Colonial Transformation and Asian Religions in Modern History

Colonial Transformation and Asian Religions in Modern History

Colonial Transformation and Asian Religions in Modern History Edited by

David W. Kim

Colonial Transformation and Asian Religions in Modern History Edited by David W. Kim This book first published 2018 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2018 by David W. Kim and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-0559-6 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-0559-9

CONTENTS

List of Tables and Figures ......................................................................... vii Acknowledgements .................................................................................... ix Preface ........................................................................................................ xi Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Part One: South Asia Chapter One ............................................................................................... 10 From Colony to Post-Colony: Animal Baiting and Religious Festivals in South Punjab, Pakistan Muhammad Amjad Kavesh Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 30 NƯlƗcala: The Mountain of Desire, Death and Rebirth Paolo E. Rosati Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 54 (In)complete Rebellion: M. G. Ranade and the Challenge of Reinventing Hinduism Alok Oak Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 74 The MahƗbhƗrata as Celebrity Political Text? Gregory Millett Bailey Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 95 Karma Yoga: An Ideal of the Performance of Action in the Bhagavad Gita Taritwat Chaihemwong

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Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 110 Two Women Reformers: The Brahmani of Kaushika-DharmavyadhaLegend in the Mahabharata and Rani Rashmoni of Calcutta; A Comparative Study Supriya Banik Pal Part Two: Southeast Asia Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 140 Buddhist Art of 9th-Century Champa: Ĉӗng Dѭѫng Ann R. Proctor Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 163 Religious Pentecostal Evangelisation of Politics Has Begun: Evidence from the Grassroots Practitioners Joel A. Tejedo Part Three: East Asia Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 186 A Socio-Religious Volunteerism: The Australian NGO Movement during the Korean War (1950-1953) David W. Kim Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 210 The Meaning of “New Religion” in Japan: The Presence of Tenrikyo and the Meiji Era Midori Horiuchi Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 230 Re-Interpreting Hansai: Burnt Offerings as the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Gwyn McClelland Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 261 Coming Down the Mountain: Transformations of Contemplative Culture in Eastern Tibet Elizabeth McDougal Contributors ............................................................................................. 290 Index ........................................................................................................ 293

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Part One: South Asia Chapter One Map 1: Showing festivals in different areas of South Punjab, Pakistan

Chapter Six Figure 1: Rani Rashmoni Figure 2: Front page of the Asiatic Journal Figure 3: Death News of Rajchandra in the Asiatic Journal Figure 4: Seal with signature used by Rani Rashmoni Figure 5: Early image of Dakshineswar Temple © British Library Board Photo 247/2 (1)

Part Two: Southeast Asia Chapter Seven Figure 1: Ĉӗng Dѭѫng Pedestal from the Vihara, 9-10th Century, Cham Museum, permitted by Trang Ky Phuong Figure 2: Remains of a Structure at Ðӗng Dѭѫng, December 2015 Figure 3: Door Guardian, Ĉӗng Dѭѫng, 9-10th century, sandstone, h. 200 cm, Cham Museum, permitted by Trang Ky Phuong Figure 4: Tara, (replica) 9th century, bronze, h. 115 cm, Cham Museum, permitted by Trang Ky Phuong

Chapter Eight Table 1: Summary of the Demographic Information of the Respondents

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List of Tables and Figures

Part Three: East Asia Chapter Nine Figure 1: The aircraft carrier HMAS Sydney in Korean waters 1951-1952 © the Sea Power Centre, Australia Figure 2: Catherine (second from left) and Helen Mackenzie (third from left) with medical staff in front of the Il-Sin Christian Hospital in September 1952, public domain Figure 3: The prisoner of war (POW) from North Korea interviewed by an UN military officer, public domain

Chapter Ten Figure 1: Kagura Service from the cover of the Reference Materials for The Life of Oyasama

Chapter Eleven Figure 1: Panorama Shiki Nagasaki Kankou Annai Zu 151 Figure 2: Nagai Takashi, 1946, mourning his wife, Midori, public domain Figure 3: Landscape of Silence: the burnt-out remains of survivor Fukahori Jǀji’s home, near Yamazato Primary school, Urakami Figure 4: Statue of Pope John Paul II, erected at Megumi no Oka Genbaku Hǀmu

Chapter Twelve Figure 1: Gebchak Nunnery at 4,500 metres in Nangchen, Kham (Eastern Tibet) Figure 2: A typical-looking Tibetan housing resettlement on the Tibetan Plateau Figure 3: A newly constructed monastic college in Eastern Tibet Figure 4: The elderly yogin, Pema Dorje, teaching the nature of mind to a Gebchak nun © Caterina DeRe and Elizabeth McDougal

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This project (Colonial Transformation and Asian Religions in Modern History) was originally motivated through casual conversations with Asian religion and society scholars at the School of Culture, History, and Language at the Australian National University. The idea was carried on by hosting an international conference on Asian Religion from 7-9th April 2016. There were over one hundred scholars at the conference. As it was so successful, a second conference will be organised in 2018. As a result of the conference, this volume, in a pioneering perspective, introduces the various phenomena of religious transformation in a multi-cultural community to enhance the social concept of religion in the history of religions. The study draws from studies of the religious culture of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia as well as the ideological subjects of animal baiting, Sanskrit mythologies, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), religious philosophy (within Hinduism), the MahƗbhƗrata, the Bhagavad Gita, women, Champa Buddhist art, Pentecostalism, religious volunteerism, Tenrikyo, the Nagasaki Catholic community, and Tibetan Buddhism. This research is financially sponsored by the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS: Korean Government). The Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs and the School of Culture, History, and Language (CHL) of the Australian National University generously offered their research facilities. The Korea Foundation (KF) provided fieldwork support (the Korea Foundation’s Field Research Fellowship) for six months in Busan, South Korea. This project would not have been possible without the financial and organisational assistance of the funding agencies and the research institutions. For their assistance, I would like to thank Suemin Kwak, Research Grant Officer, the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS), Korea, and Sean Downes, Senior Research Development Officer (Bell School/CHL), Research Services, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, and Yeunhye Park, Korea Foundation (KF). Professor Simon Haberle, Director of Culture, History, and Language, Australian National University (ANU) showed a special interest through the favour of providing University research sources and research space. Professor John Powers (FAHA: Fellow of the Academy of Humanities in Australia, ANU), as the academic advisor, helped me in many ways, including official and administrative issues, and University

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access. Professor Robert Cribb, Department of Pacific and Asian History, Australian National University (ANU), supported my research by advising on internal academic developments. Prof MaComas Taylor, Dr Peter Friedlander, Dr Barbara Nelson, and Dr Ruth Gamble, who together organised the first ANU Asian Religion conference, shared their experiences of Indian and Nepal religious studies to deepen my understanding of the life of the indigenous religions in the region of South Asia. Mr Anthony Chan, the research assistant of the university, solved most of the practical issues for my academic activities. I am grateful to Professor Iain Gardner (FAHA: Fellow of the Academy of Humanities in Australia) and Emeritus Professor Gary Trompf (the Personal Chair in the History of Ideas), the School of Letters, Arts, and Media, the University of Sydney who are my academic mentors in the History of Religions and Theology. I also thank Ms Helen Gadie and Garry Breland in the USA for their involvement in reading the manuscript. They gave useful comments as well. Finally, I express sincere gratitude to Victoria Carruthers (Author Liaison) and Amanda Millar (Typesetting Manager), Cambridge Scholars Publishing (CSP) for their efforts in the process of this publication. David W. Kim Australian National University

PREFACE

It is an honour and a great pleasure for me, an anthropologist of Asian globalised religions, to preface David Kim’s Colonial Transformation and Asian Religions in Modern History. This volume indeed engages and reopens a crucial debate in Asian Studies and in Religious Studies: the issue of “colonialism” and the many ways the term (and what it means empirically and epistemologically speaking) has impacted both practices and knowledge. Indeed, in the last two decades Social Sciences and Humanities have undertaken a vast movement of redefinition of the nature and context of the production of knowledge, taking more and more seriously the issue of colonialism, not only as a way to understand the reframing of the world, but also the reorganisation of the semantic categories and the frameworks of meaning through which the world makes sense. Foucault’s reflections on power and knowledge and the growing interest in the poetics and politics of social action and of cultural representation have infused Social Sciences and Humanities, and range nowadays at the forefront of the new agendas of research. If we live in Postcolonial times, as goes the common wisdom, academic circles also work alongside postmodern and postcolonial epistemologies (of deconstruction, critical archaeology of knowledge, issues in power) and even with “post-postcolonial” views, since the process of critical deconstruction has now bypassed the “postcolonial” step. Theories of social and cultural change, and furthermore religious change needed to leave room enough for the factors explicitly associated, directly or less directly, to colonial projects or forces. Knowledge on societies and cultures has been deeply impacted by the issue of colonialism and the postcolonial turn, but religion has long been indisposed to engage in the critical deconstruction of the structures of power in the world. Voices from the Asian South have had a particular (sound) echo in Social Sciences and Humanities, especially in the context of Indian Cultural and Subaltern Studies whose discussion on the concept of “culture,” the contestation of the models of knowledge and the historical narratives exported from the North exemplified the emergence of a new ideological consciousness and a more multi-polar and balanced intelligibility of social processes and cultural dynamics. Yet, the topic of religion has only recently surfaced in these debates, for understandable

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reasons but not always explicitly explained (religion was synonymous with historical stability, or with resistance to change, for instance). In the United States, but on the basis of the Western Path of monotheistic religious institutions, Talal Asad ranges among the first scholars to locate issues in power regarding religion, not only in history and society, but regarding the definition of religion itself. It is worthy to note that Asad was himself born in Muslim Asia (Saudi Arabia) and the critics he addressed to the definition of religion were framed after Clifford Geertz’s works, who had himself studied Asian religions (but as well, Islam in North Africa). Asian religions nevertheless only came late in the agenda of the “colonial-postcolonial” debates and retrospectively, it is clear now for many that the fabric of Asian societies in the Western mind as “spiritual nations” takes on a deshistoricisation of Asia (Van der Veer, 2009), and that the reinjection of history and politics in the background studies on Asian religions unveiled unexpected dynamics of complex reinventions––Asian cultural and religious traditions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism, are engaged in the dialectics of Westernisation of the East and Easternisation of the West––following Campbell (1999). Postcolonial thinking and critics have otherwise been nourished by the pioneering works of Edward Said, Stuart Hall or Franz Fanon, and their influence grew in Humanities and Social Sciences, and finally reached Asian and Religious Studies, especially Tibetan Studies where considerations on identity, resistance, imagination, challenges of authority, ethnicity and the instrumental construction of culture/religion have nowadays a large theoretical surface and legitimacy (see the works of Peter Bishop, Donald Lopez Jr. or Frank Korom, as examples). But colonial and postcolonial issues do not only matter for regions of Asia where political history is marked by such critical turbulences: they have also filtered into many other countries and cultural areas, even those where “colonialism” was until recently not a meaningful concept, and under the influence of modern transnational social sciences (in Nepal, see Prasad, 2000). Under the flag of “colonial” or “postcolonial,” both moulding the relationships between religious dynamics and ideological or political forces, religions can be either considered as altered and weakened, on the one side, or revitalised and invigorated by this colonial environment, on the other side. Further, issues in power imbalance, and the political domination of groups over others have mainly been considered under the umbrella of “colonial Asia” (colonial India, Burma, Vietnam, and so on) and focused on the external forms and forces of colonialism––cultural, political and religious influences coming from the Modern and Imperialistic West, affecting local traditions, remained more or less unaltered. According to

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this model, long-lasting and immutable “traditions” have been quickly and deeply impacted by exported models of modernities, but fortunately revised for a much more complex portrayal of the interplay between local and global, urban and rural, elite and popular, Western and Eastern, etc., ideas and practices, on the grounds of empowerment or resistance, and the reinvention of the forms, functions, effects, and even the semantic category of “religion” (Van der Veer 2002). Recent literature has demonstrated that the reinvention of so-called “traditional religions” in Asia, in the colonial and postcolonial context, is a multifaceted process of “religionisation of politics and politicisation of religion” to quote Roland Robertson (1992), depending on the specific local situation: the colonial and political history of India, of Southeast Asia or of Tibet (three edifying examples) are all concerned, in different manners and with different aspects and effects, with the issue of colonialism. Scholars in Religious and Asian Studies accurately recognise this diversity and avoid the essentialist generalisations on “religion-in-colonial-Asia” for more detailed historically and ethnographically informed local situations in which a specific form of colonial domination generates a particular agency for unique religious systems and actors. Adding the colonial issue, another crucial dimension of the debate regarding colonialism is regarding the forces of collective imaginations, and the moral geographies they draw. As such, the “Orient” is both the terriorialised imagination of the eastern Other (in the Western mind) and the geographic site where the Asian religions are reworked and repackaged alongside the new faces of transnational politics and global cultural forces. It is a well-known fact that orientalism did play a role in the emergence of colonial and postcolonial thinking. Edward Said’s masterpiece, Orientalism (1978), emphasised the ways that the category of “the Orient” has nourished the fantasies and imagination of the West towards a stereotyped East. As a response, Eastern societies have secreted the reverse imaginary force, Occidentalism, as a political and cultural imagination of the West in the “Eastern mind,” in a strange and paradoxical mimesis and counter-mimesis process. Egalitarianism, and other claims relating to decolonisation in the realm of politics and culture in Asia (at large) seem to take on a Kulturkampf between emerging ideological and cultural forces in Asia and a more and more “provincialised” West (according to Chakrabarty), risking the essentialisation of culture and religion. Moreover, it is very important to consider the diversity of the moral geographies of the East, and the distinction between territorial imaginations on the “Near East” and “Far East,” where religions have rather differently faced the challenges of modernisation and globalisation, even if identity reinvention through

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religious resistance and empowerment is a common dynamic observed here and there. It remains that colonialism and postcolonialism as perspectives to understand the rapid and massive transformations of Asian cultures and religions are still a rather new section in Asian Studies, to be nourished by empirically informed researches. David Kim has successfully gathered here a series of instructive and illustrative case studies revealing the continuing logics of colonial forces in the modern history of Asia. We hope and do not doubt that this volume will contribute significantly to this topical yet essential key debate in the context of Asia. Lionel Obadia University of Lyon, France Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies of Strasbourg (USIAS)

INTRODUCTION

The localisation of a region, group, culture, or nation was a common social phenomenon in the pre-modern era of Asia, but global colonialism began to affect the lifestyle of local people. In particular, western authorities introduced more advanced skills such as technology, navigation, medicine and education into Asia, but whether they always cooperated with regional people is a curious issue. What was the cultural condition of their relationship between locals and newcomers? The influence of imperialism has been criticised in various ways, but the role of colonial power over the religious communities and the emergence of new religions in Asian cultures have not received significant attention among scholars, even though the Asian continent is home to many religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Shintoism, and Shamanism. It is also an undeniable fact that Asian society and culture were formed based on such a religious environment. Colonial Transformation and Asian Religions in Modern History will unveil multi-angle perspectives of the socio-religious transition of Asian society. This book uses the cultural religiosity of Asian people as a lens through which readers can re-examine the concepts of imperialism, religious syncretism and modernisation. In addition, the book’s contributors interpret the growth of new religions as another perspective of anti-colonialism. This new approach offers a significant insight to comprehending the practical agony and sorrow of the regional people of Asia in the context of modern history. The subject of this (edited) book is eighteenth- to twentieth-century Asian history related to colonial transformation and Asian religions. The manuscript is composed of selected articles (from a total of sixty-two articles) from the Asian Religion Conference, held on 7-9th April, 2016, at the Australian National University. Although there are already many introductory sources on the colonial societies of modern Asia (Plantation Society and the Colonial Order in Southeast Asia (1989), Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia (1997), and Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy (2001)), this book uniquely demonstrates the impact of religious and philosophical culture on social development. The scope of the book covers the identity, culture, and teachings of religious communities in modern Asian society. The socio-political influence of Asian religions on local people will be the primary focus, with less

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Introduction

attention given to economic perspectives. Attention to Asian history, ethnology, and traditional religions will help to apprehend the theme of this project. Further, this new book offers a new view of the socioreligious phenomena of Asian countries through examining the structure and unique teaching of the old and new religions. The inquiry of religious persecution and social apprehension under imperial influence will underline the new cultural landscape of Asia. Colonial Transformation and Asian Religions in Modern History has three sections (twelve chapters): South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. Section One (six chapters) will describe the religious landscape of South Asia where the religious communities are evaluated from a colonial perspective. The topics of “animal baiting and holy shrines in Pakistan,” “the Peshwa and the Brahmin community in Maharashtra,” and “KƗmƗkhyƗ and NƯlƗcala in KƗmarnjpa,” will be reviewed in a socioreligious context. The MahƗbhƗrata will be explored by three papers in which Indian literature is seen from the perspective of political text, of the Bhagavad Gita, and of the female reformer. Section Two (two chapters) approaches the region of Southeast Asia. Here, the characteristic of medieval Buddhist Art is analysed for the origin of the state religion in Champa (Vietnam), while the religious community of Pentecostals is considered in the context of democratic politics in the modern Philippines. Section Three (four chapters) demonstrates the colonial conflicts or harmony of the religious movements in the region of East Asia. Many nations belong to the region of East Asia, including Mongolia, but this part explores the colonial transformation of China, South Korea and Japan, focusing on the manifestations of “Australian Presbyterian volunteerism during the Korean War,” “the Japanese new religion of Tenrikyo,” and “the interpretation of Nagasaki Catholics on the atomic bombing,” and the cultural image of “Tibetan Buddhism in China.” In detail, Chapter One, in the South Asia section, discusses the politics of organising animal baiting activities and Muslim religious festivals (urs or meely) adjacent to 10 rural shrines of South Punjab, Pakistan. Taking a short detour into Indian colonial history, Muhammad Kavesh examines the strategies of current South Punjabi politicians for perpetuating power. He raises multiple questions: how did contemporary South Punjabi politicians use colonial manoeuvres for wielding authority? How and why has animal baiting been seen as an expression of masculinity since colonial times? How does the mechanism of corruption work in favour of the district bureaucrats and rural politicians? Kavesh then argues that the colonial laws that provided pathways to the British such as controlling the pilgrims’ gatherings, to minimising the risks of

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affrays, riots, and public epidemics, or organising/banning animal baiting activities, are still utilised by the district authorities and local politicians of South Punjab to strengthen and perpetuate power in the area. Chapter Two explains the cross-cultural negotiation which took place at NƯlƗcala, through the analysis of Sanskrit mythologies connected to the sacred hill as well as the study of ritual praxis linked to the temple of KƗmƗkhyƗ. Paolo E. Rosati here demonstrates that in KƗmarnjpa (Assam, north-eastern India) after the Hindu cultural penetration, mirrored by the mythohistorical invasion headed by Naraka, the PaurƗ۬ikas to legitimise the yoni (vulva) tribal symbol within the Brahmanic ideology manipulated the mythology of Dakৢa’s sacrifice. Therefore, only the North-eastern purƗ۬as narrate the origin of the ĞƗkta-pƯ‫ܒ‬has (seats of the goddess) from the limbs of SatƯ, after her body’s dismemberment; her yoni landed on NƯlƗcala in KƗmarnjpa, where KƗmadeva (Desire) regained his shape after he had been incinerated by ĝiva. Thence, the tribal yoni was transformed in the “yoni of SatƯ” and NƯlƗcala became the yoni-pƯ‫ܒ‬ha. The KƗmarnjpa is connected either with sexual or death imagery, and both are inherited from tribal traditions. Yet, the local goddess KƗmƗkhyƗ was absorbed into the Hindu pantheon, though her tribal roots survived within the mythologies of desire, death, and rebirth which linked KƗmadeva and SatƯ to the temple of KƗmƗkhyƗ on NƯlƗcala, as well as in her aniconic cult and in its related ritual praxis. Chapter Three shows how religion has had prime importance in the debates on colonialism in India and how religion became a contested category to reach modernity. In the process “dharma” that became the new signifier, operated through the institutional apparatuses, in social reform initiatives, in public ceremonies and ritualistic practices. Alok Oak argues that the dharmic basis for social, ethical, and political mobilisation against British colonialism in the late 19th century assumed different modes of engagement. Raising objections to the decades-old perception of the role of religion in the colonialism-modernity binary as either a form of revivalism or as a form of “derivative” discourse, this paper substantiates dharma (religion) as a universal politico-ethical category. Taking a cue from western liberal tradition as well as the medieval saint poetry of Maharashtra, M. G. Ranade (1842-1901) became the biggest exponent of such dharmic rationality in the 19th century. This paper argues that Ranade was attempting a distinct exposition of liberalism co-habiting the spaces opened up by his interpretations of the western discourse and the dualist philosophy within Hinduism. Meanwhile, Chapter Four explores the use of the epic text, the MahƗbhƗrata, in political discourse over the past twelve years, specifically since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost power

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Introduction

centrally in 2004 and regained it again in 2014. It suggests that the appropriation of this text by politicians and the media, and the adoption of some of its central characters as political role models have been a deliberate strategy and a significant influence in propelling the BJP to power. This stands in contrast to the media’s exaltation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s charisma and supposed good economic management in Gujarat. Greg Bailey extends this appropriation of the epic by making some comments about the well-publicised attempt by figures such as Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research, to lay the groundwork for both epics to be regarded as definitive, almost mirror image, sources of early Indian history and of leaving a marked heritage to the present day. By an analysis of contemporary media articles from Indian newspapers, the paper argues that both politicians and journalists are employing these to frame political activity in terms of a civilisational narrative that, though being over two thousand years old, still has a very vibrant reality in the present day. Taritwat Chaihemwong, in Chapter Five, approaches the Bhagavad Gita which is one of the sacred texts of Hinduism. The Bhagavad Gita is esteemed to be the jewel of Hindu literature and a container of the Upanishad, which is based upon experience, thought, and action as important aspects of human life, and advocates the values to humanity. Karma Yoga in the Bhagavad Gita is seen as the performance of actions without caring for their fruits; this is reflected as the essence of the Bhagavad Gita’s teaching which provides the basis of practical humanism with a spiritual bent of mind. Chaihemwong sees that no action can be without a result, but one should not aspire for any results of his/her action because aspiration brings selfhood and increases the ego in man. The Bhagavad Gita is reflected to teach how to solve human problems in practical life as the opening section of the Bhagavad Gita raises the question of human action. This paper argues that followers must discharge their worldly duties selflessly and sincerely, but while doing so, they should always keep the thought in their mind from the shades of selfishness. Thus, the paper includes the concept that Karma Yoga in the Bhagavad Gita is the important way for attaining light to perfect oneself, to eradicate evils from the earth, and to establish eternal peace for humankind. Chapter Six regards the empowerment of women in the form of the socio-religious reformation of society in the age of the epic Mahabharata (400 BC-400 AD) and in the society of British Colonial Calcutta in the 19th century. With respect to the society of the Mahabharata, Supriya Banik Pal explores the socio-cultural experiences and obstacles that were

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faced by the average Brahmin housewife, and contrasts them with patriarchal religious ideals. Rani Rashmoni, born to a lower-caste poor family and the wife of a Zamindar, is considered to be one of the eminent social reformers of the Bengal Renaissance. Her strong personality, humanity, political wisdom, religious virtue, social welfare, and resistance against the British are of great importance. The paper shows that she built the Dakshineswar-Kali-temple which has been the centre for spiritual awakening since the 19th century. But how were Brahmani and Rashmoni being represented in the era of the Mahabharata and in Colonial Bengal respectively? Was there any difference? This article not only investigates these issues with a post-modern outlook but also evaluates the propagation of the social structures and customs that emphasised specific and distinct gender roles within society. Chapter Seven, in the Southeast Asia section, explores 9th-century Champa Buddhist art. According to Ann R. Proctor, during the ninth century CE a monumental Buddhist monastery and temple were built by a Cham king at Ĉӗng Dѭѫng near present-day Ĉà Nҹng, Vietnam. Consecrated in 875 CE, it was one of the largest Buddhist establishments ever built in Southeast Asia. The once vast complex was built in the city of Indrapura, described as “The city covered with splendour, as is the city of Indra, sparkling with white lotuses.” However, the splendid city of Indrapura was deserted by the year 1000. Through examining architectural remains and sculpture, this paper sustains that Cham linkages with India through Southeast Asia and China are evident in historical records, and the form of religion appears to be a version of esoteric Buddhism with particular emphasis on the compassionate saviour, Avalokiteshvara. Proctor also addresses the fact that the unique style of Ĉӗng Dѭѫng sculptures attests to the syncretic form of religion followed by the Cham elite at this time. Chapter Eight examines Filipino Pentecostals as a community of believers as to whether they are democratically participative, locally acting, and translating the Gospel of Christ in all its fullness in the strengthening of civil society and democratic politics in the Philippines. Joel A. Tejedo selected two groups of Pentecostal believers as respondents to probe whether there is a significant difference between the political engagement of Ilocano and Cordilleran Pentecostals. Using the measurement tools designed by the Judkins Institute of Leadership and the 2006 Social Capital Community Survey of the Sanguaro Seminar of Harvard University, Tejedo utilises a statistical formula to test the data as to whether these differences and commonalities indicate cohesive political engagement in the political world. The results of the study show that there is no crucial difference between the perception of Ilocano and Cordilleran

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Pentecostals. However, the findings reveal the significant observations that Pentecostal believers, both Ilocano and Cordilleran, have a high level of political participation, demonstrated in their civic and political participation in the local communities. This paper suggests that Filipino Pentecostals are beginning to translate the meaning of the gospel into the creation of just politics in the public sphere. Chapter Nine, in the East Asia section, delivers a case study of the Australian NGO movement during the Korean War (1950-1953), through which the religious vulnerary activities affected the socio-cultural situation of Korea in the process of its modernisation. Here, the Korean peninsula, like Taiwan (1895-1945), was seen as one of the colonies of Japan in the first half of the twentieth century (1910-1945). The end of World War II brought an opportunity to be independent, but the different ideologies of the Capitalist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc caused the Cold War. The Korean War was the initial result of the political conflict. Australia did not have diplomatic relations with the unsteady nation until 1963, but this paper not only explores the social activities of the Australian NGO group (the Presbyterian Church of Australia (PCA), together with the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union (PWMU)), but also argues that the religious volunteerism of humanitarian aid, medical work, religious mission, and education was a significant refugee project in Pusan (temporary capital) and Kyungnam province. According to Chapter Ten, Tenrikyo was established in 1838. The time was towards the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate (Edo era, 1603~1868) and on the threshold of a new phase of the Meiji era (1868~1912). The new religion was referred to as “the religion in transitional” Japan. Midori Horiuchi sees that it was a time marked by the end of the closed-door policy in Japan. Previous to that time the Edo government’s policy towards religions was the danka-system. Namely, Buddhist temples wrote terauke (“registration”) certificates for all their affiliated households, while households had the duty to become danka of the closest Buddhist temple. There was no freedom of belief for individuals. Under those circumstances what impact did the divinely revealed religion of Tenrikyo provide to the people? This paper considers some characteristics of the “new religion” Tenrikyo through the responses of the community and people of that transitional period of Japanese history. Chapter Eleven discusses how Nagai Takashi’s interpretation of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki as hansai or a burnt offering has been negotiated by the modern Catholic hibakusha community. This analysis is part of an oral history project interviewing Catholic survivors of the bombing and other community members about community memory

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including faith perspectives and perceptions of the bombing. In view of the presence of 12000 Catholics close to ground zero of whom 8500 are said to have been killed, Nagai’s interpretation proved to be significant for the community. After his death in 1951, Nagai’s interpretation was increasingly criticised, not only by outsiders but also by the surviving Catholic community. How did the Papal visit in 1981 shift the Catholic interpretation of the bomb? Gwyn McClelland sustains that the Pope’s description of the bombing as inflicted by humanity shifted the discourse significantly. Moving beyond the hansai interpretation has been necessary for the surviving community, who have relinquished some of Nagai’s terms. How then do modern Catholic survivors remember the bombing? The political theology of Johann Baptist Metz and Renè Girard’s “scapegoat” mechanism may subvert the suggestion that smaller violence halts larger violence, just as the survivors’ reinterpretation of religious vocabulary demonstrates agency and resistance beyond victimhood. The last chapter (Twelve) demonstrates the cultural transformation of Eastern Tibet in contemporary China. Since Tibet’s abrupt meeting in the 1980s with the modernising forces of capitalism, science and the Chinese Communist Party’s policies on religion, Buddhism in Eastern Tibet has been shifting towards a valuing of scholastic knowledge over yogic, experiential knowledge. This is seen as evident in Tibetan dialogues heard in monasteries, public debates, and publications in which practitioners who do not marry their meditation and yogic practices with in-depth textual study are criticised. Elizabeth McDougal maintains that the shift is particularly apparent in Nangchen, a former kingdom in Eastern Tibet, where oral lineages that engaged in tantric sƗdhanƗs and yogas without much dialectical study used to fill the region’s many hermitages. This research takes Gebchak nunnery in Nangchen as an example of Eastern Tibet’s earlier contemplative culture, and juxtaposes the Nunnery’s determination to preserve their original practice traditions with the shift towards scholasticism taking place elsewhere in the region. Ultimately, each article of this volume (Colonial Transformation and Asian Religions in Modern History) reflects the historical perspective of modern Asia; the colonial time for religions was the socio-cultural transformation moment in which local communities or religious groups, in order to survive, had to be either negotiated or altered by the external environment or its influences. Chapters One, Two, Eight, Ten, Twelve, and Thirteen were based on field research in the contexts of cultural anthropology, arts, history, politics, and culture. Chapter Nine was the result of a survey on the Pentecostal evangelisation of the politics of the Phillippines, while chapters Three to Seven and Eleven were about the

8

Introduction

issues of society, rebellion, scripture, women, and new religions. Such approaches of Asian religions in modern history are enough to indicate the conclusion that religious traditions can be maintained in the process of historical transformation, but they need to accept cultural challenge or political compromise. David W. Kim Australian National University

PART ONE: SOUTH ASIA

CHAPTER ONE FROM COLONY TO POST-COLONY: ANIMAL BAITING AND RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS IN SOUTH PUNJAB, PAKISTAN MUHAMMAD AMJAD KAVESH AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

Despite their illegal status, baiting activities have been widely practised in many countries throughout the world. Some are presumed to have existed in Rome’s Coliseum,1 where dogs were baited against other animals to appreciate the dog’s fierceness and aggression.2 From the 12th century, baiting activities became popular in medieval England,3 where dogs were pitted against bears, bulls, badgers, and even rats.4 Brownstein noted that from Roman times, England was famous for the large and ferocious English mastiff, which was “used for hunting, but primarily he was bred and trained to be a man killer as watch-dog or war-dog.”5 As such, the mastiff for Britons was an emblem of strength, courage, aggression and other characteristics that were symbols of English masculine prowess.6 Baiting activities flourished as a popular pastime in Britain and reached  1

Hanna Gibson, Dog Fighting: Detailed Discussion (Michigan Staff University, College of Law: Animal Legal & Historical Center, 2005), 4. 2 Linda Kalof and Carl Taylor, “The Discourse of Dog Fighting,” Humanity & Society 31, 4 (2007): 321-22. 3 Phyllis G. Coleman, “Note to Athletes, NFL, and NBA: Dog Fighting is a Crime, not a Sport,” Journal of Animal Law & Ethics 3, 1 (2009): 88. 4 Rhonda D. Evans and Craig J. Forsyth, “Entertainment to Outrage: A Social Historical View of Dog Fighting,” International Review of Modern Sociology 27, 2 (1997): 61. 5 Oscar Brownstein, “The Popularity of Baiting in England Before 1600: A Study in Social and Theatrical History,” Educational Theatre Journal 21, 3 (1969): 243. 6 Kalof and Taylor, “The Discourse of Dog Fighting,” 322.

From Colony to Post-Colony

11

their peak in the 16th century.7 At that time, it was an amusement of royalty, appreciated by monarchs, aristocrats, nobility, and the gentry; and was taken with utmost earnestness by the people of all classes.8 Scholars observed that King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth I enjoyed baiting activities, and presented dogs (mostly English mastiffs) as royal gifts to other heads of state. 9 Such gifts are revealing in politically astute exchange, as the courageous dog embodied the traits of its presenter––the courageous and powerful monarch, and functioned in developing/maintaining hierarchies.10 In the 16th century, bull baiting and bear baiting in England were popular, even more so than the drama of that period. 11 The baiting activities at that time not only displayed the dog’s qualities against bears, bulls and rats, but they also served some utilitarian functions.12 The bull was selected for baiting so that before slaughter, the frenzied exercise would tenderise the bull’s meat.13 The bear was chosen because of its similarity to humans in form and shape and the dog’s win over the bear depicted its ascendancy over a more powerful creature.14 In addition, ratting was performed to reduce the population of rats in the cities at the time when the sewer system was not fully developed.15 However, from serving utilitarian functions, the baiting activities soon became

 7

Mike Homan, A Complete History of Fighting Dogs (Gloucestershire: Ringpress Books, 1999). Dieter Fleig, History of Fighting Dogs (Neptune City: THF Publications, 1996). 8 Evans and Forsyth, “Entertainment to Outrage: A Social Historical View of Dog Fighting,” 61. 9 Brownstein, “The Popularity of Baiting in England Before 1600: A Study in Social and Theatrical History,” 243. 10 Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. Ian Gunnison (New York and London: The Norton Library, 1954), 72. 11 Brownstein, “The Popularity of Baiting in England Before 1600: A Study in Social and Theatrical History,” 237. 12 Rhonda Evans, DeAnn K. Gauthier, and Craig J. Forsyth, “Dog Fighting: Symbolic Expression and Validation of Masculinity,” Sex Roles 39, 11-12 (1998): 827. 13 Kalof and Taylor, “The Discourse of Dog Fighting,” 322. 14 Ibid. 15 Evans and Forsyth, “Entertainment to Outrage: A Social Historical View of Dog Fighting,” 61.

12

Chapter One

entertainment.16 In all these baiting activities, the audience praised the mastiff’s ferocity, and was eager to see it as a winner.17 In the 18th century, a new form of entertainment was introduced in addition to bull baiting and bear baiting. The activity of dog fighting (two dogs fighting against each other) appeared as another popular choice.18 The major reason for its introduction was that dog fighting appeared as more sporting and competitive than bull baiting or bear baiting. In dog fighting, the canines were not attacking a tethered victim (bear or bull) but fighting against each other on equal grounds.19 Dog fighting and other baiting activities remained legal for almost a century with the support of members of the upper class, who at that time were commercial breeders of the baiting animals and had control of the market.20 Any change in the law was strongly opposed, for instance when in 1800, the House of Commons presented a bill for abolishing bull-baiting in the British Parliament, it was defeated on the grounds that the amusement inspired courage and produced an elevation of mind.21 In India, the British colonialists introduced bear baiting in the 18th century. Until the present day, the outcrosses of the English bull terrier are the most employed breeds in bear baiting and dog fighting. The perpetuation of animal baiting in India has been seen by some as the British strategy to initiate relations with local landlords, who in exchange took up these activities “to develop relations with the British rulers and establish their important status within the rural community.”22 For many years, animal baiting remained a symbol of conspicuous leisure and martial masculinity for the British. During the early colonial time, the British not only transmitted the activities to Indian landlords, they also  16

Evans, Gauthier, and Forsyth, “Dog Fighting: Symbolic Expression and Validation of Masculinity,” 827. 17 Brownstein, “The Popularity of Baiting in England Before 1600: A Study in Social and Theatrical History,” 243. 18 Evans and Forsyth, “Entertainment to Outrage: A Social Historical View of Dog Fighting,” 62. 19 Kalof and Taylor, “The Discourse of Dog Fighting,” 323. 20 Evans and Forsyth, “Entertainment to Outrage: A Social Historical View of Dog Fighting,” 62. 21 Harriet Ritvo, “Animals in Nineteenth-century Britain: Complicated Attitudes and Competing Categories,” in Animals and Human Society: Changing Perspectives, eds. Aubrey Manning and James Serpell (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 106. 22 John Joseph, “Bear-baiting in Pakistan,” in World Society for the Protection of Animal's Liberty Campaign (World Society for the Protection of Animals, 1997), 4.

From Colony to Post-Colony

13

transferred the meanings they carried (such as to depict the dog’s masculine courage and strength over other animals). Bulls held a religious and utilitarian (farming) significance for both Hindus and Muslims, so they were not baited against dogs. However, bear baiting and dog fighting were practised to appreciate the martial masculine skills of dogs (courage, bravery, aggression, and strength, to name a few). Slowly, the animal activities received opposition in England from the moral philosophers. In the 18th century, many religious and moral philosophical schools debated the use and abuse of non-human animals. These debates were the precursor to the animal welfare movement. The core of these debates was the demand for more humane treatment and the prevention of cruelty to all animals. These 18th century moral philosophers not only discouraged beating or baiting animals but also insisted on the complete care and protection of animals. Among them, English utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was a central advocate for raising concerns on animal suffering: “The question is not, Can [animals] reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?” he argued.23 Bentham and many others criticised the inhumane treatment of non-human animals during that time. In the 19th century, baiting activities started to lose their elite patronage and were banned in England with the Humane Act of 1835.24 The reasons for banning animal baiting in England were much more than the pressure from moral philosophers. For instance, its opposition stemmed from the Church of England: most of the animal baiting was being practised on Sundays, and significantly reduced the audience of the church.25 Secondly, the increasing impact of Victorian sensibilities, such as morality, sympathy, suffering, and self-righteousness underpinned the ban on such activities. However, because of Victorian moral principles animal baiting slowly lost its elite patronage, whereas other “blood sports” such as game-hunting, fox-hunting, and tiger-hunting in India (as elite activities) continued as gentlemen’s recreation.26 And lastly, as Dunning  23

Jonathan Benthall, “Animal Liberation and Rights,” Anthropology Today 23, 2 (2007): 2. 24 Coleman, “Note to Athletes, NFL, and NBA: Dog Fighting is a Crime, not a Sport,” 88. 25 Evans and Forsyth, “Entertainment to Outrage: A Social Historical View of Dog Fighting,” 63. 26 Anand S. Pandian, “Predatory Care: The Imperial Hunt in Mughal and British India,” Journal of Historical Sociology 14, 1 (2001). Shafqat Hussain, “Sportshunting, Fairness and Colonial Identity: Collaboration and Subversion in the Northwestern Frontier Region of the British Indian,” Conservation and Society 8, 2

14

Chapter One

has noted, in the “age of revolution” baiting activities were attracting large crowds, and were considered a threat for propagating riots and affrays.27 As the Indian natives adopted bear baiting and dog fighting, the British elites turned their attention away, and adopted tiger killing and game hunting in the Himalayas as an expression of their masculine prowess and conspicuous leisure. Veblen has noted that leisure is worthy, honourable and noble if it involves the element of exploitation, and those employments that do not contain exploitation are seen as unworthy, debasing, and ignoble.28 By exploiting the wildlife and killing the “maneating tiger,” the British not only engaged in an “honourable” form of leisure, they also justified their role as worthy rulers and masters of the wild.29 In 1824, “The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals” was established in England. Soon after, the society received royal patronage and changed to “The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals” under the aegis of Queen Victoria.30 At the end of the 19th century, dog fighting along with all other types of baiting were declared illegal by the British Government of India through the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1890 as an effort to extend the boundary of the Victorian humane doctrine to include the colony. After independence in 1947, both the newly established Indian and Pakistani Governments adopted the laws developed by the British. Although the Indian Government made amendments to the Prevention to Cruelty Act in 1960,31 in Pakistan the 1890 version of the Act is still intact with very minor changes. According to section 6-C of the Act, if any person incites or baits any animal to fight, the person will be punished with a fine of up to fifty rupees (about a half-dollar in the present day). In  (2010): 32-36. William K. Storey, “Big Cats and Imperialism: Lion and Tiger Hunting in Kenya and Northern India, 1898-1930,” Journal of World History 2, 2 (1991): 154-161. 27 Tom Dunning, “Animal Baiting,” in Encyclopedia of World Sport: From Ancient Times to the Present, eds. David Levinson and Karen Christensen (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 1996), 30. 28 Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1912), 15. 29 Pandian, “Predatory Care: The Imperial Hunt in Mughal and British India,” 84. 30 Ritvo, “Animals in Nineteenth-century Britain: Complicated Attitudes and Competing Categories,” 108. 31 Krithika Srinivasan, “The Biopolitics of Animal Being and Welfare: Dog Control and Care in the UK and India,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 38, 1 (2013): 108.

From Colony to Post-Colony

15

section 3(a), there is mention of a three-month term of imprisonment for the person who treats animals with cruelty.32 The penalty for inciting animals to fight was a deterrent in 1890, when 50 rupees was a huge sum. In the present day, the value of the fine is nominal, and has resulted in minimal police action as regard to animal baiting. The activity of bear baiting has been recently outlawed in Sindh province through a bear protection law, and the Bio-Resource Research Centre (BRC)33 in coordination with the Wildlife department of Pakistan is taking steps to ban the activity in the whole of Pakistan. Bear baiting as an activity was a popular feature of festivals in parts of rural Punjab and Sindh where two or more dogs were unleashed to attack a tethered bear. The canine (and sometimes incisor) teeth, and nails of the bear were removed before the fight to give the dogs a clear advantage over the bear.34 The popularity of bear baiting as a rural entertainment remained at its peak until the mid-1990s, but a decrease in wild bears, most importantly Asiatic black bears,35 raised some concerns from international animal rights groups [such as the World Society for the Protection of Animals]. This resulted in formidable opposition to bear baiting from the Wildlife department in Pakistan which supported the BRC to eradicate the practice of bear baiting in the country: “we started this project in 1994 as a species conservation drive. At the start there were 1200 bear baiting cases in one year, but in 2014 there were only eight events,” commented the director of the BRC. The chief strategy of the BRC was to convince Imams (the persons who lead prayers in a mosque) from different Islamic sects to speak against bear baiting. Imams are men of great stature whose designation as religious authorities and community leaders means that they can speak against such deleterious activities during their weekly sermon of Friday noon prayer in the mosque. In February 2015, bear baiting was officially declared illegal in Sindh province. In addition, keeping and using bears for

 32

The Government of India, “The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act,” The Government of India (1890). 33 Bio-resource Research Centre (BRC), “Bearbaiting,” Bio-resource Research Centre (BRC), http://www. pbrc.edu.pk/bearbaiting.htm, accessed on 10/11/2015. 34 The practice of making the bear more vulnerable by tethering it with a chain was adopted from the British, see Kalof and Taylor, 2007, 323. 35 Asiatic Black Bear or Himalayan Black Bear has been listed as “vulnerable” to extinction by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (see The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2015).

16

Chapter One

dancing,36 begging or in the circus were also declared illegal, and the penalties for these acts were fines up to 100,000 rupees (about $1000) and/or imprisonment for two years.37 The pronouncement of religious authorities in declaring bear baiting as un-Islamic, along with legal actions and severe penalties enforced by the state with the pressure of international animal welfare organisations, has put an end to this practice.

Mela in South Punjab In present-day rural South Punjab (and rural Pakistan at large), animal baiting (other than bear baiting) is not thwarted by the police or other law enforcing authorities. Most of the animal baiting activities are organised by rural politicians as part of rural cultural festivals (melas). When a police SHO (Session House Officer) was asked for his opinion about the legality of animal baiting, he shrugged and stated “festival organisers (the politicians) obtain permission beforehand from higher district authorities such as DPOs (District Police Officer) and DCOs (District Coordination Officer), so how are we (low-ranked officers) supposed to raid the event?” In the early colonial period, animal baiting activities helped the British in their dominance over the Indian subcontinent. Now these activities are assisting rural politicians to further their political ambitions. A mela (the term originated from the Sanskrit word mel) usually refers to a religious fair where thousands of people come together and celebrate the death anniversary of a Sufi saint or martyr engraved in the shrine. However, it is important to note that the melas taking place in South Punjab should not be considered similar to the urs38 festivals being  36

In rural Pakistan, beggars train monkeys and bears to perform certain tricks (referred to as bear-dance), and display the performance to rural audiences in village streets to get some money in reward. 37 Sameer Mandhro, “Sindh Bans Bear-baiting,” The Express Tribune, 19 February 2015. World Animal Protection, “New Law a Major Step Forward in Protecting Bears in Pakistan,” World Animal Protection, http://www.worldanimalprotection.org/news/new-law-major-step-forwardprotecting-bears-pakistan, accessed on 22/03/2016. 38 The word urs, literally meaning “marriage” in Arabic, symbolises the mystical union of the soul with God. In popular culture, the term is used for the death anniversary of a saint that is celebrated at his shrine to honour his efforts and services to humanity. Some famous urs of popular Sufi shrines (such as the urs of Lal Shahbaz Qalander in Sindh, the urs of Data Ganj Bakhsh in Lahore, and the urs of Baha-ud-Din Zakriya in Multan) even congregate hundreds of thousands of people on the occasion.

From Colony to Post-Colony

17

practised in other areas of Pakistan, where most of the ethnographic work is coming from. Four anthropological case studies that were produced on urs festivals are touched on here in order to underline the difference between South Punjabi melas and urs in other areas of Punjab. Firstly, in spite of their difference in themes—music and movements in urs,39 the practices and customs of marginal groups’ veneration,40 the symbolic politics of Sufism in Pakistan,41 and urs as a symbolic milieu for the sacred union of the state with the society42—these studies all focused on the famous urban Sufi shrines of Lahore, Islamabad, and Pakpattan as a point of departure, and did not discuuss rural festivals. Secondly, most of these studies (excluding Philippon 2012) discussed the importance of the faqir or malang (mystics, ascetics, or Sufi mendicant) in the urs, who is plainly absent from the South Punjabi melas. Thirdly, the shrines that have been the focus of these studies all come under the regulation of the Government’s Auqaf and Religious Affairs department; 43 whereas no shrine in my research locale comes under the regulation of the Auqaf department.44 And lastly, all urs discussed in these four anthropological studies are celebrated either in accordance with the Islamic Hijri (lunar)  39

Richard K. Wolf, “The Poetics of ‘Sufi’ Practice: Drumming, Dancing, and Complex Agency at Madho Lal Husain (And Beyond),” American Ethnologist 33, 2 (2006): 21-25. 40 Muhammad Azam Choudhary, “Religious Practices at Sufi Shrines in the Punjab,” Pakistan Journal of History and Culture 31, 1 (2010): 245-256. 41 Robert Rozehnal, “Faqir or Faker?: The Pakpattan Tragedy and the Politics of Sufism in Pakistan,” Religion 36, 1 (2006). 42 Alex Philippon, “The Urs of the Patron Saint of Lahore: National Popular Festival and Sacred Union between the Pakistani State and Society?” Social Compass 59, 3 (2012): 21-26. 43 Pakistani Government’s Auqaf (Religious Affairs) department mostly performs the management of Sufi shrines, the appointment of caretakers, and the organisation of urs. The Auqaf department collects funds from shrines’ donations and leases the land in the shrines’ surrounding for commercial purposes. These funds are then utilised for the maintenance and upkeep of shrines and welfare services such as dispensaries and free food distribution near shrines. Since its establishment in 1976, the Auqaf department has restricted the traditional sources of the profit of caretakers who used to benefit from Shrines’ donations and offerings. Now the department has set sealed donation boxes in the courtyards of shrines, which are opened weekly and the money is transferred to the department’s bank account. However, because of the limited human resource, the Auqaf department has only focused on the famous urban shrines of Pakistan. 44 Government of The Punjab, “Auqaf and Religious Affairs,” Punjab Portal, http://www.punjab.gov.pk/auqaf _and_religious_affairs, accessed on 12/04/2016.

18

Chapter One

calendar, or the Gregorian (solar) calendar; conversely, all the melas the researcher participated in during the fieldwork were held according to the Bikrami (or desƯ/folk) calendar.45

Map 1: Showing festivals in different areas of South Punjab, Pakistan.

 45

Muhammad Aurang Zeb Mughal, Time, Space and Social Change in Rural Pakistan: An Ethnographic Study of Jhokwala Village, Lodhran District (Durham, UK: Durham University, 2014), 133-151.

From Colony to Post-Colony

19

As the Government’s Auqaf department does not manage all the 10 festivals discussed in this paper, their organisation becomes the interplay of institutionalised corruption between all the actors involved. These festivals are usually organised by the patronage of local politicians such as MNAs (Member of the National Assembly) and MPAs (Member of the Provincial Assembly). However, the organisers face an obstacle: the imposition of Section 144 by the District Government. Section 144 that is imposed by the DCO (District Coordination Officer) and enforced by the DPO (District Police Officer) is part of Pakistan’s Code of Criminal Procedure, originally developed by the British in 1898 and amended by the Pakistani Government in 1997.46 During the colonial era, Section 144 was imposed to inhibit public gatherings (such as during festivals) to minimise the cases of riot and affray and to restore public order. For the British, the melas were potentially dangerous occasions; and as Kama Maclean (2008) noted, the British perceived festivals “as powerful conduits of disease as well as news, rumours, sedition, and eventually nationalism,”47 and developed laws for the tight regulation and control of festivals. Most of the festivals were not only recreational activities; they also held religious significance for the locals. However, the British saw these rituals as “oriental” backward superstitions and fanatical activities. By highlighting the absurdity of local people’s beliefs and practices, they legitimised their colonial power and pushed it further through the notion of modernisation.48 In contemporary South Punjab, the imposition of this century-old law to ban cultural fairs is normal by the corrupt and impoverished district authorities.49 The official reason for banning the  46

The Asian Development Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Pakistan: Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898 as Amended by Act 2 of 1997 (Government of Pakistan, 2007 [1898]). 47 Maclean, Pilgrimage and Power: The Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, 1765-1954, 4. 48 Hafeez-ur-Rehman Chaudhry, Saints and Shrines in Pakistan: A Case Study of Potwar Area (Islamabad: NIHCR, 2011), 68. 49 These are not only the rural festivals that are haunted by Section 144, the law is also imposed in federal and provincial territories during local elections, discouraging unlawful assembly, and dispersing the organised protests and rallies (again the practice that imitates the British style, who used to ban nationalist demonstrations through Section 144 during the independence movement). Moreover, in recent years, the Supreme Court of Pakistan used Section 144 to ban the spring festival of kite flying all over Pakistan. The decision was taken up following numerous reports of deaths of motorcyclists caused by the razor sharp strings used in kite flying.

20

Chapter One

melas provided by the State’s documents is similar to the British one, that festivals can cause a threat to human life, public health, safety, and order. However, the festival organisers stated that they always manage to circumvent the law and get “special permission” from the district authorities to organise fairs. A mela is a festive place for the public, and a ban on these activities by the district bureaucrats deprives the rural people of their annual amusement. However, as the local politicians obtain “special permission,” the organisation of the mela provides them with an opportunity to derive some political gains. Holding the “banned” melas and providing amusement for the local people bring positive impacts for their political position. Not only do they receive great admiration from the public but they also portray their symbolic power that can go beyond the law. The “special permission” from the district authorities is provided when the politicians utilise their connections or practise monetary exchange (bribery). Speaking about festival organisation, a top tier politician of Lodhran district said that“Pakistan vich ‫ڲ‬an‫ڲ‬y nƗl ty pesy nƗl sab thƯ wendƗ he” (In Pakistan everything is possible either with the wooden club [connections] or with money). The politicians (such as the MNAs and MPAs) can easily get “special permission” to organise the mela by using “functional intimacy” 50 with the district authorities. Speaking about Sultani Ayub Mela (famous for the horse-dance and camel fighting), a local man explained that “it is organised by the current MNA of Lodhran district, his relative, and other affluent men, because they all have an interest in camel fighting and invite rich political friends from other areas of Pakistan.” Another advised that some politicians not only organise bear baiting (which is strictly banned in Pakistan) but invite the SP (Superintendent of Police) to watch the activity. Through presenting camel fighting and bear baiting exhibitions and organising banned activities in the presence of law enforcement authorities, the politicians symbolically depict their power and authority in the area and accumulate symbolic capital. The crowd of thousands of people who gather to watch the camel fighting and bear baiting also witness the participation of key district officials, and reaffirm the power of their village politicians. The paper argues that by organising banned festivals, the local politicians reproduce and reinforce their power and symbolic capital in a bid to strengthen their domestic political position.  50

This paper uses the term “functional intimacy” for an affective relationship between individuals who are functionally instrumental to each other, for instance the local politicians and the district bureaucrats.

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Some festivals are organised through giving bribes to district authorities and getting “special permission.” However, the mechanism of bribes in South Asia is not straightforward; it is not “simply an economic transaction but a cultural practice that require[s] a great degree of performative competence.” 51 The local politicians master this performative art of practising bribery and simplify these seemingly complex negotiations. In these cases, the politicians provide some portion of money from the festival income to the district authorities and get the “special permission.” Though the local politicians develop their symbolic capital by providing amusement for village people through lifting the ban on festivals, they do not however provide the bribe from their own pockets. Festival organisation is not only the source of prestige and honour for the politicians, it also ensures income. As discussed earlier, none of these 10 shrines is controlled by the Government’s Auqaf department, so the local politicians keep a strong hold on the charity donations and other income related to the shrines. In all these shrines’ courtyards, several locked iron chests are placed for visitors to make donations and the money goes to the politicians. Moreover, during the festival time, the politicians rent the land in the surroundings of the shrine for commercial purposes. In Pir Jewan Mela, a shopkeeper at a small stall of local sweets said that he gives 5000 rupees (about $50) for renting the stall for three days to mela organisers, and there were almost 300 stalls. In addition, there are rents for circuses, motorbike shows, gambling activities (dice throwing, roulette, and cards), small movie theatres and donations to the shrine (these donations continue throughout the year). The money that sometimes exceeds a couple of million rupees (usually 20,000 dollars) is shared with the district authorities to organise festivals. This mechanism of corruption commences with the money that comes from ordinary people’s pockets and makes a chain from the shopkeepers at a festival to the organiser of the festival, and reaches the district bureaucrats. The ordinary person is the sole consumer, while the difference in money takers is that the politicians and bureaucrats raise large sums from relatively few people, whereas festival shopkeepers collect the money in small amounts from a very large number of people. It is for this reason that this mechanism of corruption is not only curtained

 51 Akhil Gupta, “Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics, and the Imagined State,” American Ethnologist 22, 2 (1995): 381.

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Chapter One

from the masses, but from the higher state officials sitting in provincial and federal capitals.52 The festivals organised near the village shrines provide an opportunity for the rural people to get amusement and enjoy the occasion after the harvesting season. Most of these festivals take place from February to April in spring, and some are held in the monsoon season in July and August. The people always look forward to these festivals impatiently as the events are crucial markers of the local calendar. On the occasion of festivals, people rarely gather for the veneration of the saints and their tombs, but the crowd of thousands congregates to buy things, eat food, and observe and take part in different spectacles. The festivals are an embodiment of relaxation and joy—made up of noise, jollity, and festivity—and are held with great enthusiasm. Though most festivals are organised near the villages and held for three to four days, they are also frequented by city dwellers every day. The mela bazaar provides people with an opportunity to buy things such as toys and balloons for children; trinkets; pottery, metal and wooden vessels and utensils; and other inexpensive objects for daily domestic use. People bring their children for amusement rides and eat foodstuffs from the refreshments stalls. 53 However, the indispensable aspects of these festivals are spectacles such as men’s wrestling, camel-fighting, and dog fighting. These activities are organised at an open ground, nearby the festival bazaar, and gatherings of thousands watch the occasions. Animal baiting most of the time takes place on the second (and busiest) day of the festivals. It is worth noticing that not every festival has animal baiting, but almost all animal baiting competitions are held at festivals. Animal baiting is mostly organised under the patronage of the festival organisers (the politicians). Though organisers commonly sponsor transportation, animal fighters do not get any monetary reward if their animal wins the fight or any compensation if it loses. Even though monetary rewards or betting are absent from this activity, there remains fierce competition surrounding masculinity, displays of aggression, prestige, and honour.

 52

Ibid., 384. Iftikhar Haider Malik, Culture and Customs of Pakistan, Culture and Customs of Asia (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006), 156-157.

53

From Colony to Post-Colony

23

Animal Baiting and Shrines–– The Holy and Unholy Paradox The shrines in South Punjabi are considered holy places, which embody the spiritual power of the saint. As the saint is physically engraved in the shrine, so the followers believe that the spirit of the saint remains alive in the territory of the shrine, listens to their prayers, and accepts their offerings. Festivals are organised every year at the occasion of the anniversary of the saint. However, the organisation of animal baiting that specifically involves dogs presents an interesting (holy and unholy) paradox. The dog is a haram and a ritually impure animal as per the orthodox interpretation of Islam. Due to this very reason, loving a dog, petting or cuddling it, and spending time with it are considered to be against rural South Punjabi values.54 Here, the two modes of understanding the world are aligned: that is the culturally-constituted understanding of purity and pollution, and the modern system of hygiene and health. The symbolic order, argued Mary Douglas, is critical for understanding human behaviour and discovering how cultures organise their worlds. Douglas was especially concerned with discovering an overarching order of things that could explain why some “things” (objects, foods, animals, people and places) are considered polluting while others are regarded as pure. She contends that those objects that do not fit into the symbolic order of any cultural system are considered to be “matter out of place,” and thus become unholy.55 In analysing the taxonomic schema of kosher and nonkosher animals discussed in Leviticus, she argued that cloven-hoofed animals that chew the cud (such as cattle, goat, and sheep) and fishes with  54

It is important to add that the viewpoints of the urban middle and upper-middleclass of Central Punjab (Lahore, Sialkot, Faisalabad, and so forth) paint a very different picture. City people mostly keep many foreign breeds of dogs such as German Shepherds, Huskies, Pointers, Poodles, Labradors, Cocker spaniels, Pugs and so forth. They sometime involve their canines in the dog shows, which are organised by the Kennel Club of Pakistan. These dog shows are occasions where people bring their cherished dogs, socialise with each other, and compete for the internationally recognised “Champion Certificate”. The dogs are evaluated by judges, some of whom are foreigners, who assess the dogs based on their pure breeding, their behaviour to their owners and other dogs, and their composure and flexibility on being handled by the judges. The whole performance receives substantial media coverage. 55 Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), 36.

24

Chapter One

fins and scales were described as kosher because they fall under the pure and proper symbolic order, and are thus considered holy. In contrast, those animals that neither have cloven-hooves nor chew the cud (or do not have one of these two characteristics, such as the pig, camel, hare, and badger), and fishes without fins and scales did not come under the cherished order and were regarded as impure, improper and thus considered unholy. Douglas was convinced that the idea of pollution reduction in different cultures stemmed from keeping things in a cherished order and contravention of this order results in breaching the sanctity of the system. During the fieldwork, it was repeatedly stated that angels of mercy do not visit the houses of those who keep dogs (the popular belief can be traced from a hadith of the Prophet).56 Keeping dogs is allowed for only two instrumental reasons: hunting or guarding (farms/livestock). It is a common belief that if a dog sniffs or licks any pot or vessel, the utensil becomes unclean and needs to be washed with water seven times before using it again, and if it is a clay utensil, it should be disposed of and never used again. The major reason behind this is that the dog’s saliva contains germs. By invoking Douglas once again, the paper contends that it is best to employ her concept of “symbolic boundaries” in order to analyse Islam’s attitude towards dogs. Symbolic boundaries have been defined as conceptual distinctions that serve to define and include some groups/things and exclude others.57 The dog in traditional Arab society was performing crucial functions: hunting and guarding, and so it was allowed to be domesticated for these instrumental reasons. Whereas, a dog’s saliva (and bite) was believed to contain diseases (such as rabies), and again, for practical reasons, it was discouraged from being kept in the house or from licking the utensils. In other words, the canine’s association with rabies defined it as a contagious creature and a symbolic boundary was created through which the animal was classified and placed at the margins of the social system. However, despite a religiously polluted status, dogs are being baited near holy shrines. The major reason for this is that festivals are liminal spaces. Turner (1967; 1969) was convinced that the liminal phase alters

 56

Muhammad Al-Bukhari, “Sahih al-Bukhari,” http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/ bukhari/bh3/bh3_514.htm, accessed on 04/05/2016. 57 Michèle Lamont and Virág Molnár, “The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences,” Annual Review of Sociology 28 (2002): 168.

From Colony to Post-Colony

25

the state of an individual.58 It is a period of betwixt and between where people experience an ambiguous situation as they are neither here nor there.59 During the festivals, South Punjabi people detached themselves from their current status and entered the liminal phase where they adopted and took part in activities that were not normally practised in everyday social contexts. For instance, at festivals some people consumed alcohol or gambled, while others entertained themselves by watching transgender dancing. None of these activities were socially permissible in everyday life. However, they were practised without any opposition at the festivals. Once the festival was over and the liminal phase had passed, everyone was expected to behave according to the pre-existing cultural norms and ethical standards.60 Therefore, in the liminal phase of festivals no one opposed the practice of (unholy) dog baiting near the (holy) shrines. Instead of debating the sanctity or evil of animal baiting near the shrines, people enjoyed the show. By watching two fierce dogs fighting or a couple of canines disempowering a bear, local people appreciated the courage of the animals and the bravery of those who organised these activities. The politicians never fought against each other in the arena, yet they reproduced their superiority, domination, and authority by organising banned festivals and activities. The baiting animals became actors and the festivals became a stage through which the rural politicians symbolised their power. To achieve a higher status and maintain their dominance over their subjects, local politicians utilise old colonial tactics. For the British, bear baiting and other dog fighting activities were symbolic proof of their masculine prowess. The fierce fighting dog symbolised colonial ferocity, power, and virility. The dog’s success over other animals epitomised the English man’s success over the effeminate natives. The dog’s courage, aggression, and bravery exemplified the British dominance over the Indians. Even though the British banned the activity in 1890, after independence the Pakistani rural politicians adopted these as an expression of their masculine power. By organising the banned festivals, and displaying animal baiting activities, the post-colonial politicians prove their worth as legitimate rulers. Therefore, the colonial tactics that eased the way for the British to control the pilgrims’ gatherings, minimise the  58

Victor Witter Turner, “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage,” in The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1967). 59 Ibid., “Liminality and Communitas,” in The Ritual Process: Structure and Antistructure (Chicago: Aldine Pub. Co, 1969). 60 Ibid., 94.

26

Chapter One

risk of affrays and riots, and display the martial traits of masculinity, are still utilised by the local politicians of South Punjab to strengthen and perpetuate power in the area.

Conclusion This paper explored the past and present of two colonial tactics of governance. It examined the history of animal baiting as well as the ban on cultural festivals, and analysed their influence in the current rural Punjabi power framework. The paper argued that the rural politicians of South Punjab accumulate symbolic capital by organising animal baiting at banned festivals. These “prestigious” politicians then use their symbolic capital to exercise symbolic violence. One way of exercising symbolic violence is in the perpetuation of power through success in future electoral campaigns. Politicians attract crowds to the festival through the displays of animal baiting. Larger crowd means that the festival will be successful. The successful festival promises money for rural politicians, who use the funds to build socio-political alliances, to influence the bureaucratic structure, and to activate local workers at the time of elections to get more social support for political goals. In this whole process, local politicians receive multiple advantages. By taking care of shrines and by organising festivals, they get respect (symbolic capital) from the community and by keeping their hold over the festival income they perpetuate their power in the coming electoral campaigns. Therefore, animals as actors and festivals as stages reproduce the rural politicians’ masculinities and clear their path to power accumulation. Section 144, which was once implemented by the British to control the unlawful assembly of people and minimise the risks to public health is now being used by rural Pakistani politicians to further their political gains. The animal baiting that was once the depiction of colonial martial masculinity now symbolises the local politicians’ courage, bravery and prowess. The British during the colonial era and the Pakistani politicians in this post-colonial time use the same tactics to govern and manage. These two tactics assisted the British in their control over the effeminate Indians, and now assist the Pakistani politicians to accumulate economic and symbolic capital. Thus, both the colonialists and the current bureaucrats have a similar objective: to display their macho aggression through baiting activities, and to depict their authority and wield their symbolic power through lifting the ban on the crucial annual entertainment of the rural people.

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Bibliography Al-Bukhari, Muhammad. “Sahih Al-Bukhari.” http://www.sacred-texts. com/isl/bukhari/bh3/ bh3_514.htm, accessed on 04/05/2016. Benthall, Jonathan. “Animal Liberation and Rights.” Anthropology Today 23, no. 2 (2007): 1-3. Bio-resource Research Centre (BRC). “Bearbaiting.” Bio-resource Research Centre (BRC), http://www.pbrc.edu.pk/bearbaiting.htm, accessed on 10/11/2015. Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Forms of Capital.” In Handbook of Theory and Research for Sociology and Education, edited by J. G. Richardson, 241-258. New York: Greenwood, 1986. __. The Logic of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1990. —. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology 16. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loïc Wacquant. “Symbolic Capital and Social Classes.” Journal of Classical Sociology 13, 2 (2013): 292-302. Brownstein, Oscar. “The Popularity of Baiting in England before 1600: A Study in Social and Theatrical History.” Educational Theatre Journal 21, 3 (1969): 237-250. Chaudhry, Hafeez-ur-Rehman. Saints and Shrines in Pakistan: A Case Study of Potwar Area. Islamabad: NIHCR, 2011. Choudhary, Muhammad Azam. “Religious Practices at Sufi Shrines in the Punjab.” Pakistan Journal of History and Culture 31, no. 1 (2010): 130. Coleman, Phyllis G. “Note to Athletes, Nfl, and Nba: Dog Fighting is a Crime, Not a Sport.” Journal of Animal Law & Ethics 3, no. 1 (2009): 85-119. Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966. Dunning, Tom. “Animal Baiting.” In Encyclopedia of World Sport: From Ancient Times to the Present, edited by David Levinson and Karen Christensen, 27-30. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 1996. Evans, Rhonda D., and Craig J. Forsyth. “Entertainment to Outrage: A Social Historical View of Dog Fighting.” International Review of Modern Sociology 27, no. 2 (1997): 59-71. Evans, Rhonda, DeAnn K. Gauthier, and Craig J. Forsyth. “Dog Fighting: Symbolic Expression and Validation of Masculinity.” Sex Roles 39, nos. 11-12 (1998): 825-838.

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Fleig, Dieter. History of Fighting Dogs. Neptune City: THF Publications, 1996. Gibson, Hanna. “Dog Fighting: Detailed Discussion.” Michigan Staff University, College of Law: Animal Legal & Historical Center, 2005. Gupta, Akhil. “Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics, and the Imagined State.” American Ethnologist 22, no. 2 (1995): 375-402. Homan, Mike. A Complete History of Fighting Dogs. Gloucestershire: Ringpress Books, 1999. Hussain, Shafqat. “Sports-hunting, Fairness and Colonial Identity: Collaboration and Subversion in the Northwestern Frontier Region in the British Indian Empire.” Conservation and Society 8, no. 2 (2010): 112. Joseph, John. “Bear-baiting in Pakistan.” In World Society for the Protection of Animal’s Liberty Campaign, 21, World Society for the Protection of Animals, 1997. Kalof, Linda, and Carl Taylor. “The Discourse of Dog Fighting.” Humanity & Society 31, no. 4 (2007): 319-333. Lamont, Michèle, and Virág Molnár. “The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences.” Annual Review of Sociology 28 (2002): 167-95. Maclean, Kama. Pilgrimage and Power: The Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, 1765-1954. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Malik, Iftikhar Haider. Culture and Customs of Pakistan. Culture and Customs of Asia. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006. Mandhro, Sameer. “Sindh Bans Bear-baiting.” The Express Tribune, 19 February 2015. Mauss, Marcel. The Gift: The Form and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. Translated by Ian Gunnison. New York and London: The Norton Library, 1954. 1925 (original publication date). Mughal, Muhammad Aurang Zeb. “Time, Space and Social Change in Rural Pakistan: An Ethnographic Study of Jhokwala Village, Lodhran District.” Durham: Durham University Press, 2014. Pandian, Anand S. “Predatory Care: The Imperial Hunt in Mughal and British India.” Journal of Historical Sociology 14, no. 1 (2001): 79107. Philippon, Alex. “The Urs of the Patron Saint of Lahore: National Popular Festival and Sacred Union between the Pakistani State and Society?” Social Compass 59, no. 3 (2012): 289-297. Punjab, Government of the. “Auqaf and Religious Affairs.” Punjab Portal, http://www.punjab. gov.pk/auqaf_and_religious_affairs, accessed on 12/04/2016.

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Ritvo, Harriet. “Animals in Nineteenth-century Britain: Complicated Attitudes and Competing Categories.” In Animals and Human Society: Changing Perspectives, edited by Aubrey Manning and James Serpell, 106-126. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. Rozehnal, Robert. “Faqir or Faker?: The Pakpattan Tragedy and the Politics of Sufism in Pakistan.” Religion 36, no. 1 (2006): 29-47. Sinha, Mrinalini. Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth Century. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1995. Srinivasan, Krithika. “The Biopolitics of Animal Being and Welfare: Dog Control and Care in the UK and India.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 38, no. 1 (2013): 106-119. Storey, William K. “Big Cats and Imperialism: Lion and Tiger Hunting in Kenya and Northern India, 1898-1930.” Journal of World History 2, no. 2 (1991): 135-173. The Asian Development Bank, and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. “Pakistan: Code of Criminal Procedure, 1898 as Amended by Act 2 of 1997.” Government of Pakistan, 2007 [1898]. The Government of India. “The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.” 1890. Turner, Victor Witter. “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites De Passage.” In The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual, 93111. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1967. —. “Liminality and Communitas.” In The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure, 94-130. Chicago: Aldine Pub. Co., 1969. Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1912. 1899 (original publication date). Wolf, Richard K. “The Poetics of ‘Sufi’ Practice: Drumming, Dancing, and Complex Agency at Madho Lal Husain (and Beyond).” American Ethnologist 33, no. 2 (2006): 246-268. World Animal Protection. “New Law a Major Step Forward in Protecting Bears in Pakistan.” World Animal Protection, http://www.worldanimalprotection.org/news/new-law-major-stepforward-protecting-bears-pakistan, accessed on 22/03/2016.

CHAPTER TWO NƮLƖCALA: THE MOUNTAIN OF DESIRE, DEATH AND REBIRTH PAOLO E. ROSATI SAPIENZA UNIVERSITY, ROME

NƯlƗcala or “the Blue Mountain”––also called KƗmagiri, or “the Mountain of Desire”1 is in the Brahmaputra Valley of Assam between Khasi and Garo’s Hills, a land infamous for black magic,2 and human sacrifices.3 Since early times, its local inhabitants have been considered to be strongly linked with supernatural powers; in fact they are described in Epic, Puranic and Tantric sources as kƗmarnjpi۬Ư (shape-shifters),4 and today all Assamese women are still considered to be the human counterpart of the divine yoginƯs.5 The mountain is revered as the most sacred abode of the goddess in South Asia, because on its top is placed the temple of KƗmƗkhyƗ,  1

The hill is also called NƯlaku৬a, NƯlƗparvata, NƯlagiri, and KƗmaparvata; see KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a (=KP), 62.1, 75; 72.2; 76.75; 79.84, in B. Shastri, ed. and trans., The KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a: Text, Introduction and Translation in English (2nd ed., Delhi: Nag Publisher, 2008). 2 KaulajñƗna-nir۬aya (=KJN), 4.14-15; 14.75-76, in P. C. Bagchi, ed., M. Megee trans., KaulajñƗna-nir۬aya of the School of Matsyendranatha, (2nd ed., Varanasi: Prachya Prakashan, 1986). 3 M. Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (2nd ed., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), 305. 4 See KJN, 7-10; cf. VƗyupurƗ۬a (=VP), 1.39.31, in G. P. Bhatt, ed., and G. V. Tagare, trans., VƗyupurƗ۬a. Translated and Annotated, vol. 1 (Delhi/Paris: Motilal Banarsidass/UNESCO, 1987-1988); and KP, 38.38. 5 KJN, 22.9-11, in Bagchi, ed., Megee, trans. (1986); N. N. Bhattacharyya, History of the ĝƗkta Religion (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1974), 104-105; see particularly V. Dehejia, YoginƯ Cult and Temple: A Tantric Tradition (New Delhi: National Museum, 1986).

NƯlƗcala: The Mountain of Desire, Death and Rebirth

31

where inside its garbhag‫܀‬ha (inner chamber) is preserved the yoni of SatƯ. Thus, the site is recognised by the Sanskrit sources as well as the Tantric pilgrims to be the greatest ĞƗkta pƯ‫ܒ‬ha, as it is stated in the Kulacnj‫ڲ‬Ɨma۬i Tantra: “Of all pƯ৬has, the supreme pƯ৬ha is KƗmarnjpa. It bears great fruits, even if the worship is done there only once.” 6 During a period of fieldwork conducted on NƯlƗcala in January and February 2016, it is evident from interviews that many Hindu practitioners came from West Bengal, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, while a number of worshippers arrived on the hill-top from Deccan and Southern India. Although not all the pilgrims were tƗntrikas (Tantric worshippers), all of them agreed that the site was the most sacred of India because of its connection with the yoni of the goddess.7 H. B. Urban calls the sanctum “the womb of tantra” to underline the extreme religious relevance of the KƗmƗkhyƗ temple within the South Asian context as well as its central role in the genesis of the Tantric phenomena.8 Indeed, the inner chamber where the yoni is preserved is metaphorically reminiscent of the female womb; it is very dark, and there is a water-stream that covers the yoni-like stone. Every day, a crowd of pilgrims starts the queue to visit the sanctum well before dawn, and it takes a few hours to arrive in the inner chamber where the pilgrims are allowed to worship the yoni only for a few minutes.9 At the temple complex every year the annual menstrual period of the goddess is celebrated through the AmbuvƗcƯ melƗ, in June or July (Ɨ‫܈‬Ɨ‫ڲ‬ha)––the main ĞƗkta festival of Assam. NƯlƗcala is revered as the womb from which all the ĞƗkta pƯ‫ܒ‬ha network spreads out, a religious network founded either on the goddess’s sacrifice or on the ĝiva-ĝakti union. Furthermore the KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a––the earliest text devoted to the worship of the goddess KƗmƗkhyƗ compiled between the tenth and eleventh centuries10––through the myths of its cosmogenesis, highlights the link of the hill with the  6

Kulacnj‫ڲ‬Ɨma۬i Tantra (=KCT), 5.36-40, in L. M. Finn, ed. and trans., Kaulacnj‫ڲ‬Ɨma۬i Tantram and VƗmakeĞvara Tantra, with the Commentary (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1986); see also DevƯbhƗgavatapurƗ۬a (=DBP), 38.1518, in R. T. Pandey, ed., DevƯbhƗgavatapurƗ۬a (Kashi: Pandit Jayaratha Pustakalya, 1956); KJN, 8.20-22; KP, 62.82-83. 7 Author’s Field-work Notes, Assam: January-February 2016; see also B. Shastri, ed., YoginƯ Tantra (Delhi: Bharatiya Vidya Prakashan, 1982), xxx. 8 H. B. Urban, “The Womb of Tantra: Goddesses, Tribals, and Kings in Assam,” The Journal of Hindu Studies 4 (2011): 232. 9 Author’s Field-work Notes, Assam: January-February 2016. 10 Shastri, ed. and trans., The KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a: Text, Introduction and Translation in English, xxvi-xxxiv.

32

Chapter Two

sexual symbolism and the death imagery. After the death of SatƯ, an episode well-fitted within the scenario of the great sacrifice officiated by Dakৢa (dak‫܈‬ayajña),11 the gods cut her corpse into pieces that then fell down on to the earth (India), originating the ĞƗkta pƯ‫ܒ‬has network. Among them, her yoni fell on NƯlƗcala, a fact that explains why it is revered as the greatest pƯ‫ܒ‬ha by Puranic and Tantric literature.12 Her husband ĝiva, still attached to the bodily pleasures and desperate over the loss of his wife, reached the goddess in every pƯ‫ܒ‬ha, through his aniconic phallic shape (li۪ga). When the hill––the body of ĝiva––was touched by the yoni its colour turned into blue and it came to be known as NƯlƗcala. Moreover, the hill also came to be described as KƗmagiri, because here the divine couple reside in an endless yoni-li۪ga union.13 Hence, the death of the goddess also rendered the power of ĝiva accessible to human beings.14 How did SatƯ die? She burned her body through her tapas (or jumping inside the sacrificial fire-pyre). Thus, her selfincineration provoked a chain of events that explains her connection with NƯlƗcala as the yoni pƯ‫ܒ‬ha––the core from which the ĞƗkta religious  11

Here is a short list of the textual references on the dak‫܈‬ayajña mythology: MahƗbhƗrata (=Mbh), 12.274.36-59, in S. K. Belvalkar, ed., The Santiparvan. The Twelth Book of the MahƗbhƗrata, vol. 2 (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1954); MatsyapurƗ۬a (=MP), 13.1-64, in J. D. Akhtar, ed., MatsyapurƗ۬a (Delhi: Oriental Publishers, 1972); Li۪gapurƗ۬a (=LP), 1.99-100, in J. L. Shastri, ed., Li۪gapurƗ۬a. Translated by a Board of Scholars, vol. 1 of 2, Ancient Indian Tradition & Mythology (Delhi/Patna/Varanasi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1973); KnjrmapurƗ۬a (=KnjP), 1.14, J. L. Shastri, ed., The KnjrmaPurƗ۬a, vol. 1 of 2 (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1981-1982); BrahmapurƗ۬a (=BaP), 34, in J. L. Shastri, ed., BrahmapurƗ۬a. Translated and Annotated by a Board of Scholars, vol. 1 of 4, Ancient Indian Tradition & Mythology (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1978); ĝivapurƗ۬a (=ĝP), 2.2.26-37, in J. L. Shastri, ed., The ĝiva PurƗ۬a, vol. 1 of 4, Ancient Indian Tradition & Mythology (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1969-1970); VP, 1.30; VƗmanapurƗ۬a (=VmP), 2.1-4, in A. S. Gupta, ed. and trans., VƗmanapurƗ۬a. With English Translation (Varanasi: All-India Kashiraj Trust, 1968); VarƗhapurƗ۬a (=VrP), 3.3, in S. Vankitasubramonia Iyer, ed. and trans., VarƗhapurƗ۬a. Translated and Annotated (Delhi/Paris: Motilal Banarsidass/UNESCO, 1985); VP, 1.30. 12 KP, 18.39-47; particularly see D. C. Sircar, The ĝƗkta PƯ‫ܒ‬has (2nd ed., Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1998); see also note no. 7. 13 KP, 18.53, 62.72b-76a; see also MahƗbhƗgavatapurƗ۬a (=MBP), 11.113-116, in S. P. Kumar, ed., MahƗbhƗgavata PurƗ۬a: An Ancient Treatise on ĝakti Cult (Delhi: Eastern Book Linkers, 1983). 14 KP, 18.46; DBP, 7.30.44-50. See particularly David Kinsley, Hindu Goddesses. Vision of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Traditions (2nd ed., Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2005), 38-40.

NƯlƗcala: The Mountain of Desire, Death and Rebirth

33

network spread out throughout the Indian sub-continent. In this way her ashes are metaphorically the origin of the ĞƗkta pƯ‫ܒ‬has. The theogonic role of ashes appears also in another myth of cosmogenesis of KƗmarnjpa: the madana-bhasma or “the incineration of KƗma”. In fact the god of desire was incinerated by the fiery glance of ĝiva, because he struck ĝiva with his divine arrows, provoking his sexual desire. Then he regained his corporeal form––after the wedding of ĝiva with ParvatƯ––in the NorthEast, so that the region took the name of KƗmarnjpa or the “land of desire” (literally “the shape of desire”).15 Therefore, according to purƗ۬as and tantras produced in the North-East, all the ĞƗkta pƯ‫ܒ‬has in general, NƯlƗcala in particular, emerge as either sexual pleasure alcoves or cemeterial grounds; in fact they are the earthly tomb of the goddess. Both concepts fuse together with the tribal as well as the pre-Aryan world.

Naraka, the Tribal Assam and the Cult of KƗmƗkhyƗ Why have only the North-eastern purƗ۬as narrated that the yoni of the goddess landed on KƗmarnjpa?16 Why has NƯlƗcala been considered either the core of the ĞƗkta pƯ‫ܒ‬has network,17 or the religious centre from which the Tantric phenomena spread out? 18 During the age of the Gupta Empire––the fourth to sixth centuries––the North-East was at the margins of Indian history. It was a land inhabited by tribal people as documented by the Epic as well as the Puranic sources.19 According to the most famous Assamese accounts––the KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a as well as the later YoginƯ Tantra––the hill tribesmen of Assam practised the kirƗta-dharma (the religion of KirƗtas), and they were already devoted to KƗmƗkhyƗ.20 The  15

KP, 1.24-62, 2.1-59, 3.1-49; MP, 3.30-44, 4.11-21; ĝP, 2.3.51.1-15. KP, 18.41-47; see also DBP, 7.38.16-18; MBP, 11.1-2; although the extreme sacrifice of SatƯ is described in Epic and Puranic sources, it is only in the purƗ۬as compiled in North-Eastern India that the ĞƗkta pƯ‫ܒ‬has lists are included. 17 H. B. Urban, The Power of Tantra. Religion, Sexuality and the Politics of South Asian Studies (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2010), 31-32. 18 Eliade, Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, 305; see also K. P. Goswami, KƗmƗkhyƗ Temple: Past and Present (New Delhi: A.P.H., 1998), 49. T. E. Donaldson did not agree with this position; on the contrary he considered PurƯ in Orissa to be the place where the ĞƗkta cults, as well as the concept of pƯ‫ܒ‬has originated; cf. T. E. Donaldson, Tantra and ĝƗkta Art of Orissa, vol. 1 (Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 2002), 7-11, 19-20, 88. 19 KP, 38.100-103a. 20 YoginƯ Tantra (=YogT), 1.9.13-6, in B. Shastri, ed., YoginƯ Tantra (Delhi: Bharatiya Vidya Prakashan, 1982); see also KP, 38.100-103a. See also R. M. 16

34

Chapter Two

Puranic name KƗmƗkhyƗ could be a corruption of a local goddess’s name; indeed the Khasi’s main goddess is called Ka-me-kha, while Kam-Ki or Kham-mai-kha is the Bodo-Khacarie goddess’ name. Although from an etymological point of view the studies have not arrived at any certain conclusion,21 it emerges from a sociological perspective that a regional process brought an alien deity into the Hindu pantheon, together with her religious and socio-cultural substratum. B. K. Kakati in 1948 hypothesised that Austroasiatic speaker groups imported an aniconic-yoni cult to ancient Assam.22 Although there is no written evidence, it seems possible to speculate on the existence of an ancient tribal Mother Goddess worshipped as an aniconic deity. Indeed, after a glance at the regional tribal religions and arts, it is evident from the data that they are linked with the aniconic concept of the divine,23 so it is more than possible that ancient Assamese hill tribesmen practised the aniconic cult of the goddess KƗmƗkhyƗ before the Aryan cultural penetration, mirrored by the mytho-historical invasion headed by King Naraka––a cult continued by the Hindu ruler. According to the myth, Naraka was the son of Viৢ৆u in the form of a vahƗra (boar), and P৚thvƯ (the Earth goddess),24 and he was conceived during her menstrual period (considered the most impure period by the Hindu orthodoxy).25 He was not only described as the ruler who aryanised ancient Assam, but he was also considered as the founder of the Bhauma

 Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 209. 21 F. Brighenti, pers. comm. [e-mail correspondence from November 2014 to March 2015]; see also Urban, The Power of Tantra. Religion, Sexuality and the Politics of South Asian Studies, 46. 22 B. K. Kakati, The Mother Goddess KƗmƗkhyƗ, or, Studies in the Fusion of Aryan and Primitive Beliefs of Assam (Guwahati: Punya Prasad Duara for the Assam Publishing Corporation, 1948), 43-44. 23 See C. Mallebrein, “Local and Tribal Deities: Assimilation and Transformation,” in V. Dehejia, ed., Devi: The Great Goddess. Female Divinity in South Asian Art (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute, 1999), 137-156. 24 KP, 38.163. 25 See H. B. Urban, “Matrix of Power: Tantra, Kingship and Sacrifice in the Worship of Mother Goddess KƗmƗkhyƗ,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 31, 3 (2008): 500-534; Urban, The Power of Tantra. Religion, Sexuality and the Politics of South Asian Studies, 55-6; cf. B‫܀‬hadƗra۬yaka Upani‫܈‬ad, 6.4.13.20-22 (=BU), in E. Sénart, ed. and trans., B‫܀‬hadƗra۬yaka Upani‫܈‬ad (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1934).

NƯlƗcala: The Mountain of Desire, Death and Rebirth

35

dynasty of KƗmarnjpa.26 The storytelling of Naraka was already narrated in the MahƗbhƗrata, where he was considered as the son of P৚thvƯ,27 although his filial relationship with Viৢ৆u has been cleared through the KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a. The Dubi Copper Plate of BhƗskaravarman (600-625 CE) corroborates the story of his miraculous birth; in fact, it reports that “Naraka was born from the Earth for the stability of the people.” 28 Furthermore, his divine birth justified the name of his dynasty, the Bhauma, as recorded in the rock-cut inscription of NagƗjarƯ-KanikargƗon– –Bhauma means “the son of the Earth.”29 Moreover, the genealogies reported in the rock-cut inscriptions indicated that Naraka was considered to be the ancestor by all the regional dynasties that ruled over Assam during the Medieval Age. Was the royal families’ high consideration of Naraka due to his divine origins? Alternatively, did it derive from his connection with Tantric elements? According to the KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a Naraka was found by his stepfather Janaka––the king of Mithila––in his sacrificial ground, lying inside a human skull.30 This is a clear reference to the Tantric ritual; however, he was introduced to the Vedas soon after he was adopted.31 In the Puranic storytelling, Naraka emerged to be both either the ruler who was able to overcome the tribal hostility and the one able to unite under his flag both the Hindu and tribal cultures, as it is pointed out by the following verses of the KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a: The (KirƗta) king having been killed, some KirƗtas fled while others surrendered to Naraka. Naraka killed those who fought him, protected those who took refuge in him, and then he went to his father and submitted

 26

M. M. Sharma, Inscriptions of Ancient Assam (Guwahati: Dept. Publications Guwahati University, 1978), 10-34. 27 The Udyogaparvan and Dro۬aparvan (the fifth and seventh books of Mbh) confirm that Naraka was born from BhumƯ, but they do not explain his relationship with Viৢ৆u. See Mbh, 5.48.80-86 in K. Garbutt, ed. and trans., Mahabharata V: Preparations For War (Udyogaparvan), vol. 1 (New York: New York University Press/JJC Foundation, 2008), 455-457; Mbh, 7.29.30-39, in P. Vaughan, ed. and trans., MahƗbhƗrata VII: Drona (Dro۬aparvan), vol. 1 (New York: New York University Press/JJC Foundation, 2006/2009), 251-253. 28 Lines 2-5, translated by Sharma, Inscriptions of Ancient Assam, 20; cf. Mbh, 2.9.10-15, in P. Wilmot, ed. and trans., MahƗbhƗrata II: The Great Hall (SabhƗparvan) (New York: New York University Press/JJC Foundation, 2006), 95. 29 See Sharma, Inscriptions of Ancient Assam, 303-305. 30 KP, 37. 35-60. 31 KP, 38.1-4, and see particularly 38.157.

36

Chapter Two after paying his obeisance. Naraka said: ‘O Father! I killed Ga৬aka, the king of the KirƗtas along with many other generals of his army, command me what else I should do.’ BhagavƗn said: ‘Annihilate the KirƗtas up to the (abode) of the goddess DikkaravƗsinƯ, drive away the fleeing ones and protect those who submit.’32

Thus, it emerges from his myth that he killed the tribal chief Gha৬akƗsura, a king of the KirƗta tribes. Then some of the defeated tribes fled to Eastern KƗmarnjpa,33 while others submitted to the new Hindu Lord. The Northeastern account explains how the new ruler was able to manage a political alliance with some hill tribes, although there was a socio-cultural gap between the conquerors and the conquered: You shall not worship any other god or goddess except the great goddess KƗmƗkhyƗ, mother of the world, who is none else than MahƗmƗyƗ, AmbikƗ. Acting otherwise, you shall die therefore, O Naraka! Adhere to the promise with great care.34

Hence, the text describes the acceptance of a local goddess within the Brahmanic pantheon, together with her tribal characters––mainly her blood-thirsty behaviour and the associated sexual rites. The political role of the religion is evident; the Puranic regional literature became an instrument to transform and incorporate the tribal beliefs and practices within the Brahmanic religious folds. Indeed, the KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a underlines the fact that brƗhma۬as as well as other dvijas (twice-born castes) had settled down in ancient Assam:

 32

KP, 38.110-113. An ancient diaspora is mirrored by the presence of another regional ĞƗkta pƯ‫ܒ‬ha near the eastern border of modern-day Assam, the DikkaravƗsinƯ pƯ‫ܒ‬ha in the Paya area (Lohit district of Arunachal Pradesh) around 30 km from Sadiya’s area (Assam). The temple was known either as TamreĞvarƯ temple or “the Copper temple” and it was registered as a protected monument in 1910 by the Government of India. Unfortunately, today the temple has been “buried under earth during the great earthquake of the 1950s and the area was submerged by the Haju River due to the changing of its course” (D. K. Chuley [Superintendent Archaeologist of Archaeological Survey of India––Guwahati circle], pers. comm. [e-mail correspondence 22 February 2016]; on 21 February 2016 I also personally examined the area). 34 KP, 38.149-150. 33

NƯlƗcala: The Mountain of Desire, Death and Rebirth

37

By evicting KirƗta people from the region, many people belonging to the twice-born castes, who are well versed in the Vedas, and others also of the fold of the sanƗtana caste-system settled here.35

The text through its verses describes the first step in the Aryan cultural penetration in Assam. Hence the religion has been used as a political tool to obtain the loyalty of local cultures which was a necessity for the Hindu rulers in a region dominated by tribal traditions. From the textual analysis, the paurƗ۬ika(s) (Puranic compilers) of KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a placed the roots of the regional goddess within the tribal religiosity; even Naraka is strongly linked to both cultures, an aspect that could justify the early Hindu (or Hinduised) royal dynasties of the North-East considering him as a common ancestor. 36 His inclusion in the dynastic genealogies as the earliest common ancestor underlines the political need for the Northeastern kings to find common ground with the tribesmen. Nevertheless, Naraka is still today an enigmatic character of the ancient history of Assam. He was probably not a single ruler; on the contrary his name designed a dynastic royal title assumed by a family, which grounded its roots in the sexual intercourse between Viৢ৆u and P৚thvƯ. 37 Perhaps the compilers of the Epic and Puranic sources misunderstood or consciously mixed the rulers of the earlier Hindu (or Hinduised) royal family of Assam, creating the mytho-historical king. It also explains the ritual changes during his mytho-historical rule, so that the ritual praxis shifted from the vai‫۬܈‬ava type to the Ğaiva type.38 The myth of Naraka from a historical-religious perspective does underline the origin of the aniconic cult practised on NƯlƗcala, while from a sociological perspective it explains how the absorption process of a tribal goddess within the Hindu world is not only influenced by Universalisation, and Brahmanisation/Sanskritisation processes, 39 but is also influenced by Parochialisation and Tribalisation ones.40  35

KP, 38.128. P. C. Choudhury, The History of Civilization of the People of Assam up to the 12th Century AD (2nd ed., Guwahati: Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies in Assam, 1966), 119-277. 37 D. R. Mankad, PurƗ۬ic Chronology (Anand, Gujarat: Gangajala Prakashan, 1951), 225-231. 38 S. P. Kumar, ĝakti Cult in Ancient India (Varanasi: Barathiya Publishing House, 1974), 133-5; see also KP, 60.1-18. 39 Regarding the Sanskritisation concept, see Mysore Narasimhachar Srinivas, Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India (London: Asia Publishing House, 1952), 30. Cf. L. Carroll, “«Sanskritisation» «Westernisation» and «Social 36

38

Chapter Two

The Yoni Cult: Its Cross-cultural Implications On the one hand the acceptance of the local goddess KƗmƗkhyƗ within the Brahmanic pantheon and on the other hand the inclusion of tribal praxis to worship her, were both necessary elements to obtain the loyalty of nonAryan people––a necessity for the new Hindu kings in a region dominated by tribal traditions. Who, then, was the ancient KƗmƗkhyƗ? This Sanskrit name was a corruption of tribal goddesses’ names, but it could be argued that her character was built through tribal deities’ traits fused with the Hindu goddess’s construction of the DevƯmƗhƗtmya.41 On NƯlƗcala the absorption process resulted in the identification of a tribal goddess with the sacred yoni of SatƯ––the most sacred part of the female body. 42 Therefore, the mythology of SatƯ was manipulated to highlight the crosscultural influences on NƯlƗcala as a locus sacer (place of worship). As narrated in the KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a, the brƗhma۬as arrived in Assam from Western regions (mainly from Bengal).43 They needed to legitimate the yoni-tribal symbol into the Brahmanic sphere to create a meeting-point between Hindu kings and local people. The death of SatƯ connected to the rise of the ĞƗkta pƯ‫ܒ‬has in India is a North-eastern transformation of ancient literature, influenced by archetypes (mythologems) already present in the Vedas.44 The North-eastern texts legitimated the cult of KƗmƗkhyƗ as well as her aniconic worship, through the transformation of the ancient mythologies grounded in the Vedic myths of the exclusion of Rudra-ĝiva  Mobility»: A Reappraisal of the Relevance of the Anthropological Concept of the Social Historian of Modern India,” Journal of Anthropological Research 33, 4 (1977): 355-357. 40 M. Merriott “Little Communities in an Indigenous Civilization,” in Village India: Studies in the Little Community, M. Marriott, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955), 197-198; see also P. Dold, “The Mahavidyas at Kamarupa: Dynamics of Transformation in Hinduism,” Religious Studies and Theology 23 (2004): 89-122. 41 See MƗrka۬‫ڲ‬eyapurƗ۬a (=MkP), 81-93, in F. E. Pergitar, ed. and trans., The MƗrka۬‫ڲ‬eya PurƗ۬a (2nd ed., Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1904); this group of chapters is commonly known as DevƯmahƗtmiya, the glorification of the goddess. 42 KP, 62.75-76; DBP, 7.38.16-18; MBP, 12.30-31; KCT, 5.36-40; YogT, 1.15.51; Yoni Tantra (=YT), 4.2, in J. A. Schoterman, ed., The Yonitantra. Critically edited with an introduction (Delhi: Manhohar, 1980). 43 See footnote no. 35. 44 Regarding the relationship between archetypes (i.e. mythologems) and mythology, see Kerényi, Károly, “Introduzione. Origine e fondazione della mitologia,” in Carl Gustav Jung and Károly Kerényi, Prolegomeni allo studio scientifico della mitologia, trans. A. Brelich (Torino: Einaudi, 1941), 14-17.

NƯlƗcala: The Mountain of Desire, Death and Rebirth

39

from the sharing of the sacrifice’s parts and in the incest of PrajƗpati with his daughter Uৢas (Aurora).45 The Vedic exclusion of Rudra-ĝiva was confirmed in the Puranic accounts, which justified it through the narrative of the bad relationship between ĝiva and his father-in-law Dakৢa.46 It was due to the fact that ĝiva was a skull-bearer,47 since he beheaded one of the BrahmƗ’s heads, and thus he blemished himself through brahmanicide.48 Moreover, ĝiva was used to dwelling and engaging in sexual intercourse with his wife inside the cremation grounds, 49 further behaviour considered from a mythological standpoint as inappropriate by Dakৢa, while on a historicalreligious level, the Hindu orthodoxy considered these behaviours to be highly impure and polluting. The lack of respect for ĝiva displayed by Dakৢa was considered an offence by his daughter SatƯ, and it was the instigating event that provoked her decision to sacrifice herself inside the sacrificial ground organised by him. 50 Her extreme act caused the destruction of the sacrificial ground by ĝiva who was “overwhelmed by pain and angry.”51 After the destruction of their sacrificial ground, the presiding deities accepted the superiority of ĝiva.52 Analysing the Puranic narratives, it is evident from the data that at this stage of the myth the North-eastern purƗ۬as diverged from the other Northern and Southern accounts; indeed it emerges, as a regional (Assamese) literary variation of the Brahmanic scenario, that the dismemberment of the lifeless body of SatƯ caused the rise of the ĞƗkta  45

W. Doniger, The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology (2nd ed., Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1980), 274-290; S. Kramrisch, La presenza di ĝiva, trans. V. Vergiani (Milano: Adelphi, 1999), 17-22. 46 KP, 43.77-78a. 47 KP, 16.29-30, 17.12. 48 KP, 61.5; particularly see ĝP, 2.2.29.20-32; BaP, 4.2.4-18; VmP, 2.18. 49 SkandapurƗ۬a (=SkP), 5.2.8.1ff, in G. V. Tagare, ed. and trans., The SkandapurƗ۬a. Translated and Annotated, vol. 1 (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1992). 50 The details regarding the death of SatƯ depend on the Epic or Puranic source being taken into consideration. 51 S. Wendt, “UgrƗ SatƯ––SaumyƗ SatƯ. Two Versions of one Myth in the KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a,” in A. Michaels, C. Vogelsanger and A. Wilke, eds., Wild Goddesses in India and Nepal: Proceedings of an International Symposium, Bern and Zurich, November 1994 (Bern/Berlin/Frankfurt/New York/Paris/Vienna: Lang, 1996), 179-187. 52 KP, 17.21-55; 61.6-11; DBP, 7.30.44-50; MBP, 11.32-118. The details of the destruction of the sacrificial ground vary from a purƗ۬a to another one.

40

Chapter Two

pƯ‫ܒ‬has’ network in the Indian sub-continent. 53 The number of these religious centres varies from four to 108 or more, according to the different traditions taken into consideration; each of them has preserved a different limb of the goddess’s body––an ancient heritage of pre-Aryan traditions.54 The splitting of the corpse of the goddess is a clear recollection of the primordial puru‫܈‬a’s sacrifice,55 which originated the caste system, the plinth of Indian society; however, the dismemberment of the lifeless body of the goddess was not only a creative act, but also a destructive one.56 By falling down on NƯlƗcala the yoni of SatƯ translated into mythological terms the incorporation of a tribal symbol within the Brahmanic context developed in Assam.57 Furthermore, the mountain was also permeated by the power of ĝiva, as evidenced by the blue colour of the hill, due to the contact of the ĝiva-li۪ga with the yoni.58 Therefore, the praxis on NƯlƗcala is dominated by the ritualisation of violence and sexual intercourse; the first is the public part of the ritual, which recalls the violent sacrifice of SatƯ, while the second is the most secret religious practice, and the esoteric counterpart of the public one. The sexual rituals are secretly practised on NƯlƗcala, often in the crematory grounds during the night with the ritual use of alcoholic substances.59 According to the KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a animal and human sacrifice dominated the ritual scenario in the early Medieval Age; the almost contemporary KaulajñƗnanir۬ay,60 although it is the first Tantric text to systematise the  53

KP, 18.41-7, and 64.43-9; DBP, 7.38.16-8; MBP, 11.1-2. See S. M. Bhardwaj, Hindu Places of Pilgrimage in India (A Study in Cultural Geography) (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1973); see also D. L. Eck, India: A Sacred Geography (New York: Harmony Books, 2012), 257-299. 55 ‫ۿ‬g Veda (=‫ۿ‬V), 10.90, in R. T. H. Griffith, ed. and trans., The Hymns of the ‫ۿ‬g Veda, vol. 1 of 2 (2nd ed., Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series, 1963). 56 See W. C. Beane, Myth, Cult, and Symbols in ĝƗkta Hinduism. A Study of the Indian Mother Goddess (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977), 205; cf. H. B. Urban, “The Path of Power: Impurity, Kingship and Sacrifice in Assamese Tantra,” American Academy of Religion 69, 4 (2001): 788. 57 See J.-E. Shin, “Yoni, YoginƯs and MahƗvidyƗs: Feminine Divinities from Early Medieval KƗmarnjpa to Medieval Koch Behar,” Studies in History 26, 1 (2010): 129. 58 KP, 18.41-47; MBP, 11.60-116. 59 Interview with a Tantric Guru from Varanasi (Kamakhya Village, February 12, 2016); interview with a Tantric priest of Kamakhya Hill (February 15, 2016). 60 Urban, “Matrix of Power: Tantra, Kingship and Sacrifice in the Worship of Mother Goddess KƗmƗkhyƗ,” 508; cf. D. G. White, The Kiss of the YoginƯ. 54

NƯlƗcala: The Mountain of Desire, Death and Rebirth

41

secret cult of the sixty-four yoginƯs,61 has few references to the sexual rituals. Even the Kulacnj‫ڲ‬Ɨma۬i Tantra, another eleventh-century text,62 does not go into detail about the ritualisation of sexual intercourse. On the other hand, with the later Tantric literary production, the sexual rites became the most important ritual practice in Assam. Emblematic of this literary change is the Yoni Tantra, where the yoni pnjjƗ is prescribed as the most important rite, which reaches its apex with the consumption of the yonitattva (sexual discharges) 63 ––a fluid necessary to obtain siddhis (accomplishments).64 The absorption and acceptance of sexual symbolism within Hindu orthodox ideology and religious praxis on the one hand evidence the political role assumed by religion, while on the other hand it outlines the first step of the ĞƗkta-tantra religiosity grounded in the tribal substratum within the Brahmanic world.65

The Incineration of Desire: Sexual and Death Symbolism The relevance of KƗmarnjpa as a sacred spot within a broader list of pƯ‫ܒ‬has dates back to the ninth century with the composition of the Hevjra Tantra; 66 this Vajrayana source does not link the pƯ‫ܒ‬has with the goddess’s symbolism, but connects them with the bodhisattva’s states. Its connection with the female power (Ğakti) appears with the ĞƗkta-tantra  “Tantric Sex” in Its South Asian Contexts (2nd ed., Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006), 22-23 and 278. 61 Particularly see Bhattacharyya, History of the ĝƗkta Religion, 104-105. 62 Finn, ed. and trans., Kulacnj‫ڲ‬Ɨma۬i Tantram and VƗmakeĞvara Tantra, with the Commentary, 21. 63 Schoterman, ed., The Yonitantra. Critically edited with an introduction (Delhi: Manhohar, 1980), 18-21. See also Hevajra Tantra (=HT), 2.11.10b-12b, 14b-15b, in D. L. Snellgrove, ed., Hevajra Tantra: A Critical Study, 2 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1959). 64 The word siddhis is translated as “supernatural powers” by K. R. Van Kooij, Worship of the Goddess According to the KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972), 24; it has been translated as “supernatural enjoyments,” the goals of “the male tantric practitioner” (yogin) by D. G. White, Sinister Yogis (Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), 11. 65 Cf. G. Flood, The Tantric Body. The Secret Tradition of Hindu Religion (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 14. 66 HT, 1.7. In this context, KƗmarnjpa has to be considered as NƯlƗcala. It is not intended to describe the entire Assamese region. For the date of the text see also P. Szántó, “Selected Chapters from CatuৢpƯ৬atantra. 1/2: Introductory Study with the Annotated Translation” (Unpublished DPhil Thesis: University of Oxford, 2012), 14.

42

Chapter Two

literature produced in the North-East during the tenth to eleventh centuries; this is particularly the case with the KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a and the DevƯbhƗgavatapurƗ۬a, where the death of SatƯ is associated to the rise of the pƯ‫ܒ‬has. On the other hand, the almost contemporary Tantric texts––the Kulacnj‫ڲ‬Ɨma۬i Tantra and the KulajñƗnir۬aya––do not convey the goddess’s myth, though they consider the pƯ‫ܒ‬has as places of feminine power, particularly the KƗmarnjpa, which is revered as the homeland of the cult of the sixty-four yoginƯs.67 Therefore, the KƗmarnjpa and the other pƯ‫ܒ‬has were linked to the cemeterial ground and its related death imagery well before the Puranic transformation of the dak‫܈‬ayajña mythology and the introduction of the ĞƗkta pƯ‫ܒ‬has’ ideology within the Brahmanic religion. The pƯ‫ܒ‬has that in Puranic literature became the earthly tomb of the goddess preserve the preAryan dead world’s roots. Furthermore, the Assamese mythologies not only confirm the link between the yoni pƯ‫ܒ‬ha on NƯlƗcala and the death imagery, but also intertwine both aspects with the sexual symbolism, through the myth of the incineration of KƗma, the god of desire. The connection between death and desire is evident in the following passage of the KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a: “[Inside the cave of Manobhava]68 on that stone there is the very lovely yoni in the form of stone […] and lying along the Bhasma-Ğaila (the hill of ashes of KƗma)”.69 Thus the hill which preserves the yoni of the goddess was constructed from the ashes of the god of desire, perhaps in memory of the fact that the site was an ancient KirƗta burial ground.70 The myth of the incineration of KƗma is another Puranic transformation and adaptation of some Vedic archetypes. In particular, the KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a’s version stresses the sexual and death imageries linked to the NƯlƗcala and to the yoni of SatƯ. As pointed out by Wendy Doniger, the role of KƗma changed from Vedic to Puranic narratives. KƗma was the one able to provoke the desire in BrahmƗ/PrajƗpati, originating the incest of the god with his daughter, an act that caused his curse and incineration by ĝiva.71  67

KJN, 8.13-45. Manobhava is the Assamese name of KƗma. 69 KP, 62.89, trans. by Shastri, ed. and trans., The KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a: Text, Introduction and Translation in English, 459; see also YT, 11.35. 70 According to H. B. Urban the site was an ancient Garo and Khasi burial ground; see Urban, “The Womb of Tantra: Goddesses, Tribals, and Kings in Assam,” 234. 71 See particularly W. Doniger, Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of ĝiva (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), 141-71. See MP, 3.30-44; 4.10-20; SkP, 5.2.13.2-20. 68

NƯlƗcala: The Mountain of Desire, Death and Rebirth

43

In other Puranic sources, it is narrated that KƗma was the only one able to instigate the love between ĝiva and the goddess ParvatƯ,72 even though ĝiva was practising asceticism when he was struck by the magic arrows of KƗma,73 and for this reason he punished this act by burning the god of desire.74 Nevertheless, ĝiva was unable to interrupt the chain of events triggered by “desire”. According to the purƗ۬as, Rati, the wife of KƗma, brought her husband’s ashes to ĝiva, and, thanks to his divine glance, KƗma emerged from his ashes, regaining his shape.75 Yet, the Assamese KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a modifies some details, thus in this context BrahmƗ cast his curse against ĝiva and not against the god of desire, because it is a “ĞƗkta purƗ۬a”.76 However, the main manipulation of the mythology is mirrored by KƗma’s rebirth in the North-East, a detail omitted in the other Puranic accounts, where the god of desire is considered ana۪ga (shapeless).77 Thence, the KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a narrates that the god is reborn in KƗmarnjpa (a form of desire), and it intertwines his mythology with the yoni preserved in the temple of KƗmƗkhyƗ on NƯlƗcala, which has been made by the ashes of KƗma.78 Furthermore, before the Aryan invasion it appears that the hill had a cave which was presided over by genius loci called Manobhava (KƗma) and his companion (ĝakti). Over the centuries and due to the cross-cultural negotiation that took place in Assam, the sacred place was absorbed by and adapted into the Brahmanic tradition. Indeed from the KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a’s verses KƗma emerges as the presiding deity of NƯlƗcala: One should worship ManobhavaguhƗ and also her friend (Ğakti), and thereafter the guardians of the quarter of the sky, and also the nine planets. In order to get one’s desire fulfilled one should worship them according to their respective shapes.79

 72

MP, 154.207; ĝP, 2.3.17.20. KP, 18.3-6; Mbh, 12.183.10.3-5; MP, 154.208-220; ĝP, 2.3.17.1-2, 28-43. 74 KP, 42.148-173a, 43.108; see also MP, 154.235-250; BrahmavaivartapurƗ۬a (=BRP), 62.41-59, in R. Chaturvedi, ed., S. L. Nagar, trans., BrahmavaivartapurƗ۬a. Text with English Translation (Delhi: Parimal Publications, 2012). 75 ĝP, 2.3.51.1-15; see also KP, 79.51-52; MP, 154.259-274. 76 T. E. Donaldson, Kamadeva’s Pleasure Garden: Orissa (Delhi: B. R. Publishing Corporation, 1987), 27; see also KP, 19.63-67. 77 KP, 79.51-52. 78 See note no. 69; cf. KP, 62.1-2. 79 KP, 63.8-9a. 73

44

Chapter Two

The presence of an ancient cave is corroborated by a verse of the DevƯpurƗ۬a––another ĞƗkta text produced in the North-East, perhaps around the ninth century.80 Moreover, the texts link the myth of the yoni’s cave with the mythology of Naraka: “The son of Bhauma worshipped DevƯ in the cave of KƗmƗkhyƗ [hill]”.81 Indeed, Naraka is the son of the Earth Goddess (BhumƯ) and the verse is a clear reference to him. The Yoni Tantra––a fifteenth to sixteenth century text compiled in Koch Bihar (actually an eastern district of West Bengal)82––confirms the presence of an ancient dark cave where the yoni is worshipped.83 Its description is corroborated by the appearance of today’s garbhag‫܀‬ha of the temple of KƗmƗkhyƗ. Although it is difficult to determine if the temple incorporated the original cave when it was constructed, the yoni stone is covered by the water of a stream that flows underground, reminiscent of the yonigarta (cave of the yoni) described in the Yoni Tantra. From a metaphorical perspective, the chamber reminds one of the mother’s womb; KƗmƗkhyƗ is the South Asian mother par excellence and she resides inside the yoni stone, 84 and during the AmbuvƗcƯ festival the water of the stream becomes red as the menstrual blood of the goddess.

The Enhancement of the Yoni Symbolism The YoginƯ Tantra, a text compiled in Assam during the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries,85 preserves a completely different story regarding the NƯlƗcala’s cosmogenesis as yoni ma۬‫ڲ‬ala. The mountain is described  80

R. C. Hazra, Studies in UpapurƗ۬as. Volume 2: ĝƗkta and Non-sectarian UpapurƗ۬as (Calcutta: Sanskrit College, 1963), 36-37. 81 DevƯpurƗ۬a (=DP), 39.6cd, in S. P. Kumar, ed., DevƯ PurƗ۬am (New Delhi: Sri Lal Bahadur Shastri Kendriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth, 1976); trans. by Shin, “Yoni, YoginƯs and MahƗvidyƗs: Feminine Divinities from Early Medieval KƗmarnjpa to Medieval Koch Behar,” 8. 82 Hazra (1963), 232; see also A. M. Sacco, Il culto della yoni (Yonitantra) (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2014), 13. 83 YT, 4.2d; see also trans. by Sacco (2014), 136; YogT, 1.13.1-23; Shoterman, ed., Hevajra Tantra: A Critical Study, 4-6. 84 KƗmƗkhyƗ Tantra, 1.4, cit. in Sacco, Il culto della yoni (Yonitantra), 48. 85 A. C. Barthakuria, The Tantric Religion of India: An Insight Into Assam’s Tantra Literature (Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 2009), 5, 33-34; T. Goudriaan, and S. Gupta, Hindu Tantric and ĝƗkta Literature, Vol. 2 of A History of Indian Literature, 10 vols., J. Gonda, ed. (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1981), 85; Shastri, ed., YoginƯ Tantra, xxxvii-xl; Urban, The Power of Tantra. Religion, Sexuality and the Politics of South Asian Studies, 199; White, “The Kiss of the YoginƯ. “Tantric Sex” in Its South Asian Contexts,” 103.

NƯlƗcala: The Mountain of Desire, Death and Rebirth

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as the abode of the feminine powers under the shape of the goddess’s yoni. In this Tantric context ĝiva describes the goddess KƗmƗkhyƗ to be no other than KƗlƯ, and she is the main actor within the cosmogonic scenario.86 According to the narration, after BrahmƗ created the universe, he arrogated to himself the supreme cosmogonic power. His arrogance was considered an offence by the goddess, and to punish it she created the demon KeĞin who began to torment the three worlds. BrahmƗ and Viৢ৆u were unable to destroy the demon, so they worshipped the goddess KƗmƗkhyƗ in order to obtain the salvation of the whole cosmos. Thus the goddess was pleased to show her superiority, burnt KeĞin in a place which has been identified as KeĞƯpura and ordered BrahmƗ to build a hill with the demon’s ashes. Then she asked the god to catch a star from the sky and to put it on the hill-top. It is the association with the star that confers upon the mountain the status of yoni ma۬‫ڲ‬ala.87 According to B. K. Kakati the Tantric story seems to have no contact points with the Puranic one, thus he argued in 1948 in the first scientific study on KƗmƗkhyƗ, that the Puranic and Tantric mythologies grounded their roots in two different matrilineal traditions.88 Notwithstanding, the Indian scholar did not take into consideration the likelihood that both texts were also influenced by oral traditions which influenced both sources. Indeed, the KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a narrates more than one myth of genesis of KƗmƗkhyƗ; one of these explains that BrahmƗ made a star in KƗmarnjpa89– –an act that originated the name of PrƗgjyotiৢapura (the ancient capital of KƗmarnjpa), the “city of eastern astrology.”90 In this way the KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a as well as the YoginƯ Tantra associated the firmament with the sexual symbolism of the yoni. This link star––yoni still survives today in folk tradition, and indeed during the interviews conducted in the vicinity of the temple of KƗmƗkhyƗ, most of the pilgrims believed that the yoni stone preserved in the garbhag‫܀‬ha was a meteorite that fell down on the earth.91  86

YogT, 1.15.1-2. See YogT, 1.15; N. N. Bhattacharyya, Religious Culture of North-eastern India (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1995), 87. 88 Kakati, The Mother Goddess KƗmƗkhyƗ, or, Studies in the Fusion of Aryan and Primitive Beliefs of Assam, 37. 89 KP, 38.123. 90 Cf. Choudhury, The History of Civilization of the People of Assam up to the 12th Century AD, 434; E. A. Gait, A History of Assam, (2nd ed., Calcutta: Thackar, Spink & Co., 1926), 15. 91 Series of interviews with pilgrims held during a field-work period (Kamakhya village, January-February 2016). 87

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Moreover, both mythologies considered the hill to be made of ashes (the first from KƗma’s and the second from KeĞin’s), underlining the importance of the death imagery––a memory of pre-Aryan cultures. The greatest difference between the two Assamese sources resides in the symbolism connected to the yoni. If it is mainly considered a sexual symbol in Puranic literature, and in the YoginƯ Tantra (and the Yoni Tantra) the yoni is raised to a higher level; it is at the origin of the whole universe. It is not a religious medium to legitimise the absorption process of tribal traditions within the Brahmanic sphere, but it symbolises the superiority of female powers over male powers. In this Assamese philosophical evolution, the goddess is able to create and destroy the whole universe without any male interference.92

The Ritualisation of Violence and Desire On the ritual ground NƯlƗcala has emerged as a religious centre linked with blood sacrifices as well as sexual rites. Through the myth of SatƯ’s sacrifice, both elements that have dominated the ritual praxis at the temple of KƗmƗkhyƗ during the centuries are explained; on the one hand the violent death of the goddess is mirrored by animal sacrifices; on the other hand the sexual element is translated by the rebirth of the goddess in every ĞƗkta pƯ‫ܒ‬ha, where she eternally resides united with ĝiva.93 As already explained the dismemberment of the corpse of SatƯ recalls the primordial sacrifice of the puru‫܈‬a, even if the goddess’s death is at the origin of the destruction of the Brahmanic orthodoxy and represents the first step of the local religiosity connected with the feminine inside the Hindu religious cosmos. This new order subverts the old Vedic order as pointed out by H. B. Urban in his analysis of ritual prescriptions described in the KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a.94 The socio-religious context of KƗmarnjpa reflects a narrow connection between politics and ritual praxis, as evidenced by the daily public blood sacrifices performed on NƯlƗcala:  92

According to the DevƯmƗhƗtmya, male gods need female powers to destroy the demon. At the same time, the goddess needs male weapons to fight against and destroy him; see also T. B. Coburn, ed. and trans., Encountering the Goddess: A Translation of the DevƯ MƗhƗtmya and a Study of its Interpretation (Albany: State University of New York, 1991). 93 Urban, The Power of Tantra. Religion, Sexuality and the Politics of South Asian Studies, 31-32. 94 See Urban, “The Path of Power: Impurity, Kingship and Sacrifice in Assamese Tantra,” 797-804.

NƯlƗcala: The Mountain of Desire, Death and Rebirth

47

Kings should perform ĞakrapnjjƗ (worshipping the god Indra) on the twelfth day of the moon when the sun is in the house of Leo. Particularly kings should perform the following by spending heavy amounts. These having been done, the army, the kingdom, and the treasure increase. If these sacrifices are not performed, famine and mass death occur, and the six kind dangers (iti) take place. Therefore, particularly these should be performed.95

The passage explains the necessity of blood sacrifices to preserve the political order in the state, and it goes on to describe the need for sacrifices to achieve victory over enemies: By [performing] these sacrifices, by offering gifts, one becomes a king in this world… By performing sacrifices … [your enemy] kings are slain, and you will become king, without doubt.96

The wide and complex relationship between mythological manipulation and political power appears also in the ritual praxis performed on NƯlƗcala. On the one hand the blood became a medium to preserve and develop the political power and on the other hand the bloodshed is an anti-Vedic system of ritual, its roots grounded in tribal cultures.97 In particular, the fact that the goddess is pleased through the offering of the victims’ heads finds its roots in the head-hunter tribes of the North-eastern hills. Indeed, they considered the heads of the victims to be the place where the soul of the human being resides, a very powerful trophy for tribal warriors.98 According to the KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a, blood sacrifices are the core of the worship of the goddess, as underlined by the composition of the “blood chapter,” infamous for the use of human beings to satisfy the bloodthirsty goddess KƗmƗkhyƗ.99 Two texts compiled in ancient Assam, probably during the eleventh century, are the Kulacnj‫ڲ‬Ɨma۬i Tantra, and the KaulajñƗnanir۬aya. 100 Although they are Tantric sources like the  95

KP, 85.12-14a. KP, 84.79-81, trans. by Urban, “The Path of Power: Impurity, Kingship and Sacrifice in Assamese Tantra,” 806. 97 B. Dobia, “ĝakti YƗtrƗ. Locating Power, Questioning Desire: A Women’s Pilgrimage to the Temple of KƗmƗkhyƗ,” (Unpublished PhD Thesis: University of Western Sydney, 2008), 159 and 172. 98 Interview of a Khasi man (Shillong, February 8, 2016). 99 See the KP, 67 (rudhirƗdhyƗya); according to the manuscript taken into consideration by K. R. Van Kooij, Worship of the Goddess According to the KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a, see Ch. 71. 100 See notes nos. 60 and 62. 96

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KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a, they do not stress the sexual ritual prescriptions considered as the most transgressive and secret ritual practice. On the contrary, the later Tantric regional sources placed the sexual ritual (such as the Yoni Tantra) and the yoni symbol (such as the YoginƯ and the Yoni Tantra) at the centre of devotional practice. In fact, it is through the consumption of the yonitattva that the adept can obtain the siddhis.101 Despite this, blood sacrifices were still considered a complement to sexual ones, and as a result, blood and sexual fluids are homologated by Tantric ideology.102

Conclusion According to mythology as well as ritual praxis, NƯlƗcala emerged as a cross-cultural sacred spot, where a negotiation between local people and Brahmanic traditions took place over the centuries. The mountain, an archetypal symbol of the male sexual reproductive organ, is permeated by female energies and can be read as a macro-yantra, composed of two opposed and superimposed triangles––a symbolic image of the endless ĝiva-ĝakti union.103 The religious traditions linked with the hill have been influenced by matrilineal tribal cultures, which still today dominate the Assamese hills. The yoni symbol already worshipped by the KirƗta tribes also became predominant within the Brahmanic tradition of ancient Assam; it was adapted with the transformation of the dak‫܈‬ayajña episode, with the addition of the ĞƗkta pƯ‫ܒ‬has’ birth from the splitting of the limbs of SatƯ. NƯlƗcala was an ancient burial ground of the Khasi and Garo tribes, and still remains linked to the dead-world symbolism with the advent of Hindu people. Indeed, if the Puranic and Tantric mythologies have considered the hill to be made from ashes, today the cremation grounds are considered places where the adepts and pilgrims can purify their bodies. Therefore, NƯlƗcala is a macro representation of Ğakti-Ğava, underlining the necessity of female power to awaken the male power; indeed, at KƗmƗkhyƗ it is the goddess’s menstrual blood that permeates the earth every year during the main festival celebrated at the NƯlƗcala––the AmbuvƗcƯ MelƗ. According to the DevƯbhƗgavatapurƗ۬a, the festival should be a heritage of tribal traditions and originally it celebrated the sexual intercourse between Viৢ৆u and BhumƯ during her menstrual  101

YT, 8.2a and 8.13; cf. KP, 74.136-138. YT, 2.10-15; 3.16-17; 5.24-26; see also Schoterman, ed., Hevajra Tantra: A Critical Study, 30; cf. KP, 78.140. 103 MBP, 7.9-11; see also KP, 62.73b-78. 102

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49

period.104 Today, it celebrates the menstrual period of KƗmƗkhyƗ, when the goddess gives back the power that she obtained with daily blood offerings. Thus, through the divine menstrual blood, the earth is vivified and permeated by Ğakti power––a clear link with an ancient agricultural festival, connected to early tribal traditions.

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Davidson, Ronald M. Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Dehejia, Vidya. YoginƯ Cult and Temple: A Tantric Tradition. New Delhi: National Museum, 1986. Dobia, Brenda. “ĝakti YƗtrƗ. Locating Power, Questioning Desire: A Women’s Pilgrimage to the Temple of KƗmƗkhyƗ.” Unpublished PhD Thesis: University of Western Sydney, 2008, http://researchdirect.uws.edu.au/islandora/object/uws:29498, accessed on 28/05/2015. Dold, Patricia. “The Mahavidyas at Kamarupa: Dynamics of Transformation in Hinduism.” Religious Studies and Theology 23 (2004): 89-122. —. “Tantra as a Religious Category in the MahƗbhƗgavata PurƗ۬a.” Studies in Religion/Science Religieuses 38 (2009): 221-245. Donaldson, Thomas Eugene. Kamadeva’s Pleasure Garden: Orissa. Delhi: B. R. Publishing Corporation, 1987. —. Tantra and ĝƗkta Art of Orissa, Vol. 1. Delhi: D. K. Printworld, 2002. Doniger, Wendy. Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of ĝiva. London: Oxford University Press, 1973. —. The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology. Berkeley/Los Angeles/ London: University of California Press, 1980 (1976). Eck, Diana L. India: A Sacred Geography. New York: Harmony Books, 2012. Eliade, Mircea. Yoga: Immortality and Freedom. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971 (1958). Finn, Louise M., ed. Kaulacnj‫ڲ‬Ɨma۬i Tantram (=KCT) and VƗmakeĞvara Tantra, with the Jayaratha Commentary. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1986. Flood, Gavin. The Tantric Body. The Secret Tradition of Hindu Religion. New York: I. B. Tauris, 2006. Gait, Edward Albert. A History of Assam. 2nd ed. Calcutta: Thackar, Spink & Co., 1926 (1906). Garbutt, Kathleen, ed. and trans. Mahabharata (=Mbh) V: Preparations for War (Udyogaparvan), Vol. 1 of 2. New York: New York University Press/JJC Foundation, 2008. Goswami, Kali Prasad. KƗmƗkhyƗ Temple: Past and Present. New Delhi: APH, 1998. Goudriaan, Teun and Sanjukta Gupta. Hindu Tantric and ĝƗkta Literature. Vol. 2 of A History of Indian Literature, 10 vols., edited by Jan Gonda. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1981.

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Griffith, Ralph Thomas Hotchkin, ed. and trans. The Hymns of the ‫ۿ‬g Veda (=‫ۿ‬V), Vol. 1 of 2. 2nd ed. Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series 1963 (1889). Gupta, Anand Swarup, ed. and trans. VƗmanapurƗ۬a (=VmP). With English Translation. Varanasi: All-India Kashiraj Trust, 1968. Hazra, Rajendra Charma. Studies in UpapurƗ۬as. Volume 2: ĝƗkta and Non-sectarian UpapurƗ۬as. Calcutta: Sanskrit College, 1963. Kakati, Bani Kanta. The Mother Goddess KƗmƗkhyƗ, or, Studies in the Fusion of Aryan and Primitive Beliefs of Assam. Guwahati: Punya Prasad Duara for the Assam Publishing Corporation, 1948. Kerényi, Károly. “Introduzione. Origine e fondazione della mitologia.” In Prolegomeni allo studio scientifico della mitologia edited by Carl Gustav Jung and Károly Kerényi and translated by Angelo Brelich, 11106. Torino: Einaudi, 1941. Kinsley, David. Hindu Goddesses. Vision of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Traditions. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2005 (1987). Kramrisch, Stella. La presenza di ĝiva. Translated by Vincenzo Vergiani. Milano: Adelphi, 1999. Kumar, Sharma Pushpendra, ed. DevƯ PurƗ۬am (=DP). New Delhi: Sri Lal Bahadur Shastri Kendriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth, 1976. —, ed. MahƗbhƗgavata PurƗ۬a (=MBP): An Ancient Treatise on ĝakti Cult. Delhi: Eastern Book Linkers, 1983. —. ĝakti Cult in Ancient India. Varanasi: Barathiya Publishing House, 1974. Mallebrein, Cornelia. “Local and Tribal Deities: Assimilation and Transformation.” In Devi: The Great Goddess. Female Divinity in South Asian Art, edited by V. Dehejia, 137-156. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute, 1999. Mankad, Dolararaya Ram. PurƗ۬ic Chronology. Anand, Gujarat: Gangajala Prakashan, 1951. Marriott, McKim. “Little Communities in an Indigenous Civilization.” In Village India: Studies in the Little Community, edited by M. Marriott, 171-222. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955. Pandey, Raj Tei, ed. DevƯbhƗgavatapurƗ۬a (=DBP). Kashi: Pandit Pustakalya, 1956. Pargiter, Frederick Eden, ed. and trans. The MƗrka۬‫ڲ‬eya PurƗ۬a (=MkP). 2nd ed. Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, (1888) 1904. Ramesh, Chaturvedi, ed., and Shanti Lal Nagar, trans. BrahmavaivartapurƗ۬a. Text with English Translation. Delhi: Parimal Publications, 2012. Sacco, Antonio Maria. Il culto della Yoni (Yonitantra). Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2014.

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Schoterman, Jan A., ed. The Yonitantra (=YT). Critically Edited with an Introduction. Delhi: Manhohar, 1980. Sénart, Emile, ed. and trans. B‫܀‬hadƗra۬yaka Upani‫܈‬ad (=BU). Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1934. Sharma, Mukunda Madhava. Inscriptions of Ancient Assam. Guwahati: Dept. of Publications Guwahati University, 1978. Shastri, Biswanarayan, ed. and trans. The KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a (=KP): Text, Introduction and Translation in English. 2nd ed. Delhi: Nag Publisher, 2008 (1991). —. YoginƯ Tantra (=YogT). Delhi: Bharatiya Vidya Prakashan, 1982. Shastri, Jagdish Lal, ed. BrahmapurƗ۬a (=BaP). Translated and Annotated by a Board of Scholars, Vol. 1 of 4. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1978. —. Li۪gapurƗ۬a (=LP). Translated by a Board of Scholars, Vol. 1 of 2. Delhi/Patna/Varanasi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1973. —. The Knjrma-PurƗ۬a (=KnjP), Vol. 1 of 2. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1981-1982. —. The ĝiva PurƗ۬a (=ĝP). 4 vols. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 19691970. Shin, Jae-Eun. “Yoni, YoginƯs and MahƗvidyƗs: Feminine Divinities from Early Medieval KƗmarnjpa to Medieval Koch Behar.” Studies in History 26, no. 1 (2010): 1-29. Sircar, Dinesh Chandra. The ĝƗkta PƯ‫ܒ‬has. 2nd ed. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1998 (1948). Snellgrove, David Llewellyn, ed. Hevajra Tantra (=HT): A Critical Study, 2 vols. London: Oxford University Press, 1959. Srinivas, Mysore Narasimhachar. Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India. London: Asia Publishing House, 1952. Szántó, Péter. “Selected Chapters from CatuৢpƯ৬atantra. 1/2: Introductory Study with the Annotated Translation.” Unpublished DPhil Thesis: University of Oxford, 2012. Tagare, Ganesh Vasudeo, ed. and trans. The SkandapurƗ۬a (=SkP). Translated and Annotated, Vol. 1 of 20. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1992. Urban, Hugh B. “The Path of Power: Impurity, Kingship and Sacrifice in Assamese Tantra.” American Academy of Religion 69, no. 4 (2001): 777-816. —. “Matrix of Power: Tantra. Kingship and Sacrifice in the Worship of the Mother Goddess KƗmƗkhyƗ.” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 31, no. 3 (2008): 500-534.

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—. “The Womb of Tantra: Goddesses, Tribals, and Kings in Assam.” The Journal of Hindu Studies 4 (2011): 231-47. —. The Power of Tantra. Religion, Sexuality and the Politics of South Asian Studies. New York: I. B. Tauris, 2010. Van Kooij, Karel Rijk. Worship of the Goddess According to the KƗlikƗpurƗ۬Ɨ. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972. Vankitasubramonia Iyer, S., ed. and trans. VarƗhapurƗ۬a (=VrP). Translated and Annotated. Delhi/Paris: Motilal Banarsidass/UNESCO, 1985. Vaughan, Pilikian, ed. and trans. MahƗbhƗrata (=Mbh) VII: Drona (Dro۬aparvan), Vol. 1 of 4. New York: New York University Press/JJC Foundation, 2006. Wendt, Sylvia. “UgrƗ SatƯ––SaumyƗ SatƯ. Two Versions of one Myth in the KƗlikƗpurƗ۬a.” In Wild Goddesses in India and Nepal: Proceedings of an International Symposium, Bern and Zurich, November 1994, edited by A. Michaels, C. Vogelsanger & A. Wilke, 179-187. Bern/Berlin/Frankfurt/New York/Paris/Vienna: Lang, 1996. White, David Gordon. The Kiss of the YoginƯ. “Tantric Sex” in Its South Asian Contexts. 2nd edition. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006 (2003). —. Sinister Yogis. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. Wilmot, Paul, ed. and trans. MahƗbhƗrata (=Mbh) II: The Great Hall (SabhƗparvan). New York: New York University Press/JJC Foundation, 2006.

CHAPTER THREE (IN)COMPLETE REBELLION: M. G. RANADE AND THE CHALLENGE OF REINVENTING HINDUISM ALOK OAK1 UNIVERSITY OF LEIDEN

The collapse of the Peshwa rule in 1818 ushered in winds of change in Maharashtra. The Peshwa rule was known for its lavish lifestyle and utter contempt for any change in the social order. The Peshwas were conservative rulers who supported the orthodox Brahmin community of Maharashtra by providing the annual dakshina (charity). The Brahmins, in turn, created false images of the Peshwa Bajirao II (the last Peshwa) as an incarnation of Lord Krishna and procured immense wealth by performing sacrifices, Vedic altar-worship ceremonies and public festivals. Texts written in the latter half of the 19th century such as Vishrabdhha Sharda, Riyaasat and the historical accounts written by the historian V. K. Rajwade have chronicled the “lakhs of gold coins” given as “rewards” to Brahmins, courtesans and singers under the Peshwa rule.2 The intellect of the period had plunged into such deep crisis, that one of the maps of the world drawn in the late 18th century showed England to the West and China to the east with Tasgao (a small village on the outskirts of Pune) as the centre of the world!3

 1

I wish to thank Akanksha Mansukhani for her help in acquiring important archival material. 2 V. K. Rajwade, Marathyanchya Itihaasachi Sadhane Vol. 1 (Dhule: Rajwade Sanshodhan Mandal, 2010). 3 Prabhakar Padhye, “Bharatiya Prabodhan- Ek Purnarvichar,” Samaj Prabodhan Patrika 67 (Jan.-Feb., 1976): 31-43.

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Rise of Intellectual Traditions Western Enlightenment ideals gained entry into Maharashtra with the arrival of Lord Mount Stuart Elphinstone. A self-proclaimed disciple of Edmund Burke, he vehemently fought against the French liberal tradition in the post-Revolution period.4 His books on Maratha history became pioneering efforts in the British colonial historiographical tradition.5 His appreciation of the Maratha rule, and especially the rule of Shivaji, may have been partly influenced by his readings of Cicero’s history of Rome.6 The statesman was cautious of the powerful Brahmin lobby. Thus, while he brought down the dakshina given to the Brahmins to an annual 45,000 gold coins, he also opened a Sanskrit Paathshala in Pune. This Paathshala was later turned into the Deccan College and in its current avatar stands as the Deccan College of Archaeology. In 1820 Elphinstone established the “Native Education Society” and started education for middle-caste students of Pune. He considered the “upliftment of the natives” to be a moral duty. Quoting Adam Smith, Elphinstone held education, next to the “protection of sovereignty” and “imparting justice”, as the most important functions of the modern nation-state.7 Lokahitwadi Gopal Hari Deshmukh was born to a clerk in the Peshwa court, five years after the collapse of the Peshwa rule. He had an utter disgust for the moral degradation during the Peshwa period. His vitriolic attack on the Brahmin orthodox class and their socio-religious practices began with his Shatapatre (100 letters) which he wrote in the newspaper Prabhakar between 1848 and 1849. He criticised the despicable state of women and the ignorance arising out of rigid ritual practices leading to cruelty and barbarity as being founded amongst the Brahmins. He also criticised the colonial taxation system and the British policy of exporting goods to its colonies which destroyed native production activities. As early as 1848 Lokahitwadi proposed Swadeshi and boycott as the two means to obstruct British commercial activities in India. He wrote a book on political economy called Lakshmidynan in 1849. As for the religious reforms, Lokahitwadi presented a 14-point program. Some of the salient points of this program  4

Martha McLaren, British India and British Scotland, 1780-1830: Career Building, Empire Building and a Scottish School of Thought on Indian Governance (Akron, OH: University of Akron Press, 2001). 5 Mountstuart Elphinstone, History of India (London: John Murray, 1839). 6 Ibid., “Prabodhanaache Pahile Prawakte,” Samaj Prabodhan Patrika 68 (Mar.Apr., 1976): 71-81. 7 A. N. Basu, Indian Education in Parliamentary Papers, Part 1 (Bombay: n.p., 1952), 210.

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are as follows: 1. Pure devotion towards any god of one’s choice; 2. Respect for others; 3. Of the 16 rites prescribed in Hinduism; marriage, the thread ceremony and death rites must be the only three rites that should be followed; 4. The meaning of the religious rituals and hymns must be known in one’s own mother-tongue; 5. In the matters of religion and household, men and women must have equal rights; 6. Ethics must be regarded as more important than deeds; 7. One should love one’s nation and strive for its development; 8. One should have the liberty to choose one’s occupation; 9. The government should give equal rights to all its citizens. If denied, the citizens have the right and responsibility to fight for these rights.8

The period following Macaulay’s Minutes on Education (1833) till the establishment of the Universities in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras (1857) was a tumultuous period in Indian history. 9 In the aftermath of the Vernacular Press Act of 1835, hundreds of newspapers and magazines emerged in different parts of the country.10 In Maharashtra alone, fourteen newspapers11 began circulation with literate people writing editorials and columns under pseudonyms. 12 Ferocious debates and discussions on society, culture, politics and religion started taking place. The process was aided further by the proselytising activities undertaken by Christian Missionaries. People like Laxman-shastri, Morbhat Dandekar, Narayanrao, and Krishna-shastri Sathe defended Hinduism against missionary attacks.  8

Quoted in Padhye, “Prabodhanaache Pahile Prawakte,” 77. Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989). 10 Veena Naregal, Language Politics, Elites and the Public Sphere (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2001). 11 Digdarshan (1837), Prabhakar (1840), Dynanodaya (1842), Dynansindhu (1842), Upadesh-chandrika (1843), Samachar-darpan (1844), Dynanprakash (1849), Dynanprasaarak (1851), Vichar-lahari (1852), Vartaman-dipika (1853), Dhoomaketu (1853), Dynan-darshan (1854), Hindu Hitecchu (1855) and Sadarbha Dipika (1855). 12 Names such as Ek Nagarakar (A citizen), EK Nagpurkar (A Resident of Nagpur city), Hinduncha Mitra (A Friend of Hindus), Manushyacha Mitra (A friend of humans), Ek Spashtawakta (A person who speaks straight-forwardly), Khote karu nay ease icchinara (Someone who does not wish lies to spread), Raanwai (A forest-dweller), Vetaall (A Ghost), Pishaccha (A Ghost), and Golyaa Ghubad (A round-faced owl)! 9

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A text named Hindudharma sthaapanaa whose author is unknown became very popular. Morbhat Dandekar started a journal named Updeshchandrika with the intention of “informing the Hindu people of their religion and defending the religion against the attacks by the Christians” [sic].13 Other newspapers such as Dnyanoday, Vichaar-lahari, Sad-dharmaDipika, etc., were also involved in spreading Hindu religious thought. Baba Padamji wrote, These Christians [have portrayed their God as] conniving, a liar, stubborn, unjust, dependent on others, restless, sly, filicidal [and] one who pushed the world into hell out of a desire for an apple. So it is clear how condemnable, cheating and evil this religion is. Who would benefit from such a religion?14

Such shastris and pandits considered the Vedic-dharma as sanatan (eternal) and therefore not open to any form of change. It is interesting to note that this sanatan form of dharmic discourse amongst the orthodox Brahmins was in relation to the dominant-caste relations. The sanatan nature of the scriptures was divided into two camps: those castes which were prescribed to use Vedic rites and those castes which were allowed to use the Puranic rites. While debates arose over the intrinsic hierarchy in these two ritual practices, their sanatanic nature was never questioned. Unable to comprehend the right reasons for India’s backwardness, they took respite in the ancient grandeur. A few amongst them, who decided to work more closely with the British government, gradually started realising the reasons for progress in Europe. Those who decided to work with the British government included Bhau Mahajan, Dadoba Pandurang Tarkhadkar and Dr. Bhau Daji Laud amongst others. Ram Balkrishna started the Paramhansa Sabha in 1850 in Bombay. Dadoba Pandurang Tarkhadkar acted as an advisor to the organisation and wrote two informative pamphlets called Dharma-vivechana and Paramsansic braahmadharma which explained the principles and policies adopted by the Sabha. The Sabha closely resembled the “Manavdharma Sabha” started by Dadoba Pandurang Tarkhadkar in 1844 in Surat. In Dharma-vivechana Dadoba Pandurang Tarkhadkar explained the nature of religion and established the singularity of the creator of the universe. This Creator was unknowable to human thought and He could be attained only  13

Quoted in G. B. Sardar, Ranadepraneet Samajaik Sudharnechi Tatwa-mimansa (Pune: Pune University, 1973), 13, my translation. 14 Baba Padamji, Arunodaya, 2nd edition (Mumbai, 1955), 79, quoted in Sardar, “Ranadepraneet Samajaik Sudharnechi Tatwa-mimansa,” 13, my translation.

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by His own divine grace and benediction. God has many abilities and these abilities took the form of a deity giving birth to pantheism. He further explained that men who claimed to know God expounded their beliefs to the ignorant masses, turning themselves into messiahs or prophets and the masses into their devotees. Consequently, a conflict arose over the authentic way to reach God as well as the rightful prophet. Dadoba argued that neither the holy texts nor the words of the prophets implied the truth about God. He put forward two forms of religion: Paarmaarthik (metaphysical) and Vyaawahaarik (material).15

M. G. Ranade: The Man and His Times Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842-1901) was a Chitpavan Brahmin born in Niphad village in the Nashik district. He was amongst the first batch of graduates from Bombay University and also completed his MA from Bombay University in 1864 on a University fellowship. Meanwhile he was also teaching English and History at the newly-established Elphinstone College. In 1866 Ranade secured a first class honours degree in LLB and started working as a translator for the Government of India before being appointed as the District Subordinate Judge in 1871. Ranade became a High Court Judge in 1894. He was the first public intellectual with allIndia recognition. He actively participated in the establishment of the Indian National Congress in 1885 and also established the Social Conference which used to hold its meetings alongside Congress. The philosophical, political and economic writings of Ranade, appreciated across India and by the British, were a result of the extraordinary efforts made by him during his formative years. He had studied Caesar and Horace in Latin for one full year during his undergraduate years16 and the list of books studied by him between 1858-61 included authors such as T. B. Macaulay, Edward Gibbon, Henry Thomas Buckle, Walter Scott, Plato, John Milton, George Byron, Adam Smith, Francis Bacon, William Shakespeare and Joseph Butler. For his MA examination he had to study authors such as T. B. Macaulay, Alex de Tocqueville, Edward Pococke, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, P. B. Shelley, Petrarch, Voltaire, E. M. Foster, Sir G. Lewis, Henry Maine, James Mill, Thomas Carlyle and others.17 Such stupendous study provided the intellectual foundation for his  15

Sardar, “Ranadepraneet Samajaik Sudharnechi Tatwa-mimansa,” 18-22. N. R. Phatak, Nyaymurti Mahadev Govind Ranade Yaanche Charitra (Mumbai, 1924), 22. 17 Phatak, “Nyaymurti Mahadev Govind Ranade Yaanche Charitra,” 27-48. 16

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writings in the later part of his life. In his convocation address to the first batch graduating from Bombay University in 1862 Chancellor Sir Bartle Frere uttered the following words: Remember, I pray you that what is taught here is a sacred trust confided in you for the benefit of your countrymen. The learning which can be imparted here to a few hundred or at the most to a few thousands of scholars must by you be made available through your own vernacular tongues to the many millions in Hindustan. The great majority of your countrymen can only learn through the language which is taught to them at their mother’s knee and it must be through such language mainly that you can impart to them all that you would communicate of European learning and science… remember… the character of your people is to a great extent in your hands.18

Ranade, who was sitting in the audience, must have been deeply impressed by Frere’s words and they are echoed in Ranade’s own writings.19 But it was not literature which interested Ranade as much as socio-religious reform. After graduating from Bombay University, Ranade plunged himself into the social reform movement. As described earlier, the social reform movement was gathering heat under the Paramahansa Sabha. However, the Sabha was dissolved in 1860 out of fear of a backlash from the colonial authorities and the progressive Marathi intelligentsia dispersed. Ranade’s interest in socio-religious reform was a long, evolving process. In 1864 while completing his MA, Ranade published an essay called Prajaawruddhi che dushparinaam (The ill-effects of the increase in population) in the journal of the Dynanprasaarak Sabha. The essay argued that human life is full of suffering. This suffering, according to Hinduism, is a result of karma and, according to Christianity, human life is created by God so that humans can suffer and embark on the path of religious salvation. When one sees the extraordinarily complex order of things in nature, the Divine Wrath reserved for humans seems improbable. Ranade put the blame for the present generation’s misfortune onto past generations. In the essay, Ranade raised fundamental questions about the nature and origin of suffering and called the relation between human deeds and Providence inconsequential. Finally, he used the Malthusian scheme about poverty and argued that the growth of the human population and a lack of  18

B. N. Pitale, Speeches and Addresses of Sir H. B. E. Frere (Bombay, 1870), 111, quoted in Aroon Tikekar, Ranade: The Rennaissance Man––What Happened to his Legacy? (Pune: Shreevidya Prakashan, 2000), 46. 19 M. G. Ranade: “A Note on the Growth of Marathi Literature,” in Miscellaneous Writings (Delhi: Sahitya Akademy, 1992).

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resources are the causes of human suffering.20 In 1869 Ranade, along with R. G. Bhandarkar, joined the newly-formed Prarthana Samaj. They were responsible for giving a clear philosophical and ideological position to the Samaj. A year before they joined the Samaj, Bombay witnessed the second visit by the renowned Bengali reformer Keshub Chandra Sen.21 Sen’s speeches had a profound effect on the nationalist consciousness of the young intellectual class of Maharashtra. Speaking about the speeches around 40 years later, Sir Narayan Chandavarkar uttered the following words “Oh what a glorious thing it was in those years after 1867 to be a young man! To be a young man! To be young, I may tell you, was then very heaven!”22 Within a year, Ranade faced his first big opposition from the orthodox community of Pune and Mumbai over the proposed widowremarriage issue.23 It was the controversy surrounding the issue which prompted Ranade to undertake a serious study of Hinduism and its ancient texts. In the decades that followed, Ranade, who had started representing the new reformers’ group, continued to pursue the issue of religious reform with a modern and liberal outlook and struggled to maintain his position on religion against the rising agnosticism (of Agarkar) on the one hand and modern orthodoxy (of Tilak) on the other. The debates in the public sphere of Maharashtra revolved around the axis of dharma. Agnosticism, atheism, materialism and utilitarianism were the four important nemeses confronting Ranade. Ranade provided a counter-narrative through his theistic belief system. The development of Ranade’s thoughts on the necessity of religion is a complex phenomenon. Ranade was, it seems, always torn between the orthodox/conservative social group which was constantly raising difficult theological challenges to Ranade’s liberal outlook on religion and his own love for history which described religion as an outgrowth of human civilisation. The historywriting technique which Ranade had inherited from the British empiricists pushed religion into the background, and progress through modernisation was considered the sole rationale behind history. One of the earliest attempts by Ranade to historicise religion was in the aftermath of the widow-remarriage controversy mentioned above when he published an  20

Phatak, “Nyaymurti Mahadev Govind Ranade Yaanche Charitra,” 99-101. David Kopf, The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1979). 22 Quoted in Phatak, “Nyaymurti Mahadev Govind Ranade Yaanche Charitra,” 164. 23 Ashwini Tambe, Codes of Misconduct: Regulating Prostitution in Late Colonial Bombay (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009). 21

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essay called “Vedic Authorities for Widow Marriage.”24 The essay is a hermeneutical exercise (in the Gadamerian sense) in which different Vedic texts, Smriti texts; Puranic texts and then Itihaas texts (i.e. Mahabharata) were analysed elaborately. In another instance, Ranade once again tried to historicise religious rituals and practices through his essay “The Sutra and Smriti Texts on the Age of Hindu Marriage”25 where he wrote, “it is not possible for a living being, be the unit an individual or a collection of individuals, to remain stationary at any stage of progress achieved by them for any considerable time without, in fact, undergoing the slow process of decay and degradation” and joined the chorus of intellectuals who argued for a national rejuvenation for social and political emancipation. However, Ranade traced the genealogy of the nationalist consciousness to Vedic times which was a “golden period” of Hindu civilisation that eventually “lapse(d) into decrepitude and dotage.”26 It is interesting to see that, in Ranade, the Vedic age as well as the texts lost their divine and sanatanic status but gained a capacity to reflect the material reality to which they belonged.27

Philosophical Outlook of Ranade Essentially, the philosophical outlook of Ranade remained more or less the same from the day that he published “A Theist’s Confession of Faith” (1872) to perhaps his last important work on theism called “Philosophy of Indian Theism” (1896). This philosophical outlook was governed by three important principles: the study of nature, the dictates of enlightened consciousness and the testimony of history.28 In the intervening twentyfive years Ranade developed his theistic ideas and came closest to associating himself with the Vaishnava sect of Ramanuja and the Bhagwata tradition of Eknath. His philosophical expositions can be divided into two parts: the more complex theological questions were addressed in the English and Marathi writings which were published for a wider audience,  24 M. G. Ranade, Religious and Social Reform: A Collection of Essays and Speeches, compiled by M. B. Kolaskar (Bombay: Gopal Narayan and Co. & G. Claridge and Co., 1902), 53-91. 25 Ranade, “Religious and Social Reform: A Collection of Essays and Speeches,” 26-52. 26 Ibid., 26. 27 Aparna Devare, History and the Making of a Modern Hindu Self (London: Routledge, 2011), 107-113. 28 Matthew Lederle, Philosophical Trends in Modern Maharashtra (Bombay: Popular Prakashan), 91.

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whereas a more sentimentalist approach was taken in his public discourses which he gave to the audience assembled at the meetings of the Prarthana Samaj and which were posthumously published as Dharmapar Vyakhyaane. As for the more difficult philosophical issues, Ranade took recourse to Dr. A. C. Fraser’s lectures titled “Philosophy of Theism”29 and raised a series of questions: What is the deepest and truest that can be put by man upon the immeasurable actuality with which he is brought into contact and collision ever since he becomes percipient and self-conscious? In what sort of environment and for what purpose do I exist? What is this universe forever changing the appearances it presents to me? What is the origin and outcome of this endless flux? Is the principle which finally determines all events reasonable and trustworthy or chaotic and misleading, or must man forever remain ignorant about this and unable to adapt him to it? What light can enlighten me upon my present duties or my final destiny as part of this mysterious whole?30

His sentimentalist and populist approach is seen through the following statements made in the first public sermon: Recently we have witnessed a promising movement in the political sphere but… simultaneously the sphere of religion seems to be neglected, which is disheartening. Therefore, nobody is making efforts to paint the correct picture of truth about religion. It is pertinent to understand the thoughts and words of the great saints, who are revered by all of us, about the nature of religion.31

Ranade’s social and religious reformist position emerges out of his faith in the British liberal tradition. Different scholars have traced different ways in which the thinkers in this tradition influenced Ranade. Matthew Lederle has traced a similarity in the methodology adopted by Ranade with some of the thinkers of Scottish Commonsense philosophy. W. Hamilton, whose writings were familiar to Ranade, came up with a new formulation of phenomenalism where the human mind was incapable of knowing the Absolute since the Absolute was able to transcend the phenomenal world. As opposed to him, Henry Calderwood denied the epiphenomenalism of  29 A. C. Fraser, Philosophy of Theism (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1895). 30 Ranade “Religious and Social Reform: A Collection of Essays and Speeches,” 4. 31 M. G. Ranade, Nyaymurti M. Mahadev Govind Ranade yaanchi Dharmapar Vyakhyane (Bombay: D. G. Vaidya, undated), 2, my translation.

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Hamilton and went back to the intuitionists of the earlier period and argued that the wise-God was indeed comprehensible only through intuitions. In his later years Ranade was heavily influenced by the “political theism” of A. C. Fraser.32 D. K. Bedekar has drawn parallels between the philosophical outlook of J. S. Mill and Ranade.33 J. S. Mill’s most developed form of criticism of religion came up in his “Nature, Utility of Religion and Theism” where he traces the evolution of the religious thought of the 19th century in the shadows of the earlier century. Mill argues that the philosophy of history which took shape in the 19th century contributed to the shift in the internecine warfare between the believers and non-believers of the 18th century. History, as it took centre stage, made religion a historical object to be studied resulting in the birth of a handful of atheists, whereas the greater masses opened up to the idea that Christianity was not indispensable. While the 18th-century conflict revolved around the notions of commonsense and logic; the 19th-century conflict revolved around scientific enquiry. In this light, religion came to be seen as a “natural growth of the human mind” which would last through the different stages of human consciousness but ultimately was “destined to disappear” and be replaced with something else.34 The move from polytheism (which is natural in its orientation) to monotheism is governed by science. Mill argued that science gave casualness to the events in nature. The multiplicity of antecedents, where a slight modification in any one of them could potentially alter the material manifestation, led one to conclude that no individual Being or Unity of Beings held the reins of cosmic control. In one of the slippery passages Mill calls the polytheistic practice found in Hinduism “the degraded” form of worship.35 Such radical ideas could not have attracted the mind of Ranade who firmly believed in the Supernatural and, as will be shown later, in the inability of science to explain all Cosmic and human events, but appealed to agnostics like G. G. Agarkar.36 Ranade felt anxious about the rejection of monotheism in India which was in itself a result of the dominant belief-system of the 19th century. The nature of religion proposed by Ranade was neither scripturally revelatory nor  32

Lederle, “Philosophical Trends in Modern Maharashtra,” 93. D. K. Bedekar, “Adhunik Maharashtrachi Ghadan ani Udaarmatvaad,” Samaj Prabodhan Patrika 49 (Oct.-Dec., 2011): 62-64. 34 J. S. Mill, “Theism,” in Nature, the Utility of Religion and Theism (Delhi: Orient Publications, 1988), 126. 35 Mill, “Theism,” 132. 36 Aravind Ganachari, Gopal Ganesh Agarkar: The Secular Rationalist Reformer (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 2005). 33

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doctrinally ecclesiastical. Therefore, Ranade did not attempt to create any “harmony” between the different sects within Hinduism. Instead he aimed directly at a higher truth, retaining its abstraction and made it available to the common masses. Religion was a prerequisite, he argued, for an ethically superior and rational citizenry to be born in India. His criticism of agnosticism, mentioned above, is corroborated by two incidents. A young Ranade criticised Prof. Selby’s book propounding agnosticism which he felt would adversely affect the students in colleges and universities. He wrote, …while we admire the independence of spirit shown by the learned author, we cannot but regret that the young students of the Deccan College are fed on such skeptical pabulum in the most plastic period of their life… Professor Selby… looks down upon those who believe in immutable principles of right and wrong, as laboring under a delusion. There are according to him no such principles… our conscience is a varying quantity, and is a result of inherited experiences of what makes and does not make for happiness. The next step… is to deny that God, as revealed in nature and man, is a perfectly good, wise and Almighty Being … human knowledge must in its nature be relative and can have no absolute standard of correctness. We are thus landed at the dreary alternative of agnosticism, which the young students are taught to accept as a final word of science on the grave mysteries of life and thought, man’s hopes of personal communion with God are laughed away to make room for an inane faith in evolution, and the law of collective development and progress.37

On another occasion, much later in his life, he admonished G. G. Agarkar during a public lecture in Deccan College for merely repeating the words learnt from foreign authors without completely grasping their meaning or their suitability for native conditions.

The Liberal Approach of Ranade Resisting the temptation of agnosticism, Ranade remained rooted in his theistic faith. Comparing agnosticism to Buddhism, he called it a “paralysis of thought” which was harmful for the nation. 38 Ranade pronounced the existence of God as  37

Ranade, “Religious and Social Reform: A Collection of Essays and Speeches,” 65, quoted in Lederele, “Philosophical Trends in Modern Maharashtra,” 90-91. 38 Ranade, “Religious and Social Reform: A Collection of Essays and Speeches,” 14.

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not a mere power or a force, nor nature in its created or developed state as the universe of matter, nor in its potential or seed-like form or germ, nor is He the great elements of earth, water, fire, air, nor the sun, the moon, nor the stars, nor the principle in the body of nature. There are not many gods nor hierarchy of gods, nor deified good or bad powers, nor principles of light and darkness, of matter and spirit, of Prakriti, maya or Purusha. God is one and without a second and not many persons––not a triad, nor a duality of persons. Neither is He a self-absorbed Brahman resting in contemplation and indifferent to what happens in the word of matter and spirit.39

G. B. Sardar reaffirms Ranade’s faith in English liberalism. Giving increasing importance to the natural capacities of individuals and driving them towards free-will and autonomy have been at the core of the political and philosophical thoughts of Jeremy Bentham, the Mills and Adam Smith. Ranade endorsed this liberal approach to human emancipation. 40 The liberalism found in Ranade has three basic tenets: 1. Individualism––Individualism, as developed by Ranade, was completely based on human rationality. Ranade claims that human rationality is governed by judgements of good and bad or pure and evil so that even God’s voice can be heard using the rational capacities. All human actions, although governed by the Divine Wish, are also decided by human reason. The free will which Ranade attributes to humans, if subscribed to the Divine, rejects all forms of authority. In the process Ranade rejected the traditional authorities such as scriptures and holymen as well as rituals and customs. Ranade argued that no social force or authority could ever claim to know the ultimate truth. Similarly there was no spiritual truth which was prescribed by the religious institutions or texts. To substantiate his point Ranade read the biographies of the medieval saint-poets and visualised them as the earliest individualists and compared the Protestant movement in Europe with the medieval Bhakti movement. 2. Equality––Freedom can be fully materialised only when it accepts the equality principle. The religious discourse in traditional Hinduism followed either the path of knowledge (dynan marg) or the ascetic path (yoga marg). Both of these paths were criticised by Ranade in his Dharmapar Vyaakhyane since they prohibited the entry of shudras and women in the ritual and/or learning practices. Ranade replaced these exclusivist traditions with the bhakti (devotional) path as propounded in the Bhagwata tradition. Ranade paid particular attention to the rights

 39

Ranade, “Religious and Social Reform: A Collection of Essays and Speeches,” 57. 40 Sardar, “Ranadepraneet Samajaik Sudharnechi Tatwa-mimansa.”

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The social habits and customs in India were determined by caste relations. Therefore, British liberalism could not be applied to the non-western context in its totality and Ranade was completely aware of this. Thus the autonomy granted to individuals through the exercise of absolute free will was impossible to practice in India. The life-world of Indians was controlled by the ideas of virtue-sin, karma-dharma and sowalle-owalle. Thus Ranade had to replace superstition with reason without abandoning its religious core. The basic task in front of reformers like Ranade, in his own words, was “the change which we (sic) should all seek is thus a change from constraint to freedom, from credulity to faith, status to contract, from authority to reason, from unorganised life to organised life, from bigotry to toleration, from blind fatalism to a sense of human dignity.”42 Ranade believed that religion had always enchanted the human mind across time and space. Religion, only when understood in its right context and performativity gives immense strength to undertake arduous

 41

Rajendra Vora, “Nyaaymurti Ranade Yancha Udaarmatvaadi Vichar,” Paraamarsh 4, 3 (Nov., 1982): 37-47. 42 Ranade, “Miscellaneous Writings,” 116.

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tasks.43 Ranade wrote, “there appears to be no ground for hope … of seeing any genuine reform movement springing up from within the heart of the nation, unless that heart is regenerated, not by cold calculations of utility but by the cleansing fire of a religious revival.”44 The word “revival” here connotes ethical dimensions of religion. The socio-ethical responsibility of interpreting religions lay on the rational capacities of humans. It is rather unfair for scholars to attribute the development of Ranade’s social-religious thought merely on his readings of British and other western authors. This is falling prey to the hegemonic “derivative discourse” put forward by Partha Chatterjee where the autonomy of the native authors is reserved at the expense of their exposure to western intellectuals.45 While it is possible to argue that tracing the influences on a writer/intellectual is an important exercise within the domain of intellectual history, merely tracing these influences does not yield many results.46 In what follows, the endeavour is to trace the development of the religious thought of Ranade by attempting an enquiry into his often neglected text––Dharmapar Vyakhyane, along with other writings which provide the most consciously-developed form of his religious beliefs.

Ranade and the Bhakti Tradition Ranade, it seems, realised the hollowness attached to the Vedic texts and their utility in bringing about any form of social transformation quite early in his public life. Therefore, his early enthusiasm about the Vedic and postVedic texts soon subsided when he found that the medieval Bhakti movement had greater potential for emancipation. More than the Vedic tradition, it was the Bhakti movement which had the capacity to transcend the social barriers of class, caste and gender and also conform to the ideals of modernity which espoused historical authenticity and scientific rigour. Ranade may also have been searching for a “political community” rooted in tradition. This was indeed one of the principle endeavours of the Prarthana Samaj but it was failing in its task. Ranade, therefore, chose to address his audience from the platform provided by the Prarthana Samaj.  43

Sardar, “Ranadepraneet Samajaik Sudharnechi Tatwa-mimansa,” 54. Ranade, “Miscellaneous Writings,” 71, quoted in Sardar, “Ranadepraneet Samajaik Sudharnechi Tatwa-mimansa,” 54. 45 Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse (London: Zed Books, 1986). 46 For example, G. B. Sardar somewhere carelessly mentions that Ranade comes closest to Edmund Burke’s conservative stand on religion without any explanation. 44

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The Bhakti movement in the 19th century was not “a dead sect.” It was alive through the varkari tradition. However, Ranade must have been sceptical of the ritualistic and symbolic structure of the varkaris and suspicious of their emancipatory capacities. The Bhakti movement in itself was also not homogenous. All four of the traditional paths to liberation were expressed in the Bhakti movement. This apparent “paradoxical unity of its symbolic structure” weaved together in “hegemonic and liberating moment(s) of tradition”47 was found by Ranade in the Bhagwata dharma propounded by Eknath and to some extent in the Vaishnava sect of Ramanuj. In his conceptual vocabulary Ranade devised an intriguing alternative. By calling the Bhakti movement “Hindu Protestantism” he immediately attracted the attention of the learned class and pushed away the orthodox section which may have callously called Ranade a new “kirtankar.” He wrote, One of the essential features of the Bhagawata Dharma (sic) is its Protestant character. As among the Jews, prophet after prophet has risen among us, and their lives and precepts have protested against and denounced certain habits of thought and principles of action which have an inveterate tendency to encrust the true spirit of our faith and to give a human coating which obscures from view the essentially divine element. Bhagawata Dharma may, therefore be, safely described as Protestant Hinduism…48

The Bhagwata Dharma symbolised radicalness in its protest against the high-handedness of the Vedic authorities. The saint-poets brought the Vedic scriptures to the masses by explaining their significance in the vernacular tongue. The Bhagwata Dharma rejected the yogic extremities and became inclusive by relaxing the rigid caste norms. Finally, it offered an alternative to the karmic (sacrificial) practices of the Sakta tradition and senseless idol worship by taking recourse to a direct approach to the Divine on the basis of prayer and faith.49 G. J. Agashe speaking on the occasion of the 6th death anniversary of Ranade eloquently explained the significance of Ranade’s appeal to the Bhagwata tradition. There were, according to him, two aspects to Ranade’s notion of Bhakti: 1. Complete surrender to Divine Will, and

 47

Jayant Lele, ed., Tradition and Modernity in the Bhakti Movement (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981), 5. 48 Ranade, “Miscellaneous Writings,” 199. 49 Ranade, “Miscellaneous Writings,” 202-205.

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2. Surrender resulting from an evolved wisdom.

This wisdom was not to be attained from extensive readings of scriptures but through a profound search for the “ego” with the help of the conscience. The individual who has purified his/her conscience and attained wisdom will automatically strive for the material and nonmaterial happiness of all sentient beings. Ranade called this higher wisdom vidnyan. This vidnyan had to be practised in daily life so that virtues could be dissipated instead of clogging the intellect. Ranade also recommended some methods for reaching this higher wisdom in the sections “Awaghe dekhe Jan Brahmaswaroop,” “Aatmanastu kaamay Sarvam Priyam Bhawati,” “Brahmarasaachya Praaptichi Waastawik mahati,” “Chittashuddhi sambandhi Vichaar,” and “parakruti kashi karavi” in his Dharmapar vyakhyane. The ideas of love and goodness governed Ranade’s explication of the Bhagwata Dharma.50 Rejecting the mayavaad of Sankar,51 Ranade accepted the help of the vishishta-advaita vaad of Ramanuj. He did not consider the world as an illusion. The world, though created by Ishvara, was neither His reflection nor in unity with Him. Apart from the human world a conscious and nonconscious world, too, existed. The human soul is conscious and indestructible. Ranade accepted the separate existence of the soul for humans and that it is distinct from the Brahman. But human souls ultimately lacked free will. Both the human world and the spiritual world were dependent upon the Divine Will. Since the Divine Will is governed by reason, all natural events were justified. Human free will on the other hand, although exercisable in its limited capacity was ultimately the desire of the Divine so that every human action arising out of a higher wisdom was verified by the Divine. The new sect which Ranade was espousing through his religious sermons was based upon history and reason. However he did not attach undue significance to the rational capacities of humans. Hence concepts such as “eternity” made frequent appearances in his lectures, making his modernist historical outlook dubious. The utilitarian philosophers of the 19th century believed that the ultimate aim of all human activity (and especially of religion) was happiness. The Vedic texts, too, speak of happiness and further divide it into preyas (material happiness) and shreyas (metaphysical happiness). Ranade admonished  50

G. J. Agashe, “Ranade the Good,” in D. G. Agashe, ed., Kai. G. J. Agashe yanche Nivadak Lekh (Pune: Sadhana Press, 1958), 336-356. 51 Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, Vol. 2 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996).

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such conceptions about happiness and argued that in Bhagwata Dharma happiness was a means and not the end. Ranade argued that happiness and suffering were a part of daily life which could and should not be avoided. Instead, the goal of human life, according to Bhagwata Dharma, was to attain civility and progress in both private and public life.52 A strange admixture of pre-Humean ethical discourse and Bhagwata tradition is seen to be at play in the writings of Ranade, but seems to have been overlooked by most of the scholars. It has been argued that until the early 17th century, Western Europe was under the influence of Aristotelian metaphysics. It was Rene Descartes (1596-1650) who proposed an anthropocentric worldview with his famous Cartesian duality, and a generation later it was John Locke (1632-1704) who incorporated the scientific discoveries of Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle and brought the downfall of Aristotelian metaphysics in England. During his scientific inventions in the 17th century Robert Boyle proposed an idea called “Corpuscularianism” which meant that matter was made up of corpuscles which interacted with each other in their atomic state. The empiricist method of determining the nature of objects influenced the philosophical development in England and was pioneered by John Locke who wrote “An Essay concerning Human Understanding” (1690) just a few years after Boyle’s claims were made public. Locke argued that the external world could be deduced with the help of our senses and thus “experience” was brought to the centre of human perception. The Scottish School, which fervently followed Locke’s approach coupled with the spread of Protestant ideas in the region, gave birth to a new kind of reform in philosophical enquiry by the 18th century where science and religion were seen as complementing each other. Natural theology portrayed God as the Great Designer and human reason as an impressive manifestation of his creative will. Locke, despite his belief in empiricism, perhaps out of fear of Christian orthodoxy, made the modest claims that science, too, after all, was based on “probability” and humans were active agents of the Divine, fulfilling their Destiny. Arguably, it was this natural theology with its simultaneous growth of scientific enquiry which exerted tremendous influence in Britain until the early 19th century.53 Nevertheless, as is evident, Ranade does not take exception to Western ideals, but uses them as a stepping stone to establish a modernist interpretation of the medieval Bhakti tradition. Western philosophy  52

Ranade, 35-46. Peter Millican, “Introduction” to An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: David Hume (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), ix-lvi.

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accepted the a priori status of human knowledge about the Divine. To some extent the Advaita and other classical Hindu philosophy, too, accepted the a priori status of Divinity and argued that humans had to have faith in a Divine existence. Ranade disagreed with the a priori status, given to knowledge as well as the science-religion duality. He argued that certain cosmic laws were yet to be codified by modern science. Therefore, he proposed to retain the mystical character of certain cosmic events instead of shovelling them into a scientific mould and searching for their explanations. God, according to Ranade, was a just and compassionate being. Therefore, Ranade’s monotheism, while giving free will to humans, also advised them to curb the ego (ahamkara) by having complete faith in God. Such total faith had to manifest not only internally, affecting human ontology and purifying it, but also had to express itself externally through community-worship where fraternal bonds could be built.

Conclusion The social and religious ideals of Ranade did not appeal to the Maharashtrian public ethos after his death in 1901. In all probability, the charge that Ranade restricted his audience to the educated and upper-caste population is not unfounded and must have contributed to the steady decline of his popularity. Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the “giant figure” emerging out of Maharashtra who would later create havoc in Indian National Congress circles, forcing it to unofficially split in 1907, replaced Ranade as the most influential public figure of western India. The next few decades of public imagination in Maharashtra oscillated between a strange concoction of radical traditionalism, of Tilak, and the extreme Hindutva of V. D. Savarkar, making the religio-ethical thoughts of Ranade disappear into the mists of public memory.

Bibliography Agashe, G. J. “Ranade the Good.” In Kai. G. J. Agashe yanche Nivadak Lekh, edited by D. G. Agashe, 336-356. Pune: Sadhana Press, 1958. Basu, A. N. Indian Education in Parliamentary Papers, Part 1. Bombay, 1952. Bedekar, D. K. “Adhunik Maharashtrachi Ghadan ani Udaarmatvaad.” Samaj Prabodhan Patrika 49 (Oct.-Dec., 2011), 62-64. Chatterjee, Partha. Nationalist Thought and Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse. London: Zed Books, 1986. Devare, Aparna. History and the Making of a Modern Hindu Self. London:

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Routledge, 2011. Elphinstone, Mountstuart. History of India. London: John Murray, 1839. Fraser, A. C. Philosophy of Theism. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1895. Ganachari, Aravind. Gopal Ganesh Agarkar: The Secular Rationalist Reformer. Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 2005. Kopf, David. The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Indian Mind. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1979. Lederle, Matthew. Philosophical Trends in Modern Maharashtra. Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1979. Lele, Jayant, ed. Tradition and Modernity in Bhakti Movements. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981. McLaren, Martha. British India and British Scotland, 1780-1830: Career Building, Empire Building and a Scottish School of Thought on Indian Governance. Akron, OH: University of Akron Press, 2001. Mill, J. S. “Theism.” In Nature the Utility of Religion and Theism, 125-175. Delhi: Orient Publications, 1988. Millican, Peter. “Introduction.” In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: David Hume. Clarendon: Oxford University Press, 2007. Naregal, Veena. Language Politics, Elites and the Public Sphere. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2001. Padamji, Baba. Arunodaya, 2nd edition. Mumbai, 1955. Padhye, Prabhakar. “Bharatiya Prabodhan-Ek Purnarvichar.” Samaj Prabodhan Patrika 67 (Jan.-Feb., 1976): 31-43. —. “Prabodhanaache Pahile Prawakte.” Samaj Prabodhan Patrika 68 (Mar.-April, 1976): 71-81. Phatak, N. R. Nyaymurti Mahadev Govind Ranade Yaanche Charitra. Mumbai: Publisher, 1924. Pitale, B. N. Speeches and Addresses of Sir H. B. E. Frere. Bombay, 1870. Rajwade, V. K. Marathyanchya ItihaasachiSadhane, Vol.1. Dhule: Rajwade Sanshodhan Mandal, 2010. Ranade, M. G. Religious and Social Reform: A Collection of Essays and Speeches, compiled by M. B. Kolaskar. Bombay: Gopal Narayan and Co. & G. Claridge and Co., 1902. —. Miscellaneous Writings. Delhi: Sahitya Akademy, 1992. —. Nyaymurti M. Mahadev Govind Ranade yaanchi Dharmapar Vyakhyane. Bombay: D. G. Vaidya, undated. Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli. Indian Philosophy, Vol. 2. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996. Sardar, G. B. Ranadepraneet Samajaik Sudharnechi Tatwa-mimansa. Pune:

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Pune University, 1973. Tambe, Ashwini. Codes of Misconduct: Regulating Prostitution in Late Colonial Bombay. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Tikekar, Aroon. Ranade: The Renaissance Man––What Happened to his Legacy? Pune: Shreevidya Prakashan, 2000. Viswanathan, Gauri. Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989. Vora, Rajendra. “Nyaaymurti Ranade Yancha Udaarmatvaadi Vichar.” Paraamarsh 4, no. 3 (Nov., 1982): 37-47.

CHAPTER FOUR THE MAHƖBHƖRATA AS CELEBRITY POLITICAL TEXT? GREGORY MILLETT BAILEY LA TROBE UNIVERSITY

The Doordarshan versions of the two Sanskrit epics, the MahƗbhƗrata (MBh) and the RƗmƗyana (RƗm), were received with a great fanfare when they were shown on television from 1987 to 1990 (with versions being aired in Tamil, Telugu, and also in Indonesia in the early 1990s) and were welcomed by audiences in the hundreds of millions. It has been suggested that the effect of these televised versions in creating a sense of India possessing a national epic 1 reaching back into antiquity 2 was a distinctive factor in the rise to power centrally of the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1998. More recently, Star Television ran a new version of the MBh in Hindi (16 September 2013 to 16 August 2014 on STAR Plus). This was seemingly not as popular as the Chopra version but has been dubbed into several other Indian languages, both northern and southern. The popularity of the MahƗbhƗrata in filmic versions is not necessarily a  1

See Arvind Rajgopal, “Our Many Ramayanas: The Sunday Mythology Club,” “The fact that people across the country set aside their other duties and watched the show at the same time seemed like a celebration of their common heritage.” The Indian Express, 10/10/15. 2 See Rajgopal, “Apart from being a dharam granth, the Ramayana appeared in Sagar’s re-telling as a political entity familiar to the modern imagination. It was almost as if a modern developmental state had been projected back into the golden age of Hinduism.” See also Uma Chakrabarti, “Saffroning the Past: Of Myths, Histories and a Right-wing Agenda,” Economic and Political Weekly 33/5 (1998): 225. “The late 1980s witnessed a spate of serials which responded ‘dialogically’ to the crisis of the legitimacy of the state: indeed it might be argued that they were sanctioned by the state controlled TV for the purpose of, at least ideologically, reconstructing the fragmented nation.”

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cause of its ongoing high profile elsewhere. Rather its filmic popularity may have been a consequence of its residual popularity in a variety of literary, dramatic, artistic and filmic genres. And this residual popularity has likely been a feature of it since its initial composition and dissemination (200 BCE-200 CE). Televising it (and the RƗm) in Hindi/Sanskrit and other vernacular languages––regardless of which language it is presented in, it is still the MBh3––must have effected a kind of unity of content for the two new versions and, in turn, this allowed the assertion of a unified Indian national polity, despite ongoing fissures within the government at the centre, and between it and the various state governments. Bear in mind that the MBh would have been known in all sorts of diverse ways as a kind of residual cultural memory before the Chopra version, but this version would have imposed a sense of homogeneity on this diversity.4 There is a real question to be asked on whether momentum has been maintained since the late 1980s in asserting a visible Hindu unity in a country that so easily collapses back into major ethnic, linguistic and religious differences. As a partial answer to this question, this chapter explores the use of the MahƗbhƗrata in political discourse over the past four years 5 ––especially for the two years before and after the BJP regained power in April 2014––in order to determine if it has had any influence in propelling the BJP to power, as opposed to the mass media’s focus on Narendra Modi’s charisma and supposed good economic management in Gujarat. The question may come down to this: to what extent can symbols of the traditional Indian past be appropriated into the present in a media discourse which is as much concerned with modernisation as it is with the past? There are two, possibly contrastive, aspects to this: the dominant presence of a modern social and cultural environment with economic factors so strongly coming into play because of the internal and external expectations developed of India as a powerhouse country where economic and military forces will become  3

This point about its presentation in a multiplicity of languages has been made before. It is a desideratum that the connection between these versions and the Sanskrit version should be studied more closely as to the authoritative status of the vernaculars in relation to the Sanskrit versions and many manuscripts. 4 See Lakshmi Bandlamudi, Dialogics of Self, The Mahabharata and Culture. The History of Understanding and Understanding of History (London: Anthem Press, 2010), Ch. 5. 5 There is also considerable press material for the period when the BJP was first in government and after 2004 when the Congress took control of the centre again. For a few examples see Adam Bowles, “The Failure of Dharma,” Seminar 608 (April, 2010): 27.

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extremely potent; and a rich historical tradition interwoven with a very considerable mythology and philosophical tradition that define a Bharata not dependent on economic and political power, but rather require it to be celebrated as a civilisation with conspicuous characteristics. There are at least three aspects to the contemporary status of the MBh in media discourse: 1) The utilisation by the political agents and journalists of contemporary Indian politics utilising the MBh war and its principal characters; 2) The filling of important cultural positions by people who believe the MBh and the RƗm are records of historical events, not just bodies of mythology embedded in an epic narrative. This would also include the appointments of Durdarshan actors to prominent political and administrative roles; 3) An assessment of what the actual MBh means when it is drawn upon in political discourse. I note that only an allusion to the Mbh, or merely just the name, has to be made in political and other popular discourse, and readers will understand easily what is being conveyed. Whether it is the plot, the Sanskrit version, whatever vernacular version or tale has been received by the viewer/reader, or the many films, it is still the MBh. Or is it some amorphous tradition that people draw upon and which manifests equally in film, story and drama?

The most obvious reason for the continual referencing of the MBh (and the RƗm) in both political and journalistic forums is that the consciousness of it is firmly embedded in the minds of so many Hindus. One can easily agree with Bandlamudi’s assessment of this when she writes: Epics in India serve as a medium for expressions of culture. They are not texts handed down from generation to generation in pristine form; instead, they mediate the very consciousness for a Hindu. Tales from the epics are always invoked whether one wants to talk about the political state of affairs, agrarian reforms, economic development, literature, films or even scientific development. Even a casual observer of Indian culture cannot help but notice the ubiquitous presence of epic characters in cultural life.6

And it is for this reason that there is always the potential for the MBh to be appropriated for political (and other) reasons and to provide a narrative foundation (or a founding text) for some kind of Hindu civilisation, the details of which would be defined in the present and would not  6

Bandlamudi, Dialogics of Self, 105-106.

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necessarily borrow anything from the past. For the second half of the twentieth century, a historical trajectory can be suggested. The MBh was translated into Bengali twice in the nineteenth century, then once into English in the 1880s-90s, with a well publicised critical edition being produced between 1933 and 1969, almost a national epic as Peter van der Veer7 called it, leading finally to the Chopra Durdarshan version of the epic which received huge coverage in various media. This trajectory must have been very significant in raising its profile as a unified/unifying civilisational text and not just amongst the brahmanical intelligentsia. And it has been particularly since the Chopra version that MBh characters have been used in political discourse as a mode of characterising certain players especially, but not just, on the BJP side.

Broad Context Quantitative references to these two texts in the media also show what the popular consciousness of them may amount to. A quick search in some of the prominent English language papers came up with these figures over the past few years: The Hindu 5351 results, The Express 762, and the Deccan Herald 265, the great majority of which references are not about politics. Many more would be found in the prominent vernacular language media. Whilst this is nothing like saturation coverage, the MBh appears enough in the print media to reinforce what the reader of this media already knows about the main themes of the MBh. Much that creates a broad context comes from journalists functioning as commentators, and from politicians being paraphrased by journalists. This leads to the creation (or appropriation) of a common discourse, one that definitely and necessarily has a strong resonance with newspaper readers and the broader electorate. In sourcing the MBh this discourse is selective for the most part, presenting a much more restricted view than one would find in the Sanskrit MBh or many of the vernacular versions, though people cannot expect it to replicate more than the broad themes of the epic. Journalistic and political discourse centres principally on the MBh war, the humiliation of DraupadƯ in the sabhƗ and allusions to some of the principal characters, especially Yudhiৢ৬hira, K৚ৢ৆a, Arjuna, BhƯৢma,  7

Peter Van der Veer, “Monumental Texts: The Critical Edition of India’s National Heritage,” in J. Assayag, ed., The Resources of History: Tradition, Narration and Nation in South Asia (Pondichery: Ecole francࡥ aise d’Extrême-Orient Institut francais de Pondichery, Paris-Pondichery 1999), 113-127.

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Duryodhana, Dh৚tarƗৢ৬ra, Kar৆a, DraupadƯ, and the PƗ৆ঌavas and Kauravas as warring groups and to other specific characters, some of whom seem to be related to actors who have been in the Chopra MBh and later filmic versions. As such these figures have virtually assumed a contemporary reality as role models. A statement Modi made in the Lok Sabha, soon after taking government is pertinent, even if it may appear to contradict what is being argued here. The Economic Times reported on June 11, 2014: Prime Minister Narendra Modi invokes the Mahabharata in the Lok Sabha NEW DELHI: Returning the fire, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today invoked the Mahabharata epic to remind Congress that the days of ‘Kauravas and Pandavas’ were over and that his government wanted to move forward taking everyone along. Modi’s remarks came a day after Congress cautioned BJP against becoming arrogant saying that even though Kauravas were large in numbers, Pandavas emerged victorious. Referring to the epic, the Prime Minister said that even though Duryodhana knew dharma, he always admitted that ‘it was not in his DNA’ to act accordingly. In his hour-long reply to the debate in the Lok Sabha on the Motion of Thanks to the President’s Address, Modi emphasised that his government would focus on co-operative federalism. Taking a swipe at the Opposition, Modi also said the time of the Mahabharata is over. ‘There are no Kauravas or Pandavas (now),’ he remarked. The Prime Minister’s mention of the epic to drive home the government’s point of view elicited smiles and the thumping of desks by the ruling members….8

This is surely the exception that proves the rule that political activity in the contemporary politics of the centre can be, and often is, conceptualised as the conflict9 that dominated the relationship between the two warring  8

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi invokes Mahabharata in Lok Sabha,” The Economic Times, 11/6/14. 9 But, not just political. Here is a media account of the judgement delivered by Justice Jayant Nath of the Delhi High Court on March 5, 2015 in the case of Naveen Jindal v. Zee Media Corporation Ltd. Thikkavarapu, Prashant, R., “Zee Media vs. Positiv Television: The Mahabharata of defamation,” “This case is a part of the ongoing Mahabharata between Naveen Jindal the industrialist and former Congress MP and the Zee Media Corporation, which is a part of Subhash Chandra’s media empire. The background of the Jindal-Zee war can be traced back

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parties in the MBh even if the host of ambiguities that define their relationship are substantially glossed over. But who are the Kauravas and who are the PƗ৆ঌavas? Should it be automatically assumed that the government represents the PƗ৆ঌavas and the opposition the Kauravas? Not if we accept Modi’s call for unity in the words “that the days of ‘Kauravas and Pandavas’ were over and that his government wanted to move forward taking everyone along.” It can be assumed that this goes outside parliament and is an attempt to draw in a much larger constituency which he would prefer to think the BJP represents. His mild critique of Duryodhana is not necessarily self-referential, but rather a rebuttal of Congress’ accusation that the BJP is arrogant. The raising of the question of dharma is also surely significant, as if Duryodhana was all the worse because, though knowing dharma, he found himself incapable of acting in accord with it. Despite Modi’s stated desire to move beyond the conflict it still remains that in appropriating characters from the MBh, and even in alluding to themes from its main narrative, the media and, mainly, BJP politicians are continuing to reinforce a discursive space that advances the vision of a unifying Hinduism with dharma as its ethical foundation. As an overarching concept with political and ethical dimensions, both social and personal, the idea of dharma scarcely needs to be defined in the media, and is easily translated into binary oppositions such as good and evil, PƗ৆ঌava and Kaurava. At the same time the BJP are advancing a legislative program that may not need the constant reiteration of a Hindutva ideology in a legislative sense, because Hindutva is already taken care of by the RSS and the VHP. There are, of course, many references in the media to statements that one form of political activity, or the conflict between the National Democratic Alliance and the others, is like the MBh war.10 Note that the  to the sensational ‘reverse-sting’ conducted by Jindal a couple of years ago in October, 2012, wherein representatives of Zee Media were allegedly caught on tape demanding Rs. 100 crore in advertising fees from the Jindal Group in exchange for ‘going slow’ on coverage of the Group’s alleged involvement in the coal-block allocation scam” (Media Business 6/4/15). 10 Cf. also Ananda Mitra, Television and Popular Culture in India: A Study of the Mahabharat (New Delhi: Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1993), 111. “These connections between the television serial and a set of larger elements in culture are significant because of the centrality of the Mahabharat in Indian popular culture. This popular story has now been reproduced on Doordarshan as the narrative of a family feud between two warring families. Yet, the opening and closing sequences of the episodes point out that the Mahabharat is also the story of a conflict between

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great majority of references are to the MBh war, not to the conflict in which RƗma was involved. Why focus on the battle, as very little is ever said about the period of rule after Yudhiৢ৬hira becomes king? So Bharata was born out of the MBh war. Analogically this means that a new India is going to be born out of a struggle between Hindus and other minority religious groups. Yet it is hardly surprising that the war, with two clearly identified opposing parties, will be drawn upon constantly. It is huge and climactic, and represents the manifest competition defining the contemporary political warfare in the centre, but it also brings both sides into the same discursive space. Although they are opponents the PƗ৆ঌavas and the Kauravas are both fundamentally part of the same group. Even several months before the election the Daily Bhaskar.com (4/9/13 New Delhi) could say: “The Bharatiya Janata Party has buckled down for the final showdown. The party’s poll committee Chief Narendra Modi is all set to get the shot of his life at the prime ministerial post. The stage is set for the ‘Mahabharat’ of votes” (accessed 7/3/16). Whatever this might mean, other than as a political contest, this was going to be huge. A further allusion in the same article points to the contest within the BJP leadership as being itself the site of the MBh battle: (29/1/13) “The hype over Modi could also be an outcome of the intensifying infighting among the BJP’s top leaders.” … “Earlier, they (the BJP) were invoking the Ramayana for the Ram temple but now the Mahabharata has started in the BJP. It is not a good sign for the BJP as a political party because their differences are coming to the fore, especially those surrounding personalities,” said Achyut Yagnik, a political analyst and author based in Ahmedabad (accessed 7/3/16). Note that people are only given the noun Mahabharata, but Yagnik is likely referring to the war itself, without there being any necessity to add any word indicative of conflict or struggle. And in reporting a pre-election BJP National Executive and Council meeting at Surajkund, First Post reports: Lord Krishna has become the new icon in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s discourse. Unlike Ram, the party this time is not chanting Krishna’s name but is using the image of Krishna blowing the conch-shell, in true Mahabharat style. … The party believes that it’s in a war with the Congress and by using the Krishna portrait it wants to convey the message to the party faithful, and perhaps the electorate outside, that it is in the

 the forces of evil and good. Therefore, a connection is established between ‘goodness’ and the deeds of one family, consequently equating the activities of the other family with a lack of virtue.”

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Pandava camp rather than the Kaurava one in this Mahabharat. … By invoking Krishna’s battle-cry, the BJP hopes to win the political war against the ruling Congress. But unlike Mahabharata, in this political war there are too many regional warriors who are likely to play spoilers to both parties.11

In this and other articles it is the conflict between two sets of parallel cousins which provides a frame for the political conflict both within the NDA alliance and between it and the Congress (or UPA). One might ask why the conflict between RƗma and RƗva৆a and their respective forces is not invoked. Is it because the PƗ৆ঌavas and Kauravas emerge from the same family whereas this cannot be so in regard to the hero and the antagonist of the RƗm? Allusion to the MBh recognises a kind of uniform India––which means one family culturally––, but one in which there can be differences, though not of such magnitude that they will threaten the fundamental unity of the country. A conflict between Hindus and Muslims could not be conceptualised as such because these groups cannot be seen as part of the same family. A much fuller statement comes from an article in India News of 30/12/13, an assessment of the then political conflict that successfully brings out the full hermeneutical possibilities of the MBh in contemporary politics. India News: “Why Kejriwal isn’t Krishna and Modi is not Arjuna of Mahabharata 2013” by Sandipan Sharma December 30, 2013: All of us have heard the epic tale of Mahabharata. Some of us may have watched it on Doordarshan 25 years ago. A few of us would have read one of its various narrations. But did any of us notice the Mahabharata unfold right in front of us in 2013? If ever there was a year that reminded us of the gripping tale of politics, intrigue, treachery, revenge and war, it has to be 2013. This year had all the ingredients of every Indian’s favourite drama. It had all its characters too.”

If we stop here it confirms that the MBh is being used to impose a broad  11

“BJP drafts Krishna in new Mahabharat with Congress,” http://www.firstpost.com/print page.php?idno=469336&sr_no=0,. See also Verma, Lalmani, “Weighed against Coins, UP BJP Chief Lands in Fresh Controversy” The Indian Express, 21/4/16. “Weighed against coins, UP BJP chief lands in fresh controversy. The controversy comes within a fortnight of the Phoolpur MP assuming charge as state BJP chief and in less than a week after he faced protests when posters depicting him as Lord Krishna and Opposition leaders as Kauravas appeared across Varanasi.”

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interpretative frame for potentially any political conflict. This is a frame that gives political conflicts a uniquely traditional Hindu flavor––even if this does not go back to early versions of the MBh. A parallel may be found in the times that Shakespeare’s characters have been used to define events in Australian politics. Equally, one could be forgiven for thinking that the pre-election posturings were being seen as a soap opera, one already beautifully presented much earlier in the MBh, and one reason for its ongoing attraction. He continues, saying: There are different ways to look at the Mahabharata. If seen through the eyes of Sanjay, who narrated it to Dhritrashtra, it could be a violent power struggle, a clash of egos and a slighted woman’s quest for justice against her tormentors. It could be seen as a tragic saga of a blind man’s incessant faith in his power-hungry, incompetent and errant son. All of this, in some way or the other, was part of the 2013 narrative.

Now the article becomes more specific in its detail: If seen through the eyes of Krishna, the Mahabharata is the story of what transpires when the ruling class deviates too far from its dharma, its duty; when everybody revolts against the tyranny of injustice, inequity and when people start praying, yearning and pleading for somebody to come forward and cleanse the system. It tells us that somebody always comes forward to wipe out the perpetrators of the rule of adharma. Just one shloka from the Bhagavad Gita sums it up: … (Whenever there is decline of dharma and predominance of adharma, at that time I descend).

This really is the principal message being offered in this extended metaphor: the level of public life had diminished so much that it required an interpretative frame capable of reaching beyond the present and sharing continuity with a distant past, a frame that was accessible and enjoyed a high degree of authenticity. This frame was dominated by the doctrine of the decline of dharma drawn from the BhagavadgƯtƗ, known to be part of the MBh, but also separate from it and a powerful text in contemporary India. Next he fills in the details of this by putting contemporary names to fictional characters: Though there is no Atal Behari Vajpayee12 to publicly remind us of it, albeit in a different context, [sic] 2013 would not have been so engrossing if the UPA had not completely forgotten its Raj Dharma. In public

 12

BJP prime minister for 13 days in 1996 and from 1998 to 2004.

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perception it became synonymous with graft, sycophancy, single-minded devotion to a dynasty, inflation, unemployment, injustice and atrocities against women. It is not difficult to identify personalities within the Congress who acquired shades of the protagonists of the Mahabharata. There is the Dhritrashtralike Sonia, the Bhishma-like Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi, though by no yardstick vile and villainous like Duryodhana, but still a symbol of a ruling family’s desire to perpetuate itself with any means available. And there are the various Shakunis scheming and plotting in the background in the garb of mentoring the Gandhi scion like indulgent maternal uncles. … …. Since the Congress had begun to resemble the Kauravas––an unjust, incompetent congregation of darbaris whose only aim is to bring the next generation of the dynasty into power—it was wiped out.

Here again the deeper cause is dharma, an abstraction that enables all of the dissatisfactions and grievances against the UPA, and especially the Congress, to be rolled into one. As such it is not just a few specific issues that lead to Congress’ destruction but the whole tone of government, which percolates to the state of the country itself. And hence no distinction need be made between good and bad on particular sides: it is the side that matters. And this allows him to name four characters in the MBh who have consistently been focused upon as “controversial” figures because of their underlying honesty and nobility. So, just as Bhishma, Drona, Kripacharya, Karna—the good guys in the wrong camp—were killed in the Mahabharata, even those with a clean image and a decent track-record were decimated in 2013. Sheila Dixit and Ashok Gehlot can continue to wonder why they were trampled over, but the simple answer is that they represented the wrong side in the good vs. the bad. It would be tempting for followers of Narendra Modi and even Arvind Kejriwal to believe that their heroes are Pandavas of this epic. Some might even fight to anoint one of them Lord Krishna. But Modi and Kejriwal were, at best, tools in the fight against the current evil. They were just weapons of mass political destruction—Arjuna’s bow Gaandiv, Bhima’s mace or Krishna’s Sudharshan Chakra. The people were the real Pandavas of this epic, they fought for what is rightfully theirs, avenged—like Draupadi—…The BJP and the AAP, in fact, only executed the will of the people; they just heeded to vox populi, which is vox dei.

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Chapter Four If there is one lesson from 2013, it is this: the collective voice of the people has descended to destroy the rule of adharma. This is not the first time it has happened, this won’t be the last. Modi and Kejriwal shouldn’t forget this. Whoever forgets his dharma would be next on the list.13

What is interesting in the final paragraphs is the evocation of the people as representing the force of dharma against adharma, a fundamental theme running throughout the MBh, but not without crucial difficulties of interpretation. In evoking democratic and populist values this is adding a new 21st-century reading to the MBh, but it is easy to see how it makes sense if one conceptualises the gap between the corrupt and the uncorrupt as to what motivated the two sides in the great epic battle, and how adharma flows through to the people at large when those who are required to oversee the observance of dharma fail in their duty, as they have here. Despite its translation into an appeal for a democratic concept, that is, “the people,” the same basic thematic parameter of dharma/adharma evokes a perfect convergence of the political conditions of 2013 with more traditional views, general enough to be easily understood by the educated populace. In analysing a few selected press reports and the statements reported of politicians, the following question can be asked: which comes first as an interpretative frame, the Mbh or the political spectacle that occurred leading up to the BJP’s victory? Are both being treated as soap operas offering an interpretative function in relation to each other? Bowles’ (2010) article contains other media references from 2004 to 2006, indicating that the MBh plot in its broadest sense was then being used as a means of placing some control and meaning on the political stage that otherwise could easily be reduced to soap opera status. But is it also an attempt to distance the Congress from traditional Indian values in the centre of which the BJP claims to place itself?

Political Actors If the previous section outlines the broad context, it can now be asked if there is a specific media context where the MBh is used or if everything about contemporary allusions to the MBh in the press and elsewhere should be considered part of the context outlined above. This section is divided into two parts: one where politicians are seen to act like characters  13

See Sharma, Sandip, “Why Kejriwal isn’t Krishna and Modi not Arjuna of Mahabharata 2013,” First Post, 30/12/2013.

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from the MBh even when they may not be intentionally doing this, as this is a judgement placed upon them by others, and secondly, an acknowledgement that actors from the Chopra Durdarshan version of the Mbh have entered the political sphere. Both occurrences assume people already know the plot of the MBh and can easily fit characters into it. Career politicians. The most typical characters with whom the principal politicians are compared are BhƯৢma, K৚ৢ৆a, Dh৚tarƗৢ৬ra and Duryodhana. Dh৚tarƗৢt৚a appears particularly often as a comparator to Prime Ministers. Manmohan Singh, for example, has been compared to Dh৚tarƗৢ৬ra because “Sonia Gandhi had the final say in everything in the UPA government and that it was a reality that the PM came to terms with,”14 with the same person (media advisor Sanjaya Baru) saying that “The PM tried his best given his political limitations. He was like Bheeshma of the Mahabharata, not Dhritarashtra.”15 Arvind Kejriwal, leader of the Aam Aadmi, “had called former PM Singh ‘Dhritarashtra’ when he attacked Singh over the coal blocks allocation scam and the missing coal files.” 16 And still another person had characterised him as ĝikha৆ঌin because “…when the PM lets corruption flourish under his leadership, what is the point of personal honesty? The Congress party uses him as a ‘kavach’, or shield just as Shikhandi was used as a shield in Mahabharata.”17 Manmohan Singh had himself designated Atal Vajpayee in these words: “The Bheeshma Pitamah of Indian politics Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee should listen to his conscience and let the national interest prevail upon narrow politics.”18 It is scarcely surprising that BhƯৢma and Dh৚tarƗৢ৬ra were chosen as traditional role models for Prime Ministers, as both always seemed to hold back from making real decisions––letting others do it––even when they knew what was wrong in terms of dharma. The expectation in the Sanskrit MBh, at least initially, was that they would enforce a view of dharma––seemingly denied famously when they did not put limits on Duryodhana and ĝakuni in the scene where DraupadƯ is humiliated in Dh৚tarƗৢ৬ra’s assembly hall whilst all the dharma specialists look on (MBh 2, 58-61)––, but this did not happen, with misplaced loyalty to Duryodhana being attributed as the cause. Manmohan Singh no doubt  14

“PM was like Bheeshma, not Dhritarashtra: Sanjaya Barua,” http://www.moneycontrol.com/master_your_money/stocks_news_consumption.ph p?autono=1069207,” accessed on 12/06/2016. 15 “PM was like Bheeshma, not Dhritarashtra: Sanjaya Barua.” 16 Ibid. 17 “Prashant Bhushan denies calling PM a ‘Shikhandi,’” The New Indian Express, 29/5/12. 18 “Bhishma Pitamah should rise above party politics: PM,” The Hindu, 6/3/2008.

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looked the part: he was old, imposing in appearance, honest, but incapable of controlling those who were really running the government. BhƯৢma and Dh৚tarƗৢ৬ra might be regarded as tragic figures because they know what is right or dharmic, yet their inaction only gives rise to further adharma. It is almost as though Singh and Advani are being conceptualised as noble figures who were not aggressive enough to follow the right path, and will no doubt regret this as did Dh৚tarƗৢ৬ra. Advani is also seen as BhƯৢma: Who knows more about epic victory and defeat than BJP’s L. K. Advani? Having undertaken rath yatras to lead his flock forward from a mere two seats, Advani has served loyally behind the lotus throne for centuries, sorry, years… … Hoping his word would be scripture in BJP by now, it must have been a bitter blow for the saffron star to let go of his wrath, sorry, rath, and fly solo—in fact, so low that the nameplate of his Lok Sabha office had to be changed. To what? Bhishma Pitamah, of course, for who knows the agony of lying on a bed of thwarted dreams better than him?19

Here the use of words such as rath yatra, rath and “lotus throne” has the deliberate purpose of mixing up the narrative of the career of Advani with that of BhƯৢma, and the whole thing is assuredly encapsulated in the word pitamah, referring to BhƯৢma’s role as one overseeing the development of the PƗ৆ঌavas and Kauravas as one large family, and as having him lying on a bed of dreams instead of arrows. Finally, one more specific reference to Narendra Modi made one year after he had become PM: Congress today said another ‘Mahabharata’ would be fought over proposed amendments in the Land Acquisition Act in which parties like BJD must prove their commitments towards farmers and tribals. ‘Prime Minister Narendra Modi is behaving like Duryodhan of Mahabharat and ready to sacrifice the interests of farmers and tribals to appease the corporates which invested in the public issue (Modi) during elections. Investors now want dividends in the form of land,’ former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh said. … Ramesh said: ‘We are not depending on Patnaik to

 19

“Congress and BJP adopt fabled roles—but who’s fighting the real Mahabharata?” The Times of India 14, 6, 2014. Advani was Minister of Home Affairs, 1998-2004, and deputy Prime Minister for two years. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/edit-page/Congress-and-BJP-adopt-fabledroles-but-whos-fighting-the-real-Mahabharata/articleshow/36504923.cms, accessed on 16/3/16.

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fight against the Duryodhan (Modi) government over the land act issue. I request him (Patnaik) to support farmers who are “Pandavas” in the 2015 Mahabharat’.20

In all these cases it is the potential decision makers in the MBh, Dh৚tarƗৢ৬ra, BhƯৢma and Duryodhana, who are the basis of the comparison. The first knows what is right but does nothing to stop the base ambitions of his greedy son who lusts after the PƗ৆ঌava kingdom. He is a somewhat tragic figure as is BhƯৢma who is the ultimate arbiter and teacher of dharma, even if he supports the wrong side. Each has a different flaw attached to his persona, with BhƯৢma being noble––but seemingly supporting adharma, Dh৚tarƗৢtra weak and Duryodhana wicked. As a group they provide a range of relatively unambiguous and well-known role models into which contemporary political leaders could be placed. The second component of this section involves a very brief comment about actors involved in the BJP. It has been quite common for Bollywood actors to go into politics (M. G. Ramachandran and J. Jayalalitha, both in Tamilnadu); after all, politicians are primarily actors. Yet, at least three actors in the Chopra MBh have become heavily involved with the BJP, or in one case have been appointed to a prominent administrative position. Roopa Ganguly and Praveen Kumar both joined the party and received considerable press coverage when they did so. This publicity occurred even though it had been twenty-five years since the Chopra MBh was shown on Doordarshan. Does their connection with the film provide them with a special status that other politicians would not have? Are they still playing Yudhiৢ৬hira and DraupadƯ in their political roles?21 It is yet too early to assess if their roles––that is, if they rise in the party––in politics will be interpreted by the media in terms of their personas earned in their film roles. Here are some examples reported in early 2015: Bengaluru, Jan. 7: Bengali actor Roopa Ganguly on Wednesday officially joined the BJP at a function in Kolkata in the presence of Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

 20 “Mahabharata Will Be Fought Over Proposed Land Act Amendments,” Outlook, 6/4/2015. 21 See Mitra, Television and Popular Culture in India: A Study of the Mahabharat, 105. “When film stars cross into television space, they bring such histories [of their previous roles] with them. However, in the case of Mahabharat on Doordarshan, there were few such crossovers, and the key roles were played by new faces that soon became connected to the characters they played.”

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Chapter Four Ganguly, who played Draupadi in the Mahabharat television serial directed by B. R. Chopra in the late 1980s, became the second actor from that serial to join the BJP. In April last year, Praveen Kumar, who played the role of Bheem in the serial, joined the BJP. [Kumar said] He said the country needed a strong leader and a party and termed the BJP as the ‘Pandavas’ and the Opposition parties as ‘Kauravas.’ … In 2011, actor Debasree Roy who played Satyavati in the mega serial joined the Trinamool Congress and won from the Deganga constituency in the West Bengal assembly election that year. Nitish Bharadwaj, the actor who played Krishna in the Mahabharata contested parliamentary elections on the BJP’s ticket in 1996 and 1999. Though he won from Jamshedpur in 1996 to become a member of the Lok Sabha, he lost in Rajgarh in Madhya Pradesh in the 1999 polls.22

Another media reference to Ganguly is explicitly made to her role as DraupadƯ. Mausumi Kayal was on a march to get justice for a young woman raped and murdered in West Bengal. Ganguly was on the same march and it was reported that: Mausami, meanwhile, said she would be thrilled to speak to Ganguly, her television idol. ‘I am excited to see Draupadi (Ganguly had portrayed the character in the television series Mahabharat). I will run to see her and if given an opportunity, also hug her. But since we have vowed not to be affiliated to any party, I cannot join the march,’ she said.23

Is she DraupadƯ or Ganguly? But if DraupadƯ, is she then DraupadƯ in an entirely new role defined in terms of women’s rights? This tells us that the Doordarshan MBh is still very much alive in the minds of contemporary commentators and voters and propels some of those who acted in it towards their political careers, whilst also imposing expectations on how they should function when in political office. It is not a direct transfer from the film to parliament, rather the backgrounds of the epic and contemporary politics are brought together in an overlapping hermeneutical frame.

 22

Ghosh, Shubham, “Roopa Ganguly: ‘Bheem’ & ‘Draupadi’ in BJP, ‘Satyavati’ in Trinamool Congress,” One India. 7/1/2015. 23 “BJP protest in Kamduni: Women who fought for Justice say they won’t join March if Party Flags are displayed,” Indian Express, 2/2/16.

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MBh and RƗm as Source Texts of Indian History Recently, figures such as Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, chairman of the ICHR, have made claims about both epics as definitive sources of early Indian history which have left a marked heritage to the present day. Nobody could deny the truth of this from one perspective, but what is controversial is that it is a history of the time when it was first composed. Rao’s asserted belief that the two epics are somehow depictions of historical events is seemingly an expression of the kind of fundamentalist reading of the epics for which BJP politicians and RSS functionaries are famous. His well-publicised interview in Outlook (21/7/14) is illustrative: ‘You are the author of the Mahabharata project? What is the project about?’ ‘There is a certain view that the Mahabharata or the Ramayana are myths. I don’t see them as myths because they were written at a certain point of time in history. They are important sources of information in the way we write history. What we write today may become an important source of information for the future in the future. When analysed, of course, they could be declared to be true or false. History is not static. It belongs to the people, it’s made by the people. Similarly, the Ramayana is true for people... it’s in the collective memory of generations of Indians. We can’t say the Ramayana or the Mahabharata are myths. Myths are from a western perspective.’

Some of this is true, as both epics do live in the collective memory of the people. And though he may have been set up here, yet he goes on in the interview to justify this mode of reading the text. In addition, there have been many other examples recently of similar expressions of the two epics as records of historical events, definitely a form of historical fundamentalism. This approach to the past was given a big push forward when the BJP was last in power (1998-2004). The government provided funds for marine archaeologists to find proof that K৚ৢ৆a’s birth place, DvƗraka, actually existed, thus compromising the objectivity of the Archaeological Survey of India. Such a view as Rao’s is also backed up at forums which are essentially religious but also civilisational, as recorded in a very partisan report by F. Gautier at the World Hindu Congress held in New Delhi in November 2014. New Delhi’s World Hindu Congress: ‘3,000 movers and shakers from all over the planet made history at the World Hindu Congress in New Delhi, signaling a new era for the Hindu Renaissance. … At the cultural conference, many attendees agreed that the “Nehruvian” outlook “has diluted the richness and dignity of Bharat’s culture by reducing it to a show

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Chapter Four of government-sponsored Bharat Natyam dance and Indian classical singing.” Others expressed anger that the very authenticity and historicity of our noble sacred texts, such as the Vedas, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, have been challenged by the official historians of the Nehruvian school. Too much of Indian history, as portrayed in both Indian and Western texts, was written by the British and blindly adopted by Nehru and subsequent historians.’24

To these could be added many other Hindutva websites which justify in their own terms the historicity of both epics. However, the ICHR is a prestigious body and statements by its chairman may give credence to many people who know the MBh from sources other than the Sanskrit text itself. To them its historicity may be attractive, especially since these assertions are attempting to objectify both epics as accurate reflections of Indian history at a particular given time. In that sense they are quite different from the Chopra retelling which almost places the MBh beyond time in focusing on conflicts, intrigues and jealousies which people can easily correlate with their own personal situations in the present day. Whilst there may be a conceptual conflict here, this is not something that threatens to displace the civilisational status of the MBh in the public eye. Instead the impact of both may strengthen it. Even if the MBh is not regarded as historical by many contemporary Indians, it is still influential in their framing of certain aspects of their own lives and of events around them.

Conclusion In the final analysis the title of this paper can be questioned. The MBh is no celebrity text, if celebrity though an important sociological category,25 is assumed to rise and fall in its individual iterations. The MBh does not fall into this category. It has so pervaded the consciousness of Hindus and others over two millennia as to have long been an integral part of the cultural furniture. That is, as Bandlamudi’s very useful book shows, it is a fundamental reference point for most Hindus who have had access to a MahƗbhƗrata story in all kinds of different ways. However, with the  24

F. Gautier, “3,000 movers and shakers from all over the planet made history at the World Hindu Congress in New Delhi, signalling a new era for the Hindu Renaissance,” Hinduism Today Magazine Web Edition, April/May/June 2015 Conference: New Delhi’s World Hindu Congress. 25 Milner, M., “Is Celebrity a New Kind of Status System?” Society 47 (2010): 379-387, outlines several criteria for determining celebritisation.

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widespread advent of television and electronic media to India since the mid-1980s, it gives celebrity status to those who are directly associated with it in a performative sense––especially in conjunction with the direct impact on celebritisation effected by Bollywood. Many of the prominent politicians are already well-known, but placing them within the frame of the MBh narrative locates them in a much longer historical trajectory continuing up until the present. But the connection also effects a unifying function for those who are included within it. “Unifying function” 26 means that it focusses on a few very prominent characters and themes in the MBh and ties them into the basic workings of Indian political activity, and especially with certain prominent figures of the BJP and Congress. Thus political activity and some MBh themes mirror each other in a kind of unified discourse accessible to most of the electorate.27 If Modi has had to try and downplay the influence of the RSS in the election campaign and present the BJP as a moderate centralising party28 attempting to take the middle ground, then he has had to minimise the influence of the communitarian aspect of the Hindutva ideology. But can the BJP still identify itself with a strong Hindu nationalist push, where Hinduism as a unifying influence on a culture of diverse elements is brought into play?29 It is here the MBh and the RƗm, both so well-known without the need for extra publicity, might come into play as formative factors in the development of a unifying Hinduism. Given their survival and popularity over two millennia, there is surely something here that  26

See also van Van der Veer, 121. “The MahƗbhƗrata and RƗmƗya৆a traditions have not only been written down, but have been transmitted through every available modern medium, be it printing, audio recordings, television, or film. The important thing to note here is that these modern media do not destroy, let alone marginalise speaking and watching. They also have not produced the solitary reader or watcher. However, they do have a unifying tendency in that they make more people hear and watch the same.” 27 Cf. “Gulzar pitches for inclusion of Mahabharat in education system,” The Indian Express, 10/1/2016 “Filmmaker and lyricist Gulzar made a strong pitch for Indian epics like Mahabharat to be made part of the education system during his visit to Ahmedabad on Friday. ‘Mahabharat is one epic that ties all of us together, be it culturally and by way of philosophy.’” 28 As he still seems to be doing. See S. Palshikar, “The BJP and Hindu Nationalism: Centrist Politics and Majoritarian Impulses,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 38/4 (2015): 719-735. 29 See Palashikar, “The BJP and Hindu Nationalism,” 725. “[Modi] argued that nationalism is development and being nationalist is the core value of Hindutva. His ‘Hindutva’ was associated more with ‘national development,’ thus bypassing issues of intercommunity relations and minority rights.”

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needs investigating, because the BJP can minimise its Hindu nationalism whilst enjoying the fruits of the continuation of strong mainstream support for a political and civilisational Hinduism. Both van der Veer and Mitra point to the unifying functions of a single MBh, whether the critical edition or the Doordarshan version. Whilst not denying the continuing existence of many other versions, the Doordarshan version in particular with its weekly serialisation focused viewers’ attention every week onto the MBh and no doubt this helped to push its function as an interpretative frame for contemporary politics.30 At the same time the Congress Dynasty was exhausting itself centrally and the various political and extra-political organisations making up the Sangh Parivar were becoming better organised and achieving increased electoral success. They needed a text that would provide a traditional justification for their continuing assertions of India as a Hindu nation. The two epics were prime candidates for this role, because both came from a time when Hinduism was emerging and both had retained their popularity for at least two millennia. And the MBh, in particular, can be seen as a civilisational text such is its penetration into virtually every aspect of culture.

Bibliography Bandlamudi, Lakshmi. Dialogics of Self, the Mahabharata and Culture. The History of Understanding and Understanding of History. London: Anthem Press, 2010. Bowles, Adam. “The Failure of Dharma.” Seminar 608 (Apr., 2010): 2631. “Bhishma Pitamah should Rise above Party Politics: PM.” The Hindu, 6/3/2008 http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/bhishma-pitamah-shouldrise-above-party-politics-pm/article1214692.ece, accessed on 16/3/16.  30 See Mitra, “Television and Popular Culture in India,” 102. “The primary significance of serialisation thus lies in the way in which Mahabharat on Doordarshan was able to take a well-known story, and bring it back to the audience every week. Doordarshan became a forum where the central tale of India was repeated every week, reemphasising not only the centrality of Mahabharat but also redescribing the position of television.” And Van der Veer, 121. “The MahƗbhƗrata and RƗmƗya৆a traditions have not only been written down, but have been transmitted through every available modern medium, be it printing, audio recordings, television, film. The important thing to note here is that these modern media do not destroy, let alone marginalise speaking and watching. They also have not produced the solitary reader or watcher. However, they do have a unifying tendency in that they make more people hear and watch the same.”

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“BJP Drafts Krishna in New Mahabharat with Congress.” 26/9/2012. http://www.firstpost.com/printpage.php?idno=469336&sr_no=0, accessed on 16/3/16. “BJP Protest in Kamduni: Women who Fought for Justice say they won’t join March if Party Flags are Displayed.” The Indian Express. 02/02/2016. Chakrabarti, Uma. “Saffroning the Past: Of Myths, Histories and the Right-wing Agenda.” Economic and Political Weekly 33, no. 5 (1998): 225-232. “Congress and BJP adopt Fabled Roles—but who’s Fighting the Real Mahabharata?” The Times of India, 14/6/2014. Edgerton, Franklin, ed. The SabhƗparvan. Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1944. Gautier, F., “3,000 Movers and Shakers from All Over the Planet made History at the World Hindu Congress in New Delhi, Signaling a New Era for the Hindu Renaissance.” Hinduism Today April/May/June 2015, https://www.hinduismtoday.com/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemi d=5586, accessed on 16/03/2016. Ghosh, Shubham. “Roopa Ganguly: ‘Bheem’ & ‘Draupadi’ in BJP, ‘Satyavati’ in Trinamool Congress.” One India, 07/01/2015. http://www.oneindia.com/bengaluru/bheem-and-draupadi-join-bjpsatyavati-joined-trinamool-congress-1614439.html, accessed on 16/03/2016. “Gulzar Pitches for Inclusion of Mahabharat in Education System,” The Indian Express 10/1/2016. “‘Mahabharata’ Will Be Fought Over Proposed Land Act Amendments.” Outlook, 06/04/2015 http://www.outlookindia.com/newswire/story/mahabharata-will-befought-over-proposed-land-act-amendments/889912, accessed on 16/03/2016. Milner, Murray. “Is Celebrity a New Kind of Status System?” Society 47 (2010): 379-387. Mitra, Ananda. Television and Popular Culture in India: A Study of the Mahabharat. New Delhi: Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1993. Palshikar, Suhas. “The BJP and Hindu Nationalism: Centrist Politics and Majoritarian Impulses.” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 38, no. 4 (2015): 719-735. “PM was like Bheeshma, not Dhritarashtra: Sanjaya Barua” http://www.moneycontrol.com/master_your_money/stocks_news_ consumption.php?autono=1069207,” accessed on 16/3/2016. “Prashant Bhushan denies Calling PM a ‘Shikhandi.’” The New Indian

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Express, http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2012/may/29/prashantbhushan-denies-calling-pm-a-shikhandi-372804.html, accessed on 16/3/2016. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi invokes Mahabharata in Lok Sabha,” The Economic Times, 11/6/2014. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/primeminister-narendra-modi-invokes-mahabharata-in-lok-sabha/articleshow /36399460.cms, accessed on 16/3/2016. Rajgopal, Arvind. “Our Many Ramayanas: The Sunday Mythology Club,” The Indian Express, 10/10/15 http://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/art -and -culture/ourmany ramayanas -the -sunday -mythology -club/, accessed on 12/6/2016. Sharma, Sandip. “Why Kejriwal isn’t Krishna and Modi not Arjuna of Mahabharata 2013.” 30/12/2013 First Post. http://www.firstpost.com/india/why-kejriwal-isnt-krishna-and-modinot-arjuna-of-mahabharata-2013-1313133.html, accessed on 16/3/2016. Stoler Miller, Barbara. “Contending Narratives––The Political Life of the Indian Epics.” The Journal of Asian Studies 50, no. 4 (1991): 783-792. Thikkavarapu, R. Prashant. “Zee Media vs. Positiv Television: The Mahabharata of Defamation.” Media Business 6/4/2015 http://www.thehoot.org/media-watch/media-business/zee-media-vspositiv-television-the-mahabharata-of-defamation-8222, accessed on 16/3/2016. Van der Veer, Peter. “Monumental Texts: The Critical Edition of India’s National Heritage.” In The Resources of History: Tradition, Narration and Nation in South Asia, edited by J. Assayag, 113-127. Pondichery: Ecole francࡥ aise d'Extrême-Orient Institut francais de Pondichery, ParisPondichery, 1999. Verma, Lalmani. “Weighed against Coins, UP BJP Chief Lands in Fresh Controversy.” The Indian Express, 21/4/2016.

CHAPTER FIVE KARMA YOGA: AN IDEAL OF THE PERFORMANCE OF ACTION IN THE BHAGAVAD GITA TARITWAT CHAIHEMWONG PRINCE OF SONGKLA UNIVERSITY

The Bhagavad Gita is often simply referred to as the Gita, which means the “Lord’s song” in Hindu scripture. It is part of the Hindu epic Mahabharata, the most renowned book on individual moral conduct and everyday life. The Gita deals with metaphysics, religion, and ethics and has been rightly called the Gospel of Humanity. It aims to build up a philosophy of action on knowledge, and is supported by devotion. The central point of the Gita is the development of the human self and its merging with the divine. The three-fold paths propounded by the Gita are therefore known as: the Jnana Marga (the path of knowledge); Karma Marga (the path of action); and Bhakti Marga (the path of devotion). The metaphysical theories of the Gita are concerned with the well-being and perfection of man. In the Gita, Karma Yoga means the performance of actions without caring for their fruits. It is an ideal of the performance of actions in a detached spirit. Everyone should follow this ideal of action without being influenced by the egoistic consideration of its fruit.1 The Gita places emphasis on action rather than meditation. However, this action must be free from any desire. The ultimate destination of man is the same but he can adopt the way of knowledge, action or devotion. The theory of disinterested action of the Gita begets a duty of high quality, leading man to the path of non-attachment. By non-attachment, man lives in this world  1

B. N. Singh, Dictionary of Indian Philosophical Concepts (Varanasi: Asha Prakashan, 1989), 137.

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but remains aloof from it. In the words of Radhakrishnan, the author of the Gita tells readers that the superior soul is he who experiences pain and pleasure without being affected by it. 2 He further states that the significance of the Gita is that its teaching is not presented as a metaphysical system by an individual thinker or school of thinkers. It is set forth as a tradition that has emerged from the religious life of mankind. A profound seer who sees the truth in its many-sidedness and believes in its saving power articulates it. It represents not just one sect of Hinduism, but Hinduism as a whole and not merely Hinduism, but religion, as such, in its universality, without the limit of time or space, embracing within its synthesis the whole gamut of the human spirit, from the crude fetishism of the savage to the creative affirmations of the saint.3 Suggestions are set forth in the Gita on the meaning and value of existence, the sense of eternal values, and the way in which the ultimate mysteries are illuminated by the light of reason and moral intuition. This provides the basis for agreement in mind and spirit which is very essential for keeping together the world which has become material by the universal acceptance of the externals of civilisation. Then, the doctrine of Karma Yoga in the Gita is the philosophy of life and it is in this sense that the Gita’s unique contribution to Indian ethical thought is understood. Then, how did the Gita pave the way for this discipline? The constituents of this discipline are karma and dharma. Karma is the mechanical force that is a necessary attribute of matter. All natural karmas, having once arisen, culminate in the production of certain, fitting consequences. This is the law of nature, inviolable by any agency, human or divine. Man falls within the orbit of its determination only with respect to his deeds that have been motivated by some natural desire or inclination. Nevertheless, the Gita points out that man is not a bundle of mere sensuous desires and inclinations. He possesses a unique power of spiritual determination. This is called his dharma. Thus, karma by itself is blind and cannot lead to any intelligent or meaningful activity. Dharma, on the contrary, is empty because by itself, it cannot determine anything. Evidently, the two assume meaning and significance only when they come together and form an organic whole. This is the truth about human life and must be recognised as such.

 2

S. Radhakrishnan, An Idealistic View of Life (London: Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1951), 281. 3 Idem., The Bhagavadgita (Delhi: Harper Collins Publishers, 2004), 12.

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Then, an action is truly human and, for that matter, truly good or moral when it is the fruit and flower of a will determined by dharma. It is not what man has attained or lost, but rather the way in which he has attained or lost something that really matters. Goodness, then, pertains not to actions or their results but solely to the motive with which they have been performed. For the Gita, it is the motive of dharma alone that can be claimed to be ranked as the highest of all motives.4 Indians hold that there are certain instincts common to man and animals, such as fear, sex, sleep and hunger, but what distinguishes the former from the latter is the characteristic of dharma. What the distinction serves to point out is the fact that while in the conduct of animals there is purpose but not selfdetermination, in the conduct of humans there is both purpose and selfdetermination. Any karma is good if it is the outcome of the power of selfdetermination. It is, in short, dharma, which is unconditionally and absolutely good for all spiritual beings. As soon as it has been subjected to the determination of dharma, it has not only been divested of its natural mechanism but also directed to a new purpose in the realisation of which lies the true human good. This is precisely what Karma Yoga means.5 Today’s society is witnessing a downward tendency in moral values. The reason is not hard to find. It is because the person who happens to be at the helm of affairs in a society is seen as divorced from these values. This is really a cause for great concern to all. According to the Gita, karma and dharma complement each other; they develop to affect each other in such a way that is in keeping with the demands of their respective natures.6 Karma, as already noted, awaits determination by a conscious spiritual agency in order to be truly good. This spiritual agency can only determine whether karma is in keeping with its own law. It is in such an act of determination, then, that true human freedom lies. All karma, when objecting to the determination of dharma, becomes obligatory, in the sense that it alone can be said to be truly representative of the agent’s essential being and, therefore, producing good.7 The Gita recognises man as part of nature. According to the Gita, the human world is not very different from nature. It is situated in nature and is part of nature. Since man is part of nature and depends on nature for many things, including his food, it follows that he owes a debt to nature  4

Balbir Singh, Essence of Bhagavadgita: an Intelligent Man’s Guide (Delhi: Arnold-Heineman, 1981), 62-63. 5 Ibid., 65. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid.

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and should, therefore, perform some action to maintain the balance in nature or for the smooth-running of the course of nature (Cakra): BG III: 16.8 Krishna describes the mutual dependence and interaction between man and nature. The man-nature relation makes it obligatory on the part of man to participate in this cycle. This in itself is one justification of action. One who does not follow this cycle and acts accordingly is a sinful person and his soul is not worth a human life.9 Man’s relation with other individuals can be said to be a relation between man and society. As man is related to nature, so is he relating to his fellow human beings. In fact, man overcomes his animal nature and becomes truly human only on account of his relationship with others. It is in society that man can realise his potential. As nature forms a condition of human life, so does society. An individual man is an incomplete being. He fulfills his many needs by depending on others. As with individuals, he also establishes relations with groups of individuals, and such groups are also related to one another. All these are social relations of man that create phenomena such as duty, obligation, right and so on. Because of his relationship with nature, man is supposed to undertake actions that are justified. Similarly, on account of his relationship with other individuals, action turns out to be obligatory on his part. He owes a debt to others because they shape his life and develop his personality. It is his duty to act for the sake of existence and the continuation of society.10 Here, it can be seen that karma yoga is grounded in man’s actions and relationships with others.

Action as Self-Development to do Duties Sometimes, an individual could be on the verge of collapsing when unpleasant situations arise because of conflict. This is not a problem for a particular human being, but for humanity as a whole. This is why the humanism of the Gita highlights the fact that every man has a moral nature  8

Swami Ranganathananda, Universal Message of the Bhagavad Gita, Volume 1 (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 2000), 276-277. “This Cakra, this wheel on interconnections, has been established from the very beginning of the universe. When the cosmic evolution started, this cakra also started, this interconnected cycle––one who does not follow this in this life; one who neglects this concept of cakra and breaks it, makes life one-sided, selfish, self-centred, etc.; what happens to such a one? His or her life is a life of sin, a life of evil.” 9 S. S. More, The Gita, A Theory of Human Action (Delhi: Indian Books Centre, 1990), 165. 10 Ibid., 166.

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that has its own functions and significance. Every human being in society is expected to do good.11 The Gita explains Svadharma (duty), which is the classification of the duty of man. In its sense and its deep understanding and Svadharma, the Gita becomes a guide for perfection and also reveals the truth in itself.12 The Lord makes Arjuna hear his words of the highest value. In whatever action in life man has made himself competent, that is his Savadharma. It means that every man has certain natural endowments and propensities to be fully developed and wisely directed so that he can play his part efficiently in the world. Everybody has his own Svadharma based on his nature. It is certainly true that if someone is following or practising another’s duty, he will be failing in the true spirit. He will fail to be efficient. But, the question arising in the modern world is whether all men are born equal; after gaining full knowledge, one becomes efficient to perform his duty; people adopt various professions after adequate training or education. However, the Gita would not object to such a view; anyone can adopt his Svadharma by gaining or by improving his nature. The real meaning of Svadharma that the Gita wants to convey is performing for the better. Even the caste organisation is not meant to make one superior to another, but only to emphasise Svadharma. Caste division was not the organisation of society on a spiritual basis. It provided the systematic distribution of functions among individuals in society for the well-being of all on the basis of justice. What is evidently necessary at this stage is the need to understand the philosophy of karma which, in the words of the Gita, is so subtle that even wise men are often confused as to what is truly karma and what is not. Such an enquiry is indispensable to an understanding of the nature of human goodness which is the central theme of the teachings in the Gita, and it is in this enquiry that a new perspective emerges. Earlier, it was commonly believed that action is a source of mundaneness in life, and inaction, which is revealed in a life of renunciation, is the best remedy for the worldly misery of human life, an outlook that constitutes the specific message of this Hindu text.13 Karma generally means deed, work, duty or action. Man, as a conscious being, engages himself in action. But, his actions are motivated by his end––the result he wants to achieve. Psychologically speaking, actions are of two  11

Radhakrishnan, The Bhagavadgita, 367. Ibid., 368. 13 K. Walli, Theory of Karman in Indian Thought (Varanasi: Bharata Manisha, 1977), 111-112. 12

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kinds: 1. 2.

Voluntary action; Non-voluntary action.

Voluntary actions are performed for the sake of fulfilling certain desires, but non-voluntary actions are performed by different organs of the body, for example, the opening and shutting of the eyes, breathing, etc. Therefore, what matters in voluntary actions in which man is engaged is waking the states in order to fulfill certain desires. The deeds performed by selfish motives for fulfilling an individual’s subjective selfhood are actions performed for the sake of fulfilling one’s own desires.14 But, if the goal is to perform one’s duties with a spirit of nonattachment, without caring for the fruits of one’s actions and thoughts of pleasure or pain, profit or loss, victory or failure, with a sense of equanimity and equality, Krishna points out that this requires knowledge––Jnana––of the true nature of the self. This knowledge of the highest self or the supreme lord, however, would require a devotional attitude of complete self-surrender and the performance of one’s duties in the spirit of an offering to Bhakti Yoga––devotion. Now the following question arises here––what does skill in action consist of? The straight answer from the Gita is that it consists of the renunciation of the fruits of action, not of the renunciation of the action itself. The significance of this teaching becomes clear if it is connected with the two values of life prevalent at the time the Gita was written. One was the negative ideal of renunciation and the other was the positive ideal of an active life. The former advocated the giving up of all activity that was karma. The latter recommended living in the midst of society and undertaking all obligations. It did not, however, exclude the selfish element altogether.15 The Gita suggests the path of selfless attachment in our actions and the way to perform all actions is Niskama Karma, which means that one should concern oneself with the duties to be performed, but not with the results that may accrue from activities undertaken in such a frame of mind. Having such an attitude is possible only if one understands one’s role in the activity correctly. Niskama Karma shows when the mind becomes pure and almost free from the encroachment of a sense of ego, the moment happiness comes. God dwells in the heart and asks for the  14

Judunath Sinha, Indian Philosophy Volume III (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1999), 73. 15 Ram Balak Roy, Gandhian Philosophy (Patna: Anupam Publications, 1986), 10.

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renouncement of all actions and a person must surrender himself exclusively to the inner monitor. As a result of this self-dedication preceded by the renunciation of action, the Lord takes upon himself the responsibility of the purification of the soul and transforms it accordingly for a higher spiritual purpose.16 However, the other important contribution of the Gita lies in its description of the ideal man. The ideal man of the Gita is neither the pure contemplative man disconnected from the busy life of the world, nor the unregenerate practical realist who believes in the existence of this world and this world only.17 The ideal man is described by the phrase “the man of tranquil wisdom.” He abandons all the desires that come to the heart and with the help of the spirit, finds joy in the spirit, and his mind is serene. He is not troubled by sorrow and does not long for pleasure. He is free from passions, anger, and fear and has an unwavering mind. He is free of all ties. He is unaffected by the vicissitudes of fortune. He withdraws within himself in the manner of a tortoise and sits serene while his senses move unaffected in the world of objects. He is free from the blandishments of objects and the lusts of the senses. He is in harmony with himself and at peace with the supreme. He is awake while others are asleep. He is just like the ocean wherein all waters flow but which never overflows. The host of desires does not upset him.18 Again, the ideal man is described by the phrase “the devotee.” He is a devotee who is envious of none, who is a fount of mercy, who is without egotism, who is selfless, who treats cold and heat, happiness and misery alike, who is ever forgiving, who is always content, whose resolutions are firm, who has dedicated his mind and soul to God, who causes no dread, who is not afraid of others, who is free from sorrow and fear, who is pure, who is well-versed in action and yet remains unaffected by it, who renounces all fruits of action, good or bad, who treats friends and foes alike, who is untouched by respect or disrespect, who is not puffed up by praise, who does not go under when people speak ill of him, who loves silence and solitude, and who has a disciplined reason.19 The ideal man of the Gita is called Yogin, more popularly known as Karma-Yogin, and those who have attained perfection are similar,

 16

Radhakrishnan, The Bhagavadgita, 378. P. Nagaraja Rao, The Bhagavadgita and the Changing World (Ahmedabad: Sri Ramakrishna sevasamitti, 1953), 147. 18 Ibid., 148. 19 Ibid. 17

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irrespective of whether they are Karma-Yogin, Bhaktas or Jnanins.20 They have peace of mind and are tranquil in spirit, but this is only one side of the story. Their perfections and completeness lie in the fact that they are also engaged in Lokasamgraha––doing good to all people and maintaining peace of mind in the midst of struggles as they continuously work for social justice, harmony, unity, and welfare, particularly of the the poor and the weak.21 In fact, the author of the Gita gives great prominence to the motives that move men to action. He does not ask men to renounce the world for the sake of salvation. He asks them to make use of all the good things of life in due proportions for spiritual realisation. He asks them to tread the middle path, to embody neither asceticism nor self-indulgence.22 The word yoga indicates the middle path: Yoga is not for him who eats too much, nor for him who eats too little. It is not for him, who sleeps too much, nor for him who keeps the whole night awake. But yoga is for him who is temperate in his food and recreation, who is restrained in all his actions, who has regulated hours of sleep and waking. Such yoga puts an end to all sorrow.23

The Gita does not promote the repression of men’s instincts, which generates neuroses. It is also against the view that one must give full rein to all impulses and passions. Such unlimited expression also leads to neuroses. Therefore, the middle path is advocated.24 The Gita presents order to society in an ideal manner, so as to train everyone to attain spiritual perfection. Dharma is the kingdom of heaven on earth. It has the power to transform men’s nature. The concept of dharma has social and individual aspects. There is no antithesis between the individual and society. Each is an abstraction when taken alone. They are inseparable in fact and distinguishable in thought. An individual grows to be his best only in society. The society is the training ground for his moral virtues. The society checks men’s anarchic and anti-social impulse and gives definiteness and form to their ideals and desires.25 The purpose of the  20

M. P. Pandit, Light from the Gita (Pondicherry: Dipti Publications, 1967), 25. “Of all Yogins he who with all his inner self given up to Me, for me has love and faith, him I hold to be the most united with Me in Yoga.” 21 Satya P. Agarwal, The Social Message of the Gita, Symbolized as Lokasamgraha (Columbia: Urmila Agarwal, 1995), 58. 22 Nagaraja Rao, The Bhagavadgita and the Changing World, 112. 23 Ibid., 113. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., 117.

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society is not to produce a dull uniformity in the behaviour and standards of men’s conduct. It must encourage the best in men and the good of all. The concept of dharma restores the perspective that corrects the misdirected energies of men and saves wastage. It stores the true sense of values in social thinking: a society based on dharma is like a flower garden and not a dull field of turnips. It offers different spheres of stimuli and is an example to all aspirants. It combines individual self-realisation and social well-being.26 In the Gita, Karma Yoga is laid down for all time; it is the bedrock of yogic practice and poise. Unless one takes success and failure, prize and punishment, applause and disapproval with an equal mind frame, he will merely labour in the name of “Yoga.” The other striking feature of yoga in the Gita is “Karma Yoga.”27 According to the doctrine of Karma Yoga in the Gita, no one owns or is owned, no one is a capitalist or labourer, no one is a master or slave, no one is superior or inferior, no one is rich or poor, but all are equal; all are part of the whole and have to contribute to the good of the society. This is the real kingdom where the Lord dwells.28 In the Gita, action is not the point of success or failure, for consideration, but just the way towards the truth and purity of the mind for the performance of actions.29 In the eyes of such a person, yoga consists of the sense of equality between both success and failure and the expected. He should perform duties for his own sake and not for any ulterior motive. This leads to purity of action in the highest sense in the world of purity, consistent with a higher spiritual realisation. Karma Yoga of the Gita is not possible without devotion––bhakti.30 Whenever one acts with the desire to reap the fruit of an action, he opens himself to misfortunes. Preoccupation with the fruit of one’s actions is what oppresses the person. There is agitation and tension in one’s life. Man has no choice other than action, and action is inevitably followed by its fruits. A man has to reap what he sows. How, then, should men live and  26

Ibid., 118. Hullasa Behera, 50 Flowers from Bhagavad Gita, A Solace against Frightening Materialism (Delhi: Pustak Mahal, 2002), 182. 28 M. D. Paradhar, Studies in the Gita (Bombay: Bombay Popular Prakashan, 1970), 15. 29 K. Walli, Theory of Karman in Indian Thought, 111. 30 M. P. Pandit, Light from The Gita, 25. “Delight of the heart in God is the whole constituent and essence of true Bhakti. The Gita brings in Bhakti as the climax of Yoga, which may almost be said to sum up, the whole final result of the Gita’s teaching. Whoever loves God in all his soul is founded upon the divine oneness, however he lives and acts, lives and act in God.” 27

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act, and yet not be weighed down by sorrow and samsara? The answer to the question of Lokasamgraha leads Lord Krishna to set up a model. Complete absorption in social good and living for others are the ways that lead to a God-union. Those who cannot act when they are told to perform the duties of their station in life and dedicate their acts to God must refer every action to God. They must have no aim other than the glorification of the Lord.31 Understanding the correct meaning of surrender is very much the need of the present day.

Conclusion The concept of karma is one of the central beliefs of Hinduism. Hinduism believes that actions will have consequences when they are performed with selfish desires and expectations. In this paper, the belief in karma, or the law of action, is presented according to the Bhagavad Gita: how to perform actions without desire and attachment to escape from their consequences. Lord Krishna exemplified Karma Yoga. He lived a worldly life, but never abandoned his duty to uphold dharma and protect the world from evil. He supported virtuous people, without becoming involved in the world or showing any partiality. If he supported the Pandavas, it was to destroy evil and restore dharma in the world that was in decline. Critics argue about certain actions and decisions made by him and the Pandavas during and before the war. However, it must be remembered that Krishna had no personal stake in the war. He did not benefit from it. In performing those actions and making those decisions, he was putting into practice the essential principles of Karma Yoga. This is recorded in the Bhagavad Gita itself, in the chapter on his universal form in which he told Arjuna that he had already decided on the fate of the war, where his duty was to play his part and unfold the divine plan. His teachings in the scripture reflect the same approach. He recommended Karma Yoga for householders to perform their obligatory duties and ensure the order and regularity of the world and the preservation of life and virtue upon the earth. No one can avoid karma, but with the help of Karma Sanyasa Yoga, one can escape the consequences that may arise and the sin that follows. This is the secret that can be learned from the scripture. The Bhagavad Gita does not preach the renunciation of action, but the renunciation of attachment to action and the desire for its fruit. It advocates both the performance of action through knowledge and Sanyas  31

Nagaraja Rao, The Bhagavadgita and the Changing World, 133.

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as a means for the attainment of freedom from the consequences of one’s actions. Sanyas means the renunciation of action prompted by desire while Tyaga means the abandonment of the fruit of the action. Both are the characteristics of a true karma yogi. The true Sanyasi is one who does his work without seeking the fruit of his actions, not the one who gives up activity or the sacred fire (6.1). If actions are performed with desires and attachment and with the egoistic assumption of the agent, then one has to assume responsibility for all his actions and also face the consequences of all his actions here and hereafter. He must enjoy or suffer from the fruits of his good actions or bad actions, respectively, accepting either the sorrow and suffering or the pleasure and happiness emanating from his actions. In both cases, he has no real freedom from the laws and jaws of mortal life. He thus remains subjugated to the conditions of mortal life and confined to the world of illusion and ignorance.

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Bobde, P. V. The Philosophy of the Geeta. Delhi: Intellectual Publishing House, 1995. Chatterjee, R. K. The Gita and its Culture. Delhi: Sterling Publishers Private Ltd., 1987. Chaturvedi, L. N. Teaching of Bhagavadgita. Delhi: Sterling Publishers Private Ltd., 1991. Chitale, M. P. The Bhagavadgita and Hindu Dharma. Poona: Continental Book Sellers & Publishers, 1953. Desai, Morarji. A View of the Gita. Delhi: S. Chand & Company Ltd., 1978. Devaraj, N. K. Humanism in Indian Thought. Delhi: Indus Publishing Company, 1988. —. Mind and Spirit of India. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1967. Dua, K. K. Bhagavadgita and Environment. Delhi: Koshal Book Depot, 1999. Durrany, K. S. Man in the Bhagavadgita, A Humanitarian Approach to the Scripture. Aligah: Three Men’s Publications, 1965. Flood, Gavin. An Introduction to Hinduism. Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Gangadhar, D. A. Dharma and Human Life. Research Journal: Faculty of Arts. 5. Varanasi: Banaras Hindu University, 1999. Guenon, Rene. Studies in Hinduism. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 2002. IMS, Fr. Sudil. The Reign of God and the Establishment of Dharma, a Theological Study of the Concept of the Kingdom of God in the Synoptic Gospels and of Dharma in the Bhagavadgita. Varanasi: IMS Generalate, 1998. Jariwlla, J. S. The Gita, the Science of Living. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1984. Joshi, M. C. Hindu Religions and Ethics. Delhi: Aryan Books International, 1994. Kaveeshwar, G. W. The Ethics of the Gita. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1971. Klostermaier, K. Klaus. A Survey of Hinduism. Noida: Gayatri Offset Press, 1990. Krishnananda, Swami. The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita. Himalayas: The Divine Life Society, 2000. Lal, R. B. The Gita in the Light of Modern Science. Bombay: Somaiya Publications Private Ltd., 1970. 

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Mahadevan, T. M. P. Outlines of Hinduism. Delhi: Skylark Printers, 1984. Mahajan, Yogi. Geeta Enlightened. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1989. Mainkar, T. G. A Comparative Study of the Commentaries on the Bhagavadgita. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1969. Maitra, S. K. Ethics of the Hindus. Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1963. Minor, Robert. Modern Indian Interpreters of the Bhagavadgita. Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1991. Mishra, Umesh. The Bhagavadgita, a Critical Study. Allahabad: Tirabhukti Publications, 1967. Modi, Bhupendra Kumar. Hinduism the Universal Truth. Delhi: Brijbasi Printers Private Ltd., 1993. More, S. S. The Gita, a Theory of Human Action. Delhi: Indian Books Centre, 1990. Morgan, Kenneth. The Religion of the Hindus. Delhi: Shri Jainendra Press, 1996. Nagaraja Rao, P. The Bhagavadgita and the Changing World. Ahmedabad: Sri Ramakrishna Seva Samitti, 1953. Otto, R. The Original Gita. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1939. Pandit, M. P. Light from the Gita. Pondicherry: Dipti Publications, 1967. —. Thought on the Gita. Pondicherry: Dipti Publications, 1990. Paradhar, M. D. Studies in the Gita. Bombay: Bombay Popular Prakashan, 1970. Rachan, S. P. New Sights on the Gita. Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1987. Radhakrishnan, S. An Idealistic View of Life. London: Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1951. —. Religion and Society. Delhi: Harper Collins Publishers, 1997. —. The Bhagavadgita. Delhi: Harper Collins Publishers, 2004. Ram, G. M. Bible of Hinduism. Delhi: Jagowal Printing Press, 1985. Ranade, R. D. The Bhagavadgita as a Philosophy of God Realization. Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1965. Rangacharya, M. The Hindu Philosophy of Conduct, Lectures on the Bhagavadgita. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1990. Ranganathananda, Swami. Universal Message of the Bhagavad Gita, Volume 1. Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 2000. Row, T. Subba. Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita. Madras: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1994. Roy, Ram Balak. Gandhian Philosophy. Patna: Anupam Publications, 1986. Roy, S. C. The Bhagavadgita and Modern Scholarship. London: Luzac & Co., 1941.

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Saroja, G. V. Tilak and Sankara on the Gita. Delhi: Sterling Publishers Private Ltd., 1985. Sharan, M. K. The Bhagavadgita and Hindo Sociology. Delhi: Bharat Bharati Bhandar, 1971. Sharma, Arvind. New Essays in the Bhagavadgita. Delhi: Books & Books, 1987. Sharma, D. S. Hinduism Through the Ages. Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1967. —. The Gita and Spritual Life. Madras: Theosophical Publishing House, 1928. Sharma, H. L. The Geeta Way of Life in the Context of Indian Culture. Meerut: Mansi Prakashan, 1990. Sharma, I. C. Ethical Philosophies of India. Ghaziabad: International Publishing, 1991. Sharma, R. N. Indian Ethics. Delhi: Surjeet Publications, 2013. Shastri, Hari Prasad. The Teaching from the Bhagavadgita. Varanasi: Pilgrims Publishing, 2005. Singh, B. N. Dictionary of Indian Philosophical Concepts. Varanasi: Asha Prakashan, 1989. Singh, Balbir. Essence of Bhagavadgita: an Intelligent Man’s Guide. Delhi: Arnold-Heinemann, 1981. Sinha, Judunath. Indian Philosophy Volume III. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1999. Sivananda, Swami. All about Hinduism. Himalayas: Yoga Vedanta Forest Academy Press, 1997. Tiwari, Kedar Nath. Classical Indian Ethical Thought. Delhi: Shri Jainendra Press, 1998. Vinoba. Talks on the Gita. Varanasi: Sarva Seva Sangh Prakashan, 1974. Virajeshver. Science of Bhagavadgita. Delhi: Himalayan Books, 1977. Vyas, R. N. Synthetic Philosophy of the Bhagavadgita. Delhi: Meharchand Lachhmandas, 1974. —. The Bhagavadgita and Jivana Yoga. Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1985. Wadia, A. S. N. Message of Krishna. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1934. Walli, K. Theory of Karman in Indian Thought. Varanasi: Bharata Manisha, 1977. William, Monsier. Religious Thought and Life in India. Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1974. Wood, Ernest. The Bhagavadgita Explained. California: The New Century Foundation Press, 1954.

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Yardi, M. R. The Bhagavadgita as a Synthesis. Poona: The Bhandarkar Institute Press, 1991. Zaehner, R. C. The Bhagavadgita. London: Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1969.

CHAPTER SIX TWO WOMEN REFORMERS: THE BRAHMANI OF KAUSHIKADHARMAVYADHA-LEGEND IN THE MAHABHARATA AND RANI RASHMONI OF CALCUTTA; A COMPARATIVE STUDY1 SUPRIYA BANIK PAL INDEPENDENT SCHOLAR, INDIA

Nowadays there is a lot of talk about gender studies and considerable attention is paid to the discussion of women. The central theme of this paper is based on two women characters from two different eras. This paper is divided into two major sections and will provide an analytical discussion on the empowerment of women in the form of the socioreligious reformation of 19th-century British Colonial Calcutta Society. It will explore the experiences of a mere Brahmin housewife and will contrast it with the male-dominated religious ideals and their implications to the society of the Mahabharata. On the other hand, coming from a lower-caste and poor family, the wife of a Zaminder (landlord), Rani Rashmoni of 19th-century Calcutta, is considered to be one of the noted reformers of the Bengal Renaissance. Her strong personality, humanity, political wisdom, religious virtue, social welfare contributions and resistance to the British are of great importance. She built the Dakshineswar-Kali 1 I would like to thank Mr. Kusal Chowdhury, Secretary and Trustee of the Dakshineswar Temple and Devottara Estate for providing materials and resources, Mr. Surojit Banerjee and Mr. Madan Chandra Mandol of the Asiatic Society for lending books, and my daughters, Vaishali Pal and Vidisha Pal for their valued assistance.

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temple which has been pivotal for spiritual awakening since the 19th century. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are two great epics of India, of which the Mahabharata is considered the longest epic in the world of literature, consisting of one hundred thousand (100,000) verses, for which reason it is also called ĝatasƗhasrƯsaূhitƗ. The epic Mahabharata was ascribed to the name of Krishnadvaipayana Vyasadeva in the 4th century BC, but this epic attained its present form through several decades (“Between the 4th century BC and the 4th century AD the transformation of the epic Mahabharata into our present compilation took place, probably gradually”––M. Winternitz). 2 In the Ramayana, the “Garhasthyadharma”––the practices and duties of family life (the second stage of life according to the Hindu scriptures) are narrated. But the Mahabharata describes the four means of the eternal goal––“Dharma”––virtue, “Artha”–– wealth, “Kama”–– chastity, and “Moksa”––the ultimate goal. Winternitz explained thus: Dharma, ‘law and custom or morality,’ artha ‘utility,’ ‘advantages,’ ‘practical life’ and kama ‘sensual gratification’ are the three aims of life and to a certain extent considered the be-all and end-all of human existence, according to Indian ethics. The final aim of all striving, however, is moksha, deliverance to which the various sects and philosophical systems indicate different paths.3

In the Mahabharata, the word Dharma is stated to be the code of conduct that should be performed for the benign stability of this mortal world and the world beyond death. The word “religion” is synonymous with and described by this term, “Dharma” (Dharman), which imparts several meanings: “law, usage practice, customary observance or prescribed conduct, duty, right, justice, virtue, morality, religion, religious merit, good works,” etc.4 Thus, “Dharma” may be classified by the use of various vocabulary like “Svadharma”––“own religion,” “own rights to get justice” or “own duty”; “Jatidharman”––“caste, duty, generic or specific property”; “Varnadharma”––“occupation of any caste or tribe,” “Deshadharma”––“law or usage of the country.” In the great Indian epic Mahabharata, all of these “Dharmans” are represented in a remarkable  2 M. Winternitz, A History of Indian Literature. Vol. I, pt. II (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1978), 417. 3 Ibid., 286. 4 Monier Monier, Williams. A Sanskrit English Dictionary (Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass, 2002), 510.

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manner in the form of didactic tales which have a long-lasting influence on social, ethical, political and religious customs. “Jatidharma”, or the restoration and preservation of religion by the king, is also referred to as “Svadharma”, wherein society curbs inter-caste relations as well as occupations outside the caste and class. “Kuladharma,” which restricts the professions of the four castes, is also a branch, or another name of the “Svadharma” or “Jatidharma.” It is told in the Bhismaparvan, Book VIII of the Mahabharata, that to follow the code of conduct of one’s own caste and heritage rather than to take another’s profession is regarded highly in society.5 ĝreyƗn svadharmǀ vigu৆aত paradharmƗt svanuৢ৬hitƗt/ Svadharme nidhanaূ Ğreyaত paradharmǀ bhayƗbahaত// VIII.27.35.

There is no harm or error in performing one’s duty that has been perfected through generations, even if this profession has a lower profile according to common people. With regard to women, “svadharma” is determined by “Stridharma”––the appropriate duties of a woman’s life, or the laws/customs relative to a woman. This customary religious practice is the vow that one holds above all others: “Pativrata”––the self-abnegating love and devotional fidelity to a husband.6 The definition of “Pativrata” is described in ĝabdakalpadruma as follows: ƖrtƗrte muditƗ h৚ৢte proৢite malinƗ k৚ĞƗ/ M৚yeta yƗ patyau sƗ strƯ jĖeyƗ pativratƗ//7

The wife who is shocked, when her husband suffers distress, who is delighted by his happiness, who becomes filthy and emaciated during his stay abroad and who embraces death when he meets his demise, is known as “Pativrata.” Though a woman’s primary religious duty to her husband is an unquestionable factor in her vows, due to the limitations of fulfilling her duty, it was extended and put forth to other family members. Such an instance of a devoted and chastised woman is chosen to be the first part of this paper. Her bold speech and instructions had transformed an arrogant  5

Haridas Siddhanta-vagish, Mahabharatam. Bhisma Parvan (Calcutta: Vishwabani Prakashani 1387, Bangabda (Bengali Era B.E.)), 302 HDS edn. 6 Lynn Teske Denton, Female Ascetics in Hinduism (Albany: State University of New York, 2004), 28. 7 Radhakanta Dev, ĝabdakalpadruma. Third Kanda (chapter) (Delhi: Nag Publishers, 1987), Vol. IV, 24.

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and enraged sage into a truth-seeker. The structure of the Mahabharata, as explained in the introduction “Gender and Narratives”, is formed like “a series of nested conversations.”8 There are consecutive stories which are strongly interwoven by the main characters, and each of these episodes has special importance with regard to “their own interest which no doubt is the reason that they have been preserved in the library that is The Mahabharata.”9 The first part of this paper deals with the episode of Brahmani-Kaushika-Dharmavyadha, which is considered as a subsidiary story (Upakhhyanam) embedded in the form of dialogues and interlocutions, and which emphasises the traditional practices of a chaste and devoted woman. This story is divided into three sections which are strongly intertwined with one another. First, the story of Kaushika is narrated; whose direct and inextricable attachment with the characters Brahmani and the pious fowler is the main theme of this legend. The second narration is related to the tale of Brahmani and finally the legend of Dharmavyadha is discussed. In the conversation between Vaishampayana and Janamejaya, Vaishampayana narrated the episode of the BrahmaniKaushika-Dharmavyadha illustrated by Sage Markandeya to Yudhisthira in the Vana-parvan.10 Once, while the scholastic, austere and ascetic Kaushika, who studied the Vedas, Upanishads and other Scriptures, was chanting the hymns of the scriptures under a tree, a female crane, perched on top of the tree dropped dung on him (Vanaparvan. chap. 206). Being greatly enraged, Kaushika stared at the crane furiously with evil thoughts. Because of his seething wrath and harmful intentions, the crane fell down and succumbed to its death. But, looking at the lifeless bird, Kaushika immediately felt guilty for his mischievous deed, and realised that it had happened due to his uncontrolled surge of hatred and temper. Thereafter, he went to a village to collect alms and entered the house of a Brahmani woman. Having seen Kaushika, the housewife asked him to wait, so that she could clean the bowl for alms. Meanwhile, her husband suddenly arrived hungry and tired. The Brahmani wife engaged herself in attending to her husband by pouring water for washing his feet and rinsing his mouth, bringing a stool for him to sit on, and lastly, waiting on her husband with food and sweet words, leaving the sage waiting. Finally, having served her husband, the  8

Simon Brodbeck and Brian Black, Narrative and Gender in the Mahabharata (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 23. 9 J. A. B. van Buitenen, The Mahabharata. Book Three (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago, 1975), 182. 10 M. N. Dutt, The Mahabharata Vol. II, Chapter III (Delhi: Parimal Publications, 2004), 196-216.

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Brahmani rushed to give alms to Kaushika. She felt ashamed for the delay and apologised. But the arrogant and enraged sage refused to listen and told her that being a common housewife, it was her prime duty to first serve a Brahmin because a Brahmin could burn everything, even the earth, and her husband should not be more important than a Brahmana ascetic. In this regard, mention may be made that the Brahmanical Law––the enforcer of ancient India, instructed the king to show honour and serve the brahmanas, and this was considered to be a king’s best duty11––ĝuĞrnjৢƗ brƗhma৆ƗnƗূca rƗjĖƗূ Ğreyaskaraূ paraূ// (MS.VII.88). Manu-Samhita also enthusiastically applauds “the order of the householders as the best of the four orders” because it is from this source that “all the three remaining orders derive their subsistence” (p. 8. R. N. Nandi).12 It is also instructed that the household should give a warm reception to the guest by offering water for refreshment, serving food and providing personal care.13 SaূprƗptƗya tvatithaye pradadyƗdƗsanǀdake/ Annaূ caiva yathƗĞaktiূ saূsk৚tya vidhipurvakaূ// (MS.III.99)

Upon understanding the importance of the argument made by Kaushika, the Brahmani tried to pacify him with soothing words and agreed that she did not want to belittle the Brahmin whom she considered to be equal to gods. She knew the greatness of Brahmins and she was well aware of the power of the ascetics. Hence, she should be forgiven for the unwanted waiting. She further imposed her strong opinion with a more credible and brave answer. She relayed that she was not that crane who would be killed by his anger. She considered Brahmins to be superior to other people because of their intelligence and great asceticism. But it was her duty to serve her husband first because she believed that the husband is the greater god and she had cultivated that special virtue by serving him. She followed the pativratya dharma––the rule for chaste women and she had also abided by the rules and laws for a woman.14 PatiĞuĞruৢayƗ dharmo yah sa me rocate dvija/ Daivateৢvapi sarveৢu bhartƗ me daivataূ paraূ//

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Satyendra Nath Sen, Manu-Samhita Chapter VII (Calcutta: Sen & Sen, 1934), 97. 12 Ramendra Nath Nandi, Social Roots of Religion in Ancient India (Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi & Company, 1934), 8. 13 J. H. Dave, Manusmriti Vol. II (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1975), 111. 14 M. N. Dutt, The Mahabharata. Vol. II (Delhi: Parimal Publications, 2004), 602.

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O Brahmana, my heart inclineth to that merit which springeth from the service of my husband for I regard my husband as the highest among all the gods.(III.206.30.)15

She explained that brahminhood could be obtained by controlling all passions, wrath and desire, and by devoting oneself to the studies of the Vedas and scriptures. But with only a literal knowledge of the Scriptures and Vedas one cannot possess true virtue which leads towards equality among all creatures. In her opinion, eternal virtue is very difficult to attain as it is based on Truth. Though Kaushika is (“dharmajĖa”) virtuous, (“ĝuci”) holy and devoted to the study of the Vedas (SvƗdhyƗyanirataত) he could not obtain and failed to grasp the true essence of Virtue.16 BhabƗnapi ca dharmajĖaত svƗdhyƗyanirataত Ğuciত/ Na tu tattvena bhagavan dharmaূ vetsƯti me matiত// (III.206.43.)

She also advised Kaushika to seek and possess virtue and learn the Laws of Brahminhood from the fowler–– “Dharma-vyadha” of Mithila. Listening to the discourse on the principles of virtue, Kaushika began to reprehend himself. Vininidan sa svamƗtmƗnaূ KauĞiko dvijasattamaত/ (III.205.48.)17

Kaushika then proceeded towards the famous city of king Janaka’s Mithila and there he found the fowler in the butchery, surrounded by a large number of buyers of buffalo meat. Kaushika became perplexed and enquired why the fowler engaged himself in such a vile occupation. Dharmavyadha, the pious fowler, replied that he bothered little about it and was not ashamed of his profession since it was his family occupation which had been handed down to him from his father and grandfather.18 Kulǀcitamidaূ karma pit৚paitƗmahaূ paraূ/ VartamƗnasya me dharma sve manyuূ mƗ k৚thƗ dvija// (III.207.20.)

In the days of the Mahabharata, caste and profession seemed to be knotted  15 Kisari Mohan Ganguli, The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa. Vol. I (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Pvt. Ltd., 2004), 424. 16 Dutt, The Mahabharata. Vol. II, 603. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., 605.

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together. Interestingly, Dharmavyadha was born in the lowest category of caste in his current birth but at the request of the Brahmin Kaushika he disclosed that in a previous birth he was a Brahmin but was cursed by a hermit for a misdeed to be born into a hunter’s family. So, due to the misdeeds of his previous birth, Dharmavyadha had to take the profession of a butcher. The word “vyadha” means a hunter, who kills animals–– (VyƗdhaত m৚gahiূsaka-jƗtiত). 19 Yet, Dharmavyadha did not kill any animal to sell its meat, and he never collected excess meat for lump-sum earning and profit. He only dealt with an amount sufficient to enable him to live his life smoothly. Thus, as the Brahmani considered her duty and service to her husband to be of the highest order in life, Dharmavyadha also believed that duty and service to his parents should be the prime duty of a man, and by performing those duties he was blessed and achieved righteousness––the true knowledge. Brahman Kaushika neglected those duties and his parents when he left his home. Therefore, he should first serve his parents. He later expounded on the Law, the eternity of the soul and the moral virtues. Kaushika agreed with the pious fowler and remembered the preaching of the Brahmani and left for home. Kaushika was thus humbled and had been transformed into a truth-seeker by the Brahmani and the butcher. He conveyed his thanks to the Brahmani for her beneficial teachings.20 PrƯtǀ’smi tava bhadraূ te gataত krodhaĞca Ğobhane/ UpƗlambhastvayƗtyuktǀ mama niতĞreyasaূ paraূ// (III.206.47)

This story points out the social scenario of the religio-ethics practised in the society of the Mahabharata that was enriched by the teachings of a mere housewife with true knowledge and by the wisdom of a “vyadha”–– a hunter––born into a tribal community, one of the most backward sections of society in present times. With regard to this tale, it should be noted that the Mahabharata discourages one from engaging in the occupations of other castes and directs one to follow one’s own occupational engagements, especially to the Shudras. If there is no suitable job for his livelihood, a Brahmin can go in for the occupation of Kshatriya and Vaishya. But a Brahmin should not take the profession of Shudra, while a man born of Shudra can choose the profession of other castes. Further, it is to be noted that this episode reflects the philosophy of Swami Vivekananda’s Karmayoga that is also prescribed in the teachings of the Gita. In this  19 20

Dev, ĝabdakalpadruma, 54. Dutt, The Mahabharata. Vol. II, 603.

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didactic tale, it is interesting to note that the character of the Brahmani wife appeared in an insignificant manner in the epic, where she was presented without any proper name. But both the righteous butcher and the learned austere Kaushika mentioned her with respect and dignity. Kaushika was amazed to learn that the pious butcher knew that he came from the Brahmani even without any previous reference made to her. Similarly, his astonishment knew no bounds when the Brahmani told him that she was not the crane whose life was taken by his wrathful anger. Hence, this episode shows that the Brahmani, under “pativrata-dharma,” could step out from the role of mere housewife by keeping him waiting for alms. Though she was well aware of the power and providence of brahminhood, she had overpowered the ascetic Kaushika by instructing him to learn the laws from Dharmavyadha, the butcher. It was not so easy to reform the mentality of the scripture-oriented male ascetic to learn from a common woman like the Brahmani; especially when society in that period did not give equal rights and privileges to a woman. But it is found that by serving her husband with utmost devotion, the Pativrata Brahmani “could become a clairvoyant.”21 AviĞeৢe৆a tasyƗhaূ kuryƗূ dharmaূ dvijottamaত/ ĝuĞrnjৢƗyƗত phalaূ paĞya patyurbrƗhma৆a yƗd৚Ğaূ// (III.206.31.)22

That caused her to speak uprightly; changing the fundamental status of an ascetic of a strong patriarchal society. It should be mentioned that, despite the incident, she never failed to show courtesy to Brahmin Kaushika, and in this regard she even begged for forgiveness as her words seemed out-ofplace and appeared exaggerated to her. She subtly reminded him of the existing social decree that prohibited the persecution of women in any way. There has been a depiction of ardent fervour to glorify the chastity of women with less room for a social reformer in the epic Mahabharata. Yet a 19th-century Bengali lady of the name Rani Rashmoni, in spite of being devoted to her husband and to her spiritual religiosity, is considered as one of the pioneers in bringing transformation to the social, political, economic and religious spheres of the Bengal renaissance. Her enormous achievements in society gained her the legendary stature of “Lokamata”–– the mother of the commoner. The meaning of the word “Rani” is queen, and it was the nickname bestowed upon her by the people of Bengal who considered this dignified lady a real queen due to her extraordinary  21 22

Shalini Shah, The Making of Womanhood (New Delhi: Manohar, 2012), 107. Dutt, The Mahabharata, Vol. II, 602.

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benevolence, generosity, courage and royal nature of command. Exceptionally beautiful, Rashmoni was born on 26th September 1793, the 11th of Ashwin, 1200 Bangabda (Bengali Era) 23 in a low-caste, poor family of Kona village in the present-day North 24 Parganas, near Calcutta. Her father, Harekrishna Das, and mother Ramapriya were pious and religiously-minded people. Eighteenth-century Bengal was determined by the various sects of religious beliefs and Puranic culture like Vaishanavadharma, Shakta-dharma, Shaiva-dharma and others. Being a devotee of Raghunath, Rashmoni’s family members were the followers of the Vaishnava tradition. In the evening prayers, Harekrishna used to read the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Bhagavat-katha and other scriptures. Little Rashmoni concentrated on patiently listening to those recitations. During the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century, female children of Bengal were not given a formal education for fear of early widowhood and the miseries that a widow endured, and they were bound by several restrictions. They had to get married in their early teens. Hence, Rashmoni, at the age of eleven, was married to Rajchandra Das, a handsome, twenty-one-year-old youth of the well-known rich zamindar family of Janbazar, Calcutta. It is interesting to note that Rajchandra was enlightened and influenced by the ideals of Raja Ram Mohun Roy, the first modern reformer of India. Raja Ram Mohun Roy was described by Professor Nemai Sadhan Bose as follows: “In the midst of the darkness that prevailed all over the country the first man who saw the vision of a new India was Raja Ram Mohun Roy. He is aptly called the inaugurator of the Modern Age in India.”24 In this connection, Bose quoted the observation of Rabindranath Tagore that Ram Mohun was born at a time when our country, having lost its link with the inmost truths of its being, struggled under a crushing load of unreason, in abject slavery to circumstance. In social usage, in politics, in the realm of religion and art, we had entered the zone of the uncreative habit of decadent tradition and ceased to exercise our humanity.25

 23

Bangabda or B.E. (Bengali Era) follows the Gregorian calendar by 593 years 3 months 14 days. 24 Nemai Sadhan Bose, Indian Awakening and Bengal Chapter III (Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1969), 31. 25 Rammohun Centenary Volume Pt. II, 3. See Bose, Indian Awakening and Bengal Chapter III, 31.

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  Figure1: Rani Rashmoni

Ram Mohun formed the Brahmo-samaj (the society of Brahmo) that led the great Bengal renaissance and social reformation movements during the 19th century. He was one of the founders of the Hindu College in 1817 and other institutions like the Anglo Hindu School and the General Assembly’s Institution. He fought against social evils and abuses like the practice of Sati, polygamy and early marriage during childhood, which were prevalent in the society of Bengal. His most remarkable and successful achievement was the abolition (by Regulation XVII, AD 1829 of the Bengal Code) of the Sati system (an Indian funeral custom of the self-immolation of the widow on her husband’s pyre, practised until the 19th century) in society. Ram Mohun’s Brahmo samaj influenced the young generations of Bengal, and both young Rajchandra and Rashmoni had full support in these activities. Rashmoni always agreed with her husband by suggesting and supporting his active involvement in social works. After the death of Preetiram Das in 1817, Rajchandra inherited a vast property from his father and through his industrious effort and intense business talent he expanded his business. Not only was Rajchandra a successful business magnate but he also had an excellent association with the academic world. On July 1, 1829, he was elected one of the members of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and was among the very few Bengalis to be its members. The Proceedings (1st July 1829) of the Asiatic Society, Calcutta, recorded that “The following gentlemen proposed as members at

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the last meeting balloted for and elected.”26 Captain Macdougall Mr. Baillie Baboo Kashinath Mullick Captain Caldwell proposed by Colonel Vaughan, seconded by Mr. Wilson.

The following native gentlemen were proposed as members by Baboo Sibchunder Das, seconded by Mr. Wilson. Maharaja Bunwari Govind Rai Baboo Ashutosh De Baboo Radhamadhav Banerjee Baboo Rajchundra Das Baboo Harachundra Lohari” (pp. 664-665. Vol. III Book I P Thankappan Nair)

Furthermore, it should be noted that “The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China and Australasia,” London, published the news of the demise of Rajchandra in its December 1836 edition, giving it great importance, as shown in Figures 2 and 3:

 26 P. Thankappan Nair, The Proceedings (1st July 1829) of the Asiatic Society, Calcutta Vol. III Book I (Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1996), 664-665.

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Figure 2: Front page of the Asiatic Journal

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Figure 3: Death News of Rajchandra in the Asiatic Journal

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From apoplexy, Baboo Rajchunder Doss, a wealthy zemindar, well known to both the European and native community for his benevolent disposition. In the Baboo, the public and the native community more especially have suffered a great loss. Beside the two ghauts, the road, and that princely edifice for the reception of the sick that are carried down to the river’s side at the point of death, constructed by him. It was his intention (as he informed one of his most intimate friends, a native gentlemen, equally conspicuous for his liberality) to have left better monuments to his memory. Among many other praiseworthy things he contemplated founding some scholarships in the Hindu College, Hurkaru.27

Rajchandra’s warm relations with the elite and intellectuals like Prince Dwarakanath Tagore, Sir Radhakanta Dev, Matilal Seal, Rustamji Kawasji, etc., and western dignitaries like Lord William Bentinck, Sir Charles Metcalfe, Lord Bishop, John Bebb Esq. and others were noticed and noted by different sources. Though the active presence of women and their right to participate in the party were prohibited in those days, yet Rashmoni was found to take part in the discussions from behind a curtain/screen. Moreover, Rajchandra had a tendency to discuss and share his opinions with Rashmoni. Thus, Rashmoni was well-acquainted with social traits and political situations. Rashmoni enjoyed the moral support of her husband on decision making. While performing the obsequies on the fourth day of a married daughter of Bengal on the bank of the river, Rashmoni realised the difficulties of taking a bath on the muddy bank of the Ganges and requested her husband to construct the ghaut (a wharf). In the foundation stone it is written that The Right Honourable Lord William Cavendish Bentinck, G.C.B. & G.C.H. Governor General & c. &c. &c. with a view to encourage the direction of private munificence to works of public utility has been pleased to determine that this Ghaut constructed in the year 1830 at the expense of Baboo Rajchandra Doss shall here after he called Baboo Rajchandra Doss’s Ghaut.

J. H. Stocqueler, the editor of the “Englishman” (1833-1843) in his writing, “Social life in Calcutta during the first half of the Nineteenth Century”, praised Rajchandra’s achievement highly. While describing different “ghauts or landing places” he remarked that  27 The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China and Australasia, XXI (Dec., 1836): 253.

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Higher up is Rajchunder Doss’s Ghuat, a large, neat, and commodious landing place, the nearest point of convenient debarcation for persons proceeding to Chowringhee… Within a few yards of this ghaut stands the steam-engine which supplies with water the aqueducts, from which some of the more patrician streets of the town are watered. It is the most useful establishment in the city of Palaces, and the only wonder is, that in the metropolis of so great an empire, which yields a revenue of twenty crores of rupees a year, it is the only steam-engine erected for this important object; and that, of the streets which might be benefited by it, more than half are without aqueducts, and are rendered obscure by clouds of suffocating dust, during many months of the year.28

After completing another Ahiritola Ghaut, Rajchandra also constructed a commendable cobbled road from the Baboo Ghaut to Janbazar. Rajchandra fulfilled another of Rashmoni’s requests by building a palatial construction beside the Nimtola ghaut for the benefit of the dying that were brought and kept on the river bank until death, in the belief of attaining passage to heaven. One gatekeeper, two salaried employees and one doctor were appointed by him to serve the dying. He handed over the land as a donation to Lord Bentinck for the construction of the bridge over the Beliaghata canal and managed the exemption of tax for commoners for using the newly-built bridge. On June 9, 1836, at the age of 53, he suddenly succumbed to death (Samachar Chandrika, 18th June 1836),29 leaving behind Rashmoni and three married daughters. Now Rashmoni had to change herself from the image of a housewife. Instead of remaining inside the house as Hindu Bengali widows were required to do, she took over the responsibility and charge of managing the estate, office and business efficiently with the help of her sons-in-law: Mathura Mohon Biswas (the youngest one), Ramchandra Das and Peary Mohan Chaudhury. An incident mentioned by biographers (the first biographer–– Hemchandra Bandyopadhyay who was brought up and nurtured by Rani Rashmoni’s youngest daughter, Jagadamba Biswas, and a second biographer, Prabodh Chandra Santra, a distant relative of the Rani  28

P. Thankappan Nair, British Social Life in Ancient Calcutta (1750-1850) edited with notes by P. Thankappan (Calcutta: Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar, 1983), 161-162. 29 Samachar Chandrika was a very popular weekly, published on March 5, 1822. The editor was Bhabanicharan Bandyopadhyay who discarded Rammohun’s association due to their ideological differences. It was published bi-weekly from 1829 till Bhabanicharan’s death in 1848 and lost its glory after Bhabanicharan’s period.

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Rashmoni family30) related to the management of the estates of the postRajchandra period. Prince Dwarakanath Thakur, one of Rajchandra’s close friends, paid a visit to Rashmoni’s house. Assuming the helplessness of Bengali widows, he advised Rashmoni to appoint a suitable manager for the vast properties inherited by her. Rashmoni boldly thwarted the advice, stating the lack of an eligible and trustworthy person for the position. She also added humbly that an amount of two lakhs, loaned to Dwarakanath by Rajchandra, had not yet been recovered. Dwarakanath requested some time to repay the amount and at the next meeting he handed over the Estate of Swarup-pore under the Rungpur district of undivided Dinajpur instead of money. More surprisingly, Dwarakanath proposed his candidature as the manager of the Rashmoni’s estate. By her sharp wit and intelligence, courageous and prudent decisions, she denied help politely by stating that it would be immoral to appoint a dignified person like Dwarakanath to the post of manager of her estate, and that her son-like sons-in-law were good enough for managerial works. Thus, she presented herself as a true administrator. The seal of Rashmoni is shown in Figure 4.31

 Figure 4: Seal with the signature used by Rani Rashmani

Her silent revolutionary attitude was revealed during Durga Puja, the main festival of Bengalees. Durga Puja had been performed with much pomp and grandeur since the time of her father-in-law. After the death of her husband, on one occasion of the festival, a large procession was arranged  30

Gautam Bagchi, editor of Rani Rashmanir Pratham Jiban by Hemchandra Bandyopadhyay (Kolkata: Parul, 2015), ǀ (Bengali alphabet). 31 Matrishakti 160 years, by courtesy of Mr Kusal Chowdhury, Trustee and Secretary, Dakshineswar Temple.

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for the ritual. When the procession proceeded towards Babughaut, the Puja procession was stopped by British military personnel on the grounds of a disturbance of the peace. Rashmoni openly defied the orders, thereby proving that the street on which the procession was progressing was her personal road. The court ordered a penalty of Rs. 50/-. Rashmoni paid the penalty, but directed her men to block the streets with wooden fences on both sides from Janbazar to the Baboo ghaut. The road blockage caused havoc and harassments and stopped transport. The British rulers had to withdraw the penalty imposed on her and requested her to open the blockade in a written document. Her ethical courage and responsibility to society became a legend in Bengal from the incident of her blocking river traffic by hanging iron chains across the river Bhagirathi (Ganges). The British Government had imposed a tax on fish caught by fishermen in the Bhagirathi. Some of those fishermen lived on Rashmoni’s land. Being overburdened by the tax imposed on them, those poor fishermen complained to Rashmoni for justice. Rashmoni assured her people and made a lease of agreement with the British Government on the river waters of Bhagirathi from Ghusuri to Metiaburuz for acquiring the right to fish. The British Government received a large amount of money from Rashmoni on the assumption that the Government would benefit from hassle-free tax-revenue which would be collected by Rashmoni’s men from the fishermen. But the obstruction made by iron chains stopped all the river traffic. In reply to the protest of the British Government, Rashmoni pressed for the abolition of the new tax, stating that the reason for barricading the river was the difficulty of fishing; the fish were frightened by the river vessels and she would suffer a great monetary loss. The Government realised the importance and abolished the new tax. Rashmoni won over the ruling administration for the benefit of the backward, poorer class of society. Her confrontations with the East India Company and British rule continued. She protected her subjects of Makimpur Pargana who had suffered the ineffable tyranny of Mr. Donald, an Indigo Merchant of the East India Company. Rashmoni sent fifty skilled men who were proficient in fighting with sticks, and they drove away the merchant from Makimpur Pargana. The merchant lodged a case against Rashmoni, but that was dismissed by the court. Immense courage blended with intellect and a prompt decision-making ability made her a legendary leader. On 6th May, 1858 the news was published in the Sambad Prabhakar,32 a Bengali daily,  32 Sambad Prabhakar was the most popular weekly of the mid-nineteenth century. The first issue of this weekly was published on 28th January 1831. The editor was

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that some drunken soldiers posted to the camp of Free School Street near the house of Rashmoni, had tried to enter the house. At that time, apart from some gate keepers, only the females were at home. The gate keepers resisted but the soldiers returned at ten o’clock at night with more colleagues and forcefully entered after murdering two of the guards. Realising the intensity of the savage attacks and the brutality of the soldiers, Rashmoni removed the girls from her house to the neighbours’ and vacated the house. She stood alone in front of the temple of the Raghunath with sword in hand. Meanwhile, the British soldiers destroyed the furniture and utensils, and looted gold and silver. They even killed the pet birds. But they had to stop before the fiery image of Rashmoni. This incident shocked the citizens of Calcutta and was described in the leading daily newspaper with grief and reprehension. Since the soldiers were from the British army barracks, Rashmoni did not relent and even claimed an amount for property loss and damage from the government. Moreover, she hired and appointed twelve British army men to protect her palace for the next two years. As a social worker, she not only inspired her husband Rajchandra for the development of society, but after his death, she even constructed a long road from the Subarnarekha River to the holy pilgrimage town of Puri for the benefit of the pilgrims. Another achievement to be mentioned is the Tona Canal which was dug from the Madhumati River to the Nabaganga. The businessmen of Rashmoni’s Makimpore Estate in the Nadail district of modern Bangladesh suffered difficulties due to the lack of communication across the large river Madhumati and they appealed to Rashmoni for a canal between the Madhumati and the Nabaganga. At the cost of Rs. 10,000/- a canal was dug and it was called the Tona Canal. The “Jessore Report” published the news––“Rani Rashmoni cut a half mile khal to Bankana (Naba Ganga) with the Modhumati at Tona.”33 Another remarkable achievement that was highly praised by the Sambad Prabhakar was published on February 16, 1853. The news mentioned that a renowned physician of the name Dr. Durgacharan Bandyopadhyaya was collecting funds for a drainage system as there was no watercourse from Janbazar to Moulali, and civilians were suffering greatly. Upon hearing this news, Rashmani paid Rs. 2500/- which covered all expenses, and the drainage  Iswarchandra Gupta. From 1831 it was published as a daily newspaper; and from 1854 a monthly edition was put out with a high standard of literary works. Bengali society and literature are highly indebted to this paper. 33 Hemchandra Bandyopadhyay, Rani Rashmonir pratham jiban. Reprint (Kolkata: Parul, 2009), 46.

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system was completed. Similar to the case of Rajchandra, she also donated Rs. 10,000/- for the construction of the Hindu Metropolitan College and it was recorded in the book “Sambadpatre Sekaler Katha.”34 According to Hemchandra Bandyopadhyay, she used to listen to the recitation of books on widow remarriage written by Vidyasagar and read by her family priest Umacharan Bhattacharya. Rashmoni had the full support of Vidyasagar’s work for removing the polygamy system for the Kuleen Brahmins and for the implementation of widow remarriage. To address the problem, a meeting on widow remarriage organised by Vidyasagar was arranged by Rashmoni on the premises of Janbazar House. Besides this, it is stated in the biography of Rani Rashmoni by Shishutosh Samanta35 that after the meeting, an appeal, dated October 4, 1855, signed by 986 people, was delivered to the legislative Council of India. A copy of the letter is as follows: To W. Morgan Esq. Clerk to the Honourable Legislative Council of India Sir, On behalf of the petitioners I have the honour to forward herewith the petition of certain Hindu inhabitants of the Province of Bengal which I beg to request you will do me the favour to lay before the Honourable Council at their next sitting. I have the honour to be Calcutta Sir Sanskrit College Your most obdt. Servant The 4th October,1855

Eswar Chandra Sharma

Polygamy was a prevalent custom in the society of 18th-century Bengal. Brahmins are considered to be Kuleen, the superior class in order of honour, and they used to marry a number of girls. Evidence of this practice was published in the newspaper Samachar Darpan (23 April, 1836)36:  34

Brajendra Nath Bandyopadhyay, Sambadpatre sekaler katha. Vol. II (Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat, 1384 B.E), 750. 35 Shishutosh Samanta, Rani Rashmonir Antaheen Jiban Britte. Vol. I (Kolkata: Sourajyoti Samanta, 2007), 138-141. 36 Samachar Darpan, the first weekly newspaper in Bengali, was published on May 23 in the year 1818, by Serampore Missionary and assisted by Pandit Jaygopal Tarkalamkar and Tarinicharan Siromoni. It continued until 1852. This paper is considered invaluable evidence of the period and is a precious document

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The Polygamy of the Kuleens: The issue regarding the polygamy of Kuleen Brahmins has been shed light on and this evil misdeed has been addressed many times. Some of the newspapers claim there is no existence of this social evil. We were informed previously that this fact is baseless and that the Jnananveshan newspaper has published a list of these Brahmins with their residential address and the number of marriages… (Translation of the Bengali version). Place Mayapara Jairampur Adua Malgram Nagar Baluti Singi …

Name Ramchandra Chattopadhyay Nimai Mukhopadhyay Ramkanta Bandyopadhyay Digambar Chattopadhyay Kshudiram Mukhopadhyay Darpanarayan Mukhopadhyay Krishadas Bandyopadhyaya ...

Marriage 62 60 60 53 54 52 47 …

The names of 27 Kuleen Brahmins were mentioned in the list published by the newspaper. In response to this practice, Rani Rashmoni launched an appeal to the Legislative Society to stop the polygamy system, and her application was recorded in a file register by one of the members, Mr. Calbill. This news was published in the Sambad Prabhakar newspaper on 31st July, 1856: To curb the polygamy of the Kuleen Brahmins, appeals were submitted to the legislative council by one from Calcutta, one from Shantipur and one Sreemati Rashmani Dashi; whereupon Mr. Calbill of the aforementioned council has permitted the registration of the said appeal (Translation of Bengali version).

 of nineteenth-century Bengal. News related to Rashmoni was published in this paper from 1829 to 1836.

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Figure 5: Early image of Dakshineswar Temple © British Library Board Photo 247/2 (1)**

Rashmoni’s most noted and principal achievement was the Dakshineswar Temple.37 Growing up in religious practice throughout her childhood and listening to the traditional teachings of the scriptures, she went on to lead an extremely religious and austere life after she lost her husband. A divine and spiritual revelation, the “desire of her husband”, inspired her to build Dakshineswar temple on the bank of the Bhagirathi, at Dakshineswar in the North 24 Parganas. Ramkumar Chattopadhyay, the eldest brother of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, inaugurated and consecrated the temple on 31 May 1855. Miss Margaret Noble, the famous disciple of Swami Vivekananda and renowned as Sister Nivedita, in her article, “The Master as I saw Him”, mentioned that “The temple of Dakshineswar was built by the wealthy Rashmoni, a woman of Koiborto caste”… and “Rani Rashmoni had recognised the religious genius of Sri Ramakrishna, from the beginning and proved unfaltering in her adhesion to that first sight.”38 The Reform Movement that contributed a great deal to the birth of Indian nationalism spread through the spiritual centre of Dakshineswar temple where social evils like caste discrimination and religious prejudices were removed. Dakshineswar temple was open for all, irrespective of caste and religion. Due to the ill-health of Ramkumar, Rashmoni appointed Ramakrishna as the principal priest of the mother Goddess. Henceforth, Dakshineswar temple was the centre of spiritual enlightenment, and social awakening as well. It was “reported that Ramakrishna was spreading ‘Love’ and ‘Devotion’ among the educated classes of Calcutta and that he  37

Matrishakti: 160 years, by courtesy Mr. Kusal Chowdhury Trustee and Secretary Dakshineswar Temple. 38 Sister Nivedia, The Complete Works of Sister Nivedita––The Master as I saw Him. Vol. I. Ch. XX (Calcutta: Advaita Ashram, 1982), 190-191.

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had succeeded in reforming the character of some youths whose morals had been corrupt.” Ramakrishna met Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, Keshab Chandra Sen, Debendranath Tagore and other elite social reformers of Calcutta. These dignitaries were influenced by the ideals of Ramakrishna. It should be mentioned with much importance that Keshab Chandra Sen played a vital role in the sphere of social reformation which “became a major objective of the Brahmo movement.”39 Keshab Chandra Sen took measures to emancipate women and initiate women’s education through programmes and organisations like the Brahmica samaj and the Antahpur Strishiksha Sabha. He even started newspapers like the Bamabodhini Patrika, Paricharika and Sulabh Samachar to fight the misconception and illiteracy of women. He founded the Antahpur StrishikshaSabha, an arrangement for “family women” who were apprehensive of travelling to get an education. Apart from this stature, it was Keshab Chandra Sen who was the spearhead introducing Ramakrishna and his messages to the intellectual classes of Calcutta through his bold writings. According to N. S. Bose, ... It was from 1875 that Ramakrishna began to draw the attention of the educated and people of Calcutta, after Keshabchandra Sen had come into the contact with him. The latter developed a great veneration for Ramakrishna and wrote on his teachings. Since then the incessant flow to Dakshineswar started and thousands of men found great solace and new light from the saint.40

Ramakrishna’s famous and foremost disciple Swami Vivekananda spread his philosophical teachings all over the world. He delivered a lecture on Hindu philosophy at The Parliament of Religions in Chicago, 1893. He propagated the teachings of Ramakrishna Paramhansa by establishing The Ramakrishna Mission in 1887, and the Belur Math in 1899 to carry out the socio-religious work of the Mission. Thus, Dakshineswar temple became the socio-cultural centre of Bengal. “This spirit of social service was infused into Swami Vivekananda by Sri Ramakrishna.”41 Subsequently, Sister Nivedita’s observation and judgement was proved to be right–– A woman of the people had been, in a sense, the mother of that whole movement of which all the disciples of his Master formed parts. Humanly

 39

Nemai Sadhan Bose, Indian Awakening and Bengal (Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1976), 232. 40 Ibid., Indian Awakening and Bengal, 180. 41 Ibid., 185.

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Chapter Six speaking, without the temple Dakshineswar, there had been no Ramakrishna, no Vivekananda and without Ramakrishna no Western Mission. The whole story rested on the building, erected on the Ganges side, a few miles above Calcutta, just before the middle of the nineteenth century. And that was the outcome of the devotion of a rich woman of the lower castes,––a thing that under a purely Hindu Government, bound to the maintenance of Brahmin supremacy, could never have been possible, as Swami himself was not slow to point out. From this he inferred the importance of the non-cognisance of the caste by centralised governments in India.42

On 19th February 1861 Rashmoni left this world for her heavenly abode. On 18th February she signed the last deed related to the expenses of the Dakshineswar Temple. She endowed the Estate of the Salbari, holding 499 square miles in Dinajpur district (now in Bangladesh), as “devottara” (a gift for god) for defraying the cost of worshipping deities of Dakshineswar.43 She was concerned with the Dakshineswar Temple until her death, and history regards her as an inseparable entity of the temple.

Conclusion The achievements of these two ladies are the voices of strength and equality and represent their dignity and perseverance to challenge the roles which society prescribed for them. Despite the socio-cultural, religiointellectual and historical distinctions, there lies an unquestionable and undeniable similarity with the modern religio-social custom of serving their husband as the supreme one––the chastity––Pativrata-dharma. Although these two figures belong to different eras, there is a common factor. Rani Rashmoni was “Pativrata” as the Brahmani of the Mahabharata. Both of the ladies had to suffer gender discrimination. The ascetic Kaushika threatened Brahmani with burning everything but she defied his wrath and explained that she was not the crane who would be killed by his anger, transforming Kaushika into a truth-seeker. After the death of  42 Sister Nivedita, The Complete Works of Sister Nivedita. Vol I, 3rd edition (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1982), 190. 43 It is noted in suit 308 of the case “Deed of Endowment executed by Rani Rashmoni––According to her late husband’s desire.” I on 18th Jyaistha 1262 B.S. 31st May, and 1855 established and consecrated the Thakurs… and for purpose of carrying on the Sheba purchased three lots of Zamindaris in District Dinajpur on 29th Aug. 1855.

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Rajchandra, Rashmoni had to face the same from the ruler of colonial Bengal, and from certain people of Bengal. Rashmoni won over the British administrator as well as Ramratan Dutta Roy, a Bengali zaminder of Nadulia in Jessore District and Pran Nath Chaudhuri of Satksheera District in modern Bangladesh. Hindu religious segmentation in the sociological sphere is based on the hierarchy of caste and class. In the BrahmaniKaushika legend, the Brahmani belonged to the upper caste of the society, but she sent Kaushika to learn truth from an aboriginal-born Dharmavyadha, which portrays the indiscriminative attitude of the society. But, being born into the lower caste and restricted by the discriminative and evil rule of priestly society, Rashmoni experienced the inequality and humiliation that denied her the right to serve or cook food for Brahmins. Another instance of caste discrimination was found in a letter to the editor of the SambadBhaskar44 newspaper, dated February 11, 1851.45 Sister Nivedita, also wrote that “And yet, when Ramakrishna as the younger Brahmin of Kamarpukur, had first come to Dakshineswar, so orthodox had he been that he could not tolerate the idea of a temple built and endowed by a lowcaste woman. As the younger brother of the priest-in-charge he had to assist, hour after hour, in the religious ceremonies of the opening day. But he would eat none of the “Prasadam.”46 Further, any discussion about the Dakshineswar Temple would be incomplete without referring to Rashmoni’s endeavours. Moreover, society of the late part of the 18th century was very dark with the practices of the  44

Sambad Bhaskar, a popular newspaper, was started by Srinath Roy in March 1839 and run by Gaurisankar Tarkavagish. From 1848 it was published as a biweekly paper and eventually tri-weekly. The Calcutta Courier mentioned Gaurisankar’s writings: “His writings, as far as we have been able to judge, are always characterized by good sense and a vigorous style. Being freed from the trammels of Hindu superstition, he gladly embraces every opportunity of exposing the folly of his bigoted countrymen, and shewing the great utility of cultivating European knowledge. 45 “… I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to the Calcutta resident Srimati Rashmoni Dasi, widow of the late Rajchandra Das, for her contribution of Rs. 4000 in cash, and about 500 silk cloths to all pundits of Nabadwip for the occasion of the lunar eclipse. The head priests Srijuto Sriram Siromoni, Madhab Tarkasiddhanta, Golak Nyayaratna, Lakshmikanta Nyayabhushan, Brajanath Vidyaratna and Krishnachandra have all graciously accepted Rs. 50 and 2 silk cloths each and blessed Rashmoni Dasi, but the great-grandson of pundit Devi Tarkalankar, Ramnath Tarkasiddhanta Bhattacharya has refused the donation…” (Translation of the Bengali version.) 46 Sister Nivedita, The Complete Works of Sister Nivedita, vol. I (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1982), 191.

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Sati system, early child marriage, polygamy, illiteracy and the caste system when evil customs engulfed the society, and colonial administrators took advantage of these drawbacks as opportunities to segregate and oppress the community. In such a period, the advent of Raja Ram Mohun Roy for abolishing the Sati system and introducing education for all, Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar for initiating the Widow Remarriage Act, Sri Ramakrishna for introducing spirituality that aided nationalism, and of Rani Rashmoni, a widow of rich personality, led to a distinct, pivotal and praiseworthy role that was poignant and an effective act of individuals towards social reformation. Rani Rashmoni’s power of legitimacy with profound efficiency, the capability of making the right decisions, saving her subjects from dreadful disaster, and her courage and generosity towards society, brings to light her many dimensions, and she became the “Ranima” for all. Sister Nivedita rightly judged her as a “woman of heroic mould.”47 Unfortunately, in spite of possessing these diverse qualities and accomplishments, her charismatic career is cast under the shadow of a philanthropic image––Rani Rashmoni, the founder of Dakshineswar Temple. Few attempts have been made to focus on her achievements towards society, even though she surmounted hurdles and barriers throughout her life, and for this reason she should have more recognition and attention from the world of researchers and scholars.

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Ibid., 190.

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Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 1986. Bose, Nemai Sadhan. Indian Awakening and Bengal. Second Edition. Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1969. Broadbeck, Simon and Brian Black. Gender and Narratives in the Mahabharata. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. Bühler, G. The Laws of Manu. Translation of Manusmrti. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1886. Datta, Bimal Candra. Sri Ramakrishna Tirtha: Confluence of Devotion and Service. Calcutta: Ramakrishna Vivekananda Institute of Research and Culture, 1980. Dave, J. H. Manu-Smriti. Chapter III. Vol. II. Adhyayas 3-4. Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Series. Vol. No. 33. Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1975. Denton, Lynn Teske. Female Ascetics and Hinduism. Albany: The State University of New York, 2004. Dutt, M. N. The Mahabharata. Vanaparvan, Vol. II. New Revised Edition. Delhi: Parimal Publications, 2004. Dev, Radhakanta, ed. Sabdakalpadruma. Reprint. Vol. IV. Delhi: Nag Publishers, 1987. Ganguli, Kisari Mohan. The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa. Third Edition. Vol. I. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Private Limited, 2004. Ghosh, Binay. Samayik-patre Banglar Samaj-chitra (1840-1905). (In Bengali.) Vol. I. Calcutta: Bengal Publishers Private Limited, 1962. Ghosh, Gaurangaprasad. Rajeswari Rashmani. (In Bengali.) Kolkata: Yogamaya Prakashani, 2015. Hopkins, E. Washburn. Origin and Evolution of Religion. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1924. Kopf, David. British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance: the Dynamics of Indian Modernisation 1773-1835. Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1969. Kumar, Raj. Essays on Social Reform Movements. New Delhi: Discovery Publishing House, 2004. Leslie, Julia. Roles and Rituals. Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass, 1992. Majumdar, R. C. Glimpses of Bengal in Nineteenth-century Calcutta. Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1960. Matri-Shakti. A Journal on the Auspicious Occasion of 160 Years of the Dakshineswar Temple. Vol. 15. Issue II. Kolkata: Loka-mata Rani Rashmoni Foundation and Dakshineswar Temple and Devottara Estate, 2015. Nandi, Ramendra Nath. Social Roots of Religion in Ancient India. Calcutta:

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K. P. Bagchi and Company, 1986. Nair, P. Thankappan. (Edited with notes.) British Social Life in Ancient Calcutta (1750-1850) During the Second Half of the 18th Century by the Rev. James Long and During the First Half of the Nineteenth Century by Stocqueler. Calcutta: Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar, 1983. Nair, P. Thankappan. Proceedings of the Asiatic Society (1817-1832). Vol. III Book I. Calcutta: The Asiatic Society, 1996. Nivedita, Sister. The Complete Works of Sister Nivedita. Vol. I Third Edition. Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 1982. Renou, Louis. Hinduism. New York: George Braziller, 1962. Roy, Nirmal Kumar. Rani Rashmonir Jiban Brittanta. Reprint (in Bengali). Kolkata: Udbodhan Karyalaya, 2014. Samanta, Dr. Shishutosh. Rani Rashmonir Antaheen Jibanbritte. Vol. I (in Bengali). Kolkata: Sourajyoti Samanta, 2007. —. Rani Rashmonir Antaheen Jibanbritte. Vol II (in Bengali). Kolkata: Sourajyoti Samanta, 2008. —. Rani Rashmonir Antaheen Jibanbritte. Vols. III and IV (in Bengali). Kolkata: Sourajyoti Samanta, 2009. Sarkar, S. C. Some Aspects of the Earliest Social History of India. Patna: Janaki Prakashan, 1985. Sen, Bankim Chandra. Lokamata Rashmani. (In Bengali.) Calcutta: Patabahar, 2010. Sen, Ksiti Mohan. Hiduism. Reprint. Noida: Penguin Books, 2005. Sen, Satyendranath. Manu-samhita. Chapter VII. Calcutta: Sen and Sen, 1934. Siddhanta-Vagish, Haridas. Mahabharatam. Vanaparvan. Calcutta. Viswavani Prakashani, 1387 BE. Sinclair-Brull, Wendy. Female Ascetics Hierarchy and Purity in an Indian Religious Movement. Surrey: Curzon Press, 1997. Sinha, Pradip. Nineteenth-century Bengal––Aspects of Social History. Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, 1965. Shah, Shalini. The Making of Womanhood––Gender Relations in the Mahabharata. Second Edition. New Delhi: Manohar, 2012. Sharma, Arvind and Katherine K. Young. Feminism and World Religions. New York: State University of New York Press, 1999. The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China and Australasia. Vol. XXI––New Series. London: Wm. H. Allen and Co., September-December, 1836. van Buitenen, J. A. B. The Mahabharata. Book II. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago, 1975. Williams, Sir Monier Monier. A Sanskrit English Dictionary. Delhi:

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Motilal Banarasidass, 2002. Winternitz, M. A History of Indian Literature. Volume I Part II, Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1978.

PART TWO: SOUTHEAST ASIA

CHAPTER SEVEN BUDDHIST ART OF 9TH-CENTURY CHAMPA: ĈӖNG DѬѪNG* ANN R. PROCTOR INDEPENDENT SCHOLAR, SYDNEY

Cham societies dominated two-thirds of the narrow central coast of what is now Vietnam for over one thousand years––from the third/fourth century until 1720, when the Cham finally came under the suzerainty of the Vietnamese. The society appears to have been a polity of loosely aligned principalities based in the riverine valleys along approximately one thousand kilometres of the coast. This collection of regional chiefdoms was united by a common language and culture. At its height, the population is estimated to have been about 2.5 million.1 Relations with their neighbours, China, the Ðai ViӋt, Khmer and Javanese, were at various stages, commercial, tributary, bellicose and matrimonial. As a maritime polity, they were subject to outside influences and also battles which frequently resulted in the destruction and pillaging of their religious buildings. Many sites were continually rebuilt, especially the Hindu temples at the major Cham holy site of Mӻ Sѫn, but curiously the Buddhist centre of Ĉӗng Dѭѫng was deserted by the aristocracy and never rebuilt following the incursion of invaders. The Cham economy was multifaceted. They were a cosmopolitan trading power with an agricultural base. Benefitting from the summer northerly trade winds and the southerly autumn and spring monsoons, traders stopped at their many harbours such as Hӝi An, dealing in a range of commodities particularly gold, forest

 * I wish to acknowledge Trҫn KǤ Phѭѫng for his generous assistance in reviewing this article. 1 Georges Maspero, Le Royaume de Champa (Paris: Van Oest, 1928), 6.

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products and slaves.2 Trade along the Southeast Asian coast was booming from the late 6th to early 10th centuries and continued until the 15th century. Political conditions in China and the opening of long distance trade routes between Chinese and Persian Gulf traders facilitated favourable development in commerce. 3 Ĉӗng Dѭѫng was built during this time of particular prosperity and relative peace for the Cham people. In terms of religion, contact with traders from India brought Hinduism to the region by the 4th century. While Buddhism was present from the first century of the Common Era in the North and South of the country now called Vietnam, there is evidence of Buddhist worship in Cham areas from the 5th century and it was patronised by the aristocracy and royalty in the 9th and 10th centuries. It must be noted, however, that architectural, sculptural and epigraphic evidence indicate that the major focus of worship throughout Cham history was the Hindu god, Shiva. Hindu and Buddhist philosophies brought with them the notion of a God King. Under this credo the human king adopted the persona of a religious deity, thereby strengthening his rule on earth by an alliance with metaphysical powers. Buddhist and Hindu ideas were often syncretised in the simultaneous worship of both Buddha and Shiva. While this fusion occurred in Champa, it also appeared in many other societies such as in Gandhara between the 7th to 9th centuries, 4 in Java from the 8th to 9th centuries and particularly during the 13th and 14th-century Majapahit era of East Java. It is not surprising that these syncretic ideas were prevalent along major trading routes. Holy men travelled with the traders as they either sought scriptures and learning from India and then spread ideas of Hinduism and Buddhism in various courtly centres along the trade routes between China and West Asia. Ideas from the introduced philosophies of Buddhism and Hinduism coexisted with Cham local beliefs and mythologies, such as that of the Uroja or mother goddess. Islam was incorporated into Cham religious practices during the 15th to 17th centuries and the remaining Vietnamese Cham population is now predominantly of that faith. Cham history has largely been reconstructed from written records–– Chinese, Vietnamese, Khmer and Javanese as well as Cham inscriptions.  2 Ian Mabbett, “Buddhism in Champa,” in David G. Marr and A. C. Milner, eds., Southeast Asia in the 9th-14th Centuries (Singapore: ANU, 1986), 293. 3 Pierre-Yves Manguin, “Early Coastal States of Southeast Asia: Funan and Srivijaya,” in John Guy, ed., Lost Kingdoms: Hindu- Buddhist Sculpture of Early Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), 114. 4 Michael Henss, “The Mystery of the ‘Hund Statues’: An Unknown Chapter of Central Asian Statuary,” Arts of Asia 46, 1 (2016): 29.

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The only remaining Cham written records are in stone, though most probably there were contemporaneous writings on less durable materials. The earliest known inscription found in Southeast Asia, the Võ Cҥnh inscription has variously been dated to the 3rd or 4th century. This stele was found near Nha Trang and is now in the collection of the National History Museum, Hanoi. The script is related to second-century Sanskrit found in Eastern India.5 Until the 9th century nearly all the inscriptions in Cham territories were written in Sanskrit, the classical language of India.6 The Cham script has the same alphabet as Sanskrit, but uses diacritics to indicate differences in pronunciation. Written Sanskrit was used for prayers and mystical incantations. Cham script was used to list donations, to indicate the importance that various rulers accorded to particular divinities, to underline their authority to rule and to validate their line of succession. By the 11th to 13th centuries, after the abandonment of northern Buddhist sites, the inscriptions are almost exclusively Cham. Only a very small proportion of the extant inscriptions refer to Buddhism. There are no extant inscriptions in Cham territories from the period under discussion that were written in Chinese. However, there may well have been sutras written in Chinese on more ephemeral materials. Historical records mention that Buddhist texts, pillaged by the Chinese in 605, were written in Cham.7 Furthermore, that many stele inscriptions are in Sanskrit rather than Pali or Prakrit indicates an orientation to a Brahmanical and/or Mahayana world rather than Theravadan.8 Thus, the languages found in religious contexts in Cham territories seem to add weight to the notion that the source of the introduced philosophical ideas came through the sea trade routes, rather than overland through China. During the late ninth century, when Buddhism flourished in Champa, the Ðҥi ViӋt and Chinese, under the Tang, were concerned with their own dynastic problems; hence the northern Cham lands had a period of relative respite from conflict.9  5

Pierre Baptiste, “Early Cham Art: Indigenous Styles and Regional Connections,” in John Guy ed., Lost Kingdoms: Hindu-Buddhist Sculpture of Early Southeast Asia (Yale University Press, 2014), 69. 6 Georges Coedès refers to 4th-century rock inscriptions in early Cham script in The Making of South East Asia (University of California Press, 1966), 67. 7 Mabbett, “Buddhism in Champa,” 294. 8 See Peter Skilling in John Guy, Lost Kingdoms: Hindu-Buddhist Sculpture of Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014). 9 Buddhism was banned in China by the Huichang proscription 842-845 CE under the Tang Emperor, Wuzong (814-46). Cao Yin, ed., Tang: Treasures from the Silk Road Capital (Sydney: AGNSW, 2016), 65.

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The Khmer too, were preoccupied with their own internal issues. Trade along the sea routes was flourishing bringing traders and other foreigners to ports along the Cham coastline. It was a time of relative peace and prosperity: a time in which it was possible to build a large religious establishment.

Indrapura and Ĉӗng Dѭѫng The Ĉӗng Dѭѫng complex built within the city of Indrapura was located 60 kilometres south of the present city of Ĉà Nҹng and 25 kilometres SW of Mӻ Sѫn, the main centre of Cham Hindu temples. It is located in the current province of Quҧng Nam in a rather flat location of low lying land which nowadays is mainly covered with rice fields or forest. The name, Ĉӗng Dѭѫng, means “Heaven’s Field.” This appears to be the only time in Cham history that Buddhism was the official State cult. As noted previously, the majority of Cham temples are dedicated to Hindu deities, particularly Shiva. Ðӗng Dѭѫng was a veritable Buddhist metropolis at the end of the 9th century. As with some smaller Buddhist temples constructed during this period in the same geographical part of Champa, it was dedicated to Lokeshvara, who was viewed as the personal divinity attached to the rulers of the so-called dynasty of Indrapura (875-991).10 There are two extant stele inscriptions from Ĉӗng Dѭѫng. One states that in 875 the king, Jaya Indravarman 11 (875-99) established a vihara and temple dedicated to Laksmindra Lokeshvara, who is always full of compassion. It is thought that he extended a pre-existing Buddhist establishment, consecrating it in 875 to a form of Avalokiteshvara called Laksmindra Lokeshvara after his own name Lakshindrabhumishvara. 11 The inscription indicates that the temple was donated for the sake of the dharma (doctrine). “And as long as the king of the gods shall govern heaven by dharma, so long may the king, in constant majesty, secure the honour and position of the Buddha.”12 On face C of the stele, it states “May all who protect these gods of the men of religion––wise Brahmans, ascetics, relatives of the King etc… attain … to the city of Buddhist

 10 The “Indrapura Dynasty,” (875-991) called the “Sixth” by Maspero, had seven rulers. 11 Anne-Valérie Schweyer, Ancient Vietnam: History, Art and Archaeology (Bangkok: River Books, 2011), 194. 12 Mabbett, “Buddhism in Champa,” 300.

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deliverance and may those who seek to seize or destroy them, fall into the hell of Rudra.”13 The stele also established Indravarman 11’s right to rule by succession and mentions the Uroja myth, an indigenous Cham legend. The third face (face B) of the stele celebrates the erection of a Kosa with a golden visage.14 Kosas are metallic covers for the aniconic, phallic form of the Hindu deity Shiva. These gold and silver covers, frequently embellished with gems, were decorated with varying numbers of anthropomorphic faces that display distinctly Cham facial features. Donations of Kosa are mentioned relatively frequently amongst Cham Royal inscriptions, but are almost unknown in the rest of the Hindu world.15 In all, the lengthy dedicatory inscription at Ðӗng Dѭѫng indicates that Jaya Indravarman 11 was concerned about the idea of compassion as represented by the Buddhist deity Lokeshvara, as well as the protective aspects of the Hindu deity Shiva, while acknowledging the autochthonous belief system of the Cham peoples. Stele 11 at Ðӗng Dѭѫng gives a eulogy for Jaya Simhavarman r. 898-903. He was the son of the eldest sister of Indravarman 11, as Indravarman 11 died without a male heir. The inscription is written in Sanskrit and old Cham and gives a panegyric of the Cham city of Indrapura as well as an enumeration of institutions founded by his matrimonial aunt.16 This second ruler of Indrapura sent one of his relatives, Po Klun Pilih Rajadvara to Java to “learn magic.”17 Rajadvara served four kings and went to Java at least twice. It could well be surmised that his quest was in search of religious, possibly esoteric, doctrines.

 13

Ibid. Jean Boisselier, La statuaire du Champa: recherches sur les cultes et l'iconographie (Paris: École française d'Extrême-Orient, 1963), 90. 15 See John Guy in “Champa and Vietnam: Art, History and Exchange,” in H. Tan ed., Vietnam from Myth to Modernity (Singapore: Asian Civilizations Museum, 2008), 15-16. 16 Boisselier, La statuaire du Champa: recherches sur les cultes et l'iconographie, 93. 17 Georges Maspero, The Champa Kingdom: The History of an Extinct Vietnamese Culture (Bangkok: White Lotus, 2002), 55. 14

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Figure 1: Ĉӗng Dѭѫng Pedestal from the Vihara, 9-10th Century, Cham Museum, permitted by Trang Ky Phuong

In addition to these on-site inscriptions, there is a later, brief reference to the complex in the histories of the NguyӉn Dynasty (1802-1945). Two brick towers at Ðӗng Dѭѫng and the vestiges of a third base are mentioned. 18 In 982 Indrapura was sacked. According to the complete history of Ðҥi ViӋt, after a number of Cham attacks on the then ViӋt capital of Hoa Lѭ, the Vietnamese King himself, Lê Hoàn, led a retaliatory attack on Indrapura. The Cham King, Paraesvarman, was killed, palaces and temples were destroyed, and thousands of prisoners were taken, including one hundred royal ladies and an Indian monk. In addition, the

 18

Ngô Văn Doanh, Champa: Ancient Towers and Legend (Hanoi: ThӃ Giӟi, 2006), 70.

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victors made off with thousands of kilograms of gold and silver.19 General Lѭu KӃ Tông, who was reputed to have had a harsh policy towards the Cham, was placed in charge and the city was deserted by the year 1,000. Tông then subsequently proclaimed himself King of the area. The loss represented one quarter of Cham territory.20 So, there is an answer to part of the question, as to why Cham Buddhism only lasted for a relatively short time at Ĉӗng Dѭѫng. The original, extremely wealthy and powerful patron died and his descendant, who apparently followed similar religious practices, was killed when the area came under a new foreign rule of a differing religious persuasion. Buddhism did not completely disappear and Buddhist vestiges dating until the 15th century have been found throughout Cham lands. However, the religion was never patronised again at the same level or in the same form as it had been at Indrapura in the 9th and 10th centuries.21

Archaeological Remains The Ĉӗng Dѭѫng site was visited by Louis Finot in 1901 when 229 artefacts were discovered. A preliminary archaeological survey was carried out by Henri Parmentier and Charles Carpeaux in 1902. The survey involved up to two hundred workers. The excavation site of 6,500 square metres was described as containing twenty-eight monuments and numerous vestiges which needed to be extracted from the tangle of vegetation, stabilised, cleaned, measured and described. The extent of the work is evident in the photographic record of the excavations, now maintained in the Musée Guimet Archives. Excavations were not continued in the following years and the site was left to go back to nature. The pillaging of artefacts took place very quickly and some of these later turned up in American and European collections. Some items were conserved in museums in Vietnam and in the Musée Guimet in Paris.  19

Trian Nguyen, “LakĞmƯndralokeĞvara, Main Deity of the Ðӗng Dѭѫng Monastery: A Masterpiece of Cham Art and a New Interpretation,” Artibus Asiae 65, 1 (2005): 8. 20 Geoff Wade, “The ‘Account of Champa’ in the Song Huiyao Jigao,” in Trҫn KǤ Phѭѫng and Bruce Lockhardt eds., The Cham of Vietnam: History, Society and Art (Singapore: NUS Press), 144. 21 In the 12th century Surayavarman dedicated a temple at My Son to Herukaharmya, an esoteric Buddhist deity. Nandana Chutiwongs in Pierre Baptiste and Thierry Zéphir, eds., Trésors d’art du Vietnam: la sculpture du Champa v-xv siècles (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2005), 75.

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Figure 2: Remains of a Structure at Ðӗng Dѭѫng, December 2015

Henri Parmentier (1871-1949) was at the time Director of the French Archaeological Department in Indochina and the author of the initial archaeological report. Charles Carpeaux (1870-1904) took photographs during the excavation period. 22 This survey confirmed that the Ĉӗng Dѭѫng complex was burnt and pillaged in the 10th century. 23 Little remains of the complex after the ravages of time and nature, except countless bricks scattered around the site. The only large remaining structure at the site is a lonely archway, once part of a temple. Divided into three courts on an east-west axis, the complex was an impressive 1,300 m long, surrounded by a brick wall. It was larger than any Hindu complex in Champa. One entered from the east, where there was a water basin, along a lengthy causeway of 763 metres. The causeway idea is similar to those used later at Angkor and such a physical arrangement can be said to represent the idea of moving from one realm to the next: from the mundane to the divine. Along the causeway there was once a large column, called the Xuân Sѫn pillar: a column decorated with four nagas or snakes,  22

Charles Carpeaux took large format 13 x 18 cm prints as well as stereoscopic views on glass. It is these photographs that are preserved in the Guimet archive. The glass slides measure 45 x 107 mm. Sadly, the young Carpeaux died of dysentery in Saigon in 1904. 23 Nguyen, “LakĞmƯndralokeĞvara, Main Deity of the Ðӗng Dѭѫng Monastery: A Masterpiece of Cham Art and a New Interpretation,” 5-38.

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supporting a lotus flower on their heads.24 The pillar is referred to later in this paper as evidence for the use of a particular Buddhist sutra in informing the ideas and iconography used at Ĉӗng Dѭѫng. There were also footpaths around the water basin. At the western end of the causeway was a large gate, destroyed in the American-Vietnam War, but described by Boisselier as one of the finest achievements in Cham art. 25 The gateway had two side chapels. After traversing the causeway and passing through the gate just mentioned, one entered the first courtyard which held the pillared assembly hall or vihara of the monastery. Here the Buddha was worshipped on a massive altar at the western end of the structure. The huge seated sandstone Buddha from this altar was badly damaged but the pieces have been reconstructed and are now in the Museum of Cham Sculpture, Ĉà Nҹng. The assembly hall with side aisles was covered by a tiled roof supported by cruciform pillars. The vihara was followed by a second gateway which gave access to the second courtyard with another smaller hall or mandapa which was probably used in the preparation for ceremonies. The final courtyard at the westernmost end contained the temple to Lokeshvara preceded by a smaller building dedicated to Vairocana and surrounded by other smaller structures, eighteen in number, which included one large stupa with declining cylindrical rings. The surrounding walls of this enclosure were profusely decorated on their outer face. The small temples around the perimeter are thought to be dedicated to the guardian divinities of the heavenly quarters that are mentioned in the Ðӗng Dѭѫng inscription.26

Sculptures Sculptures from the Ðӗng Dѭѫng site, many of which are now housed in the Museum of Cham Sculpture, Ĉà Nҹng, form a most distinctive and intriguing group of works. The facial features of the deities are distinctly Cham. The impressive scale of some pieces and the unique features of the whole corpus lead one to think that there must have been a sculpture workshop located at the site. Their distinctive characteristics led early scholars to give this style the name of the temple, i.e. the Ðӗng Dѭѫng style. The originality of the sculptors’ vision and that of their patron(s)  24

Maud Girard-Geslan et al., The Art of Southeast Asia (Paris: Abrams, 1998), 266. 25 Boisselier, La statuaire du Champa: recherches sur les cultes et l'iconographie, 37. 26 Baptiste, Trésors d’art du Vietnam: la sculpture du Champa v-xv siècles, 226.

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from just over 1,000 years ago has left many questions about the particular type of religious doctrine that is being conveyed. While the stone sculptures far outnumber the extant bronze sculptures securely attributed to Ðӗng Dѭѫng, there are two outstanding bronze examples. The first to be discussed here is an impressive bronze sculpture of the Buddha that was discovered by Finot in 1901 in the eastern assembly hall or vihara and taken to what is now called the History Museum in Hӗ Chí Minh City. There has been much speculation about the origin of this image: is it either Indian or Sri Lankan and from what century? 27 It is a lost wax bronze Buddha performing the gesture of discussion and the figure is dressed in the under and over garments of monastic robes. Unlike the Sri Lanka Buddha, the mark in the centre of the forehead, urna, is pronounced and covered with curls. Furthermore, the joined eyebrows are a distinctly Cham characteristic adding further mystery to this Buddha’s provenance and date. Boisselier thought that it looked like a work of Amaravati or the Anhuradhapura style and noted that a matching smaller one was found on the Khorat Plateau, Thailand, but without an urna––like the Sri Lankan ones. 28 Zéphir notes that the eyes have been re-incised and speculates that this could have been done when the image was re-consecrated on its installation at Ĉông Dѭѫng.29 Without an analysis of the metals used in the bronze it is difficult to ascertain the site of origin of the sculpture. Boisselier, who wrote a most extensive account of Cham sculpture, considers that the last quarter of the ninth century and the first half of the tenth, i.e. the period of Ĉӗng Dѭѫng, saw the development of a homogenous local Cham art style. Up until this time and even following it, Cham art was marked by profound and sudden changes, which he notes seem to result from the local interpretation of literary sources and the assimilation of introduced ideas.30 In addition to the bronze Buddha just discussed, a massive sandstone Buddha sculpture was found in the vihara. An impressive 1.54 metres at the neck, it was discovered in pieces. According to the 1902/3 notes made by the archaeologists, the bust of the figure was found in the central tower of the main enclosure at the western end of the complex, whereas the pendant feet were found with the altar in the vihara. The archaeologists  27

John Guy in Tran Ky Phuong and Bruce Lockhardt eds., The Cham of Vietnam; History, Society and Art (Singapore: NUS Press, 2011), 308. 28 Boisselier, La statuaire du Champa: recherches sur les cultes et l'iconographie, 24. 29 Baptiste, Trésors d’art du Vietnam: la sculpture du Champa v-xv siècles, 209. 30 Boisselier, La statuaire du Champa: recherches sur les cultes et l'iconographie, V.

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surmised that the bust had been moved some time after the abandonment of the temple as a pious act. The head from this Buddha is thought to be one in the National History Museum in Hanoi. 31 That large sandstone head, measuring 66 centimetres in height, has features typical of Cham physiognomy as represented in their sculptures––a squarish face with eyebrows that meet in the centre, broad full lips, a wide nose, a thick moustache and long sideburns. The cranial protuberance, or usnisha, on the Buddha’s head takes the form of a lotus blossom. This unusual characteristic is found on other Ĉӗng Dѭѫng works such as a large Vairocana head now in the Musée Guimet. That 68 cm tall head has an expression of benevolence with a smile that reveals the teeth. These stone Buddha heads exhibit distinctive hair curls that are almost flame-like but certainly of a similar aesthetic to the vermiculate decorative motif found in many Ĉӗng Dѭѫng sculptures. Additional features of the large seated Buddha from the vihara that are unknown anywhere else are the scarf on the pendant legs and the hands positioned to cap his knees.32 Pendant legs are unusual in Southeast Asian examples of the Buddha of which the majority are either standing or seated in a cross-legged position. Some scholars have suggested a Chinese influence for the seated position. 33 However, at Candi Mendut, near Borobudur, which is considered to be a Vajrayana Temple from the 9th century, there are monumental seated images of Lokeshvara and Vajrapani flanking an image of Vairocana with legs pendant. Fisher suggests they belong to two Vajrayana mandalas: the Garbhadhatu and the Vajradhatu.34 The Cham Buddha was seated above a sculpture of the multi-headed, multi-armed demon, Mara, whom he had subdued. Now displayed in the Cham Museum, this imposing Buddha was placed on a U-shaped pedestal  31

Pierre Baptiste, et al., Missions archéologiques françaises au Vietnam, Les Monuments du Champa, Photographies et itinéraires 1902-1904 (France: Barnéoud, 2005), 129. The head is shown in Phҥm Thúy Hӧp, The Collection of Champa Sculpture in the National Museum of Vietnamese History (Hà Nӝi: National Museum of Vietnamese History, 2003), 4. 32 Jean Boisselier, La statuaire du Champa: recherches sur les cultes et l'iconographie (Paris: École française d'Extrême-Orient, 1963), 37. 33 Jean Boisselier, La statuaire du Champa: recherches sur les cultes et l'iconographie (Paris: École française d'Extrême-Orient, 1963), 98. Emmanuel Guillon, Hindu-Buddhist Art of Vietnam: Treasures from Champa (Thailand: Weatherhill, 2001), 82. 34 Robert E. Fisher, Buddhist Art and Architecture (London: Thames & Hudson, 1993), 200.

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which was decorated with narrative bas reliefs. The schema of bas reliefs has been interpreted as depicting scenes from the life of the Buddha. There were two narrative pedestals in the Ĉӗng Dѭѫng complex: one in the vihara in which the panels are rather difficult to decipher and another from the main shrine at the western end of the complex. Unlike Cham Hindu temples, these pedestals were placed against a wall, more like an altar than a structure around which one could circumnambulate. Cham pedestals are a most distinctive feature of their sculptural tradition. Tingley has discussed the remarkable narrative pedestals largely on the basis of their iconography,35 while Trҫn KǤ Phѭѫng, who has contributed to the iconographic identification of the figures within the narratives, places the pedestals within an architectural environment and a specific time frame. 36 Another reason for the distinctive pedestals of the Cham may be, as suggested by Baptiste, that they took a literal interpretation of the ancient Indian manuals governing design and iconography, which emphasise the importance of the seat of the God. 37 A number of figures of monks, worshippers and Bodhisattvas were placed on the vihara pedestal. These princely figures have large moustaches and pendant earrings. One, seated in a pose of royal ease, but with the foot turned so that the sole faces skywards is adorned with an arched aureole decorated with the vermiculate pattern characteristic of the Ĉӗng Dѭѫng style. This style of ornament may have originated in a fern native to that part of the country. According to Phҥm Thúy Hӧp, “its spiral bud, a symbol of life, fecundity and development, became a sacred motif among various ancient ethnic cultures of South East Asia.”38 Some of the most dramatic sculptural figures found at Ðӗng Dѭѫng are enormous guardian figures. These fierce guardians protected the successive enclosures of the temple. One was located on either side of each gateway in a unique configuration within the Southeast Asian context.39 Three of the remaining Guardian figures are now in the Cham  35

Nancy Tingley, “The Pedestals of Champa,” Arts of Asia 39, 6 (2009): 104-111. Trҫn KǤ Phѭѫng also considers that the establishment of Indrapura coincided with the perfection of the corbelling technique of the bricks in Cham towers. Phѭѫng and Lockhardt eds., The Cham of Vietnam; History, Society and Art, 277299. 37 Nancy Tingley, Arts of Ancient Vietnam (Germany: Yale University Press, 2009), 182. 38 Phҥm Thúy Hӧp, The Collection of Cham Sculpture in the National Museum of Vietnamese History (Ha Noi: National Museum of Vietnamese History, 2003), 22. 39 Guillion mentions examples found in Tang China. Emmanuel Guillon, HinduBuddhist Art of Vietnam: Treasures from Champa (Thailand: Weatherhill, 2001), 36

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Museum, Ĉà Nҹng. Two of the remaining intact figures, carved from sandstone, stand over two metres high. Impressive through their size alone, their dynamic poses increase the emotional response to the sculptures. One figure crushes a buffalo underfoot, while the other tramples on a bear. The subdued animals each spew from their mouths a small figure which confronts the colossi with their own weapons. All the guardian figures have bare torsos and wear cloths––sampots––that come to just about their knees. The jewellery elements consist of tiered crowns, large earrings, arm bands, wrist and ankle bands and belts that are decorated with the form of three-headed serpents or nagas.

Figure 3: Door Guardian, Ĉӗng Dѭѫng, 9-10th century, sandstone, h. 200 cm, Cham Museum, permitted by Trang Ky Phuong

Found at the north side of the gate in enclosure two, the figure trampling a bear has a ferocious visage with bulging eyes, protruding fangs and puffed-out cheeks. His angry attitude is heightened by the veins that stand out on his neck. He holds a large vajra in his left hand, as did all the Guardians located on the north side of the gateways, while those on the  86.

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south side carried a short dagger or sword. 40 There were many metal vajras found at Cham Buddhist temple sites. These “double thunderbolt” accoutrements for Tantric Buddhist ceremonies lend further weight to the belief that the practice of a type of esoteric Buddhism was performed at the Ĉӗng Dѭѫng site. The final sculpture to be discussed in this paper is a remarkable bronze image of a female divinity. Dated to between 875 and 910 and measuring 1.20 metres in height, it is now in the Museum of Cham Sculpture, Ĉà Nҹng. Excavated in 1978, within the monastery site, it is the largest Cham bronze extant. Made using the lost wax method of casting, the sculpture has a small meditating Buddha in her hair depicted in an earth-touching pose. This small Buddha is protected by a seven-headed naga. Her distinctive hairdo of tufted curls similar to those in the Buddha images has a channel that probably enabled the attachment of a diadem. She wears a long skirt, folded down the front, in which the drapery is finely detailed. Her torso is bare and there are no sculpted jewellery elements. Her large open eyes are inlaid and evince a penetrating look. That look is heightened by the once inlaid, joined eyebrows and a medallion or plaque in the centre of her forehead with a large diamondshaped void. A sacred relic or dedicatory inscription may have been placed inside this space, which would have then been covered by a jewel or precious inlay. She was sculpted as if to be viewed from all sides. What deity does she portray? Various suggestions have been made–– Tara, Prajnaparamita, Lokeshvara or Vishnu’s consort Lakshmi. This last attribution is suggested by the lotus and conch attributes that she once held in her hands. Trian Nguyen has made a very convincing argument that she is in fact Lokeshvara, the main image in the Ĉӗng Dѭѫng complex referred to in the inscriptions. 41 The sculpture has an intriguing recent history. Some farmers came across this sculpture when digging up spolia bricks near the ruined monastery in August 1978; it was buried, but well preserved in the sand. She was found with two attributes in her hands: a conch and a lotus. The farmers, thinking the sculpture was gold and represented a Cham princess, broke off the attributes and kept them for themselves. The local police came to the discovery site, questioned the farmers and confiscated the attributes which they took to the local police station. Later, when the district authorities came to claim and take the  40

Boisselier, La statuaire du Champa: recherches sur les cultes et l'iconographie, 102. 41 Nguyen, “LakĞmƯndralokeĞvara, Main Deity of the Ðӗng Dѭѫng Monastery: A Masterpiece of Cham Art and a New Interpretation,” 5-38.

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sculpture to the Museum in Ĉà Nҹng, they went straight to the find site without calling at the People’s Committee Office in Bình Ĉӏnh where a reception had been planned to mark the occasion. Put out at this breach of protocol and major failure to show due respect, the People’s Committee decided to keep the attributes as their own cultural treasures without telling the district authorities.

Figure 4: Tara (replica), 9th century, bronze, h. 115 cm, Cham Museum, permitted by Trang Ky Phuong

Only in 2002 were the attributes of the lotus and conch brought to the attention of historians, which prompted further discussion about who this bronze represents. Having a lotus in the right hand and a conch in the left is quite unusual. The lotus is a common attribute of Avalokiteshvara, but the conch is only found in the eleven-headed thousand-armed form of the deity. Furthermore, could a female figure be the figure of Lokeshvara? It has been suggested by Nguyen that the figure was the main deity in the main shrine. The tenon on the bronze fits a space on the main pedestal. Thus, there may have been a linear progression from east to west of the Historical Buddha followed by Vairocana and then Lokeshvara. According

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to Nguyen, the representation of Lokeshvara as a female deity reflects the ruler’s interest in Buddhism, Hinduism and Tantrism as well as the native matriarchal tradition.

Buddhism in Champa From the sculptural details, inscriptions and metal objects found at northern Cham Buddhist sites, it is evident that the type of religion patronised involved a form of esoteric Buddhism. An examination of the spread of Buddhism and Buddhist teachers could shed light on the particular form of the religion that was followed at Ĉӗng Dѭѫng. Much of the study to date concerning the transmission of esoteric forms of Buddhism focuses on the northern route through Nepal and Tibet. Hardly any maps about the spread of Buddhism show the path of transmission to Indonesia and Vietnam and almost none show the Maldives, where a form of Tantric Buddhist and Hindu worship occurred in the 9th century. Trade route maps can perhaps reveal a more realistic picture of what was going on. Holy men travelled via the Maritime Silk Road, often through Java and frequently from Buddhist establishments in Sri Lanka. The sea route became increasingly popular with pilgrims especially during the Chinese Tang Dynasty. 42 In a time frame that fits with Cham sites, Tantric or Vajrayana Buddhism was once present in Sri Lanka; however a council of 1160 suppressed all but the Theravadan forms of Buddhist practice there.43 At the end of the first millennium, there appears to have been a great attraction to the Buddhist Saviour, Avalokiteshvara whose compassionate intervention could aid the faithful in attaining a release from the cycle of rebirth.44 What is more, there seems to have been a flowering of esoteric forms of Buddhism that were directly supported by ruling houses. Mantrayana and Yogini Tantra were regarded as powerful tools that could be employed to underpin the authority of the state and to deflect threats to that power. From the eight century, Mahayana and forms of esoteric Buddhism seem to have spread across Southeast Asia. Trҫn KǤ Phѫung notes that “A large number of small statues of Buddha and Avalokiteshvara in  42

Samir Kumar Mudhopadhyay, “Routes from Chinese Accounts and Chinese Travellers in India up to 550 AD” Indian Museum Bulletin, XXVIII (1963): 35. 43 John Snelling, Elements of Buddhism (Longmead: Element Books Ltd., 1990), 29. 44 John Guy, “Pan-Asian Buddhism and the Bodhisattva Cult in Champa” in Phѭѫng and Lockhardt eds., The Cham of Vietnam; History, Society and Art, 300; and as evidenced by numerous sculptural examples from this period found throughout India, China and Southeast Asia.

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bronze, found scattered throughout the length and breadth of the kingdom and dating back to the 8th and 9th centuries, are living proof of the activity of Mahayana Buddhism.” 45 This is prior to the establishment of Ĉӗng Dѭѫng under Royal patronage in the 9th century and it is thought that the influence may have come through Indonesia or Srivijaya. Some scholars have suggested a connection with Yunnan with which state the Cham had dealings, although the earliest known examples of Lokeshvara images from Yunnan date to the 12th century.46 Guy, in discussing the connection between Yunnan and Southeast Asia, mentions paintings that depict the worship and creation of images and poses the idea that the influence may have spread from Southeast Asia to China and not the other way around as previously imagined. 47 Various Buddhist teachers are known to have visited the Cham lands. One of the earliest known is the Chinese pilgrim, Fa Xian, who in the early 5th century confirmed the use of small portable Buddhist imagery. When caught between Java and China in a storm at sea, he was concerned that he would lose his sutras and images overboard. 48 Other pilgrims who voyaged in search of knowledge from Indian and Sri Lankan sources included Gunarvarman, who travelled from Kashmir during the 5th century and reportedly made conversions in the Cham lands. 49 Pundyodana, an exponent of Vajrayana Buddhism from central India, went to China in 655 and in 663. He may have brought Vajrayana Buddhism to the Cham lands, as on his return to India he spent some time in Southeast Asia.50 There is little doubt that travellers by sea would have had to make landfall at ports along the Cham coast. The Chinese pilgrim monk Yi Jing of the 7th century referred to Buddhist communities in Champa. He reported: “In this country Buddhists generally belong to the Aryasammiti-nikaya and there are a few followers  45

Trҫn KǤ Phѭѫng, Museum of Cham Sculpture Danang (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1987), 10. 46 Heidi Tan ed., Viet Nam from Myth to Modernity (Singapore: Times Graphics, 2008), 83. 47 John Guy “The Avalokitesvara of Yunnan and Some Southeast Asian Connections,” in Rosemary Scott and John Guy eds., South East Asia & China: Art, Interaction & Commerce, Colloquies on ART and Archaeology in Asia (Singapore: Percival David Foundation, 1994), 17. 48 James Legge, translator, A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms: Being an Account of the Chinese Monk Fa-Hien of His Travels in India and Ceylon (AD 339-414) in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline (New York: Dover, 1965), 112. 49 John Guy in Tan ed., Vietnam from Myth to Modernity, 15. 50 Mabbett, “Buddhism in Champa,” 295.

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of the Sarvativadanikaya.”51 According to Mabbett, the Arayasammiti sect was not particularly well-known. Both sects referred to by Yi Jing are variants of Theravadan Buddhism. Yi Jing’s memoirs refer to fifty-six pilgrims who visited India prior to his own visit in 675, not all of whom were Chinese.52 More relevant to the establishment of Ĉӗng Dѭѫng was the pilgrim, Amoghavajra, who travelled between Sri Lanka and China in the mid-8th century with more than 100 Vajrayana texts. Others came along the Continental Silk Road from China. For example, an Indian monk, called Vinitaruci in much later Vietnamese records, is said to have arrived in China about 574 and gone on to the country of the ViӋt in 580, where he established a great Buddhist centre near modern Hà Nӝi. He practised a Tantric form of Buddhism involving meditation, asceticism, rituals and magic and followed texts like the Sanskrit Vajra-PrajñapƗramitƗSnjtra.53 While most of our knowledge of Buddhist teachers is derived from those who visited China and therefore had texts translated into Chinese, there were also Southeast Asians who travelled in search of Buddhist teachings. For example, as previously mentioned, early in the 10th century a Cham aristocrat, Rajadvara, is recorded as having travelled to Java.54 While in the mid-800s an exiled Javanese Prince established a monastery at the great Buddhist University site of Nalanda in India. 55 The 902 inscription of An Thái, which is located not far from Ĉӗng Dѭѫng, mentions a statue of Avalokiteshvara and includes three verses that refer to Tantric philosophy. The inscription names three Buddhas: Shakyamuni, Amitabha and Vairocana. According to the inscription, these Buddhas generated three realms or states of emptiness, (emptiness, great emptiness and beyond emptiness) Vajradatu, Parmadatu and Chakradatu. Each state of emptiness in turn generated a specific Bodhisattva-Vajrapani, Lokeshvara

 51

Ibid. Samir Kumar Mudhopadhyay, “Routes from Chinese Accounts and Chinese Travellers in India up to 550 AD,” 35. 53 Anne-Valérie Schweyer, https://moussons.revues.org/810, accessed on 30/03/2016. There is an inscription referring to the Prajnaparamita Sutra in the Khmer Wat Sithor Inscription (K.111) from the 970s, but none have been found in Cham territories. 54 Mabbett, “Buddhism in Champa,” 302, records an inscription from Nhan Bieu. 55 Hiram Woodward, “Esoteric Buddhism in SEA in the Light of Recent Scholarship: A Review Article,” Journal of South East Asian Studies 35, 2 (2004): 356. 52

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and Vajrasattva. Chutiwongs has linked this text to the Javanese text, Sang Hyang Kamahayanikan, dated to around 920.56 Woodward and others have proposed the KƗra৆ঌavynjhasnjtra (Tripitaka No. 1050) as a source of the type of Buddhism practised at Ĉӗng Dѭѫng. The KƗra৆ঌavynjhasnjtra sutra involves the quest for the mantra that would eliminate the necessity of multiple rebirths. Chapter four of the sutra deals specifically with this quest for the six-syllable “Great Enlightenment Dharanyi,” of Om Ma Ni Pad Me Hum, a mantra that is found in a number of 9th-century inscriptions at Cham Buddhist sites. The KƗra৆ঌavynjhasnjtra sutra is an early or proto Mantrayana text from at least the 7th century.57 Chapter four of this sutra, which has the establishment of peace and happiness as a theme, also mentions a mandala with three Bodhisattvas. In the first chapter of this particular sutra there is a discussion of Avalokiteshvara who will save all souls from the Avichi Hell and quench the fire pits which the Bodhisattva will transform into pools filled with lotuses. Such imagery can be said to be replicated in the architectural arrangement of the Ĉӗng Dѭѫng site. The Xuân Sѫn pillar, mentioned earlier, found by the side of the large lake, is surmounted by a large lotus held aloft by four nagas. Such imagery has been interpreted as illustrating part of the sutra which claims that hell (represented by the poisonous snakes) was transformed into a lake with lotuses that were the size of cart wheels. According to chapter one, hungry ghosts (i.e. those who have died away from their families) will be revived by the water that flows from Avalokiteshvara’s body. There are various references in the KƗra৆ঌavynjhasnjtra sutra to the efficacy of vajras, which are evident both in various sculptures and metal examples of vajras that were found at the site. The sutra mentions Samantabadra, an emanation of the Buddha Vairocana. A sculpture of Vairocana was found in the third, main enclosure of Ĉӗng Dѭѫng. Finally, this sutra combines a primary focus on Buddhism with the acknowledgement of various Hindu gods, goddesses and Jain deities, which is a good fit with the apparent syncretic religion practised in 9th and 10th-century Champa. Woodward suggests that an investigation of the social position of 10th-century Buddhist patrons, if undertaken, could well

 56 N. Chutiwongs in Baptiste, Trésors d’art du Vietnam: la sculpture du Champa v-xv siècles, 80. 57 Woodward, “Esoteric Buddhism in the Light of Recent Scholarship: A Review Article,” 337. The sutra was translated into Chinese during the Song Dynasty (9601279).

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lead to the conclusion that the state protection of Buddhism lay behind the growth of the religion.58

Conclusion The Cham elite participated in a religious practice that was popular throughout a number of Asian societies in the late first millennium. The widely revered Buddhist compassionate saviour, Avalokiteshvara, was an intercessory deity whose worship appears to have included elements of Tantric practice. In the Cham environs the deity was called Lokeshvara. There were favourable conditions at the time that the Cham ruler and patron, Indravarman 11 (875-99) constructed the massive Buddhist complex of Ĉӗng Duong within his city of Indrapura in the late ninth century. Trade was flourishing and peaceful times prevailed. Worship there of his personal deity, Lokeshvara, coexisted with Shaivite and autochthonous beliefs. Nevertheless, it may never be precisely known how Indravarman 11 arrived at these specific manifestations of religion. The precise sutras or religious texts that were followed can still only be a matter of speculation. Some possibilities are the KƗra৆ঌavynjhasnjtra Sutra, as suggested by Woodward and discussed by Parul Pandya Dhar. There are other possible sutras, including the Vajra-PrajñapƗramitƗ-Snjtra and the Javanese text Sang Hyang Kamahayanikan. It is evident that this city and temple were sacked by the Ĉҥi ViӋt most probably as a retaliatory measure, and the area was abandoned by the year 1000. But why the Cham elite abandoned major patronage of Buddhist worship is not so clear. When the Cham centre of power moved south, Hindu sites of worship were maintained in Mӻ Sѫn and other locations. Buddhism persisted, but without the same level of patronage as in the 9th and 10th centuries. This was despite the fact the Champa still had contact with courts in Java and Cambodia where Tantric Buddhist practices continued to be patronised by the elite in the early second millennium. What does remain today from this brief interval of royally sponsored Cham Buddhism is a collection of unique sculptural images, some of which exude great power through their penetrating gaze while there remains a certain mystery about the precise form of religion that was practised at Ĉӗng Duong.

 58

Ibid., 349.

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Bibliography Baptiste, Pierre et al. Missions archéologiques françaises au Vietnam, Les Monuments du Champa, Photographies et itinéraires 1902-1904. France: Barnéoud, 2005. Baptiste, Pierre and Thierry Zephir. Trésors d’art du Vietnam: la sculpture du Champa v-xv siècles. Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2005. Boisselier, Jean. La statuaire du Champa: recherches sur les cultes et l'iconographie. Paris: École Française d'Extrême-Orient, 1963. Bui Thi Liem, ed. Artefacts of Champa. Hà Nӝi : Nhà Xuҩt Bҧn Khoa Hӑc Xã Hӝi, 1996. Cao, Yin, ed. Tang: Treasures from the Silk Road Capital. Sydney: AGNSW, 2016. Coedès, George. The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1968. Coomaraswarmy, A. K. “The Origin of the Buddha Image,” New York: The Art Bulletin, vol. IX, no. 4 (June 1927). —. History of Indian and Indonesian Art. New York: Dover, 1985. Chutiwongs, Nandana. The Iconography of Avalokiteshvara in Mainland South East Asia. New Delhi: Aryan Books, 2002. Dam, Lê Van. « Grandeur et decadance du Champa. » Paris: France Asie 8: 483-489. Dharm Parul Pandya. “Buddhism, Art, and Ritual Practice: Ðӗng Dѭѫng at the Intersection of Asian Cultures.” In Asian Encounters: Exploring Connected Histories, edited by Upinder Singh and Parul Pandya Dhar, 111-136. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014. Fisher, Robert E. Buddhist Art and Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson, 1993. Girard-Geslan et al. The Art of Southeast Asia. Boston: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1998. Guillon, E. Hindu-Buddhist Art of Vietnam: Treasures from Champa. Thailand: Weatherhill, 2001. Guy, John. Lost Kingdoms: Hindu-Buddhist Sculpture of Early Southeast Asia. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014. —. “The Avalokiteshvara of Yunnan and Some South East Asian Connections.” In South East Asia & China: Art, Interaction & Commerce, edited by R. Scott and J. Guy, 64-83. Singapore: Percival David Foundation, 1995. —. “Champa and Vietnam: Art, History and Exchange.” In Vietnam from Myth to Modernity, edited by H. Tan. Singapore: Times Graphics, 2008.

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—. “Pan-Asian Buddhism and the Boddhisattva Cult in Champa.” In The Cham of Vietnam; History, Society and Art, edited by KǤ Phѭѫng Trҫn and Bruce Lockhardt, 300-322. Singapore: NUS Press, 2011. Groslier, B. P. Indochina. Geneva: Nagel Publishing, 1966. Higham, Charles. Early Cultures of Mainland Southeast Asia. Thailand: Amarin Printing and Publishing Co. Ltd., 2002. Huber, Édouard. « La Stele de Dong Duong. » Bulletin de L'Ecole Francaise d'Extreme Orient no. 4 (1904). —. «L’épigraphie de la dynastie de Ĉӗng Dѭѫng. » Bulletin de L'Ecole Française d'Extreme Orient no. 11 (1911): 268-311. Hubert, Jean-Francis. The Art of Champa, China: Parkstone Press, 2005. Janze, Olov R. T. Archaeological Research in Indo-China, Vol. 111. Bruges: St Catherine’s Press, 1958. Lambrecht M., and C. Schicklgruber. Vietnam: Art et Cultures de la préhistoire à nos jours, Brussels: Snoeck, 2003. Legge, James trans. A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms: Being an Account of the Chinese Monk Fa-Hien of His Travels in India and Ceylon (AD 339-414) in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline. New York: Dover, 1965. Mabbett, I. “Buddhism in Champa.” In Southeast Asia in the 9th-14th Centuries, edited by D. C. Marr, and A. C. Milner. Singapore: ANU Press, 1986. Maspero, Georges. The Champa Kingdom: The History of an Extinct Vietnamese Culture. Bangkok: White Lotus, 2002. Marr, D., & A. C. Milner, eds. Southeast Asia in the 9th-14th Centuries. Singapore: Chong Moh Offset Printing Private Limited, 1986. Mudhopadhyay, Samir Kumar. “Routes from Chinese Accounts and Chinese Travellers in India up to 550 AD.” Indian Museum Bulletin, XXV111 (1963): 33-36. Mus, Paul. India as Seen from the East: Indian & Indigenous Cults in Champa. Monash Papers on Southeast Asia, Number 3, 1975. Mus, Paul & Etienne Aymonier. Religious Ceremonies and Superstitions of Champa. White Lotus (reprint) 2001. Ngô, Văn Doanh. Champa: Ancient Towers and Legend. Hanoi: ThӃ Giӟi, 2006. Nguyen, Trian. “LakĞmƯndralokeĞvara, the Main Deity of the Ðӗng Dѭѫng Monastery: A Masterpiece of Cham Art and a New Interpretation.” Artibus Asiae 65, no. 1 (2005): 5-38. Noppe, C., and J-F. Hubert. Arts du Vietnam, Musée Royal du Mariemont: La Renaissance du Livre, 2002.

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Phҥm, Thúy Hӧp. The Collection of Champa Sculpture in the National Museum of Vietnamese History. Hà Nӝi, 2003. Parmentier, H. Catalogue du Musée Cam de Tourane, Bulletin de L'Ecole Française d'Extreme Orient, Vol. XIX, No. 3, 1919. —. L’Art Architectural Hindou dans L’Inde et en Extreme-Orient. Paris: Van Oest, 1948. Schweyer, Anne-Valérie. Ancient Vietnam: History, Art and Archaeology. Bangkok: River Books, 2011. Schweyer, Anne-Valérie. “Buddhism in ýampƗ,” http://moussons.revues.org/signaler810, accessed on 01/06/2016. Sharma, J. C. Temples of Champa in Vietnam. Hà Nӝi: Nhà Xuҩt Bҧn Khoa Hӑc Xã Hӝi, 1992. Snelling, John. Elements of Buddhism. Longmead: Element Books Ltd., 1990. Stern, Phillippe. L'art du Champa (ancien Annam) et son evolution. Toulouse: Les Freres Douladoure, 1942. Swearer, Donald K. The Buddhist World of Southeast Asia. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. Tan, Heidi. “A Cham Figure of Lokeshvara at the Asian Civilization Museum.” Arts of Asia 40, no. 1 (2010): 101-103. —, ed. Viet Nam from Myth to Modernity. Singapore: Times Graphics, 2008. Tingley, N. “The Pedestals of Champa.” Arts of Asia 39, no. 6 (2009): 104-111. —. Arts of Ancient Vietnam: From River Plain to Open Sea. Germany: Yale University Press, 2009. Trҫn, KǤ Phѭѫng. Museum of Cham Sculpture Danang. Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1987. Trҫn, KǤ Phѭѫng and Bruce Lockhardt, eds. The Cham of Vietnam; History, Society and Art. Singapore: NUS Press, 2011. Trҫn, KǤ Phѭѫng. “The Architecture of the Temple-Towers of Ancient Champa (Central Vietnam).” In Champa and the Archeology of My Son (Vietnam), edited by Andrew Hardy, 155-186. Singapore: NUS, 2009. Woodward, H. “Esoteric Buddhism in SEA in the Light of Recent Scholarship.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 35, 2 (2004): 329354.

CHAPTER EIGHT RELIGIOUS PENTECOSTAL EVANGELISATION OF POLITICS HAS BEGUN: EVIDENCE FROM THE GRASSROOTS PRACTITIONERS JOEL A. TEJEDO ASIA PACIFIC THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

The Story of Luz Villaloboz Before becoming a municipal mayor of the town of Del Pilar, Luz Villaloboz was a successful businesswoman who owned a moneychanging business and funeral home services in the city of Candon, Ilocos Sur. Starting as a vegetable seller during her youth, Luz learned to become hard-working in order to overcome poverty at a young age. Severe poverty and the illness of her father forced the young Luz to strive for a better life. At the age of 12, she wanted to become a businesswoman by selling vegetables in the market until this small business grew and she became a prominent businesswoman in the city. Coming from a religious family, she followed the faith of her parents, started reading the Bible and obeyed its teachings. She believes that it was from this heritage that she was gifted with divine leadership and acquired the wisdom to do business. Partnering the work of the Lord, she became a supporter and prime player in many religious activities and projects in her own town. She made sure that everything she received from God would be used for the common good and the creation of a just and loving community. Gifted with the ability to do business and have compassion for the needy, she let her house become a home for Christian workers and became a partner of God’s mission work. She and her husband use funeral home services to offer the most affordable funeral services in the city of Candon and in nearby towns. She uses her wealth to lend, and empowers those

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who have nothing. She is becoming instrumental in the building of parish/local churches in her province and is becoming an active agent of social change, advocating the welfare of poor children and women by providing livelihoods and training for her own people. As a result, she has gained deep respect from the people of the community. Challenged by the desire to become an agent of social change in her town that is characterised by underdevelopment, and by the increasing poverty there, she ran for office in 2010 and was elected Municipal Mayor of the town of Del Pillar. Mayor Villaloboz was the first woman mayor elected for the post. She is now serving her second term as Municipal Mayor, empowering her own people to have a decent life, peace and economic well-being.

Review of Literature Although Pentecostalism started as a sectarian movement which often eschewed filthy politics due to its “other worldly” eschatology1 and less participation in civic life,2 a recent development regarding the attitude of Pentecostal believers towards politics has undergone dramatic changes.3 Evidence shows that in the past two decades, Pentecostals around the globe are increasingly becoming politically engaged in the public sphere4  1

See for example the work of Douglas Petersen, “Latin American Pentecostalism: Social Capital Network and Politics,” Pneuma: The Journal of the Society of Pentecostal Studies 26, 2 (Fall 2014): 1-15; Amos Yong, In the Days of Caesar: Pentecostalism and Political Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdsmans Publishing House, 2010); and Richard Burgess, “Pentecostals and Development in Nigeria and Zambia: Community Organizing as a Response to Poverty and Violence,” Pentecostudies: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Research and Charismatic Movements 14, 2 (2015): 176-204. 2 Kevin D. Dougherty et al., “Sidelined by Religion? Community Involvement and Political Participation of US Pentecostals,” Paper Presented at the 2009 Symposium on Religion and Politics, Department of Sociology, Baylor University, May 12, 2009. 3 Christel Kessler and Jurgen Ruland, Give Jesus a Hand: Charismatic Christians: Populist Religion and Politics in the Philippines (Manila, Philippines: Ateneo De Manila Press, 2008). 4 See the work of Jane E. Grant, The New American Social Compact: Rights and Responsibilities in the Twenty-first Century (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008); Douglas Petersen, Not by Might, Nor by Power: A Pentecostal Theology of Social Concern in Latin America (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2011); Asamoah Gra-du J. Kwabena, “Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 35, 4 (Oct., 2011): 159; Héctor M. Martínez-Ramírez, “Pentecostal Expansion and Political Activism in

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in the form of joining the formal political structure or speaking prophetically to this structure by forming a counter-culture.5 In the recent conference on “Pentecostalism and Politics” at Heidelberg University, social researchers, scientists and theologians recognised that Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity is beginning to influence local politics and is noticeable in local cultures. Michael Burger pointed out that, The worldwide growth of Pentecostalism has strongly influenced local politics and the political cultures of various regions in recent years, which is of lasting importance in international politics, development work and interreligious cooperation.6

This case is truer in the recent political engagement of many religious leaders in the Philippines who were involved in the national election in 2010.7 Three among the seven major religious organisations that joined the national election in 2010 belong to the Pentecostal charismatic movement in the Philippines.8 With the increasing number of Pentecostal churches making up twelve to fifteen per cent of the whole population,9  Puerto Rico,” Caribbean Studies 33, 1 (Jan. to Jun., 2005): 113-147; Christopher Marsh and Artyom Tonoyam, “The Civic, Economic, and Political Consequences of Pentecostalism in Russia and Ukraine,” Society 46, 6 (Nov., 2009): 510-516; Sandra E. Greena, “Sacred Terrain: Religion, Politics, and Place in the History of Anloga Ghana,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 30, 1 (1997): Shane Clifton, “Pentecostalism and Politics,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 10, 2 (July 2007); Hans Geir Aasmundsen, “Pentecostals and Politics in Argentina: A Question of Compatibility,” Iberoamericana. Nordic Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies XLII, 1-2 (2012): 85-107. 5 Yong, In the Days of Caesar: Pentecostalism and Political Theology. 6 Michael Bergunder, “Pentecostalism in Politics,” International and Interdisciplinary Conference of the European Research Network on Global Pentecostalism (GloPent) (Heidelberg: Heidelberg University, 2013), 1-2. 7 IPEOT2010, “Religious Leaders in Politics,” https://sites.google.com/site/ipeoteam2010 /religious-leaders-in-politics, accessed on 07/10/2013. 8 Ibid. 9 Pew Research Religion & Public Life Project, “Historical Overview of Pentecostalism in the Philippines: Origins and Growth.” Spirit and Power-10 Country Survey of Pentecostals, October 5, 2006. http://www.pewforum. org/ 2006/10/05/historical-overview-of-Pentecostalism-in-Philippines/, accessed on 29/09/2013. See the work of Dan Pantoja, “The State of the Philippine Evangelical Church Today: A Positive Response,” June 14, 2011. http://waves.ca/ 2011/06/14/ description-of-the-evangelical-church-today/, accessed on 28/09/2013.

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Evangelical/Pentecostal Christians see the need for impacting the political sector by positioning themselves as agents of social change. This challenge was reinforced by the fact that although Pentecostal Christians are increasing quantitatively, such numbers are not making a social impact in society at large. The Philippines remains one of the most corrupt countries in the world because of the failure of the church to deal with the structural evils characterised by unjust governance and economic inequality in the country (Pantoja). Until recently, social scientists have observed that Pentecostals are more closely engaged in the political arena and are developing a political theology that is rooted in a theology of creation, shalom, and Spirit baptism.10 One of the reasons for the increasing political involvement of Pentecostals in the political sector and public life is the increasing number of Pentecostals in the Philippines, although Pentecostal numbers are relatively small compared to the mainline church in the Philippines.11 Pentecostals are keen to suggest that they have the right to be politically engaged by virtue of Spirit work in creation, the intention of God to bring peace and justice to the world, and the nature of the Spirit as a source of power for individual and social transformation. 12 Yong argues that Pentecostals have a legitimate theological framework to translate the meaning of the Christian faith in the public sphere on the basis of the fivefold gospel of Jesus as Saviour, Sanctifier, and Baptiser in the Holy Spirit, Healer and Coming King.13  10 Giovanne Maltese, “Politics and Society in Filipino Pentecostalism in Negros Oriental” (unpublished research, University of Heidelberg, 1 May 2012 to April 2015), http://theologie.uni-hd.de/rm/Forschung/fs-pfingstbewegung/new-researchproject-pentecostalism-and-politics-in-the-philippines?set_language=en, accessed on 28/09/2013. 11 Sam Hodges, “Pentecostalism in Asia” The Pew Forum of Religion and Public Life, December 21, 2006, http://religionblog.dallasnews.com/2006/12/pentecostalism-in-asia.html/, accessed on 28/09/2013. 12 See my article on Joel Tejedo, “Pentecostal Civic Engagement: How Ilocano and Cordilleran Pentecostals Build Poor Communities in the Philippines,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies (2012) and “The Bible, Civic Engagement, and Justice for the Poor: A Pentecostal Perspective,” presented at the Asia Theological Association on the Scripture in the Asian Context, Malaysia, June 19, 2012, Journal of Asian Mission 13, 2 (2012): 3. 13 Ibid. Yong, In the Days of Caesar: Pentecostalism and Political Theology. See also the work of Alan Storkey, Jesus and Politics: Confronting the Powers (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2005) and Craig A. Carter, The Politics of the Cross: The Theology and Social Ethics of John Howard Yoder (Grand Rapids,

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According to the empirical research done by Pew Research on Religion and Public Life, Filipino Pentecostals’ political involvement during the Marcos Administration was noticeably ambivalent to the Marcos dictatorship, but during the People Power Revolution in 1986, Pentecostals seemed to take a more aggressive political position by joining the national protest. During the Aquino and Ramos Administrations, Pentecostals were instrumental in addressing a wider spectrum of political issues for the increasing democratisation of the entire archipelago. Political activities such as the electoral education of the masses, participating in the moral recovery and value formation program in the government, organising prayer rallies that speak out against injustice and violence, and even endorsing specific presidential candidates in the election are just some of the many political actions of Pentecostals after the EDSA Revolution.14 During the Estrada administration, Pentecostals were sometimes divided and often in conflict with one another due to their political interests and connections with the political leaders they supported.15 El Shaddai, one of the largest Catholic charismatic groups, comprising seven million members, supported the Estrada presidency along with the Iglesia Ni Cristo. But what is more noticeable during this period is that Pentecostals at large were actively participating in the political arena. Prior to the impeachment case of Estrada in the House of Senate, Pentecostals, along with other Christian organisations in the Philippines, proved that faith can be a political weapon to denounce unjust governance in society. With the arrest of Estrada due to a plunder case in 2001, Pentecostals, together with Catholics and other charismatic groups, condemned People Power instigated by the followers of Estrada to grab the Arroyo administration. During Arroyo’s presidency, the PCEC leadership and the El Shaddai became supporters of the Arroyo administration, serving as spiritual advisers and liaisons for constitutional changes. The Jesus Is Lord Movement, however, rejected those constitutional changes and called on Arroyo to  Michigan: Brazos Press, 2001). An excellent example of this is the founding of the “Bangon Pilipinas Movement” a political party started by Bro. Eddie Villanueva, a Pentecostal leader who ran as president during the elections in 2004 and 2009. See http://bangonpilipinas.net/ii-energize-the-economy.html, accessed on 28/09/2013. 14 Pew Research Religion & Public Life Project, “Historical Overview of Pentecostalism in the Philippines: Origins and Growth,” Spirit and Power-10 Country Survey of Pentecostals, October 5, 2006, http://www.pewforum.org/2006 /10/05/historical-overview-of-pentecostalism-in-philippines/, accessed on 29/09/2013. 15 Pew Research on Religion, 2006.

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resign due to cases of grafting and corruption. In 2004 the Pentecostals, for the first time through the Philippines for Jesus Movement and the Bangon Pilipinas Party, a Pentecostal political party organised by Eddie Villanueva, took part in the national election for president. Taking part in the national election for the second time in 2010, Villanueva was again defeated. However, with his bold participation and engagement in the political arena, many Pentecostals in public sectors were encouraged and empowered to participate in the transformation of the politics of patronage in the Philippines. 16 The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) observes that Pentecostal Charismatic believers are beginning to play a major role in the politics of the Philippines. 17 The Clark II Declaration in their General Assembly on July 2-5, 2013, demonstrates the desire and willingness of Evangelicals and Pentecostal leaders to be politically engaged for the increasing transformation of politics in the Philippines: We should impart righteousness in society and be engaged in the fight against corruption by living a life of integrity and actively exposing the deeds of darkness. We desire for the government sector to initiate righteousness and lead the nation in integrity. We want to be channels of blessings to our local and national leaders by building good relationships with them and leading them to Christ. We also want to involve our churches to cooperate with the transformational goals of the government and to participate in community activities.18

Methodology The research methodology employed for this study was a combination of multiple approaches. First, a quantitative survey questionnaire was given to pastors, church workers, Bible students in schools, and church members in order to measure the political engagement of Pentecostals. The survey comprises seven domains with five sets of questions in each domain, totalling thirty-five questions. The questionnaire includes demographic information of the respondents. The process of giving the questionnaire to  16

Ibid. CBCP News, “Erap, Binay Attend El Shaddai Fete.” Monday, October 7, 2013, http://www.cbcpnews.com /cbcpnews/?p=2378, accessed on 07/10/2013. 18 Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches, “Clark II Declaration,” PCEC General Assembly June 3-5, 2013, http://www.pceconline.org/statements.htm, accessed on 23/10/2013. 17

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the respondents was through personal participation in a collective meeting of ministers, with the voluntary assistance of selected research staff who administered the survey; letters and emails; and conducting collective interviews with group respondents such as church members or theological students. The questionnaire starts with the basic socio-demographic information of the respondents such as their name, age and marital status, the name of his/her church, and their positions and length of service in the church. Also included is the occupation of the respondent, his/her income per annum, and the area served by his/her church. Following the sociodemographic information are the detailed instructions of the questionnaire. An important source for our questionnaire came from measurement tools designed by the Judkins Institute for Leadership Studies, and this was intentionally adapted and became the official format of the questionnaire. Although the assessment tool was intended to measure the effectiveness of leadership organisations, the study adapted most of the questions to apply to the current study. Furthermore, specific questions regarding the measurement of civic engagement came from the Sanguaro Seminar of Harvard University.19 The questionnaire is designed for an intercultural context, but this study filtered most of the questions for the purpose of the study. Respondents of this study are from two groups of Pentecostal Christians in Northern Luzon, Philippines: the Ilocano and Cordilleran Pentecostals. The Ilocano Pentecostals are identified as the people of the Ilocos Region and Cagayan Valley. Among the lowland Ilocano Pentecostals, there were 123 respondents representing twenty-one local churches, of which ninety-one respondents came from the Assemblies of God, and twenty-seven responses came from Independent Pentecostal charismatic members. Among the Cordilleran Pentecostal churches there were 121 respondents of which eighty-three came from the Assemblies of God and thirty-eight from Charismatic Pentecostal churches. A summary of the demographic information respondents is as follows:

 19

Robert Putnam, “The 2006 Social Capital Community Survey Wave 1 Questionnaires Sanguaro Seminar Civic Engagement in America Kennedy School of Government,” Harvard University Study # 135633 January 13, 2006; http://www.hks.harvard.edu/saguaro/pdfs/2006SCCSw1.pdf, accessed on 13/10/2013.

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Sex

N=123 Ilocanos

Male Female

58 65

63 58

Age Under 25 26-35 36-45 46-55 56 and above

29 28 32 21 13

62 32 19 5 3

Marital Status Single Married Widow/Separated

55 67 1

72 49 1

Education HS or less Vocational Some College College Graduate Graduate or Postgraduate

21 3 48 46 5

29 4 45 36 7

Length of Service in the Church Below 5 Years 52 6-10 Years 23 11-15 Years 13 16-20 Years 5 21 and above 30

70 20 11 6 3

Church Affiliation Assemblies of God Charismatic Pentecostals

94 29

83 38

Status in the Church Member Church Officers or Workers Pastors/Administrators

27 49 47

32 50 39

Current Jobs and Employment With business and Employment 78 Students/No employment 43

64 57

N=121 Highland

Table 1: Summary of the Demographic Information of the Respondents

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Findings and Summary 1. Local Churches Must Integrate the Concern of Discussing Local and National Issues in their Bible Study, Seminar and Conference Developing social and community awareness is one way of helping the community. In this aspect, respondents were asked about their attitudes and responses towards their community issues. They were asked if local church members discuss local and national issues and if they integrate the concern of empowering the poor with spiritual or moral issues in their Bible studies. They were also asked if the members participate in and represent themselves in the formal political structure, or if there are collective responses made by their local church when there are community issues. The respondents agree (means of 3.09 and 2.97 for Ilocano and Cordilleran Pentecostal churches, respectively) that Pentecostal members should integrate the concern of empowering the poor into their Bible studies. They should discuss and participate in national and local issues and events rather than merely the usual moral issues. They must promptly respond to the needs of their immediate locality such as in times of calamity and death; and they must allow Pentecostal members to represent themselves or participate in the formal political structure. As to how respondents demonstrate social and community awareness, the Ilocano Pentecostals strongly suggest that local churches should study the sociopolitical framework of their own community and discuss contextual programs that will help people to be released from poverty. There is also a growing interest from the Ilocano Pentecostals that a local church should demonstrate a collective partnership with the programs of the community and not just be concerned with their own church programs. The Cordilleran Pentecostals, however, strongly agree that Pentecostal local churches must demonstrate solidarity and a cooperative spirit in the community. It is also helpful if a local church studies the biblical principles of social and community engagement rather than shun their social responsibilities in the community.

2. In Partnership with the Local Leadership of Communities, Local Churches Must Cooperate and Actively Participate in the Transformation of Local Communities The immersion of the local church in the community is pivotal in building rural communities in the Philippines. In this study, respondents were asked

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if church members were collectively or individually participating in community meetings and if they actively participated in the decisionmaking process when there were community projects or programs. This study endeavours to discover if the local church, from the perspective of the community, is acquiring a good image and reputation, especially when local government asks for collective participation from the religious sector. Inasmuch as each person is a member of a community or a society, the respondents agree (means of 3.09 and 2.87 for Ilocano and Cordilleran Pentecostals, respectively) that Pentecostal members should actively participate in community meetings, in decision-making processes, and in worthy locally-sponsored good projects. In so-doing, they would build a good reputation in the community. While respondents of Ilocano Pentecostals agree that local churches should develop increased participation in the community, the respondents of the Cordilleran Pentecostals strongly recommended that the local church should spearhead the collective cooperation of the community, especially when tragedy and calamities threaten the welfare of the community. It is from this action that a local church can foster a positive image with the people in the community. Respondents from the Cordilleran Pentecostals also encourage spiritual discernment for the possible tie-ups between the local church and local government programs. The local church, as an important part of a community, should work for the increasing solidarity of the people.

3. Pentecostal Members who are Gifted with Leadership Skills and Talents should Participate in Politics for the Production of the Common Good The questions on political participation are centred on the participatory action of local members with respect to political activities, whether respondents are knowledgeable of current political situations in local and national affairs, whether or not those situations foster trust in their local political leaders, and whether the respondents were participating in the political or community organisations. Whether or not respondents should voice their sentiments or share the discussion of public meetings is one of the central issues raised in this section. Results show that respondents agree (means of 2.84 and 2.68 for Ilocano and Cordilleran Pentecostals, respectively) that Pentecostal members should participate in political and national affairs to some extent. They trust that their local and national governments are doing what is right and they voice their sentiments when political activities threaten the freedom and well-being of the community, such as buying votes and political killings. One way of showing their

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political participation is by attending public meetings, during which there is a discussion of town and school affairs, or political meetings and rallies and community organisation meetings. There are increasing suggestions from the Ilocano Pentecostals that the most important political participation that Christians should engage in is prayer for the political leaders in the community, and positively influencing them for the common good. Other respondents suggest that Pentecostals should condemn vote buying and should not support such activities. The Ilocano Pentecostals admit that most Pentecostals are not politically informed; thus, church leaders have the task of educating their own people and knowing where they should stand on political matters. For the Cordilleran Pentecostals, it is not sufficient for Pentecostal members to get involved in political meetings and to support godly leaders, but in cases where they have members who are gifted in political leadership, they should encourage them to run for office. Such an undertaking is not without risk, but there is a growing suggestion among them that local churches should be both a centre of spirituality and an educational centre for social and political concerns. The Cordilleran Pentecostals strongly believe that once the local churches are taught the socio-political conditions of their community, they must encourage their own people to be spiritually and politically responsible. This finding does not undermine the Pentecostal position, especially for the Assemblies of God in the Philippines, in which the local churches should be apolitical and non-partisan. This by-law, upheld by the Assemblies of God, only applies to the ministers and does not delimit the potential contribution of Pentecostal believers in the creation of just politics.20

4. Governance and Civic Engagement are Part of the Christian Calling Pentecostal communities are often thought of as other-worldly. Thus, they are perceived as anti-social with not much interest in civic participation. This study recognises the importance of civic solidarity, or a collective cooperation of the people, including the church, for a community to attain progress and economic well-being. The surveys under the domain of civic  20

Eliezer Javier, “Ministerial Political Engagement: PGCAG Perspective.” A Paper, December 2009; http://pgcag.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/mpe.pdf, accessed on 17/06/2010; and “A Sacred Exercise Gone Awry: A Look into Election Practices in the Philippine General Council of the Assemblies of God.” http://pgcag.files.wordpress.com/ 2010/01/asega.pdf; accessed on 17/06/2010.

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solidarity asked the respondents about their perceptions and personal involvement in the development of their own communities. Respondents were asked if they were willing to cooperate with local government officials when asked to conserve water or power supplies. This question was posed to test the degree of cooperation of Pentecostals. Regarding their perceptions of the community, respondents were asked if they felt it was unlikely that they would be victims of crime and if they considered their community a peaceful place to live, or if they were considering transferring to another location. This domain ended with a question on whether Pentecostals believe they can potentially make a contribution to their community to make it a better place. The results of the survey ranked civic solidarity at the fourth level of civic engagement with a mean of 2.98 for Ilocano Pentecostals and 2.91 for Cordilleran Pentecostals. It demonstrates that Ilocano Pentecostals have an average level of civic cooperation in their respective villages. While both agree that Pentecostals should demonstrate collective solidarity in the community, the result shows that this role is not yet fully developed as a practice within the local congregation. Ilocano Pentecostals suggest ways to demonstrate civic solidarity and also show the burgeoning interest to cooperate when the local community asks them to participate. They also recognise the importance of mutual help (Bayanihan), voluntary involvement and seeking the best interests of the community as a way of demonstrating authentic solidarity with the community. Moreover, living as a godly character expressed by loyalty towards common programs and vision in the community are ways to demonstrate good citizenship in the community. While the Cordilleran Pentecostals agree on the recommendations above, they believe that these actions should be outwardly manifested in the practical outworking of the command of Jesus to love our neighbours. In other words, the actualisation of one's faith in the community is rooted in the values of the kingdom which are to love God and to love our neighbour.

5. Local Churches that Are Politically Engaged Have a Greater Tendency to Have a Political Voice in the Community Civic organisational membership and assuming leadership responsibilities for righteous governance and effective advocacy for the creation of a just and loving society are crucial needs in the community. This study advocates the creation of social justice and the equal participation of people in the community. It affirms the importance of godly leadership and the organisation of people’s groups and associations that look closely at the welfare of the community. In this study, Ilocano and Cordilleran

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Pentecostals, a total of 244, were asked if they belonged to a community organisation, such as the rotary club, crime watch, the value formation organisation, samahan ng mga magsasaka, etc. Respondents were asked if the organisation they belong to is involved in social and political reform, if they participate voluntarily and share their talents, time and money, or willingly assume leadership responsibilities when asked by the organisation. They were also asked if their membership meant also an active participation in the discussion and meetings of their organisation. Results of the study reveal that Ilocano Pentecostals have a mean of 2.94 and Cordilleran Pentecostals have a mean of 2.73. The study also reveals that the Ilocanos are ranked number six while the Cordillerans are number nine. The study reveals a minimal difference with respect to points, but overall, both agree that Pentecostals should join and assume leadership roles in the community organisations that support social and political reforms. As to how to develop a strong associational network within the community, the Ilocano Pentecostals agree that Pentecostal members should participate and if given the opportunity to lead, should take responsibility. Ilocano Pentecostals also suggest that in order to make a greater impact in the community, they should foster strong and positive moral values that somehow impact local communities. Among the Cordilleran Pentecostals, there is a growing interest in participation in civic leadership. Taking responsibility to lead is an important act of participation of church members in the community. But contrary to the contemporary practice of civic leadership, Christians should foster servant leadership in their service to others. They strongly suggest that those Christians running for political offices should be received positively by local churches and given moral and spiritual support. Studies by the Sanguaro Seminar of Robert Putnam reveal that large stocks of community social capital are associated with effective governance and a healthy participatory democracy.21 (Putnam) recognises that, A vibrant associational life, whether organised around ‘private’ goals such as entertainment, socialising, worship, or public welfare projects such as erecting a playground, creates a community resource. This organisational resource can be mobilised to meet unforeseen problems or to represent the beliefs and interests of community members to governmental bodies. The broader the web of associations, the more likely all members of the community will have access to government. No longer would be just the

 21

Robert Putnam, “The Prosperous Community: Social Capital and Public Life,” The American Prospect 13 (Spring, 1993); http://epn.org/prospect/13/13putn.html; accessed on 12/07/2009.

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few ‘well connected.’ Also, small local associations give many citizens the chance to assume leadership roles and learn the vital democratic skills of coalition building, organising and cooperation.22

6. Local Churches that Participate in Public Affairs and Civic Meetings Are Most Likely to Influence the Values and Moral Direction of the Community Close participation in the affairs of the community by local Pentecostal churches is another way of bearing witness and helping the poor in the communities. This study believes that Pentecostal churches should be “watchmen” and act as the “moral conscience” of society. The Church contains “the light” and is called upon to be instrumental in influencing and affecting the moral fabric of the community. In this study, respondents were asked if they were interested in knowing what is happening in community affairs, whether related to political issues or to the public community. To test the respondents regarding their close participation, they were asked if they were free to vote for their own candidates and willing to participate in civic meetings. They were also asked if they trusted their local and national leaders and would be willing to report to the police anything illegal happening in the community. The results of the study show that Ilocano Pentecostals have a mean score of 2.86 and Cordilleran Pentecostals have a mean of 2.76. This demonstrates that both agree that local Pentecostal churches should closely watch and participate in the happenings of the community. The results of the study, however, ranked this study as number seven for the Ilocano Pentecostals and number eight for Cordilleran Pentecostals. As to how to demonstrate the closer participation of Pentecostal churches in public affairs, the Cordilleran Pentecostals have a broader suggestion. For the Ilocano Pentecostals, local churches should positively join and participate in community affairs, show deep concern for the needs of the community and contribute good ideas during community meetings. While these suggestions are strongly supported by Cordilleran Pentecostals, the respondents strongly feel that they are involved closely when they act as law-abiding citizens within the community, wisely voting during elections, and participating voluntarily when the community is in need. When illegal activities are taking place, Cordilleran Pentecostals strongly suggest that Pentecostal Christians should not be afraid to verbalise their sentiments and campaign for righteous governance in the  22

Ibid.

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community. Cordilleran Pentecostals look positively at the potential contributions of Pentecostals if they closely participate and keep track of the activities in the community. To determine whether there is a significant difference between the perceptions of the Ilocano and the Cordilleran Pentecostals, the t-test was used. The findings show that at the 5% significance level, there is no marked difference between the two groups as indicated by the t-statistic of 1.572, which is lower than the tabular value of 2.074. This implies that the Ilocano and Cordilleran Pentecostals have similar views on the perceptions of their political engagement.

Case Studies Case One: The Political Participation of Pentecostal Christians in Abra Province (SAG) If there is one local church that is worthy of emulation for its strong and aggressive political advocacies in the province of Abra, it is the example of Pentecostal Christians in Brgy. Supo, Tubo, Abra. Supo is one of the villages of the town of Tubo, Abra, a third-class municipality that has a total population of 5,588, comprising 902 households. Abra remains one of the poorest provinces in the Philippines, and, politically speaking, it is one of the provinces where there are recurring cases of political killings and massive election fraud during election time. It was this socio-political background that challenged Pentecostal Christians to take seriously how they could become an agent of social change in the political sector. The Pentecostal Assembly of God (PAG) is built in the middle of the village, close to the political and educational centre of the village. As to how it was started, the Pentecostal Assembly of God was founded by Fedro Castro, one of the earliest Filipino Pentecostal pioneers, who was converted in the United States and came back to the Philippines before World War II to evangelise local communities in the Northern Philippines. Fedro Castro, during the formative stage of Pentecostals, travelled on foot and on horseback for weeks in the Mountains of Ilocos Sur and Abra to proclaim the Christian gospel to different tribes in the languages of the region. What seemed to be an ordinary day in 1947 when Fedro Castro came into contact with the Maeng Tribe near the Abra River became instrumental for the conversion of prominent families in the village of Supo. Although, at the start, those who were converted to the Christian religion were deeply persecuted by paganism, they slowly and faithfully interjected the Christian gospel into their village. Eventually a church was built in the centre of the village with 80% of the population as

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members. The church owned a one-acre cemetery in the village. The strong political engagement of the church is closely connected to its strong emphases on the creation and the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. The PAG believes that Christian doctrine must be lived out in the world. It means that Christians are given the responsibility to take care of the whole of creation by virtue of the image of God imputed to man, and to actualise the mission of Jesus to redeem and restore the broken world. So in the past decades up until now, members started joining in the formal politics of the village. There are two factors that drove the members to run for political office. The village in the past was dominated by pagans and there was a threat of a communist takeover during the Marcos era. As the church aggressively evangelised people in the village through constant witnessing, fellowships, and signs and wonders, people began to be incorporated into the church. When social problems arose in the village, Christians began to pass ordinances based on the teachings in the scriptures. Elders in the church served as local court judges who executed decisions and discipline in the community. Through the strong political engagement of church leaders in the village, they also created and passed ordinances that protected the rivers and mountains surrounding their village. The village itself was rich in natural resources and far from ecological destruction because of the close watch and community ordinances created by Christian leaders in the village.

Case Two: Members of the Del Pilar Assemblies of God and their Political Participation If the Supo Assembly of God is a local church within a small village that has strong political engagement within its own community, the Pentecostal Assemblies of God in Del Pilar are comprised of small local churches within the town of Del Pilar that have a vibrant religious practice and a cohesive network. The town of Del Pilar is a fifth-class municipality in the province of Ilocus Sur with a population of 4,722 in 811 households. Formerly known as Conception, the town’s name was later changed, and named after the young general, Gregorio Del Pilar who fought to the death against the Americans at Tirad Pass, by virtue of the Republic Act No. 1246 on June 10, 1955. The inhabitants are Igorots, but belong to the Bago ethno-linguistic group. These people, a mixture of Ilocano and Igorot intermarriages, speak the Kankanaey dialect but can also speak and understand the dialects of neighbouring towns. The inception of the Christian gospel in the Municipality of Del Pilar was a collective contribution of Pentecostal believers in Ilocus Sur,

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particularly the ministry of San Emilo and the Bugibog Assemblies of God. The revival occurred in Cabaroan through the initiative of Fedro Castro and Pablo Garcia, and fuelled an evangelistic outreach ministry to the mountain areas of Ilocos Sur including the Municipality of Del Pilar. Through the conversion and the baptism of the Holy Spirit of Sayong Nabubos, together with the early converts from the Bugibog AG, he went to Barangay Matue, sharing his faith with his relatives. Pagan elders like Eugenio Mangibat and Herman Dang-Alan were known as the first converts who were baptised and became the first officers of the church on February 11, 1948. In April 1948, three months after the first baptism, the church was constructed and officially organised. As early as 1948, a respected soldier of World War II by the name of Hover Ciriaco had direct contact with the believers in Barangay Matue. Through the constant evangelistic efforts of the believers, Hover Ciriaco came to Christ and was baptised in 1949. With the visit of Fedro Castro to his house on December 24, 1948, he was encouraged to follow Christ and leave the army for the cause of Christ. Seeing a vision of Christ, he decided to be baptised in water, and once and for all left his post in the military to become a preacher. Through Castro's follow-up efforts, Aming Fabrigas and Petra Lazaro from San Emilio, Hover Ciriaco was increasingly convinced that God was calling him to be a preacher. After his conversion, he unashamedly preached the gospel to his relatives and many came to Christ through his evangelism. The formation and growth of the Assemblies of God in Del Pilar, however, cannot be reconstructed without considering the contribution of Carino, a recognised Spirit-filled pastor, who played a significant role in the expansion of the Assemblies of God in Del Pilar. Pastor Alberto Carino, a prayerful pastor, discipled Ciriaco to grow in the Lord and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Together with Ciriaco, they brought the gospel to the neighbouring villages which eventually established local churches in Butarag (1950), Poblacion Del Pilar (1950-55), Alfonso (1955), and Bussut (1959). Carrying on the evangelistic passion of these early pioneers, these local churches spawned other local churches in other districts such as Ululing AG (1980) and Tangaoan (1990). The town has a population of 4,722 people; the Assemblies of God have 1,555 adherents and members in this Municipality, second to the Catholic Church by only a small margin. Among the towns and cities of the Philippine archipelago, it was rare to find Pentecostals participating in the political arena. The Pentecostals on some level continue to regard politics as dirty and sinful. But the case of Pentecostals in Del Pilar is unique and worthy of emulation. Pentecostals are not only growing numerically, but are actively participating in the local

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politics of the town down to the barangay level. The town is led by Luz Villaloboz who succeeded the former mayor Gilbert Ciriaco, the son of a Pentecostal pioneer and a devoted member and elder of the Tangoan Assembly of God. Most of the councillors and barangay leaders are members of Assembly of God churches. There are at least two important factors that contribute to the active political participation of Pentecostals. Pentecostals recognise their potential contribution to the social challenges of their towns. Aside from massive poverty and the social struggle they are facing, the practice of politics in the past was characterised by political patronage and corruption. So it was due to these challenges that Pentecostals collectively engaged in politics. As a result, crimes like murder, kidnapping and stealing are virtually unknown in the townfolks' vocabulary. One can sleep with windows and doors open at night and safely leave produce at the farm for weeks. The people are industrious, cooperative, friendly, hospitable and peace-loving. It may seem unbelievable, but no one has ever been sued or tried since the creation of the Municipal Circuit Court. The elders settle misunderstandings and disputes amicably in the shortest possible time.

Conclusion This study laid out seminal research to demonstrate that Pentecostal believers, after a century of the church’s existence, are beginning to recognise the importance of interplaying faith and religiosity in the political sectors of Philippine society. While it is true that Pentecostal Christians at the macro-level are still developing a united political voice, the results of the study show that Pentecostal involvement in local politics is participation and locally acting towards the creation of just politics in the community. The study also shows that Pentecostals are creatively and innovatively engaging the meaning of the Christian faith in the different socio-political challenges that are arising in their respective communities and participating judiciously for the increasing democratisation of local communities. With these indications, the general populations will not only see Pentecostal Christian churches grow in the future but will actively participate in the moral and political transformation of local politics in the Philippines. On the basis of these observations and findings, this study critically suggests the following recommendations to the Filipino Pentecostals to develop a fuller and holistic understanding of politics. First, because Pentecostals are beginning to integrate faith into the political sectors, Pentecostals must position Pentecostal local churches at the centre of

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social education, empowering church members and informing them about the current issues and challenges of the socio-political realities in their respective communities, providing a fair and critical analysis of political issues, and perhaps advocating and lobbying for those policies and laws that empower people’s rights and well-being. Second, because Pentecostal believers need a theological framework and praxis upon which to base their political ideologies, different from secular ideologies, there is a need for a new breed of Pentecostal scholars to develop a Pentecostal theology of politics, integrating their biblical doctrine on politics in the fellowship meetings and bible studies, whereas members of the local church need to develop a holistic understanding of the political society. This Pentecostal theology of politics rooted in religious teachings and democratic laws must encourage Pentecostal believers to participate cohesively in the increasing democratisations of local communities.

Bibliography Aasmundsen, Hans Geir. “Pentecostals and Politics in Argentina: A Question of Compatibility.” Abero-Americana (Jan., 2012): 85-107. Bergunder, Michael. “Pentecostalism in Politics.” International and Interdisciplinary Conference of the European Research Network on Global Pentecostalism (GloPent). Heidelberg: Heidelberg University, 2013. Carter, Craig A. The Politics of the Cross: The Theology and Social Ethics of John Howard Yoder. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, 2001. CBCP News, “Erap, Binay Attend El Shaddai Fete.” Monday, October 7, 2013, http://www.cbcpnews.com/ cbcpnews/?p=2378, accessed on 07/10/2013. Clifton, Shane. “Pentecostalism and Politics.” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 10, no. 2 (July, 2007): 229. Dougherty, Kevin D., et al. “Sidelined by Religion? Community Involvement and Political Participation of US Pentecostals.” Paper presented at the 2009 Symposium on Religion and Politics on May 12, 2009, Department of Sociology, Baylor University. Grant, Paul. “Dread and Pentecostal: A Political Theology of Black Church in Britain. Black Theology in Britain.” A Journal of Contextual Praxis 6 (May, 2001): 66-78. Greena, Sandra E. “Sacred Terrain: Religion, Politics, and Place in the History of Anloga Ghana.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 30, no. 1 (1997): 1.

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Hodges, Sam. “Pentecostalism in Asia” The Pew Forum of Religion and Public Life, December 21, 2006, http://religionblog.dallasnews.com/2006/12/pentecostalism-inasia.html/, accessed on 28/09/2013. IPEOT2010, “Religious Leaders in Politics,” https://sites.google.com/site/ipeoteam2010/religious-leaders-in-politics, accessed on 07/10/2013. Javier, Eliezer. “Ministerial Political Engagement: PGCAG Perspective.” A Paper, December 2009; http://pgcag.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/mpe.pdf, accessed on 17/06/2010. ___ . “A Sacred Exercise Gone Awry: A Look into Election Practices in the Philippine General Council of the Assemblies of God.” http://pgcag.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/asega.pdf, accessed on 17/06/2010. Kwabena, Asamoah Gra-du J. “Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria.” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 35, no. 4 (Oct., 2011): 159. Kessler, Christ and Jurgen Ruland. Give Jesus a Hand: Charismatic Christians: Populist Religion and Politics in the Philippines. Manila, Philippines: Ateneo De Manila Press, 2008. Maltese, Giovanne. “Politics and Society in Filipino Pentecostalism in Negros Oriental.” (Unpublished Research, University of Heidelberg, 1 May 2012 to April 2015), http://theologie.uni-hd.de/rm/Forschung/fspfingstbewegung/new-research-project-Pentecostalism-and-politics-inthe-philippines?set_language=en, accessed on 28/09/2013. Martinez, Ramirez and M. Hector. “Pentecostal Expansionism and Political Activism.” Caribbean Studies 33, no. 1 (Jan-June, 2005): 1113. Marsh, Christopher and Artyom Tonoyam. “The Civic, Economic, and Political Consequences of Pentecostalism in Russia and Ukraine.” Society 46, no. 6 (Nov., 2009): 510. Pantoja, Dan. “The State of the Philippines Evangelical Church Today: A Positive Response.” June 14, 2011, http://waves.ca/2011/06/14/description-of-the-evangelical-churchtoday/, accessed on 28/09/2013. Petersen, Douglas. “Latin American Pentecostalism: Social Capital, Network, and Politics.” PNEUMA: The Journal of the Society of Pentecostal Studies 26, no. 2 (Fall, 2014): 1-15. Pew Research Religion & Public Life Project, “Historical Overview of Pentecostalism in the Philippines: Origins and Growth.” Spirit and Power––10, Country Survey of Pentecostals, October 5, 2006.

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http://www.pewforum.org/2006/10/05/historical-overview-ofPentecostalism-in-Philippines/, accessed on 29/09/2013. Putnam, Robert. “The 2006 Social Capital Community Survey Wave 1 Questionnaires Sanguaro Seminar Civic Engagement in America Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University Study # 135633 January 13, 2006; http://www.hks.harvard.edu/saguaro/pdfs/2006SCCSw1.pdf, accessed on 13/10/2013. —. “The Prosperous Community: Social Capital and Public Life.” The American Prospect 13 (Spring, 1993); http://epn.org/prospect/13/13putn.html, accessed on 12/07/2009. Storkey, Alan. Jesus and Politics: Confronting the Powers. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2005. Sucio, Joseph R. “Pentecostalism and Social Change.” AJPS 8, no. 2 (2005): 1-95. Tejedo, Joel. “Pentecostal Civic Engagement: How Ilocano and Cordilleran Pentecostals Build Poor Communities in the Philippines.” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 13, no. 1 (2012): 41-46. —. “The Bible, Civic Engagement, and Justice for the Poor: A Pentecostal Perspective.” Journal of Asian Mission 13, no. 2 (2012): 3-14. Villanueva, Eddie. “Bangon Pilipinas Movement.” http://bangonpilipinas.net/ii-energize-the-economy.html, accessed on 28/09/2013. Yoder, John Howard. The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1972. Yong, Amos. In the Days of Caesar: Pentecostalism and Political Theology. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing House, 2010. —. “Pentecostalism and the Political: Trajectories in Its Second Century.” PNEUMA 32 (2010): 333-336.

PART THREE: EAST ASIA

CHAPTER NINE A SOCIO-RELIGIOUS VOLUNTEERISM: THE AUSTRALIAN NGO MOVEMENT DURING THE KOREAN WAR (1950-1953)1 DAVID W. KIM AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPS: 1925-1960) began to reconsider the Korean colonial policy of Japan for which the Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA) was one of the eleven national councils in the pre-UN international organisation (IPS), along with the USA, Canada, China, France, Japan, the Netherlands, NZ, the Philippines, the UK, and the USSR.2 When Japan was defeated, the Korean peninsula was ideologically divided into North and South Korea in 1945. The North was occupied by troops of the Soviet Union. The South was superintended by the United States. The United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea (UNTCOK: 1947-1948) was the body that oversaw elections in May 1948. The Commission consisted of nine nations, including Australia, Canada, and Syria. 3 Afterwards, Australia played an ongoing, significant role as a member of the United Nations Commission on Korea (UNCOK), which was established in 1948 as a diplomatic mission to monitor the withdrawal of WWII occupation forces from Korea, and provided UN intelligence sources for the  1

The previous version of this article has been introduced in the European Journal of Korean Studies (2017). 2 Gavan McCormack, Cold War, Hot War: An Australian Perspective on the Korean War (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1983). Jung-Hyoo Ko, “The Institute of Pacific Relations and the Korean Problem during the Pacific War,” Acta Korana 17, 1 (Jun.,, 2014): 429-453. 3 Bruce Cumings, Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005), 211–212.

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unification of the two regimes.4 When the troops of North Korea invaded South Korea on June 25 1950, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 82, calling on North Korea to cease hostilities and withdraw to the 38th parallel.5 The United Nations Command (UNC) formed the multinational military forces supporting South Korea during the Korean War. Personnel from the Australian Army (3 RAR, and elements of 1 and 2 RAR), the Royal Australian Air Force (No. 77 Squadron, and other elements), and the Royal Australian Navy (nine ships, including HMS Glory and HMAS Sydney, and an air group) fought as part of the UN multinational force.6 Australia dispatched seventeen thousand service people during the Korean War from 1950 to 1953.7 Among them, the military commitment of Australian females was evident. In this situation, where there was a severe manpower shortage, a new Australian women’s air force was formed in July 1950 and became the Women’s Royal Australian Air Force (WRAAF). The Royal Australian Army Nursing Corps (RAANC) was also established, in February 1951,  4

In May 1950, war loomed on the still-divided Korean peninsula and military observers began to undertake monitoring activities in the field supplemented by UNCOK. Two Australian observers, Major F. S. B. Peach and Squadron Leader R. J. Rankin, were in Korea. Whilst it was Australia’s smallest peacekeeping contingent, it was one of the most important as they were the only UNCOK observers in place when North Korea invaded South Korea in late June 1950. Their thorough report proved that North Korea had initiated hostilities and provided the evidence needed for the UN to intervene in South Korea. “United Nations Commission on Korea (UNCOK) 1950,” https://www.awm.gov.au/conflict/CN50 0118/, accessed on 16/03/2016. 5 The UN Commission for the Unification and Rehabilitation of Korea (UNCURK) occurred as part of the Korean War in 1951. Many of the participating nations include those who participated in the United Nations Command. “United Nations Security Council Resolution 82,” June 25, 1950. Bradley Lynn Coleman, “The Colombian Army in Korea, 1950-1954,” The Journal of Military History (Project Muse (Society for Military History)) 69 (4): 1137-1177. Stanley Sandler, “Select Bibliography of the Korea War,” Magazine of History 14, 3 (Spring, 2000): 6-9. Robert Barnes, “Branding an Aggressor: The Commonwealth, the United Nations and Chinese Intervention in the Korea War, November 1950January 1951,” The Journal of Strategic Studies 33, 2 (April, 2010): 231-253. 6 The nine warships of the Royal Australian Navy comprised one carrier, four destroyers, and four frigates. David Hobbs, “British Commonwealth Carrier Operations in the Korea War,” Air & Space Journal 18, 4 (Winter, 2004): 62-71. 7 Three hundred and thirty-nine soldiers died and 1200 were wounded. Richard Trembath, “A Lie Based on a Delusion: Australia’s Role in the Korea War Germ Warfare Controversy,” Social Alternatives 23, 3 (2004): 6-10.

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from the Royal Australian Army Nursing Service (RAANS).8 Enlistment for the Women’s Royal Australian Army Corps (WRAAC) began in April 1951, along with enlistment for the Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS).9 Then, was there any involvement of Australian NGO people during the Korean War? If so, what was their background? Where were they? What was their concern, and how did they help the Korean people?

Figure 1: The aircraft carrier HMAS Sydney in Korean waters 1951-1952 © the Sea Power Centre, Australia10

Australian NGO Volunteerism in Pusan and Kyungnam Province The sociocultural activities of the Australian non-government organisations  8

Edgar Jones and Ian P. Palmer, “Army Psychiatry in the Korean War: the Experience of 1 Commonwealth Division,” Military Medicine 165, 4 (2000): 256260. 9 “Women in Action––Nurses and Serving Women,” http://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/women-in-action, accessed on 16/03/2016. 10 The original photo has been provided by the Sea Power Centre (for Australian Navy History), Canberra, Australia.

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(NGOs) were not the result of the direct involvement of the Australian movement in Asia-Pacific policy in the 1940s. Rather, the history of the Australian NGO movement came about following the death of Joseph Henry Davies in Pusan (a harbour city in the southern part of Korea) in 1889.11 From 1889 to 1941, there were seventy-eight Australian male and female volunteers, helping the citizens of colonial Korea.12 The deportation order of Japan caused all foreigners, including Australians, to be forcefully deported in 1941. Afterwards, Korea went through sociopolitical persecution during the Greater East Asia War (until 1945). The Korean people experienced independence, but the period between 1945 and 1950 was another confused time under foreign military forces. The voluntary activities of Australians were slight, but the Korean War motivated the hearts of Australians, especially through the Presbyterian Church of Australia (PCA) and the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union (PWMU). Heung Soo Kim demonstrated the role of the World Council of Churches (WCC) with a pro-South Korea, pro-American, and pro-UN position on the Korea War. The WCC also approved “the police action” of the United Nations. The leaders of American Churches held a meeting in New York in October 1950, to discuss relief work in Korea. In this regard, Heung Soo Kim argued that Korea should become “the primary recipient of American paternalism” in East Asia, instead of China and Japan.13 However, since the regions of Pusan and Kyungnam province had been the main areas in which Australian volunteers had previously settled, from the first half of the twentieth century, the launch of social volunteerism among Australian NGO people was much easier and more effective. When the capital of South Korea was relocated twice from Seoul to Pusan, in 1950 and 1951-53, war refugees gathered in the provisional capital city of Korea.14 The Australian Mission base was the main place where foreign NGO workers could get help or cooperate to  11

“The Outlook in Korea,” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (April, 1950): 11-12. 12 Sang Gyoo Lee, To Korea with Love: Australian Presbyterian Mission Work in Korea, 1889-1941 (Melbourne: PVC, 2009), 102-110. 13 Heung Soo Kim, “The Korean War (1950-1953) and Christianity: ProAmerican Activities of the Christian Churches and the North Korean Reactions,” Madang 16 (Dec., 2011): 135-158. 14 There were about forty refugee camps in Pusan during the Korean War. EunKyoung Kong, “The Formation of Woo-Arm Dong and its Spacious Characteristic,” in The Space and Life of the Woo-Arm Dong People, edited by Hyeon Yu and Sang-Su Kim (Pusan: Shin-Hyung Ki-hak, 2015), 60-61 & 254256.

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assist Korean refugees. The compassionate spirit of Australian volunteerism was revealed in the progressive works of humanitarian relief, medical work, religious mission, and education.

1. Humanitarian Relief During the Korean War, Australian military groups provided defence against the communists of North Korea and China as part of the UN force. On the other hand, the Australian NGO people launched humanitarian relief work, for tens of thousands of refugees had fled from Seoul and North Korea: Visited a refugee camp of about 1,000 this morning on a river bed ... another camp of one half million people in the river bed … the Korean military hospital in Pusan needs more doctors, nurses, bandages … water, toilet facilities, blankets and organisation are the major needs.15

Harold Voelkel expressed the chaotic situation when he said: “Pusan seems to be absorbing all Korea. People from all places stream in, Pusan became definitely the hub of the nation.”16 There were a few international NGOs in Pusan, such as the Independent Board, Australian Presbyterians, Southern Presbyterians, Methodists, Seventh Day Adventists, the YMCA,17 and international chaplains, but “the Australian House” became the international centre where all NGO groups regularly met for their cooperative works: “the Australian House is like an accordion, for when any one extra arrives they apparently just move over and let him in.”18 In response, the Presbyterian Church of Australia’s (PCA) Board of Mission (Sydney) contributed £500 to re-establish the homes and  15

According to the UN Civil Assistance Command (UNCACK), there were approximately 267,000 refugees in Pusan in March 1951. Hyun-ju Lee, Provisional Capital Memorial Hall (Pusan: Shin-Hyung Ki-hak, 2012), 55. “Korea’s Urgent Need for Help,” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Feb., 1951): IV. The original journal (The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria) will be abbreviated as CPWMUV from now on. 16 “Pusan in Wartime,” CPWMUV (Mar., 1951): 10-11. 17 There were nine YMCA centres in Korea: Pusan, Taegu, Taejon, Mokpo, Masan, Kwangju, Chochiwon, Kunsan, and Chinhai. “The YMCA in Korea,” CPWMUV (Jul.,, 1952): 11-12. 18 “Pusan in Wartime,” CPWMUV (Mar., 1951): 11. “News Items from Korea,” CPWMUV (May, 1951): 6.

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properties in a part of south Kyung-Sang province. 19 Harold W. Lane delivered thirty-seven bags of grain to a district where half a million refugees were living out in the open space.20 The Australian relief worker visited the cities and towns of Masan, Chudong, Sinmasan, Chindong, Pansung, Changwon, Hamyang, Haman, and Chinju with relief supplies on December 31 1950. In particular, Chinju, where there had been a major Australian Hospital (the Paton Memorial Hospital) from 1905, was completely destroyed between June and August 1950. 21 The Chinju railway station, with the bridge between Masan and Chinju, was broken. The city was seen to be hopelessly without a water service, electric light, and trains. The Southern Presbyterians left 1,700,000 won to the Australian NGO for Korean refugees (January 15 1951). The Queensland PCA gave more than £800 for the re-habitation of Pusan and Kyungnam province in March 1951.22 Some twenty boxes of clothes, donated by a New Zealand chaplain, were provided for the regions with refugees. 23 These sources were a great help towards overcoming the first winter (December 1950 to February 1951). While the World Council of Churches Food Bowl Appeal (WCCFBA) contributed £1,295, the PWMU and other Australian bodies added £700 towards relief in September 1951.24 The relief clothing sent from Australia had been widely distributed throughout regions of south Kyung-Sang before the second winter of the Korean War. Mr Lane testified that a three-quarter-ton truck from the United Church of Canada (UCC) had made a number of trips to the country with relief supplies. Thousands of people related to 150 regional churches received supplies. The houses in the remote towns and villages also obtained this relief benefit. 25 The leaders of regional churches supported families, women, and children who had lost family members and who were not being reached by the relief activity of the Korean government. There were also individuals who came to the Australian House looking for help. Those refugees were sent back to their dwelling places with food and clothes. Korean Army chaplains also helped to distribute twenty boxes of clothes for the destitute people just south of the

 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

“Our Missionary Mail Bag,” CPWMUV (Feb., 1951): 11. “Korea’s Urgent Need for Help,” CPWMUV (Feb., 1951): IV. “A Trip to Chinju,” CPWMUV (Mar., 1951): 6-7. “Korea,” CPWMUV (Mar., 1951): 10. “Pusan in Wartime,” CPWMUV (Mar., 1951): 11. “APC Notes,” CPWMUV (Sept., 1951): 13. “Our Church’s Relief Work in Korea,” CPWMUV (Dec., 1951): 10-12.

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38th parallel.26 A big proportion of the relief supplies sent from Australia was for the lepers who used to be under the care of the pre-1940 Australian volunteers in (Gamman-dong) Pusan. Relief funds had also enabled Australian workers to help not only the families of religious leaders, but also a seven-year old boy whose eyes were injured.27 Among other narratives of relief work, a widow with four children was given some money to start as a wayside seller of fruits. The result being successful, this approach was applied to similar cases of refugees who wanted to be self-sufficient, even during wartime. The idea of “selfhelp” was properly established as the (Australian) Relief Committee organised “small workshops where women may be able to make things for themselves and thus earn a little, rather than being on the dole.”28 The Australian House was in charge of distributing the New Zealand Church’s (NZC) £9,000 for Korean Christians and their churches that were destroyed.29 Twenty-five cases of relief goods had been delivered in Pusan in the middle of 1952, while it was decided that the special consignment of twenty-two cases from Sydney was to be supplied to Korean residents in Japan.30 A ton of powdered milk (Australian) was imported from Hong Kong for hospitals which indirectly challenged other foreign government agencies to bring in larger quantities.31 Thus, the Australian NGO group focused mainly on humanitarian relief from the end of 1950 to the early part of 1952, when there were so many refugees in Pusan and its regions of Kyungnam province. Yet Elizabeth Dunn, who was an eyewitness of the Korean War, argued that there was a further need for relief: “their very existence depends on the love and pity and help from others which will make a difference between life and death.”32 Under such circumstances, the change of currency on July 17 1952 increased the financial burden of Australian workers in that “the USA dollar brought 24,000 won, but now it can bring only 6,000 won.”33  26

“Our Church’s Relief Work in Korea,” CPWMUV (Dec., 1951): 10-12. Sang-Su Kim, “The Formation of Woo-Arm Dong and its Spacious Characteristic,” in The Space and Life of the Woo-Arm Dong People, edited by Hyeon Yu and Sang-Su Kim (Pusan: Shin-Hyung Ki-hak, 2015), 122-125. 27 Ibid. 28 “The Needs of Korea,” CPWMUV (Dec., 1954): 5-6. 29 “Foreign Mission Committee Notes,” CPWMUV (Feb., 1952): 9. 30 “Notes from the Foreign Mission Committee,” CPWMUV (Oct., 1952): 10. 31 “Our Korean Field,” CPWMUV (Oct., 1952): 11-12. 32 “A Glimpse of Ravaged Korea,” CPWMUV (Jul.,, 1952): 5. 33 “Our Korean Field,” CPWMUV (Oct., 1952): 13. “Suffering Korea,” CPWMUV (Dec., 1952): 7-8.

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2. Il-Sin Medical Project Medical volunteerism was another social method by which the Australian NGO people impacted the war refugees. Although they did not have any medical volunteers between 1941 and 1950, the Korean War demanded medical needs and encouraged the return of two daughters of James Mackenzie, who was called the father of Korean lepers during the colonial era (1910-1940). When the Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong declared the creation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on October 1, 1949, Dr Helen Mackenzie and midwife Catherine “Cath” Mackenzie had to leave China. When the initial campaign of supplying relief was turning into a second round, the medical volunteers “offered themselves for service in Korea in view of the great urgency of the relief programme.”34 Yet, the war situation did not allow them entry to the Korean peninsula until June 19, 1951, on which date the General PWMU Committee proposed the service plan for the Save the Children Fund organisation.35 The arrival of Helen and Cath to Pusan, where they were born and had grown up, was the second step of the Australian NGOs’ launching of a health project, especially for the social minorities of women and children.

Figure 2: Catherine (second from left) and Helen Mackenzie (third from left) with medical staff in front of the Il-Sin Christian Hospital in September 1952, public domain36

 34

“FMD Notes,” CPWMUV (Apr., 1951): 12. Helen and Cath left Australia for Korea on 7th November 1951. “Minutes of Meeting of the PWMU General Committee,” CPWMUV (Aug., 1951): 12. “About Our Friends,” CPWMUV (Dec., 1951): 12. 36 The Pusanchin church in which the Il-Sin hospital was built, was originally established by early Australians who arrived in Pusan in the pre-colonial period. See “Korea.Net: Gateway to Korea,” 35

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The first glimpse of Pusan for the female workers showed the growth of the population, caused by the arrival of people from Seoul and the North.37 A letter from Helen and Cath proved that the medical work was launched after a period of preparation: “it is now possible to send parcels, up to 11 lbs. in weight, to Korea … the need is for babies’ clothes and all that a baby needs, like soap, powder, napkins, etc., also pyjamas and nightgowns for the mothers.” 38 The passion of the medical volunteers was overwhelming, but the social situation was not ready to launch until June 1952; nevertheless, they regularly visited the other temporary medical institutions of the Korean government and the international organisation (UNCACK: United Nations Civil Assistance Command Korea). 39 The Strange Korea of Today testified that the condition of those places was horrible as patients got no nursing assistance.40 The family was responsible for administering to patients. There were not enough blankets, while hygiene in the medical camps was the main concern. It was a reality that injections were overused or abused. The role of nurses was simply to wait on the doctors and write charts.41 Helen argued that the lack of nursing was partly due to the Japanese medical system under which the Koreans had been trained. 42 There were not enough medical books for training local students. A Glimpse of Ravaged Korea demonstrated that Severance Hospital was in the same situation, where refugee women and children were mainly treated with a lack of facilities. Patients, including infants, were not properly cared for. They needed specialists qualified in Pathology, Obstetrics, Gynaecology, Surgery, and Medicine. 43 Australian medical workers helped to bring about a new beginning for Severance Hospital as well as Ewha Women’s Christian University Medical School in Pusan. Yet  http://www.korea.net/NewsFocus/People/view?articleId=140629, accessed on 12/04/2017. 37 According to the report of the UN Civil Assistance Command (UNCACK), there were 912,000 people in September 1953. Lee, Provisional Capital Memorial Hall, 55. 38 “About Our Friends,” CPWMUV (Jun.,, 1952): 2. 39 The UNCACK was a United Nations military agency that was involved in the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Korea during the Korean War from 1950 until 1953. Along with the United Nations Korean Reconstruction Agency (UNKRA), UNCACK was one of the major organisations involved in providing humanitarian assistance to Korea during the war. 40 “The Strange Korea of Today,” CPWMUV (Jun.,, 1952): 9-10. 41 Ibid., 9. 42 Ibid., 10. 43 “A Glimpse of Ravaged Korea,” CPWMUV (Jul.,, 1952): 5-6. “Notes from the Foreign Mission Committee,” CPWMUV (Oct., 1952): 10.

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such insecurity in wartime Korean society instigated a daily number of suicides (600 people per day).44 Therefore, the purpose of the Australian hospital was to focus on women and children. The Governor of the province supported the medical project.45 The authorities of the United Nations and the Korean Church were also approached for consultation. As a result, a medical organisation was formed as an obstetric hospital as well as for training nursemidwives. 46 For this project, Dr. Helen Mackenzie and Catharine Mackenzie were specially trained and qualified with previous experiences in China. The Victorian PWMU donated £10,000, while the Canadian Mission was invited to share their business management skills in the enterprise.47 The Korean medical team was to employ three doctors and thirty nurses. The budget of £12,000 was confirmed, with the additional cost of resources (£2,000). 48 Many baby items were required, such as nighties, singlets, jackets, napkins, blankets, and bunny rugs. Women’s clothes, safety pins, powders, soap, olive oil, wool, gauze, linen, and bed jackets were demanded in unlimited quantities. Table-covers, cups, little dishes, mugs, curtains, screens, paint, enamel, and stain were also suggested as being needed for the new Pusan obstetric hospital. Drugs, hospital goods, vitamins, iron, aspirin, Dettol and other disinfectants (like sulphas) were required as well.49 In the second half of 1952, Australian House had become the property owner of the hospital. Helen and Catharine, who had experience in making a temple into a hospital in China, began the project to change a Pusanchin church’s kindergarten building into a hospital which could house fourteen beds. Medical books also began to arrive from Australia for training purposes. Some of the resources were contributed to Severance Hospital and the Ewha (medical) library. 50 The hospital was officially  44

“Our Korea Filed,” CPWMUV (Oct., 1952): 11-12. “A Glimpse of Ravaged Korea,” CPWMUV (Jul.,, 1952): 5-6. “Seoul Today––A Shattered City,” CPWMUV (Sept., 1952): 6-7. 45 “Pokseegie––Bread Cast on Water,” CPWMUV (Jul.,, 1952): 5-6. 46 “Minutes of Meeting of the General Committee of the PWMU,” CPWMUV (Aug., 1952): 11-12. “The New Hospital in Korea,” CPWMUV (Nov., 1952): 8. Ki-Su Kim, Survey of Pusan Modern Heritage Buildings, reported to Pusan Metropolitan City, 02, 2005, 106-107. 47 “Foreign Mission Committee Notes,” CPWMUV (Aug., 1952): 9-10. 48 “Minutes of Meeting of the General Committee of the PWMU,” CPWMUV (Aug., 1952): 11-12. 49 “How Can You Help,” CPWMUV (Sept., 1952): 5. 50 “About Our Friends,” CPWMUV (Nov., 1952): 4-8.

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opened on September 17, 1952, and named the “Il-Sin Women’s Hospital” which means “daily new,” with the idea of renewal every day. The United Nations Korea Reconstruction Agency (UNKRA) supported the extra building (kitchen, laundry, staff dining-room, and out-patient quarters) the hospital needed and gave $500 for teaching equipment. 51 The hospital averaged two babies a day in February 1953.52 The “infant care,”53 which previously brought great success at the Australian Chinju Hospital (Paton Memorial) during the colonial period of Korea, was one of the main works in the hospital. There was a plan for a postgraduate course for those who had no chance for practical experience during their training. Another programme was to offer six months of training for student nurses of other NGO hospitals, to be devoted to midwifery. The home-delivery service was additionally launched by nurses who had sufficient experience, because most Korean women preferred to have their babies at home.54

3. Religious Mission a) Zainichi Koreans55 The Australian NGO volunteers not only affected the refugee society with medical technology, but also continued their religious mission among Koreans. When the Korean War occurred in June 1950, most of the foreign residents had to leave Korea without any certainty of return. 56 The Australian volunteers moved to Japan, where there were Korean immigrants from Chulla Province, Kuchang, Taiku, Andung, Kimchun, and Quelpart (Jeju Island).57 Australians exiled in Japan cooperated with the Yokohama Korean Christian community to help the war refugees. The church was set up in the Korean style as a room in a Japanese house. The original church was completely destroyed at the end of the Second World  51

“Letter from Sister Catherine Mackenzie,” CPWMUV (Mar., 1953): 4-5. The number of beds was increased from fourteen to twenty by July 2 1953. “Letter from Sister Catherine Mackenzie, Pusan, Korea,” CPWMUV (May, 1952): 4. “About Our Friend,” CPWMUV (Sept., 1952): 2. 53 “Letter from Sister Catherine Mackenzie,” CPWMUV (Oct., 1953): 6-7. 54 The generous gift ($5,000) of the UNRRA (United Nations Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency) was used to build the annex building of the hospital just before the end of the Korean War. 55 Zainichi Koreans mean ethnic Koreans living in Japan. 56 It was the second forceful departure since 1940-41, when the colonial government of Korea issued a deportation order for the launch of the Greater East Asia War (Dai Tǀ-A Sensǀ: 1941-1945). 57 “Korean Christians in Japan,” CPWMUV (Feb., 1951): 4-5. 52

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War. Yet, according to Miss Dunn, Sunday school was a great place where thirty to forty children gathered, even though all teaching had to be done in the Japanese language. Reading and writing in Korean script were offered at the end of the Sunday programme.58 Miss M. Withers and Miss A. A. McNabb serviced the Tokyo Korean Church, and there were two other Korean settlements. The KeioTamagawa district of Tokyo had over 100 Korean houses. The adult service and Sunday school were held at a house for women and children. As a result, Tamagawa Korean Christians had a site for a small church, towards which the Tokyo Korean Church, the Australian Mission (£25), the Canadian Mission, and the Koreans in the district helped with contributions.59 There were another fifty to sixty houses in the area of Kami-ishi-hara, in which the church had twenty-one people regularly attending services.60 There was an objection from three fortune tellers to prevent Korean people coming to the church, but the Australian pastoral team still influenced the Zainichi Koreans in Japan from early 1951. By the summer of 1952, Miss Withers confessed that “the (voluntary) work in Japan among children is growing numerically and in enthusiasm.”61 The former Korean students then took over the English Bible Study classes: “Letters from some of the students at the high school where I (McNabb) taught report that the missionary who said I had taught is now taking all four and the after-school Bible class …”; “Our Bible class is being run as well as when you (McNabb) were here.”62 b) The Korean Church in Kyungnam Province The Korean War also brought a time of suffering for the Korean Church. Many Christians perished and hundreds of church buildings were lost. Most churches became greatly impoverished. F. Kinsler reported, on February 15, 1951, that many Christian ministers were killed or missing: 246 Presbyterians, eighty Roman Catholics, fifty-five Methodists, six Anglicans, six Holiness Church ministers, four members of the Salvation  58

“Korean Christians in Japan,” CPWMUV (Feb., 1951): 4-5. Miss McNabb had good Korean and Japanese language skills to communicate with Koreans in Japan. “News from Tokyo,” CPWMUV (Oct., 1951): 11-12. “Reports,” CPWMUV (April, 1952): 13. 60 “News from Tokyo,” CPWMUV (Oct., 1951): 11-12. 61 “Minutes of Meeting of the General Committee of the PWMU,” CPWMUV (Aug., 1952): 11-12. 62 “Extracts from the Letters from Miss B. McNabb, Korea,” CPWMUV (Mar., 1953): 6-7. 59

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Army, thirty-two foreign missionaries, and seven youth workers.63 While the Christians of Australia had been asked to help the rehabilitation, the churches in Pusan, including Sin Yang Church, were generously housing many refugees. Permission for other Australians to enter had been refused, but Rev. H. W. Lane, with his Korean colleague Ahn Umjun, consistently supported local churches in the region from 1950-1951. 64 He regularly visited the (150) churches of Kyoungnam region, including Chinju, Masan, Haman, and Kuchang, to encourage and cooperate with the local pastors for the members as well as war casualties:65 We went to Chinhai to Yaksin Lee’s place … did not see Yaksin’s sister … His boy is a bright young lad and the girls [are] growing into nice young ladies. The orphanage children look well cared for … we saw Dr Lee (a former doctor at Australian Chinju hospital in the 1930s). He looked ill. Yaksin Lee came to Pusan with us.66

The church in the Haman region was destroyed along with almost every house. However, the congregation bravely began to rebuild the church, for which Australian restoration funds were donated. 67 Helen Mackenzie testified to the religious passion of Korean Christians through the example of a Pusan Easter Sunday, saying: “Today is Easter Sunday and at dawn 5,000 Koreans and UN soldiers gathered to worship the Risen Lord.”68 The Australian volunteer witnessed the faithfulness of Korean churches at early-morning prayer. Meanwhile, Rev. George Anderson, who had previously volunteered in Korea from 1922 to 1934, had been appointed Foreign Mission Secretary of the Presbyterian Church of Australia in 1939. During his tenure he visited Korea a few times, including the years 1939, 1943, 1946-7, and 1949. When the Korean War occurred, he resigned from his position and then volunteered to help the Korean people again. Anderson returned to Korea in March 1952. 69 His ministry was visiting small churches to share the good news of Christianity. The Korean Church was eager to be encouraged by the preacher: “It’s putting a lot on you but will you speak to us again at the  63

“News Items from Korea,” CPWMUV (May, 1951): 6-7. “Korea’s Urgent Need for Help,” CPWMUV (Mar., 1951): 1-2. 65 “A Trip to Chinju,” CPWMUV (Mar., 1951): 1-2. 66 “From the Rev. H. W. Lane, Pusan, 11/01/1951,” CPWMUV (Mar., 1951): 1112. 67 “Our Church’s Relief Work in Korea,” CPWMUV (Dec., 1951): 10-12. 68 “The Strange Korea of Today,” CPWMUV (Jun., 1952): 9-10. 69 “The Rev. George Anderson, MA,” CPWMUV (Aug., 1952): 9-10. 64

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daybreak prayer meeting?”70 The D. M. Lyall Memorial School, which was established by Australians in 1926, was operated by the Korean Church. The ministry of George Anderson reached out to the (900) boys of the school. The Bible Women worked closely with the pastoral leadership of the Australian leader. They were not offered proper training, but their role was significant in the local Korean churches. Despite their commitment, the prayer of Anderson was for the need for “efficient and devoted ministers, efficient and devoted Bible women, efficient and devoted ordinary members of the congregations.” 71 The idea of establishing a District Training Bible Institute was eventually suggested for “young and old” and “men and women.” The so-called “Higher Bible Institute in Pusan” began to function as a professional religious organisation, where candidates such as Bible women, home missionaries, and ministers were admitted. At the request of the Australian Mission it included professional teachers from Australia.72 c) Chaplaincy and POWs From January to June 1951, the fighting between North and South Korea occurred around the 38th parallel. The opposing sides, with the support of Chinese communists and the United Nations, were taut for about six months. Then, a military stalemate was maintained from July 1951 to July 1953. During the period in which the refugee situation was gradually steadying, the military mission was another aspect in which Australian (and Korean) volunteers were concerned in the southern part of South Korea. As part of the military mission, a Chaplain Corps was established in the Korean Army with the support of President Syngman Rhee and the Defence Minister. No national funds were available for chaplains. Christian soldiers made up less than five per cent of the Korean Army. The rest of the Korean soldiers were animists, and a few Buddhists. However, David Chung who was teaching at the Cho-sen Seminary was appointed as a “teacher” among military men. The chaplain then organised an ultimate group of four teachers. Soon after, thirty-two civilian chaplains (ten Presbyterians; nine Methodists; four of the Holiness Church, and nine Catholics), under the guidance of united foreign volunteers, committed to the military chaplaincy of the Republic of Korea (ROK) Divisions.73 There was a negative concern for a civilian chaplaincy in the Army, but the result, according to the report of military chaplain W. E.  70 71 72 73

“Our Korean Field,” CPWMUV (Oct., 1952): 11-12. “The Needs of Korea,” CPWMUV (Dec., 1954): 5-6. Ibid., 6. “News Items from Korea,” CPWMUV (May, 1951): 7.

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Shaw, was unexpectedly positive, in that Korean (civilian) chaplains were “eager to serve their soldiers and seize the tremendous evangelistic opportunity” among the non-Christians.74 The number of Korean chaplains was increased to 100 (including forty Korean Presbyterian chaplains) in June 1952. 75 Their clothes, food, scriptures, hymnals, and other supplies were supplied by the international Chaplain Corps. The visitation of Chaplain-General Stewart to Korea additionally promoted the necessity and significance of chaplaincy in the Korean Army.

Figure 3: The prisoner of war (POW) from North Korea interviewed by an UN military officer, public domain

Since there were many prisoners (135,000) in Pusan and the surrounding regions, including Koje-do (“Island of Great Salvation”), 76 the POW  74

Ibid. “The Stranger Korea of Today,” CPWMUV (Jun.,, 1952): 9. “The YMCA in Korea,” CPWMUV (Jul.,, 1952): 11-12. 76 Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Prisoner Number 600,001: Rethinking Japan, China and the Korean War 1950-1953,” The Journal of Asian Studies 74, 2 (May, 2015): 411432. 75

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(prisoners of war) mission was an extension of the Christian mission. The chaplain, Harold Voelkel visited the POW camp on one occasion when there were 1,000 to 1,500 teenagers (between fourteen and sixteen years old).77 On another occasion he met 2,000 communicants at a POW church. Voelkel had 237 baptisms and 573 catechumens in April 1952. The Bible correspondence course was offered for the Christian POWs. Three hundred and sixteen POWs took the exams, and a total of 257 graduated.78 As the Rev. W. C. Kerr worked among the tens of thousands of Korean POWs, the Australian religious leader, as an officer of the United Nations, gave instruction on the basic principles of democracy as well as the Bible. Since most of them came from North Korea, the new religious teaching was more than welcome among the Communist soldiers.79 By December 1952, thousands of prisoners came out to Church services, day-break prayer meetings, and Bible study. The female POWs were another concern of Australian volunteers, and the Korean Church conducted such meetings among orphans, hospitals, and refugees. 80 The experience of Rene Watkins testifies that the refugee church in Koje-do, made with flimsy deal boards, had a congregation of about 100. Yet, their spirit of worship was very sincere, reaching down to the depths of a very real faith.81

4. Modern Education The social activity of modern education was the last strategy that the Australian workers applied, because, unlike male professionals and female medical workers, female foreigners were not allowed to enter the Korean peninsula. Helen and Catharine Mackenzie, as medical experts, arrived in Korea in March 1952, but non-medical women had to wait until September 1952. 82 When the Korean War had settled down, one year before its end, there were chances for M. Withers, A. A. McNabb and Rene Watkins to return.

 77

“Pusan in Wartime,” CPWMUV (Mar., 1951): 10-11. “POW Congregations in Korea,” CPWMUV (April, 1952): 8-9. 79 “Foreign Mission Committee Notes,” CPWMUV (May, 1952): 11-12. 80 Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Prisoner Number 600,001: Rethinking Japan, China and the Korean War 1950-1953,” The Journal of Asian Studies 74, 2 (May, 2015): 420425. 81 “A Visit to Koje Do,” CPWMUV (Jun.,, 1953): 8-9. 82 “About Our Friends,” CPWMUV (Sept., 1952): 3-4. 78

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a) Korean Education in Pusan Since the educational relationship of Australia with Korea had been established from the pre-colonial period of the twentieth century,83 it was not a surprise that NGO Australians were involved in local education in Pusan and its surrounding regions. The first task was to rehabilitate the Pusanchin kindergarten that had been launched in 1895 by Australians, including Bessie Moore (1863-1956), Belle Menzies (1856-1935), and Agnes Brown (1868-1954). The Korean teachers (including Miss Chai) and the members of the Mothers’ Association co-operated in the establishment of the project, even though all the equipment had been destroyed except for a piano and two organs. They had to use the ground floor of the Pusanchin church. 84 Miss Dunn described the historical narrative whereby “these children are being educated, although there are no schools. They (teachers) are meeting with the children on the hill-sides, or in bombed-out sites.” 85 Miss Watkins planned to teach some handicrafts to the patients of a public hospital. Her letter testified to her passion for helping the Korean people: “I wonder if you could obtain a gramophone. You may have heard of our visit to a public T.B. hospital here (Pusan). There are sixty patients, all of them lying all day with nothing to do and no one visiting them at all.”86 The education of the war orphans was also part of their social project. The Sunday school that was launched, from April 1951, was part of the educational volunteerism. Miss McNabb once witnessed that at 9:30 am, children met in a small space with very few teachers, but they certainly learnt the Bible stories, which touched some of them.87 Initiating a sewing project for widows was encouraged in the region of Masan (a population of 80,000). They provided sewing machines to the widows to support their families and children. It was also common for Australian volunteers to adopt homeless children, allowing the children the chance to become educated. Catharine Mackenzie, like other colleagues, adopted one child, Induri, who had been abandoned.88 The so-called “House of  83 O. Yul Kwon, and Gregory J. Trotman, “Australian Perceptions of Korea: the Need for Korean Studies,” Korea Observer 33, 4 (Winter, 2002): 619-623. “Our Korean Field,” CPWMUV (Oct., 1952): 11. 84 “About Our Friends,” CPWMUV (Nov., 1952): 3-4. “Personal Report (M. Withes, Jun.,, 1949),” CPWMUV (Feb., 1949): 7. 85 “Fifteen Days in Korea,” CPWMUV (Dec., 1952): 4-5. 86 “About Our Friends,” CPWMUV (Nov., 1952): 4. 87 “Extracts from a Letter from Miss B. McNabb, Korea,” CPWMUV (Mar., 1953): 6-7. 88 “Seoul Today––A Shattered City,” CPWMUV (Sept., 1953): 6-7.

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Hope” had been built to provide a home for women coming out of prison. The place functioned to offer a Christian welcome and a guide in the process of rehabilitation.89 By the end of 1953, the educational work of Australian women was extended to the Tongyung and Jinju regions after Masan. 90 As a result, Queeaimie (known as Harla or Hanna), who attended Ilsin Girls’ School (one of the first Australian schools), affected the life of a brother (Sung Bong Yang) as he became the Mayor of Pusan and Minister of Agriculture in President Rhee’s cabinet. Her sister-in-law (Mr Yang’s wife: Moon Pokseerie) was also educated in the initial Australian educational centre (called Myoora Institute) and went to Ilsin Girls’ School. 91 The female pastor Deok-gwi Gong (1911-1997) of Tongyung, who graduated from the Australian Jin-Myoung kindergarten and Ilsin Girls’ School, became thewife of the fourth President of South Korea, Bo-seon Yun (1960-1962). The First Lady (Myung-soon Son) of the seventh President of South Korea, Young-sam Kim (1993-1998), was also influenced by one of the Australian education centres (Chang-sin School) in Masan. b) Korean Education in Australia Modern education for Koreans was not only practised in Korea, but also in Australia in the 1950s. The professional fields were unlimited, including medical or nursing science, as the Australian NGOs provided a liberal environment and knowledge for Korean trainees. In early 1950, five Koreans came to Australia for their postgraduate studies. Among them, Cheung Soo Huh was studying political science; Min Ha Cho was in theological education at Ridley College; and Pong Eun Lee pursued graduate study in medicine: “the three Korean men will pursue their studies in Australia for some time further in 1951.”92 Miss Hong was a trained nurse, gaining experience in medical practice at St. Andrew’s Hospital. Another young man had also been sponsored by the United Nations Commission to study textiles at Gordon Technical College in Geelong, Victoria.93 The experience of two years’ study and Australian  89

“Letter from Rev. G. Anderson (23rd Sept., 1953),” CPWMUV (Dec., 1953): 1213. 90 “Korea, Extracts from Annual Report 1953,” CPWMUV (Aug., 1954): 8-9. 91 “Pokseegie––Bread Cast on Water,” CPWMUV (Aug., 1952): 8-9. “After Many Days––Another Instance,” CPWMUV (May, 1954): 8-10. 92 “Korea,” CPWMUV (Mar.,, 1951): 10. “POW Congregations in Korea,” CPWMUV (Apr., 1952): 11-13. 93 “Korean Orphans and Our Mission Boxes,” CPWMUV (April, 1950): 10. “Farewell Messages,” CPWMUV (May, 1952): 5-6.

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life not only provided them with an opportunity to build up an open mind to Western personal life, but also motivated them to have social leadership skills for modern Korean society. When Miss Hong returned to Korea, she was promoted to Matron of the Severance Hospital in Seoul in September 1953. 94 Mr Cho was interested in carrying on the Student Volunteer Movement (SCM) in Korea. Cheung Soo Huh became the Vice-Minister of Education in the Korean government.95 Such an overseas education was an alternative method by which young Koreans were able to obtain a global perspective for the democratisation of Korea.

Conclusion The Korean War (1950-1953), which was caused by the political tensions of two global ideologies between the Capitalist West and the Soviet Bloc, brought further mental suffering to the Korean people after colonial hardships (1910-1945). The peninsula nation did not have enough time to modernise its society by itself. Meanwhile, Western NGO volunteerism was one of the key sources through which local people were able to learn new technologies and Western knowledge. The effort of Australian volunteers, initialised in 1889, was consistently continued, even during the Korean War. Their cultural and geographical knowledge of the regions of Pusan and Kyungnam Province was advanced, and provided useful information for other foreign NGO organisations (including the Swedish and German Red Cross).96 While 17,000 Australian soldiers were on the battlefield, Australian volunteers were involved in various projects of relief, medical work, religious mission, and modern education. Despite the fact that those works could not be performed at the same time, the social impact of the Australian workers cannot be denied. Especially, the health and security of women and children were their priority, in order to sustain family life after the humanitarian relief project. The Il-Sin medical project was one of the  94

“Seoul Today––A Shattered City,” CPWMUV (Sept., 1953): 6-7. “Letter from Rev. G. Anderson,” CPWMUV (Dec., 1953): 10. 96 Therefore, their NGO volunteerism was the most effective tool for Kyungnam Koreans and war refugees, even though there were ten doctors and thirty nurses at the Swedish Red Cross of Pusanchin for soldiers. Eun-Kyoung Kong, “The Formation of Woo-Arm Dong and its Spacious Characteristic,” in The Space and Life of the Woo-Arm Dong People, edited by Hyeon Yu and Sang-Su Kim (Pusan: Shin-Hyung Ki-hak, 2015), 64-66. Sang-Su Kong, “The Location of Woo-Arm Dong,” in op. cit., 104-107. Jin-Man Son, My Love Pusanchin: Chasing the Traces of the History (Pusan: Dae-hun Ki-Planning, 2010), 132-133. 95

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first maternity hospitals in the southern region of South Korea. The various types of support (including pastoral care) for the POWs affected their lives, in terms of changing their ideology from communism to democracy. The educational services in Korea and Australia offered great opportunities for young Koreans who until then did not have hope for themselves. The availability of modern education became the social foundation of success in their region and nation. Thus, the number of Australian volunteers may have been insignificant during the war, but their influence as volunteers under the federal support of Australia was the central axis of Western NGO groups between 1950 and 1953.

Bibliography “A Glimpse of Ravaged Korea.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (July, 1952): 5-6. “A Trip to Chinju.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Mar., 1951): 1-7. “A Visit to Koje Do.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (June, 1953): 8-9. “About Our Friend.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Sept., 1952): 2-4. “About Our Friends.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Dec., 1951): 12. “About Our Friends” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Sept., 1952): 3-4. “About Our Friends.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Nov., 1952): 4-8. “After Many Days––Another Instance.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (May, 1954): 8-10. “APC Notes.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Sept., 1951): 13. Barnes, Robert. “Branding an Aggressor: The Commonwealth, the United Nations and Chinese Intervention in the Korean War, November 1950January 1951.” The Journal of Strategic Studies 33, no. 2 (Apr., 2010): 231-253. Coleman, Bradley Lynn. “The Colombian Army in Korea, 1950-1954.” The Journal of Military History (Project Muse (Society for Military History)) 69, no. 4: 1137-1177. Cumings, Bruce. Korea’s Place in the Sun: A Modern History. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005.

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“Extracts from the Letters from Miss B. McNabb, Korea.” the Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Mar., 1953): 6-7. “Farewell Messages.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (May, 1952): 5-6. “Fifteen Days in Korea.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Dec., 1952): 4-5. “FMD Notes.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Apr., 1951): 12. “Foreign Mission Committee Notes.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Feb., 1952): 9. “Foreign Mission Committee Notes.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (May, 1952): 11-12. “Foreign Mission Committee Notes.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Aug., 1952): 9-10. “From the Rev. H. W. Lane, Pusan, 11/01/1951.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Mar., 1951): 1112. Hobbs, David. “British Commonwealth Carrier Operations in the Korean War.” Air & Space Journal 18, no. 4 (Winter, 2004): 62-71. “How Can You Help.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Sept., 1952): 5. Jones, Edgar and Ian P. Palmer, “Army Psychiatry in the Korean War: the Experience of 1 Commonwealth Division.” Military Medicine 165, no. 4 (2000): 256-260. Kim, Heung Soo. “The Korean War (1950-1953) and Christianity: ProAmerican Activities of the Christian Churches and the North Korean Reactions.” Madang 16 (Dec., 2011): 135-158. Kim, Ki-Su. Survey of Pusan Modern Heritage Buildings, reported to Pusan Metropolitan City, 02, 2005, 106-107. Kim, Sang-Su. “Formation of Woo-Arm Dong and its Spacious Characteristic.” In The Space and Life of the Woo-Arm Dong People, edited by Hyeon Yu and Sang-Su Kim, 122-125. Pusan: Shin-Hyung Ki-hak, 2015. Ko, Jung-Hyoo. “The Institute of Pacific Relations and the Korean Problem during the Pacific War,” Acta Korana 17, no. 1 (June, 2014): 429-453. Kong, Eun-Kyoung. “Location of Woo-Arm Dong.” In The Space and Life of the Woo-Arm Dong People, edited by Hyeon Yu and Sang-Su Kim, 60-61. Pusan: Shin-Hyung Ki-hak, 2015.

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“Korea, Extracts from the Annual Report 1953.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Aug., 1954): 89. “Korea.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Mar., 1951): 10. “Korea’s Urgent Need for Help.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Feb., 1951): iv. “Korean Christians in Japan.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Feb., 1951): 4-5. “Korean Orphans and Our Mission Boxes.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Apr., 1950): 10. “Koreans’ Urgent Need for Help.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Mar., 1951): 1-2. Lee, Hyun-ju. Provisional Capital Memorial Hall. Pusan: Shin-Hyung Kihak, 2012. Lee, Sang Gyoo, To Korea with Love: Australian Presbyterian Mission Work in Korea, 1889-1941. Melbourne: PVC, 2009. “Letter from Rev. G. Anderson (23rd Sept., 1953).” the Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Dec., 1953): 1213. “Letter from Rev. G. Anderson.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Dec., 1953): 10. “Letter from Sister Catherine Mackenzie, Pusan, Korea.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (May, 1952): 4. “Letter from Sister Catherine Mackenzie.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Mar., 1953): 47. McCormack, Gavan. Cold War, Hot War: An Australian Perspective on the Korean War. Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1983. “Minutes of Meeting of the General Committee of the PWMU.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Aug., 1952): 11-12. Morris-Suzuki, Tessa. “Prisoner Number 600,001: Rethinking Japan, China and the Korean War 1950-1953.” The Journal of Asian Studies 74, 2 (May, 2015): 411-432. “News from Tokyo.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Oct., 1951): 11-12. “News Items from Korea.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (May, 1951): 6-7.

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“Notes from the Foreign Mission Committee.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Oct., 1952): 10. O. Yul Kwon, and Gregory J. Trotman, “Australian Perceptions of Korea: the Need for Korean Studies.” Korea Observer 33, no. 4 (Winter, 2002): 619-623. “Our Church’s Relief Work in Korea.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Dec., 1951): 10-12. “Our Korean Field.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Oct., 1952): 11-13. “Our Missionary Mail Bag.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Feb., 1951): 11. “POW Congregations in Korea.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Apr., 1952): 8-13. “Personal Report (M. Withes, June, 1949).” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Feb., 1949): 7. “Pokseegie––Bread Cast on Water.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (July, 1952): 5-9. “Pusan in Wartime.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Mar., 1951): 10-11. “Reports.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Apr., 1952): 13. Sandler, Stanley. “Select Bibliography of the Korean War.” Magazine of History 14, no. 3 (Spring, 2000): 6-9. “Seoul Today––A Shattered City.” the Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Sep., 1952): 6-7. Son, Jin-Man. My Love Pusanchin: Chasing the Traces of the History. Pusan: Dae-hun Ki-Planning, 2010. “Suffering Korea.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Dec., 1952): 7-8. “The Needs of Korea.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Dec., 1954): 5-6. “The New Hospital in Korea.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Nov., 1952): 8. “The Outlook in Korea.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Apr., 1950): 11-12. “The Rev. George Anderson, MA.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (Aug., 1952): 9-10. “The Strange Korea of Today.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (June, 1952): 9-10. “The YMCA in Korea.” The Chronicle of the Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union of Victoria (July, 1952): 11-12.

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Trembath, Richard. “A Lie Based on a Delusion: Australia’s Role in the Korea War Germ Warfare Controversy.” Social Alternatives 23, no. 3 (2004): 6-10. “United Nations Commission on Korea (UNCOK) 1950,” https://www.awm.gov.au/conflict/CN500118/, accessed on 16/03/2016. “United Nations Security Council Resolution 82.” 25 June 1950. “Women in Action––Nurses and Serving Women,” http://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/women-inaction, accessed on 16/03/2016.

CHAPTER TEN THE MEANING OF “NEW RELIGION” IN JAPAN: THE PRESENCE OF TENRIKYO AND THE MEIJI ERA MIDORI HORIUCHI TENRI UNIVERSITY, JAPAN

Tenrikyo, a new religion of Japan, was established in 1838. Its establishment was towards the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate (Edo) period (1603-1868) and on the threshold of a new phase of the Meiji period (1868-1912).1 Thus, a scholar once referred to Tenrikyo as “the religion in transitional” Japan.2 In fact, it was a time marked by the end of the closed-door policy3 in Japan and an opening to the Western world. Prior to that time the Edo government’s policy towards religions was to limit religious activity to the danka-system. Namely, Buddhist temples wrote terauke (“registration”)  1

The Meiji period was the reign of Emperor Meiji, the beginning of the modern period (kindai) of Japanese history. The Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan states that the Meiji period was a momentous epoch that saw the transformation of feudal Japan into a modern industrialised state with a parliamentary form of government and its emergence as a world power through military adventures abroad. (Compiled under the supervision of Edwin O. Reischauer, Shigeto Tsuru and others, Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan vol. 5, Tokyo: Kǀdansha, 1983, 155.) 2 Kazuo Kasahara, Tenkanki no shnjkyǀ: Shinshnj, Tenrikyǀ, Sǀkagakkai [Religions in transitional: Shinshnj, Tenrikyǀ, Sǀkagakkai], (Tokyo: Nippon hǀsǀ kyǀkai, 1966), Preface. 3

Sakoku ( 莍 ⦌ ) in Japanese was the policy (1639~1854) adopted by the Tokugawa shogunate (1603~1867) to legitimise and strengthen its authority both domestically and in East Asia. The main elements of the policy were the exclusion of Catholic missionaries and traders, the proscription of Christianity in Japan, and the prohibition of foreign travel by Japanese people. (Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, vol. 5, 346.)

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certificates for all their affiliated households, while all households had a duty to become danka4 members of the closest Buddhist temple. There was no freedom of belief for individuals. Under those circumstances what impact did the divinely-revealed religion of Tenrikyo have on the people? This paper considers some characteristics of the “new religion” Tenrikyo through the responses of the community and people of that transitional period of Japanese history.

The Tokugawa Shogunate and the Danka-System The Tokugawa Shogunate, also known as the Tokugawa bakufu (೉詐翼臉), or the Edo period, emerged from the Sengoku (ਅব) period (1467-1603). During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Japan experienced continual upheavals. Tokugawa Ieyasu (೉詐竖笵 1543-1616), the first leader of the dynasty, reunified Japan and inaugurated the shǀgun (ల糛)5 system to start a new government in Edo. It lasted from 1603 to 1867 and was the last feudal military government in Japan. The Tokugawa bakufu government was headed by the successive shǀguns, and each was a member of the Tokugawa family. For more than two-and-a-half centuries, Japan experienced peace and steady advances in economic, cultural and other spheres. Its political structure consisted of three branches. The emperor resided in Kyoto and provided legitimacy by granting titles to officials and aristocrats. The most powerful of the three branches was the

 4

A term derived from dan, a transliteration of the Sanskrit dƗnapati, meaning a lay believer who gives donations to a monk or the Buddhist community, and ka, Japanese for “house.” A danka indicates a family which requests a particular Buddhist temple to conduct all its funerals, memorials, and other services in exchange for which it offers remuneration and partial provision for the upkeep of the temple. The Tokugawa shogunate (1603~1867) institutionalised this practice by creating a nationwide danka system whereby every family was required to register with a particular temple. (Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, vol. 2, 76.)

5

An abbreviation of seii tai shǀgun (袗蝏繗⺕糛), which is customarily translated as “barbarian-subduing generalissimo.” Shǀguns were in theory military dictators whose regimes dominated the Japanese polity for most of Japanese history between 1192 and 1867. Their regimes were known as bakufu or “tent governments,” a term commonly translated as shogunate. There were three shogunates, the first (1192-1333) situated in Kamakura, the second (1338-1573) in the Muromachi district of Kyoto, and the third (1603-1867) in Edo (now Tokyo). (Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, vol. 7, 160.)

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shǀgun. The shǀgun and his aides made Edo6 (now known as Tokyo) the military capital. The shǀgun appointed the top level of military personnel (萍 samurai) to serve as governors of semi-independent domains. These military bureaucrats, called daimyǀ (繗聐), ruled their allotted domains called han (腐) throughout Japan. This system was called the bakuhan taisei (翼腐鐎裃). Baku, or “tent,” is an abbreviation of bakufu (翼臉), meaning “military government”—that is the shogunate. The hans were the domains headed by daimyǀ. Eventually there came to be over 250 daimyǀ and each oversaw the inhabitants within their territory. The shǀgun controlled Japan through these 250 daimyǀ, and all members of Japanese society were placed in four social classes consisting of samurai (萍 warriors), farmers, artisans, and merchants (艐緷簴芣 shi-nǀ-kǀ-shǀ). And there were four major religious streams during the 260 years of the Tokugawa shogunate. They were Buddhism, Shintoism, Confucianism and Christianity.7 The shǀgun utilised the Buddhist danka system (縣竖裃繱 danka-seido) to control the religious activities of the people. Danka (縣竖) is a family or individual affiliated to a particular Buddhist temple and the danka system is a system in which a family (the danka) contributes to the support of a particular Buddhist temple, which in return provides its services. 8 This kind of temple affiliation became mandatory during the Edo period, when used by the bakufu for political ends. That is, the tie between temples and dankas was developed into an obligatory relationship forcibly by the bakufu in its efforts to monitor religious elements that might undermine its emerging political authority. They did this by forcing all people to register to become Buddhist temple parishioners. In essence, this implies that all Japanese people were Buddhist. It also came to be known as the terauke system (艔誂裃繱 terauke-seido). Terauke was a document granted by Buddhist temples to their danka members to certify they were not Christian. The Tokugawa shogunate considered Christianity to be dangerous for the bakufu’s governance. In his article on “The Development of the Temple-parishioner System” Tamamuro Fumio discussed the danka system and the antiChristian policy of the Tokugawa as follows:

 6

Tennǀ (詏赜), the Emperor, lived in Kyoto till the Meiji. The first two have been the major ones, the third one was rooted in the warrior’s class as their behavioral principle, and the Christian missionary developed successfully. 8 They are funerals and ceremonial occasions primarily. 7

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In the Twelfth Month of 1613 (Keichǀ 18), the Edo bakufu issued the ‘Order to Expel the Padres’ (胬詏缺諏脘罈 bateren tsuihǀrei). Behind this move was the perception that Christians were not primarily in Japan to help enable commerce between European countries and Japan, but were a part of a broader effort to colonise Japan through the propagation of Christianity. Viewing Christianity as the enemy of Shinto and Buddhism, the bakufu moved towards an immediate ban on Christianity.9

Therefore, many Christians were forced to become “apostate Christians” through membership of the Buddhist danka organisation. However, there was still a larger number of Christians who maintained their faith as “hidden Christians” (ඛလျၸ၅၍ႁ kakure kirishitan),10 especially within domains of Kynjshnj. 11 This campaign with its various regulations demanding loyalty to the regime was aimed at rooting out Christians, and became particularly acute in the wake of the so-called Shimabara Rebellion of 1637. Because of the rebellion, the bakufu took a very severe stance vis-à-vis any religious ideology or group that could potentially be mobilised against the regime. The role of the new investigator of religion office (褒肱筐蔨 shnjmon aratame yaku) also known as the magistrate in charge of investigating Christians (ျၸ၅၍ႁ評觳膬貇 kirishitan sensaku bugyǀ), worked to expose hidden Christians. This was accomplished by compelling all Japanese people to obtain certificates of temple registration, and have village officials produce registries of religious affiliation (褒覄蝸腳筐蟨 shnjshi ninbetsu aratamechǀ) for everyone in their village.12 Because of this system people could not change their faith practically, that is, Buddhism was the “state religion” in those days. Because of the above, it was during this period that all Japanese people were compelled to produce certificates of temple registration. That was terauke shǀmon (艔誂韍肫). Therefore, many of these new parishioners chose their temple affiliations not based on doctrinal or faith considerations, but based merely on their geographical proximity to a  9

Fumio Tamamuro, “The Development of the Temple-parishioner System,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 36, 1 (2009): 16. 10 Kakure Kirishitan (“Hidden Christian”) is a term for a member of the Japanese Catholic Church during the Edo period that went underground after the Shimabara Rebellion in the 1630s. The precious Kirishitan documents are housed in the Tenri Central Library, Tenri University. See Ikuo Higasibaba, Kirishitan-shi saikǀ: shinkǀjuyǀ no shnjkyǀgaku [Reconsideration of Kirishitan History: Religious Study of “Faith Acceptance”] (Tenri: Oyasato Institute for the Study of Religion, 2006). 11 Fumio Tamamuro (2009), 17. 12 Ibid., 20.

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temple. At the same time, in 1635 the bakufu established the new Office of Temples and Shrines (艔艧膬貇 jisha bugyǀ). Under the supervision of this office, the bakufu approved administrative head temples (ඡ绀艔蚭G furegashira jiin) for each Buddhist sect and required their branch temples to expose Christians in all villages. Through an elaborate, pyramid-like structure of head and branch temples, the bakufu instituted a complex network for monitoring religion, which would also serve as the controlling mechanism demanding certificates of Buddhist temple registration as evidence of good standing in the new polity. Behind these processes of the anti-Christian policy of the bakufu, there was the fear of the Christian power of preaching. The bakufu considered that religious missionaries were a risk in the governance of Japan. So finally, the bakufu closed its doors to foreign countries. A small island called Dejima in Nagasaki was the only area for foreign trade that was limited to designated merchants of China and Holland. According to Tamamuro’s study of the danka-system, it is difficult to pinpoint the exact beginnings of this system.13 While there were medieval precedents, the broad development of the relationship between a Buddhist temple and its parishioners as established through funerary rituals is primarily a religious phenomenon of the early modern period. 14 His research also reveals that until the late medieval period, ordinary people did not hold funerals at Buddhist temples; such rituals were limited to emperors, aristocrats, and upper-class warriors. Temples were originally places where memorial services could be held for the founding donor—the kaiki danna (筛結縣綞, the term danna 縣綞 is the basis for the term danka 縣竖 or temple parishioner)—that his or her descendants would support financially thereafter. In time, temples were built for other powerful figures in Japanese society such as feudal lords and local rulers, who also financially supported the running of their family temple. With the collapse of the medieval order, however, lower-class warriors reigned over upper-class warriors through an inversion of the social order. Families that originally founded the temples (筛結 kaiki, 縣綞 danna) often lost their status in society, which, in turn, made the management of temples unstable. This forced the temples to search for new economic opportunities and so the monks began to perform funerals not just for founder families but also for ordinary people. This shift is also reflected in the topics of lectures presented by eminent monks. They spoke of the importance and meaning of a funeral rite and further, the importance  13 14

Ibid., 11. Ibid., 12-13.

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of a series of memorial services for the dead. Thus the ordinary people developed a close relationship with temples. After the establishment of the temple-parishioner system in the second half of the seventeenth century, the establishment of the registration of religious affiliation, and the emergence of fully-developed funerary Buddhism, people were required to attend not only on the occasion of their own family’s funerals and memorial rites held by temples, but also any kind of service held by a temple.15 Thus the Buddhist temples solved their own financial issues and at the same time monitored people as danka members. This means that the temples functioned as a kind of local officer in the Tokugawa period. But as the end of Tokugawa period approached, the social conditions greatly changed. Concerning the end of the Tokugawa bakufu, the Encyclopedia Britannica notes: Their (daimyǀ and samurai) primary source of income was a fixed stipend tied to agricultural production, which had not kept pace with other sectors of the national economy. Several attempts at fiscal reform were made by the government during the late 18th and 19th centuries, but the financial strain on the warrior class increased as the period progressed. During its final 30 years in power the Tokugawa shogunate had to contend with peasant uprisings and samurai unrest as well as with financial problems. These factors, combined with the growing threat of Western encroachment, brought into serious question the continued existence of the regime, and by the 1860s many demanded the restoration of direct Imperial rule as a means of unifying the country and solving the prevailing problems.16

During the 19th century trade routes between North America and Asia took trading ships into the vicinity of Japan. However, due to the isolation policy, ships other than the officially sanctioned Dutch traders could not land in Japan under penalty of death. When Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853 forced the shǀgun to permit all foreign ships to land, and Japanese merchants to trade with visiting foreign merchants, he did not intend to disrupt the Japanese social system, yet that is exactly what happened. This was the turning point for Japan which signalled the end of the Edo period and the transition to the Meiji period.17 The new era began with the  15

Ibid., 12. “‘Tokugawa period’ in Japanese History,” in Encyclopedia Britannica. School and library subscribers, https://global.britannica.com/event/Tokugawa-period, accessed on 31/06/2016. 17 The treaty named “Convention of Peace and Amity between the United States of America and the Empire of Japan” was concluded between Japan and America in 1854. This treaty made Japan open its country to the world. And freedom of 16

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greatest commotion and the most drastic changes in Japan. In the religious field, for example, Haibutsu kishaku (ఀบᛡ๸, literally “abolish Buddhism and destroy ShƗkyamuni”)18 was a particular historic movement during the Meiji Restoration (聒謐蛴萿 meiji ishin).19 Buddhist temples, images and texts were destroyed, and the Buddhist monks forced to return to secular life.20 Because the Meiji government shifted the head of Japan from the shǀgun to the emperor, that move placed Shinto in the position of a state religion. Around this time new religious movements began to occur. As Kasahara Kazuo has indicated, the changes in society produced new religions according to the religious demands and desires of ordinary people. The masses needed a new religion(s) that would answer their fears under unstable social conditions.21 According to the Shin shnjkyǀ jiten [Dictionary of New Religions in Japan], the term “new religion” is not yet

 religion is guaranteed to Americans by the “Treaty of Amity and Commerce” concluded between Japan and America in 1858. American missionaries began to come to Japan. They started their missionary works including founding schools. But the instruction of the Education Department (Act 12 of 1899) was issued. Religious education and rites in schools were prohibited by this act. See Ejima, Naotoshi, Miura, Shnj, Matsuno Tomoaki (eds.) Kindainihon no daigaku to shnjkyǀ [Universities and Religions in Modern Japan] (Kyoto: Hǀzǀkan, 2014), 33-34. 18 The haibutsu kishaku was an event triggered by the policy of separation of Shinto and Buddhism (葃⅞臧翟 shinbutsu bunri). This caused great damage to Buddhism in Japan after 1868. Bryan D. Lowe pointed out that the emergence of modern historical studies in the nineteenth century served as a tool that Buddhists could use to reconstruct the tradition to meet the demands of the modern age according to James Ketelaar. And they were useful for Buddhist reformers in the 1890s after a period of haibutsu kishaku. (Bryan D. Lowe, “States of ‘State Buddhism’: History, Religion, and Politics in Late Nineteenth- and Twentiethcentury Scholarship,” Japanese Religions (NCC Center for the Study of Japanese Religions) 39, 1 & 2 (2014): 72.) 19 See Marra Claudia, “Haibutsu kishaku,” The Journal of Nagasaki University of Foreign Studies 18 (2014): 173-184. 20

For example, Uchiyama-eikynjji (␔芄薆粜艔) founded in the 12th century being a huge temple with a Grand large Buddhist monastery existed in Tenri, Nara. It was totally destroyed. There was nothing without a pond in 1875 or 1876. Scriptures and manuscripts, Buddha statues and Buddhist altar fittings and paintings were sold for a song. Monks were brought back to secular life. 21 Kasahara, Tenkanki no shnjkyǀ: Shinshnj, Tenrikyǀ, Sǀkagakkai, 17.

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clearly defined.22 When the big and drastic political changes came about in Japan with the end of the Tokunaga bakufu, the ordinary people wanted a new faith in order to face these changes. The Dictionary says that a new religious movement had three distinct streams. They are 1) a movement being original and apart from the established religions, 2) a movement consisting of reformed folk religions, and 3) a movement involving the reformation of established religions. It also notes that they are considered a religion if they have their own doctrine, their own practice and community. Furthermore, they have inherited and innovated various religious and traditional legacies, and their main bearers are popular people.23 The new religion of Tenrikyo falls under these categories as the following section explains.

Some Characteristics of Tenrikyo Tenrikyo (詏翓ઇૠ詏翓 tenri means “heaven’s way” or “truth,” ઇ kyǀ means a teaching) came into existence, when God the Parent (謤葃 Oyagami, oya is parent, kami is God), Tenri-ƿ-no-mikoto (詏翓蘌聑) was revealed through Nakayama Miki (襦芄ဏ࿝, 1798-1887), the Foundress of Tenrikyo, on 26th October in 1838.24 Miki is called Oyasama (࿚န࿥ဎ, our beloved parent) by Tenrikyo followers. When Miki was 41 years old, the words of God the Parent were suddenly uttered through her mouth: I am the Creator, the true and real God. I have the Preordination for this Residence. At this time I have appeared in this world in person to save all humankind. I ask you to let Me have Miki as My Shrine.25

Startled by this unexpected revelation, her family and relatives passed three days in uneasiness and dismay, then they finally complied with the request of God the Parent on October 26, 1838. She came to devote all her energies to conveying God’s wishes to the world as God’s Shrine. A radical change took place in her life, as if she were quite another person, a  22

Nobutaka Inoue, Mitsugu Koumoto, Tsushima Michihito, Hirochika Nakamaki, & Shigeru Nishiyama (eds.), Shin shnjkyǀ jiten [Dictionary of New Religions in Japan] (Tokyo: Kǀbundǀ, 1990), 2-4. 23 Ibid., 5-6. 24 That day marks the beginning of Tenrikyo. According to the lunar calendar that was in use in Japan at that time; December 12, 1838, by the Gregorian calendar. 25 Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, The Doctorine of Tenrikyo (Tenri: Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, 1993 tenth edition), 3.

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fact that was beyond the understanding of the surrounding people. 26 Formerly there had been no one in the village who did not join in praising the fair mistress of the Nakayama family, saying that she was good and kind, she was faithful to her husband, tender and dutiful towards her parents-in-law, she applied herself diligently to the labour of the house, treated her friends and relatives with kindness, and was loved by neighbours. But after she became the Shrine of God the Parent, people, including her relatives, acquaintances and villagers, thought her insane, and said that some evil thing had possessed her. At first she gave her family fortune to charity till she and her family sank to the lowest depths of poverty.27 It was the first step to save all humanity. But in those days people were inclined to rely on their property, social rank, standing and lineage rather than on their own character or faith, so it was difficult to live on without these external things. Miki was not a householder, only a housewife, a female, and people could not understand or imagine the reasons for her behaviour. Years later, in 1854, she issued a “grant of safe childbirth” (࿚ဃန貔࿧ obiya yurushi).28 Then her reputation as a “god of childbirth” began to spread and this was followed by her increasing reputation as a “god to save the sick.” Subsequently, some people came to her with such devotion that they began to call her a living deity in the early part of the 1860s. They came to hear, understand and practise the teachings of God the Parent according to Miki’s direction. Miki wrote scriptures29 and taught the Kagura Service30 rites, to save all people. Finally, the life of Miki  26

See Chapter Three “On the Way” of The Life of Oyasama, Foundress of Tenrikyo (Tenri: Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, 1996), third edition, 18-41. 27 She obeyed God the Parent’s command, “Fall to the depths of poverty,” and said, “Whoever comes to this house shall never leave without being filled with joy. To Me, the Parent, all human beings in the world are My children.” Quite a number of poor people from the surrounding country came to Her house, yearning to bask in Her mercy. Ibid., 18-19. 28 Ibid., 28-30. 29 The three Scriptures of Tenrikyo are the Ofudesaki (The Tip of the Writing Brush), the Mikagura-uta (The Songs for the Service), and the Osashizu (The Divine Directions). 30 In Tenrikyo the task of reconstructing the entire world, as the world of the Joyous Life is a huge undertaking that cannot be accomplished without God the Parent’s help. Through their performance of the ritual known as the Kagura Service, God the Parent manifests once more the immense energy by which humankind and the world were created and thereby enables all human beings to return to their true and original state and thus lead the Joyous Life. The Kagura Service is thought to be the ultimate means to replace our minds and return to our

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became the model (論賉 hinagata) of Tenrikyo followers, who believe that Miki permanently resides in Jiba31 where there is a Tenrikyo sanctuary built for the world’s salvation. Thus Miki expounded on the intention of God the Parent for fifty years. The basic thrust was that humankind is created with the purpose of living a life of joy (蓪ਞ࿠မ࿧, yǀki-gurasi, the Joyous Life). The Joyous Life is the objective of humankind’s existence. It is to be collectively shared by people of all nations, who are children of God the Parent. Therefore, all human beings are considered as brothers and sisters to help each other. God, too will share in this joy experienced by humans. The Tenrikyo, The Path to Joyousness outlines the teachings of Tenrikyo as follows. Among the important points of the teachings is the place where humankind was first conceived, called the Jiba of Origin, and it contains a distinctive hexagonal stand called the Kanrodai that marks this spot. Of central importance is the teaching that the human body is a thing lent, a thing borrowed from God the Parent, and that the mind alone is actually what we may call our own. […] Not only did Miki instruct Her disciples by example but She also did so by word. Two of the three Tenrikyo Scriptures were written by Miki Nakayama Herself. They are the Ofudesaki, (The Tip of the Writing Brush), and the Mikagura-uta, (The Songs for the Service).32

 original state––the way we really are. The Kagura Service is performed by ten dancers, five men and five women, who wear their respective kagura masks and symbolize by hand-gestures the ten aspects of God the Parent’s complete providence. To perform this Service, the ten dancers take up positions around the Kanrodai (the Stand for the Heavenly Dew), which is set up on the Jiba, the very place where God the Parent resides. 31 The word jiba has such meanings as “place,” “land,” and “location.” The Tenrikyo scriptures indicate that Jiba is the object and centre of the Tenrikyo faith. It is the place of origin where God created humankind, the place to which the divine name “Tenri-ƿ-no-Mikoto” has been given (Shǀzen Nakayama, Kǀki no kenkynj [A Study of Kǀki, the divine Record], Tenri: Tenrikyo dǀynjsha, 1957, 125126), and the place that is the source of universal salvation. The significance of Jiba is often referred to by the expression “the truth of Jiba.” (Tenrikyo Overseas Department (ed.), A Glossary of Tenrikyo Terms (Tenri: Tenrikyo Overseas Department, 2010), 168-172.) 32 The Second Shinbashira, Nakayama Shǀzen (1905-1967) who was the second Head-minister of Tenrikyo once wrote that all the most fundamental principles of the Tenrikyo faith were found in the Ofudesaki, which really forms the core of Tenrikyo canonical scriptures, and that the Mikagura-uta Psalms, originally composed as the accompaniment of the Divine Service, could be said to belong to a special form of lyric well-suited to adapting people fully and firmly to the profound truth of the divine teaching through performance of the Service. Shǀzen

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Chapter Ten Where the former is written in a poetic style containing 1,711 verses, the latter composes words that are sung for the Kagura and Teodori dances. The Kagura Service is a ritual dance with masks accompanied by musical instruments performed only around the Kanrodai. There are ten performers for the Kagura Service, five men and five women, who wear their respective masks and symbolize by their hand gestures, the complete providence of God the Parent. The Teodori, on the other hand, is a ritual dance that is performed by members of the Tenrikyo community for communal spiritual practice in missions in various countries throughout the world. The fifty-year period in which Miki taught the will of God the Parent is called the Divine Model, a model for all humankind to follow. The words that She spoke, the words that She wrote, and the actual demonstration of the two in action embody the path of single-hearted salvation—a path that will surely draw us to the Joyous Life.33 The world and the human body are both permeated with the blessings of God the Parent: both are products of a single theme. Furthermore, humanity was created by God simply from the desire that they be spirited and, by seeing this spiritedness rise among humanity, God, too, could share in it. The key in living spiritedly, however, lies in how humanity handles the mind. Through the proper use of the mind, then, the Joyous Life can be realised. To summarise this footing, a Divine Direction (an Osashizu) states: Sah, sah, because Tsukihi (God) exists, the world exists. Because the world exists, things exist. Because things exist, your bodies exist. Because your bodies exist, law exists. Although the law exists, to resolve your minds is primary (Osashizu, January 13, 1887).34

 Nakayama, “The Various Forms of Verbal Evolution in Tenrikyo Doctrine,” in Michi no tomo, no. 990 (Tenri: Tenrikyo Dǀynjsha, 1960), 2-4. 33 Tenrikyo Overseas Mission Department, Tenrikyo: The Path to Joyousness (Tenri: Tenrikyo Overseas Mission Department, 1998), 2-3. 34 Ibid., 28.

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Figure1: Kagura Service from the cover of the Reference Materials for The Life of Oyasama

There are some specific characters of Tenrikyo that can be pointed out according to the two Scriptures, The Doctrine of Tenrikyo and The Life of Oyasama, Foundress of Tenrikyo. They are: 1. Tenrikyo is called a sǀshǀshnjkyǀ (訕訖褒㟨) which is a religion proposed by a person or a group and which contains original doctrines and a community; 2. Tenri-O-no-Mikoto, the God the Parent, manifested to the world through Miki Nakayam who is the foundress of Tenrikyo; 3. The founder is female; 4. According to the doctrine, the aim of the existence of humanity is

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to teach and live the Joyous Life; 5. The service for salvation is open to all people; therefore each and every person can participate to build an ideal world of Joyousness. The service (索ထ, tsutome), together with the Sazuke (࿥࿵࿡), the divine grant, constitute the path of single-hearted salvation. While the Sazuke is seen as a means of salvation from illness in particular, the service is considered the means of universal salvation addressing not only illness but also any other issues that concern humans. The Kagura Service 35 is performed to allow God’s workings that created humankind to be once again manifested, this time for the purpose of accomplishing salvation; 6. Human beings are children of God the Parent. They are related to one another as brothers and sisters; 7. According to the Story of Origin (蚕誏ဎယ࿾贬, motohajimari no hanasi), human beings are created to experience the Joyous Life; 8. Fnjfu (臄臅), the relation between a husband and wife is a basic unit for salvation. This is the basis of relations among humans. And oyako (謤螲 parents and child(ren)) is another basic relation of human beings. Through actions that happen among these relations, people will be able to change and grow spiritually. Furthermore, Miki emphasised affection towards each other and the hearts of parents full of their love for children (謤葖 oyagokoro). The main doctrinal book, the Ofudesaki, teaches: I bring you together according to the causality of your previous lives and protect you. This settles the matter for all times. (Ofudesaki, 1: 74)

At the same time, it is written in the Ofudesaki that each individual can think and act according to his or her own mind. Even between parent and child, husband and wife, and brothers and

 35

This Kagura Service is said to symbolize the renewal of human creation (Tenrikyo: The Path to Joyousness, 21). According to Taketo Hashimoto, the Kagura service has three meanings. The first meaning is found in the construction of a prayer through which performers invoke the blessings of God. The second meaning is in the act of the performance itself, where humankind regains the relationship it has lost with God the Parent. The third meaning found in the Kagura Service concerns the importance of being one with God as at the beginning of the world. Taketo Hashimoto, “The Kagura Service: Its Structure and Meaning,” Tenri Journal of Religion 15 (1981): 32.

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sisters: their minds all differ from one another. (Ofudesaki, 5: 8)

9. States of mind that are not in accordance with the intention of God or are filled with mistaken thoughts are linked to “dust” (蒦 hokori). According to Tenrikyo, there is no such thing as an inherent evil nature in human beings; what appears to be so is merely a little dust that has settled on the originally pure mind (Ofudesaki, 1: 52-53). The dust of the mind, however, accumulates continually, almost as if this were an inevitable aspect of one’s mental life (Ofudesaki, 17: 69). Therefore, it is vital to notice the dust and sweep it away promptly. The Doctrine of Tenrikyo says: As a means to help us reflect on the dusts of the mind, God the Parent cited eight types of dust: miserliness, covetousness, hatred, self-love, grudge-bearing, anger, greed, and arrogance. In addition, God warns us that Tsukihi ‘dislikes falsehood and flattery.’36

This is called the “eight dusts” (讱࿴࿾ဋ࿣ယ, yattsu no hokori)37 related to the teaching of “a thing lent, a thing borrowed” (繡࿧ဒ࿾觡ယဒ࿾, kashimono-karimono).38 One who is fully aware of this teaching, practises the sweeping away of dust in order to avoid a self-centred mind; 10. In Tenrikyo, human “death” is taught through the word “denaoshi” (諨覜࿧) which means passing away for rebirth. In contrast to the idea that death is the final end of life, the term indicates that dying is a departure towards starting life anew in this world. The Story of Creation (Origin) describes human beings as developing through passing away for rebirth repeatedly, and this offers a glimpse into an aspect of how spiritual growth can occur. Far from being a mere end, it may be seen as an important catalyst in the creative process of spiritual development towards the world of the Joyous Life;  36

The Doctrine of Tenrikyo, 53. In addition, God warns people against falsehood and flattery. 38 This teaching is one of the unique teachings of Tenrikyo and may be seen as its answer to the question “What is humanity?” In a broader sense, this teaching comprises such following elements as “the teaching that the entire universe is the body of God,” “the teaching of universal brotherhood: the teaching that all human beings are equally brothers and sisters,” “the teaching that the human body is a teaching lent by God, a thing borrowed,” “the teaching of the dust of the mind,” “the teaching of causality,” and “the teaching of passing away for rebirth.” See, A Glossary of Tenrikyo Terms, 430-435. 37

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11. The complete providence39 of God the Parent was explained by distinguishing the ten aspects of it and by giving each aspect a sacred name40 which humans would better understand the essential character of the ten aspects described in the Story of Creation. Accordingly the ten concrete aspects would help and encourage humans to perceive and recognise every phenomenon in the world including everything that the human body does, as a blessing or working of God so that they may live with a constant sense of gratitude to God; 12. The term “yǀboku” (ဘ࿖ဌ࿟) means “timber,” or building material for the construction of the Joyous Life World. Yǀboku are those people who endeavour to convey the Tenrikyo teachings to enable humankind to realise the Joyous Life. They convey the teachings by speaking of their own experiences to other persons.41

The Responses of the Community and People to Tenrikyo At first, the relatives and neighbourhood treated Miki as insane or possessed by evil. After Miki became popular as a living god, those in competition including general practitioners and monks came to Miki’s residence to complain to her that her deeds were a kind of “interference” in some medical and pharmaceutical processes. Some of them even went so far as to destroy the ritual things in the room. When the numbers of believers coming to Miki increased, she received a summons from the authorities, was arrested and imprisoned by the religious and political authorities. She was subjected to these hardships on at least seventeen occasions between December 1874 and February 1886. Most of these hardships are described in The Life of Oyasama, the Foundress of Tenrikyo, especially in chapters 7 and 9. Some followers who were leaders were also subjected to persecution. They were told by officials to stop their faith because the sacred names used in Tenikyo were not found in Shintoism. This seemed to be a fact following the separation of Shinto from  39

This is the teaching of jnjzen-no-shugo (葟衒࿾莗贇, jnjzen means complete, perfect, and shugo means providence). 40 The divine names seem to succeed a Shinto style for gods’ names, yet some of them are different from Shinto. But it is considered to be familiar for the people in those days to understand and store them. 41 See “24. I Am Glad You Have Come Home,” “42. By Saving Others,” “100. You Are To Save Others,” etc., in the Anecdotes of Oyasama, the Foundress of Tenrikyo (Tenri: Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, 1976).

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Buddhism and the haibutsu-kishaku movement, which aimed to make Shinto the State religion. Thus Tenrikyo was considered as heresy. At the same time, this incident of persecution showed the firm self-awakening faith in Oyasama of her followers. In the Meiji period many anti-Tenrikyo campaigns took place. Newspapers, magazines and books described Tenrikyo as a diabolical religion. Strict regulations controlling the activities of Tenrikyo believers were enacted by the Meiji government in the 29th year of Meiji. Because of these laws Tenrikyo missionary work came under social pressure. In spite of the arrests of Miki, the numbers of followers were increasing like wildfire. The number of people who came to greet her when she was released from her final hardship was quite considerable. They filled the entire area in front of the police station, and it is said that the procession of people and rickshaws following Miki home extended from the police station to the residence, Jiba, in an unbroken line. In those days the Mikagura-uta and its sacred ritual dance (tsutome, service) with hand gestures and musical instruments was prepared by Miki. Miki wanted her believers to perform this dance completely and in a correct fashion. The dance reveals the teachings of the way of life and people enjoyed performing it in groups. Believers gathered to practise the dance with good cheer, so the police became angry and arrested people or dispersed the crowds of dancers. Kasahara has noted that the performing of the sacred dance and the singing of the Mikagura-uta were a kind of pleasure.42 The Mikagura-uta taught peasants the joy of working, which was work freed from forced labour. Dancing would make peasants feel refreshed. The Kǀga no michi (the history of the way of the Tenrikyo Kǀga grand church) described many people gathering to practise the tsutome after their daily labour was finished. They enjoyed learning it. Male and female, adult and child, and the many people who also came to the place or house to watch the performance of the tsutome also looked happy. Also it was said that in Osaka people wearing a red hakama (簒, a long pleated skirtlike garment worn over a kimono mainly on ceremonial occasions) learned the tsutome while singing the Mikagura-uta throughout the night.43 After 1887, when Miki withdrew from physical life, numerous instances of miraculous salvation continued to appear. The teachings began to spread rapidly and widely; in less than one year, the number of followers exceeded two hundred thousand. The first anniversary of Miki was held on  42

Kasahara, Tenkanki no shnjkyǀ: Shinshnj, Tenrikyǀ, Sǀkagakkai, 193. Tenrikyo Kǀga Grand Church (ed.), Kǀga no michi (Shiga: Tenrikyo Kǀga Grand Church, 1931), 23-32.

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January 26, 1888, but in the middle of the ceremony the police came to interrupt it and drove the worshippers away. This made many followers feel more strongly about the necessity of obtaining legal recognition of their faith. Tenrikyo eventually achieved the freedom to conduct its missionary activities throughout the country and abroad after World War II. It has more than 15,000 churches in Japan and about 200 churches in foreign countries such as the USA, Brazil, Columbia, Congo, France, Korea, Taiwan and some South and Southeast Asian Countries.

Conclusion Tenrikyo was born in the time between the Tokugawa Shogunate and the Meiji period. The time of the political change from the Tokunaga bakufu to Meiji was a time of great reform of Japan itself. Many systems changed socially, politically and religiously. Under both governmental systems, the government tried to utilise religion to control the people. Under such historical conditions, Tenrikyo was pressured by both governments because many people became followers of Tenrikyo by their own volition.44 It was uniquely different when compared with Buddhism and Shintoism. Furthermore, followers of Tenrikyo conveyed the teachings and saved others voluntarily. They have experienced miraculous salvation through their religious life. From the viewpoint of followers Tenrikyo provided a spiritual awareness through the choice of their own faith and its religious practice or its way of living. Followers recognised that human beings were created to experience the Joyous Life in this world, that they were equal to God the Parent, and therefore that people are obliged to help one another live together. That is, every human being has an important existence in this world and everyone will be able to realise oneself through relations such as those between a husband and wife, or a parent and child. These teachings are thought to anticipate modern ideas. Thus, Tenrikyo offered a new way of life that one could live even in the face of difficulties, being  44

Under the danka system in the Edo period, faith belonged not to an individual

but to a family. And this danka system was said to become koseki (㓇衂) in the Meiji period. Japanese law requires all Japanese households (竖 ie) to report the names of family members, their dates of birth, dates of records and causes (marriage, divorce, death, adoption, etc.), the names of the father and the mother and the relation to them, etc., as the duty of Japanese citizens to their local authority. Thus koseki could be considered to have the same role of the danka system.

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aware of the teaching of kami-no-futokoro45 zumai (葃࿾ဝ褩ဎ࿔ human beings are living under the providence of God). Here is the role in which Tenrikyo is placed as the new wave of religions.

Bibliography Claudia, Marra. “Haibutsu kishaku.” The Journal of the Nagasaki University of Foreign Studies 18 (2014): 173-184. Ebisawa, Arimichi. Nihon kirishitan-shi [The History of Japanese Christians]. Tokyo: Haniwa shobǀ, 1966. Ejima, Naotoshi, Miura, Shnj and Matsuno Tomoaki, eds. Kindainihon no daigaku to shnjkyǀ [Universities and Religions in Modern Japan]. Kyoto: Hǀzǀkan, 2014. Encyclopedia Britannica. “School and Library Subscribers,” https://global.britannica.com/event/Tokugawa-period, accessed on 31/06/2016. Fukaya, Tadamasa. The Fundamental Doctrines of Tenrikyo. Tenri: Tenrikyo Overseas Mission Department, 1973. Haga, Shǀji, ed. Bakumatsu-ishin no bunka [Culture in the Last Days of Tokugawa Shokunate and the Meiji Restoration]. Tokyo: Yoshikawakǀbunkan, 2001. Hashimoto, Taketo. “The Kagura Service: Its Structure and Meaning.” Tenri Journal of Religion 15: 31-44. Tenri: Oyasato Research Institute, 1981. Higasibaba, Ikuo. Kirishitan-shi saikǀ: shinkǀjuyǀ no shnjkyǀgaku [Reconsideration of Kirishitan History: Religious Study of “Faith Acceptance”]. Tenri: Oyasato Institute for the Study of Religion, 2006. Hur, Nam-Lin. “Introduction: The Rise of Funerary Buddhism in Tokugawa Japan.” In Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan: Buddhism, Anti-Christianity, and the “Danka” System (PDF), 7-17. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007, retrieved 2008. Inoue, Nobutaka. Koumoto, Mitsugu. Michihito, Tsushima. Nakamaki, Hirochika & Nishiyama, Shigeru, eds. Shin shnjkyǀ jiten [Dictionary of New Religions in Japan]. Tokyo: Kǀbundǀ, 1990.  45 The Japanese word futokoro (bosom) means “the inside” of something. In Tenrikyo’s discussions of faith, this word often occurs as part of the phrase “living in God’s bosom”—a phrase that indicates the foundation of Tenrikyo’s world view, which is expressed in the Ofudesaki as “This universe is the body of God” (Ofudesaki III: 40, 135, XV: 37).

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Ito, Shiro. “Assimilation of Buddhas and Deities (kami): The Formation of the honji-suijaku Theory.” Japanese Religions (NCC Center for the Study of Japanese Religions) 40, nos. 1 & 2 (2015): 1-23. Kasahara, Kazuo. Tenkanki no shnjkyǀ: Shinshnj, Tenrikyǀ, Sǀkagakkai [Religions in Transition: Shinshnj, Tenrikyǀ, Sǀkagakkai]. Tokyo: Nippon hǀsǀ kyǀkai, 1966. Lowe, Bryan D. “States of ‘State Buddhism’: History, Religion, and Politics in Late Nineteenth- and Twentieth-century Scholarship.” Japanese Religions 39, nos. 1 & 2 (2014): 71-93. Marukawa, Hitoo. “Religious Circumstance in the Late Tokugawa and the Early Meiji Periods.” The Theological Perspectives of Tenrikyo: In Commemoration of the Centennial Anniversary of Oyasama, ed., 274309. Oyasato Research Institute, Tenri: Tenri University Press, 1986. Nakayama, Shǀzen. “The Various Forms of Verbal Evolution in Tenrikyo Doctrine.” In Michi no tomo, no. 990: 2-10. Tenri: Tenrikyo Dǀynjsha, 1960. —. On the Idea of God in the Tenrikyo Doctrine. Tenri: Headquarters of the Tenrikyo Church, 1962. . Kǀki no kenkynj [A Study of Kǀki, the Divine Record]. Tenri: Tenrikyo dǀynjsha, 1957. Reischauer, Edwin O., Shigeto Tsuru, and others (Compiled under the supervision of). Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan vols. 2, 5, 7, 8, Tokyo: Kǀdansha, 1983. Sueki, Fumihiko, ed. Kindaikokka to bukkyǀ [Buddhism and the Modern Japanese State] (A New History of Buddhism in Asia, Vol. 14. Japan IV), Tokyo: Kǀseishuppansha, 2011. Takahashi, Masao. Meiji no kirisutokyǀ [Christians in the Meiji period]. Tokyo: Yoshikawakǀbunkan, 2003. Tamamuro, Fumio. “Local Society and the Temple-parishioner Relationship within the Bakufu’s Governance Structure.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 28, no. 3-4 (2001): 261-292. —. “The Development of the Temple-parishioner System.” In Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 36, no. 1 (2009): 11-26. Tenrikyo Church Headquarters. Osashizu, The Divine Directions. 2nd edition. 7 vols. Tenri: Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, 1981. —. Mikagura-uta, The Songs for the Service. 6th edition. Tenri: Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, 1991. . Ofudesaki. The Tip of the Writing Brush. 6th edition. Tenri: Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, 1993. —. The Doctrine of Tenrikyo. 10th ed. Tenri: Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, 1993.

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—. The Life of Oyasama, Foundress of Tenrikyo. 3rd ed. Tenri: Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, 1996. —. Anecdotes of Oyasama, the Foundress of Tenrikyo. Tenri: Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, 1976. Tenrikyo Kǀga Grand Church, ed. Kǀga no michi. Shiga: Tenrikyo Kǀga Grand Church, 1931. Tenrikyo Overseas Department. Reference Materials for the Life of Oyasama. Tenri: Tenrikyo Overseas Department, 2000. —. Tenrikyo Overseas Department, ed. A Glossary of Tenrikyo Terms. Tenri: Tenrikyo Overseas Department, 2010. Tenrikyo Overseas Mission Department. Tenrikyo: The Path to Joyousness. Tenri: Tenrikyo Overseas Mission Department, 1998. —. Tenrikyo: Teachings for the Joyous Life: Articles printed in The Japan Times prior to the 90th Anniversary of the Foundress. Tenri: Tenrikyo Overseas Mission Department, 1976. Ueda, Yoshinaru. Insights into the Story of Creation. Tenri: Tenrikyo Overseas Mission Department, 1976, Revised edition 1984. Yamaguchi, Teruomi. Meiji kokka to shnjkyǀ [The Meiji Nation and Religion]. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1999. Yamamoto, Takeo. Faith Sincerity Joy. Tenri: Tenrikyo Overseas Mission Department, 1981.

CHAPTER ELEVEN RE-INTERPRETING HANSAI: BURNT OFFERINGS AS THE NAGASAKI ATOMIC BOMB GWYN MCCLELLAND MONASH UNIVERSITY

When the second atomic bomb destroyed Nagasaki on 9 August 1945, the local Catholic community’s suburb of Urakami was decimated.1 The Urakami Catholics were shaped by centuries of persecution and marginalisation and assigned a particular meaning to “surviving the bomb.” This writing, part of a larger project on memories of the bomb in this community, explores the religious vocabulary of suffering that emerged in the wake of the bomb. In particular, this article explores Nagai Takashi’s early characterisation of the bomb in religious terms as hansai2 (burnt offering), and the challenges to that characterisation which emerged in the community and beyond in the 1950s. Such challenges are voiced in this article by ordinary men and women, who express a wish to break through the silence about the impact of the bomb on Urakami, and add their experiences to the discourse  1 See the map in Figure 1 which shows a map of the recovered community in 1953, but illustrates the bomb’s impact upon Urakami in the northern part of the city. With great thanks to Dr. Beatrice Trefalt for her insightful comments on early chapter drafts and also to Keren who contributes greatly to the development of my writing. I acknowledge the support of the Japanese Study Grant from the National Library of Australia and the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum’s great support in this project. Last, but by no means least thank you to the hibakusha survivors who gave generously of their time and their own stories in support of this project. 2 Japanese sources frequently translate hansai into English as holocaust which is strictly correct. However, holocaust has come in the West to suggest the Jewish “holocaust,” also known as the “shoah.” Therefore, to distinguish its use in this chapter, hansai will be translated as “burnt offering.”

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dominated by men like Nagai. In the testimony of the survivors, there is a palpable tension in this study between the history of dominating “great men” and the testimony of the lesser-known women and men who may not have been able to express themselves as publicly until recently. Communal stories highlights how the bomb is remembered within longer memories of historic persecutions and martyrdoms. This communal narrative allows Urakami Catholics a sense of agency, and the possibility of resistance against an identity of exclusive victimhood. Initially the hansai interpretation encouraged believers who were disconsolate about the suggestion that the bomb could have represented a punishment. Although the impact of Nagai’s early interpretation was great, it was challenged at the time and has continued to be challenged ever since. Some respondents were negative about the legacy of Nagai, and others re-interpreted in their own ways the meanings of hansai, and the related vocabulary setsuri (divine providence) and shiren (test of faith). By reference to oral history, this chapter suggests that much of the community has consciously moved beyond the early understanding. By engaging Rene Girard’s “scapegoat mechanism” and the theoretical framework of Johann Baptist Metz’s terminology of the “dangerous memory” of Christ, a new lens is developed for the understanding of this communal memory.

Figure 1: Panorama Shiki Nagasaki Kankou Annai Zu 1513

 3

Used with permission. This 1953 map of Nagasaki demonstrates how geographically the Urakami region to the North of Nagasaki is separated from the harbour town itself by hills. As a result, the Urakami valley in the North bore the brunt of the bomb while central Nagasaki was largely protected. Author unknown, “Panorama Shiki Nagasaki Kankou Annai Zu 151,” in Shi-Hakata Chizu Shiryou (Nagasaki History and Culture Museum, 1953).

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Nagai Takashi The post-war legacy of Nagai Takashi (1908-1951) has been considerable in the city of Nagasaki and even greater in the Urakami region. Nagai was a leader within the community who donated considerable royalties from his books to the renewal efforts in Urakami. He was a scientist and sought to engage in a meaningful way as a radiologist through his own close encounter with the atomic bombing of a city. Nagai produced scientific papers such as the Atom Bomb Rescue and Relief Report (genshibakudan kyࠉgo hǀkokusho) and “Remarks on atomic disease genshibyǀ gairon.” His bestselling books and memoirs took the story of Nagasaki to the wider war-torn Japan from 1949.4 Nagai’s writing was one of the first survivor tales allowed by the military occupation censor to be published and as a result became widely read throughout Japan and beyond.5 Nagai died in May 1951 of radiation sickness and complications, which he had contracted not solely through the bomb but through his occupation as a radiology researcher. He was earlier visited by both the Emperor and the famous American deaf-blind activist Helen Keller.6

Hansai Theory Nagai’s interpretation of the bomb has become famous enough to gain its own label: hansai-setsu (as suggested by Takahashi Shinji).7 Initially the fundamentals of Nagai’s interpretation will be described here. The context and the condition of the place in which Nagai spoke of hansai are vital for an understanding of his theology. As a representative of the Catholic laity, Nagai initially articulated his theological stance of the bombing as a religious sacrifice at a funeral mass in November 1945, and in front of 150 to 160 survivors held at the ruins of the Urakami Cathedral.8 Nagai’s  4

“The Bells of Nagasaki” was the second top best seller in 1949 Japan. Takashi Nagai, Nagasaki No Kane, 880-04 Aruba Bunko (Tǀkyǀ: San Pauro, 1949). 5 Under the orders of the SCAP––the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (General Douglas MacArthur). 6 An English movie about the person Nagai entitled “All that Remains” was released in May 2016. Ian Higgins et al., All That Remains: Based on the True Story of Takashi Nagai, 2016. 7 Shinji Takahashi, Nagasaki Ni Atte Tetsugakusuru: Kakujidai No Shi to Sei, Shohan (Tǀkyǀ: Hokuju Shuppan, 1994). 8 Chizuko Kataoka and Rumiko Kataoka, hibakuchi Nagasaki no saiken (Nagasaki: Nagasaki Junshin Daigaku Hakubutsukan, 1996), 73. Chie Shijǀ, Urakami No

Re-Inteerpreting Hansaai: Burnt Offerin ngs as the Nagaasaki Atomic Bomb 233

theory revollved around the t idea of th he bombing aas a religious sacrifice, which “provvidentially” toook place as part of a histtory of shiren n or trials and tribulattions for Chhristians. Joh hn W. Treat calls Nagai’s theme “sacrifice w winning salvatiion,” or an Old d Testament sstory of a wratthful God combined w with a New Tesstament promiise of deliveryy by the same God.9

n Figure 2: Naggai Takashi, 19446, mourning his wife, Midori , public domain

Nagai postuulated that the bombing deatths should be interpreted ass a “burnt offering” to God, using thhe word hansa ai as used in tthe Japanese version v of the Old Testtament, and declaring d that the bombing was atonemen nt for the sins of hum manity and of Japan in the war. “Who cchanged Nagaasaki that was so beauutiful into a hilll of flames? It I was us,” saidd Nagai.10 In a written elaboration, Nagai explaained that in a previous erra, the Old Testament T hansai had involved an “unblemished d lamb being burnt on an altar and offered as a sacrifice to the t Lord.” “O On that day thhe fire burnt for f world peace for huumanity as a huge h hansai… … and the peoople who died d were all    Genbaku No Katari: Nagaai Takashi Karra Rǀma Kyǀkkǀ E/Shijǀ Chie (Tǀkyǀ: Miraisha, 20115), 43. 9 John Whitttier Treat, Writiing Ground Zerro: Japanese L Literature and the t Atomic Bomb (Chicaggo: University of o Chicago Press, 1995), 313. 10 Nagai quooted in Nishim mura: Akira Nishimura, N “Inoori No Nagasaaki: Nagai Takashi to Geenbaku Shisha”” (Tokyo University, n.d.), 48.

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unblemished lambs,” said Nagai.11 He interpreted the past trials of the Urakami believers as extended by the bombing: “So many martyrdoms, uninterrupted persecution and the atomic bomb.12 …these are the trials (shiren) that tell of the glory of God… on the ‘holy ground’ of Urakami.” Nagai referred to God’s providence or go-setsuri, by which he claimed that Urakami became the place where the bomb was dropped. Was not Urakami––the most sacred place in all Japan––chosen as a victim, a pure lamb that had to be slaughtered and burned on the altar of sacrifice (hansai) to expiate this sin of humanity, the World War?13

His interpretation in this context of the atomic bombing drew deeply on the theological and historical resources of the Urakami Catholics including the Edo to Meiji period martyrdoms and the persecutions at the hands of the Japanese authorities. Adding to the complexity for Nagai, there was talk that the atomic bomb was a punishment of the Japanese gods. Some city folk had said that Urakami was bombed due to the worship of a foreign god, whilst the Suwa shrine in the city was protected.14 Nagai’s interpretation rebutted this idea and exonerated the Catholics from guilt, proclaiming rather that the people who died were innocent. Part of the power of Nagai’s interpretation was that he spoke to a fractured society in a “spiritual vacuum” and an emptied-out landscape.15 At the time of  11

Shijǀ, Urakami No Genbaku No Katari, 106. Takashi Nagai, Rozario no kusari (Tokyo: Romansusha, 1948). 13 Kevin M. Doak, “Hiroshima Rages, Nagasaki Prays: Nagai Takashi’s Catholic Response to the Atomic Bombing,” in When the Tsunami Came to Shore, ed. Roy Starrs (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 260. Doak revised Johnston’s English translation of “Nagasaki no kane” by Nagai, replacing Johnston’s Nagasaki with Nagai’s original Urakami. 14 See Mori and Miyamoto: Mori cites these three statements from two sources, one a Nishi-Nippon newspaper website of 2002 and the other a news article written in 1970 entitled “Nagasaki no hibakusha: buraku, chǀsen, chnjgoku” Kenta Mori, “genbaku wa hito ni nani mo tarashita no ka: chiriteki kankei kara nagasaki wo kaishaku suru” (Waseda shakai kagaku kenkyu, 2008), https://dspace.wul.was eda.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2065/32390/1/ShakaiKagakuSougoKenkyu_S_2009_ Mori.pdf. Yuki Miyamoto, Beyond the Mushroom Cloud: Commemoration, Religion, and Responsibility after Hiroshima (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), 128. 15 Nagai’s authority grew over time, especially following the successful publication of his first books from 1948 onwards. As a doctor, who assisted in the relief effort he was accepted as a spokesperson quite quickly amongst the community. 12

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Nagai’s declaration, white bones still lay untouched across the “atomic field” of Urakami, wrote interviewee Kataoka Chizuko. 16 In this community many people were still dying17 and many more had died in the previous three months. Nagai himself had lost his wife, Midori to the bomb. A fractured society and a landscape of silence (Figure 3) were conspicuous in Urakami and no special treatment for the welfare of survivors was to be allowed for another twelve years.18 As well as the impression that the bomb had specifically decimated the Christians, the “silence” of the landscape reflected a spiritual vacuum. Most survivors were without homes, workable fields, many of their neighbours, friends, family members, their schools, workplaces and even the cathedral at the centre of their communitarian faith practice.19 Fukahori Shigemi talked in his interview of living in bomb shelters after the bombing. Fukahori declared: On the 10th I came back from the seminary, to find everything demolished…. My house is just over there (from the cathedral). I was at the ruins and that was where I met my father. Dad worked to clean up the house…, [my father was okay]. After that, there was a bomb shelter down below the church. That is where we lived. As we had no house. Yes. (Fukahori Shigemi, Urakami Cathedral, 2016)

The fractured community was searching for answers, and it was in this atmosphere of shock that Nagai’s interpretation was initially well-received.

 16

Kataoka and Kataoka, hibakuchi Nagasaki no saiken, 73. A UCLA website, entitled “Children of the Atomic Bomb” suggests that the number of people who actually died will never be known due to the destruction, chaos and censorship which followed. On the same site, the number 60-80000 dead is estimated by December 1945, suggesting that the number dying between August and December was high. Nagai spoke at the memorial service in November. UCLA, “Hiroshima and Nagasaki Death Toll,” http://www.aasc.ucla.edu/cab/200708230009.html, accessed on 13/05/2016. 18 Shijǀ discusses at length the particular conditions in which the Urakami Christian community found themselves after the bombing. 19 Shijǀ, Urakami No Genbaku No Katari, 191. The Catholic community in Urakami was very much found around Ground Zero (an estimated 8500 out of 12000 killed), and the Urakami Cathedral was located 500 m from Ground Zero and destroyed in the bombing. 17

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Figure 3: Landscape of Silence: the burnt-out remains of survivor Fukahori Jǀji's home, near Yamazato Primary school, Urakami20

Catholic Responses to Hansai: Faith and Silence Nagai’s hansai interpretation was welcomed by the Urakami Catholic group but simultaneously culminated in a reticence to speak about the bombing. Nagai furnished a way of understanding the bombing and keeping faith with God. A “special role” was proffered for those who had died and for the survivors. Nagai frequently referred to setsuri, shiren and hansai as well as martyrdom in his writings and this language was utilised in Catholic mission schools such as Junshin Girls’ High School.21 Nagai’s interpretation even gave hope and meaning to atomic death, according to Shijǀ Chie (the Research Centre for Nuclear Weapons Abolition, Nagasaki kakuheiki kenkyࠉ sentƗ).22 However, the testimony of interviewees in this project demonstrates that the atomic bomb as hansai provided only a transitory hopefulness. Nagai’s theology may be to some extent linked to this reservation to engage in discourse on their atomic bomb experiences on the part of the Urakami Catholics. Considerable gaps in memory and in discussion about Nagasaki’s atomic bombing exist in reference to the  20

Photo by Shigeo Hayashi, Nagasaki Atom Bomb Museum. Fukahori Jǀji’s narrative is described in McClelland’s journal article in Journal of Religion in Japan 5, 1. 21 Shijǀ’s work is well worth reading in this regard. Shijǀ, Urakami No Genbaku No Katari, 45-48. 22 Ibid., 191.

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Catholic Church.23 A number of scholars have linked Nagai’s interpretation to a widespread silence about the atomic bomb in Catholic organisations. Such silences have also been localised to the Nagasaki region in particular. There are many more church publications even today from the Catholic archdiocese of Hiroshima than from Nagasaki regarding the atomic bombings, despite the Nagasaki archdiocese being the much bigger organisation. Junshin Girls’ school and a Catholic old people’s facility called Genbaku Hǀmu were the only institutions to produce Catholic publications about the bombing prior to the 1980s, and these were not officially from the archdiocese.24 The Nagasaki Urakami Church and the Nagasaki archdiocese in the seventy years since the bombing put out the fewest memoirs in relation to the bombing of any official organisation in Nagasaki.25 Shijǀ demonstrated that between 1937 and the 1980s the Catholic conference of Japan put out just one title in Catholic publications with the word “peace” in it. This demonstrates a general apolitical stance by the Catholic Church, not only due to the A-bomb. As well, there were no articles in this time with the title “atomic weapon.” From the 1980s a gradual change in the Catholic discourse is demonstrable by the example of seven articles including the word “peace” and eight including the words “atomic weapon.” Nagai’s interpretation was not, however, the only reason for such silences. The belief that the bombing was an expression of God’s providence was taken so seriously by survivors that for a long period following the war, Catholic hibakusha (survivors) did not want to say any more about the event. The possibility of Catholics getting involved in political activities, some believed, meant that they would become “dirty” and people suggested that you might be called aka (Red-communist) as a result.26 One of the interviewees, Sr. Kataoka Chizuko, who was seven in 1945, recalled her own silence and the shyness of the community as a whole about speaking in relation to the atomic bombing as “something which God did….” If God dropped the bomb, there was no point in speaking about it publicly. More than that, more than anything… ‘not wanting to talk’ was the initial thing I think. To talk about ‘that experience’ … was out of the question. I also didn’t want to talk. Therefore, there were a lot of people who didn’t

 23 24 25 26

Ibid., 190. Ibid., 161. Ibid., 190. Ibid., 162.

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want to talk [about] something which God did, to draw pictures… they couldn’t talk… (Kataoka Chizuko, Junshin University Museum, 2016)

As Kataoka describes here, the hansai-setsu interpretation of the bomb contributed to a reticence to speak out in the Catholic community. Nagai’s idea of the damage of the bombing as providence sublimated an “absurd violence” into the Catholic faith through its “Old Testament” style theology, according to Shijǀ.27 The “bomb as providence” theory in reality for the Catholic survivors implied that they simply needed to endure the trials or shiren following the bombing and this was for many a living hell. Three Catholic interviewees in this project spoke of times of utter despair, especially in the early years after the bombing. Nakamura Kazutoshi, who was an eleven-year-old at the time of the bombing, said in his interview that if it was not for his religious beliefs, he would have committed suicide. He was forced to flee to Gotǀ Island after the bombing and thus could not qualify for high school, contributing to his feelings of hopelessness: After the atomic bombing, I had no mother and [most of] my brothers and sisters had also died, so if I hadn’t been Catholic, I would have jumped from somewhere and wouldn’t be here… However, in Catholicism suicide is considered kind of the worst possible sin… You must not rebel against God. I feel like it was just on that basis that I have lived on. …At the same time, I felt like ‘I want to die, I want to die’ most definitively. I had no hope at all… [in relation to his dream to go to Kaisei Senior High School] I had talked to the priests in this way and my mother, however that [dream] was crushed [Nakamura’s mother died] and all [these people died] and I had no hopes. (Nakamura Kazutoshi, Nagasaki Atom Bomb Museum, 2016)

In view of this testimony, Nakamura’s desire to stay alive rather than to end his life is his “living” sacrifice or shiren (trials) for the God of the hansai. Whilst Nagai tended to employ hansai in relation to the deaths of so many from the community, for this survivor 70 years on the understanding is an enduring obedience to God, or this “living sacrifice” of Nakamura’s life.

Public Critics of Nagai Nagai’s work was not universally accepted in Japan and criticism emerged on a number of grounds. Firstly, his interpretation was criticised for the  27

Ibid., 48.

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lack of a contribution to “peace movements.”28 One of the first writers to raise this issue was the journalist, Tadokoro Tarǀ. In 1965, Tadokoro took issue with Nagai’s use of language in referring to bomb victimhood as setsuri, or God’s providence. Tadokoro argued that this interpretation offered no “resistance to the bombing.”29 Nagai’s interpretation meant that Catholics refused to participate in peace activities as it would indicate dissatisfaction with God’s plan. Tadokoro argued that “The fact that Nagai’s books sold so well became a disadvantage to Nagasaki [in terms of the peace movement].”30 From within the Catholic community of Nagasaki, another early critic was a Catholic convert, Akizuki Tatsuichirǀ, who asserted similarly that Nagai’s religious interpretation was the reason for the ineffectiveness of the nuclear disarmament movement.31 About eight years after the bombing, Akizuki had converted to Catholicism from Buddhism. Akizuki, also a medical doctor, was concerned about peace movements and politics, as one of very few hibakusha activists who was also Catholic. Since he was not originally a member of the Urakami Catholics, he showed a less parochial approach than Nagai. He had particular interest in protesting about the atomic bombing and in his own book published in 1966, Nagasaki Genbaku-ki, Akizuki described Nagai as overly religious:32 That literary talent, poetic sentiment, artistic heart; these were the soul of the teacher, whose decline, on the other hand, was unstoppable. … However, … he was too sentimental and I did not care for the brimming religiosity. As a result, it happened that the bombing of Nagasaki was only received through the recollections of Nagai Takashi… and it was only religiosity in dealing with the atomic bomb, I believe.33

 28

In 1965 an article was released in an Asahi Journal entitled “sengo no besutoserƗ monogatari,” (Best selling stories of the post-war years), by Taro Tadokoro, who suggested, using the example of Nagai Takashi’s kono ko wo nokoshite (The children I leave behind), that Nagai had not contributed to peace activities. Tadokoro was quoted in Yuki Miyamoto, “Rebirth in the Pure Land or God’s Sacrificial Lambs? Religious Interpretations of the Atomic Bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, (2005): 146. 29 Kataoka and Kataoka, hibakuchi Nagasaki no saiken, 62. 30 Page 43 of Tadokoro, quoted in Miyamoto, “Rebirth in the Pure Land or God’s Sacrificial Lambs?” 146. 31 Miyamoto, Beyond the Mushroom Cloud, 134. 32 Akizuki Tatsuichiro, Nagasaki genbaku-ki: hibaku ishi no shogen (Tokyo: Nihon zusho senta, 1972). 33 Akizuki in his book, Nagasaki genbaku-ki, my translation, quoted in Shinji Takahashi, Nagasaki Ni Atte Tetsugaku Suru Kan: 3/11 Go No Heiwa Sekinin (Hokkyoku Shuppan, 2015), 37.

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Akizuki’s argument that “the bombing of Nagasaki was only received through the recollections of Nagai Takashi” was strong criticism. Akizuki was one of very few Catholics in the early days to critique Nagai, whilst non-Catholic critics were more common. Yamada Kan, a local poet, continued the political critique and in 1972 labelled Nagai as an uninvited “mouthpiece and saint” for Nagasaki.34 The shadow of Nagai Takashi, he wrote, enforced a long silence on the hibakusha masses. Furthermore, he wrote, a taboo against criticising Nagai was evident in Nagasaki. Such a taboo had been created through religiosity and doctrine, but also by the American occupation, which allowed Nagai originally to be published, at a time of heavy censorship of other materials.35 Yamada revisited Nagai’s “spiritual” vocabulary and reflected that setsuri or providence as a doctrinal word allowed for no doubt, dissent or criticism. If the bomb was God’s providence and represented God’s love as per this religious dogma, Yamada wrote, nothing more could be said about the bombing impacting not only the Catholics, but all the other bomb victims. Such criticisms continue to be voiced today. Echoing Tadokoro’s criticisms of Nagai as preventing resistance to the bombing, the Nagasaki academic philosopher, Takahashi Shinji recounted Yamada’s arguments and added to them the idea that Nagai’s religious interpretation exonerated the United States from any blame for dropping the atomic bomb. Similarly, Shijǀ Chie wrote in 2015 that Nagai did not pursue the responsibility of the United States for dropping the bomb and wrote of an “abstract” kind of peace: this is why the Occupation forces were supportive of his publishing activities. Consequently, according to Shijǀ, it was actually the Occupation of the United States which created Nagai Takashi as a so-called “atomic saint.” 36 In addition, not only Nagai, but also some other kataribe (spokespersons) who travelled to speak to a US Christian audience did not pursue the guilt of the United States for dropping the bomb.37 Takahashi added that Nagai’s interpretation had, in addition, directed attention away from the guilt of the emperor of Japan and the Japanese people who had participated in the military crimes of World War Two. Like Akizuki, Takahashi cast Nagai as sweetly sentimental. Furthermore, Takahashi notes that Nagai was anti-communist and anti-Soviet, which may have  34

Kan Yamada, “Gizensha: Nagai Takashi E No Kokuhatsu,” Ushio (Feb., 1972): 231-237. 35 Nagai’s Bells of Nagasaki was the first survivor tale allowed through the American occupation censor in 1949. 36 Shijǀ, Urakami No Genbaku No Katari, 99. 37 Ibid., 95.

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influenced his good relationship with the Occupation forces.38 However, given that Occupation censorship was current until 1952, after Nagai’s death, it is unlikely that Nagai was influenced by the Cold war in his writing. For Takahashi, Nagai’s hansai theory framed a specifically Catholic understanding of the Nagasaki bombing, the perception of the dead in this light and the task remaining for those who had survived. The faithful framed the bombing as setsuri; perceived the dead as a hansai (burnt offering) and understood those who remained as entering shiren (trials/tribulations). Kataoka Yakichi, a historian of the hidden Christians and the father of Sister Kataoka Chizuko who was interviewed in this project, responded to such criticisms as the above by protesting that Nagai’s interpretation should not prevent Nagasaki hibakusha from participating in the antinuclear movement.39 Kataoka argued that there were a number of other reasons that the peace movement in Nagasaki had been stymied and weak compared to that of Hiroshima. As Nagasaki was the only port open to the West during much of the Edo period, its citizens had an optimistic openness to the future, he argued. This focus on the future, said Kataoka, meant that the citizens tended to put the past behind them more quickly. Also significant was the fact that whilst the Nagasaki city centre was not badly damaged by the atomic bombing, the Urakami valley was devastated and therefore hibakusha consciousness was not evenly experienced throughout the city, but geographically stratified, which was dissimilar to Hiroshima.40 Presumably as a result, those unaffected or less affected by the bombing did not wish to dwell on this event as a central historical issue for Nagasaki. These analyses of the impact of Nagai’s interpretation of the bombing often consider Nagasaki’s wider atomic memory, but are missing a consideration of the impact on the Catholic community’s own “collective memory.” John W. Treat wrote a chapter in his book on A-Bomb literature about Nagasaki, where he has discussed the specific nature of Nagasaki ABomb literature––that of martyrdom and the connections between past and present trials. The Urakami Catholic interpretation of the bombing was inseparable from their long communal history of faith, martyrdom and  38

Takahashi, Nagasaki Ni Atte Tetsugakusuru, 200. Kataoka Yakichi died in 1980 and this paper, “Nagasaki wa naze damatte iru noka” was published posthumously in Kataoka and Kataoka, hibakuchi Nagasaki no saiken, 139-146. 40 Kataoka is quoted in Yuki Miyamoto, Narrative Boundaries: The Ethical Implications of Reinterpreting Atomic Bomb Histories (ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2003), 379-380. 39

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persecution, wrote Miyamoto Yuki in 2003. Nagai “exploited” the community’s memory of persecution and martyrdom to mark this event, she continued. Junshi, or the Japanese concept of virtuous death, was linked with the Christian community’s understanding of death as martyrdom, exemplified by the frequent executions of Christians from the year 1597 and even up to 1873. Martyrdom for Christians was understood as equivalent to the idea of junshi, or Japanese voluntary death, according to Miyamoto, whereby a person atoned for one’s defilement.41 However, it is worth adding that whilst this similarity between junshi and Christian martyrdom is likely as far as an understanding goes of the sacrifice of self for others in the community, the Catholic understanding does not go so far as to accept the practice of suicide. That Nagai drew on the Christian idea of redemption through martyrdom is clear from his autobiographical record of his speech: “…as we walk in hunger and thirst, ridiculed, penalised, scourged, pouring with sweat and covered with blood, let us remember how Jesus carried his cross to the hill on Calvary.”42 “The holocaust of Calvary gave meaning and beauty to the holocaust of Nagasaki,” writes biographer Paul Glynn.43 Glynn refers to hansai as holocaust, whilst I translate it with its literal meaning, “burnt offering.” Describing Nagai’s planning for his talk at the open-air Mass of November 1945, Glynn wrote that Nagai sat on a pile of rubble inside the broken cathedral, saw the slain Lamb on the broken altar and remembered the singing girls from Junshin, who had been singing of the Lamb as they went to their deaths. Commonly in early hibakusha narratives schoolgirls sang the national anthem as they were trapped in a building succumbing to fire. Here, again, is a story which connects to a nationalistic trope of memory.44 Miyamoto made the subsequent point that through three centuries of persecution, the Catholics had prayed for peace. Therefore, Nagai’s term of “pure lambs,” privileging Catholic believers as “chosen and pure” is more explicable.45 By placing Nagai’s interpretation in the context of wider history it is possible to understand Nagai’s perception of Urakami as “chosen.” Miyamoto’s analysis assists in scrutinising the use of martyrdom  41

Ibid., 259-303. Takashi Nagai, The Bells of Nagasaki (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1994), 109. 43 Paul Glynn, A Song for Nagasaki (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1990), 116. 44 Stephanie Houston Grey, “Writing Redemption: Trauma and the Authentication of the Moral Order in Hibakusha Literature,” Text & Performance Quarterly 22, 1 (Jan., 2002): 16. 45 Miyamoto, Beyond the Mushroom Cloud, 140. 42

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language which indicates the conflation of Catholicism and nationalism in mission school documents such as those published by Junshin Girls’ school.46 Junshin High school (1.4 km from Ground Zero) experienced the most terrible death toll in Nagasaki amongst high schools, at 206 students and seven staff members. 47 For those commemorating this calamity, in the literature and at the grave, the reference to the girls, in line with the interpretation of Nagai Takashi, as “unblemished lambs” became almost clichéd. A “school grave” was also established at Junshin, including preserved bones and hair similar to the widespread Catholic practice of revering the relics of martyrs. This kind of grave is not found in Hiroshima or elsewhere in Nagasaki.48 A poem by Nagai was engraved on the side of this grave. Music was added to this poem and is still sung each 9th August at Junshin as the “hansai song.”49 Nagai, but probably more so subsequent Principals and school leaders mourning the girls’ deaths, wove a combined Catholic and nationalistic aspect into their interpretation, in which they called the girls “martyrs for the fatherland.”50 To summarise the public criticisms of Nagai, the major one was in the area of political responsibility and his inadvertent exoneration of both the United States and the Japanese military from responsibility. As a result, Nagai’s religious interpretation of the bombing contributed at least to some extent to the neglecting of the “peace movement” and an over-shadowing of atomic memory in Nagasaki. In the ensuing discussion, recent Catholic responses to the hansai-setsu are denoted, after broaching an event of 1981 which transmogrified the community’s employment of Nagai’s interpretation of the bombing. Following this, I will consider René Girard’s interpretation of sacrifice and the community memory in this light.

Papal Paradigm Shift: from Reticence to Kataribe The interviewees suggest that their views or their community’s views about how to remember the atomic bomb and the related suffering changed from the 1980s onwards. The origin of this shift is the visit and message of Pope John Paul II to Japan in 1981, which signalled a paradigm change for both a readiness to speak about the memories and for the religious community’s transformation of their interpretation of the  46 47 48 49 50

Shijǀ, Urakami No Genbaku No Katari, 100-103. Ibid., 103. Ibid., 106. Ibid., 105. Ibid., 108.

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memory of the bombing.51 John Paul II, speaking in Japanese, began his speech at Hiroshima with these words: “War is the work of humanity (ningen no shiwaza); war is destruction of human life; war is death.”52 These words were of particular significance for the community and are referred to commonly in the interview data. Nagai Tokusaburǀ (the grandson of Nagai Takashi) suggested in his interview that his grandfather always understood war as a human error and was misinterpreted in regard to what he said about the bomb as hansai: …on the other side of it… within his books a number of times, Nagai Takashi himself also said that war is perpetrated by humanity.

Figure 4: Statue of Pope John Paul II, erected at Megumi no Oka Genbaku Hǀmu

He also talked about how the Pope’s visit was understood in regard to these words:  51

Shinji Takahashi, “Hansai Theory and Nagai Takashi,” March 25, 2016. See the Pope’s statement at Hiroshima on this website “AtomicBombMuseum.org––Testimonies,” accessed May 2, 2016, http://atomicbombmuseum.org/6_5.shtml. “AtomicBombMuseum.org-Testimonies,” accessed on 02/05/2016. 52

Re-Interpreting Hansai: Burnt Offerings as the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb 245 … the Pope said… That ‘war is sin,’ ‘war is the work of humanity’… Yes, yes. That the word hansai is a bit… the word go-setsuri is incorrect is what you are talking about …But, of course, this was not in relation to this specific matter [setsuri and hansai] …. Ningen no shiwaza (the work of humanity) is a most understood phrase isn’t it... (Nagai Tokusaburǀ, Nagai Takashi Museum, 2016)

In the above statement, Nagai Tokusaburǀ acknowledged the possibility of debate regarding setsuri and hansai and perceived that the Pope’s words were understood and had an impact on the community. Sr. Kataoka Chizuko who earlier in this chapter described the great reticence to speak about the bomb within the community, also explained how the Pope’s visit of 1981 changed attitudes and the Catholic community became more extrovert in talking about their experience of the bombing from this time on. She noted that the Pope appealed directly to the Catholics to contribute to the work of peace as follows. …but after the Pope said ‘that’ [war is the work of humanity], he said [we] have to talk about it… This was what changed. …There were a whole lot of people who as victims… [had experienced this pain of ours]… [which] we (jibun-tachi) hadn’t talked about it, [pain] concealed within us… However, the Pope said … that we had to work more for the sake of world peace, so if the Pope says so, even if it is painful, alright, our experiences have to be added to the discourse. … I think this was the kind of change you see. (Kataoka Chizuko, Junshin University Museum, 2016)

Following the change which Kataoka refers to, Nagai Takashi would no longer speak for all in the Catholic community. The Pope’s appeal broke down some of the walls of silence and drew forth memory in the Urakami community. It is this memory, breaking through the hansai-setsu of Nagai Takashi to which this chapter refers in the testimony of Catholic survivors.

Defending Nagai Takashi Despite her belief that the Pope’s visit altered the way survivors spoke about the bombing, Kataoka defended Nagai’s legacy and argued that Nagai’s interpretation should only be discussed from within a Catholic framework. In other words, because he [Nagai] was talking to the Urakami people, if you were a believer of Urakami you could understand it but, other people couldn’t follow it. There were a lot of phrases and words… There were a lot of expressions. (Kataoka Chizuko, Junshin University Museum, 2016)

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As described in her interview above, she said that the meaning would have been clear to Urakami Catholics at the time and that non-Catholics failed to understand it properly. Nagai was using “shorthand” expressions, she continued, presumably understandable to the people of Urakami. Kataoka’s response describes an understanding of a theology that only an Urakami believer could understand. Kataoka, who as a previous principal of Junshin University, is closely connected with Junshin High School which drew on Nagai Takashi’s hansai-setsu, has been a staunch defender of Nagai Takashi’s contributions especially since the publishing of her book in 1996. Her responses have engaged with the criticisms of Yamada Kan and Takahashi Shinji. In a book published with her familial sister, Rumiko, Kataoka offered a concerted defence of Nagai in a chapter entitled “Nagai Takashi to Nagasaki no kane (The Bells of Nagasaki).” During her interview Kataoka paused and took considerable time to answer. Kataoka did not concisely explain the meaning of hansai, but referred to the Old Testament. The language Kataoka avoids is expressly of interest, demonstrating ambivalence regarding Nagai’s religious vocabulary by avoiding the word “hansai” or “burnt offering” and instead drawing on the language introduced by the visit of Pope John Paul II. This somewhat distinguished her understanding from Nagai’s and expanded on her interpretation of the close connection between Christ’s passion and the bombing deaths. It wasn’t that Christ’s passion was exactly wedded (musubareta) [to the atom bomb suffering]. Rather, for the Urakami people, the extreme suffering was the result of a war caused by ‘the work of humanity,’ wasn’t it? Within this, the question for ‘us,’ who experienced these ‘shiren’ trials, was how to live life and be able to praise God and to absorb (toraeru) this… (Kataoka Chizuko, Junshin University Museum, 2016)

Whilst Kataoka has not completely discarded the concept of the hansai, or the Old Testament “burnt offering” to interpret the bombing, her interview shows how the Urakami Christian community utilises an understanding of the Passion of Christ to understand the narrative. She expresses this understanding as their putting together or accommodation (awaseru) with Christ’s suffering for the believers in death as follows: Therefore, at the time for the believers, Christ’s suffering as experienced at the place of the cross was able to allow for endurance by way of offering up their own pain, in terms of the largest physical and psychological damages which they had absorbed from the atom bomb… Therefore, they put together (awaseru) their own suffering with that experienced by Christ, and offered them up to God, and then wanted to die,

Re-Interpreting Hansai: Burnt Offerings as the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb 247 or went to die as believers in Christ. (Kataoka Chizuko, Junshin University Museum, 2016)

On the other hand, in the interview, Kataoka gave some examples relating to setsuri, again referring to the Urakami church’s particular understanding of this vocabulary. The understanding of the people from the home (Genbaku hǀmu) of setsuri (God’s providence) and the Urakami [Catholic] people’s understanding of setsuri and Nagai Takashi’s use of setsuri … suppose[s] a deep faith [and are] not able to be understood by those who do not have this faith. We absolutely use this terminology. When something happens in daily life, we will say, ‘that was God’s providence, wasn’t it!’ So, we use it in everyday scenarios, or we use it about the atomic bomb, so for Nagai to use the word setsuri, it was quite different to the meaning given by ‘these people’ [critics] … it was a different meaning… These words are known through faith. So, in [the word] setsuri, … there is this deep… knowledge, a scholarly way, which… implies a true psychology of God present, offering praise… Even if you don’t try to understand, it is in that place where we have faith… by the grace of belief in God’s significant grace, only possible itself via belief… So in the centre of faith life, therefore, Nagai Takashi’s writing uses an extreme shorthand (tanraku) expression… (Kataoka Chizuko, Junshin University Museum, 2016)

Kataoka’s interpretation suggests that Nagai never meant setsuri (providence) in the meaning which the public critics suggested. Rather, he meant setsuri just as the Catholics had always used the concept, and therefore, not ultimately in terms of the bombing. In this way, she sidesteps the difficulty of the interpretation of the bomb as providence. Rather than adopting Nagai’s wording strictly, Kataoka effectively reinterprets the religious terminology. Setsuri as a “true psychology of God present, offering praise” is how she describes the community’s understanding of providence, using examples. If the Urakami believer is the only one who will understand these words, there is no need for Kataoka to engage in a more specific reply to the aforementioned public critics, especially those outside of Catholicism. However, Kataoka still shows empathy with the hansai-setsu, even though she does not use the word specifically. She quoted Nagai’s words on the uniqueness of Urakami, still demonstrating an understanding of the bombing as the sacrifice of Christ where God is recognised as present with Christ. Kataoka agrees with Nagai that “wartime sins of humankind” were dissipated by the bomb, writing as follows:

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… According to Catholic faith the manner of these words is expressed in the following way. By being in step (awaseteiru) ourselves (watashitachi) with the sacrifice (gisei) of Christ’s cross, we perceive how to offer up the wartime sins of humankind by way of atonement through the unprecedented horror (pain) of the atom bomb, at the same time, recognising God in Urakami together with Christ as the redeemer of humanity.53

As a defender of Nagai, Kataoka’s discussion does show some differences to the original interpretation as noted, particularly about setsuri. Kataoka perceives the spiritual vocabulary here as inexplicable outside of the Urakami Catholic community. Other Catholic interviewees, however, had much stronger reactions to the idea of the bomb as hansai.

Oral History, Hansai and Peace The Catholic response to the hansai-setsu was not uniform, instead, there were some for whom the words still resonated and others who openly rejected them. Nakamura Kazutoshi, who as mentioned earlier would have committed suicide had he not been Catholic demonstrated ambivalence about providence which implied potential anger in him about an uncaring God. To a question about providence, he replied by raising another term used by Nagai, that of shiren.  I really think no matter what, I hold no grudging feelings against God. It was a shiren (trial) for humankind, I think. Do you know the word, shiren? It was shiren, a trial from God given to humanity, for suffering through, you could say. (Nakamura Kazutoshi, Nagasaki Atom Bomb Museum, 2016)

Nakamura avoids defining setsuri, rather than hansai. His answer demonstrates some ambivalence and by the idea of living through trials could be understood an acceptance of the hansai-setsu, or a sacrifice to God. In his view God gave these shiren or trials to the believer. Konishi Shin’ichi stated categorically that he (and collectively his community) does not believe in Nagai Takashi’s setsuri or providence. Professor Nagai… [said]… ‘God’s providence’ … generally we couldn’t accept that, ‘God would do that?’ ... [Laughs] …56 years later [Pope] John Paul first went to Hiroshima and said ‘War is the work of humanity,’ ‘the

 53

Kataoka and Kataoka, hibakuchi Nagasaki no saiken, 75.

Re-Interpreting Hansai: Burnt Offerings as the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb 249 work of the devil’… [In terms of]…God’s providence (setsuri)… to cause war, that wouldn’t happen. Nagasaki people, really agreed with that… [asked as to how church people agree with Nagai]… We don’t agree or disagree really. [As for the notion of] setsuri, we didn’t believe in but [it did raise the question of] how did the United States do it?… we don’t hate, but accept it, … it is faith by prayer. So, … peace activities are still rare, but now, they are increasing. (Konishi Shin’ichi, Nagasaki Atom Bomb Museum, 2014)

Konishi’s response corroborates a new Catholic resistance against the bombing in part due to the Pope’s words. Konishi explains his dissatisfaction with Nagai’s interpretation as directly linked to the Pope’s visit in 1981. When asked whether he concurred with Nagai’s overall interpretation, he equivocated, “We don’t agree or disagree really.” Konishi links the revelation that the nuclear bombing was a work of humanity to an increase in peace involvement by Christians. Therefore, while Nakamura “accepts” the bombing as a trial, Konishi resists the bombing as a human action, and a third survivor, Fukahori Jǀji is openly angry about the bombing. Fukahori does not re-interpret providence or hansai, but likewise does not disguise his unease about the legacy of Nagai Takashi. I’ve had very little to do with ‘that guy,’ he became a Christian after he got married to a Catholic, so I don’t really know about him. Anyway, what would you say, he was a ‘difficult’ person, his way of thinking and he was a doctor, wasn’t he? … Anyway, it was America who dropped the atomic bomb and I can’t forgive that. (Fukahori Jǀji, Nagasaki Atom Bomb Museum, 2014)

Apart from the three survivors’ opinions mentioned so far, Nagai’s interpretation, as described earlier in this chapter reflects the communal narrative’s inherited memory soaked in persecution and martyrdom. Amongst the nine Catholic survivors in this study, the majority of the interviewees spoke openly of public narratives and a close consciousness of the fourth persecutions (1867-73). Therefore, Nagai’s interpretation should be read in conjunction with the Urakami specific history of faith, martyrdom and persecution. A number of writers including John W. Treat and Yuki Miyamoto stress the importance of this communal narrative. Before discussing the consciousness of the persecutions amongst the interviewees in this study, it is instructive to include an excerpt of Seirai Yuichi’s popular fiction collection of short stories, Nagasaki, Ground Zero, which describes the awareness of this splicing of the nuclear memory by a Christian narrative of faith amongst the Catholic survivors in Nagasaki. In

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the short story about Catholic protagonists entitled, “Nails,” Seirai writes as follows:  O-Ryo-san had come back to the family home after the house she had married into in Yamazato was destroyed in the atomic bombing. It was in this cottage that she had recuperated alone… O-Ryo-san had a faded scar on her cheek. I remember her standing under the persimmon tree gazing out at the remains of the ruined cathedral… We would hold our hands, tingling from the cold, over the hibachi and nibble on the dried flesh of the fruit, bursting with sweetness, as O-Ryo-san told us stories of long ago. Stories of distant ancestors who had gone, praying, to their deaths, burned alive at the stake; or of the narrow cages in which the faithful were imprisoned when whole families were forcefully removed to Yamaguchi in the final days of prohibition… O-Ryo-san told us how the ancestors had hidden an image of the Virgin and Child in this cottage and how they had prayed here in secret during the years when our religion was outlawed.54

In my own oral history study, too, the concepts of hansai, setsuri and shiren were a part of the ongoing narrative and not only that of the bombing. Matsuo Sachiko’s grandmother, Nishio Waki, experienced the trials of the fourth persecution and the bombing, as a double survivor. Nishio’s resilience was a source of strength for Matsuo thinking of her own recovery following the bombing. 55 The parish of the Urakami Cathedral takes a yearly pilgrimage to Tsuwano on a bus, to commemorate the fourth persecution, which occurred there (Fukahori Shigemi, Urakami Cathedral, 2016). One interviewee in particular demonstrates the links between the memory of the bomb and the Catholic collective narrative, and here his understanding will be illuminated in some detail. Ozaki Tǀmei (or Tagawa Kǀichi) was baptised with the namesake of a child martyr of the 1597 famed 26 martyrs of Nagasaki.56 Ozaki discussed the use of the three words in relation to the history of persecution as well as the bombing, revealing the interwoven nature of these stories. He adopted his baptismal name (Ozaki) after the bombing at the age of 17 when he entered a seminary to become a monk (seibo no kishi Knights of the Holy Mother order, Nagasaki). He referred frequently in his interview to the memory of the fourth persecution/exile and to martyrdoms of the past in  54

Ynjichi Seirai, Ground Zero, Nagasaki: Stories, trans. Paul Warham (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 6-7. 55 Gwyn McClelland, “Remembering the Ruins of the Urakami Cathedral,” Journal of Religion in Japan 5, 1 (Jun., 1, 2016): 47-69. 56 The 26 Martyrs’ Monument is on a hill near Nagasaki station and is commemorated by the adjacent museum.

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relation to the bombing. Ozaki had an alternative understanding of Nagai’s setsuri: “strength to proceed.” Rather than setsuri explicating why the bomb fell on the community, it is inspired by faith which enables the community to look forward and recover, he states. To put it simply, [setsuri is] strength to proceed forward (mae ni mukatte susumu chikara) [or] Strength and hope... so even when something inconceivable happens, or is a reality, we absorb it, and face forward... That is God‘s providence, the ability to absorb... [so the bombing] The Pope said, ‘War is the work of humanity. The atom bomb is the work of humanity. It is not God‘s providence...’

Having described the experience of the fourth persecution exile and how through a ‘will of faith,’ the people returned and built the Urakami Cathedral, Ozaki again returned to the subject of providence and the bombing and this time suggested that Nagai also understood providence in this way. Many people had lost their homes and had to re-build. Faith is needed to see God’s hand in such difficult times (shiren). After the A-bomb fell, like the time when the people returned from the fourth persecution, like I said, they looked forward. ‘We oppose war. We oppose the A-bomb,’ but since reality is such as this, ‘Let’s recover quickly by looking ahead’... and [in regards to] Nagai Takashi, who said even if the A-bomb fell on us, by God’s providence, we take it on, look forward and again rebuild... So it is a problem of faith. (Ozaki Tǀmei, Francisco Hǀmu, Isahaya, 2016)

During the persecutions, apostasy and continuing faith were a key concept, and many people gave up faith and then returned to faith, once they had come back to Urakami. The key to why Ozaki therefore considers setsuri a problem of faith in relation to the bombing as well as the earlier trials of the Urakami Catholics is in the following part of his interview, where he described the experiences of those scarred by keloid scars and the pain the people went through as related to discrimination. As a seventeen-year-old, Ozaki had also come in contact with Nagai. Nagai Takashi had busied himself with relief activities around Urakami until July 1946. He taught radiology in temporary buildings in neighbouring towns for the University hospital, wrote the Christmas play and worked for recovery for Junshin Girls’ School.57 He also taught at the Seibo no Kishi seminary, where he

 57

Glynn, A Song for Nagasaki, 123.

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was given board.58 In his book, Leaving my Beloved Children Behind (kono ko wo nokoshite), Nagai wrote about his experiences here: This friary was among the first organisations to start taking care of orphans, even though they were unprepared and had not budgeted for such an undertaking… Alerted to the fact that there were lots of children like this, the friars themselves soon started looking for orphans and would bring back everyone they found… The friars from Poland were not too well versed in the state of affairs in Japan, so they often sought the opinions of us… concerning the management… Right at the end of the war, I had cloistered myself in that friary [Seibo no Kishi] to think about what to do.59

Ozaki remembered Nagai with warmth and enjoyed his frequent visits to talk to the students in the dormitory. Yet after the initial occupation, Ozaki considered Nagai to have ingratiated himself with the American occupation army. Instead of providential, Ozaki described the bombing as discriminative: … later on Nagai Takashi ingratiated himself to the US army and came to the Americans… it is like we were discriminated against [as a result of Nagai’s work]. [Urakami] was discriminated against. And, the wounds which Urakami people took in as a result of this kind of thing happening were extremely painful. I didn’t have any injuries, which was good. For those who did, it was particularly [bad]. For people who had keloid scars… ‘Is there a God?,’ they would say, ‘Why would God do this?,’ ‘I don’t believe in God,’… or ‘I can’t believe in God’s providence.’ There were people like that. And then the Pope came and clearly said, ‘This is the work of humanity, not God’s providence’… [Some of them] opened their eyes and some of these people came back to the church. (Ozaki Tǀmei, Francisco Hǀmu, Isahaya, 2016)

The persecution to which Ozaki alludes here is that of discrimination against atom bomb victims due to keloid scars and the discrimination against Urakami due to Nagai’s close ties to the US forces. Ozaki states that these survivors often lost faith due to the disconnect between the idea of providence and the bomb and so when the Pope called the bomb the work of humanity, some of them came back to faith. For Ozaki, therefore, accepting God’s providence is a “problem of faith” as a result of a  58 Nagai Takashi is listed as a teacher on the Seibo no Kishi High School website in 1946, high school seibo no kishi, “gakkou houjin seibo no kishi koutou gakkou,” http://www.seibonokishi-2008.jp/freepage_5_1.html, accessed on 02/05/2016. 59 Takashi Nagai and Takai Tsuneyoshi, Leaving My Beloved Children Behind (Strathfield, N.S.W.: St Paul's Publications, 2008), 43-44.

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discriminative event and by God’s providence, as in the historic persecutions, the people are enabled to keep faith and move on. The overcoming of victimhood in favour of resistance and agency was an important part of the view of Christ as central to the memory of the believers for Ozaki Tǀmei. Ozaki posed martyrdom as an example of how to understand the ability to accept and bear trials: …the martyrs took the cross as an exemplar for their path to martyrdom. For the 26 martyrs walking from Kyoto to Nagasaki, they walked and imagined Christ’s cross… When the bomb fell, the Urakami believers… the people who had returned from the time of the 4th kuzure (persecution) and it fell on top of these families and it was one more time ... that as I said earlier, looking forward, ‘we oppose war, we oppose the atomic bomb’ but, the reality is like this, so we quickly move on, and recover ourselves... (Ozaki Tǀmei, Francisco Hǀmu, 2016)

To summarise so far, inasmuch as Nagai’s interpretation drew upon national and Catholic narratives of martyrdom and honourable death, this impacted the community’s understanding of the bomb. Secondly, the Catholic silence due to the shadow cast by Nagai’s hansai-theory was considerably broken by the impact of the Pope’s statement to the community, as survivors were freed up to speak out about their experiences, although there is a spectrum of new ways of understanding faith after the bomb. Thirdly, where Catholic memory is liberated in Nagasaki, the data demonstrate a cognizance of an older memory of suffering and persecution. An ongoing consideration is whether unveiled atomic narratives as a result of the Pope’s statement will significantly impact public narratives.

Exposing the “Scapegoat” In the spectrum of responses about the spiritual vocabulary introduced in the hansai-setsu, survivors alternately defended or rejected Nagai’s approach. However, whilst Ozaki acknowledged some negatives in terms of the hansai-setsu, he also showed how he integrates the faith language with the communal collective narrative. The understanding of hansai as a holy sacrifice to God has proven to be a stumbling block for the faithful community, and the subsequent section of this chapter will explore what ongoing meaning the dispelling of this interpretation has for the Urakami community. If Christ is for the Christian an ultimate “political” scapegoat providing a path of reunification of all things to God, this section will explore whether an alternative political theology may result from the

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community’s unfolding understanding of their own suffering and faith. Such a political theology will refer to Johann Baptist Metz who has written that the “dangerous memory” of Christ is a memory for “those without hope,” who through being united with Christ regain a future.60 Theologian René Girard’s “scapegoat mechanism” may be usefully employed to interrogate the suffering of the people in the light of their faith in Christ, understood as the ultimate scapegoat, to resist the inevitability of suffering understood as setsuri and to demand responsibility for a shared future. Nagai’s hansai reading of the Passion narratives is a “sacrificial reading,” where those who died in the bombing are considered to be a sacrifice similar to Christ’s. Nagai’s understanding was influenced by his life as a scientist. As a scientist before a religious figure Nagai placed a high value on scientific progress, which required subjects for experiments and Nishimura has written that this influenced Nagai’s theological understanding of the requirement of scapegoats.61 The “innocent” scapegoats died in the bombing, “for humanity,” according to Nagai. A scapegoat is a mythical figure who through the mechanism of substitution is believed to disrupt an unrestrained mutual slaughter.62 By referring to the lamb of God and the girls of Junshin High School as innocent victims or lambs, Nagai suggested that scapegoats were required, associating the scapegoats with Christ, by using the language of a “lamb led to slaughter,” from the Biblical text (Acts 8:32, Isaiah 53:7). René Girard’s critique of the Christian understanding of the sacrifice of the Cross re-evaluates the meaning of hansai for this community. Girard’s book, The Scapegoat elucidates his theory that the gospels expose the “scapegoat mechanism” which had from antiquity been at the root of violent actions. Girard describes Caiaphas, the Priest, as a great politician who reassures his listeners and is galvanised into action, by suggesting that the accusing and executing of the scapegoat limit violence as much as possible.63 The “sacrificial reading,” based on the “founding mechanism” of the scapegoat, says Girard, fundamentally misreads the meaning of Christ’s death and is  60 Johannes Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology (New York: Crossroad Pub. Co., 2007), 112. 61 Nishimura, “Inori No Nagasaki: Nagai Takashi to Genbaku Shisha.” In saying this, Nishimura also mentions that Nagai thought that the horror of Nagasaki could critique or even end the war cycle and there was a possibility that no more wars would occur. 62 Martha J. Reineke, “After the Scapegoat: René Girard’s Apocalyptic Vision and the Legacy of Mimetic Theory,” Philosophy Today 56, 2 (May, 2012): 141. 63 René Girard, The Scapegoat, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 113.

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therefore also violent.64 Rather, Christ as the ultimate scapegoat subverts death, emerging from the midst of violence transformed and reconciling. Although Girard does not refer to Nagasaki, his theory would lead to the conclusion that the Urakami Catholics, by associating with Christ also subvert the scapegoat theory that “small” violence is enough to upset larger violence. Rather than enabling limited violence or “just war” Girard’s reading describes Christ’s political execution as implicating humanity who killed him. Girard substitutes the persecution of the Jews in the place of Jesus as an example of victims of hatred without cause and argues that the exposure of the “sacrificial mechanism” through Christ’s death ought to end the history of violence and open humans to divine love from God. In this interpretation, Urakami recalls Golgotha but unlike Nagai’s interpretation which assumed or did not negate God’s hand in this violence, Golgotha as a protest subverts the suggestion that smaller violence halts larger violence. Instead, the people perceive themselves as reunited with a God who also suffered human violence, linking them to the wider Catholic and non-Catholic community and with the “other” around the world. If the bomb was solely the work of humanity and may be protested, the “dangerous memory” of Christ exposes the lie of retributive violence and may not be called God’s providence. For the survivors, the questioning of the bomb as providence is turned on its head by the suffering God. In view of Metz, the “dangerous” nature of the survivors’ memory may be the call to speak of their long-hidden experiences. However, it is not only “dangerous” for the survivors, but also for the wider society, for whom the call to listen anew to the Catholic survivors may prove to be confronting and may shed new insight which causes or induces change.

Conclusion This chapter has discussed the spiritualised language used to interpret the bombing and its implications for the theology of the community. Nagai Takashi’s Hansai-setsu or “burnt-offering theory” argued that the Urakami Catholics were “chosen” by God as innocent victims, to atone for war atrocities. Publicly, community members and academics have over a long period of time critiqued Nagai’s doctrinal language, which they said resulted in the suppression of action and dialogue. Interpretation of the bombing as a religious sacrifice detracted from resistance and at the extreme suggested an exoneration of US and Japanese war crimes.  64

Nathan Colborne, “Violence and Resistance: Towards a Politics without a Scapegoat,” Toronto Journal of Theology 29, 1 (Mar., 2013): 115.

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Memory of the bombing has been suppressed, especially within the Catholic community. Interviewee, Sr. Kataoka confirmed the presence of a reticence to speak about their experiences within the community. Through oral history this chapter has demonstrated the necessity amongst the Catholic community for the reinterpretation of the language of hansai, gosetsuri and shiren, as the people have grappled in the subsequent 70 years with new ways to understand the bombing. The evidence, including gaps in the discourse and the avoidance of the use of the term, is that the community for the most part has moved beyond Nagai’s understanding of the bombing as hansai, or a burnt offering. During Pope John Paul II’s visit to Japan in 1981 he insisted that the bombing was inflicted by “humanity,” resulting in a paradigm shift in the Catholic communal discourse about the atomic bombing. The Pope’s words altered the discourse and the level of participation on the oral record as is well remembered by interviewees in this project. However, there is some resistance to such changes. Survivor Kataoka Chizuko retains a substitutional sacrificial understanding of atomic bomb death, although she re-interprets Nagai’s hansai-setsu and avoids the language of hansai for the most part. Other survivors demonstrate ambivalence and negativity about Nagai’s interpretation, and a new readiness to be kataribe (spokespeople) working for peace and speaking about their memories. The community memory of suffering refers to the atomic bombing, but also awakens the memory of earlier suffering such as communal persecutions and experiences of martyrdom as far back as the 16th century. For example, Ozaki, who also reinterpreted the vocabulary of Nagai, protested that the bombing was discriminatory and personally identified with persecutions and martyrdoms as part of his discussion of the recovery of the Catholics. The bombing understood as persecutory was a threat to faith, and resilience, rather than violence as a result of the providence of God. Christ’s death at the hands of humanity on the Cross challenges the belief that smaller violence may alleviate the threat of larger violence or the “scapegoat” theory, according to Girard. Where the survivors associate their suffering with this “dangerous” memory of the Cross, a pragmatic alternative lens for understanding atomic death from the point of view of this particular community may challenge and uncover new insights. Such “dangerous” memory is a key factor for demonstrating agency and resistance beyond victimhood for the Urakami Catholic community and their unfolding future. The uncovering of the previously “hidden” memory of the Catholic survivors of the bomb may provoke change to the status quo, to official understandings of the bombing of Nagasaki and therefore new angles on atomic history.

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Bibliography Abrams, Lynn. Oral History Theory. London and New York: Routledge, 2010. Akizuki, Tatsuichiro. Nagasaki genbaku-ki: hibaku ishi no shogen. Tokyo: Nihon zusho senta, 1972. “AtomicBombMuseum.org - Testimonies.” http://atomicbombmuseum.org/6_5.shtml, accessed on 02/05/2016. Brau, Monica. The Atomic Bomb Suppressed: American Censorship in Occupied Japan. Armonk, NY: Routledge, 1991. Chou, Raisuke. Nagasaki Bakushinchi Fukugen No Kiroku. Nihon Hǀsǀ Shuppan Kyǀkai, 1972. Colborne, Nathan. “Violence and Resistance: Towards a Politics without a Scapegoat.” Toronto Journal of Theology 29, 1 (Mar., 2013): 111-124. Diehl, Chad Richard. “Resurrecting Nagasaki: Reconstruction, the Urakami Catholics, and Atomic Memory, 1945-1970,” 2011. http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:162775, accessed on 12/05/2016. Doak, Kevin M. “Hiroshima Rages, Nagasaki Prays: Nagai Takashi’s Catholic Response to the Atomic Bombing.” In When the Tsunami Came to Shore, edited by Roy Starrs, 249-271. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Dower, John W. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1999. —. Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering: Japan in the Modern World. Reprint edition. New York: New Press, 2014. Girard, René. The Scapegoat. Translated by Yvonne Freccero. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. Glynn, Paul. A Song for Nagasaki. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1990. Hesselink, Reinier H. The Dream of Christian Nagasaki: World Trade and the Clash of Cultures, 1560-1640. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2016. Higashibaba, Ikuo. Christianity in Early Modern Japan Kirishitan Belief and Practice. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2001. —. “Historiographical Issues in the Studies of the ‘Christian Century’ in Japan.” Japanese Religions 24, no. 1 (1999): 29-50. Higgins, Ian, Dominic Higgins, Leo Ashizawa, Yuna Shin, Meg Kubota, David Yip, Junichi Kajioka, Yuriri Naka, and Kaya Yuzuki, All that Remains: Based on the True Story of Takashi Nagai. Ignatius Press, 2016.

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Hiroshima-shi Nagasaki-shi Genbaku Saigaishi Henshnj Iinkai. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Physical, Medical, and Social Effects of the Atomic Bombings. New York: Basic Books, 1981. Houston Grey, Stephanie. “Writing Redemption: Trauma and the Authentication of the Moral Order in Hibakusha Literature.” Text & Performance Quarterly 22, no. 1 (Jan., 2002): 1-23. Ikeda, Toshio. Kirishitan No Seiei. Tokyo: Chuo Shuppansha, 1972. Kamata, Sadao. “Nagasaki no inori to ikari” in Nihon no Genbaku bungaku. Vol. 15. Horupu Shuppan, 1983. Kataoka, Chizuko, and Rumiko Kataoka. Hibakuchi Nagasaki no saiken. Nagasaki: Nagasaki Junshin Daigaku Hakubutsukan, 1996. Kataoka, Yakichi. Kakure Kirishitanࣟ: Rekishi to Minzoku/Kataoka Yakichi. NHK Bukkusu; 56. Tǀkyǀ: Nihon Hǀsǀ Shuppan Kyǀkai, 1967. —. Urakami yonban kuzure Meiji seifu no kirishitan dan’atsu. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobǀ, 1963. Keshgegian, Flora A. Redeeming Memories: A Theology of Healing and Transformation. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000. Lifton, Robert Jay. Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1991. McClelland, Gwyn. “Remembering the Ruins of the Urakami Cathedral.” Journal of Religion in Japan 5, no. 1 (Jun., 2016): 47-69. Metz, Johannes Baptist. A Passion for God: The Mystical-political Dimension of Christianity. New York: Paulist Press, 1998. —. Faith in History and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology. New York: Crossroad Pub. Co., 2007. Miyamoto, Yuki. Beyond the Mushroom Cloud: Commemoration, Religion, and Responsibility after Hiroshima. New York: Fordham University Press, 2012. —. “Narrative Boundaries: The Ethical Implications of Reinterpreting Atomic Bomb Histories.” ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2003. —. “Rebirth in the Pure Land or God’s Sacrificial Lambs? Religious Interpretations of the Atomic Bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies (2005): 131-159. Moltmann, Jürgen. The Crucified God: the Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology. London: SCM, 2001. —. The Experiment Hope. Reprinted edition. Eugene, Or.: Wipf & Stock Pub, 2003. Montane, Carla. Sacred Space and Ritual in Early Modern Japan: The Christian Community of Nagasaki (1569-1643). Dissertation, London, 2012.

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Mori, Kenta. “genbaku wa hito ni nani mo tarashita no ka: chiriteki kankei kara nagasaki wo kaishaku suru.” Waseda shakai kagaku kenkyu, 2008. Nagai, Takashi. Nagasaki No Kane. Tǀkyǀ: San Pauro, 1949. —. Rozario no kusari. Tokyo: Romansusha, 1948. —. The Bells of Nagasaki. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1994. Nagai, Takashi, and Takai Tsuneyoshi. Leaving My Beloved Children Behind. Strathfield, NSW: St Pauls Publications, 2008. Nishimura, Akira. “Inori No Nagasaki: Nagai Takashi to Genbaku Shisha.” Tokyo University, n.d. Ozaki, Tomei. juunanasai no natsu. Seibo bunko. Nagasaki: Seibo no kisha-sha, 1996. Reineke, Martha J. “After the Scapegoat: René Girard’s Apocalyptic Vision and the Legacy of Mimetic Theory.” Philosophy Today 56, no. 2 (May, 2012): 141. Ricoeur, Paul. Memory, History, Forgetting. University of Chicago Press, 2009. Rober, D. A. “Ricoeur, Metz, and the Future of Dangerous Memory.” Literature and Theology 27, no. 2 (Jun., 2013): 196-207. seibo no kishi, high school. “gakkou houjin seibo no kishi koutou gakkou.” http://www.seibonokishi-2008.jp/freepage_5_1.html, accessed on 02/05/2016. Seirai, Ynjichi. Ground Zero, Nagasaki: Stories. Translated by Paul Warham. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. Shijǀ, Chie. Urakami No Genbaku No Katariࣟ: Nagai Takashi Kara Rǀma Kyǀkǀ E/Shijǀ Chie. Tǀkyǀ: Miraisha, 2015. Southard, Susan. Nagasaki: Life after Nuclear War. Viking, 2015. Takagi, Kazuo. Meiji Katorikku Kyǀkai Shi. Shohan. Tǀkyǀ: Kyǀbunkan, 2008. Takahashi, Shinji. “Hansai Theory and Nagai Takashi,” March 25, 2016. —. Nagasaki Ni Atte Tetsugaku Suru Kanࣟ: 3/11 Go No Heiwa Sekinin. Hokkyoku Shuppan, 2015. —. Nagasaki Ni Atte Tetsugakusuru: Kakujidai No Shi to Sei. Shohan. Tǀkyǀ: Hokuju Shuppan, 1994. Tracy, David. The Analogical Imagination. London: SCM Press, 1981. Treat, John Whittier. Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Turnbull, Stephen R. Japan’s Hidden Christians, 1549-1999. Hove, UK: Psychology Press, 2000. —. The Kakure Kirishitan of Japan: a Study of Their Development, Beliefs and Rituals to the Present Day. Richmond, Surrey: Japan Library, 1998.

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CHAPTER TWELVE COMING DOWN THE MOUNTAIN: TRANSFORMATIONS OF CONTEMPLATIVE CULTURE IN EASTERN TIBET ELIZABETH MCDOUGAL UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

Since Deng Xiaoping’s liberalising reforms of Chinese economic and social life began in the 1980s, a growing body of fieldwork-based research has been investigating questions on the status of Tibetan religion and culture in modern China. This fieldwork-based research is adding a new dimension to the “ongoing war of representations concerning contemporary Tibetan religion in China” remarked upon by Kapstein.1 Contrary to the earlier, prevailing perspective in Western countries that Tibetan Buddhism is being systematically eradicated in China by its Communist government, these ethnographies are discovering that Tibetan Buddhism in China has revived and thrives. The fieldwork research of Germano, Goldstein and Kapstein, Gaerrang, Gayley, Makley, Terrone, Turek, Yü and others has observed a Tibetan Buddhist revival taking place in China in which Eastern Tibet2 is the new cultural and religious centre. Han Chinese people are now a considerable demographic participating in Tibetan Buddhism in China, and form a large part of the religion’s wider social context today. What was lost from Tibetan Buddhism during the Cultural Revolution is clear and almost universally understood.3 What is being restored and  1

Matthew Kapstein, “A Thorn in the Dragon’s Side: Tibetan Buddhist Culture in China,” in Governing China’s Multiethnic Frontiers, ed. Morris Rossabi (University of Washington Press, 2004), 230. 2 Eastern Tibet in this chapter corresponds to the former Tibetan regions of Amdo and Kham, with a particular focus on Kham. 3 The systematic eradication of religions in China from the 1950s to 1970s (including the Cultural Revolution) is at times acknowledged even by Chinese

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revitalised in the Tibetan Buddhist revival, however, requires ongoing ethnographic and theoretical investigations. Tibetan Buddhism in China is continuing to reformulate itself according to the rapidly changing needs of a rapidly modernising society. One way in which this continued reformulation is evident is in a recent increase of scholarship in the practice lineages of Eastern Tibet. What started in Eastern Tibet between the 1980s and the early 2000s as a revival of Tantric practice communities––as observed by Germano at Serta,4 Terrone in Golog, Turek in Nangchen5 and others––has over the last ten years transformed into a movement of institutionally strengthening communities that emphasise degree-oriented study. This recent trend is significant in that it appears to diverge from earlier patterns of scholastic revival in Tibetan history, particularly in its attitude of scepticism and in the materialism of its degree-orientation. The trend is especially visible in Nangchen, a former kingdom in northwest Kham. Eighty-three per cent of the gonpa 6 in present-day Nangchen follow practice lineages of the Kagyu and Nyingma schools7  statesmen. See Dan Smyer Yü, “Pilgrimage to the Illusory: The Tibetan Buddhist Revival and the Politics of Religion in the PRC,” PhD diss. (University of California, 2006), 7. 4 See the indexed glossary for transliterations of Tibetan terms. 5 David Germano, “Re-membering the Dismembered Body of Tibet: Contemporary Tibetan Visionary Movements in the People’s Republic of China,” in Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet: Religious Revival and Cultural Identity, eds. Melvyn C. Goldstein and Matthew T. Kapstein (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1998); Antonio Terrone, “Householders and Monks: A Study of Treasure Revealers and Their Role in Religious Revival in Contemporary Eastern Tibet,” in Buddhism Beyond the Monastery: Tantric Practices and Their Performers in Tibet and the Himalayas, eds. Sarah Jacoby and Antonio Terrone (Leiden: Brill, 2009); Magdalena M. Turek, “‘In This Body and Life’: The Religious and Social Significance of Hermits and Hermitages in Eastern Tibet Today and During Recent History,” PhD diss. (Humboldt University of Berlin, 2013). 6 I prefer to use the Tibetan term gonpa than its often translated “monastery” at times in this paper. The term is broader and includes nunneries as well as some large hermitages, and therefore better describes the type of monastic community that was common in Nangchen, the particular setting of this research. 7 Karma Don-grub Phun-tshogs shows that 59% of Nangchen gonpa are Kagyu, 24% are Nyingma, 13% are Sakya and 4% are Gelug. See Karma Don-grub Phuntshogs (ed.), Khams sgom-sde nang-chen pa’i dgon-khag rnams kyi byung-ba phyogs-sgrigs (Nangchen: Nang-chen rdzong srid-gros rig-gnas lo-rgyus gzhungkhang, 1999), 1-10.

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whose traditional emphasis was on liturgical, contemplative training and the oral instructions of a qualified guru as the highest instructive principles. Gebchak Nunnery and its branch gonpa in Nangchen serve as points of reference for the change: while Gebchak remains determined to maintain its original curriculum, several of its branches that in the 1990s engaged full-time in curricula of ritual and meditation based on commentaries on a terma (concealed treasure teaching), now spend at least half of each day studying classical texts of MahƗyƗna philosophy. In the majority of other Nyingma and Kagyu gonpa in Nangchen the same shift to more scholastic activities has been occurring over the last decade.

Going up the Mountain: Contemplative Culture in Eastern Tibet Buddhism is first a practical religion,8 and Tibetan Buddhism––with its numerous mountain hermitages and its favouring of VajrayƗna––has for centuries specialised in contemplative experience. The import of Buddhism from India to Tibet began under Tibetan royal patronage in the 7th century, a time that coincided with the last period of Buddhism in India when VajrayƗna (Tantric Buddhism) was ascendant. It was thus VajrayƗna that came to Tibet, and with its practical methods for attaining direct experience of the philosophical truths of MahayƗna, found its long-term refuge on the rooftop of the world. In the wild and vast natural environment of the Tibetan Plateau, isolated by the mandate of a Buddhist government and supported by a relatively simple herding and agricultural economy, dedicated Buddhist practitioners––yogins––spent years if not decades in mountain caves and hermitages. Tibetan yogins were lay and monastic, male and female, peasants and aristocrats, individual and collective. In many cases accomplished yogins were also prominent scholars who composed scriptures of authority that became central to the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism. A generic term for VajrayƗna methods is “yoga”, which comprises sophisticated methods for training the energetic mind-body complex of practitioners to expedite the realisation of nondual wisdom (yeshe). 9  8

PƗli canonical literature presents the Buddha as a firm critic of metaphysical speculation who prioritised practice over theory. In the A৬৬hakavagga of the SuttanipƗta, the Buddha denies the ability of reason alone to comprehend ultimate truth. See Sn 886; D I 16 in P. D. Premasiri, “The Philosophy of the Atthakavagga,” The Wheel Publication No. 182 (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 2008). 9 Phonetic terms in brackets are Tibetan, unless preceded by “Ch.” for Chinese.

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VajrayƗna yogic methods, along with their corollary MahƗmudrƗ and Dzogchen meditation systems are derived from Indian Buddhism. Throughout many centuries in Tibet they have developed a deep and sophisticated scholarly and textual expression. Their core, however, has always been the continuity of contemplative practice among a body of highly skilled and trained practitioners. The four main Buddhist schools of Tibet––Nyingma, Sakya, Kagyu and Geluk10––have varying approaches to the Buddhist path. Generally speaking, Geluk and Sakya emphasise philosophical study in order to exhaust intellectual doubts about ultimate reality before meditation, while Kagyu and Nyingma emphasise meditation experience to understand ultimate reality as the nature of mind. Over the centuries these four lineages have been dispersed in different concentrations throughout the three traditional regions of Tibet: Central Tibet (Ü-Tsang), Amdo and Kham. Since the 1950s these Tibetan regions have been administered by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Central Tibet now roughly corresponds to the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), while Kham and Amdo cover large areas of Qinghai and Sichuan Provinces, and smaller parts of Gansu and Yunnan Provinces. Since the 17th century, Kham has had predominant populations of Kagyu, Sakya and Nyingma lineages. Though the Dalai Lamas and shrines of Lhasa were spiritual and cultural foci for Tibetans across the Plateau, many parts of Eastern Tibet had more immediate political allegiances to local kings and chieftains with a high degree of autonomy under the Mongols, Manchus and Republicans.11 Owing to the region’s less hierarchical political structures, practice lineages of the Kagyu and Nyingma schools flourished in Kham around local traditions of religious and political authority, away from the centralised state power of Lhasa.12

Nangchen: “The Land of Meditators” Nangchen is situated in the southern part of Qinghai Province (northwest Kham) and is presently administered by the PRC as a county in Yushu Autonomous Prefecture. An epithet traced to the 13th century calls  10

The identification of “four main schools” has crystallised since 1959 as Tibetans have had to organise their communities and monasteries in exile. Today, along with the four main schools Tibet’s Bon tradition is given equal status and rights as a religious tradition by the Central Tibetan Administration in exile. 11 Kapstein, “A Thorn,” 231-232. 12 Turek, “In This Body,” 10.

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Nangchen the “Land of Meditators” (“Gomdé Nangchen”)13 and its many hermitages have been a fertile source of Tibetan cultural production over the centuries, giving rise to famous yogins, treasure-revealers (tertön), pilgrimage sites and incarnation lineages (tulku). Many of Nangchen’s gonpa are located at 4,000 metres (13,000 feet) or higher and were traditionally modelled as hermitages rather than monasteries, with lifelong courses of meditation, yoga and extended group liturgical ceremonies (drubchen). Little meditation training is actually conducted in large Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, which are busy centres of clerical training in philosophy, arts and ritual. Meditation training is instead carried out in retreat centres (drubkhang) annexed to a particular monastery, or in independent hermitages like many of Nangchen’s gonpa. As was the case in pre-Communist Tibet, at the time of writing nearly all Kagyu and Nyingma monasteries in Nangchen (and Eastern Tibet) have a three-year retreat centre where many monastics traditionally trained in VajrayƗna practices, including tummo 14 (yoga of psychic heat), for at least one intensive three-year period in their lives. In Nangchen it was not uncommon for individuals wishing to deepen their practice after one or more three-year retreats to move to cave hermitages connected with the monastery, or even further away to remote, unpopulated mountain valleys. In this way the life of a yogin in Eastern Tibet moved up the mountain as he or she progressed over a lifetime of Buddhist practice. Nangchen is set at an average altitude of 3,645 metres (11,968 feet) and its predominant livelihood was, until recently, pastoralism, with many families tending herds of over a thousand yak and sheep. Until the 1990s there were no phones or electricity in Nangchen, and most transportation took place on foot, horseback and yak caravans. Today a network of highways spans the Tibetan Plateau and the favoured vehicle on Nangchen roads is no longer the horse, but the motorcycle––literally “motor horse” (trul-ta) in Tibetan––or an SUV. Under direction from the government the majority of Nangchen’s nomads have moved down the mountain to newly  13 Khams-stod lo-gyus explains that the epithet is from the reign of Barom Kagyu masters in Nangchen from the 13th century, whose widespread activities influenced all men and women to be meditators. See ’Jam-dbyangs Tshul-khrims, et al. Khams-stod lo-rgyus thor-bsdus kyi smad-cha 2 (Xining: Kan-su’u mi-rigs dpeskrun khang, 1995-1997), 2-3. 14 Tummo is an advanced Tantric Buddhist yoga by which a practitioner’s psychic energy-winds are dissolved in the central channel of the energetic mind-body complex, giving rise to an experience of co-emergent bliss and emptiness (bdestong zung-’jug). The increased body temperature that arises with tummo practice is a by-product of the yoga and not its purpose.

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built urban settlements in order to adapt to the swiftly modernising economy, leaving their yaks and mountain hermitages behind. Significant numbers of ordained saৄgha are also moving out of hermitages to pursue new, rationalised study programs, leaving empty places in Nangchen’s retreat centres.

Gebchak Nunnery and its Practice System Under the royal patronage of kingdoms like Dergé and Nangchen, Kham was the cradle for the perpetuation of Tibetan Tantric practice lineages.15 Kham was also the birthplace of the 19th-century non-sectarian Rimé (“Unbiased”) movement, which continues to shape Tibetan Buddhism today both inside and outside of China with the legacy and teachings of its famous masters, treasure-revealers and scriptural compilations.16 Marginal groups of practitioners flourished in the Rimé atmosphere and it was at the height of the movement that Gebchak Nunnery, a community that would develop a unique lineage of female yogic practice following Dzogchen tenets, was established. Tsangyang Gyamtso (1848-1909) and his guru, the first Drubwang Tsoknyi (b. circa 1828), saw that women had potential equal to men for attaining enlightenment, yet with a virtual absence of nunneries in the region were denied opportunities for Dharma learning and practice. Following his guru’s instructions Tsangyang Gyamtso founded Gebchak Nunnery in 1892, and women soon came from all parts of Eastern Tibet and Tibetan Buddhist schools to join its intensive practice system. Gebchak is a convenient example of Nangchen’s traditional contemplative culture in that its way of life is little changed from its pre1950’s existence, due to the Nunnery’s isolated setting and selfdetermination to preserve its original practice tradition. Gebchak is located in southern Nangchen in a remote valley at an altitude of 4,500 metres (14,700 feet) surrounded by hilltops that are said to reflect sacred feminine forms. Its curriculum entails a rigorous training in Tantric yogas and meditation, with a specialisation in tsa-lung (nƗ‫ڲ‬Ư and prƗ۬a yoga, the general practice category that includes tummo) as a support for their meditative insight. Apart from conducting Tantric empowerments (wang), public formalities and fundraising, for which they rely on the Nunnery’s four male lamas, the senior nuns teach all components of Gebchak’s  15

Turek, “In This Body,” 10. Peter Oldmeadow, Rimé: Buddhism Without Prejudice (Melbourne: Shogam Publications, 2012). 16

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practice traddition to the yoounger nuns, as a well as to m monks at bran nch gonpa. Such an autonomous fem male monastic lineage is unpprecedented in n Tibetan Buddhist hisstory.

Figure 1: Gebbchak Nunnery at 4,500 metress in Nangchen, Kham (Eastern n Tibet)

After fulfillling a one-yeear obligation n as a yak-heerder, a nun officially enters the Nunnery annd begins her 400,000 preliminary practices (ngondro), w which take rooughly four months. m Thesee are followed by one hundred setts of nyungney ey, a two-day fasting practtice of Avalok kiteĞvara, which may take up to a year to complete. Next is a seven-montth mantra accumulatioon retreat of thhe guardian deity d VajrakƯlaaya. While un ndergoing these prelim minary retreatss, a new nun trains in rituual instruments, shrine preparation and liturgicaal chanting. Upon complleting all of these, a Gebchak nuun then beginns her three-y year, three-moonth retreat. After A her three-year reetreat, a nun enters one off sixteen retreaat divisions where w she continues prractising her yidam y (person nal meditationn deity) for th he rest of her life. Aloong with dailyy sessions of yidam practicee, meditation and a yogas are nineteenn extensive liturgical cerremonies, callled drubchen n, lasting about ten daays each. These fall throug ghout the yearr and are perfo ormed by all the nunss together in the main temple. In 20006 a middle-aaged nun commented on Gebchak’ss practice systtem: Gebchak N Nunnery’s pracctice specialty is tsa-lung, annd it is practiced here according to the uniquue teachings of the first Tsangyang Gy yamtso. Tsangyangg Gyamtso wasnn’t a scholar, but wrote these ppractice commentaries from his puure vision and meditative m realiisation.

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To the Present Today there are 368 nuns at Gebchak Nunnery. Most of them are middleaged women who joined the Nunnery in the 1980s and were trained in all aspects of Gebchak’s practice system by elderly nuns who had survived the Cultural Revolution. According to these middle-aged nuns’ reports, one of the key reasons for the arrival of new nuns since the 1980s is the inspiring example of elderly nuns who die with an attitude of cheerful confidence. Gebchak’s nuns and lamas tell that most of the elderly nuns, having spent decades in intensive Buddhist practice, stay seated upright in tukdam (post-death samƗdhi) after their vital signs have ceased at death, with warmth at the heart and no signs of bodily decay for up to ten days. Gebchak Nunnery’s extremely remote, high altitude location is surely a condition allowing the continuation of its intensive contemplative tradition. Until today the valley where Gebchak is situated has evaded the development of roads and electricity pylons that have pervaded many other valleys of Eastern Tibet over the last twenty years. Significantly for this research––and likely due at least in part to the Nunnery’s seclusion–– the senior nuns and lamas of Gebchak Nunnery report that their practice curriculum is being maintained today as it was in the Nunnery’s early days. Many other gonpa in Nangchen have expanded their philosophical study programs and reduced their former retreat and drubchen schedules.

Coming down the Mountain: Materialism, Superstition and the Survival of the Rational The death of Mao Zedong in September 1976 marked a monumental change in direction for China and its Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership. Boldly pragmatic new policies established under the direction of Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997) opened China to foreign investment and the private ownership of small businesses and along with these a small measure of popular political participation. These policies which were selfstyled as “capitalism with Chinese characteristics”17 transformed China from economic devastation into the world’s second largest economy within thirty years.18 Along with these economic reforms, the CCP has  17 Susan K. McCarthy, “Economic Development and the Buddhist-industrial Complex of Xishuangbanna,” in Faiths on Display: Religion, Tourism, and the Chinese State, eds. Tim Oakes and Donald S. Sutton (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010), 177. 18 Hu Jintao in his keynote speech to the Fortune Global Forum in May 2005.

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adopted a pragmatic tolerance of religion. Individual religious belief is now considered beyond state intervention, with “normal religious activities” granted protection by Article 36 of the PRC Constitution.19 Article 36 is backed by the tenets of the Party’s 1982 circular “Document 19,” which allow religion as a provisional social phenomenon that should be carefully managed and harnessed for its rallying powers towards the state’s socialist aims and its central task of economic construction. 20 Buddhism is now one of five religions granted legal existence in China–– along with Daoism, Islam, Protestantism and Catholicism. These are in contrast to religions that fall into the government’s politically defined categories of superstition (Ch. mixin) and evil cult (Ch. xiejiao), and are therefore illegal. 21 Since the issuance of Document 19 the Party’s management of religion has nevertheless continued within a framework of Marxist ideology. The government regularly propagates atheism and a scientific outlook among the people, particularly among the youth, and its long-term goal remains the full realisation of socialist ideals.22 Religion is still regarded as a backward, unscientific outlook that will fade away as society evolves. As Jiang Zemin urged the Party in a statement to the United Front Work Department (UFWD) in 2003: Along with the development of socialist material and spiritual civilisations, people will continually grasp the secret of the natural world and their destiny, and lean toward science and rational thinking for the understanding of the objective world, the motion of life, and the essence of religion. This will help religion walk to its final demise.23

Three levels of CCP administrative bodies––the United Front Work Department, the State Administration of Religious Affairs (SARA24) and  19 Though according to Yang, what constitutes “normal religious activities” is undefined and often decided by incumbent administrators. See Fenggang Yang, Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 75. 20 Yang, Religion, 50. 21 See Gaerrang, “Alternative Development on the Tibetan Plateau: The Case of the Slaughter Renunciation Movement,” PhD diss. (University of Colorado, 2012), 113. 22 Zhu Huang, “An Historical Study of the Communist Party of China’s Theory and Policy Concerning Religion,” People’s Daily (14 Nov., 2003), 9. See also Yang, Religion. 23 United Front Work Department, “The Long-term Nature of Religion” (2003), cited in Yü, “Pilgrimage,” 93. 24 SARA replaced the Religious Affairs Bureau in 1998.

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state-financed religious Associations––are, in principle, primarily concerned with managing a religion’s expression and conduct so that it is adapted to socialist society.25 Their purview covers religious doctrine, texts, rituals, organisations, persons and places. One of the ten main functions of the SARA is to investigate religious doctrine and ensure that it promotes national and public interests. The government’s right to intervene and calibrate religious doctrine and its expression was a major point in the adoption of the 2004 Regulations on Religious Affairs.26 A stepping off point for the government’s management of religions is demarcating religion from superstition. “Religion” is regarded as having a logical system of thought oriented to the afterlife and based on scriptures, trained clergy and fixed sites of religious activity. 27 “Superstition,” in contrast, includes beliefs and practices that lack a philosophical foundation and contradict scientific knowledge, and is therefore considered harmful to society.28 Anti-superstition rhetoric has had a long and fervent history in China, dating in the modern period from the late Qing dynasty at the turn of the 20th century. By the Republican era in the 1920s a growing population of intellectuals saw Buddhism (and all religions) as primitive superstition that impeded China’s entry into the modern world. 29 During the Cultural Revolution from 1967 to 1977 there was a “Brigade for the Termination of Religions” and the nation’s mission to eradicate superstition was backed by research institutes and the highest mandate of the PRC. Such a charged stigma of religion has evolved in the CCP’s post-reform religious policies as a trenchant demarcation between superstition and permissible religion. This, along with the management apparatus mentioned above, must be exerting pressure on the self-consciousness of Tibetan Buddhists in public talks, publications, thought and conversations in China today. Furthermore, as Gaerrang remarks, CCP rules prohibiting mixin (“superstition”) and xiejiao (“evil cult”) enforce the stagnation of existing religions and hinder the development of mystical forms of expression and practice.30  25

Gaerrang, “Alternative,” 111-112. See also Cooke, “Religious Work.” Cooke, “Religious Work,” 130. 27 Yoshiko Ashiwa, “Positioning Religion in Modernity: State and Buddhism in China,” in Making Religion, Making the State: The Politics of Religion in Modern China, eds. Yoshiko Ashiwa and David L. Wank (Stanford University Press, 2009), 58. 28 Shuk-wah Poon, Negotiating Religion in Modern China: State and Common People in Guangzhou, 1900-1937 (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2011), 31. See also Yang, Religion. 29 Donald S. Lopez, ed., A Modern Buddhist Bible: Essential Readings from East and West (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002), xix. 30 Gaerrang, “Alternative,” 113-114. 26

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“Develoop the Wesst”: Forcefu ul Economiic Developm ment off the Tibeta an Plateau A forceful ddrive for economic develo opment is thee state’s first principle towards achhieving a harm monious sociaalist society, aand often seeems to be the state’s soole solution foor the various problems it faaces.31 For Tiibetans as an ethnic m minority livingg in China’s West, this hhas meant asssimilation along a courrse of rapid ecconomic modeernisation throough China’s “Develop “ the West” campaign (Ch.. xibu da kaiffa). A large p art of the Develop the West campaiign has been relocating r Tibeetan nomads too housing reseettlements, as well as ffencing in passtoral areas where w Tibetan nomads remaain.32 The nomadic lifeestyle is generaally deemed a threat to the eenvironment and a to the state’s planss for social annd economic development.. Resettlemen nt policies were reinforrced in Marchh 2006 with th he National Peeople’s Congreess’ plans to build a ““New Socialisst Countrysid de” (Ch. shehuui zhuyi xin nong-cun jianshe), annd with the National Confeerence on Passtoral Regionss in 2011 that decidedd that ecologiccal stability off Western Chinna’s pastoral areas a is to be achievedd by transform ming pastoraal production into more in ntensified livestock inddustrialisationn, and pastoraalists into urbaanised markett actors.33 It is clear thhat remaining an unwashed d yak herder iin unfixed areeas of the Tibetan Platteau is not deeemed by the CCP C to be a vviable future livelihood for Tibetans.

T housing g resettlement oon the Tibetan Plateau P Figure 2: A tyypical-looking Tibetan

 31

Ibid., 59. Ibid. See aalso Russell Haarwood, “Negottiating Moderniity at China’s Periphery,” P in China’s G Governmentalitiies: Governing g Change, Chaanging Govern nment, ed. Elaine Jeffreyys (New York: Routledge, R 2009), 70-71. 33 Gaerrang, “Alternative,” 60. 32

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The Erosion of a High-Altitude Value System The resettlement of Tibetan nomads undermines their traditional earth-based livelihoods that for millennia supported Tibet’s contemplative culture. The nomadic way of life has been a defining feature of Buddhist culture in Eastern Tibet and allowed for the nomadic religious encampments (chögar34) of great masters like Tokden Shakya Shri and A-khyug Rinpoche, and the high-altitude economy supporting yogic practitioners. Previously, Tibetan nomads and farmers offered regular food supplies like roasted barley flour, meat and dairy products to monasteries and hermitages as a matter of religious devotion. These offerings made the commitment to long-term yogic practice a viable way of life with strong community support. Today, as the traditional food source is no longer forthcoming from Tibetan families, gonpa are forced to form connections with towns and rely on alternative sources of support via the modern market. Head lamas of Tibetan gonpa now travel throughout China and abroad to fundraise for the needs of their monks and nuns. Gebchak Nunnery is one example of this: by the year 2000 many nuns were no longer able to procure adequate food supplies from their parents or siblings on their seasonal alms rounds, and since then they have relied on one of their male lamas to fundraise for their daily meals. Another thrust of the Develop the West campaign, and a salient factor behind the transformations of Tibet’s contemplative culture, is nationwide compulsory nine-year education for all school-age children.35 Chinese is the main language of instruction and few examinations are conducted in the Tibetan language, religious culture or history.36 The core educational goal of the state curriculum is to consolidate Tibetans as an ethnic minority within the national unity of China, and to elevate them culturally through scientific and socialist values and economic development. 37 Thus the  34

Chögar were common in Eastern Tibet from the time of the fourth Karmapa in the 14th century. Chögar are large communities of monastic and non-monastic practitioners (often male and female) usually centred around a charismatic realised master or treasure-revealer. Some famous chögar are present-day Larung Gar and Yachen Gar, both in Kardzé Prefecture, and Shakya Shri’s nineteenth-century encampment at Khyi-puk. 35 Harwood, “Negotiating,” 71. See also Tiedao Zhang and Zhao Minxia, “Universalising Nine-year Compulsory Education for Poverty Reduction in Rural China,” International Review of Education 52 (2006): 262-263. 36 Melvyn C. Goldstein and Matthew T. Kapstein, eds., Buddhism in Contemporary Tibet: Religious Revival and Cultural Identity (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1998), 3. 37 Ashild Kolas and Monika P. Thowsen, On the Margins of Tibet: Cultural

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majority of Tibetan youthh are now strreamed in an education sy ystem that serves the sttate’s developpment agenda:: that of shapiing Chinese citizens as rational marrket actors whho prioritise material m develoopment and co ommodity production.338

From the t Cave to o the Classrroom Despite statee regulation of o religion, inccluding a miniimum age for monastic ordination39 and limitatioons on the po opulations of m monasteries, a Tibetan Buddhist revvival has beenn taking placee in Eastern Tiibet since the 1980s. A surprisingly large numbeer of ordaineed Tibetans aare living in monastic centres throuughout Kham m and Amdo, resuming theirr position as th he central pillar of Tiibetan religioous culture and a literary pproduction. 40 Kapstein reported in 22004 that oveer one hundred d thousand Tiibetan Buddhiist monks and nuns haad been ordainned in China, nearing the tootal Tibetan population in exile.41 T The bulk of reecent financiall support for tthe building of o Tibetan religious strructures in Chhina has come from the H Han Chinese (mainland ( and diasporric), a fast growing g numb ber of whom m are particip pating in Tibetan Budddhism as studdents and patro ons.

Figure 3: A neewly constructeed monastic colllege in Easternn Tibet

   Survival on thhe Sino-Tibetann Frontier (Univ versity of Washhington Press, 2005), 2 93. 38 Gaerrang, “Alternative,” iii. 39 Age 18. 40 David L. M McMahan, ed., Buddhism B in th he Modern Worlld (New York: Routledge, R 2012), 95. 41 Kapstein, ““A Thorn,” 2300.

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In anomalous ways, the revival is also invigorated by the state’s promotion of domestic tourism as a source of revenue and as a way to assert its control over religious matters. 42 Colourful ethnic nationalities (Ch. minzu)43 are advertised in the interests of domestic tourism, and Tibet, with its sacred culture and pristine nature, is one of the most alluring destinations. The commercialisation of religions and ethnic cultures through the tourism industry brings very high returns: in 2015 tourism revenue in Lhasa was more than 15 billion yuan.44

Eastern Tibetan Khenpos and their Movements for Educational and Ethical Reforms In the last ten years the revival of Buddhism in Eastern Tibet has predominantly taken place through the medium of monastic colleges. A growing number of gonpa are adopting more systemised scholastic curricula, many of them influenced by the monastic college of Larung Gar Five Sciences Buddhist Academy (hereafter Larung Gar) located in Serta County of Kardzé Prefecture, Sichuan Province. With a population of well over 10,000 monks and nuns, 45 Larung Gar is the largest Buddhist institution on the Tibetan plateau and the focal point of the Tibetan Buddhist revival. Its magnitude and high intellectual and ethical standards have an incredibly far-reaching influence on the minds of Tibetans across the Tibetan Plateau, from diet and livelihood to cultural identity. Larung Gar was formally established as a Buddhist Academy in 1987 by Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok (1933-2004), with the assistance of the Tenth Panchen Lama, as part of their efforts to rehabilitate their religion after the corruptions undergone during the Maoist era. Larung Gar first emerged  42

Ashild Kolas, Tourism and Tibetan Culture in Transition: A Place Called Shangrila (London: Routledge, 2008); Charlene Makley, “Minzu, Market, and the Mandala,” in Faiths on Display: Religion, Tourism, and the Chinese State, eds. Tim Oaks and Donald S. Sutton (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010); Tim Oakes and Donald S. Sutton, eds., Faiths on Display: Religion, Tourism, and the Chinese State (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010), 21. 43 Tibetans are one of fifty-six “nationalities” (Ch. minzu) that constitute the multiethnic PRC. 44 Xinua, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2016-01/11/content_23016505.htm, accessed on 17/05/2016. 45 Reports of the population vary considerably. On 17 October 2015 the Sydney Morning Herald reported an estimated 50,000 monastics living at Larung Gar. However at the time of writing the government is carrying out a demolition to reduce Larung Gar’s population to 5,000.

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around 1980 as a chögar, a community of disciples gathered around Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok for VajrayƗna teachings and contemplative training. As the number of disciples residing at Larung Gar quickly swelled––by 1986 there were more than six thousand––an in-depth curriculum of study, meditation and debate was developed. Today, Larung Gar is an ecumenical institute that is open to followers of all Tibetan Buddhist schools. It has been a trailblazer in Tibet by admitting women to its curriculum from the 1980s when Tibet’s encounter with modernity was still nascent. Another unusual element of Larung Gar has been the large number of ethnic Han monks, nuns and laypeople attending classes taught in the Chinese language.46 To date, Larung Gar has produced more than a thousand qualified khenpo (male Buddhist scholars) and khenmo (female Buddhist scholars), many of whom now teach at other monasteries and Dharma centres throughout Tibet, China, India and other countries (though female teachers are generally less well received by the wider Tibetan and Chinese society). Perhaps the most well-known of Larung Gar’s leading teachers today are Khenpo Sodargye and Khenpo Tsultrim Lodrö. Besides having massive followings of Han Chinese students, these two teachers both regularly travel to major universities in Asia, Europe, North America and Australia giving lectures on the importance of Buddhist study to worldwide audiences.

The “New Intellect” (rig-sar) in Eastern Tibet Inside and outside the monasteries a new ethos of literacy and critical thought is being advocated by young Tibetans who have access to formal, secularised education for the first time. The general mood among Tibetans sees the 21st century as an age of reason, and critical intelligence has been elevated to new prominence in the learning culture of contemporary Tibetan society, both in China and in exile. This is reflected by the new prevalence of words in colloquial Tibetan like “reasoned understanding” (tok-sey), which is sometimes juxtaposed with “blind faith” (mong-dey), and “new brain” (lepa sarpa) which refers to educated, sceptical thinkers. Khenpo Sodargye in his Chinese language book Scientific Treatise discusses the Chinese-Marxist separation of material and ideal as being the original basis for the political category of “superstition”. He goes on to argue that to accuse Buddhism of being superstitious is “as ludicrous as  46

Khenpo Sodargye, “Brief Biography of H. H. Jigme Phuntsok,” http://www.khenposodargye.org/2013/03/brief-biography-of-jigme-phuntsokrinpoche/, accessed on 01/09/2015.

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the accusation of science as superstition.”47 With a similar apology for Buddhism’s rational side, Khenpo Tsultrim Lodrö in a talk at the University of Sydney in 2015 introduced Tibetan Buddhism as “a path on which one need not have faith in any deity or religious principle; one only needs faith in the natural law of interdependence and emptiness.”48 With its essential theme of guru devotion, however, Tibetan Buddhism is a consummate religion. It is in fact replete with heavily religious practices that could easily be categorised as superstition: wang empowerments, sang and sur smoke offerings to land spirits and ghosts, mo divinations, powa transference of consciousness and yidam practices that visualise the human body as a deity. Based on his extensive fieldwork on the Tibetan Buddhist revival in China, Yü argues that the rational tenor of modern Tibetan Buddhist discourses is a project “for rescuing religion from superstition.” Yü observes that many of the Tibetan teachers leading the Buddhist revival in Eastern Tibet (like Khenpos Sodargye and Tsultrim Lodrö) are fluent in Chinese and engaged with both Tibetan and Chinese audiences. They are acutely aware that their religious activities are closely regulated by the state and that various religious aspects of Tibetan Buddhism may be perceived as superstitious.49 In monasteries and nunneries, the modern importance of rationality is seen in a strong advocacy to marry learning (she-pa) with practice (drubpa) at all times in Buddhist training. Leading masters of the 19th-century Rimé movement, renowned as “lamas possessing knowledge and yogic realisation,”50 are the direct inspiration for Larung Gar khenpos and other lamas in Eastern Tibet today. Their study-with-practice ideal is being strongly advocated by teachers and by the general population of monks and nuns engaged in scholastic curricula. While this ideal is being voiced, however, the form it is taking under the requirements of modernisation is a population shift of monks and nuns from long-term retreat centres to classrooms. Interestingly, several of today’s most populated monastic centres like Larung Gar had first established themselves as chögar (“Dharma encampments”) in the late 1980s. Chögar were traditionally meditation  47

Khenpo Sodargye, “A Scientific Treatise on Buddhism: Xin yuan bao zang,” in A Treasure House of Buddhist Faith (Hong Kong Chinese Culture Publishing House, 2000), cited in Yü, “Pilgrimage,” 86-87. 48 Khenpo Tsultrim Lodrö, “Faith Beyond Religion” (talk to the Buddhist Society, University of Sydney, 28 May 2015). 49 Dan Smyer Yü, The Spread of Tibetan Buddhism in China: Charisma, Money, Enlightenment (London: Routledge, 2013), 85-86. 50 shes-sgrub gnyis-ldan gyi bla-ma

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communities rather than monastic institutions that sometimes migrated with the seasons or the movements of the community’s guru. Turek and Terrone have asserted that an increase in chögar and drubdra (retreat centres) in the post-1980s revival was because their less organised enrolment and curricular structure made them less susceptible to state intervention and scrutiny than monasteries.51 While this was the case from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, in the last ten years several of these communities have evolved into shedra (monastic colleges) or study centres with large bases of Chinese followers and patrons. They no longer fit the traditional description of chögar or drubdra as centres for meditation training. Larung Gar is an obvious example of this, as well as several of Gebchak’s larger branch gonpa in Nangchen like Raya and Draknang. Yachen Gar today remains primarily a centre for Dzogchen training and is a destination for monks and nuns of other gonpa in Eastern Tibet to obtain meditation teachings on a seasonal basis. In the last few years at Yachen Gar, however, what used to be a sole curriculum of contemplative practice has developed a part-time study program taught by Larung Gar khenpos and khenmos.52 Scholastic learning has always been a strong stream in Tibetan Buddhist training, which is in large part based on the philosophical scriptural traditions of ancient India’s NƗlandƗ University. It is central in the Geluk school, where a geshe degree (nominally equivalent to khenpo in the Sakya, Kagyu and Nyingma schools) entails at least fifteen years of dialectical study. The Sakya lineage has also long been identified as a scholastic tradition with its illustrious scholars and historians, like Sakya Pandita (1182-1251) and Gorampa (1429-1489). The Nyingma and Kagyu lineages have also had their fair share of master-scholars, notably during the Rimé era in figures like Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo (1820-1892) and Ju Mipham (1846-1912), and in earlier times in masters like Drukchen Pema Karpo (1527-1592) and Longchenpa (1308-1364). Along with scholastic learning, scholastic revivals have also played defining and recurring roles in the history of Tibetan Buddhism. Samuel has described the series of syntheses and reactions between what he terms “clerical” and “shamanic” approaches in Tibetan Buddhism (comparable in this paper to scholastic and yogic approaches). Clerical developments such as aspects of the New Translation period (Sar-gyur, 10th-12th centuries) and the founding of the Geluk school attempted rationalised syntheses of  51 52

Terrone, “Householders,” 81-84; Turek, “In This Body,” 89-90. Gebchak Wangdrak Rinpoche, personal communication, July 2015.

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the Buddha’s teachings based on graduated monastic curricula. 53 The recent increase of monastic colleges in the gonpa of Eastern Tibet (many of which traditionally favoured the shamanic approach) may resemble such earlier patterns of scholastic revival. Beyond an increase of study programs, however, the more systematic, degree-oriented approach and attitudes of scepticism in the gonpa of Eastern Tibet seem new and divergent from traditional Tibetan patterns of scholarship and its relation to practice. In pre-Communist Eastern Tibet a khenpo degree was infrequently bestowed and considerably more difficult to acquire than it is today.54 The degree was not the end result of a standard curriculum, but was given to a monk who over decades had proven his deep knowledge of Buddhist philosophy, along with altruistic moral conduct and spiritual insight cultivated through extended periods of retreat. Shedra (monastic colleges) were by no means the standard model of most monasteries in preCommunist Eastern Tibet. Famous shedra like Dzongsar and ĝri Singha in Dergé, Kham, established during the Rimé movement in the 19th century, were few and far between and served as major scholastic centres for monks coming from all parts of the Tibetan Plateau. Outside of these shedra most Nyingma and Kagyu monks who engaged in studies did so in small groups around a teacher who specialised in a particular subject, sometimes for years. They would then proceed to another teacher or retreat area to deepen their knowledge.55 Today a shedra curriculum of at least nine years is standard in almost all Kagyu, Sakya and Nyingma monasteries in India and Nepal. A typical daily schedule of study in a shedra starts with a morning class on a main text taught by a khenpo, followed by a class on a branch subject of language or introductory topics. After lunch there is a revision class on the main text and then debate in the evening.56 The main texts studied in a  53

Samuel repeatedly points out that clerical patterns in Tibet also involved shamanic elements, as in the figure of Tsongkhapa (1357-1419) whose academic works were inspired by visions of Tantric deities. See Geoffrey Samuel, Civilised Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies (Washington: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1993), 499-507. 54 The title khenpo traditionally referred to a preceptor, one highly accomplished in scholarship and conduct, who imparted monks’ PrƗtimokৢa vows. In the Geluk School a monastery abbot is called a khenpo. 55 Drukpa Kagyu master Dorzong Rinpoche, personal communication, 2014. 56 Adam Pearcey, “The Curricula of Tibetan Buddhist Commentarial Schools (bshad grwa): Traditional Models and Some Recent Adaptations,” Contemporary Buddhism 16, 2 (2015): 452.

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shedra are Tibetan commentarial writings on Indian ĞƗstra expositions of the subjects of Vinaya, Abhidharma and Madhyamaka.57 Throughout the curriculum shedra students are assessed in memorisation, debate and written examinations. Upon the successful completion of the curriculum a monk or nun is given the degree of lopön (junior Buddhist scholar [in a shedra context]; female: lopön-ma) or khenpo (female: khenmo), depending on one’s teaching experience and moral conduct. Such a nineyear shedra curriculum was devised in Tibetan monasteries in exile after 1960, perhaps shaped to some degree by the influences of secular education models in India and Nepal and the modern-world importance of degrees and certificates.58 As a chögar, Larung Gar’s study program did not initially entail a fixed number of years. Since 2011, however, Larung Gar has determined a fifteen-year course of study for a khenpo degree, perhaps shaped by similar influences in modern China.59 These standardised curricula have allowed hundreds, if not thousands, of Nyingma, Sakya and Kagyu lopön and khenpo to graduate from Tibetan shedras in China and exile over the last two decades. An elderly Nangchen lama relayed how in the past monks who attained a drub-la (“lama of practice”) title on completion of a three-year retreat were given the best opportunities for performing rituals and prayers in society, and therefore had better livelihoods. Today this has changed so that monks with scholarly titles are given more paid opportunities as teachers and tutors, and as a result many monks are pursuing study as their main training course.60 In Nangchen before the Cultural Revolution the only shedra where monks engaged in continuous years of systematic study was at Surmang Monastery.61 Local narratives also say that the last Nangchen king, whose seat was the Drukpa Kagyu monastery Tsechu Gar, prohibited extensive dialectical study at the monastery in order to encourage yogic realisations in his monks.62 Today in Nangchen there are six shedra and approximately twenty lower-level monastic colleges, making up thirty-five per cent of the total number of monasteries and nunneries in the region.63 Among Gebchak’s branch gonpa that have converted are Raya Gonpa  57

Ibid., 453. The fact that lopön and khenpo degrees are often compared to Master’s and Doctorate degrees alludes to this. 59 Larung Gar Khenpo Garab, personal communication, November 2015. 60 Lama Gawa, personal communication, January 2016. 61 Nangchen Kagyu monk, Amphel, personal communication, July 2015. 62 Gebchak Wangdrak Rinpoche, personal communication, July 2015. 63 Traga (incumbent Religious Affairs official in Nangchen), personal communication, July 2015. 58

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(now a shedra) and the second largest nunnery after Gebchak, Dechen Ling that now has a full-time study program taught by a resident khenpo from Larung Gar. Gebchak remains one of a handful of gonpa in Nangchen that has not developed a study program, and it is looked down upon for this reason by more progressive, educated monks and nuns. A nun from Chyodrak Khang-ney Nunnery in Nangchen commented: These days all gonpa in Nangchen have study and practice joined together. Many nun khenmo are graduating who know Buddhist logic, psychology and philosophy very well. Nowadays in society Dharma study is really improving. There are a few nunneries which have only practice and no study. But every monastery in Nangchen now has both shedra and practice. We are better educated than before. Gebchak is one of the biggest of Nangchen’s old gonpa, but they have only practice, no study of grammar or philosophy. It is a remote gonpa in a nomadic area; maybe that’s the reason. Before, Gebchak was considered an excellent gonpa. Why aren’t the lamas promoting study at Gebchak? Some people wonder about this.

What follows is an extract of a conversation between a Gebchak lama and a young tokden (“realised person”, or yogin), at a remote hermitage in Nangchen in September 2013. The conversation happened in the presence of the elderly yogin, Pema Dorje, who was respected as the highest realised living lama of the Gebchak lineage, until his death three months after this conversation. Pema Dorje managed to avoid the labour camps of the Cultural Revolution and continued his practice in a remote cave, and was thus a rare embodiment of yogic accomplishment connected to the contemplative culture of pre-Communist Tibet. The young tokden in this conversation is his disciple and a follower of the Gebchak lineage. Gebchak lama [GL]: People say that Buddhism is getting cleaned up in this country, that nowadays there should be no faith without studying. tokden [T]: What does it mean to practice? Conceptual thoughts––are they outside, inside or secret? What is the essence of our teachings? We have to understand the nature of the mind and then practice, with the guidance of the lama. What is the essence of meditation experience? From where does realisation arise? We only find this out from the lama. Noble thoughts, negative thoughts… what is the difference? Our previous lineage lamas would guide us directly like this. Nowadays people learn Dharma mostly from books. They don’t understand the essential teaching of the lama, the men-ngak [pith oral instructions]. These days practice is in trouble. GL: Nowadays drubchen are criticised. People say it’s more important to study texts. […] Some khenpo who study emptiness to an extreme tell the

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laypeople that doing circumambulations [kora] is useless. Circumambulations help the laypeople’s minds because in their hearts they believe it is good. You make them doubt that, and then what do they have? What do you think? T: Really, what I think is that we need practice! Those who say ritual practice isn’t necessary should look in [Gebchak’s] scriptures, they can see that without inner practice and relying on a yidam, it’s impossible to take realisation from the outside. I think we need practice––if it is Tantra we’re talking about. Whoever heard of Tantra without practice? […] I’ve met a few people who say you don’t need ritual practice, that the main thing is study. One monk said to me, ‘What kind of gonpa do you have without study?’ I turned it back on him, ‘You have study but no gonpa!’ […] At Gebchak Nunnery practice is still good, with nuns like Jamtsen Chödron.64 GL: All nearby branch gonpa learn from Jamtsen Chödron. T: Yes, accomplished practitioners like Jamtsen Chödron are the whole point of our tradition. GL: These days this is the biggest challenge. […] You do need learning and practice. But those who say the Gebchak nuns don’t have learning are wrong. They learn from a direct lineage of oral teachings [nye-gyu], they practise the experiential instructions of pure awareness [rigpa mar-tri]. People criticise them, saying ‘what’s the use of doing meditation and ritual practice if you haven’t studied?’ It’s true that the 21st century is the age of reason and education is improving. But experiential practice is declining, isn’t it? In many places it’s declining. I’ve travelled around and heard folks saying how today there is a ‘new intellect’ [rig-sar], and it’s the time for reason and no more blind faith. They say the new intellect is better than the old one. So now who is facing the challenge? We’re facing the challenge. If you look throughout Nangchen, there is no better place than Gebchak Nunnery. How is it better? When it comes to yogic practice. Aside from that, logic, analytical reasoning, debate… they don’t have these at Gebchak, to be honest. But what they do have is strong faith and pure perception. On the basis of these their psychic channels are cleared, which leads to realisation. This year there was a debate in Nangchen town about Buddhist women. The Gebchak nuns were there. Someone there said, ‘In the past Gebchak

 64

The name of a middle-aged Gebchak nun who holds the lineage (i.e. has mastery) of tsa-lung practice.

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Chapter Twelve T w it is not so good, because they have no study was renoowned, but now program. Those nuns ennter a three-yearr retreat not knoowing anything g. It’s a waste of time.’ That kinnd of attitude iss our greatest cchallenge. Otheerwise, all the asspects of the prractice lineage taught by Gebcchak’s senior nuns–– n like tsa-luung and trulkhoor65––are still being b practisedd, not just for months m but for their whole lives.. The tsa-lung lineage l was passsed from the laate nun Palmo too Jamtsen Chöödron, and shee teaches at oother branch gonpa. g Recently I asked the nunns if there are other o nuns as c apable of teach hing as Jamtsen C Chödron. They answered that there are manyy Gebchak nun ns with her level of accomplishhment. I was so o happy to heaar this; I felt th hat the Gebchak lineage may bee alright.

Figure 4: Thee elderly yogin, Pema Dorje, teeaching the natuure of mind to a Gebchak nun © Caterinna DeRe and Ellizabeth McDou ugal

These recennt criticisms off Gebchak Nu unnery are botth ironic and revealing of the shiftiing attitudes and values in n Nangchen ssociety. Untill recently Gebchak Nuunnery was reenowned throu ughout the reegion for the quality q of its yogic praactice traditionn,66 and now it is criticisedd; yet Gebchaak’s yogic  65

Trulkhor is series of rigorous r breath hing and physsical movemen nts that is practised in taandem with tsa-lung yoga. In Tibet T tsa-lung aand trulkhor aree practised to prepare the energetic minnd-body compllex of the pracctitioner for Dzzogchen or MahƗmudrƗ rrealisation. 66 See Karm ma Don-grub, ed., e Khams sgo om-sde; and T Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, Blazing Splenndour: The Meemoirs of the Dzogchen D Yogi Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, trans. and edds. Erik P. Kunnzang and Marccia B. Schmidtt (Hong Kong: Rangjung

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practice tradition has not changed.

Conclusion Tibetan Buddhism has been flourishing in Eastern Tibet since the 1980s with high numbers of ordained saৄgha studying in monastic centres, more engagement with Buddhist studies among the laity and the considerable support of Han Chinese students and patrons. This is apparent in the development of Larung Gar over the last twenty years, and in numerous gonpa throughout Eastern Tibet that have improved buildings and expanding study programs based on Larung Gar’s example and/or the current trend of modern education and development. Such flourishing is an achievement of many participants, but particularly of Tibetan Buddhist leaders like Larung Gar’s khenpos. Their movements for scholastic and ethical reforms have been a strategic response to challenges to their religion posed by the CCP government and modernising society. They parallel the reforms undergone by Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Burma during their colonial periods, and indeed of many religions in their encounters with science and modernity.67 Yet as livelihoods shift from their dependence on nature towards a rationalised market, and modes of learning shift from an emphasis on contemplative experience towards programs of textual learning, the minds of Tibetans are changing, as are the ways in which they engage and derive meaning from their Buddhist religion. A practice-with-study ethic continues to be advocated by many Tibetan lamas and their followers, but the demands of a rapidly modernising economy call for the attainment of academic degrees and an expounding of Buddhism that satisfies modern critical approaches to knowledge. The result has been a course of full-time scholarship for many monastics that lacks a significant practice component.68  Yeshe Publications, 2005), 157-162. 67 David L. McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Lopez, A Modern. 68 In a statement that comes full circle to Larung Gar’s origins as a chögar, Khenpo Tsultrim Lodrö expressed the following words of warning to a conference of leading Tibetan Buddhist teachers in Chengdu in October 2015: “What I’m concerned about is our practice tradition. If we continue as we are now, in twenty years our practice will be lost. […] All schools of Tibetan Buddhism are facing the problem of decline in their practice. […] In order to give empowerments and pith instructions a lama needs practice, having received them from another lama. Not anymore. Nowadays tulkus’ activities are too involved with money. […] Today,

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The central question of this paper––what is becoming of Tibetan contemplative culture––remains an open question. The enforcement of state regulations on religion in China is the government’s prerogative, and it remains to be seen whether increased freedom of religious thought and action is in the CCP’s interest for the nation’s future. The bottom line of a modern economy and the state’s religious policies may determine how far the organisational forms of Tibetan Buddhism can flourish in China. But Tibetan Buddhism, as it has been practised for many centuries until today, has transformation at its core. It will be interesting to see the inner path that its followers determine for themselves in the future.

Glossary of Wylie Transliterations of Tibetan Terms Amdo: A-mdo chögar: chos-sgar Chyodrak Khang-ney Nunnery: sKyo-brag Khang-gnas dGon-pa Dechen Ling: bDe-chen gLing Dergé: sDe-dge Draknang: Brag-nang drubchen: sgrub-chen drub-dra: sgrub-grwa drub-khag: sgrub-khag drubkhang: sgrub-khang drub-la: sgrub-bla drub-pa: sgrub-pa Drubwang Tsoknyi: Grub-dbang Tshogs-gnyis Dzogchen: rDzogs-chen Gebchak Nunnery: Gad-chags dGon-pa; Ge-chags dGon-pa Geluk: dGe-lugs geshe: dge-bshes  due to the kindness of the old lamas who hold the living lineages of instruction and empowerments, we are okay. But when I think of the future I’m worried that the Dharma will degenerate. […] Nowadays many lamas are capable of giving teachings, they have the lung transmissions of the texts. But in twenty years, where will the qualified lamas be who can give empowerments and pith instructions? […] I am not worried about the material well-being of Tibet in the future. But our practice is declining. […] These days many people are studying texts, it helps them to have a better livelihood. […] But after twenty years if we continue on this course, practice will disappear.” Lodrö, Khenpo Tsultrim Lodrö, bLa-ma dge-bshes rtse-phud dag ’dzoms-pa’i bgro-gleng, 14 September 2015a, http://mp.weixin.qq.com (personal translation), accessed on 10/11/2015.

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Golog: mGo-log Gomdé Nangchen: sGom-sde Nang-chen; Ch. Nangqian gonpa: dgon-pa Kagyu: bKa’-brgyud Kham: Khams khenmo/khenpo: mkhan-mo/mkhan-po Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok: mKhan-po ’Jigs-med Phun-tshogs Khenpo Sodargye: mKhan-po bSod Dar-rgyas Khenpo Tsultrim Lodrö: mKhan-po Tshul-khrims bLo-gros kora: skor-ba La rung Gar: bLa-rung sGar lNga-rig Nang-bstan sLob-gling lepa sarpa: klad-pa gsar-pa lopön/lopönma: slob-dpon/slob-dpon-ma; corresponding to Sanskrit ƗcƗrya MahƗmudrƗ: Phyag-rgya Chen-po men-ngak: man-ngag; corresponding to Sanskrit upadeĞa mong-dey: rmongs-dad ngondro: sngon-’gro Nyingma: rNying-ma nye-gyu: nye-brgyud nyungney: smyung-gnas powa: ’pho-ba Raya: Ra-ya rigpa mar-tri: rig-pa dmar-khrid rig-sar: rig-gsar Rimé: Ris-med Sakya: Sa-skya sang: bsang Sar-gyur: gSar-bsgyur Serta: gSer-rta shedra: bshad-grwa she-pa: shes-pa sur: gsur terma: gter-ma tertön: gter-ston tokden: rtogs-ldan tok-sey: rtogs-sad trulkhor: ’khrul-‘khor trul-ta: ’phrul-rta tulku: sprul-sku Tsangyang Gyamtso: Tshangs-dbyangs rGya-mtsho

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tsa-lung: rtsa-lung Tsechu Gar: Tshes-bcu sGar tukdam: thugs-dam tummo: gtum-mo wang: dbang Yachen Gar: Ya-chen sGar yeshe: ye-shes; corresponding to Sanskrit jñƗna yidam: yi-dam

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CONTRIBUTORS

Our contributors reside in eight different countries (Australia, Thailand, Japan, Korea, Italy, India, the Philippines, and the Netherlands) and are affiliated with thirteen different institutions: Greg Millett Bailey, formerly a Reader in Sanskrit, is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Program in Asian Studies, La Trobe University, Melbourne. He has published translations and studies of the Ga۬eĞa PurƗ۬a, Bhart৚hari’s ĝatakatrayam and books on the god BrahmƗ, early Buddhism and many articles on Sanskrit literature. At present he is working on social, literary and economic aspects of the relationship between early Buddhism and the MahƗbhƗrata, and a detailed study of the Sanskrit verb v‫܀‬t and its equivalents in Middle Indic languages and Tamil. Taritwat Chaihemwong is a Lecturer at the Department of Philosophy and Religions, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Prince of Songkla University in Thailand. He received his MA and PhD in Indian Philosophy and Religion from Banaras Hindu University in India. His field of interest is Philosophy and Religious Studies, especially Indian Philosophy, the Philosophy of Religion, Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism and Buddhism including Humanism and Ethics. Midori Horiuchi is a Professor of the Oyasato Institute for the Study of Religion, Tenri University in Japan. She was a research scholar by invitation of the Indian Government at Banaras Hindu University (198488) and was conferred a PhD there in Philosophy. Her fields are religious studies, especially modern Hinduism, new religions in Japan, gender in religion and Tenrikyo studies. Midori has published several books, including Ramakrishna: His Life and Thought, and many articles on modern Hinduism, and Tenrikyo studies. Muhammad Kavesh is a cultural anthropologist and doing his PhD at Australian National University, Canberra. He has co-authored four journal articles and one book chapter on different issues related to Pakistani culture. Before commencing his PhD at ANU, he worked in different international non-government organisations in Islamabad. In his PhD

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project, he is examining how animals are animating human lives in the Pakistani Punjab, and how the organisation of animal activities in religious festivals can indicate transformation in the Pakistani cultural value system. Gwyn McClelland received his Masters of Divinity in 2008, and enrolled for his PhD in Japanese Studies (History) at Monash University in 2013. Since then, Gwyn was awarded a Japan Study Grant at the National Library in 2015 and has completed four research trips to Nagasaki, where he has interviewed twelve survivors of the bombing and numerous other Nagasaki citizens. He had articles published in 2016 in The Journal of Religion in Japan, in 2015 in the Social Science Japan Journal (SSJJ, Oxford) and the Eras Journal (SOPHIS, Monash University), as well as previously in the Australian Journal for Mission Studies (AJMS, Melbourne). Elizabeth McDougal (Ani Tenzin Chozom) is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney following the completion of her Master’s under the supervision of Professors Geoffrey Samuel and Mark Allon. Elizabeth lived in Tibetan communities in India and Nangchen for 19 years learning the Tibetan language and Buddist practice. With her PhD she is investigating further how Tibetan Buddhist practice lineages are responding to Chinese modernisation and globalisation. Alok Oak is a PhD candidate at the Leiden Institute of Area Studies and the Centre for the Study of Religion, University of Leiden, Netherlands. In his dissertation he works on the political philosophy of B. G. Tilak, exploring the intellectual history of 19th and early-20th-century Maharashtra. A book on Albert Camus in Marathi (the first of its kind in the language) edited by the author, is also on the verge of publication. Supriya Banik Pal is a retired professor. She chaired Panel V Orality Section, ICAS5 and IAAH-2011. Supriya’s publications include Asian Literary Voices: From Marginal to Mainstream (Amsterdam, 2010), Asian Art, Culture and Heritage: Manatunga, Anura et al. (2013), Sindh through the Centuries II (SMI University, 2014), and articles for the Archaeologia Zeylanica journal (2011) and Anviksa (Jadavpur University, 2012). David W. Kim (PhD: Syd) is a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Political and Social Change, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Australian National University. He is an Article Editor for SAGE Open Publications as well as a peer-reviewer for Routledge (Asian Studies), the

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Contributors

Korean Journal for Religious Studies, the WonKwang Journal for Religious Studies, and Horizon Research. He has written six books and twenty-five peer-review articles including Religious Encounters in Transcultural Society (Lexington Books, 2017) Religious Transformation in Modern Asia: A Transnational Movement (Brill, 2015), New Religious Movements in Asian History (forthcoming by Brill, 2017-8), Intercultural Transmission in the Medieval Mediterranean (Continuum, 2012), The Thomasine Logia; The Genesis of a Jesus Tradition (forthcoming by Routledge, 2018), and Revivals Awaken Generations: A History of Church Revivals (2007). Ann R. Proctor is an Art Historian specialising in the arts of Southeast Asia. She is the author of numerous articles in a range of journals including the TAASA Review. Her PhD thesis, from the University of Sydney, was published in 2009 as Out of the Mould: Contemporary Ceramics in Vietnam. Her teaching experience, since moving to Sydney in 1995, has been with the National Art School, the Australian National University and in Hӗ Chí Minh City, Vietnam. Paolo E. Rosati successfully defended his PhD in “Civilisations of Asia and Africa” (South Asia Section) at the Italian Institute of Oriental Studies––“Sapienza” University of Rome in Italy. Paolo obtained a Laurea degree in Indian Art History and a PG Diploma di Specializzazione in Archaeology (India, Iran, and Central Asia). He published in 2017 “The Goddess KƗmƗkhyƗ: Religio-political Implications in the Tribalisation Process” (History and Sociology of South Asia 11, 2), “The Cross-Cultural Kingship in Early Medieval KƗmarnjpa: Blood, Desire and Magic” (Religions 8, 10) and (forthcoming) “The Yoni Cult at KƗmƗkhyƗ: Its Cross-cultural Roots” (Religions of South Asia 10, 3). Joel Tejedo is a research professor at Asia Pacific Theological Seminary in the Philippines. Prior to his current post in the seminary, Joel served as a pastor for 24 years in the rural areas in the Northern Philippines. Joel teaches “Church and Community” and other related ministry courses in the seminary. Joel is the author of Sambayanihan: How Filipino Pentecostals Build Communities in the Philippines (2011). He and his wife have three children (Hannah, Luke, and Joel Jr.) and have been serving as missionaries at APTS since 2009.

INDEX

Action, v, 95, 98, 107, 188 Agnosticism, 60, 64 Alberto Carino, 179 ambivalence, 246, 248, 256 AmbuvƗcƯ, 31, 44, 48 Amdo, 261, 264, 273, 284 Aming Fabrigas, 179 Amos Yong, 164 An Thái inscription, 157 ana۪ga, 43 anti-Christian policy, 212, 214 Arjuna, 77, 81, 84, 94, 99, 104 Article 36 (PRC Constitution), 269 Articulated, 232 Asceticism, 42-3, 50, 102, 114, 157 ashes, 33, 42-3, 45-6, 48 Asiatic Journal, 120-123, 136 Asiatic Society of Bengal, 119 Assemblies of God, 169-170, 173, 173n20, 178, 179, 182 Atal Vajpayee, 85 Auqaf department, 17, 19, 21 Australian NGO, 6, 186, 188-193, 196 Avalokiteshvara, 5, 143, 154-155, 157-160 Bangon Pilipinas Movement, 167, 183 Bayanihan, 174 Bengal Renaissance, 5, 110, 117, 119, 135 Bhaktas, 102 Bhakti Movement, 65, 67, 68 Bhishma, 83, 85-6, 92 Bible Women, 199 Bio-resource Research Centre, 15, 15n33, 27 Blandishments, 101

blind faith (mong-dey), 275, 281 Boisselier, Jean, 144n14, 148-9, 150n32, 160 Bollywood actors, 87 BrahmƗpurƗ۬a, 32, 52 BrahmavaivartapurƗ۬a, 43, 43n74, 51 bribery, 20-21 Brigade for the Termination of Religions, 270 British Colonial Calcutta, 4, 110 Cakra, 98, 98n8 Carpeaux, Charles, 146-47, 147n22 Catharine Mackenzie, 195, 201, 202 Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, 168 celebrity, v, 74, 90, 90n25, 91, 93 Central Tibet (Ü-Tsang), 264 Chaplaincy, 199, 200 chaste woman, 114 Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 268 Chinju, 191,191n21, 196, 198, 198n65, 205 Civil Society, 5 cleric; clerical, 265, 277, 278 closed-door policy, 6, 210 code of conduct, 111, 112 colonialism, xi, xii, xiii, xiv, 1, 3 contemplative… … culture, vi, 7, 261, 263, 266, 272, 280, 284 … tradition, 268, 275 … experience, 263, 283 Communist, 7, 178, 193, 201, 237, 240, 261, 265, 269, 269n22, 278, 280, 286, 288 Competent, 99

294 Consequences, 96, 104, 105, 165, 182 Constitutes, 99, 269 corruption, 2, 19, 21, 21n51, 28, 34, 38, 85, 168, 180 Cultural Revolution, 261, 261n3, 268, 270, 279, 280 curriculum; curricula, 263, 266, 268, 272, 275, 277-279 Dakৢa, 32, 39 dak‫܈‬ayajña, 32, 42, 48 Dakshineswar-Kali-Temple, 5 dangerous memory, 231, 254-256, 259, danka system, 6, 210-211, 211n4, 212, 214, 226, 226n44, 227 danna, 214 Deeds, 56, 59, 80, 96, 100, 168, 224 Deng Xiaoping, 268 Desires, 96, 100-102, 104-105, 216 Develop the West Ch. xibu da kaifa, 272 DevƯbhƗgavatapurƗ۬a, 31, 42, 48, 51 DevƯpurƗ۬a, 44, 44n81 Devotees, 58 Devotion, 56, 83, 95, 100, 103, 117, 130, 132, 135, 218, 272, 276 Dharmapar Vyakhyane, 62, 65, 67, 69, 72 Dh৚tarƗৢt৚a, 78, 85, 86, 87 Document 19, 269 Ĉӗng Dѭѫng, 161 Doordarshan, 74, 79, 81, 87, 88, 92n30 Douglas, Mary, 23, 24, 27, 164, 182, 232n5 DraupadƯ, 77-8, 83, 85, 87-8, 93 drub-la (lama of practice), 279, 284 drubchen (group liturgical ceremonies), 265, 267-68, 280, 284 Drubwang Tsoknyi, 266, 284 Duryodhana, 78-9, 83, 85, 87

Index Dzogchen, 264, 266, 277, 282n66, 284, 288 Dzongsar (Shedra), 278 East India Company, 126 Eddie Villanueva, 167-8 Egoistic, 95, 105 Eighteenth-century Bengal, 118 El Shaddai, 167-68, 181 Elphinstone, Mount Stuart, 55, 55n5, 58, 72 entertainment, 10n4, 12, 13n25, 15, 26-7, 175 Esoteric Buddhism, 5, 34, 50, 153, 155, 157n55, 158, 162 ethics, 56, 95, 106-108, 111, 116, 166, 181, 286, 290 Eugenio Mangibat, 179 Evangelicals, 168 evil cult (Ch. xiejiao), 269, 270 Fedro Castro, 177, 179 Fetishism, 96 Filipino Pentecostals, 5, 6, 167, 180, 292 Finot, Louis, 146, 149 Frere, Bartle, 59, 59n18, 72 Gebchak Nunnery, viii, 7, 263, 266, 268, 272, 281, 284 Geluk, 264, 277-78, 284 General Lѭu KӃ Tông, 146 George Anderson, 198, 198n69, 199, 208 geshe, 277, 284 Girard, 148, 160, 254-57 Goodness, 69, 80, 97, 99 Gospel, 6, 51, 95, 166, 177-79 Gregorio Del Pilar, 178 ground zero, 7, 235, 243, 249, 250, 259 Guardian figures, 151-52 Haibutsu kishaku, 216, 225, 227 Han Chinese…, 273 … people, 261 … students, 275, 283 haram, 23 Harmony, 2, 40, 50, 64, 101, 102

Colonial Transformation and Asian Religions in Modern History Helen Keller, 232 Helen Mackenzie, viii, 193, 195, 198 Herman Dang-Alan, 179 hermitage, 280 Hevajra Tantra, 41, 41n63, 44, 48, 52 hibakusha, 6, 230, 234, 237, 239, 240-42, 258 Hindu: Social Reform Movement, Vedic practices, 59 HMAS Sydney, viii, 187-88 HMS Glory, 187 Householders, 104, 114, 262, 277, 288 Hover Ciriaco, 179 Humanism, 4, 98, 106, 290 Humanitarian Relief, 190, 192, 204 ICHR, 89, 90 Iglesia Ni Cristo, 167 Igorots, 178 Il-Sin Hospital, viii, 193, 196, 204 Ilsin Girls’ School, 203 Incineration, of KƗma (see also madana-bhasma), 33, 41, 42 Indrapura, 5, 143, 144-46, 151, 159 Intuition, 96 Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo, 277 Jaya Indravarman 11, 143-44 Jaya Simhavarman, 144 Jesus Is Lord Movement, 167 Jnana, 95, 100, 286 Jnanins, 102 Joyous Life, 218-220, 222-24, 226, 229 Ju Mipham, 277 Judkins Institute of Leadership, 5, 169 Kagura service, viii, 218-222, 222n35, 227 KƗma (see also Manobhava), 42, 43 KƗmagiri (see also NƯlƗcala), 30, 32 KƗra৆ঌavynjhasnjtra Sutra, 158, 159 Kaulacnj‫ڲ‬Ɨma۬i Tantra, 31, 50 Kauravas, 78-81, 83, 86, 88 Kejriwal, Arvind, 81, 83-5, 94

295

KeĞin, 4, 5 Kham, viii, 34, 261n2, 262, 264, 266, 267, 273, 278, 285 Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok, 274-5, 285 Khenpo Sodargye, 275, 275n46, 276, 285, 288 Khenpo Tsultrim Lodrö, 275-76, 283-85, 287 khenpo; khenmo, 275, 279-280, 285 KirƗta(s), 33, 35-7, 42, 48 Korean peninsula, 6, 186-87, 193, 201 Kosa, 144 Kuchang, 196, 198 Kuleen, 128-9 KnjrmapurƗ۬a, 32 Kyungnam Province, 6, 188-89, 191-92, 197, 204 Laksmindra Lokeshvara, 143 lama, 274, 279-280, 283 Larung Gar Five Sciences Buddhist Academy (Larung Gar), 274 Lê Hoàn, 145 Lhasa, 264, 274, 288 lineage, 218, 266-67, 277, 280-82 li۪ga, 32, 40 Li۪gapurƗ۬a, 32, 52 Lokahitwadi, Gopal Hari Deshmukh, 55 Lokasamgraha, 102, 104-105 lopön; lopön-ma, 279, 285 Luz Villaloboz, 163, 180 madana-bhasma (see also Incineration, of KƗma), 33 Maeng Tribe, 177 MahƗbhƗgavatapurƗ۬a, 32 MahƗmudrƗ, 264, 282, 285 Maharashtra, 2, 3, 54-6, 60-61, 63-4, 71-2, 291 MahƗyƗna, 142, 155-56, 263 Mankind, 96 Manobhava (see also KƗma), 42-3 Mao Zedong, 193, 268 Marcos Dictatorship, 167, 178 MƗrka۬‫ڲ‬eyapurƗ۬a, 38 Marxist, 269, 275

296 Masan, 190-91, 198, 202-203 Masculinity, 2, 11-2, 12n16, 22, 267, 29 MatsyapurƗ۬a, 32 Media discourse, 75-6 Meiji Restoration, 216, 227 mela, 16, 19, 20-22, 28, 31, 48 menstrual blood, 44, 48-9 Metaphysical, 58, 69, 95-6, 141, 263 Metaphysics, 70, 95 meteorite (see also star), 45 Metz, 7, 254, 254n60, 255, 258, 259 Michael Burger, 165 mind-body complex, 263, 265 Mill, John Stuart, 72 Miss A. A. McNabb, 197 Miss M. Withers, 197 Monotheism, 63, 71 M৚gahiূsaka-jƗtiত/hunter, 116 Mundane, 147 Nagai Takashi, viii, 230, 232 Nakayama Miki, 217-220, 228 NƗlandƗ University, 277 Nangchen Gomdé (“The Land of Meditators”), 265, 285 Narrative pedestals, 151 National epic, 74, 77 nationalities (Ch. minzu), 274 new brain (lepa sarpa), 275 NƯlƗcala (see also KƗmagiri), 30, 32 Niskama, 100 non-sectarian Rimé (“Unbiased”) movement, 266 nondual wisdom (yeshe), 263 Nyingma, 262-65, 277-79, 285 Obligatory, 97-8, 104, 212 Om Ma Ni Pad Me Hum, 158 oral history, 6, 231, 248, 250, 256-7 oral teachings, 281 Pablo Garcia, 179 Padamji, Baba, 57, 57n14, 72 Pakistani State, 17, 28 Pandavas, 78-83, 86-88, 104 Paraesvarman, 145 Parmentier, Henri, 146-7, 162 Passion of Christ, 246

Index pastoralism/yak herder/nomads, 265 pativratya dharma, 114 Paton Memorial Hospital, 191, 196 Pearl Harbor, 186 Pema Dorje, viii, 280, 282 Pentecostal Charismatics, 165, 1689 People’s Republic of China (PRC), 193, 262, 264, 286 Peshwa rule, 54-5 Petra Lazaro, 179 Pew Research on Religion and Public Life, 167 Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches, 168 Po Klun Pilih Rajadvara, 144 Political Theology, 7, 164-66, 181, 183, 252, 254 Pope John Paul II, viii, 243-44, 246, 248, 256 Power Revolution, 167 POWs, 199, 201, 205 practice… … lineage, 262, 264, 266, 291 … system, 266, 268 Prarthana Samaj, 60, 62, 67 Presbyterian Church of Australia (PCA), 6, 189-90, 198 Presbyterian Women’s Missionary Union (PWMU), 6, 189 P৚thvƯ (see Earth, goddess), 34-5, 37 Qinghai Province, 264 Rajwade, V. K., 54, 72 Ram Mohun Ray, 118-19, 134 Ramanuj, 61, 68, 69 Ramayana, 74, 80, 89-92, 94, 111, 118 Realisation, 97, 102, 263, 269, 276, 279-82, reasoned understanding (tok-sey), 275, 285 Recognises, 81, 97, 173, 175 Refugees, 189-93, 196, 198, 201, 204 religious encampments (chögar), 272, 276

Colonial Transformation and Asian Religions in Modern History Renunciation, 99-101, 104-105, 269, 286 resettlement…, 271 … housing, viii … Tibetan nomads, 272 retreat centre (drubkhang; drubdra),265-68, 276-79, 282 revival… … of Tantric practice communities, 262 … scholastic, 262, 277-78 Robert Putnam, 169, 175, 183 Roopa Ganguly, 87-8, 93 RSS, 79, 89, 91 Sake, 98, 100, 102, 104, 143, 245, 250 ĞƗkta pƯ‫ܒ‬ha (see pƯ‫ܒ‬ha), 3, 31-3, 36, 38, 42, 46, 48, 52 ĝakti, 31-2, 37, 41, 43, 47-51, 114 Sakya, 262, 264, 277-79, 285 Samsara, 104 Sang Hyang Kamahayanikan, 15859 Sanguaro Seminar, 5, 169, 175, 183 Sanyas, 104-105 Sanyasa, 104 Sanyasi, 105 Sar-gyur/New Translation period, 277, 285 Savadharma, 99 Seer, 96, 203 self-awakening faith, 225 Selfish, 4, 98, 100, 104 Selfishness, 4 Severance Hospital, 194-95, 204 shamanic, 277-78, 278n53 shedra (monastic colleges), 277-80, 285 Shinto, 1, 212-13, 216, 224-26 shnjshi ninbetsu aratamechǀ, 213 Sichuan Province, 264, 274 Singh, Manmohan, 83, 85-6, 95, 97, 108, 160, 278 ĝivapurƗ۬a, 32 SkandapurƗ۬a, 39, 52 Social reformation, 119, 131, 134

297

Socialist, 269, 270, 272 star (see also meteorite), 45 State religion, 2, 213, 216, 225 Stridharma, 112 study; study-with-practice, 276 superstition (Ch. mixin), 86, 269, 270 Svadharma, 99, 111-12 symbolic violence, 26 Tantric empowerment (wang), 266 Tara, viii Tarkhadkar, Dadoba Pandurang, 57 terauke (“registration”) system, 6, 210, 212-13 terma (concealed treasure teaching), 263, 285 The D. M. Lyall Memorial School, 199 The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty, 12, 14-15, 28, 99 The Sunday School, 197, 202 Theology of creation, 166 Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), 264 Tibetan Plateau, viii, 263, 265, 269, 274, 278, 286 tokden, 272, 280, 285 Tokugawa Shogunate, 6, 210-12, 215, 226 Tranquil, 101-102 treasure-revealer (tertön), 265-66, 272 trulkhor, 282, 282n65, 285 tsa-lung, 266-67, 281-82, 286 Tsangyang Gyamtso, 266, 285 Tsechu Gar, 279, 286 tukdam (post-death samƗdhi), 268, 286 tulku (incarnation lineage), 265, 282-83, 285, 288 tummo (yoga of psychic heat), 265, 265n14, 266, 286 Tyaga, 105 Universal, 3, 96, 98, 104, 107, 210, 222, 223, 238 Universality, 96

298 Upanishad, 4, 113 Uroja, 141, 144 Vairocana, 148, 150, 154, 157, 158 Vajra-PrajñapƗramitƗ-Snjtra, 157, 159 VajrayƗna/Tantric Buddhism, 41, 150, 155-57, 263-65, 275 VƗmanapurƗ۬a, 32, 51 VarƗhapurƗ۬a, 32, 53 VƗyupurƗ۬a, 30, 49 Vicissitudes, 101 victimhood, 7, 231, 239, 253, 256 Vidyasagar, 128, 131, 134 Vishishta Advaita vaad, 69 Viৢ৆u, 34-5, 37, 45, 48 Võ Cҥnh inscription, 142

Index Voluntary, 100, 169, 174, 189, 197, 242 Wildlife department, 15 Women reformers, 110-111, 113 Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, 4, 89 yidam, 267, 276, 281, 286 Yogic, 7, 68, 103, 264, 266, 272, 276-77, 279-82 YoginƯ Tantra, 31, 33, 44-46, 52, 155 yoginƯs, 30, 40-42, 44, 52 Yoni Tantra, 38, 41, 44, 46, 48 yonigarta, 44 yonitattva, 41, 48 Yudhiৢ৬hira, 77, 80, 87, 113 Zainichi Koreans, 196, 197