Literacy and Renunciation: The Ascetic Ideal in Hinduism

Literacy and Renunciation: The Ascetic Ideal in Hinduism By Nicholas Collins Abstract: The shift from oral to literate culture in India is accompanied by development of the ideal of asceticism and renunciation of the social and cultural world. World renunciation, in the Upanisads and especially the heterodox religions of Buddhism and Jainism, increasingly competes with the previously dominant values of the earlier Vedic religion which emphasized proper social participation as the defining basis of selfidentity and religious and moral virtue. A new understanding of selfhood and the nature of the divine can be seen to follow a novel way of experiencing the world produced by a literate mode of thinking, where self-abstraction, detached observation and examination of the cultural/social world and one’s place within it generate dissatisfaction with the sense of identity present in the pre-literate culture. Reconciling these two ways of being became the dominant force behind evolution within Hinduism, and also some traditions of the heterodox religions. Literacy and Renunciation: The Ascetic Ideal in Hinduism The transition from oral to literate culture in India is marked by the emergence of the religious ideal of asceticism and renunciation which leads from Vedic or Brahmanic religion to classical Hinduism The ascetic ideal corresponded to a new way of thinking about identity and understanding of the self in relation to the cultural and phenomenal world, and I will argue that it was itself a result of the rise of the visually dominant mode of thinking characteristic of the literate individual. Regarding the distinction between oral and literate perspectives, media theorist Marshall McLuhan observes, In tribal cultures, experience is arranged by a dominant auditory sense-self that represses visual values. The auditory sense, unlike the cool and neutral eye, is hyper-esthetic and delicate and all-inclusive. Oral cultures act and react at the same time. Phonetic culture endows men with the means of repressing their feelings and emotions when engaged in action. To act without reacting, without involvement, is the peculiar advantage of literate man. (Mcluhan, 86) In India, the Vedic (oral) culture was auditory-sense dominant, requiring participation in the collective group and forming identity through that participation. The primacy of auditory sense is reflected in the idea of the Vedas as sruti- texts which are “heard” rather than cognized by the detached visual individual. In contrast, “by separation of the knower from the knower from the known, writing… opens the psyche as never before not only to the external objective world…but also the interior self against whom the objective world is set.” (Ong, 104) The detachment resulting from the emerging influence of literate mode of thinking first allows the individual to stand back from his inclusive participation in the social role within the culture and then to rationally consider the legitimacy of this role with respect to his conceptual understanding of selfhood. Rejecting participation, he renounced all forms of shared or embedded identity within culture and defined the self in relationship to the transcendent divine. No longer involved in the phenomenal world of particularities and forms, he found his self (atman) in formless abstraction. The ascetic renouncer is “given an eye for an ear, and freed from the tribal trance of resonating word magic and the web of kinship.” (Mcluhan, 84). In this shift from oral to literate culture, the Brahmin religious authorities, both the ritual specialists and “professional remembrancers” of the oral, Vedic culture sought to make permanent the social order central to that religious system as they became the literate specialists of this transitional age. (Goody and Watt, 308) With the progression of religious thinking during this period there emerged a new conception of the divine as well as a new understanding of the relationship between the individual and this divine principle which emphasized the dissolution of that social order. The task of Brahmin religious thinkers was to defend the functional validity of a structurally organized cosmos maintained by the adherence of individuals to the duties of their social position in the face of this new dominant and fundamental relationship to the divine. In the Rg Veda, the oldest of the four Vedas which comprised the originally oral texts of Vedic Hinduism, the origin story of the cosmic man in the Purusa-Sukta (Rg Veda 10.90), describes the creation of the universe as an ordered system of functional relationships between the classes of society as the result of a sacrifice of a Man representing the whole of existence and being. “The Man had a thousand heads, a thousand eyes… He pervaded the earth on all sides and extended beyond it… it is this Man who is all this, whatever has been and whatever is to be.” The Man is divided up into parts such that “his mouth became the Brahmin; his arms were made into the warrior (ksatriya), his thighs the people (vaisya), and from his feet the servants (sudra) were born.” The fourfold division of classes, the four varnas, are thus brought into being as fundamentally constituted of functions in the realm of worldly life corresponding to simultaneous functioning of the cosmic order. The sacred duty of remembering and reciting the knowledge of the Vedas is given to the Brahmins, who are the Purusa’s mouth. The Ksatriya warriors coming from his arms, have the duty of protecting the realm and ruling the kingdom. The vaisya people, the Purusa’s legs, constitute the general householder society, and the sudra support the rest of the classes as the feet do the body. “These were the first ritual laws (dharmas).” (Doniger, Rg Veda, 30-31) The close relationship between the Brahmins and sacred orality is further emphasized in the Hymn to Speech (10.125) in which Speech itself, personified, speaks, “Whom I love I make awesome; I make him a sage, a wise man, a Brahmin.” (Doniger, 1981, 63) This specialization of dharmas distinct to each varna present in the oral culture of Vedic Hinduism maintained its strong presence in the Hindu tradition as it acquired the permanence of the written word, and continues to do so even today despite numerous efforts to displace it. The Brahmins, who were the first to possess the technology of literacy after its initial emergence, worked to preserve this varna dharma system in the face various ascetical movements whose goal of liberation, moksa, provided a model of the ideal religious life which sought to escape all worldly engagement and which could be practiced by any individual capable of renunciation, regardless of class. However, in its initial stages, it was limited only to Brahmins whose position of literate specialists made them the first innovators of ascetically minded texts, those of the Upanisads. The Upanisads, regarded as part of the Vedic corpus, are considered, like the Vedas, to be sruti, received audibly from a transcendent source. These texts provide an account of selfhood, termed atman, as essentially transcending the world of forms and relations, united with the divine principle of Brahman. “This (self) was indeed Brahman in the beginning. It knew only Itself as, ‘I am Brahman’ (aham brahma asmi). Therefore It became all.” (Brhadaranyaka Upanisad, I.iv.9) The self of the atman is conceived of as something not definable in the terms of existence, and can only be described negatively, as in the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad, as “not this, not that” (neti neti). The tension between the socially defined self of the early Vedas and the ascetic ideal of selfhood as something abstracted from the content of phenomenal existence is evident in many passages of the Upanisads. “This Self is dearer than a son, dearer than wealth, dearer than everything else, and is innermost… One should meditate upon the Self alone as dear.” (Brhd., I.iv.8) In another passage it states, “If a person knew the self (atman) with the thought ‘I am he!’ with what desire, for love of what would he cling unto the body?” (Radhakrishnan and Moore, 88) As the ascetic ideal quickly became attractive to other classes, resulting in the rise of various heterodox traditions such as Buddhism and Jainism, Brahminical Hinduism, in the composition of subsequent religious texts such as the Laws of Manu, the Bhagavad-Gita and the epic stories of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, attempted to reabsorb the role of the renouncer, the sannyasin. The transition from Vedic or Brahmanic religion to classical Hinduism can be viewed as a move from a religion that maintained the world to one that idealized its renunciation. The structure of social identity in varnas (classes) and jatis (castes) was preserved but subordinated to a new understanding of the human person’s position relative to a world-transcending ultimate reality. In the post-Vedic view, the emphasis on self abstracted from the content of phenomenal existence overtakes the view of self defined primarily by its relation to the ordered functioning of the cosmos through adherence to varna and svadharma. The ascetic ideal of renunciation is “anti-cultural” in the sense that the Vedic culture saw the householder’s full participation in the social rituals, including having children, as the ideal religious life, where in contrast, asceticism was practiced apart from the social world, in the wilderness, an area regarded by the Vedic culture as evil because that the proper ritual structure and functions were not fulfilled there- the svadharma of beings was absent. (Olivelle, 127) In the Vedic culture, a person was “socially defined and assumed religious significance not as an individual but as a member of his group…In ritual, social, political, economic, and even moral activity the group defined the parameters of an individual’s life.” (Olivelle, 129) The non-ritualized, non-Vedic world was a failure to participate in the proper self-role relative to culture. The ascetic ideal rejected that socially defined self in favor of the undefined, unified self not dependent on cultural content for its being. The initial stage of ascetic rejection of the cultural world, both in place and in practice- the withdrawal to a life in the wilderness- is apparent in the Upanisads’ ideal of moksa over samsara, and the attainment of Atman-Brahman unity over svadharma. The Chandogya Upanisad states, Those who know thus and those here who, in the wilderness, worship with the thought ‘Faith is our austerity,’… There is a person there who is not human. He leads them to Brahman…But those here who, in the village, worship with the thought, ‘sacrifice and good works are our gifts,’ go to the smoke… to the world of the fathers…Having dwelt there until the exhaustion of their merits, they return by the same course along which they went. (Chandogya Upanisad 5.10.1-5) Here is seen the opposition between cyclical rebirth in samsara, the result of Vedic ritual fulfillment and moksa, the fruit of renunciation and spiritual self-knowledge. The blatant rejection of the social world was a philosophical as well as physical withdrawal, as ascetics renounced practical concerns such as housing and agriculture, and pre-literate cultural obligations like ritual, sacrificial fires, and kinship relations. (Olivelle, 127) This theme is reiterated in a passage from the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad; He is the great, unborn Self… such a one the Brahmins desire to know by repetition of the Vedas, by sacrifices, by offerings, by penance, by fasting. On knowing him, in truth, one becomes an ascetic. Desiring him only as their home, mendicants wander forth.” (Brhadaranyaka Upanisad, 4.4.19-22) As the ascetic ideal is incorporated into Hinduism as an alternative life path acceptable within the orthodox framework, there arises the attempt to define the renouncer in socially participatory terms, occupying a social niche necessary to the continuing maintenance of order in the world and the preservation of social dharma. The asrama system distinguishes four acceptable options for individuals in the social framework; those of the brahmacarin (student), grhastha (householder), vanaprastha (forest hermit), and lastly, parivrajaka (wandering ascetic). (Olivelle, 144) These appear first as lifelong options freely chosen by the individual according to their perception of their own natural inclination towards such a life, and later as stages undergone during the span of one’s lifetime. As asramas, “lifelong vocations,” they are ascribing social utility to the ascetic ideal, where as in the later conception, as life stages, there is more of a recognition of the contradictions inherent in the ascetic life with respect to social order and an attempt to ensure the fulfillment of social dharma before renunciation of it. This later view emerged in the Laws of Manu, and even here the unresolved discord between the ideals of renunciation and householder is apparent. In one passage Manu states, “And in accordance with the precepts of the Veda and of the traditional texts, the householder is declared to be superior to all of them for he supports the other three,” while in another, “if you ask whether among all these virtuous actions…there be one which has been declared more efficacious for securing supreme happiness to man, the knowledge of the Self is stated to be the most excellent among them…for immortality is gained through that.” (Radhakrishnan and Moore, 192) The conflict between these two ideals, and the tension felt in the incorporation of asceticism is reflected in the mythology of this period, particularly with respect to the stories of conflict with demons. As part of the changing conception of the ideal religious life, the portrayal of demons, asuras or raksasas, undergoes a concomitant shift with respect to their relationship to individuals aspiring to spiritual perfection. While they had earlier been part of a cosmos in which they, like their enemies the Vedic gods, the devas, were morally ambiguous beings, whose actions were determined to be virtuous or not depending on their concordance with their own nature (their svadharma), from the perspective of the ascetic ideal in this period they become characteristically evil, portrayed as creatures consumed by insatiable desire for worldly pleasure- women, power, wealth, etc- in contrast to the ideal of ascetic renunciation by the individual through the practice of physical and mental disciplines. The Vedic conflict between devas and asuras is not relevant to the renouncer’s practice and goal of moksa, for both of these classes of beings are ensnared in samsaric existence, albeit with greater power and longer lifespans. In relation to the ascetic, the demons represent the forces antagonistic to renunciation which must be overcome. However, ascetic practice done by those who are not justified to do so in the orthodox view was often seen to be an evil which was in conflict with the Vedic ideal of participatory cosmic maintenance. While condemnation of ascetic practice is not limited to its use by asuras and rasksasas, ascetic practice by demons was often portrayed as a threat to the desirable natural order of the world. A key point though is that asceticism as portrayed in this manner is not usually done with the goal of moksa in mind but rather the attainment of individual power (augmentation of the ego (ahamkara)), in the form of boons granted by the most powerful of the gods- Brahma, Siva, and Visnu. Myths here relate to the upsetting of cosmic order and failure to perform one’s svadharma, but the real failure is not that ascetic practice was inconsistent with svadharma, but rather that ascetic practice which does not renounce, which aims to acquire power and status similar to the devas or even surpassing them in these aspects, runs contrary to the intended aim of that practice in the first place. The tension between the ideals of asceticism and svadharma is expressed in myths where the gods, representing the interests of Brahmin sacrificial ritual power, are jealous of ascetic power (tapas), demonizing it as threatening to the proper ordering of the worldthat order being maintained by proper adherence to svadharma. This theme is expressed in the epic mythology of The Ramayana, where the raksasa demon Ravana receives a boon from Brahma following a lengthy period of intense ascetic practice. The boon consists of Ravana not being able to be killed by any of the gods, demons, or other semidivine creatures, and relates not to a desire for spiritual knowledge but for worldly power. The gods, unable to oppose Ravana because of this boon, implore Brahma to send Visnu to earth as an avatara, to become incarnated in human form, the one type of being Ravana didn’t include in his boon for invincibility (as a man-eater, Ravana has nothing but contempt for humans and their puny powers). Rama expresses the paradigmatic ideal of a good king following his svadharma, who acts for the good of the world, killing Ravana. The ascetic ideal is expressed by Ravana in a perverted form, showing that it is perceived as a threat to Brahmin sacrificial power and order. However, the Ramayana does not only represent a hostile orthodox response to the ascetic ideal, but also the transition to an acceptance of that ideal, when it is properly comprehended. Such true comprehension and attainment becomes manifest in the emergence of a new conception of divinity. Rather than the Vedic devas, themselves subject to ignorance and human passion, the new form of the divinity represents the absolute principle of brahman as it had been formed in Upanisadic thought. The deities who come to represent this principle are Brahma, Siva, and Visnu. In these figures, particularly Siva and Visnu, the knowledge of atman united with brahman, detached from egoistic concerns and the influence of the demonic passions, is embodied. Visnu then, as this principle, incarnated as Rama, in contrast to Ravana’s representative function of the deluded egoistic pleasure-seeking mentality that one must be detached from in order to realize the true self of the Atman, overcomes him in order to free the individual in the world- Sita- from delusion so that she is free to obtain divine knowledge. The presence of the divine principle in a specific individual is later adopted in the Bhakti movement, where the divine figurehead allows for an intimate personal relationship of mutual love and devotion with God. This can certainly be seen in Sita’s and Rama’s relationship in the Ramayana, particularly in instances where they undertake ascetic practice themselves, where the same ideal of divine self-knowledge through renunciation of everything other than the divine and unwavering devotion to one’s union with God is very much present. The connection between the right way to live and the true understanding that it results from is seen in the behavior of Rama. His marriage to Sita is the positive divine influence over the world. Sita, as his wife, is completely and unwaveringly faithful to Rama, following him when he is exiled to the dangers of the forest and resisting Ravana’s advances on her. In this way, Rama’s way of life becomes Sita’s as well. Their departure from the comforts of society for the forest shows the emphasis on the rejection of the evil, pleasure-seeking mentality. Throughout the story, her behavior is consequent on this, and so it is by Rama’s influence over her, over the individual’s nature, that she remains pure. Nature then, is somewhat passive force that is influenced by the powers of good and evil, or knowledge and ignorance. Ravana’s attempts to control individual nature in seducing Sita are fruitless while Rama’s influence is successfully maintained. It seems that the greater power of divine truth and understanding over ignorance is implied by this. The embodiment of this force of truth, Rama, overcomes the powers of evil and flawed knowledge. Although these influential forces of ego and devolution come from external figures, the powers themselves can be viewed as inherent within the microcosm of the individual- with Ravana as the archetype of the principle of desire for worldly engagement and self-assertion, and Rama as the realization of unity in atman-brahman, which requires destruction of the egoistic and worldly defined sense of self. Sita represents our natural worldly existence, which is forcefully pulled towards a sense of self in the body and world by our (demonic) sense-based indulgences and can only be rescued from this ignorance by understanding of the supreme reality. This saving wisdom is expressed in Sita’s rescue from Ravana by Rama. Sita demonstrates her commitment to Rama through her own ascetic practice while imprisoned in Lanka, and this practice is part of how she keeps Ravana from advancing on her. Sita is not subject to the influence of any worldly self-definition (ahamkara) and so, she leaves the world with an affirmation of her own faithfulness to Rama, to the truth that he represents, and is swallowed up by the Earth. Rama and Sita are individuals who are able to transcend the forces of desire and attachment to phenomenal existence, however they also provide models of how to live virtuously within the world and according to dharma as it relates to the social order. The theme of the web of kinship relations is emphasized in Rama’s and Sita’s marital relationship, as well as Rama’s acceptance of his father’s decree that he leave the kingdom of Ayodhya for the ascetical life in the forest. This decree was not the will of Dasaratha, but rather the consequence of a boon previously obtained by his second wife, Kaikeyi, who asks that her son be named king over the rightful heir, Rama, and that Rama, Sita, and Laksmana be banished. Sita is the paradigm of the virtuous wife, remaining faithful to Rama throughout the story, even in the face of public defamation of her character from speculation of infidelity. Rama, upon being restored to his rightful position as king of Ayodhya, provides the model for the kingly, ksatriya virtue, one of few such figures in the story. Thus the ascetic ideal is presented alongside that of the householder participating in the ordering of the social world. The Valmiki Ramayana, a product of the orthodox Brahmin tradition, is contrasted by alternate versions from the heterodox traditions of Jainism and Buddhism. In the Jain version, Ravana is still an ascetic practitioner, but his asceticism is not performed as means to satisfy insatiable hunger for worldly pleasures and power, rather he is a Jaina ascetic, with the goal of moksa. He still possesses supernatural powers, but they are his aim, rather they are the concomitant of ascetic practice. The word for such practice, tapas, meaning fiery heat or energy, refers both to the practice and this kind of supernatural spiritual power. Rather than abducting Sita and being slain by Rama, he converts them to Jainism, and Rama and his brother Laksmana become Jaina ascetics, while Sita enters into a Jaina nunnery (Thapar, 13). Rather than the ascetic ideal being subsumed by the worldly virtues of kingship, warrior, and householder life, it maintains a firm rejection of the social values of Brahminical Hinduism inherited from the oral tradition of the Vedas. Like Rama’s slaying of Ravana, in The Mahabharata the physical metaphor of battle represents the conflict between the spiritual aspirant and demonic forces. The central story of The Mahabharata, the battle between the Pandavas and their cousins the Kauravas, is told in terms of war between the Vedic gods and demonic raksasas. The devas and raksasas each take incarnation as human individuals, the demons doing so in order to gain power and mastery over the world and the gods, who see the demons’ intentions as contrary to the proper state of the world, doing so in order to destroy the demons. Here is reiterated the orthodox Hindu view of cosmology in which the world exists in a proper state in relation to individual’s acting in accordance with svadharma. Another factor is at play here. The proper state of the world is also dependent on the temporal age at a given time. Beginning in the virtuous Krta yuga (golden age), there is a progressive degeneration of dharma, corresponding to the presence of division by caste in the Treta yuga, of morally detrimental emotions of passion, greed, and anger in the Dvapara yuga, and finally immorality, murder, death, and suffering in the dark age of the Kali yuga. However, through the experience of the miseries and evils of the Kali yuga, people become numbed to these conditions of existence. “From this numbness, there will arise thought, and thought makes the mind balanced…Understanding comes from a balanced mind…The people who are left at the end of the Dark Age will have a kind of formless mental peace…Then the age will be transformed for them and the golden age will begin.” (Doniger, 1988, 71) The battle between the Pandavas and the Kauravas occurs at the point of transition from the Dvapara to the Kali yuga, and as such in order for the thought leading to restoration of the Krta yuga to arise amidst the terrible circumstances of the impending Kali yuga, a numbness, or detachment from evil must take place. This detachment is achieved by exposing oneself to these evils, battling and overcoming their influence, so that the mind may be “at peace,” engaged in formless contemplation. Not by retreating from the demonic forces in the world but by putting oneself in the midst of them, confronting them, is one able to develop the “numbness,” the detachment, necessary for unmediated formless contemplation. That is, the contemplation of the divine brings about the restoration of the original unity and perfection of the golden age. “Constantly rejoicing in their minds; in the Golden Age, people do not engage in any actions, good or bad.” (Doniger, 1988, 69). The war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas, the incarnations of the gods and the demons, viewed from the ascetic perspective is representative of the battle between the spiritual aspirant, the ascetic renouncer, and the conditions of corporeal existence to which he must learn to become indifferent to. The negative conditions characterized by extreme suffering, represented by the demons, must be battled with the thought of and devotion to the divine. Arjuna receives instruction for this kind of spiritual battle directly from the divine in the form of Krishna immediately prior to the battle at Kurukshetra. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna reveals both the nature of his divine self and the spiritual methods of yoga necessary for an individual to conquer the demonic in the microcosm of his own self-experience. Overcoming his attachments, passions, and fundamental ignorance, Arjuna is able simultaneously to defeat the demons represented by the Kaurava army on the macrocosm of the battlefield. The question of how to attain the ascetic perfection from a position of imperfection as an embodied human being is thus put in terms of the internal state of self-consciousness, and overcoming evil- as the negative conditions of embodied social life - becomes not so much a matter of proper conduct and external ritual, but of battling demonic (worldly) self-definitions so that the soul is free to regain its true nature apart from the world. Although these worldly definitions present themselves as external conflicts, such as war, conquering them is fundamentally an internal battle. Thus the Gita affirms the ascetic ideal within the social realm, but remains fundamentally opposed to social participation as a desirable means for self-definition- reiterating the ascetic’s renunciation of a social self. In Krishna’s Bhakti yoga, even when the ascetic’s battleground is within the social sphere and involves the actions of the social self, as it does for Arjuna, ascetic detachment from the social self may be maintained because that identity has been replaced by that of the bhakta devotee, continually absorbed in God. In this way the Gita attempts to reconcile the ascetic ideal and the Vedic concern for social/worldly order via svadharma through the non- participatory involvement of the bhakta, simultaneously facilitating and renouncing the cultural realm. Krsna’s bhakti presented in the Gita is one of the earliest appearances of the bhakti ideal, and is more accurately a proto-bhakti text rather than characteristic of the bhakti traditions which developed more fully after this period and outside of orthodox Brahminical Hinduism. In areas of south India such as Tamil Nadu, bhakti groups devoted to a number of deities were prominent, although the figures of the Mahabharata and Ramayana epics- Krsna, Rama, and Sita- were particularly popular as the objects of bhakti devotion. A later Tamil version of the Ramayana, the Catakantaravanan Katai, presents a sequel to the classical story, in which another raksasa demon, named Satakantharavana (“Ravana with 100 heads”), threatens to attack Rama in Ayodhya after he has regained his kingship at the end of the original epic. After hearing the news of this impending attack from Satakantharavana’s messengers, Sita tells Rama that she will lead an attack against the demons and kill Satakantharavana for Rama, reversing the dynamic of the original story of Rama rescuing the captured Sita. In this story, Sita, like Rama, is portrayed as an avatar, an incarnated form of the divine principle of brahman first presented in the Upanisads. Rama, representing Visnu, and Sita as a form of the Devi, the goddess, are frequently called by names invoking their divine identities, such as prefixing of “sri” (holy) to their titles. The worship of the goddess and of Visnu in the form of Rama are characteristic of bhakti Hinduism, where devotion to the divine figure is the centrally important religious behavior, itself presented as a form of asceticism within the world where self-identity as a bhakta, a loving devotee of the deity, overtakes the identity of social participant or the sannyasin ascetic wanderer. One of the demons in this version, Makamayan, becomes a bhakta of the divine couple. After leaving the demon army, he tells the monkey hero Hanuman “of his love for Rama and Sita… that he hopes to reach the heaven of heroes by being slain by Sita.” (Shulman, 113). With the appearance of a new demonic enemy following the original epic, there is a sense of recurring battle necessary for the continuing preservation and upkeep of the ideal social order, represented by Rama’s kingship. Battle is a ritual in the Vedic sense in that it requires proper actions to be undertaken to maintain the state of the phenomenal world. The myth of the Yugas, taken from the Linga Purana, views the ages as a recurring cyclical process rather than a single degeneration and restoration, and while the Krta age is one of human perfection characterized by blissful enjoyment and detachment“they have no preferences, nor do they experience the opposing pairs of emotions”- it is still presented as a corporeal, embodied existence which is not eternal (although lasting 4000 years) and from which state the world will eventually fall. This continual process involving the appearance and escalation of evil forces in the world, and the subsequent battle against them to restore the world to its ideal state, is further evident in Catakantaravanan story in the comparison of the demon’s arrows to the pralaya doomsday fire which accompanies the end of a yuga. The confrontation of this worldthreatening evil in the sacrificial ritual of battle is required of individuals who do so, like Sita, as an act of asceticism in devotion to the divine. “For the ideal order is not selfcontained; it requires periodic contact with the same dangerous forces upon whose exclusion it depends for its initial coherence and rationale…Ideal forms, in splendid isolation and purity, become hollow and brittle” (Shulman, 125). The imagery of the pralaya doomsday fire is also seen in the Mahabharata, in an episode in the Sauptikaparvan, where, following the main battle at Kuruksetra, the last remaining Kaurava, Asvatthaman, having slaughtered the Pandavas’ allies in the night while they slept, is confronted by Arjuna, riding towards him with Krsna as his charioteer. In response, Asvatthaman “loosed that weapon, to stupefy the universe… for in that arrow made of stalks, a fire was kindled that seemed ready to consume all three worlds.” (Sauptikaparvan, 13.19-20). In the Vedic world where devas and asuras were engaged in a continual battle, human participation in ritual is symbolic of siding with the gods and aiding them against their enemies. The gods of the Vedas differ from the bhakti dieties of Rama-Visnu and Sita-Devi in that they are not embodiments of the transcendent divine principle, Brahman, but rather supernaturally powerful beings not in possession of divine knowledge- that which is the aim of the ascetic renouncer. In the Catakantaravanan Katai, the bhakti ideal of the divinity present in corporeal form, sākṣan, “(seen) with the eyes,” adopts the ascetic view of demonizing behavior which promotes attachment and desire in the world, but also incorporates it into the traditional Brahmin concern with social and ritual action, as in sacrifice, necessary to properly structure and maintain the world. In the Vedic period, “the opposition between gods and demons is purely structural; they are alike in all ways except that, by definition, they are opposed…the two groups are functionally but not essentially opposed, in conflict over the acquisition of power- the same power, but utilized differently in each case…our allegiance to the gods is based not on moral factors but on agonistic ones: the gods always win, and so we are on their side.” (Doniger, 1976, 64) With the incorporation of the ascetic ideal in bhakti, the function of demons to symbolize evil sets them against the transcendent knowledge of the deity, that atman-brahman unity of the Upanisads, and also against the proper socialritual behavior exhibited by the incarnated avatar. Also evident in the Tamil version is the gender role reversal of Rama and Sita as compared to Valmiki’s Ramayana. Sita here takes the active role in conquering the raksasas, while Rama remains a passive witness to the battle while also being the cause of Sita’s actions, which are an act of bhakti devotion to her divine husband. To this end, Sita says to Rama, “With your grace I shall destroy the raksasa and his sea of armies. Give me the boon of achieving victory over him... if you now give me, your servant, permission, I will kill that raksasa.” (Shulman, 109) During the battle, Rama becomes her charioteer and gives her his bow, “Kodanda” as well as a quiver of magic arrows. This scene is particularly reminiscent of the Mahabharata, where Arjuna asks Krishna to be his charioteer in the war, choosing this over the use of Krishna’s armies (Mbh., 5.49.7). Like Rama, also the incarnation of Visnu, Krishna is the passive charioteer and the object of devotion for whom the ritual of battle is performed. This relationship between the passive, essentially transcendent principle, and the active principle involved in the workings of the phenomenal world, turning the wheel of samsara, is characteristic of the Samkhya darsana in orthodox Hinduism, which first appears in the Mahabharata during a discourse on dharma given by Bhisma, the grandfather of both the Pandavas and the Kauravas, and himself an ascetic practitioner who had renounced siring offspring for the good of the kingdom. In Samkhya, the dual principles of purusa and prakrti, spirit and nature, portrayed as masculine and feminine principles, exist in an intimate relationship where prakrti is a successive emergence or manifestation of its primordial nature, mulaprakrti, in different formations or expressions done specifically for the sake of purusa’s self-recognition experience, purusartha. Prakrti is always aiming to accurately express itself as the purusa which it is witnessed by, and purusa, in witnessing prakrti’s evolution, becomes the consciousness of the prakrtitic being it witnesses. The fact of consciousness or experience in a being is solely purusa, but the content of that experience, the way which it becomes articulated is the activity of prakrti. Purusa is never active itself, and even when it participates or enters into prakrti’s movements, it does so passively, as prakrti’s conditions dictate. Just like Rama acting as Sita’s passive charioteer, or Krishna similarly acting as that of Arjuna, the active forces of phenomenal existence perform their necessary activities in creating and restructuring the world as acts of devotion done for the sake of the divine spiritual principle. One’s relationship to the divine determines their relationship to and activity within the world, and one’s relationship to the content of nature and culture contextualizes their relationship to the divinity. The Mahabharata is presented as an orally transmitted text, sung by the bard Ugrasravas and composed and recited by the poet-sage Vyasa. After composing the epic and lamenting that there is no writer capable of transcribing the story, Vyasa is approached by the creator God Brahma, who recommends the god Ganapati (Ganesa) for the task (Brown, 76). Brahma is said to be motivated to help Vyasa out of the desire to benefit all mankind, suggesting that the story, in the form it is transcribed, constitutes sacred liberating knowledge which, unlike the Vedas, is accessible by all people, regardless of caste. There are frequent passages in the Mahabharata where the text is compared to the Vedas and the Upanisads, and even references to it being greater than those texts with respect to purifying one’s karmic sins and providing liberating knowledge. “A wise man reaps profits if he has this Veda of Krsna recited…Once the divine seers foregathered, and on one scale they hung the four Vedas…and on the other scale the Bharata; and both in size and in weight it was the heavier.” However, it is careful not to negate the Vedic tradition and the Brahmin religion. “In this book Krsna Dvaipayana (Vyasa) has uttered a holy Upanisad… The holy divine seers and Brahmin seers and royal seers, all of auspicious deeds, are glorified in this book…and Krsna Vasudeva (the avatar of Visnu) is glorified here, the sempiternal Blessed Lord- for He is…the eternal Brahman” (Mbh., 1.1.192-210). The idea of obtaining the fruit of hearing the text recited, phalasruti, “frame the story, and relate it to the present reader- that is, they contextualize it.” (Ramanujan, 47) In the same way, as a text incorporating the ascetic ideal alongside that of Brahmin ritual participation in the practice of bhakti, the Mahabharata synthesizes the oral and literate perspectives of Indian (Hindu) culture, contextualizing the spiritual knowledge of transcendent Brahman within the activities of life in the phenomenal world. This kind of system of container-contained relations provides a characteristic account of “an Indian way of thinking” in which “the microcosm is both within and like the macrocosm, and paradoxically also contains it” (Ramanujan, 51). Bibliography: Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, Routledge, 2002. Ong presents an account of the particularities involved in the shift from oral to literate cultures with regard to our experience of the world and the formation of culture as they relate to the dominant media forms of a society. Marshall Mcluhan, Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man, MIT Press, 1994. The author explores the impact of various forms of media on perception and culture, where transformations in the emphasis of different sense faculties correspond to changes in the organization and concerns of cultures. A.K. Ramanujan, “Is there an Indian Way of Thinking? An Informal Essay,” in Contributions to Indian Sociology (n.s.) 23, 1, New Delhi/Newbury Park/London, SAGE Publications, 1989. The author examines the numerous contextual layers of thought developing throughout Indian history which are collectively implicit in contemporary Indian thought. These layers are found not only in the present understanding of individuals but also within the historical texts themselves, to varying degrees determined by their historical and geographical environment. Romila Thapar, “Epic and History: Tradition, Dissent and Politics in India” in Past & Present, No. 125 (Nov., 1989), pp. 3-26, Oxford University Press. The author looks at the function of epic mythology in Indian history as it relates to political and religious influences developing and shaping the motivation behind different versions of the same tales as they are appropriated and altered over time. Jack Goody and Ian Watt , “The Consequences of Literacy” in Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Apr., 1963), pp. 304-345, Cambridge University Press. Goody and Watt focus on the changes that take place in primitive oral cultures in response to the emergence of the literate technology of writing, with regard to existing social structures and the concerns of individuals within cultures as they undergo this transition. C. Mackenzie Brown, “Purāṇa as Scripture: From Sound to Image of the Holy Word in the Hindu Tradition” in History of Religions, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Aug., 1986), pp. 68-86, The University of Chicago Press. Brown explores the mythological texts of the Hindu Puranas, including the Mahabharata, as they illustrate the changing perspective of Hindu religious thought in the period of these texts’ composition and dissemination in both spoken and written forms. He also looks at parallels within the heterodox Indian tradition of Buddhism. The Sauptikaparvan of the Mahabharata: The Massacre at Night, translated by W.J. Johnson, Oxford University Press, 1998. The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Barbara Stoler Miller, Bantam Classic, 1986. Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, Textual Sources for the Study of Hinduism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. J.A.B. van Buitenen, The Mahabharata: 1. The Book of the Beginning, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1973. Barbara Stoller Miller (trans), The Bhagavad-Gita, Bantam Classic, 1986. Sarvepalli RadhaKrishnan and Charles A. Moore, A Sourcebook In Indian Philosophy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957. The authors compile various philosophical texts from the Indian religious traditions and offer commentary on the views expressed therein. J. Patrick Olivelle, “Village vs. Wilderness: Ascetic Ideals and the Hindu World,” in Monastic Life in the Christian and Hindu Traditions: A Comparative Study, edited by Austin B. Creel and Vasudha Narayanan, Studies in Comparative Religion Volume 3, Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1990. The author examines the emergence of the ascetic ideal in Vedic Hinduism and the effects it has on the orthodox Hindu tradition as a conflicting religious ideal that had to undergo reintegration within the structure and values of the Vedic religion. David Shulman, “Battle as Metaphor in Tamil Folk and Classical Traditions,” in Another Harmony: New Essays on the Folklore of India, edited by Stuart H. Blackburn and A.K. Ramanujan, University of California Press, 1986. The author presents Tamil Folktale versions of classic Indian stories and illustrates the changes in ideology and cultural perspective exhibited by them in relation to their antecedents. The Brhadaranyaka Upanisad, With the Commentary of Sankaracarya, translated by Swami Madhavananda, Kolkata, Advaita Ashrama, 2004 The Rig Veda, translated by Wendy Doniger, Penguin Books, 1981. Wendy Doniger, The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology, University of California Press, 1976 Doniger explores the nature of evil in Hinduism from the Vedic period through the post-Vedic and Classical periods, up to the emergence and development of bhakti as it becomes the dominant ideology in narratives portraying and conceptualizing evil. She looks at the complex interplay of influences and agendas determining how evil is viewed in various traditions as well as the way gods, demons, and humans interact and relate to one another in a continually changing cosmos.