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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
Can the sacred texts of non-Christian religious traditions be revelatory for Christians in a fashion that is more than vague and merely theoretical? This question is central within the larger project of understanding the significance of the various world religions for Christians, and the effort to answer it must proceed according to three specific tasks.
First, it is necessary to describe the ways in which the Christian tradition predisposes and constrains Christian believers on the issue of whether non-Christian texts can be revelatory words of God for non-Christians, for Christians, or for both. The formulation of this description requires reflection on the Christian tradition and its sources: Christian ideas of revelation, scripture, the Word of God, and possible words of God.
1 I refer to the Christian theological tradition throughout not to exclude other readers, but to balance the specificity of the material studied with an explicit admission and inscription in the essay of my own specific background. My hope is that readers of other religious and nonreligious backgrounds will observe carefully the way this Christian (and Roman Catholic) perspective marks my research and affects my conclusions, and will then make adjustments and correlations fitting to their own backgrounds and interests. As for the term “non-Christian,” I use it as the simplest of markers, without intending thereby to indicate that traditions, texts, and people can be defined merely in terms of what they are not. Part of the comparative task is to use such generic terms while increasingly calling their viability into question by the very fact of that usage in the course of detailed research.
2 For a representative treatment of the Roman Catholic theological approach to the question of revelation outside Christianity, see Dupuis, Jacques, Jesus Christ at the Encounter of World Religions (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1991) esp. 152–77Google Scholar.
3 Here and throughout I have in mind texts that eventually came to be written down, however they were composed. The argument that follows does not exclude a consideration of oral traditions, although certain adjustments in the terms of conversation must then be made.
4 In my “Praying through the Non-Christian” (Review for Religious 49 [1990] 434–44)Google Scholar, I have investigated some aspects of the Christian reception of non-Christian texts either very different or startlingly similar to texts with which Christians are likely to be familiar within the Christian tradition.
5 I have discussed this process of re-reading in “Reading the World in Christ: From Pluralism to Inclusivism,” in D'Costa, Gavin, ed., Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1990) 63–80Google Scholar; and in chap. 5 of my Theology after Vedanta (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993)Google Scholar.
6 I have previously considered this song in “When the Religions become Context,” TToday 47 (1990) 30–38Google Scholar; there my focus was on the Śrīvaiṣ ṇava exegesis of the song.
7 For the general issues of scripture and canon in a comparative context, see the essays collected in Levering, Miriam, ed., Rethinking Scripture: Essays from a Comparative Perspective (Albany: State University of New York, 1989)Google Scholar; and in Timm, Jeffrey, ed., Texts in Context: Traditional Hermeneutics in South Asia (Albany: State University of New York, 1992)Google Scholar.
8 Here and throughout, all translations of Nammāḻvār and Nañjīyar are my own. I used the text in Ayyangar, S. Krishnaswami, ed., Bhagavad Viṣayam (10 vols.; Madras: Nobel, 1924— 1930)Google Scholar. An eleventh verse, probably an early addition to the original song, follows: “This song is sung by the women who fear separation from the Lord on whom they meditate, lest he go to herd the cows; it is from the hundred songs sung by bright Śaṭakōpaṉ of bright cool Kurukür, where conches lie at the feet of the cowherd God, whose lips are red fruit: this song has the same results as the others.”
9 This Śrīvaiṣ ṇava position has been articulated by Carman, John and Narayanan, Vasudha in The Tamil Veda (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989)Google Scholar.
10 The primary locus for the articulation of the orthodox notion of the canon is in Jaimini Pūrva Mīmāṃsā Sūtras 1.2–3. The Vedanta (Uttara Mīmāṃsā) accepts the Mīmāṃsā norms while insisting on the extension of the canon to include the upaniṣads.
11 The single earlier commentary of Tirukkurukaippirāṉ Piḷḷāṉ does not have an introduction.
12 The following description synthesizes and reorganizes eight key objections that Nañjīyar introduces and incorporates several objections that he adds later in his introduction. All citations are drawn from his introduction to Tiruvāymoḻi and are noted according to the page numbers in the following edition: Swami, Krishnaswami Ayyangar, ed., Bhagavat Viṣayam (4 vols.; Srirangam: Books Propagation Society, 1975) vol. 1Google Scholar.
13 Ibid., 1. 62.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid., 1. 62–63.
16 Ibid., 1. 62.
17 Ibid., 1. 63.
18 The rites—along with the rubrics and deities related to them—are not, properly speaking, the content of the Veda, as if they were materials to be read and learned. Rather, they are elements that contribute to the performance of sacrifice; this event is the true “content” of the Veda.
19 Nañjīyar, Bhagavat Viṣayam 1. 63.
20 The question of the traditional orthodox and Ṡrīvaiṣṇava views of the authorship of sacred texts is a complex one. It cannot be addressed here. For some relevant background, see my article, “Why the Veda has No Author: Some Contributions of the Early Mīmāṃ;sā to Religious and Ritual Studies,” JAAR 55 (1988) 659–84Google Scholar. The immediate point is that the Śrīvaiṣṇavas do not attempt to resolve the problem of continuity merely by the claims that the texts say the same thing or have the same author.
21 A full treatment of the problems of content cannot be sketched here, in part because the attention to the content of sacred texts cannot be taken for granted in ancient India. As Louis Renou pointed out in The Destiny of the Veda in India (trans. Chanana, D. R.; Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1965)Google Scholar reverence for the Veda was often strong without attention to the actual content of the Vedas. Instead, their use for ritual purposes was emphasized; these purposes were imbedded in traditions and not always aligned with content in any evident way. Smith, Frederick M. (The Vedic Sacrifice in Transition [Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1987])Google Scholar extends and deepens Renou's work in this regard, stressing the centrality of the ritual connections.
22 Nañjī yar Bhagavat Viṣayam 1. 63.
23 Rāma and Krsna were absent for long periods from their respective homes in Ayodhyā and Kuruvai.
24 Nañjīyar Bhagavat Viṣayam 1. 65–66.
25 For example, another interesting argument introduced by Nañjīyar charges that Tiruvāymoḻi looks down on the revered traditional goals of religion. In Tiruvaymoḻ i 10.3 these goals—liberation, renunciation, power—are not mentioned, nor do they fit in. Elsewhere in Tiruvāymoḻ i they are treated as merely intermediate and inferior goals. Nañjīyar's response is that the extension of the canon to include the new and superior texts is not a criticism of the older and still esteemed Sanskrit texts.
