Opponents of the Cārvāka-s were never wanting. Idealist and fideist philosophers and custodians of different religious groups rallied to refute the Cārvāka doctrine, not only on philosophical grounds with arguments but also by spreading false charges and calumnies in order to make the doctrine appear morally reprehensible.

Two such oft-quoted charges will now be examined on the basis of original sources.

The Cārvāka system of philosophy is generally known as one of hedonism. The following verse is supposed to epitomize its basic position:

It has been shown that the earlier sources of this verse read the second hemistich differently: nāsti mrtyor agocaraḥ (no one is beyond death) in place of rṇaṃ krtvā ghrtaṃ pibet. Apparently this slight but skilful alteration was made by S-M in order to make the doctrine appear in an unfavourable light.

However, the fact remains that the verse does urge people to ‘live happily’, sukhaṃ jīvet. What could the Cārvāka-s mean by it? Did they not advocate enjoyment of sensual pleasure as the summum bonum of life?

I shall attempt to answer this question. Needless to say, where the Cārvāka-s are concerned, there are very little positive evidence to go by, for everything is culled from the polemical writings of their opponents.

Introduction

This paper is devoted to a comparison of the Pratyāhārasūtra (psū) section of the Cāndravyākaraṇa with that of the Kāśikāvṛtti. The Cāndravyākaraṇa is a grammar of the Sanskrit language, composed in Sanskrit and intended for Buddhists. Although it has disappeared from the Indian territory, it has been maintained and transmitted in countries where Buddhism became widespread. The aim of its author, the Buddhist scholar Candragomin, who is thought to have lived around the 4th-5th century C.E., is to present an effortless, clear and exhaustive grammar. In fact, it is the first great revised edition of the Aṣṭādhyāyī (A.) of Pāṇini: Candra preserves most of the content of the Pāṇinian treatise but forsakes its generative pattern and adopts a thematic scheme. He also incorporates some of Kātyāyana's and Patañjali's suggestions.

The present study is justified in so far as the Kāśikāvṛtti shows numerous similarities with the commentary on this grammar (the Cāndravṛtti —CV— which was believed for a long time to have been composed by Candra himself; today some scholars maintain that its author was a certain Dharmadāsa), even if the Kāśikāvṛtti does not make reference to it explicitly. To date, the origin of these similarities has given rise to two main hypotheses. According to one view, defended in particular by R. Vedalankar (1977: 250-69) and P. Visalakshy (1981), the Kāśikā was influenced by the Cāndravyākaraṇa and the Cāndravṛtti.

The NM of Jayantabhaṭṭa is a seminal work of the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika system of philosophy. The author was a staunch opponent of the Cārvāka/Lokāyata and missed no opportunity of reviling it in the strongest possible terms. One of his favourite abuses employed against his adversaries is varāka, ‘wretched’. On one occasion he remarks: “But in such kind of assemblies (discussing philosophical questions), who would indeed care to remember the (name of the) wretched Cārvākas?” He always mentions the Cārvāka-s in a tone of derision and his attempts are directed to the refutation of the materialist tenets as they developed in India, viz.

a. bhūtacaitanyavāda (the doctrine of consciousness arising out of matter).

b. śarīrātmavāda or dehātmavāda (the doctrine of the self as something inseparable from the body, i.e., there can be no self independent of the body).

The Cārvāka-s are made to appear as an opponent (pūrvapakṣin) in relation to a third question, viz.

c. whether or not inference (anumāna) is to be admitted as a means of valid knowledge (pramāṇa).

Here, too, Jayanta ridicules the Cārvāka-s who allegedly do not recognize any other means of valid knowledge except perception (pratyakṣa). It is in this connection that he refers to the well-learned (suśikṣita) and cunning (dhūrta) Cārvāka-s. These two adjectives gave rise to the idea that there were at least two schools of the Cārvāka-s. This view has been accepted uncritically by almost all historians and analysts of Indian philosophy.

Introduction

January 2001 I saw in one of India's English-language newspapers a photograph of an Indian ascetic who had taken a bath in the sacred confluence of Yamuna and Ganges at Allahabad during the Kumbh Mela, a bathing festival occurring once in twelve years and attracting more than 20 million pilgrims. The caption read: “This sadhu has taken his bath at the Kumbh and now he is off again to the Himalayas”. At one level this can be taken to express the essence of asceticism, namely that its proper place is outside of normal society, in a cave in the Himalayas. At another level one can take also this as expressing the normative view of modern, English-reading Indians, namely that ascetics do not belong to modern, secular society and thus should be confined to their Himalayan caves. When these two levels coincide, the modern view with the essentialist one, the historian and anthropologist is alerted to the task of deconstruction. Indeed, how much of asceticism can we understand with our modern frame of mind, our modern conceptual apparatus? But, at the same time, why do we feel the constant need to put asceticism as modernity's ‘other’, as it is nicely captured in English-language Indian newspapers where happenings in the Kumbh Mela and developments in the Information Technology sector vie for attention on the front pages.

The theme of this volume is “Criticizing Asceticism” within the respective religious traditions that we are examining. The assumption is that the groups and individuals within those traditions who engage in the critique, as well as modern scholars who investigate such critiques, have a clear idea of what they are criticizing; that is, that they and we know what “asceticism” is. My own paper is entitled “The Ascetic and the Domestic” with the implication that, on the one hand, the two are mutually opposed and, on the other, we have a clear idea of what “domesticity” means. These are presuppositions that I will attempt to problematize here with material drawn from the Indian traditions, with the expectation that some of the issues I raise will be relevant cross-culturally in the study of religion in general and of asceticism in particular.

Scholars frequently speak of “domestication of asceticism” or “domestic asceticism”; some of my past works have also focused on these topics (Olivelle 1995a). The implied corollary, although often left unstated, is that asceticism is wild; at least that is the implication in other uses of the qualifier “domestic” as in “domestic animals” that are the opposite of ordinary animals, which are by definition wild. Such a conclusion appears to be supported by ancient Indian texts on ascetic life, texts that often oppose “wilderness” (araṇya)–the locus of the ascetic–to “village” (grāma)–the locus of domus, the home and the domestic, and of ordinary people engaged in social, economic, and ritual activities (Olivelle 1990; below pp. 44–62).

At the beginning of the Nyāyakusumāñjali Udayana, the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika philosopher, in his endeavour to prove the existence of God, declares all men to be theists at heart. Every school of philosophers and even non-philosophers like the craftsmen, he says, believe in Him in some form or the other, notwithstanding the difference in calling Him by various appellations. By way of example he refers to the Cārvāka-s who, according to him, consider ‘What is established in the worldly practice’ to be their God (lokavyavahārasiddha iti cārvākāḥ).

Commentators have tended to explain the term, lokavyavahāra in two ways. Varadarājamiśra, the earliest known scholiast, offers two alternatives: (i) the visible king and the like, or (ii) idols of gods in the form of having four arms.

He is followed by Kāmākhyānātha Tarkavāgīśa and T. Vīrarāghavācārya Śiromaṇi. Four other commentators, viz., Vardhamāna Upādhyāya, Rāmabhadra Sārvabhauma, Śaṅkaramiśra and Guṇānanda Vidyāsāgara, mention only the second interpretation. The point they wish to make is that one needs a visible entity for one's god, not an invisible one.

When does a commentator offer two or more alternatives in interpreting a word or a passage in the text? Instead of digressing into a long excursus, the question may be answered briefly as follows: If a commentator finds several interpretations equally appropriate to the context and/or equally logical but is not sure which of them corresponds to the author's intention, he records all the possible ones.

Ānanda is one of the most common terms in the religious vocabulary of the Brāhmaṇical/Hindu traditions both in Sanskrit and in the vernaculars, both in the monistically inclined traditions, such as Advaita Vedānta, and in the bhakti traditions. The term points to the intense feeling of joy that devotees experience in their loving devotion and service of god, and mystics, in their meditative trance or samādhi. Within Advaita and related traditions, it represents a central and essential “attribute” of Brahman. The term has found its way into the names or titles of religious figures, often in compounds, such as Brahmānanda and Ānandatoertha. In many of the Indian religious traditions, mokṣa, the final goal of human existence, has been defined as ānanda.

One of the most ancient, and perhaps the most significant, examples of the centrality of ānanda in theological discourse is the Brahmsūtras ascribed to Bādarāṇa. After an introductory statement that brahman is the source of the universe (1.1.5-11), Bādarāyaṇa devotes eight sūtras to demonstrating that brahman/ātman is defined in the Upaniṣads as ānanda. Although the expression does not occur in the writings of Śaṅkara, the compound saccidānanda (being-consciousness- bliss) became in time both within and outside the Advaita tradition a short-hand definition of brahman.

Given the prominence of ānanda in the theological, as well as the non-technical, religious vocabulary of India at least from about the fifth century C.E., it is somewhat surprising that, with the exception of van Buitenen's (1979) study, not much work has been done into the semantic history of this term.

This work is based on A Bibliography on the Kāśikāvṛtti by Yves Ramseier, available online (http://hin.osaka-gaidai. ac.jp/∼ramseier), which has been enlarged and updated. I wish to thank him warmly for letting me make use of his work. As far as printed editions and commentaries are concerned, only the books that did not appear in Yves Ramseier's compilation are listed here. Readers are therefore referred to that online resource for earlier editions, as well as commentaries, sub-commentaries (ancient and modern), abridged versions and curiosities.

Editions of the Kāśikāvṛtti

Pāṇinīyavyākaraṇasūtravṛtti. Kāśikā of Pt. Vāmana and Jayāditya, Edited with the ‘Prakāśa’ Hindī Commentary and Introduction by Śrī Nārāyaṇa Miśra, Chaukhamba (Kāśī Sanskrit Series 37), 2 vols., Seventh edition, Varanasi, 1996.

Kāśikā – Vāmanajayādityaviracitā Pāṇiniyaṣṭādhyāyīsūtravṭttiḥ. Sampādakaḥ: Vijayapalo Vidyavaridhiḥ, Bahalagarha, Jila Sonipata (Harayana), Ramlal Kapur Trust, 1997.

Kāśikā – Pāṇinīyāṣṭādhyāyīsūtravṛttiḥ – Śrīmad Vāmana- Jayādityaviracitā – Raghuvīra Vedālaṃkāraviracita Bhāṣya-Nyāsa-Padamañjaryādisamanvita “Jyotiṣmatī” Hindivyākhyāsahitā, “Viśeṣa” ityanena ca vibhūṣitā. Upoddhātalekhakaḥ Rāmakaraṇa Śarma. Pracyavidyapratishthan, 1997 (vol. 1).

Kāśikā, a Commentary on Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī of Vāmana and Jayāditya with ‘Somalekhā’ Hindi Commentary and Other Valuable Explanations and Various Indices i.e. Sūtra, Vārtika, Iṣṭi, Phiṭsūtra, Gaṭasūtra, Paribhāṣa, Uṇādisūtra, Kārikā and Examples. By Pt. Ishwar Chandra, Chaukhamba Sanskrit Pratishthan, Delhi 2004 (in 3 vols.).

Commentaries

Śrīharadattamiśraviracitā Padamañjarī (Vāmana-jayādityaviracitāyāḥ kāśikāyā vyākhyā). Sampādakau: Pullela Śrīrāmacandruḍu, Viṭhaladevuni Sundaraśarmā (in 2 vols.), Samskṛtapariṣat, Usmāniyā-viśvavidyālayaḥ (Samskṛtapariṛadgranthāvalī 26), Hyderabad 1981.

Introduction

Those who have been investigating Indian traditions in recent years will be perfectly familiar with the fact that Wilhelm Halbfass in his brief yet famous text laden with implications, entitled Preliminary Postscript and published in the volume India and Europe (Halbfass 1988: 160-170), suggested that Indological praxis should acquire a theoretical framework constituted by hermeneutic philosophy, understood especially as philosophy that developed along the Heidegger-Gadamer axis. Here, in re-examining Halbfass's suggestion and comparing it with other possible approaches, we intend to advance the possibility of reinstating the study of the Indian tradition of debate programmatically—and when referring to the past, where possible, descriptively—within a framework that comprises, as well as the above-mentioned philosophers, also Richard Rorty, who follows along the Heidegger-Gadamer axis, reviving its obsolete aspects, though he is at the same time the heir to the developments of that opposite current of neopositivistic and analytic speculation (see Marconi, Vattimo 1986: viii-ix).

One of the most salient features of Indian traditions is precisely the presence among them of a transversal tradition of systematic reflection and theoretical debate. Within the ambit of this tradition “in principle there were no distinctions made between ‘human’ sciences and ‘natural’ sciences” (Staal 2001: 611), hence it consists of a vast and variegated accumulation of scientific and philosophical knowledge and methodologies. One of the preliminary issues to examine closely when seeking to understand the Indian world is how this prominent tradition is to be understood.

Introduction

Although China is commonly perceived as being ethnically homogenous, nearly 9 percent of the total population consists of ethnic minorities whose importance for China's long-term development is disproportionate to their numbers. Among the estimated 106.4 million ethnic minorities, the majority have traditionally concentrated in the resource-rich western areas of the nation (NBS/EAC, 2003). Foremost among these areas is the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in China's northwest – occupying onesixth of the country's total land mass and holding one of the nation's largest and most strategically important natural gas and oil reserves – where nearly 8.4 million Uyghurs, a Turkic, mostly Sunni-Muslim ethnic minority, reside in the majority.

Tensions between Muslim Uyghurs and Han Chinese (the national majority) have dominated discussions in the region as a result of historical and contemporary incidents between both groups. For instance, during the Gulja Incident during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in February 1997, a series of riots and demonstrations occurred due to crackdowns by Chinese authorities on traditional Uyghur culture, including most notably the banning of traditional social gatherings (meshrep). More recently in July 2009, violent riots in the region's capital, Urumqi, resulted in 197 Uyghur and Han deaths and 1,721 injured (Hao et al., 2009). In general, contributing factors behind Muslim Uyghur-Han Chinese tensions revolve around policies that limit religious practice or aim to phase out Uyghur language instruction in schools. For example, public sector employees are not allowed to wear Islamic head scarves or coverings (including the doppa cap for males), nor fast during Ramadan.

The preceding chapters highlight a number of aspects of religion which depart from, fundamentally modify and recontextualize the received wisdom about religion, especially as it has been understood through the prism of classical sociology. Each of the distinct sources of the classical perspective outlines an understanding of religion that – while contrasting with other understandings – has been taken with the others to represent the various facets of religion in the modern world. And yet none of these facets of religion is today found in forms projected by the sociological luminaries.

Émile Durkheim famously characterized religion in terms of a distinction he believed inherent in all religions, namely that between the sacred and the profane. The sacred, Durkheim held, was a symbolic form of the enduring and defining values of the society itself in which the religion in question resides. But the coherence of a more or less societally wide normative consensus that Durkheim assumes in making this claim is in fact not to be found in modern societies. This is largely because the populations of modern societies are not unitary in terms of their origins and historical memory, either through geographic mobility that accompanies modern occupational careers or through international migration, which has been a major demographic factor throughout the twentieth century and promises to continue in the present. Associated with these trends, the idea of the sacred – which requires a traditional understanding of received meaning supported by ritual practices – has given way if not to a scientific to at least a mundane utilitarian and therefore market set of values.

This paper is about a project by a Dutch artist to paint murals at a Buddhist temple, the Ginivalla Navamunisaya temple, in southern Sri Lanka. Supported by her father Eddy Roos, and assisted (in colour mixing) by a third Dutch national Rachell Daniell, Noella was near the completion of her project when, under the cover of darkness, a mob invaded the temple and vandalised the murals. What is the meaning of this ungracious act? My task in this paper is to find an answer to this question.

Built in 1825, the temple that is the focus of our attention is best known as the Kataluva temple, after the name of the small town in which it is located. By 2002 Noella Roos had been living in Sri Lanka for five years, and had visited the temple several times. Some parts of the temple had been recently restored with the outer walls of the image house still remaining unpainted. Noella Roos expressed to the chief monk Migoda Kalyanatissa her interest in doing a series of paintings, depicting Buddhist themes, on the blank walls. The project had however been assigned to Walter Kulasuriya, an artist from the nearby town Ahangama, and he had already started work at the time Noella Roos made her request in February 2002. The chief monk, an educated man with an innovative bent of mind, seems to have been impressed enough by Noella Roos' interest to ponder the question and make inquiries about her credentials.

This extraordinary verse concludes Baudhāyana's description of both the holy householders (BDh 3.2.19) and the forest hermits (BDh 3.3.22). In many religions the pursuit of holiness has been associated with renunciation and fleeing from society. Living austere and often solitary lives in the wilderness, forest, or desert is viewed in many traditions as a sign of holiness. An extreme expression of this attitude is the practice of imitating the life style and behavior of wild animals.

The Desert Fathers of early Christianity are depicted as living like animals. According to a contemporary description, the monks in the Syrian desert “had one garment, went barefoot, mortified themselves, ate grass, legumes and roots, wandered about on the mountains like wild animals.…” “I looked,” says a monk describing his encounter with a Desert Father, “I saw a man afar off, who was very fearful. His hair was spread over his body like a leopard. … When he approached me, I was afraid. I climbed on a mountain peak, lest perhaps he was a mountain ass. … He said to me: ‘Onnophrius is my name and, behold, for sixty years I have been in the desert, walking in the mountains like the animals.’”

Introduction

This paper deals with the development of two philosophical traditions (i.e. successions of thinkers), namely Nyāya and Bhāṭṭamīmāṃā. Our attempt is to juxtapose the two schools on a specific philosophical problem, to highlight points of contact and departure, and possibly to get a better picture of the evolution of their thought by underlining inherited concepts and mutual influences. In doing so we will show how the representatives of the two streams further explained the original arguments of the sūtras, added new perspectives, and replied to issues raised by opponent schools.

Particularly, our focus is on the defense of the validity (prāmāṇya) of Veda. The reason for this choice is that Veda is held as an autonomous source of information about religious matters by the two schools under exam and is widely accepted in their social context as a source of knowledge. In this sense it constitutes the tradition (i.e. the cultural horizon) of both.

In their bid to defend Veda's validity, Nyāya and Mīmāṃsā have also a further purpose (for Nyāya, arguably, the main purpose): justifying the epistemic role of tradition (i.e. word-conveyed knowledge).

In the following pages the different acceptations of the word ‘tradition’—respectively employed, from the strictly grammatical point of view, as a class-noun, a noun denoting a state of affairs, and an action noun—will clearly surface: we are going to talk of traditions that, within the horizon of a cultural tradition, discuss the epistemic role of tradition.

There are two major gifts which Wilhelm Halbfass has bestowed upon the Indologist who works outside of the strictly defined Indian philosophy and the six darśanas as such. The first is a renewed interest in the intellectual value of word study, outside of the more narrow realm of etymology. Time and again his work has focused on the history of a particular word as a kind of micro-intellectual history, and with felicitous results. His essay on dharma in India and Europe, and his treatment of the word bhāva and abhāva in Being and What There Is, are two more of the salient examples of this kind of writing. In addition, Halbfass has cautioned us that the medium of cultural transition is as important as the content, no matter what period of Indian thought we are examining. In his epilogue to India and Europe, Halbfass wonders whether the exchange between the two cultures has determined not only the content, but the medium of the message. He is concerned here with both the vehicle and conditions of cultural transmission in this stormy, painful, and enriching relationship.

The present article takes up these two major contributions —the intricacies of dharma and the medium in which cultural transmission occurs. In his ‘Dharma in the Self-Understanding of Traditional Hinduism’, mentioned above, Halbfass takes pains to note particular nuances of the term. For instance, he argues with Robert Lingat's assertion that in the Mahābhārata, dharma is dhāraṇa, ‘supporting’, ‘maintenance’, in the sense of cosmological, eternal law.

At the end of the first chapter of the SDS, S-M quotes a number of verses and ascribes them to Bṛhaspati. One of them runs as follows:

J. Muir, the first English translator of this passage from the SDS, renders it thus:

The verse seems to strike an odd note. It is well known that Bṛhaspati, the eponymous founder of the Lokāyata doctrine, denied the existence of God, after-life, etc. Why should he speak of the Creator, dhātṛ?

Cowell indeed felt that there was something wrong here. He therefore translated dhātṛnirmitā as “made by Nature”. In a note he added, “I take Dhātṛi as God, or nature, speaking by common parlance. Dr Hall (Catalogue, p. 162) would seem to take Dhātṛi as the name of an author. —‘Dhātṛi may sometimes stand for Bṛihaspati’.”

There is no evidence elsewhere or in the lexicons that Bṛhaspati was also called Dhātṛ. In any case, even accepting that would be of no avail in the given context. How could Bṛhaspati or a mere author (as Hall would have it) make or ordain the livelihood of the ascetics?

Introduction

There are thousands of instances of ships being lost throughout Southeast Asia over the centuries. Over a hundred have been found. Dozens make an appearance in various maritime museums. Only a handful of ships have been the subject of comprehensive study and display. It is indeed regrettable that such a tiny fraction of the maritime cultural resource has actually made it to a worthy finale. Incredible amounts of information have been irretrievably lost through looting, dynamite fishing, trawling, and irresponsible legal salvage. The ships have, in effect, been wrecked twice. However, there are still unspoiled wrecks out there, awaiting proper excavation, documentation, study and display. If only the awareness, knowledge, enthusiasm and political will could be brought to bear.

Every country in Asia has a different policy on how to deal with the discovery and excavation of ancient shipwrecks. Some allow commercial involvement, while others strictly forbid it. Some are proactive while others are reactive. Some are effective in recording and preserving this nonrenewable cultural resource while others are not. Yet, none of the policies is “ideal.” The author has carried out shipwreck survey and excavation work in four Asian countries and remains informed on activities in several others. This chapter outlines various national policies and highlights their achievements and failings to the societies they supposedly serve, rather than to institutions or salvors.

Here, commercial involvement refers specifically to the sale of artifacts recovered from shipwreck sites with the intent to cover costs or to make a profit.

The undertaking of a new task in India is often held to require a number of rituals, rules, or customs. The field of scholarly activities is no exception in this respect. Alphabetlearning (vidyārambha or akṣarasvīkāra), to start with, is expected to take place on certain auspicious days, following the scriptures' prescriptions. This is also the case with the inception of Vedic recitation, the age of the upanayana ceremony depending on one's caste. Similarly, Sanskrit classical works are often preceded by an auspicious verse (maṃgalaśloka) paying homage, among other things, to a deity and/or to the author's teacher. Such a maṭgalaśloka is believed to ensure that the composition of the work will be completed without hindrance. Since the ritualization of all important events is deeply rooted in the cultural background, it is not surprising that Indian scribes should, in their turn, insert an auspicious note in their manuscripts before the Sanskrit text they are about to copy. The preliminary invocations of the scribes in the manuscripts of the Kāśikāvṛtti available to us will be dealt with in the first part of this paper. The second part is concerned with the historical transmission of the Kāśikāvṛtti's incipit (its maṭgalaśloka), taking into account new elements of information resulting from the study of the manuscripts used for our edition.

Unlike the maṭgalaśloka, the copyist's invocation is not a part of the transmitted text.