03.28.09
Hinduism: a three thousand year old mess?
Doniger’s The Hindus.
James cites some criticisms by Witzel of Doniger. But my interest in the book isn’t concerned with the eccentricities of Doniger, which are apparently considerable.
As I was reading the book my older views of Indian history from the 1990′s resurfaced, after a considerable rethinking, in relation to the AIT/OIT debate(discussed here on this blog).
Students of India now have a problem: it is almost a PC issue to criticize/not criticize the AIT.
Although I remain open in this debate, and plan to continue exploring the problems with the AIT, I am suddenly suspicious that, while the AIT is heavily prejudicial, that applies only to its surface interpretation.
Or perhaps Indians can’t quite face the reality: a group of Aryan cowboys/cattle rustlers came whooping in and became assimilated barbarians.
The evidence in favor of a migration, according to the rough standard scenario (reiterated with variations in Doniger) seems unavoidable. The resemblance to the greeks is striking, down to the epic poetry dealing with a violent war.
The confusion arises over the source of the great ‘yogas’. Can we really find these in the Vedic culture?
My original thinking, from the nineties, now resurfaces:
one approach: the great yogas predate the Indo-European entry, go back very early, and seep into the Sanskrit world very late. Consider the Jains here.
Another approach: the yogas are a heretical sideline (vratyas) moving underground and then surface later, especially during the Axial interval. Or perhaps this seed begins in Punjab, with a connection lost to Iranian proto-Zoroastrianism.
Still another approach: the great yogas are completely latent until the Axial period. We see their bifurcation from the Vedas in the Upanishads.
A series of figures appear, e.g. Kapila, and by the time of Buddhism the whole non-canon has materialized.
This leaves the question of the Jains, who I once thought represented this primordial yoga from the earlier era of India, before the Aryans.’
Now I am not so sure: perhaps the twenty-four teertankers in the Jain tradition were all crammed into the Axial interval???? Or go back to the earliest era of India before the Indo-Europeans.
In any case, one is suspicious that yoga in Hinduism is all ripped off from these other sources.
Doniger stumbles on some insights along these lines.
There are many variants to the OIT line of thinking, however, that might be combined with some of this.
It is in any case confusing to think of Hinduism as some primordial source of yoga. It was basically, no?, an outgrowth of the Vedid religion, mixed with many other things predating the Aryans, and among other things a Brahmanical challenge to the threat of Buddhism
I should note that Doniger has nothing on the Axial Age. It is impossible to understand Indian history without taking it into account.
Then we see very clearly that the Buddhism upsurge is like a rescue operation, an attempt to put the great yogas in a canonical form, one that is freed from Vedic trappings (sacrificial rites).
Instead we see the codification of the invasive Indo-European three caste system, rendered worse by the addition of a fourth caste of untouchables, and this made into a post-Vedic Hindu scriptural dogma (Code of Manu).
In other words, history going awry. The Code of Manu and other BULLSHIT turned into sacred shit. The Code of Many simply isn’t relevant to anything. It is a bunch of deluded Indo-European brahmins trying to rewrite the legacy that predated them.
These points are clarified from the use of the eonic effect/Axial Age methods of study.
Those who criticize the AIT may have failed to realize that they have a clue to the confusions that entered their religious traditi