Cultural Osmosis, Fore word to a book on Indian Folklore

Y. Sudershan Rao, M.A., Ph.D. # 5-11-643

Professor of History (Rtd), Srinagar Rd No 4

Formerly Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, Vidyaranyapuri

Kakatiya University, Warangal, India Hanamkonda

Former Member of ICHR, New Delhi. 506 009

Preface

The Indian sub-continent or Bharatakhanda, from Himalayas to Cape Kanyakumari forming a holy ‘Inverted Triangle’, is a world by itself. This land, now known as South Asia in Western academic parlance, is not a ‘museum’ of cultures. It is in reality an abode of living communities of diverse cultures evolving to perfection, sharing the natural and physical resources without mutual conflicts from times immemorial. The rich diversity in ethnic cultures exhibits a very wide range, from mere anthropological to highly spiritual. Simple living, non-exploitative means of livelihood, well organized family life, unswerving filial commitments, spirit of sacrifice, quest for life beyond death and overall attitudes of self reliance and self respect are some of the basic characteristics common to all Indian communities – tribal, semi-tribal or marginal and civilised. The customs, traditions and beliefs of these communities are based on the faith that they all hail from One and the same origin which they might prefer to identify with one or the other cosmic or natural phenomenon. From the tribal communities’ unquestioning belief in the existence of Supreme Power to the highly speculative and philosophical thought of Brahman as reflected in the Vedanta, the Indian psyche could be understood as reflecting various dimensions of a common theme. This common psyche perhaps enabled various communities to live in peace and exchange their cultural traits for mutual benefit.

This South Asia Region now politically divided into seven independent States (known as SARC countries) can boast of a unique status for its unbroken and ever expanding civilization backed by a very high Culture. The beginnings of this Cultured civilization can not however be traced historically. However, the secret of its continuity could be understood from its nature of peaceful assimilation of diverse cultural trends in its main stream without dissolving their cultural identities. Thus, a solid cultural mosaic has formed in this Region with the voluntary participation of all cultures-- classical, folk or tribal. The arts and crafts of ‘little’ or ‘great’ traditions have equally enriched the civilization and culture of this land.

Studies in Indian folklore reveal cultural assimilation while preserving the sensitivities of various ‘little’ traditions. The sincere efforts of the ancient sages to reach out to the masses could be found in the development of folk arts for enlightenment through entertainment. While the Vedanta and Sastras were meant to serve the intellectual class, the Puranas were written for the benefit of common man. These Puranas are not lesser on any count than the Vedic literature. They are popular histories and each one of the major Purana is an encyclopedia by itself. Thus they are the storehouses of knowledge. They impart education, propagate Dharma and teach wisdom to all sections of people from a common platform. This effort has been continuously pursued by the ‘great’ tradition to help grow the ‘little’ while preserving their typical characteristics and art forms.

The Puranas are followed by the Epics which constituted major content of the folk art performances. Buddhist and Jain traditions also attempted to reach the common man in the contemporary folk languages. Dharma has been the under-current of all these literary and art forms, both classical and folk. Satguru Dr Sivananda Murty (Bheemunipatnam, A.P.) while explaining the phenomenon in his simple and sweet but thought-provoking words, says that the Supreme Intelligence descends in myriad forms to help the ascent of man. This is symbolically presented as a “Triangle in an Inverted Triangle” in the Vedic lore. Thus the classical knowledge and folk art forms were integrated to facilitate the ‘Cultural Osmosis’. The diminishing number of tribes and tribal population in India from the remotest past to the present could mainly be ascribed to this natural process. As civilization became widespread, many hill-tribes and forest communities were naturally attracted to join the main stream. The development of modern vernaculars in medieval times has further hastened this process of assimilation. For, select folk art forms are employed to preserve the pride and culture of each community through their own historical narratives describing their origins to confirm that they were branched out of the same stem.

The holistic and all inclusive character of the ‘great’ tradition was considered a major threat to the invading armies and alien cultures. Modern European colonists resorted to brutal annihilation of aboriginal tribes and native cultures in Americas and Australia. The English had applied persuasive methods of conversion of masses to Western culture and religion in South Asia. Two centuries of British rule developed many a crack in the Indian Cultural Mosaic. ‘Leave them alone’ policy of the Raj in respect of tribal communities stalled the process of assimilation and the gaps were, thus, widened. And the post independent era has further widened the cleavages. The rich diversity, which was once a uniting force, has turned out to be the weakness of Indian culture. The smaller units have turned out to be mutually antagonistic and collectively defiant to the uniting spirit of the age-old Culture. To assuage the wounds inflicted by the British Imperialists on Indian culture and civilization, the truth-seeking historians have to work with all seriousness to take up studies based on Indian folklore which may be considered ‘live’ historical data. I think the present work serves this purpose. I congratulate Dr P. Sadanandam for presenting his studious research work in a lucid style. May the Almighty bless him with long life in perfect health backed by all resources to continue his further academic research in this direction!

Dallas, TX, ----- Y. Sudershan Rao

United States,

July 8, 2007

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Problems of Indian Chronology- Date of Mahabharata War

Human Empowerment Conference

(Sponsored by Sanantanadharma Foundation)

Dallas, Texas

12-14 Oct 2007

Indian Chronology – Problems and Perspectives

(A Note)

---Y. Sudershan Rao[*]

Prof of History (Rtd)

Kakatiya University,

Warangal,A.P.India

Modern genre of history which is two centuries old by now insists on two prerequisites, time-space coordinates, to situate any event or person in a historical context. The heuristics of any available evidence conforming to these coordinates will distinguish a historical fact. These determinants of authenticity of a historical record are borrowed from the principles governing the commercial and property transactions of the medieval and early modern Europe. The ‘instruments’ of commercial nature will directly and materially affect the concerned individuals and/or their succeeding one or two generations. Therefore, the genuineness of the document in question is subjected to scrutiny and if necessary corroborative evidence is also required in resolving the legal disputes arising out of such transactions. The application of these principles to the impersonal matters like historical inquiries without any discretion complicates the issues rather than solving them. One can not deny the existence of his forefathers preceding four or five generations because he does not know their names, the dates of their births and deaths or the locations where they lived. For the history of the recent past, these two coordinates may appear to be more relevant as the recent happenings have direct bearing on the present and near future. We get different types of source material for writing about a recent happening. A historian can make use of corroborative sources to attempt a historical narration. European history being relatively recent, the time-space determinants may hold validity to an extent. When we are attempting to write the history of the civilizations and the peoples of remotest past whose antiquity can not be traced, a historian should use his discretion applying commonsense, reason and logic, as the basic tenets of scientific method of inquiry while examining the available historical source material to bring out the essence of the remote history for the benefit of mankind.

Bharat Varsha, the Indian sub-continent or South Asia, is endowed with voluminous record – oral, literary and archaeological – of the history of not only its people and their culture but the history of entire Creation and its secrets. The rich oral tradition which has come down to us through infinite number of generations defy our estimation of its origin in every respect because it speaks of mind boggling reckoning of Time and infinite creations. Veda is believed to be eternal. It is a revealed knowledge. The revelations of great sages are handed down to us as oral tradition. The classification of this knowledge, Veda, was attempted by Sage Veda Vyaasa whose times are connected with the great event, the Battle of Kurukshetra. Sage Vyaasa had much higher objectives for this classification than making it a chronological account. Most of the mantras included in the ‘Samhitas’ of the four books of Veda being common, the Sage has benefited the humanity with the Knowledge being presented in four different ways for varied purposes. The sage had given each version of the Veda to one of his able disciples for preservation and propogation. Modern historian assigns different periods for the origin of Rigveda and other Vedas citing certain changes in society to legitimize the Linear theory. When the author of these four versions of Veda was one and the same, it is a matter of simple commonsense that these books (oral) are contemporaneous.

Sage Vyaasa also gave us the PuraaNa which speaks of the history of many creations and major events therein, both Cosmic and mundane. The genealogies of Rishis and major dynasties of rulers are given in the PuraaNa which Sage Vyaasa has recorded as handed down to him by his father, Sage Paraashar. Sage Paraashar got this knowledge of remote history as a revelation. Out of this one body of PuraaNa (Vishnu PuraaNa?), eighteen Maha PuraaNaas were composed during Mahabharata times. The major content and characteristics of these PuraaNaas being the same, each PuraaNa is endowed with some peculiarities of its own in its presentation and emphasis given to a major concept or phenomenon. Subsequently, many subsidiary puraaNaas, Saastras, Darshanas, Sutra and Kaavya literature were composed in different periods of time and published through oral transmission. The PuraaNic literature has been updated periodically. Though the origin of PuraaNic literature could be dated to Mahabharata and immediately after Mahabharata times, we can not fix up the exact time when the literature was made available in written form for the first time. Since the material used for writing is of perishable nature, even the earliest manuscript found by us turns out to be the latest written version of the original work. The modern scientific dating methods might at best help us estimating the approximate date of an artifact or manuscript (conditions apply!). A historian with unprejudiced sense of reasoning would only say that the dating of the available copy can hardly determine the date of the original work.

Bharat has no parallel in the world in respect of the quality, quantity, antiquity and continuity of its knowledge store. Vedic and PuraaNic literature give us very valuable data for tracing the history from the remotest past to the recent times. It may not be possible to assign a fixed date for every event or episode of the remote past which of course serves no purpose. But on that score the episode can not be dismissed as fictitious. The episodes in the Vedic and PuraaNic literature should not be blindly taken in its literal sense. They are encoded narratives. The solution for a riddle posed in one episode cited in one PuraaNa could be found elsewhere in the same work or in some other PuraaNa. It needs a mega view of the whole literature to understand and interpret an episode. So micro-studies should be attempted with only macro-understanding. Every ancient work, though specializes in any Sastra (science), or Dharma (conduct), or Art (music, dance or fine arts), or Itihasa (history) is encyclopedic in its nature and gives the benefit of a bird’s eye view of the universal knowledge and the Sanatana Dharma. Thus, every ancient work, irrespective of its special focus on an area, is capable of giving universal consciousness to a sincere seeker. In ancient Indian knowledge system, a specialty did not mean ignorance of the rest as we understand the specializations today. Holistic view was the order of the day. Therefore the problem should not be studied in isolation.

Further, every ancient work was aiming at raising the conscious level of its clientele from the mundane to the Ultimate through the known to the Beyond. The Dharma as a Sutra (thread) runs through all the ancient literary forms. The essence of Vedic thought is given in PuraaNas and Itihaasas for mass consumption as educative entertainment. Sanatana Dharma, the basis of the Vedic thought and PuraaNic knowledge, is explained through the Epics as live narratives. In view of the mega time scale, the ancients have divided the eternal Time in Yugas, Mahayugas, Manvantaras and Kalpas. With the help of PuraaNic genealogies and the astronomical data available from the Mahabharata, many scholars have attempted to fix the date of Mahabharata War with negligible variations. These studies would confirm that the Great Event took place around 3000 BC. Now, it is not difficult to arrive at a reasonable time-frame for the Mahabharata which draws a line between the remote and recent past. Modern historian, free from prejudices, can fairly reconstruct Indian Chronology taking the date of the Great War as the sheet anchor. Since the chronology is the spine of the body of history, the gaps or missing links may be covered with logical interpretation of the valuable data from the ancient literature.

Heuristics and hermeneutics employed in the modern Historical Method for studying ancient societies of remote past, when associated with common sense, reasoning and logic would help resolve many misunderstandings and misconceptions entrenched in the present historical writings. What is basically required of a modern historian is a positive approach to knowing truth.

---

[*] He owes his understanding of the subject to Sathguru Sivananda Murty ji, Bheemunipatnam, A.P. India.

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Indian Culture and Post Modernism

UGC National Seminar on

INDIAN CULTURE IN THE CONTEXT OF

POSTMODERNISM AND GLOBALISATION

Kakatiya University, Warangal

(2^nd and 3^rd December 2001)

Key-Note address

Y.Sudershan Rao

Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences,

Kakatiya University

India with its unbroken civilisation since times unknown has no parallel in the world. The Veda is the most ancient knowledge of the Creation and the Evolution of souls, which is handed down to the mortals by the ancient sages of this land. The purpose and the ultimate goal of life are well defined and various paths have been suggested in the Veda for the benefit of humankind. Therefore, our ancient civilisation reflects a fine blend of materialism and spiritualism in proper proportions so that a man can enjoy this life with peace and prosperity based on eternal principles of Dharma and lead himself to his destined goal i.e. Liberation. Here, the Knowledge of the creation already exists with the creation and that could be realised by a serious pursuant. Thus Indian culture which has evolved through the ages has a strong foundation in the Veda and the values acceptable to all times and all men without any distinction. Though India has diverse geographical conditions blooming a rich variety of material cultures with different stages of development, the purpose of life and values of living molded Indian mind which projected a strong bond of unity. Thus ancient Indian culture strove to unite people appreciating various shades of material cultures within its broad framework. These small or ‘little’ traditions or strands are interwoven into the main stream as many tributaries join to make a great river, which finally flows into the ocean.

In sharp contrast to the Indian situation, the ancient Greek philosophers peeped into the future and tried to visualize ideal political institutions in the absence of any knowledge base for their imaginations. Even after two millennia, none of them have been realised in any part of the world. The concept of Universalism, which the Europeans have stretched too long through a religion, the Christianity, broke the Christendom into two halves, East and West from its very initiation. Later, Europe broke into warring fragments of politico-religious sections which styled themselves as nation states at the end of the medieval period. Religion, which makes people believe in a single path rejecting a second, divides people. Such religion disregards the individual’s freedom to choose a path of his like. The coming of Islam resulted in religious wars between the West Asia and East Europe finally resulting in the fall of the Eastern Christendom. It’s heavy fallout on the Western Europe, as is generally known as the Renaissance, broke Western Christendom into pieces. However, Islam could not make inroads into the Western Europe forming its own religious states barring one feeble attempt in Portugal. The Christianity and Islam, both, are single path religions. Therefore one could not tolerate or accommodate the other. However, Catholicism fell due to internal combustion as a result of Reformation and Counter -Reformation Movements.

The Muslim incursions into India were not so devastating as in other parts of the world because Indian culture with its strong base of tolerance and liberal character could withstand the rude shocks. By then, Indian culture had already produced many a religious thought and developed a number of philosophical schools based on various understandings of the working of Creation. Indian polities from ancient times were guided by the universal principles of Dharma, which are commonly acceptable to all religious or philosophical schools. We did not know religious states or theocratic states in ancient India. When the religious turmoil in the wake of Muslim incursions had settled down for once, Islam remained in India as one another path recognized and tolerated by the main stream, which is now generally known as the Hindu. During the medieval period, these two diverse states, one Islamic, a religious state, and the other, the Hindu, a state avowed to Dharma, coexisted. Both retained their identities. Only the modern European concepts of nationalism and liberal democracy divided the country.

The dawn of modern period in Europe pushed forward the principles of reason and humanism. Reason severely attacked the faith. Humanism led to exploitation of nature for the only benefit of the humankind. Empiricism ruled the roost disregarding all the time tested traditions. Nationalism, Liberalism, Socialism, Fascism, Totalitarianism, Communism, so on and so forth, rose like new religions in Europe each one making tall or exclusive claims of relevance and totally rejecting the others. These political religions divided the people into rival and warring sections. These new religions stood on the economic premise and propound economic solutions to all problems of man. Further these new religious prophets, unlike the ancient Greeks who looked into future, turned to the past. To suit to their political philosophies, each one of them romanticized the past with their wild guess. Since each one of them was interested to build an empire out of his romantic idea, various theories of the origin of state were proposed without any concrete evidence. The economic basis on which the new political systems are evolved has led to Colonialism and Imperialism resulting in the two devastating World Wars. The Cold War, that followed, divided the world into mutually suspecting blocks and thus, all the modern political systems proved to be defective.

In a way, Postmodernism attempts to destroy all these modern edifices which are supposed to have been built with imaginary pack of cards. But one major problem with it is that it also rejects all those theories, which are practised and time tested. This new phenomenon creates chaos and further cleavages in the society promoting divisive tendencies like casteism, minority issues etc. Postmodernism dismisses any common understanding or generalisations. With this, what modern historiography has tried to reconstruct our past proposing various generalizations and theories will be rejected as mere fiction and so also our ancient knowledge bank. Thus Postmodernism goes to the other extreme of modernism. Now the present world is caught between these two mutually conflicting and contradicting schools of thought. Secondly, Globalisation is another phenomenon, which tries to influence every walk of life everywhere on the globe. Particularly, on the cultural side, it is trying to push the world into a uniform pattern not only in respect of what we wear or eat or drink but also in the matters of art, music and dance. The evil effects on the national economy will be far insignificant when compared to the damage done to the cultures in the world due to the impact of Globalisation. Perhaps, it is time to think and act taking clues from the ancient Indian culture, which was based on sound knowledge and experience for a better world order.

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