Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!ucbvax!ucbarpa!venkat From: venkat@ucbarpa.BERKELEY.EDU (Venkat P Rangan) Newsgroups: net.nlang.india,net.politics,net.religion.jewish,net.nlang.africa,net.religion Subject: Re: Some Ideas from India: Laws of Manu: Duties of Sudras Message-ID: <11380@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> Date: Thu, 9-Jan-86 17:02:57 EST Article-I.D.: ucbvax.11380 Posted: Thu Jan 9 17:02:57 1986 Date-Received: Fri, 10-Jan-86 07:29:45 EST References: <589@harvard.UUCP> <3909@think.ARPA> Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: venkat@ucbarpa (Venkat P Rangan) Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 171 Xref: watmath net.nlang.india:964 net.politics:12878 net.religion.jewish:2929 net.nlang.africa:202 net.religion:8755 > From paturi@harvard.HARVARD.EDU.ARPA (Ramamohan Paturi): > > Some Ideas from India > ---- ----- ---- ----- > Manu's code (???? BC) gives detailed instructions regarding the then social > rules and practices in India. It believes in the fourfold order > of society as a means of social cooperation for the common > good. Here are some drastic surprises for those who do not know about Hinduism. This message is slightly long simply because a comprehensive essay, rather than than incoherent comments, must be the first introduction to people on other nets on what Hinduism is. There are two distinct aspects of Hinduism:- 1. Philosophy 2. Religion The foundations of the Philosophical aspect are:- 1. Do NOT accept anything you read in the scriptures or books without questioning vehemently even if it comes from such a learned person as Sage Suka. Accept it only and only if you come to the same conclusion after sufficient thought. (source: This is the first verse of the first Upanishad that a student of Hinduism reads. Sage Suka was a supposed to have been a great scholar at that time. Upanishads, are the highest scriptures of Upanishads. They form the final part and the culmination of the vedas and are called the Vedanta.) 2. UNLIKE several others, Hinduism does NOT attempt to give deductive definitions of God or any other being. It recognizes the futility of trying to define the Infinite in terms of the Finite. Hence only indicative pointers are given, suplimented with hints. It is the business of your intellect to come to any conclusion by induction cross examination. The hints are in the form of negations : Not This finite thing, Not That finite thing etc. 3. Each one is free to start his own cult of thinking. Hence we take pride in the thousands of Upanishads, thousands of cults. Each Upanishad was by a different person, simply because, he did not agree with some points of previous Upanishads. Many people point fingers at India, saying there are thousands of cults etc. They fail to recognize that Hinduism ideally expects each one to have his own cult, just like in any other science, each scientist has his own vision of the field he is in. 4.As a result, we do not have any ONNE GOD, ONNE SAVIOUR, ONNE BOOK, ONNE religious head to whom everyone must be subservient to, ONNE set of rules etc. There are thousands of each one of these in Hinduism. Anyone can become any of these. This is simply because, the moment you say ONNE, it cannot be Universal, Infinite, as ONNE implies there is something separate, other than it. The moment you say ONNE, there can be no independent thinking, no creative energy, no creative art or science. The absence of this in Hinduism is its extraordinary universality. Why else do you think India chose to remain secular at time of partition? Why else do you think Hinduism had such stalwarts as Mahatma Gandhi? 5. As a previous message stated, there are three general paths, namely, Karma, Bakthi, and Gnana. A human being is supposed to be composed of a Physical Body, emotional personality, and Intellectual strength. Karma, Bakthi, and Gnana correspond to these three aspects of human life. Again no one falls under only one of these. Usually it is a combination of all three, with special strengths in one of these. By the way, Bakthi DOES NOT correspond to going to temple and praying. It only means, if at any time you feel despondent in life, take refuge in the fact that Almighty has taken care of so many people. You will also be definitely taken care of. Praying is only a mechanism for cleansing your mind of past rememberences, just as a bath cleanses the body off old dirt. Lord Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gita states that those who pursue Gnana, reasoning out everything through their intellectual instrument are the dearest to Him and NOT those of Bhakthi. He even says that Gnanis do not have nor need to obey any of the societies' rules simply because of their intellectual capacity to reason out every situation correctly. These will raise lot of eyebrows. Then why else is the caste system, dowry and so on in the Indian society? The answer lies when you come to the religious aspect:- The religious aspect is a set of practices which were for the convenience of the time at which they came into being. This is like the constitution. Just as a political system or the economic system changes, these social practices are supposed to be changed as the time and place changes. They are purely a matter of convenience and part of experimentation to find out what constitutes the best set of rules to guide the society. So Hindus do not fight over any of these. If you find something illogical, you just change it. So there is no fighting over going to temple 10 times a day or not going to temple at all. No fighting as to whether you must charge interest or not. No fighting as to whether you should not eat animal A's meat or animal B's meat or no meat at all. No fanatical fighting over whether dowry is good or not. The people who are responsible to change these are the intellectuals. They are the law makers i.e., the legislature. The kshatriyas were the executive and the judicial parts of the government. Ages ago the law making intellectuals were called Brahmins. Brahmin means, one who knows Brahman, one who pursues knowledge for its own sake that includes the knowledge of the Infinite substratum ( in gross terms, the laws of nature) that unifies the apparent diversity in the universe. It is the equivalent of the present day term, Scientist. Examples are too many for those who attempted to change the social set-up. Buddha, Mahaveera, Guru Nanak, and all those who dissected the social laws that were existing at their time, found fault with many of them, and changed them. But slowly, these law makers(the Brahmins) found a secret. Using recursion theorem, why not make themselves supreme so that they no more need to exercise themselves? The version of Manu's (Man's laws) laws that a previous message gave is an excellent example. This is not special to Brahmins or Hinduism. This happens in any system that has been endowed with laws of inertia into it by nature. Examples abound :- The usurping of economic power in the U.S. by a selected few, the usurping of political power in USSR by a selected few and so on. But the Hindu Scriptures are clear on these. The generation which does not come up with a set of rules is cheating both themselves and the future generations. The previously existing rules are there only to serve as the experience of the previous generations on which the present must build. Hence any criticism of Hinduism through caste etc. is null simply because it is like criticizing the Einsteinian laws if your present experimental set up to measure the speed of light does not work. To make it work, overhaul the set-up. Similarly, occasionally overhaul your social set-up. If evolution is impossible, try a revolution. As a rule, Hinduism has NO rules about the objective(=outer,gross) world. It only and only talks about the subjective (=subtle,inner) world. As a final piece of note to non-Indians who might think that Hinduism and India are lowered in prestige because of so many criticisms by Indians themselves, here is the culmination: One of the cardinal principles of Hinduism is that those who do NOT criticize it but merely accept are deluding themselves. They get nowhere. It is the vehement arguments and counter arguments that are encouraged and enrich Hinduism, merely because one more Intellect is adding his wisdom to Hinduism when he criticizes it. IF YOU DEVOTE SUFFICIENT INTELLIGENCE, ENERGY AND TIME, YOU CAN ADD YOUR OWN UPANISHAD TO THE EXISTING COLLECTION. This is one of the Greatest Strengths of Hinduism. So whether you are a Hindu or not, you can enrich it only by dissecting, arguing for or against every aspect of it !!!.