February 14, 2006
In his essay, Is There An Indian Way Of Thinking, the late A. K. Ramanujan credits the linguist Frits Staal with the insight that the ancient Indians were as obsessed with linguistics as the Greeks were with geometry.
"…And grammar is the central model of thinking in many Hindu texts. As Frits Staal has said, what Euclid is to the European thought, the grammarian Panini is to the Indian. Even the Kama Sutra is literally a grammar of love — which declines and conjugates men and women as one would nouns and verbs in different genders, voices, moods and aspects."
It’s a neat idea. Neat because it explains many aspects of the Indian worldview, both ancient and modern: the context-sensitive nature of our ethics, the mania for taxonomy (for e.g., Bharata’s Natyashastra lists 108 different hand-foot sequences or karanas), the centuries long discussion on whether there were eight fundamental rasas (savors) or nine, and the use of verse for practically every endeavour (for e.g., Rama Krishna Deva’s algebra problem).
In a world where preservation of knowledge is as important as its production (if not more), memory becomes of paramount importance. But an oral tradition uses memory very differently. Memory is not just a storehouse, just as the internet is not merely an encyclopedia; in an oral tradition, memory becomes a kind of virtual person, joining conversations, correcting errors, acting as a mentor, and surviving death by constant renewal. In an oral tradition, the people fade, the memory remains.
Today it’s hard to get a sense of the kind of mnemonic feats the ancient Indians were capable of. Two examples may be cited.
In the 70s and 80s, Staal showed how the ancient Indians devised elaborate cryptographic schemes (Kramapatha) to ensure that nothing
in the main Vedas — RigVeda and SamaVeda — was lost during oral
transmission. And it wasn’t. As the British discovered to their
astonishment, different groups of Brahmins across the country were
still chanting the very same verses, almost 3500 years later.
Or consider the incredible Ashtavadhanam where 8 Sanskrit scholars — rappers really — pose memory tests and poetry composition challenges to the central Avadhani,
all the while attempting to disrupt his concentration with irregular chimes of
bells (yes, bells) and irrelevant questions from a dude who’s dedicated
his life to that singular purpose. Eminem would pee his pants.
The Greek obsession with geometry led to a world where generalization became synonymous with abstraction. The ancient Indians took a different tack, as unique as that of the Greeks. They categorized rather than generalized, and the richer the categorization, the closer they felt to understanding something. It should come as no surprise that it’s a view closer to the biologist than to the physicist.
The Koran, in a felicitous turn of phrase, refers to Christians and Hebrews as People Of The Book. Perhaps it makes sense to think
of the Indians — south asians — as "People Of
the Grammar."
February 3, 2006
 She rocks, this woman in the stone. It is difficult to believe that she is about a thousand years old. We don’t know much about her. She may represent a dancer, devadasi, apsara, maid or courtesan. She adorns the Adinatha temple in the eastern group of temples in Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh. During the tenth and eleventh centuries, when Europe was a God-haunted place turned by the bubonic plague into a vast graveyard, the Chandela Rajputs embarked on a joyous architectural project of unequalled moral courage and aesthetic ambition. The woman in the stone was one of their minor discoveries.
Unlike the other adornments in the temples, she is turned away from the viewer’s eye; the characteristic "glancing away" look used in Indian art (and by teenagers) to signal a pretended unawareness has been turned into an actual unawareness; the viewer becomes a voyeur, if only for that moment of turning away. The centuries are now like a lens through which we happen to see a very beautiful woman caught turning in mid-dance. Dancing is what she must be doing, for it is too stylized to be anything else.
The pose in which her sculptor — some unknown genius — found her is called the tribhanga, which means, roughly, "equipoised stance bent in three places." In the western aesthetic tradition, the tribhanga is known as the "contrapposto." The tribhanga is one of the five bhangas (equipoised stances) in traditional IndianIt’s much more accurate to say "South-Asia" and "South-asian" rather than "India" and "Indian"; it’s more accurate, but also more clumsy. So I’ll stick with the less accurate tag.†. dance: the others are shown in the figure on the right. The abhanga and tribhanga poses were both very popular in ancient and medieval Indian art.
The woman in the stone is a lovely representation of an aesthetic ideal. There’re some interesting aspects to both the pose as well the ideal. It touches upon the Doryphoros of Polykleitos, the Golden ratio and the sutras of Acharya Hemachandra. Anna Nicole Smith makes an appearance, as she must, in any discussion of aesthetics. Did I mention Kalidasa’s thoughts on Parvati’s thighs? No? Well, let’s get on with it then.
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October 31, 2005
is this:
We here, and that man, this man,
and that other in-between,
and that woman, this woman,
and that other, whoever,
those people, and these,
and these others in-between,
this thing, that thing,
and this other in-between, whichever
all things dying, these things,
those things, those others in-between,
good things, bad things,
things that were, that will be,
being all of them,
he stands there.
The God in Nammalvar’s hymn (or rather, A. K. Ramnujan’s translation of it [9, pp. 120-121]) is a god of thresholds. The threshold is of enormous interest to the Tamils. For example, the classical corpus of Tamil poetry is traditionally divided into akam (interior) poems and puram (exterior) poems [10]. The kolam is but one of the many manifestations of that interest.
Marcia Ascher’s description of the kolam is succinct and mostly accurate:
Traditionally, the women of Tamil Nadu, in southeastern India, sweep their thresholds every morning, sprinkle them with a solution of cow dung and water and cover the area with elaborate, symmetrical figures using rice powder. They trickle the rice powder in a stream between their middle and index fingers, using their thumbs to guide the flow of the powder. According to tradition, the cow dung cleans and purifies the ground, and using the rice powder begins the day with an act of kindness by providing food for ants and other insects. Girls learn this
kolam ritual from their female relatives, and kolam skills are viewed as a mark of grace and as a demonstration of dexterity, mental discipline and ability to concentrate. [1]
It is doubtful whether kolams are geometrical acts of kindness. It’s also doubtful whether kolams are purificatory acts. They could be; most things are usually lots of things. There are a great many ways to purify something in Indian tradition, but kolams are unique, more or less, to south India. What do the kolam-artists say when they’re asked why they draw these gorgeous graphs?
Fortunately, the anthropologist Lance Nelson asked that very question in his recent doctoral study of the kolam tradition [7]. One of his respondents from Thilaikkudi village in Thanjavur District, a women in her fifties, explained that:
Bhumi Devi [earth goddess] is our mother. She is everyone’s source of existence. Nothing would exist without her. The entire world depends on her for sustenance and life. So, we draw the kolam first to remind ourselves of her. All day we walk on Bhumi Devi. All night we sleep on her. We spit on her. We poke her. We burden her. We do everything on her. We expect her to bear us and all the activities we do on her with endless patience. That is why we do the kolam. [7, pp. 273]
It seems almost churlish to question the matter further. Yet, I can’t help wondering. Why draw geometrical figures to thank someone? Why not chant a simple prayer or two? Why not heap a pile of rice if the intent is to feed ants and insects (wouldn’t the ants prefer a heap as opposed to trudging alone a maze)? Why aren’t people in the Eastern, Western, and Northern parts of India driven by a similar sense of remorse and gratitude? Why is the Ganges — equally beloved and equally abused — not thanked in a similar manner. What makes Bhumi-devi special? Besides, if gratitude is the point of the performance, why allow it to be summarily destroyed by the first person to cross the threshold? Indeed, why draw it on the threshold at all?
In particular, take a second look at the boy (figure above) drawing graphs in the sand. The boy’s from Malekula, the second-largest island of Vanuatu. He, like the women of Tamil Nadu, is also engaged in an ancient performance. Why are their drawings so similar?
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October 6, 2005
In 1857, Maria Mitchell (1818-1889), the first female American astronomer, went on a tour of Europe.
She was already very famous . At 29, she’d discovered a comet (after calculating its expected position), was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences a year later, and was the first female professor of the United States. These bland biographical details obscure a more interesting story. It was an age where women were considered too stupid to be entrusted with the vote. It was an age where a Thomas Huxley could argue that women were not worthy of membership in learned societies because they were, ipso facto, amateurs. It was an age where the American Academy felt it necessary to mention in their 1848 report that they’d decided to grant her membership "in spite of her being a woman" [1]. The next admission of a female to that august assembly would be in 1943!
In Europe, she met everybody who was somebody: Roget, Babbage, Humboldt, Somerville, George Airy, Leverrier, Stokes, Struve, Herschel … the list is a who’s who of 19th century Arts & Science. Her diary reveals a keen mind with a droll sense of humor [13]. For example, she comments that:
Thus far England has impressed me seriously; I cannot imagine how it has ever earned the name of ‘Merrie England.’
She demolishes the ever-reliably pompus William Whewell with:
An Englishmen is proud; a Cambridge man is the proudest of Englishmen; and Dr. Whewell, the proudest of Cambridge men.
She comments about a statue of Dr. Johnson that, "It must be like him, for it is exceedingly ugly."
Then there’s her entry on November 2, 1858. She commented that:
It was hard for me to become accustomed to English ideas of caste. I heard Professor Sedgwick say that Miss Herschel, the daughter of Sir John and niece to Caroline, married a Gordon. ‘Such a great match for her!’ he added; and when I asked what match could be great for a daughter of the Herschels, I was told that she had married one of the queen’s household, and was asked to sit in the presence of the queen!
"When I hear a missionary tell that the pariah caste sit on the ground, the peasant caste lift themselves by the thickness of a leaf, and the next rank by the thickness of a stalk, it seems to me that the heathen has reached a high state of civilization — precisely that which Victoria has reached when she permits a Herschel to sit in her presence!
This particular entry got me thinking. It’s a natural and intuitive analogy. However, Ms. Mitchell made two errors. First, though the caste system is related to class, race and religion, it’s a very distinct entity. Second, though the caste system establishes a pecking order, it’s not a hierarchy. I will attempt to justify both statements.
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August 28, 2005
"Stuti", pronounced "Sthuthi", means "prayer/song". "Ninda" means "blame/complaint." A "ninda stuti" is essentially a prayer that is also a complaint.
Prayers are supposed to be polite. If one is praying to an omnipotent entity, it is advisable to be as inoffensive as possible. God loves you, but you’re His bitch, pal.
The Hindus do things differently. They decided to break up the monopoly. Why not have a bunch of gods? Why not make them compete, like ravenous insurance agents, for your prayers? So the Hindus dreamt up 330 million gods. Impossible?
Absolutely. It’s way too small a number. Judging from CIA fact index, the number of gods is currently estimated to be about 6,446,131,400. It’s still an underestimate.
The logic is quite straightforward. "Aham Brahmasmi." I am the Brahman. Not just me. Every living thing is a piece of the Brahman. Since we’ve not included aliens, bacter, Delhi’s crows and opposums, the exact number of Gods is, like Rumsfeld said, an "unknown unknowable."
But this is not about a holy census or an unholy consensus. It’s about the consequences of having a market in Gods. One begins to take certain liberties. Such as getting a tad familiar with the Supernatural.
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