RE: Lord GaNeZa caught red-handed in Hugh
Heffner’s Chicago penthouse - online petition to revoke his green card? [Rajiv Malhotra]
RE: I’ll post my response along with your original message
to the targeted lists [Rajiv Malhotra]
Can Prof. Paul Courtright (and Lord Ganesha) be reduced to his crooked
trunk (or upraised single tusk)? Do your homework first! [Sunthar Visuvalingam]
RE: The
Scholar’s responsibility [Rajiv Malhotra]
....
[RISA-L] Re: The scholar’s accountability [Ramdas
Lamb]
....
[RISA-L] Ganesh and Judaeo-Christian God/Jahweh [Jo Perry]
.... Re:
Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [John Richard Pincince]
.... Re:
Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [William P Harman]
.... Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [Narasingha Sil]
.... Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [Gene R. Thursby]
Re: Book on
Ganesha removed by Publisher [Antonio de Nicolas]
Personal message from Prof. Paul Courtright exhorting us to
live up to the traditional standards of debate in (not just Hindu) India
[Sunthar Visuvalingam]
Fw: Lord Ganesha [KRNath]
.... Re:
Lord Ganesha [Paul B. Courtright]
Re: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability
[Stephen Brown]
.... Re:
[RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [Richard Mahoney]
.... Re:
[RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [Gene
R. Thursby]
.... Re:
[RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [Patrick Olivelle]
.... Re:
[RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability & protective strategies
[John Cort]
[RISA-L] Shiv Sena comment on Courtright book
[Joyce Flueckiger]
Re: Good Taste, Bad Taste, Hindu Taste - why are art
historians more deserving of GaNeza’s (sweet) favor (modakas)? [Anthony Appleyard]
Is Lord Ganesha an ‘African’ God? Yes, in the same sense
that Picasso’s art is ‘primitive’! [Sunthar
V.]
The elephant-trunk as the representation of Omk�ra - is
Ganesha a sexual or a metaphysical concept? [Sunthar Visuvalingam]
Re: Good Taste, Bad Taste, Hindu Taste - why are art
historians more deserving of GaNeza’s (sweet) favor (modakas)?
[Ram Varmha]
Naked Ganesha cavorting on the cover of (withdrawn) Motilal
Banarsidas publication - is Indian culture becoming ‘infantilized’?
[Sunthar Visuvalingam]
[RISA-L] Naked
Picture [Lance Nelson]
.... Re: [RISA-L] Naked Picture [Swami Tyagananda]
.... Re: [RISA-L] Naked Picture
[Patrick Olivelle]
.... To
Cavort or Not To Cavort...You Be The Judge [Lady Joyce]
On the infantilization and ‘nazification’ of Hindu culture
- a picture is worth a thousand words! [Sunthar
V.]
.... [RISA-L] Vinayak [Chaturvedi] on Vinayaka [Shrinivas Tilak]
.... Re: [RISA-L] Judge the book by its cover? [Antonio de Nicol�s]
Celibacies,
sexualities, and Yogic eros [Stuart Sovatsky]
Re: [RISA-L] The
scholar’s accountability [mihira2ooo]
"Telling the
Indians what they really are as opposed to who they think they are" - is
Indology really ‘psychoanalysis’ in disguise? [Sunthar
Visuvalingam]
Re: [RISA-L]
Title VI funding [Joanna Kirkpatrick]
.... [RISA-L] Title VI funding [Leslie Orr]
[RISA-L]
proposal, re: Courtright lila [Frederick Smith]
Re: [RISA-L] The
scholar’s accountability [Kathleen Erndl]
.... Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [Joanna Kirkpatrick]
.... Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [Herman Tull]
.... Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [Douglas Berger]
Forms of Siva [Pathmarajah Nagalingam]
Re: Why are all the traditional (castrated?) forms of Shiva
and Ganesha depicted without a penis? The scholar’s accountability! [Anthony Appleyard]
.... Re:
Why are all the traditional (castrated?) forms of Shiva and Ganesha depicted
without a penis? The scholar’s accountability! [Loganathan]
Identity problem: Hindu American or just Hindu? - Teaching
Ganesha versus Worshipping Ganesha! [Sunthar]
.... Re:
Identity problem: Hindu American or just Hindu? - Teaching Ganesha versus
Worshipping Ganesha! [Raja Mylvaganam]
[an offline exchange with Rajiv Malhotra that was forwarded to Abhinava list on 3 Nov 04]
Subject: RE: Lord GaNeZa
caught red-handed in Hugh Heffner’s
From: Rajiv Malhotra
Sent:
To: Abhinavagupta’; Cc: [email protected];
‘Ontological Ethics’
The issue is not sexuality (which Indic traditions
have more than the western counterparts), but language and framework. Freudian
western language brings with it value judgments, lenses that are not necessarily
authentic to the Indic culture, and certainly a privileging of the gatekeepers
in charge of those systems, i.e. the western(ized) English-language “brahmins.”
Furthermore, the careless mapping to the dominant culture’s language/framework
causes the native systems to atrophy, which, in turn, further exacerbates the
appropriation.
So I see the U-Turn processes intertwined with the
shift of lenses:
First justified as market expansion to “help” the native
culture get better appreciated;
Second “hybridized” in Bhabha style to shift identities of
a few privileged brown sahibs over as “white”;
Third digesting the native intellectual property as “new”
discoveries of the dominant culture—where awards and other high profile
recognition plays an important role;
Fourth, allowing the native framework to quietly atrophy—a
subtle example being how the Urdu-Hindi program at Harvard takes a freshman
class that is 90% Hindu Indians, tells them that Urdu is a simpler version of
Hindi and hence the way to learn it, then phases out the Hindi component while
going deep into Urdu literature with the corresponding shift in worldviews.
Fifth, denigrating the source as anti-women, anti-social,
abusive, primitive...
Finally, pre-empting any honest research to expose all
this by branding any attempts as being fascist, chauvinist, nostalgic, etc. Here
one must criticize the Hindutva for making this job simple by providing plenty
of ammunition, such that any Indic worldview now runs the risk of being so
branded.
This has been one of the greatest achievements of
the dominant civilization and a major factor for its success. It appropriates
others’ intellectual capital into its own, thereby turning them into shudras (= people without capital).
So this is why Freudianism analysis is problematic, NOT
because of sexual content.
Regards,
Rajiv
-----Original
Message-----
From: Rajiv
Malhotra
Sent:
To: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Subject: RE: Good Taste, Bad Taste,
Hindu Taste - why are art historians more deserving of GaNeza’s (sweet) favor (modakas)?
Sunthar – did my post make it on your e-groups? I
think it responds to VV Raman’s comment – he seems to think that the complaint
is about sexuality; whereas I point out that it is about authenticity. Regards,
Rajiv
-----Original Message-----
From:
Sunthar Visuvalingam
Sent:
To: ‘Rajiv Malhotra’
Subject: I’ll post my response along
with your original message to the targeted lists
Hello Rajiv,
No, it did not, and I’m not sure why as you are member of ‘my’ several groups and, I believe, of Akandabaratam as well. You might want to check your email and other member settings on these lists.
I agree with you and your point is well-taken. If you can hold on for a while, I was planning to respond constructively, along with your own post, to all the lists you targeted. Laurie also got back to me as well on my previous post on GaNeza’s ‘green card’...
Regards,
Sunthar
P.S. I don’t think Raman was responding to your post but it seems that sexuality is indeed what many of the petitioners are fuming about...
-----Original Message-----
Subject: RE: I’ll post my
response along with your original message to the targeted lists
From: Rajiv Malhotra
Sent:
To: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Agreed. But there needs to be a clarity of issues
between: (A) those Hindus who are anti-sexuality period, when sexuality is
applied to devas/devis,
and (B) those who have no such problem but have other reasons for criticizing
various mis-portrayals.
Those who attack on grounds of A and those who
patronize (i.e. suck up) to these scholars by saying, “lets be open about sex,”
such as V. V. Raman, are in need of being explained about B. For, they deflect
the issue to a simpler one which the other side can dismiss.
Those who argue based on “our hurt feelings” are
locating the Hindu as a child with the westerner as parent and begging for
better parenting. This is nonsense.
Those who attack the scholar suggesting violence
are upgrading him to Salman Rushdie status and the criticism as fanatical fatwa.
My hope has been to identify the deeper issues that
do not slip down any of these slopes listed above.
Regards,
Rajiv
Subject:
Rajiv’s responses to “Lord Ganesha caught red-handed in Hugh Heffner’s
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date: Mon Nov 3, 2003 3:05 pm [Abhinava msg #1221 order of thread has been
inverted]
I’ll follow up on the very valid issues that Rajiv has raised in due course...it’s impossible to do justice to them in a couple of posts! – Sunthar
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
[Abhinava msg #1216]
Date:
All these essentially comic figures of symbolic violation like
P�zupata, GaNeza and Vid�Saka have for their sacred syllable the inarticulate (anirukta) Omk�ra because, like the ‘vacarme’
of explosive laughter, it signifies chaotic non-differentiation in the
acoustic/linguistic code. In a traditional culture sharing a depreciative,
repressive attitude to profane laughter, the P�zupata’s ‘sacred’ laughter in
imitation of the aTTah�sa of his elect
divinity Rudra can only further signify transgression. The recoding of these
P�zupata notations into the nonsensical poetic humor (k�vya-h�sya) of
the laughing Vid�Saka is only the profane spectacle of that archaic shamanic
inspiration dramatically objectivizing itself through the aesthetic creation of
the ‘poet’ (kavi)
under this inscrutably familiar guise of folly that psychoanalysis must
appropriate at its own risk.
Sunthar V., Divine Purity and Demoniac Power: A Semiotic definition of
Transgressive Sacrality (1989)
I find it rather intriguing that this whole
‘discussion’ of Courtright’s book revolves around “the flaccid trunk” and little
else. We just got back from the University of Chicago, where I was able to flip
through the book for a few minutes at the Seminary Coop (before rushing off to
listen to a Hindustani concert by Ram Narain, sarangi, and his son Braj
Narain, sarod...), and I get the impression that the book talks about so
many other topics as well. I wonder just how many people have read the book from
cover to cover, much less attempted a thorough-going critique....?
Let me, however, state categorically that:
�
like the
vid�Saka’s crooked staff (kuTilaka) the
trunk is undoubtedly (among other things) a “limp” phallus
�
however, he is definitely not
‘impotent’ (in the normal sense) because his single tusk (like the upraised kuTilaka) represents the upright phallus
�
which raises the question as to how
Courtright reconciles these two contradictory characterizations...is he even
aware of the problem?
�
does anyone on these lists have a
‘twisted’ (vakra) phallus (even when limp!)?
Otherwise, why is this ‘crookedness’ so emphasized in both?
�
these traits are evidently
‘overdetermined’ (as any psychoanalyst worth his snake-oil should know...)—what
are his creators trying to tell us?
�
can anyone offer more convincing
explanations (than Paul’s piecemeal and ad hoc ‘Freudian’ speculations)
that could stand on their own feet?
Maybe if someone took the trouble to read the book
and attempted to refute Paul’s arguments more systematically, we’d make some
more progress here..... As things stand, I have the distinct impression that
this mischievously playful brat (Pillaiy�r in the case of the Tamil GaNeza - the
vid�Saka is always called baTuka, as in BaTuka-Bhairava) is making a
laughing-stock of us all!
Sunthar
P.S. I’ve appended the current state of this thread from the
RISA-L listserv that is reserved for ‘professional’ Indologists.
Subject: RE: The Scholar’s
responsibility
From: Rajiv Malhotra
Sent:
The debate has advanced into a higher caliber territory with the post of Prof. De Nicolas below, which was put on RISA-L and other places by him. Please see the following posts on RISA-L:
http://www.sandiego.edu/theo/risa-l/archive/msg07212.html
http://www.sandiego.edu/theo/risa-l/archive/msg07213.html
http://www.sandiego.edu/theo/risa-l/archive/msg07214.html
http://www.sandiego.edu/theo/risa-l/archive/msg07215.html
http://www.sandiego.edu/theo/risa-l/archive/msg07216.html
>
>
Subject: [RISA-L] Re: The
scholar’s accountability
From: Ramdas Lamb
Date:
Regarding the issue of Paul Courtright’s text on Ganesha, I question how beneficial and relevant to Hindu scholarship its chosen methodology of depicting Ganesha is. I cannot help but believe that the vast majority of Hindus would be appalled at such an approach, which seems to say far more about the writer and his focus than about the way Ganesha has been historically understood by Hindus. If the text was simply meant to take a Freudian approach to Ganesha, with the inevitable outcome of such a tact, then maybe it was successful. However, if it was meant to provide good historical scholarship on Ganesha, then I do not see where such depictions accomplish that, unless they have been integral in the development and understanding of Ganesha within the Hindu tradition. Is it wrong to suggest scholarly understanding should take historical reality into consideration? While I am sure that there are currently, and may have long been, some Indians who may view Ganesha in that way, but when have such views been characteristic of Hindu thinking with respect to Ganesha? Just because we are scholars, does that mean we can say and write whatever we wish, irrespective of its accuracy or impact?
Ramdas Lamb
Subject: [RISA-L] Ganesh
and Judaeo-Christian God/Jahweh
From: Jo Perry
Date:
Despite the gracious response of Gene Thursby, I will add this response:
Antonio de Nicolas wrote:
The Bible is very explicit. The creation myth (history) says
very clearly that the Creator created the world by ejecting his semen (ruh = pron. ruah) and
mingling it with the waters. In other words, the creator created through
masturbation. And if you stretch the story all the way to Jesus and follow the
patrilineal lines given to him turns out that Yaweh is his father. Can you be
more gross? And would any Ph.D. in Religion be able to answer this attack?
Aware of this myth among ancient Egyptians, I find
all this repl(a)y fascinating and worth circulating (among scholars who are
likely to read such stuff, just as Courtright might expect of his own writings)
although I would appreciate some fuller explication of the Biblical text.
Given Courtright’s presumed audience (as indicated above) I see no problem with
his using Freudian ideas for a similar exposition of Hindu belief systems.
Freudian thinking has, after all, penetrated even the apparently dim and
“different” {Other? unable to be scholarly, only sensitive to slight} minds of
scholars in
Did I offend anyone by using the Tetragrammaton above? OOOPs! Sorry, but that’s the nature of scholarly discussion, Nothing can be held sacrosanct and free from analysis.
ATB JOPerry
(Dr.) John Oliver Perry (Prof. English, Emeritus,
Subject: Re: Re: [RISA-L]
The scholar’s accountability
To: RISA Academic Discussion List
From: John Richard Pincince
Date:
Dear List:
I must have missed posts previous to that of Mr. de Nicolas’ missive against Prof. Courtright—not certain when the issue arose (perhaps not the proper word re: a “limp” Ganesha:), but I have take the liberty to include below the wonderful ‘petition’ against Prof. Courtright, enjoy:
-----------------------------------------------------
Against the Book insulting Lord Ganesha and Hinduism
Sign the Petition
To: President James W. Wagner of Emory University, Governor Sunny Perdue of Georgia, President George W Bush of U.S.A, Prime Minister Atal B. Vajpayee of India, Members of India’s Parliament, Members US-India Congressional Caucus, and US Attorney General, Ashcroft.
There is a Book titled: “Ganesa - Lord of Obstacles, Lord
of Beginnings” by Professor Paul Courtright, Department of Religion,
For nude cover picture of the 2001 edition of the book please visit: http://photos.yahoo.com/hsc_ul (Please copy and paste the link)
Here are some of the author’s vulgar interpretations:
There are plenty of other insidious passages in this book aimed at tarnishing not only the image of Ganesha, but Shiva and Parvati as well:
“After Shiva has insulted Parvati by calling her Blackie [Kali], she vows to leave him and return to her father’s home and then she stations her other son, Viraka—the one Siva had made—at the door way to spy on her husband’s extramarital amorous exploits.” (Page 105-106).
We believe these are clear-cut examples of hate-crimes inflicted on innocent Hindus who worship Ganesha, Shiva and Parvati.
We the undersigned strongly ask you to take the necessary actions to achieve the following:
1) The author and the publisher(s) to give an unequivocal apology to Hindus.
2) The author expunges the above and other offensive passages and revises the book with clarifications and corrections.
3) Publisher(s) to immediately withdraw this book from circulation and the author to stop use of this book in academics.
Sincerely,
The Against the Book insulting Lord Ganesha and Hinduism Petition to President James W. Wagner of Emory University, Governor Sunny Perdue of Georgia, President George W Bush of U.S.A, Prime Minister Atal B.
Vajpayee of India, Members of India’s Parliament, Members
US-India Congressional Caucus, and US Attorney General, Ashcroft. was created by
Hindu Students’ Council -
by Devendra Potnis, President HSC-ULL. This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors.
For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.
John Pincince
Ph.D. candidate South Asian History and Politics
Department of History
Subject: Re: Re: [RISA-L]
The scholar’s accountability
From: William P Harman
Date:
Dear Risa Colleagues,
I fear I cannot be quite so charitable (nor alas, quite so elegant) as Gene Thursby has been in his response to Antonio de Nicolas’ attack on Professor Courtright’s book on Ganesh. De Nicolas has assumed that he and he alone knows “the Truth” about Ganesh and about how the culture that reveres Ganesh “thinks.” In fact, I know many Indians who much appreciated Courtright’s meticulous scholarship, and who felt that it represented an affectionate, provocative, and exploratory study into the nature of this wonderfully protean Hindu deity. To suggest that Courtright should be censored by the academic community for daring to suggest variant interpretations of Ganesh that could possibly offend the orthodox is to impose on scholarly work a standard that de Nicolas himself has denounced in print. Specifically, de Nicolas presumes to present himself as the defender of orthodoxy. About that issue he wrote in an article in THE WORLD AND I (May, 1989) the following:
“Orthodoxy operates in someone else’s name; it is a mask and, under its protection, even the weakest among us become daring, passionate heroes. It makes little difference if such orthodoxy appears in the name of religion, psychotherapy, science, humanism, progress, the church or the state. Orthodoxy separates the liberated and the non-liberated, those who are in and those who are out”
In proposing to cast Courtright out of the academic community, and in doing so from behind the mask of what he himself calls in that same article “the imagined monster of orthodoxy,” de Nicolas invites us to judge his comments about Courtright in light of his earlier and more wisely considered written words.
William Harman, Head
Department of Philosophy and Religion (# 2753)
The
Subject: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability
To: RISA Academic Discussion List
From: Narasingha Sil
Date: Sat,
Professor Courtright’s depiction of Ganesha reflects his
idealization of a particular state of the male organ and we need not exercise
ourselves unnecessarily on Ganesha’s proboscis seen as a limp phallus. I
have seen (so have many others) limp phallus of most of the male nude statuary
sculpted by the Greeks and even by the Renaissance Italians. Nobody has
interpreted the statue of a young David or a muscular Adam (the perpetrator of
the “Adamic” sin!) with a small and limp phallus in
The interesting and intriguing point to underscore here is that Ganesha being a “pagan” god, with juicy legends about his origin, is an object of curiosity to those who really have no stake in stuff Hindu. I, for one, would neither castigate Courtright for his disappointment with or disapproval of the state of Ganesha’s trunk (or phallus) nor applaud the professor’s critics, but I really give a damn to the <Siddhidata’s> trunk with the conviction that he being a Hindu god and especially related to his ithyphallic father Shiva, would surely rise to the occasion with his virility at the appropriate time.
Bastante!
Narasingha Sil
Subject: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability
To: RISA Academic Discussion List
From: Gene R. Thursby
Date: Sat,
RISA Colleagues,
I deeply respect the contributions of Antonio de Nicolas to global or at any rate international and intercultural philosophy and as a historian and theorist of education. I welcome the catalyst to discussion that he posted today under the topic of the scholar’s accountability. What he wrote today is a model of clarity (indeed a kind of manifesto) without ambiguity that leaves no room to doubt where responsibility lies and what kind of responsibility it is.
He addresses a perennial issue concerning the formulation and reception of scholarly (or at any rate academic or even official administrative) writing. He does so under the long shadow of courts of law, guild courts, and the court(s) of public opinion. Equally relevant is the much shorter shadow of post-colonial studies. One could call this a “hangover” issue that affects some peoples and cultures more than others, but in the end affects everyone—except perhaps for an imaginary Aryan or two.
The explicit center of this current version of the controversy is the deva [god] Ganesa, and so it may be inevitable that the efforts of his contemporary respecters, devotees, and partisans recall to mind earlier “self-respect as Ganesa-respect” movements such as the well-known one sparked by B. G. Tilak (see, among many available sources: Richard G. Cashman, The Myth of the Lokamanya: Tilak and Mass Politics in Maharashtra, Berkeley, 1975) under the conditions of colonialism.
Let us consider the several points of the analysis and proposal offered by Dr. de Nicolas.
(A) The Enlistment or “Rise Up” Section
We might consider what Antonio de Nicolas today proposed is the responsibility of “the court of Indic studies scholars and the Universities we serve.”
(1) We cannot be silent in “the case of Dr. Paul Courtright and his thesis on Ganesha”
[Comment: Please refer to Robert C. Solomon, The Passions, 1976; 1993 for a creative discussion that connects the adversarial, juridical model and the passion of anger.]
(2) “is it our obligation as such scholars to call into question the scholarship of Dr. Paul Courtright and demand a corrective of some kind?”
[Comment: This is a rhetoric question that entails or implies only an answer in the affirmative.]
(3) “did he act irresponsibly and unscholarly in such a manner that both his freedom of speech and his freedom to teach are both in jeopardy?”
[Comment: There is hardly a higher price that could be paid in a world constituted by speech and writing. It is the symbolic equivalent of a death penalty.]
(B) The Axiomatic or Self-Evident Section
(1) “The first responsibility of a scholar in describing, writing, speaking, teaching other cultures is to present those cultures or the elements of those cultures in the same manner those cultures are viewed by themselves and by the people of those cultures.”
[Comment: This is one of the root questions in the field of Religious Studies and several humanities and social sciences disciplines. Among the many ways this question has been argued, each RISA member may have their own favorites. I repeatedly reread W. Brede Kristensen, The Meaning of Religion; Lectures in the Phenomenology of Religion (tr. by John B. Carman), 1960; Wayne Proudfoot, Religious Experience, 1985; and Russell T. McCutcheon, Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion, 2001—an admittedly provincial if not parochial set of sources.]
(2) “If not, then the scholar is using those cultures in name only and his goal is their destruction, if not in intention at least in fact.”
[Comment: Here is the law of excluded middle at work. What is excluded? Too much I think, even without adverting to Martin Buber.]
(3) “‘The flaccid phallus of Ganesha’ is an invention of the author when this is not the only depiction of Ganesha, since He appears in other statues with large erection.”
[Comment: Analogically, at the human level it is an up and down process due to circadian rhythms of activity even without external stimulation. With reference to Ganesa, Dr. de Nicolas is surely correct. Moreover, it is unwise to attribute to others whether human or extrahuman and whether male or female a “flaccid phallus.” At this point I agree fully with the potent observation put forward by Antonio de Nicolas about the inappropriate or at least incautious formulation. Besides, Lord Ganesa already had suffered enough—alien head, only one surviving tusk, etc. —which in no wise diminished his potency, attractiveness, nor authority.]
(4) “A scholar who does not know how to present other cultures by their own criteria should not be allowed to teach those cultures. His freedom of speech is not guaranteed by his ignorance.”
[Comment: Having been myself foolish and ignorant many times in the classroom for more than 30 years, I should refrain from comment. However, I wish to claim that the weight of cases concerning “academic freedom” seems to be in the direction of protection for mistaken but not maliciously intended, unwise, and unpopular forms of speech and other expression. I agree with Dr. de Nicolas that “know how to [re]present other cultures by their own criteria” is at the least an ideal, and approximation of it is a requirement in order to earn the compliment of “competent” but this not a simple, unequivocal, non-complex standard. Why? In the first instance because “a culture” is in part a given and in part a construct. In the second instance because it is rare that a human being would live, love, work, and reflect strictly within the range of a monocultural existence. In the third instance because the range and boundaries of a culture are perhaps inevitably and in fact most often matters of contest or contention (please refer to published lectures by a great contender and psychoanalytic anthropologist - Gananath Obeyesekere, The Work of Culture: Symbolic Transformation in Psychoanalysis and Anthropology, 1990).
(C) The Action-toward-Resolution Section
(1) “Freedom stops here.”
[Comment: It is important to me that freedom does not stop. Obvious, even dire, consequences may begin at some point. In any case, the best consequence of the current controversy so far is represented by Antonio de Nicolas. He brought this matter to a suitable forum for discussion and has presented it with a clarity and force of expression sufficient to win attention for it. My thanks go to him for this excellent public service.]
(2) “Who is the Western Scholar that can use his freedom of speech (but not his responsibility to know better) in order to destroy, dethrone, or laugh at a God made naked for that purpose or consequence?”
[Comment: Socrates maybe? Please refer to the Euthyphro, probably Plato’s earliest dialogue.]
(3) “
[Comment: This is a well-stated and worthy proposal. It would not, of course, prevent unforeseen consequences such as cease-and-desist orders directed toward protesters, etc. Law courts have been known for centuries in Indic or Hindu culture (I am not proposing that they are one and the same) to perpetrate frauds, miscarriages of justice, and a huge amount of time-wasting. Once a dispute is institutionalized, many of its participants may face institutionalization, too.]
In all good faith and without irony, my thanks to Antonio de Nicolas and my hope that a discerning discussion may follow.
From: Dr. K. Loganathan
[Abhinava msg #1217]
Date:
Dear Sunthar
I am glad you are trying to bring to attention the metaphysics of laughter, smile and so forth which also figure in Tamil Saivite thinking. Appar speaks eloquently of the Pun Cirippu BEING as Siva Nadarajah wears on His lips. Tirumular attends to the same in the context of his Mantrayana study of Dance of Bliss which includes laughter. The following verse may interest you.
There are a few more at the following address:
http://arutkural.tripod.com/tolcampus/mantrayana/mantrayana-3.htm
Loga
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
910
aananatam aanantam onRu enRu aRaintida
aanantam aanantam aa-ii-uu-ee-oom enRu aRaintu idam
aanantam aanantam anjcumatu aayidum
aanantam aanantam am-hriim am-ksam aam aakumee
Meaning:
When the anma transcends even the thousand petalled Lotus, it will be non alien with BEING, the Ever Blissful and the flooding bliss in the interior of the soul with give rise to spontaneous outpourings of divine laughter. Such lyrics will be agitated by the aksaras aa-ii-uu-ee-oom. At this point the mantras na-ma-si-vaa-ya that have been ruling the mind will coalesce with the above establishing only the state of immense bliss. Then as further experiences of this Divine Bliss are continued, there will come to prevail the asaba mantras am-hiriim and am-ksam-aam that will install the Bliss of Deep Silence
Comments
The higher reaches of the inward metaphysical journey are one of joy and happiness and hence full of laughter and NOT at all one of sufferings and sadness. BEING is Wholly Blissful and the anma becomes blissful only by being one-with such a BEING. This is what happens as one recites the subtle version of the mantra na-ma-si-vaa-ya with the understanding of how they configure the mind by regulating the cognitive processes. The untamable stream of consciousness forever creating an inner stress with implanting an unchanging flow of the the-tic consciousness, is transcended when the anma attains the mantra world described as the Sahasra TaLam, the location of the thousand petalled Lotus, the originating source of everything divine. When the soul transcends even this, it liberates itself completely from the phenomenal world and at which point it has only BEING as the GROUND to be with and sustain itself.
The Bliss of Sivaanantam comes to flood the soul and which also become the substance of moving divine lyrics such as Tiruvaacakam and so forth and in which there is NO ego at all but only an egoless spontaneity.
Then comes to prevail the asaba
mantras, the mantras that lift up the soul even to higher grounds, the Tillai
Ambalam itself and where, impossible of speech of whatever kind, the anma enjoys
the Supreme Bliss of being totally one-with BEING and in Deep Silence.
Subject: Re: Book on Ganesha
removed by Publisher
From: Antonio de
Nicolas [Abhinava
msg #1219]
Date:
From:
[email protected]
Reply-to:
[email protected]
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Dear Dr. Rao,
Thanks for your mail of
Firstly, I am obliged that you have gone through the book and made us aware about the extremely objectionable passages including the cover of the book. In fact, the book was published in 1985 by OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS and we never heard any adverse comments, hence without getting that reviewed we undertook the publication since it was originally published by an internationally established publisher. We did not care to go through the book thinking that this would be academically well acceptable.
We are extremely sorry that the content of the book has hurt the sentiments of our beloved readers and the community at large. We offer our SINCEREST APOLOGIES to all our readers.
We have already withdrawn the circulation of the book from the market and discontinued the sale. Further, we ensure that no such lapse shall ever occur in future. This need not be reiterated that MLBD has ever published any such offensive matter knowingly in the entire history of their publication for the last 100 years. Being one of the best known publishers devoted to Hinduism and ancient Indian culture we would never think to tarnish the image of any religion. This has been an omission on our part and we are really apologetic to the readers for its publication.
May we request you to kindly circulate our letter of apology to various religious organisations, centres, and the Hindu community at large. A press release for the withdrawal of the circulation of the book has already been issued. We are also sending copies of this mail to various people around the world and would also like to have the E-mail addresses of other organisations, who we can inform for further circulation of this mail.
ONCE AGAIN WE REGRET FOR THE PUBLICATION OF THE AFORESAID BOOK AND THANKS FOR INFORMING US OF SUCH OBJECTIONS.
With kind regards,
Sincerely,
Rajeev Jain
---------------------------------------------
Motilal Banarsidass Publishers
41,
Delhi-110007,
(India)
Tel: (011)
23974826, 23918335, 23911985, 23932747
(011) 25795180, 25793423, 25797356
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From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
[Abhinava msg #1220]
Date:
I have thought it appropriate to preface this
second installment from the RISA-L listserv (reserved for ‘professional
‘Indologists’, i.e., those who make their living by telling Indians [what] they
really are as opposed to who they think they are...) with this personal message
from Prof. Paul Courtright (his reply to a member of the Navya-Shastra forum),
that I wholly endorse.
�
pay close attention to the manner
in which what is a burning question for Hindus, and potential threat to the
whole establishment (our unfortunate author is just a small fish...a
scapegoat?), is becoming gradually drowned in a sea of bibliographic references
and cross-references.
�
how is it that (not just Indian)
publishers (like Motilal Banarsidas) circulate a book without first having read
it and then withdraw it from the market without any due process? The problem is
that even ‘respectable’ American institutions like SUNY Press are guilty of such
censorship (going against even the wishes of the editors of their books...)—it’s
just that the ‘Indology’ business here operates far more insidiously...
Sunthar
[rest of this thread
at Antonio de Nicol�s, Re: Book on Ganesha removed by Publisher]
This reply came from Mr. Courtright in reply to my letter
protesting about
-----
Original Message ----- From: Paul B. Courtright Under the circumstances of the vicious distortions and attacks on my work, I can only respond to those who have read my work. Don’t let others think for you; read and then draw your own conclusions. If you have specific questions about my interpretation after having read the book I will try, as time and energy permit, to correspond with you. Regards, Paul B. Courtright, Professor and Interim Chairperson, 2003-04 Department of Religion, |
Subject: Re: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability
To: “RISA Academic Discussion List”
From: Stephen Brown
Date:
Friends;
De Nicolas, while admittedly making his points quite succinctly, fails (in my opinion) to make a particularly convincing argument. There is one issue in this argument however upon which I am compelled to comment. 1st) The insider perspective is the only valuable, indeed the only reasonable perspective one may use to approach an issue. He states this clearly: “The first responsibility of a scholar in describing, writing, speaking, teaching other cultures is to present those cultures or the elements of those cultures in the same manner those cultures are viewed by themselves and by the people of those cultures. If not, then the scholar is using those cultures in name only and his goal is their destruction, if not in intention at least in fact.”
By whom is this determined? It strikes me that the anthropology community and the portions of the religious studies community whose work is best categorized as “religious anthropology” have long discussed the relative value of “etic” (observer) and “emic” (insider) perspectives. Historically, in western religious scholarship on eastern religions the Etic perspective has won out. We have been observers of another’s physical practice and textual tradition. Even though the field has been rife with would-be observers turned practitioners who write profusely and often well on the subject of Asian religious practices and ideas, the etic has won the day. Regardless of the nature of any scholar’s work, be it etic or emic, it can do little more than offer a well reasoned opinion and interpretation. The main reason, it seems, for this debate is developing a discipline-wide agreement on which presents the most “accurate perspective”, which would seem at first glance to echo De Nicholas’ idea, but to my mind has quite a different result. In accepting as valuable the etic perspective we have accepted the validity of presenting another culture’s ideas and theologies from a perspective which is intentionally different from its own. That perspective has no imperative to agree with the observed community on its actions.
That being the case, who in fact is the scholar responsible to in presenting his opinion? De Nicholas would have us think that we are first responsible to the community observed, and second to the academic community at large. In this, I am compelled to agree with De Nicholas in spirit, but not in application. Indeed it is the case that we have a duty as scholars to present what we see accurately, but my disagreement with De Nicholas lies in the interpretation of the word accurately. He would have us think, as I said above, that the insider opinion is the only valid one. Interpretive scholarship, however, has no room for the restriction of agreeing with every insider on how to describe and interpret what one sees in studying and observing any given culture and its textual/iconic legacy. Description, as the scholar sees it, and interpretation in logical and careful ways are the imperatives of the field. To present a perspective which the scholar has good reason to believe is correct is his/her charge, not towing the party line. Furthermore, it is not the job of any university or academic body to castigate and censure a scholar for presenting his/her well argued and supported argument simply because they are politically unpopular. De Nicholas’ statement that to present a perspective on a culture which runs counter to the way that culture perceives itself is either intentionally or unintentionally destructive stands as just that, a statement, unsupported by evidence. Why should we presume that any disagreement is harmful? Is it not our job as scholars to entertain opinions of all colors, and to better inform ourselves better by expanding our horizons? I agree that academia and universities have the responsibility of maintaining the general quality of scholarship, and should not allow vicious and vituperative political and religious opinions to bear the name academia. There is absolutely no reasonable argument, in my opinion, to support the opinion that honest and careful scholarship which is politically unpopular fits into that category of vitriol.
De Nicolas would have us publicly censure Professor Courtright for his volume on Ganesh first published in 1985. For what purpose? What has Courtright done that merits such a reproach? Some may find his interpretation of the Ganesha myth as a reinterpretation and resolution (not historically, but theoretically) of the Freudian Oedipus complex incompatible with modern mainstream Hindu understandings of that same myth. However, that fact makes his argument neither dangerous nor inaccurate. In the same way, the presence of statuary of Ganesha with an erect phallus does not disprove nor invalidate the presence of statuary displaying a flaccid phallus. The Courtright volume does not insert sexuality into a sexuality devoid matrix, themes of sexuality are prominent not only the literature of Ganesh, but also many of the other Hindu gods. Courtright does not, in my reading of the volume, ridicule nor devalue the devata Ganapati, nor any of his manifold manifestations.
Thank you;
Stephen Brown
Subject: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability
To: RISA Academic Discussion List
From: Richard Mahoney
Date:
On
[snip]
Point number one: The first responsibility of a scholar in describing, writing, speaking, teaching other cultures is to present those cultures or the elements of those cultures in the same manner those cultures are viewed by themselves and by the people of those cultures.
[snip]
But even if this was one’s intention, how hard it would be to accomplish! For comments on the complex and difficult process of (textual) interpretation see:
Ruegg, D. S., “Some reflections of the place of philosophy
in the study of Buddhism,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist
Studies (
Griffiths, P. J., “Buddhist Hybrid English: Some notes on
philology and hermeneutics for buddhologists,” Journal
of the International Association of Buddhist Studies (
Tuck, A. P., Comparative Philosophy and the Philosophy of Scholarship: On the Western Interpretation of N�g�rjuna (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).
G�mez, L., “Unspoken paradigms: Meanderings through the
metaphors of a field,” Journal of the International
Association of Buddhist Studies (
Tillemans, T. J. F., “Remarks on philology,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies
(
Steinkellner,
E., “The logic of the ``svabh�vahetu’’ in Dharmak�rti’s ``V�dany�ya’’,” in:
Steinkellner, E., ed., Studies in the Buddhist Epistemological Tradition:
Proceedings of the Second International Dharmak�rti Conference, Vienna, June 11-16, 1989
(�sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse,
Dekschriften, 222 Band., Wein: Verlag der �sterreichischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, 1991), vol. 8 of Beitr�ge zur Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte
Asiens, pp. 311-324.
Best regards,
Richard Mahoney
Subject: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability
To: RISA Academic Discussion List
From: Gene R. Thursby
Date:
The clamor for a “case against Courtright” proceeds from a claim that his writing (which merits repeated and close reading as one basis for assessing the appropriateness of that claim) has had or could have an effect or result of perpetrating “hate-crimes” (source: the petition as cited earlier in this thread by John Richard Pincince of the University of Hawaii) because his book supposedly contains “falsehood, or opinions” that at some point risk the result that it could “inflict enormous pain on believers” who will have their feelings hurt and their religion demeaned if Ganesha is not described with scrupulous accuracy as they believe him to be and without the addition of any opinion (source: de Nicolas who contributed the first posting to this thread and who added that “Freedom stops here. Opinions are not the food of the classroom at the hands of Professors.”—Incidentally I think of that restriction on opinion as the basis for the “Hokey Pokey” theory of education for which see the National Institutes of Health site at
http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/hokey.htm ).
The posts from Brown and Mahoney move the discussion toward a key issue entailed in the current clamor but that also should be of interest beyond this current flap. This key issue Stephen Brown has posed in terms of Kenneth Pike’s distinction between “‘etic’ (observer) and ‘emic’ (insider) perspectives.” The distinction, although now widely employed, was the subject of intense discussion between Pike and the late Marvin Harris, a discussion that went so far as to draw in the esteemed Willard Van Orman Quine
(http://www.ethnologue.com/show_serial.asp?name=Frontiers+of+Anthropology).
Brown, at any rate, proposes: “In accepting as
valuable the etic perspective we have accepted the validity of presenting
another cultures ideas and theologies from a perspective which is intentionally
different from its own. That perspective has no imperative to agree with the
observed community on its actions.”—or its beliefs or its own sources. Mahoney,
writing from
My earlier post to this thread cited but three sources that have influenced how I look at this key issue which I now see in terms of the question: what sources of authority are involved in academic scholarship in Religious Studies in addition to Self and Other or Us and Them. For all his emphasis on persons and the interpersonal dimensions of Religious Studies, and for all of his reservations about method, the last Wilfred Cantwell Smith certainly acknowledged sources of authority in addition to persons—but not with quite the objectivism (if it may be put that way) of Antonio de Nicolas.
Among the three sources I cited, only the first—W. Brede Kristensen—claimed that the Other should be regarded as the (sole?) authority. (For brief mention of Kristensen in an otherwise relevant context, see
http://www.multifaithnet.org/mfnopenaccess/research/online/seminar/pgphenom.htm .)
Wayne Proudfoot proposed a two-step approach. In the first step the scholar demonstrates her or his competence by showing herself or himself capable of representing some religious ‘X’ as its experiencer or proponent or believer would have it to be. In the second step, moving beyond phenomenology to critical analysis which Proudfoot supposes is the real test of scholarly acumen one is free from that responsibility to “the Other” that is subjected to study and interpretation. Without the movement from step one to step two, according to Proudfoot “The subject’s identifying description becomes normative for purposes of explanation, and inquiry is blocked to insure that the subject’s own explanation of his [or her] experience is not contested.” (For context and quote, see
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/gthursby/0000/pdfoot.htm).
Russell T. McCutcheon (http://www.as.ua.edu/rel/mccutch.html) in his book Critics Not Caretakers and elsewhere, shifts the ground without remainder to Proudfoot’s second step and turns almost everything and everyone into data or grist for the mill, giving no quarter to religious “special pleading.”
But in addition to the Self/Other or Us/Them dimension that receives focal attention in Kristensen, Proudfoot, and McCutcheon, there are other factors (some of them highlighted by Wilfred Cantwell Smith and not peculiar to Religious Studies) that make claims on the scholar’s allegiance or loyalty. One of them, for better or worse, is a research tradition or genealogy of scholarship. Among these is a Freudian or psychoanalytic tradition, to which Stephen Brown referred and on which some of Courtright’s interpretive proposals were based.
This kind of issue—how to contextualize the scholar’s research projects (beyond a rote or mirroring objectivist model)—merits repeated discussion on this list.
The current flap itself mirrors earlier ones. For instance the complaint a decade ago that Harjot Oberoi ought not occupy a “community” chair of Sikh Studies because his book The Construction of Religious Boundaries represented Sikh history inaccurately and inappropriately. Ironic in the context of the current flap since in a way Oberoi had done too much historical study and it is claimed that Courtright has done too little. Too much or too little? Apparently people can find their feelings hurt (or inflamed) either way. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of efforts to silence scholars whose work does not neatly bridge the emic-etic gap or remain safely within the realm of the emic as “theology” rather than Religious Studies.
As it happened, there was an attempt to have
Oberoi’s book proscribed in
Gene Thursby
Subject: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability
To: RISA Academic Discussion List
From: Patrick Olivelle
Date:
This “storm” over Paul Courtright’s book is baffling, given that it was originally published by Oxford University Press in 1985, almost twenty years ago! A point that has not been made in the conversation. I assume that it came to the attention of certain people only when a re-print was issued by Motilal.
Some say that the book is not “historical”, not “accurate”—with the implication that all scholarly books need to be both. The scholarly controversies surrounding a variety of subjects—in the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities—show that some scholars do not think that the works of other scholars are either historical or accurate. But that is the marketplace of ideas, that is why free expression of scholarly opinion is so exhilarating. If we were not to “offend” any believer of any religious persuasion with what we write, then we may as well give up the academic study of religion. Let those who feel that Paul’s book is inaccurate, then write rebuttals or “accurate” histories. That would be most welcome. But to shut people up through “signature campaigns” aimed at influencing institutions and intimidating scholars is beneath contempt.
Thanks.
Patrick Olivelle
Subject: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability & protective strategies
To: RISA Academic Discussion List
From: John Cort
Date:
Wayne Proudfoot in his excellent 1985 Religious Experience (U Cal Press) devotes an entire chapter to issues of explanation in the study of religion. Of particular relevance here is his discussion on pp. 199-209 of what he calls “protective strategies,” arguments “that all accounts of religious experience must be acceptable to the subject.” Proudfoot argues, “This requirement gains its appeal from the consideration that a religious experience, belief, or practice must be identified under the description employed by the subject; but it exhibits confusion when it is extended to preclude explanatory hypotheses that differ from those of the subject.” I recommend the remainder of his lucid discussion to everyone.
in peace -- John Cort
Subject: [RISA-L] Shiv Sena
comment on Courtright book
To: RISA Academic Discussion List
From: Joyce Flueckiger
Date:
For our collective information: I just received this
from a friend in
From: Narula, Vikas
Sent:
To: NDLst_PressDist_Broad
Subject: RELIGION-GANESH-BUSH-SHIV SENA
Importance: High
PRIO
RELIGION-GANESH-BUSH-SHIV SENA
Shiv Sena shoots letter to Bush
over Ganesha’s obscene picture New Delhi, Nov 3 (UNI) Offended by a nearly naked
depiction of Lord Ganesha on the cover of a US publication, the Shiv Sena has
dashed off a letter to American President George W. Bush, demanding its
immediate withdrawal from the circulation and an unqualified apology by the
author.
“Amori University Professor Paul Courtright’s book - ‘Ganesha,
Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings’ - contains not only a naked depiction of
the popular Hindu deity on the cover but also contains reprehensible
misrepresentation of facts about Him,” Shiv Sena Delhi unit Vice-President
Abhimanyu Gulati
complained in his letter. The letter alleges that the author has included
“fictitious accounts of Lord Ganesha in the book which is also embellished with
a naked, obscene photograph” of the deity.
“This is an affront to popular Hindu sensibility and an assault on the Hindu
religion, which cannot be tolerated by us,” Mr Gulati said.
The Shiv Sena leader also
pointed out that it was not the first incident of its kind in the
Mr Gulati said another
outrage against the Hindu feeling was committed in
“We, therefore, appeal to
you to ensure that the academician’s publication is immediately withdrawn from
circulation,” he said in his letter to the
“Besides, the author must
be asked to tender an unqualified apology to the billions of Hindus for hurting
their faith and religious sensibility.
From: Anthony Appleyard
Date:
Sunthar wrote:
...the underlying meaning: why did the Indians invest so much of their creativity, and over so many centuries, into producing such ‘grotesque’ figures as the ‘lord of the (disfigured) hosts’ (gaNa-pati)? ...
It could be that originally Ganesha was thought of
being completely an elephant, and his human parts came later. Similar happened
to some of the gods of Ancient Egypt: originally many of them were thought of as
being animals (ibis, jackal, scarab beetle, crocodile, etc), and later they
changed into human shapes with animal heads.
[response to Sunthar’s post at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/1213]
Subject: Is Lord Ganesha an ‘African’ God? Yes, in the same
sense that Picasso’s art is ‘primitive’!
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date: Tue Nov 4, 2003;
Hello Anthony,
Though practically all cultures have cherished
fantastic (including half-human) animals in the bestiary of their imagination,
‘Hindu’ India seems have offered a fertile soil for such ‘exotic’ iconography to
not only flourish but find a pride of place in the religious system, and this
already from the Indus-Sarasvat� civilization. In fact, S. Kalyanaraman has
recently posted here (the image of)
a terra-cotta elephant that could well have been a prototype of Lord GaNeza.
This and other, even more extravagantly hybrid, animal (including entirely non-human) representations
probably go back to the African substratum of the ‘Dravidian’ presence in
North-West
However, the
specifically Egyptian (i.e., ‘human’) developments of this imagery have been
attributed to the admixture, especially in the Nile Delta, of
dominant influences from Mesopotamia that, likewise, made themselves felt very
strongly on the Sindh-Gujarat coast from at least around 2500 BC if not
earlier. It seems to me that these developments took a unique turn in
What is the advantage of depicting a deity in
half-human/half-animal form? L�vi-Strauss has noted long ago, in what has become
(yet another inane) ‘structuralist’ clich�, that, for the natives of the
Americas, animals are not only good for eating (I’m sure Lord GaNeza would drop
his modaka for just a second here to trumpet a
resounding ‘YES’!) but for *thinking*: Hindu esotericism works through
symbolic strategies whereby several layers of (even conflicting) meaning are
superposed within a single ‘overdetermined’ image. For example, in the
Mah�bh�rata, the “Burning of the
So now you
know why Lord GaNeza has taken refuge from old manuscripts rotting away in (the
censored Indian ‘pornography’ section of?) some god-forsaken libraries
(frequented only by inquisitive young Hindus like Sathia?) to the more
hospitable climate of
Sunthar
[rest of this thread at Re:
iconography of Ganesha - why not start by comparing him with the Vid�Saka (a
real ‘gourmet’ if there was one...)?]
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date: Wed Nov 5, 2003;
....bearing the very form of (the sacred syllable) AUM-k�ra, O
crooked-trunked!
praNava-svar�pam vakra-tuNDam
(Muttuswami Dikshitar, V�t�pi GaNapatim bhaje’ham - “I worship Lord
GaNeza of V�t�pi”)
Brahm� laughed scornfully: “How could the Brahman, free of all
attachment, lustily sport with his wife in the company of his troop of deformed
churn-goblins (pramatha)?” However, Rudra’s
supremacy was finally reconfirmed by the esoteric sound-syllable, Omk�ra,
quintessence of the Veda and most condensed symbol of Brahman, who pointed out
that Shiva’s wife is not adventitious to her husband but on the contrary
embodies his own blissful essence. [ Despite its general associations
with ritual purity, the formless Omk�ra, who assumes (human) form to laughingly
reconfirm the eternal sexual biunity (mithuna)
or twin (y�mala) nature of Siva, is itself
already identified as a Mithuna (sexed couple) in Ch�ndogya Upanishad
(I.1.6); cf. note 115 infra.
For the transgressive significance of Omk�ra’s laughter, see
Elizabeth Visuvalingam, The Origin-myth of the Brahmanicide Bhairava (1989)
Concealment of his ‘purified’ ritual(ized) speech (IV.3: g�Dha-pavitra-v�Nih) and
behavior (IV.2: g�Dha-vratah) by the erudite ‘Brahman par excellence’
(mah�-br�hmaNa), who thereby seeks to transform his
knowledge into consummate penance (III.19, IV.1), suggests that much of his
incoherent rambling was only the comic disguise assumed by the enigmatic br�hman,
whose “purest” essence was Omk�ra (V.27: v�g-vizuddhah). The deformed
(Mah�-)GaNapati, ‘Lord of the PramaThas,’ who presides over the comic sentiment
(h�sya)
in the Sanskrit drama, is himself born from Omk�ra’s bi-unity (mithuna). Issuing thunderously from the
sacrificial stake in the form of the cosmic linga, Omk�ra’s mysterious laughter, while
affirming the supremacy of Rudra, is indistinguishable from the violent laughter
(aTTah�sa) of the
‘Great God’ (Mah�deva) himself.
Sunthar V., Divine Purity and Demoniac Power: A Semiotic definition of
Transgressive Sacrality (1989)
Dear Loga, Varmhaji and cousin Rajan,
It seems to me that Loga has taken us into the crux
of the problem of GaNeza by attempting to integrate the ‘psychoanalytic’
dimension of the ‘homely’ Pur�nic myth with the metaphysical notion of
‘autonomy’ (sv�tantrya—the very core of
Abhinavagupta’s teaching!) through the notion of the Son becoming independent of
(both Father and) Mother. Varmhaji has given us all a helping hand by pointing
out that not only is GaNeza (like the P�zupata and the Vid�Saka) an embodiment
of AUM-k�ra, but that the privileged glyph for the latter, though consisting of
a stylized union of the letters for A U M, does indeed resemble (at least for
anyone who has developed the Hindu eye for abstractionist art) the shape of
GaNeza: a pot-belly surmounted by a head in profile with a gracefully curved
trunk reaching out for a bowl containing a modaka!
The question before us now is whether this
invocation of OMk�ra helps redeem our innocent Pillaiy�r (who, like the clownish
P�zupata, seems to be courting ridicule and abuse from every side...) of any
sexual symbolism and implications. First of all, with the elephant-trunked god
so securely ensconced at the ‘root support’ (m�l�dh�ra) at the base of the spinal column, would it
be at all surprising if this formless supreme (Mah�-)Brahman found it (in-?)
appropriate to assume the external form of whatever else might have been hanging
around there? Whereas, as we have already seen, the fascination with the
symbolic possibilities of the elephant (rhino, bull, etc.) already goes back to
the Indus-Sarasvat� civilization, its infusion with the idea of sexual union (mithuna) goes back at least to the Ch�ndogya UpaniSad.
In subsequent Pur�nic mythology, OMk�ra divides into a mating couple of
elephants that reunite to form the god GaNeza (if my memory of Wendy isn’t
playing tricks with me here...). In the glyph for OMk�ra, the ‘bowl with the
modaka’ is called the bindu (‘point’ ) which is also the Sanskrit word for
what Alice Getty euphemistically calls the ‘germ of life’ (which does not
exclude the metaphysical meanings related to ‘sound’ as in n�da, bindu, kal�, etc.)
What then is
the relation between sexuality and autonomy that have been condensed into the
single figure of GaNeza, the embodiment of AUM? If the root cause of bondage and
all its discontents is eros—that in Freud’s pessimistic materialist view
of the human organism, civilization would never be able to escape—then
tantricism affirms freedom only by diving into its depths (like the serpent
Ahir-Budhnya?) and transmuting its ‘unconscious’ nature by illuminating its
darkness with the light of Consciousness (Cit). Whether this amounts to a
rejection of incest, or the violation of this fundamental taboo upon which all
societies are founded (and upon which L�vi-Strauss builds his entire
‘anthropological’ edifice), or rather the ‘neutralization’ of its invisible hold
upon the psyche through its inward (symbolic) assumption...you are free to pick
your choice!
Thanks to Rajan for bringing some clarity into this
discussion by throwing his ‘humanist’ spanner into Loga’s metaphysical works...
Sunthar
P.S. The problem with Courtright’s ‘father-castrates-son’
interpretation of the broken-tusk is that Bhairava also decapitates his father
Brahm�...
[rest of this thread at
Is Lord Ganesha an ‘African’ God? Yes, in the same sense that Picasso’s art is
‘primitive’!]
From: Ram Varmha
Date: Wed Nov 5, 2003 11:19 am
Dr. Loganathan,
Your explanation of the
shape of Ganesha’s body is partly true. Actually, it is the entire body of
Ganesh that is considered to be in the form of
“Omkara Roopam
Ganesham Bhajema,
Pranava Swaroopam Ganesham Bhajema,
Regards,
Ram
“Dr. K.Loganathan” wrote:
[Loga’s full post at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/1222]
Dear Thurairaja
4. This is what Siva CURES by replacing the human head of such a victim with
elephant head. But why the elephant head?
The elephant head is a natural object that comes closest to resembling the
shape of Ongkaram and for which reason Ganapati is the Muulaathara Muurtti, the
Icon that regulates the Siddhies and Buddhies. When the normal head is replaced
with the elephant head what happens is the transmutation of the personality of
the son into one who would be dominated in the head i.e. in thinking about
METAPHYSICAL matters and as prompted by Ongkaram, the Primordial Logos.
This means that when the son becomes Metaphysical, he becomes autonomous and
frees himself from being a victim of his mother’s substitution behavior, an
irrational clinging onto him instead of her husband and which is the proper
thing to do. The
metaphysical illuminations that would destroy the abnormal attachment and make
him function as an individual on his own right and push ahead in his
metaphysical sojourn and enjoy more and more real freedom. This also restores
the Mother and puts her back with the authentic relationship between a man and
woman and which remains essentially sexual till the ardhanar� [androgyne] icon form is
attained and the anma [�tm� =
‘Self’] is transmuted to
that shape.
Loga
[response to Rajan’s post at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/1218]
[My comments are on the following RISA-L exchange on the cover photo of Courtright’s book]
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date: Wed Nov 5, 2003;
“Amori [sic] University Professor Paul Courtright’s book -
‘Ganesha, Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings’ - contains not only a naked
depiction of the popular Hindu deity on the cover but also contains
reprehensible misrepresentation of facts about Him,” Shiv Sena Delhi unit
Vice-President Abhimanyu Gulati complained in his letter. The letter alleges
that the author has included “fictitious accounts of Lord Ganesha in the book
which is also embellished with a naked, obscene photograph” of the deity. “This
is an affront to popular Hindu sensibility and an assault on the Hindu religion,
which cannot be tolerated by us,” Mr Gulati said. The Shiv Sena leader also
pointed out that it was not the first incident of its kind in the
At home as a kid in
Indeed, what
was the point of splashing such an (admittedly) atypical image of the God of
Wisdom on the cover of a book that purports, through a ‘psychoanalysis’ (of an
elephant?), to draw sweeping generalizations on the (dysfunctional?) Hindu
family that even Christians find objectionable? Regardless of what we think of
the Shiva Sena (and ‘fascists’ like V.S. Naipaul who have spoken up for
them...), can ‘Indologists’ who are unable (or unwilling?) to read (not merely)
between the lines of the above statement, be entrusted with interpreting our
culture?
Sunthar
Subject: [RISA-L] Naked
Picture
From: Lance
Nelson
Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2003 08:10:48 -0800
Re the cover of the MLBD
edition of Paul Courtright’s Ganesha book, I have seen similarly revealing
“naked” images of the baby
Lance
----------------------
Lance Nelson
Theology & Religious
Studies
Subject: Re: [RISA-L] Naked
Picture
From: Swami Tyagananda
Date:
Lance, this is the first time in my
life that I saw the image/picture of the naked Ganesha. Which is not to say that
Paul Courtright’s book has invented it. But a naked Ganesha is certainly not a
“tradition” the way a naked baby
Swami Tyagananda
Vedanta Society
Subject: Re: [RISA-L] Naked Picture
From: Patrick Olivelle
Date:
Indeed, I have a bronze statue of a
naked baby Ganesha in the crawling position, right next to my baby
Patrick
Subject: Re: [RISA-L] Naked Picture
To: “RISA Academic Discussion List”
From: “jkirk”
Date:
Yes, well nowadays one
cannot even take photos of one’s own naked babies
without being turned into
the police as a child molester by the persons
developing the films.
This is here.....not in
JK
[Joyce’s response, along with visual commentary, to my post on the discussion above – check out the photo]
Subject: To Cavort or Not To Cavort...You Be The Judge
From: Lady Joyce
Date: Thu Nov 6, 2003;
Much like pornography,
as defined by the US Supreme Court,
“you know it when you see it”
http://www.omshaantih.com/Courtcavort.html
Ganesha saranam
saranam Ganesha...
Joyce
Subject: On the infantilization and ‘nazification’ of Hindu culture - a picture is worth a thousand words!
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date: Fri Nov 7, 2003;
Hello “Lady Joyce”,
Thanks for the link to the lovely image of the
toe-sucking Baby Krishna that ought to have accompanied my post on the GaNeza
cavorting on the cover of the withdrawn Motilal Banarsidas book (that Antonio,
below, has now obligingly posted on the RISA-L list). However, the one that
adorned our home didn’t have any clothes on (though retaining some ornaments
like the peacock-feather) and not in the sort of pose that might have been
assumed by a Michelangelo sculpture intended to grace the
When I asked
“is Indian culture becoming infantilized?,” I chose my wording carefully to
suggest that to some extent Indians were indeed beginning to live up to the
stereotyped image(s) being projected upon them, just as Muslims the world over
are now starting to identify themselves with Al Qaida (itself largely a
co-creation of American foreign policy...), and the “black is beautiful”
movement here has internalized, through defiance, suburban white stereotypes of
inner city culture (and ‘delinquent gypsies’?). How is it that American
specialists of Islam bend over backwards, even after 9/11 (and perhaps rightly
so?), to dissociate ben Laden from the Quran (despite its conditional advocacy
of jihad), whereas the Indologists have no hesitation in plastering the
Nazi manifesto onto the iconography of GaNeza and reading back its ideology into
(Krishna’s role in) the Bhagavad G�t� (despite the fact that the same Song of
God has also inspired apostles of non-violence like Gandhi)?
Glad to have you with us!
Sunthar
[rest of this thread at
Rabbi Shabazi’s attempt to hijack the Roma heritage - is Orientalism a form of
identity-theft?]
[Check out Joyce’s response at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/1244]
Subject: [RISA-L] Vinayak
[Chaturvedi] on Vinayaka
To: RISA-L
From: Shrinivas Tilak
Date:
Paul Courtright wrote:
“were I writing that book today I would, hopefully, be more
aware of how it might be read by some Hindu
readers in both
This should be one positive outcome of the present controversy. Those who have read Vinayak Chaturvedi’s article “Vinayak and me: Hindutva and the politics of naming” (Social History, vol. 28, no 2 (May 2003): 155-173) will agree that such rethinking has been long overdue.
I particularly found the cover illustration of
Social History of that number very offensive. The illustration is by James
Ferguson which first appeared in the Weekend Edition of the Financial Times
of
Shrinivas Tilak
Subject: Re: [RISA-L] Judge
the book by its cover?
To: RISA-L
From: Antonio de Nicol�s
Date:
Here it is:
http://www.omshaantih.com/I%20rest%20my%20case.html
and now that you know yath� icchasi tath� kuru (do as you wish) [from
Subject: Celibacies, sexualities, and Yogic eros
From: Stuart Sovatsky
Date:
I have found it helpful to consider that the term “sexuality” refers to the multitude of erotic practices and interpretive concepts pertaining mainly to the capacities awakened via (what we call) “genital puberty.” The various modes of celibacy (brahmacarya, eunuchism, iconic ardha-n�ri androgyny) point to less appreciated (at least since Freud and the ensuing language of “sexual liberation”) puberties of thymus-heart, spine (kundalini, tumo, ntum, thxiasi num), and pineal (with its light-generating, bliss-inducing, proven to be rejuvenating secretions: melanin/melatonin and endorphin: soma-amrita.)
I believe that all spiritual traditions that speak of states of (embodied) consciousness that are filled with light, love-bliss, immortality are fathoming inklings of these “other” puberties, which, like adolescent genital puberty, entail profound changes in identity- sense, gender-sense, purpose-of-life-sense, hormonal production, postgenital bodily tumescences (spinal uju kaya, hypoglossal khecari mudra, celibate-ithyphallic tumescences), potentials for immortality (via fertility, via extreme Yogic longeivty, or “soul- identification.”)
What offends us regarding a genitalized (cover-photo of) Ganesha or a Freudian interpretation of Indian icons is that they stick these Beings who are manifesting these “other puberties” back into their favored contexts and hermeneutics of genital puberty. Thus, the (postgenital) mysteries of ardha-n�ri, urdhva-retas, amrita, the mudras of kundalini (and of course) ithyphallic Sivas or Ganeshas get masked and lost once more behind the bold, yet false, confidence of Psychoanalytic “truth.” Foucault saw this and fashioned his concept of ars erotica to be able to view more accurately (culture-syntonically) such post-Freudian (postgenital?) mysteries of body/soul and the traditions that map them.
Stuart Sovatsky
Subject: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability
From: “mihira2ooo”
<[email protected]>
Date:
Just thought I would pass along a communication received from a colleague. Commentary and my own letter to follow.
**********************************************************
Mr. Ramesh Jain Motel
Dear Mr. Jain,
I deeply regret your recent decision discontinue publication of Paul Courtright’s book on the pagan God Ganesha. Employing psychoanalytical methods is an old tradition in the English speaking academia: but how can an unwashed coolie like you know about such things? These methods reveal a great deal about the person doing the analysis, much like a Roshak test. That is another little psycho-babble concept that you don’t know about.
So let me explain it to you. I will speak very slowly for your benefit. Paul Courtright’s limp phallus imagery is clearly derived from his own lack of fertility as a scholar. He tends to see limp phalluses everywhere. In fact, the limp phallus is a good symbol for the state of Indology in general. That is why we are all obsessed with phalluses, limp or otherwise. Where would we be as a field without our little limp phalluses? You have seriously tarnished your good name (in my opinion) by missing such an obvious point. It is our right as scholars to publish anything we like. It is your duty to publish everything we ask you that has been peer reviewed. No real (i.e., European) publisher ever considers the marketability of a book. Am I speaking slow enough for you?
May I ask for the current status of the books I sent to you to publish because I could not find a real (i.e., European) publisher for them? Are AT PLAY WITH PAUL and WENDY: GODDESS OF INDIA still in print? I know I am striking terror into your heart, by threatening in my devilishly clever and subtle way, to withdraw these books from your care. Take that and add that to your curry!
yours sincerely
John Yes, Holy
The one and Only
*********************************************************************
Cheers
MW
===================================================================== = =====
Michael Parody Witzel
witzel@f... www.fas.hahvahd.edu/~parodywitzel/mpwpage.htm
Dept. of Asanskrit & Anti-Indian Studies,
Bow to No One Street
phone: 1- 617 - 555 3295 (telepathy & messages
-------------------------------------------------------------------- -- -----
my direct line from God almighty (via Martin Luther) : 617- 555- 2990
[response to Antonio’s post at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/1209]
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date: Sat Nov 8, 2003 2:06 pm [Abhinava msg #1243 – order of thread has been
reversed]
This "storm" over Paul Courtright’s book is baffling, given
that it was originally published by Oxford University Press in 1985, almost
twenty years ago! A point that has not been made in the conversation. I assume
that it came to the attention of certain people only when a re-print was issued
by Motilal.
Patrick Olivelle, "Re: The
scholar’s accountability,"
"Ganesa, is a son of the great god Siva, and many of his
abilities are comic or absurd extensions of the lofty dichotomies of his father.
[...] Ganesa’s potbelly and his childlike love for sweets mock Siva’s practice
of austerities, and his limp trunk will forever be a poor match for Siva’s erect
phallus." Paul Courtright as cited in
["Asian Art in The Walters Art Gallery: A
Selection," by Hiram W. Woodward, Jr. Publisher: The Trustees of The
Though I too find some of the citations from
‘GaNeza’ in the petition quite atrocious—not because the wealth of symbolic
connections he embodies are false or illegitimate but because they have been
worded by his American ‘advocate’ in such a tendentious manner—it is wholly true
that the psychoanalytic approach to culture was not invented by Courtright but
goes back to the founder himself. In fact, not only did Freud’s pioneering
attempt to formulate the universal ‘unconscious’ rely heavily on what he knew of
the anthropology of totem and taboo in ‘primitive’ societies, he went on to risk
the wrath of his co-religionists (especially at a time when the Judaic faith was
already being demonized as a prelude to its extirpation...) by applying his
theoretical model not only to the monotheistic foundations of his own Jewish
childhood shaped by Mosaic law, but also, and above all, to the self-destructive
malaise of modern man to which he could see no clear and definitive resolution.
Despite the Western ethnocentrism that inevitably informs his theoretical model,
like those of so many ‘Jewish’ intellectuals both before and after him, the
thrust of Freud’s insights and thinking was not only revolutionary in its
implications but also subversive of reigning paradigms.
The problem with (especially American) Indologists,
those self-styled ‘disciples’ who often seem to be confused on account of
frequenting too many competing gurus (ma�tres � penser),
is that India seems to contribute very little, if anything at all,
towards critically extending, deepening and reformulating psychoanalytic theory
(let alone, the practice...). An instructive ‘exception’, in this regard, is
Jeffrey M. Masson to whose book on the ‘sentiment of peace’ (z�nta-rasa),
I owe my happy discovery, in the mid-to-late-seventies, of Abhinavagupta’s
philosophy of aesthetics, and thus eventually of his tantric worldview. Starting
with the spiritual zeal of a new convert to Advaita Ved�nta, he studied Sanskrit
both at Harvard and with Indian pandits in
Kathleen Erndl, on the contrary, has published a
remarkable study entitled "Rapist or Bodyguard, Demon or Devotee? Images of
Bhairo in the Mythology and Cult of VaiSNo Dev�" (in Hiltebeitel’s Criminal
Gods), where she explores the meaning of Bhairava’s decapitation by the
Goddess, after he pursues her through a cave in the mountain at
Is psychoanalysis, even assuming that it is being
‘correctly’ applied as an ‘explanatory’ (rather than
‘interpretative’) framework, the real culprit in distorting the otherwise
well-intentioned and legitimate discipline called ‘Indology’? Foucault has shown
how the whole (trihedral) framework of the ‘human’ sciences is actually
constantly ‘advancing’ towards the ‘unconscious’: thus, (South Asian colonial)
history can claim to have unearthed the (Harappan) roots of ‘Indian’ ethnicity
to a people whose only ‘archaeology’ had consisted of digging into the yellowing
pages of their Pur�nas; (Durkheimian) sociology reveals how the religious life
of the (e.g., hierarchical Newar) community is explicable in terms of conflicts
and rules that are mediated through rituals and refracted within mythology;
positivist psychology armed with sophisticated mapping tools (like fMRI) claims
to know more than the yogins themselves of their ‘paranormal’ experiences
because it can look directly into the underlying physics (not to speak of the
physiology) of their brains; linguistics (especially in its ‘deconstructionist’
prolongations...) revels in demonstrating that (not just) Indians do not even
‘own’ the meaning of what they say for the signification of their words derives
from an invisible semiotic system that has been deposited all around, and
despite, their field of awareness. We, the ‘subjects’ (or should I say
‘objects’?) of all these (often overlapping and conflicting) disciplines, are
presumed, like Freud’s patients, to be ignorant of who we are. The only real
difference is that these (themselves insecurely ‘founded’) ‘sciences’ approach
the ‘unconscious’ backwards as it were whereas psychoanalysis is, by definition,
a direct assault on what we do not (and cannot ever fully?) know about
ourselves. It is therefore not at all surprising if ‘Indologists’ of every
stripe and whatever (in-)competence are tempted to indulge in a ‘psychoanalysis’
of sorts. After all, the fact of the matter is that Indian religious traditions
themselves (whether Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Muslim, etc.) affirm that we do not
know what we really are. This is why Indians (and increasing numbers of less
pretentious Westerners) have been willing to surrender their jobs, wealth,
family, their very ego and even their lives (like Naciketas descending into the
realm of Yama) to a guru who could restore to them their true identity,
their (Non-) Self! What has been implicitly challenged in this controversy is
whether the subhuman GaNeza represents the collective Hindu ‘patient’ just
begging to be diagnosed by rich all-knowing Americans, who have just graduated
from ‘playing doctor’ (with their brothers and sisters?): after all, like (the kuTilaka of) that other infantile ‘polymorphous
pervert’ (duSTa-baTuka—the clown of the Sanskrit
theater whom he so resembles), his ‘flaccid trunk’ seems to been trumpeting
forth his right to court (and not just from Courtright!) a likewise ‘crooked’ (vakra!) treatment!
Patrick Olivelle, a respected scholar of Hindu
monasticism, religious law and other subjects besides, had struggled
single-handedly in the early 80s, against the apathy of the Hindi diaspora, to
establish the Chair of Hindu Studies at
In short, this is a ‘civilizational conflict’ that
has been in the making since a very long time (since when?)...anyone who
attempts to pin the blame on a single individual, whether Courtright or Rajiv,
or makes it a problem simply conjured up by either of the ‘warring’ parties
(that it would be likewise simplistic to reduce to Hindus versus the West...),
is in no position to help us get out of this spiraling mess...
May Lord GaNeza grant us the wisdom to grasp his
true nature and thereby partake in the enjoyment of his modakas (kh�b mast raho)!
Sunthar
[rest of this thread at
On the infantilization and ‘nazification’ of Hindu culture - a picture is worth
a thousand words!
Rajiv Malhotra,
Paul Courtright’s "limp phallus" enters US museums (
Jeffrey Masson and Abhinavagupta on aesthetic vis-�-vis spiritual experience (
Subject: Re: [RISA-L] Title
VI funding
To: "RISA Academic Discussion List"
From: [Joanna Kirkpatrick]
Date:
Kurtz’s website is
revealing: http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/bios/kurtz.html
He’s at the Hoover
Library at Stanford; he’s also a contributing editor to
_National Review_ online.
I always had reservations about his thesis in _All
the Mothers Are One_. This sort of reduction
seems strange if more broadly
applied, e.g., All the
Leaders are One, All the Children are One, etc.
Joanna Kirkpatrick
Subject: [RISA-L] Title VI
funding
To: RISA Academic Discussion List
From: Leslie Orr
Date:
Thanks to Tim Cahill for bringing
the proposed legislation concerning Title VI funding to our attention. This is
indeed quite a troubling situation. As a development unfolding at the same time
as the series of attacks on Paul Courtright and his book, I find it particularly
noteworthy (not to say rather astonishing) to see the leading role being played
by Stanley Kurtz in mobilizing Congressional support for the policing of area
studies in the academy. This is the same Stanley Kurtz who authored the book _All
the Mothers are One_, published in 1992, which offered a psychoanalytic
perspective on Hindu goddess mythology. Kurtz’s book attracted considerable
scholarly attention and critique, but I do not believe that it was found
objectionable by members of the Hindu community, either in
best wishes --Leslie Orr
Subject: [RISA-L] proposal, re: Courtright lila
From: Frederick Smith
Date:
RISA-jan�h
I have been looking
recently at Michael Brown’s new book, Who Owns Native
Culture (
proprietary stance
towards the study of religion is not something indigenous to
recent
Native american religion,
though the ramifications clearly go much further. To
set our own situation in
a broader academic context, I would like to suggest a
series of interrelated
panels at next year’s
different regional and
conceptual areas of religious discourse (e.g., South
Asian religion, Japanese
or African religions, gay and lesbian issues, etc.). I
have no idea how to go
about organizing this, but it seems like a timely
undertaking. Maybe Philip
or Tracy, the heads of the RISA and Hinduism steering
committees can
communicate such a thought to those in parallel positions or just
up the
this is a good and
feasable idea...
Fred Smith
Subject: Re: [RISA-L] The
scholar’s accountability
To: "RISA Academic Discussion List"
From: Kathleen Erndl
Date:
Thank you Patrick, for a
breath of fresh air! Whatever the merits or
demerits of certain types
of analysis and interpretation may be, they ought
to be debated in an
informed, scholarly (and dare I suggest) civil manner.
There will always be
differences of opinion about the best way to approach
religious texts and
phenomena. I would bet that the vast majority of
petition signers and
other opponents have not actually read the book in its
entirety. If they had,
they would realize that the quotations have been
taken out of context, and
that the book as a whole employs a variety of
methods and approaches
(historical, textual, contextual, etc.); the
psychoanalysis is only a
small part of a more comprehensive study.
I have always enjoyed the
collegiality and supportive atmosphere of RISA
and RISA-L, even when
there are areas of disagreement.
Kathleen
Kathleen M. Erndl
Associate Professor
Department of Religion
Subject: Re: [RISA-L] The
scholar’s accountability
To: "RISA Academic Discussion List"
From: [Joanna Kirkpatrick]
Date:
Yes, the list is very
long indeed, including such scholars as Carstairs on
the Rajputs, much of
Doniger’s and Kakar’s work, many many others. There is
absolutely nothing new in
Freudianizing, and so I wonder where de Nicholas
has been all these years.
Joanna Kirkpatrick
Subject: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability
From: Herman Tull
Date:
For those of you who may not be aware of this, Prof.
Courtright’s discussion of Ganesha’s psychosexual history is hardly without
precedent. Edmund Leach raised these issues long ago in his "Pulleyar and
the Lord Buddha" in Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalytic Review (1962):
80-102; they have been repeated by many other scholars. Herman Tull |
Subject: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability
To: RISA Academic Discussion List, Patrick Olivelle
From: Douglas Berger
Date:
Hi all,
I completely agree with
Patrick’s post. When we put our
scholarly, and sometimes
not-so-scholarly, findings in the public
forum through
publication, those findings are subject to
the criticism,
correction, and judgment of the community
of experts in our field.
The fact that Freud’s, Courtright’s
or anyone else’s
evaluation of the religious phenomena they
study may or may not be
grossly inaccurate, historically, socially,
psychologically,
religiously, or in any other way, does not vitiate
anyone’s right to put
ideas forward. In a democratic exchange
of views, the right to
speak is paid for by the price of provoking disagreement and inviting critique.
Scholars do indeed have special responsibilities, but they also have the right
to
speak and be wrong, just
like everyone else. Taking away that
right from one threatens
the rights of all, and taking away
the right to speak only
eliminates the responsibility for what is said. Should Courtright’s
representations of Ganesha be inaccurate, then these will be discredited by his
peers,
and he will be held
intellectually responsible for his views. I am saddened that anyone should be
censored for putting views of any kind forward, and while I understand MB’s
stated decision about the book in a certain way, I am equally saddened by that.
Thanks,
Doug
From: Dr. K. Loganathan
Date:
Dear Sunthar
I am surprised to hear that psychoanalysis is dying out. I think it should be rephrased as: the Freudian Psychoanalysis is dying out ( but not without having influenced philosophy itself) On the basis of Agamic Psychology which is a modernization of the psychoanalysis available in Tamil Siddha and related literature, I have confronted Jungian Analytical Psychology in a number of essays the first of which is given below. The rest are available at the following address:
http://ulagank.tripod.com/psyreflect.htm
What the Indologists have to do is to deconstruct the psychoanalysis of Freud and Jung ( even though unlike Freud he was quite sympathetic towards Indian psychological thinking). I also believe that what I say below may also be agreeable to those studying Kashmir Shaivism or at least Siva Sutras.
Loga
[Loga’s complete post at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/1246]
From: Pathmarajah Nagalingam
Date: Tue Nov 11, 2003;
In our scriptures we are introduced to 64 forms of Siva; for each of which there is a meaning and concept behind that form, as well as a Puranic myth as to how they came to be. These are the traditional icons of Siva to be installed and worshipped in the temples and homes, not any other.
It is curious that none of these forms depict a penis, erect or flaccid. If ‘regeneration’, ‘creation’ and ‘union’ are such important themes, why, they would have been depicted in a majority of the icons of Siva. But that is not the case. NOT ONE depicts that (a penis)!
The same with the 32 traditional forms of Ganesha. NOT ONE shows Him with an erect or flaccid penis!
Anyone?
Regards all.
[response??? to
O you simpleton! This is your ‘Harvard alumni’ (= �rya) svAbhinava - don’t you
know the crookedness of his speech?]
From: Anthony Appleyard
To: Akandabaratam
Sent:
Pathmarajah Nagalingam wrote (Subject: Forms of Siva):-
In
our scriptures we are introduced to 64 forms of Siva;... It is curious that none of these forms depict a penis,
Perhaps in some cases the God or Goddess is assumed to be wearing a close-fitting garment which hides his/her genitalia.
And there are likely some people, as among many
cultures, who do not want to see realistic pictures of genitalia.
Subject: Re: Why are all the traditional (castrated?) forms of Shiva and Ganesha depicted without a penis? The scholar’s accountability!
From: Dr. K. Loganathan
Date:
Dear Anthony
I think you are right but only partially. The close-fitting garments which
only suggest genitalia but do not depict them explicitly is only part of the
story. There is a fundamental difference in ART as approached in
the West. I see it as follows.
The Icons are Double-Texts, representations in which the Deep Structure is
made also present within the Surface Structure and because of which there
are transformations of the natural itself. For example in Greek sculptures
the veins of the muscular arms are shown very clearly while in Indian
sculptures including in the Buddhist sculptures of Ghandara school where
there was Greek influence, we do not find this. The muscular contortions are
NOT depicted but instead we have only smooth contours in that also the
spiritual dimensions of Santhi and so forth. The Inner World of spiritual
depths are made VISIBLE through the flesh with such transmutations.
The same happens when the genitalia are covered up and their presence is
only indicated but NOT shown in the best of Icons. The physical sexuality
is backgrounded in order to show LOVE (may still be sexual) between the
deities. When in some sculptures Civa gazes with LOVE at Uma, what we have
is LOVE and in which sexuality is transmuted to spirituality.
This is also the difference between the Kamattup Paal of TiruvaLLuvar and
the Kama Sutra or Kokkoha Sastras which deal with the acrobatics of coitus.
In KuRal what we have is LOVE with sexual desires not suppressed but
backgrounded, made less important than Love.
I think this hermeneutic notion that Indian sculptures are Double-Texts
while the Western is simply the mono-texts that depicts only the physical,
may be the real difference between the two cultures and because of which
there are many misunderstanding.
I shall develop this theme later.
Loga
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date: Tue Nov 11, 2003; 11:54 am
Subject: Why are all the traditional (castrated?) forms of
Shiva and Ganesha depicted without a penis? The scholar’s accountability!
I think Prof. John Yes, Holy (The One and Only),
has already largely answered your (typically Indian?) confusion on this
matter...
Enjoy,
Sunthar
[rest of this thread at Michael Witzel, Re:
[RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability]
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date: Fri Nov 21, 2003;
Up to a point, anyone can study non-boundary traditions, just
like a man who never tasted ice cream could understand it to some extent by
reading and interviewing people to get third-person accounts. So we cannot say
that all external knowledge is false. But such a person does not have the
experience of tasting it. Conversely, there are things that an outsider sees,
which are not about the experiencing of it, but about how it comes across from
the outside. That too is knowledge of a certain kind. How a pork-eater smells to
others can only be known from the outside by others, as the man himself won’t
know how others find his smell. So both inside and outside perspectives convey
knowledge. It boils down to what one wants out of that knowledge. Another point
is this: There are no real outsiders standing on neutral objective ground. One
who is outside of Hinduism is inside of Christianity, or Marxism, or Feminism,
or Eurocentrism, or whatever. Nobody is ideology and bias free. So one replaces
the Hindu bias with a different kind of bias, but still it is not value-free or
neutral as claimed to be by the scholars.
Rajiv Malhotra,
RISA Lila - 2 - Limp Scholarship and Demonology (comment of
In his provocative (in the best sense of the term!)
talk at the Divinity School last Thursday on “Make-Believe: Teaching Religion
and Being Religious,” Prof. Paul J. Griffith made the case, that I fully
endorsed, that it was about time that those who taught religion to
undergraduates ‘came out of the closet’ by openly assuming their own personal
faith (even if it were only in Freud!) instead of pretending that it didn’t
exist or, worse still, didn’t matter to what they were teaching and the
formative role they were playing in the still malleable minds of young
Americans. He also pointed out that (not just Christian) students who were
the most vociferous in championing their faith were often the least informed
about its traditions and their significance (like many of the adult Hindus
taking up arms in defense of Ganesha?).
After outlining the ongoing Ganesha controversy and
the challenge it poses to his theses (that I personally found most welcome...),
I concluded by asking whether the professor could simply remain ‘neutral’ by
walking on a pedagogical tightrope between ‘objective’ descriptions
(psychoanalysis says this about Ganesha, sociology this, and history that...you
get the picture!) and the traditional representations of the faithful. Or should
the ‘teacher’ assume his full responsibility (and just how many have the
competence to live up to this calling?) by nudging his/her students to fresh
perspectives that would go beyond, even while initially embracing (�
la
Hegel), these ‘civilizational’ oppositions?
It seems to me that many a young ABCD
(American-Born ‘Confused’ Dez� = Indian/Hindu) reveals far greater perspicacity
as to what ‘Hinduism’ has been really all about than their more ‘informed’ adult
counterparts, whether Indologist or Hindu.....
Enjoy!
Sunthar
[response to Kalyan’s post of Aditi Banerjee’s article at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/1324]
From: Raja Mylvaganam
Date: Sun Nov 23, 2003;
The posts by Sunthar and Rajiv Malhotra on the
teaching of religion in the
It seems to me that the time has come for the
establishment of a
There is a long history of Indian Hindu influence
in the
Rajan