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Re: Hindu scholarship and Vivekananda
dran@panini.cs.albany.edu (Paliath Narendran) wrote :
> There is a very interesting book review in a recent (August '95)
> issue of the Journal of Asian Studies. The book is "The Limits of
> Scripture: Vivekananda's Reinterpretation of the Vedas," By
> A. Rambachan (Univ. of Hawai Press). The review is by Harold
> Coward, a professor at the University of Victoria.
>
> The main issue discussed in the review is Vivekananda's influence
> on contemporary Hindu scholarship. The assessment of both the
> author and the reviewer is that this influence has been mainly
> negative. Prof. Coward writes:
>
> "This book brought answers to puzzles which had been in my mind
> for years: why do Hindus not show much serious scholarly interest
> in dialogue?; why has Hindu scholarship in this century become so
> flabby?"
>
The Greek dialogues of Plato are probably the most influential on all
post-Socratic Western philosophy...and the Greek form of dialogue/debate
has now decayed into nothingness. Richard P.Feynman, the famous
quantum physicist( Nobel prize in physics-1965 ) writes in his book,
"Surely you're joking, Mr.Feynman" that in his trip to Greece, the attitude
of the Greeks to their ancients was that of "Hero-worship". They looked down
on the modern man and his achievements, always pointing out that the Greek
philosophers did so much intellectual work without any modern equipments.
When Feynman gave the example of how the Greeks had given up on the problem
of the exact solution of the cubic equation and the exact solution was
determined by a guy called "Ferrari" in the medieval times ( modern to the
Greeks !), the Greeks were very upset. They always liked to think of the
ancients as the Great ones and Feynman's example had proved otherwise!!
A passage from the Gita, "..among subduers, I am time...".
> The latter observation is certainly a cause of concern to us all
> (though I am not entirely sure about what Coward means by `Hindu
> scholarship'). I wonder if many Western Indologists feel this
> way. The reason given by Rambachan, and enthusiastically
> endorsed by Coward, is that
>
> "Whereas Sankara gave top priority to Sruti as the only (?) valid
> way to obtain knowledge of brahman and release (moksha),
> Vivekananda ... superimposes direct personal experience
> (anubhava, samAdhi) of brahman above scripture as its ultimate
> validation."
>
What I do remember about Adi Sankara is that he said that other 'paths'
too were okay, but that the the path of Jnana was the 'most direct'.
> In conclusion, Coward says
>
> "Vivekananda's downgrading of scriptural scholarship to mere
> intellectual theory, requiring supplementation by the samaadhi of
> raajayoga, has led to the glossing over of differences of
> doctrine as unimportant (e.g., differences between Sankhya and
> Advaita, between Hinduism and other religions). It asserts too
> easily that all religions lead to the same goal. The uncritical
> embracing of this view has not served Hinduism well in the
> religious pluralism of the twentieth century, for it fails to
> take _difference_ seriously, something Sankara always did. It has
> led to a lack of rigor in scholarship (since intellectual
> differences do not really matter) and to a failure to take the
> differences between religions seriously"
>
> and that Vivekananda's legacy is "flawed."
>
I've often seen flaws in Vivekananda's "commentary" of the Ramayana.
I don't remember what mistakes there were and I don't have his commentary
with me now, but I do remember some distinct flaws. Vivekananda is known
more for his speeches than for his scholarship.
> I would like to see a serious discussion of this. It will be too
> easy to dismiss Rambachan's and Coward's arguments as prejudiced.
>
> Narendran
>
_Kartik
