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>Let me next address the first question, that of relevance to
>the average, non-elite Hindu. You may not realize this from
>your position as an educated, English-speaking brahmin, but
>the average Hindu never felt alienated from his or her religion
>or culture and did not feel the need to be inspired by a
>chicken-soup reformulation of traditional philosophy. I know
>Vivekananda took Madras by storm after his return from America,
>but who was his audience? Once again, the educated,
>English-speaking elites of Madras who had an inferiority
>complex about their religion.
This, IMHO, is very true. The baabus-turned-into-'English-speaking brahmin'
are in fact doing a disservice to themselves. My grandmother, who was taught by
her paNDita father, probably knows more about vedaanta than most 'English-speaking
brahmins' I know; but I can't generalize from one instance.
>[For arguments' sake, let's assume that some smArtas and other
>brahmins find Vivekananda and other neo-Hindu proponents relevant.
>Brahmins constitute 2-3% of the population of Tamil Nadu, and
>less than 5% of Hindu India as a whole. Only if the average,
>temple-going Hindu is left out of the accounting does neo-Hinduism
>become relevant in general.]
Yes, one cannot generalize from one example or from one's experience (its
statistically invalid anyway!) and its all a matter of opinion after
all. :-)
>A perfect example is Swami Gambhirananda's translation of
>the BrhadAranyaka Upanishad. The last section of the Upanishad
>deals with rituals designed to ensure the birth of a son.
>Sankaracharya, a serious philosopher if there ever was one,
>comments on it as he would any other text of Vedanta. In
>Gambhirananda's translation of the text and commentary,
>he completely bypasses it, leaving only the Sanskrit text.
>Why is this? Is he ashamed of what the Upanishad contains?
>Why would he leave out what even Sankara did not?
I have noticed this particular example too and I never understood why the last
bit was left out. Apparently, shankaraachaarya did have sexual experience with the
queens of a dead king and it is rumoured that he even wrote a treatise on this.
Maybe that could be a reason why he was more 'open' to this section. Just
speculating.
Genrally speaking, I have noticed that some modern translators 'buffer' the texts
with 'politically correctness' whenever they come across 'sensitive' passages. I
would be curious to know how the manusmR^iti is translated. Its perhaps more
helpful to give the original text while translating. The reader can then read
his/her interpretation into the text.
-- Girish
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