Book Review from The Hindu Newspaper: Religious traditions

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Date:17/12/2002 URL:

http://www.thehindu.com/br/2002/12/17/stories/2002121700040300.htm

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Religious traditions

 

RELIGIOUS PROCESS — The Puranas and the Making of a Regional

Tradition: Kamal Chakrabarti; Oxford University Press, YMCA Building,

First floor, Jai Singh Road, Post Box No. 43, New Delhi-110001. Rs.

645.

 

HINDU RELIGIOUS literature comprises the Vedas, the epics, the

Puranas, the Upa Puranas, the Upanishads, the Brahmasutras with their

commentaries by Sankara Bhagavadpada, Ramanuja, Madhwacharya and

Nimbaraka, the Dharma Sastras and the Grhyasutras.

 

The amazing variety of this vast literature nevertheless exhibits a

wonderful underlying unity. But for the translations of the great

classics, those ignorant of Sanskrit would indeed have remained

profoundly ignorant of their own great heritage.

 

In the book under review, Kamal Chakrabarti surveys the growth of a

regional religious tradition. He thinks that the religious processes,

which resulted in this regional tradition derived from the Puranas,

particularly the Bhagavata Mahapurana.

 

He examines various problems with meticulous scholarship and

sympathetic understanding of the somewhat long-drawn process of the

formation of a religious tradition. The worship of Jagannath Puri and

the great leadership of one of the greatest of modern prophets of

Hinduism, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, has led to the emergence of Bengali

Vaishnavism.

 

Saivism has also emerged in a powerful fashion. But the most

important among these developments is the emergence of the worship of

God as Mother. Sakti worship is essentially based on the conception

of the universe as the child of Jagan Mata, the Universal Mother.

Sankara, in his Soundaryalahari, has stated that Sakti is absolutely

indispensable in Siva's role in the Univeerse.

 

Sir John Woodroffe has expounded in his books on the Tantras, the

ideology of Sakti worship. Tantras' relation to the Vedic tradition

is still a somewhat unexplored field of study. That in the Vamachare

Sakti worship through rituals like Panchamakaras has developed in

somewhat undesirable way is to be deplored indeed. But it must not be

forgotten that Sakti worship, even of this kind is the worship of the

Universal Mother.

 

The author has explored a fertile field of study with great diligence

and scholarship. It is gratifying to find him so keenly sensitive to

the ultimate Vedic and Brahman origin of the sacred heritage.

 

In Maharashtra and later still in South India as a whole, the

education of the common people in the sphere of morality and religion

has been based on the exposition of the epics and the Bhagavata

Purana of the Vaishnavite and Sakta branches by scholars and pandits

who were Harikatha Pravachanakartas, of a rare degree of excellence.

 

The contribution made by Harikatha Pravachanakartas to the moral and

spiritual awakening of the common people has been truly wonderful and

wonderfully efficacious.

 

We are deeply grateful to the author for his brilliant, scholarly

exploration of this long neglected field of study.

 

S. R.

 

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