Parsing the Sacred

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Parsing the Sacred

Little India

Oct. 17, 2007

By: Achal Mehra

http://www.littleindia.com/news/135/ARTICLE/1914/2007-

10-02.html

or

http://tinyurl.com/224t57

 

An award-winning book on Ganesa by an Emory University

professor has factual inaccuracies in its claims on the

Puranas, the ancient Hindu texts.

 

Paul Courtright's 1985 book, Ganesa: Lord of Obstacles,

Lord of Beginnings has been the subject of intense criticism

by several Hinduism scholars and Hindu religious groups

during the past several years. The book, which won a

national award from the committee for the History of

Religion of the American Council of Learned Societies in

1985, is sharply critiqued in a new book titled Invading the

Sacred, which questions the accuracy and objectivity of

several leading Hinduism scholars in the United States,

most notably Courtright and University of Chicago's Wendy

Doniger.

 

Little India undertook an investigation of two passages in

Courtright's book, whose authenticity was questioned by

Krishnan Ramaswamy, one of the editors of Invading the

Sacred, in an article in the August issue of Little India.

Courtright responded to the criticism in the following issue

of the magazine, which subsequently invited the two sides

to present evidence to resolve the factual disputes. Little

India traded the evidence between the parties before arriving

at the conclusions presented here. They were both given an

opportunity to respond to these findings.

 

Little India focused exclusively on the factual accuracy of

the two passages ascribed to the Puranas in Courtright's

book. It neither considered, nor was influenced by,

criticisms by several Hindu groups, as well as the authors of

Invading the Sacred, that sections of the book are offensive

or demeaning.

 

Courtright admitted he erred in asserting in his book that the

Linga Purana stated that humans " come from the divine

rectum. "

 

" I stand corrected on the Linga Purana text, which only

mentions demons, " Courtright acknowledged.

 

An examination of the relevant passage in the Linga Purana

shows that demons emerged from the divine rectum, " Then

out of his buttocks were produced the Asuras (demons). " A

subsequent passage in the Purana reveals that human beings

are born from the mind of God.

 

In his book, Courtright also cites the Bhagvata Purana for

the claim, but that passage too does not ascribe such an

origin to human beings. Finally, he cited Doniger's book,

Hindu Myths, but that citation does not reference the

creation of human beings or the divine rectum at all.

 

Courtright was also challenged on his claim in the book that

Daksa committed incest with his daughter Sati. He wrote:

" [Daksa] made love to his daughter Sati 'in the manner of a

mere beast.' This shameful action drove her to burn her own

body, that is, commit sati.... "

 

Courtright cites a passage in the Devi-bhagavata Purana in

support of the claim: " [Prajapati] took [the garland] on his

head; then placed it on the nice bed that was prepared in the

bedroom of the couple. Being excited by the sweet fragrant

smell of that garland in the night, the Prajapati engaged in a

sexual intercourse! O King! Due to that animal action, the

bitter enmity arose in his mind toward Sankara and his Sati.

He then began to abuse Siva. O King! For that offence, the

Sati resolved to quit her body that was of Daksa ... "

 

While the passage does not explicitly state that incest

occurred, Courtright insists Daksa's intercourse could only

be with Sati through a contextual reading of the passage as

she is the only woman mentioned in the passage. He also

claimed in his article in Little India, " Other versions of the

stories of Daksa and Brahma's seduction of Sandhya -

stories told in succession in the Siva Purana and other

collections of narratives - sets a wider context for the primal

incest. "

 

Little India's examination of Devi-bhagavata Purana passage

found that while there is no direct reference to incest, a

strained reading of such a rape is possible from the text.

Such a reading would be more compelling if other versions

of the story hinted at or supported such a context, as

Courtright claimed.

 

However, a review of the Daksa and Sati story in multiple

Puranic sources by Little India, including Siva Purana, Vayu

Purana, Linga Purana, Brahma Purana, Kurma Purana,

Matsya Purana and Bhagavata Purana found that they all

ascribed Sati's self-immolation to her dismay at her father's

insult of her husband Siva.

 

Courtright did not offer any Puranic source that might

provide context for the primal incest. He cited, what he

described as a " back story, " in which Siva cut off Brahma's

head because Brahma raped his daughter Sandhya. " In the

Siva Purana the story of Danksa is told right after the story

of Brahma and Sandhya, " Courtright said, noting from the

sequence: " It seems to me a plausible reading that the story

of Daksa is a transformed retelling of the story of Brahma's

incest. What does Siva do when he learns of Sati's

immolation? He comes to the sacrifice, in some versions in

his form as Bhairava, and beheads Daksa, just as he had

beheaded Brahma in the other story. "

 

A Little India review of the Siva Purana, however, found

that the Brahma story follows the Daksa story rather than

the other way around. The story immediately preceding the

Danksa episode is Tripurasura. The Brahma story relates

Brahma's explicit lust for his daughter Sandhya and it has

allusions to Brahma's pursuit of Sandhya in the form of a

deer, during which the deer is beheaded by Siva.

 

The original Sanskrit text in the Daksa story alludes to

" pashukarma. " Courtright noted: " Literally, 'pashukarma'

means 'animal act.' That could mean forcible sex, [...] who

knows? That's where the context is important. "

 

Nonetheless, he acknowledged: " I'm not sure I would say

explicitly, 'Daksa raped Sati.' But I am persuaded that the

story is, among other things, about family relations, father-

daughter relations, incestual desire, and that it is a profound

story about things that are so powerful and below the level

of consciousness that they cannot be named.

 

" Who knows what Daksa did, he is such an archetypal

villain in the puranas I would not put it past him. Daksa was

a control-freak, he did not want Siva to have what he could

not have in relation to Sati.... I think the storytellers are

trying to tell us something by not telling us everything. The

project of interpretation is to try to get at not only what is

said, but what is not said. Naming these unconscious desires

is, of course, the project of psychoanalysis. I understand that

people may be offended. [....] "

 

Little India limited its examination to these two passages in

Courtright's work. A chapter by Vishal Agarwal and Kalvai

Venkat in Invading the Sacred alleges scores of other factual

inaccuracies in the book. Little India has not evaluated the

validity of these other criticisms.

 

Several of their criticisms of Courtright's book center on

interpretations, which do not lend themselves to factual

assessments. Other critiques by Ramaswamy in the Little

India article focused on Courtright's application of

psychoanalysis to Hindu scriptures. However, such theories

are widely used by scholars in a wide range of disciplines

and we do not consider their application by Courtright

inappropriate. New and creative interpretations of old texts

give them life and the use of different theoretical

approaches, such as psychoanalysis, is legitimate, and

indeed, as Courtright pointed out, " Psychoanalytic questions

give us another set of lenses through which to look. "

 

We also reject the argument by some of his critics, including

some in Invading the Sacred, that scholars should be

especially sensitive to religious subjects. Critical inquiry

does not lend itself to consideration of such sensitivities.

The standards and measures for scholarship and research are

independent of the subject matter.

 

Nevertheless, Little India's independent analysis of the two

passages based on the Puranas in Courtright's book does

lead to the conclusion that one of the claims is clearly

erroneous, which he acknowledges, and the second is

strained at best and unsupported by any of the many other

versions of the story in the Puranas.

 

In our opinion, there is nothing fundamentally objectionable

about Courtright's theoretical techniques or even his

observations and interpretations, however offensive they

might seem to some, so long as they are framed as

interpretations. It is representation of these interpretations as

flowing from specific Puranic sources, without

qualification, and that are unsupported by the citations, that

we found problematic.

 

In his response, Courtright said: " The bottom line is that I

wrote the book a quarter of a century ago. If I missed things

that I should have noticed, or would notice now, is moot.

I'm not in a position to re-write the book. I hope I've learned

a few things about textual precision in my current work.... If

I was wrong, then I was wrong. I acknowledge that.

Scholars sometimes make errors. Beating up on an old book

seems like a waste of everyone's time. "

 

In [Little India's] opinion, however, on the basis of

the two examples investigated by Little India,

the many other inaccuracies in the book alleged by

Venkat and Agarwal deserve examination as they go to

the scholarly integrity of an award-winning work, however old.