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The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s2: The Humanism of the Modern Indian Languages

The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14.s2

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The Humanism of the Modern Indian Languages

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In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the *charai-veti* (march on) or expansion of Hindu culture was likewise in evidence in the new or "modern" Indian (vernacular) literatures. It was going on in Marathi-speaking regions through the development of the *abhangs* or folksongs of *bhakti* in honour of Viṣṇu. The *Gītā* was thereby rendered accessible to the people in their spoken language by poets like Jñāneśvara (c 1300) and Nāmadeva (1270-1350). The democratization of the *Gītā* is an achievement of first rate importance as furnishing the folk with the gospel of life's duties.

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By the beginning of the fifteenth century the Bengali translation of the *Rāmāyaṇa* by Krittivāsa was available to the people of Bengal as a fountain of the social philosophy of daily life. The work was inspired by the cult of *bhakti* (faith or devotion), an attitude of life such as became a passion with Chaitanya (1485-1553) two generations later.

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The equalitarian philosophy which sought to abolish the distinctions between the castes was a prominent characteristic of Hindu societal thinking in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,—with Nāmadeva as with Chaitanya. A founder of this movement is the Southerner Rāmānanda (c 1400?), who derived his cult of *bhakti* from another Southerner, Rāmānuja. Although a Southerner, he was a maker of Hindi language, and in point of social liberalism or radicalism was but distanced by one of his *chelās* or followers, namely, Kabīr (1470-1518?), a Mussalman weaver of Benares. It is wellknown that Kabīr called himself the child of both Allāh and Rāma. The annihilation of the distinction between Hinduism and Islam was the *Leitmotif* of his preachings and verses. Kabīr was by all means a pre-Moghul personality.

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Another pre-Moghul personality in whom socio-religious radicalism ran to greater extremes than even in Kabīr and who indeed was his *chelā* (disciple) was Nānak (1469-1538), the founder of Sikhism.

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Secular occupation was not discounted by Nānak. In his conception the state of a householder was no less acceptable to Hari (God) than retirement from the world.⁴ He did not consider secular business as an obstacle to the attainment of final emancipation. He preached likewise that emancipation was not confined to the higher castes but accessible to all men, including the Chaṇḍāl, the *pariah*. All men were received by him as disciples and the foundation of a popular religion was thereby laid.

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⁴ Trumpp: *Adi Granth*, Eng. transl. (London 1877), pp. cxi-cxii.

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In this system it is the duty of the disciple to destroy the enemies of his faith and to help in the diffusion of the Sikh religion.⁵ The disciple is strictly to obey the order of the *Guru* (preceptor or leader) and never to forsake him; he is also to minister to his brother Sikhs. He is to pay taxes, if demanded by the *Guru*.

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⁵ Nand Lal's *Rahitnama* (Rules of Conduct), pp. 9, 80, in Trumpp. cxv, cxvi.

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In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Hindu positivism was strong enough to express itself in the different regions of India in a manner such as might enable the people to energize in a spirit of hopefulness. The old texts were reinterpreted to assimilate new races, castes and creeds. Hinduism proved to be a going concern even under the conditions of the first two or three centuries of Moslem politics. And in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Hindu positivism was once more in a flourishing condition. The age of Kavi-Kaṅkaṇa, the Bengali poet who wrote the *Chaṇḍī-maṅgala* in 1589, and Tulsīdās (1532-1624) who completed the Hindi *Rāmāyaṇa* about the same time is, as an era of the expansion and democratization of Hindu culture, not to be beaten by any epoch of Indian social achievements. Along with these two senior contemporaries of Northern India Tukārām (1608-1649), the Maratha writer of *abhangs*, constituted a triumvirate of extraordinary importance in the annals of Hindu humanism during the period of Indo-Moghul Renaissance.

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It is as an expression of the traditional democratic or socialistic strands in Hindu culture such as we have seen even in the earliest Vedic and post-Vedic milieux that we have likewise to assess the works of the great Telugu poet of the seventeenth century, namely, Vemana. The devotional or *bhakti* egalitarianism of the Tamil *Kurāl* is carried forward in Vemana's verses to a pitch verging on revolution. In his sarcasm on the inequalities of material possession he is no less radical and realistic than in his invectives against the disabilities engendered by caste distinctions.

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On one occasion we encounter this Telugu poet of equality and fraternity declaiming as follows:

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"Why should he constantly revile the Pariar? Are not his flesh and blood the same as those of our men? And of what caste is He who pervades the Pariar as well as all other men? Why should you plunge in water to purify yourself if a Pariar touches you?"

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Again, "call not him an outcaste who possesses a good disposition. Did not the hermit Vaśiṣṭha take a Pariar wife? How can he be called Brāhmaṇ whose qualities are those of a Pariar?"⁶

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⁶ Verses III, 227-229 (Brown) in B. A. Saletore: *Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (1346-1646)*, Vol. II. (Madras 1934), pp. 8, 54, 58.

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In the same strain are the following lines: "If a man still has in his heart the principles of a Pariar, and yet scorns Pariars, why should he become twice-born, while devoid of any good quality?"

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Vemana's condemnation of socio-economic inequalities is no less emphatic. "If one be possessed of wealth," says he, "they look upon him as the god of love; but if he falls into poverty, and is unable to rise and help himself, be he as Cupid himself, they look upon him as a Pariar."

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The problem of the Pariar, of the untouchables and of the distinctions between the higher and the lower castes found in Vemana a powerful exponent. His place in Hindu positivism is of the same rank as that of Kabīr, Chaitanya and the others, if not even higher.

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