The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c5.s4: India's Affinities with Eur-America in Sorokin's Analysis
The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c5.s4
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India's Affinities with Eur-America in Sorokin's Analysis
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We may commence even with Sorokin himself. In his sociological investigations Indian facts and ideas occupy a prominent place. He may, therefore, be cited as an instance not only of the "new logic" but also of the "new indology".
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Comparative sociography furnishes the data of Sorokin's *Social Mobility* (New York 1927). In this work the analogies, parallelisms, identities and affinities between the facts, institutions and movements of India and those of the rest of the world which it was a special object of the *Futurism of Young Asia* (Berlin 1922) to demonstrate have been brought out in a conspicuous manner. The treatise does not deal with ideas, ideals or theories but with the actual processes of life as developed in the diverse regions and races of the world.
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In the factual sociography of the world Sorokin does not consider India to be *sui generis*. "Interoccupational stratification" is considered by him to be a social fact of the past and the present. While describing the super-imposition of the caste-occupational groups in the Hindu system he points out that three of the eight guilds established by Numa or Servius Tullius in ancient Rome were more important from the social standpoint than the others. Among the guilds of medieval Europe there were some which were more “privileged” than the rest. The “six corps” of France and the *guilda mercantoria* of England are instances in point. Among the occupational groups of the contemporary societies also he finds “if not a juridical, at least a factual stratification” (pp. 99-100, 128).
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The rise and fall of groups as distinguished from the rise and fall of individuals is a form of social mobility in the vertical line. Indian sociography has arrested Sorokin’s interest in this regard. The processes involved in this group mobility as manifest in the ascendency of the Brahmanical aristocracy are considered by him to be identical with those that led to the gradual rise of the Christian Bishop, Clergy and the Church as a whole after Constantine. The rise and fall of the French legists as well as of the bourgeoisie and the royal aristocracies in Russia, Germany and Austria, nay, the elevation of the Russian communists after 1918 to the place occupied by the Czarist aristocracy, all embody the principles underlying the growth of what may be called the Hindu Brahmanocracy (p. 134).
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While establishing his thesis that there has scarcely been any society whose strata are absolutely closed Sorokin brings into bold relief the facts of vertical social mobility even in the caste society of the Hindus. He quotes Manu and Gautama to demonstrate that not only did the Brāhmaṇas fall but that the outcastes also rose. It is pointed out that “in the seventh generation,” as says Gautama (IV), “men may obtain a change of caste either being raised to a higher or being degraded to a lower one." He admits that in vertical mobility, although less intensive, Indian history was but repeating the stories of Greece, Rome, Egypt, China and medieval Europe (pp. 139-141, 161).
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According to Sorokin, in every country the intensity of vertical social mobility, fluctuates from period to period. India is no exception to the rule which is illustrated by China, Greece, Rome, as well as medieval and modern Europe. In order to demonstrate the universal character of the social processes in India he exhibits the epochs of caste-rigidity as well as of caste-decline as a series of "social waves" (pp. 145, 161).
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In the discussion of the rôle of learning as a "social elevator" or ladder and of the educational institution as a "channel of vertical circulation" India has her place by the side of China, Turkey, modern Western societies etc. It is pointed out, however, that it is to the upper social strata only that education and initiation are confined, these being forbidden to the Sūdras. Even in this item Sorokin does not find India to be exceptional. Similar situations, says he, "we find in some periods of the European societies also." He quotes the decree of Richard II in England to the effect that "no bondman or bondwoman shall place their children at school, as has been done, so as to advance their children in the world" (pp. 171-172).
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Among other channels of vertical circulation he mentions the religious organizations of Buddhism and Hinduism as similar to those of the Christian Church, Mohammedanism and Confucianism in their rôle as social ladders or elevators (pp. 168-169). In the field of successful money-making as social ladder, also, India has been cited for illustrations like other countries (pp. 177-178, 181).
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According to Sorokin all the mechanisms—the "sieves"—by which individuals are socially "tested", "selected" and "distributed" among different social strata are to be found in the Indian social organization. We find that India does not present a peculiar case. The almost sacred character of the family was as much a dominant feature of India as of Greece, Rome and medieval Europe down to the fourteenth century. The marriages in those societies were regulated by "eugenic" practices. In India as elsewhere the family served as a powerful testing and selective agency (pp. 184-186).
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The functions of the school as a testing, selective and distributive agency were as prominent in India and China as in the modern Eur-American societies. Incidentally, it is interesting to observe that according to Sorokin the Brāhmaṇas constituted the most "powerful aristocracy of biological and social selection." In order to pass successfully the test of the Hindu educational institutions the students had to display not only an ability to learn the Vedas but "extraordinary moral and social qualities." "Only men with an extraordinary will power and spirit", says he, "could meet such a test" (pp. 191-192, 194-195, 210, 545-546).
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One of Sorokin's inductive generalizations in regard to the vitality and health of *élites* is as follows: "The leaders and the higher classes of almost all societies seem to have been on the average superior physically to the lower classes." The care given to physical health in connection with the training of Indian Kṣatriyas as well as Brāhmaṇas was according to him a universal feature in the ancient world and is universal even today (pp. 269, 270, 272, 279).
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If Sorokin's *Social Mobility* is a study in facts and *Realpolitik*, his later work *Contemporary Sociological Theories* is, as the title indicates, a treatise dealing with ideology. In this work also indological material has been introduced by the author at every important stage of his discussions bearing on the present-day schools of sociology. He tries to exhibit the old Hindu thinkers as colleagues and comrades of the thinkers in ancient Eur-Asia, and all of them as precursors, suggestive or full-fledged, of the thinkers of the modern world.
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Along with ancient Greece ancient India is referred to in connection with the early enunciations of the "mechanistic school" of sociology, the standpoint, which interprets social phenomena in terms of physics, chemistry etc. The "materialistic atomism" of the Hindus is an item in point (p. 4). The "thinkers of ancient India" have likewise their place "among the great multitude of people who have tried to emphasize the various effects of geographical conditions on man's behaviour and psychology and on social organization, social processes and the historical destinies of a group" (p. 100).
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The "bio-organismic school of sociology" is described as having predecessors among the Hindus as among the Chinese, Greeks and Romans. In regard to the comparison of a society, particularly of a state in its social classes, institutions and social processes with an organism, especially with man or with his body and soul, or with parts of his body and bodily processes Sorokin commences with passages from Manu and then passes on to Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca and others (pp. 197-198).
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According to Sorokin what is now termed "eugenics" was very extensively practised in ancient India as in Palestine and Greece. He quotes Manu, Āpastamba, Gautama, Nārada and Viṣṇu to show that the Hindus like the Jews of the *Old Testament* and the Greeks of the *Odyssey* and the *Iliad*, Plato and Aristotle attached considerable importance to "blood," "race", "selection," "heredity" (pp. 219-220, 358).
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In regard to ancient eugenics Sorokin's *Social Mobility* (New York 1927), which, as we have seen, is mainly a study in institutions and facts, has likewise much to say. In this work also he places the Hindu "ideas" of "blameless marriage", "blamable marriage" etc. alongside of those of Plato, Hammurabi and Confucius (pp. 184-186, 208-209).
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The "sociologistic school" of sociology is described by Sorokin as that which interprets social or psychical facts as due to "interactions" and as the results of "correlation with a certain social condition." Among the first exponents of this school also he finds the *Dhammapada* and the *Upaniṣads* as well represented as Confucianism and Plato's *Republic* (pp. 435-436). The bulk of the old Indian philosophy and ethics (especially that of Buddhism), says he, is based upon the idea that our "I" or "Self" with its empirical properties, sufferings and joys is a product of social contact and exists as long as the contact exists.
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Sorokin is convinced that the consciousness about the importance of "economic factors" in human behaviour, social organization and the historical destiny of a society did not originate with Marx and Engels but that it can be traced back to "immemorial times." Among the ancient representatives of this kind of thought he finds Buddha, Viṣṇu, Manu, Nārada, *Vedānta-Sūtras*, Brihaspati, Gautama and Āpastamba in the company of Confucius and Mencius of China, and Thucydides, Plato and Aristotle of Greece, as well as Cicero, Livy and Pliny of Rome (pp. 514-515).
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Like the so-called "economic interpretation" of history or culture the so-called "psychological interpretation of the dynamics of the universe" also is found by Sorokin to be in evidence among the thinkers of the ancient world. Manu, the *Upaniṣads* and the *Dhammapada* are quoted by him in the same breath with the Chinese philosophers as well as Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Polybius, the Church Fathers and the majority of the medieval thinkers (p. 601).
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In Sorokin's sociological analysis there is a kind of "sieve" within each channel of vertical circulation whose function is to sift the individuals and accord them their proper place. He believes that every society from the earliest times has followed the "principle" that the social placement of individuals must be according to talent. This "ideology" he detects in Indian as much as in Chinese, Greek and Roman writers (*Social Mobility*, 1927, pp. 182, 208).
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In my studies on Hindu culture (1910-22) attention was directed to two fallacies of Orientalists and traditional sociologists. One was monism and the other was their inveterate obsession by the dogma of alleged distinction between the East and the West. It is interesting that Sorokin's works have not only challenged the monistic interpretations of culture and social relationships but the ideologies of race-distinctions also. In his historico-comparative and statistico-psychological investigations there is no place for India as a country in splendid isolation, geographical or cultural. The "facts" and "ideas" examined by him point to no extraordinary dominating or monistic impacts of region, climate or race. India's affinities with the rest of the world in institutions as well as ideology are thus automatically established wherever affinities are in evidence. From the standpoint of general sociology Sorokin's work as a reformer is to be appraised as considerable, nay, revolutionary. And its impacts on indology ought to be profound. For one thing, they are immensely calculated to militate against the indology as established by Max Müller, Sénart and Max Weber.
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*Recognition of the Positive Background by Formichi, Bottazzi, Hillebrandt, Meyer, Breloer and Keith*
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The "new indology" has found able exponents among Italian scholars. In the present author's *Hindu Politics in Italian* (1925-26) attention was specially invited to the works of Formichi (1914), Bottazzi (1914) and others. Italian approaches to Hindu politics and sociology from the angle of secularism and humanism are discussed subsequently in connection with the "Kauṭalya Question" (Chapter VIII).
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An exponent of this new indology in Germany is Alfred Hillebrandt who in his *Altindische Politik* (Jena 1923, pp. 1-2) commences his study with a criticism of the old indology almost in the manner of the *Positive Background*. "One who takes only the religious and philosophical literture of ancient intellectual life", says Hillebrandt, "will tend to the belief that it was exclusively given over to the eternal and transcendental questions and considered the things of this world as but nothing. The majority of modern writings, even of those which are directly based on the original sources, devoted as they are to the object of understanding the theory of the oneness of the *Vedānta* or the *Nirvāṇa* of Buddhism have created the impression as if the sages of India lived only on one thought, namely, as to how to escape the series of births and pains and to fly the actual world."
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Hillebrandt's own position is then recorded as follows: "But this was not so," says he. "By the side of the forest ascetic and peripatetic monk such as fled the world there was the unnumbered mass with its living and activities, there was the state with its solicitude for supervising and directing this life and work, and the groups of those whose concern was to investigate the requirements of life and help the state."
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According to Hillebrandt, "India possessed not only the world-escaping thinkers but also political heads and realists who were not inferior in equipment to the former." "These latter", says he finally, "did not live in the world of dreams but entirely in the actual world. They took men and things as they are, with "fine understanding of their weakness."
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The recognition of the positive background of Hindu culture forms the fundamental *milieu* in Johann Meyer's German translation of the Kauṭalyan *Arthaśāstra* (Leipzig 1926-27) as well as Bernhard Breloer's *Kauṭalya-studien* (1927-34). The subject has been dealt with at length in a subsequent chapter (VIII).
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As representing a transformation of the same character in the orientations of European indologists may be cited A. B. Keith's *History of Sanskrit Literature* (Oxford 1928, p. 450). In the same spirit as Hillebrandt Keith refers to the prevailing indology as follows :
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"The Vedic literature, permeated as it is with religion, affords a quite false impression of the Vedic Indian as a person given to reflection and religious practices without regard to practical life."
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In his own judgment "nothing of course can be farther from the truth ; the East, in lieu of bowing before the West in disdain or otherwise, confronted Alexander with an obstacle which he did not attempt to penetrate, and his garrisons had soon after his death to be withdrawn."
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The proper approach to Hindu culture has been described by Keith in a comprehensive manner such as accords to the "positive" aspects their due. "If we are to judge India aright," says he, "we must add two other objects to the *Dharma*, religious and moral duty, which is dwelt on in the Vedic texts. Already the *Hiraṇyakeśi Grihya-sūtra* (II, 19, 6) knows of the three objects in life, *Dharma*, *Artha*, politics and practical life in general, and *Kāma*, love etc. The epic (I, 2, 381) recognizes this set, the *Viṣṇu Smriti* (LIX, 30) and Manu accept it. It is found in Patanjali (on Pāṇini II, 2, 34, *Vārttika* 9), in Aśvaghoṣa and in the *Panchatantra*."
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One might easily challenge Keith as to whether *Artha* and *Kāma* were really ignored in the Vedic complex. He, therefore, anticipates that challenge by making his position perfectly clear. The Vedic antiquity of the economic and sexological elements in Hindu culture is established by him when he says by way of self-criticism that the "older system" (Vedic) no doubt combined these subjects as parts of *Dharma* in wider sense; the *Dharma-śāstras* deal with royal duties, capitals and countries, officials, taxes and military preparations as they do with justice, and the epic (XII, 58, 1) in a list of authorities of the science of kings (*rāja-śāstras*) includes Brihaspati, Viśālākṣa, Uśanas, Manu, son of Prachetas, and Gauraśiras who pass also for authorities on *Dharma*." Further, we are told that "the *Brihadāraṇyaka Upaniṣat* (VI, 3) incidentally shows that a wide knowledge of the arcana of love was prevalent in Brāhmaṇical circles, the holy Śvetaketu becoming a recognized authority later on the topic." "Gradually there must have sprung up," says he, "schools who studied *Artha* and *Kāma* in themselves and this is attested to us by the *Smritis* and the epics."
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In these clear-out and synthetic statements of the British indologist we have already the principles of positivism accepted in a forceful manner. The principles of positivism and humanism as developed between 1910 and 1922 have become integral parts, so to say, in the intellectual apparatus and cultural orientations of Indian indologists as well. Not only the direct quotations but the very words and phrases and the mode of presentation as well as the style of treatment found in the indological investigations of Indian scholars bear testimony to their assimilation, in a general manner, of the "new logic" as desired by the present author during those years.
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It only remains to observe that, as has been often repeated in the present work as elsewhere, sociologically or philosophically speaking, the futuristic logic of "positive background" does not contemplate, as it should not, any "monistic interpretation" of culture from the materialistic side. The monistic economic, political or other interpretations of cultural origins or developments are as wrong and misleading as the monistic mystico-religious interpretations.
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Attention may incidentally be drawn also to *Chinese Political Thought* (London 1932) by E. D. Thomas and E. T. Williams. The universal elements in the culture of the Orient, as exhibited in my *Chinese Religion Through Hindu Eyes* (1916), *Political Institutions and Theories of the Hindus* (1922) etc., have been utilized by the joint authors of this work, dealing as it does with some fundamental ideas of the Far East, in order to establish Oriental positivism in the field of politics.