The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c5.s5: The "New Indology" in Lüders and von Glasenapp
The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c5.s5
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The "New Indology" in Lüders and von Glasenapp
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One of the latest exponents of this "new indology" is Heinrich Lüders of Berlin, the doyen of Sanskritists in Germany. In *Der Orient und Wir* (Berlin 1935), a book of six chapters by different scholars, Lüders has a paper on India.
c5.s5.2
Lüders invites attention to the work of the Indian scholars of today, such as are interested in the study of ancient and medieval India, with approval. He points to the conclusions of modern Indian archæological and historical scholarship to the effect that the Indians were *nicht nur in sich gekehrte stille Denker gewesen* (not merely self-ruminating passive thinkers) and that their achievements can be placed by the side of the Occidental at any rate of the same period (*ihre Leistungen sich den abendländischen zum mindesten der gleichen Zeit, zur Seite stellen können* p. 92).
c5.s5.3
His own position has been clearly exhibited by himself. It is not true, says he, that the strong tendency towards the inner and the other-worldly absorbed all the energies and led to inactivity and retreat from life (*Es ist doch nicht so, dass die starke Richtung auf das Innere und das Jenseitge nun etwa alle Kräfte absorbiert und zu Lebensabkehr und Untätigkeit geführt hätte*). In his judgment this was not the case even in Buddhism in which the nothingness of life was most strongly brought out (p. 86).
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According to his analysis one should not overlook the fact that it was after all only a small percentage of the people (*nur ein kleiner Prozentsatz des Volkes*) that practised *Weltflucht* (retreat from the world) and entered the Order to achieve Nirvāṇa which could be attained only in the monastic class. The laity which believed in the Order did not think of giving up the worldly activities (*dachte nicht daran ihre weltlichen Beschäftigungen aufzugeben*) and the renunciation of secular life was not demanded from them (*es wurde nicht von ihr gefordert*). Lüders refers also to the Jaina communities of today in which, as he says, the laity consists mostly of the commercial people. It is just the richest class that belongs to the Jaina laity in the same manner as the old texts report of the composition of the Buddhist laity of yore. The attempt of Brāhmaṇism to establish an *Ausgleich* (balance) between the life in the world and the flight from the world has also demanded Lüders's attention. The relations between the first three *āśramas* (stages) of the social polity in which *tätiges Leben* (active life), the study of the Vedas and the establishment of the family are prescribed and the last stage which is characterized by the *Streben nach der Erlösung* (effort to achieve salvation) indicate this balancing of the two motives in Brāhmaṇism, says he (pp. 83, 87).
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The political history is summarized by him as also showing that the Indian people by no means spent their days in inactive brooding (*in tatenlosem Hinbrüten*). In pre-and post-Christian times were established Empires (*Reiche*) in India which exceed all political forms on European soil in area (*an Ausdehnung alle staatlichen Gebilde auf europäischem Boden übertreffen*). Lüders refers to the comprehensive political manual of Kauṭalya in which *der Verwaltungsapparat eines riesigen Reiches wie das der Mauryas bis in alle Einzelheiten hineingeschildert wird* (the administrative machinery of a gigantic Empire as that of the Mauryas is described in all its details). Incidentally be it observed that to Lüders the "Kauṭalya problem" does not seem to exist as an unsolved question.
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The Indians are described as having pursued a powerful expansion and colonial policy for centuries (*Jahrhunderte hindurch haben die Inder eine mächtige Expansions-und Kolonialpolitik getrieben*). The countries of Further India, Pegu, Kamboja, and Champa were, it is pointed out, once "colonies of Brāhmaṇical India" long before Buddhism came to these regions (p. 87).
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Lüders hints at some difference between the secular and religious literature of India. He is emphatic that the history and secular literature does not in any way make India appear so alien and negative to life (*keines-* wegs als so *lebensfremd und lebensverneinend*) as perhaps she might appear to be judged on the basis of religious literature alone (*wie es vielleicht nach der religiösen Literatur allein geurteilt scheinen möchte*, p. 91).
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In the above is to be found the recognition of the position of the *Positive Background* (1914) as well as of the *Futurism of Young Asia* (1922). The same position has recently found another strong exponent in Helmuth von Glasenapp. Two of his papers in the *Jahrbuch der Shopenhauer-Gesellschaft* may be referred to. One is entitled "Buddhas Stellung zur Kultur" (Buddha's Attitude Towards Culture), 1934, and the other "Lebensbejahung und Lebensverneinung bei den indischen Denkern" (Life-affirming and Life-denying in Indian Thinkers), 1935. The second has arisen out of a criticism of Albert Schweitzer's *Die Weltanschauung der indischen Denker* (Munich 1935), in which the conventional idea of the Orientalists is represented in the most extreme manner, namely, that the "world-view" of the Indian thinkers is the "Nay" to or denial and negation of life and is entirely different from that of the Westerns which is alleged to consist in the "Yea" to or affirmation of world and life.
c5.s5.9
Von Glasenapp's review of Schweitzer's book is both critical and constructive. In the first place, he refers to the fact that during the first 1500 years of Christianity the world-denying (*weltverneinenden*) tendencies are strongly in evidence. During the Renaissance and the Reformation also they are described as important especially in Roman and Greek Christendom. He doubts if it is possible to take these negative features as foreign to the real nature of Christianity.
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Then he goes over to the chief thesis. And in this connection he examines the alleged life-denying ideas of the Indians in their working on practical life. To him it is clear that in this respect an essential difference between the “life-denying Indians” and the “life-affirming Westerns” does not exist (*ein wesentlicher Unterschied nicht besteht*). He points to the fact that the political and cultural life of the country was not unfavourably influenced by the life-denying world-view. It is, for instance, established by him that it was just during the period of the unlimited influence of Brāhmaṇism, Buddhism and Jainism that political power, cultural efflorescence and colonial expansion were at their height. He makes it a point also to bring out the fact that Buddha, Śaṅkara and other saints were described by the Indians as men who *eine grosse Aktivität entfalteten* (developed a great activity) and who exhibited “considerable understanding for the most varied spheres of life.”
c5.s5.11
The fundamental standpoint of von Glasenapp is to be found in his remark that the life-denying feature is by no means so prominent (*tritt keineswegs so hervor*) in Indian spiritual life as one should conclude from the extracts in Schweitzer’s book. His logic is as follows. Should anybody, says he, use the works of the mystics and the literature of the monastic orders exclusively in order to exhibit the world-view of the Christian thinkers, the report would with justice be objected to as giving a whole picture which does not correspond to the factual conditions (*die nicht den tatsächlichen Verhältnissen entspricht*). The ascetic writings in India also can give but a fraction (*nur einen Bruchteil*) of her literature. Even the Buddhist literature which was produced in the main to serve the purposes of monks has references to works in which the world-denying tendency is either not at all or very little represented. 'According to Indian view *Erlösung* (*mokṣa*, salvation) is only one of the four objectives of human life, the other three being love (*kāma*), possession (*artha*), and discharge of duties (*dharma*). A survey of Indian world-view which should lay a claim to comprehensiveness must therefore have to exhibit also those works of Indian poets and thinkers in which the *Daseinsfreude* (joy of life), *Tatendurst* (thirst for action), *heroischer Sinn* (heroic sense), *Lebensklugheit* (worldly wisdom) and *werktätige Nächstenliebe* (practical philanthropy) have found expression. The epics, the *Purāṇas*, the *Jātakas* and the poetic maxims (e.g. in Böhtlingk's German collection) furnish many illustrations of these aspects. Finallly, von Glasenapp refers to the existence of "a whole series of philosophical systems" in India from which ascetic thought lies remote. The *Liṅga* cult, Śāktaism, and Kṛṣṇa-worship with its fertility-rites point in the clearest manner to the fact that a one-sided life-denial never found a place in the sphere of religious belief also.
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In reality, therefore, life-denying and life-affirming are appraised as having existed alongside of each other in India. And these two elements have been taken as constituting an "organic unity" in Indian world-view, and this is said to serve as much the metaphysical requirements as the practical life of the Indian people. Von Glasenapp's methods of analysis and conclusions find themselves in essential agreement with those of the present author developed between 1910 and 1922.