Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Volume II: Sacred Texts and Languages, Ritual Traditions, Arts, Concepts

Abstract

Guha reviews Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Volume II: Sacred Texts and Languages, Ritual Traditions, Arts, Concepts edited by Knut A. Jacobsen.

RR 2011/150 Brill's Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Volume II: Sacred Texts and Languages, Ritual Traditions, Arts, Concepts Editor-in-Chief Knut A. Jacobsen Leiden and Boston, MA 2010 xlv +887 pp. ISBN 978 90 04 17893 9 $354; euro239

Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section Two: India, Volume 22/2

Keyword Encyclopaedias, India, Religion

Review DOI 10.1108/09504121111133800

I have previously had the pleasure of examining the first volume of this massive collection of occidental research on Indian religious ideas (RR 2010/201), which focussed on religious variations in the different regions of the sub-continent; the different deities that have accumulated under the Brahmin umbrella; and, the pilgrimages and gatherings which are still an important part of Indian religious and social activity. Having reviewed that at some length, I intend to take a shorter look at the second volume. I propose to do the same with the third and fourth volumes as they come out, and will sum up me whole series with a more extensive review when the promised final volume, number five, appears.

Like the first, the volume under review consists of scholarly chapter-length essays arranged in a broad subject order rather than alphabetical subject order - really more of a handbook than an encyclopedia. It covers four inter-related topics - Sacred Texts and Languages; Ritual Traditions; Arts; and Concepts:

Language is an important topic. If we assume that Hinduism is the result of a collision between the ideas of incoming Aryan or Indo-European tribes and those of the pre-existing Dravidian inhabitants of ancient India, we can see that though there are hundreds of languages spoken there now, two main ancient languages are likely to be used for sacred writings. Sanskrit is an IndoEuropean language which, broadly speaking, has a similar relationship to many of the languages of the northern half of India as Latin has to the languages of Western Europe. Tamil is a Dravidian language, which similarly underlies many of the languages of southern India. There is, of course, no generally accepted canon in Hinduism equivalent to the Christian Bible. The documents discussed in detail here are roughly the equivalent to the Bible, the Apocrypha, the Book of Mormon, Pope's translation of the Iliad, Hymns Ancient and Modern, Suetonius' Twelve Caesars, the Mort d'Arthur, the Lives of the Saints, and the Jewish Torah.

Aside from texts written in or translated into those major languages, there are discussions of numerous devotional works, both written and oral, in all the languages of India. Many of these represent local religious traditions and folk tales which are in various stages of absorption into Brahminical Hinduism. For some reason, chapters on Ayuverdic Medicine, Astrology and Astronomy, and Mathematics and Geometry are also included in this part of the book.

Rituals, both temple routines and domestic practices, are an important aspect of Hinduism. Hinduism is incorporated into daily life to a much greater extent than is the case with Christianity, so this part also includes chapters on such diverse topics as Purity/Impurity, and Food (though the related topic of Untouchability is discussed elsewhere in the volume and the position of the Dalit untouchables themselves comes into chapters in other volumes).

In most cultures, art is closely entwined with religion. Only the modern west and the classic Chinese have achieved a sharp separation. Chapters here include discussions of temple architecture, drama, music, dance, painting, martial arts and, of course, cinema. Television is subsumed here, but could perhaps have had its own chapter - the Mahabharata may well have drawn the largest television series audience ever.

Concepts form a catch-all topic, incorporating chapters on deeply philosophical topics like Consciousness, Time and Destiny, the relationship of Body and Mind, and, Wisdom and Knowledge. Interspersed are chapters on subjects as diverse as the Avatars of the Gods (diough the gods themselves take up a large proportion of volume one), Dharma, Divination, Insanity, Meditation, and, Untouchability.

This brings me round to my main criticism of the book so far. It undoubtedly contains an enormous amount of accurate scholarly information - I really cannot attempt to fault these extended essays for omissions, inaccuracies or inadequate referencing. However, it is not easy to see a logical arrangement of the material. The essays are cross-referenced by arrows in the text, but diese refer to section headings rather than page numbers, and the contents list at the beginning of the volume is extraordinarily skimpy - just giving bare chapter headings. Thus, for example, there is a section on Sankhya and Yoga within the chapter on Consciousness here, but there is no mention of it in the contents list, and mere is no easy way of linking Yoga, Martial Arts and Ayuverda together. I am assured that there will be a comprehensive index in the final volume which will go some way towards solving this problem, but such indices tend to be extremely complex: useful for scholars but not for general reference purposes. This volume contains nearly fifty pages of prefatory material reprinted from the first volume - details of contributors, notes, lists of primary sources, lists of relevant scholarly journals, general abbreviations etc. Assuming that these are going to reappear in every volume, there will be about 200 pages of superfluous duplication when the work is complete. It would, in my view, have been more useful to have produced a fuller contents list instead, covering all the headed sections within each chapter, and perhaps an alphabetic contents list to form a quick-reference mini-index to the volume.

My other comment is on the slightly dated feel to parts of the book, exacerbated perhaps by the small black and white photographs and the fact that virtually all the references are to printed sources when there is so much available online. Hinduism is a living and growing tradition that has never been formally crystallised. I get the slight impression that some contributors are thinking of Hinduism as it was when they first started studying it, rather than the way in which it is currently developing. Thus, for example, there is a section on Devotional Darsana from Written Text to Television within the chapter on Puja (from the Ritual Traditions part of the volume, rather than from that on the Arts). Many temples now have web-cams however, and it is not unknown for devotees to regard PCs or Blackberries as altars when connected to these.

These are minor quibbles, however. Overall, this is a magnificent work of real scholarship. I look forward eagerly to reviewing the forthcoming volumes. Our congratulations should go to Brill for continuing to publish books like this, which I cannot imagine to be very profitable. Major scholarly reference libraries, and all academic libraries catering for work in oriental studies, anthropology, comparative religion or comparative philosophy, should seriously consider this for acquisition. I hope that these will form a large enough market for Brill to continue publishing the series. General public libraries, school libraries, etc. will probably find that some of the other works I mentioned when reviewing volume one more useful for quick reference purposes.