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WORK TITLE: Bhakti Yoga
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 8/31/1957
WEBSITE: http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~edbryant/
CITY:
STATE:
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http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~edbryant/about.html * http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~edbryant/edwinbryant_cv.pdf
RESEARCHER NOTES: Philosophy East and West review not included; not the same book by this author.–DP
PERSONAL
Born August 31, 1957.
EDUCATION:Attended Manchester University, 1976-77; studied at University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, 1986-89; Columbia University, B.A., 1992, M.A., 1994, Ph.D., 1997.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, scholar, Indologist, and educator. Teacher of English as a foreign language, Jerusalem, Israel, 1977-78, Tehran, Iran, 1978-79, Bahrain, 1984-85; Columbia University, New York, NY, teaching assistant in MEALAC Department, 1991-94, in Department of Religion, 1993-94, instructor in Department of Religion and MEALAC Department, 1996-97, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, research consultant, 1992-93; Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, visiting scholar in the Center for the Study of World Religion, 1997-2000, lecturer on Indology, 1997-2001; Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, associate professor of religion, 2001-.
Integrated Humanities Institute on India, rapporteur, 1992-93; tutor for all levels of Hindi to students referred by the Hindi/Urdu faculty at Columbia University, 1991-97; teaches workshops at yoga studios and teacher training courses throughout the United States.
MEMBER:Phi Beta Kappa.
Recipient of fellowships and scholarships.
WRITINGS
Contributor to books, including Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia, edited by J. Bronkhorst and M. Deshpande, 1999; New Perspectives on Vedic and Ancient Civilization, edited by B.D. Sharma, 2000; ‘Arier’ und Dravidien, edited by M. Bergunder and R.P. Das, 2002; Cultural Studies e Tradizioni Intellettuali: Tra India ed Europa, edited by Federico Squarcini, 2002; Religion and American Cultures: An Encyclopedia of Traditions, Diversity and Popular Expression, 2003; and A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science and Ethics, edited by K. Patton and P. Waldau, 2007.
Contributor of articles to periodicals, including Integral Yoga Magazine, Journal of Indo-European Studies, Journal of Vaishnava Studies, Namarupa, and Yoga Journal. Contributor of book reviews to the Journal of Hindu Studies and H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online.
SIDELIGHTS
Edwin F. Bryant is a college professor who specializes in the religions of India. He reads, speaks, and writes Italian, French, and Hindi and also has some fluency in Sanskrit, Pali, Bengali, Urdu, Avadhi, and Bhrajabhasa (medieval Indic dialects). As part of his scholarly research, Bryant, who has been a yoga practitioner for more than three decades, lived in India for several years, studying Sanskrit and training with Indian yoga experts. Bryant is the author of articles and books on Vedic history, yoga, and the Krishna tradition. He was also featured in the three-hour documentary titled Yoga Unveiled.
The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture
In his first book, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate, Bryant examines how Indian scholars for more than a century have viewed the theory of an external origin of the Indo-Aryans. In the process, Bryant draws from both empirical and historiographical data to explore aspects of this data that support or contest the idea of Aryan inroads into Vedic culture. He also discusses how various people over the centuries, including European orientalists, Indian scholars, and religious reformers have used the Aryan question to advance their own beliefs or ideologies.
“Anyone interested in a detailed, lucid review of the sprawling controversies that this most (in)famous colonisation saga of India has generated will find much that is useful in this book,” wrote India Today website contributor Nayanjot Lahiri. Eliza Kent, writing in the Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, remarked: “Bryant’s lucid and thorough re-examination of the question of the origins of Vedic culture is a must read for any teacher who begins his or her courses on Indian religions with a discussion of the Indus Valley Civilization and the Vedas.”
The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali
The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary with Insights from the Traditional Commentators focuses on the classic text on yoga by Patañjali and how to attain the experience and realization of purusha, an Indian philosophy primarily concerned with the dualistic aspect of nature and self-realization. The book includes the sutras in Devanagari script followed by the the standard International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) transcription and then a word-for-word English translation. Bryant addresses the history of yoga, details of Patañjali yoga, and the subject matter of yoga sutras. In his commentary, Bryant explores topics such as the practice of meditation and mystic powers.
Noting that “hundreds of translations are available already, representing all kinds of perspectives and written by weighty authorities, both within different schools of yoga and academia,” a Harmonist website contributor went on to comment: “Is there then any room for Edwin Bryant’s newest addition? I will argue that there is, and further, that Bryant’s edition is among the most important ones available.” As evidence of the book’s importance, the Harmonist contributor observed that Bryant draws heavily from primary sources as opposed to other second-hand sources and teachings. The reviewer went on to remark: The book’s “value is further enhanced by Bryant’s own observations and discussions on topics such as Ishvara, the agency of purusha, and the position of the siddhis.”
Krishna
In Krishna: A Sourcebook, editor and contributor Bryant provides more information on the religious figure of Krishna, who, in the West, is known primarily as the speaker in the Bhagavad Gita. Book contributors provide further background on this religious figure via stories of Krishna’s childhood and later adventures. In the process, the book draws from new translations of Krishna religious literature from various genres, from the classical and popular to the literary and philosophical.
The book is broken up into four parts, beginning with commentary on classical literature followed by regional literary expressions of Krishna. The final two parts focus on theological and religious texts and hagiography and praxis, that is, the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is realized. “With a few exceptions, this book provides a fine overview of the diversity, strengths, and weaknesses of the current state of American research on Krishna,” wrote Andre Couture in the Journal of the American Oriental Society.
Bhakti Yoga
Bryant is also the author of Bhakti Yoga: Tales and Teachings from the Bhagavata Purana. The book explores one of the most significant traditions in Hinduism and includes key texts and parables associated with the tradition. Bhakti yoga can be viewed basically as a practice of devotion. Bryant points out that Bhakti yoga is far more complex than the popular practice of chanting in groups, known as kirtan.
The book includes Bryant’s own translations of major texts associated with Bhakti yoga, primarily the Bhagavata Purana, which means “The Beautiful Legend of God.” Bryant writes the text with both a scholarly and general audience in mind, most notably yoga practitioners. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted: “Bryant is an accomplished, helpful, and humble guide to this intriguing tradition, which is still largely unexplored in the West.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Journal of the American Oriental Society, January-March, 2008, Andre Couture, review of Krishna: A Sourcebook, p. 144.
Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, January, 2004, Eliza Kent, review of The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate, pp. 1-3.
Publishers Weekly, May 8, 2017, review of Bhakti Yoga: Tales and Teachings from the Bhagavata Purana, p. 55.
ONLINE
Harmonist, http://harmonist.us/ (August 6, 2009), review of The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali.
India Today, https://www.indiatoday.in (November 19, 2001), Nayanjot Lahiri, review of The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture.
Road to Bliss, https://roadstobliss.wordpress.com/ (February 6, 2018), author profile.
Rutgers University Department of Religion Website, http://religion.rutgers.edu/ (February 6, 2018), author faculty profile.
Rutgers University-New Brunswick Website, https://newbrunswick.rutgers.edu/ (February 6, 2018), author CV.
Edwin Bryant (author)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Edwin Francis Bryant
Born August 31, 1957 (age 60)
Nationality British
Occupation Professor of religions of India
Academic background
Alma mater Columbia University
Academic work
Discipline Religious Studies
Institutions Rutgers University
Main interests Yoga, Hindu philosophy
Edwin Francis Bryant is an American Indologist. Currently, he is professor of religions of India at Rutgers University. He published six books and authored a number of articles on Vedic history, yoga, and the Krishna tradition. In his research engagements, he lived several years in India where he studied Sanskrit and was trained with several Indian pundits.[1]
Contents [hide]
1 Academic career
2 Works
2.1 The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture
2.2 Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History
2.3 Translation of the Yoga Sutras and interpretation
3 See also
4 References
5 Further reading
6 External links
Academic career[edit]
Edwin Bryant received his Ph.D in Indic languages and Cultures from Columbia University in 1997 with a dissertation on the "Indigenous Aryans Debate". He taught Hinduism at Harvard University for three years, and is presently professor of Religions of India at Rutgers University where he teaches courses on Hindu philosophy and religion.[2] He has received numerous fellowships.[2]
In addition to his academic courses, Bryant currently teaches workshops at yoga studios and teacher training courses throughout the country.[3] His lectures and workshop engagements include: The Bhagavad Gita, The Yoga Sutras, Indian Philosophy and Bhakti, and the Krishna Tradition. Indian Philosophy workshop includes "the foundational philosophical texts of yoga and examine the underpinnings and essential principles of the classical schools of Hindu philosophy... beginning with their foundations in the Upanishads, the earliest mystico-philosophical tradition of India, and evolving into the Yoga Sutras, Vedanta Sutras, Bhagavad Gita, and other post-Vedic texts."[4]
Works[edit]
Bryant has published six books and authored a number of articles on Vedic history, yoga, and Krishna-bhakti tradition. He is an expert on Krishna tradition[5] and has translated the story of Krishna from the Sanskrit Bhagavata Purana.[6]
Edwin F. Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate. — Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. — xi, 387 p. — ISBN 0-19-513777-9, ISBN 0-19-516947-6 (pbk.)
Edwin F. Bryant, Krishna: The Beautiful Legend of God; Śrīmad Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Book X; with chapters 1, 6 and 29-31 from Book XI, Translated with an introduction and notes by Edwin F. Bryant. — London: Penguin Books, 2003. — xxxi, 515 p. — ISBN 0-14-044799-7
Edwin F. Bryant and Maria L. Ekstrand, The Hare Krishna Movement: The Postcharismatic Fate of a Religious Transplant. New York; Chichester: Columbia University Press, 2004. — xix, 448 p. — ISBN 0-231-12256-X
Edwin F. Bryant and Laurie L. Patton, Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History. London: Routledge, 2005. — 522 p. — ISBN 0-7007-1462-6 (cased), ISBN 0-7007-1463-4 (pbk.)
Edwin F. Bryant, Krishna: a Sourcebook. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. — xiv, 575 p. — ISBN 0-19-514891-6 (hbk.) ISBN 0-19-514892-4 (pbk.)
Edwin F. Bryant, The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary with Insights from the Traditional Commentators; illustrated. New York: North Point Press, 2009. — xvii, 598 p. — ISBN 0-86547-736-1
The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture[edit]
Bryant is the author of The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture (Oxford University Press, 2001).[7]
J. P. Mallory says the book:
... systematically exposes the logical weaknesses of most of the arguments that support the consensus of either side. This is not only an important work in the field of Indo-Aryan studies but a long overdue challenge for scholarly fair play.[8]
Michael Witzel writes:
A balanced description and evaluation of the two century old debate dealing with the origins of the Indo-Aryan speaking peoples of South Asia. [Bryant] presents both sides of the issue, that is the traditional western, linguistic and philological consensus of immigration from Central Asia, and the more recent Indian position that denies any immigration and that asserts an indigenous South Asian origin. He probes for loopholes on both sides....
Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History[edit]
This book, edited by Edwin Bryant and Laurie Patton,[9] contains a series of articles by proponents of the "Indigenous Aryans" position and scholars of the Indo-Aryan migration theory, with some alternative interpretations. According to Edwin Bryant, most of the evidence regarding the origin of Indo-Aryans is inconclusive and he is not convinced of the Indo-Aryan migrations theory, but he is also not convinced of an "Out-of-India position", since the support for it is not significant. He notes that the discovery of Indo-Aryan language family was foundational to the investigation of the origins of the Western civilization, and the relationship between the Indo-Aryan family and the remaining Indo-European languages must be established. However, he states: "... I find most of the evidence that has been marshalled to support the theory of Indo-Aryan migrations into the subcontinent to be inconclusive upon careful scrutiny, but on the other, I have not been convinced by an Out-of-India position, since there has been very little of significance offered so far in support of it."
In a review, Sanskrit linguist Stephanie W. Jamison likened the effort of the volume to calls to "teach the controversy" by the proponents of Intelligent Design. She states that the Indo-Aryan controversy is a "manufactured one" with a non-scholarly, religio-nationalistic attack on scholarly consensus and the editors (Bryant and Patton) have unwittingly provided it a gloss of intellectual legitimacy. The editors are not linguists, she contends, and they have accepted patently weak or false linguistic arguments. So their apparently even-handed assessment lacks merit and cannot be regarded as objective scholarship.[10] Historian Sudeshna Guha concurs, saying that Bryant does not probe into the epistemology of evidence and hence perceives the opposing viewpoints unproblematic. On the contrary, she holds that the timing and renewed vigour of the indigenist arguments during the 1990s demonstrates unscholarly opportunism. Fosse and Deshpande's contributions to the volume provide a critical analysis of the historiography and the nationalist and colonial agendas behind it. She also holds Bryant's desire to present what he calls the views of "Indian scholars" for "reconstructing the religious and cultural history of their own country" as misleading because it patently ignores the views of historians of India who have done so since the beginning of the twentieth century.[11]
Translation of the Yoga Sutras and interpretation[edit]
In 2007 Bryant completed a translation of the Yoga Sutras and their traditional commentaries.[7] The translation was published in 2009 by North Point Press as The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali (with Insights from the Traditional Commentators). In his article History Repeats Itself (Yoga Journal, Nov 2001), the author adds that "Our modern world, more than any other epoch in human history, has universalized and idolized consumerism - the indulgence of the senses of the mind - as the highest goal of life." In yoga, that creates unwanted influences, where "Our vrittis, the turbulences of the mind born from desire, are out of control."[12] Control and elimination of vrittis comprise significant portion of yoga practices and observances (yama and niyama) that culminates with nirodha, an arrested state of mind capable of one-pointedness. Otherwise, if unwanted vrittis are allowed to predominate, "We risk missing the whole point of the practice".
In the interview Inside the Yoga Tradition,[13] Bryant describes some tenets of his interpretation of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, "I stress in my commentary that Patanjali is emphatic about the yamas and niyamas (vows and observances). We can't say that what he is teaching is applicable only to the time period in which he codified the Sutras or that they are only for Hindus living in India. Patanjali asserts that yamas and niyamas are great universal vows. He didn't have to further qualify them - universal means no exception whatsoever."
Discussing theistic overtones in Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the practice of ishvara-pranidhana (commitment or surrender to God), David Gordon White points out in his The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali - A Biography,[14] "Edwin Bryant, who, in his recent splendid commentary on the Yoga Sutra, notes that Vijanabhikshu considered ishvara-pranidhana to refer to the practice of devotion to Krishna, the Lord of the Bhagavat Gita. Bryant clearly aligns himself with this interpretation of the term, reading ishvara-pranidhana as submission to a personal god and asserting that most yogis over the past two millennia have been associated with devotional sects." Similar view is expressed by a commentator of Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (1999), Baba Hari Dass, "Ishvara pranidhana (surrender to God) is a method of the devotional path (Bhakti Yoga)".[15][16] Due to its ultimate intensity, this practice is considered to be a fast-track to Samadhi (super-consciousness).
EDWIN F. BRYANT
Edwin F. Bryant
Edwin F. Bryant received his PhD in Indology from Columbia University. He is a professor of Hindu religion and philosophy at Rutgers University, and also teaches workshops on the yoga sutras and other Hindu texts in yoga communities around the world. He is the author of The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali from North Point Press.
Edwin F. Bryant Ph.D
Screen Shot 2015-03-06 at 1.39.52 PMEdwin Bryant received his Ph.D in Indic languages and Cultures from Columbia University. He taught Hinduism at Harvard University for three years, and is presently the professor of Hinduism at Rutgers University where he teaches courses on Hindu philosophy and religion. He has received numerous awards and fellowships, published six books and authored a number of articles on Vedic history, yoga, and the Krishna tradition. In addition to his academic work for the scholarly community, Edwin’s Penguin World Classics translation of the Srimad Bhagavata Purana, the traditional source for the story of Krishna’s incarnation, is both for Indology specialists as well as students and those interested in Hinduism from the general reading public and the yoga community.
As a personal practitioner of yoga for 35 years, a number of them spent in India studying with traditional teachers, where he returns yearly, Edwin strives to combine academic scholarship and rigor with sensitivity towards traditional knowledge systems.
Edwin currently teaches workshops on the Yoga Sutras, Bhagavad Gita, and Hindu Philosophy at yoga studios and teacher training courses throughout the country.( source: his Website)
http://www.edwinbryant.org
Bryant, Edwin F.
Edwin F. Bryant
Professor
Religions of India
Loree Building, Room 108
Email: Edwin F. Bryant
About
pdf CV (134 KB)
A Brief Video About My Work
Contact Information
Office Hours, Fall 2017: Tuesdays, 1:00-2:00 p.m., Loree 108, DC
Phone: 848-932-3289 / 9641
Fax: 732-932-1271
Education Areas of Specialization
Ph.D., M.Phil, B.A. Columbia University
Manchester University
Religions of India
8
of 8
Edwin F. Bryant Department of Religion Rutgers UniversityLoree Bldg 11470 Lipman DriveNew Brunswick, NJ 08901-8525E-mail:
EDWIN F.BRYANTPAGE 2ACADEMIC AND RELATEDEMPLOYMENTProfessor, Department of Religion, Rutgers University, 2001-present.Lecturer on Indology, Committee for the Study of Religion, Harvard University, 1997-2001.Visiting scholar, Center for the Study of World Religion, Harvard University, 1997-2000. Instructor, Elementary Sanskrit, Department of Religion, Columbia University, 1996-97.Instructor, Hindi/Urdu, MEALAC Department, Columbia University, 1996-97.Tutor, all levels of Hindi to students referred by the Hindi/Urdu faculty, Columbia University, 1991-1997.Teaching Assistant, Introduction to Eastern Religions, Department of Religion, Barnard College, Columbia University, 1994.Teaching Assistant, Sanskrit, MEALAC Department, Columbia University, 1993-94.Teaching Assistant, Hinduism, Religion Department, Barnard College, Columbia University, 1993.Research Consultant, 1992-93, for Amy Poster, Curator, Oriental Section of the Brooklyn Museum. Translated Braj Bhasa and Sanskrit inscriptions on Indian miniature paintings and provided commentaries.Rapporteur, The Integrated Humanities Institute on India, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, 1992-93.Teaching Assistant, all levels of Hindi/Urdu, MEALAC Department, Columbia University, 1991-92. Teacher of English as a foreign language, Jerusalem, 1977-78; Tehran, 1978-79; Bahrain, 1984-85. COURSES TAUGHT Harvard University: Introduction to Hinduism; Krishna; Theism in Indic Thought; The Bhagavad Gita and its Commentaries; The Yoga of Devotion: Reading of a Hindu Theological Text; Philosophies of India; Reading Hindu Texts; Hindu Gurus in the West; The Rise of the Goddess Tradition; God as Lover, Child & Friend; Sanskrit; Hindi.Rutgers University: Hindu Scriptures (840:204); Religions of the Eastern World (840:211);Introduction to Hinduism (840:322); Krishna (840:357); Hindu Philosophy (840:368); Hindu Gurus in the West (840:345); Sanskrit (independent study, first and second year); Yoga: History and Philosophy (840:393); The Bhagavad Gita and its Commentaries(840:358), Vedanta Sutras and their Commentaries (840.403); Ancient Greek and Hindu Philosophical Thought: Comparative Perspectives (272:01); Bhakti Yoga (840:366); Western Encounters with Hinduism (840:549); Theory and Methods in the Study of Religion (840:501).
EDWIN F.BRYANTPAGE 4“The Seven Stages of Samadhi in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras”in Cultural Histories of MeditationProceedings from the Oslo University Conference (in press).“The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophyhttp://www.iep.utm.edu/."The Indo-Aryan Invasion Debate." The I-E Language Family: Pre-Historical Reality of Linguistic Fabrication?(Monograph of the Journal of IE studies, 2009), pp. 4.1–4.32. Edwin Bryant."Introduction" and “Krishna in the Tenth Book of the Bhagavata Purana” in Krishna: A Sourcebook.Ed. Bryant. (Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 4-20 & 111-136. Edwin F. Bryant.“Strategies of Vedic Subversion: The Emergence of Vegetariansim in Post-Vedic India” in A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science and Ethics.Eds. K. Patton, & P. Waldau. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 194-203. Edwin Bryant.“Concluding Remarks.” In The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and inference in Indian History. (Richmond, UK: Routledge, 2005), pp. 468-506. Eds. E. Bryant & L. Patton. "Introduction" and "Concluding Reflections." In The Hare Krishna Movement: The Post-Charismatic Fate of a Religious Transplant. (New York: Columbia University Press 2004), pp. 1-10 & 431-441. Eds. E. Bryant & M. Ekstrand.“'Somewhere in Asia and No More,' Response to ‘Indigenous Indo-Aryans and the Rigveda’ by Kazanas." Journal of Indo-European Studies30.3-4 (2003): 341-353.“Hare Krishna Movement.” In Religion and American Cultures: An Encyclopedia of Traditions, Diversity and Popular Expression.(Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2003), pp. 110-112. Eds L. Leon & G. Laderman. Edwin Bryant."Il Dibattito sulle Origini della Civiltá Indiana" (The Debate over the Origins of Indian Civilization). In Cultural Studies e Tradizioni Intellettuali: tra India ed EuropaEd. Federico Squarcini (Milano: Mimesis, 2002) pp. 333-350. . Edwin F. Bryant.“The Date and Provenance of the Bhagavata Purana.” Journal of Vaishnava Studies11:1 Fall (2002): 51-80.“Disput um die Vergangenheit. Indoarische Ursprünge und Moderner Nationalistischer Diskurs" (The Indo-Aryan Invasion Debate and the Politics of Identity). In ‘Arier’ und Dravidien.Eds M. Bergunder & R.P. Das (Halle: Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen, 2002), pp. 206-231. Edwin Bryant.“The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate and Nationalist Discourse." In New Perspectives on Vedic and Ancient Civilization. Ed. B.D. Sharma (Los Angeles: World Association for Vedic Studies, 2000), pp. 11-26. Edwin Bryant.
EDWIN F.BRYANTPAGE 5“Linguistic Substrata and the Indo-Aryan Migration Debate.” In Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia.Eds J. Bronkhorst & M. Deshpande. (Harvard Oriental Series. 3, 1999), pp 59-83. Edwin F. Bryant.Contributor to Poster, Amy G., Indian Paintings of the Brooklyn Museum. (New York: Hudson Hills, 1993, 12). Edwin Bryant. Translated two Braj Bhasapoems from the Sur Sagar (10: 4156 & 4157), Journal of Vaishnava Studies, 1:1 (1992): 6-8.Academic Electronic Media.The Yoga Sutras Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Non-Refereed Journal Articles“Is Yoga Really Universal.” Integral YogaMagazineSummer (2011):44-45. “Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and its Commentaries 5-7” Namarupa: Categories of Indian Thought6 (2007): 82-85. Edwin F. Bryant.“Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and its Commentaries 8-11” Namarupa: Categories of Indian Thought7 (2007): 29-31. Edwin F. Bryant."Inside the Bhagavad Gita."Integral Yoga MagazineSpring (2007): 10-12. Edwin F. Bryant."Inside the Vedanta Tradition."Integral Yoga MagazineFall (2007): 10-13. Edwin F. Bryant."Inside the Yoga Tradition."Integral Yoga MagazineWinter (2007): 18-20. Edwin F. Bryant."The Bhagavata Purana" Namarupa: Categories of Indian ThoughtNo 5. Fall (2006)"Was Patanjali a Vaishnava?" Journal of Vaishnava Studies. 14.1 (2005): 7-28. "Krishna's Lila and the practice of Bhakti Yoga in the Bhagavata Purana."Namarupa: Categories of Indian Thought5 (2006): 42-49. Edwin F. Bryant."The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and its Commentaries 3-4." Namarupa: Categories of Indian Thought2 (2004): 36-37. Edwin F. Bryant."The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali." Namarupa: Categories of Indian ThoughtPart III Winter (2004) (ongoing serialized contribution)."The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and its Commentaries 1-2." In Namarupa: Categories of Indian Thought.1 (2003): 33-39. Edwin F. Bryant.
EDWIN F.BRYANTPAGE 6"The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali." Namarupa: Categories of Indian ThoughtSpring 1 (2003): 33-38 (monthly serialized contribution).“Living Yoga: History Repeats Itself” Yoga Journal. 163 (2001): 65-68. Edwin F. Bryant.Published Book ReviewsStudies on the Cårvåka/Lokåyata by Ramkrishna Bhattacharya, Journal of Hindu Studies, forthcoming. Hindu Perspectives on Evolution: Darwin, Dharma and Designby C.Mackenzie Brown International Journal of Hindu Studies.18. 2 (2014), pps 85-90.Modern Hindu Personalism The History, Life, and Thought ofBhaktisiddhanta Sarasvatiby Sardello, F. Journal of Hindu Studies 7.1 (2014), pps ???Early India from the Origins to AD 1300by Romila Thapar H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online (April 2004);
EDWIN F.BRYANTPAGE 7“The Seven Stages of Samadhi in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras” Cultural Histories of Meditation conference, Oslo University, Aug 2010. “Who Owns Yoga?” Panel Discussion. Princeton University, Feb 2010. “The History of the Debate over Indo-Aryan Origins” Doshi Bridgebuilder Conference on the Indus/Sindhu Valley and Sarasvati River Valley Civilizations, Loyola Marymount University February, 2009.“Indo-Aryans: Contested Origins.” Rethinking Religion in India conference, Delhi, January 2009Panel on Yoga Books. American Academy of Religion, Chicago, November, 2008“Isvara in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras” Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies Princeton University, Oct 2008. “Roundtable on Translation” The Program in Comparative Literature Rutgers University April, 2008 "The Euro-Centric Indo-Europeans from Indo-Centric perspectives." Conference reconsidering Indo-European, Cambridge University, November 2005. "Scandalous Krishna: Nineteenth Century Debates on the Morality of the Bhagavata Purana's Tales of Love." Krishna Symposium, Stamford University, May, 2005"Notions of the Self and Identity In Classical Yoga." Committee for South Asian Studies, Princeton University, April, 2005.“The Date and Provenance of the Bhagavata Purana,” Conference in Honor of Dennis Hudson, Columbia University, November, 2002.“The Indo-Aryan Invasion Debate,” Conference on Aryanism in Indian Historiography, University of North Carolina, November, 2002.“The Battle over Origins: Stereotypes and Counter-Stereotypes in the Indo-Aryan Invasion Debate,” Panel on Hinduism in Dialogue with the Western Academy, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, November, 2001."Conflicting Orders from Above: Hindu Deity Worship and the Graven Image," American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, November, 2000.“The Emergence of Vegetarianism in Hindu Textual Sources,” American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, November, 1999.“The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate and the Politicization of History,” Conference on ‘Arier und Dravidien,’ Nartin Luther Universität, Halle, Germany, October, 1999.
EDWIN F.BRYANTPAGE 8“Dating Vedic Texts: An Astro-chronological Approach,” Annual Conference of South Asia, University of Wisconsin, Madison, October, 1998.“The Indo-Aryan Invasion Debate: The Politics of a Discourse,” Second Annual Conference of the Association of Vedic Studies, Los Angeles, August, 1998.“The Indo-Aryan Invasion Debate: Dissident Voices from India,” Tenth Annual Conference of Indo-European Studies, Los Angeles, July 1998.“Sacred Sources of Indic Tradition,” The Agha Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, November, 1997.“The Indigenous Aryan School of Historians,” American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, November, 1997.“The Aryan Invasion debate: the Linguistic Evidence,” Annual Conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin, Madison, October, 1997.“The Indo-Aryan Invasion Debate,” Study of Religion Colloquium, Harvard University, November, 1997.“Linguistic Substrata and the Indo-Aryan Migration Debate,” Aryan and Non-Aryan in South Asia Conference, University of Michigan, October, 1996.“The Origin of the Aryans: Some Linguistic Considerations,” Indus Sarasvati Conference, Atlanta, October, 1996."Indian Proto-history from a Traditional Hindu Point of View," University of Mysore, India, February,1995."In Defense of the Tradition," Regional meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Union Theological Seminary, New York, April, 1994.OtherFeatured in a 3 hours documentary on Yoga, called ‘Yoga Unveiled.’
Bhakti Yoga: Tales and Teachings from the
Bhagavata Purana
Publishers Weekly.
264.19 (May 8, 2017): p55+.
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Full Text:
Bhakti Yoga: Tales and Teachings from the Bhagavata Purana
Edwin F. Bryant. North Point, $35 (688p)
ISBN 978-0-86547-775-9
Bryant (The Yoga Sutras ofPatanjali), professor of Indian religions at Rutgers University, explores the
Bhagavata Purana ("The Beautiful Legend of God"), probably finalized between the fourth to sixth
centuries C.E., which focuses on "devotional surrender" to Krishna as Isvara or Bhagavan (God). Rather
than providing a comprehensive overview of bhakti spiritual paths, Bryant investigates this one tradition in
depth, drawing primarily on 16th-century commentaries. In Bryant's extensive introduction, which occupies
the first third of the book, he explores with precision and assurance such topics as the definitions of bhakti,
the nine bhakti practices, and the relationship of bhakti to other types of yoga, along with many religious
and philosophical aspects of this tradition. His analysis serves as an invaluable preface to the subsequent
texts, primarily stories, that he translates, in which readers will encounter bhaktas (bhakti devotees)
attaining bliss by contemplating God, Krishna's mischievous boyhood, philosophical discourses, warnings
against the dangers of worldly attachments, and lush descriptions of bejeweled deities. The extensive use of
Sanskrit terminology and the complexity of key concepts in Hinduism may offer an initial challenge for
nonspecialists, but Bryant is an accomplished, helpful, and humble guide to this intriguing tradition, which
is still largely unexplored in the West. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Bhakti Yoga: Tales and Teachings from the Bhagavata Purana." Publishers Weekly, 8 May 2017, p. 55+.
General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491949137/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c6232756. Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.
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The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali: A Biography
Shyam Ranganathan
Philosophy East and West.
66.3 (July 2016): p1043+.
COPYRIGHT 2016 University of Hawaii Press
http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/journals/pew/index.html
Full Text:
The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali: A Biography. By David Gordon White. Lives of Great Religious Books.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014. Pp. 296. Hardcover $24.95, 16.95[pounds sterling], ISBN 978-
0-691-14377-4. eBook ISBN 9781400850051.
David Gordon White's The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali: A Biography claims to be a biographical account of the
life of the Yoga Sutra. But it is instead an account of what people across times and continents have thought
about the Yoga Sutra. For the Lives of Great Religious Books series that White is contributing to with this
volume, there is no difference: your life and what people thought about you amount to the same thing. For
those of us who believe in the possibility of error--that people's opinions about you can be mistaken--there
is a strong line to be drawn between one's life and secondary opinion. In the case of texts, if secondary
opinion can be mistaken, we should certainly want to draw a distinction between the text and what people
thought about it. Historians of philosophy (philosophers with an interest in engaging with historical figures
and texts) take this approach. If you are interested in what other people think about the Yoga Sutra, then this
is your book. Moreover, if you are naive enough to believe that the account of the Yoga Sutra that you
received from your guru in the wider yoga community is the end result of a faithful, historical process
leading back to the historical Patanjali himself, you are in trouble. Call this the historical thesis. I shall also
call it "Q" for the sake of a Modus Tollens later on. White claims that he no longer holds Q (p. xv). As
someone who believes in the possibility of error of secondary opinion, I find it incredible that White ever
believed Q.
The book is geared toward showing Q false. White would rather that we view the Yoga Sutra as a "come
back classic"--that though historically neglected, it has now been translated into over forty languages the
world over (p. xvi). To this end, White is "devoted to tracing the fractured history of these modern
appropriations and contestations, which have carried the Yoga Sutra's legacy across the oceans and over the
snowy peaks of the Himalayan Shangri-la" (p. 17). Indeed, the chapters in the first half of the book do
provide such an account: starting out first with the reception of the Yoga Sutra within the history of Indian
philosophy (chapter 2), followed by the Western discovery of the Yoga Sutra (chapter 3), the surprising
interest Hegel showed in the text and the unsurprising inclination of Hegel to claim himself an expert on the
topic (chapter 4), the creative reordering and representation of the Yoga Sutra by the Indian Indologist
Rajendralal Mitra (chapter 5), the uptake of the Yoga Sutra by the Theosophical Society (chapter 6), the role
of Swami Vivekananda in the "mainstreaming" of the Yoga Sutra (chapter 7), and finally the Yoga Sutra in
the Muslim world (chapter 8).
In the second half, White returns to South Asia, focusing on the seriousness with which the Yoga Sutra was
received by medieval Indian thinkers (chapter 9), the topic of Tsvara (the Lord) as it is dealt with variously
by translations and interpretations (chapter 10), the place of the Yoga Sutra in early twentieth-century
scholarship (chapter 11), and the (lack of) evidence in support of the claim that Krishnamacarya is last in an
ancient tradition of Yoga Sutra transmission stretching back to Patanjali himself (chapter 12).
The final chapter (13) outlines recent commentarial spats on the Yoga Sutra. It touches upon scholarly
observations that the language of the Yoga Sutra is more Buddhist than "Hindu." The assumption here
seems to be that something could not be both Buddhist and Hindu (so much for karma). Finally, this chapter
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deals with contemporary commentarial controversies on the Yoga Sutra between Indologists. Far from
faulting scholars for multiplying interpretations of the Yoga Sutra based on assumptions, White identifies
"critical scholars" as being preoccupied "nearly exclusively with the classical commentators and their
readings of the work's aphorisms" (p. 5) and the project of criticism as generative of models of
interpretations that are themselves the subject of criticism (p. 235). As an example of such criticism, he
approvingly cites one scholar (Edwin Bryant) who claims that when we speak "of the philosophy of
Patanjali, what we really mean (or should mean) is the understanding of Patanjali according to Vyasa" (p.
11; cf. p. 226). This is what it is to be a "critical scholar" in his account. He contrasts folks who defer to the
authority of a commentator to the lay reader who appreciates the Yoga Sutra in terms of popular Hindu
literature and poetry, such as the Mahabharata or the puranas. This is uncritical in his account (p. 5).
To my way of seeing, when we are critical we read texts for ourselves, and we think for ourselves. This
allows us an option to be critical of the authorities. When we study the history of the reception of the Yoga
Sutra, we study what other people thought or believed about the Yoga Sutra. To call such secondary opinion
right by definition is to give up on criticism.
White's position leads us to the scholar's version of the Euthyphro Dilemma: an authority such as Vyasa is
right if he loves the right account of the Yoga Sutra (Socrates' preference), or, whatever an authority such as
Vyasa says about the Yoga Sutra is the right account of the Yoga Sutra (Euthyphro's preference). In the
original dilemma, the authorities were the Gods, tradition, and custom, and the question was "what is the
holy." Socrates's preference involves taking responsibility for figuring out what is holy, and this provides a
foundation for vindicating some Gods, traditions, and customs over others. If we take Euthyphro's option,
we write a blank check to our stated Gods and treat their preferences as definitive of what is holy--which is
contrary to being critical--and, as Socrates notes, the Gods do not agree. Socrates's position is widely
considered the better of the two options. White's position is Euthyphroian: knowing about the Yoga Sutra--
being "critical"--involves deferring to the authorities. And the authorities do not agree.
In White's account of criticism, there is no way to assess whether a "critical scholar's" account is mistaken,
for being critical means reading a text in terms of its commentary. One would hope this is not true. But yet,
when White compares competing "critical scholarly" approaches to the Yoga Sutra, with their mutually
exclusive readings, he says that if we proceed from the premises to the conclusion, they are "entirely
plausible" (p. 234).
On the question of why the Yoga Sutra has so many commentaries, White provides the following
explanation about Indian philosophy. In his account, had Indian philosophers employed the mathematics of
theoretical physics, which has a fixed, context-invariant and "transparent" extension regardless of what
language it is written in, we could understand Indian philosophy clearly. But Indian philosophers instead
opted to use natural language. As such, "this language-based format has made ancient Indian philosophy
terribly fragile, protean, and difficult to grasp." In White's account "this is what made commentaries so
vitally necessary" (p. 26). Logical Positivists who held a position very much like this had to pack it up.
There were numerous problems with their approach (for more see Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism").
Theirs is one of the few options in philosophy that is treated as dead by all concerned. But worse, White
does not seem to appreciate that if what he says is true of Indian philosophy (because it uses natural
languages, we need commentaries) then that is true of all tracts such as his own.
One gets the impression from White that there is no philosophy of the Yoga Sutra: just commentaries all the
way down. Along the way, in reviewing the various historical interpretations of the Yoga Sutra, White
criticizes those who read the Yoga Sutra in the order it comes down to us as "slavishly following the order
of the sutras as they are found in the original text" and praises Rajendralal Mitra's Kantian representation of
the Yoga Sutra. This involves replacing Patanjali's philosophically important concept of person (purusa)
with the Platonically laden mental concept of the self as the soul--a representation that not only conflicts
with the Yoga Sutra's criticism of personal identification with mind (YS I.2--4), but is a representation that
White wishes was the way Patanjali had presented the material to make it "far more accessible" (chapter 5,
pp. 94-95). My concern is that the order of the text, and the concepts employed in it, are the objective
features of a text that a good reading should explain. If I change the order of the Yoga Sutra, and change the
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concepts from those characteristic of Yoga to that which are definitive of Plato, I now have the Plato Sutra
in front of me. I have not rendered the Yoga Sutra more accessible: I just changed the topic. But none of this
will seem out of the ordinary if, in the case of the Yoga Sutra, it is merely commentaries all the way down,
with no objectively meaningful text for us to read.
From what I can tell, White has one main argument and one smaller derivative argument:
1. If P (Patanjali's Yoga Sutra is a classic of Indian philosophy) then Q (it comes down to us in an unbroken
succession of teacher, student, and copier).
2. Not Q,
3. Therefore: Not P.
Call this the historical argument. Instead of "P" White would rather have the following idea:
[P.sub.comeback] (Patanjali's Yoga Sutra is a comeback classic).
All the attention poured on the secondary literature on the Yoga Sutra bolsters Not Q. The strength of this
Modus Tollens relies upon Not Q. I take it that Q is false. White agrees, too. But for the same reason I do
not buy (1). As a conditional, it is either true in the hollow way that conditionals can be true (with a false
antecedent and false consequent) or it is outright false (with P being true and Q being false). If the meaning
of a text is objective, and not determined by opinion, then the perennial importance of a text is not about its
social reception but its enduring philosophical importance given its objective meaning. If P, then Not Q is a
more plausible conditional. We do not need [P.sub.comeback]. If the meaning of texts is subjective, then
anything goes: indeed, one might even believe truthfully as a matter of one's perspective that Q is true of the
Yoga Sutra--which White denies.
Does White have an opinion on the objectivity of the meaning of the Yoga Sutra? Does he reject that the
meaning of the Yoga Sutra is objective? He says something revealing. In his account, given Not Q, the
"recovery" that followed the text's rediscovery was a tortured process ... as its many modern interpreters
projected their fantasies, preconceptions, hopes, dreams, and personal agendas onto Patanjali's work in
unprecedented ways. As a result, the Yoga Sutra has been something of a battered orphan for the better part
of the last two centuries, often abused by well-meaning or not-so-well-meaning experts and dilettantes.... (p.
16)
If the meaning of a philosophical text is objective, we don't need its parent to protect it. We merely need to
read it as philosophers read texts: for the philosophy. No text is properly described as an orphan on this
account. If the meaning is subjective, then any one account is as good as another. Everyone is the parent of
a text, and no text is an orphan. Either way, no parent of a text has a place of privilege in accounting for the
meaning of the text. Yet, White draws attention to the absence of the Yoga Sutra's parent as the issue.
A derivative argument that White tries to establish is that the Yoga Sutra is an "Indian scriptural and
philosophical tradition that is truly cosmopolitan, embedded in every part of the world, even if only recently
rediscovered in the land of its birth" (p. 17). The evidence for this just is the historical material that White
examines through the book. If this is the argument, then it is only plausible if the Yoga Sutra being "recently
rediscovered" in India means something like a thousand years ago, by the likes of Nathamuni (p. 163).
Recent is vague, but a thousand years ago is not that recent--even for us philosophers who read old stuff all
the time.
While White seems to follow Euthyphro on the matter of what counts as normative, he seems to follow
Plato in the Republic (not Socrates) on another matter: banish literature from serious discourse (in Plato's
case it was Homer; in White's case it is the Mahabharata and puranas), and drag out the disengaged wise
men (the traditional commentators) to tell us how things are. Plato explored this position in the Republic
after Socrates was executed for his brand of philosophical piety, which brought him into conflict with
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Euthyphroian types (described in the Apology). If Philosophers could be kings, and we banish literature--
the source of common ideas of piety--Socrates would be safe--right? The result of this experiment is a new
kind of tyranny, which Plato scarcely conceals in the closing books of the Republic. White's Republic is
characterized by a liberal attitude to who could count as an authority on the Yoga Sutra. It has to do with
scholarly credibility, cashed out in terms of deference to commentaries. At times I wondered if White was
attempting to encourage a completely libertarian approach to the Yoga Sutra, where anyone could be an
authority on the Yoga Sutra, so long as one's view was informed by a traditional commentary.
Overall, I found The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali: A Biography a window into the state of scholarship on the
Yoga Sutra, where deference to authority and the idea that authorial intentions matter apparently continue to
exercise influence. White depicts the "critical" scholars as part of his Euthyphroian enterprise, which
renders their research seem (rightfully) strange. I found that White helped me catch up on the secondary
literature on the Yoga Sutra, which is useful. Extracting this benefit was made difficult by the philosophical
minefield that White has set for anyone familiar with the history of contemporary philosophy and the Yoga
Sutra. The very premise of the Lives of Great Religious Books series, which collapses the distinction
between the text itself and secondary opinion, is not helpful to critical thinking about a text such as the
Yoga Sutra. It consists in rejecting the distinction between opinion and fact, which is central to critical
thought. Despite this, White's book was useful in providing a snapshot of the state of research into the Yoga
Sutra today.
White begins his last chapter with the question whether kaivalyam, "the goal of Yoga practice, means that
the practitioner dies to the world." He notes:
For Yohanan Grinshpon, the answer is yes: Yoga requires that the
person disintegrate. . . . It is the absolute, unfathomable end,
the end of ends. For Chris Chapple and Ian Whicher, the answer is
no: Yoga entails enlightened engagement with the world; while Shyam
Ranganathan goes so far as to say that the Yoga Sutra is a work of
moral philosophy, guiding men to become morally perfect in the
world. (p. 225)
This is almost my view. In my account, the topic of the Yoga Sutra is not men, but people, and what it is to
be a person is to have an interest in one's own independence (kaivalya) via a control of the objects of one's
environment (erroneously identified as mental privacy prior to the practice of yoga). Ideally this involves
total control and responsibility for one's environment. Animals have an interest in this kind of
independence: they are people. As the central topics of the Yoga Sutra are self-governance and self-mastery
as a means to independence--a central concern of moral philosophy in any tradition, as exemplified in the
works of philosophers such as Plato or Kant--the Yoga Sutra is a classic work on ethics. Figuring this out
involves reading the Yoga Sutra on its own terms (that is, not through the lens of a commentary) while
studying the history of moral philosophy. My method in Yoga Sutra research is critical and typical for what
counts as research in philosophy, but not what counts as critical scholarship on White's account.
Positively, White puts aside "critical scholarship" at the very end of his book and notes the important role
Yoga is playing in critical discourse about democracy in India (p. 236). He depicts this as Yoga Sutra 2.0. If
the content of the Yoga Sutra is to be cashed out by what White calls "critical scholarship," then this is
capricious--it involves no deference to commentarial authority but a direct interest in yoga. If I am correct
about the ethical substance of the Yoga Sutra, this is a faithful engagement with Yoga. This would not be the
first time that this has happened. According to recent research, the Yoga Sutra was formative in M. K.
Gandhi's doctrine of satyagraha (cf. YS II.33-35) and influenced his account of moral virtues. As Bindu
Puri notes in her Tagore-Gandhi Debate on Matters of Truth and Untruth (Springer, 2015) (p. 36) there are
over two hundred references to the Yoga Sutra and "Bhagwan Patanjali" in the Collected Works of
Mahatma Gandhi. This is a topic that White leaves out of his global survey of the reception and impact of
the Yoga Sutra. Gandhi apparently did not read Patanjali through a commentary.
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Reviewed by Shyam Ranganathan York University shyamr@york.ca
Ranganathan, Shyam
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Ranganathan, Shyam. "The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali: A Biography." Philosophy East and West, vol. 66, no.
3, 2016, p. 1043+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A458165208/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=364b749f. Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A458165208
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Krishna: A Sourcebook
Andre Couture
The Journal of the American Oriental Society.
128.1 (January-March 2008): p144+.
COPYRIGHT 2008 American Oriental Society
Full Text:
Krishna: A Sourcebook. Edited by EDWIN F. BRYANT. NEW YORK: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS,
2007. Pp. xiv + 575.
This impressive book contains twenty-two chapters divided into four sections organized under the following
headings: "Classical Source Material" (chs. 1-4, pp. 21-136), "Regional Literary Expressions'" (chs. 5-12,
pp. 136-306), "Philosophy and Theology" (chs. 13-18, pp. 307-474), and "Hagoigraphy and Praxis" (chs.
19-22, pp. 475-575). The introduction by the editor provides a useful review of the various representations
of what Indian tradition has always considered to be one and the same deity. Given that this collection of
texts uses transliteration without diacritics, I have adopted the practice here.
In the first chapter Alf Hiltebeitel focuses on "Krishna in the Mahabharata: The Death of Karna." At first
glance, the angle chosen by the author might appear to be too limited. Nevertheless, the overall thrust of the
paper is to offer a convincing argument against the position of ancient ephemerist by demonstrating that
"Krishna's divinity is not a literary after-affect" (p. 24). This deity must be taken into account if the
Mahabharata is to be correctly understood. Quoting and building upon the work of Georges Dumezil and
Madeleine Biardeau, this study is one of the few that demonstrates an awareness of research done in a
language other than English. In chapter two Robert N. Minor accompanies his short but effective
introduction to "Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita" with a number of well-chosen excerpts from the text.
Chapter three deals with "The Harivamsa: The Dynasty of Krishna" (Ekkehard Lorenz). The passages
quoted have been selected with care. Nevertheless, the references are often outdated; John Brockington's
recent book, The Sanskrit Epics (Brill, 1998), which includes references to a great deal of current research
in the area, is not even mentioned. No explanation on the Harivamsha as a khila, a supplement to the
Mahabharata, is given; nor are the implications of the term or possible dates for the composition of the
Harivamsha discussed. Chapter four deals with "Krishna in the Tenth Book of the Bhagavata Purana"
(Edwin F. Bryant). Eight excerpts from eight different chapters are translated here. In these texts, I do not
see any reason not to translate the word vraja (also gokula) by 'camp' as in the preceding chapter; I will
return to this question below. I am unsure what to make of the reference to "three different French
translations [of the Bhagavata Purana which] were completed between 1840 and 1857," "followed, in turn,
by a translation of the Panchadhyaya ... in 1867" (p. 112). Mariedas Poullee de Pondichery published a
French adaptation of a Tamil adaptation of the Sanskrit text as early as 1788. Colonel de Polier gave a
summary of several Hindu texts, one of the most important being the Bhagavata Purana. Published in 1809
under the title Mythohgie des Ittdous, the book was reedited in 1986 by Georges Dumezil (Le Mahabarat et
le Bhagavat du Colonel de Polier, Gallimard, 1986). The first three volumes of Burnout's translation were
published in 1840. 1844, and 1857 respectively (the last two books being published later, by HauvetteBesnault
in 1884 and Roussel in 1898). Theodore Pavie published the first French translation of the Tenth
Book in 1852, and the Journal asiatique published Hauvette-Besnault's "Panichadhyayi ou Les cinq
chapitres sur les amours de Chrishna avec les Gopis" in 1865 (text and translation). Moreover, a French
translation of the Harivamsha was published by Langlois in 1834-35. It must be said, of course, that Bryant
rightly emphasizes the interest French scholars have shown in this text.
Chapter five is one of the book's surprises. Bijoy M. Misra translates sixteen of the nineteen chapters of the
Mushaliparvan of the Mahabharata as retold by the Oriya poet Sarala Dasa in the 15th century. This passage
connects Krishna's death at Dvaraka. his body residue (pinda) thrown into the sea, the discovery by Jara and
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his wife of this residue transformed into a wooden log, the decision made by King Indradyumna to build the
Jagannalha temple at Puri, the carving of the famous images of Rama, Krishna, and Subhadra, and finally
the installation of the strange images inside the temple. In chapter six William L. Smith translates a drama
borrowed from the Vishnu and the Bhagavata-Purana from a mixture of Assamese, Sanskrit, and Maithili
versions of Shankaradeva's Parijata Harana Nata (15th cent.); the story tells how Krishna stole the divine
parijata tree from Indra and planted it by his wife Satyabhama's door. In chapter seven Vasudha Narayanan,
who introduces and translates various Tamil poems from the Alvars, seems to be unaware that the peculiar
features of this regional Krishna (the priority of Vishnu over Krishna and other avataras, Nappinnai as
young Krishna's consort, the taming of the bulls, etc., pp. 189-90), are also found in the southern versions of
the Harivamsha. In chapter eight Vidyut Aklujkar translates poems from the first three Marathi sants,
namely Dvyandev (1275-96), Namdev (1270-1350), and Eknath (1533-99). all of which draw inspiration
from the Bhagavata Purana. Chapter nine, by John Stratton Hawley. presents a selection of poems drawn
from Sursagar, or Sur's Ocean, composed in Braj Bhasha, "that do appear in sixteenth-century manuscripts
or can be shown, through a comparison of seventeenth-century manuscripts, to have been in circulation in
the sixteenth century" (p. 224). Nancy M. Martin (chap. 10: "Rajasthan: Mirabai and Her Poetry") presents
the sixteenth-century songs of a passionate woman: "Krishna is her lover, and her tone is often defiant and
joyous . . . She joins all of nature in the joyous anticipation of his coming and speaks with ecstasy of union,
even claiming to have married him in a dream" (p. 244). Neelima Shukla-Bhatt (chap. 11) provides the first
translation of songs from the Gujarati saint Narasinha Mehta (1414-80). This well-documented contribution
about an author inspired by the poetry of the Bhagavata Purana and the Gita Govinda provides insight into
the upsurge of the Krishna-lila songs in the sixteenth century. Chapter twelve (by Steven P. Hopkins)
discusses the Gopalavimshati of Vedantadeshika, a short poem which does not yet exist in English
translation (c. 1268-1369), and one that "gives the reader a very vivid sense of Krishna in the Tamil Land
through one of South India's most gifted medieval saint poets" (p. 292).
Chapter thirteen, by Lance E. Nelson, summarizes the basic theological position of Advaita and Krishna's
place therein, focussing on the commentaries of Shankara (c. 650-750 C.E.) and on the works of
Madhusudana Sarasvati (sixteenth-seventeenth century). These commentaries were delivered at a time when
the theistic bhakti movements were flourishing and in a context where his main "interlocutor and opponent
was the then well-established orthodoxy of Vedic ritualism, promoted by the teachers of the Purva
Mimamsa" (p. 314). Chapter fourteen, by Francis X. Clooney, deals with "Rama-nuja and the Meaning of
Krishna's Descent and Embodiment on this Earth." This rather long chapter (pp. 329-56) is a particularly
well-researched, original study of the notion of divine descent and the theological problems related to divine
embodiment. The author draws on earlier traditional commentaries on the Bhashya (namely, the Tatparya
Chandrika of Vedantadeshika and the Shrutaprakashika of Sudarshana Suri). Chapter fifteen ("Madhva
Vedanta and Krishna") deals with Krishna in the Madhva School of Vedanta. Of course, Deepak Sarma is
right when he insists on the necessity of focussing of the centrality of Vishnu himself for a proper
understanding of Krishna's place in this Vedanta (p. 358). In fact, the three Madhva texts that have been
chosen deal exclusively with Vishnu. The important research carried out by the French scholar Suzanne
Siauve on Madhva's connections with the Bhagavata and the Krishna cult deserve but do not receive
mention in this context. Chapters sixteen and seventeen deal with the Chaitanya tradition. A summary of the
content of the six Sandarbhas by Jiva Gosvamin, and selections from the Tattva, Bhagavat, and Bhakti
Sandarbhas are provided by Satyanarayana Dasa (as far as I know, no complete English translation of the
text is yet available). David L. Haberman contributes "A Selection from the Bhaktirasamritasindhu of Rupa
Govasmin: The Foundational Emotions (Sthayi-bhavas)." Haberman had already translated the entire text
into English in 2003. Chapter eighteen by Graham M. Schweig presents a selection of passages illustrating
"the five most significant manifestations of the feminine within Vaishnavism: (1) the queens of Dvaraka,
wives of Krishna; (2) the wives of the Brahmins of Braj; (3) the cowherd girls of Braj, the gopis; (4) the
supreme goddess Radha, the favorite gopi of Krishna; and (5) the independently powerful goddess
Yogamaya" (p. 443). While many of the passages come from the Bhagavata-Purana, those concerning
Radha are drawn from later texts.
In chapter nineteen. "Kumbhandas: The Devotee as Salt of the Earth," Richard Barz presents a translation of
the oldest recension (A) of one of the accounts (varta) of the eighty-four Vaishnavas "so accomplished in
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their practice of the Pushtimarga that their lives became examples to be emulated by the members of the
Vallabha sect" (p. 482). "Because of this combination of unpretentious honesty with perfection in bhakti,
Kumbhadas could best be described in English as 'the salt of the earth'" (p. 484). In chapter twenty. Paul
Arney introduces and translates the first seventeen of the twenty-four verses from the first letter of Hariray's
Bade. Shikshapatra with the commentary of Gopeshvar, a Vallabhite guide to the worship of Krishna's
divine images. Chapters twenty-one (Paul H. Sherbow) and twenty-two (Neal Delmonico) are devoted to
the pilgrimage (Puranic texts) and the singing of Krishna's names (various sources) respectively.
While this volume contains worthwhile and original articles on the Krishna tradition as it is known in the
first millennium, most of its contributors deal with Krishna as he is known from the Bhagavata-Purana on.
A few articles leave the reader with the impression that the transition from the epic Krishna to the Krishna
of the Bhagavata-Purana took place rather rapidly--within the span of a few centuries. My current research
on the Harivamsha tradition convinces me, however, that it is much more probable that the influence of the
Harivamsha remained important through to the eleventh or twelfth century (the Vishnu- and BrahmaPurana,
the Buddhist Ghata-Jataka, the Jaina Hari-vamshas, the Balacarita attributed to Bhasa,
Kshemendra's works, etc.), before the tenth book of the Bhagavata-Purana (whatever its date) became the
standard reference concerning Krishna. The Krishna tradition as it is known in the Harivamsha is not well
represented here, a fact that somewhat skews the overall perspective of the book.
A word on the translation of the Sanskrit word vraja (or later braj), a recurrent problem in this book, is now
in order. First of all, let me say that Lorenz's translation of vraja (or ghosha) by 'camp' or 'herds-camp' in
passages from the Harivamsha is altogether appropriate (even if, without any reason, he finally uses 'Braja',
p. 106). In the Harivamsha, Vishmt-Purana, and Bhagavata-Purana, and many other texts that depend on
these, the term vraja clearly designates the camp itself, the inhabitants of the camp, that is, the cows and
their herders (in this order) (cf. sarvah vrajah, 52.3), and the vrajasthatia (63.19) is the place in the forest
where a camp is set up (the campsite). Nandagopa's camp was set up in a first forest before the herders
moved to another one called Vrindavana. In most ancient cases up to the fifteenth or sixteenth century, this
should be the normal translation. The word vraja (Braj) as the designation of a region or a district probably
dates from this period. In the older texts there are no "residents of Braj" but herders, no "ladies of Braj" but
cow women (gopis), no "forest of Braj"; Krishna cannot be the "ruler of Braj" or the "darling of Braj."
There is no village called Gokula either, a word meaning 'a herd of kine', and sometimes used for the entire
camp. Such translations superimpose on the ancient texts a new reading, which probably originated in a late
rediscovery of the land of Krishna and involved a historical carelessness or some sort of pious anachronism.
(1)
This volume has been edited without an index, or even a list of the main epithets used for Krishna with their
exact meaning. On pp. 266-78, synonyms for Krishna's name are even followed by an asterisk, pointing to a
possible glossary that actually does not exist. Of course, many of these terms are explained in the
introductions or end-notes, but it would have been a great advantage had the reader been able to consult
them with ease.
With a few exceptions, this book provides a fine overview of the diversity, strengths, and weaknesses of the
current state of American research on Krishna. It is a most welcome complement to Guy L. Beck's
Alternative Krishnas: Regional and Vernacular Variations on a Hindu Deity (Albany: State Univ. of New
York Press, 2005). Krishna: A Sourcebook is to be recommended to all those interested in this Hindu deity.
Even experts in the area are sure to discover gems as they move through the useful research found in this
volume.
ANDRE COUTURE
UNIVERSITY LAVAL, QUEBEC
(1.) See the 1871 remark by Growse quoted by Vaudeville: "In the earlier authorities for Krsna's adventures,
both vraja and gokula are used to denote not the definite localities now bearing those names but any chance
spot temporarily used for stalling cattle: inattention to this archaism had led to confusion in assigning sites
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for the various legends" ("Braj, Lost and Found," Indo-Iranian Journal 18 [1976]: 198 n. 10). Also A.
Couture, "Campement de bouviers et forets dans trois versions anciennes du mythe d'enfance de Krsna"
[Journal asiatique 270 [1982]: 385-400).
Couture, Andre
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Couture, Andre. "Krishna: A Sourcebook." The Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 128, no. 1,
2008, p. 144+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A201100579/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=74d3d6af. Accessed 27 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A201100579
Review: The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali by Edwin Bryant
Submitted by Harmonist staff on August 26, 2009 – 7:09 pm10 Comments
yoga-sutras-bryant-1By Bhrigupada dasa
Edwin F. Bryant, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. New York: North Point Press, 2009.
Publishing yet another English edition of Patañjali’s classic text on yoga is no easy task. Hundreds of translations are available already, representing all kinds of perspectives and written by weighty authorities, both within different schools of yoga and academia. Furthermore, many of these editions are available for free on the Internet (example). Is there then any room for Edwin Bryant’s newest addition? I will argue that there is, and further, that Bryant’s edition is among the most important ones available.
Much in Bryant’s edition will be familiar to aficionados of the text. As is usual, the sutras are presented first in Devanagari script, then in the standard IAST transcription, followed by a word-for-word translation, a running translation, and a commentary. Similarly, many technical terms are left untranslated, such as dhyana, klesa, and samskara. Neither is there anything very particular about the translation: Bryant adds verbs (is, becomes, etc) when needed to smooth out the abrupt nature of the sutra style, and occasionally adds clarificatory words in brackets [like this]. All of this means that, except from being thicker than most other editions (598 pages), Bryant’s looks just like any other.
Content-wise, we have a completely different situation. Where most other editions content themselves with looking at the sutras through the lens of a smattering of Advaita Vedanta or the vague teachings of some popular yoga teacher, Bryant’s goes to the sources. Unknown to many modern readers, Patañjali’s text has a long tradition of Indian textual commentary. Bryant’s commentary quotes heavily from these commentaries, in particular Vyasa, Vacaspati Mishra, and Vijñabhikshu, who seems to be something of a favorite. It is not that these commentaries have not been available in English before, but the translations that are available (e.g. Woods 1914) are generally too academic to be of much use for a non-specialist. Bryant’s paraphrases, on the other hand, are clear and to the point, without dumbing down the text. Readers familiar with only run-of-the-mill modern editions will find plenty of hard-core philosophy to delve into here.
The above would already qualify Bryant’s edition as extremely valuable. Its value is further enhanced by Bryant’s own observations and discussions on topics such as Ishvara, the agency of purusha, and the position of the siddhis. Readers with a background in bhakti will be delighted to find that Bryant quite correctly highlights the devotional side of the Yoga Sutras (after all, Patañjali does refer to ishvara-pranidhana on three different occasions). He mentions Srila Prabhupada and the maha-mantra twice. A Vaishnava devotee wishing to introduce modern yogis to a more theistic understanding of yoga can hardly find a more useful book. There have been attempts by devotees to hijack the popularity of the Yoga Sutras, but this is something completely different. Bryant’s work is one of thorough scholarship, not an attempt to crudely superimpose another ideology on this ancient text.
All of this does not mean that I like everything in Bryant’s edition. He prefaces his text with a foreword by B.K.S. Iyengar, which—with all due respect to this giant of a teacher—will do nothing but confuse the reader (“perfection in asana means a divine union of prakriti and purusha”…). Like in the case of many American writers, Bryant’s prose tends to become somewhat wordy. He also unnecessarily repeats himself (as when writing about mantras in 1.27 and 2.44). There are also some sloppy references (on p. 458 Bryant refers to sutra 1.10 instead of the correct 2.10). There is also something wrong with the font used for the diacritics and for such a voluminous book to lack an index is unfortunate. However, these are all details that can be easily corrected in the next edition. To state it simply: for most readers, this is the only edition of the Yoga Sutras that they will ever need.
Book review: Edwin Bryant's 'The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture'
Nayanjot LahiriNovember 19, 2001UPDATED 14:56 IST
The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture
By Edwin Bryant
Oxford
The Indo-Aryans are as renowned for their physical features as they are for the quarrels that have erupted around them. Were they fair, blond and blue-eyed or dark and brown-haired? Can they be described as peaceful agriculturists or were they horsebacked, aggressive pastoralists? How, when and where did they come from?
Anyone interested in a detailed, lucid review of the sprawling controversies that this most (in)famous colonisation saga of India has generated will find much that is useful in this book.
Edwin Bryant's critique in The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Debate has two aspects - empirical and historiographical. The first examines the philological, linguistic and archaeological data and how these have been interpreted both to support Aryan inroads and to contest them. The second focuses on the ways in which the Aryan question has been used over two centuries by various people, from European Orientalists and First World Indologists to Indian scholars and religious reformers.
The empirical minutiae underlines how the same "evidence" is capable of being explained in different ways. For example, there are 35 non-Aryan names for individuals, tribes and clans in Rigvedic vocabulary. On the one hand, this can suggest a non-Sanskritic linguistic substratum which infiltrated into the language of the ruling Aryan elite.
On the other hand, foreign words and syntactical features continue to be accepted into our languages today without any foreign "linguistic substratum, so it is legitimate to ask why this had to be the case in the protohistoric past". In which case, non-Aryan words in Vedic texts cannot be considered as sure proof of a linguistic "substratum" and could, instead, have been an "adstratum".
Bryant's historiographical critique is more provocative in the sense that it proposes to mitigate "a type of Indological McCarthyism creeping into areas of western, as well as certain Indian, academic circles, whereby ? anyone reconsidering the status quo of Indo-Aryan origins is instantly and a priori dubbed a nationalist, a communalist or, even worse, a Nazi".
Arguing forcefully for rigorous examination of the arguments put forward by Indian scholars against Aryan migrations, he believes that most Indologists in western academia would be willing to "change their views if appealed to with informed reason and arguments that address all the evidence".
To put it most charitably, it is naive to think that the "ignorance" in influential western circles of indigenous writings on the Aryan question can be made to go away simply by producing a book about such writings, which Bryant has tried to do.
Tough code to crack: The Indus sealsThere is politics that girds academic writings which is related to larger sociopolitical realities. First World academics frequently fail to consider Third World scholars as "agents of knowledge" whose views about their own history need to be taken seriously at all.
Even before the onset of globalisation, this asymmetry was there for all those who cared to look. For instance, in a paper called "Trade Mechanisms in Indus-Mesopotamian Interrelations", C.C. Lamberg Karlovsky (who prominently figures in this book) examined the stimulus behind the creation of the Harappan civilisation.
Karlovsky's paper, published in 1972, did not think that such writings or issues were important to the question of the formation of the Indus civilisation. In fact, his citations would suggest that as far as he was concerned, there had been no writings by Indians on the civilisation since 1949 - the only two works by Indian scholars cited there, those of Madho Sarup Vats and M.G. Dikshit,were published before 1950.
On a lighter note, the reactions of some Indians to the idea that they belonged the same Aryan lineage as the Europeans make for hilarious reading. Of all of them, the most ingenious seems to have been Pandit Visnu Sakharam who in 1920, filed an immigration court case in America on the plea that he was a Brahmin and therefore an Aryan/European.
Apparently, the argument was entertained for a while, until a court in California ruled that "the Aryan invasion theory was precisely that: just a theory, and therefore not citable as credible proof for immigration purposes".
If scholarship had also treated the "presence" of the Aryans in the same way as the California court, perhaps, a more inclusive, multilineal story of ancient India may have been in place, instead of the same old saga of Indian history through the Aryan prism.
4
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Journal of Hindu-Christian StudiesVolume 17Article 17January 2004Book Review: "The Quest for the Origins of VedicCulture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate"Eliza KentFollow this and additional works at:http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcsPart of theReligion CommonsTheJournal of Hindu-Christian Studiesis a publication of theSociety for Hindu-Christian Studies. The digital version is made available by DigitalCommons @ Butler University. For questions about the Journal or the Society, please contactcbauman@butler.edu. For more information aboutDigital Commons @ Butler University, please contactomacisaa@butler.edu.Recommended CitationKent, Eliza (2004) "Book Review: "The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate","Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies: Vol. 17, Article 17.Available at:https://doi.org/10.7825/2164-6279.1326
The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate. Edwin Bryant. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, xi + 371 pp., maps il. WERE the Noble Ones who composed the Vedas direct descendents of nomadic tribes who migrated into India from somewhere west of the Khyber Pass between 1500 and 1200 BCE? Or were they a people indigenous to India, perhaps even contemporaneous with the technologically sophisticated creators of the Indus Valley Civilization? The answers to these questions are relevant not only to Indologists, historians of early India, and other scholars in South Asian studies, many of whom have built careers on 'the assumption of an external origin for Vedic Culture, but also to politically engaged scholars and activists in India seeking to bolster (or challenge) a vision of the modern Indian nation-state as functioning primarily for the benefit of Hindus. As a result, the debate over the homeland of the Indo-Aryans has become exceedingly polarized. According to Bryant the majority of historians in India now favor the Indigenous Aryan view, finding perfectly plausible that, the Indo-Aryan speaking people did not come from outside India, but rather were originally from somewhere on the Indian subcontinent, probably the Northwest. Meanwhile, in Britain, Europe, Canada and the United States, scholars and textbooks for the most part accept the Aryan Migrationist theory. Some even treat with indulgence the I now widely discredited Aryan Invasion hypothesis, which pictured blonde-haired, blue-eyed Aryans swarming across the steppes to plunder the dark-skinned, snub-nosed dasas in India. I confess I have lmtil recently been among the Migration Theory loyalists who pay only glancing attention to opposing points of view in this debate. Overheated exchanges on scholarly listservs had led me to regard the arguments against the Aryan Migration hypothesis as the fantasies of disgruntled cranks and covert Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies 17 (2004) 81-94 (and sometimes overt) Hindu nationalists. When the evidence for or against a particular theory is so scanty and the analy~is of it by specialists so complex, one inevitably relies on the authority of experts. Edwin Bryant's thorough re-examination of the evidence and arguments surrounding the origins of Indo-European culture offers a healthy reminder of the perils of this kind of intellectual shortcut. The first chapter discusses the beginnings of the quest for an Indo-Aryan homeland in the 18th century "discovery" of Sanskrit and the resulting challenges to the biblical worldview. It also helpfully reviews several prevailing theories about the Indo-Aryan homeland. The second chapter discusses how Indians living under British colonialism appropriated European theories about the Aryans for a variety of purposes. This chapter anticipates the more thorough discussion of the political uses of the Indigenous Aryan argument in present-day India that the author undertakes in the last chapter.' The middle ten chapters present how scholars in a variety of fields use evidence to advance or undermine the Aryan Migration hypothesis. Bryant has here done us all an enonnous favor by sorting through a formidable amount of scholarship spanning fields as diverse as philology, comparative linguistics, historical linguistics, linguistic paleontology, Indo-European studies, astronomy, archeology, paleogeology, and archaeozoology. Drawing on a wide array of experts, including many whose work very rarely surfaces in mainstream English-language scholarship, he demonstrates how Indigenous Aryanists and Aryan Migrationists, proceeding from different assumptions, can arrive at diametrically opposed interpretations of the same evidence even while using the same Ii I i , ' : :: I I , I 'I : I I: 1Kent: Book Review: "The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indo-Aryan Migration Debate"Published by Digital Commons @ Butler University, 2004
86 Book Reviews methods. He provides dense but generally lucid summaries of literally dozens of controversies, such as whether or not the remains of horses found in Harappan sites can be positively identified as those of a true horse (Equus caballus Linn) or a more intractable creature such as the domestic ass (Equus asinus) or the hemione (Equus hemionus). Readers will probably gravitate to those controversies with which they are most familiar. One of the few drawbacks of the book, in fact, is Bryant's exhaustive, and sometimes exhausting, review of all sides of every debate. Especially in those controversies with which the reader is less familiar, one finds oneself grasping at Bryant's rare assertions of opinion like a man drowning in a sea of facts. .. Of particular interest to readers-of this journal will be the first chapter. The "discovery" of Sanskrit by 18th century European scho!ars, along with other textual and archeological evidence of the antiquity of the human race, provoked a serious questioning of the Biblical narrative of human history. How could the internal claims of Sanskrit texts for a created universe hundreds of thousands of years old be reconciled with the much shorter chronology of the Earth derived from Christian scripture? Sir William Jones himself went to great lengths to demonstrate that there was no great contradiction between the" chronologies of early human history extractable from Hindu and Christian scripture. Even after the social pressure to confirm the validity of Biblical accounts of history waned in the nineteenth century, other elements of the biblical worldview persisted. Scholars of intellectual history will be interested in his argument that the paradigm from Genesis of a single post-diluvian family dispersing and becoming linguistically differentiated over time survives to the present day as the founding assumption of Indo-European studies. This kind of tension between different epistemological frameworks is a recurri11g theme in this work. For example, Bryant notes the irony in the fact that just as some eighteenth-century Christian scholars sought to use the science of linguistics to prove the historicity of scriptural narratives, so are some Hindu scholars today employing . archeology and linguistics to ratify the truths . of the revealed Vedas. When satellite photographs and archeological digs reveal the massive dried-up bed of the Sarasvati river, celebrated in over sixty Rgvedic hymns, in exactly the place. where the Rgveda locates it, the satisfaction among Indigenous Aryanists is palpable. First, this finding refutes Western scholars who have said that the Sarasvati was just a myth, at best the result of the Vedic authors' memories of an even greater river back in their homeland somewhere in the Caucasus, or Anatolia, or Armenia, or any place but India. Second, the discovery of the Sarasvati seems to clearly demonstrate the veracity of Vedic revelation. This is not to say that Indian scholars today are manipulating , scientific evidence in order to preserve the autho,rity of religious text, while scholars in the West gave that up two centuries ago. Rather, one of the effects of Bryant's study is to show how tenaciously all scholars cling to their favorite arguments and narratives, whatever their grounding source of authority, sometimes bending over backwards to argue away contradictory evidence; While stating his sympathies with the anti-imperial sentiments conveyed by the Indigenous Aryan argument, Bryant deftly distances himself from' those who seek to use it to promote Hindu nationalism. The author is well aware of the way in which scholarly interpretations of evidence are themselves interpreted within a volatile socio-political environment in India, in which the assertion that the Vedas were composed by people native to India is used to privilege adherents of religions that are seen as flowing from them, and to disprivilege those that do not. Yet he is equally sensitive to another implication of the Indigenous Aryan argument, not cd 2Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, Vol. 17 [2004], Art. 17http://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol17/iss1/17DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1326
sufficiently recognized by its opponents, namely that the effort to re-examine the Aryan Migrationist argument is also an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist project insofar as it entails a challenge to versions of early Indian history scripted by India's former colonial masters. This is, after all, also a boqk about the politics of scholarship. From the British administrators' use of theories about the connection between Sanskrit and European classical languages to legitimate colonial rule to the use of evidence of an Indo-European homeland in South Asia by Hindutva ideologues to bolster a sense of Hindu superiority, Bryant illuminates how , narratives about the past are employed to promote particular political agendas. And while such an endeavor is often undertaken in order to promote one agenda or undermine another, Bryant avoids this with his scrupulous faimess to all sides of the· Book Reviews 87 debate. Notably, he goes to great lengths to advocate against what he calls Indological McCarthyism - the knee-jerk branding of anyone who opposes the theory of Aryan Migration as a communal bigot. In the process;' he manages to bring a breath of fresh air into the sometimes fetid chat-room of contemporary academia. Edwin Bryant's lucid and thorough re-examination of the question of the origins of Vedic culture is a must read for any teacher who begins his or her courses on Indian religions with a discussion of the Indus Valley Civilization and the Vedas. It is an exemplar of one of the core values of critical scholarship: the Willingness to question one's own cherished assumptions in the face of points of view very different from one's own. i~ Eliza Kent Colgate University