The Unity of the Spiritual Traditions

of India

Introduction
The coming of European rule to Hindustan brought with it a new and strange phenomenon. Yes the
Europeans were as filled with greed, blood lust and brutality as other invaders before them. And
they were also inspired with the same zeal for imposing monotheist imperialist iron clad dominance
on a defeated and enslaved people. But they had with them also political instruments and skill of
exceptional refinement, maturity and effectiveness.
The Islamic Turkoman who came before the European established these objectives entirely through
systems of terror. The flames of imperial vengence against the slightest signs of disobedience, the
ignominy of mass rape and religious conversion, wholesale genocide, the razing and enslavement
and expulsion of entire kingdoms and vast campaigns of plunder and extortionate taxation. And yet
the Turkoman allowed in India a prosperous economy to remain. So long as the population were
submissive, the Turkoman would only demand enough to satisfy his own greed, caprice and
fanaticism. Perhaps on an extravagant even gigantic scale. The Turkoman imperialist that settled in
India ultimately was an Indian emperor even if of foreign origin and held the natives in deep and
hostile submission.
Like any other conqueror the European desired to establish for himself a secure dominion, a
prosperous treasury, and a submissive population. But the European also brought with him a new
and entirely unprecedented phenomenon. Industrial scale plunder. And even more importantly a
more sophisticated system of imperial domination. That of intensive and extensive propaganda
aimed at dividing the subject society. This is a project that continues world wide by the European
states and their successors great and small.
The objective of this paper is to assess and establish
Controversy is an inevitable part of any attempt to construct a chronologically accurate historical
account. And the controversy grows as the events describe recede farther into the past. It is therefore
an ancient habit among the Hindus to regard the attempt to maintain a chronological history as a
futile exercise.
Perhaps such a civilizational disregard for history was cause for much grief, but also the position is
fundamentally sound.
Instead the Hindus have Itihasas, literally translated as so it verily was. These are ostensibly a
chronology of a certain number of events. But the purpose essentially is not about chronology. The
Itihasas are illustrations of the principles underlying social organization, either in the large scale or
the individual level. And so these great collections of literature developed over millenia have a vast
collection of moral tales, political and philosophical discourses, spiritual insights and social
recommendations.
The underlying theme and purpose of these collections is that the ideas, events and observations
therein will be repeated age after age in one order or another. And hence the observations made
there can be a source of wisdom and a reliable guide to action. This must be at any rate the
essential objective of any serious study of history.
The earliest surviving chronological histories from Europe can be attributed to Diodorus Siculus Bibliotheca Historica dating to around 40 BC. About a century after the Roman conquest of
Greece. Roman accounts of merit date from Titus Livius (English Livy). From around the first
years of the common era. There were Greek and Roman historians before these ones but little has

survived of their works except as references by later writers.

While fairly extensive histories of the Hindus have been constructed in the last couple of centuries,
the discipline can almost be imagined to be initiated by the British.
The Greeks apparently cared enough to write histories even those about India. One that is
sometimes mentioned as of importance is Indica by Megasthenes, the Selucid ambassador to to
the Mauryan empire. Very little of significance has survived of this work except for fanciful
accounts only illustrating the point that history at this point was still dominantly a work of
entertainment and propaganda rather than a serious work of factual recording.
Ancient historical accounts by the Hindus, are much more sparse. The only surviving authentic
native Hindu attempt at history appears to be that by Kalhana of Kashmir from the 12th century of
the common era. His Rajatarangini appears to correspond to other chronologies from the date of the
Mauryan empire.
Of much greater antiquity, detail and reliability is the great body of historical and mythical records
from the Sinhala traditions. A great body of text called the Mahavamsa. It was written exclusively in
Pali. And records the origin of the Sinhala kings from Vijaya of Bengal in 543 BCE to Sinhala King
Mahasena (334 361 CE).
While the Mahavamsa is not a canonical text of Theravada Buddhism, it is still a very highly
regarded text of the tradition; and has been extensively studied in the Theravada traditions also of
southeast asia.
Mahayana texts presenting chronology in a highly exaggerated style abound. But rarely are these
accorded the status of historical accounts by scholars either contemporary or ancient. Or even by
other Mahayana texts. Quite plainly such texts are not intended as chronology so much as they are
works of devotion. The Mahayana traditions are therefore variants of the Bauddha Dharma that use
emotional aids to spirituality in addition to the more austere and dry systems of the Sthavira
Jain literature appears to be entirely spiritual in nature with practically no surviving litarary attempt
at historical chronology. Current Jain traditional narrative often quotes the conjecture that the Jain
tradition is Pre Aryan. In effect swallowing the British colonial narrative of an Aryan Dravidian
divide in the History of India. Such a divide has no mention in any of the traditions of India. And is
entirely a fabrication of the British Raj policy of ruling by division. Recent genetic studies of the
origins of the population of India firmly establish a stable genetic composition of India going back
atleast fifty thousand years.
History as reported in the Sikh tradition is not to be distinguished from the religious / spiritual
tradition. Significant parts of the Sikh identity and tradition are a response to the life threatening
historical circumstances under which the Sikh panth was formed. This is in violent contrast to the
very placid and pacific circumstances under which the other traditions of the Hindus evolved. The
Sikh tradition therefore in contrast to the rest of the traditions of the Hindus reports history. Even if
some parts thereof maybe regarded as standing in disagreement with other accounts. And yet the
history reported in sikh literature is again primarily a spiritual exercise rather than a political or
scholarly one.
It is not as if we will not refer to history to describe the spiritual traditions of the Hindus. However
we must first recognize the limitations in such sources. Atleast so far as we have access to these.

Diverse Traditions With Unified Aim

Jain tradition like the Buddhist tradition easily mixes with the Vedic tradition just as the Buddhist
tradition does. And yet, like the Buddhist tradition it remains quite distinct. For the layman there is
no apparent distinction in the practical realization of one philosophy or another. Yes there are
differences, large ones at that, even in the daily domestic ritual of the various traditions. But there is
no fundamental distinction in the Weltanschhaung proposed by the various traditions.
Vedanta, the summary of the Vedic / Astika tradition, proposes that the fundamental goal of
existence is mukti. This is a position common to the three divergent traditions of vedanta Advaita,
Vishishtaadvaita, and Dvaita.
Sankhya states that the objective of the system is to dissolve the sources of suffering.
Yoga affirms in the very second sutra of Patanjali that the objective is the dissolution of Chitta
Vritti; the modifications of the material that produces material existence. In short mukti.
The three other darsanas of the Astika division of the Hindus are the Nyaya, Vaisheshika and Purva
Mimansa. These traditions do not debate mukti. They develop their individual expositions of the
purpose of existence. Mainly Dharma. Dharma is the method to develop a prosperous, balanced and
fulfilled life.
Vedanta easily accepts this position. It holds that the Jiva can aim for mukti only after it has been
sufficiently prepared by the dharma as enunciated in the mimamsa tradition. Nyaya and Vaisheshika
are vital tools for sharpening the intellect and providing the tools to investigate into the ultimate
nature of existence. And at any rate there is no quarrel with these because the objective of these
philosophies are not in opposition to the notion of mukti. It only happens that such questions are
not discussed in Nyaya and Vaisheshika.
The Bauddha, the Jaina and the Sikh traditions of the modern day emphasis without equivocation
that the purpose of existence is mukti.
Then there were among the Hindus many other philosophies that have flourished and subsided at
varoius points in time. Among these of special mention can be the