The Navhind Times I Sunday January 14, 2018
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4 Views & Analysis
Ponderings
hhPatricia Pereira-Sethi, is an
award-winning journalist who
worked for two decades with
Newsweek magazine in New
York. She has interviewed 45
heads of state during her career
and has authored the biography
of industrialist Ramesh Chauhan
of Bisleri. Sethi currently lives
in Goa.
Sunday Masses, which
would continue well
past noon for the
elderly and for those
who wished to sleep
late after working all
night, lacked lengthy,
repetitive, boring
sermons
Kōnkaṇapurāṇa
hhTensing Rodrigues is engaged
in research on Konkani Language
and People
Kali Yuga means age of
vice, strife or discord;
the evil world order
refers to the significant
changes that came
about in the Vedic
religion as a result of
the encounter between
the ritualistic practices
of the Vedic culture and
the atmavidya of the
jaina
Nostalgic Nuggets
„„Patricia Pereira-Sethi
W
hen I first moved to
New York on a full
scholarship to do
graduate work at the
Jesuit-run University
of Fordham, I felt all alone. But not
for long. A group of nuns from the
order of St Francis de Sales (head-
quartered in Wisconsin) befriended
me and I was never lonely again.
I met them by chance. They
needed a primary school teacher,
and apparently I fit the bill. I taught
twenty bright-eyed and bushy-
tailed young lads in first grade
from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., then moved
on to the university for late after-
noon classes. The sisters offered
me breakfast and lunch so I did not
have to worry about elementary
sustenance. I only had to take care
of supper at night, usually picked
up from the local deli.
The nuns were guardian angels.
Especially the Mother Superior,
who later led a band of her breth-
ren to a simple wedding with my
Hindu husband at the St Jean
Baptiste Catholic church in Manhat-
tan. Normally, the younger sisters
wore plain beige dresses, knee
length, with short black veils on
their heads. They were mostly Irish,
beautiful, blue-eyed, red-cheeked
and fresh-faced. They always had a
smile on their faces and a song on
their lips. Strikingly different from
the religious at my convent school
in Mumbai who walked around
with serious looks, criticising, com-
plaining, forever chastising, holding
onto a ruler to smack you with, if
you stepped out of line. They car-
ried Christianity on their backs like
a scourge – not a joy.
The New York breed was spe-
cial. They showered Happiness all
around. They also included me on
Beginning of the Kali Yuga
„„Tensing Rodrigues
Y
uga Purana speaks of a
divine retribution for the
‘evil world-order’ that
set in at the end of the
Dvapara Yuga, which
is said to coincide with Krishna’s
departure, which is dated around
3,000 BCE. Kali Yuga means age
of vice, strife or discord; the evil
world order refers to the signifi-
cant changes that came about in
the Vedic religion as a result of the
encounter between the ritualistic
practices of the Vedic culture and
the atmavidya of the jaina.
We can see this hostility in sever-
al contemporary texts. For instance,
Satapatha-Brahmana (13.8.1.5)
speaks about the “demonic people
of the east” – asuryah pracyah.
The passage elaborates on the
‘demonic’ nature of these people:
“Four-cornered [is their sepulchral
mound]. Now the Devas and the
Asuras, both of them sprung from
Prajapati, were contending in the
[four] regions [quarters]. The Devas
drove out the Asuras, their rivals
and enemies, from the regions, and,
being regionless [having no place
of their own], they were overcome.
… Wherefore the people who are
godly make their burial-places four-
cornered, whilst those who are of
the Asura nature, the Easterners
and others, [make them] round, for
they [the Devas] drove them out
from the regions.” (Eggeling, 1882
: Satapatha-Brahmana, Vol 5, 423)
Satapatha Bramhana also advises
the Kuru-Pancalabramhana not to
venture into the pracya (eastern)
countries as the bramhana there
have forgotten their dharma of sac-
rifice enjoined in the sacred texts
and have adopted a new dharma
against sacrifice. (Chakravarti,
1974: Jaina Literature in Tamil, 4)
In Atharva Veda, Book 5, malarial
fever was assigned to the people
of Magadha as a curse. [Samadar,
1927: The Glories Of Magadha, 7]
But the Vedic religion was slowly
but surely yielding to the influ-
ence of Magadha’s asuryah culture.
First of all the ideas of rebirth and
karmic retribution entered the
Vedic religion at this time; till then
weekend trips to the Village area
of downtown Manhattan. On such
occasions, the nuns wore regular
street clothes and, since they were
so attractive, guys would hit on
them and we would all laugh heart-
ily about it. If only they knew, we
whispered! On occasion we visited
jazz clubs to hear Herbie Mann
flute it up, or the wizard Ahmad Ja-
mal roll fluidly across the keyboard.
Sometimes, gentlemen would send
over free drinks for all of us in the
hope of striking up a conversation.
We were thankful for the glasses
of cheer, but an impenetrable wall
would come down soon thereafter.
Our group ate burgers and falafel
on street corners and during the
holiday season, we shared a por-
tion or two of roasted chestnuts at
the religion of the bramhana was
about rituals and sacrifices; Vedic
literature does not have references
to rebirth and karma till very late.
[Bronkhorst, 2017: Brahmanism –
Its Place In Ancient Indian Society,
Contributions to Indian Sociology,
Vol 51, Number 3, 363] Baumard et
al corroborate Bronkhorst’s thesis
in their empirical study connect-
ing the rise of ascetic religions with
increased affluence: “Vedism, in
turn influenced by these spiritual
movements, underwent a massive
transformation, integrating asceti-
cism and karma in the new Brah-
manic orthodoxy” [Baumard et al,
navhindart@gmail.com
Rockefeller Center, where skaters
amused us with their antics on
the man-made rink. We dropped
in to admire the displays at Saks
Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s:
our combined purses contained so
little cash, we could not purchase
anything at those fancy, expensive
stores. Every one coughed up their
own pennies, whether it was for a
snack, the entrance to a show or a
subway ticket.
I always felt a sense of reassur-
ing peace with them. They cared
and it showed. They were helpful,
kind and generous with their time
and energies; they were never
negative or judgmental. I loved that
old rundown school in the Bronx
where they taught and lived. It was
a four-storey affair with no eleva-
2015: Increased Affluence Explains
the Emergence of Ascetic Wisdoms
and Moralizing Religions, Current
Biology, 25, 10] As we have seen
earlier, the bramhana were essen-
tially flesh eaters, from their Saras-
vati days, and this continued during
their Kuru-Pancala sojourn. [Further
Inquiry Into Chadd’ddi, 19 Feb 17]
It was the encounter with the jaina
of Magadha and their ideology of
ahimsa that transformed the bram-
hana diet.
But perhaps the most signifi-
cant effect of the encounter was
the radical transformation of the
Vedic religion. The loss of political
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tor, since it was a pre-war building.
My classroom was located right on
the top, virtually in the attic. The
kids came from the lower middle-
class strata, gentle and sweet. Of
Irish stock for the most part, a few
were Italian and Latino. Since their
parents believed that all Indians
were starving, generous food pack-
ages would show up in their chil-
dren’s knapsacks “for the teacher”.
The children would walk me home
after school “to protect me,” they
contended. And the nuns insisted
I wear a saree and bindi to work
“to expose the children to other
cultures,” they said. The kids loved
my clothes, playing with my shawl
or pallu as we trudged up the road
home. One would hold my books,
another would carry my handbag.
A third would clutch my hand.
Catholicism in New York is such
a far cry from its Goan counterpart.
It is steeped in bliss and joyfulness,
causing me to feel an overwhelm-
ing sense of nostalgia whenever
I recall those marvellous expe-
riences. Sunday Masses, which
would continue well past noon
for the elderly and for those who
wished to sleep late after working
all night, lacked lengthy, repeti-
tive, boring sermons. Serious and
unsmiling folk were rarities, and
no one pointed fingers at others in
a holier-than-thou stance. I cannot
recollect a mean-spirited person
or people involved in vigorous
altercations: no one scrapped with
their neighbours during the week,
using the most offensive language
– only to show up at church on
the weekend, seated in the front
pew, decked out with self-anointed
halos. My New York friends and
acquaintances exuded compassion
and basic decency, the essence of
Christianity. It was unimaginable
for a true Christian to label another
patronage by the bramhana, begin-
ning with or around the time of the
rise of the Maurya dealt a death
blow to the way the bramhana
functioned and survived till then;
for it was for the king that the big
sacrifices were performed – which
provided them the sustenance.
However the bramhana reinvented
themselves. The sacrificial ritual
now became largely an individual
affair; dharmasutra gave way to
grihyasutra. The ideal bramhana
was projected as an ascetically
inclined individual who concen-
trated on his personal rites and
avoided to the extent possible
contact with the outside world – a
hermit in the forest occupied with
the performance of rituals and Ve-
dic recitation. Both Mahabharata
and Ramayana bear witness to
this new model of a bramhana. His
superiority now arose not from
his prerogative to officiate at big
sacrifices, but his power to per-
form supernatural feats through
recitation of mantra – which he
alone knew. Most of these mantra
came from Atharva Veda; a text
that played little role in the big
sacrifices of the early Vedic age. It
was this reinvented Vedic religion
that the bramhana carried as they
moved further to the east and
the south. Bronkhorst’s statement
about the ‘the end of the Vedic re-
ligion’ is to be seen in this context;
he calls the ‘new’ religion bram-
hanism. [Bronkhorst, 2017: 365]
But the bramhana – jaina en-
counter was in no way one-sided;
just as the jaina culture trans-
formed the Vedic religion, the
latter had a profound effect on
the former. To understand this,
we need to review our basic un-
derstanding of religion. Both the
vedic and the jaina ‘religion’ were
not religions in the sense in which
we use the term now, or rather in
the sense in which we consider
Christianity or Hinduism or Bud-
dhism or Islam as a religion. Our
understanding of religion implies a
distinct body of philosophy, theol-
ogy, liturgy (ritual practices) and
canon (religious dos and don’ts).
Both the ‘vedic’ and ‘jaina’ at that
point of time did not constitute a
religion in that sense; pre-Second
human being “a Nazi”, “an outsider”,
or “a dirty migrant”. That was left
to the bigots. No one tried to im-
press you with how much land they
owned or what their net worth en-
compassed; no one mentioned big
bucks as if that was the only thing
that mattered in life. They adhered
closely to recent Papal teaching: “to
resist inclinations toward arro-
gance, the thirst for power and for
riches.”
In Goa, the money-gougers for
the most part are the diocesan
priests: their primary purpose
appears to be to hustle cash, and
more cash, out of their parish-
ioners. Ostensibly to erect new
edifices, as if we do not have suf-
ficient religious structures crowding
the landscape. Such money could
be better spent feeding the hungry;
it could instead be granted to the
Missionaries of Charity of Mother
Teresa who are doing so much for
the needy and marginalised among
us. That same money could be used
to refurbish shuttered churches for
those who have no shelter from the
January cold.
The local leadership has done
little or nothing to ameliorate a
disturbing and distressing situa-
tion. They do not rein in avaricious
priests or those who regularly
overstep their boundaries, in stark
contrast to what the Bible preach-
es. Instead they live in a time warp
which dates back to the 18th and
19th centuries, unable to move
ahead, to stir out of their comfort-
able complacency and sanctimoni-
ous moulds. Our magnificent Pope
Francis could not have been more
clear when he stated in his annual
Christmas speech to the Curia, that
cleaning out the rot and malaise
in the church, was “as difficult as
trying to clean the Sphinx with a
toothbrush.”
Temple Judaism would compare
better with them. Each of them
was simply a way of dealing with
matters beyond human control
adopted by a geographically de-
fined community – in the Saras-
wati valley, in Magadha, in Judea,
etc; from that ‘way’ later emerged
a religion or religions in modern
sense: Hinduism (more correctly
Brahmanism), Jainism, Judaism,
etc.
It is in this framework that we
can understand how the vedic cul-
ture transformed the jaina culture.
Just as the vedic-jaina encounter
was happening, the latter was
slowly evolving into a religion;
it eventually evolved into Jain-
ism. But the influence of the vedic
on the jaina spawned another
religion: Buddhism. That Siddhar-
tha Gautama was a jaina, in the
sense that we have used the term,
does not need elaboration; he was
born and grew up in Magadha in a
kshatriya family that practiced the
way of life of that region between
the 6th and 4th centuries BCE. He
became a sramana, a jaina ascetic.
But found that the severe asceti-
cism found in the sramana move-
ment was unnecessary or counter-
productive. Thus he preached the
majjhimapatipada or the middle
way. [Laumakis, 2008: An Intro-
duction to Buddhist Philosophy, 4]
The folk tradition about Buddha
does speak of his trying various
ascetic practices before his ‘en-
lightenment’. Two easily discernible
ways in which he diverged from
the jaina tradition is in the clothing
– he accepted clothes, and in diet
– he permitted the eating of meat
under certain conditions. One can
easily see the influence of Vedic
tradition in these.
Why are we going into such a
detail about the jaina culture and
its interaction with the bramhana
culture? Because soon we are going
to step into Deccan and what once
was Konkan (what we have called
the Brhatkonkan); Konkani identity
draws from its kshatriya (jaina) and
the bramhana past, along with its
vadukar origin. [Konkan Once Upon
A Time, December 25; The Vadukar,
The Kshatriya And The Bramhana,
June 11, 2017]