Review

Reviewed Work(s): The Ocean of Love: Middle Bengali Sufi Literature and the Fakirs of
Bengal by David Cashin
Review by: Carol Salomon
Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 118, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1998), pp.
554-558
Published by: American Oriental Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/604793
Accessed: 24-01-2018 05:35 UTC

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554 Journal of the American Oriental Society 118.4 (1998)

mere
merefact,
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that
Jainas
Jainas
havehave
used the
usedlexeme
the lexeme
arsa can- Buddhism,
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so so
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("nicht
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eindeutig")
as to render major work
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D. SEYFORT RUEGG
Old
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Indo-Aryan(Sanskrit)
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term
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LONDON
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language
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ofhe
texts
placed
he placed
in his Class I of BHS-the Mahavastu, etc.-was more a
Prakrit (Middle Indo-Aryan) than Sanskrit (see, e.g., his BHSG
[1953], xxv). Now, by not including any reference to Sanskrit,
the designation Arsa can, in a Buddhist context, serve as a gen-
The Ocean of Love: Middle Bengali Sufi Literature and the
eral designation covering not only canonical texts in Edgerton's
Fakirs of Bengal. By DAVID CASHIN. Skrifter utgivna av
Classes II and III of BHS-which he considered to have been Foreningen for Orientaliska Studier, no. 17. Stockholm: As-
composed in a more regular Sanskrit-but also sutra texts in his SOCIATION OF ORIENTAL STUDIES, STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY,
linguistically Middle Indo-Aryan Class I. This was indeed the 1995. Pp. 329. SK 10.
point of my observation in Dialectes . . about the potential
suitability and the convenience of the term Arsa to denote the The Islam of Bengal, which has the second largest Muslim
population in the world-concentrated mainly in the eastern
language of Buddhist sitras marked by forms that are grammat-
ically irregular by the standard of Sanskrit: if the language of delta comprising present-day Bangladesh-is characterized by
flexibility, adaptability, and accommodation to local traditions.
the group of texts (viz., Edgerton's Class I) is indeed Prakrit, the
designation "Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit" is something of a mis- The book under review, which was the author's Stockholm Uni-

nomer for it. (It may be noted in addition that the very idea ofversity dissertation, is a study of Bengali Sufi esoteric litera-
ture dating from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. This
such a thing as [Buddhist] "Hybrid Sanskrit" has encountered
resistance, and engendered misunderstandings, in India everhighly abstruse literature, composed by some of the most distin-
guished authors of medieval Bengal, including the late-sixteenth-
since this designation was publicized through lectures given
century epic poet Saiyid Sultan, was influenced by the beliefs
there in 1953 by Edgerton. In part this is because it is thought
that no Indo-Aryan grammatical form can be at the same time and practices of Bengali Tantric yogic traditions. To my knowl-
edge, this is only the second book-length study of the literature
linguistically hybrid and linguistically samskrta.) Certainly, none
of this finally and conclusively demonstrates that we must forth- (not including discussions in text editions) published to date,
with abandon the familiar designation BHS, provided at leastfollowing Ashim Roy's The Islamic Syncretistic Tradition in
that it is employed with due care. What it does show is thatBengal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983).
thought and research still need to be devoted to the complex of Cashin's aim in writing this book is to demonstrate that (pp.
111-12) "the majority of these texts hold a specific cultic line
philological, historical, and social issues arising in relation with
the multi-layered, and sometimes heterogeneous, linguistic phe-which is directly traceable to one or another of the Hindu
nomena we now globally call BHS (and sometimes also Bud- cults." He rejects Muhammad Animul Haq's and Ahmad Sharif's
dhist Sanskrit). These issues, which of course extend far beyondview of Bengali Sufi literature as the product of a combination
the purview of the SWTF, arise in relation with the use of the of influences, including Vedantic, Tantric, Nath, Vaisnava Saha-
jiya, Sufi, and Buddhist. He also rejects Ashim Roy's assess-
grammatical term arsa; in Prof. Bechert's reaction, printed on
ment that Muslim authors derived their Tantric and yogic ideas
pp. 597-98 of this dictionary, to what the present writer con-
largely from the Naths, arguing that Roy had only part of the
siders to be a genuine problem in Indian historical linguistics,
picture (p. 40). Instead, he sets out to prove that the texts can
enough space was clearly not available to address the issues still
in need of clarification. be divided into two distinct and for the most part exclusive
groups, according to whether they are Nath in orientation or
Vaisnava Sahajiya-the former texts predating the latter but
The successful completion of this first volume of SWTF will
be universally welcomed by scholars of Indo-Aryan and of virtually disappearing by the nineteenth century.

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 Reviews of Books 555

According to Cashin, his method differs from that of previ- practice), represents, according to Cashin, the Nath position.
ous scholars in that he does not merely discuss isolated terms, Ali Raja's Agam, which regards a woman who is married to
but rather provides the contexts in which they occur, including someone else (parakiya) as a superior partner to one's own wife
detailed textual analysis, since technical terminology tends not (svakiya), expresses the Vaisnava Sahajiya stance. Chapter six,
only to be recycled but also often reinterpreted. In cases where "The Elixir of Immortality," discusses the meanings of rasa in
a term has both Nath and Vaisnava Sahajiya antecedents, he Nath and Vaisnava Sahajiya traditions and in the Muslim texts
first determines the distinctive sense in which it is used in each influenced by them. Chapter seven, "Sekh Canda's Har Gauri
tradition in order to be able to trace the source of the word used Sambdd," compares this text which uses Hindu Tantric termi-
in the Sufi text. He combined his study of texts with fieldwork nology with Talib Namd, a parallel text written by the same
in Bangladesh. At the beginning of several chapters he quotes author which uses Sufi terminology to express essentially the
from a Sufi song he collected, or from an interview he con- same concepts. These interesting texts, Cashin concludes, dem-
ducted with a pir, in order to show continuity between theonstrate that Hakim viewed Hindu Tantric, especially Nath, and
medieval textual tradition and modern Sufi belief and practice, Sufi traditions as equivalent. Chapter eight, "Muslim Vaisnava
in which he finds Vaisnava Sahajiya to be the predominantPoets," compares Vaisnava lyrics written by Muslim poets influ-
"cultic" influence. enced by the Naths with those influenced by the Vaisnava Sa-
For this study Cashin examined numerous manuscripts hajiyas.
and Finally, the last chapter, "The Cult of the Pir," includes
a translation of Ballabha's Satyandrayaner Puthi, a popular
published texts. He translates here for the first time four short
works into English, namely Nir Nama, by Sekh Paran; Cari
narrative tale about a saint known as Satyapir or Satyanarayan,
Mokamer Bhed, by Abdul Hakim; Har Gauri Sambad, by Sekh
who was worshipped in common by Hindus and Muslims. This
text is unrelated to the main theme of the book, i.e., Nath and
Canda;1 and Satyandaryaner Puthi, by Ballabha, and appends
Vaisnava
their texts in roman transliteration at the end of the chapters in Sahajiya influence on Sufi texts, and so should not
have been included.
which they are translated and analyzed. This is also the first
time that Sekh Paran's and Abdul Hakim's Bengali texts haveConceptually, the book is a jumble. On the one hand, Cashin
appeared in print. In support of his arguments, Cashin includes
states that he is attempting to prove that the texts are "exclu-
translated portions of several other works as well. In addition,
sively Nathist or exclusively Vaisnava Sahajiya" (p. 40), and
in the course of his discussions, he quotes from Nath and Vais-
sometimes even goes so far as to identify an author of a Bengali
nava Sahajiya literature to serve as a basis for comparison with
Sufi text as a "straightforward Nathist yogi" (p. 141) or "Vais-
the Sufi literature. nava Sahajiya" (p. 104). On the other hand, he admits that there
The book is divided into nine chapters. Chapter two, "The are Nath elements in Muslim texts which he considers to be
Sahajiya-Nath-Sufi Confluence in Bengal," discusses the factorsVaisnava Sahajiya in orientation and vice versa, but holds that
which led to the emergence of a large Bengali Muslim popula-it is the tradition that predominates which indicates the "cult"
tion and also gives an overview of Bengali Tantric traditions. of origin. Clearly, "exclusively" is an overstatement and not apt
Chapter three, "In the Beginning ... " compares creation mythsto characterize the premodern Bengali religious scene, which
in Bengali Sufi texts with those in Bengali Nath and Vaisnava tended to be fluid and inclusivist. In any case, the book for the
Sahajiya works. In chapter four, "Yogic Texts," Cashin translates most part discounts exogenous Sufi influence.
and interprets Abdul Hakim's Cari Mokamer Bhed, which, along While I agree with Cashin that the concepts in the texts are
with Saiyid Murtaza's Yoga Kalandar, is one of the two Sufilargely borrowed from Tantric yogic traditions, there are more
texts he found that deals primarily with yogic techniques. These Sufi elements in them than he realizes. For example, Cashin
are identified by Cashin as deriving from Nath sources on theremarks that the belief that creation was produced from Nir
grounds of the much greater importance that the Naths place onMuhammad's sweat (or in the case of Ali Raja's Agam, from
yoga for its own sake than do the Vaisnava Sahajiyas. Chapterthe sweat of both God and Nur Muhammad) is "typical of eso-
five, "Lover Becomes Mother, Desire Becomes Love," comparesteric texts in Bengali" and is found "even in Sheikh Paran's
Nath and Vaisnava Sahajiya views on women, arguing that there more orthodox text" (p. 104), but he does not note that similar
are more similarities between these views than meets the eye. Sufi cosmogonic beliefs were recorded in Arabic and Persian
Among Bengali Sufi texts, Sekh Canda's Talib Nadm, which texts dating at least as early as the eleventh century. He also
describes women as "stealing the candra" ("moon"; a code states that silent dhikr (Bengali jikir, "recollection," i.e., repe-
word for semen, the preservation of which is essential to Nathtition of the names of God or of religious formulae) mentioned
in Bengali Sufi texts is due to the influence of (p. 132) "the
mantra concept of word-power" and that this represents "a clear
distinction from Sufi practice." Actually dhikr can be performed
1 For the most part, Bengali names and words are transliter-silently or aloud and, in fact, the latter is generally considered
ated as they appear in the book under review. superior to the former.

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556 Journal of the American Oriental Society 118.4 (1998)
It is well known that it was through the Naths that Tantric
yogic ideas and practices were incorporated into various tradi-
tions of north India, influencing Sufi works such as Rushd-Nama,
by Shaikh CAbdu'l-Quddus Gangohi (1456-1537), Ismaili Gin-
ans, and Sant poetry. Cashin endeavors to understand the process
whereby such Tantric yogic ideas and practices were absorbed
into Sufism in Bengal, yet the history of this close association
between Naths and Sufis in medieval India tracing back to the
beginning of Muslim rule is hardly noted. The key role played
by the Amrtakunda, a Nath yogic manual, which is said to have
been first translated from a Sanskrit original into Persian and
Arabic as early as the thirteenth century, is only mentioned in
a footnote (pp. 55-56, note 135). Had Cashin adequately pro-
vided the historical context for the literature, it would come as
no surprise that Nath influence is strong in Bengali Sufi texts.
Even in the later texts, which were influenced by Vaisnava
Sahajiya traditions, Nath influence remains discernible.
Bengali Sufi esoteric texts, like Bengali Tantric texts in gen-
eral, are not systematic, standardized, or consistent. Yet Cashin
attempts to regularize the texts, imposing a structure on them
that they do not have. He occasionally uses arbitrary and un-
substantiated criteria for determining what are Nath and Vais-
nava Sahajiya elements. For example, he mentions as a defining
feature of the Naths the goal of avoiding death and attaining
immortality by preserving semen. However, this is equally char-
acteristic of the Vaisnava Sahajiyas. He also mentions that for
the Naths rasa connotes bodily fluids, whereas for the Vaisnava
Sahajiyas it is primarily a sentiment. According to Cashin, Nath
texts advocate the consumption of rasa whereas Vaisnava Saha-
jiya texts do not. Actually, in Vaisnava Sahajiya texts rasa con-
notes both an emotional state and sexual fluids that are ritually
ingested. In addition, Cashin takes jivatmd and paramatma, often
mistranslated as "body" and "spirit," to be Vaisnava Sahajiyf
concepts, whereas they actually can be traced back ultimately to
Vedantic literature and are not exclusive in any one tradition.
Cashin's interpretations sometimes reflect preconceived no-
tions of what he believes the works ought to say, as in this
example: In Cari Mokamer Bhed, a text that was influenced by
the Naths, Muhammad Hakim explains the practice of breath
control performed during dhikr. Commenting on this passage,
Cashin remarks (p. 137): "[Hakim] describes the pulling up
of the abdomen (khicite) while releasing air associated with
certain syllables. This is the yogic khecari practice which is
associated with the perfect retention of semen." While the
khecarimudra, a distinctive Nath technique which consists of
curling the tongue back into the opening at the back of the soft
palate, is one method used during dhikr to arrest breath, it is
nowhere mentioned in Hakim's text. Yet later on, Cashin re-
verses himself and says that (p. 142) " ... Hakim just left out
a description of the technique [i.e., khecari mudrai]."
In other cases Cashin concocts interpretations based on in- he sucks again and again, pulling at the nipple of the breast."
correct translations. For instance, he renders a passage in Sekh According to his interpretation, this refers to a ritual of drink-
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Canda's Tdlib Nama, another text influenced by the Naths, in
this way (p. 173):
Sah Daula Pir speaks this secret of sexual intercourse,
the teaching by which the dtmd is preserved in inter-
course for the one with the desire to annihilation (nir-
bdna).... by drawing in the stomach 10 or 15 (times)
you will place a blinder for the eye. When this blinder
has been fully placed from root to tip, at that time you
will keep gazing at the woman's face.
He comments (p. 173):
What Canda describes is the ulta sadhand of the Naths
in which the male is inflamed sexually and then by
means of the kumbhaka, "drawing in the stomach 10 or
15 times," causes the semen to flow in reverse back to
the reservoir in the head. The eyes are considered an out-
let for the essence within the body which is why this is
referred to as a "blinder" for both the eye and the penis.
This experience is described as the means for achieving
nirbdna or annihilation.
As Sekh Canda makes clear later in the text, this is indeed a
description of ulta sddhand, although it is a Vaisnava Sahajiyf
as well as a Nath practice. But little else in the translation or the
interpretation matches the Bengali original. Sekh Canda neither
mentions kumbhaka (breath control) in this passage nor uses
any word that indicates "stomach." "Blinder for the eye" trans-
lates thuni, which in this sense occurs more commonly as thuli;
but it is the wrong meaning for the context. Thuni here means
"pillar" (Skt. sthiina) and is a metaphor for penis. Although
Cashin indicates that "annihilation" translates nirbdna, no such
word occurs in the passage. Apparently, he rendered lay as "an-
nihilation" and then, without checking the text, replaced it in
his translation and commentary with its synonym nirbdna. In
this passage, however, lay in the phrase ydr lay mati is the third
person of the verb laoya "to take" and the entire phrase means
"whoever (lit., 'whosoever's mind') is so inclined." (Cashin also
mistranslates the verb lay as "annihilation" on pp. 138-39,
line 3.) A correct translation of the passage would be:
Pir Sahdaula tells this secret sexual intercourse to who-
ever is inclined to learn it to preserve the dtmi. ... With
five or ten thrusts he will plant the pillar (i.e., penis).
When the pillar goes in from the base to the tip he will
look at the woman's face a moment.
In another example, Cashin renders a line in the Vaisnava
Sahajiya text Amrtarasdball as (p. 189): "He stares eye to eye,
 Reviews of Books
ing breast milk (loc. cit.): "Breast milk as rasa materialized,
is a representative substance to be consumed." (Curiously, he
does not seem to notice that this interpretation contradicts one
of the main criteria he set up for judging a work as Vaisnava
Sahajiya in orientation-i.e., that rasa is not a substance to be
consumed.) The translation, however, bears little resemblance
to the Bengali text, which reads: naydne nayana cdhe kuca
pane, ghana ghana tane ndsd. Apparently, Cashin incorrectly
takes pane which he translates as "he sucks" to be third person
of a denominative verb formed from pdn "drinking." There is,
however, no such verb in Bengali. Pane in this context is the
postposition "towards," "at." The line translates: "He looks in
her eyes and gazes at her breasts. He draws in his breath (lit.,
'nose') again and again."
Such mistranslations abound. A few more examples will
suffice to give an idea of the extent of the problem: "Elephant
goad of love" (p. 62 note 7) translates premer ahkura "sprout of
love": ankura obviously was mistaken for ahkuSa. Sometimes
the English sentence does not make sense: ". .. the universe is
the writing of the bodiless" (p. 200, line 3) translates i tina
bhubane tar aghat likhana (text on p. 218, line 3). A correct
translation would be: "In these three words his miracles (lit.,
'impossible acts') are written." Errors are found not just in trans-
lating esoteric texts but also in the Satyandrdyaner Puthi, a
straightforward narrative poem. For example (p. 258, line 22):
"He... sat in a tree which swayed (under his weight) to and
fro" is Cashin's rendering of gacha nare gdcha cale gdche kare
bhara (text on p. 288, line 22). The verse is not, as Cashin con-
tends (p. 258 note 50), "in disguised passive form"-whatever
that might mean. Rather the verbs ndre and cdle are causatives.
The line translates: "He makes the tree sway. He makes it move.
He possesses it." Even a sentence referring to the famous Ma-
hdbhdrata story of Draupadi is mistranslated (p. 267, line 16):
"Dusbasana took all of Draupadi's clothes and slowly handed
them over to Krsna" is Cashin's translation of dropadirjata bas-
tra nei [ney] dusbasana, dinala kariyd dena nander nandana
(text on p. 296, line 16). Diiala is probably an error for dinala
(Skt. dirgha) "long." A correct translation is: "Krsna increased
the length of (lit., "made long") Draupadi's cloth by as much as
Dusbasana (i.e., Duryodhana) took off."
While textual corruptions are sometimes indicated with a
question mark, at other times, although the published text is
clearly corrupt, there is no indication of a textual problem. For
example, Cashin reads a line in Abdul Hakim's Cari mokamer
bhed (p. 153, line 6): chadar tala manta ho jana biryir mokam.
This is translated (p. 139, line 6): "You are aware that mantra
is the root of this ultimate place, the mokam of semen (birya)."
Although he does not say so, Cashin apparently takes manta
to be a variant of mantra. Ho, which is not a word in Bengali,
is not translated. Actually, the first four words should be only
two, chadartal mantaho, intended for chddratul mantahd (Ar.
sidratu 'l-muntahd), the celestial Lote tree mentioned in the
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557
Qur'an which marks the boundary between the seventh heaven
and God's domain. In Hakim's text it is identified with thejabrut
mokdm located in the head where semen is believed to be stored.
The line can be rendered: "Know that the Lote tree of the
boundary is the place of semen."
In his discussions Cashin tends to quote only those portions
of a text that support his arguments and to omit material not
consistent with them. This is especially the case in his analysis
of Ali Raja's late-eighteenth-century works Agam and Jidn
Sdgar. Only the considerable Vaisnava Sahajiya influence on
the Agam is commented on in any detail. The fact that Ali Raja
writes about Nath practices such as ajapajap (saying the silent
mantra hamsa consisting of exhalation and inhalation) and re-
fers to Nath concepts such as andhata sabda "unstruck sound"
is not discussed, although in his chart of Nath and Vaisnava
Sahajiyf elements in the texts (p. 110) Cashin does check off
some Nath categories for the Agam. Given the Nath and also
Sufi influences on the texts, it is hard to see how Ali Raja can
be described as representing "an exclusively Vaisnava Sahajiya
viewpoint" (p. 38).
I append some comments on specific chapters. In chapter
one Cashin's sources are outdated. Some of the theories he
repeats to account for the large Muslim population in Bengal,
such as conversion by "force of arms" (p. 34), have been dis-
credited, most recently in Richard Eaton's seminal study The
Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier (Berkeley and Los An-
geles: Univ. of California Press, 1993). In chapter eight Cashin
holds that the colophons of Vaisnava poems composed by
Muslim authors who wrote works influenced by Sahajiya Vais-
navism are participatory and devotional, whereas those com-
posed by Muslim authors who wrote works influenced by the
Naths are not. Based on this observation he concludes (p. 233):
"In fact these participatory colophons demonstrate that the Mus-
lim authors of them were followers of the Vaisnava Sahajiya
philosophy." There is, however, no clear difference between the
two groups of colophons quoted by Cashin. Moreover, it is just
as possible for a Muslim author like Phayjullah, who wrote a
Nath text, to compose devotional Vaisnava poetry as it is for a
Muslim author like Ali Raja, who was strongly influenced by
Sahajiya Vaisnavism. Popular religious traditions, whether Hindu
or Muslim, were often not viewed as mutually exclusive. In ad-
dition to esoteric Sufi texts and Vaisnava poetry, Ali Raja com-
posed Syama sarigit in which he even subordinated Krsna to
Kali in one of the colophons, calling him the servant of the god-
dess (sydm kdlika dds), while a Hindu named Kesab Ray was
the author of a Sufi work entitled Yoga Kalandar.
The book could have benefited from careful editing and
proofreading. There are a large number of spelling errors, such
as hansom and handsom throughout chapter nine, amendation
(p. 200), hemaphrodite (p. 176), extent for extant (p. 31), and
roll for role (p. 49). The r is sometimes dropped from Maij
Bhandar (e.g., p. 234). Tamasa and rajasa are frequently written
558 Journal of the American Oriental Society 118.4 (1998)

in place
place of
of tamasa
tamasaand
andrajasa
rajasa(for
(for
example,
example,
p. 63,
p. 63,
note
note
9). 9). enables him to read (Advaita)
(Advaita) Vedanta
Vedanta in
in its
its important
important light.
light. II
Apostrophes
Apostrophesare
areoften
oftenomitted
omittedfrom
from
possessives,
possessives,
e.g.,e.g.,
"Gods"
"Gods" select four of the book's
book's key
key points
points which
which follow
follow from
from this.
this.
(p. 67)
67) and
and "Sekh
"SekhMansurs"
Mansurs"(p.(p.
57).
57). i) The distinction between
between the
the Advaita
Advaita as
as Uttaramimdmsa
Uttaramimdmsa
and as Vedanta philosophy
philosophy (p.
(p. 74).
74). As
As II have
have also
also argued,'
argued,'
CAROL SALOMON there are good grounds
grounds for
for studying
studying Samkara
Samkara as
as aa theologian
theologian
UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON primarily interested
interested in
in scriptural
scriptural texts
texts as
as the
the medium
medium for
for liber-
liber-
ation, rather than purely
purely as
as aa philosopher
philosopher whose
whose conceptual
conceptual
analysis can be abstracted
abstracted from
from its
its exegetical
exegetical context.
context. Theology
Theology
after Vedanta makes
makes aa strong
strong case
case for
for understanding
understanding Advaita
Advaita in
in
relation to the "Mimanmsa
"Mimanmsa practice
practice of
of reading"
reading" which
which it
it extends
extends
to "a new set of texts,"
texts," namely,
namely, the
the upanisads
upanisads (p.
(p. 25).
25). In
In an
an
Theology after Vedanta: An Experiment in Comparative Theol-
investigation of the
the scheme
scheme of
of the
the Brahmasatrabhdsya
Brahmasatrabhdsya in
in terms
terms
ogy. By FRANCIS X. CLOONEY, S.J. Towards a Comparative
of sutras, adhikaranas
adhikaranas ("case
("case studies"),
studies"), padas
padas and
and adhydyas,
adhydyas,
Philosophy of Religions, ed. Frank Reynolds and David
which will be very useful
useful for
for students
students starting
starting to
to study
study Advaita,
Advaita,
Tracy. Albany: STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS,
the reader learns from
from practical
practical experience
experience that
that it
it is
is the
the process
process
1993. Pp. xviii + 265.
of reading and assembling
assembling meaning
meaning that
that is
is important,
important, not
not just
just
the summary given (on
(on pp.
pp. 70-71).
70-71). The
The notion,
notion, drawing
drawing on
on
Theology after Vedanta presents an ambitious yet carefully
Modi,2 that the Bhdsya
Bhdsya is
is best
best understood
understood "backwards"
"backwards" and
and
circumscribed foundation for rereading and rewriting a form of
that to read only from
from 1.1.1
1.1.1 to
to 1.1.4
1.1.4 is
is to
to miss
miss the
the point,
point, is
is very
very
Roman Catholic theology at the end of the twentieth century in
fruitful and could be
be extended
extended much
much further,
further, especially
especially in
in as-
as-
the light of an attentive reading of key Advaita Vedanta texts.
sessing the sections on
on meditation
meditation in
in 3.3
3.3 (pp.
(pp. 64-68,
64-68, 89-92).
89-92).
At the outset, the author warns that, although indologists and The tension between Advaita as Uttaramimamsa and as
theologians may want to read different parts of the book selec-
Vedanta philosophy is necessary to the structure and argument
tively, it is best read as a whole. I bear this in mind in this of the book as a whole (see further below), but the latter is
review, even though, for the readership of this journal, I shall
perhaps too downplayed when it is claimed that Advaita's co-
focus on the indological material.
herence "subsist[s] in... textual relatedness, and not in the
The book is structured with care. After a first chapter which
themes, nor even the referent(s), of Advaita knowledge" (p. 63).
explores possible senses for "comparative theology" and intro- Potter's remarks on the interrelatedness of Advaita's themes3 do
duces Advaita as a commentarial tradition, the "texture," "truth"
not seem to me to be abrogated by a strongly textual approach.
and readership of the Advaita Vedanta "Text" (I conserve the
ii) Reading the Text, not just texts. On p. 157, a summative
capitalization on purpose) are investigated, respectively, in chap-
definition of "Text" is given:
ters two to four. This trio forms the basis for "Theology after
Advaita Vedanta: The Text, The Truth and The Theologian," as
... a series of (written) acts of language which are ir-
chapter five is called. In line with its basic thesis that reading reducible to any author's or authors' intention(s) or to
and rereading is at the heart of the Advaitin enterprise and
the announced and practiced purposes of any particular
should become so for the comparative theologian, the book later tradition, but which are read as intertextually com-
constantly forces the reader to reread and reconsider what goes
posed into a larger whole comprised of a series of related
before, through its structure, its repeated return to texts exam-
texts: e.g., a text along with those which are inscribed in
ined earlier, the comparison of texts in parallel columns, the
it by citation, and those which exist in the form of com-
gradual refinement of vocabulary (from Brahman referred to
mentary upon it.
first as "post-textual," then as "extratextual," then as both) and
a progressive use of capitalization (from "texts" to "Text"; from
"truth" to "truth of comparison" to "Truth of comparison"). I 1 J. G. Suthren Hirst, "The Place of Teaching Techniques in
found this embedding of its pedagogical standpoint refreshing
Samkara's Theology," Journal of Indian Philosophy 18 (1990):
and rewarding, not least in the chapters which, though "in- 113-50; idem, "Strategies of Interpretation: Samkara's Interpre-
scribed" with the comparative project (a perhaps overused term
tation of the Brhadaranyakopanisad," JAOS 116 (1996): 58-75.
in the book), concentrate on Advaita.
2 P. M. Modi, A Critique of the Brahmasutra (111.2.11-IV),
with Reference to Sahkardcdrya's Commentary, 2 vols. (Baroda:
A "credible Indological study" (p. 7)
private publication, 1956).
Without doubt, this is a valuable contribution to studies of 3 Karl H. Potter, ed., Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies:
Samkara's Brahmasutrabhasya and its commentaries, by a Advaita Vedanta up to Samkara and his Pupils (Princeton: Prince-
scholar whose knowledge of the Purvamimamsa tradition ton Univ. Press, 1981), 100.

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