Cyclical Time in India
Cyclical Time in India
Cyclical Time in India
Johannes Bronkhorst
johannes.bronkhorst@unil.ch
Axel Michaels's Hinduism: Past and Present is a wonderful book. Having said
that, I must add that its title makes me uneasy. It does not say but suggests to me
that the past is here used to understand the present. This can be done, but the past
that really explains the present is primarily the past of tradition, or rather
traditions, the past as conceived of by those in the present. And the past of
tradition is a selected past, a constructed past, sometimes even an invented past
that supports and confirms the self-image of those who belong to those traditions.
The past of tradition is not always the same as the past of the historian. The
historian, if he takes his job seriously, tries to break out of traditional preferences
and construct an image of the past that is not influenced by present concerns. And
indeed, the past of the historian has often no or only very little relevance for the
presence. Consider as an example the perhaps most important recent historical
discovery in South Asia: the exploration of Gandhra as an important Buddhist
centre during the centuries surrounding the beginning of the Common Era. Its
exploration has brought to light numerous manuscripts of unprecedented
historical significance and much else, but the relevance of these discoveries for
the present is dubious at best. They may tell us how the huge Buddha statues
destroyed by the Taliban a few years ago got there in the first place, but little else
about the region as it is at present.
Let me emphasize that Michaels's book is far more sophisticated than
these introductory remarks might suggest, and more than once he shows a
developed historical sensitivity. There is however a question of focus. A
presentation that uses the past to understand the present runs the risk of
overlooking aspects of the past that do not help to understand the present, but that
are yet very important for understanding this or that particular historical period. I
will illustrate this with an example: cyclical time in India. And I will begin with a
passage from Michaels's book (p. 300):
Cyclical time
Cyclical time
However, this still leaves us with a riddle, and Michaels is aware of it. If
the centuries just preceding and following the beginning of the Common Era were
so horrible (at any rate for the Brahmins), would these Brahmins not rather
believe that the end of the world, or at least of the present world period, was near
there and then? As Michaels points out (p. 302): The Revelations of Saint John
or Dantes gloomy visions might appear much more about the end of the
world According to the scheme that Michaels presents, this end would in India
still be thousands of years away, hardly the kind of distance to make sense of
present disasters.
As stated above, there is evidence supporting the following position. The
Brahmanical inhabitants of northwestern India did indeed suffer greatly as a
result of the foreign invasions of that time, and they actually came to think that
the end of the present world period (yuga) was near. A number of sources state
quite unambiguously that this end was expected to happen in the very near future,
and some of them even add that a new Ktayuga was to be expected soon. To the
extent that they specify the date of the end of the present world period, their
judgments vary. The earliest date proposed is somewhere around the middle of
the first century BCE. But expectations of this kind were still alive in the third
century CE. After that date they make place for complaints about a stretched out
Kaliyuga that will go on for thousands of years to come.
The relevant evidence is to be found in a number of different texts. The
earliest and most important one is the Yuga Pura, which is part of a longer text,
the Grgya-jyotia. Second in importance are certain portions of the
Mahbhrata, most notably a discussion between King Yudhihira and the sage
Mrkaeya in the third book. Thirdly, there are two Puras, considered to be
among the oldest, viz. the Vyu Pura and the Brahma Pura. One could
finally mention some passages from the Mnava Dharmastra (the so-called
Manusmti) for some additional evidence.
Let us begin with the Yuga Pura. This text describes, in the form of a
prophecy, a number of invasions that took place after the collapse of the Mauryan
Empire. It mentions the Greeks (yavana) and the akas and the war and
destruction these invaders bring. What is more, it presents these disasters as
Cyclical time
Cyclical time
This destruction at yugnta, which clearly does not refer to the transition between one
individual yuga and the next, seems to allude either to an undefined long period of time,
or to the end of the cycle of all four yugas (Kta, Tret, Dvpara and Kali) taken as a
whole. The four yugas taken together are commonly referred to as a yuga, what the
Puras would call the mahyuga, the great yuga, or the caturyuga, the fourfold yuga.
Gonzlez-Reimann 2002, 71-72.
6
As shown in Gonzlez-Reimann 2002, 64-73
7
Gonzlez-Reimann 2002, 71.
Cyclical time
Cyclical time
entirely, justified by the supposed understanding they bring of the modern world.
I have proposed an altogether different justification in an article that came out in
the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlndischen Gesellschaft a few years ago. But
since this is not the subjectmatter of this meeting, I will say no more about it.
I conclude with a citation that I take from a paper that Sheldon Pollock
recently read here in Heidelberg. Pollock cites a lecture given by Leopold von
Ranke in 1854; it contains the following remarkable sentence (p. 20): "Jede
Epoche ist unmittelbar zu Gott, und ihr Wert beruht gar nicht auf dem, was aus
ihr hervorgeht, sondern in ihrer Existenz selbst, in ihrem Eigenen selbst." Seen
this way, the past does not derive its value and interest from its contribution to the
present. And if we wish to study any period of the past, we must try not to reduce
it to ancillary status with respect to the present.
Bibliography:
Bronkhorst, Johannes (2011): Indology, what is it good for? Zeitschrift der
Deutschen Morgenlndischen Gesellschaft 161(1), 115-122.
Bronkhorst, Johannes (2015): The historiography of Brahmanism. History and
Religion: Narrating a Religious Past. Ed. Bernd-Christian Otto; Susanne
Rau & Jrg Rpke. Berlin Boston: Walter de Gruyter.
(Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten, 68.) Pp. 27-44..
Michaels, Axel (2004): Hinduism: Past and Present. Princeton & Oxford:
Princeton University Press.
Pollock, Sheldon (2014): "What is South Asian knowledge good for?" South Asia
Institute Papers 1, 1-22.
URN: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-savifadok-31831
URL: http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/savifadok/volltexte/2014/3183