Religion
Related: About this forum‘The Norton Anthology of World Religions: Volume I’
THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF WORLD RELIGIONS
Volume I: Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism
Edited by Jack Miles, Wendy Doniger, Donald S. Lopez Jr. and James Robson
Illustrated. 2,182 pp. W. W. Norton & Company. Sold together with Volume II: Judaism, Christianity, Islam; $100 for the set.
The god Krishna and Kaliya, the serpent king, from 17th-century India. Credit DeAgostini/Getty Images
DEC. 19, 2014
By WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
By the end of the 19th century, almost all the major surviving classics of Greek and Roman literature had been translated into English. Since then a few new gems have turned up, mainly from papyri found in the rubbish dumps of the Egyptian town Oxyrhynchus. Here was found, for example, a tattered verse by Sappho and Pindars paeans to Apollo. It is unlikely, however, that many more great works of classical European literature will surface; the canon of ancient European literature we have now is likely to remain largely unchanged a century hence.
It is often assumed that the same is true for the other great classical literatures of the world, but this is very far from the case. In particular, the rich treasures of ancient Indian literature remain almost completely unexplored, even to those few who can read languages such as Sanskrit or classical Tamil. For there survives in manuscript form in libraries across South Asia a corpus of literature which is, at a conservative estimate, a thousand times larger than what has survived in Greek. Only a very small proportion of these manuscripts have even been cataloged, never mind translated estimates range from 5 to 7 percent of the total, maybe 500,000 manuscripts of a surviving seven million; but there are really no accurate figures. The scholar David Pingree put the actual number closer to 30 million manuscripts. And such is the scale of the haul, and the poor state of their preservation, that several hundred Sanskrit manuscripts are destroyed or become illegible every week, their contents lost forever. Who knows what masterpieces of prose and poetry, what epics and chronicles, what vital works of sacred and secular literature could be disappearing every year?
If the project of conserving and cataloging the ocean of ancient Indian literature has a long way to go, then the business of translation has barely begun. Faced with the vast seas to be explored, the small band of professional translators of Sanskrit tend to feel like infants paddling on the foreshore of the Atlantic, looking wistfully, but impotently, out to the depths of the turbulent sea.
There are historical reasons for this neglect. Sanskrit eventually became an exclusively sacred language, the preserve of the Brahmins, and in the ancient Laws of Manu, any Dalit (untouchable) who attempted to learn it was sentenced to have molten lead poured into his ears. Partly as a result of this, before the arrival of the pioneering Orientalist Sir William Jones in Calcutta in 1783, there was almost complete ignorance in Europe about Indias classical literature. There began a stumbling progress that led to the translation of passages from the most prominent ancient Indian writers: Vyasa, to whom is attributed the Mahabharata; Valmiki, author of the Ramayana; and the greatest of ancient Indian playwrights, Kalidasa, who is to Sanskrit what Shakespeare is to English.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/books/review/the-norton-anthology-of-world-religions-volume-i.html?_r=0
Jim__
(14,075 posts)But, at $100 for the set, I'll probably have to do any reading at the library.
rug
(82,333 posts)Jim__
(14,075 posts)An excerpt:
First, the selected Jewish writings show that contrary to some popular assumptions, religion does not offer unsustainable certainty. The biblical story of the binding of Isaac leaves us with hard questions about Abrahams God, and later, when Moses asks this baffling deity for his name, he simply answers: Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh, which can be roughly translated: Never mind who I am! The Book of Job finds no answer to the problem of human suffering, and Ecclesiastes dismisses human life as utter futility. This bleak honesty finds its ultimate expression in Elie Wiesels proclamation of the death of God in Auschwitz.
At its best, religion helps people to live creatively and kindly with the inescapable sorrow and perplexity of human existence. Jack Miles, the general editor of the series, compares faith to the human propensity to play, a disciplined make-believe that leads to ekstasis, a stepping outside of normal perception, which, when translated into action, has also helped to develop law, commerce, art and science. Today, believers and nonbelievers alike tend to read Scripture with a dogged literalness, but in the premodern period traditional exegesis in all three monotheisms was a form of intense creativity.
Thus the Talmudic rabbis developed an inventive form of exegesis that they called midrash (from darash: to investigate). They imagined Moses returning to earth in the second century B.C. as a yeshiva boy and, to his consternation, finding that he could not understand a word of Rabbi Akibas explication of his own Torah: Matters that had not been disclosed to Moses were disclosed to Rabbi Akiba and his colleagues. Sinai had been just the beginning. Revelation was an ongoing process and would continue every time a Jew confronted the sacred text; it was the responsibility of each generation to continue the process.
Scripture did not, therefore, imprison the faithful in outmoded habits of thought. In his selection of Christian texts, Lawrence S. Cunningham hints that some of the Gospel stories may also be a form of inventive midrash that drew on texts from the Hebrew Bible, but unfortunately he does not spell this out clearly to the reader. To counter our modern literalistic mind-set, it would have been helpful if he had also included Origens ruling that it was impossible to revere the Bible unless it was interpreted figuratively, and Augustines insistence that if the plain meaning of Scripture clashed with reliable scientific discovery, the interpreter must respect the integrity of science.
...
That sounds like an interesting read too.
rug
(82,333 posts)I should spent less time in here and more time reading.
Jim__
(14,075 posts)okasha
(11,573 posts)then check the used copies on Amazon. That's how I bought all my art history books, The original prices for that kind of thing are enough to send us 99%-ers to the fainting couch.
We need a *swoon* smiley.
Jim__
(14,075 posts)Last edited Mon Dec 22, 2014, 05:50 AM - Edit history (1)
I'll put it on my Amazon wish list, that way I can track it.
Edited to add: It's already available new on Amazon for $63.25.
thucythucy
(8,045 posts)I'll have to get my local library to purchase, or at least inter-library loan a set.
rug
(82,333 posts)The variety is mesmerizing.
Cartoonist
(7,316 posts)Sanskrit eventually became an exclusively sacred language, the preserve of the Brahmins, and in the ancient Laws of Manu, any Dalit (untouchable) who attempted to learn it was sentenced to have molten lead poured into his ears.
okasha
(11,573 posts)Try again.
Cartoonist
(7,316 posts)okasha
(11,573 posts)Cartoonist
(7,316 posts)If I check out a book from the library and keep it past its due date, I am charged a fine. That's secularism at work. If someone who was not permitted to check out a book in sanskrit did so, then the Brahmins, a religious class, poured molten lead in their ear. That's religion at work. As usual, you don't see any religious connection, and apologize by blaming it on something else.
okasha
(11,573 posts)Brahmins were a social and economic class with incidental religious function--rather like Roman priests in that regard. Preventing the spread of literacy limits power. Why do you think right-wingers are doing their damnedest to undermine public education?
TM99
(8,352 posts)millions all over the world - Buddhists, scholars, Hindi, yoga instructors, etc. can study this wonderful language without Brahmin hit squads breaking down our doors.
So what is your point? Oh, wait, I bet I know what it is. This is a potentially interesting thread about a serious scholarly set of books on the study of religion. And you, as an anti-theist, just can't pass up an opportunity to troll it with your snark, snide comments, and evangelism. Yeah, that's got to be it.
Cartoonist
(7,316 posts)Religion has always been a force for good. And yet, today people are having their heads cut off. Yeah, I'm a troll.
TM99
(8,352 posts)Who exactly said religion has always been a force of good?
And your non sequitur is irrelevant, because yes, you are not discussing the OP at hand. You are pushing a tiresome agenda of anti-theism which is not relevant in the least to this topic.
So, yes, my good sir, this is classic trolling behavior.
Prophet 451
(9,796 posts)But, even at a discounted price, it's £40 that I can't afford on a disabled income.
rug
(82,333 posts)Every time I hear something like this I get pissed off all over again at how little it would take to enrich people's lives. Books? No! Drones? War onTerror!
Prophet 451
(9,796 posts)Here, libraries are always having their funding cut.