Christopher Dawson on the Religion and Culture of India: Part II
by Edward V. King
(Part I of this essay will be found in the Winter 1994 issue of The
Dawson Newsletter--Volume XII, No. 1) This part deals with Volume I
of the Gifford Lectures, delivered at the University of Edinburgh
from 1947 to 1948. Published in two volumes in 1948 and 1950.)
"The Western student of Eastern religion and especially of Mahayana
Buddhism is apt to be oppressed and bewildered by the tropical
luxuriance of its development. He is lost in a jungle of
metaphysical systems and sacred literatures which have become
inextricably interwoven in the course of ages, so that in spite of
the immense spiritual energy that has been expended, he is often
brought back to the point from which he set out, without any clear
knowledge of what has been achieved.
"Nevertheless, underlying all this complex development there is a
unity of religious experience which is no less striking than the
unity in diversity which characterizes the conception of the ritual
order in the different archaic civilizations."
Religion & Culture, 1948, Volume I of the Gifford Lectures, pp
189-190)
There are numerous references to the culture of India in the first
series of Gifford Lectures, but it is only in lectures V and IX that
we have an extended analysis of the religious tradition of India.
Thus a simple descriptive listing of references in the other lectures
is probably the best way to give the reader an idea of how often
India is brought into the discussion.
i) In lecture I on "Natural Theology and the Scientific Study of
Religion" Dawson mentions the Evenings at St. Petersburg of Joseph
de Maistre (1753-1821) and the book On the Language and Wisdom of the
Indians (1808) by Friedriech von Schlegel (1772-1829) as examples of
writers who turned to the religion and philosophy of India in order
to combat the "abstract a priori constructions" of 18th century
rationalism (13-14)
ii) In lecture II on "God and the Supernatural" he criticizes the
attempt of John Dewey in the first of his Gifford lectures to
construct a sociological rationalization of the Vedanta in terms of
the caste system (34-35). Such an explanation is far too superficial
to explain so general and so profound a teaching in human thought as
the intuition of transcendent spiritual being. In a footnote he
singles out Pere G. Dandoy's "remarkable essay" entitled An Essay on
the Doctrine of the Unreality of the World in the Advaita (1919) and
further on he quotes a passage from it to show how Eastern philosophy
started with the principle of Transcendent Being in contrast to
Western philosophy which began with the Hellenic conception of Nature
(35-37).
In the concluding section of the lecture he refers to the religious
literature of India where one can trace (i) a highly specialized
class devoted to the study of sacred formulas and ritual techniques
and (ii) a movement of theological thought and speculation concerning
ultimate religious truths. When this point is reached one can indeed
speak of Natural Theology; nevertheless, the Vedanta itself claims
the authority of revelation in the strict sense of the word and he
quotes a passage from the Vedanta Sutras of Sankara to prove his
point, giving the reader some background on the latter in a footnote
(42- 43).
iii) In lecture III on "The Relation between Religion and Culture"
Dawson at the end of the lecture highlights the paradox of Buddhism
which he will later repeat in lecture IX. At first sight Buddhism
seems entirely indifferent to culture since it appears to represent a
turning of the mind away from life. Nevertheless, as lndologists
would be the first to point out, Buddhism was "emphatically a way of
life" in that it created communities and institutions and had "a more
far-reaching influence on the culture of Eastern and Southern Asia
than any other movement" (60).
He gives as two striking examples the Buddhist cultures of Tibet and
Mongolia in which the monks transferred intact the "extremely subtle
and elaborate" structure of Buddhist metaphysics from Sanscrit to
Tibetan and then later from Tibetan to Mongolian so that the whole of
Eastern Central Asia is dominated by what he terms "this secondary
derivative Buddhist culture."
"Thus by a strange irony of history the most aggressive warrior
people of Asia--the Mongols--came to adopt a religion of
non-aggression and universal compassion; and if, as seems probable,
this event gradually led to a change in the character and habits of
the people which contributed to the cessation of the age-long drive
of the peoples of the steppes to East and West, it may be reckoned as
one of the turning points in world history. On the other hand it is
equally clear that the native tradition of Tibet and Mongolia had a
powerful influence on the higher religion of Buddhism and this shows
the other side of the relation between religion and culture displayed
"on a colossal scale in time and space"." (60-61).
iv) In lecture VI on Kingship as one of "The Sources of Religious
Knowledge and the Religious Organs of Society", he includes the
Indians of the Vedic Age as one of a series of peoples who are
preoccupied with blood and lineage who believe in the divine origin
of kings (113).
v) In lecture VII on Sacred Science as a manifestation of "The Divine
Order and the Order of Nature" Dawson brings India into the picture
in his discussion of the main source from which the idea of a cosmic
order developed. The cosmic order is brought out "with exceptional
perfection and detail" in the ritual theology of the Brahamanas. But
it is far older than this since the idea already finds expression in
the hymns of the Rig Veda which Dawson praises for their literary
beauty in two consecutive paragraphs:
"The religion of the Rig Veda is perhaps the most perfect example of
a polytheistic religion of the divine powers of nature that we know,
and it is expressed with a poetic power and imagination which is
unequaled except in Greek literature."
"...The Dawn which is addressed in some of the most beautiful of all
ancient hymns is the real visible dawn rather than a supernatural
power." (144).
It would seem that it was the translation of Hermann Oldenberg which
conveyed to Dawson the exquisite beauty of these hymns since he
refers to volume 46 of the Sacred Books of the East series in two
footnotes on the following page, omitting to mention, however, the
translator.
vi) Finally in lecture X he concludes with a number of sociological
observations on India: in section I: the dualism in the Indian
cultural tradition between the Aryan warrior culture and the Archaic
Indian culture, (199); in section II: the Jains as an example of
extreme other- worldliness combined with economic enterprise and
social adaptability, (203-204); in sections III and IV: the paradox
of Buddhism again; its positive influence on culture versus its
negative influence, (207-208); Buddhism as one of the world religions
which regard supernatural revelation as transcending human culture
and universal to all peoples, (211-212); Hinduism and Buddhism as two
of the five world religions in a secularized civilization which still
continue to influence human life but have lost their organic relation
to society, (213-214).
In lecture V dealing with the Priesthood and Sacrifice as one of the
"Sources of Religious Knowledge and the Religious Organs of
Society'", four of the eight sections comprising 10 pages focus on
India.
In section III he notes the outstanding importance of India in the
specialized development of sacrificial and ritual technique, not only
on account of its antiquity and wealth of documentation but still
more on account of its intensity and persistence in pursuing this
particular tradition. Dawson outlines three stages in the
development: i) the primitive conception of the magical potency of
the sacred formula; ii) the speculative theory of the creative power
of the divine word - the Brahman; iii) the conscious philosophical
identification of the enlightened mind with the Atman - the Self and
with Brahman, the ultimate transcendent Reality (92).
This development is not a straight-forward progress from magic to
religion or from mythology to mysticism since the religious element
is more evident in the religious poetry of the Rig Veda than in the
ritual technology of the Brahamanas. Dawson yet again praises "the
magnificent religious poetry of the hymns of the Rig Veda." (p.93)
In sections III and IV he gives illustrations of this process with a
number of quotations from the Satapatha Brahamana and the
Brihadaranyaka, Chandogya and Mundaka Upanishads, all in The Sacred
Books of the East series (93-98).
In section V it seems at first sight surprising that Dawson would
include Buddhism in the lecture on Priesthood and Sacrifice. He
justifies this with the argument that not only are the Buddhist monks
the lineal descendants of the Brahmins, but also that Buddhism is a
kind of sublimated Brahminism in which the rite of sacrifice is
replaced by moral asceticism and the priestly caste by the monastic
order.
Here he repeats the point made in lecture III about the enormous
influence Buddhist monasticism exerted throughout Central Asia, the
Far East and the extinct culture of East Turkestan, through its
"tireless activity" in the translation and diffusion of a great range
of theological, metaphysical and literary works (99-100).
In section VI Dawson concludes his discussion of the religion of the
priesthood and sacrifice in India. The latter survived and triumphed
over the great secondary disciplines of salvation - Buddhism and
Jainism. With the rise of the temple cultus and the theistic
developments of Vishnuism and Sivaism associated with it, modern
Hinduism resembles the classical type of priestly culture as
developed in the Near East..
In addition to this, the doctrine of the sacrifice received its
scientific formulation in an independent philosophical school--the
Karma Mimamsa--which is parallel to the Vedanta and even more than
the latter, is the classical system of orthodox Indian religion
(101).
In the last section of the lecture Dawson remarks on the relation
between the priest and the man of learning in the higher cultures and
these have also tended to be the chief interpreters and
intermediaries between different cultures. India furnishes two
examples with men like Rammohun Roy, the Bengal Brahmin and religious
reformer, "who did more to bridge the gulf between European and
Indian culture than any other man of this generation", or Iswar
Chandra Vidyasager (1820-1891) who carried on a similar work in the
following generation (105).
This article was taken from "The Dawson Newsletter," Winter 1995,
P.O. Box 332, Fayetteville, AR 72702, $8.00 per year.
