Peace Out.

Cheers!

Cheers Vishal! Rock on!

Next time you create a game, try to use Egyptian gods like Set, Horus or Norse gods like Thor. You clearly have no idea what Kali signifies, and if you’re someday fortunate enough to pull your head out of your materialistic ass, focus on your Ajaneya chakra and actually commune with Reality, you’ll think twice about reducing a very primal force and a feminine principle to some super-villain like entity, and then feeding that concept into millions of global minds. What your game could likely speed up, is inevitable and indiscriminate Pralaya.

I hope people flush your game down the toilet, and I hope it doesn’t sell.

Sadhu Sanyasi Ji: Heretic, poet and Saint – part of the Hindutva hate brigade – or figure this out for yourself

Brownfrown says:

Either way, I don’t see very much difference between this latest appropriation and what was going on a thousand years ago between Hindus and Buddhists. Both situations essentialise another’s symbols as a polemic, to further whatever they are trying to push. You don’t think that was a commercial move on the Buddhists’ part? They were a proselytising religion, in need of converts – and what better way to do that than to use the language and the imagery of your milieu to your advantage? I think the differences between these two situations are a lot less marked than we’d like to admit because while we like Buddhists, we don’t like ignorant Western money-making corporations touching our deities. But back in the day, I bet you there was the same distaste in “Hindu” circles (at least amongst people who had *ahem* time to sit around and debate philosphical issues ad nausem) if they came accross this appropriated Buddhist version of say Siva or Durga.

I think this is a great point. There was alot of borrowing, exercising, and conversion, to use old Buddhist Studies terminology–so packed with Orientalist concerns–of local dieties by Buddhists. Nowhere did this happen more than in Tibet, where the comparative sophistication, and more importantly the cultural weight of the Subcontinent paradigm, gave Buddhism the resources it needed to “placate, exercise, and convert” all the local dieties, many of which are said by the tradition to have been hostile to Buddhism at first. In comes the mythical Padmasambhava.

However, this appropriation by Buddhism of so-called Hindu motifs masks the reciprocity of the exchange between the various traditions in South Asia. I hesitate using the term “Hinduism” in this context, because the earliest record of the term ‘hindu’ in Indic languages post-dates the exhaustion of Buddhism in India. What we seem to have are all sorts of traditions in contact, contestation and communication. We find, very commonly, the incorporation of Buddhist motifs, symbols, in all sorts of traditions we now call “Hinduism”. It seems to me the discussion has implied that the borrowing was a one-way endeavor, which is not at all the case. This is true even if one doesn’t accept the notion of pan-Indian tropes shared and used variously in all sorts of ways by Buddhists, Jains, and “Hindus” in medieval India.

And again:

While you’re right in that there was debate within all the various (at least Brahmanic) “Hindu” schools of thought *and* “Buddhist” schools, there was a sense of self-identity amongst Buddhsists that could only defined by defining themselves as “other” to the Hindus.

Absolutely. This is totally correct. The sanskrit term that Buddhists used was Bauddha, just like Jains called themselves Jaina. The problem with this statement is that they didn’t define themselves as “other” to Hindus, but rather to Brahmins (in the Pali literature) and Nyayas or Kapilikas, S’aivas and Vais’navas (in Sanskrit), and more commonly other Buddhist schools, for example. We have to remember that for large periods of time in particular regions of India up until the Gupta period, Buddhism was a more dominant ideology than Hinduism or Jainism. In certain instances, it was the other way around–that is, “Hindu” traditions would define themselves in response to Buddhist or Jain paradigms. Some argue that the Gita is imbedded within this context of a response to an excess of actual renunciation and move to more symbolic, internal forms of renunciation. To add another point to the borrowing,

Divya says,

Dharma is as much a hindu concept as it is a buddhist one.

Indeed, in the Vedas, there is not much emphasis on dharma, it is not until you get to the 2nd c. BCE-2nd c. CE that we find the Epics, Dharmas’astras, and puranas explicitly talking about Dharma. But this is after Jains, Ajivikas, and Buddhists have spread all across India talking about Dharma. It seems that the response to this, called “classical Hinduism” by scholars, borrowed heavily from that paradigm but went in an interesting direction with it.

Just to bring it back to Kali and Tantra, an exchange is often called pan-Indian where it is unclear which tradition “originally” developed a certain characteristic that exists in all traditions. This quest for origins is problematic at best, but just to show an example: the two earliest tantras we have are Buddhist, the Hevajra tantra and the Guhyasamaja tantra. So, from that evidence do we conclude that Tantra originally was a Buddhist tradition borrowed by Hinduism? I don’t think we have enough evidence to support that claim. Nor the other way around. There is not enough evidence to support a Buddhist borrowing of Tantra from Hinduism, originally. When we starting talking about particular elements of Buddhist or Hindu Tantra at a later date, there are more clear cut cases of borrowing.

So, all this evidence is to argue that all interpretation is (mis)interpretation or–less polemically–(re)interpretation. All traditions were reinterpreting and re-imagining paradigms that were kicking around. While we can, in some cases, say that one particular element started here instead of there, I think the weight of that in terms of authenticity is overstated. Reinterpretation happens all the time–everyone is doing it. From the vantage-point of history, we might say that the violence of Buddhist or Jain or Hindu reinterpretations are not at the level of Orientalist commodification, but perhaps brownfrown is correct in questioning this assumption? The concern, of course, is the degree of systematic power-relations and relative inequality. But again, are we over-stating the power of Orientalist discourse? Can we think of examples of appropriation of “Western” motifs, watered down, commodified and proliferated in non-Western settings?

Anyway, all of these details don’t really get at brownfrown’s observation that perhaps the repetition of the Ashoka v. Kali battle is a (coincidental?) reproduction of a ideological battle happening in classical India. In some ways, I think it necessarily has to be. Where did those symbols come from? Even if the video game was Ashoka and Kali v. Christ and Moses (live on pay-per-view) instead of Ashoka v. Kali, the structural history would still allow that combination. There are all sorts of semiotic systems coming to bear on this game; and like literary analysis, a semiotic analysis of this particular video game could reap great benifits to unpacking a more general understanding of contemporary mythical paradigms. So, while there never was any Ashoka v. Kali in India literature, we can see how this reimagining becomes the confluence of Abrahamic and Indic semiologic systems. The interesting thing would be to unpack them.

As far as what the semiology means, one thing I tend to agree with is a distaste for the repetition of Good/Evil paradigms in relation to any symbolism, but especially in regard to imagery and traditions that explicitly attempt to deconstruct that binary. But, this is how symbols travel. Once that reality is accepted we can find more strategic ways of restaging the symbols to reflect a paradigm that we think is more appropriate. An example of a successful venture is Princess Mononoke, which many have told me they found disconcerting precisely because of its moral ambiguity. In this video game, I think the disney mythology has been used as a foundation for a co-opting of other symbols. What should be done in response? Non-dual interpretations of Abrahamic religious symbols? It seems to me more and more that direct confrontations can suppress particular instantiations of systematic representations, but the only thing that affects structure-wide change is developing a competitor on the same stage that is more attractive. It is a consumer-heavy model, but in terms of symbols, perhaps the consumption and reproduction of symbols is a more effective strategy than railing against something. Look what effect millions of people worldwide marching against the Iraq war had. Barely perceptible to none. Perhaps we need both rejection and working within the system. It doesn’t look like we have much of a competitor to late-capitalism in the forseeable future. So why not market a popular product/movie/mythology that opens up room for more historically accurate, positive, or enabling interpretations of Kali? Getting Sarasvati shoes off the racks is necessary (rejection), but then video games like this pop up (does continual rejection work?). Eventually, if these symbols cannot enter the global market of symbolic exchange, they will die out. Why else does the Dalai Lama, craftily, sell Apple computers? He understands the power of branding in late capitalism. Why else did Vivekenanda and Dharmapala go to the World Parliament of Religions?

Ok, ok. Enough of the late-capitalist rant. I guess to sum up my points, it is to say we have to be careful about our analysis of medieval India. Too often we ahistoricize the past. Nowhere do I see it more commonly than about India where emotive or often well-intentioned political influences ignore certain facts or trends of the past that don’t fit with contemporary desires. Nonetheless, a examination of classical and medieval India can help us understand some of the contemporary appropriations and reinterpretations of symbols, and give us a better idea of what is going on today.

Dharmaserf

The comments seemed to suggest that Kali is exotic and Buddhism (Ashoka’s religion) is all intellectual. The ground reality was that Indian Buddhism fulfilled the same criteria for exoticism as does Hinduism.

I didn’t used to get shocked by Kali but as I get older I seem to be getting more and more squeamish. I had to remove my little painting of Kali to a spot where I didn’t see it so often.

I agree about your point about syncretism. But I think it’s inaccurate to claim that certain people didn’t identify with the new Buddhist traditions and didn’t see a difference between what was taught under that umbrella term versus that which was “Hindu”. As for the vedas as maya within “Hindu” traditions – sure. But there is an explicit imagery used in certain Buddhist texts that serve to differentiate itself from the status-quo of Hinduism. And deities do fall under “popular” religion. So whether the Vedas say that the deities are not ultimately the end of enlightenment or not is moot given the practices of the people. The response of Buddhists is also on this realm of praxis (rooted, of course, in philosophy). Ultimately, you are to let go of gods, goddesses, bodhisattvas, and Buddhas to realise sunyata or equate wisdom and compassion or nirvana or whatever permutation particular to that path.

And your point that these are all rather highbrow distinctions is valid. The “common man” (ahem) may not have been greatly affected by these philosophical distinctions… but in the same way that this discussion board is an elite excercise, those religious polemics have always been confined to the realm of the privilage few while people on the ground go about thier everyday business, picking and choosing religious practices with relative ease and freedom. Until of course, it’s time to mobilise the masses and fight or something

If you see tangkha paintings your head will reel just as much as it does on looking at images of Kali. I only had this in mind when I made my prior comment and did not intend to talk about the philosophy. I mean Indian buddhism is just as exotic as Indian hinduism.

Yes I’ve seen seen them – they are pretty wild. My head, however, doesn’t reel very much when I look at images of Kali – I guess you get desensitized pretty quickly when you’ve grown up with a particular image – especially one that’s been domesticated to the extent that Kali has in Bengal… However, earlier, more explicitly ‘tantric’images of Kali bear a lot of resemblence to the shock value of these Buddhist paintings.

What do you mean as Indian Buddhsim being as “exotic” as Indian Hinduism, by the way?

This is Merriam -Webster’s definition

myth 2 entries found for myth. To select an entry, click on it. mythurban legend

Main Entry: myth Pronunciation: ‘mith Function: noun Etymology: Greek mythos 1 a : a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon b : PARABLE, ALLEGORY 2 a : a popular belief or tradition that has grown up around something or someone; especially : one embodying the ideals and institutions of a society or segment of society b : an unfounded or false notion 3 : a person or thing having only an imaginary or unverifiable existence 4 : the whole body of myths

My question was because I normally don’t see people using “mythology” when they talk about Islam or Christianity..

Well.. For me I can’t really differentiate the BS..