Hinduism as a Missionary Religion

Chapter IV: Hinduism as a Missionary Religion: The Evidence from Classical India

Chapter IV Hinduism as a Missionary Religion The Evidence from Classical India I It could be maintained that while Hinduism may have been a missionary religion in Vedic times, it ceased to be so in post-Vedic times—the times to which alone the term Hinduism, according to one view, may be properly applied.1 Such a position leaves us with a problem: we know that Hinduism ultimately came to embrace the whole of India, but by the post-Vedic period, it seems to have penetrated only as far as the Deccan. How then did it spread to the rest of peninsular India, right up to Ír¥ La∫kå,2 if it was not in some sense a missionary religion? Some scholars believe that the Hindu epics—the Råmåya£a and the Mahåbhårata—contain allusions to this forward march of Hinduism. The Epics relate the acceptance of new tribes and their gods into the old family circle. The clash of cults and the contact of culture do not, as a rule, result in a complete domination of the one by the other. In all true contact there is an interchange of elements, though the foreign elements are given a new significance by those who accept them. The emotional attitudes attached to the old forms are transferred to the new, which is fitted, into the background of the old. Many tribes and races had mystic animals, and when the tribes entered the Hindu society the animals which followed them were made vehicles and companions of gods. One of them is mounted on the peacock, another one the swan, a third is carried by the bull, and the fourth by the goat. The enlistment of Hanumån, the monkey-general in the 75 76 Hinduism as a Missionary Religion service of Råma signifies the meeting-point of early nature worship and later theism. The dancing of K®∑ˆa on Kål¥ya head represents the subordination, if not the displacement, of serpent worship. Råma’s breaking of the bow of Íiva signifies the conflict between the Vedic ideal and the cult of Íiva, who soon became the god of the south (Dak∑inåm¨rti). There are other stories in the Epic literature indicating the reconciliation of the Vedic and the non-Vedic faiths. The heroized ancestors, the local saints, the planetary influences and the tribal gods were admitted into the Hindu pantheon, though they were all subordinated to the one supreme reality of which they were regarded as aspects. The polytheism was organized in a monistic way. Only it was not a rigid monotheism enjoining on its adherents the most complete intolerance for those holding a different view.3 This may4 or may not5 be true but the fact that Hinduism did extend itself to cover South India is not open to doubt, only the manner in which this may have come about is. K.A. Nilakanta Sastri has pointed out that the southward extension of Hinduism, or the Aryanization of the South, is recognizable even in the Manusm®ti.6 This is supported by not only by Sanskrit but Tamil traditions as well. These “have plausibly been interpreted as reminiscent of historical occurrences” and relate to the figures of Agastya,7 Kauˆ∂inya, and Murugan. The Vedic Agastya has a miraculous birth like many other “heroes of nations,” but otherwise K.A. Nilakanta Sastri regards him “as a historical person, as real as the king and tribes mentioned in the§gVeda; he composes hymns, has a wife and sister, and perhaps also a son. His life story receives full treatment in the two epics of the Mahåbh årata and the Råmåya£a and many new legends are recorded about him; the Puråˆas and the Tamil tradition mark still further stages of this development.”8 According to K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, “three achievements ” ascribed to him are of “particular significance to the story of progressive Aryanization of South India and the East:” (1) Agastya’s association with the Vindhyan mountain: He prevailed upon Vindhya mountain to cease growing in height; (2) Agastya’s destruction of the Råk∑asa brothers, Ilvala and Våtåpi, who hated the Brahmins, and (3) Agastya’s drinking up the waters of the ocean. “These three achievements have been understood to represent respectively the crossing of the Vindhyas into the Deccan by the bearers of the Indo-Aryan culture...