Review 2 of the Lord as Guru - The Sants - Saints Virues

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Volume 15, Number 4 / October 1989 Religious Studies Review / 319

(James Walker)—we find documentary evidence, as good aswe can get, of a Native American Mother Earth.

Raymond J. DeMallie's book The Sixth Grandfather hintsat another simpler "story" of Mother Earth in America, astory in which scholars have played no substantive role.2

DeMallie reports that Vine Deloria, Jr. , suggested that Black

Elk Speaks has been "elevated . . . to the status of an American Indian Bible" (1984, xx). "Indeed," writes DeMallie,"Black Elk's teachings appear to be evolving into a consensual American Indian theological canon" (1984, 80). ThusSam Gill is right, I think, to suspect tha t the re has been someIndian myth-making going on in the twentieth century, buthe has left out the most important episode in the story.

Largely because of the combined religious genius ofBlack Elk and li terary geni us of Jo hn G. Nei har dt, manycontemporary American Indians and non-Indians, in searchof an ecologically resonant Native American portrait of therelationship between human beings and nature, have gravitated toward the basic elements of the traditional Lakotaworld view.

Black Elk Speaks faithfully, if artfully, records Black Elk'steachings, and Black Elk's teachings are, on the whole, representative of the traditional Lakota world view. But for allthe spiritual and literary power of Black Elk Speaks, the Lakota concept of Mother Earth would not have been so broadlyadopted by contemporary non-Lakota American Indiansunless it struck a common chord, unless it captured, in anespecially vivid and direct metaphor, the relationship between people and the earth expressed in the narrative traditions of many other American Indian cultures.

Sam Gill has failed to show convincingly that the now familiar "Native American" Mother Earth is actually a European immigrant whose passage to America was sponsoredby religious studies scholars. Least convincing and most un

becoming is his insinuation that contemporary AmericanIndians are so out of touch with their own traditions that theyhave naively (or worse, manipulatively) "appropriated" ascholarly fiction. Mother Earth is, rather, truly native to theNorth American Great Plains and has, by consensus, become emblematic of the intimate relationship felt by practically all native people with their natural environments andexpressed in traditional American Indian cultures in manydifferent ways.

NOTES

1. One searches in vain not only through Gill's text, notes, and

bibliography, for a reference to Black Elk Speaks, but also throughhis "Bibliographic Supplement" (181-91), which cites documentsnot discussed in the text that make mention of Mother Earth inconnection with Indian myth and belief systems.

2. An ironic twist to this alternative American story of MotherEarth is that "Black Elk saw himself as the 'sixth grandfather,' thespiritual representative of the earth" (DeMallie, 1984, ix).

REFERENCES

CHANG TSAI

1963 "The Western Inscription." In Wing-Tsit Chan, ed. andtrans. A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton UniversityPress.

DEMALLIE, RAYMOND J.

1984 The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk's Teachings Given to Neihardt University of Nebraska Press.

MARTIN, CALVIN

1978 Keepers of the Game: Indian-Animal Relationships and

Trade. University of California Press.

NASH, RODERICK1967 Wilderness and the American Mind. Yale University Pr

NEIHARDT, JOH N G.

1932 Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of

lala Sioux. William Morrow.

UDALL, STEWART

1963 The Quiet Crisis. Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

WALKER, JAMES R.

1980 Lakota Belief and Ritual. Edited by R. J. DeMallie and EA. Jahner. University of Nebraska Press.

THE SANTS AND OTHER

HINDU DEVOTIONAL TRADITIONS

THE SANTS: STUDIES IN A DEVOTIONAL

TRADITION OF INDIA

Edited by Karine Schomer and W. H. McLeod

Berkeley Religious Studies Series

Columbia, MO: South Asia Books/Delhi: Motilal

Banarsidass, 1987

Pp. ix + 4 7 2 + 1 color plate. $40.00/Rs. 325.TH E LOR D AS GU RU : HI ND I SAN TS IN TH E

NOR THE RN INDIA N TRADITION

By Daniel Gold

New York: Oxford University Press, 1987Pp. ix + 256. $29.95.REDEMPTIVE ENCOUNTERS: THREE MODERN

STYLES IN THE HINDU TRADITIONBy Lawrence A. Babb

Comparative Studies in Religion and Society, 1

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987 (cl986)Pp. xiv + 257. $29.25.SAINTS AN D VIR TUES

Edite d by J oh n Stratt on H awley

Comparative Studies in Religion and Society, 2

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987

Pp. xxiv + 256. Cloth, $47.00; paper, $12.95.

Reviewer: Monika Thiel-Horstmann Indologisches Seminar

Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität D-5300 BonnWest Germany

I

Th e Sants repre sent an Indian religious tradition belongingto the bhakti (devotional) form of Vaishnava Hinduism,thou gh sometimes and to a varying degree the Vaishnavismis only nominal. Their heyday lies in the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries when their most impor tant literatur e in theIndian vernaculars was produced. The movement started in



320 / Religious Studies Review Volume 15, Number 4 / October 1989

Maharashtra (represented by figures such as Jnänesvar,Nämdev, Eknäth) and gained ground in North India in thefourteen th/fifteent h centuri es (among its main no rth ernexponents are Kabìr, Guru Nânak, Dädü). The latest representatives of the movement are the Radhasoamis, whoemerged in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The

Sant groups would often develop into regular sects (or, touse an indigenous term, panths) which continue to exist tothis day.

A Sant is a person who has realized his ontic being. Thisis, broadly speaking, conceived of as identical with that of thesupreme. The word Sant is derived from Old Indian sant-/sat-, "being" and hence means "[ontologically] being, true,good." The Sants' supreme being has to be realized withinand is beyond qualities, that is, nirguria. This ineffable beingis also called the satguru, the "true guru," that is, the innervoice of revelation whose most powerful symbolic condensation is the divine name. Hence, the Sants reject iconic worship. The Sants also reject (with some restrictions) theauthority of the Veda, the caste hierarchy with its brahmin

supremacy, and the notion that only the initiated "twice-born" should be allowed access to the salvific avenues of religion. Th us the Sants, of whom many if not most hailed froma low-caste or Muslim milieu, attracted all ranks of society,including non-Hindus and women. Their religious inheritance is that of the theistic Upanishads, of Vaishnavism, ofthe Ta nt ra of the Nâthyogïs, and of Sufism, although Suf-ism acted more as a catalyst on the Sants rather than influencing their cosmologica! or theological worldview directly(the exact historical dimensions of this relationship remainproblematic).

Being directed towards a nirguria God, the Sants' bhaktiis thereby traditionally distinguished from the saguna bhaktiwhich worships an incarnate divine manifest in the icon of

the temple. How far this distinction holds true is one of thevariously discussed central topics of the volume edited bySchomer and McLeod (1987).

The volume brings together research papers read as earlyas 1978 for a conference held at the University of Californiaat Berkeley's Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies.By that time Sant studies had been put on a remarkablysound footing owing to early pioneer work by Indian scholars and to subsequent in-depth studies by non- Indi an scholars, foremost among these Vaudeville (1969, 1974) andMcLeod (1975, 1976).

The first section of the volume explores the conceptualbackground of the Sant tradition, the religious inheritanceof the Sants and their relationship with their sister tradition,the saguna bhakti. Charlotte Vaudeville (21-40) delineatesthe characteristic features of nirguria bhakti and emphasizesthe wide spectrum of the Sant tradition, a fact which is obscured by modern generic terms for it that suggest a uniform theological and organization concept. She also tacklesthe pivotal conceptual problem of nirguna bhakti : its veryclaim to rarguwa-ness (26-29). Her brief discussion is furthe r highlight ed in the contributions by Frits Staal (41-46) ,Wendy D. O'Flaherty (47-52) and implicitly, with an approach from the saguna side, by Jo hn S. Hawley (191-211).Vaudeville states the obvious dilemma that "the very notionof 'nirguna bhakti' seems to be a contradiction in terms. If itsignifies the abolition of all distinctions and the thorough

merging of the illusory jiva [i.e., the embodied, seeminglyindividual soul] into the One Reality so that all identity is lostforever, the 'nirguna bhakti' would bring about the abolitionof bhakti itself (27).

Staal, arguing partly logically, partly psychologically,reaches the conclusion that nirguna brahman, the supreme

being beyond qualities, and nirguria bhakti are identical, for,as Staal surmises, they are identical in thei r nirguna-ness andin their being beyond the word. Here he refers to the practice of silent prayer in the Indian tradition which, as he boldlyspeculates, may echo a pre-linguistic state of human development. "There is one thing that certainly does not lead tothe ineffable: talking.. . . The same holds for the nirgunabhakti—as all true bhaktas have always realized" (45). Thiscategoric statement forms the crucial point, for what Staalsays is only half the tr uth (see also Vaudeville, 29-31, on thecorpus of love poetry produced by the Sants). Bhakti doesnot primarily mean simply "love," but "participation, communi on," which relates the divine and the devotee in a mutually active mode. As a religious path, bhakti is thus

processual, and as a religious pa th it is also far from beingsilent; in fact, it is verbose. At the end of the process the re isthe goal, and only then may there be silence.

There are types of bhakti where the union between thedivine and the devotee has the quality of infinite participation (see Carman, 1983 for the dialectic of bhakti); in nirguna bhakti the philosophical conc ept is, ind eed , tha t inoneness "the abolition of bhakti itself is brought about. Intheir religious practice, however, nirguria bhaktas occupy aperpetually liminal position. Their liminality hinges on whatis called the "experience" (anubhava), which requires the dualstructure of a devotee and the object of his devotion. Anubhava is the emotional concomitant of bhakti. It pulls thedevotee towards (not into) the nirguria. As long as there is an

ubhava there cannot be nirguna; if nirguna prevails, anubhava is dead. This is precisely, however, what the devoteeshuns, an d this is why nirguria bhaktas app ear also as the de tractors of final liberation (mutki). That is, nirguria bhakti isan ever approximative process. As a religious quest in a persistent dual structure nirguna bhakti is, there fore, inher ently saguna (thus also Staal, 41). This is one of the reasonswhy a separation between the two forms of bhakti is not feasible, unless one argues within the confines of a philosophicaconcept. In this connection Hawley's findings about the relatively late emerging dichotomy between saguna and nirguna bhakti in the growth of the Sûr tradition is revealing(197). Sür, in the early (pre-1700) strata ofthat textual tradition, appears rath er nirgunt.

O'Flaherty (47-52) also applies herself to the overarching conceptual problem stated. She talks of the nirguna idealas something "force-fed to grass-root Hindus with a strictlylimited degree of success" and of nirguria bhakti as "a concoction of monistic scholars artificially imposed upon Santtradition" (47). But later she argues that "the Sants . . . chooseto mix nirguna and saguna; theirs is a free choice as they haveno canon or priest hood " (49—50). The se und ocu men tedstatements are not very easy to reconcile, and they are notconsistently borne out by facts.

Th e Sants emerged as heirs to a mixed tradition and theirmonistic outlook is cast in the language of an inherited poetic tradition. O'Flaherty feels that the nirguna ideal is not




well integrated into Epic and Puranic Hinduism (48, 49) andthat the avatära concept is in conflict with the nirguria one.Then, turning to visual art, she explores the constant tension between the nirguria and the saguna in the example ofthe Hindu temple. She describes how the beholder movesfrom the outer "saguna" halls to the interior, where, in thecella, he finds the "nirguria." Here she adduces the Mahesaof Elephanta who is, in fact, outside the cella and per hap snot even a Mahesa (see Srinivasan, 1987 for Sadâsiva). He isin any case a manifest aspect of Siva, whose formless aspect(niskala) is symbolized by the Unga in the cella. But even theformless aspect cannot straightforwardly be identified withthe nirguria, for it is undif ferentiated but, capable of differentiation , not devoid of quality. As long as ther e is an iconicrepresentation, there is no nirguna, although the image or,as at Elephanta, a sequence of images, may be interpretedas an increasing approximation to the unfolded divine. Theattempt to replace indigenous concepts by our own concepts requires more careful consideration of the original author's intention.

O'Flaherty concludes her examination of the Hindutemple by describing how the "nirguna" objects of shrines ofthe little tradition (unhewn icons, for example) are endowedwith qualities by the devotees. Again: these objects are minimal representations, not nirguria. Despite its willful treatment of the data, O'Flaherty's misgivings about a somewhathovering nirguna concept triggers a hith erto little-studiedquestion: How well do ordinary devotees, not the theologyof a given tradition, cope with the nirguria character of theirfaith? It is well known how elaborate rituals have accrued tonirguria cults (for example to the Kabirpanth), and we alsoknow of the freezing of the nirguria tradition into tangiblestructures (for example the Radhasoamis, for whom see section 2 below). The saguna devotional strand in nirguna bhakti

may become either manifest in a syncretistic fashion or in aseparate strand of a devotee's religious life (here the examination of the family shrine and religious practice can be revealing). The theoretical section of the volume ends in aphenomenological topology of bhakti charted by AndrewRawlinson which, because of its extreme brevity and consequently insufficient interpretation of the terms, fails toconvince.

Th e second section of the volume, devoted to the textualsources, yields a host of results relevant to the student of religion. Schomer (61-90) carefully investigates the historicaland functional place of the distich (dohä), which is one of thetwo important genres of Sant literature, the second being thesong (poda), and suggestively interprets it as similar to the

classical philosophica l sütras in offering authoritative utterances. Eleanor Zelliot (91-109) shows how Eknäth, thebrahmin reviver of bhakti in sixteenth-century Maharashtra, by taking on in his drama poems (bhäruds) low-caste,unorthodox, and female personae, exhibits a culturally integrating approach. From Linda Hess's study of the threeKabïr collections (111-41) emerge two distinctly Kabïrianpersonalities, a result that exemplifies th at the aut hors ofSant bhakti in their overwhelming majority are exponentsof traditions rather than individuals. In a further study (143-65) Hess explores the "rough rhetor ic" of the eastern Kabïrtradition. In analyzing Tagore's reception of Kabïr, Vijay C.Mishra implicitly alerts us to more hermeneutical aware

ness. Winand M. Callewaert (181-89) dwells on the growthof Dádú's hagiography (now superseded by Callewaert,1988), thus enriching our data on which to base systematicstudies of Sant hagiographies, of which an outstanding exemplar is the historical research of McLeod, 1980 (for progress in work taking into account the hagiographicallyinformed lives of Indian religious men, see sections 2 and 3below).

The image, the self-image, and the historical ramifications of Sant groups are treated in section three ("Movements"). Early in their history, it seems (see Vaudeville, 36-40), the Sants did not set themselves much apa rt from thethen prevalent, non-sect-specific model of the "good Vaish-nava" (which seems to be ultimately based on BhägavataPuräna 11.45-55 and which has even been appropriat ed inmodern popular Jaina books!). In the nineteenth century weencounter the definite concept oï a sant mat, a "Sant faith."However, it is premat ure to conclude, as Schomer does , tha t"The concept of 'nirguna bhakti' as a distinct devotional modecontrasting with 'saguna bhakti,' and the Sants constituting

a separate devotional tradition, is relatively new" (. . . "not. . . fully crystallized until the mid-nineteenth century)" (3).The map of the distinct self-awareness of the Sants has sofar too many blank spots as to allow for assumptions of thiskind. The increasingly distinct saguna outlook of the Sur tradition after 1700 is an indicator tha t the ort hod ox conceptsof this form of bhakti were gradual ly interna lized by the vernacular tradition (or their theologically trained compilers!).The increasing dogmatic rallying of the two camps is evident in nirguria bhakti of the same time too. For example, asearly as in the second generation of Dâdû's disciples (mid-seventeenth century) monastic rules are quite positive abouttheir position in contrast to that of the sagunïs (see Thiel-Hors tmann , forthcoming b). It seems that much more work

is necessary before we can offer safe results. In Maharashtra, the Saiva and Näth background influenced the Sants and,for that matter, also the Krishnaism of the Mahänubhävas,so that their Vaishnavism is of a rather nominal type. Thisis poi nted out by Vaudeville (215—28), whose findings areparalleled by evidence in other areas, such as Rajasthan,where Sant bhakti has espoused local Saiva cults and theHanumän cult.

Among the Sant traditions the one whose history hasbeen studied best is that of the Sikhs. The consolidation oftheir Panth into the Khalsa was prompted by the dominantJat element in their constituency who stamped its martial attitudes on the developing Panth. Thus the Sikhs developeda double loyalty: on the one hand, to the martially governed

tradition of the Khalsa with its precisely formulated codexof conduct and political orientation and, on the other, to theearlier religious inheri tance of the Nänak -Pan th. McLeodinvestigates how these two loyalties are at work to this day(229-49). Apart from the very carefully evaluated results thispaper presents, it (see also McLeod, 1975) is methodologically exemplary for the study of other bhakti groups of whomdistinct branches betray alignments on caste-lines, as for example warrior-ascetics who emulate Rajput models by theconstruction of lineages traced back to a Rajput founder andby a distinct life-style. In cases such as these, the caste composition of those Panths as well as the ideological motives that




were momentous in that alignment need more historical investigation (Gold, forthcoming and Kolff, forthcoming areexpected to cover relevant aspects).

In one more paper McLeod (251-68) studies the imageof the Sant among modern Sikhs. Also in continuation of hisfirst contribution, he points out the dynamics of religiouschange and attitude which lead to the development of sev

eral distinct types which at the same time exhibit ongoing attachment to inherited patterns of loyalty. Complementaryto this, Bruce LaBrack (265-79) investigates the role of thetravelling Sikh Sants in the U.S. as reinforcers of the assumed values of their native culture and thus serving theimmigrants' new identity.

Lorenzen (281-308) discusses the impact of the potential of social protest inherent in Kabir's work in the modernKabïr-Panth and finds that this Panth, with its great tribaland low-caste constituency, has not so much activated thispotential as it has sought social mobility within the caste system on the lines of a "pur e Vaishnava" reference model(vegetarianism, abstention from alcohol).

For two more studies, on the Radhasoamis, one by David

Gold and t he othe r by Mark Juer gens meye r see section 2 below. The volume is rounded off by three papers on relatedtraditions. Bruce B. Lawrence (359-73), assessing the Sufielement in Sant writing, points to the obvious problem thatthe Sants do not emerge as historical individuals but areshrouded in legend quite unlike the Sufis whose biographies are verifiable. This makes the verification of the assumed interaction of Sants and Sufis elusive. Lawrence findsthat the only valid basis to account for interaction is the investigation of the copious thematic correspondence between both traditions. Here also, however, similarities do notallow us to establish historical dependency. Only in the caseof Sant hagiography does it seem indisputable that there wasMuslim influence. Edward C. Dimock (375-83) shows howthe Bàul tradition forms a confluence of Sufi, Tantric, andVaishnava origins, while the measure of these influences andthe exact historical dependency of the Bäuls cannot be determined. K. Kailasapathy's sketch of the Tami Siddhas andElinor W. Gadon's art-historical comment on the frontispiece of the volume conclude the work.

II

The volumes edited by Schomer and McLeod and by Juergensmeyer and Barrier (1976) testify in a comprehensivefashion to the attention increasingly given since the mid-seventies to the social manifestation of Sant traditions. Apartfrom the Sikhs, a mid-nineteenth-century Sant offspring, theRadhasoamis, is probably the gro up that has profitted mostfrom such attention. The Radhasoamis both continue andtransform the Sant tradition, which, by the time the Radhasoamis emerged, had become frozen. Early Sants (like Kabïr) had broken open the conceptual system of Tantric Yogaand revived it by transforming its fixed notions into fluidmetaphors of their religion. In these they often spoke of the"ineffable." Gradually, however, their fluid metaphors andconcepts froze again. Metaphors became one-to-one relatedsymbols or mere poetic conventions. This development canalready be traced from the sixteenth/seventeenth centuries

onwards (already Dädü smacks a bit of it). With the Radhasoamis, finally, the "inaccessible mounta in pa th" of the earlySants became the exactly mapped and fairly safe road to salvation winding through a lovely landscape (see Moeller, 1956for the Radhasoami cosmological system).

Juergensmeyer (in Schomer and McLeod, 1987, 329-55)investigates how the Radhasoamis have transformed Santism

He identifies a move towards the well-defined: be it the exactmapping of the nirguria path, or the satguru who is now nolonger the inner voice of revelation but a living individuallinked in a genealogical chain with a human or divine originalancestor, or the satsang, the company of the saints, which is nowa church with a fixed ritual. The existential adventure has become thoroughly socialized, and this is enhanced by a strongelement of a worldly asceticism of work in the interest of thecommunity. Theologically, Radhasoami doctrine owes muchto the esoteric ideas of the Kabïrpanthï Anuräg-sägar.

That the Radhasoami focus has shifted from the interiorto the externally or socially tangible is a phenomenon that callsfor analysis. Such is offered by Daniel Gold (1987; for an earlier version of the pivotal theme of his research, see Schomerand McLeod, 1987,305-27). Gold places his analysis in a comparative frame, which is very wide and hence tends to weakenhis approach on its periphery,1 whereas his core analysis of theposition of the guru in the Radhasoami and related traditionsconvincingly clears up the perspective in which the functioning of the guru-oriented religious forms can be interpretedGold, in an anthropological perspective and in fruitful indebtedness to work by Inden (1976), distinguishes the positions of individual Sants as either a member of a clan with adivine ancestor-satguru, whose salvific power is mediated by thliving guru, or as a member of a lineage-organization with ahistorical Sant-ancestor. The clan-organization includes earlier Sants as clan-kin. Thus the oft-occurring cumulative reference to earlier Sants would be a reference to kin with whomone shares the power-current coming down from the divineand not a specific lineage. A case in point is the Beas (Punjab)branch of the Radhasoamis. For them the historical founderof the Radhasoamis is a most perfect Sant, whose remote clan-ancestor is the divine satguru; his salvific current becomesmanifest in every new incumbent of the seat of guru of the Beasbranch of the Radhasoamis. Against this, the Agra branches ofthe Radhasoamis represent a lineage-model. They believe thatafter the demise of a holder of the seat of guru his "current"is still active in the group and will, eventually, become manifest in his successor. With Sant lineages the lineage-ancestor ithe historical founder of a tradition.

Gold casts his findings in Indian te rms: "In this study a sant

lineage is called paramparä as long as the dominant focus ofspiritual power within it resides in the figure of a living holyman, and not in ritual forms recalling a sant of the past. . . . Weshall reserve the term panth to the final phase of a sant lineage,when it has become a sectarian ins ti tu ti on .. ." (85). This is acceptable as long as we keep in mind that the term panth has awider meaning in primary Sant sources and can, besides, alsorefer to the interior religious path and to religious groups intheir incipient state. His findings encourage Gold to apply themto the problem of the alleged "divine satguru" of Sants like Kabïr. He also argues that because the absence of a guru is unusual for an Indian religious person, Kabïr probably did havea living guru too, whom he interpreted, however, as divine in




light of the monistic concept of his faith. As far as Kabïr andDâdû, to whom Gold also extends this interpretation, are concerned, there are no data that verify his hypothesis. He summarizes the state of affairs for the case of Kabïr (107). For Dädühe feels that a historical spiritual preceptor can be identifiedwith some probability (208). Here he follows Orr (146-52).Orr's assumption is not plausible, however, for he locates a guru

in a town in Rajasthan to which Dädü came at the age of 29,whereas his mystic visions of a divine guru happened to himin Gujarat one and two decades earlier. Moreover, the experiences of Dàdù ar e momentous visions, invisible to others,hence phenomena different from the guru-disciple relationship. Instead of extrapolating from Radhasoami findings, Iwould in the absence of more evidence assume that the twoIndo-Muslim artisans were unusually receptive satsangis whointeriorized the prevalent tradition of their times in interaction with other devotees.

The third contribution on the Radhasoamis is by Lawrence A. Babb (1987) and forms one of three case studies ofHindu traditions brought together in his book (the Radhasoamis, the Brahmäkumäns, and the followers of Sathya Sai

Baba). These case studies are connected by a common methodological focus. Babb convincingly interprets the apparentlydiffuse sum of commonalities in various traditions that add upto form "Hinduism" from the point of view of their function.Identical concepts may differ radically in function from onetradition to another. He therefore approaches Hinduism as anordered diversity of (possibly) contrastive religious styles sharing constant Hindu themes, which they valorize divergently.He does this by examining three traditions which form modern outposts rather than central traditions of the Hindu spectrum and finds that "extreme diversity gives us the clearestpossible contrast between varying externals and the constantinner core" (5). Babb interprets the function of "images," basicideas arranged in divergent religious constructions (12), as

providing for the devotee's recovery of his identity.Babb first applies his method to the Radhasoamis and

elaborates on the anthropological findings of Gold (1987) byadding a religio-socio-psychological dimension to them. Heexplores the central function of the guru in relation to the devotees. In Radhasoami faith the devotee is supposed to ascendto the supreme goal in an interior process that is marked bythe experience of celestial sounds testifying to the divine, whichthus draws him towards the goal. This internal process is,however, overlaid by the immediate, tactile relationship between the devotee and the guru, who is the vessel of the divinecur rent (see Gold, 1987), which the kin of previous gurus havemediated to him. Consequently, the guru himself takes therank of the divine. The current is transmitted to the devoteeby the devotee's eating the guru's prasäd (his food leavings) orby drinking the fluid substance that is the guru's gaze. By ordinary Hindu standard, eating left-overs is defiling; divineleavings, however, are salvific. This requires that the personwhose left-overs are eaten be defined as divine and that thedisciple can thereby define himself as a truly devout lover ofGod and as a receptacle of the curr ent st reaming from theguru. That is, by realizing one's identity as disciple one becomes part of the divine and one of the kin of the guru. Salvation is thus brought about by personal interaction.Radhasoami doctrine holds that man, enmeshed in the world,has forgotten his identity with the divine which is a common

bhakti theme. His amnesia is remedied by the guru in whomthe devotee finds his identity.

The validity of Gold's and Babb's core-concept of the salvific flow is amply borne out by Sant poetry and hagiographyBabb also examines the Brahmäkumär i movement, which wasfounded at the end of the 1930s by one Lekhraj Kriplani, aSindhi jeweler of Pustimarg (Vallabhacarya) religious back

ground (on the impact of this, see Barz, forthcoming). In thecase of the Brahmäkumäns, Babb lays bare common themesof Hinduism that combine to form a doctrine claimed by itsmembers to be non-Hindu. It is a millenarian movement witha strong missionary commitment inside and outside India. Itsmillenarianism is brought about by the concept that the world-cycle of four ages, which against its common Hindu counterpart measures only 5000 years, is about to come to an end verysoon, for we live in the last phase of a transitional age afterwhich there will occur a great destruction that will usher in anew cycle. Humans enmeshed in the cyclic round of the worldare again victims of amnesia, for they are forgetful of being"pure souls" whose home is in the beyond in the abode of thesupreme self.

At the end of each cycle (everything in Brahmäkumäri history happens in exactly the same way in each cycle which makesthe salvation of the elect pure souls, once they are identifiedall the more certain) the supreme self enlightens a preceptor(the founder of the movement) to restore die pure souls' recognition of their identity. This is brought about by "Raj Yoga,"at the heart of which is the mediation of the flow of divine lightthrough the preceptor to the disciple by the contact of gazeThe divine current emanates also in the flute sounds fromLekhraj's or, after his death, from his single female "trancemedium's" mouth. The movement's millenarianism and itsemphasis on predestination make the urgency of the recoveryof one's true identity most pressing. Once true identity is realized, predestination is no threat but a beatific confirmationof belonging to the elect.

Most striking is the movement's feminism in terms of thehistory of its early constituency, in theology (thus echoing thesingle man Krsna and the female souls of Vallabhan tradition), and in its leadership. This feminism is rooted in theHindu concept of the power of virginity as it is evidenced, forexample, in the Durgäpüjä or the veneration of unmarriedgirls, especially in northwestern India.

Babb's fundamentally important study illuminates aspectsalso connected with overseas Brahmäkumäns . Thei r hermeticgroup coherence is enhanced by factors of alienation from theirnative culture by their quest for a spiritual Bhärat; by their newidentity as "pure souls," which invalidates their ordinary iden

tity and is a potential for conflict in a post-Freudian society; bytheir sense of sharing an unfathomable revelation, all the moremysterious due to its not so rare cultural and linguistic incomprehensibility, for the "flute" revelations of their preceptorsometimes become mystifying by having suffered several intermediat e translations; by their sense of having knowledgebeyond religion, which is especially attractive to young intellectuals, with whom Babb's study helped to activate a latentidentity crisis.

Babb's last example are the followers of Sathya Sai Baba,whose hagiographically informed life he studies in Hawley1987, 169-86. As Babb argues convincingly, the miracle-working avatar (ultimately he is going to be manifest as Siva)




satisfies by his miracles the longing of urban middle-class Indians, alienated, from the Hindu tradition that the law of rationality which reigns in their ordinary lives be reversed. SathyaSai Baba re-enchants them. He dispenses his divine current tothem by the miraculous objects he produces, by his sight, byhis voice. They grasp and drink his prasäd. Divine parent, heloves, helps, but demands nothing. One might conclude that,reassured by their childlike partaking of his divine substance,they are strengthened in their affirmative performance in theadult world of rationality. This would imply that the identitySathya Sai Baba's followers acquire through contact with himis not an integral one.

Ill

Saints and Virtues (Hawley, 1987) presents a collection of excellent papers that consistently dwell on the focus indicated bythe title. Read from the point of view of what the volume contributes to the study of Indian, especially bhakti, hagiography,I find that one of its finest achievements lies in the field of afunctional typology in that the saintly life is seen, as Gelber putsit in a different context, located at "the intersection of personality, role, and social context" (16). The theological issues ofhagiography have been increasingly investigated in recentyears, but typological and systematic issues, which also implyhistorical ones, have not yet attracted adequate interest.

Hawley himself (52-72) studies four bhakti saints as theyemerge as exemplars of cardinal virtues in Näbhädäs' "Garland of Bhaktas." Striking here, as well as also, for example, inthe parcl genre of bhakti hagiographies (which unlike Näbhädäs ' are texts devoted entirely to an individual saint), is howthe Buddhist päramitä pattern has remained dominant, notwithstanding a Muslim streak which Lawrence recognizes inSant hagiography (Schomer and McLeod, 1987, 37 If f) . Inbhakti hagiography a saint may display the whole gamut ofcardinal virtues or, as in the examples analyzed by Hawley, individual ones in a special way so that different saints act com-plementarily. The saint in bhakti tradition does not appear asan intercessor but as the model of one absorbed in the love ofGod, withdrawing from the world, but by providing a model,helping others to transform themselves by identifying with him.This type of the behavior-transforming model is widely represented in various traditions. It can appear with the emphasisthat the saintly charisma is seen as the condensation of thecentral "classical" values of a given society. This is shown byPeter Brown for Late Antiquity (3-14), who sees the saint aspersonifying the ideal of Paideia and as a "moral catalyst withina community" (9). A similar case is the Confucian tradition

where the sage is the exemplar of true humanity realized bythe cultivation of the self (Tu Wei-ming, 73-86). Against thisthe bhakti saint in the satsang occupies the liminal position ofone beyond the world but interacting with it. To characterizea saint as a model need not imply that his model is emulable,as argued by William M. Brinner for Muhammad, who is theunattainable exemplar of man which then leads to the development of his cult as a semidivine figure and to that of otherinterceding saints prefigured by antedating cults. If the modelis that of the ideal person in an egalitarian community religion, this need not be represented by a saint at all, as is the casein rabbinic Judaism (Robert L. Cohn, 87-108).

The saint as transformer is another widely current type,such as Thai Buddhist arahant who besides being teacher to themonks acts as a transforming transmitter of a charismatic current when interacting with lay devotees. Transformation byinteraction in a field of which the power-focus is the saint isstrongly evident in the Vodou ritual (Karen M. Brown, 144-67) and in the Sathya Sai Baba cult (Babb, 16&-86), where thepriestess and the holy man, respectively, help their clientele infinding their identity.

Two papers show a diametrically different dialectic between a saint's true identity and the role which he enacts. Hester G. Gelber (15-35), in a paper perhaps too positive aboutpsychological male/female universale that might be applied to(hagiographical!) life-accounts of St. Francis of Assisi, however convincingly suggests that in taking on dramatic roles St.Francis taught the world that he did not consider himself to bethe perfect saint the world thought he was. In his dramatic actshe publicly expiated the sins he suffered from as only a saintcan. Mark Juergensmeyer writ ing on M. K. Gandhi (187-203)presents a contrastive case, a man on whom a role styled by hisWestern admirers was thrust, behind which Gandhi's complex

individuality as a person was obscured and who thus becamea remote and inemulable figure.

NOTE

1. His translations of Sant texts contain mistakes in other thanmarginal points; a greater familiarity with Dâdùpanthî thought wouldhave helped him to avoid misrepresentations; given a mere 22 pages,the ambition for comprehensiveness in chapter 7 had to remain unfulfilled.

REFERENCES

BARZ,R. K.forthcoming "A Reinterpretation of Bhakti Theology: From thePustimärg to the Brahma Kumaris." Paper presented at the FourtConference on Devotional Literature in New Indo-Aryan Languages, University of Cambridge, 1988.

CALLEWAERT, WINAND M.

1988 The Hindi Biography of Dädü Dayäl. Delhi: Moulai Bandass.

CARMAN, JOH N B.

1983 "Conceiving Hindu 'Bhakti' as Theistic Mysticism." In Steven T. Katz (ed.), Mysticism and Religious Traditions. Oxford: OUniversity Press.

GOLD, DANIEL

forthcoming "The Dadupanth and Princely Power in Rajas-than." In Karine Schomer, et al. (eds.), Rajasthan: The Making o

Regional Identity.INDEN, RONALD Β.

1976 Marriage and Rank in Bengali Culture: A History of CasClan in Middle Period Bengal. University of California Press.

JUERGENSMEYER, MARK AND N. GERALD BARRIER (EDS.)

1979 Sikh Studies: Comparative Perspectives on a Changing TBerkeley: Berkeley Religious Studies Series.

MCLEOD, W. H.

1975 The Evolution of the Sikh Community: Five Essays. Delford University Press.1976 Gurü Nänak and the Sikh Religion. Delhi: Oxford UniverPress.




1978 "On the Wonl Panth : A Problem of Terminology and Definition," Contributions to Indian Sociology 12/2, 287-95.

MOELLER, VOLKER

1956 "Der Rädhäsvämi-Satsang und die Mystik der Gottestöne. "Phil. Diss., Tübingen.

KOLFF, D. H. A.

forthcoming An Armed Peasantry and Its Alliances: Rajput Traditionsand State Formation in Hindustan, 1450—1850.

ORR, WILLIAM G.

1947 A Sixteenth-Century Mystic: Dadu and His Followers. London:Lutterworth Press.

SRINIVASAN, D. M.

1987 "Saiva Temple Forms: Loci of God's Unfolding Body," inM. Yaldiz and Wibke Lobo (eds.), Investigating Indian Art, 335-^7.Veröffentlichungen des Museums für Indische Kunst, 8. Berlin:Museum für Indische Kunst.

THIEL-HORSTMANN, MONIKA

forthcoming a "An Oral Theology: Dädüpanthi Homilies." Paper presented at the Fourth Conference on Devotional Literaturein New Indo-Aryan Languages, University of Cambridge, 1988.forthcoming b "Treatises on Dädüpanthi Monastic Discipline."In C. Singh et al. (eds.) Gopöl Näräyan Bahurä Abhinandan Granth.

Jaipur: M. S. Man Singh II MuseumVAUDEVILLE, CHARLOTTE

1969 L'Invocation: le Haripäth de Düändev. Publications de l'EcoleFrançaise d'Extrême-Orient, LXXII. Paris: Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient.1974 Kabïr. Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Review 2 of the Lord as Guru - The Sants - Saints Virues

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