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Perspectives
on Hinduism |
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Within the tradition, the
great gods
continued
to be important, and to be depicted in their traditional
poses |
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Brahmins,
as ever, continued to be the guardians of the high
tradition
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Early efforts by outsiders to
understand
and depict the deities were not very satisfactory-- the
work of *Picart*
is a notable case in point |
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But even as time passed and
understanding
improved, traditional austerities and other religious
practices were
often
treated by Westerners as exotic spectacles |
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Above all, the sacredness of
the
cow was
fascinating to outsiders |
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Other animals too, including
elephants,
monkeys, and rats, sometimes received veneration |
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But there were also (rare)
animal
sacrifices,
especially in Bengal, where goats were sometimes offered
to Durga |
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Ceremonies in which devotees
swung
from
flesh-embedded hooks were viewed with repugnance-- and
outlawed by a
coalition
of missionaries and Brahmins |
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The burning of the dead on
riverbanks was
a perpetual source of fascination |
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The practice of sati aroused
horror and
revulsion; but also sometimes, when it was voluntary,
evoked a certain
romantic awe |
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And old temples were often
seen as
picturesque
and artistic |
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The Brahmo Samaj reform
movement,
founded
in 1828 by Ram Mohan Roy and Dwarkanath Tagore, was
further developed
by
Keshub Chunder Sen |
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Swami Dayananda, founder of
the
Arya Samaj
(1875), was markedly hostile to Islam, Christianity, and
other
religions;
he also sought to redefine caste |
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Shri Ramakrishna, the
charismatic
Bengali
mystic, claimed to experience all faiths in his ecstatic
visions |
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Swami Vivekananda, Shri
Ramakrishna's greatest
disciple, made a tremendous hit in the West, and
attracted a number of
British disciples |
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Sri Aurobindo too left a
large and
complex
legacy of writing, teaching, and organization (*Sri
Aurobindo Ashram*) |
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Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's
novel
"Ananda
Math" popularized the song "Vande Mataram"--and also
gave the
nationalist
vision an anti-Muslim slant |
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