Blind men and an Elephant: Historicity of Rama
[From What do Indians need: a history or the past]
Let me begin with the following dialogue between a Swiss-German and a young Balinese (from Bichsel, Peter, Der Leser, Das Erzählen: Frankfurter Poetik-Vorlesungen, 1982, Darmstadt und Neuwied: Hermann Luchterhand Verlag. Pp. 13-14, my translation and italics):
When I discovered, or when it was explained to me, that Hinduism is a pedagogical religion, namely, that in so far as the best “good deed” of a Hindu consisted of explaining something or the other, I lost my inhibitions and began with questions…
A young Balinese became my primary teacher. One day I asked him if he believed that the history of Prince Rama–one of the holy books of the Hindus–is true.
Without hesitation, he answered it with “Yes”.
“So you believe that the Prince Rama lived somewhere and somewhen?” “I do not know if he lived”, he said.
“Then it is a story?”
“Yes, it is a story.”
“Then someone wrote this story – I mean: a human being wrote it?”
“Certainly some human being wrote it”, he said.
“Then some human being could have also invented it”, I answered and felt triumphant, when I thought that I had convinced him.
But he said: “It is quite possible that somebody invented this story. But true it is, in any case.” “Then it is the case that Prince Rama did not live on this earth?”
“What is it that you want to know?” he asked. “Do you want to know whether the story is true, or merely whether it occurred?”
“The Christians believe that their God Jesus Christ was also on earth”, I said, “In the New Testament, it has been described by human beings. But the Christians believe that this is the description of the reality. Their God was also really on Earth.”
My Balinese friend thought it over and said: “I had been already so informed. I do not understand why it is important that your God was on earth, but it does strike me that the Europeans are not pious. Is that correct?”
“Yes, it is”, I said.
Consider carefully the claims of this young Balinese. (A) Even though the narrative of events could have been invented and written by a human being, his ‘holy book’ remains true. (B) He does not know, or even interested in knowing, whether Rama really lived but that does not affect the truth of the Ramayana. (C) He draws a distinction between a true story (not just any story, nota bene, but his ‘holy book’) and a chronicle of events on earth. (D) Finally, it remains his ‘holy’ book despite the above or precisely because of it.
That is to say, he is indifferent to historical truth and suggests, in the italicized parts of the dialogue, that it is not a proper question to ask; even if it is the invention of a human being and even if it is historically unfounded, the story retains its truth. He correlates impiety with believing in the truth of the Biblical narrative. As I would like to formulate it, not only is the young Indonesian drawing a distinction between a story and a history but is also suggesting that the historicity of the Ramayana is irrelevant to its truth. His stance, I would like to add, is also the stance of many, many Indians, even if subject to some changes during the last few decades.
In a way, in the West and elsewhere, we do talk about stories in an analogous fashion. When the Sherlock Holmes Society disputes whether the famed detective ever really said “Elementary, my dear Watson”, the dispute is not whether Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ever wrote such a sentence but whether Sherlock Holmes ever said such a thing. In this sense, we do talk about the ‘truth’ or ‘falsity’ of stories (the way the Indonesian does), even where we know that there is no historical truth to them. In the case of this Indonesian, or the Asian, who believes in his ‘holy books’, the situation is more complicated: in his culture, the Ramayana is ‘true’ even when it is not clear what the status of the book is. Perhaps it is fiction; perhaps it is not. He neither knows nor cares. To know that the Bible is historical, suggests this Balinese, makes the Europeans impious. Impiety is to believe that one’s ‘religion’ is historically true! Many questions emerge, if we read this dialogue carefully: how does the Balinese understand the “historical”? Does the notion make any sense in his mode of going about in the world? Or, is he inferring the “value” of this term from his interlocutor’s account of the Christians?
We can say that Sherlock Holmes did not exist, and still argue that it is true that he lived in 221B Baker Street. When we discuss the truth of fictional objects, we know that we are talking about fictions. The “truth” here is unverifiable but experientially accessible; “fiction” can “touch” us. The question about how we can analyse our disputations about the truth of an object or an event in fiction is different from expressing indifference regarding the status of the narrative itself. The first is familiar to us; there are interesting attempts in both literature studies and philosophy of logics to analyse them. I want to draw attention to the second: it does not seem to matter whether the Ramayana is true or not;whether it is fiction or fact. The ‘ontological’ status of the content of the text is irrelevant to its truth.
To understand this situation properly, we need a contrast. Let me, therefore, ask the question: How similar is the stance of the Indonesian regarding the Ramayana when compared to the attitudes with respect to the Bible? In the last decades, a “narrative criticism” is observable in theological circles. Many advocate that we look at the Bible in its entirety as a series of stories; yet others focus on the New Testament in an analogous fashion. Especially under the influence of the ‘deconstruction’ movement and ‘post-modern theology’, the Greek distinction between mythos and logos has come under attack and criticism. Are the problems I am trying to formulate comparable to these and allied tendencies?
Because much more requires to be said in this context than I can possibly do now, let me rest content with making just two points.
Whatever the intellectual fashion in Biblical scholarship (or in New Testament studies), we must not forget that they are responses to the historical problems posed by Biblical exegesis. The ‘narrative turn’ is one answer to the problem of the historicity of Jesus and the truth of the Gospels. Even these narrativists, today in any case, would not dream of taking the stance (as Christians, nota bene) that the existence of Jesus on earth is irrelevant to the truth of the Bible. In fact, this turn is predicated on the historical veracity of the New Testament Bible.
Suppose someone says the following: Jesus might or might not have existed; he might be The Saviour or he might not be; he might have asked Peter to found the Church or he might not have; the Gospels might be the fictitious invention of some four people or it might not be. As far as he is concerned, any of the above possibilities could be true, and the truth or falsity of none of the above affects his belief in the truth of the Gospels. How could we understand such a person? Probably, The Holy Bible is not ‘holy’ to him; perhaps, he sees the Bible as a moral tract or a story-based philosophical treatise on the human condition. Whether or not such an attitude is justified, we know that he cannot really be a Christian.
There is a second point. Even where the Gospel is seen as a story, it becomes an object of investigation as a text. Only as a text can the Bible provide ‘knowledge’ (of whatever kind). Such an attitude suggests that knowledge is primarily textual in nature. Consequently, even the narrative turn – if and where it does turn radical – requires knowledge of the text. Further, it will look at the text of the Bible as a story, and will talk about the way the Gospels talk about the world, man and society without, however, being able to look at stories in other ways. That is to say, stories are treated as knowledge-claims about the world.
The difference, with respect to the Indonesian, lies along these two lines: to him, the story of Rama does impart knowledge but without it being a knowledge-claim about the world. And to him, stories are ‘true’ not because they are ‘fictions’ and even less because they are historical facts. In that case, what is the nature of such stories and what is the attitude of those who make these stories their own? In simple terms, how do we make sense of this Young Balinese or those many Indians who would agree with him? What is the nature of “truth” involved in the Indonesian’s claim about Rama?
On a metaphor and ‘truths’
To begin answering these questions, a metaphor could prove useful. Consider a dominant metaphor in Indian culture. Used by the literate and the illiterate alike, it is about ten blind men: while touching and feeling ten different parts of an elephant (tusk, tail, snout, ear, trunk, leg, toenails, skin, back and underbelly), they carry on maintaining that an elephant is that part which he happens to be touching. Such, the wise tell us, is the nature of our disputation. Disputation about what? I will keep the answer in abeyance for the time being but let us say for now that it is about ‘the world’. Coming to grips with this metaphor, however, requires a short philosophical detour through discussions about the nature of ‘truth’ in Indian intellectual traditions.
Only for the sake of keeping this detour short, simple and accessible, let me draw on the current claims of Indology and Hinduism studies. These claims postulate rivalry, competition and strife between multiple Indian traditions. Let me create an anachronistic spectrum of Indian traditions where the Advaitic tradition stands at one end of the spectrum with the Buddhist traditions at the other end. Both operate with the idea that there are two kinds of truths (Satyadvaya): the ‘Conventional’ (Vyaavahaarika, or Laukika or Praapanchika) and the ‘Ultimate’ (Paaramaaarthika).
The conventional truths are true claims about the entities that exist in the world. In some senses, this notion of truth dovetails with what is called the ‘semantic conception’ of truth or, equally often, the ‘Aristotelean conception’ of truth. The conventional truth further includes the ‘pragmatic conception’ of truth. In other words, the semantic and pragmatic conceptions of truth are parts of the conventional conception of truth. This truth is always and only about existing entities (which include objects, events, situations or whatever else) in the world.
However, what is the world and what exists there? The world is everything that was, is and shall be. It includes everything: from primordial matter to ghosts and spirits, if they exist. The ‘world’ is the most inclusive concept we have to accommodate entities that existed, that exist now and shall exist in the future. What exists though? The answer to this question cannot be provided by a philosophical fiat, but only by knowledge. Only knowledge tells us what there is in the world, and this knowledge is always limited, ‘perspectival’ and hypothetical. Knowledge is, in some senses, about empirical properties of the world, as we sometimes use that term. Also, what constitutes knowledge is itself a question in knowledge and both the question and the answers to it are human. As our knowledge of the world evolves, so does our understanding of what human knowledge is. This human knowledge tells us that the world itself is subject to all kinds of changes. Our conventional truths are contextual and evolving: what we believe to be true at some time might turn out to be false later. These truths, like the world about which they are true, are in flux, to use a well-known metaphor. In simple terms, the conventional truths are context dependent and conditional in nature. This is how we must understand our present day claims about such entities as ‘super strings’, ‘dark matter’ and such like. We hypothesize the existence of such entities currently; they might or might not exist, but that is something we shall know only as knowledge evolves.
Here is the first sense in which the dominant metaphor is suggestive. It tells us that our knowledge of the word is always partial and while partial descriptions are true, they remain partial. They are true of those parts that our knowledge describes but none of these parts tells us what ‘the elephant’ is. However, what is this ‘elephant’, if not a sum of the parts? A knowledge of systems theory of today tells us that the previous question is not proper: the relationship between an elephant and the organs is a part whole relationship, i.e.that it is a mereological relation. A description of the parts of a system, even when such descriptions are true, does not give us a description of the system itself.
Consider now the fact that while the blind men do have tactile access to parts of an elephant, they have access to the elephant as a creature. Thus, we have access to ‘something’, whose nature we do not know yet. But, in terms of the metaphor, we do not know what the ‘elephant’ is except for the parts about which we have some true descriptions. In and of itself, that need not create any problem because we can generate hypotheses about that entity which has these parts. However, this requires that we know that these partial descriptions, and only these partial descriptions, are descriptions of one and the same entity. However, as blind men, we do not know that: what if there are more than ten blind men some of whom are touching parts of a cat, others parts of a table and yet some others the parts of an automobile and so on? Are we to assume that they are touching one and the same entity or different entities? How can we know that?
One possibility is to appeal to human reason. That is to say, if the hypothesis is logical and it explains in a consistent fashion that which we access, then this hypothesis can be considered possibly true. (In this sense, I think there is also the syntactic conception of truth in the Indian traditions.) If there are many such hypotheses then that does not show that only one of them is ‘true’ (even though each adherent to a particular hypothesis thinks that way) because we have no knowledge about the nature of the objects but only some ill-understood access to them. If we confine the debate to the metaphor, that is, agree that the discussion is about what the ‘elephant’ is, we can recognize that a similar debate has taken place in the western intellectual tradition. This is the discussion between the nominalists and the realists (to use one set of labels) about the nature of Universals: what is the ontological status of terms like ‘elephant’, ‘Green’, etc.? Does ‘green’ refer to a world of ‘colour’ or are green objects merely similar with respect to their property of having a colour? Here, given that the proponents in the debate are trying to answer the same question, we can assume that their theories or hypotheses are rival and competing theories.
Consider now the possibility that this discussion about the elephant and other objects have been going on for some time and that these groups of blind men have evolved criteria to arrive at some kind of consensus about the criteria they use to settle their disagreements. Now, there arrives another group of blind men, who have managed to use knives but without having a tactile access to the surfaces of the objects they have dissected or cut through. Some have dissected an elephant, yet others have failed to saw through its tusk, some have skinned a cat and some others have tried to cut through the table or the automobile and so on. These two groups meet to discuss about the nature of the items they have access to. To keep the discussion simple, let us assume that both groups have reached a consensus about the separateness of these objects. However, their hypotheses about the nature of the objects that the second group has access to diverge radically from the hypotheses that the first group has. To the first group, it is obvious that the entities they have tactile access to are neither soft (tissues) nor mushy (internal organs) and definitely not like liquids (blood). That is to say, the second group of hypotheses goes in a direction that is antithetical to what their knowledge tells them about their access. To the second group, the hypotheses of the first group also contravenes their knowledge. How should they decide what their debate is now about? Is it about the ontological status of the ‘elephant’ (or about the ontological status of the ‘cat’ or ‘the automobile’)? Are they rival hypotheses and competitor theories or merely true descriptions of different levels of what they access?
They agree that their hypotheses about the accessible but ill-understood objects are different. They could then either agree that all their different hypotheses are true because they are merely different true descriptions of the different ‘levels’ of the objects they have access to. Or, they might believe in the opposite: that these are rival or competitor theories. No matter how they decide at a later date, how could they linguistically indicate their current situation? That is, how to indicate that the conflict they now have is also about ‘the domain’ these objects inhabit?
In a sense, this problem is easily solved. They make a distinction between object and meta-level discussions. Let us say that they agree that the discussion about ‘the world’ is at a meta-level, whereas their disputes about ‘elephants’ and such like are at an object-level.
Let us now say that in both these groups of blind men, some people discover that next to the objects and their properties they access tactilely, they can also access some properties that are not accessible through their sense organs. That is, they discover that the presence of properties that, using our language, can be called emergent properties. Now, suddenly, huge questions open up that have to do with the status of these: (a) Are there emergent properties in the world? (b) Do they have effects on objects and events in the world? (c) If objects in the world have such properties, does ‘the world’ itself manifest one or more emergent properties?
Some of these blind men also devise many practical ways to access these properties. Any blind man, if he is willing to follow one of these ways, can testify to accessing these emergent properties. Many people describe their access and, even if they do not call them ‘emergent’, they develop hypotheses to account for their manifestation. These hypotheses, though each is consistent, contravene every object and meta-level consensus, both about the objects in the world and the nature of such a world. How is this discussion to be identified and separated from the earlier discussions? That is, how do these people now indicate that (a) the newly proposed hypotheses are consistent; (b) what these hypotheses postulate are accessible to human experience; (c) these hypotheses, at the same time, speak about properties that contravene everything they individually or as a group know about the world and the objects therein?
Indian traditions identify and separate such discussions from disagreements about both the objects in the world and about the world. They call the latter as disagreements regarding conventional truth. They separate these from debates about ‘the emergent properties’ by speaking about Ultimate Truth. This domain of the ultimate truth is the domain of ‘Adhyatma’, to use a Sanskrit word. (For the time being, and only for the time being, I will use the word ‘adhyatma’ without explicating its meaning. However, I will come back to this issue soon.) Are we or are we not accessing this domain of Adhyatma too when we access the world?
Herein, then, lies the peculiarity of the adhyatmic domain. As human beings, we can experientially access it. Conceptually, when one attempts to describe such experiences, it contravenes our knowledge of the world. It is practically accessible in the sense that one can devise different practical methods to access it and even experiment with ways of accessing it. One could even identify, in a variety of ways, the different degrees of access that one has to this domain. We face but two choices to understand this: either dismiss Adhyatmic domain as delusional and confused or attempt to make sense of this domain and our purported access to it. The first approach makes the entire Asian culture into a delusional culture. I prefer the second option.
Taking the second option requires introducing a philosophical distinction that I cannot argue for in the course of this talk. Let me say objects that populate the world exist. Here, all and only those objects exist that have material or energetic substratum. Our natural and social sciences study existing objects and formulate hypotheses about them. Let me call the adhyatmic domain as the domain of the real. In so doing, I am introducing the distinction between ‘existence’ and the ‘real’: what is real does not exist and what exists is not real.
About the distinction
Two issues need tackling when distinctions in natural languages are made: (a) one has to show that the distinction is cognitively fruitful and that (b) it has some linguistic plausibility. Let me begin with the second issue first.
The distinction between the real and existence is not as artificial as it looks at first sight. Often, even in English, we ask whether something ‘really’ exists or not, where the word ‘real’ qualifies existence. Mirages exist but they are not considered real, the Lyle-Müller illusion exists but the uneven lengths of the lines are not real, the Sun’s revolution around earth is observed to exist but it is not real etc. That is to say, we often make the distinction (in our daily language) between the ‘Real’ and ‘Existence’, even if we, equally often, run these two words together. I am making this point not to suggest that Adhyatma is akin to earth’s revolution round the sun or whatever but merely to indicate that there is some kind of linguistic plausibility in this case.
Is the distinction between the real and existence also made elsewhere in western thought? In a sense, yes. God is the real in Christianity. Human beings, according to this religion, cannot talk about God using only human reason. God has to reveal Himself to us and aid us further in our search for Him. He is the Truth we are searching for but this truth cannot be described using only human knowledge. That is the real, as such. However, the relation between the Real and Existence is a matter of discussion, even if it occurs within the framework of the Bible: that issue is about the transcendence and the immanence of God or the Real. In all the three Semitic religions, the Real is sometimes drawn into existence. It is about the reality of existence that western thought and religion is preoccupied with, at times. Consequently, their concerns are different from those of the Indian traditions.
Of course, to make the distinction between the real and the existence coherent, we need to speak about many other things as well: (a) the relationship between the entities that could exist but do not (e.g. leprechauns, witches and flying pigs) and the real, (b) the relationship between the Universals and the domain of existence and so on. However, this task need not detain us for the moment.
All I am suggesting for the moment is that the Indian traditions also make the distinction between real and existence and my proposal is merely to keep this distinction stable for the time being. Henceforth, I shall use the word ‘adhyatmic truth’ instead of ‘Ultimate truth’. Thus there are two kinds of truth: the Adhyatmic truth and the conventional truth. When used with respect to sentences, this distinction suggests that the sentences about the real and existence differ with respect to their property of being truth-or-falsity-bearers (or as bearers of truth values).
This is just about the only philosophical apparatus we need in order to begin making sense of the young Balinese, of some aspects of Indian culture and the Indian notion of ‘Itihasa’, which is often translated inaccurately as ‘history’.