Freda Bedi Cont'd (#3)

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Inside Tibet
by Office of Strategic Services
1943

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Central Social Welfare Board (CSWB), Excerpt from Social Welfare Administration in India
by Dr. Shradha Chandra
2017

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Burma was Freda Bedi's gateway to Buddhism -- her assignment there changed her life utterly. She found a teacher, a faith, a form of meditation, and had a moment of awakening which marked a personal turning point. When she returned to India she not only regarded herself as a Buddhist but had decided that her life had a new purpose. Her encounter with Buddhism was more by chance than design. She had for some years been a spiritual seeker -- persisting with her regular meditation sessions and taking up yoga as well. But of the world's four major faiths, Buddhism was the one to which she had been least exposed. She had reviewed a children's storybook based on the Jataka -- an early Buddhist work about the birth tales of the Buddha -- and read from it to Ranga. It stayed with her. Several years later, she wrote about the Buddha's various incarnations, weaving this into her reflections on war, famine and death. She had read Buddhist texts along with other spiritual classics which she found so rewarding. But her visit to Burma was, in so many ways, a revelation. It was her first time immersed in a Buddhist culture and she felt instinctively 'that was my home. Then I knew that in some former life, I think in many former lives, I'd been in the Buddhist way. That's what I feel,' she told a California radio station, while adding 'of course it may be wrong.'

It was money more than spiritual considerations that attracted Freda to Burma. Towards the close of the Bedis' time in Kashmir, she accepted a six months' United Nations posting to Burma, which had won its independence from Britain a year after India. She could probably sense that her husband wouldn't continue for much longer at Sheikh Abdullah's side, and the family needed an income. Her family also needed a home, and before taking up the post Freda had to ensure that her children were cared for. Freda had travelled a great deal but usually with one or other of her children in tow. This was the first time that she had made a long trip leaving all her family behind. Ranga was eighteen and at college in Delhi; Kabir and Guli were much younger, seven and three. She decided against leaving them in the care of her husband, and arranged for them to stay in Delhi with a Czechoslovak friend, Jana Obersal.

Freda's new role with the United Nations was to help in the planning of Burma's social services: 'A job after my own heart,' she told Olive Chandler, 'but it's hard not to be with the family. However, in their interest, I can't throw opportunities away + this opens new fields for us all.' She was restless by nature and relished the opportunity of working somewhere new. 'Burma is like India enough to be homely,' she wrote, 'unlike enough to be beguiling.' Without family responsibilities, she had more time to devote to her own interests, and above all to meditate. She met a Buddhist teacher in Rangoon, U Titthila, who had spent the war years in London where he had on occasions abandoned his monk's robes to serve as an air raid warden and, during the Blitz when London came under sustained German air attack, as a stretcher bearer. Freda found him 'very saintly'; she asked him to teach her Vipassana (insight) meditation techniques. 'And it was then ... I got my first flash of understanding -- can't call it more than that. But it changed my whole life. I felt that, really, this meditation had shown me what I was trying to find ... and I got great, great happiness-a feeling that I had found the path.'

While Vipassana meditation dates back many centuries, the Vipassana movement -- which developed particularly in Burma in the mid-twentieth century -- was an adaptation of earlier teaching. It was innovative and linked broadly to rising anti-colonial sentiment. The meditation technique was intended mainly for lay people and offered quick results (some see it as shaping the more recent mindfulness movement) but because of its intensity, it could on occasions overwhelm new practitioners. For Freda, it brought an early moment of illumination -- one which was life-changing but also destabilising.

For two months, she had a weekly session with U Titthila. 'And I remember him saying when the eight weeks was coming to an end: if you get a realisation or a flash of realisation, it may not be sitting in your room in meditation, in pose in front of a picture of the Buddha or something, it will probably be somewhere where you don't expect it.' That's exactly what happened. 'I was actually walking with the [UN] commission through the streets of Akyab in the north of Burma -- [it was] as though some gates in my mind had just opened and suddenly I was seeing the flow of things, meaning, connections. And when I went back to Delhi, well, I told my husband I'd been searching all my life, it's the Buddhist monks who have been able to show me something I could not find and I'm a Buddhist from now on. Then I began to learn Buddhism after that.' Her family's recollection is that this 'flash' of spiritual awakening was accompanied by a breakdown. According to Ranga, his mother fainted and was taken to hospital. Bedi managed to get emergency travel documents, headed out to Burma and brought his wife home. When she came back, she didn't recognise B.P.L. or anybody. She didn't recognise her children. She would sit on her cot doing nothing -- completely blank. You couldn't make eye contact with her,' Ranga recalls. 'There was no speech, no recognition -- though she could eat and bathe. That lasted for about two months when she gradually started reacting to things. All she recalled was that when walking down the street ... she saw a huge flash of light in the sky and she lost consciousness.'

This was a moment of epiphany -- an incident which redefined her life and purpose. From then on, she regarded herself as a Buddhist. And this was much more than simply a religious allegiance. It quickly became the most important aspect of her life. On her return to Delhi, she set up an organisation that she called the Friends of Buddhism. She took a personal vow of brahmacharya, a commitment to virtuous living which implies a decision to become celibate. Her engagement with the faith radically refashioned her links with her family and set her on the course which defined the last quarter-of-a- century of her life. The household faced several concurrent crises. Freda's collapse not only raised concerns about her health; it also brought an end to any prospect of a longer-term UN role in Burma or indeed anywhere else. Bedi's hasty exit from Kashmir had closed the door on the only regular, decently paid job he ever secured, and plunged him into the much more uncertain arena of small-scale publishing and writing and translating on commission. 'That was a very traumatic move,' Kabir recalls, 'suddenly overnight we arrived in Delhi.' Their reduced circumstances were reflected in the family's accommodation in the Indian capital. From the relative grandeur of a house close to Dal Lake, they took a flat -- a 'grotty' apartment, in Kabir's words -- in the crowded Karol Bagh area of central Delhi. It was quite a comedown.

Once she was fully recovered, Freda again had to take on the responsibility of being the family's primary earner. She got a helping hand from a well-placed friend. Among her papers is a handwritten note from 'Indu', Indira Gandhi, on the headed paper of the Prime Minister's House: 'Durgabai Deshmukh wants to see you at 11 a.m. tomorrow ... in her office in the Planning Commission, Rashtrapati Bhawan. I shall send the car at 10.30.' Deshmukh was an influential figure in the Congress Party and had been a member of India's Constituent Assembly. She had just been appointed as the initial chairperson of the Planning Commission, which in Nehruvian India with its faith in the state to engineer social and economic progress was an important post. She was adamant on the need to champion the interests and promote the welfare of women, children and the disabled. Her meeting with Freda clearly went well. The following month, in January 1954, Freda began working for the government's Central Social Welfare Board establishing and editing a monthly journal, Social Welfare. Although she was not a natural civil servant, she embraced the social agenda and the opportunity to travel across India and throw a spotlight on women's concerns and on projects which successfully addressed them. She remained in the job for eight years.

Freda's government employment wasn't particularly well paid, but it allowed the family a measure of financial security. They moved from Karol Bagh and by the close of 1954 were living in the more comfortable locality of Nizamuddin East: 'a nice house (for Delhi) in the shadow of a Mogul wall, near the beautiful Humayun's Tomb,' she told her old friend Olive Chandler. It was only a temporary respite. For a while the family lived under canvas at a Buddhist centre at Mehrauli just outside Delhi but eventually Freda was allocated government accommodation in the middleclass district of Moti Bagh. She described it as 'one of those nicely tailored modern flats complete with fans and shower-baths. To be frank, it doesn't suit us at all even though it has got its points in terms of comfort. We are a nice sprawly joint family, equipped on the male side with booming Punjabi voices, and hardly fit into a flat at all.' Money was tight. Freda travelled to work by bus or -- for a while -- on a scooter. She was responsible not only for earning but also for managing the household's finances. She was provident, as you might expect of someone brought up in a non-conformist, north of England household. Bedi was the opposite -- earning infrequently, and splashing out when he did. He was a writer for hire, Kabir says, but his earnings were irregular. 'Papa's style was whenever he got money he would then splurge, buy baskets of mangos for everybody in the family and take us on big treats. That was his way of showing his caring.'...

Although her faith loomed increasingly large in her life, she had a demanding job too. At the Central Social Welfare Board, Freda had a free hand in devising the new monthly publication. Social Welfare launched in April 1954 with Freda named as executive editor and promising to be 'the beginning of a new experience in coordinating social welfare in India.' It was conspicuously well produced and made effective use of black-and-white photos and on occasions bore striking modernist-style covers. The journal's purpose was to support the Board's endeavour to develop 'services for women, children, the delinquent and handicapped and the family as a unit'. Freda occasionally wrote under her own by-line, reporting on projects and initiatives she had visited in different parts of India. Both Binder and his wife Manorma were roped in as occasional contributors. She was able to reprise some of the themes she had introduced in Contemporary India twenty years earlier -- prevailing on Devendra Satyarthi to write on Indian cradle songs, traditional dance, and women's life as reflected in folk song. But the hallmark of the magazine was the focus which it placed on women's issues, including many which rarely appeared in the mainstream press.

In the first year of publication, Social Welfare's agenda was cautious. Once established, it became more adventurous, tackling such themes as deserted wives, family planning, unmarried mothers, trafficking of women and children, and prostitution. It also prompted discussion of the widening career opportunities for women, and published exercises for expectant mothers. Freda enjoyed the opportunity to see something of village life in different parts of India. She described herself as 'somebody who loves the village old and new, and finds happiness there'. Her conviction that the village was the essence of India, and village women the backbone of the nation, remained undimmed. The monthly had the advantage over commercial magazines that it was not vulnerable to dips in circulation or revenue, and the frustration that as a government publication its impact was limited. It was the job that Freda stuck to longer than any other. She saw herself as a social worker as much as an editor and journalist and welcomed the prospect of contributing to independent India's social development.

Some of the missions on behalf of the Social Welfare Board took her to corners of the country which were rarely seen by outsiders. In 1958 she accompanied Indira Gandhi to north-east India, visiting areas which are now in the Indian states of Mizoram, Nagaland, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh. 'Indu' remained a close friend, and perhaps a confidante -- her marriage had also hit problems. Freda's children remember going to eat at Auntie Indu's and attending the birthday parties of Indira's sons, Rajiv and Sanjay. 'Sometimes we would go privately and play with their remarkable collection of trains,' Kabir says. 'They had a wonderful room in the prime minister's house that had these trains around tracks, gifts of foreign dignitaries .... As we got older, we'd go out on the president's estate and ride horses and see movies there or go to the swimming pool or go on car rides together. So it was that kind of fairly close relationship with the Gandhi family.'

Freda's government role allowed plenty of opportunity for the networking at which she excelled. Among her new friends was Tara All Baig, a prominent social worker from a privileged background who became the president of the Indian Council of Child Welfare. Baig first met her at a United Nations Youth Conference at Simla, and was struck by both her appearance and personality...

Freda's involvement with Buddhism introduced her to several rich and influential Punjabi women who shared her interest. Goodie Oberoi had married into the family that ran one of India's leading chains of luxury hotels. The Maharani of Patiala was part of a Sikh royal family which retained its political influence after the dissolution of the princely states. In 1957, Freda travelled to Britain at the maharani's request -- her first visit for a decade -- to accompany her two daughters to their new boarding school. She took the opportunity to visit her mother and brother in Derby and see old friends. Freda saw no inconsistency in championing the interests of poor village women and accepting the patronage of the moneyed elite...

Towards the close of 1956, Delhi hosted a major international Buddhist gathering that was Freda's introduction to the Tibetan schools of Buddhism, which are in the Mahayana tradition as distinct from the Theravada school which is predominant in Burma. This Buddha Jayanti was to celebrate the 2,500th anniversary of the Buddha's life. The Indian government wanted Tibet's Buddhist leaders to attend, particularly the Dalai Lama, who was that rare combination of temporal ruler and spiritual leader of his people. The Chinese authorities initially said no but at the last minute relented. Jawaharlal Nehru was at Delhi airport to welcome the twenty-one year old Dalai Lama on his first visit to India; the young Tibetan leader had at this stage not made up his mind whether he would return to his Chinese-occupied homeland or lead a Tibetan independence movement in exile. Freda played a role in welcoming the Tibetan delegation to the Indian capital. 'The radiance and good humour of the Dalai Lama was something we shall never forget,' she told Olive Chandler. 'I also got a chance of shepherding the official tour of the International delegates to India's Buddhist shrines and made many new friends.' A snatch of newsreel footage shows Freda Bedi at the side of the Dalai Lama at Ashoka Vihar, the Buddhist centre outside Delhi where the Bedi family had camped out a few years earlier. Both Kabir and Guli were also there, the latter peering out nervously between a heavily garlanded Dalai Lama and her sari-clad mother. Freda also received the Dalai Lama's blessing.

In the following year, when she made a brief visit to Britain, Freda made a point of visiting the main Buddhist centres in London and meeting Christmas Humphreys, a judge who was the most prominent of the tiny band of converts to Buddhism in Britain. She was becoming well-known and well-connected as a practitioner of Buddhism. What prompted her to become not simply a devotee but an activist once more was the Dalai Lama's second visit to India -- in circumstances hugely different from his first. Nehru had dissuaded the Dalai Lama from staying in India after the Buddha Jayanti celebrations. Early in 1959, Tibet rose up against Chinese rule, an insurrection which provoked a steely response. The Dalai Lama and his retinue, fearing for their lives and for Tibet's Buddhist traditions and learning, fled across the Himalayas, crossing into India at the end of March and reaching the town of Tezpur in Assam on 18th April 1959. Tens of thousands of Tibetans followed the Dalai Lama, undergoing immense hardships as they traversed across the mountains and sought to evade the Chinese army. Freda felt impelled to get involved.

'Technically, I was Welfare Adviser to the Ministry,' Freda wrote of her time at the Tibetan refugee camps in north-east India; 'actually I was Mother to a camp full of soldiers, lamas, peasants and families.' It was a role she found fulfilling. Freda was able to use the skills and contacts she had developed as a social worker and civil servant and at the same time to be nourished by the spirituality evident among those who congregated in the camps. The needs of the refugees were profound. For many, the journeys had been harrowing -- avoiding Chinese troops, travelling on foot across the world's most daunting mountain range and sometimes reduced to eating yak leather to stave off starvation. Many failed to complete the journey. And while the Indian camps offered sanctuary, they were insanitary, overcrowded and badly organised. For hundreds of those who arrived tattered, malnourished and vulnerable to disease, the camps were places to die.

In October 1959, six months after the camps were set up, Jawaharlal Nehru, India's prime minister, asked Freda to visit them and report back -- though it may be more accurate to say that Freda badgered her old friend into giving her this role. Among Delhi's Buddhists, who had welcomed the Dalai Lama so reverently three years earlier, the plight of those who had followed in his footsteps over the mountains would have been of pressing concern. For Freda, it offered her a cause in which to immerse herself as well as an opportunity to deepen her spiritual engagement.

As soon as she reached the camps, Freda realised the urgent and profound humanitarian crisis that was engulfing the thousands of Tibetans who had made it into India. Within a matter of weeks, she had persuaded the government to keep her in the camps for six months as welfare adviser for Tibetan refugees. She took on this role as a secondment to the Ministry of External Affairs -- the refugees and their camps were on Indian soil, but given the intense diplomatic sensitivities of offering refuge to such large numbers of Tibetans, the foreign ministry led on the response to the influx. 'I stayed 6 months in a bamboo hut rehabilitating + looking after refugees,' Freda wrote to her old friend Olive Chandler at the close of the assignment. 'It is an experience too deep to translate into an Air Letter. The Tibetans are honest, brave + wonderful people; the 5000 Lamas we have inherited contain some of the most remarkable spiritually advanced monks + teachers it has been my privilege to meet.' She became entirely absorbed in the lives and welfare of the refugees, and of the Buddhist practice of the monks, nuns and lamas among them. 'I am going back to the [Social Welfare] Board tomorrow,' she told Olive, 'but my heart is in this work.'

Freda's home when working with the refugees was at Misamari camp in Assam, where a former military base -- the American Air Force had been stationed there during the Second World War -- was hastily expanded by the construction of rows of large bamboo huts. Misamari was near the town of Tezpur which the Dalai Lama had reached in mid-April 1959 at the end of his flight across the mountains. By mid-May, the Indian authorities had built shelters at Misamari sufficient for 5,000 refugees -- and it was already clear that would not be sufficient. It was a remote corner of the country -- though not too far as the crow flies from Borhat, still further up the Brahmaputra but on the southern bank, where Ranga and Umi and their young family were living on a tea estate...

The camp may have been safe, but for many Tibetans it was not hospitable. This was alien terrain -- much lower in altitude, stiflingly hot and humid, with a different culture and cuisine. 'Tibetan people don't know [the] language [or] how to make Indian food,' recalled Ayang Rinpoche later one of the most respected Buddhist spiritual teachers in India. He was about sixteen when he arrived at Misamari shortly after the camp opened. 'That place [was] very hot, and underground water [was] very uncomfortable. By this way, Tibetans [were] much suffering and many people died. My mother also died at that place, Misamari.' Another widely revered Buddhist spiritual figure, Ringu Tulku, also reached Misamari in 1959 after a long and arduous journey, 'sometimes fighting, sometimes running, sometimes hiding', from Kham in eastern Tibet. He was about seven years old, and recalls the long bamboo sheds at the camp, each providing shelter to scores of people. 'And very, very hot, so we couldn't usually sleep at night. So we sang and danced all night -- and then we had a little bit of shower. And then we didn't know how to cook dal; we didn't know how to cook all these vegetables.' He too has vivid recollections of the large numbers who died at Misamari from fever and disease.

Lama Yeshe came across Freda Bedi in his first few weeks at the camp. 'Before that I [had] never seen any white woman in my whole life. But she is a very caring, motherly human being.' Ayang Rinpoche also met Freda for the first time at Misamari; he remembers her as 'an English lady with Indian dress, very active, she work[ed] a lot'. Indeed, she kept herself furiously busy -- arranging, organising, improving the health facilities and the water and food supply and ensuring that there was sufficient baby food and vitamins for the newborn and nursing mothers. This became her life. When she decided to dedicate herself to an issue or a cause, it consumed her. The plight of the women among the refugees was a particular concern as they were so central to the Tibetan family groups and tended to avoid attention even when they desperately needed it. Both Kabir and Gulhima spent several weeks of their school holidays with their mother at Misamari -- not quite what they would have expected to be doing once liberated from their boarding schools in the north Indian hills. 'It was an amazing experience,' Kabir says. 'I remember her telling me that when these refugees arrived from Tibet ... the men would be absolutely shattered, probably fit to be carried. And the women would always be standing. And within days of their arrival, there would be women who would collapse and the men would stand. So it's the women who held them together in that long trek across the Himalayas.'...

Her most immediate task was to remedy the shortcomings in the running of these hastily set-up camps. She used the privileged access she had to India's decision makers. She went straight to the top -- to Nehru. And he listened. In early December, Nehru sent a note to India's foreign secretary, the country's most senior career diplomat, asking for a response to concerns that Freda had brought to the prime minister's notice. He endorsed one of Freda's suggestions, 'the absolute necessity of social workers being attached to the camps'.

The normal official machinery (Nehru wrote) is not adequate for this purpose, however good it might be. The lack of even such ordinary things as soap and the inadequacy of clothing etc. should not occur if a person can get out of official routines. But more than the lack of things is the social approach.

What concerned Nehru even more was Freda's complaint of endemic corruption. 'She says that "I am convinced that there is very bad corruption among the lower clerical staff in Missamari [sic]". Heavy bribery is referred to. She suggested in her note on corruption that an immediate secret investigation should take place in this matter.' Nehru ordered action to investigate, and if necessary to remove, corrupt officials. 'It is not enough for the local police to be asked to do it,' he instructed. It's not clear what remedial measures were taken but the interest in the running of the Tibetan camps shown by the prime minister and by his daughter, Indira Gandhi, will have helped to redress the most acute of the problems facing the refugees there.

Freda sought to raise awareness of and money for the Tibetan refugees in other ways. At the end of January 1960, just ahead of the Tibetan New Year, she wrote from Misamari to the Times of India, seeking donations from readers to allow the thousands of refugees on Indian soil to celebrate this religious festival. 'The vast majority of the Tibetan refugees are in Government refugee camps and are living on refugee rations,' she wrote. With very few exceptions they are penniless. If they light sacred lamps (deepa), they will do it by sacrificing their ghee rations for some days together. They need money for ceremonial tea and food, for incense and for community utensils ... The Tibetans are separated from country and often from family. Let us give them a feeling of welcome and belonging. Friendliness is as important as rations.' This was very much part of her approach to refugee welfare and reflected her own personality. For Freda, compassion and concern was as essential in aiding the refugees as food and medicine. The Tibetans needed to be reassured that the bonds of shared humanity embraced them too after the ordeal so many had suffered.

'Misamari was a bamboo village, made up of hefty bamboo huts, over a hundred of them, capable of housing eighty or ninety people,' Freda wrote in her only published account of her time in the Tibetan camps. This was titled 'With the Tibetan Refugees', which was as much a declaration of personal allegiance as a description of her role. She recounted that there had been as many as 12,000 refugees in the camp in mid-1959, but it was always intended to be a transit centre and many moved on after a few weeks. 'By the time I reached Misamari, with its fluttering prayer flags and its Camp Hospital of eighty beds, there were about four thousand still to be rehabilitated before the Camp could be closed.' She was writing for the government magazine she also edited, and this was not the place to raise complaints of corruption and maladministration. But she expressed sensitivity to Tibetan customs and needs...

Freda wrote about the efforts made to educate the young Tibetans and provide vocational training. She made only glancing reference to the deployment of many thousands of Tibetans in road building gangs at a paltry daily rate, and none at all to the most unjust aspect of this close-to forced labour, the separation of large numbers of Tibetan children from their parents...

While based at Misamari, Freda also visited the other principal Tibetan camp, at Buxa just across the state border in West Bengal. This was both more substantial than Misamari and more forbidding. It was initially a fort built of bamboo and wood, but had been rebuilt in stone by the British and used as a detention camp -- and as it was so remote, it housed some of what were seen as the more menacing political detainees. When the buildings were made available to the Tibetans, they were in poor repair. All the same, these were allocated for Tibetan Buddhist monks and spiritual teachers. Freda referred to it rather grandly as a monastic college. And unlike Misamari, which was open for little more than a year, Buxa was intended as a long-term camp. It's estimated that at one time as many as 1,500 Tibetans lived there. Conditions were so poor that many monks contracted tuberculosis but it remained in operation for a decade.

Towards the close of her six months in the camps, Freda Bedi again sought out Nehru, and this time was more insistent about the measures the Indian government needed to take to meet its responsibilities towards the refugees. She wrote to the prime minister to pass on the representations of 'the representatives of the Venerable Lamas and monks of the famous monasteries ... living in Misamari', though the vigour with which she expressed herself -- this was not the temperately worded letter that India's prime minister would be more accustomed to receive -- underlines her own anger at what she saw as the harsh treatment of the Tibetan clerics in particular. Her main concern was the enrolling of Tibetan refugees on road building projects.

Roadwork is heaving, exhausting, and nomadic, it is utterly unsuited to monks who have lived for long years in settled monastic communities. They can't 'take it', any more than could our lecturers, or officials, or Ashramites, or university faculties and students. Let us face that fact, and make more determined efforts to rehabilitate them in their own groups on land.

She insisted that those who did not offer to do roadwork were not lazy, and that almost all those in the camps were 'eager and willing to work on land in a settled Community'. And she sought lenience for some of those involved in roadwork who were penalised as 'deserters' when they were forced to leave their duties because rain washed away the roads or had made shelter and food supplies precarious. 'I feel it is not worthy of Gov[ernmen]t to be vindictive when the refugees have already suffered as much in Tibet,' she told Nehru. 'We should be big hearted.'

She warned Nehru that the Indian government's responsibility for Tibetan monks wasn't limited to the 700 or so in Dalhousie in the north Indian hills and the 1,500 which at this date -- March 1960 -- were at Buxa. There were a further 1,200 monks in Misamari and new arrivals expected for some months more, and another 1,500 refugees outside the government camps living in and around the Indian border towns of Kalimpong and Darjeeling and 'in a pitiable condition'. Freda was speaking from personal observation. Her letter concluded with an appeal and a warning, again couched in language that only a personal friend could use to address a prime minister:

Panditji, I am specially asking your help as I do not want a residue of over one thousand unhappy lamas and monks to be left on our hands when Misamari closed. Nor do I want to hear totally unfair statements that 'they won't work'. I am sure you will help to clarify matters in Delhi.

Nehru asked his foreign secretary to investigate, who replied with a robust defence of the use of refugees in road-building projects. They were not acting under compulsion, he insisted, and this was a temporary measure while more permanent arrangements were made for accommodation and rehabilitation. And he suggested that some at least of the refugees were work shy, expressing just the sort of view that Freda had insisted was so unjust and uncaring. 'Mrs Bedi complains that we have been hard on the Lamas,' the foreign secretary wrote in a note to Nehru. 'There are various grades of Lamas, from the highly spiritual ones -- the incarnate Lamas -- to those who merely serve as attendents [sic]. Our information now is that having found life relatively easy ... many ordinary people who would otherwise have to earn their living by work, are taking to beads and putting forward claims as Lamas. I feel that some pressure should be brought to bear on this kind of people to do some useful work.'

In her letter to the prime minister, Freda had mused that if Nehru could see the Buxa and Misamari camps, 'I feel you would instinctively realise the major unsolved policy problems here on the spot.' In a testament to her personal sway with India's leader, the following month Nehru did indeed visit Misamari. He spent two hours at the camp, looking round the hospital and seeing Tibetan girls who were being trained in handloom weaving. He addressed a crowd which consisted of almost all the 2,800 Tibetans then at Misamari, assuring them that he would act on an appeal he had received from the Dalai Lama to extend arrangements for educating both the young and adults. There was no greater spur to official attention to the Tibetans' welfare than the prime minister's personal oversight of the issue. And if any had doubted just how much influence Freda held with the prime minister, persuading him to travel across the country to one of its most difficult-to-reach corners demonstrated just how influential and effective she was.

Freda did not let the matter drop. On her return to Delhi in June, she called on the prime minister and in a remarkable demonstration of her moral authority and personal influence, cajoled Nehru to write to one of his top civil servants that same evening to express his disquiet about what he had heard concerning recent ministry instructions.

One is the order that all the new refugees, without any screening, should be sent on somewhere for road-making, etc. This seems to me unwise and impracticable. These refugees differ greatly, and to treat them as if they were all alike, is not at all wise. There are, I suppose, senior Lamas, junior Lamas, people totally unused to any physical work etc. ...

Sending people for road-making when they are entirely opposed to it, will probably create dis-affection in the road-making groups which have now settled down more-or-less. I was also told that the mortality rate increases.

It reads almost as if Freda was dictating the prime minister's note. She also prompted Nehru to question a reduction in rations for those in the camps, and to urge the provision of wheat, a much more familiar part of the Tibetan diet, rather than rice. Freda Bedi was, Nehru warned, going to call on the ministry the following day -- and civil servants were urged to take immediate action on these and any other pressing issues she raised. 'I do not want the fairly good record we have set up in our treatment of these refugees,' the prime minister asserted, 'to be spoiled now by attempts at economy or lack of care.'

Nehru's more persistent concern was the impact of providing refuge to the Dalai Lama and so many of his followers on relations with India's powerful eastern neighbour. A steady deterioration in relations eventually led to a short border war in 1962 which -- to Nehru's shock and distress -- China won. In the immediate aftermath of that military setback, Nehru came to address troops at Misamari camp, which had reverted to serving as a military base. Nevertheless, India persisted with its open-door policy for Tibetans, and somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 refugees followed the Dalai Lama into India. The Dalai Lama and his immediate entourage were settled in the hill town of Dharamsala in north India, which became the headquarters of Tibet's government-in-exile...

Freda found her time in the Assam camps both physically and emotionally draining. On her return to Delhi she was admitted to hospital suffering from heat stroke and exhaustion. It was sufficiently serious for Kabir and Gulhima to be brought down from their boarding school in the hills. The doctors said their presence might lift her spirits. 'She responded well to our being there,' Gull says. 'Initially when we went in to see her she did not respond. But the next day she was sitting up and spoke.' Once recovered, she was determined to have a continuing role promoting the welfare of Tibetan refugees even though she was returning to her government job editing Social Welfare. Reading between the lines of Nehru's missives, Freda seems to have lobbied him on this point. 'If possible, I should like to take advantage of her work in future,' Nehru noted. 'She knows these refugees and they have got to know her. Could we arrange with the Central Social Welfare Board to give her to us for two or three weeks at a time after suitable intervals?'

When Freda confided to her friend Olive Chandler that her heart was in working with the Tibetans, she was saying what was becoming increasingly evident to her colleagues in the Social Welfare Board. 'Freda went to these camps and her heart bled,' according to her friend and colleague Tara All Baig. 'She neglected her work with the Board more and more, travelling to the centres especially in Bengal and Dehra Dun where distress was greatest.' Her boss, the formidable Durgabai Deshmukh, got fed up with Freda's preoccupation with the Tibetan issue to the exclusion of other aspects of her work. She was determined to sack Freda, and only Baig's personal intervention saved her job. 'I was lashed by Durgabai's best legal arguments against retaining her. But Freda had children and needed her job. I weathered the storm and was rewarded with Freda's reinstatement.' She survived in her government post for another couple of years, by which time the pull of working more fully and directly with the lamas among the Tibetan refugees had become compelling...

While on her initial mission at the Tibetan camps in 1959-60, Freda also visited Sikkim where a number of Tibetan monks and refugees had settled. It seems to have been then that she first met the head of the Kagyu lineage, one of the four principal schools within Tibetan Buddhism. The 16th Karmapa Lama had escaped from Tibet through Bhutan in the wake of the Dalai Lama's departure and had moved into his order's long established but near derelict monastery at Rumtek in Sikkim. Apa Pant, a senior Indian official, told Freda that she really couldn't come to Sikkim without calling on the Karmapa. Pant was an Oxford contemporary of the Bedis. He was from a princely family and had an inquiring mind about faith and religion; he went on to be one of India's most senior diplomats. At this stage of his career, Pant was India's political officer covering Sikkim and Bhutan, two small largely Buddhist kingdoms which lay on the hugely sensitive border with China, and also in charge of the four Indian missions in Tibet. Freda was keen to act on her friend's suggestion:

[Apa Pant] sent me on horseback -- there was no road at that point up to the monastery. And I remember the journey through the forest and it was most beautiful. As we neared the monastery, His Holiness sent people and a picnic basket full of Tibetan tea and cakes and things to refresh us. It's about twenty miles, the path up to the monastery. And when I went to see him, there he was with a great smile on the top floor of a small country monastery surrounded by birds, he just loves birds. ... There he was with his birds, sitting in his room, not on a great throne but on a carpet with a cushion on it. And just at that time, the Burmese changeover took place and the gates of Burma were shut. And I was feeling a great sense of loss that I can't see my Burmese gurus and so I asked the question that was in my mind that I was saving up to ask my guru when I met him. I asked it of His Holiness. And he gave me just the perfect answer...

At the Misamari camp, Freda got to know two tulkus, reincarnations of venerated spiritual leaders, to whom she became particularly attached: Trungpa Rinpoche had led across the Himalayas the large contingent of Tibetans of which Lama Yeshe was part; Akong Rinpoche was his spiritual colleague and close friend, and Lama Yeshe's brother. Both were part of the Kagyu order. Trungpa, Akong and the small band of refugees who managed to complete their journey reached Misamari at the end of January 1960. Freda was the first Westerner that Trungpa had got to know. They had no common language but they established a firm bond. Freda recognised in Trungpa an exceptional spiritual presence and authority and a willingness to adapt to his new circumstances. Trungpa saw in Freda a woman of integrity and influence who could help him make that journey. 'She extended herself to me as a sort of destined mother and saviour,' he said. Within a short time, Freda was helping Trungpa to learn basic English, the first Tibetan she taught, and he was acting as Freda's informal assistant at the camp, a role which helped to spare him from the prospect of being enlisted in a road building gang. Trungpa and his colleagues were transferred to Buxa camp. Not long after, Trungpa managed to get out of Buxa -- the inmates were not free to come and go as they pleased -- to visit the 16th Karmapa Lama at Rumtek. The Karmapa invited Trungpa to stay and join him in rebuilding both the monastery and establishing the Kagyu tradition in new territory; Trungpa declined and moved on, an unorthodox and almost rebellious act in the deeply hierarchical and deferential culture of Tibetan Buddhism.

Shortly after Freda returned to Delhi and her job editing Social Welfare, Trungpa and Akong turned up at the door of her flat. Trungpa had travelled on from Rumtek to Kalimpong, and sent a message back to Akong in Buxa camp suggesting that they head to Delhi. Trungpa and Akong spoke no Hindi and had nothing to guide them to Freda's home beyond an address written on a slip of paper. They turned up, it seems, unannounced, confident that Mummy-La, the name by which Freda was known to the younger lamas and tulkus, would not turn them away. She didn't. 'This winter finds us in our modern flat in New Delhi to which we have had to attach an overflow summer hut,' Freda told Olive Chandler. 'Two young Lamas (age 20) Tulku Major and Tulku Minor share our home this winter, and spend the time getting adjusted to modern life and learning English. It is a joy to have them with us. We are sure they will get ahead quicker with conversation as soon as the children take them in hand.'

Two young men joining the household put quite a strain on the already cramped government accommodation, and the temporary shelter on the veranda which housed Akong and Trungpa would have been pretty miserable during the monsoon rains and through the chilly, if brief, Delhi winter. They stayed at the Moti Bagh flat for the best part of a year. Kabir Bedi recalls an initial feeling of 'great resentment' at this intrusion on the family home. Some of the induction they received into the 'modern world' was not quite what Freda had in mind. Ranga remembers his father giving the two Tibetans both money and men's shorts, so they could buy treats from the market wearing something less conspicuous than their robes. Trungpa and Akong also acted as a beacon for others -- Akong's younger brother, then known as Jamdrak, moved to Delhi to join them. 'Freda's humble home .. .' her friend Tara Ali Baig recalled, 'was soon full to overflowing with young incarnate Lamas. Whatever simple Indian food there was, was shared ... Regardless of their present plight, these cheerfully robed young people warmed to the affection Freda lavished on them.'...

Nehru had taken a diplomatic risk by hosting the Dalai Lama and tens of thousands of those who followed in his wake. But there was a limit to the amount of official support and funding that could be expected for the refugees' welfare, with the most urgent and unmet need being the upkeep and education of the young lamas.

Freda was entirely comfortable soliciting money and support from the rich and well connected. She had also established links with Buddhist and similar groups in London and elsewhere. Within weeks of returning to Delhi from the camps, she sought to turn her extensive network to the Tibetans' advantage. In mid-August 1960, she wrote a long letter to Muriel Lewis, a California-based Theosophist with whom she had corresponded for several years. Muriel ran the Mothers' Research Group principally for American and Western Theosophists, a network which had an interest both in eastern religions and in parenting issues.

I should like to feel that the 'Mothers' Group' was in touch with all I do (Freda wrote). Do you think it would be possible for some of your members to 'Adopt' in a small way -- write to, send parcels to -- these junior lamas? Friendships, even by post, could mean a great deal. We could work out a little scheme, if you are interested. The language barrier is there, but we can overcome it, with the help of friends.

Freda's family had, she recounted, already taken a young lama under their wing.

Last year my son [Kabir] 'adopted' one small lama of 12, sent him a parcel of woollen (yellow)clothes, sweets and picture books, soap and cotton cloth. This time when I went to Buxa, Jayong gave me such an excited and dazzling smile. He was brimming over with joy at seeing me again! It is very quiet away from your own country and relations for a small lama with a LOT TO LEARN. It was of course most touching to see the 'Mother-Love' in the faces of the tutor-lamas and servant lamas who look after the young ones. They are very tender with them.

Freda's letter was included in Muriel's research group newsletter and subsequently reprinted by the Buddhist Society in London. This was the founding act of the Tibetan Friendship Group, which quickly established a presence in eight western countries and was the conduit by which modest private funds were raised for the refugees. It outlasted Freda and while the group's purpose was not political, it helped give prominence to the Tibet issue as well as the well-being of the Tibetan diaspora.

At the close of the year, Freda sought to enlist her personal friends in this enterprise. 'Do you think you would like to "adopt" a young Tibetan in a small way ... ' she appealed. Which would you choose -- and of what age? The English learning groups include not only junior lamas, young monks and young soldiers (almost all without families) but schoolboys and schoolgirls, some with no father, some with both parents far away on the roads, almost all very keen to make friends and contacts.' Misamari was by now closed and its former inmates dispersed. Some Tibetans eventually settled in Karnataka in south India, others congregated close to Dharamsala in what was then the Punjab hills and small Tibetan communities took root in many of India's cities. This dispersal added to the urgency of ensuring that the young lamas were not simply herded with the rest of the refugees, but identified and offered spiritual guidance and -- the point which Freda emphasised -- a wider education to ensure that their Buddhist practice could be nurtured outside Tibet in a manner which would allow the wider world access to the spiritual richness that the lamas both represented and bestowed.

-- The Lives of Freda: The Political, Spiritual and Personal Journeys of Freda Bedi, by Andrew Whitehead

[Dr. Shradha Chandra, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Administration, University of Lucknow, India. Author of many scholarly publications and research articles in the field of Public Administration with specialization in Social Welfare Administration. Dr. Chandra has been consistently engaged in teaching at Post-graduation level, supervising PhD's and working on various research projects of National importance.]

The Central Social Welfare Board was established in 1953 by a Resolution of Govt. of India to carry out welfare activities for promoting voluntarism, providing technical and financial assistance to the voluntary organisations for the general welfare of family, women and children. This was the first effort on the part of the Govt. of India to set up an organization, which would work on the principle of voluntarism as a non-governmental organization. The objective of setting up Central Social Welfare Board was to work as a link between the government and the people.

Dr. Durgabai Deshmukh was the founder Chairperson of the Central Social Welfare Board. Earlier she was in charge of "Social Services" in the Planning Commission and she was instrumental in planning the welfare programmes for the First Five Year Plan. Under the guidance of Dr. Durgabai Deshmukh, various welfare schemes were introduced by the Central Social Welfare Board.

The Central Social Welfare Board obtained its legal status in 1969. It was registered under section 25 of the Indian Companies Act, 1956

The State Social Welfare Boards were set up in 1954 in all States and Union Territories. The objective for setting up of the State Social Welfare Boards was to coordinate welfare and developmental activities undertaken by the various Departments of the State Govts. to promote voluntary social welfare agencies for the extension of welfare services across the country, specifically in uncovered areas. The major schemes being implemented by the Central Social Welfare Board were providing comprehensive services in an integrated manner to the community.

Many projects and schemes have been implemented by the Central Social Welfare Board like Grant in Aid, Welfare Extension Projects, Mahila Mandals, Socio Economic Programme, Dairy Scheme, Condensed Course of Education Programme for adolescent girls and women, Vocational Training Programme, Awareness Generation Programme, National Creche Scheme, Short Stay Home Programme, Integrated Scheme for Women's Empowerment for North Eastern States, Innovative Projects and Family Counselling Centre Programme.

The scheme of Family Counselling Centre was introduced by the CSWB in 1983. The scheme provides counselling, referral and rehabilitative services to women and children who are the victims of atrocities, family maladjustments and social ostracism and crisis intervention and trauma counselling in case of natural/ manmade disasters. Working on the concept of people’s participation, FCCs work in close collaboration with the Local Administration, Police, Courts, Free Legal Aid Cells, Medical and Psychiatric Institutions, Vocational Training Centres and Short Stay Homes.

Over six decades of its incredible journey in the field of welfare, development and empowerment of women and children, CSWB has made remarkable contribution for the weaker and marginalized sections of the society. To meet the changing social pattern, CSWB is introspecting itself and exploring new possibilities so that appropriate plan of action can be formulated. Optimal utilisation of ICT facilities will be taken so that effective and transparent services are made available to the stakeholders.


Organogram of Central Social Welfare Board

Composition of CSWB

General Body of the Central Social Welfare Board

As per Memorandum and Articles of Association, there is provision of General Body and Executive Committee for conducting the business of Central Social Welfare Board. The General Body is headed by the Chairperson of the Central Social Welfare Board, it consists of all Chairpersons of the State Social Welfare Boards, five(5) professionals, one each from Law, Medicine, Nutrition, Social Work, Education and Social Development, three (3) eminent social workers, representatives of Govt. of India from Ministry of Women & Child Development, Rural Development, Health & Family Welfare, Finance, NITI Aayog etc. and two (2) members from Lok Sabha and one (1) from Rajya Sabha and Executive Director of Central Social Welfare Board.

Executive Committee of Central Social Welfare Board

The Executive Committee is headed by the Chairperson of the Central Social Welfare Board. Chairpersons of five (5) State Social Welfare Boards including one (1) from the Union Territory, State Board, one representative each from Ministry of Women & Child Development, Rural Development, Finance, Health & Family Welfare, Education and two (2) Professionals from the General Body.

Issue of notification

Notification for the constitution of the Central Social Welfare Board is issued by the Ministry of Women & Child Development, Govt. of India.

Functions and Activities  

The Central Social Welfare Board is the key organisation in the field of social welfare in India. Created in 1953 it comprises of a full-time chairperson and members representing state and union territories. Its general body consists of 51 members headed by the chairperson. She is appointed by the government in consultation with the ministry of social welfare from amongst prominent women social workers.

The general body consists of representatives nominated by state governments, social scientists, representatives from the ministries of finance, rural reconstruction, health education and social welfare and one member from Planning Commission. In addition three members of Parliament, social workers, social scientists and social welfare administrators are also included in the general body.

The administration of the affairs of the CSWB is vested in an executive committee nominated by the government from amongst the members of the CSWB. The executive committee comprises of 15 members including the executive director. The Board is administratively organised in a number of divisions and sections.

The chairman is aided by a secretary who is of the rank of the deputy secretary or director in the Government of India. The CSWB has three joint directors, one financial advisor-cum-chief accounts officer, chief administrative officer and a public relations officer. The board assists in the improvement and development of social welfare activities.

Its statutory functions are:

(i) To survey the need and requirements of social welfare organisations.

(ii) To promote the setting up of social welfare institutions in remote areas.

(iii) To promote programmes of training and organize pilot projects in social work.

(iv) To subsidies hostels for working women and the blind.

(v) To give grants-in-aid to voluntary institutions and NGOs providing welfare service to vulnerable sections of society.

(vi) To coordinate assistance extended to welfare agencies by Union and state governments.

The board coordinates between the programmes of the CSWB and other departments and also, between voluntary organisations and the governments. It is funded by the Government of India and the funds for the programmes as well as non-plan expenditure of the board are a part of the budget of the department of social welfare. There has been a significant increase in the total expenditure in the programmes of the board during last few decades.

Organisation:

The nine divisions, two sections and one unit which constitute the organisation. The names of the division are self-explanatory. For instance, project division looks after projects while grants-in-aids division processes and administers the distribution of grants the accounts of which are submitted to the finance and accounts division. Coordination and administration of state boards are handled by sections and Hindi unit is for assistance to all the divisions and their units in the field.

The state social welfare boards have a similar and parallel structure but the regional and state variations exist in northern and southern states. The state social welfare boards have been established purely as advisory boards to advise the CSWB on the institutions requiring assistance and their eligibility to get such assistance, while the grants were sanctioned directly to the organisations by the CSWBs.


Organisation of Central Social Welfare Board

These boards are also responsible to supervise, guide and advise the voluntary organisations in the welfare programmes in their respective areas. The CSWB has a wide network of its activities ranging from anganbaris to family welfare camps.

Some of these welfare activities of the target groups are:

(i) Running of rehabilitation centres and cooperative societies for destitute, widows, orphans and deserted women and children.

(ii) Educating and training women to acquire vocational skills to become employable.

(iii) Organising family welfare camps to promote small family norm through opinion leads.

(iv) Providing hostels for working women of low income groups with adequate security.

(v) Operating urban welfare centres in towns for recreational activities and learning programmes for women and children.

(vi) Supplying nutritional supplementary diet and tonics to malnourished mothers and children below 5 years through balwadis and day care centres.

The CSWB consolidates the work done by voluntary agencies. It funds specific projects and strengthens welfare services for children, women and handicapped. The victims of drug abuse, infirm and retarded children and vulnerable groups of minorities are offered extra protection by the programmes of the ministry which directly as well as indirectly contribute to empowerment of the deprived.

[admin]

Servants of the People Society
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/23/21

'The Huts' was the Bedis' address for ten years or so until Partition and the upheaval that accompanied it forced them from Lahore. This was not the sort of place of which Freda's mother would have approved -- 'I think my living in huts would have upset her if she had seen it' -- but it was the home where the family was most content. Life in the huts was both happy and beautiful, as Freda remembered it, with a canopy of trees and, beyond, the mustard fields which were a hallmark of the Punjab countryside. 'Under those trees we designed and got built reed huts with plastered mud floors ... and we didn't have to pay rent because we built it in what was known as the green belt. We cultivated vegetables and had a rose garden and sat out under the trees on the string cots of the Punjab. We had the living complex where a dining room and bedroom combined in one big hut; we had a guest hut; and we had a hut for my mother-in-law and Binder.'3 [ 'Berlin to Punjab 1934-39' audio recording made by Freda Bedi c1976, BFA] Over time, there was a retinue of domestic staff -- a gardener, a cook and a secretary: 'In India,' Freda explained to a friend in England, 'there are always too many servants, because they are so cheap + inefficient!'4 [Freda Bedi to Olive Chandler, 1 and 31 March 1940, BFA]

Without electricity, reading, writing and marking papers in the huts was restricted to daylight hours. Reading 'almost stopped in the house at dusk, which could be pretty early in the winter, later in the summer,' Freda said. 'And I used to read in the early morning hours as we got up with the birds, and that again was say 5 a.m. on summer mornings.' There was no room, however, for the Bedis' large collection of books and periodicals which they had assembled with such care and in the spring of 1938, their 'nice personal Library of about a thousand books' was given to the Servants of the People Society, a nationalist-minded social welfare organisation.5 [Tribune, 25 March 1938]

-- Chapter 5: The Huts Beyond Model Town, Excerpt from The Lives of Freda: The Political, Spiritual and Personal Journeys of Freda Bedi, by Andrew Whitehead

Servants of the People Society (SOPS) (Lok Sevak Mandal) is a non-profit social service organization founded by Lala Lajpat Rai, a prominent leader in the Indian Independence movement, in 1921 in Lahore. The society is devoted to "enlist and train national missionaries for the service of the motherland".

In 1880, Lajpat Rai joined Government College at Lahore to study Law, where he came in contact with patriots and future freedom fighters, such as Lala Hans Raj and Pandit Guru Dutt. While studying at Lahore he was influenced by the Hindu reformist movement of Swami Dayanand Saraswati, became a member of existing Arya Samaj Lahore (founded 1877) and founder editor of Lahore-based Arya Gazette.[7] [His journal Arya Gazette concentrated mainly on subjects related to the Arya Samaj.]

When studying law, he became a firm believer in the idea that Hinduism, above nationality, was the pivotal point upon which an Indian lifestyle must be based. He believed, Hinduism, led to practices of peace to humanity, and the idea that when nationalist ideas were added to this peaceful belief system, a secular nation could be formed...

Since childhood, he also had a desire to serve his country and therefore took a pledge to free it from foreign rule, in the same year he also founded the Hisar district branch of the Indian National Congress and reformist Arya Samaj with Babu Churamani (lawyer), three Tayal brothers (Chandu Lal Tayal, Hari Lal Tayal and Balmokand Tayal), Dr. Ramji Lal Hooda, Dr. Dhani Ram, Arya Samaj Pandit Murari Lal,[9] Seth Chhaju Ram Jat (founder of Jat School, Hisar) and Dev Raj Sandhir...

In 1914, he quit law practice to dedicate himself to the freedom of India and went to Britain in 1914 and then to the United States in 1917. In October 1917, he founded the Indian Home Rule League of America in New York. He stayed in the United States from 1917 to 1920...

Graduates of the National College, which he founded inside the Bradlaugh Hall at Lahore as an alternative to British institutions, included Bhagat Singh.[10] He was elected President of the Indian National Congress in the Calcutta Special Session of 1920...

While in America he had founded the Indian Home Rule League in New York and a monthly journal Young India and Hindustan Information Services Association. He had petitioned the Foreign affairs committee of Senate of American Parliament giving a vivid picture of maladministration of British Raj in India, the aspirations of the people of India for freedom amongst many other points strongly seeking the moral support of the international community for the attainment of independence of India. The 32-page petition which was prepared overnight was discussed in the U.S. Senate during October 1917.[13] The book also argues for the notion of "color-caste," suggesting sociological similarities between race in the US and caste in India.

-- Lala Lajpat Rai, by Wikipedia

It was shifted to India, following the partition of India in 1947, and functioned from the residence of Lala Achint Ram, a founder member and Lok Sabha, M.P. at 2-Telegraph Lane, New Delhi. In 1960, after the construction of the new building its shifted to Lajpat Bhawan, Lajpat Nagar, in Delhi. Today, it has branches in many parts of India.[1]

History

With an aim to create missionary social worker freedom fighter, Lala Lajpat Rai, founded the organisation in November 1921. It was inaugurated by Mahatma Gandhi, and Lalaji who had donated his bungalow in Lahore to the organisation and his library of over 5000 books, remained its founding President till his death in 1928. Its subsequent Presidents were Purushottam Das Tandon, Balwantrai Mehta, and Lal Bahadur Shastri.[2]

"The Society was initially started with the [Bal Gangadhar] Tilak School of Politics in 1921, to train those who would work in the political field. The state of the country during 1921 engendered a war atmosphere in which normal priorities had to be waived. The initiates pledged to serve the Society and were bound only by their word and sense of honor and of duty."

Tilak was one of the first and strongest advocates of Swaraj ("self-rule") and a strong radical in Indian consciousness. He is known for his quote in Marathi: "Swarajya is my birthright and I shall have it!". He formed a close alliance with many Indian National Congress leaders including Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai, Aurobindo Ghose, V. O. Chidambaram Pillai and Muhammad Ali Jinnah...

He stated: "Religion and practical life are not different. The real spirit is to make the country your family instead of working only for your own. The step beyond is to serve humanity and the next step is to serve God."..

Tilak was considered a radical Nationalist but a Social conservative...

During late 1896, a bubonic plague spread from Bombay to Pune, and by January 1897, it reached epidemic proportions. British troops were brought in to deal with the emergency and harsh measures were employed including forced entry into private houses, the examination of occupants, evacuation to hospitals and segregation camps, removing and destroying personal possessions, and preventing patients from entering or leaving the city. By the end of May, the epidemic was under control. They were widely regarded as acts of tyranny and oppression. Tilak took up this issue by publishing inflammatory articles in his paper Kesari (Kesari was written in Marathi, and "Maratha" was written in English), quoting the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, to say that no blame could be attached to anyone who killed an oppressor without any thought of reward. Following this, on 22 June 1897, Commissioner Rand and another British officer, Lt. Ayerst were shot and killed by the Chapekar brothers and their other associates. According to Barbara and Thomas R. Metcalf, Tilak "almost surely concealed the identities of the perpetrators". Tilak was charged with incitement to murder and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment. When he emerged from prison in present-day Mumbai, he was revered as a martyr and a national hero...

On 30 April 1908, two Bengali youths, Prafulla Chaki and Khudiram Bose, threw a bomb on a carriage at Muzzafarpur, to kill the Chief Presidency Magistrate Douglas Kingsford of Calcutta fame, but erroneously killed two women traveling in it. While Chaki committed suicide when caught, Bose was hanged. Tilak, in his paper Kesari, defended the revolutionaries and called for immediate Swaraj or self-rule. The Government swiftly charged him with sedition. At the conclusion of the trial, a special jury convicted him by 7:2 majority...

In passing sentence, the judge indulged in some scathing strictures against Tilak's conduct. He threw off the judicial restraint which, to some extent, was observable in his charge to the jury. He condemned the articles as "seething with sedition", as preaching violence, speaking of murders with approval. "You hail the advent of the bomb in India as if something had come to India for its good. I say, such journalism is a curse to the country". Tilak was sent to Mandalay from 1908 to 1914...While in the prison he wrote the Gita Rahasya...

According to him, the real message behind the Bhagavad Gita is Nishkam Karmayoga (selfless action), rather than Karma Sanyasa (renouncing of actions), which had become the popular message of Gita after Adi Shankara... He finds the message of the subservience of all yogas to Karmayoga or the yoga of action rather than the yoga of sole knowledge (jnanayoga) or of devotion (bhaktiyoga)...

Tilak tried to convince Mohandas Gandhi to leave the idea of Total non-violence ("Total Ahimsa") and try to get self-rule ("Swarajya") by all means...

Tilak helped found the All India Home Rule League [Indian Home Rule Movement] in 1916–18, with G. S. Khaparde and Annie Besant... Tilak was impressed by the Russian Revolution, and expressed his admiration for Vladimir Lenin...

Tilak sought to unite the Indian population for mass political action throughout his life. For this to happen, he believed there needed to be a comprehensive justification for anti-British pro-Hindu activism. For this end, he sought justification in the supposed original principles of the Ramayana and the Bhagavad Gita. He named this call to activism karma-yoga or the yoga of action.[37] In his interpretation, the Bhagavad Gita reveals this principle in the conversation between Krishna and Arjuna when Krishna exhorts Arjuna to fight his enemies (which in this case included many members of his family) because it is his duty. In Tilaks opinion, the Bhagavad Gita provided a strong justification of activism. However, this conflicted with the mainstream exegesis of the text at the time which was predominated by renunciate views and the idea of acts purely for God. This was represented by the two mainstream views at the time by Ramanuja and Adi Shankara. To find support for this philosophy, Tilak wrote his own interpretations of the relevant passages of the Gita and backed his views using Jnanadeva's commentary on the Gita, Ramanuja's critical commentary and his own translation of the Gita.[38] His main battle was against the renunciate views of the time which conflicted with worldly activism. To fight this, he went to extents to reinterpret words such as karma, dharma, yoga as well as the concept of renunciation itself. Because he found his rationalization on Hindu religious symbols and lines...

Tilak was strongly opposed to liberal trends emerging in Pune such as women's rights and social reforms against untouchability...Tilak was also opposed to intercaste marriage, particularly the match where an upper caste woman married a lower caste man...Tilak officially opposed the age of consent bill which raised the age of marriage from ten to twelve for girls, however he was willing to sign a circular that increased age of marriage for girls to sixteen and twenty for boys...he arranged his daughter's marriage at the age of fifteen. He also advocated widow marriages...

Child bride Rukhmabai was married at the age of eleven but refused to go and live with her husband. The husband sued for restitution of conjugal rights, initially lost but appealed the decision. On 4 March 1887, Justice Farran, using interpretations of Hindu laws, ordered Rukhmabai to "go live with her husband or face six months of imprisonment". Tilak approved of this decision of the court and said that the court was following Hindu Dharmaśāstras...

In 1890, when an eleven-year-old Phulamani Bai died while having sexual intercourse with her much older husband, the Parsi social reformer Behramji Malabari supported the Age of Consent Act, 1891 to raise the age of a girl's eligibility for marriage. Tilak opposed the Bill and said that the Parsis as well as the English had no jurisdiction over the (Hindu) religious matters. He blamed the girl for having "defective female organs" and questioned how the husband could be "persecuted diabolically for doing a harmless act". He called the girl one of those "dangerous freaks of nature".[41] Tilak did not have a progressive view when it came to gender relations. He did not believe that Hindu women should get a modern education. Rather, he had a more conservative view, believing that women were meant to be homemakers who had to subordinate themselves to the needs of their husbands and children.[9] Tilak refused to sign a petition for the abolition of untouchability in 1918...

Tilak and Swami Vivekananda had great mutual respect and esteem for each other...it was agreed between Vivekananda and Tilak that Tilak would work towards nationalism in the "political" arena, while Vivekananda would work for nationalism in the "religious" arena...

In 1894, Tilak transformed the household worshipping of Ganesha into a grand public event (Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav). The celebrations consisted of several days of processions, music, and food...

The events like the Ganapati festival and Shiv Jayanti were used by Tilak to build a national spirit beyond the circle of the educated elite in opposition to colonial rule. But it also exacerbated Hindu-Muslim differences. The festival organizers would urge Hindus to protect cows and boycott the Muharram celebrations organized by Shi'a Muslims, in which Hindus had formerly often participated. Thus, although the celebrations were meant to be a way to oppose colonial rule, they also contributed to religious tensions...

In 1903, Tilak wrote the book "The Arctic Home in the Vedas". In it, he argued that the Vedas could only have been composed in the Arctics, and the Aryan bards brought them south after the onset of the last ice age. He proposed a new way to determine the exact time of the Vedas.

-- Bal Gangadhar Tilak [Keshav Gangadhar Tilak], by Wikipedia

The organization's programs today include providing a forum for farmers to sell their produce in cities, providing artisans from rural areas with a place to sell their services and products in cities. The non-profit is also involved in education and family health campaigns.

Lal Bahadur Shastri, second prime minister of India, was a lifelong member of the society[3]

Notes

1. "Head Office". Servants of the People Society. Retrieved 27 May 2014.
2. Grover, Verinder (1993). Political Thinkers of Modern India: Lala Lajpat Rai. Deep & Deep Publications. pp. 547–. ISBN 978-81-7100-426-3.
3. Shastri's biography by FreeIndia.org

External links

• Official website
• Official Site for the Society
• Tribune India newspaper's write up about the society

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Part 1 of 3

Adi Shankara
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/23/21

A biography of Sri Sankara on modern lines is an impossible for want of exact data from contemporary writings. We have therefore to depend on the type of Sanskrit works called Sankaravijayas, the traditional lives of the Acharya, to know whatever is now possible to gather about this saintly philosopher…As these Vijayas have a mythological bias, they have their obvious defect in respect of chronology and recording of facts and events…

We are presenting this translation not because we consider it a proper biography in the modern sense, but because there is nothing better to offer on the life and achievements of Sri Sankara. Sri Sankaracharya is undoubtedly the most widely known of India’s saintly philosophers, both within the country and outside, and there is a constant enquiry for an account of his life.

The trouble does not actually lie with these scholars or the accounts they have given of Sankara’s life. It lies in the fact that there is absolute dearth of reliable materials to produce a biography of the modern type on Sankara, and the scholarly writer, if he is to produce a book of some respectable size, has no other alternative but to fill it with discussions of the various versions of the dates and of the incidents of Sankara’s life that have come down to us through that series of literature known as Sankaravijayas, which vary very widely from one another in regard to most of these details….

In a situation like this, a modern writer on Sankara’s life can consider himself to have discharged his duty well if he produces a volume of respectable size filled with condemnation of the old Sankara-vijayas — which, by the way, have given him the few facts he has got to write upon—for their ‘fancifulness, unreliability, absence of chronological sense’ and a host of other obvious shortcomings, and indulge in learned discussions about the date and the evidence in favour of or against the disputed facts, and finally fill up the gap still left with expositions of Sankara’s philosophy. In contrast to these are the traditional biographical writings on Sankara called Sankara-vijayas. All of them without an exception mix the natural with the supernatural; bring into the picture the deliberations held by super-human beings in the heavens; bring gods and dead sages into the affairs of men; report miraculous feats and occurrences; and come into conflict with one another in regard to many biographical details…

The trouble comes only when mythological accounts are taken as meticulously factual and men begin to be dogmatic about the versions presented in them. In the mythological literary technique, facts are often inflated with the emotional overtones and with the artistic expressiveness that their impact has elicited from human consciousness, and we have therefore to seek their message in the total effect they produce and not through a cocksure attitude towards the happenings in space and time…

this is only one of the following ten Sankara-vijayas listed on p. 32 of T.S. Narayana Sastri’s The Age of Sankara…Of these, the first two, the Brihat-Sankara-vijaya and Prachma-Sankara-vijaya are supposed to be the products of the contemporaries of Sankara, their authors being the Acharya’s disciples. Nothing can be said of this claim, as the texts are not available anywhere at present.' Sri T. S. Narayana Sastri, the author of The Age of Sankara, claims to have come across what he calls a ‘mutilated copy’ of the second section, called Sankaracharya-satpatha, of Chitsukha’s work mentioned above. There is, however, no means to assess the authenticity of the claim on behalf of this mutilated copy, as it is not available anywhere…

there are only five of them available in printed form, and even most of them can be got only with considerable difficulty….

We are taking up for translation the last of these, namely, Madhava-Vidyaranya’s work, with the full awareness of its limitations, which may be listed as follows: It is not a biography but a biographical and philosophical poem, as the author himself calls it. There are many obviously mythological elements in it, like reports of conferences held in heavens, appearance of Devas and dead sages among men, traffic between men and gods, thundering miracles, and chronological absurdities which Prof. S. S. Suryanarayana condemns as ‘indiscriminate bringing together of writers of very different centuries among those whom Sankara met and defeated.’ But these unhistorical features it shares with all other available Sankara-vijayas, including that of Anantanandagiri….Ever since it was first printed in Ganapat Krishnaji Press in Bombay in the year 1863, it has continued to be a popular work on Sankara and it is still the only work on the basis of which ordinary people have managed to get some idea of the great Acharya, in spite of the severe uncharitable criticism1 [The motives behind the criticism of Madhviya-sankara-vijaya and the scurrilous nature of the criticism will be evident from the following extract from page 158 of The Age of Sankara by T. S. Narayana Sastri (1916): “We know from very reliable sources that this Madhaviya-Sankara-vijaya was compiled by a well-known Sanskrit scholar who passed away from this world just about eight years ago, under the pseudonym of ‘Madhava’— a 'synonym' for ‘Narayana’—specially to extol the greatness of the Sringeri Math, whose authority had been seriously questioned by the Kumbhakonam Math, the Acharyas of the latter Math claiming exclusive privilege of being entitled to the title of the 'Jagadgurus' for the whole of India as being the direct successors of Sri Sankara Bhagavatpada's own Math established by him at Kanchi, the greatness of which had been unnecessarily extolled by Rajachudamani Dikshita, Vallisahaya Kavi and Venkatarama Sarman in their respective works, Sankarabhyudaya, Achraya-dig-vijaya and Sankara-bhagavatpadacharitra. About fifty years ago, in the very city of Madras, as many may still remember, a fierce controversy raged between the adherents of the Kumbhakonam Math on the one hand, and those of the Sringeri Math headed by Bangalore Siddhanti Subrahmanya Sastri and two brothers —Kumbhakonam Srinivasa Sastri and Kumbhakonam Narayana Sastri—sons of Ramaswami Sastri, a protege of the Sringeri Math, on the other. We have very strong reasons to believe that this Sankara-dig-vijaya ascribed to Madhava, the Sankara-vijaya-vilasa ascribed to Chidvilasa, and the Sankara-vijaya-sara ascribed to Sadananda, had all been brought into existence by one or other of these three scholars, about this period, in answer to the Sankara-vijayas ascribed to Rajachudamani Dikshita and Vallisahaya Kavi.” Not satisfied with the above indictment, Sri T. S. Narayana Sastri gives the following bazaar gossip as proof of his contention on page 247 of his book, “The reader is also referred to an article in Telugu with the caption Sankara-vijaya-karthavevaru by Veturi Prabhakara Sastri of Oriental Manuscripts Library, Madras, published in the Literary Supplement of the Andhra Patrika of Durmathi Margasira (1921-22) where an interesting note about the author of the above mentioned ‘Sankara Vijaya’ (Sanakara-dig-vijaya of Madhava) is given. Here is an English rendering of a portion of that article: ‘I happened to meet at Bapatla, Brahmasri Vemuri Narasimha Sastri, during my recent tour in the Guntur District, in quest of manuscripts. I mentioned casually to him my doubts regarding the authorship of Madhaviya-sankara-vijaya. He revealed to me some startling facts. When he was at Madras some fifteen years ago, he had the acquaintance of the late Bhattasri Narayana Sastri who wrote the Sankara Vijaya published in the name of Madhava i.e., Vidyaranya, and that four others helped him in this production. The importance of the Sringeri Mutt is very much in evidence in this Sankara Vijaya (not correct). Taking a copy of the Vyasachala Grantha, available at Sringeri Mutt, Bhattasri Narayana Sastri made alterations here and there and produced the Sankara-vijaya in question. That he was an expert in such concoctions, is widely known among learned men.”…

The criticism of it is uncharitable because it is mainly born of prejudice, and it has extended beyond finding fault with the text, to the question of its authorship itself. The critics somehow want to disprove that this work is, as traditionally accepted, a writing of the great Madhava-Vidyaranya, the author of the Panchadasi, and a great name in the field of Indian philosophical and theological literature….Besides the support of tradition, the colophon at the end of every chapter of the book mentions its author’s name as Madhava, that being the pre-monastic name of Vidyaranya….

The identity of Madhava, the author of Sankara-dig-vijaya, with this Madhava-Vidyaranya is further established by the first verse of the text, wherein he pays obeisance to his teacher Vidyatirtha…The identity is further established by the poet Madhava’s reference to his life in the royal court in the following touching introductory verses of his work: “By indulging in insincere praise of the goodness and magnanimity of kings, which are really non-existent like the son of a barren woman or the horns of a hare, my poesy has become extremely impure. Now I shall render it pure and fragrant by applying to it the cool and fragrant sandal paste fallen from the body of the danseuse [a female ballet dancer] of the Acharya’s holy fame and greatness, as she performs her dance on the great stage of the world.”

Besides, the text is a masterpiece of literature and philosophy, which none but a great mind could have produced. But there are detractors of this great text who try to minimise its obvious literary worth by imputing plagiarism and literary piracy to its author. They claim that they have been able to show several verses that have entered into it from certain other Sankara-vijayas like Prachina-Sankara-vijaya and Vyasachala’s Sankara-vijaya. Though Prachina-Sankara-vijaya is nowhere available, T. S. Narayana Sastri claims to have in his possession some mutilated sections of it; but such unverifiable and exclusive claims on behalf of mutilated texts cannot be entertained by a critical and impartial student of these texts, since considerations other than the scholarly have entered into these criticisms, and manuscripts, too, have been heavily tampered with by Sanskrit Pandits. It can as well be that the other Vijayas have taken these from the work of Madhava. Next, even if such verses are there, and they are demonstrably present in regard to Vyasachala’s work, the author can never be accused of plagiarism, because he acknowledges at the outset itself, that his work is a collection of all the traditions about Sankaracharya and that in it all the important things contained in an extensive literature can be seen in a nutshell as an elephant’s face in a mirror…

Besides, it is forgotten by these critics that it is a literary technique of Vidyaranya, as seen from his other works also, to quote extensively from recognised authorities without specially mentioning their names, and that this feature of the present work goes only to establish the identity of its authorship with Vidyaranya….

There is also the view that the author need not necessarily be Madhava-Vidyaranya but Madhavacharya, the son of the former’s brother Sayana and the author of Sarvadarsana-Samgraha, a masterly philosophical text. To make this hypothesis even plausible, it has to be established that this Madhava was the disciple of Vidyatirtha, which the author of Sankara-dig-vijaya claims to be in the very first verse of the text…

Most of Vidyaranya’s other works are on high philosophical and theological themes, and if he has used methods and styles in such works differing from that of a historical poem like Sankara-dig-vijaya, it is only what one should expect of a great thinker and writer. That the author of this work has poetic effect very much in view can be inferred from his description of himself as Nava-Kalidasa (a modern Kalidasa) and his work as Navakalidasa-santana (offspring of the modern Kalidasa)…

Chronology and historicity did not receive much attention from even the greatest of Indian writers in those days.

Regarding the biographical details contained in different Sankara-vijayas, there are wide variations, as already pointed out. There is no way now of settling these differences…

Every date in ancient Indian history, except that of the invasion of Alexander (326 B.C.), is controversial, and Sankara’s date is no exception. Max Muller and other orientalists have somehow fixed it as 788 to 820 A.D., and Das Gupta and Radhakrishnan, the well-known writers on the history of Indian Philosophy, have accepted and repeated it in their books. To do so is not in itself wrong, but to do it in such a way as to make the layman believe it to be conclusive is, to say the least, an injustice to him. It is held by the critics of this date that the Sankara of 788-820 A.D. is not the Adi-Sankara (the original Sankara), but Abhinava Sankara (modern Sankara), another famous Sannyasin of later times (788-839), who was born at Chidambaram and was the head of the Sankara Math at Kanchipuram between 801 and 839. He was reputed for his holiness and learning and is said to have gone on tours of controversy (Dig-vijaya) like the original Sankara.

It is found that not only modern scholars, but even the authors of several Sankara-vijayas have superimposed these two personalities mutually and mixed up several details of their lives. The author of the concept of adhyasa himself seems to have become a victim of it! The cause of much of this confusion has been the custom of all the incumbents of the headship of Sankara Maths being called Sankaracharyas. To distinguish the real Sankara, he is therefore referred to as ‘Adi-Sankara' an expression that is quite meaningless. For, Sankaracharya was the name of an individual and not a title, and if the heads of the Maths of that illustrious personage were known only by their individual names like the heads of religious institutions founded by other teachers, probably much of this confusion could have been avoided….

Ullur S. Parameswara Iyer has pointed out in his great work that the sole support for the modern scholars’ view on Sankara’s date as 788 A.D. is the following incomplete verses of unknown authorship: "Nidhi nagebha vahnyabde vibhave sankarodayah; Kalyabde candranetranka vahnyabde pravisad guham; Vaisakhe purnimayam tu sankarah sivatamagat." Here the words of the first verse are the code words for the year 3889 of the Kali era, which is equivalent to 788 A.D. (It is derived as follows: nidhi: 9; naga: 8; ibha: 8; vahni: 3. Since the numbers are to be taken in the reverse order, it gives 3889 of the Kali era as the date of Sankara’s birth, its conversion into Christian era being 788 A.D. Kali era began 3102 years before the Christian era….

Traditional Indian dates are suspect because of the multiplicity of eras, of which about forty-seven have been enumerated by T. S. Narayana Sastri in his book, The Age of Sankara. So unless the era is specifically mentioned, it is difficult to fix a date in any understandable way. Two of these eras are famous—the Kali era, which started in 3102 B.C., and Yudhishthira Saka era which started 37 years after, i.e., in 3065 B.C. The calculation according to the latter era is, however, complicated further by the fact that, according to the Jains and the Buddhists, the latter era started 468 years after the Kali era, that is, in 2634 B.C.

Sri T. S. Narayana Sastri, in his book, The Age of Sankara, argues the case for the traditional date, on the basis of the list of succession kept in Kamakoti Math and Sringeri Math, and what he has been able to gather from ‘mutilated copies’ of Brihat-Sankara-vijaya, Prachtna-Sankara-vijaya and Vyasachallya-Sankara-vijaya. Until authentic copies of these works are available, the information they are supposed to give is not acceptable…

44 B.C., the supposed date of the birth of Sankara according to Sringeri Math, might have been the result of the confusion of eras and calculations based on them. 2625 of the Kali era, the date of his death, must have been taken as referring to Buddhist-Jain era and then converted into Kali era by adding 468 to it, thus arriving at 3093 of Kali era (9 or 10 B.C.) as the date of Sankara’s death….

as stated in T. S. Narayana Sastri’s work, in the Kamakoti list Sankara occupied that Gaddi for three years (from 480 B.C. to 477 B.C.) and was followed by Sureswara for 70 years (477 B.C. to 407 B.C.), the Sringeri list maintains that Sankara occupied that Gaddi for six years (from 18 B.C. to 12 B.C.), and was followed by Sureswara for 785 years (from 12 B.C. to 773 A.D.)… The record of the Sringeri Math says that Sankara was born in the 14th year of the reign of Vikramaditya. Compilers wrongly referred this to the era of Vikramaditya of Ujjain, which was originally called Malava Samvat and later in the eighth century A.D. called the Vikrama Samvat. This took Sankara to the first century B.C. and necessitated the assignment of around 800 years to Sureswaracharya to agree with the later dates. Mr L. Rice points out that the reference is not to the Vikramaditya of Ujjain but to the Chalukya king Vikramaditya who ruled in Badami near Sringeri. Historians opine that Chalukya Vikramaditya ascended the throne during the period 655 to 670 A.D….

Such unbelievable inconsistencies have made modern historians totally reject the evidence provided by the chronological lists of the Maths. So Sri Ullur Parameswara Iyer, himself a pious Brahmana, maintains in his History of Kerala Sahitya (Vol. 1 p. 111) that it is easy to prove that most of these Math lists have been formulated so late as the 16th century A.D.

But a still greater difficulty posed for such an early date as 509 to 476 B.C. for Sankara is the proximity of this to the generally accepted date of the Buddha (567-487 B.C.). Sankara has criticised Buddhism in its developed form with its four branches of philosophy. A few centuries at least should certainly be allowed to elapse for accommodating this undeniable fact. Sri T. S. Narayana Sastri is, however, remarkably ingenious, and his reply to this objection is that the Buddha’s date was certainly much earlier. Vaguely quoting Prof. Wheeler, Weber and Chinese records, he contends that the Buddha must have flourished at any time between the 20th and the 14th century B.C. He challenges the fixing of the date of Buddha on the basis of the dates of Kanishka or of Megasthenes.3a [Kanishka’s date is variously stated as 1st century B.C., 1st century A.D., 2nd century A.D. and 3rd century A.D. The relevancy of his date to the Buddha’s date is that Hsuan Tsang, the Chinese traveller, states that the Buddha lived four hundred years before Kanishka. Some historians try to fix the date of the Buddha on the basis of this information as 5th century B.C. This view is not currently accepted, and the Buddha’s date is settled on other grounds as 567-487 B.C. It is fixed so on the basis of Asoka’s coronation in 269 B.C., four years after his accession. According to the Ceylon Chronicles, 218 years separate this event of Asoka’s coronation from the date of the Buddha’s demise. Thus we get 487 as the date of the Buddha’s demise, and as he is supposed to have lived 80 years, the date of his birth is 567. According to R. Sathianatha Ayyar, the date of 487 B.C. is supported by “the dotted record” of Canton (China); The traditional date according to the Buddhist canonical literature, however, is 623-543 B.C. Megasthenes comes into the picture, because he was the Greek Ambassador of Selukos Nickator at the court of Chandra Gupta Maurya (325 B.C.), who is described by him as Shandracotus. Now Sri T. S. Narayana Sastri, with a view to push back the Buddha’s date, challenges this identification, and opines that this reference could as well be to Chandra Gupta or even to Samudra Gupta of the Gupta dynasty (300-600 A.D.), in which case the Mauryan age (325 to 188 B.C.) will have to be pushed further back into the 7th to 5th century B.C. and the Buddha (567-487 B.C.) too, into the 9th century B.C. at least. But Sri Sastri forgets that these contentions cannot stand, as the date of Megasthenes and of Chandra Gupta Maurya have necessarily to be related to the firm and unquestionable date of Alexander’s invasion of India (326 B.C.) Megasthenes was the ambassador at the Pataliputra court sent by Selukos Nickator (305 B.C.), the Satrap who succeeded to the Indian region of Alexander’s empire, which he had to give up to Chandra Gupta by a treaty. T. S. Narayana Sastri’s attempt to shift the Gupta period of India history, to the time of Alexander’s invasion (326 B.C.) by equating Shandracotus with Samudra Gupta of the Gupta period, is a mere chronological guess-work without any supporting evidence, as against several historical synchronisms which compel the acceptance of the currently recognised chronology. For example, the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Fahien was in India in the Gupta age, from 399-414 A.D., and his description of India can tally only with that period and not with the Mauryan period. Besides, the Hun invasion of India was in the reign of Skanda Gupta, about 458 A.D., and this event cannot be put on any ground into the B.C.’s when Mauryans flourished, even with an out-stretched poetical imagination. So we have got to maintain that the Shandracotus who visited Alexander’s camp (326 B.C.) and who later received about 326 B.C. Megasthenes as the ambassador of Selukos Nickator, the successor to Alexander’s Indian province, can be none other than Chandra Gupta of the Mauryan dynasty (325 B.C. to 188 B.C.) Further, historical synchronisms, the sheet-anchor of the chronology of Indian history give strong support to the accepted date of Asoka (273-232 B.C.), the greatest of the Mauryan Emperors. His Rock Edict XIII mentions, as stated by Sathianatha Ayyar, the following contemporary personalities: Antiochus Teos of Syria (261-246 B.C.); Ptolemy Philadelphos of Egypt (285-247 B.C.); Antigonos Gonates of Macedonia (278-239 B.C.); Magas of Cyrene (285-258 B.C.), and Alexander of Epirus (272-258 B.C.). They are referred to as alive at the time of that Rock Edict. In the face of such historical synchronisms all attempts to push back the time of the Buddha by several centuries in order to substantiate the theory of 509 B.C. being Sankara’s date, is only chronological jugglery. So the Buddha’s date has to remain more or less as it is fixed today (568-487 B.C.). Sankara came definitely long after the Buddha.] The reference to Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador, who refers to the ruler to whom he was accredited as Shandracotus, need not necessarily be to Chandragupta Maurya but to the king of the Gupta dynasty (300-600 A.D.) with the same name, or even to Samudra Gupta. If this line of argument is accepted, the present dates of Indian history will have to be worked back to about three to four hundred years, which will land us in very great difficulties, as shown in the foot note….

there is another opinion that assigns Sankara to the 1st century B.C. This view is held by Sri N. Ramesam in his book Sri Sankaracharya (1971). His argument is as follows: Sankara is accepted in all Sankara-vijayas as a contemporary of Kumarila. Kumarila must have lived after Kalidasa, the poet, because Kumarila quotes Kalidasa’s famous line; Satam hi sandeha padesu vastusu pramanam antahkaranasya vrittayah. Now Kalidasa’s date has not been firmly fixed (first half of the 5th century A.D. according to some), but it is contended that it cannot be earlier than 150 B.C., as Agni Mitra, one of the heroes in a famous drama of Kalidasa, is ascribed to that date. So also, it cannot be later than the Mandasor Inscription of 450 A.D. So on the basis that Sankara and Kumarila were contemporaries and that Kumarila came after Kalidasa, we have to search for Sankara’s date between 150 B.C. and 450 A.D. Now to narrow down the gap still further, the list of spiritual preceptors that preceded Sankara is taken into consideration. Patanjali, Gaudapada, Govindapada and Sankara— form the accepted line of discipleship. Patanjali, Sri Ramesam contends, lived in the 2nd century B.C., a conclusion which, if accepted finally (?), gives much credence to his theory. Now, not less than a hundred years can be easily taken as the distance in time between Sankara and Patanjali in this line of succession, and thus we derive the time of Sankara as the 1st century B.C., which has the merit of being in agreement with the Kumarila-Sankara contemporaneity and the Kumarila-Kalidasa relationship. The 1st century hypothesis has also got the advantage of tallying with the Sringeri Math’s teacher-disciple list, according to which, as already stated, 12 B.C. is the date of Sankara’s demise. Sri Ramesam finds further confirmation for his theory in the existence of a temple on a Sankaracharya Hill in Kashmir attributed to Jaluka, a son of Asoka who became the ruler of Kashmir after Asoka’s demise, according to Rajaiarangini. Asoka passed away In 180 B.C. and it is very credible that Jaluka could have been in Kashmir when Sankara visited that region, provided Sankara’s life is fixed in the 1st century B.C. Further, Cunningham and General Cole are stated to assign the temple architecturally to the times of Jaluka…

Sri Ramesam also refutes the modern scholars’ view of Sankara’s date being 788-820 A.D. on the ground that this has arisen due to confusion between Adi-Sankara and Abhinava-Sankara (788-840 A.D.)… its credibility depends largely on the theory of 200 B.C. being the time of Patanjali and the acceptance of the Kumarila-Kalidasa relationship. If these are questioned, the whole theory falls. This is the case with most dates in Indian history, where the rule is to fix the date of one person or event on the basis of the date of another person or event, which itself is open to question….

Dr. A. G. Krishna Warrier, Professor of Sanskrit (Rtd) in the Kerala University, in his learned Introduction to his translation of Sankara’s Brahma-sutra-bhashya into Malayalam… states that the Buddhist author Kamalasila has pointed out that Sankara has quoted in his Brahma-sutra-bhashya (B. S. II. 2-28) the following passage from the Alambanapariksha by Dingnaga, the celebrated Buddhist savant: 'Yadantarjneyarupam tat bahiryadavabhasate’. Dingnaga’s date, which Dr. Warrier links with those of Vasubandhu (450 A.D.) and Bhartrhari, is fixed by him as about 450 A.D. But that is not all. The following verse of Dingnaga’s commentator Dharmakirti is quoted by Sankara in his work Upadesa-sahasri: Abhinnopi hi buddhydtma viparyasitadarsanaih grahyagrahaka-samvitti bhedavaniva laksyate (ch. 18, v. 142). This reference is from Dharmakirti’s Pramana-virtischhaya. Dr. Warrier points out that Dharmakirti is described as a ‘great Buddhist logician’ by the Chinese pilgrim-traveller, It-sing, who was in India in 690 A.D. The implication is that Dharmakirti must have lived in the first half of the 7th century or earlier, and that Sankara came after him. It means that Sankara’s date cannot be pushed back beyond the 5th century A.D., or even beyond the 7th century A.D., if the Upadesasahasri is accepted as a genuine work of Sankara. As in the case of most dates in Indian history, the credibility of the view, too, depends on the acceptance of the dates of Dingnaga and Dharmakirti as 5th century and 7th century respectively, and that Upadesasahasri is really a work of Sankara, as traditionally accepted. Fixing dates on the basis of other dates, which are themselves open to question, can yield only possibilities and not certainties.

Probable dates suggested by other scholars are also the 6th century and the 7th century A.D. Sankara refers in his writings to a king named Pumavarman who, according to Hsuan Tsang, ruled in 590 A.D. It is, therefore, contended that Sankara must have lived about that time or after. Next Telang points out how Sankara speaks of Pataliputra in his Sutra-bhashya (IV. ii. 5) and that this will warrant Sankara having lived about a century before 750 A.D., by which time Pataliputra had been eroded by the river and was non-existent. Such references to names of persons, cities, rivers, etc. in philosophical writings can also be explained as stock examples, as we use Aristotle or Achilles in logic, and need not necessarily have any historical significance. Dr. T. R. Chintamani maintains that Kumarila lived towards the latter half of the 7th century A.D. (itself a Controversial point) and Sankara, being a contemporary of his, must have lived about that time (655-684 A.D.). It is also pointed out by him that Vidyananda, the teacher of Jainasena, who was also the author of Jaina-harivamsa (783 A.D.), quotes a verse4 ["Atmapi sadidam brahma mohat parosyadu sitam; Brahmapi sa tathaivatma sadvitiyatayesate."] from the Brihadaranyaka-vartika of Sureswara, disciple of Sankara. This is impossible to conceive without granting that Sankara and Sureswara lived, about a hundred years earlier to Jainasena who lived about the second half of the 8th century A.D.

Thus vastly varied are the views about Sankara’s date, ranging from 509 B.C. to 788 A.D., i.e., more than a millennium and a half…

Under the circumstances, all these complicated discussions of Sankara’s date culminate only in a learned ignorance. We have to admit that we have no certain knowledge, and it is, therefore, wise not to be dogmatic but keep an open mind….

It is pointed out in the monograph of P. Rama Sastry on The Maths Founded by Sankara that this four-Math theory has been propounded first in Chidvilasa’s Sankara-vijaya which, along with some other Sankara-vijayas, is, according to T. S. Narayana Sastri, a recent production and of little authority. It finds no support in the other Vijayas of its kind and perhaps not even in the more ancient Sankara-vijayas. Of course this view cannot be verified now, as the most ancient of these Sankara-vijayas are not available now….

Nothing more precise than this can be said about the question as to which are the Maths originally founded by Sankaracharya, or even whether he founded any Math at all. Different sectaries having varying traditions can stick to them with justification, provided they do not become too cocksure and dogmatic and deny a similar right to others who differ from them…

it is interesting to read the following statement issued by Sri T. N. Ramachandran, Rtd. Joint Director-General of Archaeology of India…“At Kedamath, on the way to Badrinath, there is a monument associated with the great Adi-Sankaracharya which His Holiness Sri Sankaracharya of Dwaraka Pith visited some time ago and expressed a desire to renovate (the memorial). His Holiness issued instructions to scholars of all parts of our country to ascertain the place of the Samadhi of the great Adi- Sankaracharya. On this Sri Sampurnanand, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, and myself bestowed some thought.

“After having arrived at some conclusion on the point by mutual correspondence, we are of the opinion, that Kedamath cannot be said to be the Samadhisthan (the final resting place) of the great Acharya….

‘‘The Memorial at Kedamath should at any rate be kept intact, and it is the duty of all who profess any interest in the hoary Religion and Philosophy of our land to join hands in the sacred endeavour of renovating the Adi-Sankara Memorial at Kedarnath, as chalked out by Sri Sampurnanand, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, in his letter addressed to me…‘Dear Sri Ramachandra, Recently I had occasion to discuss the matter with the Sankaracharya of Dwaraka Pith also. In the first place the word ‘Samadhi’ is a misnomer in this connection. There is nothing to prove that Sri Sankaracharya died at this spot. All that tradition says is that he came to Kedarnath and, in modern phraseology, disappeared thereafter. So, what is "called Samadhi' is really not a Samadhi but a Memorial. I myself do not treat it as Samadhi and such proposals as I am considering are based on this information. What I propose is that instead of the wretched structure that passes as a Samadhi, a new Memorial should be built in memory of the great Acharya. It should not occupy the place of the present construction which is in danger of being overwhelmed by an avalanche any day. It should be built at a safer place somewhere near the temple. I am getting a design prepared by our State Architect. The Sankaracharya of Dwaraka Pith has given me his support in the matter’....”

This theory of Sankara having attained Siddhi (final end) at Kanchi is supported, according to T. S. Narayana Sastri in his book, The Age of Sankara, by the following texts: Brihat Sankara- vijaya, Vyasachala’s Sankara-vijaya and Anantanandagiri’s Sankara-vijaya, besides the Punyasloka Manjari, Jagat-guru-ratnamala and Jagat-guru-katha samgraha. On this it has to be remarked that from among the above-mentioned Sankara-vijayas one has only Anantanandagiri’s and Vyasachala’s works available for reference and corroboration. Sri T. S. Narayana Sastri, however, claims to possess some extracts of mutilated sections of the first of the texts mentioned, which is considered by some as the most ancient and authoritative text. But no one can be sure of, much less accept, the claims of these mutilated manuscripts….

The attainment of Siddhi at Kanchi is further corroborated by Sivarahasya, a voluminous text of the Siva cult dealing with all the devotees of Siva, which is also quoted in the Madras University edition of Anantanandagiri. It has, however, to be remarked that, as pointed out by T. S. Narayana Sastri (pp. 287 of his work The Age of Sankara), there are conflicting readings on this point in different manuscripts of the text of Sivarahasya. In one it is: misran tato lokam avapa saivam. In another it is: misran sa kancyam. In still another it is: Kancyam Sive! tava pure sa ca siddhim apa. Evidently texts have been manipulated by interested Pandits, creating a very confusing and suspicious situation….

In the edition of it, recently published by the University of Madras under the editorship of Dr. Veezhinathan, the birth of Sankara is thus described…

But the first ever published edition of this work gives an entirely different version….

Now, in Dr. Veezhinathan’s edition, the above text is given as a footnote….he refers to ten manuscripts (A.Mss.) as supporting his version. Probably many of these manuscripts of both groups may be copies only, and from the numbers, their authenticity cannot be ascertained. Besides, several of them are not complete also…The Editors of the 1868 edition, Navadweep Goswami and Jayanarayana Tarkapanchanana, have stated in their Preface that ‘their edition had been prepared in the light of three texts they could get—one in Nagari letters which was procured with great difficulty; another in Telugu characters procured with equal difficulty; and still another in Bengali alphabets made on the basis of the above texts’. There is no reason why this text should not be given at least an equal place of importance as the one edited by Dr. Veezhinathan. According to the text of the Calcutta edition, Anantanandagiri is giving the history, not of ‘Adi-Sankara who was born at Kaladi’, but of a Sankaracharya ‘who was born immaculately to Visishta of Chidambaram’, who continued to live at Chidambaram itself, took Sannyasa there, and who went on Dig-vijaya tours that are entirely different from the routes that Adi-Sankara is supposed to have taken in several of the other Vijayas. This Sankara is very largely concerned with reforming the various cults that prevailed, in the country and very little with philosophy. The controversy with Mandana, which is one of the most glorious episodes in Adi-Sankara’s life, finds a casual mention in the form of a synopsis. In this, as also in entering into Amaruka’s body and in the writing of the Bhashyas, the two Sankaracharyas are mixed up….There is every possibility that this Chidambaram Sankaracharya is the Abhinava-Sankara whom even modern scholars have mistakenly identified with Adi-Sankara and given 788 A.D. as his time. Besides, Anantanandagiri, the author, calls the hero of his work his Parama-guru (his teacher's teacher). This makes the matter all the more confusing. For, no one has recorded that Adi-Sankara or his disciples had a disciple called Anantanandagiri. Anandagiri (quite different from Anantanandagiri) was Sankara’s disciple, and the Prachina-Sankara-vijaya attributed to him (a book quite different from Anantanandagiri’s) is not available anywhere now….no final view is possible with the existing information. The best that can be said is that it is one of the traditions….

We have shown above the confusion prevailing about the place of Sankara’s demise. The same extends to most events of his life, especially about the places where they happened and about the routes he took in his travels….

the custom of all the Heads of Sankara Maths being called as Sankara-charyas, as if it were a title, and not an individual’s name, was the main cause of much of this confusion of biographical and literary details connected with Sankara. This confusion has got worse confounded by the interference with manuscript copies in the past by the adherents of particular Sankara Maths in order to enhance the prestige and supremacy of the particular institution that patronised them. As a result, we have today only a lot of traditions about Sankaracharya, and he is a foolhardy man, indeed, who dares to swear by any of these traditions as truly historical and the others as fabricated…

Rightly does Dr. Radhakrishna offer the tribute of the Indian mind to the personality of the great Acharya in the following most beautiful and effective words in his book on Indian Philosophy: “The life of Sankara makes a strong impression of contraries. He is a philosopher and a poet, a savant and a saint, a mystic and a religious reformer. Such diverse gifts did he possess that different images present themselves, if we try to recall his personality. One sees him in youth, on fire with intellectual ambition, a stiff and intrepid debator; another regards him as a shrewd political genius (rather a patriot) attempting to impress on the people a sense of unity; for a third, he is a calm philosopher engaged in the single effort to expose the contradictions of life and thought with an unmatched incisiveness; for a fourth, he is the mystic who declares that we are all greater than we know. There have been few minds more universal than his.”

-- Sankara-Dig-vijaya: The Traditional Life of Sri Sankaracharya, by Madhava-Vidyaranya, Translated by Swami Tapasyananda

Highlights:

The historical fame and cultural influence of Shankara may have grown centuries later after his death, particularly during the era of Muslim invasions and consequent devastation of India….

He established the importance of monastic life…

There are at least fourteen different known biographies of Adi Shankara's life….

These, as well as other biographical works on Shankara, were written many centuries to a thousand years after Shankara's death…the biographies are filled with legends and fiction, often mutually contradictory….

[O]ne of the most cited Shankara hagiographies, Anandagiri's, includes stories and legends about historically different people, but all bearing the same name of Sri Shankaracarya or also referred to as Shankara but likely meaning more ancient scholars with names such as Vidya-sankara, Sankara-misra and Sankara-nanda. Some biographies are probably forgeries by those who sought to create a historical basis for their rituals or theories.

Adi Shankara died in the thirty third year of his life…

The Sringeri records state that Shankara was born in the 14th year of the reign of "Vikramaditya", but it is unclear as to which king this name refers…

Several different dates have been proposed for Shankara:

• 509–477 BCE…
• 44–12 BCE…
• 6th century CE…
• c. 700 – c. 750 CE…
• 788–820 CE…
• 805–897 CE… it would not have been possible for him to have achieved all the works apportioned to him…

The biographies vary in their description of where he went, who he met and debated and many other details of his life…Different and widely inconsistent accounts of his life include diverse journeys, pilgrimages, public debates, installation of yantras and lingas, as well as the founding of monastic centers in north, east, west and south India…

Texts say that he was last seen by his disciples behind the Kedarnath temple, walking in the Himalayas until he was not traced…

[H]is doctrine, states Sengaku Mayeda, "has been the source from which the main currents of modern Indian thought are derived". Over 300 texts are attributed to his name, including commentaries (Bhāṣya), original philosophical expositions (Prakaraṇa grantha) and poetry (Stotra). However most of these are not authentic works of Shankara and are likely to be by his admirers or scholars whose name was also Shankaracharya…

Shankara only accorded a provisional validity to the knowledge gained by inquiry into the words of the Śruti (Vedas) and did not see the latter as the unique source (pramana) of Brahmajnana. The affirmations of the Śruti, it is argued, need to be verified and confirmed by the knowledge gained through direct experience (anubhava) and the authority of the Śruti, therefore, is only secondary…

Shankara maintained the need for objectivity in the process of gaining knowledge (vastutantra), and considered subjective opinions (purushatantra) and injunctions in Śruti (codanatantra) as secondary. Mayeda cites Shankara's explicit statements emphasizing epistemology (pramana-janya) in section 1.18.133 of Upadesasahasri and section 1.1.4 of Brahmasutra-bhasya. According to Michael Comans (aka Vasudevacharya), Shankara considered perception and inference as a primary most reliable epistemic means [Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemologists study the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge, epistemic justification, the rationality of belief, and various related issues.], and where these means to knowledge help one gain "what is beneficial and to avoid what is harmful", there is no need for or wisdom in referring to the scriptures….

Shankara…states that for proper understanding one must "accept only meanings that are compatible with all characteristics" and "exclude meanings that are incompatible with any"…

Shankara…discourages ritual worship such as oblations to Deva (God), because that assumes the Self within is different from the Brahman. The "doctrine of difference" is wrong, asserts Shankara, because, "he who knows the Brahman is one and he is another, does not know Brahman". However, Shankara also asserts that Self-knowledge is realized when one's mind is purified by an ethical life that observes Yamas such as Ahimsa (non-injury, non-violence to others in body, mind and thoughts) and Niyamas. Rituals and rites such as yajna (a fire ritual), asserts Shankara, can help draw and prepare the mind for the journey to Self-knowledge. He emphasizes the need for ethics such as Akrodha and Yamas during Brahmacharya, stating the lack of ethics as causes that prevent students from attaining knowledge….

[H]is Advaitin convictions with a monistic view of spirituality….

I am Consciousness, I am Bliss…
Without hate, without infatuation, without craving, without greed;
Neither arrogance, nor conceit, never jealous I am..
Neither mantra, nor rituals, neither pilgrimage, nor Vedas…
Without fear, without death, without discrimination, without caste;
Neither father, nor mother, never born I am;
Neither kith, nor kin, neither teacher, nor student am I…
Without form, without figure, without resemblance am I…

According to Shankara, the one unchanging entity (Brahman) alone is real, while changing entities do not have absolute existence…

His philosophical thesis was that jivanmukti is self-realization, the awareness of Oneness of Self and the Universal Spirit called Brahman…

The method of yoga, encouraged in Shankara's teachings notes Comans, includes withdrawal of mind from sense objects as in Patanjali's system, but it is not complete thought suppression, instead it is a "meditative exercise of withdrawal from the particular and identification with the universal, leading to contemplation of oneself as the most universal, namely, Consciousness"…

Sankara also emphasized the need for and the role of Guru (Acharya, teacher) for such knowledge.

Shankara's Vedanta shows similarities with Mahayana Buddhism; opponents have even accused Shankara of being a "crypto-Buddhist”…

Sankara recognizes the value of the law of contrariety and self-alienation from the standpoint of idealistic logic; and it has consequently been possible for him to integrate appearance with reality…

Shankara and his followers borrowed much of their dialectic form of criticism from the Buddhists. His Brahman was very much like the sunya of Nagarjuna [...] The debts of Shankara to the self-luminosity of the Vijnanavada Buddhism can hardly be overestimated. There seems to be much truth in the accusations against Shankara by Vijnana Bhiksu and others that he was a hidden Buddhist himself. I am led to think that Shankara's philosophy is largely a compound of Vijnanavada and Sunyavada Buddhism with the Upanisad notion of the permanence of self superadded….

He travelled all over India to help restore the study of the Vedas….

He introduced the Pañcāyatana form of worship, the simultaneous worship of five deities – Ganesha, Surya, Vishnu, Shiva and Devi. Shankara explained that all deities were but different forms of the one Brahman, the invisible Supreme Being….

Hajime Nakamura states that the early Vedanta scholars were from the upper classes of society, well-educated in traditional culture. They formed a social elite, "sharply distinguished from the general practitioners and theologians of Hinduism." Their teachings were "transmitted among a small number of selected intellectuals". Works of the early Vedanta schools do not contain references to Vishnu or Shiva….

The Buddhist scholar Richard E. King states, “Although it is common to find Western scholars and Hindus arguing that Sankaracarya was the most influential and important figure in the history of Hindu intellectual thought, this does not seem to be justified by the historical evidence.”…

Other scholars state that the historical records for this period are unclear, and little reliable information is known about the various contemporaries and disciples of Shankara…

Several scholars suggest that the historical fame and cultural influence of Shankara grew centuries later, particularly during the era of Muslim invasions and consequent devastation of India. Many of Shankara's biographies were created and published in and after 14th century…

[Note: 0 Reference to "Prajna"; 1 Reference to "Consciousness" in Rig Veda, translated by Ralph T.H. Griffith: "The Swift Ones favour him who purifieth this: with consciousness they stand upon the height of heaven."]
[Note: 0 Reference to "I am Brahman" in The Texts of the White Yajurveda, translated by Ralph T.H. Griffith
4 References to "I am": (1) I am in heaven above; (2) I am what Gods in secret hold the highest; (3) I am the Household priest; (4) I am the triple light, the region's meter.]
[Note: 0 Reference to "I am Brahman" in The Veda of the Black Yajus, translated by Arthur Berriedale Keith
7 References to "I am": (1) As wife with my husband I am united; (2) What time thou didst declare, 'I am Cipivista'?; (3) Favour those in the region where I am; (4) Whose domestic priest I am; (5) 'I am he who smites in the stronghold; (6) 'I am he who brings from the stronghold'; (7) 'I am the friend of all'.]
[Note: 0 References to "Tatt" or "That thou art" in Hymns of the Samaveda, translated by Ralph T.H. Griffith]
[Note: 0 References to "Ayamatma" or "Atman" in The Hymns of the Artharvaveda, translated by Ralph T.H. Griffith].

-- Adi Shankara, by Wikipedia

[admin]

Part 2 of 3


Adi Shankara
Painting of Adi Shankara, exponent of Advaita Vedanta with his disciples by Raja Ravi Varma
Personal
Born: Shankara, c. 700 CE (disputed)[1], Kalady, Kongu Chera dynasty (present-day Kochi, India)
Died: c. 750 CE (disputed)[1], Kedarnath, Gurjara-Pratihara dynasty (present-day Uttarakhand, India)
Religion: Hinduism
Known for: Expounded Advaita Vedanta
Founder of: Dashanami Sampradaya
Philosophy: Advaita Vedanta
Religious career
Guru: Govinda Bhagavatpada
Honors: Jagadguru
Kanchi Kamakoti Pithadhipati
Preceded by: Created
Succeeded by: Suresvaracharya

Adi Shankaracharya (Sanskrit: आदि शङ्कराचार्यः [aːdɪ ɕɐⁿkɐɽɑːcɑːrjə])[note 1] was an Indian philosopher and theologian[2] who consolidated the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta.[3][4][note 2] Although he is credited by some with unifying and establishing the main currents of thought in Hinduism,[6][7][8] his influence on Hindu intellectual thought has been questioned; until Vācaspati Miśra (tenth century CE), his works may have been overshadowed by his older contemporary, Maṇḍana Miśra.[9][10][11] The historical fame and cultural influence of Shankara may have grown centuries later after his death, particularly during the era of Muslim invasions and consequent devastation of India.[12][13][14]

His works in Sanskrit discuss the unity of the Ātman and Nirguna Brahman "brahman without attributes".[15] He wrote copious commentaries on the Vedic canon (Brahma Sutras, Principal Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita) in support of his thesis.[16] His works elaborate on ideas found in the Upanishads. Shankara's publications criticised the ritually-oriented Mīmāṃsā school of Hinduism.[17] He also explained the key difference between Hinduism and Buddhism, stating that Hinduism asserts "Ātman (Soul, Self) exists", while Buddhism asserts that there is "no Soul, no Self".[18][19][20]

Gobineau blamed the final degeneration of the Indian Aryan on Buddhism, which turned the white race away from its correct path by religiously sanctioning racial mixing. The destructive influence of Buddhism's "rationalism" was long-lasting, dating from the fifth to the fourteenth centuries. By the time Buddhism had taken its toll, foreign elements (the Moslems, Turks, Mongols, Tartars, Afghans, Arabs, Portuguese, English, and French) stepped in to finish the job. Brahmin Aryanism had degenerated completely. The great men had disappeared. Absurd superstition had taken over. Theological idiocies originating in black segments of society wiped out antique philosophy. One could no longer distinguish the Aryan from low-caste Negro and yellow types. Confronted with the superior force of white nations coming from Western Europe, this degenerated race did not stand a chance (Gobineau 1983: 551). Gobineau presented India's racial situation as a tremendous object lesson. Its devotion to religious, social, and political ideals, even after being beaten by pillage, massacre, and misery, elicited his praise. Nevertheless, he acknowledged that its total racial debasement was inevitable and should serve as a warning to all nations (Gobineau 1983: 557)...

In response to the question of what one should revive, Ranade followed the inspiration of a long tradition of indiginous reformers. In particular, he emulated the work of the universally respected Maratha saints. He recognized in their efforts an attempt to modify caste exclusion, endow the shudra with spiritual power, and raise the status of women. Since Ranade viewed the Aryan past as a time of enjoyment in which woman played a necessary part, women's rights became for him emblematic of the good old times. As a consequence, Ranade's reform became intimately bound up with the status of women in Hindu society. Activities of reform included female education, widow remarriage, caste intermarriage, and infant marriage.

Ranade saw the rise of female rights in Aryan India and their subsequent fall as a history much like the rise and fall of institutions among the Roman Aryans. In early Vedic times, women were devoid of rights. Their lot gradually improved as Vedic texts show: there grew a chivalrous regard for women and concern for their freedom and comforts. Aryan women ultimately were allowed to choose their marriage partners. The Vedas speak of women poets, philosophers, and rishis (Ranade 1902: 97). Vedic texts such as the Grhya Sutras recognized female liberty. According to Ranade, the Aryan society articulated in the Vedas celebrated monogamy, intercaste marriage, and non-infant marriages.

This idyllic Aryan past, however, gave way to a philosophy that devalued earthly existence, with women appearing as just one of the many snares of maya. As a consequence, the status of women diminished. Aryan society in general lost its vigor. Non-Aryan barbarians who had earlier been driven to the hills reemerged. They easily overran the weakened and demoralized Aryans. The victors' morality, decidedly of a lower type, asserted itself. The non-Aryan conquerors circumscribed female liberty and lowered the dignity of women in social and family arrangements (Ranade 1902: 29). The subsequent rise of other non-Aryan tribes to power and Buddhism's "horror of female society" further eroded Aryan cultural values (Ranade 1902: 32) on-Aryan races from central Asia such as the barbarian Scythians and Mongolians then invaded. They too conquered India and drastically altered what remained of its Aryan institutions and usages. All these "lower civilizations" further curtailed women's rights. Islam, however, dealt the final blow: The Moslems had an especially low ideal of family life and respect for the female sex. Women now became a symbol of corruption and vice.

Chamberlain, whose interest in India was whetted by the study of Sanskrit and contact with Schopenhauer's thought, recognized the important philosophical and religious influence of the Vedas and the Upanishads on world civilization. In and of itself, India provided an important model of a civilized society. As a point of comparison, Vedic mythology supplied German philology with evidence that the ancient Teutons (the Aryans) possessed holy books that were finer and nobler than the Old Testament (Chamberlain 1968: 1.32, see also 1.lv). It was merely a question of recognizing the divine understanding of the Aryans and acknowledging Germany's racial and spiritual affinity with them. Chamberlain felt that recognition of this parenty should be achieved without resorting to the "pseudo-Buddhistical sport of half-educated idlers" (Chamberlain 1968: l.liv)...

This racialist argument foregrounds the larger political concern of validating caste distinctions. Rather than evolving toward a civilized mode of existence, non-Aryans are presented as "schemers" trying to live as did the Aryans, coopting their lifestyle by entering schools and colleges, wearing the sacred thread, performing ceremonies, and enjoying equal rights in religion and politics (Vivekananda 3:520). Too many different uncivilized and uncultured races tried to flock to the Aryan fold with their superstitions and hideous forms of worship. While appearing civilized, they clearly were not. These barbarians wreaked havoc by introducing "mysterious rites and ceremonies" to the old faith. They destroyed Aryan vigor and chaste habits. They defiled India with their superstitions (Vivekananda 3:263). Their rank imitation of the Aryan lifestyle initiated a process of decay. The central Aryan core, forced to succumb to the allurements of sensual forms of worship prevalent among these various low races, lost its integrity. In the past, when contact with "outcastes" had threatened to "destroy Aryan civilization," the Aryans had struck out in a natural reaction of self-preservation, as when they destroyed Buddhism (Vivekananda 6:164). But, the successful seduction of the Aryans by sensualists resulted in blind allegiance to usages "repugnant to the spirit of the Sastras" and ultimately destroyed the Aryan race (Vivekananda 6:182). Aryavarta became a deep and vast whirlpool of the most vicious, most horrible, and most abominable customs. It lost all internal strength and became the weakest of the weak (Vivekananda 4:445)....

Buddha was for Chamberlain the antithesis to Christ. He represented the senile decay of a culture which had reached the limits of its possibilities, where everything was directed to thought, where a religious symbolism had gone amok, and where philosophy resulted in the deep silence of the primeval forest (Chamberlain 1968: 1.184-85)...

Rosenberg also blamed Buddhism's passivity and call to alleviate suffering for the deteriorization of Aryan values...

Ambedkar maintained that the objects of brahmin wrath were actually Buddhists who did not revere or employ them as priests (Ambedkar 1990: 7.315). The brahmins retaliated with such tremendous slander that these Buddhists eventually became regarded as Untouchable. The roots of untouchability are, therefore, to be found in brahmins' hatred and contempt for Buddhism as an assault upon their hegemony (Ambedkar 1990: 7.317). Brahmins hated the Buddhists because they made them look bad. Compared with Buddhist moderation, the brahmins' love of beef concealed in the elaborate pomp of the sacrifice (Ambedkar 1990: 7.334) undermined public esteem. Their constant slaughter of animals produced revulsion for Brahmanism (Ambedkar 1990: 7.346). Realizing how low their stock had fallen, the brahmins sought to recover the ground they had lost to Buddhism. They became vegetarian and made the cow sacred. Since the Buddhists remained meat eaters, they were consequently viewed as sacrilegious (7.350). The brahmins were thus able to marginalize Buddhists and gain ascendancy over them. Ultimately, the brahmins destroyed the Buddhists. They then conspired and succeeded in subjugating their descendants.

-- Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority through Myths of Identity, by Dorothy M. Figueira

Shankara travelled across the Indian subcontinent to propagate his philosophy through discourses and debates with other thinkers. He established the importance of monastic life as sanctioned in the Upanishads and Brahma Sutra, in a time when the Mīmāṃsā school established strict ritualism and ridiculed monasticism. He is reputed to have founded four mathas ("monasteries"), which helped in the historical development, revival and spread of Advaita Vedanta of which he is known as the greatest revivalist.[21] Adi Shankara is believed to be the organiser of the Dashanami monastic order and unified the Shanmata tradition of worship.

Biography

Sources

There are at least fourteen different known biographies of Adi Shankara's life.[22] Many of these are called the Śankara Vijaya, while some are called Guruvijaya, Sankarabhyudaya and Shankaracaryacarita. Of these, the Brhat-Sankara-Vijaya by Citsukha [Citsukha lived in the early part of the thirteenth century.] is the oldest hagiography but only available in excerpts, while Sankaradigvijaya by Vidyaranya and Sankaravijaya by Anandagiri are the most cited.[22][23] Other significant biographies are the Mādhavīya Śaṅkara Vijayaṃ (of Mādhava, c. 14th century), the Cidvilāsīya Śaṅkara Vijayaṃ (of Cidvilāsa, c. between the 15th and 17th centuries), and the Keraļīya Śaṅkara Vijayaṃ (of the Kerala region, extant from c. the 17th century).[24][25] These, as well as other biographical works on Shankara, were written many centuries to a thousand years after Shankara's death,[26] in Sanskrit and non-Sanskrit languages, and the biographies are filled with legends and fiction, often mutually contradictory.[22][27]

Scholars note that one of the most cited Shankara hagiographies, Anandagiri's, includes stories and legends about historically different people, but all bearing the same name of Sri Shankaracarya or also referred to as Shankara but likely meaning more ancient scholars with names such as Vidya-sankara, Sankara-misra and Sankara-nanda.[23] Some biographies are probably forgeries by those who sought to create a historical basis for their rituals or theories.[23][26]

Adi Shankara died in the thirty third year of his life,[28] and reliable information on his actual life is scanty.[23]

Jesus was approximately 33 years old when he was crucified.

-- The Bible, by biblestudytools.com

Birth-dates

The Sringeri records state that Shankara was born in the 14th year of the reign of "Vikramaditya", but it is unclear as to which king this name refers.[29] Though some researchers identify the name with Chandragupta II (4th century CE), modern scholarship accepts the Vikramaditya as being from the Chalukya dynasty of Badami, most likely Vikramaditya II (733–746 CE),[29]

Several different dates have been proposed for Shankara:[28]

• 509–477 BCE: This dating, is based on records of the heads of the Shankara's cardinal institutions Maṭhas at Dvaraka Pitha, the Govardhana matha and Badri and the Kanchi Peetham. According to their records, these monasteries were founded in Kali 2593 (509 BCE) by a person named Adi Shankara.[30] The successive heads of the Kanchi and all other major Hindu Advaita tradition monasteries have been called Shankaracharya leading to some confusion, discrepancies and scholarly disputes. The chronology stated in Kanchi matha texts recognizes five major Shankaras: Adi, Kripa, Ujjvala, Muka and Abhinava. According to the Kanchi matha tradition, it is "Abhinava Shankara" that western scholarship recognizes as the Advaita scholar Shankara, while the monastery continues to recognize its 509 BCE chronology.[30][31] The exact dates of birth of Adi Shankaracharya believed by four monasteries are Dwaraka at 491 B.C., Jyotirmath at 485 B.C., Puri at 484 B.C. and Sringeri at 483 B.C.[32] Also, as per astronomical details given in books Shankara Satpatha, Shankara Vijaya, Brihat Shakara Vijaya and Prachina Shankara Vijaya, it is believed that Shankaracharya was born in 509 B.C.[citation needed] The Kashmiri king named Gopaditya built temples of Jyeteshwara and Shankaracharya, thus implying that the Shankaracharya must have visited Kashmir before his birth.[32]
• 44–12 BCE: the commentator Anandagiri believed he was born at Chidambaram in 44 BCE and died in 12 BCE.[5]
• 6th century CE: Telang placed him in this century. Sir R.G. Bhandarkar believed he was born in 680 CE.[5]
• c. 700 – c. 750 CE: Late 20th-century and early 21st-century scholarship tends to place Shankara's life of 32 years in the first half of the 8th century.[33][34] According to the Indologist and Asian Religions scholar John Koller, there is considerable controversy regarding the dates of Shankara – widely regarded as one of India's greatest thinkers, and "the best recent scholarship argues that he was born in 700 and died in 750 CE".[1]
• 788–820 CE: This was proposed by early 20th scholars and was customarily accepted by scholars such as Max Müller, Macdonnel, Pathok, Deussen and Radhakrishna.[5][35][36] The date 788–820 is also among those considered acceptable by Swami Tapasyananda, though he raises a number of questions.[37] Though the 788–820 CE dates are widespread in 20th-century publications, recent scholarship has questioned the 788–820 CE dates.[33]
• 805–897 CE: Venkiteswara not only places Shankara later than most, but also had the opinion that it would not have been possible for him to have achieved all the works apportioned to him, and has him live ninety two years.[5]

The popularly-accepted dating places Shankara to be a scholar from the first half of the 8th century CE.[4][22]

Life

Shankara was born in the southern Indian state of Kerala, according to the oldest biographies, in a village named Kaladi[38][22] sometimes spelled as Kalati or Karati.[39][40] He was born to Nambudiri Brahmin parents.[41][42] His parents were an aged, childless, couple who led a devout life of service to the poor. They named their child Shankara, meaning "giver of prosperity".[43] His father died while Shankara was very young.[22] Shankara's upanayanam, the initiation into student-life, had to be delayed due to the death of his father, and was then performed by his mother.[44]

Shankara's hagiography describe him as someone who was attracted to the life of Sannyasa (hermit) from early childhood. His mother disapproved. A story, found in all hagiographies, describe Shankara at age eight going to a river with his mother, Sivataraka, to bathe, and where he is caught by a crocodile.[45] Shankara called out to his mother to give him permission to become a Sannyasin or else the crocodile will kill him. The mother agrees, Shankara is freed and leaves his home for education. He reaches a Saivite sanctuary along a river in a north-central state of India, and becomes the disciple of a teacher named Govinda Bhagavatpada.[45][46] The stories in various hagiographies diverge in details about the first meeting between Shankara and his Guru, where they met, as well as what happened later.[45] Several texts suggest Shankara schooling with Govindapada happened along the river Narmada in Omkareshwar, a few place it along river Ganges in Kashi (Varanasi) as well as Badari (Badrinath in the Himalayas).[46]

The biographies vary in their description of where he went, who he met and debated and many other details of his life. Most mention Shankara studying the Vedas, Upanishads and Brahmasutra with Govindapada, and Shankara authoring several key works in his youth, while he was studying with his teacher.[47] It is with his teacher Govinda, that Shankara studied Gaudapadiya Karika, as Govinda was himself taught by Gaudapada.[22] Most also mention a meeting with scholars of the Mimamsa school of Hinduism namely Kumarila and Prabhakara, as well as Mandana and various Buddhists, in Shastrarth (an Indian tradition of public philosophical debates attended by large number of people, sometimes with royalty).[46] Thereafter, the biographies about Shankara vary significantly. Different and widely inconsistent accounts of his life include diverse journeys, pilgrimages, public debates, installation of yantras and lingas, as well as the founding of monastic centers in north, east, west and south India.[23][46]

Philosophical tour and disciples

While the details and chronology vary, most biographies mention that Shankara traveled widely within India, Gujarat to Bengal, and participating in public philosophical debates with different orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy, as well as heterodox traditions such as Buddhists, Jains, Arhatas, Saugatas, and Carvakas.[48] During his tours, he is credited with starting several Matha (monasteries), however this is uncertain.[48] Ten monastic orders in different parts of India are generally attributed to Shankara's travel-inspired Sannyasin schools, each with Advaita notions, of which four have continued in his tradition: Bharati (Sringeri), Sarasvati (Kanchi), Tirtha and Asramin (Dvaraka).[49] Other monasteries that record Shankara's visit include Giri, Puri, Vana, Aranya, Parvata and Sagara –- all names traceable to Ashrama system in Hinduism and Vedic literature.[49]

Shankara had a number of disciple scholars during his travels, including Padmapadacharya (also called Sanandana, associated with the text Atma-bodha), Sureśvara, Totakacharya, Hastamalakacharya, Citsukha, Prthividhara, Cidvilasayati, Bodhendra, Brahmendra, Sadananda and others, who authored their own literature on Shankara and Advaita Vedanta.[48][50]

Death

Adi Sankara is believed to have died aged 32, at Kedarnath in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, a Hindu pilgrimage site in the Himalayas.[49][51] Texts say that he was last seen by his disciples behind the Kedarnath temple, walking in the Himalayas until he was not traced. Some texts locate his death in alternate locations such as Kanchipuram (Tamil Nadu) and somewhere in the state of Kerala.[46]

Works

Further information: Adi Shankara bibliography

Adi Shankara's works are the foundation of Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism, and his doctrine, states Sengaku Mayeda, "has been the source from which the main currents of modern Indian thought are derived".[51] Over 300 texts are attributed to his name, including commentaries (Bhāṣya), original philosophical expositions (Prakaraṇa grantha) and poetry (Stotra).[51][52] However most of these are not authentic works of Shankara and are likely to be by his admirers or scholars whose name was also Shankaracharya.[53][54] Piantelli has published a complete list of works attributed to Adi Sankara, along with issues of authenticity for most.[55]

Authentic works

Shankara is most known for his systematic reviews and commentaries (Bhasyas) on ancient Indian texts. Shankara's masterpiece of commentary is the Brahmasutrabhasya (literally, commentary on Brahma Sutra), a fundamental text of the Vedanta school of Hinduism.[51]

His commentaries on ten Mukhya (principal) Upanishads are also considered authentic by scholars,[51][53] and these are: Bhasya on the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, the Chandogya Upanishad, the Aitareya Upanishad, the Taittiriya Upanishad, the Kena Upanishad,[56] the Isha Upanishad, the Katha Upanishad, the Mundaka Upanishad, the Prashna Upanishad, and the Mandukya Upanishad.[57][58] Of these, the commentary on Mandukya, is actually a commentary on Madukya-Karikas by Gaudapada.[58]

Other authentic works of Shankara include commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita (part of his Prasthana Trayi Bhasya).[59] His Vivarana (tertiary notes) on the commentary by Vedavyasa on Yogasutras as well as those on Apastamba Dharma-sũtras (Adhyatama-patala-bhasya) are accepted by scholars as authentic works of Shankara.[57][60] Among the Stotra (poetic works), the Daksinamurti Stotra, the Bhajagovinda Stotra, the Sivanandalahari, the Carpata-panjarika, the Visnu-satpadi, the Harimide, the Dasa-shloki, and the Krishna-staka are likely to be authentic.[57][61]

Shankara also authored Upadesasahasri, his most important original philosophical work.[60][62] Of other original Prakaranas (प्रकरण, monographs, treatise), seventy six works are attributed to Shankara. Modern era Indian scholars such as Belvalkar as well as Upadhyaya accept five and thirty nine works respectively as authentic.[63]

Shankara's stotras considered authentic include those dedicated to Krishna (Vaishnavism) and one to Shiva (Shaivism) – often considered two different sects within Hinduism. Scholars suggest that these stotra are not sectarian, but essentially Advaitic and reach for a unified universal view of Vedanta.[61]

Shankara's commentary on the Brahma Sutras is the oldest surviving. However, in that commentary, he mentions older commentaries like those of Dravida, Bhartrprapancha and others which are either lost or yet to be found.[64]

Works of doubtful authenticity or not authentic

Commentaries on Nrisimha-Purvatatapaniya and Shveshvatara Upanishads are attributed to Shankara, but their authenticity is highly doubtful.[53][58][65] Similarly, commentaries on several early and later Upanishads attributed to Shankara are rejected by scholars[66] to be his works, and are likely works of later scholars; these include: Kaushitaki Upanishad, Maitri Upanishad, Kaivalya Upanishad, Paramahamsa Upanishad, Sakatayana Upanishad, Mandala Brahmana Upanishad, Maha Narayana Upanishad, Gopalatapaniya Upanishad. However, in Brahmasutra-Bhasya, Shankara cites some of these Upanishads as he develops his arguments, but the historical notes left by his companions and disciples, along with major differences in style and the content of the commentaries on later Upanishad have led scholars to conclude that the commentaries on later Upanishads were not Shankara's work.[58]

The authenticity of Shankara being the author of Vivekacūḍāmaṇi[67] has been questioned,[68][69] though it is "so closely interwoven into the spiritual heritage of Shankara that any analysis of his perspective which fails to consider [this work] would be incomplete."[69][note 3] According to Grimes, "modern scholars tend to reject its authenticity as a work by Shankara," while "traditionalists tend to accept it."[70] Nevertheless, does Grimes argue that "there is still a likelihood that Śaṅkara is the author of the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi," [70] noting that "it differs in certain respects from his other works in that it addresses itself to a different audience and has a different emphasis and purpose."[71]

The Aparokshanubhuti and Atma bodha are also attributed to Shankara, as his original philosophical treatises, but this is doubtful. Paul Hacker has also expressed some reservations that the compendium Sarva-darsana-siddhanta Sangraha was completely authored by Shankara, because of difference in style and thematic inconsistencies in parts.[66] Similarly, Gayatri-bhasya is doubtful to be Shankara's work.[58] Other commentaries that are highly unlikely to be Shankara's work include those on Uttaragita, Siva-gita, Brahma-gita, Lalita-shasranama, Suta-samhita and Sandhya-bhasya. The commentary on the Tantric work Lalita-trisati-bhasya attributed to Shankara is also unauthentic.[58]

Shankara is widely credited with commentaries on other scriptural works, such as the Vishnu sahasranāma and the Sānatsujātiya,[72] but both these are considered apocryphal by scholars who have expressed doubts.[58] Hastamalakiya-bhasya is also widely believed in India to be Shankara's work and it is included in Samata-edition of Shankara's works, but some scholars consider it to be the work of Shankara's student.[58]

Themes

Using ideas in ancient Indian texts, Shankara systematized the foundation for Advaita Vedanta in 8th century CE, one of the six orthodox schools of Hinduism founded many centuries earlier by Badarayana.[62] His thematic focus extended beyond metaphysics and soteriology, and he laid a strong emphasis on Pramanas, that is epistemology or "means to gain knowledge, reasoning methods that empower one to gain reliable knowledge". Anantanand Rambachan, for example, summarizes the widely held view on one aspect of Shankara's epistemology before critiquing it as follows,

According to these [widely represented contemporary] studies, Shankara only accorded a provisional validity to the knowledge gained by inquiry into the words of the Śruti (Vedas) and did not see the latter as the unique source (pramana) of Brahmajnana. The affirmations of the Śruti, it is argued, need to be verified and confirmed by the knowledge gained through direct experience (anubhava) and the authority of the Śruti, therefore, is only secondary.

— Anantanand Rambachan[59]

Sengaku Mayeda concurs, adding Shankara maintained the need for objectivity in the process of gaining knowledge (vastutantra), and considered subjective opinions (purushatantra) and injunctions in Śruti (codanatantra) as secondary. Mayeda cites Shankara's explicit statements emphasizing epistemology (pramana-janya) in section 1.18.133 of Upadesasahasri[73] and section 1.1.4 of Brahmasutra-bhasya.[74][75] According to Michael Comans (aka Vasudevacharya), Shankara considered perception and inference as a primary most reliable epistemic means [Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemologists study the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge, epistemic justification, the rationality of belief, and various related issues.], and where these means to knowledge help one gain "what is beneficial and to avoid what is harmful", there is no need for or wisdom in referring to the scriptures.[76] In certain matters related to metaphysics and ethics, says Shankara, the testimony and wisdom in scriptures such as the Vedas and the Upanishads become important.[77]

Shankara cautioned against cherrypicking a phrase or verse out of context from Vedic literature, and remarks in the opening chapter of his Brahmasutra-Bhasya that the Anvaya (theme or purport) of any treatise can only be correctly understood if one attends to the Samanvayat Tatparya Linga, that is six characteristics of the text under consideration: (1) the common in Upakrama (introductory statement) and Upasamhara (conclusions); (2) Abhyasa (message repeated); (3) Apurvata (unique proposition or novelty); (4) Phala (fruit or result derived); (5) Arthavada (explained meaning, praised point) and (6) Yukti (verifiable reasoning).[78][79] While this methodology has roots in the theoretical works of Nyaya school of Hinduism, Shankara consolidated and applied it with his unique exegetical method called Anvaya-Vyatireka, which states that for proper understanding one must "accept only meanings that are compatible with all characteristics" and "exclude meanings that are incompatible with any".[80][81]

Hacker and Phillips note that this insight into rules of reasoning and hierarchical emphasis on epistemic steps is "doubtlessly the suggestion" of Shankara in Brahma-sutra, an insight that flowers in the works of his companion and disciple Padmapada.[82] Merrell-Wolff states that Shankara accepts Vedas and Upanishads as a source of knowledge as he develops his philosophical theses, yet he never rests his case on the ancient texts, rather proves each thesis, point by point using pramanas (epistemology), reason and experience.[83][84]

Shankara, in his text Upadesasahasri, discourages ritual worship such as oblations to Deva (God), because that assumes the Self within is different from the Brahman.[85] The "doctrine of difference" is wrong, asserts Shankara, because, "he who knows the Brahman is one and he is another, does not know Brahman".[86][87] However, Shankara also asserts that Self-knowledge is realized when one's mind is purified by an ethical life that observes Yamas such as Ahimsa (non-injury, non-violence to others in body, mind and thoughts) and Niyamas. Rituals and rites such as yajna (a fire ritual), asserts Shankara, can help draw and prepare the mind for the journey to Self-knowledge.[88] He emphasizes the need for ethics such as Akrodha and Yamas during Brahmacharya, stating the lack of ethics as causes that prevent students from attaining knowledge.[88][89]

Shankara has been described as influenced by Shaivism and Shaktism. However, his works and philosophy suggest greater overlap with Vaishnavism, influence of Yoga school of Hinduism, but most distinctly his Advaitin convictions with a monistic view of spirituality.[22][62][90]

Philosophy and practice

Atma Shatkam (The song of the Self):

I am Consciousness, I am Bliss, I am Shiva, I am Shiva.[note 4]

Without hate, without infatuation, without craving, without greed;
Neither arrogance, nor conceit, never jealous I am;
Neither dharma, nor artha, neither kama, nor moksha am I;
I am Consciousness, I am Bliss, I am Shiva, I am Shiva.

Without sins, without merits, without elation, without sorrow;
Neither mantra, nor rituals, neither pilgrimage, nor Vedas;
Neither the experiencer, nor experienced, nor the experience am I,
I am Consciousness, I am Bliss, I am Shiva, I am Shiva.

Without fear, without death, without discrimination, without caste;
Neither father, nor mother, never born I am;
Neither kith, nor kin, neither teacher, nor student am I;
I am Consciousness, I am Bliss, I am Shiva, I am Shiva.

Without form, without figure, without resemblance am I;
Vitality of all senses, in everything I am;
Neither attached, nor released am I;
I am Consciousness, I am Bliss, I am Shiva, I am Shiva.
—Adi Shankara, Nirvana Shatakam, Hymns 3–6[92]

HYMN XII: A prayer for vengeance on a malicious rival worshipper

1 The spacious Firmament, and Earth and Heaven, the Field's
Queen, and the wonderful Wide-Strider,
Yea, the broad middle air which Vāta guardeth, may these now
burn with heat while I am burning.
2 Listen to this, ye Gods who merit worship. Hymns here are sung
for me by Bharadvāja.
Bound in the noose may he be doomed to trouble whoever mars
this that our mind hath purposed.
3 Hear this my call, O Indra, Soma-drinker, as with a burning
heart I oft invoke thee.
I smite, as 'twere a tree felled with a hatchet, the man who
marreth this my plan and purpose.
4 Together with thrice-eighty Sāma-singers, Angirases, and Vasus,
and Ādityas,
May the felicity of the Fathers guard us. I seize that man with
fire that Gods have kindled.
5 O Heaven and Earth, regard me with your favour, and, all ye
Gods, stand on my side and help me.
Angirases, Fathers worthy of the Soma! woe fall on him who,
caused the hateful outrage!
6 Whoever either scorns us, O ye Maruts, or blames devotion
which we now are paying.
Let his own wicked deeds be fires to burn him. May Heaven
consume the man who hates devotion.
7 Thy sevenfold vital breath, thine eight marrows I rend away
with prayer.
With Agni as thine envoy, go, prepared, to Yama's dwelling
place.
8 In Jātavedas kindled flame I set the place assigned to thee.
Let fire consume thy body, and thy voice go to the general
breath.

-- The Hymns of the Atharvaveda, translated by Ralph T.H. Griffith

Knowledge of Brahman

Shankara systematised the works of preceding philosophers.[93] His system marks a turn from realism to idealism.[94][95] His Advaita ("non-dualism") interpretation of the sruti postulates the identity of the Self (Ātman) and the Whole (Brahman[note 5]). According to Shankara, the one unchanging entity (Brahman) alone is real, while changing entities do not have absolute existence. The key source texts for this interpretation, as for all schools of Vedānta, are the Prasthanatrayi–the canonical texts consisting of the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the Brahma Sutras.

Practice

Advaita Vedanta is based on śāstra ("scriptures"), yukti ("reason") and anubhava ("experiential knowledge"), and aided by karmas ("spiritual practices").[96] Starting from childhood, when learning has to start, the philosophy has to be a way of life. Shankara's primary objective was to understand and explain how moksha [release from the cycle of rebirth impelled by the law of karma.] is achievable in this life, what it is means to be liberated, free and a Jivanmukta.[62] His philosophical thesis was that jivanmukti is self-realization, the awareness of Oneness of Self and the Universal Spirit called Brahman.[62]

HYMN XVI: A Rishi's morning prayer
1 Agni at dawn, and Indra we invoke at dawn, and Varuna and
Mitra, and the Asvins twain:
Bhaga at dawn, Pūshan and Brāhmanaspati, Soma at dawn, and
Rudra we invoke at dawn.
2 We all strong Bhaga, conqueror in the morning, the son of
Aditi, the great Disposer,
Whom each who deems himself poor, strong and mighty, a king,
addresses thus, Grant thou my portion!
3 Bhaga, our guide, Bhaga whose gifts are faithful, favour this
hymn and give us wealth, O Bhaga.
Bhaga, augment our store of kine and horses. Bhaga, may we be
rich in men and heroes.
4 So may felicity be ours at present, and when the Sun advances,
and at noontide;
And may we still, O Bounteous One, at sunset be happy in the
Gods' protecting favour.
5 May Bhaga verily be bliss-bestower, and through him, Gods!
may happiness attend us.
As such with all my might I call and call thee: as such be thou
our leader here, O Bhaga.
6 To this our sacrifice may the Dawns incline them, and come to
the pure place like Dadhikrāvan.
As strong steeds draw a chariot may they bring me hitherward
Bhaga who discovers treasure.
7 May the kind Mornings dawn on us for ever with, wealth of
kine, of horses, and of heroes.
Streaming with all abundance, pouring fatness,
Do ye preserve us evermore with blessings!

-- The Hymns of the Atharvaveda, translated by Ralph T.H. Griffith

Shankara considered the purity and steadiness of mind achieved in Yoga as an aid to gaining moksha knowledge, but such yogic state of mind cannot in itself give rise to such knowledge.[97] To Shankara, that knowledge of Brahman springs only from inquiry into the teachings of the Upanishads.[98] The method of yoga, encouraged in Shankara's teachings notes Comans, includes withdrawal of mind from sense objects as in Patanjali's system, but it is not complete thought suppression, instead it is a "meditative exercise of withdrawal from the particular and identification with the universal, leading to contemplation of oneself as the most universal, namely, Consciousness".[99] Describing Shankara's style of yogic practice, Comans writes:

the type of yoga which Sankara presents here is a method of merging, as it were, the particular (visesa) into the general (samanya). For example, diverse sounds are merged in the sense of hearing, which has greater generality insofar as the sense of hearing is the locus of all sounds. The sense of hearing is merged into the mind, whose nature consists of thinking about things, and the mind is in turn merged into the intellect, which Sankara then says is made into 'mere cognition' (vijnanamatra); that is, all particular cognitions resolve into their universal, which is cognition as such, thought without any particular object. And that in turn is merged into its universal, mere Consciousness (prajnafnaghana), upon which everything previously referred to ultimately depends.[99]

Shankara rejected those yoga system variations that suggest complete thought suppression leads to liberation [?!], as well the view that the Shrutis teach liberation as something apart from the knowledge of the oneness of the Self. Knowledge alone and insights relating to true nature of things, taught Shankara, is what liberates. He placed great emphasis on the study of the Upanisads, emphasizing them as necessary and sufficient means to gain Self-liberating knowledge. Sankara also emphasized the need for and the role of Guru (Acharya, teacher) for such knowledge.[99]

Shankara's Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism

Shankara's Vedanta shows similarities with Mahayana Buddhism; opponents have even accused Shankara of being a "crypto-Buddhist," a qualification which is rejected by the Advaita Vedanta tradition, given the differences between these two schools. According to Shankara, a major difference between Advaita and Mahayana Buddhism are their views on Atman and Brahman.[100] According to both Loy and Jayatilleke, more differences can be discerned.[101][102]

Differences

Atman

According to Shankara, Hinduism believes in the existence of Atman, while Buddhism denies this.[103] Shankara, citing Katha Upanishad, asserted[19] that the Hindu Upanishad starts with stating its objective as

... this is the investigation whether after the death of man the soul exists; some assert the soul exists; the soul does not exist, assert others." At the end, states Shankara, the same Upanishad concludes with the words, "it exists."[104]

Buddhists and Lokāyatas, wrote Shankara, assert that soul does not exist.[18][note 6]

There are also differences in the understanding of what "liberation" means. Nirvana, a term more often used in Buddhism, is the liberating realization and acceptance that there is no Self (anatman). Moksha, a term more common in Hinduism, is liberating realization and acceptance of Self and Universal Soul, the consciousness of one's Oneness with all existence and understanding the whole universe as the Self.[101][105]

Logic versus revelation

Stcherbatsky in 1927 criticized Shankara for demanding the use of logic from Madhyamika Buddhists, while himself resorting to revelation as a source of knowledge.[106][note 7] Sircar in 1933 offered a different perspective and stated, "Sankara recognizes the value of the law of contrariety and self-alienation from the standpoint of idealistic logic; and it has consequently been possible for him to integrate appearance with reality."[107]

Recent scholarship states that Shankara's arguments on revelation are about apta vacana (Sanskrit: आप्तवचन, sayings of the wise, relying on word, testimony of past or present reliable experts).[108][109] It is part of his and Advaita Vedanta's epistemological foundation.[108] Advaita Vedanta school considers such testimony epistemically valid asserting that a human being needs to know numerous facts, and with the limited time and energy available, he can learn only a fraction of those facts and truths directly.[110] Shankara considered the teachings in the Vedas and Upanishads as apta vacana and a valid source of knowledge.[108] He suggests the importance of teacher-disciple relationship on combining logic and revelation to attain moksha in his text Upadeshasahasri.[111] Anantanand Rambachan and others state Shankara methodology did not rely exclusively on Vedic statements, but included a range of logical methods, reasoning methodology and pramanas.[112][113]

Similarities

Despite Shankara's criticism of certain schools of Mahayana Buddhism, Shankara's philosophy shows strong similarities with the Mahayana Buddhist philosophy which he attacks.[106] According to S.N. Dasgupta,

Shankara and his followers borrowed much of their dialectic form of criticism from the Buddhists. His Brahman was very much like the sunya of Nagarjuna [...] The debts of Shankara to the self-luminosity of the Vijnanavada Buddhism can hardly be overestimated. There seems to be much truth in the accusations against Shankara by Vijnana Bhiksu and others that he was a hidden Buddhist himself. I am led to think that Shankara's philosophy is largely a compound of Vijnanavada and Sunyavada Buddhism with the Upanisad notion of the permanence of self superadded.[114]

According to Mudgal, Shankara's Advaita and the Buddhist Madhyamaka view of ultimate reality are compatible because they are both transcendental, indescribable, non-dual and only arrived at through a via negativa (neti neti). Mudgal concludes therefore that

... the difference between Sunyavada (Mahayana) philosophy of Buddhism and Advaita philosophy of Hinduism may be a matter of emphasis, not of kind.[115]

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Part 3 of 3

Historical and cultural impact

See also: History of Hinduism

Historical context

Further information: History of India and History of Hinduism

Shankara lived in the time of the great "Late classical Hinduism",[116] which lasted from 650 till 1100 CE.[116] This era was one of political instability that followed the Gupta dynasty and King Harsha of the 7th century CE.[117] It was a time of social and cultural change as the ideas of Buddhism, Jainism, Islam and various traditions within Hinduism were competing for members.[118][119][120] Buddhism in particular had emerged as a powerful influence in India's spiritual traditions in the first 700 years of the 1st millennium CE.[117][121] Shankara, and his contemporaries, made a significant contribution in understanding Buddhism and the ancient Vedic traditions, then transforming the extant ideas, particularly reforming the Vedanta tradition of Hinduism, making it India's most important tradition for more than a thousand years.[117]

Influence on Hinduism

Shankara has an unparallelled status in the tradition of Advaita Vedanta. He travelled all over India to help restore the study of the Vedas.[122] His teachings and tradition form the basis of Smartism and have influenced Sant Mat lineages.[123]

He introduced the Pañcāyatana form of worship, the simultaneous worship of five deities – Ganesha, Surya, Vishnu, Shiva and Devi. Shankara explained that all deities were but different forms of the one Brahman, the invisible Supreme Being.[124]

Benedict Ashley credits Adi Shankara for unifying two seemingly disparate philosophical doctrines in Hinduism, namely Atman and Brahman.[125] Isaeva states Shankara's influence included reforming Hinduism, founding monasteries, edifying disciples, disputing opponents and engaging in philosophic activity that, in the eyes of Indian tradition, help revive "the orthodox idea of the unity of all beings" and Vedanta thought.[126]

Prior to Shankara, views similar to his already existed, but did not occupy a dominant position within the Vedanta.[127] Hajime Nakamura states that the early Vedanta scholars were from the upper classes of society, well-educated in traditional culture. They formed a social elite, "sharply distinguished from the general practitioners and theologians of Hinduism."[128] Their teachings were "transmitted among a small number of selected intellectuals".[128] Works of the early Vedanta schools do not contain references to Vishnu or Shiva.[129] It was only after Shankara that "the theologians of the various sects of Hinduism utilized Vedanta philosophy to a greater or lesser degree to form the basis of their doctrines,"[130] for example the Nath-tradition,[131] whereby "its theoretical influence upon the whole of Indian society became final and definitive."[128]

Critical assessment

Some scholars doubt Shankara's early influence in India.[12] The Buddhist scholar Richard E. King states,

Although it is common to find Western scholars and Hindus arguing that Sankaracarya was the most influential and important figure in the history of Hindu intellectual thought, this does not seem to be justified by the historical evidence.[10]

According to King and Roodurmun, until the 10th century Shankara was overshadowed by his older contemporary Mandana-Misra, the latter considered to be the major representative of Advaita.[10][14] Other scholars state that the historical records for this period are unclear, and little reliable information is known about the various contemporaries and disciples of Shankara.[132] For example, Advaita tradition holds that Mandana-Misra is the same person as Suresvara, a name he adopted after he became a disciple of Shankara after a public debate which Shankara won.[133][134]

Some scholars state that Maṇḍana-Miśra and Sureśvara must have been two different scholars, because their scholarship is quite different.[135][133] Other scholars, on the other hand, state that Mandana-Miśra and Shankara do share views, because both emphasize that Brahman-Atman cannot be directly perceived, rather it is discovered and defined through elimination of division (duality) of any kind.[136][132] The Self-realization (Soul-knowledge), suggest both Mandana Misra and Shankara, can be described cataphatically (positive liberation, freedom through knowledge, jivanmukti moksha) as well as apophatically (removal of ignorance, negation of duality, negation of division between people or souls or spirit-matter).[136] While both share core premises, states Isaeva, they differ in several ways, with Mandana Misra holding Vedic knowledge as an absolute and end in itself, while Shankara holds Vedic knowledge and all religious rites as subsidiary and means to the human longing for "liberation, freedom and moksha".[136]

Several scholars suggest that the historical fame and cultural influence of Shankara grew centuries later, particularly during the era of Muslim invasions and consequent devastation of India.[12][13] Many of Shankara's biographies were created and published in and after 14th century, such as the widely cited Vidyaranya's Śankara-vijaya. Vidyaranya, also known as Madhava, who was the 12th Jagadguru of the Śringeri Śarada Pītham from 1380 to 1386,[137] inspired the re-creation of the Hindu Vijayanagara Empire of South India in response to the devastation caused by the Islamic Delhi Sultanate.[13][138] He and his brothers, suggest Paul Hacker and other scholars,[12][13] wrote about Śankara as well as extensive Advaitic commentaries on Vedas and Dharma. Vidyaranya was a minister in Vijayanagara Empire and enjoyed royal support,[138] and his sponsorship and methodical efforts helped establish Shankara as a rallying symbol of values, and helped spread historical and cultural influence of Shankara's Vedanta philosophies. Vidyaranya also helped establish monasteries (mathas) to expand the cultural influence of Shankara.[12] It may be these circumstances, suggest scholars,[139] that grew and credited Shankara for various Hindu festive traditions such as the Kumbh Mela – one of the world's largest periodic religious pilgrimages.[140]

Mathas

See also: Dashanami Sampradaya

Shankara is regarded as the founder of the Daśanāmi Sampradāya of Hindu monasticism and Ṣaṇmata of Smarta tradition. He unified the theistic sects into a common framework of Shanmata system.[141] Advaita Vedanta is, at least in the west, primarily known as a philosophical system. But it is also a tradition of renunciation. Philosophy and renunciation are closely related:[web 1]

Most of the notable authors in the advaita tradition were members of the sannyasa tradition, and both sides of the tradition share the same values, attitudes and metaphysics.[web 1]

Shankara, himself considered to be an incarnation of Shiva,[web 1] established the Dashanami Sampradaya, organizing a section of the Ekadandi monks under an umbrella grouping of ten names.[web 1] Several other Hindu monastic and Ekadandi traditions remained outside the organisation of the Dasanāmis.[142][143]

Adi Sankara organised the Hindu monks of these ten sects or names under four Maṭhas (Sanskrit: मठ) (monasteries), with the headquarters at Dvārakā in the West, Jagannatha Puri in the East, Sringeri in the South and Badrikashrama in the North.[web 1] Each math was headed by one of his four main disciples, who each continues the Vedanta Sampradaya.

Yet, according to Pandey, these Mathas were not established by Shankara himself, but were originally ashrams established by Vibhāņdaka and his son Ŗșyaśŗnga.[144] Shankara inherited the ashrams at Dvārakā and Sringeri, and shifted the ashram at Śŗngaverapura to Badarikāśrama, and the ashram at Angadeśa to Jagannātha Purī.[145]

The advaita sampradaya is not a Shaiva sect,[web 1][146] despite the historical links with Shaivism:

Advaitins are non-sectarian, and they advocate worship of Shiva and Vishnu equally with that of the other deities of Hinduism, like Sakti, Ganapati and others.[web 1]

Nevertheless, contemporary Sankaracaryas have more influence among Shaiva communities than among Vaisnava communities.[web 1] The greatest influence of the gurus of the advaita tradition has been among followers of the Smartha Tradition, who integrate the domestic Vedic ritual with devotional aspects of Hinduism.[web 1]

The table below gives an overview of the four Amnaya Mathas founded by Shankara, and their details.[web 2]

Shishya (lineage) / Direction / Maṭha [College] / Location / Mahāvākya ["The Great Sayings" of the Upanishads] / Veda / Sampradaya [Tradition]

Padmapāda / East / Puri Govardhanmaṭha Pīṭhaṃ / Puri, Puri District, Odisha / Prajñānam brahma (Consciousness is Brahman) / Rig Veda / Bhogavala

[Note: 0 Reference to "Prajna"; 1 Reference to "Consciousness" in Rig Veda, translated by Ralph T.H. Griffith: "The Swift Ones favour him who purifieth this: with consciousness they stand upon the height of heaven."]

Sureśvara / South / Sringeri Śārada Pīṭhaṃ / Sringeri, Chikkamagaluru, Karnataka / Aham brahmāsmi (I am Brahman) / Yajur Veda / Bhūrivala

[Note: 0 Reference to "I am Brahman" in The Texts of the White Yajurveda, translated by Ralph T.H. Griffith
4 References to "I am": (1) I am in heaven above; (2) I am what Gods in secret hold the highest; (3) I am the Household priest; (4) I am the triple light, the region's meter.]

[Note: 0 Reference to "I am Brahman" in The Veda of the Black Yajus, translated by Arthur Berriedale Keith
7 References to "I am": (1) As wife with my husband I am united; (2) What time thou didst declare, 'I am Cipivista'?; (3) Favour those in the region where I am; (4) Whose domestic priest I am; (5) 'I am he who smites in the stronghold; (6) 'I am he who brings from the stronghold'; (7) 'I am the friend of all'.]

Hastāmalakācārya / West / Dvāraka Śārada Pīṭhaṃ / Dwarka, Devbhumi Dwarka, Gujrat / Tattvamasi (That thou art) / Sama Veda / Kitavala

[Note: 0 References to "Tatt" or "That thou art" in Hymns of the Samaveda, translated by Ralph T.H. Griffith]

Toṭakācārya / North / Badari Jyotirmaṭha Pīṭhaṃ / Jyotirmath, Chamoli, Uttarakhand / Ayamātmā brahma (This Atman is Brahman) / Atharva Veda / Nandavala

[Note: 0 References to "Ayamatma" or "Atman" in The Hymns of the Artharvaveda, translated by Ralph T.H. Griffith]

Smarta Tradition

Main article: Smarta Tradition

Traditionally, Shankara is regarded as the greatest teacher[147][148] and reformer of the Smarta.[149][148]

According to Alf Hiltebeitel, Shankara established the nondualist interpretation of the Upanishads as the touchstone of a revived smarta tradition:

Practically, Shankara fostered a rapprochement between Advaita and smarta orthodoxy, which by his time had not only continued to defend the varnasramadharma theory as defining the path of karman, but had developed the practice of pancayatanapuja ("five-shrine worship") as a solution to varied and conflicting devotional practices. Thus one could worship any one of five deities (Vishnu, Siva, Durga, Surya, Ganesa) as one's istadevata ("deity of choice").[150]

Films

• Shankaracharya (1927), Indian silent film about Shankara by Kali Prasad Ghosh.[151]
• Jagadguru Shrimad Shankaracharya (1928), Indian silent film by Parshwanath Yeshwant Altekar.[151]
• Jagadguru Shankaracharya (1955), Indian Hindi film by Sheikh Fattelal.[151]
• In 1977 Jagadguru Aadisankaran, a Malayalam film directed by P. Bhaskaran was released in which Murali Mohan plays the role of Adult Aadi Sankaran and Master Raghu plays childhood.
• In 1983 a film directed by G.V. Iyer named Adi Shankaracharya was premiered, the first film ever made entirely in Sanskrit language in which all of Adi Shankaracharya's works were compiled.[152] The movie received the Indian National Film Awards for Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Audiography.[153][154]
• On 15 August 2013, Jagadguru Adi Shankara was released in an Indian Telugu-language biographical film written and directed by J. K. Bharavi and was later dubbed in Kannada with the same title, by Upendra giving narration for the Kannada dubbed version

See also

• Hinduism portal
• India portal
• Religion portal
• Philosophy portal
• Swami Vivekananda
• Adi Shri Gauḍapādāchārya
• Jnana Yoga
• Upanishads
• Shri Gaudapadacharya Math
• Shri Govinda Bhagavatpadacharya
• Vairagya
• Vivekachudamani
• Soundarya Lahari
• Shivananda Lahari
• Self-consciousness (Vedanta)
• Govardhan Peetham (East), Puri, Odisha
• Dwarka Kalika Pitha (West), Dwarka, Gujarat
• Jyotirmath Peetham (North), Jyotirmath, Badrikashram, Uttarakhand
• Shri Sringeri Sharada Peetham (South), Sringeri, Karnataka
• Shri Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham, Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu

Notes

1. He is also known as Adi Shankaracharya, Shankara Bhagavatpada, sometimes spelled as Sankaracharya, (Ādi) Śaṅkarācārya, Śaṅkara Bhagavatpāda and Śaṅkara Bhagavatpādācārya.
2. Modern scholarship places Shankara in the earlier part of the 8th century CE (c. 700–750).[4]Earlier generations of scholars proposed 788–820 CE.[4] Other proposals are 686–718 CE,[citation needed] 44 BCE,[5] or as early as 509–477 BCE.
3. See also IndiaDivine.org, Authorship of Vivekachudamani and arshabodha.org, Sri Sankara's Vivekachudamani, pp. 3–4, The Question of Authorship of Vivekachudamani
4. Swami Vivekananda translates Shivoham, Shivoham as "I am he, I am he".[91]
5. Brahman is not to be confused with the personalised godhead Brahma.
6. Shankara (?): "(...) Lokayatikas and Bauddhas who assert that the soul does not exist. There are four sects among the followers of Buddha: 1. Madhyamicas who maintain all is void; 2. Yogacharas, who assert except sensation and intelligence all else is void; 3. Sautranticas, who affirm actual existence of external objects no less than of internal sensations; 4. Vaibhashikas, who agree with later (Sautranticas) except that they contend for immediate apprehension of exterior objects through images or forms represented to the intellect."[18]
7. Shcherbatsky: "Shankara accuses them of disregarding all logic and refuses to enter in a controversy with them. The position of Shankara is interesting because, at heart, he is in full agreement with the Madhyamikas, at least in the main lines, since both maintain the reality of the One-without-a-second, and the mirage of the manifold. But Shankara, as an ardent hater of Buddhism, would never confess that. He therefore treats the Madhyamika with great contempt [...] on the charge that the Madhyamika denies the possibility of cognizing the Absolute by logical methods (pramana). Vachaspati Mishra in the Bhamati rightly interprets this point as referring to the opinion of the Madhyamikas that logic is incapable to solve the question about what existence or non-existence really are. This opinion Shankara himself, as is well known, shares. He does not accept the authority of logic as a means of cognizing the Absolute, but he deems it a privilege of the Vedantin to fare without logic, since he has Revelation to fall back upon. From all his opponents, he requires strict logical methods."[106]

References

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6. Johannes de Kruijf and Ajaya Sahoo (2014), Indian Transnationalism Online: New Perspectives on Diaspora, ISBN 978-1-4724-1913-2, p. 105, Quote: "In other words, according to Adi Shankara's argument, the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta stood over and above all other forms of Hinduism and encapsulated them. This then united Hinduism; (...) Another of Adi Shankara's important undertakings which contributed to the unification of Hinduism was his founding of a number of monastic centers."
7. Shankara, Student's Encyclopedia Britannia – India (2000), Volume 4, Encyclopaedia Britannica Publishing, ISBN 978-0-85229-760-5, p. 379, Quote: "Shankaracharya, philosopher and theologian, most renowned exponent of the Advaita Vedanta school of philosophy, from whose doctrines the main currents of modern Indian thought are derived.";
David Crystal (2004), The Penguin Encyclopedia, Penguin Books, p. 1353, Quote: "[Shankara] is the most famous exponent of Advaita Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy and the source of the main currents of modern Hindu thought."
8. Christophe Jaffrelot (1998), The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India, Columbia University Press, ISBN 978-0-231-10335-0, p. 2, Quote: "The main current of Hinduism – if not the only one – which became formalized in a way that approximates to an ecclesiastical structure was that of Shankara".
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12. Paul Hacker, Philology and Confrontation: Paul Hacker on Traditional and Modern Vedanta (Editor: Wilhelm Halbfass), State University of New York Press, ISBN 978-0-7914-2582-4, pp. 29–30
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14. Roodurmun 2002, p. 33–34.
15. Sri Adi Shankaracharya, Sringeri Sharada Peetham, India
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18. Edward Roer (Translator), to Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad. Shankara's Introduction at Google Books
19. Edward Roer (Translator), Shankara's Introduction, p. 3, at Google Books to Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad at p. 3, OCLC 19373677
20. KN Jayatilleke (2010), Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge, ISBN 978-81-208-0619-1, p. 246–249, from note 385 onwards;
Steven Collins (1994), Religion and Practical Reason (Editors: Frank Reynolds, David Tracy), State Univ of New York Press, ISBN 978-0-7914-2217-5, p. 64; Quote: "Central to Buddhist soteriology is the doctrine of not-self (Pali: anattā, Sanskrit: anātman, the opposed doctrine of Ātman is central to Brahmanical thought). Put very briefly, this is the [Buddhist] doctrine that human beings have no soul, no self, no unchanging essence.";
Edward Roer (Translator), Shankara's Introduction at Google Books]
Katie Javanaud (2013), Is The Buddhist 'No-Self' Doctrine Compatible With Pursuing Nirvana?, Philosophy Now;
John C. Plott et al. (2000), Global History of Philosophy: The Axial Age, Volume 1, Motilal Banarsidass, ISBN 978-81-208-0158-5, p. 63, Quote: "The Buddhist schools reject any Ātman concept. As we have already observed, this is the basic and ineradicable distinction between Hinduism and Buddhism".
21. The Seven Spiritual Laws Of Yoga, Deepak Chopra, John Wiley & Sons, 2006, ISBN 81-265-0696-2, 978-81-265-0696-5
22. Mayeda 2006, pp. 3–5.
23. Isaeva 1993, pp. 69–82.
24. Vidyasankar, S. "The Sankaravijaya literature". Retrieved 23 August 2006.
25. Tapasyananda, Swami (2002). Sankara-Dig-Vijaya. viii.
26. Pande 2011, p. 35.
27. The hagiographies of Shankara mirror the pattern of synthesizing facts, fiction and legends as with other ancient and medieval era Indian scholars. Some biographic poems depict Shankara as a reincarnation of deity Shiva, much like other Indian scholars are revered as reincarnation of other deities; for example, Mandana-misra is depicted as an embodiment of deity Brahma, Citsukha of deity Varuna, Anandagiri of Agni, among others. See Isaeva (1993, pp. 69–72).
28. Isaeva 1993, pp. 83–87.
29. K.A. Nilakantha Sastry, A History of South India, 4th ed., Oxford University Press, Madras, 1976.
30. Roshen Dalal (2010). Hinduism: An Alphabetical Guide. Penguin. p. 376. ISBN 978-0-14-341421-6.
31. T.S. Narayana Sastry (1916, republished 1971), The Age of Sankara
32. "Dating Adi Shankara". IndiaDivine.org. Retrieved 20 August 2020.
33. Adi Shankara, Encyclopedia Britannica (2015)
34. N.V. Isaeva (1993). Shankara and Indian Philosophy. State University of New York Press. pp. 84–87 with footnotes. ISBN 978-0-7914-1281-7.
35. The dating of 788–820 is accepted in Keay, p. 194.
36. Madhava-Vidyaranya. Sankara Digvijaya – The traditional life of Sri Sankaracharya, Sri Ramakrishna Math. ISBN 81-7823-342-8. Source: [1] (accessed: 14 Sep 2016), p. 20
37. Tapasyananda, Swami (2002). Shankara-Dig-Vijaya. pp. xv–xxiv.
38. Students' Britannica India. Popular Prakashan. 2000. pp. 379–. ISBN 978-0-85229-760-5.
39. Narasingha Prosad Sil (1997). Swami Vivekananda: A Reassessment. Susquehanna University Press. p. 192. ISBN 978-0-945636-97-7.
40. this may be the present day Kalady in central Kerala.The house he was born is still maintained as Melpazhur Mana
41. Joël André-Michel Dubois (2014). The Hidden Lives of Brahman: Sankara's Vedanta Through His Upanisad Commentaries, in Light of Contemporary Practice. SUNY Press.
42. Roshen Dalal (2010). The Religions of India: A Concise Guide to Nine Major Faiths. Penguin Books India.
43. Adago, John (2018). East Meets West. UK: Program Publishing; 2 edition. ISBN 978-0692124215.
44. Menon, Y. Keshava (1976). The Mind of Adi Shankara. Jaico. p. 109. ISBN 978-8172242145.
45. Isaeva 1993, pp. 74–75.
46. Pande 2011, pp. 31–32, also 6–7, 67–68.
47. Isaeva 1993, pp. 76–77.
48. Pande 2011, pp. 5–36.
49. Isaeva 1993, pp. 82–91.
50. Isaeva 1993, pp. 71–82, 93–94.
51. Mayeda 2006, pp. 6–7.
52. Isaeva 1993, pp. 2–3.
53. Paul Hacker, Philology and Confrontation: Paul Hacker on Traditional and Modern Vedanta (Editor: Wilhelm Halbfass), State University of New York Press, ISBN 978-0-7914-2582-4, pp. 30–31
54. W Halbfass (1983), Studies in Kumarila and Sankara, Studien zur Indologie und Iranistik, Monographic 9, Reinbeck
55. M Piantelly, Sankara e la Renascita del Brahmanesimo, Indian Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Apr. 1977), pp. 429–435
56. Kena Upanishad has two commentaries that are attributed to Shankara – Kenopnishad Vakyabhasya and Kenopnishad Padabhasya; scholars contest whether both are authentic, several suggesting that the Vakyabhasya is unlikely to be authentic; see Pande (2011, p. 107).
57. Isaeva 1993, pp. 93–97.
58. Pande 2011, pp. 105–113.
59. A Rambachan (1991), Accomplishing the Accomplished: Vedas as a Source of Valid Knowledge in Sankara, University of Hawaii Press, ISBN 978-0-8248-1358-1, pp. xii–xiii
60. Wilhelm Halbfass (1990), Tradition and Reflection: Explorations in Indian Thought, State University of New York Press, ISBN 978-0-7914-0362-4, pp. 205–208
61. Pande 2011, pp. 351–352.
62. John Koller (2007), in Chad Meister and Paul Copan (Editors): The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion, Routledge, ISBN 978-1-134-18001-1, pp. 98–106
63. Pande 2011, pp. 113–115.
64. Mishra, Godavarisha. "A Journey through Vedantic History – Advaita in the Pre-Sankara, Sankara and Post-Sankara Periods" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 June 2006. Retrieved 24 July 2006.
65. Vidyasankar, S. "Sankaracarya". Archived from the original on 16 June 2006. Retrieved 24 July 2006.
66. Paul Hacker, Sankaracarya and Sankarabhagavatpada: Preliminary Remarks Concerning the Authorship Problem', in Philology and Confrontation: Paul Hacker on Traditional and Modern Vedanta (Editor: Wilhelm Halbfass), State University of New York Press, ISBN 978-0-7914-2582-4, pp. 41–56
67. Adi Shankaracharya, Vivekacūḍāmaṇi S Madhavananda (Translator), Advaita Ashrama (1921)
68. Grimes 2004.
69. Shah-Kazemi 2006, p. 4.
70. Grimes 2004, p. 23.
71. Grimes 2004, p. 13.
72. Johannes Buitenen (1978). The Mahābhārata (vol. 3). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-84665-1
73. Note: some manuscripts list this verse as 2.18.133, while Mayeda lists it as 1.18.133, because of interchanged chapter numbering; see Upadesa Sahasri: A Thousand Teachings, S Jagadananda (Translator, 1949), ISBN 978-81-7120-059-7, Verse 2.8.133, p. 258;
Karl H Potter (2014), The Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, Volume 3, Princeton University Press, ISBN 978-0-691-61486-1, p. 249
74. Mayeda 2006, pp. 46–47.
75. Brahmasutra-bhasya 1.1.4, S Vireswarananda (Translator), p. 35
76. Comans 2000, p. 168.
77. Comans 2000, pp. 167–169.
78. George Thibaut (Translator), Brahma Sutras: With Commentary of Shankara, Reprinted as ISBN 978-1-60506-634-9, pp. 31–33 verse 1.1.4
79. Mayeda 2006, pp. 46–53.
80. Mayeda & Tanizawa (1991), Studies on Indian Philosophy in Japan, 1963–1987, Philosophy East and West, Vol. 41, No. 4, pp. 529–535
81. Michael Comans (1996), Śankara and the Prasankhyanavada, Journal of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 49–71
82. Stephen Phillips (2000) in Roy W. Perrett (Editor), Epistemology: Indian Philosophy, Volume 1, Routledge, ISBN 978-0-8153-3609-9, pp. 224–228 with notes 8, 13 and 63
83. Franklin Merrell-Wolff (1995), Transformations in Consciousness: The Metaphysics and Epistemology, State University of New York Press, ISBN 978-0-7914-2675-3, pp. 242–260
84. Will Durant (1976), Our Oriental Heritage: The Story of Civilization, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 978-0-671-54800-1, Chapter XIX, Section VI
85. Shankara, himself, had renounced all religious ritual acts; see Karl Potter (2008), Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies Vol. III, Motilal Banarsidass, ISBN 978-81-208-0310-7, p. 16;
For an example of Shankara's reasoning "why rites and ritual actions should be given up", see Karl Potter on p. 220;
Elsewhere, Shankara's Bhasya on various Upanishads repeat "give up rituals and rites", see for example Shankara's Bhasya on Brihadaranyaka Upanishad pp. 348–350, 754–757
86. Sanskrit:Upadesha sahasri
English Translation: S Jagadananda (Translator, 1949), Upadeshasahasri, Vedanta Press, ISBN 978-81-7120-059-7, pp. 16–17; OCLC 218363449
87. Karl Potter (2008), Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies Vol. III, Motilal Banarsidass, ISBN 978-81-208-0310-7, pp. 219–221
88. Mayeda 2006, pp. 92–93.
89. Karl Potter (2008), Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies Vol. III, Motilal Banarsidass, ISBN 978-81-208-0310-7, pp. 218–219
90. Isaeva 1993, pp. 3, 29–30.
91. Swami Vivekananda (2015). The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda. Manonmani Publishers (Reprint). p. 1786.
92.
 Original Sanskrit: Nirvanashtakam Sringeri Vidya Bharati Foundation (2012);
 English Translation 1: K Parappaḷḷi and CNN Nair (2002), Saankarasaagaram, Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan, ISBN 978-81-7276-268-1, pp. 58–59;
 English Translation 2: Igor Kononenko (2010), Teachers of Wisdom, ISBN 978-1-4349-9898-9, p. 148;
 English Translation 3: Nirvana Shatakam Isha Foundation (2011); Includes translation, transliteration and audio.
93. Nakamura 2004, p. 680.
94. Sharma 2000, p. 64.
95. Scheepers 2000, p. 123.
96. "Study the Vedas daily. Perform diligently the duties ("karmas") ordained by them", Sadhana Panchakam of Shankara
97. Anantanand Rambachan, The limits of scripture: Vivekananda's reinterpretation of the Vedas.University of Hawaii Press, 1994, pp. 124–125: [2].
98. Isaeva 1993, pp. 57–58. Quote: "Shankara directly identifies this awakened atman with Brahman and the higher knowledge. And Brahman, reminds the Advaitist, is known only from the Upanishadic sayings".
99. Michael Comans (1993), The question of the importance of Samādhi in modern and classical Advaita Vedānta, Philosophy East & West. Vol. 43, Issue 1, pp. 19–38
100. Isaeva 1993, pp. 60, 145–154.
101. David Loy (1982), Enlightenment in Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta: Are Nirvana and Moksha the Same?, International Philosophical Quarterly, 23(1), pp. 65–74
102. KN Jayatilleke (2010), Early Buddhist Theory of Knowledge, ISBN 978-81-208-0619-1, pp. 246–249, from note 385 onwards
103. Gerald McDermott and Harold A. Netland (2014), A Trinitarian Theology of Religions: An Evangelical Proposal, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-975182-2, p. 131
104. Sankara Charya, The Twelve Principal Upanishads at Google Books, RJ Tatya, Bombay Theosophical Publication
105. Thomas McFaul (2006), The Future of Peace and Justice in the Global Village: The Role of the World Religions in the Twenty-first Century, Praeger, ISBN 978-0-275-99313-9, p. 39
106. Fyodor Shcherbatsky (1927). The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana. pp. 44–45.
107. Mahendranath Sircar (1933), Reality in Indian Thought, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 42, No. 3, pp. 249–271
108. Arvind Sharma (2008), The Philosophy of Religion and Advaita Vedanta, Penn State Press, ISBN 978-0-271-02832-3, pp. 70–71
109. Aptavacana Sanskrit-English Dictionary, Cologne University, Germany
110. M. Hiriyanna (2000), The Essentials of Indian Philosophy, Motilal Banarsidass, ISBN 978-81-208-1330-4, pp. 42–44
111. Isaeva 1993, pp. 219–223 with footnote 34.
112. Isaeva 1993, pp. 210–221.
113. Anantanand Rambachan (1991), Accomplishing the Accomplished: The Vedas as a Source of Valid Knowledge in Sankara, University of Hawaii Press, ISBN 978-0-8248-1358-1, Chapters 2–4
114. S.N. Dasgupta (1997). History of Indian Philosophy, Volume 1. p. 494.
115. Mudgal, S.G. (1975), Advaita of Shankara: A Reappraisal, New Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass, p. 4
116. Michaels 2004, p. 41–43.
117. John Koller (2012), Shankara in Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion (Editors: Chad Meister, Paul Copan), Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-78294-4, pp. 99–108
118. Doniger, Wendy. (March 2014). On Hinduism. Oxford. ISBN 9780199360079. OCLC 858660095.
119. TMP Mahadevan (1968), Shankaracharya, National Book Trust, pp. 283–285, OCLC 254278306
120. Frank Whaling (1979), Śankara and Buddhism, Journal of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 1–42
121. Karl Potter (1998), Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies: Advaita Vedānta up to Śaṃkara and his pupils, Motilal Banarsidass, ISBN 978-81-208-0310-7, p. 1–21, 103–119
122. Per Durst-Andersen and Elsebeth F. Lange (2010), Mentality and Thought: North, South, East and West, CBS Press, ISBN 978-87-630-0231-8, p. 68
123. Ron Geaves (March 2002). From Totapuri to Maharaji: Reflections on a Lineage (Parampara). 27th Spalding Symposium on Indian Religions, Oxford.
124. Klaus Klostermaier (2007), A Survey of Hinduism, Third Edition, State University of New York Press, ISBN 978-0-7914-7082-4, p. 40
125. Benedict Ashley, O.P. (2006). The Way toward Wisdom. p. 395. ISBN 978-0-268-02028-6. OCLC 609421317.
126. N.V. Isaeva (1992). Shankara and Indian Philosophy. State University of New York Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-7914-1281-7. OCLC 24953669.
127. Nakamura 2004, p. 690.
128. Nakamura 2004, p. 693.
129. Nakamura 2004, p. 692.
130. Nakamura 2004, p. 691.
131. Feuerstein 1978.
132. Karl Potter (2008), Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies: Advaita Vedānta up to Śaṃkara and his pupils, Vol 3, Motilal Banarsidass, ISBN 978-81-208-0310-7, pp. 346–347, 420–423, Quote: "There is little firm historical information about Suresvara; tradition holds Suresvara is same as Mandana Misra".
133. Roodurmun 2002, p. 31.
134. Isaeva 1993, pp. 79–80. Quote: "More plausible though was an Advaita conversion of another well known Mimamsaka – Madanamisra; ... Vedantic tradition identifies Mandana Misra as Suresvara".
135. Sharma 1997, p. 290–291.
136. Isaeva 1993, pp. 63–65.
137. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Mādhava Āchārya". Encyclopædia Britannica.
138. Cynthia Talbot (2001), Precolonial India in Practice: Society, Region, and Identity in Medieval Andhra, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-513661-6, pp. 185–187, 199–201
139. Lochtefeld, James G. (2004). "The Construction of the Kumbha Mela". South Asian Popular Culture. 2 (2): 103–126. doi:10.1080/1474668042000275707. S2CID 144464946.
140. Roshan Dalal (2011), The Religions of India: A Concise Guide to Nine Major Faiths, Penguin, ISBN 978-0-14-341517-6, see Kumbh Mela entry
141. Various Papers: Śaṅkarācārya, Conference on Sankara and Shanmata (1969), Madras, OCLC 644426018, Reprinted by HathiTrust Digital Library
142. Karigoudar Ishwaran, Ascetic Culture
143. Wendy Sinclair-Brull, Female Ascetics
144. Pandey 2000, p. 4–5.
145. Pandey 2000, p. 5.
146. Nakamura 2004, p. 782–783.
147. Doniger 1999, p. 1017.
148. Popular Prakashan 2000, p. 52.
149. Rosen 2006, p. 166.
150. Hiltebeitel 2002, p. 29.
151. Ashish Rajadhyaksha; Paul Willemen (10 July 2014). Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-135-94325-7.
152. Adi Shankaracharya at IMDb
153. "31st National Film Awards". India International Film Festival, iffi.nic.in. Archived from the original on 12 November 2013.
154. "31st National Film Awards (PDF)" (PDF). Directorate of Film Festivals, dff.nic.in.

Sources

Printed sources

• Comans, Michael (2000). "The Method of Early Advaita Vedānta: A Study of Gauḍapāda, Śaṅkara, Sureśvara, and Padmapāda". Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
• Cousins, L.S. (2010). Buddhism. In: "The Penguin Handbook of the World's Living Religions". Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-195504-9.
• Doniger, Wendy (1999). Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of World Religions. Merriam-Webster. p. 1017. ISBN 978-0-87779-044-0. smarta sect.
• Fort, Andrew O. (1998). Jivanmukti in Transformation: Embodied Liberation in Advaita and Neo-Vedanta. SUNY Press.
• Fuller, C.J. (2004). The Camphor Flame: Popular Hinduism and Society in India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-12048-5.
• Greaves, Ron (March 2002). From Totapuri to Maharaji: Reflections on a Lineage (Parampara). 27th Spalding Symposium on Indian Religions, Oxford.
• Grimes, John (2004), "Introduction", The Vivekacudamani of Sankaracarya Bhagavatpada: An Introduction and Translation, ISBN 978-0-7546-3395-2
• Hiltebeitel, Alf (2002), Hinduism. In: Joseph Kitagawa, "The Religious Traditions of Asia: Religion, History, and Culture", Routledge, ISBN 978-1-136-87597-7
• Isaeva, Natalia (1993). Shankara and Indian Philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press (SUNY). ISBN 978-0-7914-1281-7. Some editions spell the author Isayeva.
• Keay, John (2000). India: A History. New York: Grove Press. ISBN 978-0-8021-3797-5.
• Keshava Menon, Y (1976). The Mind of Adi Shankaracharya. India: Jaico. ISBN 978-81-7224-214-5.
• King, Richard (2001). Orientalism and Religion: Post-Colonial Theory, India and "The Mystic East". Taylor & Francis e-Library.
• Larson, Gerald James (2009). Hinduism. In: "World Religions in America: An Introduction". Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 978-1-61164-047-2.
• Mayeda, Sengaku (2006). A thousand teachings : the Upadeśasāhasrī of Śaṅkara. Motilal Banarsidass. ISBN 978-81-208-2771-4.
• Michaels, Axel (2004). Hinduism. Past and present. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
• Minor, Rober Neil (1987). Radhakrishnan: A Religious Biography. SUNY Press.
• Morris, Brian (2006). Religion and Anthropology: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge University Press.
• Mudgal, S.G. (1975). Advaita of Shankara: A Reappraisal. New Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass.
• Nakamura, Hajime (2004). "A History of Early Vedanta Philosophy. Part Two". Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited (Reprint of orig: 1950, Shoki No Vedanta Tetsugaku, Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo).
• Narayana Sastry, T.S (1916). The Age of Sankara.
• Nath, Vijay (March–April 2001). "From 'Brahmanism' to 'Hinduism': Negotiating the Myth of the Great Tradition". Social Scientist. 29 (3/4): 19–50. doi:10.2307/3518337. JSTOR 3518337.
• Pande, G.C. (2011). Life and Thought of Śaṅkarācārya. Motilal Banarsidass. ISBN 978-81-208-1104-1.
• Pandey, S.L. (2000). "Pre-Sankara Advaita. In: Chattopadhyana (gen.ed.), "History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization. Volume II Part 2: Advaita Vedanta"". Delhi: Centre for Studies in Civilizations.
• Popular Prakashan (2000). Students' Britannica India, Volumes 1–5. Popular Prakashan. ISBN 978-0-85229-760-5.
• Pradhavananda; Isherwood, Christopher (1978). Shankara's Crest-Jewel of Discrimination. USA: Vedanta Press. ISBN 978-0-87481-038-7.
• Roodurmun, Pulasth Soobah (2002). Bhāmatī and Vivaraṇa Schools of Advaita Vedānta: A Critical Approach. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited.
• Rosen, Steven (2006), Essential Hinduism, Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN 978-0-275-99006-0
• Samuel, Geoffrey (2010). The Origins of Yoga and Tantra. Indic Religions to the Thirteenth Century. Cambridge University Press.
• Scheepers, Alfred (2000). De Wortels van het Indiase Denken. Olive Press.
• Shah-Kazemi, Reza (2006). "Paths to Transcendence: According to Shankara, Ibn Arabi & Meister Eckhart". World Wisdom.
• Sharma, Chandradhar (1962). Indian Philosophy: A Critical Survey. New York: Barnes & Noble.
• Sharma, C. (1997). A Critical Survey of Indian Philosophy. Motilal Banarsidass. ISBN 978-81-208-0365-7.
• Sharma, B.N. Krishnamurti (2000). History of the Dvaita School of Vedānta and Its Literature: From the Earliest Beginnings to Our Own Times. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. ISBN 978-81-208-1575-9.
• Shetty, V.T. Rajshekar (2002). "Caste, a nation within the nation: recipe for a bloodless revolution". Books for Change.
• Singh, N.; Barauh, B. (2004). "Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Pali Literature, Volume 1". Global Vision.
• Tapasyananda (2002). Sankara-Dig-Vijaya: The Traditional Life of Sri Sankaracharya by Madhava-Vidyaranya. India: Sri Ramakrishna Math. ISBN 978-81-7120-434-2.
• White, David Gordon, ed. (2000). Introduction. In: Tantra in practice. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Web-sources

1. "Sankara Acarya Biography – Monastic Tradition". Archived from the original on 8 May 2012.
2. "Adi Shankara's four Amnaya Peethams". Archived from the original on 26 June 2006. Retrieved 20 August 2006.

Further reading

• Ingalls, Daniel H.H. (1954). "Śaṁkara's Arguments against the Buddhists". Philosophy East and West. 3 (4): 291–306. doi:10.2307/1397287. JSTOR 1397287. Archived from the original on 28 June 2011.
• Mishra, Parameshwar Nath (2003), "Era of Adi Shankaracharya 507 B.C.–475 B.C.", Howrah Samskriti Rakshak Parishad, West Bengal.
• Mishra, Parameshwar Nath, "Amit Kalrekha", 3 vols. (in Hindi), Howrah Samskriti Rakshak Parishad, West Bengal.
• Succession of Shankaracharyas (a chronology) (from Gaudapada onwards)
• Reigle, David (2001). "The Original Sankaracarya" (PDF). Fohat. 5 (3): 57–60, 70–71.
• Frank Whaling (1979), Śankara and Buddhism, Journal of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 1–42
• "Sri Shankaracharya in Cambodia..?" by S. Srikanta Sastri
• Navone, J.J. (1956). "Sankara and the Vedic Tradition". Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. 17 (2): 248–255. doi:10.2307/2104222. JSTOR 2104222.
• Biderman, Shlomo (1978). "Śankara and the Buddhists". Journal of Indian Philosophy. 6 (4). doi:10.1007/BF00218430. S2CID 170754201.
• Rukmani, T.S. (2003). "Dr. Richard de Smet and Sankara's Advaita". Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies. 16. doi:10.7825/2164-6279.1295.
• A Questioning Approach: Learning from Sankara's Pedagogic Techniques, Jacqueline Hirst, Contemporary Education Dialogue, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 137–169

External links

• Media from Wikimedia Commons
• Quotations from Wikiquote
• Texts from Wikisource
• Data from Wikidata
• Works by Adi Shankara at Project Gutenberg
• Adi Shankara at Curlie
• Works by or about Adi Shankara at Internet Archive
• Majors works of Adi Sankara Volumes 1–20, (Sanskrit and English Translations)
• A Note on the date of Sankara (Adi Sankaracharya) by S. Srikanta Sastri

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Part 1 of 3

Chapter 3: Facets of the Negro Problem [Color Caste], Excerpt from An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy
by Gunnar Myrdal
With the Assistance of Richard Sterner and Arnold Rose
1944

In 1880, Lajpat Rai joined Government College at Lahore to study Law, where he came in contact with patriots and future freedom fighters, such as Lala Hans Raj and Pandit Guru Dutt. While studying at Lahore he was influenced by the Hindu reformist movement of Swami Dayanand Saraswati, became a member of existing Arya Samaj Lahore (founded 1877) and founder editor of Lahore-based Arya Gazette.[7] [His journal Arya Gazette concentrated mainly on subjects related to the Arya Samaj.]

When studying law, he became a firm believer in the idea that Hinduism, above nationality, was the pivotal point upon which an Indian lifestyle must be based. He believed, Hinduism, led to practices of peace to humanity, and the idea that when nationalist ideas were added to this peaceful belief system, a secular nation could be formed...

Since childhood, he also had a desire to serve his country and therefore took a pledge to free it from foreign rule, in the same year he also founded the Hisar district branch of the Indian National Congress and reformist Arya Samaj with Babu Churamani (lawyer), three Tayal brothers (Chandu Lal Tayal, Hari Lal Tayal and Balmokand Tayal), Dr. Ramji Lal Hooda, Dr. Dhani Ram, Arya Samaj Pandit Murari Lal,[9] Seth Chhaju Ram Jat (founder of Jat School, Hisar) and Dev Raj Sandhir...

In 1914, he quit law practice to dedicate himself to the freedom of India and went to Britain in 1914 and then to the United States in 1917. In October 1917, he founded the Indian Home Rule League of America in New York. He stayed in the United States from 1917 to 1920...

Graduates of the National College, which he founded inside the Bradlaugh Hall at Lahore as an alternative to British institutions, included Bhagat Singh.[10] He was elected President of the Indian National Congress in the Calcutta Special Session of 1920...

While in America he had founded the Indian Home Rule League in New York and a monthly journal Young India and Hindustan Information Services Association. He had petitioned the Foreign affairs committee of Senate of American Parliament giving a vivid picture of maladministration of British Raj in India, the aspirations of the people of India for freedom amongst many other points strongly seeking the moral support of the international community for the attainment of independence of India. The 32-page petition which was prepared overnight was discussed in the U.S. Senate during October 1917.[13] The book also argues for the notion of "color-caste," suggesting sociological similarities between race in the US and caste in India.

-- Lala Lajpat Rai, by Wikipedia

Almost unanimously white Americans have communicated to the author the following logic of the caste situation which we shall call the "white man's theory of color caste."

(1) The concern for "race purity" is basic in the whole issue; the primary and essential command is to prevent amalgamation; the whites are determined to utilize every means to this end.

(2) Rejection of "social equality" is to be understood as a precaution to hinder miscegenation and particularly intermarriage.

(3) The danger of miscegenation is so tremendous that the segregation and discrimination inherent in the refusal of "social equality" must be extended to nearly all spheres of life. There must be segregation and discrimination in recreation, in religious service, in education, before the law, in politics, in housing, in stores and in breadwinning.

Chapter 3: Facets of the Negro Problem, Excerpt from An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, by Gunnar Myrdal

[This study was made possible by funds granted by Carnegie Corporation of New York. That corporation is not, however, the author, owner, publisher, or proprietor of this publication, and is not to he understood as approving by virtue of its grant any of the statements made or views expressed therein. ]

FOREWORD

I have been asked to write a prefatory note for this book, because of the part played by the Carnegie Corporation in inaugurating the comprehensive study of which it is the outcome. In the public mind, the American foundations are associated with gifts for endowment and buildings to universities, colleges and other cultural and scientific institutions, and to a lesser degree with the financial support of fundamental research. It is true that a great part of the funds for which their Trustees are responsible have been distributed for these purposes, but the foundations do other things not so generally recognized. There are, for example, problems which face the American people, and sometimes mankind in general, which call for studies upon a scale too broad for any single institution or association to undertake, and in recent years certain foundations have devoted a considerable part of their available resources to the financing of such comprehensive studies.

The primary purpose of studies of this character is the collection, analysis and interpretation of existing knowledge; it is true that considerable research may prove necessary to fill the gaps as they reveal themselves, but such research is a secondary rather than a primary part of the undertaking as a whole. Provided the foundation limits itself to its proper function, namely to make the facts available and let them speak for themselves, and does not undertake to instruct the public as to what to do about them, studies of this kind provide a wholly proper and, as experience has shown, sometimes a highly important use of their funds.

As examples, we may take the inquiry and report of the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care (1928-1933), made possible by a group of foundations. Lord Hailey's memorable study, An African Survey, in the thirties was financed by the Carnegie Corporation. The significance of such undertakings cannot be measured by their cost. The volumes on the Poor Whites of South Africa, published in 1932, represent a relatively modest enterprise, but they have largely changed the thinking of the South Africans upon a social question of great importance to them.

While the underlying purpose of these studies is to contribute to the general "advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding," to quote the Charter of the Carnegie Corporation, it sometimes happens that a secondary factor, namely the need of the foundation itself for fuller light in the formulation and development of its own program, has been influential in their inception. This is true in the present case. The wide sweep of Andrew Carnegie's interests included the Negro, he gave generously to Negro institutions, and was closely identified with both Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes. The Corporation which he created maintained that interest, and during the years between its organization in 1911 and the inauguration of the present study, it made grants of more than two and one-half million dollars in direct response thereto.

In 1931, the late Newton D. Baker joined the Corporation Board. He was the son of a Confederate officer, attended the Episcopal Academy in Virginia and the Law School of Washington and Lee University, and spent the greater part of his early years in the Border states of West Virginia and Maryland. His services first as City Solicitor and later as Mayor of Cleveland gave him direct experience with the growing Negro populations in Northern cities, and as Secretary of War he had faced the special problems which the presence of the Negro element in our population inevitably creates in time of national crisis.

Mr. Baker knew so much more than the rest of us on the Board about these questions, and his mind had been so deeply concerned with them, that we readily agreed when he told us that more knowledge and better organized and interrelated knowledge were essential before the Corporation could intelligently distribute its own funds. We agreed with him further in believing that the gathering and digestion of the material might well have a usefulness far beyond our own needs.

The direction of such a comprehensive study of the Negro in America, as the Board thereupon authorized, was a serious question. There was no lack of competent scholars in the United States who were deeply interested in the problem and had already devoted themselves to its study, but the whole question had been for nearly a hundred years so charged with emotion that it appeared wise to seek as the responsible head of the undertaking someone who could approach his task with a fresh mind, uninfluenced by traditional attitudes or by earlier conclusions, and it was therefore decided to "import" a general director—somewhat as the late Charles P. Howland was called across the Atlantic to supervise the repatriation of the Greeks in Asia Minor after the close of the first World War. And since the emotional factor affects the Negroes no less than the whites, the search was limited to countries of high intellectual and scholarly standards but with no background or traditions of imperialism which might lessen the confidence of the Negroes in the United States as to the complete impartiality of the study and the validity of its findings. Under these limitations, the obvious places to look were Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries, and the search ended in the selection of Dr. Gunnar Myrdal, a scholar who despite his youth had already achieved an international reputation as a social economist, a professor in the University of Stockholm, economic adviser to the Swedish Government, and a member of the Swedish Senate. Dr. Myrdal had a decade earlier spent a year in the United States as a Fellow of the Spelman Fund, and when the invitation was extended to him by the Corporation in 1937, was about to make a second visit at the invitation of Harvard University to deliver the Godkin Lectures.

It was understood that he should be free to appoint and organize a staff of his own selection in the United States and that he should draw upon the experience of other scholars and experts in less formal fashion, but that the report as finally drawn up and presented to the public should represent and portray his own decisions, alike in the selection of data and in the conclusions as to their relative importance. Upon him rested the responsibility, and to him should go the credit for what I for one believe to be a remarkable accomplishment.

The difficulties of Dr. Myrdal's task, which would have been great enough in any event, were much increased by the outbreak of the present war. At a critical point in the development of the enterprise, he returned to Sweden to confer with his colleagues in the Government and the University, and only after nine months was he enabled to return by a long and circuitous route. Meanwhile, defense and war needs here had taken more and more of the time and energies of his collaborators. Despite all these difficulties, delays and complications, his task has now been completed and is presented in these volumes. The Carnegie Corporation is under deep and lasting obligation to Dr. Myrdal. The full degree of this obligation will be appreciated only when the material he has gathered and interpreted becomes generally known.

Though he has achieved an extraordinary mastery of the English language, Dr. Myrdal is not writing in his mother tongue. As a result, there is a freshness and often a piquancy in his choice of words and phrases which is an element of strength. Here and there it may lead to the possibility of misunderstanding of some word or some phrase. This is a risk that has been deliberately taken. It would have been possible for some American to edit the very life out of Dr. Myrdal's manuscript in an effort to avoid all possibility of offending the susceptibilities of his readers, but the result would have been a less vital and a far less valuable document than it is in its present form.

Thanks are also due to the Director's many associates and advisers, and in particular to Professor Samuel A. Stouffer and Dr. Richard Sterner, who during Dr. Myrdal's absence carried the burden of direction and decision, and to Messrs. Shelby M. Harrison, William F. Ogburn and Donald R. Young for their generously given editorial services in connection with the publication of some of the research memoranda prepared by Dr. Myrdal's collaborators.

When the Trustees of the Carnegie Corporation asked for the preparation of this report in 1937, no one (except possibly Adolf Hitler) could have foreseen that it would be made public at a day when the place of the Negro in our American life would be the subject of greatly heightened interest in the United States, because of the social questions which the war has brought in its train both in our military and in our industrial life. It is a day, furthermore, when the eyes of men of all races the world over are turned upon us to see how the people of the most powerful of the United Nations are dealing at home with a major problem of race relations. It would have been better in some ways if the book could have appeared somewhat earlier, for the process of digestion would then have taken place under more favorable conditions, but, be that as it may, it is fortunate that its appearance is no longer delayed.

I venture to close these introductory paragraphs with a personal word dealing with a matter upon which Dr. Myrdal himself has touched in his preface, but which I feel moved to state in my own words. It is inevitable that many a reader will find in these volumes statements and conclusions to which he strongly objects, be he white or colored, Northerner or Southerner. May I urge upon each such reader that he make every effort to react to these statements intellectually and not emotionally. This advice, I realize, is much more easy to give than to follow, but it is given with a serious purpose. The author is under no delusions of omniscience; as a scholar, he is inured to taking hard knocks as well as giving them, and he will be the first to welcome challenges as to the accuracy of any data he has presented, the soundness of any general conclusions he has reached, and the relative weight assigned by him to any factor or factors in the complicated picture he draws. Criticism and correction on these lines will add greatly to the value of the whole undertaking.

F. P. Keppel
December 15, 1942.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

Late in the summer of 1957 Frederick P. Keppel, on behalf of the Trustees of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, of which he was then President, invited me to become the director of "a comprehensive study of the Negro in the United States, to be undertaken in a wholly objective and dispassionate way as a social phenomenon."

Our idea, so far as we have developed it, would be to invite one man to be responsible
 for the study as a whole, but to place at his disposal the services of a group of associates, Americans, who would be competent to deal as experts with the anthropological, economic, educational and social aspects of the question, including public health and public administration.* [Letter from Mr. Frederick P. Keppel, August 12, 1937.]

After some correspondence and, later, personal conferences in the spring of 1938, when I was in the United States for another purpose, the matter was settled. It was envisaged that the study would require a minimum of two years of intensive work, but that it might take a longer time before the final report could be submitted.

On September 10, 1938, 1 arrived in America to start the work. Richard Sterner of the Royal Social Board, Stockholm, had been asked to accompany me. On Mr. Keppel's advice, we started out in the beginning of October on a two months' exploratory journey through the Southern states. Jackson Davis, of the General Education Board, who has behind him the experiences of a whole life devoted to improving race relations in the South and is himself a Southerner, kindly agreed to be our guide, and has since then remained a friend and an advisor.

We traveled by car from Richmond, Virginia, and passed through most of the Southern states. We established contact with a great number of white and Negro leaders in various activities; visited universities, colleges, schools, churches, and various state and community agencies as well as factories and plantations; talked to police officers, teachers, preachers, politicians, journalists, agriculturists, workers, sharecroppers, and in fact, all sorts of people, colored and white . . .

During this trip the State Agents for Negro Education in the various states were our key contacts. They were all extremely generous with their time and interest, and were very helpful.

The trip was an exploratory journey: we went around with our eyes wide open and gathered impressions, but did not feel ready, and in any case, had not the necessary time to collect in an original way data and material for the Study. The experience, however, was necessary. Without it our later studies will have no concrete points at which to be fixed.* [Memorandum to Mr. Keppel, January 28, 1939. ]

After a period of library work a first memorandum on the planning of the research to be undertaken was submitted to Mr. Keppel on January 28, 1939. It was later mimeographed, and I had, at this stage of the study, the advantage of criticisms and suggestions, in oral discussions and by letter, from a number of scholars and experts, among whom were: W. W. Alexander, Ruth Benedict, Franz Boas, Midian O. Bousfield, Sterling Brown, W. O. Brown, Ralph J. Bunche, Eveline Burns, Horace Cayton, Allison Davis, Jackson Davis, John Dollard, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edwin Embree, Earl Engle, Clark Foreman, E. Franklin Frazier, Abram L. Harris, Melville J. Herskovits, Charles S. Johnson, Guion G. Johnson, Guy B. Johnson, Eugene Kinckle Jones, Thomas Jesse Jones, Otto Klineberg, Ralph Linton, Alain Locke, Frank Lorimer, George Lundberg, Frank Notestein, Howard W. Odum, Frederick Osborn, Robert E. Park, Hortense Powdermaker, Arthur Raper, Ira DeA. Reid, E. B. Reuter, Sterling Spero, Dorothy Swaine Thomas, W. I. Thomas, Charles H. Thompson, Edward L. Thorndike, Rupert B. Vance, Jacob Viner, Walter White, Doxey A. Wilkerson, Faith Williams, Louis Wirth, L. Hollingsworth Wood, Thomas J. Woofter, Jr., Donald R. Young.

During the further planning of the study in terms of specific research projects and collaborators, Donald R. Young of the Social Science Research Council, Charles S. Johnson of Fisk University, and Thomas J. Woofter, Jr., then of the Works Progress Administration, were relied upon heavily for advice. Mr. Young, in particular, during this entire stage of the study, was continuously consulted not only on all major questions but on many smaller concerns as they arose from day to day, and he placed at my disposal his great familiarity with the field of study as well as with available academic personnel. Upon the basis of the reactions I had received, I reworked my plans and gradually gave them a more definite form in terms of feasible approaches and the manner of actually handling the problems. A conference was held at Asbury Park, New Jersey, from April 23 to April 28 inclusive, at which were present: Ralph J. Bunche, Charles S. Johnson, Guy B. Johnson, Richard Sterner, Dorothy S. Thomas, Thomas J. Woofter, Jr., and Donald R. Young. As a result of the conference I submitted to Mr. Keppel, in a letter of April 28, 1939, a more definite plan for the next stage of the study. The general terms of reference were defined in the following way:

The study thus conceived, should aim at determining the social, political, educational, and economic status of the Negro in the United States as well as defining opinion, held by different groups of Negroes and whites as to his "right" status. It must, further, be concerned with both recent change, and current trend, with respect to the Negro's position in American society. Attention must also be given to the total American picture with particular emphasis on relations between the two races. Finally, it must consider what changes are being or can be induced by education, legislation, interracial efforts, concerted action by Negro groups, etc.

 
Mr. Keppel, who from the start had given me the benefit of his most personal interest and advice, and who had followed the gradual development of the approach, gave his approval to the practical plans. Needed were a working staff, consisting of experts who could devote their whole time to the project, and, in addition, the collaboration of other experts to prepare research memoranda on special subjects. I was most fortunate in securing the cooperation needed. The following staff members were engaged, besides Richard Sterner: Ralph J. Bunche, Guy B. Johnson, Paul H. Norgren, Dorothy S. Thomas, and Doxey A. Wilkerson. Norgren did not join the staff until November I, 1939. Mrs. Thomas left the study on January 15, 1940, for another engagement. Outside the staff, the following persons undertook various research tasks, namely: M. F. Ashley-Montagu, Margaret Brenman, Sterling Brown, Barbara Burks, Allison Davis, J. G. St. Clair Drake, Harold F. Dorn, G. James Fleming, Lyonel C. Florant, E. Franklin Frazier, Herbert Goldhamer, Melville J. Herskovits, T. Arnold Hill, Eugene L. Horowitz, Eleanor C. Isbell, Charles S. Johnson, Guion G. Johnson, Dudley Kirk, Louise K. Kiser, Otto Klineberg, Ruth Landes, Gunnar Lange, T. C. McCormick, Benjamin Malzberg, Gladys Palmer, Arthur Raper, Ira DeA. Reid, Edward Shils, Bernhard J. Stern, Louis Wirth, T. J. Woofter, Jr. There were the following assistants to staff members and outside collaborators, who worked for various periods: Berta Asch, Lloyd H. Bailer, Louis Boone, Frieda Brim, Vincent Brown, William B. Bryant, Elwood C. Chisolm, Walter Chivers, Kenneth Clark, Belle Cooper, Lenore Epstein, Edmonia Grant, Louis O. Harper, James Healy, Mary C. Ingham, James E. Jackson, Jr., Wilhelmina Jackson, Anne De B. Johnson, Louis W. Jones, Alan D. Kandel, Simon Marcson, Felix E. Moore, Jr., Rose K. Nelson, Herbert R. Northrup, Edward N. Palmer, Lemuel A. Penn, Glaucia B. Roberts, Arnold M. Rose, George C. Stoney, Joseph Taylor, Benjamin Tepping, Harry J. Walker, Richard B. Whitten, Milton Woll, Rowena Wyant, and Walter Wynne. Mrs. Rowena Hadsell Saeger was the executive secretary of the study throughout this stage.

During the summer of 1939 I prepared a detailed plan for the study.* ["Memorandum on the Disposition of the Study on the American Negro." ] The work on the various research memoranda started gradually during the summer and fall of 1939, and I remained in close touch with all my collaborators. As I wanted to be able to corroborate, as far as possible, information in the literary sources and in the research memoranda being prepared for the study, by looking at interracial relations in various parts of the country with my own eyes, I continued to reserve as much of my time as possible for work in the field.

After the Germans had invaded Denmark and Norway in April, 1940, Mr. Keppel and I agreed that my duty was to go home to Sweden. Samuel A. Stouffer — who, meanwhile, had undertaken the responsibilities on the staff which Mrs. Thomas had left — agreed to take upon himself the burden of directing the project in my absence. Without reserve, he unselfishly devoted all his talents and all his energy to the task of bringing the research to completion by September 1, 1940, and he succeeded. I shall always remain in deep gratitude to Stouffer for what he did during those months and for the moral support he thereafter has unfailingly given me and the project.

Because of the delay in the completion of the work — and, indeed, the uncertainty as to whether I would ever be able to return to the task of writing a final report — the Corporation decided, in the fall of 1940, to facilitate the publication of some of the memoranda. A Committee to advise In the selection of those contributions most nearly ready for publication was appointed, consisting of Donald R. Young, Chairman, Shelby M. Harrison and William F. Ogburn. Samuel A. Stouffer served as Secretary to this committee. The following volumes have been published:

Melville J. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941.

Charles S. Johnson, Patterns of Negro Segregation. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1943.

Richard Sterner, The Negro's Share. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1943.

A fourth volume is to be published later:

Otto Klineberg, editor, Characteristics of the American Negro. New York: Harper & Brothers.

This volume contains the following research memoranda, the manuscripts of which will be deposited in the Schomburg Collection of the New York Public Library.

Otto Klineberg, "Tests of Negro Intelligence," "Experimental Studies of Negro Personality."

Benjamin Malzberg, "Mental Disease among American Negroes: A Statistical Analysis."

Louis Wirth and Herbert Goldhamer, "The Hybrid and the Problem of Miscegenation."

Eugene L. Horowitz, "'Race' Attitudes."

Gny Johnson, "The Stereotypes of the American Negro."

The following unpublished manuscripts, prepared for the study — after some provision has been made to preserve the authors' rights — are being deposited in the Schomburg Collection of the New York Public Library where they will be available for scientific reference:* [In addition to the unpublished research memoranda listed, the following material is also deposited in the Schomburg Collection: (1) Memorandum to Mr. Keppel, January 28, 1939 (containing the first plan of the Study); (2) Memorandum to the Staff, "Disposition of the Study on the American Negro," September 10, 1939 (containing the definitive research program); (3) Memorandum to the Staff, "Main Viewpoints and Emphases of the Study," February 8, 1940; (4) Memorandum to the Staff, "Preparation of Manuscripts," February 8, 1940; and (5)Memorandum to the Staff, "Bibliographies," October 31, 1939.]
 

M. F. Ashley-Montagu, "Origin, Composition and Physical Characteristics of the American Negro Population."

Margaret Brenman, "Personality Traits of Urban Negro Girls."

Sterling Brown, "The Negro in American Culture" (fragment).

Ralph Bunche, "Conceptions and Ideologies of the Negro Problem," "The Programs, Ideologies, Tactics, and Achievements of Negro Betterment and Interracial Organizations," "A Brief and Tentative Analysis of Negro Leadership," "The Political Status of the Negro."

Barbara Burks, "The Present Status of the Nature-Nurture Problem as It Relates to Intelligence."

Allison Davis, "Negro Churches and Associations in the Lower South."

Harold F. Dorn, "The Health of the Negro."

J. G. St. Clair Drake, "Negro Churches and Associations in Chicago."

G. James Fleming, "The Negro Press."

Lyonel C. Florant, "Critique of the Census of the United States," "Negro Migration — 1860-1940" (revised edition, 1942, of the Stouffer-Florant manuscript).

E. Franklin Frazier, "Recreation and Amusement among American Negroes," "Stories of Experiences with Whites."

T. Arnold Hill, "Digest and Analysis of Questionnaires Submitted by Urban League Secretaries for 'The Negro in America.' Churches and Lodges, Negro Business and Businessmen, Racial Attitudes, Recreation and Leisure Time."

E. C. Isbell, "The Negro Family in America," "Statistics of Population Growth and Composition."

Guion G. Johnson, "A History of Racial Ideologies in the United States with Reference to the Negro."

Guion G. Johnson and Guy B. Johnson, "The Church and the Race Problem in the United States."

Guy B. Johnson and Louise K. Kiser, "The Negro and Crime."

Dudley Kirk, "The Fertility of the Negro."

Ruth Landes, "The Ethos of the Negro in the New World."

Gunnar Laage, "Trends in Southern Agriculture," "The Agricultural Adjustment Program and the Negro" (fragment).

T. C. McCormick, "The Negro in Agriculture."

Benjamin Malzberg, "A Study of Delusions among Negroes with Mental Diseases."

Paul Norgren, "Negro Labor and Its Problems."

E. Nelson Palmer, "A Note on the Development of Negro Lodges in the United States."

Arthur Raper, "Race and Class Pressures."

Ira DeA. Reid, "The Negro in the American Economic System."

Edward A. Shils, "The Bases of Social Stratification in Negro Society."

Bernhard J. Stern, "The Negro in Adult Education."

Samuel A. Stouffer and Lyonel C. Florant, "Negro Population and Negro Population Movements: 1860-1940, in Relation to Social and Economic Factors."

Doxey Wilkerson, "The Negro in American Education" (fragment).

T.J. Woofter, Jr., "The Negro and Agricultural Policy."

The Advisory Committee appointed by the Corporation has gone through all the published and unpublished memoranda listed above. Coming to the material from outside and viewing it with fresh eyes, the Committee felt justified in giving the following appraisal:

The Committee found that every manuscript submitted offered significant contributions. In serving the purposes of the Study so well, the contributors necessarily subordinated their individual publication interests to the interests of the central project. This is evidence of unselfish team-play which deserves respect and commendation.* [Foreword by the Committee to: Melville J. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past (1941), p. x.]

To this high appreciation, which needs no amplification on my part, I want to add some words of personal gratitude to my colleagues in the first stage of the study. The collaboration in the study -- which embraced, in friendship and concerted efforts, white and Negro men and women of different specialties, ages, and previous accomplishments -- gave more than is contained in the 15,000 typewritten pages of manuscript. Even about the specific problems of race relations, which we were studying together, I learned much more from our informal conferences than I can ever duly account for in this book.

To Mrs. Rowena Hadsell Saeger I remain grateful for her great devotion and, specifically, for the efficient manner in which she relieved me of much office work in directing the study, thereby allowing me to use much of the year for continuing my field trips.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, The Urban League, The Commission for Interracial Cooperation, private and public research institutions, several branches of the federal government, and state and municipal authorities in different parts of the country, and, in addition, a great number of individuals, have aided me and my collaborators to an extent which makes any detailed acknowledgment difficult.

The first stage of the study closed with the completion of the several research memoranda which are published or, in unpublished form, are made available for students of the Negro problem.

The second stage of the study began when I returned to America on March 6, 1941. In writing the present book, which has been produced during this second stage, I have utilized the unpublished manuscripts, prepared for the study during its first stage, in the same manner as I have used the printed literature. I have, therefore, had frequent occasion to cite them. As a glance at the footnotes will reveal, the unpublished manuscripts on which I have relied most heavily are those by Bunche, Norgren, Raper, Stouffer and Florant, and, in the next place, those of Dorn, Drake, Kirk and Lange. I have, of course, depended upon the printed literature to an even greater extent than upon the specially prepared monographs. Much of the library work was done during the summer of 1941 in the excellent Baker Library of Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. Use was also made of the Columbia University Library, the New York Public Library, the Princeton University Library and the Russell Sage Foundation's library. I have also drawn upon my person observations of conditions and attitudes in various parts of the country and upon the observations of Sterner and Rose. Most of the book was written in Princeton, New Jersey.

In September, 1941, I was joined by Richard Sterner and Arnold Rose, whose names rightly appear on the title page as assistants. Richard Sterner has been my associate in this work from the first day. Together we explored the Negro problem in America, which was so new and foreign to us both, and together we discussed the task to be accomplished. Sterner assisted in an essential way in outlining the program for the first stage of the work. Besides the special investigation of the Negro's standard of living, which he later undertook as one of the staff members and which resulted in his now published book, The Negro's Share: In Income, Consumption, Housing and Public Assistance, he kept, upon my request, a general interest and a general responsibility for the wider economic problems of the Negro in America. For the present book he has prepared manuscripts in draft form for nine chapters in Part IV on economic problems. Appendix 6, "Pre-War Conditions of the Negro Wage Earner in Selected Industries and Occupations," is written by him. He has carefully gone through the several succeeding drafts of other parts of the book and has given me criticism which has not only referred to details but often to fundamental views and arrangement. For the final shape of Part V on the political problems, for instance, his criticism has been of greatest importance since it has led me to stress, much more than I had succeeded in doing in a first draft, the elements of actual and pending change in the political scene of the South. His critique of this and other parts has had a specific functional value for the writing of this book, as he, being a stranger like myself and having the same cultural background, was inside the points of view which have been applied throughout the work. I should also mention that when statements in this book are made in a conjectural form and based on personal observations, these observations are often made by Sterner or by both Sterner and myself.

Arnold Rose has prepared drafts for Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8 on problems connected with race and population, Chapter 22 on the present political scene, Chapter 29 on the patterns of discrimination, Chapters 41 and 42 on church and education, and Appendices 4, 7 and 8. He has also prepared drafts for many sections of other chapters. For still other chapters he has assembled data and filled in gaps. For the final formulation of the main methodological analysis in Appendix 2 on facts and values in social science, his contribution has been of great importance. He has read the manuscripts of all parts and edited them. His editing work has included much more than polishing the English. It has, rather, been a most conscientious checking of basic data as well as of inferences, and a critical consideration of arrangement, viewpoints and conclusions. Both his criticisms and suggestions have, with few exceptions, led to changes in the final manuscript, and many of these changes are important. His wide knowledge of the social science literature and his sound judgment on methodological problems have, in this critical work, been significant. When I delivered the manuscript and departed from America, there was still a great deal of checking to be done and gaps to be filled in for which he was responsible, as well as for the proof reading. He also had to write Chapters 43 and 44, on the Negro community and culture, and Sections 1 and 4 of Appendix 10. For the present form of these two chapters and the appendix, Rose is himself responsible.

About the contributions of both Sterner and Rose I want to add the following. The size of the book, and still more the scope of the problems involved, will make it understandable even to the reader who is not himself familiar with many of the specific fields, that the work done has been immense. We have had to dig deep into primary sources in many fields of social science and a major part of this digging has been done by them. The collaboration, which stretched ruthlessly over evenings and weekends, has been a sheer pleasure to me, as I have felt more than I have ever experienced before the stimulation of an ideal cooperation where we not only added together the results of our labor but imagined that we in our concerted endeavors sometimes reached higher than an arithmetical sum. A similar outlook on the methodological problems of social science and a mutually shared scientific curiosity in seeing our structure of hypothesis, data, and conclusion rise, have given to our collaboration a spirit of intellectual exploration which I will not soon forget.

To Miss Ruth Moulik, who has been our secretary and who will continue to stay with the book until it has come through the press, we are grateful for her skill and great devotion. Besides the responsibility for the office and, particularly, for the typing and checking of the manuscript, she has helped us by statistical computations, by digging up sources in the library, by checking statistical data and quotations, and in many other ways.

In the last, hectic stage of the study, from September through December, 1942, Caroline Baer Rose was a member of the little group of three who had to carry on after Sterner and I departed for Sweden. She worked unselfishly through all hours, including evenings and weekends, and brought to the study her frank personality and broad background. She assisted Mr. Rose in checking data and filling in gaps and was especially helpful in doing these things on the economics part. She also wrote the first draft of Chapter 44, Section 4, on "Recreation."

Before making my final revision of the manuscript I have had the invaluable help of having it read critically and carefully by two friends who are at the same time outstanding social scientists with a great familiarity with the problems treated in the book: Professors E. Franklin Frazier of Howard University and Louis Wirth of the University of Chicago. They have not spared any effort, and as a result I have had their criticisms and suggestions often from page to page, referring to everything from the syntax and the arrangement of chapters and appendices to fundamental problems of approach and to conclusions. In my revision nearly every point raised by them has caused omissions, additions, rearrangements, clarifications or other alterations. Paul H. Norgren has read Appendix 6 and a first draft of Chapter 19. Gunnar Lange has read Chapters 10 to 12 and a first draft of Chapter 18. The final manuscript has benefited by their criticism. Alva Myrdal has read various chapters; her criticism of Appendix 1 and Chapter 41 on Negro education has been particularly valuable.

The relation of the study to the Carnegie Corporation of New York must be accounted for. The study has an unusual character as it was not initiated by any individual scholar or academic institution but sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation itself and, in a sense, carried out within the Corporation. The general plan that a number of American experts should be asked to collaborate by preparing research monographs while the director himself should write a final report, was also developed by the Corporation. All decisions on practical and financial matters have been taken on the responsibility of the Corporation. The Trustees of the Corporation have been most generous and prompt in appropriating necessary funds for the study.

Mr. Keppel has had to keep in closer touch with the progress of the work than is usual when a study is sponsored by an outside institution. No conventional words of appreciation can express what his unfailing personal interest in the project has meant in upholding the courage of the present author throughout his tribulations. Charles Dollard, the Assistant to the President of the Carnegie Corporation, has followed the work in all its practical details and has, with Keppel, contributed most in terms of moral support and advice. Both Keppel and Dollard have read the manuscript and given me their criticisms and suggestions, which have been very valuable.

For the content of the book, I am solely responsible.

The scope and main direction of this book will be explained in the "Introduction." There are, however, some few notes of a more personal character for which the proper place is at the close of this preface. To invite a foreigner — someone "in a nonimperialistic country with no background of domination of one race over another" who, presumably "would approach the situation with an entirely fresh mind"; I am here again quoting Keppel's first letter, August 12, 1937 — to review the most serious race problem in the country, is an idea singularly American. In any other country such a proposal would have been defeated by afterthoughts of practical and political expediency. Many will deem it a foolish idea. But more fundamentally it is a new demonstration, in a minor matter, of American moralism, rationalism, and optimism — and a demonstration of America's unfailing conviction of its basic soundness and strength. Early in the course of this work, when I had found out the seriousness of the task before me, I proposed to Mr. Keppel that a committee be formed of a Southern white, a Northern white, and a Negro. In such a group we could have allowed for political considerations and worked out a basis for practical understanding, to which each one could have subscribed, since the representation of different viewpoints would have accounted for the intellectual compromises involved. This was, however, not at all what he wanted. He told me that everyone would generously help and advise me — and there he proved right — but that I would have to find out for myself, and upon my own responsibility, the truth in the- matter without any side glances as to what was politically desirable and expedient.

This book is the result. Let it be added at once that the author does not have any pretension of having produced the definitive statement of the Negro problem in America. The problem is too big and too complicated, and also things are rapidly changing while one writes. Time has, as always, been a limitation. When I now leave the work, I know that many chapters could be improved. But apart from such shortcomings, there is a more basic relativism which the reader should keep in mind. Things look different, defending upon "where you stand" as the American expression runs. The author fully realizes, and hopes the reader will remember, that he has never been subject to the strains involved in living in a black-white society and never has had to become adjusted to such a situation — and that this condition was the very reason why he was asked to undertake the work. He was requested to see things as a stranger. Indeed, he was asked to be both the subject and the object of a cultural experiment in the field of social science.

As he, in this problem — to which he previously had given hardly a thought — was nearly stripped of all the familiar and conventional moorings of viewpoints and valuations, he had to construct for himself a system of coordinates. He found this in the American ideals of equality and liberty. Being a stranger to the problem, he has had perhaps a greater awareness of the extent to which human valuations everywhere enter into our scientific discussion of the Negro problem. In two appendices on valuations, beliefs, and facts he has attempted to clear the methodological ground for a scientific approach which keeps the valuations explicit and hinders them from going underground in the form of biases distorting the facts. And he has followed the rule all through the book of inserting the terms "the American Creed" and "value premise" and of specifying those value premises and printing them in italics. The reader will be less irritated by their repetition if he understands that these terms are placed as signs of warning to the reader and to the writer alike: the search for scientific knowledge and the drawing of practical conclusions are dependent upon valuations as well as upon facts.

When, in this way, the data on the American Negro problem are marshaled under the high ideals of the American Creed, the fact must be faced that the result is rather dark. Indeed, as will be pointed out in the first chapter, the Negro problem in America represents a moral lag in the development of the nation and a study of it must record nearly everything which is bad and wrong in America. The reading of this book must be somewhat of an ordeal to the good citizen. I do not know if it can be offered as a consolation that the writing of the book, for much the same reason, has been an ordeal to the author who loves and admires America next to his own country — and does it even more sincerely after having had to become an expert on American imperfections. To a scholar a work is always something of a fate. His personal controls are diminutive; he is in the hands of the facts, of his professional standards, and of the fundamental approach chosen.

If this book gives a more complete record than is up to now available of American shortcomings in this field, I hope, however, that it also accounts more completely for the mutability in relations, the hope for great improvement in the near future and, particularly, the dominant role of ideals in the social dynamics of America. When looking back over the long manuscript, one main conclusion — which should be stressed here since it cannot be reiterated through the whole book — is this: that not since Reconstruction has there been more reason to anticipate fundamental changes in American race relations, changes which will involve a development toward the American ideals.

To the friends, colleagues, experts, and administrators of both races who have been helpful to me in the course of this study, 1 want to say plainly that in a job of this kind the attempt to be completely honest involves the author in the risk of losing friends. If this does not happen in the present instance, I shall ascribe this to the singular American magnanimity which is demonstrated in the very initiative of calling for this study.

GUNNAR MYRDAL
Stockholm, October, 1942
University of Stockholm

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Part 2 of 3

CHAPTER 3: FACETS OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM

I. American Minority Problems

For some decades there has been a tendency to incorporate the American Negro problem into the broader American minority problem.1 [More recently, Donald R. Young has been most outstanding in arguing this restatement of the Negro problem. We quote from him: "The view here presented is that the problems and principles of race relations are remarkably similar, regardless of what groups are involved; and that only by an integrated study of all minority peoples in the United States can a real understanding and sociological analysis of the involved social phenomena be achieved." (American Minority Peoples [1932], pp. xiii-1.) In explaining the similarities of the deprivations imposed upon different minority groups, Donald R. Young points out that: "It is ... to be expected that dominating majorities in various regions, when faced with the problem of what to think and do about minorities, will fail to be sufficiently inventive to create unique schemes of relationships and action. Variations in intensity of restriction and oppression, special techniques in maintaining superior status and other adaptations to the local scene will always be found, but the choice of fundamental patterns of dominance in majority-minority relations is limited by the nature of man and his circumstances." (Research Memorandum on Minority Peoples in the Depression, Social Science Research Council, Bulletin No. 31 [1937], pp. 9-10.)] In the United States, the term "minority people" has a connotation different from that in other parts of the world and especially in Central and Eastern Europe, where minority problems have existed. This difference in problem is due to a difference in situation. The minority peoples of the United States are fighting for status in the larger society; the minorities of Europe are mainly fighting for independence from it. In the United States the so-called minority groups as they exist today — except the Indians and the Negroes — are mostly the result of a relatively recent immigration, which it was for a long time the established policy to welcome as a nationally advantageous means of populating and cultivating the country. The newcomers themselves were bent upon giving up their language and other cultural heritages and acquiring the ways and attitudes of the new nation. There have been degrees of friction and delay in this assimilation process, and even a partial conscious resistance by certain immigrant groups. But these elements of friction and resistance are really only of a character and magnitude to bring into relief the fundamental difference between the typical American minority problems and those in, say, the old Austrian Empire. Of greatest importance, finally, is the fact that the official political creed of America denounced, in general but vigorous terms, all forms of suppression and discrimination, and affirmed human equality.

In addition to a cultural difference between the native-born and the foreign-born in the United States, there was always a class difference. At every point of time many of those who were already established in the new country had acquired wealth and power, and were thus in a position to lay down the rules to late-comers. The immigrants, who left their native lands mainly because they had little wealth, had to fit themselves as best they could into the new situation. Their lack of familiarity with the English language and ways of life also made them an easy prey of economic exploitation. But as long as the West was open to expansion, immigrant groups could avoid becoming a subordinate class by going to a place where they were the only class. Gradually the frontier filled up, and free land no longer offered the immigrants cultural independence and economic self-protection. Increasingly they tended to come from lands where the cultures were ever more distant from the established American standards. They became distinguished more markedly as half-digested isolates, set down in the slums of American cities, and the level of discrimination rose.

The first stage of their assimilation often took them through the worst slums of the nation. Group after group of immigrants from every part of the world had their first course in Americanization in the squalid and congested quarters of New York's East Side and similar surroundings. They found themselves placed in the midst of utter poverty, crime, prostitution, lawlessness, and other undesirable social conditions. The assimilation process brought the immigrants through totally uncontrolled labor conditions and often through personal misery and social pressures of all kinds. The American social scientist might direct his curiosity to the occasional failures of the assimilation process and the tension created in the entire structure of larger society during its course. To the outside observer, on the other hand, the relative success will forever remain the first and greatest riddle to solve, when he sees that the children and grandchildren of these unassimilated foreigners are well-adjusted Americans. He will have to account for the basic human power of resistance and the flexibility of people's minds and cultures. He will, have to appreciate the tremendous force in the American educational system. But it will not suffice as an explanation. He will be tempted to infer the influence upon the immigrant of a great national ethos, in which optimism and carelessness, generosity and callousness, were so blended as to provide him with hope and endurance.

From the viewpoint of the struggling immigrant himself, the harsh class structure, which thrust him to the bottom of the social heap, did not seem to be a rigid social determinant. In two or three generations, if not in one, the immigrant and his descendants moved into, and identified themselves with, the dominant American group, and — with luck and ability — took their position in the higher strata. Only because of this continuous movement of former immigrants and their descendants up and into the established group could the so-called "Americans" remain the majority during a century which saw more than a score of millions of immigrants added to its population. The causal mechanism of this social process has been aptly described as a continuous "push upwards" by a steady stream of new masses of toiling immigrants filling the ranks. of the lower social strata. The class structure remained, therefore, fairly stable, while millions of individuals were continuously climbing the social ladder which it constituted. The unceasing process of social mobility and the prospect of its continuation, and also the established Creed of America promising and sanctioning social mobility, together with many other factors of importance, kept the minority groups contented and bent on assimilation.

Religious differences, differences in fundamental attitudes, and "racial" differences entered early as elements of friction in the process of assimilation and as reasons for discrimination while the process was going on. With the growing importance of the new immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe in the decades before the War, these factors acquired increased importance. They are, in a considerable degree, responsible for the fact that even recent community surveys, undertaken decades after the end of the mass immigration, give a picture of American class stratification which closely corresponds to the differentiation in national groups. This type of differentiation is one of the most distinguishing characteristics of the American social order.

The split of the nation into a dominant "American" group and a large number of minority groups means that American civilization is permeated by animosities and prejudices attached to ethnic origin or what is popularly recognized as the "race" of a person.* [The popular term "race prejudice," as it is commonly used, embraces the whole complex of valuations and beliefs which arc behind discriminatory behavior on the part of the majority group (or, sometimes, also on the part of the minority group) and which are contrary to the equalitarian ideals in the American Creed. In this very inclusive sense the term will be used in this inquiry. It should be noted that little is explained when we say that "discrimination is due to prejudice." The concept "race prejudice" unfortunately carries connotations that the intergroup situation is fairly stable and that the complex of attitudes behind discrimination is homogeneous and solid. (This is, incidentally, the danger with the concept of "attitude" as it is often used; see Appendix i.) For a discussion of the empirical study of race prejudice, see Appendix 10, Section 4. We do not need to enter into a discussion of whether "anti-minority feelings" in general are different from the "race prejudices" as they are displayed against Negroes. On the one hand, people in general also refer the former attitude to what they usually perceive of as "race." As Donald Young points out, there is also something of a common pattern in all discriminations (see footnote 1 to this chapter). On the other hand, there is this significant difference which we shall stress, that in regard to the colored minorities, amalgamation is violently denied them, while in regard to all the other minorities, it is welcomed as a long-run process.] These animosities or prejudices are commonly advanced in defense of various discriminations which tend to keep the minority groups in a disadvantaged economic and social status. They are contrary to the American Creed, which is emphatic in denouncing differences made on account of "race, creed or color." In regard to the Negro, as well as more generally to all the other minorities, this conflict is what constitutes the problem, and it also contains the main factors in the dynamic development. Taking a cross-sectional view at any point of time, there is thus revealed an inconsistency in practically every American's social orientation. The inconsistency is not dissolved, at least not in the short run. Race prejudice and discrimination persist. But neither will the American Creed be thrown out. It is a hasty conclusion from the actual facts of discrimination that the Creed will be without influence in the long run, even if it is suppressed for the moment, or even that it is uninfluential in the short run.

In trying to reconcile conflicting valuations the ordinary American apparently is inclined to believe that, as generations pass on, the remaining minority groups — with certain distinct exceptions which will presently be discussed — will be assimilated into a homogeneous nation.2 [Even a prominent leader of the Ku Klux Klan, whose conservative attitudes on "racial" questions cannot be doubted, expressed to the writer the considered opinion that, in time, not only the Poles, Italians, Russian, Greeks, and Armenians, but also the Turks, Hindus, Jews, and Mexicans would come to be engulfed in the great American nation and disappear as separate, socially visible population segments. But it would take a very, very long time. I have heard this view affirmed by Americans in all social classes and regions of the country.] The American Creed is at least partially responsible for this, as well as for the American's inclination to deem this assimilation desirable. Of course, this view is also based on the memories of previous absorption of minority groups into the dominant "American" population. Even the American Indians are now considered as ultimately assimilable. "The American Indian, once constituting an inferior caste in the social hierarchy, now constitutes little more than a social class, since today his inferior status may be sloughed off by the process of cultural assimilation."3 [Young, Research Memorandum on Minority Peoples in the Depression, pp. 18-19.] This, incidentally, speaks against the doctrine that race prejudice under all circumstances is an unchangeable pattern of attitudes.

This long-range view of ultimate assimilation can be found to coexist with any degree of race prejudice in the actual present-day situation. In many parts of the country Mexicans are kept in a status similar to the Negro's or only a step above. Likewise, in most places anti-Semitism is strong and has apparently been growing for the last ten years.4 [It is the present writer's impression that anti-Semitism, as he observed it in America during the last years before the Second World War, probably was somewhat stronger than in Germany before the Nazi regime.] Italians, Poles, Finns, arc distrusted in some communities; Germans, Scandinavians, and the Irish arc disliked in others, or sometimes the same communities. There are sections of the majority group which draw the circle exclusively and who hate all "foreigners." There arc others who keep a somewhat distinct line only around the more exotic peoples. The individual, regional, and class differentials in anti-minority feeling arc great.5 [See Eugene L. Horowitz, "Race Attitudes" in Otto Klineberg (editor), Characteristics of the American Negro, prepared for this study, to be published; manuscript pages 115-123 et passim.]
 
In spite of all race prejudice, few Americans seem to doubt that it is the ultimate fate of this nation to incorporate without distinction not only all the Northern European stocks, but also the people from Eastern and Southern Europe, the Near East and Mexico. They see obstacles; they emphasize the religious and "racial" differences; they believe it will take a long time. But they assume that it is going to happen, and do not have, on the whole, strong objections to it — provided it is located in a distant future.

2. The Anti-Amalgamation Doctrine

The Negroes, on the other hand, are commonly assumed to be unassimilable and this is the reason why the characterization of the Negro problem as a minority problem does not exhaust its true import.* [See Chapter 4. ] The Negroes are set apart, together with other colored peoples, principally the Chinese and the Japanese. America fears the segregation into distinctive isolated groups of all other elements of its population and looks upon the preservation of their separate national attributes and group loyalties as a hazard to American institutions. Considerable efforts are directed toward "Americanizing" all groups of alien origin. But in regard to the colored peoples, the American policy is the reverse. They are excluded from assimilation. Even by their best friends in the dominant white group and by the promoters of racial peace and good-will, they are usually advised to keep to themselves and develop a race pride of their own.

Among the groups commonly considered unassimilable, the Negro people is by far the largest. The Negroes do not, like the Japanese and the Chinese, have a politically organized nation and an accepted culture of their own outside of America to fall back upon. Unlike the Oriental, there attaches to the Negro an historical memory of slavery and inferiority. It is more difficult for them to answer prejudice with prejudice and, as the Orientals may do, to consider themselves and their history superior to the white Americans and their recent cultural achievements. The Negroes do not have these fortifications for self-respect. They are more helplessly imprisoned as a subordinate caste in America, a caste* [ In this inquiry we shall use the term "caste" to denote the social status difference between Negroes and whites in America. The concept and its implications will be discussed in some detail in Part VIII. It should be emphasized that, although the dividing line between Negroes and whites is held fixed and rigid so that no Negro legitimately can pass over from his caste to the higher white caste, the relations between members of the two castes are different in different regions and social classes and changing in time. It is true that the term "caste" commonly connotes a static situation even in the latter respect. However, for a social phenomenon we prefer to use a social concept with too static connotations rather than the biological concept "race" which, of course, carries not only static but many much more erroneous connotations.] of people deemed to be lacking a cultural past and assumed to be incapable of a cultural future.

To the ordinary white American the caste line between whites and Negroes is based upon, and defended by, the anti-amalgamation doctrine. This doctrine, more than anything else, gives the Negro problem its uniqueness among other problems of lower status groups, not only in terms of intensity of feelings but more fundamentally in the character of the problem. We follow a general methodological principle, presented previously, when we now start out from the ordinary white man's notion of what constitutes the heart of the Negro problem.

When the Negro people, unlike the white minority groups, is commonly characterized as unassimilable, it is not, of course, implied that amalgamation is not biologically possible. But crossbreeding is considered undesirable. Sometimes the view is expressed that the offspring of cross-breeding is inferior to both parental stocks. Usually it is only asserted that it is inferior to the "pure" white stock. The assumption evidently held is that the Negro stock is "inferior" to the white stock. On the inherited inferiority of the Negro people there exists among white Americans a whole folklore, which is remarkably similar throughout the country. To this we shall refer in the next chapter.

Whether this concept of the inferiority of the Negro stock is psychologically basic to the doctrine that amalgamation should be prohibited, or is only a rationalization of this doctrine, may for the moment be left open. The two notions, at any rate, appear together. The fact that one is used as argument for the other does not necessarily prove such a causal psychic relation between them. In many cases one meets an unargued and not further dissolvable "primary valuation, which is assumed to be self-evident even without support of the inferiority premise. Miscegenation* [Miscegenation is mainly an American term and is in America almost always used to denote only relations between Negroes and whites. Although it literally implies only mixture of genes between members of different races, it has acquired a definite emotional connotation. We use it in its literal sense — without implying necessarily that it is undesirable — as a convenient synonym of amalgamation.] is said to be a threat to "racial purity." It is alleged to be contrary to "human instincts." It is "contrary to nature" and "detestable." Not only in the South but often also in the North the stereotyped and hypothetical question is regularly raised without any intermediary reasoning as to its applicability or relevance to the social problem discussed: "Would you like to have your sister or daughter marry a Negro?" This is an unargued appeal to "racial solidarity" as a primary valuation. It is corollary to this attitude that in America the offspring of miscegenation is relegated to the Negro race.

A remarkable and hardly expected peculiarity of this American doctrine, expounded so directly in biological and racial terms, is that it is applied with a vast discretion depending upon the purely social and legal circum- stances under which miscegenation takes place. As far as lawful marriage is concerned, the racial doctrine is laden with emotion. Even in the Northern states where, for the most part, intermarriage is not barred by the force of law, the social sanctions blocking its way are serious. Mixed couples are punished by nearly complete social ostracism. On the other hand, in many regions, especially in the South where the prohibition against intermarriage and the general reprehension against miscegenation have the strongest moorings, illicit relations have been widespread and occasionally allowed to acquire a nearly institutional character. Even if, as we shall find later when we come to analyze the matter more in detail,* [See Chapter 5.] such relations are perhaps now on the decline, they are still not entirely stamped out.

Considering the biological emphasis of the anti-amalgamation doctrine and the strong social sanctions against intermarriage tied to that doctrine, the astonishing fact is the great indifference of most white Americans toward real but illicit miscegenation. In spite of the doctrine, in some regions with a large Negro population, cohabitation with a Negro woman is, apparently, considered a less serious breach of sexual morals than illicit intercourse with a white woman. The illicit relations freely allowed or only frowned upon are, however, restricted to those between white men and Negro women. A white woman's relation with a Negro man is met by the full fury of anti-amalgamation sanctions.

If we now turn to the American Negro people, we can hardly avoid the strong impression that what there is of reluctance in principle toward amalgamation is merely in the nature of a reaction or response to the white doctrine, which thus stands as primary in the causal sense and strategic in a practical sense. It is true that white people, when facing the Negro group, make an ideological application of the general Jim Crow principle — "equal but separate" treatment and accommodations for the two racial groups — and proceed from the assertion that both races are good to the explanation that there is a value in keeping them unmixed. They appeal also to the Negroes' "race pride" and their interest in keeping their own blood "pure." But this is a white, not a Negro, argument.

The Negro will be found to doubt the sincerity of the white folks' interest in the purity of the Negro race. It will sound to him too much like a rationalization, in strained equalitarian terms, of the white supremacy doctrine of race purity. "But the outstanding joke is to hear a white man talk about race integrity, though at this the Negro is in doubt whether to laugh or swear."6 [Robert R. Moton, What the Negro Thinks (1929), p. 219.] Even the Negro in the uneducated classes is sensitive to the nuances of sincerity, trained as he is both in slavery and afterwards to be a good dissembler himself. The Negro will, furthermore, encounter considerable intellectual difficulties inherent in the idea of keeping his blood pure, owing to the fact that the large majority of American Negroes actually are of mixed descent. They already have white and Indian ancestry as well as African Negro blood. And in general they are aware of this fact.

In spite of this, race pride, with this particular connotation of the undesirability of miscegenation, has been growing in the Negro group. This is, however, probably to be interpreted as a defense reaction, a derived secondary attitude as arc so many other attitudes of the Negro people.* [See Appendix 10, Section 4.] After weighing all available evidence carefully, it seems frankly incredible that the Negro people in America should feel inclined to develop any particular race pride at all or have any dislike for amalgamation, were it not for the common white opinion of the racial inferiority of the Negro people and the whites' intense dislike for miscegenation. The fact that a large amount of exploitative sexual intercourse between white men and Negro women has always been, and still is, part of interracial relations, coupled with the further fact that the Negroes sense the disgrace of their women who are not accepted into matrimony, and the inferior status of their mixed offspring, is a strong practical reason for the Negro's preaching "race pride" in his own group. But it is almost certainly not based on any fundamental feeling condemning miscegenation on racial or biological grounds.

On this central point, as on so many others, the whites' attitudes are primary and decisive; the Negroes' are in the nature of accommodation or protest.

3. The White Man's Theory of Color Caste

We have attempted to present in compressed and abstract formulation the white supremacy doctrine as applied to amalgamation, sex relations and marriage. The difficulty inherent in this task is great. As no scientifically controlled nation-wide investigations have been made, the author has here, as in other sections, had to rely on his own observations.7 [This is much to be regretted. Indeed, it is urgently desirable that such impressionistic generalizations be critically examined and replaced by statistically verified and precise knowledge. Meanwhile, because of the lack of such studies, the author has simply been compelled to proceed by building up a system of preliminary hypotheses. The defense is that otherwise intelligent questions cannot be raised in those sectors of the Negro problem where statistics or other kinds of substantiated knowledge are not available. Some attitude studies and public opinion polls have been made which touch on some of the statements presented in hypothetical form in the text. But they were designed to answer other question and are practically never comprehensive, and so they cannot be used as conclusive proof of our hypotheses. We shall cite some of the relevant ones in footnotes at certain points. For a summary of all the attitude studies (up to 1940) dealing with the Negro, see the monograph prepared for this study by Eugene L. Horowitz, "Race Attitudes" in Klineberg (editor), Characteristics of the American Negro.]

Every widening of the writer's experience of white Americans has only driven home to him more strongly that the opinion that the Negro is unassimilable, or, rather, that his amalgamation into the American nation is undesirable, is held more commonly, absolutely, and intensely than would be assumed from a general knowledge of American thoughtways. Except for a handful of rational intellectual liberals — who also, in many cases, add to their acceptance in principle of amalgamation an admission that they personally feel an irrational emotional inhibition against it — it is a rare case to meet a white American who will confess that, if it were not for public opinion and social sanctions not removable by private choice, he would have no strong objection to intermarriage.

The intensity of the attitude seems to be markedly stronger in the South than in the North. Its strength seems generally to be inversely related to the economic and social status of the informant and his educational level. It is usually strong even in most of the non-colored minority groups, if they are above the lowest plane of indifference. To the poor and socially insecure, but struggling, white individual, a fixed opinion on this point seems an important matter of prestige and distinction.

But even a liberal-minded Northerner of cosmopolitan culture and with a minimum of conventional blinds will, in nine cases out of ten, express a definite feeling against amalgamation. He will not be willing usually to hinder intermarriage by law. Individual liberty is to him a higher principle and, what is more important, he actually invokes it. But he will regret the exceptional cases that occur. He may sometimes hold a philosophical view that in centuries to come amalgamation is bound to happen and might become the solution. But he will be inclined to look on it as an inevitable deterioration.* [The response is likely to be anything but pleasant if one jestingly argues that possibly small fraction of Negro blood in the American people, if it were blended well with all the other good staff brought over to the new continent, might create a race of unsurpassed excellence: a people with just a little sunburn without extra trouble and even through the winter; with tome curl in the hair without the cost of a permanent wave; with, perhaps, a little more emotional warmth in their souls 1 and a little more religion, music, laughter, and carefreeness in their lives. Amalgamation is, to the ordinary American, not a proper subject for jokes at all, unless it can be pulled down to the level of dirty stories, where, however, it enjoys a favored place. Referred to society as a whole and viewed as a principle, the anti-amalgamation maxim is held holy; it is a consecrated taboo. The maxim might, indeed, be a remnant of something really in the "mores." It is kept unproblematic, which is certainly not the case with all the rest of etiquette and segregation and discrimination patterns, for which this quality is sometimes erroneously claimed.]

This attitude of refusing to consider amalgamation — felt and expressed in the entire country — constitutes the center in the complex of attitudes which can be described as the "common denominator" in the problem. It defines the Negro group in contradistinction to all the non-colored minority groups in America and all other lower class groups. The boundary between Negro and white is not simply a class line which can be successfully crossed by education, integration into the national culture, and individual economic advancement. The boundary is fixed. It is not a temporary expediency during an apprenticeship in the national culture. It is a bar erected with the intention of permanency. It is directed against the whole group. Actually, however, "passing" as a white person is possible when a Negro is white enough to conceal his Negro heritage. But the difference between "passing" and ordinary social climbing reveals the distinction between a class line, in the ordinary sense, and a caste line.

This brings us to the point where we shall attempt to sketch, only in an abstract and preliminary form, the social mechanism by which the anti-amalgamation maxim determines race relations. This mechanism is perceived by nearly everybody in America, but most clearly in the South. Almost unanimously white Americans have communicated to the author the following logic of the caste situation which we shall call the "white man's theory of color caste."

(1) The concern for "race purity" is basic in the whole issue; the primary and essential command is to prevent amalgamation; the whites are determined to utilize every means to this end.

(2) Rejection of "social equality" is to be understood as a precaution to hinder miscegenation and particularly intermarriage.

(3) The danger of miscegenation is so tremendous that the segregation and discrimination inherent in the refusal of "social equality" must be extended to nearly all spheres of life. There must be segregation and discrimination in recreation, in religious service, in education, before the law, in politics, in housing, in stores and in breadwinning.

This popular theory of the American caste mechanism is, of course, open to criticism. It can be criticized from a valuational point of view by maintaining that hindering miscegenation is not a worthwhile end, or that as an end it is not sufficiently worthwhile to counterbalance the sufferings inflicted upon the suppressed caste and the general depression of productive efficiency, standards of living and human culture in the American society at large — costs appreciated by all parties concerned. This criticism does not, however, endanger the theory which assumes that white people actually are following another valuation of means and ends and are prepared to pay the costs for attaining the ends. A second criticism would point out that, assuming the desirability of the end, this end could be reached without the complicated and, in all respects, socially expensive caste apparatus now employed. This criticism, however adequate though it be on the practical or political plane of discussion, does not disprove that people believe otherwise, and that the popular theory is a true representation of their beliefs and actions.

To undermine the popular theory of the caste mechanism, as based on the anti-amalgamation maxim, it would, of course, be necessary to prove that people really are influenced by other motives than the ones pronounced. Much material has, as we shall find, been brought together indicating that, among other things, competitive economic interests, which do not figure at all in the popular rationalization referred to, play a decisive role. The announced concern about racial purity is, when this economic motive it taken into account, no longer awarded the exclusive role as the basic cause in the psychology of the race problem.

Though the popular theory of color caste turns out to be a rationalization, this does not destroy it. For among the forces in the minds of the white people are certainly not only economic interests (if these were the only ones, the popular theory would be utterly demolished), but also sexual urges, inhibitions, and jealousies, and social fears and cravings for prestige and security. When they come under the scrutiny of scientific research, both the sexual and the social complexes take on unexpected designs. We shall then also get a clue to understanding the remarkable tendency of this presumably biological doctrine, that it refers only to legal marriage and to relations between Negro men and white women, but not to extra-marital sex relations between white men and Negro women.

However these sexual and social complexes might turn out when analyzed, they will reveal the psychological nature of the anti-amalgamation doctrine and show its "meaning." They will also explain the compressed emotion attached to the Negro problem. It is inherent in our type of modern Western civilization that sex and social status are for most individuals the danger points, the directions whence he fears the sinister onslaughts on his personal security. These two factors are more likely than anything else to push a life problem deep down into the subconscious and load it with emotions. There is some probability that in America both complexes are particularly laden with emotions. The American puritan tradition gives everything connected with sex a higher emotional charge. The roads for social climbing have been kept more open in America than perhaps anywhere else in the world, but in this upward struggle the competition for social status has also become more absorbing. In a manner and to a degree most uncomfortable for the Negro people in America, both the sexual and the social complexes have become related to the Negro problem.

These complexes are most of the time kept concealed. In occasional groups of persons and situations they break into the open. Even when not consciously perceived or expressed, they ordinarily determine interracial behavior on the white side.

4. The "Rank Order of Discriminations"

The anti-amalgamation doctrine represents a strategic constellation of forces in race relations. Their charting will allow us a first general overview of the discrimination patterns and will have the advantage that white Americans themselves will recognize their own paths on the map we draw. When white Southerners are asked to rank, in order of importance, various types of discrimination,* [In this introductory sketch the distinction between "segregation" and "discrimination" is entirely disregarded. This distinction, signified by the popular theory and legal construct "separate but equal," is mainly to be regarded as an equalitarian rationalization on the part of the white Americans, indicating the fundamental conflict of valuations involved in the matter. "Segregation" means only separation and does not, in principle, imply "discrimination." In practice it almost always does. (See Chapter 28.)] they consistently present a list in which these types of discrimination are ranked according to the degree of closeness of their relation to the anti-amalgamation doctrine. This rank order — which will be referred to as "the "white man's rank order of discriminations" — will serve as an organizing principle in this book. It appears, actually, only as an elaboration of the popular theory of color caste sketched above. Like that theory, it is most clearly and distinctly perceived in the South; in the North ideas are more vague but, on the whole, not greatly divergent. Neither the popular theory of caste nor the rank order of discriminations has been noted much in scientific literature on the Negro problem.

The rank order held nearly unanimously is the following:

Rank 1. Highest in this order stands the bar against intermarriage and sexual intercourse involving white women.

Rank 2. Next come the several etiquettes and discriminations, which specifically concern behavior in personal relations. (These are the barriers against dancing, bathing, eating, drinking together, and social intercourse generally; peculiar rules as to handshaking, hat lifting, use of titles, house entrance to be used, social forms when meeting on streets and in work, and so forth. These patterns are sometimes referred to as the denial of "social equality" in the narrow meaning of the term.)

Rank 3. Thereafter follow the segregations and discriminations in use of public facilities such as schools, churches and means of conveyance.

Rank 4. Next comes political disfranchisement.

Rank 5. Thereafter come discriminations in law courts, by the police, and by other public servants.

Rank 6. Finally come the discriminations in securing land, credit, jobs, or other means of earning a living, and discriminations in public relief and other social welfare activities.

It is unfortunate that this cornerstone in our edifice of basic hypotheses, like many of our other generalizations, has to be constructed upon the author's observations.8 [There are some studies, however, which provide evidence for the hypothesis of the "rank order of discriminations," even if they are not comprehensive enough to serve as conclusive proof. There are a host of attitude studies showing how whites have different attitudes toward Negroes in different spheres of life. Probably the earliest of these studies was that of Emory S. Bogardus, "Race Friendliness and Social Distance," Journal of Applied Sociology (1927), pp. 272-287. As an example of such studies which apply solely to Negro issues, we may cite the study by Euri Relle Bolton, "Measuring Specific Attitudes towards the Social Rights of the Negro," The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology (January-March, 1937), pp. 384-397. For a summary of other such studies, see Horowitz, op. cit., pp. 123-148. ] It is desirable that scientifically controlled, quantitative knowledge be substituted for impressionistic judgments as soon as possible.9 [Such studies should not only break the rank order into finer distinctions, but also develop a measure of the distance between the ranks in the order. It would, further, be desirable to ascertain individual differences in the apprehension of this rank order, and to relate these differences to age, sex, social class, educational level and region.] It should be noted that the rank order is very apparently determined by the factors of sex and social status, so that the closer the association of a type of interracial behavior is to sexual and social intercourse on an equalitarian basis, the higher it ranks among the forbidden things.

Next in importance to the fact of the white man's rank order of discriminations is the fact that the Negro's own rank order is just about parallel, but inverse, to that of the white man. The Negro resists least the discrimination on the ranks placed highest in the white man's evaluation and resents most any discrimination on the lowest level. This is in accord with the Negro's immediate interests. Negroes are in desperate need of jobs and bread, even more so than of justice in the courts, and of the vote. These latter needs are, in their turn, more urgent even than better schools and playgrounds, or, rather, they are primary means of reaching equality in the use of community facilities. Such facilities are, in turn, more important than civil courtesies. The marriage matter, finally, is of rather distant and doubtful interest.  

Such reflections are obvious; and most Negroes have them in their minds. It is another matter, however, whether the white man is prepared to stick honestly to the rank order which he is so explicit and emphatic in announcing. The question is whether he is really prepared to give the Negro a good job, or even the vote, rather than to allow him entrance to his front door or to ride beside him in the street car.

Upon the assumption that this question is given an affirmative answer, that the white man is actually prepared to carry out in practice the implications of his theories, this inverse relationship between the Negro's and the white man's rank orders becomes of strategical importance in the practical and political sphere of the Negro problem. Although not formulated in this way, such a relationship, or such a minimum moral demand on the ordinary white man, has always been the basis of all attempts to compromise and come to a better understanding between leaders of the two groups. It has been the basis for all interracial policy and also for most of the practical work actually carried out by Negro betterment organizations. Followed to its logical end, it should fundamentally change the race situation in America.

It has thus always been a primary requirement upon every Negro leader — who aspires to get any hearing at all from the white majority group, and who does not want to appear dangerously radical to the Negro group and at the same time hurt the "race pride" it has built up as a defense — that he shall explicitly condone the anti-amalgamation maxim, which is the keystone in the white man's structure of race prejudice, and forbear to express any desire on the part of the Negro people to aspire to inter- marriage with the whites. The request for intermarriage is easy for the Negro leader to give up. Intermarriage cannot possibly be a practical object of Negro public policy. Independent of the Negroes' wishes, the opportunity for intermarriage is not favorable as long as the great majority of the white population dislikes the very idea. As a defense reaction a strong attitude against intermarriage has developed in the Negro people itself.10 [This goes far back. Frederick Douglass nearly endangered his position among Negroes by marrying a white woman. About Douglass, Kelly Miller observed: "... he has a hold upon the affection of his race, not on account of his second marriage but in spite of it. He seriously affected his standing with his people by that marriage." (Kelly Miller, Race Adjustment -- Essays on the Negro in America [1908], p. 50.) And W.E.B. Du Bois tells us in his autobiography: "I resented the assumption that we desired it [racial amalgamation]. I frankly refused the possibility while in Germany and even in America gave up courtship with one 'colored' girl because she looked quite white, and I should resent the inference on the street that I had married outside my race." (Dusk of Dawn [1940], p. 101.) See also Chapter 30, Section 2.] And the Negro people have no interest in defending the exploitative illicit relations between white men and Negro women. This race mingling is, on the contrary, commonly felt among Negroes to be disgraceful. And it often arouses the jealousy of Negro men.

The required soothing gesture toward the anti-amalgamation doctrine is, therefore, readily delivered. It is iterated at every convenient opportunity and belongs to the established routine of Negro leadership. For example, Robert R. Moton writes:

As for amalgamation, very few expect it; still fewer want it; no one advocates it; and only a constantly diminishing minority practise it, and that surreptitiously. It is generally accepted on both sides of the colour line that it is best for the two races to remain ethnologically distinct.11 [Op. cit., p. 241.]

There seems thus to be unanimity among Negro leaders on the point deemed crucial by white Americans. If we attend carefully, we shall, however, detect some important differences in formulation. The Negro spokesman will never, to begin with, accept the common white premise of racial inferiority of the Negro stock. To quote Moton again:

. . . even in the matter of the mingling of racial strains, however undesirable it might seem to be from a social point of view, he [the Negro] would never admit that hit blood carries any taint of physiological, mental, or spiritual inferiority.12 [Ibid., p. 239.]

A doctrine of equal natural endowments — a doctrine contrary to the white man's assumption of Negro inferiority, which is at the basis of the anti-amalgamation theory — has been consistently upheld. If a Negro leader publicly even hinted at the possibility of inherent racial inferiority, he would immediately lose his following. The entire Negro press watches the Negro leaders on this point.

Even Booker T. Washington, the supreme diplomat of the Negro people through a generation filled with severe trials, who was able by studied unobtrusiveness to wring so many favors from the white majority, never dared to allude to such a possibility, though he sometimes criticized most severely his own people for lack of thrift, skill, perseverance and general culture. In fact, there is no reason to think that he did not firmly believe in the fundamental equality of inherent capacities. Privately, local Negro leaders might find it advisable to admit Negro inferiority and, particularly earlier, many individual Negroes might have shared the white man's view. But it will not be expressed by national leaders and, in fact, never when they are under public scrutiny.13 [An exception, which by its uniqueness, and by the angry reception it received from the Negroes, rather proves our thesis, is the remarkable book by William H. Thomas, The American Negro (1901). The fact that Negroes privately often enjoy indulging in derogatory statements about Negroes in general is not overlooked. It is, however, a suppression phenomenon of quite another order. See Chapter 36, Section 2.] An emphatic assertion of equal endowments is article number one in the growing Negro "race pride."

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Part 3 of 3

Another deviation of the Negro faith in the anti-amalgamation doctrine is the stress that they, for natural reasons, lay on condemning exploitative illicit amalgamation. They turn the tables and accuse white men of debasing Negro womanhood, and the entire white culture for not rising up against this practice as their expressed antagonism against miscegenation should demand. Here they have a strong point, and they know how to press it.14 ["The rape which your gentlemen have done against helpless black women in defiance of your own laws is written on the foreheads of two millions of mulattoes, and written in ineffaceable blood.") W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk [1924; first edition, 1903], p. 106.)]

A third qualification in the Negro's acceptance of the anti-amalgamation doctrine, expressed not only by the more "radical" and outspoken Negro leaders, is the assertion that intermarriage should not be barred by law. The respect for individual liberty is invoked as an argument. But, in addition, it is pointed out that this barrier, by releasing the white man from the consequences of intimacy with a Negro woman, actually has the effect of inducing such intimacy and thus tends to increase miscegenation. Moton makes this point:

The Negro woman suffers not only from the handicap of economic and social discriminations imposed upon the race as a whole, but is in addition the victim of unfavourable legislation incorporated in the marriage laws of twenty-nine states, which forbid the intermarriage of black and white. The disadvantage of these statutes lies, not as is generally represented, in the legal obstacle they present to social equality, but rather in the fact that such laws specifically deny to the Negro woman and her offspring that safeguard from abuse and exploitation with which the women of the white race are abundantly surrounded. On the other side, the effect of such legislation leaves the white man, who is so inclined, free of any responsibility attending his amatory excursions across the colour line and leaves the coloured woman without redress for any of the consequences of her defencelessness; whereas white women have every protection, from fine and imprisonment under the law to enforced marriage and lynching outside the law.15 [Op. cit., pp. 208-209.]

But even with all these qualifications, the anti-amalgamation doctrine, the necessity of assenting to which is understood by nearly' everybody, obviously encounters some difficulties in the minds of intellectual Negroes. They can hardly be expected to accept it as a just rule of conduct. They tend to accept it merely as a temporary expedient necessitated by human weakness. Kelly Miller thus wrote:

. . . you would hardly expect the Negro, in derogation of his common human qualities, to proclaim that he is so diverse from God's other human creatures as to make the blending of the races contrary to the law of nature. The Negro refuses to become excited or share in your frenzy on this subject. The amalgamation of the races is an ultimate possibility, though not an immediate probability. But what have you and I to do with ultimate questions, anyway?16 [Race Adjustment, p. 48.]

And a few years later, he said:

It must be taken for granted in the final outcome of things that the color line will be wholly obliterated. While blood may be thicker than water, it docs not possess the spissitude or inherency of everlasting principle. The brotherhood of man is more fundamental than the fellowship of race. A physical and spiritual identity of all peoples occupying common territory is a logical necessity of thought. The clear seeing mind refuses to yield or give its assent to any other ultimate conclusion. This consummation, however, is far too removed from the sphere of present probability to have decisive influence upon practical procedure.17 [Out of the House of Bondage (1914), p. 45.]

This problem is, of course, tied up with the freedom of the individual. "Theoretically Negroes would all subscribe to the right of freedom of choice in marriage even between the two races,"18 [Op. cit., p. 241.] wrote Moton. And Du Bois formulates it in stronger terms:

... a woman may say, 1 do not want to marry this black man, or this red man, or this white man. . . . But the impudent and vicious demand that all colored folk shall write themselves down as brutes by a general assertion of their unfitness to marry other decent folk is a nightmare.19 [Editorial, The Crisis (January, 1920), p. 106.]

Negroes have always pointed' out that the white man must not be very certain of his woman's lack of interest when he rises to such frenzy on behalf of the danger to her and feels compelled to build up such formidable fences to prevent her from marrying a Negro.

With these reservations both Negro leadership and the Negro masses acquiesce in the white anti-amalgamation doctrine. This attitude is noted with satisfaction in the white camp. The writer has observed, however, that the average white man, particularly in the South, does not feel quite convinced of the Negro's acquiescence. In several conversations, the same white person, in the same breath, has assured me, on the one hand, that the Negroes are perfectly satisfied in their position and would not like to be treated as equals, and on the other hand, that the only thing these Negroes long for is to be like white people and to marry their daughters.

Whereas the Negro spokesman finds it possible to assent to the first rank of discrimination, namely, that involving miscegenation, it is more difficult for him to give his approval to the second rank of discrimination, namely, that involving "etiquette" and consisting in the white man's refusal to extend the ordinary courtesies to Negroes in daily life and his expectation of receiving certain symbolic signs of submissiveness from the Negro. The Negro leader could not do so without serious risk of censorship by his own people and rebuke by the Negro press. In all articulate groups of Negroes there is a demand to have white men call them by their titles of Mr., Mrs., and Miss; to have white men take off their hats on entering a Negro's house; to be able to enter a white man's house through the front door rather than the back door, and so on. But on the whole, and in spite of the rule that they stand up for "social equality" in this sense, most Negroes in the South obey the white man's rules.

Booker T. Washington went a long way, it is true, in his Atlanta speech in 1895 where he explained that: "In all things that are purely social we [the two races] can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress."20 [Up from Slavery (1915; first edition, 1900), pp. 221-222.] He there seemed to condone not only these rules of "etiquette" but also the denial of "social equality" in a broader sense, including some of the further categories in the white man's rank order of discrimination. He himself was always most eager to observe the rules. But Washington was bitterly rebuked for this capitulation, particularly by Negroes in the North. And a long time has passed since then; the whole spirit in the Negro world has changed considerably in three decades.

The modern Negro leader will try to solve this dilemma by iterating that no Negroes want to intrude upon white people's private lives. But this is not what Southern white opinion asks for. It is not satisfied with the natural rules of polite conduct that no individual, of whatever race, shall push his presence on a society where he is not wanted. It asks for a general order according to which all Negroes are placed under all white people and excluded from not only the white man's society but also from the ordinary symbols of respect. No Negro shall ever aspire to them, and no white shall be allowed to offer them.

Thus, on this second rank of discrimination there is a wide gap between the ideologies of the two groups. As we then continue downward in our rank order and arrive at the ordinary Jim Crow practices, the segregation in schools, the disfranchisement, and the discrimination in employment, we find, on the one hand, that increasingly larger groups of white people are prepared to take a stand against these discriminations. Many a liberal white professor in the South who, for his own welfare, would not dare to entertain a Negro in his home and perhaps not even speak to him in a friendly manner on the street, will be found prepared publicly to condemn disfranchisement, lynching, and the forcing of the Negro out of employment. Also, on the other hand, Negro spokesmen are becoming increasingly firm in their opposition to discrimination on these lower levels. It is principally on these lower levels of the white man's rank order of discriminations that the race struggle goes on. The struggle will widen to embrace all the thousand problems of education, politics, economic standards, and so forth, and the frontier will shift from day to day according to varying events.

Even a superficial view of discrimination in America will reveal to the observer: first, that there are great differences, not only between larger regions, but between neighboring communities; and, second, that even in the same community, changes occur from one time to another. There is also, contrary to the rule that all Negroes are to be treated alike, a certain amount of discretion depending upon the class and social status of the Negro in question. A white person, especially if he has high status in the community, is, furthermore, supposed to be free, within limits, to overstep the rules. The rules are primarily to govern the Negro's behavior.  

Some of these differences and changes can be explained. But the need for their interpretation is perhaps less than has sometimes been assumed. The variations in discrimination between local communities or from one tune to another are often not of primary consequence. All of these thousand and one precepts, etiquettes, taboos, and disabilities inflicted upon the Negro have a common purpose: to express the subordinate status of the Negro people and the exalted position of the whites. They have their meaning and chief function as symbols. As symbols they are, however, interchangeable to an extent: one can serve in place of another without causing material difference in the essential social relations in the community.

The differences in patterns of discrimination between the larger regions of the country and the temporal changes of patterns within one region, Which reveal a definite trend, have, on the contrary, more material import. These differences and changes imply, in fact, a considerable margin of variation within the very notion of American caste, which is not true of all the other minor differences between the changes in localities within a single region — hence the reason for a clear distinction. For exemplification it may suffice here to refer only to the differentials in space. As one moves from the Deep South through the Upper South and the Border states to the North, the manifestations of discrimination decrease in extent and intensity; at the same time the rules become more uncertain and capricious. The "color line" becomes a broad ribbon of arbitrariness. The old New England states stand, on the whole, as the antipode to the Deep South. This generalization requires important qualifications, and the relations are in process of change.

The decreasing discrimination as we go from South to North in the United States is apparently related to a weaker basic prejudice. In the North the Negroes have fair justice and are not disfranchised; they are not Jim-Crowed in public means of conveyance; educational institutions are less segregated. The interesting thing is that the decrease of discrimination does not regularly follow the white man's rank order. Thus intermarriage, placed on the top of the rank order, is legally permitted in all but one of the Northern states east of the Mississippi. The racial etiquette, being the most conspicuous element in the second rank, is, practically speaking, absent from the North. On the other hand, employment discriminations, placed at the bottom of the rank order, at times are equally severe, or more so, in some Northern communities than in the South, even if it is true that Negroes have been able to press themselves into many more new avenues of employment during the last generation in the North than in the South.

There is plenty of discrimination in the North. But it is — or rather its rationalization is— kept hidden. We can, in the North, witness the legislators' obedience to the American Creed when they solemnly pass laws and regulations to condemn and punish such acts of discrimination which, as a matter of routine, are committed daily by the great majority of the white citizens and by the legislators themselves. In the North, as indeed often in the South, public speakers frequently pronounce principles of human and civic equality. We see here revealed in relief the Negro problem as an American Dilemma.

5. Relationships Between Lower Class Groups

It was important to compare the Negro problem with American minority problems in general because both the similarities and the dissimilarities are instructive. Comparisons give leads, and they furnish perspective.

This same reason permits us to point out that the consideration of the Negro problem as one minority problem among others is far too narrow. The Negro has usually the same disadvantages and some extra ones in addition. To these other disadvantaged groups in America belong not only the groups recognized as minorities, but all economically weak classes in die nation, the bulk of the Southern people, women,* [The parallel between the status of Negroes and of women, who are neither a minority group not a low social class, is particularly instructive; see Appendix 5, "A Parallel to the Negro Problem."] and others. This country is a "white man's country," but, in addition, it is a country belonging primarily to the elderly, male, upper class, Protestant Northerner. Viewed in this setting the Negro problem in America is but one local and temporary facet of that eternal problem of world dimension — how to regulate the conflicting interests of groups in the best interest of justice and fairness. The latter ideals are vague and conflicting, and their meaning is changing in the course of the struggle.

There seems to be a general structure of social relations between groups on different levels of power and advantage. From a consideration of our exaggeratedly "typical" case—the Negro— we may hope to reach sonic suggestions toward a more satisfactory general theory about this social power structure in general. Our hypothesis is that in a society where there are broad social classes and, in addition, more minute distinctions and splits in the lower strata, the lower class group will, to a great extent, take care of keeping each other subdued, thus relieving, to that extent, the higher classes of this otherwise painful task necessary to the monopolization of the power and the advantages.

It will be observed that this hypothesis is contrary to the Marxian theory of class society, which in the period between the two World Wars has been so powerful, directly and indirectly, consciously and unconsciously, in American social science thinking generally. The Marxian scheme assumes that there is an actual solidarity between the several lower class groups against the higher classes, or, in any case, a potential solidarity which as a matter of natural development is bound to emerge. The inevitable result is a "class struggle" where all poor and disadvantaged groups are united behind the barricades.

Such a construction has had a considerable vogue in all discussions on the American Negro problem since the First World War. We are not here taking issue with the political desirability of a common front between the poorer classes of whites and the Negro people who, for the most part, belong to the proletariat. In fact, we can well see that such a practical judgment is motivated as a conclusion from certain value premises in line with the American Creed. But the thesis has also been given a theoretical content as describing actual trends in reality and not only political desiderata. A solidarity between poor whites and Negroes has been said to be "natural" and the conflicts to be due to "illusions." This thesis, which will be discussed in some detail in Chapter 38, has been a leading one in the field and much has been made of even the faintest demonstration of such solidarity.

In partial anticipation of what is to follow later in this volume, we might be permitted to make a few general, and perhaps rather dogmatic, remarks in criticism of this theory. Everything we know about human frustration and aggression, and the displacement of aggression, speaks against it. For in individual to feel interest solidarity with a group assumes his psychological identification with the group. This identification must be of considerable strength, as the very meaning of solidarity is that he is prepared to set aside and even sacrifice his own short-range private interests for the long-range interests of his group. Every vertical split within the lower dais; aggregate will stand as an obstacle to the feeling of solidarity. Even within' the white working class itself, as within the entire American nation, the feeling of solidarity and loyalty is relatively low.* [See Chapter 33.] Despite the considerable mobility, especially in the North, the Negroes are held apart from the whites by caste, which furnishes a formidable bar to mutual identification and solidarity.

It has often occurred to me, when reflecting upon the responses I get from white laboring people on this strategic question, that my friends among the younger Negro intellectuals, whose judgment I otherwise have learned to admire greatly, have perhaps, and for natural reasons, not had enough occasion to find out for themselves what a bitter, spiteful, and relentless feeling often prevails against the Negroes among lower class white people in America. Again relying upon my own observations, I have become convinced that the laboring Negroes do not resent whites in any degree comparable with the resentment shown in the opposite direction by the laboring whites. The competitive situation is, and is likely to remain, highly unstable.

It must be admitted that, in the midst of harsh caste resentment, signs of newborn working class solidarity are not entirely lacking; we shall have to discuss these recent tendencies in some detail in order to evaluate the resultant trend and the prospects for the future.* [See Chapter 13.] On this point there seems, however, to be a danger of wishful thinking present in most writings on the subject. The Marxian solidarity between the toilers of all the earth will, indeed, have a long way to go as far as concerns solidarity of the poor white Americans with the toiling Negro. This is particularly true of the South but true also of the communities in the North where the Negroes are numerous and competing with the whites for employment.

Our hypothesis is similar to the view taken by an older group of Negro writers and by most white writers who have touched this crucial question: that the Negro's friend — or the one who is least unfriendly — is still rather the upper class of white people, the people with economic and social security who are truly a "noncompeting group." There are many things in the economic, political, and social history of the Negro which are simply inexplicable by the Marxian theory of class solidarity but which fit into our hypothesis of the predominance of internal lower class struggle. Du Bois, in Black Reconstruction, argues that it would have been desirable if after the Civil War the landless Negroes and the poor whites had joined hands to retain political power and carry out a land reform and a progressive government in the Southern states} one sometimes feels that he thinks it would have been a possibility.21 ["The South, after the war, presented the greatest opportunity for a real national labor movement which the nation ever saw or is likely to see for many decades." (Black Reconstruction [1935], p. 353 passim.)] From our point of view such a possibility did not exist at all, and the negative outcome was neither an accident nor a result of simple deception or delusion. These two groups, illiterate and insecure in an impoverished South, placed in an intensified competition with each other, lacking every trace of primary solidarity, and marked off from each other by color and tradition, could not possibly be expected to clasp bands. There is a Swedish proverb: "When the feedbox is empty, the horses will bite each other."

That part of the country where, even today, the Negro is dealt with most severely, the South, is also a disadvantaged and, in most respects, backward region in the nation. The Negro lives there in the midst of other relatively subordinated groups. Like the Negro, the entire South is a problem. We do not want to minimize other obvious explanations of the harsher treatment of the Negro in the South: his concentration there in large numbers, the tradition of subordination retained from slavery, and the traumatic effect of the Civil War and Reconstruction; but we do want to stress the fact that the masses of white Southerners are poor and to keep in mind the tendency of lower class groups to struggle against each other.* [The great similarity in cultural situation — on a different level — between the Negro people in all America and the white South should not be overlooked. Many of the general thing! which can be said about the Negroes hold true, in large measure, of the white Southerners, or something quite similar can be asserted. Thus, just as the Negro sees him- self economically excluded and exploited, so the Southern white man has been trained to think of his economy as a colony for Yankee exploitation. As the Negro has been compelled to develop race pride and a "protective" community, so the white South has also a strong group feeling. The white South is also something of a nation within a nation. It is certainly no accident that a "regional approach" in social science has been stressed in the South. The Southerner, like the Negro, is apt to be sensitive and to take any personal remark or observation as a rebuke, and a rebuke not only against himself but against the whole South. In analyzing himself, he finds the same general traits of extreme individualism and romanticism which are ascribed to the Negro. His educators and intellectual leaders find it necessary to complain of the same shortcomings in him as he finds in the Negro: violence, laziness, lack of thrift, lack of rational efficiency and respect for law and social order, lack of punctuality and respect for deadlines. The rickety rocking-chair on the porch has a symbolic meaning in the South not entirely different from that of the Negro's watermelon, although there is more an association of gloom and dreariness around the former stereotype, and happy-go-lucky carefreeness around the latter. The expression "C.P.T." — colored people's time — is often referred to in the South, but nearly as frequently it is jestingly suggested that it fits the folkways also of the white Southerners. The casual carrying of weapons, which is so associated in the Northerners' minds with the Negro, is commonplace among white Southerners. Both groups are on the average more religious than the rest of America, and the preacher is, or has been, more powerful in society. In both groups there is also a tendency toward fundamentalism and emotionalism, the former characteristic more important for the whites, the latter for the Negroes. The general educational level in the South has, for lack of school facilities, been lower than the national norm, and as a result an obvious double standard in favor of Southerners is Actually being applied by higher educational institutions and by such organizations as foundations awarding fellowships and encouraging research projects. The Yankee prejudice against the South often takes the form of a paternalistic favoring of a weaker group. The 'white writers of the South, like the Negro writers, are accustomed to work mainly for a "foreign public of readers. And they have, for the benefit of the out-group, exploited the in-group reliance and oddness. During the twenties both groups had a literary renaissance, commonly described in both cases as an emancipation from outside determinants and as a new earthbound realism. This list could be continued to a considerable length, but it has already been nude understandable both why the Negro in a way feels so much at home in the South and why his lot there sometimes becomes so sad and even tragic.]

A few remarks are now relevant on the internal social stratification of the Negro group itself. The stratification of the Negro caste into classes is well developed and the significance attached to class distinctions is great This is not surprising in view of the fact that caste harriers, which prevent individuals of the lower group from rising out of it, force all social climbing to occur within the caste and encourage an increase in internal social competition for the symbols of prestige and power. Caste consigns the overwhelming majority of Negroes to the lower class. But at the same time as it makes higher class status rarer, it accentuates the desire for prestige and social distance within the Negro caste. It fact it sometimes causes a more minute class division than the ordinary one, and always invests it with more subjective importance.* [See Chapter 32.] The social distinctions within a disadvantaged group for this reason become a fairly adequate index of the group's social isolation from the larger society.

Caste produces, on the one hand, a strong feeling of mutuality of fate, of in-group fellowship — much stronger than a general low class position can develop. The Negro community is a protective community, and we shall, in the following chapters, see this trait reflected in practically all aspects of the Negro problem. But, on the other hand, the interclass strivings, often heightened to vigorous mutual repulsion and resentment, are equally conspicuous.

Negro writers, especially newspapermen, particularly when directing themselves to a Negro audience, have always pointed out, as the great fault of the race, its lack of solidarity. The same note is struck in practically every public address and often in sermons when the preacher for a moment leaves his other-worldliness. It is the campaign cry of the organizations for Negro business. Everywhere one meets the same endless complaints: that the Negroes won't stick together, that they don't trust each other but rather the white man, that they can't plan and act in common, that they don't back their leaders, that the leaders can't agree, or that they deceive the people and sell out their interests to the whites.

In order not to be dogmatic in a direction opposite to the one criticized, we should point out that the principle of internal struggle in the lower classes is only one social force among many. Other forces are making for solidarity in the lower classes. In both of the two problems raised— the solidarity between lower class whites and Negroes and the internal solidarity within the Negro group— there can be any degree of solidarity, ranging between utter mistrust and complete trustfulness. The scientific problem is to find out and measure the degree of solidarity and the social forces determining it, not just to assume that solidarity will come about "naturally"
and "inevitably." The factors making for solidarity are both irrational and rational. Among the irrational factors are tradition, fear, charisma, brute force, propaganda. The main rational factors are economic and social security and a planned program of civic education.

While visiting in Southern Negro communities, the writer was forced to the observation that often the most effective Negro leaders— those with a rational balance of courage and restraint, a realistic understanding of the power situation, and an unfailing loyalty to the Negro cause — were federal employees (for example, postal clerks), petty railway officials, or other persons with their economic basis outside the local white or Negro community and who had consequently a measure of economic security and some leisure time for thinking and studying. They were, unfortunately, few. Generally speaking, whenever the masses, in any part of the world, have permanently improved their social, economic, and political status through orderly organizations founded upon solidarity, these masses have not been a semi-illiterate proletariat, but have already achieved a measure of economic security and education. The vanguards of such mass reform movements have always belonged to the upper fringe of the lower classes concerned.

If this hypothesis is correct and if the lower classes have interests in common, the steady trend in this country toward improved educational facilities and toward widened social security for the masses of the people will work for increased solidarity between the lower class groups. But changes in this direction will probably be slow, both because of some general factors impeding broad democratic mass movements in America* [See Chapter 33.] and — in our special problems, solidarity between whites and Negroes — because of the existence of caste.

In this connection we must not forget the influence of ideological forces. And we must guard against the common mistake of reducing them solely to secondary expressions of economic interests. Independent (that is, independent of the economic interests involved in the Negro problem) ideological forces of a liberal character are particularly strong in America because of the central and influential position of the American Creed in people's valuations.

It may be suggested as an hypothesis, already fairly well substantiated by research and by common observation, that those liberal ideological forces tend to create a tie between the problems of all disadvantaged groups in society, and that they work for solidarity between these groups. A study of opinions in the Negro problem will reveal, we believe, that persons who are inclined to favor measures to help the underdog generally, are also, and as a. pact of this attitude, usually inclined to give the Negro a lift. There is correlation between political opinions in different issues,* [For a discussion of the correlation of opinions in different issues, see Appendix 2, Section I.] which probably seats upon, a basis of temperamental personality traits and has its deeper roots in all the cultural influences working upon a personality. If this correlation is represented by a composite scale running from radicalism, through liberalism and conservatism, to reactionism, it is suggested that it will be found that all subordinate groups — Negroes, women, minorities in general, poor people, prisoners, and so forth — will find their interests more favored in political opinion as we move toward the left of the scale. This hypothesis of a system of opinion correlation will, however, have to be taken with a grain of salt, since this correlation is obviously far from complete.

In general, poor people are not radical and not even liberal, though to have such political opinions would often be in their interest. Liberalism is not characteristic of Negroes either, except, of course, that they take a radical position in the Negro problem. We must guard against a superficial bias (probably of Marxian origin) which makes us believe that the lower classes are naturally prepared to take a broad point of view and a friendly attitude toward all disadvantaged groups. A liberal outlook is much more likely to emerge among people in a somewhat secure social and economic situation and with a background of education. The problem for political liberalism — if, for example, we might be allowed to pose the problem in the practical, instead of the theoretical mode — appears to be first to lift the masses to security and education and then to work to make them liberal.

The South, compared to the other regions of America, has the least economic security, the lowest educational level, and is most conservative. The South's conservatism is manifested not only with respect to the Negro problem but also with respect to all the other important problems of the last decades — woman suffrage, trade unionism, labor legislation, social security reforms, penal reforms, civil liberties — and with respect to broad philosophical matters, such as the character of religious beliefs and practices. Even at present the South does not have a full spectrum of political opinions represented within its public discussion. There are relatively few liberals in the South and practically no radicals.* [See Chapter 21, Section 5.]
 
The recent economic stagnation (which for the rural South has lasted much more than ten years), the flood of social reforms thrust upon the South by the federal government, and the fact that the rate of industrialization in the South is higher than in the rest of the nation, may well come to cause an upheaval in the South's entire opinion structure. The importance of this for the Negro problem may be considerable.* [See Chapter 21, Section __.]

6. The Manifoldness and the Unity of the Negro Problem

The Negro problem has the manifoldness of human life. Like the women's problem, it touches every other social issue, or rather, it represents an angle of them all. A glance at the table of contents of this volume shows that in our attempt to analyze the Negro problem we have not been able to avoid anything: race, culture, population, breadwinning, economic and social policy, law, crime, class, family, recreation, school, church, press, organizations, politics, attitudes.

The perplexities and manifoldness of the Negro problem have even increased considerably during the last generation. One reason is migration and industrialization. The Negro has left his seclusion. A much smaller portion of the Negro people of today lives in the static, rather inarticulate folk society of the old plantation economy. The Negro people have increasingly stepped into the midst of America's high-geared metropolitan life, and they have by their coming added to the complication of these already tremendously complicated communities. This mass movement of Negroes from farms to cities and from the South to the North has, contrary to expectation, kept up in bad times as in good, and is likely to continue.

Another and equally important reason why the Negro problem shows an increasing involvement with all sorts of other special problems is the fact that America, especially during the last ten years, has started to use the state as an instrument for induced social change. The New Deal has actually changed the whole configuration of the Negro problem. Particularly when looked upon from the practical and political viewpoints, the contrast between the present situation and the one prior to the New Deal is striking.

Until then the practical Negro problem involved civil rights, education, charity, and little more. Now it has widened, in pace with public policy in the new "welfare state," and involves housing, nutrition, medicine, education, relief and social security, wages and hours, working conditions, child and woman labor, and, lately, the armed forces and the war industries. The Negro's share may be meager in all this new state activity, but he has been given a share. He has been given a broader and more variegated front to defend and from which to push forward. This is the great import of the New Deal to the Negro. For almost the first time in the history of the nation the state has done something substantial in a social way without excluding the Negro.

In this situation it has sometimes appeared as if there were no longer a Negro problem distinct from all the other social problems in the United States. In popular periodicals, articles on the general Negro problem gave way to much more specific subjects during the 'thirties. Even on the theoretical level it has occurred to many that it was time to stop studying the Negro problem in itself. The younger generation of Negro intellectuals have become tired of all the talk about the Negro problem on which they . were brought up, and which sometimes seemed to them so barren of real deliveries. They started to criticize the older generation of Negroes for their obsession with the Negro problem. In many ways this was a movement which could be considered as the continuation, during the 'thirties, of the "New Negro Movement" of the 'twenties.

We hear it said nowadays that there is no "race problem," but only a "class problem." The Negro sharecropper is alleged to be destitute not because of his color but because of his class position — and it is pointed out that there are white people who are equally poor. From a practical angle there is a point in this reasoning. But from a theoretical angle it contains escapism in new form.* [See Chapter 38, Sections 5 to 7.] It also draws too heavily on the idealistic Marxian doctrine of the "class struggle." And it tends to conceal the whole system of special deprivations visited upon the Negro only because he is not white. We find also that as soon as the Negro scholar, ideologist, or reformer leaves these general ideas about how the Negro should think, he finds himself discussing nothing but Negro rights, the Negro's share, injustices against Negroes, discrimination against Negroes, Negro interests — nothing, indeed, but the old familiar Negro problem, though in some new political relations. He is back again in the "race issue." And there is substantial reason for it.

The reason, of course, is that there is really a common tie and, therefore, a unity in all the special angles of the Negro problem. All these specific problems are only outcroppings of one fundamental complex of human valuations — that of American caste. This fundamental complex derives its emotional charge from the equally common race prejudice, from its manifestations in a general tendency toward discrimination, and from its political potentialities through its very inconsistency with the American Creed.

7. The Theory of the Vicious Circle

A deeper reason for the unity of the Negro problem will be apparent when we now try to formulate our hypothesis concerning its dynamic causation. The mechanism that operates here is the "principle of cumulation," also commonly called the "vicious circle."* [See Appendix 3, "A Methodological Note on the Principle of Cumulation." We call the principle the "principle of cumulation" rather than "vicious circle" because it can work in an "upward" desirable direction as well as in a "downward" undesirable direction.] This principle has a much wider application in social relations. It is, or should be developed into, a main theoretical tool in studying social change.

Throughout this inquiry, we shall assume a general interdependence between all the factors in the Negro problem. White prejudice and discrimination keep the Negro low in standards of living, health, education, manners and morals. This, in its turn, gives support to white prejudice. White prejudice and Negro standards thus mutually "cause" each other. If things remain about as they are and have been, this means that the two forces happen to balance each other. Such a static "accommodation" is, however, entirely accidental. If either of the factors changes, this will cause a change in the other factor, too, and start a process of interaction where the change in one factor will continuously be supported by the reaction of the other factor. The whole system will be moving in the direction of the primary change, but much further. This is what we mean by cumulative causation.

If, for example, we assume that for some reason white prejudice could be decreased and discrimination mitigated, this is likely to cause a rise in Negro standards, which may decrease white prejudice still a little more, which would again allow Negro standards to rise, and so on through mutual interaction. If, instead, discrimination should become intensified, we should see the vicious circle spiraling downward. The original change can as easily be a change of Negro standards upward or downward. The effects would, in a similar manner, run back and forth in the interlocking system of interdependent causation. In any case, the initial change would be supported by consecutive waves of back-effects from the reactions of the other factor.

The same principle holds true if we split one of our two variables into component factors. A rise in Negro employment, for instance, will raise family incomes, standards of nutrition, housing, and health, the possibilities of giving the Negro youth more education, and so forth, and all these effects of the initial change, will, in their turn, improve the Negroes' possibilities of getting employment and earning a living. The original push could have been on some other factor than employment, say, for example, an improvement of health or educational facilities for Negroes. Through action and interaction the whole system of the Negro's "status" would have been set in motion in the direction indicated by the first push. Much the same thing holds true of the development of white prejudice. Even assuming no changes in Negro standards, white prejudice can change, for example, as a result of an increased general knowledge about biology, eradicating some of the false beliefs among whites concerning Negro racial inferiority. If this is accomplished, it will in some degree censor the hostile and derogatory valuations which fortify the false beliefs, and education will then be able to fight racial beliefs with more success.

By this we have only wanted to give a hint of an explanatory scheme of dynamic causation which we are going to utilize throughout this inquiry. As pointed out in Appendix 3, and as we shall find in later chapters, the interrelations are in reality much more complicated than in our abstract illustrations, and there are all sorts of irregularities in the reaction of various factors. But the complications should not force us to give up our main hypothesis that a cumulative principle is working in social change. It is actually this hypothesis which gives a theoretical meaning to the Negro problem as a special phase of all other social problems in America. Behind the barrier of common discrimination, there is unity and close interrelation between the Negro's political power; his civil rights; his employment opportunities; his standards of housing, nutrition and clothing; his health, manners, and law observance; his ideals and ideologies. The unity is largely the result of cumulative causation binding them all together in a system and tying them to white discrimination. It is useful, therefore, to interpret all the separate factors from a central vantage point — the point of view of the Negro problem.

Another corollary from our hypothesis is practical. In the field of Negro politics any push upward directed on any one of those factors — if our main hypothesis is correct — moves all other factors in the same direction and has, through them, a cumulative effect upon general Negro status. An upward trend of Negro status in general can be effected by any number of measures, rather independent of where the initial push is localized. By the process of cumulation it will be transferred through the whole system.

But, as in the field of economic anti-depression policy, it matters a lot how the measures are proportioned and applied. The directing and proportioning of the measures is the task of social engineering. This engineering should be based on a knowledge of how all the factors are actually interrelated: what effect a primary change upon each factor will have on all other factors. It can be generally stated, however, that it is likely that a rational policy will never work by changing only one factor, least of all if attempted suddenly and with great force. In most cases that would either throw the system entirely out of gear or else prove to be a wasteful expenditure of effort which could reach much further by being spread strategically over various factors in the system and over a period of time.

This — and the impracticability of getting political support for a great and sudden change of just one factor — is the rational refutation of so-called panaceas. Panaceas are now generally repudiated in the literature on the Negro problem, though usually without much rational motivation. There still exists, however, another theoretical idea which is similar to the idea of panacea: the idea that there is one predominant factor, a "basic factor." Usually the sc-called "economic factor" is assumed to be this basic factor. A vague conception of economic determinism has, in fact, come to color most of the modern writings on the Negro problem far outside the Marxist school. Such a view has unwarrantedly acquired the prestige of being a particularly "hard-boiled" scientific approach.

As we look upon the problem of dynamic social causation, this approach is unrealistic and narrow. We do not, of course, deny that the conditions under which Negroes are allowed to earn a living are tremendously important for their welfare. But these conditions are closely interrelated to all other conditions of Negro life. When studying the variegated causes of discrimination in the labor market, it is, indeed, difficult to perceive what precisely is meant by "the economic factor." The Negro's legal and political status and all the causes behind this, considerations by whites of social prestige, and everything else in the Negro problem belong to the causation of discrimination in the labor market, in exactly the same way as the Negro's low economic status is influential in keeping down his health, his educational level, his political power, and his status in other respects. Neither from a theoretical point of view — in seeking to explain the Negro's caste status in American society — nor from a practical point of view — in a tempting to assign the strategic points which can most effectively be attacked in order to raise his status — is there any reason, or, indeed, any possibility of singling out "the economic factor" as basic. In an interdependent system of dynamic causation there is no "primary cause" but everything is cause to everything else.

If this theoretical approach is bound to do away in the practical sphere with all panaceas, it is, on the other hand, equally bound to encourage the reformer. The principle of cumulation — in so far as it holds true — promises final effects of greater magnitude than the efforts and costs of the reforms themselves. The low status of the Negro is tremendously wasteful all around — the low educational standard causes low earnings and health deficiencies, for example. The cumulatively magnified effect of a push upward on any one of the relevant factors is, in one sense, a demonstration and a measure of the earlier existing waste. In the end, the cost of raising the status of the Negro may not involve any "real costs" at all for society, but instead may result in great "social gains" and actual savings for society. A movement downward will, for the same reason, increase "social waste" out of proportion to the original saving involved in the push downward of one factor or another.

These dynamic concepts of "social waste," "social gain," and "real costs" are mental tools originated in the practical man's workshop. To give them a clearer meaning — which implies expressing also the underlying social value premises — and to measure them in quantitative terms represents from a practical viewpoint a main task of social science. Fulfilling that task in a truly comprehensive way is a stage of dynamic social theory still to be reached but definitely within vision.

8. A Theory of Democracy

The factors working on the white side in our system of dynamic causation were brought together under the heading "race prejudice." For our present purpose, it is defined as discrimination by whites against Negroes. One viewpoint on race prejudice needs to be presented at this point, chiefly because of its dose relation to our hypothesis of cumulative causation.

The chemists talk about "irreversible processes," meaning a trait of a chemical process to go in one direction with ease but, for all practical purposes, to be unchangeable back to its original state (as when a house burns down). When we observe race prejudice as it appears in American daily life, it is difficult to avoid the reflection that it seems so much easier to increase than to decrease race prejudice. One is reminded of the old saying that nineteen fresh apples do not make a single rotten apple fresh, but that one rotten apple rapidly turns the fresh ones rotten. When we come to consider the various causative factors underlying race prejudice — economic competition; urges and fears for social status; and sexual drives, fears, jealousies, and inhibitions — this view will come to be understandable. It is a common observation that the white Northerner who settles in the South will rapidly take on the stronger race prejudice of the new surroundings; while the Southerner going North is likely to keep his race prejudice rather unchanged and perhaps even to communicate it to those he meets. The Northerner in the South will find the whole community intent upon his conforming to local patterns. The Southerner in the North will not meet such concerted action, but will feel, rather, that others are adjusting toward him wherever he goes. If the local hotel in a New England town has accommodated a few Negro guests without much worry one way or the other, the appearance one evening of a single white guest who makes an angry protest against it might permanently change the policy of the hotel.

If we assume that a decrease in race prejudice is desirable — on grounds of the value premise of the American Creed and of the mechanism of cumulative wastage just discussed — such a general tendency, inherent in the psychology of race prejudice, would be likely to force us to a pessimistic outlook. One would expect a constant tendency toward increased race prejudice, and the interlocking causation with the several factors on the Negro side would be expected to reinforce the movement. Aside from all valuations, the question must be raised: Why is race prejudice, in spite of this tendency to continued intensification which we have observed, nevertheless, on the whole not increasing but decreasing?

This question is, in fact, only a special variant of the enigma of philosophers for several thousands of years: the problem of Good and Evil in the world. One h reminded of that cynical but wise old man, Thomas Hobbes, who proved rather conclusively that, while any person's actual possibilities to improve the lot of his fellow creatures amounted to almost nothing, everyone's opportunity to do damage was always immense. The wisest and most virtuous man will hardly leave a print in the sand behind him, meant Hobbes, but an imbecile crank can set fire to a whole town. Why is the world, then, not steadily and rapidly deteriorating, but rather, at least over long periods, progressing? Hobbes raised this question. His answer was, as we know: the State, Leviathan. Our own tentative answer to the more specific but still overwhelmingly general question we have raised above will have something in common with that of the post- Elizabethan materialist and hedonist, but it will have its stress placed differently, as we shall subsequently see.

Two principal points will be made by way of a preliminary and hypothetical answer, as they influence greatly our general approach to the Negro problem. The first point is the American Creed, the relation of which to the Negro problem will become apparent as our inquiry proceeds. The Creed of progress, liberty, equality, and humanitarianism is not so uninfluential on everyday life as might sometimes appear.

The second point is the existence in society of huge institutional structures like the church, the school, the university, the foundation, the trade union, the association generally, and, of course, the state. It is true, as we shall find, that these institutional structures in their operation show an accommodation to local and temporary interests and prejudices — they could not be expected to do otherwise as they are made up of individuals with all their local and temporary characteristics. As institutions they are, however, devoted to certain broad ideals. It is in these institutions that the American Creed has its instruments: it plays upon them as on mighty organs. In adhering to these ideals, the institutions show a pertinacity, matched only by their great flexibility in local and temporary accommodation.

The school, in every community, is likely to be a degree more broad-minded than local opinion. So is the sermon in church. The national labor assembly is prone to decide slightly above the prejudice of the median member. Legislation will, on the whole, be more equitable than the legislators are themselves as private individuals. When the man in the street acts through his orderly collective bodies, he acts more as an American, as a Christian, and as a humanitarian than if he were acting independently. He thus shapes social controls which are going to condition even himself.

Through these huge institutional structures, a constant pressure is brought to bear on race prejudice, counteracting the natural tendency for it to spread and become more intense. The same people are acting in the institutions as when manifesting personal prejudice. But they obey different moral valuations on different planes of life. In their institutions they have invested more than their everyday ideas which parallel their actual behavior. They have placed in them their ideals of how the world rightly ought to be. The ideals thereby gain fortifications of power and influence in society. This is a theory of social self-healing that applies to the type of society we call democracy.

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The Arctic Home in the Vedas
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/23/21

A year of mortals is a day and a night of the Gods, or regents of the universe seated round the north pole; and again their division is this, their day is the northern, and their night the southern course of the sun.

-- Institutes of Hindu Law: Or, The Ordinances of Menu, According to the Gloss of Culluca. Comprising the Indian System of Duties, Religious and Civil, Verbally translated from the original Sanscrit, With a Preface, by Sir William Jones

--The Arctic Home in the Vedas, Being Also a New Key to the Interpretation of Many Vedic Texts and Legends, by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, B.A., LL.B., Author of Orion or Researches into the Antiquity of the Vedas, Editor of the Kesari, Sometime Additional Member of the Council of H.E. the Governor of Bombay for Making Laws, &c., &c., 1903

The title page of the 1903 edition of The Arctic Home in the Vedas

The Arctic Home in the Vedas is a 1903 book on the origin of Aryanic People by Indian nationalist, teacher and independence activist Bal Gangadhar Tilak.[1] It propounded the idea that the North Pole was the original home of Aryans during the pre-glacial period which they had to leave due to the ice deluge around 8000 B.C. and had to migrate to the Northern parts of Europe and Asia in search of lands for new settlements. In support to his theory, Tilak presented certain Vedic hymns, Avestic passages, Vedic chronology and Vedic calendars with interpretations of the contents in detail.

The book was written at the end of 1898, but was first published in March 1903 in Pune.

Man was believed to be post-glacial, and the theory of an Asiatic origin of the Aryan peoples prevailed. The age of the oldest Vedic period, however, was carried back to 4500 BC by scholars including the author himself after scientific astronomical research in correlation with purported evidence found in the Vedic hymns.

Tilak cites a book by William F. Warren, the first President of Boston University, Paradise Found or the Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole, as having anticipated his ideas to some extent. Warren dedicated his book to Max Müller, with whom Tilak had shared ideas before the book was completed.

Tilak held the view that further study of Vedic hymns and Avestan passages might reveal the long vista of primitive Aryan antiquity.

Summary of Tilak’s polar theory

• Neolithic Aryan race in Europe cannot be regarded as autochthonous [indigenous peoples], nor European Aryans descended from the Paleolithic man. Hence, question of the original Aryan home is still unsettled.
• In the early geological ages, the Alps were low, the Himalayas not yet upheaved, Asia and Africa were represented only by a group of islands and an equable and uniform climate prevailed over the whole surface of the globe. In those days, however, a warm climate prevailed in the Arctic region.
• The close of the Pliocene and the whole of the Pleistocene period were marked by violent changes of climate bringing on what is called the Glacial and Inter-Glacial epochs. A succession of cold and warm climates must have characterized these Glacial and Inter-Glacial periods which were also accompanied by extensive movements of depression and elevation of land, the depression taking place after the land was weighed down with the enormous mass of ice.
• Thus a period of glaciations was marked by elevation, extreme cold and the invasion of the ice-caps over regions of the present Temperate zone; while an inter-glacial period was accompanied by depression of land and milder and congenial climate which made even the Arctic regions habitable.
• According to the latest geological evidence, the last Glacial period must have closed and Post-Glacial must have commenced at about 10,000 years ago or 8,000 BC. There were at least two Glacial and one Inter-Glacial period, and the geographical distribution of land and water on the earth during the Inter-Glacial period was quite different from what it is at present. It was the coming on of the Glacial age that destroyed this genial climate and rendered the regions unsuited for the habitation of tropical plants and animals.
• At the North Pole, one sees the heavenly dome above seems to revolve around one like a potter's wheel. The stars will not rise and set but move round and round in horizontal planes during the long night of six months. The Sun, when it is above the horizon for six months; would also appear to revolve in the same way but with some difference. The Northern celestial hemisphere will alone be visible spinning round and round and the Southern half remain invisible. The Sun going into the Northern hemisphere in his annual course will appear as coming up from the South. Living in the temperate and tropical zones, however, one sees all heavenly objects rise in the East and set in the West, some passing over the head, others traveling obliquely.
• The long dawn of two months is a special and important characteristic of the North Pole. As we descend southward, the splendor and the duration of the dawn will be witnessed on a less and less magnificent scale. But the dawn occurring at the end of the long night of two, three or more months will still be unusually long, often of several days duration.
• All these characteristics of an Arctic home are clearly recorded in several Vedic hymns and Avestic passages and they come to us sometimes as the description of the prevailing conditions or the day-to-day experience or stories told by the earlier generation and sometimes as myths.


Tilak in his Study

Chronology of the post-glacial period

• 10,000 to 8000 BC – The destruction of the original Arctic home by the last Ice Age and the commencement of the post-Glacial period.
• 8000 to 5000 BC – The age of migration from the original home. The survivors of the Aryan race roamed over the northern parts of Europe and Asia in search of lands suitable for new settlements. Tilak calls it the Pre-Orion Period.
• 5000 to 3000 BC. – The Orion period, when the vernal equinox was in Orion. Many Vedic hymns can be traced to the early part of this period and the bards of the race seem to have not yet forgotten the real importance of the traditions of the Arctic home inherited by them. It was at this time that first attempts to reform the calendar and the sacrificial system appear to have been systematically made.
• 3000 to 1400 BC – The Krittika period, when the vernal equinox was in Pleiades. The traditions about the original Arctic home had grown dim by this time and were often misunderstood, making the Vedic hymns less and less intelligible.
• 1400 to 500 BC – The Pre-Buddhistic period, when the Sutras and the Philosophical systems made their appearance.

Influence

M.S. Golwalkar, in his 1939 publication We or Our Nationhood Defined, famously stated that "Undoubtedly [...] we — Hindus — have been in undisputed and undisturbed possession of this land for over eight or even ten thousand years before the land was invaded by any foreign race."[2] Golwalkar was inspired by Tilak's[note 1] The Arctic Home in the Vedas.[3] Gowalkar took over the idea of 10,000 years, arguing that the North Pole at that time was located in India.[3][note 2]

See also

• Ancient North Eurasians
• Arctic
• Ariana
• Aryan
• Aryan race
• Aryavarta
• Atlantis
• Indo-Aryan languages
• Indo-Aryan peoples
• Indo-Aryans
• Indo-Iranians
• Indo-Iranian languages
• Kumari Kandam
• Kurgan
• Lemuria (continent)
• Mu (lost continent)
• Hyperborea
• Rigveda
• The Orion (book)
• Vedic Age

Notes

1. Carol Schaeffer: "Tilak, dubbed the “father of Indian unrest” for his advocacy of violent tactics against British colonialists and inspiration to later Indian Hindu nationalists".[3]
2. See also Is our civilisation really 10 millennia old? Or are we simply insecure?; Sanjeev Sabhlok (2013), Not to be outdone by Müller, Tilak proposed that Aryans descended from the north pole. and Golwalkar’s most fantastic and absurd attempt to “prove” that the non-existent Aryans were from India.

References

• The Arctic Home in the Vedas by B.G. Tilak, edition 1925.
1. Ashalatha, A.; Koropath, Pradeep; Nambarathil, Saritha (2009). "6 – Indian National Movement" (PDF). Social Science: Standard VIII Part 1. Government of Kerala • Department of Education. State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT). p. 72.
2. Gyanendra Pandey (2006), Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories, Stanford University Press, p.103
3. Carol Schaeffer (2018), Alt-Reich. The unholy alliance between India and the new global wave of white supremacy, The Caravan (2018), p.42

Sources

• Ashalatha, A.; Koropath, Pradeep; Nambarathil, Saritha (2009). "6 – Indian National Movement" (PDF). Social Science: Standard VIII Part 1. Government of Kerala • Department of Education. State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT).
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• Pandey, Gyanendra (2006), Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories, Stanford University Press
• Schaeffer, Carol (2018), "Alt-Reich. The unholy alliance between India and the new global wave of white supremacy", The Caravan

Further reading

• The Arctic Home in the Vedas by B.G. Tilak, edition 1925.

External links

• The Arctic Home in the Vedas (1903) at the Internet Archive
• The Whalers Atlas (Атлас Китобоев) by Dionysius Artifex 2021