Review: [Untitled]

Reviewed Work(s):Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta by René Guénon; Richard C. Nicholson

Joachim Wach

The Journal of Religion, Vol. 27, No. 3. (Jul., 1947), pp. 221-222.

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221 CRITICAL REVIEWS

poetical sources in attractive translation (esp. pp. 117 ff.). If anything will help to overcome the Western prejudice of viewing the religion of the Muslims as barren "nomism," i t will be a growing acquaintance with Sufi devotion and its expression (cf. sec. 5). The treatment of Rluslim laws and their interpretations in the areas of the four madhab has been carefully studied in the last decades. Perhaps fuller reference could have been made to J. Schacht's studies in hijal and to Snouck Hurgronje's concern with the theory and practice of the Shafiite "rite" in southeast Asia. Grunebaum aptly remarks: "Nowhere was the discrepancy between the normative dreams of the lawyers and the actual conditions of life so loud and so hurtful as in the sphere of politi- cal organization" (p. I 53). These "theoretical" dreams had finally to be abandoned after a pro- longed policy of "attenuating the original re- quirements of legimate power" (p. 168). Using A1 Mawardi's statutes of rulership as an im-portant source, the author discusses interesting- ly the governmental offices and their hierarchy, after first treating of the basic sources for law in his fifth chapter.

The most original contributions this reviewer finds in the sixth, seventh, and ninth chapters. The study of social stratification in Islamic so- ciety which R. Levy has so happily inaugurated is here continued. As no comparative study of the Lebensideal of the different great civiliza- tions exists as yet (except E. Krieck's Vergleich- ende Erziehungskunde), the attempt to charac- terize the human ideal of the Moslems (chap. vii)-depersonalization of experience, literari- zation of its reproduction, and usefulness as a criterion are important features (p. 232)--is especially welcome. The author finds Islam "eminently human" in that i t takes man as he is, but he adds significantly that "he is directed and guided toward salvation rather than edu- cated to develop his self. . . ." (p. 230). AS in the preceding chapters, salient passages from Is- lamic sources are quoted in the eighth, in tast- ful translations, to illustrate the author's analy- ses of the literary expression of the Muslims. The monographic treatment of the sources of the Arabian Nights (chap. ix) whet our appetite for a fuller study of stylistic phenomena by the author. He says himself: "Muslim civilization's greatest contributions to man's spiritual life were offered on the verbal level" (p. 259; cf. p. 226). The self-expression is shaped by three literary traditions, the Arabic, Persian, and

Greek (p. 261). Poetical convention is strong. Grunebaum discussed the role of self-praise by Muslim authors (pp. 265-66) and analyzes their biographical and autobiographical writing (cf. also pp. 223-24). In their historiography he finds standards of accuracy and conscientious- ness "astoundingly high" (p. 281). I t is signifi- cant that large-scale narrative and drama never developed, as Arab literary theory did not pro- vide for fiction (p. 287).

I t is difficult to convey within the framework of a review an adequate idea of the rich content and lucid organization of this book. Not all topics touched upon could be treated exhaus- tively, of course, but only in a few cases does the change of subject seem abrupt (pp. 2 2 ff.). In the first two chapters the historical material oc- casionally triumphs over the systematic ar-rangement. I wonder if i t is correct to say: "Man in the Middle Ages made, on the whole, little or no effort to comprehend the outsider whose status as an infidel disqualified him as an object of dispassionate inquiry" (pp. 7-8) (cf. the "relations" of the Mendicant missionaries to the East in thirteenth century). I n the first and second chapters fuller reference to C. H. Becker's studies in Christian and Muslim dog- matics and ritual (Islamische Studien) could have been made. H. Haas has traced the devel- opment of the picture which the West had of Muhammed (Z. f. M. R.) (42 ff.). On page 141, H. H. Schaeder's treatise on the insan a1 Kancil may have been mentioned; on p. 197 F. Gold-ziher's studies Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung; on p. 281, J. T. Shotwell's The History of History; on p. 203, A. Christen- sen, L'Empire des Sassanides. But these are minor matters. Professor von Grunebaum's in- terpretation of Islamic civilization will be useful to all students of Islam. The University of Chicago Press had added to its long roster of works which are of interest to the scholar and to the educated layman alike an especially hand- somely bound and well-nigh faultlessly printed volume.

JOACHIM WACH University of Chicago

Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta. By R E N ~ GU~NON.Translated by RICHARD C. NICHOLSON. London: Luzac & Co., 1945. 187 pages. 12s. 6d.

222 THE JOURNAL OF RELIGION

As a companion to his Introduction to the Study of Hindu Doctrines (reviewed in the Journal of Religion, XXVII, 2, 1947, 136) R. GuCnon has published an analysis of the con- cept of man in the teachings of the Upanishads and the Vedanta Sutras according to the inter- pretation of Shankaracarya, the great commen- tator of the ninth century A.D. (d.P. Deussen's translation of his commentary on the Sutras and the same author's System des Vedanta). His main sources are the Mandukya- and Chandog- ya-Upanishads and the Brahma Sutras and their commentaries. On the flyleaf we read A. K. Coomaraswamy's judgment according to which this presentation is "probably the best account of the Vedanta in any European language." I t is a very penetrating yet lucid exposition of the metaphysical psychology of the most influential school of Hinduism. (Less technical than GuCnon's is a similar attempt by S. Akhilanan- da, Hindu Psychology: I t s Meaning for the West, [New York: Harper & Bros., 19461). "Not erudi- tion but understanding" is the purpose of the author (p. 7 ) . He has succeeded in introducing his readers to the basic Hindu ideas on the na- ture and constitution of the human being, thus enabling him to follow the Indian seeker after realization of the true self, in "his divine jour- ney" to LLimmortality."

After brief remarks on the sources (chap. i) GuCnon develops the fundamental distinction between the transcendent "self" and the empiri- cal 'Lego," defining the former as the principle by which all the states of the being exist (p. 36) and relating it to the supreme self (Paramatma) which is supposed to dwell in the vital center of the human being. Chapters ii and iii follow the enfolding of the manifestation of the Brahma ("supreme ruler") identified with the Atma ("universal spirit") and the "self" into the realms of relativity. Purusha and Prakniti are its primary aspects (chap. iv), the latter pos- sessing three gumas, or constitutional qualities, "conditions of universal existence" (p. 52). I t is from the latter that all manifestation is pro- duced (p. 58). Chapters vii-x describe the dif- ferent (not chronologically but ontologically distinct) manifestations of the Atnza: Buddhi (L'higher intellect"), ahankara ("individual con- sciousness"), the kanmatras ("elementary de-terminations"), the bhutas ("elements"), the manas ("inner sense"). Moreover, five kosha's ("envelopes") are postulated of which the last

is the corporeal or gross form, corresponding to the most external mode of manifestation and consisting of the five sensible elements of which all bodies are constituted (p. 78). Though the essential unity and identity of the "self" in all the states of the being have to be upheld, this does not imply pantheism or immanentism, ac- cording to GuCnon, who quotes from the Bhagavadgita, "All beings are in Me and I am not myself in them" (p. 87). All single individ- ual beings are subjected to various modalities, four to be exact: waking, dream, deep sleep, and, the "unconditioned" state. The first cor- responds to gross manifestation, the second to the subtle, the third is the "formless" state, while the fourth, the "greatest of them," is that of freedom from all manifestation, that is, "full- ness of peace" and "beatitude" (chaps. xi-xv ff.). As this is a state beyond determination and hence limitation, i t means one "beyond Being" (p. 112). In the last sections of his book Mr. GuCnon expounds the Hindu doctrine of the subsistence of subtle elements after the individ- ual (bodily) existence has come to an end. The "reabsorption of the individuality" into the "unmanifestated state" is taught in the Brahma Sutras and by Shankara (chaps. xvi-xix ff.). The "withdrawal" is conceived of as taking place by degrees (according to degrees of knowl- edge), in case deliverance "is not achieved a t the moment of death." I t can be symbolized as a "journey" (chaps. xx-xxii). The state of the re- alization of the supreme identity by the Yogi is described, according to Shankara, as return to the primordial state, as the ability to awaken possibilities in others and as isolation (balya, panditya, mauna) (chap. xxiii) .

The use of the technical Sanskrit terms ac- companied by translation and explanation is reassuring for those who are weary of second- and third-hand paraphrases of the Vedanta by Western amateurs. Mr. GuCnon refers frequent- ly to parallel concepts in Sufism and Taoism. The polemics against misconceptions of the task of theinterpreter of Eastern systems of thought, to which we are accustomed from his previous writings, reoccur in this book.

We can look forward to translations of other writings by the author which are in preparation.

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