Shastri's Sastra

The criticisms of the Mishras and other scholars, though controversial, were mild compared to those of astrologer-pandit Rajnikant Shastri, whose 1949 book, Manasmimamsa^[*] (An inquiry into the Manas ) brought debate over the epic to a new level of passion. Although subtitled "a nonpartisan critical study" and dutifully sweetened with a chapter entitled "The Merits of the Manas ," Shastri's book consists for the most part of a no-holds-barred attack on poem and author, delivered with the zeal of a public-spirited crusader.

I grant that the Hindi-speaking Hindu populace views this book with an extremely reverent gaze. They are ever intoxicated with its sweetness and consider its reading and recitation to effect their temporal and spiritual well-being, and foreign scholars too, noting its virtues, openly sing its praises. But in deference to truth I must declare that people's attention has till now never been drawn toward this book's defects, from which people have suffered greatly and continue to suffer.^[154]

Shastri's catalog of defects is long; it is also idiosyncratic and his method of attacking them no less so. His complaints against the Manas are weighty: that it promotes the oppression of women and Shudras and, by encouraging blind faith and fanaticism, saps the vitality of Hindu society. Yet the arguments put forward in support of these views often involve the same kinds of tortuous and fanciful interpretations favored by the epic's defenders. Thus, he devotes a long chapter to a testy attempt to prove, largely using astrological calculations based on Puranic passages, that Sita was born nine hundred years earlier than Ram and therefore the entire Ramayan story is only an airy fiction. Chameleonlike, the venerable Shastri appears at one moment as a radical atheist, debunking all myths and championing social egalitarianism, and at the next as a pious Hindu, quoting a wide range of texts (including the Valmiki Ramayana^[*] , which he has dismissed as a hoax) in order to prove various assertions.

Despite such inconsistencies, Shastri's scholarly tone and modernist idiom have added a powerful statement to the debate over the epic's

social teachings. A single passage on Tulsi's treatment of Shudras will give a sense of the author's angry eloquence:

If he had the impertinence to call Brahmans hypocrites in such verses as "Brahmans were illiterate, greedy, and lustful," etc. [7.100.8.], at least he atoned for it by writing "A Brahman should be worshiped even if without virtue," etc. [3.34.2]. But what had he to fear from weak and helpless Shudras? He gave them a thorough thrashing. Beholding their prayers, austerities, and fasts his hateful heart burned with rage. Seeing them seated on a dais expounding religious stories was like a needle in his eye. Perhaps you are not aware that Vasishtha, Parashar, Bharadvaj, and other sages were the sons of, respectively, a prostitute, an untouchable, and a Shudra mother; but by prayer, austerity, fasting, and so forth they made themselves not merely Brahmans but sages who founded great lineages and whose descendants even today are puffed up with pride. . .. In a country whose revered leader wishes to uplift the nation by extending education to women, sweepers, and scavengers, this Ramcaritmanas of Tulsi's, "in accordance with numerous scriptures," pummels and ridicules him with its "virtuous" teachings. . .. But now there have appeared people who will calculate the true cost of this intoxicating spell of his; those whose keenly critical pens, like the sharp lancets of dedicated surgeons, heedless of the abuses he poured out in anticipation of criticism, will slice open his overripe boils and extract and discard all their filthy, rotted pus!^[155]

Shastri, who clearly considers himself foremost among the surgeons, goes on in this fashion for more than two hundred pages, tempering lofty social criticism with the cranky literalness of a Ramayani.^[156] He reiterates many of the common problems raised by believers,^[157] but his diatribe occasionally includes striking insights of the sort that rarely intrude into the polite game of sanka^[*] and samadhan . In discussing Tulsi's attitude toward women, he notes the common defense that the poet's criticisms are directed only against "wayward women" and that the epic provides many positive female models (Sita, Kaushalya, Anasuya, Shabari, etc.) as well as many reprehensible male characters. Shastri points out that whereas the condemnation of men is particularized, that of women is universal and based on a constantly repeated theme of inherent feminine impurity. If Ram's misogynistic lecture to Narad is intended only for ascetics, Shastri wonders, then why is there no comparable passage for householders, extolling women's virtues?

And why are exemplary female ascetics like Shabari not similarly warned by Ram against the allurements of young men?^[158]

Such insights, albeit nearly buried beneath Shastri's invective and quaint preoccupations, suggest a degree of questioning of the traditional worldview that is rarely encountered in any of the polemics, pro or con, concerning the epic. As Hess observed after noting the ingenious interpretations of the verb tarna^[*] —to "instruct," "correct," "tune," "get the best out of," and so forth—with which most of her interviewees sought to explain the drum verse,

in their very defense of this line, the speakers reveal attitudes which to us may seem just as incriminating as the obvious problem about beating. . .. The very juxtaposition of these five terms—drum, peasant, Shudra, animal, woman—implies the degradation of the human items on the list. The comparison of the five, and the explanations commonly offered, continually reinforce the idea that women and Shudras, like animals and drums, are there for certain other people to "get something out of." Those people are twice-born males . . . or husbands of any caste or class.^[159]

But if, like the legendary hamsa^[*] bird, we choose to selectively relish the milk of Shastri's insights, we must first strain out a great deal of water. The pandit's motives for his unprecedented attack, visible here and there beneath the surface of his argument, merit closer examination; I return to this subject shortly.