Rāmānuja - The theology of Rāmānuja: realism and religion

THE THEOLOGY OF RMNUJA

THE THEOLOGY OF RMNUJA

Realism and Religion

C.J. Bartley

First published 2002 by Routledge Curzon

This edition published 2013 by Routledge
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2002 C.J. Bartley

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ISBN 978-0-700-7145-9

For Loretta

This book, which has recently come of age, began life as a Cambridge doctoral thesis supervised by Julius Lipner to whom I owe an enduring debt of gratitude. Thanks are also due to the Master and Fellows of Gonville and Caius College; to the electors to the Peregrine Maitland Studentship in Comparative Religion in the University of Cambridge; to Wolfson College, Oxford where I held the Junior Research Fellowship in Religious Studies from 19825. Since 1995 I have been attached to the Philosophy Department at Liverpool University which has provided an environment congenial to research and writing. Particular thanks are due to Barry Dainton, Michael McGhee, Howard Robinson and John Williamson at Liverpool; to Richard Gombrich and Alexis Sanderson at Oxford and to Jackie Suthren Hirst of the Department of Religions and Theology at Manchester University.

The work would not have seen the light of day without the love and support of my wife Loretta.

Rmnuja (c.10751140 A.D.) was a Brahmin initiate into the theistic and devotional South Indian r Vaiava tradition. He is venerated by members of that tradition as the thinker and scriptural exegete who, following in the footsteps of Nthamuni (c.900950) and Ymuna (c.9661038), provided a solid and comprehensive theological and philosophical defence and articulation of their beliefs and practices in the system that would come to be known as Viidvaita Vednta. This involved challenging the dominant monistic interpretation of the Upaniads propounded by the Advaita Vednta tradition of scriptural exegesis which holds that the import of those texts is the identity of the soul (tman) and the ground of being (Brahman) and that all experience of difference is the ultimately unreal consequence of ignorance or misunderstanding (avidy). His success in this respect was such that nothing could ever be the same again in Vednta, theistic or otherwise.

The r Vaiava sect derives its character from the integration of the sectarian Tntric (i.e. non-Vedic) Pcartra temple ritual and theology, the emotional devotionalism (bhakti) towards a personal deity with qualities (sagua) of the Tamil lvr poets and classical Vedntic elements. The ritual life of the sect is structured by the Pcartra scriptures (gama). There is an emphasis on the immanent presence of the divinity in the world in the temple image (arcvatara).

Vednta, the science of Brahman or the absolute reality, is the systematic exegesis and elucidation of those portions (the jna-ka) of the supposedly eternal and infallible Vedic sacred texts that are called Upaniads and which deal in different ways with such metaphysical issues as the nature of the absolute principle and summum bonum underlying the cosmos, the nature and destiny of the essential self (tman) and the manner of cosmic generation. Its basic text is the Brahmastra attributed to Bdaryaa (second century A.D.) which summarises in a readily memorable but inevitably highly ambiguous (given the aphoristic nature of the stra genre) fashion the topics dealt with by the major Upaniads just as the Mmsastras (attributed to Jaimini c.100 A.D.) summarise those portions (the karma-ka) of the Vedas which bear upon the performance of mandatory and fructiferous rituals. Vednta is sometimes called Uttara Mms (Later Exegesis). The ritualist acquired the designation Prva-Mmsa (Previous Enquiry) in so far as the path of ritual action came to be understood as precedent and propaedeutic to the path of knowledge.

Rmnuja is an agent in the Vednticisation of what was originally a non-Vedic tradition. He sought to harmonise the tenets of his bhakti cult with those of the classical Vedntic tradition whose primary scriptural authorities are the Upaniads , the summaries of the Upaniads in the Brahmastras and the Bhagavad Gt . Amongst the criteria of Hindu Brahminical orthodoxy (smrta), which include acceptance as binding of the Vedically derived social and religious duties specific to hereditary members of the castes (varramadharma) and the eternity of an essential principle in man (tman), recognition of the authority of the Veda is the most prominent. By Vednticisation is meant the articulation of the theory and practice of sectarian traditions in terms of a widely recognised notion of ideology and conduct as preserved in the mainstream Vedntic tradition. By writing commentaries on the Brahmastras and the Gt , Rmnuja was asserting the Vedntic legitimacy of his bhakti religion. His theistic and dualistic interpretations of the Upaniads provided a classical basis for popular devotional religion.

Drawing on Tamil theological sources, Ymuna had laid the foundations for such an enterprise. In his Siddhitraya , he sought to demonstrate that the essential self (