May I first express my gratitude for the privilege extended to me by the University of Madras, to deliver this year the two Principal Miller Endowment Lectures on "The Meaning of History". The recurring theme of these lectures every year is the same: "The inner meaning of history as disclosing the one increasing purpose that runs through the ages". A very sombre impressive-sounding theme indeed, though its meaning may need more unfolding than most people can do on their own.
First let me pay my humble tribute to Principal William Miller. I never had the privilege of knowing him in person when he was at Madras Christian College.
Miller was more than a great European teacher and an outstanding western Christian missionary. He was also a great humanist philosopher, though that philosophy was moulded by a particular type of Christian dogma current in his time in the west. Whoever formulated the terms of the Miller Endowment Lectures knew that central to Principal Miller's Christian convictions was the belief that God was at work in human history; that the purpose of God which is the meaning of history was gradually unfolding itself in history. We shall not be able to trace the origins of this conviction in these lectures. Here I want only to pay tribute to Principal Miller, who came to India because he wanted to be part of that purpose of God as it works out in India.
I would like also to make four introductory points about the concept of history as we have inherited it from our own heritage as well as from the western tradition which too is now part of our heritage, though still not fully digested.
Is the West more historically Oriented than Asia?
Wittgenstein claimed that philosophy does not give us beliefs, but merely relieves feelings of intellectual discomfort. I must enter the caveat that much of western philosophy serves that function -- that of an intellectual anodyne or painkiller. In my understanding philosophy's function is the opposite -- namely to create intellectual discomfort that prods the human spirit to rise above the intellectual towards the truly healing joy.
‘History‘, like ’culture', is a concept we have recently borrowed from the west. Philosophically its original provenance is the German-speaking world rather than the English-speaking world. There is no real parallel to 'history' or 'geschichte' in Sanskrit. We have our puranas, our caritas, and our itihasas, but no real concept of 'history' as an entity. Small wonder then that Al—Beruni, the Arab traveler, wrote in 1039 A.D., about our ancestors of nearly a millennium ago:
"The Indians unfortunately do not pay much attention to the historical sequence of events; they are very negligent in the enumeration of the chronological succession of their kings, and when we press them for explanation they do not know what to say and are ever ready to relate fables". ( Cited by J.K. Nariman, Literary History of Sanskrit Buddhism,
Motilal Banarsidass, 2nd edition Bombay 1923, Reprint Delhi 1972. p. 160)
We need not take that castigation too literally. We do have a few exact dates on several inscriptions and quite a compendious historical literature in Sanskrit, in Pali and in Prakrit. Just to give a few examples, the Vinaya basket of the Buddhist Tripitaka, contains (a. the Mahavagga which opens with a biography of the Buddha as the basis for the code of duties outlined therein, and (b) the Cullavagga with the history of the Councils convoked after the demise of the Buddha. We need not take the 547 Jatakas or narrative tales of anterior existences of the Buddha as historical material. Even the hagiographies or apadana of Buddhist men and women saints need not be so classified, though they have some historical basis, no doubt. But the description of the councils, the first, of 500 monks at Rajagriha, convoked soon after the Buddha's demise by his principal disciple Kashyapa, and the second council at Vaishali a century later, as well as the third at Pataliputra in the time of Ashoka contain valuable historical material, though most of it seems difficult to separate from legend.
These were mentioned as examples to show that Asians are not totally devoid of any sense of history. The Pali or Magadhi Theravada canon, the Nepalese Tibetan, Chinese and Korean Buddhist canons of Asia do contain historical material, though again it is most difficult to separate the legendary from the historical.
But unlike the Greek tradition which seems to have preserved verbatim fragments of the dicta of the pre—Socratics, we have no such fragments from the Buddha or Mahavira. The Tripitaka and Asvaghosha's Buddhacharita or Sutralankara as well as the Vedas, Upanishads, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana have all come down to us in heavily edited versions or translations. The only real early fragments have are the edicts of Ashoka, and some clay tablets and inscriptions in Mongolian, Chinese, Syriac, Pahlavi, and other Central Asian languages. But then besides the Greek fragments, how much historical material can the Europeans show us from the early centuries of our era or from the one before?
Compared to Europe, in terms of the situation 2000 years ago, Asian cultures had much greater abundance of historical material. There is no justification for the view many hold that Asians were traditionally ahistorical while Europeans were more historically oriented. This is especially noticeable in the case of China where very precisely dated chronicles were maintained. The documents and records of many Asian-African civilisations do go back to at least the second millennium BCE (China,India, Egypt and others).
The word 'history' is of course from Greek 'historia', which originally meant narratives, accounts, inquiries; it was probably a common word, plural in number, not singular. Herodotus (484 BCE — 430 BCE) used it as the title of his book, visible when the papyrus scroll was rolled up: HERODOTUS OF HALICARNASSOS - HISTORIA. A. R. Burns, in his introduction to the Penguin Classics translation of Herodotus, says that the word "history" in our present sense, was born with that title. (Herodotus, The Histories, Penguin Classics, Revised edition 1972.)
2. The Essential Mystery of History
Aware of a few notable exceptions, one can still make the general observation that in ancient history, whether in Asia or Africa or in the west, people's historical consciousness was always deeply rooted in the Transcendent. History was never fully separable from myth -- specially religious myth -- the Prajapati or Brahmanda myths in Hinduism, the Tirthankara myth in Jainism, the Buddhakayas in Buddhism, the Creation myth in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and so on.
These early European historians like Herodotus and Plutarch were by no means secular rationalists like many modern historians. They were ‘religious’ and believed in sacrifices and oracles and all the rest. But their transcendent world of the gods was itself so fill of strife, envy, greed and lust, that the rootedness of their histories in the transcendent helped very little to ennoble them.
The question of the 'meaning of history‘ has to do not only with the rootedness of history in the transcendent realm, but also with the human perception of the character and orientation of that transcendent realm.
We shall deal with this question at some length in the second lecture. Here one needs only to say that if history is regarded only as an “objective realm‘ to be explored in a value-neutral way by critical reason, then it can yield no rich meaning. Then history becomes meaningless "bunk" as Ranke thought. Or as a great western historian of our time, H.A.L. Fisher puts it with more grace:
"One intellectual excitement has, however been denied me. Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a pre-determined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave, only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalisations: only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen". (H.A.L. Fisher, history of Europe, 2 vols, Fontana 1960, p.773)
If history is seen only from a secular rational critical viewpoint, it yields no meaning; all is pure chance and happenstance. On the other hand if history is seen as one dimension of a multidimensional universe, and if we have access to some perspective on these other dimensions, then history begins to unfold itself into a slightly discernible pattern. Not that we get a clear picture' but we do get a picture that provides enough of a clue to throw oneself into that history and to identify oneself with that discerned pattern an purpose.
This is why I insist that there is an essential element of mystery in history. But mystery does not mean a closed, inaccessible realm, hidden away. Neither does it mean as it does to many moderns, a puzzle, a 'whodunit', which can be solved by ingenious detective investigation.
To me, as an Eastern Christian, mystery means something more sacramental, though not sacramental in the usual western sense. To me mystery means rising above the dimension open to our senses into participation in a transcendent community where communion with the Transcendent is experienced historically through the liturgical action of the Transcendent in the community, by word and deed, by sign and symbol, by body soul as well as by mind and spirit. I do believe that the historical consciousness belongs integrally to this liturgical community. Devoid of this element of mystery, history is simply one thing after the other, a jumble of chaos and confusion; a series of wars and conquests, of migration and transmigration, samsara without sara.
3. Myth, Meaning and The Brevity of History
My third preliminary point about the comparative brevity of history in relation to time as a whole shall be very briefly dealt with indeed.
Human history as we know it or can reconstruct from written records does not go far beyond 5000 years. The scientists tell me that they know that the Big Bang which began our universe occurred about 17 billion years ago. That is the kind of science that I treat with respect not unmixed with skepticism. l7,000 million years of astro-history, we know only 5000 years of it as written history . i.e. about one by 3.5 millionth of the whole of tine. I know there are astrophysicists who will tell me that they know everything that happened in that 17 billion years of time, except the first tenth of a second.
But the written historical record does not deal with 16.999995 billion out of the 17 billion. They tell me that physical evolution took at least 12.5 billion years before the protogalaxies, galaxies, star clusters, stars and solar systems with their planets, including our own little planet took shape. Then began chemical evolution for 1.5 billion years, before life began 3 billion years ago. Life has been evolving now for 3 billion years; before that there was only physico-chemical evolution, governed by the principles which we can now see in the evolution of auto-replicating systems -- dialectical principles like Stabilization-destabilization and co-operation-- competition. As organic evolution begins we see new principles of self-replicating systems begin to emerge -- like mutation, selection and recombination, which were not obviously evident at the physico-chemical level. And as we come to later socio-cultural or historico-linguistic human evolution, still new principles of self-replicating systems emerge -- more accurate copying mechanisms, more efficient communication systems, recombination mechanisms, programmed feedback mechanisms, nervous systems and so on.
None of our written history would have been possible without all the preceding developments, stochastic processes and emergent principles. All of that history including life and consciousness and the principles which guide them must have been potentially present in that first Big Bang. That involves a lot of explaining which neither history nor science can easily escape.
Various cultures have designed or developed varying devices to explain pre-history. They deal with it briefly, though the period involved is many million times longer. Epics and Sagas deal with a much later part cf prehistory. The hoary beginnings had to be expressed in myth and symbol, community rituals and liturgical feasts.
History is integral not only to the transcendent dimensions of reality but also to pre-history and the ways in which we apprehend and articulate and enter into relationship with that prehistory. Or secular rationality has created the myths of Big Bang and Natural Evolution. All theories, like all myths, are human creations. The Theory of Evolution is one such theory/myth created by a sector of humanity to understand pre-history.
Myths are simply inescapable. Today's myths may be laughed at. But as long as they are accepted myths they direct our historical understanding. As the Italian Rafaelle Petazzoni puts it:
"Myth is not fable, but history; 'true history' and not 'false history'. It is true history by virtue of its content, the narrative of events that really occurred, beginning with those grandiose events of the origins; the origin of the world, of humanity, the origin of life and death, of the animal and vegetable species, the origin of hunt and of agriculture, the origin of fire, and so on. Events remote in time from which present-day life took its beginning and foundation, from which the present structure of society issued and on which it still depends".(Raffaele Petazzoni, Miti e leggende, 1948, Vol I. p.v. Eng Tr. in G.Van der Leeuw: "Primordial Time and Final Time" in Joseph Campbell, (ed) Man and Time, papers from the Eranos Yearbooks Bollingen series XXX.3 Princeton U.P., 1983, pp. 330-331)
Myth is a device for dealing with important events in pre-history that affect our lives today. Myth is meaning-filled time, perhaps the meaning is evident only to poets and neurotics like me. Primordial time, despite its unmanageable length, has to be incorporated into history in some form of myth, if history is to promote genuine self-understanding for peoples. Our secular histories consciously seek to avoid myths, but unconsciously load us with new myths about evolution and progress, about money and greed, about power and adventure, with disastrous consequences some times.
4. Cyclical and Linear Views of Time
Western scholars have often told us that our ancient world views are 'cyclical', while theirs is 'linear'. It will be useful to look at the origins of this peculiar geometry whose origins go back to debates and polemics between Neo-Platonism and Augustine.
The Neoplatonists emphasized the cycle, the immanence of eternity in history, the eternal return, the endless circular metempsychoses of samsara, the cycles of joy and sorrow, of dharma and adharma, of justice and injustice, of misery and bliss. In the City of God, Augustine attacked this cyclical view of history in order to free eternity from the embrace of time. What Augustine did in Book XII of the City of God was to bring in the idea of linear progress, arguing that since in each re-incarnation there must be some novum which was not present in the previous incarnation, the cycles are not identical. This idea of a series of new nova which constantly develop gave the basis later for the liberal notion of progress and to the Darwinian Theory of Evolution.
Prima facie, it looks all right. Herodotus the first important pagan historian of the west was too cyclical in his view of history. The first great Christian theologian of the west broke the spell of the circle as prison, delivering us from the confining circuitus of time, to be free to progress on the linear via recta of time (Gilles Quispel: "Time and History in Patristic Christianity" in Joseph Campbell, ed., op cit. pp 96ff) of course not ordinary tempus, but tempera Christiana Christian time, Christian line. And Augustine charted the path of history: away from the dying city of the earth and its dying cyclical time, towards the City of God, along the path of linear progress. Eternity is in the future. So the path of history has to be linear!
Nothing could be more misleading than Augustine at this as at many other points. Eternity was never a prisoner of time. Time is where eternity presents itself. Augustine's denial of the value of time accounts partly for the western history. I cannot demonstrate that here.
We need not doubt that the pagan Greek view of time was cyclical or circular. Aristotle says so, in his Physics 4:14, referring possibly to Empedocles and Plato before him:
"Even time itself is thought of as a circle. And this opinion is held because time is the measure of a circular motion, and is itself measured by a circular motion."
For Aristotle, the reason is that time is both generated by the motion of the planets, and measured by that motion, which is circular. Without accepting Aristotle's we can ourselves see the circularity of time in so many rhythmic recurrences. The galaxies, the stars, the planets are all in circular motion. In our experience morning comes around every day as does nightfall. Monday, Tuesday till Sunday-- the cycle of the week recurs again and again. The moon waxes and wanes, months come back in 12 month cycles. The year begins and ends to begin again. And all you can have is an unending repetition of year after year. Circularity thus means endless recurrence.
The late Neoplatonist Proclus clearly denied linear time, a line straight and infinite in both direction. (Diel's Fragments Proclus: in Tim 3: 29, 3-5 et passim, Plato's Timaens: 38 A.) Of course since Augustine's time is in the mind (Confessions: XI: 20 ff) (psychological time) and since he does not accept time as made by the motion of planets, he could see time as linear.
I think the controversy about linear versus cyclical time is quite pointless. Neither the line nor the circle can do justice to the concept of time.St. Basil showed us how the idea of linear time as an infinite succession of points in a universe which has a beginning raises unanswerable questions about what preceded the first moment of Beginning.
Western thought often forgets the fact that time itself cannot be understood in our logical categories. Kurt Goedel, the famous author of Goedel's Theorem, sought to prove by mathematical logic that time has to be circular, but the argument has not carried conviction.(Kurt Goedel."A Remark about the Relationship between Relativity Theory and Idealistic Philosophy" in P.A. Schilpp (ed) Albert Einstein Philosopher-Scientist, New York, 1951, pp 555-562). Such questions do not yield to mathematical logic. We in India traditionally have dealt with such logically unanswerable questions with myth and symbol.
On the one hand we have the myth of the yugas, the mahayugas and the pralayavilaya which takes place between mahayugas. 4 yugas make a mahayuga i.e. 12,000 years of 360 years each, or 4,320,000 of our years. A thousand such mahayugas (4.32 billion years) constitute a Kalpa,and 14 kalpas, i.e.60.48 billion years make up a manvantara and that 6.48 billion years constitute a day, and another 60.48 billion a night in the life of Brahma. (Mircea Eliada, Time and Eternity in Indian Thought‘ in Campbell(ed) Man and Time. op.cit. pp 173-200.) We have in India such mind-stretching notions of time, whose purpose is not to remove the discomfort of intellectual-curiosity, to shake us out of the kind of narrow-minded, linear, supposedly rational and understandable definitions of historical time such as western civilisation seeks to offer us. The purpose of the myth is to shatter the spell of profane, linear historical time which imprisons us.
The "wheel of time“, which westerns call the "cyclical view of time" is not meant to be a descriptive concept, as it is in Aristotle. Its purpose is to wake us up out of our trivial historical pursuit and out of our childish pre-occupation with the understandable, and the comprehensible, which mean also manipulable by us. Where was Madras University a yuga ago, and where will it be a yuga hence? Or ask the same question about where would your professorship, your home, your car, your bank balance be, a kalpa hence? Ask that question seriously, and one is ready to begin to ask questions about the meaning of
History.
The famous 17 billion years evolution time as computed in the west, is also a myth -- a very inferior one, in my opinion. On our Indian scale it is about 4 kalpas, or less than one-third of a manvantara. Should we not be careful about yielding to such smallness?