Ka ̄dambarı ̄, gives a well known portrayal of a Durga ̄ shrine in the depths of the
Vindhya forest, manned by a Dravidian priest. The poem begins with a tribal
princess bringing a parrot as present from her father to the King. Her feet
marked with leaf patterns in lac resemble Durga ̄’s feet reddened by the buffalo’s
blood. The leader of the tribal hunters who captured the parrot had his shoul-
ders scarred with making blood offerings to Durga ̄, his body like Durga ̄’s marked
with blood of buffaloes, all this foreshadows the final remaining part of the orig-
inal, when the prince, having met and fallen in love with the beautiful
Ka ̄dambarı ̄, is ordered home by his father, and deep in the jungle comes across
a shrine of Durga ̄, described by Ba ̄n.a in great detail; no less detailed is the
account of the Dravidian priest who attends this goddess. Quarrelsome, irrit-
able, ill-educated, he is a figure of fun. He is an exponent of all the New Age fads
of the day. One eye was destroyed by a fake ointment to make him all-seeing; to
the other eye he applied collyrium three times a day; his singing sounded like the
buzzing of flies. On and on goes the scornful account of impossible goals –
alchemy, levitation, invisibility, and more. The prince laughs aloud when he sees
this strange figure, but is then polite to him, restrains his followers from
tormenting him, and gives him money when he leaves. The elegant prince,
tormented by love in separation, here views an almost complete panorama of
southern Hinduism exemplified in the priest, with a distant reserve reminiscent
of a colonial administrator.
In fact Ba ̄n.a was playfully referring to what was certainly later a well estab-
lished theme in Indian literature, namely that of kings visiting a goddess of
destruction in the jungle prior to going to battle (as in the Gaud.avaho and the
Kalin.kattupparan.i). Goddesses were indeed to be found in jungles, not just in the
Orientalist imagination. Bayly remarks on Inden’s swingeing critique, “Few
authorities escape his blade. If at times he appears in the guise of the many
armed goddess Kali strutting through the scholarly carnage sporting a necklace
of academic skulls, his goal is still Regeneration” (C. Bayly 1990: 1313). This jeu
d’espritby the most authoritative of British historians of India credits Inden with
a power he does not in fact achieve; as well as likening him to a Goddess he
chooses to ignore. Furthermore the analogy of Inden to Ka ̄lı ̄ shows a power of
imagination that Inden would not approve of, for imagination is the second
object of Inden’s witch hunt. Imagination unquestionably played a major part
in Hinduism, just as it does in every culture.
Britain exploited India and exerted power over India in many ways, but
Orientalist Indologists, inevitably contaminated to some extent by the prejudices
of their age – how could they not be? – were not “making a career of the East.”
They sought mastery of a body of knowledge in a way somewhat parallel to a
Sanskrit pandit’s quest for mastery of a body of knowledge. The procedures were
different, but the goal of both was purely intellectual: Orientalists and traditional
Indian scholars sought the power and glory of the intellect. The analysis offered
by Said and Inden at first had a seductive thrill, an overturning of idols, the
laying bare of the dialectic of self and other, seemed to throw a powerful search-
light on the underside of the study of the East. But what this attempted and
60 david smith