Western expectations concerning the self-contained nature of religions—or, more
frequently, ‘faiths’—combined with a tendency to romanticize a culture with
which they may be only fleetingly acquainted, students may have a reified
understanding of what ‘Hinduism’ ought to be, or may have the tendency to
regard a text such as the Bhagavad G¥tÇas the equivalent of the Christian
gospels. Far more contentious is the situation when books written by Western
Indologists are regarded as disrespectful of Hindu deities, holy men, or Hinduism
in general—witness the attacks on Paul Courtright’s Gan.eÊa(1985) or on Jeffrey
Kripal’s book on Ramakrishna, KÇl¥’s Child(1995), not to mention agitated
online discussions concerning Wendy Doniger and Michael Witzel.
An attempt to do justice to the routinely neglected views of Indian scholars
concerning the so-called Aryan invasion of the Indian subcontinent is found
in Edwin Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture(2001); while
in ‘Autochthonous Aryans?’ (2001), Witzel convincingly defends the non-
autochthonous position. More recently, linguists, philologists, archaeologists,
and historians have addressed this issue in The Indo-Aryan Controversy, edited
by Bryant and Laurie Patton (2005). Since the debates about the Aryan invasion
are an aspect the ongoing controversies concerning the Indo-European
homeland, the very existence of the Indo-Europeans, and, in terms of the politics
of scholarship, the political sympathies of Georges Dumézil, in which the main
North American participant has been Bruce Lincoln, it may be worth
recalling—not for the first and perhaps not for the last time—the cri de cœur
of Bernard Sergent, a man of the left: ‘on peut être indo-européaniste sans être
le moins du monde nazi’ (Les Indo-Européens, 1995: 12). It may be added
that despite the political controversies surrounding them, Indo-European studies
continue to be pursued in the United States: after Jaan Puhvel’s Comparative
Mythology(1987) Roger Woodard’s Indo-European Sacred Space(2006) has
appeared in a series that has Lincoln among the members of its editorial board.
Buddhism and Jainism.Buddhism is one of the religions whose study
continues to flourish. Most historical periods, regions and aspects of this, the
oldest of the world religions—including Buddhism in North America—are being
studied in books, articles and conferences, the Buddhist Studies section being
one of the most important units of the American Academy of Religion (AAR).
It would be impossible even to list the main scholars who have contributed to
this study, from anthropologists such as Stanley Tambiah, author of a trilogy
devoted to Thailand—Buddhism and the Spirit Cults in Northeast Thailand
(1970), The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets(1984)—
and, more recently, on the political role of the sangha in his native Sri Lanka—
Buddhism Betrayed?(1992)—to Buddhologists. Among the latter we may
mention Steven Collins, whose expertise in textual studies and in social theory
can be seen at work in Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities(1998); at the
other end of Asia, we may mention John McRae, author of The Northern
School and the Formation of Early Ch’an Buddhism(1986) and Seeing through260
GUSTAVO BENAVIDES