Zwischen Normativität und Performanz: Hindu Asketentum und christliches Mönchtum in vergleichender Perspektive.
Employee: Edgar Leitan
Monasticism or asceticism in a broader sense is by no means limited to the Christian Occident or the Christian "oikumene" in general. As a possibly universal phenomenon, it seems to be in its various forms rather a constant presence in almost every religious tradition of mankind. The flight from the world or negation of the secular value system, which underlies asceticism, has paradoxically led to the creation of an alternative world or a variety of such - sometimes loose, even almost "anarchistic", but possibly also hierarchically highly organised - life concepts arose and flourished in the course of historical development, which as an area of the "sacred" was not only negating, but rather supplementing and complementing the world of the "profane" - not so much as a community of the "People of God", which was shaped by eschatology in a special way (such as a monastic community in Christianity), but rather as the soteriological crowning glory of the life of an individual who, in his search for final liberation (mokṣa), gradually passes through prescribed stages of life in order to reach its apex in the end.
It is a well-known saying that India is the home of hermitism and the classic ground of asceticism. But where exactly is the ascetic way of life in India rooted? What are its religious, textual and social origins? Can stages of its historical development be demonstrably outlined and followed? What are its most important concepts and terms expressing these concepts? There are a number of contradictory theories on this subject which need to be considered and evaluated.
The aim of this project is to investigate the accessible (i.e. already edited) normative literature of the former Brahmanic asceticism as well as the later Hindu monasticism of various religious - mostly clearly theistic - traditions (śaiva, vaiṣṇava), which is found in various works of ancient Indian literature both compactly incorporated and loosely scattered. The works mentioned are classified into different classes of Vedic and later Sanskrit literature, and they are as follows: Works of both the "apersonal" (apauruṣeya) Vedic Revelation (śruti) (especially Saṃnyāsa-Upaniṣads, which is important for the study of the ideology of ascetics, but also other works of at least nominal Vedic tradition) and the literature of "human tradition" (smṛti), such as e.g. textbooks on the socio-religious norm (dharma) - such as the shorter Dharmasūtras and the corresponding detailed Dharmaśāstras -, as well as the Sanskrit epics (Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa) and the numerous Purāṇas, which are considered a separate genre of Hindu religious literature. Among the important normative sources of Hindu asceticism there are also other categories of writings: medieval legal compendia (nibandha), in which special sections are dedicated to the legal-religious regulations for the Brahmanic ascetics, such as a separate 14th volume "Mokṣakāṇḍa" (section on redemption) in the well-known extensive compendium "Kṛtyakalpataru" of the scholar Lakṣmīdhara. Furthermore, there are individual treatises that deal exclusively with the ascetic life in its diversity, and which contain both numerous quotations from the other, partly lost, works as well as own original material from their authors. Unfortunately, only a small fragment of these is accessible in edited form: most of the works, comprising more than 80 titles, are only available in manuscript form. In addition, there are later, partly medieval commentaries on the earlier significant works of the Dharmaśāstra literature mentioned above, such as the Manusmṛti or the Yājñavalkyasmṛti. Hagiographies of the great religious reformers (e.g. several Viten of Śaṅkarācārya, Vallabhācārya, Caitanya etc.), which also allegedly personally founded the monastic communities still important in India today (e.g. the so-called Daśanāmī-Saṃnyāsins or the "Orders" of the militant ascetics), seem to be very important in their normative aspect for the development and self-understanding of mentioned communities and have not yet been sufficiently researched.
As yet hardly accessible sources - not so much of the "normativity" of the ascetic or monastic way of life in the strict sense, but of its performative implementation and at the same time external perception - could be numerous works of fine literature in Sanskrit and Prakrit, gift inscriptions to monastic institutions (maṭha, āśrama), and not least early European travelogues. The multi-layered and rich symbolism underlying all these sources - seen as a link between normativity and performativity - as well as conventionally spread, formulaic stereotypical statements about ascetics/monks and their way(s) of life, should be thoroughly hermeneutically reflected in detail both from an emic (view from within the respective tradition) and an etic (observations coming from outside the tradition) perspective, methodically applying the philological, i.e., the "ascetic" and the "ascetic" perspectives. i.e. historical-critical text exploration, ritual theories, theories of performativity, rhetoric, semiotics, symbol research, etc. General categories are to be worked out, which can serve as a solid methodological basis for the inter-religious comparison of monastic cultures and which are expressed in the normative literature of the respective traditions as quasi structurally "coded" building blocks with a variety of contents. Prolegomena to such a reflection on the presumably universal phenomenon of monasticism, pointed to the comparison of Hindu asceticism with occidental monasticism, should constitute the second, comparative part of the work.