post-colonial_translation

Ramanujan’s theory and practice 133
of ascent, a metamorphosis from egg to larva to pupa to the
final freedom of winged being. Often the devotee in his [or her]
impatience asks to be cut loose from these stages of
metamorphosis . . . .
Six phases or steps (sthala, sopana) are recognized. The
devotee at each stage has certain characteristics; each stage
has a specific relationship between the anga or the soul and
the linga or the Lord . . . . Creation comes into being by the
lord’s engagement (pravrtti); liberation for the anga is
attained through disengagement (nivrtti). The description
of the first is a cosmology, not very different from the
Sankhya philosophy. The description of the disengagement
is in the form of the six phases.
(SS, 169)
By the same token, Niranjana should acknowledge that
Ramanujan’s references to parallels between Virasaivism (or bhakti)
and European Protestantism are part of his effort to provisionally
translate the non-Indian reader from a Western-Christian culture
towards the culture of the thirteenth-century Virasaiva saints.
Ramanujan’s comments in the Introduction seem to me to be
obviously not intended to appropriate bhakti into Protestantism or
Puritanism, but only to orient the unfamiliar Western reader to crosscultural
similarities that are remarkable for being present at all:
bhakti religions like Virasaivism are Indian analogues to
European protestant movements. Here we suggest a few
parallels: protest against mediators like priest, ritual,
temples, social hierarchy, in the name of direct, individual,
original experience; a religious movement of and for the
underdog, including saints of all castes and trades (like
Bunyan, the tinker), speaking the sub-standard dialect of
the region, producing often the first authentic regional
expressions and translations of inaccessible Sanskritic texts
(like the translations of the Bible in Europe); a religion of
arbitrary grace, with a doctrine of the mystically chosen
elect, replacing a social hierarchy-by-birth with a mystical
hierarchy-by-experience; doctrines of work as worship
leading to a puritan ethic; monotheism and evangelism, a
mixture of intolerance and humanism, harsh and tender.
(SS, 53–4)