(Download) "When Texts Conceal: Why Vedic Recitation is Forbidden at Certain Times and Places (Presidential Address) (Presidential Address Gary Beckman of American Oriental Society) (Report)" by The Journal of the American Oriental Society # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: When Texts Conceal: Why Vedic Recitation is Forbidden at Certain Times and Places (Presidential Address) (Presidential Address Gary Beckman of American Oriental Society) (Report)
- Author : The Journal of the American Oriental Society
- Release Date : January 01, 2006
- Genre: Social Science,Books,Nonfiction,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 260 KB
Description
During last year's (2005) Presidential Address Gary Beckman spoke on the "Limits of Credulity" (Beckman 2005), or more forthrightly stated, "when texts lie." We know that texts can lie, as when untruths or exaggerations are inscribed or when documents are forged or altered; and there are ancient versions of these in both texts and inscriptions. (1) Beckman (2005, 348) is correct in seeing political motives behind many of the statements in ancient inscriptions and texts: "In dealing with these official texts we come up against a significant inherent difficulty: telling the truth is not a value much honored by governments, but is at best secondary to the pursuit of their policy goals, and above all, to assuring their survival." This is true not just of government documents but also of texts originating from groups with hegemonic power within a given society, as in the case of Brahmanical documents of ancient India. Although some texts do lie, it is much more common for texts to conceal. Sometimes the concealment may be deliberate and strategic, as when the Mahabharata fails to mention the Buddhists explicitly, even though, as it has been shown recently, the epic can be seen as an extended argument against the Buddhist views of society, religion, and kingship; (2) or when Madhava, a high official in the Vijayanagara court in the fourteenth century, wrote the voluminous Parasara-madhaviya without once mentioning the Muslims. More often, however, things are hidden due to the very nature of the discourse. To reveal what a text conceals is the task of the text critic; and this is a task that all of us perform every time we subject a text to a close reading.