Interview with Alain Daniélou by Olivier Germain-Thomas

France Culture — Agora — Interview with Alain Daniélou by Olivier Germain-Thomas, 1992

PRESENTATION

A renowned expert on India and Asia, Renaudot Prize–winning author of Benares-Kyoto, writer and radio producer Olivier Germain-Thomas welcomes Alain Daniélou to his program “Agora” to discuss his relationship with India and his unconventional path. In this 1992 interview, he highlights the publication of two major works by Daniélou—Myths and Gods of India and the Kama Sutra—and delves into the relationship between Shaivism and Hinduism, as well as the importance of the oral tradition. The conversation also explores monotheism and the notion of “the One,” dogmatism, and the linguistic implications of generic versus singular categories. It’s a dialogue to listen to again and again: two passionate scholars whose methods of inquiry differ yet remain bound by mutual respect.

DESCRIPTION

Discussion of two books: mainly Myths and Gods of India, with a brief mention of the Kama Sutra; scholarly and serious.

– Shaivism and Hinduism
– Oral tradition and texts
– Hinduism and science
– Shaivism and earliest sources on humanity
– Monotheism, Kali Yuga, and moralistic dogmatism
– Figure of Christ: mystic and poet
– Question of the One: illusion
– Digression into linguistics: singular versus generic
– The goddess Sarasvati – rituals – the inner quest for knowledge and the various paths to achieve it
– Recap of the journey to India
– Emphasis on never pitting Western education against Indian experience
– Very brief mention of the Kama Sutra

The complete radio interviews can be consulted on the archives site.

Alain Daniélou
© Jacques Cloarec, Zagarolo, 1987.

TRANSCRIPTION

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: Alain Daniélou, you are an internationally renowned Indianist. You lived in India for a very long time, and not just to observe it, but to live its own values. You are both a musicologist and a musician. You have lived in Benares, among other places. You have had both masters of philosophy and masters of music in this life. You have given us a number of works, some of which are going to be republished, but it is not to hear the story of your Indian adventures that you are here today, but on the occasion of the republication of a work that you are both publishing for the first time, both with Editions du Rocher. The reissue under a slightly different title is “Mythes et Dieux de l’Inde, le polythéisme hindou” (Myths and Gods of India, Hindu polytheism) and the work you are giving us a new translation of, with what makes it original compared to other editions, a double commentary, an older commentary and a more recent commentary. This is the Kama Sutra, which is perhaps one of the best-known books in the world for the wrong reasons, because it is often misinterpreted, or at least not interpreted for what it is.

So we’re going to start with this fundamental work, “Mythes et Dieux de l’Inde” (Myths and Gods of India), which was certainly essential reading for anyone who wants to understand India, even if some – well, everyone recognises your knowledge and experience, even if some think that it may be a subjective vision, but let’s just say that from the outset you set the tone by showing that reality can never be grasped and that reality always presents itself in multiple facets. It’s obvious that trying to approach Indian reality from a Western perspective in this way could lead to criticism from those who have other conceptions of Hinduism or, in any case, other conceptions where there wouldn’t be such a gulf between Hinduism and certain aspects of Christianity that you’re challenging.

But let’s come to the essence of your approach. The essence of your approach is the realisation that there is a religious background that spans India, the Near East and the Mediterranean, in which Shiva can be considered a principal figure.

Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, there was a time when that was very ancient, and there are obviously very similar traces of it in all civilisations. But then there was also the world, what we call European Hinduism, which was not Shivaite and which also spread with the Indo-European languages throughout the Western world.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: And who has recovered the figure of Shiva.

Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, but this figure was recovered relatively late both in India and in Greece, with Dionysus appearing relatively late in Greek culture among the divinities. And in India, it seems that the ancient religion with the ancient culture that had been practically abolished by the Aryan invasions and Vedism continued more or less historically for centuries and it was only from the 6th century BC that the texts of Shivaism began to reappear, even though they are obviously very ancient.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: OK, but you don’t see any opposition between this primitive background and the texts and values brought over by the Indo-Europeans?

Alain DANIÉLOU: Ah, there was opposition to begin with, but then, in spite of everything, the Indo-Europeans were relatively barbarians compared to the great civilisations of Antiquity, whether it was the Indus civilisation or the Sumerians or the Egyptians, and they gradually assimilated many elements of the culture they had tried to destroy.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: Yes. So, there was historical opposition at the time and now when we talk about Hinduism, Hindu polytheism, it’s a question, but it’s not very clear whether we can distinguish between the first background or the second background of the two data.

Alain DANIÉLOU: Of course. It starts with the Atharva-Veda, which has nothing to do with the Rig-Veda and is entirely Shivaist in its origins. Then there is the whole philosophical culture, the Upanishads in particular, which originate from the ancient culture assimilated into the Vedic world.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: So the originality of your approach, as I mentioned earlier, Alain Daniélou, is to have studied both the texts and oral transmission as represented today by certain pandits with whom you came into contact when you lived in Benares in particular.

Alain DANIÉLOU: Naturally, that is to say, the whole tradition in the Hindu world is fundamentally oral because even when the texts were written, they were written in versified form, made to be memorised. It’s even believed that Panini’s grammar, the great Sanskrit grammar, was oral before it was written down, and this is a very interesting aspect that continues to this day and allows for extraordinary continuity, because once versified texts are memorised, they remain absolutely permanent, much more so than written texts.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: So, there is an extraordinary wealth of myth, symbol, legend and meaning for each of the gods listed in your book “Mythes et Dieux de l’Inde” (Myths and Gods of India), but anyone travelling in India today and therefore inevitably coming into contact with Hinduism is, in your view, coming into contact with a degenerate religion?

Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, of course. There was, and we mustn’t forget, over a thousand years of Islamic and English domination in India, and inevitably many people made an effort to adapt their culture to the ideas of the invader. This is how a somewhat hybrid Hinduism came into being, purged in some way to be acceptable to Anglo-Saxon puritanism and other ideas of monotheism, which then distorted certain values a great deal and this old conception, moreover, is still represented in literature in English. It’s not at all like that if you go into genres that speak only Indian languages.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: We have the impression that the transmission of Sanskrit is becoming more and more difficult as the study of Sanskrit diminishes. The maths schools where young Brahmins are trained to learn the Veda have fewer and fewer resources, and the dancers are no longer maintained by the temples. Sometimes you get the impression that the tradition is disappearing.

Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, but I think that, basically, according to the conception of two traditionalists, the core of the tradition becomes more and more closed in a hidden door, but it remains there, and probably, it can reappear as it has already happened several times in history. Suddenly, quantities of texts, concepts and notions of terminology that were thought to have been forgotten reappear.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: So you’re not at all in a linear vision of history which would consist, as the 19th century tried to teach us, in saying that religion can have a beginning, an apogee and an end, but on the contrary, you’re entering into a cyclical system while recognising that for the moment there is probably a retreat and that there may very well be a flourishing of these same values.

Alain DANIÉLOU: Absolutely, yes.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: So you don’t at all link this great Hindu polytheism with a certain mode of production, a certain awareness of the world. In your view, the contributions of today’s science do not in any way run counter to Hindu beliefs.

Alain DANIÉLOU: On the contrary, the only people in the Western world today who come close to the concepts of cosmology, metaphysics, energy, matter, Hindu science and Hindu philosophy are astrophysicists and people who study atoms and suddenly say: “But that’s exactly it”. And really, there’s a kinship there that is often absolutely astonishing.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: The concepts, yes, are recognised by some great astrophysicists, but the representation of these gods and goddesses in Indian temples and cults is a representation of an agricultural society.

Alain DANIÉLOU: No, you can’t say gods. We tend to think of the gods as fictions, as human creations. But for Hindus, the gods are realities and symbolise aspects of creation. They are the forces that organise creation from its very beginnings, in all its diversity and beauty. So when we try to understand something in any field, if we get to the bottom of things, we arrive at a kind of unknown, a kind of mysterious energy, a kind of divinity, and in each field it appears different. This is what we personify, either by formulae, considering that every aspect of the world is based on a kind of energetic and numerical code that characterises every aspect of existence, and so we can represent them by diagrams, we can represent them by gods, we can represent them by formulae. But the point is that these are attempts to represent realities. They are not inventions at all.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: So you can see the enduring nature of these representations. You can well imagine that in a century or 10 centuries’ time, the representations and metaphysical speculations of the Hindus will still be operational.

Alain DANIÉLOU: Of course, and they may well be accessible to other people too, because they are perfectly reasonable and rational. It’s not… in other religions, people vaguely believe in gods, in subtle beings. They talk about angels, demons, saints who have extraordinary powers, who are simply substitutes for these forces of divine origin that organise the world and that we seek and that are the goal of all research, of all knowledge, in fact of all religion.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: What you found within Hinduism, why didn’t you find it or look for it within Christianity, which was the religion of your ancestors?

Alain DANIÉLOU: That is to say, there are still vestiges in Christianity, but vestiges that are so little known, so misunderstood, that is to say, if we analyse from the Hindu point of view and often even from the point of view of the religions of the Greco-Roman world, all our festivals, all our sacred places, all our rites, all our costumes, everything that makes up the outward appearance of religion is perfectly recognisable, but the curious thing is that Christians are completely unaware of this.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: It doesn’t matter if the supreme reality you’re looking for can be found in these forms.

Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, of course. And that’s why India is so useful, because it’s the only religion from Antiquity that has survived to the present day. So Hindu concepts can be used to interpret and rediscover the meaning of many things that still exist in the Christian and even the Islamic world.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: Because in your books, you have very often set Christianity and its dogmatism against the freedom you found in Hinduism, for example, which you could have found in Greek religion.

Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, in other words, dogmatism, and it’s not so much that religions are monotheistic. It’s the prophetic religions that are characteristic of what the Indians call the Kali Yuga, the decadence, in other words, these are human figures who suddenly claim – or maybe he’s telling the truth, I don’t know – to have divine inspiration and establish rules for living, but which have nothing to do with religion. It’s separate from society. It’s always rules of morality, rules of behaviour.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: This is not the case with the Gospel. There are very few rules of morality and behaviour in the Gospel. On the contrary, there is an extraordinary poetic freedom, I would even go so far as to say anarchic freedom in the text itself. So maybe people have misinterpreted it, but was it in the very essence of Christianity that there was what you’re pointing out?

Alain DANIÉLOU: Well, that’s difficult to know because what has been done with Christ’s message is so contrary to what seems to have been his teaching to these people that Christianity cannot be linked to Christ. This is where there is an extraordinary confusion.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: In other words, the Church has often tried to stifle all the extraordinary poetry of the texts and the saints were there to live this text in its essence and substance.

Alain DANIÉLOU: There have always been mystics everywhere, intuitive people who seek the truth, who sense the subtle world and the divine world, and they are generally in contradiction with all religions.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: Yes, so that proves that this supernatural reality could, if we follow you, be found in any religion.

Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, but in spite of any religion, I would say.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: And so, despite Hinduism too.

Alain DANIÉLOU: In certain forms of Hinduism too, there are precisely the same problems in modern Hinduism and in certain forms of sectarian Hinduism.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: Earlier you mentioned Alain Daniélou’s concept of monotheism. It’s obvious that it’s important to clarify things in relation to this often primary opposition that we often find and that has caused a lot of ink to be spilt, even a lot of blood, the systematic opposition between monotheism and polytheism. Does it exist?

Alain DANIÉLOU: In other words, monotheism is a simplification of a cosmologically impossible state of affairs. The being who thinks the world is necessarily outside the world, unreachable and non-acting. When it thinks the world and gives it a reality through energetic manifestations that involve the creation of space, time, energy, etc., it necessarily has organisers for this. It cannot do this itself.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: Yes, and so existentially, there is a division. But in the interest of Christianity, through the saints, the virgin, the trinity, we can also find these same structures because Hinduism recognises that there is a higher principle. It is not a man, but a principle that is unique to him. The principle is not multiple.

Alain DANIÉLOU: No, be careful! Beyond the number, it’s very different. One is… Oh no! The most simplified form is to say that it is not two, but certainly not that it is one, because it has unity in the same definition even Hindu is (innaudiblemaya) the illusion lies in the number one.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: Finally, there is often talk of the unique, the one in the texts.

Alain DANIÉLOU: The unique.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: The only one.

Alain DANIÉLOU: No, I…

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: Brahman is singular.

Alain DANIÉLOU: Oh no! He’s…

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: It’s neutral, but singular.

Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, but generic. Language has no way of expressing the inexpressible. So there are abuses of language, allusions that use unsuitable words, but in divinations, it’s perfectly clear that the Brahman is an absolutely unknowable and non-regulating principle, so he can’t be a character to whom we refer, where he orders us to do things. When a prophet says that he receives instructions from a divine being, it cannot be that level. It must be a devil or an angel or a god who inspires him and there’s a lack of clarity there. I think that only in Hinduism is there an effort to clearly define the possibilities of a supernatural world and the possible communication through rituals with certain aspects, certain entities, certain divinities.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: So, let’s go back to this very level: the existential level, where the principles are expressed in many different ways through the many gods, goddesses and energies that you list and explain the virtues and energies of each one in “Myths and Gods of India”. Let’s take one example, since unfortunately time is short: you chose Sarasvati, the goddess of speech.

Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, she’s the goddess of the sciences, of the arts, of a certain kind of knowledge, and she’s worshipped by all craftsmen, by all scientists, by all people who are looking for some kind of creative achievement.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: That’s it, and in particular the music that you yourself have played.

Alain DANIÉLOU: And so for the festival of Sarasvati, the musician worships his instrument as the image of the goddess, but the blacksmith also worships his forge and the carpenter his tools because Sarasvati is precisely the conception of the divine aspect of everything to do with the arts, crafts and creativity.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: Do you worship Sarasvati yourself?

Alain DANIÉLOU: I’m not really into rituals. Well, naturally I’m going to worship my instrument on the day of the Sarasvati Puja like everyone else.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: So if there are no outward manifestations of religion in your life, it’s above all an inner reality.

Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, absolutely major. What attracts me is above all a quest for knowledge.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: It’s not just speculative and intellectual.

Alain DANIÉLOU: Oh no! It’s the opposite of speculative. If it’s a search for reality, isn’t it? Well, what interests me is cosmology, that’s to say the conceptions we have of the universe and man’s role in it.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: But the Hindus tell us that this knowledge is attained through practice: bodily practices, physical exercise or practices of devotion, adoration, yoga or meditation.

Alain DANIÉLOU: In some cases, yes, but there are many paths to knowledge and each person has to choose the path that is most accessible to them, and it certainly is. There are others who seek paths that are perhaps more intellectual.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: And you haven’t been back to India for a very long time now and you still see the world through the eyes of Hinduism.

Alain DANIÉLOU: Yes, because as far as I’m concerned.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: Is it a given once and for all?

Alain DANIÉLOU: Of course, I consider that the form of thought that developed in India during the great periods of its civilisation in all fields is probably unequalled. Basically, the periods – and it was more or less the same as that of the century of Pericles in Greece – but what has remained of it from the point of view of all the forms of art and thought seems to me to be much more powerful than what was achieved anywhere else, so what else can we look for? I don’t know what happened to the (0:25:20) ? inaudible reconnaissance, but we don’t know. We don’t know what happened to the Egyptians. In any case, we know from the remains that we interpret. But in India, all of a sudden, we find this extraordinary picture of the search for what man as a whole can… the methods by which we can achieve the essential aspect of man, which is knowledge.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: Did you realise straight away when you encountered Indian culture that this would be your approach to understanding the world?

Alain DANIÉLOU: No, not at all.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: Did it take long?

Alain DANIÉLOU: It took a while. I was for some years with Rabindranath Tagore, who was an absolutely delightful and interesting man, but who was very… he was not representative of the higher aspects of…

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: Yes, traditional aspects, he’s more one of those intellectuals you mentioned earlier who was ultimately very westernised.

Alain DANIÉLOU: And that’s why I went to the nest of tradition, that is to say Benares and its great scholars and Samnyasins, who are people who maintain certain forms of knowledge and philosophies that I found extraordinarily valuable. And I educated myself. Anything I learnt elsewhere is of no importance to me.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: But you didn’t set it against everything you knew beforehand?

Alain DANIÉLOU: No, as a matter of fact, I never put things in opposition. But what was left of what I had before wasn’t much because I hadn’t lived it deeply. I was hostile to my native environment and I had never integrated into the Christian world.

Olivier GERMAIN-THOMAS: So, I’d like to refer you to your book, Alain Daniélou, Mythes et Dieux de l’Inde, le polythéisme hindou (Myths and Gods of India, Hindu Polytheism), a very complete and essential book for a good understanding of traditional Indian culture, published by Editions du Rocher. So, from the same publisher, “Le Kama Sutra, le Bréviaire de l’Amour, Traité d’Erotisme”, you give a translation of the text itself and a double commentary, an ancient commentary that must date from the 11th or 14th century and a much more recent commentary written in Hindi that clearly shows how this text lives on in Indian consciousness, since it has been commented on century after century. And reading this book shows that the Kama Sutra is not what it seems. I leave it to the listeners to find out for themselves. Thank you for your time.

And so ends Agora, a programme brought to you by Olivier Germain-Thomas. My guest: Alain Daniélou, in Paris to talk about “Mythes et Dieux de l’Inde”, published by Editions du Rocher. Agora, production teams: Yann Paranthoën, Pierre Bornard and Maryvonne Noël. Good evening.

Editorial Manager: Anne Prunet.
Production: Archipel Studios.