Ronald Inden

Orientalist Constructions of India

Now it is the interest of Spirit that external conditions should become internal ones; that the natural and the spiritual world should be recognized in the subjective aspect belonging to intelligence; by which process the unity of subjectivity and (positive) Being generally—or the Idealism of Existence—is established. This Idealism, then, is found in India, but only as an Idealism of imagination, without distinct conceptions;—one which does indeed free existence from Beginning and Matter (liberates it from temporal limitations and gross materiality), but changes everything into the merely Imaginative; for although the latter appears interwoven with definite conceptions and Thought presents itself as an occasional concomitant, this happens only through accidental combination. Since, however, it is the abstract and absolute Thought itself that enters into these dreams as their material, we may say that Absolute Being is presented here as in the ecstatic state of a dreaming condition (Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 139).

What Happens in a Hindi Film

AbstractThis paper looks at the popular Hindi film and its treatment in film and media studies. It criticises the assumption that “entertainment” is a simple universal, arguing that it needs to be seen rather as a problematic, historic institution. The author attempts a preliminary reconstruction of Indian discourse on film and entertainment, a discourse marginalised or ignored by Eurocentric scholarship on film in South Asia. Central to the Indian discourse are historically situated notions of extravaganza, of spectacle (tamasha) in a paradise setting, and a focus on emotional experiences, those of wonder and of ecstasy and despair. The articulation of these elements has changed but continue to be constitutive of the popular Hindi film.

Classics in the Garden: Suppers in an Earthly Paradise

Historically, the studies of classics have focussed on their use in education, the formation of youth, and have concerned themselves only indirectly or incidentally with the adult use of the classics for self formation. What I propose to do here is to look at the practices in which adults used the classics. What were these practices? They were performative practices—song and classical poetry recitals, storytelling, the reading of classics aloud to one another and discussion of them. These practices were concerned with texts, but there were others that involved other media—music both vocal and instrumental, food and drink, costuming, the viewing of sculptures and paintings, and the use of architecture—most if not all with classical connections. The use of these media in conjunction with one another had the effect of turning these practices into entertainments or spectacles, performances which the performers considered theatrical and didactic. The main institutional venue for these practices was some sort of daily or occasional meeting that involved food and drink and other performances. This is an institution that has a number of variants and a long and complicated history that interconnects the ruling classes of empires and kingdoms from China and India to Iberia, including, of course, the symposium of European antiquity. The locus for these meetings was, from early times, a garden-palace, a palace or pavilion with an audience and banqueting hall complemented by a garden of delights. Almost invariably the masters of these garden-palaces themselves considered these settings to be paradises on earth—exclusive places where those who were qualified by birth and divine connection could have some sort of experience of transcendence of the everyday world by engaging in a liberating practice of some kind—and encouraged others to think so. I refer to the garden-palaces as courtly paradises.

Mitra-Varuṇa: An Essay on Two Indo-European Representations of Sovereignty . By Georges Dumézil. Translated by Derek Coltman. New York: Zone Books, 1988. 189 pp.

In his work the late Georges Dumezil, arguably the most important modern mythologist, demonstrated that every Indo-European religious and social system was structured according to three primary functions: sovereignty, war, and fertility. Mitra-Varuna, a penetrating inquiry into the first of these functions - religious and political sovereignty - is among the first of his texts to implement this revolutionary theory.Dumezil shows how, from Vedic India to Ireland from Caucasia to Rome, and from Iran to Old Germany, the sovereign gods and heroes always appear in couples: the creative but violent legislator and his counterpart, the conservative guarantor of world order. In effect, Mitra-Varuna presents an archaeology of representations of religious and political power.Georges Dumezil a member of the Academie Francaise, was Professor of Indo-European Civilization in the College de France. He is the author of numerous books including Camillus, The Gods of the Ancient Northmen, and The Stakes of the Warrior.Derek Coltman lives in England and is the translator of Dumezils From Myth to Fiction.