In one way at least the comparison of Kгlidгsa and Shakespeare [39] is apt: Both were masters of writing in char- acter, from the most royal and refined monarchs to the most bawdy and vulgar clowns. Kгlidгsa in fact had an advantage over Shakespeare, because he had two languages at his dis- posal; in his plays, the most aristocratic characters speak classi- cal Sanskrit, while the rest speak vernacular Prakrit. (It is as if in the plays of Moliиre the principal male characters spoke Latin, and everyone else spoke French.) I would suggest another Shakespearean comparison as well. The principal ten- sion in Sakuntala is between duty and passion, between socially prescribed modes of behavior and spontaneous love. Shakespeare explored the same themes in The Tempest; it is an interesting exercise to read the two plays in close succession.
Sakuntala was first translated into English by Sir William Jones, a pioneer Western scholar of Sanskrit and the father of modern scientific linguistics; his translation was greatly admired by Goethe [62]. There have since been other excel- lent translations of the works of Kгlidгsa, who deserves to become much better known in the West.
J.S.M.
24
Revealed to MUHAMMAD
completed 650 The Koran
Western Arabia during the early centuries of the Common Era was a prosperous part of the larger Semitic world, a land where the caravan trade from Yemen to the Levant created a cos- mopolitan and lively society. Jews and Christians were a part of the local community, and the Torah and the New Testament were well known. Many, perhaps most, people in that part of the world considered themselves descendants of Abraham through his son Ishmael. Into that community, in the city of Mecca, Muhammad was born around the year 570. The first forty years of his life were unremarkable; he married a pros- perous widow and was a respectable member of Mecca's mer- cantile class.
In 610 Muhammad began to preach what he described as messages given to him by God; he had, he said, been selected to warn the people that God's final revelation was at hand. He was a charismatic preacher who gathered many followers but also made enemies; the latter plotted to murder him in 622, but he was warned of the plot and fled to the nearby city of Medina. There he founded a theocratic state in accordance with the word of God as it had been revealed to him; the year 622 of the Common Era is the Year One of the Islamic calendar.
The Koran consists of 114 chapters, or suras, which in the written version of the holy book are printed simply in order of length, the longest first and the shortest at the end. There is no narrative thread in the Koran and no obvious connections link- ing each sura to the next; these features derive from the original oral nature of the text. (In fact Al-Quran means "the recita- tion," and in the Muslim world reciting the Koran is an important act of faith and religious witness.) The written text was not finalized until around 650, some twenty years after Muhammad's death in 632; it was compiled from memory and included ali the material that, by consensus of the community, was considered to have been genuinely revealed to Muhammad by God.
From the point of view of a non-Muslim Western reader, the Koran seems remarkable at first glance for the degree to which it is part of the Jewish and Christian Biblical heritage. It is full of familiar figures; Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, John the Baptist and many others are represented as prophets and messengers of God. A closer look shows that this familiar world is seen through a radically different lens in the Koran; ali of the Biblical stories, ali of the prophets and patriarchs, are pre- sented as precursors leading up to the Koran itself, the Word of God as recited by Muhammad; the Koran presents itself as the "seal of prophesy," the final revelation of God's word on earth.
Accordingly, much of the Koran is devoted to telling the faithful exactly how they are to live in a state of islam, "submis- sion," to God. These instructions for the regulation of a theo- cratic community are distilled in the Five Pillars of Islam, which are
н. The profession of faith: "There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his Prophet." (The word translated as "prophet" in this formula really has a stronger meaning: "One who warns of God.") Islam is a religion of uncompromising monotheism; God is absolute, omniscient, and omnipotent— nothing whatsoever happens on Earth or in the Heavens but by the will of God.
Prayer five times each day, according to prescribed rituais.
Fasting from dawn to dark during the month of Ramadan each year.
Giving alms to the poor.
At least once in one's lifetime, making a pilgrimage to Mecca, but only if one is in good health and has sufficient financial means to make the pilgrimage without impoverishing one's family.
These rules, supplemented by many more both in the Koran and in later compendia of religious law, mark off the Muslim community from ali others; the Koran promises the protection of God to those who submit to his will, and damna- tion to ali who reject it. The Koran thus creates a religious community that is inherently militant and evangelistic, while at the same time urging upon the faithful attitudes of modera- tion, tolerance, and a dedication to justice. The history of the Islamic world provides many examples of fanaticism, and equally many examples of enlightened tolerance; like ali scrip- ture, the Koran can be used to justify many things.
Some years ago I was privileged to talk with a very high official of our government, and I asked him (because the Middle East was very much in the news at the time) how many members of the presidential cabinet knew enough about Islam to name the Five Pillars of the faith. "Thafs easy," he replied. "Not one." At a time when one of every five people in the world is a Muslim, and the Islamic world contributes a dispro- portionate share of our government^ foreign policy concerns, it seems to me a matter of simple good citizenship to know something about Islam. That is one good reason to read the Koran; others are the beauty of its majestically poetic language, and the fascinatingly refracted vision that it projects of the Biblical traditions at the heart of Euro-American mainstream culture.
J.S.M.
25
HUI-NENG
638-713
The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch
Buddhism arose in northern нndia in the sixth century B.C.E. through the life and teachings of Siddhartha Gautama. A prince of a small kingdom in the Himalayan foothills, he was shocked by the suffering that he saw everywhere in the world, and he went on a retreat to meditate for many days, sheltered by a great tree, searching for the cause of that suffering. At last he entered a state of pure understanding, thereby becoming the Buddha or "enlightened one"; and he began to preach a new doctrine on the basis of that enlightenment.
Gautama grew up in the Brahmanic religious world of ancient нndia, and he shared its assumptions (which we have already encountered in the Bhagavad Gita [17]): The world has no concrete reality, but is fundamentally illusory; each per- son is born and reborn many times, and carnes from one birth to the next a burden of karma derived from good or ill done in previous lives; each person must follow his or her own dharma, or path of duty in the world. Building on this tradition, the Buddha formulated his new understanding in the Four Noble Truths: Ali life is suffering; suffering proceeds from desire; desire can be overcome; the means to overcoming desire is the Noble Eightfold Path (right intentions, right thoughts, right actions, etc.). The key insight here is that it is desire itself that keeps a person bound to the wheel of karma; the illusory world exerts such a pull on the ego that people seek rebirth, even though that inevitably only mires them in a new lifetime of suffering. Fortunately, the Buddha taught, it is possible to end that cycle of desire, and to reach a state of nirvana, extinction of the soul in pure enlightenment.