KARMA THEORY – DATA / OBSERVATION FROM THE PAST IN SUPPORT OF ITS PRACTISE FROM MISSIONARY LITERATURE

The Karma Theory , all moderns consider to be only theory and not practical/practicable. But  practical work, especially in manufacturing (if we may borrow that word), based on ‘Karma-yoga’  was in vogue as late as the first quarter  of SEVENTEENTH CENTURY , at least in India. Whether the persons/artisans engaged in such work, really knew(had consciously known) about Karma Theory is questionable.  But our society had been structured  (by our seers) in such a way that , work were organized to wear off the ‘karma-vasanas’

Abbe J.A Dubois was a Roman Catholic Missionary who lived in  South India for 31 years (1792-1823). He tried to gain first-hand knowledge of the Hindus, ‘by the more laborious (but more accurate) method of personal inquiry  in situ.’ He believed that such knowledge pertaining to the ‘innermost life and character of the Hindus’ would help him in his proselytizing work.  The Abbe was rewarded for this study of Hindus with 2000 star pagodas (equivalent to 8,000 rupees in 1897) by Lord William Bentick, who bought the manuscript from him after paying this sum on behalf of the East India Company. This manuscript originally in French, is now available  in  print in  English, having been translated and edited with notes, corrections and biography by Henry K Beauchamp,in 1897. The book title is ‘Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies’.This resource is freely available on the net.

The Abbe  had recorded in brief the method of  work and the tools and instruments used by artisans like carpenters, goldsmiths and weavers.  This knowledge is very insightful, considered from the standpoint of ‘Karma Theory’. The Abbe was in India during the period of the Industrial Revolution,(1760-1830) when machine made

goods made in England and Western Europe were flooding markets of the world/colonies and raw-materials were being siphoned-off from the colonies to the industrial centres.

SIMPLE TOOLS

The tools used by the Hindu carpenters and goldsmiths were few, and as per European eyes/observation (standards) crude. The loom used by the weavers  was so simple that it could be carried around by a single person, and set up in no time.  But the products turned out with this simple tools were world-class and traders had come to India from all parts of the globe to buy such items. Another missionary Willam Carey writing about the Indian Sickle (Kastya) used by farmers in Dinjapur, Bengal in the early part of the 1800’s remarks that “It (the Blade) is fixed in a rude handle ; and is used to cut corn, grass or even brushwood on occasion, being to the Hindu a very useful instrument, although a European labourer would scarcely pick one of them up if he saw it lie on the road.”Carey had also given detailed information about the Indian ploughshare and other ‘çrude’  implements used in agriculture.

NEGATIVE KARMA- VASANAS & MACHINERY

The above tools and implements being simple were aiding karma, and not replacing human karma wholesale like in the case of machines. Dependence on machines, will not help in removing the karma-vasanas, which are essential for the many.( ie those who desire and are in various stages of realization). Machines are not essentially labour saving,  but increases the labour of those who have to work the same. In addition it denies many, opportunity for laboring and thus denies them a honorable livelihood. Further  machines add to the negative or harmful karma-vasanas of the entire humankind. Examples of  the manifestation  of this negative vasanas abound, and could be garnered from daily news bulletiens. The effects of  the sum total of such negative vasanas are wars and man-made climate change.

HANDICRAFTSMEN IN DISTRESS

The Abbe is entirely aware of the harm caused to Indian artisans , by the industrial machinery of Europe. He had seen , weavers out of work, and starving. His first-hand account of the situation in own words “Just before returning to Europe (Jan 15, 1823) I travelled through some of the manufacturing districts, and nothing could equal the state of desolation prevailing in them. All the work-rooms were closed, and hundreds of thousands of the inhabitants, composing the weaver caste, were dying of hunger ; for through the prejudices of the country they could not adopt another profession without dishonouring themselves”. The Abbe left India (for Paris) , never to return  on January 15,1823, his passage  having been paid by the East India Company.

GITA 18:47

The last part of the above paragraph is noteworthy, and resonates with the ‘karma theory’expounded by Krishna in the Gita. Maybe the Abbe if he  would  have studied the Gita in depth, would have found out a more solid reason , apart from the ‘dishonour’he attributes to the members of weaver community, not adopting another profession. The Gita unequivocally states that , even if one is experiencing difficulties of any kind in his profession/livelihood (swa-dharma),one should not abandon it and take another profession/livelihood even if it(the new one)  seems to offer better prospects, because swadharma as per ones nature(gunas) if done consciously to wear of the karma-vasanas will contribute towards total freedom (liberation/moksha). See Gita 18:47. Similar idea is to be found in Gita 3:35. Thus it becomes incumbent on the  society, to see that its artisans are cared for, by providing them ample opportunities to wear off their karma-vasanas.  The govt or king at any cost should protect their trade. This implies that changes social changes, due to technology should be minimal, and even if changes become a utmost necessity, it should only be introduced after careful study and preparation. Any change in social equation is a tendency in the centrifugal direction. World history provides copious examples/events, making men like Gandhiji exclaim that things are becoming worse as time passes on.

RAMA & SHAMBUKA- A KING STRICTLY ADHERING TO THE RULE OF LAW,EVEN TO THE EXTENT OF BANISHING BELOVED & ONLY WIFE !!!!

Thus we find in 17^th century India, weavers preferring to starve to death, than change their profession. We are knowledgeable of an event (in a story) from our pre-historic past, a reverse event, ie  a man  disregarding his varna and swadharma, and engaging in other ‘profession’,  about which  men (like E.V.R) hell-bent on turning gold and precious stones into mud/garbage (a kind of  demonic/asuric alchemy), had heaped calumny on the protagonist of this ‘story’, to  further their very narrow agendas. Lord Rama had beheaded a Sudra ascetic Shambuka for inverting the mode of penance and as well as depreciating the objective of penance. This story in detail  appears in Uttarakanda, Book Seven, Cantos 73-76 of Valmiki’s Ramayana. A Sudra’s, Gunas and Karmas are different from that of  a Brahmana. And if Sudras takes up the action/karma of     Brahmanas for which they are ill-suited/not prepared (and vice-versa), the social order is ruptured and none benefits. There are only disadvantages than advantages. Therefore for taking up a karma which violates ‘the law of being’ (ie varnashrama), Rama the king, who is concerned as well as responsible for the overall social order and peace within  his kingdom punished Shambuka. 17^th century weavers in India did not switch their ‘profession’ even in the face of  adversities, and in contrast to this, in ancient India, an individual was punished by a king for violating the established code of conduct, based on the law of our being (ie varna based on gunas and karma).

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The full text of The Abbe’s observation of S.Indian  arts and crafts is given as follows. Excerpts from the book "HINDU MANNERS CUSTOMS AND CEREMONIES"

“Further, one would be justified in asserting that it is to caste distinctions that India owes the preservation of her arts and industries. For the same reason she would have reached a high standard of perfection in them had not the avarice of her rulers prevented it. It was chiefly to attain this object that the Egyptians were divided into castes, and that their laws assigned the particular place which each individual should occupy in the commonwealth. Their lawgivers no doubt considered that by this means all arts and industries would continue to improve from generation to generation, for men must needs do well that which they have always been in the habit of seeing done and which they have been constantly practising from their youth.

This perfection in arts and manufactures would undoubtedly have been attained by so industrious a people as the Hindus, if, as I have before remarked, the cupidity of their rulers had not acted as a check. As a matter of fact, no sooner has an artisan gained the reputation of excelling in his craft than he is at once carried off by order of the sovereign, taken to the palace, and there confined for the rest of his life, forced to toil without remission and with little or no reward. Under these circumstances, which are common to all parts of India under the government of native princes, it is hardly surprising that every art and industry is extinguished and all healthy competition deadened. This is the chief and almost the only reason why progress in the arts has been so slow among the Hindus, and why in this respect they are now far behind other nations who did not become civilized for many centuries after themselves.

Their workmen certainly lack neither industry nor skill. In the European settlements, where they are paid according to their merit, many native artisans are to be met with whose work would do credit to the best artisans of the West. Moreover they feel no necessity to use the many European tools, whose nomenclature alone requires special study. One or two axes, as many saws and planes, all of them so rudely fashioned that a European workman would be able to do nothing with them—these are almost the only instruments that are to be seen in the hands of Hindu carpenters. The working materials of a journeyman goldsmith usually comprise a tiny anvil, a crucible, two or three small hammers, and as many files. With such simple tools the patient Hindu, thanks to his industry, can produce specimens of work which are often not to be distinguished from those imported at great expense from foreign countries. To what a standard of excellence would these men have attained if they had been from the earliest times subjected to good masters !

In order to form a just idea of what the Hindus would have done with their arts and manufactures if their natural industry had been properly encouraged, we have only to visit the workshop of one of their weavers or of one of their printers on cloth and carefully examine the instruments with which they produce those superb muslins, those superfine cloths, those beautiful coloured piece-goods, which are everywhere admired, and which in Europe occupy a high place among the principal articles of adornment. In manufacturing these magnificent stuffs the artisan uses his feet almost as much as his hands. Furthermore the weaving loom, and the whole apparatus for spinning the thread before it is woven, as well as the rest of the tools which he uses for the work, are so simple and so few that altogether they would hardly comprise a load for one man. Indeed it is by no means a rare sight to see one of these weavers changing his abode, and carrying on his back all that is necessary for setting to work the moment he arrives at his new home.

Their printed calicoes, which are not less admired than their muslins, are manufactured in an equally simple manner. Three or four bamboos to stretch the cloth, as many brushes for applying the colours, with a few pieces of potsherd to contain them, and a hollow stone for pounding them : these are pretty well all their stock in trade. (From Part 1, Chapter 2 (p.35,36))

CHAPTER VI

The Poverty of the Hindus.

India has always been considered a most wealthy and opulent country, more favoured by nature than any other in the world, a land literally flowing with milk and honey, where the soil yields all that is necessary for the existence of its happy people almost without cultivation. The great wealth accumulated by a few of its native princes, the large fortunes so rapidly acquired by many Europeans, its valuable diamond mines, the quality and quantity of its pearls, the abundance of its spices and scented woods, the fertility of its soil, and the, at one time, unrivalled superiority of its various manufactures : all these have caused admiration and wonder from time immemorial. One would naturally suppose that a nation which could supply so many luxuries would surpass all others in wealth.

This estimation of the wealth of India has been commonly accepted in Europe up to the present day ; and those who, after visiting the country and obtaining exact and authentic information about the real condition of its inhabitants, have dared to affirm that India is the poorest and most wretched of all the civilized countries of the world, have simply not been believed. Many people in Europe, after reading what various authors have to say about India's manufactures and about the factories which turn out the delicate muslins, fine cloths, and beautiful coloured cottons, &c, which are so much admired all the world over, have supposed that the establishments producing such magnificent stuffs  must have supplied models for those which are to be found at Manchester, Birmingham, Lyons, and other cities in Europe. Well, the truth is (and most people are still unaware of the fact) all these beautiful fabrics are manufactured in wretched thatched huts built of mud, twenty to thirty feet long by seven or eight feet broad. In such a work-room the weaver stretches his frame, squats on the ground, and quietly plies his shuttle, surrounded by his family, his cow, and his fowls. The instruments he makes use of are extremely primitive, and his whole stock in trade could easily be carried about by one man. Such is, in very truth, an exact picture of an Indian factory. As to the manufacturer himself, his poverty corresponds to the simplicity of his work-shop. There are in India two or three large classes whose only profession is that of weaving. The individuals comprising these classes are, for the most part, very poor, and are even destitute of the necessary means for working on their own account. Those who deal in the products of their industry have to go to them, money in hand, and after bargaining with them as to the price, quality, and quantity of the goods required, are obliged to pay them in advance. The weavers then go and buy the cotton and other necessaries with which to begin work. Their employers have to supervise their work and keep a sharp look-out lest they decamp with the money, especially if the advances happen to be in any way considerable. (p.80,81)

EXCERPT FROM  Dubois, J. A. (Jean Antoine), 1765-1848. “Hindu manners, customs and ceremonies.” Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1906. iBooks.

Another serious cause of the poverty of modern India is the decrease in the demand for hand labour, resulting from the introduction of machinery and the spread of manufactures with improved methods in Europe. Indeed, Europe no longer depends on India for anything, having learnt to beat the Hindus on their own ground, even in their most characteristic industries and manufactures, for which from time immemorial we were dependent on them. In fact, the roles have been reversed, and this revolution threatens to ruin India completely.

Just before returning to Europe I travelled through some of the manufacturing districts, and nothing could equal the state of desolation prevailing in them. All the work-rooms were closed, and hundreds of thousands of the inhabitants, composing the weaver caste, were dying of hunger ; for through the prejudices of the country they could not adopt another profession without dishonouring themselves. I found countless widows and other women out of work, and consequently destitute, who used formerly to maintain their families by cotton –spinning. Wherever I went the same melancholy  picture  confronted me.

This collapse in the cotton industry has indirectly affected trade in all its branches by stopping the circulation of money, and the cultivators can no longer reckon on the manufacturers who, in the days of their prosperity, were wont to buy up their surplus grain, and even to lend them money when they were in arrears with their taxes. This has led the cultivators to the hard necessity of relinquishing their grain to, and thus becoming the prey of, remorseless usurers.

Such is the deplorable condition into which the poor Hindus have sunk ; and it grows worse daily, thanks to the much-vaunted improvements in machinery which some nations glory in. Ah ! if only the inventors of these industrial developments could hear the curses which this multitude of poor Hindus never tire of heaping upon them ! If only, like me, they had seen the frightful misery which has overtaken whole provinces, owing entirely to them and their inventive genius, they would no doubt, unless they were entirely wanting in human pity, bitterly repent having carried their pernicious innovations so far, and having thereby enriched a handful of men at the expense of millions of poor people, to whom the very name of their competitors has become odious as the sole cause of their utter destitution ! (Chapter VI p.94,95)

And let no one venture to[…]””