The Hermeneutics of Suspicion: A Case Study from Hinduism.

The "hermeneutics of suspicion," which has emerged in recent times as a lens for examining historical texts, is a hermeneutic which involves a fundamental philosophical reorientation.(1) Consciousness, which was once considered to be perceptually transparent in a Cartesian manner and linguistically transparent in a Wittgensteinian way, is now considered to consist primarily of the relationship between the hidden and the shown, between what is concealed and what is revealed.(2) Consciousness therefore needs decoding, and so also the texts which embody it. This understanding of consciousness is the fundamental assumption underlying the "hermeneutics of suspicion" as it was espoused by Paul Ricoeur, who referred repeatedly to the three "masters of suspicion": Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud.(3) While these three might appear "seemingly mutually exclusive,"(4) for all three "the fundamental category of consciousness is the relation of hidden-shown or, if you prefer, simulated-manifested."(5) The basic hermeneutical implication of their thought points in the same direction--a text may not be taken at its face value, indeed the face of a text may be no more than a mask which conceals underlying socio-economic, political, and psychological realities in such a way as to obscure them, or render them more palatable, if not more acceptable.

A hermeneutics of suspicion may be said to occupy a mediate horizon as distinguished from the immediate and the ultimate, where the immediate involves only a literal reading of the text and the ultimate a deeper meaning intended by the author. While the "hermeneutics of suspicion" also seeks to determine a non-evident meaning, such a hermeneutics focuses on a meaning which is different from the author's intention, whether evident or hidden. Accordingly, the present paper, which concerns the exegesis of Hindu texts, represents an important fork in the road in the application of the hermeneutics of suspicion as it is currently understood. Both the expression "hermeneutics of suspicion" and the idea embodied in this expression have become accepted, if not commonplace, in Hindu Studies.(6) In the present paper, however, I will be proposing a rather unconventional use of this hermeneutics. To me, it seems unnecessary to assume that the hermeneutics of suspicion always discloses that which is negative behind a text. It will be my contention that if the rigorous scrutiny of the hermeneutics of suspicion can reveal the negative implications and realities which lie behind a text that on the surface appears to be positive, then it is equally possible that such hermeneutics may also disclose the positive implications which might lie behind a text that on the surface appears to be negative. I shall develop this rather unconventional idea through an examination of a passage from Sankara's commentary on the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad (VI.4.17) and selected passages from the Manusmrti.

* Women and Vedic Study

The applicability of a hermeneutics of suspicion to the study of Hindu texts becomes readily apparent in the case of Sankara, the famous Hindu scholiast sometimes compared to Thomas Aquinas. Around 800 C.E., Sankara wrote a commentary on the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad (ca. 800 B.C.E.). As might be expected, Hinduism had undergone many transformations during the more than one thousand years which intervene between the composition of the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad and Sankara's commentary, and his understanding of the text reflects these transformations. For instance, one major transformation is related to the fact that women, who not only had access to Vedic studies in Vedic times but even had Vedic hymns revealed to them, had been debarred from studying the Vedas in the interregnum. Sankara was apparently aware of this restriction and had to contend with it when commenting on Brhadaranyaka Upanisad VI.4.17. This particular text recommends a ritual for securing the birth of a learned daughter and is followed by a ritual for securing the birth of a learned son. The word used for denoting "learned" in both cases is the same: pandita in the feminine and pandita in the masculine. However, while Sankara interprets "learned" in the straightforward sense in the case of the male, he points out that in the case of the female such learning is limited to domestic skills.(7) As modern scholars are quick to note, he glosses the text in this manner "because his age held that women were ineligible for Vedic studies."(8) Sankara himself adds: vede'nadhikarat, while "the Upanisad seems to grant the privilege of learning and scholarship to women."(9)

We know this to be so because the very Upanisad he is commenting on, the Brhadaranyaka, contains accounts of two women, Gargi and Maitreyi, who discoursed about brahman, or the ultimate reality, as discussed in the Vedas.(10) How does Sankara handle these cases? Suspiciously. He conveniently overlooks the difficulty they pose to his position and uses them as an example to illustrate his point that the acquisition of the knowledge of the ultimate reality, or brahman, does not require ritual practices as a precondition. A rival school had insisted on the prior and coordinate necessity of ritual as a precondition for the attainment of such knowledge.(11) But Sankara argues that although women are not eligible for the performance of Vedic ritual (in the Hinduism of his times), the fact that Yajanvalkya instructs his wife Maitreyi regarding the acquisition of knowledge of brahman in this Upanisad proves his point that Vedic rituals are not a prerequisite for the attainment of such knowledge. Thus, he uses the example of women acquiring knowledge of brahman in the Upanisads not to question the prevailing view that women cannot study the Vedas, as one might expect, but to substantiate another point of his own doctrine! This is real exegetical chutzpa! This is an example of what might be called "heads I win, tails you lose" exegesis.

* Women and Adultery

The case of Sankara and the two women, Gargi and Maitreyi, demonstrates the applicability of the hermeneutics of suspicion in a Hindu context. I would now, however, like to argue that the assumption of negativity, which might be implied by the word "suspicion" in the expression "hermeneutics of suspicion," prevents the full potential of this hermeneutical concept from being realized. To me it seems unnecessary, and lacking in imagination, to assume that ancient texts and their commentators were simply prejudiced and even evil. I admit that such commentators and texts could well possess a less radiant dimension, as we all do, but I would also maintain that this need not necessarily be the case. In other words, if what on the surface seems to be positive is on inspection revealed to be negative, then it is equally possible that what appears to be negative on the surface might on inspection harbor a rather positive implication. But, before …