{"id":4274,"date":"2012-05-28T17:45:14","date_gmt":"2012-05-28T21:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gornahoor.net\/?p=4274"},"modified":"2022-05-30T19:16:04","modified_gmt":"2022-05-30T23:16:04","slug":"coomaraswamy-on-evolas-revolt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/?p=4274","title":{"rendered":"Coomaraswamy on Evola’s Revolt"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first translation of any of Julius Evola<\/strong>\u2019s works into English was published in the prestigious Indian journal The Visva-Bharati Quarterly<\/cite> (Vol. V, Part IV, New Series, 1940), founded by the Nobel prize winning writer and poet, Rabindranath Tagore<\/strong>. Ananda K Coomaraswamy<\/strong> [AKC] wrote a brief introduction, which follows below, and the translation of the chapter \u201cMan and Woman\u201d from Revolt against the Modern World<\/cite> was made by his wife, Luisa Runstein. A few of Evola\u2019s essays appeared in the British journal East and West<\/cite> in the 1950s, but the full translation of Revolt<\/cite> did not appear in English until 1995.<\/p>\n

For obvious reasons, Evola\u2019s book could receive more understanding in India than in the West. The modern deracinated Westerner is ignorant of his own past. Hence he can discern nothing recognizable in Evola\u2019s \u201cremarkable presentation and exposition of Traditional doctrine\u201d (AKC), which was characteristic not only of Indian civilization, but also of ancient Rome and the Middle Ages. Instead, he remains smug in the \u201cpretenses\u201d of the modern world.<\/p>\n

AKC did point out a serious error due to Evola\u2019s misunderstanding of a text from the Aitareya Brahmana<\/cite> (VIII, 27, Page 341 of Arthur Keith\u2019s translation). In a Hindu wedding ceremony, the groom says to his bride:<\/p>\n

\nI am that, you are this, this you are, that I am; I am sky, you are earth.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When the King chooses his Purohita, i.e., the priest who offered sacrifices for the king since the gods would not accept those of the king directly, the purohita recites the groom\u2019s part to the king. Hence, in this regard, the priest is masculine in respect to the king. Evola assumed just the opposite, which led to the unfortunate characterization of the priesthood as lunar and regality as solar. Although this quotation was removed from subsequent editions of Revolt, this error persisted in Evola, even if inconsistently and ambiguously. This is AKC\u2019s note on that topic:<\/p>\n

\nWe refer in particular to the citation of the conjugal rajnah purohita-varana-mantram<\/i> with which the priest takes the king as consort, saying, \u201cI am sky, you are earth\u201d. Evola, inverting the roles of the king and priest, does so in a way that it was with these words that the king directed to the selected priest and consequently that the priest was to obey the king! The true relations were recognized by the first Sanskrit scholars (Oldenberg, for example), by Guenon in Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power<\/cite>, by Hocart in The Castes<\/cite> and were recently discussed in a very recent article on the various aspects of Hindu regality (Spiritual Authority and Temporal Power in the Indian Theory of Government<\/cite>, 1942).\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

AKC\u2019s introduction to the translation follows.<\/p>\n

\nRevolt against the Modern World<\/cite>, which contains the chapter titled \u201cMan and Woman\u201d, whose translation follows, constitutes perhaps the most significant among the numerous works of the Italian philosopher Julius Evola. Evola\u2019s \u201cRevolt\u201d is, fundamentally, the affirmation of the universal metaphysical doctrine that has given form to traditional social institutions: thus this study treats social hierarchy (\u201ccaste\u201d), the meaning of regality and empire, the relationship between the sexes, the mystery of rites, and from the same point of view interprets history and makes a destructive criticism of the pretenses of modern \u201ccivilization\u201d.<\/p>\n

The book is not without defects: in particular he exalts beyond measure the importance of regality in relation to the priesthood (Kshatriya in relation to Brahma, raja in relation to Brahman), even erroneously interpreting Hindu texts to support his theses on this point. In addition, of everything amiss in a work of this type, in which the \u201cserenity\u201d of the heroic element results so rightly emphasized, he clearly shows an anti-Semitic prejudice, as can be seen in the superfluous characterization of Freud as a Jew. Nevertheless, this book constitutes a remarkable presentation and exposition of Traditional doctrine and could well serve as an introductory text for the student of anthropology and as a guide for Indology, especially for anyone who is interested in Hindu mythology and does not understand that, in the words of Evola, \u201cthe passage from mythology to religion constitutes a humanist decadence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The chapter \u201cMan and Woman\u201d was chosen for translation because of its clear, uncompromising, and, we can add, dense peroration of the principles, that are reflected in the institutions and ideals, such as that of sati<\/i>, that are no longer comprehensible and that certainly are no longer held dear, not even as memories by our politicians and reformers who, \u201cwhether by force or consent, were led to the accept the models of the West\u201d.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That last quotation is from Peaks and Lamas<\/cite>, by Marco Pallis. AKC also provided ten footnotes to the translation, all but one of which supported the text with references to relevant passages in Hindu texts. The exception addressed Evola\u2019s claim that absolute \u201cdedication\u201d in love is typical for the woman in relation to the man. Giovanni Monastra describes AKC\u2019s objection:<\/p>\n

\nThat, according to Coomaraswamy, is true in the limits in which the husband constitutes for the wife the \u201csymbol of God\u201d. But, under the traditional aspect, in his turn the man also in relation to Divinity assumes a \u201cfeminine\u201d role, rendering love with total dedication, without entailing any degradation, something different from what Evola means. Not even man can, therefore, be considered self-centered: the \u201cinternal sufficiency\u201d which is mentioned in Revolt is a relative fact, not to be absolutized.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This book constitutes a remarkable presentation and exposition of Traditional doctrine and could well serve as an introductory text for the student of anthropology and as a guide for Indology, especially for anyone who is interested in Hindu mythology Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16195,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[141,4],"tags":[656,493,406],"class_list":["post-4274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ananda-coomaraswamy","category-evola","tag-aitareya-brahmana","tag-rabindranath-tagore","tag-revolt-against-the-modern-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4274"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16196,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4274\/revisions\/16196"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}