ABSTRACT
The Upanisadic author challenges our ethical imaginations: Why is a guest – a stranger in the house – made up of fire? How does the imagery of fire help a Vedic householder behave in the appropriate way toward the one whom he does not know who crosses his threshold? Much of the study of ethical discourse in Hinduism has focused on the question of dharma, or moral law – a concept only fully developed in the later Vedic period. This chapter will begin by taking a more phenomenological approach, looking at the question of ethics from the levinasian standpoint of ‘being in the presence of an other.’ I will then set the Vedic stage, and introduce basic vocabulary. I will next move on to explore the basic Vedic idea of an ‘other’; finally, we will discuss some of the modes of encounter with an other, or stranger – both positive and negative in tone. overall, I want to add a phenomenological note to the very compelling recent discussions of the Vedic ‘other’ in early India.1 I also hope to add a more imagistic note to the idea of Hindu forms of ethics.2 If levinas is right in his emphasis on concrete, daily events as the basis of ethics, then Vedic India has much to tell us. This discussion also assumes a ‘soft’ relativism, in which Vedic forms of ethics might be loosely recognizable and translatable across cultures, but also having their own particular characters and vocabularies which are unique to
the periods and the religious cultures in which they occur. I do not embrace a ‘hard’ relativism, for I am philosophically committed to the idea of responsible comparison as part of the human scholarly enterprise.3 I also assume moral complexity at every moment of Vedic history; as in all moments of history, erasures of the other exist side by side with acknowledgments of the other.
