Chandâla — Wikipedia

Chandâla (चांडाल, “dog eater”) is a term to designate the “last of creatures” thus defined according to the laws of Manu, a term used in Hinduism by Sanskrite literature to designate hunters in antiquity, people ” Hard, cruel, refusing the prescribed duties ”(that is to say, non-noble).

By extension, in common language in India, the term can designate a bandit, a rapist, a criminal, a butcher, an eater of animal flesh (specially bovine) or any dangerous, “demonic” individual according to the Brahmans.

The Chândâla is out of the system of Crow , since the Ahimsâ (“Nonviolence”, wife of Dharma ^{[ first ]} ) is the primordial duty of the four Vedic sacred castes: the ahimsâ proves the “nobility” or the aryanity according to Manu laws (Book 10, verse 63); The Chândâla is located hierarchically, not only below the Shudra/Servant (Shudra which is also Arya , “Noble”, although not dvija , not “twice born”, not initiated into Vedas), but of all other creatures, animals or plants: its shadow should not even touch that of the Brâhmane (hence the Western expression of “untouchable” concerning the Chandâla ) ^{[ 2 ]} , because of its dangerousness and hostility to AHIMSâ (the Manu laws indicate that Chandâlas From ancient India practice circumcision, excision, are executioners, eat animals for pleasure alone, practice incest, forced marriage or by removal, etc.).

Manu’s laws declare that the Chandâla is the result of the sexual union between a Shudra man and a woman born of Brahman parents. It is therefore of impure origin according to Hinduism, which is defined in Sanskrit as the Arya Dharma , “noble religion”; Hinduism considers that it is impossible to get rid of its packaging alone: ​​it is necessary either the grace of the divinity, or that the community – on which we depend – is also purified. But the impurity of the Chândâla is above all linked to its behavior, a behavior refusing Brahmanic values ​​(like the Ahimsâ, etc.), and not at all in relation to its physical appearance:

“57 A man of impure origin, belonging to any caste ( varna ), but whose character is not known, which is not Arya (“Noble”), but has the appearance of a Arya (“Noble”), we can discover what he is through his actions. 58. The behavior unworthy of a Arya (“Noble”): coarseness, hardness, cruelty, neglect of prescribed duties betray in this world a man of impure origin. »»

– Laws of Manu, Book 10 ^{[ 3 ]} .

Manu’s laws consider that in seven generations a line of “excluding caste” can find a caste, the highest (that of the Brâhmans), thanks to collective purifying practices:

“63. AHIMSâ (refusal to violate, harm creatures), veracity, non-voltage, purity and control of the senses, Manu said it was the summary of the Dharma (” law “) for the four castes. 64. If a woman, from a Brahmane man and a Shudra woman, carries the child of a member of a higher caste, the inferiors reach the highest caste within the seventh generation. 65. Thus, a shudra reaches the rank of a Brahmane, and (in a similar way) a Brahmane packed at a shudra; But be aware that it is the same with the offspring of a kshatriya or a vahya. (…) 67. The decision is as follows: “He who was generated by a Arya (“Noble”) with a non-noble woman, can become Arya by its virtues; The one who was worn by a mother arya (“Noble”), but which has a non-noble father, is and remains the opposite of a Arya ». »

– Laws of Manu, Book 10 ^{[ 3 ]} .

This theory has an echo in the work of Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena , where the philosopher affirms that the child takes, from his father, the will, and his mother, the intellect.

Adi Shankara declared that the man who has an appearance of chandâla , but who knows the Atman (the uncreated and indestructible soul, capable of transmigating in all forms of life and of uniting forever in the Brahman, the universal soul), is not a Chândâla ^{[ 4 ]} .

Several untouchable castes are still designated by the word visitor Dans l’inde du nord (Maharashtra, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar et Bengale) ^{[Ref. necessary]} .

Hindu Orthodoxy recognizes that Chandâla The ability to become Brâhmans, if they show evidence of their will to be purified by signs and practices strictly Brahmanic . In the Shiva-purâna , composed by the mythical Brâhmane Vyasa, compiler of the Vedas (and himself from a mother of a clan Chandâla ), we can see that the state of “dog eater” is relative and abolished by the fact that the symbols dear to the brâhmans, carried on oneself, are very purifying for a person completely foreign to the Brahmanic sphere as is a “Hunter”, which thus becomes similar to them by carrying, for example, the sacred shivaïtes symbols:

“Even a Chandâla [“Dog eater”, follower of violence] which carries the rosary of rudrâksha at his neck and the tripundra On his forehead is worthy of consideration. It therefore belongs to the most excellent of all castes [the brâhmans, guards of the ahimsâ] ^{[ 5 ]} . »

The use of the term Sanskrit became widespread in the East to Japan to qualify (in the West) members of the names named untouchables, located outside the company .rya , of those having theoretically to have the universal non-violence (ahimsâ), whether they are Brâhmans (scholars, artists), Kshatriya (gendarmes, princes), Vaishyas (peasants, craftsmen) or shudra (servants, uninitiated in Veda/Know how to also all the children in Brâhmans are) ^{[ 6 ]} . In India, untouchables constitute an important part of the population (in The Indou model , Guy Deleury recalls that a political party in India cannot win an election without a wide support of the untouchables, and that the Brâhmans are either apolitical, or close to ideologies in favor of the right to collective material well-being and persecuted minorities or robbed), while the Brâhmans are a poor but respected minority for its sacred knowledge and its guardian ethics of the Ahimsâ, living near Muslims in their slums in order to be protected from the violence of the mafias of Hindu nationalists, untouchable, etc., as Naipaul indicates in his work India, a million revolts .

A notorious example: in order to show its modest origin because it comes from a family of fishermen, at XIII ^{It is} century, the Buddhist monk Nichiren qualifies himself as a member of the class of Chandâla ^{[ 7 ] , [ 8 ] , [ 9 ]} . His method to convert to school that he founded in 1253 , the Nichiren Shū, considered according to him to be the only correct in the time of Mappō, is Shakubuku whose literal translation is “Break and submit” ^{[ ten ]} attachment to lessons deemed lower because they are expired at the time of At it or according to another translation “Break and submit” ^{[ 11 ]} attachments to lessons preceding the Sūtra du lotus . He will oppose his death in 1282 To the other Buddhist schools of his time, in particular Jōdo Shū (Nembutsu), Zen, Shingon and Ritsu.

Friedrich Nietzsche refers several times to the term of Chandâla , especially in The Antichrist (Aphorism 45) and in The twilight of idols , to speak of Christianity or socialism as “religions of Chandâla “, Based on a” slave morality “, embodying the” resentment of the weak “, which they oppose to the” morality of the masters ” ^{[ twelfth ]} .

“Let me read the first part of my Morality genealogy : For the first time, I highlighted the contrast between a noble morality and a morality of Tchândâla, born of resentment and helpless revenge. Saint Paul was the greatest of the apostles of revenge… ”

Strongly influenced by Nietzsche, the Swedish writer and playwright August Strindberg (1849-1912) published in 1888 a new entitled Tschandala ^{[ 13 ]} .

Bibliography [ modifier | Modifier and code ]

• Koenraad Elst: Manu as a Weapon against Egalitarianism. Nietzsche and Hindu Political Philosophy, dans Siemens, Herman W. / Roodt, Vasti (Hg.): Nietzsche, Power and Politics. Rethinking Nietzsche’s Legacy for Political Thought, Berlin / New York 2008, 543-582.

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