Comparative Religion as Cultural Combat: Occidentalism and Relativism in Rajiv Malhotras Being Different

Robert A. Yelle

Rajiv Malhotras book, Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism (2011), serves as a barometer of the current culture wars. It is evidence of the success of postcolonial studies in shifting the topic away from Europeans defining Hinduism and other formerly colonized traditions to members of those other traditions defining both themselves and the West. It also highlights some of the problems that may arise when postcolonial ressentiment and cultural relativism are allowed to overrule scholarly judgment. Malhotras goals in the book are multiple. He seeks to more accurately describe Indian traditionswhich he refers to as dharmicin order to liberate the representation of these traditions from the (frequently negative) stereotypes that have been imposed on them by Western scholars. At the same time, he aims to describe Western traditions themselves, particularly the manner in which they differ from dharmic ones. Dharmic and Western traditions are compared along several trajectories, including conceptions of cosmos and deity, relative valuations of scriptural versus embodied knowledge, attitudes toward difference and disorder, compatibility with modern science and understandings of language. In every case, Malhotra describes not only a stark opposition, but also one that is explicitly valueladen: Western traditions are supposedly grasping, rigid and burdened with an anxiety stemming ultimately from their synthetic or cobbledInternational Journal of Hindu Studies 16, 3: 335348 2012 Springer
DOI 10.1007/s11407-012-9133-z

336 / Robert A. Yelle together nature, beginning with the uneasy fusion of Hebrew and Greek cultures and culminating in the effort to assimilate other cultures during the era of colonialism, the aftermath of which we are still experiencing: the Westis dynamic but also inherently unstable, leading to restless, expansionist, and often aggressive historical projects, as well as anxiety and inner turmoil (4). Malhotra draws freely on a number of longstanding tropes: the West is characterized by a strict division between mind and body (15960) and between the natural, human and divine orders, as symbolized particularly in the idea of a transcendent God who created the world out of nothing (ex nihilo) (187). The thirst for order has contributed, in the religious domain, to the strict adherence to a canon of scripture and the marginalization of embodied knowledge as a source of ongoing revelation. Monotheism, at least of the sort represented by Judeo-Christian traditions, has translated into a religious hierarchy in which censorship and persecution are necessary adjuncts of institutional authority. Dharmic traditions, on the other hand, are the opposite of and, quite possibly, the antidote for all of these negative aspects of Western culture and society. They are inherently pluralistic, flexible enough to accommodate numerous perspectives in a harmonious unity that is organic or integral rather than synthetic, and comfortable with chaos and disorder. They are not disturbed by, but have even anticipated, the discoveries of modern science that all nature is related and that truth, even at the level of atomic particles, is a matter of ones perspective (114, 12324). Consequently, dharmic traditions, which have conserved eco-friendly practices largely eliminated in the West by industrialization, may even hold the key to saving the planet. These representations of Malhotras positions, although necessarily condensed, are not caricatures; they accurately characterize both the substance and the tone of his argument. There are numerous problems with this argument that I shall address shortly; however, I should like to begin by acknowledging some of its virtues. As someone who has written about both classical Hinduism and British attitudes toward that tradition during the colonial era, I recognized and could affirm much of the books account of the history of Western misrepresentations of Hinduism and the manner in which these misrepresentations were implicated in the political and economic project of colonialism

Comparative Religion as Cultural Combat / 337 in India. I also found myself in sympathy with Malhotras effort to trace some aspects of the colonial critique of Hinduism to patterns of universalism and exclusivism that had roots deep in Christianity. The chapter that had the most resonance for me was the final one, Contesting Western Universalism, which includes the statement: Secularism implicitly includes Judeo-Christian themes and hence is not neutral with respect to the various world religions (325, cf. 32728). As the study of European colonialism in India has progressed, it has been recognized increasingly, especially by some Indian scholars such as S.N. Balagangadhara (1994), that the colonial encounter reveals the sectarian Christian commitments of an ostensibly secularized Western culture. Perhaps Indian scholars are better positioned to recognize this than are scholars who, having been brought up in Western traditions, lack sufficient critical distance from those traditions. On the other hand, Malhotra seems to lack any distance from the truthclaims of those traditions he calls dharmic, so that these claims are not treated with any criticism or skepticism, but are rather used as clubs with which to beat Western culture on the head. As a die-hard comparativist, I believe that it is possible for us to understand other cultures on the basis of a shared humanity, although this requires a significant investment of time, labor and hermeneutical sensitivity, or what Malhotra calls respect as opposed to mere toleration (1625). Although I was glad that someone had undertaken to draw a clear distinction between two civilizational traditions that are often sloppily assimilated, I was also dismayed at how Malhotra chose to frame his comparison. The psychoanalysis of an entire tradition as anxiety-laden (for example, 2627) and egoistic (265) seems nothing more than a crude attempt to take a measure of revenge against a tradition of Western scholarship that had presumed to diagnose the psychopathologies of Hinduism. What Malhotra has, with some justification, condemned Western scholarship for doing, he has now done himself. I do not think that this is the inevitable outcome of a cross-cultural, comparative study; but Malhotras book cannot serve as a model of how such a study ought to be conducted. There is little, if any, original scholarship in the book. It is the work of a polemicist, rather than a careful, patient sifter of facts. The book recycles numerous old tropes about the evils of Western culture and the merits of Indian culture, while combining these tropes with elements of postcolonial

338 / Robert A. Yelle scholarship, which Malhotra freely borrows from when criticizing the West but ignores when presenting a thoroughly nativist vision of dharmic traditions. The various criticisms of the possibility of a non-distorting knowledge of other cultures that have emerged since the publication of Edward Saids Orientalism have created the space in which a voice like Malhotras could emerge. But what Malhotra has given us is a mirrorimage of Orientalism, namely Occidentalism (cf. Buruma and Margalit 2004). Ignoring the warnings that postcolonial scholars have issued against essentializing traditions, he presents an image of both dharmic and Western traditions that is thoroughly monolithic, erasing all of the differences within these traditions in order to exaggerate the divide between them. Every tradition is in fact an amalgam, and retains the traces of its composite origins. The English language, for example, is a combination of, among other languages, Anglo-Saxon, Old French, Latin, Greek, Norse, and even Hindi and Anglo-Indian; while Sanskrit itself incorporated words and phonemes that are not found in other IndoEuropean languages and that were presumably assimilated in part from other linguistic traditions indigenous to the subcontinent. The idea of dharmic traditions represents a choice to gloss over, whether for ideological or strategic reasons, the vast differences that exist among and even within the various traditions of India. These differences are invoked occasionally in order to buttress Malhotras argument for the pluralism of Indian culture, only to be erased as he presents as universal to dharmic traditions what is, in fact, easily recognizable as a thoroughly modern and homogenized ideal of Hinduism drawn from certain aspects of Vednta philosophy and Yoga. Malhotras depiction provides further confirmation of Richard Kings (1999) argument that one of the effects of colonial modernity has been to reduce Hinduism to a kind of mystical philosophy. This has happened for various reasons. The version of Hinduism thus constructed is largely shorn of any peculiarities that would prevent it from serving as an exportable commodity for both Indians and Europeans. It is entirely compatible with secularist models of religious freedom and with consumer capitalism. The idea of integral unity that Malhotra identifies as the specific distinguishing feature of dharmic traditions seems designed to achieve this strategic objective. This observation is not changed by the fact that there are also indigenous precedents in Hinduism for this idea, including the

Comparative Religion as Cultural Combat / 339 idea of Brahman in the Upaniads and its systematization in Advaita Vednta. What gets left out of this homogenized Hinduism? To begin with, the notion that there is a uniformity among so-called dharmic traditions, the model for which is modernized Vedntic Hinduism, elides any differences represented by traditions such as Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and so on, and might well be offensive to members of those traditions.1 As anyone who has studied the cultural history of India knows, there have been dramatic transformations in the traditions of the subcontinent. The rama~a movement that began five hundred years or more before the Common Era represented a revolution against the institution and ideals of the Vedic sacrificial system; Buddhism and Jainism emerged out of this period, as did that amalgam known as Hinduism, which combined caste-based ritualism with the radical quest for individual liberation, and is as much a synthetic unity as Western tradition. It has been argued that there are resemblances among salvation traditions or so-called Axial religions; these comparisons, for all of their flaws, still pick out some characteristics that might plausibly be taken to distinguish renunciant Hinduism and Buddhism, prophetic Judaism, and early Christianity from those background traditions against which these salvation traditions revolted.2 This fact problematizes the idea of a single dharmic tradition, and suggests the possibility of a greater affinity between aspects of Indian and Western traditions than Malhotras model of comparison allows. Malhotras foregrounding of the model of a mystically unified Hinduism also simultaneously de-emphasizes or renders invisible certain institutions that are incompatible with this model and would hinder its marketability to modern Indians and Westerners. One such institution is caste, which Malhotra barely mentions. His treatment of the relevant Dharmastra texts such as the Laws of Manu is sketchy and biased. Malhotra denies that these texts were ever laws in the Western sense (that is, norms enforced by rulers and backed up by state sanction) (for example, 78, 94, 261). Unlike Western ideas of normative law and binding scripture, Hinduism supposedly allowed flexibility in adopting different ways of life. I appreciate Malhotras desire to move beyond Western stereotypes of Hinduism as caste, cows, and curry (333), but that is no justification for ignoring caste as part of the history of Hinduism, which should be

340 / Robert A. Yelle treated honestly, as should the topic of the enslavement of other nations under European colonialism. That Hinduism was embodied (56, 70 71) like other traditions, is not in doubt. Such embodiment was clearly not limited to Yoga, but extended to a system of caste-based behavior that assigned different roles to different human beings on the basis of their birth. Unfortunately, Malhotra is thoroughly disingenuous about caste. He glosses var~a-dharma as occupational predispositions (!) (193) and states that different communities within the same society were allowed to practice their own codes (194; emphasis added), implying that different occupational pursuits and varying standards of conduct were a matter of choice rather than external imposition. The notion of svadharmameaning ones own, personal dharma appropriate to station in life and individual circumstancesis presented in the most positive possible terms (13638, 193, 195, 199, 258). And, indeed, that notion as elaborated in the Bhagavad Gt is a noble one, although one should never forget that Arjunas duty to fight is also established by his status as a Katriya or member of the warrior caste. But the less palatable dimensions of caste in particular are thoroughly downplayed by Malhotra. Such practice becomes glaring when he labels Western culture as particularly concerned with establishing distinctions of race, class, and gender (8). Supposedly, dharmic culture is radically different from the traditional Western notion of bloodlines defining ones past (254). Is Malhotra here deliberately inverting Western polemics against caste? I cannot be sure, but the omission of any fair treatment of these issues mars whatever might be valid in his critique. In particular, the Christian theological argument that, in Christ, social differences are erased (based on, for example, Galatians 3:28) has always represented at least one theme in the history of the struggle of egalitarianism against racism in the West. Within the Church itself, arguably the notion of race did not emerge until the blood purity laws (limpieza de sangre) toward the end of the Reconquista in Spain; that is to say, they were part of an internal colonialism linked to a new, external colonialism. Malhotra cites as an example of the organic unity of Hindu tradition the Puruaskta, gveda 10.90 (116n14). This text, which represents the oldest iteration of the ideology of caste, certainly expresses an idea that everything in the natural and social orders is united by virtue of having emerged from a single being, primal Man, through sacrifice. But this

Comparative Religion as Cultural Combat / 341 unity is also explicitly hierarchical. The theological or cosmological idea of unity cannot be separated from the social interests that motivated the rhetorical and mythical construction of this very idea. The flexibility of dharmic as opposed to Western codes of morality is supposed to be inherently desirable; Malhotra (197) quotes A.K. Ramanujans (1989) comparison of Immanuel Kants universalism with Manus particularism, and favors the latter. But the universalism of Western traditions, like the Protestant emphasis on universal access to a canon of scripture, is inseparable from democracy in the broadest sense. It establishes, at least in theory, a level playing field. The converse of this is what Malhotra describes as the dharmic system of continual revelation through embodied knowledge. Such a system leadsto turn Alexis de Tocquevilles formula on its headto a nation of men, not of laws and thus is at least potentially authoritarian and anti-democratic. This is always a danger in a system based on the personal charisma of the individual guru, rather than on the publicly available means of salvation that most branches of Christianity affirm. Malhotra argues that By its very nature, the claim of an unmediated state of knowing cannot be deconstructed by socio-political-cultural historical analysis and anthropology (74). This claim not only appears designed precisely to avoid the Enlightenment insistence that real knowledge be public, objective and replicable, but also has dangerous political connotations that Malhotra ignores. One unstated goal of Malhotras project seems to be to identify the socalled Abrahamic traditionsthe monotheistic traditions stemming from the Hebrew Bibleas both essentially similar to each other and essentially different from dharmic traditions. Malhotra thus describes American affinities with Pakistani Islam over Indian Hinduism (17475). He blames communalist ideologies and the associated violence in the subcontinent on the ill effects of an exclusivist ideology imported from monotheistic traditions and as alien to Indian pluralism (340, cf. 244). Against this background, the following passage struck this reader as especially disturbing: Scriptures [of Abrahamic traditions] claiming to be both the literal and non-negotiable accounts of history are notoriously opaque in some of their meanings, leading to disastrous consequences on the ground. For

342 / Robert A. Yelle example, Christian Zionistsbelieve Jesus will return (the Second Coming) only when the Jewish temple of David is restored to its original site. But the ground where this temple once stood is now the site of one of the holiest mosques of Islam. Muslims hold that Prophet Mohammed himself had an important, superseding and unsurpassable revelation at exactly the same place, and they are determined that the spot continue to be honoured with a mosque. Each claim is non-negotiable by its respective side and devastating to the other faith. It is this clash of official histories that causes a clash of civilizations, most notably in the Middle East. In order for Christian Zionists to fulfil their history-centred duty (as they see it), the mosque must be destroyed (5960). When I read this passage, my jaw literally dropped. It is not possible that Malhotra is unaware of the destruction of the Babri Masjid by Hindutva radicals at Ayodhya in 1992. How then can he have failed to note the precise parallel, ironic in the context of his claim of a uniquely Western intolerance and exclusivism, between that conflict and the one he describes? In the Indian parallel, the Dome of the Rock becomes the Babri Masjid, which, unlike the former, was actually destroyed; Jesuss Second Coming becomes the return of Ramraj; the foreign invaders are Muslims in both cases. As we see, the Rmya~a, with its talk of rkasas (demons), is fully capable of serving as the vehicle of an exclusivist, intolerant ideology, when interpreted in the way that some have chosen to interpret it. The problem Malhotra highlights is not unique to Western civilization; for an adequate treatment of the problem, we must first have an accurate diagnosis, which he does not attempt to provide.3 Another example of Malhotras uncritical endorsement of a nativist ideology is his treatment of mantras and Sanskrit language. As a semiotician and student of Sanskrit who has published one book on Hindu Tantric mantras (Yelle 2003) and another that contrasts British colonial views of language with Hindu views (2013a), I read these sections of Malhotras book with special interest. I was disappointed to find nothing more than a restatement of an indigenous view that Sanskrit is an inherently natural and perfect vehicle of expression: Linguistics reveals that all languages work similarly, yet there is a crucial

Comparative Religion as Cultural Combat / 343 difference: in other languages, the initial posited association between the sound and the object it represents is in most cases arbitraryunlike in Sanskrit (232). Not only does Sanskrit, like all languages, encode specific and unique cultural experiences and traits, but the very form, sound and manifestation of the language carry effects that cannot be separated from their conceptual meanings.These sounds are not arbitrary conventions but were realized through spiritual practice that brought direct experiences of the realities to which they correspond (9). As Arthur Avalon (1998: 7081) recognized long ago, the Hindu Tantras in particular express a theory of natural name in which the Sanskrit language, as manipulated in mantras, not only directly expresses reality but is also capable of influencing it.4 Tantric mantras are often constructed as elaborate diagrams of natural processes of creation; this underwrites the belief in their efficacy. Many cultures, in fact, and not only Sanskritic Hindu culture, have viewed their own languages or ritual formulas as having a direct or immediate connection with reality; Malhotra acknowledges that similar claims have been made for Hebrew in the past (228). There is a vast literature both on the dream of a natural (iconic) or magical language in traditional cultures, and on the modern quest, since it was first proposed by Francis Bacon, for a universal language that might also be natural in some sense.5 However, one of the basic premises of modern, Western views of language, at least since John Locke, is that language is arbitrary. This idea has now been firmly established, with very few exceptions, in modern linguistic science. To repeat claims for a natural (iconic) language now, as if the existence of such were simply a matter of wishing it to be so, is to fall into a kind of nativism or magical thinking. The ancient Sanskrit grammarians undoubtedly made many important discoveries concerning language and phonetics, and they excelled in the elaboration of a systematic grammar. The study of Sanskrit has contributed to the development of modern linguistics in numerous ways, beginning with the discovery of Indo-European languages. Yet Malhotras claim that Sanskrit is uniquely in tune with nature is nothing more nor less than ethnolinguistic chauvinism. This does not prevent one from agreeing with Malhotra that colonial

344 / Robert A. Yelle modernity has contributed to the marginalization of different languages, including Sanskrit, and with this, of the thought-worlds that are encoded, expressed and perpetuated principally by means of such languages. The death of the last native speaker of any language means, in some sense, the death of an entire world. I have written on the violence associated with projects of Anglicization, including colonial codification and Roman transliteration, in the Indian context (Yelle 2013a: Chapter 3), and can sympathize fully with Malhotras desire that Sanskrit may once again become a vehicle for a living culture, although I would need to register my doubts about the likelihood of this occurring. Yet I cannot read Malhotras paeans to the natural status of Sanskrit and of the pra~ava (o) (26162) without recalling that similar claims supported a social structure in which access to the Vedas and other authoritative texts was tightly controlled, and the pronunciation of the pra~ava itself was generally prohibited to women and lower castes. In hastening to highlight the differences between Western and dharmic traditions, Malhotra frequently exaggerates those differences and neglects the many points of commonality. This is a direct consequence of his monolithic presentation of both traditions. Malhotras assertion that dharmic traditions insist on embodied knowing (6) as opposed to the mere scriptural knowledge authorized by Western traditions ignores, for example, born again Christian evangelical traditions and Pentecostal practices such as speaking in tongues. His contention that Western religious culturetreats the body as inherently sinful (77, cf. 9697) neglects the parallel with ancient traditions of asceticism and celibacy in India. The claim that, unlike the West, Dharmic thought never created anymind/body divide (160) glosses over the distinction between purua and prakti in Skhya tradition. And so on. Another example of this phenomenon appears in the chapter on Order and Chaos, in which Malhotra argues that dharmic traditions are more comfortable with disorder. Among other arguments he presents is the following: The festivities of Diwali and Holi symbolize the re-creation of the world out of chaos through a socially creative outburst. The revelers pass from the order and pattern of everyday social life into a regenerative temporary chaos before returning to their respective orderly

Comparative Religion as Cultural Combat / 345 roles, rejuvenated and refreshed. The festivities symbolize rhythmical polarities: order/chaos; submission to rules/surrender to traditional impulses; division and differentiation/union and non-differentiation; obedience to taboos/transgression of taboos; discipline under the reality principle/indulgence of the pleasure principle; caste rivalry/glorification of the collective. The festival rites utilize the potency of disorder or the harnessing of the creative mind in re-establishing order (181). Any scholar of religion who reads this passage will instantly recognize that the pattern Malhotra is describing is not by any means confined to Indian traditions, but is found in many cultures and has been systematically theorized, most notably by Victor Turner (1977), with his concepts of structure versus anti-structure, liminality, and communitas.6 Turner and others have used the example of Carnival in Roman Catholic tradition in defining this anthropological phenomenon. The behavioral license taken during such events of anti-structure also includes a leveling or inversion of social hierarchy. Examples in the contemporary West may be found, although Charles Taylor (2007: 4554) has argued that such moments of anti-structure have declined under secularism. Some of the differences between Western and Indian traditions that Malhotra describes are indeed real and have had profound consequences. For example, the idea of a transcendent God who created the world ex nihiloan idea that is not itself in the Bible and that has not been maintained as uniformly within Western traditions as Malhotra thinkshas had far-reaching effects on Western understandings of the world and of Indian traditions (98). Colonial polemics against Hinduism as idolatry and against such practices as image-worship (mrti-pj), the establishing of vital force in images (pr~apratih) and the use of mantras for magical purposes, stemmed in part from such a difference in conceptions of deity (Yelle 2013a: 9, 25, 105, 11718, 12224; cf. Malhotra 28487). Malhotra actually minimizes this cultural divide by downplaying the magical dimensions of such Hindu practices in order to emphasize a more enlightened, spiritual interpretation that will be more palatable to modern Indians and Westerners. Although I appreciate Malhotras reasons for wanting to make a sharp distinction between Western and Indian traditions, the manner in which he has constructed his distinction cannot serve as a model for a valid

346 / Robert A. Yelle comparison between cultures. Differences internal to traditions have been repressed in order to construct ideal types that ignore historical change, real pluralism, and the social motivations underlying normative representations made by the traditions themselves. The West is largely reduced to a monolithic representation of Christianity, with only slight recognition of differences among Christian traditions (for example, 257, 302), while processes of modernization and secularization are scarcely acknowledged.7 At the same time, resemblanceswhich are never simple identitiesacross traditions have been ignored in the name of declaring Sanskritic traditions untranslatable (22122, 249). Combining recognition of the cultural violence committed by the West with an excess of postcolonial ressentiment, Being Different represents the reductio ad absurdum of cultural relativism. I see the history of the encounter between India and the West in very different terms. There has been a gradual improvement in Western scholars knowledge of Indian traditions followed by an overdue appreciation of the cultural damage perpetrated under colonialism and lingering, in some cases, in the categories of Western scholarship. To see Indians increasingly willing to assert their own traditions in robust terms should be taken as another positive development in the history of cultural dialogue and exchange. But the starting point for such a dialogue must be to look in the mirror. A searching self-criticism must be tempered by a realistic appraisal of ones own and other traditions. The remedy for unjust comparisons cannot be more of the same, only with the gaze reversed. Notes 1. There have been legal efforts to assimilate Buddhism, Jainism, and so on, into Hinduism, as traditions indigenous to India. One example is the Gujarat Freedom of Religion (Amendment) Bill 2006, which freely permitted conversion across these traditions, while restricting conversions to other, ostensibly foreign traditions such as Christianity. Malhotras theoretical construct of dharmic traditions is thus not without realworld precedent and political implications. 2. The most recent comprehensive treatment is Bellah (2011). 3. Malhotras contention that, due to modern geographical science, Lord Krishnas city of Dvaraka has been discovered off the coast of

Comparative Religion as Cultural Combat / 347 Gujarat (65) opens up the possibility that he himself has bought into such claims of mythical geography as those used to establish present-day Ayodhya as the city of Rma. 4. See Yelle (2003: Chapters 2, 3) for a discussion of the linguistic ideology of the Tantras and the view of mantras as a natural or iconic language with magical potency. 5. For a discussion, see Yelle (2013a: Chapter 3; 2013b: Chapter 3). 6. Similarly, the vidaka character in Sanskrit drama as described by Malhotra (21718) is the embodiment of anti-structure and resembles the jester or fool in the courtly culture of the Christian Middle Ages. 7. Malhotras lumping together of Jewish, Christian, or secular as all equally Western is exemplary (4142). References Cited Avalon, Arthur [John Woodroffe]. 1998 [1922]. The Garland of Letters: Studies in the Mantra stra. Madras: Ganesh and Co. Balagangadhara, S.N. 1994. The Heathen in His Blindness: Asia, the West, & the Dynamic of Religion. Leiden: Brill. Bellah, Robert. 2011. Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Buruma, Ian and Avishai Margalit. 2004. Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies. New York: Penguin. King, Richard. 1999. Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and The Mystic East. London: Routledge. Malhotra, Rajiv. 2011. Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism. New Delhi: HarperCollins. Ramanujan, A.K. 1989. Is There an Indian Way of Thinking: An Informal Essay. Contributions to Indian Sociology 23, 1: 4158. Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Turner, Victor. 1977. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Yelle, Robert A. 2003. Explaining Mantras: Ritual, Rhetoric, and the Dream of a Natural Language in Hindu Tantra. New York: Routledge. Yelle, Robert A. 2013a. The Language of Disenchantment: Protestant Literalism and Colonial Discourse in British India. New York: Oxford

348 / Robert A. Yelle University Press. Yelle, Robert A. 2013b. Semiotics of Religion: Signs of the Sacred in History. London: Bloomsbury.

ROBERT A. YELLE is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Memphis. robertyelle@hotmail.com