Friedhelm Hardy
Encyclopedia
Friedhelm Ernst Hardy also known as Fred Hardy (1943 - 4 August 2004) was Professor of Indian Religions, teaching at King's College London
. He was a linguist familiar with both classical
and modern
India
n languages, described in his obituary as "unrivalled in this country and possibly anywhere in the world today". He is the author of two prominent works, The Religious Culture of India: Power, Love and Wisdom and Viraha-Bhakti: The Early History of Kṛṣṇa Devotion in South India.
and according to his obituary "showed an early interest in languages and scripts." He began studying Sanskrit
in Cologne
before moving on to his doctoral work at Oxford University in 1967. While at Oxford, he met Aruna Gokhale, a mathematician, whom he later married.
, specifically all pre-11 century sources starting with the stories of Krishna and the gopi
s, of Northern Literature, and including Mayon
mysticism of the Vaishnava Tamil
saints, Sangam Tamil literature
and Alvars
' Krishna-centered devotion in the rasa
of the emotional union and the dating and history of the Bhagavata Purana
. The resultant thesis was detailed to the point that it had to be abbreviated for its 1983 publication. His book Viraha-bhakti was considered to have contained some major discoveries. His first discovery concerned the emotion displayed towards Krishna
as "bhakti
", or object of devotion, in the Bhagavad Gita
. Hardy demonstrated that this was more of an intellectual type, whereas emotional bhakti is different and expressed in the various connections between records and traditions there is evidence of early "southern Krishnaism", even there was a tendency to allocate this tradition to the Northern traditions. There is a narrative context in which the early writings in Dravidian
culture such as Manimekalai
and the Cilappatikaram
present Krishna, his brother
, and favorite female companions in the similar terms. He argued that the Sanskrit
Bhagavata Purana
is essentially a Sanskrit "translation" of the bhakti of the Tamil alvars
. Accordingly South India
n texts illustrate close parallels to the Sanskrit traditions of Krishna and his gopi
companions, so ubiquitous in later North Indian text and imagery. Some consider his work fundamental to the study of how Hinduism
developed. He had also theorized in his subsequent publications how Tamil bhakti gradually spread to the North India
and laid the ground for the later bhakti of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu
and Vallabhacharya.
After long studies in India, Fred Hardy came up with a theory as to the meaning of erotic sculptures, such as for example visible on the temples of Khajuraho
. The erotic sculptures are visible on may temple of the South India
, the main area of expertise of Hardy. This theory was first expressed to him by people in a temple's environs. Fred Hardy theorized that the erotic sculptures on the outer walls of Hindu temples are intended to keep away demons
from the pure sanctuary of the shrines.
He has suggested: That the global title of "Hinduism
" has been given to [such a variety of religions] must be regarded as an act of pure despair.
He had concluded: religious pluralism is demonstrable nonsense.
religions, The World's Religions: the Religions of Asia published in 1990. He was also notably invited to give the Wilde Lectures on Comparative Religion at Oxford University were later published in 1994 as The Religious Culture of India: Power, Love and Wisdom.
See also Seven Hundred Elegant Verses: c. 360 pp, Friedhelm Hardy, 2008, ISBN 0-8147-3687-4 published earlier this year.
King's College London
King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...
. He was a linguist familiar with both classical
Classical language
A classical language is a language with a literature that is classical. According to UC Berkeley linguist George L. Hart, it should be ancient, it should be an independent tradition that arose mostly on its own, not as an offshoot of another tradition, and it must have a large and extremely rich...
and modern
Modern language
A modern language is any human language that is currently in use. The term is used in language education to distinguish between languages which are used for day-to-day communication and dead classical languages such as Latin, Attic Greek, Sanskrit, and Classical Chinese, which are studied for...
India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n languages, described in his obituary as "unrivalled in this country and possibly anywhere in the world today". He is the author of two prominent works, The Religious Culture of India: Power, Love and Wisdom and Viraha-Bhakti: The Early History of Kṛṣṇa Devotion in South India.
Early years
Hardy was born in the RhinelandRhineland
Historically, the Rhinelands refers to a loosely-defined region embracing the land on either bank of the River Rhine in central Europe....
and according to his obituary "showed an early interest in languages and scripts." He began studying Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
in Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
before moving on to his doctoral work at Oxford University in 1967. While at Oxford, he met Aruna Gokhale, a mathematician, whom he later married.
Notable work
Hardy went to Tamilnadu to conduct research for his doctoral thesis, spending over a year examining the history of KrishnaismKrishnaism
Krishnaism is a group of Hindu denominations within Vaishnavism, centered on devotion to Radha Krishna or other forms of Krishna, identified with Vishnu.The central text of Krishnaism is the Bhagavad Gita....
, specifically all pre-11 century sources starting with the stories of Krishna and the gopi
Gopi
Gopi is a word of Sanskrit origin meaning 'cow-herd girl'. In Hinduism specifically the name gopi is used more commonly to refer to the group of cow herding girls famous within Vaishnava Theology for their unconditional devotion to Krishna as described in the stories of Bhagavata Purana and...
s, of Northern Literature, and including Mayon
Mayon
Mayon may refer to:*Mayon, Cornwall*Mayon Volcano*In Tamil, Mayon is a name for Krishna....
mysticism of the Vaishnava Tamil
Tamil people
Tamil people , also called Tamils or Tamilians, are an ethnic group native to Tamil Nadu, India and the north-eastern region of Sri Lanka. Historic and post 15th century emigrant communities are also found across the world, notably Malaysia, Singapore, Mauritius, South Africa, Australia, Canada,...
saints, Sangam Tamil literature
Tamil literature
Tamil literature refers to the literature in the Tamil language. Tamil literature has a rich and long literary tradition spanning more than two thousand years. The oldest extant works show signs of maturity indicating an even longer period of evolution...
and Alvars
Alvars
The alwar or azhwars were Tamil poet saints of south India who lived between the sixth and ninth centuries A.D. and espoused ‘emotional devotion’ or bhakti to Visnu-Krishna in their songs of longing, ecstasy and service. Sri Vaishnava orthodoxy posits the number of alvars as ten, though there are...
' Krishna-centered devotion in the rasa
Rasa (theology)
Rasa is a Sanskrit theological concept specific to Krishna-centered bhakti traditions, such as Gaudiya Vaishnavism. The theological use of the word can be found early, about two thousand years before the Nimbarka or Caitanya schools of bhakti, in a phrase that Chaitanya traditions frequently...
of the emotional union and the dating and history of the Bhagavata Purana
Bhagavata purana
The Bhāgavata Purāṇa is one of the "Maha" Puranic texts of Hindu literature, with its primary focus on bhakti to the incarnations of Vishnu, particularly Krishna...
. The resultant thesis was detailed to the point that it had to be abbreviated for its 1983 publication. His book Viraha-bhakti was considered to have contained some major discoveries. His first discovery concerned the emotion displayed towards Krishna
Krishna
Krishna is a central figure of Hinduism and is traditionally attributed the authorship of the Bhagavad Gita. He is the supreme Being and considered in some monotheistic traditions as an Avatar of Vishnu...
as "bhakti
Bhakti
In Hinduism Bhakti is religious devotion in the form of active involvement of a devotee in worship of the divine.Within monotheistic Hinduism, it is the love felt by the worshipper towards the personal God, a concept expressed in Hindu theology as Svayam Bhagavan.Bhakti can be used of either...
", or object of devotion, in the Bhagavad Gita
Bhagavad Gita
The ' , also more simply known as Gita, is a 700-verse Hindu scripture that is part of the ancient Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata, but is frequently treated as a freestanding text, and in particular, as an Upanishad in its own right, one of the several books that constitute general Vedic tradition...
. Hardy demonstrated that this was more of an intellectual type, whereas emotional bhakti is different and expressed in the various connections between records and traditions there is evidence of early "southern Krishnaism", even there was a tendency to allocate this tradition to the Northern traditions. There is a narrative context in which the early writings in Dravidian
Dravidian peoples
Dravidian peoples is a term used to refer to the diverse groups of people who natively speak languages belonging to the Dravidian language family. Populations of speakers of around 220 million are found mostly in Southern India. Other Dravidian people are found in parts of central India, Sri Lanka,...
culture such as Manimekalai
Manimekalai
Manimekalai or Maṇimekalai , written by the Tamil Buddhist poet Seethalai Saathanar is one of the masterpieces of Tamil literature. It is considered to be one of the five great epics of Tamil literature. Manimekalai is a poem in 30 cantos...
and the Cilappatikaram
Cilappatikaram
Silappatikaram Silappatikaram has been dated to likely belong to the beginning of Christian era, although the author might have built upon a pre-existing folklore to spin this tale. The story involves the three Tamil kingdoms of the ancient era, the Chola, the Pandya and the Chera...
present Krishna, his brother
Balarama
Balarama , also known as Baladeva, Balabhadra and Halayudha, is the elder brother of the divine being, Krishna in Hinduism. Within Vaishnavism Hindu traditions Balarama is worshipped as an Avatar of Vishnu, and he is also listed as such in the Bhagavata Purana...
, and favorite female companions in the similar terms. He argued that the Sanskrit
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
Bhagavata Purana
Bhagavata purana
The Bhāgavata Purāṇa is one of the "Maha" Puranic texts of Hindu literature, with its primary focus on bhakti to the incarnations of Vishnu, particularly Krishna...
is essentially a Sanskrit "translation" of the bhakti of the Tamil alvars
Alvars
The alwar or azhwars were Tamil poet saints of south India who lived between the sixth and ninth centuries A.D. and espoused ‘emotional devotion’ or bhakti to Visnu-Krishna in their songs of longing, ecstasy and service. Sri Vaishnava orthodoxy posits the number of alvars as ten, though there are...
. Accordingly South India
South India
South India is the area encompassing India's states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu as well as the union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry, occupying 19.31% of India's area...
n texts illustrate close parallels to the Sanskrit traditions of Krishna and his gopi
Gopi
Gopi is a word of Sanskrit origin meaning 'cow-herd girl'. In Hinduism specifically the name gopi is used more commonly to refer to the group of cow herding girls famous within Vaishnava Theology for their unconditional devotion to Krishna as described in the stories of Bhagavata Purana and...
companions, so ubiquitous in later North Indian text and imagery. Some consider his work fundamental to the study of how Hinduism
Hinduism
Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...
developed. He had also theorized in his subsequent publications how Tamil bhakti gradually spread to the North India
North India
North India, known natively as Uttar Bhārat or Shumālī Hindustān , is a loosely defined region in the northern part of India. The exact meaning of the term varies by usage...
and laid the ground for the later bhakti of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was a Vaishnava saint and social reformer in eastern India in the 16th century, believed by followers of Gaudiya Vaishnavism to be the full incarnation of Lord Krishna...
and Vallabhacharya.
Notable theories and statements
-
- Erotic images on Hindu Temples
After long studies in India, Fred Hardy came up with a theory as to the meaning of erotic sculptures, such as for example visible on the temples of Khajuraho
Khajuraho
The Khajuraho Group of Monuments in Khajuraho , a town in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, located in Chhatarpur District, about southeast of New Delhi, are one of the most popular tourist destinations in India. Khajuraho has the largest group of medieval Hindu and Jain temples, famous for...
. The erotic sculptures are visible on may temple of the South India
South India
South India is the area encompassing India's states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu as well as the union territories of Lakshadweep and Pondicherry, occupying 19.31% of India's area...
, the main area of expertise of Hardy. This theory was first expressed to him by people in a temple's environs. Fred Hardy theorized that the erotic sculptures on the outer walls of Hindu temples are intended to keep away demons
Asura
-In Hinduism:In Hinduism, the Asuras constitute a group of power-seeking deities, sometimes considered sinful and materialistic. The Daityas and Danavas were combinedly known as Asuras. The Asura were opposed to the Devas. Both groups are children of Kasyapa...
from the pure sanctuary of the shrines.
-
- Modern Myth of Hinduism
He has suggested: That the global title of "Hinduism
Hinduism
Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...
" has been given to [such a variety of religions] must be regarded as an act of pure despair.
-
- Pluralism in religion
He had concluded: religious pluralism is demonstrable nonsense.
Other works and projects
His also was an editor of a general companion to IndicIndic
Indic can refer to:* Indo-Aryan languages* Indic scripts* Related to the Indian Subcontinent* of or related to India ; see Indica...
religions, The World's Religions: the Religions of Asia published in 1990. He was also notably invited to give the Wilde Lectures on Comparative Religion at Oxford University were later published in 1994 as The Religious Culture of India: Power, Love and Wisdom.
See also Seven Hundred Elegant Verses: c. 360 pp, Friedhelm Hardy, 2008, ISBN 0-8147-3687-4 published earlier this year.
See also
- Svayam BhagavanSvayam BhagavanSvayam Bhagavan , "The Lord" or Lord Himself, is a Sanskrit theological term. The term refers to the concept of absolute representation of the monotheistic God as Bhagavan within Hinduism....
- KrishnaKrishnaKrishna is a central figure of Hinduism and is traditionally attributed the authorship of the Bhagavad Gita. He is the supreme Being and considered in some monotheistic traditions as an Avatar of Vishnu...
- Clay Sanskrit LibraryClay Sanskrit LibraryThe Clay Sanskrit Library is a series of books published by New York University Press and the JJC Foundation. Each work features the text in its original language on the left-hand page, with its English translation on the right...
- Bhagavata PuranaBhagavata puranaThe Bhāgavata Purāṇa is one of the "Maha" Puranic texts of Hindu literature, with its primary focus on bhakti to the incarnations of Vishnu, particularly Krishna...
- PuranasPuranasThe Puranas are a genre of important Hindu, Jain and Buddhist religious texts, notably consisting of narratives of the history of the universe from creation to destruction, genealogies of kings, heroes, sages, and demigods, and descriptions of Hindu cosmology, philosophy, and geography.Puranas...
- Hardy (surname)Hardy (surname)Hardy is an English surname of French origin. Hardy comes from Old French hardi meaning "bold" which came from Old Frankish hardjan meaning "to make hard." The name could also be an Anglicized form of the Irish name Mac Giolla Deacair meaning ‘son of the hard lad’...