2.1 The Choice for Advaita

The intellectual and spiritual encounter with Advaita Vedanta in the twentieth century has its immediate foundation in the pioneering work of the Bengali Brahmin convert, Brahmabandhab Upadhyay (1861-1907),who, though marginalised and misunderstood at the time, was a great influence on subsequent Catholic encounter with Hinduism.Footnote ¹⁶ Like de Nobili Upadhyay engaged with the culture of Brahmanical Hinduism and adopted the clothes and manner of life of the Hindu renouncer (sannyasin) to promote dialogue with Hindus and in pursuit of an Indian Christianity. Upadhyay strove to live out and promote his own dual identity as both a Brahmin and a Christian and like de Nobili was prepared to allow a version of caste as compatible with Christianity. He also made an attempt at setting up a monastic community on the traditional Hindu pattern of the ashram.

Though he initially rejected Advaita Vedanta, Upadhyay later argued for its convergence with the Thomist account and suitability for expressing Christian teaching.Footnote ¹⁷ In choosing Thomism he was following the emphasis on neo-scholastic Thomism in the Catholic Church in the later half of the 19^th century. Likewise the choice of Advaita reflected the prestige being given to it by Upadhyay's contemporary Vivekananda. This prestige was reflected in the introduction Thibaut added to his still widely used translation of the commentaries of Shankara and Ramanuja on the Vedantic Brahma Sutra text, a translation with which Upadhyay was well acquainted.Footnote ¹⁸

Upadhyay's choices for the shape of an inculturated Christianity were further developed in subsequent Catholic theological and spiritual encounter with Hinduism. Just a decade after Upadhyay's death, there began the sustained intellectual encounter undertaken by the ‘Calcutta School’ of Jesuits, including Pierre Johanns (1885-1955), Pierre Fallon (1912-1985) and Richard de Smet (1916-1998).Footnote ¹⁹ They undertook serious study of the various traditions of Hinduism, as well as sought to identify what might be used for expressing Christian faith in Hindu terms. Their Christianity was Thomist in character and there was a clear preference for systematic Vedanta, and a tendency, though not an altogether exclusive one, to favour Advaita. De Smet furthered and refined this encounter in the time leading up to and after the Council. His approach has been promoted by others, especially his student Sara Grant RSCJ (1922-2000)Footnote ²⁰ and, further afield, the American theologian, Bradley Malkovsky.Footnote ²¹ The work of these Jesuits and their successors has done much to shape Catholic perspectives on Hinduism itself and on the possibilities for the intellectual encounter between Catholic and Hindu thought, be it in India or further afield.

This encounter between Thomism and the Vedanta is also evident in the well-known and highly influential work of the Indian and Spanish theologian Raimundo Panikkar (1918-), who has furthered the intellectual encounter between Catholicism and Hinduism, as well as theological reflection on religious pluralism and the nature of interreligious dialogue. The scope of Panikkar's work and his outlook have developed considerably over the decades. Nonetheless the encounter between Thomism and Advaita Vedanta forms the heart of his best-known work, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism.Footnote ²² In the final section he presents a Christological commentary on one of the Brahma Sutras, in which Christ is understood as the creative principle of the world, Ishvara. Panikkar depicts his endeavour as a constructive reading of the text in a way that parallels Thomas' use of his Greek sources.Footnote ²³

Upadhyay's efforts also proved a source of inspiration for a more spiritual and contemplative encounter with Vedanta in the form of the ashramic movement.Footnote ²⁴ The best known of the Catholic ashrams is Saccidananda Ashram established in 1950 by the French priest Jules Monchanin and French Benedictine Henri Le Saux (Abhishiktananda) (1910-73) in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, later to be joined and succeeded by the English Benedictine, Bede Griffiths (1906-93).Footnote ²⁵ Sara Grant, for her part, was joint head of the Christa Prema Seva Ashram in Pune, established in 1927 and re-founded in 1972.Footnote ²⁶ Here too there is a marked preference for Advaita Vedanta, though in this more contemplative approach there is an emphasis on the experiential rather than intellectual encounter. An important aspect of this has been the contemplative exploration of the Advaitic experience of non-duality with Brahman, conceived under the threefold description sac-cid-ananda (being, consciousness and bliss), in relation to the Christian experience of interpersonal communion with God, conceived as the three Persons of the Trinity.Footnote ²⁷ In his detailed account of this, Abhishiktananda explores an inward meeting between the Advaitic and Christian experiences, viewed either as a progression from one experience to the other, or as a creative ‘symbiosis’ of the two experiences.Footnote ²⁸

2.2 The Catholic Understanding of Advaita

We have noted that the particular choice of Advaita Vedanta was influenced by the desire to present Christian faith in a form attractive to the upper castes of Brahmanical society and because of the prestige being attached to Advaita. A particular concern was to avoid Christianity being dismissed by Advaitic Hindus as spiritually and intellectually inferior, for within the Advaitic paradigm theistic religion is seen as a lower and provisional stage, a stepping-stone to the Advaitic experience. Advaita thus reconciles the first and second trends in Hindu religious thought by subordinating the theistic account and finally doing away with it. However, thus understood, Advaita Vedanta would seem conceptually, as well as spiritually, incompatible with the Christian account of God and the creation. However, those Christians drawn to inculturation into Advaita have argued for an alternative reading of Advaita that turns out to converge with Christian theism.

To appreciate and appraise their endeavour it will be useful to outline the standard reading of Advaita in more detail.Footnote ²⁹ As commonly understood, Advaita, as radical non-dualism, is held to maintain that the soul (atman) is strictly identical with Brahman. Brahman only is ultimately real (paramartha-sat) and empirical duality, be it of the material world, or of finite selves, is only apparently or practically real (vyavaharika-sat). Within the Vedantic tradition Brahman is said both to be immutable, but also to be the substantive, as well as the efficient cause, of the world, transforming itself into the empirical world. To reconcile these two ideas Advaita maintains that the world is only the illusory transformation (vivarta) of Brahman into the world. The personal creative Lord (Ishvara or saguna brahman) of theism is only part of that illusory manifestation and real only on the level of apparent or practical reality. In reality Brahman remains immutable and impersonal or supra-personal in nature, without attributes (nirguna).

It is important, however, to note a nuance in the Advaitic gradation of reality. For the level of the practically real (vyavaharika-sat) is held to be very real for those who remain and act on its level, on which ritual and social duties hold good. This level has a reality which is higher and distinct from a third level of reality in Advaita, that the individual imagination, which is only fictitiously real (pratibhasika-sat).Footnote ³⁰ Only when the liberating realisation of the non-duality or identity of the soul and Brahman comes about is the world on the level of practical reality seen as lacking substantial reality and value, as illusory in nature.

On this reading many Christians have concluded that Advaita is as such incompatible with the Christian account.Footnote ³¹ Pierre Johanns takes Advaita to teach the world to be the illusory manifestation of Brahman, but in order to produce a Vedantic account which would express the Thomist one, seeks to amalgamate Advaita with theist Vedanta, especially the Visistadvaita of Ramanuja, in which the personal nature of Brahman and the distinction of the soul from Brahman, even in the state of release, are affirmed.Footnote ³² Johanns feels unable to accept Ramanuja's account on its own as compatible with the Thomist account, because he feels that Ramanuja's account of the relationship between Brahman and the world is pantheistic.Footnote ³³

Other Christian thinkers have argued instead that the standard reading fails to give a true account of Advaita and that properly understood it is compatible with the Thomist account.Footnote ³⁴ The most systematic and enduring attempt has been that of de Smet and his successors, especially Sara Grant.Footnote ³⁵ They argue that we should distinguish the account of Shankara, the principal teacher of the Advaitic system, from later Advaitic tradition. A fundamental part of their argument is based on the acceptance of western critical methods in dealing with Advaitic texts, accepting only some of the works traditionally ascribed to Shankara as genuine. Footnote ³⁶

De SmetFootnote ³⁷ argues that in Shankara's account the distinction between the ultimately real and practically real should be taken as one between self-subsistent being and contingent being. Likewise, Shankara's affirmation of the identity of the soul with Brahman is to be understood as indicating that the soul has no independent existence.Footnote ³⁸ Statements that seem to deny the real production of the world only deny that Brahman undergoes change in the production of the world. Moreover, rather than relegating Ishvara to a lower level of reality, Shankara often uses the term Ishvara and Brahman interchangeably. When he does deny that Ishvara is Brahman and talk of Ishvara as belonging to the practical level of reality, this again serves only to deny that Brahman in itself has really distinct attributes and is really related to the world as creator and lord, in the sense of undergoing change.Footnote ³⁹

Shankara's account can, thus, be said to be compatible with the Thomist account of God and creation, concerned to express the same non-reciprocal relation of dependence that Aquinas does through his account of mixed relations. De Smet is keen to assert that the central concept of non-dualism in Shankara is not the same as monism, for it affirms dependence not identity of being.Footnote ⁴⁰ In the released state (moksa) there is an epistemological rather than an ontological shift, in which the world does not cease to have reality, but is perceived clearly to be contingent, to have no existence independent of Brahman as its cause.Footnote ⁴¹ Based on his reading of Shankara, de Smet calls for inculturation into Advaitic categories in preference to those of bhakti.Footnote ⁴²

For de Smet the difference between Shankara and Aquinas is thus one of expression, not of content. Shankara affirms contingency by a more negative approach, valorising finite being negatively against absolute being, whereas Aquinas has a more positive approach, using the language of participation.Footnote ⁴³ De Smet and his successors have also come to talk of the Advaitic account as a complementary expression that might enrich the Thomist account and Christian experience. De Smet remarked that Shankara's account had taught him personally to be aware of ‘God's non-dual presence within.’Footnote ⁴⁴ Grant argues that non-dual language and experience, as well as the Vedantic emphasis on the immanence of Brahman, challenges tendencies in western theological discourse towards a dualism between God and the world, in which God is depicted as outside and remote from the world.Footnote ⁴⁵ Her suggestions have been taken up by the American Thomist, David Burrell, in an exploration of the way Aquinas uses non-Christian accounts as intellectual resources for developing his doctrine of creation. Accepting Grant's account of the complementarity between Shankara's non-dualism and the Thomist account of creation, Burrell suggests that non-dual language is not to be feared as pantheistic and can be useful in expressing the unique and inseparable relationship of creation, helping us to ‘think both creator and creature together.’Footnote ⁴⁶

2.3 Problems with the Christian Reading of Advaita and the Theistic Alternative

This attempt to argue for an alternative reading of Advaita remains problematic as an act of theological inculturation. Conceptually it has won very little acceptance as an account of Shankara's teaching. De Smet presents his understanding of Shankara as being an exposition of the account and he has been charged with assimilating the two accounts into each other, rather than showing an objective convergence.Footnote ⁴⁷ Certainly his successors, such as Grant, are more cautious about identifying too complete a correspondence between the accounts. Grant is prepared to acknowledge that Shankara probably did not think that the released soul continued to have a distinct identity, thus conceding the central doctrine of Advaita that the soul is ultimately identical with Brahman. Instead, she argues that we can read Shankara's account in such way that, within its terms, scope can be given for affirming the continued difference of the soul.Footnote ⁴⁸

Thus a Christian account of God and creation in Advaitic terms is more easily justified as a creative adaptation or re-reading of Shankara, just as Aquinas adapted the Greek and other resources he made use of.Footnote ⁴⁹ Advaitic Trinitarian and Christological accounts are likewise creative interpretations of Advaita in the encounter with Christian faith. However, this has to reckon with the problem of the reception by Hindus of such an account of Advaita. Unlike the ancient Greek culture with which Thomas engaged, the Hindu culture is a living tradition, interpreted by those who adhere to it. As Grant and Malkovsky have been ready to admit, neither this interpretation of Shankara, nor the modern historical critical approach to the Advaitic corpus which supports it, have won any significant acceptance among Advaitins, who continue for the most part to accept the standard account of Advaita and, in traditional manner, to read Shankara and the later Advaitic accounts as in doctrinal continuity with each other.Footnote ⁵⁰ This means that such Christian inculturation into Advaita is open to considerable misunderstanding on the part of Hindus or rejection as the product of an alien interpretative method supporting an incorrect interpretation.

While any Christian inculturation into Hindu culture is bound to be transformative to some extent, the problem with such use of Advaita is that so fundamental a discontinuity with the standard account that it undermines the dialogical success of such inculturation. In this regard Panikkar has made some important observations on what is involved in successful inculturation into the traditions of Hinduism. He has promoted the term ‘interculturation’ as better expressing that what takes place is an exchange between Christian and Hindu religious cultures. This recognises that Christianity in India already has a cultural expression and that it engages with a Hindu culture that is the living concern of Hindus. Panikkar argues that this cultural exchange is the more successful, the more it is understood appropriately by both the Christian and the Hindu cultures and acceptable to them.Footnote ⁵¹

In effect, on this Christian reading, Shankara is taken out of the first trend of Indian thought and placed within the second theistic trend. It might seem just as good to develop a Christian Vedanta using one of the existing theistic Vedantic accounts. Despite the prestige given to it, Advaita is only one system of the Vedanta and it is only Advaitins who rank other Vedantic schools below Advaita. For the adherents of theistic Vedanta, among whom are also members of the higher castes, Advaita is not accepted as the pinnacle of Hindu thought and spirituality, but reckoned an erroneous system, based on incorrect exegesis of the Vedantic texts and faulty reasoning.

An attractive alternative to Advaita is the theistic Vedanta of the south Indian teacher Ramanuja.Footnote ⁵² Ramanuja's Vedantic tradition came to be known as Visistadvaita, the ‘non-dualism (advaita) of what is differentiated (visista),’ often, but less correctly rendered as ‘qualified non-dualism.’ In this system Brahman and the personal God are explicitly identified and the permanent reality and distinction of God, the material world and souls are affirmed. At the same time, the relationship is also described as advaita (non-dualism), because material things and souls are contingent on Brahman for their existence at all times. Ramanuja's central conception of this relationship is that the entities of the world form the body of Brahman. The final goal is the blissful realisation of this relationship and of the direct knowledge or vision of Brahman. This comes about through bhakti, which Ramanuja depicts in Vedantic terms as a form of devotional meditation on the Vedantic texts, a steady calling to mind of God that leads into vision of God. This process and the attainment of the final goal are dependent on divine grace.Footnote ⁵³

The principal advocates of a positive engagement with Ramanuja have until recently been Protestant Christians. Above all, Appasamy, a bishop of the Church of South India, sought to develop a Christian theology which draws heavily on the Hindu bhakti traditions, worked out in the terms of Ramanuja's account.Footnote ⁵⁴ Catholic theologians such as Johanns and de Smet, on the other hand, rejected Ramanuja's account as pantheistic because he seemed to them to end up affirming a substantial unity between Brahman and the world.Footnote ⁵⁵ This interpretation of Ramanuja can, however, be shown to be mistaken. A careful reading of his work, giving due priority to his embodiment cosmology, makes clear that the relationship is one between self-subsistent being and contingent being, for the embodiment relationship is a two-substance dualism. As such his cosmological account is compatible with the account of creation found in Aquinas. Footnote ⁵⁶ In fact, the type of Christian re-reading of Shankara we have considered ends up interpreting Shankara's non-dualism in ways that bear a remarkable likeness to the account given by Ramanuja.Footnote ⁵⁷

In the final quarter of the twentieth century Catholic theologians have also gradually come to show interest in and openness to Ramanuja and to his tradition of Vedanta. For her part, Grant is more open to Ramanuja than de Smet and ready to see his system as complementary to that of Shankara.Footnote ⁵⁸ As the theologian Julius Lipner has noted, Ramanuja's account, as Visistadvaita, is also characteristically Vedantic, emphasising the non-dualism of Brahman and the world and the immanence of Brahman in the world. It has the same potential to complement and enrich the existing Christian account, be it in the evolution of an Indian Christianity or more widely.Footnote ⁵⁹ Ramanuja's distinctive concept of the world as the body of God might itself have something to offer, if appropriated as a metaphor to express the Christian account of creation.Footnote ⁶⁰ Ramanuja's account might, then, be considered at least an alternative to Advaita, if inculturation into systematic Vedanta is sought. Moreover, as a system it is free from the difficulties we have identified with Advaita, for there is no need to argue for a re-reading of his cosmological account that is fundamentally at odds with the way modern Visistadvaitins understand it.

3.1 Social Concern and the Liberational Critique of Hinduism

The term, ‘Dalit’, refers either solely to the so-called ‘untouchables’ (or Scheduled Castes) or to these and tribal people (or the Scheduled Tribes). Together they constitute about a quarter to a third of the population of India. The ‘untouchables’ are those traditionally considered polluting by higher caste Hindus and excluded from areas of religious and social life. They have an ambiguous relationship with Hinduism, either considered outside the hierarchy of the caste system or at its bottom. Post-Independence India has seen the increased conscientisation of the Dalits, especially since the 1970s, as well as attempts by the Indian government to push forward social reforms meant to improve the situation of these and other disadvantaged groups.

As a result of mass conversions of Dalits to Christianity at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, of the present Catholic community fifty percent belong to the Scheduled Castes and twenty-five percent to the Scheduled Tribes.Footnote ⁶¹ The emergence of a Dalit voice within the Church has encouraged the view that it is on the level of the Dalits that Christians should develop their theological and practical attitudes towards Hinduism. The kind of concern shown by de Nobili and Upadhyay to be acceptable socially to the Brahmins is seen as typifying the wrong approach of earlier engagements. Dalit Christians protest, moreover, that oppressive caste structures continue in the Catholic community. They argue that they end up being doubly discriminated against, because as Christians they do not enjoy the same rights as Hindu Dalits under the Indian constitution, on the grounds that there is no caste in Christianity, whereas in reality they do suffer caste discrimination within the Christian community.Footnote ⁶² A shift to an emphasis on social emancipation, focused on the socio-political struggle of the Dalits, challenges any inculturation into the intellectual and spiritual traditions of Brahmanical Hinduism, Advaita or otherwise, insofar as they provide support for the caste system and insofar as they promote a spirituality of withdrawal and transcendence instead of concern for social transformation.

It is in this context that a liberative hermeneutic of religions is favoured for determining what kind of inculturation there can be into the traditions of Hinduism. A prominent advocate of this, Soosai Arokiasamy,Footnote ⁶³ stresses that a liberational perspective insists on the need to keep desire for spiritual salvation and concern for social transformation together in a dynamic tension, or within Christian terms, to keep love of God together with love of neighbour. The liberative hermeneutic aims to identify the prophetic, or liberative, core in Hinduism and also to identify how it has been domesticated to fit into oppressive structures, so that it may be freed to function once more as liberational. Arokiasamy identifies the bhakti movement as such a core, which he interprets as primarily a movement of members of the lower castes or outcastes, in which God is held to offer salvation equally to all whatever their status, thereby rendering irrelevant the spiritual hierarchy and exclusiveness of the caste system, where lower or higher place is justified as the consequences of karma. To illustrate this, Arokiasamy refers to passages in the very influential bhakti text, the Bhagavata Purana, as indicating the special concern that God shows for the poor within the bhakti tradition, and he mentions the Shaiva Basava (c.1106-67) and the Muslim Kabir (1440-1518) as both teaching that devotion to God has to be combined with concern for the welfare of others. Within this perspective bhakti is domesticated, when it is combined with affirmation of the values of the caste system or a world-transcending spirituality, thus undermining its power to motivate social transformation. Arokiasamy points to this taking place in the tendency in Brahmanical Hinduism for bhakti to be integrated into a scheme of three saving paths (marga), along with caste-specific action (karma) and liberating knowledge (jnana).Footnote ⁶⁴

The emphasis on social emancipation can lead to a wholesale rejection of Brahmanical Hinduism as inextricably linked to the oppressive structures of caste and to argue for dichotomy and opposition between Brahmanical culture and Dalit culture, as two mutually exclusive choices for inculturation.Footnote ⁶⁵ Arokiasamy's liberative critique of Hinduism itself, however, would seem to offer a less extreme alternative, for it leaves the way open for a creative adoption of Brahmanical Hindu traditions freed from oppressive elements. In keeping with this, many Indian Christian theologians continue to explore a positive interaction with Brahmanical Hinduism, often critical of elements which fail to address these issues of social emancipation, but also able to find within these traditions the basis for an authentic Indian Christian theology and spirituality.Footnote ⁶⁶ Any rigid dichotomy between Brahmanical Hinduism and the religion and culture of Dalits might seem to ignore the history of and continuing potential for a creative interaction between them, the kind of interaction which is reflected in the complex and varied relationship between Brahmanical Hinduism and bhakti theism.Footnote ⁶⁷ The Indian identity of the Catholic community is, in any case, neither solely that of Dalit culture nor Brahmanical Hindu culture. Footnote ⁶⁸

Arokiasamy's Asian liberational perspective, moreover, depicts concern for social transformation going along with the pursuit of spiritual advancement, rather than replacing it. In like manner, a number of those thinkers who have engaged in intellectual and spiritual encounter with Advaita have argued that a distinctive Indian liberative theology should be concerned with both social and spiritual liberation. Panikkar grounds intercultural dialogue and exchange in concern for the mutual liberation of both Christian and Hindu cultures and depicts this as both liberation from injustice and liberation for the attainment of the ultimate goals of human life.Footnote ⁶⁹ Thus, the shift to social concerns is not in itself exclusive of intellectual and spiritual concerns.

3:2 Towards a Liberative Inculturation into Hindu Bhakti

Such a liberational perspective will be critical of a number of features of Advaita Vedanta. Advaita affirms the caste hierarchy, for traditionally only those who are high caste are eligible to study the Vedas and hence to follow the Vedantic path for liberation. Advaita would, moreover, seem to have only a limited scope for constructing a positive view of the world that might motivate emphasis on social concern. Even the Christian reading of Advaita, in which Advaita affirms the reality of a contingent world, still expresses a fairly negative evaluation of the world in itself. Advaita's concern is not the transformation of the world of practical existence, but withdrawal from it and its transcendence in the liberating experience of the unity of the soul with Brahman. In recent times those Christians emphasising social emancipation have, for their part, often been very critical of the contemplative spirituality of the ashramic engagement with Hinduism, as insufficiently unconcerned with the social and political reality of most Christians in India. Even within the neo-Hindu movement itself there was doubt over the suitability of Advaita for constructing a positive social ethic, which might serve to bring about social change and growth. Important neo-Hindus such as Bankim Chandra Chatterji (1838-1894) and Gandhi (1869-1948) turned instead to the Hindu theistic traditions for the resources they needed.

Although from the liberational perspective the developed bhakti traditions have themselves tended to allow caste structures to be reaffirmed, they have also been a force for social change and have retained an inherent dynamic to challenge the religious value of social hierarchy and exclusion. An ethic for social transformation seems to find an easier basis in the theist trend in Hinduism in general, which affirms the reality and value of the world and interpersonal relations and where there is found an emphasis on concern for others. Bhakti traditions tend to emphasise release from existence affected by ignorance and karma, rather than from materiality and embodiment as such. In Ramanuja's Visistadvaita, for instance, not only is embodiment viewed as a good thing in the state of release, but even the present life of samsara changes from being place of sorrow to one of delight for the devotee whose will is in harmony with that of God, the world in itself being the manifestation of the glory of God.

A liberational perspective suggesting a new engagement with the bhakti tradition co-incides with a much greater openness to Hindu theism on the part of Catholics in the second half of the twentieth century. Earlier generations of Christians, including many of those Catholics who favoured encounter with Advaita, tended to be quite negative towards the devotional traditions of Hinduism and to see them as the opposite of what they understood Christianity to be, taking the variety of Hindu theistic traditions to be polytheism and the ubiquitous worship of images to be idolatry. Hindu devotion itself seemed to lack a sufficiently ethical focus and to tend to the overly emotional and erotic. Hindu mythology was taken at face value and dismissed as anthropomorphic and as picturing the gods in an immoral light.Footnote ⁷⁰

Upadhyay, for his part, initially characterised Hindu devotionalism as morally degrading, singling out the myth of the young Krishna with the naked gopis (cow-herd girls) as expressing only an offensive eroticism. He also characterised Hindu worship of images as idolatrous, in contrast to the veneration shown to Christian images in Catholic devotion. Later, however, he came later to argue that Krishna was a moral exemplar for Hindus to emulate, now reading this myth as symbolising and teaching the reconciliation in Krishna of renunciation and involvement in the world.Footnote ⁷¹ The Jesuit scholars we have considered likewise often have had considerable reservations about Hindu theism. Nonetheless, they too have gradually come to show greater openness, especially since the Council. Johanns is unhappy with what he regards as anthropomorphic and irreverent elements in the mythology and theology of bhakti, even though he admires the fundamental attitudes of Hindu devotional religion, with the emphasis on surrender to God in love. A generation later, however, Fallon is willing to depict Hindu mythology as a symbolic communication of truths and values. He also acknowledges the underlying and often very explicit monotheistic perspectives to be found in Hindu theism. Moreover, he recognises that the properly installed image in Hindu worship, as the locus of the sacramental presence or embodiment of God (arcavatara), finds a better parallel in the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist rather than in the use of images.Footnote ⁷² This type of shift has continued and Catholic theologians engaged in serious study of Hinduism would now want to distance themselves from the type of negative and contrastive language found in earlier Christian appraisal of Hindu theism.Footnote ⁷³

A move towards a more sympathetic appraisal of the devotional traditions has gone with an openness to intellectual and spiritual inculturation into them. For instance, Gispert-Sauch, a Jesuit at Vidyajyoti College, in a discussion of how the Bhaktisutra of Narada, a treatise on the nature of bhakti, might help develop an Indian Christology, finds in the same episode with the gopis not a lack of reverence for God or the promotion of eroticism, but an example of the humble devotion of those who have nothing but their nakedness to offer. He finds in the depiction of devotion (bhakti) and the devotee (bhakta) a Indian Christological model whereby Christ can be seen as the true devotee, wholly oriented to God, as well as a model for Christian discipleship.Footnote ⁷⁴ Likewise, Klaus Klostermaier's encounter with the Vaishnavas in Vrindavan leads him to explore a Christology within the Vaishnava Pancaratra scheme of five forms of divine manifestation.Footnote ⁷⁵

Attempts at inculturation into Hindu theism, however, also have to recognise the danger of considerable misunderstanding by Hindus if some elements are adopted. The obvious example of this is the difficulty with any straightforward use of the Vaishnava concept of the avatara (divine descent) as a way of expressing the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation.Footnote ⁷⁶ While the concept of the avatara has often seemed a natural parallel for the Incarnation, there are serious objections against its suitability for expressing the nature and scope of the Incarnation in Christian thinking. For instance, the avataras are not incarnations into the bodies which human beings have in samsara, for within the Hindu account, the avatara cannot take on a samsaric body, nor can it suffer, because such bodies and suffering are the result of karma, which God does not have. The avataras are also many and often clearly limited in their scope. Thus, although Klostermaier favours the Pancaratra scheme in which the avatara is one form of divine manifestation, he refuses to align Christ with the avatara, in order to avoid Hindu misunderstanding. Moreover, from a liberational perspective, it has been argued that the avatara doctrine manifests the kind of world-transcending spirituality that contrasts with concern for the transformation of this world.Footnote ⁷⁷

A number of Catholic theologians have sought a positive engagement with the rich devotional traditions of South India, both Tamil Shaivism and Vaishvaism. Just as Catholic scholars are becoming more open conceptually to Ramanuja's theistic Vedantic, so they are becoming more open to the spirituality of the Sri Vaishnava tradition to which he belonged.Footnote ⁷⁸ Sri Vaishnavism is itself rooted in the spirituality of its great bhakti poet-mystics, the Alvars, and represents a reconciliation of Sanskritic Brahmanical culture and Tamil culture. For his part, Ramanuja is held to have made efforts to improve the status of members of the low castes and to secure their involvement in temple religious practice.Footnote ⁷⁹ A liberational critique would, of course, find here much domestication of the bhakti tradition. Ramanuja's own conception of bhakti, developed within Vedantic terms, is itself accommodated to caste eligibility for access to Vedic knowledge, as well as reflecting the basic world-view of Vedanta. Within the Sri Vaishnava tradition caste restrictions have also come to be re-imposed concerning access to some temples. However, within this tradition the inherent dynamic of bhakti to transcend such restrictions is manifest in another form of devotion, prapatti, self-surrender to God, which is seen as open to all and even the superior path for all to follow. Moreover, the more radical Ramananda (14^th century), one of the leading figures of the sant movement, and his followers are understood to be rooted in the teaching and spirituality of Ramanuja and the Sri Vaishnava tradition. These developments show the potential of bhakti for encouraging change and transformation in Hinduism, even though domestication is also taking place. There might, then, be a creative inculturation into Visistadvaita and Sri Vaishnava theology and spirituality, which builds upon its own history of cross-cultural fusion and social emancipation.