The Hermit's Hut

Avishek Ray

In his The Hermit’s Hut, Kazi K. Ashraf provides a profoundly interesting study of asceticism and architecture in the context of (Buddhist) India, and in so doing, examines how ‘the narratives of asceticism are deeply etched by the profile of a hut’ (p.2). The book with glossy pages and some 150 illustrations, all reflective of an outstanding production works in a number of registers: ‘phenomenological descriptions, religious ideas, yogic practices, sociological formation, metaphysical constructs, and fabrications of home and homelessness’ (p. 21), and throws light on how discursive practices centered around the ascetic’s dwelling function as a symbolic register of the politics of asceticism and the rise thereof in Buddhist India.

The book comprises of seven chapters plus an Introduction. In the first chapter ‘Asceticism and Architecture’, Ashraf does a genealogy of the evolution of the hut. The second chapter presents a philosophical inquiry into notion(s) of home/hut and implications thereof. It reminds that the idea of ‘home’ invokes disjunctive temporalities and totally different value systems in the contexts of two divergent and mutually obfuscating trajectories: the household (grhyastha) system and the critical discourse of what Ashraf calls the ‘ascetic imagination’. The third chapter deals with the concept of ‘home’ in the Buddhist ascetic tradition in particular while the fourth chapter of crucial significance discusses how the dwelling/home becomes a metaphor of the body. The fifth chapter, in sum, problematizes the purported association between asceticism and primitivism. Building upon this, the sixth and seventh chapters focus on the multiple iterations of the home/hut, both as a spatialarchitectural territory and a concept.

Indeed, the topic of the book is a rich one and, in its broadest possible outlines, Ashraf’s thesis about the intimacy between asceticism and ascetic structures of dwelling is sound. Given the fact that ‘in the historiography of Indian architecture, the ascetic hut has, for the most part, vanished from the horizon’ (p. 3), there is much to admire in Ashraf’s endeavor and his study, involving an impressive combination of careful architectural analysis and much broader (Buddhist) philosophical scholarship, is a total revelation. Notwithstanding its merits, there are also some claims in the book that I take issues with. First, take this instance of confusing or contradicting timeframe evident in the two citations below:

From the third century BCE or so, the hermit and the hut began to mirror each other, producing an intimacy and inseparability through a set of conventions in art, architecture, and literature. (p. 107; italics mine).

In analogical development and reciprocity between the hut and the body, the properties of one begin to be reflected in the other as the ascetic figure matures from its revolutionary beginning in the fifth century BCE (p. 164; italics mine).

The confusion is symptomatic of a kind of vague ahistoricity that shies away from doing the required archaeology (in the Foucauldian sense), which, in my opinion, would have complemented the robust architecture of Ashraf’s project, and brought out its terms and stakes to its best effect. The timeframe whether it is the third century or the fifth crucially matters here, for it serves as a cue to understanding how the ‘reciprocity’ became discursively meaningful when and where it was conceived.

This ahistoricity, I am afraid, is pervasive in other parts of the book as well. The hermitascetic, Ashraf maintains, ‘could be conceived of as the epitome of otherness’ (p. 37). In all likelihood, I would agree with Ashraf. But, what I find missing again is a rigorous archaeology of how and when the ‘otherness’ was imposed. Ashraf posits: ‘[T]he idea of hermit has ingrained within it a history of existing in heterotopic spaces’ (p. 38). What needs to be asked at this point is: is it always so? Transhistorically?[i] The deeper problem, however, manifests in the form of Ashraf first etymologically overlapping the ‘hermit’ in the Greek tradition with the ‘vanaprasthi’ in the Indian tradition (p. 38), then apparently seeing a parallel first between , and then the ‘Buddhist ideology of pabbaja’ and and the Brahminical tradition of samnyas (p. 64). Each of these categories, I insist, comes with different historical contingencies and emancipatory agendas, which seem to fall flat if and when overlapped .[ii]

That said, I am particularly impressed with the structure of the book. Ashraf’s arguments whether I agree with or not are never overwhelmed by the proliferation of detail. The critical argument of the book that ‘the intimacy of the hermit and his hut...segues naturally in the topic of mutuality between body and building’ (p. 20) unfolds in Chapter 4 and holds the argumentative architecture of the book together. However, the omission of Nirmal BoseStella Kramrisch debate when it comes to discussing the ‘body’ in the context of Indian religious architecture is glaring.[iii]

Avishek Ray (avishek.avishek@gmail.com)

References

Bose, N., 1932. Canons of Orissan Architecture. Calcutta: R. Chatterjee.

, 1947. ‘Review of the book The Hindu Temple’, in Modern Review, Vol. 82. (pg. 66). Kramrisch, S. 1946/76. The Hindu Temple. (Vol. I & II) Delhi: Motilal Banarasidas Pvt. Ltd

Olivelle, P., 1984. ‘Renouncers and Renunciation in the Dharmasastras’, in Studies In Dharmasastra, ed. Lariviere, Richard W., Calcutta: Firma KLM, pp 81152

Ray, A., 2015. ‘Hinduism and Families’ (Encyclopedia entry), Shehan, C.L. (ed.), The Encyclopedia of

Family Studies, Malden: WileyBlackwell (forthcoming; in press)

Thapar, Romila, 1978. ‘Renunciation: The Making of a CounterCulture?’, in Ancient Indian Social History,

Delhi: Orient Longman, pp. 63104

[i] In fact, I have argued elsewhere that renunciants were at least tolerated, and in some cases even an integral part of the social and statist systems in ‘ancient India’. It is not until the crystallization and institutionalization of Hinduism that hermits were alleged to abstain from ‘productive labor’, and thereby marginalized. For details, see Ray (2015). Also, Olivelle (1984) discusses the cultural politics of the paradox in the earlier Dharmasūtras strictly disapproving renunciation while the later ones being accommodative of the same.

[ii] While Ashraf is correct that both ‘hermit’ and ‘vanaprasthi’ etymologically invoke recluse we still have to note that the ‘forest dweller’ in Greek and that in the ‘Indian’ tradition might not be functions of the same

‘language game’, evocative of the same value system. In other words, we have to take into account, to borrow Derrida’s word, the differance between the lexical meaning and linguistic associations, the etymological and the conceptualcultural registers. On another note, Thapar (1978), quite contrary to Ashraf’s thesis, demonstrates how (and when) the Buddhist sramana emerges as an antithetical Other to the samnyasi.

[iii] The BoseKramrisch debate took place in the 1940s. Nirmal kumar Bose (1926, 1932) and Stella

Kramrisch (1946) are representative of two divergent viewpoints or schools of interpreting religious architecture in India. They differed in opinion over interpreting the architecture of the Konark Sun Temple (Orissa, India). While Bose viewed the temple reflective of the ‘outer’/physical/corporeal body Kramrisch saw in the architecture what Bose (1947: 66) calls ‘the metaphysical connotation of physical forms’ of the human body.

Book Jacket

Hermit's Hut, The: Architecture and Asceticism in India

Kazi Khaleed Ashraf
University of Hawaii Press, 2013
978-0-8248-3583-5

The Hermit’s Hut offers an original insight into the profound relationship between architecture and asceticism. Although architecture continually responds to ascetic compulsions, as in its frequent encounter with the question of excess and less, it is typically considered separate from asceticism. In contrast, this innovative book explores the rich and mutual ways in which asceticism and architecture are played out in each other’s practices. The question of asceticism is also considered—as neither a religious discourse nor a specific cultural tradition but as a perennial issue in the practice of culture.

The work convincingly traces the influences from early Indian asceticism to Zen Buddhism to the Japanese teahouse—the latter opening the door to modern minimalism. As the book’s title suggests, the protagonist of the narrative is the nondescript hermit’s hut. Relying primarily on Buddhist materials, the author provides a complex narrative that stems from this simple structure, showing how the significance of the hut resonates widely and how the question of dwelling is central to ascetic imagination. In exploring the conjunctions of architecture and asceticism, he breaks new ground by presenting ascetic practice as fundamentally an architectural project, namely the fabrication of a “last” hut. Through the conception of the last hut, he looks at the ascetic challenge of arriving at the edge of civilization and its echoes in the architectural quest for minimalism. The most vivid example comes from a well-known Buddhist text where the Buddha describes the ultimate ascetic moment, or nirvana, in cataclysmic terms using architectural metaphors: “The roof-rafters will be shattered,” the Buddha declares, and the architect will “no longer build the house again.” As the book compellingly shows, the physiological and spiritual transformation of the body is deeply intertwined with the art of building.

The Hermit’s Hut weaves together the fields of architecture, anthropology, religion, and philosophy to offer multidisciplinary and historical insights. Written in an engaging and accessible manner, it will appeal to readers with diverse interests and in a variety of disciplines—whether one is interested in the history of ascetic architecture in India, the concept of “home” in ancient India, or the theme of the body as building.

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