Dear Yong Peng and Rett,
Your speculations sound like a variation on "I like Eastern
mythology. Good stuff. I like Tolkien. Good stuff. Therefore,
Tolkien's ideas must be Eastern."

Tolkien wrote a long letter to his friend Milton Waldman in 1951
explaining where his LoTR and related works sprang from. There is no
need to speculate on Indian or Sanskrit or other influences--he
explicitly credits many western and northern European influences
without a word about Asian: "I was from early days grieved by the
poverty of my own beloved country: it had no stories of its own
(bound up with its tongue and soil), not of the quality that I
sought, and found (as an ingredient) in legends of other lands. There
was Greek, and Celtic, and Romance, Germanic, Scandanavian, and
Finnish (which greatly affected me); but nothing in English, save
impoverished chap-book stuff. Of course there was and is all the
Arthurian world, but powerful as it is, it is imperfectly
naturalized, associated with the soil of Britain but not with
English...I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected
legend, ranging from the large and cosmogenic, to the level of
romatic fairy-story--the larger founded on the lesser in contact with
the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths--
which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country. It
should possess...fair elusive beauty that some call Celtic (though it
is rarely found in genuine ancient Celtic things)...Anyway all this
stuff is mainly concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine. With
Fall inevitably, and that motive occurs in several modes...It may
become possessive, clinging to the things made as its own, the sub-
creator wishes to be the Lord and God of his private creation. He
will rebel against the laws of the Creator--especially against
mortality [distinct echoes of both St. Paul and Genesis]. Both of
these (alone or together will lead to the desire for Power, for
making the will more quickly effective,--and so to the Machine (or
Magic). By the last I intend all use of external plans or devices
(apparatus) instead of developments of the inherent inner powers or
talents--or event he use of these talents with the corrupted motive
of dominating: bulldozing the real world, or coercing other wills."

He certainly may have read and been influenced by Mahabharata and
Arabian Nights but apparently not to a degree that he noticed or
acknowledged.

Sincerely,

Dan

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, rett <rett@...> wrote:
>
> Dear Yong Peng and group,
>
>
> >I wonder if
> >authors like C.S.Lewis and Tolkien were in any way directly
influenced
> >by the Jataka Tales or inspired by Arabic sources, especially the
> >Arabic Nights which was in turned influenced by Indian (Hindu and
> >Buddhist) sources.
>
> I have also wondered that as well. I've studied Tolkien's letters
and iirc he doesn't mention those sources at all, but I strongly
suspect that he was influenced _in part_ by the Mahaabharata
(possibly in Ganguli's translation) and tried to do something
comparable for 'western' culture and then suppressed mention of
Indian sources. The only hint he seems to give is that he wanted,
with the Silmarillion and LotR, to give Britain a national epic
comparable to the Eddas and the Mahabharata.
>
> Among many other things, Lord of the Rings concerns a shift from a
third to a less magical fourth age, which fits very well into the
setting of the Mahabharata. (transition to kaliyuga after a
cataclysmic battle)
>
> Another is that the Elvish alphabet devised by Feanor is arranged
in a systematic way that reminds one of the phonetic arrangement of
the Sanskrit alphabet.
>
> Tolkien was, after all, a philologist, and must have at least had
contact with indological scholars. Sanskrit was foundational to
comparative Indo-European philology and was fairly widely studied in
Britain at the time. It seems to me unlikely that the Feanorian
script system wasn't influenced by Sanskrit (just as it would be
uncontroversial to suggest that the Dwarvish runes were influenced by
the Futharc)
>
> On a more whimsical note I wonder if the young Tolkien had read TW
Rhys Davids' _Buddhist India_ and all but forgotten a certain line
that then popped out as he was correcting exams, and idly jotted down
the idea of a Mr Baggins who lived under 'The Hill'. Consider page 22
of Rhys-Davids' book, where he lists Khattiya clans beginning with:
>
> "1. The Bhaggas of Sumsumaara Hill."
>
> Sounds almost like Baggins of the Hill to me. Too tenuous for
serious literary criticism perhaps, but I like to think that little
lines and phrases we read can take a new form many years later
without our even remembering where they came from. Especially since
Tolkien himself described his writing process as akin to an act of
remembering. He couldn't force the story in certain directions, but
had to look inwards and recall what 'actually happened'. This
suggests a powerful unconscious creative activity taking place, and
everything he had read in his youth could possibly be involved in
that activity.
>
> Also, consider how the great wizards, like Gandalf the Grey and
Saruman the White, as well as Radagast the Brown were essentially
incarnated divine powers, avatars. Two of these wizards were said to
have 'disappeared into the east' and not only that they were _Blue_.
Krishna and Balarama? Again, perhaps too whimsical for an academic
study, but somehow Gandalf at the head of an army in the West, and
Krishna at the head of an army in the East, in the same legendary,
transitional period of history, seems to me like a very productive
parallel that the old professor might have toyed with, but never told
anyone about. It would've been like him.
>
> In Tolkien the elves reincarnate.
>
> In ancient Indian culture, everything is oriented towards
the 'east' which is the most auspicious direction. In Tolkien it's
the exact opposite, the 'west' is the direction leading towards
heaven.
>
> There's so much more. I'm very inclined to think that the hordes of
Southrons and Easterners that march to the final battle outside of
Gondor in LotR are essentially Mahabharata era heroes of legendary
Indian and Arab background. The only sad thing about it is that he
would then be making out the whole ancient culture of the East to be
essentially under the sway of evil and darkness, something that I, as
a Buddhist and admirer of ancient Indian culture, am not prepared to
admit.
>
> best regards,
>
> /Rett
>