Urban Ecology: Emerging Patterns and Social-Ecological Systems 1st Edition Pramit Verma (Editor) All Chapter Instant Download

Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1of 53

Full download test bank at ebook textbookfull.

com

Urban Ecology: Emerging Patterns


and Social-Ecological Systems 1st

CLICK LINK TO DOWLOAD

https://textbookfull.com/product/urban-
ecology-emerging-patterns-and-social-
ecological-systems-1st-edition-pramit-verma-
editor/

textbookfull
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Demand for Emerging Transportation Systems: Modeling


Adoption, Satisfaction, and Mobility Patterns 1st
Edition Constantinos Antoniou

https://textbookfull.com/product/demand-for-emerging-
transportation-systems-modeling-adoption-satisfaction-and-
mobility-patterns-1st-edition-constantinos-antoniou/

Ecological Networks and Territorial Systems of


Ecological Stability László Miklós

https://textbookfull.com/product/ecological-networks-and-
territorial-systems-of-ecological-stability-laszlo-miklos/

Ecology and Conservation of Birds in Urban Environments


1st Edition Enrique Murgui

https://textbookfull.com/product/ecology-and-conservation-of-
birds-in-urban-environments-1st-edition-enrique-murgui/

ENVIRONMENT ECOLOGY AND EXERGY ENHANCED APPROACHE


ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECOLOGICAL MANAGEMENT 1st Edition
Marc A. Rosen

https://textbookfull.com/product/environment-ecology-and-exergy-
enhanced-approaches-to-environmental-and-ecological-
management-1st-edition-marc-a-rosen/
Media Art and the Urban Environment Engendering Public
Engagement with Urban Ecology 1st Edition Francis T.
Marchese (Eds.)

https://textbookfull.com/product/media-art-and-the-urban-
environment-engendering-public-engagement-with-urban-ecology-1st-
edition-francis-t-marchese-eds/

Conservation: Integrating Social and Ecological Justice


Helen Kopnina

https://textbookfull.com/product/conservation-integrating-social-
and-ecological-justice-helen-kopnina/

Economics and Sustainability: Social-Ecological


Perspectives Karl Bruckmeier

https://textbookfull.com/product/economics-and-sustainability-
social-ecological-perspectives-karl-bruckmeier/

Terricolous Lichens in India Volume 1 Diversity


Patterns and Distribution Ecology 1st Edition Himanshu
Rai

https://textbookfull.com/product/terricolous-lichens-in-india-
volume-1-diversity-patterns-and-distribution-ecology-1st-edition-
himanshu-rai/

Collaboration Across Boundaries for Social Ecological


Systems Science Experiences Around the World Stephen G.
Perz

https://textbookfull.com/product/collaboration-across-boundaries-
for-social-ecological-systems-science-experiences-around-the-
world-stephen-g-perz/
URBAN
ECOLOGY
EMERGING PATTERNS AND
SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

Edited by

PRAMIT VERMA
Integrative Ecology Laboratory (IEL), Institute of Environment & Sustainable Development (IESD),
Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India

PARDEEP SINGH
Department of Environmental Studies, PGDAV College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India

RISHIKESH SINGH
Integrative Ecology Laboratory (IEL), Institute of Environment & Sustainable Development (IESD),
Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India

A.S. RAGHUBANSHI
Integrative Ecology Laboratory (IEL), Institute of Environment & Sustainable Development (IESD),
Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India
Elsevier
Radarweg 29, PO Box 211, 1000 AE Amsterdam, Netherlands
The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, United Kingdom
50 Hampshire Street, 5th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States
Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher. Details on how to seek permission, further information about the
Publisher’s permissions policies and our arrangements with organizations such as the Copyright Clearance
Center and the Copyright Licensing Agency, can be found at our website: www.elsevier.com/permissions.
This book and the individual contributions contained in it are protected under copyright by the Publisher
(other than as may be noted herein).
Notices
Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden
our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become
necessary.
Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and
using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or
methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom
they have a professional responsibility.
To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any
liability for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or
otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the
material herein.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data


A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-12-820730-7

For information on all Elsevier publications visit our website at


https://www.elsevier.com/books-and-journals

Publisher: Joe Hayton


Acquisitions Editor: Candice Janco
Editorial Project Manager: Chiara Giglio
Production Project Manager: Vijayaraj Purushothaman
Cover Designer: Greg Harris

Typeset by TNQ Technologies


Contributors

Luca Afonso Centre for Invasion Biology, Syed Mohsin Bukhari Applied and Environ-
Department of Botany and Zoology, Stellen- mental Microbiology Laboratory, Department
bosch University, Matieland, South Africa of Wildlife and Ecology, University of Veteri-
Muhammad Akmal Water Research Labo- nary and Animal Sciences, Lahore, Punjab,
ratory, Department of Fisheries and Aqua- Pakistan
culture, University of Veterinary and Animal M.C. Chandan RCG School of Infrastructure
Sciences, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan Design and Management, Indian Institute of
Waqas Ali Applied and Environmental Micro- Technology Kharagpur, West Bengal, India
biology Laboratory, Department of Wildlife Ranit Chatterjee Kyoto University, Kyoto,
and Ecology, University of Veterinary and Japan
Animal Sciences, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan Álvaro Corredor-Ochoa Tampere University,
Carmen Antuña-Rozado VTT Research Centre Tampere, Finland
of Finland Ltd., Espoo, Finland Ambika Dabral Resilience Innovation Knowl-
Vidhu Bansal Research Scholar, Department of edge Academy, New Delhi, Delhi, India
Architecture and Regional Planning (ARP), Lalatendu Keshari Das IIT Bombay, Mumbai,
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, Maharashtra, India
West Bengal, India
Rajkumari Sanayaima Devi Deen Dayal
Sunny Bansal Research Scholar, Ranbir and Upadhyaya College (University of Delhi), New
Chitra Gupta School of Infrastructure Design Delhi, India
and Management (RCGSIDM), Indian Institute
Juan Du Department of Architecture & Urban
of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, West Bengal,
Ecologies Design Lab, Faculty of Architecture,
India
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
André C.S. Batalhão Environmental Sciences, Special Administrative Region, China
Center for Environmental and Sustainability
Karen J. Esler Department of Conservation
Research e CENSE/Nova Lisbon University,
Ecology and Entomology and Centre for Inva-
Caparica, Portugal
sion Biology, Stellenbosch University, Matie-
Rahul Bhadouria Department of Botany, Uni- land, South Africa
versity of Delhi, Delhi, India
José Fariña-Tojo Universidad Politécnica de
H.A. Bharath RCG School of Infrastructure Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Design and Management, Indian Institute of
Mirijam Gaertner Nürtingen-Geislingen Uni-
Technology Kharagpur, West Bengal, India
versity of Applied Sciences (HFWU), Schel-
Antonia D. Bousbaine Département de Géo- menwasen 4-8, Nürtingen, Germany and
graphie, Laboratoire LAPLEC, Université de Centre for Invasion Biology, Department of
Liège, Liège, Belgium Botany and Zoology, Stellenbosch University,
Christopher Bryant Géographie, Université de Matieland, South Africa
Montréal, Canada & Adjunct Professor, School Mateo Gasparovic Chair of Photogrammetry
of Environmental Design and Rural Develop- and Remote Sensing, Faculty of Geodesy, Uni-
ment, University of Guelph, Montréal, Québec, versity of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Canada

xi
xii Contributors

Sjirk Geerts Department of Conservation and Wenjian Pan Department of Architecture &
Marine Sciences, Cape Peninsula University of Urban Ecologies Design Lab, Faculty of Archi-
Technology, Cape Town, South Africa tecture, The University of Hong Kong, Hong
Dilawar Husain Department of Mechanical Kong Special Administrative Region, China
Engineering, School of Engineering and Tech- D. Pavlova National Research University
nology, Sandip University, Nashik, India Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia
Ali Hussain Applied and Environmental Daniela Perrotti University of Louvain, Lou-
Microbiology Laboratory, Department of vain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Wildlife and Ecology, University of Veterinary Ravi Prakash Department of Mechanical Engi-
and Animal Sciences, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan neering, Motilal Nehru National Institute of
Syed Makhdoom Hussain Aquaculture Technology, Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India
Research Laboratory, Department of Zoology, A.S. Raghubanshi Integrative Ecology Labo-
Government College University, Faisalabad, ratory (IEL), Institute of Environment & Sus-
Punjab, Pakistan tainable Development (IESD), Banaras Hindu
Arshad Javid Applied and Environmental University (BHU), Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh,
Microbiology Laboratory, Department of India
Wildlife and Ecology, University of Veterinary Juho Rajaniemi Tampere University, Tampere,
and Animal Sciences, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan Finland
Vaishali Kapoor Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Col- Rumana Islam Sarker Department of Infra-
lege (University of Delhi), New Delhi, India structure Engineering, University of Innsbruck,
Sushil Kumar School of Environmental Scien- Innsbruck, Austria
ces, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Joy Sen Professor and Head, Department of
India Architecture and Regional Planning; Joint Fac-
Pyarimohan Maharana School of Environ- ulty, Ranbir and Chitra Gupta School of Infra-
mental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, structure Design and Management, Indian
New Delhi, India Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur,
R.K. Mall DST-Mahamana Centre of Excellence West Bengal, India
in Climate Change Research, Institute of Envi- Fariya Sharmeen Institute for Management
ronment and Sustainable Development, Bana- Research, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the
ras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, Netherlands; Faculty of Civil Engineering
India and Geosciences, Delft University of Technol-
Y. Milshina National Research University ogy, Delft, the Netherlands
Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia Sujit kumar Sikder Leibniz Institute of Eco-
Golam Morshed Department of Infrastructure logical Urban and Regional Development
Engineering, University of Innsbruck, Inns- (IOER), Dresden, Germany
bruck, Austria Nidhi Singh DST-Mahamana Centre of Excel-
G. Nimish RCG School of Infrastructure Design lence in Climate Change Research, Institute of
and Management, Indian Institute of Technol- Environment and Sustainable Development,
ogy Kharagpur, West Bengal, India Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar
Pradesh, India
Tahir Noor Applied and Environmental Micro-
biology Laboratory, Department of Wildlife Ravindra Pratap Singh Research Scholar, Inte-
and Ecology, University of Veterinary and grative Ecology Laboratory, Institute of Envi-
Animal Sciences, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan ronment and Sustainable Development,
Banarasi Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar
Piotr Nowakowski Silesian University of Tech-
Pradesh, India
nology, Katowice, Poland
Contributors xiii
Rishikesh Singh Integrative Ecology Labo- Pratap Srivastava Shyama Prasad Mukherjee
ratory (IEL), Institute of Environment & Sus- Post-graduate College, University of Allaha-
tainable Development (IESD), Banaras Hindu bad, Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India
University (BHU), Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, Nuala Stewart Master of Sustainable Develop-
India ment, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW,
Saumya Singh DST-Mahamana Centre of Australia
Excellence in Climate Change Research, Insti- Denilson Teixeira Environmental Engineering,
tute of Environment and Sustainable Develop- Federal University of Goiás, Goiânia, Brazil
ment, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi,
Sachchidanand Tripathi Deen Dayal Upad-
Uttar Pradesh, India
hyaya College (University of Delhi), New
Anita Singh Department of Botany, Banaras Delhi, India
Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh,
Shweta Upadhyay Integrative Ecology Labo-
India
ratory (IEL), Institute of Environment & Sus-
Pardeep Singh Department of Environmental tainable Development (IESD), Banaras Hindu
Studies, PGDAV College, University of Delhi, University (BHU), Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh,
New Delhi, India India
Rajeev Pratap Singh Department of Environ- Barkha Vaish Department of Environment and
ment and Sustainable Development, Institute of Sustainable Development, Institute of Envi-
Environment and Sustainable Development, ronment and Sustainable Development, Bana-
Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar ras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh,
Pradesh, India India
Vaibhav Srivastava Department of Environ- Pramit Verma Integrative Ecology Laboratory
ment and Sustainable Development, Institute of (IEL), Institute of Environment & Sustainable
Environment and Sustainable Development, Development (IESD), Banaras Hindu Uni-
Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar versity (BHU), Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India
Pradesh, India
Mariusz Wala PST Transgór S.A., Rybnik,
Poland
Foreword

Harini Nagendra, School of Development, ‘Urban Ecology: Emerging Patterns and


Azim Premji University, Pixel B, PES Social-Ecological Systems’ presents an ambi-
Campus, Electronic City, Hosur Road, Ban- tious attempt to examine a number of
galore 560100, India. diverse facets of urban ecology, drawing on
In 2007, for the first time ever, more than reviews, metaanalyses and case studies
half of the world’s population lived and located in diverse parts of the world. Cities
worked in urban areas. Cities occupy a are, at their core, social-ecological systems
relatively small fraction of the world’s land (Wolfram et al., 2016), and this book appro-
cover but have an ecological, economic, so- priately treats them as such, combining
cial and cultural impact that is completely research that looks at invasive species, urban
disproportionate to their size. Urban areas metabolism, land cover change, air pollution
suck in resources including energy, water, and urban disaster management, as well as
food and people from the hinterland and several other issues relevant to understand-
from distant parts of the world and export ing the sustainability of urban social-
their waste, creative ideas and money to far- ecological systems.
flung regions. Understanding the ecological In far, too many reviews and books on the
impact of cities is crucial in the era of the urban, fast-growing regions of the global
Anthropocene, if we are to learn how to South often get left out or underdeveloped,
move towards a more sustainable world despite the fact that Southern cities are
(Seto and Pandey, 2019). growing at much faster rates compared to
Urbanization has been criticized for its their Northern counterparts (Nagendra et al.,
unsustainability. Yet the fact that much of 2018). This edited volume presents a
the urban area projected to exist by 2050 is welcome departure from that trend,
yet to be built also provides us with an op- combining a number of case studies and re-
portunity to think differently about cities views originating from South Asia with
and to reimagine a different type of urban: research from other parts of the world.
one that is more sustainable, equitable and In this era of climate change, cities will be
innovative (Parnell et al., 2018). That win- some of the worst hit in terms of urban
dow of opportunity, if indeed it does exist, is sustainability and human well-being
closing fast. There is a real and urgent need (Estrada et al., 2017). Ecological integrity,
for interdisciplinary research that examines environmental quality and socioeconomic
the ecology of cities from diverse angles, equity will play a major role in ensuring the
using different disciplinary lenses, method- resilience of cities to climate change and
ological approaches and drawing on case other shocks. Urban sustainability and resil-
studies from all parts of the world. ience thus present important goals for the

xv
xvi Foreword

21st century. Given the magnitude, intensity Nagendra, H., Bai, X., Brondizio, E.S., Lwasa, S., 2018.
and interconnectedness of the challenge The urban south and the predicament of global
sustainability. Nature Sustainability 1, 341e349.
ahead, there is a pressing need for interdis- Parnell, S., Elmqvist, T., McPhearson, T., Nagendra, H.,
ciplinary research on urban social-ecological Sörlin, S., 2018. Introduction - Situating knowledge
systems that investigate the challenges of and action for an urban planet. In: Elmqvist, T., et al.
urban sustainability and resilience from (Eds.), The Urban Planet. Cambridge University
diverse angles. This book presents a Press, pp. 1e16.
Seto, K.C., Pandey, B., 2019. Urban Land Use: Cen-
welcome step in this direction. tral to Building a Sustainable Future. One Earth 1,
168e170.
Wolfram, M., Frantzeskaki, N., Maschmeyer, S., 2016.
References Cities, systems and sustainability: Status and per-
Estrada, F., Botzen, W.W., Tol, R.S., 2017. A global eco- spectives of research on urban transformations.
nomic assessment of city policies to reduce climate Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 22,
change impacts. Nature Climate Change 7, 403e406. 18e25.
C H A P T E R

1
Urban ecology e current state of
research and concepts
Pramit Verma1, Rishikesh Singh1, Pardeep Singh2,
A.S. Raghubanshi1
1
Integrative Ecology Laboratory (IEL), Institute of Environment & Sustainable Development
(IESD), Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India; 2Department of
Environmental Studies, PGDAV College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India

O U T L I N E

1. Introduction 4 3.4 Modelling and remote sensing 12


1.1 What is urban ecology? 4 3.5 Disaster risk reduction 12
1.2 Socialeecological systems and 3.6 Economies of scale 12
urban metabolism 5 3.7 Urban ecological footprint 13
3.8 Urban sustainability indicators 13
2. State of research in urban ecology 7
3.9 Smart city 13
2.1 Global trends in the past
3.10 Sustainable city 13
two decades (1999e2019) 7
3.11 Human health 13
2.2 Country-wise division of urban
3.12 Integrated approach 14
ecology research (from 2009 to
3.13 Governance and planning 14
2019) 7
4. Conclusions 14
3. Urban ecology: concepts and
definitions 8 References 14
3.1 The urban boundary 9
Further reading 16
3.2 Urban metabolism 11
3.3 Land use land cover change 12

Urban Ecology
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-820730-7.00001-X 3 Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
4 1. Urban ecology e current state of research and concepts

1. Introduction

1.1 What is urban ecology?


Andrewartha and Birch (1954) considered ecology to be a study of the abundance and dis-
tribution of organisms. Odum (1975) gave the concept of ecosystem ecology, which focussed
on the ecosystem. However, a better definition of ecology is given by the Carry Institute of
Ecosystem Studies, focussing on the holistic and encompassing perspective of ecology, as
‘the scientific study of the processes influencing the distribution and abundance of organisms,
the interactions among organisms, and the interactions between organisms and the transfor-
mation and flux of energy and matter’. The important aspect of this definition is its emphasis
on the ‘processes’ and ‘interactions’.
Cities have become engines of development as well as drivers of environmental change.
Drawing on the aforementioned description of ecology, urban ecology can be defined as the
study of the relationship between living organisms and their environment, their distribution
and abundance, the interactions between the organisms, and transformation and flux of en-
ergy and matter, in an urban area. An urban ecosystem is the growth of human population
and its supporting infrastructure in the form of cities, towns, agglomerations and megacities.
An urban area consists of a number of processes and physical components, such as biodi-
versity in the form of parks, animals and trees, humans and their socioeconomic groups, built
structures in the form of roads and buildings, transport, essential services such as finance,
health and waste disposal, energy flow from different types of sources such as solar, elec-
tricity, coal, LPG, wood, and so on and material flow in the form of food supplies, building
material (bricks, mortar, steel, etc.), waste generation, urban agriculture and biogeochemical
cycles in urban areas. This is not an exhaustive list, but it gives an idea about the urban pro-
cesses and components which constitute an urban ecosystem.
There are, however, two major aspects of this field that make it more important for the pre-
sent times. First, the ecology of urban areas is not restricted to the urban boundary where the
apparent indicator is observed (Verma and Raghubanshi, 2018), the indicator being urbani-
zation. The meaning of ‘urban area’ and the boundary concept has been explored in greater
details in section (3.1). Second, since human beings are the dominant organism in an urban
area, urban ecology inevitably becomes a study focused on processes and interaction medi-
ated by human actions. The resources, in the form of matter and energy, are not necessarily
used where they are found, and the effects of human actions are felt at multiple scales and
across system boundaries. The materials and energy may consist of hydropower energy
transmitted from hydropower dams located at a remote location, built and other materials
being carried into the cities for construction purposes, waste generated from urban areas get-
ting dumped in landfills or other locations and finding its way to the oceans and rivers, waste
produced during the manufacturing of food supplies to be consumed in urban areas, emis-
sion generated due to fuel consumption or changes in the biogeochemical cycles due to urban
growth.
This input and output of material balance is the ex situ resource mobilization for urban
growth due to trade and globalization and is mediated by anthropogenic subsidization of
material and energy balance (Bai, 2016). However, the importance attributed to this phenom-
enon of urban growth, or the creation of urban ecosystems, is due to the scale at which it has

I. Emerging facets of urban ecology e urban and urbanization, theory and concepts
1. Introduction 5
developed and continues to do so with impunity. The urban population has increased from a
mere ‘750 million (1951) to 4.2 billion (2018)’ (Chapter 18; United Nations, 2018a, b) consti-
tuting more than 55% of the total world population. About 9.8 billion people will be living
in urban areas by 2050 which will increase to 11.2 billion by 2100 (United Nations, 2018a,
b). The resource base for such a massive population is made available at the cost of natural
resources, environmental destruction and ecosystem services. Furthermore, apart from the
environmental factors, the resource distribution and consumption in an urban ecosystem is
not equitable since there is an influence of social factors, such as income, governance and pol-
icy, civic amenities, and so on.
Taking the example of CO2 emission from electricity consumption from urban households
in India, cities such as Allahabad had per capita emission of 12 kg CO2 per capita per month,
whereas Chennai emitted 81 kg CO2 per capita per month (Ahmad et al., 2014). The reason
has been attributed to the lifestyle and income disparities. Rural areas predominantly utilize
traditionally solid fuels, which might be responsible for higher carbon emission from cooking
activities. This kind of disparities within urban ecosystems also exist in different processes
and components which determine the scale and magnitude of the effect of urban phenomena
on its environment.

1.2 Socialeecological systems and urban metabolism


Cities and urban areas are human ecosystems where social, economic, biological and
ecological components work together forming a system of feedback loops and interactions.
These interactions in urban ecosystems are guided through human values and perceptions
(Pickett and Cadenasso, 2013). Together, this forms the socialeecological system (SES) and
determines the ecology of urban areas. Studies in the ecology of whole cities started in the
1970s centring on energy and nutrient cycling.
Energy flow through an ecosystem is considered unidirectional. It flows from the sun to
the primary producers, consumers and decomposers and then to the nutrient pools across
the food web. In urban ecosystems, the energy is consumed not only along the food chain
but also to perform social and other basic activities, such as cooking, heating, cooling and
travelling. As explained in an earlier example of urban electricity consumption, all activities
using fuels and electricity contribute towards energy flow in an urban ecosystem which is
different from the calorific content of food content. In a natural ecosystem, cycling of material
also takes place, identified as the carbon, sulphur, phosphorus, nitrogen, oxygen and water
cycle. Due to urbanization, these nutrient cycles are disturbed and modified. For example,
due to input of fertilizers and pesticides, the natural flux across soil systems is modified,
which leads to higher productivity as an immediate effect but lower fertility of soils over
several years. This is one of the impacts of urban development. Urban areas are also consid-
ered the hotspot of consumption and waste generation.
The metabolic approach towards understanding the water supply and air and water
pollution in cities originated from the biological concept of metabolism (Restrepo and
Morales-Pinzon, 2018). The urban area is considered as an organism with dynamic functions
maintaining the life of the urban system. The material and energy flow across its boundaries
is compared to the way an organism or a cell takes in nutrients, converts them into energy
and excretes the waste out of its body. In urban systems, material balance consists of natural

I. Emerging facets of urban ecology e urban and urbanization, theory and concepts
6 1. Urban ecology e current state of research and concepts

resource requirements for activities such as housing and construction, transport, and so on
(Schandl and Schaffartzik, 2015). It is simply how raw material or finished products are trans-
ferred to urban systems, and waste and transformed products come out. However, this flow
of material takes place at economic and environmental costs.
Wolman’s work in urban metabolism and ecosystems led to their recognition as an impor-
tant area of research. Wolman’s hypothetical city gave an estimate of material budget for
food, fuel and water use, and sewage, refuse and air pollutants that a million US citizens
would store and transform according to 1965 standard rates (Wolman, 1965). Such studies
for whole cities are rare, and an in-depth analysis of a few cities by the UNESCO’s Man
and the Biosphere Programme in the 1970s gave further insight into urban metabolism
studies (Bai, 2016). Urban metabolism is concerned with the flow and transformation of ma-
terials and energy in an urban setup. These are classified as inputs and outputs (Decker et al.,
2000). It was found that the material balance of Hong Kong with a population of 5.5 million
residents was approximately equal to that of Wolman’s hypothetical US city (Decker et al.
2000). Furthermore, 3.65 million residents of Sydney, in 1990, metabolized as much as Wol-
man’s hypothetical US city with the exception of high CO2 levels. The cause would probably
be the higher number of automobiles (Ibid).
Urban sustainability has a greater chance of success ‘when the scales of ecological pro-
cesses are well-matched with the human institutions charged with managing humane
environment interactions’ (Leslie et al., 2015). In the past few decades, the field of urban ecol-
ogy transformed from studying ecology in the city to ecology of the city (Childers et al., 2014).
This has led to the coupling of urban metabolism principles with human choices and prefer-
ences, giving rise to SES. Cities transform raw materials, fuel and water into the built struc-
ture, human biomass and waste. Energy flow and material transformation conceived as
urban metabolism do not give a complete picture of these urban centres. The human aspect,
when added to urban metabolism, provides a more holistic approach towards the study of
these cities. Recently, this fact is being accepted and taken into account of urban system
studies. The growth and development of cities is a process of organization in which human
choices and preferences play a pivotal role, working in an ecological matrix.
Hence, this book deals with the emerging aspects of urban ecological studies from the
perspective of SES. Urban ecology comprises a number of dimensions which have been out-
lined in this book, like, urban metabolism [Chapter 2], land use land cover change [Chapters
3 and 4], disaster risk management [Chapter 5], urban ecosystem services [Chapter 6], urban
green space [Chapter 7], urban agriculture [Chapter 8], carbon emissions [Chapter 9], trans-
port in cities [Chapter 10], urban air quality [Chapter 11], water management [Chapter 12],
urban biodiversity [Chapter 13], waste management [Chapters 14, 15 and 23], climate change
and human health [Chapter 17], urban heat island effect [Chapter 17], sustainable and smart
cities [Chapters 18 and 19], urban design [Chapters 20 and 21], policy and management
[Chapter 22] and nutrient fluxes [Chapter 16], among many others. This book discusses the
conceptual undertakings and advances in the field of urban ecology. The next section gives
a brief description of the state of research into urban ecology followed by a discussion on
the major themes covered in this book.

I. Emerging facets of urban ecology e urban and urbanization, theory and concepts
2. State of research in urban ecology 7

2. State of research in urban ecology

2.1 Global trends in the past two decades (1999e2019)


‘Urban ecology’ was used as a keyword to search the Web of Science core database from
1999 to 2019. It was found that literature on urban ecology has grown from a mere 8 articles
in 1999 to 158 articles in 2018. The period after 2008 experienced an exponential rise in the
number of works of literature being published related to urban ecology (Fig. 1.1). The year
2009 also saw the publication of ‘Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space
for Humanity’ by Rockstrom et al. (2009). It gave the concept of planetary boundaries for nine
earth systems essential for humans to sustain themselves. However, the unprecedented
growth of urban ecosystem with little regard to the ecological resilience has resulted in
crossing over of some planetary boundaries. The latest research says that due to the develop-
ment of society, certain systems, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, land and nutrient
cycles (nitrogen and phosphorus), have ‘gone beyond their boundary into unprecedented ter-
ritories’ (Steffen et al., 2015). This could be a possible reason for a large number of studies in
this field now.

2.2 Country-wise division of urban ecology research (from 2009 to 2019)


Urbanization is expected to be led by the countries of Africa and Asia. India and China are
expected to see an increase of one-third urban population by the end of 2020 (Shen et al.,
2011). India and China, having the world’s largest rural population, 893 and 578 million,
respectively, will account for 35% of the urban population growth between 2018 and 2050
along with Nigeria (United Nations, 2018a, b). Asia houses 54% of the current world’s urban
population, followed by Europe and Africa (13% each). The pace of urbanization is expected
to be the highest in low- and lower-middle-income countries (Singh et al., 2019). However,
this is not reflected in the literature from the past 10 years. We found that the United States,
England and Australia had the maximum number of publications in this field, followed by

FIGURE 1.1 Publications related to ‘urban ecology’ for each year from 1999 to 2019 indexed in the Web of Science
core collection (accessed on 05 December 2019).

I. Emerging facets of urban ecology e urban and urbanization, theory and concepts
8 1. Urban ecology e current state of research and concepts

China, Germany, Canada and Mexico (Fig. 1.2). African countries were represented by South
Africa, and Asian countries were represented by China and Singapore in the top 25 results.
This does not mean that various dimensions of urban ecology are not being researched in
other countries; however, it does indicate that the transdisciplinary nature of urban ecology
might be lacking in such studies.
The next section discusses the various themes covered in this book. It describes the concep-
tual undertakings and advances in the field of urban ecology covered in this book.

3. Urban ecology: concepts and definitions


The field of urban ecology can be approached in several ways, for example, from the
perspective of material and energy balance, sustainable development in the form of eco-
nomic, social and environmental sustainability and certain unique phenomena associated
with urban growth, such as land-use land cover change and urban heat island effect, urban
design and architecture and human-centric in the form of social equity and human health,
leading to better resource management and sustainability, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission
and climate change or ecosystem services and biodiversity. The transdisciplinary nature of
this subject warrants understanding the nexus between human and ecological functions
through the aforementioned mentioned lenses (Fig. 1.3). However, as pointed out by Simon
et al. (2018), the transdisciplinary nature of coproduction is ‘complex, time-consuming, and
often unpredictable in terms of outcomes’, and these issues gain greater importance when
comparative studies are undertaken. More discussion on this aspect of urban ecology
research has been done in the last chapter of this book. The following section describes the
conceptual background, which would help the reader peruse through this book.

FIGURE 1.2 Tree diagram of the country and region-wise number of documents related to ‘urban ecology’
published between 2009 and 2019. From Web of Science, accessed on 05 December 2019.

I. Emerging facets of urban ecology e urban and urbanization, theory and concepts
3. Urban ecology: concepts and definitions 9

3.1 The urban boundary


There is confusion of terminology used for describing the urban ecosystems, as the defini-
tion of a city boundary varies across countries making comparisons difficult. Due to advance-
ments in geospatial and remote sensing technology, a growing scientific literature on the
study of urban ecology is emerging, which warrants bringing forward the definition of the
city at par with urban area boundary. In this section, we have first discussed the definitions
of city and related terms, their inappropriateness in the implementation of urban ecological
studies and data availability followed by suggestions.
Definitions for urban areas for city, town or any other administrative boundary are highly
specific to the country. Political context determines these boundaries along with economic
and social concerns (MacGregor-Fors, 2011). Urban land cover, material and energy balance,
urban forestry and tree cover, urban planning, urban waste generation, pollution control and
modelling, urban disaster mapping and many other fields require a geospatial boundary of
constituent units to collect and analyze data. There have been attempts at defining terms used
in the ecology of urban areas, but ultimately research from using such studies needs to be
implemented on the ground, and thus it confronts the prevalent paucity of data and confu-
sion in the functional, structural and administrative definitions of urban area boundaries. Ac-
celeration and diversification of economic activities push the urban boundaries beyond their
administrative or municipal limit. From an environmental point of view, the structure and
function of the urban component in an urban ecosystem are more than that actually managed
by the district or city administration.

FIGURE 1.3 Dimensions of urban ecology e a word of author keywords from each chapter in the book.

I. Emerging facets of urban ecology e urban and urbanization, theory and concepts
10 1. Urban ecology e current state of research and concepts

There are many definitions of the city according to different countries. How a city is
defined generally depends on its population, presence of an administrative unit in the city
and any other economic or social characteristic important for that country. Based on the num-
ber of people, cities have been defined by total population, population density or both. Some
countries designated other terms for larger urban areas comprising more than one urban core
such as urban agglomeration (India), urbanized area (United States) and conurbations
(United Kingdom). A city has at least 50,000 population in Japan and the European Union,
and 2500, 2000 and 200 population in the United States, Israel and Iceland, respectively. A
list of some countries that have defined cities according to population is given in Fig. 1.4.
For a researcher, the first task before conducting any urban-based research is to identify and
define the study area. Generally, district, city, urban agglomeration or block in case of rural
areas is selected. The next step is to gather data and extract the boundary of the site. Informa-
tion regarding the boundary of a city is generally not available in digital formats which makes
the processing of data very difficult. If available, such digital information is out of date , for
example, the urban boundaries of cities in India are expanding at a rate greater than that at
which the administration works. This results in the presence of high-density urban patches
classified as rural or outside the municipal boundary in local bodies’ records and escaping
full evaluation for urban landscapes. Satellite data and geographical information systems
(GIS) play a vital role in landscape-based studies.
Confusion in data available for urban areas can be better understood by the following
example, for example,. Data regarding population, literacy, number of households, area
and employment sector are available at ward (sub-city) and village level for towns (urban)
and blocks (rural), respectively. Calculation of secondary metrics and change in these quan-
tities is possible for these categories at the aforementioned urban or rural units. Information
regarding amenities and assets is available at subdistrict (tehsil) level. The boundary of a sub-
district is independent of the boundary of a city, town or village. Thus, metrics calculated
from such data are applicable at different levels of urban areas, each having a different pop-
ulation, and thus pose a difficulty for researchers when calculating per capita metrics This
example comes from India, where cities are constituted inside a district, however, it points
out the confusing, often overlapping and sometimes absent data regarding urban areas.
Other countries may have better systems of administrative demarcation, however, the point
remains that in order to study urban systems, the data should reflect the ground reality.
Need for a uniform urban boundary becomes more apparent when we look at urban areas
from a landscape perspective. The scale at which an urban area is perceived should match the
scale at which it is expanding and information is available. The rate of urbanization should be
taken into account to revise the definition of a city. Thus, the definition needs to be versatile
and able to cope with rapid urban expansion as well as uniform to make comparisons across
regions possible. A better way to define a city is by taking into account population, popula-
tion density, employment and their concentration gradient identified through remote sensing
and GIS. A GIS grid with these layers and a threshold value of concentration gradient for
defining urban, semiurban and rural can be used similar to the methodology followed in a
European Commission working paper (Dijkstra et al. 2018) but additionally having well-

I. Emerging facets of urban ecology e urban and urbanization, theory and concepts
3. Urban ecology: concepts and definitions 11

City/Town by populaon
New Zealand, 1000
Bahrain, 2500
Guam, 2500
Switzerland, 10000
Spain, 2000
Slovakia, 5000
Portugal, 10000
Norway, 200
Netherlands, 2000
Lithuania, 3000
Ireland, 1500
Iceland, 200
Greece, 10000
France, 2000
Czech Republic, 2000
Austria, 5000
Albania, 400
Turkey, 20001
Malaysia, 10000
Israel, 2000
India, 5000
Venezeula, 1000
Bolivia, 2000
Argenna, 2000
USA, 2500
Puerto Rico, 2500
Panama, 1500
Mexico, 2500
Greenland, 200
Cuba, 2000
Canada, 1000
Senegal, 10000
Liberia, 2000
Ethiopia, 2000
Equatorial Guinea, 1500
Botswana, 5000
Zambia, 5000
Sudan, 5000
0 3000 6000 9000 12000 15000 18000 21000
Populaon
FIGURE 1.4 City/town by population in some countries (UNSD, 2015).

defined economic and employment thresholds similar to prerequisites already present in the
definition of towns according to Census of India (2011). Threshold defining these values may
differ from countries. This can result in a uniform definition of cities and needs to be inves-
tigated further.

3.2 Urban metabolism


Urban metabolism deals with urban sustainability indicators, GHG emission, policy anal-
ysis and their application to urban design (Kennedy et al., 2011). As mentioned earlier, the
urban system depends on resources to sustain itself, in the form of a flow of materials and

I. Emerging facets of urban ecology e urban and urbanization, theory and concepts
12 1. Urban ecology e current state of research and concepts

energy, and the various social and ecological interactions act like the ‘metabolism’ of living
organisms. Urban metabolism is the study of the flow of matter and energy through a city
providing a model for human and nature interactions.

3.3 Land use land cover change


Land cover change denotes a change in certain continuous characteristics of the land such as
vegetation type, soil properties, and so on, whereas land-use change consists of an alteration in
the way certain area of land is being used or managed by humans (Patel et al., 2019). This in-
volves the transformation in the natural landscape due to urban growth. It is interesting to note
that this change is responsible for a number of local and global effects, including biodiversity
loss and its associated effects on human health, and the loss of habitat and ecosystem services
(Patel et al., 2019). It is mainly driven by urban growth and is particularly important now for
developing and underdeveloped countries. However, natural causes may result in land cover
change, but land-use change requires human intervention (Joshi et al., 2016).

3.4 Modelling and remote sensing


To understand urban growth and quantify its impacts and future trajectories, certain mathe-
matical tools are used, which is known as modelling. Modelling urban growth can provide better
insights into managing urbanization and its related effects. Data collected from satellites and
other sensors are used in modelling techniques. Development of modelling techniques which
involve artificial neural network, fuzzy log and other nonparametric approaches have greatly
increased the accuracy of mapping urban systems (Verma and Raghubanshi, 2019, 2020).
Markov-chain and SLEUTH based on cellular automata are some of the models which help in
the prediction of urban growth (Chandan and Bharath, 2018). Big data and crowdsourced data
platforms are now increasing their impact on urban modelling (Johnson et al., 2017).

3.5 Disaster risk reduction


Rapid urban growth has resulted in unplanned settlements often with high population den-
sities. It is found that the socially weaker sections of society inhabit these kinds of settlement
(Chatterjee et al., 2015). Risk, due to natural and anthropogenic disasters, is increased in these
places of unplanned built areas. Disaster-induced and rural-to-urban migration further puts a
burden on urban resources (Chapter 5). Preventing this risk involves increasing the resilience of
the people. This reliance includes a number of policy changes which invariably include urban
design and social resilience in the form of education, income and demographics. These activ-
ities make up the disaster risk reduction strategies which have become more important due to
the increase in the frequency of natural disasters due to climate change.

3.6 Economies of scale


This is an important concept in the field of urban ecology. It has been observed that cities
follow scaling laws depending on their size. Bettencourt and West (2010) put forward three
observations e (1) due to intense use of infrastructure, the space required per capita decreases;

I. Emerging facets of urban ecology e urban and urbanization, theory and concepts
3. Urban ecology: concepts and definitions 13
(2) cocioeconomic activities increase leading to higher productivity; and (3) socioeconomic
activities diversify leading to better opportunities. They showed that for doubling the population
of a city, about 85% of infrastructure development is needed (Bettencourt and West, 2010). This
indicates that cities essentially grow like an organism with some savings as the size increases.
These savings are in the form of cost or material benefits which are made due to the increase in
scale. However, this may not indicate that such growth is necessarily sustainable.

3.7 Urban ecological footprint


The urban ecological footprint is essentially the amount of earth needed to sustain and urban
areas and recycle or absorb its waste and emissions. It denotes the number of resources needed
to provide the necessary raw materials (natural resources, ecosystem services, etc.) and the earth’s
capacity to absorb or recycle the waste material generated including gaseous emission (like GHGs).
The resource utilization by urban areas results in waste generation and emissions. The magnitude
of this generation has crossed the critical threshold of planetary boundaries (Steffen et al., 2015).

3.8 Urban sustainability indicators


Indicators are an essential part of assessing the progress of any system. Urban sustainability
indicators include a number of dimensions dealing with various aspects of urban systems,
including policy and governance, demographics, economics, environment and energy. Indicators
could be in the form of gross domestic product, Gini coefficient or ambient air quality. Indicators
also provide an understanding of the phenomena being studied (Verma and Raghubanshi, 2018).

3.9 Smart city


According to the International Business Machines (IBM), a smart city is one that makes
optimal use of the available information about various processes to better deliver and recog-
nize its operations and make optimum use of resources available by balancing the social,
commercial and environmental needs of the city (Nam and Pardo, 2011). This concept has
grown to involve sustainability as a part of information and communication technology
used to create a smart city. Efficiency and application of information and communication
technology are the essential parts of a smart city.

3.10 Sustainable city


Urban ecosystems ‘which are ethical, effective (healthy and equitable), zero-waste gener-
ating, self-regulating, resilient, self-renewing, flexible, psychologically fulfilling and coopera-
tive’ can be termed as sustainable (Newman and Jennings, 2012; Dizdaroglu, 2015).

3.11 Human health


Humans shape the ecology of cities as well as are influenced by the type of environment
they create. Human health is an emerging aspect of urban ecology research, especially due to
the effect of the urban ecosystem on human health, in the form of lack of green spaces, air

I. Emerging facets of urban ecology e urban and urbanization, theory and concepts
14 1. Urban ecology e current state of research and concepts

quality, urban heat island effect, water and air pollution, psychological and mental health,
and urban design (Giles-Corti et al., 2016).

3.12 Integrated approach


Ostrom (2009) suggested that the study of SES requires study of the ‘complex, multivari-
able, nonlinear, cross-scale and changing systems’. Urban ecology when observed as an inte-
grated and transdisciplinary subject would be able to offer better insights into urban
sustainability, and thus, an integrated approach is required in this discipline.

3.13 Governance and planning


Implementation of sustainability practices to ensure a healthy urban ecosystem remains a
challenge (Verma and Raghubanshi, 2018). Verma and Raghubanshi (2018) identified two
major challenges in the application of sustainability monitoring programs in urban areas
as the selection of relevant indicators followed by their application. However, sustaining
such measures requires repeated assessments and policies tailored according to local condi-
tions. Governance and planning play an important role in determining the nature of urban
ecosystems, including education, urban design and planning, environmental laws and their
implementation; hence, they remain one of the most essential features in this subject.

4. Conclusions
The preceding section described some of the concepts including the urban boundary, ur-
ban health, modelling and remote sensing, smart and sustainable city and indicators of sus-
tainability, which have been used in this book. Since cities contain a number of components
which are mainly created by humans, they function at different trajectory than natural eco-
systems. Currently, cities are plagued by several problems such as biodiversity loss, air qual-
ity, green spaces, lack of open space, and so on. However, it is believed that cities are resilient
ecosystems, and better performing cities continue to do so for several decades. Policy based
on an understanding of the workings of different components in urban ecosystems would
help in creating a sustainable future.

References
Ahmad, S., Mathai, M.V., Parayil, G., 2014. Household electricity access, availability and human well-being: evidence
from India. Energy Policy 69, 308e315.
Andrewartha, H.G., Birch, L.C., 1954. The Distribution and Abundance of Animals. Univ. of Chicago Press.
Bai, X., 2016. Eight energy and material flow characteristics of urban ecosystems. Ambio 45 (7), 819e830.
Bettencourt, L., West, G., 2010. A unified theory of urban living. Nature 467 (7318), 912e913.
Chandan, M.C., Bharath, H.A., 2018. Modelling urban transition using cellular automata based Sleuth modelling. In:
2018 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (SSCI). IEEE, pp. 1656e1663.
Chatterjee, R., Shiwaku, K., Gupta, R.D., Nakano, G., Shaw, R., 2015. Bangkok to Sendai and beyond: implications for
disaster risk reduction in Asia. International Journal of Disaster Risk Science 6 (2), 177e188.
Childers, D.L., Pickett, S.T., Grove, J.M., Ogden, L., Whitmer, A., 2014. Advancing urban sustainability theory and
action: challenges and opportunities. Landscape and Urban Planning 125, 320e328.

I. Emerging facets of urban ecology e urban and urbanization, theory and concepts
References 15
Decker, E.H., Elliott, S., Smith, F.A., Blake, D.R., Rowland, F.S., 2000. Annual Review of Energy and the Environment
685e740.
Dijkstra, L., Florczyk, A., Freire, S., Kemper, T., Pesaresi, M., Schiavina, M., 2018. Applying the degree of urbanisation
to the globe: A new harmonised definition reveals a different picture of global urbanisation. In: Proceedings of the
16th IAOS Conference: Better Statistics for Better Lives, pp. 19e20. Paris, France.
Dizdaroglu, D., 2015. Developing micro-level urban ecosystem indicators for sustainability assessment. Environ-
mental Impact Assessment Review 54, 119e124.
Giles-Corti, B., Vernez-Moudon, A., Reis, R., Turrell, G., Dannenberg, A.L., Badland, H., Owen, N., 2016. City plan-
ning and population health: a global challenge. The lancet 388 (10062), 2912e2924.
Johnson, B.A., Iizuka, K., Bragais, M.A., Endo, I., Magcale-Macandog, D.B., 2017. Employing crowdsourced
geographic data and multi-temporal/multi-sensor satellite imagery to monitor land cover change: a case study
in an urbanizing region of the Philippines. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems 64, 184e193.
Joshi, N., Baumann, M., Ehammer, A., Fensholt, R., Grogan, K., Hostert, P., Reiche, J., 2016. A review of the applica-
tion of optical and radar remote sensing data fusion to land use mapping and monitoring. Remote Sensing 8 (1),
70.
Kennedy, C., Pincetl, S., Bunje, P., 2011. The study of urban metabolism and its applications to urban planning and
design. Environmental Pollution 159 (8e9), 1965e1973.
Leslie, H.M., Basurto, X., Nenadovic, M., Sievanen, L., Cavanaugh, K.C., Cota-Nieto, J.J., Nagavarapu, S., 2015. Oper-
ationalizing the social-ecological systems framework to assess sustainability. Proceedings of the National Acad-
emy of Sciences 112 (19), 5979e5984.
MacGregor-Fors, I., 2011. Misconceptions or misunderstandings? On the standardization of basic terms and defini-
tions in urban ecology. Landscape and Urban Planning 100 (4), 347e349.
Nam, T., Pardo, T.A., June 2011. Conceptualizing smart city with dimensions of technology, people, and institutions.
In: Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Digital Government Research Conference: Digital Government
Innovation in Challenging Times. ACM, pp. 282e291.
Newman, P., Jennings, I., 2012. Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems: Principles and Practices. Island Press.
Odum, E.P., 1975. Ecology, the Link between the Natural and the Social Sciences. Oxford and IBH Publishing.
Ostrom, E., 2009. A general framework for analyzing sustainability of social-ecological systems. Science 325 (5939),
419e422.
Patel, S.K., Verma, P., Singh, G.S., 2019. Agricultural growth and land use land cover change in peri-urban India.
Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 191 (9), 600.
Pickett, S.T.A., Cadenasso, M.L., 2013. In: Leemans, R. (Ed.), Ecological Systems. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-
4614-5755-8.
Restrepo, J.D.C., Morales-Pinzon, T., 2018. Urban metabolism and sustainability: precedents, genesis and research
perspectives. Resources, Conservation and Recycling 131, 216e224.
Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, Å., Chapin, F.S., Lambin, E.F., Nykvist, B., 2009. A safe operating space
for humanity. Nature 461 (7263), 472e475.
Schandl, H., Schaffartzik, A., 2015. Material Flow Analysis.
Shen, L.Y., Ochoa, J.J., Shah, M.N., Zhang, X., 2011. The application of urban sustainability indicatorseA comparison
between various practices. Habitat International 35 (1), 17e29.
Simon, D., Palmer, H., Riise, J., Smit, W., Valencia, S., 2018. The challenges of transdisciplinary knowledge produc-
tion: from unilocal to comparative research. Environment and Urbanization 30 (2), 481e500.
Singh, N., Mhawish, A., Ghosh, S., Banerjee, T., Mall, R.K., 2019. Attributing mortality from temperature extremes: a
time series analysis in Varanasi, India. The Science of the Total Environment 665, 453e464.
Steffen, W., Richardson, K., Rockström, J., Cornell, S.E., Fetzer, I., Bennett, E.M., Folke, C., 2015. Planetary bound-
aries: guiding human development on a changing planet. Science 347 (6223), 1259855.
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2018a. World Population Projected to Reach 9.8 Billion
in 2050, and 11.12 Billion in 2100. Retrieved on 31 December 2018. https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/
news/population/world-population-prospects-2017.html.
United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2018b. 68% of the World Population Projected to Live in
Urban Areas by 2050, Says UN. Retrieved on 31 December 2019. https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/
news/population/2018-revision-of-world-urbanization-prospects.html.

I. Emerging facets of urban ecology e urban and urbanization, theory and concepts
16 1. Urban ecology e current state of research and concepts

UNSD e United Nations Statistics Division, 2015. Table 6 e Demographic Yearbook 2015. Available at: https://
unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic-social/products/dyb/documents/dyb2015/Notes06.pdf. (Accessed 18
December 2019).
Verma, P., Raghubanshi, A.S., 2018. Urban sustainability indicators: challenges and opportunities. Ecological Indica-
tors 93, 282e291.
Verma, P., Raghubanshi, A.S., 2019. Rural development and land use land cover change in a rapidly developing
agrarian South Asian landscape. Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment 14, 138e147.
Verma, P., Raghubanshi, A., Srivastava, P.K., Raghubanshi, A.S., 2020. Appraisal of kappa-based metrics and
disagreement indices of accuracy assessment for parametric and nonparametric techniques used in LULC classi-
fication and change detection. Modeling Earth Systems and Environment 1e15.
Wolman, A., 1965. The metabolism of cities. Scientific American 213 (3), 178e193.

Further reading
Ahmad, S., Baiocchi, G., Creutzig, F., 2015. CO2 emissions from direct energy use of urban households in India. Envi-
ronmental science & technology 49 (19), 11312e11320.

I. Emerging facets of urban ecology e urban and urbanization, theory and concepts
C H A P T E R

2
Urban metabolism: old challenges,
new frontiers, and the research
agenda ahead
Daniela Perrotti
University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

O U T L I N E

1. Urban metabolism: from concept to socioeconomic flows of the urban


methods 17 metabolism 23
1.1 One concept, a variety of methods 17 2.3 Linking urban metabolism research
1.2 A variety of practical applications with design: systematizing the
and end-users 20 growing evidence-base on nature-
based solutions 25
2. Challenges and new frontiers for
urban metabolism research 21 3. Conclusions: a tentative research
2.1 Understanding distinct conceptual agenda 26
underpinnings and common methods
References 28
across ecological sciences 21
2.2 Expressing interdependency between
biogeochemical cycles and

1. Urban metabolism: from concept to methods

1.1 One concept, a variety of methods


Urban metabolism (UM) is an interdisciplinary research field, spanning across disciplines
as different as industrial ecology, urban ecology, political ecology and political-industrial

Urban Ecology
https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-820730-7.00002-1 17 Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
18 2. Urban metabolism: old challenges, new frontiers, and the research agenda ahead

ecology (Wachsmuth, 2012; Castàn Broto et al., 2012; Newell et al., 2017). Each of these dis-
ciplines encompasses different schools, which focus on a wide range of methods and diver-
sified scales of analysis. In quantitative terms, industrial ecology is the most influential
research path in UM studies (Newell and Cousins, 2014). Industrial ecology approaches to
resource accounting have extended beyond the original focus on the metabolism of industrial
systems and industrial symbiosis to include the broader scale of cities (Bai, 2007; Kennedy
et al., 2012). In industrial ecology, UM is defined as ‘the sum total of the technical and socio-
economic processes that occur in cities, resulting in growth, production of energy, and
elimination of waste’ (Kennedy et al., 2007). In UM research, cities are studied as open
systems whose metabolism is the result of the interactions with other (close or remote)
anthropogenic systems and the natural environment. Beyond the concept, industrial ecology
UM research provides analytical tools and methods to assess the resource intensity of urban
systems and, when applied in policy and practice, to enable resource use optimization.
Material Flow Analysis (MFA) is the most used method for resource accounting in indus-
trial ecology (Cui, 2018; Kennedy et al., 2011). Rather than a single model, it consists of a fam-
ily of mass-balance models that can vary from national to local scales and includes aggregate
materials and energy accounts as well as assessments of a single material or substance. The
Eurostat’s Economy-wide material flow accounting (EW-MFA) is the most widely spread
method within the MFA family and represents the basis of standard statistical reporting in
the EU (Eurostat, 2001). The EW-MFA was introduced in the late 1960s (Ayres and Kneese,
1969) and further developed in the 1990s (Baccini and Brunner, 1991; Bringezu, 1997). It was
initially conceived as a standardized method for flow accounting at the scale of national econ-
omies. Hammer et al. (2003) adapted the EW-MFA at the city and regional level, opening the
path to a still growing number of applications to urban systems (e.g., Hammer and Giljum,
2006; Barles, 2009; Voskamp et al., 2017; Bahers et al., 2019). In the EW-MFA, only material
input and output flows entering or leaving the system are considered, excluding in-boundary
processes and dynamics associated with resource use. Hence the model results in a ‘black
box’ representation of the socioeconomic system itself. The method has in the past decades
gained maturity thanks to considerable efforts by the scientific community to work consis-
tently toward methodological harmonization and standardization across existing datasets
(Fischer-Kowalski et al., 2011). In the past few years research efforts have concentrated on
integrating the EW-MFA with other methods for the assessment of urban resource flows
(Daigger et al., 2016) and with ecosystem services frameworks (Perrotti and Stremke,
2020). Substance Flow Analysis (SFA) belongs to the same mass-balance family of accounts
as the Eurostat EW-MFA. It concentrates on the analysis of substance fluxes and key nutrients
(primarily carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus), which are assessed either separately or coupled
with other fluxes. SFA applications at the city level range from analysis of individual ele-
ments responsible for human-induced water, air, or soil contamination in urban ecosystems
(or contamination risks) (Barles, 2010), to investigation into the mutual dependency of mul-
tiple elements in water-agro-food systems (Verger et al., 2018; Esculier et al., 2019), and to
coupled material and energy fluxes in an ‘urban nexus’ perspective (Chen and Lu, 2015).
Beyond MFA and SFA, other popular methods for resource accounting within industrial
ecology include Emergy-based analysis and Energy Flow Accounting (EFA). Emergy-based
analysis is characterized by the use of the ‘emergy’ concept as a basis for resource accounting
(Odum, 1996). Emergy is defined as the total amount of solar energy that is used directly and
indirectly to deliver a product or a service. As exemplified in the study of Beijing from 1990

I. Emerging facets of urban ecology e urban and urbanization, theory and concepts
1. Urban metabolism: from concept to methods 19
to 2004 (Zhang et al., 2009), in emergy-based analysis, the studied UM system includes the
socioeconomic system and the natural subsystems (the natural capital included within the
city’s administrative boundaries). Solar equivalent joule (SEJ) is used as a common unit to
account for all flows, including renewable sources (wind, rain, rivers, earth cycles), indige-
nous nonrenewable resources (e.g., coal, iron ore, sand, gravel) and all other resources im-
ported from other systems (fuels, goods, services). The emergy issued from renewable and
nonrenewable indigenous sources is considered regardless of the amount of final energy
used in the socioeconomic subsystem. Despite the limits resulting from the use of a single
unit for different energy flows and qualities (Hau and Bakshi, 2004), the emergy method
provides a clear picture of the contribution of natural energy to the system’s economy. Since
the beginning of the 2000s, EFA has been established as an alternative method to the EW-
MFA in industrial ecology research (Haberl, 2001a; Krausmann and Haberl, 2002). EFA is
grounded on a socioeconomic perspective of the energy metabolism of human organizations
and emphasizes the central role of energy flows in metabolic analysis, integrating technical
energy (power and heating) with biomass flows (wood, food, feed and biomaterials). EFA
adapts the set of indicators used in MFA to account for all streams of energy (including en-
ergy from renewable sources) and energy-rich materials that cross the system boundary
based on their gross calorific value, regardless of the purpose for which they are used (Hab-
erl, 2001a). All energy inputs that build up the biophysical structures of the societies are
considered alongside the biomass combusted to generate heat and/or electricity. EFA also
tracks the main energy conversion processes throughout the system (primary-final-useful en-
ergy) for both technical energy (used in artefacts) and nutritional energy (for humans and
livestock). The EFA’s focus on biomass is essentially due to the historical perspective adopted
in these studies. This allows for comparison between different types of societal organizations,
such as hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies, in which technical energy from fossil sour-
ces was not as dominant as in industrial societies. System boundaries are rarely restricted to a
single administrative urban unit and EFA is mostly performed at the regional, national, or
supranational scale (Krausmann, 2013). Moreover, through the introduction of additional
indicators such as Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production (HANPP), EFA also of-
fers valuable insights into the relations between land use and resource flows (Haberl et al.,
2006), placing human social activities (e.g., economic production or the use of technologies)
in a broader ecological context (Haberl, 2001b). EFA is regarded as a valuable tool to integrate
socioeconomic and natural flows in a comprehensive UM framework (Golubiewsk, 2012) and
can provide an interdisciplinary knowledge-base for industrial ecology, ecological economics
and human ecology to jointly advance UM research (Barles, 2010).
Recent years have seen the rise of political-industrial ecology, an interdisciplinary field
concerned with the cross-fertilization of epistemologies and the hybridization of qualitative
and quantitative methodologies used in industrial and political ecology (Newell et al.,
2017). In political ecology, socioeconomic flows of the UM are analyzed as the result of the
interactions between power, institutional structures, politics, social and human capital
(Swyngedouw and Heynen, 2003; Castàn Broto et al., 2012). Criticisms are addressed to ‘or-
thodox’ industrial ecological methods for their limited engagement with the social and polit-
ical challenges arising from unequal access to resources across societies or stakeholder groups
(Dalla Fontana and Boas, 2019) and uneven relations of power in the governance of natural
resources (Gandy, 2004).

I. Emerging facets of urban ecology e urban and urbanization, theory and concepts
20 2. Urban metabolism: old challenges, new frontiers, and the research agenda ahead

On the urban ecology side of the UM research spectrum, synergies and tradeoffs between
environmental and social concerns were central to the studies carried out since the 1970s
within the UNESCOeMan and the Biosphere Programme (UNESCO, UNEP, 1971).
Follow-up research by the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of
Sustainability (UNU-IAS, former United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies)
has allowed fostering an ‘urban ecosystems’ approach to resource management and policy
development in cities (Marcotullio and Boyle, 2003). Similar interdisciplinary questions
were explored in experimental programmes such as the Long Term Ecological Research
Program in the United States (LTER) that started in the 1980s and included 24 different pro-
jects (Hobbie et al., 2003). A long-lasting dialogue across disciplines was foreseen as a means
to achieve shared theoretical bases to understand cities as dynamic, complex and adaptive
systems linking ecology and society (Grimm et al., 2000; Pickett et al., 2011). More recently,
interdisciplinary exploratory research initiatives were carried out within the US National
Science Foundation’s Urban Long-Term Research Areas (ULTRA-Ex) with pilot projects
developed in over 20 US cities. The programme specifically tailored the opening of the ‘black
box’ of city systems and the study of the dynamic interactions between people and natural
ecosystems occurring in urban settings as well as their influence on cities’ liveability and
the health and functionality of nonurban systems. For example, in the Ecosystem Study of Bal-
timore, Maryland, and the District of ColumbiaeBaltimore City ULTRA-Ex project, bio-
geophysical models of water, carbon and nitrogen cycles from the watershed to the parcel
scale were coupled with econometric and structural models simulating locational choices
and patterns of land development; this aimed to inform sustainability policy scenarios for
enhanced water quality and carbon sequestration (Grove et al., 2013). Other urban ecology
experiments include the research, development and demonstration projects within the Public
Interest Energy Research Program (PIER) established by the California Energy Commission
in 1998. A research roadmap issued at the end of the programme proposed an expanded en-
ergy and resource use accounting framework including life cycle cost assessment, sociodemo-
graphic data and policy drivers underlying energy use. Outcomes of these projects provide
evidence of the benefit of combining socioeconomic and environmental perspectives with
UM research (Pincetl and Bunje, 2010; Pincetl et al., 2012).
When navigating through the aforementioned projects, one could argue that the strong inter-
disciplinary focus of contemporary ecological science links back to Eugene P. Odum’s original
idea of a ‘new ecology’ (Odum, 1977). E. P. Odum intended ecology as a conceptual framework
and a project which should benefit society through linking physical and biological processes,
combining holism and reductionism and bridging social and natural sciences. Ecology as a
new ‘integrative science’ provides fertile soil to experiment with the integration of biophysical
and socioeconomic parameters within the same system framework, bridging communication
gaps and combining with economics methods (Barret and Odum, 1998; Barret, 2001). In line
with this ambition, this chapter will focus on the interoperability of industrial and urban ecology
methods and on the rise of new integrated approaches in ecological science as a way forward to
face current challenges and identify opportunities for advancing UM research.

1.2 A variety of practical applications and end-users


Practical applications of UM research have developed in fields as varied as the definition
of sustainability and environmental pressure indicators (e.g., Wood, 2012), the development
of Decision Support Systems (e.g., Chrysoulakis et al., 2013), GHG emission accounting tools
I. Emerging facets of urban ecology e urban and urbanization, theory and concepts
2. Challenges and new frontiers for urban metabolism research 21
(e.g., Mohareb and Kennedy, 2012), and urban planning and design (e.g., Brugmans and
Strien, 2014; Metabolic, 2015). There is nowadays a broad consensus that UM assessments
can have significant impact on the work of professional designers and planners and help
streamline urban planning strategies toward resource optimization (Galan and Perrotti,
2019). For urban planners and designers, an UM perspective is key to understanding the nat-
ural and anthropogenic processes that sustain socioeconomic activities and ecological cycles
in humans’ physical environments. These include both present and projected spatial and tem-
poral dynamics through which cities gather, transform and use biotic and abiotic resources to
ensure their functioning and, when relevant, growth. Applications of UM studies in design
extend from mono- or multiprocess engineering systems and utility infrastructure (e.g., wa-
ter, heat and electricity, waste cycling) to urban form at the neighborhood and city scale. If
engineering applications represent a traditional focus of industrial ecology, spatial design
strategies have gained increased attention across the industrial ecology research community
over the last two decades (Ibañez and Katsikis, 2014; Galan and Perrotti, 2019). A better un-
derstanding of the interdependency between scopes and scales of these two design domains
is a major challenge ahead and an essential condition for enhancing the applicability of UM
models in policy and practice.
Following-up from the abovementioned practical applications, end-users of UM studies
range from urban sustainability analysts (cf. previous section) to environmental and civil en-
gineers, policymakers and urban planning and design professionals. The uptake of the UM
concept and the applicability of UM studies may vary substantially according to the targeted
end-users, their background, expertise, specialist and tacit knowledge, urban sustainability
visions, as well as specific goals and priorities (Taleghani et al., 2020). Consequently, the
design of UM assessment methods with the profile of the targeted end-users in mind, or in
collaboration with them, is crucial for successful incorporation of the results of UM studies
in policy and urban planning practice (Perrotti, 2019). Awareness of key characteristics and
needs of end-user profiles and more structured collaborative approaches for codesigning
resource accounting methods can increase the meaningfulness of UM research and its rele-
vance for policy and practice. Moreover, the integration of end-users’ input (on key charac-
teristics of the studied urban system or specific policy orientations) since early stages of the
research can favour successful UM knowledge exchange between science and practice.
Knowledge coproduction in UM research is essential not only to favour the uptake of the
UM concept by professionals but also for the development of assessment methods that can
better serve practitioners’ daily work and catalyze the move from research to action (Newell
et al., 2019). With the considerable success known by the field in recent years, topics such as
the actionability of the UM concept and UM theory and the delivery of more practice-relevant
UM methods are constantly moving up in both industrial and urban ecology research
agendas (Cui, 2018; Perrotti, 2019).

2. Challenges and new frontiers for urban metabolism research

2.1 Understanding distinct conceptual underpinnings and common methods


across ecological sciences
There exist both conceptual differences and methodological commonalities between in-
dustrial ecology and urban ecology approaches in UM research. Understanding them can

I. Emerging facets of urban ecology e urban and urbanization, theory and concepts
22 2. Urban metabolism: old challenges, new frontiers, and the research agenda ahead

help identify common grounds and opportunities for cross-fertilization and more integrated
work.
On the conceptual level, the main difference between industrial ecology and urban ecology
approaches consists of their use of the ‘organism’ analogy (industrial ecology) and the
‘ecosystem’ concept (urban ecology) to refer to the city and to study its metabolism. A recur-
ring tendency to use these two terms nearly interchangeably could be observed in industrial
ecology studies until at least a few years ago (Golubiewsk, 2012; Kennedy, 2012). Interdisci-
plinary work across the two communities (Newell and Cousins, 2014; Bai, 2016) has favoured
substantial progress and increased clarity and consensus on the fact that rather than organ-
isms, cities are ecosystems and not analogous to them (Pickett et al., 1997; Grimm et al., 2008).
Tansley (1935) originally coined the term ‘ecosystem’ to describe the constant interchange
among organic and inorganic components in a biome, i.e., between the living organisms (in-
dividual plants and animals) and between these and all the inorganic elements that compose
their environment. He did not attempt to translate these interchanges into energy and mate-
rial flows, which was done later by Lindeman (1942), with the metabolism idea applied to
ecosystems subsequently popularized by Odum (Fischer-Kowalski, 1998), nor did he refer
to the human-dominated or urban ecosystems in particular. However, his contribution has
the merit to have opened the discussion on which level is the most appropriate to study a
city’s degree of heterotrophy through consideration of the relationship with its environment
and among its biotic and abiotic components (Golubiewsk, 2012). The urban ecosystem
concept as defined in contemporary urban ecological science (Cadenasso and Pickett, 2013)
is grounded in an understanding of cities as human-dominated systems (and, as such,
different from ‘natural’ and said ‘wild’ ecosystems), characterized by interrelations and feed-
back loops among material cycles and energy flows (rather than linear input-output
dynamics). Here regulating and governing mechanisms such as policy and planning play a
crucial role in shaping social and ecological processes (Bai, 2016). Differentiating between
the ‘organism’ and ‘ecosystem’ levels when referring to cities from an UM perspective is
more than a question of semantics. Confining UM within the limits of the organismal analogy
can limit the effective use of scientific principles and frameworks in analyzing how cities
function and their relationship with the surrounding environment, as well as hamper the
consolidation of a common knowledge base for more interdisciplinary work (Golubiewsk,
2012). In general, moving beyond organismic and biological metaphors to properly organize
comprehensive knowledge frameworks and city-specific system analytics reflects a growing
concern in systems thinking (Yang and Yamagata, 2019). A call for different urban disciplines
to coalesce around a ‘new science of cities’ has been expressed in the past decade (Batty,
2013), stressing the need for streamlining theory and methods to better describe the intricate
structure of the networks and flows that compose urban systems.
From a methodological standpoint, mass balance methods are used in both industrial and
urban ecology to measure urban resource flows in order to understand drivers of human con-
trol upon them. Input-output studies of biogeochemistry fluxes (water, nutrients, carbon and
other substances) and flows of useful and waste energy in ecosystems have a strong research
tradition in urban ecology (McHale et al., 2015). Complementarily, industrial ecology EW-
MFAs of cities concentrate on the account of flows of materials and technical energy that
make up the economy of urban systems. MFA studies that consist of a mass-balance model
for a single element (e.g., metals) normally concentrate on the pools and fluxes required for
economic consumption, manufacturing and recycling process, as well as on waste generation.

I. Emerging facets of urban ecology e urban and urbanization, theory and concepts
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
All things have been delivered unto me of my Father: and no one
knoweth who the Son is, save the Father; and who the Father is,
save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal
him. Luke, 10, 22.

I know the things which have been, those which are, and
those which are to be; but me nobody knows. VII, 26.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest. Matt., 11, 28.

Forsaking all duties, come to me as thy sole refuge. I will


release thee from all sins: do not grieve. XVIII, 66.

But that ye may know that the Son of Man hath authority on
earth to forgive sins,—Mark, 2, 10.

Of all mortals, he who knows me to be unborn, without


beginning, the great Lord of the world, being free from
delusion, is released from all sins. X, 3.

If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take
up his cross, and follow me. Mark, 8, 34.

In thought renouncing all actions unto me, intent on me,


applying thyself to the yoking of thine intellect, be thou
always thinking of me. XVIII, 57.

So, therefore, whosoever he be of you that renounceth not all


that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. Luke, 14, 33.

Having thyself yoked by the yoke of renunciation, thou shalt


come to me. IX, 28.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest. Matt., 11, 28.

In him seek shelter with all thy might: by his grace thou shalt
attain supreme peace, the eternal dwelling-place. XVIII, 62.
If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how
much more shall they call them of his household? Matt., 10, 25.

hating me in their own bodies and in those of others. XVI, 18.

And blessed is he, whosoever shall find none occasion of


stumbling in me. Matt., 11, 6.

Deluded people, ... not knowing my highest nature as great


lord of entities, disregard me, as I have assumed a human
body. IX, 11.

My yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Matt., 11, 30.

To the constantly-yoked Yogi, who constantly remembereth


me, never thinking of another, I am easy of access. VIII, 14.

Learn of me. Matt., 11, 29.


Learn from me. XVIII, 50.

It would lead us far afield to set forth in detail all the striking things
that Jesus has to say about His own person and mission, but it may
be well to quote a few passages exhibiting lines of character and
thought not exemplified above:—
(a) His meekness and lowliness.

“I am meek and lowly in heart.” Matt., 11, 29.

(b) The conditions of His earthly life.

“The foxes have holes, and the birds of heaven have nests; but
the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head.” Luke, 9, 58.

(c) The necessity that He should die for men.

“And He began to teach them, that the Son of Man must suffer
many things, and be rejected by the elders, and the chief priests,
and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”
Mark, 8, 31.

(d) His spirit of service and self-sacrifice.

“Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to


minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.” Matt., 20, 28.
“But I am among you as he that doth serve.” Luke, 22, 27.

(e) His claims on the allegiance and love of men.

“Every one who shall confess Me before men, him shall the Son
of Man also confess before the angels of God: but he that
denieth Me in the presence of men shall be denied in the
presence of the angels of God.” Luke, 12, 8-9.
“He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of
Me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not
worthy of Me.” Matt., 10, 37-38.

(f) His universal sympathy.

“Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these My brethren, even these


least, ye did it unto Me.” Matt., 25, 40.

(g) His declaration that he will return to judge all men.

“Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy
by Thy name, and by Thy name cast out devils, and by Thy
name do many mighty works? And then will I profess unto them,
I never knew you: depart from Me, ye that work iniquity.” Matt., 7,
22-23.

(h) His presence with his followers.

“For where two or three are gathered together in My name, there


am I in the midst of them.” Matt., 18, 20.
The Gītā is one of the most eloquent possible proofs of the fact that
the human heart cries out for an incarnate Saviour. Scarcely less
impressive is the evidence furnished by the reception of the Gītā by
Hindu readers: not the greatest of the Upanishads, neither the
Chāndogya nor the Katha, has had one quarter of the influence
exercised by this late poem; and the secret undoubtedly is to be
found in the attraction of the man-god Krishna. How many
generations of pious readers have found in the story of the life and
teaching of the incarnate god something to which their deepest and
most persistent religious instincts have responded! How many to-day
turn to Krishna in their trials and troubles!
On the one hand, then, we have the imaginative portrait of Krishna,
surrounded by millions of adoring worshippers—touching spectacle!
On the other, stands the historical Jesus of Nazareth, Son of Man
and Son of God, stretching out His nail-pierced hands to India, as He
says, “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I
will give you rest.” Rightly read, the Gītā is a clear-tongued prophecy
of Christ, and the hearts that bow down to the idea of Krishna are
really seeking the incarnate Son of God.
IV. We have been able to see some little distance into the self-
consciousness of Jesus, and to realize in part at least that on which
He grounds His claim to the heart of every man; but we have not yet
learned the secret of that most marvellous of His powers, His power
to win human love. To that we must now address ourselves.
It is a well-known fact of history that, shortly after the death of Christ,
His followers began to preach in His name, and that very soon the
new faith began to spread rapidly. We have already learned from
Tacitus that in 64 A. D. there was “an immense multitude” of
Christians in Rome itself. Now the greatest of all the early
missionaries was Paul. He was the apostle of Europe. We mention
his name here, because we wish to refer to one of his Epistles.
These letters are the earliest of our Christian documents. The series
begins with two brief letters, both written, with a short interval
between them, to the church at Thessalonica. The most probable
date for them is 49 A. D., that is, only twenty years after the death of
Christ. But the letter we wish to use is one sent from Ephesus to the
church of Corinth[235] about 55 A. D.,[236] that is, twenty-six years after
the death of Jesus. We must not stay here to speak of the splendour
of the ethical feeling and teaching of the Epistle further than to say
that it manifestly has its source in Jesus. We must direct our
attention to other facts which appear in it.
Christianity, we note, has already spread from Judæa into the
provinces of Asia[237] and Galatia[238] in Asia Minor, and
Macedonia[239] and Achaia[240] in Europe. Phœnicia, Syria, Cilicia and
Cyprus are not mentioned; but we know from other sources[241] that
they too were already evangelized. Thus in twenty-six years the
Church of Christ has become a great organization, extending
through many lands, yet conscious of its unity in Christ.[242] We note
also that then, as to-day, BAPTISM is a solemn ceremonial act, in
which a man through the action of the Holy Spirit becomes a
member of the body of Christ,[243] while THE LORD’S SUPPER is a
recurrent feast, in which the members of the Church have fellowship
with the Lord and with each other.[244]
But what we would call special attention to is the place assigned to
Christ in the Epistle. With reference to the Christian, Christ is THE
LORD;[245] with reference to the Father, He is THE SON;[246] He is
spoken of as the Lord of Glory,[247] the Power of God,[248] and the
Wisdom of God;[249] and prayer is offered to Him.[250] All spiritual
authority and power are attributed to Him.[251] The Church is His
body,[252] and He supplies His grace and power to every member.[253]
He will come back again to earth in glory,[254] and will then reveal all
secrets and judge all men.[255]
But there is another point still more noteworthy, and that is the way in
which the crucifixion of Christ is interpreted. Instead of regarding that
judicial murder as a regrettable incident, like the assassination of
Cæsar or the death of Socrates, Paul and his fellow-believers glory
in it,[256] not only as the crowning event of the divine revelation made
in Christ, but as the consummation of His work as the Saviour of
men.[257] Paul makes it the basis of all his preaching,[258] and in it he
finds all the wealth of spiritual wisdom which Christianity contains.[259]
He contrasts the wisdom of God wrapped up in that divine tragedy
with the worldly wisdom of earthly rulers.[260]
What can be the explanation of this extraordinary attitude to such an
event?—The basis of it is the solemn declaration, which Paul makes
in the Epistle, and which he says he made to his converts first of all,
that ON THE CROSS CHRIST DIED FOR OUR SINS.[261] The
crucifixion, as a bare event in history, is but an act of wicked folly on
the part of the rulers of Judæa; but, viewed from the standpoint of
morality and religion, it is a divine act of world-wide significance. In
the blood of Christ a new covenant had been made between God
and man.[262] This is the Gospel, which all the Apostles teach, and
which all the churches believe.[263] Through faith in Christ, on the
basis of this tremendous assertion, the Corinthian Christians, like the
rest, had been saved,[264] i.e., they had received the forgiveness of
their sins[265] and the sanctifying Spirit.[266] They thus no longer
belonged to themselves: they had been bought with a great price,
the blood of the Son of God.[267] They were no longer part and parcel
of heathen society; each one was a member of the body of Christ.[268]
What led Paul and all the other Apostles and all the early Christians
to form such an extraordinary theory? How did they come to the
conclusion that the crucifixion was not a squalid tragedy, but a divine
sacrifice? This letter tells us quite plainly; the reasons were these:
Jesus Himself declared before He was crucified, that His death was
to be the basis of the New Covenant,[269] and this declaration of His
had been divinely confirmed by His Resurrection.[270]
Now mark: this letter was written within twenty-six years of the event.
The majority of the twelve Apostles, and multitudes of other men
who had known Jesus, were still alive.[271] Paul’s good faith is beyond
all question; and, as he was intimate with Peter and John and the
rest of the Apostles, and also with James the brother of Jesus,[272] he
had access to the very best information possible. Further he had
been one of the most violent opponents of Christianity. His testimony
is, therefore, evidence of the very highest value. We may conclude,
then, with the utmost certitude that we are standing on an
immoveable historical foundation, when we say that Jesus, before
His crucifixion, said He was about to die for the sins of men.
But this evidence does not stand alone. It is a historical fact,
acknowledged by scholars of every school, that all Christian
churches have from the very beginning celebrated the Lord’s
Supper.[273] Now this universal usage in so many churches, divided
not only by long distances but in many cases also by minor
differences in doctrine, cannot be explained at all except as a result
of a command of Jesus Himself. If any single disciple had started
such a practice, it could never have won its way to universal
acceptance. Now consider the significance of this fact: Jesus, on the
night in which He was betrayed, took bread, broke it, and bade His
disciples eat it, saying, ‘This is My body.’ He then took a cup of wine
and bade them drink it, saying, ‘This is My blood.’[274] The scene is
absolutely without a parallel in the history of the world; and it can
have but one meaning, viz., that Jesus regarded His death as a
sacrifice.
But the direct statement of Paul is corroborated, not only by the
institution of the Supper, but also by this fact, that the doctrine, that
Christ died for our sins, is an integral part of the teaching of Jesus as
that is handed down to us in the Gospels. We have already seen that
He held that His death was necessary for the establishment of the
Kingdom. We must now set out His teaching on this subject with a
little more fulness. We shall restrict ourselves to a single Gospel. In
the earliest saying that refers to it, His death is a future event,
coming inevitably, and destined to bring sorrow to His disciples. “And
Jesus said unto them, Can the sons of the bride-chamber mourn, as
long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when
the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then will they
fast.”[275] In the next it is much more clearly defined. Its necessity is
emphasized; we are told that the agents are to be the religious
leaders of Israel; and it is to be followed by the resurrection. “From
that time began Jesus to shew unto His disciples, how that He must
go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief
priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised up.”[276]
Twice over this same prophecy is repeated, the last time with more
detail.[277] Then follows a most striking saying, in which He speaks of
His death as voluntary: it is a giving away of His life; and it is
explained as the climax of His life of service; for the gift is ‘a ransom
for many,’ that is a price paid, in order to redeem many from sin.
“The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and
to give His life a ransom for many.”[278] We need not linger over the
next sayings, though each has its own interest.[279] The last saying
occurs in the account of the institution of the Supper. In these words
He teaches in the clearest way, first, that His death is to be the
ground of forgiveness, and secondly, that after His death He is to be
the source of the spiritual life and strength of His followers. “And as
they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it; and
He gave to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body.’ And
He took a cup, and gave thanks, and gave to them, saying, ‘Drink ye
all of it; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is shed for many
unto remission of sins.”[280] The teaching of Jesus is an organic
whole, and is incomplete without this, His own interpretation of His
death of shame.
Jesus, then, gave Himself up to death as the sacrifice for the sins of
men. Our Christian documents go on to declare that He rose from
the dead on the third day, and that this resurrection of His was God’s
confirmation of the sacrifice of His Son. That men should at first sight
disbelieve the astounding assertion, that the crucified Jesus rose
from the dead, is not to be wondered at; but the fact remains.
Sceptical scholars have laboured for centuries to explain away this
extraordinary occurrence, but no one of these scholars themselves
will venture to say that any explanation hitherto given is satisfactory.
The latest attempt, that made by Schmiedel in the Encyclopædia
Biblica, is a farcical failure. The following are the adamantine facts
which no rationalism has ever yet succeeded in crushing or melting:
—(a) the Christians declared that they had seen Christ and spoken
with Him after His resurrection; (b) they were absolutely sincere in
this belief[281]; (c) the Christian Church arose as a result of this
conviction; (d) the grave was empty. The account of Christ’s
appearances given in the fifteenth chapter of our Epistle is well worth
study. Those who wish to look into this question further may consult
Ballard’s Miracles of Unbelief, pp. 135 ff.
We have thus, by a serious historical inquiry, reached the conclusion,
that Jesus of Nazareth, the founder of the Christian religion,
declared, before His crucifixion, that He was about to die for the sins
of men, and that this assertion of His was sealed with the divine
approval by the unique miracle of the resurrection. We have also
seen that this was the Good News, which Paul and all the other
Apostles preached, and on which the early Church was founded. It is
this that has won for Jesus the love of myriads; it is this that has
been the magnet to draw them away from sin. It is the source of the
joy and vital power of the Christian life.
Now let us recollect the poem upon The Servant of Jehovah, which
we considered in our third chapter. How marvellously Jesus
corresponds to the extraordinary idea which that poem discloses, the
despised and oppressed prisoner who endures in uncomplaining
meekness the uttermost shame of a violent death, and is finally
recognized as having been “pierced because of our trangressions,
and crushed because of our iniquities.” That anyone should write
such a poem, seems strange in the extreme; that Jesus should have
fulfilled it, is infinitely more wonderful.
How comes it that this Jewish carpenter, with His three years of
public life and His cross of shame, fulfils so many ideals and
aspirations? He brings in the new age which Virgil and his
contemporaries sighed for; He is Plato’s just man; He utters from His
own self-consciousness such things as the author of the Gītā
imagined an incarnate god would say; He gives Himself up to death,
in sheer love, as a sacrifice for sin, thus fulfilling the deepest needs
of man, as expressed by the old Hebrew seer; and He is the only
human being whom men of every race and clime can heartily admire
and unhesitatingly imitate. Nor is this all: many other convergent
lines of thought might be suggested, in the light of which Jesus
stands out as the ideal of our common humanity and the fountain of
the love of God.
How is all this to be explained? Wide chasms sever the Hindu sage,
the Greek philosopher, the Hebrew prophet and the Roman poet; yet
in Jesus their several ideals are reconciled in a loftier unity. Once in
the course of the centuries East and West have actually met! Nor
was the meeting merely the resolution of antitheses in a wider
conception: what the Jew and the Indian, the Greek and the Roman,
dreamed of as the unattainable, that Jesus actually accomplished in
this work-a-day world of ours, amid storms of the cruellest hatred
and calumny.—What is your candid opinion about Him, brother?
How are you to solve the problem raised by His life, death and place
in history? Can He be better described than in His own words, SON
OF MAN and SON OF GOD?
APPENDIX.
NEO-KRISHNA LITERATURE.

The Neo-Krishna movement is about twenty years old. Before 1880


Vaishnavism does not seem to have been in great favour with the
higher castes of Bengal. Traditionally they were Saivas or Sāktas
rather than Vaishnavas; and English education, which bore very
heavily for half a century on every form of Hinduism seems to have
told with peculiar severity on Krishnaism. But shortly after 1880 a
great change becomes visible: Krishna begins to be praised on
every hand, and ancient Vaishnava books are read and studied with
avidity. The new movement seems to have owed its origin, on the
one hand, to the teaching and influence of Ramkrishna Paramhansa,
Keshub Chundra Sen, Bijoy Krishna Goswami and Shishir Kumar
Ghose; and on the other, to the efforts of two or three noteworthy
literary men, who threw themselves into the task of painting the
character of Krishna with extraordinary enthusiasm. The Gītā at once
leaped into greater prominence than ever: numberless editions and
translations of it have been published. Many essays have appeared
comparing Krishna with Christ and Vaishnavism with Christianity.
Thus a large Krishna literature, both in English and Bengali, has
sprung up. The following seem to be the more important books of
this literature:—

1884
Essays in Prachār on Krishnacharitra by Bunkim Ch. Chatterji.
1886
1. Krishnacharitra, Bunkim Ch. Chatterji, 1st edition. A volume in
Bengali prose on the character of Krishna.
1887
2. Raivatak, Nobin Ch. Sen. An epic poem in Bengali on
Krishna’s youth. 3. The Bhagavad Gītā, or the Lords Lay, Mohini
M. Chatterji. An English prose translation of the text and of parts
of Sankara’s commentary. An attempt is made to put the Gītā on
the same level as the New Testament.
1888
4. Krishna Jivani, Prosanna Kumar Vidyaratna. A life of Krishna
in Bengali prose.
1889
5. Srikrishner Jivana O Dharma, Gaur Gavinda Ray. The life and
religion of Krishna from the standpoint of the New Dispensation:
Bengali prose.
1890
6. Srimadbhagavadgītā, Krishnananda Swami (i.e. Krishna
Prasanna Sen). The text in the Bengali character with a Bengali
commentary and translation.
1892
Krishnacharitra, Bunkim Ch. Chatterji, 2nd edition. This edition
contains a great deal of new matter.
7. Amiya Nimai Charity, Shishir Kumar Ghose. First part. A life of
Chaitanya in Bengali prose.
1893
Amiya Nimai Charit. Second part.
8. Kurukshetra, Nobin Ch. Sen. An epic poem in Bengali on
Krishna at Kurukshetra.
1894
9. The Landmarks of Ethics according to the Gītā. Bulloram
Mullick.
Amiya Nimai Charit. Third part.
1895
10. Kālā Chānd Gītā, Shishir Kumar Ghose. A sort of Krishnaite
Song of Solomon in Bengali verse. It is said to have been
composed in 1888.
1896
11. Srikrishna, his Life and Teachings, Dhirendra Nath Pal. 3
vols.
12. Srikrishner Kalanka Kena? Nava Kumar Devasarma. A
Bengali prose defence of the character of Krishna.
13. The Bhagavad Gītā, Annie Besant. New and revised edition.
An English prose translation with an introduction and a few
notes.
14. Prabhās, Nobin Ch. Sen. An epic poem in Bengali on the
later years of Krishna’s life.
1897
15. Lord Gaurānga, Shishir Kumar Ghose, 1st volume. A life of
Chaitanya in English prose, with a discussion of the doctrine of
Incarnations.
1898
16. Krishna and Krishnaism, Bulloram Mullick.
Lord Gaurānga, 2nd volume.
17. Hindu Theism, Sitanath Tattvabhushan.
18. An Elementary Treatise on Universal Religion. Kshetra
Mohan Mukerji. The religion of the Gītā is here put forward as the
universal religion.
1899
19. Incarnation, Nanda Krishna Bose. This treatise follows in
most points the theory of Incarnation put forward in Lord
Gaurānga.
1900
20. The Young Men’s Gītā, Jogindranath Mukharji. An English
prose translation with introduction and notes.
21. Srimadbhagavadgītā, Prasanna Kumar Sastri, 2nd edition.
The text in the Bengali character, with several commentaries,
and a Bengali translation by Sasadhar Tarkachuramani.
1901
22. The Imitation of Sreekrishna, S. C. Mukhopadhaya. A daily
text-book, containing extracts in English from the Gītā, the
Mahābhārata, and the Bhāgavat Purāna.
23. Sree Krishna, Muralidhur Roy. An account, in English prose,
of the life and character of Krishna.
24. Srimadbhagavadgītā, Bhudhur Chattopadhaya, 4th edition.
The text in the Bengali character, with a Bengali commentary.
1903
25. A most elaborate edition of the Gītā, edited by Damudar
Mukerji, is being published in parts.
26. A Bengali verse translation of the Gītā by Satyendra Nath
Tagore is appearing in Bhārati.

This revival of interest in Krishna and his worship is clearly part of


the great national movement which has been so potent in Bengal,
religiously, socially and politically, these last twenty years. This
period has witnessed the appearance of the whole Neo-Hindu
movement, with its literature, lectures, societies and missionary
propaganda, the rise of the Indian National Congress and of the
social reform movement, the advance of native journalism to its
present extraordinary influence, and the establishment of the native
unaided colleges, which have so seriously changed the balance of
influence in Higher Education. Neo-Krishnaism, then, is one result of
the operation of that potent spirit whereby India has become
conscious of her unity, and her sons have been roused to a vigorous
defence of all that they have inherited from the past. This rise of the
national spirit, though it may be troublesome in small matters to the
rulers of India, is undoubtedly the last and greatest justification of
English rule; and, while, with its exaggerations and insincerities and
follies, it cannot fail to provoke criticism,[282] yet its power to awake
self-reliance, self-respect and the passion for freedom ought to win
for it the approval and the encouragement of all good men.
There can be no doubt that among the influences which have
produced Neo-Hinduism, Christianity is one of the most potent, if not
the chief. This is peculiarly evident in the case of the Neo-Krishna
literature we are discussing. In 1899 the Bengal Librarian wrote,
“There is no denying the fact that all this revolution in the religious
belief of the educated Hindu has been brought about as much by the
dissemination of Christian thought by Missionaries as by the study of
Hindu scriptures; for Christian influence is plainly detectable in many
of the Hindu publications of the year.” But beyond this general
influence, which cannot fail to be noticed by anyone who will take the
trouble to read the volumes, it is, we believe, perfectly plain that the
very ideas which have given birth to the literature are the result of
Christian influence. A distinct taste for such books as the Gospels
has sprung up; and men have come to feel the need of a perfect
character, such as Christ’s is, for daily contemplation and imitation.
The Neo-Krishna movement endeavours to supply these needs from
within Hinduism, offering the Gītā instead of the Gospels, and
Krishna instead of Christ.[283]
Nobin Ch. Sen seems to have been the first to conceive the idea of a
modern rendering of the character of Krishna; for he laid the project
before some of his friends in 1882.[284] His famous epic trilogy,
Raivatak, Kurukshetra and Prabhās, are the result of this pregnant
thought. But, while he and Shishir Kumar Ghose have done a great
deal to popularize the movement, there can be no doubt that Bunkim
Ch. Chatterji’s Krishnacharitra has been by far the most influential
volume in the whole of this literature. Gaur Gavinda Ray’s work,
Srikrishner Jivana O Dharma, is a piece of excellent
characterization, and has won the high regard of many thoughtful
men.
The books on our list fall into two classes, Historical and Traditional.
In the Historical class there are only two volumes, Tattvabhusan’s
Hindu Theism, and the Young Men’s Gītā. These two frankly
acknowledge that the Gītā is a late book. In the Young Men’s Gītā[285]
its date is said to be a century or two before, or a century or two
after, the Christian era; while in Hindu Theism[286] the Gītā is
regarded as the point of transition from the old Vedānta to the
religion of the Purānas. The standpoint of these two books is thus
thoroughly historical, but it necessarily implies the abandonment of
the divinity of Krishna.
All the rest of the books on the list fall into the second class; for they
hold the traditional position about Krishna. Most of them make no
attempt at criticism of the sources, but treat the Mahābhārata, the
Gītā, the Harivansa and the Purānas as all historical and all equally
trustworthy. A few of the authors, however, state plainly their own
critical conclusions, and two or three enter into some discussion of
the main problems. These attempts at criticism are the most pitiable
parts of the whole literature. The talented author of Srikrishner
Jivana O Dharma, by far too sincere and candid to ignore the
Puranic elements in the sources, frankly confesses their presence;
yet, believing these books to be genuine representatives of the age
of Kurukshetra, he is driven to the extraordinary conclusion that the
Vedic, the Vedantic, and the Puranic ages were contemporaneous.
[287]
The late Bulloram Mullick, in discussing the eighteen Purānas,
goes so far as to say, “Whatever may be the views of European
savants, there is indubitable proof that some of these Purānas
existed in the eleventh or twelfth century before Christ.”[288] Even
Bunkim Chundra Chatterji himself not only unhesitatingly adopts
Goldstücker’s rash guess, that Pānini’s grammar was written before
the Brāhmanas and the Upanishads, but on the basis of that unwise
conjecture, pushes back Pānini’s date to the tenth or eleventh
century B. C.,[289] i.e., four or five centuries earlier than the pre-
Buddhistic date which Goldstücker[290] wished to establish. Dhirendra
Nath Pal, seeing that Bunkim Babu found it so easy to leap over a
few centuries, goes a little further and suggests the twelfth or
thirteenth.[291] But, indeed, without some such strange perversion of
history, it is impossible to construct an argument for the authenticity
of the Gītā and the historicity of the Mahābhārata that shall have
even the semblance of reason.
We note next that of all the books of the second class, Bunkim
Chundra’s Krishnacharitra is the only work that gives any
independent criticism: all the rest, with the single exception of
Srikrishner Jivana O Dharma, merely echo his arguments. Thus
Bunkim Babu’s theory is the only one we need discuss.
Now the whole critical structure of the Krishnacharitra rests upon the
passage on pages 41 and 42, where the date of Pānini is discussed.
Pānini is pushed back to 1000 B. C.; and, the ‘original’ Mahābhārata
being earlier than Pānini, we are asked to believe that it was
produced within a century or two of Kurukshetra, and that it is in
consequence trustworthy historically. The whole argument thus rests
on the date of Pānini.
We translate this important passage:—

“Goldstücker has proved that, when Pānini’s Sūtra was


composed, Buddha had not arisen. In that case Pānini must
belong to the sixth century B. C. But not only that, in his time the
Brāhmanas, the Aranyakas, the Upanishads and the other parts
of the Vedas had not been composed. Apart from the Rig, the
Yajur, and the Sāma Vedas, nothing else existed. Asvalāyana,
Sānkhāyana and the rest had not appeared. Max Müller says
that the age in which the Brāhmanas were composed began
about 1000 B. C. Dr. Martin Haug says that that was the end of
the age, and that it began in the fourteenth century B. C.
Therefore, if we say that Pānini must belong to the tenth or
eleventh century B. C., we do not say too much.”

Now the first remark we make on this extraordinary piece of criticism


is this, that Goldstücker and Max Müller are most unfairly conjoined
to support a date which both of them would have indignantly
repudiated. For Müller’s date for Pānini is the fourth century B.C.,[292]
and Goldstücker never proposed to push him further back than the
sixth century; indeed all that he claims is that he has brought forward
evidence which affords a strong probability that Pānini preceded the
origin of the Buddhistic creed.[293] Our next remark is that, though
more than forty years have passed since Goldstücker’s book
appeared,[294] he has convinced no one that the Brāhmanas and the
Upanishads are posterior to Pānini’s grammar: opinions still differ as
to Pānini’s precise date, but no scholar to-day puts him before the
Brāhmanas.[295]
Can the grounds for this unanimity among modern scholars be
vividly set forth? We believe they can. Here, as in our first chapter,
we shall not attempt to fix a definite chronology, but shall simply aim
at reaching the relative age of the great books we are dealing with;
and we shall not deal with the meaning of disputed passages, but
shall rest the case altogether on the clear and prominent features of
history which every one can appreciate. There is, then, first of all the
great broad fact that the Sūtras depend on the Brāhmanas, and are,
in general, posterior to them, and that the language and style of
Pānini’s Sūtras show that he belongs to about the middle of the
Sūtra period.[296] All the detailed study of the last forty years has
gone to strengthen this stable conclusion.
But there is another and still more conclusive proof that Pānini
comes long after the early Brāhmanas. These ancient books are
written in Vedic Sanskrit.[297] The early Upanishads are more modern
in character, but even they belong to a stage of the language a good
deal earlier than the Sūtras: Professor Macdonell’s words are, “the
oldest Upanishads occupying a position linguistically midway
between the Brāhmanas and the Sūtras.”[298] Thus the Brāhmanas
were composed while Vedic Sanskrit was still the language of the
Indo-Aryans. Now Pānini’s grammar deals with classical Sanskrit,
not the Vedic speech. He deals with many points of Vedic grammar,
it is true, but he deals with them as exceptions; his subject is
classical Sanskrit. He laid down the law, which has ruled Sanskrit
throughout the centuries since his day. Thus he arose at a time,
when the language of the Brāhmanas had become archaic, and
modern Sanskrit had taken its place.[299] It is thus absolutely
impossible to believe that Pānini lived and wrote before the
Brāhmanas were composed: to propose to put him back before their
composition is much the same as proposing to push Johnson’s
Dictionary back before Chaucer.
Another line of proof may also be indicated. Careful study of the
early Brāhmanas has made it plain that they were composed after
the collection of the hymns of the Rigveda, but before[300] the
formation of the Sanhitā text (i.e., the text in which the words are
joined according to the rules of Sandhi) and the Pada[301] text (i.e. the
word by word text). The author of the Pada text is Sākalya.[302] Now
Yāska refers to Sākalya as a predecessor;[303] and Yāska himself is
earlier than Pānini.[304] Thus the historical order is the early
Brāhmanas, the Sanhitā text, Sākalya, Yāska, Pānini.
Bunkim Babu’s date for Pānini being thus altogether untenable, his
whole argument for the historicity of the Pāndava Mahābhārata and
Krishna’s character as therein pourtrayed tumbles in ruins, and
brings down with it all the rest of this Krishna literature.
We would invite our readers to turn away from these vain attempts to
turn a myth into sober history, and to listen to the teaching of those
really scholarly Indians who study Hinduism from a scientific
standpoint. We have already referred to Sitanath Tattvabhushan’s
Hindu Theism, and we have frequently used Bose’s Hindu
Civilization under British Rule and R. C. Dutt’s works as authorities.
We would now call attention to a monograph by one of the greatest
scholars in Bengal (Comparative Studies in Vaishnavism and
Christianity, by Brajendra Nath Seal), where[305] the growth of the
Krishna legend is frankly discussed;[306] also to a very remarkable
essay on Buddhist and Vishnuite in a recent number of Sāhitya[307]
by the late Umes Chundra Batabyal, in which grave historical
reasons are given for concluding that the Gītā is in part at least a
polemic against Buddhism; and to the late Mr. Justice Telang’s
introduction to his translation of the Gītā (S. B. E., vol. VIII), with
regard to which readers will note, that, although the date is put a little
earlier than most scholars would put it, no attempt is made to defend
the traditional theory of the origin of the Song.

Footnotes
1. The philosophic basis of the book is primarily the Sānkhya
system which is essentially atheistic.

2. Dr. Lorinser’s attempt (Die Bhagavadgītā, übersetzt und


erläutert von Dr. F. Lorinser, 1869) to prove that the author of
the Gītā borrowed many ideas from the Bible must be
pronounced a failure. Cf. Garbe, 19, 83-85; Max Müller, Natural
Religion, 97-100; Hopkins, R. I., 429.

3. On the religion of the Rigveda see Kaegi, 27-74; Hopkins, R. I.,


Chaps. II-VI; Macdonell, 67-115; Bose, H.C., I, 6-9; Dutt, C.A.I.,
Vol. I, Chap. V; Monier-Williams, Chap. I.

4. Hopkins, R.I., 141; Macdonell, 385; Garbe, 1-2; Kaegi, 87.

5. E.g., X, 90.

6. X, 81; 82; 121.

7. X, 129.

8. Kaegi, 3; Macdonell, 171-174.

9. Kaegi, 4; Macdonell, 174-185.

10. Kaegi, 5; Macdonell, 202 ff.; Müller, A.S.L., Chap. II; Bose,
H.C., I, 9-12.

11. Müller, A.S.L., 389.

12. Hopkins, R.I., 177.

13. Gough, Chap. I; Garbe, 2-7; Macdonell, 223; Hopkins, R.I.,


204.

14. Müller, A.S.L., 313 ff.; Macdonell, 204; Kaegi, 5.

15. Müller, A.S.L., 316 ff.; Macdonell, 218 ff.; Kaegi, 5; Bose, H.C.,
I, 12-19.

You might also like