Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age

by Robert N. Bellah

  The Rdmdyana is both shorter and narratively clearer than its epic companion.241 In both epics the tension between general and particular dharma comes to a head in the question of the ethical responsibility of the king, or of the ksatriya caste, for the inevitable violence of rule in a moral world where violence is inadmissible. This, as we have seen, is the issue that most concerned Asoka; and Sheldon Pollock, one of the most acute commentators on the epics, makes the comparison explicit. Pollock, whose comments on the epics I have found most helpful, describes Rama, the central figure of the Ramayana, who eventually became king not only of his own city of Ayodhya but of the whole world, as uniting the political and the religious, the ksatriya and the Brahmin ideals, by not only reaffirming dharma but by redefining it:

  Rama resolves the contradiction [between the Brahmin and ksatriya ideals] through a new definition of dharma incumbent on him as a ksatriya. By the increment of a hieratic component, not derived from but only enriched by his temporary ascetic vocation, his code is enlarged to become simply “righteousness.” It is made to intersect with and so absorb brahmanical dharma and its legitimizing ethics, nonviolence, and spirituality. In this way the ksatriya becomes self-legitimizing, and the “full potential” of kingship as an integrating power can at last be activated. The political and spiritual spheres may now converge in a single locus: the king.242

  Pollock then goes on to note the striking parallels between the teachings of Rama and those of Asoka:

  One is again struck by the similarity between the inscriptions [of Asoka] and the Ayodhydkdnda [book 2 of the Ramayana]. For Asoka, too, “the only true conquest is conquest through dharma”: through “compassion, generosity, truthfulness, and honesty,” through “reverence for Brahmans and ascetics.” Glory, too, is desirable only on account of his aim that “men may [be induced] by him to practice obedience to dharma [in Asoka’s Prakrit, Dhamma], that they may conform to the duties of dharma.” The “drum of battle” is similarly transformed into the drum of dharma, and the “abiding welfare of all the world” becomes the fundamental concern.243

  Writing his introduction to the Ayodhyakanda in 1986, Pollock speculates that the influence was from the Ramayana to Asoka, and even that “the Rdmdyana may well have served as a prototype” for “the biography of the Buddha.“244 But in 2006 in The Language of the Gods in the World of Men, he writes, “No convincing evidence has been offered for a pre-Ashokan date of the Ramayana in its monumental form (the common denominator of all our manuscripts), let alone a date before the Buddha (c. 400 BcE).“245 Thus, if we can speak of influence, whatever that might mean in this case, it would have to be from Buddhism and Asoka to the Ramayana, not the other way around.

  Pollock sees the Ramayana as, in the end, creatively ambivalent. Rama “explicitly affirms hierarchical subordination”-many have seen this in the Ramayana over the centuries-yet his “spiritual commitment that allows for his utopian rule seems implicitly to oppose it.“246 The “Golden Age” of peace and prosperity that his rule was said to inaugurate seems to be much more like Asoka’s than like Manu’s. The ethical universalism that had emerged in Buddhism and the edicts of Asoka, therefore, did not die, but lived on in tension with Brahmanic particularism in subsequent Indian history. Indeed, Asoka’s Dhamma, together with Buddhism, which so clearly influenced it, acted as a continuing axial challenge of ethical universalism to the archaic heritage of Brahmanic particularism, such that later Indic civilization, perhaps more than most post-axial civilizations, was an uneasy compromise between axial and archaic cultural strands.

  The Ramayana, in the sense that it has a happy ending, is a comedy, whereas the Mahabharata, in spite of the tacked-on happy ending, is a tragedy that ends in utter catastrophe, so clearly that copies of the Ramayana were often kept at home whereas copies of the Mahabharata were considered too inauspicious for home use.247 But what this shows us is that the Ramayana’s happy ending comes perhaps too easily, whereas the Mahabharata opens up for us the abyss between ethical practice and inevitable violence, between religious ideals and political realities, revealing tensions not only in Indian but in human society. Again Pollock is a helpful commentator: “Whatever else the Mahabharata may be, it is also and preeminently a work of political theorythe single most important literary reflection on the problem of the political in southern Asian history and in some ways the deepest meditation in all antiquity on the desperate realities of political life.“248

  If, as Pollock remarks, “the Ramayana is rightly said to have become a veritable language for talking about the world,” the Mahabharata can be seen as a kind of encyclopedia, with its vast collections of stories and teachings, that contains the whole world, yet it, like the Ramayana, has a narrative core:

  The [Mahabharata] famously celebrates its own encyclopedism, declaring near the start that “whatever exists in the world is to be found in the Mahabharata and whatever is not there does not exist.” Nonetheless, the text, over the course of tens of thousands of verses, never loses sight of the narrative core-the struggle between two sets of cousin-brothers for succession to rulership in the Kuru capital, Hastinapura-or of the central problematic upon which it is so adamantly insistent, the antinomy of political power:

  Man is slave to power but power is slave to no one (Mbh. 6.41.36). The dilemma of power-in the starkest terms, the need to destroy in order to preserve, to kill in order to live-becomes most poignant when those whom one must kill are one’s own kin. That is why the Mahdbadrata is the most harrowing of all premodern political narratives in the world: the Iliad, like the Rdmdyana, is about a war far from home, the Odyssey about a post-war journey home, and the Aeneid about a journey for a home. The Mahdbadrata is about a war fought at home, and in any such war, both sides must lose.249

  Although Pollock is certainly right that the Mahabhdrata is about the antinomy of power, that antinomy arises above all in the context of dharma: when and in what way is power consistent or not with dharma? Both epics are centrally concerned with power and dharma, though in quite different ways. Rama, the hero of the Ramayana, is the unambivalent embodiment of dharma, virtually one-dimensional, as he never wavers.250 On the eve of his accession to the throne, in accordance with the wish of his father, the king, he is banished as a result of palace intrigue and must retire to the forest. He accepts his father’s unjust decision and uses the opportunity to behave as a renouncer, though at her urgent request, taking his wife with him. When his brother charges him with not acting like a true ksatriya, Rama replies: “So give up this ignoble notion that is based on the code of the kshatriyas [ksatradharma]; be of like mind with me and base your actions on righteousness [dharma], not violence” (Ramayana 2.18.36). Later when someone else suggests something similar, Rama again rejects “the kshatriya’s code [ksdtram dharmam], where unrighteousness and righteousness go hand in hand [adharmam dharmasamhitam], a code that only debased, vicious, covetous, and evil men observe” (2.101.20).251 Rama, as we have seen, takes dharma to mean general dharma, righteousness itself, and consistently rejects violence toward human beings throughout the epic. Pollock affirms the nature of Rama as the “ideal king” by asserting that ideal characters “are imaginary solutions to problems that do not admit of real solutions.“252 But lest Rama appear too ideal, or too close to a Buddhist renunciate, his ksatriya aggression is allowed full sway against some animals (problematic, given the ethic of nonviolence toward animals), and especially against the Raksasas, demons or ogres, who may stand for human evils but who are not human. Indeed, the great war with the Raksasas is the dramatic climax of the Ramayana, but one that does not, at least on the surface, undercut Rama’s renunciation of war, even though on occasion in later history certain human groups could all too easily be identified as Raksasas.253

  In the Mahabharata, however, there are no ideal characters like Rama. On the contrary, each of the central figures, the Pandavas, the five sons of the king Pandu, is flawed in his own way, none more so than the eldest brother, Yudhisthira, the
son of the god Dharma (because his human father, Pandu, could not conceive and thus is in an important sense the embodiment of dharma itself, such that he is referred to as King Dharma. Yet the whole epic is an account of Yudhisthira’s education in dharma, an education that never seems complete. The next-younger brother, Arjuna, who embodies the ksatriya ideal, wavers at a critical moment, as any reader of the Bhagavadgita knows, as to what his duty really is.

  The general problem of how dharma relates to power comes to a focus in the obligation of the warrior to fight and if necessary kill for a just cause as against the ethical injunction of nonviolence and especially nonviolence toward relatives and teachers. Arjuna’s charioteer, Krisna, Arjuna’s friend but also the avatar of the great God Visnu, argues with Arjuna, just before the great battle with the Kauravas255 begins, in order to dispel Arjuna’s sudden unwillingness to fight at all. Krisna’s argument is the core of the Bhagavadgita, and there is no necessity for me to rehearse it here, except to say that it is only with Krisna’s revelation of his true self in all his blinding glory that Arjuna finally realizes that his highest obligation is to do his caste duty, his svadharma, while renouncing any concern for the results and realizing that all is finally in the hands of God and that no one is ever definitively killed anyway as the victors will enjoy the triumph in this life and their slain opponents will be reborn in heaven. This was not Rama’s view, and as Romila Thapar put it, “Had the Buddha been the charioteer the message would have been different.“256 In any case the argument is not settled by the Bhagavadgita in book 6 of the Mahabharata but continues to disturb Yudhisthira in later books.

  Books 6 to 9 describe the great war and end with the final triumph of the Pandavas after the near-total annihilation of their rivals, the Kauravas. Book 10, the Sauptikaparvan, or “The Massacre at Night,” however, describes how three surviving Kaurava leaders steal into the Pandava camp at night and murder all the children and grandchildren of the Pandavas, the five brothers themselves having been drawn away from the scene by Krisna and thus surviving.257 After the near-universal slaughter on both sides, Yudhisthira expresses the wish to refuse the kingship that is now his right and retire into the forest, because he cannot imagine perpetrating any more violence than has already taken place. It falls to Arjuna to argue the case as to why this would be wrong and why he must accede to the throne, the country needing a just ruler at last. At this critical moment Arjuna moves beyond the argument from svadharma, one’s “own” dharma, which in practice means the inherited dharma of one’s caste, and which is, in the case of ksatriyas, to kill. They are not alone. Arjuna argues that we are all killers and comes up with quite a list:

  I see no being that lives in the world without violence. Creatures exist at one another’s expense; the stronger consume the weaker. The mongoose eats mice, just as the cat eats the mongoose; the dog devours the cat, your majesty, and wild beasts eat the dog … People honor most the gods who are killers. Rudra is a killer, and so are Skanda, Agni, Varuna, Yama. I don’t see anyone living in the world with nonviolence (ahimsa). Even ascetics (tapasas) cannot stay alive without killing. (Mahabharata 12.15)258

  Though Yudhisthira had said, “I am determined not to be cruel,” thus affirming the value of noncruelty (anrsamsya), he allows himself to be convinced that it is his duty to become king and orders a horse sacrifice (asvamedha), one of the great sacrificial rituals of kingship, to be held. Alf Hiltebeitel describes nonviolence (ahimsa) and noncruelty (anrsamsya) as two values central to the Mahabharata, which, more than once, calls each of them the “highest dharma.” However, Hiltebeitel has discovered 54 references in the epic to something as “the highest dharma,” of which there are 8 for noncruelty and 4 for nonviolence, among the most frequently mentioned (although truth at 5 slightly surpasses nonviolence). Actually a very wide assortment of virtues and spiritual practices are described as the highest dharma, leading Hiltebeitel to the following definition of the “highest dharma” in the Mahdbhdrata: “The highest dharma seems to be knowing the highest dharma for whatever particular situation one is in, and recognizing that situation within an ontology that admits virtually endless variation and deferral in matters of formulating and approaching `the

  All that may be true and has surely served the tradition well, yet the Mahabharata itself leaves us in some doubt as to how well it satisfied Yudhisthira. As for the great Horse Sacrifice, it was apparently successfully concluded, though not without an incident where Arjuna’s son “killed” his father, who was nonetheless successfully revived.260 “But,” comments Doniger, “the success of the sacrifice is undermined by a story told right after it ends and the guests depart. A mongoose came out of his hole there and declared in a human voice, `This whole sacrifice is not equal to one of the grains of barley that were given by a Brahmin who lived by observing the vow of glean The mongoose is expressing the typical renouncer view that sacrifice is as nothing compared to a simple act of charity. Certainly the great Rajasuya sacrifice early in the Mahabharata, symbolizing Yudhisthira’s rule as a cakravartin, “wheel-turning emperor,” had disastrous consequences in that it led to the fatal gambling episode from which arose the trouble with the Kauravas and all the catastrophes that followed.262 Here, too, we have the featuring of one of the great Vedic rituals with a very ambiguous outcome.

  As Pollock puts it, by the end of the story, although the “Pandavas political power has been confirmed, both the war and the new meaner Kali Age it has inaugurated have sapped their strength and will,” so that Yudhisthira can exclaim, “Cursed be the law of power that has left us dead in life” (Mahdbadrata 15.46.8).263 Pollock sums up one reading of the epic as chiefly addressing “the collapse of social value” by quoting a ninth-century thinker who believes that “[the Mahdbadrata’s] purpose as a whole is the production of despair with social life.” Pollock goes on to say that “this is an interpretation of epic not as social fullness but as social abyss, of power not as perfected but as unperfectable since, as Vyasa [the reputed author] says, it is `slave to no In the end, the Mahdbadrata leaves us in the dark as to what exactly its central term, dharma, means. It would seem that only God knows and that, as Hiltebeitel puts it, “the Mahdbadrata is an argument with God.“265

  Just to complete our discussion of epic as a mode of dealing with central ethical and religious issues in the Indic tradition, I would like to refer briefly to the Vessantara jdtaka, which has been called “A Buddhist Epic.“266 The Jatakas are tales of the Buddha’s previous births and are of various and unknown dates, though clearly on the whole later than the Suttas, and many of them probably do come from the same period before and after the turn of the Common Era from which the Hindu epics come.267 The importance of the Vessantara jataka is underlined by Richard Gombrich in the introduction to Margaret Cone’s English translation:

  The selfless generosity of Vessantara, who gave away everything, even his children and his wife, is the most famous story in the Buddhist world. It has been retold in every Buddhist language, in elegant literature and in popular piety; it has been represented in the art of every Buddhist country; it has formed the theme of countless sermons, dramas, dances, and ceremonies. In the Theravada Buddhist countries, Ceylon and South-East Asia, it is still learnt by every child; even the biography of the Buddha is not better known.261

  Although not nearly as long as the Hindu epics, the Vessantara jataka is an epic in that it recounts the deeds and sufferings of a great hero. It is also the case that in its longest and most literate version it is tightly organized and well written. It rivals the Hindu epics in its capacity to express central concerns of the religious tradition in a compelling and influential way to broad audiences, both educated and popular, for centuries.

  Collins shows that the Vessantara jataka is far closer in spirit to the Ramayana than to the Mahabharata, in that Vessantara, like Rama, is a prince of perfect virtue, chosen by his father to rule as regent, but then is banished to the forest where he lives as a renouncer, only to return in the end t
o rule as an “ideal king.” Vessantara gets in trouble with the public because of his extreme generosity, especially when he gives away the state elephant, with magical rain-making capacities, when some Brahmins from another country suffering from a drought ask him for it. This gives rise to a popular demand that Vessantara be banished. He, his wife, and his two children go to a forest retreat that is in many ways idyllic until a disgruntled Brahmin comes and demands Vessantara’s children, and the ever-generous Vessantara accedes, much to his wife’s distress. Indra, the king of the gods, comes to Vessantara in disguise asking for his wife in order to forestall the evil Brahmin from asking for her too. Indra then reveals his true self and returns Vessantara’s wife, who now cannot be given away again, as a gift returned is inviolable. Much of the pathos of the tale is in the misery of the wife at the loss of her children. These events make it clear that the life of perfect renuncia tion, which implies perfect generosity, is the cause of extreme pain on the level of normal human relationships. What does not happen in the Vessantara jataka is any war against the offending Brahmin, so the parallel with the Ramayana fails at that point. Vessantara is incapable of violence against anyone, even a demon, which surely the Brahmin in his unmitigated evil truly is. Nonetheless the behavior of the Brahmin comes to light, and Vessantara is not only reunited with his family but thereafter becomes the perfect king and rules happily ever after. (The evil Brahmin, by the way, is actually given a ransom for the children and set up in a palace, but he promptly eats himself to death, thus bringing about his own punishment.) Collins’s overall interpretation of the story is as follows: