The Penguin History of Early India

by Romila Thapar

  Methods of memorizing the Vedic hymns involved a series of cross-checks, and analyses of Vedic Sanskrit already had complex rules. The foundation was laid for sophisticated linguistic analyses and it is debatable whether the absence of a script actually assisted this process. The grammar of Panini, although it was not the grammar of the ritual language – Vedic Sanskrit – but of the more commonly used Sanskrit, reflected an unusually advanced understanding of the structure of language and was remarkable in many ways. (It was, incidentally, seminal to the work of Franz Bopp and comparative philology in nineteenth-century Europe, and the birth of modern linguistics.)

  At about this time mention was made of variant languages of the Indo-Aryan family. Vedic Sanskrit as the language of ritual developed differently from spoken Sanskrit, or what Panini calls Bhasha, and for which he wrote his grammar. This was to evolve into Classical Sanskrit, the language of those with formal learning. Panini’s grammar was foundational to later grammars of Sanskrit and of other Indo-Aryan derived languages. It would be worth investigating why the grammar was written at this time. Was it written to prevent further changes in Sanskrit introduced by the currency of non-Aryan languages? Or did it provide a structure for the learning of the language, particularly for those not familiar with Indo-Aryan? Or was it thought appropriate that the oral tradition be given a written form? Panini is said to be from the north-west, yet the best Sanskrit according to some commentators was the language of the Kuru-Panchala area in the western Ganges Plain.

  In the towns and villages the more popular speech was Prakrit, also derived from Indo-Aryan. This had local variations: the western variety was called Shauraseni and the eastern variety Magadhi, after the regions where they were spoken. The Buddha, wishing to reach a wider audience, taught in a variety of Magadhi. The Buddhist Canon in the subsequent period was composed in Pali, an associated Indo-Aryan language. Urban centres were host to a variety of languages, so inevitably there would have been changes in the structure and vocabulary of these.

  These features of social and economic life were closely linked with alterations in other spheres. It was doubtless this new situation that from the brahmanical perspective required regulations relating to social norms. Hence the composition of the Dharmasutras, setting out the social codes, social obligations and duties, and the correct behaviour for each varna. Creating social norms involved the adjusting of various practices prevalent among the societies now juxtaposed. This is demonstrated, for instance, in the listing of the legitimate forms of marriage that include the patriarchal practice of the father gifting his daughter to her husband-to-be as the best form, marriage involving bride-price as tolerable, with the lowest form being the kidnapping of the bride. That all these many forms were regarded as legitimate, although some received more approval than others, must have posed serious problems for the authors of the Dharmasutras in juxtaposing and accepting variant practices. An attempt was made to give some uniformity and homogeneity to the social regulations for the upper castes, whereas the variations in social custom of the lower castes were difficult to regulate. There was an underlining of upper-caste privileges with their counterweight of lower-caste disabilities. Lower castes and women are frequently bracketed in these texts and the subordination of both is exemplified.

  Religions and Ideologies: Questions and Responses

  The contestation or accommodation between the established orthodoxy and the aspirations of newly rising groups intensified changes in religious belief and practice and in philosophical speculation, resulting in a remarkable richness and vigour in thought, rarely surpassed in the centuries to come. The ascetics and the wandering sophists of the earlier age maintained a tradition of unorthodox thinking, and, in general, philosophical speculation ranged from controlled determinism to free-ranging materialism. Rivalries and debates were rife. Audiences gathered around the new philosophers in the kutuhala-shalas – literally, the place for creating curiosity – the parks and groves on the outskirts of the towns. This was a different ambience from that of Vedic thought where teachings or disputations were not held in public. The presence of multiple, competing ideologies was a feature of urban living.

  Some of those expounding different ideas were identified as sects. This meant that they were small groups, usually supporting a single doctrine or belief, who had voluntarily come together. There were, therefore, a large range of sects. Their recruitment was not bound by caste, although they tended to use a language common to all their members and their aspirations were most likely similar. Much of our information on these comes from texts of the subsequent period, reflecting on the beginnings of philosophical thought. Some of these sects grew in number in the subsequent period through a following or incorporation and, where they were successful in finding support and patronage, they emerged as an Order, being referred to as various Sanghas or assemblies. These were characterized by a broader identity than the narrow conformity of the sect and could result in the breaking away of groups that then became the nuclei of new sects.

  The Ajivikas were followers of a philosophy of predetermination – that destiny controlled even the most insignificant action of each human being and nothing could change this. They had a body of monks – those becoming monks believing that this was predetermined – and their occupation was asceticism. There were various other sects, some supporting atheism, such as the Charvakas whose philosophy derived from materialism and challenged the ideology of Vedic Brahmanism. Man was made of dust and returned to dust, as described in the teaching of the influential Ajita Keshak-ambalin:

  Man is formed of the four elements. When he dies, earth returns to the aggregate of earth, water to water, fire to fire, and air to air, while his senses vanish into space. Four men with the bier take up the corpse: they gossip as far as the burning-ground, where his bones turn the colour of a dove’s wing and his sacrifices end in ashes. They are fools who preach almsgiving, and those who maintain the existence [of immaterial categories] speak vain and lying nonsense. When the body dies both fool and wise alike are cut off and perish. They do not survive after death.

  Digha Nikaya, 1.55, tr. A. L. Basham, The Wonder That Was India, p. 196

  The Buddha described such sects as ‘eel-wrigglers’, inconsistent in their teaching. Those who regarded them with scorn, such as those with orthodox views, accused them of immoral practices as is usual among confrontational groups. Brahman attitudes to them were particularly harsh, since the materialists objected to what they perceived as the senseless ritual and ceremonial on which the priests insisted, largely because it was their livelihood. References to materialist schools of thought were blurred in the priestly writings that have survived and, until recently, it was generally thought that Indian philosophy had more or less bypassed materialism. The participation of the Charvaka and the Lokayata groups in discussions on knowledge is now seen as more significant than was thought before.

  But, of all these sects, the two that came to stay were Jainism and Buddhism, both of which were to become independent religions. Part of the reason for this may have been that theirs was a more holistic understanding of contemporary changes than that of other sects, and, in the breakaway from the earlier systems of thought and ethics, they reflected a more sensitive response to the pressures of the changes. Jaina ideas, thought to have been in circulation earlier, posited previous teachers – the tirthankaras or makers of fords – with the claims to an ancestry of the ongoing teaching. Claims to an earlier succession of teachers were also made by some other sects. Mahavira gave shape to these ideas in the sixth century, and this led to the organization and spread of the Jaina sect which was initially called Nirgrantha. Jaina is a secondary formation from Jina, ‘the Conqueror’, which refers to Mahavira. He is said to have renounced his family at a young age to become an ascetic. For twelve years he wandered, seeking the truth, and eventually gained enlightenment. Mahavira’s teaching was confined to the Ganges Plain, though in later centuries the larger following of Jainism was in other
parts of the subcontinent, particularly Karnataka and western India.

  Jaina teaching was at first preserved as an oral tradition, but later it was collated and recorded. Some Jaina sects take their cue from the final version of the Canon, edited at the Council of Valabhi a millennium later. Compilations such as the Acharanga-sutra, Sutrakritanga and the Kalpasutra are regarded as the early texts. The conversion, at a later date, of oral traditions to written forms is often a pattern with religious sects. This makes it problematic to ascertain the original teaching and separate it from interpolations. Jainism later split into two major sects, the monks of which were either the Digambara/Sky-clad or naked, or the Shvetambara/Clad in White. Jaina history continued to be written, and was prolific in the eleventh to fourteenth centuries AD when Jainism was virtually hegemonic in western India.

  Vedic authority was not accepted by the Jainas; nor was the claim that knowledge was revealed only to the brahman. The existence of deity was not central to early Jaina doctrine, which taught that the universe functions according to an eternal law and is continually passing through a series of cosmic waves of progress and decline. The purification of the soul is the goal of living, for the pure soul is released from the body and then resides in bliss. Purification is not achieved through knowledge, as some of the Upanishadic teachers taught, knowledge being a relative quality. This is explained by the famous story of the six blind men, each touching a different part of an elephant and insisting that what they had touched was a rope, a snake, a tree trunk, and so on. Each man sees only a fraction of true knowledge, which makes knowledge unreliable for salvation. The purification of the soul required living what the Jainas regarded as a balanced life, but this, as described by Mahavira, was only possible for a monk. Yet, despite the vow of renunciation, the monk or nun was dependent on the lay community. The monk’s vow of begging for alms had as its counterpart the commitment of the lay follower to the giving of alms.

  The vow of non-violence became almost obsessive: even the unconscious killing of an ant while walking was regarded as sinful. The more orthodox wore a muslin mask covering the mouth and nose in order to prevent the involuntary inhalation of even the tiniest of insects. No breathing, existing, living, sentient creatures should be slain, or treated with violence, or abused, or tormented, or driven away, according to the Acharanga-sutra. The emphasis on ahimsa, non-violence, prevented Jainas from being agriculturalists, since cultivation involved killing insects and pests. Crafts endangering the life of other creatures also had to be avoided. Trade and commerce were possible occupations and Jainism spread among the trading communities. The encouragement of frugality in Jainism became an ethic and coincided with a similar sentiment upheld in commercial activity. The Jainas specialized in conducting the exchange of manufactured goods, acting as middlemen, with a preference for financial transactions. Thus Jainism came to be associated with the spread of urban culture.

  Of the two near contemporaries, Mahavira and Gautama Buddha, the latter is the more famous since he founded a religion that was to prevail in Asia. The Buddha (or the Enlightened One), as he was called, belonged to the Shakya clan, and his father was the kshatriya raja of the Shakya gana-sangha. The legend of the Buddha’s life has curious similarities with the legendary episodes in Christ’s life such as the idea of the immaculate conception, and the temptation by the Devil. He was born in the sixth century BC and lived the life of a young aristocrat, but with increasing dissatisfaction after he came into contact with the sick, the suffering and the dead. Finally, he left his family and his home one night and went away to become an ascetic. After an austere period of ascetic practice he decided that this was not the way to achieve freedom from rebirth. He then resolved to discover the path towards liberation through meditation and, eventually, on the forty-ninth day of his meditation, is said to have received enlightenment and understood the cause of suffering in this world. He gave his first discourse at the Deer Park at Sarnath, in the vicinity of Varanasi, where he gathered his first five disciples.

  This has been called the ‘Discourse on the Turning of the Wheel of Law’, which was the nucleus of the Buddha’s teaching. It incorporated the Four Noble Truths: the world is full of suffering; suffering is caused by human desires; the renunciation of desire is the path to nirvana or liberation from rebirth; and this can be achieved through the Eightfold Path. The latter consisted of eight principles of action, leading to a balanced, moderate life: right views, resolves, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, recollection, and meditation, the combination of which was described as the Middle Way.

  To understand this discourse did not call for complicated metaphysical thinking, nor did it require complex rituals. It required a commitment to ethical behaviour, a central feature of which was that it was not based on the privileges and disabilities of caste identity but on a concern for the welfare of humanity. Such an approach suggests a degree of sensitivity to the social mores becoming current in urban living. The rational undertone of the argument was characteristic of the Buddhist emphasis on causality and logic as the basis of analysis, particularly in a system where little is left either to divine intervention or else to the kind of metaphysics that the Buddha described as splitting hairs. The Buddha did not see his teaching as a divine revelation, but rather as an attempt to reveal the truths that were apparent to him and required to be stated.

  To the extent that a deity was not essential to the creation and preservation of the universe, Buddhism was atheistic, arguing for a natural cosmic rise and decline. Originally a place of bliss, the world had been reduced to a place of suffering by human capitulation to desire. The authority of the Vedas was questioned, particularly as revealed texts associated with deity, and this was not specific only to Buddhism. Brahmanical ritual, especially the sacrificing of animals, was unacceptable. There was a closer association with popular, more unassertive forms of worship at funerary tumuli and sacred enclosures. Doubtless this relieved the austerity of an otherwise rather abstract system of thought. Independence from deities was also evident in Buddhist ideas about the origin of government and the state. Whereas Vedic Brahmanism invoked the gods in association with the origin of government, Buddhism described it as a process of gradual social change in which the instituting of the family and the ownership of fields led to civil strife. Such strife could only be controlled by people electing a person to govern them and to establish laws for their protection: an eminently logical way of explaining the origins of civil strife and the need for law.

  In underlining elements of logic and rationality, the Buddha was reflecting some of the philosophical interests of his day. Freedom from the cycle of rebirth led to nirvana, interpreted either as bliss through enlightenment, or extinction. Thus the doctrine of karma and samsara, linking action and rebirth, was essential to the Buddhist system even if the Buddha denied the existence of the atman or soul. What continued was consciousness and this was modulated by actions. The denial of the soul gave a different edge to the Buddhist doctrine of action and rebirth. Implicit in the Four Noble Truths is the concept of karma, causally connected to desire and suffering. The Buddha’s teaching was partially a response to the discourse of the early Upanishads, agreeing with some ideas and disagreeing with others. The disagreements were not insubstantial. But the teaching was a departure from that of the Vedic corpus and also a response to the historical changes of the time, among which were the emergence of the state and the growth of urban centres, posing questions that could not be answered by existing ideologies. The institutions that they generated were still in flux. The individual was involved in a struggle for status in the current defining of social hierarchies. The wish to opt out of social obligations was in part determined by these changes, and also by the search for answers to questions that troubled a changing society.

  Unlike the brahmanical idea, the Buddhist notion of karma was not tied to the regulations of varna society, nor were social ethics measured by the rules of varna. The improvement of one’s karma to ens
ure a better life was dependent on observing a code of social ethics based on the Eightfold Path and not merely the norms of sacred duties drawn up by brahmanical authors. The Buddha did not envisage the elimination of caste, as that would have required a radical reordering of society. Caste – whether varna or jati registered social status, and jati was important to determining marriage circles and occupations. The norms of ethical behaviour were distinctive and were irrespective of caste status. The curiosity about the dual division of master and slave among the Yonas of the west was in its own way a questioning of the universality that was claimed for caste.

  A subtle questioning of caste also lay in the freedom given to women to function in ways other than subjugation to rules of marriage. Despite the Buddha’s hesitations, he was persuaded to permit the ordaining of women as nuns. This held at least an option for an alternative way of life, if only a limited one. The general hesitation in admitting women as nuns came from the notion that this would weaken marriage and family. The poems and hymns composed by the nuns that were later compiled as the Therigatha provide statements of considerable sensitivity on perceptions by women. That women could be lay followers and patrons allowed them a more assertive role. For example, cities of the Ganges Plain boasted of wealthy and accomplished courtesans, some of whom gave munificent gifts to the Buddhist Sangha/Order. Such women were respected for their attainments and were acceptable to the Order. A distinction was maintained between prostitutes and courtesans, both symptomatic of urban life, but the courtesan was admired for her accomplishments. Making donations was an expression of self-confidence, as it permitted women some control over wealth and the right to donate it where they thought fit. Again, this was a contrast to Vedic Brahmanism where women, although associated as wives with the patrons of the sacrifice, are hard to trace as patrons in their own right. The founding of an Order for nuns was a striking innovation, as there were increasing limitations being placed on the activities of women in the Dharmasutras.