Fields of Blood

by Karen Armstrong

  The Buddhists and Jains made an impact on mainstream society because they were sensitive to the difficulties of social change in the newly urbanized society of northern India. They enabled individuals to declare their independence of the big agrarian kingdoms, as the tribal republics had done. Like the ambitious vaishyas and shudras, Buddhists and Jains were self-made men, reconstructing themselves at a profound psychological level to model a more empathic humanity. Both were also in tune with the new commercial ethos. Because of their absolute rejection of violence, Jains could not engage in agriculture, which involved the killing of creatures, so they turned to trade and became popular in the new merchant communities. Buddhism did not demand complex metaphysics or elaborate, arcane rituals but was based on principles of reason, logic, and empirical experience that were congenial to the merchant class. Moreover, Buddhists and Jains were pragmatists and realists: they did not expect everybody to become a monk but encouraged lay disciples to follow their teachings insofar as they could. Thus these spiritualties not only entered the mainstream but even began to influence the ruling class.

  Already during the Buddha’s lifetime, there were signs of empire building in the Gangetic plain. In 493 BCE Ajatashatru became king of Magadha; it was said that, impatient for the throne, he had murdered his father, King Bimbisara, the Buddha’s friend. Ajatashatru continued his father’s policy of military conquest and built a small fort on the Ganges, which the Buddha visited shortly before his death; it later became the famous metropolis of Pataliputra. Ajatashatru also annexed Koshala and Kashi and defeated a confederacy of tribal republics, so that when he died in 461, the Kingdom of Magadha dominated the Gangetic plain. He was succeeded by five unsatisfactory kings, all parricides, until the usurper Mahapadma Nanda, a shudra, founded the first non-Kshatriya dynasty and further extended the borders of the kingdom. The wealth of the Nandas, based on a highly efficient taxation system, became proverbial and the idea of creating an imperial state began to take root. When the young adventurer Chandragupta Maurya, another shudra, usurped the Nanda throne in 321 BCE, the Kingdom of Magadha became the Mauryan Empire.

  In the premodern period, no empire could create a unified culture; it existed solely to extract resources from the subject peoples, who would inevitably rise up from time to time in revolt. Thus an emperor was usually engaged in almost constant warfare against rebellious subjects or against aristocrats who sought to usurp him. Chandragupta and his successors ruled from Pataliputra, conquering neighboring regions that had strategic and economic potential by force of arms. These areas were incorporated into the Mauryan state and administered by governors who answered to the emperor. On the fringes of the empire, peripheral areas rich in timber, elephants, and semiprecious stones, served as buffer zones; the imperial state did not attempt direct rule in these areas but used local people as agents to tap their resources; periodically these “forest peoples” resisted Mauryan dominance. The main task of the imperial administration was to collect taxes in kind. In India, the rate of taxation varied from region to region, ranging from one-sixth to one-quarter of agricultural output. Pastoralists were taxed according to the size and productivity of their herds, and commerce was subject to taxes, tolls, and custom dues. The crown claimed ownership of all uncultivated land, and once an area had been cleared, shudras living in overpopulated regions of the Mauryan Empire were forcibly resettled there.95

  The empire, therefore, depended entirely on extortion and force. Not only did military campaigns increase the wealth of the state by acquiring more arable land, but plunder was an important supplementary revenue, and prisoners of war provided valuable manpower. It may therefore seem strange that the first three Mauryan emperors were patrons of nonviolent sects. Chandragupta abdicated in 297 BCE to become a Jain ascetic; his son Bindusara courted the strictly ascetical Ajivaka school; and Ashoka, who succeeded to the throne in about 268 after murdering two of his brothers, favored the Buddhists. As shudras, they had never been permitted to take part in the Vedic rituals and probably regarded them as alien and oppressive. The independent, egalitarian spirit of these unorthodox sects, on the other hand, would have been highly congenial. But Chandragupta realized that Jainism was incompatible with royal rule, and Ashoka did not become even a lay Buddhist until the end of his reign. Yet alongside Mahavira and the Buddha, Ashoka would become the most central political and cultural figure of ancient India.96

  On his accession, he took the title Devanampiya, “Beloved of the Gods,” and continued to expand the empire, which now extended from Bengal to Afghanistan. In the early years of his reign, Ashoka had lived a somewhat dissolute life and acquired a reputation for cruelty. But that changed in about 260, when he accompanied the imperial army to put down a rebellion in Kalinga in modern Odisha and had an extraordinary conversion experience. During the campaign, 100,000 Kalingan soldiers were killed in battle, many times more had perished from wounds and disease afterward, and 150,000 were deported to the peripheral territories. Ashoka was profoundly shocked by the suffering he witnessed. He had what we might call a “Gilgamesh moment,” when the sensory realities of warfare broke through the carapace of cultivated heartlessness that makes warfare possible. He recorded his remorse in an edict inscribed on a massive rock face. Instead of jubilantly listing the numbers of enemy casualties, like most kings, Ashoka confessed that “the slaughter, death and deportation is extremely grievous to Devanampiya and weighs heavily on his mind.”97 He warned other kings that military conquest, the glory of victory, and the trappings of royalty were fleeting. If they had to dispatch an army, they should fight as humanely as possible and enforce their victory “with patience and light punishment.”98 The only true conquest was personal submission to what Ashoka called dhamma: a moral code of compassion, mercy, honesty, and consideration for all living creatures.

  Ashoka inscribed similar edicts outlining his new policy of military restraint and moral reform on cliff faces and colossal cylindrical pillars throughout the length and breadth of his empire.99 These edicts were intensely personal messages but could also have been an attempt to give the far-flung empire ideological unity; they may have even been read aloud to the populace on state occasions. Ashoka urged his people to curb their greed and extravagance; promised that, as far as possible, he would refrain from using martial force; preached kindness to animals; and vowed to replace the violent sport of hunting, the traditional pastime of kings, with royal pilgrimages to Buddhist shrines. He also announced that he had dug wells, founded hospitals and rest houses, and planted banyan trees “which will give shade to beasts and men.”100 He insisted on the importance of respect for teachers, obedience to parents, consideration for slaves and servants, and reverence for all sects—for the orthodox Brahmins as well as for Buddhists, Jains, and other “heretical” schools. “Concord is to be commended,” he declared, “so that men may hear one another’s principles.”101

  It is unlikely that Ashoka’s dhamma was Buddhist. This was a broader ethic, an attempt to find a benevolent model of governance based on the recognition of human dignity, a sentiment shared by many contemporary Indian schools. In Ashoka’s inscriptions, we hear the perennial voice of those repelled by killing and cruelty who have, throughout history, tried to resist the call to violence. But even though he preached “abstention from killing living beings,”102 he had tacitly to acknowledge that, as emperor and for the sake of the region’s stability, he could not renounce force; nor in these times could he abolish capital punishment or legislate against the killing and eating of animals (although he listed species that should be protected). Moreover, despite his distress about the plight of the Kalingans who had been deported after the battle, there was no question of repatriating them since they were essential to the imperial economy. And as head of state, he could certainly not abjure warfare or disband his army. He realized that even if he abdicated and became a Buddhist monk, others would fight to succeed him and unleash more havoc, and as always, the peasants and the poor would suffer most
.

  Ashoka’s dilemma is the dilemma of civilization itself. As society developed and weaponry became more deadly, the empire, founded on and maintained by violence, would paradoxically become the most effective means of keeping the peace. Despite its violence and exploitation, people looked for an absolute imperial monarchy as eagerly as we search for signs of a flourishing democracy today.

  Ashoka’s dilemma may lie behind the story of the Mahabharata, India’s great epic. This massive work—eight times the length of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey combined—is an anthology of many strands of tradition transmitted orally from about 300 BCE but not committed to writing until the early Common Era. The Mahabharata is more than a narrative poem, however. It remains the Indian national saga and is the most popular of all India’s sacred texts, familiar in every home. It contains the Bhagavad-Gita, which has been called India’s “national gospel.”103 In the twentieth century, during the buildup to independence, the Gita would play a central role in the discussions about the legitimacy of waging war against Britain.104 Its influence in forming attitudes toward violence and its relation to religion has therefore been unparalleled in India. Long after Ashoka was forgotten, it compelled people of all ranks to grapple with his dilemma, which thus became central to the collective memory of India.

  Even though the text was finally redacted by Brahmins, at its heart the epic depicts the pathos of the Kshatriya who could not achieve enlightenment because he was obliged by the dharma of his class to be a man of war. The story is set in the Kuru-Panchala region before the rise of the large sixth-century kingdoms. Yudishthira, eldest son of King Pandu, has lost his kingdom to his cousins, the Kauravas, who rigged the ritual game of dice during his consecration, so that he, his four brothers, and Draupadi, their common wife, had to go into exile. Twelve years later the Pandavas regain the throne in a catastrophic war in which nearly everyone on both sides is killed. The final battle brings the Heroic Age of history to an end and ushers in what the epic calls the Kali Yuga—our own deeply flawed era. It should have been a simple war of good versus evil. The Pandava brothers were all fathered by gods: Yudishthira by Dharma, guardian of cosmic order; Bhīma by Vayu, god of physical force; Arjuna by Indra; and the twins Nakula and Sahadeva by the Ashvins, patrons of fertility and productivity. The Kauravas, however, are incarnations of the asuras, and their struggle therefore replicates on earth the war between devas and asuras in heaven. But even though the Pandavas, with the help of their cousin Krishna, chieftain of the Yadava clan, finally defeat the Kauravas, they have to resort to dubious tactics, and when they contemplate the devastated world at the end of the war, their victory seems tainted. The Kauravas, on the other hand, although they are fighting on the “wrong” side, often act in an exemplary manner. When their leader, Duryodhana, is killed, devas sing his praises and cover his body with a shower of petals.

  The Mahabharata is not an antiwar epic: innumerable passages glorify warfare and describe battles enthusiastically and in gory detail. Even though it is set in an earlier time, the epic probably reflects the period after Ashoka’s death in 232 BCE, when the Mauryan Empire began its decline and India entered a dark age of political instability that lasted until the rise of the Gupta dynasty in 320 CE.105 There is, therefore, an implicit assumption that empire—or in the poem’s terms, “world rule”—is essential to peace. And while the poem is unsparing about the ferocity of empire, it poignantly recognizes that nonviolence in a violent world is not only impossible but can actually cause himsa (“harm”). Brahmin law insisted that the king’s chief duty was to prevent the fearful chaos that would ensue if monarchical authority failed, and for this, military coercion (danda) was indispensable.106 Yet while Yudishthira is divinely destined to be king, he hates war. He explains to Krishna that even though he knows that it is his duty to regain the throne, warfare brings only misery. True, the Kauravas usurped his kingdom, but to kill his cousins and friends—many of them good and noble men—would be “a most evil thing.”107 He knows that every Vedic class has its particular duty—“The shudra obeys, the vaishya lives by trade.… The Brahmin prefers the begging bowl”—but the Kshatriyas “live off killing,” and “any other way of life is forbidden to us.” The Kshatriya is therefore doomed to misery. If defeated, he will be reviled, but if he achieves victory by ruthless methods, he incurs the taint of the warrior, is “deprived of glory and reaps eternal infamy.” “For heroism is a powerful disease that eats up the heart, and peace is found only by giving it up or by serenity of mind,” Yudishthira tells Krishna. “On the other hand if final tranquillity were ignited by the total eradication of the enemy that would be even crueler.”108

  To win the war, the Pandavas have to kill four Kaurava leaders who are inflicting grave casualties on their army. One of them is the general Drona, whom the Pandavas love dearly because he was their teacher and initiated them in the art of warfare. In a council of war, Krishna argues that if the Pandavas want to save the world from total destruction by establishing their rule, they must cast virtue aside. A warrior is obliged to be absolutely truthful and keep his word, but Krishna tells Yudishthira that he can kill Drona only by lying to him. In the midst of the battle, he must tell him that his son Ashwatthaman has died so that, overcome with grief, Drona will lay down his weapons.109 Most reluctantly, Yudishthira agrees, and when he delivers this terrible news, Drona never imagines that Yudishthira, the son of Dharma, would lie. So Drona stops fighting and sits down in his chariot in the yogic position, falls into a trance, and ascends peacefully to heaven. In terrible counterpoint, the chariot of Yudishthira, which has always floated a few inches above the ground, comes crashing down to earth.

  Krishna is no Satan, tempting the Pandavas to sin. This is the end of the Heroic Age, and his dark stratagems have become essential because, as he tells the desolate Pandavas, the Kauravas “could not have been slain by you on the battlefield in a fair fight.” Had not Indra lied and broken his oath to Vritra in order to save the cosmic order? “Not even the world-guardian gods themselves could have killed by fair means those four noble warriors,” Krishna explains. “When enemies become too numerous and powerful, they should be slain by deceit and stratagems. This was the path formerly trodden by the devas to slay the asuras; and a path trodden by the virtuous may be trodden by all.”110 The Pandavas feel reassured and acknowledge that their victory has at least brought peace to the world. But bad karma can only have a bad outcome, and Krishna’s scheme has appalling consequences that resonate horribly with us today.

  Crazed with sorrow, Ashwatthaman, Drona’s son, vows to avenge his father and offers himself to Shiva, the ancient god of the indigenous peoples of India, as a self-sacrifice. Entering the Pandava camp by night, he slaughters the sleeping women, children, and warriors who are “exhausted and weaponless” and hacks horses and elephants to pieces. In his divine frenzy, “his every limb doused in blood, he seemed like Death himself, unloosed by fate … inhuman and utterly terrifying.”111 The Pandavas themselves escape, having been warned by Krishna to sleep outside the camp, but most of their family are killed. When they finally catch up with Ashwatthaman, they find him sitting serenely with a group of renouncers beside the Ganges. He fires off a magical weapon of mass destruction, and Arjuna retaliates with a weapon of his own. Had not two of the renouncers, “desiring the welfare of all creatures,” positioned themselves between the contending weapons, the world would have been destroyed. Instead Ashwatthaman’s weapon is diverted into the wombs of the Pandava women, who will bear no more children.112 So Yudishthira is proven right: a destructive cycle of violence, betrayal, and lies has rebounded on the perpetrators, resulting in destruction for both sides.

  Yudishthira reigns for fifteen years, but he has incurred the ancient stain of the warrior. The light has gone out of his life, and after the war he would have become a renouncer had not his brothers and Krishna strongly opposed it. The king’s rod of force is essential for the welfare of the world, Arjuna argued. No king has ever attaine
d glory without slaying his enemies; indeed, it is impossible to exist without harming other creatures: “I don’t see anyone living in the world with nonviolence. Even ascetics cannot stay alive without killing.”113 Like Ashoka, who was also unable to stem the violence of imperial warfare, Yudishthira focuses on kindness to animals, the only form of ahimsa that he is able realistically to practice. At the end of his life, he refuses to enter heaven without his devoted dog and is congratulated for his compassion by his father, Dharma.114 For centuries, the Indian national epic has compelled its audience to appreciate the moral ambiguity and tragedy of warfare; whatever the warrior’s heroic code maintained, it was never a wholly glorious activity. Yet it was essential not only to the survival of the state but also for civilization and progress and, as such, had become an unavoidable fact of human life.

  Even Arjuna, who is often irritated by his brother’s yearning for nonviolence, has an “Ashoka moment.” In the Bhagavad-Gita he and Krishna debate these problems before the final battle with the Kauravas. As he stands in his chariot beside Krishna in the front line, Arjuna is suddenly horrified to see his cousins and beloved friends and teachers in the enemy ranks. “I see no good in killing my kinsmen in battle,” he tells Krishna, “I do not want to kill them, even if I am killed.”115 Krishna tries to hearten him by citing all the traditional arguments, but Arjuna is not impressed: “I will not fight!” he cries.116 So Krishna introduces an entirely novel idea: a warrior must simply dissociate himself from the effects of his actions and perform his duty without any personal animus or agenda of his own. Like a yogin, he must take the “I” out of his deeds, so that he acts impersonally—indeed, he will not be acting at all.117 Instead, like a sage, even in the frenzy of battle, he will remain fearless and without desire.