Gosâlä was one of those non-Aryan wandering ascetics of humble origin whom bourgeois society called jîvikä(s) (beggars). He was very early preoccupied by the activities of extremist sects such as the Kâpâlikä (Skull-Bearers) and the Kâlâmukhä (Black Faces), whose magical practices and antisocial attitudes shocked the urban society of their time. He sought to reinstate the philosophic and rationalist aspects of the ancient pre-Aryan culture, which were in opposition to popular ecstatic and mystical Shaivism. We find similar attempts to adapt Shaivism to the prejudices of bourgeois society with the Virä Shaïvä or Lingayat of the Middle Ages and later with the reformers of the British era. The Shaiva ascetics went about naked, their bodies smeared with ashes, practicing orgiastic dances. They refused to be participants in a society oriented toward productivity and puritanism. With matted hair and haggard eyes, they lived away from villages and towns and refused to take an interest in material wellbeing. In the same epoch, the sect of Cynics, of which Diogenes is a typical example, flourished in Greece and is clearly related to the Kâlâmukä(s) of India.
The Bhagavatî Sûträ, a Jaïnä work, has preserved for us the most important description of the life and work of Gosâlä, his relationship to and his break with Mahâvîrä, and the circumstances of his death.
The father of Gosâlä was a Mankhä, a sort of roving bard, exhibitor of pious images. Of non-Aryan origin, he was considered to be a Dâsyu, an appellation corresponding to the term "native" in the period of European colonialism. This, in fact, meant that any position other than a servile one was prohibited to him in Aryan society. Nevertheless, he was a man learned in the philosophic tradition of the ancient culture, particularly in the materialist theories of the Vaïsheshikä and the cosmology of the Sâmkhyä, infinitely more evolved than the nebulous concepts of the followers of the Vedä. (In a similar context many centuries later, I myself knew a humble janitor at the French Consulate in Calcutta who was a poor Brahman who read the Upanishad(s) while operating the elevator for the sahibs, the Europeans, the new Aryan lords of India, as arrogant as they were ignorant.)
It was during the course of his father's peregrinations that Gosâlä was born, like Jesus, in a stable, not far from the famous university of Nalanda. After having practiced for several years the family business of dealing in images, Gosâlä joined a group of Shaiva ascetic-beggars. He soon acquired great renown for his asceticism and his learning. According to the Bhagavatî Sûträ, his disciples considered him the twenty-fourth prophet (Tîrthamkarä) of the jîvikä, in the Avasarpini Yugä (the age of secret messengers), and as the reformer of the old Shaivism, about which little was known at the time for the texts were only reconstituted later. "A great wave of spiritual unrest swept through the Ganges Valley in the sixth century B.C. The thirty-three great gods of the Aryans and the lesser earth spirits of the Aboriginals were too motley a company to correspond to the orderly civilization which had already emerged . . . and were inadequate to meet the spiritual needs of the rising class of merchants to the existence of which both Buddhist and Jaina texts testify."3
The wandering Shaiva sages, asocial and marginal, both ascetic and lascivious, free from the tyrannies of society, held a great fascination for the bourgeois and aristocratic young people of the cities (a little like the hippies of modern times). Hence, the great bourgeois Mahâvîrä and the prince Gautamä became disciples of Gosâlä. (Plutarch reports that Alexander said of himself: "If I were not Alexander, I would wish to be Diogenes.")
The figure of Gosâlä is very important, for in presenting a different version of the old culture, until then ignored and rejected by Aryan society as the superstitions of despicable slaves, he attracted those, such as Mahâvîrä and Gautamä, who were dissatisfied with Vedic rigidity, and he aroused a sudden interest in the antique pre-Aryan philosophy within the good society of the period. The role of Gosâlä can be compared to someone such as Aurobindo, who, in the modern era, however contested by orthodox Hinduism, provoked considerable interest in the philosophic and religious conceptions that Europeans until then had regarded as the superstitions of backward populations.
Mahâvîrä traveled with Gosâlä for six years, and Gautamä joined them for three or four years. The commentary on the Avashyâkä Sûträ by Jîna Dâsä, which gives a rather complete picture of the life of Mahâvîrä, contains the story of his travels in the company of Gosâlä. Gosâlä finally argued with his two disciples over points of doctrine, and they separated. "After their separation, Gosâlä made his headquarters at Savatthi in the workshop of a potter-woman, Hâlâhalâ, and was surrounded by many disciples. At this time he was visited by six dishâcharä (missionaries of the six directions) in consulation with whom he codified the jîvikä scriptures."4 Gosâlä died in 484 B.C., a year before the Buddha. Mahâvîrä lived on until 467.
During his last years, Gosâlä observed a vow of silence (vâcam pahâyä) and lived in a state of trance. He practiced dance and drunkenness. A few moments before his death, one of his disciples asked him, "What is the nature of Hallâ [the principle of the world]?," to which he answered with the mysterious phrase, "The form of Hallâ is as the root of the bamboo. Play the vînâ, Friend." The vînâ is a stringed instrument made from a long bamboo. Music, the ephemeral harmony of sounds that evokes the harmony of the universe, comes forth from the bamboo. Its form and sonorous qualities are implied in its root, in its genetic formula, which like that of all other species is part of the plan devised by the Creator. Gosâlä suggests here a subject for meditation on the tortuous route (vakrä) which links the world of appearance to the unfathomable origin of creation and thus evokes the fundamental problem of knowledge.
Hallâ is a mysterious term used by certain Shaiva sects to invoke the Supreme Being during ecstatic dances. It is difficult to avoid a comparison with Allah, the divine name adopted by the Muslims, together with the black stone of Mecca, which, according to the geography of the Purânä(s), is a Shivä Lingä situated in the ancient sacred site called Makhevshvarä (Lord of the Crocodile). Vestiges of an important colony of people from the Indus Valley have been discovered at Oman, on the Arabian Peninsula.
The teachings of Gosâlä, which constitute the reformed doctrine of the jîvïkä(s), were gathered together in a work in ancient Dravidian called Navakadir. According to Nîläkêshi Tirattu, this work was translated into the Tamil language (modern Dravidian) under the name Onbadukadir, today lost, but of which the Manimekhalaï, a Tamil novel from the second century, preserves important extracts.
THE DOCTRINE OF GOSLÄ
We primarily know about the doctrine of Gosâlä through the writings of his Jaïnä and Buddhist opponents. These texts must therefore be read with some caution. The essential element of the teaching of Gosâlä is the doctrine of Niyati (determinism), which envisages a preestablished universal order by which the world evolves, at all levels, as do living beings, according to a plan contained in its seed. Progress and change are strictly determined by the "law of the process of development" (parinâmä-kramä-niyamä), which forms ruts or molds inside which individuals develop.
Gunaratnä, the commentator of the Shaddarshana-Samucchayä (condensed from the six systems) of Haribhadra, cites Gosâlä: "What makes thorns pointed and determines the innumerable forms of the animals and birds? All this originates from their nature (svabhâvä). Nothing is born of its own will or its actions. All beings develop according to the plan (niyati), to their nature (svabhâvä) and chance (sangati)."
Evil and suffering, attributed by others to the actions (karmä) of living beings, are, according to Gosâlä, determined by fate. "Just as a dropped spool of thread unwinds to its end, so will the madman, like the sage, follow his destiny and reach the end of suffering (dukhântä)."5 "Human efforts are ineffective" (N'atthi purisakare) was the slogan of the jîvikä(s).
The doctrine of Gosâlä was divided into six parts: gains (lâbham), losses (alâbham), joy (suham), sorrow (duham), life (jîviyam), and death (maranam). It included the atomic
theory of the Vaïsheshikä and the cosmology of the Samkhya. We will see later with regard to the Vaïsheshikä, a summary of Gosâlä's materialist doctrine according to the Manimekhalaï. According to this doctrine, the number of souls, of "individual consciousnesses" in the world, is infinite.
A theory of cyclical liberation (mandalä mokshä) refers to the destruction of individual beings at the end of each cycle. The process of the development of life over 8,400,000 Mahâ Kalpä, the stages of evolution that represent the different species in creation, was later on interpreted as a series of reincarnations of the individual being.
All the jîvikä(s) used music and dance as ecstatic media and knew the secret of the technique of rescuscitating the dead by the transfer of their own vital energy, one of the Siddhi(s) (powers) obtained through Yogä. This power was called paütta parihâra by the disciples of Gosâlä.
Mahâvîrä
IT was in the Age of Doubt (dvâparä), with the development of agricultural, sedentary, and urban civilizations, that Jainism appeared, whose first prophet, Rishabhä, belongs to what we call prehistory. With him arose the notion of a moral, materialistic society with atheistic tendencies, which restrains individual liberty in the name of the common good and of the orderliness of the city, in opposition to Shaiva mysticism, which promotes the joy of living in communion with the divine work that the natural world represents.
It was Jainism that introduced vegetarianism and nonviolence, as well as the theories of transmigration and Karmä, into the Indian world. Jainism also advocated suicide by fasting.
The doctrine of Karmä, linked to that of transmigration, attributes differences between beings to their behavior in previous lives. Inequalities between living beings, and, in particular, between men, are due to an automatic retribution after death for actions committed in life. This theory tends to replace the responsibility of an impermanent "I," the transmitter of a genetic code that affects the species, with the evolution of a supposedly permanent "I." This has significant consequences, morally speaking, and also eliminates the notions of grace, of the whim of the gods, and of their freedom of action. It is basically an atheistic theory, contrary to the conceptions of the mystical Shaivism and ritualistic Vedism.
Mahâvîrä is considered to be the twenty-fourth and last prophet of Jainism. Pârshvä, the twenty-third prophet, lived three centuries earlier and had apparently liberalized the ascetic customs of the sect.
Mahâvîrä was, at a young age, outraged by the environment he lived in, which was essentially commercial. He became the disciple of the wandering monk Gosâlä, with whom he traveled, begging for his food, for over six years. Gosâlä did not practice or recommend the observance of chastity, as it was contrary to the principles of Shaivai Yogä. Antisexual moralism was introduced later in certain sects, such as the Vîrä-ShaÑ—vä. It was on these grounds and on that of Karmä that Mahâvîrä parted company with Gosâlä. "Mahâvîrä was almost certainly a twice-born Aryan who had been converted from the religious goal of sexual power to that of ethical celibacy. His reform of the religion of Pârshvä was precisely to impose the law of celibacy where earlier it had not been in effect. He was overall the most antisexual of the religious teachers of his time."6 Mahâvîrä undertook to reform Jainism, which, since that time, has been divided into two sects: the Jaïnä Hdressed in space" (digambarä), who are always naked, and the Jaïnä "dressed in white" (shvetâmbarä), which allows them to participate more easily in the social life of urban society.
Gautamä Buddhä
GAUTAMÄ belonged to a princely family of the Shâkyä clan of Nepal, who reigned over the rich city of Kapilavastu in the northeast of India. At the time, the families of the warlike aristocracy were in revolt against the authority of the Brahmans and the rigid ritualism of the Vedic religion. Immense sacrificial ceremonies, such as the sacrifice of the horse (ashvämedhä), through which the Brahmans imposed their power, ruined the states financially. Gautamä was at first attracted by the antisocial mysticism of Shaivism. For a time, he was also a disciple of Gosâlä and very close to Mahâvîrä, who was three years younger. For several years he practiced with them the austere and free life of a wandering monk. He eventually left them, however, and soon became their rival. He then undertook to reform Brahmanism on the basis of the fundamental atheistic concepts of the Jaïnä, in particular the prohibition of rites, nonviolence, reincarnation, the doctrine of Karmä, the negation of castes, the emphasis on moral values, and so forth.
His disciples called Gautamä the Buddha the Enlightened One. His doctrine, under the name of Buddhism, was to have a great influence, first in India, then in the Far East, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia. Adopted by the aristrocratic and warlike class to which Gautamä belonged, Buddhism became a powerful instrument of colonialism and cultural expansion, justifying, under the pretext of religious propaganda, the most savage conquests, such as that of Kalingä, by the emperor Ashokä. Later, Christianity and Islam, other moralistic religions stemming from Arihat, were to serve in the same way as a pretext for a conquering imperialism. Buddhism was to play a major role on the Indian scene for more than six centuries.
The Religion of Nature and the Religion of the City
DURING the Dvâparä Yugä, the age of doubt and economic development, together with sedentary life and urban growth, new forms of religion emerged which sought to protect a conservative and puritanical social order. But it was not until the middle of the Kali Yugä that we witness the realization of the prediction of the Purânä(s). The teaching of Arihat, in the form of Buddhism and Jainism, as well as reformed jîvikism, attacks the old ecstatic, orgiastic, and mystical Shaiva tradition and, at the same time, the ritualistic and hierarchical structures of Vedic society.
The three heterodox sects that arose in this cultural climate, Buddhism, Jainism, and jîvikism, had much in common. All three alike rejected the sacrifical polytheism of the Aryans and the monistic theories of the Upanishadic mystics. The supernatural powers were relegated to an inferior or even negligible position. The three new religions represent a recognition of the rule of natural law in the universe, and the work of their founders may be compared with that of their approximate contemporaries, the natural philosophers of Ionia.7
The religious reforms in the middle of the Kali Yugä were to bring to the fore the conflict of mysticism and moralism, and of the religion of nature and love in contrast to that of the city and civic virtues.
In India, as elsewhere, we can, in the course of the Kali Yugä, follow the alternation, conflict, and sometimes even the complementary nature of the two tendencies. Beginning in the Dvâparä Yugä, in the limited spheres of what is called the intelligentsia of the cities, materialistic tendencies developed which were in conflict with Dionysian Shaivism, the religion of nature, hostile to the religion of towns, focused on man.
Jainism, an essentially moralistic religion, along with the forms of Hinduism derived from it, such as Buddhism and Vaishnavism, are still the religions of the city dwellers and commercial classes in India today.
The Kali Yugä in the World
A development similar to that in India took place in all the territories occupied by the Aryans. The legacy of vanquished Pelasgi and Cretans is at the root of the development of the Hellenic civilizations. The Indo-Sumerian sources of Hesiod and Homer have been proven.8 Dionysian cults similar to Shaivism combine with the Aryan religion in Greek and Roman antiquity as they do in India.
The middle of the Kali Yugä is everywhere marked by great upheavals. Europe witnessed the spread of Celtic barbarians. It was the time of the destruction of Athens, Urarthu, and Babylon, and the Persian invasion of Egypt. In Italy, Rome developed at the expense of the Etruscans. We can observe, in different parts of the world, the simultaneous appearance of doctrines so similar to each other that they seem all to have the same source, which, according to the Indians, would be the Jainism of Pârshvä (817–778), the predecessor of Mahâvîrä. All these religions and philosophical movemen
ts are moralistic and puritanical in character, demonstrate a belief in transmigration, and also oppose polytheism and ecstatic practices.
Zoroaster (died 553 B.C.), a little before the occupation of the Indus by Cyrus (533 B.C.), had reformed the Persian religion (close to Vedic polytheism) and adopted the Jaïnä theory of transmigration and retribution for actions after death. Xenophanes, a Greek from Asia Minor, (c. 540 B.C.), opposed polytheism and anthropomorphism. In Greece, the naked Gymnopedists, who were Jaïnä missionaries, had a considerable influence. Pythagoras taught transmigration and set up a brotherhood in the same year that Gautamä became a monk (530 B.C.). He drew inspiration from the theories of the Sâmkhyä, while the School of Cynics is, in all likelihood, an echo of the teachings of the jîvikä(s).
In China, the fifth century is the age of the birth of Taoism (Lao-tse, 604–531 B.C.) and Confucianism (Confucius, 551–479 B.C.), whose ideas are very close to some of the Indian concepts. The great system of Tao, which tries to follow the natural movement of the universe, originally appears to be based on a poetic version of the concepts of the Sâmkhyä and of Yogä. The words Yin and Yang correspond to Yoni and Lingä. Breathing practices and the search for the sun and moon in the body recall Idâ and Pingalâ, the lunar and solar paths of breath in Yogä. The sexual practices (withholding the spermatic essence and trying to absorb the feminine essence) are identical to those of Yogä. The notion of immortality conceived as transmutation, in which "astride a white cloud the Sage or Yellow Emperor arrives at the region of the gods," is analogous to that of Shaivism. We again find the seven sages, the refusal of asceticism, the practices aiming at a long life (Ayurvedä, the Indian science of longevity).
While the Gods Play Page 3