8 CHAPTER ONEThe traditional religious beliefs and practices questioned by these mem-
bers of society were those stemming from Vedic tradition. The Vedas were re-
ligious hymns of the Indo-Aryans, who had entered northwest India over the
Khyber Pass (beginning sometime after 1600 B.c.E.), and who came to domi-
nate the local population. These hymns had been memorized by a hereditary
Aryan priestly caste called brahmins, who engaged in philosophical speculation
and conducted empowerment rituals-often involving animal sacrifice~to
bend the will of the gods in their pantheon to the wishes of their clientele. As
their tradition developed on Indian soil, the patterns of the ritual came to
eclipse the gods in importance, as the belief developed that the gods had no
choice but to obey a ritual that was properly performed. This belief is reflected
in the Brahma~Jas, ritual and speculative texts that were composed in the first
millennium B.C.E. and that best reflect the state of the Vedic tradition at the
time of the Buddha. In contrast to the strict orthopraxy (rules of ritually proper
behavior) advocated in the Brahma~Jas, these texts contain a wide range of
speculative thought concerning the origin and nature of the cosmos. Several
strands of thought, however, predominate. One is that the cosmos is derived
from Brahma-conceived either as an anthropomorphic god or as a living
principle-who gave birth to the cosmos through a process analogous to that
of the Vedic ritual. Thus the ritual represents an order of being prior to that of
the cosmos itself. Another strand is that the brahmins as a caste are descended
from the mouth ofBrahma, whereas other castes are descended from more
lowly parts of his body. Thus the brahmins are a higher order of being than
the rest of humanity and hold a monopoly not only on ritual knowledge but
also on knowledge of all ultimate truths. These strands of thought, which de-
fined the stage ofVedism termed Brahmanism, became the focal point for the
anti-Vedic reaction in the sixth century. B.C. E.
As the social dislocations caused by the new political order became more
and more acute, some members of society began to question the efficacy of
the Vedic tradition, as new elites were coming into power with no access to
Vedic means. New religious and philosophical groups surfaced, rejecting the
basic claims of Brahmanism and asserting what they saw as truths of nature
that human beings of any caste could discover through reason or meditation.
These groups were called srama~Ja (literally, strivers). Although their original
leaders were non-brahmins, they managed over time to attract some brahmins
to their cause. Whether they were the result of a resurfacing of a pre-Aryan
religious movement, an upsurge of dissidence from within the Aryan tradi-
tion, or a combination ofboth, no one knows for sure. They abandoned the
family and its orthoprax ritual life, generally giving up normal work and social
status to live as mendicants. These strivers, whom Siddhartha joined at the age
of 29, lived as wanderers, dwelling outside the villages and towns in forest
asramas (places of spiritual striving). There they formed fluid communities
around masters who propounded a wide diversity of teachings, including ex-
treme asceticism, skepticism, fatalism, and hedonism. In time, Siddhartha be-
came one such master, founded early Buddhism, and changed the face of
Indian spiritual culture.