Vedas. One is no longer learning a particular priest role in the ceremonies; all
the Vedas are now regarded as essentially one body of knowledge, to be learned
by everyone in the educated class. For a long time there is indecisiveness about
whether the Atharvas belong in this sacred alliance. Many Upanishads refer
to the “three Vedas”; sometimes they add “with the Atharvana as the fourth.”^10
The term “four Vedas” becomes firmly established only with the formulation
of a Hindu culture in opposition to the Buddhists’.
The long-term process conforms to the law of small numbers. In the early
period, the Vedic priests have the entire attention space to themselves; they
split into four factions (counting both Black and White Yagurvedas), while the
oppositional faction, the Atharva magicians, pulls together as a single collec-
tion. Then comes the attack on the Brahmanical guilds by a proliferation of
dissident sages, leading to the ascendancy of the Buddhists. Now the Brahmans,
on the defensive, overcome their differences and syncretize into a united front.
Strong positions divide, weak positions unite.
The Crowded Competition of the Sages
The breakdown of the Vedic cults is more obscured by retrospective ideology
than any other period in Indian history. It is commonly assumed that the
dominant philosophy now became an idealist monism, the identification of
atman (self) and Brahman (Spirit), and that this mysticism was believed to
provide a way to transcend rebirths on the wheel of karma. This is far from
an accurate picture of what we read in the Upanishads. It has become tradi-
tional to view the Upanishads through the lens of Shankara’s Advaita inter-
pretation. This imposes the philosophical revolution of about 700 c.e. upon a
very different situation 1,000 to 1,500 years earlier. Shankara picked out
monist and idealist themes from a much wider philosophical lineup.^11 The
doctrines of karma and escape from rebirth, too, are by no means dominant
among the Upanishadic sages, but come to the forefront in the networks
around the Buddha. It was the formation of Buddhism and Jainism which
focused the basic themes of the religious-philosophical attention space; what
we call Hinduism emerged as a reaction to these monastic movements.
The social characteristics of the intellectual community depicted in the
Upanishads are much the same as we find in the early Buddhist and Jaina texts.
There is a multitude of sages, teachers with competing doctrines, engaging in
public debates. In the Upanishads these debates most often take place under
the auspices of kings; in the monastic recollections they also occur in shelters
and rainy season retreats for the wandering ascetics.^12 In both sources the
Brahmans are under attack.
The Brahmans by now are no longer merely professional priests; they have
External and Internal Politics: India • 195