Through the main period of the Upanishadic sages, there is little or nothing
on the karmic consequences of one’s actions chaining one to a cycle of re-
births.^18 Nor do most Upanishadic sages seem to practice yoga or one-pointed
concentration (samadhi). The early sages, Uddalaka, Yajñavalkya, and their
debating partners, are concerned with scoring philosophical points. Some
Upanishads enjoin thoughtful contemplation during hymns and rituals (Ai-
tareya Upanishad 2.1–3). A full-fledged description of Yoga method as a route
to liberation does not come until the middle-period Shvetashvatara Upanishad
(1–2), ca. 300–200 b.c.e., and again in the late Maitrayani Upanishad (6.18–
29). It appears that most Brahmans spent their time either in rituals, in reciting
their ever-lengthening texts, or sometimes in debates.
The Upanishads describe the period of debating sages from the point of
view of the Brahmans. In heterodox descriptions we also find the shramanas
formulating rival element cosmologies. The Buddha converts three brothers of
a Brahman family and their followers, ascetics who carry out ceremonies near
a volcano and apparently regard fire as the primary element (Mizuno, 1980:
61). Other famous contemporaries of the Buddha (25 and 26 in Figure 5.1)
proposed that the world is made out of seven elements, or four. Some of the
shramanas carry denunciation of Brahmanical orthodoxy to an extreme, as-
serting a purely naturalist position that the world consists of nothing but the
working out of the elements. These are the Lokayata, or “materialists.” What
distinguishes the shramanas as a whole from the Brahmans is that the former
have organized a new lifestyle, cut loose from householding and centered on
the practice of austerities. It might seem peculiar that the Lokayata, preaching
purely worldly existence, should also be ascetics. But this is the social milieu
of the charismatic teachers; the Lokayata are a faction which emerges from
the debates among the element philosophers in the sector competing over who
has gone furthest in overturning the Brahmanical lifestyle.
It is in the shramana circles that the doctrines of karma and samsara
(rebirth) become central topics of debate, and the issues on which top intellec-
tual reputations are made. Both the Buddha and Mahavira founded movements
claiming the overcoming of karma. For the Jainas, the karma doctrine was cast
in the concepts of a materialist element philosophy; karma is the fruit of action,
conceived as material particles which stick to the soul and keep it from its
natural omniscience. The Buddha conceived karma in a more abstract fashion,
as a chain of causality which leads to attachment to the forms of the material
world and hence to rebirth. The third successful movement organized at this
time, the Ajivikas of Makkhali Gosala, exalted the idea of karma into an
inescapable fate; each person’s life inevitably goes through its chain of conse-
quences and rebirths until it reaches the end, like a ball of thread being
unwound.
External and Internal Politics: India • 199