heaval, that is not so much because mysticism is a compensation as because
state and religious regimentation have lost their grip, allowing exploration of
what was previously heretical or disreputable.
Max Weber ([1922] 1968: 503–505) advanced a narrower interpretation
of the rise of salvation-oriented mysticism: it is embraced by a declining
aristocracy losing its political power to the centralizing state. Thus the Buddha,
a prince of the Shakya tribe on the fringes of the expanding Ganges states,
would have been motivated by declining political fortunes. Mahavira, founder
of Jainism, came from a similar political background. But this argument does
not hold up either as a generalization or in the particulars of the Indian case.
A survey of declining aristocracies would hardly show that their general
tendency is toward otherworldly mystical religion. The displacement of the
aristocracy by the absolutist state in Europe during the 1600s and 1700s
contributed no trend toward world-escaping mysticism. In Japan, the aristoc-
racy supported Buddhist mysticism most strongly during the feudal period
1300–1600, when the political alliance between the rural monasteries and aris-
tocratic power was at its height; during the displacement of Japanese aristoc-
racy by the Tokugawa bureaucracy after 1600, Buddhism declined among the
upper classes and was replaced by Confucianism. In India, the status of the
kshatriyas was not declining preceding the rise of Buddhism, and in any case
the main recruitment base of Buddhism was the Brahmans.
The biggest question left unanswered by these deprivation-compensation
explanations of mysticism is why the mystics were so socially honored. It is
conceivable that hard times might motivate a certain class of individuals to
withdraw from social life; but why should the rest of the society honor them
for doing so? The movement of shramanas, from which Buddhism and Jainism
grew, consisted of holy alms men who could exist only because their social
prestige was spreading, motivating a widening tendency to give alms. Here we
see one connection between increased social prosperity and mysticism: the
mystics’ dropping out from society presupposes increased economic surplus to
support them. The successful expansion of the Buddhist movement, with its
surge of monasteries and monuments, depended on a growing economy, to-
gether with increased political organization capable of extracting and channel-
ing surplus.^27
There remains the question why shramanas, and subsequently monks,
become the bearers of so much social charisma. This happened at a time when
the means of emotional production were newly expanding, and the means of
intellectual production as well; in both dimensions the center of these new
media was the free-floating community of non-householders. The shramanas
played on the emotional capital of techniques for violating the ordinary,
especially in their grotesque displays of asceticism. This was facilitated by older
External and Internal Politics: India • 207