Transitoriness and Transformations 105a departure from the Buddha’s teaching. Further, as the monasteries
themselves became more bigger and were supported by land grants
and gifts rather than direct contact with the world of householders,
social morality may also have been blurred.Broadening the Way
From the perspective of Mahayana Buddhism, Theravada was a
limited way, a ‘little vehicle’, one that was almost selfish. While
on the one hand Mahayana saw the Buddha as a super, more-than-
divine being, on the other it stressed compassion and the goal of
liberation for all the souls in the world, which resulted in prolifer-
ation of Bodhisattvas who accumulated merit so that all could
benefit from this. This assumed devotionalism and the concept of
transfer of merit which was alien to the individualism of classical
Buddhism.
Devotional Buddhism was part of the general development
of bhakti in India, preceeding the well-known bhakti or ‘Hindu’
devotional movements centered around Krishna, or Shiva, or other
gods. ‘Bhakti’ devotionalism meant throwing oneself on the ‘grace’
of a transcendent God, who was separate from the worshipper, to
whom was given worship and love in exchange for grace. This was
alien to both the early Brahmanic and the samana tradition, and
to the early Dhamma which had emphasised self-control, not
abandonment; righteousness, not propitiation of a god. ‘Popular’
religion itself is not necessarily devotional; it is often in fact very
pragmatic, with believers performing their actions as a kind of
‘bargaining’ with the deity. Thus the emergence of bhakti was a
radically new phenomenon.
Bhakti devotionalism seems to have developed in India around the
same time as Christian devotionalism was developing in the Roman
empire; it may have been a similar response to social changes and
social structures that seemed to be unimaginably great and beyond
individual control. But dates are confusing. Kosambi (1975) relates
bhakti to what he calls ‘feudalism from below’ with devotion to a
god being supported by the ‘material relations’ of loyalty/devotion to
the feudal overlord; this is considered by both Kosambi and
R.S. Sharma to have begun towards the end of the first millennium.
At a more general level, it might be argued that devotionalism was aBuddha as a historical human being who showed the way to
liberation and embodied wisdom and compassion; and he includes
in their number the greatest logicians of India, Dinnaga (5th–6th
century) and Dharmakirti (7th century) (Singh 1984: 84).
The Abhidhamma philosophies which came to constitute classical
Theravada introduced another form of speculation that brought
further contradictions. What was nibbana? According to at least
some scholars, the earliest Buddhist thinking saw it as part of the
world of contingency, and that it meant the elimination of craving
(tanhakkhaya), a state of detachment, the end of suffering and a state
of perfect happiness. This was, in Rhys Davids’ words, ‘an actual
state, to be reached in this birth by ethical practice, contemplation
and insight’ (Burford 1991: 3–6). But the Abhidhamma school trans-
formed nibbanainto a transcendental, beyond the world state. This
had two results. First, along with the acceptance and elaboration
of the karma/rebirth framework, this meant that there were two
radically distinct goals of human endeavour, one was liberation from
the entire round of samsara, the other was to seek better rebirth
within this round. These then became identified with the distinction
between the Sangha and society as already noted.
At the same time, there was no clear way of reaching nibbana
itself. Ethical practices, even extremely heroic ones, produced
‘good’ kammathat was nevertheless efficacious kamma and led to
a good rebirth, but not to the transcendental nibbana. This we have
also seen in the Jatakas: the heroic compassion of King Sibi, for
instance, only resulted in a further birth; while the heroic giving of
Prince Vessantara led to super mental powers. There was no way
to specify how actions were related to the attainment of nibbana.
In the end, the very transcendental character of nibbana so under-
stood, coupled with the failure to define actions which would lead to
it, left the way open for reformulations of the doctrine that included
ideas of ‘instant Enlightenment’ along with the identification of the
transcendental state with the world itself. Such transformations
were brought about by Mahayana and consolidated in Vajrayana.
What Theravada teachings seemed to produce was a doctrine
that encouraged ethical behaviour oriented to this-worldly ends for
the majority of Buddhists, supporting a society of monks who
devoted themselves to the other world. It was a simple and in many
ways a healthy society, but it was also unsatisfactory in many ways.
Much of the philosophical and theological speculation represented
104 Buddhism in India