Buddhism in India

Buddhist Civilisation 147

asceticism’ as Protestantism. Neither Buddhism nor Protestantism

saw the successful merchant or the loyal, disciplined productive

worker as the highest ideal. But both gave social sanction and

respect to the successful merchant and to accumulation done

through moral means. ‘Realizing the kingdom of heaven on earth’

was about as far from fundamentalist Protestantism as it was from

Buddhism, but both had clear definitions and ideas about the ideal

society which they visualised as an open and egalitarian one. Both

encouraged rationalism, and denied the ritualistic, magic-centered

life fostered by ideologies such as Brahmanism.

There is an unexamined assumption at the heart of the Weberian

thesis. This is that economic growth is somehow unnatural, so

individuals have to be specially and unusually motivated to be

productive and accumulative. Growth may well be ‘unusual’ and

even harmful from the perspective of religious and political ideolo-

gies such as medieval Catholicism and Brahmanic varnashrama

dharmathat discourage it and that positively foster a ‘harmonious’

and stable social order—but historically and humanly speaking,

development is just as ‘natural’. Rather than assuming that humans

naturally prefer to live in a harmonious, rooted, agriculture-based

society and therefore it would take a tremendous motivation to

push individuals into the kind of rational, economically-motivated

behaviour that produces growth, we can argue on the contrary that

societies have a ‘natural’ tendency to develop unless frustrated by

particularly irrational or binding social relations. In this view, the

task of analysis for a socio-economic history is not to look for the

causes of a unique breakthrough but rather, assuming a widespread

potential for development, to look at the negative factors blocking

it. If we follow Adam Smith, for example, and argue that a ‘propen-

sity to truck and barter’ is natural to humans, then the question

of ‘moral sentiments’ is more one of the need for a morality to

modulate this acquisitiveness, not to push it forward but to temper

it with compassion.

This seems to fit the situation of the first millennium BCE in

India—growth was taking place, the society was dynamic; the

danger was rather one of acquisitive and amoral individualism. In

this situation, Buddhism acted not so much to promote growth as

to give it an ethical foundation while endorsing it; in contrast

Brahmanic Hinduism pushed the society back into stagnation.

Buddhism, in discouraging ritualism, in countering birth-based

of rationality, once established a capitalist society has any number
of ways to continue to provide such motivation (Weber 1958b).
After setting out this thesis in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism, Weber turned to the study of the religions of India and
China for comparative evidence as to why capitalism could not
arise in these societies, in spite of the presence of other material pre-
requisites for it. Here Brahmanism is seen as anti-rational due to its
orientations towards rituals and magic and the deadening of entre-
preneurship and capacities is taken to be caused by the caste system.
But what about Buddhism? Weber argues that Buddhism is also
anti-rational. He believes that the existence of rules in the Sangha, is
not relevant, and says that ‘a rational economic ethic could hardly
develop in this sort of religious order’ (Weber 1996: 216). This is a bit
of a strained argument, and not only downplays the continued associ-
ation of Buddhism with commerce and merchants, but also seems to
ignore data on the economic functioning of monasteries in China.
As for the motivated individual, Weber interprets Buddhism
along with Hinduism as representing an other-worldly asceticism.
He argues that, Buddhism is anti-individualistic as well as anti-
rational, because it sees salvation in turning away from the world,
in stilling passions, in denying the legitimacy of the will to succeed
in anything. According to him, because the atmanis denied, and
because the individual is seen as a collection of sensations and
consciousness and physical form, all striving against each other,
individualism is denigrated. Since craving (tanha) is seen as the
cause of sorrow, something to be overcome, Weber, who interprets
craving as the will to life, thus sees Buddhism as so otherworldly
that it can provide no foundation for this-worldly ethical action
(Weber 1996: 221). All the Buddhist texts that seem to do so, along
with the major spread of Buddhism itself, are interpreted as resulting
from the influence of Asoka.
This interpretation^5 is too much influenced by a particular com-
petitive doctrine of individualism. Buddhism’s denial of the atman
was not necessarily a denial of the individual, and its injunction to
overcome passion could just as easily be seen as an ‘inner-worldly

146 Buddhism in India

(^5) Weber here seems very much influenced by Hermann Oldenberg’s position in
the famous Rhy Davids–Oldenberg debates of the time. See also the criticism by
Romila Thapar.