Buddhism in India

The Defeat of Buddhism in India 181

conquered became known as ‘Candalas’ and were treated as

untouchable, in spite of their resistance which those in more hilly

and remote areas could remain independent. There may well have

been some ‘collective consciousness’, nurtured by teachers and tra-

ditions, spreading from the ‘Candalas’ in the more central areas of

India to the east. In the east many of these groups must have

provided support for Buddhism, where they learned an equalitarian

high tradition. Taranatha tells the story of a chieftain of eastern

Bengal whose son studying in a Brahman school was

beaten up by Brahman boys saying ‘You are born in a low family.’

When he asked the reason for this, they said, ‘Being a Buddhist

Tantrika your father gave the Sudra queen a higher status and, while

worshipping, he does not distinguish between the low and high castes

and allows them to mix (Taranatha1990: 291).

These ‘indigenous’ people, who were by no means simple ‘tribals’,

did not need to read Rousseau or Jefferson to learn values of equal-

ity; they learned it from Buddhist traditions. Once Buddhism was

decisively out of power in India and there was no support for

escaping discrimination, it is understandable that they would have

turned to a religion that, though drastically different in so many

ways, also had egalitarian traditions (however much they were

modified by medieval hierarchicalism). Those who became Muslim

became known simply as Muslim cultivators (or weavers or what-

ever); though they were treated in caste-like ways, they were never

untouchables. Those of who, for whatever reasons, did not con-

vert, or were powerless to identify themselves with the Muslim

community, were categorised as ‘Candals’ or ‘Kaivartas’ (fishermen

castes) and the like. In spite of Eaton’s prize-winning scholarship, the

Social Liberation thesis stands.

The Nature of Indian %eudalism

Finally, we return to the important question of whether Brahmanic

hegemony meant a step forward or backward in terms of advanc-

ing forces of production and human betterment. There is no ques-

tion that in terms of human values of equality, rationality and

non-violence, Buddhism fostered a higher form of society. In the

Chapter 4 we argued that, beginning in the first millennium BCE

‘present-day values to peoples of the past’ by presupposing that
they had a desire for equality:

Before their contact with Muslims, India’s lower castes are thought to

have possessed, almost as though familiar with the writings of Jean-

Jacques Rousseau or Thomas Jefferson, some innate notion of the

fundamental equality of all humankind denied them by an oppressive

Brahmanic tyranny (ibid.: 117).

Eaton does not give a name to his own thesis, but since he implies
that the mass of lower-class Indian Muslims came directly from
‘tribal’ origins, from people outside the reach of the Brahmanic
caste system, we could call it the ‘Tribe to Muslim’ thesis.
However, if we look at the situation in Bengal, in particular at the
time of the Muslim conquest, this thesis does not seem to hold. In
spite of the centuries-long upsurge of Brahmanism in India, it was
slow to capture eastern India. In Bengal itself the strongholds of
Buddhism were in south and east Bengal, in the kingdoms whose sea-
ports provided links with the flourishing trade with the Buddhist-
influenced kingdoms of southeast Asia. This area saw less Brahman
migration as compared to that in west Bengal. But Brahmanisation
cannot be simply identified with agricultural settlement. Eastern and
northern Bengal, as reported by Hsuan Tsang, were well-cultimated
regions. It seems likely, then, that though Islam did help in the exten-
sion of agriculture, it did not initiate it; a large section of the masses
must have been cultivators before conversion.
Here the interesting question arises once again: who were the
Candalas? Bengal is the only state that had an untouchable caste
called Candalas at the time of the British (in fact they organised a
strong social movement, calling themselves Namasudras). As Eaton
points out, the mass of indigenous people in Bengal were probably
‘Proto-Munda’ speakers, i.e. using an Austro-Asiatic language that
as it went towards the east became mixed with Indo-Aryan and
Dravidian forms. The word ‘Candal’ was used, as we pointed out,
for people not simply in the east but also in the madhyadeshaor
Gangetic plains as well as central India. It is also strikingly similar
to the name of a Mundari-speaking ‘scheduled tribe’ today, the
Santhals. It seems a reasonable hypothesis, then, to argue that these
proto-Munda speakers spread from Bengal into central India and
also into some regions of the Gangetic plains. As the hegemony of
Brahmanism was consolidated, those who could be dominated and

180 Buddhism in India