The texts that developed in this period in vaidikacircles were understood
to be smr.ti(“remembered” or derivative) rather than s ́ruti(heard or
revealed) such as the earlier Vedic materials were termed by the orthoprax.
It is important to remember that these texts were the products of the elites
- almost always brahman males – and that therefore what they articulated
were brahmanic attempts to adapt to the vicissitudes of the period. They
do not necessarily reflect the reality of religion as practiced by the general
public nor, for that matter, of all the “elites” themselves. We refer to them
with some caution as they are, at best, some authors’ attempts to posit an
“ideal” by which the orthoprax should live.
One such text, the Manusmr.ti(Laws of Manu) edited sometime after
the first centuries BCE, portrayed the “ideal” lifestyle for the brahman. It
articulated an ethic for brahmans who no longer have access to physical
ritual centers (such as Vedic fire huts), yet could continue the principles of
sacrifice and ritual purity. In the Manusmr.ti, one finds connections made
between the sacrificial system and a legal-ritual code with a mix of con-
tinuities and reinterpretations. These continuities included the importance
ofvaidikalearning; the imagery of sacrifice, and the superiority of the
priest and brahman. Here laws and everyday practice were presented as
appropriate extensions of the older Vedic system. It sought to demonstrate
how one could maintain ritual purity and identity, and fulfill religious
obligations while living in the city.
Some of the principles of this reinterpreted ethic can be sketched by way
of illustration. Not the least important such shift was that of renunciation.
No longer need one renounce deeds and actions; rather it was the fruitof
one’s actions that one renounced. The Bhagavadgı ̄ta ̄, for example, referred
to “fruitless” actions and non-attachment to the fruits of one’s deeds. It
was okay, in effect, insofar as it was one’s dharma, to kill one’s enemy so
long as one took no pleasure in it. This shift was also implicit in the system
known as the varn.a ̄s ́rama dharmasystem – the four stages of life formulated
for the brahman male. The first stage was that of the celibate-student
(brahmacarya) who sought a guruand lived as a celibate. The second stage
now seemed to be the most important, just as it may have been in the Vedic
period – that of the householder (gr.hastya); the home and marriage were
seen as a cosmogony, a creation of the universe. It was usually only when
children were grown that one entered the third stage and became the
“seeker” or hermit (va ̄ naprastha) – a stage of further seeking for the truth.
This could be done within one’s home. (Note that those Buddhist texts
written in this period recounting the life of the Buddha insist that Gautama’s
stage of seeking [va ̄naprastha] occurs only after he had been married and
had a child.) Finally, the stage of the samn.ya ̄sior ascetic remained an option
near the end of one’s life, though it is not clear that many chose to
62 The Urban Period