Buddhism in India

The Background to Buddhism 51

proper knowledge, then the stage of householder, then gradual

retirement into the forest. The result of this was the full-fledged

description of the orthodox Brahmanical social order—the

varnashrama dharmai.e., the religion of the four castes, and of the

four-stage path of life. Renunciation for anyone who had not fulfilled

his (or her) duty as a householder was rigorously discouraged.

Conclusion

The samana cults and the Brahmanic tradition emerged as two

major contending and conflicting forces in the Indian society of the

first millennium BCE. They clashed on several points. Organisationally,

Brahmanism had its base in the householder Brahmanic elite, while

the samanas had their base in the wandering hermits and mendicants

drawn from various castes. Brahmanic philosophies were passed

down through a guru–disciple tradition that was at times loose

but was generally identified with caste hierarchy; a disciple from

‘lower’ castes would normally not be admitted. It was secretive. The

samana groups, in contrast, were open to all and their philosophers

engaged in often fierce open debates. Notably, they all denied the

authority of Brahmans and the Vedas.

The story of Shambuk in the Ramayana illustrates the conflict.

After Rama’s return from the war with Ravana, a Shudra named

Shambuk takes to asceticism in the kingdom of Ayodhya, and

because of this ‘sin’ a Brahman boy in the kingdom dies. When his

father makes an appeal, Rama enforces the law of varnashrama

dharma by killing Shambuk. Here the Buddhist injunction to honour

‘samanas and Brahmans’ contrasts sharply with the way in which

Brahmanic kings were adjured to persecute samanas of the ‘wrong’

caste and discriminate against ‘pashanda’, a term that took on

a harsh meaning by the time of the Arthashastraand a positively

virulent one when it was used to condemn Buddhists and Muslims

by the time of the Guptas in north India (O’Flaherty 1983).

Thus in a very important way Buddhism was identified with the

samana tradition and as being against Brahmanism. In other senses,

however, it arose as a philosophy and social–religious tradition that

radically differentiated itself from but sought to absorb the best of

both these forces. In Buddhist literature ‘samanas and Brahmans’

were both treated with respect (but ‘Brahman’ was consistently

no need to modify that responsibility (whether that of the king and
warrior, or the moneylender, or the farmer or slave) with ideas of
universal individual rights and duties. Rather people were urged to
go on maintaining their world, including the world of the four
castes and the ritual life. Krishna’s major promise in the Gita is that
he takes shape as an avatar again and again to prevent chaos, and
chaos is interpreted in the Brahmanic world-view to include not
only growing crime and violence, but wives deserting husbands and
the intermixture of the varnas. This was Brahmanism’s primary
‘solution’ to the problem of social order posed by the emergence of
a new class society—a caste-based solution, in which the actions of
individuals could be as opportunistic as they wanted, but within
the framework of the varna system.
The Shiva cult also became Brahmanised. Shiva was associated
with the Vedic deity Rudra, and identified as the ‘destroyer’ in a
trinity. This cult was also very ancient, and very often combined
with that of the mother-goddess as a ‘Shiva–Shakti’ cult. One
scholar of Buddhism, Richard Gombrich, argues that the famous
legend of Angulimala, the vicious robber and murderer who was
converted by the Buddha, points to this tradition. Among other indi-
cations, the bandit was supposed to have worn a string of human
fingers around his neck, which Gombrich argues was similar to the
necklace of skulls often identified with Shiva as destroyer (Gombrich
1997: 133–63). Whether or not this is true, it is quite certain that
the cult existed at the time of the Buddha and others, and was
absorbed by the Brahmanic tradition. As ascetics, the followers
of Shiva differentiated themselves from the Buddhists, Jains and
others by long matted hair and so were described as jatilas(those
with matted locks), and ascetics of the two types were referred to
together as mundakajatilas(shaven and matted-hair ones). The
Brahmanic cults emphasised tapascarya, the effort to attain magical
powers, and Shiva himself was said to be the supreme ascetic—and
hence the most powerful. The notion of Shakti, seen as power,
energy, creation, was identified with the worship of goddesses
(Bhattacharya 1996).
Nevertheless, though Brahmanism admitted renunciation and
asceticism, it did so only reluctantly. Brahmanism preferred the
householder; the priest was to be a householder; and renunciation
was accepted only as the final stage of society. Before this, for the elite,
was to come the student stage—when a boy was socialised into the

50 Buddhism in India