History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas: A Vanished Indian Religion c25.s4.5

c25.s4.5

It is nowadays not unheard of for the historian to attempt to find economic and material counterparts to philosophic and religious developments, and to give logical priority to the former. Thus the development of philosophy in Ancient Greece has been ascribed to the replacement of the tribal warlords of the Homeric age by a community of city states; with the disappearance of the chieftains and tribal kings the gods, who were their heavenly counterparts, appeared obsolete to the best minds of the times, and new speculative systems were devised to replace them. Similarly the rise of Protestantism in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has been attributed to the growth of a powerful commercial middle class, antagonistic to the ruling aristocracies, and demanding a new order in religion as in politics.