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Samnyasa Upanishads: Hindu Scriptures on Asceticism and Renunciation c5.s2: 2. Renunciation and Society: The Inner Conflict of Tradition

Saṃnyāsa Upaniṣads: Hindu Scriptures on Asceticism and Renunciation c5.s2

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English

Contents

2. Renunciation and Society: The Inner Conflict of Tradition

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As the Saṃnyāsa Upaniṣads need to be located within the broader literary tradition of Brāhmaṇism, so the renunciatory life and ideals of India can be adequately studied only in their historical context and within the framework of their interaction with societal religion and ethics. That the ascetic way of life and the so-called life-negating and world-denying ideals and ideologies are central elements or even defining characteristics of Indian religions is often taken as axiomatic by scholars and lay observers alike. Such assumptions, however, often create the impression of a monolithic religion unrelated to historical vicissitudes. Albert Schweitzer's evaluation of the Indian religious ethos and its presumed contrast to the Hellenistic, or more generally the Western ethos is representative:

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When Hellenic thought turns towards world and life negation, it is because in the end it begins to have misgivings about the world and life affirmation which for centuries had seemed a matter of course. . . . In the thought of India, on the other hand, world and life negation does not originate in a similar experience. It is there from the very beginning, self-originated, born as it were in a cloudless sky. And it is there in a very curious guise. Unlike Hellenic world and life negation, it does not claim

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to be generally accepted, but remains on good terms with world and life affirmation, which it allows to exist alongside of it.¹

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¹ Albert Schweitzer, *Indian Thought and its Development*, trans. Mrs. Charles E. B. Russell (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1960), 18. The book was originally published in 1936.

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Schweitzer is wrong on both counts. First, world-denying ideals and ways of life were not "there from the very beginning" in India. They were not "self-originated" but arose at a particular time in history—probably around the sixth century B.C.E.—against the background of momentous socioeconomic changes along the Ganges valley. Second, world renunciation in India did not always remain "on good terms" with society-oriented ideologies. It took a long period of domestication for the renunciatory ideals to be incorporated into the fabric of mainstream religion, and even this incorporation, as the evidence of the Saṃnyāsa Upaniṣads themselves demonstrates, did not altogether erase their irresolvable conflict. The reality of Indian religions is more complex than Schweitzer's observations suggest.

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In assessing the emergence of renunciatory ideologies and ways of life, scholars have been generally divided into two camps; some see it as a natural or, to use Heesterman's term, an *orthogenetic* development of the Vedic tradition, while others regard it as a new phenomenon that challenged and transformed the Vedic religion.

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Heesterman's work remains the best argued and most developed exposition of the former position.² He sees the emergence of renunciation not "as a protest against brahmanical orthodoxy" but as "the orthogenetic, internal development of Vedic thought," the final and logical outcome of the internal maturation of the Vedic sacrificial theology that sought ultimate autonomy and transcendence (Heesterman 1964, 24).

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² See, for example, Heesterman 1964. This essay is included in his recent collection, Heesterman 1985. This view is also evident in the writings of Madeleine Biardeau (for example, in Biardeau and Malamond, 1976). For an accessible account of this controversy, see Kaelber 1989, 101–124.

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The opposite view has been argued most forcefully by Louis Dumont (1960) in his seminal essay “World Renunciation in Indian Religions.” Even though I am willing to admit lines of continuity between renunciation and sacrificial religion, I believe that Dumont is right in viewing it as a “new” element that at least initially challenged and contradicted many of the central premises of sacrificial theology. Nothing in history, after all, emerges ex nihilo, and Vedic religion provided the backdrop both positively—for example, in providing key concepts and a technical vocabulary—and negatively for the emergence of renunciation. Yet, I believe—and the following study, I trust, will demonstrate—that when the evidence is examined completely it does point to a profound conflict between the two, a conflict that cannot be adequately explained if renunciation was in fact “an orthogenetic development of Vedic thought.” The claim frequently made in later sources that the Brahmin householder is the ideal renouncer far from supporting Heesterman’s position appears to reflect the incorporation of renunciatory values into Brāhmaṇical institutions and theology; often it is mere rhetoric.³

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³ These claims of Brahmin householders are taken at their face value by A. Wezler, *Die wahren “Speiseresteesser” (Skt. vighasāśin)*. Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur. (Wiesbaden: Kommission Steiner Verlag, 1978). Bodewitz (review of Wezler in *WZKSA* 24 (1980): 239–242) is right, I think, in caricaturing this type of Brāhmaṇical rhetoric by comparing it to a right-wing politician’s characterization of employers as the “true workers,” because they do not just work from nine to five but have to continuously think about their business.

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Although I consider world renunciation to be a “new element” that challenged the Vedic world, I do not subscribe to the view put forward by some scholars that ascetic modes of life were non-Aryan in origin. These scholars argue that the emergence of renunciation as a major force in religion signals the growing influence of non-Aryan populations on the Aryans as they migrated east along the Ganges valley.⁴ Such an hypothesis is clearly untenable if we confine ourselves to the available evidence. It is obvious that the Vedic society contained large numbers of people whose roots were non-Aryan and that their customs and beliefs must have influenced the dominant Aryan classes. It is quite a different matter, however, to attempt to isolate non-Aryan customs, beliefs, or traits at a period a millennium or more after the initial Aryan migration into India. The mere absence of a practice or belief in the extant Vedic documents is not sufficient to call it non-Aryan. The Vedic literature provides us with merely a peephole into the society of that period; it does not give us a complete account of the religious life of the Aryans, who, moreover, should not be considered to have been a monolithic group. That some customs or ideas we observe at a later period are absent in the early Vedic texts is no proof of their absence at that time, much less of their non-Aryan provenance.

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⁴ See, for example, S. K. Belvalkar and R. D. Ranade, *History of Indian Philosophy*, vol. 2: *The Creative Period*, 2d ed. (Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1974), 79–81, 400–403; G. C. Pande, *Studies in the Origins of Buddhism* (Allahabad: University of Allahabad, 1957), 251–261; G. C. Pande, *Śramaṇa Tradition: Its History and Contribution to Indian Culture* (Ahmedabad: L. D. Institute of Indology, 1978). S. Singh, *Evolution of the Smṛti Law: A Study in the Factors Leading* *to the Origin and Development of Ancient Indian Legal Ideas* (Varanasi: Bhāratīya Vidyā Prakāśana, 1972), 176–185.

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A culture, furthermore, develops and changes over time not only through external influences but also through its own inner dynamism and because of social and economic changes. New elements in a culture, therefore, need not always be of foreign origin.

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In the absence of an adequate definition of orthodoxy within the Brāhmaṇical tradition of this period, moreover, the division of conflicting theologies and modes of life into *orthodox* and *heterodox* is both anachronistic and utterly useless for historical purposes. The challenges to the mainstream Vedic views are found, as we shall see, across a broad spectrum of religious literature, including some of the most authoritative texts of Brāhmaṇism. Opposition to accepted views of a tradition, after all, can and often does come from within that tradition. Thus, when I assert that renunciation was a "new" element, I do not mean that it was either non-Aryan or even non-Brāhmaṇical.

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The subtitle of this chapter—"The Inner Conflict of Tradition"—is a reference to the conflict between societal and renunciatory values and ideas that in one form or other persists throughout the tradition, a conflict observable in the Saṃnyāsa Upaniṣads themselves.⁵ In what follows I want to explore the background of and possible reasons for the historical emergence of renunciatory ideologies and their initial conflict with the Vedic world.

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⁵ I have deliberately adopted the tile from Heesterman's (1985) volume. Heesterman sees it primarily as a conflict between the renunciation-oriented Brahmin and the this-worldly king. I hope to show that the deeper conflict within Indian religions is between the renunciatory life and ideals (whether they are espoused by Brahmins or Buddhists) on the one hand, and the socioritual order sponsored by priests and rulers alike. This conflict, moreover, is not between concrete individuals but between ideal types. The conflict, therefore, did not historically prevent alliances between rulers and renunciatory sects; clearly other-worldly people and ideas can be and have been put to good this-worldly use. See, for example, my "The King and the Ascetic: State Control of Asceticism in the *Arthaśāstra*," *The Adyar Library Bulletin* 51 (1987): 39–59.

2.1 Vedic Theology: Sacrifice and Marriage

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The Vedic religion had reached great complexity and sophistication by the sixth century B.C.E. Its central element both practically and theologically was the Vedic sacrifice. By this time it had become extremely intricate and expensive, requiring an array of ritual specialists. The development of the Vedic sacrificial theology paralleled that of the sacrifice; finding ever-new meanings and cosmic significances in ritual acts, this theology created both a cosmology and a soteriology centered on the sacrifice. The Vedic sacrificial theology was based on two significant claims. First, creation itself resulted from the sacrifice. Second, gods themselves attained immortality⁶ through the sacrifice, setting an example for humans to follow.

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⁶ The exact meaning of immortality (*amṛta*) in these ancient texts is not clear. As Collins (1982, 42–44) points out, in this context the term probably means freedom from death and the indefinite continuation of existence, a meaning quite different from the deathless state envisaged within the later concept of *mokṣa* ("absolute freedom"), a state that transcends both life and death. In the latter view, life and death are inseparable correlatives constituting our present state of *saṃsāra* (“life subject to repeated births and deaths”), a concept that by definition assures the indefinite continuation of existence.

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The *Ṛg Veda* (10.90) in the celebrated Puruṣa hymn presents the sacrifice as the primordial cosmogonic principle. The Brāhmaṇa literature came to identify the sacrifice with a new and somewhat artificial creator god, Prajāpati, which identification became the cornerstone of later sacrificial theology. Prajāpati is both the sacrifice personified and the primordial performer of the sacrifice. From Prajāpati as sacrifice and sacrificer flows the entire creation: heaven and earth, gods and humans.⁷

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⁷ For an accessible discussion of the Brāhmaṇical theology of sacrifice and for further bibliography on the subject, see Kaelber 1989.

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As the fountain of creative power, the sacrifice is also the source of immortality. The gods were the first to obtain the knowledge of the sacrifice. By performing it correctly they attained immortality. The Vedic seers discovered that same knowledge, and the Vedas are its repository. The sacrifice, then, is the source of immortality for humans, as it was for gods. It is connected, moreover, with the archetypal activity of the creator god Prajāpati, as well as of gods and seers. This activity, recorded in myth and reinforced by Brāhmaṇical theology, therefore, becomes doubly paradigmatic for humans.

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The obligation to imitate the gods by performing sacrifices is grounded also in a practical concern: humans seek to be like gods, to attain the world of gods, in other words, to become immortal. Brāhmaṇical theology, however, also gives that obligation a cosmic dimension. As the cosmos first emerged from the sacrifice, so it must be continually recreated and renewed through the sacrifice if it is not to lapse into chaos and death. The king, as the hub of the social cosmos and as the chief sacrificer in society, occupies a central position in the sacrificial recreation of the cosmos. As Heesterman observes:

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. . . the rājasūya [“royal consecration”] seems to be an abridgment of what originally must have been an unremitting series of yearly ceremonies with the object of regenerating the universe.

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The king took a central place in it. The universe had yearly to be recreated and so had the king who, like the common śrauta [“Vedic”] sacrificer, incorporated the cosmos.⁸

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⁸ J. C. Heesterman, *The Ancient Indian Royal Consecration*. Disputationes Rheno-Trajectinae, no. 2 (The Hague, 1957), 10.

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In the Vedic sacrifice, therefore, Brāhmaṇical theology combined the cosmological and the soteriological; the individual and social obligation to perform sacrifices was thereby doubly reinforced. The focus of this obligation fell in a special way on the daily fire sacrifice called *agnihotra*. Most Vedic sacrifices were offered on special occasions or on specific days of the ritual calendar. Given their elaborate nature and the enormous expense they entailed, few in all likelihood could have afforded to perform the major Vedic sacrifices. The relatively simple daily offering of *agnihotra* thus began to assume an ever-increasing importance among theologians as the paradigmatic sacrifice. The obligation to offer it daily assumed a central position within the sacrificial ethic; a person has the duty to offer it every day during his entire life. As one text puts it:

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It is assuredly a long sacrificial session upon which they enter who offer the *agnihotra*. This is indeed a session to be broken off only through old age. For one is absolved from it either by old age or by death.⁹

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⁹ ŚB 12.4.1.1; *Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa*, 1.51.

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A corollary to the obligation to offer the daily fire sacrifice is the duty to maintain one or more of the sacred Vedic fires burning at all times in one’s house. These ritual obligations defined the Brāhmaṇical ethic regarding normative behavior encapsulated in the term *dharma*, which for all Indian religions indicated the “right way” of both behavior and ideology. From a symbolic and sociological point of view, the presence of a sacred fire at home placed that household squarely within the Brāhmaṇical *dharma*.

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A second and less obvious corollary of sacrifice is the obligation to marry, for only a married man accompanied by his legitimate wife is qualified to be a sacrificer. The two constitute a single sacrificial persona. “A man who has no wife,” says the *Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa* (2.2.2.6), “is not entitled to sacrifice.” The intimate and unbreakable union between husband and wife in the sacrifice, the *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa* (12.8.2.6) says, is like that between truth and faith, and between mind and speech: wherever the husband is, there also is the wife.

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Next to sacrifice, therefore, the obligation to get married and procreate children (especially a son) is central to Brāhmaṇical theology, which regards the family—father, mother, and son—as the only complete person. The wife is said to be one half of the husband, because so long as a man is without a wife he remains childless and incomplete.¹⁰ “Therefore, having found a wife,” says the *Aitareya Āraṇyaka* (1.2.5), “a man considers himself to be, as if, more complete.”

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¹⁰ TS 6.1.8.5; ŚB 5.2.1.10.

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Apart from her role in ritual activities, the wife’s importance is directly related to her being the mother of her husband’s son. It is, however, not just the child that she begets; the husband himself is born again in her as the son. This rebirth and continuation of the husband is said to be the true wifehood of the wife:

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The husband enters the wife;
Becoming an embryo he enters the mother.
In her become a new man again,
He is born in the tenth month.¹¹
A wife is called wife,
Because in her he is born again.¹²

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¹¹ In ancient India the period of human gestation was taken to be ten months.

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¹² AitB 7.13. The authors play on the word *jāyā* (“wife”), which is derived from the verbal root *jan* (“to be born”). The later law book of Manu (9.13) says: “The husband, after conception by his wife, becomes an embryo and is born again of her; for that is the wifehood (*jāyātva*) of a wife (*jāyā*), that he is born (*jāyate*) again by her.”

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“The father,” says the *Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa* (12.4.3.1), “is the same as the son and the son is the same as the father.” Consequently, one should desire a good wife, thinking "let my self come into existence in something good," and guard her continuously "lest in my womb, in my world somebody else come into existence" (*Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa*, 1.17).

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The cardinal point in the Brāhmaṇical theology of religious life that the son constitutes the immortality of the father is already expressed in the Ṛg Vedic (5.4.10) prayer: "Through offspring, O Agni, may we attain immortality." The Brāhmaṇas never tire of repeating this: "In your offspring you are born again; that, O mortal, is your immortality" (*TB*, 1.5.5.6).

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The Brāhmaṇical conceptions of immortality as freedom from physical death and of the family as the true and complete person are reflected in the belief that a man's immortality is found in his son. The family line continues in the son despite the death of the father. As the son survives after the father's death, so the father in his son survives his own death. Upon his death, the son takes the place of the father as the ritual head of the household.¹³ This appears to be the meaning of the statement that a father is born again in his son. This new birth frees him from the death that must eventually end the life begun at his first birth. In a very significant way, therefore, the family is what guarantees human immortality.

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¹³ This shows why a daughter cannot become a similar continuation, because she cannot ritually replace the father. There may also have been an underlying idea that the seed or semen contains the essence of the father. But I think this idea is not as crucial as the ritual continuation of the father in the son, for the same semen, after all, creates also the daughter.

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The theologies of sacrifice and marriage, the obligations to sacrifice and to procreate, thus complement and support each other. We find, for example, that sexual imagery is often transferred to the sacrificial act and sacrificial imagery to the sexual act. The sacrificial and creative act of Prajāpati, for example, has all the features of the procreative act. The Sanskrit term for creature and offspring is the same: *prajā*. Prajāpati, "the lord of *prajā*," is not only the creator of creatures but also the father of offspring.¹⁴ Human procreation thus follows the archetypal activity of creation and is likened to a sacrifice. The sexual act is called a fire sacrifice.¹⁵ The *Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad* (6.4.3) homologizes the sexual parts of a woman with elements of the sacrifice and equates sexual intercourse to a Soma sacrifice:

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¹⁴ For an accessible account of the sexual imagery used by Brāhmaṇical theologians in describing the work of Prajāpati, as well as the elements of the sacrifice, see Kaelber 1989, 30–33, and passim elsewhere.

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¹⁵ See, for example, *ŚB* 11.6.2.10.

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Her vulva is a sacrificial altar; her pubic hairs, the sacrificial grass; her skin, the Soma-press; and her labia, the fire in the middle. As great indeed as the world gained by one who performs a Soma sacrifice, is the world gained by one who, with this knowledge, engages in sexual intercourse.

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The obligation to sacrifice and to procreate puts in a nutshell the complex set of duties that defined Brāhmaṇical *dharma* during this early period. This *dharma* revolved around ritual duties comprehended by the sacrifice and familial-social duties epitomized by procreation and defined to a large measure the world¹⁶ created by Brāhmaṇical theology.

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¹⁶ I use the term *world* in the sense it is used by the sociology of knowledge: see Berger and Luckmann 1966 and Berger 1969.

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A significant aspect of this world is that the human individual is not given any conceptual reality within it. This is one of the major premises of the seminal work of Louis Dumont (1960, 42), who states rather bluntly that in the Vedic world “the individual *is* not.” The Brāhmaṇical system of ethics works almost exclusively at the level of social groups, and individuals become real only as members of such groups. An individual’s rights and obligations, roles and aspirations, are all determined by the group to which that individual belongs. The most fundamental of the social divisions is the *varṇa* system: the four social classes of Brahmin, warrior, commoner, and servant. Other divisions, for example on the basis of caste (*jāti*), guild, sex, and age, exist either side by side or are integrated into the *varṇa* classification. The main point for our discussion, however, is the relative insignificance of the individual as a conceptual category for Brāhmaṇical theology and ethics.

2.2 Socioeconomic Changes in Sixth-Century India

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In the foregoing discussion we saw a central feature of, to use Peter Berger's (1969) category, Brāhmaṇical world construction, that is, the social creation of a common conceptual framework within which individuals can understand and find meaning in their discrete experiences of themselves and of the social and physical world outside. Sacrificial and procreative theology addressed in a special way the marginal situation of death where the socially constructed world is threatened with ultimate meaninglessness. In explaining death and the means of overcoming it, moreover, this theology legitimized the central social institution of marriage and, by extension, society itself.

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All culturally created worlds, however, are intrinsically unstable (Berger 1969, 29). They are constantly challenged by new experiences, by changes in geography, climate, and economics, by social and political upheavals, and by individuals and groups seeking better answers and new meanings. Here I want to examine briefly the momentous social, economic, and political changes that took place along the Ganges valley roughly around the sixth century B.C.E., changes that facilitated the rise of rival worldviews and the ascetic challenge to the Brāhmaṇical definition of the ideal religious life.

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The Aryans who migrated into India during the second millennium B.C.E. were nomads. They lived in tribes, and their economy was based principally on cattle rearing. Their tribal organization persisted even after these people had settled down in the upper Gangetic plane and agriculture had replaced cattle as their principal economic activity. They lived in small village communities. The Vedic civilization remained village based until the sixth century B.C.E. This village culture is the social background of the Brāhmaṇical theology that we have examined. The Brāhmaṇical *dharma* is addressed to the villager.

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The Indus Valley Civilization boasted an urban culture centered around the two principal cities of Harappa and Mohenjo Dāro, but this ancient urban civilization came to an end toward the middle of the second millennium B.C.E., and it is unlikely that it exerted an appreciable influence on Vedic culture and religion. "For her next cities, her 'second urbanization,' India had to wait for over a thousand years after the disappearance of the Indus cities—till the middle of the sixth century B.C., which saw simultaneously the beginnings of her historical period" (Ghosh 1973, 2).

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We can detect five major elements in the socioeconomic changes of the sixth century: food surplus, increase in population, trade, monarchical states, and, above all, cities.¹⁷ Throughout the Vedic period we detect the movement of the Aryan population to the lower regions of the Ganges valley, where the land was very fertile and rain more abundant. Rice cultivation on wetlands became the major agricultural activity, and rice replaced barley as the staple food. Although there is disagreement among scholars regarding the cause, it is clear that wetland rice cultivation gave rise to an agricultural surplus that permitted both urbanization and an increase in population.¹⁸

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¹⁷ For a balanced, clear, and informative description of these changes, see Ghosh 1973, and Gombrich 1988, 49–50.

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¹⁸ Some scholars argue that it was the invention of the iron axe and plough that made possible the clearing of the forests and the large-scale colonization and cultivation of that fertile land. Others point to the lack of archaeological evidence for such widespread use of iron tools during this period and question their need for successful farming or for creating urban cultures. See Gombrich 1988. Regarding the effects of rice on the increase of population, see Ling 1976, 49–51, where further bibliography is also given.

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The last three elements—trade, monarchies, and cities—are the most significant for our study. All three ultimately depended on the agricultural bounty of the rich Gangetic soil. Gombrich (1988, 53) offers some insightful comments on the interrelationship of these elements:

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Towns and cities arise primarily as settlements of people whose main livelihood is not derived directly from agriculture—though to be sure they may also house absentee landlords. They are political and commercial centres. There can be no trade without an economic surplus; but though trade seems to be a necessary condition for the creation of towns, it is not a sufficient one. On the other hand, it is too easily forgotten that commerce itself depends on organization: on an infrastructure of communications and a certain level of legality and security, both products of stable political conditions. . . . It is kings who construct the roads along which vehicles can move and allow for land trade in larger quantities than a pedlar carries on his back. Moreover, security in the countryside of Bihar and neighbouring areas has rarely if ever been good; without the security provided by towns, large-scale trade is impossible.

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Along the Ganges valley, in a region commonly referred to as the "Middle Country," relatively large kingdoms began to be consolidated under the absolute authority of kings who were constantly seeking to expand their power and territories through aggression and alliance. We detect here the beginning of states, as opposed to the village or regional political structures that existed in the Vedic period.

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The military capability of the kings assured a relatively efficient and safe network of roads and waterways, a necessary prerequisite for maintaining a central government and for administering a large territory. The facility of travel also enabled religious mendicants to travel freely over a large region and to disseminate new ideas and customs. It also enabled a merchant class to flourish. Merchants established the first professional organizations in India. Merchant guilds had their own laws and government, which were respected by the civil authority. Trade was also facilitated by the creation of money; the first coins of India go back to the late sixth century B.C.E.¹⁹

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¹⁹ It is a matter of controversy whether writing was used during this period. See Ghosh 1973, 27; Gombrich 1988, 53.

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Cities and courts of kings attracted nobles, priests, philosophers, and leaders of religious sects. The breakdown of the strict family and kinship networks that urban life entailed and the resultant freedom for individual initiatives clearly encouraged both ideological and practical challenges to traditional Brāhmaṇism. The many religious movements that arose about this time were primarily urban in nature. Speaking of Buddhism, one of the most successful of such movements, Gombrich (1988, 50) says:

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The most obvious difference from the [Vedic] society . . . is that that was entirely rural, a village-based society, whereas the Buddha spent much of his time in cities. Max Weber aptly begins his account of Buddhism with these words: “Like Jainism, but even more clearly, Buddhism presents itself as the product of the time of urban development, of urban kingship and the city nobles.”²⁰ The Buddha talked to kings, Pasenadi of Kosala, Bimbisāra and his son Ajātasattu of Magadha, who ruled quite sizeable territories from their urban capitals.

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²⁰ Max Weber, *The Religion of India*, trans. and ed. Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale (New York: The Free Press, 1958), 204.

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Cities, kings, and the merchant class contributed to the rise of individualism, a factor extremely significant for our study. Dumont (1960), as we have remarked, has argued that Vedic thought lacked the concept of the individual; it was the group that gave the individual conceptual reality. Caste ideology stressed the centrality of the group at the expense of the individual. Even though Dumont’s dichotomy between the lack of the individual in the world and the centrality of the individual in the renunciation of the world may not present a totally accurate picture of the individual in Indian history, nevertheless he is right in pointing out the marginal status of the individual in the mainstream of Vedic thought. The factors that contributed to the discovery of the individual as a central concept in religious and social thought both within and outside the institution of world renunciation, however, were the emergence of kingship and urban culture. The king, of course, was the supreme individual in society. That he belonged to the noble class was pure theory; he was not just another member of a group. There was no one like him in his kingdom. Ambition, strategy, and intrigue all played a role in a man's becoming a king and in expanding his realm. Even patricide appears to have been committed by impatient royal heirs. A similar individualistic mentality may have been prevalent among merchants, whose success depended less on following an inherited and ritualized pattern of behavior than on initiative and enterprise.

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The individualistic spirit permitted the creation of the first voluntary religious organizations in India. The Buddhist and Jain monastic orders are the earliest available examples of such organizations. People entered them because they wanted to, because they had taken a personal decision regarding how they wanted to live their lives. They were not following a set pattern for correct living ritualized in life-cycle ceremonies. They exercised the same individual initiative at the religious level that kings and merchants exercised in the political and economic fields. The freedom to choose that was encouraged by the new urban environment, we shall see, is at the heart of both the challenges to the Vedic religious ideal and the theology of the *āśrama* system.

2.3 Rival Views of Religious Life

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Not all was well, however, during that period of social change and economic prosperity, and there appears to have been a growing sense of dissatisfaction and unease in the urban population. It is reflected in the ideologies of many religious movements, such as Buddhism and Jainism, born during that time of upheaval, which proved to be a watershed in the history of Indian culture and religion. These ideologies shared the view that human life was essentially suffering, which even death could not end; death is a mere interlude in the never-ending cycle of rebirth. Many adopted life-styles of intense mortification, separating themselves completely from social and familial ties and from economic activities, in search of an escape from the bondage of life.

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In discussing how an urban environment may have contributed to these radical changes in outlook and life-style, Gombrich (1988, 57–58) provides a lucid summary of Ghosh's (1973, 38) conclusions:

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It has been customary to point out that rapid social change tends to upset people. This is no doubt true, though not very informative. Professor Ghosh has provided a more precise and interesting summary of how urbanization may engender a spiritual malaise: the movement from village to town to city entails a more complex division of labour and professional specialization; social organization less in terms of kinship groups and more in terms of goal-oriented associations; less stringent control over the individual and greater dependence on impersonal institutions of control (bureaucracy, police, etc.); greater individual freedom and mobility and hence some disintegration of the traditional culture and social order. We may add that these factors operate more rapidly as one climbs the social scale: some city slum neighbourhoods are more like village communities than the wealthier districts can ever be. We know too little about the Buddha's social environment to apply every factor Ghosh has listed to that time, but the general picture is familiar: a move away from the closed community towards a more open society, an increase in the individual's power to choose and hence doubt about choosing rightly.

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Another reason for the emergence of ascetic institutions and ideologies asserting that life is full of suffering is suggested by William McNeill's study of the relationship between disease patterns and human civilizations.²¹ McNeill has shown the key role microparasites and the infectious diseases they cause have played in the development of societies and cultures. What is most significant for our study, however, is that for their propagation many of the most virulent microparasites require a minimum number of persons living in close proximity. For measles, to take but one example, the threshold appears to be between 300,000 and 400,000 people (McNeill 1976, 60). The startling conclusion is that many forms of deadly infectious diseases go hand in hand with the creation of cities, which alone can provide those thresholds. Lacking any immunity at first, the early urban populations may have been decimated by viral infections, in the same way as in modern times when colonial expansions introduced new diseases to hitherto isolated populations. For the first time in Indian history, urbanization along the Ganges valley in the sixth century B.C.E. provided the population threshold for such infections; many unknown diseases and epidemics may have erupted, causing widespread death. Gombrich (1988, 58–59) was the first to suggest a relation between such urban epidemics and the ascetic ideologies of ancient India. Although the lack of evidence regarding disease patterns in India during this period prevents us from drawing any certain conclusions, the widespread death from previously unknown diseases might have provided a catalyst for considering life as bondage and suffering.

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²¹ William McNeill, *Plagues and Peoples* (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday), 1976.

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The new religious ideologies and the increasingly widespread ascetic life-styles fostered by urbanization stood in sharp contrast to the Vedic religious world centered around the householder and his duties of sacrifice and procreation. What is significant for our study, moreover, is that the challenges to the Vedic world came not just from those outside the Brāhmaṇical tradition, such as the Buddha, but also from people who chose to remain within that tradition. Brahmins themselves were becoming urbanized, sharing the common concerns of the rest of the increasingly urban population. One study on the social composition of a sample of over 300 Buddhist monks and nuns to whom are ascribed two collections of religious poems in the Pāli canon finds that 86 percent came from cities and about 40 percent were Brahmins.²²

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²² B. G. Gokhale, “The Early Buddhist Elite,” *Journal of Indian History* 42, pt. 2 (1965): 391–402; and “Early Buddhism and the Brahmins,” in *Studies in the History of Buddhism*, ed. A. K. Narain (Delhi: B. R. Publication Corp., 1980), 68–80. His findings are summarized in Gombrich 1988, 55–56. As Gombrich notes, the social composition of the monks is given in a commentary that dates from the fifth century C.E., and the dates of the *Thera-* and *Therī-gāthā* are also uncertain. The conclusions, therefore, are to be used with caution. There is, however, ample evidence of numerous Brahmin converts to the Buddhist monastic order.

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New sects that spawned during this time became increasingly influential socially and politically. Kings and rich merchants were attracted to them by what Gombrich calls their “ethic for the socially mobile”²³ and became their patrons. The exclusive privilege enjoyed by Brahmins in the area of religion was broken. A new religious elite, the ascetic virtuosi, competed with the Brahmins for the allegiance and economic support of the people.

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²³ For an excellent presentation of the new Buddhist ethic aimed at merchants, financiers, and politicians, see Gombrich 1988, 78–86. This ethic encouraged saving and reinvestment, discouraged ostentatious consumption, and posited wealth and success as moral goals and as the result of moral living.

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Within Brāhmaṇism itself, it was the urban Brahmins who, in all likelihood, were most influenced both by the dramatic socioeconomic changes of urbanization and by the rising prestige and influence of non-Brāhmaṇical religious movements. Most urban Brahmins probably remained within their tradition but challenged and changed it from within. It is these changes, and not the threat posed by non-Brāhmaṇical groups as assumed by many scholars, that I believe were the catalysts for the creation of inclusivistic institutions and theologies, such as the *āśrama* system, that sought to integrate the emergent ascetic worldview and way of life into the Vedic culture. In the following discussion, therefore, I shall focus mainly on the challenges to the Vedic world posed by the changes occurring within Brāhmaṇism itself, even though the ideas and life-styles we will examine are not exclusive to Brāhmaṇism.

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The sources I examine are mainly the early Upaniṣads. They are difficult documents to analyze because they are anthologies that contain texts of diverse nature and different provenance. These texts were composed over a long period of time. They contain sections dealing with sacrificial theology and symbolism that are very similar to the liturgical texts of the Brāhmaṇas and reflect the old Vedic ideology. There are other sections, however, that share the new symbolic world we are about to discuss. The ideas and attitudes expressed in them, especially their antiritual and procelibacy stance, make it likely that they originated within a socioeconomic background similar to that of Buddhism and Jainism. In other words, I think that the new doctrines of the Upaniṣads were urban products.

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The internal evidence of the early Upaniṣads, especially the larger collections of the *Bṛhadāraṇyaka* and the *Chāndogya*, appears to support such a conclusion. Many scholars have long argued that the major Upaniṣadic doctrines were the product of the nobility. The Upaniṣads themselves present several doctrines as known only to the nobility and record many instances when kings, reversing the accepted roles, became teachers of Brahmins. Deussen articulates this position clearly:

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. . . we are forced to conclude, if not with absolute certainty, yet with a very high degree of probability, that as a matter of fact the doctrine of the ātman [“self”], standing as it did in such sharp contrast to all the principles of the Vedic ritual, though the original conception may have been due to Brāhmans, was taken up and cultivated primarily not in Brāhman but in Kshatriya circles, and was first adopted by the former in later times.²⁴

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²⁴ Deussen 1906, 19. See also Frauwallner 1973, 1:34–35, and 359 for further bibliography.

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Frauwallner (1973, 1:35), in this context, draws a parallel between the noble origin of Upaniṣadic doctrines and the fact that the Buddha and Mahāvīra, the founder of Jainism, were also of noble descent.

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I think that the proper question to ask, however, is not whether or why these doctrines, Upaniṣadic or Buddhist, were created by nobles. It is impossible to determine with any degree of historical certainty whether an Upaniṣadic doctrine was actually created by the nobility or, for that matter, whether the Buddha and Mahāvīra were in fact nobles. The more significant questions are why the proponents of these Upaniṣadic doctrines ascribed them to kings and why the adherents of Buddhism and Jainism portrayed the founders of their respective traditions as nobles.

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It is not possible to investigate these questions fully here. I think, however, that the proponents of these doctrines must have found it advantageous to align their doctrines with the nobility in general and with kings in particular. We do not have sufficient historical data regarding the various kings named in the Upaniṣadic texts to identify the reasons why their names were used. In general, however, I think the alignment with the nobility served to distinguish these doctrines from the Vedic doctrines that were identified with the Brahmins. The very term *Veda* signified "knowledge" par excellence; the three Vedas were referred to as *trayī vidyā*, "the triple knowledge." It may not be too farfetched to imagine that in the minds of urban intellectuals this "knowledge" was closely associated with the old village culture. In a positive way, moreover, the identification of a doctrine with a king (or calling the Buddha the son of a king) may have served to signal that it was a doctrine of and for the new age, an urban doctrine suitable for the new urban culture.

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In this light, what appears a problem for those who upheld the noble provenance of Upaniṣadic doctrines, namely why Brahmins should have preserved these stories that belittled them, ceases to be a problem at all. I would argue that it was precisely the Brahmin partisans of these doctrines who stood to gain by such stories. Aligning with kings gave their doctrines a new status and prestige, and served to distinguish them from the old beliefs and practices. What these stories of kings teaching new doctrines to Brahmins point to, I believe, is a divide that existed within the Brahmin tradition between the village Brahmins clinging to the old ritual religion and the city Brahmins catering to the needs of an urban population.²⁵

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²⁵ By "city Brahmins" I do not mean Brahmins actually living in cities, but those who had come under the influence of the new urban civilization. It is interesting to note in this regard that several *Dharma-sūtras*, which belong to a somewhat later period but which reflect the mentality of the conservative village Brahmins, advise Brahmins not to visit cities: BDh 2.6.31–34; ĀpDh 1.32.21.

2.4 The Emergence of a New World

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The challenge to the old Vedic views was made at two interrelated levels: theology and practical life-style. On the theological plane a set of ideas came into being that shaped a new symbolic world that was at total variance with the Vedic world. That symbolic world is so well known by anyone familiar with Indian culture that it is unnecessary to describe it in detail.

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Its principal components were: (1) *saṃsāra*: human existence is subject to rebirth and it is a state of bondage and suffering; (2) *karma*: ritual and moral actions determine the rebirth process and contribute to the continuation of human bondage; and (3) *mokṣa*: liberation from *saṃsāra* is the ultimate goal to which all religious efforts should be directed. Most religious traditions of India accept these doctrines as axiomatic. Their disagreements, however, center on the cause(s) of human bondage and release. This is not the place to discuss these doctrines in detail, but one can detect two rival viewpoints. One claims that the human predicament is due to a lack of understanding and that freedom can come only from acquiring the proper gnosis. The other locates the problem in human actions (*karma*) and/or intentions, and prescribes a path of self-control and asceticism. Elements of both viewpoints are often found in the same tradition.

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A couple of significant conclusions flow from this new framework for understanding human life and death. The two central religious activities of the Vedic world, offering sacrifices and begetting offspring, come to be considered as obstacles to achieving liberation, the ultimate religious goal of the new world; they are activities that a person who pursues the new religious ideal should seek to avoid. Liberation, the new equivalent of immortality, is a metaritual (according to some even a metaethical) state with regard to which ritual activity is ineffective. Sacrifice, the *karma* par excellence, far from being the source of immortality, is in fact a principal cause of human bondage and suffering. Ritual activity, therefore, is not only devalued but also acquires a negative connotation. Gods and heavenly worlds that formed the context of the sacrificial theology are now reduced to being mere components of *saṃsāra*. Rebirth follows upon death; sons and funeral offerings cannot assure personal immortality or permanent bliss. This is an individualist ideology where the situation after death as well as final liberation are determined by what an individual does and knows and not by intermediaries, whether they are priests or heirs. The individual stands alone at the center of this symbolic world, the sole architect of his or her own future.

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A passage in the *Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad* (1.4.10) states in effect that gods desire to keep people ignorant in order that they may continue to receive sacrificial offerings. The *Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad* (1.2.6–10) has an interesting and satirical passage regarding the inefficacy of sacrifices and the delusion that constitutes the sacrificial theology contained in the Vedic texts. After describing (1.2.1–5) the efficacy of sacrifices proposed by those theologians, the author puts these words in the mouth of the offerings personified:

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Saying, “Come, come!” the splendid offerings carry that sacrificer on the rays of the sun, praising him and saying sweet words to him: “This is your Brahma-world of merits (*puṇya*) and good acts (*sukṛta*).” (MuṇU 1.2.6)

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The author then exposes the guile of sacrificial theology:

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These are indeed unsteady rafts, the eighteen sacrificial forms,²⁶ which teach an inferior ritual (*karma*). The fools who hail it as superior (*śreyas*) sink repeatedly into old age and death.

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²⁶ The identity of these eighteen forms is unclear. According to Śaṃkara, they refer to the sixteen types of ritual specialists, the sacrificer, and his wife.

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Living in the midst of ignorance, self-wise, and thinking them-
selves to be learned, the fools go about hurting themselves, like
blind men led by one who is himself blind.
Living endlessly in ignorance, the fools think "We have reached
our goal!" Because of their passion, those who perform rites
(*karmin*) do not understand. When their worlds are exhausted,
therefore, they fall down wretched.²⁷
Regarding sacrifices and good works as the best, the fools know
nothing better (*śreyas*). After enjoying the highest heaven of good
acts (*sukṛta*), they enter again this or even a lower world. (MuṇU
1.2.7–10)

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²⁷ The meaning is that they fall to lower levels of existence when they have exhausted the reserve of merit that had won them the heavenly worlds.

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Several significant points are made in this passage. Those who perform rites (*karma*) gain, or perhaps make for themselves,²⁸ a heaven after death. They live in the realm of ignorance (*avidyā*) and consider this heaven as *śreyas*, a term that means the ultimate good or bliss.²⁹ But this heaven will one day come to an end, and the performers of rites will return once again to earth. Such people are referred to repeatedly as fools pretending to be wise; they are the guardians of the old sacrificial religion. I am tempted to think that the author of the *Muṇḍaka* is satirically referring to the Vedas, the knowledge par excellence for the ritualists, as ignorance. The ritualists who daily study the Vedas and follow their directions are wallowing in ignorance. Could it be that the blind man who leads other blind men is indeed the Veda? The *Muṇḍaka* (1.1.4–5) elsewhere denies the authority of the Vedas:

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²⁸ The heaven is said to be *sukṛta*. It probably means that the heaven is made by performing correctly (*su*) the ritual acts.

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²⁹ The *Kaṭha Upaniṣad* (2.1–2) opposes *śreyas* to *preyas*, the fleeting delights. The wise choose the former, and the fools the latter.

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Two kinds of knowledge are to be known, as, indeed, the
knowers of Brahman declare—the higher as well as the lower.
Of these the lower is the *Ṛg Veda*, the *Yajur Veda*, the *Sāma*
*Veda*, the *Atharva Veda*, phonetics, ritual, grammar, etymology,
metrics, and astrology. And the higher is that by which the Un-
decaying is apprehended.

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Vedic knowledge deals only with the ritual. It is useful only for worldly existence (MuṇU 1.2.1–6). It is not the knowledge that leads to final liberation, and from that perspective it is ignorance masquerading as knowledge.

2.5 The Householder and the Celibate

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As the sacrificial ideology promoted the married householder as the paragon of religious life, so the new worldview minimized the religious significance of marriage and children and advocated the value of celibacy.

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From the perspective of the new framework for understanding the human individual, the claim that a son constitutes a person’s immortality would have seemed downright silly. At a sacrifice of King Janaka, Yājñavalkya, a proponent of the new theology, compares a human being to a tree and questions the assembled priests:

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Now, a tree, when it is cut down, grows anew from its root. From what root does a man grow, when he is cut down by death? Do not say “from the semen,” for he produces it while he is alive. (BāU 3.9.27.4–5)

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A son issues from his father’s semen, but he is not the continuation of his father’s existence. Individuals are now considered as complete in themselves, with personal continuities of their own from one life to another. The family is no longer needed to transform the individual into a complete person. The son is not the father’s self but the result of the father’s desire.

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