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Samnyasa Upanishads: Hindu Scriptures on Asceticism and Renunciation c5.s2.t6: 2.6 When Two Worlds Meet: Conflict and Compromise

Saṃnyāsa Upaniṣads: Hindu Scriptures on Asceticism and Renunciation c5.s2.t6

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2.6 When Two Worlds Meet: Conflict and Compromise

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When alternative definitions of reality are created within a single society, there results an inevitable conflict of worlds. The alternative definitions, as Berger and Luckmann (1966, 106–107) point out, pose a threat not only at an ideological level but also at a very practical and institutional level; they threaten the privileges enjoyed by the guardians of the old world:

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The group that has objectivated this deviant reality becomes the carrier of an alternative definition of reality. It is hardly necessary to belabor the point that such heretical groups posit not only a theoretical threat to the symbolic universe, but a practical one to the institutional order legitimated by the symbolic universe in question.

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The ascetic world we have examined provided such an alternative definition of reality. Here I want to explore briefly the resultant conflict with the established world and the inevitable interaction between the two worlds that radically transformed them both. I shall focus here mostly on the institutional aspects of this interaction, leaving the ideological and theological aspects for the remaining sections of this introduction, because they are clearly visible in the Saṃnyāsa Upaniṣads themselves.

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During the first phase of such a conflict we should expect the guardians of the old world that is being challenged to reject and denounce the deviant world and to present an uncompromising defense of the old. Such a defense will include attempts at theological legitimation of the central institutions of that world. We encounter such attempts in a spectrum of Brāhmaṇical texts belonging to widely different periods.

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An early legitimation of sacrifice and marriage is found in the theology of debts.³⁵ There are different versions, but the best-known is the scheme of three debts found in the *Taittirīya Saṃhitā* of the *Yajur Veda* (6.3.10.5):

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³⁵ For a detailed discussion of the theology debts in Brāhmaṇism, see Charles Malamoud, "Theologie de la dette dans les *Brāhmaṇas*," *Puruṣārtha: Science sociales en asie du sud* 4 (1980): 39–62.

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A Brahmin, at his very birth, is born with a triple debt—of studentship to the seers, of sacrifice to the gods, of offspring to the fathers. He is, indeed, free from debt, who has a son, is a sacrificer, and who has lived as a student.

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It is significant that this theology uses the concept of debt to characterize the obligatory nature of these three duties. The term debt (*ṛṇa*) in ancient India carried the meaning both of debt in the strict sense and of fault, guilt, or sin; the two meanings are often presented together as components of a single concept.

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Indebtedness is considered a grave state, and gods are frequently petitioned to eliminate one's debt.³⁶ The Apsarases, for example, are asked in the *Atharva Veda* hymn 6.118 to discharge debts incurred in gambling, while in the very next hymn (AV 6.119) Agni Vaiśvānara is requested to remit debts not related to gambling. A suppliant prays:

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³⁶ Petitions are directed at Varuṇa (RV 2.28.9), Ādityas (RV 2.27.4), Soma (RV 9.47.2), Uṣas (RV 10.127.7), Indra (RV 4.23.7), and the Maruts (RV 1.169.7).

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Debtless in this (world), debtless in the higher, debtless in the third world may we be; the world traversed by gods and traversed by the fathers—in all the paths may we abide debtless. (AV 6.117.3)

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The remitting of a debt by gods clearly does not refer to the actual payment of the sum owed to a creditor but rather to the release from the inner state of bondage and obligation that indebtedness creates. It is to this inner state that the second meaning of debt, namely guilt, refers. When people are in debt they lack something; they are wanting in fullness. Significantly, the term *ṛṇa* is used in mathematics to indicate the "minus."

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Happiness in this world and the next, therefore, can be assured only if one is free from debts, for debtors are bound by their debts even after death. To be under debt also implies that one is not free. Later authors associate this lack of freedom when one is indebted with the concepts of bondage and freedom (*mokṣa*) central to the new world, arguing that one can hardly be expected to attain absolute freedom if one is still under the obligation of debts. As a device for legitimation, therefore, "debt" had great potential.

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An important feature of the theology of debts is that a man becomes indebted by the mere fact of his birth. This stands in sharp contrast to the normal understanding that a debt is contracted by a deliberate action of an adult. Sāyaṇa, the great medieval commentator on the Vedas, (on ŚB 1.7.2.1) recognized the new definition of debt in this theology when he says that "birth alone is the cause of indebtedness" (*ṛṇatve jananam eva nimittam*). The texts do not throw any light on the mechanism whereby a man falls into debt at birth. There is no myth of origin that would provide us with some clues. Unlike the Judeo-Christian doctrine of original sin, the debts one incurs at birth, on the one hand, are not caused by some act committed by one's ancestors, and, on the other, affect only twice-born males. The manner in which debts are inherited, furthermore, contradicts the ideology of *karma*.³⁷ While the doctrine of *karma* insists that people reap what they sow, the doctrine of debts asserts that twice-born men become guilty of debts without any deliberate act on their part. Further, even though debts are incurred immediately upon birth, the tradition is unanimous that their payment can only be made when the individual is able and qualified to do so: the payment of the debt to the seers requires Vedic initiation, and the payment of the debts to gods and forefathers presupposes marriage.

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³⁷ In all likelihood, the theology of debts predates the origin of *karma* and rebirth as significant explanatory concepts in Indian theodicy.

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It appears, therefore, that the concept of debt was given a new meaning in this theology and that it was used to illustrate and define the obligations of ritual actors—namely adult males—in the context of their relationship to significant individuals who play central roles in the Vedic world. The inhabitants of this world—including gods, ancestors, seers, and other human and non-human beings—live in a web of interdependent relationships that creates reciprocal rights and obligations. The obligations of twice-born adult males, who are the principal actors in the social world, are here singled out and defined as debts.

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An early and eloquent defense of marriage and procreation, the central institutions of the old worlds, coupled with a total and uncompromising rejection of the celibate ideal is found in these beautiful verses of the *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa* (7.13):

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A debt he pays in him,
And immortality he gains,
The father who sees the face
Of his son born and alive.

Greater than the delights
That earth, fire, and water
Bring to living beings,
Is a father's delight in his son.

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By means of sons have fathers ever
Crossed over the mighty darkness;
For one is born from oneself
A ferry laden with food.

What is the use of dirt and deer skin?
What profit in beard and austerity?
Seek a son, O Brahmin;
He is the world free of blame.

Food is breath, clothes protect.
Gold is for beauty, cattle for marriage.
The wife is a friend, a daughter brings grief.
But a son is a light in the highest heaven.

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.

A wife is called wife,
Because in her he is born again.
He is productive, she’s productive,
For the seed is placed in her.

The gods and the seers
Brought to her great lustre.
The gods said to men:
“She is your mother again.”

“A sonless man has no world.”
All the beasts know this.
Therefore a son mounts
Even his mother and sister.

This is the broad and easy path
Along which travel men with sons, free from sorrow;
Beasts and birds see it;
So they copulate even with their mothers.

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In this poem we see a broad-based attempt to defend marriage and procreation against ascetic ideologies extolling the virtue of celibacy. It uses both the theology of debts and the ancient doctrine that the son constitutes the immortality of the father. Beyond these, the poem appeals to the natural instincts of man:

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consider the joy that a newborn son brings to one's heart! The poet even appeals to the testimony of animals who instinctively follow the natural law: desiring a son they even engage in incest. The statement "A sonless man has no world" is the strongest that can be made within the framework of the Vedic world; it is tantamount to saying that a sonless man has absolutely no future in this world or the next and is subject to total annihilation.

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Humans' debts to gods and ancestors are also seen as related to the needs of gods and especially of ancestors. Gods feed on sacrificial oblations. Ancestors likewise depend on their sons and subsequent male descendants for ritual offerings of food and water. The needs, interpreted as rights, of gods and ancestors, therefore, create corresponding duties in humans. In a telling episode recorded in the *Mahābhārata* (3.94.11-15), Agastya saw his forefathers hanging upside down in a cave, reduced to that miserable state due to Agastya's decision to turn celibate, leaving no descendants to present them with ritual offerings. The dilemma of a renouncer who aspires to personal liberation only to find that he has harmed his forefathers is presented graphically in the account of Asita and Jaigīṣavya, also recorded in the *Mahābhārata* (9.49). Seeing that Asita, following Jaigīṣavya's advice, had renounced, his "forefathers wept aloud saying 'Who will feed us now?'"

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Attempts to defend and legitimize the totality of the old world, however, are never completely successful, and the guardians of the old are compelled finally to accept the new world and to respond to it at a different level. This response

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involves the more ambitious attempt to account for all deviant definitions of reality *in terms of* concepts belonging to one's own universe. . . . The deviant conceptions are not merely assigned a negative status, they are grappled with theoretically in detail. The final goal of this procedure is to incorporate the deviant conceptions within one's own universe, and thereby to liquidate them ultimately. (Berger and Luckmann 1966, 115)

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Berger and Luckmann assume that this process of compromise and assimilation is initiated solely by the custodians of the established world. The example of the ascetic world in ancient India demonstrates that it was indeed a two-way street; the champions of the new world, especially when it has become institutionalized, also seek acceptability, allegiance, and power through compromise and assimilation at both the institutional and the ideological levels. The initiative often came from the renouncers themselves, eager to gain social respectability and political patronage. For our purpose, however, the authors are less important than the dynamics of the process itself.

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The most significant structural innovation that facilitated the incorporation of renunciatory ideals and way of life into the Brāhmaṇical world was the creation of the *āśrama* system. The original formulation of the system is found in the four early *Dharma-sūtras*,³⁸ and it differs markedly from the classical formulation found in Manu and later *Dharma-śāstras*. The original formulation posits four alternate modes of religious life for adult males: student, householder, forest hermit, and renouncer. These modes are given the technical term *āśrama* (order of life). They are regarded as lifelong undertakings that an adult is free to choose. The time for making that choice is after the young adult has returned home upon completion of his Vedic studies.

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³⁸ For a more extensive account of the historical development of the *āśrama* system, see Olivelle 1974 and 1984.

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The *āśrama* system is a completely new invention; the very term *āśrama* is absent in the early vocabulary. The system was created probably around the fifth century B.C.E. A careful reading of the early *Dharma-sūtras* shows that the authors of the system were Brahmins who were supporters of or sympathetic toward the ideals of celibacy and renunciation. The openness and the liberal attitude of the authors, demonstrated by the freedom of choice, which is a central element of the system, suggests that they belonged to the urban elite. The system envisages the *āśramas* as voluntary institutions. People are free to choose what they want to be as adults. The same principle was the basis of other voluntary organizations, such as the Buddhist and Jain monastic orders. It is difficult to see how the individual freedom inherent in this bold theological innovation could have arisen within a village context.

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The original *āśrama* system was a structure for inclusion. The purpose of creating the system was clearly to legitimize celibate modes of life by providing a place for them within the sphere of *dharma*. In doing so they expanded the meaning of *dharma*; it is made to include institutions and ideals of the old as well as the new world. The expanding concept of *dharma* provided the umbrella that could bring two opposing worlds together. Thus we find the related division of *dharma* into *pravṛtti* (active) and *nivṛtti* (non-active).³⁹ The former is the *dharma* of society and is connected with the saṃsāric process. The latter is the *dharma* of renunciation and is connected with the path to liberation. The old threefold classification of life's aims (*trivarga*)—*dharma*, *artha* (wealth), *kāma* (pleasure)—is transformed into a fourfold division with the inclusion of *mokṣa* (liberation). *Mokṣadharma*, a term that may have been viewed as a contradiction by early Brāhmaṇical theologians, becomes a respected branch of the science of *dharma*.

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³⁹ For a detailed treatment of these concepts, see Greg Bailey, *Materials for the Study of Ancient Indian Ideologies: Pravṛtti and Nivṛtti*. Pubblicazioni di "Indologica Taurinensia," no. 19. (Torino, 1985).

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*Dharma*, a term at the heart of the old world, is now given new dimensions and used to define the new worlds. The use of that term, indeed, signals that the proponents were presenting the new worlds as alternatives to and substitutes for the old. The Buddha himself, for example, presented his message as *dharma*. The new sectarian *dharmas* and even the original *āśrama* system brought an important element into the religious discourse: one can discuss which is *better* and one can *choose* the *dharma* that one considers superior or more suitable for oneself.

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Gombrich (1989, 58) refers to the "doubt about choosing rightly" that accompanies the freedom to choose. An excellent example of the trauma created by doubts regarding what is right (*dharma*) is found in the famous *Bhagavad Gītā* where Arjuna is torn between his duty as a warrior to fight and the awful prospect of killing his own kinsmen. Renunciatory ideals such as not injuring any living creature and the assertion of the individual as the ultimate moral agent were no doubt at the root of such moral dilemmas that underlie the inner conflict of tradition.

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The later history of the *āśrama* system represents both a retreat from the initial spirit of liberalism and a fuller incorporation of the system and of renunciation into the framework of the Brāhmaṇical world. The social and theological context that gave birth to the system had changed radically by the beginning of the common era. Celibate institutions, including renunciation, were now considered as thoroughly Brāhmaṇical. A structure for inclusion, such as that envisaged in the original system, was unnecessary and superfluous. Instead, the four *āśramas* came to be regarded as constituting four ideals of the Brāhmaṇical ethic, ideals that can and should be realized by each individual.

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Thus, in contrast to the original system, the classical formulation considers the *āśramas* not as alternative ways of life open to an individual but as obligatory modes of life suitable for different periods of an individual's life. Choice, which was the central element in the original formulation, is eliminated, and the *āśramas* are transformed from permanent and lifelong vocations to temporary periods, the only exception being renunciation, which in the new formulation occupies the final days of an individual's life. At least ideally, a person is expected to pass from one *āśrama* to the next in an orderly manner and at specific points in his life. The *āśramas* accompany an individual as he grows old and assumes new and different duties and responsibilities. The entry into each *āśrama* is a rite of passage that signals the closing of one period of life and the beginning of another.

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The journey through the *āśramas*, according to the new system, begins at a boy’s Vedic initiation, which is now considered the rite of entry into the first *āśrama*. The initiatory studentship thus constitutes the first *āśrama*. The fusing of the initiatory studentship and the first *āśrama* transformed the latter from an adult into an adolescent mode of life and converted the former from a period of preparation for all *āśramas* into one that prepares a youth to assume the responsibilities of marriage. This represents a return to the conception of initiatory studentship as envisaged in the system of Brāhmaṇical sacraments (*saṃskāra*).

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The period of initiatory studentship concludes with the ritual bath of the student and his return (*samāvartana*) from the teacher’s to his parents’ home. We saw that in the original formulation this was the critical time of a young adult’s life, when he had to make a decision regarding how he would live his adult life by choosing one of the four *āśramas*. In the classical formulation, however, the return of the student signals the completion of his first *āśrama* and the preparation for assuming the second *āśrama*.

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After he returns home, his parents set about finding him a suitable partner. The rite of marriage initiates the young man into his second *āśrama*, the life of a married householder. The productive years of an adult’s life are thus spent in activities that contribute to the welfare of family and society. He raises a family, engages in economically productive activities as required by his caste affiliation, and lives as a responsible member of society.

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According to the classical system, this mode of life is also temporary. When a householder has produced children, educated them, given them in marriage, and settled them in their occupations—when, in other words, he has completed his household obligations—he is ready to assume the third *āśrama*, that of a forest hermit. Passage into the third *āśrama* is clearly related to old age and retirement. During the final years of his life he becomes a renouncer. In the last two *āśramas* a man is able to set aside the worries of everyday life and to dedicate himself to penance, mortification, and meditation in preparation for what awaits him after death.

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That this grand compromise did not end the inherent conflict between societal religion and renunciatory values is exemplified in the following delightful dialogue between a father, the prudent guardian of the old world, and a son, the embodiment of a restless age, recorded in the *Mahābhārata* (12.169):

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*Son* Since soon the days of mortals end,
How ought the wise their lives to spend?
What course should I, to duty true,
My sire, from youth to age pursue?
*Father* Begin thy course with study; store
The mind with holy Vedic lore.
That stage completed, seek a wife,
And gain the fruit of wedded life,
A race of sons, by rites to seal,
When thou art gone, thy spirit's weal.
Then light the sacred fires, and bring
The gods a fitting offering.
When age draws nigh, the world forsake
Thy chosen home the forest make;
And there a calm, ascetic sage,
A war against thy passions wage,
That, cleansed from every earthly stain,
Thou may'st supreme perfection gain.
*Son* And art thou then, my father, wise,
When thou dost such a life advise?
What wise or thoughtful man delights
In formal studies, empty rites?
Should such pursuits and thoughts engage
A mortal more than half his age?
The world is ever vexed, distressed;
The noiseless robbers never rest.
*Father* Tell how the world is vexed, distressed;
What noiseless robbers never rest?
What means thy dark, alarming speech?
In plainer words thy meaning teach.
*Son* The world is vexed by death; decay
The frames of mortals wear away.

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Dost thou not note the circling flight
Of those still robbers, day and night,
With stealthy tread which hurrying past
Steal all our lives away at last? . . .
No moment lose; in serious mood
Begin at once to practise good;
Tomorrow's task today conclude;
The evening's work complete at noon;
No duty can be done too soon.
Who knows whom death may seize tonight,
And who shall see the morning light?
And death will never stop to ask,
If thou has done or not, thy task.
While yet a youth, from folly cease;
Through virtue seek for calm and peace. . . .
And then thou say'st that I should wed
And sons should gain to tend me dead
By offering pious gifts, to seal,
When I am gone, my spirit's weal.
But I shall ask no pious zeal
Of sons to guard my future weal.
No child of mine shall ever boast
His rites have saved his father's ghost
Of mine own bliss I'll pay the price
And be myself my sacrifice⁴⁰

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⁴⁰ I have given the verse translation of Muir cited by M. Winternitz, "Ascetic Literature in Ancient India," *The Calcutta Review*, October, 1923, 5–8. Although it is clearly not literal, Muir's version captures well the spirit of the original dialogue.

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Despite conflict and controversy, however, the new theological definition of the *āśramas* put the system and, by implication, renunciation at the very heart of the Brāhmaṇical world's definition of itself as *varṇāśramadharma*, the *dharma* of classes-castes and of *āśramas*. *Varṇāśramadharma* then provides the context for Brāhmaṇical discussion of renunciation, the central theme of the documents we are about to examine.

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