Early India
The Asian Way Of Life
Introduction
This chapter will trace the genesis and development of the two oldest
continuous civilizations - the Indian and the Chinese - in order to obtain an
understanding of the Asian way of life and allow comparison with the West. In
addition, this chapter will examine the early trade and diplomatic exchanges
between East and West. These exchanges provide us with our first view of
historical development on a global scale.
A modern Indian scholar has said: "All that India can offer to the world
proceeds from her philosophy." Indian thinkers have consistently held a
fundamental belief in the unity of all life, establishing no dividing line
between the human and the divine. This pervasive belief in the unity of life
has made possible the assimilation and synthesis of a variety of beliefs and
customs from both native and foreign cultures. Thus, despite its almost
continual political disunity, India has achieved and maintained a fundamental
cultural unity.
While political disunity has characterized most of India's history, China
has been united for more than 2000 years - the longest-lived political
institution in world history. While religion had dominated the customs and
attitudes of India's people, the Chinese have been much more humanistic and
worldly. "We find in China neither that subordination of the human order to
the divine order nor that vision of the world as a creation born of ritual and
maintained by ritual which are part of the mental universe of India." ^1 The
Chinese attitude toward life had led to a concern for the art of government,
the keeping of voluminous historical records, and the formulation of
down-to-earth ethical standards.
[Footnote 1: Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 28]
This chapter traces the important threads of Indian and Chinese history
to the beginning of the third century A.D., a time when the Pax Romana in the
West was coming to an end. This was the formative age of both civilizations,
the period in which the major elements of the Indian and Chinese way of life
were established.
Early India
About 2500 B.C. a counterpart of the civilizations that had emerged
earlier along the Tigris-Euphrates and the Nile rivers appeared along the
Indus River in India. Coinciding with the collapse of this Indus civilization,
Indo-European invaders - the Aryans - began a conquest that produced numerous
contending states in northern India by 326 B.C. Long before that date, Aryan
and native Indian beliefs and customs had undergone a process of assimilation
and development that produced what is called classical Hinduism - an amalgam
of religious and philosophical ideas (humankind's relation to the cosmic
order) and socioeconomic institutions (the caste system in particular). Most
of the elements that today are characteristic of Indian thought and action are
the products of this period.
Geography Of India
We can think of India* as a gigantic triangle, bounded on two sides by
the warm waters of the Indian Ocean and on the third by the mountain wall of
the Himalayas. The highest mountains in the world, the Himalayas and their
western extensions cut India off from the rest of Asia, making it an isolated
subcontinent as large as Europe. Through the Khyber and other mountain passes
in the northwest have come the armed conquerors, restless tribes, and
merchants and travelers who did much to shape India's turbulent history.
[Note *: Until the text deals with the creation of the separate states of
India and Pakistan in 1947, the word India will refer to the entire
subcontinent.]
In addition to the northern mountain belt, which shields India from cold
Arctic winds, the Indian subcontinent comprises two other major geographical
regions, both characterized by India's most important ecological feature, an
enervating subtropical climate.
In the north is the great plain known as Hindustan, which extends from
the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal. It forms the watersheds of two great
river systems, the Indus and the Ganges, which have their sources in the
Himalayas. South of this great plain rises a high plateau that covers most of
the southern, or peninsular, part of India and is called the Deccan (the
"South"). The mountains along the western edge of the Deccan plateau, called
the Western Ghats ("Steps"), caused the monsoon winds that blow across the
Arabian Sea to drop their rain on the Malabar coast. Since Roman times, the
pepper and other spices that grow abundantly on this coast have attracted
Western traders.
Our focus is presently on western Hindustan, now part of the state of
Pakistan, where India's earliest civilization arose. This area is made up of
an alluvial plain watered by the upper Indus and its tributaries (called the
Punjab, "Land of the Five Rivers"), and the region of the lower Indus (called
Sind, from sindhu, meaning "river," and the origin of the terms Hindu and
India).
[See Ancient India]
The Indus Civilization (c. 2500-1500 B.C.)
The rise of civilization in the Indus valley around 2500 B.C. duplicates
what occurred in Mesopotamia nearly one thousand years earlier. In both areas,
Neolithic farmers lived in food-producing villages situated on the hilly
flanks of a large river valley. Under pressure from increased population and
the need for more land and water, they moved to the more abundant and fertile
soil of the river valley. Here their successful adaptation to a new
environment led to the more complex way of life called a civilization. In
India's case, four or five of the farming villages had grown into large cities
with as many as 40,000 inhabitants by 2300 B.C. Excavations of two of these
cities, Mohenjo-Daro in Sind and Harappa in the Punjab, have provided most of
our knowledge of this civilization.
Although Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro were 400 miles apart, the Indus River
made possible the maintenance of a uniform administration and economy over the
large area. The cities were carefully planned, with straight paved streets
intersecting at right angles and an elaborate drainage system with underground
channels. A standard system of weights was used throughout the area. The
spacious two-storied houses of the well-to-do contained bathrooms and were
constructed with the same type of baked bricks used for roads. A uniform
script employing some 400 pictographic signs has not yet been deciphered. The
only known use of the script was on engraved stamp-seals, which were probably
used to mark property with the name of the owner.
The economy of the Indus civilization, like that of Babylonia and Egypt,
was based on irrigation farming. Wheat and barley were the chief crops, and
the state collected these grains as taxes and stored them in huge granaries.
The importance of agriculture explains the presence of numerous mother-goddess
figurines; representing the principle of fertility, they exaggerate female
anatomy. For the first known time in world history, chickens were domesticated
as a food source, and cotton was grown and used in making textiles. The
spinning and weaving of cotton continues in modern times to be India's chief
industry.
Copper and bronze were used for tools and weapons, but the rarity of
weapons indicates that warfare was uncommon. Trade was sufficiently well
organized to obtain needed raw materials - copper, tin, silver, gold, and
timber - from the mountain regions to the west. There is also evidence of
active trade contacts with Mesopotamia, some 1500 miles to the west, as early
as 2300 B.C. (the time of Sargon of Akkad).
For centuries the people of the Indus valley pursued a relatively
unchanging way of life. However, excavations of Mohenjo-Daro show clearly that
decline had set in about 1700 B.C., when a series of great floods caused by
earthquakes altered the course of the Indus. Harappa to the north appears to
have suffered a similar disaster. The invaders who came through the northwest
passes about 1500 B.C. found little remaining of a once-flourishing
civilization.
The Aryan Invasion And The Early Vedic Age (c. 1500-1000 B.C.)
The invaders who brought an end to what was left of Indus civilization
called themselves Aryans, meaning "nobles." They spoke Sanskrit, an
Indo-European language, and were a part of the great Indo-European migrations
of the second millennium B.C., whose profound effects on the ancient world we
have noted in earlier chapters. The Aryans were pastoralists who counted their
wealth in cattle and whose chief interests were war and cattle rustling. Like
the Homeric heroes of Greece, no greater shame could befall these warriors
than to take flight in the face of the enemy. Their horse-drawn chariots,
which were new to India, made them invincible.
The native population, later called Dravidians, was either conquered by
the Aryans as they expanded eastward into the Ganges plain, or driven south
into the Deccan. The Aryans contemptuously referred to these darker-skinned
but more civilized conquered people as Dasas, "slaves."
We know more about the Aryans than we know about their Indus civilization
predecessors. Our knowledge comes largely from the four Vedas ("Knowledge"),
great collections of hymns to the gods and ritual texts composed and handed
down orally between 1500 and 500 B.C. by the Aryan priests, the Brahmins.
Hence this thousand-year period is commonly called the Vedic Age.
The earliest and most important of the Vedas, the Rig-Veda ("Royal
Veda"), the earliest surviving Indo-European work of literature, gives an
insight into the institutions and ideas of the Early Vedic Age, which ended
about 1000 B.C. Each tribe was headed by a war leader called rajah, a word
closely related to the Latin word for king, rex. Like the early kings of
Sumer, Greece, and Rome, the rajah was not considered divine; nor was he an
absolute monarch. Two tribal assemblies, one a small council of the great men
of the tribe and the other a larger gathering of the heads of families,
approved his accession to office and advised him on important matters.
The earliest hymns in the Rig-Veda mention only two social classes, the
Kshatriyas (nobility) and the Vaishyas (commoners). But by the end of the
Early Vedic Age two additional classes were recognized: the Brahmins, or
priests, who because of their specialized religious knowledge had begun to
assume the highest social rank; and the Shudras, the non-Aryan conquered
population of workers and serfs at the bottom of the social scale. From these
four classes the famous caste system of India was to develop during the Later
Vedic Age.
The early Aryans had an unsophisticated premoral religion. It involved
making sacrifices to the deified forces of nature in return for such material
gains as victory in war, long life, and many offspring. The gods were
conceived in the image of humans - virile and warlike, fond of charioteering,
dancing, and gambling (dice, like chess, is an Indian invention). They were
addicted to an intoxicating drink called soma, which was believed to make them
immortal. The most popular god of the Rig-Veda was Indra, storm-god and patron
of warriors, who is described leading the Aryans in destroying the forts of
the Dasas. Virile and boisterous, Indra personified the heroic virtues of the
Aryan warrior aristocracy as he drove his chariot across the sky, wielded his
thunderbolts, ate bulls by the score, and quaffed entire lakes of intoxicating
soma. Another major Aryan god was Varuna, the sky-god. Viewed as the king of
the gods, he lived in a great palace in the heavens where one of his
associates was Mitra, known as Mithras to the Persians and widely worshiped in
the Roman Empire. Varuna was the guardian of rita, which is the right order of
things. Rita is both the cosmic law of nature (the regularity of the seasons,
for example), and the customary tribal law of the Aryans.
The Later Vedic Age (c. 1000-500 B.C.)
Most of our knowledge about the five hundred years that comprise the
Later Vedic Age is gleaned from two great epics, the Mahabharata and the
Ramayana, and from the religious compositions of the Brahmin priests. The
latter comprise three major groups: (1) the three later Vedas, containing many
hymns along with spells and incantations designed to avoid harm or secure
blessings to the worshiper, (2) the Brahmanas, which describe and explain the
priestly ritual of sacrifice and reflect the dominant position achieved by the
Brahmin class in society; and (3) the more philosophical speculations
collectively known as the Upanishads.
The kernel of the two Indian epics, which glorify the Kshatriyan (noble
or warrior) class, was originally secular rather than religious. The core of
the Mahabharata is a great war between rivals for the throne of an Aryan state
situated in the upper Ganges plain in the region of the modern Delhi. Many
passages dwell on the warriors' joy of battle as they fight for glory and
booty. As in the Greek Iliad's account of the Trojan War, all rulers of Aryan
India participate in a decisive battle, which rages for eighteen days near the
beginning of the Later Vedic Age. The epic came to be used in royal
sacrificial ritual, and a long succession of priestly editors added many long
passages on religious duties, morals, and statecraft.
One of the most famous additions is the Bhagavad-Gita (The Lord's Song),
a philosophical dialogue which stresses the performance of duty, or dharma,
without passion or fear. It is still the most treasured piece in Hindu
literature. Dharma, whose broad meaning is moral law and is often translated
as "virtue," had by this time replaced the earlier Vedic term rita which, as
noted above, originally meant premoral customary and cosmic law.
The other great epic, the Ramayana, has been likened to the Greek
Odyssey. It recounts the wanderings of the banished prince Rama and his
faithful wife Sita's long vigil before they are reunited and Rama gains his
rightful throne. In the course of time priestly editors transformed this
simple adventure story into a book of devotion. Rama became the ideal man and
the incarnation of the great god Vishnu, while Sita emerged as the perfect
woman, devoted and submissive to her husband. Her words were memorized by
almost every Hindu bride:
Car and steed and gilded palace,
vain are these to woman's life;
Dearer is her husband's shadow
to the loved and loving wife.
The two epics, together with the last three Vedas and the Brahmanas,
reflect the many changes that occurred in Indian life during the Later Vedic
Age. By the beginning of this age, the Aryans had mastered iron metallurgy,
which they may have learned from the Near East. The Aryans had also moved
eastward from the Punjab, conquering the native population and forming larger
and frequently warring states in the upper Ganges valley. These were
territorial rather than tribal states. Although some were oligarchic
republics, most were ruled by rajahs. Despite the presence of an advisory
council of nobles and priests, the rajahs' powers were greater than those of
the tribal leaders of the earlier period. The rajahs now lived in palaces and
collected taxes - in the form of goods from the villages - in order to sustain
their courts and armies. A few small cities arose, some as administrative
centers connected with a palace, and some as commercial centers. Trade
contacts with Mesopotamia were renewed, and merchants probably brought back
from the West the use of coinage and the Aramaic alphabet, which was adapted
to Sanskrit.
Village, Caste, And Family
In the Later Vedic Age, the three pillars of traditional Indian society -
the autonomous village, caste, and the joint family - were established. India
has always been primarily agricultural, and its countryside is still a
patchwork of thousands of villages. The ancient village was made up of joint
families governed by a headman and a council of elders. Villages enjoyed
considerable autonomy; the rajah's government hardly interfered at all as long
as it received its quota of taxes.
The four classes, or castes - Kshatriyas (nobles), Vaishyas (commoners),
Brahmins (priests), and Shudras (workers or serfs) - have remained constant
throughout India's history. But during the Later Vedic Age, the Brahmins
assumed the highest social rank. The four castes also began to subdivide into
numerous subcastes, each with a special social, occupational, or religious
character. For example, such new occupational groups as merchants and artisans
became subcastes of the Vaishyas. Furthermore, another main social division
was formed, consisting of those whose occupations were the most menial and
degrading - scavengers, sweepers, tanners (because they handled the carcasses
of dead animals), and carriers of human and animal waste. These outcasts were
called Untouchables because their touch was considered defiling to the upper
castes.
Although the inequalities of the caste system clearly contributed to the
wealth and influence of the upper castes, the lower caste groups came to
accept the system. One reason for this was the manner in which a caste
performed the functions of a guild in maintaining a monopoly for the caste in
its occupation and in securing other favorable conditions for its members. By
maintaining discipline in accordance with caste rules, the caste leaders in
each village also gave Indian society a stability that partially compensated
for the lack of political stability over a wide area through much of Indian
history.
The third pillar of Indian society was the joint family, in which the
wives of all the sons of the patriarch of the family came to live and raise
the children. When the patriarch died, his authority was transferred to his
eldest son, but his property was divided equally among all his sons. Women
could not inherit property. Nor could they participate in sacrifices to the
gods; their presence at the sacrifice was considered a source of pollution.
The emphasis placed on the interest and security of the group rather than
on the individual is a common denominator of the three pillars of Indian
society - the autonomous village, the caste system, and the joint family. Thus
Indian society has always been concerned with stability rather than with
progress in the Western sense, and the Indians have had a more passive outlook
toward life than their Western counterparts.
The Brahmanas And The Upanishads
Radical changes in Indian religion and thought occurred during the Later
Vedic Age, producing what became one of the world's most complex religious and
philosophical systems. The first phase of this development is clearly seen in
the Brahmanas. It began about 1000 B.C. and is often called Brahmanism because
it was the product of the emergence of the Brahmin priests to a position of
supreme power and privilege in society. During the Early Vedic Age, sacrifice
had been only a means of influencing the gods in favor of the offeror; now it
became the means of compelling the gods to act, provided the correct ritual
was employed. Since only the priests possessed the technical expertise to
perform the complex and lengthy rites of sacrifice (some of which lasted for
months), and since the slightest variation in ritual was thought to turn the
gods against people, the Brahmins strengthened their position over the nobles
and rulers of the Kshatriya class.
Equally important, the priests gave the caste system a religious sanction
by extending the concept of dharma, moral duty, to include the performance of
caste functions as social duty - behavior suitable to a person's hereditary
caste.
The more than 250 Upanishads were composed between 800 and 600 B.C. by
some members of the Brahmin and Kshatriya classes who rejected both the simple
nature worship of the Rig-Veda and the complicated sacrificial system of the
Brahmanas. The Upanishadic thinkers speculated on the nature of reality, the
purpose of life, and immortality. (The Rig-Vedic Aryans, pursuing their heroic
warrior values, had not been particularly interested in life after death.)
These first Indian gurus wandered in the forests as hermits, where they
meditated and taught their disciples. One of them summed up their quest as
follows:
From the unreal lead me to the real!
From darkness lead me to light!
From death lead me to immortality!
The following beliefs ultimately became an integral part of Indian
religion and philosophy:
1.The fundamental reality, the essence of all things, is not something
material, as most of the early Greek philosophers at about the same time
concluded, but spiritual - the World Soul.
2.Each individual possesses a soul, which is a part of the World Soul.
3.The material world is an illusion (maya) and the cause of all
suffering. As long as such earthly goals as fame, power, and wealth are
sought, the result will be pain and sorrow.
4.Salvation, or deliverance from maya, can only come through the
reabsorption of the individual soul into the World Soul.
5.This release from maya is part of a complicated process of
reincarnation. The individual soul must go through a long series of
earthly reincarnations from one body to another.
6.Intertwined with the doctrine of reincarnation is the immutable
law called karma (meaning "deed"). This law holds that the
consequences of one's deeds determine one's future after death. A
person's status at any particular point is not the result of chance
but depends on his or her soul's actions in previous existences.
Together with the doctrine of maya, karma gives a satisfactory
explanation to the question of why suffering exists, a question that
has troubled thoughtful people all over the world. The Indian answer is
that the wicked who prosper will pay later, while the righteous who
suffer are being punished for acts committed in former existences.
Hindusism: A Religious Synthesis
Upanishadic thought became a part of Hinduism, the developing religion of
India, when the Brahmin priests incorporated it into their teaching. In doing
so they gave the caste system additional religious support by linking it to
karma and the process of reincarnation. In effect, caste became the essential
machinery for the educative process of the soul as it went through the long
succession of rebirths from the lowest categories in caste to that of the
Brahmin, who presumably is near the end of the cycle. The priests made
individual salvation, now a conspicuous part of Indian religion, dependent on
the uncomplaining acceptance of one's position at birth. Marriage outside
one's caste was forbidden.
But because the Upanishadic doctrine of salvation by absorption of the
individual soul into the World Soul was too intellectual and remote for the
average person to grasp fully, devotion to personal redeemer gods emerged.
This new devotion centered on gods who, as manifestations of Brahman (the
World Soul), stood in close relationship to their worshippers.
The major Aryan gods gradually faded away, and Hinduism acquired a
trinity consisting of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the
Destroyer. Brahma, the personification of the World Soul whose name is the
masculine form of Brahman, never acquired the popular following achieved by
Visnu and Shiva, a position they continue to maintain. These two popular
deities evolved from Vedic and Dravidian origins.
In the old Vedic pantheon of the Aryans, Vishnu was a god associated with
the sun. He now evolved into the friend and comforter, the savior who works
continuously for the welfare of humanity. "No devotee of mine is lost," is
Vishnu's promise. His followers believe that he has appeared in ten major
"descents" in human form to save the world from disaster. Two of Vishnu's
incarnations are described in great Indian epics. As Krishna in the
Mahabharata, he is the friend and adviser of princes and the author of The
Lord's Song (Bhagavad-Gita). As Rama, the hero of the Ramayana, he saves the
human race from the oppressions of a great demon before returning to the "City
of the Gods" and resuming the form of Vishnu.
Shiva, the other great popular god of classical and modern Hinduism,
evolved from a minor Aryan Vedic god who was the guardian of healing herbs but
whose arrows also brought disease. Another prototype of Shiva was a pre-Aryan
fertility god who was worshipped in the cities of the Indus civilization. For
this reason, Shiva is often associated with phallic symbols. His spouse is the
pre-Aryan mother goddess who under various forms, from grossly sexual to
gentle and benevolent, often plays a more important role than her husband.
With such a background, Shiva is a very different character from Vishnu.
Shiva personifies the cosmic force of change that destroys in order to build
anew. He exemplifies another major characteristic of Hinduism, the
reconciliation of extremes - violence and passivity, for example, and
eroticism and asceticism. Some representations portray Shiva in terrifying
guise, garlanded with skulls; others show him as the Lord of Dancers, whose
activities are the source of all movement within the cosmos.
Most Hindus are devotees of either Vishnu or Shiva and their respective
emanations, wives, and children. However, animals - especially the cow -
vegetation, water, and even stones are also worshiped as divine. In time
literally thousands of deities, demigods, and lesser spirits came to form the
Hindu pantheon, the world's largest. Hindus, however, do not think of their
religion as polytheistic, for all gods and spirits are viewed as
manifestations of Brahman, the World Soul, which pervades everything.
Hinduism is probably the world's most tolerant religion. It possesses no
canon, such as the Bible or the Koran; no single personal founder, such as
Christ or Muhammad; and no precise body of authoritative doctrine. Hindus can
believe what they like, and they remain Hindus as long as they observe the
rules of their caste. Depending on one's intellectual and spiritual needs and
capacities, Hinduism can be a transcendental philosophy, a devotional
adherence to a savior god such as Vishnu, or simple idolatry. From its
earliest origins, Hinduism has exhibited an unusual organic quality of growth
and adaptation. The last major element in the Hindu synthesis was provided by
Gautama Buddha.
The Middle Way Of Gautama Buddha
By taking over Upanishadic thought, the Brahmins had laid the foundations
of classical Hinduism, but they continued to place great emphasis upon the
importance of sacrifice, priestly ritual, and magical spells. This led in the
sixth century B.C. to the rise of more ascetics and reformers who sought to
pursue the goals of Upanishadic thought by bypassing the priests and other
mechanical ceremonialism. To achieve salvation from the cycle of birth and
death, most of these dissenters lived as hermits, meditating on the true
nature of human beings as part of the World Soul. They demonstrated by their
indifference to worldly matters that they had realized their oneness with the
underlying essence of all things. The most important of these ascetics, who
soon rejected extreme asceticism and found his own "Middle Way" to salvation,
was Guatama, who called himself the Buddha ("The Enlightened One").
Gautama (c. 563-483 B.C.) was the son of a leading noble in a small
oligarchic republic located at the foot of the Himalayas. In his twenty-ninth
year, according to tradition, Gautama was deeply shocked by the misery,
disease, and sorrow that he saw as he walked through the streets of his native
city. He renounced his wealth and position and, forsaking his wife and child,
determined to seek a meaningful answer to the question of human suffering. For
six years he lived in a forest, practicing the self-mortification rites of the
ascetics he found there. Gautama almost died from fasting and self-torture and
at last concluded that these practices did not lead to wisdom.
One day, while sitting beneath a sacred fig tree meditating on the
problem of human suffering, Gautama received "enlightenment." The meaning, the
cause, and the conquest of suffering became clear to him. From this insight,
he constructed a religious philosophy that has affected the lives of millions
of people for 2500 years.
Dressed in a simple yellow robe, with begging bowl in hand, he wandered
through the plain of the Ganges, speaking with everyone regardless of caste
and attracting disciples. At last, when he was eighty years old and enfeebled,
he was invited by a poor blacksmith to a meal. According to legend, the food
was tainted, but Gautama ate it rather than offend his host. Later in the day
the Buddha had severe pains, and he knew death was near. Calling his disciples
together, he gave them this parting message: "Be ye lamps unto yourselves. Be
a refuge to yourselves. Hold fast to the truth as to a lamp. Look not for
refuge to anyone beside yourselves."
What is "the truth" that the Buddha believed could be discovered by
individual effort, without the need for priestly assistance? The answer had
been revealed to him during the Great Enlightenment in the form of the Four
Noble Truths: (1) existence is suffering; (2) suffering springs from desire
and craving; (3) the cure for suffering is the extinction of desire; and (4)
to achieve the absence of desire, there is an Eightfold Path of right conduct,
which is the Middle Way between worldly pursuits and extreme asceticism. The
Buddha offered Five Moral Rules of right conduct: do not kill any living
being; do not take what is not given to you; do not speak falsely; do not
drink intoxicating drinks; do not be unchaste.
Like so many reform movements in the history of religion, the Buddha's
teaching aimed at restoring the purity of an existing creed. The Buddha sought
to strip the Upanishadic teachings of the corruptions that had enveloped them.
Thus he restored the ethical basis of the doctrines of karma and
reincarnation, which the priests had made dependent on the performance of
ritual rather than on moral behavior. He also repudiated the belief that only
members of the Brahmin caste could attain release from the wheel of birth and
rebirth, insisting that release was possible for everyone regardless of caste.
Nor was there any place in his system for the popular gods of Hinduism.
Indeed, what the Buddha taught was more a philosophy than a religion. Thus,
Buddhism became a movement separate from Hinduism.
The Buddhists came to form two groups - monks and laity. The Buddha's
close disciples, who included women as well as men, renounced the world,
donned yellow robes, and lived for part of the year in the world's first
monastic communities (many in caves cut out of rock), with staves and begging
bowls as their only possessions. By means of a strict discipline of mind and
body, they aspired to achieve "the supreme peace of nirvana" - release from
the wheel of birth and rebirth. The literal meaning of nirvana is "to
extinguish," and it refers to the extinguishing of desire, which feeds on
sensual pleasures and is the cause of suffering. Nirvana is also a state of
superconsciousness, attained by a type of yoga concentration in which the
individual personality or ego dissolves and becomes united with the spirit of
life, which the Buddha taught exists in all creatures.
To the ascetic monks, Buddhism's major purpose is the dissolution of the
ego and the sense of release and spiritual joy that results. To the ordinary
Buddhist laity, who continue to live in the world (although they often
"retreat" to a monastery for short periods), the Buddha's ethical teachings
serve as a guide to right living.
The Buddha was a reformer who censured the rites and dogmas of the
Brahmins, broke with the rules of caste, taught that all people are equal, and
proclaimed a code of ethics whose appeal is universally recognized. Buddhism
reached its height in India in the third century B.C. Soon thereafter Buddhism
began to decline, and ultimately it disappeared in its homeland.
One reason for this development was a successful counterreformation of
Hinduism. For most people accustomed to elaborate ritual and the worship of
benevolent personal gods, original Buddhism seemed stern and austere, and in
time the Buddha's simpler followers began to worship him as a god and the
savior of humanity. Temples were built and statues were erected honoring the
savior, and nirvana was viewed as a sort of heaven. Then when the Brahmins
proclaimed the Buddha to be the ninth incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu,
Buddhism began to fade as an independent religion in India. (Destroyed
completely by persecution following the Muslim conquest of India in the eighth
century A.D., Buddhism revived on a small scale in the mid-twentieth century.)
Buddhism's impact on Hinduism was nevertheless profound, for it served to
rejuvenate and purify the older religion. More emphasis was henceforth placed
on ethical conduct as a means of salvation and less on sacrifices, ritual
prayers, and magic spells.
Another order of monks and lay followers who reject the authority of the
Brahmin priests was Jainism. Its founder was Mahavira, a younger contemporary
of the Buddha. Jainism has much in common with Buddhism, but it has never
attained Buddhism's popularity. It places far more emphasis on asceticism and
the doctrine of nonviolence (ahimsa) toward any living creature. It is
probably more through the influence of Jainism than of Buddhism that
nonviolence became a significant aspect of Hinduism.
