Ramkrishna
Bhattacharya
Both
D. D. Kosambi (1907-66) and Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (1918-93), two leading
Marxist thinkers in India, discussed at length the teachings of the six heretics
and of the Buddha during the sixth/fifth century BCE in their seminal works, An Introduction to the Study of Indian
History (1956) and Lokāyata
(1959) respectively. It will be interesting to compare and contrast their views
and observe how, in spite of their basic similarity of approach, they arrived
at almost opposite conclusions in the
1950s. It may also be stated in advance that Kosambi did not radically alter
his views in his last work, The Culture
and Civilisation of Ancient India in Historical Outline (1965), although he
added much that was new. On the other hand, Chattopadhyaya gradually modified his views and came to a more appreciative
assessment of the six heretics and the Buddha. His last work, History of Science and Technology in Ancient
India, Vol. 2 (1991) records his mature opinion of these thinkers.
Kosambi,
as is well-known, was not primarily interested in philosophy and in his magnum opus
does not deal with the later developments of the orthodox (āstika) and heterodox (nāstika)
systems. Yet he dealt with the six heretics and their legacy (as also of the
Buddha) in some detail and tried to account for both their origin and extinction.
Quite naturally the Buddha gets the lion’s share in his discussion but other thinkers are not treated cursorily. Kosambi
summarizes their teachings and assesses their views against the backdrop of the
transition from tribe to state, from a pastoral economy to an agricultural one
and what constituted the Buddha’s pre-eminence ((1956/75), 162-171).
*
Chattopadhyaya’s
study in 1959 was directed to a single question: Why did the teachings of the
Buddha’s contemporaries, especially the major five of the so-called sixty-two
heretics, fail to survive while the teachings of the Buddha succeeded?
Chattopadhyaya’s answer was: The Buddha had provided the right illusion to
replace reality which his other contemporaries could not (506-07).
In
this connection Chattopadhyaya refers to Kosambi but does not seem to notice his
observation on the significance of majjhimā
paṭipadā , the Middle Way
Moreover,
speaking of asceticism Chattopadhyaya misses the point that Kosambi pointed out
quite empatically:
[A]sceticism
was not their (sc. the heretical
teachers’) discovery, for even brahmins had the tradition that the simple
non-killing food-gatherer’s life in the forest was in some way specially
meritorious. These new sects brought some practical conclusions out of that simple life for the whole of a
food-producing non-tribal society ((1956/1975), 165-66. Emphasis added).1
It
is interesting to observe that Kosambi attempted to link the views of the six
heretics to the later developments of Indian philosophy: Ajita to the Cārvāka/
Lokāyata, Pakudha to Vaiśeṣika, Pῡraṇa
to Sāṃkhya, Makkhali to Yoga (1956/1975,
164) – not exactly as a philosophical system but as physical exercise.2
Chattopadhyaya
initially ignored these aspects and paid no attention to the philosophical
inheritance of the heretical systems either in Lokāyata or in his other
works published before the early 1970s. It was only from the late 1970s when he
devoted himself to the study of history of science in ancient India
I
have already mentioned that Kosambi and Chattopadhyaya, in spite of their basic
similarity of approach, had initially
arrived at almost opposite conclusions in the
1950s. The starting point even then was the same: transition from the pre-class
society (tribe) to the class-divided society (state). Yet Chattopadhyaya harped
on the illusory nature of the Buddha’s teachings and the element of despair and
frustration common to the five of the chief heretics. Kosambi, on the contrary,
found many more positive elements in the teachings of the Buddha and the six
heretics as evinced in the continuity found in later developments of Indian
philosophy. Chattopadhyaya too came to the same conclusion much later, only in
1991, when he studied the philosophical systems in relation to the history of
science and technology in ancient India
Let
us now concentrate on how Kosambi viewed the advent and historical significance
of the six heretics and the Buddha.
*
Kosambi
lays much stress on the rise of so many heretical views all at a time in
ancient India
Kosambi
then points out three features common to these sects. They may be summarized as
follows:
1)
“Each of them (sc. the new sects) had
involved considerable mental and physical effort on the part of the first
proponent” ((1956/1975),166). They underwent years of painful asceticism before
they began to preach their doctrines. In passing Kosambi remarks: “There is no
point in arguing whether they were Hindu or not; Hinduism came to existence, with the indelible stamp of these sects,
only when they had faded many centuries later.” (166. Emphasis added.)
2)
“Without exception, even when the founder was a brahmin like Pῡraṇa
and Saṃjaya, they actively or
passively denied the validity of vedic rituals and observances. In the study of
these sects, the final metaphysical differences are of lesser importance than
the background phenomena of tribal life and the monstrous cancer growth of
sacrificial ritual in the tribal kingdoms. It is out of these and as a protest
against their anti-social features that everyone of the sects appeared….[T]he
new society had gone over to agriculture, so that the slaughter of more and
more animals at a growing number of sacrifices meant a much heavier drain upon
producer and production.” (166)
3)
“[T]he new religions were at the beginning all much less costly to support than
vedic brahminism. The śramaṇa
monks and ascetics took no part in production, as their creeds forbade them to
labour but neither did they exercise the least control over the means of
production. They were forbidden ownership of houses, fields, cattle, the touch
of gold and silver and trade….Not only the family but caste and tribe were also
renounced by the monk upon ordination, which meant adoption into a quasi-tribal
saṃgha.” (168)
In
this connection Kosambi mentions the rules of the Buddhist saṃgha in particular and
observes: “The Buddha himself followed the rule till his death at the age of
eighty. His disciples went along new trade routes, even into the tribal
wilderness, bearing the message of peace, but coincidentally the influence of
Magadhan trade. Because they preached in the people’s languages, they lived
closer to the people than the brahmin with his monopoly of the obscure vedic
Sanskrit” (168-69).
Kosambi
feels that the Buddha provided a ‘new religion [that] was the exact parallel,
for the same economic reasons, of the move towards “universal monarchy”, the
absolute despotism of one as against the endlessly varied tyranny of the many’ (169).
Moreover, “brahmin ritual (sc. yajña, animal sacrifice) then served
only the kings, nobles, chiefs or rich traders, but had very little use for the
common man in contrast to the later fully developed brahmin priesthood which
performed even the most trifling ritual for anybody for inconsiderable payment.”
5 The Buddhist doctrine, on the other hand, ‘called itself “Aryan”, thus
admitting the right of indigenous tribal elements and lower castes to ennoble
themselves merely by just action, contrary to brahmin theory’ (169).
Ethical
code in place of magic ritual, frugal way of livimg instead of ostentatious
display of wealth in performing costly sacrifices, and such like features are
common to all the heretical doctrines,
not exclusively of the Buddhist saṃgha. What then made the Buddha pre-eminent of them all?
Chattopadhyaya’s answer was: the Buddha had provided the right illusion of the
epoch which his other contemporaries could not. Kosambi does not think in terms
of illusion and reality at all. Before getting into this issue he first frames an
altogether different question: Why did so many alternatives to the Vedic
religion rise in one narrow region in eastern India
If
it were a matter of simple continuity and gradual evolution, the new religions
should have arisen on the Indus with its ruined memories of a great
civilisation, or in the north-west which had been and remained the centre of Vedic
culture for centuries, or in Kuru-land which was the locus of the Mahābhārata story and the suitable place
for the morality with which the great epic is overloaded, or at Mathurā from
which a new and powerful cult of Krishna as all-god eventually to spread. Why
did the newest and in some cultural respects rather backward land of the east
take the lead in the most advanced form of religion?” (1965/1972, 100)
Kosambi
then goes on to relate the rise of new religions (not only of Buddhism) to the
rise of new classes in the Gangetic basin. There were free peasants and farmers
there. “The neo-Vedic pastoral class of vaiśyas within the tribe was replaced
by agriculturist for whom the tribe had ceased to exist” (100). Traders had
become so wealthy that the kings also used to treat them with respect. The key
to the change in society as a whole was the origin of private property in farm
animals, in land and its produce. Killing of cattle in ritual sacrifices was
now frowned upon and embodied in the doctrine of ahiṃsā, non-violence. “How
completely the sixth-century reform drove this [Vedic sacrifice of cattle] too
out of fashion is seen by the absolute Hindu tabu upon cattle-killing and
beef-eating…. A modern orthodox Hindu would place beef-eating on the same level
as cannibalism, whereas Vedic brahmins had fattened upon a steady diet of
sacrificed beef” (102).
Moreover,
“the new eastern teachers rose above all ritual and broke the strongest tabu by
eating cooked food from the hands of another caste however low, or even
left-overs of soiled food” (103). “The leaders of the various innovating sects
and their monkish followers (not the lay believers) gained their livelihood
mostly by alms. This was at base reversion to food-gathering….Celibacy and
abstinence from holding property made the new teachers much more economic than
greedy fire priests in an acquisitive society” (103-04).
Again,
all this are more or less common to all the heretical sects, excepting perhaps Mokkhali
Gosāla, who is said to have indulged in sensuous orgy before his death,
drinking spirits, singing incessanatly and dancing. But he did all this in a
state of delirium (Basham 61-62). Kosambi finds a clue to the victory of the
Buddha over other heretics in this particular respect:
Buddhism
stood between the two extremes: unrestrained individualistic self-indulgence
and equally individualistic but preposterous ascetic punishment of the body.
Hence its steady rise, and its name ‘The Middle Way’. (105)
This
doctrine of the Middle Way
Not
only this, Kosambi considers the Noble Eightfold Path (ārya aṣṭāṅgika mārga) to be the core of Buddhism. This is why
Buddhism was “the most social of
religions; the applications of its various steps are carefully developed
and expounded…” (106. Emphasis added). The early monks “would accompany caravans,
but even then passed the night outside the camp. The Buddhist monk was
forbidden labour for profit and for agriculture, having to live on alms or by
gathering food in the forest without the taking of life; only thus would he be
free to concentrate upon his social
duties, the obligation to lead all to the proper Way“ (107. Emphasis added).
It
was not merely the attainment of personal nirvāṇa that
guided the Buddhist monk; his social mission is of cardinal importance. These
features of Buddhism explain why it succeeded in its mission while other
heretical doctrines could not.
It
is apparent that Kosambi cares little for the metaphysics or ontology of
Buddhism. It is the social philosophy of the Buddha that concerns and impresses
him most. Dropping his customary reticence he waxes eloquent on the
achievements of Asoka (Aśoka), “the great emperor,” and highlights this very
aspect which marks him different from the Arthaśāstra
king:
The
Arthaśāstra king owed nothing to anyone; his sole business was to rule for the
profit of the state, with efficiency as the one ultimate criterion. With Asoka,
the social philosophy expressed in the sixth-century Magadhan religions had at
last penetrated the state mechanism ((1965/1972), 158).
In
connection with the intellectual turmoil in the then India Kosambi acutely
observes:
The
sixth century B. C. produced the
philosophy of Confucius in China
and the sweeping reforms of Zoroaster in Iran
He
might have added that Greece too witnessed the rise of Presocratic philosophers
in the same period.6 Now that the time of the Buddha’s death has
been brought down to c. 400 BCE (Norman 50-51), the period of the rise of
several competing doctrines in Eastern India would be the fifth century BCE. Of
all the teachers who dissociated themselves from the Vedic varṇa (caste) system, the
Buddha alone was to propose a new way of life and put forward a new concept of
the state. Speaking of the Buddha’s pronouncements of the new duties for the
absolute monarch (such as, maintenance of peace and order, public works for the
benefit of the subjects, etc., in short, a model of welfare state appropriate
to the those days), Kosambi writes:
This
is a startling modern view of political economy. To have propounded it at a
time of Vedic yajña to a society that
had just begun to conquer the primeval jungle was an intellectual achievement of the highest order. The new
philosophy gave man control over himself. (113.Emphasis added)
At
the same time, Kosambi does not fail to notice the basic limitation of this new
philosophy in a backward society: “What it could not give was limitless
scientific and technical control over nature with the benefits to be shared by
all mankind according to individual and social need” (114).
That
the doctrine nevertheless continued to grow even after the Buddha’s death is
“because it was eminently fitted to the needs of a rapidly evolving society”
(114).
To
sum up then: Kosambi’s explanation of the rise of the heretical doctrines and
the ultimate victory of the Buddha’s teachings over others provides an
excellent instance of studying history afresh, as Engels urged Marxists to do (Selsam
and others (eds.) 71). Instead of following what Marx had summarily dismissed
as a “super-historical” theory (Selsam and others (eds.) 71), Kosambi attends
to all the details of the socio-economic scenario prevailing in the Gangetic basin
during the sixth/fifth century BCE. Nor does he undervalue the genius of the Buddha and his
intellectual achievements, and explains his success both in terms of the crying
need of the hour and how he alone could fulfil it, not the others. Yet Kosambi
insists that “Buddhism cannot be treated solely as a personal achievement of its unquestionably great founder nor was its
decline due to the imperfections of humanity” ((1965/1972), 100). Thus, taking
both the objective and the subjective conditions into consideration, Kosambi
provided a model for Marxist historical analysis, radically different from any
other “Marxist” interpretation offered by others.7
Notes and References
1Kosambi says all this in his later work in less detail ((1965/1972),
104-05). For Chattopadhyaya’s views see R. Bhattacharya 2010.
2 Kosambi’s observation on Yoga is highly sardonic and worth
quoting:
Yoga
within limits is a good system of exercise in a hot climate for people who do
not live by muscular exertion and hard physical labour. The most that one can
attain by it is some measure of control over normally involuntary functions of
the body, and good health; but no supernatural powers [such as becoming invisible
or flying through the air at will]. (1965/72, 105)
3The Four Noble Truths are: i) dukkha, suffering, ii) dukkhasamudaya, origin of suffering, iii) dukkhanirodha, cessation of suffering, and iv)dukkhanirodhagāminī paṭipadā, way to the cessation of suffering. (Dhammacakkapavattana sutta, 5-8)
4For a more detailed discussion of negation and the negation
of negation, see R. Bhattacharya 2009.
5In his later work (1965) Kosambi says the same in another
way: “The yajña was ended for the
easterner in all but theory; the brahmin of the future would eventually agree
to serve all castes as priest and to adopt new worships to old forms in order
to gain his livelihood – paying lip service to the Vedas all the while”
(1965/1972),104.
6Katherine Osborne has recently provided a short but lucid
account of the Presocratics. The classic Marxist account by George Thomson is
still worth studying.
7See, for example, Ram Bilas Sharma’s very “left-wing” but
largely pointless study and contrast it with Kosambi’s. It is rather strange
that nothing of Kosambi was included in a collection of essays entitled Buddhism: The Marxist Approach.
Works Cited
Basham,
A. L. History and Doctrine of the
Ājīvikas. Delhi
Bhattacharya,
Ramkrishna. “Basham, Kosambi, and the Negation of Negation”, Psyche and Society (Kolkata), 7:2, December 2009, pp. 71-75.
Bhattacharya,
Ramkrishna. “The Buddha and the Six Heretics: How Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya
Viewed Them”. Psyche and Society. 8:
2, December 2010, 17-21.
Chattopadhyaya,
Debiprasad. History of Science and Technology in Ancient India , Vol. 2, Calcutta
Chattopadhyaya,
Debiprasad . Lokāyata: A Study in Ancient
Indian Materialism . New Delhi
Dhammacakkapavattana
sutta in Saṃyutta Nikāya (5. Mahāvagga), ed. Jagadish Kasyap, Patna
Kosambi,
D. D. Bombay Bombay
Kosambi,
D. D. India Delhi
Mahāvastu Avadāna. Ed.
Radhagobinda Basak. Vol. 3. Calcutta : Sanskrit College
Osborne,
Katherine. Presocratic Philosophy: A Very
Short Introduction. Oxford : Oxford University
Rhys Davids, T.W. Dialogues of the Buddha. London : Oxford
University
Sankrityayan,
Rahul and others. Buddhism: The Marxist
Approach. New Delhi
Selsam,
Howard, David Goldway and Harry Martel (eds.). Dynamics of Social Change: A Reader in Marxist Social Science. New York
Sharma,
Ram Bilas. “Some Aspects of the Teaching of Buddha” in Sankrityayan and others,
pp. 54-65.
Thomson,
George. Studies in Ancient Greek Society,
vol. 2. The First Philosophers. London
Acknowledgements:
Amitava Bhattacharyya, Arindam Saha, Krishna
Del
Ramkrishna Bhattacharya taught
English at the University Calcutta ,
Kolkata and was an Emeritus Fellow of University Grants Commission. He is now a
Fellow of Pavlov Institute, Kolkata.
This
paper first appeared in Psyche
and Society (9:1, May
2010, 55-60), the organ of Pavlov Institute, 98, Mahatma
Gandhi Road , Kolkata –
700007.
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