Social and Economic Aspects of the Bhagavad Gita - PART I

DD Kosambi

The Bhagavad-Gita, "Song of the Blessed One", forms part of the great Indian epic Mahabharata. Its 18 adhyaya chapters contain the report by Sanjaya of a dialogue between the Pandava hero Arjuna and his Yadu Charioteer Krsna, the eighth incarnation of Visnu. The actual fighting is about to begin when Arjuna feels revulsion at the leading part which he must play in the impending slaughter of cousins and kinsmen. The exhortations of Lord Krsna answer every doubt through a complete philosophical cycle, till Arjuna is ready to bend his whole mind, no longer divided against itself, to the great killing. The Gita has attracted minds of bents entirely different from each other and from that of Arjuna. Each has interpreted the supposedly divine words so differently from all the others that the original seems far more suited to raise doubts and to split a personality than to heal an inner division. Any moral philosophy which managed to receive so many variant interpretations from minds developed in widely different types of society must be highly equivocal No question remains of its basic validity if the meaning be so flexible. Yet the book has had its uses.

If a Mahabharata war had actually been fought on the scale reported, nearly five million fighting men killed each other in an 18-day battle between Delhi and Thanesar; about 130,000 chariots (with their horses), an equal number of elephants and thrice that many riding horses were deployed. This means at least as many camp-followers and attendants as fighters. A host of this size could not be supplied without a total population of 200 millions, which India did not attain till the British period, and could not have reached without plentiful and cheap iron and steel for ploughshares and farmers1 tools. Iron was certainly not available in any quantity to Indian peasants before the 6th century BC. The greatest army camp credibly reported was of 400,000 men under Candragupta Maurya, who commanded the surplus of the newly developed Gangetic basin. The terms patti, gulma etc., given as tactical units in the Mbh did net acquire that meaning till after the Mauryans. The heroes fought with bows and arrows from their chariots, as if the numerous cavalry did not exist; but cavalry—which appeared comparatively late in ancient Indian warfare—made the fighting chariots obsolete as was proved by Alexander in the Punjab.

The epic began, like the early Homeric chants, as a series of lays sung at the court of the conquerors. The lament was thinly veiled, presumably by irony; the defeated Kurus survived in legend (e.g. the Kuru-dhamma-jataka) as unsurpassable in rectitude and nobility of character. Krsna-Narayana had no role to play even in the first connected epic narrative. Should the reader doubt all this, let him read the final cantos of the extant Mbh. The Pandavas come in the end to disgraceful old age, and unattended death in the wilderness. Their opponents are admitted to heaven as of right, but the heroes are only transferred there from the tortures of hell, after a long and stubborn effort by the eldest brother Yudhstihira, It strikes even the mast casual eye that this is still the older heaven of India and Yama; Krsna-Narayana is not its dominant figure, but a palpable and trifling insertion in a corner.

Those legendary Utopians, the: pure, and unconquerable Uttara Kurus of the Digha Nikaya (DN 32) and the Aitareya Brahmana (AB 8.14; H.23) are not to be confused with the Kurus who survived in historical times near Delhi-Meerut. The Buddha preached several of his sermons at the settlement Kammasa-damma in Kuruland (Majjhima Nikaya 10; 75; 106) white their capital seems 10 have been at Thullakotthita (MN 82), the seat of the nameless petty tribal Kuru chief, presumably descended from the Pan (Java conquerors whom the epic was to inflate beyond all limits. This negligible 'kingdom' either faded away or was among the tribal groups systematically destroyed by the Magadhan emperor Mahapadma Nanda, a few years before Alexander's raid into the Punjab. The memory, however, remains as of a tribe, but not a full-fledged kingdom with a class structure in the eleventh book or the Arthasastra along with similar oligarchies like the Licchavis and the Mallas known to have been destroyed about 475 BC. As for Narayana, it might be noted here, that the famous benedictory initial stanza Narayanam namaskrtya, which would make the whole of the extant Mbh into a Vaisnava document, was stripped off by V. S. Sukthankar's text-criticism in 1933 as a late forgery.

1 .1 FOR WHAT CLASS?

We know that the Gita exercised a profound influence upon Mahatma Gandhi, B. G.Tilak, the 13th century Maharastrian reformer Jnanesvar, the earlier Vaisnava acarya Ramanuja. and the still earlier Samkara. Though both fought hard in the cause of India's liberation from. British rule, Tilak and the Mahatma certainly did not draw concordant guidance for action from the Glta. Aurobindo Ghose renounced the struggle for India's freedom to concentrate upon study of the Gita. Lokamanya Tilak knew the Jnaneswari comment, but his Gita-rahasya is far from being based upon the earlier work. Jnanesvar himself did not paraphrase Samkara on the Gita, nor does his very free interpretation follow Ramanuja; tradition ascribes to him membership of the rather fantastic natha sect. Ramanuja's Vahnavism laid a secure foundation for the acrid controversy with the earlier followers of Siva who came into prominence with the great Samkara. But then, why did samkara also turn to the Bhagavad-gita?

What common need did these outstanding thinkers have that was at the same time not felt by ordinary people, even of their own class? They all belonged to the leisure-class of what, for lack of a batter term, may be called Hindus. The consequent bias must not be ignored, for the great comparable poet-teachers from the common people did very well without the Gita. Kabir, the Banaras weaver, had both Muslim and Hindu followers for his plain yet profound teaching. Tukaram knew the Gita through the Jnaneswari, but worshipped Visnu in his own way by meditation upon God and contemporary society in the ancient caves (Buddhist and natural) near the junction of the Indrayam and Patina rivers. Neither Jayadeva's Gita-govinda, so musical and supremely beautiful a literary effort, (charged with the love and mystery of Krsna's cult) nor the Visnuite reforms of Caitanya that swept the peasantry of Bengal off its feet were founded on the rock of the Gita. I have yet to hear that the heterogeneous collection which forms the Sikh canon owes anything substantial directly to the Gita, though it preserves verses due to Jayadeva, and the Maharashtrian Namdev. Jnanesvar ran foul of current brahmin belief at Alandi, and had to take refuge about 1290 AD on the south bank of the Godavari, in the domains of Ramacandra Yadava, to compose his famous gloss in the common people's language. 

We know as little of the historic action taken or instigated by Samkara and Ramanuja as we should have known of Tilak s had only his Gita-rahasya survived. Yet, about the year 800, Samkara was active in some manner that resulted -according to tradition—in the abolition of many Buddhist monasteries. That this was achieved by his penetrating logic and sheer ability in disputation is now, the general Hindu belief. The mass of writing left in his name, and what is given therein as the Buddhist doctrine which he refutes, make only one thing clear: that he had not the remotest idea of Gotama Buddha's original teaching. Buddhism as practised in the monasteries had in any case degenerated into Lamalsm with opulent vihara foundations which were a serious drain upon the economy of the country. That samkara's activity provided a stimulus to their abolition, and Ramanuja's some handle against the wealthier barons whose worship of Siva was associated in the popular mind with their oppressive land- rent, seems a reasonable conclusion on the evidence before us. Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain why the richer, aristocratic landholders opted for Siva, the poorer, and relatively plebeian overwhelmingly for Visnu, in the bitter smarta-vaisnava feuds, it is difficult to believe that they could come to blows because of differing religious philosophy.. Samkara managed to discover a higher and lower knowledge in the Upanisads which allowed him "to conform to the whole apparatus of Hindu belief "—whatever that may mean—"on the lower plane, while on the higher he finds no true reality in anything; his logic, it has been well said, starts by denying the truth of the proposition 'A is either B or not B'... At death the soul when released is merged in the absolute and does not continue to be distinct from it". According to Ramanuja, "if in a sense there is an absolute whence all is derived, the individual souls and matter still have a reality of their own, and the end of life is not merger in the absolute but continued blissful existence. This state is to be won by bhakti, faith in and devotion to God." It is not possible to imagine that subtle arguments on these tenuous ideas gripped the masses, that people could be whipped up to a frenzy merely by the concept of restricted dualism (visistadvaita) or thoroughgoing dualism (dvaita). Yet frenzied conflict there was, for centuries. Neither side objected to rendering faithful service at the! same time to beef-eating Muslim overlords, who knocked brahmins off without compunction or retribution, and desecrated temples without divine punishment. 

The main conclusion is surely the following : Practically anything can be read into the Gita by a determined person, without denying the validity of a class system. THE GITA FURNISHED THE ONE SCRIPTURAL SOURCE WHICH COULD BE USED WITHOUT VIOLENCE TO ACCEPTED BRAHMIN METHODOLOGY, TO DRAW INSPIRATION AND JUSTIFICATION FOR SOCIAL ACTIONS IN SOME WAY DISAGREEABLE TO A BRANCH OF THE RULING CLASS upon whose mercy the brahmins depended at the moment. That the action was not mere personal opportunism is obvious in each of the cases cited above It remains to show how the document achieved this unique position.

1.2. A REMARKABLE INTERPOLATION

That the song divine is sung for the upper classes by the brahmins, and only through them for otters, is clear. We hear from the mouth of Krsna himself (G.9.32): "For those who take refuge in Me, be they even of the sinful brands such as women, vaisyas, and sudras.." That is, all women and all men of the working and producing classes are defiled by their very birth, though they may in after-life be freed by their faith in the god who degrades them so casually in this one. Not only that, the god himself had created such differences (G.4.13): "The four-caste (class) division has been created by Me"; this is proclaimed in the list of great achievements. The doctrines are certainly not timeless. Ethics come into being only as they serve some social need. Food-producing society (as distinct from conflicting aggregates of food-gathering tribal groups) originated in the fairly recent and definite historical past, so that the principles upon which it may work at some given stage could not have been expressed from eternity. The Gita sets out each preceding doctrine in a masterly and sympathetic way without naming or dissecting it, and with con- summate skill passes smoothly on to another when Arjuna asks "why then do you ask me to do something so repulsive and clearly against this ?" Thus, we have a brilliant (if plagiarist) review-synthesis of many schools of thought which were in many respects mutually incompatible. The incompatibility is never brought out; all views are simply facets of the one divine mind. The best in each system is derived, naturally, as from the high God. There is none of the polemic so characteristic of disputatious Indian philosophy; only the Vedic ritual beloved of the Mimamsakas is condemned outright. The Upanisads are well—if anonymously—represented, though the Svetasvdara Upanisad alone contains the germ of bhakti, and none the theory of perfection through a large succession of rebirths. This function of karma is characteristically Buddhist. Without Buddhism, G.2.55-72 (recited daily as prayers at Mahatma Gandhi's asrama) would be impossible. The brahma-nirvana of G. 2.72, and 5.25 is the Buddhist ideal state of escape from the effect of karma. We may similarly trace other—unlabelled—schools of thought such as Samkhya and Mimamsa down to early Vedanta (G. 15.15 supported by the reference- to the Brahama-sutra in G. 13.4)-. This helps date the work as somewhere between 150-350 AD, nearer the later than the earlier date. The ideas are older, not original, except perhaps the novel use of bhakti. The language is high classical Sanskrit such as could not have been written much before the Guptas, though the metre still shows the occasional irregularity (G. 8. 101, 8. IP, 15. 3a, &c) in tristubhs, characteristic of the Mbh as a whole. The Sanskrit of the high Gupta period, shortly after the time of the Gita, would have been more careful in verification.

It is known in any case that the Mbh and the Puranas suffered a major revision " in the period given above. The Mbh in particular was in the hands of Brahmins belonging to the Bhrgu clan, who inflated it to about its present bulk (though the process of inflation continued afterwards) before the Gupta age came to flower. The Puranas also continued to be written or rewritten to assimilate some particular cult to Brahminism. The last discernible redaction of the main Purana group refers to the Guptas still as local princes between Fyzabad and Prayag. This context fits the Gita quite well. The earliest dated mention of anything that could possibly represent the Gita is by Hsiuen Chuang, early in the seventh century, who refers to a Brahmin having forged at his king's order such a text, (supposedly of antiquity) which was then 'discovered', in order to foment war. The fact does remain that the Mbh existed in two versions at the time of the Asvadayana Grhya Sutra, which refers both to the Bharata and the Mahabharata" The prologue of the present Mbh repeats much the same information in such a way as to make it evident that the older 24,000-stote Bharata was still current at the time the longer version was promulgated. Every attempt was made to ascribe both to the great 'expander', Vyasa, to whom almost every Purana is also ascribed. A common factor is the number 18, which had some particular sanctity for the (whole complex, and for the Brahmins connected therewith. There are 18 main gotra clan-groups of brahmins though the main 751 sages are only seven in number; many of the 18 (e.g. the kevala Bhiargavas and kevala Angirasas) are difficult to fit into a rational scheme. Correspondingly, there are 18 main Puranas, and 18 parvan sections of the Mbh, though the previous division was into 100, as we learn from the prologue. The very action of the Bharatan war was fought over 18 days between 18 legions. The Gita has also 18 adhyayas, which is surely not without significance. That the older Bharata epic had a shorter hut similar Gita is most unlikely. One could expect some sort of an exhortation to war, as is actually contained in- G. 2. 37: "If slain, you gain heaven; if victorious, the earth; so up, son of Kunti, and concentrate on fighting'. These lines lit the occasion very well. Such pre-battle urging was customary in all lands at all times (advocated even by the supremely practical Arthasastra, 10.3) through invocations and incantations, songs of bards, proclamations by heralds, and speech of captain or king. What is highly improbable - except to the brahmin bent upon getting his niti revisions into a popular lay of war—is this most intricate three-hour discourse on moral philosophy, after the battle-conches had blared out in mutual defiance and two vast armies had begun their inexorable movement towards collision.

To put it bluntly, the utility of the Gita derives from its peculiar fundamental defect, namely dexterity in seeming to reconcile the irreconcilable. The high god repeatedly emphasizes the great virtue of non-killing (ahimsa), yet the entire discourse is an incentive to war. So, G. 2.19 ff. says that it is impossible to kill or be killed. The soul merely puts off an old body as a man his old clothes, in exchange for new; it cannot be cut by weapons, nor suffer from fire, water or the storm. In G. 11, the terrified Arjuna sees all the warriors of both sides rush into a gigantic Visnu-Krsna's innumerable voracious mouths, to be swallowed up or crushed. The moral is pointed by the demoniac god himself (G. 11.33): that all the warriors on the field had really been destroyed by him; Arjuna's killing them would be a purely formal affair whereby he could win the opulent kingdom. Again, though the yajna sacrifice is played down or derided, it is admitted in G. 3.14 to be the generator of rain, without which food and life would be impossible. This slippery opportunism characterizes the whole book. Naturally, it is not surprising to find so many Gita lovers imbued therewith. Once it is admitted that material reality is gross illusion, the rest follows quite simply; the world of "doublethink" is the only one that matters.

The Gita was obviously a new composition, not the expansion of some proportionately shorter religious instruction in the old version. I next propose to show that the effort did not take hold for some centuries after the composition.

Courtesy:

Myth and Reality: Studies in the Formation of Indian Culture (first printed in 1962).

The entire book can be downloaded here

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The Decline of Buddhism In India

DD Kosambi

The Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Chuang (830 A.D.) saw images that had sunk into the damp Indian soil, and was told local prophecies to the effect that thereligion of the Teacher would vanish completely when the image had sunk out of sight altogether. Shashanka, king of Bengal who had systematically destroyed Buddhist religious structures, cut down and burned the sacred tree at Gaya under which the Buddha had attained enlightenment twelve centuries earlier.

The tree was soon nursed back to growth from a sprout discovered by Purnavarman, the last descendant of Ashoka. Harsha repulsed Shashanka, restored the devastated Buddhist foundations, and built many new ones. Monasteries by the thousand still housed and fed a vast army of monk. The richly endowed University of Nalanda was at the zenith of its fame. All seemed well.

The real damage came from within, and may be discerned in the report of the same Chinese traveler, though he was perhaps not conscious of what his words signified: “(The Buddhist scholar who) can explain three classes (of sacred texts) has allotted to him different servants to attend and obey him....He who can explain five classes is then allotted an elephant carriage. He who can explain six classes of books is given a surrounding escort.... If one of the assembly distinguish himself (in disputations) by refined language, subtle investigation, deep penetration, and severe logic, then he is mounted on an elephant covered with precious ornaments, and conducted by a numerous suite to the gates of the abbey. If, on the contrary, one of the disputants breaks down in his argument, or uses poor and inelegant phrases, or if he violates a rule in logic, they proceed to disfigure his face with red and white, and cover his body with dirt and dust, and then carry him of to some deserted spot or leave him in a ditch. Thus they distinguish between the meritorious and the worthless, between the wise and the foolish.”

This was surely not the way merit had been judged in the days of the Buddha. The original function of the ever-wandering almsmen had been to explain the way of righteousness to all, in the simplest possible words, and the languages of the common people. The new class of disputatious residents of wealthy monasteries cared nothing for the villagers whose surplus product maintained them in luxury. The original rules laid dorm and followed by the Buddha had permitted only the mendicant's trifling possessions without even the touch of gold, silver or ornaments. The Buddhas of Ajanta are depicted wearing jewelled crowns, or seated upon the costliest thrones. 

Similarly, the old Buddhism had turned Ashoka away from war to the path of peace. His edicts state that the army would henceforth be used only for spectacles and parades. The devout emperor Harsha, on the other hand, managed to reconcile war with Buddhism just as he reconciled hip worship of the Sun god and Maheshwar. Harsha's army increased during thirty years of constant, aggressive warfare, to 64000 elephants, 104000 cavalry, and a still larger number of foot soldiers. He was Buddhist enough to forgive the assassin whom he had disarmed, when the assembled kings and nobles demanded the death punishment. The common people, who had to pay for his wars and for the triumphal pageantry, might have preferred his putting the assassin to death and idling less people on fewer battlefields.

In a word, Buddhism had become uneconomic. The innumerable monasteries and their pampered inmates were a counterpart of the costly military establishment. Buddhism had, from the very beginning, favored the growth of a universal monarchy, which would stop petty warfare. The Buddha is chakkravartin, spiritual counterpart of the emperor. But such great, personally administered empires had themselves become uneconomic; Harsha's was about the last of the sort in India. Thereafter, kingdoms were much smaller till feudalism from below gave the state a new basis of feudal landowners. The administration gradually drifted into the hands of a feudal hierarchy growing from below with new (feudal) property rights in land.

Ruins of Nalanda University

The village defeated both the empire and the organized religion that accompanied it. The self-contained village was hereafter the norm of production. Taxes had to be collected in kind, and consumed locally, for there was not enough trade to allow their conversion into cash. Transport of grain and raw material over long distances would have been most difficult under medieval Indian conditions. Harsha traveled constantly with court and army, through his extensive domains. The Chinese pilgrim states that Indians rarely used coins for trade, which was conducted by barter. This seems confirmed by the absence of coins struck by Harsha, which contrasts with the tremendous hoards of punch-merited coins that had circulated under the Mauryans.

Buddhism owed its initial success precisely to its fulfillment of a great social need. Society in the Gangetic basin of the 8th century B.C. was not organized into peaceful villagers producing mostly for themselves. The much thinner population was divided into a set of warring semi-tribal principalities and some tribes not yet on the level of agrarian production with the plough. Vedic Brahminism and tribal cults were fit only for the pastoral tribe at war with all neighbors. The Vedic animal sacrifices were far too onerous for a developing agrarian economy. The thin pre-Mauryan settlement required trade in metals, salt, and cloth over long distances, which could not be conducted without the protection of a powerful state. The passage from a group of tribes to a universal society, therefore, needed a new social philosophy.

That the universal monarchy and the religion of the universal society were parallel is proved by the rise of both in Magadha, at about the same time. Not only Buddhism, but also numerous other contemporary Magadhan sects preached about the same thing: the Jains, Ajivikas, and others all denied the validity of Vedic sacrifice, and the need for killing. Buddhism accompanied and protected the first traders into wild country, peopled by savage tribes. This is shown by the ancient monuments at Junnar, Karle, Nasik, Ajanta, and elsewhere on the junctions of primitive trade routes.

The major civilizing function of Buddhism had ended by the seventh century A.D. The ahimsa doctrine was universally admitted, if not practiced. Vedic sacrifices had been abandoned except by some rare princeling whose revivalist attempt had little effect upon the general economy. The new problem was to induce docility in the village cultivators, without an excessive use of force. This was done by religion, but not by Buddhism The class structure in the villages appeared as caste, always scorned by the Buddhists. Primitive tribesmen were enrolled as new castes. Both tribesman and peasant relied heavily upon ritual, which the Buddhist monk was forbidden to practice; ritual remained a monopoly of the Brahmin.

Moreover, the Brahmin at that time was a pioneer who could stimulate production, for he had a good working calendar for predicting the times of ploughing, sowing, and harvest. He knew something of new crops, and trade possibilities. He was not a drain upon production as had been his sacrificing ancestors, or the large Buddhist monasteries. A compromise could also be affected by making the Buddha an avatara of Vishnu. So formal Buddhism inevitably faded away.

Its main lesson need never be lost: that good thoughts require cultivation and training of the mind by the individual's personal efforts, no less carefully than good singing that of the voice or craftsmanship that of the hand. The value of the thoughts, on the other hand, is to be judged by the social advance, which they encourage.

Author's Note: From the Times of India, May 24, 1956, by kind permission of the editor; the title has been changed from “Buddhism in history” and minor corrections made. The topic may be pursued further, by those interested, in my book: Introduction to the Study of Indian History (Bombay, 1956).

Courtesy: Exasperating Essays, People’s Publishing House, New Delhi

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The Scientific Attitude and Religion

DD Kosambi

In what follows, some social aspects of religion are considered in so far as they serve to keep India a backward country. The methods of cure suggested are by legislation, education and improved social conditions, with a brief example or two to bring out the basic idea in each case.

Reports by great religious leaders of the past show that they regarded their own experiences and revelations as the most exhilarating and profound happenings of a lifetime. But the details show that exactly similar and often-identical experiences may be had by the use of certain drugs, electrical stimulus of the brain, lesions of the cerebral cortex and in dreams. The trouble begins when people impose their views, on the basis of such experience, upon others.

Damodar Darmanand Kosambi

My treatment of the phenomenon is purely materialistic, no matter what the source of the revelation. Argument with men or religion on their own ground implies that their sacred books or some other sacred books have a peculiar intrinsic validity, not to be challenged by experiment or reason. I am not prepared to admit that religion cannot be understood or discussed by a man of no faith, This comes to saying that only a confirmed drunkard can be competent to deal with alcoholism. Whenever reform from within succeeded in India, the result was the addition of one more sect to the innumerable existing sects.

The figure of speech about alcoholism has been deliberately introduced. Not only wine but also mescaline and other drugs have formed the core of ancient or primitive modern religion. The potent soma of the sacred Vedas was a drink of this sort too. Hashish was a reward for and stimulus to the murder of inconvenient opponents, as used by a fanatical Muslim sect of the Middle Ages in Asia Minor. The drug and its use gave rise to the word assassin. The sect itself changed into the more innocuous one of the Aga Khan. Religions have recognized kinship and rivalry between the spiritual and the spirituous. Thus Buddhism and Islam banned wine. If such a ban can now be defended on grounds of social necessity and prohibition be made part of a democratic constitution, why should other hallucinogens not be treated on the same basis? And what more powerful hallucinogen than religion?

There is one difference that drugs can generally be relied upon to produce exaltation. Its purveyors are taxed and subject to regulation, while the individual who uses them has to observe public decorum and, is severely punished for breaking law and order. Curative treatment is given to addicts. We have been very slow and hesitant in dealing with the purveyors of religion on the same basis. Only the most gruesome malpractices have been banned: sati (widow burning; defended as ‘voluntary’ by many pundits), hook swinging, and the most obscene features of the holi festival are now forbidden. The last comes directly from prehistory; even Asoka had trouble with the institution.

But we have stopped halfway. Pilgrim taxes are levied by many places (Banaras) whether the visitor is a pilgrim or not. Why not tax all income from any religious source, including the ‘voluntary’ contributions from the pious? Why are temples and mosques not taxed on the same basis as many buildings reserved for the use of a special group? Marriage and divorce are now regulated to some extent by civil procedure; monogamy has become a legislative measure, regardless of religion. Why not secularize these social institutions completely and compulsorily?

Some people, although willing to admit that Indian religion has its harmful aspects, insist that education is the sole remedy. It is not, of course, but there is every advantage in educating people out of their superstition. That is one way of improving Indian education and social conditions, provided education is understood in a sense far wider than that of the schoolroom. The crudest of Indian superstitions is faith in astrology. Millions still bathe at a solar eclipse, not as a hygienic measure but to free the sun from a demon of darkness.

It is known, however, that there is no longer a risk of perpetual darkness if the ritual bath be omitted. The precise time and duration of the eclipse is predictable long in advance, not by the Brahmin’s stock in trade but by Newtonian theories of the universe. It is not enough to make this fact public, namely that the Indian almanacs surreptitiously borrow their information about eclipses from foreign sources, while retaining the tripe about planetary influences upon horoscopes.

The panchang almanacs sell by the hundred thousands all over, the country, each area having one or more of its own. Their very existence must be turned to good use by inserting useful information: first aid hygiene, element of legal rights for the citizen, possibilities of getting aid from sources other than the blood-sucking money lenders in time of need and so on. Let the planets stay, and give their positions by all means; but make the traditional almanac into a really useful educational document.

Here the modern educator is definitely at fault. He works through a bureaucratic mechanism originally imposed by a foreign government and allowed to continue by inertia. His own education has, more often not, consisted in learning foreign books by rote where his grandfather might have recited Sanskrit texts with as little understanding. Often, he can teach the latest scientific theories in school and maintain outside the classroom that his ancestors three thousand years ago could fly through the air by the power of yoga and see the atomic nucleus and viruses by their inner sight. He never turns scientific methods upon the study of superstition. Why did the superstition arise? Did the Indian almanac ever perform any useful function at all? If not, how can one account for its rise and spread?

The basic fact is that the whole of Indian agriculture turns upon the monsoon. The annual rains begin at about the same time every year in any given part of the country, but the land has to be prepared for the sowing well before then. Similarly, the harvest has to be taken in after the last normal rain has fallen. But the calendar is a very advanced scientific concept in primitive life, determined mainly by long observation of the positions of the sun, moon and planets. We know that these heavenly bodies merely mark time: for primitive man, they made the weather as the very word meteorology indicates. So, they also seemed to control man’s destiny. These all-powerful stars would have to be propitiated according to the priest’s instructions.

To counteract this, education is the best method. Just as eclipses can be predicted, the onset and strength of the monsoon can also be predicted. Not as accurately as astronomical phenomena, but much better than the varsha-phala (‘yield of the rains’) given in every Indian almanac. It is easier to send out storm warnings by radio and much quicker too. With radios in every key village, the farmer could be advised - given an efficient weather bureau - when to sow and to harvest. But this means leaving the panchang almanac alone.  If we do this, superstition will survive much longer, and may be perverted to strange uses by some interested people.

The best way is to have a reasonably efficient long-range weather forecasting system. This is now well within our reach with air-mass analysis and observation satellites. The information must then be put into every almanac and the basis of calculation carefully explained in simple language. The peasant will see for himself that the stars have nothing to do with the weather or the monsoon and will be willing to listen when other bits of really useful scientific information are given.  Even now he knows that fertility rites are much less effective than the proper use of fertiliser. But we must not throw away the magnificent chance of utilizing an old institution like the almanac to cut down the very superstition it promotes.

The last section says in effect that tout comprendre is by no means equivalent to tout pardonner. Let use try the method on the most obscurantist of all Indian religious and social institutions, caste.   The evils of the caste system are known, but no one asks himself why the system originated and why it has held on in spite of so ·great a change in Indian life. Why should the Brahmin’s pretensions be believed when he puts his sons to work in an office, which uses only English, not Sanskrit, and is perhaps headed by a beef-eating sahib?

The answer is quite obvious. Caste was socially useful at one time, when production was at a much lower level. It was the one way of keeping people together in co-operative effort rather than have every man strike out for himself with the common ruin of all. The village was the firm basis of caste, because land was generally held by a kinship group. Tenure of land and membership of the group went together. Whoever was outcast could no longer survive in the village. With feudal tenure, caste was still powerful as a common bond against unlimited oppression. Whole villages would desert en masse if the baron bore down too hard. Their caste-fellows were bound to help these peasant strikers in distress. Further, the village need for a potter, blacksmith, carpenter or barber was fulfilled by artisan castes when the level of commodity production was low.

Today, factory production, overcrowded cities, road and rail transport have changed all this. Caste persists only because some people gain from it, namely, those who possess land, hold the priesthood, and so on. Caste disabilities persist in spite of legislation and-in many places-mass conversion as to Buddhism. The root cause is the abysmally low economic status of the lowest castes and their total lack of opportunity. Neither legislation, nor conversion, nor schoolroom education can remove this. The sole possible cure is more efficient production and distribution of the product in a manner equitable for all; most people call this socialism. But equality on paper and the adult franchise will not be enough, when politicians can use caste for vote catching and distribution of patronage.

To take an allied but smaller point: most economists see no future for India without birth control. The national income and production are not rising at a faster rate than the population, so that the net gain is virtually nil. But why do people want children in a poor country? The usual answer is, ‘superstition’. A son is essential so that the parents may go to heaven and be given the annual oblation to keep them there.

Silly as this is, it contains an ancient historical truth. Archaeology tells us that it was a tremendous and extremely rare achievement in the older Stone Age for any human being to reach the age of forty years. Food production instead of food gathering made it possible for a substantial number of people to live longer. This only meant that some people lived to an age where they could no longer fend for themselves and had to be fed by others as in childhood. The offering to the manes (pinda) is simply an extension of this practice, when the ancestors have entered upon the long sleep of the grave.

If, now, birth control were by some miracle enforced, it would mean that every person who reached a certain age and physical condition would have no one to feed him in the present social set up. Children are necessary precisely because Indian parents have no other means of subsistence in old age. Insurance, savings, landed property, pensions or other means of income would not suffice, at a guess, for as much as five per cent of the population. So, the birth control expert is in fact asking people to starve to death in old age so that some other people will be better off.

Most of us are not likely to listen to the argument. Where food was very scarce, e.g., in Rajasthan until the last century, a dreadful form of population control was affected by female infanticide. Today, population control will be successful only if people are convinced that there would be enough for them to live on in their old age even if they have no children.

The real stupidity lies with the ‘planners’ who try to regulate the total numbers of the people by theory, without assurance of a reasonable livelihood for the people in existence. The expert who talks of epidemic and famine as natural checks upon the ‘population explosion’ himself runs to consult the doctor the moment he has a fever; and never goes without a full meal if he can help it. There are modern superstitions in the guise of science, quite as deadly as those of religion.

The need is less for reform or even the abolition of religious superstition than for basic changes, which can only be described as revolutionary. Unfortunately it is possible to have a revolution without its promised benefits, but never the benefits without a revolution.

This essay is taken from Science, Society & Peace (15 essays by Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi) published by The Academy of Political and Social Studies, Pune

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D. D. Kosambi’s Views on the Six Heretics and the Buddha: A Critique

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).

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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 ((1956/1975), 165).

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 that he discovered new merits in the ideas of the six heretics as also in the Buddha’s teachings, particularly in the doctrine of dependent origination (paṭicya samuppāda/ pratītya samutpāda). He had viewed this doctrine in Lokāyata (500-02) exclusively in terms of its application to human suffering (dukkha /duḥkha), not as a universal principle applicable to all phenomena, human suffering being only one of them (as Rhys Davids (44) explains). Kosambi, on the contrary, discovered in the concept of nirodha (cessation), the third of the Four Noble Truths,³ the origin of the philosophical question of negation. Kosambi considered this aspect to be the quintessence of the Buddhist dialectics (as Moggallāna instantly understood it when Assajit told him in a nutshell what his master had preached. Mahāvastu-avadāna, 3:83). Kosambi then refers to the negation of the negation, which came to be formulated as late as the nineteenth century by Hegel and subsequently adopted by Marx and Engels in their materialist version of dialectics ((1956/75),171).⁴

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.

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Kosambi lays much stress on the rise of so many heretical views all at a time in ancient India at a particular juncture of history. He notes that the kings of those days “were deeply interested in religious matters and protected these sects” ((1956/1975),163). “It follows,” he says, “that the new beliefs were the expression of some urgent needs, some change in the productive basis” (164. Emphasis added).

           

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 rather than in the strongholds of the Vedists?

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 then marks the superiority of Buddhism over all other anti-Vedic religions of the times. It did not provide an illusion but a viable way of life, no less real than the others.

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. In the middle of the Gangetic basin there were many entirely new teachers of whom the Buddha was only one, not the most popular in his own day. (97, 100)

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: Motilal Banarsidass (MLBD), 1981 (first pub. 1951).

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: Firma KLM, 1991.

Chattopadhyaya, Debiprasad . Lokāyata: A Study in Ancient Indian Materialism . New Delhi: People’s Publishing House (PPH), 1959 (third edition 1973).

Dhammacakkapavattana sutta in Saṃyutta Nikāya (5. Mahāvagga), ed. Jagadish Kasyap, Patna: Pali Pulication Board, 1959, p. 361. These four ariyasaccas are also mentioned in some other suttas that follow (pp. 363 ff.). 

Kosambi, D. D. An Introduction to the Study of Indian History. Bombay: Popular Book Depot, 1956 (Revised second edition. Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1975).

Kosambi, D. D. The Culture and Civilisation in Ancient India in Historical Outline. Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1972 (first published 1965).

Mahāvastu Avadāna.  Ed.  Radhagobinda Basak. Vol. 3. Calcutta: Sanskrit College, 1968.

Norman, K.R. A Philological Approach to Buddhism. The Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai Lectures 1994. Lancaster: The Pali Text Society, 2006.

Osborne, Katherine. Presocratic Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Rhys Davids, T.W. Dialogues of the Buddha. London: Oxford University Press, vol. 1, 1899.

Sankrityayan, Rahul and others. Buddhism: The Marxist Approach. New Delhi: PPH, 1978 (first published 1970).

Selsam, Howard, David Goldway and Harry Martel (eds.). Dynamics of Social Change: A Reader in Marxist Social Science. New York: International Publishers, 1983.

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: Lawrence & Wishart, 1955.

Acknowledgements: Amitava Bhattacharyya, Arindam Saha, Krishna Del Toso

Ramkrishna Bhattacharya taught English at the University of 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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