FROM THE PAGES OF HISTORY - Buddhism

 

FROM THE PAGES OF HISTORY

Buddhism 

Before the rise of Buddhism in the sixth century B.C., India had gone through a long process of religious thought and philosophical speculation; the formulation of the doctrines of Buddhism and the beliefs and practices of the early Buddhists were in great measure due to the religious milieu in which this faith was first preached to the people. A review, perforce very brief, of the religious thought and life in India before Buddhism arose, is therefore necessary for the student of history to appreciate the great spiritual and intellectual upsurge created by that religion, says Prof. S. Paranavitana. 

It is not possible to speak with any degree of certainty about the religion of the people of the Indus civilization until its script is deciphered: but, from the examination of the material remains unearthed at Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and other sites, it has been ascertained that certain aspects of Indian religion, with which we are familiar during historic times, go back to the remote past. The meditating yogi held in esteem by every Indian religious sect, was not known to the people of the Indus civilization, who also practised the cult of the Mother Goddess and worshipped the phallic emblem. Tree-worship appears to have been wide-spread, and one of the trees honoured appears, from a representation on a seal, to have been the Ficus Religiosa (the Bodhi Tree of the Buddhists). Zoolatry, or the worship of animals, existed in various forms, and the cult of the serpent, particularly of the cobra, was associated with tree-worship.

From the advent of the Indo-Aryans, there is a continuous religious development known to us in great detail for over three thousand years. Our knowledge of the religion of the ancient Indo-Aryans is gained from an extensive literature that they have bequeathed to us, venerated to this day by the Hindus as the Revealed Word. The earliest work of this literature, which is also the earliest literary monument of any Aryan people, is the Rgveda, a collection of 1028 hymns, mostly addressed to various divinities. These hymns, in the earliest form of the Sanskrit language called Vedic, rise at times to great poetic beauty and grandeur, and from them we can gather much information about the religious beliefs and practices of the ancient Indo-Aryans, as well as about the social, political and economic conditions prevailing among them.

The gods who are praised in these hymns are personifications of natural phenomena like heaven, earth, sun, wind, clouds, rain, storm, water, rivers, night, dawn, etc. There were also personifications of abstract concepts like faith, devotion, bounty etc. The gods most frequently praised were Agni (Fire), Indra, the god of rain, Varuna, the personification of heaven and the upholder of the physical and moral order of the Universe, Soma, a plant the juice of which was offered to the gods, Surya, the sun, and Mitra, another aspect of the sun. Visnu, a deity of solar origin, and Rudra, the storm god, are not often mentioned in the Rgveda, but they are important, as in later times the one or the other was considered the Supreme Deity. Of abstract concepts defined, Brhaspathi and Prajapati are of importance, particularly the latter, ‘the Lord of Creatures,’ who was the prototype of Brahma, Yama, the first to die, was the king of the departed, the fathers.

In the Rgveda, there is no evidence of the gods having been worshipped by means of icons. The ritual was very simple, and consisted of offering clarified butter and food in the domestic hearth, at which the head of the household officiated without the intervention of a priest. There were also more elaborate sacrifices in which the pressing of the Soma was done by priests. As time went on, the sacrifice gained in importance, and different classes of specialist priests came into being who conducted various aspects of it. Hymns collected from the Rgveda, to be chanted at those sacrifices, were collected into a second Veda, called the Samaveda, and prose formulas recited by the priest formed another collection, known as the Yajurveda. To these three Vedas was later added a fourth – the Atharvan – which contained charms and imprecations of a popular nature, together with several hymns of a philosophical character. The religion of the Vedic Aryans concerned itself mainly with this world, beseeching the gods, or forcing them by means of the sacrifice, to giving long life, health and heroic sons to the worshipper. They do not seem to have concerned themselves overmuch with life after death, but even in the Rgveda there are some speculations about the origin of the world, which receive greater emphasis in the Atharvaveda. The hymns in the Atharvaveda addressed to Time, Mother, Earth and Brahman conceived as the Pillar embody thoughts of a highly abstract nature.

In course of time, the sacrifice was elaborated, and instead of offerings of food and clarified butter, animals in large numbers were tied to posts, slaughtered and offered to gods. Side by side with the earlier domestic ceremonies, there were sacrifices of a public nature which needed immense expenditure for their performance. Grandiose claims were made on behalf of these sacrifices; one called rajasuya was necessary to inaugurate the rule of a king; another, the asvamedha, in which a horse was immolated, was considered efficacious in raising a king to imperial status. But the efficacy of the sacrifice depended, so it was asserted, on the scrupulous adherence to the correct method, in which only the specialist priests were adept. A syllable pronounced with the wrong accent, or a single gesture of the hand made out of place, would make an otherwise perfect undertaking completely without effect. The ritual of the sacrifices, the hymns to be uttered and every detail connected with the ceremonies were given in wearisome detail, and with dogmatic assertions with regard to their origin and significance, in treatises meant to be studied by the priests who, as well as those sacred writings, which were in prose, were known by the name Brahmana. 

The Brahmana priests demanded and received costly fees comprising hundreds of heads of cattle, gold and other valuables from kings and nobles who, for various purposes, wished to have these sacrifices performed. The priests thus became a rich and influential class of the community who attached much importance to purity of birth, and were hence exclusive with regard to connubial matters. They counted among them many members who led a life of rigorous discipline, devoting themselves to study, and the hold that they were able to gain on the minds of the people made their support very necessary for the kings to maintain themselves in power. On the other hand, the temporal power which the kings wielded was at the disposal of the priests in maintaining their authority. The priests and the warriors thus formed themselves into the two highest classes of the community. The warriors, called the Ksatriyas, at first claimed the pre-eminence, but were eventually obliged to concede it to the priests. The great bulk of the Aryan community who engaged themselves in agriculture, cattle-breeding and trade formed the third class of the people known as the Vaisyas, and those who were outside the Aryan pale were known as the Sudras. Thus was evolved the caste system which ruled Indian society for centuries.

Along with this fourfold division of the community was evolved a division into four stages of the life of an individual of the two higher castes. The first stage of the life was devoted to the acquiring of skills and learning, the second stage comprised the household life, in the third stage the individual gave up the household life, donned the garb of an ascetic and lived in the forest, and in the fourth stage he communed with the Deity. This is the Varnasramadharma which forms the basis of Hindu religion. Those who had given up the householder’s life and taken up abodes in forests led a life of contemplation not shackled by the inhibitions of society, and the results of their quest for the Truth are contained in treatises called Aranyakas which are appended to the Brahmanas. The concluding portion of some of these Aranyakas, are known as Upanisads which contain secret or esoteric doctrines imparted only to a select few. In these Upanisads, the efficacy of the sacrifice is often questioned, and the emphasis is not on ritual (karma-marga) but on deliverance through knowledge (jnana). In them ‘for the first time in the history of human thought the Absolute is grasped and definitely expressed.’ The principal doctrine in the Upanisads is that the individual soul, Atman, is identical with the Cosmic-soul, Brahman, that the external world is illusion (maya) and that the liberation of the individual lies in the merging of the individual soul in the World-soul. In the Upanisads is also found for the first time the doctrines of rebirth and karma, i.e. that the individual obtains a good or bad existence in the future in accordance with his own actions, and that the present existence is one of a long series (samsara). These revolutionary doctrines, however, were not imparted to the average man. The Ksatriyas took a leading part in their promulgation. During the centuries of this religious development, the old Vedic gods continued to be worshipped, says Prof. S. Paranavitana in University of Ceylon - A Concise History of Ceylon in Chapter III - The Rise of Buddhism in India and its Introduction to Ceylon.

These events will be described in detail in the presentations to follow soon.

By Chandra Edirisuriya