1. Lokayata A Study in Ancient Indian Materialism Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya 1959

LOKĀYATA

A STUDY IN ANCIENT INDIAN MATERIALISM

DEBIPRASAD CHATTOPADHYAYA

PEOPLE'S PUBLISHING HOUSE

LOKĀYATA

A STUDY IN ANCIENT INDIAN MATERJALISM

LOKĀYATA

A STUDY IN ANCIENT INDIAN MATERIALISM

DEBIPRASAD CHATTOPADHYAYA

PEOPLE'S PUBLISHING HOUSE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

But for the encouragement and active help of Shri Prasanta Kumar Sanval I could not have started the work at all and with- out the cooperation of my young teacher Shri Haridas Sinharay, Lecturer in Sanskrit, Ranaghat College, I could never have finished it. It is indeed impossible for me to be explicit about the extent of my gratitude to Shri Sinharay: wherever I have deviated from the standard translations of the ancient texts I have substantially - often exclusively - depended upon his rendcrings. Chapter VIII of this book in particular embodies so much of his patient labour that I am inclined to look upon it as a joint product. In addition, he has gone through the entire manuseript and given me innumerable suggestions. In the matter of editing the manuseript and seeing it through the press, the most arduous task has, however, been that of Shri T. K. N. Menon. I am also grateful to my other friends in the People's Publishing House who have patiently cooperated with me in many wavs. To Shri Manindra Kishore Chakravarty of the Jadavpur University I owe a number of crucial suggestions. The interpre- tation of the word vraalya as well as the possible indication of the prehistory of the Vedie sacrifices as suggested by the word yajamana were originally pcinted out to me by Shri Chakravarty. Similarly Shri Chitrabhanu Sen, of the Asiatic Society, Bengal, drew my attention to the possibility of interpreting svadhyayam udvavraja of the Chandogya Upanisad as meaning 'renounced the Vedic studies.' Shri Ramakrishna Maitra helped me with a consi- derable number of anthropological data which I have used; besides, he has prepared the General Index for the present volume. My indebtedness to two of my intimate friends, Shri Subhash Mukhopadhyaya and Shri Mohit Sen, is peculiarly pervasive; apart from concrete help en many an important matter, even rambling talks with them have opened for me quarries of new ideas. To Shri Radharaman Mitra I owe the masterly guidance on many fundamental points. To my wife Aloka I am indebted for her patient cooperation and very much else besides. DEBIPRASAD CHATTOPADHYAYA

JULY 1959

Copyright by Peopie's Publishing House (Private) Limited. No part of this book may be reproduced in any torm without permission in writing from the publishers, except by a reviewer who may qucte brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper.

Printed and published by D. P. Sinha at the New Age Printing Prers, Rani Jahnsi Road, New Delhi, for Pecple's Publishing House Private Limited, Rani Jhansi Road, New Delhi.

CHRONOLOGY

The dating of ancient Indian texts is largely conjectural. The following is intended chiefly to indicate the sequences rather than exact dates: Indus Civilization c. 3000 B.c. - foundation of the Indus cities. Rig Veda The earliest stratum presumably ear- lier than 1500 B.C., separated by many centuries from the latest stratum. The Brahmanas and the Upanisads Probably between 800 B.c. and 600 B.C. Death of the Buddha 583 B.C. The Srauta Sutras and the Grihya Sutras Probably bctween 500 B.C. and 300 B.C. Panini's Grammar Probably earlier than 300 B.C. Alexander's invasion 327 B.C. The Maurya Dynasty 322-185 B.C. Kautilya's Arthasastra is also to be placed in this period. Manu-Smriti Probably between 200 B.C. and A.D. 200. Brahma-Sutra Probably between 200 B.C. and A.D. 200. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata In its present form the Mahabharata could be placed in the 4th century A.D ; the Ramayana in its 'final form' was at least one or two centuries carlier. The Gupta Dynasty A.D. 320-530. The Puranas were pre- sumably recast into their present form during the same period. Samkara 8th century A.D. Sayana and Madhava 14th century A.D.

AID TO THE READER

It is regretted that diacritical marks could not be used in the text. There had, however, been occasions when the exact pronounciation of a Sanskrit word proved vital to the argument, c.g., it is argued that the word 'vratya' was derived from the word 'vrata' rather than 'vrata. Where the difference between 'a' and 'a' has really mattered, 'aa' is used to indicate the latter, e.g., in 'vraata' (vrata), Kapilaa (Kapila), 'bhaaga' (bhaga), 'varnakaa' (varnaka), ete. etc.

Italics are uniformly used to indicate Sanskrit and Pali words other than proper names.

Abbreviations used in the foot-notes are explained in the Bibliography.

INTRODUCTION

'The interpretation of all ancient systems requires a constructive effort,' said Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya1 in his Preface to the Studics in Sankhya Philosophy. Again, introducing his Studics in Vedantism, he said that thev were 'not so much expositions of the traditional Vedanta as problematic constructions on Vedan- tic lines intended to bring out the relations of the system to modern philosophical systems." His method has accordingly been characterised as constructive interpretation, and this as contrasted with exposition in the ordinary sense: 'It is an exten- sion or development in new directions of some fundamental tenets of the several schools. It is development not in the sense of necessary amplifications of what is potential therein: it is rather the discovery of new potentialities and is in that sense a genuine addition to the existing corpus of the philosophy of the relevant schools."8 Obviously enough, it is not for everybody to follow such a method effectively. It demands a great deal of speculative bril- liance and it perhaps also entails the risk of reading modern con- cepts where they do not actually exist. What interests us, however, is the admission by one of our eminent professors of philosophy that elements of such construction - though obvi- ously not in the same spectacular sense - are really unavoidable for any study of the ancient philosophical system: 'It would be unfair to suggest that this is nothing but "subjectivism" in the sphere of interpretation. For the so-called "objective" interpre- tation is as much "subjective" in this sense as "constructive" interpretation. The mind that interprets is not a tabula rasa; neither is it just a calculating machine or an electronic brain. The interpreter is a thinking being and as such he will have to interpret with a mind having a system of beliefs and from a standpoint which he happens to occupy at the time of his inter- pretative activity. Subjectivism in this sense is inevitable in all

1 SP 127 2 Ib. 1. 3 Ib. pref. xi-xii.

X11 LOKAYATA

human thinking. It is not any blemish either unless, indeed, the belief system is proved to be unfounded or the perspective dis- torted, or, again, unless its application turns out to be wrong or illegitimate.4 What is clearly denied here is the broad possibility of study- ing the ancient philosophical systems without adopting a parti- cular philosophical standpoint for the purposc. Subjectivism in this sense is perhaps inevitable. But subjectivism in the sense in which it manifests itself in the writings of an individnal inter- preter - or even in the sense in which it has so far manifested itself in the writings of the majority of the interpreters - cannot be so. For there are alternative standpoints in philosophy and the validity of none is determined by voting. Of these alternative standpoints, moreover, there is one that can assure comparative objectivity, though it has not so far been seriously tried in interpreting the ancient Indian philosophical systems. Others - in other fields - have adopted it and have achieved magnificent results. I quote Professor George Thomson:5

The use that men make of their leisure, their ideas of the physi- cal world, of right and wrong, their art, philosophy and religion, vary and develop in accordance with variations and developments in their social relations which in turn are ultimately determined by their mode of securing their material subsistence. This is not to deny that there exists an objective reality, or that some men have formed a truer idea of it than others; but every idea of it is relative in so far as it starts from conscious or unconscious assumptions determined by the position of the man himself in the world he con- templates. To that extent, therefore, not only was the Greek view of life relative, but so is our view of the Greek view. Our view cannot be wholly objective, and the professed impartiality of some modern scholars is an illusion; but it will be more or less objective in pro- portion as we recognise and analyse our own preoccupations. We must become conscious of our prejudices in order to correct them. The historian of the past is a citizen of the present. Those who as citizens are averse or indifferent to contemporary social changes will seek in the civilization of ancient Greece something stable and abso- lutely valuable, which will both reflect and fortify their attitude of acquiescence. Others, who cannot acquiesce, will study the history of Greece as a process of continuous change, which, if it can be made to reveal its underlying laws, will help them to understand, and so direct, the forces making for change in the society of today.

We have here two points of vital significance. First, the view of the contemporary student of the ancient views - like the ancient views themselves - is ultimately conditioned by some

Ib. pref. xii. 5 AA 2.

INTRODUCTION xiii

concrete material factors. Secondly, it also reacts back on the material conditions - tends either to fortify or change them. To reject either of the points is to precipitate into darkness and dogmatism. For, if the mind that interprets be not a tabula rasa, neither is the belief-system of the interpreter any kind of self-sufficient phantom chasing only phantoms. It is, on the contrary, 'directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life.6 For after all, there remains

the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat and drink, have shelter and cloth- ing, before it can pursue polities, science, art, religion, etc .; and that therefore the production of the immediate material means of sub- sistence and consequently the degree of economic development attain- ed by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, the art and even the religious ideas of the people concerned have been evotved, and in the light of it these things must therefore be explained, in- stead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.7

All these imply the standpoint of materialism. It is from this that the present study is attempted. Since, on the admission of even those who would energetically dissociate themselves from materialism, some philosophical standpoint or other is really un- avoidable for any student of the ancient philosophies, no apology is needed for consciously adopting one. However, the parti- cular standpoint adopted here has imposed certain obligations on me about which I am anxious to be quite clear. Far from this being the conventional standpoint, I am not aware of any systematic effort to study ancient Indian philosophy from the materialistic point of view. All the works on Indian philosophy are written explicitly - often implicitly - from the idealistic point of view. Under these circumstances, the pro- posed study from the materialistic point of view suffers from a two-fold limitation. It is somewhat tentative and it has to be highly argumentative. My apology for the first limitation is simple and obvious. I have meant the present study to be only a draft for discussion and even the many mistakes that I must have committed would have their utility if they could provoke scholars with greater competence. Discussion and criticism - particularly from the materialistic point of view - is honestly the highest reward that 1 shall look forward to.

" Marx & Engels GI 13. 7 Marx & Engels SW i.12.

xiv LOKAYATA

But the second limitation is in need of some explanation. Because of my obligations to this 'unconventional' point of view, I had frequently to question the validity of some long-cherished conclusions and propose a re-examination of certain standard interpretations of the ancient texts. Without this there was the risk of dogmatism and over-simplification. With this, however, the risk is no less serious. For the counter-assertions thus freely criticised are not infrequently associated with the names of some of the greatest scholars, without depending on whose contribu- tions it would have been impossible for me - or, for that matter, for any student of Indian philosophy today - to study the sub- ject at all. In short, 1 had to criticise those who are, to say the least, vastly my superiors. A list of all their names would be a long one. But I am specially anxious to mention two of them, because I had the personal privilege of being a student of both. They are profes- sors S. N. Dasgupta and S. Radhakrishnan. While begging to differ from the former, I could never for a moment forget that without his masterly guidance and the monumental work, A History of Indian Philosophy, I could never have learnt what- ever little I know of Indian philosophy. Practically all the references in the Vedic, Buddhist and Jaina sources to the Loka- yata were collected by him in one place, a feat which a scholar of his calibre alone could have performed. Students like us are thus left practically with no problem of discovering any new fact about the Lokayata; the only task that remains is that of seeking new relations of these facts. And that is what I have attempted. Again, if I found occasion to refer to Professor Radhakrishnan, mainly for the purpose of differing from him, the reason is that his highly consistent interpretation of the entire Indian philoso- phical heritage from the uncompromisingly idealistic point of view enjoys the widest popularity both in and outside the aca- demic circles. I have always been conscious that this tendency to criticise the elders was likely to encourage audacity and arrogance. The safeguard I could devise was to make the elders speak for them- selves and, as far as possible, against each other. Fortunately, I was able to follow this procedure to a considerable extent. For, evidently because of the pressure of the objective data, some of the idealist interpreters themselves had occasionallv to trans- gress their own idealistic preoccupations. They have thus, though in different contexts, thrown some significant suggestions

INTRODUCTION XV

which, if pieced together, could help the reconstruction of a pic- ture I was myself trying to arrive at. This eagerness to quote what others have already said, along with the anxiety to docu- ment my argument as far as possible, I am aware, have made my presentation rather wearisome and unattractive. Nevertheless, in spite of these limitations, I found the mate- rialistic point of view particularly relevant for a study of what is referred to as the Lokayata in our ancient texts. Apart from the general considerations concerning the possibility of the materialistic point of view, there is a special circumstance that makes it so. It has not been my purpose to attempt an exhaustive study of all the materialistic trends in ancient Indian philosophy: I wanted rather to concentrate on that which was specifically called the Lokayata in the ancient texts. Thus, for example, the atomism of the Vaisesikas and the Sarvastivadi Buddhists con- tains important clements of Indian materialism. But it falls outside the scope of the present study. However, as it is well known, there is a special reason that makes the study of the Lokayata particularly difficult. While at least the major texts of the other schools are preserved for us, all the original works of the Lokayatikas are lost beyond the prospect of any possible recovery. What we are actually left with are merely a few fragmentary survivals of the Lokayata, but all these as preserved in the writings of its opponents, i.e., of those who wanted only to refute and ridicule it. Lokayata thus remains to be recon- structed from the essentially hostile references to it. Under these circumstances, if the modern student is himself deeply out of sympathy with materialism as such, he may not always remain alert to distinguish between the vilification of and genuine information about the Lokayata. This has, as a matter of fact, happened with the majority of our modern scholars who wanted to look upon the Lokayata through the deep-rooted idealistic convictions of their own. Therefore, the study of the Lokayata from the materialistic point of view acquires a special significance. It means a reassessment and a rediscovery, a break-away from the beaten track. However, it is necessary to be clear about the materialistic point of view itself. As is well known, the most advanced form of the materialistic point of view was worked out by Marx and Engels and is broadly referred to as Marxism. I have accord- ingly attempted to approach the Lokayata from the Marxist

xvi LOKAYATA

point of view. But that means a much greater undertaking than a mere reconstruction of its lost structure. Marxism looks for the material roots of each phenomenon and views them in their historical connections and movement. It ascertains the. laws of such movement and demonstrates their development from root to flower, and in so doing lifts every phenomenon out of a merely emotional, irrational, mystic fog and brings it to the bright light of understanding. Accordingly, as a Marxist student of the Lokayata I had also to survey the material conditions of ancient India of which it was the product. As a result, there had inevitably been long digressions from the central argument. It might be useful to sum up my main argument here and sketch the plan followed. Despite ramifications, the argument is a continuous one. It is unfolded in four stages corresponding to the four main divi- sions of the study. Chapters I & II of Book I are designed to discuss the Problem and the Method respectively. The problem of the Lokayata is, again, discussed in two stages. In the first stage. I have surveyed the mass of the modern theories about the Loka- yata. Though highly heterogeneous and mutually contradictory, practically all these take their start from a doubtful representa- tion of the Lokayata which we come across in a medieval compendium of Indian philosophy, the Sarva Darsana Sam- graha, written by a leading representative of the most outstand- ing form of Indian idealism. Discarding its authenticity on evidences both internal and external, I have, in the second stage, moved on to consider the other available clues. Judging from the fact that even the earliest Buddhist sources repeatedly mentioned the Lokayata and, further, as al- ready argued by Dasgupta and others, even the older Upanisads mentioned it, - though under the name of the Asura-view, - it is natural to presume that the Lokayata, in its original form, must have been very ancient: it was certainly pre-Buddhistic and even pre-Upanisadic, though how very ancient it is impos- sible to be precise about. In such an early period of Indian history we do not expect the development of a materialistic philosophy in the modern sense and indeed the Lokayata was originally not so. This may mean some disappointment for an over-enthusiastic modern materialist; from the materialistic point of view, however, such a disappointment is necessary. The materialistic philosophy in the modern sense presupposes the

INTRODUCTION xvii

development of certain material conditions which could. not have existed in India before the Upanisads. What then was the original Lokayata? That is, what was it which we find referred to as the Lokayata in the ancient texts? Etymologically it means 'that which is prevalent among the people' and also 'that which is essentially this-worldly.' But the earliest of the available clues are hopelessly fragmentary and are too often embedded in mythological imagination. Nevertheless, a careful examination of some of these may give us a dim view of a primordial complex of a this-worldly outlook related to a body of ritual prac- tices and the whole theme being somehow or other 'prevalent' among the masses. The most conspicuous feature of this primi- tive world-outlook appears to be dcha-vada, the view that the material human body (deha) is the microcosm of the universe, along with a cosmogony attributing the origin of the universe to the 'union of the male and the female.' It is impossible to be certain whether this world-outlook, in its origin, was at all theoretically formulated. The presumption is that it was not. Yet the significant point is that though far from the matcrialism of our times, this archaic world-outlook did .re- present a stage of consciousness yet to witness the birth of the spiritualistic concepts like God, Soul and the Other-World. In this sense of being essentially pre-spiritualistic, it may possibly be characterised as primitive proto-materialism, though it was far from acquiring the form of a philosophical outlook proper. This, I have argued, was the humble beginning of the Lokayata. But it had farreaching philosophical successes to achieve. For it evcntually became a highly developed philoso- phical system and represented the strongest opposition to the carliest form of Indian idealism, namely the Vedanta. But I had to postpone this discussion to Chapter VI of Book III deal- ing with the Sankhya system, because I felt that in the mean- while certain other points had to be clarified. The first problem is suggested by the body of ritual practices which, on various evidences, were related to the Lokayata as mentioned in the ancient texts. There are, moreover, certain suggestions that the rituals were obscure and obscene, indicating, as is only to be cxpected, a primitive stage of development. But the literary sources, by themselves, do not help us to understand them fully. I had, accordingly, to search for some method with the help of which it could be possible not only to reconstruct a fuller picture of the primitive rituals as related to the primitive L-II

xviii LOKAYATA

proto-materialism, but also to understand the entire primitive complex as dircctly interwoven with the productive activity of men living evidently at a primitive level of development. Such a method was suggested to me by the recent writings of Profes- sor George Thomson, whose application of the fundamental principles of Marxism in the interpretation of the ancient Greek literature and philosophy appears to me to have many a lesson for the student of ancient Indian philosophy. I have, accord- ingly, in Chapter II, attempted to illustrate this method with some concrete literary-speculative material of ancient India. The material I have chosen, however, is from the Vedic literature, which is really opposed to the Lokayata tradition. This is meant to serve another aspect of my argument. I have argued that in spite of all the idealistic grandeur with which the Vedic world-outlook was eventually characteriscd, its subsoil, too, was formed by some kind of primitive proto-materialism, which for all its differences from the original Lokayata, resembled it in representing a stage of pre-spiritualistic consciousness. This is a point which had repeatedly occurred in the course of my study, though I could return to a full discussion of its implications only in Chapter VIII of Book IV, dealing with the emergence of the idealistic outlook in the Vedic tradition. After discussing the method in Chapter II of Book I, I could have resumed the argument concerning the original Lokayata from where it was left in Chapter I, but for the fact that the discussion of the method ushered in certain questions concern- ing the social background, without answering which, the Loka- yata could not be placed in its proper perspective. However, the discussion of the social background had to be introduced with reference to the specific problem of the Lokayata. The primordial complex of the primitive proto-materialism as related to the obscure rituals, - which in the first chapter I have pre- sumed to be the original essence of the Lokavata and which in the second chapter I found to be indicative of a primitive society, - had acquired a more popular name in later times, viz. Tan- trism, however much it may contradict the popular notions about Tantrism itself. Now a peculiar feature of the Indian cultural history is that Tantrism in this sense is not only ancient but also medieval and even modern. Its relics are traced as far back as the Indus period and, as repeatedly claimed, its influence has continued unbroken till today. This peculiar tenacity of the archaic beliefs and practices throughout the cultural history

INTRODUCTION kix

of India can only be accounted for by the actual survival in the social reality of those material conditions of which these were the products. But what could be these material conditions? Chapters III and IV of Book II are designed to answer this question. In Chapter III, I have argued that two of the most conspi- cuous features of the Indian social history had been uneven development and tribal survival. The primitive society has always persisted here along with and by the side of the advanced and civilised society, as it is in fact persisting even today. Secondly, relics of such primitive or tribal socicty have always strongly characterised the social fabric of India - ancient, modern and medieval. It is, as I have called it, a case of in- complete de-tribalisation, a point which I have attempted to illustrate with the following: the cthnic composition, the village communities, the caste organisation and the customary laws. Of course this, of all my chapters, is the most tentative and in- adequate. The problem of Indian social history is vast and cnormously complicated, and rather than aiming at a full re. construction of it I found the scope in this chapter of emphasis- ing only those aspects of it that are not ordinarily emphasised, though they have direct bearings on our understanding of the survivals of the primitive elements in Indian culture. I feel that the details devoted to some of the problems are disproportionate while the treatment of some others - particularly the problem of the traditional land-tenure and that of the transition from the tribe to the state - has been rather desultory. But with all these inadequacies, the main points that I have argued may be sub- stantially valid. I hope to see these better substantiated and more ably worked out by more competent Marxists. Chapter IV is designed to discuss one specific feature of this tribal survival, viz. mother-right. I have treated this separately because of its obvious importance to my argument: it gives the only possible background for understanding the sources of Tantrism. One of the most conspicuous features of Tantrism happens to be its supreme emphasis on the Female Principle, called the sakti or the prakriti. As such, it reflected the social conditions under which women held a more important place in society than men. Apart from the writings of Professor George Thomson - upon which incidentally I have depended through- out my study - I am particularly indebted to The Mothers by R. Briffault as the main source-book for mother-right and the

xx : LOKAYATA.

ancient rituals related to it. Following Thomson and Briffault I have argued that, because agriculture was the discovery of women, the initial stage of the agricultural economy created the material conditions for the social superiority of the female. Following Ehrenfels and others I have argued further that mother-right in India could have been historically connected with the early agricultural economy and that it was, in all pro- bability, violently suppressed in the subsequent days. Yet the peculiar tenacity with which the elements of mother-right have survived in the lives of the Indian people is quite striking. Could the reason be that the vast majority of them remained the tillers of the soil? In any case, this connection of Tantrism with the carly agricultural economy gave me the most important clue to its other features. By contrast, the economic life of the early Vedic people was predominantly pastoral. That accounts for their highly patriarchal society along with a characteristically male-dominated world-outlook. It is here, again, that we have the real clue to the basic difference between the two main cur- rents of the subsequent philosophical thought in India -the Vedic and the non-Vedic, Tantrism in a broad sense being the dominating element of the latter. These preliminaries over, I could, in Chapters V & VI of Book III return to the main argument about the Lokayata. In these two chapters I have attempted to answer two main ques- tions. First, what could be the ultimate material basis of tho primitive deha-vada and the primitive rituals related to it and how; at the stage at which these were originally evolved, could these be connected with the mode of securing the material means of subsistence? Secondly, what was the course of development this archaic outlook eventually underwent? In Chapter ,V, designed to answer the first question, I have traced the origin of Tantrism to the fertility magic of the early agriculturists and in Chapter VI, designed to answer the second question, I have arguëd that the Sankhya philosophy was originally a develop- ment of the primitive proto-materialism which formed the sub- stratum of Tantrism itself. In arguing both the points, I had to go against many an accepted notion concerning ancient Indian philosophy. But I shall mention here specially one which appears to me to be crucial. How could Tantrism, with all its limitations as evidenced by its relations to the primitive rituals, have this substratum of primitive proto-materialism at all? Agricultural ritual, in which

INTRODUCTION xxi

it has its ultimate source, rests on the assumption that the pro- ductivity of nature - of mother earth - can be enhanced or in- duced by the imitation of human reproduction and conversely, human fertility is similarly related to natural fertility.8 In the primitive stage these principles were not, of course, con- sciously formulated. But if we look back and are at all justified in theoretically formulating the fundamentals of this primi- tive view, we may look at it as an instinctive groping at a theory according to which the human body and the earth are assumed to have the same nature, the two being taken as interacting and inter-dependent. The corollaries are two-fold. First, it should be possible to understand the mystery of nature if we can under- stand the mystery of the human bodv - the deha or the material human body is the microcosm of the universe. Secondly, the birth of the universe is the result of the same or a similar process as the birth of the human beings. The deha-vada and the cos- mogony of Tantrism are but elaborations of these two corollaries. It is not difficult to see that in such a scheme of thought there is no place whatsoever for anything that may attributc primacy to the spirit. In fact the earlier receptacles for the notion of the primacy of the spirit - the conceptions of God, Soul and the Other-World - are conspicuously absent from all these. Thus, with all the ignorance about nature as well as the human body, human consciousness at this stage remains yet to be emancipated from the world and proceed to the formation,of the spiritualistic or idealistic world-outlook. This is not mate- rialism in the mature sense; nevertheless, in the sense of an instinctive acceptance of the primacy of the material human body and the material earth on which it lives, it can be charac- terised as some form of primitive proto-materialism. I confess, when I first arrived at these formulations, I had myself many a hesitation about their plausibility. But in 1956, 1 came across the second volume of Science and Civilization in China by Professor Joseph Needham. It helped me immensely to clarify my own ideas and reinforce my own argument. What has become clear by his masterly analysis of Chinese Taoism has indeed a flood of light to throw on what still remains largely obscure about Indian Tantrism. Needham himself has drawn our attention to the close similarity -and even the possible interchange of idcas - between Taoism and Tantrism and he

8 See Thomson SAGS i. 204 ff. for the materialistic interpreta- tion of the primitive fertility magic.

xxii LOKAYATA

has argued that the Taoist speculations about and insight into nature 'lie at the basis of Chinese science.' Of course, Chinese Taoism, like Indian Tantrism, was basically magic. But, argued Needham, "science and magic are in their earliest stages indis- tinguishable' and this is a point the importance of which 'we cannot emphasise too much.' What accounts for such an indis- tinguishable relation between the two? It was manual labour, answered Needham: `magic and science were originally united in a single undifferentiated complex of manual operations."9

Bold formulations like these, coming as they do from a scientist of Needham's stature, helped me clearly to see how Indian Tantrism, because of its rootedness in the manual opcra- tions of agriculture, and in spite of being magic, did also con- tain the potentialities of later Indian science - particularly the sciences of physiology and alchemy. But let us concentrate on the primitive proto-materialism. Science, it is argued, is instinctively materialistic. The assump- tion of the primacy of spirit gives theology and metaphysics, but not science. From this point of view, Indian Tantrism could be proto-science because of its proto-materialism; even the authors of the so-called alchemical Tantras were not entirely unaware of this (pp. 356-7, Chapter V). At the source of Tan- trism, again, was agricultural magic, considered at a particularly undeveloped stage as an aid to the manual operation of agricul- ture itself. It is in this sense that the primitive proto-material- ism of Tantrism, too, was ultimately rooted in manual labour. All these lead us to see that so long as human consciousness retains its moorings in manual labour, it remains instinctively materialistic. For there is a sense of objective coercion about the labour process itself, a point that I have argued elaborately elsewhere.10 This is negatively substantiated by the fact that the emergence of the idealistic outlook in the human conscious- ness presupposes a separation of thought from action - of mental labour from manual labour - along with a sense of degradation socially attached to the latter. The result is an exaltation of the spirit or consciousness - of pure thought or pure reason - to the status of a delusional omnipotence having, as it were, the power

9 I could do no more than quote a few stray lines trom Needham's work. For a proper understanding of his view concerning the sources of science, it is necessary at least to go through SCC ii. 83-139. 10 See Appendix.

INTRODUCTION xxiii

to dictate terms to reality. And this is the essense of the idealistic outlook. Considering the importance of this process for the purpose of understanding, though negatively, the nature of the primitive pre-spiritualistic world-outlook, I have designed a special chapter (Chapter VIII, Book IV) to a detailed discussion of it. Sinee historically the idealistic outlook first emerged in Indian philo- sophy in the later portions of the Vedic literatures, this chapter has turned out to be a review of these. Obviously enough, it was not necessarv for me to go into the intricacies of this idealistic outlook itself; it was enough to show that this idealistic outlook did emerge on the ruins of a primitive proto-materialism, representing the consciousness of the primitive pre-class society in which manual labour and mental labour were not dissociated from each other. But it was necessary to go into the details of the further development of the primitive proto-materialism of the Lokavata tradition. This has been done in Chapter VI of Book III. dealing with the original Sankhya. All these, really speaking, did complete mv main argument. But there is another circumstance that I could not just overlook. Certain philosophers of the Buddha's times are generally treated as the followers of the Lokayata views. Accordingly, I felt the need to discuss them in a separate chapter - Chapter VII of Book III. However, my study of these philosophers led me to the view that they had little or no affiliation to the genuinely Lokayata tradition - i.e., to what is specifically referred to as the Lokayata in the ancient texts, in spite of the occasional hangover of a kind of primitive and muddled materialism in their views. As a matter of fact, the Buddhist and the Jaina texts, which happen to be the main sources of our know- ledge of their views, never mentioned them as the followers of the Lokayata, though the name Lokayata repeatedly occurred in these. Nevertheless, I found my study of them amply rewarded by a peculiar fascination of its own. There remains only one other question that I would like to answer in this Introduction. Looking back at the argument in its entirety what value, from the Marxist point of view, do I propose to attach to it? Of course, the significance of the San- khya in the Indian philosophical heritage is discussed in its proper place. But what is the significance of the recognition of the primitive proto-materialism, which forms the substratum of both the Lokayata and the Vedic traditions? My answer is

xxiv LOKAYATA

simple enough. Its value is comparable to the recognition of primitive communism in Marxism. The Marxists emphasise the importance of primitive communism not because they drcam of a return to it. The purpose is rather to show that private pro- perty and the state machinery are not eternal adjuncts to human existence: 'They will fall as inevitably as they arose at an earlier stage.'11 Similarly, the primitive proto-materialism is discussed not for the purpose of a glorification of it and surely there is not even the remotest apology for any return to it. Yet it has its value by way of showing that the spiritualistic outlook is not innate in man. It, too, will be finally washed away as inevi- tably as it arose at an carlier stage: if the spiritualistic outlook came into being, it will also, along with the social separation between manual and mental labour, pass away. This has some particular relevance for the understanding of the Indian philo- sophical tradition. For we are never tired of listening that spiritualism is an inherent feature of Indian thought. But, 'Ah! Faustus, now hast thou but onc bare hour to live!'

'11 Engels OF 284.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements V Chronology vii Aid to the Reader ix Introduction xi

Book I

THE PROBLEM AND THE METHOD

Chapter One. ASURA-VIEW : THE PROBLEM OF ANCIENT JNDIAN MATERIALISM 1 Materialism and the Philosophy of the people (p. 1) Problem of Indian Materialism (p. 4) Lost Lokayata Texts (p. 6) Traditional Method (p. 8) Anarchy in the Academic World (p. 11) Authenticity of Madhava (p. 20) Madhava's Mode of Presentation (p. 21.) Loka- yata Epistemology (p. 22) Lokayata Ethics (p. 30) Lokayata Metaphysics (p. 35) Lokayata and Rituals (p. 36) Lokayata and the Asura-view (p. 40) Asura- view and the Ancient Deha-vada (p. 42) Asura- cosmogony (p. 48) Lokayata and. the Tantra (p.51) Asuras (p. 54) Indus Archæology (p. 57) Tantra and the Indus Civilization (p. 58) Original Sankhya (p. 60) Sex-rituals (p. 65) Veda and Lokayata (p. 70) Recapitulation (p. 74) Chapter Two. THE CHANTING DOGS: A STUDY IN THE COMPARATIVE METHOD 76 An Obscure Passage (p. 76) Who Was Baka Dalbhya? (p. 77) Modern Interpretation (p. 79) Meaning of 'Dog' (p. 81) Animal Names in Vedic Literatures. (p. 82) Humans With Animal-names (p. 84) 'Dogs' in Ancient Literatures (p. 85) The Backward Peoples (p. 86) Totemism (p. 87) Totemism and Vedic Litera- tures (p. 88) Group Life (p. 91) Magic and Religion (p. 93) Song for Food (p. 96) Early Vedic Songs (p. 97) Chandogya Upanisad (p. 99) Desire and Song. (p. 103) Speech, Metre and Magic (p. 107) Song in the Rig Veda (p. 109) Folk Culture and Vedic Culture

(p. 117) (p. 112) Recapitulation (p. 117) General Principles

xxvi LOKAYATA

Beok 1I

THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND

Chapter Three. GANAPATI: STUDIES IN THE TRIBAL HERITAGE 125

Why Ganapati? (p. 126) Meaning of Ganapati (p. 129) Ganapati as Catastrophe (p. 130) From Vighnesvara to Siddhidata (p. 134) Conflicting Myths (p. 136) Transformation (p. 138) Ganas and Ganapati in the Vedas (p. 146) Jayaswal on the Ganas (p. 151) Mean- ing of Gana (p. 152) Uneven Development (p. 159) Ganas in the Mahabharata (p. 162) Meaning of Vraa- tya (p. 166) Kautilya and the Tribal Society (p. 171) Massacre of the Vajjians (p. 173) Tribal Survivals (p. 177) Ethnic Composition (p. 180) Village Com- munities (p. 186) Caste Organisation (p. 199) Cus- tomary Laws (p. 217) Tribal Survivals Pass into Their Opposites (p. 224) Problem of Ideological Survival (p. 227)

Chapter Four. GAURI : STUDIES IN INDIAN MOTHER-RIGHT 232

Agriculture and the Exit of the Male (p. 232) Hunting, Agricultural and Pastoral Tribes (p. 235) Social Im- portance of the Sexes (p. 236) Mother-right (p. 238) Purusa-sukta and the Pastoral Economy (p. 242) Iconographical Incongruities (p. 247) Agriculture: The Discovery of Women (p. 251) Mother-right in India (p. 252) Female Principle (p. 258) Religion of Mohenjo-daro (p. 262) The Gramadevatas (p. 265)

Book III

MATERIALISM

Chepter Five. TANTRA: OBSCURE CULTS AND AGRI- CULTURAL RITUAL 269

Magic and Early Agriculture (p. 269) Meaning of Vamacara (p. 272) Agricultural Ritual (p. 286) Origin of Durga-puja (p. 292) Lata-sadhana and Yantras (p. 296) The Khapuspa (p. 305) The Five ma-s (p. 307) Meaning and Antiquity of Tantra (p. 321) The Sects of Tantrism (p. 324) Tantrism and the Castes (p. 330) The Deha-tattva (p. 332) Tantrism and Taoism (p. 338) Manual Labour and Proto-science (p. 345) The Proto-scientific Trend (p. 352)

CONTENTS xxvii

Chapter Six. SANKHYA : FROM PROTO-MATERIALISM TO MATERIALISM .. 359 ..

Tantra and Sankhya (p. 360) Problem of Original Sankhya (p. 364) Sources of Original Sankhya (p. 364) Brahma-sutra and the Sankhya (p. 369) Idealism versus Materialism (p. 372) The Anti- Vedic Origin (p. 375) The Place of Purusa (p. 383) Origin of the Sankhya (p. 424) The Sankhya and the Yoga (p. 436) New Form and Content (p. 445)

Chapter Seven. SAMGHA AND NIYATI: STUDIES IN ILLUSION AND REALITY 459

Two Views of Farly Buddhism (p. 459) The Crucial Question (p. 466) Uneven Development (p. 467) The Tribes and the States (p. 469) The New Miseries (p. 475) The Kingdom of Truth (p. 478) Samgha and Primitive Communism (p. 483) A Religion Without God (p. 494) Theoretical Basis (p. 499) The Buddha and His Contemporaries (p. 504) The Philosophy of Fate (p. 519)

Book IV

IDEALISM

Chapfer Eight. VARUNA AND MAYA : THE BIRTH OF THE IDEALISTIC OUTLOOK 527

The Vedic Literatures (p. 528) Modern Parallels (p. 529) The Vedic Gods (p. 534) The Todas (p. 542) This-worldly Desires (p. 545) The Comparative Method (p. 554) Relics of the Collective Life (p. 560) Bhaga and Amsa: Distribution (p. 565) Sabha and Samiti: Administration (p. 582) Yajna: The Ritual of Produc- tion (p. 601) Rita and.the Fall of Varuna (p. 622) Maya: The Birth of Idealism (p. 643)

Appendix 667 Bibliography 679 General Index 687 Corrigenda 697

LOKAYATA

A STUDY IN ANCIENT INDIAN MATERIALISM

BOOK I

The Problem and the Method

CHAPTER ONE

ASURA- VIEW

THE PROBLEM OF ANCIENT INDIAN MATERIALISM

There is an interesting ambiguity in the philosophical termi- nology current in ancient India; its significance is, moreover, peculiarly modern. Our ancients did not feel the necessity of using two separate words to refer to the philosophy of the people and the material- istic philosophy. There was only one word that meant both. This was Lokayata, alternatively called Carvaka or Barhaspatya philosophy. Lokayata meant the philosophy of the people. Lokayata also meant the philosophy of this-worldliness or matcrialism.

1. MATERIALISM AND . PHILOSOPHY OF THE PEOPLE

.Lokesu ayatah lokayata. It was called Lokayata because it was prevalent (ayatah) among the people (lokesu). E. B. Cowell,1 in his translation of the medieval compendium of Indian philosophy called the Sarva Darsana Samgraha (by Madhavacarya, 14th century A.D.) has accepted this etymology of the name. H. P. Sastri,2 too, used the word to mean the world- outlook of the people. He has done it in a simple and matter-of- fact manner, as if it were a part of the philosophical common sense of the country and as such any evidence in its support was hardly necessary. But such evidences are there and we shall mention one or two. S. N. Dasgupta3 has already pointed out that the Buddhist text Divyavadana used the name Lokayata in this etymological

1 SDS (Cowell) 2n. 2 BD (B) 37-8. 3 HIP iii. 514n.

LOKAYATA

sense, that is, to mean what was prevalent among the people. Gunaratna,4 the Jaina commentator of the 14th century A.D., in his commentary on the Sat Darsana Samuccaya (by Haribhadra, 8th century A.D.) referred to the Lokayatas (or the Lokayatikas) as those who behaved like the unthinking mob, the common undiscerning people. Madhavacarya,5 too, gave practically the same reason to explain why the ancient materialistic view, tradi- tionally associated with the name of Carvaka, was also called the Lokayata view:

The mass of men in accordance with the sastras of policy and enjoy- ment, considering wealth and desire the only ends of man. and denying the existence of any object belonging to a future world, are found to follow only the doctrine of Carvaka. Hence another name for that school is Lokayata,-a name well accordant with the thing signified.

And in saying this, Madhava was only following in the footsteps of his great master, Samkaracarva" (8th century A.D.), who in his commentary on the Brahma Sutras, equated the crude mob (prakrita janah) with the followers of the Lokayata-views (lokayatikah) by mentioning the two together, almost in the same breath. It is true that a contempt for the Lokayata was largely responsible for such statements. Nevertheless, this does not minimise the importance of the statements, particularly in view of the fact that it is implied by the very etymology of the word. Lokayata did mean the philosophy of the people, though those who were using the name in this sense had often a deep con- tempt for the people along with their philosophy. And this philosophy was essentially this-wordly or mate- rialistic. Other evidences apart, this is indicated by the alternative significance of the name. The Petersburg Dictionary™ rendered lokayata simply as materialism. According to M. Monier-Williams," the name, in the masculine, meant 'a material- ist,' and, in the neuter 'materialism, the system of atheistic philosophy.' H. T. Colebrooke" showe! that the word lokayatana, in masculine, meant only a materialis . Some of our eminent traditional scholars, too, have given this interpretation of the name. Accurding to Pancanan Tarka-

5 SDS (Cowell) 2. 6 On Br Su i. 1.1. 7 V. 235. The PTS Dictionary, however, takes the word to mean 4 TRD 300.

the world-outlook of the people. 8 SED 907. 9 Ib.

ASURA-VIEW

ratna,10 this philosophy was called Lokayata because it believed in nothing but this concrete material world (loka) and denied everything beyond. Rajkrishna Mukhopadhyaya11 argued on similar lines. The name Lokayata, according to him, was to be derived from the essential emphasis on the natural world (loka or iha-loka) in this philosophy. We come across in the older texts certain attempts to explain the name from the point of view of its materialistic con- tent. Buddhaghosa,12 the Buddhist commentator of the 5th century A.D., is said to have suggested that the word ayatah could also be used in the sense of ayatana, mcaning 'the basis'; in accordance with this Lokayata would mean the philosophy, the basis of which is the material world (loka). A somewhat similar derivation of the name was suggested by Haribhadra13 and his commentators. He defined loka as all that could be the object of sense-perception. Manibhadra,14 a commentator, tried to be more explicit. He summed up by saying that loka meant padartha-sartha or padartha-samuha, that is, the totality of the material existences. According to both, since the name Lokayata was rooted in this word loka, it could only mean the materialistic philosophy. Thus Lokayata meant not only the philosophy of the people but also the philosophy of this-worldliness or materialism. As a matter of fact both S. Radhakrishnan and Dasgupta, the two outstanding historians of Indian philosophy, have alternatively drawn our attention to the two meanings of the same name. 'Lokayata,' Radhakrishnan15 has said, 'directed to the world of sense, is the Sanskrit word for materialism.' Dasgupta16 has observed, 'Lokayata (lit., that which is found among people) seems to have becn the name by which all Carvaka doctrines were generally known.' It remains for us only to connect the two meanings, and if we do it, we shall be led to doubt the reiterated claim that the philosophical tradition of India was one of unbroken idealism or spiritualism. The claim is made even in our own days: The characteristic of Indian thought is that it has paid greater attention to the inner world of man than to the outer world.17

10 Presidential Address at the Philosophical Section of the Ben- gali Literary Conference, 14th Session. 11 VD (B) Sravana (1281). 18 SatDS 81. 12 See Dasgupta HIP iii. 515.

16 HIP i. 78n. 14 Manibhadra on above. 15 IP i. 279n .. 17 Radhakrishnan (ed.) HPEW i. 21.

4 LOKAYATA

This is true only if we overlook that trend of philosophical thought which our tradition had wanted to attribute to the Indian masses. Their world outlook was instinctively matcrial- istic. The name Lokayata is an evidence of this fact.

2. PROBLEM OF INDIAN MATERIALISM

It follows, therefore, that ancient Indian materialism cannot be looked at as a philosophical thought, enjoying as it were, an existence-in-itself in the ideological sphere. The question of our ancient materialism is inextricably mixed up with the history of our people. What was meant by 'the people"? Did they have a philosophy? If so. in what sense was this a materialistic one? These are questions we cannot avoid in studying the Lokayata. Obviously, the answers to these questions are to be sought in the data concerning the Lokayata that are preserved for us. But these data themselves, far from being helpful and satisfac- tory, introduce us to various and often unexpected difficultics. It is well known, for example, that the available materials concerning the Lokayata are so few and fragmentary that they almost call for a Cuvier to reconstruct its lost structure. How- ever, as we progress we begin to realise that this by no means is the only or even the real difficulty. Such data 'are, moreover. often highly obscure and, at least apparently, heterogeneous and ambiguous. This explains, though partially, why the modern investi- gators were led to so many erratic conclusions concerning the origin and significance of the Lokayata in ancient India. As we shall presently sce, each one of them relied rather exclusively on a selected datum and, according to the individual peculiarity of this, arrived at an individualistic understanding of the Lokayata. There has, however, bcen another factor that contributed to the multiplicity of modern views on ancient Indian material- ism. With all the differences among themselves, they have, directly or indirectly, considered Madhava's Sarva Darsana Samgraha to be the only reliable starting point for purposes of reconstructing the lost Lokayata. But Madhava's version of the Lokayata is at best a doubtful one; we shall presently see why it is so. It may be that once we can emancipate ourselves from his influence, the informations about the Loka-

ASURA-VIEW 5

yata which we come across in sources considerably older than Madhava would not appear to us to be so baffling after all. Thus it was that I thought of avoiding the beaten track and searched for some method that could throw new light on the ancient data and help us to understand the Lokayata as the world outlook of the people. Such a method was suggested to me by the recent writings of G. Thomson, particularly his Aeschylus and Athens and in the first two volumes of Studies in Ancient Greek Society. In Chapter 2 I have argued how certain obscure and even apparently meaningless fragments of our ancient philosophical literatures may possibly be clearly under- stood if interpreted according to the principles followed by Thomson. In trying to follow his procedure, however, I was obliged to raise certain questions that arc not usually raised in the standard discussions on the subject. The results have been more than mere digressions. I had even to modify my original plan substantially and the undertaking, to a large extent, turned out to be an enquiry into the sources of those obscure cults that are broadly referred to as Tantrism. Further, the much-debated question concerning the origin and development of the Sankhya philosophy had to be seriously faced and at least partially answered. And 1 found it impossible to do all these without entering into the more complicated question concerning mother- right in India. I had, in fact, to end by realising that, our knowledge of the Lokayata is still so incomplete, largely because of an unfortunate situation. Mother-right in ancient India, along with its characteristic ideology, remains yet to be seriously investigated into. As we shall see, J. Marshall, following the suggestions of R. P. Chanda, made a number of valuable obser- vations in this connection. And O. R. Ehrenfels, inspired by Marshall, has collected further materials about it. But owing largely to their neglect of Morgan, Engels and Briffault, the conclusions they arrived at remain insufficiently important. More startling, however, than all these is another point that struck me in course of my own studies. It is the basic similarity between the Lokayata tradition and the more archaic stratum of the Vedic tradition. This is most remarkable. The two tradi- tions, as we know them, are widely different; in fact, diametri- cally opposed. The contempt for the Lokayata of those who eventually announced themselves to be the inheritors of the Vedic tradition is indeed well known. No less known is the contempt

6 LOKAYATA

of the Lokayatikas for them. Nevertheless, the similarities referred to are remarkable. This demands some explanation. I had to digress long to enquire into the origin of the ideas and beliefs of the early Vedic peoples, and this, paradoxically enough, in order to understand the Lokayata more fully. All this is unconventional. I shall, therefore, try to explain the circumstances under which I was obliged to raise these questions.

3. LOST LOKAYATA TEXTS It is customary to begin the enquiry into ancient Indian matcrialism with the assumption that the real difficulty in recon- structing its history is the scarcity of relevant materials. For it may not be an exaggeration to suggest that in the ocean of uncer- tainty concerning the lost Lokayata the only piece of definite information is that we are left with no original work on it. Modern scholars do not agree among themselves even on the question whether any such work ever existed at all. Rhys Davids18 strongly denied the possibility. Referring to the refutation of the Lokayata by Samkara and the Buddhists, he observed that

the expressions used point rather to an opinion held by certain thinkers, in union with other opinions, and not expounded in any special treatise. Any text setting forth a philosophy thus refuted was for him but an unwarranted assumption. However, the evidences collected by Tucci, Garbe and Dasgupta are decisively against such a view. Tucci19 observed:

It is well known that no Lokayata text has come down to us .... But from this to assume, as some scholars did, that Lokayata texts never existed, means to go too far .... I only shall briefly expose some of the facts which, as it seems to me, clearly point out that Lokayata texts were known in ancient times. A Lokayata sastra was quoted in Candrakirti's Prajna Sastra. Aryadeva's Satasastra contained an actual quotation from Brihas- pati Sutra and 'tradition attributes to Brihaspati himself the first treatise of the system called after him, Barhaspatya, and we do not know why we should not accept it."20 According to the unknown author of the marginal notes to the work of Puppha-

18 DB i. 166 ff. 19 PIPC 1925 36. 20 Ib.

ASURA-VIEW 7

danta, 'the Purandara named in the text was a Carvaka-mate- granthakarta,' i.e., an author of texts expounding the Carvaka doctrine. Garbe21 mentioned two authorities, namely Patanjali22 and Bhaskaracarya23 who 'bear witness to the former existence of textbooks of materialism.' Dasgupta24 referred to the Buddhist text Divyavadana where the Lokayata was 'regarded as a special branch of study which had a bhasya and a pravacana (i.e., a commentary and annotations on it).' To this he added the evidence of Patanjali, already mentioned by Garbe, and considered this evi- dence to be decisive. Tle grammarian Katyayana (c. 300 B.C.) formulated a rule whereby the word varnaka becomes varnakaa in the feminine to mean a blanket or a wrapper, and Patanjali (about 150 B.c.) in interpreting this Varttika Sutra, says that the object of restricting the formation of the word varnaka only to the sense of a cotton or woollen wrapper is that in other senses the feminine form would be varnikaa or varttika (meaning a commentary) as in the case of the Bhaguri com- mentary on the Lokayata.25 From this Dasgupta concluded that 'it seems to be quite certain that there was a book called the Lokayata on which there was at least one commentary carlier than 150 B.C., or even earlier than 300 B.C., the probable date of Katyayana, the author of the Varttika Sutra."20 But such texts, even if. these were once in existence, are lost to us. Judging from the bitter hostility expressed in so many places against the Lokayata-views, it is often conjectured that these might have been deliberately destroyed.27 Whatever it was, it must have happened long ago, presumably before the beginning of the Christian era. Apart from the mere mention ot such lost treatises, what we now concretely possess are a few stray references to the Lokayata-views, or to its followers called the Lokayatikas, as preserved in the writings of those who wanted only to ridicule and refute the Lokayata. As S.K. Belvalkar and R.D. Ranade ?8 have put it, this philosophy had the misfortune of being known to us only through the writings of its opponents. The opponents of the Lokayatikas could not have had any special anxiety to describe dispassionately what Lokayata

21 ERE viii. 138. 23 On Br Su iii. 3.53. 22 Mahabhasya vii. 3. 45.

26 Ib. 24 HIP iii. 514. 27 Nehru DI 100. 25 Ib. iii. 515-6. 28 HIP ii. 459.

8 LOKAYATA

actually stood for. We do not, therefore, expect an unbiased version of its vicws in these sources. Secondly, writers belong- ing to different schools of philosophy tried to refute the Loka- yata in different contexts of philosophical controversies. So the informations obtained about the Lokayata from these sources are necessarily fragmentary. The only notable exception is pro- bably the version of the Lokayata in the Sarva Darsana Sam- graha, where the author gives us the impressiin of coherence. But we shall presently see how little we can rely on it. Under these circumstances, Rhys Davids29 was fully justi- fied in claiming that pending the discovery of other texts, and specially of such as are not only the testimony of opponents,' what we can at best hope is to arrive at a working hypothesis concerning the Lokayata to explain its fragmentary survivals. Rhvs Davids wrote this in 1899. On the basis of our expe- rience since then we can now definitely add that there is no. hope of such a discovery. It is true that F. W. Thomas re- covered a certain Brihaspati Sutra which, as edited and trans- lated by him, was published in 1921. It could be a Lokayata work because Brihaspati is said to have been the founder of the school. However, no scholar could take this text seriously. It was a very late product often dominated by an ideology really alien, or even positively hostile, to the Lokayata-views. As Tuccia0 remarked, 'it bears a clear Brahmanical character.' At the same time, he hastened to add:

But in spite of that you will find some quotations in it on the Loka- yata, which are likely to have been taken from an ancient but now lost compilation having a peculiar Lokayata character. That, however, is the real problem. What exactly is meant by the peculiar Lokayata character? And what is the source of our information about it?

4. TRADITIONAL METHOD

In answer to this it is suggested, though often tacitly-and Rhys Davids was one who definitely rejected the suggestion- that the most notable of the Lokayata-fragments being those that are preserved in Madhava's work, this should be the starting point of our study. As Garbe31 said, 'the principal source of our

29 DB i. 170-1. 30 PIPC 1925. 36. 31 ERE viii. 138.

ASURA-VIEW 9

knowledge, however, is the first chapter of the Sarva Darsana Samgraha.' This being fairly typical of the attitude of the modern scholars, the method usually followed by them for reconstruct- ing the Lokayata was to begin by gathering the basic idea about it from Madhava's work and then to interpret in its light other relics of the Lokayata obtained from other sources. Even Sastri, the importance of whose contributions to our knowledge of the Lokayata we shall presently return to discuss, was not free from a bias for this method. Of course Rhys Davids doubted the authenticitv of Madhava. Paradoxically enough, his strong doubt of Madhava, as we shall see, was really based on a rather exclusive reliance on him. It needs to be pointed out here that there are at least two distinct advantages in the traditional method which tempt us to follow it. First, Madhava's account of the Lokavata is clear and coherent. The epistemology, metaphysics and ethics of the Lokayatikas, as Madhava wanted us to understand these, are presented by him in a neatly woven logical construction. According to him, the Lokayatikas denied the validity of any source of knowledge other than immediate sense-perception. And therefore they denied all realities except the gross objects of the senses. There was no God, no soul and no survival after death. It naturally followed that the Lokayatikas denied all religious and moral valucs and cared only for the pleasures of the senses. This is, in essence, the Lokayata-view as represented by Madhava. Whether drawn from his own imagination or not, such a representation is free from any obscurity and is wonder. ful in its internal coherence. If we make this our starting point, we have at least the feeling of moving on secure grounds. The second advantage, and by no means an unimportant one, of starting from Madhava is that it also promotes a sense of familiaritv in the minds of our modern scholars. For it agrees smoothly with the contemporary notions of, or more properly, the contemporary prejudices against the materialistic philoso- phy in general. Materialism, as Madhava put it, had been the cult of those crude people who little understood the higher values of human existence. This is also the attitude of the modern scholars. They are out of sympathy with the material- istic philosophy as deeply as Madhava was.

10 LOKAYATA

Here are two examples: L. de la Vallee Poussin,32 discussing the Lokayata stand- point said, 'A man who wanted to convert-let us say "pervert" -a woman to his materialist opinions,' etc., etc. Materialismn, to the writer, is but mere perversion. This is so obvious to him that he was making a statement of fact, as it were. Practically the same attitude to materialism explains how Radhakrishnan33 could say that the 'substance of this doctrine is summed up by a character in the allegorical play of Prabodha- candrodaya.' The author certainly knows that this is as good as saying that the substance of the Socratic view or the essence of the Socratic character is to be found in the plays of Aristophanes. For what we really have in the Prabodhacandrodaya is only a caricature of the Materialist, and by no way a subtle one.34 This play, it is well known, 'was written by Krisna Misra of Mithila to expose, ridicule and contradict the ideas of the Buddhists, Jainas, Carvakas, Kapalikas and other sects which had taken hold of the public mind in his days."35 No scholar would suggest the possibility of recovering the substance of Buddhism or Jainism from it. With the materialistic philosopby, however, the matter is different. The modern scholars are not interested in distinguishing between its substance and its caricature. And so they find Madhava's account of the Lokayata so satisfactory to start with. Notwithstanding these two apparent advantages, however, we are obliged to doubt the traditional procedure. To begin with, the contradictory character of the conclusions that result-

32 ERE viii. 494. 33 IP i. 278. 34 Here are some specimens (Act ii. (Taylor). MATERIALIST: (looks at the great king Passion and advances towards him) May thou be victorious-Materialist salutes thee. PASSION: My friend, you are welcome, sit down here. MATERIALIST: (sitting down) Vice prostrates himself at your feet. PASSION: The felicity of Vice, I hope, is unimpaired. MATERIALIST: By your bounty all are happy. Having accomplished what he was ordered to perform, he now desires to touch your feet; for blessed is he, who after destroying the enemies of his lord, beholds his gracious face with exceeding joy, and pros- trates himself at his lotus feet. PASSION: What exploits have been performed by Vice? MATERIALIST: He has caused the most virtuous men to forsake the road commanded in the Vedas; and to follow their own inclina- tions. This achievement, however, belongs neither to Vice nor myself; for it was Your Majesty who inspired us with courage ... 35 P (Taylor) Intro. 4.

ASURA-VIEW 11

ed from this is itself a warning against its reliability. We may note the contradictions first and sce how far an initial reliance on Madhava is responsible for these.

5. ANARCHY IN THE ACADEMIC WORLD Modern writers on ancient Indian philosophy-and among them are included scholars of great eminence whose authority it is not easy to challenge-have arrived at the most extraordi- narily contradictory conclusions with regard to the origin and significance of the Lokayata. It has been conjectured that Lokayata was the result of the breakdown of traditional authority. Others thought that it was the cause of the consolidation thereof. Some concluded that Lokayata was originally imported into India from ancient Sume- ria. Others thought that it originally formed part of the Indian priestcraft. It has even been claimed that Lokayata did not belong merely to the ancient times, for it still survives in the country in the form of certain obscure and highly obscene cults. As these interpretations of what the Lokayata might have meant are basically opposed to one another, we are not surprised to find the place of all being taken up by a scepticism which claim- ed that the Lokayata, as a branch of ancient Indian philosophy, never existed at all. These are some evidences of the anarchic conditions pre- valent in our academic world. We are going to examine the views in so far as these are the results of a reliance on Madhava's version of the Lokayata. Radhakrishnan36 has argued that the Lokayata was the characteristic intellectual product of the unsettled conditions of India during the 'epic period,' i.e., 600 B.C. to A.D. 200. It was an age when the faith of the centuries was crumbling down and the hold of authority on the people was being shattered. In such an atmosphere, ever so many metaphysical fancies and futile speculations were put We have the materialists with their insistence on the world of sense, the Buddhists with their valuable psychological forward ....

teachings and high ethics. Under these circumstances, materialism, with all its futility, was, nevertheless, playing a historic role: it was 'repudiating the old religion of custom and magic,' was 'declaring the spiritual

36 IP i. 271-6.

12 LOKAYATA

independence of the individual and rejecting the principle of authority. The Carvaka philosophy is a fanatical effort made to rid the age of the weight of the past that was oppressing it. The removal of dogmatism which it helped to effect was necessary to make room for the great constructive efforts of speculation.37 This conclusion has the virtue of simplicity. The simplicity, however, is the result of a rather rigid adherence to Madhava. The author has refused, as it were, to be influenced by any in- formation about the Lokayata that did not fit in with Madhava's version of it. This explains why he agreed to supplement the Sarca Darsana Samgraha only by such texts as the Prabodha- candrodaya and the Sarca Siddhanta Samgraha: these too, like Madhava's work, were written from the standpoint of Vedantic idealism and the account of the Lokayata in all these was sub- stantially the same. The essence of this account is thoroughly negative in character: the Lokayata denied the reliability of in- ference, the authority of the Vedas, the reality of God, soul and immortality, and it repudiated any moral value excepting the gross sensual pleasures of the moment. Concentrating exclu- sively on such an account the only question our author has considered worth asking is: How can we account for the origin of such an ultra-negative attitude in ancient India? The hypo- thesis of an age in which the faiths of the centuries were crumb- ling down and which, therefore, released a fanatic urge for free- thinking, served his purpose. The whole thing was, no doubt, an excess and a futility. Nevertheless, it played its historic role. It was necessary for our ancestors to be emancipated from the old religion of custom and magic in order to move forward to the great constructive efforts of speculation, and the Lokayata contributed to this emancipation. J. Muir,38 too, connected the Lokayata with the freedom of speculation in ancient India. But the connection, as conceived by him, was just the other way round. Far from being the effect of the breakdown of ancient faith, the Lokayata was, according to him, the cause of its consolidation. How did he arrive at this conclusion? Like Radhakrishnan, he too made the negativistic version of the Lokayata given by Madhava his starting point. But, unlike Radhakrishnan, he wanted to take seriously a little more of the evidences about the Lokayata and to squeeze

37 Ib. i. 283. 38 JRAS xix. 299 ff.

ASURA-VIEW 13

these into the framework provided by Madhava. This made all the difference between the views of the two scholars. On the evidence of the heretics and disbelievers referred to in Rig-Veda, Muir conjectured that the intellectual atmos- phere of the country must have been characterised by a spirit of freedom of speculation from a very remote antiquity. Such an atmosphere must have continued for many centuries. Even at the time of the composition of the Ramayana, it was possible for one to remain a Brahmana and yet to go on preaching the Lokayata-views. This is evidenced by the Brahmana, Jabali, try- ing to persuade Ramacandra to heretical ideas.39 That such heretical views were essentially Lokayatika was argued by Muir on the basis of their similarities with the Loka- yata-views as expounded by Madhava. And referring to the Ramayana evidence, he argued: Even after the Brahmanical system had been more firmly establish- ed; and its details more minutely prescribed, it is clear that the same strictness was not extended to speculation, but that if a Brahmana was only an observer of the established ceremonial, and an asserter of the privileges of his own order, he might entertain and even profess almost any philosophical opinion which he pleased.40 Subsequently, however, as the attacks from the heretics like the Lokayatikas and the Buddhists became sharper, 'when the authority of the sacred books was not merely tacitly set aside or undermined, but openly discarded or denied, and the institutions founded on them were abandoned and assailed,'41 the orthodox party took the alarm and started enforcing such measures as put an end to the age-old atmosphere of the freedom of speculation. Lokayata-excess, thus, became the cause of the consolidation of ancient authority. Dasgupta's conjecture concerning the origin and develop- ment of the Lokayata has no point in common with either of these two views. According to him, the Lokayata was originally a foreign belief imported into the country, though it underwent some modification in course of its subsequent development in India. Probably the lokayata doctrines had their beginnings in the preced- ing Sumerian civilisation in the then prevailing customs of adorning the dead and the doctrine of bodily survival after death. This later on became so far changed that it was argued that since the self and the body were identical and since the body was burnt after

39 Ib. 303ff. 40 Ib. 331. cf. Colebrooke ME i. 379. 41 Ib.

14 LOKAYATA

death, there could not be any survival after death and hence there could not be another world after death.42 We thus know that the lokayata views were very old ... being current among the Sumerian people of pre-Aryan times.48 How did Dasgupta arrive at such an extraordinary conclu- sion? Because, like others, he started from Madhava's version of the Lokayata but, unlike others, wanted to emphasise the importance of an additional information about it, which, he thought, was to be found in the Chandogya Upanisad. A view identifying the self with the body was attributed by this Upa- nisad to the Asuras. Secondly, the Upanisad also mentioned a burial custom of the Asuras which, as interpreted by Dasgupta, meant

to adorn the dead body with fine clothes, good ornaments and pro- vide food for it with which they probably thought that the dead would conquer the other world.44 Dasgupta identified the Asuras with the ancient Sumerians and thought that the burial custom referred to was characteri- stic only of them. On the other hand, the view identifying the self with the body easily reminded him of the Lokayata. How- ever Lokayata, as understood by Madhava, not only denied any self over and above the body but also the survival after death in any form whatsoever. To reconcile the Upanisadic evidence with Madhava's picture of the Lokayata, therefore, he had to imagine that the beliefs and ideas underlying the burial custom of ancient Sumer, after being imported into India, underwent some kind of modification-the Indian custom of cremating the dead impressing upon the upholders of this belief that there could not be any survival after death. Tucci, again, would not agree with all these. According to him, the Lokayata was originally only a part of the Indian priest- craft.

At its very beginnings this doctrine represented the science of the purohita who on earth assisted his King as in heaven Brihaspati

same way.45 assisted Indra: artha and dharma for a certain period followed the

By artha the author meant political economy, by dharma religious purity. But the two, he argued, could not go together very far; there were signs of a clash between the two in very early days.

42 HIP iii. 529. 45 PIPC 1925. 40. 43 Ib. iii. 531. 44 Ib. iii. 528.

ASURA-VIEW 15

But political intrigues and religious purity cannot go together and in fact signs of a real contrast between artha and dharma can be traced back to the times of Yajnavalkya and of Narada.46

This process eventually led to an open revolt of artha against dharma.

In course of time among the masters of this political science there were some who refused to acknowledge any authority to dharma and proclaimed that in this world of men, God and priests had not interfered .... As it happens in such a case the reaction of the artha against the dharma went further on: artha not only broke up any relation with dharma but rose against it.47 And this, Tucci conjectured, ultimately resulted in the trans- formation of the original school of artha into the heretical, hedonistic and materialistic philosophy which Madhava des- cribed for us. What led him to this vicw? To begin with, he came across, in sources considcrably older than Madhava, certain references to the Lokayata which went very much against Madhava's picture of it:

We find the Lokayata included in the list of the sciences studied by Brahmanas in the stereotyped formulas of the Pali or Sanskrit Buddhist texts: and according to the Vinaya Pitaka there were also some Buddhist monks who endeavoured to study it were it not that the Buddha prevented them.48 The evidences were already noticed by Rhys Davids who con- cluded that the Lokayata originally meant only nature-lore. Tucci, however, could not agree with this:

Loka never had in Sanskrit the meaning of nature for which is used pradhana, or prakriti or svabhava; so that Buddhist texts, when discussing cosmological questions, in order to avoid misunder- standing, are obliged to prefix to loka the word bhajana, when they conceive the cosmos as a material thing: while loka in itself has rather the meaning of human world or class of beings, lokayatra, lokokti, lokavada, devaloka. Therefore the interpretation we have to give to the name Lokayata is quite different. It is but a science which has for its only object the loka, that is this world; and this interpretation is quite in accordance with the Chinese translation of the word by Shun-she or Shun-su: 'those who follow the world or the customs of the world.' Therefore this Lokayata which has for its aim the lokayatra is the forerunner of niti and arthasastra, that is of a science which was attributed by Brahmanical sources, also to Brihaspati-from whom Lokayata is called Barhaspatya as well as Barhaspatyamata-had the meaning of niti.49 Whether this interpretation of the name is acceptable or

46 Ib. 41. 47 Ib. 48 Ib. 40-1. 49 Ib. 40.

16 LOKAYATA

not, the facts referred to are certainly important. Lokayata being invariably mentioned in the list of sciences studied by the accomplished persons, is an evidence against Madhava. These could have, therefore, reasonably led our scholar to doubt the authenticity of Madhava. But he would not do it. The fidelitv of the modern scholars to Madhava has been fundamental. Therefore. the only possibility that Tucci found himself left with, was to imagine a history of the confiet between artha and dharma which resulted in the transformation of the origi- nally serious Lokayata into the Lokayata of Madhava's descrip- tion. Sastrise has argued that it would be wrong to view the Lokayata as belonging merely to some ancient period of Indian history. There survive in India even today living examples of the Lokayata sects. Arguing on the basis of certain remarkable evidences from the Brihaspati Sutra (recovered by Thomas) and the writings of the Jaina commentator Gunaratna, he dis- covered a close connection between the Lokayatikas and the followers of some obseure cults, called the Kapalikas. 'Brihaspati considers them as distinct sects but Gunaratna identifies the Kapalikas with the Lokayatikas."1 This by itself, is a startling observation; for the Kapalikas are not extinet even today. Sastri wanted to go a step further and argued: .. the influence of the Lokayatikas and the Kapalikas is still strong in India. There is a sect, and a numerous one too, the followers of which believe that deha, or the material human body, is all that should be cared for, and their religious practices are concerned with the union of men and women and their success (siddhi) varies according to the duration of the union. These call themselves Vais- navas, but they do not believe in Visnu or Krisna or his incarna- tions. They believe in deha. They have another name, Sahajia, which is the name of a sect of Buddhists which arose from Mahayana in the last four centuries of its existence in India.52 If all these be true Madhava's presentation of the Lokayata must be at best doubtful. For, though it remains for us to see how far the Sahajia may actually be looked at as but a survival of degencrated Mahayana Buddhism, we know too much about it to identify it with the Lokayata as described by Madhava.53 Assuming Lokayata to be the same as the Kapalika

51 Ib. 6. 52 1b. 53 I do not mean that the views of the Sahajias could not have 50 L 4 ff.

been proto-materialistic. But this proto-materialism (deha-vada)

physics. could not be the same as Madhava's description of Carvaka meta-

ASURA-VIEW 17

and the Sahajia, we should be logically led to an outright rejection of Madhava. However, in spite of his own startling observation, Sastri himself did not propose to do so. His fidelity to Madhava was basic. 'The book,' he wrote, referring to the Sarva Darsana Samgraha, 'carly attracted my attention .... The versified portion of the account of the Carvakas I soon made my own. Curiosity impelled me to look to other reference."* How- ever, even when he perceived that the other references went against the evidence of the Sarva Darsana Samgraha, the possi- bility did not occur to him to doubt Madhava and to reconstruct the Lokayata on the basis of a deeper understanding of the obscure cults like the Kapalika and the Sahajia. This led him to risk the internal consistency of his own statements. Madhava's version of the Lokayata remained his own and yet he spoke of the sameness of the Lokayatikas with the Sahajias and the Kapalikas. D. R. Sastri,55 whose Short History of Indian Materialism, Sensationalism and Hedonism has enjoyed considerable popula- rity in our academic circles, took up the suggestion of H. P. Sastri and tried to solve the problem suggested by his predeces- sor. The simplest way to do this was to argue that since the Lokayatikas, on Madhava's authority, were but natural degene- rates, they easily affiliated themselves to the degenerated Bud- dhists, the Kapalikas, and the Sahajias, notorious for their erotic excesses. Degenerates attracted each other. D. R. Sastri wanted to argue this in more than one way: Some of the sects of degenerated Buddhists, in which laxity in sexual morals was one of the features, became gradually affiliated to the Lokayata school. One of these sects was the Kapalika sect. The Kapalikas are a very ancient sect. They drink wine, offer human sacrifices and enjoy women. They strive to attain their religious goal with the help of human corpses, wine and women ... As kama, or the enjoyment of sensual pleasure was the goal of this sect, it came gradually to be affiliated to the Nastika form of the Lokayata school according to which the summum bonum of the human life is ... the enjoyment of gross sensual pleasure.56 After the great Brahmanic renaissance the Lokayata sect took shelter under different forms in different parts of India. In Bengal, an old sect of the Buddhist Mahayana school chiefly concerned with sexual romance gave up its independent existence and like the Svabhavavadins and the Kapalikas became at one with the Nastika Lokayatikas and the Lokayatikas on their part incorporated them-

54 Ib. 1. 55 The author's later contribution (HPEW ed. Radhakrishnan) does not clarify the points left unexplained in his well known work. 56 HIMSH 35-6. L-2

18 LOKAYATA

selves with that community. The old element of sensualism of the festival Madanotsava of the Nastikas, a sanction for the gratification of grosser pleasures, is still found to linger in this sect. The name of this sect is the Sahajia sect .- 7 Interestingly enough, according to the author, this combi- nation of double degradation enjoyed the most widespread popularity in some period of our ancient history. The Lokayatikas were a creed of joy, all sunny. Through their influ- ence, at that period of Indian history the temple and the court, poetry and art, delighted in sensuousness. Eroticism prevailed all over the country. The Brahmin and the Candala, the king and the beggar took part with equal enthusiasm in Madanotsava, in which Madana or Kama was worshipped. The author has not told us what period of Indian history he was referring to. Nor did he betray any anxiety to enquire into the real significance of the festival called Madanotsava and the temple sculptures with erotic motif he was presumably refer- ring to. Complex questions are obviously suggested by the indi- cations of there being some connection of all these with the Lokayata views. D. R. Sastri, with an enviable simplicity, has only argued that all these must have been due to the widespread influence of the degenerated outlook of the Lokayatikas, this degeneration being already evidenced in the writings of Madhava. After all these varied conjectures about the ancient Loka- yata, it is but one step for some of the modern scholars to re- move the whole problem from the realm of reality. This was actually accomplished long ago by Rhys Davids who, mainly on the basis of the Buddhistic sources, argued that neither the Lokayata-view nor its followers ever existed.

Throughout the whole story we have no evidence of any one who called himself a Lokayatika, or his own knowledge Lokayata. And of the real existence of a school of thought, or a system of philo- sophy that called itself by the name there is no trace.59 Nevertheless, we do come across in our ancient literatures, evi- dences of some people being called by the name Lokayatika, though by their philosophical opponents. Rhys Davids argued that these were references merely to the nature-lorists. Though originally looked at with reverence, the nature-lorists were ultimately looked down upon.

57 Ib. 37. 59 Ib. 36. 59 DB i. 172.

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After the early use of the word in some such sense as Nature-lore, folk-lore, there is a tone of unreality over all the statements we have ... In the middle period, the riddles and quibbles of the Nature-lorists are despised. In the last period the words Lokayata, Lokayatika, became mere hobby horses, pegs on which certain writ- ers could hang the views that they imputed to their adversaries, and gave them, in doing so, an odious name.60 Thus the problem of Lokavata was solved by denying its exis- tence. How far, it will be asked, was the reliance on Madhava really responsible for such a view? Apparently, the answer would be in the negative. For, Rhys Davids was the only modern scholar who definitely doubted the authenticity of Madhava.

Finally in the fourteenth century the great theologian Sayana- Madhava has a longish chapter in which he ascribes to the Lokaya- tikas the most extreme forms of the let-us-eat-and-drink- for-to-morrow-we-die view of life; of Pyrrhonism in philosophy. and of atheism in theology ... His very able description has all the appearance of being drawn from his own imagination; and is chief- ly based on certain intidel doggerel verses which cannot possibly have formed a part of the Lokayata studied by the Brahmanas of old. It is the ideal of what will happen to the man of some intellect, but morally so depraved that he will not accept the theosophist position.61

This is how Rhys Davids apparently wanted to reject Madhava. Really speaking, however, at the basis of his denial of the reality of the Lokayata philosophy there was only an exclusive reliance on Madhava. He failed to come across in the more ancient references to the Lokayata any system of philoso- phy that answered Madhava's description of it and as such the Lokayata itself appeared unreal to him. The reality of the Loka- yata stood or fell with the veracity of Madhava's version of it. The Lokayata was unreal because the way in which Madhava described it could not have been real. The reliance on Madhava, though indirect, could not go any further. The point is that he came across a considerable number of references to the Lokayata, particularly in the Buddhistic litera- tures, which rightly appeared to him to be irreconcilable with Madhava. If only he could liberate himself from the influence of Madhava, attach due importance to these informations obtained from the Buddhist sources and try to synthesise these with the informations available in the Jaina and other sources,

60 1b. 61 1b.

20 LOKAYATA

our scholar would have probably found some new way of re- constructing the old Lokayata. However, with all his verbal protests against Madhava, he did not try this. Madhava, thus, remained the last word for our modern scholars.

6. AUTHENTICITY OF MADHAVA

As our modern scholars have relied so much on Madhava and further, as this reliance has created so much of confusion among themselves, it is only logical for us to begin with an en- quiry into the authenticity of his version of the Lokayata. A preliminary doubt may be suggested against Madhava by pointing to the wide time-gap that separated him from the original Lokayata. In the early Buddhist sources like the Kutadanta Sutta"2 we come across the name Lokayata while in the equally early Brahmajala Sutta63 we come across a de- finitely materialistic view that identified the body with the self. Judging from these and the deep concern felt by the early Buddhist authors for the Lokayatikas and their materialistic view, we may easilv infer that the original Lokayata was flour- ishing as far back as the pre-Buddhist times. Madhava, on the other hand, belonged to the 14th century A.D. He was thus separated from the original Lokayata at least by two thousand years. This preliminary doubt may be further strengthened by pointing to Madhava's pronounced political preoccupation. He was, like his brother Sayana, a founder-minister of the Vijaya- nagara Empire; it is presumed further that he obtained from a medieval monastery the necessary finance for establishing this empire.64 This shows that he was himself very much in the thick of political activities which were likely to have influenced his philosophical enthusiasm. Philosophy was presumably the ideological counterpart of his practical politics. How could, then, an overt champion of aristocracy like Madhava, give us an un- distorted picture of the Lokayata, which, as its name signified, embodied only the world-outlook of the masses? In defence of Madhava, however, it will be argued that neither of the two points can carry special weight. The time- gap separating Madhava from the early Lokayatikas is evidently considerable. Yet one acquainted with the characteristic mode

62 Ib. i. 178. 63 Ib. i. 46. 64 VK (B) xiv. 565.

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of the development of Indian philosophical thought does not really expect spectacular changes to take place in a system even in course of centuries. The germs of the early Lokayata might have become, by the time of Madhava, highly elaborate and fairly systematised. But this hardly justifies the suspicion that the original Lokayata was bound to be qualitatively different from the later version of it. Secondly, it is also a fact that Madhava had his own politi- cal preoccupations. But if this be looked at as the ground for rejecting Madhava, the conclusion would be that the Loka- yata remains unknown and unknowable. For, the Lokayata has the misfortune of being known only through the versions of its opponents. Others who informed us about it might not have shared the political bias of Madhava. But they had at least a religious bias equally strong. In spite of such defence, however, we cannot rely too literally on Madhava's version of the Lokayata. Evidences, both internal and external, are against it. The external evidences are decisive but the internal ones are not unimportant. We shall begin with these.

7. MADHIAVA'S MODE OF PRESENTATION Cowell, in his introduction to the English translation of the Sarva Darsana Samgraha, said that Madhava, with regard to the views of his opponents, 'often displays some quaint humour as he throws himself for the time into the position of their ad- vocate, and holds, as it were, a temporary brief in behalf of opinions entirely at variance with his own.'05 This is important. The ability referred to speaks of the spe- culative brilliance of Madhava. But this brilliance was at the cost of authenticity. He allowed himself to be carried away by the fascination of his own constructive imagination and wanted to establish himself, for the time being, in the position of the Lokayatikas themselves. That is why, he did not so much care to report what the Lokayatikas themselves claimed and how they actually argued. Instead of this, he was more interested in telling us what he would himself say were he a Lokayatika and how he would himself have argued in defence of their philosophical standpoint.

SDS (Cowell) pref. vii.

22 LOKAYATA

This led to incongruities. The pattern of the Lokayata- argument must have been strongly opposed to his own. He was himself a Vedantist and the Vedantists had their own way of arguing. Yet Madhava did not hesitate to impose the Vedantic pattern of arguing on the Lokayatikas. To the Vedantist sruti or revelation was the highest author- ity. Arguments alone could not prove any thesis: these had validity only as subservient to sruti. Therefore, for a Vedan- tist, the surest proof for a statement is some quotation from the Upanisadic texts. But this was exactly the opposite of the Loka- vatika attitude. Even on Madhava's own admission, the Lokaya- tikas looked at the sruti as but fabrications of the lazy cheats. Under these circumstances, the idea of the Lokayatikas quoting the Upanisad is no less peculiar than the proverbiai devil quoting seripture. Yet Madhava, the Vedantist, was so much carried away by his own individuality that he did not hesitate to make the Lokavatikas quote the Brihad-Aranyaka Upanisad in support of their own position:

In this school the four elements, earth, etc .. are the original princi- ples; from these alone, when transformed into the body. intelligence is produced, just as the inebriating power is developed from the mixing of certain ingredients; and when these are destroyed. intelli- gence at once perishes also. They quote the sruti for this (Brihad- Aranyaka Upanisad ii.4.12). 'Springing forth from these elements. itself solid knowledge, it is destroyed when they are destroyed,- after death no intelligence remains.'f; Whatever might have been the real implication of the Upanisadie passage, this is certainly not the way the Lokaya- tikas themselves would have argued.

8. LOKAYATA EPISTEMOLOGY It is generally assumed that the Lokayata denied the vali- dity of inference. The idea is derived mainly from Madhava's treatment of the Lokayata-epistemology. In the terminologies of European logic, this argument against the validity of infer- ence may be summed up as follows: Inference presupposes a universal relation (vyapti) between the middle term (linga) and the major terms (sadhya). But this vyapti is an undue assumption. No source of valid knowledge can' guarantee it. The nearest parallel of this in European logic is Hume's denial of the universal and necessary relation.

Gf Ib. 2-3.

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Thus, for example, the inference of fire (sadhya) from smoke (linga) can be valid only when it is established that all cases of smoke are cases of fire (cyapti). But there is no source of valid knowledge that can justify this universal relation. Per- ception cannot do it, because it is limited only to the particulars. Inference, being itself dependent upon vyapti, cannot generate it. Testimony and the other so-called sources of valid know- ledge, being after all inferential, are similarly incapable of being the basis of cyapti. Therefore, inference is not possible. The last word of the Lokayata-epistemology, as represented by Madhava, is thus direct sense-perception. It becomes somewhat easy to refute the Lokayatikas if their epistemology is reduced to this. All arguments depend on cyapti. and as such, the denial of cyapti amounts to the declaration of a non-confidence in argument as such. But the Lokavatikas had themselves to argue their own case and were therefore involved in self-contradictions. As Madhava himself, while arguing against the Lokayatikas from the Buddhist point of view, said:

If a man does not allow that inference is a form of evidence, pra- mana, one may reply: You mercly assert thus much, that inference is not a form of evidence: do you allege no proof of this, or do you allege any" The former alternative is not allowable according to the maxim that bare assertion is no proof of the matter asserted. Nor is the latter alternative any better, for if while you assert that in- ference is no form of evidence, you produce some truncated argn- ment (to prove. i.e., infer, that it is none). you will be involved in an absurdity, just as if you asserted your own mother to be barren ... When you deny the existence of any object on the ground of its not being perceived, you yourself admit an inference of which non-perception is the middle term.67 Further Udavana, a medieval philosopher of the Nyaya School, argued that the Lokayata-claim would make even our practical life impossible: If this doctrine is consistently applied and people begin to disbelieve all that they do not perceive at any particular time, then all our practical life will be seriously disturbed and upset.4> The question is, how far can we really relv on this repre- sentation of the Lokayata-epistemology? Did the Lokayatikas really argue against the validity of inference in this absolute sense which made not only the science of logic, but also prae- tical life a sheer impossibility. Circumstantial evidences lead

67 Ib. 14. eS Quot. by Dasgupta HIP iii. 539.

24 LOKAYATA

us to a negative answer, showing thereby that the picture of the Lokayata-epistemology given by Madhava was largely fanciful. We are going to argue that rather than maintaining a purely destructive attitude to arguments as such the Lokayatikas were probably the earliest logicians in India, and, further, it is wrong to imagine that they were using arguments for destructive pur- poses alone. Buddhaghosa described the Lokayata as vitanda-cada-sattha. Sattha, in Pali, meant sastra in Sanskrit, roughly equivalent to a science or a branch of study. Thus Lokayata, according to Buddhaghosa, was the science of vitanda and vada. These two words referred to disputations or arguments though. according to the Nyaya School, in two opposite senses. Vitanda means tricky disputation and it is defined .... as that kind of tricky logical discussion (jalpa) which is intended only to cri- ticise the opponent's thesis without establishing any other counter- thesis, .... and it is thus to be distinguished from rada which means a logical discussion undertaken in all fairness for upholding a parti- cular thesis.4! Having this distinction in mind, Dasgupta has raised the ques- tion, how could the Lokayata be a sattha of both vitanda and vada? He found the answer in the suggestion of Jayanta, another medieval philosopher belinging to the Nyaya School, according to whom the Buddhists did not distinguish between vitanda and vada, both being empty sophistry to them. Thus, observed Dasgupta, 'Lokayata, though consisting of vitanda, could also be designated as vada in Buddhist literature,' in the special Buddhist sense. That is, Lokayata meant only destructive argu- ment, tricky but useless. Thus, from the above and from many other passages from the Pali texts it is certain that the Lokayata means a kind of tricky disputa- tion, sophistry or casuistry practised by the non-Buddhists, which not only did not lead to any useful results but did not increase true wisdom and led us away from the path of Heaven and of release. The common people were fond of such tricky discourses and there was a systematic science (sastra or sattha) dealing with this subject, despised by the Buddhists and called the vitanda-sattha.70 This might have been one solution of the problem. But the other possibility is not wholly ruled out. It might as well have been that the Lokayatikas knew the two forms of argument, both destructive and constructive, that is vitanda and vada in the usually accepted senses. It will be argued that this could not

69 Ib. iii. 512. 70 Ib. iii. 514.

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have been so. Some of the Buddhist sources themselves give us the impression that Lokayata meant merely empty, though tricky, disputations. Nevertheless, there is a tone of unreality about such descriptions. For, arguments obviously absurd, and not really too clever, were attributed by such Buddhist sources to the Lokayatikas. Here is a specimen: 'The crows are white because their bones are white; the cranes are red because their blood is red."1 That the arguments of the Lokayatikas could not be as naive and spurious as all these is evidenced by the following: Sukra Niti Sara,72 in its list of the seiences and arts, mention- ed the nastikas as very strong in logical arguments. These nasti- kas are usually taken to be the Lokayatikas. The sastra of the nastikas, according to the text, denied God and the authority of the Vedas. This was of course employing arguments merely for destructive purposes. But according to the Sukra Niti Sara itself, these nastikas had also their positive thesis: sarvam svabhavikam matam, that is, the doctrine according to which everything is governed by natural laws. We have, thus, here a possible refer- ence to not only a positive attitude of the Lokayatikas to the validity of reasoning or arguments, but also to the employment of such arguments for the purpose of defending a positive thesis. Kautilya,73 in his Arthasastra, mentioned, along with San- khya and Yoga, the Lokayata and called it the science of logic. anviksiki. Medhatithi,"+ commenting upon Manu, spoke of the tarkavidya of the Carvakas. Manu?5 himself mentioned the hetusastra (logic) and the haitukas (logicians) and Dasgupta™G has rightly pointed out that these were presumably references to the Lokayata and the Lokayatikas. For, though the philoso- phers of the Nyaya and the Mimamsa schools, too, were often referred to as haitukas and tarkis, they were logicians within the framework of orthodoxy, whereas the logicians mentioned by Manu were nastikas, i.e. heretics from the Vedic point of view. The Bhagavata Purana,77 too, mentioned the haitukas and this along with the Buddhists and Jainas (for whom the Purana used the word pasandi). It is true that Manu78 advocated very strong legal measures

72 iv. 3. 55. 71 SV. i. 91. See Dasgupta HIP. iii. 515, Rhys Davids DB i. 167-8. 75 ii. 11. 73 i. 1.

78 iv. 30; ii. 11, etc. 76 HIP iii. 518. 7+ on Manu vii. 43. 77 xi. 18. 30.

26 LOKAYATA

against these logicians: one should not even speak with the here- tics (pasandins), transgressors of caste discipline (vikarmas- thas), hypocrites (vaidala cratikas), and the haitukas or the logicians. The reason. however, was not that these haitukas were opposed to the validity of reasoning as such or that they were mere sophists; the reason rather was that these logicians, with the aid of their arguments, were disproving the other world, the sacrificial creed and the authority of the Vedas. The best- known commentators on Manu made this point quite clear. The haitukas (mentioned by Manu), according to Medhatithi,79 were those that were denving the next world and the efficacv of gifts and sacrifices. Kullukabhattas simply said that the haitukas were veda cirodhi tarka ryacaharinah, that is, those who were opposed to the Vedas and were employing reasonings and argu- ments precisely for the sake of this opposition. The evidence of Manu, therefore, cannot prove that the Lokavatikas maintained a purely negativistic attitude to the validity of reasoning. unless a positive attitude to the validity of reasoning means only a dogmatie surrender to the authority of the seriptures. All these do not imply that in Indian philosophy we do not come across a purely negative or destructive attitude to the validity of reasoning as such. We do. Interestingly, however. it was the attitude of the very school of philosophy to which Madhava himself belonged. According to the Vedantas1 alone reasoning is intrinsically invalid: reasoning depends upon the individual capacity of the person arguing and, therefore, on the basis of arguments, what is proved by one cau be disproved by another. It has been conjectured that the Vedantic denial of the vali- dity of reasoning or arguments was provoked, though negatively, by the Lokayatikas themselves. Pestered by the Lokayata argn- ments, which lured men away from the path to heaven and libe- ration, orthodoxy found it necessary, as it were, to deny logie in order to make room for faith. As Dasgupta" has said,

.. it is possible that the doctrine of the orthodox Hindu philosophy. that the ultimate truth can be ascertained only by an appeal to the scriptural texts, since no finality can be reached by arguments or inferences because what may be proved by one logician may be controverted by another logician, and that disproved by yet another logician, can be traced to the negative influence of the sophists or

79 on Manu iv. 30. 80 on Manu iv. 30. 81 Br Su ii. 1. 11. " HIP iii. 517.

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logicians who succeeded in proving theses which were disproved by

logicians. others, whose findings were further contradicted by more expert

According to Dasgupta, these early logicians (haitukas) were the same as the Lokayatikas. Thus the orthodox denial of the validity of reasoning was traced to the negative influence of the Lokayatikas. Assuming this to be true. it camot be argued, as Madhava did, that the Lokayatikas were maintaining a purely destructive attitude to reasoning as such. On the contrary, Madhava, being himself a Vedantist, was maintaining such a destructive or nega- tive attitude. He imputed this verv negative attitude to the Lokavatikas in a somewhat peculiar, though apparently con- vincing, manner. This was possible for Madhava because there are grounds to presume, as we shall presently see, that the Loka. yatikas were really objecting to the inferential process not as such, but in the special sense in which it claimed to prove the reality of God, soul and the other world. But Dasgupta's suggestion that the orthodov denial of the validity of reasoning could be traced negatively to the influence of the Lokayatikas, cannot be readily admitted. It rests upon the assumption that the Lokavatikas were only sophists and quibblers of words, employing reason for destructive purposes alone. That the Lokayatikas denied many a tenet of orthodox Bralimanism is not doubted. But the question is: Is any argu- ment disproving heaven, liberation and the efficacy of the Vedic sacrifices to be considered destructive and useless sophistry? There was a time when this was a part of the accepted assump- tions of the orthodox circle. But there is no reason why a historian of Indian philosophy should share the view today. But, it will be argued, we bave no evidence of the Lokaya- tikas emploving their arguments for constructive purposes. The only evidence that we have are evidences in which the Lokaya- tikas were employing reasoning for the purpose of denying something or the other. As H. P. Sastris3 said, 'they have few doctrines to defend but a lot to assail, and in the matter of assailing, thev are bold, direct and exceedingly sarcastic.' There is no doubt that this is the impression that we have about the Lokayatikas. But the sources of our information are peculiar.

8 L 4.

28 LOKAYATA

Our impression of the Lokayatikas is derived from their philo- sophical opponents. And these opponents were busy defending themselves against the Lokayata-onslaughts directed against them. They had obviously no other occasion to refer to the Lokayata views. In other words, what we have are only answers to the Lokayata criticisms of certain positive contentions of the rival philosophers, or more strictly, of rival schools of philo- sophy. This has given us the idea that the Lokayatikas were only criticising others and they had hardly anything positive to defend. However, this is only a limitation of our knowledge of the Lokayata and it would be wrong to consider it to be a basic characteristic of the Lokayata standpoint. Thanks to the laborious researches of Dasguptas4 himself, even this limitation of our knowledge is now partially removed. He has salvaged for us a valuable piece of information concern- ing the positive attitude of the Lokayatikas to the inferential process. The special importance of this evidence is derived from the circumstance that here we have the Lokayata-standpoint ex- plained by one who was himself a Lokayatika. Ilis name is Purandara. We have already seen how Tucci has argued that this Purandara was himself an author of texts written from the Carvaka point of view, carvaka-mate-granthakarta. Dasgupta, agreed to it and wanted to place him in 7th century A.D. This date is of course comparatively late. However, himself belong- ing to the Lokayata school, he was presumably only carrying forward the real Lokayata tradition. Dasguptas5 summed up Purandara's position as follows:

Purandara .... admits the usefulness of inference in determining the nature of all worldly things where perceptual experience is available; but inference cannot be employed for establishing any dogma regard- ing the transcendental world, or life after death or the laws of karma which cannot be available to ordinary perceptual experience.

Purandarah tu aha, lokaprasiddham anumanam carvakaih api isyate eva, yat tu kaih cit laukikam margam atikramya anumanam ucyate tan nisidhvate.80

This means: But Purandara said that even according to the Carvakas inference was valid within the range of the empirically known world; if, however, one proposed to extend its application

84 HIP iii. 536. 85 Ib.

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beyond the range of the this-worldly objects, one's claim would be a forbidden one. And this was not a dogmatic assertion on the part of Puran- dara. Dasgupta himself has tried to explain the grounds of Purandara, following the suggestions of Vadideva Suri, the Jaina author, who also quoted a sutra of Purandara:

The main reason for upholding such a distinction between the validity of inference in our practical life of ordinary experience, and in ascertaining transcending truths beyond experience, lies in this, that an inductive generalisation is made by observing a large number of cases of agreement in presence together with agreement in absence, and no case of agreement in presence can be observed in the trans- cendent sphere; for even if such spheres existed they could not be perceived by the senses. Thus, since in the supposed supra-sensuous transcendent world no case of a hetu agreeing with the presence of its sadhya can be observed, no inductive generalisation or law of concomitance can be made relating to this sphere.87 Thus, according to the impression which Vadideva Suri gave us about the Lokayata epistemology, the inferential process was only secondary (gauna) in importance. The Lokayatikas wanted to attribute primacy to sense-perception. Manibhadra,ss in his commentary on Sat Darsana Samuccaya, gave some extremely striking reasons for the Lokayata-emphasis on the primacy of sensc-perception. The reasons are socio-political and appear to be strangely modern. There are cunning deceptors, in religious garbs, trying to gencrate in the minds of the people illusions concerning the attainment of heaven and the discrimination bet- ween the good and the bad; and they are trying to establish their claims on the basis of futile references to such sources of valid knowledge as inference, scriptures, etc. The Lokayata insistence on the primacy of sense-perception was meant to be a defence against such deception and exploitation. Being the philosophy of the people it wanted to warn the people against the dangers of religious exploitation. If, as Manibhadra went on explaining the Lokayata point of view, the unperceived, too, were given the status of existence then the poor could as well delude them- selves with the idea of possessing a heap of gold and as such they would trample over their sense of poverty with a kind of indifference; the slave, too, would delude himself with the idea that he had become the master. Such delusions, like the illusions generated by the religious deceptors, would be fatal for the people and since the religious deceptors, in defence of

87 Ib. 88 on SatDS v. 81.

30 LOKAYATA

the existence of the unperceived, were talking too much of infer- ence and testimony, the Lokayatikas were obliged to argue in favour of the primacy of sense-perception. Thus, if the defen- ders of orthodox religion found it necessary to deny reason in order to make room for faith, the Lokayatikas found it equally necessary to argue against the spurious claims of the deceptors in defence of the people. The full picture that we have, therefore, is not the picture of certain isolated sophists indulging in useless disputations; it is rather the picture of a clash of two cultures. The exponents of one were preaching God, heaven and immortality and, as a means to attain these, the efficacy of the Vedic sacrifices. The other represented the standpoint of the people and was trying to defend their material interests. If we admit, and we have already seen that there are sufficiently strong grounds in favour of it, that the Lokayatikas were the first logicians of this country, we may be led to presume further that the birth of Indian logic was linked up with the defence of popular interest against religious deceptions. But more of this later. For we are yet to

deceptions. enquire into the questions concerning the origin of these religious

How far we can actually depend upon Manibhadra in thus comecting the Lokayata-cpistemology with the class interest of the people is of course a different matter. However, one point is sufficiently clear. The purely destructive or negative character of the Lokayata-epistemology, as depicted by Madhava, was fictitious. And, since Madhava derived the metaphysics as well as the ethics of the Lokayatikas from this imaginary epistemo- logy, his picture of the Lokayata is likely to be grossly unreliable.

9. LOKAYATA ETHICS

'The philosophy of pleasure,' wrote Marx,$9 'was never any- thing else but the clever language of certain pleasure-privileged social classes.' If this be true, and if, further, Lokayata, as its etymology indicates, was only the philosophy of the people- the prakrita janah or the crude mob, as Samkara contemptuously characterised them-then the chance of this being the philosophy of pleasure becomes really a remote one. Yet, as described by Madhava, it was but the most extreme form of such a philoso- phy. Madhava90 described the Lokayata ethics as follows:

89 Quot. by Hook FHM 316. I 316. D0 SDS (Cowell) 3.

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The only end of man is enjoyment produced by sensual pleasure. Nor may you say that such cannot be called the end of man as they are always mixed with some kind of pain, because it is our wisdom to enjoy the pure pleasure as far as we can, and to avoid the pain which inevitably accompanies it; just as the man who desires fish takes the fish with their scales and bones, and having taken as many as he wants, desists; or just as the man who desires ricc, takes the rice, straw and all, and having taken as much as he wants, desists. It is not therefore for us, through a fear of pain, to reject the pleasure which our nature instinctively recognises as congenial. Men do not refrain from sowing rice, because forsooth there are wild animals to devour it; nor do they refuse to set the cooking-pots on the fire, because forsooth there are beggars to pester us for a share of the contents. And, thus is the well known verse attributed to the Lokaya- tikas: 'While life remains, let a man lice happily; let him feed on ghee even though he runs in debt. We are going to argue that such a representation of the Lokayata ethics was only a vilification. Lokayata itself, in all presumption, could not have stood for such a crude craving for sensual pleasures. We shall begin with certain points already argued by our modern scholars. Garbe"! wrote: It is natural to conjecture that the Lokayata system was based by its founder upon deeper principles, and developed upon more serious philosophical lines than the information which has come to us from their opponents allows us to understand. This is true. But the question is, why is it natural to con- jecture this? Belvalkar and Ranade"e have given us the answer: its great seductive charm and extensive vogue cannot be readily explained on the usual assumption regarding the purely negative and destructive character of its tenets. The reason why these scholars did not add that the usual assumptions like these were primarily due to the influence of Madhava's picture of the Lokavata, is perhaps that the point is rather obvious. Many evidences may be mentioned to show that the influ- ence of the Lokayata views was deep and widespread. The name Lokayata is itself onc: it meant that which was spread among the people. The zeal of the philosophical opponents to distort, disparage and refute Lokavata was possibly another: there was scarcely any philosophical school in ancient India that did not try all these. If Lokayata was simply as superficial a proposal as to making merry even on debts, we cannot explain how it could

"1 ERE viii. 138, cf. Nehru DI 100. 92 HIP ii. 459.

LOKAYATA

have such a deep and widespread influence, or, why all the schools of Indian philosophy had to take it so seriously. But we have more direct evidences to argue against Madhava's representation of the Lokayata-ethics. In the Vanaparva of the Mahabharata,93 Draupadi said that when she was a child, her father invited a Brahmana to live with them. It was from him that her father as well as her brothers received instructions in the Barhaspatya views: 'O king,' Drau- padi went on addressing Yudhisthira, when, with the intention of listening to this view, I approached my father under the pre- text of some useful work and settled myself on his lap, the Brahmana preceptor, with affection and tenderness, used to tell me all about it.' Barhaspatya was but an alternative name for the Lokayata. To deny this, we have to question our ancient tradition seriously. Nor can it be argued that by the Barhaspatyamata was meant here the ancient science of the state-craft, as Tucci contended. For there is nothing intrinsically heretical about the so-called science of the state-craft, whereas, in the Mahabharata,94 Yudhi- sthira, after listening to the views of Draupadi, actually accused her of being influenced by heretical ideas. Thus the Barhas- patyamata referred to could only be the Lokayata-vicws. But does this Mahabharata evidence agree with the picture of the Lokayata given by Madhava? Obviously not. Had Lokayata merely been what Madhava wanted us to believe, a respectable person like Draupadi's father would have scarcely felt the need of specially inviting a learned Brahmana to teach these views. This learned teacher of the Lokayata-views is said to have been a Brahmana. This may look rather strange. It goes against not only our accepted notion of the Lokayata but also that of a Brahmana. Yet the Buddhist sources appeared to go a step further. As Rhys Davids9 has shown,

the description of the good Brahmana as put, in the Buddhist suttas, into the mouth of Brahmanas themselves, (Anguttara, i. 163. and other passages), mentions Lokayata as one branch of his learning. The whole paragraph is complimentary. And though the exact con- notation of one or two of the other terms is doubtful they are all descriptive of just those things which a Brahmana would have been rightly proud to be judged a master of. Further, Rhys Davids98 has pointed out, in a passage of the Mahabharata (which also occurs in the Harivamsa), 'at

98 M-(Ray) iii. 97. 94 1b. iii. 89. 95 DB i. 166. 90 Ib. i. 169.

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the end of a list of the accomplishments of learned Brahmanas, they are said to be masters of the Lokayata.' Evidences like these perhaps indicate that we are in need of revising our notion of the Brahmana, particularly of the Brah- mana of Buddhist India."7 They also call forth a necessary revision of our notion of the Lokayata derived from Madhava. For these are evidences not merely of some Brahmana's profess- ing and preaching the knowledge of Lokayata, but of learned and distinguished ones doing so. The knowledge of Lokayata, in other words, was considered vital to the accomplished mind, a mark of culture and knowledge. The Lokavata-views, there- fore, could hardly have been the expression of the instinctive vulgarities of the pleasure-seeking mob, as Madhava wanted us to believe. That it could not have been so is indicated by other sources, too. In the Milinda,", a knowledge of the Lokayata was ascri- bed to the hero of the story, Nagasena. This was definitely meant to be a compliment, though, in another passage, which Rhys Davids"" has considered 'a gloss which has crept into the text,' the word lokayatika is used in a derogatory sense. Fur- ther, the Lokayatika was mentioned in the long list of the hermits given in Bana's Harsacarita :100 The holy man's presence was suddenly announced by the king's seeing various Buddhists from various provinces seated in different situation .... Jainas in white robes, white mendicants. followers of Krishna, religious students, ascetics, who pulled out their hair, followers of Kapila, Jainas, Lokayatikas, followers of Kanada, followers of the Upanisads, believers in God as a Creator ... Surely this setting in which the Lokayatikas were placed went very much against their picture in the Sarva Darsana Samgraha. We are thus obliged to reject Madhava's presentation of the Lokayata ethics. But the question is: is there any other source from which we may have at least some rough indication of the positive moral values upheld by the Lokayatikas? Possibly there are some, though the indications are largely indirect. Let us begin with the well known episode of the killing of Carvaka, which occurs in the Santiparva of the Mahabharata.101 After the great Kuruksetra war, when the Pandava brothers were returning triumphantly, thousands of Brahmanas gathered at the city-gate to bestow blessing on Yudhisthira. Among them

99 1b. 97 See Fick SONEIBT ch. viii. as See Rhys Davids DB i. 170. 100 Tr. Cowell & Thomas 236. 101 M (Ray) xil. i. 120 ff.

34 LOKAYATA

was Carvaka. He moved forward and, without the consent of the rest of the Brahmanas, addressed the king thus: This assembly of the Brahmanas is cursing you for you have killed your kins. What have you gained by destroying your own people and murdering your own elders? You should die. This outburst of Carvaka, abrupt that it was, stunned the as- sembled Brahmanas. Yudhisthira felt mortally wounded and wanted to die. But then the other Brahmanas regained their senses and told the king that Carvaka, rather than being their real representative, was only a demon in disguise and a friend of the king's enemy, Duryodhana. They assured the king that the real Brahmanas had only admiration for his great deeds. And then they burnt him, the dissenting Carvaka, to ashes. The story of Carvaka being a demon in disguise, a secret agent of the wicked Duryodhana, etc., is maliciously fanciful and much too crude to be accepted seriously. Yet the point is that Carvaka and Lokayata were but names interchangeable, and, as such, it may not be very wrong to seek here,-in what Carvaka said,-the indications of the real Lokayata-ethics. Carvaka, in this Mahabharata passage, did not say anything that may give us even a remote impression of the let-us-eat-and- drink-for-tomorrow-we-die view of life. On the other hand, if we are at all justified in speaking of any moral value underlying these words, it was distinctively tribal, of those that lived in kinship or gentile organisation. For the dark deed of which Yudhisthira was accused by Carvaka was that of destroying the relatives and murdering the elders. It was not the general charge of destroying human lives, in which case Carvaka's stand could have been described as one of ahimsa or non-violence. It was, rather, the specific charge of killing the kins and that is why we look at it as an expression of the moral standard distinctive of the tribal society: Throughout the history of tribal society, clan-kinship is of all ties the most sacred. The horror excited by homicide within the clan is well-described by Gronbech, writing of the primitive Norsemen: 'from the moment we enter into the clan, the sacredness of life rises up in absolute inviolability, with its judgement upon bloodshed as sacrilege, blindness, suicide. The reaction comes as suddenly and unmistakably as when a nerve is touched by a needle.'102 In the Kuruksetra war it was all very different. It was a war between brothers. Kins had to be killed. The old moral

102 Thomson AA 34-5.

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values of the tribal society were being trampled upon and des- troyed. Thus Carvaka's protest against all these was outspoken and courageous. He was burnt to ashes and the moral standards had to be revised and restated to suit the new situation. We find it done in the Gita. Arjuna, on the eve of the Kuruksetra war, was sad and depressed. He found himself faced with the problem of killing his kins and destroying his elders. He would not fight. So Krisna had to elevate his soul to lofty metaphy -. sical heights from where such killings could be justified. But before such heights could be reached, Krisna had to dwell on the more matter-of-fact and mundane consideration. He argued: You will attain heaven if you are killed in this battle, and, if vou win it, you will enjoy this earth.10: This was quite outspoken. There was the prospect of plea- sure in either alternative-pleasure on earth if you could kill your kins and pleasure in heaven if you are yourself killed. And this was probably the earliest expression of a real ethics of pleasure in the history of Indian philosophical thought. But the ethics of the Carvakas, at least judged on the basis of the Maha- bharata-evidence, was an open protest against this. Could it, therefore, be that those who were accusing the Lokayatikas of a gross philosophy of pleasure were themselves subscribing to it, though surreptitiously?

10. METAPHYSICS

We are going to argue that the world-outlook of the Lokaya- tikas, though basically this-worldly and materialistic, was not exactly the materialistic metaphysics attributed to them by Madhava. The fundamental feature of the Lokayata-materialism was dcha-vada, the view that the self was nothing but the body. This deha-vada of the Lokayatikas might have been the same as the deha-vada of original Tantrism. An analysis of the Lokayata- cosmogony, too, bears out its relationship to Tantrism. This argument is bound to be a complex one, and it is neces- sary to engage into lengthy digressions to substantiate it. It would, therefore, be useful to enumcrate at the beginning the different steps of this argument. Our argument will consist of the following steps; : 1) Lokayata could not have orginally meant a sceptical or

103 Gita ii. 37.

36 LOKAYATA

materialistic philosophy in the sense in which we ordinarily use the term. 2) It was possibly a broad word used to refer to the popular 'cults,' which, though opposed to the Brahmanical rituals, were nevertheless characterised by rituals of a this-worldly character. 3) The followers of the Brahmanical culture called Loka- yata the Asura-view; it may, therefore, be possible to arrive at an idea of the original Lokayata by analysing what was descri- bed as the Asura-views in the Brahmanical sources. 4) Two prominent features of this Asura-view were the deha-vada and a peculiar cosmogony. Both point to a possible relationship between original Lokayata and original Tantrism. The identification of the Lokayata with original Tantrism may appear to be most peculiar. This seems so only because our notions concerning both these ideas are wrong.

11. LOKAYATA AND RITUALS There is no doubt that the Lokayatikas denied the authority of sruti and smriti, ridiculed the Brahmanical rituals and mocked at the idea of the other-world or heaven. Practically all the sources of our information about Lokayata agree on these points. It is because of the Lokayata-criticism of Brahmanical orthodoxy that our scholars have too readily imagined that the Lokayatikas were the ancient sophists, sceptics or atheists in the senses in which we employ these words today. But that is doubtful. By sophists and sceptics we understand certain individual philosophers whereas it may be that Lokayata had never been a philosophy preached by a few individuals. In all probability, it was a body of beliefs and practices, deeply rooted in the lives of the masses and at the same time hostile to the Brahmanical doctrines. That the Lokayatikas were opposed to the Brahmanical rituals does not necessarily mean that they were opposed to rituals as such; the conflict could have been because they want- ed to stick to their own rituals and these rituals were rooted in a set of beliefs with which orthodox Brahmanism was in direct conflict. At the same time, Lokayata was essentially ma- terialistic in the sense of acknowledging the reality of nothing but the material human body and the material universe around us. If, therefore, the Lokayatikas had at all practised any rituals, such rituals could have had little to do with other-

ASURA-VIEW 37

worldliness. This point will apear to us as rather peculiar be -. cause we are used to think that rituals are necessarily religious, and as such, based on an other-worldly outlook. We shall return later to discuss the question how rituals could be essenti- ally this-worldly. For the present we shall only try to show, on fairly ancient evidences, that Lokayata was, on the one hand, definitely an expression of a this-worldly attitude, while, on the other, it was also definitely associated with certain type of rituals. Let us briefly mention the two groups of evidences. First, the Lokayata rejection of other-worldliness. It is indeed not necessary to mention too many evidences to prove this. These are in fact well known and will not be seriously contested by any one. We shall mention here only one interesting evidence, because it is not usually discussed. According to the traditional commentators of Manu, the law-giver was referring to the Lokayatikas by at least two distinct words. These were nastikas and haitukas. Medhatiti, e.g. rendered both the words as Lokayatikas, and, the tvpical formula which, according to Medhatiti, expressed their standpoint, was: nasti dattam nasti hutam nasti paralokam iti. It means, 'there is (no meaning of) gifts, no (efficacy of) sacrificial offerings and no next world.' Thus, in interpreting Manu III. 150 and VIII. 22, Medhatiti said that the nastikas were but 'the Lokayatikas and others' and he attributed the above formula to them in interpreting Manu III. 150 and VIII. 309. And the same formula was attributed bv him to the haitukas while interpreting, Manu IV. 30. All these prove that the Lokayatikas, called the haitukas or nastikas, werc entertaining a materialistic or this-worldly attitude. Of course the date of Medhatiti is not very old. Kane has placed him in A.D. 900, while, according to him the date of Manu was some- where between 200 B.C .- 200 A.D. Yet we have no reason to doubt the authority of Medhatiti. For there is neither any alter- native interpretation of these two words nor is there any evi- dence to show that the Lokayatikas really believed in gifts, sacrificial offerings and the other-world. Secondly, in spite of this rejection of the other-worldly, the Lokayatikas had presumably some kind of rituals of their own. We shall mention three interesting evidences. In the Buddhist text Saddharma Pundarika,10' we come across a peculiar passage in which the words lokayata-mantra-

104 SBE xxi. 263.

38 LOKAYATA

dharaka and lokayatika are mentioned together, though dis- paragingly. As translated by Kern,105 the passage stands as follows: .. when he does not serve, not court, not wait upon adepts at worldly spells (lokayata-mantra-dharaka) and votaries of a world- philosophy (lokayatika) .... What was meant by this peculiar expression lokayata-mantra- dharka, 'adepts at wordly spells"? It is not possible to give the exact answer. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the Lokaya- tikas were referred to by this. So it is clear that they were practising some kind of spell (mantra). In another Buddhist text called the Divyavadana106 we come across this peculiar phrase: lokayata-yajna-mantresu-nisnatah. It may mean either of the following: 1) expert in lokayata-yajna (ritual) and mantra (spell); expert in the yajna and mantra of Lokayata (type); 3) expert in the mantras of the lokayata- yajna. Even accepting the first meaning, we cannot entirely ignore the suggestion of there being a close relation between lokayata, yajna and mantra. Presumably, the Lokayata was connected with some sort of ritual and spell. To this may be added the evidence of the Vinaya Pitaka which definitely indicated that the Lokayata, as understood by the ancient Buddhists, was largely a matter of magic spells. The following passage is to be found in Cullavagga of the Vinaya Pitaka:107

Now at that time the Chabbaggiya Bhikkhus learnt the Lokayata system. People murmured, etc., saying, 'Like those who still enjoy the plea- sures of the world!' The Bhikkhus heard of the people thus murmuring; and those Bhik- khus told the matter to the Blessed One. 'Now can a man who holds the Lokayata as valuable reach up, O Bhikkhus, to the full advantage of, or attain to full growth in, to full breadth in this doctrine and discipline?' "This cannot be, Lord!' 'Or can a man who holds this doctrine and discipline to be valuable learn the Lokayata system?' "This cannot be, Lord!' 'You are not, O Bhikkhus, to learn the Lokayata system. Whosoever

Now at that time the Chabbaggiya Bhikkhus taught the Lokayata monk)'. does so, shall be guilty of dukkata (a form of offence for the

People murmured, etc., saying, 'Like those still enjoying the plea- system.

sures of the world !' 105 Ib. 100 619. 107 SBE xx. 151-2.

ASURA-VIEW 39

They told this matter to the Blessed One. 'You are not, O Bhikkhus, to teach the Lokayata system. Whosoever does so, shall be guilty of dukkata.' (Similar paragraphs to the last, ending -) 'You are not, O Bhikkhus, to learn-to teach,- the low arts (of divination, spells, omens, astrology, sacrifices to gods, witchcraft, and quackery.).' It is to be noted that Lokayata was mentioned as one of these 'low arts,' by which were meant divination, spells, omens, etc. The Pali words used were tiracchana cigga, meaning lite- rally 'brutish or beastly wisdom.' Obviously, the Buddhists had contempt for these. But that is not the point at discussion. The point, rather, is that Lokayata, as known to them, was definitely associated with some kind of ritual and spell. Rhys Davids and Oldenberg108 have pointed out that the same list of the seven low arts, occurred in Maha Sila, and, as in the passage of Culla- vagga quoted above, Lokayata was mentioned there as one of them. The connection between Lokayata and rituals is thus clear. It is probably from this point of view that we may under- stand the meaning of what Kumarila Bhatta, who represented one school of the Mimamsa philosophy, said against the alter- native representation of the same philosophy by Prabhakara and his followers. Kumarila109 said: For in practice the Mimamsa has been for the most part converted into a Lokayata system; but I have made this effort to bring it into a theistic path. It is customary to interpret this as follows: The Prabhakara school left no place for God in the Mimamsa philosophy; Kuma- rila restored the position of God in it and thus made it theistic. As Muir110 said, I learn from Professor Banerjea that the Mimamsaka commentator Prabhakara and his school treat the Purva Mimamsa as an atheistic system, while Kumarila makes it out to be theistic. This may be true; but this may not be the whole of truth. Did Kumarila mean by the above that Mimamsa philosophy, as interpreted by the Prabhakara School, was practically reduced to the Lokayata simply because it left no place for God in it? That would equate Lokayata with Godlessness. But the Mimamsa philosophy was essentially a rationalisation of rituals. Mimamsa minus God,-that is Mimamsa as interpreted by the

108 Ib. xx. 152 n. 109 Varttika 10. 110 OST iii. 95.

40 LOKAYATA

Prabhakara school, could only have been the rationalisation of God-less rituals. And this, according to Kumarila, was reducing the Mimamsa practically into the Lokayata. Thus, according to the indications of Kumarila, too, there were rituals associated with Lokayata, though such rituals were God-less and essentially this-worldly. If all these be true, then, in spite of its rejection of the authority of sruti and smriti and in spite of its denial of God, the other-world and the efficacy of the Brahmanical rituals, the Lokayata could have hardly been the philosophy of scepticism and materialism in our usual sense, that is in the sense of being propounded by some individual philosophers. Rather, the clash between Brahmanism and the Lokayata assumes for us the ap- pearance of a clash of two distinct cultures, the latter being deeply rooted in the lives of the masses. It is possibly from this point of view that we may understand the claim of Belvalkar and Ranade that the Lokayata enjoyed 'extensive vogne and seduc- tive charm' in this country. It is from this point of view again that we may also understand the obvious implication of lokesu ayata, being prevalent among the masses, an implication which lies at the root of the name itself. On the other hand, if we re- ject this point of view, we shall be led to the absurd idea that the Indian masses, for inscrutable reasons, were deeply and fundamentally influenced by the views of certain individual phi- losophers who were scepties, sophists, atheists and materialists in the modern senses of these terms.

12. LOKAYATA AND THE ASURA-VIEW But the problem is, how can we arrive at an idea of the world-outlook of the Lokayatikas, using the word lokayata in the broader sense in which we have proposed to understand it? Left, as we are, only with the version of their opponents, we may try the procedure of beginning with an analysis of certain Brahma- nical myths propagated against the Lokayatikas. According to the Mahabharata, the Carvaka killed by the holy Brahmanas was originally only a raksasa, a demon. He ac- quired tremendous strength by severe penances; he then started tormenting and subduing the devas, the gods. This myth is typical; because the Brahmanical sources were persistently ascribing the Lokayata-views to the peoples described as demons and monsters-the raksasas, daityas and asuras.

ASURA-VIEW 41

The Visnu Purana,11 after describing how the Great De- ceiver (Mayamoha), seduced the Daityas to the acceptance of the two heretical views, namely the Buddhist and the Jaina ones, proceeded to explain the genesis of the Lokayata-views thus: The Great Deceiver, practising illusion, next beguiled other Daityas by means of many other sorts of heresy. In a very short time these Asuras (Daityas), deluded by the Deceiver, abandoned the entire system founded on the ordinances of the triple Veda. Some reviled the Vedas, others the gods, others the ceremonial of sacrifice and others the Brahmanas: This (they exclaimed), is a doctrine which will not bear discussion; the slaughter (of animals in sacrifice) is not conducive to religious merit. (To say that) oblations of butter consumed in the fire produce any future reward, is the assertion of a child. If Indra, after having attained to god- head by numerous sacrifices,-feeds upon sami and other woods; then an animal which eats leaves is superior to him. If it be a fact that a beast slain in sacrifice is exalted to heaven, why does not the worshipper slaughter his own father? If a man is really satiated by the food which another person eats, then sraddhas should be offered to people who are travelling abroad, and they, trusting to this, should have no need to carry any food along with them ... Infallible utterances do not, great Asuras, fall from the skies; it is only assertions founded on reasoning that are accepted by me and by other (intelligent) persons like yourselves. Thus by numerous methods, the Daityas were unsettled by the great Deceiver, so that none of them any longer regarded the triple Veda with favour. When the Daityas had entered on this path of error, then Devas (gods) mustered all their energies, and approached to battle. Then followed a combat between the gods and the Asuras, and the latter, who had abandoned the right road, were smitten by the former. In previous times they had been defended by the armour of righteousness which they bore, but when that had been destroyed they also perished. Muir1!" has already convincingly argued that the view des- cribed here could only have been the Lokayata-view. It is to be noted, further, that the Maitrayani Upanisad,11a too. mention- ed practically the same myth concerning the origin of the devilish, false and the un-Vedic views of the Lokayatikas.

Verily, Brihaspati (the teacher of the gods) became Sukra (the teacher of the Asuras), and for the security of Indra created this ignorance (avidya) for the destruction of the Asura (devils). By this (ignorance) men declare that the inauspicious is auspicious, and that the auspicious is inauspicious. They say that there should be atten- tion to law (dharma) which is destructive of the Veda and of other Scriptures (sastra). Hence, one should not attend to this (teaching). It is false. It is like a barren woman. Mere pleasure is the fruit thereof as also of one who deviates from the proper course. It should not be entered upon. 'In the Gita,11+ Krisna said,

111 iii. 18. 14-26. (tr. Muir) 11 JRAS xix. 302. 113 vii. 9. (tr. Hume). 114 xvi. 6.

42 LOKAYATA

Two races were created in this world,-the devas (gods) and the asuras. O Arjuna, I have already described for you the views of the devas (gods). Listen, now, to the views of the asuras. By the views of the devas was obviously indicated the philoso- phical essence of the Gita. But what was meant by the views of the asuras? Sridharasvami, by far the ablest of the commen- tators on the Gita, said that the views ascribed by the Gita to the asuras was nothing but the Lokayata-views. We have, thus, here the same myth, namely, that the Lokayata-views were the views of the demons and the monsters. Such myths were of course meant to be scare-crows,-to frighten people away from the Lokayata-views. Obviously, the myths could not have been true in the form in which these were presented. Nevertheless, these might have contained an element of important truth. The Lokayata-views, in all presumption, were the views of those people that were despised as daityas and asuras in the Brahmanical sources. But who were these people? We shall presently see that this question is a complex one and we cannot expect a simple answer to it. But there is no doubt that at least in a great many places the words referred to those people who were considered by the inheritors of the Vedic tradi- tion to be their aliens and that such aliens enjoyed a culture basically different from the so-called Brahmanical one. But what exactly was the view of the asuras? How far was it this-worldly and yet associated with rituals and spells?

13. ASURA-VIEW AND THE ANCIENT DEHA-VADA Dasgupta115 has already drawn our attention to the possi- bility of reconstructing the ancient Lokayata by using the view attributed to the asuras as the clue. According to him the asuras were the ancient Sumerians. Hence he thought that the Lokayata views came from ancient Sumeria. This, as we shall see, is a doubtful speculation; the identification of the asuras with the ancient Sumerians is at best one among many possible hypo- theses. Nevertheless, his basic suggestion is an important one, for the ancient Brahmanical sources were constantly attributing the Lokayata-views to the asuras. Leaving, therefore, for the time being, the question of the identity of the asuras, we may examine certain evidences con- cerning the views attributed to them. We shall confine ourselves

115 HIP iii. 528 ff.

ASURA-VIEW 43

mainly to two points of the asura-views, namely, the doctrine of the self and the doctrine of the origin of the universe. The doctrine of the self first. The Maitrayani Upanisad110 told the following story: Verily, the gods and the devils (asuras), being desirous of the self (atman), came into the presence of Brahma. They did obeisance to

tell us.' him and said: 'Sir, we are desirous of the self (atman). So, do you Then, meditating long, he thought to himself: 'Verily, these devils are desirous of a self (atman) different (from the true one).' Therefore a very different doctrine was told to them. Upon that fools here live their life with intense attachment, destroy- ing the saving raft and praising what is false. They see the false as if it were true, as in jugglery Hence, what is set forth in the Vedas-that is true! Upon what is told in the Vedas-upon that wise men live their life. Therefore, a Brahmana should not study what is non-Vedic. This should be the purpose. Whether the view of the self (atman) subscribed to by the asuras was preached to them deliberately to delude them away from truth, is of course a doubtful point. However, there is no doubt that the author of the Upanisad wanted to single out the doctrine of the self (atman) as the most prominent feature of the asura-views. But what was this asura-doctrine concerning the self? The Maitrayani Upanisad did not give us the answer. However, we find the answer in the Chandogya Upanisad, where the same story was repeated in greater details. We quote below the story of Indra and Virocana, as told in the Chandogya Upanisad:117

'The Self (atman), which is free from evil, ageless, deathless, sorrowless, hungerless, thirstless, whose desire is the Real, whose conception is the Real-He should be searched out, Him one should desire to understand. He obtains all worlds and all desires who has found out and who understands the Self.'-Thus spake Prajapati. Then both the gods and the devils (devas and asuras) heard it. Then they said: 'Come! Let us search out the Self, the Self by searching out whom one obtains all worlds and all desires!' Then Indra from among the gods went forth unto him, and Viro- cana from among the devils. Then, without communicating with each other, the two came into the presence of Prajapati, fuel in hand. Then for thirty-two years the two lived the chaste life of a student of sacred knowledge (brahmacarya).

living?' Then Prajapati said to the two: 'Desiring what have you been

Then the two said: 'The Self (atman), which is free from evil,

116 vii. 10 (tr. Hume). 117 viii. 788 (tr. Hume).

44 LOKAYATA

ageless, deathless, sorrowless, hungerless, thirstless, whose desire is the Real, whose conception is the Real-He should be searched out, Him one should desire to understand. He obtains all worlds and all desires who has found out and who understands that Self. - Such do people declare to be your words, Sir. We have been living desiring Him.' Then Prajapati said to the two: 'That Person who is seen in the eye-He is the Self (atman) of whom I spoke. That is the immortal, the fearless. That is Brahman. 'But this one, Sir, who is observed in water and in a mirror- which one is he?' 'The same one, indeed, is observed in all these,' said he. 'Look at yourself in a pan of water. Anything that you do not understand of the Self, tell me.' Then the two looked in a pan of water. Then Prajapati said to the two: 'What do you see?' Then the two said: 'We see everything here, Sir, a Self corres- ponding exactly, even to the hair and fingernails!' Then Prajapati said to the two: 'Make yourselves well orna- mented, well-dressed, adorned, and look in a pan of water!' Then the two made themselves well-ornamented, well-dressed, adorned, and looked in a pan of water. Then Prajapati said to the two: 'What do you see?' Then the two said: 'Just as we ourselves are here, Sir, well- ornamented, well-dressed. adorned-so there, Sir, well-ornamented, well-dressed, adorned.' 'That is the Self,' said he. 'That is the immortal, the fearless. That is Brahman.' Then with tranquil heart (santa hridaya) the two went forth. Then Prajapati glanced after them, and said: 'They go without having comprehended, without having found the Self (atman). Who- soever shall have such a doctrine (upanisad), be they gods or be they devils, they shall perish.' Then with tranquil heart Virocana came to the devils. To them he then declared this doctrine (upanisad): 'Oneself (atman) is to be made happy here on earth. Oneself is to be waited upon. He who makes his own Self (atman) happy here on earth, who waits upon himself-he obtains both worlds, both this world and the yonder.' Therefore even now here on earth they say of one who is not a giver, who is not a believer (a-sraddadhana), who is not a sacri- ficer .... for such is the doctrine (upanisad) of the devils. They adorn the body (sarira) of one deceased with what they have begged, with dress, with ornament, as they call it, for they think that thereby they will win yonder world. After this, the Upanisad went on to describe how Indra, the representative of the devas or the gods, found the real danger in sticking to such a view of the Self and how he returned to Prajapati in order to be led gradually to an idealistic understand- ing of the nature of the true Self. This part of the story inte- rests us only in so far as it shows what the asura-views were not. For Virocana, along with the asuras, whose representative he was, was said to have remained satisfied with the understanding of the Self as identical with the body.

ASURA-VIEW 45

The reference to the yonder-world as forming part of the asura-belief is, of course, peculiar, and, at least apparently, it is inconsistent with the view that there is no Self over and above the body. It might have been only a matter of using set formulae rather carelessly. In any case, there can be no doubt that such a belief could not have formed part of the Lokayata-views, for all the available evidences concerning the Lokayata are definitely against it. However, with this reservation, we are obliged to accept Dasgupta's suggestion that the view cquating the Self with the body attributed by the Upanisad to the asuras could only be the Lokayata-view. The evidence for this is not merely that the Brahmanical myths were persistently attributing the Lokayata-views to the asuras. Further, this doctrine of there being no Self over and above the body was the main point ou which the rival philosophers concentrated their attacks on Lokayata. The writings of Samkaracarya may be taken as a typical example. In his commentary on the Brahma Sutra, Samkara men- tioned the Lokayata-views thrice and invariably as the doctrine of there being no Self over and above the body.

Unlearned people and the Lokayatikas are of opinion that the mere body endowed with the quality of intelligence is the Self.118 For this very reason, viz: that intelligence is observed only where a body is observed while it is never seen without a body, the Mate- rialists (Lokayatikas) consider intelligence to be a mere attribute of the body.119 Here now some Materialists (Lokayatikas) who see the Self in the body only, are of opinion that a Self separate from the body does not exist; assume that consciousness (caitanya), although not observed in earth and other external elements-either single or combined-may yet appear in them when transformed into the shape of a body, so that consciousness springs from them; and thus maintain that know- ledge is analogous to intoxicating quality (which arises when certain materials are mixed in certain proportions), and that man is only a body qualified by consciousness. There is, thus, according to them no Self separate from the body and capable of going to the heavenly world or obtaining release, through which consciousness is in the body; but the body alone is what is conscious, is the Self. For this assertion they allege the reason stated in the sutra, 'On account of its existence where a body is.' For wherever something exists if some other thing exists, and does not exist if that other thing does not exist, we determine the former thing to be a mere quality of the latter; light and heat, e.g. we determine to be qualities of fire. And as life, movement, consciousness, remembrance and so on-which by

118 on Br Su i. 1. 1. 119 SBE xxxiv.

46 LOKAYATA

the upholders of an independent Self are considered qualities of the Self-are observed only within bodies and not outside bodies, and as an abode of those qualities, different from the body, cannot be proved, it follows that they must be qualities of the body only. The Self therefore is not different from the body.120

Thus, we have here a view identifying the Self with the body and clearly refcrred to as the Lokayata-view. It is to be noted that Samkara did not mention, nor did he care to refute, any other contention of the Lokayatikas; this implies that this was considered by him to be the most important among the Lokayata-tenets. Such a view of the Self was, moreover, very ancient; it was in fact older than the Brahma Sutra, on which Samkara com- mented. We find the same, or at least a very similar, view re- ferred to by the Brihad-Aranyaka Upanisad and also by the carly Buddhist literatures. In the Brihad-Aranyaka Upanisad,121 Yajnavalkya said to Maitreyi:

Arising out of these elements (bhuta), into them also one

samjna asti). vanishes away. After death there is no consciousness (na pretya

The same thing is repeated in another place of the Brihad- Aranyaka Upanisad122 and presumably a view like this was re- ferred to by Yama in the Katha Upanisad.128 Maitreyi, in the Brihad-Aranyaka, was naturally bewildered to listen to such a view of the Self from Yajnavalkya. But it was obviously not his own view; it was the position of the opponent which he was contesting. Therefore, it could have been the view of the ancient Lokayatikas. Dasgupta124 has already shown that this was the way in which Jayanta was wanting to look at the Upanisadic passage:

Jayanta says in his Nyaya Manjari that the Lokayata system was based on views expressed in passages like the above, which represent only the opponent's (purva-paksa) view. Referring to this view of the Self, Rhys Davids125 said:

A very similar, if not indeed the very same view is also controverted in the Brahmajala Sutta, and is constantly referred to throughout the Pitakas under the stock phrase tam jivam tam sariram.

120 Ib. xxxviii. 269. 121 ii. 4. 12 (tr. Hume). 124 HIP iii. 519. 122 iv. 5. 13. 123 ji. 6. 125 DB i. 167

ASURA-VIEW 47

As translated by Rhys Davids, the passage is as follows: In the first place, brethren, some recluse or Brahmana puts forth the following opinion, the following view: 'Since, Sir, this soul has form, is built up of the four elements, and is the offspring of father and mother, it is cut off, destroyed, on the dissolution of the body; and does not continue after death; and then, Sir, the soul is completely annihilated .... '126 If such a view, as Rhys Davids said, was 'constantly refer- red to throughout the Pitakas,' then we are obliged at least to admit that a view like this must have becn widely prevalent in Buddhist India. Moreover, as Rhys Davids127 has himself shown, that the names Lokayata and Lokayatikas occurred frequently in the early Buddhist sources. Under these circum- stances, it is only natural for us to think that the doctrine under discussion, or something very much like it, was an aspect of the original Lokayata. But this is precisely the point which Rhys Davids has strongly doubted. According to him, we come across a view like this in the ancient Buddhist sources; we also come across in these sources the name Lokayata; but nowhere do we come across expressed connection between the two. Therefore, we cannot infer any such connection. Of course Samkara refut- ed a similar doctrine, and he called it Lokayata. This, according to Rhys Davids, was possibly an error.

Samkara, in setting forth his theory of the soul, controverts a curi- ous opinion which he ascribes to Lokayatikas-possibly wrongly, as the very same opinion was controverted ages before in the Pita- kas, and not there called Lokayata, though the word was used in Pitaka times.128 We naturally hesitate to agree with Rhys Davids on this point. The evidence of what is clear cannot be set aside by the evidence of what is obscure. What is clear is that a kind of deha-vada was repeatedly referred to by the early Buddhist sources. Secondly, a doctrine called the Lokayata was fre- quently mentioned by the same sources. Thirdly, Samkara, though he came long after the early Buddhists, identified the two and wanted to refute specifically this deha-vada as the doc- trine of the Lokayatikas. What is obscure, however, is why these early Buddhist sources did not mention the deha-cada together with the name Lokayata and expressedly identify the two. But the absence of any expressed identification cannot be the same as a positive denial of it, particularly in the face of the

126 Ib. i. 46. 127 Ib. i. 172. 128 Ib. i. 171-2.

48 LOKAYATA

evidence provided by the writings of Samkara. The contention of Rhys Davids would have been acceptable if it were possible to find a name other than the Lokayata used by the Buddhist sources to designate the deha-cada under discussion, or, in the alternative, to find some doctrine other than the dcha-vada being definitely referred to by these sources under the designa- tion of Lokayata. But none of these possibilities are there. To agree with Rhys Davids it would be necessary to assume that though this deha-cada had an extensive vogue in Buddhist India, it had no distinct name assigned to it, or, at least the Buddhist writers never felt the need of mentioning its name. It would be necessary to assume, further, that there was a widely prevelant doctrine called the Lokayata, but the Buddhist writers never felt the need of describing it. Such assumptions would be extravagant. Besides, it would be necessary to assume that Samkara was deliberately falsifying the position of the Lokaya- tikas by attributing to them a deha-vada in which they them- selves did not believe. The time-gap separating Samkara from the carly Buddhists might have been a long one; but there is nothing to disprove the possibility that Samkara was only dwell- ing on a point tradition handed down to him from a remote past, probably from the days of the Brihad-Aranyaka and the Chandogya Upanisads.

14. ASURA COSMOGONY

This deha-vada of the Upanisads and the Pitakas could have been genuinely Lokayatika. But it could not have been the deha-vada of Madhava's description, because, as we have al- ready seen, Lokayata was also characterised by its distinctive spells and rituals. In order to understand the Lokayata stand- point, therefore, it is necessary to raise a new question. Do we come across in the cultural history of ancient India any deha- vada which was at the same time characterised by its distinctive spells and rituals? As a matter of fact we do. It was the deha- vada of those obscure beliefs and practices that are broadly referred to as Tantrism. . Tantrism was very old; competent scholars129 have con- jectured that it could have been even older than the Vedas. Tantrism, with all its spells and rituals, was distinctly

129 Dasgupta ORC 27.

ASURA-VIEW 49

non-Vedic and, at least in its early phase, opposed to the Vedic tradition. As Kulluka Bhatta,130 the commentator on Manu put it, 'srutis are two-fold, the Vedic and the Tantrik.' Tantrism, was in a sense, lokesu ayatah, prevalent among the people. As a modern scholar131 has put it, 'In the popular know- ledge and belief they (Tantras) have practically superceded the Vedas over a large part of India.' And this Tantrism was, in a very important sense, the extreme form of deha-vada. Deha, that is, the material human body, as conceived by Tantrism, was a microcosm of the universe itself.132 We shall return later to discuss in greater details all these aspects of Tantrism. For the present let us see how far this clue, namely, that the deha-vada of the ancient Lokayatikas could have been the same as the deha-vada of Tantrism, may help us further to reconstruct the ancient Lokayata. We have already seen that the asura-view referred to in the Gita was equated by Sridhara to the Lokayata-view. We do not have any strong reason to question Sridhara's authority parti- cularly because sources as old as the Chandogya Upanisad, the Maitrayani Upanisad and the Visnu Purana persistently attri- buted the Lokayata-views to the asuras. We may, therefore, look more closely into the Gita to see whether any more positive information about the asura-view is found in it. Much of what the Gita said about the asuras and their views was of course an expression of sheer contempt: the asuras could not differentiate between desire and self-restraint; they had no notion of purity, morality and truth; and so on.133 How- ever, it is possible for us to recover at least two interesting indi- cations about the asura-view from this heap of abuses and sland- ers. The first implied that the asuras had a definite cosmogony and the second that they had distinct forms of ritual practices. The Gita summed up the cosmogony of the asuras, thus: aparaspara sambhutam kim anyat kama haitukam.134 The world originated from the union of the male and the female and that it could not have any other cause than kama or the sexual urge. Secondly, according to the Gita, these same asuras, in spite of their denial of God and the next world135 had some distinct forms of ritual practices of their own136: 'the yajna (ritual) they

130 on Manu ii. 1. 188 xvi. 7 ff. 181 ERE xii. 193. 132 Dasgupta ORC 31. 134 xvi. 8. 135 Ib. 136 xvi. 17.

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LOKAYATA

perform is yajna only in name.'137 So they were performing some kind of yajna after all, though naturally, these rituals were con- sidered to be as bad as no rituals by those that despised them. So the asuras of the Gita had a distinct cosmogony, and, in spite of their essential this-worldliness and the denial of God, they were practising some kind of rituals of their own. Accept- ing, therefore, the suggestion of Sridhara that these asuras were but the Lokayatikas, we may try to identify the ancient Lokayata on the basis of these two clues. The question is: do we come across in the ancient Indian tradition the same or similar cosmo- gony accompanied by some form of non-Vedic or non-Brahma- nical ritual practices? The answer is in the affirmative. The sug- gestion, again, is that we are to look at the Tantra to find it. Following is a free rendering into English of how one of the ablest of our recent writers138 on Tantrism has explained its cosmogony:

In the case of the human beings the process which leads to the creation of a new life is the union of the male with the female. The universe was created in the same way, through the union of the purusa (the male) with the prakriti (the female) .... That which was the great original throbbing in the vast empty sky manifests itself in the human beings in the form of erotic urge (kama), the working of the Eros (Madana). Exactly in the manner in which the erotic urge (kama) and Madana lead, in the case of the human beings, to new names and new forms, the great throbbing caused by the erotic urge and Madana in the primordial purusa and pra- kriti caused new names and new forms throughout the universe ... In certain Tantras the similarity between and, in fact, the sameness of the union of Siva (purusa, the male) and Sakti (prakriti, the female) on the one hand, and that of the human male and the human female, on the other, is explained in meticulous details,-the former accounting for the birth of the universe while the latter accounting for the birth of human beings.

Thus, the asura-cosmogony, by which Sridhara meant the Lokayata-cosmogony, was the same as the cosmogony of the Tantras.139 We have already seen that the Lokayata deha-vada could have been the same as the Tantrika one. The two sug- gestions converge. Lokayata and Tantrism were probably the same. This may also explain the references to the Lokayata- rituals found in the ancient Buddhist texts as well as the asura- rituals referred to by the Gita.

137 xvi. 17. 138 Bandopadhyaya R (B) il. 294-5. 139 Cf. Thomson SAGS ii. 91 for similar cosmogony elsewhere.

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15. LOKAYATA AND TANTRA The following is taken from Dasgupta:140

Gunaratna, however, in his commentary on the Sat Darsana Samuccaya, speaks of the Carvaks as being a nihilistic sect who only eat but do not regard the existence of virtue and vice and do not trust anything else but what can be directly perceived. They drank wines and ate meat and were given to unrestricted sex-indulgence. Each year they gathered together on a particular day and had un- restricted intercourse with women. They behaved like common people and for this reason they were called lokayata. The promiscuity of the Lokayatikas referred to by Guna- ratna suggests an interesting point. It could not have been a mere mark of moral depravity; for the depraved do not have to assign a special day of the year for such orgies. Therefore, the promiscuity had a ritual significance. And if the promiscuity was a ritual, so must have been the practice of eating meat and drinking wine. We have, thus, in Gunaratna's writings at least three ma-s of the Tantrikas. As is well known, the five-fold ritual of the Tantrikas is called panca makara or the five ma-s be- cause the words for these practices begin with the letter ma. These are: madya (wine), mamsa (meat) maithuna (sexual in- tercourse), mudra (fricd ccreals), matsya (fish). The first three being most important in the list, the only way in which we can understand Gunaratna's statement is that he wanted to identify the Tantra with the Lokayata. Gunaratna's statement, therefore, to say the least, was very remarkable. What is no less remarkable, however, is Dasgupta's indifference to its significance. The only ebservation he found it necessary to make on Gunaratna's words was concerning the uncertainty of the name Carvaka: Thus it is difficult to say whether the word Carvaka was the name of a real personage or a mere allusive term applied to the adherents of the lokayata view.141 Obviously, Gunaratna's observations suggest more problems than this. We may begin with what Gunaratna142 actually said: After this-the Lokayata-view. The nature of the nastikas first. The Kapalikas, who smear their bodies with ashes and who are Yogins, are some of them, degenerate Brahmanas. They do not recognise virtue (punya) and vice (papa) of the creatures. They say that the world is made up of four elements. Some of them, the Car- vakas and others, consider akasa (empty space) to be the fifth ele- ment; they view the world as made of five elements. According to

140 HIP iii. 533. 141 Ib. 142 TRD 300.

52 LOKAYATA

them, consciousness emerges in these elements in the manner of the intoxicating power. Living beings are like bubbles in water. Man is nothing but body endowed with consciousness. They drink wine and eat meat and indulge in indiscriminate sexual intercourse, even incest. On a specific day of each year all of them gather together and unite with any woman that they may desire. They do not recognise any dharma (religious ideal) over and above kama (the erotic urge). They are called the Carvakas, the Lokayatikas, etc. To drink and to chew is their motto; they are called Carvakas be- cause they chew (carv), that is, eat without discrimination. They consider virtue and vice to be merely qualities attributed to the objects .... They are also called Lokayatas or Lokayatikas because they behave like the ordinary undiscerning masses. They are also called Barhaspatyas, because their doctrine was originally pro- pounded by Brihaspati. Gunaratna took care to mention here all the alternative names traditionally attributed to the Lokayatikas. These were the Carvakas and the Barhaspatyas. We are thus left with no doubt as to who he was speaking about. At the same time he said that these Lokayatikas were Kapalikas; they were Yogins and they smeared their bodies with ashes. We know that the Kapalikas are Tantrikas143 and Tantrism is a form of Yogic practice in which the act of smearing the body with ashes plays a prominent part. It is in this context that the three important ma-s of Tantric practice, namely madya, mamsa and maithuna, mentioned by Gunaratna, are to be understood. The identity of the Lokayatikas with the Tantrikas could not have been more complete, though the materialistic view mentioned here by Gunaratna does not fit in with our usual notion about Tantrism. But, as we shall fully discuss later, this is largely because of the fact that our usual notion of Tantrism is in need of serious revi- sion. Tantrism, in its origin and essence, was not what we commonly think it to have been. In so far as it had any philoso- phical basis at all, Tantrism was materialistic, or better, proto- materialistic, that is, a kind of primitive materialism wrapped in archaic phantasies. The deha-vada as well as the peculiar cos- mogony of Tantrism already referred to are examples of this. This proto-materialism was obviously far from our modern con- ception of the materialistic philosophy. Yet it is important to note that the original Tantrism represented a phase of human thought which was yet to be acquainted with the spiritualistic values. There is no doubt that we come across all sorts of spiri- tualistic ideas in the written treatises on the Tantra. But, as it

143 Dasgupta ORC 105 n .: 'Kapali is the general name given to the Tantric Yogins.'

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is rightly said,144 it is difficult to find out the real tenets of Tan- trism from the written treatises that are available for us. The reason is that persistent efforts were made in these treatises to bring Tantrism on theistic lines and spiritualistic ideas were continually superimposed on it. This resulted in the so-called schools of Tantrism,-the Buddhistic Tantrism and the Hindu Tantrism, the latter subdivided again into Vaisnava Tantrism and Sakta Tantrism. Tantrism, however, was much older than all these-older in fact than the origin of the spiritualistic ideas in general. But more of this later. For the present let us confine ourselves to the evidence of Gunaratna. H. P. Sastri, thanks to his greater objectivity, did not over- look or ignore the suggestion of Gunaratna. 'Gunaratna,' he said,145 'identifies the Kapalikas with the Lokayatikas.' He has, moreover, drawn our attention to certain other indications which pointed to the same identification. One of these, according to him, is to be found in the Brihaspati Sutra edited by Thomas. We find in this text two successive aphorisms, the first referring to the Lokayatikas and the second to the Kapalikas, and these two aphorisms were, according to Sastri, quite genuine in spite of the fact that the text itself, in the form in which it has come down to us, is largely spurious. These are: Universally Lokayata is to be followed at the time of acquiring material prosperity (arthasadhand-kale). 11. 5.

sadhane). 11. 6. Only the Kapalika as regards the erotic practices (kama-

Referring to this, Sastri146 wrote: But the most important piece of information the Brihaspati Sutra gives us is the close connection of the Lokayatas with the Kapalikas. He (i.e., Brihaspati, the supposed author of the really genuine por- tions of the text) says, for the production of wealth Lokayata is the sastra; at the same breath he says, for kama or earthly enjoyment (more literally, erotic practices) Kapalika is the sastra. If Brihaspati says so, he is sure to be denounced by the orthodox people as a nastika. But this is not our present purpose-our present purpose is the Kapalikas .... But the Brihaspati Sutra tell us that the Kapa- likas are an ancient sect, at least as ancient as the Lokayatas and that as the Lokayatas, with their Materialistic Philosophy made the beginning of the science of Economics, so the Kapalikas, with what system of philosophy we do not know, made the beginning of the science of Erotics. The last point in the above observation is not clear. Brihas- pati suggested that the Lokayatikas were closely related to the

144 Bandopadhyaya R (B) ii. 274. 145 L 6. 146 Ib. 5-6.

54 LOKAYATA

Kapalikas. Gunaratna went a step further and identified the two. Sastri has taken both the authorities seriously. However, if we really do so, there is obviously no need to imagine any philo- sophy other than the materialistic one to form the basis of the kama sadhana of the Kapalikas. Further, it follows from the premise of Sastri himself that the so-called science of erotics of the Kapalikas was vitally related to the ideal of artha sadhana or the enhancement of material wealth. We are going to argue that this was actually so, for the Tantrika cults like the Kapalika had their source in the archaic belief according to which natural production could be enhanced by the imitation or contagion of human reproduction, that is the kama sadhana and artha sadhana were not so unrelated after all.

16. ASURAS

Further data concerning the asura-views appear to corro- borate the point, that by the Lokayatikas were probably meant the Tantrikas. Before, however, we pass on to discuss this, it is necessary to examine the observations made in this connection by Dasgupta; because the possibility of reconstructing the lost Lokayata on the basis of an analysis of the views attributed to the asuras was originally suggested by him. His crucial evidence had been the passage in the Chando- gya Upanisad, which, as we have seen, attributed a kind of deha-vada to the asuras. The Upanisad also mentioned the burial mode of the asuras and Dasgupta has argued that the deha-vada of the Asuras had been 'a corollary underlying their custom of adorning the dead.'147 On the basis of this he concluded that the Lokayata-views had their origin in ancient Sumeria. Two major assumptions are involved in this. First, the asuras meant only the ancient Sumerians. Secondly, the burial custom was characteristic only of them. For, if the deha-vada was a corollary to the burial custom and if other people had the same or similar burial custom, they, too, were likely to have developed the same or similar deha-vada and this would have gone against Dasgupta's conjecture. However, on closer examination, we find both the assump-

147 HIP iii. 530.

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tions to be highly doubtful. We shall begin with the second assumption. To begin with, the Upanisad did not really say that the deha-vada of the asuras was a corollary to their burial custom. Rather, the text itself gives us the simple impression that the asuras believed in the said deha-vada and they also practised the particular mode of burial. Secondly, this burial custom, far from being characteristic only of the Sumerians, was hardly the only mode of burial known to them. As it is well known, the ancient Egyptians carried the practice of adorning the dead to extreme excess and many other peoples of the ancient world had the same or a similar practice. Even many of the tribes surviv- ing in India have a similar burial custom.148 So the burial cus- tom of the asuras mentioned by the Upanisad could not have been distinctive of the ancient Sumerians. Besides, it is not true that this was the only mode of disposing of the dead known to the ancient Sumerians.

Cremation appears to have been the rule in certain parts of ancient Sumer and Akkad, as in the region South of Lagash; but in other parts interment in coffins and vaults is more frequent.149 Thus, Dasgupta's assumption that the Lokayata dcha-vada was originally a corollary to the belief underlying the Sumerian custom of adorning the dead cannot be readily accepted. But what was meant by the asura? Could it be that the asuras of ancient Indian literature were none else than the an- cient Sumerians? Such an assumption would justify Dasgupta's conclusion. But all the scholars would not agree to it and cer- tain cvidences definitely do not justify the assumption. There have been many conjectures about the ancient asuras, including of course the one on which Dasgupta's thesis is based.

Banerji-Sastri considers the asuras as immigrants from Assyria, the followers of the asura cult who preceded the Aryans in India and were the authors of the Indus Valley civilization. Bhandarkar takes the asuras to be the Assurs or Assyrians and suggests that the Sata- patha Brahmana refers to the asura settlements in Magadha or South Bihar.150

Others thought that they were the ancient Persians, the follow- ers of Ahura Mazda.

148 ERE iv. 411 ff. 149 Ib. iv. 444. 150 Majumdar (ed.) VA 250.

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Christensen has suggested that the asura-religion was practised by the more cultured and steadier elements of the primitive Indo- Iranian society whose chief occupation was agriculture and cattle- breeding, while the older daiva-religion continued to find favour with the more vigorous but less civilized portions of the people to whom the primitive predatory habits were more congenial: the former were content to remain behind in Iran, but the latter, urged by the spirit of adventure, advanced farther east and at last enter- ed India.151

B. K. Ghosh152 has argued that though eventually the Indo- Aryan society became predominantly daivic, and this as con- trasted with the Indo-Iranian society which remained predo- minantly asuric, yet the term 'asura' was 'perhaps borrowed from a higher civilization.'

As I have suggested elsewhere (Indian Culture viii. 339), this term is probably nothing but the personal designation of the tutelary deity of Assyria used as a generic name by the Indo-Iranians who must have come in direct or indirect contact with the Assyrians during the period of Kassite ascendancy.153

The asura-tribe still surviving in Central India, according to some, could have been the asuras of ancient Indian literature:

the Aryans, in their invasion of what is now called India, were obstructed by that fierce and savage-like people whom they called asura, or demons, and whom they expelled and partly annihilated. Whether the asuras living in Chota Nagpur are the offspring of these opponents of the Aryans or are connected with the asura builders of those ancient embankments still found in the Mirzapur district, is, of course, an open question; yet there seems to be nothing to exclude such suppositions.154 Others, who would not agree to this possible identity of the asuras with the ancestors of the surviving asura-tribes, would look at the ancient Asuras as a general term referring to the ori- ginal inhabitants of India who resisted the Aryan advance.

Asuras, daityas, danavas, and nagas denoted peoples of different cultures in various stages of civilization ranging from the rude, aboriginal, uncivilsed tribes to the semi-civilised races, offering strong resistance to the spread of Aryan culture. There appear to have been three stages in the description of the hostile tribes of asuras, danavas, daityas, and raksasas in Puranic accounts. Original- ly, these denoted human beings, but as they were generally the enemies of Aryans, these names came to mean alien and hated, hostile or savage men. Later on, these names became terms of opprobrium and abuse which led to the attribution of evil charac- ters to these peoples .... Finally, these terms came to be associated with demoniac beings and were used synonymously with demons.155

151 Ib. 220. 152 Ib. 218 ff. 158 Ib. 223-4. 154 ERE ii. 157. 155 Majumdar (ed.) VA 313.

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This diversity of views concerning the asuras at least shows that the problem is not a simple one and as such we cannot smoothly identify them with the ancient Sumerians. The point is that the many references we come across in our ancient litera- tures to the asuras are not all of the same nature; this suggests that probably the term was not used in any uniform sense at all. Among these bewildering multiplicity of references to the asuras, it may be useful for our present purpose to concentrate on one type of suggestion that appears to be quite prominent. The suggestion is that at least in a large number of cases the word asuras referred to the builders of the Indus civilisation.

17. INDUS ARCHAEOLOGY 'On the top of Mount Meru,' said Sayana,150 'lies the city of Amaravati, wherein the gods dwell; and beneath Meru lies Iravati, the city of the asuras.' It may be difficult to trace the tradition upon which Sayana was dwelling here; but the con- nection of the asuras with Iravati, as suggested by Sayana, can- not be looked upon lightly. For the archaeologist's spade has really unearthed the ruins of an ancient city by the bank of Iravati, which, on the evidence of the Rig Veda, we are strongly inclined to look as the city of the asuras. This city is known to us as Harappa. The evidences are quite simple. In the sixth Mandala of Rig Veda we come across a description of Indra's campaign against the asuras. Indra was called there asuraghna,157 the killer of the asuras. This des- cription of Indra is not uncommon in the Vedic literatures. The Atharva Veda158 the Satapatha Brahmana,159 the Grihya Sutras,100 and even the Upanisads161 remembered him as the destroyer of the asuras. The word asuraghna occurred in Rig Veda vi. 22. 4. Its authorship was attributed to the risi Bharadwaja. To the same risi was attributed a series of other verses of the same Mandala, including the Sukta vi. 27. Presumably, the role in which Indra was depicted in Rig Veda vi. 27 was the same in which he

156 SBE xii. 110 n. 157 vi. 22. 4. 158 SBE xlii. 79, 83, 137, 215, 222. 159 Ib. xxvi. 399; xliii. 193. 160 Ib. xxix. 342. 161 Ib. xv. 343.

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was also depicted in vi. 22, though the word asura does not explicitly occur in the former. Now in Rig Veda vi. 27 we come across certain inte- resting proper names. One of these is Varasikha. Indra was described as destroying him along with his descendants. We have just seen that the context suggests that Indra did it in the role of asuraghna, that is as the destroyer of the asuras. It is from this point of view, therefore, that Sayana162 wus fully justified in explaining Varasikha as the name of a certain asura. This point is important. For if Varasikha and others were but asuras, their city was presumably the city of the asuras. The name of this city, according to Rig Veda was Hariyu- piya. Scholars163 today are strongly inclined to identify Hariyu- piya of the Rig Veda as the Harappa of the Indus Valley: 'Cer- tainly, the written tradition and the archacological record match very well here.'164 Thercfore, there are grounds to believe that at least in somc cases the word asura meant the authors of the Indus Civilization. Banerji-Sastri, as we have seen, thought so; though he con- jectured that these authors of the Indus Civilization originally came from Assyria. This last point, however, is yet to be esta- blished convincingly by contemporary archaeology.165

18. TANTRA AND INDUS CIVILIZATION It has been argued by contemporary archaeologists168 and historians that the Indus cities were destroyed by the Vedic Aryans and the peoples living thercin were looted, massacred and routed. At the present stage of our knowledge we cannot possibly replace this hypothesis by a more satisfactory cne. Nevertheless, the orbit of the Indus Civilization was a fairly large one and all the people living therein could not have been completely annihilated; nor could all traces of their ideology, their beliefs and their rituals, have completely vanished from the country. What happened to all these? Our historians are yet to answer the question fully. However, assuming that the Indus people were called the asuras in the earlier portions of Rig Veda, it would be only natural to conjecture that their descend-

162 on RV vi. 27. 4. 164 Kosambi ISIH 68. 183 Wheeler IC 18. 168 Wheeler IC 18. 185 See Childe MAE & FIMAE.

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ants continued to be characterised as before, that is, as asuras, even in the later Vedic-Brahmanical literatures, and, as such, it may not be totally unreasonable to ask whether the views and rituals attributed to the asuras in such comparatively later works as the Upanisads and the Gita could have been only the relics of those of the Indus period. Here, again, the evidence of the literary tradition arpears to agree with that of the archaeological records. We have al- ready seen that the asura-view, as described by the Gita in particular, was in all probability the same as Tantrism. On the other hand, it has been argued that we come across very strong traces of Tantrism in the material remains of the Indus Civili- zation.107 We have discussed the grounds for identifying the Loka- yata with the asura-views. But the Lokayata, whatever it was, was essentially proto-materialistic or this-worldly. Thus is raised a further question: Is there anything in the view attributed to the asuras which indicates its this-worldliness? We have already referred to the deha-vada and the cosmogony of the asuras; we shall now mention another peculiar evidence of the Vedic lite- ratures which indicates that the rituals of the asuras, too, were essentially this-worldly. In Rig Veda,168 we read: O Indra! thou, by the maya, has defeated those mayavins who were putting the sacrificial oblations (sradha) into their own mouths; thou, who art the protector of men, hast destroyed the cities of Pipru and hast saved Vijisan (lit., he who moves on the straight path) from the destruction of the robbers. Mayavin literally meant the possessors and practitioners of maya, magic power or 'craft.'169 Sayana170 said that the word here referred to the asuras. And there is no doubt that Sayana was right. For maya in Rig Veda, had been the power cha- racteristic of the asuras.171 Besides, we come across in the Vedic tradition repeated statements to the effcct that it was the asuras who were putting the sacrificial oblations into their own mouth: Once upon a time the gods and the asuras, both of them spring- ing from Prajapati, strove together. And the asuras, even through arrogance, thinking, 'Unto whom, forsooth, should we make offering?' went on offering into their own mouths. This occurs in two places of the Satapatha Brahmana.172 Further,

167 Marshall MIC i. 48-51; Prana Nath IHQ vii. 1-52. 168 i. 51. 5. 169 Macdonell VM 26. 171 i.11.1; 1.51.5; v.63.7, etc. 170 on RV i. 52.5. 172 SBE xli. 1; xliv. 22.

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Sayana,173 in his commentary on Rig Veda, quoted the autho- rities of Vajasaneyi and Kausitakis to establish the same point. Vajasaneyi said that the devas and asuras once used to look upon each other with arrogance; the asuras insolently thought, "We are not going to offer sacrifices to any,' so they went on putting the sacrificial oblations into their own mouths and thereby insult- ing (the devas). Kausitakis said, the asuras defeated Agni and went on offering sacrifices to themselves. The ritual practice of putting sacrificial oblations into their own mouths sounds highly peculiar. However, the rituals of the Tantrikas are something of that sort: they drink wine and eat meat, whatever might be the significance they attach to such practices. And if we concur with Gunaratna as to the origin of the name Carvaka (carva, meaning the act of eating), then the asuras, who went on offering into their own mouths may as well be called the Carvakas. In any case, the Vedic evidences at least indicate that the rituals of the asuras were not based on the concept of other-worldliness, i.e., these were essentially materialistic.

19. ORIGINAL SAMKHYA

The questions concerning the asura-view and of Tantrism in the broad sense cannot possibly be fully answered without entering into the more complicated problem of the origin and development of the Samkhya philosophy. There are, to begin with, certain highly interesting sugges- tions, the significance of which cannot be lightly treated. As is well known, Kapila was said to have been the founder of the Samkhya sysetm and it is said that he imparted this knowledge first of all to Asuri. Thus, according to the Bhagavata,174 The fifth avatara (incarnation of God) was named Kapila, the chief of saints, who revealed to Asuri the Samkhya explanation of first principles, which has been impaired by time. Of course, Kapila being an incarnation of God sounds somewhat ironical because, as it is well known, the original Samkhya had absolutely no place for God in it. But the imparting of the Samkhya knowledge first of all to Asuri might not have been a mere myth. For the same thing was said in the Samkhya Karika175 itself: 'This great purifying (doctrine) the sage com-

173 on RV 1.51.5. 174 i. 12 (tr. Colebrooke SK VER.) 175 70.

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passionately imparted to Asuri, Asuri taught it to Pancasikha, by whom it was extensively propagated.' Now, Asuri might have been the name of a particular per- son, as is usually supposed. There is nothing definite to disprove this supposition. At the same time we should not overlook the circumstance that the name Asuri could have been derived from the word asura: asura adds sni, a suffix in the sense of apatya or progeny, and forms Asuri to mean the son of the asura. This suggestion is significant. In another fairly ancient text, Kapila himself was described as an asura, struggling as all the asuras did, with the gods. Thus Baudhayana176 said: With reference to this matter they quote also the following passage -'There was, forsooth, an Asura, Kapila by name, son of Prahlada. Striving with the gods, he made these divisions. A wise man should not take heed of them.' Of course it cannot be conclusively claimed that this same Kapila was the founder of the Samkhya system. But the possi- bility cannot be conclusively disproved either. Besides, there were points of fundamental importance on which Samkhya agreed with the views attributed to the asuras. We have already seen the cosmogony attributed by the Gita to the asuras: the world was the effect of the sexual urge and it was born as a result of the union of the male and the female. And Gaudapada,177 in his commentary on the Samkhya Karika mentioned the same cosmogony: As the birth of a child proceeds from the union of male and female, so the production of creation results from the union of prakriti and purusa. It will be objected that the prakriti of the Samkhya meant the primordial matter (rather than the female) just as the purusa meant the soul (rather than the male). This makes the similarity between the Samkhya cosmogony and the asura-cosmogony rather remote. But that is not so. For though purusa was even- tually understood to mean the soul, this was far from the original meaning of the word. Purusa originally meant the male human body and this was the sense in which even the authors of the earlier Upanisads understood the word. This point has already been argued by Belvalkar and Ranade. Pointing to the use of the word in the Brahmanas and some of the Upanisads they said, This clearly shows that the purusa originally denoted the human

176 SBE xiv. 260. 177 on SK. 21.

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being with its peculiar bodily structure and not any inner or spiriutal entity in dwelling therein. (In the first and second group of our Upanisadic texts; this is almost the exclusive sense in which the term is used).178 The point, as we shall fully discuss it later, is that the Sam- khya thought which was originally fully atheistic and material- istic, was submitted to a process of rigorous spiritualisation, and idealistic contents were grafted on it in such a manner that at last the original Samkhya passed into its opposite. The transforma- tion of the original concept of the male body into the concept of pure detached consciousness hardly differing from the Vedanta view of the Self was but a part or aspect of this process. Again, it is true that prakriti of Samkhya meant the material princi- ple. What is often overlooked, however, is the circumstance that overtly female characteristics were also attributed to the same. As has been ably pointed out by Bhattacaryya,170 the prakriti was compared to the dancing girl and the shy bride. Besides, as we shall see in Chapter VI, the terminologies like ksetra and others, by which the prakriti was constantly referred to in the Samkhya texts, probably had an overt feminine signifiance. These show that prakriti was not merely a material principle but also a female principle. It remains for us to discuss more fully how this female principle could at the same time be understood to mean the primordial matter, from which, according to original Samkhya, resulted the evolution of the world. To return to the question of Samkhya views. If prakriti and purusa originally meant the female and the male, as these obvi- ously did, then we have good reasons to think that the cosmo- gony of original Samkhya did not differ much from the cosmogony attributed by the Gita to the asuras. But this cosmogony, we have argued, was also the same as that of Tantrism. This raises questions concerning the relation between original Samkhya and original Tantra. That the fundamental categories of Samkhya and Tantra are the same will not be doubted; these are the prakriti and the purusa. According to both Samkhya and Tantra, again, prakriti is primary insofar at least as the world-process is concerncd. There must have, therefore, been some relation between Tantra and Samkhya. However, under the influence of the changed ideas about Samkhya, according to which, this originally mate- rialistic outlook is mistaken for a form of mystical idealism-the

178 HIP ii. 428. 179 BDS (B) 149-50.

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modern scholars have, on the whole, been reluctant to acknow- ledge this relationship; for Tantrism, particularly in its ritual aspect, remained largely in its original stage of crude primi- tivism and this in spite of all the spiritual coatings that were tried on it in later times. Or, when this relationship between Tantra and Samkhya is at all admitted, it is said that Tantrism borrowed its philosophical foundation from the Samkhya sys- tem.180 We shall argue later that this is a gross misconception. For, to all presumption, Samkhya, too, in spite of all the meta- physical modifications eventually introduced into it, had the same humble origin as that of Tantrism. As a matter of fact, Samkhya and Tantra were, in origin, not different from each other. Or, if we are at all bent on attributing chronological priority to any, it belongs to Tantrism. The primordial complex of an archaic world-view and a series of equally archaic ritual practices, which was what original Tantrism meant, eventually dissolved into a collateral duality, out of which emerged the speculations of Samkhya on the one hand, and the practical dis- cipline of Yoga on the other. In course of time, both Samkhya and Yoga were brought on to idealistic lines: but the old bond between the two was never completely forgotten, though in the later periods, the memory of this was rationalised by the idea that some form of synthesis of Samkhya and Yoga had once taken place. Historically, however, as we shall try to argue. the very opposite was the case. Tantrism was the original complex out of which emerged the Samkhya and the Yoga of the later times. But just as, because of the uneven development, people in the primitive tribal conditions have continued to live in India side by side the civilized and sophisticated societies, so, in the ficld of ideology, bv the side of the later sophisticated Samkhya and Yoga there survived also the Tantrika beliefs and prac- tices, still representing the primordial complex out of which Samkhya and Yoga eventually developed. But more of this later.

To recapitulate: the problem of the lost Lokayata led us to raise questions concerning the asura-views and of Tantrism in general and these questions, in their turn, introduced fresh pro- blems concerning the sources of the Samkhya philosophy. Was there, then, any connection between Lokayata and Samkhya? According to the Jaina tradition, the answer is in the affirmative.

1N0 ERE vi. 706.

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This has already been pointed out by Dasgupta:181 After the treatment of the views of the lokayata nastikas, the Sutra Kritanga Sutra treats of the Samkhyas. In this connection Silanka says that there is but little difference between the lokayata and the Samkhya, for though the Samkhyas admit souls, these are absolutely incapable of doing any work, and all the work is done by prakriti which is potentially the same as the gross elements. The body and the so-called mind is therefore nothing but the combination of the gross elements, and the admission of separate purusas is only nomi- nal. Since such a soul cannot do anything and is of no use (akimcit- kara), the Lokayatas flatly deny them. This close relation between the Lokayata and Samkhya, as suggested by the Jaina sources, will appear to be somewhat strange. But the reason may be that, on the one hand, we have mistakenly relied too much on Madhava's version of the Loka- yata, while, on the other, we are yet to arrive at correct ideas concerning the original Samkhya. However, from the point of vicw of what we are trying to argue, the close relation between the Lokayata and Samkhya, far from being strange, is only what is to be expected. Lokayata might have originally meant those obscure beliefs and practices which are broadly referred to as Tantrism, and Tantrism is found to have fundamental similarities with original Samkhya. At any rate, the problem of Lokayata cannot be properly understood without entering into the ques- tions concerning original Samkhya and, further, it mav be that an enquiry into the origin of Tantrism will throw light on both Lokayata and Samkhya. Thus, one of the fundamental questions we are led to ask is: What exactly was meant by ori- ginal Tantrism? We shall try to answer this question in Chapter V and see that, contrary to our usual idea of Tantrism, it really represented a naturalistic trend in the philosophical heritage of India. It was, moreover, characterised by a distinctly demo- cratic attitude. As a matter of fact, its affiliation to the crafts and professions traditionally despised was greatly responsible for its being continually misunderstood. The closest parallel is to be found in Taoism of ancient China. Indeed, the similarities between Taoism and Tantrism were fundamental. Thanks to the recent monumental work of J. Needham,182 we are now in a position to understand this point correctly. What has become clear by his analysis of the significance of ancient Taoism may help us to understand what is yet obscure about our ancient Tantrism.

181 HIP iii. 527. 182 SCC ii. 33-164.

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Reserving these discussions for the future, we may here confine ourselves to one important feature of ancient Tantrism. It is its emphasis on the sexual union.

20. SEX RITUALS Gunaratna said that the Lokayatikas indulged in periodie promiscuity. This was obviously a reference to the so-called vamacari theory and practice of Tantrism. Vama meant the female and probably also the eros (kama); in the context of Tantrism it meant both. For Tantrism is largely the practice (acara) centred in the female and also in the sexual union. The meaning usually attributed to vamacara, namely left-hand prac- tice,"s3 is really misleading. There is no doubt that this aspeet of Tantrism has provoked the most violent revulsion in our modern schools. Rajendralal Mitra14 referred to this when he wrote that in Tantrism

theories are indulged in, and practices enjoined which are at once the most revolting and horrible that human depravity could think of, and compared to which the words and specimens of Holiwell Street literature of the last century would appear absolutely pure. To discuss these matters openlv, said Sastri,185 one had to trans- gress the limits of civilization and probably stood the risk of facing the Indian Penal Code. It was because of this vamacara, again, that Crooke186 characterised Tantrism as 'the most debased side of Hinduism.' There is no doubt that, judged by modern moral values, much of Tantrism appears to be outrageous and absurd. How- ever, it is not enough to stop our enquiry with a simple judge- ment. For the fact is that the profligacy which notoriously cha- racterised Tantrism could not have been merely a mark of perver- sion. There are at least two important reasons for this. First, Tantrism had been, as it is correctly and repeatedly said, one of the most powerful factors in the development of Indian culture. We cannot, therefore, look at Tantrism as mere perversion without at the same time looking at ourselves as a nation of perverts. Sentiments apart, such a conclusion would be objectively absurd. In all likelihood, therefore, there must have been some original significance attributed to these peculiar beliefs and practices, which we are apt to miss if we allow ourselves to

183 See ch. iv. sec. 2. 185 Ib. 83. 184 Quot. by Sastri BD (B) 82. 186 ERE vi. 705. L 5

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be carried away by a spirit of sheer moral repugnance. The vamacara of Tantrism, since our ancestors were so serious about it, could not have meant mere perversion, though these are manifestly so if practised in the context of our developed know- ledge and moral values. And it is necessary to know why our ancestors had such absurd beliefs in order to understand how we have become what we are today. The second argument is no less important and we shall dis- cuss this in somewhat greater detail. That the original signi- ficance of ritual sex anion could not have been mere perversion is proved by the cireumstance that the other important trend of Indian culture, namelv the Vedie one, is not without strong relics of the same or similar beliefs and practices. In fact, the Vedic literatures are full of these. Contemporary exponents of Indian culture, in their zeal to save their Arvan ancestors from the indig- nities of such beliefs and practices, usually try to hush up these evidences. But it is necessarv to face facts rather than to delude ourselves with a fanciful story of our ancient heritage. We shall, therefore, quote some of the passages from the Vedic literatures and try to understand these. Following is the Vamadevya Saman of the Chandogya Upanisad:187 Cne summons-that is a Himkara. He makes request-that is a Prastava. Together with the woman he lies down-that is an Udgitha. He lies upon the woman-this is a Pratihara. He comes to the end-that is a Nidhana. He comes to the finish-that is a Nidhana. This is the Vamadevya Saman as woven upon copulation. He who knows thus this Vamadevya Saman as woven upon copulation comes to copulation, procreates himself from every copu- lation, reaches a full length of life, lives long, becomes great in offspring and in cattle, great in fame. One should never abstain from any woman. That is his rule. Saman meant Vedic chanting. The Vedic sages attached great significance to this practice. Himkara, Prastava, Udgi- tha, ete., were the five divisions of the fivefold Saman. Evidently, the author of the Upanisad, by identifying the different stages of coition with these divisions of Vedic chanting, wanted to attach greater importance to the former. The benefits imagined to result from the sexual act, judged by the standards of the undeveloped conditions of those days were colossal: 'pro-

187 ii. 13 (tr. Hume).

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creates himself from every copulation, reaches a full length of life, lives long, becomes great in offspring and in cattle, great in fame.' The mention of cattle is significant. Because, till the time of the Upanisads, material wealth was largely mea- sured in terms of it. This shows that the Upanisadic speculator was dwelling here on a belief according to which reproduction could not be viewed as detached from production: kama or the sexual union was imagined to be an aid to artha (pasu) or material wealth as well. Whatever may be the contemporary judgement upon it, from the point of view of this ancient belief, it was obviously a piece of wisdom to say, 'One should never abstain from any woman. That is his rule.' The Upanisads are called Vedanta, literally the end of the Vedas, because, though chronologically separated from the Vedas hy many centuries, thev were somehow or other appended to the Vedas. This connection between the Vedas and the Upani- sads was thus artificially conceived. Nevertheless, the fact re- mains that the authors of the Upanisads were philosophizing on the experiences, ideas and beliefs of their ancestors-the carly Vedic people, because these were transmitted to them by a peculiarly unbroken oral tradition. The belief underlying the Vomadevya Saman of the Chandogya Upanisad was obviously such a one. We come across the same belief in the Samhitas themselves. In the Atherva Veda,1s* for example, sexual intercourse was conceived in terms of the churning of fire by rubbing two pieces of wood, asvattha and sami : The asvattha (ficus religiosa) has mounted the sami (mimosa suma): then a male child was produced. That, forsooth, is the way to obtain a son; that we do bring to our wives. Of course this hymn was employed in a ceremony calculated to ensure the birth of a male child.189 Nevertheless, conceiving the sexual act in terms of churning the fire is highly significant, because the latter was of vital importance to the early Vedic peoples in their performance of Yajna or the ritual. Besides, as is well known, the sexual act, along with the dialogues describ- ing it, was, according to the Vajasaneyi Samhita,190 a very im- portant aspect of the Asvamedha Yajna. This leads us to the question of Vedic rituals, the Yajnas. We shall see later that the Yajnas were originally thought of as mcans or aids to the productive activity of the early Vedic peo-

188 SBE xlii. 97. 189 Ib. xlii. 460. 190 VS xxiii. 26 ff.

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ples. What is important here is to note that according to the ancient Vedic beliefs the process of Yajna and the process of sexual union were often inextricably mixed up; the very images with which Yajna was understood and explained were often the images of the sexual union. This is evident from the Brahmanas, the works on the rituals that came in between the Samhitas and the Upanisads.

A pap in ghee should he offer, who considers himself unsup- ported: in this (earth) does he not find support who does not find support. Ghee is the milk (blood?) of the woman, the rice grains that of the man; that is a pairing; with a pairing verily thus does he propagate him with offspring and cattle, for generation; he is pro- pagated with offspring and with cattle who knows thus.191 The commentators said that by 'unsupported' was meant 'being without offspring and cattle.' The remedy suggested consisted of a ritual mixing of ghee with rice grain and this pro- cess was symbolic of copulation: the ghee standing for female blood and the rice grains for the male semen and it was an ancient belief192 that the female blood mixed with the male semen produced the fetus. Pairing meant this. What needs to be noted here is that this process was imagined to generate not only the offspring but also the cattle and thereby to remove the state of being unsupported. This passage of the Aitareya Brahmana occurs in the context of the Soma ritual. Other passages in the context of the other rituals show the same overwhelming importance attributed to the sexual union:

'Forward to your god Agni' are Anustubh (verses). He sepa- rates the two first padas; therefore a woman separates her thighs, He creates the last two padas; therefore a man unites his thighs. That is a pairing; verily thus he makes a pairing at the beginning of the litany, for generation; he is propagated with offspring, with cattle, who knows thus.19:

In the Kausitaki Brahmana,194 practically the same was re- peated:

Then he recites the seven-versed Ajya .... It is in Anustubh verses; the Anustubh is speech; whatever is described by speech, the Anustubh, all that he obtains. He separates the two padas; that is a symbol of generation; a man takes apart as it were (the limbs) of his wife. Further, in that he takes apart, that is a symbol of support.

191 Keith RVB 107. 193 Keith RVB 159. 192 Vedantavagish SD (B) 203. 194 Ib. 423-4.

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The symbolic (and sometimes overt) emphasis on the im- portance of sexual intercourse is to be found most frequently in the Satapatha Brahmana.195 After the Brahmanas came the Upanisads. We naturally find the philosophers of the Upanisads still considering it to be a piece of divine wisdom1" to identify Yajna with sexual union. The following story was told by the two major Upanisads, the Chandogya17 and the Brihad Aranyaka.198 Svetaketu Arnneya went up to an assembly of the Pancalas. There he was asked by Pravahana Jaibali, 'Have you been in- structed by your father?' Svetaketn answered in the affirmative. To test his knowledge, however, Pravahana Jaibali put five ques- tions to him, none of which he could answer. So he returned disgruntled to his father, Gautama. Gautama, too, did not know the answers to these questions. So he himself went to Pravahana Jaibali to get enlightened. He learnt the answers after going through the preliminary disciplines. One of the questions was: 'Do you know how in the fifth oblation water comes to have a human voice?"!"" The answer ultimately given was as follows:200 Man, verily, O Gautana, is a sacrificial fire. In this case speech is the fuel; breath, the smoke; the tongue, the flame; the eyes, the ccals; the ear, the scarks. In this fire the gods offer food. From this oblation arises semen. Woman, verily, O Gautama, is a sacrificial fire. In this case the sexual organ is the fuel: when one invites, the smoke; the vulva, the Came; when one inserts, the coals: the sexual pleasure, the sparks. In this fire the gods offer semen. From this oblation arises the fetus. Thus indeed in the fifth oblation water comes to have a human voice. After he has lain within for ten months, or for however long it is, as a fetus covered with membrane, then he is born. Obviously, this was how the Upanisadic philosophers were looking at the process of human reproduction. But it was also the Yajna process, as understood by them. This point was continued in the Brihad Aranyaka Upanisad.201 But we need not quote the details.

195 SBE xii. 194, 257 ff, 261 ff, 277, 281, 334, 336, 377 ff, 381, 386, 388, 395 ff, 398; xxvi. 61, 90 ff, 131, 212-5, 318. 327, 365-9, 437 ff; xliv. 15, 56, 171, 179 ff, 192, 199, 211 ff, 215, 219 ff, 239 ff, 248 ff, 254, 349, 384, 391. 100 Br Up vi. 2.6. 197 v. 3ff. 199 Ch Up v. 3.3; Br Up vi. 2.2. 198 vi. 2.T. 200 Ch Up v. 7.1-v. 9.1 (tr. Hume). 201 vi. 4.2-11.

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We may now return to the question of amacara in the Lokayatika tradition, Lokayata being understood in the broader sense of Tantrism. It was primarily becanse of this vamacura that those who, in the later days, claimed to have been the inhe- ritors of the Vedie tradition hated and denounced Tantrism. We have argued that such an attitude can hardly be justified. For, very strong relies of the same or similar vamacara practices cha- racterised the Vedic tradition itself. Besides, the Vedic evid- ences make it quite clear that some significance other than mere perversion must have been originally attributed to this sexual union; or else, the ancient sages would not have equated it to the Vedic chanting (Saman) and the Vedic ritual (Yajna). Our problem, therefore, is to understand the ancients and to find out what inspired them to attach so much of importance to these apparently peculiar beliefs and ideas. And in order to find it out it may be necessary for us to follow some method other than the traditional one, because the traditional method cannot explain these.

21. VEDA AND LOKAYATA

We have been arguing that the, later champions of the Vedic tradition, in denouncing Tantrism for its vamacara, were also denouncing their own past. For, the same or similar beliefs very strongly characterised early Vedic culture itself. It will be argued, that such beliefs and ideas, though found in the Vedic literatures, were obviously primitive and, there- fore, in all probability, originally formed part of the belicfs and ideas of the local aborigines; as the Vedic Aryans came in con- tact with them the Vedic outlook got contaminated by these primitive elements. This argument would find favour with many modern scholars, it being a favourite hypothesis with them that the Vedic peoples freely borrowed ideas and beliefs from the local aborigines, and this led the aboriginal elements to creep into the Vedic outlook.202 Indian culture, it is repeatedly said, represented a wonderful synthesis of the Aryan and the non- Aryan elements. Let us call this the hypothesis of adoption and absorption. There are, however, many reasons against this hypothesis. We shall mention three of these, the first two being concerned

81, 24, 31, etc. 202 Hopkins in PAOS (1894) cliv ff; Gough PU 18; Keith RPV

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with the general possibility of this hypothesis itself, while the third would be against the specific possibility of the elements of vamacara in the Vedie literatures being the result of such a process of absorption. First, the Vedie peoples themselves must have had a primi- tive past and as such, assuming such belefs and ideas to be clements of primnitive thought, these could as well have been the survivals or the relies of the primitive past of the Vedie peoples themselves. All that is primitive in the Vedie literature was not necessarily aboriginal elements creeping from outside into the Vedie outlook. Secondly, the terminologies are racial and the process of cultural exchange is conceived vaguely and often even mysteri- ously. The theories are, in fact, based on a rather superficial view of culture as such. Ideas and beliefs are locked at as if they were like ready-made clothes that could fit anvone. We hear much of the general theory of enltural diffusion. The theory itself is yet in need of being fully worked out. In the meanwhile, as Thomson20" has remarked, there is the risk of exaggerating its significance. Since the function of ail social institutions, alien or indigenous. is to satisfy some need, the origin of this or that custom is not explained by saying that it was borrowed from abroad. As Ferguson remarked, Nations borrow only what they are nearly in a condition to have invented themselves. Thus, if this hypothesis of the fusion of the Aryan and non- Arvan elements in Indian culture is ever really established, it will be established onlv on the basis of a clear knowledge of the material needs of the peoples that led them to borrow from each other. How far such a need was actually there is a point to be decided by detailed historical researches. Before, however, one proceeds to undertake these, it is necessary for one to be quite clear about the general theoretical position about this material necd itself. Culture does not enjoy an existence-in-itself. It is not a kind of floating entitv that may get attached to any and every life-pattern. The usual analogy for it is that of the superstruc- ture of the materialistic conception of history. As Marx and Engels said: The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material

203 Thomson AA 4.

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intercourse of men, the language of real life .... Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with

thinking.204 their real existence, their thinking and the products of their

Thesc general considerations apart, there is a definite and spccific reason because of which we cannot look at the ritual emphasis on the sexual union in the Vedic literatures as non- Arvan beliefs absorbed by it. The general structure of Vedic thought within which these elements are found is definitely dis- tinct from that of Tantrism. The Vedic people imagined that the sexual union would increase their material wealth. This material wealth was conceived primarily in terms of cattle. That is, the Vedic ideas were the ideas of a predominantly pastoral people. By contrast, the vamacara of Tantrism, as we shall see later, though based on the same belief that human coition would enhance material prosperity, conceived the material wealth mainly in terms of agricultural products. That is, these were ideas of an essentially agricultural society. Incidentally, it may be noted here that there are grounds to presume that the Lokayatikas, too, were arguing in favour of the supreme importance of agriculture. Even the name Loka. yata can be interpreted in a way that suggests this point. It is loka and ayata. The word ayata may be derived as a + yat + a, meaning in the proper way (a) to make effort (yat).285 And, as Monier-Williams showed,200

in the oldest texts loka is generally preceded by 'u'; and 'u' may be a prefixed vowel and uloka a collateral dialectic form of loka; accord- ing to others u-loka is abridged from uru- or ava-loka, and thus meant 'free or open space'; further, this word loka is comparable to the Latin lucus, originally 'a clearing of a forest' and to the Lithu- nian laukas, a field, Were the Lokayatikas those who were making efforts in a proper way (ayata) to clear the forest and prepare fields for agriculture (loka)? In any case, according to both Brihaspati Sutra207 and Prabodhacandrodaya,208 the Lokayatikas considered varta to be of very great importance and varta primarily meant agriculture. And if the vamacara of Tantrism formed part of the beliefs of the agricultural people, then, from this point of view, too, our

204 Marx & Engels GI 13-4. 206 SED 906. 205 Dasgupta HIP iii. 514. 207 Sastri L 3. 208 P Act ii.

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hypothesis as to the identity of Tantra and Lokayata becomes all the more legitimate. The second characteristic of the ritual sexuality of the Vedic literatures is that it was dominated by the most exaggerated ideas of male superiority, The Brihad Aranyaka Upanisad, for example, looked at the whole thing from the point of view of the male and did not hesitate to recommend extreme measures to overpower and humiliate the female:

If she still does not grant him his desire, he should hit her with a stick or with his hand, and overcome her, saying: 'With power, with glory, I take away your glory!' Thus she becomes inglorious.209 This is in most striking contrast to the fundamentals of Tantrism, in which the female principle is personified and made prominent to the almost total exclusion of the male. Arthur Avalon210 has put the point very clearly:

This sect hold women in great esteem and call them Saktis

manifestations of the Great Cause of all, are entitled to respect and crime. (power) and to illtreat a Sakti-that is, a woman-is held to be a H. H. Wilson also himself points out, that women, as

even to veneration. Whoever offends them incurs the wrath of prakriti, the Mother of all, whilst he who propitiates them offers worship to prakriti Herself. And so, at a time when, the rite of Sati as some allege, was being rractised in accordance with the Vedas, and many a woman was bcing horribly oppressed, it was the Mahanirvana Tantra which forbade it on the ground above stated. In conformity. also, with these views, we find, according to the Tantra, alone of all the great Sastras, that a woman may be a spiritual teacher (guru). and initia- tion by her achieves increased benefit.

Such an attitude, as we shall see in Chapter IV and V, could be the characteristic product of the social svstem known as mother-right and this is why we cannot fully understand the pro- blem of the Lokayata without entering into the question of mother-right in India. To sum up: The ritual importance of sexual union, as found in the Vedic literatures, formed part of the pastoral-patriarchal ideas. By contrast, the Lokayata tradition retained the same belief as forming part of the agricultural-matriarchal ideas. We shall later discuss the importance of this distinction. For the present, our point is that the one could not have borrowed from the other and that the emphasis on sexual matters which we come

209 Br Up vi. 4.7. 210 PT Pref. xviii.

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across in Tantrism must have had some significance other than mere perversity. As such, it is not logical to condemn Tantrism merely for this. It is particularly illogical for those who claim to be the champions of the Vedic tradition to be indignant at Tantrism for its sexual theories and practices, because the early Vedic peoples were themselves believing in and practising the same things.

22. RECAPITULATION

Lokayata meant the philosophy of the people. It also meant the philosophy of this-worldliness or instinctive materialism. The original works of the Lokayatikas being lost beyond any pros- pect of recoverv, we have got to reconstruct it mainly on the basis of the references to them found in the writings of their opponents. One of these opponents was Madhavacarva. In his Sarva Darsana Samgraha he gave us a version of the Loka- yata. Modern scholars have so far accepted it as the basic source of our knowledge of the lost Lokavata. But evi- dences, both internal and external, are against the authen- ticitv of Madhava. Because of the fact that different modern scholars have, in different ways, tried to reconcile Madhava's version of the Lokavata with the different pieces of additional evidences obtained from other sources, we have a multiplicity of modern theories about ancient Indian materialism. Never- theless, there are elements of truth in all these, in spite of their mutual contradictions. The contradictions mav be resolved if we liberate ourselves from the influence of Madhava. For, when we do so, we find that the data on which these theories are based appear to have a convergent suggestion. The suggestion is that by Lokavata was meant those popular and obscure beliefs and practices that are broadly referred to as Tantrism. Spiritual and other-worldly ideas were subsequently superimposed on Tan- trism; but original Tantrism, like its more philosophical version known as the Samkhya, was atheistic and materialistic. But Tantrism repels the modern mind mainly because of its obsession with sex. Those who claimed in the later times to be champions of the Vedic tradition, were full of contempt for Tantrism mainly because of this. Yet these same elements strongly charactcrised the ancient Vedic outlook itself. Therefore the presumption is that these had originally some significance other

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than what the modern mind is hastily inclined to attribute to them. The problem of the ancient Lokavata thus becomes largely the problem of finding out this original significance. But the question is: How are we to do it? What, in other words, is the method that we ought to follow? In the nest chapter, therefore, we shall take up the problem of the method.

CHAPTER Two

THE CHANTING DOGS

A STUDY IN THE COMPARATIVE METHOD

In this chapter we are going to argue that certain obscure and even apparently mcaningless fragments of our ancient philoso- phical literatures may be understood if interpreted according to the principles followed by Thomson in his recent Greek Studies. The broader question of the value and validity of these principles for the general purpose of reconstructing the history of ancient Indian philosophy would be discussed, at least partially, in the chapters to follow. However, lest we deviate too much from our central theme, I have chosen here, as specimen of such obscure fragments, a passage, which, notwithstanding all its strangeness, reveals, on the whole, a stark materialistic outlook.

1. AN OBSCURE PASSAGE Following is the 12th Section of the First Chapter of the Chandogya Upanisad. This passage is complete in itself.

Now next the Udgitha of the dogs. So Baka Dalbhya,-or Glava Maitreya-went forth for Veda-study. Unto him there appeared a white dog. Around this one, other dogs gathered and said: 'Do you, Sir, obtain food for us by singing. Verily, we are hungry.' Then he (the white dog) said to them: 'In the morning may you assemble unto me here at this spot.' So Baka Dalbhya,-or Glava Maitreya-kept watch. Then even as (priests) here, when they are about to chant the Bahispavamana Stotra, glide hand in hand, so did they glide on. Then they (the dogs) sat down and performed the preliminary vocalising (himkara). (They sang): 'Om! Let us eat. Om! Let us drink! Om! Deva, Varuna, Prajapati, Savitri, gather food here. O Lord of Food! Gather food here .- Yea, gather it here. Om!'

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The translation above (as well as those other passages from the Upanisads quoted in this chapter) is broadly based upon that of Hume and following are the necessary word notes:1 Udgitha, in the wider sense, means the chanting of the Sama Veda, specially of the exact Sama Veda without additions. In the narrower sense, however, Udgitha means loud chanting and is the third division of the five-fold Saman, the two preced- ing it being himkara (preliminary vocalising) and prastava (introductory praise) and the two following it being pratihara (response) and nidhana (conclusion). Bahispavamana is the name of a Vedic Stoma (praise, eulogium, hymn, a typical form of chant) sung outside the cedi (altar) during the morning libation. The special interest of the passage consists in this that by placing the highest value on the material means of subsistence, it reveals a rather stark materialistic outlook, though, of course, a primitive and crude one. As a matter of fact, if we agree to derive the name Carvaka from carva,2 that is to eat or to chew, then the strange creatures described in our passage, because they sing only of eating and drinking and obtaining the food, may even be considered a group of Carvakas. What makes this so peculiar is the circumstance that this passage forms part of a Upanisad, usually taken to be the repository of spiritual wisdom.

2. WHO WAS BAKA DALBHYA? The central theme of the passage is obviously the strange scene of the chanting dogs. But this scene was not depicted for its own sake; rather, it was specifically meant to be witnessed by a certain person culled Baka Dalbhya. Therefore, some light may be thrown on it if we can determine the nature of this per- son-i.c. his views or ideological affiliations. The modern scho- lars have, unfortunately, ignored this possibility. Perhaps a clue as to his viewpoint can be found in the words svadhyayam udvavraja of the text. These words, from the strict grammatical point of view, should be rendered as 'renounced the Veda-studies,' rather than as 'went forth for Veda-studies', as in the translation we have used. Though all the traditional interpretations would go against rendering the

1 See Monier-Williams SED. 2 TRD 300.

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words as 'renounced the Veda-studies,' such an understanding, apart from being literal, has an additional advantage. It may help us to understand the alternative name of the person. Glava literally means the displeased: obviously a person displeased with the Vedas would renounce it. Of course, whether there is any technical difficulty in rendering 'Glava Maitreya' as 'Maitreya, the displeased' is a question which should not be ignored. Such an interpretation would suggest that the person was a heretic from the Vedic point of view. The suggestion gains in strength because of some more evidences that are external to the Chandogya Upanisad. The Jaiminiya Upanisad Brahmana3 related how a certain Baka Dalbhya was using violence against Indra, the lord sup- reme of the Vedic pantheon. The Kathaka Samhitat described him as engaged in a ritual dispute with Dhritarastra. These suggest, therefore, that he was one of the disgruntled elements. Of course, these sources did not mention the alternative name, Glava Maitreya. We have, therefore, some hesitation in identi- fying him with the Baka Dalbhya of the Chandogya Upanisad. Nevertheless, this cannot be a definite ground to disprove the identity, particularly because in the Chandogya Upanisad3 it- self we find the name Baka Dalbhya mentioned elsewhere with- out the alternative Glava Maitreya. Further, Weber and Grier- son have claimed that Baka Dalbhya was a Pancala and the Pancalas were anti-Brahmanical.6 This may lend additional support to the presumption that he might have been a heretic from the Vedic point of view. However, there are certain difficulties in accepting this view of the ideological affiliation of the person. The evidence of the Chandogya Upanisad itself appears to go against it. The same text, in a different context, describes him as possessing and practising the wisdom of Vedic chanting: 'Baka Dalbhya knew it (that is, the secret of the Vedic chanting). He became Udgatri-priest of the people of Naimisa."7 In the Mahabharata,8 too, we find him advising Yudhistira on matters of ritual proce- dure. These evidences, therefore, appear to clash with those pre-

3 i. 9. 2. 5 i. 2.13. Macdonell & Keith (VI ii. 58, 236) thought that the 4 xxx. 2.

same person was referred to in all these texts. 6 See Macdonell & Keith VI i. 165. 7 i. 2. 13. S Tr. Ray iii. 74.

THE CHANTING DOGS 79

viously quoted and indicate that Baka Dalbhya was far from being a heretic, or that he could not have renounced the Veda- studies. A way out of the confusion may possibly be suggested. Admitting the seriousness of both sets of evidences we may imagine that either he was originally a Vedie priest who even- tually renounced the Vedas or he was originally a disbeliever, eventually converted to the Vedic path. The cireumstance of his possessing two gotra-names" mav also indicate some kind of con- version having taken place in his life. For, the commonly accepted interpretation of this dual name, originally suggested by Samkara." namely, that he could have bcen the son of a married woman by somebody else's husband ( deyamusyayana), cannot be supported by any text. In the face of all these complexities, it is obviously not pos- sible for ns to say anything definite as to the nature of the per- son before whom was revealed the strange scene of the chanting dogs. However, for the purpose of our argument it may be sufficient to confine ourselves to the two alternative possibili- ties concerning his views or affiliations.

3. MODERN INTERPRETATION We have argued at length on the ideological affiliation of the person. He was either one who renounced the Veda-studies or one who sought them. If the former be the case, then the scene of the chanting dogs, which was designed specifically to be witnessed by him, could only be meant to restore in him his shaken convictions. In the latter alternative it could only be meant to reveal to him the knowledge he wanted. The two sug- gestions are convergent: the scene was somehow or other con- nected with what the author of this passage considered to be the essence of the Vedic wisdom, or, more specifically, the wis- dom of Vedic chanting. This will appear to be most strange. How could such a highly peculiar scene have anything to do with the Vedic wisdom, or the wisdom of the Vedic chanting? Yet, as we have just seen, an analysis of the context in which the scene occurs cannot have any other implication. We shall presently return to discuss the significance origi- ually attributed to Vedic chanting and see the possible relation of this strange scene to it. Before, however, we do it we may

See Kosambi JBBRAS xxvi. 23. 10 On Ch Up i. 12. 1.

80 LOKAYATA

briefly review the standard interpretation of the passage offered by the modern scholars. Whether the scene depicted before Baka Dalbhya was meant to restore in him his shaken convictions, or, whether it was meant to impart to him the knowledge he sought for-we are under the obligation to admit that the authors of the text could not have meant it to be a joke or a mockery. The passage, in other words, was meant to be a serious one. This point is important, because it is crucial. It disproves the view of the modern scholars that the whole thing was only a satire on the performance of the Vedic priests. Radhakrishnan observed:11 There are occasions when the sacrificial and priestly religion strikes them (i.e., the authors of the Upanisads) as superficial, and then they give vent to all their irony. They describe a procession of dogs to march like a procession of the priests, each holding the tail of the cther in front and saying, 'Om! let us eat; Cm, let us drink!' Rhys Davids1 discovered in this passage 'a spirit of subtle irony,' which, according to him, was peculiarly Indian. What is the especial point in this fun-a kind of fun quite unknown in the West? It is the piquancy of the contrast between the mock seriousness of the extravagant, even impossible details, and the real serious earnestness of the ethical tone .... In the Upanisads it is very marked. The Liturgy of the Dog ... and several other such episodes have this mixture of unreality and earnestness. Durant13 practically echoed Radhakrishnan:

That there were doubters, even in the days of the Upanisads, appcars from the Upanisads themselves. Sometimes the sages ridi- culed the priests, as when the Chandogya Upanisad likens the orthcdox clergy of the time to a procession of dogs each holding the

us drink!' tail of its predecessor, and saying, piously, 'Om, let us eat; Om, let

Hume14 probably felt a little less sure of the ironical motive of the passage; after describing it as a satire on the performance of the priests he has put a question mark within brackets. More examples may be quoted; but that is not necessary. The question is: why have the modern scholars imagined this passage to have been a satirical one? There are many reasons for that. One of the important reasons is that these scholars are very much influenced by Samkara's interpretation of the general nature of the Upanisadic (or Vedantic) thought. Samkara

11 IP :. 149. 13 OOH 416. 12 DB i. 161-2. 14 TPU 188.

THE CHANTING DOGS 81

argued that the Upanisads were emphasizing the importance of pure knowledge (jnana) by negating the value of the rituals (karma). But it cannot be claimed that this is the only possible interpretation of the general trend of the Upanisadic view. The question of the textual details apart, the broad fact remains that the other traditional interpreters of the Upanisads were against such a view. Ramanuja, for example, argued that the Upanisads, far from being hostile to the Vedic rituals, were really complementary to these. We cannot obviously enter here into this controversy. However, against the modern scholars it may be pointed out that as far as this particular passage is concerned Samkara15 himself did not see any irony in it. On the contrary, he wanted to draw our attention to the context of this passage in order to show its serious implication. The preceding sections16 of the text described famine-conditions. Driven by hunger a Vedic priest called Usasti Cakrayana was forced to eat the leavings of food of a low-born. Hence, argued Samkara, the author of this Upanisad was logically led to des- cribe in the succeeding section the Udgitha of the dogs, because this was the method of obtaining the food, and as such, was a remedy for hunger. The white dog, according to Samkara, was either a god or a sage (risi) that appeared in the guise of a dog and so were the other dogs that approached him, though they were of comparatively lesser importance. But Samkara did not try to explain why the gods assumed the guise of the dogs in order to impart the divine wisdom.

4. MEANING OF 'DOG'

This leads us to the other important reason why the modern scholars have considered the passage to be merely satirical. They have thoroughly misunderstood the dogs of the text. To them the dogs were but dogs and nothing but dogs. And since even the dogs should be given their dues, these creatures of the an- cient text are imagined to have possessed even real tails ! As Radhakrishnan has described them, 'each holding the tail of the other in front.' Of course the text itself did not mention the tails. Yet the tails have a rather long tale. They started

15 On Ch Up i. 12. 1. 16 Ch Up i. 10 & 11. Significantly, this discussion ends with the following: Verily, indeed, all beings here live by taking up to them- selves food. This is the divinity connected with pratihara.' L 6

82 LOKAYATA

from Samkara's commentary on the Upanisad (for though Sam- kara considered them to be gods, he thought that their disguise as dogs was a real one) and reached Radhakrishnan's Indian Philosophy via Max Müller's Sacred Books of the East." But how, it will be asked, can there be dogs without tails, and, how, further, can obviously human behaviour be described as canine without there being any sting about it? It is true that both possibilities appear remote to the modern mind. But the text we are discussing is not a modern one. It is an ancient text and it refers to the ancient realities. Therefore, in order to understand it properly, we should look at it from the point of view of the ancients rather than impose upon it the preoccupations of our own. And when we do it, we shall easily see that the dogs of our passage are neither gods in Samkara's sense nor dogs in the sense of our modern scholars but simply a group of human beings.

6. ANIMAL NAMES IN VEDIC LITERATURES

Things in the past must have been fundamentally different in many ways from how we look at these in our own times. Animal names were then freely used in the human context and this without the slightest malice. We may have some examples of this from the Vedic literatures. The Vedas, that is the Vedic Samhitas, are said to have had many sakhas or recensions. Most of these are lost to us. Only the names remain. But even the meanings of most of the sur- viving names are lost. A few of them make clear sense. Sur- prisingly, however, when these do so, they usually reveal their origin in the name of an animal or of a plant. The only surviving sakha of the Rig-Veda Samhita is called the Sakala. It means a species of snake.18 According to the Pratisakhya,19 the same Veda had four more recensions called Asvalayana, Vaskala, Samkhyayana, and Mandukeya. The last one is obviously derived from the frog. It is worth enquiring whether the other three can be similarly traced to any anima! (or plant) origin. The Puranas20 spoke of a thousand sakhas of the Sama Veda Samhita. These were destroyed by Indra. The action of

17 SBE i. 21. 19 Lahiri RV (B) 29. 18 AB iii. 43 20 Winternitz HIL i. 163.

THE CHANTING DOGS 83

Indra seems puzzling. But no less puzzling are the names of the seven sakhas which are said to have survived Indra's onslaught. These are: Kauthum, Satyamugra, Ranyayana, Kapola, Maha- kapola, Langulika, and Sarduliya. The last is definitely derived from the tiger. Others may have a similar animal origin. Of the two well known surviving sakhas of the Krisna Yajurveda Samhita one is called the Taittiriya. This is elearly derived from a species of bird (fittira). The names of the sub- recensions or upasakhas of the other surviving sakha are quite interesting. These are Manava, Varaha, Chagaleya, Haradra- viya, Dundubha, Syamayaniya. The first three of these are derived from the man, the boar and the goat respectively. The names of some of the sakhas of the Atharva Vede Samhita are Paippalada, Brahmapalasa and Saunaka. Of these the first is presumably derived from the name of some bird that lived on pipal fruits and the last is definitelv derived from that particular species of animal in which we are at the moment most interested. Saunaka owes its origin to 'the dog and, of course, there was no satirical motive in the use of this name. To sum up: the meanings of some of the names of the sakhas of the Vedic Samhitas are clear, though others are obscure, and when the meaning is clear its origin is traceable to the animal or the plant world. What is clear, however, can- not be set aside by what is obscure. It may, therefore, be argued that the Vedic seers were attaching animal names to their own literary creations.21 This practice died hard. Even some of the principal Upanisads bear obvious animal names. These are the Svetasca. tara (from the white mule), the Mandukya (from the frog), the Kausitaki (from the owl), the Taittiriya (from a species of bird). Another Upanisad, though it is now extinct in its Sams- krit form, was called Chagalcya, a name derived from the goat. These facts are convincing. We should, therefore, hesitate to imagine that in the Vedic literatures animal names necessarily referred to actual animals or that the animal names being used in the human context necessarily implied a spirit of satire or irony. So the singing dogs of our Upanisadic passage might not have been dogs at all; they could have been just human beings and they were called dogs by the author of the passage

21 The explanation seems to be that each recension was current among a specific group of people bearing a definite animal name.

84 LOKAYATA

not because he wanted to ridicule them and their performance but rather because of some other reason which deserves to be objectively investigated into. This presumption becomes stronger in view of the following further evidences.

6. HUMANS WITH ANIMAL NAMES In the Vedic literatures we come across various groups of human beings referred to by animal names. Here are a few examples. The Rig Veda22 referred to a people called the Ajas, mean- ing the goats. Another people were mentioned in it as the Sigrus.23 It meant the horse-radishes. Similarly, we come across the Matsyas24 or fishes in the same text. The Satapatha Brah- mana25 spoke of a certain Matsya king. The Matsyas as a people were also mentioned in the Kausitaki Upanisad,20 the Gopatha Brahmana,27 and even in the Manu Samhita.28 The Satapatha Brahmana,29 again, spoke of the creator appearing in the form of a tortoise (kurma). The Aitareya Brahmana as well as the Atharva Veda referred to a priestly family as Kasyapa,30 mean- ing the tortoise. Kasyapa was not the name of a people; it was rather the name of a risi, or Vedic seer. This leads us to consider the names of the famous risis mentioned in the Vedic literatures by obvious animal names. Macdonell31 has already prepared a catalogue of the better known examples. These are Kausika (from the owl), Mandukeya (from the frog), Gotama (from the bull), Vatsa (from the calf) and Sunaka (from the dog). This list is by no means exhaustive.32 However, the name that in- terests us most in this list is the last one. For, it is the problem of the singing dogs that we are trying to understand. The point is that the sage Sunaka is quite famous in the Vedic literatures, and, as against Samkara's interpretation of our Upanisadic pas- sage, it needs to be pointed out that the Vedic literatures no- where mentioned that the risi Sunaka was so called because he had really the tail of a dog or that he was fond of assuming the disguise of a dog. He was a risi, a human being.

22 vii. 18. 19. 25 xiii. 5. 4. 9. 23 Ib. 24 vii. 18. 6. 28 ii. 19; vii. 193. 26 iv. 1. 29 vii. 5. 1. 5. 27 i. 2. 9. 30 Macdonell VM 153. 31 Ib. 32 E.g. in Ch Up iv. 3, 5 the interesting name Kapeya (from monkey) occurs.

THE CHANTING DOGS 85

The Vedic literatures actually went a little further. In the Aitarcya Brahmana3" we come across the three famous brothers called Sunah-puccha, Sunah-scpa and Sunah-langula, meaning the dog's tail. If the dog's tail could be the source of the names of the Vedic sages, (at least Sunah-sepa was definitely a risi), then we should hesitate to ascribe actual tails to our Upanisadic dogs.

7. DOGS IN ANCIENT LITERATURES

So it may be quite possible that the Chandogya Upanisad was only describing a group of persons called 'the dogs' and that they were called dogs not because the author of the pas- sage was sarcastic about them. This possibility gains strength in view of the fact that in many other places of our ancient literatures, we come across references to human beings called after dogs. Kautilya in his Arthasastra3* spoke of a people called the dogs. They, along with a few other people, belonged to the raja-sabdopajivi-gana. A whole chapter of the Harivamsa35 was devoted to describe the geneology of a highly respected family, called the family of dogs. The Mahabharata36 referred to a scction of the Yadavas called the dogs. The same epic, at least in two more places, mentioned human groups called the dogs. One of these is to be found in the Bhisma-parva"7 and the other in the Sabha-parva.38 Incidentally, the Mahabharata39 appears to give us the im- pression that the various peoples mentioned in it had all sorts of animal names. Following are a few examples: the owl, the scorpion, the crow, the jackal, the donkey, the fowl, the ele- phant, the hare, the tortoise, the swine, the ram, the tiger, the swan, the horse, the fish. But let us concentrate on the evidences of actual human beings called dogs. The Karandavyuha40 referred to a mixed caste called the kukkura and the Mahabharata41 to a muni (sage) by the same name. The Visnu Purana,12 too, mentions the people called kukkura. More examples may be mentioned.43

33 Keith RVB 303-9. 34 xi. 1. 35 Ch. 38. 36 Sabhaparva xix. 28. 37 ix. 42. 38 lii. 16. 39 See Sen JB (B) 100-1. 40 Monier-Williams SED 287 41 Ib. 42 Ib. 43 Ib.

86 LOKAYATA

8. THE BACKWARD PEOPLES

The question is: Can we, from the point of view of our modern notions, make any sense of these ancient references to human beings deseribed normally by animal-names? The answer would obviously be in the negative. The reason is very clear. These are references to ancient realities and ancient realities were in many respects fundamentally different from todav's. Nevertheless, it is necessary to note that such ancient reali- ties are not extinet even today. If we turn over the pages of our Census Reports, or the works of Thurston, Risley, Russell, Iver,-in fact any of those authors who have described for us the backward peoples of the country,-and try to prepare an exhaustive list of the names of these various peoples, we shall probably see that no known species of animals or plants is left out of it. The various tribal and semi-tribal peoples of India still call themselves by such peculiar names. Of these, the one derived from the dog is most relevant for our present discussion. We shall mention only a few examples. Risley,4+ in his description of the Oraons, spoke of the 'wild dogs.' lyer15 mentioned 'the dogs' among the Mysore tribes and castes. The 'wild dogs' are also there in Thurston's46 list of the South Indian peoples. Examples like these may be multiplied. What is necessary is only to note that 'the dogs' are not at all rare among the castes and tribes of India today. And it is needless to add that these dogs, like those belonging to the Vedic literatures, are in the company of all sorts of animal-names like the tortoise and the frog, the mule and the fish. Does it not imply that the conditions still surviving among the backward peoples of our country have some light to throw on our ancient literatures? There is, again, no mystery about this implication. An- cient literatures, being ancient, naturally reflect, or at least contain strong relics of, the ancient realities. On the other hand, the backward peoples surviving today, because of their stunted development, still retain the same ancient characteristics in a living form. This is the result of uneven development. The pace of development of all the peoples all over the world had not been the same; some are still surviving at a stage the others

44 PI 793. 45 MTC 248. 46 CTSI q.v. bholia.

THE CHANTING DOGS 87

passed through long ago. The point was already formulated by Kaines.47

There communities refleet the spiritual conduet of our ancestors thousands of dmes removed. We have passed through the same stages of devciopment, physical and moral, and are what we are today because they lived, toiled and endeavoured. However, this is true not merely on a world-scale. Uneven development had beeu a particularly important feature of the history of Indian society. Ancient society. in this country, exist- ed along with the developed and civilised society. It is not estinet in India even today. If this be true. then, we mav be permitted to fry to under- stand what is apparently obscure in our ancient literatures in the light of ihat is known in general about the primitive and semi-primitire peoples surciving even today. We shall see how far this procedure actnally helps us to understand the Chando- gya-passage we are diseussing. .

9. TOTEMISM An almost universal characteristic of ancient societies surviv- ing today is that the peoples living therein borrow their names from the animal or the plant world. Observed Morgan:18 Thrcughout aboriginal America the gens (that is, the clan) took its name from some animal, or inanimate object, and never from a person. In this early condition of society, the individuality of per- scns was lost in the gens. Thus, for example, the American tribe called the Seneca was composed of the following clans: Bear, Wolf, Beaver, Turtle, Deer, Snipe, Heron and Hawk. Similarly, the Ojibwa tribe was 'divided into about 40 exogamous ... clans, of which those of the Crane, Catfish, Loon, Bear, Marten and Wolf were the prin- cipal.'49 This practice of borrowing names from the animal world (or plant-world) is known as totemism. The term was coined from the dialect of the Ojibwa tribe of America. 'In the Ojibwa dialect,' said Morgan,5 'the word totem, quite as often pronoun- ced dodaim, significs the symbol or device of a gens (clan); thus the figure of a wolf was the totem of the Wolf-gens.' Totemism, as revealed by later works, 'survives most com-

47 Morgan in AS quoted it as the epigraph. 4> Morgan AS 86. Morgan AS 170. 49 ERE xii. 394.

88 LOKAYATA

pletely among the lower hunting tribes of Australia; it is also found in forms more or less degenerate among more advanced tribes in America, Melanesia, Africa, India and other parts of Asia.'51 The essence of totemism is as follows. Each clan of which the tribe is composed associates itself with an animal (or a plant), which is called its totem. 'The clansmen regard them- selves as akin to their totem-species and as descended from it."52 Thus the people belonging to the dog-clan, for example, would consider themselves to be dogs and as descended from the dog. There are also taboos, or categorical prohibitions, associated with totemism. Thus, the people of the dog-clan would be forbidden to eat dogs, that is, their own totem-species. Neither would they be allowed to marry any member belonging to the same totem-group. It is to be noted that the relics of totemism are found to linger even among peoples that have advanced far ahead of the primitive level. Such relics obviously indicate that whatever may be the stage of development in which we find these peoples, their ancestors must have once lived in the stage of totemistic society. As Thomson53 observed:

Among the Indo-European, Semitic and Chinese peoples there are numerous traditions and institutions which have been assigned to a totemic origin. All these peoples are, or have been organised in tribes, and therefore the view that they too were formerly totemic will be considerably strengthened if it can be shown that totemism is an inherent feature of the tribal system. As to the details of how the author actually argued the last point, the readers are referred to his own work. For the present our questions are: Are we to look at the animal names thus freelv used by the Vedic literatures in the human context as but relics of totemism? Further, if this be so, what can we deduce from such evidences?

10. TOTEMISM AND VEDIC LITERATURES Macdonell54 thought that 'there are possibly in the Rig Vedu some survivals of totemism or the belief in the descent of the human race or of individual tribes or families from animals or plants'. Oldenberg,55 too, considered the animal-names as relics

51 Thomson AA 12. 54 VM 153. 52 Ib. 11. 53 Ib. 12. 55 Keith VBYS cxxi.

THE CHANTING DOGS 89

of totemism; further, according to him, certain taboos in the Vedic literatures could have been but the counterparts of the same totemic belief.56 However, Hopkins vigorously doubted all these: 'Our learn- ed scholar,' he wrote referring to Oldenberg, 'who is perhaps too well-read in modern anthropology, seems to give the absolute dictum that animal-names of persons and clans imply totemism.' This appeared to Hopkins as highly untenable: 'There is no proof of totemism, on the contrary there is here direct evidence that totemistic appearance may be found without totemism.'57 What, then, is the explanation of this 'totemistic appearance"? Hopkins suggested that 'Mr Tortoise' was so called 'very likely because he was slow' and 'Mr Cucumber' owed his name probably to the circumstance of his having 'numerous family.' 'Such family events are apt to receive the mocking admiration of the con- temporaries."58 Practically the same argument has been adduced by Keith,59 who also denied the totemistic survivals in the Vedic litera- tures.60 Referring mainly to the evidences cited by Macdonell, he observed that 'it is most probable that some of them may be nicknames given by their too candid friends,'61 and, referring to the views of Frazer and Oldenberg, he added that the 'use of beast or vegetable names for people is valueless as evidence, since the names may be in some cases mere nicknames.'02 However, this kind of argument leaves no line of demar- cation between serious textual interpretation and the fabrication of pure fancy. Mr Cucumber having numerous family is nowhere mocked at in the texts and the possibility of Mr Tortoise being slow has entirely been drawn from the author's own ima- gination. Similarly Keith may imagine that such tribal names as the Matsyas, the Ajas, the Sigrus, or such names of the Vedic families as Gotamas, Vatsas, Sunakas, Kausikas, Mandukeyas and Kasyapas were but nicknames given by their too candid friends; but the authors of the Vedic literatures themselves did not betray the slightest trace of knowledge of such a possibility. We only find very deep reverence shown to such Vedic families and risis. We may mention a few examples from the Chandogya Upanisad. The risi Kausitaki imparted the secret knowledge

50 Keith RPV 197. 57 PAOS 1894. cliv. 58 Ib. 59 RPV 196-7; VBYS cxxi. 00 JRAS (1907) 931 ff. 62 VBYS cxxi. 61 RPV 196.

90 LOKAYATA

of Udgitha to his son.": The sage Sunaka Kapeva (of the two components of the name, the first is derived from the dog, the second from the monkey) imparted secret knowledge to a stu- dent." Similarly, the story of Sunah-sepa as told by the Rig Veda and the Aitarcya Brahmana, was told in all seriousness and without any 'mocking admiration. Besides, the risis were not the lone bearers of animal names. As we have seen, parts and branches of the Vedic literatures were often named after well known animals. Were these mere nick names (Keith), or, the results of mocking admiration ( Hopkins )? Obviously not. The only explanation is that the authors and the perpetuators of such texts were the descendants of peoples that looked at these animals with special reverence; that is, they belonged to originally totemic clans bearing such names. But why was Hopkins so keen on denying the totemie sur- vivals? Because he wanted to save the Arvans 'of the indigni- ties of contemporary anthropology. Clearly enough, it is in the later literature that one is brought into closest rapport with the anthropological data of the other peoples. This is due to the fact that the more the Hindus penetrated into India the more they absorbed the cult of the un-Aryan nations and it is from this rather than the refined priestliness of the Rig-Vedic Aryans that we may get parallels to the conceptions of cis-Indic Earbarism.65 Too many assumptions are involved here. The Rig-Vedic Arvans, whoever they might have been and whatever might have been the stage of development reflected in their literatures, were after all human beings and like all human beings thev, too, had to begin their 'existence on earth at the bottom of the scale, instead of at the top,' and had gradually to work upward. In short, they. too, must have had a primitive past. As such. there is nothing improbable in the idea that even in their later litera- tures relics of this primitive past were retained. It would, there- fore, be a wrong appreciation of their literatures to view anv and every survival of the primitive characteristic as but the non- Aryan elements absorbed by them. Besides, beliefs and ideas, do not fit people indiscriminately. Therefore, rather than view- ing these totemic evidences in the Vedic literatures as absorbed from the non-Aryans or pre-Aryans, it would be more logical to characterise them as but survivals of the primitive past of the Vedic people themselves.

G3 i. 5. 2. 6+ iv. 3. 5. 65 Op. cit. clv.

THE CHANTING DOGS 91

We may now look more elosely into Keith's argument. His argument appears to be that only some totemic features are present in the Vedic literatures. and not all. Therefore, 'the use of beast or vegetable mames for people is valueless as evi-

In the Vedic religion there is not a single case in which we can trace any totem-clan which cats sacramentally the totem animal or plant, and, therefore, the most essential feature of toiemism on Reinach's theory does not even begin to appear in the Veda. The only point on which there is anything to be pleaned from the Vedie hterature is the question of descent from animals, or plants.";

Apart from the question whether traces of the sacramental killing of the totem-species can really be found in the more archaic references to the Ascamedha"s and the Soma"9 rituals, Keith's argument would be of value only against those who would claim to discover totemism in its full-fledged form in the Vedic literatures. What is actually claimed, however, is that there are only relics of totemistic belief there. A relic is after all a relic and a relic of totemism is not supposed to reveal all the features thereof. On the other hand, if we reject the hypo- thesis of these being totemic relics we shall have to prefer dark- ness to knowledge and say that such animal-names are of the nature of we-know-not-what. As a matter of fact, Keith's argu- ment ultimately led him to a position like this:

... it is most probable that some of them may be nicknames given by their too candid triends, other again for causes which we cannot

So there are only two alternatives-either pure fancy or pure ignorance, and all these because of a rather determined effort to resist the legitimate hypothesis.

11. GROUP LIFE Even scholars like Macdonell and Oldenberg who have ad- mitted the existence of totemic evidences in the Vedic litera- tures, have only incompletely discussed the implications of these evidences. Totemism is often looked at as a mere curiosity and the term, unfortunately, is often very loosely used. Therefore, it is rightly suggested that the term

66 VBYS cxxi. 67 RPV 196. 6$ VBYS cxxxV. 69 1b. cxxi. T0 RPV 196.

92 LOKAYATA

should be restricted to those cases where a systematic association of groups of persons with species of animals (occasionally plants or inanimate objects) is connected with a certain element of social orgamsation .? ' What is the nature of this social organisation? Moret has given us a very clear answer. The true totemic society, he says,

... knows neither kings nor subjects. It is democratic or commu- nistic; all the members of the clan live in it on a footing of equality with respect to their totem.7- Again, ... the active and passive subjects of obligations are collective in the regime of the totemic clan .... We are in the presence of a communal and equalitarian society in the bosom of which partici- pation in the same totem which constitutes the essence of each and the cohesion of all, places all members of the clan on the same tooting.73 This is primitive communism. Since totemism survives most completely in Australia we shall confine ourselves here mainly to the Australian evidence of this primitive communism. Said the Rev. Ridley:7+

Communism is another law of the aborigines. They hold the doc- trine of Mr. Proudhon, La propriete c'est le vol. Real and personal

communism. property in individuals is rendered impossible by their systematic

Referring to the South Australian aborigines, Taplin75 wrote:

Each clan has its own symbol, and every member of it regards all the other men, women, and children belonging to it as blood-relations. It is that clan-life which is the cause of the peculiar national charac- ter of the Australian tribes. In the clan there can be no personal property-all implements, weapons, etc. belong to the members collectively; every individual regards them as possessions of his clan and to be employed for its welfare and defence as occasion may re- quire. If he has a weapon, or net, or canoe which is in some sense his own, he knows that his property in it is subject to the superior rights of the clan. Every man is interested in his neighbour's pro- perty and cares for it because it is part of the wealth of the family collectively .... One effect of this state of things is a lack of the grace of gratitude. If a man be in danger or injured, anyone of the same clan who succours him is supposed to do it more for the sake of the clan than from personal regard. Indeed, it is often the case that a man will give all the help he can to one whom he dislikes. His personal feelings are sunk for the common good; and if any kind- ness is shown to one of the clan, it is felt to be shown to the whole.

71 EB xxii. 315. Italics added. 73 Ib. 14. 74 TAA 7. 72 FTE 5. 15 FMCLSAA 2 ff.

THE CHANTING DOGS 93

Whatever injury there befalls a single individual is a general damage that befalls the whole. These are examples of the group life of the people living in the totemic stage. If such a group life be an inherent feature of totemism, then the relic of totemism should be understood also as the relic of such group life.

12. MAGIC AND RELIGION We may now return to the strange scene of the chanting dogs. Certain dogs were hungry. They approached a white dog and said: 'Do you, Sir, obtain food for us by singing? We are hungry.' To us, this appears strange. How could a song solve the problem of food? Nevertheless, the dogs meant it. When they sang, they sang of food and nothing but food: 'Om, Let us eat; Om, Let us drink,' etc. Thus, the actual song fulfilled the desire that occasioned it, though in fantasy. It may be suggested that by song the dogs perhaps meant a prayer. They wanted to have food and so they requested the white dog-presumably an elder-to lead them to pray to the gods so that the gods would grant them their desire. This interpretation agrees with our modern notions, and, as a matter of fact, Samkara76 wanted to interpret the passage somewhat on this line. However, there are many difficulties in taking this interpre- tation seriously. In the text itself we come across the word 'to sing' rather than 'to pray.' It cannot be imagined that the difference bet- ween the two words was not known to the author (or authors) of the text. In some other context of the same Upanisad we come across the deliberate use of the word 'to pray."77 Thus, since the words 'to sing' and 'to pray' are different and since this difference was clearly known to the authors themselves, we do not have the liberty to imagine that they, in our passage, meant the latter, yet wrongly used the word for the former. Besides, the actual song of the dogs, which came last, was evidently a song and not a prayer, and this in spite of the fact that the memory of certain ancient Vedic devas was invoked in it.

76 On Ch Up i. 12. 2. 77 E.g. ii. 3. 1.

94 LOKAYATA

Secondly, there is another evidence, which, though external to the test itself, decisively goes against reading any prayer- motive in the song of the dogs. We have seen that the dogs were neither gods nor dogs but just a group of primitive people. We may, therefore, hope to understand their behaviour only in the light of what is known in general about the primitive peo- ples. So the question is: Can we really impute any praver- motive to such peoples directly observed and known? Jane HarrisonTs has already answered the question:

The savage is a man of action. Instead of asking a god to do what he wants done, he does it or tries to do it himself; instead of prayers he utters spells. In a word, he practises magic, and above all he is strenuously and frequently engaged in dancing magical dances. When a savage wants sun or wind or rain, he does not go to church and prostrate himself before a false god; he summons his tribe and dances a sun dance or a wind dance or a rain dance. When he would hunt and catch a bear, he does not pray to his god for strength

dance. to outwit and outmatch the bear, he rehearses his hunt in a bear

Harrison has used the word magic. Magie is not religion. The difference between the two is qualitative. Religion, as Thomson™" has put it,

is characterised by belief in God and the practice of prayer or sacri- fice. The lowest savages known to us have no gods and know noth- ing of prayer or sacrifice. Similarly, wherever we can penetrate the prehistory of civilized peoples, we reach a level at which again there are no gods, no prayer or sacrifice. What we find at this level is magic.

That the Vedic literatures contain very strong traces of magical beliefs will not be doubted by serious scholars: as is well known, practically the whole of the Atharva Veda is nothing more than sheer magic. So, when we penetrate into the prehistory of the Vedic people we reach a level at which there is no religion but simply magic. Unfortunately, our modern scholars*" often use the word magic rather lightly and its quali- tative difference with religion is not always clearly remembered. Thus it is necessary for us to go into some details over the general character of magical beliefs.

Magic rests on the principle that by creating the illusion that you control reality you can actually control it. In its initial stages it is simply mimetic. You want rain, so you perform a dance in which you mimic the gathering clouds, the thunderclap, and the falling

7S AAR 30. 79 R 9. *" E.g. Winternitz HIL i. 125; Keith RPV 380-2, etc.

THE CHANTING DOGS 95

shower. You enact in fantasy the fulfilment of the desired rcality. In its later stages the mimetic act may be accompanied by a com- mand, an imperative 'Rain!' But it is a command, not a request. This principle of collective compulsion corresponds to a stage of society at which the community is still an undivided whole, supreme over each and all of its members, presenting a weak but united front against the hosule world of nature.>1 We have emphasized two points in the quotation above because their bearing on our passage is direct and evident. The dogs wanted to have a song for the sake of food and their song was clearly a food-song. This was enacting in fantasy the fulfil- ment of the desired reality. And those who did it,-the dogs of our Upanisadic passage-we have already argued, bore the stamp of a stage of socicty at which the community was still an undivided whole. In short, that, upon which the song thrived, was magic. It could not have been a praver. Magie is an illu- sory technique. But though illusory, it is not futile; it is an aid to the real technique. Thomsonse has illustrated the point thus:

The Maoris have a potato dance. The young crop is liable to be blasted by east winds, so the girls go into the tields and dance, simu- lating with their bodies the rush of wind and rain and the sprouting and blossoming of the crop; and as they dance they sing, calling on the crop to follow their example. They enact in tantasy the fulfil- ment of the desired reality. That is magic, an illusory technique sup- plementary to the real technique. But though iltusory it is not tutile. The dance cannot have any direct effect on the potatoes, but it can and does have an appreciable effect on the girls themselves. Inspired by the dance in the belief that it will save the crop, they proceed to the task of tending it with greater confidence and so with greater energy than before. And so it does have an effect on the crop after all. It changes their subjective attitude to reality, and so indirectly it changes reality. The efficacy of magic is thus psychological. But it is not a matter of individual psychology.

One element in the rite we have already observed, and that is, that it be done collectively, by a number of persons feeling the same emotion .... Collectivity and emotional tension, two elements that tend to turn the simple reaction into a rite, are-specially among primitive peoples-closely associated, indeed scarcely separable. The individual among savages has but a thin and meagre personality; high emotional tension is to him only caused and maintained by a thing felt socially; it is what the tribe feels that is sacred, that is matter for ritual .... Intensity, then and collectivity go together ... But this primitive collectivity is undermined by the advance in the productive technique: it creates surplus and as such the

x1 Thomson R 9. 82 SAGS i. 440. 83 Harrison AAR 36-7.

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possibility for a few to live on the labour of many.$ But the memory of the primitive efficacy of magic does not vanish. It is rationalised as a mysterious spiritual power, the secret know- ledge only of the few. That is superstition. And, as supersti- tion, it becomes a hindrance to the real productive technique. Magic passes into its opposite. It becomes religion. We are going to argue that with the speculators of the Upanisads it had already become so. However, to understand their superstitions, it is necessary to delve into their pre-history, when it had been an aid to their productive technique.

13. SONG FOR FOOD The central theme of the passage of the Chandogya Upanisad we are trving to understand is a song-for-the-sake-of-food. The first point to be noted is that it was not a stray thought in the text. As a matter of fact, the authors of the Upanisad could not conceive of a song that was not connected with the idea of obtaining the food (or of fulfilling some similar desire). This is evident from the way in which they wanted to derive the word Udgitha itself. According to them, the word was really some kind of an abridged sentence: ud, gi and tha. Ud meant breath, gi meant speech and tha meant food.

(sthita).85 Tha is food, for upon food this whole world is established

Food, therefore, was one of the components of the very conception of the Udgitha. And the authors of the Upanisad knew of no song that was not an Udgitha. Thus, song, as con- ceived by them, was inevitably a song for food. We may now understand the general context in which the scene of the chanting dogs was placed in the Upanisad. The scene was not presented for its own sake. It was designed specifically to be witnessed by a certain person called Baka Dalbhya. He was either a wayward heretic in whom faith in the Vedic chanting had to be restored, or, simply a traditional seeker before whom the secret of Vedic chanting had to be revealed. In any case, the scene could only be connected with what the authors of the Upanisad considered to be the essence of Vedic chanting. Under these circumstances, the scene could not but have the theme of song for food. The idea of obtaining

84 Engels OF Ch. ix. 85 Ch Up i. 3. 6.

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food was not, to the understanding of the authors, extrinsic to Vedic chanting. In order to substantiate this further, it is necessary to dis- cuss briefly the character of the Vedic songs and the general nature of the Upanisadic speculations on these.

14. EARLY VEDIC SONGS

The Chandogya Upanisad. in its earlier chapters, discussed the questions of speech, song and melody. This is only to be expected from the context of the text. Like the other Upanisads, the Chandogya, too, was attached to a Veda. The particular Veda to which it was attached was the Sama Veda, meaning 'the knowledge of melody.'6 Really speaking, this Sama Veda was not an independent Veda. It was simply an anthology of those verses of the Rig Veda which were more specifically intended to be chanted at the Soma-ritual. All but seventy-five verses of the Sama Veda occur in the 8th and 9th books of the Rig Veda and it has been con- jectured7 that these others, too, might have formed part of some lost recension of the Rig Veda. This shows that whatever the date of the compilation of the Sama Veda, the songs found in it were actually composed in a very remote past. The best known recension of the Sama Veda, namely the Kauthuma, consists of two parts. In both these parts, as Win- ternitz ** has observed,

.the text is only a means to an end. The essential element is always the melody, and the purpose of both parts is that of teaching the melodies. The Chandogya Upanisad, forming an appendage of the Sama Veda, was naturally concerned with these early Vedic melodies. It will be objected that thesc were melodies not in our sense of the term. Rather, these were melodies in the specific sense of forming parts of some Vedic rituals. The Sama Veda resembles the Yajur Veda in having been compiled exclusively for ritual application; for the verses of which it consists are all meant to be chanted at the ceremonies of the Soma- sacrifice.89 This is true. But it only means that in order to answer fully

86 Winternitz HIL i. 54. 88 Ib. $7 Ib. i. 164. N9 Macdonell HSL 171. L 7

98 LOKAYATA

the questions concerning the origin of the Vedic songs, we have got to enter into the more complicated question concerning the origin of Vedic rituals. We shall, in Chapter VIII, try to discuss this problem of the sources of the Vedic rituals and we shall see there that in spite of all the complexities with which the rituals were later characterised, there are grounds to presume that these were originally aspects of the primitive labour processes of the early Vedic peoples. For the present, we shall try to understand the above objection in a different, though obvious, sense. The Vedic songs were songs in a very special sense, because these were the earliest songs in human history of which we possess a definite literary record. These, therefore, belonged to a very early phase of human history. The pre-literate ancestors of the Vedic peo- ples, when they composed these early songs orally,90 were pre- sumably like the primitive peoples surviving today. The point is not entirely new. Winternitz91 has already admitted it, though partially: The priests and theologians certainly did not invent all these melodies themselves. The oldest of them were presumably popular melodies, to which in very early times semi-religious songs were sung at solstice celebrations and other national festivals, and yet others may date back as far as that noisy music with which the pre- Brahmanical wizard-priests-not unlike the magicians, shamans, and medicine-men of the primitive peoples - accompanied their wild songs and rites. Traces of this popular origin of the saman melo- dies are seen already in the ... stobhas or shouts of joy, and especi- ally in the fact that the melodies of the Sama Veda were looked upon as possessing magic power even as late as in Brahmanical times. There is a ritual book belonging to the Sama Veda, called Sama Vidhana Brahmana, the second part of which is a regular hand-book of magic, in which the employment of various Samans for magic purposes is taught. We may also see a survival of the con- nection of the saman melodies with the pre-Brahmanical popular belief and magic, in the fact that the Brahmanical law-books teach that the recitation of the Rig Veda and the Yajur Veda must be interrupted as soon as the sound of a saman is heard. What the author has said is extremely important. But we cannot take it as a casual comment. Its implications are to be seriously faced. And the implications are that we have got to study the role of song and melody in the lives of the surviving savages and try to understand, in the light of this, what appears to be strange and obscure not only about the carly Vedic songs. but also about the later speculations on these.

90 RV i. 38. 14. 91 HIL i. 167-8.

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15. CHANDOGYA UPANISAD The Chandogya Upanisad, as appended to the Sama Veda, has its special importance in being the earliest effort we possess of a definite literary record, towards the theoretical understand- ing of speech, song and melody. However, these were speech, song and melody in the special senses in which the ancestors of the authors of our text-that is the early Vedic peoples- experienced them. This point is important because it determines our funda- mental approach to the Chandogya Upanisad. The time-gap between the actual composition of the early Vedic songs and the Chandogya speculations on these must have been enormous. Even on the most moderate estimate, it was more than two thousand years. During this period, the ideas and views of the Vedic peoples, like their social organisation, changed fundamentally. The authors of the Upanisad were living in an advanced stage of social development"2 and held sophisticated spiritualistic views and philosophical ideas. But it was very much different with their forefathers who actu- ally composed these songs and melodies. They were living in primitive society.03 We cannot attribute to them any tendency to abstract speculation, because the inaptitude for this of the primitive peoples is well known.94 At the same time speech, song and melody must have been playing a role in their lives largely comparable to the one which these still play in the lives of the surviving savages. It was a matter of concrete experience and not of abstract speculation. The same could not of course be a part of the living expe- rience of the authors of the Upanisad. Yet its memory was not entirely lost to them. It came down to them in an unbroken continuity of oral tradition, the tenacity of which in the Vedic culture is well known. In other words, in spite of being sophi- sticated thinkers themselves and in spite of the fact that they were thinking largely in their own terms, what the authors of the Upanisad were trying to rationalise was but the memory of very archaic experiences. It is this core of archaic experience that interests us most.

92 This remains to be argued by us in ch. viii. 98 This remains to be argued in ch. viii. 14 Briffault M ii. 503 ff.

100 LOKAYATA

If we do not have a clear idea of it, the speculations of the Upanisad will appear to us to be mysterious, even meaningless. The Vedic songs, in their origin, were conceived by the Vedic seers to have a special efficacy. The metres, the melodies and even the very syllables and accentuations were imagined to be invested with tremendous magical power." This magical power, though fantastically conceived, was originally an aid to the real material power. However, this could not have been so with the thinkers of the Upanisad: the context of the collective life that alone could make it real being no longer there. The only way they could try to rationalise the idea of the original efficacy was to say that it was due to some secret spiritual power. Thus the sense of the original efficacy passed into its opposite: that which was experienced as a material force was eventually explained as some mysterious spiritual feeling. This aspect of the later rationalisation does not interest us much. Yet we cannot entirely ignore the question of the sur- vival of the sense of the efficacy of the songs and melodies. ... Social institutions rendered obsolete by economic progress find a sanctuary in religion, which is of interest to the historian of humanity just because it is a stratified repository of discarded practices and discredited beliefs. Long after men have ceased in normal life to do as their forefathers did, they cling to the belief that their pros- perity depends in some way on the good-will of their ancestors.90 However, under the changed circumstances to which these ancient beliefs and practices are brought forward, they acquire a new function. They are no longer aids to intensify the collec- tive emotion. They begin to be proclaimed as the 'secret know- ledge' of the few, the possession of which makes them superior over the rest. That is, in a society split up into classes, these become ideological weapons for class-domination. These terminologies are modern. But the evidence of the Upanisad is quite clear on this point. Upanisad meant 'secret knowledge' and this as contrasted with the Vedas of the past which simply meant 'knowledge.' That this 'secret knowledge' was a monopoly of the ruling class-the Ksatriyas or the kings-and further, was an important aid for their assuming and maintaining class-superiority, is a point

95 Probably the best known example is that of Tvastri killing himself rather than the foe intended to be killed because of a wrong accentuation in uttering the spell. 96 Thomson SAGS i. 66.

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which the authors of the Upanisads quite proudly proclaimed. We come across this in the course of the story of the five ques- tions put forth by Pravahana Jaibali, 'a friend of the kings' ( rajanya-bandhuh), to Svetaketu Aruneya. The story occurs hoth in the Brihad Aranyaka and the Chandogya Upanisad and we have referred to it in Chapter 1, Section 20. When Gautama, Svetaketu's father went to the king's palace"7 and begged of him the answers to these questions, the king said: As to what you have told me, O Gautama, this knowledge has never vet come to Brahmanas before you; and therefore in all the worlds has the rule belonged to the Ksatriya only .! N This, to say the least, is a very startling admission. If the knowledge in question was not known even to the Brahmanas, the implication is that only the Ksatriyas or kings claimed the monopoly of it. But much more startling than that was another point in the statement: tasmad u sarvesu lokesu ksatra- syaiva prasasanam abhut-it was because of the fact that the Ksatriyas alone possessed this knowledge that thev were the rulers of all the worlds. In contemporary terminology this can only mean that the Upanisad or secret knowledge was an ideo- logical weapon of the ruling class. Yet the piece of knowledge that the king eventually imparted, on closer analysis, is found to be largely a mystified version of the primitive belief underly- ing the fertility magic of the surviving savages.9" This gives us some idea of the nature of the speculations of the Upanisadic sages on the archaic beliefs that came down to them from their ancestors. We may now return to the specific question of the Chan- dogya Upanisad. The point to be noted is that the mystifica- tion of the archaic experiences is not uniform throughout the text. It was less so in the earlier chapters, of which the passage under discussion forms part. The structure of the Chandogya Upanisad is somewhat peculiar. It is by no means a compact text discussing one central theme. Rather, it is a body of loosely jointed or even disjointed discussions of various subjects. The abruptness with which these discnssions begin and end gives us the impression that these were originally like independent beads later strung together without too strong a connecting thread.

97 Ch Up v. 3. 6. "8 1b. v. 3. 7. D9 This remains to be argued by us in ch. v.

102 LOKAYATA

But there is one distinct theme that runs through all the sections of the first two chapters of the text. It is the theme of speech, song and melody. After the close of the second chapter, the Upanisad returns to this theme only occasionally and that, too, in a rather casual manner.10" This itself suggests that the first two chapters of the Upanisad probably formed its original core; the other chapters could have been later additions. So the memory of the archaic experiences conld be retained there in a less distorted manner. It will be objected that certain other chapters of the Upa- nisad, too, have a running subject matter. It is concerning the nature of the real self, a subject-matter usually looked at as characteristic of the Upanisadic thinking as a whole. We find this being discussed in the Chandogya Upanisad not only in a comparatively larger number of places but also with greater zeal and deeper interest. This is true. Yet this other theme is neither distinctive of the Chandogya Upanisad nor has it any relevance to the circum- stance of this Upanisad being appended to the Sama Veda. Be- sides, the significance of the name Chandogya should not be ignored. For though the names of the Upanisads do not neces- sarily have any bearing on the theme discussed, yet the rele- vance, where it exists, should not be overlooked. The name Chandogya is derived from the word chandoga.

Chandoga means chandas-singer,' and chandas combines in itself the meanings 'magic-song,' 'sacred text' and 'metre.' The fundamental meaning of the word must be something like 'rhythmical speech': it might be connected with the root chand. 'to please, to satisfy, or to cause to please.'101

If the authors of the text meant to discuss in it primarily the questions concerning the nature of the real self, there is no reason why they should have called it Chandogya. But if they meant to discuss primarily the questions concerning the magic songs, then the earlier chapters of the text formed its original core and, as such, were older than the rest. It is no wonder. therefore, that we should be able to understand these more directly in the light of what is already known in general about the primitive peoples.

100 E.g. iii. 12. 1; iii. 17. 3. 101 Winternitz HIL i. 168 n.

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16. DESIRE AND SONG It is not necessary for our purpose to try to explain all the points discussed in these earlier chapters of the Upanisad. We are going to concentrate, rather, on those topics that have a direct bearing on the passage under consideration. For we are trying only to argue that far from being satirical, the strange scene of the chanting dogs was meant to reveal what the authors of the Upanisad really thought to be the essence of Vedic chant- ing. Said the Chandogya Upanisad:10" The essence of a person is speech The essence of speech is the Rik ('hymn'). The essence of the Rik is the Saman ('melody'). The essence of the Saman is the Udgitha ('loud chanting'). That is, there is no speech which is not poetry, there is no poetry which is not a melody and there is no melody that is not chanted loudly-and all these are vitally related to human existence. The relationship between speech, poetry and song, as con- ceived here, is, a persistent feature of ancient Vedic thought. The Vedic theologians, however, conceive the relationship of melody and stanza in such a way that they say, the melody has originated out of a stanza. The stanza (Rik) is, therefore, called the yoni. that is, the womb, out of which the melody came forth.10: This has naturally appeared strange to the modern scholars10; because it is far from our current notions concerning the rela- tion between poetry and melody. However, this will not appear to us to be very strange if we try to understand it in the way in which we have tried to understand 'the dogs' of our passage, that is, in the light of our knowledge of the primitive peoples. The common speech of savages has a strongly marked rhythm and a lilting melodic accent. In some languages the accent is so musical. and so vital to the meaning, that when a song is composed the tune is largely dictated by the natural melody of the spoken words.105 That is, the Riks, among the primitive peoples, are the yonis of the Samans, or, there is no Rik which is not also a Saman, just as there is no speech which is not also poetry (Rik). Thus, the common speech of these savages is rhythmical, melo- dic, fantastic to a degree which we associate only with poetry. And if their common speech is poetical, their poetry is magical. The

102 i. 1. 2. 104 Ib. 103 Winternitz op. cit. i. 165. 105 Thomson SAGS i. 439.

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only poetry they know is song, and their singing is nearly always accompanied by some bodily action, designed to effect some change in the external world-to impose illusion on reality.10;

The last point brings us to another well known character- istic of ancient Vedic singing. The songs were supposed to be accompanied by well defined movements of hands. When singing, the priests emphasize these various notes by means of movements of the hands and the fingers.107 Burnell,10x in his introduction to the Arseya Brahmana of the Sama Veda has tried to discuss this peculiarity of Vedic chanting. Yet we are left to wonder at the mysterious meaning- lessness of all the details, because serious efforts are not made to understand these from the point of view of the gesticulations as forming an aspect of primitive speech.

Savages, like children, gesticulate when they talk. The function of gesticulation is not merely to help others to understand. They gesti- culate just as much when talking to themselves .. For us, speech is primary, gesticulation secondary, but it does not follow that this was so with our earliest ancestors.11)!

But let us return to the Chandogya Upanisad. We have seen that in ancient society, speech, poetry and music are in a state of primordial complex, yet to be dissolved into the multi- plicity of these collateral activities. That upon which the com- plex thrives is of course magic: the illusory technique of pre- senting the desired reality as if it were actually present. The core of magic is thus a desire-the desire that is meant to be fulfilled fantastically. We do not, naturally, expect the authors of the Chandogya Upanisad to know of any song that is not for the purpose of fulfilling a desire, or, of a singer who is not at the same time a procurer of desires."10 The desire is primarily that of food, as in the case of our chanting dogs.

Then it (i.e., breath) sang out food for itself, for whatever food is eaten is eaten by it. Hereon one is established. Those gods said: 'Of such extent, verily, is this universe as food. You have sung it into your own possession. Give us an aftershare in this food.

This occurs in the Brihad Aranyaka Upanisad.111 But it occurs there in the context of a story which is also to be found

106 Ib. i. 440. 107 Winternitz op. cit. i. 167. 108 xxviii, xli-xlviii. 110 Ch Up i. 2. 13: kaman agayati. 109 Thomson SAGS i. 445-6. 111 i. 3. 17-8.

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in the Chandogya Upanisad."1 Deussen"1: conjectured that the Brihad Aranyaka version of the storv was older. But that is doubtful. Udgitha being the central theme of the story, it is particularly relevant to the Chandogya Upanisad. Besides, the idea of song for the purpose of fulfilling a desire was definitely the persistent theme of the Chandogya Upanisad. We shall quote a few examples:

An effective singer of desires, verily, indeed, becomes he who, know- ing this thus, reverences the syllable as the Udgitha.11+

Therefore an Udgitha-singer who knows this may say: 'What desire may I win for you by singing"" For truly he is lord of the winning of desires by singing, who, knowing this, sings the Saman-yea. sings the Saman!115

'Let me obtain immortality for the gods by singing'-thus should one obtain with his singing. Let me obtain oblation for the fathers by singing, hope for men, grass and water for cattle, a heavenly world for the sacrificer, food for myself (atman)'-one should sing the Stotra carefully. meditating these things in mind.116

'Which one is the Rik" Which one is the Saman" Which one is the Udgitha?'-Thus has there been a discussion. The Rik is speech. The Saman is breath (prana). The Udgitha is this syllable 'Om.' Verily, this is a pair-namely speech and breath. and also the Ril: and the Saman. This pair is joined together in this syllable 'Om.' Verily. when a pair come together. verily. the two procure each the other's desire. A procurer of desires, verily, indeed, becomes he who, knowing this thus, reverences the Udgitha as this syllable. Verily, this syllable is assent; for whenever one assents to anything he says simply 'Om.' This, indeed, is fulfilment-that is, assent is. A fulfiller of desires, verily, indeed, becomes he who, knowing this thus, reverences the Udgitha as this syllable.117

Now then, the fulfilment of wishes. One should reverence the following as places of refuge .. Finally, one should go unto himself and sing a Stotra, meditating carefully upon his desire.

112 i. 2. 113 SUV 69. 114 i. 2. 14. 115 i. 7. 8. 116 ii. 22. 2. 117 i. 1. 4-8.

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Truly the prospect is that the desire will be fulfilled for him, desir- ing which he may sing a Stotra-yea, desiring which he may sing a Stotra!118 If the authors of the Upanisad actually thought all these then our modern scholars have obviously no right to think that the dogs of our passage, since their song was meant only to ful. fil the desire for food, were just mocking at the Vedic priests. On the contrary, the point is, however much removed these authors were from their own ancestors, they were still looking at the magical efficacy of the songs largely in the manner in which their ancestors did. That is why, they did not know of any song that was not for the purpose of fulfilling a desire. This desire was primarily that of food. But it could as well have been the desire for making rain, multiplying the cattle or kindling the fire. We shall quote a few examples:

The preceding wind is a Himkara. A cloud is formed-that is a Prastava. It rains-that is an Udgitha. It lightens, it thunders-that is a Pratihara. It lifts-that is a Nidhana. It rains for him, indeed he causes it to rain, who, knowing this thus. reverences a five-fold Saman in a rainstorm.119 Himkara, Prastaca, etc., we have seen, were the five divi- sions of the five-fold Saman. The point to be noted is that the underlying belief in the rain-making magic is still preserved in its purity among the surviving savages. What follows is an example of the belief in the magical efficacy of the Saman for fulfilling the desire for the increase of cattle.

In animals one should reverence a five-fold Saman. Goats are a Himkara. Sheep are a Prastava. Cows are an Udgitha. Horses are a Pratihara. Man is a Nidhana. Animals come into his possession, he becomes rich in animals, who. knowing this thus, reverences a five-fold Saman in animals.120 There is obviously an element of arbitrariness in this piece of speculation. Being later speculations on the archaic experi- ences these were bound to be often arbitrary. But that is not our point. What we are concerned with is the ancient belief under- lying the speculation.

118 i. 3. 8, 12. 119 ji. 3. 120 ii. 6.

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More examples are not necessary. Winternitz has already drawn our attention to the ritual book of the Sama Veda, `which is a regular hand-book of magic, in which the employ- ment of various Samans for magic purposes is taught.' How- ever, what our scholar did not explicitly say is that such employ- ment of the Samans for magical purposes could not have been mere inventions of the Vedic priests. The authors of such texts were only trying to rationalise the beliefs that came down to them from their own ancestors.

17. SPEECH, METRE AND MAGIC One obvious reason why the scene of the singing dogs has so easily been taken to be a satirical one is that the idea of singing for the sake of food has appeared to our refined scholars to be very crude. It is crude. However, where they err is in taking the ancestors of the authors of the Upanisad to be refined people which they were not. They were rather hungry savages frightened of starvation, death, extinction. That is why, speech, metre, song, melody-everything was imagined by them to have the magical efficacy of obtaining food. The Brihad Aranyaka Upanisad' tells the following story of the birth of speech:

In the beginning nothing whatsoever was here. This (world) was covered over with death, with hunger-for hunger is death .... He desired: 'Would that a second self of me were produced"' He- death, hunger-by mind copulated with speech (vak). That which was the semen, became the year. Previous to that there was no year. He bore him for a time as long as a year. After that long time he brought him forth. When he was born, Death opened his mouth on him. He cried 'bhan! That, indeed became speech. He bethought himself: 'Verily, if I attack him. I shall make the less food for myself.' With that speech, with that self he brought forth this whole world, whatsoever exists here: the hymns (rik), the formulas (yajus), the chants (saman), the metres (chanda), the rituals (yajna), men, cattle. Whatever he brought forth, that he began to eat. Verily, he eats (ad) everything: that is the aditi-nature of Aditi. He who knows thus the aditi-nature of Aditi, becomes an eater of everything here: everything becomes food for him. So the authors of the Upanisads were not after all so touchy about the crude idea of food. The same Upanisad declared: This whole world, verily, is just food and the eater of food.122

121 i. 2. 1, 4, 5. 122 i. 4. 6.

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And again: He who knows the support of the Saman is indeed supported. Voice. verily, is its support, for when supported on voice the breath sings. But some say it is supported on food.1 :: What deserves specially to be noted is that in spite of all the mystifications and obscurities in these statements, the original connection of speech and food was not entirely forgotten. Speech, like melody, was conceived magically to be an aid to obtain food. It was this magical efficacy of speech which the authors of the Chandogya Upanisad. too, were trying to ration. alise in various ways. Speech yields milk-that is, the milk of speech itself-for him, he becomes rich in food, an eater of food who knows thus this mystic meaning (upanisad) of the samans - vca. who knows the mystic meaning!12+ It was not an isolated thought in the Chandogya U'panisad. It occurred again and again. Thus. Speech yields milk-that is, the milk of speech itself-for him, he becomes rich in food. an eater of food, who, knowing this thus, reverence a seven-fold Saman in speech.1" Again, Spcech yields milk-that is the milk of speech itself-for him, he becomes rich in food, an eater of food. who knows and reverences these syllables of the Udgitha thus: ud. gi. tha.12 However, the authors of the Chandogya Upanisad made it quite clear that the speech they were speaking of was not the common speech. Rather, it was the accentuated speech of the savages, and, therefore, metrical. As a matter of fact, there was to them no speech (cak) which was not in metres (chandas). As is only to be expected, the chandas or metres were conceived

Upanisad: to have the same original function. Said the Chandogya

Verily, the gods, when they were afraid of death, took refuge in the three-fold knowledge (i.e., the three Vedas). They covered (accha- dayan) themselves with metres. Because they covered themselves with these, therefore, the metres are called chandas.127 So the gods-i.e., the forefathers of the Vedic peoples-were afraid of death. The Brihad Aranyaka Upanisad1"& already told us that death meant hunger. They took shelter under the chan-

123 i. 3. 27. 125 ii. 8. 3. 124 i. 13. 4.

127 i. 4. 2. 126 i. 3. 7. 128 i. 2. 1.

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das or the metres. There was obviously only one way in which the chandas could offer shelter to the gods against hunger and extinction. It was by opening the sources of food. That is, the metres, too, were once connected with the activity of obtaining food. We find the memory of this lingering in the later Vedic texts in various ways. The better known of the early Vedic metres were Gayatri, Usnih. Brihati, Pankti, etc. And the Aita- reya Brahmana said: Gayatri verses should he use as the invitatory and offering verses of the Svistakrit, who desires brilliance or splendour; the Gayatri is brilliance and splendour; brilliant and resplendent does he become who knowing thus uses Gayatri verses. Usnih verses should he use who desires life; the Usnih is life: he lives all his days who knowing thus uses Usnih verses. Anustubh verses should he use who desires the heaven .... Brihati verses should he use who desires pros- perity and glory; the Brihati is prosperity and glory among the metres; verily, prosperity and glory he places in himself who know- ing thus uses Brihati verses. Fankti verscs should he use who desires the sacrifice .... Tristubh verses should he use who desires strength; the Tristubh is force, power, and strength; possessed of force, power and strength does he become who knowing thus uses Tristubh verses. Jagati verses should he use who desires cattle; cattle are connected with Jagati: he becomes possessed of cattle who knowing thus uses Jagati verses. Viraj verses should he use who desires proper food; the Viraj is food: therefore he who here has most food is most glorious in the world; that is why the Viraj has its name (the glorious).129 Many more passages like this may be easily found in the Vedic literatures. But it is not necessary to quote many. The point is that the chandas, like the vak and the saman, were meant to fulfil some desire, however, arbitrary might have been the connection in these later speculations between the particular chandas and the particular desire it meant to fulfil. That is, the chandas, too, were conceived to have magical efficacy. So our chanting dogs were not very far from the real Vedic path in designing a song specifically meant to fulfil a desire.

18. SONG IN THE RIG VEDA That the chanting dogs of the Chandogya Upanisad were strictly following the original Vedic path-that, in other words, the scene depicted before Baka Dalbhya was designed to re- present the ancient wisdom of the Vedic sages,-is further evi- denced by an analysis of the role of songs in the Rig Veda.

129 Keith RVB 110.

110 LOKAYATA

In the sixth mandala of the Rig Veda we find the following addressed to Indra:

-Then take thy seat with us amidst the gana and sing that we may obtain food .- we who are singing.130

Gana meant the group, and we shall sec in the next chapter, that it meant specifically the collectivity characteristic of the tribal society. So the early Vedic poets, themselves living in ganas, wanted food. For the purpose of obtaining it, how- ever, they were singing a collective song. And they were re- questing Indra to join the chorus. This is most remarkable, be- cause this is precisely what our chanting dogs of the Chandogya Upanisad said and did: annam no bhagavan agayatu asanayam oa iti. By common acceptance the oldest stratum of the Rig Veda embodies the mandalas from the second to the seventh. As is to be expected, we find the idea of song-for-the-sake-of-food re- peatedly occurring in these portions. Following are some examples:

(O Agni!) thou with those songs bring the wealth attended with food; we shall serve thee with our service.131

That Indra inspired and fulfilled the desires of the Angirasas ex- pressed in songs for food.132

Through yajna the seers with desire got the cows with songs from the giver of water (Indra); sitting together with harmonious tunes Indra.138 they attained wealth, wishing to protect the cows in praise of

The singers go round thee (Indra) telling about food in all seasons; they sing like the sama-singers in both the metres Gayatri and Tristubh and please the hearer.134

Agni increased much with the songs of the singers. 1:5

130 vi. 40. 1. 131 ii. 6. 1. 132 ii. 20. 5. 134 ji. 43. 1. 138 ii. 21. 5. 135 jii. 5. 2.

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The Agni Vaisvanara, being realised as such in mind, we invoke with songs in the yajna, being desirous of food and wealth. bountiful, with a chariot he comes to the places of yajna.130 He is

And so on. Many more passages like these may be quoted from the older stratum of the Rig Veda. In all these we find the song to be invariably a group-song and also meant to fulfil an essentially materialistic desire,-usually the desire for food. It is interesting to note that in spite of all the changes that took place in the lives of the Vedic peoples during the long period that scparated the earliest stratum of the Rig Veda from its latest stratum, the idea of the song-for-the-sake-of-food did not disappear. Presumably, the memory of the magical efficacy of the songs were carried forward to the poets of later times, and they tried to echo it, though sometimes with modifications characteristic of their times.

Rig Veda: Following are some examples from the latest stratum of the

The havih offering placed on the kusa-grass and the songs make thee (the Asvinas) come to us with food in accordance with our wish.137

Moreover, O Asvins, the rain-givers, the song of thy shining body nourishes us in the house sprinkled with these types of kusa-grass;

milk.138 it gives us rain and gladdens man by thy gifts. as the cow gives

O Marutas, this panegyric is for thee: this song came to us who respect thee and melt thee (to charity), that we may know the food, as the spoils of victory, and meant for the (nourishment of the) body.139

This last hymn occurs four times in the first mandala of the Rig Veda. Obviously, great importance was attached to it. Of course we find in this the old magic-motive being largely mixed up with the new prayer-motive. The explanation is presumably to be found in the circumstance that it was a product of later times, i.e., of altered social conditions. What is significant, however, is that the magic-motive did not fully disappear even

186 jii. 26. 1. 137 i. 117. 1. 188 j. 181. 8. 139 i. 165. 15; i. 166. 15; i. 167.11; i. 168. 10.

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from the latest stratum of the Vedic compositions. Song was still looked upon as the fulfiller of some desire. Sayana, in his commentary on the hymn quoted last, made this point quite clear: Having addressed the panegyric to Maruta, a wish is expressed for the desired object. What deserves specially to be noted again is the starkly materialistic character of the wish involved. There is nothing in it of the nature of spiritual values-of heavenly bliss or of libera- tion (moksa). It is simply a desire for food and the food is simply meant for the nourishment of the body. This is obviously the instinctive materialism, or, proto-mate- rialism of the primitive peoples and even the later Vedic poets were yet to outgrow it. We come across the same instinetive materialism among the chanting dogs of our Upanisadic pass- age. By placing the highest value on the material means of subsistence,-by singing only of food and of eating and of drink- ing,-these chanting dogs were, again, sticking strictly to the original Vedic path. We shall, in Chapter VIII, return to discuss the question of the instinctive materialism of the early Vedic outlook. Mean- while, it is interesting to observe that from the standpoint of this instinctive materialism, the Vedic outlook, in its original form. was surprisingly similar to the Lokayatika one.

19. FOLK CULTURE AND VEDIC CULTURE We now propose to understand the peculiarity of the Vedic culture in its original form from a very unconventional point of view, that is, from the point of view of the folk-culture still sur- viving in our country. We have previously argued, in connection with the totemic survivals, that our backward peoples, because of their stunted development, still exemplify in many ways the beliefs and prac- tices of the early ancestors of the Vedic peoples. There is nothing mysterious about it. These early ancestors were them- selves backward people. We are now going to argue that because of the same or similar reason, certain elements of our folk-culture may have some light to throw upon the earlier phases of the Vedic culture, upon which the authors of the Upanisads were speculating. though in their own way. We shall confine ourselves to the questions of poetry and

THE: CHANTING DOGS 113

song, because that will be specially relevant for our present argument. To the Upanisadic thinkers, a song was invariably for the purpose of fulfilling a desire and a singer was but a procurer of desires. This was so, because the fulfilment of some desire was the essence of the songs as expcrienced by their early ancestors. We shall now proceed to see how the same belief underlies the vratas of Bengal. These are folk-rituals, often seasonal, performed more particularly by peasant women. We are indebted to Abanindranath Tagore for his remark- able monograph on the Vratas of Bengal.140 We shall broadly follow here his treatment of the subject, avoiding it only on points where his idealistic preoccupations have obscured the subject. The nucleus of a vrata is a desire.141 Clustering round it are rhyme, riddle, song, dance and even pictorical representations called the alpanas. All these are meant to represent the desire as if it were already fulfilled. As Abanindranath has put it: A vrata is just a desire. We see it represented in the pictures; listen to its echo in the songs and the rhymes, witness its reactions in the dramas and dances; in short, the vratas are but desires as sung, the painted desires, desires as moving and living. 142 All this is clearly magic. That is, it would be a mistake to call them religious. Abanindranath143 has repeatedly said that the vratas are neither prayers nor propitiations. The attitude under- lying the performance of a vrata is essentially an active one. It is not the attitude of prostrating oneself before the gods and begging some favour of them. It is rather the attitude of fulfilling the desire through certain definite actions. In fact the concept of the other world or heaven is alien to the vratas. Of course, some of the vratas, as we find them today, are but religious hotch- potches. But, as Abanindranath has insisted, these are either cunning devices of recent origin or just contaminations with later ideas.144 In any case, these are not genuinc vratas. The really genuine ones, as he poetically says, are 'attuned to the music of the earth.'145 One element of the vrata is that it must be done collectively, by a number of persons participating in the same desire. The desire of an individual and the actions designed to fulfil it cannot

141 Ib. 1. 140 BV (B). Quotations to follow are free renderings. 148 Tb. 11. 142 Ib. 58. 144 Ib. 7. 145 Ib. L 8

114 LOKAYATA'

constitute a vrata. It becomes a vrata only when a number of persons cooperate to produce the same effect. It may be possible for an individual to perform a dance but not a drama. Similarly, it may be possible for an individual to pray and propitiate; but not to perform a vrata. Both prayer and vrata are designed to fulfil the desires. However, the first is confined to the individual and it culminates in begging for the desire to be fulfilled; the desire.146 the latter is essentially collective and it ends in actually fulfilling

The peasants of Bengal perform the vasu dhara vrata.147 It is during the mid-summer drought, when, as the vrata-rhymes describe it, 'the Ganga is sunken and the sky but a heap of ashes.' Naturally, the vrata is designed to fulfil the desire for rain, for plenty of water. The peasants sing. They sing of the shower and in the song they see the scorched earth submerged and the children swimming merrily. And they also act. They create the rain. They hang a jar on the tree, fill it with water and bore holes in it. The jar is the cloud. Water drips from it. It rains. That is how they enact in fantasy, the fulfilment of the desired reality. We shall confine ourselves to the role of the songs as forming part of these rituals. The question is: Do the songs in this vasu dhara vrata-the songs in which the desire for rain is represented as if it were actually fulfilled-really create rain? Obviously not. Never- theless, these songs are not futile. For the midsummer drought is long and appalling; it is by far the severest trial in the lives of our peasants. And the sight of rain which they see in the songs, -of land submerged and children swimming merrily-though not a 'material reality' is certainly a 'psychological reality'.148 That is, the songs assure the peasants and lead them to overcome the feeling of helplessness before a hostile nature. This is how magic, though an illusory technique, is an aid to the real technique. The early ancestors of the Vedic peoples, too, sang their songs. And these songs were meant to fulfil their desires. And it helped them to survive: the songs saved the gods from hunger and extinction, the chandas offered them the shelter. So when the dogs of our Upanisadic passage were hungry like these early gods, they wanted to have a song. It was a song for the sake of

146 Ib .. 11. 148 The terminology is Freudian, though Freud himself (Totem 147 Ib. 57.

magic. & Taboo) was far from a materialistic understanding of primitive

THE CHANTING DOGS 115

food. Their behaviour, therefore, was not very much different from that of the peasants of Bengal who still perform the vasu dhara and other vratas. Of course, these peasants are not primitive people. How in their cultural life this primitive clement still survives as a living force is, naturally, a complex question. We shall raise it in the next chapter. Meanwhile, we may note the remarkable point to which we have already arrived. The Lokayata tradition has an unexpected light to throw on the obscurities of the Vedic tradi- tion. For Lokayata, as we have seen, meant the beliefs and ideas of the people, the crude mob, as Samkara contemptuously called them. It was, in short, another name for folk culture. But Lokayata also meant the this-worldly outlook,-proto- materialism, as we have called it. And it has indeed been remark- able of Abanindranath Tagore to have drawn our attention to the fact that the early Vedic songs resemble the vrata-songs from this point of view, too. The vratas, he has rightly said, could not have been derived from the Vedas; the two were aspects of two distinct cultures. So he has attributed the vratas to the pre- Aryans. Yet the vrata-songs are remarkably similar to the Vedic songs:

The world with which both the Aryans and the pre-Aryans concerned themselves was this earth in which they were actually born. The desires of both were to have in this very earth wealth, crop, luck, health, longevity and other essentially this-worldly objects. This both.149 is obvious from the nature of the desires underlying the songs of

How do we account for this remarkable similarity? Abanindranath has really suggested the method to answer the question. For he has actually proposed to understand the peasant vratas by appealing to the knowledge about the American aborigines.150 If this be valid and if, further, the similarities between the vrata-songs and the early Vedic songs be really fundamental, then the obvious implication is that we may try to understand the obscurities about the latter, too, in the light of the knowledge of comparative anthropology. Unfortunately, Abanindranath himself has not faced the full implication of this argument. Nevertheless, we may follow him closely for there are other interesting points to recover from his observations. How old are the vratas? According to Abanindranath, these

149 Tagore op. cit. 6. 150 Ib. 21 ff.

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are old-very old in fact-certainly older than the Puranas151 and may even be older than the Vedas.152 Yet the vratas were distinct from the Vedas, in spite of all the similarities that we may observe between them. The desires behind the Vedic songs were characteristically masculine while those behind the vrata songs are characteristically feminine:

The desires of the male and the desires of the female,-the Vedic rituals were of the men, the vratas of the women,-that is all the difference between the two.153 This is significant. However, there is another difference between the nature of the two which, though equally significant, has not been emphasised by our author. Both were designed to fulfil certain desires-the desire for plenty and for security; yet the objects meant to ensure these were not of the same nature. The Vedic singers dreamt of cattle and more cattle:

The principal means of livelihood to the Vedic Indian was cattle- breeding. His great desire was to possess large herds; and in the numerous prayers for protection, health, and prosperity, cattle are nearly always mentioned first.154

But the women performing the vratas in our villages are primarily concerned with the crop. In fact, the largest majority of the vratas are, directly or indirectly, based on the desire for the success of the agricultural operations. Agriculture, by con- trast, had only a secondary importance in the lives-and there- fore also in the songs and rituals-of the Vedic peoples: 'at the time of the hymns agriculture as yet played only a small part.'155 Assuming, therefore, that the vratas were pre-Aryan in origin we may conclude that the culture of these pre-Aryans was basically characterised by the agricultural elements which were the affairs of the women. Had the pastoral economy of the Vedic peoples anything to do with their characteristically masculine ideas? Had the agricultural economy of the pre-Aryans anything to do with their pronouncedly feminine ideas? We shall see. more of these later. For the present we may remember that we have come across this same fundamental difference while considering the vamacari ideas in the previous chapter: the ritual sexuality of the Lokaya- tikas formed part of the matriarchal-agricultural context while

151 Ib. 6. 154 Macdonell HSL 166. 152 Ib. 9 153 Ib. 6. 155 Winternitz HIL i. 64.

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in the Vedic literatures it belonged to the pastoral-patriarchal context.

20. RECAPITULATION To recapitulate: The chanting dogs were no more real dogs than their performance was really a satire on the Vedic priests. They were just primitive people and their performance was meant to impart the knowledge of Vedic chanting to a certain person called Baka Dalbhya. The Chandogya Upanisad said: Baka Dalbhya knew it. He became the Udgitha-singer of the people of Naimisa. He used to sing to them their desires.156 We are, of course, not told whether the scene of the chanting dogs he was made to witness gave him this wisdom. Perhaps it did. For the knowledge in question was that of singing the desires. And what he was made to witness was nothing but this. This is how we have tried to explain, in broad outlines, an apparently obscure passage of the Chandogya Upanisad. Our argument has been that what is obscure in our ancient literatures may be the survival of very archaic belief and as such can possibly be understood in the light of what is already known in general about the surviving primitive peoples. The general principle on which this argument is based is that these com- munities of the surviving primitive peoples 'reflect the spiritual conduct of our ancestors thousands of times removed.'157

21. GENERAL PRINCIPLE This principle was first scientifically formulated by Morgan. He spent the greater part of his life among the American abori- gines. His study of them 'is a pioneer work of field anthropology and a masterpiece of its kind."15s And it was on the basis of this that he reconstructed 'the prehistoric foundation of our written history in its main features.'159 He observed that all the primitive peoples were not living in the same stage of social development.

As it is undeniable that portions of the human family have existed in a state of Savagery, other portions in a state of Barbarism,

156 i. 2. 13. 158 Thomson SAGS i. 87. 157 Morgan AS epigraph. 159 Engels OF 10.

J18 LOKAYATA

and still other portions in a state of Civilization, it seems equally so that these three distinct conditions are connected with each other in a natural as well as necessary sequence of progress. Moreover, that this sequence has been historically true of the entire human family, up to the status attained by each branch respectively, is rendered probable by the conditions under which all progress occurs, and by the known advancement of several branches of the family through two or more of these conditions.160 Therefore, The remote ancestors of the Aryan nations presumptively passed through an experience similar to that of existing barbarous and savage tribes. Though the experience of these nations embodies all the information necessary to illustrate the periods of civilization, both ancient and modern, together with a part of that in the later period of barbarism, their anterior experience must be deduced, in the main, from the traceable connection between the elements ot their existing institutions and inventions, and similar elements still preserved in those of savage and barbarous tribes.161 Concluded Morgan:

In studying the condition of tribes and nations in these several ethnical periods we are dealing, substantially, with the ancient history and condition of our own remote ancestors. 162 Morgan argued this in 1877. Since then, immense progress has been registered in the field of archæology, creating greater possibilities of reconstructing the pre-historic foundation of written history. Yet, this progress has not minimised the im- portance of Morgan's argument. Archæology deals with the material remains of the extinct man. But it does not directly tell us anything about their social organisation, nor about their beliefs and ideas. This gap may be filled up by ethnology. Since Morgan's time, new materials have also been collected in the field of ethnology, necessitating, as we shall see, modifica- tions of some of Morgan's conclusions. But his basic argument remains valid. Unfortunately, however, full advantage of this has not been taken by our modern scholars of pre-history. Thomson has argued in defence of this comparative method. He has also provided the necessary caution. Childe asks whether we should assume that, .. because the economic and material culture of these tribes has been arrested at a stage of development Europeans passed through some ten thousand years ago, their mental development stopped dead at the same point?

160 Morgan AS 3. Italics added. 161 Ib. 7-8. 162 Ib. 18. Italics added.

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Thomson agrees that the answer should be in the negativc. But he adds that the problem cannot be left there.' It is true that the institutions of these modern tribes have continued to develop, but these have developed

only in directions determined by the prevailing mode of production. This is the key to the problem. If, for example, we examine the Australian forms of totemism, exogamy, and initiation, and compare them with similar institutions elsewhere, we find that they are ex- traordinarily elaborate, pointing to a long period of development. But these are all institutions characteristic of a simple hunting eco- nomy. In other words, just as the economic development of these tribes is stunted, so their culture is ingrown. And consequently, while we cannot expect to find such institutions in palæolithic Eu-

form.1053 rope in the same form, we are likely to find them there in some

Besides, there are the questions of special features resulting from external influences.

It must never be forgotten that the primitive peoples surviving today are known to us only to the extent that they have been penetrated by our own traders, missionaries, government officials, and ethno- logists. In some cases they have been converted outright into pro- letarians, like the Bantus in the South African goldfields; in others their native institutions have been arbitrarily stabilised as an instru- ment of indirect rule by the British Colonial Office. Such cultures must of necessity present special features due to the abrupt nature of their contacts-features which can only be explained after a methodical analysis of the effects of capitalist exploitation.164 Concluded Thomson:

With these reservations the comparative method is an instrument of which we can and must avail ourselves if we are intent on the ad- vancement of our subject.165 Morgan, like Marx, is thought of as outmoded and con- sequently discarded. But it is not necessary for us to enter into the general question of how far his observations still remain valid. Thomson has already discussed the point and, in fact, with more competence than any other known to us. He has also indicated where and how, because of evidences gathered by. subsequent anthropological work, Morgan's conclusions are in need of modification. It may therefore be useful for readers, before relying too exclusively upon the critics of Morgan, to go through Thomson's criticism of them. However, we may mention here one special point about Thomson's reply to the critics of Morgan. Such criticisms are

163 Thomson SAGS i. 34-5. J64 Ib. i. 35-6. 165 Ib. i. 36.

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not always the results of the objective evidences. There is often something more than this. It is the general resistance of our academic world to his findings. For, just as a modern scientist studying the primitive peo- ples is but a civilized man, 'the historian of the past is a citizen of the present.'160 That is, the ideas, beliefs and values of contemporary society are very much likely to influence the basic outlook of both the scientist and the historian, though not neces- sarily consciously. Therefore, not only the primitive view of life was relative to the primitive society, but also our view of the primitive life has the distinct possibility of being relative to our society. We live on private property, we have our values of morality and we are accustomed only to patrilineal descent. Saturated as our general outlook is by all these, we are often likely to see them even where they do not really exist. The professed objectivity of the social scientists and the his- torians, therefore, if taken in an absolute sense, will only be an illusion. This does not mean that there cannot be degrees of objectivity. But the degree of objectivity will depend upon the capacity to criticise our own preoccupations. Thus a champion of the status quo will have a lesser chance of understanding the primitive peoples or the conditions of our own remote ancestors compared, for example, to a socialist, who is a critic of the status quo.

blindness.' This brings us to what Marx17 called 'a certain judicial

Even the best minds absolutely fail to see-on principle, owing to a certain judicial blindness-things which lie in front of their noses. Later, when the moment has arrived, one is surprised to find traces everywhere of what one has failed to see. The first reac- tion against the French Revolution and the Enlightenment bound up with it was naturally to see everything as medieval, romantic; even people like Grimm are not free from this. The second reaction is to look beyond the Middle Ages into the primitive age of every nation, and that corresponds to the socialist tendency, although those learned men have no idea that they have any connection with it. Then they are surprised to find what is newest in what is oldest- shudder. even equalitarians, to a degree which would have made Proudhon To show how much we all labour under this judicial blindness: Right in my own neighbourhood, on the Hunsrücken, the old Germa- nic system survived up till the last few years. I now remember my father talking to me about it from a lawyer's point of view! Another proof: Just as the geologists, even the best, like Cuvier, have expounded certain facts in a completely distorted way,

106 Thomson AA 2. 167 Marx & Engels SC 242.

THE CHANTING DOGS 121

so philologists of the calibre of a Grimm mistranslated the simplest Latin sentences because they were under the influence of Möser (who, I remember, was enchanted that 'liberty' never existed among the Germans but that 'the air makes the serf') and others. For example, the well-known passage in Tacitus: Arva per annos mutant et superest ager,' which means: they exchange the fields, arva, (by lot, hence sortes in all the later Leges Barbarum) and common land (ager as ager publicus contrasted with arva) remains over-is translated by Grimm, etc: they cultivate fresh fields every year and still there is always (uncultivated) land left over! We shall have, in course of our study, repeated occasions to realise the profound significance of what Marx meant by 'finding what is newest in what is oldest.' But at the moment the question of the judicial blindness only. We shall have plenty of exam- ples of this, too, in the modern works on our ancient culture. We may mention here only a few interesting examples. The Mahabharata16> described a people called the Vahikas, In this context the epic said:

Therefore, their sister's sons rather than their own sons become their successors. We have here obviously a reference to the indirect matri- lineal succession, as is still exemplified by the Khasis and the Iroquois. But the medieval commentator Nilakantha explained it as follows: Since they produce their children in the womb of their sisters rather than in their wives, their sister's sons succeed them. We cannot obviously expect Nilakantha to interpret this indirect matrilineal succession on the basis of the comparative method. But we expect him not to make such grotesque inven- tions and impose these on the ancient text. However, he had to do it. Because he was trying to understand the mode of suc- cession described in the text on the basis of the only mode known to him and accepted by his society: succession can only be from the father to the son and as such, since among the Vahikas the sister's sons are the successors, they must have some- how or other been real sons as well, though born in the womb of the sisters. That is, he was suffering from a judicial blindness. But have the modern scholars, who are evidently better situated than Nilakantha as far as the availability of the ethnological data are concerned, shown a greater freedom from this judicial blindness? Unfortunately not. We may mention only one example here.

168 Karnaparva xxxiv. 119.

122 LOKAYATA

In the Chandogya Upanisad169 we find a village referred to as the Ibhya-grama, the village of the Ibhyas. Ibha means ele- phant; therefore ibhya literally means the descendant of the elephant. From the point of view of totemism, the clearest im- plication is that the villagers were the descendants of the ele- phant-clan. People belonging to the elephant-clan were quite well known in ancient India; we find the Ibhyas being mentioned in the Rig Veda170 as well as in the ancient Buddhistic litera- ture.171 Presumably they were still in a backward stage during the time of the Upanisad, for in the story of the Chandogya Upanisad172 we find them treated as degraded people. The same sense of degradation is to be found in the reference to the lbhyas as a low caste in the fifth Asoka edict.17" However, this straightforward meaning has escaped the traditional commentators of the Upanisad as well as the modern scholars. Samkara17+ tried to interpret the name Ibhya to mean the elephant-riders and he showed considerable grammatical ingenuity for the purpose. We understand his difficulty. The concept of totemism was not available to him. However, the persistent misinterpretation of the name which we come across in the writings of the modern scholars cannot be understood except as instances of what we are trying to characterise as 'judicial blindness.' Here are a few examples. Geldner175 has taken it to mean vassals rich enough to maintain elephants, Radhakri- shnan176 has followed him and rendered Ibhya-grama as 'village of the possessor of elephants.' Hume17 dropped the elephants altogether and took Ibhya-grama simply to mean 'village of a rich man.' This is how the ancient texts are misunderstood if inter- preted from the point of view of our contemporary notions and preoccupations. Therefore, the proper method should be to try to understand these in the light of what is already known in general about the primitive peoples surviving today. Thus alone can we hope to reconstruct our past.

169 i. 10. 1. 170 i. 65. 7. 171 Ambattha Sutta. 172 i. 10. 173 Kosambì ISIH 102. 174 On Ch Up i. 10. 1. 176 PU 353 175 Kosambi ISIH 102 177 TPU 186.

BOOK II

The Social Background

CHAPTER THREE

GANAPATI

STUDIES IN TRIBAL HERITAGE

Lokayata, as implied by the name itself, had been the world-outlook of the people. Therefore, it is only logical for us to begin with an enquiry into the history of the Indian people. To be fruitful, this enquiry has to take into account two factors: uneven development and tribal survival. The scheduled tribes form a considerable section of the total popu- lation of India. According to the Census of 1951 they number 19.1 million. Out of every 1000 Indians, 54 belong to the tribal com- munity.1 Again, The tribal peoples live in different economic stages ranging from food-gathering and hunting through shifting cultivation to settled plough cultivation. The Birhor, Korua and Hil) Maria depend on food gathering and hunting for their livelihood. The Baiga, Pauri (hill) Bhuiyan, Juang and Kutia Kandh are shifting cultivators. The Munda, Santal and Oraon depend primarily on permanent plough cultivation for their living. The Naga have developed a system of terraced cultivation with elaborate means of irrigation by aqueducts. In social organisation also there is a wide range of variation from tribe to tribe. The matriarchal Garo and Khasi co-exist with the patriarchal Munda, Santal and other tribes in India. Some tribes like the Onge go about practically naked, whereas tribes like the Bhuiyan and the Gond have regular dresses.2 This is uneven development. And one of the basic points that we are going to argue in this chapter is that this uneven development had been a very important feature of Indian social history from remote antiquity. India witnessed the rise of the State in the Indus Valley at least five thousand years ago. This must have been on the ruins of the tribal organisations, though our historians are yet to tell us exactly how the process operated.

1A 99. 2 Ib. 24-5.

126 LOKAYATA

At the same time the tribes persisted by the side of the early states, as they have persisted throughout Indian history and as they do even today. Obviously, we cannot overlook the tribes and yet hope to understand the history of the Indian peoples. Unfortunatelv, however, our historians have largely ignored the tribes. Referring to the Indian tribes, Guha,3 one of our eminent contemporary anthropologists, has said that there can be no doubt that India's civilization, as it stands today, has been en- riched by the gift of many traits which it received from them.' As we shall see, such gifts of traits were, moreover, usually the survivals of the tribal past of the civilized peoples themselves.4 That is, these were not necessarily borrowed or adapted from their tribal neighbours, as our scholars are so fond of thinking." This brings us to the second point of our argument in this chapter. We are going to argue that because of reasons which need to be carefully investigated into, tribal elements have always strongly survived in the social fabric, and therefore also in the beliefs and ideas, of the Indian masses-that is, even of those that have left the tribal stage bchind. So we cannot ignore the tribal survivals and yet hope to understand the cultural history of India. Unfortunately, however, our historians have not paid sufficient attention to this question of tribal survivals."

1. WHY GANAPATI ?

There are many difficulties in trying to plunge directly into questions of social history of India, particularly of the ancient period. As is well known, we have abundant data from the religious and mythological point of view, but hardly much from the point of view of social history proper. So we propose to begin from a different end. If it is true that religious ideas are ultimately conditioned by concrete material factors, it should be possible for us to discover something about these material factors by examining the religious ideas in which these are re-

• The hypothesis of absorption examined by us in Ch. I, sec. 12, 3 Ib. 38.

tends to overlook the circumstance that even the so-called advanced Aryans had an aboriginal past. 5 Sen BS (B) Intro .: this free exchange of ideas and beliefs is an evidence of the grace of God. 6 Cf. Kosambi ISIH 20-31.

GANAPATI 127

flected .? As Marx said, `the reality of the past seems reflected in mythological fantasy.' We may, therefore, examine the mytho- logical fantasy in order to arrive at the ancient reality. Let us begin with the story of the birth of a god. And as we are interested primarily in the problem of the Lokayata, i.e., the world-outlook of the people, we should select that god whose name has particularly been associated with the people of the country. He is Ganapati, meaning the deity of the people.9 There are many reasons because of which we have selected the story of Ganapati. It will give us some idea of the tribes of ancient India and it will also throw some light on the ques- tion of how the state might have emerged in ancient India on the ruins of the tribal organisation. Further, it is not without interest from the philosophical angle cither. For Ganapati was not always a god-at least not so in the modern sense of the term- nor was he always favourably looked at by the ancient myth- makers and law-givers. He became a god only eventually and the process which raised him to the status of a god was but an ideological reflection of the process which ushered in the state- power and human relations based on the individual ownership of property. To put it rather schematically: just as the state- power emerged on the ruins of the pre-class primitive commu- nism, so also the spiritualistic ideas emerged in the human consciousness on the ruins of the primitive pre-spiritualistic ideo- logy. Ganapati, indeed, leads us to presume that the nature of this pre-spiritualistic ideology was materialistic or at least proto- materialistic, that is, Lokayatika, in the sense in which we have understood it. But Ganapati is not the only god in our pantheon. If, therefore, the process of the emergence of the spiritualistic values, as we are trying to understand them, be valid, the same should, in outline, explain the history of the birth of the other gods, too. This is true. Instead of Ganapati, therefore, we could have traced the story of some other god-of Siva or Krisna, or even that of the ancient Vedic god Brihaspati, with whose name our tradition has always associated the materialistic outlook in ancient India, however ingenious might have been the later myths by which the strangeness of this association was sought to be covered up.

7 Thomson AA 38. 8 Engels OF 170. 9 Gupta SS (B) 144.

128 LOKAYATA

But there are many advantages in following the trail of Ganapati. Materials concerning his pre-deistic phase are, on the whole, more numerous. And these directly connect him with the questions of the tribal organisation. For, Ganapati meant the chief of the gana, and gana, as we shall see, meant the tribal collective, though the word has often been misunder- stood by our modern scholars. Besides, the story of Ganapati is fairly typical. By peculiar ambiguities in Indian mythology, the name Ganapati was also the name of Siva,10 and even that of Brihaspati himself. This identity of Ganapati and Brihaspati is traceable to as far back as the Rig Veda.11 Even the Aitareya Brahmana12 said that the Vedic mantra 'gananam tva,' etc. was addressed to Brahmanaspati or Brihaspati. This raises an interesting point. If there be really anything in this tradition, that is, if Brihaspati had really something to do with the materialism of ancient India, and if, as the Vedic literatures indicate, Ganapati and Brihaspati had originally been names interchangeable, and if, further, the name Ganapati had been rooted in the gana, are we not led to presume that there was some connection between the primitive pre-class society and the materialistic outlook of the ancient times? In any case, Ganapati lures us to enter the field of ancient Indian philosophy. For his connections with the philosophical views were many. Wilson13 mentioned gana as the name of a sect of philo- sophy or religion. Some idea of the nature of this philosophy may possibly be obtained from indirect evidences. Ganapati had many alternative names. Two of these were Lokabandhu and Lokanatha-the former meaning the friend of the people, the latter their protector. What is specially sugges- tive is the word loka, the people. For Lokayata, too, was so called because it was prevalent (ayata) among the people (loka). Lokabandhu's connection with the Lokayata views may not, therefore, be very remote. But a review of the fragmentary remains of the Lokayata leads to the presumption that it was at least closely related to Tantrism. Do we find Ganapati connected with Tantrism in any way? We do, and in fact in more than one way. He enjoys

10 Monier-Williams SED 343. 12 Keith RVB 122. 11 ii. 23. 1. 18 Monier-Williams op. cit. 343.

CANAPATI 129

over fifty appellations in the Tantrika literatures. Besides, Anandagiri's Samkara-Vijaya14 described many sects of the Gana- patyas, i.e., of the followers of Ganapati. Of course, the sect that particularly interests us is that of the followers of Ucchista Gana- pati. Anandagiri's description of them does not differ very much from that of the Lokayatikas described by Gunaratna, ritual promiscuity being a very prominent feature of both. In fact, Anandagiri told us in so many words that the followers of Ucchista Ganapati were but vamacaris, i.e., Tantrikas. These connections of Ganapati with the philosophical views of ancient India or, more specifically, with the materialistic trend in ancient Indian philosophy, may be indirect and, at times, remote. However, these are not unreal. And we shall probably understand the proper significance of all these if we can reconstruct, at least in broad outline and even tentatively, the strange history of Ganapati-the lokabandhu or lokanatha. 2. MEANING OF GANAPATI The myths about Ganapati are very complex. But the literal meaning of the name is quite simple. It is gana and pati, i.e., the chief or protector of the gana. How much of strict theological implications was originally attached to this, is a doubtful question. The other equivalent of the same name, namely Ganesa, means isa or the deity of the gana. But Gana- pati was also called Gananayaka and Varabamihira,15 in the sixth century A.D., meaning the head of an assemblage or cor- poration.' Besides, there is hardly anything like our conception of god in the use of the name Ganapati in the Vajasaneyi Sam- hita or even in the Rig Veda. Monier-Williams16 said that Ganapati, in these texts, only meant the leader of a class or troop or assemblage. Mahidhara,17 in his commentary on the Vaja- saneyi Samhita, long before Monier-Williams, interpreted the name simply to mean gananam ganarupena palakam, that is, one who protects the ganas or the groups. The Tantrika literatures18 gave the final verdict on the point, by using simply gana as one of the fifty possible appellations of Ganapati or Ganesa. Wilson,19 probably on the basis of this, also said that gana was one of the names of Ganesa. There is nothing in the word gana to suggest a god.

14 Ch. xvii. 16 SED 343. 15 BrS xv.15

18 VK (B) v. 202. 17 on VS xxiii. 19. 19 Monier-Williams SED 348. L-9

130 LOKAYATA

3. GANAPATI AS CATASTROPHE

Interesting though these are in themselves, the most import- ant feature of Ganapati is not to be found in his names. I consists, rather, in a strange transformation of the attitude ex- pressed towards him. From being literally a trouble-maker, he became the custodian of good-will and success. And the story of this transformation is also the story of Ganapati's elevation to the status of a god. We are accustomed to think that Ganapati was conceived as the deity who bestowed success. But this is an obviously late idea being superimposed on an older one, and the older one viewed Ganapati as catastrophe incarnate. It is traceable as far back as the fifth century B.C., that is, the date usually assigned to the Grihya Sutras. It needs to be remembered, to begin with, that the Maha- bharata, like certain other ancient texts, conceived of many Ganapatis rather than one. 'Ganesvaras, or Ganapatis, and Vinayakas are here represented as ... many in number and present everywhere.'20" And it is needless to add that the Vina- yakas mentioned in these texts were the same as the Ganapatis. These Ganapatis or the Vinayakas inspired only dread and contempt in the days of the Grihya Sutras. The Manava Grihya Sutra21 declared that when

possessed by these a person pounds sods of earth, cuts grass, and writes on his body, and sees in dreams waters, men with shaved heads, camels, pigs, asses, etc., and feels he is moving in the air, and when walking sees somebody pursuing him from behind. These were psychotic symptoms, considered, in those days, to be the results of being possessed by evil spirits. But these were not the only misdeeds which the Ganapatis caused. The text went on to describe how because of the Vinayakas,

Princes Royal do not obtain the kingdom, though qualified to govern. Girls do not obtain bridegrooms, though possessed of the necessary qualities. Women do not get children even if otherwise qualified. The children of other women die. A learned teacher qualified to teach does not obtain pupils, and there are many interruptions and

successful. breaks in the course of a student. Trade and agriculture are un-

In view of the limited possibility of human happiness then existing, the list of calamities could have hardly been more ela-

.20 Bhandarkar VS 147. 21 ii. 14.

GANAPATI 131

borate. Ganapati was considered to be evil incarnate. And this attitude to Ganapati must have persisted for a long time. The law book ascribed to Yajnavalkya, separated by many centuries from the Manava Grihya Sutra, echoed it. Yajnavalkya22 began by saying that the Vinayaka was ap- pointed by Rudra and Brahma to the leadership of the ganas (gananam adhipatye) to create obstacles. One possessed by him dreams of getting drowned in water, of men with shaven heads and red garments, of riding on carnivorous ani- mals, of staying amidst the Candalas, asses, camels, etc., of trying to run away from the enemies, but, being unable to do that, falling in the grip of the enemies. He loses concentration, fails to be suc- cessful in any enterprise and feels depressed without reasons. Being possessed by Ganapati, the Princes Royal do not obtain the kingdom. The rest of it is just as in the Manava Grihya Sutra quoted. Between the Manava Grihya Sutra and the Yajnavalkya Smriti, we have Manu Smriti. Manu23 instructed that those who performed the ganayaga should be excluded from the funeral feast. What was meant by ganayaga? Govindaraja, the traditional commentator, interpreted it to refer to the ritual of the followers of Ganapati. However, under the influence of the changed atti- tude to Ganapati, our modern scholars find difficulties in accept- ing this straight-forward interpretation. They therefore wonder as to what Manu might have really meant. But Manu himself was sharing only the sentiments of his day. A couplet,24 ascribed to him, describes Ganapati as the deity of the depressed classes, the Sudras, and this in clear contrast to Sambhu, the deity of the Brahmanas, and Madhava, the deity of the Ksatriyas. The Sudras, according to Manu,25 were entitled to wear only the worn-out clothes and eat only the refuge of food. We do not, therefore, expect him to be reverentially disposed to the follow- ers of Ganapati, the deity of the Sudras. His contempt for gana- yaga was thus only logical. However, Katyayana,28 before Manu, gave us an interesting clue to the nature of this gana yajna. As interpreted by him, it had hardly much to do with worship as we understand it; it meant a ritual performed collectively by the brethren (bhratrinam) and the comrades (sakhinam) amongst themselves. We shall see more of this sense of the collective later. For the present, only the earlier view of Ganapati.

22 i. 271 ff. Free rendering. 24 VQ 1931-2. 475. 23 iii. 164. *6 KSS xxii. 11. 12. 25 x. 125.

132 LOKAYATA

It is from the point of view of this early attitude as expressed in the legal or quasi-legal literatures, that certain well known names of Ganapati can possibly be clearly understood. These names are Vighnakrit, Vighnesa, Vighnaraja, Vighnesvara, etc. meaning, literally, the 'trouble-maker.' However, under the influence of later ideas, the literal meaning of these names is often ignored and the modern scholars are generally inclined to view these as meaning the deity who, by presiding over troubles, helps human beings to overcome these and attain success. As Monier-Williams27 said, 'though Ganesa causes obstacles he also removes them; hence he is invoked at the com- mencement of all undertakings and at the opening of all com- positions with the words namo ganesaya vighnesvaraya,' that is, I bow down before Ganesa, the Lord of Obstacles. The fact referred to is of course true. But it is true under changed conditions, that is, under the changed attitude to Gana- pati which developed later. The literal meaning of vighnakrit, etc., is 'the creator of troubles.' The legal sources already indi- cated that this was the original sense. Yajnavalkya, we have seen, said this in so many words: Vinayaka became the leader of the ganas in order to create obstacles (karma cighna siddh- yartham). And the Dharma Sutra ascribed to Baudhayana28 gave the final verdict on the point. Ganapati was called by the simple word vighna, that is, trouble. So, Ganapati meant trouble. The mythological literatures tempt us to go even a step further and view him to have been, in the past, not merely a trouble-maker but a bloody one at that. Ganapati's elephant-head was said to be left only with one tusk; this explains his name ekadanta. And the tusk was supposed to be blood-red. The Tantrika literatures29 explained the colour as due to the blood stains of the enemies vanquished. But who could the enemies be? The Brahma Vaivarta Purana30 suggested the answer, by way of telling us the thrilling tale of how Ganapati lost his other tusk. There was a fight between him and Parasurama. The latter hurled at him a battle-axe, made by Ganapati's father himself, and this deprived him of one tusk. Not that Ganapati was not equal to Parasurama. For the Brahmanda Purana31 added that Ganapati was 'able enough

27 SED 343 29 VK (B) v. 202. 28 SBE xiv. 254. 31 Rao EHI I. i. 60. 'so iii. 40.

GANAPATI 133

to resist the blow of the axe; but he did not do so, because he could not bear to see his father's battle-axe pass for a powerless weapon.' The interesting point of the story is suggested by the nature of Parasurama. He was, as is well known, the most aggressive champion of the priest-class supremacy. Does it mean that Ganapati had for his main enemy the priest-class of his time? The malice which the early priest-class literatures had for him, seems to confirm the suggestion. The hatred for Ganapati, however, was not confined to the literary sources alone. Gupta32 has suggested that some of the sculptural representations of Ganapati as a terrifying demon were indications of the early attitude to him. The early sculp- tures of Ganapati, were indeed of a different nature:

His clumsy nudity, however, as well as the total lack of jewellery, gives one the impression that he is hardly yet rising from the rank and file.33 All this is true. What is far more significant, however, is another series of images of Ganapati which show hostility to- wards him expressed bluntly and directly. Stone-images34 are found in Bengal in which Ganapati figures under the padmasana (a sitting posture) of Bhrukuti Tara, or lying prostrate under the lotus-throne of Parnasavari. The circumstance that in the latter, Ganapati is seen to hold a shield and a sword indicates that his surrender was not without resistance. In certain Tibetan bronzes,35 again, Ganapati is found trampled under the feet of Mahakala. This Mahakala was supposed to be the deity of law and order. Yi-Tsing, the Chinese author and pilgrim, relates ... that at the doors of the Indian monastaries there was usually the statue of a deity ... holding a bag of gold; and this god was called Mahakala.36 The Mongolian despot Altan Khan is said to have burnt all other idols in his state in favour of this Mahakala.37 All these are, therefore, evidences of Mahakala's connection with aristocracy and the ruling class. Ganapati being trampled under the feet of Manjusree is, again, not a piece of very rare sculpture.88 Probably more signi-'

82 Gupta SS(B) 144. 84 Ib. 37-8. 83 Getty G xix. 86 Getty GNB 161. 85 Ib. 43. 88 Getty G. 43. . 87 Ib.

134 LOKAYATA

ficant than all these is an image found of a certain deity called Vighnantaka,39 literally meaning one who destroys obstacles or conquers troubles. Trampled under his feet, Ganapati could only mean the creator of catastrophes. Nepalese legends con- firm this point: A pandit from Odiyana was performing special rites on the bank of the river Bagmati near Katamudu, in order to attain a certain stage of perfection or siddhi. Ganesa, wishing to prevent the pious Buddhist from attaining siddhi, put insurmountable obstacles in his way. The pandit, unable to perform the required rites, invoked, in great distress, the Buddhist Destroyer of Obstacles, who appeared in the fierce form of Vighnantaka and Ganesa was overcome.40 It may be objected that Manjusree, Mahakala and others were after all Buddhist deities. Their contempt for Ganapati, therefore, differed in some important respects from the contempt expressed by authors of the Manava Grihya Sutra and Yajna- valkya Smriti, the representatives of Hinduism. This is true. But this only shows that Ganapati was once hated by the Buddhists as much as by the Hindus. In any case, he was yet to be raised to the status of a god.

4. FROM VIGHNESVARA TO SIDDHIDATA

What appears to be most astonishing in the career of Gana- pati is that this trouble-maker with his blood-smeared tusk was eventually declared to be the god who sanctioned success. The vighnaraja became the siddhidata. A wide range of publicity literature was naturally called for to popularise this changed attitude to Ganapati. Ganesa or Ganapati was made to figure very prominently in the Puranas. Lengthy sections of at least two major Puranas were devoted only to describe his pomp and glory. These were the Brahma Vaivarta Purana and the Skanda Purana.41 Hyper- boles were freely used. The Skanda Purana declared him to be an avatara, that is an incarnation of God himself. Another text, called the Ganapati Tattva,42 went a step further and equated him to the Upanisadic Brahman, the all absorbing spiritualistic reality. At least one Upa-Purana and one minor Upanisad were composed exclusively for the purpose of praising him. These were the Ganesa Purana and the Ganapati Upanisad. The extravangance

41 Ganesa-Khanda of both. 39 Ib. 40 Ib. 42 VK (B) v. 202.

CANAPATI! 135

with which his praise was characterised may be illustrated by the latter. Ganapati was addressed as follows: The universe is manifest in thee; earth, fire, air and ether. Thou art Brahma, Thou art Visnu, Thou art Rudra. Thou art superior to the three bodies (trimurti).43 What particularly strikes us is the deliberate and planned effort at giving publicity to this glory attributed to Ganapati. The Ganesa Stotra4+ of the Narada Purana concluded: One who copies out this (i.e., the Ganapati Stotra) in eight copies and distributes the copies among eight Brahmanas, is sure to attain imme- diate success in learning and that by the grace of Ganesa. Ganesa began to appear in Indian sculptures in a new light. Not to speak of being trampled under the feet of anybody else, he began to receive costly ornaments and sophisticated decora- tions. But, as we shall presently see, there was a peculiar abruptness about this new enthusiasm. However imposing this new publicity enterprise might have been, certain cracks in it could not be concealed. When we examine these we can see that the whole thing was the result of a clumsy after-thought. Ganapati, it was declared with amazing abruptness, was the god of wisdom and learning. This must have been in flat contradiction to what the authors of the Manava Grihya Sutra and Yajnavalkya Smriti had said. For according to both, it was because of Vinayaka that a learned teacher failed to obtain pupils and students had to face all sorts of obstacles and inter- ruptions. The necessity was naturally felt for fabricating myths to justify the new quality so abruptly attributed to Ganapati. So it was said that Ganesa alone was found competent to undertake the supremely difficult task of taking down in writing the Maha- bharata, as composed and dictated by Vedavyasa. But Winter- nitz45 has already shown that this story, though found in some recensions of the Mahabharata and because it is not to be found in the other recensions, must have been post-Mahabharata in origin. That is, it was a later product of a local genius some- how or other grafted on the text.

48 Getty G. 5. 45 JRAS xxviii. 147ff. 44 Vrihat Stotra Ratnakara.

136 DOKAYATA

Another instance. To substantiate the claim for wisdom of Ganapati, it was necessary to attribute to him lofty philosophical discourses. So we come across a later text, called the Ganesa Gita, in which Ganesa is made to discuss philosophy. But the text itself was the product of not too ingenious an inventor. For it is verbatim the same as the Srimad Bhagavat Gita, only with this modification that the name of Krisna is substituted in it by that of Ganesa.46 Ganapati was indeed older than his fame for wisdom and learning. The modern scholars have often overlooked this point and have, in vain, tried to link up the two. Ganapati's reputation for wisdom is, I believe, to be attributed to the confusion between him and Brihaspati, who in Rig Veda is called Ganapati. Brihaspati, of course, is the Vedic god of wis- dom, and is called the sage of sages.47 This cannot be a convincing explanation. In the early Vedic literatures, cpithets of wisdom were not distinctive of Brahma- naspati alone. Besides, the evidence of the Manava Grihya Sutra and Yajnavalkya Smriti definitely prove that Ganapati's reputation for wisdom could not have been very ancient. The explanation of Ganapati's fame for wisdom as offered by Monier- Williams4s is more ingenuous and less credible. He tried to connect the god's wisdom with the size of his head: 'to denote his sagacity (Ganesa) has the head of an elephant.' This is obviously arbitrary. Ganapati's elephant-head has a more in- teresting story to tell.

5. CONFLICTING MYTHS The trouble-maker turned the custodian of success, had to be provided with some dignified geneology. The authors of the Puranas naturally found this a laborious task and the mytholo- gical literatures pondered over the story of Ganapati's birth. As Foucher49 has rightly commented, The discrepancies of these tales, even more than their inconsistency, would be enough to prove that they had been invented as an after-

scholars. thought for the needs of the cause and by less than indifferent

Scholars like Rao50 and Kennedy51 already collected these

46 Monier-Williams IW 139. 47 Bhandarkar VS 149. 49 Getty G xxi. 50 EHI I. i. 1ff. 48 SED 343: ! 51 HM 353ff.

GANAPATI 137

fables together. We need not go into the details over again. Only one or two interesting examples should be enough for our purpose. It was sometimes claimed that Ganapati was born of a male without a female,52 sometimes again of a female without a male,53 indicating at any rate that his birth as a god was far from being normal. There was moreover a sense of uncleanliness about his origin, which the Puranas could not entirely overcome. The typical story54 is that while playing with the filth of her own body, Parvati gave a queer shape to it, was herself fascinated by the shape, put life into it and called it her son. Another story went a step further. Parvati took the unguents with which she annointed herself and mixed with these the impurities of her own body; then she went to the mouth of the river Ganga and made the elephant-headed raksasi, Malini, drink it. As a result, Malini conceived and gave birth to a child; this child was eventually taken away by Parvati.55 Thus Ganapati acquired his status in the holy pantheon by adoption than by birth. Even then, his elephant-head remained to be accounted for. This led the mythological literatures into fresh muddle. According to the Brahma Vaivarta Purana,50 Ganesa, shortly after his birth, lost his own head by the sight of Sani; so Visnu, out of mercy for the weeping mother, brought an elephant-head and grafted it on his human trunk. But the Skanda Purana57 would not accept this story. According to it, Ganesa lost his head even before he was born. A certain demon called Sindura, literally vermilion, entered his mother's womb and feasted upon his foetal head. The child when born, had to help himself in the matter of obtaining a head. He beheaded the elephant- demon, Gajasura, and placed its head on himself. It was not explained why the child did have such a special preference for a hideous-looking head like this. Most ingenious of all was the naturalistic explanation sug- gested by a South Indian version of Suprabhedagama:58 Siva and Parvati once attempted coition in the elephant-posture and this resulted in the baby with the elephant-head. : Stories connecting Ganesa with Malini, the elephant-headed

52 VQ 1935. 105. 53 Getty G 7. 54 The story occurs in Skanda Purana. Brahma Vaivarta Pu- rana, etc. 85 ERE il. 808. 56 1b 57 VK (B) v. 182-3. 58 VQ 1935. 105.

138 LOKAYATA

raksasi, or with Gajasura, the elephant-headed raksasa, indicate that beneath the thick over-growth of later myths remains con- cealed the fact that Ganesa originally belonged to the aboriginal stock, the raksasas and raksasis. Another myth-and it occurs in a number of Puranas59-appears to have a similar implication. The celestial aristocracy headed by Indra, was alarmed by a rally of inferior human creatures, the Sudras and their women, at the hilly tract of Somanatha, the residence of Siva. The gods appealed to Siva, who, however, refused to stop them. So they approached his wife, Parvati, who, from the filth of her own body, created the lord of catastrophe for the destruction of this popular mobilisation. This myth might have represented a reality, but represented it in an inverted manner. Ganesa, we have already seen, was declared by Manu to be the deity of the Sudras, and there are grounds to presume,60 that, among the followers of Ganapati, women enjoyed equal status with men. Ganapati could not, therefore, owe his birth to the purpose of stopping the rally of the Sudras and their women. The truth, however, must have been verv different. As his name implies. he was originally connected with the popular mobilisation, but rather as its leader than as its destroyer. Significantly, another name of Ganapati is Dvi-Dehaka.61 It means the two-bodied one. Ganapati was indeed so. He had two bodies, two beings, two births-the earlier and the later, the profane and the holy, the trouble-maker and the custodian of success. We are more familiar with the latter, because in later times more publicity was given to it.

6. THE TRANSFORMATION It is possible for us to arrive at a rough idea as to the time when this transformation of vighnaraja into siddhidata took place. In Cordington's Ancient India,62 we come across an image of Ganapati in which he appeared in glory and grandeur. This sculpture is assigned to about 500 A.D. and is looked at as one of the earliest in which Ganapati appeared in this new light. Coomaraswamy,63 too, has pointed to the fact that Ganesa 'does not appear in iconography before the Gupta period' and, further,

59 Kennedy op. cit. 354. 60 Samkara Vijaya ch. xvii. 62 Plate xxxix. #1 Getty G xxiv. 63 BMFAB xxvi. 30.

GANAPATI: 139

'the figure of Ganesa appears suddenly and not rarely in the Gupta period.' Kane64 has conjectured that 'the well known characteristics of Ganesa and his worship had become fixed be- fore the 5th or 6th century of the Christian era.' All these agree with the evidence of the Puranas. For, though the Puranas might have been older, scholars"5 have shown that there was a thorough recasting of the Brahmanical literatures during the Gupta period. Thus we have some idea of the time when Ganesa or Ganapati acquired the status of a god proper. It must have been sometime preceding the Guptas. We shall now examine certain other characteristics of Gana- pati more critically; these may throw some light on how he acquired the status of a god. The clue is to be found in his elephant-head. We are now accustomed to think that this was his original characteristic. But it was not so. The peculiar features of Ganesa, as described in the medieval works, namely, the head of an elephant, pot belly, mouse as vahana (con- veyance) are entirely wanting in the Vedic literature.66 Of course, Baudhayana's Dharma Sutra referred to the Vinayaka as hastimukha vakratandu, ekadanta and lambodara-charac- teristics which came to be attributed to him in later times. 'But, as Kane67 has shown, 'this part of the Baudhayana Dharma Sutra is of doubtful authenticitv.' On the other hand, we have a series of evidences indicating that before the present conception of Ganapati became a fixed one, there were many Ganapatis, not one. The Vajasancyi Samhitaes used the name in plural. The Manava Grihya Sutra referred to the four Vinayakas, and Yajnavalkya mentioned a multiplicity of them. The Mahabharata,69 too, spoke of the Ganesvaras and Vinayakas in the plural. Bhandarkar70 conjec- tured that the four original Vinayakas were in course of time reduced to one. The different Ganapatis presumably had different features and appearances too. The Taittiriya Samhita71 faintly indicated that they had animal appearances (pasus). The Tantrika litera- tures,72 however, went a step further and indicated that some of

6* HD ii, 215. 65 Rhys Davids BI 23; Kosambi ISIH 138. 66 Kane HD ii. 213. 67 Ib. ii. 214. 68 xvi. 25. 69 Anusasanaparva cli. 26. 70 VS 148. 71 iv. 1. 2. 2. 72 VK (B) v. 202.

140 LOKAYATA

the Ganapatis had the emblem of the bull, others that of the snake. Of the fifty names assigned to Ganapati in the Tantrika literatures, Vrisabhadvaja and Vrisaketana (both meaning the same, i.e., bull as the emblem) and Dvijihva (the two tonged, i.e., the snake) hold special interest for our study. Like the elephant-head of Ganapati with which we are so familiar, the other animal names of the presumably various Ganapatis indi- cate their origin in the ancient totemic belief. That the elephant-head of our familiar Ganapati is an unmis- takable mark of his totemic origin is a point that need not be elaborately argued. There is no other conceivable explanation of this feature. Foucher73 has rightly observed:

When dealing with a therianthropomorphic figure of Ganesa's type, we can easily trace it back to the animal prototype from which it came; and here we plunge into the oldest layer of superstition which our developed minds can grasp; totem worship and agrarian rites. What is not taken note of is, however, a series of other circumstances. Totemism, in its origin, implies a certain definite social organisation, and, on the admission of all, it is primitive communism. If the elephant-head of Ganapati is a mark of his totemic origin, then his history goes as far back as the primitive community life. We shall presently see that an analy- sis of the meaning of gana confirms this. It is necessary here to be quite clear about the distinction between totemism and religion. We quote Thomson.74

Totemism differs from mature religion in that no prayers are used, only commands. The worshippers impose their will on the totem by the compelling force of magic, and this principle of collective compulsion corresponds to a state of society in which the community is supreme over each and all of its members. So long as the united efforts of the whole community are absorbed in maintaining it at the bare level of subsistence, there can be no economic or social inequality beyond the prestige earned by individual merit. This is still the case in Australia ... The more advanced forms of worship, characteristic of what we call religion, presuppose surplus production, which makes it possible for a few to live on the labour of the many. The headmanship ceases to be elective and becomes a hereditary. chieftaincy. The totem is attended with prayer and propitiation, assumes human shape, and becomes a god. The god is to the com- munity at large what the chief is to his subjects .... The further expansion of class privilege fosters an increasing complexity in, the divine powers from which it draws its sanction. As the ruling clan extends its authority, it annexes the totem gods of other clans and 73 Getty G xvi. 74 SAGS i. 49-50.

GANAPATI 141

absorbs them into its own. The royal totem becomes the god of the tribe or league of tribes, and eventually of the state. Bearing this in mind we return to the question of Ganapati. The Ganapatis were detested by the authors of such texts as the Manava Grihya Sutra, Manu Smriti and Yajnavalkya Smriti. We do not really know who these authors were, excepting insofar as they were the spokesmen or the representatives of the state powers of their times. But tribes persisted by the side of these early states, as they are persisting even today. The hostility and contempt felt by these authors for the Ganaptis can thus be taken as reflecting the attitude of the states towards the tribes. However, the attitude changed, and the spokesmen of the state powers of the subsequent period started to praise Ganapati. These were obviously not the old Ganapatis-the elephant, the bull, the snake-but one distinguished Ganapati, selected from among a multiplicity of totem-symbols and raised to the status of a god. Writers were no longer speaking of the many Gana- patis; they were praising only the Lambodara, Ekadanta, Hasti- mukha, and this is the Siddhidata with whom alone we are familiar in our time. The selection of one definite Ganapati from a previous multi- plicity of them and the transformation of his nature as well as the attitude expressed towards him, could not be accidental. These demand an explanation. And the only working hypothesis to explain it is that all these were the reflections of the process by which some tribe, originally bearing the banner of the ele- phant, eventually established its superiority as a victorious state. The old veneration felt by this tribe for its totem was retained, but its nature changed. The totem became a god. Only the name remained. We may look more closely into the icons of our familiar Ganapati. We find him riding a rat. The huge god using a mere rat to ride upon, does not obviously suggest a judicial selection of transport (vahana). Yet there is no real incongruity about it. For the gods did not have the freedom to choose their own transport. It was dictated by the nature of the emblem of the vanquished tribe or clan. That is, the elephants established their victory over the rats; the totem of the former became a god while that of the latter was logically reduced to its servitude. All these may appear highly conjectural. But the real reason is that our historians have paid little or no attention

142 LOKAYATA

so far to the problem of the origin of the states in ancient India. The states were taken for granted. The histo- rians sometimes speak no doubt of the tribes, states and clans in ancient India; but they do not always give us the impression that they want to be very clear about the real significance of these terms. Lastly, no respect at all is shown to the general historical law that the states could emerge only on the ruins of the tribes. Under these circumstances, the hypothesis of Ga- nesa becoming a god as a result of the elephants assuming sovereignty over the other tribes (including the rats), cannot but appear to be very strange. At the present stage of historical research, it is obviously not possible to trace the details of the process which led to the godhead of Ganapati. We shall confine ourselves only to two points. First, there is nothing intrinsically impossible about our working hypothesis. Secondly, if a comparative study of the ancient history of the other peoples have any relevance for our understanding of ancient Indian history, this is probably the only reasonable hypothesis on which we can work. Our hypothesis is not improbable for we actually know of the triumphant elephants establishing state-power in ancient India. Thus, for example, there were the ancient Matangas who left their impress on the early punch-marked coins. Kosambi75 has suggested that the later Kosalan coinage, when arranged in chronological order, reveals the history of the gradual establish- ment of the Matanga (elephant) dynasty. That this name Ma- tanga was inevitably a relic of the totemic past can hardly be doubted. But it would be highly conjectural, if not manifestly absurd, to claim that specifically this event of the Matangas establishing their state-power was reflected in the process by which Ganapati became a god. For the Matanga dynasty was presumbaly much older than the time of Ganapati attaining god- head. We have seen that in the evidences available so far, the event of Ganapati becoming a god is to be placed sometimes before the Guptas. On the other hand, judging from the fact that the Buddhist text Lalita Vistara76 characterised king Pase- nadi as matanga cyuti upapannam,-that is, born of the elephant- semen-it is rightly thought that the Matanga-dynasty is to be placed even before the Mauryas. Pasenadi was the king of Kosala during Buddha's time. So Ganapati's elephant-head

75 ISIH 149. 76 JBBRAS xxvii. 185.

GANAPATI '143

could not possibly be connected with these Matangas. Neverthe- less, the evidence of the Matangas is important insofar as it shows that there is nothing intrinsically impossible in the idea of some elephant-tribe eventually establishing a state-power in the ancient days. Besides, these Matangas were not the only elephants to have established a state-power in ancient India; the epigraphic records speak of more. The chief queen of Khara- vela, for example, described herself as the daughter of Hastisaha or Hastisimha.77 We hear also of the rats or the Musikas in ancient India. It has been conjectured that they were the same as the Musicanis of the early Greek narrators.78 At least the names are strikingly similar. If this were so, and if we are to trust the Greek narra- tors, then we may be led to believe that at the time of Alexan- der's campaign those rats were living a community life, typical of the tribal peoples. The Greek writers have told us about their community life.79 Like the elephants of ancient times, these rats, too, had evidently a totemic past; their name itself is a proof of that. In modern India, the rat is not at all an uncommon totem among the surviving tribes.80 The same might have been true in ancient India; we come across this name in many sources. How- ever, Jayaswal81 thought that all these referred to the same people: The Musikas were a people of the South. The Mahabharata men- tions them in the company of the vanavasis (i.e., forest-dwellers). Their country could not have been far removed from Kalinga, for the Natya Sastra (Circa 100 B.C .to A.D. 100) describes the Tosalas, the Kosalas, the Mosalas (the Musikas).

Similarly, the Puranas mentioned the strirajya (i.e. govern- ment of women) and the Musikas in the Vindhyan countries.82 All these might have referred to the same people as Jaya- swal has thought, though the possibility of different tribes being called by the same name is not entirely ruled out. For there is no reason why the rat should be considered as being the exclusive totem-symbol of only one definite people. Be that as it may. In the context of our present argument, the most important fact about the Musikas is that, we are never told of their establishing any state power. Rather, we hear of

T7 Barua OBI 57. 78 Jayaswal HP i .75. 79 Ib. 80 Risley PI 793; Thurston CTSI i. 164. 81 JBORS iii. 442. . 82 Ib.

144 LOKAYATA

them as being one of the peoples vanquished by an early state power. Strikingly again, this story of the Musikas being van- quished is to be found in the famous Hasti-gumpha (elephant cave) inscription of king Kharavela of Kalinga. This inscrip- tion is dated 160 B.c. Jayaswal, 'who has made the reading, restoration and interpretation of the contents of this important epigraphic record his life's work'83 has read in the fourth line of the inscription a reference to king Kharavela defeating the Musikas: '(he) destroys the Musika capital,' according to Jayaswal's translation.84 Of course, this Hasti-gumpha inscription, in spite of all the important historical researches, still remains obscure. We do not yet know, for example, why did it at all derive its name from that of an elephant. The name is suggestive, though of course we cannot possibly argue that the defeat of the rats inscribed within this elcphant-cave, gives us the clue to the origin of Ganapati as a god. For the cave is usually associated with Jaina faith which precludes any connection between this cave and Ganapati. Nor has any relation between the elephant and the king Kharavela been established. Besides, this event of the rats being vanquished took place much earlier than the godhead of Ganapati. Nevertheless, the evidence is significant from the point of view of our argument. It shows that there is nothing intrinsically impossible about the idea of there being a van- quished tribe in ancient India that bore the emblem of the rat. So there were the elephant-clans in ancient India and there were of the rats, too. We have evidence of the elephants being victorious and we have the evidence of the rats being vanquished. Therefore our hypothesis that the icon of Ganesa with which we are so familiar conceals behind it the history of some elephant- clan establishing its empire, need not necessarily be absurd. Secondly, it is the only reasonable hypothesis on which we may work, provided of course, we agree to draw lessons from historical parallels. We have specially in mind the researches of Moret and Davy85 regarding the transition from the tribe to the empire that took place in ancient Egypt. This history is reconstructed by them mainly on the basis of totemic evidences. They have shown, further, that this history of the birth of the state was also the history of the birth of a god.

83 Barua op. cit. 3. 85 FTE 115ff. .84 JBORS iii. 462.

GANAPATI 145

Before the formation of the Upper and Lower kingdoms, Egypt was divided into a number of autonomous nomes, that is, totemic clans and tribes grouped in villages. Various totems were the emblems and standards of these various nomes. Egyp- tian legends retained the memory of the conquest (by the fol- lowers of Horus) of the North by the South, and the subsequent establishment of the two kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt. Moret and Davy have deciphered the legend from a series of ivory and slate palettes carved with pictures of animals in com- bat, leading to the victory of the Falcon. The animals in these pictures were but the various totemic emblems of the different nomes.' The combat between them was simply the combat between the nomes. The victory of the Falcon was but the vic- tory of the nome represented by it. The chief of the Falcon nome was Menes; the series of victories of the Falcon over the other animals was thus the representation of the series of the victories earned by Menes. Menes conquered the rest of the Valley and the Delta, and welded the independent villages and clans into a single state. This was, therefore, the story, told in totemic images, of Menes becoming the king-the story of the transition from tribe to empire. It was also the story of a totem becoming a god. The Falcon became the divine Horus, the Falcon-god of an- cient Egypt. Egyptian pictures represent king Menes and the god Horus working in very close alliance. This history of ancient Egypt, as reconstructed by Moret and Davy, is, of course, clear in details. What is clear is likely to throw light on what is yet obscure. The history of Ganapati is also the history of a totem becoming a god. But it is still obscure. On the evidence of the Egyptian parallels, may we not hope, that the obscurities would be removed when our scholars would proceed to reconstruct the history of the transi- tion from tribe to state in ancient India, which must have taken place in different periods and in different regions? In order to do that, however, they would have to take into account the totemic evidences. But we may, for the time being, leave the question of the state and go back to the literatures of those peoples, who were yet to be fully acquainted with the state organisation. These are the Vedas. As is only to be expected, we find the Vedic Samhitas to be only full of the glory for the ganas and the Ganapatis. L-10

146 LOKAYATA

7. GANAS AND GANAPATI IN THE VEDAS The early Vedic people, on the admission of the more serious scholars,8 were organised in tribes. From the point of view of our argument, therefore, we neither expect them to hate the ganas and the Ganapati in the manner in which the authors of the Manava Grihya Sutra, Yajnavalkya Smriti and Manu Smriti did; nor do we expect them to know the elephant-headed god and all the artificial ways of propagating his glory. On the contrary, if gana meant the tribe and if the early Vedic people were themselves living a tribal life, we expect their poets to look at the ganas as their own group-organisations and to be full of friendly reverence for their Ganapati, the chief of the ganas. The Vedic poets knew their Ganapati but knew nothing of his elephant-head. This Ganapati was neither the Vighnaraja nor the Siddhidata of the later days. Significantly, these early Vedic poets did not know of the Ganapati apart from the con- crete ganas, in which they were themselves living. We invoke, thee, O Brahmanaspati, thou who art the Ganapati among the ganas, the seer (kavi) among the seers, abounding beyond measure in food, presiding among the elders and being the lord of

performed.$7 invocation; come for thy seat where the yajnas are being

This occurs in the second mandala of the Rig Veda, that is, in the oldest stratum of the Vedic literatures. The tenth man- dala of the Rig Veda was much later, and, as we shall see in Chapter VIII, it reflected a social reality that differed in many wavs from the picture of the earlier portions. It is, however, to be noted that even during the days of the tenth mandala the love for the ganas and the friendly reverence for its chief persisted: O Ganapati, take thy seat amidst the ganas, thou art called the supremely wise among the seers; nothing nearby or afar is perform- ed without thee. O thou possessor of wealth, extol the great and variegated sun.88 This was addressed to Indra. There was a difference bet- ween addressing Indra as Ganapati in the tenth mandala and addressing Brahmanaspati as Ganapati in the second mandala. However, this is a point to which we can return only in Chapter VIII of our study.

86 E.g. Macdonell HSL 153ff; Winternitz HIL 63; Kosambi ISIH ch. 4. XR RV x. 112 9. 87 RV i1. 23. 1.

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In the Rig Veda itself, we do not come across Ganapati anywhere else. But we hear of the ganas rather frequently: along with its derivatives, the word occurs no less than forty- four times in the Rig Veda. In most of these, gana refers to the group-life of the Maruts. In other cases, the use of the word is more significant for it indicates the group-life of the Vedic poets themselves. O (All-gods), Let the ever bountiful (sadaprina) yajamanas, with powerful arms, wishing for gain, kill the enemies with thy help; one attains both the desires and that is why one praises the ganas with flattering verses.89 O Pusan, thou art renowned even abroad; do inspire the gana that it may seek the cows for our gains.90 The glow leapt upwards of the resplendent fire, which never dies, whose teeth are sharp and which is protected by the gana.91 (O Usas), thou, who art high-born and pleased with horses, (we) approach thee for wealth (food) through these ganas; may thou distribute profuse wealth (food) among us the desirous.92 O Indra, drink the soma offered for thy pleasure and hence hold and release the two horses who are thy friends; then take they seat

singing.93 amidst the ganas and sing that we may get food,-we who are

This group-life-the gana-was characteristic of the early tribal stage. However, such a straight-forward interpretation of gana will not be readily accepted. The word has been the source of lots of confusions and contradictory interpretations. The confusions are not all of recent origin. Sayana, for example, gave us five different interpretations of the same word in the context of the five passages we have just quoted from the Rig Veda. These are (i) deva-samgha, i.e., the group-organisation of the Vedic deities; (ii) manusya-samgha, i.e., the group-organi- sation of human beings: (iii) yajamana-gana, i.e., the collective of yajamanas; (iv) samghabhuta, i.e., forming a group or collective body; and (v) stotrisamgha, i.e., the chorus-group. In any case, gana implied the collective or some kind of group-life. No scholar would seriously question it. But it is necessary to raise a further question: What could this group- life be which we find referred to in such an ancient literature? When it is a question of the Vedas and the Vedic peoples, our scholars do not hesitate much in characterising them as but tribal. Even Jayaswal who, as we shall see, was most strongly opposed to interpret ganas as tribe thought that

89 v. 44. 12. 91 viii. 23. 4. 00 vi. 56. 5. 92 v. 79. 5. 98 vi. 40. 1.

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In Vedic times, Hindu society was divided into Janas, tribes or nations, e.g., Anus, Yadus, Kurus.94 Other scholars, too, have unhesitatingly used the word tribe in describing the social organisation of the Vedic people. Bhandarkar 95 suggested: 'The Rudras are called ganas or tribes and Ganapatis or leaders of tribes'. But he has, argued that the idea of Rudra was suggested to the Vedic poets by the gods of the savage tribes: Being represented as roaming in forests and other lonely places, the idea of investing him with the skin-clothing of the savage tribes may have suggested itself to a poet. The Nisadas, a forest tribe, are compared to Rudras which fact lends support to this view.96 And so Bhandarkar came to the following view concerning the ganas and Ganapatis in the Vedic literatures:

Rudra had his hosts of Maruts, who were called his ganas, and the leader of these ganas was Ganapati. The name Rudra, as we have seen, was generalised and signified a number of spirits partaking of the character of the original Rudra; and so was the name Ganapati generalised and meant many leaders of the ganas, or groups.97 The implication is that, the Vedic people adapted the idea of the ganas and the Ganapatis from the forest tribes. But the evidences of the Vedic literatures are against such an assumption. It is true that in the Rig Veda the word gana is found to occur most frequently in connection with the Maruts and that the Maruts were strongly associated with Rudra. Nevertheless, there are also a considerable number of cases in which the word has nothing to do with the Maruts at all. Besides-and this goes decisively against Bhandarkar-in the Rig Veda itself, Rudra is never called Ganapati. On the contrary, only such exalted Vedic deities as Brahmanaspati, and more significantly Indra, were called Ganapati. In short, in the Vedic literatures the glory of the ganas and of Ganapati was original and it could not have been the result of any kind of absorption from the aboriginal tribes. : We have argued this point because there is a tendency among our scholars to explain the ganas and Ganapatis of the Rig Veda as due to this type of adoption. Mitra98 has argued:

94 HP i. 11n. 96 Ib. 103. 95 VS 104. 97 Ib. 147. 98 VQ 1935. 105.

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As.Ganesa was perhaps originally the special deity of the ganas- wild Aryan tribes, inhabiting desert wastes, mountains and forests, he was probably in later times affiliated to Pasupati (Sankara) and Bhutapati (Siva); and when he was admitted to the higher Aryan pantheon, various descriptions of his origin were given in the Puranas, as necessity arose. These explanations might have taken centuries to grow.

Sen9® has gone even a step further and has argued that Ganapati was un-Aryan in origin and the Aryans, in order to please the mob-mind, subscquently allowed him to enter their own patheon. What is clearly overlooked by these scholars is the circum- stance that whatever ups and downs there might have been in the career of Ganapati during the post-Vedic periods, we have cear and unmistakable evidences of the glory of the ganas and Ganapatis so far as the Vedic literatures are concerned. And there is nothing mysterious in this. Unlike those that in later times claimed to be the inheritors of the Vedic tradition and yet hated the tribal life, the Vedic peoples themselves lived in the tribal societies or ganas, and Ganapati was looked upon by them as simply their leader. We may quote some further evidences. The following are from the Atharva Veda:

ganas.) 100 Oblations to the ganas: Oblations to the great ganas (maha-

The yajna is well-performed and performed with strength, inasmuch as it is performed by the ganas, that are the favourites of Indra and are unimpeachable.101 He (Brihaspati), the bounteous and the lorded one, along with the gana, vanquished the Asura (Vala) with his roar, by the tactics of separation; he recovered the cattle, which were the producers of milk and butter and were lowing.102 Let the ganas of the Maruts sing separately for the clouds which roar, and let the rain thus created be sprinkled over the earth.103 The Vajasaneyi Samhita, too, is not without parallels: Salute to the ganas and the Ganapatis. Salute to the vraatas and the Vraatapatis too. Salute to the magicians (gritsa) and the leaders thereof. Salute to the men of various forms and the viswa- rupas as well.194 Thou art Ganapati among the ganas. We invoke thee. Thou art Priyapati (the lord of the beloved) among the beloveds (priyanam).

Do JB (B) 64. 100 xix. 22. 16. 101 xx. 40. 2; xx. 70. 4. cf. RV i. 6. 8. 102 xx. 88. 5. cf. RV iv. 50. 5. 103 iv. 15.4. 104 xvi. 25.

150 LOKAYATA

We invoke thee. Thou art the lord of the treasures among the treasures (nidhinam). We invoke thee.105 (nidhipati)

The last was evidently a chorus-song sung by women in course of the performance of the Asvamedha Yajna. The word nidhi here may be of some interest. Monier- Williams100 has shown that it was derived from the root dha, meaning 'to deposit' and that in the Samhitas it meant store, hoard, treasures. But store or treasure belonging to whom? Mythological and legal literatures of later times retained certain hints from which we may conjecture that these were not origi- nally privately owned. The Puranas107 mentioned usually nine. though sometimes eight, nidhis, and they were conceived of as personified. When, however, we examine the names actually assigned to these, their totemie origin leaps be- fore our eyes. The names are: padma (the lotus) mahapadma (the great lotus), samkha (the conch-shell), makara (the cro- codile), kacchapa (the tortoise), etc., etc. The names there- fore lead us back to a very dim past-the totemic past. And however humble and meagre might have been the wealth of men at this stage, there could not have been any private ownership of it. This primitive concept of collective wealth- of nidhi-came down to the authors of the later legal litera- tures.10% They knew that the idea of ownership, as understood in the later times, was incompatible with such wealth. The only way they found open to explain this archaic concept in con- formity with their own preoccupations was to say that nidhi was that kind of wealth the ownership of which had been des- troyed for ever. The question of property of the early Vedic peoples will be discussed in Chapter VIII. For the moment, we may sum up our argument so far. Living in tribal societies as they did, the early Vedic poets sang the glory of the ganas and of the Ganapatis. During the post-Vedic times, however, the spokesmen of the early state powers detested the tribal societies that surrounded them, and this accounts for their contempt for the ganas and for Ganapati. The inheritors of the Vedic traditions, thus, learnt to hate pre- cisely those ideas and institutions which were valued so much by their ancestors. This situation continued for several centuries

105 xxiii. 19. cf. RV ii. 23. 1 .- 107 Ib. 106 SED 548. 10% VK (B) x. 126-7.

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until some triumphant tribe that assumed state power dragged out the ghost of the old concept of Ganapati and endowed it with new pomp and grandeur. And Ganapati became merely a formal entity of his old self, retaining only an animal-head on the human trunk to remind us of his former existence as the chief of the gana or the tribe. But did the word gana really mean the tribe?

8. JAYASWAL ON THE GANAS References to the ganas abound in our ancient literatures beginning from the Rig Veda. But the attention of our historians was properly drawn to these only recently, that is, by the second decade of the twentieth century. This resulted in two important works of historical research, namely, Jayaswal's Hindu Polity and Majumdar's Corporate Life in Ancient India, particularly the former. The latter was published in 1919 and though the publication date of the former was 1924, the author has told us in the introduction that the book was to be published earlier but for certain highly disgraceful events.109 These dates are important. For there was something more than mere historical enthusiasm behind these works. As rightly observed, The celebrated volume of Jayaswal on Hindu-Polity was written with the motive to refute the assertion of the British ruling class that India was unfit for parliamentary democratic institutions, by show- ing that India had republics and 'self-governing democracies.'110 Jayaswal111 himself noted with gratification: The book was cited by Sir Sankaran Nair from the manuscript in his Note to the Government of India's First Despatch on Constitu- tional Reforms (dated 5th March, 1919).

It is no wonder, thercfore, that the book should show tremendous enthusiasm to discover in the ancient ganas such minute details of parliamentary democracy as seats in the republics, motion, resolution, quorum, whips, votes, votes of absentees, ballot voting, procedure of majority, principle of referendum, basis of franchise and citizenship, judicial representation and laws of republics, etc., etc .; in short, practically everything that our national movement was trying to achieve in those days.

109 Jayaswal HP pref. vi. 110 Dange IPCS 3. 111 HP pref. vi.

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Judging from the enthusiasm with which our nationalist press received Majumdar's book we may infer the same or simi- lar inspiration behind it. The Modern Review112 hailed it as a crushing answer to those who are at present struggling to establish against history that self-government is the chartered monopoly of the Western nations. The Amrita Bazar Patrika113 was jubilant over the fact that the book will furnish the most convincing reply to the reiterated arguments of our Anglo-Indian friends that India was quite unft for experiment of democratic institutions. Historical research became an ideological weapon in our national struggle. We need not underestimate the important role which this ideological weapon played in those days. Nor should we for a moment forget the value and importance of the vast materials concerning the ancient ganas, so laboriously and competently collected, particularly by Jayaswal-a feat of historical research which a scholar of his calibre alone could have performed. Nevertheless, all these should not make us blind to the limitations of his conclusions-limitations that were clearly the results of the exigencies of the situation that drew his attention to the ganas. The demand of our national struggle for a demo- cratic self-governing state in India led our historian to discover such states in ancient India and he thought that gana was simply the technical term for it, whereas, as we are going to argue, the word really meant the tribal society, or, as in com- paratively later literatures, to the more or less degenerate forms of it. This point is important. For state and tribe are different- the former emerges only on the ruins of the latter.

9. MEANING OF GANA

The modern lexicons first. Wilson114 has collected the following meanings of the word: a flock, a multitude, a troop, a tribe or class, etc. The meauings collected by Monier-Wil- liams115 are: a flock, troop, multitude, number, tribe, series, class (of animate and inanimate beings), body of followers or atten- dants, troops or class of inferior deities, a company, any assem- blage or association of men formed for the attainment of some

112 March, 1919. 114 SD q.v. gana. 113 20 February 1919. 115 SED 343

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ends, etc. Macdonell116 has collected the following meanings: host, multitude, class, troop, retinue, community, association, corporation, etc. Evidentaly, these modern lexicons were draw- ing on the traditional ones. So Fleet117 was right in saying that The word gana is given in Indian lexicons, with many other terms, as primarily, a synonym of samuha and samghata, of which the ra- dical and leading idea is that of 'a gathering together,' 'a collection.' On the basis of this he argued that gana meant the 'tribe.' But Thomas objected to this interpretation and there was a long controversy over this between the two scholars in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.118 The immediate issue of this controversy was the interpretation of two old inscriptions, dated the fifth and sixth century A.D., in which the words malava gana sthiti occurred. Both cited the authority of the Indian scholars in their own favour. Fleet quoted the authority of Bhandarkar,119 who had already translated malava gana as the Malava tribe. Thomas mentioned the authority of Jayaswal; though curiously enough, he wanted to use the word gana in a sense substantially different from that of Jayaswal: Now precisely the evidence required has been supplied by Mr. Jaya- swal in the paper to which I have referred, evidence for the use of the world gana in a definite political sense, a sense appropriate to the present case, which he renders as 'republic' but which may better be represented by 'governing body' or 'senate' and this is accordingly the only sense which has a title to consideration here .... I do not think that in either case the word gana would have denoted anything but the governing body of the tribe.120 The scholar is unfortunately vague as to what could be the meaning of the governing body of the tribe. The true tribal society is so thoroughly democratic and equalitarian121 that a governing body, as distinct from the tribe and set over it, is not clearly conceivable, unless of course it means the tribal council. In any case, Jayaswal's own interpretation of ganas was different, and at least clear and consistent:

In view of the results of a special study of the republican organisa- tions, I differ from that great scholar (namely, Rhys Davids, who according to Jayaswal, was 'the foremost authority on the Buddhist

116 S q.v. gana. 117 JRAS 1915. 138. 118 1914. 413-4, 745-7; 1915. 138-40, 533-5, 802-4, etc. 119 IA 1913. 161. 121 Morgan AS 66, 85-6. 120 JRAS 1915. 534-5 .: .1. .

154 LOKAYATA

literature') when he calls them 'clans.' The evidence does not warrant our calling them clans. Indian republics of the seventh and the sixth century B.c. ... had long passed the tribal stage of society. They were states, ganas and samghas, though many of them very likely had a national or tribal basis, as every state, ancient or modern, must have.122 Jayaswal being the ablest and most consistent representative of the view we are going to oppose, we shall argue specially against him and in defence of the older view upheld by scholars ot no less eminence than Fleet, Monier-Williams, Bhandarkar and Rhys Davids. The mass of materials collected by Jayaswal decisively prove that the gana, insofar as the word stood for some human group, meant primarily some kind of non-monarchical and ultra-demo- cratic organisation. But using this as the premise, we cannot argue that the only conclusion conceivable is that the ganas were republican states. For, the tribal society, too, in its purity, is democratic to an extent which even the Greek city-states never attained. More important, however, are the evidences ignored by Jayaswal. These show that the ultra-democratic ganas were but tribal societies, or, as in later literatures, only the more or less degenerate forms of these. Jayaswal began with the evidences of Panini, the gram- marian who is usually placed in the sixth century B.c., and he has rightly argued that the large number of rules we come across in Panini regarding the ganas 'impresses one with the importance which the contemporaries of Panini attached to the existing republics.'128 Panini, dealing with the formation of the word samgha, in iii. 3. 86. says that the word samgha (as against the regular samghata, derived from han, iii. 3. 76) is in the meaning of gana.124 This should simply mean that Panini cquated the ganas with the samghas. And Patanjali,125 commenting on Panini, said that samgha was so called because it was one body, a unity. There is, therefore, nothing in these to exclude the idea of the tribal society or to establish the conclusion that the re- publican states alone could be the meaning of these ganas. But Jayaswal thought that another rule of grammar, which he next quoted from Panini, proved his point inasmuch as this rule implied that some of the sumghas known to Panini were con-

' 122 HP i. 49-50. 124 Ib. i. 27-8. 123 1b. i. 33. 125 on Panini v. 1. 59.

GANAPATI 155

taminated by caste distinctions. This rule is a complex one and we shall see that even assuming Jayaswal's interpretation of the rule, his conclusion does not follow. Besides, certain other and less doubtful evidences decisively go against the conclusion. In this rule, Panini120 referred to certain samghas, described by him as the ayudhajivi samghas among the Vahikas. Examples of these, as mentioned by the commentators, were the Ksud- rakas and the Malavas. According to Panini, words which refcrred to persons belonging to such samghas, were to have a certain suffix, viz. nyat. Thus, to denote a person as belonging to the Ksudrakas, the name should have this suffix and should become Ksaudrakyah. Similarly, a person belonging to the Malavas should be called Malavyah. At the same time, Panini said that the rule would be applicable only to words that were specifically non-Brahminical and non-monarchical (a-brahmana- rajanyat) in sense. This had led Jayaswal to argue that pre- sumably there were words referring to the Brahmanas and the Ksatriyas who, at the same time, belonged to the samghas; or else why should Panini make exceptions likc these?

This points to the stage of a developed, the familiar, Hindu society, as opposed to a tribal stage.127 Let us first of all see how the traditional commentators proposed to interprct this rule. Bhattoji asked: Why did Panini use the word samgha in the sutra? The answer is that he wanted to exclude for example, the samrat (king) to whom the suffix would not apply; because it (samrat) was alien to the sense of samgha .... Why was the word a-brahmana? To exclude the possibility of the application of the suffix to such substantives as gopalava, when it referred to a Brahmana .... The rule applies only to the specific substantive rajanya.

At least one point should be quite clear from the above. The commentator was anxious to tell us that the concept of the samgha and the concept of rajanya were thoroughly incompati- ble. Therefore it would be hardly permissible to argue that the samghas referred to 'a developed, the familiar, Hindu society'; because there were, as a rule, Ksatriyas and Brahmanas in such a society. And how could one at all imagine that the samghas represented the familiar Hindu society on the face of the fact that whatever might have been the exact sense of Panini, there is at least no doubt that he meant such cases to be only excep-

126 v. 3. 114 127 HP i. 34.

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tional after all? To agree with Jayaswal, it would be necessary to imagine that the samghas generally or as a rule, had Brahma- nas and Ksatriyas in them. That would be exactly the opposite of what Panini actually said. Besides, it would indeed be even prejudicial to Jayaswal's own view, namely, that the samghas were republican rather than monarchical organisations, if his interpretation of the above rule of Panini is taken seriously. As interpreted by him, this rule implied that there were Brahmanas and Ksatriyas in the sam- ghas. But the grammatical literatures used the word Ksatriya in the sense of the monarch, the ekaraja. As Katyayana,128 com- menting on a sutra of Panini, said: the word ksatriyad was used in the sutra to denote ekaraja (the monarch) so that the sense of samgha was excluded. We come across the same argument in Patanjali's129 commentary, too:

The term ksatriyad in the sutra indicate ekarajat. That is, the sense of monarchy. And why was the word used? To exclude the sense of the samghas. Because the suffix under discussion did not apply to substantives denoting the samghas. It is evident from the sutra commented upon, that Panini would use the word janapadas to mean organisations with Ksatriyas, as contrasted to samghas which did not include Ksatriyas. Thus the samghas, as the grammarians knew these, were not compatible with Ksatriyas being there. As such, it is hardly permissible to argue that these revealed the familiar caste-divi- ded society and therefore were republican states rather than tribal societies. And even assuming that according to Panini there were Brahmanas and Ksatriyas in some of the samghas or ganas, we fail to agree with Jayaswal's view of the familiar Hindu society. For such Brahmanas and Ksatriyas were obvi- ously very far from our usual notion of them. This is evident from the Mahabharata. The samghas referred to by Panini belonged to the Vahikas. The same Vahikas were mentioned in the Mahabharata and this is how the epic described them: The people residing there are called the Vahikas. The lowest of the Brahmanas are also residing there from very remote times. They are without the Veda and without knowledge, without sacrifice and without the power to assist at others' sacrifices. They are fallen

128 on Panini iv. 1. 168 129 Ib.

GANAPATI 157

(vraatyas) and many amongst them have been begotten by Sudras upon other people's girls. The gods never accept any gift from them.130

Again, Travelling through various countries following various religions, I, at last, O King, came among the Vahikas. There I heard that one at first becomes a Brahmana and then becomes a Ksatriya. Indeed, a Vahika would. after that, become a Vaisya, and then a Sudra and then a barber. Having become a barber, he would then again become a Brahmana. Returning to the status of a Brahmana, he would again become a slave.131 But more of the Mahabharata evidences later. There is no doubt that the presumably more advanced samghas were showing the early signs of class division during the time of the later grammarians. Patanjali,132 for example, said that a certain suffix was not to be applied to the slaves (dasas) and the craftsmen (karmakaras) among the Ksudrakas and the Malavas, implying thereby that there emerged by his time some form of slavery and fixed craftsmanship in these two well known samghas of ancient India. Perhaps the tribal struc- ture of the samghas was beginning to break down in other cases, too. However, this would not justify the generalised claim that the samghas of the grammarians were invariably full-fledged state organisations. That the samghas or the ganas of the grammatical litera- tures originally meant only tribal societies is indicated by the names assigned to some of these. The names are typically tribal, being mostly totemic in origin. The following list would be interesting, though it is by no means exhaustive: Ksudraka,133 a kind of gadfly.134 Malava,135 a white flowering lodhra. Vrika,136 the leopard. Damani,137 relating to the Artemisia flower. Aulapi,138 relating to a species of plant called the Udupa. The confederacy of the six Trigartas,139 consisting of: Kaundoparatha, one that sits near the kaunda-creeper; Dandaki, born of danda, meaning trunk, tusk or stalk, or, in the masculine, of a horse, and in the feminine, of the plant Hedy- sarum lagopodioides;

130 Tr. Roy viii. 155-6. 132 on Panini iv. 1. 168. 131 1b. viii. 156

183 Commentaries on Panini v. 3. 114. 184 Monier-Williams SED 331. 185 Commentaries on Panini v. 3. 114. 186 Panini v. 3. 115. 137 Ib. v. 3. 116. 138 Bhattoji on Panini v. 3. 116. 139 Panini v. 3. 116.

158 LOKAYATA

Kraustuki, from jackal; Jalaki, a spider, etc., etc. Kapotapakah,140 the young of a pigeon.141 Kaunjayanyah, descended from the kunja, meaning a bower or an elephant's tusk.143 Parsavah,144 those with battle-axe.145 Bradhnayanyah,146 from bradhana, a horse.147 Samivatyah,148 from samivat, those with sami-tree. Aurnavatyah,149 from urnavat, those with cob-web.

The names are interesting and these could hardly be the names of Republican states. We wanted to deal in detail the grammatical evidences adduced by Jayaswal. For, of all his points these were the strongest. His other arguments are of lesser weight. We may refer here to one or two.

Again, new ganas were founded. Would that mean that new

.sideration.150 tribes were founded? Such a meaning would hardly deserve con-

To those who have actually studied the tribes, however, the possibility of new tribes being formed did not appear to be such a prima facie impossibility. Here is what Morgan151 said many years ago. New tribes as well as new gentes were constantly forming by natural growth .... The method was simple. In the first place there would occur a gradual outflow of people from some overstocked geographical centre, which possessed superior advantages in the means of subsistence. Continued from year to year, a considerable population would thus be developed at a distance from the original seat of the tribe. In course of time the emigrants would become dis- tinct in interests, strangers in feeling and last of all, divergent in speech. Separation and independence would follow, although their territories were contiguous. A new tribe was thus created.

But Jayaswal thought that the ganas were founded by certain individuals; and so these could not be tribes. There is, for example, a reference in the Mahabharata to a confederacy of seven ganas which went by the name of the 'Utsava- Samketas':

140 Bhattoji on Panini v. 3. 112. 141 Monier-Williams SED 251. 142 Bhattoji on Panini v. 3. 113. 143 Monier-Williams SED 288 145 Monier-Williams SED 609. 144 Panini v. 3. 117. 146 Bhattoji on Panini v. 3. 113. 147 Nighantuh i. 14. 149 Ib. 148 Panini v, 3. 118.

151 Morgan AS 105. 150 Jayaswal HP i., 29.

GANAPATI 159

After vanquishing in war the Pauravas and the mountain- marauders, the Pandava (Nakula) conquered the seven ganas called the Utsava-Samketas.152

The traditional commentator Nilakantha gave the following note:

Among the Utsava-Samketas, mutual attachment between the male and the female was sufficient ground for sexual engagement. Marriage system did not exist among them. Sexual life was indis- criminate as among the beasts. Assuming that Nilakantha was not merely vilifying the ganas, that is, he was really drawing upon the ancient tradition, we may argue that the above, if it says anything at all, indicates some form of group-marriage, a characteristic of the pre-state tribal life. The seven ganas collectively described as the Utsava-Samketas were, thus, but seven tribes. Jayaswal,153 how- ever, without any further evidence, and ignoring Nilakantha unceremoniously, argued: The Utsava-Samketas were republicans, probably founded by two men, Utsava and Samketa. We may, however, point out that samketa is a technical term, denoting an act or resolution passed by a republic, and it is just possible that samketa here originally denoted a state founded by a resolution of the Utsavas. Apart from the invention of the meaning of the word samketa,154 and apart from the question of the internal consis- tency of the comment made, it is a feat of fancy to have elevated the seven ganas of the ancient text into a state founded by two imaginary men, called Utsava and Samketa. Whatever may this be, it certainly is not history.

10. UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT The evidences concerning the ganas mentioned by Jayaswal are important. But more significant than these are the evidences he had to ignore to prove his thesis. The Vedic literatures, for example, including its oldest stratum, as we have already seen, contain a fairly large number of references to the ganas. It is evidently too much for any serious scholar to argue that the Vedic poets sang the glory of certain republican states of their times. Therefore, Jayaswal

152 Sabhaparva xxvi. 16. 153 HP i. 156. 154 The literal meaning of the word appears to be 'sexual engage- ment.' Monier-Williams SED 1126.

160 LOKAYATA

found it safe to ignore the ganas of the Vedic literatures. He spoke about the tribal societies of the Vedic times. He discussed the question of the sabha and samiti of the Vedic age, but he preferred to remain completely silent about the ganas of the Vedic peoples. In defence of Jayaswal it may be argued that though the early Vedic people might have been living in tribal societies, and though the word gana in the early Vedic literatures might have stood for these, yet, during the pcriod that separated the grammatical literatures from the early Vedic literatures, Indian society did not remain static. So, during the days of Panini, on whose account of the ganas Jayaswal depended so much, the Indian people must have advanced far ahead of the tribal and developed state-organisations. It is well known that words change more slowly than their meanings and the old word is often retained to refer to the new realities. Therefore, it is quite conceivable that though the word gana meant tribal organisations in the early Vedic sources, it was not bound to mean the same during the days of Panini and after. That is, it may not be improbable that in the new context of the post- Vedic times the old Vedic word gana began to mean, as Jayas- wal thought, the republican states that must have cropped up by that time. This argument cannot be valid. However, the rejection of the argument does not at all imply that states were yet to develop in India during the time of Panini and others. As a matter of fact, India witnessed the rise of the state even long before the Vedic age; the material remains of the Indus people are evidences of a sophisticated urban life and centralised state power. Again, as revealed by the Vedic literatures, the Vedic people themselves, in spite of their tribal past, ultimately reach- ed the stage of class division and state organisation. So it would be fantastic to deny that there were states during the days of Panini. What is denied, however, is that the word gana ever meant these. The development of social organisations was not homogeneous throughout the whole country. Tribes always persisted by the side of the states. And even in the earlier days, those who had left the tribal stage behind had to use some word to refer to their tribal neighbours. The words they used were gana, vraata, puga, samgha, sreni. They did not have to invent these words; these were current among their own ances- tors. The grammatical sources reveal that these samghas were

GANAPATI 161

non-monarchical. The Greek writers155 of Alexander's campaign tell that these had formidable power in resisting direct military assault. The Buddhist sources156 made it clear that these were ultra-democratic in constitution. All these informations under- stood in the light of the evidences of the Mahabharata and the Arthasastra, make the picture of the tribal societies complete. What is really overlooked by our historians is the uneven development of the Indian peoples, a fundamental characteristic of Indian history. What was true of the Indus people was not true of all their contemporaries. There were tribes around the Indus state, and even the Vedic pcoples were then at the pasto. ral stage of the tribal society, measuring their wealth in terms of cattle. This is one instance of uneven development. But the Indus state was destroyed and, it is conjectured, destroyed by the Vedic peoples. These Vedic peoples, too, eventually deve- loped their own state power. The Brahmanas are quite clear about it. But the Vedic peoples did not represent the whole of India. Surrounding the centres of these early states, there were large patches of tribal societies, the inhabitants of which were described as demons and devils in the literatures of those days. This is yet another instance of uneven development. The tribal names in the edicts of Asoka are again evidence of the uneven development of his age: In the vast slaughter of Asoka's Kalinga war, there is no mention of opposing princes or kings. Elsewhere in the Asokan edicts only tribal names appear. But he mentions by name the contemporary Greek kings Antiochus, Antigonus, Ptolemaios, Magas, Aleksandros; so it is clear that, except for the Mauryan empire, there was no kingship of the type in India at that time.157 This feature of uneven development remained a characteri- stic of Indian history throughout the successive ages, down to the very modern times. It is this uneven development of the Indian peoples that justified, as late as 1881, the author of the Imperial Gazettecr of India to speak of the 'remnant to our own day of the Stone Age.'158 India thus forms a great museum of races, in which we can study man from his lowest to his highest stages of culture. The specimens are not fossils or dry bones, but living communities, to whose widely

laws.159 diverse conditions we have to adapt our administration and our

155 JBBRAS xxvii. 188. 156 Maha Parinibbana Sutta of the Digha Nikaya. 157 JAOS 1xxv. 37. 159 Ib. iv. 174. 158 Hunter IGI iv. 176.

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162 LOKAYATA

A still more recent example of this uneven development may be found in the map of tribal India recently prepared by the Department of Anthropology, in 1956. Bearing this in mind, we may now return to the question of the ganas, and discuss those evidences in particular that Jayas- wal had to ignore or overlook for the sake of his own thesis.

11. GANAS IN MAHABHARATA

The Vedic singers sang the glory of the ganas. These were organisations of their own. In the literatures of the post-Vedic period, too, we come across many a reference to the ganas. But there was a characteristic and significant difference in the atti- tude expressed. They were no longer the organisations to which the authors of these texts had any affiliations. They belonged rather to the aliens, those who were hated and looked down upon. People still living in the ganas were considered to be unclean, uncivilised and, significantly, without any sense of marriage morals. The attitude expressed in the Mahabharata to the Vahikas, who, according to Panini, were people living in samghas or ganas may be taken as typical. In the Mahabharata160 the following is put into the lips of Karna:

In Dhritarastra's abode the Brahmanas used to narrate the accounts of diverse delightful regions and many kings of ancient times. A foremost one among Brahmanas, venerable in years, while reciting old histories, said these words, blaming the Vahikas and the Madra- kas: 'One should always avoid the Vahikas, those impure people that are out of the pale of virtue, and that live away from Himavant and Ganga and Sarasvati and Jamuna and Kuruksetra and Sindhu and its five tributary rivers. I remember from the days of my youth that a slaughter-ground for kine and a space for storing intoxicating spirits always distinguish the entrances of the abodes of the (Vahika) kings (chiefs). On some very secret mission I had to live among the Vahikas. In consequence of such residence the conduct of that people is well known to me. There is a town of the name of Sakala, a river of the name of Apaga, and a clan of the Vahikas known by the name of the Jarttikas. The practices of these people are very censurable. They drink the liquor called gauda, and eat fried barley with it. They also eat beef with garlic. They also eat cakes of flour mixed with meat, and boiled rice that is brought from others. Of righteous practices they have none. Their women, intoxicated with drinks and divested of robes, laugh and dance out- side the walls of houses and cities, without garlands and unguents, singing all the while drunken and obscene songs of diverse kinds that are as musical as the bray of the ass or the bleat of the camel.

160 Tr. Ray viii. 152-6.

GANAPATI 163

In intercourse they are absolutely without any restraint, and in all other matters they act as they like. Maddened with drink they call upon one another, using many endearing epithets. Addressing many drunken exclamations to their husbands and lords, the fallen women among the Vahikas, without observing restrictions even on sacred days, give themselves up to dancing. One of those wicked Vahikas,-one, that is, that lived amongst those arrogant women, -who happened to live for some days in Kurujangala, burst out with cheerless heart, saying, -"Alas, that (Vahika) maiden of large proportions, dressed in thin blankets, is thinking of me, - her Vahika lover, - that is now passing his days in Kurujangala, at the hour of her going to bed! Crossing the Sutlege and the delightful Iravati, and arriving at my own country, when shall I cast my eyes upon those beautiful women with thick frontal bones, with blazing circlets of red arsenic on their foreheads, with streaks of jet black collyrium on their eyes, and their beautiful forms attired in blankets and skins, and themselves uttering shrill cries. When shall I be happy in the company of those intoxicated ladies amid the music of drums and kettle-drums and conchs, sweet as the cries of asses and camels and mules; when shall I be among these ladies eating cakes of flour and meat and balls of pounded barley mixed with skimmed milk, in the forests, having many pleasant paths, of Sami and Pilu and Karira. When shall I, amidst my own country- men mustering in strength on the high-roads, fall upon passengers, and snatching their robes and attires beat them repeatedly?" 'What man is there that would willingly dwell, even for a moment, amongst the Vahikas that are so fallen and wicked and so depraved in their practices?' Having said this, that pious Brahmana began once more to say what I am about to repeat respecting the wicked Vahikas. Listen to what I say: In the large and populous town of Sakala, a raksasa-woman used to sing on every fourteenth day of the dark fortnight, in accompaniment with a drum: 'When shall I next sing the songs of the Vahikas in this Sakala-town, having gorged myself with beef and drunk the gauda liquor? When shall I again, decked in orna- ments, and with those maidens and ladies of large proportions, gorge upon a large number of sheep and large quantities of pork and beef and the meat of fowls and asses and camels? They who do not eat sheep live in vain!' Even thus, O Salya, the young and the old, among the inhabi- tants of Sakala, intoxicated with spirits, sing and cry! How can virtue be met with among such a people? Thou shouldst know this! I must, however, speak again to thee about what another Brahmana had said unto us in the Kuru court: 'There where forests of Pilus stand, and those five rivers flow, viz. the Satadru, the Vipasa, the Iravati, the Candrabhaga, and the Vitasta and which have the Sindhu for their sixth, there in those regions removed from the Himavant, are the countries called by the name of the Arattas. Those regions are without virtue and religion. No one should go thither. The gods, the pitris, and the Brahmanas, never accept gifts from those that are fallen, or those that are begotten by Sudras on the girls of other castes, or the

gious.' Vahikas who never perform sacrifices and are exceedingly irreli-

That learned Brahmana had also said in the Kuru court:

164 LOKAYATA

'The Vahikas, without any feelings of revulsion, eat off wooden vessels having deep stomachs and earthern plates and vessels that have been licked by dogs and are stained with pounded barley and other corn. The Vahikas drink the milk of sheep and camels and asses and eat curds and other preparations from those different kinds of milk. Those degraded people number many bastards among them. There is no food and no milk that they do not take. The Aratta-Vahikas that are steeped in ignorance, should be avoided.' I must, however, again speak to thee about what another Brahmana had said unto me in the Kuru court: .. 'There are two pisachas in the river Vipasa, named Vahi and Hika. The Vahikas are the offspring of those two pisachas. They are not creatures created by the creator. Being of such low origin, how can they be conversant with the duties ordained in the scripiures? The Karaskas, the Mahisakas, the Kalingas, the Keralas, the Karkoiakas, the Virakas, and other peoples of no religion, one should always avoid. 'Even thus did a raksasa-woman of gigantic hips speak unto a Brahmana who on a certain occasion went to that country for bath- ing in a sacred water and passed a single night there. The regions are called by the name of the Arattas. The people residing there are called the Vahikas .... The gods never accept any gifts from them.' The description of the Vahikas was continued in the next section of the Mahabharata and, in course of saying what he claimed to have been told by a learned Brahmana, Karna gave us a very valuable clue as to the social organisation of the people:

In former days a chaste woman was abducted by robbers (hail- ing) from Aratta. Sinfully was she violated by them. upon which she cursed them, saying, 'Since you have sinfully violated a help- less girl who is not without a husband, therefore the women of your families shall all become unchaste. Ye lowest of men, never shall ye escape from the consequences of this dreadful sin.' It is for this, O Salya, that the sisters' sons of the Arattas, and not their own sons, become their heirs.101

This is an indirect form of matrilineal succession in which the woman's rights are transferred to her brother. We have living examples of this among the Iroquois of America, the Khasis of India and others.162 To the Brahmana-reporter, accus- tomed as he was with the laws of patrilineal succession of his own society, this naturally appeared as a mark of degradation. So he wanted to explain it as the result of some sin. In the same way, those Brahmana reporters were utterly seandalised by the social and sexual freedom of the Vahika women. But the moral indignation of the Brahmanas reporting on

161 Ib. viii. 156-7. Italics added. 162 Thomson SAGS i. 154.

GANAPATI 165

the tribal peoples was really ironical. For, their attitude to the tribal peoples, judged by their own standards, were not highly moral. This is evident from Kautilya's Arthasastra. We shall presently quote it and see that the secret mission of those Brahmanas among the tribal peoples was only the mission of spying in the guise of hermits, of corrupting these peoples with adulterated wine and attractive women-married, unmarried and the professionals. However, there was a more interesting aspect about this moral indignation on which we shall confine ourselves for the moment. The Brahmanas were so much scandalised by the Vahikas, primarily because of the lack of sexual morals among them. 'In intercourse, they were absolutely without restraint.' Or, as Nilakantha put it, they were indiscriminate like the beasts. This was how the civilized peoples were looking at the man- woman relationship of the surviving tribes of their times. And this is not very much different from how, even some of the modern scholars, have looked at the sexual relationship among the primitive peoples of our times. However, the fact is that what was looked at with such contempt was some form of marriage relationship prior to the monogamian one and mono- gamian marriage was fully established only with the advent of civilization. Interestingly, these civilized observers of the Mahabharata themselves had a primitive past which, as is only to be expected, was characterised by similar practices. This is evidenced by the Mahabharata itself. Here is an example: It has been heard by us that there was a great risi of name Udda- laka. He had a son of name Svetaketu who was also an ascetic of merit. One day in the presence of Svetaketu's father, a Brahmana came and catching Svetaketu's mother by the hand, told her, let us go. Beholding his mother seized by the hand and taken away apparently by force, the son, moved by wrath, became very indig- nant. Seeing his son indignant, Uddalaka addressed him and said: 'Be not angry, O Son! That is the practice sanctioned by antiquity. The women of all orders in this world are free (lit., uncovered- anavrita). O Son, men in this matter, as regards their respective orders, act as kine.' The risi's son Svetaketu, however, disapproved of the usage, and established in the world the present usuage as regards men and women.163 Again, the following is what Pandu said to Kunti in the Mahabharata:

163 Tr. Ray i. 356.

166 LOKAYATA

But I shall now tell thee about the practices of old indicated by illustrious risis fully acquainted with every rule of morality .... Women formerly were not immured within houses and dependent on husbands and other relatives. They used to go about freely, enjoying as best liked by them .... They did not then adhere to their husbands faithfully, and yet, O handsome one, they were not regarded sinful, for that was the sanctioned usage of the times. That very usage is followed to this day by birds and beasts with- out any exhibition of jealousy. That practice, sanctioned by prece- dent, is applauded by great risis. And O thou of tapering thighs, the practice is yet regarded with respect among the Northern Kurus. Indeed, this usage so lenient to women hath the sanction of antiquity. The present practice, however, hath been establish- ed but lately.164 This very strongly reminds us of Morgan:105 We have been accustomed to regard the monogamian family as the form which has always existed .. .. Instead of this, the idea of the family has been a growth through successive stages of development, the monogamian being the last in its series of forms .... it was pre- ceded by more ancient forms which prevailed universally through- out the period of savagery through the older and into the middle period of barbarism; and that neither the monogamian nor the patriarchal can be traced back of the later period of barbarism. They were essentially modern. To sum up. Among these very Brahmanas, who denounced the tribal peoples as promiscuous like beasts the monogamian form of sexual relationship developed comparatively later. Their forefathers, living as they did in the same or similar stages of social development in which the Brahmanas found the tribal peoples to be, were having the same or similar type of sexual relationship and were even considering these as but dharma. The ganas or samghas, so much hated by the later Brahmanas, were ironically, the very social organisation of their own ances- tors, the proud inheritors of whose tradition they at the same time proclaimed themselves to be.

12. MEANINC OF VRAATYA This last point is important and it may clarify lots of mis- leading speculations of our modern scholars about ancient Indian social history resulting from a mistaken understanding of another important word, the vraatya. We shall therefore go into some details of the meaning and history of this word. : The word occurs in the passage of the Mahabharata we have quoted. Karna said, vraatyanam dasamiyanam devah annam bhunjate.

164 Ib. i. 355-6. 165 AS 393.

GANAPATI 167

In the translation we have used, vraatya is rendered as 'the fallen'. This is an error. But the error is neither uncommon nor without reason. We shall analyse these reasons first. Like the Mahabharata, the legal and ritual literatures did impute a definite sense of uncleanliness and degradation to the persons called the vraatyas. According to the Apastamba Dharma Sutra,160 a vraatya is one on whom and on whose ance- stors the samskara of upanayana was not performed. The Para- skara Grihya Sutra and other Sutra-works said the same thing.167 Samskara meant purification, and upanayana the Brahmanical form of initiation. At the time of this initiation, one learnt the sacred Gayatri-mantra, which was also called Savitri. So Manu168 said that the vraatyas were fallen from Savitri and as such were outside the pale of the Aryan society. Yajnavalkya109 held the same view: the Savitri-patitas were the craatyas. These people were not to be taught the Vedas, nor allowed to officiate in the sacrifices, and social intercourse with them was forbidden. The Baudhayana Dharma Sutra170 tried to explain the cause of the degradation of the vraatyas by using the stereotyped Brahmanical formula: the vraatyas were but varna-samkaras, i.e., born of the mixture of castes. But the ritual books called the Brahmanas, prescribed rituals for upgrading them. Thus the Tandya Maha Brahmana171 described a ritual called the vraatya- stoma, which had four different forms. And the Katyayana Srauta Sutra172 said that by performing this ritual the vraatyas would cease to be vraatyas and would be eligible for social intercourse. At the same time, the Tandya Maha Brahmana, in the con- text of this ritual gives us some valuable clue as to what the word have originally meant. It tells us a story: when the gods rose up to the heavenly world, some of their dependants were left behind on earth and they were left to live the vraatya-life; eventually, however, thesc dependants received the sodasastoma (consisting of sixteen stotras) and the metre anustubh from the Maruts and with the help of these secured the heaven. The story could not obviously be true in the way in which it was told. Nevertheless, it appears to contain a very important element of truth. That is, uneven development was a feature

106 i. 1. 1. 22-i. 1. 2. 10. 167 Kane HD ii. 96. 168 ii. 39. 169 i. 38. 170 i. 9. 15. 171 xvii. 1-4. 172 xxii. 4. 27-8.

168 LOKAYATA

even of the social life of the early Vedic peoples themselves. Some of them moved forward, while others were left behind to live the vraatya-life. And those that moved forward, naturally developed contempt for those that were left behind. For the same Brahmana declares that those who led the vraatya-life were base because they did not till the soil nor engage themselves in trade. Obviously these were questions of technological develop- ment rather than mere matters of religious observances. To derive the meaning of vraatya from the point of view of the social development of the ancient Vedic peoples, therefore, seems sensible. Perhaps the literal meaning of the word will throw some more light on the question. Influenced by the sense of the fallen (Savitri-patita), our modern scholars have often tried to derive the word from vrata, meaning the ritual. Those who were without the vratas or rituals were called the vraatyas. But, as Sastri173 has convin- cingly shown, there is no conceivable way in which the word vraatya could be, from the point of view of strict grammatical rules, derived from the word vrata (ritual) to mean those that were without rituals or vratas. Kane174 has observed that the 'origin of the word vraatya is lost in the mists of antiquity.' But it is not necessary to take such a gloomy view. Panini175 already indicated how the word could be derived from the substantive vraata, by adding the suffix nyah to it. This suffix was to be added in the sense of 'belong- ing to' (svartha). Thus the vraatyas were those who were living in the vraatas, who belonged to the vraatas. So the question is: what was meant by the vruata? Katya- yana176 said that the words sreni, puga, gana, vraata and samgha meant the same thing, the radical sense of all these being the group-samuha, or varga. So the meanings of gana and vraata were not different. Interestingly, Sayana 177 tried to make out the same point: 'there is but little difference between the gana and the vraata.' Gana, we have seen, meant the tribal collective. The meaning of traata could not be different.

173 AV 3. 174 Kane HD ii. 386. 175 v. 3. 113. Though the commentator Bhattoji wanted to res- trict the derivation to words denoting vraata (vrata vaci savdas), yet there is apparently nothing in the Sutra itself to prevent the application of the rule to the word vraata as such. 176 Kane HD ii. 66. 177 On RV x. 34. 12.

GANAPATI 169

Accepting, therefore, the derivation of the word given by Panini, we conclude that the vraatyas were those that lived in the tribal societies. We may now understand the story of the Tandya Maha Brahmana: among the ancestors of the Vedic peoples some reached a higher stage of social development while the others were left behind in the tribal stage, as they did not lcarn to till the soil or to engage themselves in trade. At the same time, the Tandya Maha Brahmana, like the legal and the ritual literatures, was full of contempt for the vraatyas. Here again, we come across the same ironical situation in the Vedic tradition. The authors of all these texts were claiming to be the champions of the ancient Vedic tradition; however, while showing contempt for the vraatyas they were also showing con- tempt for the ancient institutions of the Vedic peoples them- selves. If, as Tandya Maha Brahmana tells us, some of the Vedic ancestors moved forward leaving others to live the vraatya- life, the only inference is that at a still remote age all the ances- tors of the Vedic peoples were living in vraatas, i.e., were the oraatyas. That this inference is legitimate is evident from the Sam- hitas. When we skip over the Smritis, Sutras and the Brahma- nas, and go back to the more ancient portions of the Vedic literatures, we find the Vedic sages themselves, far from being unfavourably disposed towards the vraatas and the vraatyas, were singing the glory of these. The best example is the Atharva Veda, a full chapter of which is devoted to the praise of the vraatya. Following are a few specimens from it. He (the vraatya) arose; he moved out toward the eastern quarter; after him moved out both the brihat (i.e., a Vedic metre) and the rathantara (antoher Vedic metre) and the Adityas and all the gods; against both the brihat and the rathantara and the Adityas and all the gods doth he offend who revileth a thus-knowing vraatya; of both the brihat and the rathantara and of the Adityas and of all the gods doth he become the dear abode (who knoweth thus). Of him in the eastern quarter faith is the harlot, Mitra the magadha (bard). discernment the parment. day the turban. night the hair. yellow the two pravartas, Kalmali the jewel (mani), both what is and what is to be the two footmen. mind the rough vehicle, Matarisvan and Pavamana the two drawers (vaha) of the rough vehicle, the wind the charioteer, the whirlwind the goad, both fame and glory the two forerunners: to him cometh fame, cometh glory, who knoweth thus.178 The Atharva Veda goes on to describe how the vraatya next

178 Tr. Whitney 774.

170 LOKAYATA

moved to the Southern quarter, and then to the Western quarter and then to the Northern quarter, and always with similar glory. There was thus, in the Atharva Veda, a tendency to express the glory of the vraatya in a grand cosmic scale. It found its culmination in the following:

Of that vraatya- As for his right eye, that is yonder sun; as for his left eye, that is yonder moon. As for his right ear, that is this fire; As for his left ear, that is this cleansing one (wind). Day and night (are his) two nostrils; Diti and Aditi (his) two skull- halves; the year (his) head. With the day (is) the vraatya westward, with the night eastward: homage to the Vraatya.179 On the basis of all these, it is even conjectured by some180 of the modern scholars that the vraatya of the Atharva Veda was comparable to the purusa of the purusa-sukta of the Rig Veda or the Superme Being of the Puranas. The glory of vraatya in the Atharva Veda naturally created much confusion in the mind of Sayana. Removed, as he was, from the Vedic literatures by a few thousand years and being a great champion of Brahmanism of his time, he wanted to look at the vraatya in the manner in which the authors of the ritual and legal literatures did. However, the evidence of the Atharva Veda was in flat contradiction to it. He tried to resolve the contradiction by inventing an obviously arbitrary explanation of this. He suggested that this description did not 'apply to all vraatyas, but only to some very powerful, universally respected and holy vraatya'.181 There is at least nothing in the text itself to justify such an explanation. We have seen the same thing with regard to the ganas and the Ganapati. The early Vedic literatures were full of glory for both, whereas the later inheritors of the Vedic tradition hated both. And indeed, this parallel is only to be expected. For the gana and the vraata referred to the same thing-the group-life of the tribal society. Parallel, therefore, to the glory of the ganas, we come across in the Rig Veda itself, a peculiar glory attributed to the vraatas. In certain verses the two words are used almost interchangeably: In every vraata, in every gana, we desire for the energy of the Maruts and the splendour of Agni with panegyrics .... 182

179 Ib. 791. 181 Kane HD ii. 386. 180 VK (B) x. 101. 182 jii. 26. 5.

GANAPATI 171

It is to be noted that even in the tenth book of the Rig Veda the glory of the vraata, like the glory of the gana, was not com- pletely lost. The vraata plays with the fifty three of these (dice); he is truth- ful by nature, like the god Savitri .... 108 We shall return later to discuss the importance of the dice in the primitive society. In the present context it is important to note how in the well known aksa-sukta of the Rig Veda, not only the words gana and vraata were used almost interchange- ably, but the same glory was also attributed to both. The dice were addressed as follows:

That which has become the leader (senani) of your great gana and the leading chief (raja-prathama) of the vraata,-I address him and I declare that I am not withholding wealth; I am stretching out the ten fingers of my arms and am speaking the truth (rita).181 Obviously, the Vedic poets were too near their own ganas and vraatas to have learnt to hate these.

13. KAUTILYA AND TRIBAL SOCIETIES

The early ganas eventually disintegrated, allowing the states to emerge on their ruins. However, because of uneven develop- ment, the early Indian states remained surrounded by, and often included within the field of their domination, extensive areas of tribal societies, despised by the spokesmen of the state powers. On the religious or quasi-religious plane, this contempt for the ganas found its expression as contempt for the Ganapatis or the Vinayakas. On the ethical or quasi-ethical plane, the same was ex- pressed as contempt for the beliefs and practices in gencral, of the tribal peoples, and hatred for their marriage morals in particular. However, by far the sharpest expression of this contempt for tribal societies is to be found in the writings of Kautilya. There are a number of reasons that make his account of the samghas very important. First, there is no sentimental fuss about it: his indignation of the tribal societies was neither religious nor moral but essentially practical. Kautilya would not mix up politics with moral scruples. Secondly, there are reasons to believe that the policy attributed to him was in fact the re-

183 x. 34. 8. 184 x. 34. 12.

172 LOKAYATA

. cognised state-policy practised in this country for many cen- turies before and after him. Lastly, his zeal to break up the group-bond of these samghas or the tribal societies was most significant. Spies, entering the samghas and discovering jealousy, hatred and other prospects of internal conflicts, should sow the seeds of a well- planned dissension among them. Under disguise of teachers (acar- yas), they should cause childish embroils among the chiefs. Sharp spies may provoke the chiefs of the samghas by praising their in- feriors in taverns and brothels. Under disguise of astrologers and others. the spies should give publicity within the samghas to the royal marks of the prince; as such the honest leaders of the samghas should be led to subservience to the prince, born of this or the other kag. T0 tnose wno are thus prevailed upon, the king should send gifts of cattle, men and other materials. They should be thus won over. On occasions of any affray, spies, pretending to be wine- dealers, should, under the plea of the birth of a son, of marriage or of the death of someone, distribute hundreds of vessels of liquor adulterated with madana-juice (aphrodisia). Greed in the chiefs is w ve provoked with golden rings and gold (left) at the portals of caityas and shrines. Keepers of harlots or dancers, players or actors, after gaining access into the samghas, excite the sex of the chiefs by exhibiting women with bewitching youth and beauty. By removing the women to other persons or by staging that some others have violently car- ried them off, they should bring about violent quarrel among those that have fallen in love with them. In the ensuing affray, sharp spies would do their work and declare: Thus is the lecher destroyed. After betraying her lover (a chief), a woman should approach another chief and say, 'That other chief is bothering me when my mind is set on you; while he remains alive I cannot stay here.' Thus the one' will be provoked to kill the other. A woman violently carried off at night will cause the death of her violator near a park or pleasure-garden with sharp weapons or poison given by herself. And then she will declare, 'My darling is killed by the other man.' In the disguise of an ascetic, a spy, at night-time, may offer, to one sexually aroused, ointments claimed to have the power of capti- Vaulig women but really mixed with poison; and then he will dis- appear. Other spies would be there to declare the incident to be a rival's act. Widows with secret instructions, or women disguised as female mendicants, will, while pretending to quarrel over claim for a deposit kept with the king, (will show themselves off to the chiefs and will thus make the samgha-chiefs) mad with sex. Harlots or dancing women or songstresses may make an even- ing appointment to meet a lover at some secret house and when they turn up sharp spies will kill them or carry them away in chains. A spy will describe to a samgha-chief, who is fond of the female, saying, 'A poor man is removed from that village but his wife deserves to be a queen (in beauty). You must have her.' Afier she is carried away. a fortnight later, another spy in the guise of an ascetic will sharnlv denounce the chief in the tribal assembly saying, 'This man has forcefully detained my wife or daughter-in-law or sister or daughter.' When the samgha punishes the chief, the king will arrest

GANAPATI 173

him and put him to tortures. Sharp spies, in the garb of mendicants, should be roving about at night. Spies, in various disguises, should accuse the chiets saying, 'The man has slain a Brahmana and has committed adultery with a Brahmana woman.' Disguised as an astrologer, a spy will predict about a marriage- able girl, saying, 'This man's daughier is going to be a queen and the mother of a king; get her at any cost, even by force.' If one chief fails to get her, the spies should instigate his rivals to it. And when a rival succeeds a feud is inevitable. A mendicant woman will tell a chief who is fond of his wife, "This other chief, proud of his youth, asked me to entice your wife. Being afraid of him, I had to carry his letter and the ornaments for your wife. Your wife is innocent. But secret steps are to be taken against that chief and I shall anxiously wait for your success.'185 And so on. We come across pages after pages of these in the Arthasastra of Kautilya. But why this peculiar zeal to destroy the group-life of the tribal societies? Kautilya188 gave us a frank answer: The acquisition of a samgha is better than that of an army (danda) or an ally. Samghas are invincible by others because of their unity (or organisation, samhatavat). Kosambi187 has rightly commented: Such samghas were generally too strong to be destroyed by mili- tary action. This is fairly well confirmed by Alexander's campaign in the Punjab, where the stiffest opposition came from such tribal organisations. .. The Arthasastra does not overestimate the for- midable power of such samghas in resisting direct assault.

14. MASSACRE OF THE VAJJIANS

We may now try to understand this policy with reference to an actual historical event that took place long before the date traditionally ascribed to Kautilya. The Jaina literatures descri- bed the event as 'the last battle with large stones' and from the Buddhist sources we learn that the beginnings of the event was traceable as far back as the life-time of the Buddha. There was, in those days, a confederacy of tribes called the Vajjians, the chief element of which was the famous Licchavis of the Pali texts. King Ajatasattu contemplated a campaign against them. The Buddhist text Maha Parinibbana Sutta188 opened as follows: The Exalted One was once dwelling in Rajagaha, on the hill called the Vulture's Peak. Now at that time Ajatasattu, the son of the queen-consort of the Videha clan, the king of Magadha, had made up

185 Arthasastra adhikarana xi. Free translation. 186 Ib. tr. Sama Sastri. 188 Rhys Davids DB ii. 78-80. 187 JBBRAS xxvii. 188.

174 LOKAYATA

his mind to attack the Vajjians; and he said to himself 'I will strike at these Vajjians, mighty and powerful though they be, I will root out these Vajjians, I will destroy these Vajjians, I will bring these Vajjians to utter ruin.' So he spoke to the Brahmana Vassakara (the rain-maker), Prime Minister of Magadha, and said: 'Come now, Brah- mana, do you go to the Exalted One, and bow down in adoration at his feet on my behalf, and inquire in my name whether he is free from illness and suffering, and in the enjoyment of ease and comfort and vigorous health. Then tell him that Ajatasattu, son of the Videhi, the king of Magadha, in his eagerness to attack the Vajjians, has re- solved, "I will strike at these Vajjians, mighty and powerful though they be, I will root out these Vajjians, I will destroy these Vajjians, I will bring these Vajjians to utter ruin"; and bear carefully in mind whatever the Exalted One may predict, and repeat it to me. For the Buddhas speak nothing untrue.' Then the Brahmana Vassa- kara, the rain-maker, hearkened to the words of the king, saying, 'Be it as you say.' And ordering a number of state carriages to be made ready, he mounted one of them, left Rajagaha with his train, and went to the Vulture's Peak, riding as far as the ground was passable for carriages and then alighting and proceeding on foot to the place where the Exalted One was. On arriving there he exchanged with the Exalted One the greetings and compliments of politeness and courtesy, sat down respectfully by his side (and then delivered to him the message even as the king had commanded). Now at that time the venerable Ananda was standing behind the Exalted One, and fanning him. And the Blessed One said to him: 'Have you heard, Ananda, that the Vajjians foregather often and frequent the public meetings of their clan?' 'Lord, so I have heard,' replied he. 'So long Ananda,' rejoined the Blessed One, 'as the Vajjians fore- gather thus often, and frequent the public meetings of their clan; so long may they be expected not to decline, but to prosper.' (And in like manner questioning Ananda, and receiving a similar reply, the Exalted One declared as follows the other conditions which would ensure the welfare of the Vajjian confederacy.) 'So long, Ananda, as the Vajjians meet together in concord, and rise in concord, and carry out their undertakings in concord,-so long as they enact nothing not already established, abrogate nothing that has been already enacted and act in accordance with the ancient institutions of the Vajjians, as established in former days-so long as they honour and esteem and revere and support the Vajjian elders, and hold it a point of duty to hearken to their words,-so long as no women or girls belonging to their clans are detained among them by force or abduction-so long as they honour and esteem and revere and support the Vajjian shrines (cetiyani) in town or country, and allow not the proper offerings and rites, as formerly given and per- formed, to fall into desuetude so long as the rightful protection. defence, and support shall be fully provided for the Arahants among them, so that Arahants from a distance may enter the realm, and the Arahants therein may live at ease-so long may the Vajjians be ex- pected not to decline, but to prosper.' This is highly interesting. It showed that what Kautilya said was nothing new. Long before Kautilya, the Buddha him- self pointed out that the samghas or the tribes were invincible and unconquerable by direct military action and that the source

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of their strength was derived from their group-bond. That is why, Kautilya did not recommend direct military action against the tribes. And the Brahmana minister Vassakara of the Bud- dhist text said precisely the same thing: 'We may expect then,' answered the Brahmana, 'the welfare and not the decline of the Vajjians when they are possessed of any one of these conditions of welfare, how much more so when they are possessed of all the seven. So Gotama, the Vajjians cannot be overcome by the king of Magadha; that is not in battle, without diplomacy or breaking up their alliance. And now, Gotama, we must go; we are busy and have much to do.'189 And the Brahmana Vassakara, the rain-maker, rose from his seat and went away. But the story did not end there. Bud- dhaghosa, in his Sumangala Vilasini tells us that it was 'on the Buddha's advice that Ajatasattu decided not to wage immediate war on the Vajjians, but to bide his time.' And he completes the story by stating that Ajatasattu, not confident of his ability to overcome the Vajjians by force, sent the unscrupulous Vassa- kara, in the guise of a refugce, to sow dissension among the Licchavi clansmen. Three years were spent by Vassakara in preparing the ground for Ajatasattu's invasion, at the end of which period the latter crossed the Ganges and occupied Vesali (the capital of the Vajjians) with little opposition.190 But the question is, how far can we actually rely on Bud- dhaghosa's account of this sequel to Vassakara's visit to the Buddha? He was after all a late writer. Nevertheless, Basham191 has claimed that it must be remembered that Buddhaghosa was himself a Magadhan. and may have had access to trustworthy records or traditions about the earlier history of his own country. This is true. So there is likely to be historic truth in what he added to the account of the Maha Parinibbana Sutta. We have, therefore, reasons to believe that the course of direct war was actually avoided and the unscrupulous methods of Kautilya were tried instead. In the Sutta itself, we find Vassakara giving clear indications of this. At the same time, there was something in Buddhaghosa's account which was obviously fanciful. The Buddha himself could not have advised king Ajatasattu to try the unscrupulous alternatives. His sympathy for the Vajjians was too outspoken to allow us to believe in this possibility. Se-

189 Ib. ii. 80-1. 191 Ib. 71. 190 Basham HDA 72.

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condly, the defeat of the Licchavis could not have been as easy a matter as suggested by the commentator. For the evidences of the other texts are against this. Nirayavalika,192 a Jaina text, referred to the campaign of Ajatasattu against the Licchavis. The battle was fiercely fought and Cedaga, the chief of the Licchavis, killed a certain prince Kala of Ajatasattu's camp and completely routed the forces under his command. The final outcome of this battle is not discussed by the text. But another Jaina text, the Bhagavati Sutra,193 mentioned the same battle. According to this, two battles were fought, called Mahasilakantae and Rahamusale. Ajatasattu (Kuniya) went to the first battle only after the news reached him that his forces were facing a setback. His ten brothers were already dead by the arrows of Cedaga. The victorv of Cedaga was almost assured. But 'on the eleventh day, the god Indra presented Kuniya (Ajatasattu) with a great war- engine, which struck down the Licchavis with great stones.'194 Thus ended the battle of Mahasilakantae. The outcome of the other battle referred to as the Rahamusale, too, according to the Jaina source, depended ultimately on some kind of divine intervention. Ajatasattu received from the Indra of the asuras, viz. Camera, a peculiar chariot armed with great club which caused devastation among the Licchavis.195 However, on the testimony of Jinadasa's Avasyaka Curni we may infer that the defeat of the Licchavis was not due to divine intervention only. It tells us that the real cause of the defeat was the treachery of a certain ascetic called Kulavalaya. He was won over by a beautiful prostitute in the employ of Kuniya (Ajatasattu), and persuaded to break his vows and to betray the city. Cedaga committed suicide by drowning, and the Licchavis emigrated to Nepal.190 Further, it deserves to be noted that in spite of all the boastings of Ajatasattu 'to root out, to destroy and to utterly ruin the Vajjians,' the defeat of the Vajjians was not so conclusive. As Basham197 has rightly pointed out, The marriage of Chandragupta I to the Licchavi princess Kumara- devi, and the rise of a Licchavi dynasty in Nepal, indicate that the chief clan of the Vajjian confederacy retained its individuality for some eight hundred years after the war with Ajatasattu.

192 Ib. 69. 194 Ib. 193 Ib.

196 Ib. 195 1b. 70. 197 7b. 75.

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Such was the indomitable strength of the tribal peoples.

15. TRIBAL SURVIVALS There is no reason to doubt the historic authenticity of this campaign against the Vajjians. And it is a typical illustration of Kautilya's policy towards the surrounding tribal societies: corrupting Kulavalaya by employing a beautiful prostitute sup- plies us with its last missing details. Roychoudhuri198 has argued that the battle referred to must have taken place soon after the Buddha's death. Basham199 has tried to be more precise. If we accept c. 483 B.c. as the date of the Buddha's nirvana. on the basis of the Mahavamsa synchronism the accession of Ajatasattu must have occurred in the year C. 491 B.c., and his second campaign against the Vajjians c. 481-480 B.C ..... We suggest that the first campaign occurred c. 485 B.C. Kautilya, on the other hand, is said to have been the brain behind the Maurya Dynasty, which was established in 322 B.C. Thus the time-gap between Ajatasattu's campaign against the Vajjians and the actual composition of the Arthasastra must have been a considerable one. And yet the former illustrated, as it were, the policy formulated in the latter in meticulous details. This shows that the policy of Kautilya was put in actual practice long before he theoretically formulated it. This is possibly explained by the circumstance that Kautilya himself mentioned a long list of his predecessors, which takes his theory far back. Again, there are reasons to think that Kautilya's policies were actually in practice during many centuries after him. We find it being popularised in later classical kavyas.200 Such being the important part played by this policy in Indian history for so many centuries, it may reasonably be expected that one of the keys to the problem of the social struc- ture of traditional India lies in the proper understanding of this policy. Bearing this in mind, we propose to look into it more closely. There were in India, as there are even today, considerable patches of tribal societies. During the earlier times, such tribal areas must have been more extensive and also prominent. State powers were largely localised and even when the zone under

198 PHAI 171ff. 200 E.g., Kiratarjuniyam, Sisupalavadham. 199 Basham HDA 74.

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178 LOKAYATA

the state's domination was very large, as in the case of the famous empires, there remained tribal societies within the orbit of the state administration. The tribal peoples, therefore, always created problems to the state-administrators. Kautilya's Artha- sastra shows that the problems were really pressing. So the question was: What was to be done with the tribal peoples themselves? That their tribal solidarity was to be bro- ken and that they were to be subducd, is of course understood. But all these peoples could not obviously be physically annihi- lated. 'Therefore some method of rehabilitating them under a new set-up was demanded. Thanks to the clarity of Kautilya's formulation of the state policy, we are not left in the dark as to the nature of the method actually adopted. Kautilya suggested two points. First, these tribal peoples, after their tribal solidarity was broken up, were no longer to be allowed to remain together. If allowed, they would, in spite of the military defcat suffered by them, gravitate again towards tribal solidarity, so natural and inherent in them, and then they would again take up arms and fight for their lost liberty.201 So the first thing to do was to scatter them. This brings us to the second, and by far the most important point about Kautilya's policy with regard to the tribal peoples. What were the means suggested by him through which these people were to be rehabilitated? Kautilya said that they were to be made to settle in small villages consisting of ten families or five families and were to be engaged in agriculture (pancakulim dasakulim va krisyayam nivesayet-02). That such villages were to be isolated, and, therefore, self-contained, followed from the first principle: the possibility of contacts between these small groups of uprooted people was to be carefully avoided. To sum up: the tribal societies were to be broken up and the tribal peoples were to be rehabilitated in small and self- contained agricultural villages. And it was a policy not merely suggested by a certain politician of the ancient times: it was also actively pursued during many centuries of our past history. It may, therefore, be reasonably expected that it should have im- portant light to throw on the problem of the peculiar social structure of traditional India. It was, as it were, a case of artificially changing the super- structure without an appropriate change taking place in the

201 377 (Mysore Ed) 202 Ib.

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basis itself. For it was not a case of the natural disintegration of the tribal societies consequent upon the advancement of the productive technique; it was rather a case of breaking up the tribal societies by attacking these from outside and forcing the tribal peoples to live in extremely small and isolated village communities, subject, as is well known, to the payment of a certain portion of the total agricultural product of these com- munities to the king or the lord, under whose rule these com- munities were brought. The contact between the rulers above and the villagers below was never particularly a strong one. The villagers were left to live their own lives in the villages and there naturally survived among them very strong relics of the tribal institutions and ideologies. In other words, the tribal peoples transplanted into the village communities retained much of the characteristics of their tribal past. Granting that some such policy was practised quite extensively and during a long period, the whole process led to a peculiar social set-up which may roughly be characterised as despotism above with incomy pletely destroyed tribal society in the villages below. Besides, there were actual tribal pockets too. The eumulative effect of all these is that the Indian masses, generally speaking, have re- tained in their lives strong elements that are traceable to the tribal society. Lest there be an impression of over-simplification, we feel anxious here to be quite clear about our point. We do not want to suggest that the policy enunciated by Kautilya was followed everywhere in the same manner. Neither do we suggest that the policy of breaking up the tribal societies and rehabilitating the uprooted peoples in small and isolated agricultural commu- hities was the only factor that contributed towards the formatiou of what we call the traditional Indian society. This social structure was itself a complex one and its development must have been the result of a complex process. Nevertheless, the policy formulated by Kautilya and actively pursued for centuries by the early state powers of India was presumably one among the various factors, and by no means an unimportant one, that contributed to the formation of the special characteristics of the traditional Indian society. And if we have dwelt too exclusively on these incompletely and artificially destroyed tribal elements, the reason is that their importance has not been properly acknowledged so far. How far the policy thus outlined by Kautilya really accounts

180 LOKAYATA

for the distinctive peculiarity of the traditional Indian social structure, may still be an open question. But the fact remains that very strong survival of tribal elements had been a basic characteristic of the traditional Indian society and as such it is not possible to understand traditional Indian culture or, more particularly, Indian folk culture, without taking these into consi- deration. Awaiting, therefore, a fuller explanation of these tribal survivals, we proceed here to illustrate some of the moro important of these. We are going to discuss the following: a) The ethnological composition of the Indian peoples; b) The village communes and the question of the land tenure; c) The caste organisation; and d) The customary laws.

16. ETHNIC COMPOSITION Dependable reports of the census operations in India date only from 1871-2. However, the facts mentioned by the earliest of such reports are revealing. There were then roughly 186 million men under direct British rule and 54 million in feudatory India. We leave, for the time being, the question of the latter; the report did not give us full facts about them. Of the 186 million under British rule, it would be convenient to leave for the time being also the question of the Mohamedans, numbering about 41 million, because the problem of their origin is complicated and, at any rate, their story as Mohamedans began comparatively late. We are thus left with the question of 145 million. The census report of 1871-2 made the rather startling reve- lation that of these 145 million about 18 million were still living in the tribal stage. The bureaucrats referred to them as the aborigines or the non-Aryans and tried to explain their survival thus: Thrust back by the Aryans from the plains, they have lain hidden away in the recesses of the mountains, like the remains of extinct animals which palæontologists find in hill caves.208 However, more startling than this is perhaps the circum- stance that the origin of more than 110 out of the remaining 127 million could not, really speaking, be clearly accounted for. Roughly 17 million belonged to the recognised ruling castes,

203 Hunter IGI iv. 174.

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described as 'the comparatively pure offspring of the Aryan or Sanskrit speaking race (the Brahmanas and Rajputs).' But what about the remaining peoples, numbering more than 110 million, and, as such, forming by far the largest majority of the Indian population? The British bureaucrats referred to them as the great mixed populations, grown chiefly out of the non-Aryan elements. By the non-Aryans, again, were meant the tribal peoples, the aborigines of the census report. Our earliest glimpses of India disclose two races struggling for the soil, the one was a fair-skinned people, which had lately entered by the north-western passes; a people of Aryan, literally 'noble,' lineage, speaking a stately language, worshipping friendly and powerful gods. The other was a race of a lower type, who had long dwelt in the land, and whom the lordly new-comers drove back before them into the mountains, or reduced to servitude on the plains. The comparatively pure descendants of these two races are now nearly equal in numbers; the intermediate castes, sprung chiefly from the ruder stock, make up the mass of the present Indian population.204 This was of course the usual nineteenth-century way of looking at Indian history-the fair-skinned and advanced Aryans conquering the ruder stock of the dark-skinned natives. It was discovering the whiteman's burden in ancient Indian history. The view was obviously based on equating the ruling class of ancient India with the Aryans. This was a mistake. But the mistake was not without reason. The ruling class in this country, beginning from very ancient times, were anxious to share the glory of those people who called themselves the Aryans. The rulers would try to establish pure Aryan descent for themselves. Of course, they had usually to do this in a highly artificial manner. The kings and nobles that established their rules in more or less detached areas of the country had rarely any real connection with the strictly Vedic peoples. The Mauryas, for example, had nothing to do with the so-called Aryans. Even the authors of the Puranas, or more properly those that revised the Puranas, had to admit this fact. Thus, for example, we are told that after Mahapadma Nanda, all succeeding kings would be Sudras or near-Sudras. This would mean primarily that they did not claim Vedic ancestry nor observe the pure Vedic ritual, and there is no reason to doubt this, for the Mauryas certainly did not.205 Nevertheless, the tendency of the rulers to announce them-

204 Ib. iv. 172. 205 JBBRAS xxvi. 25 n.

182 LOKAYATA

selves as sharing the glory of the Aryans did not really cease after Mahapadma Nanda. Here is an example from compara- tively recent history.

The founder of the Maratha greatness was Sivaji. He was a .. Sudra. But when he carved out a small but absolutely independent principality for himself in 1664, he wanted 'coronation.' But the Brahmins were very unwilling to consecrate a Sudra as a king. So a geneology was manufactured declaring the Bhonsla family in which he claimed descent to be a branch of the Sisodias of Chittor and it was declared that the family by neglecting Ksatriya customs for many centuries had become vraatyas. A very learned Pundit of Banaras, but of Maratha descent, was invited to give an opinion that Sivaji was a vraatya-Ksatriya and that if he was purified according to the injunctions of sastras, the ceremony of coronation might be performed. The Pundit, Vishveshvara Bhatta by name, was a voluminous writer and a master of the art of disputation. He was, nicknamed Gaga Bhatta, as in assemblies called for disputation he bellowed like a bull. For fifteen days poor Sivaji had to undergo all sorts of purificatory rites and then he was anointed king.206 If this be a specimen of the zeal shown by the rulers of the country to claim pure Aryan descent, the nineteenth century historians may have their excuse for being misled to interpret Indian history in terms of the Aryans ruling over the non-Aryans. Fortunately, the more advanced historians of later times have discarded this approach to Indian history. However, our present point is not merely this. It is, rather, the astonishing fact that by far the largest majority of the Indian population was observed by the carly census officers to have 'sprung chiefly from the ruder stock,' that is, obviously, the tribal stock. But what was meant by springing from the tribal stock? Did it simply mean that they descended from the originally tribal peoples? But the same is true of all the peoples all over the world and as such there would hardly be any sense in making this a special point about the so-called mixed population of the country. Yet the early census officers were obliged to make this a special point, presumably because of the fact that the charac- teristics of the tribal life strongly survived among them: they were still largely tribal and yet they could not be characterised as purely tribal, that is, they were detribalised only incompletely. What was true of India as a whole was obviously not true of all the parts of the country. But in some parts of India this feature stood out all the more sharply. Following are the obser- vations of Dutta,207 made in 1874, on the peasantry of Bengal:

206 Sastri AV 1-2. 207 PB 11-2.

GANAPATI 183

Ever since the Aryans came into Bengal, it has been a main object with them to proselytize the aborigines, and large number of the latter have now entered into the ranks of Hinduism, but forming separate castes of their own, as Haris, Domes, etc .... Dr. Hunter (in his Annals of Rural Bengal) starts a very interesting question, namely. what proportion of the total population of Bengal are Hinduized aborigines. To this question he gives a very imperfect answer. Dutta explained the reasons why the answer was imperfect and went on to examine the view of Beverley on the same question. Out of a total population of nearly 37 millions of Bengal proper, Mr. Beverley reckons the aborigines (Santals, Garos, etc.) at nearly 4,00,000 and the Hinduized aborigines a little over 5 millions. Under this last head he includes such people as the Bagdi, the Buna, the Chamar and the Muchi, the Candal, the Dome and the Hari, the Kaora, the Mal, the Mehtar and many other tribes. Though all these are recokned as Hindus now, any one, who has carefully observed their peculiar modes of living in our villages, would have no difficulty to setting them down as descended from the aboriginal stock. However, half a million of tribal peoples and five millions of 'Hinduized aborigines' did not obviously exhaust the 37 mil- lions of Bengal's population. To these five and half millions. Dutta would add about two and half millions of pcoples of superior castes, that is, those that claimed, however fictitiously it might have been, pure Aryan origin. And there were about half a million of high caste Mohamedans. Still by far the largest majority of the peoples were left out of account. Deducting then half a million of aborigines, five million Hinduized aborigines, two and half million high caste Hindus and half a million high caste Mohamedans from the total of nearly 37 milhion, we have about 28 million io account for. The question

stock? arises. then, have these 28 million descended from the aboriginal

To this question Dutta answered with an emphatic affirmative. His explanation of the phenomenon was as follows: The Aryan conquerors of Bengal, after causing their religion to be widely spread through the land did not and could not exter- minate the aboriginal tillers of the soil. It stands to reason to sup- pose that, while the brave and fierce aborigines retired to the wild and fastness of Bengal the weaker population accepted the religion of the conquerors and remained, as they were before, the cultiva- tors of the soil. The basic point of this observation, namely that the over- whelming majority of the peasants of Bengal were neither purely tribal nor completely detribalised, is extremely significant, and this, in spite of the confusion created by the favourite

184 LOKAYATA

theories of the nincteenth-century historians, viz. the Aryan conquerors proselytizing the native aborigines. Substituting Aryan conquerors by the ruling class of the early state-powers and the native aborigines by the tribal peo- ples against whom their attacks were directed, we may try to understand what the process of proselytizing could have con- eretely meant in our earlier days. We have modern parallels of the same process and these may reveal the reality of the past. The less hypocritical and more matter-of-fact modern term for it is 'recruitment'-of agricultural labourers for the fields, coolies for plantations, diggers for the mines and of course cannon-fodder for colonial wars. Here is a an example. In 1881, Hunter20s wrote about the Santals: The Santals dwell in villages in the jungles or among the moun- tains, apart from the people of the plains .... Although still clinging to many customs of a hunting forest tribe, they have learned the use of the plough, and settled down into skilful husbandmen .... The whole village feasts, hunts, and worships together .... So strong is the bond of race, that expulsion from the tribe was the only Santal punishment .... Until nearly the end of the last century, the San- tals were the pests of the neighbouring plains .... But in 1789, the British Government granted the proprietory right in the soil to the landholders of Bengal under the arrangements which four years later became the Permanent Settlement. Forthwith every landholder tried to increase the cultivated area on his estate, now become his own property. The Santals and other wild tribes were tempted to issue from their fastnesses by high wages or rent-free farms. We have the story of the Santal revolt as a rather rude commentary on the fairytale of high wages or rent-free farms: On the 30th of June, 1855, the Southern Santals, started in a vast body, 30,000 strong, with their bows and arrows, to walk to Calcutta and lay their condition before the Governor General.209 Further, it has already been shown that the real purpose of the Permanent Settlement was only 'to create a new class of land- lords after the English model as the social buttress of English rule.'210 However, what interests us at the moment is the frank admission of how, even in comparatively recent times, agricul- tural labourers were recruited largely from the tribal stock. 'Every proprietor,' said the London Morning Chronicle (1792), 'is collecting husbandmen from the hills to improve his low- lands."211 This is how, even in modern times, free savages were

208 TGI iv. 177, 179. Italics added. 209 Ib. iv. 179. 211 Quot. by Hunter IGI iv. 179. 210 Dutt IT 217.

GANAPATI 185

being converted into agricultural serfs. It strongly reminds us of what Kautilya said centuries ago; only the role of the recruit. ing agents working among the tribal peoples to corrupt them and destroy their morals, was missing in the reports of the Morning Chronicle. India, said Hegel,212 'is a phenomenon antique as well as modern.' In any case there are modern parallels of the ancient realities. Kosambi21: has already noted that the 'advance of the agrarian village economy over tribal country, is the first great social revolution in India.' This point is important, though often overlooked by our historians. What Kosambi himself over- looked, however, is the circumstance that the writings of Kautilya possibly preserve for us informations concerning one of the ways, though not necessarily the only way, in which this advance took place. It is presumably because of this that Kosambi gave us a rather one-sided picture of this ancient social transformation. He told us that the transformation took place peacefully, the role of violence being replaced in the Indian scene by the overwhelming force of religious beliefs. Marx noted only the backwardness engendered by the caste-system, the grip of the most disgusting ritual such as worship of the cow. cobra, monkey, which sickeningly degraded man. On the other hand without these superstitions assimilated by Brahmanism at need, tribal society could not have been converted peacefully to new forms nor free savages changed into helpless serfs-though peace between tribes (whose normal intercourse means war) and change from hunting or pastoralism to agriculture guarantee a decidedly more secure livelihood for the tribesman. Only an imposing ritual, or overpowering force or modern socialism could have won the savage over. The Indian method reduced the need for violence to a minimum by substitution of religion; caste and the Smritis adopted or replaced totem and taboo with more power than the sword or bow. There is no doubt that the role of religious beliefs was there and it would be an error to overlook it. At the same time, we should not overlook the role violence and unscrupulousness played in the ancient times in transforming the free tribesmen into agricultural serfs. Kosambi appears to have on the whole exaggerated the importance of the religious factor, the Brah- min ritual: Brahmin ritual, moreover, was not just witch-doctor's mumbo- jumbo, but accompanied a practical calendar, fair meteorology, and

212 LPH 145.

article, p. 36. 213 JAOS lxxv. 35. The next quotations are from the same

186 LOKAYATA

sound working-knowledge of agriculture technique unknown to primi- tive tribal groups which never went beyond the digging-stick or hoe. For all his magic cantrips the Brahmin immigrant into tribal lands was at first an effective pioneer and educator, though inevitably becoming a mere drain upon production. But we have seen the Brahmin immigrants in tribal lands in some role other than that of this effective pionecr: the Brahmin reporters of the Mahabharata alluded to the very secret mission which made them stay among the tribal peoples and the Arthasastra made it clear that this was the mission of corrupting the tribal peoples with wine, women and lies. We have seen how the Brahmana Vassakara helped Ajatasattu's campaign against the Vajjians by putting these into actual practice. Anyway, these tribal peoples had to be conquered by violence and force and had even to be massacred on extensive scale before being 'absorbed' within the orbit of the state-rule. The vast manslaughter known as Asoka's Kalinga war was pro- bably a typical example.

17. VILLAGE COMMUNITIES

Small and self-sufficient village communities had been a very conspicuous feature of the traditional Indian social system. We are going to discuss these insofar as they reveal the relics of tribal society. Following is Marx's famous description of the village com- munities:214

Those small and extremely ancient Indian communities, some of which have continued down to this day, are based on possession in common of the land, on the blending of agriculture and handi- crafts, and on an unalterable division of labour, which serves, whenever a new community is started, as a plan and scheme ready cut and dried. Occupying areas of from 100 up to several thousand acres, each forms a compact whole producing all it requires. The chief part of the products is destined for direct use by the com- munity itself, and does not take the form of a commodity. Hence, production here is independent of that division of labour brought about, in Indian society as a whole, by means of the exchange of commodities. It is the surplus alone that becomes a commodity, and a portion of even that, not until it has reached the hands of the State, into whose hands from time immemorial a certain quan- tity of these products has found its way in the shape of rent in kind. The constitution of these communities varies in different parts of India. In those of the simplest form, the land is tilled in common and the produce divided among the members. At the

214 C i. 357-8.

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same time, spinning and weaving are carried on in each family as subsidiary industries. Side by side with the masses thus occupied with one and the same work, we find the 'chief inhabitant,' who is judge, police, and tax-gatherer in one; the book-keeper, who keeps the accounts of the tillage and registers everything relating there- to; another official, who prosecutes criminals, protects strangers travelling through and escorts them to the next village; the boun- dary man, who guards the boundaries against neighbouring com- munities; the water-overseer, who distributes the water from the eommon tanks for irrigation; the Brahmin, who conducts the reli- gious services; the schoolmaster, who on the sand teaches the children reading and writing; the calendar-Brahmin, or astrologer, who makes known the lucky or unlucky days for seed-time and harvest, and for every other kind of agricultural work; a smith and a carpenter, who make and repair all the agricultural imple- ments; the potter, who makes all the pottery of the village; the barber, the washerman, who washes clothes, the silversmith, here and there the poet, who in some communities replaces the silver- smith, in others the schoolmaster. This dozen of individuals is main- tained at the expense of the whole community. If the population increases, a new community is founded, on the pattern of the old one, on unoccupied land. The whole mechanism discloses a sys- tematic division of labour; but division like that in manufactures is impossible, since the smith and the carpenter, &c., tind an un- changing market, and at the most there occur, according to the sizes of the villages, two or three of each, instead of one. The law that regulates the division of labour in the community acts with the irresistible authority of a law of Nature, at the same time that each individual artificer, the smith, the carpenter. and so on, con- ducts in his workshop all the operations of his handicrafts in the traditional way, but independently, and without recognizing any authority over him. The simplicity of the organisation for pro- duction in these self-sufficing communities that constantly re- produce themselves in the same form, and when accidentally des- troyed, spring up again on the spot and with the same name-this simplicity supplies the key to the secret of the unchangeableness of Asiatic Societies, an unchangeableness in such striking contrast with the constant dissolution and refounding of Asiatic States, and the never-ceasing changes of dynasty. The structure of the econo- mical elements of society remains untouched by the storm-clouds of the political sky. Cooperative life, and even more important than that, the absence of private ownership of land among these communities, we are going to argue, were the survivals of the tribal system. However, the validity of Marx's description is questioned. The key point of the controversy centres round the ownership of land. : Earlier witers like Wilks,215 Campbell216 and Maine,217 arguing mainly on the Reports of Revenue and Settlement-the detailed registers 'of all rights over the soil in the form in which they are believed to have existed on the eve of the conquest or

215 HSSI. 216 MI. 217 VCEW.

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annexation"218 concluded that the traditional Indian village communities, like the Marks or Townships of early Europe as studied by Von Maurer, exercised joint ownership over land. As Maine219 put it:

The village-community of India exhibits resemblances to the Teutonic Township which are much too strong and numerous to be accidental .... It has the same double aspect of a group of families united by the assumption of common kinship, and of a company of persons exercising joint ownership over land. The domain which it occupies is distributed, if not in the same manner, upon the same principles; and the ideas which prevail within the group of the relations and duties of its members to one another appear to be substantially the same. But the Indian village-community is a living, and not a dead institution. The causes which transformed the Mark into the Manor, though they may be traced in India, have operted very feebly; and over the greatest part of the country the village-community has not been absorbed in any larger collection of men or lost in a territorial area of wider extent. This comparison of the Indian village community to the Mark as studied by Von Maurer was significant, though it over- looked the point, already clearly explained by Marx and Engels, that this joint ownership of land which characterised the ancient Teutonic Mark was nothing but a survival of the tribal system. Before Maine wrote the above, Engels,220 in answer to Duhring's fantastic claim (viz., that the serfs are necessary, because in order that man can bring nature under control the exploitation of landed property in tracts of considerable size is to be carried out, and who but the serfs working for the landed proprietors could carry on this exploitation of the land?), wrote:

.. If we confine ourselves to the exploitation of landed pro- perty on a large scale, the question arises: whose landed property is it? And then we find in the early history of all civilized peoples, not 'the great landlord,' whom Herr Duhring interpolates here with one of his customary tricks of legerdemain, which he calls 'natural dialectic,' but tribal and village communities with common owner- ship of the land. From India to Ireland the exploitation of landed property in tracts of considerable size was originally carried out by such tribal and village communities; sometimes the arable land was cultivated jointly for account of the community, and sometimes in detached parcels of land temporarily allocated to families by the community, while woodland and pasture-land continued to be used in common. It is once again characteristic of the 'most exhaustive specialised studies,' made by Herr Duhring 'in the domain of poli- tics and law' that he knows nothing of all this; that all his works breathe total ignorance of Maurer's epoch-making writings on the primitive constitution of the German Mark, the basis of all German law, and of the ever increasing mass of literature, chiefly stimulated

218 Ib. 33. 220 AD 263. Italics added. 219 Ib. 12.

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by Maurer, which is devoted to proving the primitive common own- ership of the land among all civilized peoples of Europe and Asia, and showing the various forms of its existence and dissolution. It needs to be noted that Engels spoke of the 'tribal' and the 'village communities,' implying thereby that, according to his understanding, the two were separate, though the 'primitive common ownership of the land,' orginally a characteristic of the pre-class or tribal social organisation, continued to persist in the village communities of India, even as late as on the eve of the British conquest. This is an important point. For all the peo- ples all over the world, insofar as they have a tribal past, had also the history of the common ownership of the land behind them; the merit of Maurer's writings, called 'epoch-making' by Engels, consisted in tracing this history of common ownership behind the German Marks. Similarly the merit of the works of Wilks, Campbell and Maine consisted in showing that the early British Reports on Revenue and Settlement were evidences of the fact that this characteristic of the primitive pre-class society, namely the common ownership of land, continued to persist as a living feature of the Indian village communities, even when these communities were much ahead of the strictly tribal stage. But the fact of this common ownership was vigorously ques- tioned by some writers, foremost of whom was Baden-Powell. We shall therefore begin with an examination of some of his observations and arguments. At any rate I think that we have every right to insist that the distinct existence of a type of Indian village in which 'owner- ship in common' cannot be proved to be a feature either of the past or present should be duly acknowledged; and that it is hardly possi- ble to appeal to 'the Indian village-community' as evidence in any general question of archaic land-custom or of economic science, if we first obtain a single type by leaving out of view the wide area of a country which furnishes divergent forms or features.221 The type of the Indian villages which, according to him, disproved the evidence of ownership in common was the ryot- wari one. But according to his own admission, there was ano- ther type of villages in India, which he called the joint village and to which Maine's description did apply. According to Baden- Powell's estimate, the total area covered by these two types of villages were as follows: Joint Villages-218,170 square miles;

221 IVC 5.

190 LOKAYATA

Ryotwari Villages-575,313 square miles.222 Therefore, even granting his own assumption that the ryotwari type of villages presented no feature of common ownership, we cannot deny that extensive areas of the country retained this feature. But his assumption is not beyond doubt. For even the villages of the ryotwari type were observed to retain strong relics of tribal equality and, therefore, ultimately of the tribal collective life. Thus, for example, Baden-Powell himself observed that the arable land of such villages, though divided into household estates, were periodically redistributed.223 This periodic redis- tribution was meant to ensure equality, and as such, it was a 'relic of the pre-class tribal society. This had been a universal primitive practice. In Palestine, Transjordan, and Syria still another form of semi- collective ownership exists When the tribes settled originally, 'the arable land of each village was allotted between members equ- ally, each member receiving a piece of land in different zones of the village; and to maintain equality between the members, the land was re-allocated at intervals.224 Thomson,25 on the authority of Seebohm and Vinogradoff, has shown that this primitive practice of ensuring equality by annual redistribution of land characterised the early English villages too. As they put it, the practice rested directly on the principle that 'the soil was not allotted once for all to individuals but remained in the ownership of the tribal community, while its use for agricultural purposes was apportioned according to cer- tain rules among the component houscholds, strips for cultivation being assigned by lot.' Many more parallels have been quoted by Thomson, the significance of which can hardly be overlooked. The point is that, periodic redistribution of the land by lot was universal of the early agricultural villages all over the world. And if the type of ryotwari villages, too, preserved this feature down to the beginnings of British rule, which it did according to Baden- Powell himself, then far from being evidences against joint ownership of land, this type of villages also are to be looked at as possessing strong relics of the tribal past. Strangely enough, Baden-Powell, though so anxious to dis- prove collective-ownership of land, did not argue against the

222 Ib. 8. 223 Jb. 179-8, 324-5. cf. Maine VCEW 112. 224 Quot. by Thomson SAGS i. 305 n. 225 Ib. i. 306.

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survival of the tribal elements in these villages of ryotwari type. On the contrary, one of the specific points of his criticism of Maine was that the latter overlooked the tribal survivals in these villages. In this fact I find the explanation of the total omission in Sir H. S. Maine's pages of any specific mention of the ryotwari form of village, and the little notice he takes of the tribal or clan constitution of Punjab.226 Indian races in general, and of the frontier tribal villages in the

Again, referring to the ryotwari type of villages he said: In the countries marked by the prevalence of villages of this type :we are almost always able to note evidences of a tribal state of society .... There were clan divisions of territory containing a num- ber of villages each under its own headman or chief.227 .But what was meant by the clan composition and the tribal state of society? Evidently, largely because of his neglect of Morgan, Baden-Powell suffered from a rather peculiar notion about it; he overlooked the fact that the genuinely tribal state of society and private ownership of land were concepts irreconcilable. Private ownership emerged only at comparatively later stage of social progress. As Hobhouse228 generalised: We may express the whole tendency best by saying that the communal principle predominates in the lower stages of culture and retains a small preponderance among the pastoral peoples, and that private ownership tends to increase in the higher agricultural stages, but partly in association with the communal principle, partly by de- pendence on the chief, or in some instances by something in the nature of feudal tenure. We seem in fact to get something of that am- biguity as between signorial and popular ownership that we find at the beginning of our own history. Over and over again, at the stage in which barbarism is beginning to pass into civilization, the com- munal, individual, and signorial principles are found interwoven ... and it seems to be the next stage upwards in civilization that gives its preponderance to the lord. . Baden-Powell, however, wanted to work on a hypothesis which, in fact, made this historical process topsyturvy. His thesis obviously is that the type of ryotwari villages with private .ownership of land was there at the beginning and the system of joint ownership was superimposed on it in certain areas by those that conquered the country. Referring to the ryotwari villages he wrote: It is quite possible that when the first Dravidian and other tribes- men formed villages of this pattern, there was some general idea of

226 Baden-Powell IVC 4. 227 Ib. 9. 228 Quot. by Thomson SAGS i. 302-3.

192 LOKAYATA

tribal union, and that every member of the clan was entitled to receive an allotment sufficient for his wants; but there is on trace of common holding of the land occupied; the several portions of the village are allotted or taken up severally, and are enjoyed quite inde- pendently from the first.229 Common ownership, according to Baden-Powell, was intro- duced into these villages much later. This is how he wanted to explain the origin of the joint villages: The body of owners who thus, whether their lands are partitioned or not, still hold together and have a certain joint interest in the village, arises in various ways .... I wish first to repeat once more that in all cases they are either a ruling, conquering, and often non- agriculturist caste, who have taken the superior or landlord position over an earlier existing village group of cultivators, usually of aboriginal or some mixed or humbler descent; or else they have founded their own village in the virgin waste, either by their own exertions, if agriculturist by nature, or by aid of tenants and dependants.230 As an inversion of the historic process, this must be mani- festly false. Apart from what is known in general about the development of the institution of private property, a large num- ber of specific cases are known in India in which individual or private ownership of land was introduced into originally tribal villages by those that established their rule over these.281 We now leave these modern Western writers and turn to consider certain older evidences which show that the private ownership of land had not been a prominent feature of the tradi- tional agrarian India. It is remarkable, as Maine pointed out, that the law-codes of such a predominantly agricultural country as India, pre- sented 'a singular scarcity of rules relating specially to the tenure of land, and to mutual rights of the various classes engaged in its cultivation'.232 Instead of that we come across laws concern- ing the revenue to be collected by the kings from the villages, which were usually one-sixth of the total produce of the village as a whole, called bhaga or kara by Manu. This evidence of the ruler's right to a part of the village produce, together with the exaggerated epithets usually applied by the law-books to the kings, led some writers to imagine that the land was not owned by the cultivators at all; instead it was owned only by the kings. The native law of India,' said

229 IVC 9. 230 Ib. 21-2. 281 Roy MC app. II gives a very interesting example. 232 VCEW 51.

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Smith,233 'has always recognised agricultural land as being crown property.' The only serious argument so far adduced in favour of this theory of crown-ownership, however, is not the evidence of the Indian legal literature, but rather the account of the early Greek travellers. But Wilks already showed how little we can depend on such account.234 Therefore, Jayaswal235 was quite right in retorting Smith: The native law of India as laid down by its own lawyers of un- questioned and unquestionable authority is the other way. It may be

of India. the native law of any other land; it is certainly not the nauive law

However, the evidences mentioned by scholars like Jayaswal and others in disproof of the theory of crown-ownership were considered by them to be proofs of private property in the soil, and this in the sense of individual ownership as contrasted with collective ownership. A critical review shows that though all these were really evidences against crown-ownership, there is nothing in these to prove private ownership or to disprove collective ownership. In fact, private ownership (or property in the modern sense) is not the only possible alternative of crown-property. There re- mains the other alternative, namely collective ownership, i.e., ownership in the ancient or tribal sense, the strong relics of which survived in the Indian village communities. Jayaswal began with a quotation from Colebrooke's essay on Mimamsa. At certain sacrifices such as that which is called Viswajit, the votary for whose benefit the ceremony is performed is enjoined to bestow all his property on the officiating priests. It is asked whether a paramount sovereign shall give all the land, including pasture ground, highways and the sites of lakes and ponds, a universal monarch the whole earth, and a subordinate prince the entire pro- vince over which he rules? To that question the answer is: The monarch has not property in the earth, nor the subordinate prince in the land. By conquest kingly power is obtained, and property in house and field which belonged to the enemy. The maxim of the law, that 'the king is the lord of all excepting sacerdotal wealth,' concerns his authority for correction of the wicked and protection of the good. His kingly power is for government of the realm and extirpation of wrong; and for that purpose he receives taxes from husbandmen, and levies fines from offenders. But right of property is not thereby vested in him; else he would have property in house and land appertaining to the subjects abiding in his dominions. The

233 Quoted Jayaswal HP ii. 181. 285 HP ii. 181. 234 HSSI 112-3.

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194 ŁOKAYATA

earth is not the king's but is common to all beings enjoying the fruit of their own labour. It belongs, says Jaimini, to all alike; therefore, although a gift of a piece of ground to an individual does take place, the whole land cannot be given by a monarch, nor a province by a subordinate prince, but house and field acquired by purchase and similar means are liable to gift.236 The earth was not the property of the king and the land was not the property of the subordinate prince. Whose property were these then? The crucial text quoted by Colebrooke which answered this question was Jaimini's statement that the land belonged to all alike. There was no suggestion of individual ownership here. Jayaswal next quoted the authority of Nilakantha, which, as translated by him, runs as follows:

Similarly conquest and the other (modes) are (available) for a ruler (Ksatriya) and the others. On conquest the ownership of the conqueror arises only in respect of the houses, lands, and personality, etc. of the ruler conquered. Where the latter had a right to taking taxes, the conqueror acquires that much right, and no ownership. Hence 'by an emperor the whole country and by a provincial ruler the province is not a "deya" (a "subject of gift")' is laid down in Book VI (of the Purva Mimamsa). Proprietary right in the whole land with regard to villages and lands etc., lies in their respective landlords etc. The king's right is limited to the collection of tax therefrom. Therefore what is technically called at present 'gift of land' etc. (by the king) does not mean giving away of land, but a mere creation of allowance. If house, land, etc. are bought from the owner (by the king) proprietorship indeed can arise.297 The word landlords, in this quotation, may suggest private ownership of the feudal type. But it is the result of a mis- translation. The landlords, as we understand them, being the creation of British rule, could not have existed during Nilakan- tha's times. The actual word used by him was bhaumikadi. Monier-Williams2B8 has suggested that the literal meaning of bhauma is 'relating or dedicated to the carth, produced or com- ing from the earth.' Etymologically, bhaumika, in the plural, means the children of the soil; because it is the result of the suffix snik (lit., to indicate children) added to the word bhumi (land). Besides, it is to be noted that Nilakantha did not mention only the bhaumikas; he also added the word adi, (mean- ing 'and others') to it. Assuming bhaumikas to mean the land- lords, the addition of 'and others' makes no sense. However, from the point of view of the meaning we have suggested, the addi-

236 Ib. ii. 175. 238 SED 768. 287 Ib. ii. 176-7.

GANAPATI 195

tion of this word 'adi' is quite logical. As we have seen, apart from the actual tillers of the soil, there were the craftsmen and others in the village communities; the land and the village (bhumi-ksetradi) belonged to them all, jointly. Secondly, the mention of sale and purchase in this quota- tion, may create some confusion. We shall presently return to discuss the real sense of such sales and purchases. Jayaswal""9 next quoted some other authorities: like Madhava, Katyayana, Mitramisra and the anthor of the Bhatla- dipika. However, none of these contain any decisive evidence in favour of the individual ownership of land. Madhava referred to the maha-bhumi (the great land) as the common wealth of all living beings to enjoy the fruit of their labour. The author of the Bhattadipika spoke of the purchase of houses and lands, but these were, as in Nilakantha, griha- ksetradan, definitely contrasted to mahaprithiti. On this great land, there could be no right of any kind other than the right of the king to collect a portion of the produce of the cultivators. Katyayana and Mitramisra did not indicate anything more than this. We mav therefore reasonably assume that according to these legal works, though the village land was not definitely owned by crown, there was neither any private nor individual ownership of these. Kanc,240 too, mainly on the evidence of the law-codes of Manu, argued that the ownership of the cultivable land was vested in the cultivators rather than in the king. Referring to a considerable number of passages from Manu he argued that all these showed 'that Manu held that the ownership of arable land was in the cultivator himself and the king was entitled to demand a certain share in the produce.' But the question is: were the cultivators, according to the law-books, owning their land individually or collectivelv? Kane was inclined to accept the first alternative though without ad- ducing any definite evidence or argument in favour of it or against the second alternative. We are, therefore, not obliged to accept this point. Jayaswal, in defence of his theory of the private ownership of land, has referred to the evidence of the inscriptions. 'Inscrip- tions proving to the hilt private property in the soil are extant .* 211 But, not to speak of analysing the implications of the inscriptions,

288 HP ii. 177ff. 241 HP ii. 174. 240 HD ii. 867-8.

196 LOKAYATA

he has not even mentioned any single inscription that could prove his thesis. Instead he has referred to, in his footnote,242 an article in the Indian Antiquary. The same article was claimed by him to justify the following assertion.

Gupta title-deeds inscribed on copper-plates and registered at the district officers' office, whose seals they bear, clearly prove private ownership.243

This article, on the strength of which Jayaswal was proving private ownership so conclusively, was the rather well known one by Pargiter244 on Three Copper-Plate Grants from East Bengal. Strangely, however, the plates actually examined here are strong evidences against the view of individual ownership of land and even the author of the article thought so. Of the three charters, the first was the clearest and Pargiter thought that it went to show that the land was the joint property of the villagers. Here is the inscription:

The leading men of the district (modern Faridpur), who were headed by Itita, Kulacandra, Anacara, Bhasaitya, Subhadeva, Garuda, Brihaccatta, Aluka, Ghosacandra, Anamitra, Guna- candra, Kalasakha, Kulasvamin, Durlabha, Satyacandra, Arju- nabappa, and Kundalipta, and the common folk (prakritayah) were appraised by the agent Vatabhoga thus: 'I wish to buy a parcel of cultivated land (ksetrakhanda) from your honours and bestow it on a Brahmin; therefore do ye deign to take the price from me, to divide (the land) in the district and give it (to me).' Wherefore, we, giving heed to this request (and) being unanimous, determined (the matter) by an appraisal by the keeper of the records (pusta- pala) Vinayasena. There is in this district the rule established along the eastern sea (that) cultivated lands are things which may be sold according to the (rate of the) sum of four dinaras for the area that can be sown with a kulya of seed (kulyavapa) and that the evidence of a sale is by the custom of (giving) a copper plate, which custom applies immediately on seeing the counting made for the parcel of cultivated lands of such-and-such-sowing (area), and thereby the feet of the emperor receive the sixth part (future taxes) (tacca parama - bhattaraka - padanam dharmasadbhaga- labhah), according to the law here. Therefore the agent Vatabhoga atra

having adopted this procedure, (and) having by tendering the deposit (complied with it) by the act as well as by the intentions of one who has desired to establish the fame of his own merit (and) having paid twelve dinaras in our presence-we, having severed (the land) according to (the standard measure of) eight reeds (nala perhaps bamboo here) by nine (per kulyavapa) by the hand of Sivacandra, have sold to Vatabhoga a triple Kulya-sowing (area) of culcivated land in Dhruvilati by the custom of the copper-plate. This very Vatabhoga who desires benefit in another world as long as (this land) shall be enjoyed, while the moon, the stars and the sun endure, has joyfully, for the (spiritual) benefit of his own parents

242 Ib. 248 Ib. ii. 180. 244 IA (1910) 193.

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bestowed the land on (the Brahmin) Chandrasvamin who is of the Bharadvaja gotra, who is a Vajasaneya, and student of the six angas (imprecation against violators of the grant; limits of the area donated). The third (regnal) year, 5th day of Vaisakha.245 What deserves specially to be noted is that the land could be 'purchased' only on the basis of the unanimous approval of the leading men of the district as well as the common folk. This is evidence against individual or private ownership. Never- theless, the fact of payment as well as the terms of purchase and sale are clear and these raise interesting questions. As Kosambi246 has put it, 'The main question, then, is: to whom was the payment made, and for what purpose?' The payment could not possibly be to those who gave their consent, for they included not only the villagers but also the leading men of the whole district. Besides, 'the transaction was not for financial profit, nor an investment'; rather 'the land went to a Brahmin for spiritual merit gained by the purchaser and his parents. According to the custom of the country, a piece of land, when it went to a Brahmin for such purposes, became tax-free. What was purchased, therefore, was presumably the exemption from taxation, the traditional one-sixth of the produce. In that case, the purchase of land meant only a compensation to the state- treasury for this exemption of taxation. Kosambi rightly observed:

Thus the 'sixth part' mentioned would not be a sixth of the total price, but would indicate payment made to the treasury (OT to those whom the state held responsible for the taxes) in commu- tation of the sixth portion of the yield, which was the standard land-tax in this period.247 The copper-plate under discussion belonged to the sixth 'century A.D. Other inscriptions and charters belonging to other periods give us roughly the same idea concerning the ownership of land. We may quote some of the observations of Kosambi.248 Chandragupta's general Amarakarddava purchased the village of Isvaravasaka in A.D. 409-10 with money furnished by certain members of the royal household and presented it, with the interest of an added sum, to the support of the Buddhist monastic order at Sanchi. The purchase could only have been from the state, in the sense of compensation to the royal treasury after which the village revenues were assigned to the monastic order by the state; but this must be conjectured, in the absence of any further data about the village, from other grants of the Gupta period in Bengal. Indeed,

245 Tr. Kosambi JAOS 1xxv. 232. 246 Ib .. 247 Ib. 233. 248 Ib. 21

198 LOKAYATA

purchase of any sort is unusual in these charters, and a private owner of that day selling land is unheard of. The Damodarpur plates do not indicate purchase of plots from the village council by immigrant strangers, as has sometimes been claimed. The payment there is clearly to the state, by a Brahmin or his patron, of com- pensation at the rate of 3 dinaras per kulyavapa for the right to cultivate family-size holdings in hitherto unploughed, marginal (khila), waste-land, WITHOUT payment of taxes. What had been purchased was freedom (in perpetuity) from taxation by a Brah- min or for a temple-plot, not the land itself; the officials concerned were ultimately responsible to the king. The typical conditions of such freedom from taxation are to be found in an inscription+9 of the early fifth eentury. A.D. In this case, as in many other cases, the donor was the king himself. But the king was donating the land not as a proprietor but as one who was entitled to a fixed tax from the land; that is, the donation only meant forgoing the tax. The charters dug up till now are overwhelmingly of land or village gifts made by kings to Brahmins.25) But what was meant by such gifts?

Generally, the king grants the right to tax-free cultivation; at a later stage, the village taxes themselves are also given to the donee. The taxes, being usually in kind, amount to a gift of grain. The tax donation conveys no proprietary rights in the land itself. which cannot be sold or alienated as a rule. The beneficiary is not accountable for tax-dues received, nor does he pass on some agreed fraction to the state as would be the case in later, feudal times.251

But even in later feudal times, whatever might have been the changes introduced into the taxation-system, private owner- ship of land did not develop, at least not as a universal feature of ludian economy. Even as late as the Moghul period, com- mon ownership of land persisted over extensive areas of the country. As Wilks=>2 pointed out,

The European travellers who visited the court of Aurungzebe in the latter part of the 17th Century are unanimous in denying the existence of private landed property in India. Evidences like these are conclusive. It is not possible for us to go into greater details over the problem of traditional Indian land tenure. As a matter of fact, the problem remains yet to be fully solved by our historians. What is necessary for our argument is already sufficiently dis- cussed. We are trying to argue that tribal survival formed an

249 Ib. 230. 251 1b. 229. 250 Ib. 228. 252 HSSI 114. .

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outstanding feature of the traditional Indian social system. The Indian village communities were examples of such survivals. The cooperative life and common ownership of land. obviously relies of the tribal system, were the main features of these com. munities. Hegel and Marx already noted this. Said Hegel:2 The whole income belonging to every village is, as already stated, divided into two parts, of which one belongs to the Raja, the other to the cultivators; but proportionate shares are also received by the Provost of the place, the Judge, the Water Surveyor, the Brahmin who superintends religious worship, the Astrologer (who is also a Brahmin, and announces the days of good and ill omen), the Smith, the Carpenter, the Potter, the Washerman, the Barber, the Physician, the Dancing girls, the Musicians, the Poet. This arrangement is fixed and immutable, and subject to no one's will. All political revolutions, therefore, are matters of indifference to the common Hindu, for his lot is unchanged. The individual as individual, according to Hegel, did not exist in India. But what was the reason of this? Hegel thought that the answer was to be found in 'the character of Spirit in a state of Dream,' as the generic principle of the Hindu Nature."54

Spirit has ceased to exist for itself in contrast with alien existence. and thus the separation of the external and individual dissolves before its universality, its essence. The dreaming Indian is there- fore all that we call finite and individual, and, at the same time- as infinitely universal and unlimited-a something intrinsically divine.255 It was naturally left for Marx to tear off this veil of meta- physics and state the reality about the village communitics in a clear and objective manner, i.e. to make Hegel stand on his feet.

18. CASTE ORGANTSATION

The other outstanding feature of the traditional Indian society was the caste organisation. By this we do not mean the fanciful claim of superiority of the so-called higher castes over the lower castes (caste arrogance), but the real and pecu- liar organisation in which, the members of both the so-called higher and lower castes lived. The problem of the castes is most complex. Senart256 said that no statement made on the subject could be regarded as

253 LPH 161. 254 Ib. 147. 255 1b. 256 See Mitra C-WB (1951) vol. on CT 16.

200 LOKAYATA

absolutely true. Yet the literature on the subject is vast and the authors have seldom been able to agree among themselves: There are perhaps as many theories regarding the origin of the caste-system itself as there are writers on the subject.257 It is neither necessary nor possible for us to review all these theories. We are not going to attempt a full or final explana- tion of the problem. We are going to discuss the question only insofar as it concerns our argument. The argument is, that the. castes, like the village communities, reveal very strong relics of the tribal organisation. The point has already been noted by Kosambi.258 The entire course of Indian history shows tribal elements being fused into a general society. This phenomenon, which lies at the very foundation of the most striking Indian social feature, namely caste, is also the great basic fact of ancient Indian history. It remains for us to explain the implication of this insofar as it illustrates our hypothesis of incomplete detribalisation. Efforts were once made to explain the peculiarities of the caste system on the basis of the Brahmanical literatures, parti- cularly the Dharma Sastras. Though among the contemporary authorities, Dutta259 and others are still inclined to attach con- siderable value to the Brahmanical theories concerning the origin of the castes, as given, for example, in the codes of Manu, yet this reliance on the Brahmanical version of the caste organ- isation is, on the whole, now discarded. For, the reality about the castes did not and does not tally with the Brahmanical theory. It appears that in reality new occupational groups having the characteristics of castes had arisen, and the Brahmanic account of their origins was a mere theory based on permutations and combi- nations of the four original castes which bounded the Brahmin's mental horizon.200 Sengupta,261 in his contribution to the Census of West Ben- gal (1951), has laboriously prepared two extremely interesting tables of the origin of the mixed castes and sub-castes as men- tioned by the Dharma Sastras; and the tables conclusively show that the Dharma Sastra speculations on the origin of the mixed castes were utterly worthless. However, the criticism and rejection of the Brahmanical

257 1b. 17. 259 Mitra op. cit. 17. 258 ISIH 25.

261 Mitra op. cit. 47-8. 280 Ghurye CRI 91.

GANAPATI 201

version of the caste theory are to be traced primarily to the two Buddhist scholars, Rhys Davids and Fick. The evidences of the Buddhist literatures, like the evidences of the coins and in- scriptions, said Rhys Davids,282 'fitted very badly with the Brahmin theories of caste and history.' Yet so much reliance was placed during his days on these Brahmanical theories that, as Rhys Davids said, he had 'to declare war ... against such vicws. Fick said that though the Brahmanical theories reacted powerfully upon the facts or actual conditions, yet these were promulgated without much reference to the facts and as such did not give us any picture of the real social conditions. Refer- ring to Manu's theory of the four castes and the other mixed castes, he commented: It is prima facie evident that we cannot possibly have in it a true picture of the real state of things; and it is not difficult to see how there has been developed such a system. The names of the parti- cular mixed castes show very plainly the material out of which the system is built; throughout it is either geographical or ethnical rela- tions, names of lands or peoples, which give them their distinctive names, as, for example, Magadha, Nisada, Vaideha, Ambastha, Malla, Licchavi and Candala. Along with these and to a much smaller extent, professional categories determine the names, as Suta, cart-driver, Vena, maker of reeds, Nata, dancer, Kaivarta, fisherman. The self- contained existence of these and similar groups separated from the Aryan society, through contempt shown towards their race or their callings, was too evident to make it possible to ignore them quietly or to bring them under one or other of the four castes. The theory was widened and the mixed castes were annexed to the four original and recognised castes by giving their families or professional groups a wholly arbitrary genesis.203

If this be true, then, obviously, some source other than the Brahmanical law-books were to be relied upon in order to understand the realities about the castes. Fick himself mainly relied on the Buddhist Jatakas, as the alternative. But the caste system was not peculiar only to Buddhist India, whose picture, according to Fick, was faithfully reflected in the Jatakas. Castes are living realities in modern India, too, and as such, if we keep ourselves confined to the Buddhist sources only, however much might have been the comparative objectivity of these sources, the possibility of a full understanding of the problem is bound to be remote. Fick204 himself realised this:

262 BI pref. vi. 2B SONIBT 8-9 264 Ib. 2-3.

202 LOKAYATA

.. we do not even hesitate to make use of the conditions of modern India which, on account of the stability of most oriental cultures. have preserved so much of the past, for comparison with and for the explanation of earlier periods. When, however, we agree to do this, that is, try to under- stand the earlier periods in the light of contemporary realities, the most surprising phenomenon that strikes us is that, parti- cularly among the backward pcoples of India, the boundary line separating the tribal organisation from the caste organisa- tion is not always quite clear. This is evident from the very titles of the books dealing with these backward peoples. Thest titles usually retain both the words castes and tribes,265 betray- ing thereby that the line of demarcation between the two has not always been clear to the authors themselves. Besides. there has invariably been a separate volume of the census reports dealing with the backward peoples, and these volumes are described as The Castes and Tribes. Obviously, the census superintendents did not alwavs know how to differentiate be- tween the two clearly. This phenomenon is not merely modern. Even the authors of our traditional law-codes and other works did not know whether to call a particular group of backward people a caste or a tribe. This is evident from the arbitrariness often found in the traditional usages. We shall mention here only a few examples. Manu26 described the Licchavis as a low mixed caste; but it is evident from the other sources, particularly the Buddhist ones, that it was the name of a tribe, forming part of a confederacy of the Vajjians. Again the same authority267 looked at Ambastha as a low caste, being born of a Brahmana father and a Vaisya mother; but in the Mahabharata268 it i clearly described as a tribe. Similar was the case of the Ugras. Fick269 has shown that this could only have been the name ot an ancient tribe; but the Brahmanical works270 called it a low- caste and, in accordance with the general Brahmanical ten- dency, tried to ascribe to it obviously fanciful and heterogenous genealogies. Similarly, 'Karna is a mixed caste in Gautama but clearly the name of a tribe in Manu.271 All these go to show

265 Outside the special volumes on Tribes and Castes in the Census Reports, the more outstanding works are by Iyer, Risley. Thurston, Russell and others. 200 x. 22. 268 JAOS Lxxv. 38. 207 x. 8.

270 Mitra op. rit. 47-8. 269 Ib. 271 1b. 22.

GANAPATI 203

that the ancient writers, like the modern census officers, were not always clear as to whether a particular group of backward people was to be called a caste or a tribe. The obvious corol. lary is that the caste organisation, beginning from early times, contained, as it still contains, very strong relics of the tribal. This is proved not only by the circumstance that the word; 'caste' and 'tribe' were, and are, often used interchangeably. The evidence is, in fact, deeper than mere matters of termino- logy. For the actual structure of the caste organisation, proper- ly analysed, reveal the clearest survivals of the tribal. The writers on the caste system are not unanimous as to its definition, and therefore, as to the essential feature of the caste organisation. Foreign writers have attempted to define the term, but it will be readily seen that these so-called definitions are often descriptions of only those characteristics of the caste system which the parti- cular writer wishes to emphasise."72 Nesfield, Gait, Baines, Senart, Rislev, Ketkar, Hutton, Ghurye, Dutta, and other writers are usually taken to be the standard authorities on the subjeet and they have given ns different pictures of the essential characteristics of the caste system. Instead of being lost in the details of all these pictures, it may be more profitable for us to begin with a clear idea of the tribal organisation, and then return to examine the caste organisation to see how the different aspects of the tribal organisation are to be found surviving in the caste organisation. The tribe is endogamous, though it contains sub-divisions within it, called the clans that are strictly exogamous. All the members of a clan have a strong belief in common descent; the original ancestor being usually imagined to be a plant or an animal, from which the clan borrows its name. Lastly, the council is the great feature of ancient socicty: all the affairs of the clan are managed by the clan council; similarly, at the tribal level there is the council of tribes with the supreme authority over all the members of the tribe. Expulsion from the tribe is the major form of tribal punishment. We have mentioned these features of the tribal organisa- tion because all these are found to characterise the basic fea- tures of the caste organisation.

272 1b. 16.

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a) The endogamous group having within it strictly exo- gamous sub-groups bearing animal-names: This feature is strikingly present in the caste organisation. We quote below certain examples from the Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India, by Russell and Hiralal:

The Ahir273 caste has sub-castes, which again are divided into exogamous sections. and to totemistic animals. The names of these sections are often titular The Andh:274 cultivating caste of Berar. Divided into two groups-1) Vartati or pure and 2) Khaltati or illegitimate-which take food together but do not intermarry. These again are divided into a large number of exogamous sets, a few of which names are totemistic, viz., Majiria (cat), Ringni (a kind of tree), Dumare (from Dumar, an ant-hill), Dukare (from Dukar, a pig) and Titawe (from Titwa, a bird), etc. Baiga:275 a primitive Dravidian tribe, are divided into seven sub-tribes, which again are divided into a number of exogamous septs, the names of which are identical with those of the Gonds. Markam, Maravi, Netam, Tekam, etc. other sept which also worships the same god. .. No sept can marry into an-

These examples are not carefully selected but are taken at random. The Ahir and the Andh are called castes by the authors; yet their organisation is strikingly similar to the classi- cal structure of the tribal organisation as studied by Morgan. The following, for example, is the comparative chart of the Seneca tribe as described by Morgan and the Andh caste as described by Russell and Hiralal:

SENECA (Tribe)

Bear - Wolf - Deer Snipe - Turtle - Hawk Heron - Beaver - (Clans) (A person belonging to the Bear clan, e.g., cannot marry another belonging to the same clan. All clans are strictly exogamous.)

273 TCCPI ii. 24-6. 274 Ib. ii. 38-9. 275 Ib. ii. 77-81.

GANAPATI 205

ANDH (Caste)

Vartati Khaltati

(cat) (pig) bird) Titawe Ringni Dukare Majiria Dumare an ant-hill) (a species of- (from dumar- (a kind of tree) (A person belonging to the 'cat' cannot marry another belonging to the same clan. All the sub-groups are strictly exogamous.)

It is of some interest to note that Russell and Hiralal have used the word caste with reference to the Ahir and the Andh whereas they called the Baiga a tribe. This terminological differ- entiation was arbitrary, because the organisation of all the three is broadly the same. Obviously enough, it has not been possible for the authors to differentiate strictly between the caste organisation and the tribal organisation. This uncertainty is further evidenced by the almost random use of such terms as exogamous sections and exogamous septs. The point is sim- ple. 'Exogamous sept' is a known concept and, strictly speak- ing, it is relevant for the tribal organisation alone. Thus the Baiga, admitted by the authors to be a tribe, was reasonably described as composed of a number of smaller groups, the exogamous septs. However the same feature survived among the organisations of the Ahirs and the Andhs, considered by our authors to be castes. To describe this feature, however, they have, without any justification whatsoever, sometimes used the modified term 'exogamous sections' while, sometimes again, retained the term 'exogamous septs.' Besides, the frequent ani- mal names of these exogamous septs were the most decisive proofs that these caste organisations contained strong relics of tribal organisation.

206 LOKAYATA

We are dwelling on this terminological arbitrariness of Russell and Hiralal because it is fairly typical of the authors who have tried 'to make use of the conditions of modern India' for the explanation of the caste system. The following is another typical example: There are the totemistic clans which are found amongst the rastes of the tribal type. The totem is some animal or vegetable for- merly held in reverence by the members of the clan and associated with some taboo; but by the time a tribe has developed into a caste, the origin of the name has generally been forgotten, and the name it- self is transformed.276 But what exactly is meant by castes of the tribal type? It may have meaning onlv as referring to those caste organisations in which the relics of the tribal are still very strong. But though in certain other cases such relics of tribal organisation are not as immediately obvious, they are nonetheless there; and. as such, we cannot view the so-called castes of the tribal type as a pecu- liar and distinct varietv of caste. Secondly, what is meant by the matter-of-fact assertion, 'by the time a tribe has developed into a caste?' Is a law of general historical development referred to by this assertion' That seems hardly possible; because all the peoples all over the world began as tribes but did not necessarily develop into castes. 'The caste system is a unique institution."T However, this unique character consists largely of the circumstances that the basic features of the tribal organisation remain, somehow or other, stabilised within the caste organisation. The tribes developed into castes but the castes could not shake off the re- lies of their tribal past. It is from this point of view that the statement quoted may be fully accepted. However, this point of view represents nothing but our hypothesis of incomplete detribalisation. It is to be noted that the stabilisation of the tribal elements within the caste organisation is not a feature only of the so- called 'lower castes.' The essential features of the tribal organ- isation are found to survive, though in a comparatively less distinct form and as mixed up with a large number of other complications, even in the so-called 'higher castes.' Thus the members of the Brahmana caste are subdivided into a number of smaller groups, called the gotras. These smaller groups are strictly exogamous and usually bear animal

276 ERE iii. 233 (Italics added). 277 Mitra op. cit. 16.

SANAPATI 207

names. A Brahmana, for example, is supposed to belong to the Kasyapa gotra. This name of the gotra is derived from the tor- toise. That is, all the members of the Kasyapa gotra are sup- posed to be the descendants of an original ancestor who was a tortoise. As belonging to this tortoise-group, he is supposed to live under two very strict taboos. First, he must never eat tor- toise. Secondly, he must not marry any member of the same gotra, that is, of the tortoise-group. This obviously shows that his Kasyapa gotra is but a survival of the tortoise-clan in which his ancestors were living when they were still to outgrow the tribal stage of social organisation. It will be argued that the gotra-system (that is the gotras, grouped under broader categories called pracaras) is too com- plex to be judged in such an easy manner. The Brahmanical literatures devoted to the subject are enormous and these are at times almost hopelessly complicated. But that only proves that the Brahmanical literatures on the gotras were only attempts to rationalise the survivals of a very archaie system. Never- theless, these Brahmanical literatures retain certain clear indi- cations that suggest that even the gotras of the 'higher castes were but survivals of the clan-svstem of the tribal society. We shall mention some of these. In the Rig Veda27s the word meant the cow-stall or herd of cows. How it subsequently came to mean the sub-groups with- in a caste is still a matter of conjecture. Kane2"" suggested that there was already in the Vedic literatures a tendencv towards this shift of meaning:

In some cases gotra probably means only 'assemblage' (samuha). e.g. Rig Veda, ii.23.18, vi.65.5. From this last sense of 'assemblage the transition to the meaning of a 'group of persons' is both easy and quick. There is no positive instance of the word gotra being unchallengeably used in the sense 'descendants of a common pat- riarchal ancestor' in the Rig Veda; but the conception underlying the idea of gotra was, it is plain, quite familiar even in the age of the Rig Veda. In the Atharva Veda (v.21.3.) the word visvagotryah (belonging to all families) occurs. Here the word gotra clearly means 'a group of men connected together (by blood).' The Kausika Sutra (iv. 2) quotes a mantra in which gotra undoubtedly means 'a group of persons.' Be that as it may. There is no doubt that in the later times the word clearly acquired the significance of consanguinity and

278 JBBRAS xxvi. 21. 279 HD ii. 479.

208 LOKAYATA

common descent. Panini280 and his commentators used the word in this sense and, as Fick281 pointed out, the Indian lexicographers explain gotra as synonymous with santati (lineage), janana (race), kula (family), abhijana (descent), anvaya (progeny), vamsa (race), anvavaya (lineage), santana (family off- spring)-Amarakosa 1i.7.1. All these justify the following summing up of Kane:282

The general conception about gotra is that it denotes all persons who trace descent in an unbroken male line from a common male ancestor.

The original ancestors over whom the members of the Brahmana gotras prided themselves were imagined to be risis or ancient sages. Such risis were, thus, referred to as the gotra- karins-'The founders of the numerous Brahamanical families, and their descendants are the various gotras.' But this was obviously the result of an afterthought. For there were clear anomalies, contradictions and patch-works in these Brahmanical theories.

The mass of material on gotra and pravara in the Sutras, the Puranas and digests is so vast and so full of contradictions that it is almost an impossible task to reduce it to order and coherence. The learned author of the Pravaramanjari (which is the leading work on the subject) wrote in despair, 'Here in the parts of Sutras that have been quoted, there is a great divergence in the order (of the names of pravaras) of the texts of the several Sutrakaras, this being specially so in the text of Asvalayana Srauta Sutra."283 Following284 are some examples of the confusions and contradictions: According to the legend of the Matsya Purana, there came forth from Brahma the seven risis, or sages called Bhrigu, Angiras, Marichi, Atri, Pulaha, Pulastya and Visvamitra. The Satapatha Brahmana, however, gave a somewhat different list of the seven original risis, considered as the original ancestors: Gautama, Bharadvaja, Visvamitra, Jamadagni, Vasistha, Kas- yapa and Atri. To this list, tradition added another, namely Agastya. This gives us the list of eight gotrakarins. However, the number of gotras supposed to have descended from them is, in the Brahmanical tradition, far from being constant. Accord- ing to the Asvalayana Srauta Sutra, it was 49. According to a passage quoted by Radhakanta, the number was 24. In the

280 iv. 1. 162. 283 Ib. ii. 483. 281 ERE vi. 353 n. 284 ERE vi. 353. 282 HD. ii. 484.

GANAPATI 209

Kuladipika, the total number was said to have been 40, though the text mentioned the names of only 32. According to the Gotra Pravara Nibandhana Kadambam the number was not less than 73. According to Baudhayana, however, the actual number of the gotras was much more.

Brahmin gotras are grouped into larger units (probably corres- ponding to the phratry) by common pravaras, of which Baudhayana recognises 49 sets in a far larger -- almost unlimited-number of gotras.285

And so on. There are many more contradictions in the gotru system, which have already been pointed out by modern scho- lars. We need not go into the tiresome details over again.

One reason for these anomalies is already discussed by Kosambi.286

That the system did expand is certain, for it has catered to the needs of an increasing population while assimilating an additional number of regional and racial groups which could not possibly have belonged to the Vedic categories.

The fact remains that the gotra-pravara system, as we find it in the Brahmanical tradition, being largely the result of the attempts to rationalise and glorify a social institution which came down to these Brahmanical writers from antiquity, is al- most hopelessly complex. Under these circumstances, there 'is no point in speculating how all these came about nor in attempt- ing an explanation for every detail of the entire system."287 But the question is, which are the features of the gotra system on which we should concentrate for the purpose of understand- ing its origin?

The names of some of the gotras first. These names are most significant. We shall mention below some of those well known names along with the species of animals or plants from: which they were derived. The following names occur in the gotra list given in the Asvalayana Srauta Sutra288:

285 JBBRAS xxvi. 21. 286 1b. 24. 287 Ib. 288 xii. 10. 6ff.

L 14

210 LOKAYATA

Vatsas Calves Sunakas Dogs Riksas Bears Bharadvajas A species of birds Mudgalas A species of fish Kapis Monkeys Ajas Goats Renus Pollens Venus Bamboos Kasyapas Tortoises Sandilas A species of birds Gotamas Cows

In the gotra lists of other Brahmanical texts, we come across such interesting names as the Kusikas (owls), Mandukas (frogs), Darbhas (grass), Tittiras (parrots), etc. The sugges- tion is quite clear. The gotras, in their origin, must have been totemic clans. There can be no other explanation for such peculiar names. Yet this clear suggestion is sometimes missed by scholars. Thus, for example, it is argued, that

the gotra is a purely Brahmanic institution. In support, we find that instead of the animal or food-tree totems of savage tribes, the gotras are always derived from the names of sages.289

What the author apparently ignores are the circumstances that even the ancestors of those Brahmanas were once living the life of the savage tribes. This fact could not be completely con- cealed even by the most elaborate myths of risi-descent fabricated in later times to glorify the survivals of the ancestral institutions. This is corroborated by the rule of strict exogamy pres- cribed for the gotras. It is true that gotra-considerations were regarded as very important in many a matter like the inheritance of wealth of one dying without any issue, the sraddha or the funeral rites, the performance of certain rituals, the offering of water to the dead, the manner of hair-cutting.

289 JBBRAS xxvi. 22.

GANAPATI 211

But the diversity of gotra in relation to ritual had not so profound an influence upon practical life as had the rules prohibiting marriage between members of the same gotra, or inter-marriage between certain groups of gotras.290

This rule of exogamy was formulated with varied empha- sis in various works.291 Thus, for example, the Gobhila Grihya Sutra and Apastamba Dharma Sutra said that the bride must not belong to the same gotra as the bridegroom. Kautilya said practically the same thing. But according to the Dharma Sutras of Gautama and Vasistha, and the Grihya Sutras called after Manava and Varaha, marriage with a girl of the same pravara was prohibited. Manu and Vaikhanasa said that the bride must not be a sapinda (roughly, blood-relation) of the mother of the bridegroom. Yajnavalkya, Gautama, Vasistha and others went a step further and prohibited marriage of a sapinda girl to seven degrees on the father's side and five degrees on the mother's side. It is not necessary to quote more examples. The point is quite clear. The gotras of the Brahmanas were meant to be strictly exogamous. The suggestion, again, is that these were the survivals of the ancient clans. Thus, if we do not allow ourselves to be lost in the maze of all the complications created by the later writers who wanted to rationalise and glorify the ancient gotra system, and if we concentrate on the fundamental characteristics of the system, namely, 1) idea of a common descent of all the members belong- ing to the same gotra; 2) animal names usually assigned to the gotras; and 3) rule of strict exogamy for each gotra,-then, the clan origin of the system becomes evident to us. And the gotra system was vital to the caste organisation of the Brahma- nas. Even the so-called higher castes, therefore, were not with- out very strong relics of the tribal organisation. But the gotra system was not peculiar only to the Brahmana castes. This point was alrcady argued by Fick.292 Nor can we in this investigation rely solely upon the Sanskrit literature; we must also take into account the Pali canon of the

290 ERE vi. 355. 291 Kane HD ii. 436. 292 ERE vi. 353. The quotations that follow are from the same article.

212 LOKAYATA

Buddhists, and the books of the Jainas. If we then compare with the results thus obtained the data furnished by the ethnological materials found in modern Anglo-Indian literature, we may ven- ture to draw from these various sources some conclusions regarding the origin and character of the gotras in ancient times.

This suggestion is very important and we may follow Fick for the rest of our discussion of the gotra system. Buddha, a scion of the Sakya family, called himself Gotama. His father and also his cousin Ananda were addressed as Go- tama. They were Ksatriyas. This shows that the Ksatriyas too were organised in gotras.

That it was customary in addressing the individuals in question, to use, not the kula name (Sakya), but the gotra-name (Gotama), shows how high a value was set-precisely in the ranks of the Khattiya (Ksatriya)-upon membership in one of the ancient gotras. This finds expression also in a verse which frequently recurs in the Buddhist Suttas: 'The Khattiya is regarded as best among people who set a value on gotta.'

The evidences of the books of the Jainas are perhaps more precise and to the point.

That the gotras were in no sense a purely Brahmanical institution is borne out, further, by the sacred writings of the Jains. Mahavira, the founder of this sect, and like Buddha, a member of the Ksatriya caste ... belonged to the Kasyapa, gotra; and of course, Siddhartha, his father, Suparsva his paternal uncle, Nandivardhana his eldest brother, and Sudarsana his eldest sister were all likewise Kasyapas. On the other hand, Trisala, the mother of Mahavira, was of the Vasistha gotra, Yasoda his wife a Kaundinya, while his daughter who, while still unmarried was, of course a Kasyapa, passed by marriage into her husband's gotra, and her daughter, the grand- child of Mahavira, was of the Kausika gotra. Thus the traditions of the Jainas likewise lead us to infer that the Ksatriya families set as high a value upon gotra as did the Brahmanas, and that they observed the injunction against marriage within the gotra; for the family of Mahavira was connected neither by gotra nor by pravara with the two families with which, as just indicated, they inter- married.

In much later days, people claiming Ksatriya descent, were having the same or similar institution.

The Rajputs, who claim to be the legitimate successors of the Aryan Ksatriyas, are divided into a great many clans or tribes, each tracing its origin to some ancestor of renown .... The Rajputs, taken as a whole, i.e., a caste, marry only within their own ranks; no Rajput may marry a woman who is not of the Rajput class. In

CANAPATI 213

the several clans, however, the system of exogamy is so constituted that the males must find their wives in clans other than their own.

Similar was the case of the Jats.

The Jats, who likewise consider themselves to be descendants of the Ksatriyas, and in many respects stand on an equality with the Rajputs, are as a tribe strictly endogamous, but they resemble the Rajputs also in being divided into gentes or gots, and these, again, are exogamous. The Deswal, Man, Dalal and Siwal gentes of the Jats are of common descent, and must not inter-marry; and the like holds good of the Mual, Sual, and Rekwal gentes of the Rajputs.

Fick, as we have seen, wanted to compare all these results with the ethnographical data obtained in modern Anglo-Indian literatures. And this led him to the most important of all his observations on the gotra and caste system.

Among the lower Hindu castes and the indigenous hill-tribes, and especially among the Dravidian peoples of South India, we find almost universally a system of sub-division into small exogamous groups-in part also known as gots (gotras)-akin to that of the Brahmanical gotras. They resemble the Brahmanical clans in recog- nising descent in the male line, so that children belong to the father's gotra, not the mother's, while a woman passes by marriage into the gens of her husband, and persons of the same gotras can- not marry one another. These groups are distinguished from the gotras of the higher castes, however, by their undisguised adherence to totemism. Each of the exogamous clans bears the name of an animal, tree, plant or some other natural or artificial object, and the members of the clan arc not allowed to eat, to cultivate, to

object. burn, to carry, or in any other way to make use of that particular Thus to give a few specially characteristic examples-all the Bhils venerate totems and avoid injuring or using them, and when they pass their totem, they make a ceremonious bow, while the women veil their faces. Of the Bhils, the Ava clan takes its name from its totem, the moth, and its members do not injure moths. Among the Gollas, a large shepherd caste of the Telegu people, the members of the gotra called Raghindala (Ficus Religi- osa) are prohibited from using the leaves of the sacred fig-tree as plates for their food.

And so on. We are thus back again to those backward peoples like the Ahirs, the Andhs and the Baigas, characterised arbitrarily as castes or tribes by authors like Russell and Hira- lal. Volumes have indeed been written on these backward peoples still surviving in India, and an almost inexhaustible number of examples may be cited to show that this basic pat- tern of social organisation, i.e., the exogamous sub-groups (usually bearing animal or plant names) within the broader endogamous groups is to be found among them. However, the

214 LOKAYATA

point which is not sufficiently emphasised by modern writers on the castes is that it is precisely here that we must look for the origin of the caste organisation. The contempt felt for these backward peoples by the members of the so-called higher castes like the Brahmanas and the Ksatriyas was intense; their arro- gance and pride of belonging to the higher castes was colossal; nevertheless, the fact remains that their own ancestors were once living in similar social organisations and that the features of this social organisation remained, presumably because of the stunted economic development of the country, fossilised in their own organisations of later times. That was their own caste organisation. The tribal organisation, in other words, gives us the real clue to the mystery of the caste organisation. And when this clue is missed, even the most imposing monograph on the caste system becomes a specimen of erudite nonsense. Even a Sanskritist as great as Wilson,298 because he missed this clue, observed that the caste was after all a product of the Indian climate and the Indian character:

Caste, which like rank luxuriant plants of the jungle could only have been generated under the inflammatory influences of a torrid clime, has been in no small degree perpetuated, until it became an omnipotent agency in Hindu social life, by the intense lassitude

established. induced by the heat, and, the unwillingness to alter which is already

Again, Risley and Gait, in spite of their own collection of valuable ethonographical materials, wanted to explain the castes in the terms of the psychological peculiarities of the Indian people:

It is clear that the growth of the caste instinct must have been greatly promoted and stimulated by certain characteristic pecu- liarities of the Indian intellect ... its lax hold of facts, its indiffer- ence to action, its absorption in dreams, its exaggerated reverence for tradition, its passion for endless division and sub-division, its acute sense of minute technical distinctions, its pedantic tendency to press a principle to its farthest logical conclusion, and its re- markable capacity for imitating and adapting social ideas and usages of whatever origin. It is through this imitative faculty that the myth of the four castes, evolved in the first instance by some speculative Brahman and reproduced in the popular versions of the Epics which the educated Hindu villager studies as diligently as the English rustic used to read his Bible, has attained its wide currency as the model to which the Hindu society ought to conform.294

203 Quoted by Mitra op. cit. 18. 294 Ib. 38.

GANAPATI 215

We do not really know who was this 'speculative Brahmana' that first evolved the myth of the four-castes; but we do know that such explanation of the castes in terms of some hypothetical racial psychology as evolved by these speculative bureaucrats is no less mythical in nature.

(b) The caste-council and the punishment of caste expulsion: We shall now pass on to consider briefly certain other features of the caste organisation which, too, tan only be under- stood as but survivals of the tribal organisation. The Council is the great fcature of the tribal society and expulsion from the clan is the severest tribal punishment. Among the Santals295 and others this form of punishment still persists. Similar are the principles of caste government and caste punishment. Caste discipline is maintained by the members of the community through their recognised leaders .. Sometimes they hold offices with well defined duties, but usually, especially amongst the func- tional castes, they form a standing committee, or panchayat, which deals with all branches of caste discipline and other matters affect- ing the community. The decisions of the panchayat are final, and their authority is unquestioned. Minor breaches of caste rules and restrictions can be expiated by a ceremony of purification and a feast to the fraternity; but for more serious offences, or for contu- macy, the penalty is excommunication. A man against whom this sentence has been pronounced is cut off from all intercourse with his caste fellows, who will neither eat nor smoke nor associate with him; he is shunned as a leper, and his life is made so miserable that he soon becomes eager to accept any conditions that may be imposed upon him. Should his offence be too heinous to permit of atone- ment, he is driven to seek admission to some lower caste, or to be- come a Mohammedan, or to hide himself in the towns, where the trammels of the caste system are weaker and less irksome than in the villages.296 (c) Functional castes and occupational clans: It may be objected that the view of the caste organisation we are trying to uphold cannot be acceptable, for it does not explain a very important feature of this organisation, e.g. the fixed and un- alterableness of the profession of the different castes. Our answer is that the unalterableness of profession is not and had not been such a fundamental characteristic of caste organisation which we are often misled to believe by the theoretical discussion of the Brahmanical law-books. Fick,297

295 See note 208 of this chapter. Cf. Thomson AA 35. 296 ERE iii. 232. 297 SONIBT 216ff.

216 LOKAYATA

for example, has already shown that the Dasa Brahmana Jataka conceived the Brahmanas to follow quite a considerable variety of professions. This does not certainly mean that the 'functional castes' did not exist or that the rigidity of profession did not form any feature of the caste organisation whatsoever. Indeed, from the earlier times, many a caste has been known by its profession, and even in the modern times certain definite pro- fessions remain restricted within certain specific castes. How- ever, all these do not disprove our hypothesis of the tribal survivals in the caste organisation. For, this unalterableness of occupation is itself a characteristic of the tribal organisation, thought at its comparatively higher levels. As Thomson298 has put it:

In the earliest phase of tribal society the only division of labour had been sexual, but, with the development of stock-raising, tillage and handicrafts, specialised occupations tended to become here- ditary in particular clans. . as Gronbech has shown, the guild is descended from the clan. The only structural difference between them is that member- ship of the guild is not determined by birth, except in so far as the son becomes eligible by following his father's vocation; and even the primitive clan commonly admits strangers by adoption. Since the craft clan is a widespread feature of the higher stages of tribal society, there is no difficulty in supposing that it existed in primitive Attica; and even if it did not, at least there existed the primitive clans out of which the craft clans subsequently evolved. It is from this point of view that Thomson has explained the craft clans of ancient Greece: the Homeridai (rhapsodes), the Asklepiadai (physicians), the Iamidai, Branchidai and Kronti- dai (soothsayers), the Euneidai (lyre-players), the Kerykes and Theokerykes (heralds). And there is no doubt that such castes of ancient India described as the Sutas (cart-drivers), the Venas (makers of reeds), the Natas (dancers), the Kaivartas (fisher- men) were either actual craft-clans or fossilisations of the craft- clans in the form of occupational castes, many an example of which we find in India today. Thus, like gotra-exogamy, the occupational rigidity of some of the castes and sub-castes had been but relics of the tribal organisation. Unfortunately, how- ever, this point was not clearly remembered even by the more eminent writers on the caste system. As a result, fantasies have sometimes taken the place of scientific explanation. Slater,299 for example, thought that 'the occupational groups became en-

298 AA 44, 45. 299 Mitra op. cit. 17.

GANAPATI 217

dogamous due to magic, religious ceremonies and the natural desire to preserve trade secrets.' There is, of course, no basis for such a conjecture; the institution of exogamy must have been the original character of the early clans, Similarly Roy,300 in his otherwise magnificent contribution to the problem of the castes, has stressed

the importance of the primitive ideas of taboo, mana and soul-stuff in the formation of the caste system, and also on the Indo-Aryan concept of karma and a certain taboo-holiness that came to be attached to the Brahman because of his supposed spiritual power. There is no doubt that such ideological factors contributed to the formation of the complexities of certain caste elements. Nevertheless, as we have seen, the real clue to the castes is to be found elsewhere. It is in the tribal organisation. The castes are not tribes, yct these are largely tribal. This is our hypo- thesis of incomplete detribalisation.

19. CUSTOMARY LAWS

The same feature of tribal survival is to be found in the field of the Indian legal system. The point is clearly borne out by the brilliant analysis of Maine, with which it would be convenient for us to begin. It was once supposed that the Dharma Sastras were the repositories of the laws of the land. However, this was soon found to be an error by the carly Anglo-Indian administrators. As Maine301 observed:

. the more exclusively an Anglo-Indian functionary has been employed in 'revenue' administration, and the further removed from great cities has been the scene of his labours, the greater is his hesitation in admitting that the law assumed to begin with Manu is, or ever has been, of universal application. Maine called these laws of the Dharma Sastras the codified laws and he claimed:

Complete and consistent in appearance as is the codified law of India, the law enunciated by Manu and by the Brahminical com- mentators on him, it embraces a far smaller portion of the whole law of India than was once supposed, and penetrates far less deeply among the people. What an Oriental is really attached to is his local custom.302 Again,

300 Ib. 301 VCEW 52. 302 Ib. 39.

218 LOKAYATA

... the whole of the codified law of the country-that is, the law con- tained in the Code of Manu, and in the treatises of the various schools of commentators who have written on that code and greatly extended it-is theoretically connected together by certain definite ideas of a sacerdotal nature. But the most recent observation goes to prove that the portion of the law codified and the influence of this law are much less than was once supposed, and that large bodies of indigenous custom have grown up independently of the codificd law. But on comparing the written and the unwritten law, it appears clearly that the sacerdotal notions which permeate the first have invaded it from without, and are of Brahminical origin. I shall have to advert to the curious circumstance that the influence of these Brahminical theories upon law has been rather increased than otherwise by the British dominion.303

The unwritten laws by which the lives of the peoples were largely governed, being based on indigenous custom, were aptly characterised by Maine as the customary laws. The early Anglo-Indian administrators, thus, had to face these customary laws and to incorporate them to a considerable extent into their own judicial system. Interestingly, this was not a new phenomenon. Maine himself did not note that the same problem of facing the importance of the customary laws and of being obliged to incorporate these within the body of the official laws was felt long ago by the authors on the Brahma- nical laws themselves, however distasteful these customary laws might have been to them. We quote Kane304 to show an example.

There is also a text of Brihaspati which prescribes that the practices of the countries, castes and families should be guarded (or enforced) by the king as they have been in vogue from past times, otherwise the subjects become inflamed and among such practices he instances, 'Brahmanas in the South marry the maternal uncle's daughter.'

Again,

Brihaspati, while illustrating the proposition that the king should not disturb popular usages even though they may be improper, cites several such practices among which he mentions, 'In some other countries there is the most reprehensible practice of a brother taking (as wife) the widow of his deceased brother, and the practice of delivering a maiden to a family.305

We have quoted these two passages from Kane because the specific instances mentioned therein, have some light to throw on the genesis of the customary laws. The first of the two laws was concerned with cross-cousin marriage - marrying the

303 Ib. 20. 304 HD ii. 462. 305 Ib. ii. 555.

GANAPATI 219

daughter of the maternal uncle or the paternal aunt. The second, i.e., delivering a maiden to a family (rather than to an indivi- dual, and as a result of this, the husband's brother becoming himself the husband), was obviously a relic of group marriage. We are going to argue that both these laws represented the survivals of the tribal institutions (though of different stages of development) and, if it is found that laws like these were important features of the customary laws, then the presumption would be that the customary laws had their origin in tribal institutions. The question of the cross-cousin marriage first. It could cither be marrying the daughter of the maternal uncle or that of the paternal aunt (matula pitrisvasri duhitri gamana). In either case, the authors of the codified laws condemned it306 as it strongly went against their principle of sapinda-prohibition. In the Apastamba Dharma Sutra it was called a form of mortal sin. Baudhayana agreed with Gautama to condemn the practice on the ground that it was opposed to the Smritis and the views of sistas (learneds). Manu prescribed the penance called candrayana for the sin of approaching the daughter of the father's sister or the mother's brother and he added that a

wise man should not take as his wife (any one of) these; they are not fit to be wedded because they are (sapinda) relatives, for by wedding them one sinks low (i.e. falls into hell or loses caste). Many more examples may indeed be quoted to show that the cross-cousin marriage was strictly forbidden by the authors of the codified laws. At the same time, they were obliged to admit that such marriages formed part of the customs of certain parts of India, particularly of the southern parts. Baudhayana, in the passage already referred to, said that marrying the maternal uncle's or the paternal aunt's daughter was one of the five practices pecu- liar to the South; further, it is evident from his writings, that some of the writers on codified laws used to argue that since the cross-cousin marriage was part of the recognised custom of the South, it was a sin only in other parts of the country, im- plying thereby that in the South it was not considered to be a sin. Of course, Baudhayana himself wanted to refute such an

458-9. 306 The following references are to be found in Kane HD ii.

220 LOKAYATA

argument. But we have already seen that it was argued on the authority of Brihaspati himself that the king must obey and accept the custom. In fact, this practice of cross-cousin marriage was cited as the most prominent example of such custom. Others argued that there were Sruti authorities, and also of course, the practice of the sistas (learned elders) that justified such a practice. Thus, for example, the following Sruti was mentioned by the authors of the Smriti Candrika and Parasara Madhaviya.307 The Satapatha Brahmana said:

Thus the separation (of the eater and the eaten) is effected in one and the same act; hence from one and the same man spring both the enjoyer (the husband) and the enjoyed (the wife); for now kinsfolk live sporting and rejoicing together saying, 'in the fourth or third man (generation) we shall unite.' Uniting in the fourth or third generation, according to these authors, meant cross-cousin marriage. They cited another Vedic verse though it belonged to a very late stratum of the Vedic literature (Khila Sukta). This is,

Come O Indra, by commended paths to this our sacrifice and par- take of your portion. They (the priests) have offered the fat seasoned with ghee that is thy portion, as the maternal uncle's daughter or the paternal aunt's daughter (is one's lot in marriage). Sruties like these, to say the least, are remarkable. How- ever, it is not necessary for us to digress and discuss whether the real implications of such texts actually supported cross- cousin marriage or not. What is relevant for our argument is only to sce how tenacious was the effort of some of the authors on the later codified laws to make place for the regional customs within the general framework of the legal system. It is the same tenacity which led the authors of Smriti Candrika and Parasara Madhaviya to argue further that 'Southern sistas deeply read in the Vedas and, acting according to the meaning of the Veda, practise marriage with a maternal uncle's daughter.' The author of the Smritimuktaphala offered the same argument.

To sum up. Not only the Anglo-Indian administrators of the early British period but also some of the authors on the codified laws were themselves keenly conscious that, whatever might have been the basic claims of the codified laws, it was necessary to make room also for the customary laws within the

307 Ib. ii. 461.

GANAPATI 221

general legal system; or else the legal system would obviously become too unreal to be acceptable. So the questions are: what was the source of these cus- tomary laws and why was the hold of these laws on the lives of the peoples so deep and fundamental? We are going to answer these questions as follows. The customary laws had their sources in the tribal laws. Their hold on the people remained so strong because the elements of the tribal society were only incompletely eliminated from their lives. In other words, the same hypothesis with which we tried to explain the basic features of the village communities and the caste organisations, throws light also on the survival of the customary laws. We have here a case of convergent suggestions. Let us begin with the question of the sources of the cus- tomary laws. The law of cross-cousin marriage was chosen by the earlier authors as the best example. The Brahmanical authors were of course discussing the question from the patriar- chal point of view. They asked whether it was legitimate for a male to marry his maternal uncle's or paternal aunt's daughter. But the custom itself was obviously a part of the matriarchal organisation. This is evidenced in more than one way. The custom still persists in those areas of the country where the survival of the matriarchal elements is evident even today. Among several castes in the Deccan and the Madras Presidency, not only is marriage with a maternal uncle's daughter allowed but it is highly commended. 'Even certain Brahamana castes like the Desastha Brahamanas of the Karnataka and Karhada Brahamanas observe this practice in modern times.308 The areas referred to are full of relics of matriarchy. What is more significant is that the cross-cousin marriage discussed by the authors of Dharma Sastras was invariably looked upon by them as marrying the maternal uncle's daughter or the paternal aunt's daughter. The implication is that the maternal uncle's daughter had originally been the same person as the paternal aunt's daughter. This means that the maternal uncle was the husband of the paternal aunt; i.e., the mother's brother was married to the father's sister. This would be clear from the following simple table:

808 Ib. ii. 462.

LOKAYATA

Father's Sister Father Mother Mother's Brother

Son Daughter-X Daughter-Y

If, from the point of view of the son, daughter X and daughter Y was really the same person then the mother's brother could have been none but the father's sister's husband. This leads us to view the marriage custom in an entirely new light. It is the complicated matrimonial relationship under- lying the classificatory system of kinship terminology.309 Inci- dentally, Morgan, who was the first to explain the classificatory system scientifically, based his conclusion on an analysis of 150 languages. One of these languages was Telugu, i.e., the language of precisely that region of India where the custom of cross- cousin marriage still persists and where it did prevail at the time of the authors of the Dharma Sastras, giving them such an awful problem to solve. In Telugu, the same word refers to 'mother's brother's daughter' and 'father's sister's daughter'; it is vadine. Again, there is only one word to refer to the 'father's sister's husband' and the 'father-in-law.' The word is mama. 'Mother's brother' is called menamama. Similarly, there is only one word for the 'mother's brother's wife' and the 'mother-in-law.' It is atta. Father's sister is called men-atta. We need not go into further details of the classificatory system of kinship terminology in Telugu. The subject had already been exhaustively treated by Morgan and the modern critics of Morgan have been well answered by Thomson, who has summed up the matrimonial relationship underlying this kinship terminology as 'the whole system turns on the conti- nuous inter-marriage of cross-cousins.' It was this custom of cross-cousin marriage prevalent among the ancestors of the modern Telugu-speaking people which our authors of the Dharma Sastras considered to be extremely repulsive; and yet they, like the administrators of the early British days, could not entirely ignore the impact of the customary laws. Some of them were, therefore, resorting to the surreptitious methods of finding place for these within the system of codified laws. The

309 Thomson SAGS i. 68.

GANAPATI 223

hold of such customary laws on the lives of the people was so strong that the act of ignoring these would have exposed the entire legal system to the risk of being unreal and unworkable. But what was the origin of this customary law concerning cross-cousin marriage? Thomson,310 following Morgan, has summed it up thus: Cross-cousin marriage is the form of marital relations that results from the inter-marriage in each generation of two exogamous groups. All relatives are classified according as they belong to the speaker's own group or to the other. This brings us to the other customary law mentioned by the Dharma Sastras. Brihaspati, it is said, referred specifically to two customary laws, one concerning cross-cousin marriage and the other concerning the practice of giving the daughter in marriage to a family instead of to an individual. We can now see that the second did not have any source other than that of the first. Both were survivals of group-marriage. It may be objected that the practice referred to by Brihas- pati was fraternal poliandry rather than group-marriage. This is the sense in which eminent scholars have understood it. Our answer is that, first of all, this interpretation is doubtful. For there was no mention of only one girl being married to a num- ber of brothers jointly; the implication rather seems to be that any girl that was given in marriage became wife-in-common of all the brothers. Presumably, more than one woman were married to the same family. That is, a number of women became wives-in-common of a number of brothers jointly. Secondly, even assuming that the practice referred to was only. fraternal poliandry, our argument would not be fundamentally disturbed; for fraternal poliandry, like sororate was itself a survival of group-marriage. To sum up. The two customary laws mentioned in the Dharma Sastras were inter-related and both represented the survival of the tribal system. Secondly, the writers on the codified laws found such customary laws highly objectionable; yet they felt obliged to make room for these within the legal system because, as frankly admitted, the grip of the customary laws on the lives of the people was too strong to be ignored. This was roughly the situation of the legal system long before the advent of British rule. The early British adminis-

310 Ib. i. 68-9.

224 LOKAYATA

trators found the situation to be basically the same. As Maine said, what the people were really attached to were their local custom. Such customs or the customary laws were but survivals of the tribal society. Maine did not say this in so many words; nevertheless, this alone could be the implication of his state- ments and comments. He spoke of the 'primitive usage' which 'was from the first most carefully observed and most respec- ted.'311 One 'great instrumentality,' through which was pre- served for centuries 'this great body of unwritten custom, differing locally in detail but connected by common general features' was, according to him, 'the perpetual discussion of the customary law by the people' and that it could be so preserved was accounted for by the fact that 'the social con- stitution of India is of the extreme ancient .... type."312 The point is, words like primitive and ancient, in the context of the social organisation, can only mean the tribal.

20. TRIBAL SURVIVALS PASS INTO THEIR OPPOSITES We have tried to explain our hypothesis of incomplete detribalisation with reference to the ethnic composition, the village communities, the caste system and the customary laws of the country. It now remains for us to examine the signifi- cance of the tribal survivals more closely. Because of the backwardness of their mode of production, the tribal peoples are poor, ignorant and often pitiably exposed to the hostile forces of nature. There is, therefore, no question of making a cult of the natural savage, as some earlier thinkers wanted to. There is no question either of taking a very romantic view of the tribal peoples. Truth is often prosaic but many people seem to thrive on a romantic rather than a truthful picture of the situation .... It must be realised that the life of the tribal people in India does not consist of one continuous round of music and dance.313 Even the poorest workers living in our industrial slums are, in many senses, better situated than the free savages of our frontier hills.

Gordon Childe has pointed out, that even the lowest paid workers in Mesopotemia were better off than the free and equal members of

811 VCEW 52. 812 Ib. 56. Italics added. 318 Bose in A 118.

GANAPATI 225

any neolithic village. The urban revolution had brought about an absolute rise in the standard of living.314 At the same time there is another side of the picture. This is how our Prime Minister has felt about our tribal neighbours: In the tribal people I have found many qualities which I miss in the people of the plains, cities and other parts of India. It was these very qualities that attracted me We should have a receptive attitude to the tribal people. There is a great deal we can learn from them, particularly in the frontier areas, and having learnt, we must try to help and co-operate. They are an extremely disciplined people, often a great deal more democratic than most others in India. Even though they have no constitution, they are able to function democratically and carry out the decisions made by elders or repre- sentatives. Above all, they are a people who sing and dance and try to enjoy life; not people who sit in stock exchanges, shout at each other and think themselves civilised.815 What is the source of these charming qualities that we find among the tribal peoples with all their pitiable poverty and backwardness? The question was answered by Engels316 long ago: The grandeur and at the same time the limitation of the gentile order was that it found no place for rulers and ruled. In the realm of the internal, there was as yet no distinction between rights and duties; the question of whether participation in public affairs, blood revenge or atonement for injuries was a right or a duty never con- fronted the (Iroquois) Indian; it would have appeared as absurd to him as the question of whether eating, sleeping or hunting was a right or a duty. Nor could any tribe or gens split up into different classes. This leads us to the investigation of the economic basis of those conditions. The population was very sparse ... Division of labour was a pure and simple outgrowth of nature; it existed only between the two sexes .... Each owned the tools he or she made and used .... The household was communistic, comprising several, and often many, families. Whatever was produced and used in common was common property: the house, the garden, the long boat. In short the economic basis of what the civilized men find attractive about the tribal peoples, is their communism, though it be primitive. It is this primitive communism which, as Engels said, made the tribal constitution 'wonderful in all its childlike simplicity,'317 full of 'the mysterious charm with which the Ger- mans infused new vitality into dying Europe.'318 The grandeur and at the same time the limitations of the gentile order rest on the extremely low level of technological development. Human

814 Thomson SAGS i. 24. 815 Nehru in A 1-3. 816 OF 258-9. 817 Ib. 160. 318 Ib. 254.

L-15

226 LOKAYATA

labour-power at this stage cannot produce more than is neces- sary for its maintenance. So there is poverty; but, in the absence of any surplus, there is no scope for exploitation either. How technological advance undermined this primitive equa- lity, and how we are to assess this proccss of historical develop- ment from primitive cominunism to class-society, are questions, into the complexities of which we need not enter here. Our present point is rather to see that the elements of the tribal orga- nisation, when torn off from their root in this original economic basis-i.c., communism-and artificially brought forward, as it were, to a complex social structure detribalised only incompletely, lose their original vitality and purposiveness and pass into their opposites. They become empty and petrified forms and linger merely as the dead burdens of the past. We have seen how the tribal elements survived in the village communes, the caste system and the codified laws. We shall now see their degradations. The village communities first. Following are the famous observations of Marx319 on the destruction of these village com- munities by British rule in India. Significantly Marx called these semi-barbarian, semi-civilised communities, that is, the complex social structure that were incompletely detribalised. . Now, sickening as it must be to human feeling to witness those myriads of industrious patriarchal and inoffensive social organisa- tions disorganised and dissolved into their units, thrown into a sea of woes, and their individual members losing at the same time their ancient form of civilization, and their hereditary means of subsist- ence, we must not forget that these idyllic village communities, in- offensive though they may appear, had always been the solid foun- dation of Oriental despotism, that they restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional rules, depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies. We must not forget the barbarian egotism which, concentrating on some miserable patch of land, had quietly witnessed the ruin of empires, the perpetration of unspeakable cruelties, the massacre of the population of large towns, with no other consideration bestowed upon them than on natural events, itself the helpless prey of any aggressor who deigned to notice it at all. We must not forget that this undignified, stagnatory; and vegetative life, that this passive sort of existence evoked on the other part, in contradistinction, wild, aimless, unbounded forces of destruction and rendered murder itself a religious rite in Hindustan. Similarly, we have seen that the caste organisation has basically been the survival of the clan organisation. The wonder-

319 Marx & Engels OB 382-4.

GANAPATI 227

ful system of clan co-operation in the tribal life is well known. No less known, however, are the most dreadful sense of exclusiveness and isolation of the human groups created by the caste organisation in the social fabric of traditional India. Marx320 called the castes the 'decisive impediments to Indian progress and Indian power' and we Indians know it only too well that he was not at all exaggerating. What served in the tribal stage as an organisation of united front against the hostile forces of nature, became, in the form in which it survived later, the most important of all the factors in our country that set up men against men. In the customary laws, too, the tribal survivals appeared merely as the dead weight of the past. This made the peasants mere slaves of time-worn customs. Each individual in India is a slave to the customs of the group to which he belongs; and the customs of the several groups, various as they are, do not differ from one another with that practically infinite variety of difference which is found in the habits and practices of the individual men and women who make up the modern societies of the civilized West.321

21. PROBLEM OF IDEOLOCICAL SURVIVAL We proposed to view ideology not as 'directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life'. The ideological superstructure is thus to be understood according to the same principles as the social basis itself. If, therefore, it is true that the life of the Indian masses remained detribalised only incompletely, then the sources of their dominant world-outlook should logically be sought in the beliefs and ideas of the tribal peoples, though the original significance of this world-outlook, like that of the tribal survivals themselves, must have eventually passed into its opposite. What interests us most is the original nature of this world- outlook. We are going to argue that it must have been instinc- tively materialistic or proto-materialistic,-the collective labour of the tribal life being a guarantec for that. Interestingly, surviving as it did in the lives of the working masses (lokesu. ayata), this proto-materialistic character was not completely lost from the popular weltanschauung, called the Lokayata. How far such an argument can be historically justified will of course be borne out by the rest of our studies. At this stage we

320 Ib. 390. 321 Maine VCEW 13-4.

228 LOKAYATA

shall raise only one question: Do we come across any evidence in our ancient literatures that may indicate some connection between the archaic form of the social organisation (gana) and an archaic form of the materialistic outlook? We do, however fragmentary the evidence may be. There is a sutra in Panini322 which reads vraatena jivati, i.e. live according to the vraata-way. Patanjali commenting on it, said: The vraatas are samghas of people of various kinds, whose profes- sions are not fixed but who live on manual labour; their work is vraatam and those who live by this kind of vraata-karma are vraatinah. This was further elaborated in the other standard commentaries. The Kasika reads as follows: The vraatas are samghas and pugas of people of various kinds, whose professions are not fixed and who have for their summum-

dhanah). bonum material wealth and the sexual urge (artha-kama-pra-

Bhattoji added: Those who live by manual labour (sarirayasena) rather than by the wealth of intelligence (buddhi vaibhavena) are vraatinah (belong- ing to the vraata). Let us now examine the implications of these statements. Gana, vraata, samgha, puga, sreni, were but terms inter- changeable. We have already elaborately examined the terms gana, samgha and vraata and have seen that the collectivity indicated by these, in the context of the human organisation, simply meant the tribal collectivity. Thus the vraatinah referred to were simply the tribal peoples as the early grammarians knew them. According to the Kasika, the people thus described were artha-kama-pradhanah, that is, they considered material pros- perity and the erotic life to be the highest forms of human ideals. This is extremely significant. There is no other epithet in the field of Indian philosophical terminology more patently meant for the materialists. It may, therefore, be presumed that the other human ideals, namely dharma and moksa-the religious upliftment and the final liberation of the soul-were yet to dawn on the consciousness of those people living the collective life. The birth of the spiritual values in human consciousness went

822 v.2.21.

GANAPATI 229

hand in hand with class-division: the world-outlook of the pri- mitive pre-class society was pre-spiritualistic and, in this sense, proto-materialistic.

Significantly, the grammarians also indicated the logical basis of the connection between this proto-materialism and this primitive gana-life. Patanjali said that these people were living on manual labour. Bhattoji went a step further and clearly contrasted this manual labour (sarirayasa) with the 'wealth of intelligence (buddhi-vaibhava). To the grammarians, this natu- rally appeared as a mark of degradation. Living as they did in class-divided society, they could not but share its sentiments, they could not but look at the tribal life around them with contempt and disgust. It was logically also a contempt for the sarirayasa or manual labour, because in a class-divided society manual labour had already become a mark of servitude and slavery. The instinctively materialistic world- outlook generated by the process of manual labour,-a world outlook which appeared to the grammarians as artha-kama- pradhanah-too, did not earn their respect either.

From tribes there developed nations and states. Law and politics arose and with them the fantastic reflection of human things in the human mind: religion. In the face of all these creations, which appeared in the first place to be products of the mind, and which seemed to dominate human societies, the more modest productions of the working hand retreated into the background, the more so since the mind that planned the labour process already at a very early stage of the development of society, was able to have this planned labour carried out by other hands than its own. All merit for the swift advance of civilization was ascribed to the mind, to the development and activity of the brain. Men became accustomed to explain their actions from their thoughts, instead of from their needs-and so there arose in the course of time that idealistic outlook on the world which, especially since the downfall of the ancient world, has dominated men's minds.323

This is how Engels wanted to explain the birth of the idealistic outlook. It conformed to the first full statement of Marxism by Marx and Engels.

Division of labour only becomes truly such from the moment when a division of material and mental labour appears. From this moment onwards consciousness can really flatter itself that it is something other than consciousness of existing practice, that it is really conceiving something without conceiving something real; from now on consciousness is in a position to emancipate itself from

823 Engels DN 238-9.

230 LOKAYATA

the world and to proceed to the formation of 'pure' theory, theology, philosophy, ethics, etc.324 It is from this point of view that we shall try to review the history of the birth of idealistic outlook in Indian philosophy. However, what particularly interests us at the moment is that if the social process leading to the degradation of manual labour (sarirayasa) and the exaltation of mental labour (budhi- vaibhava) really gives us the clue to the origin of the idealistic outlook, it is also here that we are to seek the key to the problem of the destruction or downfall of the primitive proto-material- istic outlook. Evidently, when the grammarians were speaking of the vraatinah as artha-kama-pradhanah, they were referring to this primitive proto-materialistic outlook of the peoples that were still living the collective life of the tribal societies. The idealistic outlook and the spiritualistic values in general were yet to dawn on their consciousness; this consciousness, because it was yet to be divorced from the operations of manual labour, was yet to be emancipated from the world and to recognise any human ideal other than the attainment of material wealth (artha) in this world. But the grammarians did not speak only of artha being the summum bonum for these vraatinah. They also spoke of kama along with artha, and kama meant the erotic urge. This is crucial. For this gives us a distinct hint as to the nature of the primitive proto-materialistic outlook referred to. We shall see in Chapter V that this world outlook, in its more developed form, found its expression in Tantrism and that Tantrism had its ultimate source in the belief underlying the early agricultural magic, namely, that the productivity of nature is induced or enhanced by the imitation or the contagion of the human reproductive pro- cess or aspects thereof. Pending a fuller discussion of this point, we may end this chapter with a brief note on the question of ideological survival. We have argued that the tribal elements, in the form in which these survived in the lives of the peoples, no longer retained their original significance but were already converted into their opposites. Assuming ideology to be vitally related to social reality, we only expect the same transformation to have taken place in the history of the ideological survivals, too. In Chapter V, again, we shall see how this actually took place. The Tan-

824 G1 19-20.

GANAPATI 231

trika beliefs and practices retained their grip on the lives of the Indian masses; but these no longer retained the original force of their proto-materialistic character. In short, these too passed into their opposites and thus became only appropriate recepta- cles for all sorts of spiritualistic ideas and terminologies that were continually superimposed on these. The result was a bewildering mass of written treatises on Tantrism, some of which presenting Tantrism with a strong flavour of Buddhism, others with that of Hinduism. This resulted in the so-called Buddhist Tantras, the Saiva Tantras, the Sakta Tantras, the Vaisnava Tantras, and what not. As a matter of fact, the process of the transformation of the primitive proto-materialism into the natural receptacle of the spiritualistic ideas did not end only in this growth of the huge heap of heterogeneous literatures on Tantrism. The same process manifested itself in another direction and had a far reaching consequence in the history of Indian philosophy. For, as we have already indicated and as we shall sec more fully, the Sankhya system, in its origin, presumably represented the samc archaic materialism of original Tantrism though in an obviously more self-conscious form. However, as we shall also see, this original materialism of Sankhya system, too, eventually passed into its opposite and, as early as the Sankhya Karika itself, i.e., the earliest written treatise on Sankhya available for us, it was virtually transformed into a form of disguised Vedanta or absolute idealism. But more of this in Chapter VI.

CHAPTER FOUR

GAURI

STUDIES IN INDIAN MOTHER-RIGHT

It remains for us to consider another aspect of our tribal heritage, viz., of mother-right. A clear knowledge of this is crucial for our understanding of the Lokayata, more particularly, of the basic concepts of Tantra and Sankhya. In Tantra, as in Sankhya, the female principle or prakriti is viewed as the fundamental reality, the cause of the universe. Such an idea could only be the reflection, in the sphere of philosophical abstraction, of the social supremacy of the female. It will remain for us to see why this philosophical position had logic- ally the tendency to gravitate towards a kind of instinctive naturalism or proto-materialism. However, it is necessary, at the beginning, to be clear about the general theoretical position concerning the economic basis of mother-right itself.

We are going to argue that because agriculture is the dis- covery of women and which remains their exclusive preoccupa- tion in its early stages, it created conditions for the economic- and, therefore, also of social-supremacy of the female. It is here that we find a material basis of the ideological emphasis on prakriti (prakriti pradhanya) of the Lokayata trend in Indian philosophy. By contrast, the Vedic ideology was purusa- pradhana, or male dominated. The material basis of this, as we shall see, was their pastoral economy.

1. AGRICULTURE AND THE EXIT OF MALE

There is a folk ritual known in some parts of the country as the Ganesa Caturthi Vrata. Its performance is spread over a

GAURI 233

number of days, beginning from the fourth day of the month of Bhadra (August-September). The most remarkable feature of the ritual, however, is that though its name is still associated with a male god, he has practically very little to do with the ritual itself. In some comparatively undeveloped parts of the country, Ganesa stands in the ritual simply for the new moon of the sowing season.1 In the other parts, he is abruptly made to quit the scene as it were, leaving the ritual to take a thorough- ly feminine character. According to Gupte,2 on whose descrip- tion of the ritual we are depending here, the image of Ganesa is discarded on the second day of the performance of the ritual and from then on we hear only of a female deity instead. She is Gauri; but she is not the Gauri of our familiar Puranic pan- theon. Instead, she is merely a bundle of plants, along with her human representative: a virgin. The plants are collected by women, placed on a diagram drawn with turmeric powder. While wrapping these up in a bundle, married women are served with vermilion. Only women remain to participate in the rest of the ritual centring round this bundle of plants. The plants, along with the virgin, are carried from room to room and asked, 'Gauri, Gauri, what do you see?' The virgin answers, 'I see prosperity and plenty.' To make this dramatic visit of Gauri realistic, her supposed foot- prints are actually drawn on the floor showing that she did enter the rooms. The next day's function begins with offering cakes made of rice and coconut kernel to the deity. Every married woman then takes hand-spun cotton-thread, sixteen times her own height in length, and places it before Gauri. Then in the even- ing, 'all the girls in the house sing songs and dance, keeping up late, visiting the houses of girl friends for dancing and singing in front of Gauri.' Unfortunately, Gupte has not given us any details of these songs and dances. The next day, the effigy is offered food consisting of cres- cent-shaped pancakes. Then each woman collects her own cotton-thread which, on the previous night, was placed before the figure; each folds her thread into smaller skein and sixteen knots are tied on it. These are next dyed with turmeric and tied by each woman round her neck. The necklace is retained until the next harvest day, when it is removed before the sun

1 Crooke RFNI 36. 2 IA xxxv. 60 ff.

234 LOKAYATA

sets and ceremoniously thrown into the river. Meanwhile, on the day on which the necklaces are worn, the effigy of Gauri is thrown into a river or a tank and a handful of earth is brought home from the bank and scattered all over the house and the garden. It is, again, only a woman that carries the effigy to the river and she is warned not to look behind, just as is when carry- ing a dead body. Fables are usually told after the performance of such vratas or rituals. The fable of this vrata is quite simple. Once upon a time there lived a very poor person. Driven by poverty, he went to drown himself into the river. An old married woman appeared before him; she persuaded the poor man to return home and herself accompanied him. With this old woman came prosperity to his home. Then came the time for her to depart. The man took her back to the river and the old woman gave him a handful of earth from the river-bank and asked him, in order to ensure plenty, to scatter this earth over every possession of his. He was also asked to repeat this every year in the month of Bhadra and that, in honour of Gauri. Following are Gupte's" observations on the ritual:

The rationale of the ceremony suggests: 1) The alluvial soil of the river-side or tank as the original seat of the crops, 2) the old woman as the old season going out, 3) the young girl as the new season budding up, ready to burst out, as the symbol .'touch-me-not' specially suggests, 4) the lay figure as possibly the dead body of the old season, the rice and the millets being just in flower at that time of the year, and 5) the food offered as the expected bhadvi. new rice-crops. . But the loss of the spirit in the lay figure at midnight, the last day of the particular season of 'field-work,' the drowning of the lay-figure into the bowels of the Mother Earth, the sprinkling of sand and the skeins with sixteen knots-are symbolical of the simultaneous death and resurrection of the season, celebrated all over the world by primitive races, found here stereo- typed into a Hinduised form. The sixteen knots and the sixteen folds of the skein, turned into a necklace, suggest the number of weeks a rice crop takes to grow. The observations are interesting. The whole ritual is cen- tered in the desire for a rich harvest. But no less important is the feature of the ritual which has completely escaped the com- ments of our author: the ritual, being agricultural, is thoroughly feminine. There is no place in it either for a male god or any male participant. Only the name of the male god remains graft- ed artificially. But Gupte, obviously misled by the suggestion

3 Ib. xxxv. 62.

GAURI 235

of this name, has tried in vain to connect the male god with the agricultural ritual. According to him, the iconography of Ganesa might have been suggested by the winnowing basket placed by the side of the sheaf of corn, or by the image of a peasant carrying a heap of harvest on the head.4 These sugges- tions are fantastic and do not deserve serious criticism. More fantastic, however, is the over-enthusiastic comparison drawn by our author between Ganesa and certain agricultural deities of other parts of the world. The Indian Ganesa may in this matter be compared with the grain-goddess of Mexico, the Alo Alo of the Tonga Islands, the Demeter of Greece, or the Ceres of the Romans.5 A confusion of the sexes is involved in this comparison. Those with whom our old Ganesa is compared were but females. We shall see why they were logically so-why, in other words, with the discovery of agriculture the male deities were obliged to recede to the background. As a matter of fact, our author has himself observed this phenomenon in connection with the Ganesa Caturthi Vrata:

In regard to the chief goddess, Gauri, the goddess of the harvest, one great peculiarity remains to be mentioned. She is sup- posed to have been followed secretly by her husband Siva, who remains hidden under the outer fold of her sari (garment), and is represented by a lota (pot), covered by a coconut and filled with rice.6 Obviously, the name Siva, like Gauri and Ganesa, are transplanted from the Puranic pantheon to this peasant-ritual. But the point is that when the ritual is essentially agricultural, the male god either quits the scene like Gancsa or, like Siva, is reduced to a very subordinate position. Is there anything in the early stage of the agricultural eco- nomy that establishes the female principle in the ideological sphere?

2. HUNTING, ACRICULTURAL, AND PASTORAL TRIBES Thomson7 has suggested the following classification of the surviving tribes from the point of view of their economic development. Lower Hunters: food-gathering and hunting. Higher Hunters: hunting and fishing. 4 Ib. 61. 6 Ib. 63. 5 1b. 7 SAGS i. 33.

236 LOKAYATA

Pastoral-two grades: in the second grade cattle-raising is supplemented by agriculture. Agricultural-three grades: in the third grade, garden-till- age done with hoe is superseded by field-tillage done with the plough and agriculture is combined with cattle-raising. We are asked to remember two points about this classi- fication: 1) In the second pastoral and the third agricultural grades 'we find further progress in the handicrafts, permanent settlements, inter-tribal barter and metallurgy. At this level the tribal structure of society inherited from the lower grades, is beginning to break up. 2) The categories do not 'constitute a fixed chronological sequence. Food-gathering and hunting have come first every- where, but the higher grades depend on the local fauna and flora and other environmental factors.' Thus, after food-gather- ing and hunting, some of the peoples of the ancient times moved towards the pastoral economy while some others discovered agri- culture. The advance in both the lines ultimately resulted in the breakdown of the tribal system. There had thus been two parallel paths of economic advance which led people to civil- ization.8 We shall see the importance of this point for the understanding of the two fundamental trends of Indian culture, viz., the Vedic and the non-Vedic.

3. SOCIAL IMPORTANCE OF THE SEXES For the purpose of answering the question concerning the social importance of the male and the female in the lives of our remote ancestors, we may, in accordance with our method, look at the ethnological domain and see how far, among the sur- viving tribes, this feature is correlated to their economic lives. The Todas of the Nilgiri Hills are a small community. Though their number is declining fast, they have aroused con- siderable ethnographical interest, because they alone represent a purely pastoral economy in India today. They are a purely pastoral people who eschew all other occupations. They are provided with the products of agriculture by the Badagas, a Canarese tribe who also live on the plateau, while the Kotas, allied to the jungle peoples of Southern India, furnish their metal work and pottery.9

8 Cf. Engels OF 259 ff. 9 ERE xii. 354.

GAURI 237

Thus, according to our classification, they belong to the first grade of the pastoral economy. In social organisation, they represent an extreme example of the superiority of the male.

Descent is always patrilineal. A man belongs to the clan of his father. The effect of fatherhood is not determined by marriage, however, but by a ceremony of giving a bow and arrow which takes place at the seventh month of pregnancy .... The Todas practise poliandry, nearly always of the fraternal type. Formerly this prac- tice was possible in a pure form owing to the existence of female infanticide. Though the girls are probably sometimes killed at birth, the practice is now less frequent.10 The Khasis of Assam form a considerably bigger community. Their staple industry is agriculture, supplemented by hunting, fish- ing, and stock-raising. The principal crop is rice. Manuring is well understood, but in most parts of the country the plough is unknown.11 Thus, according to our economic classification the Khasis are to be placed before the third agricultural grade.

Their social organisation presents one of the most perfect examples still surviving of matriarchal institutions, carried out with a logic and thoroughness which, to those accustomed to regard the status and authority of the father as the foundation of society, are exceedingly remarkable. Not only is the mother the head and source and only bond of union of the family; in the most primitive part of the hills, the Synteng country, she is the only owner of real property, and through her alone is inheritance transmitted. The father has no kinship with his children, who belong to their mother's clan. What he earns goes to his own matriarchal stock, and at his death his bones are deposited in the cromlech of his mother's kin. In Jowai he neither lives nor eats in his wife's house, but visits it only after dark. In the veneration of ancestors, which is the found- ation of tribal piety, the primal ancestress and her brother are the only persons regarded. The flat memorial stones set up to perpetu- ate the memory of the dead are called after the woman who repre- sents the clan, and the standing stones ranged behind them are dedicated to the male kinsmen on the mother's side. In harmony with this scheme of ancestor-worship the other spirits to whom propitiation is offered are mainly female, though here male person- ages also figure. The powers of sickness and death are all female, and these are the most frequently worshipped. The two protectors of the household are goddesses, though with them is also revered the first father of the clan. Priestesses assist at all sacrifices, and the male officients are only their deputies. In one important state, Khyrim, the high-priestess and actual head of the state is a woman, who combines in her person sacerdotal and regal functions.12 The examples of the Todas and the Khasis would be parti- cularly important for our studies because these illustrate that

10 Ib. 11 Thomson SAGS i. 151. Italics added. 12 Lyall quoted by Gurdon K xix-xx.

238 LOKAYATA

the pastoral economy is correlated to the social supremacy of the male while the early agricultural economy to that of the fcmale. Let us now go back to the still carlier stage of social development. According to Majumdar's13 economic gradation, the following tribes of India are still in the 'hunting and collec- tional stage': Raji (U.P.); Kharia and Birhor (Bihar); Kuki and Konyaks (Assam); Hill Maria (C.P.); Koya, Conta- Reddi, Paliyan, Kadar, Hill Pantaram (Madras and Hyderabad); Juang (Orissa). Among them the patrilineal mode of descent preponderates.14 Other examples of hunting tribes are to be found in Austra- lia and a high proportion of them are patrilineal.15 Nevertheless, certain practices are observed among them that point to their matrilineal past.

In two widely separated Australian tribes, of which we happen to be exceptionally well informed, we find an elaborate code of regulations requiring the married men to hand over the whole or the best part of their catch to their wives' parents. Similar rules are common in other parts of the world. They point to a state of society in which the men went to live with the clan to which their wives belonged-a matrilineal clan centred in the women.16 Bearing all these in mind, we may now proceed to consider the general question concerning the economic basis of mother- right.

4. MOTHER-RIGHT Mother-right has been defined by Rivers17 as a form of social organisation in which the rights of a person in relation to the other members of his community and to the commu- nity as a whole are determined by relationship traced through the mother. In this condition the duties which a person owes to society, the privileges which he enjoys and the restrictions to which he is subject are regulated, and their scope is determined, by the relations social group. in which the person stands to his mother's relatives and his mother's

Rivers has mentioned the following as constituting its chief elements: descent, kinship, inheritance, succession, authority, marriage. The condition of mother-right in its most typical form occurs very rarely, being found mainly among the Khasis

13 RCI 106. 14 E.g. Haimendorf ATH ii. 161, 331. 15 Thomson SAGS i. 42-3. 16 Ib. i. 43. 17 ERE viii. 851.

GAURI 239

of Assam and certain tribes of North America (the Iroquois and the Seri Indians). In other cases, only one or the other element of the organisation is prominent. In the last century, following Bachofen, the ethnologists were unanimous that mother-right represented the original form of social organisation. This view is vigorously contested by many contemporary authorities though they are without any agreed positive alternative. In recent years, Briffault, on the basis of vast data, has reaffirmed the old view, though not with- out introducing important modifications in it.18 The evidences mentioned by most of the authorities on both sides are largely of the nature of the extant cases of transition from one mode to the other. Such evidences clearly indicate the priority of the mother-right. As Rivers,19 one of the contemporary critics of the old view, has admitted: In several parts of the world we have definite evidence that a condition of mother-right has changed either into one of father-right or into a form of social organisation in which social rights are re- cognised with the relatives of both father and mother. Thus there. is evidence that some form of mother-right once existed in Europe, while in the Sudan there is historical proof that five hundred years ago the Beja, who are now definitely patrilineal, kept their genea- logies in the female line, and transmitted property to the sons of sister or daughter. In Melanesia, again, and in some parts of Ame- rica, there is positive evidence of a change from matrilineal to patrilineal institutions, the transition being still in progress in some parts of Melanesia. On the other hand, there is no unequivocal evidence from any part of the wworld of a change having taken place in the opposite direction. Strangely, however, the same author, in the same article, made the following comment: But, while it is almost certain that by far the most frequent process throughout the world has been a transition from mother- to father- right, the reverse change may have occurred.20 However, what the author has cited as probable examples of the process of reverse change is not such a process as is actu- ally observed to have taken place, but rather the fact that certain obviously backward tribes have very clear father-right clements in their social organisation, whereas, certain other and compara- tively more advanced tribes have social organisations strongly characterised by mother-right elements. Rivers has mentioned the evidence of the North American tribes:

18 Thomson SAGS i. 43. 19 ERE viii. 858. Italics added. 20 Ib. Italics added.

240 LOKAYATA

Not only do some of its matrilineal peoples, such as the Iroquois and the Pueblo Indians, possess the most advanced cultures of the con- tinent, but, where one people, such as the Dene or northern Athapas- cans, practise both lines of descent, it is the less cultured, who use the patrilineal mode.21 Such evidences are important. We have seen in the pre- vious section that father-right elements are not uncommon among the hunting tribes, whereas the Khasis, at some developed agri- cultural stage (though prior to the introduction of cattle-drawn plough) represent the most typical example of mother-right. What the ethnologists of the last century, as well as our contemporary critics of them, have overlooked is the economic basis of the social domination of the sexes. We shall quote Thomson2" on the correlation of the two:

In the pre-hunting stage there was no production, only simple appropriation of seeds, fruits, and small animals, and consequently there was no division of labour. Such a condition is conducive to the social superiority of the female. For, since there was no production, there was no ques- tion of the superiority of any from the point of view of produc- tion, whereas, it was on the women that rested the supremely important function of rearing up the young and of imparting to them whatever could be characterised as human heritage at this stage.

There are two types of natural relations, sexual and parental, and among the higher animals they tend to be mutually exclusive. The female is averse to sexual intercourse during gestation and lacta- tion, and the male plays little or no part in feeding and tending the young. This is true of the mammals in general, including the apes, and, if it was also true of man's apelike ancestors. it follows that the advance from imitation to co-operation was effected by the develop- ment of parental relations, and, more particularly, of the relations between mothers and their offspring. It may be suggested, there- fore, that one condition for the development of production was the extension and transformation of those habits of co-operation, based on imitation, which characterised the relations between mothers and offspring in the transition from ape to man. In man the maternal relation, which among the apes is replaced at maturity by the sexual, was gradually prolonged until it comprehended all members of the group in a non-sexual, social relationship. In this way they acquired a sense of kinship, a consciousness of mutual obligations and attach- ments springing from the natural affinity between a mother and her children. Thus, there is real truth in the Khasi proverb, 'From the woman sprang the clan.'23 So, the earliest form of the social organisation was centred

21 Ib. 22 SAGS i. 41-2. 28 Ib. ii. 42-3. Italics added.

GAURI 241

round the mother and this state of affairs persisted for a long period of time. From this point of view, the ethonologists of the last century were right in insisting that mother-right was characteristic of the earliest form of human society. Yet their view needs to be substantially modified for they overlooked the subsequent shifts in the social superiority of the sexes that took place as a result of the development and changes in the technique of production. We shall quote Thomson24 at length.

With the invention of the spear, however, hunting became the men's task, while the women continued the work of food-gathering. This sexual division of labour is universal in hunting tribes, being due to the relative immobility of women during pregnancy and lactation. Hunting led to the domestication of animals. Instead of being killed the game was brought home alive and kept. cattle-raising is almost everywhere men's work. On the other hand, Accordingly food-gathering led to the cultivation of seeds in plots adjacent to the settlement, and so garden tillage is women's work. Then, after the introduction of the cattle-drawn plough, agriculture was trans- ferred to the men. In parts of Africa, where the plough is only a recent acquisition, the change-over can be seen taking place at the present day. These shifting tensions in the relations of the sexes to the mode of production explain the rise of patrilineal descent. The process began with hunting, and was intensified by cattle-raising, but in the initial phase of agriculture it was reversed. How, it has been asked, if descent was originally matrilineal, has it come about that some of the most backward peoples reckon through the father, while others, more advanced, retain the older form? The answer is that the sexual division of labour characteris- tic of a hunting economy is such as to impart to that economy an inherent tendency to patrilineal descent. The reason why so high a proportion of modern hunting tribes are patrilineal is that their economic life has been arrested at that level. Conversely, when we find, as we shall find, that in the pre-history of civilized peoples matrilineal descent persisted to a much higher stage than the ethnological data might lead us to expect, the explanation is that these peoples passed rapidly through hunting to agriculture. .

To sum up. The social importance of the sexes is correlated to the development of the economic life. The original pre-hunt- ing stage was characterised by mother-right. With the develop- ment of hunting, however, the social supremacy was shifted to male. In the post-hunting stage, among those peoples that developed the pastoral economy this male-supremacy came to exercise even greater hold; among those, however, that discovered agriculture, the situation was reversed. There was a revival of mother-right among them. With the further development of

" 24 Ib. i. 42-3. L-16

242 LOKAYATA

agriculture,-more specifically, with the introduction of the cattle-drawn plough to the field-this agricultural mother-right was finally overthrown. Gods and goddesses are after all created in human image; these shifts in the social importance of the sexes were naturally reflected in the form of parallel shifts in the celestial sphere. Deities representing the hunting and the pastoral stages are predominantly male whereas those representing the earlier stages of agriculture were predominantly female. We are going to argue that we have here the clues to the Vedic as well as the non-Vedic outlooks.

5. PURUSA-SUKTA AND PASTORAL ECONOMY That the economic life of the early Vedic peoples was predominantly pastoral is a point on which practically all the authorities are unanimous. Even as late as the times of the Upanisads,25 the sages were counting their wealth mainly in terms of the cattle. We shall, in Chapter VIII, briefly review the early Vedic literatures, particularly the Rig Veda, and see how the desire for cattle and more cattle dominated the whole of it. For the present, it may suffice our purpose to refer to some competent opinions. Following are the observations of Winternitz:20 Rice - later the chief product of agriculture and the staple food of the Indians-is still quite unknown to the Rig Veda. Only barley is planted, and at the time of the hymns agriculture as yet played only a small part. The chief source of income was cattle-rearing, and the chief cattle was the bullock. Again and again in the songs and invocations to the gods, the prayer for cattle and horses occurs. . Also the strife amongst the hostile aboriginal inhabitants turns on the possession of cattle. Therefore, too, the old word for 'war' or 'battle' is originally 'desire for cattle' (gavisti). In the most extravagant expressions cows and bullocks are praised as the most precious possessions. The lowing of cows hastening to the calves is looked on by the ancient Indian as the sweetest music. 'The singers are shouting to the god Indra,' says a poet, 'as mother cows low to the calf.' Gods are readily compared with bullocks, goddesses The milk of the cow was not only one of the chief articles of food, but milk and butter formed an essential part of the with cows.

sacrifices to the gods. The milk was by preference consumed warm as it came from the cow, and Vedic poets marvel at the miracle that the 'raw' cow gives cooked milk. Similar observations may be quoted from the writings of the other scholars.27 But that is not necessary. It is, as a matter of

25 The point is rather well known. E.g. Ch. Up. iv. 4. 5. 26 HIL i. 64-5. 27 E.g. Macdonen HSL 166.

GAURI 243

fact, a commonplace of Vedic scholarship to assert that the Vedic peoples, particularly in their earlier days, were predominantly pastoral. Agriculture not only played a secondary role in the Vedic economy; it was actually looked down upon in the Vedic tradition. The pastoral peoples had an aversion for agricul- ture.28 Mitra29 thought that the contempt of the Vedic people for the Zoroastrians arose from the same source. As it is well known, according to Manu,30 agriculture was forbidden to the Brahmanas. Baudhayana,31 too, found real contradiction bet- ween agriculture and the study of the Vedas. It was as a society of pastoral warriors that they (i.e., the Vedic people) established themselves in the fertile plains of North- ern India; they never took up the cultivation of the soil, leaving it to the native inhabitants; and, indeed, they, like all pastoral warriors, profoundly despised agriculture as the occupation of conquered races.32 The pastoral economy has a natural tendency towards a social organisation in which the males dominate. We have seen the example of the Todas, the only surviving pastoral tribe in India which is also highly patriarchal. There is, in fact, no pastoral people which is not patriarchal for 'cattle-raising is almost everywhere men's work.' 33 Definite economic power was first placed in the hands of men by the domestication of animals, which are always regarded as ap- pertaining to the province of the hunter, and by the development of pastoral societies. That power has commonly been used to buy off the claims of women and of their families to the allegiance and services of husbands; women are purchased for cattle, and patriar- chal society with patrilocal marriage becomes inevitably established among pastoral peoples.34 We are, at the moment specifically interested in the question of how this social superiority of the male among the Vedic peo- ples, resulting from their pastoral economy, was reflected in the Vedic pantheon. Goddesses occupy a very subordinate position in Vedic belief and worship. They play hardly any part as rulers of the world. The only one of any importance is Usas, who judged by the statis- tical standard ranks as a deity of the third class. But, unlike nearly all the gods, she received no share in the Soma offering. Next to her comes Sarasvati, who, however, only ranks with the lowest class

: " . 28 Briffault .M. iii. 59, 111. 29 Mitra IA Article xx: 'Primitive Aryans.' 80 SBE xxv. 86, 106ff., 420ff. 81 i. 5. 101. 32 Briffault M iii. 59. 88 SAGS i. 42. 34 Briffault M ii .. 251.

244 LOKAYATA

of deities. A few other goddesses are praised in one hymn each. Prithivi, hardly separable from Dyaus, is praised in one short hymn of three stanzas. Ratri (night) is also invoked in one hymn. Like her sister Dawn, she is called the daughter of heaven .... Vak (per- sonified speech) is celebrated in one hymn .... Goddesses as wives of the great gods similarly play an insigni- ficant part in the Veda. They are altogether without independent character, simply representing the spouses whom such gods as Indra must have had. Hardly anything about them is mentioned but their names, which are simply formed from those of the gods with the feminine suffix-ani.35

Like the pastoral economy of the Vedic peoples, the male- domination of the Vedic pantheon is the fact too well known to be elaborately argued.36 What needs to be argued, however, is that the former was the material basis of the latter. Of course, the Vedic literature is vast. It took many centuries for the Vedic poets to compose the whole of the Rig Veda itself. During this period, the consciousness of the Vedic peoples, like their social organisation, did advance. It was, however, an advance within the general structure of the male- dominated thinking. Our scholars have characterised the advance of Vedic thinking as an unconscious groping towards monotheism and monism.37 This may be true. What is not true, however, is their assertion that the fundamental principle of the One arrived at by the later poets of the Rig Veda was without any character of sex.

Whatever is the age when the collection of the Rig Veda Samhita was finished, it was before that age that the conviction had been formed that there is but One, One Being, neither male nor female, a Being raised high above all the conditions and limitations of perso- nality and of human nature .... 38 Radhakrishnan39 added:

They applied to the central principle the neuter term Sat, to show that it is above sex. ... In some of the advanced hymns of the Rig Veda the Supreme is indifferently called Her or It. That there are passages in the comparatively later portions of the Vedic literature which use the neuter gender to refer to the ultimate reality, need not be denied.40 What needs to be

35 Macdonell VM 124-5. 36 Bhandarkar VS 142; Crooke in F xxx. 284 ff. Kosambi has discussed the survivals of the archaic mother-right in the Vedic literatures JBBRAS xxvi. 69n, 70 ff. 37 Radhakrishnan IP i. 91 ff. 3° IP i. 94, 96. 88 Max Muller SSIP 51. 40 x. 129.

GAURI 245

affirmed, however, is that even these passages do not prove that the Vedic thinkers outgrew the limits of male-dominated thinking. The decisive evidence is furnished by the Purusa- Sukta,41 which belongs to the latest stratum of the Rig Veda. Following is an extract from this: A thousand heads hath purusa, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet. On every side pervading earth he fills a space ten fingers wide. This purusa is all that yet hath been and all that is to be. The lord of immortality which waxes greater still by food. So mighty is his greatness; yea, greater than this is purusa. All creatures are one-fourth of him, three-fourths eternal life in With three-fourths purusa went up: one-fourth of him again was heaven.

Thence he strode out to every side over what eats not and what eats. here.

It needs only to be remembered that purusa simply means the male. If, therefore, there had been any specimen of thinking completely dominated by the idea of the supremacy of the male, we have it in our Vedic literature. Our scholars, often over-anxious to attribute to our remote ancestors a gift for unfettered free-thinking, have, almost invariably, ignored the literal meaning of the word. The question is never asked why in this famous hymn the entire cosmic order was conceived in terms of the original malc. Yet the question is relevant and even important, because it is precisely here that the Vedic tradi- tion sharply differed from the non-Vedic-or, more specifically, the Tantrika-tradition, which conceived the cosmic order in terms of the original female. The fact is that the speculations of the Vedic peoples, like the speculations of the other mortals, could not outgrow the general structure basically determined by their economic life. The Purusa-Sukta did represent some stage of the development of abstract thinking. But it was after all the abstract thinking of the predominantly pastoral people, who, living as they did in patriarchal society, could not think except in terms of the supremacy of the male. What is probably not less striking about the Vedic literatures is that in the comparatively few places where agriculture is referred to, the deities connected with it are generally conceived as females. In the Rig Veda,42 we come across the following invocation to the goddess Sita, literally the furrow:

Bountiful Sita, be present, we glorify thee that thou mayest be the giver of abundant wealth to us, that thou mayest yield abundant fruit.

41 R.V. x. 90. 42iv. 57. 6-7.

246 LOKAYATA

May Indra take hold of Sita, may Pusan guide her; may she, well stored with water, yield it as milk, year after year, . Sita here is made subordinate to the male gods like Indra and Pusan. But that is only to be expected. This subordi- nation of the female deity corresponds to that of the agricultural economy of the Vedic people. What is significant, however, is the fact that being an agricultural deity she is conceived as a female. 'The figure of this goddess,' Keith43 observed, 'naturally has more life in the Sutras, which deal with the operations of agri- culture.' Separated from the Rig Veda by a considerable time- gap, the Sutras mention other deities connected with agriculture, who, significantly, are all females. The Gobhila Grihya Sutra44 referred to Sita, Asa, Arada, Anagha. They were to be invoked at the rituals of furrowing, of sowing the seeds and of reaping the harvest. Again, the Paraskara Grihya Sutra45 referred to the goddesses Urvara, Sita, Yaja, Sama and Bhuti. They were all connected with the agricultural operations and they were all females. Referring to such female deities Keith46 commented: It would of course be absurd to suppose that these scanty rem- nants of worship represent the whole of the agricultural side of Vedic religion, and as a matter of fact in the ritual there are abun- dant traces of other ceremonies having to do with agriculture, but the deities of the field were evidently as such not of great importance in Vedic religion, the care of the prosperity of men in these respects having been taken over by the great gods. When agricultural and vegetation spirits as such have great honour among and importance in the ideas of a people, then their figures are elevated to the rank of the great deities, as is the case with Attis, Adonis, or perhaps even Osiris in the lands of Asia Minor and of Egypt, and the fact that other deities are the great gods of Vedic religion cannot be explained on any other hypothesis than that the specific religious instinct of the Vedic people chose these forms as the favourite objects of its devotions. This hypothesis is worthless. The point is quite simple and obvious. Agriculture did not have that importance in the Vedic economy which it had in Asia Minor or Egypt. There was, therefore, no reason for the agricultural deities of the Vedic literatures to acquire any great prominence. Besides, it is really amazing how easily the scholar has overlooked the great god- desses while speaking of the religions of Asia Minor and Egypt. But more of this later.

43 RPV 186. 45 ii. 17. 10. SBE xxix. 334. 44 iv. 4. 29. SBE xxx. 113. 46 RPV 187. Italics added.

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6. ICONOGRAPHICAL INCONGRUITIES. In the Vedic age, there were pastoral tribes outside the Vedic circle. Radhakrishnan47 has mentioned the example ot the Krisnas. According to the Rig Veda,48 these Krisnas were defeated by the Vedic peoples under the leadership of Indra. The 'deified hero' of the tribe was also called Krisna. Signi- ficantly, he was a male. Similarly, Bhandarkar49 has suggested that Rudra of the Rig Veda might have originally been the deity of the hunting tribes (the Nisadas), though, according to him, they were not necessarily purely non-Vedic. What is relevant for our argument is that he, too, was a male. But we need not go to the Vedic literatures to see the cor- relation between the hunting economy and a male deity; our old Ganapati may, in a sense, serve the purpose. The clue is to be found in his ayudhas. The gods of our pantheon are not empty-handed; they hold some emblem or other in their hands. These are the ayudhas, literally, weapons. The various weapons and emblems, .... which are generally found in the hands of the images of Visnu, Siva and other gods are per- sonified under the name of Ayudha Purusas.50 But the personifications are obviously arbitrary, for the 'sex of a personified ayudha is ... determined merely with reference to the gender of its name in Sanskrit.'51 Later writers tried to attribute to the ayudhas spiritual significance drawn from the stock of their own later ideas. This naturally resulted in much confusions and contradictions, speci- mens of which have been quoted by Rao,52 who himself, in a kind of despair, has observed: Thus we may see that, in relation of these various weapons and emblems found in the hands of the images of Hindu gods and god- desses there is a consensus of opinion showing that the early Hindus had probably a systematised symbolism as appertaining to their iconographic art in its application to religion. The key to this symbo- logy is evidently lost and cannot be easily recovered .... Till this lost key is recovered .... nothing more than making mere guess in the dark regarding the meaning and moral aim of Hindu icons is really possible.53 But there is probably no reason to take such a gloomy view. For the original significance of at least some of the

47 IP i: 87. 49 VS 103-4. 48 RV viii. 96. 13.

51 Ib. 52 Ib. i. i. 293. 50 Rao EHI i. i. 287-8, 58 Ib. i. i. 295-6.

248 LOKAYATA

ayudhas can possibly be recovered, provided we do not allow our visions to be clouded by the later and arbitrary speculations. From the iconographical point of view Ganapati had a large variety of forms-no less than a dozen and half-having a distinct name for each. Some of these, like the Vala Ganapati or Bhakti Vighnesvara Ganapati are obviously very late while the others, like Unmatta Ucchista Ganapati or the Nritya Ganapati, are genuinely old. However, the point to be specially noted is that whenever the image of Ganapati is not too modern, we find him holding in his hands the two ayudhas called the pasa, and ankusa. The former means the noose, the latter the elephant-goad. These are to be found in the hands of the Taruna Ganapati, Vira Vighne- svara Ganapati, Laksmi Ganapati, Prasanna Ganapati, Unmatta Ucchista Ganapati, Vighnaraja Ganapati, Bhuvanesa Ganapati, Nritya Ganapati, Haridra Ganapati and others.54 So it may reasonably be presumed that the noose and the elephant-goad were the original ayudhas of Ganapati. If we ask the simple question, what could Ganapati have been doing with these two well known hunting implements,-more particularly the implement for elephant-hunting-there would be only one answer to it: Ganapati was himself engaged in the act of hunt- ing. His totemic origin testified by his elephant-head confirms the point: totemism is the ideology characteristic of the hunting stage.55 Further, in some of his forms-particularly in the forms known as Vira Vighnesvara and Urdhva Ganapati-he is seen to hold even the bow and arrow,56 patently hunting implements again. In his origin, therefore, Ganapati could only be the deity of the hunting tribes. And, as is to be expected from the point of view of our argument, he was a male. However, as we have already seen while discussing the Ganesa Caturthi Vrata, the male deity either quits the scene or is reduced to an obviously secondary position when it is speci- fically a question of the agricultural ritual. In the images of Ganapati, we come across a different manifestation of the same phenomenon: the male deity of the hunting stage is brought

54 Ib. i. i. 52-9. 55 It may be significant, in this connection, to remember Thom- son's theory of the totem-species being originally the specialised diet of the clan. The taboo eventually imposed on the eating of the totem-species is explained by him as the measure to ensure the economic interdependence of the clans. AA 12-3. SAGS i. 37-8. 56 Rao EHI i. i. 52, 56. .

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forward to the agricultural stage no doubt, but this could be effected only at the cost of such basic iconographical inconsis- tencies as almost to negate his male sex. The point is interesting and we may look into it rather carefully. Among the ayudhas of the Vala Ganapati, we find the mango, banana and other fruits. The Taruna Ganapati carries among other things the wood-apple and the jambu fruit. The Bhakti Vighnesvara Ganapati has the coconut, mango, lump of sugar, etc. as his ayudhas. Conspicuous among the ayudhas of Laksmi Ganapati are the pomegranate, lotus, water-vessel and the Kalpakalata (the wish-fulfilling plant), etc. Similarly, the lotus and the pomegranate, along with the ears of paddy, are to be seen in the hands of Maha Ganapati.57 It is not necessary to multiply the instances. The point is that all these are agricultural products and so try to connect Ganapati with the agricultural occupation. In trying to do so, however, these create contradictions and inconsistencies. We shall concentrate specially on one of these. It consists in the cir-

hand. cumstance of the male god holding a pomegranate in his

This pomegranate is not at all an uncommon ayudha of the deities of the Grcek pantheon. But those who held it there were all goddesses, not gods. And this is only logical. We shall quote Thomson58 to see the logic of it. Demeter was constantly portrayed as holding in her hand a poppy or a pomegranate or both. The image of Victory Athena at Athens had a helmet in the right hand and a pomegranate in the left. At Olympia there was a statue of the athlete Milon holding a pomegranate. Milon was a priest of Hera. Hera's statue at Argos had a sceptre in one hand and a pomegranate in the other. In referring to it Pausanias remarks: 'I will say no more about the pomegranate because the story connected with it is in the nature of a secret.' What was the secret? The fruit of the pomegranate is a brilliant red. So is the seed (kokkos) which by yielding a common dye gave Greek its word for scarlet (kokkinos). The pomegranate was a sign of blood. That is generally understood, but the real meaning of the sign has been missed. It has usually been regarded as a symbol of violent death. That is undoubtedly what it means in particular case .... But these applications are secondary. The pomegranate was used medicinally for menstruation and pregnancy, and this shows that in the hands of Demeter it had the same value as the poppy, which is expressly described as a symbol of fecundity. In the Eleusinian Mysteries and the Arcadian Mysteries of Despoina (Persephone) it was taboo, in allusion to a well known incident in the story of Persephone .... At

57 Ib. i. i. 55. 58 SAGS i. 219-20.

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Athens the women who kept the Thesmophoria were required to abstain from pomegranates and from sexual intercourse. Each night. they slept on beds of withy, which had the double virtue of check- ing the sexual impulse and scaring away snakes. Since they used the withy as an antidote to sexual activity, we must suppose that they avoided the pomegranate because it was a stimulant. Its colour was not primarily the blood of battle but the blood of fertility- menstrual and lochial blood. It remains for us to see the importance attributed to the menstrual blood in primitive ideas, particularly in the ideas characteristic of the early agricultural stage. However, it is at present sufficient for us to note, that, assuming such symbolic- significances to be universal which these certainly were, pome- granate being used as an ayudha of Ganapati makes obviously a case for the most grotesque inconsistencies. The male god was dabbling in the female matters. It was all right for him to be a male and be connected with the hunting economy; but not so with the agricultural. When he wanted, as it were, to be connected with the latter he had to borrow the characteristics. and secrets of the other sex. We may notice more manifestation of the same fundamental inconsistency in the later idcas of our old Ganapati. Efforts in various ways were made to associate him with the colour of the blood. According to the Mantramaharnava,59 the image of Ganapati should be red like blood. In the Tantrasara60 we come across such epithets as 'red as the vermilion,' 'wearing clothes of the colour of blood' in the meditations on Ganapati. Accord- ing to Colebrooke,61 'the distinguishing sectarian mark of the Ganapatyas was a circlet of red minium on the forehead.' The scarlet flower jaba (china-rose) is called 'the flower of Ganesa.'02 Vermilion powder, again, is called the 'cosmetic of Ganesa.'3 On the bank of the Narmada, near Ganesa-Kunda, there is a piece of red stone called the Ganesa-stone.64 Kane85 has said that five kinds of stone were used in worship, of which the one used in the worship of Ganesa was red. What was the real significance of all these? Why was it conceived that Ganapati was intimately connected with red? What did the colour stand for? The author of Samkara Vijaya68 gave us the clue to these questions. For he clearly told us that the menstrual blood played a decisive role in the rituals of the

59 VK (B)- v. 203. 61 ERE vi. 176. .. 80 Ganesamantrah ch. ii. Verse 63. 4. .. 63 Ib. v. 208. 62 VK (B) v. 206. 65 HD ii. 716." 64 Ib. v. 205. S &D22 86 Ch. xvii. p. 115.

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followers of Ganapati. Evidently, the red with which Ganapati was thus variously associated was the symbol of the same. We shall see this point more clearly in Chapter V. This symbolic significance of the red colour had been universal in ancien! cultures. Thomson, on the basis of an enormously vast heap of evidences collected by Briffault, has in fact conclusively argued this point. For the moment it is sufficient for us to note that if this be the real significance of the colour, it is hardly consistent for our male god to be anointed with it. It was the same inconsistency he exhibited by holding a pomegranate in his hand. The male god was getting involved in matters pertaining to the female. From this point of view, it was probably more consistent for him to retire from the agricultural scene, as he did in the Ganesa Caturthi Vrata, leaving the ritual to be performed by the women centred round a female figure. Perhaps the other way for him was to take shelter behind the female. As a matter of fact, we find him doing this in certain cases. In the cave of Ellora, Ganesa is to be seen not by himself but as subservient to the seven women, called the seven mothers (sapta matrikas).67 In some other cases, we find a young lady usually sitting on his lap and being amorously embraced by him. She is called the Sakti and such icons of Ganesa are known as the Sakti Ganapatis.G8 We shall later see how, in such sculptural representations in which the male god is associated with Sakti, he is reduced to the secondary position, however much the icon-makers might have disregarded this proportional im- portance of the male and the female.

7. AGRICULTURE: THE DISCOVERY OF WOMEN Thus there were reverses in the celestial plane in the superiority of sexes at the initial stage of agriculture. The female moved forward and the male was either pushed to the back- ground or, at least, made to imitate the female. All these were logical. The initial stage of agriculture witnessed the social superiority of the women. For agriculture was women's in- vention. Observed Bernal.69 As grain-gathering was women's business agriculture was probably a women's invention, and in any case was women's work,

67 Getty G pl 2 (c). 68 Rao EHI i. i. 53. 69 Bernal SIH 60-1.

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at least till the invention of the ox-drawn hoe or plough, for it was done with the hoe, a derivative of the old stone age digging stick with which women used to grub for roots. Where agriculture pre- dominated over hunting in providing food it accordingly raised the status of women and halted and reversed the tendency to change the reckoning of descent through the mother (matrilineal), to that through the father (patrilineal) which hunting had first induced. Only where stock-raising predominated, as in the lands bordering the agricultural settlements, was there a complete transition to the patriarchy-as we see it in the Bible. Giles,70 in his contribution to the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, argued the same point:

Primitive agriculture is not altogether nor to any large extent, in the hands of males. As Von Den Steinen remarks of the Bakairi of Central Brazil, it is woman that has invented agriculture .... Dibbling with a pointed stick and hoeing with a stone axe were possible for the women and children in the neighbourhood of the huts, while the men wandered farther afield as hunters or on the war path. Hence agriculture reaches an advanced stage, before the women hand over the greater part of the operations to the men .. Hence, with the development of the plough and of a system of tillage, agriculture of necessity passed more into the hands of men. More over, when a pastoral people turns to agriculture, it objects to women having to do with the cattle. Added Briffault:

In the primitive division of labour the gathering and the culti- vation of vegetable food are the special occupation of the women as hunting is that of the men. The yam-digging stick is among the Australian aborigines as inseparable and personal a part of the woman as weapons are appurtenances of the men. The art of culti- vation has developed exclusively in the hands of women. The

myth.71 invention of agriculture by woman is commemorated in savage

Where agriculture, which from the first has been the province of women, has developed on an important scale without any inter- vening pastoral stage, the matriarchal order has often persisted and has even become accentuated in relatively advanced phases of culture. ... This happened notably in Egypt, which owed its wealth and culture to the Nile and to the fields which it fertilised, and where pastoral property never importance.72 attained to any degree of

8. MOTHER-RIGHT IN INDIA

Agriculture thus was the invention of women. Therefore, the initial phase of agricultural economy witnessed the social superiority of the female. But questions may still be asked with regard to the specific

70 ERE i. 227-8. 71 Briffault M iii. 2. 72 Ib. ii. 251-2.

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case of Indian history. We have already observed the example of the Khasis and have seen how they represent a comparatively undeveloped agricultural technique along with mother-right in its typical form. 'Matriarchal institutions,' Kosambi73 has observed, 'still survive in those parts of the country that took last to the plough economy, e.g. Travancore-Cochin and among some tribesmen.' However, further questions are obviously involved. Was agriculture, in India, the discovery of women? Was this discovery really connected with the social superiority of the female? Ehrenfels has already answered the questions. Women here not only invented systematic tilling of the soil, but also put this into practice, which can by no means have been an easy task, as conservatism was so strong in primitive society, specially in the primeval culture-circle, that some remnants of these pre-agricultural groups have been preserved to the present day. In consequence of the tilling of the soil the peoples of this first matriarchal culture-circle gave up roaming in the forest and became the first settlers.74 The author has indeed gone a step further and asserted that a primitive form of agriculture, and along with it a form of mother-right first developed originally in India. The mutual relations between Indian and non-Indian mother-right cultures are manifold. The general geographical and also the archaeological situation favours the theory that the world-cultures of mother-right originally emanated from India.75 So, it was the Indian mother-right which appears to have created the ancient matriarchal civilizations in the Mediterranean Basin, Oriental Africa, the Near East and specially Southern Arabia.76 This hypothesis of India being the original home of mother- right and, therefore, of the migration of mother-right from India to the other centres of the ancient world, may of course be dis- puted. If mother-right be originally due to the invention of agriculture by the women, as Ehrenfels has repeatedly accepted it to have been, then it is quite conceivable that the other peoples of the world, under similar circumstances, i.e., because of similar inventions, might have developed the same or similar institution. Nevertheless, this consideration does not at all minimise the importance of the contribution of our author to the question of mother-right in India. The. Index of the Caste-Register77 which he has so laboriously prepared goes to

78 ISIH 22. 74 MRI 8. 75 Ib. 204. 76 Ib. 77 Ib. 18-35.

254 LOKAYATA

show how strong and widespread are the surviving 'matriarchal culture elements' among the peoples of India. Indeed, a pre- dominantly agricultural country like India, with her stunted economic development accounting for the strong survivals of the tribal elements, is only likely to be full of relics of mother- right. In the North-East, among the Khasis and Garos, and in the South-West among the Nayars of the Malabar Coast, the survival of mother-right may be particularly strong; but, as Ehrenfels has shown, there are a number of more primitive tribes, living mainly on jhuming-cultivation (the author's U- group), who present a more primitive form of mother-right: Many of their mother-right elements are found to have been taken over from the surrounding matriarchal peoples who belong to more progressive social units. Still it is possible, perhaps even probable, that the beginning of a mother-right civilization, though a very primitive one, was constituted within the U-group long before any influence by other communities could have taken place.78 More important than all these are the observations of Ehrenfels on the violent overthrow of the original mother-right among the vast masses of the Indian peasant-population. The abrupt and essentially artificial way in which the overthrow took place did result, according to him, in the 'three typically Indian institutions,' namely, hypergamy, child-marriage and sati (burning of widows). Summing up the evidences on hypergamy, Ehrenfels con- cluded:

The principle of hypergamy in India finds its best explanation in the desire of an immigrating, patriarchally organised society, to force the idea of the superiority of men on the women, whose spirit of independence and self-confidence was rooted in the old tradition of a matriarchally organised society. Hypergamy thus seems a means to subdue the female position in society by forcing upon her social inferiority in matrimonial relations.79 But the question is why, in India, such extravagant means of breaking the resistance of matriarchy was called for, parallels of which are

scarcely to be found anywhere else in human history, though con- tention between patriarchal and matriarchal principles has so often existed in the course of human civilization.80 The author has sought the answer in 'the special vigour and development of the matriarchal civilization in pre-Aryan India';s1

78 Ib. 201. 80 7b. 79 Ib. 121. ba Yb. 125.

GAURI. 255

it was this which 'yielded such a strong opposition to the patriar- chal tendencies of the Aryan new-comers',82 and called forth such extravagant methods to destroy it. Similar is the explanation of child-marriage: The prevalence of infant-marriage in India, compared to other countries, where a struggle between father-right and mother-right has also taken place, is subject to the same explanation as the one which was given with regard to hypergamy.83 However, the most violent form of this extravagant method of depriving the women of their former importance is exempli fied by the contempt for the widow. This picture of the progressive decay of women's position in India betrays the clearly visible tendency to humiliate them before men, a tendency which is practised in excess in the treatment of widows.84 Ehrenfels quoted Russell to illustrate the position of widows. (A widow is often forced to) shave her head and is usually forbidden to have a cot or bed, and must sleep on the ground or on a plank. She must not chew betel leaves, should eat only once a day, and must rigorously observe all the prescribed fasts. She wears white clothes only, no glass bangles and no ornaments on her feet. family. She is subject to other restrictions and is a general drudge in the . Hindus say that a widow is half-dead. She should not be allowed to cook the household food ... a widow is not per- mitted to worship the household-god or the ancestors of the family ... a widow should not claim any life-interest in her husband's property .... 85 Ehrenfels has rightly added the following: Sati, or burning the widow together with the husband's body, is, under these conditions only one step further, if we take into con- sideration that life without any occupaion, besides the humiliating ones, without any aim, purpose or happiness, suppressed not only by the superstitious fear, but often hatred of the whole family, had to be faced by the widow who refused to commit sati, whereas this self-sacrifice in the burning flames was considered not only to bring honour and glory on the name of the whole family, but also eternal happiness to the soul of the suicided woman.86

Thus, ... the bad position of the widow, intensified to the extreme in the custom of burning her alive with the body of the deceased husband, originally foreign to the pre-Aryan, as well as to the Aryan society of India, has been evolved in the struggle between the originally matriarchal and the immigrated patriarchal system of society as a

82 Ib. 121. 88 Ib. 125. ' 84 Ib. 128 .. 85 TCCPI ii. 369, 86 MRI 128.

256 LOKAYATA

means to subdue the former by the religiously organised rule of the latter.87 We have emphasized parts of the quotation only to point out where the argument of Ehrenfels is doubtful. According to him, during the Vedic period, the Vedic Aryans, in spite of being patriarchal, were not having such extreme practices as the sati to humiliate the women. He has accepted the 'proba- bility of a better position of women, the existence of adult- marriage and permission of widow-remarriage among the Aryans in the period of the Early Vedas.'88 Consequently he argued:

The Brahmin hostility against womanhood, opposing the prin- ciples of the Early Vedas, where women enjoyed an honoured position, is thus easily explainable as the outcome of the struggle between the patriarchally organised nomadic herdsmen, whose sociology is the basis of the Aryan Brahmanism against the matriar- chally organised indigenous civilization, which resisted more actively than was usually the case in similar constellations of other countries. The Brahmin desire to break this resistance with all possible means easily explains the progressive decline of the standard of woman- hood in India, proportional to the more and more draconic means applied by the representatives of the patriarchal society.89 But the position of women during the early Vedic period was really not as honourable as our author seems to believe. There are distinct references in the Samhitas to the practice of burning the widow along with the dead-body of her husband.

The funeral hymns of the Rig Veda and the Atharva Veda show that in the Vedic period, like Purusamedha, anumarana or follow- ing the husband to death by mounting his funeral pyre, was also practised in a symbolic fashion.90

The Maitrayani Samhita91 described women as untruth, the Taittiriya Samhita®2 said that a good woman was worse than a bad man and the Katha Samhita93 sarcastically alluded to the woman's ability to obtain things from her husband by cajolery at night. The point is that the pastoral economy of the Vedic peoples was at the root of their patriarchal organisation which could not have much scope to make the position of the women honourable. The degradation of women in the Vedic society was conditioned by the economic life of the Vedic peoples just as the tenacity of the matriarchal elements in the lives of the non-Vedic peoples of the country-the peasant masses-can be

87 Ib. 129. Italics added. 88 Ib. 126. 90 MASI xli. 19. 89 Ib. 127.

92 vi. 5.8.2. 91 i. x. 6. 8; ii. 6. 3. 93 xxxi. j.

GAURI 257

accounted for only from the basic pattern of their economic life. It is this economic basis of both father-right and mother- right which Ehrenfels, in spite of rightly associating agriculture with matriarchy, has, on the whole, overlooked. This has led him to treat both patriarchy and matriarchy as 'things-in-them- selves,' the former waging a kind of battle as it were against 'the latter. It is true that the most extravagant methods were neces- sary in this country to establish the victory of patriarchy. Further, Ehrenfels is the only writer to have insisted that such exaggerated efforts to establish artificially the superiority of the male resulted in the institutions of hypergamy, child-marriage and the sati. The special vigour to overthrow matriarchy must have necessarily implied, as Ehrenfels rightly claimed, a corresponding special vigour which mother-right must have been enjoying in this country. But our analysis cannot stop here. For the tenacity of mother-right among the Indian masses is itself a problem and the problem is not solved by saying, as Ehrenfels did, that mother-right was extremely ancient.94 On the other hand, when we look at the problem from the point of view of the economic basis of the social institutions, the answer appears to be rather simple. As we have discussed the point in the last chapter, the economic development of the country, generally speaking, remained stunted. The large masses of the Indian people continued to be merely the tillers of the soil. If the undeveloped agricultural economy had a natural tendency to create matriarchal society and if by far the largest proportion of the Indian masses remained predominantly agri- cultural, then it was but logical that the most extravagant methods would have been necessary to coerce upon them the supremacy of the male. Ehrenfels rightly indicated the resistance to father-right, but he has not explained the right reason for it. This neglect of the economic basis of mother-right has result- ed in a more serious limitation in Ehrenfels' observations. The violent imposition of male supremacy might have resulted in such artificial institutions as hypergamy, child-marriage and the sati. But even then the matriarchal culture-elements could not be stamped out from the lives of the masses. Ehrenfels has himself prepared the most admirable catalogue of these exten-

94 MRI 121-2. L17

258 LOKAYATA

sive and deep-rooted survivals of mother-right in India. In view of the extreme measures taken to suppress it, the survivals of mother-right are, to say the least, peculiar. Ehrenfels himself has given us no reasonable explanation of this peculiarity. When we ask ourselves what could have been the real reason for these extensive survivals of mother-right in India-there can possibly be only one answer. Elements of the material basis of mother- right must have survived. We return to the same point: the overwhelmingly large majority of the people remained at a comparatively low level of agricultural economy.

9. FEMALE PRINCIPLE

Of all the survivals of mother-right, we are at present directly interested in what is usually described as the 'female principle' in the religious beliefs and philosophical views. That this 'female principle,' generally speaking, is the ideological aspect of mother-right will not be doubted by serious scholars. We quote Starbuck95:

Female deities have often enjoyed the highest place among the gods. This depends upon the nature of the social organisation and the respect in which women are held. Clan-life in which the mother is the head of the group is likely to lift the 'mother-goddess' into

of magic. a supreme position provided the nation has risen above the stage

This is clearly logical. But we have to pursue further. We have to raise the question concerning the condition 'in which the mother is the head of the group.' When we do so, we come across the fact that in the ultimate analysis the early agricultural economy is the material basis of the female principle. Unfortunately Starbuck himself has not raised the question, though it is interesting to note that coerced, as it were, by objective historical facts, he was obliged to acknowledge the basic connection between the agricultural pursuit and the female principle. It seems inevitable that, as the quieter agricultural pursuits in naturally protected valleys favourable to the worship of goddesses have fallen into the background, through the fusion of clans and cities into warring nations in which chivalry and virility are at a premium, male deities have risen supreme, while those of the 'weaker sex' have been degraded to lesser functions, attached as consorts, superseded and forgotten or, to save themselves, have changed their sex to fit the new demands.98

95 ERE v. 828. 96 Ib.

GAURI 259

So gods and goddesses are viewed as products of war and peace-the deities of 'stronger sex' during war while those of the 'weaker sex' during peacc. The problem was to adjust life as the situation demanded.

Among the needs are protection and safety. Gods have been especially useful in this relation. Another need is the increase of crops, herds, and children. Goddesses have been the natural and convenient symbols of fertility and increase.97 With this as his starting point the author has tried to explain the religious history of India. India is unique in having the opposite history of higher appreciation of goddesses, along with its later development. illustrates, however, the same principle in a negative way. The Vedas It

were written before and during the period when the Aryans were conquering the aborigines of India and were engaged in feuds among their own tribes. Under such conditions there are no god- desses, although the literature is richly polytheistic. Since the nation has settled down into a relatively peaceful life of agricultural pursuits, the worship of female deities has risen to a place of supreme importance: Durga, spirit of nature and spring; Kali, soul of infinity and eternity; Sarasvati, supreme wisdom; and Sakti, mother of all phenomena.98 The relationship conceived between the female principle and the agricultural pursuits is of course important; but it has been conceived within the framework of a hypothesis historically unsound. There were female deities like Candi, whose exploits, as narrated by the Markandeya Purana, places her on the same footing as any other male deity renowned for aggressiveness and war-like character. As a matter of fact, the myth of the 'weaker sex' is itself a late product of the patriarchal society and as such any hypothesis built on it has not the prospect of fitting in with facts. The story of the Amazons of ancient Asia Minor had been largely mythological; but it could as well have had some histo- rical basis. In any case, women, in many primitive races, far fiom representing the constitutionally weaker sex, are physically more developed than the men and commonly take part in war in primitive societies; they are even generally distinguished by greater cruelty. Briffault,99 arguing on the basis of a huge mass of evidences, has proved these points conclusively. It is, therefore, wrong to imagine that men distinguished themselves as warriors because of any constitutional vigour

97 Ib. v. 830. 98 Ib. V. 828. 99 M i. 443-6, 451-3, 454-8.

260 LOKAYATA

inherent in them. The real reason, as Briffault rightly insisted, is to be found in the economic factors:

The differentiation of the man as warrior and fighter is certainly not due to any constitutional indisposition or incapacity in primitive woman, but to cconomic necessities.100 What were these economic necessities that prevented women from devoting themselves fully to war purposes?

But while the women are frequently known to share in the active pursuits of men, the constructive occupations which have given rise to the development of material culture belong, in the rudest societies, almost exclusively to the sphere of women's work, and the men take no share in them. All industries were at first home industries, and developed therefore in the hands of the women, who are the home-makers and stayed at home .... 101 The basic discovery which enabled human beings to deve- lop all these industries was agriculture. Therefore, it will be logical to concentrate specially on this. We may now return to consider the view of Starbuck concerning the female principle in general and the development of Indian religion in particular. It is indeed a remarkable fact that the Vedic pantheon is predominantly male. But the reason is not, as Starbuck thought, that the Vedic peoples were engaged in war. More remarkable, however, is the fact that in the post- Vedic Hinduism, with all its formal allegiance to the Vedas, there survived none of the major Vedic gods-Indra, Varuna, Mitra, Prajapati, Pusan, Matarisvan, etc. Yet this exit of the Vedic gods from the post-Vedic pantheon was only logical; the pastoral economy which generated the Vedic pantheon was no longer there in the post-Vedic period to nourish it. The Vedic gods had to wither away. Father-right elements might have been aggressively imposed on the lives of the people, yet the remnants of mother-right could not be completely stamped out. The Indian masses, remaining as they did the tillers of the soil, were sticking to their old Mother Goddess, or Sakti. Not that there is no male god in the later Indian pantheon. But they are, particularly in the predominantly agricultural areas, gene- rally pushed to the background or somehow or other fused with the female. The siva-lingam108 is probably the commonest example of the latter.

100 Ib. i. 451. 101 Ib. i. 460. 102 It may be remembered that the Gauri-pattam of the familiar Siva-lingam is but the female organ.

GAURI 261

Secondly, Starbuck has worked on the hypothesis that the Aryans, after conquering the aborigines of India, settled down in this country to peaceful agricultural pursuits. In the absence in his time of the archacological data made available in later times, such a hypothesis found almost a universal favour with the nineteenth-century scholars. But the Indus excavations have refuted it. As Marshall summed up his observations on the Indus excavations: Five thousand years ago, before ever the Aryans were heard of, the Punjab and Sind, if not other parts of India, as well, were enjoy- ing an advanced and singularly uniform civilization of their own, closely akin, but in some respects even superior to that of con- temporary Mesopotamia and Egypt.103 And again, One thing that stands out clear and unmistakable, both at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, is that civilization ... at these two places is not an incipient civilization, but one already age-old and stereo- typed on Indian soil with many millennia of human endeavour behind it. Thus India must henceforth be recognised, along with Persia, Mesopotamia and Egypt as one of the most important areas where the civilizing processes of society were initiated and developed.104 But initiated by whom? By the male or by the female. Presumably by the latter. For, like the other centres of ancient civilizations, the Indus too was drawing its wealth from the soil. Agricultural surplus, in other words, was its material basis. And agriculture was the invention of the women. It is no wonder, therefore, that the relics of the ancient Indus civilization should reveal very strong survivals of matri- archal elements. We may quote Ehrenfels105 again: These excavations, and Sir John Marshall's summary of their archaeological results, have changed the outlook on the history espe- cially of the more highly developed strata within the matriarchal culture-circle of India, and brought about two fundamentally im- portant facts: (a) The predominance of the pre-Aryan element in the cultural structure of what we call 'Hinduism,' and (b) the matriarchal character of this advanced pre-Aryan civilization to which present-day and medieval India owes so many elements, im- pulses and cultural moulds. Those Indus relics with matriarchal character, according to Marshall, were of the nature of religious objects. We shall quote his observations on these later. For the present, we merely want to establish that the importance of the female

103 MIC i. preface v. 10 Ib. 105 MRI 1.

262 LOKAYATA

principle in the religious history of India was not the product of the peaceful conditions of the post-Vedic period, as Starbuck imagined it to have been. Its history, rather, is to be traced as far back as the earliest recorded period of the discovery of agriculture in this country, just as the strength of its survival in the later periods can only be accounted for by the fact that the people among whom it survived remained predominantly agriculturists.

10. RELIGION OF MOHENJO-DARO

There was a controversy among scholars over the import- ance of the non-Aryan elements in later Indian religion, broadly called Hinduism. Monier-Williams and Hopkins thought that the contribution was almost negligible and it consisted of the most barbaric and degrading aspects. Oppert, on the other hand, argued an opposite view. In the background of this controversy, as Marshall106 rightly observed, the new materials from Mohenjo-daro and Harappa were invested with surprising value because these were actual monuments of the pre-Aryan period. Marshall's own interpretations of these new materials have largely been inspired by the observations of Chanda on Saktism, published a few years before the actual Indus excavations started:

For a conception of the god-head analogous to that of the Sakta conception of the Devi we should travel beyond countries dominated by the Vedic Aryans and the Avestic Iranians to Asia Minor. Syria, Egypt and other countries bordering on the Mediterranean.107 The reason is not really far to seek:

There is a strong resemblance between the Indian Sakta con- ception of Sakti and the Sakta ritual of the followers of Vamacara and Kulacara, who practised ceremonial promiscuity, on the one hand, and the Semitic conception of Astart (Astarte), the Egyptian conception of Isis, and the Phrygian conception of Cybele on the other. On the basis of these similarities, Chanda observed:

It may be assumed that Saktism arose in India under the same social conditions as those under which Astarte was conceived in Syria, Cybele in Asia Minor, and Isis in Egypt.108

106 MIC i. 49. 107 IAR 148-9. . 108 Ib. 150. Italics added.

GAURI 263

What exactly was the nature of these social conditions? Chanda answered the question in one word. It was matriarchy. Matriarchal conditions were actually prevailing in ancient Syria, Asia Minor and Egypt. There is a large body of evidence to show that the Semites before their separation passed through a matriarchal stage of society. The tribe was a group of people inhabiting a particular oasis in the Arabian desert. It was made up of mothers and their brothers and children. The fathers were men of other tribes, dwelling in other oasis, who contracted only temporary unions with the mothers. Descent was traced through the mother, and she was the head of the clan in peace and war. In such a society the chief deity of the tribe must have been conceived as a counterpart of the human matriarch. Male divinities might exist and be known as 'maternal uncle,' but they would not be called 'father,' and would play so unimportant a part that they would survive only sporadically in later religion. This view is confirmed by the fact that all those traits which are oldest and most permanent in the character of Ashtart-Ishtar are those which for other reasons we must predicate of the ancient Semitic tribal mother.109

Similarly, the origin of the Great Mother Cybele is to be understood in the light of the fact, observed by Frazer,110 that mother-right lingered in Lycia down to historical period; and we may conjecture that in former times it was widely spread throughout Asia Minor.' Again, in the home of Isis (Egypt), the archaic system of mother-kin, with its preference for women over men in matters of property and inheritance, lasted down to Roman times.'111 On the basis of these similarities, Chanda112 concluded: The Sakta conception of the Devi, as Adya Sakti, 'the primor- dial energy,' and Jagadamba, 'the mother of universe,' also very probably arose in a society where matriarchate or mother-kin was prevalent. There is no doubt that of all the comments so far made on the origin of Saktism, this is the most rational. Unfortunately, however, the author did not pursue this question of the socia! origin of Saktism any further. Instead he wanted to look at Saktism with its matriarchal basis as a mere matter of racial characteristic. The question he finally considered worth asking was: Did Saktism then originate among the Indo-Aryans of the Outer countries?113 But the question has lost much of its value to the scholars of later times.

109 ERE ii. 115. 110 AAO 394-5. 111 Ib. 395. 112 IAR 153. 113 Ib. 153.

264 LOKAYATA

The problem of Saktism and its possible relation to mother- right, however, had to be reopened by Marshall; because, among the material remains of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa were found a large number of female figurines of terra-cotta and such other objects that could not easily pass for toys:

Now it is well known that female statuettes akin to those from the Indus Valley and Baluchistan have been found in large numbers and over a wide range of countries between Persia and the Aegean, notably in Elam, Mesopotamia, Transcaspia, Asia Minor, Syria and Palestine, Cyprus, Crete, the Cyclades, the Balkans and Egypt.114

The similarities are striking. Marshall tried to interpret the Indus relics in the light of what is already known about similar figurines found in other places:

The generally accepted view concerning them is that they represent the Great Mother or Nature Goddess, whose cult is believed to have originated in Anatolia (probably in Phrygia) and spread thence throughout most of Western Asia. The correspond- ence, however, between these figurines and those found on the banks of the Indus is such that it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the latter also represented Mother or Nature Goddess and served the same purpose as their counterparts in the West, viz. either as votive offerings or, less probably, as cult images for household shrines; and this conclusion is strengthened by the fact that the range of these figurines now extends practically without a break from the Indus to the Nile, over tracts that are not only geographi- cally continuous but which in the Chalcolithic Age were united by common bonds of culture.115

Marshall made the further important comment:

That, like the Mother Goddesses of Western Asia, they originated in a matriarchal state of society, is a highly reasonable sup- position.116

And again, this remarkable parallelism between these cults and Indian Saktism has long been recognised and commented on, and it has been assumed that in both cases it originated in the similar (i.e. matriar- chal) conditions of society which are thought to have prevailed during the pre-Aryan age in India as well as in the Nearer East. What was not recognised and what has only been revealed by the discoveries at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, is that in the Chalcolithic Age India and Western Asia were closely united by common bonds of civilization .... As a fact, there is some evidence ... of a tangible concrete connection between the religions of Indus Valley and those of Mesopotamia117

114 MIC i. 50. 116 Ib. i. 51. 115 Ib. 117 Ib. i. 58.

GAURI 265

Such a tangible concrete connection must have been a remarkable revelation of the Indus archaeology. But our expla- nation of the female figurines cannot end there. If these were the images of the mother-goddess and if such images are 'turned up in hundreds among the Neolithic and Chalcolithic deposits of Central Europe, the Mediterranean region and the Near East,118' these must have evolved everywhere from the same material origin. This origin can be understood only in the background of the primitive agricultural matriarchate, a question which Marshall has not raised seriously enough. When we do so, we come across the same point everywhere: all these ancient civilizations drew their wealth from the soil, and agri- culture was the invention of women. Beneath all these centres of ancient civilizations, therefore, remain buried the images of the mother-goddess, because these were supposed to ensure, though magically, the success of the agricultural operation to those women who, by inventing agriculture, 'played the most decisive part in the origin of civilization.'

11. THE GRAMADEVATAS

In India, however, the story of the mother-goddesses did not end with the Indus civilization. We may quote Marshall again: She is the 'Mother' or 'Great Mother' and prototype of the power (prakriti) which developed into that of Sakti. Her representatives are the Gramadevatas, the village-goddesses whose names are legion and whose local attributes may vary, but who one and all are personifications of the same power .. Who is the author of ferti- lity .... There can be no question that they held a pre-eminent position among the national deities of the non-Aryan population. This is indicated alike by the popularity of their cults among the primitive tribes, and by the fact that the leading part in their ritual and ceremonies are taken, not by Brahmanas, but by low-caste Pariahs-members of some of the old tribes who are supposed to know how to win the ear of the goddess. Some of the pre-Aryan tribes have never really come within the fold of Hinduism, and among these tribes the worship of the Mother or Earth Goddess is specially strong.119 Ehrenfels120 has prepared the following list of those back- ward peoples of India in the consciousness of whom the pri- mitive goddess is still occupying a supremely important position: Bili Magga, Budubudiki, Darzi, Domb, Gadaba,

118 Thomson SAGS i. 237-48. 119 MIC i. 51. 120 MRI 79-80.

266 LOKAYATA

Gangadikara Okkalu, Ganga,· Golla, Haddi, Hallikar Okkaliga, Helava, Holeya, Idiga, etc. The list is imposing. If, as Marshall has argued, these Gramadevatas be really the representatives of the 'Mother' or 'Great Mother', the relics of whom are traceable as far back as at least 3000 B.C., then we have here, again, another example of uneven development which we have tried to argue elaborately in the previous chapter. There are people still surviving in India that live the life of-and therefore also stick to the beliefs and ideas of-the ancestors of those that built the Indus civilization many thou- sands years ago. More significant is the fact that among the vast masses of the Indian peasantry-that is, among those that are no longer living in the tribal society-male deities have only secondary position. The deities that have any real grip on the lives of the masses are mostly females. The better known names of these are Durga, Kali, Candi and others. But, as it has been argued, the variations in these names, like the variations in the qualities and histories attributed to them, being later additions, are only secondary in importance.121 Behind them all is the primeval goddess, terra-cotta representations of whom are unearthed at all the centres of ancient civilizations. The survival of this primeval mother in the consciousness of the Indian masses can only be explained by the survival of its material basis. This illustrates the second point concerning the peculiarity of India's social history which we have tried to argue in the previous chapter. Survival of the tribal past has indeed been an im- portant charactcristic of the traditional Indian society.

121 JASB (N.S.) xxi. 315 ff.

BOOK III

Materialism

CHAPTER FIVE

TANTRA

OBSCURE CULTS AND AGRICULTURAL RITUAL

There are two basic trends in Indian culture, the Vedic and the non-Vedic. A predominant, if not the most conspicuous feature of the latter is Tantrism, with its supreme emphasis on prakriti or the female principle. In this chapter we are going to enquire how far our general argument concerning the agricultural origin of the female principle may explain the other fundamental characteristics of the Tantrika beliefs and practices.

1. MAGIC AND EARLY AGRICULTURE It is a fact observed all over the world that in the compara- tively earlier phases, agricultural operations are viewed as vitally dependent on magical observances. Magical beliefs thus acquired a strange importance at the early agricultural stage. The art of cultivation is regarded by all uncivilized peoples as depending in an ever higher degree than other operations, upon labour.1 magical power and procedures rather than on skill and manual Briffault2 has illustrated this with many examples. The Peublo Indians were shocked at the European settlers planting the corn without any ritual; and yet to their utter amazement they saw abundant crops resulting from it. 'The fact did more to shatter their faith than all the missionary crusades of the Padres.' In Northern Borneo, 'the whole labour of farming is for the Dyaks no more prosaic routine, but a supernaturally pro- tected process with constant festal interruptions.' Similarly, in South Africa, 'the Sumba woman will not hoe their lands if their

1 Briffault M. iii. 2-3. 2 Ib. iii. 3.

270 LOKAYATA

dance has not been held, as they say that if they do not respect their spirits there will be no crop.' In ancient Mexico, again, every agricultural operations, however trivial, was accompanied with ceremonies and incantations to the goddess of fertility. To this we may add a few more examples from the Indian tribes. The Hos3 observe seven important festivals. All these are associated with their agricultural life, and as such the time and season for these are determined by the needs of agriculture. These festivals are not pure fun; their purpose is to ensure, though magically, the success of agriculture. The Santals,4 in the month of Sawan (July-August), when the monsoon rains make the transplantation of the paddy seed- lings possible, observe the Hariar Sim festival so that 'the paddy may grow green.'

In the Central Provinces bunches of wild rice are hung up in the house in August, when the crop is growing, to represent the mother rice-plant. Kurmis in the same province observe the Hereli or 'feast of greenery' in the middle of Sawan (July-August) when the rice is sprouting. Balls of flour mixed with salt are given to the caitle. The plough and other implements are taken to a tank, washed, and set up in the courtyard of the house. The plough is placed facing the sun, and butter and sugar are offered to it .... Bhuiyas, Kols and Binds mn the United Provinces also worship during the rainy season Hariyari Devi, Mother of Greenery, by employing their Baiga Priest to sacrifice chickens and to pour a libation of wine on the fields after harvest or before the sowing season.5 These are only a few examples. It will not be an exaggera- tion to suggest that the backward peoples of India knew of no agricultural operation which is not viewed as vitally dependent upon some magical act.® What is sometimes overlooked, however, is the circumstance that our remote ancestors, like our tribal neighbours, were view- ing agricultural success as similarly dependent upon magical spells and procedures. Kautilya7 in his Arthasastra instructed that there should not be any sowing without the appropriate magical incantation or mantra:

8 Majumdar AT 211-2. 4 JASB (Sc) xix. 7. 5 Crooke RFNI 265.

present Chapter. 6 We shall see many examples of this ritual in the course of the 7 Chanda IAR 133.

TANTRA 271

Always, while sowing seeds, a handful of seeds bathed in water with a piece of gold shall be sown first and the following mantra recited: 'Salutation to god Prajapati Kasyapa, agriculture may always flourish and the goddess (may reside) in seeds and wealth, Canda- vata ho. When we go back beyond Kautilya, even as far as the Vedic literatures, we come across the same point. Of course, agriculture had only a secondary status in the Vedic economy. Yet it is of interest to note that in the comparatively few refer- ences to agriculture that we have in the Vedic literatures, the process is viewed as vitally dependent upon magical spells and performances. The Atharva Veda8 recommended the following mantra while sowing the seeds:

Raise thyself up, grow thick by thy own might, O Grain! Burst every vessel! The lightning in the heaven shall not destroy thee! When we invoke thee, god grain, and thou dost listen, then do thou raise thyself up like the sky, be inexhaustible as the sea! Inexhaustible shall be those that attend to thee, inexhaustible thy heaps! They who give thee as a present shall be inexhaustible, they who eat thee shall be inexhaustible! The Taittiriya Samhita9 mentions a similar mantra: The furrow anointed with ghee, with honey, approved by the all-gods, the Maruts, full of strength, swelling with milk, do thou, O furrow, turn towards us with milk. Even in the Rig Veda10 we have examples of chants design- ed to ensure success in agriculture. However, it is in the comparatively later portions of the Vedic literatures, particularly in the Grihya Sutras, that the dependence of agriculture on magic is clearer and more direct. The Asvalayana Grihya Sutra,11 the Sankhayana Grihya Sutra12 and the Bharadvaja Grihya Sutra13 prescribed that offerings to the deity of the field should be performed before ploughing it. The Paraskara Grihya Sutra14 gave Sita, the goddess furrow, considerable importance and the Gobhila Grihya Sutra15 prescri- bed that she, along with such female deities as Asa, Arada and Anagha were to be invoked at the rituals concerning the furrow- ing, thrashing, sowing, reaping and putting the corn into the barn.16

8 SBE xlii. 141. 9 Keith VBYS 316. 10 iv. 57. 6. 12 iv. 13. 5. 11 ii. 10. 4.

14 ii. 17. 9. 13 ii. 10.

10 The other female deities connected with Vedic agriculture are 15 iv. 4. 27.

mentioned in the previous chapter.

272 LOKAYATA

The Vedic evidences mentioned are particularly significant. Agriculture might have been comparatively less important to the Vedic people; but magical rites was considered vitally important for agriculture even by them. The question is why was it thus considered? Thomson17 analysed the reasons for this by contrasting agriculture with the occupation of cattle-raising: So long as they have pasture, cattle feed and breed of themselves, but by comparison with cattle-raising the work of tilling, sowing and reaping is slow, arduous and uncertain. It requires patience, foresight, faith. Accordingly, agricultural society is characterised by the extensive development of magic. To the early agriculturists, it was not known why or how the plants really grew. The process from sowing to reaping was with them greatly mysterious. Besides, the technique was poor and consequently the prospect of success extremely precarious. That is why it required patience, foresight and faith. But how could magic provide them with all these psycho- logical necessities? Magic rests on the principle that by creating the illusion that we control reality, we can actually control it. But how could this illusion be created? By enacting it in fantasy. That could not obviously have any effect on the actual course of nature. But it could and did have an appreciable effect on the performers themselves. Inspired by the belief that the fulfilment of the desired reality is ensured by enacting it in fantasy, they were able to work harder for the purpose of actually fulfilling it. Magic rests on ignorance. But it would be wrong to view it as mere ignorance. For it is also a guide to action, though a psychological one. At the initial stage of agriculture, at which this psychological guide is most needed, we naturally find a peculiar intensification of magical beliefs and practices.

2. MEANING OF VAMACARA

If agriculture was the invention of women, then it is only logical that agricultural magic in its origin should belong exclusively to the province of women. Here we have an import- ant clue to Tantrism. For, contrary to our usual notion, Tan- trism, too, originally consisted of ritual practices in which only

17 AA 21-2.

TANTRA 273:

the women participated. The reason is that Tantrism had its sources in the agricultural ritual. Let us begin from the general position that women alone were originally concerned with agricultural magic. Briffault18 summed up the point thus: The magical or religious rites intended to secure the fertility of the fields were naturally within the special competence of the women who cultivated them .... He has argued this on the basis of an overwhelming mass of material. We may mention a few examples: The Raruba women's society in Sierra Leone has for its chief function to prepare "medicine" or magical charm, which is sprinkled over the rice-fields, thus insuring their fertility.'19 The com-dance of the Cheyennes was, they say, practised by young girls and middle-aged women, who danced in a circle .. The woman who led the dance carried the sacred ear of corn on a stick which was fitted into a hole in the butt of the ear. Among the Sioux the women performed each spring with conside- rable ceremonial the magical rites which ensured the fertility of the fields.20 Among the Hidatsas, the women, at the corn festival, carried at the end of sticks samples of all the vegetables which they culti- vated, maize, pumpkin, melons, etc. They proceeded with them to the lodge. Here they stripped naked, and the elder men sprinkled both the fruits and the women with consecrated water. The men, in this instance, performed the fertilising function; but the festival was, we are told, 'instituted by the women.'21 We may look at the evidences from another point of view. The primary pre-requisite for successful agriculture is rain. No rites connected with the success of agricultural operations are of such paramount importance as those designed to control the rainfall. Those rites are commonly regarded as appertaining to the women's special sphere.ª2 Following are some examples. Among the tribes of Peru and the Araucanians of Chile, the rain-making magic depends entirely upon sacred women or priestesses. Among the Abipones of the Gran Chaco no one but the eldest woman of the tribe was regarded as qualified to provide the water required in the village. Among the Guanches of the Canary Islands the pro- duction of rain was the business of priestesses; they proceeded for that purpose to the sea-shore and beat the water with rods. Through- out India the magical operations intended to secure a supply of rain are performed almost exclusively by the women.28

18 M iii. 3. 20 Ib. 19 Ib.

22 Ib. iii. 10. 21 Ib. iii. 4. 28 Ib. L-18

274 LOKAYATA

Abundant traces of the rain-making functions of the priestesses of primitive Europe survive in the attributes and activities of their successors, the witches of medieval and modern times.24 Similarly in Africa, where rain-making is a very prominent function of the sacred king, 'the association of that function with the special powers and activities of women is nevertheless apparent."25 We shall presently see certain interesting details of this rain-making magic. For the present it is sufficient for our purpose to remember that, as a vital aspect of agricultural operation, it originally belonged to the province of women. The sources of certain cults of the ancient period are clearly traced to agricultural magic. We may mention one of these. It is the cult of Dionysos, represented as 'inventing and introducing agriculture."26 In Boeotia the rites associated with Dionysos 'were the immemorial rites indispensable to the suc- cessful cultivation of the soil."27 And the rites were celebrated by women.

No man was permitted, even as late as the time of Pausanias, to enter the chapel which represented the birth-chamber of Dionysos at Thebes.28 The story of Pentheus shows that men trying to spy upon such women's mysteries were originally exposed to the danger of being torn to pieces.29

It would, in fact, appear that the whole cult associated with Dionysos was originally a women's religion, from the rites of which men were excluded. When Dionysian religion was introduced into Italy no men were, under the severest penalties, allowed to be present at the celebrations.30 The idea of rituals resting exclusively or mainly on women may appear to us to be strange. The reason, however, is our essentially patriarchal preoccupations.

At the present day in Christian and other pronouncedly patriarchal societies, such as those of Brahmanical India and of China, the notion of priestly functions being exercised by women runs counter to all conceptions of beseemingness and fitness.31

But it was not so in the ancient days, particularly among those people who were moving forward to civilization on the basis of the discovery of agriculture. 'The ancient world was full of

24 Ib. iii. 11. 26 Ib. iii. 123. 25 Ib. iii .. 13. 27 Ib. 28 Ib. iii. 125-6. 30 Briffault M iii. 128. 29 Thomson AA 139-40. 31 Ib. il. 514.

TANTRA 275

priestesses.'32 There were, for example, the Vestais of the most ancient and sacred institutions of the Roman cult.

There is every indication that both they and other priestesses, the Regina sacrorum, the Flaminicae, played in earlier times an even more important part in Italian cult. Besides the official priestesses, ancient Italy swarmed with priestly and prophetic women who exercised often an even greater influence than the official priestesses of the temples.33 Similarly there were priestesses in ancient Greece.

The most sacred and ancient shrines of Greece, such as those of Delphi and of Dodona, were served by priestly and prophetic women. The priestess of Demeter, like the Vestals at Roman spectacles, occu- pied a special throne of honour at the Olympic games; and at Hali- carnassus she was termed also the priestess of Demos, the represen- tative of the people. In the primitive cults of Greece that promi- nence was very much more pronounced, and there can be little doubt that in those earlier cults, which became later connected with th religion of Dionysos, priestly functions were exercised not only chiefly, but exclusively by women.34 The same was true of ancient Babylonia, Assyria, and Egypt. As in Greece so in Babylonia and Assyria women were inspired prophetesses of the god. It was from the priestesses and serving women of Ishtar of Arbela that Esshar-Haddon received the oracles of the goddess.35 Assyrian inscriptions called the priestesses the Mothers. In Carthage, the mediators between the great goddess and the people were women. In ancient Egypt the high-priestess of Raa was the queen herself. There were priestesses in the old Middle and New Kingdom.36 Needham37 has recently shown that in ancient China, particularly among the Taoists, magical functions originally belonged to the women.

The Chinese had a word of their own for shaman, however, namely wu .... It seems that there were two kinds of wu, the wu proper, who were women, and the hsi, who were men. In the primitive cultures, Briffault has added, 'the part played by women in religious cult is found to be even more pronounced.' He has adduced a vast number of instances in support of this. And he concluded:

Thus among our own ancestors in Western and Northern Europe, as among many uncultured races which we have already noticed in other parts of the world, it would appear that formerly religious

32 Ib .. 84 Ib. ii. 515. 33 Ib.

86 Ib. 35 Ib: 87 SCC.ii. 134.

276 LOKAYATA

and priestly functions, far from appertaining prescriptively to the sphere of masculine occupations, belonged, on the contrary, to that of the women, and that those functions have only been transferred subsequently to male priests.38 As an example of such transference, the case of the Druids may be cited.

There is evidence that they (the Druids) had ousted women as the earlier magic-wielding persons. The rites of agriculture and the possession of much primitive lore having been first of all in the hands of women, and the rites being largely magical. they were 'par excellence,' magicians. With the gradual encroachment of man on woman's domain, with the growing supremacy of gods over god- desses, men became also great magicians.39

But the point is that the encroachment of man on woman's domain, from the point of view of magical functions, could be neither abrupt nor without any trace of the former state of affairs. That is, even after the magico-religious functions were adjusted to the patriarchal conditions, traces of these being formerly the exclusive functions of women, persisted. The male, in order to adapt himself to the priestly functions, had to sur- render his sex, as it were, and to fuse himself with the female. The priests of Ishtar, of the Syrian goddess, the Galli and Kou- retes, the priests of Pessinos, the Hittite priests, those of Ephe- sian Artemis and others had physically to emasculate themselves in order to be able to assume the priestly functions.40

The priests of Cybele in historic times were eunuchs called Galloi, who first appear in Alexandrian literature about the 3rd Century B.c. Clad in female garb, they wore their hair long and fragrant with ointment, and celebrated rites to the accompaniment of flutes, cymbals, tambourines, and castanets, yelling and dancing themselves into a frenzy until their excitement culminated in self- scourging, self-laceration, and exhaustion.41

However, the commonest way of surrendering the male sex had been the use of the female dress on the part of the priests. The significance of this practice is to be understood in the con- text of the fact that, according to the primitive belief, clothes are parts of its wearer's person.42

It is a universal principle in primitive society that the distinctive dress of each sex implies that the person wearing it is engaged in those occupations which are peculiar to that sex.43

88 M ii. 543 40 Ib. iii. 213. 39 Quoted Ib. ii. 541. 42 Frazer GB 43-4. 41 ERE iv. 377. 43 Briffault M ii. 532.

TANTRA : 277

In Patagonia men, exercising shamanistic functions, are 'obliged, as it were, to leave their sex and to dress themselves in female apparel.'44 Among the Dayak tribes of Borneo all men who formerly practised magic were required to put on female dress.45

When Zulu chiefs perform rain-making ceremonies they put on a woman's petticoat. In Madagascar the priests dressed as women. In Tahiti and the Marquesas the priests of the Areois stained their skin a light colour so that it might resemble a woman's, and affected the ways and manners of women.46 The rule that the pricsts should dress like women is found among the North American Indians, the tribes of New Mexico and throughout Indonesia and Pelew Islands.47 Whitehead48 has reported that at Guichivada in the Telegu country, the priest, when officiating, has to wear woman's apparel. The same is true of the ancient days.

Among the ancient Germans male priests dressed as women. In Babylon the priests of Ishtar wore female attire, and so did those of the Syrian goddess and those of Pessiones.49 The Korybantes, the Dactyloi, the Kouretes, the priests of an- cient Rome, of Herakles at Kos did likewise.50 Briffault has given us many more examples. His conclusion: It does not appear that the universal practice is susceptible of any other interpretation than that magical power was originally associated with women, and was regarded as essentially a woman's function.51 To sum up. Agriculture was the discovery of women. Agri- cultural magic, from which the ancient religions originated, belonged exclusively to the province of women. Later, in order to adjust the religions to the patriarchal conditions, these func- tions began to be transferred to men. Even then, the male as male could not discharge these. They could become priests only by changing their sex to that of females. We may now turn to Tantrism. How far its characteristic practices and fundamental concepts can be traced back to agri- cultural magic of the primitive peoples is a point which we shall presently take up. For the moment, we may raise only one point: Is there anything in Tantrism that leads us to infer that it was originally the exclusive affair of women?

44 Ib. ii. 525. 47 Ib. 45 Ib. ii. 526. 46 Ib. ii. 531. 50 Ib. 48 Quoted Ib. iii. 50. 51 Ib. ii. 534. 4o Ib. ii. 531.

278 LOKAYATA

That among the Tantrikas, female shamanesses called bhairavis and yoginis still occupy an important place will not be doubted. Observed Needham:

It is interesting that Tantrism, like Taoism, encouraged women adepts, and we find names such as those of Laksminkara (A.D. 729) and Sahajayogini (A.D. 765) in the list of its leaders.5" Nevertheless, the Tantrikas, as we find them, are mostly males. But the question is: Do the males as males participate in the Tantrika practices? The answer is in the negative. The Acarabheda Tantra53 prescribed: Worship the five principles (panca tattva), the sky-flower (kha- puspa) and the kula woman. That will be vamacara. The ultimate female force is to be propitiated by becoming a woman (vama bhutva yajet param). The five principles, the sky-flower and the kula woman are technical terms of Tantra, the meanings of which we shall discuss later. What deserves particularly to be noted here is the instruction to become a woman while propitiating the ultimate female force: vama bhutva yajet param. Why should the Tantrikas thus try to become women? There could be only one answer to it. The practices were originally associated with women and were regarded as essentially women's functions. As we have seen, in other cases the same point is borne out by the practice of the priests wearing the female robe. It is here that we are to seek the real meaning of the word Vamacara, with which Tantrism is so intimately associated. Even very competent Sanskritists have often misunderstood the word and rendered it as the left-hand-path.54 That does not make much sense. It is vama and acara. Acara means practice or, more strictly, ritual practice. Vama means woman or the sexual urge (kama). Vamacara thus stands for the ritual practices of woman and of sex. We have seen that even the Vedic literatures contain many references to ritual practices of sexual nature. However, these were the literatures of the predominantly pastoral and, therefore, highly patriarchal peoples. Thus, such Vedic practices could not leave any exalted place for the woman in these. Tantrism, on the contrary, lays a very great emphasis on the female. It is the propitiation of the female force and it requires that while propitiating one has to become a woman.

52 SCC ii. 427. 53 VK(B) vii. 512. 54 Monier-Williams SED 941. cf. ERE xii. 196.

TANTRA 279

Obviously, it is to be traced to those ritual practices which were originally the exclusive affairs of women and, as we shall pre- sently see, sexual matters played a tremendously important part in it. That explains the meaning of vamacara. It will be objected that vamacara is only one of many forms of the Tantrika practice. We cannot, in other words, equate Tantrism with it. As a matter of fact, the vamacara of Tan- trism is sharply contrasted with another mode called daksina- cara. But it is in the vamacara that we are to seek for the original version of Tantrism. Many reasons may be adduced in support of this. That the daksinacara is only a late invention is obvious from its artificial and compromising character. One could be a daksinacari tantrika and at the same time a follower of the Vedic path.55 Secondly, some of the Tantrika texts declare that between the two, vamacara repre- sents the more genuine form of Tantrism. As the Vamakesvara Tantra50 said,

There are two forms of practices (acara), differing between them- selves as vama and daksina; one is on the daksina side from the moment of birth, while the vama path is acquired only after initia- tion (abhiseka).

This is to be understood in the context of the tremendous importance attached to initiation in Tantrism. An uninitiated Tantrika is hardly a Tantrika. And, if the initiation makes him a vamacari, the implication is that the real Tantrika is a vamacari. Thirdly, as it has been correctly observed, it is not always pos- sible to understand the real nature of Tantrism, relying too exclu- sively on the extant texts available on it.57 Much of such texts are spurious. On the other hand, Tantrism proper is largely of the nature of secret practices and the practising Tantrikas would not too readily impart the secret to the uninitiated. Yet a few of our scholars, thanks to their personal contacts with the practising Tantrikas, have been able to elicit some of these secrets. Among them, one has reported that at least the Tantri- kas of Bengal would not consider any mode other than vama- cara to be valid.58 The point is important. Apart perhaps from the solitary exception of the matriarchal South, Greater Bengal

55 This has misled even a scholar like Bagchi who thinks that Tantrism had two forms, the orthodox and the heterodox. ST i. 45. 56 VK(B) vii. 513. 57 Bandopadhyaya R (B) ii. 274. 58 VK(B) vii. 513.

280 LOKAYATA

happened to be the strongest seat of Tantrism. Lastly, the most important point is that the yogasadhana of Trantrism, i.e. its psycho- physical practices, when pro- perly understood, is found to be nothing but a desperate effort to realise the womanhood in oneself. It is, in other words, a kind of training prescribed to transform the basic personality and consciousness into that of the female. This point has so far been missed by our scholars. The modern writers on Tantrism, usually interested in discovering some hidden spiritual signifi- cance in its yogasadhana, have unfortunately overlooked the obvious and direct implication of these practices. We shall discuss the question in some detail. The yogasadhana of Tantrism is usually called the sat-cakra- bheda.59 It has for its theoretical basis the anatomical view of the Tantrikas. According to it, there are two nerve-cords (nadi, usually rendered as nerve), running parallel on the two sides of the central cord, called the susumna, which stretches, according to the Tantrikas, from near the pelvic curve to the brain; and, therefore, it is often roughly identified with the spinal cord. FIG. 1 Within the susumna is conceiv- Sat-Cakra: The Seven ed another nerve-cord, called Lotuses. the vajrakhya, within which,

59 Dutta BUS (B) ii. ii. 167 ff .; Dasgupta ORC 107 ff.

TANTRA 281

again, is conceived another nerve-cord called the citrini. In short, this citrini is the inmost core of the central nerve cord, the susumna. Seven padmas, literally lotuses, are conceived as situated on seven different positions of the susumna-cord. Modern writers on Tantrism usually call these the nerve plexuses. But the point is that in Tantrism the lotus (padma), like many other terms, is conceived exclusively in a technical sense. In Tantrism the lotus is invariably a symbolic representation of the female genital organ. Referring to the so-called Buddhist Tantrism, L. de la Vallee Poussion60 has observed: Vajra (with the variant mani) is a decent or mystic phrase for linga, the male organ, just as padma, lotus, is the literary render- ing of bhaga or yoni. Modern Buddhists, often highly puritanical, scarcely sus- pect the real meaning of the mantra or magical spell uttered by them every day: Om mani padme hum-'Om, the jewel in the lotus, Amen.' The same symbolic significance was attached to the lotus in ancient Egypt and it persists in the West, 'even when, as also among the Buddhists, they contradict the central doctrine of the religion in which they appear.'01 The seven lotuses on the susumna-cord are, therefore, nothing but the seven seats of femininity, which is, according to Tantrism, inherent in every human being. This is further confirmed by the following: According to the Tantras, these seven lotuses have definite pictorial representations (FIG. I). Among the various details of these representations, we find the diagram of a triangle within most of the padmas. The triangle, again, as we shall presently see, is invariably the Tantrika representation of the female geni- tal organ. Besides, the Tantras mention the seven Saktis, called Kulakundalini, Varuni, Lakini, etc., each residing in a lotus. Modern scholars have sometimes rendered the word sakti as force or energy. Dasgupta02 has gone so far as to call it an 'electric force.' However, in the specific context of Tantrism, all these would be inadmissible. Sakti, in the Tantras, essentially means the female. So, if the Kulakundalini and other Saktis

60 ERE xii. 196. 61 ERE v. 829. 62 Dasgupta ORC 116. Strangely, however, the same author (150) notes that in the so-called Vaisnava Sahajia literatures this kula- kundalini sakti is conceived as but Radha, i.e., the female principle of the Vaisnavas.

282 LOKAYATA

residing in the seven padmas of the susumna are at all energies or forces, we cannot but conceive them as female forces or feminine energies. Thus, there are seven seats of femininity on the central nerve-cord. Now we come to the question of the yogasadhana. By the control of breath and other means, the Tantra-sadhaka, that is, one practising the Tantrika yoga, is asked to arouse the Kula- kundalini Sakti (lit., femininity remaining coiled) in the nethermost centre of the susumna near the pelvis. The rest of the effort is to transmit this via the citrini cord, that is the cen- tral core of the susumna, upwards, towards the brain, piercing through successive stages, the other lotuses situated on the susumna. The highest lotus on the susumna is called the sahasra-dala-padma, lit., the lotus with a thousand petals, rendered by Seal as the 'thousand-lobed, the upper cerebrum with its lobes and convolutions.'63 According to the Tantrikas, this is the highest seat of consciousness. Thus, the essence of the Tantrika yogasadhana consists in arousing and vitalising the female principle residing in her nethermost centre and then transmitting her to her highest centre, the seat of consciousness, after piercing all the inter- mediary positions. It is, thus, nothing but an effort towards a total transformation of the personality into femininity. The Tantrikas naturally conceive that once the Kulakundalini Sakti reaches the sahasra-dala-padma, she is united with the mascu- linity that resides there along with the femininity and every- thing dissolves into a kind of non-duality, because, evidently, everything is lost into the pure all-absorbing femininity which is aroused within. It is not the place for us to discuss the merit of the anato- mical theory of the Tantrikas. Nor are we interested in assess- ing the spiritual bliss claimed to result from the sat-cakra-bheda. As is well known, much of the speculations on this yogasadhana which we find in the written texts of Tantrism, are but later thoughts grafted on its archaic essence. What is here relevant is only that the practice is nothing but a practical method sug- gested for the purpose of carrying out the injunction: vama bhutva yajet param, propitiate the ultimate female principle by becoming a woman. This interpretation of the yogasadhana of Tantrism will

63 Seal PSAH 221.

TANTRA 283

appear to be unfamiliar to those accustomed to the standard works on Tantrism by the modern scholars. However, the fact that this is the real interpretation is confirmed by certain other sources, particularly the Carya songs, the essential Tantrika character of which is established by all the scholars who have worked on these, though it is usually thought that this Tantrism is pronouncedly Buddhistic in nature. Referring to the Buddhistic conception of the 'female force,' Dasgupta64 observed: In the Carya songs we find frequent references to this female force variously called as the Candali, Dombi, Savari, Yogini, Naira- mani, Sahajasundari, etc. and we also find frequent mention of the union of the yogin with this personified female deity. It is important to note that this female force, thus referred to in various names, according to the standpoint of the Carya songs, does not remain outside the body of the yogin. Like the Kulakundalini and other Saktis, these female forces are within the body of the yogin. As is said in one of these songs, The yogin Kanha has become a Kapali (i.e. the Tantrika shamaness) and has entered into the practices of yoga, and he is sporting in the city of his body in a non-dual form.65 In the Carya songs, the rousing of the female principle within the body of the yogin is conceived in various ways. In one of the songs it is said, 'One is that lotus, sixty-four are the petals,-the Dombi climbs upon it and dances.'66 But this dance is compared to the flame that consumes everything in order to leave the pure femininity behind. The Candali burns in the navel and she burns the five Tatha- gatas and the goddesses like Locana and others, and when all is burnt, the moon pours down the syllable hum.67 Or, as it is put in another song: The lotus and the thunder meet together in the middle and through their union Candali is ablaze; that blazing fire is in contact with the house of the Dombi,-I take the moon and pour water. Neither scorching heat nor soak is found, but it enters the sky through the peak of Mount Meru.68 The moon pouring down the syllable hum or water, will not appear to be meaningless or mysterious if we remember that in primitive thought the moon is conceived as the giver

64 ORC 116. 65 Song No. 11. Tr. Dasgupta ORC 105. 66 Song No. 10. Tr. Dasgupta ORC 116. 67 ORC 116. 68 Ib. 117.

284 LOKAYATA

of natural fertility-a point exhaustively discussed by Briffault69 and Thomson.70 Nevertheless, there is no doubt that much of the language of the Carya songs is esoteric-sandhya bhasa, supposed to be understood only by the initiated. However, it is already obvious that from the standpoint of the Carya songs, too, the aim of yogasadhana is to rouse the female principle within and to establish her non-duality. In the Carya songs, the point is put in a highly symbolical language and the flavour of Buddhistic metaphysics is added to it. Bereft of all these, how- ever, is the same effort to carry forth in practice the peculiar instruction: vama bhutva yajct param. Vamacara, in the sense of being the practice (acara) of women (vama) is, thus, not a separable attribute of Tantrism characterising only some of its sects; it is rather the inherent feature of Tantrism as such. Modern scholars on Tantrism have discussed its yoga- sadhana in great details. But this obvious implication of the practices is generally missed. Nevertheless at least some of them have been obliged to admit that somehow or other Tantrism represented the ideal of becoming a woman. Bhandarkar71 observed:

The ambition of every pious follower of the system is to be- come identical with Tripurasundari (a name of the Tantrika female principle), and one of his religious exercises is to habituate himself to think that he is a woman. Thus the followers of the Sakti school justify their appellation by the belief that god is a woman and it ought to be the aim of all to become a woman. But the question is, why do they believe like this? Bhandarkar has not attempted to answer the question. Similarly, speaking of the Sahajias (who are Tantrikas), Bose72 remarked: The Sahajias also believe that at a certain stage of spiritual culture the man should transform himself into a woman, and remember that he cannot have experience of true love so long as he cannot realise the nature of a woman in him. By way of illustrating this, he has quoted some extremely relevant lines and the Sahajia songs:73 Discard the male (purusa) in thee and become a woman (prakriti); thou wouldst thus be of one body and placed in eternity. Love and sex only after (thou become) female (prakriti) by nature. Thou shouldst, O male, become a woman ....

69 M ii. 432, 583-94. 72 PCSC 42. 70 SAGS i. 210 ff. 73 Ib. cf. Bose SS (B) 52. 71 VS 146.

TANTRA 285

He who knows the practice of the female and the behaviour of the male ... The question, again, is why do the Sahajias formulate such an apparently peculiar human ideal? Unlike Bhandarkar, Bose tried to face the question boldly and, in fact, to justify the Sahajia stand on psychological grounds: But what is meant by a man becoming a woman? Consider the state of an old man of eighty. He is a male being, no doubt, but all his passions have suffered natural extinction and the male elements in him are conspicuous by their absence. This state of things in the grandfather is the effect of age and decay; but consider the case of a young man acquiring that state of neutrality by careful spiri- tual exercises. In him, his senses will then remain vigorous and sound, entirely free from the decaying influence of old age, but controlled to such an extent that they would produce no reaction due to external stimuli.74 The fantastic psychology on which such a statement is based does not deserve to be criticised at length. Besides what- ever may be the position the scholar has tried to justify in this manner, it is not that of the Sahajias. The Sahajias do not care to acquire any hypothetical state of neutrality by careful exer- cises; they have the positive ideal of becoming a female,-of rousing the femininity which, according to them, is inherent in all men and, thus to destroy the male in themselves. Besides, the extinction of passions, particularly sexual passion, has never been the aim of any school of genuine Tantrism, least of all the Sahajia Tantrism. Rather, it is to arouse the inner passion in them-the female passion of course-and to work themselves up to a kind of frenzy. As Sastri75 categorically stated the point, the scriptures of all these Sahajias clearly assert that if you want to attain bodhi you must indulge in kama or lust in its five forms (panca kama). But, it will be asked, why was so much importance attach- ed to the effort of becoming a woman and also, as we shall see, to matters relating to human reproduction, or more particularly, to the female role in it? Why, in other words, so much emphasis was laid on vamacara in the two senses in which we have tried to understand the word? We have so far argued that vamacara is an evidence of the fact that Tantrism was originally the prac- tice only of the women. However, this cannot by itself explain the 'importance attached to the practice.

74 Ib. 42. 75 BD (B) 71.

286 LOKAYATA

In order to answer the question just raised, it is necessary to go deeper into the original significance of Tantrism. We are going to argue that there had been very concrete material need which these practices were designed to satisfy. It was the need of the agricultural operation. But it was agriculture in its earlier stage of development, i.e., based on underdeveloped technology. At this stage the real technique had to be supplemented by an illusory one, the art of cultivation was vitally dependent upon magical powers and procedures. What, then, is the essence of this magical belief, associated with the earlier stages of agriculture? The belief is that the productive activity of nature is related to, and is even vitally dependent on, the human reproductive functions or, more parti- cularly, the reproductive function of the woman. Tantrism had its origin in this archaic belief. The yogasadhana of the Tantri- kas, the desperate effort to transform oneself into a woman or to arouse the latent femininity in oneself, was thus logically designed to undertake, however fantastically it might have been, the supremely important functions of enforcing the productive activity on nature.

3. AGRICULTUBAL RITUAL

We shall first discuss the general theoretical position impli- cit in the agricultural ritual and then return to the specific questions concerning Tantrism.

When a Catholic priest remonstrated with the Indians of the Orinoco on allowing their women to sow the fields in the blazing sun, with infants at their breasts, the men answered, 'Father, you don't understand these things, and that is why they vex you. You know that women are accustomed to bear children, and that we men are not. When the women sow, the stalk of maize bears two or three ears, the root of the yucca yields two or three basketfuls, and everything multiplies in proportion. Now why is that? Simply be- cause the women know how to bring forth, and how to make the seed which they sow bring forth also. Let them sow, then; we men don't know as much about it as they do.'76

This may be taken as a typical example of the belief under- lying agricultural magic. The main point is that human fertility, particularly female fertility, and natural fertility belong to the same order of existence. In other words, human reproduction

76 Frazer GB 28-9.

TANTRA 287

and agricultural production are linked up. Therefore, by con- tagion or by imitation the one can influence the other. In Frazer's terminology, the former would be Contagious Magic and the latter Homoeopathic Magic. The primitive peoples, Frazer observed,

.. confused the process by which human beings reproduce their kind with the process by which plants discharge the same function and fancied that by resorting to the former they were simultaneous- ly forwarding the latter.77 One of the instances, mentioned by Frazer is that of the Bagandas of Central Africa: A couple who have given proof of extraordinary fertility by becoming the parents of twins are believed by the Baganda to be endowed with a corresponding power of increasing the fruitfulness of the plantain-trees, which furnish them with their staple food. Some little time after the birth of the twins, a ceremony is performed, the object of which clearly is to transmit the reproductive virtue of the parents to the plantains. The mother lies down on her back in thick grass near the house and places a flower of the plantain between her legs; then her husband comes and knocks the flower away with his genital member. Further, the parents go through the country, performing dances in the gardens of favoured friends, apparently for the purpose of causing the plantain-trees to bear fruit more abundantly.78 In this instance the reproductive power of the male, too, is seemingly playing some part. However, in the instance of the Orinocos quoted by Frazer, that is specifically denied and the reproductive power is ascribed to the female alone. This represents the more archaic form of the belief. That is, the fertility of the women in particular is linked up with that of the earth. Frazer did not clearly note this point. Being the invention of women, agricultural production was originally looked at as being vitally related to the female reproductive function. Yet some of the facts mentioned by Frazer point to it.

The magic virtue of a pregnant woman to communicate fertility is known to Bavarian and Austrian peasants, who think that if you give the first fruit of a tree to a woman with child to eat, the tree will bring forth abundantly next year. On the other hand, the Baganda believe that a barren wife infects her husband's garden with her own sterility and prevent the trees from bearing fruit; hence a childless woman is generally divorced.79

Frazer summed up the point by saying, 'a fruitful woman makes plants fruitful, a barren woman makes them barren.'80

77 Ib. 136. 79 Ib. 28. 78 Ib. 137. 80 Ib. 29.

288 LOKAYATA

In order to understand the significance of this point more fully, we shall have to leave Frazer for the moment and follow Briffault, who has discussed it in greater detail. It is because of the fact that the women were the first agri- culturists, not only were they the original wielders of agricul- tural magic but, further, the essence of this magic consisted in linking up their fertility with that of the earth.81 The fertility of the soil retained its immemorial association with the women who had been the tillers of the earth and were regarded as the depositaries of agricultural magic.82 The supernatural source from which magic powers are regard- ed as being primarily derived is, we shall see, connected in the closest manner with the functions of women; the magic faculties which it imparts to them are, according to the primitive con- ceptions, as much a part of their natural constitution as are their reproductive functions.83 The successful carrying out of the agricultural labours of women is regarded in primitive thought as due to the magical powers with which they are credited, and is thought to be, like their power of child-bearing, inherent in their sex and to appertain to the very nature of womanhood. Primitive man thinks of the cultivation of the soil as being magically dependent for success on woman and connected with child-bearing.84 We may mention a few examples. According to the Chero- kees, the corn is supposed to have been discovered by the first woman.

When she died, she gave directions that her body should be dragged over the earth; wherever it touched the soil there sprang an abundant crop.85 A legend current among the Tupis of Brazil tells of a young woman conceived without intercourse and gave birth to a snow-white child. The child died after a year and was buried. Presently, from its grave there arose a plant that bore fruit. That was the first manioc plant on earth.86

In New Zealand the same ritual precautions and taboos apply to a woman who is with child and to one who has a patch of sweet potatoes under cultivation. The Nicobar Islanders consider that seed will germinate and prosper best if it is planted by a pregnant woman. Similar ideas are current in Europe. The peasants of South- ern Italy believe that whatsoever is sown and planted by a preg- nant woman will grow and increase as the foetus in her womb.87

The basic idea behind all these is clear. 'The fecundity of the earth and the fecundity of women are viewed as being one

81 Briffault M iii. 3. 82 Ib. iii. 117. 83 Ib. ii. 560. 85 Ib. iii. 2. 84 Ib. iii. 54. 86 Ib. iii. 54, iii. 2. 87 Ib. iii. 55:

TANTRA 289

and the same quality.'88 A pcasant-song of modern Greece still retains the core of this archaic belief: A Jewish maiden reaps the corn; Ah! the maiden is with child. At times she reaps, at times she stoops and leans upon a wheat-sheaf, and she bears a golden child.89 The manifestation of this fundamental idea is widespread. Briffault has even suggested that the idea is universal: 'the assimilation of the fruit-bearing soil to the child-bearing woman is universal.'90 If the idea of agricultural production involved in this pri- mitive belief be poor, so was that of human reproduction. It took ages for humanity to understand the causal connection between coition and conception. Some of the Australian and American aborigines are apparently still left at such a back- ward stage of knowledge as is yet to discover this connection. They believe that they get children within their womb directly from the mother earth: At Nierstein, in Hessia, as among the Australian and North American aborigines, the women believe that they get their children from a cave in the earth; and they assert that if you place your ear to the ground in the neighbourhood you can hear quite clearly the cries and voices of the unborn. The apostles of Christianity in north- ern Europe had great trouble in combating such beliefs.91 In some other places, the same belief persists in other forms. It is manifested in placing the child just after its birth on the ground, the idea evidently being that the earth is the mother of the child.

(The custom) was honoured by the Romans, and is similarly observed by very rude savages. The Veddahs of Ceylon, for instance, place the child on the ground .. The same thing is done by the Tupis of Brazil, and by the African natives on the Gold Coast and in Cen- tral Africa .... In Sicily it is believed that if a child is not laid on

hospital.92 the earth immediately after it is born it will certainly die in

The commonest Sanskrit word for childbirth is bhumistha, i.e. being placed on the earth. Evidently, it tells its own story. There are, thus, two aspects of this ancient belief. On the one hand, the plant-producing activity of the earth is viewed as magically depending upon the reproductive capacity of the female body. On the other hand, the reproductive capacity of the female is viewed as being magically dependent upon that

88 Ib. 89 Ib. 90 Ib. iii. 59. 01Ib. iii. 58. 92 Ib. L19

290 . LOKAYATA

of the earth. We may look at some more examples of the mani- festation of the belief in its second aspect. It is a countrywide custom in India that women, desirous of children, hang a piece of stone or a lump of earth on a tree. The tree is thus made to bear fruit and the expectation is that the women, too, would be similarly fruitful. In other instances, fruits and vegetables are placed on the lap of woman desiring children. Frazer pointed out that the same belief is manifested in many other India-wide customs: Again, the tree-spirit makes the herds to multiply and blesses women with offspring. In Northern India the Emblica Officinalis is a sacred tree. On the eleventh of the month Phalguna libations are poured at the foot of the tree, a red or yellow string is bound about the trunk, and prayers are offered to it for the fruitfulness of women, animals, and crops. Again, in Northern India the cocoanut is esteemed as one of the most sacred fruits, and is called sriphala, or the fruit of Sri, the goddess of prosperity. It is the symbol of ferti- lity, and all through upper India is kept in shrines and presented by the priests to women who desire to become mothers.93

The beliefs, as we find them now, have largely assumed the form of religion. There is no doubt, however, that these are magical in origin. In other instances, the same belief finds several peculiar manifestations. Barren women expose themselves to the rains, or take recourse to the act of pouring water on themselves under the idea that barrenness would thus be removed. Water, the prime giver of fertility to the earth, is also expected to make the women fertile. Natural fertility ensures human fertility.

In the Punjab, women desirous of children take recourse to bathing where the roads meet and in streets.94 In other instances from the same area, the barren woman is made to sit on a stool which is lowered into a well. She strips off, bathes, dresses and is then drawn up. When it is not possible for her to descend the well, the rite of bathing is performed under a tree. It is believed that the rite absorbs the fertile energy of the well or the tree and infuses the same into the woman. The well dries up, the tree withers away and the woman conceives.95 Among the Kandhs, the barren woman is taken by the priest to the confluence of two streams and water is sprinkled on her.96

9$ GB 119. 94 Kaul CR (Punjab) i. 235. 95 Rose CR (Punjab & N.W. Frontier Province) i. 164. " NINQ i. 47.

TANTRA 291

Among the Koi Gonds, water is poured on the head of the bride and, in the lower Himalayan region, on her hands.97 Similar beliefs are observed elsewhere: 'The fertilising rains and all the flowing water which fecundate the earth can also fecundate women.'98

Bushmen women and girls are careful to take shelter during a shower, for the rain from heaven which fertilises the earth would impregnate them also. Hottentot women believe that it would be impossible for them to have any children unless they had first stood naked in a thunder-shower. Australian women likewise believe they can be impregnated by the rain. A Mongol princess conceived through the operation of a hail-storm.99

There are examples, again, of the reverse expression of the same belief. The female fertile energy is looked at as an aid to the making of rain that fecundates the earth. Following are some well known examples. During the Gorakhpur famine of 1873-74, 'parties of women, at night time, stripped themselves naked, went out of their houses, and, taking the ploughs with them, dragged the same across their fields.'100 Again, on the occasion of a long standing drought in Mirzapur,

three women from a cultivator's family, stripped themselves stark naked, all male folk having been excluded from that place before- hand. Then two of these nude women were yoked like oxen to a

hands. plough; while the third held the handle of the plough with her

ploughing.101 Thereafter they began to imitate the action of the

Again, 102

Whenever a drought occurs in Northern Bengal the women-folk of the Rajbamsis or Kochs, ... strip themselves stark naked and, in that state of nudity, dance before the image of their rain-god. Chaubey103 and Desai104 have reported on similar practices in Gujarat, 'specially of labour classes, namely of Kurmi, Nunia, Kahar, Chamar, Dasadh, and Dhamka castes.' Practices like these are in fact widespread in other parts of the world.

In the Caucasian province of Georgia when a drought has lasted long, marriageable girls are yoked in couples with an ox-yoke on their shoulders, a priest holds the reins, and thus harnessed they

97 JRAS xiii. 430. .o Ib. ii. 452. 98 Briffault M iii. 56. 101 Ib. 921. 100 JANSB xii. 921. 105 BV vi. 175-8. 102 Ib. cf. Risely TCB i. 498. 104 JGRS vi. 22-7.

292 LOKAYATA

wade through rivers, puddles, and marshes, praying, screaming, weeping, and laughing.105 Elsewhere, there is neither prayer nor a male priest in this magical performance.

In a district of Transylvania, when the ground is parched with drought, some girls strip themselves naked, and, led by an older woman, who is also naked, they steal a harrow and carry it across the fields to a brook, where they set it afloat. Frazer noted the essential similarity of this with the rain-making rituals of India. In Servia,

in seasons of drought, a girl is stripped naked and then draped with flowers. In this state of semi-nudity, she dances at every house of which the mater familias comes out and pours upon her a jar of water while her companions sing rain-songs.106 Evidently, the idea behind all these is to infuse into nature the fertile energy inherent in the female sex. It may be noted that even at a comparatively later stage of development of human knowledge, when the connection between coition and conception was understood or at least vaguely under- stood, the old magical belief in its dual aspect largely persisted. The corn-bearing earth remained assimilated to the child-bear- ing woman. As a consequence, on the one hand, the reproduc- tive function of the female was viewed as something enhancing the productivity of nature, while, on the other hand, natural fertility was imagined to be an aid to the human reproductive capacity, particularly that of the female.

4. ORIGIN OF DURGA-PUJA

How far this archaic belief assimilating the Mother Earth with the human mother went into the making of the great god- desses of the ancient world, is a subject exhaustively treated by Briffault.107 We shall mention here only one example from Hindu religion, particularly because it has a direct bearing on the origin of Tantrism. The Markandeya Purana has a well known section called Devi Mahatmya,108 that is the glory of the goddess. In this, the goddess herself makes a rather startling declaration:

105 Frazer GB 71. The next quotation is from the same page. 106 Crooke PRFNI 39. 107 M iii. 54 ff. 108 Cantos 81-93.

TANTRA 293

Next, O ye gods, I shall support (i.e. nourish) the whole world with the life-sustaining vegetables, which shall grow out of my own body (atma deha samudbhavaih) during a period of heavy rain; I shall gain fame on the earth then as Sakambhari.109 The name Sakambhari is striking. It is rendered as 'the herb-bearing,' or, 'the herb-nourishing.' The idea is further explained by the declaration of the goddess that the life-sustain- ing plants would grow, during the rains, from out of her own body. Under this name, therefore, lies buried a piece of very archaic bclief that the plants originally grew out of the female body. We have seen living examples of this belief among the backward peoples like the Cherokees and the Tupis. Interestingly, a concrete evidence of this belief has been unearthed by the archæologist at Harappa (FIG. 2). Marshall110 described it as

a very remarkable oblong seal from the Harappa (Plate xxii, 12), on which a nude female figure is depicted upside down with legs apart and with a plant issuing from her womb. There is also an inscription in six FIG. 2 letters on the seal (FIG. 3), which, in all probability, has some light to throw on the extremely interesting name, Sakambhari. We may be yet far from deciphering the Indus script. Meanwhile, it may be noted that the idea depicted on the seal found expression in other phases of Indian culture (FIG. 4). Marshall111 observed:

Although unique, so far as FIG. 3 I am aware, in India, this Indus Seal. striking representation Note the connection of the Earth Goddess with a of the female deity with plant growing from the plants. womb is not unnatural, and her

is closely paralleled by a terracotta relief of the early Gupta Age from Bita in the United Provinces, on which the goddess is shown ... in much the same posture, but with a lotus issuing from her neck instead of from her womb. FIG. 4 Yaksi and Tree: 109 Ib. Canto 92, Sloka 43-44. 110 MIC i. 52. Kusana Period. 111 Ib.

294 LOKAYATA

The connection of the goddess with vegetation is thus clear. Chanda112 noted this some years before the Indus excavations. He also pointed out that certain well known names of the god- dess, like Annada and Annapurna, are to be understood from this angle.113 The former means, 'the giver of food', the latter 'she who is full of food.' Further, the connection between the plants and the female deities is borne out by the importance of the kula plants in Saktism:

Another aspect of Saktism that demands notice in this connection is the worship of the kula trees. The very first duty enjoined upon a Sakta on rising from bed very early in the morning is the saluta- tion of the kula trees with the formula, Om kulavriksebhyo namah. According to the Kulacudamani, 'the worshipper should salute the kula tree whenever he sees it.' The author of the Saktananda Tarangini reproduces two different lists of the kula trees .... It is said of kula trees, 'The kula yoginis always dwell in all these kula trees. No one should sleep under the kula trees nor injure them.114 However, of all the observations made by Chanda in this connection, the one connecting the origin of the Durga-puja with the vegetation world is probably the most important. Unfortu- nately, the author has not gone into sufficient details of this ritual and has overlooked some of its more significant features. We shall discuss these specially. To begin with, it is necessary to remember that the image of the Great Goddess with ten arms and riding a lion, however much familiar to us, has, really speaking, little to do with the actual ritual that forms the essence of the Durga-puja. How this image came to be associated with Durga may be an inte- resting problem for our historians to solve; nevertheless, there is no doubt that the association is comparatively late and the central ritual of the Durga-puja is not much affected by it. As Bandopadhyaya115 said, even a century back the icon-makers of Bengal knew nothing of the ten-armed lion-riding goddess sur- rounded by her sons and daughters. The fact is, as the author rightly insisted, though so much of pomp and grandeur is now lavished over this image, the real worship in the Durga-puja has very little to do with it. Instead of that, it is some ritual centred in the purna ghata (FIG. 5) and the yantra. What, then, are these? Purna ghata is an earthen vessel filled with water. This is how it is placed: Five varieties of corn-seeds (panca sasya) are

112 IAR Ch. iv. 114 Ib. 135. 113 Ib. 134. 115 R (B) ii. 265.

TANTRA 295

scattered on a lump of flattened and square-shaped clay. Then an earthen vessel, filled with water is placed on it. Rice, mixed with curd, is put into the vessel. Round the neck of this vessel is tied a piece of red thread. Its open mouth is covered with five varieties of leaves. Then an earthen-plate with rice and a betel-nut is placed on the leaves. On the plate of rice, again, is placed another fruit, preferably a green cocoanut with its stalk intact. The fruit is smeared with vermilion. On the sur- face of the vessel is drawn FIG. 5 Purna-Ghata the picture of a human baby with vermilion paste; it is called the sindura puttali. This is the purna ghata.116 The flattened square-shaped clay, on which the vessel is placed, has a diagram drawn on it, called the sarvatobha- dra mandalam (FIG. 6). It is one of those well known diagrams of Tantrism, known as the yantras. Its centre is occupied by the picture of a lotus with eight petals (asta dala padma). As we have already observed, in Tan- trism this padma or lotus is FIG. 6 Sarvatobhadra Mandalam invariably a symbolic repre- sentation of the female geni- tal organ. We may now easily see the significance of the purna ghata being placed on the sarvatobhadra mandalam. Plants and fruits are brought into contact with the female reproductive organ. The same idea is repeated in the purna ghata itself. The vessel is the female womb;117 that this womb is with a baby is indicat-

116 KKV (B) i. 239. 117 Neumann GM 39 ff.

296 LOKAYATA

ed by the picture of the sindura puttali. It is, thus, an enactment of human reproduction; the symbolic significance of the use of vermilion only confirms the point. But why this enactment of human reproduction? Obviously to ensure the multiplication of the fruits, plants and leaves. That is why these are brought in contact with the female reproductive organ. We are thus back to the magical belief that the productivity of nature is ensured or enhanced by the imitation or contagion of human reproduc- tivity or, more particularly, female reproductivity.

This is the original significance of the Durga-puja. There is hardly anything in it that can be called spiritual or religious in the strictest sense. It is just agricultural magic.

5. LATA-SADHANA AND YANTRAS

Judged by modern standards, there is probably nothing more morbid and disgustingly obscene than the sexual theories and practices of Tantrism. This explains the two attitudes of modern writers on ancient Tantrism. Either Tantrism is con- demned outright or its obscenities are hushed up, as it were, by covering these up with spiritual and mystic after-thoughts. However, neither of the two attitudes is really helpful. Meta- physical subtleties discussed in the context of Tantrism do not help us to understand it; these are after all only modern theories fancifully superimposed upon Tantrism.118 Tantrism is primi- tive, however much sophisticated may be the later views of it. Yet it would be wrong, at least not advantageous for the purpose of understanding the cultural history of our country, to reject Tantrism outright on the ground of its primitiveness. There is no denying the fact that Tantrism, with all its primitive peculiarities, exercised very powerful influence on the develop- ment of Indian culture. Its influence on the Indian mind had really been much deeper than is ordinarily suspected. The peoples of this country, for how many centuries we do not exactly know, attached tremendous importance to these very theories and practices. However morbid and absurd the survi- vals of Tantrism in the modern times might be, different signi- ficances altogether must have originally been attached to it. Since we have outgrown the conditions of those ancestors of ours, there is no need to rationalise these significances. But there

118 See sec. 9 of this Chapter.

TANTRA 297

is the question of understanding these. For it is necessary to know how we have become what we are today. With these preliminary remarks we may now proceed to understand certain fundamental features of Tantrism. In Tantrism, we find the greatest emphasis being placed on the ritual centering round the female genital organ. The usual word for it is bhaga, though, according to the terminologies peculiar to Tantrism, it is often called lata, lit., the creeper. The ritual centering round it is, thus, called bhaga yaga, lit., the ritual of the female genitalia, or lata sadhana, i.e. the ritual prac- tice concerning it. It is to be noted that a similar emphasis on the female organ is expressed in the Tantrika yantras, i.e. the symbolic representations of the same. It may be useful to begin with a quotation from Thom- son.119

In North America, when the corn is attacked by grubs, men- struating women go out at night and walk naked through the fields. Similar customs still survive among the European peasantry. Pliny recommended as an antidote to noxious insects that menstruating women should walk through the fields with bare feet, loose hair, and skirts drawn up to the hips. Demokritos, according to Colu- mella, held the same opinion; the women, he said, should run round the crop three times with bare feet and flowing hair. The idea was evidently to diffuse the fertile energy with which the female body was believed at such times to be charged. Elsewhere the energy is regarded as inherent in their sex. Among the Zulus, for example, the girls who perambulate must be naked but need not be actually menstruating at the time. This is the origin of the well known women's rite of exposing the genitalia by drawing up the skirts- a rite which in Greece was specially associated with Demeter; and the custom common to many Greek cults of female votaries walk- ing in procession without shoes, head-bands or girdles belongs to the same circle of ideas. We have already noted that the basic feature of the rain- making rite, as practised by the women-folk of our backward peasantry, is to take recourse to nudity. The idea is that the female reproductive organ, thus exposed, would enhance natural fertility. This idea is, as a matter of fact, universal among peoples surviving at the backward stages of economic development. We may note a few more examples. Among the Hidatsas,120 the women, while taking part in the agricultural ritual, strip themselves naked. A prominent feature of the rain-making ceremonies of the Baronga women and of the rites of the various women's societies in the Congo,

119 SAGS i. 206. 120 Briffault M iii. 4.

298 LOKAYATA

which has so much scandalised the civilized observers, consists in the stark nudity of the women performing these.121 'The rites of the women of barbarian Europe were marked by the same indelicate character.'122 Similarly, the Flemish women had to perform their rites in the state of nudity.123 'British priestesses danced naked painted with woad,'124 It is a universal rule that a witch, in order to perform her incanta- tions effectually, must divest herself of all clothing. In ancient Greece and Italy witches stripped when performing their magical operations.125 These are only a few of the vast number of examples cited by Briffault. We want to add to this list a very significant example to which Needham126 has recently drawn our attention. Ritual nakedness, he shows, had been an important characteris- tic of the shamanistic practices of the Chinese Taoists. More- over, this nudity had special relevance for rain-making. This is particularly significant because of the close similarity between Tantrism and Taoism, which we shall presently discuss. Readers interested in Indian examples may look up Crooke's 127 well known article 'Nudity in India, in Custom and Ritual.' 'Nudity,' he observed, 'is essential in many magical rites and appears prominently in rain magic.'128 However, the expla- nation suggested by him is manifestly wrong. The possible explanation of the custom is that clothing pollutes the magician. and its absence indicates absolute submission to the will of the Higher Powers.129 Crooke here overlooked the essential characteristic of magic and its distinction from religion. There is, in magic, no question at all of submitting to the Higher Power. The purpose, on the contrary, is practical. By exposing their reproductive organs these women are trying to coerce nature to produce. We may quote Briffault130 again: All religion, not only in its crude and primitive phases, but in its highly developed forms in the great civilizations of India, of Babylon, of Egypt, of Greece, is pervaded with conceptions, symbols and practices which, in our modern European view, appear the very reverse of religious and holy .... That fact is commonly expressed by saying that the generative powers of nature have everywhere been the object of worship. But the statement is rendered unsatis-

121 Ib. iii. 204. 123 Ib. 122 Ib. iii. 205. 124 1b. 125 Ib. iii. 208. 127 JRAI xlix. 247. 126 SCC ii. 135.

129 Ib. 128 Crooke RFNI 71. 130 M iii. 207.

TANTRA 299

factory by the obscurity attaching to the latter term. The word 'worship' does not express the rationale or motive of any primitive religious phenomenon; the objects of primitive cults are not such by virtue of their being worshipful, but by virtue of the practical utilities or dangers that are supposed to derive from them. Perhaps the word magical would have been more appro- priate than the words primitive religious phenomenon. Never- theless, the fact remains that at the later stages of cultural development, when magic had lost its original significance and became religion, the old belief in the efficacy of the female re- productive organ survived, though not with the original signi- ficance attached to it. This is the clue to the bhaga yaga and lata sadhana of the Tantrika texts. But original Tantrism is immeasurably older than the written treatises on it. As such, the stupendous importance attributed to the female genitalia in Tan- trism is to be traced back to the belief in the magical efficacy attributed to it in primitive thought. However, before we proceed to examine the specific case of Tantrism, it may be advantageous for us to review certain instances of the survival of this primitive magical belief in the religious systems of the other peoples. Briffault has drawn our attention to many examples in which ritual nudity, that is, direct resort to the exposure of genitalia, formed an important feature of the religious functions. Evidently, the same idea underlies the use of models of the female organ. An interesting example of this is unearthed by the Indus excavations.131 In the famous shrine of Kamakhya,132 the image of the goddess is nothing but the yoni, the female genital organ. Other instances are mentioned by Briffault. It should further be noted that when the magical functions were transferred from the women to the men, the human productive power was considered largely to be centred also in the male organ. By an extension of the same rule, therefore, on the one hand, even the male priests were to strip themselves,133 while, on the other hand, emblems and models of the phallus began to be widely used in religious functions. 'In ancient Egypt the women carried phallic images operated by strings, as is still done in West Africa and the Congo.'134 Athenian women of the most noble families did the same thing at the Thesmophoria185

131 Marshall MIC i. Pl. XIII. 7. 132 VK(B) q.v. Kamaksya. 133 Briffault M iii. 209. Cf. Crooke RFNI 71 ff. 134 Briffault M iii. 205. 135 Ib. iii. 206.

300 LOKAYATA

and the phallic emblems formed part of the cult of Vesta, the patroness of matronly virtue.136 'The obscenity,' Briffault137 commented, 'is no more a gratuitous manifestation of depravity in Africa than it was in Rome.' We may now return to the problem of bhaga yaga and lata sadhana in Tantrism. From the point of view of our argu- ment, we may expect to find the importance placed on the female genitalia in Tantrism being linked up with the source of natural fertility and, as such, with material prosperity. Inspired solely by the Tantrika tradition, bhaga is looked at as the sum total of all the six forms of material prosperity, called sadaisvarya.138 How the word denoting the female organ came to mean the source of all conceivable forms of material wealth, is a question which is not generally asked. But it is a valid one and there can be only one answer to it. According to primitive belief, the female organ is the source of all material prosperity. It may be objected that the sense of being the source of wealth is older. It occurs in this sense even in the earlier parts of the Rig Veda.139 If this were really so, we have only to look at our question from a different angle: How did the word origi- nally denoting material wealth come eventually to be used for the female organ? That material wealth was conceived in Tantrism mainly in agricultural terms, is evidenced by the other word used in the Tantras for the female genitalia, viz., lata. The literal meaning of lata is plant or creeper. In Tantrism, however, it stands for the female organ. Evidently, some relation between the two is imagined in Tantrism. That the relation between the two is an intrinsic feature of Tantrism is evidenced also by the yantras. Yantras are complex diagrams. It is sometimes suggested140 that the Tantrikas attach so much importance to these because gods are supposed to descend to take their seats on these. Such explanations are fictitious from the real Tantrika point of view. A Tantrika, when he really confides in you, will frankly confess that these diagrams are but representations of the female organ. Competent scholars have in fact repeatedly noted this point. Bhandarkar141, for example, observed as follows on the sri cakra

136 Ib. 138 VK(B) xiii. 222. 137 Ib.

139 We shall discuss this in Chapter VIII. 140 VK(B) xv. 545. 141 VS 146.

TANTRA 301

or the sri yantra which he considered to be a feature of the genuine form of Tantrism:

It consists in the worship of a picture of the female organ drawn in the centre of another consisting of a representation of nine such organs, the whole of which forms the Sri Cakra.

FIG. 7 Yantra FIG. 8 Yantra

FIG. 9 FIG 10 Yantra Sri-yantra

There are in Tantrism various yantras (FIGs. 7-10) bearing different names and the Sri Cakra is only one of them. But the essential feature in all of them is the same. It consists in the re- presentation of the female organ either by the picture of a lotus (padma) or by the diagram of a triangle, usually by both.

302 LOKAYATA

This is not something new. What is generally overlooked, however, is the significance of another important feature of the yantras. In majority of the yantras, we also see the picture of a creeper surrounding all the four sides of the centrally repre- sented female organ. This creeper is called the kalpa-latika (lit., the wish-yielding creeper). If we ask ourselves why the creeper should so closely be related to the female organ in the Tantrika yantras, there would possibly be only one answer. The yantras of Tantrism have their sources in the same archaic belief which found expression in the name Sakambhari, a concrete relic of which is unearthed among the ruins of Harappa. We mav now review the possible origin of the mode of representing the female organ with the diagram of a triangle, so common to the Tantrika yantras. It will throw some light on the development of the early ideas of production and re- production.

FIG. 11 Venus of Menton. Venus of Lespugne. Venus of Willendorf. FIG. 12 FIG. 13 Soapstone, Austria. Ivory. France. Limestone, Austria.

The oldest extant piece of statuary was discovered in Lower Austria (FIG. 13). It belongs to the upper palaeolithic stage and is called the 'Venus of Willendorf.'142 It is the figure of a fat, giant-hipped, heavy-breasted and nude woman, probably repre- senting the state of pregnancy. That this could not be an object of art in our sense is evidenced by the fact that it was found

142 Limestone found near Kremas, Austria (Aurignacian).

TANTRA 303

painted with red ochre, a circumstance definitely pointing to its ritual use. Evidently, she was a fertility goddess. What deserves to be noted, however, is that in spite of the nudity, little im- portance was attached to the genitalia; apparently the emphasis was on the breasts and the womb. This is significant. In certain other statuaries of the upper palaeolithic period we find similar emphasis being laid on the breasts. These early figurines (FIGs. 11-13) obviously belong to a stage of development of human knowledge where the role of the genitalia in the reproductive process was not known. One of the carliest view was that conception began in the breasts;143 later the child descended to the abdomen. It is conjectured, that the idea originated from the circumstance of the carly signs of pregnancy appearing on the breasts. Such belief is still found to persist among the Sinaugolos144 of British New Guinea. It was probably from such a view of things that the image of the many-breasted Mother arose among the Aztees.1+> She was also the Mother Earth, conceived as an aid to natural fertility. The same idea evidently formed the basis of the Ephesian Artemis, who was also conceived as a many-breasted woman and was, originally, conceived to enhance the fertility of the earth.146 It may be remembered that the primitive technique of emphasising the importance of a thing is either to magnify its size or to multiply its number. If the breasts were originally viewed as being specially related to human reproduction, then the palaeo- lithic mothers with their highly exaggerated breasts, like the Mother of the Aztecs and the Artemis of Ephesus with their multiple breasts, were only taking recourse to the reproductive principle for the purpose of enhancing the productivity of the earth. But mankind did not remain stranded at this poor level of understanding the mystery of human reproduction. Progress was gradually made towards a more advanced view of the role of the female genital organ in the reproductive process. Accord- ingly, in the next stage, we find emphasis being shifted from the breasts to the genital organ. Evidently, the bhaga yaga and lata sadhana of Tantrism had their source in such a stage of human knowledge. This is also illustrated by a series of well known images of female deities in ancient days (FIGS. 14-22). Significantly, in a large number of these, we find a distinct ten-

143 ERE x. 242. 145 ERE v. 129. 144 Tb. 146 Ib.

FIG. 14 N .- W. Frontier, FIG. 15 Mesopotemia FIG. 16 Ukraine India. (3000 B.c.)

FIG. 17 India. FIG. 18 FIG. 19 Indus Phoenicia. (c. 800 B.C.) (c. 2500 B.C.)

FIG. 20 FIG. 21 FIG. 22 Mesopotemia (c. 1400 B.C.) Egypt. Thrace. (c. 2000 B.C.) (Neolithic)

TANTRA 306

dency to represent the female genitalia with the diagram of a triangle. Presumably, the clue to the triangles of the Tantrika yantras is to be sought in this tendency.

6. THE KHAPUSPA

Before the Bhils147 begin sowing they sct up a stone at the top of the field and smear it with vermilion. Why do they do it? What is the significance attached to the vermilion? We are goining to argue that the vermilion stands here for the men- strual blood. And since in primitive thought menstrual blood is viewed as the basis of human reproductivity, the act of smear- ing it on the stone is designed to infuse the productive energy into the field. This alone can explain the tremendous significance attached in Tantrism to the menstrual blood or its substitutes. We begin with Thomson:

It is important to observe that the magic of human fecundity attaches to the process, not to the result-to the lochial discharge, not to the child itself; and consequently all fluxes of blood, mens- trual as well as lochial, are treated alike as manifestations of the life-giving power inherent in the female sex. In primitive thought menstruation is regarded, quite correctly, as a process of the same nature as childbirth.

to be feared. This magic is ambivalent. Its very potency makes it something From one aspect the woman who may not be approached is inviolable, holy; from another aspect she is polluted, unclean. She is what the Romans called sacra, sacred and accursed. And hence in patriarchal society, after woman has lost her control of religion, it is the negative aspect that prevails. Not only are her sexual functions treated as impure in themselves, but the same condemnation attaches to her feminine nature as such. She becomes the root of all evil, Eve, a witch. These ideas are universal. There is no sphere of human life in which a greater uniformity can be observed than in the treatment of menstrual and puerperal women. The subject is discussed at length by Briffault, who has collected examples from every branch of the human race and every stage of culture.148 Aristotle, Pliny, and other naturalists, ancient and medieval, believed that the embryo is formed from the blood retained in the uterus after the stoppage of menstruation. This is the blood of life. Hence the commonest method of placing persons or things under a taboo-menstrual, lochial, or any other interdict formed on this original pattern-is to mark them with blood or the colour of blood. And in keeping with the ambivalent nature of the taboo itself this sign of blood has the double effect of forbidding contact and impart- ing vital energy. It is a world-wide custom for menstruating or pregnant women to daub their bodies with red ochre, which serves at once to warn the men away and to enhance their fertility. In many marriage ceremonies the bride's forehead is painted reda sign that she is forbidden to all men save her husband and a. gua-

147 Crooke: RFNI 250. 148 SAGS i. 205. L-20

306 LOKAYATA

rantee that she will bear him children. This is the origin of cosme- tics. Among the Valenge, a Bantu tribe, every woman keeps a pot of red ochre, which is sacred to her sex and used to paint her face and body for ceremonial purposes. Of the many occasions for which she needs it the following may be noted. At the end of her confine- ment both mother and child are anointed with it: in this way the child will live and the mother is restored to life. At initiation the girl is painted red from head to foot: so she is born again and will be fruitful. At the conclusion of mourning, after stepping over a fire, the widow is painted the same colour: so she returns from the contamination of death. : Red is renewal of life. That is why the bones from upper palaeo- lithic and neolithic interments are painted red. The symbolism be- comes quite clear when we find, as we commonly do, that the skele- ton has been laid in the contracted or uterine posture. Smeared with the colour of life, curled up like a babe in the womb-what more could primitive man do to ensure that the soul of the departed would be born again?149 We may mention here only one or two typical examples of the survival of this primitive belief in the later religions of India. In Bengal, it is currently believed that at the time of the first burst of rain, Mother Earth prepared herself for being fertilised by menstruating. During that time there is an entire cessation from all ploughing, sowing, and other farm work.150 The religious ceremony of the day is called amvuvaci. Similarly, in Travancore, there is a very important periodic ceremony performed in the temple. This is known as trippukharattu, or purification ceremony, in connection with the menstruation of the goddess, which is believed to take place about eight or ten times a year. The cloth wrapped round the metal image of the goddess is found to be dis- coloured with red spots, exactly as in the case of menstruation. The discoloured cloth is sent up to the ladies of the Vanjipuzha or Talavur Patti houses for examination, and, on its being passed by them, the image is removed to a separate shed, the inner and prin- cipal shrine being closed for the period. The cloth is given to the washerwoman and never used again for the goddess. There is a great demand among the people for the discoloured cloth, which passes as a holy relic.151 In Chunganur, too, great importance is attached to the menstruation of goddess Parvati.152 Similar is the case of the goddess Kamakhya of Assam.153 If the origin of Tantrism is to be traced to the magical belief confounding the productive and reproductive processes, it is only natural to find great importance attached in it to the menstrual blood.

1 .149 Ib. i. 209-10. rindo Gait CI i. 189. 152 Ib. ii. 436. 151 Briffault M ii. 435-6. 153 VK(B) Kamaksya. .

TANTRA 307

The Tantrikas have a technical term for it. It is usually kusuma or puspa, sometimes mystically called the khapuspa. This terminology too suggests a close affinity to the plant- world. Kusuma or puspa means flower. The plant yields fruits, just as the female organ bears babies. Thus the female organ is called lata or the plant. Again there is flower before the fruit, just as menstruation comes before pregnancy. So the menstrual blood is called the flower-the kusuma or puspa. The Tantrika literatures go into great details over the question of menstrual blood. Bloods of different types of women are given different names.154 This aspect of the discussion does not interest us much. What is necessary to remember is that certain practices of the Tantrikas, like those concerning the use of vermilion or the choice of the blood-red colour for their clothes, derive their significance from the same belief. The belief, as it survives today, is of course a superstitious dross. And nothing will probably appear to our modern taste to be more vulgar and repulsive than the elaborate Tantrika dis- cussions of it. There is nothing to wonder at the archaic belief becoming a superstition today; it is simply the result of the advances in technology and knowledge. However, the sense of uncleanliness we frequently attach to the menstrual blood, pro- bably owes its origin to another factor. It is a new superstition replacing the older one. It is largely because of our patriarchal preoccupations that we fail to view the menstrual blood objectively.

7. THE FIVE MA-S 'How, O Devi (goddess), could one repeat the Candi mantra without "The Five,"' says a Tantrika text.155 'The five ma-s, O Devi, are pleasing to the gods,' declares another.156 Many more texts lay a similar emphasis on The Five or, more specifically, The Five Ma-s. The Five, so reverentially referred to, are madya (wine), mamsa (meat), matsya (fish), mudra (fried corn) and maithuna (sexual intercourse). Since all these words begin with the letter ma, these are technically referred to as pancamakara, the five ma-s. The list is no doubt appalling. Those among the modern

154 Ib. vii. 522. 155 Ib. vii. 532. 156 Ib. vii. 531.

308 LOKAYATA

scholars who have tried to rationalise or justify Tantrism, have naturally found the pancamakara to be the greatest stumbling block. Efforts are made to mystify it: the real significance of pancamakara is too subtle or too hidden to be understood by the uninitiated. Or, as is sometimes said, the practices are not for the ordinary men; only the spiritually advanced could go in for these. Or, the practice of the pancamakara is difficult and dangerous-more difficult, in fact, than walking on a razor's edge and playing with wild tigers.157 And so on. Justifications like these do not interest us. Their apparent absurdities only betray the weakness of the position sought to be justified. Advanced technology and greater knowledge of the laws of nature make it difficult for us either to admire or justify these archaic practices. It is necessary, however, to understand them. And this understanding cannot come unless we try to view them from the position of our remote ancestresses who, with the discovery of agriculture, were only beginning to advance towards civilization. Of the five ma-s, we shall specially discuss madya and maithuna, i.e. the ritual resort to wine and sexual intercourse. 'There can be hardly any objection to sanctioned meat, fish and fried corn,' says a contemporary scholar,158 'yet we feel doubtful as to how wine and sexual intercourse could be features of a religious practice.' Yet the Tantras are quite categorical on the importance of both. There cannot, for example, be any sadhana (ritual prac- tice) without the use of wine. As one of the texts declares, There cannot be any siddhi (ritual success) whatsoever without wine; therefore, you must drink it carefully, and make her drink too, and only then you should utter the spells.159 Obviously, this cannot be accepted as the philosophy of a civilized people. But we shall have to understand this in the light of what is generally known about primitive peoples sur- viving today. The Oraons,160 before transplanting the rice-seedlings, make a libation of rice-beer on the ground. The Baigas,161 after clear- ing the forest and determining the boundary of the cultivable area, periodically circuit round the village limit, scattering a line of wine along the boundary. The work is entrusted to the

157 Bandopadhyaya R(B) ii. 251. 158 Bhattacharya TP(B) 56. 160 Crooke RFNI 250. 159 VK(B) vii. 526. 161 Ib. 83-4.

TANTRA 309

Baiga magician, who often gets drunk himself while perform- ing it. He is then supposed to acquire great magical power,- 'a quasi-divine afflatus', as Crooke has put it. Crooke rightly suggested that the same idea, namely that liquor is the vehiclo of magical power, lies at the root of the ritual of the Gonds round the Mahua tree. They distil their liquor from the corolla tubes of the Mahua, and this liquor is used by them 'in various religious and domestic rites.' Other examples of the ritual use of liquor for the purpose of averting the diseases or of ensuring the fertility of the fields may be found in Crooke.162 Why should the liquor be thus looked upon as a promoter of magical power, and more specifically, as an agent that could enhance the fertility of the field? The answer is that in primitive thought it is, like blood, taken as a life-giving principle. This will be evident from two sets of examples. In the first set liquor is resorted to for the purpose of overcoming death. In the second the use of liquor is designed to ensure birth. Thus it is the agent that overcomes death and ensures birth. That wine overcomes the contamination of death is eviden- ced from the following: The Irish wake is a familiar example of the practice of drink- ing to celebrate death. In West Africa the Tshi people drink heavily during the fast which follows a death, and the mourners are gene- rally intoxicated. The same is the case among the Yorubas. But it is chiefly after the funeral that drinking is the rule of the feast. At funerals among the Woolwa Indians there is much drink- ing of mishla. A long line of cotton is stretched, like a telegraph wire, from the house of the dead, where the drinking takes place, to the burial-ground where the body has been deposited. I have seen the white thread following the course of the river for many miles, crossing and re-crossing the streams several times.' As soon as a Bangala man dies, the family gets in large supplies of sugar- eane wine. Dancing and drinking are carried on for three or four days and nights, or until the wine is finished. The Guiana Indians drink and dance at the funeral feast. Among the Tshinyai of the Zambesi the native beer, pombe, plays a considerable part in post-funeral rites. For the ceremony of Bona, a large quantity is prepared. Holes are bored above the grave and pombe is poured in. In one hole, in front of the house where the grave is, the mourners wash their hands with pombe. As the procession retires, a widow, of the deceased (she is called musimo, the spirit), her head covered with calico, constantly calls out for pombe, which she drinks beneath the covering. At the house of the head widow a large hole is dug and well cemented. This is filled with pombe and every one lies down and drinks it without help of spoon. or vessel. A feast follows, consisting of pombe and meat.163 Similar use of wine in the funeral rite is not at all un-

162 Ib. 100, 119, 127, 133, 176, 422. 163 ERE v. 79-80.

310 LOKAYATA

common in India, particularly among the so-called depressed classes. Evidently, wine in these rituals are designed to over- come the contamination of death and to ensure the renewal of life. One of the commonest name for locally made wine in India is sanjivani, or mrita sanjivani, that which gives life, or, that which gives life to the dead. The same belief probably explains the use of wine in the initiation rites, the essence of which is death and rebirth: the child, as child, dies, and is born again as an adult. It is no wonder, therefore, that wine, as the life-giving agent, should find an important place in these rituals.164 In primitive society, initiation is followed by marriage and marriage means the preparation for the act of procreation. As is to be expected, therefore, drinks, in various ways, play an important part in marriage rituals. At Tipperah weddings the bride receives a glass of liquor from her mother. She takes this to the bridegroom, sits on his knee, and, after drinking some of the liquor, gives the rest to him .... Among the Nakri Kunbis of Thana, liquor is given to the pair when the wedding ceremony is completed. The girl relatives of the Khyoungtha bride bar the entrance to the village against the bride- groom with a bamboo. Across this he has to drink with them a 'loving-cup of fraternity' before he is allowed to enter. At weddings in Morocco the priest hands to the pair a cup of wine which he has blessed. When both have drunk of it, the glass is dashed to the ground by the bridegroom, with 'a covert meaning that he wishes they may never be parted until the glass again becomes perfect'. the Larkas, a cup of beer is given to each of the two parties; they Among

mix the beer, and then drink it. This completes the marriage. In Moluccas, Japan, Bengal, Brazil, Russia, Scandinavia, and many districts of Europe, the bridal pair drink, at the marriage ceremony or part of it, wine or beer from one vessel. At Beni-Israel weddings, the bridegroom pours wine into the bride's mouth. In Korea and China the pair drink wine from two cups, which are tied together by a red thread. In Christian countries the rite is separated from the marriage ceremonial proper, but is carried out indirectly when the pair receive together the wine of Communion, which is to be partaken of immediately or soon after the marriage itself. Among the Gonds, the respective fathers of the bridal pair drink together.165 Probably one of the best known examples of the belief in wine inducing the reproductive urge in the human being is retained in the creation-legend of the Santals.166

From two birds' eggs came the two original human beings, a boy and a girl, called Haram and Ayo. They had no clothes. Still they felt no shame, and they lived in great peace. But they were not multiplying their own species. So one day, Lita, the principal

164 ERE v. 80. 165 Ib. 166 JASB (sc) xix. 12-4.

TANTRA 311

bonga or spirit, came to them and said: Where are you grand- children? How are you? I am your garndfather; I have come to pay a visit. I see you are well; but there is one great joy that you have not tasted. Do brew beer, it has a very sweet taste.' Then he taught them how to prepare beer. All three went to the forest. Lita showed them the roots. The two dug up and brought these. Then they learnt to prepare beer. Then Lita said to them: 'Now both of you drink this after first having poured on the ground some to Lita. Tomorrow I shall come again and visit you.' Thereupon they made three leaf-cups and filled them with beer; having done this, they poured on the ground the contents of one in the name of Lita; then they drank themselves. When they were drinking, they commenced to enjoy amorously; continuing this they both drank all and also became very drunk. It became night; they lay down together. When it became dawn Lita suddenly came. He called out to them: 'How is it, grandchildren, have you got up or not? Do come out.' When they regained consciousness, they recognised that they were both naked and felt very ashamed. Therefore they answered to him, 'O Grandfather, how can we possibly go out? We are awfully ashamed. We are both of us naked. Last night when we had become drunk from beer, we have done something bad.' Lita then said to them, 'It does not matter.' And smiling to himself he went away .... Now they got children, seven boys and seven girls.

The implication of the legend is quite clear. The original human pair were led to the discovery of the beer, without which there was no reproductive function. So in primitive thought wine is the agent that helps men not only to overcome death but also to create new life. Like blood, it is the principle of life itself. How far the psycho-physical effects produced by liquor were at the root of such a view may be an interesting subject for investigation. The presumption is that it was largely so. Intoxication could easily have been mistaken for a state of being possessed by some life other than that of oneself. It is because of some such idea that wine is frequently used by the shamans and priests for chemically inducing the state of inspiration. Briffault167 has mentioned some interesting examples. All these obviously go back to the primitive idea concerning the magical efficacy of liquor, particularly of its life-giving aspect. It is here that the ritual use of wine for enhancing fertility of the earth is to be sought. From this point of view, therefore, the emphasis laid in Tantrism on the use of wine appears to be only logical. Some of our traditional scholars, in defence of Tantrism, argued that the ritual use of meat and wine in Tantrism cannot

167 M iii. 133.

312 LOKAYATA

be objeeted to, for it is not extrinsic to the Vedic orthodoxy itself.

That the provisions of the Tantra which relate to the panca- tattva are opposed to the Veda, is a notion which is declared by the Indian Tantrika pandits to be erroneous.168 The use of meat and fermented liquor, it is pointed out by them, was quite popular among the Vedic peoples and it formed part of their ritual system. We shall confine ourselves specifically to the use of wine. The commonest form of wine used by the Vedic peoples was called soma. It occupies an overwhelmingly important place in the Vedic literatures. Soma was also a Vedic god and the im- portant ritual centering round it (soma-yaga) is quite well known. Curiously, this fermented liquor is looked upon in the Vedic literatures, as the agent with which men can overcome death and attain immortality. 'We have drunk the soma and have become immortal,'169 declared a Vedic poet. The more significant, though comparatively less used, of the intoxicating drinks, was sura. This word is retained in the later times as the name for alcoholic drinks in general. Evid- ently, it was stronger than soma and its use was more specifically restricted to ritual purposes. It formed part of the vajapeya, sautramani, and other Vedic rituals.170 What is particularly significant from the point of view of our argument is that, in the Vedic literatures, this sura was related to 'the ceremonial rituals in connection with fertility magic,' a point already noted by the advanced Vedic scholarship of today.171 What, therefore, do all these-particularly the ritual use of the sura in the Vedic literatures really mean? Does it mean, as some of the modern Tantrika pandits have claimed, that the pancatattva of the Tantras has the sanction of the ancient Vedic usages? Such a view would be fantastic, if for no other reason than this that the madya of the Tantrika pancamakara is but the ritual use of wine intrinsically related to the supreme importance of the female principle. In other words, the Vedic and the Tantrika views are fundamentally different and as such it is futile to justify the latter by the former. Never- theless, the ritual use of soma and sura in the Vedic literatures has its own interest. Like many other characteristic Vedic

168 Avelon PT Pref. xxxiv. 170 Keith RPV 339, 352-3, 265, 384, etc. 169 R.V. iv. 48. 3.

171 Ib. 91.

TANTRA 313

practices, it represents the survival of the primitive past of the Vedic peoples themselves. They were predominantly pastoral, and as such the necessity of the fertility ritual was not felt by them so keenly as by the early agriculturists. As we have already seen, the intensity of the magical beliefs and practices is greatest at the initial stage of agriculture. This is the reason why the use of sura could not attain that overwhelming import- ance in the Vedic view as in Tantrism. Yet, as an evidence of the survival of primitive belief in the Vedic literatures, this ritual use of soma and sura shows that the early Vedic peoples, whose cultural inheritance later Brahmanism so proudly claimed, were believing and behaving in much the manner in which the Oraons and the Baigas in India still do; besides the so-called lower castes of the country, who are still attributing great signi- ficance to the use of wine in the funeral and the marriage rituals, being backward, retain a close parallel to the early Vedic beliefs and practices, which later Brahmanism with all its hatred for these so-called lower castes, tried to justify. We may now proceed to discuss the other ma of the panca- makara, namely maithuna or the sexual intercourse. Frazer,172 referring to the spring and summer festivals of Europe, observed: 'We may assume with a high degree of probability that the profligacy which notoriously attended these ceremonies was at one time not an accidental excess but an essential part of the rites, and that in the opinion of those who performed them the marriage of trees and plants could not be fertile without the real union of the human sexes. It may be difficult, he added, to come across this archaic belief in its original form in the civilized Europe of today. But ruder races in other parts of the world have consciously emplo- yed the intercourse of the sexes as a means to ensure the fruitfulness of the earth; and some rites which are still, or were till lately, kept up in Europe can be reasonably explained only as stunted relics of a similar practice. Evidently, the practice reflects a stage of the development of human knowledge at which the connection between coition and conception was rightly understood. Therefore, the logic of the practice is that coition, which ensures fertility of the human beings, would magically enhance the fertility of the earth. Following are some of the evidences mentioned by Frazer.179 The Pipiles of Central America, abstained from sexual inter- course for four days before sowing,

172 GB 135-6ff. Italics added. 173 Ib. 136ff.

314 LOKAYATA

in order that on the night before planting they might indulge their passions to the fullest extent; certain persons are even said to have been appointed to perform the sexual act at the very moment when the first seeds were deposited on the ground. This sexual intercourse was considered by them to be a duty 'in default of which it was not lawful to sow the seed.' In some parts of Java, at the time of the blooming in the rice field, the peasants take their wives to the fields at night and 'engage in sexual intercourse for the purpose of promoting the growth of the crop.' Certain practices of the European peasants represent the survivals of the same belief. 'In some parts of Germany at harvest the men and women, who have reaped the corn, roll together on the field.'174 In the Ukraine 'the young married people lie down in couples on the sown fields and roll several times over on them in the belief that this will promote the growth of the crops.' 175 Briffault176 made the following observation: The rites immemorially associated with the multiplication of the tribe's food were, when that food came to be derived chiefly from the cultivation of the soil instead of from hunting, naturally extended to the promotion of the earth's fertility by ritual magic. The belief that the sexual act assists the production of an abundant harvest of the earth's fruits, and is indeed indispensable to secure it, is uni- versal in the lower phases of culture. It is necessary to remember one point about this ritual intercourse. Often it also represents a ceremonial reversion to the ancestral practice of sexual communism, i.e., collective sexual relationship, or group-marriages.177 To the civilized observers, therefore, it may very easily appear to be a case of mere sexual licence. But that would not be correct.

It would be unjust to treat these orgies as a mere outburst of unbridled passion; no doubt they are deliberately and solemnly

of man.178 organised as essential to the fertility of the earth and the welfare

Briffault179 observed that this traditional licence was origi- nally regarded with a very different sentiment. This is further evidenced by the fact that a sanctity, which often appears to us to be almost religious in character, is attributed to this ritual promiscuity.

174 Ib. 137. 176 M iii. 196. Italics added. 175 Ib. 178 Frazer GB 137. 177 Thomson SAGS i. 67 179 R. Briffault M iii. 196.

ȚANTRĄ : 315

Bearing these in mind we may quote some well known examples:

Among the Peruvians the festival held at the ripening of the palta, or alligator pear, was preceded by a period of severe fasts and abstinence. Men and women then assembled naked, and at a given signal ran a race, and every man had intercourse with the woman he caught. Similar yearly festivals at which sexual licence was unchecked took place in Chile, in Nicaragua, among the tribes of New Mexico, and are observed by the native tribes of Mexico at the present day. The sacred festivals of Jurupari among the Uaupes and other tribes of the Amazon region are scenes of unrestricted sexual licence in which old and young join without restraint. Among the Choroti every ritual dance is followed by public promiscuity, and similar rites are observed among the Bororo. Among the Pata- gonians the chief religious festival, or Kamaruko, concludes with a general sexual orgy. Among the tribes of the plains of North Ame- rica and of the lower Mississippi valley the harvest festivals were attended with general licence, and the old men and women exhorted the younger ones to indulge without restraint.180 In the Leti, Sarmata, and some other groups of islands which lie between the western end of New Guinea and the northern part of Australia, the heathen population regard the sun as the male principle by whom the earth or female principle is fertilised .... Once a year at the beginning of the rainy season, Mr. Sun comes down into the holy fig-tree to fertilise the earth .... On this occasion pigs and dogs are sacrificed in profusion; men and women alike indulge in a saturnalia; and the mystic union of the sun and the earth is dramatically represented in public, amid song and dance, by the real union of the sexes under the tree. The object of the festival, we are told, is to procure rain, plenty of food and drink, abundance of cattle and children and riches from grandfather sun.181 Among the Dayaks of British North Borneo, at the festival called Bunut by which the fertility of the soil and a plentiful harvest of paddy are secured, general licence takes place lasting exactly a quarter of an hour, after which perfect order and beseemingness are restored .... In the Malay Peninsula, during the rice-harvest the men of the Jakun tribes exchange wives.182 A huge mass of evidences like these are amassed by Briffault.183 But let us now take some example from our own country. The greatest festival of the Santals is called the Sohrae. Modern scholars have already noted its obvious bearing on agriculture. This is how one of them has described the festival: Five days are spent in dancing, drinking and debauchery. It is significant that, at the commencement, the village headman gives a talk to the village people in which he says that they may act as they like sexually, only being careful not to touch certain women; otherwise they may amuse themselves. The village people reply that they are putting twelve balls of cotton in their ears and will not pay any heed to, nor hear or see, anything.184

180 Ib. iii. 196-7. .181 Frazer GB 136. 188 Ib. iii. 196-209. 182 Briffault M iii. 197. 184 Bodding SD v. 336.

316 LOKAYATA

The sexual licence said to be general during the Maghe festival in Kolhan, and also during the other festivals, is not of a promis- cuous nature. The use of obscene language by the Hos during the Maghe festival when sons revile their parents and parents their children, has been misinterpreted by Col. Dalton. Such customs as we find among the Hos are not unique, or without parallel elsewhere ... (it) is an essential agricultural rite.185 Both among the Eastern and Western Rengmas (a Naga tribe), the vice of prostitution for gain is absolutely unknown; but in the latter group sexual morality, though strict in some villages, is very lax in others. Everywhere laxity is at its height during the season of sowing. The reason given is that more liquor is drunk then but it is more probably true that there is an almost unconscious belief that the union of the sexes will in some way make the fields fer- tile 186 The Konyak village of Wakching provides the best example I know of the belief that the sexual act is beneficial to the food supply. There rich men arrange for young men to screen off little sleeping places on the verandahs of their granaries and bring girls there for the night. The arrangement is with individuals, and any young man who so desires will have a granary verandah allotted to him for the purpose.187 Here is another interesting example of how much im- portance is attached by the Nagas to the sexual act for the purpose of achieving agricultural success. A part of the agricul- tural operations they observe is known as the path-clearing ceremony. Zemi (Kacha Nagas) villagers of the Pelekima group make by a path they clear at this time a model of the sexual organs in coition. The female organ is exactly modelled in clay, with dry grass repre- senting the pubic hair, while a wooden stake serves for the male organ. Parties of young men and girls going to and from the fields stop by these models, while one of the young men works the stake

party.188 in an appropriate way, to the great amusement of the rest of the

Crooke pointed out that the original purpose of the Holi festival was to promote the fertility of men, animals and crops and it was characterised by 'the most licentious debauchery and disorder .... It is the regular Saturnalia of India.'189 In the yearly agricultural festival of the Parganait of the Rajmahal Hills, the unmarried of both sexes indulge in promis- cuous sexual intercourse.190 During the spring festival of the Bhuiyas of Orissa, 'all respect for blood-relations and husbands is set at nought.'191 The Kotas of the Nilgiri Hills observe a festival of continuous licentiousness.192 During the spring festi- val, the women-folk of the Assam-tribes behave as they like,

185 Majumdar AT 143. 187 Ib. 43n. 186 Mills RN 43.

180 F xxv. 83ff. 188 Ib. 83n.

191 CR ciii. 188. 190 IGI (revised ed.) xxii. 68. 192 Briffault M iii. 198.

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without 'any stain, blemish, or loss of reputation."193 Similar festivals are observed in Khondistan, among the wild tribes of Manipur and Northern Burma.194 More examples of such rituals and ceremonies are not neces- sary. However, to show how much the early ideas concerning agriculture were linked up with those of the sexual act we may mention here the following interesting philological data quoted by Bagchi:195 Besides 'the plough,' the Sanskrit word langalam designates also 'the penis.' On the other hand, specially in the Sutras and the Mahabharata, a form langula is found to mean both 'the penis' and 'the tail' (of an animal). From 'penis' one can pass, without difficulty, to the sense of 'plough' and 'tail.' There are evident analogies between copulation and the act of ploughing, by which one digs up the earth for depositing the seeds. The problem becomes more complicated from the fact that, almost invariably, the word linga which strongly resembles the two other words, and has the meaning of 'penis' comes in. Bagchi himself subscribed to the view that these words were originally Austro-Asiatic. So he referred to the following further evidences:

Besides the Santals have a common word 'la'-'to dig or make a hole.' The derivatives like langalam, etc. express the penetration of plough into female earth. The names of 'penis' and of 'plough' therefore, signify respectively in the languages in question (Austro- Asiatic), 'the limb which one drives in.'196 The hypothesis is further strengthened by the actual in- strument used by the Austro-Asiatic peoples for the purpose of tilling. Some Austro-Asiatic peoples use even today, not a plough to furrow, but a simple pointed stick for digging holes in which they place the seeds .... There the analogy between penis and the farm- ing instrument is as clear as possible ... The farming stick in Melanesia and Polynesia has often the form of a penis. In some Polynesian languages, the same word designates the 'penis' and the 'digging stick.' It is possible that the aborigines of India at first knew the use of this stick and the name of the instrument for digging the soil has not changed after the introduction of the plough. Whether all these actually prove the Austro-Asiatic influ- ence on Sanskrit language or not, is a different question. From the point of view of our argument, however, these linguistic evidences are highly interesting. Obviously, there is something more in these than mere superficial similies or comparisons. The

193 Butler TAPA 226. 194 Briffault M iii. 198-9. 195.Bagchi PAPDI 10. 196 Ib. 13 197 Ib. 14.

318 LOKAYATA

idea of sowing and digging are fused with the idea of coition. The two processes are viewed as essentially alike. Significantly, corresponding to the use of the plough, we have here an instance of viewing coition from the male point of view. There are other reasons, too, for this. Whether it owed anything to the language of the aborigines or not, Sanskrit was after all the language of the Vedic tradition. It was the tradition of the predominantly pastoral and therefore highly patriarchal people. Nevertheless, what is particularly significant is the fact that the scanty references to agriculture that we have in the literatures of those pastoral-patriarchal peoples, are almost in- variably looked upon as similar in nature to human coition. Planting the seed is like depositing semen in the female womb. The Taittiriya Samhita19s recommended the following spell for agricultural purposes:

Yoke the ploughs, stretch apart the yokes, Here sow in the womb made ready the seed, Through our song be there audience with profit for us; May the ripe (grain) be brought low by the sickle.

Similar thoughts are traceable in the other Samhitas. Vedic poets, thus, closely linked up agricultural process with human coition. Perhaps the most interesting passage is to be found in the Vajasaneyi Samhita.199 Modern Vedic scholars have felt rather shy about the passage. To our sense of decency and morality, it is revoltingly obscene. It comprises of a series of dialogues between the Vedic priests, called Adhvaryu, Udgata, Brahma, and their female partners, called Kumari, Vavata, Mahisi. The dialogues go into somewhat lurid details of the sexual act. What particularly interests us, however, is that throughout this coition-dialogue there runs the refrain of an obviously agricul- tural theme: shite vate punanniva. As the commentators explain- ed, it means 'as a peasant, drying the paddy (seeds), quickens (the sowing) by taking it and releasing.' Following is a free rendering of a portion of the passage along with the best known commentary on it:

Raise her up as you carry a load on the mountains; then let her middle region be erpanded. As (the grain) is dried in cold wind. (Vaj. Sam. xxiii. 26).

198 iv. 2. 5. 5. Tr. Keith 315. 199 xxiii. 22ff.

TANTRA 319

Uvata's commentary: The Udgata unites with the Vavata. (He) asks someone, 'Raise this woman. Raise up this Vavata high.' How? As a load is carried up clasping it at the middle; thus clasping her at the middle, fix her high up. As in the place, i.e., so raise her that the waist and the genital region of this Vavata may be extended. So hold her as it may expand. As a peasant, drying the paddy (seeds) quickens the sowing by taking these and releasing. Raise him up as you carry a load on the mount. Then let his middle region begin to function. As (the grain) is dried in cool wind. (Vaj. Sam. xxiii. 27). Uvata's commentary: In reply, the Vavata told the Udgata: 'Thou, too, should be made to act in a similar way. Here the female is playing the role of the male. As a load is carried up hill. Then let his middle region begin to function, i.e., be engaged in the reproduc- tive function. Then press him down. As a peasant, drying the barley (seeds) in cool air quickens the sowing by taking these and releasing.

And so on. The same obscenity was exchanged between the other Vedic priests and their female partners. Judging it in its context, the passage was obviously intended to be of very great ritual importance. It formed part of the Asvamedha. The sexual act is viewed here as an aid to natural productivity. 'It was neces- sary for these 'queens' to conceive in order that the earth might bear fruit.'200 The obscenity of the language, moreover, was highly purposive:

The operation of the divine generative power which brings about the fertility of nature, of animals, of women, is believed to be stimulated not only by sexual intercourse, but also by any act or speech of a lascivious and sensual character.201 This is why the obscene jests and speeches formed so im- portant an aspect of primitive fertility ritual. We may now return to the question of Vedic kamacara, many examples of which are quoted in the first chapter. The explanation for such peculiar ideas in the Vedic literatures is not difficult to find. The ancestors of the Vedic peoples, like those of all the peoples all over the world, were once living under primitive conditions and viewed sexual intercourse as a technique to enhance the fertility of nature, including that of the cattle. This archaic belief of their own ancestors came down to the authors of the Brahmanas and the Upanisads, and they were trying to rationalise it in their own way. Obviously the Tantrika emphasis on the sexual union had for its source the same primitive belief.

200 Thomson SAGS i. 158. 201 Briffault M iii. 204. Italics added.

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A few points are to be noted about these survivals of kama- cara in the Vedic literatures as contrasted with the kamsadhana of Tantrism. First, the natural fertility this sexual union is supposed to enhance, though occasionally conceived in agricultural terms, is, in the Vedic literatures, predominantly pastoral in spirit. Secondly, consistent with the partiarchal society in which they lived, this emphasis in the Vedic literatures on the sexual union, had an obvious male bias about it. As the Brihad Aranyaka Upanisad202 said,

If she should not grant him his desire, he should bribe her. If she still does not grant him his desire, he should hit her with a stick or with his hand and overcome her. We may add here another interesting evidence of this male bias. The terms traditionally used in India to refer to the patriar- chal and the matriarchal systems are bija pradhanya and ksetra pradhanya.203 The terminologies are evidently derived from the sexual-agricultural circle of ideas we are discussing. Pradhanya means predominance. But bija and ksetra have double mean- ings. Ordinarily these mean 'the seed' and 'the agricultural field' and the use of the word in this sense is traced as far back as the Rig Vedic times.204 Similarly, ksetra also means 'the fertile womb' of 'the wife' and the legal literatures have often used the word in this sense.205 From the bija pradhanya point of view, therefore, the human child is the product primarily of the male semen just as the corn is primarily the result or effect of the seed- grains. This represents a male bias and is naturally associated with the patriarchal system. From the ksetra pradhanya point of view, however, the human offspring is primarily the product of the female womb just as the corn is born primarily of the agri- cultural field. It represents a female bias and is naturally asso- ciated with the matriarchal system. The relics of fertility magic in the Vedic literatures, since these obviously represent the seed- point-of-view, are to be characterised as kamacara with a pro- nounced male bias. We have already seen how the pastoral economy of the Vedic peoples was logically responsible for this male bias in their fundamental outlook. 1

202 vi. 4. 7. 204 Monier-Williams SED 732. 203 Sen BS(B) 11. .205 Ib. 332.

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Thirdly, in spite of these scattered relics of the kamacari beliefs and practices in the Vedic literatures, these could assume neither the overwhelming importance nor the extra- ordinary elaboration as in Tantrism. The reason is, as we have suggested, that the initial stage of agriculture in which Tan- trism had its origin. is necessarily characterised by a peculiar intensity of magical beliefs and practices, the parallels of which are not to be found in any other phase of technological development. We shall presently see more of this Tantrika emphasis on the sexual union while discussing its dehavada and cosmogony. Before that, however, it may be useful to clarify certain mistaken ideas about Tantrism in general.

8. MEANING, ANTIQUITY AND SECTS OF TANTRA What is meant by the word tantra? How old is Tantrism? What is the real significance of the differences between the different sects of Tantrism? Some of our modern scholars206 have raised elaborate dis- cussions on the meaning of the word tantra. However, the simple meaning of the word is unfortunately overlooked. The reason is that they usually work under the preoccupation that Tantrism is essentially a mystic metaphysics having for its counterpart a course of spiritualistic practices. The plain mean- ing of the word, however, docs not prove any of these. The word tantra is derived from the root tan with the suffix stran. Tanoti (tanute) tanyate va iti tan-+stran. The meaning of the root tan is 'to extend, to spread.' Spreading what? Extending what? Primarily, the human family, the number of children. The meaning, in other words, is the act of propagation. Monier- Williams207 showed that in the Harivamsa and the Bhagavata Purana, the word is used to mean: 'to propagate.' The same point is borne out by such common words like santana or tanaya (meaning children) both derived from the root tan. Besides, as Monier-Williams further observed, the word tantu, derived from the same root, is used in the ancient texts as the Katyayana Srauta Sutra, Apastamba Dharma Sutra and the Taittiriya Upanisad, in the sense of 'one propagating his family in regular succession'; in the Aitareya Brahmana the word is used to mean 'a line of descendants.' Further, tantu kartri means 'propagating

206 Dasgupta PE. 151ff. 207 SED 435. L-21

322 LOKAYATA

the succession of a family.' Even the use of the word tantra directly in the sense of propagation or reproduction is not want- ing. In the Mahabharata, for example, kulasya tantra is used to mean the principal action in keeping up a family, i.e., propagation."208 More evidences like these are not necessary. The radical meaning of the root tan is to reproduce. Thus the name Tantra, being derived from this root, suggests procreation. This con- forms to the theme of Tantrism. We shall now pass on to examine the question concerning the antiquity of Tantrism. Efforts are made to determine the age of the Tantras by an examination of the written texts on the subject.209 However, such efforts can only establish the date of this or that individual Tantrika text, but not of Tantrism as such. Tantrism is older than the written texts on it, and some of the written texts are of very recent date. We may mention one or two examples. The famous Mahanirvana Tantra is usually attri- buted to the spiritual preceptor of Ram Mohan Roy (1772- 1833).210 Another Tantrika text, called the Meru Tantra, is found to contain such words as landraja (the Londoner), ingreja (the Englishman), and as such cannot be much old.211 Some of the other texts are referred to the 6th or 7th century. A.D. That Tantrism itself is older than the Tantrika texts and, as such, it is not possible to arrive at the age of Tantrism by examining the written texts available on it, is a point already noted by some of the competent scholars. We may quote a few of these observations.

Their date, however, it is impossible to determine with any precision. The existing treatises are probably for the most part at least, reproductions with additions and variations of older works which are no longer extant. In their present form, they are usually ascribed to the 6th or 7th century of our era, but they may be con- siderably later. Tantrika usages and popular formulas were current and practised in a much earlier age; they belong to a type of thought that is primitive, and among primitive peoples varies little in the course of centuries.212 Bandopadhyaya,213 one of the most eminent of our scholars on Tantrism, observed that according to some of the competent archaeologists, Tantrism is not less older than the Vedas them- selves. There entered into India, these archaeologists think, a

208 Ib. 436. 210 VK(B) vii 508. 209 IHQ ix 1.

212 ERE xii 192. Italics added. 211 Ib. cf. BUS (B) i. 10n. 213 Bandopadhyaya R(B) ii 259-60.

TANTRA 323

race of comparatively dark-skinned Aryans, roughly during the same time when the white-skinned ones, i.e., those who com- posed the Vedas, came to this country. They began to move, it was thought, from ancient Iran or Persia towards the northern valley of present Kabul, and then, after crossing Takla Makan, entered India through Kashmir. A branch of them moved across Gandhara and reached Maharastra while another crossed over the hilly tracts and spread as far as Bengal. These were the people, the archaeologists think, who brought Tantrism to India. The race-movement described here is picturesque. Un- fortunately, however, it failed to find much support in the moro advanced historical rescarches. This does not mean that the question of the migration of Tantrism to India is irrelevant. It was already raised by Bagchi and recently reopened by Needham. We shall presently return to discuss their points. For the moment it is important only to note that Tantrism is very old, older even than what Bandopadhyaya, on the authority of some of the archaeologists of his time, thought. Concrete mate- rial relics of Tantrism are traceable among the Indus ruins. Marshall214 suggested this and he is confirmed by the more recent works of Prana Nath215 and others. 'In fact there is every reason to believe that a good deal of the Indus art and hierogly- phics are intimately connected with Tantrika motifs.'210 There is hardly any mystery about it either. The urban civilization of the Indus, drawing its wealth from the soil, could have naturally retained the relics of the beliefs and practices of the early agri- cultural stage. If traces of Tantrism are found among the Indus ruins then its history in India is not less older than five thousand years. At the same time, in view of the uneven development in the country, we cannot rely too exclusively on mere chronologi- cal considerations for determining the antiquity of Tantrism. Because of their stunted economie growth, there survive in India extremely backward tribes whose beliefs and practices represent much that we come across, though in a highly magni- fied and complicated form, in Tantrism. In other words, there are people still living the life of the ancestors of those that built the Indus cities five thousand years ago and it is to this life that we are to trace the sources of Tantrism. Tantrism, in its original

214 MIC i 57ff. 215 IHQ vii 1-52. 216 Kosambi ISIH 54.

324 LOKAYATA

form, therefore, is not merely ancient; it is also modern, even contemporary. The problem of the survival of Tantrism, however, is more complex. There survive not only the original beliefs and prac- tices underlying Tantrism among our backward tribes, but the very culture of India bears deep marks of Tantrika influence. 'In fact,' as Avalon217 said, 'both popular and esoteric Hinduism is, in its practical aspects, largely Tantrika.' Added Kaviraja: The cult of sakti (i.e., Tantrism), produced a profound influence on general Indian thought. A topographical survey of India would show that the country is scattered over with numerous centres of sakti sadhana (i.e., Tantrika practices). It was widespread in the past and has continued unbroken till today.218 The problem of the survival of Tantrism in this form is not solved simply by tracing its origin to the beliefs and practices of the tribal peoples living at the early agricultural phase. It needs to be presumed that concrete elements of the material conditions to which Tantrism owes its origin must have some- how or other survived in the general social fabric of later India to sustain and nourish these ideological elements. How far our hypothesis of incomplete detribalisation (Ch.III) explains this peculiarity of Indian culture mav possibly be considered.

9. THE SECTS OF TANTRISM Said Bagchi:219 The Tantra still remains an enigma to us. Very little work has been done in this domain and very little attempt has been made in the interpretation of its doctrines. But the fact remains that a vast literature has been written on it-a literature which is mostly found in manuscripts. This is truc. With a vast literature on the subject, Tantrism still remains an enigma to our academic world. The reasons are complex and at times even unexpected. We shall briefly review some of these here. To begin with, the vast literature on Tantrism, paradoxically enough, is itself a hindrance to its proper understanding. The treatises on Tantra lure us with a false promise as to its true nature. Even the elite is often deceived. This does not certainly mean that such texts do not contain any element of genuine Tantrism whatsoever. They do. But they also contain many other things. From various quarters and

217 PT i. 218 HPEW (ed. S. Radhakrishnan) i 402. 219 ST i 45.

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in various ways, alien and often hostile thoughts were continual- ly grafted on original Tantrism, making it difficult to recover its genuine form from the texts on it. A special difficulty arises from the circumstance that modern scholars on Tantrism generally feel more familiar with these grafted elements becanse these agree with their own preoccupa- tions. They are, therefore, easily inclined to think that for the purpose of interpreting Tantrism, it is sufficient to remain con- fined to those thoughts and ideas which were in fact super- imposed on original Tantra by the authors of the treatises on it. On the other hand, whatever is genuinely archaic in these texts appeared repulsive to them; they have, accordingly, either tried to hush up these elements or simply to condemn them outright. We may examine some examples of these superimpositions. In one type of the texts, efforts were being made to expound Tantra within the gencral structure of Buddhist philosophy, more specifically, of Mahayana Buddhism. Such texts are natu- rally crowded with Buddhist terminologies. This has misled even the ablest among the modern scholars towards an under- standing of Tantra in terms of Buddhism. Tantrism is explained as an outgrowth of Mahayana Buddhism, in fact, its decadent form. No less a scholar than H. P. Sastri put forth such a view and it has enjoyed immense popularity in our academic circles.220 Nevertheless, the fact remains that theories are indulged in and practices enjoined in these very texts that are far re- moved from the idealistic philosophy and ascetic practices of Buddhism proper. The fundamental outlook in all these texts is derived from sexual imageries and the texts are permeated with strong elements of magic. The central theme is that of the union of the male and female, though expressed in such ter- minologies as sunyata and karuna, prajna and upaya, vajra and padma,-all arbitrarily taken from Buddhism. Sunyata, prajna and vajra are made to stand for the male while karuna, upaya and padma for the female. The union of the two is only a union of the sexes. The ritual aspect of these texts, again, are overtly based on the practice of sexual union. We shall quote here two eminent authorities, the only implication of whose statements is that the connection between Buddhism and Tantrism in these Buddhist Tantras is clearly artificial.

220 Sastri BD(B) 66ff.

326 LOKAYATA

Following are the observations of Bose:221

In the Buddhist Tantras we come across descriptions similar to what we have just discussed about the Hindu Tantras. It seems that the names Siva, Durga, etc., of the Hindu Tantras are simply transcribed in the Buddhist Tantras as names of Vajrasattava, Vajradakini, etc. In the Buddhist Tantras, too, is prevalent the worship of Candi, Tara, Varahi eic. As in the Tantras revealed by Siva, bizarre dcities are imagined, so in the Buddhist Tantras we come across deities like Heruka and others. We have malamantra, matrika, kavaca, hridaya, etc., in the Buddhist Tantras as well. These are considered to be highly secret. It is enjoined in the Buddhist Tantras, too, that these must not be revealed to the uninitiated ... In the Buddhist scriptures expounding the views of the Buddha (i.e., genuine Buddhism), the five ma-s are strongly denounced. Buddhist Tantrikas, however, behave differently. The practice of the five ma-s constitutes a basic feature of the Buddhist Tantras. The indulgence in wine and meat, so severely denounced in the Buddhist scriptures, is extolled in the Buddhist Tantras. . The Buddhist Tantras, too, call him who has succeeded in the Tantrika practices, a Viranayaka. The Buddhist Tantrikas also maintain that this world is born of the female (vamodbhava). Neither are the Buddhist Tantras wanting in the practices of cakrapuja, virayaga, bhagapuja, etc.

'Buddhist Tantrism,' observed L. de La Valle Poussin,222 'is practically Buddhist Hinduism, Hinduism or Saivism in Buddhist garb.' If this be true then Buddhist Tantrism becomes a misnomer. As a matter of fact, this point follows from the following further observations of the same scholar on the two trends of Buddhist Tantrism: the two Tantrika schools maintain that all beings are vajra- sattvas, are the unique Vajrasattva; they also maintain that the nature of vajra is immanent in all beings and can be actualised by appropriate meditations and rites. Now the left-hand school conceives the nature of vajra accord- ing to the Saivite pattern; the right-hand school is nearer the Vedan- tist or Yoga tradition .. In the Tantras of the Saivite type we have to deal with a Buddhist adaptation of Saivism and Saktism. The three traditional bodies of a Buddha are preserved, but the true nature of vajrasattva is his fourth body, 'the body of bliss' (ananda, sukhamaya, maha- sukhakaya), the body of vajra; it is with this body that the eternal tathagata or bhagavat eternally embraces his sakti, Tara or Bhaga- vati. From this erotic conception of the nature of being or divine being it follows that, in order to actualise his real divine nature, the ascetic must perform the rites of union with a woman (yogini, mudra), who is the personification of bhagavati, who is Bhagavati herself; as it is said, buddhatvam yosidyoni samasritam. -'Buddhahood abides in the female organ.' This truth was discovered by Sakyamuni, who, according to the Chandamaharosama, con-

21 VK(B) vii 547. Free rendering. 222 ERE xii 193. The next quotation is from the same article.

TANTRA 327

quered Buddhahood by practising the Tantrika rites in the harim. The most conspicuous topic of this literature is what is called stri- puja, worship of women: disgusting practices, both obscene and crimi- nal, including incest, are a part of this puja, which is looked upon as the 'true heroic behaviour' (duhkaracharya) of a bodhisattva, as the fulfilment of perfect virtues. Buddhist mythology and mysticism are freely mixed with Saktas: the semen is the five Buddhas, etc ... Such ideas, though they have some Buddhist favour about them, are far from Buddhism proper. In order, therefore, to understand the true nature of Tantrism, we have to look at the Buddhist elements in these texts as but the result of artificiai superimposition. Instead our scholars look at the whole complex -the erotic theme with the Buddhist terminologies and all-as but a decadant form of original Buddhism. How is it, H. P. Sastri223 asked himself, that the originally lofty ideas of Mahayana.Buddhism were, in course of time, degenerated so badly? His answer is significant. It was, he thought, the result of a rather reckless popularisation of Buddh- ism. Buddhism, as it spread among the masses, got contaminated with all the superstitious dross that was already prevalent among them. From being the noble religion of the selfless ascetic, it became the creed of vulgar craftsmen and other common folks. Granting this to be truc, the only conclusion we are led to is that, certain beliefs and practices were already prevalent among the masses and in the so-called Buddhist Tantrism the Buddhist ideas were somehow or other artificially related to these. If original Buddhism became Buddhist Tantrism through contamination with popular elements, then the origin of Tan- trism should logically be sought precisely in these popular cle- ments. The corollary is that in order to understand the nature of original Tantrism we have to reject its associations with Buddhism and enquire into the sources of the beliefs and prac- tices of the low-caste peoples of the country. Sastri did not draw this implication of his own standpoint. Incidentally, it is precisely here that we come across an- other reason because of which Tantrism remains so much mis- understood by our modern scholars. Tantrism, in its more origi- nal form, had really been intimately associated with those castes and professions that were despised for many centuries. Our modern scholars, on the other hand, have not always been able to emancipate themselves from this traditional contempt for the lower castes and professions. 'We must become conscious of our

223 Sastri BD (B) 85-7.

328 LOKAYATA

own prejudices in order to correct them."24 This is, however, a task which our modern writers have invariably ignored. The result is that their treatment of Tantrism has not taken sufficient note of its more genuine form, i.e., the form in which it is pre- valent as the beliefs and practices of the backward peoples and lower castes. Things are, however, different with the written texts on Tantra. Being mostly compositions of the upper castes, these present Tantrism within the general structure of the accepted world-outlook of the higher castes. It is not unnatural, therefore, that most of our modern scholars should, while interpreting Tantrism, concentrate mainly on this framework. This is most evident in their treatment of the so-called Hindu Tantras. Just as one type of the Tantrika texts are found grossly permeated with Buddhist ideas and terminologies, another bears strong traces of a developed Hindu religion. In addition to a whole gallery of the gods and goddesses of the Puranic pan- theon, we find in these, elaborate emphasis laid on bhakti (devo- tion), puja (worship), moksa (liberation), ete. Like the Buddh- ist philosophy of the so-called Buddhist Tantras, these develop- ed spiritualistic notions of the Hindu Tantras are clearly extrin- sic to original Tantrism. In the Hindu Tantras, too, beneath the high overgrowth of the later spiritualistic ideas runs the same theme of the union of the male and the female conceived in a cosmic scale, and the same emphasis placed on the ritual union of their human counterparts. Notwithstanding all the ingenious rationalisations of the later scholars, this central theme is too archaic to agree with the ideas of bhakti, puja and moksa. To show how varied were the efforts at imposing alien views on the primal essence of Tantrism, namely the ritual union of the sexes: As the Buddhist Tantras try to conceive this in terms of the union of Prajna and Upaya, the Hindu Tantras generally con- ceive it in terms of the union of Siva and Sakti or Hara and Gauri. In the Vaisnava Sahajia cult, again, this is conceived as the union of Krisna and Radha or Rasa and Rati.223 More in- genious is the effort of another type of the texts which, while bearing strong influences of Hindu or Buddhist ideas, represent a pronounced bias for alchemy. We find in them the same theme conceived in terms of the union of mercury and mica:

224 Thomson AA 2. "95 Dasgupta ORC 134.

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Those who, without quitting their bodies have attained to new ones through the influence of Hara and Gauri (mercury and mica), are to be praised as rasasiddha (alchemists). All mantras are at their service. The ascetic, therefore, who aspires to liberation in this life, should first make to himself a glorified body. And in as much as mercury is produced by the creative conjunction of Hara and Gauri, and mica is produced from Gauri, mercury and mica are severally identified with Hara and Gauri in the verse- Mica is thy seed and mercury is my seed; The combination of the two, O Goddess, is destructive of death and poverty.224 The concept of liberation here is wholly physical. As the text has defined it in another place, 'having attained to mercu- rical bodies and therewith identified are liberated though alive."227 Is this an attempt to present a grossly materialistic idea within a spiritualistic framework? We shall presently return to discuss this aspect of Tantrism. For the present it is sufficient only to note that behind the rather indiscriminate use of spiritualistic and other terminologies in the texts representing the so-called different schools of Tantrism, there runs one basic theme and it is the theme of the sexual union. It is thus safe to assume that this theme is related to the intrinsic essence of Tantrism. The terminologies with which it is expressed, being variables, must have been extrinsic to it. This point has, in fact, been admitted by the more advanced works on the subject. Tantrism is neither Buddhist nor Hindu in origin: it seems to be a religious undercurrent, originally independent of any abstruse metaphysical speculation, flowing on from an abscure point. of time in the religious history of India.228 Again,

Side by side with the commonly known theological speculations and religious practices, there has been flowing in India an important undercurrent of esoteric yogic practices from a pretty old time; these esoteric practices, when associated with the theological speculations of the Saivas and the Saktas, have given rise to Saiva and Sakta Tantrism; when associated with Buddhist speculations, have given rise to the composite religious system of Buddhist Tantrism; and again, when associated with the speculations of Bengal Vaisnavism, the same esoteric practices have been responsible for the growth of the esoteric Vaisnavite cult, known as Vaisnava Sahajia move- ment.229 If this be true then we are to look at the undercurrent of esoteric yogic practices to know the real nature of original

226 Ray HHC i Intro. Ixxii. 228 Dasgupta ORC 27. 227 Ib. i. Intro. Ixiii. 229 Ib. Intro. xxxiv.

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Tantra. We have, as a matter of fact, tried to follow this pro- cedure and were led to the view that Tantrism is neither Bud- dhist nor Hindu, but simply agricultural in origin. It remains for us to see, however, the connection of original yoga with the agricultural ritual. As is only to be expected from such a viewpoint, this undereurrent of the esoteric yogic practices should survive more properly among the backward masses of our peasantry. Thanks to the laborious field work of scholars like Sastri and Sen, we now know that this actually is the fact. As Sen230 has observed, there are 'hundreds of these sects silently working in Bengal' and, though their names differ from village to village, all these arc brought by him under the general description of the Sahajia. All the cults are fundamentally the same. Unfortunately, how- ever, the artificial admixture of the Buddhist elements with these sects have deceived even Sen:

The Sahaiias would by no means confess that they were Bud- dhists, nor refer to any Buddhist text which would make it easier to trace the doctrines to their genuine origin. In the theories them- selves and in their practices, many Buddhist rites and views have left their indelible marks. The modern Sahajias themselves do not know that they closely follow the Buddhist tenets, their ancestors concealed the fact when they were admitted to the Vais- nava order, while following them still in their rituals; and at the present stage it is the duty of a historian and scholar to thrash out the grains from the chaff and find out the true Buddhist elements in their views and practices.231 To 'thrash out the grains from the chaff is indeed a correct description of the historian's task. But the question is: which is the grain and which the chaff?

10. TANTRISM AND THE CASTES We have argued that one of the difficulties in the objective understanding of Tantrism is created by the circumstance that in its comparatively purer form it remains associated with the lowest castes and professions in the country. This is evidenced in more than one way. We find, for example, supreme importance being attached in the Tantras to such characters as the Candali, Dombi, Rajaki, Savari and others.23" These are all female names and they represent some of the lowest castes carrying on the most despised

230 CAHA 351. 231 Ib. 337-8. 232 Dasgupta ORC Pt. I.

TANTRA 331

occupations. Again, the Tantras of the Kubjika school 'are said to have originated among the potters, a low-caste Hindu sect, and this is why they are said to have belonged to the kulali- kamnaya.'233 The Kubjika Tantra prescribed that the venue of the ritual practice should be the house of a potter. One of the founder-leaders of the Natha Cult, which, in essence, was a form of Tantrism, was called Goraksa, the cowherd. In another Jegend concerning the same cult which we come across in the early Bengali poetry Mainamatir Gan23+ (Song of Mainamati), the 'queen' was initiated by a Hadi, a member of a very despised caste. In many other cases of the Tantrika practices, the 'priestly' function is known to rest upon some member of a very low caste.

Being thus associated with the despised castes, Tantrism, as is to be expected, was no respector of caste distinction and caste superiority. As Avalon225 has put it:

We have in the Tantra, the recognition of the fine principle that this doctrine and its expression in ritual are for all, whatever be their race, caste or sex. This marks a great advance on the parochial restrictions of the Vedas, which are so often placed in favourable opposition to the Tantra by the English writers. The Sudra and woman are under none of the Vaidika bans.

The same point is emphasised by Sen in his discussion of the Sahajias of Bengal.

The upper classes of our country are orthodox, but they (i.e. the Sahajias, who, according to Sen comprise mainly of the lowest classes) are not at all so. ... The proselytising work they are doing is wonderful ... They gather recruits from all religions. There are Mohamedans. Christians and Brahmins amongst them ... Sahajias are free from all caste prejudices ... Caste rank in society The

and orthodoxy of views are out of question there.236 The sects are generally opposed to caste. In the matter of eating cooked food, where strict orthodoxy is observed by the various

prejudice.237 sects of the Hindu-nearly all these sects are without any

Indifference towards the caste system was often expressed as open revolt against it. The Tantrikas proclaimed the essential equality of all men and of all women and, along with it, the rejection of the traditional marriage morals. Anandagiri, in his Samkara Vijaya, described the followers of Ucchista Ganapati

233 Bagchi ST 45. 234 Sen TS i 98. 286 CAHA 339-40. 235 PT Pref. xvii. 237 Ib. 352.

332 LOKAYATA

as belonging to the vamacari cult. According to him, they proclaimed:

However, according to our cult, there are two fundamental creeds (dharma) to be followed. All the males belonging to the various castes should be (treated) as one caste. This is one creed. All the females belonging to the various castes should be (treated) as one caste. This is the other creed. There is no sin in their mutual union or separation. There is no rule as 'Such a man is the husband of such a woman' ... All the castes being but one caste, the institu- tion of marriage is a fiction.238 This is simply startling. Nevertheless, this does represent the standpoint of real Tantrism. The following is from Das- gupta: 239

The formal rules and regulations of religion were also severely criticised by the Sahajias. The most penetrating and scathing criticism was made by Saraha Pada in his Dehakosa. His first revolt is against the orthodox system of the four-fold division of colours (caturvarna) placing the Brahmins at the top. Saraha says that the Brahmins as a caste cannot reasonably be recognised to be the highest of men-for the saying that they dropped from the mouth of Brahma is a myth invented by a section of clever and cunning people; if, on the other hand, a man becomes Brahmin by religious

Brahmin ... initiation (samskara), then even the lowest of men may be a The Brahmins take earth, water, kusa grass and recite mantras and perform fire-sacrifices in their houses-in vain do they offer ghee to the fire, for thereby their eyes will only be affected with intense smoke. They become holders of single-fold or of three- fold sacred threads,-but this is of no avail unless truth is realised. Deceived is the whole world by false illusion-none does know the all-cxcelling truth where both religion and non-religion become one. The devotees of the Lord (Isvara), again, anoint the whole body with ashes, wear matted hair on the head, sit within the house and light lamps and ring bells seated in a corner: they take a yogic posture (asana) with their eyes fixed; they whisper religious doctrines into the ears (of the credulous people) and deceive them thereby. The widows, the mundis (women taking the vow of fasting for the whole month) and others taking different vows, get them- selves initiated by these devotees who do it only in greed of money (daksina). This is not a modern socialist polemic against religion. It is merely an cloquent protest of a Sahajia poct against the caste system.

11. THE DEHA TATTVA In Chapter I, we have already referred to the dehavada and the cosmogony of Tantrism. It remains for us to analyse these in the general context of our argument, namely, the origin of Tantrism in agricultural magic.

238 Ch. xvii. 239 ORC 62-3.

TANTRA 333

Agricultural magic rests on the principle that the produc- tivity of nature-of the female earth-can be induced or enhanced by the imitation or contagion of the human reproductive func- tions. Conversely, human fertility is viewed as dependent on natural fertility. Understandably, therefore, there is no reference in this ancient belief to either Soul, God and Liberation, Heaven, Prayer or Sacrifice; in fact none of the features we normally associate with developed religions. If we are at all justified in theoretically formulating the fundamentals of this extremely archaic belief, we may view it as the theory which assimilated the human body with nature-the two being viewed as but the two aspects of the same fundamental reality. The obvious corol- laries are twofold. First, it should be possible to understand the mystery of nature if we can understand the mystery of the human body. Secondly, the birth of the universe is no more mysterious than the birth of the human baby. The deha tattva and the cosmogony of Tantrism are but elaborations of these two implications. As is only to be expected, in the written treatises on Tantra this deha tattva remains mixed up with a host of alien ideas. 'We are, however, indebted to Bandopadhyaya240 for salvaging a clear exposition of the essential points from this confused mass of ideas. Whatever exists in the human body exists. also in the universe. Brahmande ye gunah santi te tisthanti kalevare-the human body is only a microcosm of the universe. This is the conclusion of all the Tantras. The wisdom of Tantrism is explained by all on the basis of this theory. The Puranas and the other Sastras have accepted this theory ... There are, thus, two aspects of the Tantrika theory and prac- tice. One of these is the external aspect and is concerned with the universe. The other is the internal aspect and is concerned with human body. There are two forms in which the success of the Tan- trika practice manifests itself. One is the aspect of external nature, of earth; the other is the aspect of internal nature i.e., nature as human body. You can attain success by developing the forces latent in you; or, again, by controlling external or natural forces you can move towards an expression of your own internal forces .... Accord- ing to the Tantras, since the universe and the human body are made according to the same principles and composed of the same materials, and since the same forces operate in the same manner within both,-by developing the forces inherent in the body you can have the forces of the universe in your favour, under your control. Those in the country who have attained success (siddhas) think that there is no instrument (yantra) more wonderful than the

240 R (B) ii 284-5. Free rendering.

334 LOKAYATA

human body. None can construct an instrument as wonderful as this. So you can fulfil all your desires without the aid of any other instrument, only if you can develop and express all the forces lying dormant within this wonderful instrument, the body. The relation- ship between the forces lying dormant in nature and in the human body is indeed astonishing. The practices on the basis of which this intimate relationship is known, established and brought under control, constitute tantra-sadhana. Its basis is deha tattva, the cult of the body. That is why Tantra is all along so deeply concerned with the questions concerning the body. If not materialism proper, this is at least proto-materialism. In the Kularnava and other Tantras this type materialism is of course somewhat clouded by the spiritualistic notions imposed on it. However, in the simple peasant songs of the Sahajias, the materialistic attitude survived in its original naivety. Here are a few examples: The most important of all things is one's own body. Thou should attain peace only when the mystery of thy body is known to thee.241 One who knows the mystery of one's own body Is the most wise one; this is the message of all the scriptures.2442 The body is at the basis of all the disciplines.243 Here (within this body) is the Ganga and the Yamuna, here the Ganga-Sagara, Prayaga, Kashi, here the sun and the moon. Here are all the sacred places-the pithas and the upapithas. 1 have never seen a place of pilgrimage and an abode of bliss as perfect as my own body.244 And so on. Following is how Dasgupta"45 summed up the deha tattva of the Sahajia songs:

Along with the uncompromising spirit of revolt against all formalities and orthodoxy in religion, great emphasis is laid in the Sahajia literature on the human body, which is conceived as a microcosm of the universe. This feature, we have hinted, pre- dominates in all the Tantras in general, wherever the yogic element prevails; but as the Sahajias laid their whole stress on the yogic element, this theory of the body being the epitome of the whole universe is most emphasised. At the same time, it needs to be noted that there had been a persistent, though obviously artificial, effort in the Tantrika texts to present this original proto-materialistic outlook as com- promised with, or assimilated by a spiritualistic outlook. In the Hevajra Tantra we find that the Lord (Bhagavan) was asked by a Bodhisattva whether there was any necessity at all of this physical world and the physical body, everything being in reality nothing but pure void. To this the reply of the Lord was that

241 Bose PCSCB 44. 242 Bose SS (B) Pref. ix. 244 Dasgupta ORC 104. 243 Bose PCSCB 45. 245 Ib. 103.

TANTRA 335

without the body there was no possibility of the realisation of the great bliss and here lies the importance of the body.246 Or, as a Carya-song declares, 'Some one bodiless is hiding him- self in the body-he who knows him there, is liberated.'247 Whatever these may be, they do not represent the true spirit of Tantrism. Nevertheless, it is really strange to see how such muddled thoughts have deceived even very eminent scholars. 'But', commented Dasgupta,"48 'though the truth is within the body and arises out of it, it should never be confused to be something physical.' Such a comment is misleading. The scarch for the inner truth within the body led the Tantrikas not to any subtle non-physical spiritual principle but rather to the human nervous system in its essentially physical aspect. We have already mentioned in brief outline the anatomy of the nervous system of the Tantrikas. Readers interested in greater details may look up Dasgupta's discussion on the sub- ject.249 What interests us particularly is to sce how this instinc- tive materialism of the Tantrikas led them to contribute to the positive sciences of ancient India. The main contribution to some of the sciences-particularly to anatomy and physiology-came in our country from the Tan- trikas. They discovered long ago that the brain was the seat of consciousness. In Caraka and Susruta (as in Aristotle) the heart is the central organ and seat of consciousness; but in the Tantrika writings (as in Galen) the seat of consciousness is transferred to the brain or rather the cerebro-spinal system.250 Such discoveries are of no little importance, particularly in the context of their time. It became possible for the Tantrikas to contribute to these sciences because of their intense interest in the human body, their materialistic outlook. We shall presently see how, because of the same reason, the Tantrikas alone could contribute to alchemy and chemistry in India. By contrast, the orthodox systems-particularly the idealistic schools-were actually pre- vented from contributing anything to the anatomical and physiological theories because of two important reasons. First, in their zeal to discover the true nature of the self or the soul, the philosophers of these schools were too busy to pay any real attention to the body. Secondly, only the lowest castes-the

240 Ib. 103-4. 247 Ib. 105. 249 Ib. 106-7. 248 Ib. 104. 250 Seal PSAH 218-9.

336 LOKAYATA

Domes, the Candalas, the Hadis-could have anything to do with the dead-body, it being considered too impure to be touched by the members of the higher castes. Further, possibly the sava- sadhana (practices centering the dead-body) of Tantrism, how- ever gruesome it may appear to the modern mind, helped the Tantrikas to have a deeper insight into the mechanism of the human body. Incidentally, the reluctance of the higher castes to touch and dissect the dead-body resisted scientific knowledge even in our own times: it was difficult to obtain students for the Calcutta Medical College when it was first opened.261 From the deha tattva of Tantrism we are naturally led to discuss its cosmogony. As Bandopadhyaya252 said, the cosmogony of Tantrism was most intimately connected with its deha tattva, was in fact an inseparable aspect of it. The reason is simple. If the human bodv be viewed as but a microcosm of the universe, the birth of the universe can only be understood on the analogy of the human birth. And this is the central point of the Tantrika cosmogony. According to Tantra, the universe was created by sexual urge (kama); it was born of the female (vamodbhava) and as the result of her union with the male. It is not difficult to see how this cosmogony is but an elaboration of the belief under- lying agricultural magic. Bandopadhyaya253 rightly suggested that this cosmogony might have been the basis of the temple-sculptures of Orissa, so exasperating for their obscenity: Among the Buddhist Tantrikas there originated a sect called Kamavajrayana, based on the view that the birth of the human being and that of the universe followed the same principles ... The texts of this school are so full of obscene details as can hardly be published for the general readers. According to this sect, the universe is created by kama exactly as human beings are .. . Their ritual practice aim at establishing a harmony between cosmic lust and human lust. They were, therefore, continually indulging in kama sadhana They exhibited this lust on the temples and monasteries ... I am of opinion that the temple of Jagannatha (Puri) was originally built under the influence of these Kama- vajrayanis. The place of the goddess Vimala (the Puri temple) was sacred to them .. It was in this Sri-mandira (another name of the Puri temple) that the harmony was achieved between cosmic creation and the creation of the human body. In all these obscene sculptures, every male is a Buddhist monk of the Kamavajrayana school and every female is a devadasi or female votary. The whole temple was built on the principles of the Kamavajrayani Buddhists.

251 Ghose PBSI (B) 107. 252 R (B) ii 301. 233 Ib. ii 305-6. Free rendering.

TANTRA 337

These observations on the possible Tantrika motif behind the temple sculptures of Orissa are certainly important. No other explanation is conceivable. Now, it might be historically true that the followers of that sect of Tantrism who built these temples had really some fascination for Buddhism, too. Never- theless, the explanation does not gain much by emphasising this Buddhist aspect of their beliefs, for there is nothing Buddhist in the motif of these sculptures. We could understand these sculptures better if we agree to free ourselves from this Buddh- istic bias. And when we do so, we are left with some form of the development of the belief underlying the agricultural magic. Presumably, the desolate ruins of Konarak, too, once witnessed the performance of agricultural magic on a gorgeous scale. If, as we are trying to argue, this cosmogony had been the offshoot of agricultural magic, we may expect it to characterise the prehistory of other ancient civilizations. Referring to the evidences of ancient China and ancient Mesopotemia, Thomson254 observed:

All cosmogonies of this type, which is evidently very primitive, have been classed as 'genealogical,' because they are founded on the notion that the physical universe was brought into being by a pro- cess of sexual reproduction. Such a cosmogony, being primitive, is naturally found among the primitive peoples themselves. Throughout this cycle of Polynesian cosmogonic myth, one fact, not without parallel in other religions, is clear. O-te-papa, the primal barren earth or rock, represents the female principle, which is fructified and made to give birth to all things living, by the fertilis- ing rain which falls from the superincumbent male Tangaloa, the sky.255 The modern scholar is naturally amazed by the similarity of this Polynesian cosmogony with the Indian and Chinese ones. 'It is also noteworthy that creation is ascribed to sexual congress in cosmogonies so diverse as the Hindu, Maori and the Taoist.'256 'Hindu' here can only mean the Tantrika. The cosmogony of Chinese Taoism had indeed been closely similar to Indian Tantrism. The similarity between the two systems, remarkably enough, was not confined to the question of cosmogony alone. Needham, in his recent monumental work, Science and' Civi- lization in China, has drawn our attention to the close similarity

254 SAGS ii 91. 255 ERE iv 175. 256 Ib. iv 126. L-22

338 LOKAYATA

between Taoism and Tantrism. He has also shown how the Taoist speculations about and insight into Nature, 'lie at the basis of all Chinese science."257 What has become clear by his discussion of Chinese Taoism, may have important light to throw on what is yet obscure-and so far basically misunder- stood-about ancient Tantrism.

12. TANTRISM AND TAOISM

Referring to the Tantras, which Needham sometimes con- sidered to be 'texts on the borderline between Buddhism and Hinduism,"258 and sometimes again, to be a 'department' or 'aspcct' of Buddhism,259 he made the following interesting observation:

One can see at once that one is in the presence of a system of thought closely akin to the shamanist and magical side of ancient Taoism.260 Referring to Taoism, again, he said: It is necessary to say that for one reason or another, Taoist thought has been almost completely misunderstood by most European trans- lators and writers. Taoist religion has been neglected and Taoist magic has been written off wholesale as superstition, Taoist philo- sophy has been interpreted as pure religious mysticism and poetry. The scientific or 'proto'-scientific side of Taoist thought has been very largely overlooked, and the political position of the Taoist still more so.201 We shall see how far such a view may be extended to our Tantrikas as well. But the similarities between Taoism and Tantrism first. Corresponding to the purusa and prakriti of ancient Indian thought, we come across in ancient China the two principles of yang and yin. The former represents all that is male, light, warm, dry, hard, active; the latter all that is female, dark, cold,

remarked, moist, soft, passive. These conceptions are very old. As Forke262

... we meet with the dualistic theory of yin and yang in Confucian as well as the Taoist works. It was the first germ of a natural philosophy universally accepted by the Chinese irrespective of their religious convictions or philosophic ideas. This is of course true, but with one important reservation to which Needham has drawn our attention: If it were not unthinkable (from the Chinese point of view) thal

257 SCC ii 1. 260 Ib. ii 426. 258 Ib. il 425. 261 Ib. ii 34. 259 Ib. ii 425, 429. 262 ERE viii 492.

TANTRA 339

the yin and yang could be separated, one might say that Taoism was a Yin thought-system and Confucianism a Yang one.263 That is, Taoism, like Tantrism, had a pronounced bias for the female point of view.

Confucian knowledge was masculine and managing: the Taoists condemned it and sought after a feminine and receptive knowledge which could arise only as the fruit of a passive and yielding attitude in the observation of Nature.264 Following are two examples of the feminine svmbol in Taoism quoted by Needham: The Valley spirit never dies. It is named the Mysterious Feminine. And the doorway of the Mysterious Feminine Is the root (from which) Heaven and Earth (sprang). It is the thread for ever woven; And those who use it can accomplish all things.265

He who knows the male, yet cleaves to what is female Becomes like a ravine, receiving all things under heaven (Thence) the eternal virtue never leaks away. This is returning to the state of Infancy. He who knows the white, yet cleaves to the black Becomes the instrument by which all things are tested (And so has) a constant virtue which never errs. This is returning to the Limitless. He who knows glory, yet cleaves to ignominy Becomes like a valley receiving into it all things under heaven, (For him) the immutable virtue all-sufficient. This is returning to the Undifferentiated. Now when the Undifferentiated is broken up (dispersed, differentiated), it separates into discrete objects. But if the sage uses it, it becomes the chief of all Ministers. Truly the greatest carver does the least cutting.266 The analysis of the symbolism of the Limitless, the Undiffe- rentiated, as explained by Needham, is important and interesting. According to him, these referred to the 'primitive collectivism of the villages before the full differentiation of lords, priests and warriors in bronze-age proto-feudalism,"267 a collectivist society for which Taoism never lost its moorings. The similarity between the Taoist poetry and the Sahajia songs is striking. It is not confined merely to the use of riddles and paradoxes. In the Sahajia songs we have already come across the Mysterious Feminine of the Taoists-the Dombi, Savari, Nairamani, Sahajasundari. In the Vaisnava Sahajia

263 SCC ii 61. 264 Ib. ii 33. 266 Ib. ii 58-9. 265 Ib. ii 58. 267 Ib. ii 59-60.

340 LOKAYATA

songs, we have come across almost an identical line as 'He who knows the male and yet cleaves to the female,' etc. The point is that in Taoism, as in Tantrism, the female point of view and the female principle were extolled over the male. Needham has argued that this led the Taoists to go 'intuitively' to the 'roots of science and democracy alike."268 The female point of view led the Taoists to develop the attitude of passive observation of nature and the Taoist philoso- phers were bound in due course to pass from the purely obser- vational to the experimental.' Thus they went to the root of science. And they went to the root of democracy too. How profound Taoist insight was may be appreciated by reading the brilliant essays of William Morton Wheeler, the great American entomologist, and Ernst Bergmann, which urge that the liquidation of masculine aggressiveness is one of the most important limiting factors for the success of that cooperative and collectivist society towards which mankind is inevitably moving as the scope and poten- tialities of the highest social organisations continue to increase.269 The following is Needham's concluding observation on the importance of the feminine symbol of Taoism : Conducting a socialist holding action for two thousand years and condemned to perpetual heterodoxy, Taoism had to retain, un- born within itself, science in the fullest sense.270 Such observations, to say the least, are startling. Neverthe- less, it is necessary to go to the sources of the female symbol in Taoism. In the course of our discussion of Tantrism we have tried to show that the same emphasis in the Tantras could only be rooted in mother-right, which in its turn was due to the discoverv of agriculture by women. That the female symbol of Taoism could have been connected with the early agricultural ritual is suggested by the fact of its emphasis on the water- symbol, to which Needham himself has drawn our attention.271 The connection of the water symbol with the fertility and agri- cultural ritual is well known. More important than this is the question of the relation of the female principle to mother-right. Unfortunately, Needham himself paid insufficient attention to this question, though, of course, he has not denied the possibility of there being such a connection. Referring to the primitive collectivist society, the memory of which was never washed away from the Taoist tradition, he remarked:

268 Ib. ii 59. 270 Ib. 269 Ib. ii 60. 271 Ib. ii 57.

TANTRA 341

A parallel passage ... gives a picture of primitive life before even the invention of clothes. The people were innocent, peaceful and cooperative. They 'knew their mothers, but did not know their father' (note that this is Chuang Chow speaking about matriarchy, not a modern theoretical archaeologist).272 'Kungsun Yang,' Needham273 added in the note, 'says exactly the same thing in a brief sketch of social evolution (seen from the legalist point of view) .... It seems very probable that matriarchal systems existed in ancient Chinese society.' Further, that this matriarchal system was presumably related to the im- portance attached to the female in the theory and practice of the Taoists, is a point which Needham did not overlook. Refer- ring to the Wu proper, that is the shamanesses of Taoism (cf. the yoginis and bhairavis of Tantrism), he observed, The prominence of women here is very significant, in view of (a) the connection of the Taoist ideal society with matriarchal memories, (b) their feminine symbol, (c) their emphasis on sex techniques.274 Again:

The recognition of the importance of woman in the scheme of things, the acceptance of the equality of women with men, the con- viction that the attainment of health and longevity needed the cooperation of the sexes, the considered admiration for certain femi nine psychological characteristics, the incorporation of the physical phenomena of sex in numerous group catharsis, free alike from asceticism and class distinctions, reveal to us once more aspects of Taoism which had no counterpart in Confucianism or ordinary Bud- dhism. There must surely be some connection between these things and the matriarchal elements in primitive tribal collectivism, some reflection in the prominence of the Female Symbol in ancient Taoist philosophy.275 We have seen in the above quotations a reference to the Taoist emphasis on sex techniques. This, as Needham has shown, is to be understood in the background of the Taoist conception of material immortality,276 a conception considered by him to be 'of incalculable importance to science' because 'this ideal stimulated the development of the techniques of alchemy."277 Incidentally, we have already come across a similar concept in the Indian Tantras, and, interestingly, in those Tantras in particular which have a pronounced alchemical bias. According to the Taoists, the attainment of this 'physical immortality' was dependent on a number of practices such as (1) respiratory techniques, (2) heliotherapeutic techniques, (3) gymnastic techniques, (4) sexual techniques, (5) alchemical

272 Ib. 108. 275 Ib. ii 151. 273 Ib. ii 108n. 276 Ib. ii 139. 274 Ib. ii 134. 277 Ib.

342 LOKAYATA

and pharmaceutical techniques and (6) dietary techniques. Some of these strongly remind us of some aspects of the yoga sadhana of Tantrism. The Tantrikas, too, had their respiratory and gymnastic techniques, called pranayama and asana. How- ever, we shall for the present confine ourselves specially to the fourth one, namely the sexual techniques. Unfortunately, as Needham has noted, owing to Confucian and Buddhist antagonism, 'these have remained much the most recondite."278 'All the books concerning these arts disappeared from the Tao Tsang during the Ming dynasty."279 Nevertheless, from the fragments preserved in other works, Needham has salvaged sufficient data, on the basis of which we can see a close parallel between this aspect of Taoism and that of Tantrism.

It was quite natural, in view of the general acceptance of the Yin- Yang theories, to think of human sexual relations against a cosmic background, and indeed as having intimate connections with the mechanism of the whole universe. The Taoists considered that sex, far from being an obstacle to the attainment of hsien-ship (hsein = True Man. the Taoist word describing the state of physical immortality), could be made to aid it in important ways.280 Interestingly, as in Anandagiri's description of the followers of Ucchista Ganapati, or in Gunaratna's description of the Loka- yatikas, the sexual techniques of the Taoists were often carried out on group basis. The most astonishing aspect of this whole department of Taoist. philosophical-religious practice (astonishing, too, for most modern Chinese) is that it comprised public ceremonies as well as ordinary conjugal life and private exercises for hsien-ship candidates. These liturgies were called 'The True Art of Equalising the Chhi's,' or 'Uniting the Chhi's' of male and female .. The ceremony was in- tended for 'deliverance from guilt' and occurred on nights of new moon and full moon, after fasting. It consisted of a ritual dance, .. which ended either in public heirogamy or in successive unions of the members of the assembly in the chambers along the sides of the temple courtyard.281 Needham has taken the idea of 'deliverance from guilt' rather seriously. 'This,' he said, 'is commended as noteworthy to the diverse schools of modern psychology."282 He looked at the ceremony as a technique of 'group catharsis.'283 But this appears to be going rather far. The idea of 'deliverance from guilt' might have been a later interpolation-apparently an arbitrary spiritual or semi-spiritual justification of the survival of an obviously archaic ritual. If Taoism was really rooted in

278 Ib. ii 146. 281 Ib. ii 150-1. 279 Ib. ii 147. 282 Ib. ii 150n. 280 Ib. ii 146. 283 Ib. ii 151.

TANTRA 343

primitive magic, as Needham himself has so convincingly argued, then it could hardly have any place for such a notion in it. The object of magic is essentially practical. On the other hand, the emphasis on the sexual union, sometimes in group and always overtly magical, is to be found among the primitive peoples. The idea behind it is to induce or enhance the fertility of nature, and the question of deliverance from guilt hardly arises. It is from the idea that we tried to obtain the clue not only to the obscure practices of Tantrism but also to its basic theoretical structure. If Tantrism and Taoism were really closely similar, as Needham himself convincingly argued, then we may try the same procedure for the understanding of Taoism. Unfortu- nately, Needham has given us the impression of being concerned primarily with the significance of ancient Taoism and he has paid insufficient attention to the problem of its origin. The question of significance is not unimportant; but it can be fully understood only when the question of origin is adequately answered. However, looking as he did at the question of origin as somehow or other sccondary and unimportant, Needham has not fully exploited the possibility of the primitive rituals or magical practices having any light to throw on the obscure recesses of ancient Chinese thought. On the other hand, Thomson, dealing with the problem of ancient Greek thought, has shown how immensely fruitful the procedure may be. With this and the further reservation that we do not with Needham propose to look at Tantrism as but an aspect or branch of Buddhism, we may very profitably follow him further in his comparison of Taoism and Tantrism. It is then of great interest to find that just as ancient and early medieval Taoism was deeply interested in the phenomena of sex, so also this was central of Tantrism.284 He has referred to the theory of vajra and padma, the prac- tices of maithuna and stri-puja of the Tantrikas. 'The whole forms a remarkable parallel to the practices of early medieval Taoism.'285 Again, 'It is interesting that Tantrism, like Taoism, encouraged women adepts."286 And he concluded, 'In any case, it is possible to find detailed parallels of much precision between Taoism and Tantrism.'287 The Tantrika yoga, e.g., laid great emphasis on the respira- tory technique (pranayama), just as the Taoists did. 'Besides,

284 Ib. ii 426 286 Ib. ii 427. 285 Ib. 287 Ib. ii 428.

344 LOKAYATA

quite apart from these detailed technical resemblances, Tantrika literature is full of paradoxes similar to those so characteristic of early Taoism.'288 Further, Shan Wu-Wei approved of the statues showing sexual union, but warned that they were not to be placed in the public halls of Tem- ples. So also in India. Tantrists emoloyed a 'twilight language' with allusions not intelligible to the uninitiated (sandhyabhasa), a Tantrik slang.289 All these have led Needham to raise the question of the relation between Tantrism and Taoism.

At first sight, then, Tantrism seems to have been an Indian importation to China. But closer inspection of the dates leads to a consideration. at least, of the possibility that the whole thing was really Taoist.290 The dates referred to are as follows: The Taoist sexual theories and practices flourished in China between the second and the sixth centuries A.D., 'definitely before the rise of the cult in India."291 But we have already discussed the problem of the age of Tantrism and we have seen that whatever might have been the date of the written treatises on it, Tantrism goes as far back as the Indus period. The consideration of the date, therefore, does not prove that Tantrism in India was but a version of Taoism imported from China. Apart from this consideration of the date, Needham has cited, mainly from the writings of Bhattacharya and Bagchi, certain further evidences pointing to the possible Chinese origin of Tantrism. Bhattacharya claimed that the principal centre of Buddhist Tantrism was in Assam. It was in Assam (Kamarupa), again, that a Sanskrit translation of Tao Te Ching was under- taken in the seventh century292 A.D. Again, China (Mahacina) occupies a very important place in the Tantrika literatures. This evidence, originally adduced by Bagchi, may be quoted from his work.

A certain number of Tantrik practices styled Cinacara has been much discussed by scholars. The Tara Tantra adopted by both Hinduism and Buddhism says that the cult of Cina Tara came from the country of Mahacina. Vasistha, one of the greatest Brahmana sages, is said to have gone to the country of Mahacina to meet Buddha, who was to be found at that time neither in India nor in Tibet. Vasistha was initiated there by Buddha to the secret doctrines of Cinacara and subsequently came back to India to propagate them. In this Cinacara, Prof. Sylvian Levi finds distinct echo of the secret socicties which existed. in China.293

288 Ib. ii 429. 291 Ib. ii 428. 289 Ib. ii 427. 292 Ib. 290 Ib. ii 427. 293 ST i 45-6.

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Bagchi went further to show the essential identity of the two goddesses Mahacinakrama Tara and Ekajata, which according to him, showed that the latter of the Hindu Tantras was really Chinese in origin.294 Again, the Sammoha Tantra mentioned 'a lake called Cola on the western side of the Meru which was included in the Cina-desa.' This suggested to the author the connection of Tantrism with the 'pure Mongolian zone."295 'There are ample evidence,' said Bagchi, 'to prove that the zone of heterodox Tantras went far beyond the natural limits of India."296 It is not necessary to quote all the details of these evidences, and it is certainly impossible to question their im- portance. But the basic question remains: What do all these evidences really prove? They imply foreign elements in the Tan- tra, argued Bagchi. According to Needham, some of these, in the context of the fundamental similarity between Taoism and Tantrism, suggest the possibility of Taoism having been origi- nally exported from China, subsequently assuming the form of Tantrism in India. The importation of Tantrism to China, therefore, could have been, according to Needham, a case of re-importation.297 The fact of Indian Buddhist Tantrism coming to China in the eighth century A.D., has been interpreted by him as follows:

Possibly, therefore, Tantrism was another instance of foreigners amiably instructing Chinese in matters with which the Chinese were already quite familiar.298 In view of the extreme antiquity of Indian Tantrism, it is of course impossible to prove that it was merely Taoist in origin. Nevertheless, the facts and evidences mentioned by the scholars are significant. There had been foreign elements in the Tantras. But this could have been possible only because Tantrism alreadv had the framework within which these forcign elements could be accommodated. In other words certain beliefs and practices were already current in China, Tibet and other places and these, in the course of time, got absorbed in Indian Tantrism. This could have been possible only on the basis of some fundamental affinity already existing between all these and Tantrism. And there will be no mystery about this fundamental affinity if we agree to look at these as ultimately rooted in the primitive agri-

294 Ib. 296 Ib. 295 Ib. 46.

298 Ib. 297 SCC ii 428.

346 LOKAYATA

cultural matriarchate. Similar is our comment on Needham's view on the relation between Tantrism and Taoism. The point is that neither Taoism nor Tantrism was a thing- in-itself. Both must have had their roots in the concrete material conditions,-must have been 'directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men', as the Marxists would put it. Without a clear analysis of this material basis, the mere talk of one borrowing from the other remains mysterious. As Thomson,299 referring to the theory that the Eleusinian Mysteries were borrowed from Egypt, has remarked: This evidence proves that the cult of Demeter had been subject- ed at one period to Egyptian influence; but the precise extent of that influence can only be determined after an investigation of the social origins of mystical religion as such .... Religious ideas are borne by trade winds far afield, but they only take root in soils ready to receive them, and their subsequent growth is determined primarily by the conditions of their immediate environment. In order to assess the significance of the features common to the two cults, it is neces- sary to relate both to the general history of agriculture and to relate their points of divergence to the special history of the two areas. It is only when that has been done that we shall be in a position to treat the question of diffusion as a separable factor. We have emphasised a portion of the quotation above, be- cause it could have been a verbatim comment on Needham's theory on the possible Taoist origin of Indian Tantrism. And yet Needham himself does not appear to have any great confidence in the diffusionist hypothesis. Referring to the parallel between the thoughts in Kuan Tzu (a Taoist book) and those of Thales of Miletus, he has observed: I am not disposed to believe that there can be any question of transmission of the ideas. Similar minds working on similar problems would be erpected to come to similar results.300 This is certainly true. But why should we not extend its implications to the question of the relation between Taoism and Tantrism as well?

13. MANUAL LABOUR AND PROTO-SCIENCE The most startling of all the points made by Needham con- cerns the political position of the Taoists. It acquires a special significance in view of the fact, as Needham himself has insisted, that their political position cannot be separated from their proto. scientific tendencies.

299 AA 120-1. Italics added. 300 SCC ii 42. Italics added.

TANTRA 347

It is said that the Taoists walked outside the society. This might have been so. The reason, however, is that 'they were in complete opposition to the very structure of feudal society, and their withdrawal was part of their protest.'301 The Taoist criticism of the feudal lords and their ideologi- cal spokesmen-'the wise sages and the righteous scholars'-was scathing. It reminds us of the Lokayata and Sahajia criticism of the claims and pretensions of the ruling castes. Here are two examples: The shameless becomes rich, and good talkers become high officials Small robbers are put in prison, but great robbers become feudal lords, and there on the gates of the feudal lords will your 'righteous scholars' be found.302 Do not those who are vulgarly called wise prove to be but collectors for the great thieves? And do not those who are considered sages then prove to be but guardians in the interest of the great thieves? Here is one who steals a buckle (for his girdle)-he is put to death for it. Here is another who steals a State-he becomes its prince. And it is at the gates of the princes that we find benevolence and righteousness (most strongly) professed. Is not this stealing bene- volence and righteousness, sageness and wisdom?303 With this bitter protest against feudalism, what was the alternative proposed by the Taoists? They proposed nothing new, they did not look forward, and strictly speaking, therefore, they were not revolutionary; they looked back, and the type of society to which they wished to return can have been nothing other than primitive tribal collectivism.304 Wherefrom could the Taoists get the idea of this pre-class collectivism?

If it is hard to believe that the memory of this ancient feeling of social solidarity, prior to the development of classes, could have persisted sufficiently long to have inspired the Taoists, one may remember that groups following this way of life are likely to have persisted at the fringes of Chinese society far down into the feudal period. No doubt the 'barbarians,' against whom the feudal lords so frequently fought, followed it.305 Further,

it is possible to quote from Chinese writers of many ages who read back their observations of the customs of environing peoples into their own antiquity.300 Needham quoted a number of remarkable passages show- ing how strongly the memory of primitive communism survived

301 Ib. ii 86. 304 Ib. ii 104. 302 Ib. ii 102. 305 Ib. 303 Ib. 306 1b. ii 104n.

348 LOKAYATA

in the tradition of the Taoists and how clearly their political inspiration was rooted in it. Here is an example: The world was an undifferentiated unity, the pure collectivity had not been broken up and dispersed, the different sorts of people formed a oneness, and all creations flourished exceedingly.307 The Taoist writings mention certain legendary rebels, against whom the earliest legendary kings had to fight and whom they destroyed.308 It is possible, suggested Needham, 'that we should see behind these legendary symbols the leaders of that pre-feudal class-differentiated society."309 What is striking, further, is that these legendary names had obvious connections with the working people:310 the inventor of metallurgy and metal weapons, the inventor of embankments and walls, the chief of the artisans, the copper worker,311 etc. One of these names, Kung Kung, literally meant communal labour.312 This led Needham to argue an extremely significant point: If the Taoists really held the political views which I am suggest- ing that they did hold, one would expect to find traces of some close connection between them and the working people. Such traces exist.313 In the practice of the two philosophers called Hsu Hsing and Chhen Hsiang (300 B.c.), 'we can dimly see traces of co- operative agricultural units reminiscent of the Digger Move- ment of the English Revolution of the seventeenth century.'314 Thcy are said to have belonged to the School of Agriculturists, 'but we can see that they must have been extremely close to the Taoists.'315 Another connection of the Taoists with manual work and tech- nology is seen in a type of story which is so frequent that one may call them 'knack-passages.' Their general burden is that wonderful skills cannot be taught and transferred, but are attainable by minute concentration on the Tao running through natural objects of all kinds.316 Such knack-passages occur concerning the butcher, the musician, the cicada-catcher, boatmen, swimmers, sword- makers, bellstand-carvers, arrow-makers, wheelwrights, animal tamers and mathematicians.317 'In any case', Needham summed up, 'throughout the subse- quent centuries material production and manual labour conti- nued to be a trait of Taoist communities."318

307 Ib. ii 107. 310 Ib. ii 117. 309 Ib. ii 115ff. 309 Ib. ii 119.

313 Ib. ii 120. 311 Ib. ii 115-7. 312 Ib. ii 117.

316 Ib. 314 Ib. 317 Ib. ii 121. 315 Ib. 818 Ib.

TANTRA 349

This connection of the Taoists with manual labour and material production is exceedingly important. It is here that we come across the clue to their scientific or proto-scientific world- outlook. Labour processes involve a sense of objective coercion- the material reality of the external world is brought to bear on the human consciousness when man is engaged in work on it. In other words, manual labour keeps human consciousness an- chored to the concrete material world and does not allow it to drift to other-worldliness or idealistic fancies. It is only when, as the result of the process of social evolution, manual labour is despised,-looked at as a mark of degeneration and vulgarity, -human consciousness, i.e., the consciousness of the ruling class that withdraws itself from the direct responsibility of manual labour, also emancipates itself from its obligations to the con- crete material world and acquires the delusion of omnipotence, flattering itself with the idea, as if it were the creator of the external world.319 This is the idealistic outlook, and when the word consciousness is substituted by God or Spirit, the same is called spiritualism. It is not difficult to see why science should become im- possible on the basis of such a view. When the whole world is reduced to a mere product of consciousness,-of Mind, Spirit, or God-it cannot acquire any more status than a phantasma- goria, making it an idle preoccupation to be seriously interested in its laws and secrets. It is because of this that Buddhism, as a world-denying ascetic faith, when exported to China, became so much inimical to scientific speculations there.320 With the Taoists, however, it was different. Remaining true, as they always did, to material production and manual labour, they could also retain an instinctively materialistic outlook, on the basis of which alone it was possible to develop science or proto-science. As Needham put it, 'at bottom, the artisan and the Taoist stood together in the conviction that the Tao was in natural things and not something other-worldly and trans- cendent.'321 Following is an excellent example of this instinctive materialism from the Taoist writings: All the labour (of building) throughout the months and years is devoted to the handling of natural things. But people say that to be enslaved to natural things is not the right Tao. However, I believe that the right Tao lies exactly in being the servant of the things of Nature. If this were not so, the people would not know

319 Engels. DN 328-9; Marx and Engels GI 19-20. 320 Needham SCC ii. 396, 403. 321 Ib. ii 123.

350 LOKAYATA

the use of all simple everyday things. Even the Confucian scholars cannot depart from practical things for a single moment.322 This is instinctive materialism generated by the processes of manual labour. It was on the basis of this that the Taoists developed their scientific or proto-scientific outlook. Needham's concluding remarks in connection with democracy and science in ancient China deserve to be quoted at length: the birth of science requires the bridging of the gap between the scholar and the artisan. It is a point to which we shall return, but it must be mentioned here, for the Confucians were entirely on the side of the literate administrators, and lacked all sympathy with artisans and manual workers. The Taoists, on the other hand, were. as we have seen, in close contact with them (here is another parallel with the pre-Socratic Greek nature-philosophers). These attitudes run through all later Chinese history Other points of connection might be raised, but enough has been said to indicate that it was probably no coincidence that Taoism in its ancient form was con- nected both with the earliest Chinese science and technology, and with the ideals of ancient equalitarian pre-feudal Chinese society.323 This last point is probably in need of a little more clarific- ation. What was it that established the connection between proto-science and the ideal of the primitive collective society of Taoism? The answer is to be found in the attitude to manual labour in the primitive collectivist society. Here are two re- markable Taoist evidences cited by Needham. The compiler of the Bibliography in the Chhien Han Shu says of the followers of the Agriculture School that 'they could see no use for sage-kings. Desiring both ruler and subject to plough to-

classes.'324 gether in the fields, they overthrew the order of upper and lower

(Anciently) the people had a constant nature, they wove them- selves clothes and tilled the ground for food. This was what we call the Virtue of the Common Lite. They were united, forming one single group; this was what we call Natural Liberty.325 In the terminology of the Marxists, the primitive society was yet to witness the divorce of theory from practice, of mental labour from manual labour; and it was in such a social organ- isation that the Taoists were seeking their inspiration. But the ideology of the primitive society is magic. And Needham has repeatedly observed that the proto-science of the Taoists was also magical. As a matter of fact, Chinese Taoism so closely resembled Indian Tantrism in being predominantly magical. Again, Tantrism, too, as we shall see further on, repre- sented the proto-scientific trend in the Indian philosophical heritage.

322 1b. 324 Ib. ii 121. 323 Ib. ii. 131-2. 325 Ib. ii. 106.

TANTRA 351

If all these sound queer and baffling, the real reason is that the modern man is prone to misunderstand the real significance of primitive magic. There is no doubt that magic rests on ignorance. But ignorance is one thing while idealism or spiritual- ism quite another. In magic, as Frazer326 pointed out, we may detect a germ of the modern notion of natural law or the view of nature as a series of events occurring in an invariable order without the intervention of personal agency. Again: Thus its fundamental conception is identical with that of modern science; underlying the whole system is a faith, implicit but real and firm, in the order and uniformity of nature .... The fatal flaw of magic lies not in its general assumption of a sequence of events determined by law, but in its total misconception of the nature of the particular laws which govern that sequence.327 It is from this point of view that Frazer characterised magic as next of kin to science.329 Nevertheless, Frazer treated magic largely as a thing-in- itself. He has not gone into the question why magic, with all its primitiveness and ignorance, could remain so much akin to science? It is here that Needham's analysis of the subject comes to our help. 'Science and magic,' said Needham, 'are in their earliest stages indistinguishable.'329 This is a point, according to him, the importance of which 'one cannot emphasise too much."230 Thus Taoism, which was basically magic,331 was also proto- science.332 But the question is, how was it so? How could magic and science be originally thus indistinguishable? If science be based on an instinctively materialistic outlook, and if magic be originally next of kin to science, magic too must have been origi- nally based on an instinctive materialism. And there is no mystery about it, because this instinctive materialism is itself generated by the labour processes. Primitive society was yet to witness the degradation of the labour process; magic, its charac- teristic outlook, had to remain instinctively materialistic, and as such closely akin to science. It is from this point of view that we are to understand Needham's bold formulation: 'magic and science were originally united in a single undifferentiated com- plex of manual operations.'338 With the disintegration of the pre-

826 GB 10. 327 Ib. 49. 828 Ib. 50. 829 SCC ii 34. 330 Ib. ii 83. 381 Ib. ii 83fr., 132ff. 333 Ib. ii 426. Italics added. 332 Ib. ii 68-9.

352 LOKAYATA

class society, manual operation was looked down; the primitive magic or proto-science gave way to religion and the idealistic outlook. Taoism, with its moorings for the primitive pre-class society,-in which 'the ruler and subject had to plough together in the fields,'-had naturally no place for other-worldliness in it. It was magic. But it was also proto-science. Later, though despised by the upper classes and their ideological spokesmen, it retained its connections with the working people. How Necdham argued these exceedingly important points is a question into the details of which we cannot enter here. We have, unfortunately, neither the scope to quote the re- markable Taoist passages cited and re-interpreted by him. What is really important for us is to draw those implications of his analysis that are specially helpful for our understanding of Tantrism. We have tried to trace the sources of Tantrism to the manual operation of agriculture. In its initial stage, these manual operations were intensely characterised by magical beliefs and practices. However, with all the ignorant fantasies of savagery with which it was stuffed, the agricultural magic from which Tantrism arose, because of its connections with the manual operations, remained instinctively materialistic. The germs of this instinctive materialism became clear in the dehavada of Tantrism, which, as we have secn, followed directly from the theoretical aspects of the ancient agricultural magic. Later Tan- trism, as surviving in the altered social atmosphere, passed into its opposite. That which was originally a form of instinctive materialism became a receptacle for spiritualistic ideas like bhakti, puja, moksa and what not. Nevertheless, the relics of the original materialism was never completely lost because Tantrism, even in the later times, retained its connections with the despised castes and toiling peoples. And if this was so, we may expect to see Tantrism closely associated with the scientific or proto- scientific trend of the cultural heritage of India.

13. THE PROTO-SCIENTIFIC TREND Observed Needham: Naturally Victorian scholars spoke of Tantrism with bated breath, but we may well question whether these ideas, which after all we cannot judge by the canons of a civilization which has had two thousand years of Pauline anti-sexuality, were not quite reasonably associated with the magical- scientific view of the world. I would remind the reader only of the great, though sometimes unsuspected, part which sexual symbolism

TANTRA 353

has played in the language of the alchemists. May it not have been that the very conception of chemical reaction arose by analogy from the congress of the human sexes?334 Again, referring to the exponents of Tantrism in China, he said,

the most important Tantrist was the monk I-Hsing (672-717 A.D.), the greatest Chinese astronomer and mathematician of his time, and this fact alone should give us a pause, since it offers a clue to the possible significance of this form of Buddhism for all kinds of observational and experimental sciences. It would be surprising if there were no alchemical connections ... 35 As a matter of fact, it is in this field of alchemy that the contribution of the Tantrikas to Indian science was most notable. The subject was exhaustively treated by Ray in his History of Hindu Chemistry. 'Indian Alchemy,' observed Ray,338 'very largely derives its colour and flavour from it,' i.e., Tantrism. The Tantrika cult is 'a curious mixture of alchemical processes on the one hand, and grotesque and obsccne and sometimes revolting rites on the other."337 The most important Tantrika text, from the point of view of alchemical knowledge, is Rasaratnakara of the eighth century A.D.338 But there were many other texts like this. 'It is scarcely possible,' said Ray,339 'to submit an exhaustive list.' Ray himself used as his sources mainly the following: Rasaratna- kara,340 Rasarnava,341 Kakacandesvarimata Tantra,312 Rasendra- curamani,343 Rasaprakasasudhakara,344 etc. He prepared a list of the more important texts like these along with the names of their authors and the list contains no less than two dozen names."45 Some of the texts in their original form are lost, though preserved in Tibetan translation. Some of the names and contributions of the important alchemists are preserved in the writings of others. There are indeed a great many names scattered throughout the mass of chemical and medical literatures, some of which have been handed down to posterity, sometimes on account of the important processes they invented and sometimes, again, because of the efficacy of the metallic preparations which they introduced.846 The universities of Nalanda, Udantapura and Vikramasila in Central India and Magadha became the important centres

834 Ib. ii 426. 335 Ib. ii 427. 337 Ib. i Intro. xxxviii. 836 Ray HHC i Intro. XxXv. 338 Ray (ed) HCAMI 311 389 Ray HHC ii Intro. xcvi. 340 Ib. ii 1. 841 Ib. ii 9. 342 Ib. ii 12. 848 Ib. ii 14. 344 Ib. ii 16. 845 Ib. ii Intro. xcvi. 846 Ib. ii Intro. xcv. L-23

354 LOKAYATA

for the cultivation of Tantrism, 'with alchemy as an integral part of it., It is conjectured that from there it spread to South India and Tibet (Bhot).347 The development of Tantrika mysticism in South India has some special importance for us and we may discuss it briefly. Like the Carya songs of early medieval Bengal, Tamil lite- rature preserves for us a considerable body of poetical works attributed to the great South Indian Tantrists of the time. In Tamil they were called the sittars (Sanskrit siddhas, the perfect ones, i.e., the great adepts in Tantrism), a word that obviously corresponds to the Siddhacaryas of the Carya songs. We are indebted to Iyer for a short account of them.348 Of the eighteen sittars mentioned in these Tantrika works, one had the name Bogar in Tamil. A considerable number of medical and alchemical works are attributed to him. According to these sources, he was originally a Chinese who came to India in the third century A.D. To begin with, he spent some time in Patna and Gaya. These were arcas under strong Buddhist in- fluence then. However, Bogar's writings show hardly any influence of Buddhism. He next moved to South India and got himself initiated in Tantrism by the sittare there. Eventually, he himself acquired the status of a sittar and by all means a foremost one. He not only wrote his treatises on alchemy and medicine; it is also believed that the South Indian sittars learnt a lot about these subjects from him. He is said to have visited Arabia and then returned to his coun- try. It is further believed that some of his Tamil disciples accompa- nied him to China and after learning some mechanical arts returnad to Tamil Nad.349

Bogar was not the only Chinese among the South Indian sittars. Iyer has mentioned another, called Pulipani in Tamil. It is said that he came to India along with Bogar and settled in Tamil Nad. Evidently he too worked his way up to the status of a sittar in a similar manner. A considerable number of works on magic, medicine and alchemy bear his name. These too are in Tamil, and, needless to add, are written from the Tantrika point of view. Most of the works of the Tamil sittars still remain scattered over various manuscript libraries and monasteries of South

347 Ib. ii Intro. xlix. 848 Ray (ed.) HCAMI 125-6. 349 Ib. 126.

TANTRA 355

India. When properly edited and analysed, these will give us rich material for reconstructing the history of Indian science. We may have some idea of their importance as source-material from the following. Reddy350 has recently published a list of twenty-seven of these manuscripts along with short notes on their contents. Important data concerning Indian medicine, alchemy and che- mistry are to be found in these notes. Reddy mentioned thirty- eight more manuscripts and told us that these abound in similar materials. Thus the special interest of these works of the Tamil sittars is twofold. First, these indicate some kind of exchange of scienti- fic or proto-scientific ideas and techniques between India and China. Of the eighteen South Indian sittars at least two werc definitely Chinese. For, though the dates ascribed to them by the Tamil sources may not be beyond controversy, there is no ground to question their validity on the point that Bogar and Pulipani originally came from China. Secondly, on the evidence of these Tamil sources, this interchange of scientific knowledge took place through the medium of Tantrism. The natural pre- sumption is that there was something inherent in Tantrism that favoured the growth of the scientific trend. Incidentally, the Tamil sittars were strongly opposed to the idealistic philosophy of Samkara351 and Bogar, as we have just seen, was least in- fluenced by Buddhism proper. We have tried to indicate what it was in Tantrism that favoured the growth of the scientific trend. Readers interested in more details concerning the contribution of the Tantrikas to Indian medicine, alchemy and chemistry may look up Ray's book. It is not necessary for us to enter here into all the techni- calities of the chemical processes invented by the Tantrikas. Instead of that we may remain confined to certain broader question of general theoretical interest. It is true that the alchemical Tantras, too, followed the stereotyped pattern of the so-called Hindu or Buddhist Tantras. The theme is often presented in the form of a dialogue between Siva and Parvati. Again, sometimes a Buddha, a Tathagata or an Avalokitesvara is invoked as the source and fountain of all knowledge. Nevertheless, the artificiality of all these becomes evident from the distinct emphasis on experimental observation

350 Ib. 127. 851 Ib. 126.

356 LOKAYATA

which appears to be a persistent theme of these alchemical Tantras. The Tantrikas did invent and use a large variety of actual laboratory instruments for their chemical experiments and they gave functional names to these, e.g. Dola Yantram, Svedani Yantram, Patana Yantram, Adhaspatana Yantram, Dheki Yan- tram, Valuka Yantram, Tiryakpatana Yantram, Vidyadhara Yantram, Dhupa Yantram and Kosthi Yantram. Interesting diagrams of these are to be found in the History of Chemistry in Ancient and Medieval India.352 But not merely the invention and the use of such instru- ments-the importance of experiments was theoretically formu- lated by the Tantrika alchemists. Said the Rudrayamala Tantra:353

I have performed the aforementioned experiments with my own hands and have seen them with my own eyes. They are not recorded from mere hearsay or from the dictation of a teacher. These are being promulgated for the benefit of mankind. Similarly, the Rasendracintamani34 opened with the follow- mg declaration: I shall give publicity only to such processes as I have been able to verify by my own experiments. In another place, the author of the same treatise declared:

Those mercurial operations alone have found a place in my book, which I have been able to put to tests. Those who teach with- out being able to perform experiments labour in vain.355 Are not all these extremely remarkable in the land of sruti and smriti? But the theoretical interest of these alchemical Tantras is not exhausted merely by its emphasis on experimental observations. Consistent with this emphasis, we find in the texts a conscious acceptance of the materialistic outlook to serve as the theoretical foundation of this science or proto-science. 'What is it,' Ray35 asked himself, 'that made the Tantras the repositories of chemical knowledge"? The answer, he rightly said, was already given by the Tantrikas themselves. Said the author of the Rasarnava:

As it is used by the best devotees for the highest end, it is called parada (quick-silver). Begotten of my limbs, it is, O Goddess, equal to me.

852 Ib. Fig. 30A, B, D, E, G, etc. 353 Ib. 157. 355 Ib. 354 Ray HHC ii Intro. Ixiv. 356 Ib. i Intro. xli

TANTRA 357

It is called rasa because it is the exudation of my body. It may be urged that the literal interpretation of these words is incorrect, the liberation in this life being explicable in another manner. This objection is not allowable. Liberation is declared in the six systems as subsequent to the death of the body, and upon this there can be no reliance, and consequently no activity to attain to it free from misgivings ... Such liberation is not cognised in perception like an emblic fruit in hand. Therefore, a man should preserve that body by means of mercury and medicaments.857 Another text declared:

Those who, without quitting their bodies have attained to new ones through the influence of Hara and Gauri (i.e. mercury and mica), are to be praised as rasasiddhas (alchemists) therefore, who aspires to liberation in this life, should first make to The ascetic,

himself a glorified body.358 The conception of liberation, here, is peculiarly physical. To the Tantrikas, liberation meant perfection and development of the body. As it was declared, 'having attained to mercurial bodies and therewith identified are liberated though alive'.359 Thus, it is this conception of physical immortality that gave the Tantrikas the word for mercury (parada). According to them, mercurial preparations could make the body imperishable. To acquire such a state of the body was the highest ideal. Mer- cury, thus, was the giver (da) of the summum bonum (para), i.e. it was parada.

The preservation of body, O Supreme Goddess, is obtained by mercury and by (the supression) of breath. Mercury, when swooned, cures diseases and when killed, restores life 1o the dead.360 Some one may urge: If the creation of mercury by Hara and Gauri were proved, it might be allowed that the body could be made permanent; but how can that be proved? This objection is not allowable, inasmuch as that can be proved by eighteen modes of elaboration.361 This conception of physical immortality and its connection with the alchemy of the Tantrikas is, again, strongly reminiscent of ancient Taoism. The Taoists, as Needham showed,382 were

359 Quoted SDS (Cowell) 139. Cf. Ray HCAMI 132: 'By partak- 357 1b. 358 1b ii 58.

ing of this elixir (or the sublimate) the devotee acquires a body not liable to decay.' Cf. SDS (Cowell) 137: 'Mercury is called parada, because it is a means of conveyance beyond the series of transmi- gratory states'. 380 Ray HHC i Intro. xlii-ii. 381 Ib. i Intro. xliii. 362 SCC ii. 139.

358 LOKAYATA

emphasising the importance of certain techniques like the respi- ratory technique (pranayama), the gymnastic technique (asana), the sexual technique (maithuna), the alchemical and pharmaceutical techniques (rasayana)-and all these for the purpose of attaining a state of material immortality. This con- ception of material immortality, he added, was 'of incalculable importance to science' because it 'stimulated the development of the technique of alchemy.'33 We have just seen that precisely the same thing was said of Tantrism by our Tantrikas them- selves: unlike the followers of the idealistic systems of Indian philosophy who belittled the importance of the body and dreamt of the liberation of the soul, the Tantrikas, with their supreme emphasis on the material human body (dehavada), conceived liberation only in terms of the development and culture of the body (kaya sadhana). It is no wonder, therefore, that they should have been so much concerned with concrete material measures that could ensure the development and the preserva- tion of the body itself. This explains their contribution to al- chemy and medicine. In short, the proto-materialism of the Tantrikas was the clue to their proto-scientific tendencies.364 As is only to be expected, this proto-materialism was archaic and instinctive; it was still inextricably mixed up with ritual practices that formed part of the extremely backward technology. It remains for us to argue in the next chapter how in original Sankhya this archaic materialism implicit in the Tantra acquired a self-conscious philosophical form and thus represented the strongest opposition to the most outstanding school of the idealistic philosophy in this country, namely the Vedanta.

363 Ib 364 Madhava SDS (Cowell) 136-44 gives us a description of this philosophical basis of the Mercurial System; however, because he did not emphasise the essential proto-materialism of this philosophy and did not connect it with the deha-vada and the kaya-sadhana of the Tantrikas, his account remains somewhat confusing and sketchy.

CHAPTER SIX

SANKHYA

FROM PROTO-MATERIALISM TO MATERIALISM

Much of Sankhya literature appears to have been lost, and there seems to be no continuity of tradition from ancient times up to the age of the commentators. In such systematic works as we have, one seems to have a hazy view of a grand system of speculative metaphysics. There is so much that is clothed in a poetic or mystic garb on which commentators do not help us much but which are suggestive enough to tempt us to con- struct the system anew. The interpretation of all ancient systems requires a constructive effort; but while in the case of some systems where we have a large volume of literature and a continuity of tradition, the construction is mainly of the nature of translation of ideas into modern concepts, here in Sankhya the construction at many places involves supplying of missing links from one's imagination. It is risky work, but unless one does it one cannot be said to understand Sankhya as a philosophy. It is a task that one is obliged to undertake. It

philosophy. is a fascinating task because Sankhya is a bold constructive

KRISHNACANDRA BHATTACHARYYA1

'We are reminded of the Sankhya philosophy by the familiar drum-beats of the Durga Puja or of the worship of Kali or of Jagaddhatri.' Bankimcandra Chattopadhyaya,2 the eminent novelist and thinker of the nineteenth century Bengal made this extraordinary observation. We have already discussed the cults of Durga and of the other Mother Goddesses and have seen these to be offshoots of ancient Tantrism. But what is there in Tan- trism to remind us of the Sankhya philosophy? Bankimcandra answered that the Sankhya principles of purusa and prakriti laid the basis for Tantrism.

1 SP 127. 2 BR (B) ii. 222.

360 LOKAYATA

I. TANTRA AND SANKHYA That the fundamental theoretical concepts of Tantrism are strikingly similar to-and, in fact, are identical with-those of the Sankhya system cannot be questioned. These are the con- cepts of prakriti and purusa, with a decisive emphasis on the former. This naturally raises the question of the relationship between Sankhya and Tantra. The usual nineteenth-century explanation, as accepted by Bankimcandra, is that Tantrism borrowed its theoretical basis from the Sankhya philosophy. Thus, for example, in his article on 'Hinduism' in the Encyclo- pædia of Religion and Ethics, Crooke,3 referring to Tantrism, commented,

it has been supplied with a philosophical justification, being a popularised version of the Sankhya principle of the union of the soul of the universe (purusa) with the primordial essense (prakriti). We are going to argue that the rendering of purusa as the soul of the universe, however popular it may be, is, in all pro- bability, alien to the spirit of original Sankhya. More serious, however, is the error of the general hypothesis itself, namely, that Tantrism borrowed its theoretical basis from the Sankhya system. Even a mere chronological consideration makes the hypothesis prima facie doubtful. Tantrism, we have already seen, is so ancient that its origin can be traced as far back as the Indus period and it would be illogical to argue that the supreme importance of prakriti was originally extrinsic to it. Thus, if the explanation of the similarity between Tantra and Sankhya on the usually accepted lines fails to satisfy us, may we not be justified in reversing the hypothesis, viz. that the Sankhya system may turn out to be a more explicit philosophical re-statement of the theoretical position implicit in Tantrism? By way of what is called vriddha-sammati (the sanction of the elders) in our traditional philosophical writings, however, it may be pointed out at the very beginning that the genuine Indian philosophical tradition is not without any distinct hint as to the plausibility of this hypothesis. Samkara,4 for example, told us in so many words that the Sankhya system of Kapila 'is called Tantra' (trantrakhya). Referring to the alleged authenticity of Sankhya, he said, 'such smritis are the one called Tantra which was composed by a risi and is accepted by authoritative per- sons.'

3 ERE vi. 706. Cf. Dasgupta HIP i. 71. 4 On Br. Su. ii. 1.1.

SANKHYA 361

This may be understood along with the facts that in the same context he characterised the Sankhya philosophy as the 'Tantra of Kapila' (Kapilasya tantra),5 while in another place he referred to the Sankhya philosophers as tantrantariah.6 Of course, Thibaut was not inclined to attach any technical mean- ing to the use of the word tantra in the latter two cases. He rendered 'Kapilasya tantra' as the 'system of Kapila'7 and tantrantariah as the 'followers of another doctrine.' But the etymology of the word tantra does not give us the sense of system or doctrinc. The word commonly used by Samkara for doctrine or system is vada and, if Thibaut's translation be cor- rect, it must be viewed as an extremely remarkable fact that Samkara used the word tantra only in the context of Sankhya, i.e., never in the context of any other system. Besides, Thibaut himself found it impermissible to take the first of the above- mentioned use of the word tantra in the sense of doctrine or system. He had to render tantrakhya as 'the one called Tantra." But what did Samkara really mean by the word tantra in this case? The usual interpretation10 is that he was possibly referring here to an ancient treatise on Sankhya, the Sasti Tantra, which is lost to us. But there are difficulties in accepting such an interpretation. There is nothing in the writing of Samkara himself to justify it. It is not understandable why, if his real intention was to refer to a definite treatise, he failed to call it by its proper name. Is it possible that he used the word tantra merely to indicate the text Sasti Tantra? That hardly seems plausible, for the word tantra must have had its distinct sense in his times. Secondly, it is extremely doubtful, if not manifestly absurd, to imagine that Samkara was referring here to any definite treatise at all. We have rather the impression that Samkara was using the word tantra in a general sense to cover a class of smritis, i.e., treatises though not scriptural yet traceable to authoritative persons. Further, the author of the Sankhya Karika11 himself used the word tantra to mean the Sankhya doctrine, a circumstance to be understood in the context ot the fact that no ancient exponent of any school of Indian philosophy except the Tantrikas was known to use the word tantra to refer to his own system. Besides, the name Sasti Tantra is itself sug-

5 1b. 7 SBE xxxiv. 295. 6 Tb. ii. 4. 9.

9 Ib. xxxiv. 291. 8 Ib. xxxviii. 86. 10 Vedantabagish SB (B) ii.2n. 11 70. For difference in interpretation of bahudha kritam tan- tram, see Dasgupta HIP i. 211 and Colebrooke SK 158-9.

362 LOKAYATA

gestive because such names are typical of the Tantrika texts. Interestingly, we know of another text on Sankhya Yoga called Patanjala Tantra,12 which contains. references to alchemical matters, too. Such repeated use of the word tantra in connection with Sankhya could not be just accidental. We shall presently see that Gunaratna mentioned another extinct text on Sankhya, the Atreya Tantra. But more important than all these is a significant circum- stantial evidence which leads us to presume that Samkara repre- sented the true spirit of the Brahma Sutra in calling Sankhya or Kapila's system by the name Tantra in the distinctly technical, i.e., in the Tantrika sense. A considerable portion of the Brahma Sutra was designed to refute the philosophical and theological claims opposed to the standpoint of the Vedanta. Apparently, the author was anxious to refute those of the rival systems in particular that exercised the strongest influence in his times. We have already seen that Tantrism, from a remote antiquity, enjoyed wide popularity and influence; in fact, it represented the strongest opposition to the Vedic standpoint. Under these circumstances, it was natural for the author of the Brahma Sutra to refute Tantrism. Strangely, however, we do not come across in this text any single aphorism meant directly to refute Tantrism. This omission can be explained only on the assumption that the author of the Sutras, by refuting the Sankhya system elaborately, considered a separate refutation of Tantrism unnecessary, possi- bly because, during his times, the difference between the funda- mentals of the two did not acquire any great significance. For the moment what particularly interests us is that if this hypothesis be true, that is, if the Sankhya philosophy were in the earlier times an explicit philosophical re-statement of the fundamental theoretical position implicit in Tantrism and, if further, as we have already tried to argue, the term Lokayata originally stood for the beliefs and practices broadly referred to as Tantrism, then original Sankhya may be viewed as the most important development of the Lokayata tradition in Indian philosophy. Silamka, the Jaina commentator, was justified in denying any basic difference between Sankhya and Lokayata. Sankara, too, made the Sankhya philosophers quote the authority of the Lokayatikas.

12 Dasgupta HIP i. 235.

SANKHYA 363

All these mean that original Sankhya was a form of uncom- promising atheism and materialism. In fact, the genuinely old Indian philosophical tradition viewed it thus. It was persistently called nirisvara pradhana karana vada, the godless doctrine of primordial matter. Further, it must have originally been funda- mentally opposed to the orthodox or Vedic tradition which cul- minated in the idealistic outlook of the Upanisads, a point which the genuine representatives of the really orthodox tradition like Samkara and others have vigorously tried to establish. Jacobi held the view that Sankhya was originally the deve- lopment of a materialistic philosophy current in the country from very ancient times, a view which Radhakrishnan has tried to reject. Jacobi's attempt, said Radhakrishnan, to regard the Sankhya as the development of an early materialist school has little to support it. By its insistence on the absolute reality and independence of the spirit, the Sankhya set itself against all materialist views of mental phenomena. We do not come across any stage of the development of the Sankhya at which it can be identified with materialism.13 Radhakrishnan appears to be unduely influenced by the later writers on the Sankhya, who no longer represented the original spirit of the system. As a matter of fact, as we shall see later, this materialistic outlook of original Sankhya gave it a unique importance in the history of Indian philosophy. It was because of this that the Sankhya system could provide our philo- sophical tradition with the fundamental ideas of positive science. The most important of these are a theory of matter, a theory of causality, a theory of knowledge and a theory of evolutionary process. Referring to the last, Seal14 observed: The Sankhya system possesses a unique interest in the history of thought as embodying the earliest clear and comprehensive ac- count of the process of cosmic evolution, viewed not as a mere metaphysical speculation but as a positive principle based on the conservation, the transformation, and the dissipation of energy. Finding such ideas in an ancient system like the Sankhya may appear to be somewhat far-fetched. But it is not so. Even if original Sankhya did not express all these ideas in their fully developed form, the potentialities of these were in it and this could be possible because of its firm basis in the materialistic outlook. Nevertheless, persistent efforts were made to bring this originally heterodox system under the folds of orthodoxy and all

13 IP ii. 251. 14 PSAH 2.

364 LOKAYATA

sorts of arguments were invented to make an idealistic and spiri- tualistic philosophy of it. This has naturally resulted in conside- rable confusion in modern interpretations of the Sankhya philo- sophy. At the initial stage of our study, therefore, we are confronted with a special problem: How are we to gain a clear idea of the original Sankhya?

2. PROBLEM OF ORIGINAL SANKHYA The widespread influence which Sankhya philosophy enjoyed in this country can be judged from the circumstances that since the first century B.C., as Garbe15 said, the whole of Indian literature, so far as it touches philosophical thought, beginning with the Mahabharata and the Law Book of Manu, specially the literature of mythological and legendary Puranas, has been saturated with the doctrines of the Sankhya. Even Samkara,1s perhaps the greatest opponent of the Sankhya, had repeatedly to admit, however grudgingly it might have been, that the Sankhya system was supported by many weighty arguments and had the partial sanction of some emi- nently wise men. It is surprising, therefore, that in spite of this, the genuinely authentic materials on original Sankhya are scanty and even those that are available are often highly deceptive. Tradition attributes the origin of this system to Kapila, but makes the case confounding by also attributing a wide variety of conflicting myths to Kapila himself.17 As we shall see, the Mahabharata evidence makes us wonder whether this person was a male or a female. Even the name Sankhya is quite a mystery, despite various efforts to give it a meaning.18 As for the original texts directly devoted to an exposition of this philosophy, we are, strictly speaking, left with only twc. These are the Sankhya Karika and a certain Sankhya Sutra. The first is extremely short, consisting only of seventy-two couplets. The second one is quite late and largely spurious. The authorship of the Sankhya Sutras is ascribed to Kapila himself. It imitates a recognised old style in being a bundle of cryptic aphorisms. But in fact, it is the work of an unknown and definitely medieval author. According to Garbe,19 'it is highly

15 ERE xi. 189. 16 On Br. Su. ii. 1. 12. ii. 2. 17. 17 Colebrooke SK 157, Malasekera DPPN i. 513-5. 18 Belvalkar & Ranade HIP ii. 412. Gunaratna suggested that the name could have been शांख्य presumably derived from शंख meaning conch shell TRD 22. 19 SPB pref. ix.

SANKHYA 365

probable that the Sutras themselves are to be referred to a date as late as about 1400 A.D.' Dasgupta20 wanted to push their date five hundred years back. But he has not given us any definite reasons for this. On the other hand, the basic fact remains that the Sankhya Sutra has not been referred to by any writer before the fifteenth century A.D. Madhavacarya,21 in his account of Sankhya, quoted only the Karika. Even Gunaratna,22 though he spoke of a number of treatises on early Sankhya, was evidently unaware of the Sutras. Besides, how little we can rely on these Sutras as an authentic source-book of original Sankhya, is evidenced by the fact that they represent a persistent effort to obliterate all dis- tinctions between the Sankhya and the Vedanta. As Garbe23 said:

Even in the Sankya Sutras themselves the Sankhya doctrine no longer appears in its original unadulterated form; for they seek to explain away the points of discrepancy between themselves on the one hand and the teachings of the Upanisads and the Vedanta on the other. In particular, the author of the Sutras is at great pains to furnish proof of the utterly impossible thesis that the teachings of the Sankhya system are not in irreconcilable contradiction with the doctrine of personal God, with the doctrine of the all-embracing unity of Brahman, with the doctrine of the nature of Brahman as bliss (ananda), and with the doctrine of the attainment of the highest aim in the heavenly world. The aphorisms referred to by Garbe as evidences of this absurdity are indeed interesting.24 And here are his concluding remarks as to the difference between original Sankhya and the standpoint of the Sankhya Sutra: Indeed the Sankhya Sutras show clearly recognisable results of Vedantic influence in many places: most plainly perhaps at iv. 3, which is a word-for-word repetition of the Vedanta Sutra iv. 1. 1., and at v.116, where the Vedantic technical term brahmarupata is used instead of the proper Sankhya expression. Compared to this, the Sankhya Karika attributed to Isvara- krisna is older. According to Garbe,25 it can be placed possibly in the fifth century A.D., while according to Dasgupta,26 200 A.D. In spite of its comparatively greater antiquity, however, some of the modern scholars have offered definite historical grounds against the plausibility of discovering original Sankhya in the Karika:

20 HIP i. 212. 22 TRD 99. 21 SDS (Cowell) 221-30. 23 SPB pref. xi. 24 SS i. 95; i. 154; v. 64; v. 68; v. 110; vi. 51; vi. 58; vi. 59. 25 ERE xi. 189. 26 HIL i. 212.

366 LOKAYATA

The fact that Caraka (78 A.D.) does not refer to the Sankhya as described by Isvarakrisna and referred to in other parts of the Maha- bharata is a definite proof that Isvarakrisna's Sankhya is a later modification, which was either non-existent in Caraka's time or was not regarded as an authoritative old Sankhya view. Wassilief says quoting Tibetan sources that Vindhyavasin altered the Sankhya ac- cording to his own views. a title of Isvarakrisna.27 Takakusu thinks that Vindhyavasin was

Apart from such historical considerations, a logical analysis of the text reveals a very clear tendency to incorporate into the Sankhya system certain philosophical views that are really Vedantic in origin, though not possibly in as gross a manner as was done by the author of the Sankhya Sutra. In any case, it would be wrong under these circumstances to rely uncritically on the Karika for an idea of original Sankhya. Moreover, the Sankhya Sutra is but a collection of half sentences and the Sankhya Karika only a bundle of 'technical memorial verses.' It is necessary, in order to understand these, to depend upon the commentators. Bhattacharyya28 regretted that 'there seems to be no continuity of tradition from ancient times up to the age of the commentators.' But the situation is worse than that. For, really speaking, we do not come across the writings of any commentator on either of these two texts who can be called a strict tollower of the Sankhya. Apart from Raja, whose writings are lost to us,29 the best known commentators on the Karika were Gaudapada and Vacaspati Misra. There is no definite ground to deny that this Gaudapada was the same person as the Vedanta philosopher famous for his commentary on the Mandukya Upanisad. Colebrooke30 took him to be the same philosopher. At least, his commentary on the Karika shows .1 pronounced Vedantic bias. Again, Vacaspati Misra, a medieval philosopher belonging to the Nyaya School, was famous for his theism; he deliberately criticised the atheism of original Sankhya and wanted to convert it into a kind of theistic philosophy. The first to comment on the Sankhya Sutra was Aniruddha, a pronouncedly Vedantic philosopher belonging to the fifteenth century A.D. He was followed by Vijnana Bhiksu (16th cen- tury A.D.) whose commentary Pravacana Bhasya, is probably the most well known work on the system, as well known in fact as his clearly artificial effort to harmonise the Sankhya with the Vedanta.

27 Ib. i. 218. 20 Dasgupta HIP i. 212 n. 28 SP 127. 30 SK pref. vi.

SANKHYA 367

In still larger measure (i.e. higher than in the Sankhya Sutra) do Vedantic influences manifest themselves in Vijnana Bhiksu's commentary on the Sutras, ... In order to bridge over the chasm bet- ween the Sankhya system and his own theism (which he is pleased to style Vedantic), Vijnana Bhiksu resorts to the strangest means to do away with one of the fundamental doctrines of the genuine Sankhya, which is the denial of God.31 But more absurd than this, as Garbe32 himself noted, is his effort to reconcile the Vedantic doctrine of the unreality of the world (maya) with the Sankhya doctrine of the fundamental reality of matter (prakriti or pradhana, also called maya in Sankhya, but in the definitely opposite sense). There are a few other late medieval works on the Sankhya. But if the most outstanding commentaries on the extant treatises of the system and, what is worse, if these treatises themselves cannot be relied upon uncritically for an unbiased idea of original Sankhya, the importance of such late medieval works for the purpose is still less.

3. SOURCES OF ORIGINAL SANKHYA

There were other and older works on the Sankhya. These are lost to us. The most important of these was perhaps a certain Sasti Tantra referred to at the end of the Karika:

The subjects treated here in seventy couplets represent the entire (Sankhya) system, as is found in the Sasti Tantra, but exclu- sive of the anecdotal and polemical portions (of the Sasti Tantra).33 Colebrooke34 thought that this was not a reference to any particular treatise on the Sankhya system; he translated the word sastitantra as 'comprising sixty topics.' But this is improbable. It is not possible to prepare a list of sixty topics as forming the essence of the Sankhya system, without being as ingenious as the Raja Vartika quoted in Vacaspati Misra's85 commentary on the Karika. Even the Karika36 mentioned a list of only twenty-five categories and the authoritative orthodox tradition, as evidenced by the Sarva Darsana Samgraha,37 always remembered Sankhya as the doctrine of twenty-five topics. Besides, other writers, referred to the Sasti Tantra as an individual text. Thus, for example, we find a summary of it in the Ahirbudhnya Samhita,36

31 Garbe SPB pref. xii. 32 Ib. pref. xiii. 33 72. Like this, most of the Karika-passages quoted in this chapter are based on Colebrooke's translation. 34 SK 160. 85 Ib. 37 SDS (Cowell) 223. 38 Dasgupta HIP i. 220. 36 3.

368 LOKAYATA

whatever might have been the merit of this summary. Gunaratna gave a slightly altered name of the text, a circumstance that led Dasgupta39 to conjecture that it might have been a reference to a revised edition of the Sasti Tantra. Gunaratna40 himself mentioned two other authoritative works on the Sankhva, the Mathara Bhasya and the Atreya Tantra. Nothing at all is known of the former and nothing defi- nite of the latter, though Dasgupta41 thought that the Atreya Tantra could have been 'the same as Caraka's treatment of the Sankhya.' His argument is that in the ancient medical treatise attributed to Caraka we come across some version of the Sankhya and the sage Atri is said to be the speaker in Caraka's work. The name Atreya Tantra, therefore, could have been derived from the name of this sage. However, the more significant fact is that the Caraka Sam- hita is older than the Sankhya Karika and the treatments of the Sankhya in the two texts are substantially different. This led Dasgupta42 to think that 'the account of the Sankhya given by Caraka represents probably an earlier school.' Gunaratna,43 too, spoke of two distinct schools of the Sankhya, the Maulikya San- khya and the Uttara Sankhya, literally the original Sankhya and the later Sankhya. Dasgupta44 argued that the former could have been the same as Caraka's version of the Sankhya philo- sophy. Further, in the Mahabharata we come across certain passages in which the Sankhya doctrines were imparted to Janaka, king of Mithila and, according to Dasgupta,45 this expo- sition of Sankhya essentially agreed with Caraka's version of it, a circumstance that lends added support to his thesis concerning Caraka's treatment of the Sankhya. Whether Caraka's version of the Sankhya was actually the same as original Sankhya may still be an open question. What is evident, however, is that though Isvarakrisna's Karika happens to be the oldest available work on this system, we cannot uncri- tically rely on it for our knowledge of original Sankhya. The fact is that the Sankhya is extremely old and modifications have been continually introduced into it from very early times. In the Mahabharata,46 the Sankhya and the Yoga were described as two eternal systems (sanatane dve) and this like all the

39 Ib. i. 220-1. 41 HIP i. 213. 40 TRD 99. 42 Ib. i. 212. 43 TRD 99. 45 Ib. i. 216. 44 HIP i. 217. 46 Garbe ACOPVMCSS Intro. xxi.

SANKHYA 369

Vedas. Kautilyati mentioned only three systems, namely, the Sankhya, Yoga and the Lokayata. On the basis of evidences like these, Garbe1s asserted that 'Sankhya is the title of the oldest system of Indian philosophy.' Along with others49 he tried to prove that the Sankhya was pre-Buddhistic-as a matter of fact the system from which Buddhism arose. The name of Buddha's birth-place Kapilavastu could have been derived from that of Kapila.50 Sastri fully subseribed to this view. He observed: Asvaghosa practically told us in so many words that the Bud- dhistic doctrines arose out of the Sankhya system. Both the precep- tors of the Buddha, viz. Adara Kalama and Uddaka (Ramaputta) were subscribers to the Sankhya views.51 All these indicate the pre-Buddhistic origin of the Sankhya philosophy. Its antiquity is further evidenced by the fact that the name Sankhya as well as the terminologies peculiar to it are to be found in certain Upanisads, particularly the Katha, the Maitri, the Svetasvatara and the Prasna, though all these. were comparatively younger among the Upanisads. This led a num- ber of modern scholars to speculate on the rudiments of the Sankhya system in the Upanisadic literatures. But we may begin with an analysis of the circumstance which makes this possibility extremely remote.

4. BRAHMA SUTRA AND SANKHYA

It is strange that the modern scholars who have speculated on the original Sankhya have so far largely ignored a very im- portant source of our knowledge of it. It is the Brahma Sutra or the Vedanta Sutra ascribed to Badarayana. The Brahma Sutra represents the first effort at a systemati- sation of the philosophy of the Upanisads. It consists of 555 sutras or aphoristic sentences (and often mere detached words in lieu of sentences), arranged in four chapters, having four sections in each. According to Dasgupta,52 these sutras, in their present form, were possibly 'written in the second century B.c.' But Thibaut53 claimed that these were 'preceded by a long series of preparatory literary efforts of which they merely represent the highly con- densed outcome.' If both the scholars are correct, this effort at

47 A i. 1. See IA xlvii. 102. 49 Thomas LB 193. 48 ERE xi. 189

51 BD (B) 37. 50 Garbe ACOPVMCSS intro. xx-xxi. 53 SBE xxxiv. intro. xii. 52 HIP i. 418.

L-24

370 LOKAYATA

a systematic formulation of the Upanisadic philosophy must have been very ancient. Some of the writers54 have gone so far as to claim that the Brahma Sutra could have been pre-Buddhistic. This would appear to be an exaggerated claim, unless of course we agrce to look at a particular portion of it, called the tarka- pada, as a later addition to the original Sutras or, unless it is argued that all the traditional commentators thoroughly mis- understood it, for they are unanimous that this portion contains an explicit refutation of the Vijnana Vada school of Buddhistic philosophy, which was much later than the Buddha himself. But the fact is that we cannot doubt at least the basic con- tentions of the major commentators of the text. If we do so, the Sutras will become merely a meaningless mass of words for us: It is here, as Thibaut has shown, that the Brahma Sutras differed from the other Sutra works, as the grammatical Sutras. It is possible to understand at least a considerable part of the other Sutra-works without depending on a commentary. But not so with the Brahma Sutra.

There scarcely one single sutra is intelligible without a com- mentary. The most essential words are habitually dispensed with; nothing is, for instance, more common than the simple omission of the subject or predicate of a sentence. And when here and there a Sutra occurs whose words construe without anything having to be supplied, the phraseology is so eminently vague and obscure that without the help derived from a commentary we should be unable to make out to what subject a Sutra refers.55 This point is important. The philosophical position of the Brahma Sutra can be understood only by depending on the major commentators on it. The earliest and ablcst of the com- mentators was Samkara, though the time-gap between the Brahma Sutra and Samkara was considerable. Samkara belonged to the eight century A.D.56 Yet, as Gough57 pointed out, there are reasons to believe that the Vedanta views came down to him by an unbroken series of teachers intervening between him and the author of the Brahma Sutra. The other major commentator on the text was Ramanuja. He belonged to the eleventh century A.D.58 Yet he, too, had 'an old and weighty tradition' behind him.59 It will be argued that his differences with Samkara were considerable. Nevertheless,

54 Vireswarananda BS intro. viii ff. 55 SBE xxxiv. intro. xiii-xiv. 50 IA xi. 174 ff; JBBRAS xvi. 190; xviii, 88, 203 etc. 57 PU 239 ff. 58 ERE x. 572. 59 SBE xxxiv. intro. xvii.

SANKHYA 371

we can depend upon both Samkara and Ramanuja for under- standing the basic philosophical position of the Brahma Sutra. The ditferences between them were, after all, only differences within the broader structure of some general agreement. It will therefore not be a valid argument to claim that a certain philosophical position cannot be attributed to the Brahma Sutra itself because it is to be found only in the writings of the commentators and not explicitly stated in the sutras themselves. In spite of the time gap betwcen the sutras and the commentaries and, in spite of the differences between the major commentators60 it is indeed possible for us to know a good deal about the real philosophical standpoint of the Brahma Sutra from them, parti- cularly from Samkara. What interests us most in the present context is that the author of the Brahma Sutra took the greatest care to refute the Sankhya philosophy and in fact looked upon it as the most im- portant challenge to the Vedanta system. Thus the vicw refuted in the Brahma Sutra as the Sankhya system may give us real indications as to the nature of original Sankhya. It may be objected that the Sankhya as refuted in the Brahma Sutra is to a great extent the same as expounded in the Karika. How can we, then, doubt the latter and depend upon the former for an idea of original Sankhya? There is some weight in this objection, at least as far as Samkara's commentary on the Brahma Sutra is concerned. For, the version of the Sankhya as refuted here was to a large extent drawn from the Karika. Still there is a distinct advantage in depending on Samkara. The author of the Karika wanted to graft upon the Sankhya system certain elements of idealistic thought, evidently borrowed from the Vedantic circle, and Samkara's writings are particularly helpful in exposing the inter- nal inconsistencies thus created. That is, being a highly con- scious idealist philosopher himself, Samkara could clearly see that the Vedantic elements (particularly, the Vedantic concept of purusa as Self or Consciousness) could be introduced into the Sankhya system only at the cost of internal consistency. It would therefore not be a methodological error to suggest that we should gather our basic idea about original Sankhya from the refutation of it in the Brahma Sutra and then return

60 I exclude such later commetators who have interpreted the Br. Su. according to all sorts of theological and philosophical view- points, including even the Sakta and the Sankhya views.

372 LOKAYATA

to examine such sources as the Mahabharatha, the Caraka Samhita, the younger Upanisads and even the Sankhya Karika itself and find out what really we can learn about original San- khya from these. To doubt this procedure we have to imagine either that Badarayana was fighting an imaginary philosophy and yet called it Sankhya or that his major commentators thoroughly misunderstood him. Obviously enough, both the pos- sibilities are preposterous.

5. IDEALISM VERSUS MATERIALISM It is important, first of all, to remember that there is nothing arbitrary about Badarayana's refutation of the Sankhya. It was only a logical necessity. The Sankhya philosophy, as understood by the Brahma Sutra, is called pradhana vada or pradhana karana vada, i.e., 'the doctrine of pradhana' or 'the doctrine of pradhana being the first cause, the ultimate reality'. Pradhana being the Sankhya synonym for prakriti, this description of the philosophy makes the position of the purusa evidently anomalous. However, this is a point which we shall take up later. For the present, there is no doubt that the principle of pradhana meant only the pri- meval matter, the non-intelligent or non-sentient first cause. In contrast, the Vedanta philosophy was Brahma vada or Brahma karana vada, that is the doctrine according to which Brahman is the first cause, the ultimate reality. Whatever might have been the points on which Ramanuja differed from Samkara in interpreting the nature of the Brahman, there is no doubt that this Brahman was a principle of consciousness for all the Vedan- tists. Thus the controversy between the Brahma karana vada of the Brahma Sutra and the pradhana karana vada of the Sankhya was simply a controversy between idealism and mate- rialism. In the terminology of Indian philosophy, it was a conflict between cetana karana vada and acetana karana vada- that is, between the doctrines of the first cause as a principle of consciousness and of unconscious matter. In defence of his own idealistic position, it was thus necessary for Badarayana to ·refute the materialism of the Sankhya. Judging from his zeal to single out the Sankhya philosophers as the foremost of his oppo- ments, we can easily see how deep was the influence of mate- rialistic thinking in his days and how old was the controversy between materialism and idealism in this country.

SANKHYA 373

We may look at the planning of the Brahma Sutra to see the importance attached by its author to the refutation of Sankhya materialism. After explaining in the first four sutras certain points about the nature of Brahman and the Vedanta texts,-viz. the prerequisites of the enquiry into Brahman, that Brahman is the cause, etc., of the world, that Brahman is the source of the Vedas and that Brahman is uniformly the topic discussed in all the Vedanta texts-the author hastened to argue in the next seven sutras that this Brahman was an intelligent principle and must not be confused with the non-intelligent pradhana of the Sankhya. But these are not the only sutras in which Badarayana tried to refute the materialistic standpoint of the Sankhya. A good deal of care was taken in the Brahma Sutra to refute the claims of the rival schools: but none of these reccived even half the attention given to the Sankhya. Apart from the seven sutras already mentioned, the whole of the fourth section (pada) of the first chapter (adhyaya) and the early portions of both the first and the second sections of the second chapter were designed to refute the Sankhya. Numerically speaking, of the total 555 sutras of the text, at least 60 were definitely designed to refute, the doctrine of the pradhana, while only 43 were devoted to refutation of other rival schools. Of these 43, only four were specifically against the Jaina views and seventeen against the schools of Buddhist philosophy.61 Apart from this numerical consideration, there are other grounds to judge how the Sankhya represented the strongest opposition to the Vedanta standpoint. In the first section of the second chapter, the author, after elaborately refuting the doctrine of the pradhana, said, Thereby those (theories) also which are not accepted by competent persons are explained.'2 Samkara6 commented the following: Hitherto we have refuted those objections against the Vedanta texts which, based on reasoning, take their stand on the doctrine of the pradhana being the cause of the world ... But now some dull- witted person might think that another objection founded on reason- ing might be raised against the Vedanta, namely on the ground of the atomic doctrine. The sutrakara (the author of the sutras), therefore, extends to the latter objection the refutation of the former, considering that by the conquest of the most dangerous adversary

01 The Sankhya is refuted in the following sutras: i. 1. 5-11; 1.4.1-28; ii.1.1-11; ii.2.1-10. By comparison, the Jaina views are refuted in ii.2.33-6 and the Buddhist views in ii.2.18-32. 62 ii.1.12. SBE xxxiv 317. 63 SBE xxxiv, 317-8.

374 LOKAYATA

the conquest of the minor enemies is already virtually accomplished. Other doctrines, as, for instance, the atomic doctrine of which no part has been accepted by either Manu or Vyasa or other authorities, are to be considered as 'explained', i.e., refuted by the same reasons which enabled us to dispose of the pradhana doctrine. The comparison on which Samkara based his argument was drawn from the wrestling arena: when you defeat the champion wrestler of the opposite camp, you are no longer required to contest the minors individually (pradhana malla nivarhana nyaya). Ramanuja,64 too, gave practically the same interpreta- tion of this sutra; only he made the list of the opponents more exhaustive:

The sutra means to say that by the demolition given above of the Sankhya doctrine which is not comprised within the Veda, the re- maining theories which are in the same position, namely the theories of Kanada, Aksapada, Jina, and Buddha, must likewise be consi- dered as demolished.

Significantly, there is no mention of the Lokayata in this list. Neither do we find any single sutra in the entire Brahma Sutra directly designed to refute the Lokayata standpoint. The expla- nation presumably is, that to the author of the text, the refuta- tion of the Sankhya was all that was needed to refute the materialistic standpoint. At least one point is clear: the early representatives of Vedantic idealism understood the Sankhya as a form of crass materialism. The first reference in the Brahma Sutra to the Sankhya system was a reference to a materialistic view. From the point of view of Samkara, Thibaut translated it thus:

On account of seeing (i.e., thinking being attributed in the Upanisads to the cause of the world; the pradhana) is not (to be identified with the cause indicated by the Upanisads; for) it is not founded on scriptures.65

After Ramanuja, again, he translated the same sutra thus:

On account of seeing (i.e. thinking) that which is not founded on scripture (i.e. pradhana) is not (what is taught by the texts referring to the origination of the world).66

The two translations are practically the same and this shows that when it is the question of opposing the doctrine of the material first cause, the two idealist philosophers had no differ- ence amongst themselves. Samkara argued elaborately that

64 SBE xlviii. 426. 66 SBE xlviii. 200. 65 i.1.5. SBE xxxiv. 47.

SANKHYA 375

there was no way of interpreting the pradhana of the Sankhya as anything but unconscious matter and Ramanuja added, thinking cannot belong to the non-sentient pradhana; the term Being (of the Chandogya Upanisad according to which this Being is the cause of the universe) can therefore denote only the all-knowing highest Person who is capable of thought.67 Indeed, if Sankhya was not understood as a form of materialism, there could not have been much sense in such staunch opposition to it on the part of the Vedantists.

6. THE ANTI-VEDIC ORIGIN According to the classical tradition, only three schools of philosophy-viz the Lokayata, the Buddhist and the Jaina-are regarded as specifically non-Vedic or nastika, while the Sankhya is considered to be a form of astika philosophy, i.e., affiliated to the Vedic tradition. But this could not have been the standpoint of the Brahma Sutra, according to which Sankhya was clearly the strongest of the non-Vedic or anti-Vedic trends. The Brahma Sutra represented only an effort to systematise the philosophy of the Upanisads or the Vedanta. According to it, philosophical truth cannot be attained by independent reason- ing. It remains revealed in the Vedas and the Upanisads. The role of reason is confined to a mere analysis of the implications of these texts. It is only logical, therefore, that the author of the Sutras as well as the major commentators on these, should, in refuting the Sankhya, have taken the greatest care to prove that this philosophy had nothing to do with the real Vedic tradition and that no passage in the Vedas and the Upanisads could justi- fy the doctrine of the pradhana. Of the sixty aphorisms of the Brahma Sutra directly refuting the Sankhya, no less than thirty- seven68 were designed to prove its non-Vedic and anti-Vedic character. It is a pity that in spite of this conclusive evidence of the authentic orthodox tradition, modern scholars like Garbe, Zimmer and Sastri had to argue over again that original Sankhya must have been thoroughly anti-Vedic. It would be tedious and unnecessary to quote all the eviden- ces of the Brahma Sutra on the anti-Vedic character of original Sankhya. A few examples would suffice our purpose. Said Samkara:

67 Ib. xlviii. 201. 68 i. 1.5-11; i.4.1-28; ii.1.1-2.

376 LOKAYATA

It is impossible to find room in the Vedanta texts for the non- intelligent pradhana, the fiction of the Sankhyas; because it is not founded on scripture. How so? Because the quality of seeing, i.e., thinking, is in the scripture ascribed to the cause.69 The point is quite clear. Sankhya was the philosophy of the unconscious, i.c., material first cause, whereas according to the Upanisads, the first cause was a spiritual principle. There can- not really be any place for a materialistic philosophy within the essentially idealistic treatises.70 On this point, Ramanuja's argu- ment did not at all differ from that of Samkara. Both the scholars quoted a large number of passages from the Upanisads and subjected these to a thorough analysis only to show that any claim to discover the Sankhva doctrines in these was fictitious. We shall return later to examine some of these passages in connection with the modern views that claim to dis- cover the germs of original Sankhya in the Upanisads. For the present we want only to show that the philosophers who repre- sented the really orthodox Indian tradition were not at all pre- pared to entertain such a claim. From the standpoint of the Brahma Sutra, the heterodox nature of the Sankhya svstem was absolute. Not to speak of being supported by the sruti (i.e., direct revelation, the Vedas and the Upanisads), Sankhya could not, according to the Vedan- tists, claim authoritativeness even on the ground of being a smriti. Smriti (lit., memory), as contrasted with sruti. were texts originally expounded by authoritative sages and remembered by later teachers. The defenders of the Sankhya might claim that being originally traccable to the great sage Kapila, the system enjoyed the status of a smriti. An aphorism of the Brahma Sutra™1 was designed to answer such a claim. According to the interpretations of both Samkara and Ramanuja, the main points of this Sutra may be summed up as follows: Objection: The doctrine of Brahman, as expounded by the Brahma Sutra, cannot be accepted, because it is in conflict with a smriti, viz. the smriti of Kapila. Answer: This cannot be a valid argument. If we accept the Sankhya doctrine of pradhana, we shall have to reject the clear teachings of certain other smritis. As Samkara72 said,

69 On Br. Su. i.1.5. SBE xxxiv. 47. 70 It remains for us to discuss in Ch. VIII how this idealistic world-outlook of the Upanisads itself emerged on the ruins of an archaic materialism. 71 ji.1.1. 72 SBE xxxiv. 292.

SANKHYA 377

If you object to the doctrine of the Lord being the cause of the world on the ground that it would render certain smritis purpose- less, you thereby render purposeless other smritis which declare themselves in favour of the said doctrine. Samkara73 quoted the Puranas, the Bhagavata and the Apastamba Dharma Sutra to show how all these other smritis declared the original cause to be an intelligent principle. Rama- nuja74 wanted to enlarge the list by quoting the Manu Smriti, the Gita and the Mahabharata. Assuming, therefore, that the Sankhya claim of being a smriti was valid, we have here an apparently anomalous situa- tion: the different smritis were contradicting each other. Sam- kara75 clarified the orthodox position: As the purvapaksin (the opponent, viz. the defender of the Sankhya) opposes us on the ground of smriti we reply to him on the ground of smriti only; hence the line of defence taken up in the sutra. Now it has been shown already that the sruti-texts aim at conveying the doctrine that the Lord is the universal cause, and as wherever different smritis conflict those maintaining one view must be accepted while those which maintain the opposite view must be set aside, those smritis which follow

disregarded. sruti are to be considered as authoritative, while all others are to be

Again,70 even if those 'perfect' men were accepted as authorities to be appeal- ed to, still, as there are many such perfect men, we should have in all those cases where the smritis contradict each other in the manner described, no other means to final decision than an appeal to sruti. Among those 'perfect' men the authority of Manu must be accepted as unquestioned; because, argucd Samkara, we have a sruti-passage which proclaims the excellence of Manu, viz. whatever Manu said is medicine (Taittiriya Samhita. ii.2.10.2.). Manu himself .... implicitly blames the doctrine of Kapila.77 All these gave Samkara the ground to argue the absolutely anti-Vedic character of the Sankhya system: 'the system of Kapila contradicts the Veda, and the doctrine of Manu who follows the Veda.78 However, all these should not give us the impression that the early representatives of the orthodox tradition were really prepared to accept the alleged authoritativeness of Kapila as a perfect sage. According to Samkara, such a hypothesis was at

73 Ib. xxxiv. 293. 75 Ib. xxxiv. 293. 74 Ib. xlviii. 410.

77 Ib. xxxiv. 294-5. 76 Ib. xxxiv. 294. 78 Ib. xxxiv. 295.

378 LOKAYATA

best a dubious one. For, though in some of the sacred texts a certain Kapila was praised as a wise sage, there is no valid ground to claim him as the propounder of the Sankhya system:

The scriptural passage which the purvapaksin (objector) has quoted as proving the eminence of Kapila's knowledge would not justify us in believing in such doctrines of Kapila (i.e., of some Kapila) as are contrary to Scripture; for that passage mentions the bare name of Kapila (without specifying which Kapila is meant), and we meet in tradition with another Kapila, viz. the one who burnt the sons of Sagara and had the surname Vasudeva.79

One point is clear from all these. According to the authen- tic exponents of the Vedic tradition itself, the Sankhya system was originally positively hostile to it. Samkara told us in so many words that the Sankhya doctrines were veda viruddha (opposed to the Vedas) and vedaanusari manuvacana viruddha- ca (also opposed to the words of Manu, which followed the Vedas). In the commentary on the next sutra he said that the Sankhya views were not substantiated either by the Vedas or by ordinary experiences (vede loke va upalabhante).80 And on this score he was in complete agreement with Ramanuja,81 who argued that 'Kapila's smriti which contains a doctrine opposed to Scripture must be disregarded.' We may now return to the Sankhya texts-the Karika and the Sutras-to see how far these retained the original anti-Vedic character of the system. Significantly, in spite of the compara- tively later date of the two texts, and in spite of the fact that the Sankhya philosophy as presented even in the Karika was largely a compromise with the orthodox standpoint, it is important to observe that traces of the original hostility of the Sankhya to the Vedas were not entirely lost in these texts. The Karika declared:

The revealed mode is like the temporal one ineffectual, for it is impure; and it is defective in some respects, as well as excessive in others.82 The actual word used in the text, rendered here as 'the revealed mode,' is anusravika and the commentator Gaudapada said, "anusravati, 'what man successively hears'; anusravika, 'that which is thence produced, revealed mode'; that is, established by the Vedas." The grounds of the Sankhya objection to the validity

79 Ib. xxxiv. 294. 81 SBE xlviii. 411. 80 On Br. Su. ii.1.2. 82 2.

SANKHYA 379

of the Vedas were explained by Gaudapada quite elaborately. Wilson83 summed these up as follows: The Vedas are inefficient from their inhumanity in prescribing the shedding of blood: the rewards which they propose are also but temporary, as the gods themselves are finite beings, perishing in each periodical revolution. The immortality spoken of in the Vedas is merely a long duration, or until a dissolution of the existent forms of things. The Vedas also cause, instead of curing, pain; as the bless- ings they promise to one man over another are sources of envy and misery to those who do not possess them. Relics of this original hostility of the Sankhya to the Vedas are to be found even in the Sankhya Sutra. The Vedic injunc- tions, said a sutra,84 are not different from the worldly practices. The srutis (anusravika), said another,s5 cannot lead to the summum bonum (apurusarthattvam); because the fruits of the Vedic rituals have a beginning (sadhya) and therefore also an end (avrittiyogat ). Under these circumstances, Garbes6 rightly commented, Originally the Sankhya must have taken up a position of direct op- position to the doctrines of the Brahmanas, as is proved inter alia by its polemic against their ceremonial.

At the same time it is necessary to note that these two texts on the Sankhya, in spite of retaining traces of the original hostility to the Vedas, showed clear marks of compromise with the ortho- dox standpoint. This is most pronounced in the case of the Sankhya Sutra. In the sutra immediately following the one in which the possibility of anusravika or sruti as leading to the summum bonum was criticised and denied, it was declared that the Vedas limit the non-regeneration of one who has attain- ed discriminative wisdom: tatra praptavivekasya anavrittih srutih.87 The effort of accommodate within the Sankhya stand- point the declaration of the sruti is obvious. Similar efforts are to be found in many other sutras88 as well. Even the Karika,S9 after criticising anusravika, passed on to declare that the Veda or Sruti was one of the three sources of valid knowledge. The actual word used is aptavacana and explained as apta srutih apta vaca- nah (by apta is meant the statement of the authoritative persons as well as the sruti). These two attitudes to Vedic authority-the rejection as well as the acceptance of it - are contradictory and

83 Colebrooke SK 13. 84 i. 6. 85 i. 82. 86 ERE xi. 189. 87 i. 83. 88 i.154; iv.3; vi.51; vi.58; vi.59. 89 4 & 5.

380 LOKAYATA

the contradiction is resolved only by assuming that the former represented the standpoint of the earlier, i.e., of original San- khya while the latter was the result of subsequent compromise. That some of the later philosophers were trying to bring San- khya along the orthodox lines is further evidenced by the Brahma Sutra itself, where the claim was repeatedly refuted that it was possible to find sruti-support for the Sankhya. Presumably, such a claim had been quite strong even during Badarayana's times. In spite of such a claim, however, the fact clearly stands out that original Sankhya was sharply opposed to the Vedic authority and as such the earlicr representatives of authentic orthodoxy like Samkara and Ramanuja were obliged to look at Sankhva as the most outstanding form of heterodoxv. Some of the modern scholars have argued the point over again. Referring to the Sankhya, Zimmer"0 observed: These ideas do not belong to the original stock of Vedic Brah- manic tradition. Nor. on the other hand, do we find among the basic teachings of the Sankhya and the Yoga any hint at such a pan- theon of divine Olympians beyond the vicissitudes of earthly bon- dage as that of the Vedic gods. The two ideologies are of distinct origin, the Sankhya and the Yoga being related to the mechanical system of the Jainas, which. as we have seen, can be traced back, in a partially historical, partially legendary way, through the long series of the Tirthankaras, to a remote, aboriginal non-Vedic antiquity.

Said Garbe:91

The origin of the Sankhya system appears in the proper light only when we understand that in those regions of India which were little influenced by Brahmanism the first attempt had been made to explain the riddles of the world and of our existence merely by means of reason. For the Sankhya philosophy is, in its essence, not only atheistic but also inimical to Veda. All appeal to sruti in the Sankhya texts lying before us are subsequent additions. We may altogether remove the Vedic elements, grafted upon the system, and it will not in the least be affected thereby. The Sankhya philosophy nad been originally, and has remained un to the present day, in its real contents, un-Vedic and independent of the Brahmanical tradition.

Garbe has drawn our attention to the fact that in the Mahabharata the Sankhya and the Yoga were mentioned as separate from the Vedas, 'existing by the side of all Vedas.' But if such is the case, how is it that Sankhya was eventually accepted as an orthodox system? Garbe92 has answered the question thus:

90 PI 281. 92 Ib. xxi-ii. 91 ACOPVMCSS intro. xx-xxi

SANKHYA 381

That the Sankhya philosophy appears in later times among the orthodox systems, is not to be wondered at; the fact proves that this system, on account of its sober lucidness, has stood its ground against Vedantic supernaturalism, and that consequently the Brah- manas have adopted it, owing to their great ability of appropriating all intellectual elements of importance .... The last nominal acknow- ledgement of the Veda and of the prerogatives of the Brahmanas was surely sufficient for a system passing as orthodox; and if the Buddhists had not refused to acknowledge the authority of the Vedas and of the Brahmanas, they might, without any essential alteration of their doctrines have become a Brahmanical sect, and Buddha a risi, like his predecessor Kapila. The latter part of this comment appears doubtful. Apart from the hypothetical receptivity of the Brahmanical mind, the fact remains that the Sankhva philosophers of the later times could earn the recognition of the orthodox tradition only by surrendering the essential contentions of original Sankhya. The later Sankhya was, to all philosophical purpose, reduced to the position of idealistic metaphysies, retaining onlv a formal alle- giance to its original terminology. Nevertheless, Garbe's observations on the anti-Vedic charac- ter of original Sankhya is important, particularly because he has drawn our attention to the cirenmstance that its home was out- side the pale of Vedic influence. The rise of Sankhya, he said,9" `may be attributed to the same district of India as produced Bnddhism.' We quote Sastri,94 who continued this argument: Did Sankhya represent the views of the Vedic Aryans? Samkara referred to it as a non-Vedic view, like Buddhism .... According to the ancient tradition, the Sankhya views were the views of Kapila. Kapila belonged to the Northern regions of the country, that is, the areas of the Vangas, the Vagadhas and the Ceras. We find Kapila- srama, the hermitage of Kapila, on the route to Gangasagara. Kapila's village was situated on the banks of Kavataksa; Kapilavastu, too, was the abode of Kapila. This placing of the original home of the Sankhya in the north-eastern regions of the country is significant. For these were also the regions of mother-right and of Tantrism. As a matter of fact the relics of both in these areas are very strong even today.95 This historical evidence, therefore, goes in favour of our hypothesis that original Sankhya might have been a development of Tantrism. We are naturally reminded here of a remarkable hint in the Mahabharata, according to which the

93 ERE xi. 189. 94 BD (B) 37. 05 Relics of mother-right and Tantrism in South India and their possible relation to the Sankhya deserves to be seriously investigated into.

382 LOKAYATA

original propounder of the system could have been a female, a certain Kapilaa rather than Kapila. The names of two of the early teachers of the Sankhya have come down to us. These are Pancasikha and Asuri. As the Karika"0 said,

This great purifying (doctrine, i.e. Sankhya) the sage (Kapila) com- passionately imparted to Asuri, Asuri taught it to Pancasikha, by whom it was extensively propagated. In the Mahabharata,97 too, we come across the names of Asuri and Pancasikha with the same teacher-disciple relation between them. What is striking about this Mahabharata evid- ence, however, is that at least in this chapter of the epic, it is not mentioned that Asuri was a disciple of Kapila. More signi- ficant than this is the other name used in the Mahabharata for Pancasikha. It is Kaapila or Kaapileya or Kapilaaputra, i.e., born of a certain woman called Kapilaa. The author of this chapter of the Mahabharata was anxious to tell us how Pancasikha acquired this peculiar name. He said that Kapilaa was the wife of Asuri and, when Pancasikha was staying with Asuri as his disciple, she used to give him the milk of her own breast. That gave Pancasikha the name Kapilaaputra. It was indeed strange for an adult disciple to be breast-fed by the preceptor's wife; the myth could not obviously be true in the form in which it is presented in the Mahabharata. But it is possible that it retained some elements of truth. We have to take the story of Kapilaa breast-feeding Pancasikha in a figu- rative sense and if we do so the myth might suggest the story of an original female preceptor of the Sankhya system. Could it be that the Mahabharata myth was the offshoot of a very ancient tradition, according to which the early Sankhya philoso- phers were disciples of female teachers and the original name Kapilaa, under patriarchal conditions, was eventually changed into that of Kapila? The suggestion will not appear wild if we remember that too little is positively known about Kapila to reject the possibility outright and, further, the original home of the Sankhya was presumably those areas of the country which were, from a very remote antiquity, under strong influence of mother-right and the Tantrika ideology. The Sankhya could have been only a development of Tantrism and Tantrism origi- nally knew only female preceptors.

96 70. 97 Santiparva Ch. 218 (Citrasala Press).

SANKHYA 383

7. THE PLACE OF PURUSA We have already noted that the Sankhya was known to the ancients as the doctrine of the pradhana. This is the typical form in which Samkara and Ramanuja referred to it. Pradhana literally means the primary, the original, the chief or the first. In the Sankhya, however, it is used in the technical sense of the primordial or primeval matter or, more strictly, matter in its original pre-evolved state, i.e., a state of matter from which the world or the universe was yet to evolve. If Sankhya was consistently characterised as the doctrine of the pradhana, the obvious implication is that according to this philosophy the primary matter was the ultimate reality, the cause of the universe. The other term for pradhana is prakriti or, more strictly, the mula-prakriti, literally the root-prakriti. As Gaudapada"8 said, mula prakritih pradhanam, the root-prakriti is called pra- dhana. Apart from this pradhana or prakriti, however, the Sankhya recognised also the principle of purusa or, more strictly, a multiplicity of them. Purusa literally means the male. How- ever, even in the version of the Sankhya as represented in the commentaries on the Brahma Sutra, we find the word used in a distinctly technical sense to mean the Self or the principle of consciousness. Therefore the question whether original Sankhya is to be understood as a materialistic philosophy or not can be fully answered only after discussing two further points. First, even accepting purusa to mean the Self or the principle of con- sciousness, we have to determine what after all could have been its logical status within the general structure of original Sankhya. Secondly, we have to ask ourselves whether the word purusa originally meant something different and this meaning of Self or the principle of consciousness was the result of Vedantic influence on the Sankhya. The logical status of the purusa first. As contrasted with prakriti, purusa in the Sankhya was secondary or a-pradhana. The commonest epithet for it used to be udasina or the indiffe- rent. We find this epithet in the commentaries on the Brahma Sutra;99 even the Karika100 is not without it. This may cause one to wonder why the propounders of the Sankhya should have at all felt the necessity of recognising the purusas over and above the self-sufficient primeval matter, if the purusas were totally indifferent to the actual world-process and if these had no part

98 On SK 3. 100 20. 99 E.g. Samkara on ii.2.7.

384 LOKAYATA

to play in the evolution of the visible world from the pre-evolved original matter? And why should these have any place in the scheme of reality at all? As we sball see, there were more rea- sons than the individual inclinations of certain philosophers behind the recognition of this principle of the purusas, however much anomalous, from the point of view of logical understanding, might have been their position in a system which was essentially the doctrine of pradhana. In accordance with the procedure we have adopted, we may begin with an analysis of the evidence of the Brahma Sutra. Said Samkara: We willingly allow room for those portions of the two systems (Sankhya and Yoga) which do not contradict the Veda. In their description of the Soul (purusa), for instance, as free from all quali- ties the Sankhyas are in harmony with the Veda which teaches that the person (purusa) is essentially pure: e.g. Br. Up. iv.3.16,-'For that person is not attached to anything.'101 This comment has more significance than is apparent. If the Sankhya was condemned as being not only opposed to the Vedas but also to the teachings of the genuine followers of the Vedas, it must have been highly peculiar for the system to allow room for a 'description of the Soul in harmony with the Veda,' unless of course the whole thing was surreptitiously borrowed by some later exponents of Sankhya from the circle of philosophers who were really the followers of the Vedas. We are going to argue that this was precisely what was done by Isvarakrishna in his Karika. Nevertheless, the Vedantic conception of the purusa thus borrowed, was never fully reconciled to the fundamentals of the Sankhya. These were the doctrines of pradhana, parinama (namely, the effect being real as contrasted with the Vedantic doctrine of the effect being ultimately unreal, known as vivarta- vada), and of the multiplicity of the purusas (purusa bahutvam). Ultimately, only by surrendering these fundamentals of original Sankhya, the later philosophers could logically retain the con- ception of the purusa as pure consciousness. The real implica- tion of Samkara's comment, therefore, could only be that he would have no quarrel with the Sankhya philosophers had they agreed to stick seriously to this view of the purusa, because they would thus remain followers of the Sankhya in name, whereas in fact, they would be merely logically driven to the position of being disguised Vedantists.

101 On Br. Su. ii.1.3. SBE xxxiv. 298.

SANKHYA 385

The other alternative is to take this comment of Samkara on its face value. But we cannot do so. For the doctrine of the purusa along with the pradhana, parinama and purusa bahutvam was never really acceptable to Samkara. There were many reasons why he was obliged to reject it. We may discuss here only two. First, Samkara was not only an idealist but also an extreme monist. The Self, which was to him the ultimate reality, was one and its oneness was absolute and unique. By contrast, a plurality of the purusas formed an essential feature of original Sankhya and even the author of the Karika could not fully sur- render it. Secondly, according to the Vedanta, this Self or the purusa alone being real, the empirical manifold was unreal, the product of ignorance or avidua. That is, in the ultimate analysis, the causation of the phenomenal world from the purusa was only fictitious (vivarta)-something like the conjuring up of a magical show on the stage by the magician. On the other hand, from the Sankhya point of view, the pradhana being real and the visible world being a real effect (parinama) of the pradhana, too, was basically real and yet the purusas had absolutely no part in the causation of it. Even the author of the Karika, whatever might have been the position he was ultimately driven to, did not fully surrender the doctrines of the pradhana and parinama and, therefore, even his view of the purusa could not be reallv acceptable to Samkara. And if we are prepared to go beyond the Karika and try to reconstruct original Sankhya mainly on the basis of its doctrines of the pradhana and parinama (and reject the Karika conception of the purusa because of its inconsistencies with the fundamentals of the Sankhya), we would have glimpses of a philosophy which must have been outspokenly opposed to the standpoint of Samkara. When the basic reality of the visible world is categorically asserted, as in the Sankhya, and the purusas are said to have nothing to do towards the causation of it, the whole philosophy amounts to the assertion that the place of the purusas (whatever these might have originally meant) is utterly unimportant and even redundant or super- fluous. When, on the other hand, as in the Vedanta, the purusa is looked upon as the ultimate reality and the world-process as a whole as ultimately illusory, the entire philosophy is to be accepted as designed to make the Self or the purusa so over- whelmingly important that by contrast the importance of every- thing else melts into nothingness. It was thus impossible for Samkara to read his own philosophy in the Sankhya view of the L-25

386 LOKAYATA

purusas and there is no doubt that he actually argued against it. First, according to the Sankhya, there is a multiplicity of purusas. Argued Samkara: Kapila, by acknowledging a plurality of Selfs, does not admit the doctrine of there being one universal Self. In the Mahabharata, also, the question is raised whether there are many persons (souls) or one; thereupon the opinion of others is mentioned, 'There are many persons (purusas), O King, according to the Sankhya and the Yoga philosophers'; that opinion is controverted: 'Just as there is one place of origin (viz. the earth) for many persons, so I will proclaim to you that universal person (purusa) raised by his qualities,' and, finally, it is declared that there is one universal Self, 'He is the internal Self of me, of thee, and of all other embodied beings, the internal witness of all, not to be apprehended by any one. He the all-headed, all-armed, all-footed, all-eyed, all-nosed one, moves through all beings according to his will and liking.' And scriptures also declare that there is one universal Self.102 As a matter of fact, this view of there being many Selfs, is, according to Samkara, one of the strongest grounds on which the Sankhya was to be considered as thoroughly anti-Vedic. It may be noted that the doctrine of the multiplicity of the purusas was, as evidenced by the early Vedanta literature, an intrinsic feature of original Sankhya. The Karika, in so far as it tried to offer definite arguments for the doctrine, was thus retaining the old spirit. We may pause here a little to discuss these arguments as they have some interesting light to throw on the fundamental difference between the Sankhya and the Vedanta. Since birth, death and the instruments of life (the sensory and motor endowments) are allotted severally; since occupations are not at once universal; and since the gunas are different in different cases; -multitude of purusas is demonstrated.103 Thus, the grounds for the existence of many follows: Selfs were as

(1) The different individuals have differences among them- selves as to birth, death and the sensory and motor endowments As Gaudapada104 explained the argument, Thus, if there was but one soul, then when one was born, all would be born; when one died, all would die; if there was any defect in the vital instruments of one, such as deafness, blindness, dumbness, mutilation, or lameness, then all would be blind, deaf, dumb, maimed, and halt: but this is not the case; and therefore, from the several apportionment of death, birth and instruments of life, multiplicity of souls is demonstrated.

102 On Br. Su. ii.1.1.SBE xxxiv. 295. 103 SK 18. 10+ Colebrooke SK 57-8

SANKHYA 387

Gaudapada used here the word atma or soul; but that might not have been true to the spirit of the Karika. For, the differ- ences in the sensory and motor organs, which, according to tho text, were the ground for the existence of many purusas (purusa-bahutvam), could not obviously be the characteristics of the soul. Presumably, the Karika was here taking a rather commonsense view of the purusas as the individual human beings with their physical characteristics like birth, death and the possession of the sensory and motor organs. It is not any metaphysical view of the soul and obviously farthest from the highly abstract view of the Self as pure consciousness. This is also evident from the other two grounds adduced by the Karika for the existence of many Selfs. (2) The different individuals differ from each other in their respective activities. As Gaudapada105 explained the arguments, Since occupations are not at once universal. Yugapat means, 'at one time.' Not at once; or, at one time. Occupation: as engaging in acts of virtue and the like are not observed to occur at one moment; but some are busy with virtuous, others with vicious, actions; some cultivate indifference to the world, and some acquire true wisdom; therefore, from the non-contemporaneousness of oc- cupation, multitude of souls is concluded. (3) Different individuals differ from each other in having difference in the three gunas. This argument is most interesting. By the three gunas are meant the three constituents of prakriti, called the sattva, rajas and tamas. Prakriti being essentially material, its constituents, too, must have been the same. Thus if, according to the Karika argument one of the proofs for the multiplicity of the purusas be the preponderance of the different gunas in the different individuals, it must be admitted that the gunas were, somehow or other, conceived by the text as constitutive of the purusas. This gives us a concep- tion of the purusas quite different from that of the Vedantic view of the Self as pure consciousness. What, then, was the fundamental assumption upon which all the three proofs for the existence of the multiplicity of purusas were based?" The assumption was that the concrete and visible world of experience-the world in which different individuals were born and died had all sorts of motor and sensory endow- ments and exhibited differences in basic personality (some having a preponderance of sattva, others of rajas or tamas)-

105 Ib. 58.

388 LOKAYATA

must have been accepted as fundamentally real; or else, all the arguments would fall through. This leads us to consider the second point on which the Sankhya view of the purusas funda- mentally differed from the Vedantic one. According to the Sankhya, the experienced world was basi- cally real, while the purusas had no participation in its causation. The obvious corollary made the purusas utterly insignificant. According to the Vedanta, too, the purusa had no real participa- tion in the actual world process, but this was because the world process as a whole was ultimately unreal and as such the purusa alone had supreme reality. Thus the problem of the difference between the Sankhya and the Vedanta is reduced to one ques- tion: Is the experienced world to be accepted as real or not? That the Sankhya answer to the question was definitely in the affirmative is evidenced negatively by the Vedanta refutation of it. In his Sarva Darsana Samgraha, Madhavacarya,106 follow- ing in the footsteps of Samkara very closely, opened the dis- cussion on the Sankhya with the following question: But how can we accept the doctrine of illusory emanation (the Vedanta view) when the system of development propounded by the Sankhyas is still alive to oppose it? Hence, like Samkara, Madhava also felt the necessity of refuting the Sankhya. Indeed, the controversy between the Sankhya and the Vedanta, as evidenced by the Brahma Sutra and the commentaries on it, had largely been a controversy between parinama vada and vivarta vada. That the world was of the nature of an effect and that the effect was potentially contained within the cause were admitted by both the systems. However, they differed as to the reality of the effect. Accord- ing to the Sankhya, the effect was real (parinama vada) and as such the world (as the effect of the pradhana) was also real. This is the very opposite of the Vedanta standpoint, according to which, the effect could not be real (vivarta vada) and as such the world (as the effect of the Brahman) could not have any ultimate claim to reality. As a matter of fact, the very proof of the existence of the pradhana in the Sankhya, rested on the assumption of the reality of the empirical world. It is in this context that we are to judge the possible status of the purusa in original Sankhya. The crucial question, again, is: Had the purusa any genuine participation in the world-

106 SDS (Cowell) 221.

SANKHYA 389

process? We shall have to examine how the author of the Karika, in surreptitiously introducing the really Vedantic concept of the purusa into the Sankhya system, laid himself bare to all sorts of contradictions in order to face this question .. We may, however, begin with the writings of Samkara, because, being a conscious idealist, he could clearly perceive the fundamental issue between idealism and materialism and show that in spite of this artificial acceptance of the idealistic view of the purusa, the later Sankhya philosophers like Isvarakrisna could not come out of the meshes of the original materialism. We shall confine ourselves particularly to Samkara's com- mentary on the second section of the second chapter of the Brahma Sutra, where he proposed to refute the arguments of the Sankhya philosophers 'in an independent manner, without reference to the Vedanta texts.'107 Samkara10* represented the position of the Sankhya thus: Just as jars, dishes and other products which possess the common quality of consisting of clay are seen to have for their cause clay in general; so we must suppose that all the outward and inward (i.e., inanimate and animate) effects which are endowed with the charac- teristics of sattva, rajas and tamas have for their causes sattva, rajas and tamas in general. These, in their generality, constitute the threefold pradhana. This pradhana, which is non-intelligent, evolves itself spontaneously into multiform modifications, in order thus to effect the purposes (i.e., enjoyment, release and so on) of the intelligent soul. We have emphasised two points in this quotation. First, the non-intelligent (i.e., unconscious or material) pradhana evolves itself spontancously into this visible world. Secondly, the entire process of evolution is to effect the purposes of the intelligent soul. There is no doubt that Samkara was repre- senting here the Sankhya position in the lines of the Karika. However, the second of these two points was clearly the effort of the later Sankhya philosophers to make room, though artifi- cially and inconsistently, for elements of idealistic thought within the Sankhya. This aspect of later Sankhya was never fully reconciled with its other aspect, as expressed by the first of the above points, viz. that the pradhana or the primeval matter spontaneously evolved itself into the real visible world. What particularly interests us about Samkara's argument is that he made this point his main target. The real issue, he told

107 On Br. Su. ii.2.1. 108 Ib. SBE xxxiv. 364. Italics added.

390 LOKAYATA

us, was the issue concerning the causation of the world and its ultimate claim to reality. In spite of introducing the idealistic conception of the Self into the system and in spite of claiming that the whole process of evolution was meant to serve the pur- poses of this Self, the Karika version of the Sankhya persisted in representing very strong philosophical opposition to Samkara, because it also retained the heritage of the original materialistic standpoint in claiming that consciousness had no role in its pro- duction. Samkara's arguments interest us further because it enables us to see that the idealistic premise, viz. that the prin- ciple of consciousness is the real cause of the universe, logically results in the conclusion that the universe is unreal, a position that could never be acceptable to the Sankhya philosophers as long as they stuck to their doctrine of causality (parinama vada). Let us follow the arguments of Samkara in outline. Said the Brahma Sutra:109 That which is inferred (by the Sankhyas, viz. the pradhana) cannot be the cause (of the world), on account of the orderly arrangement (of the world) being impossible (on that hypothesis). It is to be noted that the hypothesis designed to be refuted by the sutra is that non-intelligent (acetana, unconscious or material) pradhana and nothing else is the cause of the world. The Sankhya argument for the existence of the pradhana, as we shall see, was based on its doctrine of causality: the nature of the cause is to be inferred from the nature of the effect, i.e., in accord- ance with it and, as such, the basic characteristics of the material world are to be inferred as characterising its cause. Presumably, the basis of this doctrine of causality was the observation of the facts of nature, called parallel instances (dristanta vala) by Samkara: jars, dishes and other products which possess the com- mon quality of consisting of clay, for example, must have their cause as clay in general. This led Samkara110 to argue: If you Sankhyas base your theory on parallel instances merely, we point out that a non-intelligent thing which, without being guided by an intelligent being, spontaneously produces effects capable of subserving the purposes of some particular person is nowhere ob- served in the world. We rather observe that houses, palaces, couches, pleasure-grounds and the like-things which according to circum- stances are conducive to the obtainment of pleasure or the avoidance of pain-are made by workmen endowed with intelligence. Now look at this entire world which appears, on the one hand, as external (i.e., inanimate) in the form of earth and the other elements enabling

109 ji.2.1. 110 Ib. SBE xxxiv. 364-5.

SANKHYA 391

(the souls) to enjoy the fruits of their various actions, and, on the other hand, as animate, in the form of bodies which belong to the different classes of beings, possess a definite arrangement of organs, and are therefore capable of constituting the abodes of fruition; look, we say, at this world, of which the most ingenious work- men cannot even form a conception in their minds, and then say if a non-intelligent principle like the pradhana is able to fashion it! Other non-intelligent things such as stones and clods of earth are certainly not seen to possess analogous powers. We rather must assume that just as clay and similar substances are seen to fashion themselves into various forms, if worked upon by potters and the like, so the pradhana also (when modifying itself into its effects) is ruled by some intelligent principle. When endeavouring to determine the nature of the primal cause (of the world), there is no need for us to take our stand on those attributes only which form part of the nature of material causes such as clay, etc., and not on those also which belong to extraneous agents such as potters etc. That is, as Thibaut111 wanted to sum up the argument, If we attempt to infer the nature of the universal cause from its effects on the ground of parallel instances, as, for instance, that of an earthen jar whose material cause is clay. we must remember that the jar has sprung from clay not without the cooperation of an intel- ligent being, viz. the potter. At least one point seems to be quite clear. The Sankhya, as refuted by Samkara, considered the material cause to be self-sufficient for the purpose of producing the world. At the same time Samkara obviously knew that there was in the Sankhya the principle of the purusa over and above the principle of the pradhana and some of the Sankhya philosophers like the author of the Karika were already interpreting this purusa on the ideal- istic line as the Self or pure consciousness. The implication of Samkara's writings, therefore, is that even this concession to idealism was not sufficiently satisfactory to a full fledged idealist like himself, because the principle of consciousness could not yet be raised to the status of the cause of the world and the material world with its ultimate cause as primordial matter re- mained real. Thus the principle of purusa, in spite of being idealistically interpreted, retained only an anomalous position in the Karika version of the Sankhya. In his commentary on the next sutra Samkara continued the same line of argument and thereby strengthened our impression of the same anomalous position of the purusas in the doctrine of the pradhana. Said the sutra:112 'And on account of (the impossibility of) activity.' Commented Samkara: 113

111 SBE xxxiv. 365 n. 118 SBE xxxiv. 367. 112 ii.2.2.

392 LOKAYATA

Leaving the arrangement of the world, we now pass on to the activity by which it is produced .... Now these activities again can- not be ascribed to a non-intelligent pradhana left to itself, as no such activity is seen in clay and similar substances, or in chariots and the like. For we observe that clay and the like, and chariots- which are in their own nature non-intelligent-enter on activities tending towards particular effects only when they are acted upon by intelligent beings such as potters, etc. in the one case, and horses and the like in the other case. From what is seen we determine what is not seen. Hence, a non-intelligent cause is not to be inferred because, on that hypothesis, the activity without which the world cannot be produced would be impossible. One point, again, is clear. The Sankhva philosophers of Samkara's times still attributed all activities to the non-intelli- gent pradhana left to itself. Samkara elucidated his own posi- tion in the traditional Indian manner of raising some possibl objection against it, i.e., from the Sankhya point of view, and then answering it from his own standpoint, i.e., by showing the futility of all possible defences of the Sankhya standpoint. We may sum up this chain of arguments for a clear idea of how the Sankhya philosophers were still thinking that the principle of primeval matter was self-sufficient for explaining all the changes in the world and also the original change that caused the world. According to the Sankhya, it is not necessary to postulate any principle of intelligence or consciousness for explaining movement or change. In fact, observation of nature (dristanta vala) teaches us that movements and modifications are to be found always in some material entity rather than in any principle of intelligence or consciousness. Why then should we at all think of any principle of intelligence to account for movements and modifications? Commented Samkara:114

A thing, we reply, which is itself devoid of motion may never- theless move other things. The magnet is itself devoid of motion, and yet it moves iron; and colours and other objects of sense, although themselves devoid of motion, produce movements in the eyes and other organs of sense. So the Lord also who is all-present, the Self of all, all-knowing and all-powerful may, although himself unmoving, move the universe Whatever might have been the source from which Samkara drew these analogies, he was clearly conscious of the fact that such a line of argument could not really be consistent with his own fundamental philosophical position. That is why he hastened to add:

114 On Br. Su. ii.2.2. SBE xxxiv. 369.

SANKHYA 393

If it finally be objected that (on the Vedanta doctrine) there is no room for a moving power as in consequence of the oneness (a- duality) of Brahman (the ultimate reality which, according to the Vedanta, is the Self or pure consciousness) no motion can take place: we reply that such objections have repeatedly been refuted by our pointing to the fact of the Lord being fictitiously connected with maya (the indescribable illusion which, according to the Vedanta. accounts for the world-appearance), which consists of name and form presented by Nescience. Hence motion can be reconciled with the doctrine of an all-knowing first cause.115 Thus Samkara made the other issue between idealism and materialism quite clear: change and movement can indeed be reconciled with an intelligent first cause only by denying their reality. It was thus a controversy not merely over the question of the primacy of spirit or matter but also on the problem of the reality of change or movement. We can now clearly sce why an extreme idealist like Samkara had to argue against the parinama vada of the Sankhya philosophers as tenaciously as against their pradhana karana cada. The two issues were logically interlinked. But more of this later. What particularly interests us in the present context is a different question: Accepting the reality of change and move- ment, how were the Sankhya philosophers trying to explain them? It is understood that from the Sankhya standpoint no spiritual principle participated in these, i.e., pradhana alone was responsible for all change. But the question is, how exactly do all changes result from the primeval matter? There are grounds to infer that in answer to this question the early Sankhya philo- sophers developed a theory which is surprisingly similar to the scientific view of the laws of nature. 'If it be said,' we read in the Brahma Sutra,116 '(that the pradhana moves) like milk or water, (we reply that) there also (the motion is due to intelligence).' Commenting on this Samkara117 said that the Sankhya philosophers would represent their own position thus: As non-sentient milk flows forth from its own nature (svabha- venaeva) merely for the nourishment of the young animal, and as non-sentient water, from its own nature (svabhavenaeva), flows along for the benefit of mankind; so the pradhana also, although non-intelligent, may be supposed to move from its own nature (sva- bhavenaeva) merely for the purpose of effecting the highest end of man (purusartha siddhaye). The concept of purusartha siddhi, i.e., the purpose of effect- ing the highest end of the purusa. was evidently taken by

115 SBE xxxiv. 369. 116 ii.2.3. 117 SBE xxxiv. 369.

394 LOKAYATA

Samkara from the Karika version of the Sankhya and, as we shall see, the author of the Karika, in introducing this concept into the Sankhya system, had to expose himself to logical in- congruities. What interests us, however, is Samkara's use of the word svabhava (lit., 'nature') in the descripiton of the Sankhya position. Evidently, according to the Sankhya philosophers, it is only because of the natural laws (svabhavenaeva) rather than any spiritual principle that the primeval matter modified itself into the world of nature. That such was really the standpoint of original Sankhya may be argued from its internal consistency with the materialistic outlook. If the Sankhya was originally only the doctrine of pradhana, we naturally expect it to have also been the doctrine of svabhava (svabhava vada) for the former is logically incomplete without the latter. Significantly, Gaudapada, in spite of all the idealistic twists in his interpre- tation of the Sankhya, had to admit, however reluctantly and casually it might have been, that 'according to the Sankhya philosophers there is a certain kind of cause called svabhava.'i1s This doctrine of svabhava naturally reminds us of the svabhava vada so frequently attributed to the Lokayatikas, which was a doctrine of natural laws, though some of the modern scholars, because of their repulsion for the materialistic standpoint as such, have tried to ridicule it as the doctrine of the denial of cause.119 That early Sankhya was really maintaining the doctrine of natural law (svabhava vada) is further evidenced by the follow- ing from the Brahma Sutra:120 Nor (can it be said that the pradhana modifies itself spontaneously) like grass, etc. (which turn into milk); for (milk) does not exist elsewhere (but in the female animal). Samkara,121 commenting on it, said that the Sankhya philo- sophers would like to present their case thus: Just as grass, herbs, water, etc., independently of any other instrumental cause (nimitta antara nirapeksa) transform themselves, by their own nature (svabhavat eva), into milk; so, we assume, the pradhana also transforms itself into the Great Principle (mahat) and so on. And, if you ask how we know that grass transforms itself independently of any instrumental cause; we reply, 'Because no such cause is observed.' For if we did perceive some such cause, we certainly should apply it to grass, etc., according to our liking, and thereby produce milk. But as a matter of fact, we do no such thing. Hence the transformation of grass and

118 On SK 27. 120 ji.2.5. 119 ERE viii. 494. 121 SBE xxxiv. 371.

SANKHYA 395

the like must be considered to be due to its own nature merely; and we may infer therefrom that the transformation of the pradhana is of the same kind. Samkara's own refutation of this svabhava vada is hardly satisfactory. He argued that grass becomes milk only when it is eaten by a cow or some other female animal, not if it is left either uneaten or is eaten by a bull. If the transformation had no special cause, grass would become milk even on other conditions than that of entering a cow's body.122 Further, men also are able, by applying a means in their power, to produce milk from grass and herbs: for when they wish to produce a more abundant supply of milk they feed the cow more plentifully and thus obtain more milk from her.123 In arguments like these, the real point of svabhava vada is somewhat distorted. The question is, whether it is necessary to postulate any extra-natural cause, over and above the merely natural, to explain changes and modifications. The evidence of the necessity of the physiological apparatus of the female animal does not indicate any extra-natural cause. From the point of view of svabhava vada the cause of milk would not be grass as such but the entire natural complex, viz. grass-as-eaten-by-the- cow. Svabhava vada could be refuted only on the basis of the demonstration that some further spiritual factor is necessary for the causation of milk. That men can get a more abundant sup- ply of milk by feeding the cow more plentifully only proves that man can conquer nature only by recognising the laws of nature. We do not have any direct evidence to prove that the early Sankhya philosophers were actually drawing all these implica- tions of their svabhava vada. That their views carried the germs which could be developed into these lines cannot, however, be doubted. Thus, it was their pradhana vada-the doctrine of a material first cause-which made the Sankhya philosophers the precursors of the scientific view of the laws of nature. At the same time, even in the Karika we find distinct efforts to present the Sankhya from the idealistic standpoint. As is only to be expected, therefore, the emphasis on the original svabhava vada is no longer there. The author of the text tried his best to make the purusa, understood in the almost Vedantic sense, responsible for all change, including the original modifi- cation of the pradhana. Samkara, himself a highly consistent idealist, could clearly see the futility of such efforts to reconcile

122 Ib. 128 1b. xxxiv. 371-2.

396 LOKAYATA

the fundamental principles of idealism with materialism. The whole theory of the purusa as the passive moving power behind the prakriti, seemed to him to be a gross self-contradiction: Beyond the pradhana there exists (according to the Sankhya) no external principle which could either impel the pradhana to activity or restrain it from activity. The soul (purusa) as we know, is indifferent (udasina)-neither moves to, nor restrains from action. As therefore the pradhana stands in no relation. it is impossible to see why it should sometimes modify itself into the great principle (mahat) and sometimes not.1"4 Further, Samkara went on arguing, it cannot be claimed from the Sankhya point of view that the purusa, in spite of being perfectly passive, indirectly initiates and guides the world- process just as the magnet activises the iron without being itself active, or, as a lame man sitting motionless on the shoulder of a blind man mav guide the movements of the latter. Such a defence of the Sankhya would in effect amount to a surrender of the fundamentals of the philosophy, according to which the pradhana is moving of itself, and the (indif- ferent and inactive) soul possesses no moving power. And how should the indifferent soul move the pradhana? A man, although lame, may make a blind man move by means of words and the like; but the soul which is devoid of action and qualities cannot possibly put forth any moving energy. Nor can it be said that it moves the pradhana by its mere proximity, as the magnet moves the iron; for from the permanency of proximity (of the purusa to the pradhana) a permanency of motion would follow. The proximity of the magnet, on the other hand (to the iron), is not permanent, but depends on a certain activity and the adjustment of the magnet in a certain position; hence the lame (man) and the magnet do not supply really parallel instances. The pradhana being the non-intelligent and the purusa indifferent, and there being no third principle to connect them, there can be no connection of the two.125 The instances of the magnet-iron and the lame-blind occur in the Karika and there is no doubt that Samkara was criticising here the Karika-version of the philosophy. It is obvious, there- fore, that the author of the text, surrendering the doctrine of svabhava and trying to make the purusa responsible for all changes and modifications, only made the Sankhya standpoint internally inconsistent. Since there is no ground to argue that ori- ginal Sankhya was internally inconsistent, and since, as Samkara argued, the pradhana being unconscious matter and the purusa just indifferent there can be no connection between the two, the theory of such a connection as expounded in the Karika must have been a concoction of the later thinkers grafted on original Sankhya. We are thus left only with two alternative presump- 124 Ib. xxxiv. 370. 125 1b. xxxiv. 374. Italics added.

SANKHYA 397

tions as to the nature of original Sankhya. Either it was not the doctrine of the pradhana at all, or the role of the purusa in it (and even the meaning of the purusa itself) was quite different from the one we are accustomed to think under the influence of the Karika. The evidence of the Brahma Sutra being decisively against the first, we are left only with the second alternative. But if it was so, if the meaning as well as the role attributed to the purusa in the Karika had been alien to original Sankhya, there could not have been much difference between it and the materialistic philosophy attributed to the Lokayatikas. As a matter ot fact, it is from such a point of view that the Jaina commentator Silamka wanted to equate the two. Silamka says that there is but little difference between the Lokayata and the Sankhya, for though the Sankhyas admit souls, these are absolutely incapable of doing any work, and all the work is done by the prakriti, which is potentially the same as the gross elements, the body and the so-called mind is therefore nothing but the combination of the gross elements, and the admission of separate purusas is only nominal. Since such a soul cannot do anything and is of no use (akincitkara), the Lokayatas flatly deny them.12; Interestingly, Samkara's own writings betray a somewhat similar understanding of the proximity in the philosophical posi- tions of the Sankhya and the Lokayata. Apart from the fact that his refutation of the Sankhya was by far a refutation of the materialistic philosophy (and therefore his claim that any real status given by the Sankhya philosophers to the principle of the purusa idealistically understood is bound to create internal incon- sistencies for Sankhya), we find him representing the Sankhya philosophers as citing the authority of the Lokayata in defence of their thesis that activity could belong only to the non-intelli- gent pradhana: For this very reason, namely, that intelligence is observed only where a body is observed while it is never seen without a body, the Lokayatikas consider intelligence to be a mere attribute of the body. Hence activity belongs only to what is non-intelligent.127 If there is any truth in this representation of the Sankhya standpoint, it would be wrong for us to imagine any fundamental difference between the Sankhya and the Lokayata materialism. However, the clearest proof of the materialistic nature of original Sankhya consists in the nominal status of the purusa in it. Some of the modern scholars, too, have noted this. Garbe128 summed up their views:

126 Dasgupta HIP iii. 527. 127 SBE xxxiv. 368. 128 ERE xi. 191.

398 LOKAYATA

What place, however, in a system which maintains such views is to be found for the soul (purusa)? Strangely enough, former scholars who made exhaustive investigations into the Sankhya sys- tem did not succeed in answering this question. They regard the soul in this system as entirely superfluous, and hold that its founder

nated it. would have shown himself more logical if he had altogether elimi-

Garbe himselt tried to read a real status of the purusa in original Sankhya. We shall examine his view later and see why the older view rejected by him was on the whole more correct. For the present we may consider certain evidences discussed by Dasgupta which appears to justify our understanding of the materialistic character of original Sankhya. According to Dasgupta,129 Caraka's treatment of the philo- sophy 'represents the earliest systematic doctrine of the San- khya.' Caraka's work was much older than the Karika. The Sankhya, as treated in the Karika, does not appear to be a mate- rialistic philosophy because of the peculiarly idealistic concep- tion of the purusa in it. The purusa in the Karika meant the Self as pure consciousness and though the doctrines of the pradhana, parinama and purusa bahutvam were not really abandoned by its author, the whole process of the development of the visible world was viewed by him as designed to serve the purpose of 'enjoyment and liberation' of the purusa. If such a conception of the purusa be there, the system can hardly ap- pear to be a materialistic one. Thus it was primarily because of Isvarakrisna's interpretation of the purusa that the Sankhya did not appear to be a full fledged materialistic philosophy to the majority of the modern scholars. But do we come across the same understanding of the purusa in the older version of the Sankhya as preserved in Caraka? It is here that Dasgupta has special importance for us: According to Caraka there are six elements (dhatus), viz. the five elements such as akasa (empty space), vayu (air), etc. and cetana (consciousness) called also purusa. From other points of view, the categories may be said to be twenty-four only, viz. the ten sen- ses (five cognitive and five conative), manas (mind), the five objects of senses and the eight-fold prakriti (prakriti, mahat, ahamkara, and the five elements).130 Thus we have here two alternative angles of looking at the Sankhya. According to the first, the purusa or consciousness (cetana) is simply on par with the five well-known material ele- ments, i.e., is itself a form of material element (dhatu). The peculiarly materialistic nature of this standpoint is obvious. In 129 HIP i. 217. 180 Ib. i.213.

SANKHYA 399

the second alternative, too, the standpoint is overtly material- istic. For everything in this list of twenty-four categories-in- cluding the ten organs and the mind-are, from the Sankhya view, essentially material. That is, the list has no place for any spiri- tual principle at all. The concept of the purusa is absent in it. This absence was so conspicuous that Cakrapani,131 the commentator on Caraka, found it necessary to invent some explanation for it: the prakriti and the purusa both being unmanifested the two to- gether have been counted as one.' Such an explanation, if true to the real spirit of Caraka, amounts to a denial of any independ- ent status to the purusa. Dasgupta,13= evidently depending on Cakrapani, explained this version of the Sankhya thus: Caraka identifies the avyakta (the unmanifested) part of the prakriti with the purusa as forming one category. The vikara or evolutionary products of the prakriti are called ksetra, whereas the avyakta part of the prakriti is regarded as the ksetrajna. This avya- kta and cetana are one and the same entity. From this unmanifested prakrti or cetana is derived the buddhi (intellect) and from buddhi is derived the ego (ahamkara) and from the ahamkara the five elements and the senses are produced, and when this produc- tion is complete, we say that creation has taken place. At the time of pralaya (periodical cosmic dissolution) all the evolutes return back to the prakriti, and thus become unmanifest with it, whereas at the time of a new creation from the purusa, the unmanifest (avyakta), all the manifested forms-the evolutes of buddhi, ahamkara, etc .- appear. If this interpretation be correct, then according to Caraka's understanding ot the Sankhya the purusa becomes only a part of the prakriti, i.e., the principle of consciousness as potentially contained in the primeval matter. Whether this was the standpoint of original Sankhya cannot be asserted with certainty, though evidences mentioned by Das- gupta favour such a view. Caraka spoke of only twenty- tour categories, whereas, presumably under the influence of Isvarakrisna, we are accustomed to think of the Sankhya as a system of twenty-five categories, the purusa being the twenty- fifth. However, a passage in the Mahabharata clearly indicates that there was an older version of the system that acknowledged only twenty-four categories and certain other passages of the epic implied a materialistic understanding of the purusa itself. Here are the evidences as collected by Dasgupta:188

131 Ib. i. 213 n. 182 Ib. i. 214-5. 133 Ib. i. 217-8. It must not, however, be imagined that Dasgupta accepted a materialistic view of the Sankhya. With what consist-

Sankhya. ency it is difficult to judge, he favoured a theistic view of the original

400 LOKAYATA

In the Mahabharata (xii.318) three schools of the Sankhya are mentioned, viz. those who admitted twenty-four . categories (the school I have sketched above), those who admitted twenty-five (the well-known orthodox Sankhya system) and those who admitted twenty-six categories. This last school admitted a supreme being in addition to the purusa and this was the twenty-sixth principle. This agrees with the orthodox Yoga system and the form of the Sankhya advocated in the Mahabharata. The schools of the Sankhya of twenty-four and twenty-five categories are here denounced as unsatisfactory. Doctrines similar to the school of the Sankhya we have sketched above (i.e., Caraka's Sankhya) are referred to in some of the other chapters of the Mahabharata (xii.203, 204). The Self apart from the body is described as the moon of the new moon day; it is said that as Rahu (the shadow of the sun during an ecli- pse) cannot be seen apart from the sun, so the Self cannot be seen apart from the body. The Selfs (saririnah) are spoken of as mani- festing from the prakriti.

The view quoted last suggests a theory of the Self reminis- cent of the Lokayatika. Was it because Samkara knew this older Sankhya that he made it quote the authority of the Lokayata? Did the relic of such a view of the Self form the basis of the proofs for the plurality of the purusas even in the Karika? At least one point is clear. As evidenced by the Caraka Samhita and certain passages of the Mahabharata, we are led to admit that there was a version of the Sankhya older than the one we come across in the Karika, in which the principle of the purusa was understood in a materialistic sense. Therefore, the Karika understanding of the purusa as pure consciousness was not a feature of early Sankhya. We are thus left with two alter- natives. Either it was an invention of Isvarakrisna himself, or it was borrowed by him from some other philosophical source. We are going to argue in favour of the second alternative. Our grounds are two-fold.

First, it is possible for us to reconstruct the history of the development of this idealistic conception of the purusa among the followers of the Vedic path, i.e., among the circle of philo- sophers who were originally hostile to the Sankhya. This shows that the understanding of the purusa as the eternally detached pure consciousness was an inherent feature of the Vedantic thought and as such, if found in a treatise on the Sankhya, it must be looked upon as being borrowed from the Vedantists.

Secondly, this conception, as introduced by Isvarakrisna into the Sankhya, created very gross logical inconsistencies with- in the system and could be reconciled with the Sankhya only by surrendering its fundamentals.

SANKHYA 401

The history of the development of the conception of the purusa as pure consciousness can be satisfactorily traced among the followers of the Vedic tradition. Such a development, fur- ther, could not have been accidental. The pastoral economy of the early Vedic people brought into vogue an outlook of male- domination and, since purusa literally meant the male, it is here that we expect to find the principle of the purusa raised to an exalted philosophical status. Secondly, the vast literatures from the Samhitas down to the Upanisads give us a connected picture of the development of the idealistic principle of pure conscious- ness itself. It is therefore in later phases of this tradition that we find the originally male-dominated outlook fused with the ideal- istic outlook, i.e., the principle of the purusa made to stand for the ultimate reality conceived as pure consciousness. And since original Sankhya was positively opposed to the Vedic tradition, it will not be logical to imagine that the interpretation of the purusa as pure consciousness was an original feature of it. Wc shall now follow the history of the development of the concept of the purusa in the Vedic tradition. It will help us to understand the real standpoint of original Sankhya, negatively though. Belvalkar and Ranade134 have already drawn our attention to the fact that even in the comparatively later portions of the Vedic literatures, the word purusa meant only the human being. Criticising the usually accepted etymology of the word they observed:

These etymologies do not inform us as to the original meaning of the term which is more clearly brought out by certain ritualistic and other statements made about him in the Brahmanas like Sata- patha, vi. 2.2.9. (seventeen is the purusa, as consisting of ten pranas, four limbs-the hands and the feet-the trunk the fifteenth, the neck the sixteenth and the head the seventeenth); Aitareya, ii.4. (quintuple is the purusa as constituted from out of hair, skin, flesh, bone and marrow); Tandya, xxiii. 14.5 (purusa is twenty, for there are ten fingers to the hand and ten to the feet); or Taittiriya Sam- hita, vi.4.5.7 (three amongst the beasts grasp by the hand, hasta, namely man or purusa, elephant and monkey). This clearly shows that purusa originally denoted the human being with his peculiar bodily structure, and not any inner or spiritual entity in-dwelling therein. What the authors have not sufficiently taken note of is the circumstance that in spite of there being so many words dis- tinctly meaning the human being, these sources chose the word

184 HIP ii. 427-8. L-26

402 LOKAYATA

specifically meaning the male (as contrasted with the female) to refer to the human being. Presumably, the explanation is that because of their pastoral economy the Vedic people were so highly patriarchal that the terms male and human became almost interchangeable. We have already seen how, in the latest stratum of the Rig Veda, there appeared the tendency to raise the purusa to the exalted status of the cosmic principle from which the universe originated. Eventually, when the idealistic outlook fully em- erged in the Vedanta or the Upanisads and the ultimate reality was viewed as pure consciousness itself, there arose, logically enough, the tendency to identify the purusa with this pure con- sciousness or Brahman. Many examples of this may be quoted from the Upanisads. In order to identify the purusa with pure consciousness, it was first of all necessary to divest it of its former human impli- cations. 'There is a purusa who is non-human (a-manava)', said the Chandogya Upanisad,135 and it said it over and over again, 'There is a purusa who is non-human (a-manava). He leads them on to the Brahma. This is the way leading to the gods.'136 Once divested of the human associations, there was no diffi- culty in identifying it with pure consciousness or the Self. A very good example of this tendency is to be found in the Brihad Aranyaka Upanisad: This earth is honey for all creatures and all creatures are honey for this earth. This shining immortal purusa who is in this earth, and, with reference to oneself, this shining immortal purusa who is in the body-he, indeed, is just this soul (atman), this Im- mortal, this Brahma, this All.137 What is meant by 'honey' here? Commentators138 inter- preted it as follows: The earth and all living beings are mutually dependent, even as bees and honey are. The bees make the honey and the honey supports the bees. Similarly, the earth supports all creatures and all creatures sup- port the earth. And the Upanisad was trying to show that behind all these correlatives there is the shining immortal purusa which is Brahman or the Self. So the Brihad Aranyaka passage conti- nued: These waters are honey for all things and all things are honey for waters. This shining immortal purusa who is in these waters,

135 iv. 15.5. 137 ii.5.1. Hume 102. 136 v. 10.2. 188 Radhakrishnan PU 202.

SANKHYA 403

and, with reference to oneself, this shining immortal purusa who is made of semen-he is just this Soul, this Immortal, this Brahma, this All. This fire is honey for all things and all things are honey for this fire. This shining immortal purusa who is in this fire, and, with reference to oneself, this shining immortal purusa who is made of speech-he is just this Soul, this Immortal, this Brahma, this All.139 After similarly reviewing how the shining immortal purusa. is behind the wind, the sun, the quarters of heaven, the moon, the lightning, the thunder, the space, the law (dharma) and the truth, the passage concluded: This Soul (atman) is honey for all things, and all things are honey for this soul. This shining immortal purusa who is in this soul, and, with reference to oneself, this shining immortal purusa

this All. who exists as soul-he is just this Soul, this Immortal, this Brahma,

Verily this soul is overlord of all things, the king of all. As all the spokes are held together in the hub and felly of a wheel, just so in this soul all things, all gods, all worlds, all breathing things, all these selves are held together.140 The identification of the purusa with the ultimate reality is clear and since the ultimate reality was conceived as Brahman or the self or pure consciousness, the purusa itself became the principle of consciousness. This is the history of the develop- ment of the concept of the purusa in the Vedic tradition. It is not logical to find the same sort of development of the concept of the purusa in the agricultural-matriarchal tradition, the ideological offshoots of which were the Tantra and the San- khya. The reason is simple. The male, in this tradition, was secondary only. Nevertheless, the fact is that whatever might have been the form of original Sankhya, there was in it the prin- ciple of the purusa, because we do not come across any version of the system which did not mention this principle. Therefore the question is, why did the early Sankhya philosophers at all conceive of such a principle and what did it originally stand for? A clue to this is perhaps to be found in the Caraka Samhita itself. Dasgupta's understanding of Caraka is based, as we have said, on Cakrapani's commentary. We find in this the theories of creation and dissolution. But there were commentators on 'Caraka older than Cakrapani and they understood Caraka's passage in a somewhat different way. Instead of creation and dissolution, they thought that Caraka was merely speaking of birth and death.141 The difference is significant, for the older

139 ii.5.2-3. Hume 102. 140 ii.5.14-5. Hume 103-4. 141 Dasgupta HIP i. 215 n.

404 LOKAYATA

understanding indicates that the basic philosophical categories of the Sankhya were rooted in human analogy. Perhaps a relic of this older understanding was retained even in Gaudapada's commentary on the Sankhya Karika, according to which, 'as the birth of a child proceeds from the union of the male and the female, so the production of creation results from the union of 'the prakriti and the purusa.' From this point of view, the charac- terisation of the prakriti or the pradhana in the Karika142 as prasava dharmi (one that gives birth to) might have been some- thing more than a mere metaphor. If original Sankhya was try- ing to understand the cosmic processes of creation and dissolu- tion on the analogies of human birth and death, it might have been that the view of evolution was originally suggested to the Sankhya philosophers on the analogy of the fœtal development. It is from this point of view, again, that the continuity of origi- nal Sankhya with Tantra becomes clear to us. All these imply that the prakriti and the purusa of original Sankhya also meant the female and the male. This point is im- portant, for it may help us to understand the problem of the anomalous position of the purusa in original Sankhya. Evidently the term prakriti was not the invention of the early Sankhya philosophers because it was the basic concept of Tantrism, the history of which is traced back to a very remote antiquity. And it is impossible to deny that the prakriti original- ly stood for the female principle without questioning the Indian cultural tradition fundamentally. It was also the term for sakti, the more concrete manifestations of which were the mother goddesses. In Tantrism the human body, particularly the female body, was understood as the microcosm of the universe and as such the prakriti became also a cosmic principle. It is from this point of view that the universe in Tantrism is conceived as vamodbhuta, born of the female. The greatness of the early Sankhya philosophers could only be that they expressed in a new form, abstract and objective, the fundamental ideas of the pra- kriti, which was apprehended in original Tantrism in the form of the concrete primitive myth. The change 'was significant. For it was not simply a question of revolutionising the form of the primitive thought, but also of introducing the germs of a new content. For in presenting it in the form of an abstract and objective principle, the early Sankhya philosophers had con-

142 11.

SANKHYA 405

sciously to reject the idea of any god or creator and to define the prakriti as the non-spiritual or material (acetana) potential of the concrete material world. We shall return later to examine the principle of the prakriti or the pradhana in greater detail. For the moment, we may try to see how far, even when stated in the form of an abstract and objective philosophical principle, the original implication of femininity was still retained in the term. Surprisingly enough, the Sankhya Karika and even the Sankhya Sutra are not without its relics. Thus, for example, in the Karika,143 the prakriti is compared to a dancing girl: Just as a dancing girl, after showing her performances desists from dancing, so does the prakriti desist, after exhibiting herself to the purusa. Two more couplets of the Karika144 were explained by Gauda- pada on the basis of this analogy of the dancing girl. Even in the Sankhya Sutra,145 the prakriti was compared to the dancing girl (nartakivat). The analogy is strange and the usually accep- ted interpretation of it does not throw much light on the real position of the Sankhya. On the other hand, in view of the facts that in the early phases of social development dancing was definitely a magical act and the original germs of the Sankhya are to be traced to very early times, it may not be groundless to presume that the analogy of the dancing girl could have origi- nally been something more than a mere analogy; that is, it might have had some ritual significance, the precise nature of which can be understood only when we have a fuller knowledge of ancient Indian matriarchy and its characteristic rituals. Such a presumption becomes stronger in view of a somewhat similar but equally obscure reference in the Karika: 146 I think there is nothing more tender (sukumara) than the prakriti; once 'seen' (drista) by the purusa she does not become the object of being 'seen' again. Gaudapada's interpretation of this is obviously fanciful. It is evident from his explanation that, according to the Sankhya, God is the creator of the world. Other interpretations of the passage are not more satisfactory. It is not improbable, there- fore, that the Karika contained here a reference to some ancient matriarchal ritual overlooked by the commentators. In this con-

143 59 145 iii.69. 144 65, 66. 146 61.

406 LOKAYATA

nection it is useful to remember what a contemporary philosopher, Krisnacandra, said: There is so much (in the Sankhya texts) that is clothed in poetical or mystic garb on which the commentators do not help us much but which are suggestive enough to tempt us to construct the system anew. What we propose to add is that a study of the ancient matriarchal rituals will help such reconstruction. We may be yet far from understanding the real meaning of the reference to the dancing girl or of being seen on the part of the prakriti. But one point should be fairly clear. The essential femininity of the prakriti was not washed away even in the Karika version of the Sankhya. Interestingly, Vijnana Bhiksu,147 in one of his elementary works called the Sankhya Sara, men- tioned the word sakti as a synonym for prakriti. Another well- known synonym for prakriti was maya (in a sense opposite to the Vedanta) and it is suggested that the word was derived from the root ma, to measure.148 Obviously, it is the same root that gave Sanskrit the word, 'mother.' The other commonly used synonym for prakriti is aja, the unborn female, and this reminds us of the refernce to the Sankhya view in the Svetasvatara Upanisad:129 With the one unborn female, red, white, and black, Who produces many creatures like herself, There lies the one unborn male taking his delight. Another unborn male leaves her with whom he has had his delight. This evidence is decisive. It is therefore impossible not to agree with the following: According to the Sanskrit grammar, the word prakriti is in the feminine gender. But the synonyms for it, like avyakta or pradhana are not so. In Sanskrit, however. the gender of a word does not indicate the sex of the object referred to. In these cases, too, the gender of the words used cannot be the main consideration. There is no doubt that the object referred to by these words was definitely conceived as female.150 Now about the term purusa. That it originally stood for the male can be disputed only if we deny the early Sankhya philosophers the credit of a deliberate selection of terminology. For this is the literal meaning of the word and if the propoun- ders of the system preferred to use it, they knew what they were doing. In other words, if they did not want purusa to mean the

147 Colebrooke SK 68. 149 iv. 5. Hume 403. 148 Ib. 150 Bhattacarya BDS (B) 149.

SANKHYA 407

male, they could have easily found another word to express what they really wanted to indicate. The Karika, however, infused into the word implications much removed from this primary one. Yet the original masculine sense was not totally lost to it. We find such words as puman151 and pumsah152 (meaning, the male) used in the Karika as substitutes for purusa. And this principle, originally meaning the male, had a pecu- liarly anomalous position in the Sankhya. Even in the Karika153 it is conceived as the 'witness, solitary, bystander, spectator and passive,' and all these not in the Vedantic sense: the passive spectator of the Sankhya was the spectator of an essentially real world-process. Remembering, therefore, that the prakriti and the purusa originally meant the female and the male, we may now look into the living ethnological domain for a clue to this anomalous position of the purusa in original Sankhya. 'The Khasis have a saying, from the woman sprang the clan.'154 Similarly, 'the Chinese word for the clan-name means born of a woman.' and the modern scholars have interpreted this as evidence of mother-right in ancient China.155 It is not difficult to see why mother-right should produce sayings like these. 'The father has no kinship with his children, who belong to their mother's clan.'156 He is thus considered an alien, a mere visitor. 'In Jowai he neither lives nor eats in his wife's house, but visits it only after dark.'157 'This does not leave much scope for the man. As a husband he is a stranger to his wife's people, who refer to him curtly as a begetter.'158 This gives us some idea of the anomalous position of the purusa in mother-right. On the one hand, at least at a com- paratively developed stage of the knowledge of human repro- duction, the fact was recognised that the male had to visit the female and be united with her to ensure human reproduction. On the other hand, since he had no claim to real paternity, he was considered as just an alien and as such utterly unimportant. So he was curtly referred to as the 'begetter.' This anomalous position of the purusa is reflected in the Sankhya. On the one hand, presumably because of an extension of the Tantrika tendency to understand the mystery of the uni-

151 11. 152 60 153 19. 155 ERE viii. 858. 154 Thomson SAGS i 153.

157 Ib. 156 Gurdon K xix. 158 Thomson SAGS i. 153.

408 LOKAYATA

verse on human model, the early Sankhya philosophers must have imagined that just as a child was born as a result of union of the male and the female, so was the universe a result of the union of the purusa and the prakriti. On the other hand, just as the child in the matriarchal society has no real kinship with the father, so the universe, in spite of being real, has no real relationship with the purusa. Hence the anomalous status of the purusa in a system, known to the early orthodox idealists as essentially the doctrine of the pradhana. The principle of the purusa was there in original Sankhya, although we do not clearly see why should it at all have been there. Evidently, there were more factors than the individual inclinations of the early philosophers that were responsible for this. The social struc- ture reflected in this philosophy left for the purusa only an ano- malous position. How far the same social system can provide a clue to the understanding of the doctrine of the multiplicity of the purusa (purusa bahuttvam), is not an impermissible question. The presumption is that a more detailed knowledge of mother-right in ancient India may throw some light on it. But we cannot enter into this question here. Rather, we want to point out that this anomalous position of the purusa in original Sankhya re- mained its greatest weakness; it provided an easy opportunity to the later thinkers to introduce alien ideas into the system. This is exemplified by the Karika. Original Sankhya must have been immensely old. Accept- ing Garbe's chronology, we have to assume a large time-gap between it and the Karika. During this period-though in the circle of thinkers directly opposed to original Sankhya (i.e., among the Vedantists)-the concept of the purusa underwent its own course of development, culminating in the distinctly idealistic principle of Self as pure consciousness. The author of the Karika-and more conspicuously the later writers on the Sankhya as Gaudapada, Aniruddha and Vijnana Bhiksu-tried their very best to introduce this concept of the purusa into the Sankhya system and thus virtually to make a Vedanta of it. We shall confine ourselves particularly to the Karika, as the real affiliation of these later writers to the Vedantic standpoint is well-known, whereas the claim that the version of the Sankhya in the Karika was already contaminated by Vedantic thought might be questioned. Is there any ground for suspecting the authenticity of the

SANKHYA 409

Karika? It is after all the earliest available text on the system and, if the purusa here means the Self or Consciousness, should not the presumption be that this was how the purusa had been understood in original Sankhya? Of course Gunaratna drew a distinction between the original Sankhya and the later Sankhya. But we have no direct evidence of what the purusa meant in the former. We might have possibly known it, had the more ancient treatises on the system like the Sasti Tantra and the Atreya Tantra been available to us. In the absence of such evidences, is it not logical for us to rely on the evidence of the earliest text we possess? Our answer is in the negative. It is true that we do not have any evidence of a decisive character against the Karika version of the purusa which may be considered as either direct or external. Nevertheless, we have evidences against it which, though circumstantial and internal, are no less decisive in nature. We shall begin with the internal evidences. The Karika view of the purusa could be looked upon as forming an appropriate feature of original Sankhya, had it not introduced gross inconsistencies within the text itself. An un- biased study of the Karika gives one the impression that its author, after introducing a virtually Vedantic view of the purusa into the system, did not clearly know what to do with it, i.e., how to reconcile it with the fundamental tenets of the system. The only way in which he could ultimately effect this reconciliation was by surreptitiously surrendering the original tenets. That most of the modern scholars, like the best-known traditional com- mentators, have overlooked this peculiarity of the text, is possibly explained by their affiliation to the idealistic (often specifically Vedantic) standpoint. The nearer the author of the Karika approached the Vedanta, surrendering the funda- mentals of the Sankhya, the more did the system appear to them internally consistent and philosophically acceptable. Eventually, the significance of the fact is almost forgotten that Badarayana, the first philosopher to systematise the Vedantic outlook, looked upon the Sankhya as representing the strongest opposition to it, and Samkara, the ablest commentator on Badarayana, found the Karika view of the purusa as utterly irreconcilable with the fundamentals of the Sankhya. By the fundamentals of the system we mean the following: (1) The doctrine of the pradhana, i.e., primeval matter is the ultimate cause of the visible world; (2) The view of causality

410 LOKAYATA

known as parinamavada, i.e., the effect is a real modification of the cause; and (3) The doctrine of the plurality of the purusas. That these were really the fundamentals of the system is evi- denced by the Brahma Sutra, where the refutation of the Sankhya is specifically a refutation of these doctrines. Even the author of the Karika found it impossible to deny all these to the Sankhya standpoint. Where he failed, however, was to show how these could be really reconciled to the conception of the purusa as detached consciousness. Elaborate arguments are not necessary to prove that the Karika conception of the purusa was practically the same as the Vedantic view of the Self. Like the sakti of the Vedanta, the purusa of the Karika is bare witness.159 It is the pure knower or jna,160 like the vijnata of the Upanisads. It is abso- lutely opposite in nature to the primeval matter (prakriti or avyakta) and its evolutes (vyakta),161 and as such, it alone is the principle of pure consciousness: the consciousness which appears to belong to certain things of the visible world is ulti- mately nothing but the consciousness of the purusa reflected therein.162 And so on. There is no difference between such a view of the purusa and the Vedantic conception of the Self. However, when this Vedantic conception was introduced by Isvarakrisna into the Sankhya as standing for the principle of the purusa, it became irreconcilable with the fundamentals of the system. We may begin with the Karika proofs for the existence of the purusa. The pradhana is real and the visible world is a real modi- fication (parinama) of this pradhana. As a matter of fact, it is from the reality of the visible world that the reality of the pradhana was inferred by the Sankhya: karyatah tat upa- labdhih,163 as the Karika put it. Interestingly, this same visible world was taken of as proof for the existence of the purusa: Since the assemblage of sensible objects is for another's use; since the converse of that which has the three gunas with other properties (before mentioned) must exist; since there must be superintendence (adhisthana); since there must be one to enjoy; since there is a tendency to abstraction (kaivalyartham pravrit- teh ca: since also there is the desire to be detached from the world); therefore, purusa is.164 These are the proofs offered by the Karika for the existence

159 19. 100 2. 161 11 162 20. 164 17. 163 8.

SANKHYA 411

of the purusa and we are going to argue that they carry the germs of at least the major contradictions in the Karika. Following are the expositions of the proofs: 1. The purusa must exist because the assemblage of objects is for another's use. As Gaudapada165 explained the argument: In like manner as a bed, which is an assemblage of bedding, props, cords, cotton, coverlid, and pillows, is for another's use, not for its own; and its several component parts render no mutual service; thence it is concluded that there is a man who sleeps upon the bed, and for whose use it was made: so this body, which is an assemblage of the five elements, is for another's use; or, there is soul (purusa) for whose enjoyment this enjoyable body, consisting of an aggregate of intellect and the rest, has been produced. Perhaps, the word body, in this commentary, should have been replaced by the word nature (the visible world including the human body) to give a more precise understanding of the standpoint of the Karika; for, the other references in the text make it clear that the assemblage of objects meant nature. It may be noted that the same argument occurs also in the Sankhya Sutra106 and the commentator Vijnana Bhiksu explained samhata ( assemblage) as prakriti karya sadharana, i.e., the effects of the prakriti in general. So the essence of the argument is that the things of the visible world, being of the nature of assembled objects, presuppose an enjoyer thereof, which must be the purusa. But the question is why the enjoyer, thus presupposed, should specifically be the purusa? The answer to this question forms the content of the next argument. 2. The enjoyer presupposed cannot be the prakriti or its evolutes, all these being themselves assemblages of parts, being essentially composed of three gunas. Therefore something which is converse in nature to the prakriti and its evolutes can alone be the enjoyer of these and the purusa alone is such. Therefore purusa must exist. The same argument occurs also in the San- khya Sutra107 3. The purusa must exist, because there must be superin- tendence. Gaudapada168 explained the argument thus: 'As a charioteer guides a chariot drawn by horses able to curvet, to prance, to gallop, so the soul guides the body.' Again, the word body here should possibly be substituted by the word nature, for that is the sense of the other references to the same theme occurring in the Karika. And Gaudapada himself quoted the

165 Colebrooke SK 55. 167 i.141. 166 i.66. 168 Colebrooke SK 55-6.

412 LOKAYATA

authority of the Sasti Tantra,169 which according to him, decla- red that the pradhana, as mounted by the purusa, prevailed (pravartate). Besides, the same argument, with the same impli- cation, is also to be found in the Sankhya Sutra.170 4. The purusa must exist, because there must be an enjoyer. This is practically a repetition of the first argument. Even Gaudapada171 interpreted it on similar lines: In like manner as there must be some one to partake of food flavoured with sweet, sour, salt, pungent, bitter, and astringent flavours, so, as there is no capacity of fruition (bhoktritva bhava, lit., tendency to enjoyment) in intellect and other products of nature (prakriti), there must be soul (atma) by which this body is to be enjoyed. Exactly the same argument is to be found in the Sankhya Sutra.172 5. The purusa must exist, because (as Colebrooke transla- ted the Karika) there is a tendency to abstraction. The actual word in the text, rendered here as 'abstraction' is kaivalya, loneliness. Said Gaudapada:173 Kaivalya is the abstract noun, derived from kevala, 'sole, only', -for, on account of, that (abstraction); the practice of it: from the exercise of (or tendency to) abstraction (for the sake of its own separation or detachment) it is inferred that soul is. That is, every one, whether wise or unwise, equally desires imperishable release from succession of worldly existence. Vijnana Bhiksu, commenting on the same argument as occurring in the Sankhya Sutra,174 made the point clearer: Kai- valya is 'absolute extirpation of pain.' In short, the argument is that since there is an urge for liberation, there must exist the purusa which alone can have this urge. But the question is, what is it from which the purusa thus wants to be liberated? Apparently, from the worldly bondage, i.e., from the fetters of the prakriti and its evolutes; for, in the Karika list of twenty-five tattvas there is nothing excepting these outside the purusa and purusa itself cannot be the cause of its own bondage. Thus are the five proofs in the Karika explained. It remains for us to ask one question: Since all these proofs have reference to the prakriti and its evolutes, what is the understanding of the relationship between the purusa and the prakriti upon which the proofs are based? Apparently, there is no simple answer to this

169 On SK 17. 171 Colebrooke SK 56. 170 i.142

173 Colebrooke SK 56. 172 i.143. 174 i.144.

SANKHYA 413

question; the underlying understanding does not appear to be uniform. Three distinct shades in it are clearly discernible: (a) The relation between the purusa and the prakriti is that of the enjoyer and the enjoyed. The purusa is the enjoyer of the prakriti and its evolutes. (b) It is the relation between the guide and the guided. The purusa guides the prakriti and superintends the evolutionary process. (c) It is the relation between the bound and that which binds. The purusa wants to be detached from the prakriti and

liberation. its evolutes and thereby attain a kind of solitude which is

All these understandings are there in the Karika. And Samkara's writings make it clear how the author of the text had to contradict himself in order to maintain all these positions along with the view of the purusa as detached spectator and also the fundamental tenets of the Sankhya, viz. the doctrines of the pradhana and parinama. In examining these contradic- tions we may follow the writings of Samkara. We shall first take up the argument concerning superintendence (adhisthana). According to the Karika, the existence of the purusa is pre- supposed by the modifications of the prakriti, for these modifi- cations cannot take place without superintendence and the prakriti cannot superintend its own modifications. However, if the prakriti be real and the visible world a real modification of it, this superintendence, too, needs to be looked at as essentially real. But superintendence, being a form of activity, cannot be really attributed to the purusa, the passive spectator. As the Karika175 admitted, activity can belong only to the prakriti and it is only because of its association with the prakriti that the 'stranger' (purusa) is falsely imagined as active. The author of the Karika170 wanted to evade the difficulty of making the passive purusa superintend over the prakriti's modifications on the basis of the well-known analogy of the halt and the blind. But the analogy cannot be really satisfactory, because, if taken seriously enough, it amounts to a surrender of the fundamentals of the Sankhya. As Samkara177 said, Well then-the Sankhya resumes, endeavouring to defend his position by parallel instances-let us say that, as some lame man devoid of the power of motion, but possessing the power of sight,

177 On Br. Su. ii.2.7. SBE xxxiv. 373. 175 20. 176 21.

414 LOKAYATA

having mounted the back of a blind man who is able to move but not to see, makes the latter move; ... so the soul moves the pra- dhana. Thus also, we reply, you do not free your doctrine from all shortcomings; for this your new position involves an abandonment of your old position, according to which the pradhana is moving of itself, and the (indifferent inactive) soul possesses no moving power. Besides, the superintendence of the halt over the blind is not really speaking a passive process.178 Therefore, as Samkara showed, if the Sankhya philosopher wanted logically to stick to the view of the purusa as a purely passive spectator, it was impossible for him to find any logical explanation of the modi- fications of the prakriti. Beyond the pradhana there exists no external principle which could either impel the pradhana to activity or restrain it from acti- vity. The soul (purusa), as we know, is indifferent, neither moves to, nor restrains from action. As therefore the pradhana stands in no relation, it is impossible to see why it should sometimes modify itself into the great principle (mahat) and sometimes not.179 Also, as Samkara180 went on arguing, if this doctrine of passive superintendence be really accepted, liberation would become impossible on the Sankhya view: 'The permanency of such capability would imply the impossibility of final release.' In short, to be consistent, the Sankhya philosophers have to accept either of the two positions. First, the superintendence of the purusa is there but it is not to be taken in the real sense. That is, the modification of the prakriti, in the ultimate analysis, is itself unreal. But this will no longer be the position of the Sankhya, because it will be the position of the Vedanta. As Samkara181 said, 'The activity or non-activity (by turns) of the lord, on the other hand, are not contrary to reason, on account of his ... being connected with the power of illusion (maya).' This is self-consistent idealism, which the Sankhya, without sur- rendering its fundamental tenets of the pradhana and parinama, could not obviously accept. The other alternative was to remain consistent to the materialistic position based on the principles of the pradhana and parinama and, in order to remain true to it the Sankhya philosophers had to view the modifications of the prakriti as due to svabhava or natural law rather than the superintendence of the purusa. Besides, one of the constituents of the prakriti being

179 On Br. Su. ii.2.4. SBE.xxxiv. 370. 178 Ib.

180 On Br. Su. ii.2.7. SBE xxxiv. 374. 181 On Br. Su. ii.2.4. SBE xxxiv. 370-1.

SANKHYA 415

rajas, or the potentials for activity, why should the Sankhya phi- losophers at all think of explaining the activities or the modifica- tions of the pradhana as depending upon the passive influence of the purusa? Obviously, had the Sankhya philosophers agreed to remain true to this original materialistic position and avoided the deceptive suggestion of Isvarakrisna, it would have been impossible for Samkara to bring in the charge of internal incon- sistency against them, whatever might have been the other possible objections of the self-conscious idealist against the posi- tion of the self-consistent materialists. But the fact is that the author of the Karika did not follow any of these alternatives. He was trying in many ways to make room within the doctrine of the pradhana for the principle of the purusa in the sense of pure consciousness and thus made the Sankhya system grossly inconsistent. This becomes all the more clear in the case of his argument concerning the enjoyment or bhoktritva. Repeatedly did he assert that the entire process of the modification of the prakriti was to serve the purpose of enjoyment of the purusa. The instruments (karanas, i.e., the internal and external organs, themselves the evolutes of the prakriti), perform their respective functions incited by mutual invitation (akuti, craving, incitement to activity). The soul's (purusa's) purpose is the motive: an instru- ment is wrought by none.182 We have here a strange kind of juxtaposition of the mate- rialistic principle of svabhava with the idealistic principle of the soul: the evolutes of the prakriti acted according to their own akuti and did not owe any impetus to anything outside them- selves (contrast the view of the superintendence of the purusa) and yet the motive of their activities was to serve the purpose of the soul. This was hardly consistent. More inconsistent, however, was the repeated claim of the Karika that the whole process of evolution was meant to serve the purpose of the purusa, by which was sometimes meant the enjoyment on the part of the purusa, sometimes again, the liberation of the purusa. Here are some examples: Generous nature (prakriti), endowed with qualities, does by manifold means accomplish, without benefit (to herself) the wish of the ungrateful soul (anupakarinah purusah), devoid as he is of qualities (a-guna).183 The instruments characteristically different from each other, and variously affected by qualities, present to the intellect (buddhi

182 SK 31. 183 60.

416 LOKAYATA

itself a product of the prakriti) the soul's whole purpose, enlighten- ing it (buddhi) as a lamp.184 Since it is intellect (buddhi) which accomplishes suul's fruition of all which is to be enjoyed, it is that, again, which discriminates between the chief principle (pradhana) and soul.185 For the sake of soul's wish, that subtile person exhibits (before it), like a dramatic actor, through relation of means and consequence, with the aid of nature's (prakriti's) influence.180 And so on. The central point is that, according to the Karika, the evolution of the prakriti is meant to serve the pur- pose of the purusa. This contention naturally gave rise to gross self-contradictions within the Sankhya. What needs to be said on this had already been stated by Samkara.187

If the spontaneous activity of the pradhana has, as you say, no re- ference to anything else, it will have no reference not only to any aid- ing principle, but also to any purpose or motive, and consequently your doctrine that the pradhana is active in order to effect the 'purpose of man, (purusartha, lit., the purpose of the purusa) will become un- tenable. If you reply that the pradhana does not indeed regard any aiding principle, but does regard a purpose, we remark that in that case we must distinguish between the different possible purposes, viz. either enjoyment (on the part of the soul), or final release, or both. If enjoyment, what enjoyment, we ask, can belong to the soul which is naturally incapable of any accretion (of pleasure or pain)? Moreover, there would in that case be no opportunity for release. If release, then the activity of the pradhana would be purposeless, as even antecedently to it the soul is in the state of release; more- over, there would then be no occasion for the perception of sounds etc. If both, then, on account of the infinite number of objects of the pradhana to be enjoyed (by the soul), there would be no oppor- tunity for final release. Nor can the satisfaction of a desire be con- sidered as the purpose of the activity of the pradhana; for neither

any desire. the non-intelligent pradhana nor the essentially pure soul can feel

If, finally, you should assume the pradhana to be active, because otherwise the power of sight (belonging to the soul on account of its intelligent nature) and the creative power (belonging to the pradhana) would be purposeless; it would follow that, as the creative power of the pradhana does not cease at any time any more than the soul's power of sight does, the apparent world would never come to an end, so that no final release of the soul could take place. It is, therefore, impossible to maintain that the pradhana enters on its activity for the purposes of the soul.

These are the contradictions in which the Karika got involved in trying to introduce a Vedantic conception of the purusa into the Sankhya and to relate it to the pradhana as the enjoyer thereof. There is no half-way house between material-

184 36. 187 On Br. Su. ii.2.6. SBE. xxxiv. 372-3. 185 37. 186 42.

SANKHYA 417

ism and idealism. If you look at the pradhana as the original cause of the visible world and consider the visible world to be a real modification (parinama) of the pradhana, there would hardly be any logical status in your system for the principle of pure consciousness as either the superintendent or the enjoyer of the world process. If, on the other hand, you want to stick seriously to this principle of pure consciousness, you have to abandon the doctrine of the pradhana and its parinama and look at the world-process as ultimately unreal. This is the position of the Vedanta and it is interesting to see how Isvarakrisna, in connection with his view of liberation, gradually moved towards such a view. We may begin with some of his typical formulations: This evolution of nature (prakriti), from intellect to the special elements, is performed for the deliverance of each soul respectively; done for another's sake as for.itself.188 As it is a function of milk, an unintelligent (substance), to nou- rish the calf, so it is the office of the chief principle (pravrittih pradhanasya, the desire of the pradhana) to liberate the soul.189 As people engage in acts to relieve desires, so does the undis- crete principle to liberate the soul.190 All these give us the impression of an unconscious teleology: the whole process of the evolution of the prakriti is designed to fulfil a purpose-the liberation of the soul. We can easily see why it is difficult for the Sankhya philosopher to maintain this view consistently with his other theses. First, in order to uphold this view, it is necessary to surrender the theory that the evolu- tion of the prakriti is meant for the enjoyment of the purusa. It is a serious point to be surrendered, because it amounts to abandoning two of the most important proofs for the very existence of the purusa. Secondly, this theory of unconscious teleology is internally inconsistent. For liberation presupposes bondage and the only cause of bondage, from the Karika stand- point, can be the prakriti and its evolutes. How can, therefore, the evolution of the prakriti be the cause of bondage of the purusa and at the same time have the purpose' of liberating the purusa? Thirdly, if the prakriti be real and the evolution of the visible world a real process, then the bondage of the purusa, too, becomes real and its liberation, therefore, logically impossible. As Samkara191 argued: But perhaps you (the Sankhyas) will say that, after all, suffer-

188 56. 189 57. 191 on Br. Su. il. 2.10. SBE xxxiv. 380-1. 190 58.

L 27

418 LOKAYATA

ing (on the part of the soul) is real. In that case, however, the impossibility of release becomes all the more undeniable, especially as the cause of suffering (viz. the pradhana) is admitted to be eternal. - And if (to get out of this difficulty) you maintain that, although the potentialities of suffering (on the part of the soul) and of causing suffering (on the part of the pradhana) are eternal, yet suffering, in order to become actual, requires the conjunction of the two-which conjunction, in its turn, depends on a special reason, viz. the non-discrimination of the pradhana by the soul-and that. hence, when that reason no longer exists, the conjunction of the two comes to an absolute terminaion, whereby the absolute release of the soul becomes possible. We are again unable to accept your expla- nation, because that on which the non-discrimination depends, viz. the guna called Darkness (tamas, one of the three constituents of the prakriti), is acknowledged by you to be eternal. And as there is no fixed rule for the (successive) rising and sinking of the influ- ence of the particular gunas, there is also no fixed rule for the termi- nation of the cause which effects the conjunction of the soul and the pradhana (i.e., non-discrimination); hence the disjunction of the two is uncertain, and so the Sankhyas cannot escape the reproach of the absence of final release resulting from their doctrine. Samkara rightly pointed out that the only logical view of liberation, consistent with the conception of the Self as pure consciousness, is to be found in the Vedanta, according to which the bondage of the Self, though empirically real is ultimately unreal, as the phenomenal world itself is such: To the Vedantin, on the other hand, the idea of final release being impossible cannot occur in his dream even, for the Self he acknow- ledges to be one only, and one thing cannot enter the relation of' subject and object, and Scripture, moreover, declares that the plura- lity of effects originates from speech only. For the phenomenal world, on the other hand, we may admit the relation of sufferer and refute it.192 suffering just as it is observed, and need neither object to it nor

Could it have been possible for the author of the Karika to accept such a position? Obviously not. At least so long as he was not prepared to surrender the doctrine of the pradhana and viewed the phenomenal world as the product of Nescience or Ignorance (avidya), that is, so long as he refused to agree to consider the bondage of the purusa as ultimately unreal. Sam- kara193 had already argued out this point: And if you should say that the soul suffers as it were because it. leans towards the sattva-guna, we point out that the employment of the phrase, as it were, shows that the soul does not realy suffer. If it is understood that its suffering is not real, we do not object to the phrase 'as it were.' For the amphisbena also does not become venomous because it is a serpent as it were ('like a serpent'), nor does the serpent lose its venom because it is 'like an amphisbena.' You must therefore admit that the relation of causes of suffering and of sufferers, is not real but the effect of Nescience.

192 Ib. SBE xxxiv. 381. 193 Ib. SBE. xxxiv. 379-80.

SANKHYA 419

Samkara rightly added that there was practically no differ- ence between this and the Vedantic position. In short, there- fore, only by surrendering the fundamentals of the Sankhya and by virtually accepting the position of the Vedanta, could the author of the Karika (or any later Sankhya philosopher like him) logically defend the doctrine of liberation, upon which, inci- dentally, depended a vital proof for the existence of the purusa in Isvarakrisna's version of the Sankhya. Amazingly enough, the Karika did ultimately move towards such a position. It retained the doctrine of the purusa, though at the cost of the fundamentals of the Sankhya. Verily not any purusa is bound, nor is released nor migrates; but the prakriti alone, in relation to various beings, is bound, is released, and migrates.194 Commented Gaudapada:195 For soul is of its own nature loosened, and goes everywhere and how therefore should it migrate ?- migration being for the purpose of obtaining something not previously obtained. The phrases, there- fore,-soul is bound, soul is loosened or migrates-originate in ignor- ance of the nature of migration. From knowledge, the end of soul and existence, the real nature of soul is attained. That being mani- fest, soul is single, pure, free, fixed in its own nature. This could have formed part of any genuine Vedantic text. However, that was the position to which even the author of the Karika was himself moving: So, through study of principle, the conclusive, incontrovertible, only one knowledge is attained, that neither I AM, nor is aught mine, nor do I exist.196 Explained Wilson: 197 By these expressions, therefore, however quaint or questionable, we are not to understand negation of the soul. This would be a direct contradiction to its specification as one of the categories of the system, one of the twenty-five essential and existent principles. It is merely intended as a negation of the soul's having any active participation, any individual interest or property, in human pains, possessions, or feelings. I am, I do, I suffer, mean material nature, or some of her products, (substantially), is, does, or suffers; and not the soul, which is unalterable and indifferent, susceptible of neither pleasure nor pain, and only reflecting them, as it were, or seemingly sharing them, from the proximity of nature, by whom they are really experienced: for soul, according to the Vedas, is absolutely existent, eternal, wise, true, free, unaffected by passion, universal. Wilson did not ask himself: How far such a view, though consistent with the position of the Vedanta, could really be

194 62. 196 64. 195 Colebrooke SK 147. 197 Colebrooke SK 151.

420 LOKAYATA

reconciled with the doctrines of the pradhana and parinama? The participation of the Self in the phenomenal world could be considered unreal-and as such the illusion of such participation could be dispelled by knowledge-only when the phenomenal world along with its proximity to the Self became utlimately unreal. Had the Karika really moved towards such a position, the only implication would be that it surrendered the funda- mentals of the Sankhya in the interests of the conception of the Self borrowed from the Vedanta. This is further evidenced by the following: Possessed of this (self-knowledge) the soul contemplates, at leisure and at ease, the prakriti which now gets debarred from prolific change (nivritti prasavam prakritim198). That is, with the attainment of self-knowledge on the part of the purusa, the evolutionary process of the prakriti ceases to be real. This is, however, logically conceivable only when the evolutionary process as a whole is viewed as the result of ignor- ance (avidya) rather than svabhava or the laws inherent in the prakriti. This is plainly surrendering the Sankhya to the Vedanta. Isvarakrisna was in fact doing this: When separation of the informed soul from its corporeal frame at length takes place, and nature in respect of it ceases, then is absolute and final deliverance accomplished.199 To sum up: The Karika conception of the purusa was irre- concilable with the fundamentals of the Sankhya, because it was really speaking the Vedantic view of the Self to which the fundamentals of the Sankhya were originally opposed. It was, therefore, only by tacitly surrendering the fundamentals of the Sankhya that Isvarakrisna could finally defend his view of the purusa. That is, in defence of his view of the purusa, he virtually converted the Sankhya into Vedanta, the parinama vada into vivarta vada. There is another interesting feature of this conversion of original Sankhya into disguised Vedanta which, though not to be clearly found in the Karika itself, becomes obvious in the writings of Gaudapada and in the Sankhya Sutra. It is the transformation of the original doctrine of the plurality of the purusas (purusa bahutvam) into that of the non-duality of the purusa, without which, the surreptitious conversion could not be complete.

198 SK 65. 199 68.

SANKHYA 421

In the eleventh verse of the Karika, the author tried to specify the properties of the prakriti in its pre-evolute (avyakta) state and in its evolutes (vyakta), and added that the purusa did not possess the properties that were common to the avyakta and the vyakta; it possessed only properties peculiar to the former. Gaudapada found in this an excellent opportunity to surrender the doctrine of the plurality of the purusas. He argued that since the vyakta was multitudinous (aneka) and the avyakta single or solitary (eka), and since the purusa had the quality that differentiated the avyakta from the vyakta, the purusa, too, must have been eka or single. This logic clearly is in flat con- tradiction to the doctrine of the plurality of the purusas which, as we have seen, even the author of the Karika laboriously defended. Even the Sankhya Sutra200 echoed his argument. Gaudapada's position, therefore, seemed somewhat peculiar to the modern scholars. Some of them tried to justify him though not in a convincing manner. Wilson,201 for example, stated: Either, therefore, Gaudapada has made a mistake, or by his eka is to be understood, not that soul in general is one only, but that it is single or several, in its different migrations or, as Mr. Colebrooke renders it, individual. At the same time he realised that such an ingenious inter- pretation of Gaudapada could not stand because the doctrine of there being only one soul was patently Vedantic. The multiplied existence of the soul is in special contradiction to the doctrine of Vedantists, of the universality of one supreme soul of the world, from which all human souls are derived, as in such texts as these: 'one only existent soul is distributed in all beings; it is beheld collectively or dispersedly, like the reflection of the moon in still or troubled water. Soul, eternal, omnipresent, undisturbed, pure, one, is multiplied by the power of delusion, not of its own nature.' This is undoubtedly the doctrine of the Vedas and the Sankhya teachers, who profess to receive those works as authority, are obliged to interpret the texts unfavourable to their dogmas in a peculiar manner.202 What the author apparently forgot is that the original Sankhya philosophers had really no anxiety to interpret their views in conformity with the Vedas and the Upanisads, for they must have been as much opposed to the Vedanta as the early Vedantists were opposed to them. It was only the later philosophers, the disguised Vedantists, who showed any such anxiety. Thus, for example, the author of the Sankhya Sutra,20.3

200 i. 149. 202 Ib. 59. 201 Colebrooke SK 41. 203 i. 154.

422 LOKAYATA

with his proof of the plurality of the purusas, was trying in- consistently to reconcile it with the Vedantic view of the non- duality of the purusa: There is no contradiction (of this doctrine of many purusas) with the scriptural (Vedic) declaration of the non-duality (of the Self), because of the comprehensiveness of genus (jatiparatvat). That is, the soul, considered as genus, is but one; its nature and properties are common to all souls. Such a soul, though individual, becomes manifold because of its connections with aggregate, the products of nature. And Vijnana Bhiksu, as is only to be expected, tried his best to rationalise this standpoint further. Notwithstanding all these, the fact remains that the Sankhya theory of the plurality of the purusas was clearly opposed to the Vedantic view of the non-duality of the Self, and as such, the effort to make the former consistent with the latter was simply a manoeuvre to bring original Sankhya along Vedantic lines. We may now sum up our arguments concerning the place of the purusa in original Sankhya. (1) Sankhya was originally the doctrine of the pradhana or the prakriti because the early Vedantists refuted it as such. (2) In spite of this, it had within it a place for the purusa, though this place must have been highly auomalous. The origin of this anomalous position of the purusa in a system which was essentially the doctrine of the pradhana can presumably be traced to the anomalous position of the male in the matriarchal society. This presumption becomes valid in view of the circumstance that original Sankhya was a more explicit philosophical statement of the theoretical assumptions implicit in Tantrism, while Tantrism, in its turn, is to be traced to matriarchal conditions, as Chanda and others already argued. And if this presumption be true, we have to admit that what- ever might have been the original meaning of the purusa in the Sankhya, it could never have been the detached consciousness or the Self of the Vedanta. (3) This view of the purusa as detached consciousness developed outside the circle of the Sankhya philosophers, chiefly among the Vedantists. (4) The principle of the purusa, however insignificant might have been its importance in original Sankhya, and what- ever might have been its original meaning, remained the Achil- les' Heel of the philosophy. In comparatively later times, when

.SANKHYA 423

some of the philosophers were trying to transfuse Vedantic con- tents into Sankhya, they naturally saw that the easiest way to do this was to take the principle of the purusa in the sense in which the Vedanta philosophers interpreted it. The process, as far as the available data allow us to conjecture, began very early, even as early as the Mahabharata; for, the version of the Sankhya we come across in the Mahabharata was already cast into an idealistic and spiritualistic mould. With Isvarakrisna, this process became even more glaring. However, it remained for Samkara, the highly conscious idealist philosopher, to show that this extremely idealistic conception of the Self was bound to remain ever irreconciled with the materialsitic essence of original Sankhya, as evidenced particularly by the doctrines of the pradhana and parinama. Thus in Samkara we come across, on the one hand, concentrated attack on these fundamental doctrines of the Sankhya, while, on the other hand, a clear demonstration of the contradictions in the standpoint of the Sankhya philosopher who tried to accept the Vedantic view of the Self without surrendering the original doctrines of the pradhana and parinama. Isvarakrisna himself ultimately pre- ferred to save the Vedantic conception of the purusa by surren- dering the doctrines of the pradhana and parinama. In doing this, however, he converted the Sankhya into a sort of disguised Vedanta, leaving us to wonder why, if this version of the San- khya was true to its original form, the earliest systematiser of the Vedanta view should have at all found in the Sankhya the strongest opposition to his own standpoint. We may now clearly see what Samkara meant when he said that he had no quarrel with the Sankhya philosophers in so far as they maintained the view of the Self as free from all qualities, i.e., as detached consciousness. He knew only too well that the acceptance of such a view amounted to a plain surrender of the fundamentals of the Sankhya in favour of the Vedanta; why should he have quarrelled with the Sankhya philosophers if they agreed to do it? But Samkara clearly understood that there was no way of reconciling this view of the purusa with the doctrines of the pradhana and parinama, the hangovers of original San- khya in the Karika version. That was why his refutation of the Sankhya was primarily a refutation of the doctrine of the pradhana, i.e., the doctrine of an unconscious or material first

process. cause and the development of the visible world from it as a real

424 LOKAYATA

8. THE ORIGIN OF THE SANKHYA That in spite of the Karika-the earliest available text on the Sankhya system-it is necessary to reconstruct the original form of the Sankhya is not saying anything new. Eminent modern scholars like Oldenberg, Jacobi, Dahlmann and, even Garbe have made attempts in this direction. These attempts have been summed up by Belvalkar and Ranade.204

Oldenberg refused to believe that the Sankhya could have been propounded as a perfect system by some individual philo- sopher and then handed down through centuries practically intact and unaltered. What usually took place in the case of the ancient systems was that the rudiments suggested by some think- ers in the remote antiquity were worked out by succeeding thinkers into full-fledged systems. This leads to a retracing of the steps and a partial modification of the earlier premises in the light of the difficulties suggested, which at times leads even to a bifurcation of the original system into two or more schools.205 According to Oldenberg, this is what happened to the San- khya: original Sankhya bifurcated into two distinct philosophies, called by Oldenberg the 'Epic Sankhya' and the 'Classical Sankhya.' By the former he meant the version of the Sankhya as found in the Mahabharata, particularly in the Srimat Bha- gavat Gita, while by the latter the version of the Sankhya as found in the Karika. These were the two independent lines along which, according to Oldenberg, 'original' Sankhya deve- loped and both the lines were self-consistent. But if this were really so, where are we to look for an outline of the 'original' unbifurcated Sankhya itself? Oldenberg answered that the rudiments of this 'original Sankhya was to be found in the Upanisads, particularly in the Katha and the Svetasvatara Upa- nisads, and more specifically in the first chapter of the latter. And since, in his view, the beginnings of original Sankhya was to be traced to the Upanisads, Oldenberg was not prepared to think that original Sankhya was anti-Vedic or anti-Upanisadic. Let us first take the assumption that the rudiments of the Sankhya could be found in the Upanisads, because other scho- lars,200 too, have considered that possibility seriously. Apart from the Katha and the Svetasvatara, certain passages of the Prasna

204 HIP ii. 412-24. 205 Ib. ii. 419. 206 E.g. Dasgupta HIP i. 211.

SANKHYA 425

and the Maitri Upanisads are claimed to hold the rudiments of the Sankhya. Of course, Jacobi suggested that if it was at all possible to find the beginnings of the Sankhya in the Upanisads, we should rather take up a passage of the Chandogya, which somehow or other foreshadowed a similar view. This proposal may be taken up later as it would be more fruitful to discuss it in connection with Jacobi's views. Here is the list of the Upanisadic passages wherein the germs of the Sankhya are said to be found: Katha Upanisad: i.3. 10 & 11; ii.3. 7 & 8; Svetasvatara Upanisad: i.8; i.10; iii.12; iv. 5; iv. 10; v. 2; v. 7; v. 8; vi. 10; vi. 13; vi. 16; Prasna Upani- sad: iv. 8. And also certain passages of the Maitri Upanisad. We may now quote the standard translation of these pass- ages and see how far, in the context of what we have already discussed, these can actually be accepted as holding the germs of the Sankhya.

From the Katha: Higher than the senses are the objects of sense. Higher than the objects of sense is the mind (manas); And higher than the mind is the intellect (buddhi). Higher than the intellect is the Great Self (atma mahan). Higher than the Great is the Unmanifest (avyakta). Higher than the Unmanifest, however, is the person (purusa) Higher than the person (purusa) is nothing at all. That is the goal. That is the highest course.207 Higher than the senses (indriya) is the mind (manas); Above the mind is the true being (sattva). Over the true being is the Great Self (i.e., buddhi, intellect); Above the Great is the Unmanifest (avyakta). Higher than the Unmanifest, however, is the person (purusa), All-pervading and without any mark (a-linga) whatever, Knowing which, a man is liberated And goes to immortality.208 From the Svetasvatara: That which is joined together as perishable and imperishable, As manifest and unmanifest-the Lord (Isa, Potentate) supports

Now, without the Lord the Soul (atman) is bound, because it all.

of being an enjoyer; By knowing God (deva) one is released from all fetters.209 What is perishable, is Primary Matter (pradhana). What is immortal and imperishable, is Hara (the 'Bearer', the

Over both the perishable and the Soul the One God (deva) rules. Soul).

207 Hume TPU 352. 208 Ib. 359. 209 Ib. 395.

426 LOKAYATA

By meditation upon Him, by union with Him, and by entering into His Being More and more, there is finally cessation from every illusion (maya nivritti).210 A Mighty Lord (prabhu) is the person (purusa), The instigator of the Highest Being (sattva) Unto the purest attainment, The ruler, a light imperishable.211 With the one unborn female, red, white, and black, Who produces many creatures like herself, There lies the one unborn male taking his delight. Another unborn male leaves her with whom he has had his delight.212

Now, one should know that Nature (prakriti) is illusion (maya). And that the Mighty Lord (mahesvara) is the illusion-maker (mayin). This whole world is pervaded With beings that are parts of Him.213

(Even) the One who rules over every single source, All forms and all sources; Who bears in his thoughts, and beholds when born, That red (kapila)214 seer who was engendered in the begin- ning.215

Whoever has qualities (guna, distinctions) is the doer of deeds that bring recompense; And of such action surely he experiences the consequence. Undergoing all forms, characterised by the three qualities

The individual self (gunas), treading the three paths, roams about according to its deeds (karman).216

He is of the measure of a thumb, of sun-like appearance, When coupled with conception (samkalpa) and egoism

But with only the qualities of intellect and of self (ahamkara).

The lower (self) appears of the size of the point of an awl.217

The One God who covers himself. Like a spider, with threads Produced from Primary Matter (pradhana), according to his

May he grant us entrance in Brahma!218 own nature (svabhavatas)-

210 Ib. 396. 211 Ib. 401. 212 Ib. 403. 213 Ib. 404. 214 Note on the word kapila by Hume: 'The reference may be to the sage Kapila, the founder of the Sankhya philosophy. But in the similar stanza iv. 12 (Cf. also iii 4) the reference is clearly to the Demiurge, Hiranyagarbha, 'the Golden Germ'.' .. Hume TPU 406. 215 Hume TPU 405. 217 Ib. 216 Ib. 407. 218 Ib. 409.

SANKHYA 427

Him who is the constant among the inconstant, the intelligent

The One among many, who grants desires, among the intelligences,

That Cause, attainable by discrimination and abstraction (sankhya-yoga)- By knowing God, one is released from all fetters.219 He who is the maker of all, the all-knower, self-sourced, Intelligent, the author of time, possessor of qualities, omniscient Is the ruler of Primary Matter (pradhana) and of the spirit (ksetrajna), the lord of qualities (guna), The cause of reincarnation (samsara) and of liberation (moksa). of continuance and of bondage.220

From the Prasna:

As birds resort to a tree for a resting-place, even so, O friend, it is to the Supreme Soul (atman) that everything here resorts: Earth and the elements (matra) of earth, water and the elements of water, heat (tejas) and the elements of heat, wind and the elements of wind, space and the elements of space, sight and what can be seen, hearing and what can be heard, smell and what can be smelled, taste and what can be tasted, the skin and what can be touched, speech and what can be spoken, the hands and what can be taken, the organ of generation and what can be enjoyed, the anus and what can be excreted, the feet and what can be walked, mind (manas) and what can be perceived, intellect (buddhi) and what can be conceived, egoism (ahamkara) and what can be con- nected with 'me', thought (citta) and what can be thought, brilli- ance (tejas) and what can be illumined, life-breath (prana) and what can be supported. Truly, this seer, toucher, hearer, smeller, taster, thinker (man- tri), conceiver (boddhri), doer the conscious self (rvijnana atman), the person-his resort is in the Supreme Imperishable Soul (Atman, Self).221 It is not necessary to quote the passages of the Maitri Upanisad as its central point is not different. Besides, the text being comparatively of a later date, even those who claim to discover the embryonic elements of the Sankhya in the Upani- sads, do not attach any great importance to them. We may now look critically at these passages and see how far these may be considered as indicative of original Sankhya. That we come across here terminologies which are distinctly San- khya cannot be doubted. There are, moreover, obvious references to views that are typically Sankhya. However, it does not follow that they reveal the rudiments of the Sankhya. For, references to a philosophcial view, along with the terminology distinctive to it, may as well be for the purpose of refuting it and it is not difficult to see that the references to the Sankhya in the Upani-

219 Ib. 410. 220 Ib. 221 Ib. 386-7.

428 LOKAYATA

sadic passages could have had no other purpose. Higher than the avyakta (prakriti) is the purusa and higher than the purusa is nothing at all, said the Katha Upanisad. Higher than the avyakta, repeated the text, is the purusa, know- ing which, a man is liberated. Do we have here a statement of the Sankhya or its refutation? There can be only one answer to this question if we bear in mind that the Sankhya, as evidenced by the refutation of the system in the Brahma Sutra, had origi- nally been only the doctrine of the pradhana (avyakta) and the place of the purusa in it had been secondary (apradhana and in fact udasina or the indifferent). In fact, if the prakriti (avyakta or primeval matter) were not the primary principle in original Sankhya, it would be inexplicable why the system should have deliberately chosen the term pradhana, the primary, to refer to it. The chief tendency of the Upanisadic texts, however, was to make this primeval matter of original Sankhya utterly unim- portant and, in the ultimate analysis, even illusory. Thus, when the Svetasvatara declared that the One God produced, from the pradhana-but in fact out of His own nature (svabhavatas), and, therefore, like a spider,-everything that exists, the view was obviously designed to establish the thesis that the One God was the final cause, the Ultimate Reality. And if this were so, the pradhana's part in the production of the visible world would become only apparent. As the text said, the One God 'is the maker of all, the all-knower, self-sourced, intelligent, omniscient, the ruler of the pradhana and the ksetrajna, the lord of all the gunas.' Thus the causality attributed by the Sankhya to the pradhana became illusory. As the text said, 'one should know that the prakriti is illusion (maya) and the Mighty Lord is the illusion-maker (mayin).' This is certainly the position of the Vedanta, though with a theistic bias that might support Ramanuja's understanding of the philosophy. The point to be specially noted is that the Vedanta was not expounded here without any reference to the Sankhya. Rather, we find here a distinct effort to establish the Vedanta on the ruins of the Sankhya. This shows that the orthodox exponents of the philosophy of the Upanisads, as Badarayana and Sam- kara, unlike some of the modern scholars, knew the philoso- phical traditions better. Mere textual understanding was enough for them to realise that the Sankhya could not be justi- fied by the passages from the Upanisads; the former simply re- presented the most important philosophical opposition to the

SANKHYA 429

latter. In other words, a critical study of the Upanisadic texts in which Oldenberg and others discovered the roots of the Sankhya, only reveals that like Badarayana and others (who, in later times, refuted the Sankhya in defence of the Upanisads), the authors of the Upanisads were themselves trying to achieve the same end, though in their own way. To sum up: there is little possibility of substantiating Oldenberg's claim that original Sankhya is to be found in the Upanisads. And if this be so, his further claim that this Upani- sadic Sankhya eventually bifurcated into Epic Sankhya and Classical Sankhya becomes even less plausible. We have already discussed the reasons that led to the argument that the so-called Classical Sankhya of Oldenberg, i.e., the version of the system which we come across in the Karika, was substantially the result of clumsy imposition upon the Sankhya, the cardinal theme of the Vedanta. The so-called Epic Sankhya, i.e., the overtly spiritualistic philosophy called the Sankhya in the Mahabharata (particularly in the Gita), represented a complete surrender of the basic principles of the Sankhya. What Oldenberg and others overlooked is the thoroughly anti-Vedic character of original Sankhya. Misled by the later ideas that accepted the Sankhya within the folds of orthodoxy, they forgot that the earlier exponents of real orthodoxy, i.e., Badarayana and his commentators, condemned it primarily for its anti-Vedic and anti-Vedantic spirit. As is only to be expec- ted, scholars like Garbe, who rightly made this anti-Vedic cha- racter of original Sankhya their starting point, avoided the pit- fall of trying to discover the roots of the Sankhya in the well- known passages of the Upanisads and the Mahabharata. Such passages are, according to Garbe,222 the result of deliberate con- tamination of genuine Sankhya ideas with Upanisadic philo- sophy. The original Sankhya came indeed to be perverted in the Sveta- svatara, the Epic, and the Bhagvat Gita and, later still, in the theistic Yoga and the several sectarian and Vedanta-coloured puranas.223 Some of the later exponents of the system, according to him, in seeking to enlist the support of the Brahmanic Scriptures and to placate orthodoxy, were trying to justify the Sankhya on the basis of isolated Vedantic texts and were even prepared to suffer

222 Belvalkar & Ranade HIP ii. 414. 223 Ib. ii. 415.

430 LOKAYATA

doctrinal modifications. They were thus subscribing to certain Vedantic doctrines like the value of prescribed religious practices as a preparation towards the summum bonum, or the nitya suddha mukta (eternally pure and liberated) nature of the atman; they were attempting to postulate, on the analogy of the Yoga doctrine, three grades in viveka (discrimination) and, above all, they were conceding the all-pervading character of the Self or the Atman. Nevertheless, modifications like these remained ever extrinsic to the true spirit of the Sankhya. But the question is: what, according to Garbe, were the fundamental tenets of original Sankhya? His answer listed the following: the absolute separation of the material and the spiri- tual principles; the independence and indestructibility assigned to the material principle called the prakriti or the pradhana, having the three constituents called sattva, rajas and tamas; the ordered process and sequence of the evolution of the world from the prakriti; the denial of God; the peculiar epistemologi- cal doctrine of knowledge as a merely mechanical process illu- mined by the spiritual power of the soul; the doctrine of the linga sarira or the subtle transmigrating body; and lastly, the belief in salvation through viveka or the discrimination between the prakriti and the purusa. There is no doubt, as Belvalkar and Ranade224 pointed out, all these tenets are to be found in the Karika and, as such,. Garbe's view of original Sankhya amounted to its equation to. the Karika version. And it is here that his analysis fails to be. logical. It is true that the Vedantic principle of the purusa was there in the Karika; nevertheless, as we have already seen, it could not be logically reconciled to the fundamental tenets of original Sankhya. Therefore, features of the Karika-version of the: Sankhya that followed from the Vedantic principle of the purusa must have been extrinsic to original Sankhya and the most pro- minent of these features was the doctrine of liberation as illumi- nation or knowledge. The only conclusion which all these lead to is that original Sankhya must have been some form of archaic. materialism. It is here that Jacobi's view225 of original Sankhya has: considerable interest for us. He was probably the only modern scholar who drew our attention to the possibility of the Sankhya being a development of an archaic materialism. He agreed

224 Ib. 225 Ib. ii. 416.

SANKHYA 431

with Garbe in regarding the Sankhya as pre-Buddhistic in origin and also in looking at the Epic Sankhya (i.e., the Sankhya of the Mahabharata and the Gita) as a hybrid combination of Classical Sankhya (i.e., the Sankhya of the Karika) and the Vedanta. Where he differed from Garbe, however, was in his assertion of the existence of an incipient 'pro-Classical' Sankhya, the possibility of which Garbe totally denied. Interestingly, this original or pre-Classical Sankhya, according to Jacobi, did not, like the Classical one, have an exclusively metaphysical purpose; it had a practical purpose, addressed, as it was, to the masses rather than to the trained dialecticians. We are thus lured to ask: Was original Sankhya a lokayata philosophy in the dual senses in which we have tried to understand it? Jacobi would not perhaps agree to an affirmative answer. Neverthe- less, there are certain distinct hints in his own views that need be taken into account. One of these is that the incipient pre- Classical Sankhya must have been some form of archaic mate- rialism. It is important to discuss this point in particular because, apart from its relevance for our understanding of original San- khya, it throws some unexpected light on the question of the origin of the idealistic outlook in ancient Indian philosophy. Starting with the idea that original Sankhya must have been a form of materialism, Jacobi looked through the Upanisads for some passage that might have foreshadowed such an outlook. He found one in the Chandogya. It relates the story of Svetaketu Aruneya seeking the source of highest wisdom from his father. The father began:

Just as, my dear, by one piece of clay everything made of clay may be known-the modification is merely a verbal distinction, a name the reality is just 'clay.' Just as my dear by one copper ornament everything made of copper may be known-the modification is merely a verbal distinc- tion, a name, the reality is just 'copper'. Just as, my dear, by one nail-scissors everything made of iron may be known-the modification is merely a verbal distinction, a name; the reality is just 'iron.' So, my dear, is that teaching.226 There is a tendency here to seek one fundamental principle behind everything and this fundamental principle is called sat, i.e., Being or Existence:

226 Hume TPU 240-1.

432 LOKAYATA

In the beginning, my dear, this world was just Being (sat), one only, without a second. To be sure, some people say: 'In the begin- ning this world was just non-Being (a-sat) one only, without a second; from that non-Being Being was produced. But verily, my dear, whence could this be? .... How from non-Being could Being be produced? On the contrary, my dear, in the beginning this world was just Being, one only without a second. It bethought itself: 'Would that I were many! Let me procreate myself!' It emitted heat. That heat bethought itself: 'Would that I were many! Let me procreate myself.' It emitted water. There- fore whenever a person grieves or perspires from the heat, then water (i.e., either tears or perspiration) is produced. That water bethought itself: 'Would that I were many! Let me procreate myself.' It emitted food. Therefore, whenever it rains, then there is abundant food. So food for eating is produced just from water.227 And the discussion continued: Now, of these beings here there are just three origins: (there are beings) born from an egg, born from a living thing, born from a sprout. That divinity (i.e., Being) bethought itself: 'Come! Let me enter these three divinities (i.e., heat, water and food) with this living soul (atman), and separate out name and form. 'Let me make each one of them threefold.' That divinity enter- ed into these three divinities with this living soul, and separated out name and form. It made each of them threefold. Now. verily, my dear, understand from me how each of these three divinities becomes threefold.228 Whatever red form fire has, is the form of heat; whatever white, the form of water; whatever dark, the form of food. The firehood has gone from fire: the modification is merely a verbal distinction, a name. The reality is just 'the three forms. Whatever red form the sun has, is the form of heat; whatever white, the form of water; whatever dark, the form of food. The sunhood has gone from the sun: the modification is merely a verbal distinction, a name. The reality is just 'the three forms.'229 And so on about the moon, the lightning, etc. It was, in short, the wisdom of the ancients that whatever appeared red was the form of heat, whatever appeared white was the form of water, whatever appeared dark was the form of food. These three, upon reaching man becomes threefold:

Food, when eaten, becomes divided into three parts. That which is its coarsest constituent, becomes the feces; that which is medium, the flesh; that which is finest, the mind. Water, when drunk, becomes divided into three parts. That which is its coarsest constituent, becomes the urine; that which is medium, the blood; that which finest, the breath (prana). Heat, when eaten, becomes divided into three parts. That which

227 Ib. 241. 229 Ib. 242. 228 Ib. 241-2.

SANKHYA 433

is its coarsest constituent, becomes bone; that which is medium, the marrow; that which is finest, the voice. For, my dear, the mind consists of food; the breath consists of water; the voice consists of heat.230 Of coagulated milk, my dear, when churned, that which is the finest essence all moves upward; it becomes butter. Even so, verily, my dear, of food, when eaten, that which is the finest essence all moves upwards; it becomes the mind. Of water, my dear, when drunk, that which is the finest essence all moves upward; it becomes the breath. Of heat, my dear, when eaten, that which is the finest essence all moves upward; it becomes the voice. For, my dear, the mind consists of food; the breath consists of water; the voice consists of heat.231 Emphasis here is laid on the view that the mind consisted of food and nothing but food. The proof offered is quite interesting:

The father, Uddalaka Aruni, told the son Svetaketu Aruneya: 'A person, my dear, consists of sixteen parts. For fifteen days do not eat; drink water at will. Breath, which consists of water, will not be cut off from one who drinks water.' So Svetaketu did not eat for fifteen days, went to the father and asked, 'What shall I say, Sir?' Uddalaka asked him to recite the Vedas. The son said, 'Verily, they do not come to me, sir.' The father explained, 'Just as, my dear, a single coal of the size of a fire-fly may be left over from a great kindled fire, but with it the fire would not thereafter burn much-so, my dear, of your sixteen parts of a single sixteenth part may be left over, but with it you do not now apprehend the Vedas. Eat, then you will understand from me.' Then Svetaketu ate and approached the father. Then whatever the father asked him, he answered. The father explained it thus: 'Just as, my dear, one may, by covering it with straw, make a single coal of the size of a fire-fly that has been left over from a great kindled fire blaze up, and with it the fire would thereafter burn much-so, my dear, of your sixteen parts a single sixteenth part has been left over. After having been covered with food, it has blazed up. With it you now apprehend the Vedas; for, my dear, the mind consists of food, the breath consists of water, the voice consists of heat.' And Svetaketu understood.232 But the real purpose of the whole discourse was to go beyond these principles of heat, water and food and arrive at the fundamental reality behind everything-the finest essence of everything, the Being: On this point, my dear, understand that this (body) is a sprout which has sprung up. It will not be without a root. What else could its root be than food? Even so, my dear, with food for a sprout, look for water as the root. With water, my dear, as a sprout, look for heat as the root. With heat, my dear, as a sprout, look for Being as the root. All creatures here, my dear,

230 Ib. 243. 232 Ch. Up. vi 7.1-5. 231 Jb.

L-28

434 LOKAYATA

have Being as their root, have Being as their home, have Being as their support ... That which is the finest essence-this whole world has that as its soul. That is reality (satya). That is atma (soul). That are thou, Svetaketu.233

In the remaining part of this chapter this same theme is repeated over and over again. We may now try to examine Jacobi's claim that this chapter of the Chandogya anticipated the Sankhya views. The question is: Can the sat or Being be looked upon as constituting the rudi- ments of the concept of the prakriti of the Sankhya system? It is difficult to say yes. For though the prakriti of the Sankhya philosophers was as subtle and as fundamental as the sat of this Upanisadic passage, the prakriti was clearly a material principle, whereas the chief aim of the Upanisad was to identify this sat with the Self or atman. And, at least as far as the standard interpretations go, this Self or atman was clearly conceived as a spiritual principle. Secondly, though the Upanisadic passage spoke of three principles, viz., (like that of the prakriti of the Sankhya, viz., sattva rajas and tamas) heat, water and food, they were not looked upon as the constituents of the Being but as emanations thereof. Lastly, the Sankhya prakriti was not only the principle of primordial matter but also, as we have seen, a female principle. The Being of the Upanisad had no such association; it could not have that, because after all, it was a philo- sophical principle conceived within the framework of male- dominated thinking. This difference is decisive. The prakriti of the Sankhya and the sat of the Upanisad were parts of two distinct world-outlooks. The latter, therefore, could not have anticipated the former. Yet Jacobi's thesis has special interest for us. By drawing our attention to this particular portion of the Chandogya, and by showing, further, that this contained a clear relic of an archaic materialistic outlook, he has inadvertently drawn attention to the problem of the birth of idealism in the Upani- sadic literatures. The Upanisads are usually looked upon as the repositories of mere spiritual wisdom, as containing an unilineal exposition of the idealistic philosophy. But the actual position is more complex. There is no doubt that an idealistic outlook, later systematised as the Vedanta philosophy, formed the most dominant trend in these texts. What is usually overlooked,

283 Hume TPU 245-6.

SANKHYA 435

however, is the fact that this idealistic outlook emerged on the ruins of a primitive materialism, traces of which remained scat- tered over the texts. One of the most typical forms in which this hangover of primitive materialism is to be found in the Upanisads is aptly described by Kosambi234 as 'the food-philo- sophy.' It is the view that all creatures are produced from food, live by food and pass into food. At the same time, the authors of the Upanisads were making conscious efforts to emancipate themselves from the crude and primitive materialistic world- outlook of their forefathers. The story of Bhrigu Varuni of the Taittiriya Upanisad235 is perhaps a suitable example. We shall in Ch. VIII examine how far the fundamental changes in the social life of the Vedic peoples were at the root of this change that took place in their consciousness, i.e., the undermining of primitive materialism and the shift towards a full-fledged idealistic outlook. What particularly interests us at the moment about the survival of this primitive materialism in the Upanisads, is its similarity, as materialism, to original Sankhya. For though we may not read in it any real anticipation of the Sankhya view, yet, like the doctrine of the prakriti, the doctrine of the three material elements (viz. heat, water and food) of the Chando- gya, and particularly the view that the mind consists of food and is dependent on food, implied a strange emphasis on mate- rialism. This shows that however bitter might have been the hostility between original Sankhya and the Vedanta, the latter had a history of its own and, in some remote phase of this his- tory, its opposition to the Sankhya as a materialistic outlook could not have been very sharp, though the two grew as antagonistic trends in the cultural history of ancient India, root- ed as they were in the agricultural-matriarchal and the pastoral- patriarchal conditions respectively. It is true that a full-fledged idealistic outlook emerged in the wake of the latter trend and became the dominant philosophy of the Upanisads. Even in the Upanisads themselves this idealistic outlook sometimes clearly and directly opposed the fundamentals of the Sankhya. Nevertheless, the survival of a sort of archaic materialism in the Upanisads suggests that the ancestors of those who composed the texts were yet to emancipate themselves from the material- istic outlook. We are going to argue in Chapter VIII that the pri-

284 ISIH 123. 235 Tait. Up. iii. 1. ff.

436 LOKAYATA

mitive materialism of the early Vedic period represented the con- sciousness of the pastoral-patriarchal people living in a primi- tive pre-class society. For the present it may be of interest to see how far it is possible to trace the connection of the Sankhya materialism with the pre-class life of the agricultural-matriarchal peoples. For this purpose we have to follow the history of the relation between the Sankhya and the Yoga.

9. SANKHYA AND YOGA

In the Vedic literatures the word yoga originally meant yoking or harnessing.236 However, this did not remain the only meaning of the word. From a remote antiquity, it also stood for certain practices or exercises supposed to help the attain- ment of the highest end. This eventually became its primary meaning. In the philosophical literatures, however, the word came to stand for the name of a particular school of philosophy, sys- tematised in a treatise called the Yoga Sutra attributed to a cer- tain Patanjali.237 What particularly interests us here is the con- nection of this system with the Sankhya. This connection was so energetically established in the later times that it has become customary today to speak of Sankhya- Yoga as forming one philosophical complex rather than two. But how old is this connection? Nothing definite can be said about it. But for an arbitrarily introduced concept of God, there is nothing in the philosophical side of the Yoga, not dis- tinctive of the Sankhya. Further, even very early references to the Sankhya theory were also references to the Yoga practices. In view of these, it may reasonably be conjectured that the con- nection between the Sankhya and the Yoga could not have been the result of later manipulations. And those who were relating the two in later times were but trying to reassert a genuinely ancient tradition. The presumption is that original Sankhya was no more purely theoretical than original Yoga was purely prac- tical; rather, there might have been an original complex of theory and practice out of which emerged the two systems. From

236 Dasgupta HIP i. 226. 237 Jacobi (JAOS xxxi. 24 ff.) thought that he could not have been the same person as the ancient grammarian; the Yoga Sutra was composed presumably after 540 A.D. Dasgupta (HIP i. 232) said that they were one and the same person and as such the date of the Yoga Sutra was B.c. 147 (HIP i. 212).

SANKHYA 437

this point of view, the history of the Sankhya and the Yoga had three distinct stages. First, the primordial complex of theory and practice. Second, the dissolution of this into a duality of collateral ideologies. Third, the old bond between the two re- affirmed to give us Sankhya-Yoga of the later times. If there be anything in this presumption, and if further, as we have already seen, the later Sankhya suffered pronounced doctrinal modifications on idealistic lines, then there cannot be any strong ground to believe that the Yoga of the later times- i.e., the Yoga of the Yoga Sutra-remained true to its origin, which was the practical aspect of the primordial complex of theory and practice. In short, the Yoga of the Yoga Sutra was, in all probability, very much different from the original Yoga practices. There is nothing new in this view. Competent scholars have argued out this. Some of them have gone so far as to discover the origin of the Yoga in the magical practices of primitive society. What is not argued, however, is that if the relation of the Sankhya and the Yoga were not an innovation of the later thinkers, the origin of the Yoga has some light to throw also on that of the Sankhya. Said Dasgupta:238

of the Yoga, ... Of the Patanjali school of the Sankhya, which forms the subject Patanjali was probably the most notable person for he not only collected the different forms of the Yoga practices, and gleaned the diverse ideas which were or could be associated with the Yoga, but grafted them all on the Sankhya metaphysics, and gave them the form in which they have been handed down to us. Vacaspati and Vijnana Bhiksu, the two great commentators on the Vyasa Bhasya (the earliest commentary on Patanjali's Yoga Sutra), agree with us in holding that Patanjali was not the founder of the Yoga, but an editor. Analytic study of the sutras also brings the conviction that the sutras do not show any original attempt, but a masterly and systematic compilation which was also supplemented by fitting contributions. The possibility of Patanjali grafting his Yoga speculations on the Sankhya metaphysics may not be a necessary hypothesis. If he knew the Yoga practices as prevalent before him, which he certainly did, then he must have known the most important form of it, viz. that which formed the essence of Tantrism. Such practices were current in the country from a hoary past and the doctrines of the prakriti and purusa formed an intrinsic feature of this Tantrism. This could only mean that Yoga

288 HIP i. 229.

438 LOKAYATA

practices had been already associated with those concepts that later formed the fundamentals of the Sankhya. It would, there- fore, be farfetched to imagine that Patanjali arbitrarily grafted the Yoga practices on the Sankhya metaphysics. What he actually did was, in all probability, to reassert the old bond between such practices and the theoretical concepts of the prakriti and the purusa. What is important, however, about Dasgupta's observation is that the original Yoga practices must have been immeasura- ably older than the speculations on these found in the Yoga Sutra. If this were so, it would be wrong to look in Patan- jali's work for fundamental ideas concerning original Yoga. It is here that the later Yoga resembled the later Sankhya. Later Sankhya was considerably modified on idealistic lines. The Yoga of the Yoga Sutra, too, must have been the result of similar modification. Such idealistic modifications of original Yoga in Patanjali's version were both theoretical and practical. On the theoretical side it was expressed as the arbitrary introduction of the concept of God into the Yoga system. This will be evident from Garbe's239 comment:

The object of the Yoga system in inserting the conception of a personal God into the Sankhya is merely to satisfy the theists. and to facilitate the propagation of the theory of the universe ex- pounded in the Sankhya. The idea of God, far from being organically interwoven in the Yoga system, is only loosely inserted. In the Yoga Sutra the passages that treat of God stand disconnected, and are, indeed, in direct contradiction to the contents and aim of the system. God neither creates the universe nor does He rule it. He does not reward or punish the actions of men, and the latter do not regard union with Him (at least according to the older doctrine of the Yoga) as the supreme object of their endeavour. dent that this is no God in our sense of the term, and that we have It is evi- to do with perplexing speculations the aim of which is to conceal the originally atheistic character of the system, and to bring the assumption of God into bare accord with its fundamental teaching. Assuredly these speculations prove, were there any need at all for proof, that in the real Sankhya-Yoga there is no room for a personal God .... The idea of God, however, once having been received into the Yoga system, it became necessary to establish a connection between God and the world of mankind, for God could not conti- nue to exist for his own sake alone. A relation between God and man was found in the fact that, while God does not bestow earthly or heavenly felicity (for this is to be obtained only by individual merit and springs necessarily from it), He in His mercy aids the man who is entirely devoted to Him to remove the hindrances which

239 ERE xıi. 831-2.

SANKHYA 439

stand in the way of the attainment of deliverance. But even this slight relation dependent on human devotion to God and on divine

of the Yoga. favour is with difficulty intelligible as combined with the doctrine

If this arbitrary introduction of the concept of God into the system was the result of a deliberate effort to modify it on ideal- istic or spiritualistic lines, the whole practical process of the Yoga as conceived in the Yoga Sutra, was no less so. The Yoga practice, discussed at length in the Yoga Sutra, is the formal art of concentration, of effecting a change in the subjective state and a complete withdrawal of the consciousness within itself. These texts describe how the senses may be withdrawn from the objects of sense and reduced to inactivity, so that their natural tendency is reversed, and they assume altogether the character of the inner central organ, whose emanations they are; how, in the next place, the activity of the organ of thought, in which all the functions that are dependent upon the influence of the external world are suppressed, is wholly centred upon the atman (the self, the soul): and how, finally, in the last stage of absorption, thought and its object completely coincide. By regular observance of the Yoga praxis the hindrances arising from our natural disposition, which make the attainment of saving knowledge so difficult, are most successfully overcome. When absorption has risen to such a height, or rather has penetrated so deep, that no wandering of thought towards other objects is any longer possible, when that dis- position of our organ of thought which is prone to go astray can no longer manifest itself, the knowledge of the essential difference of soul and matter is revealed in the form of an intuitive perception, and therewith the final goal of human endeavour is reached.240 In short, with the total withdrawal of consciousness from the material world and its concentration on the subject itself, the subject acquires a freedom from being entangled in the objective material world and thus the reality of the material world somehow or other vanishes from his consciousness, The Yoga practices were thus brought to the idealistic level by the Yoga Sutra. However, this version of the Yoga had a long history of development before it became such.

The conditions of ascetic contemplation practised in the Yoga are the final result of a long development, which takes us back to primitive times, to the ecstatic rites of savage peoples, of which we find traces also in the Veda.241 The point was first argued by Gough, according to whom the Yoga practices, because their origin is traceable to the prac-

240 Ib. xii. 832. 241 Ib. xii. 833.

440 LOKAYATA

tices of the savages, must have been borrowed by the invading Aryans from the original inhabitants of the country.

It was from the semi-savage races with which they (the Vedic worshippers) were coalescing, and which they were elevating, that they now adopted the practice of fixing the body and the limbs in statue-like repose, and including cataleptic rigidity and insensibi- lity, as a higher state than normal state of human life,-the practice known as the Yoga,-union, ecstasy, the melting away of the con- sciousness into a state of characterless indetermination. The pro- cess seems to be accompanied with intervals of morbid nervous and cerebral exaltation, in which the self-torture loses all distinction between perception and imagination, and appears to himself and others to be invested with superhuman powers.242 We shall presently see how far Gough's view of the Yoga practices can at all be tenable. But there is no doubt that his effort to trace the origin of the Yoga to the practices of the pri- mitive peoples is of great interest. To support this view, he selected two quotations from Tylor's Primitive Culture.

Among the lower races, and high above their level, morbid ecstasy, brought on by meditation, fasting, narcotics, excitement, or disease, is a state common and held in honour among the very classes specially concerned with mythic idealism.243 Throughout the lower civilisation, men believe, with the most vivid and intense belief, in the objective reality of human spectres which they see in sickness or exhaustion, under the influence of mental excitement or of narcotic drugs. One main reason of the practice of fasting, penance, narcotising, and other means of bring- ing on morbid exaltation, is that the patients may obtain the sight of spectral beings, from whom they look to gain spiritual knowledge, and even worldly power.244 Before examining Tylor's hypothesis, let us see how Gough's view of the origin of the Yoga in primitive practices was carried forward by later scholars. Belvalkar and Ranade have practically accepted Gough's thesis in toto. Referring to the 'wandering swarms of ascetics' described in the Buddhist texts, they said:245

It is more natural to suppose that we have here to do with a contact of the Aryans of the Brahmana period with peoples of a different culture whom they encountered in the course of their march into the interior of India. These peoples might have been reduced to homelessness by the conquering Aryans, or-and this is just as likely-they might not have reached a stage beyond that of a nomad, mountaineering life. Such people are not extinct in India even up to the present day. And it is surely not too much to credit these people with strange practices and modes of worship which,

242 PU 18. 243 Quot. Ib. 19. 244 Ib. 245 HIP ii. 81. Italics added.

SANKHYA 441

when taken over into the fold of Aryanism, might have, in the full- ness of time, evolved into what came to be known as the Yoga. The Brahmanas show an inordinate thirst for knowledge and had a capa- city to assimilate almost everything into their system and to assign to it its own place and period-in due subordination always to the all-important doctrine of sacrifice. And when the bulk of the people became forcibly impressed by the strange and mysterious ways and practices of those wandering ascetics, the Brahmanas could not have long remained unaffected by the Zeit-geist.

The superficial nature of this observation is obvious. Home- lessness and nomadism had nothing to do with the essence of the Yoga and the excessive thirst for knowledge of the Brahmanas is a myth exploded long ago. However, the authors returned later to the same subject and fortunately this time with a clearer conception of the primitive origin of the Yoga practices.

That an acquisition of such 'supernatural' powers is feasible, is the underlying postulate of the Yoga Now, we have already seen how a number of practices and prescriptions beionging to the Vedic ritual of the sacrifice could be quite cogently explained by the theory that sacrifice ... was an act of sympathetic magic which was aimed primarily at the attainment of control over certain powers and potences conducive to the benefit of the sacrificer and his family. A comparison with similar practices of other primitive races and peoples goes to show that there is an element of sympa- thetic magic even in . .. the form of the diksa or initiation which the sacrificer has to undergo and which involves a number of queer dietetic regulations, abnegations and penances. The real origins of the systematised theory of the Yoga are accordingly to be traced to this early Vedic ritual, which, as we saw, was a blend of certain simpler forms of nature-worship with certain animistic or totemis- tic ideas borrowed from the practices of the neighbouring non-Aryan peoples. That breath-control and other physical exercises possess the power to form and expand the mind, and that contrariwise, con- centration and other 'spiritual' exercises powerfully influence the organic functions of the body is, with the followers of the Yoga, almost an unquestioned axiomatic truth. Primitive religious life and practice is largely swayed by this axiom; and no wonder that long before the word Yoga' acquired its technical meaning, the fact was familiarly recognised, and it in fact formed the basis for the current ritualistic prescriptions.246

What is really important in this observation is not the view of early Vedic ritual as primarily a form of simple nature-wor- ship, nor the assumption of the early Aryans borrowing the pri- mitive elements of their convictions and practices from the neighbouring non-Aryans, but rather the suggestion of the ulti- mate origin of the Yoga practices in the sympathetic magic of

246 Ib, ii. 405.

442 LOKAYATA

the primitive peoples designed to control nature. Before we go into further details of this point concerning the origin of the Yoga in the primitive magical practices, it is necessary for us to be clear about the hypothesis of the advanced Aryans borrow- ing beliefs and practices of the surrounding backward non- Aryans. We have seen how Gough worked on this hypothesis and how, further, it was uncritically accepted by Belvalkar and Ranade The non-Aryans or pre-Aryans, as revealed by the more advanced historical researches, were not necessarily as primitive and backward as the hypothesis implies; nor were the Aryans as advanced and sophisticated as is claimed by the authors of the hypothesis. Besides, it is not clear why these advanced people were so keen to borrow the beliefs and practices of a backward and primitive people. The most serious defect of the hypothesis, however, is that it overlooks the fact that the so-called advanced Aryans, too, had to begin their life at the bottom of the scale and like all other races, had to work gradually upward. In short, they, too, must have had a primi- tive past. Therefore, whatever was primitive or archaic in their comparatively advanced beliefs and practices need not necessarily have been the result of absorption from an undeve- loped people; these were presumably the survivals or relics of their own primitive past. There is nothing to wonder at the survival of similar beliefs and practices both among the later Aryans and the later non- Aryans, because both emerged from a primitive past, in spite of the fact that this primitive past of the former had the distinctive feature of being based on a pronounced pastoral economy. Therefore, the mere fact that the Yoga was originally rooted in the primitive practices does not necessarily imply that it was borrowed by the Aryans from the non-Aryans, though of course the possibility remains that among the early agriculturists, out- side the circle of the Aryans, such practices were developed on a more extensive scale. Garbe, too, argued on the same lines: Following the analogy of the primitive peoples of the present day, we may confidently ascribe to that early period the belief that it was possible by ascetic practices to win the power to hold inter- course with the spirit world, and in a marvellous way to change the ordinary course of nature. In ancient India the name for asceticism was tapas. This word signified in the first instance 'warmth,' 'heat,' 'fervour,' in the literal sense; then 'the sweat generated by self- mortification,' and 'the condition of internal heat thus caused,' i.e. 'ecstasy.' As at the present day the conjurers among the Indians

SANKHYA 443

of America and among the Negro peoples are wont to proceed in a similar way, so according to the ancient Indian ritual the offerers of the soma juice prepared themselves for their task by prolonged fasting, while, clad in the dark skin of wild animals, and 'speaking in a stammering voice.' they tarried by the magic fire. The fact that the word tapas in its metaphorical meaning is found first in the later hymns of the Rig Veda proves nothing against the extreme antiquity of the above-mentioned ideas or their practical applica- tion; for the circle in which the thought of the Rig Veda moves has few points of contact with ascetic practices. Tapas meets us more frequently in the Yajur and the Atharva Vedas, and very often in the literatures of the Brahmanas and the Upanisads. Since tapas occupies here the position of a cosmogonic power, by means of which the creator of the universe produces living beings and animate objects, it is evident that already at that period no less influence was ascribed to asceticism than in classical Sanskrit literature, in which the ascetics appear as all-powerful magicians. While, then, original- ly the ecstatic condition in which man believes himself capable of rising to higher spheres, was sought mainly by fasting and other self-mortification, in India, owing to increasingly introspective character of the spiritual life, stress was laid more and more on meditation and absorption. The conception of the Yoga, therefore, was developed out of that of tapas. In this meaning the word Yoga is first met with considerably later than tapas. But the existence of the peculiar Yoga doctrine is certified already, as stated above, as early as pre-Buddhist times.247 According to what has been stated above, there is no need to subject Gough's opinion to a more searching examination; for what he regards as borrowing in historical times, is, in fact, an inherit- ance from the most hoary antiquity of the Indo-Germanic race.248 It may be noted here that among the Upanisads the Yoga can be traced clearly in the Svetasvatara, Katha, and more parti- cularly, in the Maitri Upanisads; it is, therefore, not accidental that all these Upanisads were appended to the Krisna Yajur Veda, one of the earliest collections of the 'magical formulae' of the Vedic people. Thus the Yoga, in the Vedic tradition, had, in all probability its origin in the magical beliefs and practices of the early Vedic peoples themselves. That in these Upanisads the Yoga already appeared as cast in the mould of idealistic spe- culation-i.e., understood as meditation and absorption-is only to be expected; because the idealistic outlook became already dominant in the Upanisads and the original Yoga had to be modified to harmonise with it. It is here that we naturally hesitate to agree with the other- wise significant observations of Garbe. He appears to believe that a certain introspective tendency in the spiritual life charac- terised the development of Indian thought as such; it was this that ultimately transformed the primitive tapas of the early

247 ERE xii. 833. 248 Ib. Italics added.

444 LOKAYATA

Vedic people into the formal art of meditation and absorption which became the Yoga of later times. Such a generalised picture is evidently due to ignoring the other trend of ancient Indian culture, viz. the non-Vedic. The introspective tendency referred to by Garbe was but an inevitable corollary to the emergence of the idealistic outlook which, in ancient times, became prominent only in one trend of Indian culture-the Vedic trend-which reached its culmination in the Upanisads. With its moorings in the patriarchal society of a pastoral people, this trend never ceased to look at the purusa as the highest reality, and, as we have seen, when in the Upanisads the idealistic outlook fully emerged, the purusa was interpreted as the detached witness or pure consciousness. This explains why the Yoga of the Upani- sads never lost its associations with the concept of the purusa idealistically understood. Now the other trend in our cultural history which had its moorings in the matriarchal society of the early agriculturists accepted prakriti or the female principle as the ultimate reality which was understood as a purely material first cause. This trend was represented chiefly by the Tantra and the Sankhya. The practices characteristic of the primitive agricultural magic formed the essence of the Tantrika rituals; it is here, rather than in the idealistic version of the Yoga in the Upanisads and the Yoga Sutra, that we are to seek the origin of the Yoga, simply because of the fact that the yoga practices in this non-Vedic trend did not suffer the same kind of doctrinal modification as it did in the Vedic. What could have been the primitive or original significance of the Yoga practices? At the present stage of our knowledge of the primitive peoples, we need no longer view their beliefs and practices as mysterious and meaningless. We have already dis- cussed the role of magic in primitive life. It was an illusory technique to aid the real one. In a sense, the very survival of the primitive community depended on the success of this magi- cal performance. The magician had accordingly, to work him- self up to a point of delirious frenzy and ecstasy. He had to feel a super-normal power within himself, with the aid of which alone he could hope to bring the forces of nature under his con- trol. Such a super-normal power could not be a material reality; it had to be a psychological one. The primitive magician had to feel that he possessed it. He tried various techniques to acquire a sense of the most stupendous power. Such techniques includ-

SANKHYA 445

ed various physical exercises, the control of breath, abstinence, withdrawal, self-torture, narcotics. These did induce 'morbid nervous and cerebral exaltation' and sometimes even a 'cataleptic rigidity and insensibility.' It is to all these, rather than to any inherent tendency of the savage mind to 'mythical idealism,' that we are to trace the origin of the Yoga practices; and the original purpose behind these was to bring nature under control and not to effect any hypothetical 'communion with the spirit world.' It may be possible to find in some rare passages of the earlier portions of the Vedic literatures, the traces of such primitive. practices in their original form. Nevertheless, it would be more fruitful to look for it outside the Vedic trend, viz. in the trend represented by the early agriculturists. There are two reasons for this. First, the pastoral economy of the early Vedic peoples, compared to the early agricultural economy, was not so vitally dependent upon magical beliefs and practices. Secondly, with the transformation of the Vedic ideology into the ideology of the ruling class, the elements inherited by it from the tribal past gradually passed into their opposite and were interpreted as the formal art of meditation upon the Self and on God. However, the non-Vedic ideology did not become the ideology of the parasitical class and remained prevalent (ayata) among the masses (loka). The beliefs and practices underlying these re- mained 'closely associated with the most ancient folk-practices of the people.'249 The most dominant form of this non-Vedic ideology being Tantrism, it is here that we should look for the genuine form of original Yoga. Tantrism, besides being characterised by primitive magical practices, was also based upon principles of the prakriti and the purusa. This cannot but remind us of the Sankhya. We are thus led back to the presumption we started from. The connec- tion between the Sankhya and the Yoga was not an innovation of later thinkers; original Sankhya was indeed no more purely theo- retical than original Yoga was purely practical. There was originally a primordial complex of theory and practice, the agri- cultural ritual of the primitive peoples. 10. NEW FORM AND CONTENT Nevertheless, original Sankhya, whatever its ultimate source might have been, was not primitive agricultural magic. It was

249 Cf. Needham on the representatives of primitive Shamanism in ancient China (SCC ii. 35).

446 LOKAYATA

not even the same as Tantrism, the theoretical basis of which -viz. the doctrine of the prakriti-was enmeshed in the most extensive forms of rituals and myths. The Sankhya had been a form of conscious philosophy opposed to, and in turn being opposed by, the earliest representatives of the idealistic outlook. How the archaic proto-materialistic ideas underlying Tantrism ultimately acquired such a form of conscious philosophical system needs to be revealed by further historical researches. Garbe suggested that a conscious opposition to the idealistic philosophy of the Upanisads might have resulted in the birth of the Sankhya: .. there can be no doubt in my opinion that the idealistic doctrine of the Upanisads regarding the Brahman-Atman-a doctrine which has grown from the Veda and which is the nucleus and centre of the later Vedanta system-is an older product of philosophical thinking than the leading ideas of the other systems. Apparently, the foun- dation of the Sankhya philosophy is to be sought in a reaction against the propagation of the consistent idealism which began to be proclaimed with enthusiasm.250 In view of the extreme antiquity of the Sankhya attested to by Garbe himself, we may not accept the first part of this statement. Nevertheless, it might have been quite possible that the development of the original Sankhya from Tantrism was the result of a conscious resistance to the Upanisadic idealism. What is more important for us is to remember that this was not simply a matter of a change in form. For this revolution of the primitive proto-materialism was inevitably accompanied by a revolution in its contents. While re-stating the funda- mentals of primitive beliefs in the form of a materialistic philo- sophy, consciously opposed to idealism, the early Sankhya philo- sophers had to introduce new and significant changes in content also. A brief account of this new form and content acquired by original Sankhya is necessary for our enquiry. But we face here the old problem over again: since 'much of the Sankhya litera- tures is lost' to us and since, further, 'there is no continuity of tradition from ancient times up to the age of the commentators,' how are we to determine a certain attitude or a certain theory as indicative of the form or content of original Sankhya? Fortu- nately, at this stage of our discussion, we may depend upon a comparatively simpler procedure. We have already seen that originally the Sankhya must have been the doctrine of the pra-

250 ACPVMCSS intro. xix. Italics added.

SANKHYA 447

dhana and that the idealistic understanding of the purusa, though occurring in the Karika, was borrowed from the Vedantists by those later representatives of the system who were in reality try- ing to convert the Sankhya into a form of disguised Vedanta. Therefore whatever is found in the later texts to be consistent with the doctrine of the pradhana or to follow from it, must be . viewed as belonging to original Sankhya, while, whatever is found to follow from the idealistic understanding of the purusa must be looked upon as being extrinsic to original Sankhya. It may be true that the corollaries drawn by the later commenta- tors from the principle of the pradhana might not have histori- cally belonged to the system in its early form; but the very fact that it was possible for them to draw such corollaries goes to show that these must have potentially belonged to the funda- mental tenet of the system. 'The Sankhya system,' said Garbe,251 'is throughout rational- istic.' Evidently, it was because of this that Samkara referred to the doctrine of the pradhana as based on very serious reason- ing (gurutara tarkavala).252 For an understanding of original Sankhya it is important to remember further that this thoroughly rationalistic attitude of the early Sankhya philosophers was, in all probability, the result of their conscious opposition to the mystic idealism of the Upanisads. From the standpoint of the Upanisads-or more specifically, of the philosophers who tried later to systematise these-reasoning by itself had no validity. Sruti or direct scriptural revelation alone had any intrinsic claim to truth; reasoning had merit only as subservient to sruti. It was because of such a clash between the fundamental attitudes of the Sankhya and the Vedanta, that the author of the Brahma Sutra, in connection with his refutation of the Sankhya, found it necessary to formulate a special aphorism designed to dismiss the authenticity of independent reasoning. Samkara253 com- mented on it:

In matters to be known from Scripture mere reasoning is not to be relied on for the following reason also. As the thoughts of man are altogether unfettered, reasoning which disregards the holy texts and rests on individual opinion only has no proper foundation. We see how arguments, which some clever men had excogitated with great pains, are shown, by people still more ingenious, to be falla- cious, and how the arguments of the latter again are refuted in their turn by other men; so that, on account of the diversity of men's opinions, it is impossible to accept mere reasoning as having a sure

251 ERE xi. 190. 252 on Br. Su. ii. 1.12. 258 SBE xxxiv. 314-5.

448 LOKAYATA

foundation. Nor can we get over this difficulty by accepting as well- founded the reasoning of some person of recognised mental eminence, may he now be Kapila or anybody else; since we observe that even men of the most undoubted mental eminence, such as Kapila, Kanada, and other founders of philosophical schools, have contra- dicted one another.

Again: How therefore can knowledge which is founded on reasoning, and whose object is not something permanently uniform, be perfect knowledge? Nor can it be said that he who maintains the pradhana to be the cause of the world is the best of all reasoners, and accepted as such by all philosophers; which would enable us to accept his opinion as perfect knowledge. Nor can we collect at a given moment and on a given spot all the logicians of the past, present, and future time, so as to settle (by their agreement) that their opinion regard- ing some uniform object is to be considered perfect knowledge. The Veda, on the other hand, which is eternal and the source of all know- ledge, may be allowed to have for its object firmly established things, and hence the perfection of that knowledge which is founded on the

future.254 Veda cannot be denied by any of the logicians of the past, present, or

Whether such an argument conclusively demolishes the claim of rational thinking in favour of scriptural revelation, is a different question. What particularly concerns us here is ano- ther point: If the representatives of extreme idealism like Samkara found it necessary to argue like this against the up- holders of the doctrine of the pradhana, the obvious implication is that the latter were trying to establish their views on the basis of thorough rationalism. Therefore, those later exponents of the Sankhya, trying to justify their position also by appealing to the authority of the Scriptures, deviated from original Sankhya and made surreptitious compromises with the Vedanta. The writings of Samkara, however, show that without a surrender of the fundamentals of original Sankhya, such a compromise created gross inconsistencies within the Sankhya system. To a highly conscious idealist like him, mystical idealism could not be recon- ciled to rational materialism. Referring to the Vedanta and the Sankhya he said, the alternatives suggested by the two being exhaustive, either of the two doctrines must necessarily be accepted (sadharanatvat na anyatarasmin pakse codaitavya bhavanti iti).255 Bearing in mind this uncompromising rationalism of original Sankhya, we may now pass on to consider how the early repre- sentatives of the system tried to argue that primitive matter

254 Ib. xxxiv. 316-7. 255 on Br. Su. ii. 1.10.

SANKHYA 449

called the pradhana could alone be the ultimate reailty. To the early philosophers of both the idealistic and materialistic schools, the problem of the ultimate reality appeared as the problem of the first cause of the world. Consistent with their rational attitude, the early Sankhya philosophers thought that a view of the ultimate cause of the world could be arrived at only on the basis of a satisfactory theory of causation. Hence their starting point was an enquiry into the general principle of causality. This is how Samkara25 summed up the Sankhya view of causality: .. Things of an altogether different character cannot stand 1o each other in the relation of material cause and effect. Such effects, for instance, as golden ornaments do not have earth for their mate- rial cause, nor is gold the material cause of earthen vessels; but cffects of an earthy nature originate from earth and effects of the nature of gold from gold. In the Sankhya Karika257 a number of proofs were offered in support of this view: Effect subsists (antecedently to the operation of cause); for what exists not, can by no operation of cause be brought into existence. Materials, too, are selected which are fit for the purpose: everything is not by every means possible: the capable alone is competent to act; and like is produced from like. Gaudapada28 analysed this into five distinct arguments. First, if the nature of the effect was altogether different in cha- racter from that of the cause, the non-existent could produce the existent. But that is impossible. 'In this world there is no making of what is not; as, the production of oil from sand; therefore the instrumental cause produces what is, from its having been formerly implanted.' Secondly, specific material cause is necessary for the production of the specific effect: 'thus, in life, a man who desires a thing, selects that by which it may be produced; as he who wishes for curds, takes milk, not water.' Thirdly, 'everything is not by every means possible. The uni- versal possibility of everything is not; as gold in silver, etc. or in grass, dust or sand.' Fourthly, what is capable does that to which it is competent; as, a potter is the capable agent; the im- plements, the lump of clay, the wheel, rag, rope, water, etc. (are capable) by which he makes the jar, which is capable of being so made from earth.' Lastly, like is produced from like: 'as barley is produced from barley, rice from rice.'

256 SBE xxxiv. 300-1. 258 Translations used in the following quotations are from Cole- 257 9.

brooke SK 28. L-29

450 LOKAYATA

From the repeated references in these arguments to the instances of everyday life, it is not difficult to see on what basis the Sankhya philosophers arrived at this view of causality. As Samkara said, the real strength behind it was that of the obser- vation of nature, dristanta vala. And the fact that Samkara tried his very best to refute this view of causality indicates the danger he saw in it to his idealistic principle of a spiritual first cause. As he himself represented the argument of the Sankhya: The Vedantic opinion that the intelligent Brahman is the material cause of this world is untenable because the effect would in that case be of an altogether different character from the cause. For this world, which the Vedantin considers as the effect of the brahman, is perceived to be non-intelligent and impure, conse- quently different in character from the brahman; the brahman again is declared by the sacred texts to be of a character different from the world, namely intelligent and pure.259 On the other hand, the Sankhya inference from this view of causality to the doctrine of a material first cause was simple enough: if the nature of the effect was indicative of the nature of the cause, the cause of the world must be essentially material because the world itself is such. As Samkara summed up the point:

rajas and tamas, can only be the effect of a cause itself non-intelli- .. this world which is non-intelligent and comprises sattva,

gent and made up of sattva, rajas and tamas.260 We may quote Garbe, who summed up the Sankhya view of causality and the inference therefrom of a material first cause: The material universe is traced back by a correct philosophical method to a first cause. The Sankhya doctrine proceeds on the prin- ciple that the product is none other than the 'material cause' in a definite stage of evolution, and that the preceding stages are to be inferred from that which lies open before us. By this means a first principle was finally reached, which is of the nature of cause only, and not also of product. This is the prakriti, primitive matter, from which the universe is evolved in regular course. It further teaches the existence in the entire material universe of three substances (gunas), united in dissimilar and unstable proportions, of which the first (sattva) exhibits the qualities of lightness, illumination and joy; the second (rajas), of movement, excitation and pain; the third (tamas), of heaviness, obstruction, and sloth. Hence the conclu- sion necessarily follows that primitive matter also was composed of these three constituents. Undeveloped primitive matter is the 'state of equilibrium of the three gunas.' As a result of a disturbance, which is not more definitely described, of this condition of equili- brium, the material universe is evolved .... 261

259 SBE xxxiv. 300. 260 Ib. xxxiv. 301. 261 ERE xi. 190.

SANKHYA 451

At the same time it is necessary to remember that in spite of this brilliant summing up of the Sankhya theory of the prakriti or 'primitive matter,' Garbe did not agree to accept original Sankhya as a form of materialism. It recognises two uncreated substances, existing from all eternity, but differing essentially from one another. These are (1) matter, which Kapila, in opposition to the doctrine of the Upanisads, regarded not as an illusory appearance, but as something real; and (2) souls, which are conceived not as emanations from the world- soul, but as an infinite multitude of individual souls.262 It was, thus, the principle of the purusas in the Sankhya system (and certain corollaries like the doctrine of liberation that followed from it) which prevented Garbe from accepting the system as materialistic. For him the principle of the purusas or souls was indispensable for the Sankhya, for the purusas played at least two decisive roles in the system. First, without these the starting point of the evolutionary process could not be explained. Secondly, the Sankhya theory of know- ledge was vitally dependent upon the principle of the purusas. The question of the beginnings of the evolution first. Said Garbe: Unconscious primitive matter then issues from its stable equi- librium and becomes the subject of evolution; and matter during the period of the existence of the universe continually brings forth new products. For this process it becomes necessary to assign some cause. The developments and combinations of inert matter which take place unceasingly would be inexplicable if they were not effected by a spiritual principle. This principle is the collective influence of the innumerable individual souls which-themselves incapable of any activity-contemplate, as spectators from all eter- nity, the movement of matter. It is not by conscious will that the souls exert an influence on matter but by their mere presence, which in a purely mechanical way excites matter to activity and develop- ment, just as the magnet acts on the iron.263 It is not clear wherefrom Garbe got this idea of the collec- tive influence of the innumerable individual souls. The theory of the passive influence and the analogy of iron and magnet are of course familiar; however, when the author of the Karika spoke of these, he, conveniently enough, no longer referred to the plurality of the purusas at all. Evidently, Garbe was trying to make the position of Isvarakrisna more consistent by invent- ing the theory of the collective influence of the purusas. Never- theless, even this invention did not establish the vital importance of the purusas for the Sankhya theory of evolution. It was only

262 Ib. 263 Ib. Italics Added.

452 LOKAYATA

because Garbe himself was uncritically relying upon the idealistic outlook that he argued that the development and combination of inert matter would be inexplicable if not effected by a spiri- tual principle. There is nothing intrinsically impossible in the theory of such developments and combinations taking place according to the laws of nature; these laws are all that is neces- sary to move inert matter. Original Sankhya might have been the theory of matter in motion. At least, there was nothing to prevent the early Sankhya philosophers from arguing on this line because, as we have already seen, they also subscribed to the doctrine of svabhava or natural laws. On the other hand, some of the later Sankhya philosophers, surrendering this doc- trine of svabhava and trying to make the purusas somehow or other responsible for initiating the changes in the prakriti, con- verted the Sankhya into a bundle of contradictions. Isvarakrisna actually followed this procedure and it remained for Samkara to expose the contradictions resulting therefrom. The other ground on which Garbe thought that the principle of the purusas was vitally important for the Sankhya, was con- nected with its theory of knowledge. Here, however, we are concerned with a much more important office which the soul has to fulfil in the life of the individual. It is true that only figurative expressions are here employed by the origi- nal texts; but there is no possibility of mistaking their meaning when they ascribe to the soul the illumination of the process going on in the inner organ. All these processes must indeed remain purely mechanical and unconscious, unless the soul, 'by virtue of its nearness,' illuminates them, i.e., brings them to consciousness.264 It is not clear, however, why it should be indispensable for the Sankhya to speak of a special principle of consciousness, over and above the primeval prakriti or the pradhana, to explain the illumination taking place in the knowledge-process. For, all the potentialities of this illumination were already there in the pra- dhana, one of the constituents of which being sattva-lightness, illumination and joy. We thus find that both the grounds on which Garbe argued the vital importance and indispensable necessity of the purusas in the Sankhya are untenable. Therefore, we must agree with the older scholars who regarded 'the soul in this system as entirely superfluous.' And if the soul was really superfluous, the Sankhya as a whole was a thoroughly materialistic philoso-

264 Ib. xi. 191.

SANKHYA 453

phy-the doctrine of the pradhana or the prakriti, as the early Vedantists in fact understood it. We may now pass on to consider the Sankhya theory of evolution which gave this system a unique status in the history of Indian philosophy. The starting point, again, is the concept of causality. The Sankhya view of causality is often represented as the doctrine of the pre-existence of the effect in the cause. Such a representation will be misleading if the distinction involved in it between the potential and the actual is not clearly remembered. The tree is contained within the seed; nevertheless, the tree is not the seed nor is the seed the tree. In other words, the tree is contained only potentially within the seed. It is only in this sense that the nature of the tree is determined by the nature of the seed or, conversely, the nature of the seed can be inferred from the nature of the tree. As Gaudapada205 explained: from the nature of the vrihi-plant we may infer that it must have been produced by the vrihi-seeds, or, from the nature of the sali-plant we mav infer that it must have been produced from the sali- seed. Similar is the relation between the visible world and the prakriti. The visible world is the product or effect of the pra- kriti and as such, from the essential materiality of the visible world we may infer the essential materiality of the prakriti itself. But that does not mean that the prakriti is to be equated to the visible world and as such the rendering of the term as 'nature,' done by some scholars,260 is somewhat misleading. Nature, in the sense of the totality of the phenomena of the visible world, is potentially contained in the prakriti but the prakriti and nature are not the same. The actual terminology employed by the Sankhya philoso- phers to distinguish between 'nature as the product of the prakriti' and 'the prakriti as the cause of nature' were vyakta and avyakta, the expressed and the pre-expressed or, as these are commonly rendcred, the manifest and the unmanifest. The differences between the two, as summed up by the Karika,207 are as follows. The vyakta is caused, non-eternal or inconstant, non-pervading, active, multitudinous, dependent, liable to extinc- tion, made of parts and serving (something else); the avyakta is the reverse of all these. Again, according to the Karika.268

E65 On SK 9. 266 E.g. Colebrooke repeatedly did it. 287 10. 288 11.

454 LOKAYATA

the avyakta on the other hand, resembles the vyakta in being composed of the three gunas (trigunam), without the faculty of discrimination (aviveki), objective (visayah), universal

dharmi). (samanyam), unconscious (acetanam) and prolific (prasava

At least one point is clear. The pradhana or primeval matter in its essential materiality is different from the visible world in its sensuous concretion. The Sankhya philosophers were evidently trying to arrive at the notion of a material first cause which was infinitely more subtle and nebulous than the world of sense with its gross and concrete objects. It is here that the early Sankhya philosophers instinctively touched upon the fundamental ideas of positive science. Said Seal:269 The manifested world is traced in the Sankhya to an unmani- fested ground, the prakriti, which is conceived as formless and un- differentiated, limitless and ubiquitous, indestructible and undecay- ing, ungrounded and uncontrolled, without beginning and without end. In its primitive pre-evolved state, this prakriti formed a per- fect equilibrium (samya avastha) of its three constituents or gunas, called sattva, rajas and tamas. We cannot be sure what these qualities originally stood for; 'no definite explanation of the gunas is found in any other work before Vijnana Bhiksu.'270 Nevertheless, we shall not go very much against the spirit of the older as well as of the later texts if we interpret these as the potentials of manifested intelligence (sattva), of manifested energy (rajas) and of manifested mass or inertia (tamas) .. Ac- cording to the Karika,271 these gunas are always uniting, sepa- rating and uniting again. A disturbance in the primeval equili- brium of the three gunas in the prakriti marked the starting point of the evolution of the world. We do not know how exactly original Sankhya conceived the cause of this initial disturbance. Later Sankhya philosophers wanted to explain it as due to the passive influence of the purusa on the prakriti, an interpretation that makes the Sankhya somewhat similar to the philosophy of Anaxagoras. But such an interpretation makes the Sankhya internally inconsistent. The purusa, like the prakriti, is eternal and, therefore, its passive influence, too, must have been eternal; so, if this passive influence of the purusa upon the prakriti be the real cause for the disturbance of the primeval equilibrium

269 PSAH 2-3. 270 Dasgupta HIP i. 224. 271 12.

SANKHYA 455

in the prakriti, it will be impossible to conceive of any beginning of this process of the disturbance of the equilibrium itself. Yet the fact is that in the Sankhya a beginning of this process was definitely conceived. Perhaps, we may get a more consistent picture of the Sankhya standpoint if we agree to conceive that the love and strife among the threc gunas, the uniting and sepa- rating of them going on within the bosom of the prakriti, some- how or other destroy their original equilibrium and initiate the process of evolution. But whatever might have been the cause conceived by original Sankhya for this initial disturbance of the equilibrium of the three gunas within the prakriti, there is no doubt that the Sankhya philosophers conceived that the three gunas, obviously no longer as potentialities of intelligence, energy and inertia, characterised all the later evolutes of the prakriti. That is, sattva, rajas and tamas constituted the essence of all the things of the concrete visible world. But there is in these evolutes no more any equilibrium of the gunas, some pre- pondering over the others. For example in any material system at rest the mass is patent, the energy latent, and the conscious manifestation sub-latent. In a moving body, the rajas, enery, is predominant (kinetic), while the mass, or rather the resistance it offers, is overcome. In the volitional consciousness accompanied with movement, the transformation of energy (or work done by rajas) goes hand in hand with the pre- dominance of the conscious manifestation, while the matter-stuff or mass, though latent, is to be inferred from the resistance over- come.272 But what happens in the case of those phenomena of the world that we are accustomed to characterise as states of con- sciousness? Seal did not raise the question, perhaps because the answer to it, according to the same line of interpretation, would have made the Sankhya much too overtly materialistic. For the states of consciousness are to be viewed, from this standpoint, as those in which though the sattva is predominant there must also be energy and mass-rajas and tamas-as latent and sub-latent. That is, even the states of consciousness are not strictly so; the characteristics of crude matter must be latently present in these too. It is tempting to comment here that if we agree to integrate later scientific knowledge with this stand- point, we have to re-state it as the view that thought or con- sciousness is not without a latent cerebral process. It will be the fundamental premise of a materialistic theory of knowledge,

272 Seal PSAH 5.

456 LOKAYATA

though certain modern philosophers 'have piled tome upon tome in order to denv, destroy, or obscure it."273 In any case, though the carly Sankhya philosophers were vet to be acquainted with the connection of consciousness with the cerebral process, there is no doubt that they were trying to understand intelligence, ego-consciousness, mind and the sense organs as essentially the products of matter. This is clear from their theory of evolution. It is necessary to discuss two other points before taking up the Sankhya view of evolution. First, though Isvarakrisna tried to connect this process with the principle of the purusa in a two- fold wav,-viz., on the one hand the passive infuence of the purusa as initiating the process of evolution, while on the other the entire process of evolution as moving towards the fulfilment of the purpose of enjoyment and liberation of the purusa-we have already seen that such connections were arbitrarily con- ceived by him and made the Sankhya philosophy internally in- consistent. It is therefore logical to reject such ideas while discussing the Sankhya view of evolution. Secondly, if original Sankhya really represented a development of the beliefs under- lying Tantrism, which it presumably did, it was natural for the early Sankhya philosophers to have conceived the birth of the universe, i.e., the evolution of the visible world from the pra- kriti, on the model of human birth. In other words, ideas of fetal development were inextricably mixed up with the ideas of cosmic evolution in original Sankhya. This explains why the ideas of human body getting a definite shape were so much a part of the Sankhya view of evolution, a circumstance that created considerable confusion in the later understanding of the view. We do not expect modern materialism from the early Sankhya philosophers nor do we expect any full-fledged modern thcory of evolution from them. What is really important is that they conceived the ultimate cause of the universe as essentially material and, further, they did conceive everything existing in nature as evolving from this material first cause, and consequ- ently, all the psychical elements in nature were looked upon as having an ultimately material character. With these conside- rations, we may now proceed to understand the theory of evolu- tion of early Sankhya. 'Evolution begins with the disturbance of the original equilibrium. How this is mechanically brought about is not very

273 Thomson SAGS ii. 21.

SANKHYA 457

clear.27+ We have tried to understand it in terms of the three gunas alone: the processes of uniting and separating perpetually going on among the gunas break up at a certain stage, the uni- form diffusion of intelligence, energy and inertia lead to unequal aggregation, and therefore to the relative preponderance of one over the others. Thus commences formative combination among the gunas and the consequent productive activity. Seal, too, tried to sum up the Sankhya formula of evolution in terms of differentiation in integration: Evolution in its formal aspect is defined as differentiation in the integrated. In other words, the process of evolution consists in the development of the differentiated within the undifferentiated, of the determinate within the indeterminate, of the coherent within the incoherent. The evolutionary series is subject to a definite law which it cannot overstep. The order of succession is not from the whole to parts, nor from parts to whole, but ever from a relatively less differentiated, less determinate, less coherent whole to a relatively more differentiated, more determinate, more coherent whole.275 What particularly interests us is the order of succession in this evolutionary series and we cannot do any better than quote Seal's remarkable summary of it. Here is how he represented the different stadia in the order of cosmic evolution as under. stood by the Sankhya philosophers: (1) The inconceivable, the unknowable, the formless, of which no character can be predicated (alinga), including the prakriti, or the Reals (gunas) in a state of equilibrium. (2) The knowable, the empirical universe, cosmic matter of experience, things as matter or stuff of consciousness (linga), com- prising mahat, the intelligible essence of the cosmos, evolved by differentiation and integration within the formless, characterless, inconceivable prakriti. (3) Individual but still indeterminate stuff bifurcating into two series-subject-experience and object-experience, comprising on the one hand the indeterminate unity of appreciation, or the empirical ego, as the coordinating principle of the subject-series, (asmita), and on the other hand (though through the mediation of this subjective modification, asmita or ahamkara) the indeterminate material poten- cies, the subtle vehicles of potential energy (tanmatre, suksma bhuta) the ultimate subtle constituents of the object-series (the material world). The previous stadium, the cosmic matter of expe- rience (linga, mahat), evolves within itself, by differentiation and integration, an individuated but still indeterminate stuff in two co- ordinated series, subject and object, though the latter is mediated through the former. (4) Determinate stuff (visesa) evolved within the indetermi- nate by further differentiation and integration, viz. in the series of subject-experience, sensory and motor stuff; and in the object-series. a corresponding atomic mater-stuff actualising the material poten-

274 Seal PSAH 6. 27 Ib. 7.

458 LOKAYATA

cies in the form of specific sensible energies. The latter includes the different classes of paramanus, the different kinds of atomic con- stituents of different kinds of gross matter (sthula bhuta). (5) Coherent and integrated matter-stuff, individual substances, characterised by generic and specific properties, which however are not rigidly fixed, but fluent, being subject to a three-fold change and constantly evolving. (6) And so the cosmic series moves on in ascending stages of unstable equilibrium (visadrisa parinama) until the reverse course of ecuilibriation and dissipation of energy (sadrisa parinama and samya avastha), which even now constantly accompanies the evolu- tion and transformation of energy, completes the disintegration of the universe into its original unmanifested ground, the unknowable prakriti.270 What it was that suggested to the Sankhya philosophers such a theory of cosmic evolution cannot possibly be determined at the present stage of the researches into its early history. Nor can it be claimed with certainty that all the ideas contained in the above account of evolution was consciously formulated in original Sankhya. (Seal has drawn mainly on Vyasa's com- mentary on the Yoga Sutra, a much later text). Nevertheless the fact remains that original Sankhya did formulate a theory of evolution and the original view of the Sankhya philosophers carried the rudiments of such idea because these came as logical consequences of their doctrine of the prakriti or the pradhana. It was thus the doctrine of the pradhana, i,e., the doctrine of a material first cause, that gave original Sankhya a unique posi- tion in the history of Indian philosophy and let early Sankhya to provide our philosophical tradition with the fundamental ideas of the positive sciences.

276 Ib. 8-10.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SAMGHA AND NIYATI

STUDIES IN ILLUSION AND REALITY

Since modern writers1 on ancient Indian philosophy usually discuss certain philosophers like Ajita Kesakambali and Makkhali Gosala as followers of the Lokayyata, our study of the Lokayata demands a review of their philosophies. We cannot do this, however, without a discussion of the origin of Buddhism and its early role. There are two reasons for this. First, these philo- sophers, mentioned in the Buddhist and the Jaina texts, were, in all probability, contemporaries of the Buddha. Thus the age of the Buddha forms the natural background in which alone we can understand them. Secondly, historically speaking, they were but failures and even their philosophies were essentially the philosophies of frustration and futility. This failure of theirs, again, can be understood only in contrast with the success of the Buddha. However, the success of the Buddha and the signifi- cance of his historical role is itself a matter of controversy and we begin with a brief account of these.

1. Two VIEWS ON EARLY BUDDHISM Rhys Davids2 summed up the controversy thus: Some writers on Buddhism do not hesitate to ascribe to Gotama8 the role of a successful political reformer, by representing him as having fought for the poor and despised against the rich and privi- leged classes, and as having gone far to abolish caste. Other writers

1 Dasgupta HIP iii. 520 ff .; Sastri L 1-2. 3 Buddha, the Enlightened, is properly the title only after his 2 BD i.96.

enlightenment. (Gotama was his clan-name. Sakyamuni, the sage of the Sakyas, was a reference to him by his tribal name. The commonest epithet for him in the sacred texts is Bhagava (Bhaga- vat), usually rendered as the Blessed One.

460 LOKAYATA

gird at the Buddha because most of the leaders of his Order were drawn from the ranks of the respectable and the well-to-do, with an education in keeping with their social position; and disparage him for neglecting the humble and the wretched, for not using his influence to abolish, or to mitigate, the harshness of caste rules. We are going to argue, like Rhys Davids,4 that 'both views are equally unhistorical,' though the grounds of our argument would be different from those of the eminent scholar. But the two views first.

It seems that Rhys Davids was himself inclined to view the Buddha as greatly sympathetic towards the oppressed people:

In the first place, as regards his own Order, over which alone he had complete control, hc ignores completely and absolutely all advantages or disadvantages arising from birth, occupation, and social status, and sweeps away all barriers and disabilities arising from the arbitrary rules ot ceremonial or social impurity.5 Here are certain evidences to justify such a view. The Buddha himself is recorded to have said:

As the great streams, O disciples, however many they be, the Ganga, Yamuna, Aciravati, Sarabhu, Mahi when they reach the great ocean, lose their old name and their old descent, and bear only one name, 'the great ocean,' so also, my disciples, these four castes, Noble, Brahman. Vaisva and Sudra, when they, in accordance with the law and doctrine which the Perfect One has preached forsake their home and go into homelessness, lose their old name and old pater- nity, and bear only the one designation, 'ascetics, who follow the son of the Sakya house.' In fact, the pride of birth and lineage was the very opposite of what the Buddha was preaching:

In the supreme perfection in wisdom and righteousness .... there is no reference to the question either of birth, or of lineage or of the pride which says: 'You are held as worthy as I,' or 'You are not held as worthy as I.' It is where the talk is of marrying, or of giving in marriage, that reference is made to such things as that. For who- soever, Ambatha, are in bondage to the notions of birth or of lineage, or to the pride of social position, or of connection by marriage, they are far from the best wisdom and righteousness. It is only by having got rid of all such bondage that one can realise for himself that supreme perfection in wisdom and in conduct.7 It followed, therefore, that within the Buddhist Order there could have been no distinction between the higher and the lower castes, or even between the king and the slave. The Buddha once asked king Ajatasattu that if a slave of the royal household

• DB i.96. Oldenberg B 152. 5 Ib. i.102. 7 Rhys Davids DB i.123.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 461

left the palace, took to the yellow robe of the Order and lived the life of a monk without reproach in thought, word or deed, 'Would you then say, let the man come back and be a slave again?' And the king answered:

Nay, Lord, rather should we greet him with reverence, and rise up from our seat out of deference towards him, and press him to be seated. And we should have robes and a bowl, and a lodging place, and medicine for the sick-all the requisites of a recluse-made ready, and beg him to accept of them. And we should order watch and ward and guard to be kept for him according to the law.$ The Buddha, it is said, addressed himself 'to the welfare of many people, to the joy of many people, to the blessing, welfare and joy of gods and men."9 It is no wonder then that many people of 'mean origin' should have found very important status within the Order. Rhys Davids10 prepared an interesting list:

One of the most distinguished members of his Order, the very one of them who was referred to as the chief authority, after Gotama himself, on the rules of the Order, was Upali, who had formerly been a barber, one of the despised occupations. So also Sunita, one of the brethren whose verses are chosen for insertion in the Thera Gatha, was a pukkusa, one of the low tribes. Sati, the propounder of a deadly heresy, was of the sons of the fisherfolk, afterwards a low caste, and even then an occupation, on account of its cruelty, particularly abhorred. Nanda was a cowherd. The two Panthakas were born out of wedlock, to a girl of good family through inter- course with a slave ... Capa was the daughter of a deer-stalker, Punna and Punnika had been slave girls. Sumangalamata was daughter and wife to workers in rushes, and Subha was the daughter of a smith. More instances could doubtless be quoted already, and others will become known when more texts are published. This way of looking at Buddhism have been emphatically questioned by other scholars. Said Oldenberg:11

We can quite understand how historical treatment in our times, which takes a delight in deepening its knowledge of religious move- ments by bringing into prominence or discovering their social bear- ings, has attributed to the Buddha the role of a social reformer, who is conceived to have broken the chains of caste and won for the poor and humble their place in the spiritual kingdom which he founded. But any one who attempts to describe the Buddha's labours must, out of love for truth, resolutely combat the notion that the fame of such an exploit, in whatever way he may depict it to himself, belongs to the Buddha. If any one speaks of a democratic element in Buddhism, he must bear in mind that the conception of any re- formation of national life, every notion in any way based on the foundation of an ideal earthly kingdom, of a religious Utcpia, was quite foreign to this fraternity. There was nothing resembling a

8 Ib. 1.77. 10 DB 1.102. Oldenberg B 153. 11 B 153-4.

432 LOKAYATA

social upheaval in India. The Buddha's spirit was a stranger to that enthusiasm, without which no one can pose as the champion of the oppressed against the oppressor. Let the state and society remain what they are; the religious man, who as a monk has re- nounced the world, has no part in its care and occupations. Caste has no value for him, for everything earthly has ceased to affect his interests, but it never occurs to him to exercise his influence for its abolition or for the mitigation of the severity of its rules for those who have lagged behind in worldly surroundings.

Even opening the membership of the Order to all the castes, about which so much has been said by the other scholars, was not a Buddhist innovation: Before his time. probably long before his time, there were religious

females.12 orders, which received members of all castes, both males and

And equality within the Order was merely formal. ... it seems as if the actual composition of the band, which surrounded the Buddha's person, and the composition of the early Church spe- cially, was by no means in due keeping with the theory of equality ... a marked leaning to aristrocracy seems to have lingered in ancient Buddhism as an inheritance from the past.13

Here are some examples:

Tapussa and Bhallika, 'the first persons in the world who made their profession of the faith' came from the merchant class.1+ Then, after the Sermon at Benaras,

... the number of believers soon increases. The next convert is Yasa, a scion of a wealthy house at Banaras; his parents and his wife likewise hear the Buddha's discourses and become adherents of the faith as a lay-brother and lay-sister. Numerous friends of Yasa, youths of the most prominent houses in Banaras and the country roundabout, adopt the monastic life.15

Then at Uruvela, the performance of miracles after miracles ,beginning with the miracle of overcoming a certain serpent- king) helped the Buddha to win over one thousand Brahmanas, who were formerly ascetics under the leadership of the three brothers of the Kassapa family.16 From Uruvela the Buddha, accompanied by more than a thousand bhikkhus, went to Raja- gaha, the capital of Magadha; and the 'Magadha king, Seniya Bimbisara, surrounded by twelve myriads of Magadha Brah- manas and householders' went to listen to the Buddha and

12 Ib. 154. 13 Ib. 155. 15 Ib. 131. 14 Ib. 119. 1e Ib. 132.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 463

became his followers.17 It was here in Rajagaha that Sariputta and Moggallana, two young Brahmanas, who were previously leading a religious life as followers of Sanjaya the Paribbajaka, took to the yellow robe;18 these two converts came eventually to be honoured as first in rank after the Master in the circles of the church. Thus, we have here some idea of the early converts to Bud- dhism. As Oldenberg19 summed up, ... here are young Brahmanas like Sariputta, Moggallana, Kaccana, nobles like Ananda, Rahula, Anuruddha, sons of the greatest mer- chants and highest municipal dignitaries, like Yasa, invariably men and youths of the most respectable classes of society, and with an education in keeping with their social status. Again:

Princes and nobles, Brahmanas and merchants, we find among those who 'took their refuge in the Buddha, the Law, and the Order,' i.e., who made their profession as lay-believers; the wealthy and the aristocrat, it seems, here also exceeded the poor; to reach the humble and wretched, the sorrowing, who endured yet another sor- row than the great universal sorrow of impermanence, was not the Province of Buddhism. Prominent among the 'adherents' stand the two royal friends of the Buddha, Bimbisara, the ruler of Magadha and Pasenadi, the ruler of Kosala, both approximately of the same age as the Buddha, and throughout their lives true protectors of his Church.20 It must further be remembered that the kings and wealthy merchants had made very costly gifts to the Buddha. Veluvana, the pleasure garden of king Bimbisara, was bestowed by him to the Buddha and his fraternity. 'This was the first arama accepted by the Buddha, and a rule was passed allowing monks to accept such an arama."21 It was the dedication of Veluvana which was quoted as pre- cedent by Mahinda, when he decided to accept the Mahameghavana, at Anuradhapura, from Devanampiyatissa.22 But the most spectacular of all such gifts was the one made by the great merchant Anathapindika. It was the gift of Jetavana, a pleasure garden near Savatthi. When the Buddha accepted Anathapindika's invitation to visit Savatthi, the latter, seeking a suitable place for the Buddha's residence, discovered this park belonging to Jetakumara. When he asked to be allowed to buy it, Jeta's reply was: 'Not even if you could cover the whole place with money.' Anathapindika said that

17 Ib. 133. 19 Ib. 156. 18 Ib. 133-4.

21 Malalasekera DPPN ii.936. 20 Ib. 163 22 Ib. ii. 936 n.

464 LOKAYATA

he would buy it at that price, and when Jeta answered that he had had no intention of making a bargain, the matter was taken before the Lords of Justice, who decided that if the price mentioned were paid, Anathapindika had the right of purchase. Anathapindika had gold brought down in carts and covered Jetavana with pieces laid side by side. The money brought in the first journey was found insufficient to cover one small spot near the gateway. So Anatha- pindika sent his servants back for more, but Jeta, inspired by Anathapindika's earnestness, asked to be allowed to give this spot. Anathapindika agreed and Jeta erected there a gateway, with a room over it. Anathapindika built in the grounds dwelling rooms, retiring rooms, store rooms and service halls, halls with fireplaces, closets, cloisters, halls for exercise, wells, bathrooms, ponds, open and roofed sheds. etc .... It is said that ... Anathapindika himself spent fifty-four crores in connection with the purchase of the park and the buildings erected in it.2: While granting some obvious exaggeration we cannot reject the story altogether. Not alone the sacred texts, but equally also the monumental records, the reliefs of the great Stupa of Bharhut, recently explored, show how highly celebrated this gift of Ananthapindika's was from the earliest days in the Buddhist Church.24 And the Buddha, it is said,2 rewarded the monarchs, merchants and usurers, by laying down rules that definitely served their class-interest. Interesting examples of these occur in the Mahavagga of the Vinaya Pitaka. Some of the soldiers of king Bimbisara deserted the army and took shelter in the Buddhist Order. The king was annoyed. To pacify him, the Buddha laid down the rule that no one in the royal service should be allowed to enter the Order. Now many distinguished warriors thought: 'We who go (to war) and find our delight in fighting, do evil and produce great demerit. Now what shall we do that we may desist from evil-doing and may do good?' Then these warriors thought: 'These Sakyaputtiya Samanas (i.e., the ascetics of the Buddhist Order) lead indeed a virtuous, tranquil, holy life; they speak the truth; they keep the precepts of morality, and are endowed with all virtues. If we could obtain the pabbajja (i.e., the preliminary initiation into the Order, preparatory to the upasampada or final initiation) with the Sakya- puttiya Samanas, we should desist from evil doing and do good. Thus these warriors went to the bhikkhus and asked them for the pabbajja ordination; the bhikkhus conferred on them the pahbajja and upasampada ordinations. The officers at the head of the army asked the royal soldiers: 'Why, how is it that the warriors N.N. and N.N. are nowhere to be seen?' 'The warriors N.N. and N.N., Lords, have embraced religious life among the bhikkhus.'

23 Ib. i.963-4. 25 Sankritayana DD (Hindi) 541. 24 Oldenberg B 144.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 465

Then the officers at the head of the army were annoyed, mur- mured, and became angry: 'How can the Sakyaputtiya Samanas ordain persons in the royal service?' The officers who were at the head of the army told the thing to the Magadha King Seniya Bimbisara. And the Magadha King Seniya Bimbisara asked the officers of justice: 'Tell me, my good Sirs, what punishment does he deserve who ordains a person in the royal service?' 'The upajjhaya (i.e., the preceptor under whom one got initiated), Your Majesty, should be beheaded; to him who recites the kammavacca, the tongue should be torn out; to those who form the chapter, half of their ribs should be broken.' Then the Magadha King Seniya Bimbisara went to the place where the Blessed One was; having approached him and having respectfully saluted the Blessed One, he sat down near him. Sitting near him the Magadha King Seniya Bimbisara said to the Blessed One: 'Lord, there are unbelieving kings who are disinclined (to the faith); these might harass the bhikkhus even on trifling occasions. Pray, Lord, let their reverences not confer the pabbajja ordination on persons in royal service' In consequence of that and on this occasion the Blessed One, after having delivered a religious discourse, thus addressed the bhikkhus: 'Let no one, O Bhikkhus, who is in the royal service, receive the pabbajja ordination. He who confers the pabbajja ordination (on such a person), is guilty of a dukkata offence' (a minor form of offence).26 It is true that, as a form of offence, dukkata was not as serious as the other forms like parajika, etc., mentioned in the Vinaya Pitaka. But that does mean that the dukkata, as a form of offence within the Order, was not serious. And it is to be noted that the Buddha also declared that the same offence would be incurred by one who would offer pabbajja ordination to a debtor or to a runaway slave. At that time a certain person who was in debt, ran away and was ordained with the bhikkhus. When his creditors saw him, they said, 'There is our debtor; come, let us lead him (to prison).' But some people replied: 'Do not say so, sirs. A decree has been issued by the Magadha King Seniya Bimbisara: No one is to do any harm to those who are ordained with the Sakyaputtiya Samanas; well taught is their doctrine; let them lead a holy life for the sake of the complete extinction of suffering.' People were annoyed, murmured, and became angry: 'Indeed these Sakyaputtiya Samanas are secure from anything; it is not allowed to do anything to them. How can they ordain a debtor?' They told this thing to the Blessed One. 'Let no debtor, O Bhikkhus, receive the pabbajja ordination. He who confers the pabbajja ordination (on a debtor), is guilty of a dukkata offence.'27 Rahula Sankrityayana28 has observed that such a rule should

26 SBE xiii 194-6. 27 Ib. xiii. 199. 28 DD (Hindi) 541. L~30

466 LOKAYATA

be understood in the context of the fact that in those days, in default of there being any property of the debtor to be attached, the usurers had the legal claim to the very body of the debtor, i.e., to have the debtor as their slave. This is why many a debtor were then rushing to the Buddhist Order to find shelter from the tyrannical law. But the Buddha laid down the law that put an end to such an casy escape. And the attitude to the runaway slaves was no better, whatever king Ajatasattu might have said to the Blessed One in the dialogue we have already quoted. In the Vinaya Pitaka29 it was firmly declared that no runaway slave should be given shelter in the Order: The Buddha is recorded as saying: 'Let no slave. O Bhikkhus, receive the pabbajja ordination. He who confers the pabbajja ordination (on a slave), is guilty of a dukkata offence.' If such texts were really authentic,"0 we have no ground to challenge Oldenberg's claim that the Buddha's metaphysical doctrine of the cessation of universal suffering was not designed in any way to remove the actual sufferings of the toiling masses: For the lower order of the people, for those born to toil in manual labour, hardened by the struggle for existence, the an- nouncement of the connection of misery with all forms of existence was not made.31

2. THE CRUCIAL QUESTION

Both these attitudes to early Buddhism are historically unsatisfactory. It is true that Buddhism, from its early days, was patronised and encouraged by the monarchs and the merchants. It is also true that a considerable number of con- temporary aristocrats formed the front-rank associates of the Buddha. Further, as we shall see, Buddhism did help in the expansion of the Magadha empire as well as the Magadha trade. Nevertheless, it would be too crude a view to see in Buddhism only this. The Buddha, in other words, was acting only as an unconscious tool of history, and Buddhism, from its very inception, was destined to become perhaps the biggest socio-religious movement in Indian history. The patronage of the monarchs and the merchants was far too inadequate to explain its phenomenal success. For however much the sacred

29 SBE xiii. 199. 30 Ib, xiii. intro. xxv. 81 Oldenberg B 157.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 467

books of Buddhism might have exaggerated the number of common people crowding its ranks, there is no denying the fact that the masses were drawn to it. The Buddha's attitude to the injustices of the caste-system or to the barrenness of the Brahmanical rituals might have been significant factors account- ing for its appeal to the people. But the real reason for the success of early Buddhism is to be sought elsewherc. The question is: what was it in early Buddhism that attracted the people and at the same time helped the expansion of the trade and the empire? In order to answer this question properly, we have to place Buddhism in its proper historical perspective. When we do so, we come across the astonishing circumstance that the Buddha alone, of all the contemporary prophets, could offer to the people of his times the illusion of liberty, equality and fraternity, which, as the inevitable result of the laws of social advance, were being trampled and undermined in reality. It is here that we come across the grandeur as well as the limit- ation of early Buddhism.

3: UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT

Our starting point is the uneven development in Buddhist India:

'In the Gangetic valley, about 600 B.c., there coexisted distinct sets of social groups in various stages of development."33" In the Avadana Sataka, a Sanskrit Buddhist text referred to the second century A.D.,33 we come across a remarkable line that sums up the basic features of social development in North- East India during the Buddha's time. It occurs in the story of a group of merchants of the Middle Country of Northern India who went to the Deccan. The king of the Deccan asked them, 'Gentlemen-merchants, who is the king that rules over there (i.e., in Northern India)?' The merchants replied, 'Your Majesty, some areas there are under the rule of the ganas while others are under the rule of the monarchs': deva, kecit desah ganadhinah kecit rajadhinah iti.34 Such, indeed, was the economic and social contrast pre- sented by Buddhist India. Only some areas were then wit- nessing the rise of state-power and the rule of the monarchs

32 Kosambi ISIH 140. 83 ERE viii. 88. 84 Jayaswal HP i. 31.

468 LOKAYATA

while others were still under the administration of the tribal assemblies. Of course, these were not necessarily savage tribes; for some of these had already reached a stage of development at which the tribal organisation had already begun to disintegrate from within. In order to see the significance of this uneven development for the rise of Buddhism, we have to remember further that the early monarchs, in their frantic drive for conquest and expan- sion, were systematically annihilating the surviving free tribes. And within the orbits of their direct domination new pheno- mena, - 'base greed, brutal, sensuality, sordid avarice, selfish plunder of common possessions'-phenomena that were un- known to the tribal life recently left behind were emerging. It was at such a critical period of history that the Buddha came forward and said he had found the real solution to all the pro- blems. He asked the people to join his samghas, and the sam- ghas, as we are going to see, were modelled on the pattern of the tribal democracies. These were thus meant to be the ideal substitutes for a vanished way of life. Surprisingly, however, modern scholars, with probably the only notable exceptions of Kosambi,35 have so far paid little attention to this feature of Indian history during the Buddha's times and its possible ideological reflections in early Buddhism. Even Fick's36 masterly analysis of the Jatakas noticed the tribal organisations in Buddhist India merely in a desultory manner. Of course Rhys Davids37 spoke of the 'clans' and their customs. However, he did not clearly emphasise the real nature of the clan- organisations, nor did he raise the question of the possible influ- ence of these on the formation of the early Buddhist organisation and ideology. It is true that Jayaswal88 did boldly argue that the Buddha was consciously looking at the ganas or samghas of his time as models of his own monastic Order and Majumdar39 made certain interesting observations on the Buddhist samghas from this point of view. But the value of these observations lost their significance because of their misunderstanding of the real meaning of the ganas or samghas. Jayaswal took them to be ancient republican states while Majumdar thought them to be 'corporate lives,' something too vague to have any meaning at all. Naturally, the question has not occurred to them as to why

35 JBBRAS xxvii. ii. 180-213; ISIH ch. vi. 36 SONIBT ch. xi-ii. 38 HP i. 45-55. 37 BI ch. ii. 39 CLAI 286-328.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 469

the Buddha, in founding his monastic Order, should have at all modelled the samghas on the tribal organisations of his times, and how this organisational pattern expressed itself in the ideological sphere. The standard histories of Indian philosophy makes the situation even more dismal. Generally speaking, they treat early Buddhism as a kind of thing-in-itself-an assortment of noble thoughts and precepts emanating, as it were, from the personal purity, renunciation and asceticism of its founder as a reaction against the malignant growth of the Brahmanical rituals. Radha- krishnan's writings may be taken as fairly typical. Any man with imagination will be struck with amazement when he finds that six centuries before Chirst there lived in India a prince second to none before him or after in spiritual detachment, lofty idealism, nobility of life and love for humanity.40 Referring to the conditions of the time he said no doubt that there was then 'not one vast Indian empire, but only princes of particular tribes and clans who were trying to form small states.'41 But this was just a cursory remark and no serious implication was drawn from it for the understanding of the rise of Buddhism. The real conditions, according to him, consisted of spiritual or ideal elements. A congeries of conflicting theories and guesses, accepted by some and denied by others, changing with men, reflecting individual characters, emotions and wishes of their authors, filled the air.42 Such conditions of mental unrest, according to Radha- krishnan, really accounted for the rise of Buddhism: Buddha felt most intensely the inevitable defects of an age of criticism and enlightenment, when ancient faith was undermined and the fancies of theology were disappearing like the shapes of a dream. Men's souls were full of unrest, and desolating discord, and those unable to believe were looking out for a doctrine. The quest of the age was reflected in the spirit of early Buddhism. The Buddha beautiful.43 laid his finger on the heart's desire for the true, the good and the

turn to facts. This, as poetry, is excellent. But let us leave poetry and

4. THE TRIBES AND THE STATES Thomas44 has prepared an excellent note on the geography of early Buddhism:

40 IP i. 347. 41 Ib. i. 352. 48 Ib. i. 357. 42 1b. 44 LB 13. Italics added.

470 LOKAYATA

The home of Buddhism lies in what is now South Behar, west of Bengal and South of the Ganges. This was the country of the Magadhas with the capital at Rajgaha (Rajgir). East of these were the Angas, whose chief city was Campa. North of the Magadhas and on the other side of the Ganges were tribes of Vajjis (chief town Vesali), and still further north the Mallas. West of the Magadhas were the Kasis, whose chief city was Banaras on the Ganges. The kingdom of the Kosalas (capital Savatthi or Sravasti) extended north of the Kasis as far as the Himalayas, and on the northern borders were settled the Sakyas and their neighbours on the east, the Koliyas. All these are tribal names, and it is misleading to use the terms Anga, Magadha, etc. as if they were names of countries. In the sixth century B.c., the Magadhas and Kosalas had developed out of tribal organisations into two rival kingdoms, the Kasis being absorbed by the Kosalas, and the Angas by the Magadhas. These are all the peoples that have any claim to be connected with the scenes of events in the Buddha's life. Thomas did not mention the 'forest savages besides higher tribes like the Sakyas';+5 but such lower tribes did not apparently play any great role in the rise of Buddhism. However, in the Buddhist texts we come across the name of another tribe, the Moriyas. The Maha Parinibbana Sutta1 mentioned the Moriyas of Pipphalivana as claiming a share of the Buddha's relics. The share they received was insignificant, perhaps because they were not that important then. Nevertheless, the same Moriyas were soon to play a tremendously important role in Indian history. The most important of the early state-powers-the Maurya state -rose from the Moriyas. Asoka's grandfather Candagutta (Can- dragupta) was a Moriyan; he was born of the 'queen' of the Moriyan chief.47 Asoka's mother, too, was a Moriyan 'princess.'48 It has been suggested that the name came from mora, the pea- cock.19 This indicates a totemic origin. The association of the Moriyas with the peacock was never completely lost.

The city which they founded had buildings of blue stone, like the neck of the peacock, and the place always resounded with the cries of peacocks.51 It may even be presumed that like the Gotamas (bulls), the Moriyas too originally represented a clan of the Sakya tribe. It is said that the Moriyans were originally Sakyan princes of Kapilavatthu, who escaped to the Himalaya regions to save themselves from the attacks of Vidudabha, and established a city there.51 What is of importance here is the fact that the people of the

45 Kosambi ISIH 147.

48 Ib. 46 Rhys Davids DB ii. 189. 47 Malalasekera DPPN ii. 673. . . 50 Ib. 49 Ib. 51 Ib.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 471

great Maurya state were, during the Buddha's times, still in the tribal stage and had not acquired any great prominence. Thus the age of the Buddha was the time when the organi- sation of state was beginning to develop within the womb of the tribal organisations, and in the case of the Magadhas and the Kosalas, they had already emerged as such on the ruins of the tribal organisations. However, these two state powers were still surrounded by tribal societies which, as we shall presently see, were not to maintain their independence very long. In this sense the age of the Buddha saw the most momentous social upheavals in the Gangetic valley. We could obtain a fairly clear picture of the social up- heavals by concentrating on the two state-powers already deve- loped, viz. the Kosalas and the Magadhas, and the higher tribes like the Angas, Vajjis, Sakyas, Kasis, Koilyas and Mallas. We may begin with the Sakyas. The Buddha himself came from them. It is most important to remember that the Sakyas were still in the tribal stage, though at a fairly high level of development. Even some of the important scholars have missed this point. Observed Oldenberg: The kingdom of the Sakyas was one of those small aristocratic governments, a number of which had maintained themselves on the outskirts of the greater Indian monarchies.5" Added Radhakrishnan:

He (the Buddha was the heir to the Sakya kingdom .... I Impress- ed by the emptiness of the things of sense, he renounced the.ease, power and wealth of the palace to meditate on the eternal, and open for his fellowmen an escape from the meanness of life and the illusions of the flesh.5" Such descriptions are misleading. The Sakyas were after all a tribe.5+ There could not have been anything like hereditary kingship among them. As Malalasekera"5 pointed out, The Sakyas evidently had no king. Theirs was a republican form of government, probably with a leader elected from time to time.' The description given by Rhys Davids36 is richer in details: The administrative and judicial business of the clan was carried out in public assembly at which young and old were alike present, in their common Mote Hall (Santhagara) at Kapilavastu. It was at such a parliament, or palaver, that king Pasenadi's proposition (of getting a bride from the Sakyas for himself) was discussed.

52 B 97. 59 IP i. 347-8. 55 Th. ii. 970. 54 Malalasekera DPPN ii. 969. 50 BI 13-4.

472 LOKAYATA

When Ambattha goes to Kapilavastu on business, he goes to the Mote Hall where the Sakyas were then in session. And it is to the Mote Hall of the Mallas that Ananda goes to announce the death of the Buddha, they being then in session there to consider that very mat- ter. A single chief-how, and for what period chosen, we do not know-was elected as office-holder, presiding over the sessions, and, if no sessions were sitting, over the State. He bore the title of raja, which must have meant something like the Roman consul, or the Greek archon. We hear nowhere of such a triumvirate as bore corresponding office among the Licchavis, nor of such acts of kingly sovereignty as are ascribed to the real kings mentioned above (i.e., of the Magadhas and the Kosalas). But we hear at one time that Bhaddiya, a young cousin of the Buddha's, was the raja; and in another passage Suddhodana, the Buddha's father (who is elsewhere

the raja. spoken of as a simple citizen,-Suddhodana the Sakya), is called

Rhys Davids has persistently used the word clan to mean tribe and even used the two words almost interchangeably; this, like his use of the word state in describing a really tribal orga- nisation, is liable to create confusion. In actual fact, there were a number of clans within the Sakya tribe, and one of these gave the Buddha his name Gotama (Gautama).

Within the Sakya tribe there were probably several clans, gottas. The Buddha himself belonged to the Gotama gotta. suggested that this was a Brahmin clan, claiming descent from the It has been

ancient isi (risi) Gotama. The evidence for this suggestion, is, however, very meagre. Nowhere do we find the Sakyas calling them- selves Brahmins. On the other hand, we find various clans claim- ing a share of the Buddha's relics on the ground that they, like the Buddha, were khattiyas.57 We cannot enter here into any controversy of what the word khattiya meant. Evidently it meant warrior, i.e., there was not much of the varnasrama implication.58 Nor can we enter here into the legends concerning the origin of the Sakyas, however fascinating some of their features might be.59 What concerns us is the tribal constitution of the Sakyas, a significant feature of which, as preserved in the Buddhist texts, was their tribal council, meeting in the santhagara. The council, said Morgan,60 was the great feature of the tribal society. It is thus only to be expected that the other tribes in Buddhist India should have preserved the same institution. We hear of the santhagara also of the Mallas and the Licchavis.61 The Buddha never forgot the pride of belonging to the Sakya tribe. One of the most typical forms in which the texts

57 DPPN ii. 969. 59 Thomas LB ch. i. 5s See Fick SONIBT 17 A.

61 Rhys Davids DB i. 113n; Malalasekera DPPN ii. 970n. 60 AS 84.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 473

referred to him was 'Son of the Sakyas.' He was full of rever- ence for the ancestral institutions; the tribal institutions-a ·pro- minent feature of which was the tribal democracy, the heritage of which the Buddha was himself so proud of, was, during his own life-time, threatened by the emergent state-powers. Ajatasattu's campaign against the confederacy of the Vajjians may be taken as fairly typical. 'I will root out these Vajjians,' said the king,2 'I will destroy the Vajjians, I will bring these Vajjians to utter ruin.' No cause was given for this sinister determination of the king in the Buddhist text. The Jaina text3 mentioned one: it was simply the greed of the king for a particular elephant and a necklace. This may sound flimsy. Surely there must have been something more than this. We have already discussed this in Chapter III. Kautilya's Artha- sastra gives us the clue: There was no prospect for the rising monarchs so long as the free samghas-too strong to be destroyed by direct military action-survived in the neighbourhood. Be- sides, the example of their democracy was dangerous for the monarchies. The destruction of the samghas was thus inevitably a part of the policy of the rising state-powers. "The main struggle was inevitably between Kosala and Magadha; but simultaneously both fought against the tribes.'64 It was, as Kosambi characterised it, a scene of triangular con- test.65 What particularly interests us here about the contest is the attacks led by the states against the tribes. The Kasis were already defeated by the Kosalas.

The Kosalan drive southwards to Banaras had already become legend. The fabulous king Brahmadatta of Banaras had some suc- cess against Kosala, to the extent of capturing and executing its king Dighiti with his queen. The fugitive Kosalan prince Dighavu recovered his kingdom, and perhaps annexed Kasi as Brah- madatta's son-in-law. The same story is told of a Kosalan prince Chatta, who recovered Kosala from Brahmadatta after his father's defeat, refortifying Savatthi to make it impregnable; this prince had run away to Taxila to learn the three Vedas. In Jataka 303, Dabba- sena, king of Kosala, takes Kasi; in Jataka 355, it is Vamka. Ja- taka 532 says that king Manoja of Banaras received the submission of Kosala. These names mean little, but the contest, which culmi- nated in Kosalan hegimony over Kasi, seems historical.66

It was the same Kosala-presumably during the life-time of the Buddha-that attacked the Sakyas and massacred them, in-

62 Rhys Davids DB ii. 78. 63 Basham HDA 69. 65 Ib. 147. 64 Kosambi ISIH 146. 60 Ib. 147-8.

474 LOKAYATA

cluding their women and children. The pretext was revenge for certain marriage fraud. Pasenadi (Prasenajit), the king of Kosala, by far the most powerful of the kings during the Bud- dha's life time, wanted to have a bride from the Sakyas. Pre- sumably the motive was to win over the Sakyas in diplomatic alliance (see Arthasastra). However, true to their tribal tradi- tion, the Sakyas could not agree to the proposal readily. Mar- riage outside the tribe was against the tribal rule. Yet the Sakyas were naturally afraid to turn down the king's offer un- ceremoniously. In the meeting of the tribal assembly called to discuss a way out, two different views were expressed. First: 'We live under the suzerainty of the king of Kosala. If we do not give him one of our daughters, great enmity will arise thereby; but if we do give him one, the traditions of our clan will be destroyed thereby. What is to be done?' Second: 'The king is an enemy of ours. Therefore, if we refuse to give him what he demands, he will destroy us. Moreover, he is not of equal birth with ourselves. What is to be done ?67

They cheat him by offering the beautiful Vasabha-Khattiya, dau- ghter of Mahanama Sakya, by a slave woman Naga-Munda; the mother's name combines the names of two well-known savage tribes. Pasenadi is deceived successfully about the girl's birth, and makes her his chief queen for a while. The insult is later discovered but forgiven by Pasenadi on the Buddha's intercession.68

However, Vidudabha, the successor to Pasenadi and a son by the same girl, made this an excuse for attacking and slaughter- ing the Sakyas: Having determined to wreck his vengeance on the Sakyas he, on coming to the throne, invaded their country, took their city, and put to death a great number of the members of the clan, wihout distinction of age or sex.69 Even the Buddha could not stop this disaster; he had to wit- ness the massacre of his own people by the great power of his times. Incidentally, Vidudabha was no great respector of his father. For treacherously did he betray Pasenadi and ascended the throne of Kosala. The rise and expansion of the Magada State, too, followed the same pattern of violent extermination of the tribal democracies. The Angas were defeated and brought under Magadha rule even before the Buddha's time. 'We never hear of its having regained 67 JBBRAS xxvi. ii. 184-5. 6s 1b. 185. 69 Rhys Davids BI 8.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 475

its former independence, and traditions of war between the two countries are mentioned.'70 Bimbisara's son Ajatasattu, on ascend- ing the throne, started his ruthless campaign against the Vajjians. And the task of destroying the free tribes, so far as it was left incomplete by the sons of Pasenadi and Bimbisara, was continued by the kings who came after them. A few surviving traditional ksatriya tribes (like those of the Ku- rus and Pancalas) were systematically wiped out by about 350 B.C. by king Mahapadma Nanda of Magadha, who completed tne work of Vidudabha and Ajatasattu. Their internal collapse was certain be- cause of changed economic conditions, but the new tribeless kings could not allow such dangerous example of democracy to survive.71

5. NEW MISERIES

The other feature of the history of Buddhist India, important for our purpose to understand the role of early Buddhism, was the emergence of certain new phenomena within the orbits of the state-powers. With the transition from the tribe to the state, the administrative machinery must have passed into its opposite:

from an organisation of tribes for the free administration of their own affairs it became an organisation for plundering and op- pressing their neighbours; and correspondingly, its organs were trans- formed from instruments of the will of the people into independent organs for ruling and oppressing their own people.7" Historically, this was but inevitable. We may follow Fick's analysis of the Jatakas and see how actually it did happen in Buddhist India-how, in other words, the people who were only recently free and equal members of the tribes and some of whose neighbours continued to be so, came to be plundered and op- pressed by the rising kings. The ideal of a virtuous Buddhist layman, the king in the old stories does not always follow. Very often we see in him an un- restricted tyrant guided by his own whims and caprices, 'who op- presses and puts down his subjects by punishment, taxes, torture and robbery, as one pounds sugar in a sugar mill, who is as odius to them as a particle of dust in the eyes, as a particle of sand in the rice or as a thorn that has pierced the hand.' To the virtuous mentioned in the Dasarajadhamme of the idealised ruler there stands in oppo- sition as many vices; these form, as it were, a legend on the reverse side of the coin, the side which depicts the true picture of the king -drunkenness and cruelty (in the Khantivadi Jataka; in the Culla- dhammapala Jataka), corruptibility (in the Bharu Jataka), un- truthfulness and unrighteousness (in the Cetiya Jataka) ... Only the

70 Malalasekera DPPN i. 17. 71 Kosambi ISIH 153. T2 Engels OF 268.

476 LOKAYATA

virtuousness of his councellors in spiritual and wordly matters ... might be in a position to curb his arbitrariness and tyranny. Where this opposite force was absent and the ministers or the purohita only helped to carry out the desires of their ruler, there often arose circumstances which forced the people to take recourse to the only method available, namely force, open rebellion.73 Fick has illustrated such rebellions by the Padakusala- manava Jataka and the Saccamkira Jataka. Even some of the neighbouring lower tribes were rebelling against the rule of tyranny. The kings were kept busy in keeping these down:

There is no lack of warlike expeditions which are caused .. mostly by the rebellions of the intermediate bordering tribes. Of such insurrections we read very often; the aboriginal tribes driven into the mountains and probably subjugated only in name, gave the Aryan invaders much to do. Not always the troops stationed in the frontiers (paccante thitayodha) are sufficient to quell the rebellion. After fighting several battles with the rebels, as narrated in the Bandhanamohha Jataka, (who are called cora, robbers), they send information to the king that they cannot carry on the war. Then the king collects an army (balakayam samharitva) and takes the field.74 It is important to remember, as Kosambi75 has pointed out, that the character of the new army was entirely changed:

Both these kings had developed a new type of army to replace the former armed tribe as a whole, an army without tribal basis which now owed loyalty only to the king ... Such an army could not have been maintained without regular taxes and extensive revenues. The result was the horror of taxation. Fick has given us an idea of this:

If the subjects did not pay willingly, or if the king wanted-as seemed often to happen according to the instances narrated (in the Jatakas) ... to harass the people by enhancing the taxes, he sent his officials who had to use force in filling the coffers of the king. These tax-collectors (balipatiggahakas, niggahakas, balisadhakas), according to the Jatakas, did not play an unimportnt part in public life: how they were looked upon by the people seems to me to be indicated by the conclusions of the Gagga Jataka, where the man-eating demon (yakkha) whom the Bodhisatta has subdued is given by the king the post of a balipatiggahaka.76 The use of the name niggahaka (lit., the torturer) for the tax- collector tells its own story. Sometimes, such tortures knew no limit. Here is an example given by Fick:77 Oppressed with taxes (balipitita) the inhabitants lived in the

78 SONIBT 101-3. 74 Ib. 106. 78 SONIBT 120-1. 75 ISIH 150. 77 Ib. 121 ..

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 477

forest like beasts with their wives and children; where there was once a village, there no village stood any more. The men could not, for fear of the king's people, live in their houses; they surrounded their houses with hedges and went after sunrise to the forest. In the day the king's people (rajapurisa) plundered, at night the thieves. Not infrequently, as the Jatakas told us, the king's officers made common cause with the thieves. Fick mentioned other in- teresting methods by which the kings extracted money from the people. It was indeed a costly proposition to maintain a mer- cenary army without which state-power could not stabilise and expand. But extractions not by the kings alone. 'The change in society', as Kosambi78 said, 'is manifested by a new set of insti- tutions: mortgage, interest, usury.' The story of the develop- ment of these new institutions remains still to be reconstructed. The voluminous Jatakas will provide the historian with plenty of materials and the Arthasastra is there to show how these insti- tutions were eventually stabilised. It is necessary to remember that along with the state-powers - and largely depending upon these-there emerged during the period a strong and influential merchant class, which in turn must have brought in its wake all the social vices characteristic of commercialism. This new phenomenon, that control of the state mechanism was to be had by direct violence, marks a profound change. The former need of tribal election or tribal sanction, which still persisted in the Punjab, had vanished in the greater kingdoms of the Gangetic basin. In fact, these kingdoms could not have expanded under tribal con- ditions. On the other hand, there is no mention of a regular court nobility to replace tribal elders. The implication is that a whole new class of people, who now engaged in trade, the production of com- modities, or of surplus grain on family holdings-in a word, the creation of private property-needed their immunity from tribal obstruction and from tribal sharing of the profit. To them, it was most important to have a king who could ensure safety on the road and the new rights of property; not some particular king, but any king who would prevent reversion to tribal laws and property rights in common. This was all the easier because the Magadhan royal state engaged in extensive trade in tax-grain and commodi- ties, through royal officials. The king further claimed all preroga- tives of former tribal chiefs; as few as possible of their obligations were retained.79 All this is true. Nevertheless, there is another point which, if overlooked, may make us miss the most important factor ac- counting for the success of early Buddhism. If it was necessary to prevent the people from trying to revert to the tribal laws, it

78 ISIH 139. 79 Ib. 150-1.

478 LOKAYATA

was also necessary to offer them some substitute for the lost tribal values of liberty, equality and fraternity which, though not formulated, constituted the cardinal principles of the tribal way of life.$0 Buddhism, we are going to argue, proved to be such a tremendous success precisely because it could offer such a substitute. In order, therefore, to understand the real success of the message of the Buddha, it is necessary to be clear that, with the emergence of the state-power on the ruins of the tribal societies, the old values of the tribal life must have been destroyed. Here is how Engels$1 described the process:

The power of these primordial communities had to be broken, and it was broken. But it was broken by influences which from the outset appear to us as a degradation, a fall from the simple moral grandeur of the ancient gentile society. The lowest interests-base greed, brutal sensuality, sordid avarice, selfish plunder of common possessions - usher in the new, civilised society, class society; the most outrageous means-theft, rape, deceit and treachery-under- mine and topple the old, classless, gentile society. And the new society, during all the 2,500 years of its existence, has never been anything but the development of the small minority at the expense of the exploited and oppressed great majority; and it is so today more than ever before. Engels was not lamenting the loss of some cherished values. The advance from the tribe to the state was a momentous step forward. Only we should not take too naive a view of this. As Engels said: Monogamy was a great historical advance, but at the same time it inaugurated, along with slavery and private wealth, that epoch, lasting until today, in which every advance is likcwise a realative regression, in which the well-being and development of the one group are attained by the misery and repression of the other.82

6. THE KINGDOM OF TRUTH

Said the Buddha in a Sutta:

I behold the rich in this world, of the goods which they have acquired, in their tolly they give nothing to others; they eagerly heap riches together and further and still further they go in their pursuit of enjoyment. The king, although he may have conquered the kingdoms of the earth, although he may be ruler of all land this side the sea, up to the ocean's shore, would, still insatiate, covet that which is beyond the sea. The king and many other men, with desires unsatisfied, fall a prey to death; ... neither relatives nor friends, nor acquaintances, save the dying man; the heirs take his

80 Engels OF 147. 81 Ib. 163. 82 Ib. 109. Italics added.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 479

property; but he receives the reward of his deeds, no treasures ac-

kingdom.$3 company him who dies, nor wife nor child, nor property nor

Said the Buddha in another sutta:$+

The princes, who rule kingdoms, rich in treasures and wealth, turn their greed against one another, pandering insatiably to their desires. If these act thus restlessly, swimming in the stream of imper- manence, carried along by greed and carnal desire, who then can walk on earth in peace? The Buddha was not at all exaggerating. With a strong heritage of the tribal morality - the great pride of being a son of the Sakvas - the new realities which he witnessed must have appeared appalling to him. He saw his own people, including women and children, being ruthlessly exterminated. He saw the emergence of base greed and insatiable desire which made the kings to 'float on the ocean of impermanence.' His friend Pasenadi was treacherously betrayed by the son Vidudabha. And surely Pasenadi was the greatest ruler of his times. His other friend, king Bimbisara, was imprisoned and starved to death by the son Ajatasattu. And if the Buddha had lived only a little longer he could have also seen how the same process, the same expression of insatiable greed for riches and power continued to characterise the political history of the age:85 Ajatasattu was killed by his son Udayabhadda; Udayabhadda was killed by his son Anuruddhaka; Anuruddhaka was killed by his son Munda; Munda was killed by his son Nagadasaka. Then the citizens said, 'This is a race of parricides,' deposed Nagadasaka, and consecrated the minister Susunaga as king. He reigned for eighteen years, and was succeeded by his son Kalasoka, 'Asoka, the Black.'88 It is true that the chronicles might not have been fully dependable. It is also true that the Buddha did not personally witness all these successive parricides and surely he arrived at the fundamentals of his teachings before these events actually took place. But these events were only the manifestations of the new values that followed the rise of state-power and the collapse of the tribal morality. In other words, killing the father for the throne was not accidental but the necessary consequence of the emergence of the new values. Such tension between king and heir-apparent is taken absolu-

83 Oldenberg B 64. 85 Thomas LB 168-9. 84 Ib. 86 Ib. 169.

480 LOKAYATA

tely for granted by the Arthasastra. The king is there advised (i.17) how to keep a close watch upon the prince, while Arthasastra (i.18) advises a prince how to trick his suspicious father.87 Confronted, as the Buddha was, with these new forces that began to dominate life, it was only natural for him to want a 'quietude of the heart.' Such a state of quietude was found by withdrawing himself from reality. He meditated long and hard, and at last realised the quietude he had so intensely longed for. But would his fellow beings who had embraced the new forces-would they understand him at all?

'I have penetrated this doctrine which is profound, difficult to perceive and to understand, which brings quietude of heart, which is exalted, which is unattainable by reasoning, abstruse, intelligible (only) to the wise. This people, on the other hand, is given to desire, intent upon desire, delighting in desire. To this people, therefore, who are given to desire, intent upon desire, delighting in desire, the law of causality and the chain of causation will be a matter difficult to understand; most difficult for them to understand will be also the extinction of all samkharas, the getting rid of all the substrata (of existence), the destruction of desire, the absence of passion, quietude of heart, nirvana! Now if I proclaim the doc- trine, and other men are not able to understand my preaching, there would result but weariness and annoyance to me.' And then the following stanzas, unheard before, occurred to the Blessed One: 'With great pains have I acquired it. Enough! why should I now proclaim it? This doctrine will not be easy to under- stand to beings that are lost in lust and hatred. Given to lust, surrounded with thick darkness, they will not see what is repugnant (to their minds), abstruse, profound, difficult to perceive, and subtle.' When the Blessed One pondered over this matter, his mind became inclined to remain in quite, and not to preach the doctrine.88 There was, thus, a grave crisis:

Alas! the world perishes! Alas! the world is destroyed! If the mind of the Tathagata, of the holy, of the absolute Sambuddha in- clines itself to remain in quiet, and not to preach the doctrine.89 The text tells us the story of a divine intervention which induced the Buddha to stand up and preach the doctrine and the people listened. The people no doubt listened to the Buddha. Only the miracle, the divine intervention, was not really necessary. For the miracle was there already, in the Blessed One's message itself. It was the message of the kingdom of righteousness in a

87 Kosambi ISIH 150. 88 SBE xiii. 84-5. 89 Ib. xiii. 86.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 481

world torn to pieces by the new forces of tyranny, oppression and grced, of lust and hatred. I have gained coolness and have obtained nirvana. To found the Kingdom of Truth I go to the city of the Kasis; I will beat the drum of the Immortal in the darkness of this world.90 And he went to the city of the Kasis and declared: The immortal (amata) has been won; I will teach you; to you I preach the doctrine. If you walk in the way I show you, you will, ere long, have penetrated to the truth, having yourselves known it and seen it face to face; and you will live in the possession of that highest goal of the holy life, for the sake of which noble youths fully give up the world and go forth into the homeless state.91 But where was this Kingdom of Truth which the Buddha thus set out to preach? Significantly enough, he did not look forward, to what had emerged, and was emerging fuller and fuller every day, the pomp and the grandeur of the rising state- powers. Instead, he looked backward, to the tribal collectives, threatened and undermined before his own eyes. There are two distinct grounds to support this point. First, the memory of the lost collective life ever lingered in the Bud- dhist tradition and was looked upon as the golden age of the past. Secondly, the Buddha was consciously modelling his Order - his samgha - on the surviving tribal democracies. The second of these two grounds is decisive, though the first one has an interest of its own. Referring to the Agganna Sutta of the Digha Nikaya, Kosambi92 observed:

The memory of a classless, undifferentiated society remained as the legend of a golden age when the good earth spontaneously produced ample food without labour because men had neither pro- perty nor greed. Largely the same legend and definitely the same memory of the bliss in the pre-class society may be traced in the Mahavastu Avadana. As summed up by Sastri,93 the origin of kingship in this text is, in essence, as follows:

In the beginning people used to feed on love and live in the abodes which was bliss. Feeding on food which was love and living in abodes which were bliss, they lived thus. And whatever they did was dhamma. Then emerged among them the distinction of varna (colour): some had good varna, some bad. Vanity was thus born and with its birth died dhamma. And with it dried up love and

90 Ib. xiii. 91. 92 Kosambi ISIH 162. 91 Ib. xiii. 92-3. 93 BD (B) 142ff. L-31

482 LOKAYATA

honey on which they were so long feeding. They went on in search of new sources of food. They discovered the mushrooms and after that the herbs. Then they discovered sali-dhana (a kind of rice- grain). Nobody then had any idea of hoarding. But the idea of hoarding the grain gradually grew in their minds. And the greed for hoarding went on increasing. Along with it dawned the con- sciousness of the difference between the sexes. To begin with, the idea of pairing was to them a gross violation of morality. Eventu- ally, however, the custom of pairing was stabilised and accepted. And domestic affairs became the concern of the women. The greed for hoarding went on swelling. . They started to culti- vate the land which ultimately made the collective ownership of it no longer possible. Land was distributed among the individuals for individual cultivation. Boundaries were determined for the culti- vable land of each. It was decided that nobody should infringe upon the other's plot. The arrangement worked for some time. Later, new complications started to develop. Someone thought, 'Well, this is my land and this much is the quantity of harvest that I reap. But supposing there was a bad crop?' So he resolved: 'Whether this be allowed or not does not matter, I will pounce upon someone else's field and get the grain.' He stole and was caught by a third person. The third person gave him a beating and called him a thief. He, the thief, cried, 'Look brothers, I am being beaten. Look brothers, I am being beaten. This is injustice. This is injustice.' And thus began theft, untruth and punishment. Then everybody assembled together and resolved: 'Come, let us elect somebody from amongst ourselves to look after the border of each one's field. He will be strong and intelligent and fair to all. By way of his remuneration, each of us shall pay him a part of our produce. He will punish the criminal and protect the righteous and look after the border of each.' Thus they elected one among themselves. On the consent of all, he became a raja. That is why the raja is called a maha-sammata, the Great Consent. Sastri rightly pointed out that in spite of the later distor- tions introduced into the legend, its archaic essence can be un- mistakably recovered. It is this essence we have presented above. And the legend is without parallel in Indian literature outside Buddhism. It has been pointed out that certain Mahabharata passages, too, retain the memory of the transition from the pre-class to the class-divided society.94 However, what deserves to be specially noted about the Buddhist legend is that God, or the Creator, does not find a place in it. An attitude of stark materialism - though a primitive and naive one - pervades the whole of it. In any case, passages like these show that the memory of the lost collective life was never completely washed away from the Buddhist tradition and that such a life was looked upon as

04 Dange IPCS 59ff.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 483

the golden age of the past. It was such a life, again, which the Buddha had in mind when he spoke of the Kingdom of Truth or Righteousness. This becomes quite evident when we trace the sources of his samgha.

7. SAMGHA AND PRIMITIVE COMMUNISM Unlike Christ, the Buddha instituted an Order, or Church, during his own lifetime; and in the course of his long ministry of forty-five years, and as occasion arose, he made a great many regulations for its guidance.95 This is true and here we have a crucial point that explains the success of carly Buddhism. This early appearance of a form of associated life strictly governed by law can cause no astonishment .... The monastic orders professing other faiths, preceding and coeval with the Buddha's Order, and, in a not less degree, the common source of all these sects, Brahmanism, have furnished for the formation of a church polity, as they did in the case of dogmatic speculation, a set of ready-made forms, which Buddhism had only to appropriate.96 This is not true and it misses the crucial point accounting for the success of early Buddhism. The Buddha radically departed from the other organisers of monastic groups during or before his times in making the surviving free tribes of his times the models for his samghas. The samghas were consciously designed by him to be illusory substitutes for what was being systematically annihilated in reality. The Maha Parinibbana Sutta, already referred to in Chapter III, gives us the clue. King Ajatasattu was contemplating a determined offensive against the Vajjians. He sent his prime minister, the brahmana Vassakara, to the Buddha to seek his blessings. The Buddha did not answer Vassakara directly but addressed himself to Ananda and said: So long, Ananda, as the Vajjians foregather thus often, and frequent the public meetings of their clan; so long may they be expected not to decline but to prosper. And in like manner the Buddha enumerated six other conditions that ensured the success of the Vajjians. The prime minister, failing to obtain the Buddha's blessings, left the place. And the text continued: Now soon after he had gone the Exalted One addressed the

95 Warren BT 392. 96 Oldenberg B 331-2.

484 LOKAYATA

venerable Ananda, and said: 'Go now, Ananda, and assemble in the Service Hall such of the brethren (bhikkhus) as live in the neigh- bourhood of Rajagaha.' And he did so: and returned to the Exalted One, and informed him, saying: 'The company of the brethren, lord, is assembled, let the Exalted One do as seemeth to him fit.' And the Exalted One arose, and went to the Service Hall; and when he was seated, he addressed the brethren, and said: 'I will teach you, O mendicants, seven conditions of the welfare of a community. Listen well and attend, and I will speak.' 'Even so, lord,' said the brethren, in assent, to the Exalted One; and he spake as follows: So long, O mendicants, as the brethren foregather oft, and frequent the formal meetings of their Order -so long as they meet together in concord, and rise in concord, and carry out in concord the duties of the Order-so long as the brethren shall establish nothing that has not been already prescribed, and abrogate nothing that has been already established, and act in accordance with the rules of the Order as now laid down-so long as the brethren honour and esteem and revere and support the elders of experience and long standing, the fathers and leaders of the Order, and hold it a point of duty to hearken to their words-so long as the brethren fall not under the influence of that craving which, springing up within them, would give rise to renewed existence - so long as the brethren delight in a life of solitude-so long as the brethren so train their mind in self-possession that good men among their fellow disciples shall come to them, and those who have come shall dwell at ease-so long may the brethren be expected, not to decline, but to prosper. So long as these seven conditions shall continue to exist among the brethren, so long as they are well-instructed in these conditions, so long may the brethren be expected not to decline, but to prosper.97 The special interest of the passage consists in the fact that the seven conditions mentioned here are identical to the seven conditions which the Buddha, immediately before this sermon, declared to be those that ensured the prosperity of the tribal life of the Vajjians. Thus it is not difficult to see what it was on which the Buddha modelled his Order. It was indeed not an accident that he adopted the name 'samgha,' meaning the tribal society, for his own Order; and the text, though under an obvious anachronism, virtually admitted the point. 'When I was once staying, O Brahmin,' said the Buddha, 'at Vesali at the Sarandada Shrine, I taught the Vajjians these conditions of welfare.'98 Evidently, the text presented here a historic trutl, though, out of reverence for the Exalted One, it was presented in an inverted manner: the tribal organisation the Blessed One imitated must have been immensely older than the Buddha himself.

97 Rhys Davids DB ii. 81-2. 98 Ib. ii. 80.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 485

Thus, at a critical stage of Indian history, while the free tribes of the times were being ruthlessly exterminated and, with- in the orbits of the expanding state-powers, people were experi- encing the rise of new values on the ruins of tribal equality, the Buddha was modelling his samghas on the basic principles of the tribal society and was advising the brethren of his Order to mould their lives according to these principles. This point is crucial. In building up his own samghas, the Buddha could provide the people of his times with the illusion of a lost reality, of the dying tribal collective. And it was only the great genius of the Buddha which could have built this coherent and com- plete illusion. Not only did he successfully build up his samghas on the model of the pre-class society, but he took great care to see that the members therein - the bhikkhus within the samghas - lived a perfectly detached life, i.e., detached from the great historic transformation going on in the society at large, whose course was obviously beyond his power to change. The bhikkhus were not to meddle in matters mundane. And within the samghas, there remained only one great purpose before them. It was an ideal transformation of the personality, a trans- formation of the subjective attitude, and, irrespective of what was going on in the actual life, it was, again, a transformation of the personality on the lines of the simple moral grandeur of the pre-class tribal life. As we shall presently see, it is from this point of view alone, we can understand the famous codes of morality formulated by him. No. The Buddha even went farther than that. With all his express distaste for meta- physics, he did develop a grand speculative system which alone could justify the withdrawal into this illusion of the lost equality and righteousness. It raised the concrete sufferings of his days to the rarified atmosphere of a metaphysical principle of uni- versal suffering, along with a magnificient but equally rarified explanation of it. It was here - in evolving a thoroughly consistent illusion suited to the age-that the contemporary prophets of the Buddha really failed. Makkhali Gosala, as we shall see, could never overcome the feeling of an overwhelming inevitability behind the appalling historic transformations. He saw niyati or fate in everything. Shocked by the unscrupulous massacre of the same Vajjians, whose social organisation was proclaimed by the Buddha as ideal for the brethren of his Order, Gosala became a raving lunatic and died one. Others, like

486 LOKAYATA

Purana Kassapa, thought it utterly futile to try to distinguish between right and wrong, holy and unholy. Ajita Kesakambali talked cynically of the meaninglessness of morality and meta- physics. Pakudha Kaccayana saw only barrenness in every- thing. Sanjaya Belatthiputta thought one world-outlook as bad as any other. These were the philosophies of frustration and futility. Barring Mahavira, - whose success, though not as great as that of the Buddha, was nevertheless due to his comparative ability of evolving a proper illusion of the epoch - these were the major prophets of the Buddha's times. It is therefore no wonder that, as narrated in the Samanna Phala Sutta,99 none of them could successfully justify the life of the recluse or explain the positive benefits thereof. Only the Buddha could do it. Because only he could evolve the illusion of the epoch, wonderful in its in- ternal consistency. Thus, the success of the Buddha can be understood only in the background of the failures of his con- temporaries. And it is in his samghas that we find the key to his success. We have already seen wherein the Buddha found the model for his samgha. But how thoroughly did he imitate his model? To answer this question, we need discuss three crucial problems. These relate to (1) the procedure of entry into the Order, (2) the internal administration of the Order, and (3) the personal or private property within the Order. The main source here is the Vinaya Pitaka; but our main guide for understanding the text is Morgan's classical study of ancient society. In tribal society, one's initiation as a full member of the tribe is preceded by a ritual or ceremony, the essence of which is the simulation of death and rebirth. The young dies as young and is reborn as a full-fledged member of the tribe. This is initiation. . In the ancient religions we come across relics of this ritual, though without its original purposiveness. As Thomson100 remarked, social institutions rendered obsolete by economic progress find a sanctuary in religion. Thus, for example, in the Aitareya Brahmana,101 we come across this death-and-rebirth mime in meticulous detail. Admission to the Buddhist Order presupposed the per- formance of what are called the pabbajja and upasampada ceremonies. These were the two steps towards full-fledged

90 Ib. i. 70. 100 SAGS i. 66. 101 Keith RVB 103.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 487

membership of the Order, the former being the lower and pre- paratory to the latter.

Pabbajja (pravrajya) means 'going out'; and by this ceremony one goes out from a prior state of life ... Upasampada means 'arrival,' and is the entry into the circle of the fully accredited members of the samgha.102

Excepting that the candidate here had to shave his head and change into the yellow robe, there was not much in these to resemble the death-and-rebirth mime either in its tribal or in its petrified, i.c., religious form. Instead of this the most prominent feature, particularly of the upasampada, was an elaborate method of obtaining the sanction of all the full-fledged members of the samgha for getting the candidate admitted into it. The tribal initiation does not presuppose such popular sanc- tion. Being essentially a kinship organisation, the claim to its membership is determined by descent. The Buddhist samgha was not a kinship organisation. Its membership could not be determined by descent. In short the procedure of admission into the samghas could not be modelled on the tribal initiation. This the Buddha knew well. On what did he model it then? This can be answered by raising a further question: How is membership granted in tribal society when the candidate is not a natural kin? It is by adoption, which is always preceded by an extraordinarily elaborate democratic procedure. 'Among the Iroquois,' said Morgan,103 'the ceremony of adoption was performed at a public council of the tribe, which turned it practically into a religious rite.' Morgan had first- hand knowledge of this procedure as he was himself adopted by the Hawk clan of the Seneca tribe.104 This is how he des- cribed the procedure:105

After the people had assembled at the council house one of the chiefs made an address giving some account of the person, the reason for his adoption, the name and gens of the person adopting, and the name bestowed upon the novitiate. Two chiefs taking the person by the arms then marched with him through the council house and back, chanting the song of adoption. To this the people responded in musical chorus at the end of each verse. The march continued until the verses were ended, which required three rounds. With this the ceremony concluded

102 ERE vii. 319. 104 EB xv. 802. 103 AS 80-1. 105 AS 81n.

488 LOKAYATA

Morgan has not given us the text of the verse. Evidently, these were designed to obtain the popular approval. We mav now consider the Buddhist ceremony and see whether the Iroquois one can throw any light on it. The Mahavagga106 of the Vinaya Pitaka gives us the main data. Here are some passages:

Then the Blessed One thus addressed the Bhikkhus: ' ... I prescribe, O Bhikkhus, that you confer the upasampada ordination by a formal act of the Order in which the announcement (natti) is followed by three questions. 'And you ought, O Bhikkhus, to confer the upasampada ordina- tion in this way: Let a learned, competent Bhikkhu proclaim the following natti (announcement of a resolution) before the samgha: 'Let the samgha, reverend sirs, hear me. This person N.N. desires to receive the upasampada ordination from the venerable N.N. (i.e., with the venerable N.N. as his upajjhaya). If the samgha is ready, let the samgha confer on N.N. the upasampada ordination with N.N. as upajjhaya. This is the natti. 'Let the samgha, reverend sirs, hear me. This person N.N. desires to receive the upasampada ordination from the venerable N.N. The Samgha confers on N.N. the upasampada ordination with N.N. as upajjhaya. Let any one of the venerable brethren who is in favour of the upasampada ordination of N.N. with N.N. as upajjhaya, be silent, and any one who is not in favour of it, speak.

(etc. as before). 'And for the second time I thus speak to you: Let the samgha ...

(etc. as before). 'And for the third time I thus speak to you: Let the samgha ...

'N.N. has received the upasampada ordination from the samgha with N.N. as upajjhaya. The samgha is in favour of it, therefore it is silent. Thus I understand.'107

Later, as the samghas began to develop, certain new problems inevitably arose, necessitating new rules to be observed during the upasampada ceremony.108 However, its essential character as an imitation of the tribal adoption was never lost. The following way of obtaining the sanction of the samgha always remained the final act of the procedure:

Then let a learned, competent Bhikkhu proclaim the following natti before the samgha: 'Let the samgha, reverend sirs, hear me. This person N.N. desires to receive the upasampada ordination from the venerable N.N .; he is free from the Disqualifications; his alms- bowl and robes are in due state. N.N. asks the samgha for the upasampada ordination with N.N. as upajjhaya. If the samgha is ready ... (etc. as before).'109 Such a procedure of adoption gives us some idea of the kind

106 i. 28; i. 76. 108 Ib. xiii. 151-238. 107 SBE xili. 169-70. 109 Ib. xiii. 233

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 489

of democracy the Buddha was trying to enforce within the samghas. This becomes clearer when we consider the general rules concerning their internal administration. That the constitution of the samghas was ultra-democratic, is a point already noted by some of our scholars. Majumdar observed:

The general assembly of the monks constituted the sovereign authority and the procedure of its meetings was laid down with minute exactness .... In the first place, all the fully ordained Bhikkhus in a community were members of the assembly. Every one of them, unless incapacitated for some offence by way of penalty, had a right to vote. No meeting was legal unless all the members entitled to vote were either present, or being absent, formally declared their consent. A minimum number of members that must be present in order that the act may be legal, or, in other words, the rules of a quorum are laid down in the Mahavagga .... The assem- bly having duly met, the mover had first to announce to the assem- bled Bhikkhus the resolution he was going to propose; this announcement was called natti. After the natti followed the questions (kammavaca) put to the Bhikkhus present if they approved of the resolution. The question was put either once or three times .... 110

by the samgha? And then what happened if the resolution was not ruled out

After the resolution was formally put before the samgha once or thrice, as the case might be, it was automatically passed, if the members present kept silent. In case any one spoke against it and there was a difference of opinion, the decision of the majority pre- vailed. Regular votes were taken, and a taker of votes was formally appointed by the samgha for this purpose.111 The Buddhist samghas did indeed have an ultra-democratic constitution. But such a democratic constitution was not an innovation of the Buddha; it was simply imitation of the tribal democracies. Jayaswal, albeit his misunderstanding as to the real meaning and nature of the samghas or ganas, emphasised this point clearly. The Buddha was born in a republican people. He had samgha neighbours around him, and he grew up amongst them. He called the community which he founded bhikkhu samgha, or the Repub- lic of the Bhikkhus. He, probably following his contemporary teachers, adopted the name as well as the constitution of the politi- cal samgha in founding his religious samgha.112 The Buddha, as Jayaswal showed, introduced the method

110 CLAI 310-1. 111 Ib. 312. 112 HP i. 45.

490 LOKAYATA

of counting the members of his Order precisely on the lines of the samghas or ganas, At that time the people asked the Bhikkhus who went about for alms: 'How many Bhikkhus are there, reverend sirs?' The Bhikkhus replied, 'We do not know friends.' The people were annoyed, murmured, and became angry: 'The Sakyaputtiya Samanas do not even know each other; what good things clse will they know?' They told this thing to the Blessed One. 'I prescribe, O Bhikkhus, that you count the Bhikkhus.' Now the Bhikkhus thought: 'At what time ought we count the Bhikkhus?' They told this thing to the Blessed One. 'I prescribe, O Bhikkhus, that you count (the Bhikkhus) on the day of uposatha by the method of ganas (ganamaggens ganetum) or that you take the voting tokens (salaka).113 The crucial point is the use of the words ganamaggena ganctum, correctly understood by Jayaswal as counting. on the system employed in a gana. Here is an interesting example of the democratic procedure actually observed in the Buddha's own tribe, a procedure which the Buddha was evidently imitating for his samghas. When the king of Kosala besieged the capital of the Sakyas and the ques- tion of surrender had to be decided upon, they assembled to- gether to ascertain the opinion of the majority:

So the king sent a messenger to the Sakyas, saying 'Sirs, al- though I have no fondness for you, yet I have no hatred against you. It is all over; so open your gates quickly.' Then the Sakyas said, 'Let us all assemble and deliberate whether we shall open the gates.' When they had assembled, some said, 'Open them,' others advised not doing so. Some said, 'As there are various opinions, we will find

subject.114 out the opinion of the majority.' So they set about voting on the

Examples in the Vinaya Pitaka are illustrative of the Bud- dha's concern for inner-samgha democracy. Here are some: At that time the Chabbaggiya Bhikkhus performed official acts in the following ways: they performed unlawful acts before an in- complete congregation; .. they performed seemingly lawful acts before a complete congregation; they performed acts without a natti and with the proclamation (of the kammavaca); they performed acts without a proclamation of the kammavaca) and with the natti; they performed acts without a natti and without a proclamation (of the kammavaca); they performed acts contrary to the dhamma; they performed acts contrary to the Vinaya; they performed acts contrary to the doctrine of the Teacher; and they performed acts against which (the Bhikkhus present) protested, which were unlawful, objectionable, and invalid. Those Bhikkhus who were moderate, were annoyed, etc. These

113 Mahavagga ii. 18. 114 Rockhill LB 118-9.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 491

Bhikkhus told this thing to the Blessed One. 'Is it true, as they say, O Bhikkhus, that the Chabbaggiya Bhikkhus ... etc?' 'It is true, Lord, etc .... ' Having thus rebuked them and deliver- ed a religious discourse, he thus addressed the Bhikkhus: 'If an official act, O Bhikkhus, is performed unlawfully by an incomplete congregation, it is no real act and ought not to be per- formed etc ... If an official act, O Bhikkhus, is performed against which (the Bhikkhus present) protest, which is unlawful, objec-

performed. tionable, and invalid, this is no real act and ought not to be

'There are, O Bhikkhus, six kinds of official acts (which a samgha can perform); an unlawful act, an act performed by an incomplete congregation, an act performed by a complete congre- gation, a seemingly lawful act performed by an incomplete congre- gation, a seemingly lawful act performed by a complete congrega- tion, a lawful act performed by a complete congregation. 'And which, O Bhikkhus, is an unlawful act? If one performs, O Bhikkhus, a nattidutiya act with one natti, and does not proclaim a kammavaca, such an act is unlawful. If one performs, O Bhikkhus, a nattidutiya act with two nattis and does not proclaim a kamma- vaca ... with one kammavaca and does not propose a natti ... with two kammavacas and does not propose a natti, such an act in un- lawful. 'If one performs, O Bhikkhus, a natticatuttha act with one natti and does not proclaim a kammavaca, such an act is unlawful. If one performs, O Bhikkhus, a natticatuttha act with two ( ... three,

unlawful. If one performs, O Bhikkhus, a natticatuttha act with one ... four) nattis and does not proclaim a kammavaca, such an act is

kammavaca ( ... with two, . three, ... four kammavacas) and does not propose a natti, such an act is unlawful. Such acts, O Bhikkhus, are called unlawful acts. 'And which, O Bhikkhus, is an act of an incomplete congre- gation? 'If, O Bhikkhus, at a nattidutiya act not all Bhikkhus, as many as are entitled to vote, are present, if the chanda (i.e., declaration of consent of an absentee) of those who have to declare their chanda has not been conveyed (to the assembly), and if the Bhikkhus pre- sent protest, such an act is performed by an incomplete congregation. 'If. O Bhikkhus, at a nattidutiya act as many Bhikkhus as are entitled to vote, are present, but if the chanda of those who have to declare their chanda has not been conveyed (to the assembly), and if the Bhikkhus present protest, such an act is performed by an in- complete congregation. 'And which, O Bhikkhus, is an act of a complete congregation? 'If, O Bhikkhus, at a nattidutiya act as many Bhikkhus as are entitled to vote, are present, if the chanda of those who have to declare their chanda has been conveyed (to the assembly), and if the Bhikkhus present do not protest, such an act is performed by a complete congregation.

section). 'If, O Bhikkhus, at a natticatuttha act ... (etc., as in last

'Such acts, O Bhikkhus, are called acts performed by complete congregations. 'And which, O Bhikkhus, is a seemingly lawful act performed by an incomplete congregation? 'If, O Bhikkhus, at a nattidutiya act the kammavaca is proclaim-

492 LOKAYATA

ed first and the natti is proposed afterwards, if not all Bhikkhus, as many as are entitled to vote, are present ... (etc., the six cases given in this paragraph, of which three refer to nattidutiya acts and three to natticattuttha acts, differ from those specified above only by the statement added in each of these cases regarding the inverted order of natti and kammavaca). 'And which, O Bhikkhus, is a seemingly lawful act performed by a complete congregation? 'If, O Bhikkhus, at a nattidutiya act the kammavaca is proclaim- ed first and the natti is proposed afterwards, if as many Bhikkhus as are entitled to vote, are present ... (etc. this paragraph stands precisely in the same relation to the paragraph on an act of a com- plete congregation in which the preceding one stands to the paragraph on an act of an incomplete congregation).

congregation? 'And which, O Bhikkhus, is lawful act performed by a complete

'If, O Bhikkhus, at a nattidutiya act the natti is proposed first and afterwards the act is performed with one kammavacaka, if as many Bhikkhus as are entitled to vote, are present, if the chanda of those who have to declare their chanda has been conveyed (to the assembly), and if the Bhikkhus present do not protest, such an act is lawful and performed by a complete congregation. 'If, O Bhikkhus, at a natticatuttha act the natti is proposed first and afterwards the act is performed with three kammavacas, if as many Bhikkhus as are entitled to vote, etc., such an act is lawful and performed by a complete congregation.115 Passages like these have a special interest for us. Readers may look up Jayaswal's work116 for more cxamples. While there are a number of admirable studies117 on the constitution of tribal organisations in Buddhist India, direct historical evidence are meagre. But if the Buddha was really modelling his samghas on the principles of the tribal organisations, the samgha-laws should, conversely, enable us to infer a great deal about the nature of the tribal organisations themselves. Early tribal society was not only democratic but also com- munistic. There was no such thing in it as private or individual ownership of property. But how far did the Buddha go in ensuring these communistic principles of property relations within the samghas? Majumdar observed: the individual in the Buddhist Church was merged in the cor- The same relation between the individual and the corporation is brought out by the general presumption in the Bud- poration.

dhist Cannon Law that everything belongs to the samgha and not to any individual monk, and that the latter can only possess that which has been specifically alloted to him .... Even when things were allowed to Bhikkhu for personal use, they were considered as the property of the samgha. It is perfectly in keeping with this

115 SBE xvii. 265-8. 116 HP i. 103-17. 117 Rhys Davids BI ch. ii; Turnour in JASB vii. 993ff.

SAMCHA AND NIYATI 493

doctrine that on the death of a Bhikkhu, the Samgha became the owner of his property.118 It would be tedious to quote the long passages of the Bud- dhist texts which are the basis of this observation. In fact, the whole series of the 'pachittiya offence involving forfeiture'119 was based on a clear communistic view of property relations. This will be evident from the comment of Rhys Davids and Olden- berg on the rules: The following rules, most of which have long ago fallen into abeyance, depend in great measure upon communistic customs of the ancient fraternity ... At the end of the vassa period (rainy sea- son) the samgha, or community of brethren in any place, was accustomed to give over to some one of the Bhikkhus such store of robes as it possessed; and it should here be observed that no Bhikkhu had a separate personal ownership over his robes, though nominally given to him for his own use, and really his own subject to the rules, they were, technically speaking, the property of the whole samgha. The Bhikkhu above referred to then spread the store of robes out to dry; and afterwards satisfied out of it the wants of any brother whose robes, through the dampness of the season or other causes, had become spoiled.120 It is evident that the Buddha felt strongly against private property within the Order. This was but logical. The tyranny of pain from which he sought an escape, as he was never tired of repeating, was caused by greed that he witnessed all round him. The power of private property, the Buddha knew, lay at the root of this greed. He was powerless to reform the society, but within the Order - the ideal samgha - his power was supreme. He would not permit it to be dictated by the power of gold. Whatsoever Bhikkhu shall receive gold or silver, or get someone to receive it for him, or allow it to be kept in deposit for him-that is a pacittiya offence involving forfeiture. Whatsoever Bhikkhu shall engage in any one of the various transactions in which silver is used-that is a pacittiya offence involving forfeiture.121 The remedies suggested have their own interest : The guilty Bhikkhu has to give up the gold or silver to the community (samgha) .. Then when an aramika or an upasaka comes, it is to be given to him, to buy ghee or oil with it for the samgha; and whatever is bought is the common property of all the samgha, save the guilty Bhikkhu. Should the layman object to undertake the spending of the gold or silver, he is to be asked to throw it away. Or, if this cannot be managed, then, as a last resource some Bhikkhu is to be formally appointed Bullion-remover,

118 CLAI 316-8. 120 Ib. xiii. 18n. Italics added. 119 SBE xiii. 18. 121 Ib. xiii. 26.

494 LOKAYATA

and he is to go and throw it away somewhere, without making any mark at the place.122 More examples like this123 are there. We have already secn how scholars like Rhys Davids and Oldenberg found it necessary to use the words 'communistic custom' to refer to the rules con- cerning the role of property within the Order. Even Majum- dar124 spoke of the 'communistic theory of property' of early Buddhism. What is not discussed, however, is: Wherefrom did the Buddha get such a theory and why did he lay so much emphasis on it?

8. A RELIGION WITHOUT GOD

'The family, as well as God,' said Thomson, 'goes hand in hand with private property'.125 As far as early Buddhism is concerned, it is remarkable that with hardly any respect for private property, it did not reveal any sort of faith in God. The Buddha, like his contemporary Mahavira126 of the Licchavi tribe, not only did not believe in God, but offered a series of arguments against His existence. But this point needs a little clarification. The following comment of Gaden127 will show that modern scholars are not unanimous in attributing conscious atheism to the Buddha: It is probably an erroneous view of the original teaching of Gautama Buddha which explains his attitude as entirely and of set purpose atheistic; as construing the universe in a materialistic sense, and denying the existence of a God. That he interpreted the universe in the sense indicated is in all probability true; and his views in this respect were derived from the ancient doctrine of the Sankhya philosophy, which in India professed to explain everything in terms of soul and matter (purusa and prakriti), and to have no need for the intervention of a divine power. The latter view. how- ever-that the founder of Buddhism intended to give expression to distinctly atheistic views seems to be a mistaken inference from the response which he is recorded in the Buddhist books to have given to the questioning of his disciples with regard to another world, and his refusal to offer any definite instruction on the spiri- tual and unseen, or to illuminate, with any ray of light which he was competent to give, the uncertainty and darkness of the unknown realm that lay beyond the touch of sense. It is difficult to reconcile the two aspects of this comment. If the Buddha did accept the materialism of original Sankhya,

122 Ib. 124 CLAI 319. 123 Cullavagga vi. 15. 126 Dasgupta HIP i. 203ff. 125 Thomson SAGS i. 85. 127 ERE vi. 269-70.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 495

he must have as well adopted the unquestioned atheism of the system, atheism being a natural corollary of the material- istic view of the universe. However, Gaden's doubt arose from a different circumstance altogether. The actual redaction of the sacred books of Buddhism, as we possess these, took place many centuries after the Buddha. This circumstance raises the question, how far can we rely on these texts as representing the actual views of the Buddha himself. As regards the authenticity of the anti-theistic arguments, how- ever, the situation is even worse. For these are not found even in the early canonical literatures. We first come across these in as late a text as the Buddhacarita of Asvaghosa (first century A.D.). In the earlier texts, we find the Buddha maintaining an inexplicable silence on questions concerning God and the other world. Modern scholars have interpreted the significance of this silence in various ways. Gaden128 offered the following: The inference, however, that he intended to imply personal dis- belief in the supernatural and in the existence of a God, and to urge or enjoin this upon his disciples, is certainly mistaken ... The posi- tion which it was his purpose to adopt was neither atheistic, nor, in the strict sense of the term, agnostic. But for his hearers it was immaterial whether the reply were in the affirmative or negative; and speculation on the subject was discouraged or forbidden, lest it should impair or destroy that firm spirit of self-reliance which it was his object to arouse in their hearts ... He simply refuses to communicate to his disciples knowledge which he judges to be need- less for practical life, and the consideration of which would only minister to a harmful curiosity anxious to speculate on matters beyond human ken. It is not difficult to see how such an interpretation of the Buddha's silence is based on a rather light view of a really cru- cial question. Since our prophet repeatedly announced himself as fully enlightened, and even omniscient - the tathagata or the buddha - there is no reason to imagine that he was himself in any doubt as to the question of God. If, in spite of this, he con- sidered it superfluous for his disciples to speculate on God, it only proves that he did not himself have any belief in God. It was not possible for one to believe in God and yet to consider His existence as something irrelevant to human destiny. It is true that the Buddha always strove to make his disciples concentrate on the practical problem of emancipation from misery and con- sidered metaphysical discussions as self-deceptions. Never- theless, he did formulate the minimum theoretical basis for this

128 Ib. vi. 270.

496 LOKAYATA

practical programme and, as we shall presently see, God had absolutely no place in it. This shows that the Buddha himself could not have maintained a neutral attitude to the existence of God. Evidently, he did not want his disciples to waste time and energy speculating on the non-existent. It is from this point of view that the other scholars attribut- ed to the Buddha a consciously atheistic attitude. 'Buddhism,' said Vallee Poussion,199 'in so far as it is a philosophic system, is radically averse to the idea of a Supreme Being - of a God, in the Western sense of the word.' He rightly points out that in Buddhism the principle of karma played the part ordinarily attributed to the Supreme Being. But, as a general rule, retribution for deeds is believed to operate automatically by reason of an energy called the indestructi- ble, and the system is therefore atheistic because it does away with the thought of a personal Being who would scrutinise 'the book of debts' of which their treatises sometimes speak.130 Thus, apart from the silence of the Buddha, the very struc- ture of his philosophy made belief in God a superfluous exercise. We can thus reasonably assume that Asvaghosa, in the Buddhacarita, remained true to the original teachings of the Buddha in attributing to him a series of anti-theistic arguments. These arguments might not have been personally expounded by the Buddha himself; nevertheless, these must have followed from his original teaching as the necessary corollaries thereof. Here are some examples:

If the world had been made by God, there should be no change nor destruction, there should be no such thing as sorrow or calamity, as right or wrong, seeing that all things, pure and impure, must come from Him. If sorrow and joy, love and hate, which spring up in all conscious beings, be the work of God, He Himself must be capable of sorrow and joy, love and hatred, and if He has these, how can He be said to be perfect? If God be the maker, and if all beings have to submit silently to their maker's power, what would be the use of practising virtue? The doing of right or wrong would be the same, as all deeds are His making and must be the same with their maker. But if sorrow and suffering are attributed to another cause, then there would be something of which God is not the cause. Why, then, should not all that exist be uncaused too? Again, if God be the maker, He acts either with or without a purpose. If He acts with a purpose, He cannot be said to be all perfect, for a purpose necessarily implies satisfaction of a want. If He acts without a purpose, He must be like the lunatic or suckling babe. Besides, if God be the maker, why should not people reverently submit to Him, why should they offer supplications to Him when sorely pressed

129 ERE ii. 183. 130 Ib.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 497

by necessity? And why should people adore more gods than one? Thus the idea of God is proved false by rational argument, and all such contradictory assertions should be exposed.131

The Buddha, according to the Buddhacarita, followed the same line of argument to disprove the possible existence of 'the absolute, the unconditioned, the unknowable behind all appearances:' Said the Blessed One to Anathapindika: 'If by the absolute is meant something out of relation to all known things, its existence cannot be established by any reasoning (hetu vidya sastra). How can we know that anything unrelated to other things exists at all? The whole universe, as we know it, is a system of relations: we know nothing that is, or can be, unrelated. How can that which depends on nothing and is related to nothing produce things which are related to one another and depend for their existence upon one another? Again, the absolute is one or many. If it be only one, how can it be the cause of the different things which originate, as we know, from different causes? If there be as many different absolutes as there are things, how can the latter be related to one another? If the absolute pervades all things and fills all space, then it cannot also make them, for there is nothing to make. Further. if the absolute is devoid of all qualities (nirguna), all things arising from it ought likewise to be devoid of qualities. But in reality all things in the world are circumscribed throughout by qualities. Hence the absolute cannot be their cause. If the absolute be consi- dered to be different from the qualities, how does it continually create the things possessing such qualities and manifest itself in Again, if the absolute be unchangeable, all things should be unchangeable too, for the effect cannot differ in nature from the them?

cause. But all things in the world undergo change and decay. How then can the absolute be unchangeable? Moreover, if the absolute which pervades all is the cause of everything, why should we seek liberation? For we ourselves possess this absolute and must pati-

absolute.'182 ently endure every suffering and sorrow incessantly created by the

It is not our purpose here to assess the logical merit of these anti-theistic arguments. What interests us, primarily, is the question how the Buddha could, in the face of this unambigu- ous denial of the existence of God, initiate such a powerful religious movement? Defining religion as essentially a belief in God, some of the modern theologians133 have naturally found it difficult to explain this peculiar phenomenon, namely, Buddhism as a religion without God. Obviously, the essence of religion is to be sought elsewhere. Marx184 explained the essence of religion thus:

"Man makes religion, religion does not make man ... But man

131 Radhakrishnan IP i. 456 n. 183 Martineau SR i. 1-2. 132 Ib. i. 457 n. 134 Marx & Engels OR 41-2. L-32

498 LOKAYATA

is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man, the state, society. This state, this society, produce religion, a reversed world-consciousness, because they are a reversed world. Religion is the general theory of that world, its encyclopaedic com- pendium, its logic in a popular form, its spiritualistic point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn completion, its univer- sal ground for consolation and justification Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusions about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions. The criticism of religion is therefore in embryo the criticism of the vale of woe, the halo of which is religion. We have here all the clues not only to the success of the Buddha but also to the failures of his contemporary prophets. The age of the Buddha was an age when, as a result of the development of the forces of production, the northern regions of India were witnessing the rise of ruthless state-powers on the ruins of the tribal societies. Trade and war were creating un- heard of miseries in the lives of the peoples; the greed for private property knew no bounds. Nevertheless, the productive forces were not developed enough to provide plenty for all. Rather, the further development of the productive forces, which alone could eventually lead to real happiness, must have then pre- supposed a more ruthless form of exploitation and all the mise- ries it entailed. Under these circumstances, 'the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions' was historically absurd. The other alternative, - in fact the only possible one at the time - was to create the right type of illusion for the epoch -'its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn completion, its uni- versal ground for consolation and justification.' And the Buddha did evolve it, - 'the spirit of a spiritless situation.' In the Theragatha,135 Sunita narrated the story of his con- version:

I have come of a humble family, I was poor and needy. The work which I performed was lowly, sweeping the withered flowers .. I was despised of men, looked down upon and lightly esteemed. With submissive mien I showed respect to many. Then I beheld the Buddha with his band of monks, as he passed, the great hero, into the most important town of Magadha. Then I cast away my burden and ran to bow myself in reverence before him. From pity for me. he halted, that highest among men. Then I bowed myself at the Master's feet, stepped up to him and begged him, the highest among

135 Oldenberg B 157.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 499

all beings, to accept me as a monk. Then said unto me the gracious Master, the compassionator of all worlds: 'Come hither, O monk'. That was the initiation which I received. In the Therigatha,136 again, Mutta, the daughter of a poor Brahmin of Kosala who, on coming of age, had been given to a hunchbacked Brahmana, sang in exaltation of her own release the embrace of Buddhism brought her: O free, indeed! O gloriously free Am I in freedom from three crooked things: From quern, from mortar, from my crookback'd lord! Ay, but I'm free from rebirth and from death, And all that dragged me back is hurled away. Sumangalamata,137 too, sang of her freedom: O woman well set free! how free am I, How thoroughly free from kitchen drudgery! Me stained and squallid 'mong my cooking-pots My brutal husband ranked as even less Than the sunshades he sits and weaves away. Purged now of all my former lust and hate, I dwell, musing at ease beneath the shade Of spreading boughs-O, but 'tis well with me. These are only a few stray instances of the 'sigh of the oppressed creatures, the heart of a heartless world.' But early Buddhism was actually so in a much deeper sense. It fostered a sense of equality and dhamma among a people cruelly deprived of these in their actual existence. This is borne out not merely by an analysis of the organisational principles of the samghas but also by the very theoretical basis of early Buddhism.

. 9. THE THEORETICAL BASIS Observed Kern:138

When the Buddha had taken possession of the seat of full en- lightenment, he evolved from within two formulas, ever since revealed by him to all beings, and represented as the fundamental truths of his teachings. These formulas are the four arya satyas and the twelvefold pratitya samutpada. The four arya satyas are commonly referred to as the Four Noble Truths. These were connected with the problem of suffering. The pratitya samutpada was an exposition of the chain of causes and effects meant to lay bare the roots of evil. 'It is not difficult to see,' added Kern,139 'that these four

136 Mrs Rhys Davids PEB i. 115. 188 MIB 46. 137 Ib. i. 25. 139 Ib. 46-7.

500 LOKAYATA

satyas (truths) are nothing else but the four cardinal articles of Indian medical science, applied to the spiritual healing of mankind.' Again, the pratitya samutpada 'stands to the four satyas in the same relation as pathology to the whole system of medical science.' Kern referred to a passage of the Lalita Vistara showing that this 'connection of the arya satyas with medical science was apparently not unknown to the Buddhists themselves. The Buddha looked upon the sufferings of his age as a sick- ness, a disease. In suggesting the remedy, he even wanted to proceed according to the principles of the medical science of his times. However, even though he announced himself a tathagata, we do not expect him to have diagonised the real social roots of the disease, i.e. to have analysed the tremendous historic trans- formations going on before his eyes: why the stupendous pro- gress in the productive technique was bringing with it the most awful human miseries and moral degradations. Historically speaking, what was left for him was to transform the real pro- blem into an ideal one, to interpret the objective phenomenon in subjective terms; in short, to produce 'a reversed world- consciousness.' The result was the transformation of the mass misery of the age into a metaphysics of misery. Early Buddhism. thus, became the most perfect illusion of the epoch.

Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or seeming motive forces. Because it is a process of thought; he derives its form as well as its content from pure thought, either his own or that of his predecessors. He works with mere thought mate- rial, which he accepts without examination as the product of thought, and does not investigate further for a more remote source in- dependent of thought; indeed this is a matter of course to him, because, as all action is mediuted by thought, it appears to him to be ultimately based upon thought.140 Every epoch has its false consciousness which, in fact, be- comes the major illusion of that epoch.141 The false consciousness underlying early Buddhism became the ideology - the illusion par excellence - of the age of the Buddha. It is from this point of view that we propose to review the four arya satyas as well as the doctrine of the pratitya samutpada. According to the Mahavagga, which 'contains the oldest version accessible to us now and, most probably, for ever, of

140 Marx & Engels SC 541. 141 Thomson SAGS ii. 342ff.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 501

what the Buddhist fraternity deemed to be the history of their Master's life in its most important period,'142 the Buddha, before he came on the scene with his message of redeeming the world of miseries, withdrew himself from the actual world, 'sat cross- legged at the foot of the hodhi-tree (the tree of knowledge)

cipation.'1433 nninterruptedly during seven days, enjoying the bliss of eman-

According to the text, the Buddha, before he set out to preach his doctrine, repeated four times this feat of the seven days' withdrawal from the real world.144 Evidently, this is how he derived his ideas, from 'pure thought.' The Dhamma Cakka Pavattana Sutta confirmed the point: That this was the noble truth concerning sorrow, was not, O Bhikkhus, among the doctrines handed down, but there arose with- in me the eye, there arose the knowledge, there arose the under- standing, there arose the wisdom, there arose the light. And, again, O Bhikkhus, that I should comprehend that this was the noble truth concerning sorrow, though it was not among the doctrines handed down, there arose within me the eye, there arose the knowledge, there arose the understanding, there arose the wisdom, there arose the light. And again, O Bhikkhus, that I had comprehended that this was the noble truth concerning sorrow, though it was not among the doctrines handed down, there arose within me the eye, there arose the knowledge, there arose the understanding, there arose the wis- dom, there arose the light.145 And so on. The text repeated the same thing over each of the four noble truths. However, the fact that everything about these nrya satyas was concerned with the tryranny of suffering, and further, that these truths were formulated at a critical period of history which actually witnessed the tyranny of the state-power and private property and the fact that people around him were actually floating on the ocean of misery, shows that the real motive force that impelled the Buddha to formulate these truths did not arise from pure thought. He saw the power of wealth and the insatiable greed it created. He saw his great friend King Bimbisara starved to death by prince Ajatasattu. He saw the throne of Kosala washed by the blood of his own kinsmen. Proud as he always was of his own tribal heritage, the new phe- nomena around him pained and appalled him. In short, the problem he was trying to solve did not arise from his own thoughts. Yet he was hardly exaggerating when he said that there arose within him 'the cye, the wisdom, the light'; how- 142 SBE xiii. 73 n. 114 Oldenberg B 114. 4: Ib. xiii. 74. 145 SBE xi. 150-1.

502 LOKAYATA

ever, this applied only to the solution he suggested. For he withdrew within himself for an explanation of suffering and the path that led to a cessation of it. The Four Noble Truths, as explanied by him in his famous Sermon at Banaras, ran thus: This, O monks, is the sacred truth of suffering: Birth is suffer- ing, old age is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering; to be united with the unloved is suffering, to be separated from the loved is suffering; not to obtain what one desires is suffering; in short the five-fold clinging (to the earthly) is suffering. This, O monks, is the sacred truth of the origin of suffering: it is the thirst (for being), which leads from birth to birth, together with lust and desire, which finds gratification here and there: the thirst for pleasures, the thirst for being, the thirst for power. This, O monks, is the sacred truth of the extinction of suffering: the extinction of this thirst by complete annihilation of desire, let- ting it go, expelling it, separating oneself from it, giving it no room. This, O monks, is the sacred truth of the path which leads to the extinction of suffering. It is this sacred eight-fold path, to wit: Right Faith, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Living, Right Effort, Right Thought, Right Self-concentration. This is the sacred truth of suffering. Thus my eye, O monks, was opened to those conceptions, which no one had comprehended before, and my judgment, cognition, intuition, and vision were opened. 'It is necessary to understand this sacred truth of suffering.' 'I have comprehended this sacred truth of suffering.' Thus, O monks, my eye was opened to these conceptions, which no one had compre- hended before, and my judgment, cognition, intuition, and vision were opened. (Similar passages regarding the other three truths ).14G This is how the Buddha gave a completely subjective turn to the most oppressive problems of his age; he raised the con- crete material sufferings of his fellow beings to a universal principle of eternal suffering, a kind of ideal or metaphysical suffering: The pilgrimage (samsara: earthly existences) of beings has its beginning in eternity. No opening can be discovered, from which proceeding, creatures, mazed in ignorance, fettered by a thirst for being, stray and wander. What think ye, disciples, whether is more, the water which is in the four great oceans, or the tears which have flown from you and have been shed by you, while ye strayed and wandered on this long pilgrimage and sorrowed and wept, because that was your portion which ye abhorred and that which ye loved was not your portion? A mother's death, a father's death, or brother's death, or sister's death, a son's death, a daughter's death, the loss of relations, the loss of property, all this have ye experienced through long ages, and while ye experienced this through long ages, more tears have flown from you and have been shed by you, while ye strayed and wandered on this long pilgrimage, and sorrowed and wept, because that was your portion which ye abhorred, and that which

146 Oldenberg B 128-9.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 503

ye loved was not your portion, than all the water which is in the four great oceans.147 Bcfore such a story of the beginningless, fabulous and fan- tastic misery, the actual miseries arising from the new social conditions paled into insignificance. The cause of this univer- sal, metaphysical misery was not to be sought in the material world. For the cause had to be equally metaphysical and the Buddha found it in the very craving for existence - the will to be born, the thirst for being. But he could not stop therc. In order to evolve a religion proper, an ideal protest against the actual conditions, the Buddha had to move further forward with a message of deliverance from misery. He proclaimed that the sufferings could be overcome and that there was a definite way out. But what could be the way out while misery was the pre- condition of existence itself? It was here that the objective reality left its indirect stamp on the teachings of the great Master. He did not suggest self-annihilation. He did not suggest any kind of ascetic self-mortification, which he had al. ways looked upon as 'painful, unworthy and unprofitable.1 Instead he suggested the revival, though ideally, of the simple morality of the gentile society. He spoke of right faith, right resolve, right speech, right action, right living, right effort, right thought, right self-concentration - values, as we can easily judge from the Jatakas, which were being ruthlessly undermined in contemporary society. And the Buddha presumably knew how futile it was to talk of practising all these in the world he lived in. So he asked the people to take the pabbajja and the upasam- pada ordinations, i.e. 'to go out' of the actual society and 'to arrive at' the life of the samghas. Within the samghas things were different. Modelled on the pre-class society, these alone could offer the scope for practising the instinctive morality of the tribal life. The samghas, as classless societies within the bosom of the class society, were but ideal substitutes for the vanished realities. This explains how the conception of the samghas fitted so well with the general metaphysics of suffering: the two together made the illusion complete. The Buddha went into some details over his second noble truth, namely, the cause of suffering. It is not difficult to see why he felt the necessity for doing so. The question concerning the cause of suffering remained the Achilles' Heel of his whole metaphysics of suffering. The basis of such an imposing super- 147 Ib. 216-7. 148 SBE xi. 147 .

504 LOKAYATA

structure would have crumbled down had he failed to argue convincingly that the real cause of the actual sufferings was to be sought somewhere outside the concrete material world. Other- wise the people would have taken recourse to violence in- stead. Thus it was necessary for the Buddha to fortify his second noble truth as securely as possible. This led him to formulate the other fundamental of his theoretical teachings, the doctrine of the pratitya samutpada. In the Mahavagga the doctrine was summed up thus:

Then the Blessed One during the first watch of the night fixed his mind upon the chain of causation, in direct and in reverse order: 'From ignorance (avidya) spring the samkharas (productions), from the samkharas spring consciousness, from consciousness spring name-and-form, from name-and-form spring the six provinces (of the six senses), from the six provinces springs contact, from contact springs sensation, from sensation springs thirst (desire), from thirst springs attachment, from attachment springs existence, from exis- tence springs birth, from birth spring old age and death, grief, lamentation, suffering, dejection and despair. Such is the origination of this whole mass of suffering. Again, by the destruction of igno- rance, which consists in the complete absence of lust, the samkharas are destroyed, by the destruction of the samkharas consciousness is destroyed, by the destruction of consciousness name-and-form are destroyed, by the destruction of name-and-form the six provinces are destroyed, by the destruction of the six provinces contact is des- troyed, by the destruction of contact sensation is destroyed, by the destruction of sensation thirst is destroyed, by the destruction of thirst attachment is destroyed, by the destruction of attachment existence is destroyed, by the destruction of existence birth is des- troyed, by the destruction of birth old age, death, grief, lamentation, suffering, dejection and despair are destroyed. Such is the cessation of this whole mass of suffering.149 Thus, with all his express distate for metaphysical specu- lations, the Buddha laid the foundation for a grand system of speculative metaphysics. And like all systems of metaphysics, it also created a halo in the brightness of which all the details of felt experience lost their reality and meaning. The ultimate cause of all human sufferings was traced to avidya or ignorance, i.e. the sufferings became the phantom of imagination. The problem was solved simply by removing it from the realm of reality.

10. THE BUDDHA AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

Said Basham:150

Throughout the Pali canon the teaching of the Buddha and the

149 Ib. xiii. 75-8. 150 HDA 10.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 505

activities and discipline of his Order are contrasted with the doc- trines and practices of six other teachers and their followers who are represented as the Buddha's contemporaries, and were doubtless. like the Buddha himself, inspired by the wave of dissatisfaction with the system of orthodox Brahmanism, which seems to have swept over the Ganges valley in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. This is true, with one important reservation. That Bud- dhist India was swept by dissatisfaction is a fact. It is also a fact that the Buddha along with all his contemporaries pro- tested against it though in different ways. But the cause attri- buted to it by Basham is not true. How far the picture of the Gangetic valley being invaded by 'orthodox Brahmanism' corres- ponded to actual reality might itself be an open question. How far, again, this orthodox Brahmanism caused great popular dis- satisfaction is still more conjectural. The Jatakas and the carly canonical literatures fail to provide any clear picture of these. This does not mean that the Buddha did not concern himself with orthodox Brahmanism or that he did not preach against it. In the Ambattha Sutta he argued against the caste-system, in the Kutadanta Sutta against animal sacrifice, and in the Tecijja Sutta against the knowledge of the three Vedas. However, a compre- hensive survey of the canonical literatures as a whole distinctly shows that all these presented only subsidiary problems for him, or more properly, appeared to him to be but ineffectual solutions to the great problem with which he was so much obsessed. The great problem was rather that of the 'sea of human suffering, 'of human tears becoming more colossal than all the waters of the four great oceans put together.' The Buddha never suggested that 'orthodox Brahmanism' was at the root of it nor did the great bulk of the Jataka stories reveal a social reality of the tyranny of 'orthodox Brahmanism.' The fact is that the spread of 'ortho- dox Brahmanism,' whatever it might have concretely meant, had often served our historians as a convenient hypothesis that en- abled them to avoid a really objective or materialistic analysis of the historical factor - the rise of class society with all its rutl- lessness. We have tried to argue how this is crucial for the understanding of the success of the Buddha. Conversely, the same method should help us to understand the failure of his contemporaries. Excepting Mahavira, whose success was practically negli- gible compared to that of the Buddha, the prophets and philo- sophers of the Buddha's times were but failures. The clue. to this is to be found in a peculiar characteristic of the transition

506 LOKAYATA

from the pre-class to the class-divided society, namely an ap- pearance of spontaneity and a complete lack of consciousness of this transition: In the socialist revolution the development of the new relations of production and productive forces is not a spontaneous process, as under capitalism, but takes place consciously. Going still further back to the transition from ancient society to feudalism, it could be shown that feudal relations developed even less consciously, more spontaneously than capitalist relations in the ensuing epoch; and in the transition from primitive communism to ancient society the same feature can be observed to an even greater degree.151 One of the consequences of this spontaneity and lack of con- sciousness must have been the sheer impossibility of understand- ing the real nature and cause of the change on the part of those who wanted to understand it. The philosophers of the Buddhist India wanted to under- stand the universe, i.e. the world they were living in. This uni- verse must have appeared to them as peculiarly baffling because the human relations in it were already topsyturvy. They saw the ancestral institutions falling down to pieces and giving place to the new forces of injustice and untruth. The development of the productive power,132 which was at the root of all these changes, must have been imperceptible to them, or, if perceived at all, must have appeared as having no connection with the human degradations which was all that they saw. Yet thev wanted to understand the reality and the result was a bewilder- ing cluster of frustrated ideas. Only the Buddha avoided this, not because he had found the right answer to the real question but because he found the right illusion - the right religion - to replace reality. Probably the Buddha himself understood this, though in his own way. When the news of the death of Mahavira was brought to him by Cunda and he was told that the followers of Mahavira had already started fighting among themselves, he commented: To what extent, Cunda, there now are teachers arisen in the world, I cannot discern any teacher, who has attained to such a leading position in renown and support as I have. To what extent, Cunda, there now are Orders and companies arisen in the world, I cannot discern any one that has attained to such a leading position in renown and support as the Order of the Bhikkhus. If any one, in describing a religion as in every way successful, in every respect complete, neither defective nor redundant, well set forth in all its full extent, were to be speaking rightly, it is this religion that he would be describing.158 151 Thomson SAGS ii. 179. 152 Kosambi ISIH ch. vi. 158 Rhys Davids DB iii. 118.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 507

It would be wrong to look at this as mere bragging. He offered definite reasons to consider his religion to be in every respect complete. He said that unlike his contemporaries, he wanted his followers to turn away from 'opinions concerning the beginning and hereafter of things"154 and concentrate exclusively on the methods of transforming the subjective states: A new doctrine, Cunda, do I teach for subduing the mental in- toxicants that are generated even in this present life. I teach not a doctrine for the extirpating of intoxicants in the future life only, but one for subduing them now and also for extirpating them in the after-life.155 By 'thus subduing the mental intoxicant,' he added, one were to be led to 'unworldliness, to passionlessness, to cessation, to peace, to higher knowledge, to enlightenment, to nibbana.'156 Thus, at a period of history when there was no objective possibility of understanding the causes of human sufferings nor any scope to suggest the real remedy, the Buddha turned to the only possible solution, namely subduing the mental intoxicants. If this was not possible in the world at large, it. was certainly possible within the samghas, the classless colonies founded by him. The contemporaries of the Buddha failed, because they did not follow this path. In a sense, they were trying to achieve the impossible. They raised questions concerning 'the beginning and hereafter of things. In short, instead of taking refuge in an illusion they were trying to understand the reality. This is the clue to their philosophies of frustration. Of the contemporaries of the Buddha, we hear particularly of six philosophers: Purana Kassapa, Ajita Kesakambali, Pakudha Kaccayana, Sanjaya Belatthiputta, Makhhali Gosala and Nigantha Nathaputta. The last was the name of Mahavira, the leader of the Jainas. We do not have the scope here to discuss Jainism. But we shall discuss Makkhali Gosala separately and in greater detail; his failure, in life and teachings, formed the most dra- matic contrast to the success of the Buddha. We may review here briefly the other four contemporaries of the Buddha. The Samanna Phala Sutta of the Digha Nikaya contained the longest and the most detailed account of their teachings, introduced in the course of a narrative. The Blessed One was once dwelling at Rajagaha in the mango-grove of Jivaka, the

154 Ib. iii. 129, 130. 155 Ib. iii. 121. 156 7b. iii. 122, 123.

508 LOKAYATA

children's physician of King Ajatasattu. At that time, King Ajatasattu was seated, on a full moon day, on the upper terrace of his palace, surrounded by his ministers. The King asked them, 'Who is the recluse or Brahmana whom we may call upon tonight, who, when we call upon him, shall be able to satisfy our hearts?'157 One after another six of his ministers came forward, each suggesting the name of one of the contemporaries of the Buddha. Each is described in the same stock terms, a formula applied else- where to the six heretics in the Pali canon. The phrases have a certain importance since they at least indicate the celebrity and in- fluence which the early Buddhist tradition attributed to the six teachers.158 Each was described as the 'head of an Order, of a following. the teacher of a school, well known and of repute as a sophist, revered by the people, a man of experience, who has long been a recluse, old and well stricken in years.'159 But the king remained silent to all these suggestions. Jivaka was sitting quietly near the king and the king asked him, 'But you, friend Jivaka, why do you say nothing?' Jivaka then suggested the name of the Buddha: 'Let your Majesty pay a visit to him. It may well be that, on calling upon him, your heart, Sire, will find peace.' 'Then, friend Jivaka,' said the king, 'have the riding elephants made ready.' Jivaka got five hundred she-elephants made ready and also the state-elephant the king was wont to ride. Then the king had five hundred of his women mounted on the she- elephants, one on each; and himself mounted the state-elephant; and he went forth, the attendants bearing torches, in royal pomp. from Rajagaha to Jivaka the physician's mango grove.100 On reaching the mango grove, the king saw the Buddha with his assembly of monks, 'seated in perfect silence, calm as a clear lake.' Then the king bowed to the Blessed One, and stretching forth his joined palms in salutation to the Order, begged the Buddha to be allowed to ask a question. 'Ask, O king,' said the Buddha, whatsoever you desire.' The king asked: There are, Sir, a number of ordinary crafts: mahouts, horsemen, charioteers, archers, standard bearers, camp marshalls, camp fol- lowers, high military officers of royal birth, military scouts ... All these enjoy in this very world, the visible fruits of their craft .... Can you, Sir, declare to me any such immediate fruit, visible in this very world, of the life of a recluse?161

157 Ib. i. 66. 158 Basham HDA 11. 100 Ib. i. 67. 159 Rhys Davids DB i. 66. 161 Ib. i. 68-9.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 509

The Buddha asked, 'Do you admit to us, O king, that you have put the same question to the other recluses or Brahmanas?' The king admitted to have done that and, being questioned by the Buddha, repeated the answers he already received from the six contemporary philosophers. The answers were peculiar because none of these was really a pointed one. Instead of explaining the benefits of the life of a recluse, all of them expounded only the fundamentals of their philosophy. As Ajatasattu himself commented:

Thus, Lord, did Purana Kassappa, when asked what was the imme- diate advantage in the life of a recluse, expounded his theory of non-action. Just, Lord, as if a man, when asked what a mango was, should explain what a bread fruit is, just so did Purana Kassapa, when asked what was the fruit, in this present state of being, of the life of a recluse, expounded his theory of non-action.162 This irrelevance was significant. The question was simple enough. The teachers must have understood it. Evidently, there was no real answer from their points of view: none of them could think of any real advantage in the life of a recluse. That this was actually so becomes clear when we analyse the philo- sophies they expounded. Ajatasattu summed these up as follows: The philosophy of Purana Kassapa To him who acts, O king, or causes another to act, to him who mutilates or causes another to mutilate, to him who punishes or causes another to punish, to him who causes grief or torment, to him who trembles or causes others to tremble, to him who kills a living creature, who takes what is not given, who breaks into houses, who commits dacoity, or robbery, or highway robbery, or adultery, or who speaks lies, to him thus acting there is no guilt. If with a discus with an edge sharp as a razor he should make all the living creatures on the earth one heap, one mass of flesh, there would be no guilt thence resulting, no increase of guilt would ensue. Were he to go along the south bank of the Ganges striking and slaying, muti- lating and having men mutilated, oppressing and having men op- pressed, there would be no guilt thence resutling, no increase of guilt would ensue. Were he to go along the north bank of the Ganges giving alms, and ordering gifts to be given, offering sacrifices or causing them to be offered, there would be no merit thence resulting, no increase of merit. In generosity, in self-mastery, in control of the senses, in speaking truth there is neither merit, nor increase of merit.163 The philosophy of Ajita Kesakambali There is no such thing, O king, as alms or sacrifice or offering. There is neither fruit nor result of good or evil deeds. There is no

162 Ib. i. 70. 163 Ib. i. 69-70.

510 LOKAYATA

such things as this world or the next. There is neither father nor mother, nor beings springing into life without them. There are in the world no recluses or Brahmanas who have reached the highest point, who walk perfectly, and who having understood and realised by themselves alone, both this world and the next, make their wisdom known to others. A human being is built up of the four elements. When he dies the earthly in him returns and relapses to the earth, the fluid to the water, the heat to the fire, the wind to the air, and his faculties pass into space. The four bearers, on the bier as a fifth, take his dead body away; till they reach the burning-ground men utter forth eulogies, but there his bones are bleached, and his offerings end in ashes. It is a doctrine of fools, this talk of gifts. It is an empty lie, mere idle talk, when men say there is profit therein. Fools and wise alike, on the dissolution of the body, are cut off, annihilated, and after death they are not.164 The philosophy of Pakudha Kaccayana The following seven things, O king, are neither made nor com- manded to be made, neither created nor caused to be created, they are barren (so that nothing is produced out of them), steadfast as a mountain peak, as a pillar firmly fixed. They move not, neither do they vary they trench not one upon another, nor avail aught as to ease or pain or both. And what are the seven? The four elements -earth, water, fire and air-and ease, and pain, with life (jiva) as the seventh. So there is neither slayer or causer of slaying, hearer or speaker, knower or explainer. When one with a sharp sword cleaves a head in twain, no one thereby deprives any one of life, a sword has only penetrated into the interval between seven elemen- tary substances.105 The philosophy of Sanjaya Belatthiputta If you ask me whether there is another world-well, if I thought there were, I would say so. But I don't say so. And I don't think it is thus or thus. And I don't think it is otherwise. And I don't deny it. And I don't say there neither is, nor is not, another world. And if you ask me about the beings produced by chance; or whether there is any fruit, any result, of good or bad actions; or whether a man who has won the truth continues, or not, after death-to each or any of these questions do I give the same reply.100

This is how the views of the four contemporary philosophers of the Buddha were summed up in the Samanna Phala Sutta. It is nonetheless impossible to be certain either about the per- sonalities or their exact philosophical views. Other Buddhist and Jaina texts give us conflicting information about both. We are indebted to Barua,167 Malalasekera168 and Basham169 for collecting and analysing all these.

164 Ib. i. 73-4. 160 Ib. i. 75. 165 Ib. i. 74. 167 PBIP 277-332. 168 DPPN i. 37-8; ii. 89-90; ii. 242-3; ii. 999-1000. 169 HDA 10-26.

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It is doubted whether we can at all call these philosophers the contemporaries of the Buddha. Some of the texts referred to them as belonging to an earlier period while others implied that they came much later than the Buddha. According to the Mahabodhi Jataka,170 the Buddha, in his previous births, refuted the views of Purana, Makkhali, Pakudha, Ajita and Nigantha, the five heretical councillors of King Brahma- datta of Banaras; the implication evidently is that they were much older than the Buddha himself. This appears to be further corroborated by the Samyutta Nikaya,171 which reported King Pasenadi telling the Buddha that he was a young novice com- pared to Ajita. Again Barua,172 by identifying Pakudha Kacca- yana of the Samanna Phala Sutta with Kakudha Katyayana of the Prasna Upanisad, argued: We have reason even to doubt if King Ajatasattu could have the opportunity to meet the teachers, considering that he usurped the throne of Magadha only eight years before the Buddha's death. On the other hand, it is manifest from Udayi's statement that the memory of these teachers became a thing of the past even in the life time of the Buddha. However, on the apparent merit of another text called the Milinda Panha, all these philosophers belonged to a much later date than that of the Buddha. The text recorded a dialogue supposed to have taken place between a Buddhist teacher and Menander (Milinda), the Greek King who from B.C. 125-95 ruled over the Indus territory, Gujarat and the valley of the Ganges.173 In this text,174 the six philosophers of the Samanna Phala Sutta were mentioned as contemporaries of King Milinda, which, if true, implied that the philosophers were much later than the Buddha. However, our modern scholars are not inclined to take the evidence of the Milinda Panha very seriously. 'The interview of King Milinda alluded to in the Milinda Panha,' said Barua,175 'is evidently the outcome of a naive plagiarism on the part of a later Buddhist writer.' 'The whole account,' added Malala- sekera,176 'is either a plagiarism of the Samanna Phala Sutta or else the teachers referred to only belonged to the same respective schools of thought.' It is difficult to take the second alternative suggested by Malalasekera seriously because it cannot be proved 170 Jataka v. 246. 171 i. 68 173 ERE viii. 87. 172 PBIP 281 175 PBIP 281. 174 Basham HDA 21. 176 DPPN ii. 80.

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that all the schools represented by the six philosophers survived so many centuries after the Buddha. Thus the account in the Milinda Panha could only be a plagiarism of the Samanna Phala Sutta and as such cannot prove that these philosophers came much later than the Buddha himself. If the text placing these philosophers at such a later date was untrustworthy, the other texts placing them at a much earlier period were no less so. First, there is no ground to choose one Jataka story as possessing greater historic authenticity than the canonical literatures. Secondly, the passage of the Mahabodhi Jataka describing the views of these philosophers 'are in part paraphrases of the Samanna Phala Sutta passages."177 Besides, the same tendency to represent the views of the contemporary philosophers of the Buddha by paraphrasing the passages of the Samanna Phala Sutta is found in the other Buddhist texts. Thus, in the Sandaka Sutta of the Majjhima Nikaya, Ananda described the four antithesis to the higher life. Of these, the first was a word-for-word transcription of the philosophy of Ajita Kesa- kambali as represented by the Samanna Phala Sutta, the second was a repetition of Purana's doctrine, the third was practically the same as the doctrine of Makkhali Gosala and the fourth was a curious blend of the doctrines of Pakudha and Makkhali as described by the Samanna Phala Sutta.17% Of course, the philo- sophers were not mentioned here by names; nevertheless, there seems to be no doubt that the author of the Sandaka Sutta wanted to look at the Samanna Phala Sutta as providing the standard descriptions of the contemporary philosophers of the Buddha, or perhaps, the authors of both the texts were drawing upon a common source. The same may be said about some other Bud- dhist texts.179 Thus the general authenticity of the Samanna Phala Sutta in placing the six philosophers as contemporaries of the Buddha cannot be very easily questioned. Besides, the in- clusion of Nigantha Nathaputta180 (Mahavira) and Makkhali Gosala may be considered as the most decisive evidence of the authenticity of the text in this matter because, these two repre- sentatives of Jainism and Ajivikaism respectively, are histori- cally known to have been actual contemporaries of the Buddha. Even assuming that Purana, Ajita, Pakudha and Sanjaya were really the contemporaries of the Buddha, very little is actually known about their personal lives. According to

177 Basham HDA 18. 179 Ib. 20. 178 Ib. 18-9. 180 SBE xlv. intro. xx-xxi.

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Buddhaghosa,181 Purana Kassapa was a runaway slave. It was to his slavery that he owed the name Purana: he completed (purana) the century of slaves in the household that owned him. Later, he ran away from his masters and went about naked because his clothes were stolen by thieves. This brief informa- tion about the personal life of the philosopher is questioned by our modern scholars on the ground that Kassapa was a gotra name distinctive of the Brahmanas and as such Purana must have been the son of a Brahmana rather than a born-slave. As Barua182 argued, Apparently this (Buddhaghosa's account) is not true. for, as his name shows, Kassapa was born in a Brahmana family. The true significance of the Pali epithet purana seems to be that Kassapa claimed to have attained perfect wisdom (purana jnana), or that his disciples believed that he was replete with perfect wisdom. Such an argument is based on a lack of sociology supple- mented by pure imagination. Kassapa was indeed an important gotra name among the Brahmanas; but the gotra name did not necessarily imply Brahmanical descent. Even among the Brahmanas, this gotra was a relie of the tortoise totem and among the backward peoples definitely outside the circle of the Brah- manas the same gotra, with a similar totemic origin, was not un- common in the past as it is not so even today. Thus the gotra name Kassapa did not prove that Purana was a Brahmana, and therefore, could not have been a slave. Barua's alternative inter- pretation of the name Purana (from purna jnana - full know- ledge), again, is fictitious. If we are to trust the Buddhist sources, we cannot say that the claim to omniscience was made by Purana alone; others made the same claim. Thus, it may seem rather peculiar that a general claim like this gave a specfiic name to only one philosopher of the age. The other source of our knowledge of the personal life of Purana is the Dhammapada Commentary.183 If Buddhaghosa's Sumangala Vilasini tells us of the degradation of slavery that Purana suffered in his early life, the story of the Dhammapada Commentary indicates his tragic end presumably because of his failure to stand up as the prophet of the age. The Buddha was going to perform a twin-miracle under a mango-tree called the Gandamba. The contemporary prophets of the Buddha tried their best to prevent him from doing it.

181 Sumangala Vilasini i. 142. 182 PBIP 277. 183 Malalasekera DPPN ii. 243. cf. Basham HDA 84ff. L-32

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But they failed. And when the Buddha actually performed the miracle, these other prophets fled in discomfiture and shame. Among them was Purana Kassapa. In the course of his flight, he came across one of his own followers, a farmer, who was going to see Purana with a vessel of broth and a rope. Purana took the vessel and the rope, went to the bank of a river, tied the vessel round his own neck and drowned himself. He was afterwards reborn in Avici, one of the purgatories specially de- signed for those who committed very grievous crimes. The legend may not be true in the form in which it is told. But we cannot reject it altogether either. It is conceivable that the story was fabricated around a core of historic truth. It is quite possible that the Buddhist author was presenting here the real account of Purana's suicide, though with a Buddhist bias and a fascination for the miraculous. And if the story of Purana's suicide was true, the cause assigned to it, namely his failure and frustration, was not necessarily false. Such a life of total maladjustment from beginning to end - of a slave who tried to escape slavery only to destroy himself by drowning - may throw some light on the credo attributed to him. It was the credo of total moral collapse and consequent futility of all human endeavours. There was no distinction be- tween the virtuous and the vicious, the saint and the sinner, the noble and the ignoble. Action was futile and human endeavour totally meaningless: liberalism, self-control, abstinence and honesty were as futile as slaying, maiming, torturing and causing others to be slain and tortured. The logical corollary of such a feeling of futility and frustration was ahetu vada or akriya vada, attributed to Purana in the Buddhist and Jaina texts,184 _the doctrine that it was impossible to explain any phenomenon by a rational cause and that human efforts were ineffectual. Such a philosophy reflected a world that appeared to the philosopher to have lost rational justification for anything within it. Practically nothing is known about the personal lives of Ajita, Pakudha and Sanjaya. Even Buddhaghosa did not help us much in this matter. He told us, for example, that Ajita got his name Kesakambali (lit., one who wears a blanket of human hair) because he wore blankets woven of human hair: it was the most miserable of all garments, being cold in cold weather and hot in hot, evil-smelling and uncouth.185 Of Pakudha, the only

184 Barua PBIP 278-9. 185 Sumangala Vilasini i. 144.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 515

information that Buddhaghosa gave us is that he suffered from many obsessional rituals with regard to the use of water: he avoided cold water, using only hot water and when he could not get it hot, he went without washing altogether; if he crossed a stream, which he thought was a sin, he would make expiation by constructing a mould of earth.186 Of Sanjaya's personal life, Buddhaghosa told us nothing. Is Sanjaya the same person as Sanjaya the Paribbajaka (the original teacher of Sariputta and Moggallana) of whom Malalasekera187 wrote? It is said that when those two disciples left Sanjaya to become pupils of the Buddha, they were joined by two hundred and fifty others. Sanjaya then fainted and hot blood issued from his mouth. It might have been the story of the tragic end of another frus- trated person. But we do not have the right to claim that Malalasekera was referring here to the same person. Although we have no authentic account of the lives of Ajita, Pakudha and Sanjaya, we can form a fairly accurate pic- ture of the deep sense of spiritual misery and frustration suffered by them from their respective personal credos. Barua gave us the impression of being very eager to discover the parallels of early Greek philosophy in the views of Pakudha, Sanjaya and Ajita. Pakudha,188 he said, 'cannot be denied his rightful claim to be singled out as the Empedocles of India.' Sanjaya, according to him, was the Pyrrho of the Buddhist India: In all these points the disciples of Sanjaya are at one with the disciples of Pyrrho, notably Timon. Sanjaya, like Pyrrho, raised scepticism to a scientific doctrine, and thus prepared the way for a critical method of investigation in philosophy.189 Similarly, Ajita's position in Indian philosophy was exactly the same as that of Epicurus in early Greek philosophy; like Epicu- rus he was greatly misunderstood by his contemporaries as well as posterity: 'As a matter of fact, both Ajita Kesakambali of India and Epicurus of Greece were good men at heart, lovers of simple living and high thinking.'190 There is no doubt that Barua had to distort the views of both the Indian and the Greek philosophers to suit his peculiar thesis. His comparisons, far from helping us to understand the real position of the contemporaries of the Buddha, lands us only in confusions and contradictions. We may skip over the details

186 Ib. 187 DPPN ii. 1000. 189 Ib. 327-8. 188 PBIP 283. 190 Ib. 290.

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and concentrate on what appears to be the most serious limitation in Barua's treatment of these philosophers. He wanted to look upon Pakudha, Ajita, Sanjaya and others as individual philo- sophers in the Greck or modern sense. But how erroneous is this approach is evident from Basham's observations on this point:191 There is no need to accept the view which, both implicitly and explicitly, is to be found in Dr. B. M. Barua's Prc-Buddhistic Indian Philosophy, that these men were philosophers or theologians in a modern sense. Rather it seems probable that in the sixth century B.c. the mental life of India was in ferment, and was permeated by a mass of mutually contradictory theories about the universe and man's place therein, some verging on the bizarre in their fanciful- ness, others more capable of a logical justification. What Basham has overlooked - but what becomes quite evident from the data he himself has collected - is that the Bud- dhist and the Jaina sources repeatedly indicated that as far as their credos were concemed these philosophers had but little or no individuality. A doctrine attributed to one in a certain reference was attributed to another in a different context and this was done so often that the cumulative effect is that of a conglomeration of certain amorphous world-views shared almost indiscriminately by the contemporaries of the Buddha and Maha- vira. The mutual contradictions in these views, referred to by Basham, will not seem so serious, if we remember that this clu- ster of world-views as a whole was characterised by a deep sense of futility and moral collapse. The contemporaries of the Buddha were thus basically the philosophers of futility, though the metaphysical basis of this sense of futility was often vague, obscure and even bizarre. We may examine some examples. Purana, as we have just seen, subscribed to akriya vada, the view of the futility of human endeavour. Both the Buddha and Mahavira attributed the same view to Pakudha Kaccayana. However, what Pakudha offered over and above the akriya vada of Purana was only an attempted metaphysical basis of it. This is evident from Barua's192 own observations: The question may perhaps be asked, why is it that Mahavira and the Buddha considered Kaccayana's doctrine to be a doctrine of non-action (akriya vada)? With regard to this question, we can- not do better than examine the ethical bearing of his metaphysical speculation. If the elements of being be eternally existent and un- changeable by their very nature, if they mechanically unite and separate by Pleasure and Pain, inherent in each of them, if there be,

191 HDA 12. 192 PBIP 286.

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in other words, no volitional activity of consciousness, then where is the ground for the conception of or distinction between good and bad, between knowledge and ignorance, and so forth? From a lite- ral interpretation of his expressions it at once follows that in reality there is no act of killing or hearing or knowing or instructing. If this be true, then the views of Purana and Pakudha can- not be treated separately: the latter was only trying to supply a metaphysical basis for the moral paralysis of the former. How- ever, Barua's own understanding of this metaphysical basis is not beyond question. Pakudha did not really speak of the elc- ments mechanically uniting and separating by the inherent forces of Pleasure and Pain; such an interpretation only shows the author's anxiety to make an Empedocles of Pakudha. Pakudha's ground for denying any distinction between the good and the bad was different. Barua himself spoke of a literal in- terpretation of Pakudha's expressions. Assuming the expressions attributed to him by the Samanna Phala Sutta to be genuine, we have a different ground for this akriya vada of Pakudha. The actual word used by him was 'barren' (vanjha in Pali, same as vandhya in Sanskrit). Pakudha, thus, saw only barrenness in everything: earth, water, fire, air, joy, sorrow, life - all the seven categories that he admitted appeared to him to be simply barren, and in this sense, 'as firm as mountains, as stable as pillars.' If we are at all justified in speaking of any modern parallel of this, it is to be found in the poetry of the frustrated post-war world: 'Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit.' In any case, Pakudha himself did not leave us in the dark as to what he meant by this barrenness. It was a barrenness from the point of view of human enterprise, or more particularly, of moral enter- prise. It was only a callous world - a world indifferent to good and evil, reckless to death and destruction - that was reflected in the metaphysical basis of Pakudha's akriya vada: nothing was productive of the good or the holy and in this sense everything was dry and sterile. It was a philosophy of 'the wasteland, the cactus land,' a philosophy of negativism and meaninglessness, frustration and futility. At the same time there was a pronounced leaning towards the materialistic point of view in the world-outlook attributed by the Samanna Phala Sutta to Pakudha Kaccayana. He did not speak of God, soul and the other world - in fact nothing that could be called a spiritual principle. All the seven categories admitted by him were concretely material and this-wordly. This materialistic leaning was but a heritage of the primitive world-

518 LOKAYATA

outlook in the philosophy of Pakudha, a leaning much more pronounced in the philosophy of Ajita Kesakambali. It was this materialism of Ajita which led Barua193 and Basham194 to argue that he 'must have been the forerunner of the later Carvakas.' Whether this was historically true is a different question. What is beyond doubt, however, is the uncompromising materialism of Ajita's philosophy. Practically, all the writers1% on Ajita have emphasised this materialism. What they have not emphasised, however, is an- other feature of his world-outlook, by far the most important from the point of view of our argument. Like the other con- temporaries of the Buddha and Mahavira, Ajita, too, was taking a desparately gloomy view of human existence. He was no less a philosopher of futility and moral collapse than Purana Kassapa and Pakudha Kaccayana. Perfection in wisdom and conduct, claimed by certain recluses and Brahmanas of his times, appear- ed to him to be only stupid self-deceptions. 'It is a doctrine of fools, this talk of gifts. It is an empty lie, mere idle talk, when men say there is profit therein.' For everything led to death, and beyond death there was nothing. Again, if modern parallels are at all permissible, what Ajita propounded was only a philo- sophy of the graveyard. Even in the fragmentary passage attri- buted to him by the Samanna Phala Sutta, Ajita was obsessed with the image of death. If the philosophy attributed to Sanjaya in the Samanna Phala Sutta did not give any direct expression to this sense of futility, the whole thing might have been the same, though in the intellectual sphere. He would not make any statement what- soever because it was as futile as any other. Intellectual convic- tion, in any form, was hollow and meaningless. It was thus a philosophy of total mental chaos - a typical product of the age. To sum up: the views attributed by the Samanna Phala Sutta to Purana, Pakudha, Ajita and Sanjaya were expressions of a deep sense of frustration, though expressed in different ways and with differences in the metaphysical basis. It is doubtful how much importance can be attached to these differences them- selves. The Buddhist and the Jaina texts attributed aspects of all these to the different philosophers almost indiscriminately. Basham19G has already examined this question exhaustively and he has prepared an interesting list of how the different sources

193 Ib. 288. 195 Dasgupta HIP iii. 521. 194.HDA 17. 196 HDA 22-3.

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attributed different shades of opinions to the same philosopher in different contexts and how, again, the same views were attri- buted to the different philosophers without any regard either for discernment or accuracy. Now granting that the different sour- ces were drawing upon the same tradition, we have little justi- fication in looking at the views of the different philosophers as distinct from each other: the total implication is rather that of a cluster of amorphous philosophies shared indiscriminately by these philosophers, the dominant tone of this cluster as a whole being a deep sense of frustration and human ineffectuality. We are going to argue that the clearest and by far the most coherent expression of this tendency was to be found in the life and teach- ings of Makkhali Gosala, another contemporary of the Buddha and the leader of the Ajivika sect.

11. THE PHILOSOPHY OF FATE Thanks to the recent exhaustive researches of Basham we are now in possession of a connected account of the life and teachings of Makkhali Gosala. We shall broadly follow him in our discussion of Gosala's philosophy of niyati or fate. Basham has argued that the views of at least Purana, Pakudha and Gosala cannot be treated separately for, in all pro- bability, these might have originally formed part of a single body of doctrine: In certain other passages of the Pali canon the distribution of doctrines among the six teachers is significantly altered, in a way which strongly suggests that the credos ascribed in the Samanna Phala Sutta to Makkhali, Purana and Pakudha were aspects of a single body of teaching.197 This 'single body of teaching,' according to Basham, was the central credo of the Ajivikas, i.e., the followers of Makkhali Gosala. And what was their central credo? Basham198 has pointed out that the fundamental 'slogan' of the Ajivikas was: natthi purisakare (lit., human effort is ineffectual). If this was so, there could have been nothing positive or definite to exclude Ajita and Sanjaya from the company of Purana, Pakudha and Makkhali. For there was nothing in their doctrines that went against this slogan. Rather, as described in the Samanna Phala Sutta, Sanjaya's doctrine was precisely that of human ineffectuality in so far as any intellectual enterprise was concerned, and Ajita argued that the actions commonly con- 197 Ib. 18. cf. 80ff. 198 Ib. 9.

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sidered good were meaningless nonsense. Besides, as Basham19" pointed out, the second part of the doctrine attributed in the Samanna Phala Sutta to Makkhali was also attributed to Ajita in the Dulva, the Tibetan Buddhist scripture, and the first part to Purana by other texts. Thus it might not have been impossible that the views of Ajita and Sanjaya, too, belonged to the same circle of ideas which Basham considered to be a 'single body of teaching.' of which the credos ascribed to Purana, Pakudha and Makkhali were but aspects. Be that as it may. There is no doubt that among the con- temporaries of the Buddha and Mahavira, Makkhali Gosala was by far the most important philosopher. Besides, the personal life of Makkhali was full of dramatic elements which might throw important light on his philosophy of niyati. Two stories of the birth of Makkhali Gosala have come down to us. One of these was told in the Jaina text, Bhagavati Sutra, while the other in Buddhaghosa's commentary on the Samanna Phala Sutta. There are important similarities between the two stories. In the Bhagavati Sutra,21 Mahavira was made to narrate the story of Makkhali's birth. His father, according to Maha- vira, was a mankha named Mankhali. Nothing can be said with certainty as to the meaning of the word mankha. Hoernle thought that the word did not mean anything particular. Basham argued otherwise. 'Hemacandra, in his commentary on the Abhidhana Cintamani, equates it with magadha, a bard. Makkhali's father could have been a roving bard, not at all un- common in those days. That he was actually one, was suggested by the story of the Bhagavati Sutra. Makkhali's mother was called Bhadda. With Makkhali in her womb she, along with her husband, came to a place called Saravana (lit., a thicket of reeds). There dwelt a very wealthy person called Gobahula (lit., one possessing a large number of cows). Bhadda was left by her husband in the cowshed ( gosala) of Gobahula as he went to find some place in the village to live in. But he could not find any such place. The couple continued to live in a corner of the cowshed and it was there that Bhadda gave birth to Makkhali. Being the son of a mankha called Mankhali, the child got his name Makkhali, and being born in the cowshed (gosala) he was also called Gosala.

199 Ib. 22-3. 200 Ib. 35.

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Buddhagosa201 tacitly agreed with this story about Makkhali Gosala by implying that the name arose from the circumstance of being born in the cowshed. According to him, however, the name Makkhali came from another circumstance. Gosala was a slave who tried to run away from his slavery. One day he was walking with a pot of oil over a patch of muddy ground. His master shouted at him. 'Don't stumble, old fellow' -tat ma khal iti. But Gosala was careless and spilt the oil. Apprehending the master's fury he started running. The master gave chase and managed to get a hold on the slave's robe (dasakanna). Gosala left the robe behind and ran away naked. After that he became a naked mendicant. He acquired the name Makkhali from the last words of his master's caution: 'ma khal.' This explanation of how Gosala got the name Makkhali is hardly credible. But Basham wanted to reject the story out- right: This story is a patent fiction constructed, probably by Buddha- ghosa himself, to provide an etymology for the names of the Ajivika leader, to account for his nudity, and to pour scorn on his order by attributing to him a servile origin.20" However, in default of any decisive evidence to the contrary, such an outright rejection of the entire story can hardly be justi- fied. The presumption rather is that because these are the only two stories that have come down to us on the birth of Makkhali Gosala, both the Buddhist and the Jaina texts contained im- portant elements of truth, though these must have been grossly misrepresented by their authors because of their hostility to the Ajivikas. To deny this is to surrender all hopes of reconstructing the earlier part of the life-history of Gosala, for the Ajivika tra- dition itself preserved nothing about it. Thus it is quite con- ceivable that Gosala was actually born in a cowshed, that he was a slave who tried to run away from his slavery and that his father was one of the roving bards or mankhas of the days. Gosala himself became a roving bard, a profession which, according to the Jaina source,208 he renounced later under the influence of Mahavira. For the middle period of Gosala's life, again, we have to depend upon the Jaina sources, particularly the Bhagavati Sutra. But we cannot do so uncritically because the main purpose of

201 Ib. 37. 202 1b. 203 Ib. 50.

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these sources was to ridicule and belittle Gosala. However, these tales, disparaging though they may be, give us the im- portant information that Gosala remained for many years a close associate of Mahavira and that he tried his very best to acquire ascetic powers. But he failed to gain any real sense of fulfil- ment in all these. He had to break away from Mahavira, leaving the master extremely bitter. The Jaina sources explained this by attributing all sorts of personal motives to Gosala. But the real reasons, as evidenced by the information preserved about the last days of Gosala, were different. Life, as he found it in his days, was too difficult to endure and even the remedy offered by asceticism and Mahavira's religious system failed to be a satisfactorv palliative. The sensitive poet, the roving bard, had a complete nervous collapse and he died a delirious lunatic. The Jaina sources had to, in their own interests, attribute this nervous breakdown to Gosala's repeated defeats and ex- posures in the hands of Mahavira. Nevertheless, it does not mean that these sources have nothing important to say of the last days of Gosala. As a matter of fact, the Bhagavati Sutra, in describ- ing the last delirium of Gosala, retain for us a clue which is crucial. In the course of this delirium, Gosala proclaimed a list of 'eight finalities,'204 the sixth and the seventh of which were: 'The last sprinkling scent-elephant' (carime seyanae gandha- hatti) and 'The last battle with large stones' (carime mahasila- kantae sangame). Both these finalities have more significance than is apparent. Both referred to Ajatasattu's campaign against the Vajjians. This point has already been elaborately argued by Hoernle and Basham.205 The Niravalika told the story of a splendid rutting elephant that sprinkled water on the ladies of the Magadhan court while they were bathing. It was the 'scent-sprinkling elephant.' King Bimbisara made a gift of it, along with a priceless necklace, to his younger son Vehalla. Ajatasattu, on ascending the throne, demanded these treasures of Vehalla. Vehalla refused, but knowing the consequences of his refusal, he fled with the treasures to his maternal uncle Cedaga, the chief of the Licchavis, i.e., the most important tribe in the confederacy of the Vajjians. Ajatasattu attacked the Licchavis and a fierce battle broke out. This battle was referred to as rahamusale.

204 Ib. 68ff. 205 Ib.

SAMGHA AND NIYATI 523

Another Jaina text said that two battles were fought, called mahasilakante (the battle with large stones) and rahamusale.

These events seem certainly to be those which inspired the sixth and seventh of the finalities, the sprinkling scent-elephant and the battle with great stones.206 There can hardly be any doubt about this observation. What Hoernle and Basham have not asked, however, is: Why should Gosala have at all looked at this battle as a 'finality,' the last catastrophe? There seems only one answer. In the destruction of the Vajjians, Gosala saw the doom of everything. For the Vajjians were the last of the important free tribes surviving then. Their destruction meant to the roving bard the loss of the last hope of the primitive or tribal tradition he was pitiably trying to cling to. It was thus the great 'storm-cloud' that swept away all hopes for humanity, as Gosala understood them. It meant the end of the 'drink,' the 'song,' the 'dance,' the 'reve- rence' for the elders. We have here the clue to the 'finali- ties' in Gosala's delirium: (1) The last drink (carime pane); (2) The last song (carime geye); (3) The last dance (carime natte); (4) The last greeting (carime anjalikamme); and (5) The last great storm-cloud (carime pakkhala-samvattae mahamehe). It needs to be remembered here that Gosala was greatly attached to the heritage of the tribal society, and as such songs and dances had more than ordinary significance for him. These were the two 'paths' or maggas in his creed.207 It is rightly presumed that dance and song had very important ritual significance for him.208 And Gosala, during his last deli- rium, was himself dancing and singing, in the home of the potter- woman Halahala. When he was in such a state, Ayampula, one of his earnest followers, approached him for the clarification of some obscure question. Gosala's only advice to him was: 'Plav the vina, old fellow, play the vina, old fellow.'209 What could after all a wandering bard advise his follower when the whole world he stood for was falling to pieces before his very eyes? But Gosala was not merely a poet. He was also a prophet and a philosopher. He wanted to arrive at a world-view, i.e., wanted to understand the world he lived in. And in this, as the Buddha himself realised, consisted the fatal limitation of

206 Ib. 69. 208 Ib. 194. 207 Ib. 117. 209 Ib. 63.

524 LOKAYATA

Gosala. The meaning of the stupendous social transformations taking place during his age - the tribes withering away or ruth- lessly annihilated by the colossal might of the rising state-powers -could not be really comprehended even by the greatest thinker of the age. So the Buddha realised that the task was not to raise questions concerning the cause of things but to bring in quiet- ude to the troubled heart, not to face reality but to seek refuge in a suitable illusion. It is precisely this point that helps us to understand the success of the Buddha as well as the failure of Gosala. The Buddha devoted himself to build up the most coherent illusion of the age while Gosala wanted to transgress the historical limitation and face reality. He wanted to under- stand the most gigantic historic transformation of his age-the collapse of the tribal institutions and the rise of the new values ushered in by the state-power. And he failed. Everything ap- peared to him to have been determined by the most stupendous, the most colossal, the unseen and fathomless forces of we-know- not-what. It was the force of fate or destiny. This explains his philosophy of niyati. The fundamental principle of the Ajivika philosophy was Fate, usually called niyati. Buddhist and Jaina sources agree that Gosala was a rigid determinist, who exalted niyati to the status of the motive factor of the universe and the sole agent of all phenomenal change .... For him belief in free will was a vulgar error. The strong, the forceful, and the courageous, like the weakling, the idler. and the coward, were all completely subject to the one principle which determined all things. Just as a ball of thread when thrown will unwind to its full length, so fool and wise alike will take their course, and make an end of sorrow.210

210 Ib. 224-5.

BOOK IV

Idealism

CHAPTER EIGHT

VARUNA AND MAYA

THE BIRTH OF THE IDEALISTIC OUTLOOK

The Vedantists, that is the later philosophers representing the most prominent school of Indian idealism, have always tried to justify their standpoints on the authority of certain more or less stray passages of the Upanisads; some of them even undertook to provide commentaries upon the entire Upanisads, though in ways that suited them best. It is largely due to these efforts that the lay readers are often led to think that the Upanisads are a body of homogeneous treatises expounding an idealistic out- look. This is plainly a fallacy. The idealist school attributes to the Upanisads far greater coherence than the texts actually con- vey. Furthermore, it ignores the considerable complexities in which these are really involved. Nevertheless, the fact remains that, historically speaking, the idealistic outlook first fully emerged in certain portions of these texts. The Upanisads, thus, did contain much of the potentialities for future specula- tions on idealist lines. From this point of view, the later ideal- ists were justified in drawing upon the Upanisadic passages. What is not usually discussed, however, is that it meant a struggle on two fronts, as it were, for the Upanisadic speculators to arrive at this idealistic outlook. First, it was a struggle against the materialistic views of those philosophers who were outside of, and in fact vigorously opposed to, the Vedic tradition. We have seen that this materialism had its ultimate source in the belief implicit in agricultural magic and which became explicit in Tantrism and took on a clear philosophical form in original Sankhya. The early idealists, logically enough, understood it as the doctrine of the pradhana, representing the position of their foremost philosophical opponents. Secondly, the development of the idealistic outlook also meant for these early philosophers

528 LOKAYATA

a kind of internal struggle. It was a struggle for emancipation from the instinctive proto-materialism of their own ancestral convictions, though this archaic proto-materialism, forming part as it did of the pastoral-patriarchal tradition, could not assume the same form as the doctrine of the pradhana or prakriti, the offshoot of the agricultural-matriarchal life-pattern. Yet, as materialism, the two were comparable. Thus, we have here one more example of the surprising similarity between some aspect of the non-Vedic tradition and the subsoil of the Vedic one. In this chapter, we shall concern ourselves specially with the second of these two points. We are going to argue that in the history of Indian philosophical thought the idealistic outlook first emerged on the ruins of a primitive proto-materialism, which represented the general character of the consciousness of the people living in the primitive pre-class society and that this can be illustrated by a review of the Vedic literatures, in however brief and bare an outline.

1. VEDIC LITERATURES

In certain sense, the Vedic literatures have a unique impor- tance for the understanding of the fundamental question of all philosophers, namely the question of materialism versus idealism. Here we find the philosophical ideas not only in their pre-sophi- sticated and therefore easily recognisable forms but also in their making - in the very process of their birth and growth. For, the enormous mass of the literary-speculative records beginning with the earlier portions of the Vedas and ending in the Upanisads must have taken, even on the most conservative estimate, a very long period to grow. Yet they have a peculiar continuity of their own. At the end of this protracted process of development. i.e., in the passages containing the most advanced speculations of the Upanisads, we find a crystallisation of the idealistic out- look. Interestingly cnough, the same passages also reveal a distinct effort at emancipation from a very archaic form of materialism, presumably representing the beliefs of the early Vedic secrs, that is, of the ancestors - or at least of the predeces- sors - of the same Upanisadic philosophers who were evolving the idealistic outlook. In other passages of the Upanisads there persist even stronger relics of this archaic materialism. In short, the Vedic literatures retain for us the evidences of the successive

VARUNA AND MAYA 529

stages through which the idealistic outlook gradually gained its shape and substance, its form and content. But these literatures are not mere records of the develop- ment of the thought-process. They also contain significant sug- gestions from which we may reconstruet some picture of the material conditions of the people whose thought-process they record. These material conditions were changing or developing and the decisive step in this development, as we are going to see, was the breakdown of the early life based on collective labour and the emergence, on its ruins, of new social relations distinetly based on class-division and class-antagonism along with a characteristic contempt for manual labour. Our argu- ment, in short, is that these two features of the later Vedic lite- ratures, - namely, the birth of the idealistic outlook and the breakdown of the early collective life, - were not unconnected. The clue to the former is to be found only in the latter. The implication would be that the archaic materialism, the relics of which can be traced even in certain strata of the Upanisadic speculations, represented the general form of the consciousness characteristic of the early Vedic people and that its materialistie character was determined by the life of collective labour which they originally lived. Looking, as we propose to do, at the thoughts and ideas as but superstructures on the economic life, it is logical for us to begin our enquiry into the general character of the Vedic world- outlook with questions concerning the general pattern of the economic life of the Vedic people.

2. MODERN PARALLELS

The Nighantu - the earliest of the glossaries of Vedic words, certainly older than 700 B.c.' - mentioned the word go as one of the synonyms for prithivi.2 Go means the cow, prithivi the earth. This led Sayana to interpret the word go, as occurring in one of the later riks of the Rig Veda,3 as earth. According to

1 Winternitz HIL i. 69n. Here is an interesting evidence of its antiquity. As one of the purana-namani it mentioned the word ahnaya (iii. 27). But the word cannot be traced in the only sur- viving recension of the Rig Veda, leading Yaska to comment nigamah anvesaniyah. This suggests that the Nighantu is older than this recension of the Rig Veda. 2 i. 1. 3 x. 31. 10. L-34

530 LOKAYATA

the Nighantu, again, the word aditih has the synonyms of go4 as well as prithivi." Similarly, ila stood for prithivi," go,7 vak" (speech) and anna9 (food). These ambiguities tell their own story: the cow meant every- thing to the Vedic seers - speech, food and in fact the whole world. One of them even sang that the very Vedic gods were born of the cows (gojatah10). And the Pancavimsa Brahmana'! suggested that the distance of the heaven from the earth could be measured by placing a thousand cows on top of one another. Obviously enough, such ideas could occur only to a pastoral people to whom cows and cattle meant all they cared for. 'In the most extravagant expressions,' as Winternitz"" summed up a basic characteristic of the Rig Veda, 'cows and bullocks are praised as the most precious possessions.' This naturally remind- ed him of some of the tribal peoples still surviving on the level of pastoral economy. So in the footnote he hastened to add: 'It is quite similar among the Dinkas and Kaffirs in Africa, whose present form of economics must be fairly in agreement with that of the Vedic Aryans.' It is not easy to dismiss the authority of a scholar of Win- ternitz's reputation, just as it is not easy to exaggerate the signi- ficance of this observation. Therefore, with due regard to the changes brought in under the impact of colonial rule, we may undertake a study of these African tribes, in order to gain some idea of the material conditions under which the carly Vedic people lived. Such a study, if undertaken with sufficient seriousness, will at least restrain the process of mystery-mongering from which our ideas of the Vedic people and their literatures have so far suffered. It is true that these literatures, being archaic in many a respect, can only be partially understood by us."3 But the reason why the texts arc generally misunderstood is not merely this. It is rather that feeling of reverence and awe - fostered through centuries of very subtle propaganda - with which most look upon the Vedas, which is at the root of this mystery-monger- ing. It would not be far from the truth, if we were to state, that a mind conditioned to read in the Vedas only the exalted and

4 ii. 11. G Ib. 5i. 1. si. 11. 7 ii. 11. 10 RV vi. 50. 11. 9 ii. 7. 12 HIL i. 64-5. 11 xvi. 8. 1; xxi. 1. 9. 13 Ib. i. 69ff.

VARUNA AND MAYA 531

the sacred, cannot be expected to use his critical faculties to arrive at a rational view of the subject. Under these circum- stances, it may have a sobering effect upon us if we remember that, in view of their stunted economic development, some of the backward tribes surviving today, still preserve certain general characteristics that are reminiscent of the early Vedic people. The key to the life and thoughts of the Dinkas of Africa is their pastoral economy. It is because of this that 'the desire to acquire a neighbour's herds is the common cause of those inter- tribal raids which constitute Dinka warfare."14 It is precisely the same reason that gave the early Vedic people the word for 'war': 'the old word for "war" or "battle" is originally "desire for cattle" (gavisti)."15 Similarly, as Monier-Williams1 has shown, in the Rig Veda,17 the root gam, 'to go', when preceded by gosu, 'among the cows', meant simply 'to set out for a battle.' This influence of the economic life on the vocabulary of the people was not an exception. Here is another interesting example: both among the Dinkas and the Vedic people the word for 'clan' is also the word for 'the enclosure for cattle.' The Dinka tribes are divided into a number of exogamous clans which the Bor Dinka call ut, the Tain and Aliab gol, and the Shish deb. The meanings of these words cannot be discussed here, though it is significant that among the cattle-owing tribes these same terms are also used for the cattle kraals of their clans.18 This is strongly reminiscent of the Vedic use of the word gotra, which meant the exogamous clans in which the Vedic people were organised.19 As occurring in the Rig Veda it also meant the cow-stall:20 Indra opened the cow-stall (gotra) for the Angirasas;21 Brihaspati, with the assistance of Indra, released the cows from the cow-stall (gotra) hidden behind the moun- tain;22 Indra looted the cow-stall (gotra) of the aliens for the benefit of his own tribesmen;23 and so on. According to the Nighantu,24 again, the same word gotra also meant prithivi or the world. Evidently, the early Vedic people knew their clans by their cow-stalls, or their cow-stalls by their clans - and the cow-stalls, like the cows, meant the whole world for them. Some of these references to the gotra in the Rig Veda were

14 ERE iv. 705. 15 Winternitz HIL i. 64. 37 ii. 25. 4; v. 45. 9; viii. 71. 5. 16 SED 363.

19 Macdonell & Keith VI i. 235. 18 ERE iv. 705.

21 i. 51. 3; ii. 17. 1. 20 Roth SPD s. v. 23 iii. 39. 4; iii. 43. 7 .. 22 ii. 23. 18. 24 i. 1.

532 LOKAYATA

also references to the looting of cow-stalls of the aliens under the leadership of Indra, the Vedic god who was regarded by the Vedic people as their war-chief, a comparison of whom to the supreme military despot under whom the Zulus" are united may not be farfetched. However, as we shall see, this military sup- remacy of Indra represented an advanced stage of the pastoral economy at which inter-tribal war formed part of their regular preoccupation. Roth, and following him Whitney, argued that the 'pre-eminence of Varuna as belonging to an older order of gods was in the course of the Rig Vedic period transferred to Indra."26 There is thus reason to think that before the Vedie people acquired such a predominently marauding career, there was the pre-eminence of Varuna among them. Interestingly, the Dinkas, who are yet to be organised under such a military des- pot."7 have for their supreme deity one who bears close parallel to the Vedic Varuna: They worship a high god, Dengdit, lit., 'Great Rain', sometimes called Nyalich ... The name Nyalich is the locative of a word mean- ing 'above', and literally translated, signifies 'in the above.' It is not used, however, except as a synonym for Dengdit.2> But the word worship here is hardly appropriate. This is evident from the hesitation expressed by the same author in his descrip- tion of the same people: The Southern Dinka (to whom the following specially refers) do not appear to use set forms of prayer, but seen to ask in ordi- nary simple sentences that their immediate want may be granted. They also have a number of hymns which are sung when an ox is slaughtered to avert drought or sickness; but, as Mr. Shaw informed the writer, men sing them when doing light work, and lately during

elements.29 a severe thunderstorm every one joined in lustily to appease the

Thus the hymns of the Dinkas - the simple expressions of their everyday desires - are pot prayers in the accepted sense. And if their hymns are not our prayers, no more are their deities gods. They have yet to cast off traces of their human origin and elevate themselves to the status of the fully divine. Among the Niel Dinkas, for example, Dengdit 'appears as a less remote being who at one time ruled his tribe in human guise."30 This recalls to our minds the so-called gods of the Todas, the only pastoral tribe still surviving in India. We are indebted

25 ERE iv. .704. 27 ERE iv. 704. 26 Macdonell VM 65. 29 Ib. Italics added. 28 1b. iv. 707. 30 Ib.

VARUNA AND MAYA 533

to Rivers for an exhaustive study of them. And yet Rivers him- self felt the greatest difficulty in understanding the gods of the Todas: 'There was no department of Toda lore which gave me greater difficulty than the study of the beliefs about the gods."' The reason was not simply the complexities and contradictions of legends associated in the Toda minds with their gods; it was rather that these were not at all gods in the modern sense of the word. This will be evident from the following observa- tion of Rivers himself:

The typical Toda god is a being who is distinctly anthropomor- phic and is called a teu. In the legends he lives much the same kind of life as the mortal Toda, having his dairies and his buffaloes ... The gods hold councils and consult with one another just as do the Todas, and they are believed to be swayed by the same motives and to think in the same way as the Todas themselves."

If anthropomorphism means conceiving the divine in terms of the human, it would logically imply the pre-existence of the idea of the divine; as such, there is the risk of anachronism in the use of the word in the context of those backward peoples like the Todas who have not yet reached the concept of the divine in its true sense. We shall see more of this while dis- cussing Rivers' view of the Toda worship. For the present we may quote some more of his general observations on the Toda gods, as these have interesting light to throw on the gods of the early Vedic people.

Before the Todas were created, the gods lived on the Nilgiri Hills alone, and then it is believed that there followed a period during which gods and men inhabited the hills together. The gods ruled the men, ordained how they should live and originated the various customs of the people. The Todas can now give no definite account of their beliefs about the transition from this state of things to that which now exists ... Each clan of the Todas has a deity specially connected with it. This deity is called the nodrodchi of the clan, and is believed to have been the ruler of the clan when gods and men lived together. What is fascinating here is the gross buman nature of the so-called gods of the Todas and the nature of their relationship with the members of the tribe which, again, is plainly human. It is here that we notice a surprising similarity of the Vedic gods with that of the Todas, although the Todas-members ot a decaying tribe encireled and subordinated by peoples vastly superior to them - could create nothing like the rich and enor-

31 Rivers T 183 3: Ib. 182. 33 Ib. 183.

534 LOKAYATA

mously vast poetry of the Vedic people in the period of their expansion and expeditions. Here are some examples from the Rig Veda:

3. THE VEDIC GODS

Indra is invoked simply as 'man': 'I invoke Indra, the man (naram), who fulfils the desires of many from his ancient dwell- ings, -in the same manner as my ancestors did in the past."+ Agni is said to be nrivatsakha sabhavan - a friend of the most human type and a member of the tribal assembly.35 Indra and Agni knew the ancient sages Kanva, Atri, Manu, 'who were skilled and who had abode among the gods.3 The ancient seers sat in joyful company with the devah and with true spells (mantras) generated Usas.3 Indra is praised as the chief among men (nritamah) and one who shares out wealth (vibhakta) along with other human beings (nribhih sakaih )." We shall return later to discuss the extremely interesting impli- cation of the word vibhakta or apportioner. For the present, the incomplete dehumanisation of the Vedic gods. Agni is addressed as the chief human being among the human beings (nrinam nritamah),39 the chief among men (nrinam nripate),40 the best of men (nritamah).41 He is invoked to produce (brihat kridhi), like the human being (nrivat), food in large quantity among human beings (nrinam).42 Like the human being, says another rik addressed to him, give us wealth and cattle to our sons and grandsons.43 Mitra and Varuna are invoked to come and join the soma-drinking in the company of human beings.# 'May Indra and Visnu, like human beings, give us house." Asvins, along with Agastya, are said to be the fore- most among the leading men.46 The epithet of being the chief man among men is, however, most frequently used in the case of Indra. He is the finest man among all human beings (nrinam nritamam).4 Along with

34 i. 30. 9. 35 iv. 2. 5. 36 i. 139. 9. 37 vii. 76. 4. 39 i. 77. 4. 38 jv. 17. 11.

41 v. 4. 6; iii. 1. 12; iv. 5. 2. 40 ji. 1. 1.

48 vi. 1. 12. 42 v. 18. 5.

45 iv. 55. 4. 44 i. 137. 3.

47 iii. 51. 4; cf. iv. 16. 4; vii. 19. 10. 46 i. 180. 8.

VARUNA AND MAYA 535

other humans he wins battles,4% and, in their company, he eats good food.4 The yajamanas (performers of the ritual) are asked to offer cakes to Indra, who is immediately present and is the bravest of the human beings (nrinam viratamaya).50 As foremost among men (nrinam nritama) he cuts the enemies to pieces in battles.^1 'We shall prepare soma for Indra, who is the leader of all work beneficial for the human beings and who is the best man among men (nare naryaya nritamaya nrinam).'52 He is the strongest leader among men (savistham nrinam naram).% In the past, he was the chief among men (pura cit sura nrinam).5+ As the chief of men, he rends asunder the clouds and causes showers.55 As the chief of the human beings, again, he has similar dwelling as of other human beings (manu- sanam sam okah nritamah).56 He even speaks like human beings (nrivat vadan) and 'comes to us and gives us food."7 Like a human being he entered the army of the opponent.5& Shouting like a human being (nrivat nonuvanta), he made the wind blow."9 Like a human being, again, he increased the strength.G" 'Indra, who are like a human being, from thee do we - along with the leaders of men - desire wealth.'1 In the matter of food-procuring, Indra is the chief among men: the rik in which this occurs runs as a refrain in the third book of the Rig Veda. being the last rik of no less than twelve suktas"" and it reoccurs twice in the tenth book."3 Presumably, the Vedic poets attached great significance to this. In another rik, Indra is said to be not only the chief among the human beings (nrinam nri- tamah) but also as 'common' among (equal to?) them (naryah(4). With all these evidences, it is safe to presume that Indra was originally only the culture-hero of some Vedic tribe, eventually raised to the status of a deity. This conclusion will be strongly challenged by our orthodox scholars. But to them we may answer that we have in the writings of no less an orthodox commentator than Sayana him- self, the rather startling admission that during the composition

48 i. 178. 3. 50 jii. 52. 8. 49 i. 178. 4. 52 iv. 25. 4. 51 iv. 33. 3.

54 viii. 66. 5. 53 viii. 40. 2. 56 vi. 18. 7. 55 iv. 22. 2 58 iii. 34. 5. 07 x. 28. 12. 60 vi. 19. 1. 59 iv. 22. 4. 61 vi. 19. 10. 02 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 43, 48, 49, 50. 03 x. 89. 18; x. 104. 11. 04 x. 29. 1.

536 LOKAYATA

of the Rig Veda, actual human beings were really being raised to the status of Vedic deities. The evidence is as follows. In one rik,65 Indra is addressed as the killer in great battles and the increaser of human skill with the assistance of other human beings. But the context in which this occurs suggests that Indra was doing all these things with the assistance rather of the Maruts. This naturally presented a problem to Sayana. How could the human beings of the rik mean the Maruts as well? And he answered, 'by the human beings' is meant 'by the men who, though originally men, later attained the status of the gods and were called the Maruts' (nribhih manusyaih eva sadbhih pascat devatvam apannaih marudbhih). This explanation is provocative and the temptation to digress a little cannot be helped. If Sayana was here true to the Vedic tradition, then the attainment of godhead on the part of the Maruts may be looked upon as part of the living memory of the Rig Vedic poets. And if this be true, it should be possible for us to infer the original human characteristics of the Maruts by examining the characteristics attributed to them in the Rig Veda though as gods. The special significance of this lies in the cir- cnstance that of all the Vedic deities the Maruts alone retained the strongest marks of the primitive group-life. They were most frequently referred to as living in gana or the tribal collecti- vity." They were all brothers among themselves and striet equality was believed to exist among them.67 They grew up togetheres, were born at the same place,"9 and had the same abode.79 They were strietly of one strength, one friendship and one birth."1 Thus the Marnts had this special importance in the Rig Veda that they retained the relies of not only a distinct history of human origin but also of the communistic or pre-class society to which, as human beings, thev must have originally belonged. It is no wonder, therefore, that, like our Chanting Dogs of the Chandogya Upanisad, they were described in the Rig Veda as singing the collective labour-songs. They were repeatedly re-

65 i. 129. 2. It is significant that the Maruts were later remem- bered as the deities of the folk-Keith VBYS intro. cv. They were called the sons of the soil (prisni-matarah)-Sayana on RV i. 85. 2. 66 i. 14. 3; i. 38. 15; i. 64. 9; i. 64. 12; iii. 35. 9; v. 52. 13; v. 52. 14; v. 53. 10; etc. 67 i. 165. 1; v. 59. 6; v. 60. 5; etc. 68 v. 56. 5; vii. 58. 1. 70i. 165. 1; vii. 56. 1. 09 v. 53. 1. 71 viii. 20. 1; viii. 20. 21.

VARUNA AND MAYA 537

ferred to as singers.7" That these were really labour-songs is evident from the following: While singing they built a house in heaven and generated the strength of Indra.7: When Indra killed the dragon, they sang a song for him and pressed soma .?! But let us return to the human origin of the Vedic deities. Sayana7" said that the Ribhus too, originally human beings, were 'ventuallv raised to the status of gods. This genealogy of the Ribhus is not indeed an invention of Sayana. For. in the Rig Vedaif itself we come across the startling declaration that the Ribhus, being yet mortal, attained immortality (martasah santalı amritatcam anasuh). Sayana" said practically the same thing about the Vahnis - purvam manusyatvena maranayogyah api amritatca-labhena pranan dharitavantah: though previously, being human beings, they were mortal yet they later became immortal. Of course, as deities they were only minor in importance. But the Asvins were not so. And the Rig Veda itself distinctly re- ferred to the Asvins being raised to the status of the gods ( devah bhacatha ).7> Significantly enough, even after attaining the godhead. the Ribhus retained very clear relics of. the collective life. As Sayana"" pointed out, in the Rig Veda the Ribhus were addressed in the singular (janmane) because they formed a collective body ( samgha). And the Asvins themselves maintained equality and comradely relationship with the human beings: O Asvins, our friendship with you comes down from our fathers; in friendship you are equal with us: know your and our grand- father to be the same (yuvoh hi nah sakhya pitryani samanah

Sayana.50) bandhuh uta tasya vittam: the interpretation of banduh is after

What needs to be noted is that the Vedic poets felt this essentially friendly and human relationship also for their other important deities. Here are a few, though not very carefully chosen, examples: Indra was a friend indeed! He was a friend with friends; the friend and benefactor and protector.$1 He was a friend coming from the heaven and honouring 'us' as his friends;se a

7i. 166. 7; v. 57. 8; v. 59. 8; vii. 35. 0. =i. 85. 2. 74 v. 29. 2; v. 30. 6. See Mecdonell VM 80. T5 On RV i. 20. 1. 77 On RV i. 20. 8. 76 i. 110. 4.

79 On RV i. 20. 1. TN iii. 54. 17.

81 i. 63. 4; i. 100. 4. S# vii. 72. 2. se iii. 31. 8.

538 LOKAYATA

friend 'accompanied by faithful friends;42 listening as a friend the praises of his friends.84 The friends of Indra poured out soma for him.85 These citations are, however, too few to give us any real idea of how persistently Indra - described as 'the most human of the gods ... whom the seers most closely fashioned in their own likeness'86 - was addressed or invoked as a friend. For such references in the Rig Veda are really numerous and it would be tedious to quote them all. Nevertheless, we may men- tion here one more rik because, over and above expressing the intensely friendly relation felt by the Vedic poets for Indra, it has, in distinctly referring to the past, some additional interest for us. 'O Indra, the giver of horses, cows, barley, wealth, as you were our wish-vielder in the past, so are you our friend and speak to us who are your friends."97 Agni was like a father, friendship with whom was the best of friendships (sakha sakhye varenyah88), a friend of all peoples (jananam jamih) and the most praiseworthy friend among all friends (sakha sakhibhyah idyah89). He was friend and mini- ster and well disposed towards friends.90 The seers, desiring protection, called themselves his friends.91 'Be favourably dis- posed, O Agni, on approaching us; the fulfiller like a friend or the parents; since men (enemies) are the grievous oppressors of men, do thou consume the foes who come against us.'92 And so on. Indeed, the references to such extremely friendly rela- tion to Agni in the Rig Veda are no less numerous than those to Indra. The Visvadevas (all-gods) were addressed as comrades.": This comradeship, coming down from the days of the fathers, was felt to be immensely old.94 Similar must have been the relationship felt by the Vedic poets for Asvins: it was desired that the ancient comradeship with them be revived and the friendship be sealed with drinks, being delighted together on the basis of equality (punah puranam sakhyam krinvanah sakhyn madhva madcma saha nu samanah?5). Again, Soma,96 Brahmanas-

83 jii. 39. 5. 85 jii. 30. 1. 84 iii. 43. 4.

$7i. 53. 2. 86 Keith RPV 433. 88 i. 26. 3. 89 i. 75. 4. 91 iii. 9. 1. w0 jii. 14. 1.

93 iii. 29. 4. 92 jii. 18. 1.

95 iii. 58. 6. 94 iu. 54. 9. 06 i. 91. 8; i. 91. 15; i. 91. 17.

VARUNA AND MAYA 539

pati,97 Savitri,98 Varuna,99 Mitra,100 Aryaman101 and others were all maintaining warm and comradely relations with the Vedic poets and their kinsmen. However, as comrades, Varuna, Mitra and Aryaman were the foremost. Observed Macdonell102:

Aryaman though mentioned about hundred times in the Rig Veda is so destitute of individual characteristics, that in the Naighantuka he is passed over in the list of gods. Except in two passages, he is always mentioned with other deities, in the great majority of cases with Mitra and Varuna. In less than a dozen passages the word has only the appellative senses of 'comrade' and 'groomsman,' which are occasionally also connected with the god. Thus Agni is once addres- sed with the words: 'Thou art aryaman when (the wooer) of maiden.' The derivative adjective aryamya, 'relating to a comrade', once occurs as a parallel to mitrya, 'relating to a friend.' Thus the conception of Aryaman seems to have differed but little from that of the greater Aditya Mitra, 'the friend.' The name goes back to the Indo-Iranian period, as it occurs in the Avesta. Similarly, Varuna, observed Macdonell, was 'on a footing of friendship with his worshipper.'103 How far the word 'worship- per' correctly describes the relation of the Vedic poets and their kinsmen to the Vedic gods needs really to be studied. For the present, however, we may examine an important indication - a clear and distinet reference to a past - involved in this com- radely reference to Varuna: What has become of our friendship with you, which was, in the ancient davs, without any spite? May we foster it and enter your thousand-door abode, - you who are full of food.10+ This reference to the past has some special significance with regard to the specific history of Varuna. It has also some gene- ral significance in the Rig Veda, which we may take up here. The point is that 'some hundreds of years must have been needed for all the hymns found in the Rig Veda to come into being.'105 There is no basis to think that during these hundreds of years the life and thought of the Vedic people remained unchanged. Therefore, it is only natural that the Rig Veda should contain different strata of the thought of the Vedic peo- ple passing through different stages of development. We have already before us theories concerning the different strata of the Rig Veda as worked out by the foremost of the modern scholars. However, such theories, being based mostly on bare philo-

97 ji. 24. 1. 98 i. 22. 8. 100 Ib. 99i. 41. 7.

102 VM 45. 101 Ib.

104 vii. 88. 5. 103 Ib. 27 105 Macdonell HSL 45.

540 LOKAYATA

logical considerations, are liable to suffer from the limitation of a formal approach and may mislead us to expect a view of the earlier condition of the Vedic people only in the hymns actually composed earlier. On the other hand, the possibility remains that a hymn, even when considered later on linguistie grounds, may, nevertheless, by invoking the memory of the past, reveal something about the Vedic people during their comparatively early stage of development. It is such a reference to the past that we often come across in the mention of the comradely relations of the Vedic poets with their gods, particularly Varuna. From these we may infer that the more we penetrate into the pre- history of the Vedic people, the clearer do we see their gods to be outspokenly human and maintaining a comradely relationship with the members of the tribe. Philological considerations, too, corroborate this. Here is a rik of immense significance: 'O Agni, O Asura, this ritual (yajna) of ours is full of cows, of sheep (aviman), of horses, of food, of offspring; may thou be always without anger being in our assembly (sabhavan), a friend, like a human being (nrivat-sakha), possessing huge wealth and vast waters.106 Agni being addressed as an asura is indeed remarkable;10i Sayana found it too inconvenient to comment upon. It indicates that the rik dates back to a period when to the poets of the Rig Veda the word asura had not fallen into disrepute. Probably, more significant than this is the use of the word aciman, 'one full of sheep.' This is the solitary use of the word in the whole of the Rig Veda,10 the only reference to the sheep as a form of wealth. This again indicates that the rik dates back to a period when the Vedic seers were still raising and tending the sheep, a practice they must have eventaully given up. These, therefore, are evidences of the rik belonging to the most archaic stratum of the Rig Veda. And it is the only rik in which the werd nrivat-sakha, 'friend-like-a-human-being,' occurs: in the comparatively earlier periods, the comradely relation felt by the Vedic poets for their gods was indeed overtly human. Speaking of comradely relations, we are remined here of a

106 iv. 2. 5. 107 Cf. viii. 90. 6, where Indra is addressed as an asura. Such references to the Vedic Gods as asuras are usually taken as indica- tive of the Indo-Iranian period, became in the Avesta this work did not fall into disrepute. 10% The word avibhih occurs four times but in the sense of a strainer probably made of the sheep's wool.

VARUNA AND MAYA 541

rather interesting evidence of the Vedic literatures. In the Rig Veda, one of the words used for 'comrade' is jamih: Agni was addressed as jananam jamih,10" the comrade of all men. Sayana, on the authority of the Unadi Sutra explained the word as fol- lows: 'jamu adane, jamanti saha ckasmin patre adanti iti jamayah, bandhavah; 'The root jam means to eat'; 'those who eat together from the same plate are friends, jamayah.' One point is clear: the word for comrade (jamih) is derived from the cir- cumstance of having eaten from the same plate. The association of the word comrade with communism is indeed very old. But more of this later. Let us return to the modern parallels of the Vedic gods. According to the belief of the African Dinkas, it was Dengdit who originally separated the heaven from the earth."10 The Vedic people attributed precisely the same myth to their Varuna. It was because of Varuna's law and might that the heaven remained etemally separated from the earth."1 Varuna palced the heaven and the earth in their respective positions."12 Varuna held the heaven and the earth separately.1" The point, however, is that this myth is not distinctive only of the Dinkas or the Vedic people. It formed part of a world- wide belief, the relics of which are found in ancient China, Mesopotemia and Egypt and which survives among the Poly- nesians.114 What, then, could be the source of such a widespread myth? Thomson15 answered the question on the basis of an analysis of the Amerindian cosmogony: it is to be traced to the memory of the tribe originally separating into two inter-marry- ing moieties. The circumstance, therefore, that this extremely primitive myth formed part of the living faith of the Vedic poets goes to show that they could not have moved very much ahead of the truly primitive conditions. The word primitive may perhaps be resented to as dis- paraging. Nevertheless, it is here that we have the clue to the real nature of the Vedic gods. When the primitive peoples use the word god they have in mind a being of a certain sort while when we use the same word we have in mind a being of a very different sort;116 after all words change much more slowly than the meanings attached to them. The gods of the primitive

10% i. 75. 4. 111 vi. 70. 1. 110 ERE iv. 707. 113 viii, 41. 4. 112 vii. 86. 1. 115 Ib. ii. 52, 91. 114 Thomson SAGS ii. 90. 116 Frazer GB 92ff.

542 LOKAYATA

peoples are not the same as our gods. And if the gods are not the same, the hyms and prayers addressed to them, too, must be different in spirit. This again is a crucial point for the under- standing of the Vedic hymns. However, before we pass on to discuss them, it may be of advantage to remember some more modern parallels. We may return to our Todas.

4. THE TODAS

Rivers discussed the 'prayers' of the Todas, although he was not quite sure whether it was the right word to use:

I have treated these formulae of the dairy as prayers, and I think there can be very little doubt that they are of the nature of supplications, and are believed to invoke the aid of the gods in protecting the sacred buffaloes. It must be confessed, however, that there is no actual evidence in the formulae of direct invocation of the gods. The name of no god is mentioned in the vocative form. In some prayers there is barely mention of a god at all, if the term 'god' be limited to the anthropomorphic beings of the hill-tops ... The exact relation between the formula and the gods largely depends on the exact meaning of the word idith, which is not quite clear. But, whatever the meaning of this word, it is evident that it is used in exactly the same way in the case of a god as in the case of a buffalo, a place, a dairy vessel, or other even meaner object.117

An examination of the so-called prayers of the Todas shows why Rivers was not sure about using the term 'prayers'. Here is the typical list of the short formulae with English translations carefully prepared by him:118

1. tanenma : May it be well, or, may be blessed. 2. tarmama : May it be well, or, may be merciful. 3. ir kark tanenma : With the buffaloes and calves, may it be well. 4. nuv ark ma : May there be no disease. 5. kazun ark ma : May there be no destroyer. 6. nudre ark ma : May there be no poisonous animals. 7. kavel ark ma : May there be no wild beasts. 8. per kart pa ma : May be kept from (falling down) steep hills. 9. pustht kart pa ma : May be kept from floods. 10. tut ark ma : May there be no fire. 11. ma un ma : May rain fall. 12. maj eu ma : May clouds rise. 13. pul puv ma: May grass flourish. 14. nir ur ma : May water spring. The interest of this list for the Vedic student is obvious.

117 T. 229. 118 Ib. 215.

VARUNA AND MAYA 543

Translated into the archaic language of the Vedas, each mantra of the list could very easily have formed part of some rik of the Rig Veda. And all these are but the simple expressions of the everyday desires of a people who are yet to consider anything as more precious than cattle. It follows that if the buffaloes and everything connected with the dairy appear to them to be most sacred - the highest objects of reverence - the reason is not that they have learnt to take a religious view of these things in our sense, but simply that they mean everything to them. . Their rituals are designed to multiply and protect the cattle by magic; the instruments of such protection are imagined by them to be invested with the most wonderful magical potency. It is only to be expected, therefore, that if we try to discover religion in our sense among the Todas, our search would be frustrated, or would end, as it has actually ended with Rivers, in characterising the pre-religious attitude of the Todas as a form of degenerated religion. Rivers put forth the theory of degeneration of religion among the Todas on the basis of the conjecture - admitted by him as such - that the Todas must have originally moved to the Nilgiri Hills from some other part of the country with a 'body of highly developed gods,' who were gradually forgotten by their present descendants:

Just as the prayer of the Todas seems to have almost degenerated into the utterance of barren formulae, so is there reason to believe that the attitude of worship which is undoubtedly present in the Toda mind is becoming transferred from the gods themselves to the material objects used in the service of the gods. I acknowledge that I am here on less sure ground than in the case of the dairy formulae, but the general impression left on my mind by the study of the beliefs and sacred institutions of the Todas is that the religious attitude of worship is being transferred from the gods themselves to the objects round which centres the ritual of the dairy. If I am right in these surmises, we find the Todas to possess a religion in process of degeneration. I do not suppose that this degeneration has been in progress only during the short time that the Todas have been exposed to the injurious contact of the outer world. The study of the Toda religion makes it seem to me most probable that the Todas came to the Nilgiri Hills with a religion of a higher order than they possess at present, with a developed system of gods who were believed to direct and govern the affairs of men, and that by a long and slow process these gods have become unreal, the supplications of the people for their guidance and assistance have become mecha- nical, and worship has been transferred from the gods, not to stocks and stones, but to bells and dairy vessels.119

119 Ib. 453-4. Italics added.

544 LOKAYATĄ

This is not even a hypothesis but, as Rivers himself was conscientious enough to admit, simply a 'general impression,' a 'surmise,' which rested on no secure ground. Rather, the onlv basis tor this gencral impression is the supposition that the Toda ancestors once possessed a developed religion with a developed body of gods with which they migrated to the Nilgiri Hills. Under these circumstances, the only way in which Rivers conld strengthen his supposition was to add another supposition: the older gods of the Todas must have been replaced by a set of newer gods. Intercstingly enough, these so-called new gods, of whom alone Rivers had any direct evidence, were all found to have been but human in origin: I am inclined to believe that these old gods have gradually through long ages lost their reality; that certain heroes have been raised to the ranks of the gods and that the lives of these heroes, founded to some extent on actual fact, have more interest to the Todas and are remembered and passed on while the legends of the older gods are gradually becoming vaguer in the progress towards complete obliviscence.120 Obviously, we have here the speculator replacing the field anthropologist - Rivers depending more on his 'inclination to believe' than recording what is actually observed. In default of any actual evidence for the original developed form of reli- gion of the Todas, the bare fact that the ideas and practices of these people, as actually observed, fall short of a religion proper, cannot make the hypothesis of the degeneration of religion valid or legitimate. And if this hypothesis is illegitimate, the only other hypothesis that remains is, that the Toda beliefs represent a pre-religious stage of consciousness in which the gods have not fully cast off the traces of their mundane origin. We have argued this point about the Todas because it has a direct bearing on our understanding of the Vedic literatures, which contain the records of a similar process of religion in the making. This does not mean that the Vedic literatures as a whole uniformly represent a similar stage of pre-religious con- sciousness. In a large number of places of the Rig Veda itself, we find the deities as fully developed gods and mentioned in the vocative form. What should not be overlooked, however, is that in many other hymns they are not so, and have yet to outgrow the marks of their human origin and quasi-human characteristics. What is still more important is that, so far as the earlier portions

120 1b. 452. Cf. 205-7 for the Toda myth of how Kwoto, the man, became Meilitars, the supreme among the gods.

VARUNA AND MAYA 545

of the Rig Veda are concerned, there is hardly any trace of the dawn of the other-worldly or strictly spiritual values in the con- sciousness of the poets who composed them. If it is at all possi- ble to characterise anything as constituting the central theme of such a vast collection of songs, it is the desire for the essentially this-worldly objects on the part of a pastoral people. 5. THIS-WORLDLY DESIRES The Dinkas of Africa have their orally composed hymns. So are the 'prayers' or 'formulae' of the Todas handed down through generations. The reason is simplc. Pastoral peoples are pre-literates. They are yet to develop a script. Of course, the simple hymns of the Dinkas or the naive formulae of the Todas stand absolutely no comparison to the enormous and magnificent literary creations of the Vedic peo- ple. Nevertheless, there are certain points of similarity and these have great interest for us. Living as they did in a pastoral society, the Vedic poets, too, were unacquainted with a written script. The songs or poems they created were composed orally and handed down from generation to generation orally (sruti). The poet Kanva, son of Ghora, addressed the Maruts thus: Make hymns by your mouth (asye); spread these like the cloud; sing the ukthya (laudatory hymn) in Gayatri metre.121 'Making hymns by the mouth' is understandable enough. But what may be meant by 'spreading these like the cloud'? Sayana gave us the clue: 'As the cloud spreads water, like that.' In short, like the cloud, the hymns, too, were meant to shower. And, while discussing the Chanting Dogs of the Chandogya Upanisad, we have already seen what precisely were the Vedic songs meant to shower. It was the fulfilment of desires. That is why, the Vedic songs were also called kamavarsi, the showerers of desire. And what was the nature of these desires? The desire for food, wealth, cattle, children, strength and safety. It was never the desire for liberation or moksa. This word, signi- fying the highest ideal for the later champions of the Vedas, was in fact unknown to the Vedic poets. To begin with, we may quote here only a few riks from the Rig Veda. The translation is somewhat free, but the this-worldly character of the underlying desires cannot be missed:

121 i. 38. 14. L-35

546 LOKAYATA

May the highly desired wealth move around us every day. May the foods inspire us in our work.122 O Agni, bestow abundant food upon us. O Agni, grant us colossal wealth.123 May we, O Brahmanaspati, be daily in possession of well-regu- lated and food-supplying wealth; do thou add for us the braves (sons) to the braves, - thou, who are the greatest, accept our invo- cations with food.124 The etymology of the name Brahmanaspati, as suggested by Sayana,13 is quite revealing: brahmanah annasya parirridhasya karmanah va patih palayita, one that nourishes the activity of food-production. This was not an invention of Sayana. The Nighantu10 already suggested that the word brahma was one of the synonyms for anna or food. This alone lays bare the materialistic conception of the Vedic gods; it also shows how far removed from the Vedas was the idealistic outlook of the Upani- sads, in which brahman meant the ultimate reality as pure con- sciousness. Incidentally, according to the Nighantu, another svnonym for anna or food is pitu. But Pitu was also the name of a Vedic deity, to whom was addressed an entire sukta of the Rig Veda.127 The special interest of this sukta is its stark materialism: I glorify Pitu, the great, the upholder, the strong, by whose invigorating power Trita (the famous) tortured the deformed Vritra. Savoury Pitu; honeyed Pitu; we welcome become our protector. (varimahe) you;

Come to us, beneficial Pitu, with beneficial aids; a source of de- light; a friend well respected, and having no envy. Your flavours Pitu, are diffused through the regions, as the dusts are spread through the regions, - as the winds are spread through the sky. Those (men), Pitu, who are your distributors, most sweet Pitu, - they who are the eaters of you and your juices, increase like thou with elongating necks. The minds of the mighty gods are fixed, Pitu, upon you: by your active assistance, (Indra) slew Ahi. O Pitu, the wealth which is associated with the mountains, went to you; hear you, O sweet one, be accessible to our eating. And since we enjoy the abundance of the waters and the plants; therefore, Body, do thou grow fat. And since we enjoy, Soma, thy mixture with boiled milk or boiled barley, therefore, Body, do thou grow fat. O corn of the name Karambha! fatten and activise the organ (vrikkh); therefore Body, do thou grow fast. We extract from you, Pitu, by our words, as cows yield butter for oblation; - you who sit together and eat merrily with the gods, do sit with us and eat merrily.

122 iv. 8. 7. 124 ji. 24. 15. 123 iii. 1. 22.

126 ii. 7. 125 On ii. 23. 1. 127 i. 187.

VARUNA AND MAYA 547

Thus Pitu or food - a Vedic god who sat in the company of gods and men - was also wholesome to eat and one that made the body fat. Here there is no concept of the soul. The underlving idea was obviously far from being religious or spiri- tualistic. We shall quote some more examples from the Rig Veda to see how decply obsessed these poets were with material desires. The following translations are from R. Ghosh who, depending on the interpretations of Sayana, has read spiritual- istic ideas in the riks as far as practicable. Nevertheless, the predominantly this-worldly character of the songs are obvious: Agni, son of strength, lord of food and of cattle, give us abund- ant sustenance, thou who knewest all that exists.128 May auspicious works, unmolested, unimpeded, and subversive (of foes), come to us from every quarter; may the gods, turning not away from us, but granting us protection, day by day, be ever with us for our advancement.1 :! Usas, possessor of food, bring us that various wealth by which we may sustain sons and grandsons.130 When, Asvins, you harness your bounty-shedding chariot, re- fresh our strength with trickling honey, bestow (abundant) food upon our people; may we acquire riches in the strife of heroes.131 May we manifest vigour among other men, Agni, through the steed and the food; and may our unsurpassed wealth shine like the sun over (that of) the five classes of beings.182 Let no enemy prevail against us, whether of god or man; protect us from both such foes.133 Sarasvati, best of mothers, best of rivers, best of goddesses, we are, as it were, of no repute; grant us mother distinction.134 Come to us with friendly, auspicious, and mighty airs, thou who art great and all-pervading: bestow upon us ample riches, safe from injury, well spoken of, desirable, and renowned.135 We solicit wealth of the adorable (Agni), the invoker of the gods, the pure, the single-minded, the unificent, the commendable, the beholder of all, who is many-coloured like a chariot, elegant in form, and always friendly to mankind.16 We thy mortal friends have recourse for our protection to thee, the divine, the grandson of the waters, the auspicious, the resplen- dent, the accessible, the sinless.137 May we, exempt from disease, rejoicing in food, roaming free over the wide of the earth, diligent in the worship of Aditya (adi- tyasya vratam upksiyantah: lit., living near the vrata or the rituals of Aditya), ever be in the good favour of Mitra.138 Friendly and beautiful (Agni), bring thy friend (Varuna) to our presence, as two strong horses convey the swift chariot along the road to its goal: thou receivest, Agni, the gratifying (oblation) toge- ther with Varuna, and with the all-illumining Maruts; grant bril-

128 i. 79. 4. 129 i. 89. 1. 130 i. 92. 13. 131 i. 157. 2. 133 ii. 7. 2. 132 ii. 2. 10. 135 jii. 1. 19. 194 ii. 41. 16. 187 iii. 9. 1. 138 jii. 2. 15. 138 iii. 59. 3.

548 LOKAYATA

liant Agni, happiness to our sons and grandsons; grant beautiful Agni, happiness to ourselves.139 May riches, envied by many, devolve upon us day by day, and food await us.140 May Indra and Varuna, the overthrowers (of foes), be around us with (their) protections; (that thereby we may have) good sons and grandsons, and fertile lands, and long life and verility.141 Agni of irresistible prowess, bring to us most powerful treasure;

dance.142 (invest us) with surrounding wealth, mark out the paths to abun-

Mighty Agni, grant us a son able to encounter hosts: for thou art true and wonderful, and the giver of food with cattle.143 May we ever, gods, enjoy great and uninterrupted felicity. May we ever be participants of the unprecedented joy-conferring, and well-guided protection of the Asvins; brings to us, immortal (Asvins), riches, male progeny, and all good things.144 Bestow quickly, Angni, upon us who are affluent, wondrous wealth, with abundant viands and protections, such as enrich other men with wealth, with food with male descendants.146 Surpassing all earthy things, may he bestow upon us riches, des- troying his enemies by his greatness, unresisted, unassailed.140 Drink it as of old, and may it exhilarate thee: hear our prayer (brahma), and be exalted by our praises; make the sun visible, nourish us with food, destroy our enemies, rescue the cattle.147 Bhaga, chief leader of rites, Bhaga, faithful promiser of wealth, Bhaga, granting (our wishes), fructify this ceremony, enrich us with cattle and horses; may we Bhaga, the eminent with male des- cendants and followers.148 Protector of the dwelling, recognise us: be to us an excellent abode, the non-inflicter of disease: whatever, we ask of thee, be pleased to grant: be the bestower of happiness on our bipeds and quadrupeds.149 Come, Nasatyas, with vour cattle-giving, horse-bestowing, wealth- yielding chariot; all praises gather round you, who are resplendent with admirable beauty of persons.150 Overcomers of (hostile) men, Indra and Agni, come with food upon us; let not the malevolent have power over us.151 Bring to us, Asvins, riches comprising cattle, male offspring, chariots, horses, food.152 Bring unto us riches by hundreds and by thousands, desired by many, sustaining all.153 Endowed with great wisdom preserve us for fame, for strength, for victory, for happiness, for prosperity.154 House-giver wise Agni, rescue our work from the unrighteous and the enemies.155 Give us abundant wealth; give abundant wealth to our children, to our dwelling, fulfil our desire to live.156

139 iv. 1. 3. 141 iv. 41. 6. 140 iv. 8. 7. 143 v. 23. 2. 142 v. 10. 1. 145 vi. 10. 5. 144 v. 42. 17-8. 147 vi. 17. 3. 146 vi. 16. 20. 149 vii. 54. 1. 148 vii. 41. 3. 151 vii. 94. 7. 150 vii. 72. 1. 153 viii. 5. 15. 152 viii. 5. 10. 155 viii. 44. 30. 154 viii. 9. 20. 156 viii. 68. 12.

VARUNA AND MAYA 549

O Scma, grant us strength and initiatives, destroy the enemies, act for our welfare.157 May the effused Soma grant us thousand-fold wealth and mighty strength.158 Soma, send down rains, let there be waves of water in the firmament, bring the store of inexhaustible food.159 These renderings of some of the Vedic riks may not give us a true picture of the obscurities and mythological complexi- ties involved in the verses. Nevertheless they do give us some idca of the key theme of the Rig Veda-the desire for this- worldly objects. The examples are not at all carefully chosen but taken at random. It may be argued, even as samples the few riks that we have quoted are far too inadequate to give us a convincing picture of the Rig Veda, which it has been calcu- lated, in the only recension in which it survives todav, cquals in bulk to the surviving poems of Homer.160 We may, therefore, take recourse to another standard - repeatedly called the sta- tistical standard by Macdonnel - to judge how fundamentally the poets were obsessed by the material desires. This standard consists in enumerating the number of times something occurs in the text. The Nighantu161 mentioned a considerable number of syno- nyms for the word anna or food. Following is a rough estimate of the number of times these words, along with their derivatives, are found to occur in the Rig Veda: andhah 119; wajah 518; payah 113; prayah 110; sravah 218; priksah 43; pituh 61; vayah 24; sutah 181; sinam 3; avah 229; ksu 14; dhasih 12; ira 7; ila 58; isam 253; urk 89; rasah 64; svadha 106; arkah 108; ksadma 2; nema 13; sasam 33; namah 111; ayuh 117; sunrita 48; brahma 232; varcah 17; kilalam 1; ysah 75; annam 53. The total comes to over 3,000, about one third of the total number of riks of the Rig Veda. And these synonyms for food are almost always mentioned in the specific context of a desire for food. Yet such an enumeration by itself gives us little idea of how thoroughly the whole of the Rig Veda is permeated by the this-worldly desires. The Nighantu mentioned 101 synonyms for udaka162 or water, 28 synonyms for vala163 or strength, 9 synonyms for go164 or cow, 28 synonyms for dhana15 or

137 ix. 4. 3. 158 ix. 13. 5. 100 Macdonell HSL 41. 159 ix. 49. 1. 162 i. 12. 101 ij. 7. 164 ii. 11. 163 jj. 9. 160 il. 10.

550 LOKAYATA

material wealth, and 15 synonyms for apatya1 or progeny. And, to mention only one striking example, the word go, along with its derivatives, occurs no less than a thousand times in the Rig Veda and as positively related to the desire for cattle. Thus, if we are prepared to go through a weary process of enumerating the total number of times all the words for water, strength, cow, progeny and material wealth occur in the Rig Veda, and always as indicating the longing for these, we shall reach a staggering figure, - and this even after making due allowance for the cross-references involved in the considerable number of ambiguities that are there. And still the list would exclude a large number of other words expressing material desires. Thus the impression we have from the random samples is confirmed by what Macdonell called the statistical standard. The Vedic poets did not know of any song that was not a showerer of desire and they did not know of any desire that was not posi- tively material. And if their desires were so thoroughly this- worldly, it would be wrong to attribute to them any other-worldly or spiritualistic world-outlook on the precarious evidence of extremely doubtful interpretation of a few fragments of such an enormous compilation of their songs. It is tempting here to venture a comment. According to the orthodox or later Vedic tradition, there are four forms of human ideal. These are: dharma, artha, kama and moksa. The mate- rialists are invariably denounced because of their refusal to admit the first and the fourth of these. The stock condemna- tion of them is that thev are artha-kama-pradhanah, i.e., those who admit only artha (material wealth) and kama (the sexual urge, or, in the broader sense, desire in general) as the summum bonum. Therefore, in order to judge how far the early Vedie poets themselves differed from the materialists condemned by the later champions of the Vedas, we have to determine the importance of the ideals of dharma and moksa in the Rig Veda. The classical definition of dharma, as given by Kanada,107 is 'that from which results the prosperity in this world (abhuju- dayah) and final liberation (nihsreyasah).' Moksa, again, meant final liberation. It would be a rare feat indeed if a single rik of the genuinely earlier portions of the Rig Veda can be made to reveal the ideal of moksa or final liberation as inspiring the early 10c ji. 2. 167 Sutra i. 1. 2.

VARUNA AND MAYA 551

Vedic poets. And if this were so, it would be improper to attri- bute to them the ideal of dharma either, because, as we have just seen, the classical understanding of dharma is inclusive of the ideal of moksa. In short, still innocent of the ideals of dharma and moksa, the early poets of the Rig Veda appear to us as not differing very much from the materialists: if one thing is certain about them it is that they were most thoroughly inspired by the ideals of artha and kama, though they were yet obviously far from formulating these ideals into a philosophy. It may be observed that this understanding of the Rig Veda is contradicted by the sheer fact of the existence of a host of Vedic gods mentioned in the Rig Veda. The basis of this objec- tion is that we are readily inclined to associate the idea of reli- gion - and therefore other-worldliness and spiritnalism - with the bare mention of gods and goddesses. But we have already seen that the so-called gods of the Rig Veda, as evidenced by a considerable number of passages, were yet far from becoming reallv divine. Even if it is shown that in other passages they moved somewhat nearer the more developed conception of the godhead, the surmise would be that their near-divine status, as witnessed by these passages, presupposes an anterior stage of development at which they must have been the human and quasi-human beings of the other passages. Besides, these early poets were so much preoccupied by the desire for sheer material values that even their gods were largely conceived in terms of these. The breasts of Sarasvati bear wealth (ratnadha) and are the knowers of wealth (vasu-cit).1N The Ribhus are the fore- most among the bearers of wealth (ratna-dhatamah).109 And so is Agni."70 Indra is the giver of food (vajada171) and Usas is one that gives birth to food"" (vaja-prasuta). Interestingly, the same epithets were applied to human beings as well: Agni, the best man among men, makes those (people) the possessors of wealth (maghavanah), producers of food (vaja-prasutah) and the makers of food (isayantah173). Agni himself is the lord of wealth (rayinam patih) and the fosterer of food (cajam- bharah17): Sayana quoted Panini to show that this was one of

168 i. 164. 49. 169 i. 20. 1. 171 jii. 36. 5. 170i. 1. 1. 173j. 77. 4. 172 i. 92. 8. 174i. 60. 5.

552 LOKAYATA

the Vedic names (samjna) for Agni. Agni makes food (vaja- yate175) and Indra is one whose friends are the producers of food (sravayat-sakha176). Indra is one with food (vajavan177) and Asvins the possessors of food (vajavanta178). Agni is the lord of wealth (rayi-patih) among wealth (rayinam179). Mata- risvan goes to Agni who is like wealth (rayim-iva180). Indra is full of wealth Aisavan181). Agni is the increaser of food (unna- vridhah) and one who moves with food (prati caranti annaih182). However, of all such epithets the ones that interest us most are those which were applied by the Vedic poets almost indis- criminately to their gods as well as their kinsmen. One of these is arkin, the possessor of food. The gana of the Maruts is addressed as the prossessor of food (arkin183); at the same time human beings are called arkinah.184 Another such is vaja-ratna (lit., glowing with food). Asvins185 are addressed as vaja- ratna and so are the Ribhus.180 At the same time the poets sing, 'May we, possessed of wealth, glow with food (vaja- ratnah187).' Indra is asked to make 'our' knowledge (dhiyal, alternatively actions) glowing with food.188 A third interesting example is vajayan. Even Sayana189 was sometimes obliged to render it as 'while making or producing food.' Indra is addressed as the producer of food (vajayantam190). Soma is producing food (vajayan191). Along with the Ribhus, who are the possessors of food, Indra, while producing food (vajayan), is asked to go towards the yajna.192 However, the most frequent mention of this is in connection with the human beings: 'While producing food (vajayan iva) praise Agni, the foremost of food (yasasta- masya193).' 'O Indra, we, while producing food (vajayantah), sprinkle thee with soma."19 'While producing food in the yajna, we invoke Indra.'193 Men (narah): while producing food ( vaja- yantah), invoke Indra.196 Agni is addressed as the lord of wealth ( vasu-pati), with whose help 'May we, while producing food

175 iv. 7. 11. 176 viii. 46. 12. 177 jii. 60. 6. 178 viii. 35. 15. 179 i. 60. 4; i. 72. 1. 180 i. 60. 1. 181 i. 129. 6. 182 x. 1. 4. 183 i. 38. 15. 1%4i. 7. 1; i. 10. 1. 185 iv. 43. 7. 186 iv. 34. 2; iv. 35. 5. 187 v. 49. 4. 188 vi. 35. 1. 189 On iii. 60. 7. 190 viii. 98. 12. 191 ix. 68. 4. 192 jii. 60. 7. 193 ii. 8. 1. 194 i. 30. 1 195 i. 132. 1. 196 iv. 25. 8.

VARUNA AND MAYA 553

(vajayantah), win food (vajam jayema197).' 'We, while pro- ducing food (vajayantah), invoke Agni in battles for our protec- tion - Agni, the increaser of wealth in battles.'198 In a large number of cases, the invocation accompanying the act of the pro- duction of food is directed to Indra: 'Indra, we invoke thee while producing food."199 'While producing food we are calling Indra and Vayu to give us food."200 The food-producing words are sent towards Indra.201 Indra remains with the producer of food.202 'O Indra, protect us - the producers of food."203 But what is of most surprising interest is that there were poets even in the age of the Rig Veda who thought that the production of food was sufficiently important for the human beings and the invocation of Indra for this purpose was useless: 'O people (janah), while producing food you send praises to Indra, as if he truly exists! But who has ever seen Indra? Hence whom should we praise?'204 These examples, again, are not very carefully chosen but taken more or less at random. There is no doubt that any student of the Rig Veda, can, without much effort, find plenty of parallels. Deeply concerned as they were with material values, the poets of the Rig Veda hardly knew or praised any god who was not vitally connected with these values. And, lest we attribute too hastily a consciousness of spiritualistic ideas to the early Vedic poets, it may be useful to have a word of caution here. Words change more slowly than their mean- ings. And so it often happens that under new circumstances an old word is retained to describe a new phenomenon altogether. The common belief that the Rig Veda is spiritualistic in content is to a great extent the result of some such confusion: a conside- rable number of words, originally having only a materialistic content in the Rig Veda, have survived in later Sanskrit with altered, i.e., with spiritualistic, implications. In short, the mean- ings of these words had passed into their opposites. The most handy example would probably be the word bhagavan. In our times it is used as the commonest word for God. However, bhaga in the Rig Veda, simply meant material wealth

197 v. 4. 1. 198 viii. 11. 9. 200 vii. 90. 7 .; vii. 91. 7. 199 vi. 19. 4. 202 v. 31. 1. 201 viii. 3. 15. 203 v. 35. 7. 204 viii. 100. 3. The poet of this hymn was Nema of the Bhrigu clan. In the subsequent riks of the hymn, Indra appeared before Nema and dispelled his doubt and praised himself.

554 LOKAYATA

or a share thercof. Bhagavan, therefore, meant 'one with mate- rial wealth,' or 'one entitled to a share.' The word isvara (God) is another example. The poets of the Rig Veda did not, however, took this to mean God. The Nighantu205 mentioned four synonyms for it: rastri, aryah, niyutvan and inaina. All these referred to one connected with the function of 'spreading' - presumably, inereasing or augment- ing. But increasing or augmenting what? A reasoned view of the contexts in which the words actually occur in the Rig Veda does not leave us in any doubt as to the answer: it was the activity of increasing or augmenting the material wealth, parti- cularly food. Thus Indra, as arya, was sending cettle to the Vedic singers and giving back the carthly meal to the givers thereof.206 Agni, as arya, in the past led men to get profuse food.207 As arya, again, he was producing wealth and upholding the rita and was nourishing the gods and men by giving them food.20s Vayu, as niyutvan, was invoked to come with wealth for the delight of the singers.209 Indra, as the lord of ina, was the giver of horses, cows, barley and had been in the past a wish- yielder as a friend towards friends.210 Agni, as inaina, was the lord of wealth and the custodian of wealth.21 And so on. It would be tedious to quote more examples. What needs to be remembered, rather, is that, if the gods of the Rig Veda thus invariably appear as connected with the activity of increasing the material wealth - particularly food - it may be inferred that they were originally only the producers thereof. Interest- ingly, the Nighantu212 mentioned four synonyms for aiscarya- karmanah, the activities of making or prodncing material wealth or the means of subsistence; needless to add, all these referred to the activities of the gods themselves.

6. THE COMPARATIVE METHOD To rcapitulate: That which invariably inspired the songs of the Rig Veda was only the simple everyday desire of a pastoral people. Even the gods, in whose praise the poets were so often going into ecstacies, were but the embodiments of such desires as already fulfilled. In other words, the same simple everyday

205 ii. 22. 207 i. 70. 1-2. 205 i. 33. 3; i. 81. 6. 209 1. 135. 4. 20>i. 71. 3. 210 i. 53. 2. 211 i. 149. 1. 212 ji. 21.

VARUNA AND MAYA 555

desires went to the making of the Vedic gods. Invocations to them were often only friendly requests to lead the poets and their kinsmen to the fulfilment of these desires. We cannot judge such requests in terms of what we mean by worship. For the gods, in a large number of the songs, were only human or quasi-human beings; and if in some other songs they have ceased to be so, even these point to an anterior stage of their develop- ment at which they must have been so. That is, though some of the Vedic poets moved nearer to what we mean by religion, their ancestors did not. And it is this ancestral experience of theirs that concerns us most. It will be objected that such an approach to the Rig Veda ignores or overlooks an important characteristic of these songs. These were not songs in the ordinary sense of the term, but were meant to be employed (viniyoga) in the Vedic rituals, the yajnas. And this means that in order to understand the original significance of the Vedic songs, we have to go into the question of the origin of the Vedic rituals. Yajna or the ritual is, in a sense, the key to the Vedic lite- ratures. However, before we go into the question of the origin of the yajna, it is necessary to be clear about the comparative method we discussed in Chapter II. If the Vedic society cannot be understood independently of the Vedic yajna, the Vedie yajna, too, is un-understandable when divorced from the Vedic society. The key to the Vedic society is to be found in the pastoral economy of the Vedic people. In accordance with our method, therefore, we may begin with the question: What is known in general about the basic characteri- sties of the social organisation of the people living in the pasto- ral stages of economic development? This takes us back to Chapter IV, Section 2, where we have discussed the classification of the surviving tribes from the point of view of their economie development. What is particularly relevant here is that, like the third grade of the agricultural eco- nomy, the second or the more advanced grade of the pastoral economy marks the termination of the pre-class or truly tribal society .: it is here that the tribal society begins to disintegrate. In other words, there were two parallel paths that led men from the pre-class society. These were the developments of the agri- cultural and the pastoral economy. However, the final qualita- tive change - the full transformation of the pre-class into the class-divided society - could only be the result of the accumu-

556 LOKAYATA

lated quantitative changes, the gradual increase in the pro- ductivity of human labour which ultimately enabled it to pro- duce more than was necessary for its maintenance, i.e., created the possibility for a few to live on the labour of many, the essential precondition for the division of society into classes. We shall try to trace some aspect of this process as reflected in the Vedic literatures. For the present, we need only remember that the development of the pastoral economy was itself a protracted process at the end of which alone the final breakdown of the pre-class society took place. The Rig Veda was composed by pastoral people, but it must have taken them several centuries to compose the whole of it. This long period must have also witnessed the accumulation of the quantitative changes in the productive capacity of the Vedic people which went on creating the material conditions for the ultimate qualitative transition from the pre-class to the class- divided society. Thus, on the basis of the gencral law of social development, the presumption would be that the Rig Veda as a whole was the literature of a long transitional period, retaining, on the one hand, the memory - and sometimes even the reflec- tion - of the pre-class society along with its characteristic beliefs and customs, while, en the other hand, foreshadowing the reali- ties of the class-divided society. That the Vedic people were originally tribal is, however, not a new point. The foremost of the modern scholars have unhesitatingly used the word tribal to refer to their social organi- sation.213 However, the special advantage of the comparative method is that it helps us to move a step forward -to a clearer understanding of the tribal society - and thereby to enable us to understand certain more or less obvious features of the Rig Veda in the light of our knowledge of the surviving tribes. It may be of some interest to mention here at least one example of how even the most eminent of our modern Vedic scholars have, by ignoring the comparative method, arrived at conclusions which are at best superficial. Here is an observation of Winternitz:214 However, we must not form too exalted an idea of the moral conditions in ancient India, and not picture these to ourselves in such an idyllic manner, as certainly Max Muller has at times done. We hear in the hymns of the Rig Veda of incest, seduction, conjugal unfaithfulness, the procuring of abortion, as also of deception, theft

218 CHI i. 81ff .; VA 245ff. 214 HIL i. 67-8.

VARUNA AND MAYA 557

and robbery. All this, however, proves nothing against the antiquity of the Rig Veda. Modern ethnology knows nothing of the 'unspoiled children of nature' any more than it regards all primitive peoples as rough savages or cannibal monsters. The ethnologist knows that a step-ladder of endless gradations of the most widely differing cul- tural conditions leads from the primitive peoples to the half-civilised peoples, and right up to the civilised nations. We need not, there- fore, imagine the people of the Rig Veda either as an innocent she- pherd people, or as a horde of rough savages, nor, on the other hand, as a people of ultra-refined culture. The picture of culture which is unfolded in these songs shows us the Aryan Indians as an active, joyful and war-like people, of simple, and still partly savage habits. The Vedic singers implore the gods for help against the enemy, for victory in battle, for glory and rich booty; they pray for wealth, heaps of gold and countless herds of cattle, for rain for their fields, for the blessing of children, and long life. As yet we do not find in the songs of the Rig Veda that effeminate, ascetic and pessi- mistic trait of the Indian character with which we shall meet again and again in later Indian literature. This is sound, but only negatively - as an antidote to the idyllic picture drawn by Max Muller and of course also to the mystical awe propagated during so many centuries. And this negative value of the observation is the result of the admission, - however halting and partial it might be,-of the comparative method, the admission that modern enthnology has significant light to throw on such ancient a literature as the Rig Veda. For the Vedic people could not have, like Athena of Greek mytho- logy, sprung forth from the earth in complete armour as it were. On the contrary, like all other peoples of the world, they had to begin life at the very beginning, from the lowest step in the scale of social evolution, or as Winternitz said, they had gra- dually to climb the step-ladder leading from savagery to civili- sation. Further, as rightly pointed out, there remained survivals of savage habits even in the Rig Veda, which, obviously enough, cannot be understood except in the light of what is known in general about such habits still surviving among the very back- ward peoples. However, the conclusions which Winternitz has arrived at is quite insignificant and even positively misleading. And this is because of the want of sufficient seriousness about the com- parative method itself. It is not the positive teaching of modern enthnology that the primitive people are as much given to 'incest, seduction, conjugal unfaithfulness, the procuring of abor- tion, deception, theft and robbery' as the civilised ones; that, in other words, in social vices the primitives vie with the civilised.

215 OF 60ff.

558 LOKAYATA

The point, as Engels215 clearly explained, is that it is impos. sible to judge the sexual morality of the primitive society in standards of our own; and though inter-tribal war, and therefore robbery, might have become a regular feature of the more deve- loped stages of the pastoral economv, the material conditions for individual thefts within the tribe did not develop in the truly primitive society for the very simple reason that property was still jointly owned. If, therefore, it is possible to trace in the Rig Veda records of social vices in the modern sense, the pass- ages in which these occur are to be traced to that stage of social development in which the truly primitive conditions were be- ginning to disintegrate. But the predominant characteristic of the Rig Veda does not reveal social vices as we understand them today. We shall return later to discuss the concept of the rita in the Rig Veda and shall see that it represented what Engels21 ealled 'the simple moral grandeur of the ancient gentile society.' But the most pronounced characteristic of the social organisation first. We may, in accordance with our method, begin with what is directly observed about the tribes surviving today at a stage of development similar to that of the Vedic people. On the admission of Winternitz himself, the Kaffirs of Africa are such. And here is the observation of Kidd=17 on the most pronounced feature of their social organisation: A Kaffir feels that 'the frame that binds him in' extends to the clan. The sense of solidarity of the family in Europe is thin and feeble compared with the full-blooded sense of corporate union of the Kaffir clan. The claims of the clan entirely swamp the rights of the individual. The system of tribal land-tenure, which has worked so well in its smoothness that it might satisfy the utmost dreams of the socialist, is a standing proof of the sense of corporate union of the clan. Fortunately for Europeans this sense of corporate union does not extend beyond the tribe, or no white man could have sur- vived in South Africa. In olden days a man did not have any feel- ing of personal injury when a chief made him work for white men and then told him to give all, or nearly all, of his wages to the chief; the money was kept within the clan, and what was the good of the clan was the good of the individual and vice versa. It should be pointed out that it is not only the missionary who teaches the native the value of the individual, but it is also the trader, the mine-owner and the farmer. The striking thing about this unity of the clan is that it was not a thought-out plan imposed from without by legis- lation on an unwilling people, but a felt-out plan which arose spon- taneously along the line of least resistance. If, one member of the

216 Ib. 163. 217 SC 74ff.

VARUNA AND MAYA 559

clan suffered, all the members suffered, not in sentimental phraseo- logy but in real fact. The corporate union was not a pretty religious fancy with which to please the mind, but was so truly felt that it formed an excellent basis from which the altruistic sentiments might start. Gross selfishness was curbed, the turbulent passions were restrained by an impulse which the man felt welling up within him, instinctive and unbidden.

If the modern Kaffirs are still on the same level of develop- ment which the Vedic people have passed through many thousand years ago, and if further a corporate union which can 'satisfy the utmost dreams of the socialist' be the key to the social organisation of the Kaffirs as observed, it may be quite logical for us to expect reflections or the relics of the same corporate union in the literatures of the Vedic people. One striking feature of the Rig Veda is already evident from the passages we have referred to. The desire for the this-worldly objects, which directly or indirectly formed the core of the Vedic songs, had a pronounced collective bias. They were not, in other words, the desire of the individual for his personal pros- perity, but pronouncedly and positively the desire of the group for its collective prosperity. To say this is not to claim that it is impossible to trace in the Rig Veda any passage in which was expressed the desire of the individual. There are such passages, evidently representing the disintegration of the primitive collec- tive lite of the Vedic people. However, our starting point is the collective consciousness in the Rig Veda which could be nothing but the reflection of the collective life of the Vedic people during their earlier career. This sense of collectivity is so overwhelmingly evident in the Rig Veda that it is practically difficult to ignore it. Not to speak of food, cattle and the other forms of material wealth, even when children - or more specifically the male offsprings - were desired, they were desired for the group as a whole: for 'us' and not for 'me.218 Under these circumstances, it is surpri- sing that even the eminent Vedic scholars remain silent about such a pronounced and obvious characteristic of the Vedic songs. The reason can only be what Marx called the judicial blindness of even the greatest scholars and, as we have secn, the compara- tive method can be a cure for it.

218 E.g. i. 73. 9; ii. 11. 21; etc. A large number of references may indeed be catalogued.

569 LOKAYATA

7. RELICS OF COLLECTIVE LIFE In Chapter III, Sections 7 and 12, while discussing the pro- blem of the gana and the vraata in the Vedic literatures, we came across some aspect of the collective or the pre-class organi- sation of the Vedic pcople. There are many more interesting evidences of the same, or of its survival, in the Rig Veda. It may be convenient to discuss these under two heads: (1) cvi- dences of general nature and (2) evidences more specific in cha- racter. Under the latter will come the questions of production, distribution and administration. Production should logically come first. However, in view of the considerable complexities in which the problem is involved, we propose to take it up only after discussing the problems of distribution and administration. For, what becomes clear about the Vedic people from their mode of distribution and administration may throw light on what is still obscure about their mode of production; i.e., if their mode of distribution and administration be clearly collective, the pre- sumption would be that their mode or production, too, must have been so. But the evidences of more general nature first. The point to be remembered is that a sense of equality is only a counterpart of collectivity. Here are two successive riks219 of the Rig Veda: Those ancient poets (kavayah purvyasah), the observers of the rita, were in joyful company with the gods (devanam sadha-madah asan); those ancestors (pitarah) gained the secret lustre; with spells of truth they generated Usas. Being united (adhi samgatasah) with the common cattle (samane urve: according to Sayana, sarvesam sadharane go-samuhe), they became of one mind (te sam janate: Sayana - te eka-bud- dhayah bhavanti); they strive together as it were (na yatante mithah te) nor do they injure the rituals (vratani) of the gods: not injuring each other they move with wealths (amardhantah vasubhih yadamanah). It is to be noted that we have here a reference to the very ancient phase of the life of the Vedic people, for the riks belong to the older stratum of the Rig Veda and there is, moreover, a distinct reference to the past in these. The special interest of these is, however, the fact that notwithstanding the obscurities of minor details, the broad picture of primitive communism along with its collective consciousness is clear enough. And this memory of primitive communism was also the memory of a period when men were enjoying the joyful company of the gods 219 vii. 76. 4-5.

VARUNA' AND MAYA 561

and even the gods themselves, far from being the parasitical re- ceivers of oblations of our later ideas, were performing their own rituals susceptible to human attacks or protections. More- over, the simple moral grandeur of the Vedic people when they were living under such communistic conditions is not to be over- looked: the ancient poets were observing the rita and jealousy was unknown to them. The ancient poets referred to by the riks were the Angirases. We may digress a little here to consider the myths about them in the Rig Veda, for these have significant suggestions as to the original relation between the Vedic poets and the Vedic deities. We are indebted to Macdonell220 for compiling the myths. Weber thought that the Angirases were priests of the Indo- Iranian period. Their close relation to the Atharvans seems to confirm this, though it is more likely that they were primitive magicians rather than priests in the later sense. In any case, there seems to be no doubt that they were originally nothing but human beings. The poets of the Rig Veda repeatedly referred to them as 'fathers,"221 'our fathers'222 and 'our ancient fathers."223 In the enumeration of the ancestors was mentioned the 'ancient Angirases."224 They were also mentioned as fathers along with the Atharvans and the Bhrigus,220 who were but human beings in origin. The Anukramani226 attributed the composition of the ninth book of the Rig Veda to the different Angirases, indicating that the old tradition remembered them as ancient pocts or, more properly, poet-magicians. At the same time, from the other myths about them in the Rig Veda we can see how they gradually rose to the status of Vedic gods. By yajna they obtained immortality and friendship with Indra.227 Accompanied by them, Indra pierced Vala229 and produced the cows.229 Inspired by their praises Indra did the same.230 By leading them, Indra was called angirastamah, the chief of the Angirases.231 'Incidentally,' as Macdonell232 added, 'Indra assumes a less prominent position than the Angi- rases in the myth of the cows. Thus the Angirases are said to have emptied the stall containing cows and horses, with Indra

220 VM 142-3. 221 x. 62. 2. 223 i. 62. 2. 222 i. 71. 2.

225 x. 14. 6. 224 i. 139. 9.

227 x. 62. 1. 226 See Macdonell VM 143. 229 vi. 17. 6. 228 ii. 11. 20. 231 i. 100. 4; i. 130. 3. 230 ii. 15. 8; iv. 16. 8. 232 VM 142-3. L36

562 LOKAYATA

as their companion (x. 62.7). Here we have the transition when Indra's name ceases to be mentioned any more, his characteristic funetions being directly attributed to the Angirases themselves. By the rite they drove out the cows and pierced Vala (x.62.2.), caused the sun to mount the sky, and spread out mother earth (x.62.3.). By the rite they cleft the rock and shouted with the cows (iv.3.11).' If the Angirases could thus usurp Indra of some of his most characteristic functions, the reason could only be that they became not merely the friends of Indra but, in certain respects at least, even equal to him. That is, the Angi- rases, originally only human beings, eventually became gods. It is only from this point of view that we can understand how Brihaspati, while piercing the rocks and capturing the cows,23: or while giving cows like Bhaga,*34 could himself be called an angirasa. Agni, though in some place called the chief Angiras,235 was often called an Angiras.238 'In one passage (i.31.17),' said Macdonell,237 'in which the poet exclaims, "O Agni, come to us as to Manus, as to Angiras, O Angiras," the name designates hoth the ancestor and Agni.' It is no wonder, therefore, that we should find soma offered to them238 and they invoked as gods."39 We have scen the result of the same process with regard to the Maruts and the Ribhus. We have also noted that, even after their elevation to the status of the gods they retained strong relics of the collective life, which, as human beings, they were presumably living. It is not surprising, therefore, that we should find the same peculiarity about the Angirases also. One entire suktu of the latest stratum of the Rig Veda240 was devoted in their praise. In this we find the most frequent invocations to them as gods. One of the most prominent characteristic of the sukta, however, is that the Angirases were referred to throughout as a group, in their collectivity. Presumably, they were originally not only human beings but human beings living the collective life of the pre-class society. The two riks we started with con- firm this: these ancient poets had common ownership of cows and enjoyed a collective consciousness. This brings us back to the main point of our discussion, namely the relics of collectivity in the Rig Veda. It would be

233 vi. 73. 1; 3. 234 x. 68. 2. 235 i. 75. 2; 1. 31. 1. 230 In i. 127. 2 Agni is the seniormost among the Angirases and in vi. 11. 3 he is the wisest among them. 237 VM 143. 238 ix. 62. 9. 239 iii. 53. 7. 240 x. 62.

VARUNA AND MAYA 563

remarkable if the references to collective ownership of material wealth were confined to these two riks only. However, the fact is that we come across similar references in other riks, too. Here is another example of collective ownership along with a signi- ficant reference to the past: As in the past (purvavat), he (Agni) generated the common wealth (samanam dhanam) for the living beings.241 In certain other examples, the reference to the past does not occur:

swiftly.242 Let the common cow (samanam nama dhenu) be moving

We invoke Indra, the custodian of the common wealth (samanam vasavanam) and the giver of wealth (vasu-juvam) for protection.243 O Indra, as a girl staying with father takes equal share (bhaa- gam), so bring and measure for us (kridhi upa masi) that wealth; give us share for our body (tanvah244) ....

The law of inheritance in the rik quoted last may be some- what obscure; but its overtly materialistic outlook is not so, for, whatever was desired was for the sake of the body. In another interesting rik, common right to the cows seems to follow from the very concept of instinctive morality - the rita - of the early Vedic people: O Agni, your brilliance comes to us and you brought the cows of rita equally to us (ritasya dhenah anayanta sasrutah: Sayana interpreted sasrutah as samanam gacchantyah245). The human beings, the assistance of whom the gods were frequently enjoying, were sometimes described as equal among themselves. 'Along with men, who are equal among themselves (samanaih nribhih yat yuktah), O Âgni, you killed the demons.'246 Men became equal to gods,247 and this from the times of 'the fathers."248 Agni was equal to all.249 Indra protec- ted the cows, killed Vritra and was equal to all.250 Some kind of equality among the gods thmeselves was also hinted at. Indra and Agni, like twin brothers, had the same parentage.251 The Nasatyas sat in the assemblies and drank soma with the human beings.252 The Asvins were equal in origin and in friendship.23

241 jii. 2. 12. 242 vi. 66. 1. 248 viii. 99. 8. 244 jj. 17. 7. 245 i. 141. 1. 246 i. 69. 8. 247 iii. 58. 6; vii. 72. 2. 248 vii. 72. 2. 250 iv. 30. 22. 249 i. 127. 8.

252 vii. 73. 2. 251 vi. 59. 2. 253 vili. 73. 12.

564 LOKAYATA

The Maruts were coming out from their common abode254 and some of the gods were enjoying the common oblations offered to them.255 It is not impossible even to find the gods as engaged in collective labour: O Ribhus, make food together for our yajna, for our work, for food accompanied with progeny-that we may live together along with all the heroes, the people: give us strength for our organs.250 However, of all the relics of collectivity in the Rig Veda, perhaps the most striking one is to be found in its last sukta, which, chronologically too, belonged to its latest stratum. The last three riks of this sukta represent the most intense longing for the equality and collectivity once enjoyed by the Vedic people and their gods, but which had evidently been lost to them. Do ye concur; be ye closely combined; let your minds be concur- rent, as the gods of old sat concurrent about their portion (devah bhaugam yatha purve samjananah upa-asate). (Be) their counsel (mantra) the same, their gathering the same, their course (vrata) the same, their intent alike (saha); I offer for you with the same oblation; do ye enter together into the same thought (cetas). Be your design the same, your hearts the same, your mind the same, that it may be well for you together.257

The primitive collectivity of the Vedic life had to be broker and it was broken. But, as we shall presently see, it was broken by such forces as appeared to some of the more sensitive poets as a degradation, a fall. And they were moaning for the life that was lost, were trying frantically to revive the memory of the past, as if that would restore the bliss of equality and unity once enjoyed by their ancestors. The crucial point is suggested by the words: devah bhaagam yatha purve samjananah upa-asate - just as in the past the gods, in their collectivity, used to accept their shares. Evidently, things had changed: Indra was already demanding a greater share in the booty.258 But what is meant here by 'share,' and what is meant by 'respective shares' of the gods? This leads us to the character- ristic mode of distribution under primitive communism and its relics in the Rig Veda.

254 v. 87. 4. 255 i. 25. 6. 256 i. 111. 2. 257 x. 191. 2-4. Cf. AV vi. 64. (tr.) Whitney. 258 vii. 32. 12.

VARUNA AND MAYA 565

8. BHAGA AND AMSA : DISTRIBUTION Darwin259 observed that perfect equality existed among the individuals comprising the Fuegian tribes and this, he feared, was fatal to any hope of their ever becoming civilised. For this equality was maintained by a peculiar mode of distribution which amounted to equal division of everything they possessed: 'Even a piece of cloth given to one is torn in shred and distri- buted, no one individual becomes richer than another.' Bailey260 noted the same custom among the Veddhas of Ceylon. We have here the clue not only to the practice of appor- tioning wealth frequently referred to in the Rig Veda, but also to the origin of the two otherwise peculiar Vedic deities, Bhaga and Amsa, both meaning 'share,' the economic function of both being comparable to that of Moira of the ancient matriarchal Greece. However, our method demands that we should begin with a more detailed study of what is known in general about the mode of distribution characteristic of the primitive pre-class society. The lowest savages known to us have this universal charac- teristic, that the individual has no personal right to the game, fish, vegetable food or even a personal gift received by him. The cqualitarian society in which he lives demands that the other individuals belonging to the group are instinctively entitled to a share of it. Here are some interesting observations. Palmer, in his 'Notes on Some Australian Tribes,"26J said: Division of game takes place according to well-established rule in which they practise considerable self-denial, the hunter often going short himself that others might have the recognised share. When a kangaroo is killed, the hind leg is given to the hunter's father, with the backbone; the other leg to his father's brother; the tail to his sister; the shoulder to his brother; the liver he eats himself. Sometimes his own kin will be left without any, but in that case it seems to be the rule that her brother gives her of his hunting, or someone else on her side. A blackfellow would rather go short himself and pretend he was not hungry than incur the odium of having been greedy in camp, or of neglecting the duties of hos- pitality. Among the tribes of North-Central Australia, the same principle operates though with difference in details: 'the hunter himself takes only the inner parts and blood. He then waits till he receives a share from some of the other hunters who are

259 NVRW 242. 281 Quoted by Briffault M. ii. 493-4. 260 Quoted by Briffault M. i. 494.

566 LOKAYATA

related to him. 202 Briffault288 has referred to the custom where even a single fish or snake is divided. And here is Ridley's204 description of how the Australians divide among themselves the gifts received by them:

So when blackfellows whose traditional ideas of law are not dispelled come to the stations and receive presents or rewards, these are divided among their companions; and it was not from mere thoughtlessness or ignorance of the value of what they possessed, nor vet from benevolence, that when a suit of clothes was given one, the company to which he belonged were seen accoutred, one with nothing but a coat, another with a hat, another with trousers. A venerable law handed doun from many generations imposed the division upon them.

Briffault2t5 has collected many more interesting examples of this 'venerable law' of division as operating among the primitive peoples. We may mention here a few. Among the Eskimo, the hunter has no personal right to his catch; it is divided among all the inhabitants of the village. 'In small things and in great, whatever is to be found in an Eskimo village in the way of provisions and tools is the common property of all. As long as there is a piece of meat in the camp it belongs to all.' The same division of the products of the chase takes place amongst the Aleuts. In the islands of the Ellice group it was almost a misfor- tune for a man to make a good catch of fish, for his canoe was surrounded the moment he landed, and everyone picked out the fish he liked best. In Tahiti, 'it seems,' says Bougainville, 'that as regards the necessaries of life there is no private property, and everything belongs to everybody'. .. All food is distributed through- out the clan in New Caledonia .... Among the Kugamma of Nigeria a hunter's bag of game is divided among the whole village.

Thus the low level of technique makes production as well as consumption a collective affair.206 Their systematic commu. nism is rendered possible by the inviolable law operative among them, according to which every member of the clan is entitled to an equal share in the material wealth acquired by the clan as a whole or by any member thereof. Indeed, the conscious- ness of there being any difference between the wealth acquired by an individual in the clan and by the clan as a whole is yet to dawn upon the mind of these savages. As La Hontan remarked.267

262 Quoted by Briffault M. ii. 494. He has given us many more references to the same practice. For other references to the law of division among the hunting peoples, see Thomson SAGS i. 297. 263 M. ii. 494. 204 AA. 7. Italics added. 205 M. ii. 494ff. 260 See Thomson SAGS i. 297 for many more references. 267 Quoted by Briffault M il. 496-7.

VARUNA AND MAYA 567

These savages know nothing of mine and thine, for it may be said that what belongs to one belongs to another ..... It is only those who are Christians and dwell at the gates of our towns who make use of money. The others will not touch it. They call it the 'Snake of the French' .... They think it strange that someone should have more goods than others, and that those who have more should be more esteemed than those who have less. They never quarrel and fight amongst themselves nor steal from one another, or speak ill one of another. Added another French observer:

What is extremely surprising in men whose external appearance is wholly barbarous is to see them treat one another with a gentleness and consideration which one does not find among common people in the most civilised nations. This, doubtless, arises in part from the fact that the words 'mine' and 'thine', which St. Chrysostom says extinguish in our hearts the fire of charity and kindle that of greed, are unknown to these savages.208

It is to be noted that the same law of division opcrating with the same inviolable force among these people prevents the birth of the sense of 'mine' and 'thine' in their consciousness:

I have seen them divide game, venison, bear's meat, fish etc. among themselves, when they sometimes had many shares to make, and cannot recollect a single instance of their falling into a dispute or finding fault with the distribution as being unequal or otherwise objectionable.269

To sum up: The lowest savages known to us have no sense of private or individual property because 'a venerable law handed down from many generations imposed the division upon them.' Therefore, if the prehistory of the Vedic people, like the prehistory of all other peoples of the world, was marked by simi- lar savagery, then it is only to be expectcd that their earliest literatures, - whatever might have been the stage of their eco- nomic development at which they were compiled, - inevitably full of reverence for the ancestral institutions, should retain the marks of the memory of the same inviolable law according to which every individual was by birth entitled to his share in the material wealth of the group. The law of division, in its direct form, is found operative among the hunting tribes. The Vedic people, however, were much ahead of this stage of development. The predominant feature of their economy, as reflected in the Rig Veda, was pas- toral. The adoption of this pastoral economy itself was a deci- sive step taken by the ancient peoples towards the accumnu-

26% Ib. ii. 497. 269 Jb.

568 LOKAYATA

lation of private property and, therefore, to the eventual breakdown of their primitive collective life.270 We cannot, therefore, judge the customs of the Rig Veda by the standards of the hunting savages. During the age of the Rig Veda the people were far ahead of the simple hunting economy. It is also true, however, that their ancestors were not so. Therefore, in the lives of these ancestors the same law of division must have operated with the same inviolable force as it does in the life of the surviving hunting tribes. And those who composed the Rig Veda were often obsessed with the veneration for their ancestral institutions. The survival of the relics of this ancient law of division is thus not to be wondered at. Of course, its original implication could not be equally apparent in all these relics. The Rig Veda was after all a collection of pieces many of which were separated from each other by centuries.271 Some of the poets were themselves nearer the ancient institutions than others and as such it is but natural that in certain passages the ancient custom should be referred to more directly than in others. The remoter the relic the less is its chance of preserving the original significance of the custom. When the later poets, themselves living under changed conditions, looked back they were wont to attribute to these ancestral institutions a significance that was to a large extent the product of their own altered conditions. However, while investigating into the prehistory of the Vedic people what primarily interests us is not the significance of the ancient customs thus invented later, but rather the original signi- ficance which remained more or less obscure in these relics. There is only one way to recover it - the application of the com- parative method. There is another point the importance of which must not be overlooked. The ancient law of division had its own history of development. Its original form is to be traced back to the hunt- ing period, when the division was chiefly the division of food. But it persisted, though in more or less modified form, up to the earlier phases of the pastoral and agricultural period. This is borne out by Thomson's272 outstanding analysis of how this same ancient law gave the early Grceks the conception of the goddess Moira. His account needs to be read in full, not only because it is a masterpiece of modern interpretation but, more particu-

270 Engels OF 259ff. 272 AA 38ff. cf. SAGS i. 297-347. 271 Winternitz HIL i. 127.

VARUNA AND MAYA 569

larly, because what has become clear by his analysis of the Greek evidences has very important light to throw on what still remains obscure about our Vedic literatures. We can quote his evidences only in fragments and his conclusion in bare outline:

The basic meaning of the word moira is a share or portion ..:. With moira is associated another word, lachos, a portion given or received by the process of casting lots. One of the Moirai (goddes- ses of Fate) bore the name of Lachesis, the goddess of Allotment. In this sense, lachos is synonymous with kleros, which, commonly used of a lot or holding of land, originally denoted a piece of wood used for casting lots .. The Attic clan of Gephyraioi was descended from a branch of the stock of Kadmos which had settled in Boiotia, where 'it was allotted the portion of Tanagra'. (This can possibly be understood in the light of how the tribes of Israel occupied the Promised Land): the land was to be distributed by lot among the tribes, and the terri- tory of each tribe was to be sub-divided by lot among the 'families' of clans. In the seventh Olympian, Pindar relates how the island of Rhodes was divided into three moirai by the sons of Helios. That these three moirai correspond to the three immigrant tribes is clear from the Homeric version of the same traditions. That they were distributed by lot is not expressly stated, but it may be inferred from the myth, which Pindar relates in the same poem, of the origin of the island: when the Olympian gods cast lots for the newly- conquered world, Helios was absent and so left without akcleros ... Booty was distributed in the same way. Just as the island of Rhodes, allotted to Helios, is described by Pindar as his lachos or geras, his lot or his privilege, so the same terms-moira or lachos, geras or time -are applied to the share of the spoils allotted to each warrior. The process of distribution is called, as before, a dasmos ... As it was with land and booty, so it was with food. In ancient times, so Plutarch writes, when meals were administered by Moira or Lachesis on the principle of equality, everything was decently and liberally arranged; and in support of this contention he points out that the old word for a meal meant properly a 'division' ... Plutarch goes on to remark that the equality of the common meal was destroyed in course of time by the growth of luxury but conquered world, Helios was absent and so left without a kleros ... It may therefore be concluded that in the applicaion to food, booty and land the idea of Moira reflects the collective distribution of wealth through three successive stages in the evolution of tribal society. Oldest of all was the distribution of food, which goes back to the hunting period. Next came the distribution of chattels and inanimate movables acquired by warfare, which was a development of hunting; and, last, the division of land for the purposes of agri- culture. The use of the lot was, of course, a guarantee of equality. The goods were divided as equally as possible, and then the por- tions were distributed by a process which, since it lay outside human control, was impartial. And for the same reason it was regarded as magical, as an appeal to the Moirai or spirits of the lot, who deter- mined each man's portion. With the growth of private property, the use of the lot became increasingly restricted, and the popular

570 LOKAYATA

conception of the Moirai was modified accordingly. They became the goddesses who determined for each man his lot in life.273 We may now return to consider the Vedic materials. These take us back to a very dim antiquity when even the language of the Vedic people was in the making. As indicated by the actual uses in the Rig Veda and corroborated by the Nighantu, distinct words were then not necessarily employed to express distinct ideas, particularly to differentiate between the idea of food, material wealth and the cow. Thus, if we are at all to trust the author of the Nighantu, - and this we must, if for no other reason than his nearness to the Rig Veda-the words brahman, sravas or yasas could have meant either food or mate- rial wealth in general, and the word ila may have meant speech, earth, food or cow. Evidently, these refer us back to a period when the distinction between the idea of food and the idea of material wealth in general did not gain special signifiance, food being still the predominant form of wealth known to these people. Under these circumstances, when we come across a reference to the division of wealth in the Rig Veda, as we fre- quently do, we cannot with certainty deny that the reference was to the division of food. But we may turn to more specific evidences. One of the words for material wealth is varya. Along with its derivatives, it occurs no less than sixty-nine times in the Rig- Veda. Judging from the fact that it often occurs in the plural (varyanam) and further that Sayana interpreted this plural form sometimes to mean wealth in the form of cattle (gavadi dhananam)274 and sometimes again to mean wealth in the form of crops (vrihi-yavadinam),273 it may be presumed that the word represented an advanced conception of wealth in general. What we need take note of here is the fact that the word still concealed within itself the primitive communistic conception that wealth was collectively owned and meant to be shared out. The word is derived from the root vrim, meaning 'to divide' (sambhaktau).276 Varya, in other words, meant that which was by nature divisible. Thus the ancient law of division gave the Vedic people one of the words for wealth. As occurring in the Rig Veda, the word has usually the meaning of wealth without any specific implication of division

273 AA. 38-44. 275 x. 9. 5. 27+ viii. 71. 11. 276 Sayana on RV i. 24. 3.

VARUNA AND MAYA 571

or sharing out. But at least in one place, this word, meaning wealth, is explicitly connected with the ancient law of division from which it arose:

We strongly ask for our share from you, O Savitri, the increaser and the perennial custodian of our wealth (abhi tva deva savitah isanam varyanam sada avan bhaagam imahe).277 This rik is not probably very old. It is usually placed in the middle stratum of the Rig Veda. However, Sunahsepa, the poet-seer to whom this was attributed, sang this while cursing the injustice of his contemporary society and invoking the me- mory of the past; thus the desire expressed for the share ( bhaagam) could have been a part of the latter. We shall re- turn later to the interesting legend of Sunahsepa. For the present, we refer to another rik attributed to him with a similar reference to the same ancient law of division: 'By thy strength, O divider of wealth (bhaga-bhaktasya), we begin to multiply the wealth exceedingly.27% This, too, was similarly addressed to Savitri and this is the only occurrence of the epithet bhaga-bhakta in the whole of the Rig Veda. And the epithet has its own interest. For, in the Rig Veda, bhaga means either simply wealth or specifically the share (bhaaga). Thcre- fore, bhaga-bhakta meant either the divider of wealth or the apportioner of the shares. Here, again, we have the same inte- resting history concealed behind the word bhaga: if the word for 'wealth' was also the word for 'share,' the implication is that there was originally no wealth that was not shared out. This epithet of Savitri might have been unique. But not the function implied by it. Agni, in the form of Citrabhanu, was asked to be the apportioner."7" Savitri was invoked as the divider or apportioner of varied wealth.28" U'sas was addressed as going 'today' to divide wealth among the human beings."*1 Agni and Indra divided wealth in the past.28" Savitri was des- cribed as one who, while coming, divided shares (bhaga), wealth (ratna) and longevity (ayu).2: Indra alone is the ap- portioner of wealth.284 When Indra was dividing small as well as great wealth, both his hands were full of wealth.28 'We' are

277 i. 24. 3. 278 i. 24. 5. 280 i. 22. 7. 279 i. 27. 6. 282 i. 109. 5. 281 i. 123. 3. 284 vii. 26. 4. 288 v. 49. 1. 285 vii. 37. 3.

572 LOKAYATA

going to be present today when Savitri would be dividing wealth and give 'us.'286 Indra was asked to fulfil the bhagah or share of those who praised him.287 The rik in which this desire was expressed runs like a refrain in the oldest stratum of the Rig Veda. 'O Soma, send us the shares (bhaagam) of wealth by dint of your wit (manasa); save us in battle (gavistau288).' 'O Nasatyas, come towards us carrying wealth, food and heroic sons! You too give us -the dwellers in the land of Jahnu- three shares of food a day."289 'O Agni, come towards us with friendship and give us profuse wealth in glorious shares (suva- cam bhaagam290).' 'O Ribhus, the men desiring your friendship want you; you, by your mayas, scatter the shares of yajna (yajni- yam bhaagam) which can overcome the enemy.'291 'We ask for our varied shares (bhaaga) of Savitri, the bhaga (the custodian of shares), who bestows wealth."292 'The Maruts, with strength, are dividing Indra's wealth among those that are already born and those that are yet to be born - may each of us get this as a (prati bhaagam na didhima).'293 'O Indra, the asura, we indeed ask of you shares (bhaagam) of wealth; vou scatter happiness amongst us.'294 'O Indra, give us share (amsa) of the wealth, which was obstructed, as to one who has been promised. As a person with a stick shakes down a ripe fruit from a tree, so you send wealth towards us.'295 These are only a few examples of the Vedic gods in the role of apportioners, the custodians of the ancient principle of com- munism. And this will give us some idea of the veneration felt by the Vedic poets for this ancient principle itself. It was, there- fore, only natural for them to elevate the verv concept of share or portion to the status of gods. This was the source of the two minor Vedic deities, Bhaga and Amsa. We quote Macdonell:296

The word amsa, which occurs less than a dozen times in the Rig Veda, is almost synonymous with bhaga, expressing both the concrete sense of 'share', 'portion' and that of 'apportioner.' It is found but three times as the name of a god, only one of these pas- sages stating anything about him besides his name. Agni is here said to be Amsa, a bountiful (bhajayu) god at the feast (ii. 1. 4).

286 vii. 40. 1. 287 ii. 11. 21; 15. 10; 16. 9; 17. 9; 18. 9; 19. 9; 20. 9. 288 i. 91. 23. 289 i. 116. 19. 200 jii. 1. 19. 292 v. 82. 3. 291 jii. 60. 1. 294 viii. 90. 6. 293 viii. 99. 3. 206 VM 45-6. 295 iii. 45. 4.

VARUNA AND MAYA 573

It may be noted that the world bhajayu means 'one prone to divide' and this, as an epithet for Agni, occurred in the oldest stratum of the Rig Veda. But Bhaga had a comparatively greater importance as a Vedic god. Here is how Macdonell summed up of the evidences: One hymn of the Rig Veda (vii. 41) is devoted chiefly to the praise of Bhaga, though some other deities are invoked in it as well; and the name of the god occurs over sixty times. The word means 'dispenser, giver' and appears to be used in this sense more than a score of times attributively, in several cases with the name of Savi- tri. The god is also regularly conceived in the Vedic hymns as a distributor of wealth, comparisons with Bhaga being generally in- tended to express glorification of Indra's and Agni's bounty. The word bhaga also occurs about twenty times in the Rig Veda with the sense of 'bounty, wealth, fortune,' and the ambiguity is some- times played upon. Thus in one passage (vii. 41. 2) where Bhaga is called the distributor (vidharta), it is stated that men say of the god, 'May I share in bhaga' (bhagam bhaksi). In another verse (v. 46. 6) in which he is termed the 'dispenser' (vibhakta, derived from the same root bhaj), he is invoked to be full of bounty (bhaga- van) to his worshippers.297 The evidences so far cited relate to the sharing or division of 'material wealth in general.' General words for wealth could have, in those days, meant food, cattle, water, fodder and even booty. Therefore, these evidences, by themselves, do not help us to understand the different stages of the development of the ancient law of division, as revealed by Thomson's analysis of the Greek materials. But the other evidences do help. For, in other cases we come across the use of words with more specific meanings or sometimes the same general words in more specific contexts. One of the specific words for food in the Rig Veda is vaja. Of course, according to the Nighantu298 this could as well mean strength (vala). But as occurring in the context of division or sharing out, it could not have meant the latter. And here are some examples where the word is used in the context of division: Indra is clearly described as the divider (vibhakta) of the shares (bhaagam) of food (vajam).299 As the divider of food (vajanam vibhakta), again, he is the mightiest among the gods.300 But the most significant reference to the division of food along with a distinct mention of common meal is to be found in the Atharva Veda:801

297 Ib. 45. 248 ij. 9. 200 iii. 49. 4. 801 iii. 30. 6. (tr.) Whitney AV i. 138-9. 300 vi. 36. 1.

574 LOKAYATA

Your drinking (be) the same, in common your share of food; in the same harness do I join you together; worship ye Agni united, like spokes about a nave. Significantly enough, this stanza of the Atharva Veda is imme- diately preceded by one with an equally distinct reference to collective labour. Here it is in Whitney's translation: Having superiors, intentful, be ye not divided, accomplishing together, moving on with joint labour; come hither speaking what is agreeable one to another; I make you united, like-minded.

The Atharva Veda is commonly referred to as a collection of spells or charms. The magical rites in which these were to be applied were explained in the later ritual literature as the Kausika Sutra of the Atharva Veda. According to this text, the hymn (AV: iii. 30) we have just quoted heads a series of seven Atharvan charms, which are designated as sam manasyani, 'de- signed to produce harmony."302 These could not be the pro- ducts of the collective life where harmony within the group was an accomplished fact. Therefore, the hymns as well as the magical rites in which they were employed are to be under- stood in the context of a community which was no longer an undivided whole. It is not of little significance, therefore, that the magical rites meant to ensure harmony in a society divided against itself should be accompanied not only with poems in which was invoked the memory of the ancient common meal and the division of food, but also with the actual enactment of the ancient practice of sharing the common meal. This is evi- dent from Bloomfield's summary of the Kausika Sutra version of the ritual: A jar full of water anointed with the dregs of ghee, is carried about the (quarrelling) throng and poured out in their midst. The same proceedings are undertaken with a jar full of brandy (sura). (They who desire peace) are given to eat the pickled flesh of a young cow three years old. Food, brandy, and water from the (public?) drinking-place are anointed with the dregs of ghee (and consumed).303 By enacting in ritual the practice of ancient communism they hoped to revive the consciousness of collectivity charac- teristic of those days. But what was the reason of the break- down of the ancient collectivity, necessitating the ritual imita- tion of it? It was obviously the development of the productive technique, which, in the case of the Vedic people, had its be-

302 SBE xlii. 361ff. 303 Ib. xlii. 362.

VARUNA AND MAYA 575

ginnings in the adoption of the pastoral economy. But it must have taken a long period for this new productive technique to undermine fully the ancient relations of equality based upon the ancient law of equal distribution. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Rig Veda itself should retain references to the division of the cattle. 'Make us the holders of shares (kridhi nah bhaaga-dheyam) of the herds of cattle which you (Indra), with the sixty-three Maruts, multiplied; we approach you.'304 Simi- larly, Brahmanaspati was referred to as dividing the cows among the human beings with the mighty technique (mahi ica ritih).205 The tendency of the pastoral economy to generate war and inter-tribal raids is well known. We have already noted how in the Rig Veda the word gavisti, the desire for cow, meant war. To go among the cows, too, meant going to war. The Rig Veda is naturally full of references of war and inter-tribal raids, gene- rally under the leadership of Indra. However, what needs to be noted here is that the ancient law of division remained opera- tive even after the development of these raids and the Vedic poets were never tired of desiring the shares of the booty. Evi- dently, it took a long time for them to forget the memory of the ancient law. Indra approached while dividing the wealth looted from the aliens that were without rituals.306 Maruts were asked to make 'us' sharers in the conquered wealth.307 'O Indra, united with you we defeat the enemies; you look after our shares (amsa)' from battle to battle.908 Agni, with the help of the Asvins, conquered in the past 'our' shares in the battle.309 Along with Bhaga and Savitri, Indra was aked to give shares of the conquered wealth.310 And so on. The apportioners here, as also in the cases previously quot- ed, were the gods. However, there are also instances where the poets attributed the same function to human beings. 'Give us, O Indra, wealth accompanied by sons; by dividing wealth we shall attain greatness (rayah vantarah brihatah syama)."11 In another rik the people themselves appear to be the appor- tioners.312 There are even riks in which the relation between

804 viii. 96. 8. 305 ii. 24. 14. 807 vii. 56. 21. 306 i. 103. 6.

809 i. 112. 1. 308 i. 102. 4.

311 iii. 30. 18. 310 v. 42. 5. 312 ii. 13. 4.

576 LOKAYATA

the gods and men scems to be reversed: the human beings are here the apportioners and the gods only the receivers of shares. Here is an example: O Agni, may the yajamanas, full of food, spread food under your directions; may we increase food; may we increase food in battles and give its shares to the gods (sanema vajam samithesu bhaagam devesu dadhanah).313 Such a rendering of the rik will be objected to. This, it will be argued, misses the crucial point. The word for share (bhaaga) is indeed there; but it has the sense of being oblation assigned to the gods. This may be true. But the point is that we cannot stop here. We have to ask ourselves: how the word for 'share' could also mean 'oblation' to the gods? In answering this question, we are led to the strange prehistory of the Vedic conception of oblation itself. 'Oblation' being necessarily connected with the gods, its prehistory could only be related to the prehistory of the gods themselves. We have already reviewed some of the evidences that lead us to a definite view concerning the latter. That the Vedic gods originally possessed the characteristic traits of human beings and that they maintained warm comradely relation with them were known to the Vedic poets. If this was so, and if, further, according to the inviolable law of the ancient society, all the human beings were entitled to an equal share in the mate- rial wealth of the community, the gods themselves could not have been outside the sphere of influence of this ancient law. That is, conceived originally as human beings, they too must have been entitled to their own shares and must have received them duly. But their progressive elevation to the status of gods was necessarily accompained by a process of dehumanisation. But the memory of the ancient law persisted with a peculiar tenacity. Even when they were conceived as remoter deities, it was unthinkable for the poets to deny the gods their old claim to the shares. However, these shares could not any longer be conceived in the same form as of old. For the gods were no longer participating in the collective labour of the tribesmen. Thev were gradually remodelled in the image of the parasi- tical overlords. And thus the shares became 'oblations.'" Only the word persisted, to remind us of the ancient reality. Our only evidence for this is necessarily circumstantial -

313 i. 73. 5.

VARUNA AND MAYA 577

the repeated reference to the division of material wealth among the gods and the mention of the oblations as but fixed shares for the gods in the later yajnas. However, our presumption be- comes stronger in view of the fact, that in passages of the more archaic stratum we have the picture of gods dividing among themselves the shares of their own material wealth. Brahmanaspati divided the cows also among the gods.314 Vayu received his fixed share both among men and among gods.315 He received his own portion of the oblation.310 The portion of Pusan is 'this' goat.317 Asvins were receiving their own portions.218 The Vahnis bore the share of gods in the yajnam.319 Brahmanaspati scatters the shares of yajna among the gods.320 Agni is asked to receive his share after defeating the enemy.321 Which, it is asked of Indra, is your share and which your food?32" He is asked to have his own share.""3 The word bhaaga-dheya, which might have meant either one recciv- ing share (by proxy?), or the prescribed share itself, was used almost indiscriminately with reference to gods and men. 'O Agni, the wise men do not grudge you your share (tava bhaaga- dheyam).3% In another rik,"25 the same word bhaaga-dheya is used as referring definitely to the human beings. '(O Visva- devas), I have been appointed the hota; tell me of the bhaaga- dheya as you ascertained your bhaaga or share."326 In the place where the two (i.e., husband and wife; therefore, the reference could have been to the place of yajna as later understood) sat, the gods took their shares (davah dahire bhaaga-dheyam)."27 To Indra was given the share (amsa) of wealth that was hid- den.325 'The two (Indra and Agni) increase daily like the mor- tals; these two gods, for getting horse, come forward with their amsa (the word here appears to mean "the claim to share").2" In the tenth book, which is the latest stratum of the Rig Veda, the gods' shares clearly assume the form of oblation. And. so is the sense also in the first book which, too, is a later stra- tum of the collection. But in the riks of the other books, parti-

314 ji. 24. 14. 315 i. 135. 2. 317 i. 162. 3. 316 i. 135. 3. 318 i. 183. 4. 319 i. 20. 8. 320 ii. 23. 2. 322 vi. 22. 4. 323 viii. 36. 1-6. The second part of these riks runs as a refrain. 321 ii. 10. 6.

324 iii. 28. 4. 326 x. 52. 1. 325 viii. 96. 8. 327 x. 114. 3. 328 ii. 19. 5. 329 v. 86. 5 L-37

578 LOKAYATA

cularly those of the second which forms the oldest stratum, it is doubtful whether oblation meant quite the same thing. If Brahmanaspati divided the cows among the gods, the shares received by them could hardly have been oblations in the later sense. Similarly, in the fifth book, which also formed part of the oldest stratum, Indra and Agni were depicted as pressing their claims to the shares of horses. This is certainly not the picture of the priests offering oblations to the gods. Do these evidences, therefore, suggest that the more we move backward to the older strata of the Rig Veda the clearer becomes the pre- history of the Vedic oblations? Such a possibility cannot be entirely ruled out. Leaving this question for the moment, we may now turn to another interesting problem. There are suggestions in the Rig Veda that the venue of this ancient practice of division was the vidatha. We shall see that in spite of all sorts of conflicting views as to its true nature the word meant only the assembly. Here is only one evidence. The word samiti, unmistakably meaning the assembly, was also used as a synonym for the word vidatha. And this circumstance appears to go decisively against Ludwig's view,330 viz. that vidatha meant some kind of asylum. And here are some riks that indicate that the vidatha was often the venue for the division of wealth. Ah! Let the happiness of the assembly (srustih vidathya) come to us; we offer praise to the speedy ones; because today Savitri, the custodian of wealth, is in the act of sharing out this wealth (asya ratninah vibhage).331

(vidatha).332 Suparna gives the shares of water continuously in the assembly

O god (Agni), for proper enjoyment you disbursed your wealth in shares in the assembly (tvam amsah vidathe deva bhajayuh).333 O Agni, this assembly (samiti) of ours shines among the gods; you the custodian of food (svadhavan), divide wealth among us here and give us shares full of wealth (ratna vibhajasi bhaagam nah atra vasumantam vitat).33+ Thus the assembly was often referred to as the place where the division of wealth took place. Now, another word for the assembly was 'sabha', which also meant the place where the Vedic people used to draw lots. Could it, therefore, be that the act of drawing the lot had the same original significance for the Vedic people as it had with the ancient Greeks? Was the draw-

330 Macdonell & Keith VI ii. 296-7. 331 vii. 40. 1. 39 ii 1. 4. 332 i. 164. 21. 384 x. 11. 8.

VARUNA AND MAYA 579

ing of the lot, in other words, conceived originally to ensure equality or impartiality in the division of wealth? Such a pos- sibility will be strongly doubted. The use of the lot, aksa, as found in the Rig Veda, is usually taken to mean dicing in the sense of gambling. This led Macdonell and Keith335 to assert, 'Dicing, along with horse-racing, was one of the main amuse- ments of the Vedic Indian.' There is no denying that the Vedic people knew gambling and the lot (aksa) used for it. But at what stage of their development did it come into vogue? There is the well-known aksa-sukta of the Rig Veda336 which will show to what length the Vedic people sometimes went in their craze for gambling: a gambler was lamenting here the loss of all his property, including his wife. But it should not be for- gotten that this appeared only in the latest stratum of the Rig Veda. Besides, there are certain indications about this sukta itself that cannot be explained on the simple assumption that aksa or the lot was known to the Vedic people as serving the only the purpose of gambling. The author of the Anukramani saw that the sukta as a whole was quite complex: parts of it were ecstatic praises of aksa and these were connected with the theme of agriculture, while the others were designed to denounce aksa, which was connected with gambling. On the other hand, in accordance with the general tendency of mentioning a deity for each sukta, the author had to mention one to whom this was supposed to be addressed to. Under ordinary circumstan- ces, he would have probably said that aksa, or the lot itself, was the deity of this sukta. But he could not do so, because aksa was connected here with a dual function and consequently dual attitude was expressed towards it. Confronted with this pro- blem, he simply said that the deity of this sukta was aksa-krisi- prasamsa aksa-kitava-ninda ca, lit., 'the praise of the lot as (related to) agriculture (krisi) and also the denunciation of the lot as (related to) gambling (kitava).' It may be noted here that the praise of agriculture in this sukta is itself an indication of how late it was; for it is already argued by our modern scho- lars that the Vedic people took to agriculture at a considerably late period. This praise of the lot as related to agriculture, to say the least, is remarkable. No less remarkable, however, is the cir-

335 VI i. 2. 336 x. 34.

580 LOKAYATA

cumstance that the Vedic scholars have generally preferred to leave it unnoticed. The reason presumably is that they have almost invariably started with the assumption that aksa meant gambling, and that it could under no circumstance have any function other than gambling. However, if this assumption were true, 'the praise of the lot as (related to) agriculture,' would hardly make any sense. Therefore, the words aksa-krisi- samsa had to be ignored. On the other hand, if we try to understand this from the point of view of what is known in general about the backward peoples surviving in the world today, we may not be obliged to dismiss the suggestion summarily. Among them the lot does have an important bearing on agriculture, the use of it being designed to ensure equality or impartiality in the periodical redistribution of cultivable land. The following is Baden-Powell's account of the practice as it persisted in Peshawar down to modern times: The areas were taken by drawing lots. If the land to be allotted was variable in quality, the clan authorities would arrange a number of circles or series, consisting of good, middling or in- different soils or distinguished in some other way. Then the groups of sharers would have to take their lands partly out of each series ... But in any case, inspite of the soil classification, inequality in the holdings was not altogether excluded, and so a system of periodical exchange or redistribution was long followed.37 It is of course impossible to be certain that the same or similar practice was indicated by the Anukramani in its reference to the lot as connected with agriculture. But it is important to remember, as Kosambi"38 has pointed out, that, because of their stunted economic development, some of the Vedic tribes per- sisted in 'the early Vedic tribal stage' down to the times of the Greek narrators (330 B.c.). This is how Strabo described the practice of communism among them: Among other tribes again the land is cultivated in common, and when the crops are collected, each person takes a load for his sup- port throughout the year. The remainder of the produce is burned. There might have been some misunderstanding or exagge- ration about the suggestion of burning the surplus. But the pic- ture of primitive communism is clear. And if the Vedic tribes in the Punjab that had atrophied (cf. the vraatyas of the Vraat- yastoma of the Tandya Maha Brahmana) retained the communis- tic principle in pratice, the implication is that all the Vedic tribes

337 IVC 253-5. For other references to the same or similar prac- tices see Thomson SAGS i. 305ff. 338 ISIH 91-2.

VARUNA AND MAYA 581

were maintaining it during the earlier stages of their develop- ment. And if this was so, we may infer that the lot originally served the same purpose in their lives as it is known to do among the tribes still surviving in the primitive pre-class society. This is of course a presumption and, pending further re- searches, no direct evidence can possibly be adduced in proof of it. Nevertheless there arc certain circumstantial considerations which we cannot overlook. First, if we discard this possibility, we shall be left with the only alternative view that the lot or aksa was designed by the carly Vedic people for the exclusive purpose of gambling. But it is impossible to explain on the basis of such an assumption how the aksa could become an object of such stupendous reve- rence as is evidenced in the Vedic literatures. In the well- known aksa-sukta itself, we find the following addressed to aksa: (O Aksa) thou who hast become the leader of your great gana and the first chief (raja) of the vraata,-I address him and I declare that I am not withholding wealth; I am, with my ten fingers stretched, speaking the truth (rita).339 It may be difficult for us to be certain about the exact mean- ing of all the points here. However, the promise of not with- holding wealth might have indicated something other than gambling, unless of course we uncritically agree with the stand- ard interpretation that the poet suggested some kind of reckless all-out staking, which, however, leaves unexplained why the poet should express so much reverance for the act. Elsewhere, as Macdonell and Keith340 have pointed out, the Vedic gods were compared to the throws of dice as giving or destroying wealth. Secondly, perhaps the most decisive evidence to disprove the theory that aksa was originally used for the exclusive pur- pose of gambling, is the ritual importance of it (aksa) in the Vedic literatures. There were at least two extremely important Vedic rituals, namely the Rajasuya and the Agnadheya, in which aksa played a very important role. It is not necessary for us to quote the details of these rituals; Macdonell and Keith341 have already collected the major references to the use of aksa in these rituals. Our point simply is, that only those ancestral institutions and practices of the Vedic peoples that originally had definite economic purposes. could find their sanctuary in

339 x. 34. 12. 340 VI i. 3. 341 Ib. i. 1.

582 LOKAYATA

their later rituals and gambling in the modern sense could not have that purpose; on the other hand, as the technique of im- partial distribution the use of the lot is known to have such a purpose among the backward peoples, and the survival of this is clearly traceable in the history of other peoples up to the upper stage of barbarism. Marx342 referred to the well-known passage in Tacitus: '"Arva per annos mutant et superest ager," which means: thev exchange the fields, arva, (by lot, hence sortes [lot] in all the later Legas Barbarum (law codes of the bar- barians) and common land (ager as ager publicus contrasted with arva) remains over.' Lastly, as we have already noticed, the Vedic assembly was often mentioned as the venue for casting the lot, and this same assembly was the place where the division of wealth took place. One who drew the lot was called sabha-sthanu,343 lit., the pillar of the assembly. With the belief that the throw of the dice could mean nothing but gambling, modern scholars were driven to interpret it as 'a satirical name derived from the gambler's devotion to the dicing place."344 But one looks in vain for even a tinge of satire in the texts themselves; the references, it must be remembered, occur in the context of the discussion of the Vedic rituals, and it is impermissible to imagine that the authors of thesc texts, while describing what they considered to be the most sacred of all their preoccupations, had any reason to in- dulge in satire. The hall (i.e., the place where the Vedic people held assembly) was clearly used for dicing, presumably when the assembly was not transacting public business."345 But, as we are going to see, the assembly was to the Vedic people the organ of tribal administration, and, if it was so, the use of the lot as the technique of ensuring impartiality in the matter of equidis- tribution could have been one of the important features of the transaction of 'public business' itself. This hypothesis does not exclude the possibility of the dice gradually developing into a gambling instrument with the progressive disintegration of the tribal constitution and the emergence of private property.

9. SABHA AND SAMITI: ADMINISTRATION Sabha is the name of the assembly of the Vedic Indians as well as of the "hall" where they met in assembly. It is often

342 SC 242. 344 Ib. Cf. Ib. ii. 426. 343 Macdonell & Keith VI i.157. 345 Ib. ii. 426.

VARUNA AND MAYA 583

mentioned in the Rig Veda and later, but its exact character is not certain.'346 As against this, our argument is that the clue to its exact character can be found in Morgan's classical study of the tribal administration. The council was the great feature of ancient society, Asiatic, European and American, from the institution of the gens (clan) in savagery to civilization. It was the instrument of government as well as the supreme authority over the gens, the tribe, and the confede- racy. Ordinary affairs were adjusted by the chiefs; but those of general interest were submitted to the determination of a council. As the council sprang from the gentile organisation the two institu- tions have come down together through the ages. The Council of Chiefs represents the ancient method of evolving the wisdom of mankind and applying it to human affairs. Its history, gentile, tribal and confederate, would express the growth of the idea of govern- ment in its whole development, until political society supervened into which the council, changed into a senate, was transmitted. The simplest and lowest form of the council was that of the gens. It was a democratic assembly because every adult male and female member had a voice upon all questions brought before it. It elected and deposed its sachem and chiefs, it elected Keepers of the Faith, it condoned or avenged the murder of a gentile, and it adopt- ed persons into the gens. It was the germ of the higher council of the tribe, and of that still higher of the confederacy, each of which was composed exclusively of chiefs as representatives of the gentes.347 The tribal administration, in short, is maintained by the tri- bal council at all levels. The basic unit of the tribe is the clan and its affairs are conducted by the democratic assembly of all the adult members of the clan. This assembly, elected from among its members a sachem, i.e., a leader in matters of internal administration and certain war chiefs. These war chiefs are 'raised to office for personal bravery, for wisdom in aftairs, or for eloquence in council,' and were usually the 'superior class in ability, though not in authority."348 The council had also the right of deposing the sachem and chiefs. These offices, there- fore, though 'normally for life, the tenure was practically during good behaviour, in consequence of the power to depose. Unworthy behaviour, followed by a loss of confidence, furnished a sufficient ground for deposition. When a sachem or chief had been deposed in due form by a council of his gens, he ceased thereafter to be recognised as such, and became thenceforth a private person."849 Commented Morgan : (American) Indian chiefs are described as lords by Spanish writers, and invested with rights over lands and over persons they

346 Ib. 348 Ib. 71. 347 Morgan AS 84-5. 349 Ib. 73.

584 LOKAYATA

never possessed. It is a misconception to style an (American) Indian chief a lord in the European sense, because it implies a condition of society that did not exist. A lord holds a rank and title by heredi- tary right, secured to him by special legislation in derogation of the rights of the people as a whole. To this rank and title, since the cverthrow of feudalism, no duties are attached which may be claim- ed by the king or the kingdom as a matter of right. On the con- trary, an (American) Indian chief holds an office, not by hereditary right, but by election from a constituency, which retained the right to depose him for cause. The office carried with it the obligation to perform certain duties for the benefit of the constituency. He had no authority over the persons or property or lands of the members of the gens. It is thus seen that no analogy exists between a lord and his title, and an (American) Indian chief and his office. Ore belongs to political society, and represents an aggression of the few upon the many; while the other belongs to gentile society and is founded upon the common interests of the members of the gens. Unequal privileges find no place in the gens, phratry or tribe.3550

The tribe is composed of a number of clans. The affairs affecting the interest of the tribe as a whole is conducted by a higher council composed of the elected chiefs from the different clans. Apart from electing these chiefs for the tribal council, the members of the clan, - particularly the elders therein -eleet the 'Keepers of the Faith', the function of whom is to superin- tend what Morgan, with some hesitation,331 called the religious functions of the clans. The hesitation was felt becanse, as he himself observed, the American Indian tribes 'had not attaincd that religious development which was so strongly impressed upon the gentes of the later tribes;"2 i.e. the gentes of the Gre- cian and Latin tribes. 'With the progress of mankind out of the Lower into the Middle, and more especially out of the latter into the Upper Status of barbarism, the gens became more the centre of religious influence and the source of religious develop- ment."33 In short, the nearer the stage of tribal disintegration the clearer became the mark of religious beliefs. That is why Morgan found it safer to characterise the so-called religious functions of the tribes simply as their 'festivals.' Here is Morgan's description of the functions of the 'Keepers of the Faith.'

Each gens furnished a number of 'Keepers of the Faith,' both male and female, who together were charged with the celebration of these festivals (of the six annual festivals of the Iroquois, namely Maple, Planting, Berry, Green-Corn, Harvest, and New Year's Fes- tivals) .... They designated the days for holding the festivals, made the necessary arrangements for the celebration, and conducted the

51 Morgan put a query after 'religious rites in the gens.' AS 81. 350 Ib. 208

352 1b. 358 Ib. 82.

VARUNA AND MAYA 585

ceremonies in conjunction with the sachems and chiefs of the tribe, who were, ex officio, 'Keepers of the Faith'. With no official head. and none of the marks of a priesthood, their functions were equal. The female 'Keepers of the Faith' were more especially charged with the preparation of the feast, which was provided at all councils at the close of each day for all persons in attendance. It was a dinner in common. The religious rites appertaining to these festivals ... need not be considered further than to remark, that their worship was one of thanksgiving, with invocations to the Great Spirit, and to the Lesser Spirits to continue to them the blessings of life.54 To sum up: There were, among the lroquois Indians, the clan-assembly composed of all the members of the clan, the tribal council composed of the elected chiefs from the clans and a body of the Keepers of the Faith 'selected by the wise men and matrons of each gens (clan).' The first of these was to conduct the internal administration of the clan under the leader- ship of the elected sachem. 'It was a democratic assembly be- cause every adult male and female member had a voice upon all questions brought before it. The tribal council of the chiefs was to consider mainly the questions of the tribal war and the body of the Keepers of the Faith to conduct the festivals and rituals. Evidently, the last contained the germs of the later priest-class, as the chiefs were the precursors of the later war- lords. We may now proceed to consider the Vedic materials. Granting that the Vedic peoples, too. were originally organised in tribes, it is only logical to think that they, too, must have once passed through a stage of similar organisation, though, for reasons repeatedly referred to, this must have had a pronounced patriarchal bias. Thus, their priest-class of the later times - the Brahmanas - could have only developed from their Keepers of the Faith358 just as their warring rulers - the Rajanyas and still later the Ksatriyas - developed from their war-chiefs. And if this be true, however gorgeous might have been the epithets commonly applied to the Vedic chiefs (raja, senani, samrat, etc.), they were not originally rulers or kings in the later sense. In any case, it is extremely doubtful whether these classes, as the Brahmana and the Ksatriya castes of later times, had already developed during the age of the Rig Veda.33T The only clear

354 Ib. 82. 356 The interesting similarity hetween this and the Vedic words 355 Ib. 85.

ritapah (i. 113. 12; vi. 3. 1; vii. 20. 6) and ritayavah (v. 8.1; v. 54. 12; x. 115.7) should not be overlooked .. . 357 CHI i. 92ff .; VA 385ff.

586 LOKAYATA

reference to these as castes in the Rig Veda is in the famous Purusa-sukta,358 admittedly of a very late date. Now, if during the earlier period of the Rig Veda the tribal chiefs did not deve- lop into the later Ksatriyas, or the Keepers of the Faith into the later Brahmanas - then it is only logical to expect to find in that literature elements of the original glory of the clan-council and the tribal assembly. As a matter of fact, we do find this. In the Rig Veda, one of the words for the assembly is sabha. Another word, samiti, also unmistakably meant the assembly, though, as Jayaswal359 has rightly pointed out, 'the references to the samiti in the Rig Veda are to be found only in portions which are considered to be the latest.' We shall presently see the pos- sible significance of this. The word vidatha, too, meant the assembly, though it had some additional significance not without interest for us. Modern scholars have already noted the importance of all these in the Vedic literatures. Owing, however, to their neglect of the comparative method, we are offered only a number ef confusing conjectures concerning these. Macdonell and Keith-10 have prepared a list of such conjectures. We need not quote all. As specimens of these, we may discuss the confusion created by these two scholars. Sabha, they said, was 'the assembly house of the people."861 Again, samiti is taken by them simply to mean the 'assembly of the people."362 Both the renderings are correct. What is not clear, however, is how at the same time they can venture the following comment: Accordnig to Ludwig, the sabha was an assembly not of all the people, but of the Brahmins and Maghavans (rich patrons). This view can be supported by the expressions sabheva, 'worthy of the assembly,' applied to a Brahmin, rayih sabhavan, 'wealth fitting for the assembly.'303 The implication evidently is that the sabha was the assembly of the aristocrats. Apart from the fact that this goes flatly against the meanings attached to the sabha and the samiti by the same scholars, the only evidence adduced in favour of this is nothing but, the extremely doubtful interpre- tation of two verses of the Rig Veda. The text itself does no- where indicate that the word sabheya, 'worthy of the assembly',

358 x. 90. 360 VI ii. 296, 426, 430, etc. 353 HP i. 13. 362 Ib. ii. 415. 361 Ib. ii. 308. 363 1b. ii. 426-7.

VARUNA AND MAYA 587

is applicable to a Brahmana. The rik364 referred to by Macdo- nell and Keith contains only sabheyah viprah, and even Sayana, the most Brahmanical of the interpreters, took the word riprah to mean medhavi, the talented. Besides, how can we at all speak of the Vedic sabha as an assembly of the Brahmanas and the Maghavans when the fact is that the Brahmana as a caste was yet to emerge during the age of the Rig Veda? Of course Macdonell and Keith would not subscribe to this view: It seems certain that in the Rig Veda this Brahmana, or Brahmin, is already a separate caste, differing from the warrior and agricul- tural castes. The texts regularly claim for them a superiority to the Ksatriya caste, and the Brahmin is able by his spells or mani- pulation of the rite to embroil the people and the warriors or the different sections of the warriors.305 But the question is: which texts and of what period? Interes- tingly enough, Macdonell and Keith did not refer to any passage of the Rig Veda itself in support of such a view. Instead of that, they simply referred to the different recensions of the Yajur Veda and certain Brahmanas like the Aitareya, the Satapatha and the Pancavimsa. Such texts cannot prove the emergence of the Brahmana caste in the Rig Veda, for all these are much later than the Rig Veda itself. The possibility of the sabha being the assembly of the rich patrons (Maghavans), again, appears to be based only cn a positive misunderstanding of the Vedic passages. The only rik mentioned by the two scholars in support of this conjecture contains, really speaking, nothing whatsoever to indicate such a possibility. It is true that the words rayih and sabhavan occur in it. But it must not be forgotten that both these were epithets for Agni, who was also invoked here as the multiplier of great wealth (prithu-budhnah) and a friend like the human beings (nrivat-sakha). We have already quoted the rik in full: '0 Agni, O Asura, this ritual of ours is full of cows, of sheep, of horses, of food and of offspring; may thou be always without anger, being in our assembly, a friend like a human being, pos- sessing huge wealth and vast waters'. We have seen that this is one of the oldest riks in which the Vedic singers expressed their intense desire for what they considered to be the different forms of the material wealth; and the friendly invocation to Agni as a member of the assembly is there evidently because the sabha was the place for the performance of the ritual which, to

304 ii. 24. 13. 365 VI. ii .81.

588 LOKAYATA

the Vedic singers, ensured the enhancement of such wealth. In any case, there is nothing here to justify the speculation that the sabha was the assembly only of the aristocrats, the rich patrons. Here is another evidence to show that the mention of wealth and assembly in the same passage cannot by any means indicate that it was the assembly of the aristocrats alone. 'O Agni, this samiti is shining among the gods who perform the yajna; O you possessed of food, may we get here the shares full of wealth of the wealth which you divide."B6 Obvionsly, the mention of share and division here are indicative of the tribal method of distribution. Of course, this theory that the Vedic sabha was exclusively the assembly of the aristocrats was suggested by Ludwig; Macdonell and Keith were only finding possible further evi- dences. But what are the evidences adduced by Ludwig him- self? He laid367 stress on two riks in particular. These are: O Indra, your good-looking friend is possessed with horses; chariots and cows; being receipients of wealth, they always come to- gether in the assembly (sabha) with food and are glad.308 All the friends, along with the friendly ones fit for the assembly (sabha-saha), are glad because of the soma; this soma is the destroyer of the enemies, the increaser of food and is sufficient for the welfare of the possessor of food.369 Interestingly enough, both Macdonell and Keith thought the passages were quite vague.370 There is, in any case, nothing here to suggest that the aristocrates, to the exclusion of the common people, were the only members of the sabha. Adjectives like sabha-saha were presumably used by the poets to refer to their own kinsmen as opposed to the aliens; there is hardly any indica- tion that they were applied to one class as contrasted with the others.371 And it would be wrong to make too much of the mere mention of wealth - of cows, chariots, horses and food - which we have seen is characteristic of the Vedic poets. Incidentally; even Sayana, while interpreting the word sakhayah (friends) as occurring in the second of the two riks above, said that it meant those who were equal in status and equal in knowledge. The suggestion, again, is the equalitarian organisation of the tribal peoples.

366 x. 11. 8. 387 See Macdonell & Keith VI ii. 426n. 368 viii. 4.9. 389 x. 71. 10. 370 VI ii. 426n. 371 Ib. il. 427 for Hillebrandt's view of su-jata. .:

VARUNA AND MAYA 589

It may be mentioned here that Macdonell and Keith, with all their support for Ludwig's view - and with what consistency it is not easy to judge - at the same time claimed that both the sabha and the samiti were the assemblies of the Vedic tribes. Here are some of their observations:

Sabha is the name of an 'assembly' of the Vedic Indians as well as of the 'hall' where they met in assembly.372 Hillebrandt seems right in maintaining that the sabha and the samiti cannot be distinguished.373 Samiti denotes an 'assembly' of the Vedic tribe. It is already mentioned in the Rig Veda and often later and sometimes in connec- tion with sabha.374 If all this be true then we have hardly any ground to view the sabha and the samiti as the exclusive assembly of the aristocrats - of the Brahmanas and the rich patrons. If Macdonell and Keith did not see the incompatibility of the two, the reason presumably is their neglect of the comparative method. We may now try to understand sabha and samiti from what is generally known about the tribal assemblies. We begin with a crucial evidence. The place where the herbs (osadhih) assemble together as the kings in an assembly (rajanah samitau iva) - there the wise

diseases.375 (viprah) is called the healer (bhisak), the destroyer of evils and

The poet speaks here of herbs and healer. The reference to the samiti is only incidental, by way of a metaphor. Never- theless, we cannot overlook the importance of the usage. The significant thing is the use of the plural: rajanah samitau ivu (as the kings assemble in the samiti). Evidently, the kings could not be monarchs in our sense because a plurality of them gather- ing in assembly makes hardly any sense. And if they were not monarchs they could only be the war-chiefs. And if they were the war-chiefs, their samiti could only be the tribal council of the chiefs, the most important function of which, as we have just seen, was to conduct the tribal war. We may now understand why the Nighantu376 mentioned this word as one of the synonyms for war: the samiti, according to it, was one of the samgrama-namani. Being the assembly of the war-chiefs, its main concern was war: the tribal assembly of the chiefs, in short, meant war. This is the sense in which Sayana, too, most frequently interpreted the word.

372 Ib. ii. 426. 378 Ib. ii. 427. 375 RV x. 97. 6. 374 1b. ii. 430. 378 ii. 17.

590 LOKAYATA

We shall presently see that the intrinsic logic of the develop- ment of the pastoral economy gradually made warfare a pri- mary occupation of the Vedic people. Perhaps this alone can explain why the word samiti acquired a special importance in the later portions of the Vedic literatures. With the develop- ment of the predominantly marauding career, the Vedic poets became increasingly concerned with the samiti which explains why the word samiti is mentioned particularly in the tenth book of the Rig Veda. This peculiarity is noted by our modern scholars, though the interpretation offered fails to convince. We quote Jayaswal:377 It is noticeable that the references to the samiti in the Rig Veda are to be found only in portions which are considered to be the latest. We may, therefore, conclude that the samiti was a product of the developed, not early Vedic age. The developed stage of debate, evidently a free right of discussion, the anxiety of the debator able degree. to win over the opinion of others, all point to a culture of consider-

What is clearly overlooked, however, is that the Rig Veda itself, even in its most archaic stratum, contained references to popular assemblies, speeches and debates. Popular assembly as well as the speakers' eloquence may be as old as the tribal society. The Rig Veda has other words for assemblies, two of which are particularly prominent: sabha and vidatha. The scholars who have tended to overlook the possible distinction between sabha and samiti were mistaken: both meant assembly no doubt, but the former might have stood for the clan council while the latter the tribal council of the war chiefs. Evidently, the tribal chiefs, apart from attending their own war council also attended the clan council: 'The king went to the sabha just as much as to the samiti.'378 But the 'king' here may create some confusion. The commonest word in the Rig Veda for the war chief was raja, which later on came to mean 'king.' The camparatively modern meaning of the word has led some of our scholars to discover kings and monarchs in the Rig Veda, which in turn led them to assume that some kind of pecu- liarly democratic monarchy existed in the Vedic age. That the rajas of the Rig Veda could not have been the kings of the later times is decisively proved by the fact that they were, like the chiefs of tribal society, definitely elected by the people.

377 HP i. 13. 378 Macdonell & Keith VI ii. 427n.

VARUNA AND MAYA 591

The clearest reference to the raja being elected by the people is to be found in the Atharva Veda: Thee let the people choose unto kingship, thee these five divine directions: rest at the summit of royalty, at the pinnacle; from thence, formidable, share out good things to us.379 The hyperboles of the Vedic poets appear to be all the more exaggerated by the modern translator's preoccupations with the later ideas. Beneath all these overgrowths, however, the tribal custom of the people electing the chief and the chief in turn sharing out the wealth among the people, are evident enough. This point, if ignored, may lead even the greatest of scholars to grave inconsistencies. Here is an example from the The Cam- bridge History of India: So far, our sources of knowledge, if imperfect, have given us mate- rial sufficient to sketch the main outline of Vedic society. Unhappily, when we turn to consider more closely the details of the poli- tical organisation proper, the evidence becomes painfully scanty and inadequate.380 Interestingly, however, when it comes to the question of Henying the truly tribal organisation of the Vedic people, the same 'pain- fully scanty and inadequate' evidences may lead the historian to definite claims: The tribes of the Rig Veda were certainly under kingly rule: there is no passage in the Rig Veda which suggests any other form of government, while the king under the style rajan is a frequent figure. This is only what might be expected in a community which was not merely patriarchal. . but also engaged in constant warfare against both Aryan and aboriginal foes. Moreover, the kingship was normally hereditary: even in the scantly notices of the Rig Veda we can trace lines of succession such as that of Vadhryasva, Divo- dasa, Pijavana and Sudas, or Durgaha, Giriksit, Purukutsa, and Trasadasyu, or Mitratithi, Kurusravana, and Upamasravas.381 The list of names is certainly imposing and there is no doubt that at least in some cases the genealogy was actually indicated by the Rig Veda. Thus, for example, Trasadasyu actually ap- pears to have been the sun of Purukutsa and the father of Purukutsa may have had the name Durgaha.382 However, even such genealogies are not free from confusion. Thus, the son of Trasadasyu was once mentioned as Triksi while in another place as Kurusravana.383 Of course, there is nothing unusual about the

379 iii. 4. 2. tr. Whitney. Cf. Keith RPV 481: 'The ceremony of the Rajasuya, or royal consecration, hints at recollections of an elec- tive kingship by the consent of th people.' 380 CHI i. 94. 382 viii. 19. 36; iv. 42. 8-9. 881 Ib 883 viii. 22. 7; x. 33. 4.

592 LOKAYATA

same person having two sons bearing these two names; what ap- pears to be unlikely, however, is that both of them were the hereditary kings of the Vedic tribes. Besides, whether any of them was a hereditary king in our sense is quite doubtful. Even Savana said that Trasadasyu, son of Purukutsa, was only a risi,384 a sage or poet. Similarly, the name Kurusravana, as interpreted by him, meant priest (ritvik) of the Kurus, 5 a interpretation evidently accepted by Wilson, who rendered the name as 'the bearer of the praises of the Kurus.' In another rik,a6 however, the epithet raja was attributed to the same person, leading Sayana to make a king-name out of it. But the manner in which he did it is clearly artificial: 'kurusravana meant priest of the Kurus; one who listened to their praises was a king of that name.' The fact, however, could have been simpler: the word raja might have been a more ennobling epithet in the rik. These are only a few of the difficulties involved in a straight- forward acceptance of the genealogies mentioned. Further, the mere mention of the genealogy is no valid evidence of hereditary kingship, particularly in view of the reference in the Atharva Veda to the election of the raja by the people as also the simile in the Rig Veda of a multiplicity of such rajas assembling in the samiti. Of course, as we shall presently see, towards the beginning of the disintegration of the tribal organisation, it became customary to elect the chiefs from the same family; this customary election of successors from the same family, with the final breakdown of the tribal organisation, is transformed into hereditary succes- sion. Thus the genealogies mentioned can at best indicate that in passages of the Rig Veda we have indications of the break- down of the tribal society of the Vedic people. There is nothing strange in this. What is significant, however, is that when we go back to the really archaic stratum of the Rig Veda we come across such evidences as make the hypothesis of the hereditary kingship among the Vedic tribes all the more implausible. We mention only one here. In the list of the so-called hereditary kings, we come across the name Upamasravas. The latest stratum of the Rig Veda287 mentioned him as the son of Mitratithi (though not of Kurusra- vana, as in the genealogy quoted). There is nothing however in these references to suggest that he was a hereditary king. On

394 on RV viii. 8. 21. 386 x. 33. 4. 385 on RV x. 32. 9. 387 x. 38. 6-7.

VARUNA AND MAYA 593

the contrary, the oldest stratum of the Rig Veda,38s we come across the interesting word 'upamasravastamam' and even Sayana could not make a king name of it. It was clearly a hyperbolic epithet for Brahmanaspati, invoked as the chief of the gana, and meaning 'abounding in food beyond comparison.' Thus, even it it can be objectively demonstrated that hereditary succession of chiefs -even of kingship - did develop towards the end of the Rig Vedic period, it will prove nothing whatsoever as to the period as a whole. On the other hand, the evidences of the clan council and the tribal assemblies in the Rig Veda, being less doubtful and sometimes overwhelmingly obvious, go to show that the Vedic people were largely at the tribal stage in which there is no place for anything like hereditary kingship. In fact, the political organisation of the Vedic tribes will ever remain a mystery if the indications about it in the Rig Veda are not understood in the light of tribal constitution in general. This introduces us to the main point missed by the contri- butor to the Cambridge History of India: he wanted to discuss the 'political organisation' of the Vedic tribes and yet to ignore the question of tribal organisation in general. The point is simple: hereditary kingship and the truly tribal organisation are not compatible. Evidently, the scholars who have discovered 'monarchy' among the Vedic tribes are misled by the word rajan of the Rig Veda. This is clear from the wav the Vedic Age had echoed the Cambridge History: 'As a general rule, monarchy was the system of government prevailing in this age. The term rajan, king or chieftain, is of frequent occurrence in the Rig Veda.' 389 The premise is true but the conclusion untenable: the word rajan is there in the Rik Veda but it docs not prove the existence of a monarchical form of government. We shall mention here two decisive evidences. Even in the latest stratum of the Rig Veda300 we come across the epithet raja vraatasya, and this as a synonym for ganasya senanih. This means nothing but the tribal chief. Secondly, one of the famous battles was referred by the Rig Veda as dasarajna; under the set idea that raja could mean nothing but the king, this is taken to mean the battle of the ten kings.391 But who were the ten 'kings'? In preparing the list of these so-called kings, even the author of the Cambridge

388 ii. 23. 1. 389 VA 352. 390 x. 34. 12. ' 391 CHI i. 81; VA 245. The nex quotation is from CHI i. 82, L-38

594 LOKAYATA

History was frankly obliged to use the word 'tribe' instead: 'Of the ten tribes five are of little note, the Alinas, ... the Pakthas, the Bhalanases, .. the Sivas, ... and the Visanins. Better known in the Rig Veda are the other five, the Anus, ... the Bhrigus, the Druhyus, ... the Turvasas and Yadus, ... and the Purus.' If these were tribes, then the battle against them could not be a battle of the 'ten kings.' And if this were so the use of the word rajan in the Rig Veda is far from being a sure proof of hereditary monarchy. 'Women did not go to the sabha for they were of course excluded from the political activity."392 This would have been most logical in the highly patriarchal society which the Vedic pcople developed. The Maitrayani Samhita393 did in faet declare: 'Woman is weak, man is strong; hence men go to the assembly (sabha), not women.' But this text was much later than the Rig Veda and the Rig Veda itself was a vast compila- tion of songs composed over a very long period of time. Therc- fore, the possibility of finding in it the relics of the older davs when even the women were going to the assemblies is not ruled out. In any case, we come across the interesting word sabhavati, a female in the assembly, though occurring only once in the Rig Veda: 'a woman in the assembly speaks words fit for the assembly.'394 Again, in a somewhat obscure rik, a reference was

day.305 made to three truthful women going to the assembly thrice a

'There is,' said Macdonell and Keith,396 'not a single notice of the work done by the sabha.' This, again, is not absolutely correct. We have in the Rig Veda references to the speeches made in the sabha.397 Further, if Jayaswal's398 interpretation is correct, we have also references to the election of the 'king' by the people,399 and if the people did elect their chiefs, it could have taken place in their assemblies. These are, it will be objected, at best conjectural. However, when we pass on to discuss the references to the Vedic assembly by the other word, vidatha, we have the feeling of moving on more secure grounds. The functions of the vidatha were obviously multifarious. We have already noticed one of these,

392 Macdonell & Keith VI ii. 427. 393 iv. 7. 4. 395 iii. 56. 5. 394 i. 167. 3.

397 vi. 28. 6. 396 VI. ii. 427.

399 x. 173. 1-5. cf. AV vi. 87; vi. 88 1-2. 398 HP i. 14.

VARUNA AND MAYA 595

namely the division of wealth, which must have been a very ancient practice. That there were debates and discussions in the vidatha is certain; the desire for eloquence in the assembly was frequently expressed: 'O Indra, we are your eternal beloveds and great heroes; we speak in the assembly (vidatham a vadema400).' 'May we speak loud in the assembly, rich in valiant men (brihat vadema vidathe suvirah401).' This ran like a refrain and occurred no less than twenty-two times in the sccond book of the Rig Veda,402 admittedly part of its oldest stratum. We may understand the significance of this if we remember that in the tribal society eloquence in the council is one of the criteria on the basis of which the chiefs are elected.403 Other functions of the vidatha included solving tribal dis- putes and punishing those who violated the tribal laws.401 There are also clear references to evolving the tribal wisdom or the courses of action (dhibhih) in the vidatha.405 In fact, of the three words meaning assembly in the Rig Veda, vidatha is the most frequently used. The varied activities conducted in the vidatha can be inferred from the varied meanings that modern scholars have attributed to this word. The following is from Macdonell and Keith:406 Vidatha is a word of obscure sense, confined mainly to the Rig Veda. According to Roth, the sense is primarily 'order', then the concrete body which gives orders, then 'assembly' for secular or religious ends, or for war ... Ludwig thinks that the root idea is an 'assembly', specially of the Maghavans and the Brahmanas. Geldner considers that the word primarily means knowledge. Monier-Williams407 has given the following meanings of the word: Knowledge, wisdom (esp.) 'knowledge given to others', i.e., instruc- tion, direction, order, arrangement, disposition, rule, command; a meeting, assembly (either for deliberating or for the observance of festive or religious rites, etc.) council, community, association, con- gregation .... However, Whitney's408 seems the most logical rendering of the word. He renders it as 'the council.' The other meanings, attributed to the same word by other scholars, are presumably

bate. 400 ii. 12. 15. Cf AV ii. 27 for charm against opponents in de- 401 ii. 1. 16. etc. (tr.) after Oldenberg See JAOS xix. 15. 402 See Bloomfeld VC. 403 Morgan AS 71. 405 iii. 38. 5. 404i. 31. 6; vii. 93. 5. 407 SED 963. 406 VI ii. 296. 408 AV i. 15.

596 LOKAYATA

the result of the circumstance that in the different contexts of the Rig Veda different functions of the council or the assembly werc referred to; modern scholars, in interpreting this archaic word, have often concentrated more on these functions than on the assembly itself that carried these out. In tribal society, the highest wisdom and the highest knowledge - like the rule or the order or the disposition - are evolved only in the council, and the word vidatha itself might have been a witness to this. Bloomfield409 is probably the only modern scholar who has strongly challenged this interpretation of the word. According to him, vidatha could never have meant the council or the assembly; it really meant the household. But his view appears to be based neither on any unquestionable evidence nor on very sound arguments. The evidence on which he relies most is the reference in the Rig Veda to women going to the vidatha: women were excluded from the political activities of the Vedic people and still they were not excluded from the vidatha; as such it could only mean the household. But there are clear references to the 'king' sitting in the vidatha: vidathyah samrat,410 which, like the references to eloquence in the vidatha, or to the division of wealth in the vidatha, hardly makes any sense if it is taken to mean the household. To suit his parti- cular thesis, Bloomfield had to take recourse to forced and fanciful interpretations of these references. Lastly, the evi- dence of women going to the vidatha, on which Bloomfield has depended so much, may, as we have already suggested, indicate some older realities of the Vedic society. And if this is so, we are led to accept the older view which identifies the vidatha with the sabha,411 though with this reservation, that the vidatha was possibly an older word than the sabha, and as such it could have reflected even older realities about the Vedic society. This seems to be corroborated not only by repeated references to the division of wealth taking place in the vidatha, but also by the gods themselves as having their own vidatha. Agni takes the havi from 'our' vidatha to that of the gods; he is the messenger between the two.412 But the strongest evidence against Bloomfield's view is the total disappearance of the vidatha, along with the sabha and the samiti, in the orthodox tradition of the post-Vedic period.

409 JAOS xix. 11ff. 411 JAOS xix. 13. 410 iv. 21. 2. 412 viii. 39. 1.

VARUNA AND MAYA 597

This cannot at all be explained on the assumption that the vidatha meant the home or the household, for there is nothing to make us imagine that in the post-Vedic period the champions of the Vedic tradition became homeless. On the other hand, if vidatha meant the council or the assembly, it is only logical to expect that in the post-Vedic period its importance should wither away, for even during the latest stratum of the Rig Veda itself, the development of inter-tribal wars led to the disintegra- tion of the tribal organisation of the Vedic people. We shall presently see how the vidatha withered away in the post-Vedic period. However, it may be useful to begin with what is known in general about the disintegration of the tribal assembly.

We quote Engels:#1:

The military commander of the people-rex, basileus, thiudans- became an indispensable and permanent official. The popular assembly was instituted wherever it did not yet exist. The military commander, the council and the popular assembly formed the organs of the military democracy into which gentile society had developed. A military democracy-because war and organisation for war were now regular functions of the life of the people. The wealth of their neighbours excited the greed of the peoples who began to regard the acquisition of wealth as one of the main purposes in life. They were barbarians: plunder appeared to them easier and even more honourable than productive work. War, once waged simply to avenge aggression or as a means of enlarging territory that had be- come inadequate, was now waged for the sake of plunder alone, and became a regular profession. It was not for nothing that formida- ble walls were reared around the new fortified towns: their yawn- ing moats were the graves of the gentile constitution and their turrets already reached up into civilization. Internal affairs under- went a similar change. The robber wars increased the power of the supreme military commander as well as of the sub-commanders. The customary election of successors from one family, especially after the introduction of father-right, was gradually transformed into hereditary succession, first tolerated, then claimed and finally usurped. The foundation of hereditary royalty and hereditary no- bility was laid. In this manner the organs of the gentile constitution were gradually torn from their roots in the people, in gens, phratry and tribe and the whole gentile order was transformed into its opposite: from an organisation of tribes for the free administration of their own affairs it became an organisation for plundering and oppressing their neighbours; and correspondingly, its organs were transformed from instruments of the will of the people into in- dependent organs for ruling and oppressing their own people. This could not have happened had not the greed for wealth divided the members of the gentes into rich and poor; had not 'property differ- ences in a gens changed the community of interest into antagonism between members of a gens' (Marx); and had not the growth of

418 OF 267-9. .

598 LOKAYATA

slavery already begun to brand working for a living as slavish and more ingnominous than engaging in plunder. We have here all the clues to the development of the Vedic society from the later portions of the Rig Veda onwards. In the latest portions of the Rig Veda the word samiti, which according to the Nighantu meant war, came into prominence and all the truth in the list of the 'hereditary kings' in the Cambridge His- tory of India could have been nothing more than the fact that already towards the end of the Rig Vedic period the 'customary election of successors from one family' was in the process of get- ting 'transformed into hereditary succession, first tolerated, then claimed and finally usurped.' We shall later see some more aspects of this transformation or the breakdown of the tribal organisation: the individual interest trampling upon that of the community, the fall of Varuna along with his simple moral grandeur and the growth of the new values like greed and power. For the present let us confine ourselves to the question of the assemblies. If the importance of the samiti in the latest portions of the Rig Veda was indicative of the development of military demo- cracy, it also foreshadowed the death of tribal democracy: the robber-wars increased not only the wealth of the tribesmen but also the greed for wealth of the individuals who constituted the tribe, and thus ultimately divided the community against itself. The way in which the society was disintegrating can possibly be inferred from the desperate calls to preserve unity, which began to be quite obvious from the latest stratum of the Rig Veda and were, interestingly enough, often accompanied by an appeal to the memory of the past. We have already quoted the last sukta of the Rig Veda, which formed part of its latest stra- tum: 'Do ye concur, be ye closely combined; let your minds be concurrent, as the gods of old sat concurrent about their portions.' Such a desperate call for unity should have found no place here if the unity or the group-bond of the tribesmen had continued to be a reality. Evidently, the Vedic society was beginning to break up. And the Atharva Veda - which, with all its archaic elements, was, as a compilation, much later than the Rig Veda - naturally contained many charms and spells to ensure unity among the kinsmen themselves. Here are some examples:

May your bodies be united, may your minds and your purposes

VARUNA AND MAYA 599

(be united)! Brahmanaspati here has brought you together, Bhaga has brought you together. Harmony of mind (I procure) for you, and also harmony of heart. Moreover with the aid of Bhaga's exertions do I cause you to agree. As the Adityas are united with the Vasus, as the fierce (Rudras), free from grudge, with the Maruts, thus, O three-named (Agni), without grudge, do thou render these people here of the same mind!414 May we be in harmony with our kinfolk, in harmony with strangers; do ye, O Asvins, establish here agreement among us! May we agree in mind and thought, may we not struggle with one an- other, in a spirit displeasing to the gods! May not the din of fre- quent battle-carnage arise, may the arrow not fly when the day of Indra has arrived.+15 Hither shall come Varuna, Soma, Agni; Brihaspati with the Vasus shall come hither! Come together, O ye kinsmen all, of one mind, to the glory of this mighty guardian. The fire that is within your souls, the scheme that hath entered your minds, do I frustrate with my oblation, with my ghee: delight in me shall ye take, O kinsmen. Remain right here, go not away from us; (the roads) at a distance Pusan shall make impassable for you! Vastospati shall urgently call you back; delight in me shall ye take, O kinsmen!416 This is of course only one side of the picture. The other side, as is only to be expected, was characterised by an equally desperate - almost uncanny - desire of the individual to bring the community under his control and submission. Here are the spells to ensure this:

With my mind do I seize your minds; do ye with your thoughts follow my thought! I place your hearts in my control: come ye, directing your way after my course! I have called upon heaven and earth, I have called upon the goddess Sarasvati, I have called upon both Indra and Agni: may we ucceed in this, O Sarasvati.417 'The key-note of this charm,' said Bloomfield,418 'is the word sam-nam, "to bend to one's will" ... In the Atharvan the hyman (iv. 39) is the most elaborate production of this sort.' And this is how it reads in Whitney's419 translation: Earth (is) milch-cow; of her Agni (is) calf; let her, with Agni as calf, milk for me food, refreshment, (my) desire, life-time first, progeny, prosperity, wealth: hail !.. The atmosphere is milch-cow; of her Vayus is calf; let her, with Vayu as calf, milk for me, etc. etc. This is obviously far from the collective desire and the inviola- ble law of division that inspired the earlier pocts of the Rig

414 AV vi. 74. 1-3. (tr.) Bloomfield. 415 AV vii. 52. 1-2 416 AV iv. 73. 1-3. 417 AV vi. 94. 2-3. 418 SBE xlii. 508. 419 AV i. 216.

600 LOKAYATA

Veda: the intcrest as well as the will of the individual have already undermined those of the community. As is only to be expected, under this new set-up the old administrative machi- nery of the collective society passed into its opposite: in the post-Rig Vedic period the glory of the ancient vidatha vanished fast and the sabha and samiti became merely the forum for the expression of the individual will:

May sabha and samiti, the two daughters of Prajapati, con- currently aid me! May he with whom I shall meet co-operate with me; may I, O ye fathers, speak agreeably to those assembled! We know thy name, O assembly: 'mirth,' verily, is the name: may all those that sit assembled in thee utter speech in harmony with me! Of them that are sitting together I take to myself the power and the understanding: in this entire gathering render, O Indra, me successful! If vour mind has wandered to a distance, or has been enchained here er there, then do we turn it hither: may your mind take de- lignt in me!420 The samiti is called here bv the name 'mirth.' It may be that the assembly was once also the scene of tribal festivities; but in view of the total usurpation of its former autonomy by the indi- vidual, there is really no reason to believe that it continued to be so. In the Upanisads,421 the samiti had been fully trans- formed into the royal court, attended by the king's flatterers - rajanya-bandhu.+2" It was in royal courts like these that the kings of the days of the Upanisads, relieved of the responsibilities of material production and surrounded by their parasitical flat- terers, evolved the original germs of the idealistic speculations in Indian philosophy. But more of this later. If in the Upanisads, there remained at least the word samiti, - though merely as an empty husk of its former self, -we find it disappear altogether in the later law-codes and other works of the Vedic-Brahmanical tradition. 'The assembly dis- appears as an effective part of government in the Buddhist texts, the Epic and the Law Books.'423 An obvious reservation is to be added to this. For we have already seen the glory of the assem- bly in the Buddhist texts. However, the statement is fully correct so far as the Epic and the Law Books are concerned. And Hop- kins is probably the only modern scholar who has rightly traced

420 AV vii. 12. 1-1. 421 Br. Up. vi. 2; Ch. Up. v.3. 422 Ch. Up. v. 3. 5. It is to be noted that this word had a dis- tinctly derogatory sense. 423 Macdonell & Keith VI ii. 431.

VARUNA AND MAYA 601

the decay of the old assembly through the aristocratic war- councils and the secret priestly conclave. According to him, this decay is complete in the Epic, though there are records of the different stages of this decay in the Epic itself:

The earliest assembly for adjusting political affairs in Aryan India was the clan-assembly, called sabha (cf. the German Sippe). In the Epic we find the sabha to be an assembly of any sort ... In such a case as that mentioned above, where the people met 'in assemblies' to discuss political matters, we may perhaps see a trace cf the original function of the people's assembly, though such a meeting had, of course. lcng since ceased to be what the sabha had been-a village assembly for counsel-and corresponds neither to the regular sabha of old nor to the antique state council in which the king took part (samiti), the latter having now become a meeting of the nobles and king .... The heroes of the Mahabharata are not what they (by later interpolations) are exhorted to be. They act from their own' wishes .. The council is military. The meaning is clear. The assembly of the people had become an assembly ot nobles. The mil:tary power of the people had quite become the possession of the king. In all public matters appertaining to the story itself, the priests are as good as silent, and the people are sup- pressed. It is only in such older legends as are related above, and told in our story as 'ancient tales', that the power of the people seems to linger, and then not in military but in civil matters .... We have thus three diplomatic stages reflected in our poem: the popular assembly, already restricted to protestation in civil matters; the public aristocratic assembly on war matters; the private priestly council on all matters.#24

10 YAJNA : THE RITUAL OF PRODUCTION

This is how Macdonell summed up the transition from the old Vedas to the Brahmanas, the ritual books which succeed- ed them:

The creative period of the Vedas at length came to an end. It was followed by an epoch in which there no longer seemed any need 1o offer up new prayers to the gods, but it appeared more meritori- ous to repeat those made by the holy seers of bygone generations, and handed down from father to son in various priestly families. The old hymns thus came to be successfully gathered together in the Vedic collections already mentioned, and in this form acquired an ever-increasing sanctity. Having ceased to produce poetry, the priesthood transferred their creative energies to the elaboration of the sacrificial ceremonial. The result was a ritual system far sur- passing in complexity of detail anything the world has elsewhere known. The main importance of the old Vedic hymns and formulae now came to be their application to the innumerable details of the sacrifice. Around this combination of sacred verse and rite a new body of doctrine grew up in sacerdotal tradition, and finally assumed definite shape in the guise of distinct theological treatises entitled

424 JAOS xiii. 148-51. 425 HSL 31-2. .

602 LOKAYATA

Brahmanas .... They evidently did not come into being till a time when the hymns were already deemed ancient and sacred revela- tions, the priestly custodians of which no longer fully understood their meaning owing to the change undergone by the language. They are written in prose throughout .... Yet as the oldest treatises on ritual practices extant in any literature, they are of great interest to the student of the history of religions in general, besides furnish-

particular. ing much important material to the student of Indian antiquity in

We have already reviewed some specimens of the literary compositions of the Vedic people during the period of their 'creativity.' These were poems and songs throbbing with the memory of the collective life and inspired by the intense desire for the this-worldly objects - food, wealth, progeny and safety. Even the gods themselves were but the incarnations of such desires and, like the mortals in whose image they were made, were sitting together in the assemblies to receive their shares of the collective wealth. In short, the society in which these poets lived and sang was yet to be fully split up into antagonistic classes and their consciousness was yet to witness the birth of the strictly spiritualistic values. We may now ask ourselves: What were the distinctive features of the Vedic society during the succeeding period of barren ritualism? Answered Macdonell: 426

The period of the Brahmanas is a very important one in the history of Indian society. For in it the system of the four castes assumed definite shape, furnishing the frame within which the highly complex network of the castes of today has been developed. In that system the priesthood, who even in the first Vedic period had occu- pied an influential position, secured for themselves the dominant power which they have maintained ever since. While in other early societies the chief power remained in the hands of princes and warrior nobles, the domination of the priesthood became possible in India as soon as the energetic life of conquest during the early Vedic times in the north-west was followed by a period of physical inactivity or indolence in the plains. Such altered conditions enabled the cultured class, who alone held the secret of the all-powerful sacrifice, to gain the supremacy of intellect over physical force. There are certain obvious reservations to be added to this. It is true that the strictly post-Vedic period, the beginnings of which is to be traced to the latest stratum of the Rig Veda, wit- nessed the rise of the four castes in which the priests or the Brahmanas constituted the most dominant section. But it is not true that they had occupied an influential position from the first Vedic period, for it is extremely doubtful whether during these

426 Ib. 33-4.

VARUNA AND MAYA 603

early days any distinct priest-class had at all emerged. Besides, it is not wholly true that during the period of the Brahmanas the class of princes and warrior nobles receded to the back- ground leaving power in the hands of the priests. As we are going to sec, the superiority of the priests was based on a clear compromise with the warrior nobles, and this was effected only after prolonged scrambling for power between the two classes. Secondly, if the literatures of this period are cvidences of 'phy- sical inactivity and indolence,' which they certainly are, they must be considered as the characteristics of the ruling classes, and the causes of these are certainly not to be sought in the geographical factors like the shift from the north-west to the plains but rather in the economic factor, - the increased pro- ductivity of the Vedic people which, by creating surplus, created the objective possibility for the few to live on the labour of the many. Thirdly, there was not any real 'superiority of intellect over physical force'; rather, during the period of the Brahmanas physical force or violence acquired a new momentum, as it were, and this for the purpose of maintaining the newly emerged state- power. What was actually established was the superiority of mental labour over material labour, of thought over action, though it was only in the latest appendices of the Brahmanas, namely the Upanisads, that this superiority assumed its final form. The clue to all these, again, was the emergence of the leisured class: 'the more modest productions of the working hand retreated into the background, the more so since the mind that planned the labour process ... was able to have this planned labour carried out by other hands than its own.' In short, the disintegration of the ancient tribal organisation was complete. How this resulted in the birth of the idealistic outlook of the Upanisads needs to be studied next. But we shall confine our- selves here only to one question: What was the effect of this disintegration of the tribal organisation on the Vedic rituals, the yajnas? It was claimed in the Brahmanas that all the literary com- positions compiled in the earlier Vedas were meant to be spe- cifically applied or used (viniyoga) in some ritual - yajna. This claim was not entirely fictitious, because there is no reason to believe that the early ancestors of the Vedic people differed fundamentally from the primitive peoples surviving today. They had no fascination for pure poetry or songs. We have already discussed in Chapter II that the only poetry the primitive people

604 LOKAYATA

possess are songs which are invariably magical, and the core of which is desire. It is therefore only logical to assume that the earliest poetry of the Vedic people, too, was also magical and as such was likely to have been accompanied by some ritual or other. Thus we can infer that this was all the truth behind the claim of the Brahmanas, viz. the Vedic verses had definite ritual use. But this does in no way imply that the verses were origi- nally employed in the rituals in the specific sense of the Brah- manas. The reason is simple. There is nothing in the earlier portions of the Vedas to indicate that the earlv Vedic people were at all acquainted with the rituals in the specific sense in which thesc were explained in the Brahmanas. Rituals of later times were but malignant after-growths - a point that will not be questioned by any serious scholar todav. At the same time, they could not have been the inventions of later priests ad novo. However much elaborated these might have been and whatever might have been the new content and form acquired by these rituals in the later liturgy, it is possible for us to see primitive magic as forming the subsoil of the later Vedic yajna. There is probably nothing new about this point. It is already argued by competent scholars that the Vedic yajna was the outgrowth of primitive magic, 'that the Brahman was the first of priests, originally a magician, and that the spell is the primitive form whence prayer has emerged, as from the magi- cian the priest has evolved with the growth of religion.'427 This is, however, not the whole truth. The limitation of the view as advocated arises from a lack of materialistic understanding of primitive magic itself. We have already seen in Chapter II that the practice of magic is not entirely futile: it is an illusory technique supplementing the real technique and the efficacy of this illusory technique depends upon the collectivity of primi- tive existence. In other words, so long as group-life does not disintegrate, the magical ritual remains vitally related to the technique of production itself. In fact, the poorer the develop- ment of the productive technique the more abject is its depend- ence on the magical ritual: by representing the desired reality as already present, it leads to overcome the felt-helplessness in the face of hostile nature and the more undeveloped is the actual technique the more acute is this sense of felt-helplessness, i.e.,

... '427 The view. of Henry. See summary Keith RPV 399.

VARUNA AND MAYA 605

the greater the need of magical ritual. The development of the productive technique brings nature increasingly under human control and as such the original economic efficacy of magic withers away. But not so the rites. They survive, though in new form and to serve a new purpose. For the same develop- ment of the productive forces ultimately divide the community against itself and the 'technique of magic is developed by the ruling class as a means of consolidating their privileges by in- vesting them with supernatural sanctions.'42% This, in fact, is the form in which we find the Vedic yajnas of the later period: the rituals, originally aspects of the productive technique, werc transformed into sacrifices performed for maintaining the power and increasing the prosperity of the privileged classes. And the ancient spells were proclaimed to be weapons of the ruling classes. Manu42" said that the magic spells of the Atharva Veda were the weapons of the Brahmanas which they would use without hesitation against their foes. This was an extension of the claim that began to be formulated as early as the latest stratum of the Rig Veda:40 viz. the magical power of tapas (lit., heat, but including other forms of self-mortification like fasting, silence, etc. conceived as means of attaining super-human power). the exclusive possession of the Brahmanas, will bring calamity to the man who injures them. Thus the primitive magician had already become the priest, and the ancient magical power was transformed into an instrument of his class-domination. However, what interests us here is the prehistory of the Vedic yajna. In discussing this we may begin with the indica- tions of its original connections with the collective mode of the productive technique.431 Yajna, as understood later and elaborately explained in the Brahmanas, was the performance of the ritual by the priests, - usually a number of them, - not for the benefit of themselves but for that of some rich individual, the yajamana, who paid

428 Thomson R 9.

431 Dange (IPCS 32ff.). I think, is the first to suggest that yajna 429 xi. 33 430 x. 109. 4.

was originally the collective mode of production of the early Vedic people. The amendment I have proposed here is that yajna was more strictly the ritual aspect thereof: the collective labour of the primitive people remains inextricably mixed up with magical rituals and these rituals, eventually separated from the labour process it- self, assumed the malignant form of the Vedic yajnas as later under- stood.

606 LOKAYATA

for it. Accordingly, Monier-Williams432 gave the following meanings of the word yajamana: 'the person paying the cost of a sacrifice, the institutor of a sacrifice (who, to perform it, em- ploys a priest or priests, who are often hereditary functionaries in a family), any patron, host, rich man, head of a family or tribe.' We may, however, safely leave the 'head of the tribe' out of consideration for the truly tribal society cannot have a 'head' in the sense of a rich patron. With this reservation, the meanings given by Monier-Williams give a realistic picture of the yajamana as we know him in the later literatures: he pays the cost of the yajna but does not himself participate in the performance, excepting in so far as he sits there (sometimes with his wife) to derive the results of the ritual. Interestingly, however, the etymology of the word yajamana is itself an evidence against such a picture. The word is derived from the root yaj, with suffix sanac. What is specially important is this suffix: according to the grammatical rule+:3 it applies only when the performer of the act is himself the enjoyer of its fruit, i.e., when the person is deriving the bencfit of an action per- formed by himself. Thus the etymology of the word indicates its prehistory when the distinction between the patron and the paid priests did not emerge. Presumably, the yajamanas were then themselves the performers of the yajna. Are there any indications in the Rig Veda to confirm this etymological evidence? There are, as a matter of fact, many; we may mention only a few. That which invariably inspired a Vedic song was a desire. We have already seen that, at least in an overwhelmingly large number of passages, these desires had a pronounced collective bias and even Sayana was obliged to interpret the 'we' of the songs as the yajamans in the plural. This feature by itself pre- cludes the possibility of the songs being originally employed for the benefit of the individual patron, i.c., the yajamana as later understood. 'There is,' said Bloomfield,434 'always one yajamana, or bestower of the sacrifice; the sacrifice redounds to his benefit, and that of his family.' This is true so far as the later picture of the yajamana goes; but it does not always fit in with the Rig Vedic evidences. For we have not only the clearest indication in the Rig Veda of a collective body of yajamanas but also of

432 SED 839. 438 PS i. 3. 72. 434 JAOS xix. 13.

VARUNA AND MAYA 607

the more startling fact that they were the same as the common tribesmen. Here is a crucial evidence:

We, the yajamanas, with favourable mantras (spells), invoke you (Agni). who art the best of the laudable, the foremost of the Angirases, the wise one, with blazing hair, going round like the sun, one who fulfils the desires of the people (visah) and of the carsunis.$35

There can be no doubt that the yajamanas and the people were identical in this rik. Even Sayana had to admit this. He inter- preted visah as the yajamana-rupa-prajah, people in the form of yajamanas. Equally interesting is his note on carsaninam: 'of the men, i.e., of the yajamanas, or of the carsanis, who previously being men later attained the status of the gods by dint of yajnas, and thus became fit to invoke the gods.' At least one point is clear: the yajamana was yet to be raised to the figure of the individual patron instituting a sacrifice for his personal benefit. Here are some more riks in which the word yajamana was in the plural and, presumably, in the sense of the common people desiring material wealth:

O Agni, the yajamanas daily hold towards you all the best wcalth - along with you, desiring wealth, the intelligent people opened wide the stall full of cows.436 The gods and the yajamanas, the protectors of the wind, ask for the goddess Sraddha (Reverence); calling her with intense longing, they gain wealth through Sraddha.+37 (O Indra), the wish-yielder, let not the other yajamanas delight your two horses with smooth backs; always approach us bypassing them, - we shall satisfy you with filtered soma.438 O Indra, drink this food that intoxicates and release these two moving horses of yours at this place; let not the other yajamanas delight you much; hence these somas are for you alone.139 More significant, however, are two other riks in which the yaja- manas were described as receiving shares (bhaagam) of the tribal wealth and also as attending the council (vidatha):

Sarasvati, whom the fathers invoked and who, coming from the south, pervades the yajna, - may she give to the yajamanas the shares (bhaagam) of the food, fostering wealth a thousand-fold.440 O Agni, the possessor of food, the expert sons of Vasistha invoked you in the assemblies (vidathesu) with praises; do give us, the vajamanas, increasing wealth and protect us always with well- wishes.441

435 i. 127. 2. 436 x. 45. 11. 438 iii. 35. 5. 437 x. 151. 4

440 x. 17. 9. 439 x. 160. 1. 441 x. 122. 8.

608 LOKĄYATA

All these occur in the latest stratum of the Rig Veda and from this it may be legitimate to infer that the later sense of the word yajamana was not uniformly established even towards the close of the Rig Vedic period. For in these riks the yajamanas were still the collective body of people whose desire for material wealth had formed the kernel of the early Vedic songs. Of course, these Vedic songs, like the songs of truly primi- tive peoples all over the world, were aspects of some ritual process. It may not be possible for us to reconstruct the exact picture of the rituals in which the songs of the Rig Veda were originally employed. The version of the rituals that we have in the ritual-books is in the form of their later malignant growth. However, even granting that these later versions of the rituals were not entirely the inventions of the later priests but simply claborate rationalisations of the original rituals as divorced from their original contexts and rendered obsolete by the economic progress, it may be stil! possible for us to have some indication of these original rituals from certain features that persistently characterised their later forms. One of these persistent features was the pouring out of the libation, - mostly in the form of the soma. We may therefore argue that this act must have formed part of the original rituals, whatever might have been the signi- ficance then attached to it. What interests us from the point ot view of our present enquiry is that, though in the later rituals this formed part of the characteristic function of the paid priests employed by the yajamana, as we penetrate into the prehistory of the Vedic yajna, we find the yajamana himself performing the function. The implication is that the distinction between the priest and the yajamana had not then emerged: the yajamana was himself the performer of the ritual. Here are some charac- teristic evidences:

havibhih).442 The yajamana rules with the oblations (saste yajamanah

(O Indra), you instruct the yajamana, the offerer of the obla- tion, in your mighty wealth (yajamanaya siksasi sunvate bhuri te vasu).143 (Indra) bestows beneficial strength to the yajamana, the offerer of the oblation,444 To the yajamana, the performer of the good actions, the maker of gifts and the offerer of oblations .... 445 O Pusan, follow the cows of ours, the yajamanas, the offerers of the oblation, the singers of praises .... 446

442 i. 24. 11. 443 i. 81. 2. 445i. 92. 3. 444 i. 83. 3. 446 vi. 54. 6.

VARUNA AND MAYA 609

O Indra and Agni, listen to the call of the yajamana, the offerer of oblations.147 This does not mean that throughout the Rig Veda, the dis- tinction between the yajamana and the priest remained absent. Being a collection of a vast number of verses composed over a very long period, the Rig Veda retained on the one hand, the relics of the primitive past, while on the other, it clearly fore- shadowed the shape of things to come. Many a rik448 indicated the growing distinction between the yajamana and the rriest in the later sense. We shall mention here only two interesting examples. 'On the banks of the Asikni (Chenab) the yajamana is, as it were, the hota (asiknyam yajamanah na hota).'449 Hota was one of the well-known later priests. The special interest of this rik, however, is in the use of the word na, 'as it were.' Evidently, this is an indication of the uneven development of the Vedic peoples: the living experience of the poet was that the hota and the yajamana were separate persons and that is why he was wondering at the lack of this distinction among those who lived on the banks of the Asikni. One result of this ultimate separation of the yajamana from the priest, i.e., of the development of a separate class as priests, was the transformation of the yajamana to a status of a total parasite, so far at least as the process of yajna was concerned. We find this clearly recorded in one of the latest additions to the Rig Veda (Valakhilya Suktas: these were so late that Sayana considered them not worth commenting upon). When the priests (ritviks) consciously shoulder the responsi- bility of the yajna, what can be the need of consciousness on the part of the yajamana?450 To sum up: the evidence of the word yajamana itself goes to show that the Vedic ritual was not originally the performance of the sacrifice by the priests for the benefit of the individual patron who financed it. That is, it was not yajna in the later sense. But if it was not so, what then was its original form? It is not necessary for our argument here - nor do we think it possible - to try to reconstruct a full picture of the original rituals in which the early songs of the Rig Veda were supposed to be employed. We are going to argue only two points about the Vedic yajna: First, according to the admission of the most

447 vi. 60. 15. 448 i. 51. 8; iii. 53. 3; v. 44.13; v. 45. 5; vi. 15. 16; etc. 449 iv. 17. 15. 450 viii. 58. 1. L-39

610 LOKAYATA

authentic Vedic tradition, the yajna as described in the later ritual books was not the yajna as originally practised by the early Vedic people. Secondly, the yajna as originally practised was vitally related to the productive technique - and was, in fact. an inseparable aspect of it - and this, too, had been expli- citly admitted by the authentic Vedic tradition itself. Here are some passages from the Aitareya Brahmana:

The yajna went away from the gods; it they sought to start up with offerings; in that they sought to start it up with offerings that is why offerings have their name. having found the yujna who knows thus.451 . They found it; he prospers

The yajna went away from the gods; the gods could do nothing, they could not discern it. They said to Aditi, 'Through thee let us discern the yajna.' She said, 'So be it, but let me choose a boon from you'. 'Choose' (they replied). This boon she choose, 'Let the yajna begin from me and end with me'. 'So be it' (they replied). Therefore there is a pap to Aditi as introductory (offering), (a pap)

chosen.402 to Aditi as concluding (offering), for as a boon by her was this

The yajna went away from the gods; they sought to start it up with the directions; in that they sought to start it up with the directions, that is why the directions have their name (praisa). It they made radiant with the Puroruces; that is why the Puroruces have their name. It they found on the altar; in that they found it on the altar, that is why the altar has its name (vedi). It, when found, they drew off with drawing (cups); in that they drew it off with drawing (cups), that is why the cups have their name (graha). Having found it they made it known by Nivids; in that having found it they made it known (nyavedayan) by Nivids, that is why Nivids have their name. He who seeks what is lost desires some- thing great or small; of the two he who desires the greater has the better desire; he who knows the directions as ever greater, knows them better, for the directions are a seeking for what is lost; there- fore standing bent forward he gives directions.453 The artificial nature of some of the points in these speculations is obvious. Equally obvious, however, is the necessity that led the author of the Brahmana to such forced afterthoughts: yajna in its original form was lost to them and they were trying only to reconstruct the lost yajna in terms of their own understand- ing. The key to these passages is to be found in the persistent theme of the Aitareya Brahmana that 'yajna went away from the gods.' But why were the gods so much concerned with the loss of yajna and why did they try to rediscover it so desperately? The Aitareya Brahmana leaves us in no doubt as to the answer: yajna was originally connected with the mode of obtaining food

451 i. 2. (tr.) Keith RVB 108. 452i. 7. (tr.) Keith RVB 111. 453 jii. 9. Keith RVB 170.

VARUNA AND MAYA 611

and as such the loss of yajna meant a threat to the means of subsistence: The yajna went away from the gods (saying), 'I shall not be your food.' 'No', replied the gods, 'Verily thou shalt be our food.' The gods crushed it; it being taken apart was not sufficient for them. The gods said, 'It will not be sufficient for us, being taken apart; come, let us gather together the yajna.' (They replied) 'Be it so.' They gathered it together; having gathered it together they said to the Asvins, 'Do ye two heal it,' the Asvins are the physicians of the gods, the Asvins the Adhvaryus; therefore the two Adhvaryus gather together the cauldron. Having gathered it together they say, 'O Brahman, we shall proceed with the Pravargya offering; O Hotri, do thou recite.'454 So these were only the shattered pieces of the original yajna, crushed by violence and in need of the healing art of the Asvins, that the gods were eventually left with; and they were trying to reconstruct it so desperately because the yajna had originally been a vital aid to the mode of obtaining food. And this is not an isolated theme in the Aitareya Brahmana: The yajna as food departed from the gods; the gods said, 'The yajna as food hath left us; this yajna, food, let us search for.' They said, 'How shall we search?' 'By the Brahman and the metres, they said.' They consecrated the Brahmana with the metres; for him they performed the yajna up to the end; they also performed the joint offerings to the wives (of the gods). Therefore now also in the consecration offering they perform the yajna right up to the end, they also perform the joint offerings to the wives .... They performed the guest reception; to him with the guest reception they came nearer; they hastened with the performance. They made it end in the sacrificial food (ida .: it might have ori- ginally meant simply food being equivalent to ila in the Rig Veda: 450 in any case the suggestion here is that of sharing the common meal with the guests as the culmination of the yajna). Therefore now also the guest reception ends in the ida .... Having obtained him (yajna) they (the gods) said, 'Serve us for food'; 'No,' he replied, 'how can I serve you?' Then he only looked at. To him they said, 'With the Brahman and the metres becoming united do thou serve us as food.' 'Be it so' (he replied). Therefore now also the yajna becoming united with the Brahman and the metres bears the yajna to the gods.450 The gods were, of course, the remote ancestors the Vedic peoples and the yajna as reconstructed in the age of the Brahmanas had a pronounced Brahmanical bias. This becomes clearer in the following passage of the same text: Prajapati created the yajna; after the creation of the yajna the holy power (Brahma) and the lordly power (Ksatra) were created; after the holy power and the lordly power both kinds of offspring

454 i. 18. Keith RVB 121. 455 Monier-Williams SED 164. 450 iii. 45. Keith RVB 193-4.

612 LOKAYATA

were created, those who eat the oblations and those who do not eat the oblations; after the holy power those that eat the oblations, after the lordly power those that do not eat the oblations. The Brahmans are the offspring that eat the oblations; the Rajanya, Vaisya and Sudras those that do not eat the oblations. From them the yajna departed; it the holy power and the lordly power pursued; the holy power pursued with the weapons of the holy power; the lordly power with those of the lordly power. The weapons of the holy power are the weapons of the yajna; the weapons of the lordly power are the horse chariot, the corslet, the bow and arrow. The loraly power returned without attaining it; from its weapons it turns away trembling. The holy power followed it and obtained it; having obtained it it kept blocking it from above; it being obtained and blocked from above standing, recognising its own weapons, went up to the holy power. Therefore even now the yajna finds support in the holy power and in the Brahmana. The lordly power then followed it; it said, 'Lo thou call upon me in this yajna.' 'Be it so,' it replied, 'lay aside thine own weapons, and with the weapons of the holy power, the form of the holy power, becoming the holy power, do thou come to the yajna.' 'Be it so,' (it said). Thus the lordly power, .... having laid aside its own weapons, with the weapons of the holy power, went to the yajna. Therefore, now also the Ksatriya, as the yajamana, having laid aside his own weapons, with the weapons of the holy power, with the form of the holy power, becoming the holy power, goes to the yajna.+57 This passage clearly relates the reconstruction of the yajna as it took place in the later times with the emergence of caste- distinction: Yajna was in practice before the separation between the holy power and the lordly power, and only eventually it became the special prerogative of the holy power, the Brah- manas. Besides, the story that yajna, after it deserted the gods, was pursued by the Brahmanas and the Kstriyas and that it agreed to return only to the Brahmanas because the weapons of the Brahmanas were the weapons of yajna, has its obvious rele- vance for our argument: the priests of the later times grew out of the primitive magicians, as the primitive magical rituals passed into the sacrifices of the later times. That this supe- riority of the priestly power was in fact based upon a distinct compromise with the kingly power is evident from the following suggestion of the Aitareya Brahmana which occurred in the con- text of the prescriptions for the 'prevention of decay of yajna'. .. The following he should certainly offer with: 'I have recourse to the holy power; may the holy power guard me from the lordly power: to the holy power hail!' .... Thus it delighted guards him from the lordly power. Then after the concluding formulas of the final offering of a cow (he says): 'I have recourse to the lordly power; may the lordly power guard me from the holy power; to the lordly power hail!' .... He who has recourse to the kingship has

457 vii. 19. Keith RVB 309-10.

VARUNA AND MAYA 613

recourse to the lordly power, for the kingship is the lordly power. Him who has recourse to the lordly power the holy power does not oppress. 'May the lordly power guard me from the holy power,' he says, in order that the lordly power may guard him from the holy power; 'To the lordly power hail!' (he says): thus he delights it. Thus it delighted guards him from the holy power. These two libations are the prevention of decay of the yajna and the gifts; therefore they must be offered.+58 In short, from now on the yajna could be protected only by paci- fying the kings and the priests. Without this, there would be the aggressiveness of the two ruling classes to destroy the yajna. Yajna, as rediscovered or reconstructed in the later period, was thus already clearly connected with the privileged classes. Indeed, this gives us a picture of the yajna very much different from the one depicted in the songs of the ancients; for yajna, in these early songs. was only the ritual meant to ensure the fulfilment of the collective wish. But let us concentrate on the evidences of the yajna being originally connected with the modes of obtaining the means of subsistence. The indications are clear. 'Yajna as food departed from the gods; the gods said, "The yajna as food hath left us; the yajna, food, let us search for."' If the yajna was that which, when lost, meant also the loss of the means of subsistence, and, in seeking back which the gods were also seeking back the means of subsistence, then the yajna must have been, originally, vitally related to the technique of obtaining the means of subsis- tence. But how could it be thus related? Only as magical rituals meant to ensure the primitive labour process, the illusory technique in aid of the real technique. Eventually, however, i.e., as rediscovered or reconstructed according to the Aitareya Brahmana, this illusory technique was fully divorced from the real technique - the magical rituals from the labour process it- self - and thus became pure illusion: barren, meaningless and absurd. Further, unimpeded any longer by the actual technique, it went on acquiring a fantastically elaborate form according to the fantastic logic of pure illusion itself, until it culminated into a malignant meaninglessness, namely the sacrifice of the later period. But things in the past were different. There was already a reference to the past in the name Yajur Veda. It was the earliest text foreshadowing the form of yajna as sacrifice of the later sense. The literal meaning of yajuh, the knowledge (veda)

458 vii. 22. Keith RVB 311.

614 LOKAYATA

of which was compiled in the Yajur Veda, is: '(They) perform- ed the yajna in the hoary past, yaj lit us.' Thus, along with a reference to the past, there was, in the use of the plural, also a reference to the ancient collective functioning. One of the recensions in which this Veda is preserved for us is called the Vajasancyi Samhita. Samhita means collection. But what is meant by vajasaneyi? The word is obviously derived from vaja or food; one who increases food is vajasana. The implication, again, is that the knowledge of the rituals compiled in this Samhita were originally supposed to have direct bearing on the productive technique. A ritual discussed in all the recensions of the Yajur Veda is named Vajapeya. This name, again, is rooted in the same word for food, vaja. Peya means the drink. Even according to authentic orthodox tradition, the ritual literally meant 'food and drink', and the original connection of this ritual with the activity of food-production - particularly agriculture - was not com- pletely absent in the later speculations on it. This is evidcnt from the observations of Keith:450

The priests of his (the sacrificer's) people touch him with bags of salt earth in Asvattha leaves or in Asvattha boxes, clearly as a means of securing fertility, showing that the offering is more than a mere piece of magic for the glorification of any individual person. With this is in harmony the insistence of the Sankhyayana (xv.1.1.) on the fact that the rite is available to any one who desires annadya (i.e., the eating of food), and the name is explained as 'food and drink,' a version found in the Satapatha itself. Moreover, this accords with the mantras (spells) used in touching the sacri- ficer, annaya tva (i.e., to you for the sake of food) etc., and the rule in Sankhyayana (xvi. 17. 4) that the offering can be made for a Vaisya, to which may be added the consecration of the sacrificer for krisi (agriculture) in the Vajasaneyi (ix. 22. d) and possibly the

rite. connection of the Maruts, 'the people among the gods,' with the

All these, according to Keith, were among the 'popular features' of the rite. As depicted in the later ritual books, said Keith, the rite is 'essentially already a priestly one,' but 'in sacerdotalising the rite the priests have still retained its popular features."4G0 This is certainly correct; however, we have only to add that these relics of the 'popular features,' as clues to the prehistory of the rite, lead us ultimately to recognise the collective magic of

450 VBYS intro. cx. It may be remembered here that the Yajur Veda was much later than the Rig Veda so that by the age of the Yajur Veda the Vedic people already learnt agriculture. 460 Ib.

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the primitive ancestors of the Vedic people, whose actual tech- nique of production, being poorly developed, was vitally dependent upon the illusory technique of magic and this must have formed the original core of the rite. Yajna was thus origi- nally only the ritual of production, whatever might have been its later malignant growth. That the yajnas as discussed in the later ritual books are full of magical elements is a point already exhaustively discussed by Keith4t1 himself. If this be so then these magical elements must be looked upon as survivals of the original yajna, i.e., the later sacrifices were but the artificial transformation of the early magical rituals. But this is precisely the point which Kcith strongly doubted. In fact, he argued against 'the preconceived dloctrine of the priority of magic.'402 The exaltation which saw in the poetry of the Rig Veda the highest form of honour which the gods could receive, would scarcely trouble itself about the lower field of magic. But we cannot believe that there was ever a time when the Vedic sacrifice was not filled with magic elements, and all that we can say with certainty is that the desire to see magic in everything was one which was growing in the period of the Brahmanas, which degrade the sacrifice from the position of an appeal to the bounty of heaven to the position of the greatest power on earth, which controls the gods and produces whatever is desired by the priests.403. If this be true, then our view of magic passing into sacrifice cannot be tenable. We have, therefore, to consider carefully the problem of the relation between 'magic' and 'sacrifice' in the sense of propitiation in the Vedic literatures. The problem is important and the evidence of the Vedic literatures is, at lcast apparently, quite peculiar. We have, therefore, to go into some details over this. It was Macdonell who opened the discussion and we may begin with his observations. He started from the essential difference between 'sacrifice' and 'magic': the former 'is meant to propitiate the gods' while the latter 'to control the course of things.'404 The problem of the relation between the two arises from the apparent peculiarity of the Vedic evidences. The oldest of the Vedic literatures is the Rig Veda, and it is usually taken to be a collection of prayers meant to propitiatc the gods. 'Only a dozen of its 1028 hymns are concerned with magic', said Macdonell.405 Magic elements bccome increasingly obvious in the later works -the Atharva

401 RPV ch. 22. 462 Ib. 379. 404 ERE viii. 312. 403 Ib. 379-80. 405 Ib. viii. 311.

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Veda, Yajur Veda and the Brahmanas. Under these circum- stance, the Vedic evidences appear to indicate an inversion of the usual sequence: religion seems to have degenerated into magic and as such religion must have been prior to magic. As to any magical rites connected with the sacrifice the Rig Veda gives us no information. On the other hand, magic is the main and essential subject-matter of the Atharva Veda; it is a col- lection of metrical spells, largely to be accompanied by ceremonies aiming at the welfare of the magician or the injury of his enemies. The Yajur Veda occupies an intermediate position between these two Vedas as regards magic. In its original part, which consists of prose formulae, the gods are only secondary, bearing a kind of mechanical relation to the sacrificial ceremonial with which these formulae are associated, and which they follow in its minutest details. Its character is thus of a magical rather than a religious type. The great development, in this period, of an intricate ritual and the concentration of sacerdotal thought on its perfect per- formance had led to the new conception that sacrifice was not meant to propitiate the gods, but directly to control the natural course of things. The prose theological works called Brahmanas, which repre- sent the next stage of Vedic literature, being concerned with explain- ing and interpreting the details of the ritual, supply much informa- tion regarding the magical notions and observances with which the sacrificial ceremonial was permeated.460 However, in spite of this, Macdonell hesitated to argue in a straightforward manner that the Rig Veda knew only religion and sacrifices which were eventually superceded by the rise of magic:

It is thus impossible to suppose that the sacrificial priests of the Rig Veda, the composers of the old hymns, should have occupied an isolated position, untouched by magical practices derived from a much earlier age and afterwards continued throughout the priestly literature of later times. In fact, a close examination of the hymns of the Rig Veda actually affords evidence that even in them the belief in magical power independent of the gods is to be found .... Every page of the Brahmanas and of the ritual Sutras shows that the whole sacrificial ceremonial was overgrown with the notion that the sacrifice exercised power over gods and, going beyond them, could directly influence things and events without their interven- tion. An incipient form of this notion already appears in the Rig Veda, where exaggerated sacrificial powers are in several passages mythically attributed to ancient priests .. The composers of all such passages must have attributed to the sacrifice in their own day the powers which they thus projected into the past.467 Still, according to Macdonell, 'the hymns of a magical character found in the Rig Veda are very few and late,' that the Rig Veda as a whole was a book of prayer and sacrifices and that only in the later ritual literatures the old sacrifices were 'receiving a

466 Ib. viii. 311-2. 467Ib. viii. 312.

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magical turn' and magical acts were given 'the garb of sacri- fice.'468 In short the history of the Vedic people was strange and exceptional because, in their casc, sacrifices and prayers were gradually converted into magical rites, i.e., religion passed into magic. Are we really obliged to accept such a freakish process of history? There are, to begin with, certain general considcra- tions against it. The view that among the Vedic people religion gradually degenerated into magic rests upon two major assumptions. First, the songs of the Rig Veda were pure prayers. Secondly, the Rig Veda was anterior to the Atharva Veda, the book of spells and magic charms. Modern scholars, it is true, are often inclined to interpret the whole of the Rig Veda as a compilation of prayers and sacri- fices. However, there is the risk of an over-simplification invol- ved in this. For the fact remains that the Rig Veda is not only vast but also highly complex and, as we have already seen, words change more slowly than the meanings attributed to them. Secondly, as is well known, even the strictly orthodox tradition mentions409 fundamentally different approaches to the true spirit of the Rig Veda, i.e., there were different schools of in- terpretation of the text, and this shows that the interpretation from the point of view of the prayer-motive cannot be looked at as the only possible interpretation. Besides, as we have al- ready elaborately argued, at least in a large number of references the gods of the Rig Veda were yet to become fully divine; and, if that was so, the mere mention of a god in a hymn is no in- controvertible proof of the hymn being a prayer in the modern sense. And if these were not prayers, there could not be any question of propitiating the gods with these. This makes the sense of sacrifice, too, rather remote: for, according to the ad- mission of Macdonell himself, it is this attitude of propitiation which distinguishes sacrifice from magic. This does not obviously mean that one cannot discover gods in the modern sense and, therefore, also the motives of prayers and sacrifices, anywhere in the Rig Veda. It would indeed have been a wonder if the situation was really so, for the different hymns, even on a very conservative chronology, could have been separated from each other by centuries. Thus, even if some of the hymns reveal the

408 Ib. 409 See Sayana's preface to the commentary on RV.

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Vedic gods as fully divine and express the clear motive of prayers and sacrifices, thev point to an anterior stage of the development of the Vedic people at which these had not becn so. But the question is: If, during such an anterior stage of development, the Vedic people did not know of gods in our sense, nor pravers and sacrifices as we understand them, what could have been the purpose which these served, or the object for which these were emploved? They certainly could not have been pure poetry in the modern sense because of the very simple reason that the primitive peoples never had any such thing. The claim of one school of interpretation that all the riks were origi- nally designed to be used in the yajnas as expounded in the Brahmanas cannot be true cither. For we have already seen, the yajnas in the sense of the Brahmanas must have been much later products than the Rig Veda. We are thus led to assume that the riks had some ritual use, though it could not have been specifically the use as claimed by the Brahmanas. And, though we may be yet far from knowing the exact form of the original rituals in which they were employed, the comparative method leads us to the presumption that they must have been of the nature of the magical rituals still found to be performed by the surviving savages. Thus, even if some of the hymns as collected in the Rig Veda had already acquired the characteristics of prayers and propitiations, it would be an oversimplification to think that the entire Rig Veda was nothing but a collection of prayers and sacrifices as found in developed religions. Secondly, the view that among the Vedic people exalted religion gradually degenerated into lower magical rites, rests upon a mechanical understanding of the relative chronology of the Rig Veda and the Atharva Veda. It is said that the Atharva Veda, the collection of spells and charms, was later than the Rig Veda, the book of prayers; and therefore we have here an incontrovertible proof of magic superceding religion. But the argument is too simple to be convincing. For it is not enough to say that the Atharva Veda was later than the Rig Veda; it is necessary to go a step further and ask ourselves: later in what sense? As a compilation or collection it was indeed later, and as such, it did contain pieces that were very late products. But this by itself proves nothing against its antiquity. As Winter- nitz470 clearly put the point:

470 HIL i. 127.

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But even though it is certain that our version of the Atharva Veda Samhita is later than that of the Rig Veda Samhita, yet it by no means follows from this that the hymns themselves are later than the Rig Veda hymns. It only follows that the latest hymns of the Atharva Veda are later than the latest hymns of the Rig Veda. However, certain as it is that among the hymns of the Atharva Veda there are many which are later than the great majority of the Rig Veda hymns, it is equally certain that the magic poetry of the Atharva Veda is in itself at least as old as, if not older than, the sacrificial poetry of the Rig Veda, that numerous pieces of the Atharva Veda date back into the same dim prehistoric times as the oldest songs of the Rig Veda. It will not do at all to speak of a 'period of the Atharva Veda.' Like the Rig Veda Sahita, so too the. collection of the Atharva Veda contains pieces which are separated from each other by centuries. Only of the later parts of the Atharva Veda Samhita it can be said that many of them were only composed after the pattern of the Rig Veda hymns. The name by which the genuinely old Indian tradition knew the Atharva Veda was Atharvangirasah, i.e., the Atharvans-and- the-Angirases. It needs to be noted that the poets of the Rig Veda themselves remembered the two names as those of ancient magicians: 'With mighty spells the Fathers (Angirases) found the hidden light and produced the dawn."471 'The Fathers (Angirases) adorned the sky with stars, like a black steed with pearls; they placed darkness in night and light in day."472 'With their kindled fire the Angirases found the cows and steeds hid- den by Pani.47a 'They (the Angirases), by their rita, caused the sun to mount the sky."7+ 'The Atharvans, by their rites, first prepared the paths; then the sun, the guardian of ordinances, was born.'Ta And so on. Do not all these indicate that the origi- nal magic-songs, the knowledge of which was later compiled in the Atharva Veda Samhita, is to be traced to a period which was remembered as did antiquity even by some of the pocts of the Rig Veda?

The point to be specially noted in determining the relative chronology of the Rig Veda and the Atharva Veda is that both these were after all collections or compilations of pieces that came down to the compilers from a distant past. Under these circumstances, the possibility remained that the same pieces of the ancestral compositions should find place in both. As a mat- ter of fact, this did actually happen." The twentieth book of the Atharva Veda contains little beyond the hymns that also found place in the Rig Veda; besides, about one-seventh of the

471 vii. 76. 4. 472 x. 68. 11. 474 x. 62. 3. 473 i. 83. 4. 475 i. 83. 5.

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whole of the Atharva Veda consists of the same hymns that are also found in the Rig Veda.476 This peculiarity is usually explained by the assumption that the compilers of the Atharva Veda picked them up from the Rig Veda which was already compiled. But there is no conclusive evidence to prove this. On the other hand, chances are more that the compilers of both were drawing upon the same sources, - the same stock of the ancestral compositions orally transmitted to them. If such were really the facts, it becomes really impossible for us to be certain that all the hymns that eventually found place in the Rig Vedu were originally meant to be prayers or propitiations as contrasted with magic. Thus, in order to determine the relative precedence of magic and religion among the Vedic people, we cannot depend only on the relative chronology of the two Vedas as compilations. It would be much more fruitful to raise questions concerning the use of the compositions during their original pre-compiled prehistory. For with all the measures taken in the Vedic tradi- tion to maintain the verbal purity of the original compositions in the process of transmission to subsequent generations, the fact remains that the later inheritors of these early compositions were all living under altered conditions and were therefore obliged to look upon their inheritance from their own standpoint. And in this sense they were only likely to impute to these early com- positions some altered significance that was really the product of their own altered conditions. This point can possibly be illustrated by the Atharva Veda itself. We have already seen the overwhelming importance of the sense of collectivity as reflected in the earlier portions of the Rig Veda. But this was substantially lost to the charms and songs as compiled in the Atharva Veda, for these are found mostly to serve the interests of the individual. That is, the magic songs as compiled even in the Atharva Veda had lost much of their original magical character and had passed into what is called witchcraft. This distinction between magic and witch- craft is important: 'witchcraft is the misapplication by indivi- duals of magic, which was designed for the service of the com- munity.'477 Of the two capital offences recognised by a truly tribal society, one was witchcraft.478 The magical motive in this sense, - i.e. in the sense of serving the collective interest -

476 Winternitz HIL i. 121. 477 Thomson SAGS i. 132. 478 Ib.

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is almost completely undermined by witchcraft in the yajnas as discussed in the Brahmanas. For these were meant to serve the purpose only of the rich patron financing the yajna. However, the Atharva Veda scems to present a somewhat intermediate position. The magic-songs, as collected in it, though largely contaminated by the interests of the individual, retained never- theless indications of the charms originally serving the collective interest. This will be confirmed by the following comments of Winternitz, though, unfortunately, the author did not maintain in his writings the strict distinction between magic and witch- eraft:

The songs of magic in the Atharva Veda which, according to their main contents, are certainly popular and very ancient, have no longer even their original form in the Samhita, but are brahmanised. These old charms and formulas, whose authors are equally unknown as the authors of the magic incantations and formulas of other peoples, and which originally were just as much 'popular poetry' as the poetry of magic everywhere is, have already in the Atharva Veda Samhita parily lost their popular character. We see at every step, that the collection was made by priests, and that the collection was made by priests, and that many of the hymns were also com- posed by priests. This priestly outlook of the compilers and partly also of the authors of the hymns of the Atharva Veda, reveals itself in occasional comparisons and epithets, as for instances, when, in a charm against field-vermin, it is said that the insects are to leave ficial food.' the corn untouched 'as the Brahman does not touch unfinished sacri- A whole class of hymns of the Atharva Veda, ... is concerned only with the interests of the Brahmans, the feeding of priests, the fees for the sacrifice, and such like, and they are, of course, the work of priests.479 Under these circumstances, it is only to be expected that the ancient magic-songs as later compiled in the Atharva Veda with a pronounced priestly bias, should lose much of their ori- ginal collective interest and be employed in the interest of the individual. There is no doubt that the charms as collected in 'our version of the Atharva Veda' had largely become so. What should not be overlooked, however, is that, in spite of all the priestly bias introduced into these, the traces of the original primitive character of these magic-songs were not entirely lost even from the Samhita as we find it. Commented Winternitz:480 Indeed, many of these magic songs, like the magic rites pertain- ing to them, belong to a sphere of conceptions which, spread over the whole earth, ever recur with the most surprising similarity in the most varying peoples of all countries. Among the Indians of

479 HIL i. 123-4. 480 Ib. 128.

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North America, among the Negro races of Africa, among the Malays and Mongols, among the ancient Greeks and Romans, and frequently still among the peasantry of present-day Europe, we find again exactly the same views, exactly the same strange leaps of thought in the magic songs and magic rites, as have come down to us in the Atharva Veda of the ancient Indians. There are, then, numerous verses in the Atharva Veda, which according to their character and often also their contents, differ just as little from the magic formulas of the American-Indian medicinemen and Tartar shamans, as from the Merseburg magic maxims, which belong to the sparse remains of the oldest German poetry. The examples with which Winternitz illustrated this obser- vation are indeed interesting. What also interests us here is that granting all this to be true the only way in which we can pene- trate into the prehistory of the magic-song collected in the Atharva Veda is an objective study of the spells and rituals of the surviving primitive peoples. Such a study will bring to light the fact that beneath all the malignant overgrowth of the Vedic yajna as understood later, there lay the core of primitive magic. the illusory technique that aided the real technique and served the collective interest. That is, the Vedic yajna was, in its origin, nothing but the ritual of production of the early Vedic people.

11. RITA AND THE FALL OF VARUNA The Angirases, whose spells and charms, along with those of the Atharvans, formed the original core of the Atharva Veda, were remembered, even by the poets of the earliest stratum of the Rig Veda, as but hoary ancestors - the 'fathers,' 'our fathers,' 'those ancient poets,' etc. Great magical feats were of course attributed to them. They were also said to have lived the ancient collective life, a life free from jealousy in any form. All these, however, followed from the circumstances of their observation of the rita: Those ancient poets, the observers of the rita, were in joyful company with the gods; these ancestors gained the secret lustre; with spells of truth they generated Usas. Being united with the common cattle, they became of one mind; they strive together, as it were, nor do they injure the rituals of the gods: not injuring each other they move with wealths.481 Thus the Vedic poets viewed their ancient common life with a feeling of nostalgic bliss. But what was rita, the obser- vance of which made the Angirases so noble and powerful?

4N1 vii. 76. 4-5.

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The concept of the rita is absolutely crucial. If we are at all justified in attributing any distinct philosophy to the ancient Vedic poets, the most important evidence in support of it is to be sought in this concept. We are going to argue that an analysis of the rita makes it clear that their philosophy was far from being spiritualistic or other-worldly. Representing as it does a complex of archaic ideas, the word defies any popular rendering. It is best to leave it untranslated. However, it will not be doubted that the rita originally stood for a peculiar complex of the moral law and the physical law. Winternitz used it in the sense of the 'order of the universe',482 Macdonell took it to mean the 'physical and moral order"483 _ 'The notion of this general law, recognised under the name rita (properly the "course" of things), we find in the Rig Veda ex- tended first to the fixed rules of the sacrifice (= rite), and then to those of morality (right)."84 According to Keith,485 it was the term for the cosmic order as well as the moral order: 'The term for cosmic order, rita, and its opposite anrita, express also moral order.' The Vedic poets, unlike the modern idealists who claim to discover their own world-outlook in the Rig Veda, raised this principle of the cosmic-and-moral order to the most exalted position. The dawns arise in the morning according to the rita; fathers have placed the sun in the heaven according to the rita; the the

sun is the bright countenance of the rita, and the darkness of the eclipse is contrary to law, vrata. The years is the wheel of the rita with twelve spokes. The red raw milk, the product of the white uncooked cow, is the rita of the cow under the guidance of the rita. Agni, the fire, which hidden in the waters and the plants, is produced for man from out of the kindling sticks, becomes the shoot of the

rita.480 rita, born in the rita. The streams flow in obedience to the law of

Under these circumstances, the idealist interpreter of ancient Indian philosophy is left with the only scope to give an idealistic twist to this essentially pre-idealistic conception. Observed Radhakrishnan: ... Rita literally means 'the course of things.' It stands for law in general and the immanence of justice. This conception must have originally been suggested by the regularity of the movement of the sun, moon and stars, the alternations of day and night, and of the seasons. Rita denotes the order of the world. Everything that is

482 HIL i. 154. 483 HSL 75. 485 RPV 248. 484 Ib. 67. 480 Ib. 83.

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ordered in the universe has rita for its principles. It corresponds to the universals of Plato The world of experience is a shadow or reflection of the rita, the permanent reality which remains unchanged in all the welter of mutation. The universal is prior to the particular, and so the Vedic seer thinks that the rita exists before the mani- festation of all phenomena. The shifting sereis of the world are the varying expressions of the constant rita So rita is called the father of all.487 This comparison of the rita to the Platonic ideas is fictitious. To think of an order of nature is not necessarily to reduce nature to its shadow. If there was anything that the Vedic poets did not know, it was the vaguest idea of the world being any kind of shadow of anything. We have seen how intense was their attachment to, and interest in the world they lived in. Even Radhakrishnan himself had to admit:

But the dominant note (of the Rig Veda) is not one of asceticism. In the hymns we find a keen delight in the beauties of nature, its greatness, its splendour and its pathos. The motive of the sacrifices is love of the good things of the world. We have yet the deep joy in life and the world untainted by any melancholy gloom.488 Our author would of course argue that the Vedic poets were gradually emancipated from this love for the material world and were drawn slowly to the concept of the divine that lay beneath it. As a matter of fact, the conception of the rita is, for him, an evidence of this:

The tendency towards the mystic conception of an unchanging reality shows its first signs here. The real is the unchanging law. What is, is an unstable show, an imperfect copy .... Soon this cosmic order becomes the settled will of a supreme god, the law of morality and righteousness as well. Even the gods cannot transgress it. We see in the conception of rita a development from the physical to the divine. Rita originally meant the 'established route of the world. of the sun, moon and stars, morning and evening, day and night.' Gradually it bccame the path of morality to be followed by man and the law of righteousness observed even by gods.480 Such a view of the conception of the rita as representing a development from the purely physical to the divine has no evid- ence to lean on. On the contrary, we have unmistakable evidence that the rita was, from the very beginning, as much a moral as a physical law. The close similarity of the Vedic rita with the Avestan asa (urta) is decisive proof of this point:

In the physical world there rules a regular order, rita, which is observed repeatedly, and which is clearly an inheritance from the Indo-Iranian period, since the term asa (urta) is found in the

487 IP i. 78-9. 488 Ib. i. 111. 489 Ib. i. 79.

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Avesta, and has there the same triple sense as in Vedic India, the physical order of the universe, the due order of the sacrifice, and the moral law in the world .... The identity of the Vedic and Avestan expressions is proved beyond possibility of doubt by the expression Rig Veda.490 'spring of rita.' which is verbally identical in the Avesta and the

There is thus no basis to state that the Vedic evidence of the rita reveals any history of the development of natural law into the moral law and, therefore, far less into any 'settled will of a supreme god.' As a matter of fact, far from there being anv development of this sort, what we actually find in the Rig Veda is a gradual withering away of the concept: the Vedic poets eventually felt the loss of the rita which led some of them surse the rita-less new order and strongly urge for its revival. Thus Radhakrishnan's comparison of the rita to the Platonic universals, being based on an imaginary history of the development of the concept, falls through. On the contrary, if comparison of the rita with anything outside the Indo-Iranian literatures is at all justified, we may as well do that with the tao of the ancient Chinese philosophers, a possibility casually hinted at by Radha- krishnan491 himself, but the implication of which was totally ignored by him. Like that of the tao of the Taoists, the nearest etymological meaning of the rita would probably be 'way,' or 'order.' meaning thereby the 'order of nature.' Like the Vedic poets, the Taoists also saw the tao in everything and guiding everything: 'The tao gave birth to it. The virtue (of the tao) reared it .... Therefore (as) the tao bore them and the virtue of the tao reared them, made them grow, fostered them, harboured them, fermented them, nourished them and incubated them .... '492 Again, like the rita of the Vedic poets, the tao of the Taoists has often been misunderstood by the modern scholars as 'the one of Parmenides beneath Heraclitus' flux of things,"49% a misunderstanding con- vincingly laid bare by Necdham. As to how this conception of the tao led the ancient Chinese to the fundamentals of observa- tional science the readers may refer to the monumental work of Needham himself. However, the Vedic rita, though it presuma- bly had the same source and the same original implication, did not have the same history of development: already in the later portions of the Rig Veda the poets were lamenting the loss of the rita, and in the post-Vedic period of philosophical speculation

490 Keith RPV 83. 491 IP i. 79n. 192 Needham SCC ii. 37. 493 Ib. ii. 37n. L-40

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proper, the references to the rita were even less than casual.494 Evidently, within the general idealistic structure of their own world-outlook, the speculators of the Upanisads found little scope to accommodate the ancient glory of the 'order of nature' praised so ecstatically by their early ancestors. The reality of nature, along with the conception of order in it, faded into insignificance. This, we are going to argue, was due to the degradation of manual labour in the post-Vedic society of Upanisadic speculators. Among the Taoists of ancient China, the concept of the tao did not suffer a similar fate, because, as Needham has so convincingly argued, the Taoists were rebels against the class-divided feudal society495 and retained close ties with the working people, with manual work and techno- logy.496 Their mental labour was not detached from material labour, and as such their world-outlook was yet to be emanci- pated from the world497 itself. Interestingly, in the Rig Veda, the passages that expressed the glory of the rita had direct or indirect bearing on the process of obtaining the means of sub- sistencc. 'O Agni, your brilliance comes to us and you brought the cows of rita equally to us (ritasya dhenah anayanta sa-srutah: Sayana interpreted sa-srutah as samanam gacchantyah).'498 'O Mitra and Varuna, you bring rita for the yajamanas and let the yajna be bountiful.'499 'As of old, O Indra, you remain the custo- dian of food and the custodian of the rita; you help us in search- ing our cows and be friends with us.'500 'O Mitra and Varuna, O Asuras, - the possessors of rita - you proclaim loudly of rita, since you two are great experts of heaven; do connect us with cow and water.'501 'You two (Mitra and Varuna), possessors of rita, are the foremost suppliers of cows in the yajna .... '502 'He who gives to the bright followers of the rita, and whom the Adityas increase, - he, as the foremost, goes with wealth in a chariot to distribute wealth in the assemblies.'503 'The great Agni increased without any restraint in the expanse with water and food in the past; it lay down in the source of rita (ritasya yonau), 494 In the principal Upanisads, the word occurs only seven times,

isj. 1, v. 2. -Taittiriya; i. 1. 1, i. 9. 1, i. 12. 1, ii. 4. 1, iii. 10. 6. Katha:

495 SCC ii. 100ff. 496 Ib. ii. 121ff. 497 Marx & Engels GI 19-20. See the passage quoted by us in p. 229. 498 i.141.1. 499 i.151.3. 500 i.132.3. 501i.151.4. 502 i. 151.8. 503 ii.27.12.

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being of a charitable disposition and being friends with the water."504 'Agni, the custodian of the rita and the possessor of the rita, is, like Bhaga, the leader of men."05 'O Visvadevas, he who bears the rita - him, the seniormost, do you procure large numbcr of cows.'50f 'Usas, like the Dyavaprithivi (heaven-and-earth), the custodian of the rita and of wealth.507 'O Dyavaprithivi, let your rita prevail that we may get wealth along with food.'508 'As our fathers, (Angirases), in the past, spread the rita so did they discover the tawny cows.'509 'From the ancient days, the rita has got many waters and much wisdom which discards the undesira- bles; the verses of the rita opened the deaf ears of men.'510 'The holdings of the rita are fast, the manifold forms of the rita are delightful, the praisers desire abundant food of the rita, by virtue of the rita cows are obtained and they (the cows) enter into the rita."11 'Having pleased the rita the praisers gain strength and water; the earth does yield the best cows only for the sake of the rita and it is vast and incommensurable because of the rita.512 'In the ancient days, Usas-es were truths born of the rita, who gave wealth as soon as approached and, praising whom with uktha ready wealth was obtained.'313 'Usas-es, the deity who knew the abode of the rita, made the cows.514 'Usas, the friend of the Asvins, was the mother of cows and the protector of the rita.'515 'Desirous of the rita, the ancients, in the past, praised you, O Agni, for their protection - you, Agni, the Angiras, who are grcat delighter of the mortal, the giver of food (and the lord of the dwelling).516 3 'O Mitra and Varuna, who, wishing for the rita, can get you? Protect us in the abode of the rita; give animals and food to those who desire yajna.'517 'You (Varuna and others) are the custodians of the rita, born of the rita, in- creasers of the rita, the terrible enemies of anrita (the opposite of rita); thus may we and other heroes remain with happiness and wealth in your abode."518 And many more like these.319 Obviously enough, we cannot look at these as philosophical

504 iii.1.11. The Nighantu (i.12) suggested that the word ritasya yoni was one of the synonyms for water. 505 jii.20.4. 508 jii.56.2. 507 iii.61.6. 508 iii.54.3. 509 iv.2.16. 510 iv.23.8. 511 iv.23.9. 512 iv.23.10. 513 iv.51.7. 514 iv.51.8. 515 iv.52.2. 516 v.8.1. 518 vii.66.13. 519 A large number of such references may easily be found by 517 v.41.1. following the word-index of the Poona edition of the RV.

628 LOKAYATA

speculations. They were rather the expressions, in the form of primitive poetry, of the grandeur and glory of the rita felt in- stinctively by the ancient poets. However, one point should be absolutely clear: the concept of the rita, thus variously expres- sed, was not the result of disinterested speculation. It was, on the contrary, intimately associated with the problem of survival. The rita assured the poets their cows, their water, their food, and in fact everything they considered as constituting material wealth. Being thus intimately connected with the essentially practical considerations, the concept of the rita was vet to acquire any spiritual significance. Rita, the order of nature, was also understood by the poets and their kinsmen as the most potent force assuring them of their means of subsistence. And there cannot be any doubt that the clue to the general world- outlook of the early Vedic poets is to be sought in this concept of the rita, rather than in any hypothetical renderings of such stray passages as the Hamsavati Rik,520 the Purusa Sukta"21 and the Nasadiya Sukta.322 We may now proceed to answer more fully the question we have raised in an earlier Section: could the consciousness of the early Vedic poets, with all their mighty gods, be consi- dered to have reached that stage of the development which can be positively characterised as spiritual or religious? The distinguishing marks of religion are two assumptions."* First, the ways of nature are governed by the will of God, or of gods. Secondly, this will of the God, or gods, can be won over by prayers, propitiations and sacrifices, that 'we can per- suade or induce the mighty beings who control it (nature) to deflect, for our benefit, the current of events from the channel in which they would otherwise flow.' Thus, the question whe- ther the consciousness of the Vedic poets reached the stage of religion proper can be answered only by finding out whether these two distinguishing assumptions of religion can be clearly recognised in their literary creations. The concept of the rita is indeed a warning against any

520 RV iv.40.5. There is nothing at least in the literal mean- ing of the rik to justify the highly idealistic philosophy read in it by the later commentators like Sayana. 521 x.90. This is one of the latest additions to the Rig Veda and could even be contemporary with the earlier Upanisads. 522 x. 129. Besides being very late, the exact meaning of this is quite obscure. See Keith RPV 436. 523 Frazer GB 51. : :

VARUNA AND MAYA 629

hasty attempt to attribute to the early Vedic poets the religious consciousness in our sense. For the rita, understood rightly, goes against both the assumptions characteristic of religion. As felt by the Vedic poets, it was not the will of God, or of the gods, but the principle of the rita that stood for the order of the universe. An analysis of the relation between the rita and the gods makes it clear. A superficial understanding of the exaggerated epithets used by the poets for their gods may mislead us into imagining that the gods were conceived as determining the course of nature. But the point is that the gods as gods were not doing it. On the contrary, they could do this only in the capacity of observers or guardians, or upholders, of the rita. The gods were even thought of as owing their verv existence to the rita, for it was often said that they were born of the rita itself. All these are to be under- stood along with the fact that human beings, too, were similarly conceived by the Vedic poets: the ancient Angirases, as we have already seen, sat in the joyful company of the gods, and this, as observers of the rita. Of all the Vedic gods, Mitra and Varuna - particularly the latter - were most often mentioned as the gods who determined the course of nature: Varuna's power is so great that neither the birds as they fly nor the rivers as they flow. can reach the limit of his dominion, his might, and his wrath (i.24.6) ... He embraces the all and the abodes of all beings (viii.41.1 & 7). Varuna is emniscient. He knows the flight of birds in the sky, the path of ships in the ocean, the course of the far-travelling wind, and beholds all the secret things that have been or shall be done (i.25.7; 9 & 11) .... No creature can even wink without him (ii.28.6). The winkings of men's eyes are all numbered by Varuna, and whatever man does, thinks, or devises, Varuna knows (AV iv.16.2: 5).524 All these are true. Still the question is: To what did Varuna owe all this stupendous power? The Vedic poets left us with no uncertainty as to the answer. They were never tired of telling us that of all the Vedic gods Varuna (often, of course, along with Mitra) had the closest connection with the rita. Varuna, along with Mitra, was the guardian of the rita - ritasya gopa - and only in this capacity were they the rulers of the rivers and the bestowers of food and rain."2" They were the revealers of the rita and the increasers (or upholders) of the rita, but all these, significantly enough, were accomplished by the aid of the rita.528

324 Macdonell VM 26. 525 vil.64.2. 526 i.23.5.

630 LOKAYATA

'O Mitra and Varuna, you touch the rita and increase the rita with the aid of the rita and spread yourselves for the purpose of increasing the yajna.'527 Mitra and Varuna were seen in the place of the rita covered by the rita."28 'The epithet "observer of order" (ritavan), predominantly used of Agni, is also several times connected with Varuna and Mitra. 529 Now if this was the nature of the relation of the rita with Mitra and Varuna, what reason have we to assume that the rita was dependent upon the gods, or that it was the expression of the will of the gods? There is none and even Keith530 had to admit this, though partially. The streams go on their way according to the rita of Varuna: heaven and earth further the rita of Mitra, and the two gods appear as the lords of the rita, the right. Yet on the other hand they are reduced to a lesser grade in that they appear also as the charioteers of the rita, the furtherers of the rita, the guardians of the rita, some- thing which therefore exists apart from them. The epithet for 'upholding the rita by the aid of the rita.' though mostly applied to Mitra and Varuna, was also applied to the Adityas and to the gods in general.581 The Aditvas, as also Agni and Soma were looked upon as the guardians of the rita.5 The gods were often described as being born of the rita: Soma, the king and god, was born of the rita and increased manifold the ritd with rita (ritena yah rita-jatah vivavridhe raja devah ritam brihat ).533 No wonder, therefore, that Soma was identified with the rita itself.53+ Agni was born of the rita and hence was shining (for the poet). This birth of Agni from the rita had interestingly also a reference to the hoary antiquity: a rik of the oldest stratum of the Rig Veda referred to him as rita-jatah purvih.536 Asvins, too, were born of the rita.537 Being born of the rita, the gana ot the Maruts was without blemish.588 The gods themselves behaved according to the rita: Soma. shining with the rita, speaking the rita, was purified and flowed towards Indra.539 The Visva-Devas (all-gods) were upholding the rita ( rita-dhitayah).540 It was because of the rita that Agni obtained his immortality.341 More examples are not necessary. Evidently

527 1.2.8. 528 v.62.1 529 Macdonell VM 26. 530 RPV 84. 581 Macdonell VM 26. 532 Ib. 534 ix.62.30. 533 ix.108.8.

538 jii.20.2. 535 i.36.19.

538 v.61.14. 537 jii.58.8. 540 v.51.2. 530 ix.113.4. 541 i.68.4.

VARUNA AND MAYA 631

the principle of the rita was to the Vedic poets much more fun- damental than any hypothetical will of the Vedic gods. Lest we are misled to view the rita as the will of the gods, it is worth remembering further that the rita was not connected with the gods alone. Even the cows, while lowing the rita. obtained the technique of the rita.54" Sarama, the dog, re- covered the cows, with the aid of the rita,543 just as the all-gods (Visva-Devas) obtained the cows by increasing the rita.544 But, as we have already indicated, the Vedic poets even- tually felt the loss of the rita. We are going to argue that the clue to this decline of the rita is to be found in the sources or the origin of the concept itself. And the clue to the origin of the concept is to be found in the other implication inherent in it. The rita was not merely the order of nature or of the physi- cal world but also the order of human relations. There is no need here to go into the details of this moral aspect of the rita. Practically all the modern writers on the Vedic literatures have already done this.545 However, where we venture to differ from these scholars is in regard to the relative priority of the cosmic and the moral order implied by the rita. Rita, according to the contributor to the Cambridge History of India,546 meant 'first cosmic then moral order.' 'From the physi- cal,' said the scholar 47 elsewhere, 'it is an easy step to the con- ception of the rita not merely in the moral world, ... but also in the sphere of sacrifice.' 'Rita,' said Radhakrishnan,58 'origi- nally meant.the established route of the world .... Gradually it became the path of morality to be followed by man and the law of righteousness observed even by gods.' And so on. In fact, this view of the development of the rita from the physical to the moral law has practically become a part of the accepted common- sense of the modern student of the Vedas. Popular though this hypothesis is, no scholar has so far ad- duced any internal evidence of the Rig Veda in support of it. Perhaps, the nature of the text is such as makes it impossible to gather or obtain from it any decisive evidence on the issue. In default of any such evidence, what the scholars pre. sumably depend upon must be considerations of general nature:

542 x.61.10. 543 v.45.7 544 iii.56.2

26 etc. 545 E.g. Keith RPV 83; Radhakrishnan IP i. 109ff; Macdonell VM 547 Keith RPV 83. 346 CHI i. 103. 548 IP i.79.

632 LOKAYATA

the consciousness of the moral order must be logically posterior to the consciousness of the physical order. In arguing against this hypothesis, therefore, it would not be wrong for us to begin with considerations of general nature. Thomsona49 has argued that 'man's consciousness of the external world was determined from the outset, not by the rela- tions between the individual and his natural environment, but by the relations which he had established with his fellows in the development of production .... Only in this way is it pos- sible to explain why the external world should appear so differ- ently to peoples standing at different levels of culture .... Such developments only become intelligible when we understand that man's consciousness of the world around him is a social image, a product of society. Proceeding on the basis of this we may, in accordance with our method, ask ourselves: what is known in general about the moral consciousness of the backward peoples surviving in the truly tribal societies, which, as tribal societies, must be basically similar to that of the early Vedic poets? The following passages are from Engels:

The grandeur and at the same time the limitation of the gentile order was that it found no place for rulers and ruled. In the reaim of the internal, there was as yet no distinction between rights and duties; the question of whether participation in public affairs, blood revenge or atonement for injuries was a right or a duty never con- troned the (Iroquois) Indian; it would have appeared as absurd to him as the question of whether eating, sleeping or hunting was a right or a duty.550 The tribe, the gens and their institutions were sacred and in- violable, a superior power, instituted by nature, to which the indi- vidual remained absolutely subject in feeling, thought and deed. Impressive as the people of this epoch may appear to us, they differ in no way one from another, they are still bound, as Marx says, ro the umbilical cord of the primordial community. The power of these primordial communities had to be broken, and it was broken. But it was broken by influences which from the outset appear to us as a degradation, a fall from the simple moral grandeur of the an- cient gentile society. The lowest interests-base greed, brutal sen- suality, sordid avarice, selfish plunder of common possessions-usher in the new civilized society, class society .... 551 The Vedic rita, in its aspect of the human relations, must have originally been what Engels called here the 'simple moral grandeur of the ancient gentile society': the laws regulating the relations of the members of the pre class society were instincti-

549 SAGS 11.45-6. 550 OF 258. 551 Ib. 163. Italies added.

VARUNA AND MAYA 633

vely apprehended by them as sacred and inviolable, a superior power instituted by nature to which the individual remained absolutely subject in feeling, thought and deed. And if this was so, their consciousness of the external world, being a social image, could only be an extension or projection of the same. This gave the early Vedic poets their conception of the rita - an archaic complex of the physical and moral law, so sacred and in- violable that even the greatest gods were born of it. This interpretation may be objected to as dogmatic and conceived merely to suit certain pre-conceived formulas rather than, what it should be, an interpretation based on direct Vedic materials. Of course, the other hypothesis that the moral aspect of the rita was only a subsequent development of its original physical aspect is equally without support in the internal evi- dences of the Vedas. Nevertheless, the dogmatism of one hypo- thesis cannot be the ground for the acceptance of another equally dogmatic position. Fortunately, however, we can find at least some negative support for our own hypothesis in the Vedic literature itself. If the origin of the rita was what we are going to argue, then the breakdown of the ancient collective life should have coincided not only with a sense of the loss of the rita on the part of the poets, but also with that of the triumph of the new forces of greed and avarice, the values that dominate human relations in a class-divided society. And the Vedic materials appear to be quite clear on this point. It is well known that the conception of the rita gradnally faded away from the consciousness of the Vedie poets. Along with this also declined the ancient glory of Varuna. The reason is obvious. Of all the Vedic gods, Varuna's relations with the rita had been the most intimate. 'With Varuna seems to have been bound up in the first instance the conception of rita ... and with his lessening glory these conceptions (of the cosmic and moral order) fade from Indian thought."" This fading away of the rita, to say the least, is quite strange. No less strange, however, is the general reluctance of our modern scbo- lars to understand it. The only notable exception to this is probably Keith, who tried to explain the loss of the rita. We may begin with an examination of his argument. According to Keith, the close similarity of Vedic Varuna with the Avestan Ahura as well as of the rita with the asa points

562 CHI i. 103.

634 LOKAYATA

to their Iranian origin. After their import to India, however, these conceptions failed to receive their proper nourishments, and as such had to wither away: The figure of Ahura Mazdah cannot possibly be dissociated from Varuna who bears the epithet Asura, the terms applied to other Vedic gods, while in the later Samhitas the Asuras have become the foes of the gods. Like Ahura, Varuna is the lord of the holy order. rita, which corresponds to the Avestan asa: he is closely united with Mitra, as Ahura with Mithra .... But, apart from these coincidences, the mere moral grandeur of both deities can only be explained by a common origin: the history of Varuna in India is that of moral elevation which gradually disappears .... It is inconceivable that this fact should be explained in any other way than that as a god .. he was brought to India, when under less favourable circumstances his moral quality evaporated. This theory, moreover, renders it easy to understand the success of the Zoroastrian faith and its choice of Ahura as the great and only god in the proper sense of the term: it was not a creation, but the purification of a conception existing among the people of Iran.553 Again, The idea of rita is one which, like the moral elevation of Varuna. has no future history in India. pointing irresistibly to the view that it was not an Indian creation, but an inheritance which did not long survive its new milieu.554

Now granting the Indo-Iranian origin of both Varuna and the rita, we would still need clarification on one point: What exactly was there in the 'new milieu' which prevented the sur- vival of the moral grandeur of Varuna and the conception of the rita? Why was the atmosphere in India so inexplicably hostile towards these moral values? It will be vulgar materialism to try to explain such momentous changes in the consciousness of a people by climatic and other geographical peculiarities of the country. Curiously enough, Keith, with all his repulsion for materialism, was not at all relnctant to concoct such an explanation: It may be that the stern conditions of life in Iran, where culti- vation can be maintained only by unceasing toil, and the agricul- turist must ever fear the incursions of the nomad, played a definite part in evoking the Zoroastrian outlook ... . In India under different conditions of climate and life and racial admixture, thought turned to speculation rather than to action, and inclined to see unity, in lieu of regarding life as a struggle between the good and the bad. This contrast interposed for Zoroaster essential difficulties in regarding the world as a single whole, animated by one spirit; in India this was possible, and an absolute came to be recognised in which all was contained whether good or bad, material or spiritual. Parallel with

553 Keith RPV 33. Italics added. 554 Ib. 35.

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this movement was necessarily the decline from power of Varuna. Indra as the god of the warrior and the people, remained powerful and popular .... Similarly the conception of the rita passes away before the prevalence of the brahman.555 Statements like these do not enlighten us much. Desultory and vague reference to 'different conditions of elimate and life and racial admixture' can hardly explain all the farreaching ideological changes referred to. Even assuming that the condi- tions in India were less sterner, it is impossible to see why Varuna should have been superseded by Indra and the concep- tion of the rita by that of the brahman. Therefore, leaving such conjectures as vague and unhelpful, we may ask ourselves a crucial question: What were the new features that eventuaily developed in the social life of the Vedic people and can these throw any light on the degradation of Varuna and the loss of the sense of the rita? We have, while discussing the question of the withering away of the vidatha, already seen how the deve- lopment of the pastoral economy ultimately led to the under- mining of the primitive pre-class social organisation of the Vedic people. Here alone, again, can we look for a clue to the loss of the rita, the simple moral grandeur of the pre-class primitive society. The withering away of the rita and the vidatha could not after all be unrelated.556 We have already quoted Engels on the intensification of the robber wars as a consequence of the development of the pas- toral economy. This creates the conditions for the supremacy of a war-god. It is from this point of view alone that we can under- stand the theory of Roth and Whitney557 that the ancient glory of Varuna, the moral governor, was finally usurped by Indra, the deity of war and plunder par excellence. Here is an internal evidence of the Rig Veda in support of the theory: O Indra, the unfriendly and obstructing human group is ap- proaching; on this pious day snatch off the wealth from them and give it to us. May the anrita (the opposite of the rita) which Varuna, the one with maya, sees in us be pierced and dispelled by you.558

55C In a number of passages of the RV the rita and the vidatha 855 Ib. 469.

were intimately related. See, e.g., i.151.1; i.159.1; ii.27.12 etc. For similar connection between the rita and the yajna see i.151.3: i.151.8; iv.56.7. In fact the modern scholars have often argued that rita also meant yajna: Keith RPV 83. This may be understood

the gods. in the context of the Aitareya Brahmana theme of yajna leaving

557 See Macdonell VM 65. 55% vil. 28.4. cf. iv. 42.1-10.

638 LOKAYATA

This rik formed part of an older stratum of the Rig Veda. Evidently, the poets of the earlier period were yet to forget that in the standards of Varuna, the robber wars meant the opposite of the rita. While expressing the desire for plunder and looting, they were, therefore, appealing to Indra for protection against the wrath of the moral governor. Further intensification of such robber wars led the Vedic poets to express the desire for a clear substitution of Varuna by Indra: 'O Visible (Indra), being united with maya like Mitra and Varuna, you become the giver and apportioner of our food."59 This occurs in the latest stra- tum of the Rig Veda. Though memories of the ancient law of division still survived, the demand for a substitute god is clear in this. Evidently, the demand became inevitable in view of the changed conditions in the lives of the Vedic poets. More interesting than this is the transformation of Varuna himself. In the later Vedic literature, the moral governor ap- pears as a greedy god, uncanny in his insatiable demands. Engels560 observed that greed for wealth was the key factor that transformed 'the ancient community of interest into antagonism between the members of the gens.' Varuna's change can be explained only in the light of this. We begin with the legend of Sunahsepa as narrated in the Aitareya Brahmana:501 Hariscandra was the son of a king: 'a hundred wives were his, but he had no son from them.' On the desirability of having a son, he received the following advice from Narada: 'A sonless one cannot attain heaven,' All the beasts know this Therefore a son his mother And his sister mounteth. This is the broad and auspicious path Along which men with sons fare free from sorrow; On it beasts and herds graze For it they unite even with a mother.542 The broad and auspicious path thus referred to may appear to us to be rather odd.583 But in any case, this must have made king Hariscandra quite desperate. So he 'went up to Varuna, the king, (saying) "Let a son be born to me: with him let me sacri- fice to thee." "Be it so" (he - Varuna - replied). To him a son was born, Rohita by name.'564

559x. 147.5. 561 Keith RVB 299-309. 560 OF 268.

563 See Keith's interesting note: Ib. 301n. 562 Ib. 300-1. 564 Ib. 301.

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Just after Rohita was born, Varuna came to king Hariscan- dra and demanded his due: 'A son hath been born to thee; sacri- fice to me with him.' Hariscandra played for time: 'When a victim is over ten days old then it becomes fit for sacrifice.' 'Be it so,' said Varuna. Rohita became over ten days old. Varuna appeared with his demand again: 'He hath become over ten days old: sacrifice to me with him. Hariscandra again played for time: 'When the teeth of a victim appear, then it becomes fit for sacrifice; let his teeth appear; then let me sacrifice to thee with him.' 'Be it so,' said Varuna. Rohita's teeth appeared and Varuna appeared again with his unceasing demand: 'His teeth have appeared; sacrifice to me with him.' Hariscandra went on playing for time as before: 'When the teeth of a victim fall, then it becomes fit for sacrifice; let his teeth fall; then let me sacrifice to thee.' 'Be it so,' replied Varuna. Rohita's teeth fell. Varuna appeared again and said, 'His teeth have fallen; sacri- fice to me with him.' 'When the teeth of a victim appear again,' said Hariscandra, 'then it becomes fit for sacrifice; let his teeth appear again; then let me sacrifice to thee.' 'Be it so,' replied Varuna. Rohita's teeth appeared again. Varuna reappeared with his demand: 'His teeth have appeared again; sacrifice to me with him.' 'When,' pleaded Hariscandra, 'the Ksatriya is fit to bear arms, then is he fit for sacrifice; let him win his arms, then let me sacrifice to thee.' 'Be it so.' Rohita won his arms and Varuna was prompt with his demand: 'He hath now won his arms, sacrifice to me with him.' 'Be it so,' said Hariscandra and then he addressed his son: 'O my dear one, this one gave thee to me; come let me sacrifice to him with thee.' 'No,' said Rohita, and taking his bow went to the wild, and for a year he wandered in the wilds.565 All these give us one picture of Varuna, a picture that is so familiar in our society: 'Three thousand ducats for three months, and Antonio bound.' But it is a picture of Varuna with which the early Vedic poets were totally unfamiliar: they knew him as the friend of friends, the protector and the benefactor, the showerer of desires. They knew him as the god with the great- est moral grandeur, the upholder of the rita - not the Varuna who had become a merciless monster with his uncanny demand: 'The penalty and forfeit of my bond.' What accounts for such a transformation of Varuna? The Aitareya Brahmana, in continuing the legend of Sunahsepa,

505 Ib. 301-2.

638 LOKAYATA

leaves us in no doubt as to the answer: the social organisation had changed and the ancient collective consciousness was re- placed by the omnipotent power of greed. As we shall pre- sently see, it was greed that led the hungry father to sell his son for a hundred cows; it was this greed that led the father to take up the sword to kill the son for a hundred more cows, - pheno- mena inconceivable in the good old days of the collective. The poor god was in fact helpless: conceived as he was in the image of man, he had to change his nature according to the new values that had begun to dominate the lives of human beings. This is how the legend continued in the Aitareya Brahmana: The runaway Rohita spent a whole year wandering in the forest. A vengeful Varuna afflicted Hariscandra with a disease: his belly began to swell up. On hearing this Rohita left the forest and returned to the village. However, on Indra's advice he disappeared once again. After another vear of wandering he came back to the village for the second time. Indra advised him to 'wander'586 again. After the third term of wandering he re- turned to the village. This time Indra appeared in human form and asked him to go back to the forest. Rohita fled to the wilds and wandered for the fourth year. He returned from the wilds to the village and Indra repeated: 'Do you wander.' Rohita fled to the wilds and wandered for the fifth year. But on returning to the village, he was once again advised by Indra to flee the village, and Rohita wandered for the sixth year in the wilds. In the forest he came across a person, Ajigarta Sauyavasi, overcome with hunger. He had three sons, Sunahpuccha, Sunahsepa and Sunolangula. Rohita said to Ajigarta, 'O Seer, I offer thee a hundred; let me redeem myself with one of these (sons).' Keeping back the eldest son, Ajigarta said, 'Not this one.' 'Nor this one,' said the mother, keeping back the youngest son. They made an agreement regarding the middle one, Sunahsepa. Having given a hundred for him, Rohita took him and left the wilds for the village. Going to his father, Rohita said, 'O father dear, come, let me redeem myself with this one.' Hariscandra went to Varuna, the king, saying, 'With this one let me sacrifice to thee.' 'Be it so,' replied Varuna, 'a Brahmin is higher than a Ksatriya.' To

560 It is indeed a wonder to see the lofty idealistic metaphysics built up on the basis of this simple advice of Indra to Rohita to flec for life. Sen BS (B) 13.

VARUNA AND MAYA 639

him he proclaimed this sacrificial rite, the Rajasuya. On the day of anointing he took the man (Sunahsepa) as victim. Four sacrificial priests were present. But when Sunahsepa was brought in, none of them would agree to bind him to the sacrificial post. Ajigarta said, 'Give me another hundred, and I shall bind him.' They gave him another hundred and he bound Sunhsepa to the sacrificial post. Sunahsepa was now bound, and the Apri verses had been recited, but they could not find one to slaughter him. Ajigarta said, 'Give me another hundred, and I shall slaughter him.' They gave him another hundred and Ajigarta, whetting his knife, went forward. Then Sunahsepa reflected, 'Like one that is not a man, they will slaughter me; come, let me have recourse to the deities.' Sunahsepa praised the ancient Vedic deities: Prajapati, Agni, Savitri, Varuna, the All-gods, Indra, Asvins, Usas. His bonds were loosened and Hariscandra became free from disease.567 A series of verses are said to have been composed by Sunah- sepa bound to the sacrificial post. These were compiled in the first book of the Rig Veda. In these verses, he appealed to the ancient glory of the Vedic gods. One of these verses should interest us in particular: Keep us away from nirriti (the fall from the rita); deliver us from the sin that we have committed.56% It was a curse on the new order. It was also an effort to revive the memory of the past-the ancient glory of the rita. When the father, driven by hunger, sells the son like a chattel for a hundred cows; when, driven by greed, he procceds to bind the son to the sacrificial post, when, further, maddened by the prospect of another hundred, he runs with the brandished sword to slaughter the son, - the son, with the heritage of the ancient rita, was naturally apprehensive of the new order under the new force of the nirriti. And Sunahsepa was not the only poet to curse the new order. Other poets, evidently belonging to the same early post- Vedic period, did the same thing. One of them was the poet Kutsa, whose verses, too, were compiled in the first book of the Rig Veda. We do not know the exact cause of his dissatisfaction with the new order; the myths attributed to him in the Rig Veda itself were many.569 That he was, however, a rebel is clear

567 Keith RVB 302-4. 568 i.24.9. 569 Macdonell & Keith VI i. 161.

640 LOKAYATA

enough not only from the distinct tone of defiance which charac- terised his compositions, but also from the myth attributed to him by the Brahmanas,570 and even by the Rig Veda,571 describ- ing him as keeping Indra a captive. The Sarvanukramani simply told us that he fell into a well, which fact, however, is inadequate to account for the clear Promethean tone of his curse upon the new order! I ask thee, O yajna, the ancient one (avamam: sayana took this to refer to Agni, the first of the gods)! Let his (i.e. yajna's) messen- ger speak with due consideration: Where is the rita of the past gone? Who is the new one (nutanah) that holds it? Know this of me, O Heaven-and-Farth :72 Savana's commentary on the word nutanah is worth mentioning: 'if there were such a (new) one, the present condition of mine would not have been; hence there is none such.' No less inte- resting is the challenging tone of the rik, a tone that runs through the other verses attributed to the same poet: All these gods, who are in the three spheres. where is the rita of yours gone? Where, again, the absence of the rita? Where, as of old, are the yajna (ahutih) of ours? Know this of me, O Heaven- and-Earth.373 Where, O gods, is the holding of the rita, where is the watch- fulness of Varuna? Where, again, is the path of the great ways of Aryaman? And hence are we fallen in misery. Know this of me, O Heaven-and-Earth.574 We ask of Varuna, the knower of the path and the maker of food,-I utter this from my heart, let the rita be born anew (navyal jayatam ritam). Know this of me, O Heaven-and-Earth.575

The language is clearly that of a rebel. And his curse on the new order is unambiguous. Did he fall into a well, or, was he thrown into one? We do not know. But we know of another dispossessed poet, belonging to the latest period of the Rig Veda (which might have been quite close to that of the early Brah- manas like the Aitarcya) who, struck by the fear of murder,570 wished desperately for the revival of the ancient vraatas, the group-life, or the tribal collectivity: Let our fathers (Sayana: the samgha of the Angirases) and the assembly of gods, give us again our mind, that we may get back our lively vraata.577 We have already seen the meaning of the vraata. Evidently,

570 Ib. 572 i.105.4. 571 x.38.5.

574 i.105.6. 573i.105.5.

576 Sarvanukramani on x.57. 574i.105.15. 577 x.57.5.

VARUNA AND MAYA 641

this, along with its instinctive morality represented by the ancient rita, were felt to have been lost to some of the later poets of the Rig Veda. And at least the poet Kutsa distinctly said that this was a 'fall from the simple moral grandeur of the ancient gentile society.' We may, however, return to see the degradation caused by the new order to Varuna, the custodian of morality of the ancient period. Keith has discussed it at length. The 'moral character of Varuna is expressed repeatedly in the most emphatic manner."7% This refers to the earlier strata of the Kig Veda. But his story docs not end there: It must be admitted that the figure of Varuna does not increase in moral value in the course of the development of Vedic religion ... Varuna is remembered as the god who has fetters and becomes in the Brahmanas a dread god, whose ritual in some measure is assimi- lated to that of the demons and the dead. After the performance of the bath, which ends the Agnistoma sacrifice, the performer turns away and does not look back to escape from Varuna's notice, and in the ceremony of that bath, when performed after the Horse Sacri- fice, a man of a peculiar appearance is driven into the water and an offering made on his head, as being a representative of Varuna: this form of the expulsion of evils, which is a common idea throughout. the world, shows Varuna reduced to a somewhat humble level, and degraded from his Rig Vedic eminence.579 With this degradation of Varuna, the Vedic gods, generally speaking, lost all sense of morality. That is how they are de- picted in the Brahmanas. These texts, as Keith580 has rightly pointed out, were least concerned with the problem of morality: 'these texts do not develop any theory of morality. Indeed they do not normally inculcate morality even on merely empiric grounds. The myths which they recount and invent have this characteristic about them, that they are indifferent to the moral qualities of the acts: the gods are willing to commit sins freely for their own gain. Keith has illustrated this with a series of interesting examples. Here are some of these: The gods obtained the aid of the raksasas against the asuras on the understanding that, after obtaining victory by the united effort, the spoils would be shared by them equally; but when the victory was won, they refused to honour the promise. The gods 'are constantly jealous of men whom they refuse to allow to share with them the happiness of immortality without laying aside the corporeal body in death.' Prajapati was depicted as

578 Keith RPV 246. 579 Ib. 247-8. 580 Ib. 470. Winternitz HIL i. 207. L-41

642 LOKAYATA

committing incest, and as adopting in the course of it an animal form. 'The other gods are constantly jealous of one another; they have separate dwellings, and are moved by envy of one another rather than by love and friendship .... The gods are essentially selfish; they give men the six evils of sleep, sloth, anger, hunger, love of dicing and of women.' But, added Keith, these gods, with all their vices, appear to be 'comparatively virtuous people' by the side of Indra as depic- ted in the Brahmanas. He makes a compact with Namuci and sets about to find a way of violating it, which he does with success; his murder of Visvarupa, son of Tvastri, is unmotivated and wicked .... His amour with Ahalya is only accomplished by means of deceiving the lady by adopting the form of her husband, and he gave over to the hyenas certain ascestics, an impure act. His adultery is repaid in kind; for his own son, born of his thigh, Kutsa Aurava, takes advantage of his physical likeness, to win the favour of Saci Paulomni, his father's wife. But, after all, what could be more degrading than the pictures of him hungry and begging a priest for an offering, and then running about cake in hand, or bound by cords by Kutsa and urged by Lusa to break away from this degrading servitude? Even his own sub- jeets, the Maruts, he plunders, justifying the royal habit of accepting loot plundered from the husbandmen.581 And this was the god of the new era -the Indra who superseded the ancient Varuna. 'With this decline of the great and noble god (Varuna),' said Keith, 'goes hand in hand the decline of the interest of Indian philosophy or religion in mora- lity as such: numerous as are the moral precepts which can be found here and there in Vedic literature, it must be admitted that it is quite impossible to find any real or vital principle of ethics."582 This is true and in a very important sense. The de- cline of Varuna along with his rita also marked the beginnings of the distinctly class-divided society and the moral codes that followed were invariably tainted by the outlook and interests of the ruling class. As Varuna was superseded by Indra, the ancient law of rita had to give place to the law of karma. And this was how, as early as in the days of the Chandogya Upanisad,583 this law of karma was expounded to justify caste-rule and caste- exploitation:

Accordingly, those who are of pleasant conduct here-the prospect is, indeed, that they will enter a pleasant womb, either the womb of a Brahman, or the womb of a Ksatriya, or the womb of a Vaisya. But those who are of stinking conduct here-the prospect is, indeed, 581 Ib. 582 Ib. 434. 083 v.10.7. (tr. Hume).

VARUNA AND MAYA 643

that they will enter a stinking womb, either the womb of a dog, or the womb of a swine, or the womb of an outcaste (Candala). . There is no doubt that during the entire period of sub- sequent Indian philosophical history, this law of karma reigned supreme in whatever ethical views that were evolved. It is tempting to end this section with a comment on the verses of the poet Kutsa we have quoted. Living as he did at the beginnings of the class society, he cursed the new order and asked for a revival of the ancient rita: 'I utter this from my heart, let the rita be born anew - cyurnoti hrida matin navyo jayatam ritam.' What he asked was obviously impossible. Not even the mightiest spell of the Vedic poets could have reversed the laws of history. The primitive community life had to be broken and it was broken. Nevertheless, living as we do today at the close of class society, this verse of the ancient poet acquires a new significance for us. For we have before us the prospect of a new ethics, a new sense of morality, which, made infinitely richer in content by the accumulated experiences of life under a class divided society, and based upon plenty instead of the poverty of the ancient pre-class society, will, in view of the absence of exploitation and antagonism of interests, resemble the rita of the ancient pre-class society. And this reminds us of the quota- tion from Morgan with which Engels concluded his Origin of Family: Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and know- ledge are steadily tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes.584

12 MAYA: THE BIRTH OF IDEALISM As remembered by the earlier poets of the Rig Veda, Varuna was not only the custodian of the rita but also the wielder of the great power, maya. 'The divine dominion of Varuna and Mitra,' said Macdonell,585 'is often referred to with the word maya.' What Macdonell did not notice, however, is that this maya of Varuna was scarcely to be separated from his rita: The maya of Mitra and Varuna permeated the roots of the rita as the moon permeates everything with brightness.586 You two (Mitra and Varuna), possessors of the rita are the foremost suppliers of cows in the yajna ....

584 AS 562. 585 VM 24. 586 jii.61.7.

644 LOKAYATA

O Mitra and Varuna, you are the custodians of wealth and food -you give these to men by dint of your mayas; neither your power nor wealth nor the rivers could be overpowered even by the Panis.587 This close relation between maya and rita is further evidenced by a rik addressed to Indra as 'the custodian of the rita and one whơ repeatedly performs maya,"588 though evidently such epi- thets were but borrowed glories of Indra, for, like the rita, maya too, was most specifically connected with Varuna in the Rig Veda. There are also direct evidences for this: 'O visible (Indra), give us wealth; being the possessor of maya like Mitra and Varuna, you become the giver and apportioner of our food.'589 Under these cireumstances, the fall of Varuna should have logically meant not only a loss of the rita but also a total degra- dation of the glory of maya. We have here the key to the birth of the idealistic outlook in Indian philosophy. And, in.the context of what we have already argued (viz., that the fall of Varuna was symbolic of the transformation of the pre-class society), our argument in this section will try to establish that the birth of idealism in ancient India was consequent upon the emergence of class society. However, in discussing this history of maya it may be useful to begin with some general idea about its significance in the post-Vedic (i.e., the Upanisadic) speculations and then re- turn to the Vedic materials proper. As is well known, the concept of maya is of decisive signi- ficance for the most outstanding school of Indian idealism, that of Samkara. His philosophy is popularly known as maya-vada, the doctrine of maya. But this description, strictly speaking, conveys the negative emphasis of the philosophy and it is better to refer to it by its other name, viz., Vedanta, or more correctly, Advaita Vedanta. Vedanta means the closing portions of the Vedas. The earliest form of Indian idealism owes this name to the circum- stance that its expounders were reluctant to admit it to have been the product of their own brains. As claimed by them, this was the philosophy revealed in the Upanisads. The Upanisads were appended to the Vedas and that gave the name Vedanta to the philosophy of the Upanisads.

587 i.151.8-9. 588 jii.53.8. 589 x.147.5.

VARUNA AND MAYA 645

Badarayana offered the first systematic exposition of the philosophical standpoint of the Upanisads, though in the form of cryptic aphorisms, and as such his work is popularly known as the Vedanta-Sutra. The other name for it is the Brahma Sutra and this will lead us to see the positive point of the Upanisadic philosophy: the self-shining pure consciousness, called brahman, the ultimate reality. In the Upanisads, this brahman is identified with the atman, or the self in its absolute subjecti- vity. The Jogical corollary is that the world as experienced, along with the individuals experiencing it, is, in the last analy- sis, an illusion. Maya stands for this principle of illusion. From the orthodox standpoint, therefore, the doctrine of the brahman, along with its logical corollary, the doctrine of maya, forms the essence of the philosophy of the Upanisads. At least, that is the claim of Samkara, certainly the greatest idealist in the history of Indian philosophy. There is some difference of opinion among modern scholars as to how far this claim of Samkara was really objective. Was his philosophy the same as that of the Upanisads? Thibaut doubted this. According to him, all the later phi- losophers who tried to evolve a complete philosophic system on the basis of the Upanisads, were trying to achieve the impos- sible: 'On later generations, to which the whole body of texts came down as revealed truths, there consequently developed the inevitable task of establishing systems on which no exception could be taken to any of the texts; but that the task was, strictly speaking, an impossible one, i.e., one which it was impossible to accomplish fairly and honestly, there really is no reason to deny.'590 But, he added, the task of systematising once being given, we are quite ready to admit that Samkara's system was most probably the best that could be devised.591 It is neither necessary nor possible to deny that there is truth in this comment at least from the historical point of view. The Upanisads were not philosophical treatises in the modern sense, and it would be wrong to expect any reasoned account of reality in them. Even the greatest of our modern champions of the Vedanta philosophy had to admit, 'There are sometimes attempts at reasonings, too, but then by themselves they are hardly logically convincing, having not unoften an almost infan- tile naïveté about them.'592 Such reasonings apart, the texts

590 SBE xxxiv. intro. cvi. 591 Ib. xxxiv. intro. cxxii. 592 Bhattacaryya SP 3.

646 LOKAYATA

are mostly compilations - often in the form of anecdotes-of what intuitively, or better, instinctively appeared to be true to the thinkers of the age trying to understand the mystery of the universe and man's place in it. Now there is no reason to attribute to the texts more coherence than what they actually possessed. Different thinkers, whose thoughts and ideas were recorded in the Upanisads, do not seem to have acquired the same level of philosophical abstraction and they do not, one and all, represent the idealistic outlook in a uniform manner; some of them, as we shall presently see, clearly lagged behind even the idealistic outlook itself. In short, Thibaut's comment is impor- tant in so far as it makes us conscious of the different levels of thought that were recorded in the Upanisads. At the same time, he seems to misjudge the real task of the later thinkers who tried to evolve a systematic philosophy of the Upanisads. Their claim to read a single consistent philosophy in all the passages of the Upanisads was obviously exaggerated: but they had their justification in concentrating on some selected view repeatedly occurring in the Upanisads and in claiming that this represented the highest wisdom of the texts. They were perfectly within their rights as philosophic interpreters and sys- tematisers even in claiming that 'the truth embodied in a parti- cular text is inadequately expressed and should be developed or rendered more explicit in the light of other texts.'393 In this sense, all that was later claimed as the Vedanta philosophy might not have been present in the Upanisads in their fully developed form; nevertheless, the potentialities of all these could have been there in the Upanisadic passages selected by Samkara and claim- ed by him as representing the highest wisdom of the texts. This point is probably best illustrated by Samkara's doctrine of maya. Thibaut claimed that this was not to be found in the Upanisads, except probably in an undeveloped form in some passages of doubtful significance. At the same time he admit- ted that 'the final absolute identification of the individual self with the universal self is indicated in terms of unmistakable plainness.'594 Commented Bhattacharyya: Now if the point were discussed as one of philosophy rather than of historical scholarship, it would not be difcult to perceive that the doctrine of maya is a necessary logical corollary of this doctrine of the individual being brahman in moksa (absolute libe- ration): for it is only in this identification that he realises that the

593 Ib. 594 SBE xxxiv intro. cxxii.

VARUNA AND MAYA 647

individuality was an illusion and that the distinction of subject, object etc., possible only through this individuality, was an illusion too.595 In short, the doctrine of maya was a logical corollary of the 'final absolute identification of the individual self with the universal self,' and if the latter was 'indicated in terms of unmistakable plainness' in the Upanisads, it must be admitted that the former, too, at least in its potentiality, was contained in the same texts. Samkara, an advanced and highly consistent philosopher, rightly realised that one of the basic tasks of systematising the philoso- phy of the Upanisads was to work out the potentialities of this doctrine to their logical culmination. Thus, in judging the rela- tion between the philosophy of Samkara and that of the Upani- sads, it is not enough for us to ask ourselves to what extent Samkara remained faithful to the words of the texts; the more important question is, did he really transgress the logical bounds determined by the basic implications - or, more properly, what he considered to be the highest implications - of these texts? The answer is clearly in the negative. From this point of view we may even add (and this as contrasted with what we have just quoted from Bhattacaryya), that if the doctrine of the final identification of the brahman and atman was indicated in certain passages of the Upanisads, from the historical point of view itself, we are also obliged to admit that the potentialities of the doctrine of maya, too, were inevitably there in the advan- ced speculations of the Upanisads, though it may be that a literal approach to the verbal implications of the texts gives us onlv a dim view of this doctrine in its making. To sum up: The Upanisads did retain different stages of the development of philosophical thought, the most advanced of which was the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta, though in its potentiality, as contrasted with its fully developed form given by Samkara. In other words, the culmination of the Upanisadic philosophy was the doctrine of the identity of atmar and brahman, along with its logical corollary, the doctrine of maya. A self-shining pure consciousness was the ultimate reality and the world of experience, along with the individual selves eajoy- ing or experiencing it, was, in the ultimate analysis, the product of an indescribable illusion-maya. Now how the later interpreters of this doctrine of maya differed among themselves over its more subtle implications is

595 Bhattacaryya SP 4-5.

648 LOKAYATA

not of particular interest here. We are more concerned to prove that this idealistic outlook, which represented the highest deve- lopment of the philosophy of the Upanisads, emerged, distinctly enough, on the ruins of a primitive proto-materialistic world- outlook, the relics of which were not extinct from some passages of the Upanisads and, as evidenced by some other passages, the emancipation from which was consciously attempted by other philosophers of the Upanisads. Obviously enough, this proto- materialism in its crude primitive form was the ancestral world- outlook of the Upanisadic philosophers, i.e., the world-outlook implicit in the earlier portions of the Vedic literature. This becomes clear on an analysis of the subsoil of the concepts of hrahman and maya, upon which the idealistic outlook of the Upanisads fundamentally depended. The concept of maya first. Maya was known to the early Vedic poets, though the doctrine of illusion - maya-vada -- was totally unknown to them. On the contrary, the prehistorv of this concept reveals a primordial complex of theory and practice, knowledge and action. Our earliest and most dependable guide to the original meaning of the word is obviously the Nighantu. According to it, maya was one of the words for praja, praja-namani.590 Prajna, as commonly understood, means wisdom, knowledge. However, the suggestion of the Nighantu takes us a step further. According to it, another synonym for prajna was dhi.597 And the word dhi was also one of the words meaning action or karma - karma-namani.598 Evidently, to the early Vedic poets there was no wisdom that was not also action; or, the only wisdom they knew was the wisdom of practical activity. This is further evidenced by the Nighantu itself. Another synonym for karma or action was kratu.599 The same word also meant prajna or wisdom.000 Further, the word saci, too, was a synonym for both karma801 and prajna.$02 The implication is clear. The concept of wisdom was originally inconceivable without the concept of activity. Therefore, if maya originally meant prajna or wisdom, it could not have been wisdom in our sense of the word, i.e., wisdom as dissociated from action. Being thus a primitive concept for the wisdom-action com-

596 iii.9. 397 Ib. 599 Ib. 598 ji.1.

601 ii.1. 600 jii.9. 602 iii.9.

VARUNA AND MAYA 649

plex, it was only likely for maya to have originally also a magi- cal implication. From this point of view we may accept the following interpretation of the word given by Macdonell:603 It (maya) has an almost exact parallel in the English word 'craft', which in its old signification meant 'occult power, magic', then 'skilfulness, art' on the one hand and 'deceitful skill, wile' on the other. The good sense of maya, like that of asura is mainly connected with Varuna and Mitra, while its bad sense is reserved for demons. The Nirukta, commenting upon the Nighantu, added the following: The word is derived from the root mam, to measure, with the suffix ya, meaning 'by which the objects are given specific shape.' miyante paricchidyante anaya padarthah.604 The author of the Nirukta quoted the following from the Rig Veda to illustrate the use of maya in this sense:

O Indra, with your mayas you killed Susna, the possessor of maya; the wise men know this of you and hence you increase their food.605 Nobody can spite the great maya of this god (Varuna) who is the greatest of the seers (kavitamah); hence he does not fill one ocean with water but sprinkles with water all the rivers.606 In spite of the doubtful character of the exact meaning of the second of the above riks, the importance felt by the Vedic poets for maya is obvious. Sayana, commenting upon it, took maya to mean prajna, obviously in the wisdom-action sense of the Nighantu. Kavitamah, too, according to Sayana, meant prakrista-prajnah, i.e., one with the highest prajna. These two riks, by themselves, give us some idea of how far removed the concept of maya originally was from its later despised sense of illusion or avidya. Indeed, the word avidya was totally unknown to the early Vedic poets: it does not at all occur in the Rig Veda. The reason evidently is that these poets were living in a society in which the contempt for karma or action was yet to develop. This explains why the archaic con- cept of wisdom-action had so much importance in the Rig Veda though it was inevitably shrouded by the mythological imagi- nation of the poets. 'O Agni, the custodian of food, the ancient mayas of the mayins (the possessors of maya) was yours; do you now become

603 VM 24. 605 1.11.7. 604 on iii.9. 606 v.85.6.

650 LOKAYATA

the friend of ours who invoke you (the yajamanas).'007 'O Indra and Varuna, you did benefit to the ancestors; the various works of yours (virupa kritani), O possessors of maya, are seen by all.60s 'Indra, by virtue of his maya, fixed the ancient moun- tains, rent asunder the water from the clouds, held up with his strength the earth and the heaven from falling down.'603 The mayas of the Adityas stretched forth from their nooses towards the enemy who was oppressing.'610 'The God (Agni) who is the hota and is immortal, moves forward with maya, activising the assemblies (pracodayan vidathani).'611 'You, Indra, killed with your maya that very deer possessed with maya (Sayana: the deer meant Vritra in the guise of a deer)."12 (Indra) with his maya fixed the heaven from falling down."13 'That fire, the son of his parents, possessed with dhi (dhirah) and with protection (pavitra), purifies the worlds with maya; and he milked semen of the ox with good semen and milk of the white cow.'814 'The waters which could not reach the earth with their mayas (maya- bhih) - and hence could not spread over the giver of wealth (dhanadam), - them did Indra, the desirous, draw with his glow from the darkness with his vajra.'15 Sayana's commentary on this last rik is also interesting. He interpreted dhanadam as dhana-pradam-bhumim, the wealth-yielding soil. Evidently, the reference here was to the rain-waters coming down to fertilise the soil: Indra, with his vajra pierced the cloud and helped the waters to pour down. What is specially significant is the men- tion of the word mayabhih in connection with the waters. The implication clearly is that the fertilising function of the rain- waters, too, was because of the mayas inherent in them. Ac- cordingly, Savana interpreted mayabhih as sasya-upakaradibhih- karmabhih, the activities that nourished the corns. Thus, with all the mythological imagination by which the concept of the maya was clouded in the early Vedic poetry, one point is quite clear: there is no action that is not due to maya, and even the fertilising function of the rain-waters could not be an exception to it. If all these appear strange to us, the reason is that we are not accustomed to think of the actions of nature and our own actions as being the same in quality. To the early Vedic poets, however, this was not so. We have already seen how they

607 iii.20.3. 608 iii.38.9. 609 ii.17.5. 610 ii.27.16. 612 i.80.7. 611 jii.27.7. 618 ii.17.5. 614 i.160.3. 6151.33.10.

VARUNA AND MAYA 651

wanted to conceive the cosmic order in terms of the order of human relations and how this gave them their conception of the rita. We have also noted the close connection between the rita and the maya. It is therefore only to be expected that, like the rita, the maya, too, should have originally been the special pre- rogative of Varuna. 'O you wise, Mitra and Varuna, do protect our vratas (rituals) with the maya of the Asura, and hold the sun in the sky along with his variegated chariot.616' 'The great maya of Varuna, the famous Asura, is spoken of - he that sepa- rated the sun in the sky with his measure and made them stable.'617 'O Mitra and Varuna, your maya pervades the sky where the resplendent sun moves as with your peculiar wea- pon."18 'O Mitra and Varuna, you hold for us food accompanied with wealth - O leaders, you come towards us with your mayas: with your greatness the days or the sky or oceans cannot spread over you, as the Panis, too, could not overpower you with their wealth.'619 Interestingly, the maya of Usas was clearly borrowed from that of Varuna: 'With inspiring rain the Usas impregnated the great Heaven-and-Earth with rita; Usas spreads manifold the great maya of Mitra and Varuna as the moon (spreads or reflects) the sun.'20 At the same time, this maya had sometimes a distinct human context. 'They (according to Sayana, the yaja- manas) created (mamire, according to Sayana, milked) for him (Indra), the desirous, the desirable cows along with their names (go); overpowering the Asuras more and more, the people pos- sessed with maya (mayinah) imbued this with form (ni mamire rupam asmin).'821 'The hota is coming holding his vrata high with his maya and holding the dhi which is good-looking."69" Thus maya, which was the special prerogative of Varuna, was also that with which the yajamanas were raising cattles and the hota holding his vrata high. What is of special significance for our argument is that the fall of Varuna in the mythological imagination of the Vedic poets, being symbolic of the breakdown of the ancient collective life, meant for them not only a sense of the loss of the rita, but also a clear degradation of the ancient concept of maya, representing the archaic wisdom-action complex. For, when the

616 v.63.7. 017 v.85.5. 619 i.151.9. 618 v.63.4. 621 jii.38.7. 620 iii.61.7. 622 i.144.1.

652 LOKAYATA

society is torn up into an ennobled class of the leisured minority devoted to the cultivation of pure knowledge and a despised class of the toiling majority deprived of the opportunites for such activities, mental labour or thought (jnana) gets separated from the material or manual labour or action (karma), and the latter slowly acquires the stigma of degradation. We have al- ready quoted the crucial passages from Marx and Engels623 which explain this process. We may now see how the Vedic materials are illustrative of it. The main evidence on the basis of which Roth argued that in the Rig Veda Varuna was eventually superseded by Indra 'is the fact that not a single entire hymn in the tenth book is ad- dressed to Varuna, while Indra is celebrated in forty-five.' As an historical evidence, this is certainly important: the tenth book of the Rig Veda, which was so late that parts of it could even be contemporaneons with the earlv Brahmanas if not the early Upanisads, saw the almost complete decline of the ancient gran- deur of Varuna. It is not of little interest, therefore, that in this tenth book we come across an unambiguous evidence of the degradation of maya, and this as clearly the result of the exalta- tion of jnana or pure knowledge. Here is the evidence: One hymn in the tenth book of the Rig Veda624 was addres- sed to a rather strange deity. Explaining its nature, Sayana said:

With this hymn, the poet (risi) praised the knowledge of the ultimate brahman. -the knowledge which is conducive to the highest human ideal. Hence that is the deity. According to the Brihat-Devata. 'Brihaspati, in this sukta, praised that knowledge which pervades everything, by yoga, as the much-shining highest brahman.' According to the Sarvanukramani, in this hymn Brihas- pati praised the knowledge of Brihaspati. Under these circumstances, modern scholars625 are fully justified in asserting summarily that jnana or pure knowledge was the deity of this hymn. The whole poem, in other words, was meant to be a praise of pure knowledge. It is not necessary to argue elaborately that the fact of such an abstract conception assuming the status of a Vedic deity is itself an unmistakable evidence of the hymn being of a very late date. As is only to be expected, the author of the Nighantu, in his list of the Vedic gods, glossed over the deitv. The following rik of this hymn mav be taken as absolutely crucial:

023 See P. 229 for the passages. 625 Wilson RV vi. 127; RV (Poona) v. 1031. 624 x.71.

VARUNA AND MAYA 653

You (jnana or knowledge) are said to be confident in friend- ship (sakhya) in places full of food (vajinesu) and nobody injures you; the other roams about with his maya bereft of the cows, hearing words that are fruitless and flowerless (aphalam-apuspam).626 We have here a clear contrast of jnana with maya; moreover, jnana was firmly established while maya was reduced to bar- renness. Sayana's commentary on aphalam-apuspam makes this clear: 'As a barren yet fat cow creates the illusion, "May be it gives at least a little milk," and thus roams about; as also a barren tree stands with the deceptive appearance that because it has sometimes the growth of new leaves it will blossom and bear fruit; - so does that person (with his barren maya) moves about repeating his words.' One step further, and this concept of maya would develop into the dark and unspeakable principle of cosmic illusion of the Advaita Vedanta. At least, the know- ledge or jnana praised in this hymn was definitely of the nature of secret knowledge,027 the real meaning of the word upanisad. The following rik from the same hymn makes it clear: When the Brahmanas, who are friends, gather together with their fleet minds (manasah javesu: could it be that the reference here was to the free flights of speculations?) to discuss heartily, - they throw out the (ignorant) person from the altar and they go about asserting the knowledge of the Vedas.828 Note the emergence of the Brahmanas as a separate class jealously guarding the secret knowledge - an indication cer- tainly unknown to the earlier parts of the Rig Veda. But the more important question is: What happens to the person thus declared to be ignorant and thrown out by the Brahmanas before they sat to discuss the knowledge of the Vedas? As is only to be expected from the point of view of our argument, the clear indication of the hymn is that he crowded the rank of those who were concerned with the material or manual labour. Those unlearned ones, who do not move with those Brahmanas, nor with gods nor with those that offer the soma libations, having created sinful words and being sirih. they propagate tantra (tanvate tantram), being without knowledge629 We have here the only occurrence of the word sirih in the whole of the Rig Veda and its meaning is somewhat uncertain. Monier-Williams630 and Macdonell031 thought, though not with- out some hesitation, that it meant 'weaver,' probably of the

626 x.71.5 027 Keith RPV 489; ERE xii. 541. 628 x. 71. 8. 630 SED 1217. 029 x. 71. 9. 631 VI ii. 450.

654 LOKAYATA

female sex. But Wilson632 rendered it as ploughman. Evidently, he was following the suggestion of Sayana who interpreted the word sirih as sirinah, those with the sira or the plough. If we were to accept this interpretation, the persons thus thrown out became the tillers of the soil. The other interpretation, how- ever, made them weavers. In any case, the two suggestions converge: such persons went to crowd the rank of the manual workers. This is precisely what makes the evidence of the rik absolutely crucial: we find here not only an exaltation of mental labour or pure knowledge but also a clear sense of degradation attributed to manual or material labour. This is, we are going to argue, what created the material conditions for the birth of

Upanisads. the idealistic outlook which was eventually developed in the

However, before we pass on to discuss this, we mav digress a little to see another interesting indication of this rik. It is in the use of the words tanvate tantram. We have here the only men- tion of the word tantra in the whole of the Rig Veda. Sayana interpreted tanvate tantram as krisi-laksanam vistarayanti kur- vanti, spread or perform agriculture. At the same time, the text seemed to indicate some connection with the anti-Vedic or non- Vedic spells with the activity referred to: vacam abhipadya papaya, having created sinful words. Further, Sayana qualified this word vacam by the epithet laukikam, meaning either 'this- wordly' or 'of the people.' As it is undeniable that in the RigVeda itself the word vacam had some magical implication, the lauki- kam vacam of Sayana could only mean popular or this-worldly spells, which were according to Sayana, connected with agricul- tural operation. It may, therefore, be legitimate for us to ask one question: Do we have here any indication of the connection of original Tantrism with agricultural ritual? It is of course impossible to be certain about the answer. However, certain points must not be overlooked. We do not so far have any alternative interpretation of this lone occurrence of the word tantra in the Rig Veda, and since Tantrism was immensely old there was nothing to prevent the later poets of the Rig Veda from being acquainted with the word tantra in its distinctly technical sense. Besides Sayana's interpretation of tanvate tan- tram has to be looked upon as totally unfounded, unless it is as- sumed that he was drawing upon some ancient tradition which

632 RV vi. 129.

VARUNA AND MAYA 655

really knew Tantrism as connected with the agricultural operation. Further, when Kulluka Bhatta633 referred to the bifurcation of the sruti into two directions - the Vaidiki and the Tantriki - he was really drawing upon a very ancient tradition. For he said this on the authority of Harita who was quoted as far back as the day of Apastamba and Vasistha.(94 Could it, therefore, be that the rik under discussion was one of the ear- liest clear statement of such a differentiation, albeit the con- tempt for Tantrism because of its connection with manual labour in the form of the agricultural operation? But let us return to our main point, viz., the emergence of the idealistic outlook in the Upanisads. Idealism, we are going to argue, came into being as a result of the separation of theory from practice and the exaltation of the former along with a de- gradation of the latter. The riks we have just quoted indicate how, in the latest stratum of the Rig Veda itself, there was the exaltation of inana or pure knowledge and a consequent degradation of karma or the manual operation. Evidently, this process was carried on still further in the Upanisads, a circumstance that gave the name jnana-kanda to these texts in clear contrast to the earlier ritual works that acquired the name karma-kanda. It will be objected that this contrast between jnana and karma was really a con- trast between philosophical knowledge and ritual practice; Nevertheless, as we have already seen, these ritual practices themselves had a prehistory when they were vitally related to the actual labour process. In any case, it can hardly be doubted that the Upanisads, at least as understood by Samkara, empha- sised the importance of pure knowledge or jnana at the cost of action or karma in any form, mundane or sacerdotal. Such com- plete withdrawal of consciousness from the life of the practical activities logically meant also complete emancipatoin of con- sciousness from the obligation to acknowledge the reality of the material world of practical activities. This was a resolute turn- ing away of thought from the external world to the self - the self in its final and absolute freedom from all conceivable con- tacts with the external world, the purity of which could be experienced only during the state of dreamless sleep, because, only during such a state, there was complete extinction of all representations in consciousness of the external world either

033 On Manu ii. 1. 634 Kane HD i. 70.

656 LOKAYATA

through the mediation of the sense materials or even through that of the dream-phantoms.635 This was atman or the self in its purity as understood by the advanced idealistic philosophers of the Upanisads and according to them this was the ultimate reality or the brahman. How such a philosophical outlook was developed in the Upanisads is told in detail and retold by our modern scholars.6:3i However, what interests us in particular - and what, because of their general aversion for materialism, our modern scholars are not particularly keen on discussing - is that such an ideal- istic outlook emerged in the Upanisads only on the ruins of a primitive proto-materialistic one, presumably representing the ancestral convictions of the Upanisadic philosophers themselves and which, presumably again, owed its materialistic character to the circumstance that this ancestral conviction was yet to wit- ness the degradation of maya, the ancient wisdom-action com- plex. For an examination of this archaic proto-materialism, we may look into the prehistory of the concept of the brahman in particular. J. Gonda637 opens his learned monograph on the subject with an almost bewildering mass of modern theories about this archaic concept. However, the unfortunate fact remains that these theories are often based on considerations extrinsic to the strictly Vedic tradition. For, these are mostly considerations of comparative philology or of the general laws of semantics. Such considerations have their obvious importance, but only after we have answered a fundamental question: What, according to the earliest unambiguous Vedic tradition itself, were the thoughts or ideas provoked by the word brahman in the minds of those people who used it, i.e., the early composers and reciters of the Vedic verses? And, in order to answer this question, we have, again, to take the Nighantu as our starting point. According to the Nighantu, brahman is a synonym either for food638 or for wealth.639 Commenting upon the first, the Nirukta added:

635 Ch. Up. viii. 11 & 12. For a modern interpretation of the SP 11-30. standpoint of the Upanisads on this question, see Bhattacaryya 636 ERE xii. 456ff: Radhakrishnan PU 52-95; An exhaustive bibliography of the modern interpretations of the Upanisads is to be found in Hume TPU 461-515. 687 NB 1-9. 638 ii. 7. 639 ii. 10.

VARUNA AND MAYA 657

The word is derived from the root vrih (vrimhi), to increase, with the suffix manin. Therefore, brahman literally means that which is increased by all the animals, which does not decrease in spite of being always eaten, which by nature increases having the virtue of nourishing the whole world, or by which all beings in- crease. (Sce Taittiriya Upanisad (ii. 2), jatani annena vardhante, 'after being born increase by food.') The Taittiriya passage, we shall see, points to the survival of the primitive proto-materalistic view of the early Vedic period, according to which food was the fundamental reality - an ancestral materialism from which the advanced thinkers cf the Upanisads were trying consciously to be emancipated. In any case, this citation makes it absolutely clear that by brahman the author of the Nirukta meant food and nothing but food. And he claimed that this meaning of the word was illustrated by the following from the Rig Veda: O Indra, being desired by the dhi (knowledge or action) of the yajamanas, the vaghat (a priest), who are with soma, come towards their foods (brahmani).040 As already indicated, the Vedic songs take us back to a period when human wealth was still conceived largely in terms of food. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Nighantu should have suggested that the same word brahma also meant wealth, dhana. Commenting upon this, the Nirukta emphasised again the concept of 'increase' inherent in it: bhoganam brimhakam, that which increased the nourishments. This meaning, accord- ing to the Nirukta, was illustrated by the following of the Rig Veda:

To you, Mitra and Varuna, be given offerings of food with praises (namasa) for protection; may our wealth (brahma) over- power in battle, may our rains from the sky be a good promoter.G41 It is not easv to dismiss these evidences of the Nirukta. Thus if, from the point of view of the most authentic Vedic tra- dition the word brahman in these two riks stood for food and wealth (presumably in the form of food) respectively, we have hardly the justification to attribute to them any other primary meaning as occurring in the other contexts of the Rig Veda, un- less, of course, there is some additional reason compelling us to do so. Yet, as is well known, Sayana almost persistently inter- preted the word as stotra or song of praise. We do not know the tradition from which he drew. However, granting that it

040 i. 3. 5. 641 i. 153. 7. L-42

658 LOKAYATA

was not in conflict with the ancient Vedic one, the only way in which we can perhaps accept his interpretation is from the point of view of our Chanting Dogs of the Chandogya Upanisad, for whom there was no song that was not for food. In other words, the meaning of brahman as stotra, if at all acceptable, can be taken only as a derivative meaning: stotra was the means of obtaining food, and therefore, it could sometimes be meant by the word for food. But the implication 'to increase' which, as Yaska insisted, was inherent in the conception of brahman, hardly fits in with this sense of stotra. Besides, the desire was often for increase of brahman and it is simply a strain on our imagination to assume that the Vedic poets were deeply and fundamentally concerned with the desire for the increase of their stotra, while the overwhelming and obvious fact is that they were constantlv obsessed with the desire for the increase of food and wealth. When, therefore, the context in which the word occurred in the Rig Veda suggests the desire for an increase of it, we can hardly have any justification to discard the tradition of the Nighantu and the Nirukta and take the word to mean stotra. And this is clearly the context of the word in a large number of cases: 'That Indra, being delighted together with the Angirases. with praises increased brahma while making the path (brahma tutot gatum isnan).'8+2 ' ... Whose brahma increases as well as soma (yasya brahma vardhanam yasya somah).'043 'O Maruts, give to us that which is possessed with food, which increases food (brahma citayat) day by day; give us, the praisers, also food that we may in battles gain strength unattainable and unvanquished by the enemies and thus get the wisdom (medha).'844 'O Agni, increase the fuel, increase the offering, increase food (brahma josi), increase the welfare of the people with good praises ... '845 'The Gritsamadas, O Asvins, perform- ed stomas (panegyrics) which increase food ( brahm.a vardha- nani); people delighting in these went towards you ... '84€ '() Indra, come towards us being our wish-yielder, giving us heroic sons and delighting in food, along with the ancient ones (sthavi- revih) killing the enemies; with all sorts of protections for us, increasing food (brahma jusanah), come towards us, O one with horses.'847 And so on. In all these cases, Sayana interpre-

642 ii. 20. 5. 644 ii. 34. 7. 643 ii. 12. 14.

646 ji. 39. 8. 645 ii. 37. 6. 647 vii. 24. 4.

VARUNA AND MAYA 659

ted brahma as stotra. However, the riks themselves do not sug- gest any special reason for going against the authority of the Nighantu and the Nirukta. It may be pointed out here that Sayana, in interpreting cer- tain derivatives of the word brahma, found it impossible to contradict Yaska. Brahma-codanim was interpreted by him as brahmanah annasya prerayitrim, the sender of food or, more properly, the increaser of food: 'O Pusan, the resplendent, that inspirer of food whom you hold in your hand has attracted the hearts of all; do loosen your grip.'48 He derived the namo Brahmanaspati as the nourisher of the activity of food produc- tion.649 In certain other cases, he wanted to add a ritual signi- ficance to this meaning of brahma. Thus, brahma-karah, the makers of brahma, was interpreted by him as brahmanah an- nasya havih-laksanasya kartarah,650 the makers of food in the form of oblation. Could this addition of the ritual significance be due to some hesitation felt by the late commentator, who, saturated as he was with the idealistic ideas about the brahman, failed to take the word unceremoniously to mean such crude material realities as food or wealth? With the early Vedic poets, however, it was different. They were themselves as much removed from the idealistic outook of the Upanisads as the idealist philosophers of the Upanisads were from the archaic proto-materialism of their ancestors, This proto-materialism was evident by the overwhelming im- portance they attributed to food and material wealth. This explains why the word brahman, along with its derivatives, occurred no less than 232 times in the Rig Veda alone. In the Atharva Veda, too, we come across the word rather frequently. It remains for a systematic study of the prehistory of this concept to review all these references and find out if we are at all any- where obliged to ignore the authority of Yaska and read in the concept any meaning other than food and wealth. For the pur- pose of our present argument, however, it is enough to point out that it is impossible to discover in this word, as occurring in the earlier portions of the Vedas, any significance even re- motely resembling the ultimate reality as pure ego. Rather, if it is possible to read in the Vedic brahma any philosophi- cal significance at all, this philosophy will have to be character-

643 vi. 53. 8. 649 On ii. 23. 1. 650 On vi. 29. 4.

660 LOKAYATA

ised as starkly materialistic, though inevitably a primitive and crude one. And this gives us some idea of the world-out- look upon the ruins of which the idealistic philosophy of the Upanisads eventually developed. We may now conclude our argument with two more points. First, a strong hangover of this archaic world-outlook survived even in some of the passages of the Upanisads. Secondly, cer- tain other passages of the Upanisads show that the development of the idealistic philosophy of this age was the result of a con- scious effort at emancipation from this archaic world-outlook. We shall touch upon these points in bare outlines. Yaska, we have already seen, gave us a clue to the first point. While explaining that brahman meant food, he cited the authority of the Taittiriya Upanisad in which survived the relic of this ancient view along with this modification. that by the time of the Upanisads the word had already come to acquire the significance of an all-comprehensive ultimate reality. We have thus in the Taittiriya Upanisad the view that food was the ultimate reality: From food, verily, are produced whatsoever creatures dwell on earth. Moreover, by food alone they live. And then also into it they pass at the end. Food, verily, is the eldest born of beings. Therefore is it called the healing herb of all. Verily, those who worship brahman as food obtain all food. For food, verily, is the eldest born of beings. Therefore is it called the healing herb for all. From food are beings born. When born they grow up by food. It is eaten and eats things. Therefore is it called food.651 This did not of course represent the position of the Upani- sadic philosopher himself. The author of the text, immediately after this, passed on to describe how 'different from and within that which consists of the essence of food is the self that consists of life,' etc. Nevertheless, the passage has a good deal of inte- rest for us. It indicates the kind of archaic proto-materialism which survived down up to the times of the Upanisads and from the influence of which the earliest idealists of our country were trying to emancipate themselves. This leads us to the second point, which is probably best illustrated by the well-known

Upanisad.652 anecdote of Varuna and his son Bhrigu, told by the same

Bhrigu, son of Varuna, approached his father and said, 'Declare, brahma, Sir.' The father gave the son the general

651 ii. 2 (tr. Radhakrishnan PU). 652 iii. 1-6.

VARUNA AND MAYA 66

formula as to the nature of the brahma: 'That, verily, whence beings here are born, that by which when born they live, that into which on deceasing they enter - that be desirous of under- standing. That is brahma.' The son, on the basis of this, med- itated on the nature of the brahma. The first fruit of his medi- tation was that brahma must have been anna or food. 'For, truly, indeed, beings here are born of food, when born they live by food, on deceasing they enter into food.' This did not satisfv the father who advised Bhrigu to meditate again. As a result of this second meditation, Bhrigu thought that prana or the vital breath was the ultimate reality or brahma. This, too. proved unsatisfactory and he was asked to meditate again. This time the son thought that manas or the mind was the ultimate reality. Even this was not a satisfactory view and so Bhrigu meditated again and thought that vijnana or intelligence was brahma. But Varuna asked him to meditate again and the son. at this final stage of meditation realised that ananda or bliss was the brahman. How such a view, viz. hrahman meant ananda, represented the standpoint of Vedantic idealism is a point discussed by both the traditional and modern interpreters of the Upanisads. What interests us in particular, however, is that to arrive at this posi- tion, the philosopher of the Taittiriya Upanisad had first of all to cmancipate himself from the crude materialistic standpoint according to which food was the ultimate reality. That during the age of the Upanisads there really was prevalent such a crude materialistic view actively contested by the idealistic philoso- phers will be cvident from the following passage of the Brihat Aranyaka Upanisad: 'Brahman is food,' say some. This is not so, for, verily, food be- comes putrid without life. 'Life is brahman,' say some. so. For life dries up without food. But these two deities when This is not

they become united attain their highest state. So Pratrida said to his father: 'What good, indeed, can I do to one who knows this, or what evil, indeed, can I do to him?' The father said to him (with a gesture of) his hand. 'Oh no Pratrida, who attains the highest state (merely) by entering into unity with these two?'653 After this the father proceeded to expound the idealistic stand- point. Thus here also we find the conscious effort to be emancipated from the primitive proto-materialistic outlook. That these were not really isolated efforts of the Upanisadic philo-

653 v. 12 (tr. Radhakrishnan PU).

662 LOKAYATA

sophers is further evidenced by the famous anecdote of Narada and Sanatkumara of the Chandogya Upanisad. The philoso- pher Sanatkumara led Narada to the view of the self as the ulti- mate reality or brahman, which he achieved by the method of progressively negating certain other views prevalent at the time and considered by Sanatkumara to be the expressions of lower wisdom. One of the views rejected ran as follows: Food, verily, is greater than strength. Therefore, if any one does not eat for ten days, even though he might live, yet, verily, he becomes a non-seer, a non-hearer, a non-thinker, a non-under- stander, a non-doer, a non-knower. But on the entrance of food (when he gets food), he becomes a seer, he becomes a hearer, he becomes a thinker, he becomes an understander; he becomes a doer, he becomes a knower. Meditate on food. He who meditates on food as brahman, he, verily, attains the worlds of food and drink. As far as food reaches, so far he who meditates on food as brahman. has unlimited freedom.

Narada). 'Venerable Sir, is there anything greater than food?' (asked

'Yes, there is something greater than food' (said Sanatkumara). 'Do venerable Sir, tell me that.'654 These are only some of the examples of attempts to out- grow the ancient food-philosophy.655 What interests us more is the tenacity of this ancient view, which alone can explain its survival in a more or less undistorted form in the occasional passages of the Upanisads. Thus the Taittiriya Upanisad, for all its efforts to be emancipated from this archaic view as evi- denced by the story of Varuna and Bhrigu, almost abruptly declared:

Do not speak ill of food. That shall be the rule. Life, verily. is food. The body is the eater of food. In life is the body estab- lished; life is established in the body. So is food established in food. He who knows that food is established in food, becomes esta- blished. He becomes an eater of food, possessing food. He becomes great in offspring and cattle and in the splendour of sacred wisdom; great in fame. Do not despise food. That shall be the rule. Water, verily, is food. Light is the eater of food. Light is established in water; water is established in light. Thus food is established in food. He who knows that rood is established in food, becomes esta- blished. He becomes an eater of food, possessing food. He becomes

654 vii. 9. 1-2 (tr. Radhakrishnan PU). 655 Kosambi ISIH 123 describes the views expressed in Tait. Up. ii. 2. and Maitri. Up. vi. 11-2 as 'food-philosophy' and he explains it as 'excellent sublimated totemism.' I have, however, hesitated to accept this interpretation in view of the number of assertions it in- volves both with regard to the general question concerning the origin cf totemism itself and the specific problem of the survival of this view in the Upanisads.

VARUNA AND MAYA 663

great in offspring and cattle, and in the splendour of sacred wisdom, great in fame. Make for oneself much food. That shall be the rule .... 656 The naïveté of the passage is surely reminiscent of the early Vedic songs. And the survival of such primitive outlook in the Upanisad can be understood only if we remember that like the other Upanisads the Taittiriya, too, could not be the work of a single mind.657 There are, naturally enough, different strata of thoughts recorded in the text. Some of these strata evidentlv represent the thoughts that were nearer those of the early Vedic poets while others represent the later idealistic outlook. It may, however, be pointed out that taken as a whole, probably the Taittiriya Upanisad retained the strongest memory of the early Vedic period. There are at least two distinct reasons for this assumption. First, it opened with the veneration expressed for the ancient Vedic gods - Mitra, Varuna, Aryaman, Indra, Bri- haspati, Visnu - the memory of whom faded into insignificance in the other Upanisads. Secondly, the Taittiriya alone remem- bered the glory of the ancient rita.658 It is no wonder, there- fore, that this Upanisad should end with a peculiar mystical rapture over the ancient-food philosophy: Oh, wonderful ! Oh, wonderful ! Oh, wonderful ! I am food! I am food! I am food! I am a food-eater' I am a food-eater! I am a food-eater ! I am a verse-maker ! I am a verse-maker ! I am a verse-maker ! I am the first-born of the rita! Earlier than the gods in the navel of immortality ! Who gives me away, he indeed has aided me! I, who am food, eat the eater of food! 1 have overcome the whole world.659 This takes us back to our Chanting Dogs of the Chandogya Upanisad, who sang only of food and of the eating of food. Again, this is clearly reminiscent of the Rig Vedic poet Agastya who went into ecstacies over the food-god Pitu. Admittedly, these are all very crude and primitive. What must, however, be clearly acknowledged is the fact that, with all its naïveté, it does form the subsoil of the idealistic outlook of the Upanisa- dic philosophers.

656 iii. 7-9 (tr. Radhakrishnan PU). 657 ERE xii. 541. Winternitz HIL i. 236. 058 Outside the Taittiriya, the word rita occurs only in Katha

ficance. (iii. 1 and v. 2) and largely as an empty husk of its older signi- 059 iii. 10. 6 (tr. Hume TPU. We have, however, translated sloka-krit as verse-maker.)

664 LOKAYATA

That this passage should have survived in the Upanisads, to say the least, is a remarkable thing. There are no pretences here, either spiritual or idealistic. In the sense of being essen- tially pre-spiritualistic, it represents a stage of thought which we have called proto-materialistic. And yet the Upanisads are essentially idealistic treatises trying to prove, above everything else, the identity of the brahman and the atman. Such survivals of primitive proto-materialism in the Upanisads, therefore, is comparable to the survival of isolated primitive communities in the modern world - communities that 'reflect the spiritual con- duct of our ancestors thousands of times remote.' This takes us back to our main argument. The primitive proto-materialism which forms the subsoil of the Upanisadic idealism represented the ancestral convictions of the Upanisadic philosophers themselves who were yet to witness the degrada- tion of maya, the ancient wisdom-action complex. But the latest stratum of the Rig Veda clearly foreshadowed it and the con- sequent exaltation of pure jnana as the secret monopoly of the freshly emerged leisured minority. If this post-Vedic degradation of maya gives us the clue to the idealism of the Upanisads, its ancient glory, as recorded ir. the Rig Veda, provides the clue to the remarkable similarity between the Lokayata and the deeper substratum of the Vedic world-outlook. For with all the differences between the Loka- yata and the Vedic tradition resulting from the circumstance of the former being rooted in the agricultural-matriarchal and the latter in the pastoral-patriarchal traditions respectively, the similarity - as proto-materialism - between the Lokayata and the subsoil of the Upanisadic idealism could only be the result of the fact that in the case of both, human consciousness had yet to dissociate itself from the process of manual or productive labour and thereby to evolve a world-outlook where the spirit held swav over matter. With the emergence of the leisured class in the post-Vedic society, when manual labour began to be looked upon as slavish - the mark of the Sudra - the primitive proto-materialism of the Vedic tradition itself had alrcady been undermined and the conditions created for the evolving of the idealistic outlook. However, the earliest philosophers upon whom fell the task of systematising it, had, first of all, to wage an ideologcial battle on two fronts as it were. They had to eliminate the hangover of their own ancestral convictions on the one hand, and simul-

VARUNA AND MAYA 665

taneously wage a war against the pradhana-vada which, as we have seen, represented the development of the Lokayata in the form of a self-conscious materialistic philosophy. We cannot of course go into ecstasies over the primitive proto-materialism of either the Lokayata or the Vedic tradition. For it was crude, naive and primitive, and has little to compare with the self-conscious materialistic philosophy of original San- khya, not to speak of the scientific materialism of today. Never- theless, the recognition of this proto-materialism has its im- portance for the modern materialist and this importance can be compared to that of the recognition of primitive communism by the scientific socialist. He lays stress on it not because he dreams of returning to it; his purpose rather is to show that human rela- tions based on private ownership and class-exploitation are not without a beginning and end: 'They will fall as inevitably as they arose at an earlier stage.' Thus also is spiritualism and idealism, so often claimed as inherent in Indian thought: we will do without these in the furure as we did in the past.

Appendix

MATERIAL BASIS OF IDEALISM*

We do not expect the idealists to raise the question concerning the material basis of idealism. The question, by iuplying that there is such a possible basis, amounts to a surrender of the primacy of spirit to nature, the very foundation of idealism. In defence of their own position, therefore, the idealists have to reject the question as illegitimate. With the materialists - particularly the Marxists -- it must be different. The gencral structure of the idealistic outlook - whatever might have been the variations within it and however much it might have reacted back on the material conditions, -- is of the nature of superstructure: it cannot be without a mate- rial basis. The circumstance that the materialists have not so far raised the question with sufficient seriousness does not imply that the question iteslf is unimportant from their point of view. Rather the importance of the question is not confined to the understanding of idealism alone. It may help us to understand, though negatively, something basic about the materialistic out- look itself, which is, on the Marxist understanding, the only consistent alternative to idealism. We shall try to discuss here the position of Marxism with regard to this question. It will be a discussion of the origin of the idealistic outlook and not of its signficance or historical role. Already in the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels observed: The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs. But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, namely the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common

• Extracts from the author's article published in the Neu Age Monthly, Aug., 1958.

668 LOKAYATA

forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms."1 It is well known that when Marx and Engels drafted the Manifesto, 'the social organisation existing previous to recorded history was all but unknown.' Thanks mainly to the epoch- making work of Morgan, to our knowledge of social development was added the facts of primitive pre-historic society which had vet to witness class-differentiation and class-antagonism. This was the primitive communist society. We may thus identify three main stages in the devclopment of human society: the primitive pre-class socicty, class society and the classless society of the future. This point is important. It implies that the general ideas or the common forms within which, according to Marx and Engels, the social consciousness of the past ages had moved - because it was intimately related to class-antagonism and class- exploitation - are not to be sought either in the pre-class society of the past or in the classless society of the future. But what did they mean by these general ideas or common forms of social consciousness characteristic of the class-society as a whole? Elsewhere, Marx called these the mystical veil of the life-process of class-society. 'The life-process of socicty, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by frcely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan.“e And Engels, borrowing the Hegelian terminology, characterised the same as false consci- ousness: 'Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or seeming motive forces. Because it is a process of thought he derives its form as well its content from pure thought, either his own or that of his predecessors. He works with mere thought material, which he accepts without examination as the product of thought, and does not investigate further for a more remote source independent of thought; indeed this is a matter of course to him, because, as all action is mediated by thought, it appears to him to be ultimately hased upon thought.'3

1 SW i. 129. 2C i. 80. 3 SC 541.

APPENDIX 669

One point is clear. The common form of the social con- sciousness of the entire period of class society is a false con- sciousness because it is imagined to be under the autonomy of pure thought, as made of mere thought-elements both in form and in content. We shall presently see the significance of this. For the moment there is another question. In spite of there being some general characteristic of class-society as a whole, its successive stages are marked by real differences as well. From the Marxist point of view, therefore, the general false conscious- ness of the class-society as a whole is expected to reveal different specific forms in the successive epochs of the class-society. How are we to understand these specific forms? George Thomson has suggested that the answer is to be found in what Marx and Engels, in the German Ideology, called the illusion of each given cpoch. The illusion of a given epoch is the false consciousness of that epoch. Thus, one of the achievements of socialist society is that it frees itself from false consciousness, which is a general charac- teristic of class-society, its perticular form varying from one epoch to another ("the illusion of that epoch")." What concerns us, first of all, is a clue to this false con- sciousness. We have to seek for it in that which, according to Marxian understanding emerged at the superstructural level as a result of society splitting up into antagonistic classes and which, further, dominated human consciousness through- cut class-society. Here is how Engels explained what it was: 'From generation to generation, labour itself became different, more perfect, more diversified. Agriculture was added to hunting and cattle-breeding, then spinning, weaving, metal- working, pottery and navigation. Along with trade and indus- try, there appeared finally art and science. From tribes there developed nations and states. Law and politics arose, and with them the fantastic reflection of human things in human mind: religion. In the face of all these creations, which appeared in the first place to be products of the mind, and which seemed to dominate human socicties, the more modest productions of the working hand retreated into the background, the more so since the mind that planned the labour process already at a very early stage of development of society, was able to have this planned labour carried out by other hands than its own. All merit for the swift advance of civilization was ascribed to the mind, to

5 Thomson in Communist Reviem Aug. 1952, 240-1. 4 GI 29.

670 LOKAYATA

the development and activity of the brain. Men became accustomed to explain their actions from their thoughts, instead of from their needs (which in any case are reflected, come to consciousness in the mind)-and so there arose in the course of time that idealistic outlook on the world which, especially since the downfall of the ancient world, has dominated men's minds. It still rules them .... 6 If this is how Engels wanted us to look at the origin of the false consciousness characteristic of the class-society as a whole, we must infer that the idealistic outlook is the false con- sciousness that took different forms in the different epochs of class-society. Engels also pointed out why the emergence of the idealistic outlook along with the emergence of the class-society cannot be looked at as an accidental coincidence. There was something inherent in the latter which accounted for the former. With society splitting up into classes, there took place the divorce of thought from action-of mental labour from manual labour-and also a sense of degradation attached to the latter: 'the growth of slavery,' as Engels said elsewhere, 'already began to brand work- ing for a living as slavish and more ignominious than engaging in plunder."7 By contrast, all merit for the swift advance of civilization was ascribed to the mind because it was the mind that planned the labour process. That is, mental labour became the concern of the ruling class and thus, in the consciousness of the ruling class the verdict of the mind or thought or ideas acquired a stupendous significance. The result has been that the primacy of spirit or thought became the dominant charac- teristic of the world-outlook throughout class-society, for the main characteristic of the world-outlook of an age is determined by the dominant mode of the consciousness of the ruling class of the age. 'The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class, which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental produc- tion, so that thereby, generally speaking, the idea of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it."8 If this explains why, throughout the history of class-society, the consciousness of the toiling class failed to become the domi-

6 DN 238-9. 7 OF 269. 8 GI 37-8.

APPENDIX 671

nant mode of consciousness, the explanation of the domination by the idcalistic outlook of the consciousness of the ruling class throughout class-society is to be sought in the cireumstance that in all the epochs of the class-society the ruling class remained the lcisured class, that is the class that could withdraw itself from the direct responsibility of material labour, there being always the toiling class to shoulder it. Already in their first full statement of Marxism, Marx and Engels made this point quite clear: 'Division of labour only becomes trulv such from the moment when a division of material and mental labour appears. From this moment onwards consciousness can really flatter itself that it is something other than consciousness of existing practice, that it is really conceiving something without conceiving some- thing real; from now on consciousness is in a position to eman- cipate itself from the world and to proceed to the formation of "pure" theory, theology, philosophy, ethics, etc." Thus, in order to proceed to the formation of the idealist outlook, consciousness has to emancipate itself from the world and the precondition of this is the emancipation of the thinking class from the obligation of manual labour. The reason for this is clear. The labour process, being essentially a transaction between nature and the material human body as a natural phe- nomcnon, carries within itself a sense of objective coercion. That is, the reality of the material world, of nature, forces its stamp on the human consciousness so long as man remains engaged in the process of the manwal operation. This is borne out by Marx's well-known analysis of the labour process. 'Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and nature parti- cipate, and in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material reactions between himself and nature. He opposes himself to nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natura! forces of his body, in order to appropriate nature's productions in a form adapted to his own wants.'10 Marx went into much greater details in his analysis of the labour process and we can see from this how much this process owes to the acceptance of the material reality of the objective world or nature. All the factors involved in the labour process - the personal activity of the man, the subject of the work (which, when filtered through previous labour, is called the raw material), and the instruments of labour - all these are the

º Ib. 19-20. 10 C i. 177.

672 LOKAYATA

product of the material world or nature. 'The soil in the virgin state in which it supplies man with necessaries or the means of subsistence ready to hand, exists independently of him, and is the universal subject of human labour. All those things which labour merely separates from immediate connection with their environment, are subjects of labour spontaneously provided by nature .... An instrument of labour is a thing, or a complex of things, which the labourer interposes between himself aud the subject of his labour, and which serves as the conductor of his activity. He makes use of the mechanical, physical, and chemi- cal properties of some substances in order to make other sub. stances subservient to his aims .... Thus nature becomes one of the organs of his activity, one that he annexes to his own bodily organs, adding stature to himself in spite of the Bible. As the earth is his original larder, so too it is his original tool house.'11 If the labour process is so much under obligation to nature or the objective world, how can human consciousness, without emancipating itself from its verdict, move towards an idealistic outlook, the primary prerequisite of which is the denial of the self-sufficient or independent existence of nature? But there are more points involved in the Marxist understanding of the ideal- istic outlook. For, idealism is not merely the negative doctrine of the denial of nature; it is the positive theory of spirit or con- sciousness being the ultimate reality, of thoughts and ideas dictating terms to reality. Secondly, on the Marxist understand- ing, the idealist outlook was the result of a process of social evolution, the characteristic of which is not the cessation of the role of manual labour but rather the receding of it to the back- ground of social reality - to such a position of degradation and contempt as hardly to have any longer a claim to contribute to the predominant world-outlook. For an understanding of these two points we have to analyse a further characteristic of the labour-process to which Marx drew our attention: 'We presuppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A spider conducts operations that re- semble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distingui- shes the worst architect from the best of bees is ths, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its

11 Ib. i. 178-9.

APPENDIY 673

commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will.'12 In the beginning, thus, there is an idea. Of course, this idea is not pure subjectivism in any abstract sense because it is itself the product of the material conditions: it arises front the concrete material needs felt by the living human individuals in their relation to the rest of the world. Nevertheless, the idea is not the same as the material condition originating it. The two are qualitatively distinct. That is, as idea it acquires a kind of real subjectivity which it would be vulgar materialism to overlook. And the decisive characteristic of human labour is that such an idea exists at the beginning of the labour-process and initiates it. At the end, again, there is only the realisation of this idea in the objective world - the objective world satisfy- ing the idea that initiates the labour-process. And everything in human labour that carries the sense of the objective coercion, i.e., the process of the manual operation, strictly speaking, occurs in between these two extremes. However, when the ultimate result is reached, the stamp of the intermediate steps involved is no longer apparent. As Marx said, 'The process disappears in the product, the latter is a use-value, nature's material adapted by a change of form to the wants of man. Labour has incorpo- rated itself with its subject: the former is materialised, the latter transformed.'13 It is not difficult to see what happens when the importance of the entire intermediate process involving the material trans- action between man and nature snaps off from human conscious- ness, i.e., the ruling-class consciousness. There remains only the idea at the beginning and at the end only the realisation or the satisfaction of the idea in the objective world - an appearance of the subordination of nature to the demands of the spirit or consciousness. Human ideas do appear to dictate terms to the world and consciousness does assume the semblance of the ultimate reality. And here we have the essence of the idealistic outlook. So long as it is the question of the individual labourer, there is obviously little possibility of the development of such an outlook. Engaged as he is in the labour process itself, the stamp of the immediate reality of the objective world - the

12 Ib. i. 178. 13 1b. i. 180. L-43

674 LOKAYATA

objective world as the subject of his labour, the toolhouse of his instruments and the basis of his sheer physical existence - can- not be washed away from his personal consciousness. So long, again, as it was the collective life of the pre-class society, there could be no question of anybody having such an outlook, for there could be no existence in it without a share in the labour of the community as a whole. However, while explaining the sources of the idealistic outlook Marx and Engels were not speaking of either of these two standpoints. They were discuss- ing specifically the breakdown of society into antagonistic classes and the effect of this on the world-outlook of the leisured class. The crucial point is that with the emergence of class-differ- ences, 'the plan, the purpose, the piece of imagination' sought to be realised in the material world through the labour-process gets detached from the aspect of the manual operation proper because the former becomes the concern only of the ruling class while the latter that of the toiling class. The idea given shape to by the labourers is no longer their own; those whose idea is realised through the labour-process, again, have no share in the labour-process itself. The beginnings of this are to be traced when the division between the actual producers and the organi- sers of production took place and it assumed a well-defined form when these organisers of production - originally only the custo- dians of the means of production - converted themselves into the owners thereof. At this stage society finally split up into the ruling class and the toiling class. It is only from the standpoint of the former that we may understand the rcal force of the idealistic argument. The Pharaohs thought, let there be the pyramids and the pyramids were there. Thought did indeed dictate terms to realitv. And since it was the thought of that class in whose consciousness the manual operation of the million slaves had no longer any vali- dity, the intermediate steps involved between the demand of thought and the satisfaction of it in reality lost all claim to contribute to the.general world-outlook. The result was a delu- sion of the omnipotence of thought and it is here that we find the real source of the idealistic argument - the false conscious- ness of class-society as a whole. It naturally remained for materialism to be the philosophy of revolution - the materialism of the British revolution and the materialism of the French revolution. For these were the pro-

APPENDIX 675

ducts of situations in which the toiling class did move to the forefront of the social reality. Observed Engels: 'And although, on the whole, the bourgeoisie in its struggle with the nobility could claim to represent at the same time the interests of the different labouring classes of that period, yet in every great bourgeois movement there were independent outbursts of that class which was the more or less developed forerunner of the modern proletariat .... Alongside of these revolutionary armed uprisings of a class which was as yet immature, corresponding theoretical manifestations made their appearance."14 We have here the clue to the materialistic philosophies of those periods. At the same time, corresponding to the limita- tions of those revolutions, the materialist philosophics, too, had their limitations. Rather than establishing the social superiority of the toiling class, these revolutions simply replaced one exploit- ing class by another. And these materialist philosophies. too, already pregnant with their opposites, had eventually to culmi- nate in disguised or overt idealism. It is interesting to observe how the false consciousness of class-society has, in the modern period, taken the form of the specific illusion of the epoch. The social root of the idealistic outlook - the separation of thinking from the manual operation - started quite early in the history of social development. Further advance in the produc- tive technique went on nourishing it until in the modern period the whole thing took the form of what Marx called 'industrial pathology.' Referring to the division of labour in modern manufacture, Marx observed: 'It converts the labourer into a crippled monstrosity, by forcing his detail dexterity at the expense of a world of productive capabilities and instincts ... Not only is the detail work distributed to the different indivi- duals, but the individual himself is made the automatic motor of a fractional operation."15 And again, 'The knowledge, the judgment, and the will, which, though in ever so small a degree, are practised by the independent peasant or handicraftsman ... these faculties are now required only for the workshop as a whole. Intelligence in production expands in one direction, because it vanishes in many others. What is lost by the detail labourers, is concentrated in the capital that employs them. It is a result of the division of labour in manufactures, that the labourer is brought face to face with the intellectual potencies

14 Marx & Engels SW i. 152. 15 C i. S60.

676 LOKAYATA

of the material process of production, as the property of another, and as a ruling power.'16 Marx quoted Adam Smith: 'The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations has no occasion to exert his understanding .... The uniformity of his stationary life naturally corrupts the courage of his mind .... But in evcry improved and civilised society, this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall.'17 Commented Marx: 'For preventing the complete deteriora- tion of the great mass of the people by division of labour, A. Smith recommends education of the people by the state, but prudently, and in homcpathic doses. G. Garnier. his French translator and commentator, who, under the first French empire, quite naturally developed into a senator, quite as naturally opposes him on this point. Education of the masses, he urges, violates the first law of the division of labour, and with at "our whole social system would be proscribed." "Like all other divi- sions of labour," he says, "that between hand labour and head labour is more pronounced and decided in proportion as society (he rightly uses this word for capital, landed property and their state) becomes richer. This division of labour, like every other, is an effect of past, and a cause of future progress .... ought the government then to work in opposition to this division of labour, and to hinder its natural course? Ought it to expend a part of the public money in the attempt to confound and blend together two classes of labour, which are striving after division and separation?" '18 Ferguson, added Marx in his foot-note, had already said, 'And thinking itself, in this age of separations, may become a peculiar craft.'19 It is no wonder, then, that the philosopher of the age should come out with the most outspoken manifesto of pure thought - the sharp declaration that of all his activities he could feel most indubitably certain only of pure thinking. As is well known, Descartes made the bare cogito -the bare 'I think' - the starting point of his philosophy: 'Can I affirm that I possess any one of all those attributes of which I have lately spoken as belonging to the nature of body? After atten- tively considering them in my own mind, I find none of them

16 Ib. i. 361. 18 Ib. 1. 362-3. 15 Ib. i. 362. 19 Ib. i. 362 n.

APPENDIX 677

that can properly be said to belong to myself. To recount them were idle and tedious. Let us pass, then, to the attributes of the soul .... Thinking is another attribute of the soul; and here 1 discover what properly belongs to myself. This alone is inse- parable from me. I am - I exist: this is certain; but how often? As often as I think; for perhaps it would even happen, if I should wholly cease to think, that I should at the same time altogether cease to be."20 Descartes, they say, was the father of modern philosophy. He was the first to give the most momentous expression to the illusion of the modern epoch. Subsequent development of modern European philosophy has largely been the develop- ment of this Cartesian principle of the bare cogito as the most indubitable starting point of philosophy. It remained for Hegel and his followers to carry this principle to its furthermost logical limits: 'Thus Hegel restores to thought its own right. Thought is not one existential form of the absolute beside others; it is the absolute itself in its concrete unity of self; it is the idea come back to itself - the idea that knows itself to be the truth of nature and the power in it."21 However, if this modern manufacturing period created conditions for the sharpest expression of the idealistic outlook, it also enhanced the process leading to the final refutation of it. For the same division of labour in the modern manufacturing period has developed the productive power to such an enormous extent and given it such a highly socialised form that it will ultimately rebel against the production relations and threaten the very structure of class-divided society. The earlier materialists tried to refute and reject the ideal- istic outlook. Where they failed, however, was to see its social roots. Diderot, for example, felt frankly exasperated: 'Those philosophers arc called idcalists who, being conscious only of their existence and of the sensations which succeed each other within themselves, do not admit anything else. An extra- vagant system which, to my thinking, only the blind could have originated; a system which, to the shame of human intelligence and philosophy, is the most difficult to combat, although the most absurd of all."22 And Lenin commented that Diderot came very close to the standpoint of contemporary materialism (Marxism),

20 Descartes Meditations (Everyman) 87-8. "1 Schwegler History of Philosophy 316. 22 Quoted by Lenin MEC 27.

678 LOKAYATA

namely 'that arguments and syllogisms alone do not suffice to refute idealism."23 The point is, it is impossible to refute idealism on the strength of mere philosophical arguments, however clever. Such an effort is after all an appeal to the judgment of pure thought - the acceptance of the detached consciousness as having the highest verdict on the nature of reality - and this is the basic claim of idealism itself. As is argued by the idealists, it is im- possible to prove the primacy of matter because the very organ of such a proof would be thought itself and as such would imply the primacy of the spirit. However, the premise of the detached thought, upon which such arguments rest, is itself the product of the social conditions under which thought is actually detached from action and exalted over it. If the idealistic outlook is the result of the separation of thought from action, it can be refuted not by appealing to one fragment of these separated elements bnt only by restoring the lost union of these two, which, in its turn, cannot be done with- out changing the very structure of the class-society. In other words, the false consciousness of class-society can be finally eliminated only by overthrowing the class-structure of society itself. While explaining their own materialistic conception of history, Marx and Engels observed, 'It bas not, like the idealistic view of history, in every period to look for a category, but remains constantly on the real ground of history; it does not explain practice from the idea but explains the formation of ideas from material practice; and accordingly it comes to the conclusion that all forms and products of consciousness cannot he dissolved by mental criticism, by resolution into "self-con- sciousness" or transformation into "apparitions," "spectres." "fancies," etc., but only by the practical overthrow of the actual social relations which gave rise to this idealistic humbug; that not criticism but revolution is the driving force of history, also of religion, of philosophy and all other types of theory."4 It is from this point of view alone that we can understand the philo- sophical significance of revolutionary practice emphasised by Marx in his oft-quoted eleventh thesis on Feuerbach: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. the point however is to change it."25

28 Ib. 24 GI 27. Italics added. 25 Marx & Engels SW i. 354.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Italics are invariably used to indicate books other than those in the English language. Among these, books in the Bengali language are indicated by '(B)' following the abbrevia- tion in italies. Section IV of this Bibliography contains a list of the Sanskrit and Pali texts referred in abbreviations in the foot- notes and Section V gives a separate list of the Bengali books referred to. 2. When the abbreviation in the foot-note does not indicate any separate monograph by any individual author, the initials refer to the author's contribution either to some general reference work (Section II of the Bibliography) or to some periodical ( Section III of the Bibliography). 3. The Bibliography is meant only to be a guide to the notes; other works referred to are mentioned in full in the body of the book and the names of these occur in italies in the General Index.

SECTION 1: BOOKS IN ENGLISH

AVALON, A. Principles of Tantra. London, 1914. BADEN-POWELL, B. H. The Indian Village Community, London, 1896. BAGCHI, P. C. Studies in the Tantras. Calcutta, 1939. Pre-Aryan and Pre-Dravidian in India. Calcutta, 1929. BARUA, B. M. A History of the Pre-Buddhistic Indian Philoso- phy. Calcutta, 1921 Old Brahmi Inscriptions of the Udayagiri and Khandagiri Caves. Calcutta, 1929. BASHAM, A. L. History and Doctrines of the Ajivikas. London, 1951. BELVALKAR, S K. & RANADE, R. D. History of Indian Philo- sophy. Poona, 1927. BERNAL, J. D. Science in History. London, 1954. BHANDARKAR, R. G. Vaisnavism, Saivism and Minor Religious Systems. Strassburg, 1913. BHATTACHARYYA, K. Studies in Philosophy. Calcutta, 1956.

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BLOOMFIELD, M. Vedic Concordance (H.O.S. 10). Cambridge, 1906 BODDING, P.O. A Santhal Dictionary. Oslo, 1934. BOSE, M. M. Post-Caitanya Sahajiya Cults of Bengal. Caleutta, 1930. BRIFFAULT, R. The Mothers. (2nd ed.) London, 1952. BUTLER, J. Travels and Adventures in the Provinces of Assam. London, 1855. CAMPBELL, G. Modern India. London, 1852. CHANDA, R. P. Indo-Aryan Raccs. Rajsahi, 1916. CHILDE, V. G. The Aryans. London, 1926. -- New Light on the Most Ancient East. (4th ed.) London, 1954. -- What Happened in History. (revised ed.). London, 1957. COLEBROOKE, H. T. Miscellancous Essays. London, 1837. -- The Sankhya Karika. Calcutta, 1887. COWELL, E. B. and GOUGH, A. E. The Sarva Darsana Samgraha (tr.). London, 1914. COWELL, E. B. and THOMAS, F. W. Harsacarita (tr.). London, 1897. CROOKE, W. Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India. Westminster, 1896. - Religion and Folklore of Northern India. Oxford, 1926. DANGE, S. A. India from Primitive Communism to Slavery. Bombay, 1949. DARWIN, C. A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World. London, 1890. DASGUPTA, S. B. Obscure Religious Cults as Background of Bengali Literature. Calcutta, 1946. DASGUPTA, S. N. A History of Indian Philosophy. Cambridge, 1922-55. - Philosophical Essays. Calcutta, 1951. DURANT, W. Our Oriental Heritage. New York, 1942. DUTT, R. P. India Today. Bombay, 1946. DUTTA, R. C. Peasantry of Bengal. Madras, 1874. EHRENFELS, O. R. Mother-Right in India. Hyderabad, 1941. ENGELS, F. Anti-Dühring. Moscow, 1957. -- Dialectics of Nature. Moscow, 1954. -- The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Moscow, 1952. FICK, R. The Social Organisation in North-East India in Bud- dha's Time. Calcutta, 1920.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 681

FRAZER, J. G. Adonis, Attis, Orisis. London, 1907. -- The Golden Bough. (abridged ed.). London, 1949. GATT, F. A. Census of India: 1911. Vol I 'India - Report'. Calcutta. GARBE, R. Aniruddha's Commentary on the Original Parts of Vedantin Mahadeva's Commentary on the Sankhya Suiras. Calcutta, 1892. -- The Sankhya Pravacana Bhasya. (H.O.S. 2). Cambridge, 1895. GETTY, A. Ganesa. Oxford, 1936. -- Gods of Northern Buddhism. Oxford, 1928. GHOSE, M. N. Rig Veda (tr.). Calcutta, 1906. GHURYE, G. S. Caste and Race in India. London, 1932. GONDA, J. Notes on Brahman. Utrecht, 1950. GORDON, P. R. T. The Khasis. London, 1914. GOUGH, A. E. Philosophy of the Upanisads. London, 1882. HAIMENDORE, C. F. The Aboriginal Tribes of Hyderabad. 1.on- don, 1943. HARRISON, J. E. Ancient Art and Ritual (5th ed.). London. 1935. HEGEL, G. W. F. Lectures on the Philosophy of History. Lon- don, 1914. HooK, S. From Hegel to Marx. London, 1936. HUME, R. E. Thirteen Principal Upanisads. Oxford, 1921. HUNTER, W. W. The Imperial Gazetteer of India (1st ed.). London, 1881. IYER, L. K. A. Mysore Tribes and Castes. Mysore, 1935-36. JAYASWAL, K. P. Hindu Polity (1st ed). Calcutta, 1924. KANE, P. V. History of Dharmasastra. Poona, Vol. I, 1930; Vol. 1I, 1941. KAUL, H. Census Report: Punjab. Lahore, 1912. KEITH, A. B. Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upani- sads. (H.O.S. 31, 32). Cambridge, 1925. -- Rig-Veda Brahmanas (H.O.S. 25). Cambridge, 1920. The Vedas of the Black Yajus School (H.O.S. 18, 19). Cambridge, 1914. KENNEDY, K. Researches into the Nature and Affinity of Ancient Hindu Mythology. London, 1831. KERN, J. H. C. Manual of Indian Buddhism, Strassburg, 1896. KmD, D.' Savage Childhood. London, 1906. KOSAMBI, D. D. An Introduction to the Study of Indian History. Bombay, 1956. LENIN, V. I. Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Moscow, 1947.

682 LOKAYATA

MACDONELL, A. A. History of Sanskrit Literature. London, 1905. Sanskrit-English Dictionary. Oxford, 1893. -- Vedic Mythology. Strassburg, 1897. MACDONELL, A. A. and KEITH, A. B. Vedic Index. London, 1912. MAINE, H. S. Village Communities in East and West. London, 1890. MAJUMDAR, D. N. Races and Culture of India. Allahabad, 1947. -- - The Affairs of a Tribe. Lucknow, 1950. MAJUMDAR, R. C. Corporate Life in Ancient India. Calcutta. 1919. - (ed.) History of Bengal. Dacca, Vol. I, 1943. - (ed.) Vedic Age. London, 1951. MALALASEKERA, G. P. Dictionary of Pali Proper Names. Lon- don, 1937-38. MARSHALL, J. Mohenjodaro and the Indus Civilization. London, 1931. MARTINEAU, J. A Study of Religion. Oxford, 1926 (new impres- sion ). MARX, K. Capital. Vol. I, Moscow, 1954. MARX, K. and ENGELS, F. On Britain. Moscow, 1953. -- German Ideology. Calcutta. -- On Religion. Moscow, 1957. Selected Correspondence. Moscow, 1953. Selected Works. Moscow, 1946. MAX MULLER, F. (ed.) Sacred Books of the East. Oxford, 1879. -- Six Systems of Indian Philosophy. MILLS, J. P. The Rengma Nagas. London, 1937. MITRA, A. Census Report, 1951, West Bengal. Volume on the Tribes and Castes of West Bengal. Calcutta, 1953. MITRA, R. Indo-Aryans. Calcutta, 1881. MONIER-WILLIAMS, M. Indian Wisdom. London, 1875. -- Sanskrit-English Dictionary. Oxford, 1899. MORET, A. and DAVY, G. From Tribe to Empire. London, 1926. MORGAN, L. H. Ancient Society. Calcutta. MUIR, J. Original Sanskrit Texts. London, 1873. NEEDHAM, J. Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. II. Cam- bridge, 1956. NEHRU, J. The Discovery of India. Calcutta, 1956. OLDENBERG, H. Buddha: His Life, His Teachings, His Order. Calcutta, 1927. RADHAKRISHNAN, S. Indian Philosophy. London, Vol. I - 1923, Vol. II - 1948.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 683

-- (ed.) History of Philosophy, Eastern and Western. London, 1953. -- Principal Upanisads. London, 1953. RAO, T. G. N. Elements of Hindu Iconography. Madras, 1916. RAY, P. (ed.) History of Chemistry in Ancient and Medieval India. Calcutta, 1956. RAY, P. C. History of Hindu Chemistry. Vol. I, London, 1907; Vol. Il, Calcutta, 1925. RAY, P. C. The Mahabharata (tr.). Calcutta, 1883-1895. RAY, S. C. The Mundas and Their Country. Calcutta, 1912. RuYs-DAVIDS, T. W. R. Buddhist India (1st Indian ed.). Cal- cutta. 1950. -- Dialogues of the Buddha. London, Vol. I - 1899, Vol. II - 1910. Vol. Ill - 1921. RHYS-DAVIES, MRS. Psalm of Early Buddhism. RIDLEY, W. The Aborigines of Australia. Sydnev, 1861. RISLEY, H. H. People of India. Calcutta, 1915. -- The Tribes and Castes of Bengal. Calcutta, 1891. BIVERS, W. H. R. The Todas. London, 1906. ROCKHILL, W. W. Life of Buddha and Early History of His Order. London, 1884. ROSE, H. A. Census Report of Punjab and North-West Frontier Province. Simla, 1920. ROY CHOWDHURY, H. C. Poli'ical History of Ancient India. Cal- cutta, 1938. RUSSELL, R. V. and HIRALAL RAI BAHADUR. The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India. London, 1916. SASTRI, D. R. A Short History of Indian Materialism. Sensa- tionism and Hedonism. Calcutta. SASTRI, H. P. Absorption of the Vraatyas. Dacca, 1926. -- Lokayata. Dacca, 1925. SASTRI, S. Arthasastra (tr.). 3rd ed., Mysore, 1929. SEAL, B. N. Positice Sciences of the Ancient Hindus. London, 1915. SEN, D. C. Caitanya and His Age. Calcutta. -- (ed.) Typical Selections from the Old Bengali Literature. Calcutta, 1914. TAPLIN, G. The Folklore, Manners, Customs and Languages of the South Australian Aborigincs. Adelaide, 1879. THOMAS, E. J. The Life of Buddha. London, 1931. THOMSON, G. Æschylus and Athens (2nd ed.). London, 1941. - Religion. London, 1950.

684 LOKAYATA

Studies in Ancient Greek Society. London, Vol. I - 1949, Vol. II - 1955. THURSTON, E. and RANGACHAR, K. Castes and Tribes of South- em India. Madras, 1909. TYLOR. Prabodhacandrodaya (tr.). VIRESWARANANDA, S. Brahma Sutras. Almora, 1936. WARREN, H. C. Buddhism in Translation. (H.O.S. 3). Cam- bridge, 1898. WHEELER, M. The Indus Civilization (supplementary vol. of Cambridge History of India). Cambridge. 1953. Wn.KS, M. Ilistorical Sketches of the South of India. London, 1810. WILSON, II. H. Rig-Veda (tr.). Calcutta. WINTERNITZ, M. History of Indian Literature. Vol. 1, Calcutta, 1927. ZIMMER, H. Philosophies of India. London, 1951.

SECTION II: GENERAL REFERENCE WORKS

A The Adivasis. Delhi, 1955. CHI The Cambridge History of India. Vol. I - Cambridge, 1922. DPPN Dictionary of Pali Proper Names. G. P. Malalasekera. London, 1937-38. EB Encyclopædia Britannica. (14th. ed.), 1939. ERE Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics. (ed.) J. Hast- ings. Edinburgh, 1908-18. HOS Harvard Oriental Series. HPEW History of Philosophy, Eastern and Western. (ed.) S. Radhakrishnan. London, 1952. IGI Imperial Gasetteer of India. (ed.) W. W. Hunter. London, 1881. Revised ed., Oxford, 1907-9. NINQ North Indian Notes and Queries. Allahabad, 1391-95. PTS (Pali Text Society Dictionary) Pali-English Diction- ary by T. W. Rhys-Davids and W. Stede. Surrey, 1925. S Sanskrit-English Dictionary by A. A. Macdonell. Lon- don, 1893. SBE Sacred Books of the East. (ed.) F. Max-Muller. SD Sanskrit-English Dictionary by H. H. Wilson. Cal- cutta, 1819. SED Sanskrit-English Dictionary by M. Monier-Williams. Oxford, 1899.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 685

SPD St. Petersburg Dictionary by R. Roth and O. Bohtlingk. St. Petersburg, 1855-84. VA VK(B) Vedic Agc. (ed.) R. C. Majumdar. London, 1951. Viswa Kosa. Bengali Encyclopædia. (ed.) N. N. Bose. Calcutta.

SECTION III: PERIODICALS

BMFAB Bulletin of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. BV Bharatiya Vidya. CR Calcutta Review. F Folklore. IA Indian Antiquary. IHQ Indian Historical Quarterly. JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society. JAnSB Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay. JASB Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. JBBRAS Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. JBORS Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society. JGRS Journal of the Gujarat Research Socicty. JLD Journal of the Department of Letters, Calcutta Uni- versity. JRAI Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. JRAS Journal of the Royal Asiatic Socicty. MASI Memoirs of the Archæological Survey of India. MI Man in India. NAM PAOS New Age Monthly.

PIPC Proceedings of the American Oriental Society.

VD(B) Proceedings of the Indian Philosophical Congress. Vanga-Darsana.

SECTION IV: SANSKRIT AND PALI TEXTS

A Arthasastra. AB Aitareya Brahmana. AV Atharva Veda. Br S Brihat Samhita. Br Su Brahma Sutra. Br Up Ch Up Brihad-Aranyaka Upanisad. Chandogya Upanisad. KSS Katyayana Srauta Sutra.

686 LOKAYATA

M Mahabharata. P Prabodhacandrodaya. PS Panini Sutra. RV Rig Veda. SDS Sarva Darsana Samgraha. SK Sankhya Karika. Sat DS Sat Darsana Samuccaya. SV Sumangala Vilasini. TRD Tatka Rahasya Dipika. VS Vajasaneyi Samhita.

SECTION V: BENGALI AND HINDI BOOKS

BD(B) Bauddha Dharma by H P. Sastri. BDS(B) Bharat Darsana Sara by U. C. Bhattacharya. BR(B) Bankim Racanavali by Bankim Chandra Chattopa- dhyaya. BS(B) Bharater Samskriti by K. Sen. BUS(B) Bharatvarsiya Upasaka Sampradaya by A. K. Dutta. BV(B) Banglar Vrata by A. Tagore. DD (H) Darsana Digdarsana by Rahul Sankrityayana. JB(B) Jati Bheda by K. Sen. KKV(B) PBSI(B) Kriya Kanda Varidhi.

RV(B) Prachin Bharatiya Sabhyatar Itihas by P. C. Ghose. Rig Veda by D. Lahiri. SB(B) Sariraka Bhasya by K. Vedantavagish. SD(B) SS(B) Sankhya Darsana by K. Vedantavagish.

SSB) Sahajiya Sahitya by M. M. Bose. Siksha O Sabhyata by A. C. Gupta. TP(B) Tantra Paricaya by S. Bhattacharya. R(B) VD(B) Racanavali by P. Bandopadhyaya. Vanga Darsana (ed.) by Bankim Chandra Chatto-

VK(B) padhyaya. Viswa Kosa (ed.) by N. N. Bose.

GENERAL INDEX

ADOPTION, TRIBAL AND BUDDHIST 487-8 BADARAYANA 369, 372-3, 380, 409, 428-9, 645. See agriculture: the discovery of Erahma Sutra also

251-2; and Lokayata Baden-Powell, B.H. 189-91, 580 116; and mother-right 232ff. 72-3, Bagchi, P.C. 317, 323-4, 344-5 274-5, 277-6, 320, 403, 435; Baka Dalbhya 76-8, 96, 109, and magical rites 269-72, 117 286ff, 340, 345-6, 352, 442 Bana 33 ahetu-vada 514 Bandopadhyaya, P. 294, 323-4, Ahura Mazda 633-4 333-4, 336 Aitareya Brahmana 68, 85, 90, Banerji-Sastri, A. 55, 58 109, 128, 321, 401, 486. 587, Barhaspatya 1, 6, 15, 32, 52 610-12, 637-8, 640 Barua, B. M. 510, 513, 151-7 Ajita Kesakambali 459, 486, 507, Basham, A. L. 175-7, 504-5, 510, 509, 511-2, 514-6 516, 518-20 Ajivika 512, 519, 521 Baudhyana 61, 132, 139, 167 akriya-vada 514, 516-7 209, 219, 243 Ambattha Sutta 505 Belvelkar, S. K. & Ranade, amsa 565, 572, 577. See also R. D. 7, 31, 40, 401, 424, 430, bhaaga & bhaga 440, 442 Anandagiri 129, 331, 342 Bernal, J. D. 251 Anukramani 561, 579-80, 640, bhaga 281, 297, 299-300, 303, 652 565, 571-3, 575, 599 artha 550 bhaaga 563-4, 571-3, 575-6, 607 Arthasastra 25, 85, 161, 173, bhaaga-dheya 577 177-8, 186, 270, 473-4, 477, 480. bhairavi 278, 341. See also See also Kautilya yoginis arya-satya 499-501. Bhagavata Purana 25, 60, 321, asa 614-5, 633-4. See also rita 377 Assyria 55-6, 275 Bhagavati Sutra 176, 520-2 Asura 14, 36, 40-2, 49-50, 572. Bhaguri-commentary 7 643, 651 bhakti 328, 352 Asura-tribe 56 Bhandarkar, R. G. 139, 148, Asuri 60-1, 382 153-4, 247, 284-5, 300 Asvaghosa 495-6 Bhaskaracarya 7 asvamedha-uajna 67, 91, 150, Bharadvaja Grihya Sutra 271 319 Bhattacarya, B. 344 Atharva Veda 57, 67, 94. 149, Bhattacaryya, K. C. 359, 366, 169-70, 207, 256, 271, 443, 573- 406. 646-7 4, 591-2, 598, 606, 615, 617-9, Bhattacaryya, U. 344 622, 659 Bhattadipika 195 Avadana Sataka 467 Bhattoji 155, 228-9 Avesta 633, 642-3 blood, the ritual use of 132, 134,

688 LOKAYATA

249-50, 250, 305-6, 309, 311 585-7, 602, 612, 642 Bloomfield, M. 574, 596, €06 causality 449-51, 480, 504 Bose, M. M. 284-5, 326 cetana 398-99 brahman 43-4, 131, 323, 365, cetana-karana-vada 372 372-3, 376, 388, 393, 402-3, 426, chabbaggiya bhikkhus 38, 400-1 446, 450, 570, 611, 635, 645-7, Chanda, R. P. 5, 262-3, 294, 422 652, 656-8. 660-2 Chandogya Upanisad 14, 43-4, Brahmana-texts 61, 68-9, 161, 48-9, 54-5, 66-8, 76-8, 89-90, 167-9, 319, 381, 401, 443, 601- 93, 96-8, 101-3, 110, 117, 122, 3, 610-2, 615-7, 621, 640-2, 652 375, 402, 425, 431, 434-5, 536, Brahmanaspati 127-8, 136, 146- 545, 642, 658, 662-3 8, 149, 372, 562, 575, 577-8, 593, Chattopadhyaya, B. 359-60 599, 652, 656-8, 659, 663 chemistry 335, 353, 355-6 Brahmanda Purana 132 Childe, V. G. 118, 224 Brahmajala Sutta 20 chief, tribal and Vedic 581, 585- Brahma Sutra 2, 45-6, 362, 369- 6, 591, 593-4 71, 376, 380, 383-4. 388-90, cinacara 344 393-5, 410, 428, 447, 645 Cina Tara 344 Brahma Vaivarta Purana 132, citrini 280, 282 134, 137 Briffault, R. 5, 239, 251-2, 259- class-division 157, 160, 229, 347,

60, 269, 273, 275, 277, 284, 288- 350, 352, 445, 459, 464, 481,

9, 292, 298-30, 305, 311, 314-5, 585, 603, 605, 613, 626, 642, 652

566 classless society 481, 503, 507. See also communism and pre- Brihaspati. See Brahmanaspati Brihaspati Sutra 6, 8, 16-7, 53, class society

72, 218-9, 223 class-society 226, 478, 482, 503,

Brihat Aranyaka Upanisad 22, 505-6, 632-3, 642-4

46. 48, 69, 73, 101, 104-5, 107-8, codified law 217-9, 222-3, 225 Colebrooke, H. T. 2, 193-4, 250, 320, 402, 661 Buddha, The 173-5, 177, 212, 366-7, 412, 421

334, 355, 369-70, 374, 381, 459- collective: life 482, 562, 564, 566, 574, 601, 620-2, 633, 638, 524 passim Buddha Carita 495-7 651; ownership 563; society 600

Buddhaghosa 3, 175, 513-5, common descent 203, 208. 211

520-2 communism, primitive 92-4, 127, 225-6, 339-40, 347-8, 350, 490-1, 506, 561, 564, 566, 570, 572, 574, 580. See also pre-class society CAKRAPANI 399, 403 Coomaraswamy, A. K. 138 Campbell, G. 187, 189 cosmogony: primitive & Tan- Candi 259, 266, 307, 326 trika 321, 332-4, 336-7 Candrakirti 6 Cowell, E. B. 1, 21 Caraka (Caraka Samhita) 368, Crooke, W. 65, 208, 309, 316, 360 371, 396-400, 403 Cullavagga 38-9 Carvaka 1-3, 12, 17, 28, 33-5, cultural diffusion 71, 343 40, 51-2, 60, 77, 518 Carya-songs 283-4, 335, 354 caste 155-6, 167, 180-1, 183, 185, 199ff, 221, 224, 226-7, 313, 328, DAITYA 40-2, 56

330-2, 352, 459-61, 467, 505, daksinacara 279 dance 113-5, 183, 233, 283, 287,

GENERAL INDEX 689

292, 298, 315, 342, 523 Darwin, C. 565 exogamy 203-5, 206, 210-1, 213,

Dasgupta, S. B. 281, 332, 334-5 216

Dasgupta, S. N. 1, 3, 6, 7, 13, 14, 25-7, 42, 45-6, 51, 54-6, 64, 365, FATE 485, 519, 524 368-9, 398-400, 403, 437-8 father-right 257, 259, 597. Sec death, the primitive concept of also male, patriarchy 309-11; and rebirth ritual 486- female deity 242, 245, 263, 271, 8 277-8, 294, 303; principle 232, deha and deha-vada 35-6, 42, 258-60, 261-2, 269, 278, 282-3, 47-9, 59, 321, 332-4, 336, 352, 284, 312, 315, 337, 340, 404, 434, 358 444 democracy, tribal & Buddhist. fertility 259, 265, 273, 294, 286- 350, 461, 487, 489-90, 492, 583- 7, 290, 292, 300, 303, 305-6, 308, 5, 643 311, 313-5, 320, 333, 340, 343; Deussen, P. 105 goddesses of 270, 303; of deva-dasi 336 women and earth 287-9, 314; dhamma 481, 490, 499, 550 magic 101, 250, 308, 312-3, 316. Dhammapada Commentary 513 319-20, 614, 650 dharma 166, 228, 332, 403, 550 Fick, R. 201-2, 208, 211-3, 215, Dharma Sutras 132, 139, 200, 468, 475-7 211, 217, 221-3 folk culture 112, 115, 180; ritua! Digha Nikaya 481, 507 232 diksa 441-2 Foucher, A. 136, 140 Dinka 530-2, 545 four noble truths 499-501 Dionysos 274 Frazer, J. G. 89, 263, 287-8, 290. division, primitive law of 556- 292, 313, 351 8, 570-1, 573-5, 579-81, 588, funeral rite 309, 313 595-7, 636. See also braaga & amsa Divyavadana 1, 7, 38 GAMBLING 579-81 dukkata 38-40, 465-6 gana 110, 128, 131, 140. 145-7, Dulva 520 150-2, 156-8, 160, 162. 166, Durant, W. 80 168, 170-1, 228-9, 467-8, 489- Durga 259, 266, 292-4, 325, 359 90, 560, 581, 593 Dutt, R. C. 182-3, 200 Ganapati Tattva 134 Ganapati Upanisad 134 Ganapatyas 129, 250

EARTH 287, 289-91, 292, 303, 311, Ganesa caturthi vrata 232-4,

313-5, 332, 333, 339; goddess 248, 251

265, 293; mother 292, 303, 306 Ganesa Gita 136

Egypt 55, 144-6, 275, 281, 346 Ganesa Purana 134

Ehrenfels, O. R. 253-5, 261, 265 Garbe, R. 6, 7, 31, 364-5, 367, 369, 375, 379-81, 397-8, 408, eight-fold path 502 eight finalities 522-3 424, 429-31, 438, 422-4, 446,

Eleusinian mysteries 346 450-2

endogamy 203-5, 206, 210-1, 213, Gaudapada 61, 366, 378-9. 383,

216 386-7, 394, 404-5, 408, 411-2,

Engels 5, 71, 188-9, 225, 229, 419-21, 449, 453

478, 558, 597, 632, 635-6, 643, Gauri 233-5, 328-9, 357 Geldner 122, 595 652 Ghosh, B. K. 56 L-44

690 LOKAYATA

Ghosh, R. 547 58-60, 323 Giles 252 Gita 35, 41-2, 49-50, 59, 61-2, initiation 167, 279, 284, 305, 310, 332, 354, 441, 464-5, 468-9, 499 137, 377, 424, 431. Gobhila Grihya Sutra 211, 246, Isvara Krishna 365-6, 368, 384, 389, 398-400, 410, 415, 417, 419_ 271 Gonda 656 20, 423, 451-2, 456. See also Sankhya Karika Goraksa 331 Iyer, A. K. 86, 354 gotra 79, 206-8, 212-4, 216, 472, 513; exogamy 216; vedic 531-3, Getra Fravara Nibandhana Ka- dambam 209 JACOBI, H. 374

Gough, A. E. 370. 429-40, 442-3 Jaimini 194

Govindaraja 131 Jaiminiya Upanisad Brahmana Gramadevata 265-6 78

Grihya Sutras 57, 130, 211, 271 Jainism 63, 144, 362, 373, 375 Group bond 175, 598; life 170, 380, 397, 459, 473, 507, 510, 512 173, 604, 640; marriage 159, 514, 516, 518, 520-2

219, 223, 314 Jatakas 201, 468, 473, 475-7, 503,

guna 386-8, 410-11, 415, 418, 505, 515

426-8, 450, 454-5, 457 Jayanta 24, 46

Gunaratna 2, 16, 51-3, 60, 65, Jayaswal, K. P. 143, 147, 151, 129, 342, 362, 365, 368, 409 153-5, 158-60, 162, 183. 195-6, Gupta, A. C. 133 468, 489-90, 492, 504, 586. 590

Gupta-period 138-9, 142, 293 Jinadasa 176

HAITUKAH 25, 27, 37 KAFFIRS 530, 558-9

Hara 326-9, 357 Kakudha Katyayana 511 Harappa 262, 264, 293, 302 Kali 259, 266, 359

Haribhadra 2, 3 kalpa-latika 249, 302

Harivamsa 85, 321 kama 49-50, 52-3, 65, 67, 228-30, Harrison, J. E. 94 278, 285, 336, 550

Harsacarita 33 kamacara 319-21, 336

Hegel. 185, 199 Kanada 374, 448

Hillebrandt 589 Kane, P. V. 37, 139, 168, 195, Hoernle 522-4 207-8, 218, 250

holi festival 316 Kapalika 16-7, 51-3

Hume, R. E. 80, 122 Kapila 60-1, 360-2, 364, 369, Hunter, W. W. 183-4 Kapilaa 382; Kaapileya 382 hunting 185, 235-6, 237, 241-2, Kapilaaputra 382

247-8, 250-1, 252, 314, 567-8 Kapilavastu 369, 381, 470-2 karma 49-50, 52-3, 65, 67, 228- 30, 278, 285, 336 karuna 352 IMMORTALITY, material 341-2, Kathaka Samhita 78 357-8 Katha Upanisad 47, 369, 424-5, incest 327, 642 428, 443 Indo-Iranian 56, 561, 614-5, 634 Katyayana Srauta Sutra 167, Indus: civilization 55, 57. 261, 321 265-6; people 160-1; period Kausika Sutra 574 360; state 161; and Tantrism Kausitaki Brahmana 68

GENERAL INDEX 691

Kausitaki Upanisad 60 Kautilya 25, 85, 165, 171, 173-5, Madhavacarya 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 12-

177-9, 185, 211, 270-1, 3C9, 4, 24-6, 35, 48, 64, 74, 195,

473. See also Arthasastra 365, 388

Kaviraja, G. N. 324 madya, the ritual use of 370-2,

Keith, A. B. 89-90, 246, 579, 581, 312.

586-8, 594-5, 614-5, 623, 630, Magadha 353, 462

633-4, 641-2, magic 93-5, 100, 104, 107, 109- Kennedy, K. 136 11, 113, 140, 258, 265, 269-71, Kern, J. H. C. 38, 499 275-7, 286-8, 288-9. 292, 296. khapuspa 278, 305, 307 305-6, 311-3, 321, 325, 333, 338, Khasis 121, 164, 237-8, 240, 253- 342, 350-2, 354, 405, 437, 441- 3, 444, 561, 574, 604-5, 612-4, 4 Kosambi, D. D. 142. 173, 185, 619-21, 649, 654; for increase 197-8, 200, 209, 253, 435, 468, of cattle 106; for rain-making 473, 476-7, 481 106, 114, 273-4, 276, 292, 297-8. Krisna 127, 328 See also agriculture

Krisnamisra 10 Mahabharata 32, 33, 35, 40, 78, Krisna Yajur Veda 443 85, 121, 130, 135, 139, 143, 156- Kubjika Tantra 331 8, 161-2, 164-5, 166-7, 18€, 202, kula piants 294; woman 278 317, 322, 364, 366, 372, 380-2, Kularnava Tantra 334 386, 399-400, 423-4, 429, 431, Kullukabhatta 26, 49, 655 482, 601 Kumarila Bhatta 39-40 Mahabodhi Jataka 511-3 Kutadanta Sutta 20, 505 Mahanirvana Tantra 73, 322 Maha Parinibbana Sutta 173, 175, 470, 483 LABOUR: COLLECTIVE 564, 574, Mahavagga 464, 488-90, 500, 504

576; manual 346, 348-51, 466, Mahavastu Avadana 481 €03, 626, 652-4 Mahavira 486, 494, 505-7, 512, Lalita Vistara 142, 500 516, 518, 520-1

land, ownership of 187-9, 482; Mahayana Puddhism 325, 327 periodic redistribution of 190. Mahidhara 129

582 Mainamatir Gan 331 lata 297, 300, 307 Maine, H. S. 187-9, 217-9, 224 lata-sadhana 296-7, 299-300. maithuna 307-9, 313, 343, 358

303 Maitrayani Samhita 256, 594 Lichhavis 173, 175-6, 202, 472, Maitrayani Upanisad 41-2, 49, 494, 522 369, 425, 427, 443

linga 22-3, 281, 317 Majjhima Nikaya 572 linga-sarira 430 Majumdar, D. N. 238 lotus, the ritual significance of Majumdar, R. C. 151-2, 463, 281-3, 293, 295, 301 489, 492, 494

Ludwig 578, 586, 588-9, 595 Makkhali Gosala 459. 485, 507, 511-2, 519-21 male: the superiority of 237-8,

MACDONELL, 88-9, 163, 539, 549, 241, 243-5, 257, 401, 434; gods

561-2, 572-3, 579, 581, 585-8, 233-5, 242, 249-51, 260, 266;

594-5, 601-2, 615-7, 623, 649, ritual surrender of sex of 276-

653 8, 280, 282, 285-7, 299. See also

Madana 18, 50 patriarchy, patrilineal descent, pastoral economy.

692 LOKAYATA

mamsa, the ritual use of 307, 136, 156, 152, 154, 194 262, 321, 326 531, 595, 606, 653 Manava Grihya Sutra 130-1, Moret, M. & Davy, G. 92, 144-5 134-6, 139, 141, 146, 211 Morgan, 5, 87, 117-9, 158, 166, Mandukya Upanisad 366 191, 204, 222-3, 472, 486-8, Manibhadra 3, 29-30 583-5, 643 mani 281 mother goddess 258, 260, 264-5, mantra 270-1, 281, 329, 332, 564, 275, 359, 404; the great mother 607.614 263-4, 265-6, 292, 303 Mantra Maharnava 250 mother-right 5. 232, 238-40, Manu 25-6, 37, 49, 131, 138, 141. 252-4, 257-9, 263-4, 340, 381-2, 146, 167, 192, 195, 200-1. 211, 407-8 217-9, 243, 364, 374, 377-8, 605 mudra, the ritual use of 307, 326 Markandeya Purana 259 Muir, J. 12-4, 39-40 marriage, the institution of 332: Mukhopadhyaya, R. 3 monogamian form of 165-6. Musikas 143-4 478; the ritual of 310. 313 Marshall. J. 5, 261-2, 264-5, 266. 293, 323 Marx 30, 71, 119-21. 127. 186-8, NANDI 280

199, 226-7, 229, 497, 559. 582. Naga 316

597, 632, 652 Narada 15

Matanga-dynasty 142-3 Narada Purana 135

Mathara Bhasya 368 nastikas 25, 37, 51, 375

matriarchy 73, 116. 221, 237. Natha cult 331

252-4, 256-7, 261, 263-5, 279. Needham, J. 64, 275. 279, 298,

320, 341, 346, 403, 405-7, 422, 323, 337-9, 342-4, 349-51, 357,

435-6, 444, 528, 565. See also 625-6

agriculture Nehru, J. 225

matrilineal descent 121, 164. Nigantha Nathaputta 507, 511-3

238, 240-1, 252 Nighantu 529-31. 546, 549, 554,

matsya, the ritual use of 307 570, 573, 589, 598, 648-9, 652,

Matsya Purana 208 Nilakantha 121, 159, 165, 15 656-8

Maurer 188-9 Maurya-dynasty 142, 161. 177, Nirayavalika 176

181, 470; possible connection Nirukta 649, 656-8

with moriya and mora 470 nirvana 480-1, 507

Max-Muller 82, 557 niyati 485, 519-21, 521

maya 59, 367, 393, 406, 114, 426, nudity, the ritual use of 290-1,

428, 572, 635-6, 643-5. 648-50, 292, 297-9, 302-3, 315, 521

652-3, 656; vada 614, 643 mayamoha 41 Medhatithi 25-6, 37 OLDENEURG, H. 39. 83-5 424, Meru Tantra 322 429, 461, 463, 466, 471, 493-4 Milinda 33, 511-3 Mitra, R. 65, 148, 243 Mitramisra 195 PABBAJJA 464.6, 486-7, 503 Mohenjo-daro 42, 262, 264. See padma, the ritual symbolism of also Indus 281-2, 295, 301, 325, 343 moksa 228, 427, 550, 646 Monier-Williams 2, 72, 129, 132, Pakudha Kaccayana 486, 507, 510-2, 574-6

GENERAL INDEX 693

panca-makara 51, 278, 285, 307- primeval matter 372, 383, 389, 9, 312-3, 326 391-3, 399, 409-10, 425-7, 434, Pancasikha 382 450-1, 454. See also pradhana Pancavimsa Brahmana 587, 530 and prakriti Panini 154-6, 160, 162, 168-9. 208, 228 private property 120, 127, 150, 192-3, 466, 477-9, 481, 486, 492- Paraskara Grihya Sutra 167, 4, 501, 566-8, 579, 582 246, 271 promiscuity, ritual 129, 163, 166, Pargiter, F. E. 196 314-5, 316 pcrinoma 384-5. 389, 390, 393. proto-materialism 334, 358, 359, 298, 410, 413-5, 420, 423 430-31, 434-5, 446, 648, 656-7, Parvati 137-8, 306, 355 659-61, 663 pastoral economy 72-3, 116-7, Purana 82, 116, 132, 134-5, 136- 161, 185, 332, 235-7, 241, 242- 8, 139, 143, 149-50, 170, 181, 6. 247, 252, 256, 259, 278, 313. 259, 321, 333, 364, 377, 429 318, 320, 401-2. 435-6, 442, 444- Purandara 7, 28-9 5,528, 567-8, 575, 590, 335 Patanjala Tantra 362 puga 160, 168, 228 Purana Kassapa 486. 507, 509, Patanjali 7, 154, 155-7, 228-9 511-3, 516-8 436, 438 purna-ghata 294-5 patriarchy 73, 117, 166, 221, 243, purusa 61-2, 170, 232, 245, 284, 245, 254-6, 259, 274, 276-6, 305, 338, 359-60, 371, 383ff. 444-5, 307, 318, 320, 382, 402, 4S5-6, 447, 451-2, 454, 456, 494 444, 528. 585, 591, 594 patrilineal descent 120, 164, 237-8, 240-1, 252 Prabhakara 39-40 RADHA 328

Prabodha Candrodaya 10, 12, 72 Radhakrishnan, S. 3, 10, 11, 80-

pradhana 363, 367, 372-4, 376, 2, 122, 244, 247, 363, 469. 471,

383-5, 388-90, 393-5, 393, 404- 623-5, 631

6, 412-4, 420, 422-3, 425-7, rajan 387, 389, 415, 430, 434,

427-8 ,430, 447-9. 452-3. 454. 450, 454-5, 581, 585, 589-91,

458. See also primeval matter 593-4, 600, 612. See also tribal

& prakriti. chief.

prajna 325, 328, 648-9 Ramanuja 370-2, 376-8, 380,

Prakriti 61-2. 73, 232, 265, 269, 383, 428

284, 338, 359-60, 367, 372, 383, Ramayana 13, 81

387, 395, 397-9, 404-6, 411-3, Ranade, R. D. See Belvelkar,

420-2, 430, 434-5, 437-8, 444-6, S. K.

450-2, 456-8, 494, 528; mula Rao, G. N. 136, 247

383 rasa 328, 357

pratitya samutpada 499-501, 504 Rasarnava 356

Pravacana Bhasya 366, 369, 424- Rasendracuramani 356

5, 427, 511 Ray, P. C. 353, 356

pre-Aryans 115-6, 254-5, 261-2, red, the ritual use of 132, 219-

264-5, 442 51, 295, 303, 305-7. See also vermillion. pre-class society 189-90, 229, 347, 351-2, 436, 481-2, 485, 503, religion 93-5, 140, 185, 229, 277,

506, 528, 536-7, 555, 562, 565, 281, 290, 298-9, 305, 327, 332,

581, 632, 635, 643-4. See also 333-4, 337, 352, 486, 497-8, 503, 506-7, 584, 616-8, 628-9, 641 communism reproduction 285-7, 289. 292,

694 LOKAYATA

296, 299, 302-3, 305-6. 311, 322, Samkara Vijaya 129, 250, 330 333, 407 Rhys-Davids 6, 8, 9, 15, 18, 19, Sammoha Tantra 345

32-3, 39, 46-8, 80, 153-4, 201. Samyutta Nikaya 511

459-61, 468, 471-2, 493-4 Sandaka Sutta 512

Rig Veda 57-8, 82, 84, 88-9, 97- sandhyabhasa 344

8, 109-11, 122, 128-9, 136, 146- Sanjaya Belathiputta 486, 507,

8, 151, 170-1, 207, 242, 244-6, 510, 512, 514-6

256, 271, 300, 402, 443, 529 Sankhya Karika 60-1, 231, 361, 364-6, 371-2, 378-9, 382-4, 387, passim Risley, H. 86 389-91, 394-6, 404-6, 411-3,

rita 171, 561, 563, 581, 619, 622- 420-2, 429-31, 447, 449, 451,

4, 627-9, 632-5, 637, 639-41, 53-5. See also Isvarakrishna.

643-4, 651, 663 Sankhya Sara 406

Rivers, W. H. R. 238-9, 533, 542- Sankhya Sutra 364-6, 378-9, 405, 411-2, 420-2 4 Roth, R. 532, 635, 652 Sankhyayana Grihya Sutra 271

Roy Chaudhuri, H. C. 177 Sankrityayana, R. 465

Russell, R. V. & Hiralal 86, 20t- Santal 183-5, 215, 270, 310, 315,

6, 213, 255 317 Santhagara 471-2

SABHA 160, 578, 582-4, 590-2, Saptamatrikas 251 Sarva Darsana Samgraha 1,. 4, 596, 600-1 8, 9, 12, 17, 21, 33, 74, 367, 388 Saddharma Pundarika 37 Sarva Siddhanta Samgraha 12 Sahajia 16-7, 284-5, 32F. 330-2, Sasti Tantra 361, 367-8, 409, 412 334, 339, 347 Sastri, D. R. 17-8 Saivism 326, 329 Sastri, H. P. 1, 16-7, 27, 53-4, Sakambhari 293, 302 65, 116, 285, 325, 327, 330, 369, Sakta 263, 327, 329 Sakti 251, 259-60, 263, 265, 281 375, 381, 481-2

283-4, 324, 326, 328, 404, 406, sat-cakra-dheda 280, 282

410; Saktism 263-4, 294 Satapatha Brahmana 55, 57-8,

Sakyas 460, 470-2, 479, 490 69, 208, 220, 401, 587, 614

Sama Veda 82, 97-8, 102, 104, Sat Darsana Samuccaya 2, 29, 51 107 sattva 387, 389, 425-6, 430, 434. Samanna Phala Sutta 486, 507, 510-2, 516, 518-20 450, 452, 454-5

Samhitas 67-8, 82, 169, 256, 318, Sayana 20, 57-9, 112, 147, 168,

401, 634 170, 529, 535-7, 546, 563, 570,

samiti 160, 578, 582-4, 590-2, 587-9, 592-3, 606-7, 009, 626, 640, 649-51, 653-4, 657-9 596, 600-1 saingha 147, 154-6, 157, 162, 166 science 335, 338, 340-5, 349-51,

168, 171-3, 228, 640; Buddhist 351-3, 355-6, 358, 363; proto-

468-70, 473, 481, 483-5, 493-5, 346, 349-51, 355-6, 358

499, 503, 507. See also gana, Seal, B. N. 363, 454-6 Sen, K. M. 149, 330-1 puga, sreni and vraata. Samkara 2, 30, 45-7, 79-81, 84, Senart, E. 199

93, 115, 122, 355, 360-2, 370-2, Sengupta, S. C. 200

376-8, 381, 383-5, 388-90, 394- siddhas 332, 352

6, 409, 413-5, 423, 428. 447-9, Silamka 362, 397

452, 644-6, 655 sittars 354-6 Siva 127-8, 137-8, 149, 235, 326,

GENERAL INDEX 695

328, 355 Thomson, G. 5, 71, 76, 88, 94-5, Skcnda Purana 134, 137 118-9, 140, 190, 216, 222-3, 235, slave 460-2, 465-6, 474, 478, 513- 240-1, 249, 251, 272, 284, 297, 4, 521, 598 305, 337, 343, 346, 486, 494, 541, Smith, V. 193 568, 573, 632 sreni 160, 168, 228. See aiso Thurston, E. 86 gana Todas 236-7, 243, 532-3: the sri-cakra 300-1 Sridharaswami 42, 49-50 deities and prayers of 542-5 totemism 87-9, 112, 122, 140-1, state, as contrasted with tribe 142-3, 144-6, 150, 157, 155, 206, 125-6, 142-4, 151-3, 159-60, 210, 248, 441, 470, 513 171, 177-8, 184, 186, 229, 462, 467, 469-71, 475, 477-9, 485, tribal administration 582-3: as-

498, 501, 524; Asiatic 187; in sembly 468, 474, 583-5 589-90,

Egypt 144-6; in the Indus 161 593-5, 601, 626; chie: 586, 589- 91, 594; constitution 472, 582, Strabo 580 593; democracy 458, 473-5, 481, stri-puja 327, 343 583-5, 598; equality 485, 640, stri-rajya 143 Sudra 131, 138, 157, 163, 181, law 477; morality 477; organi-

331, 460, 612 sation 125, 127-8, 189, 200,

Sukraniti Sara 25 202-4, 206, 211, 213. 215-7, 226,

Sumangala Vilasini 175, 513 468-70, 484, 492, 591-2, 598,

Sumeria 42, 54-5 603; society 34-5, 110, 147, 149- 50, 152-4, 155-7, 160-1, 169-70, sura, the ritual use of 312-3, 574 171-3, 177-9, 185-6, 191, 215, svabhava-vada 394-6, 414-5, 420, 451 221, 224, 230, 266, 324, 471-2,

Svetasvetara Upanisad 369, 406, 478, 484-6, 492, 498, 523, 590-2,

424-5, 428-9, 443 606, 620, 632 Tucci, G. 6, 8, 14-5, 28, 32

TABOO 185, 206-7, 249, 227, 305 UCCHISTA GANAPATI 129, 248,

Tagore, A. 113, 115 331, 342 Taittiriya Samhita 139, 256, 271, Udayana 23 318, 401 Upasampata 464, 486-8, 503 Taittiriya Upanisad 321, 435, Utsava Sanketa 158-9 657, 660-2 tamas 387, 389, 410, 430, 434, 450, 454-5 VACASPATI MISRA 36G-7, 437

Tandya Maha Brahmana 167, Vadideva Suri 29

169, 401, 580 Vahikas 121, 155-7, 162-3, 165

Tantrasara 250 Vaisnava 222-9, 339-40

Tao 625; Taoism 64, 275, 278, Vajjians 173-5, 188, 202, 470-1,

298, 337-9, 344-6, 350, 352, 357 473, 475, 483-5, 522-3

Tara Tantra 344 Vajasaneyi 60

Tarkaratna, P. 2 Vajacneyi Samhita 67, 129, 139,

Tevijja Sutta 505 149, 318, 614

Theragatha 498 vajra 281, 325-6, 343

Therigatha 499 Valle-Poussin 10, 281, 326, 496

Thibaut, G. 361, 369-70, 374, vamacara 65-6, 70-2, 116, 129,

391, 645-6 272, 278-9, 284-5, 332

Thomas, F. W. 8, 53, 153, 469-70 Vamakesvara Tantra 279 Varahamihira 129

696 LOKAYATA

varga 168 149; vraatya 157, 166-8, 182, varta 72 580; vraatyastoma 167, 560, 580 Varttika Sutra 7 rrata 113-5, 168, 232-4, 564, 623, Vedic chiefs 585; deities 534-41, 651 561, 565, 572-3, 576, 581. 617-8. vyakta 410, 421, 453-4 629-31, 634, 639, 641-2, 652, 663: vyapti 22-3 economy 243, 246, 271, 529 ff; rituals 67, 70, 81, 97-8. 116, 181, 246, 312, 379, 441, 581-2, 587. 603-5, 609, 613, 622; songs and WABER 561

singers 97-9, 101-3, 109-11, 115- Whitney 532, 574, 595, 599, 635

6, 159, 162, 242, 588, 606, 608-9. Wilks, M. 187, 189, 193. 198

613, 617, 657, 663; texts bear- Wilson, H. H. 73, 128-9, 152, 214.

ing animal names 82-4; tribes 379, 419, 421, 592, 654

580, 589, 591-3. See also posto- wine, the ritual use of 307-9.

ral economy 312-4, 316, 326

Vedanta 362, 365-6, 370-2, 375- Winternitz 97, 107, 135, 242, 530.

6, 385-6, 393, 402, 406, 408-10, 556-7, 618, 621-3

413, 417-9, 428-9, 431. 434, 446- witchcraft 620-1

8, 644-6; Advaita 647; Vedantic 366-7, 374, 381. 383-4, 387-9, 395, 400, 409-11, 416, 419-21, YAJNAVALKYA 15, 121-2, 134-6. 430, 661; Vedantist 22, 26-7. 139, 141, 146, 211 326, 358, 375, 400, 409, 447, 450. Lang 338-9, 342 453, 527. See also Badarayana. yantra 294-5, 296, 300-2, 333, Ramanuja, Samkara. 356 Vedanta Sutra 369, 645 Yaska 658-60 vermillion, the ritual use of 250. ying 338-9. 342 295-6, 305, 307 yoga 63, 280, 282, 283, 284, 286, vidatha 578, 586, 590, 594-6, 600, 326, 329, 330, 332. 334, 342, 343, 607, 635, 650 368-9, 380, 384, 400, 427, 429-30, Vijnana Bhiksu 366-7. 406, 408, 436-8, 445, 652; and primitive 411-2, 422, 437, 454 practices 439-41 vijnana vada 370 Yoga Sutra 436-8, 444, 453 Vinaya Pitaka 15, 38. 4C4-6, Y'oginis 278, 326, 341. See also 486, 488, 490 Bhairavis Visnu Purana 41, 49, 85 : yoni 281, 299 vivarta-vada 385, 388, 420 vraata 149, 160, 168-9, 170-1. 228, 581, 593, 640; Vraatapati ZULUS 532

CORRIGENDA

P. 37, lines 17, 19, 22, 29: read 'Medhatithi' for 'Medhatiti'. P. 38, line 5: read 'wordly' for 'world-'. P. 38, line 15: insert '(2)' before 'expert' etc. P. 58: foot-note 165 should read as 'See Childe NLMAE 183-4'.

P. 111, line 16: read 'later' for 'latest'. Pp. 111-2: read 'Maruts' for 'Marutas'. P. 129, line 25: insert 'took it as' after 'sixth century A.D.' P. 132, line 21: read 'vighnu' for 'cighna'. P. 166, last line: read 'annam na bhunjate' for 'annam bhunjate'. P. 204, line 8: read 'and traced to totemistic animals' for 'and to totemistic animals'. P. 227, line 22: delete 'not' after 'ideology'. P. 293, line 23: read '(Fig. 2)' for '(Fig. 3)'. P. 322: transpose captions of Figs. 11 & 13. P. 366, line 32: read 'Vedanta school' for 'Nyaya school'.