6 GLIMPSES OF A POSSIBLE HISTORY FROM BELOW: EARLY INDIA
The nineteenth century was the age of the grand edifices of historical explanation and theoretical construction. While some of these edifices still stand firm, others are tottering. Even those that still stand often require repair and renovation, sometimes of a structural kind, in the light of new knowledge and fresh theories. The refining of concepts and theories therefore becomes a necessary part of the historical exercise and is particularly incumbent on those who, as conscientious historians, use theoretical frameworks to formulate their initial hypotheses.
Among the early sub-periods, Vedic society has been described as tribal. The term ‘tribal’, which we have all used in the past, has rightly come in for some questioning. Whatever precision it may once have had seems to have become blurred, so perhaps we need either to redefine it or to use more exact terms for societies that we have so far described as tribal.
In its precise meaning, ‘tribe’ refers to a community of people claiming descent from a common ancestor. In its application, however, it has been used to cover a variety of social and economic forms, not to mention racial and biological identities: and this tends to confuse the original meaning.
Even as a convention it has lost much of its precision. The more recently preferred term, lineage, narrows the focus. Although the economic range remains, lineage does emphasize succession and descent with the implication that these are decisive in determining social status and control over economic resources. It also helps differentiate between chiefships—where lineage is a significant identity, and kingship—where power is concentrated and evokes a larger number of impersonal sanctions.
The concept of vamsha (succession) carries a meaning similar to lineage and is central to Vedic society with its emphasis on succession even as a simulated lineage. Thus vamsha is used to mean a descent group among the rajanyas or kshatriyas, but is also used in the list of Upanishadic teachers where succession refers not to birth but to the passing on of knowledge.
Lineage becomes important in the structure of each varna, defined by permitted rules of marriage and kinship and by ranking in an order of status, the control over resources being implicit. The emergence of the four varnas is thus closely allied to the essentials of a society based on the central identity of lineage.
In a stratified society the reinforcing of status is necessary. But where there is no recognized private property in land, and no effective state, such reinforcing has to be done by sanctions that often take a ritual or religious form. In the absence of taxation as a system of control in the Vedic period, sacrificial ritual functioned as the occasion for renewing the status of the yajamana, the patron who orders the sacrifice. Apart from its religious and social role, sacrificial ritual also had an economic function. It was the occasion when wealth that had been channeled to the yajamana was distributed by him in the form of gifts to the brahmana priests, and these strengthened their social rank and ensured them wealth. The ritual served to restrict the distribution of wealth to the brahmanas and the kshatriyas but at the same time prevented a substantial accumulation of wealth by either, for whatever came in the form of gifts and prestations from the lesser clans, the vish, to the ruling clans, the kshatriyas, was largely consumed in the ritual and only the remainder gifted to the brahmanas. Generosity being important to the office of the chief, wealth was not hoarded. This is a form of the economy of gift- exchange although the exchange is uneven: the priest receives the tangible gift whereas the patron can only claim the intangibility of status and spiritual merit on the completion of the ritual. The display, consumption and distribution of wealth at the major rituals such as the rajasuya and the ashvamedha, was in turn a stimulus to production, for the ritual was also seen as a communication with and sanction from the supernatural. Embedded in the sacrificial ritual therefore were important facets of the economy. This may be a partial explanation of why a major change in the state system accompanied by a peasant economy occurred initially in the mid-first millennium BC not in the western Ganga valley but in the adjoining area of the middle Ganga valley. This change was occasioned, not only by an increase in economic production and a greater social disparity but also by the fact that the prestation economy—of making gift offerings to a patron usually associated with a lineage-based society—became more and more marginal in the latter region, and in some areas was altogether absent.
Some scholars regard the term ‘peasant economy’ as an imprecise concept. However, it is of some use as a measurement of change. The label of ‘peasant’ has been applied to a variety of categories, some of which are dissimilar. The use of a single word as a portmanteau description confuses the categories and therefore a differentiation is necessary. Eric Wolf defines peasants as transferring their surplus to a ruler which surplus is then used to support the lifestyle of the ruler and the elite.’ This definition seems to me inadequate, for the important point is not merely the existence of a surplus but the mechanism by which it is transferred, and it is to this that I would relate the emergence of a peasant economy. That the recognition of an incipient peasant economy in various parts of India is significant to the study of social history hardly needs stressing since concomitant with this is also the establishing of particular kinds of state systems, variant forms of jatis and new religious and cultural idioms in the area. For the early period of Indian history the term peasant has been used to translate both the Rigvedic vish as well as the gahapati (this roughly translated as ‘peasant’ but more of this later) of Pali sources. But some distinction is called for. The Vedic vish was primarily a member of a clan although this did not preclude him from being a cultivator as well. The transferring of surpluses, in this case the voluntary prestations of the vish to the kshatriya, points to a stratified rather than an egalitarian society and the simile in the Veda of the kshatriya eating the vish like the deer eats the grain, would indicate greater pressures for larger gifts, prestations, offerings.
But, the transfer was not invariably through an enforced system of taxation. In the absence of private ownership of land, the relationship of the vish to the kshatriya would have been less contrapuntal, with little need of an enforced collection of the surplus. The context of the references in the Vedas to bali, bhaga and shulka (the offering, the share, the value), terms used in later periods for taxes, suggest that at this time they were voluntary and random, although the randomness gradually changed to required offerings particularly at sacrificial rituals. However, the three major prerequisites governing a system of taxation—a contracted amount, collected at stipulated periods, by persons designated as tax collectors—are absent in the Vedic texts. The recognition of these prerequisites in the post-Vedic period and the collection of taxes from the cultivators by the State would seem decisive in registering the change from cultivators to peasants in which the existence of an economy based on peasant agriculture becomes clear.
The introduction of taxation presupposes the impersonal authority of the State and some degree of alienation of the cultivator from the authority to whom the surplus is given, unlike in the lineage-based society where gifts were given more informally although directly. Taxation reduced the quantity of gifts and became the more substantial part of what was taken from the peasant, but these prestations were not terminated. The sanction of the religious ritual becomes more marginal and that of the state more central, the change occurring gradually over time. The formation of the state is therefore tied into this change. For the cultivator
the change to land becoming property or a legal entity—whether his or of
someone else—and the pressures on cultivation, have to do not only with
subsistence but also with a provision for ensuring a surplus. This highlights the
difference between appropriation in the earlier system and exploitation in the
latter.
The Vedic vish was more a generalized label under which herding, cultivation
and minimal crafts adequate to a household were included. Such groups were
germane to the later peasant household. In effect, because the relationship with
the dominant kshatriyas was based on gifts rather than on taxes, these cultivators
would seem part of a lineage society in which their subservience to a dominant
group arose more out of the exigencies of kinship or the ordering of clans than
out of exploited labour, although the latter can be seen to increase in time.
A gradual mutation becomes evident from the frequent references in the Pali
sources to the gahapati. The existence of the gahapati focuses more sharply on
the presence of what might be called a peasant economy. But to translate
gahapati as peasant is to provide a mere slice of its total meaning. Derived from
grihapati, the head of the household, the gahapati included a range of meanings
such as the wealthy mahashala brahmanas addressed as gahapatis by the Buddha,
who had received as donations extensive, tax-free, arable land and is also used
for those who paid taxes—the wealthy landowners who cultivated their large
farms with the help of slaves and hired labourers (dasa-bhritaka).
Those at the lower end of the scale who either owned small plots of land or
were professional ploughmen are more often referred to as the kassakas, from
the Sanskrit word for cultivators, karshaka. The Arthashastra mentions tenants
as upavasa and also refers to another category, the shudra cultivators settled by
the state on cultivable or waste land on a different system of tenure from the
aforesaid: as also the range of cultivators employed on the state farms supervised
by the overseers of agriculture, the sitadhyaksha.
Gahapati, therefore, is perhaps better translated as a landowner who would
generally pay taxes to the state except when the land which he owned was a
religious benefice. The ownership of land and the payment of taxes demarcates
this period of the mid-first millennium BC as one in which a peasant economy
emerged. Traces of the lineage-based society continued in the marking of status
by varna and the performance, although by now of less economic significance,
of the sacrificial rituals.
That the gahapati was not even just a landowner but more a man of means is
supported by the fact that it was from the ranks of the gahapatis that there
emerged the setthis or the financiers. The two terms are often associated in the
literature of the period and this is further attested in the votive inscriptions
recording donations to the Buddhist sangha at stupa sites in central India and the
western and eastern Deccan from the late first millennium BC. Gahapati fathers
have setthi sons as well as the other way round. It would seem that gahapati
status was acquired through the practice of any respectable profession that
provided a decent income, although the most frequent references are to
landownership and commerce.
This is not to suggest that trade originated with the landowning groups but
rather that the commercialization of exchange was probably tied to the
emergence of the gahapati. In examining the origins of trade it is necessary to
define more clearly the nature of the exchange involved. Broadly, there are some
recognizable forms of exchange that can either develop into commercialized
exchange or supplement it. There is evidence of luxury goods exchanged by
ruling groups as a part of gift-exchange. Marriage alliances between kshatriya
families involved an exchange of gifts. Thus, when Bharata visits his maternal
Kekeya kinsmen, he returns with a variety of gifts, including horses. This is not
an exchange based on need but is a channel through which status and kinship is
confirmed. It may in addition lead to other forms of exchange.
The major royal sacrifices required tributes and gifts to be brought to the
yajamana which he then distributed at the end of the ritual. The description of
the rajasuya of Yudhisthira in the Mahabharata provides an interesting inventory
of valued items. Sacrificial rituals involved the gifting of cattle and possibly
some gold. Boastful poets added to this horses, chariots, and on occasion, dasis
(slave women), given to them by the victorious cattle-raiders whose prowess the
poets had praised. These gifts became part of a distribution and exchange of
wealth which in lineage-based societies formed the salient part of the wealth of
those who ruled, whereas in the change to an economy based on peasant
agriculture, they were merely a part of the wealth accumulated by the ruling
families and the more wealthy gahapatis.
Less spectacular but more essential was another form of exchange—that of
raw materials and commodities brought by itinerant groups such as smiths and
pastoralists. It has been argued that the itinerant metal-smiths formed a network
of connections between villages. Metal, particularly iron and iron objects were
items of regular trade. The role of pastoralists in forms of exchange and in
trading circuits is now gaining attention, particularly of those groups that had a
regular pattern of transhumance—moving from pastures at lower elevation to
those higher up in summer and returning in winter. Transactions that accompany
this circuit have been described as a vertical economy. Exchange through
sources of itinerant professionals was probably the starting point of the beat of
pedlars that remains a continuing feature of one level of exchange in India.
Yet another category is what might be called exchange between one
settlement and the next. This is a useful basis for plotting the gradual diffusion of
an item as for example, the better quality varieties of pottery in archaeological
evidence. The distribution of the Northern Black Polished Ware—a luxury
ceramic—is an indicator of places in contact with each other. Such an exchange
provides evidence not only on local trade but also on the geographical reach of
intra-regional contacts. Some of these settlements may then have come to play
the role of local markets, the equivalent perhaps of what the Pali texts refer to as
the nigama. These in turn are likely to have been the nuclei of urban growth as in
the case of towns such as Rajagriha and Sravasti in the middle Ganga plain.
Distinct from all these is the familiar picture of trade which dominates the
scene in the post-Mauryan period. This is the commercial exchange between two
or more centres processing and producing commodities specifically destined for
trade. The organization of this more complex form involved a hierarchy of
producers and traders some of whom were sedentary while others were carriers
of the items traded but of a different order from pedlars and pastoralists. The
picture of commercialized exchange emerges from Buddhist texts. Some monks
were also involved in brade. The Arthashastra regards it as a legitimate source
of revenue for the State. The question then arose of the degree of State
interference and control that would be conducive to increasing the finances of
the State.
The major artefact in this trade (other than the commodities) was coined
metallic money, providing evidence of the degree of complexity and the extent
of such trade and trading circuits. These early coins in some instances were
issued by the nigama and in other cases may have been issued by local
authorities or possibly by ruling families. In the post-Mauryan period dynastic
issues gained currency, a clear pointer to the importance of commercialized
exchange. However, even in this period local issues remained in circulation
suggesting multiple levels of exchange.
Given these commercial activities, the control of trade routes becomes a
significant factor in political policy and military annexations. Recent analyses of
activities along the Silk Route linking China to the eastern Mediterranean via
Central Asia have revealed a variety of levels of exchange. These ranged from
gift-exchange to sophisticated emporia, in the context of political relations
between tribal groups and established centres of political power, suggesting
ways in which the complicated question of trade, often treated as a uniform
monolith by historians of early India, may now be investigated. The Roman
trade with India, as is clear from both commodities and the function of money,
also spans a similar range. Diverse forms of exchange within a larger trading
system suggest the coexistence of various economic levels within that system
and sharpen the social contours of the groups involved.
Analyzing trade also requires locating those involved in these exchanges in
the social hierarchy of the time. In the production of goods for exchange,
artisans, whether individuals or in guilds, had relationships with merchants and
financiers that were as diverse in form as the various categories of relationships
and tenancies between cultivators and landowners. The role of the shilpin
(artisan) and the shreni (guild) is quite distinct from the setthi. Their presence
registers a change in the nature of the trade as does the differentiation between
categories of professionals, such as the vanija (merchant), setthi (financier and
merchant), and the sarthavaha, (caravaneer).
When commercialized exchange becomes active it introduces a substantial
change. The investment required for elaborate trade had to be provided by a
well-endowed group able to invest its surplus in risk-taking ventures. The
obvious category was the gahapati who could fall back on land if the venture
failed. That it turned out to be highly successful is clear from the fact that not
only did the setthis emerge from the ranks of the gahapatis, but, by the post-
Mauryan period, had an independent identity as financiers and gradually
superceded the gahapatis.
As a result of the wealth they accumulated the setthis came to be powerful,
for some of them were known to be financiers of kings and obtained in return
rights to collect revenue, perhaps the prototype of what was later to become the
regular form of emoluments to administrative officers. On the manifestations of
trade, Buddhist and Jaina sources together with epigraphic and archaeological
evidence provide a useful counterpoint to the conventional Dharmashastra
literature of this period.
The link between agriculture and commerce is important for understanding
the changes in the subsequent period. The opulence of those involved in
commerce was poured into the adornment of religious monuments, monasteries
and images and in the conspicuous consumption that is associated with the
wealthier town-dwellers of these times. This tends to obscure the agrarian scene
where one notices less of wealthy landowners and large estates and more of
those with small holdings.
Small plots of land could be purchased and donated to religious beneficiaries
and it seems unlikely, as has been argued, that such sales were restricted to
religious donations. Small holdings together with the alienation of land could
point to some degree of impoverishment among peasants. References to debt
bondage (ahitaka, atmavikreta), as a regular if not frequent category of slavery,
as well as the increasing references to vishti (forced labour or a labour tax),
suggest a different rural scene from that of the preceding period. Oppressive
taxation—referred to as pain-causing taxation—is mentioned as an evil.
This mutation was endemic to the evident change in the post-Gupta period.
Where trade flourished, the resources of the urban centres and the trade routes
bouyed up the system: but this period points to a declining trade in some areas.
Internal commercialized trade requires the ballast of agrarian settlements and
where lineage-based societies could be converted into peasant economies, the
agrarian support to trade would be strengthened.
Earlier networks of exchange had permitted an easier coexistence with
lineage-based societies. Their resources, generally raw materials such as
elephants, timber and gemstones could, as items of exchange, be easily tapped
by traders through barter and direct exchange without disturbing the social
structure to any appreciable degree. On the other hand, because of the
requirement of land and labour, state systems more heavily dependent on a
peasant economy had to absorb these societies and convert them into peasant
economies in order to extract the benefits.
Where trade declined or where new states were established, the need to
develop the agrarian economy became necessary. The granting of land appears to
have been the mechanism adopted for extending areas under cultivation. The
reasons for this change in the post-Gupta period need more detailed
investigation, particularly at a regional level. In the very useful work done so far,
substantial data has surfaced. What is now required is a sifting and classifying of
the data to provide more precise answers and to evoke fresh questions.
The kind of data required is that which would provide information on basic
questions relating to agrarian relations. A comparative regional view would be
useful. Grants could be classified in terms of type and area, the nature of the land
and soil, the crops grown, local irrigation, degrees of ownership and tenancy, and
who provided labour. A worm’s eye view of agriculture could be better handled
through inter-disciplinary research. Historians could work with soil specialists
and hydrologists. The absence of field studies is unfortunate. Although it has
entered into some discussions of archaeological sites it is absent among
historians. An increase in data of the technical kind can assist the quality of
theoretical analyses. Many of these questions could involve extrapolating from
existing records but the more valuable input would come from fieldwork in the
area under study. It is not for nothing that R.H. Tawney, who wrote on the
economic history of Europe, is believed to have said that the first essential of
research into agrarian history is a stout pair of boots.
At another level, the analyses of the titles of grantees and changes therein
might provide clues. The question of whether the peasantry was free hinges not
only on the technical and legal definitions but also requires a discussion of the
actual status of the peasant. Rights, obligations and dues of the grantees vis-à-vis
the peasants would need to be tabulated in detail. These would provide some
indications of the essentials of the prevailing system.
It is curious that there is little resort to the policy recommended by the
Arthashastra of establishing colonies of cultivators on land owned by the state,
so as to extend agriculture and thereby increase the revenue. Was the state
unable to do so because it lacked the administrative infrastructure, or was it
because it did not have the power to implement such a policy? Or had the
economy changed to the point of discouraging the feasibility of such a policy?
Instead, the state increased the grants of land to religious beneficiaries and later,
but to a lesser extent, to administrative officers in lieu of a salary. This points to
a need for an evaluation of the nature of the states of this period with the
possibility that their formation and structure were different from the previous
ones.
Was this type of state attempting to restructure the economy to a greater
extent than the previous ones that may have been more concerned with revenue
collecting—judging by the model advocated by Kautilya? Did the system of
granting land predominate (perhaps initially) in areas where lineage-based
societies were prevalent so as to facilitate their conversion to a peasant economy
and where lineage could also be used for economic control? More than varna
identities, jati identities would have acted as a bridge to a peasant economy and
ameliorated the rupture with the lineage system. Elements of lineage have often
continued even in some areas where peasant agriculture became the norm.
Religious benefices were on the pattern of earlier grants and were not strictly
an innovation except that now grants were made increasingly to brahmanas and
ostensibly in return for legitimizing the dynasty and for the donor acquiring
religious merit. These were the stated reasons for the grant but were not
sufficient reasons. Grants of this nature, as has been pointed out, were a channel
of acculturation. They could also be used as foci of political loyalty.
If the grants were made initially from state-owned lands, they amounted to a
renouncing of revenue. If the state was unable to administer the extension of
agriculture, was the system of grants also introduced to encourage settlements in
new areas where the grant was of waste land, or alternatively, of cultivated lands
to stabilize the peasantry and induce increased production? Given the fact that
slaves were not used in any quantitative degree in agricultural production at this
time, was the system of grants an attempt at converting the peasantry into a
stable productive force through various mechanisms of subordination and a
chain of intermediaries?
Interestingly, the term gahapati/grihapati drops out of currency, for the system
had changed and terms incorporating raja, samanta and bhogin, become
frequent. Samanta had originally been the word used for a neighbour. The
meaning now changed and it referred to a grantee who had received land.
Bhogin was the one who enjoyed the produce of the land. The recipients of land
grants had the right to receive a range of taxes and dues previously collected by
the state and were soon given administrative and (some) judicial powers. This
permitted them to act us a ‘backup’ administration where the grant was in settled
areas and to introduce the system where new settlements were being established.
It may in origin have been a fiscal measure but in effect became the means of
controlling the peasantry.
The apparent increase in debt bondage and the fear of peasant migration
would point to this being one of the functions of the large-scale grants. That the
possibility of peasant migration to alleviate discontent was being slowly stifled
is suggested by the fact of peasants possibly taking to revolt from the early
second millennium onwards. A rise in brigandage may well have occurred in this
period judging by the increase in hero-stones in some areas. These were
memorials to local heroes who had died defending the village and its cattle. A
qualitative change occurs when the state begins to grant villages or substantial
acreages of land already under cultivation: a change that reflects both on the
economy and on the nature of the state.
The need to fetter the peasantry would seem an evident departure from the
earlier system and this in turn introduced a change in the relationship between
the cultivator and the land now riveted in legalities and liabilities, with tax or
rent no longer being the sole criterion of a peasant economy. The karshaka of
this period found himself in a different situation from the kassaka of earlier
times. The term ‘peasant’ therefore cannot have a blanket usage or meaning
since the variations within it have to be distinguished.
The secular grantees were part of an hierarchical system in which they
mirrored the court at the local level. This is evident from their attempts to imitate
the courtly style as depicted in the art and literature of the time. Grants of land to
the brahmanas as the major religious grantees rehabilitated them to a position of
authority and their anguished invocation of Kalki as a millennial figure became
less urgent. The codes of caste were, seemingly at least, not being overturned as
vigorously as had been feared in earlier times. It is more likely that the forms
were outwardly adhered to and the matter seemed to end at that point, without
too much investigation into the mobility of jatis.
A new religious ideology gained popularity. It focused on the icon and the
temple and asserted an assimilative quality involving the cults and rituals of
Puranic Hinduism and the genesis of the Bhakti tradition. Ideological
assimilation is called for when there is a need to knit together socially diverse
groups. It is also crucial when there is an increase in the distancing between such
groups as well as the power of some over others and the economic disparity
between them.
The significance of these new cults and sects may lie in part in the focus on
loyalty to a deity that has parallels to the loyalty of peasants and others to an
overlord. But it would be worth examining the rudiments of each sect in its
regional dimension, its groping towards a jati status and the use of an ostensibly
cultural and religious idiom to express a new social identity. Were these also
mechanisms for legitimizing territorial identities, drawing on sacred geography
and pilgrimage routes, with the temple as the focal point?
The devotees were emphasizing what they perceived to be their equal status
as devotees in the eyes of the deity. Can this be viewed as the assertion of those
lower down the social scale in favour of a more egalitarian society? But its
significance grows when the social background to this belief is one of increasing
disparity. Movements of dissent that acquired religious legitimacy and form were
often gradually accommodated and their radical content slowly diluted. The
move away from community participation in a ritual to a personalized and
private worship encourages the notion of individual freedom, even if it is only at
the ideological level. The Vedic sacrificial ritual was a gathering of the clan,
whereas forms of worship like Bhakti can be entirely based on how the
individual sees his or her relationship with the deity.
In the justifiable emphasis on social and economic history there has been too
frequently neglect among historians of the analysis of ideology. To study
ideology without its historical context is to practice historical hydroponics, for
ideas and beliefs strike roots in the humus of historical reality. To restrict the
study of a society to its narrowly social and economic forms alone is to see it in
a limited two-dimensional profile. The interaction of society and ideology takes
a varied pattern and to insist always on the primacy of the one over the other is
to deny the richness of a full-bodied historical explanation.
Ideas are sometimes analyzed as a response to social pressures and needs.
This is particularly pertinent for those dealing with social history. Some of the
more important literature (of the times) is suffused with a theoretical
representation of society even in symbolic or ideational forms. Meanings very
often do not stem from just the vocabulary but require familiarity with the
cultural context of the word. Examples of this would be the levels of meaning in
words such a varna and jati as they travel through time in texts such as the
Dharmashastras. The ideological layers in the latter as codes of behaviour have
to be peeled away in order to obtain a better comprehension of their ordering of
society.
Central to any concern with ideology in the ancient past is the critique of
religious thought, as distinct from religious practice or the organization of
religious institutions. Some analyses of the Upanishads for instance, can provide
an interesting example of this. One of the major strands in Upanishadic thought
is said to be a secret doctrine known only to a few kshatriyas who teach it to
select, trusted brahmanas. Even the most learned among the latter, the mahashala
mahashrotriya are described as going to the kshatriyas for instruction. This does
rather reverse the code but it seems not to have mattered in this context. The
doctrine they discuss involves the idea of the soul, the atman and its ultimate
merging with the universal soul, the brahman as well as metempsychosis and the
transmigration of the soul: in fact a fundamental doctrine of this age which was
to have far-reaching consequences on Indian society.
That it should have been secret and originally associated with the kshatriyas
raises many questions, some of which have been discussed by scholars. It is true
that the brahmanas and the kshatriyas were both members of the ‘leisured
classes’ in Vedic society and could therefore indulge in idealistic philosophy and
discourse on the niceties of life after death. But this is only a partial answer and
much more remains to be explained. Was the ritual of sacrifice so deeply
imprinted on the brahmana mind and so necessary to the profession at this point,
that it required non-brahmanas to introduce alternatives to moksha, the liberation
of the soul from rebirth, other than the sacrificial ritual? The adoption of
meditation and theories of transmigration had the advantage of releasing the
kshatriyas from the pressures of a prestation economy, permitting them to
accumulate wealth, which in turn gave them access to power and leisure.
Alternatively, was the accumulation of these already present in the fringe
areas described as the mleccha-desha (impure lands) in Vedic texts, where the
sacrificial rituals for various reasons had become less important? Thus Janaka of
Mithila, Ashvapati Kaikeya and Ajatashatru of Kashi could reflect on alternative
ways to moksha, other than the ritual of sacrifice. This also places a different
emphasis on the function of the kshatriya who had now ceased to be primarily a
cattle-raiding, warrior chief.
These are not the only kinds of connections relevant to a history of the period.
Upper and lower caste groups treated as monolithic, belie social reality. The
tensions within these should also be noticed where the evidence suggests this.
The competition for status between brahmanas and kshatriyas and the separation
of their functions, although retaining their mutual dependence, is symbolized in
the sacrificial ritual that becomes a key articulation of the relationship. The new
beliefs discussed in the Upanishads reversed up to a point the sacrificial ritual, in
that they required neither priests nor deities but only self-discipline and
meditation. At another level, the transmigrating of the soul through the natural
elements and plants to its ultimate rebirth carries an echo of shamanism which
may have remained popular outside priestly ritual.
There is in the new belief the first element of a shift from the clan to the
individual in as much as the sacrificial ritual involves the clan and its wealth, but
meditation and self-discipline, in opposition to the clan, involves only the
individual. It symbolizes the breaking away of the individual from the clan. It
also introduces an element of anomie that becomes more apparent in the later
development of these beliefs by various sects. These reflections were seminal to
what became a major direction in Indian thought and action, the opting out of the
individual from society, where renunciation is a method of self-discovery, but
can also carry a message of dissent.
That the new ideas were attributed to the kshatriyas and yet included in a
brahmanical text was probably because for the brahmanas to author a doctrine
openly questioning the sacrificial ritual would, at this stage, have been an
anomaly. However for kshatriyas wanting to be released from expending their
wealth in yajanas, an alternate to the sacrificial ritual was a potentially important
departure. That the doctrine stimulated philosophical discussion would in itself
have required that it be recorded. Additionally, since some teachings of the
heterodox reflected aspects of this doctrine, by setting it out as an important part
of the Vedic corpus, it could be claimed that even the heterodox had ultimately
to uphold aspects of the Vedic tradition. Such an argument is made many
centuries later, in modern times. This assumes that the Upanishadic doctrine
preceded the heterodox teachings, but it may have been the reverse.
This was to become yet another technique by which orthodox theory in
subsequent centuries sought to disguise ideas contradicting its own position. The
Buddha not only democratized the doctrine but also nurtured the idea of karma
and samsara, actions in this life determining the quality of rebirth in the next, a
generally held belief that explained social inequities. For him the link was
through consciousness as he denied the existence of the soul. But his negation of
the soul (atman) introduces a contradiction of the doctrine as visualized in the
Upanishads. Such contradictions were current at that time. The positing of a
thesis and an anti-thesis prior to arriving at a possible synthesis, became a
characteristic feature of philosophical debate and was reflected both in empirical
disciplines such as grammar as well as in more abstract analysis.
The relating of ideology to historical reality, as historians are now doing, can
result not only in new ways of examining an historical situation and be used to
extend or modify the analysis from other sources, but can also help in
confirming the reality as derived from other sources.
Such a study, incorporating elements of the deconstruction of both material
culture and ideas, would sharpen the awareness of concepts and theoretical
frameworks. Historical explanation then becomes an enterprise in which the
nuances and refinements of concepts and theories are a constant necessity, not
only because of the availability of fresh evidence from new sources but also
because of greater precision in our understanding of the categories which we use
to analyze these sources.
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