The Hindus (37 page)

The fifth and ultimate Hindu solution was hierarchy, but mutual hierarchy: For some, renunciation outranked family life, and for others, family life outranked renunciation. The drive to hierarchize, throughout classical Hindu thought, rides roughshod over the drive to present equal alternatives or even a serial plan for a well-rounded human life. The
Mahabharata
claims that the three other stages of life cannot surpass that of a good householder,
²⁶
while the reward that most of the
shastras
promise to the reader/hearer “who knows this” is
moksha
.
²⁷

We have noted the preeminence of dharma among the three aims both in its status and in the number of texts devoted to it. Dharma is complex, in part because it is a site of contestation between renunciation and violence.

Universal Hindu dharma was an overarching, unitary, nonhierarchical category of the religion for everyone, a shared human aim.
²⁸
This single dharma (sometimes called perpetual dharma [
sanatana dharma
] or dharma held in common [
sadharana dharma
]) involved general moral precepts for all four classes, though different texts had different ideas about what those precepts were. Even a single text, Manu’s dharma text, lists them differently in different places. In one verse, “Nonviolence, truth, not stealing, purification, and the suppression of the sensory powers are the dharma of the four classes, in a nutshell (10.63).” Nonviolence also comes first in another, related verse in Manu: “Nonviolence, the suppression of the sensory powers, the recitation of the Veda, inner heat, knowledge, and serving the guru bring about the supreme good (12.83-93; 10.63).” But Manu includes only one of these (suppression of the sensory powers, not nonviolence) in the ten commandments for the top three classes in all four stages of life: “Truth, not stealing, purification, suppression of the sensory powers, wisdom, learning, patience, forgiveness, self-control, and lack of anger (6.91-4).” Significantly, he does not include generosity, the primary Vedic virtue, in any of these lists. The general thought behind all the lists is a vague social ethic.

Indeed, the code was so nebulous that one would not think that as an ideal it would pose a problem for anyone. At the same time, however, each individual was supposed to follow a unique path laid out for him at birth, a path determined primarily by the class and, eventually, the caste (
jati
) into which he was born. This was his own particular dharma, his
sva-dharma
, the job that every man in any particular family was supposed to do, further constrained by such factors as his stage of life and his gender. (I use the male pronoun advisedly; these rules were not meant to apply to women, whose only
sva-dharma
was to obey their husbands, and their only sacrament, marriage.) A person’s
sva-dharma
was sometimes called his innate activity (karma in its fifth meaning).

Manu explains how this came about in terms of his own take on the theory of karma, which in his usage means something like assigned work:

The circularity of karma is explicitly set from the time of creation: You must be what you are; you cannot change your qualities. The re-creation of individual characteristics is inevitable, likened to the natural process of the seasons. An individual is born to be a king, or a servant, or, more precisely, in terms of the actuality of caste rather than the theory of class, a potter or a shoemaker. How are their karmas assigned to them? How does Manu know? It’s quite simple: He claims to have been an eyewitness, even a participant, in the creation of the world.

The innate characteristics also include what we might regard as individual nature, for which there is another term in Sanskrit,
sva-bhava
. Thus it is the innate, particular nature (
sva-bhava
) of a tiger to be cruel and of a dove to be gentle, just as it is the karma of a tiger to kill and eat smaller animals and of a dove to coo. This too is
sva-dharma
, which is built into you, leaving you few choices in many realms of action, though you have free will in other realms, such as the amassing of karma.

We therefore are trapped within a basic social paradox: If your
sva-dharma
was to be a warrior or a butcher, how were you to reconcile this with the universal dharma that gave pride of place to nonviolence, the stricture against taking life? Hinduism validated the plurality (and the hierarchy) of dharma by endorsing
sva-dharma
, but at the same time, it validated the unity of dharma by endorsing general dharma. As in parliamentary rules of order, the
shastras
state that the particular rule generally overrides the general rule;
sva-dharma
trumps general dharma. But the larger paradox of absolutism and relativism remained, and there are no easy answers.

CHAPTER 9

This vignette that the
Ramayana
tells about itself weaves together the themes of dangerous sexuality, the violation of dharma, compassion toward animals, attitudes toward tribal peoples, and the transmutation of animal passions into human culture—all central to the concerns of this chapter. At the same time, the story of Rama and Sita raises new questions about deities who become human and women who are accused of being unchaste. Where the Brahmanas documented a period of new, though dispersed, political stability, and the Upanishads gave evidence of a reaction against that very stability, the
Ramayana
(R
^dw
) and the
Mahabharata
(MB), the two great Sanskrit poems (often called epics), were composed in this period (c. 300 BCE to 300 CE) that saw the rise and fall of the first great empire in India, followed by a period of chaos that rushed into the vacuum left by that fall.

This is the moment when we have the first writing that we know how to decipher,
^dx
engraved in stone in the form of the Ashokan edicts, as well as other historical sources—monuments, coins—to supplement our knowledge of the Sanskrit texts. Another major new source of our knowledge of this period comes from the reports of Greeks and other visitors. There is also a wealth of art history, ranging from terra-cotta figures, both human and animal, made in villages, to polished stone pillars with capitals, for the rich and powerful in the cities.

We learn from these sources that the extension of agriculture into forested areas transformed the lives of forest dwellers; that craft specialists often emerged as distinct social groups; and that the unequal distribution of wealth sharpened social differences,
¹
though new access to economic resources raised the social position of slaves, landless agricultural laborers, hunters, fishermen and fisherwomen, pastoralists, peasants, village headmen, craftspeople, and merchants.
²
In addition to the ongoing tension between Brahmins and Kshatriyas, new tensions arose as the lower classes gained economic and political power and began to challenge the status of the upper classes.
^dy

Just as the doctrines of Buddhism and Hinduism have much in common at this period, so too the same snakes spread their hoods over the heads of the Buddha and Vishnu, the same buxom wood nymphs swing around trees in Hindu and Buddhist shrines, and both traditions carve images of the goddess of luck (Lakshmi).
³
The design of some of the Hindu temples may have borrowed from the Buddhist precedent, for in some of the oldest temples the shrine, with the image in the center, was surrounded by an ambulatory path resembling the path around a stupa. Buddhism and Jainism remained friendly conversation partners, their rivalry with Hinduism often spurring both factions to borrow from each other in a positive way. But the non-Vedic religions also became more competitive, powerful rivals for political patronage as well as for the hearts of men and women, and a source of ideas that challenged the very core of emergent Hinduism. One of those ideas was a more insistent concern for the treatment of animals, leading to a great deal of soul-searching about the meaning of dharma. The attitude to animal sacrifice was also much affected by the rise of the two great male Hindu gods Shiva and Vishnu in sectarian movements that had no use for Vedic ritual.

Rajagriha (in Magadha, the present-day Bihar) and Kashi (Varanasi, in Koshala), which had come to prominence in the time of the Upanishads, remained great centers of power but were now rivaled by Kaushambi in Vatsa. There were still oligarchies at this time, about whose origins legends now began to circulate. These legends insisted that the founders were of high status but had, for one reason or another, left or been exiled from their homeland.
⁴
The theme of Kshatriyas in exile is reflected in the narrative of both the
Mahabharata
and the
Ramayana
, whose heroes, before they assume their thrones in the capital cities, are forced to endure long periods of exile in the wilderness, where the plot, as they say, thickens.
^dz
But exile is also a part of a much earlier theme embedded in the ceremony of royal consecration,
⁵
a ritual of the king’s exile among the people that is in turn mythologized in the many tales of kings cursed to live among Pariahs.

Magadha controlled the river trade, forests, and rich deposit of minerals; in 321 BCE Pataliputra (the modern Patna), then said to be the world’s largest city, with a population of 150,000 to 300,000,
⁶
became the capital of the first Indian Empire, the Mauryan Empire.
⁷
In 327 BCE, Alexander the Great managed to get into India over the mountain passes in the Himalayas and crossed the five rivers of the Punjab, no mean accomplishments, though thousands of other visitors to India did it too, before and after him. But his soldiers refused to campaign any farther, and so, in 326, he followed the Indus to its delta and, apparently regarding that as a sufficient accomplishment, went back to Babylon, though not before allegedly slaughtering many Brahmins who had instigated a major rebellion.
⁸
In India, it seems, he wasn’t all that Great.

But the Indo-Greeks remained, primarily but not only in the Gandhara region. They brought with them Roman as well as Greek trade; they imported Chinese lacquer and sent South Indian ivory west to Pompeii. In the Gandhara marketplace, in the northwest, you could buy stone palettes, gold coins, jewelry, engraved gems, glass goblets, and figurines. The art of Gandhara is heavily influenced by Greek tastes, as are the great Buddhist monuments of Bharhut and Sanchi, from the first century BCE, which powerful guilds (
shrenis
) endowed. The Southeast Asia and China trade (both by sea and over the Central Asian silk route) also involved manuscripts, paintings, and ritual objects. The trade in ideas was just as vigorous; Greece imported the teachings of naked philosophers,
^ea
and many sects—Materialists, Ajivikas, ascetics, Jainas, and Buddhists—publicly disputed major religious questions.
⁹

Out of this culturally supersaturated mix, the Mauryan Empire crystallized. Mahapadma Nanda, the son of a barber (a Shudra of a very low caste indeed, and said, by the Greeks, to have married a courtesan
¹⁰
), had founded a short-lived but significant dynasty, the first of a number of non-Kshatriya dynasties, during which he waged a brief vendetta against all Kshatriyas.
¹¹
Chandragupta Maurya usurped the Nanda throne in 321 BCE and began to build a great empire. Buddhist texts say that the Mauryas were Kshatriyas of the clan of Moriyas (“Peacocks”) and Shakyas (the clan of the Buddha himself), while Brahmin texts say they were Vaishyas or even Shudras, and heretics. A story goes that a Brahmin named Chanakya (“chickpea”), nicknamed Kautilya (“Crooked” or “Bent” or “Devious”), was Chandragupta’s chief minister and helped him win his empire, advising him not to attack the center of the Nanda Empire but to harass the borders, as a mother would advise a child to eat a hot chapati from the edges. Chanakya is said to be the author of the great textbook of political science, the
Artha-shastra
, which, though it was not completed until many centuries later, may in some ways reflect the principles of Mauryan administration,
¹²
particularly the widespread use of spies, both foreign and domestic; the Mauryan emperor Ashoka too talks unashamedly about people who keep him informed.
¹³