Siddhartha & the Buddhist Revolution

A History of Mankind (96)

To check all previous newsletters in the History of Mankind, which is pretty long, you can click here.

Cyrus II’s impact was felt, just as strongly, across the eastern border of his empire. On the other side of the Indus, the Persian powerhouse became an important source of influence and concern, slowly driving the unification of some of the small northern Indian kingdoms into larger entities – even though neither Cyrus II nor any of their successors appear to have ever been interested in taking land across the great river.

The rapid urbanization and centralization of India led to key caste distinctions in the Vedic tradition becoming more prominent than ever. In small towns and the countryside, castes could be kept at a distance, but this was impossible in cities that quickly became crowded. Direct contact led to a stronger emphasis on purity rules, which could no longer be ignored by anyone. Many of those appalled by or uninterested in this state of things became renunciants, advocating a rejection of material things and social relationships – a sure way to avoid abiding by caste restrictions and rules.

The renunciants were referred to by various terms including “wanderers” when they were more like Tao-style ambulant scholars, but also “strivers” after the truth (this with some admiration) and “beggars” when their means of finding sustenance weren’t all that respectable. Early Dharmasutras contain the first detailed references to the four ashrama or stages of truth-seeking – brahmacharya (celibate studenthood), grihastha (the householder stage), vanaprastha (partial renunciation), and sannyasa (total renunciation) – as a sort of plotted course towards Vedic priesthood, but many strayed from this course and into radical notions.

Jainism, the first challenge to emerge against the domination of Vedic Hinduism in India, was at first a systematic form of revolutionary renunciation, with very radical twists that it later shared with Buddhism: it allowed anyone to embrace renunciation, not just the upper castes, and provided such renunciants with a community where they would find spiritual support and succor, and material supplies – provided by non-renunciant sympathizers in exchange for wisdom and instruction – so that they could wander and search the truth without begging.  

However, Jainism and, later, Buddhism were just two of many competing visions of renunciation embracing a peaceful and yet persistent spiritual struggle against the caste system. As they grew and absorbed renunciants, they erased the traces of those other schools.