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The Origin, Antiquity and Profile of the
Śramana Tradition
At least since the third or fourth century B. C. the religiophilosophic culture of India appears to have been divided into two major streams, namely, the Brāhmaṇa and the Śramaņa as is evident from the numerous references of the compound Brāhmaṇa-Śramana in the Pāli texts, Jain scriptures, works of Pãnini and Patañjali, records of the Greek historians and the inscriptions of Asoka'. The tradition of such a bifurcation is corroborated by the division of dharma into pravritti (world accepting) and nivritti (world negating) by Sankarãchãrya. It is further supported by the use of the terms āstika and năstika denoting two major categories of ancient Indian tradition. These two terms have been variously explained but the commonly accepted view is that the ăstikas are those who believe in the authority of the Vedas whereas the năstikas rejected the Vedas as authority (năstiko veda nindakań). Needless to say that the Śramanas held a world view which was entirely different from the worldview of the followers of the Vedic tradition.
Though the Śramaņa is rarely mentioned in the early Brāhmaṇical literature, the first being in the Taittiriya Ārumaka, its profuse use in the Buddhist and Jain literature is conspicuous denoting a specific religious
