Is There An Inner Conflict Of Tradition

SR No.: 269475
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Johannes Bronkhorst
Publisher: Johannes Bronkhorst
Total Pages: 14
Language: English
Classification: Article
File Size: 3 MB

Page 6

IS THERE AN INNER CONFLICT OF TRADITION?
43
JOHANNES BRONKHORST
once considered non-Aryan.20 It seems certain that they cannot have been mere marginal inhabitants of the lands of the Vedic Indians. The enormous influence their ideas and ideals have exerted suggests rather that they constituted a far from negligible portion of the population.
Recall now that the ideas underlying the search for liberation from rebirth, i.e., the belief in rebirth, are a few times introduced in the Upanişads in a most remarkable manner. Several passages state in so many words that this knowledge (i.c., the knowledge of the doctrine of karma, or of the true nature of the self) had not so far been known to the Brahmins. 16 They admit that the Brahmins have borrowed this knowledge from others. I find this highly significant, and I believe that it is obligatory upon us to take such passages very seriously. By the time Vedic texts themselves admit that they have borrowed certain ideas from others, we had better believe them. This does not necessarily mean that we have to also believe that these ideas were borrowed from Ksatriyas. This part of the story is so easy to explain (should Brahmins admit to borrowing ideas from Vaisyas, or Sudras?), that we can take it with a grain of salt. But borrow they did, and that is the main thing."
All this almost forces us to conclude that there existed, besides the Vedic Brahmins and those who followed their example and views, other groups of people in the period preceding our era, which had ideas and ideals that were significantly different from those connected with the Vedic tradition. These non-Vedic ideas and ideals were apparently more or less irresistible, for they found their way into late Vedic literature, as we have seen, and soon became basic to practically all the religious developments in India. These ideas and ideals belonged, at least originally, to people who were nonVedic. Were they non-Aryan? I wouldn't know how to answer this question. Judging by the way in which the early Buddhists and the Jainas use the term Arya (pa, ariya, amg. ariya), it seems clear that 'Aryan' and 'non-Aryan' had almost completely lost their original senses at this time. But whatever the way these non-Vedic people referred to themselves, it is not inconceivable, though far from certain, that they continued traditions of people that were
At this point I would like to draw attention to some recent work done by Kenneth G. ZYSK on early Indian medicine (1988, 1990, 1991). Ayurveda, ZYSK argues, does not have its roots in Vedic medical practices. Quite on the contrary, for information about the carly history of Ayurveda one has to look elsewhere, in the early surviving texts of the Sramana tradition 22 ZYSK concentrates on the text of the Pali Tipitaka, and finds there many striking parallels to classical Ayurvedic literature.
ZYSK tries to explain these facts with the help of a hypothesis that is reminiscent of the views of DUMONT, which we discussed earlier. Medical specialists, he points out, were avoided in the Vedic age. This, he continues, pushed them into the direction of the Sramanas. As he puts it himself (1991: 26): "The shunned medical specialists - wandering the countryside, administering cures to all who required and could pay for them, and closely studying the world around them while exchanging valuable information with their fellow healers - understandably gravitated toward those sharing a similar alienation and outlook: the orthodox mendicants and the heterodox wandering ascetics who had abandoned society to seek liberation from the endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, and who were quite indifferent or even antagonistic to the brahmanic orthodoxy of class and ritualism based on sacrifice to gods of the Vedic pantheon." And again (p.37): "The healers, like the ascetics, were seekers of knowledge and outcastes, shunned by the orthodox Hindus. They wandered about, performing their cures and acquiring new medicine, treatments, and medical knowledge, and eventually became indistinguishable from the other framanas with whom they were in close contact." He then adds: "The healers were not necessarily ascetics, but many ascetics - for instance, the Buddhist monk-healers - might well have been physicians."
The development of medicine of which we find evidence in the Buddhist texts is therefore, in ZYSK's opinion, something of a revolution. He cites in this connection the name of Thomas Kuhn, and speaks of a paradigm shift. To cite his own words (p. 26): "During the centuries intervening between Vedic medicine and the absorption of Indian medicine into brahmanic orthodoxy (ca. eighth century B.C.E. to early centuries C.E.), the medical
16. BRONKHORST 1993:55 f. 17. H.W. BODEWITZ studies the possibility of outside influence on the Vedic ritualistic
tradition in some recent publications (1992, 1993, 1996, 1996a). Gananath OBEYESEKERE (1996: 6) considers the strategy to try to show incipient notlens of karma in the early Vedic traditions and to accept a single line of development Whethodologically flawed" because it assumes that the extant texts reflected the multiplicity of the religious
traditions in early India, which is palpably not the case. 18. This is not to deny that there may have been real "inner conflicts", even within single
individuals belonging to one single tradition. One could think here of the "major tension" which Stephanie W. JAMISON "surmises" to be present in ancient Indian ideology, and which she describes as follows (1996: 16): "On the one hand, as is well known, a man must have sons (and his sons must have sons) in order to ensure not only the continuity of the line, but his own continuance in heaven, as is maintained after death by the ancestor (pils) worship performed by his own male line. On the other hand, the idealization of asceticism so characteristic of later Hinduism is present, in one form or another, from the earliest period, and one of the most powerful forms of uscelic practice is the control of sexuality, the relention of semen. So males are confronted with
1 conundrum: they do not want sex but they need its products." 19. For a discussion of the meaning of 'Aryan' in carly Jainism, scc DESHPANDE 1993:
9 ff.
20. OLIVELLE (1993: 68 (.) rightly criticizes some authors who too easily jumped to
conclusions regarding the supposedly non-Aryan origin of Indian asceticism. 21. So already ZYSK 1985:1, 10-11. Cp. WUJASTYK 1995: 201. 22. It is not impossible, but far from certain that the term framana did not originally refer
to an identifiable class of people, as is maintained by OLIVELLE (1993:16), the Vedic evidence in support of this is however meagre and perhaps of doubtful value. The term soon came to refer to identifiable groups of ascetics, as is clear from various passages, among them the ones to be considered below.