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JOHANNES BRONKHORST
elaborate rules. The different Buddhist schools preserved each their own (massive) collection of monastic rules with so much diligence, that the earliest schisms in the Buddhist church seem all of them to have been the results of differences concerning the form or interpretation of these rules.10 It would seem, therefore, that even in that remote past, the theory of DUMONT is at best applicable to a small part of the renouncers.
To resume. DUMONT's theory applies primarily (or even exclusively) to the ancient period, say the centuries preceding the beginning of our era. It is, moreover, based on the philological analysis of ancient documents," rather than on the sociological study of Indian society. We are therefore entitled to ask: Does DUMONT's theory satisfactorily explain the situation depicted in the early texts? Were the great religious discoveries he talks about - and DUMONT thinks no doubt of the new ideas expressed in the Upanisads, of the origin of Buddhism and Jainism, etc. - enunciated by renouncers? And if yes, is it the fact that they were renouncers that allowed them to make these discoveries? DUMONT's theory is by no means self-evident. Even if we were to assume that all original thinkers in ancient India were renouncers, is it not conceivable that they became renouncers because of their new ideas, and not vice-versa? Could it not be that there were other, non-Vedic, segments of the population where different ideas held sway, ideas which induced some of their members to choose the life of a renouncer? The existence at that period of such segments of the population might be obscured by the fact that they had no literature, or that their literature has not been preserved. This very possibility takes us, of course, back to the question of Aryan and non-Aryan.
First, however, we must briefly consider another possibility. DUMONT offered the idea that certain individuals, for one reason or another, became renouncers, as a result of which they introduced new ideas and innovations into Indian thought and religion. He does not specify which segments of the population provided these renouncers, and we must assume that they came from various segments, perhaps including what we may call the Vedic population. The origin of these renouncers does not seem to matter all that much to DUMONT, for the new ideas they produced have for him more to do with their state as renouncer than with the particular segment of the population which they left in order to become renouncers. One might however assume
9. DUMONT refers at several occasions to Buddhist monks, and includes them explicitly in the category of renouncers. Cp. DUMONT 1960: 44 n. 18: "... I have generalized the Brahmanic idea and have called renouncers, or even sanyasis, all those who have left the world in a manner analogous to that of the orthodox sanyasi including, for example, Buddhist monks." TAMBIAH (1982: 300) thinks that DUMONT's article concerns first of all Buddhist monks, he describes in detail the rules to which they have to submit.
10. This point of view, first presented by Heinz BECHERT in 1961, has recently been criticized by Shizuka SASAKI in a series of articles (1989, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996).
11. One suspects also the presence of a strong dose of "what Said calls "Romantic Orientalism', with its fantasies of lost wisdom, ... and its degradation of the Oriental modern" (LOPEZ 1995: 12).
IS THERE AN INNER CONFLICT OF TRADITION?
the opposite. One might maintain that the Vedic tradition in particular developed in such a way that its adherents came to accept, or even invent, the karma theory, and were induced to become renouncers. This is the position of J.C. HEESTERMAN, who articulates this point of view primarily in an article that was reprinted in a volume called The Inner Conflict of Tradition (1985). HEESTERMAN, too, believes that a conflict is to be assumed to explain these and other developments in India. But contrary to DUMONT and others, his conflict is a real "inner conflict". That is to say, it is not the expression of different groups in society which oppose and influence each other, but rather something inherent in single traditions, which stays with these traditions, and cannot be, or is in any case not normally, resolved. The introduction to the book just mentioned states this quite generally (p. 2): "Tradition is characterized by the inner conflict of atemporal order and temporal shift rather than by resilience and adaptiveness. It is this unresolved conflict that provides the motive force we perceive as the flexibility of tradition. Indian civilization offers a particularly clear case of this dynamic inner conflict." Note that these remarks apply to tradition in general, not only to Indian tradition, and even less to only one episode of Indian tradition. The conflict, moreover, is between "atemporal order and temporal shift", positions which can no doubt not be completely identified with different groups in society.
Let us now turn to HEESTERMAN's article "Brahmin, ritual, and renouncer", which is chapter two of his book The Inner Conflict of Tradition, mentioned earlier. HEESTERMAN derives the Upanisadic karma doctrine from certain postulated developments in the Vedic sacrifice (p. 34 f.). The interiorization of the ritual, moreover, is presented as the logical conclusion of its ongoing individualization (p. 38 f.). And here we touch the principle of world renunciation, the emergence of which, HEESTERMAN maintains, has been of crucial importance in the development of Indian religious thinking. To substantiate this claim, which he does not further elaborate, HEESTERMAN refers without comments in a note to DUMONT's article "World renunciation in Indian religions", which we have discussed above. It would seem that HEESTERMAN agrees with DUMONT's thesis to the extent that renouncers have been responsible for most of the discoveries and innovations in Indian religious life. He disagrees, however, with respect to the Brahmin, whom DUMONT views as the opposite of the renouncer, while HEESTERMAN puts him on a par with the renouncer.12
39
Renunciation, in HEESTERMAN's opinion, can be understood as a development of Vedic thought. He expresses this in the following passage. which is worth quoting in full (p. 39-40):
It is often thought that the institution of renunciation emerged as a protest against brahminical orthodoxy or that it originated in non-brahmanical or even non-Aryan circles. The theory of the four asramas, or stages of life, would then have been an attempt at legitimizing the renunciatory modes of life and drawing them within the orbit of brahminical orthodoxy. There is of course full scope for recognizing the influence of
12. HEESTERMAN 1985: 231-32 n.32.
