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IS THERE AN INNER CONFLICT OF TRADITION?
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JOHANNES BRONKHORST
extraneous beliefs and practices, for instance, in the matter of various forms of asceticism. But the important point is that these influences do not seem to have made a decisive irruption in the development of religious thought. They seem rather to have fitted themselves into the orthogenetic, internal development of Vedic thought. Or one might say that these extraneous beliefs and practices were not in principle dissimilar from
those that obtained among the adherents of the preclassical ritual. While elaborating this last remark, HEESTERMAN draws attention to various renunciant features in Vedic rites and life, and comes to the conclusion that the institution of renunciation is already implied in classical ritual thinking, The difference between classical ritualism and renunciation, he continues, seems to be a matter rather of degree than of principle (p.41).
The upshot of all this is that the important religious developments of the centuries preceding the common era are, here too, caused by an opposition, by conflict. This conflict is however, for HEESTERMAN, an inner conflict of the Vedic tradition, not a conflict between different opposed groups of people. Indeed, HEESTERMAN concludes his article "Brahmin, ritual, and renouncer" with the following remark (p.44): "The brahmin, then, is the exemplar of the irresolvable tension that is at the heart of Indian civilization
Perhaps it is the sociological orientation of these two scholars which leads them to identify the aim of renunciation with "liberation from the fetters of life as commonly experienced in this world", as DUMONT puts it; HEESTERMAN describes the renouncer as "emancipated from the relations which govern (the world)" (p. 39). Descriptions like these tend to make one overlook the aims which the early texts ascribe to the renouncers. It tums out that not all renouncers pursue the same aim. What is more, the English term 'renouncer' is not the translation of any one single Sanskrit term. There are, on the contrary, a number of Sanskrit terms which are not treated as synonyms in the texts. As so often, the urge to translate Indian expressions into expressions which are meaningful to the modem investigator, is here responsible for a failure to understand the texts on their own terms.
It turns out that early post-Vedic literature knows, and acknowledges, two altogether different spiritual aims, which cannot both be heaped together under the heading "liberation'. Some ascetics aspire for heaven (svarga), others seek to obtain final liberation (mokşa; apavarga: apunarbhava). The two are occasionally explicitly contrasted. In Ašvaghosa's Buddhacarita. for example, the Bodhisattva is described as trying out two different ascetic paths: in a penance grove, and as pupil of Arāda Kālāma respectively. The former path leads to heaven. The Bodhisattva rejects it because he does not want heaven, but freedom from rebirth (Buddhacarita 7.48). This path is described as praviti. The path of Arāda, which aims at liberation from rebirth, is
nivstri.14
DUMONT explained the main religious developments in ancient India with the help of an opposition between two groups of people: the renouncer as against the man in the world. HEESTERMAN postulated a similar opposition, but one present in one single group, or even in single individuals. If one goes along with these two scholars in thinking that an opposition, or oppositions, lie behind the major changes that become visible in Indian religion in the centuries preceding the common era, one has to take into consideration a third possibility: the opposition, or oppositions, may have been embodied in physically distinct groups of people. We have seen that similar hypotheses have been proposed to account for certain features of the Agnicayana and Pravargya rituals. But whereas in the case of these sacrifices the evidence was only indi. rect, we will see that there is far more explicit evidence in support of the hypothesis that the religious upheavals of the late-Vedic period had something to do with the non-Vedic population. DUMONT and HEESTERMAN may have overlooked this, partly because they worked with too simplistic ideas of renunciation, of liberation, and of the link between these two."
The story of king Pandu in the Mahābharata (1.110) is equally explicit. When Pandu decides to leave the world, two altogether different possibilities are open to him: either he becomes a shaven ascetic, bent on release (moksa), or he withdraws to the forest, striving for heaven.
I will not multiply examples of this kind, as I have published a small book dedicated to this and related questions. One thing seems however clear, Indians of the early post-Vedic period distinguished between two very different ascetic paths, with very different aims. One of these two-the one striving after heaven - is explicitly linked to the Vedic tradition. These ascetics normally keep the Vedic fire going, even in their huts in the forest. The other ascetics - those who look for the end of rebirth - do not, at least not in the earliest relevant texts, have anything to do with the Vedic sacrificial tradition.
13. An interesting criticism of the orthogenetic point of view is to be found in Brian K.
SMITH's Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual, and Religion. Consider his following observations (1989: 195): "Perhaps the case for a certain discontinuity, for the Upanishads as emblematic not of an extension of Vedic ritualism but of its demise as the dominant worldview of ancient India, can be made on the basis of my work here. I have located the heart and soul of Vedic ritualism in a principle at odds with that underlying monism. In the Upanishads, one might be witnessing the conclusion of Vedism not in the sense of its culmination but in the sense of its destruction. In the protoVedāntic view, the universe and ritual order based on resemblance has collapsed, and a very different configuration based on identity (abhorred by the Vedic ritualists as the 'cxcess of resemblance. jami) has emerged. Upanishadic monism, one might say, blew the lid off a system contained, as well as regulated by hierarchical resemblance."
Also p. 210: "The Upanishadic redefinition of the true sacrifice might be best seen nol as the logical outcome of Vedic ritual thinking but rather as a valuable objet trouvé
useful to assimilate the foreign to the traditional." 14. BRONKHORST 1993:73. 15. The Two Sources of Indian Asceticism, Bern: Peter Lang, 1993. An amusing story
from the Malasarvastivada Vinaya - translated in STRONG 1992: 44-45 - may here be referred to. A monkey first befriends a group of (Buddhist) pratyekabuddhas, whom it imitates. Subsequently it befriends a group of Brahmanical ascetics, in whose presence it still imitates the pratyckabuddhas. As a result the Brahmins abandon their own ascetic postures, imitate the monkey, and reach (Buddhist) enlightenment
