________________
all by Dr RG Bhandarkar? These doctrines are all interconnected as one whole and their impact was the most prominent feature of the intellectual ferment of the sixth century BC The great seers of the Upanisads are householders, and the Gītā, the epics and the Dhai masutras accept at best a synthesis where a full life of action in this world could be followed at the last stage by retirement and renunciation The theory of the Four Stages appears to have evolved gradually and the fourth stage was apparently the last to be added This tiadition could hardly be eailier than the age of Buddha and Mahāvīra This conclusion is to be drawn not only from the dates of the Dharmasūtras the earliest of which would not be earlier than the 5th century BC, but also from the way in which the Vedic tradition is referred to in the early Buddhist and Jaina canon The doctrine of renunciation in these works is not the doctrine of Sannyāsa as an Āśrama or stage but as the only mode of ideal life, the life of the householder being nothing more than a concession to human weakness In fact, Brahmacarya as well as Pravrajyā are both treated as absolutes in this literature, not as two out of four stages of life The synthesis of Karmun and Naiskarinya in the Vedic scheme of life does not accept that pessimism for which all Piavrttı is basıcally evil While the Vedic tradition in course of time came to accept the doctrines of Karman and Samsāra and hence could not but accept the validity of Sannyāsa, it never gave up its ageold value of respecting and actively fulfilling social obligations The doctrine of the Three Debts continued to be the basis of Vedic social ethics The Sramanic point of view was totally opposed to it Sramanism did not emphasize the obligations arising from specific social relations and institutions or the needs of social survival and development as having moral inevitability It tended to regard this world of obligations rather as a world of temptations and traced the sense of obligations to the accustomed pressure of habits based on egoistical desires, and interests This point of view arises simply and wholly from an undiluted belief in the doctrine of Karman and Samsāia which constituted the essential and common point of reference of the Sramanic sects I have argued elsewhere that a close analysis of the development of Vedic
