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BUDDHA & MAHẬVÎRA*
Pandit Sukhlalji
Principal Sramana Cults
The cult opposed to the religious cult known as the Brahmanic or Vedic cult is Sramana cult. It positively existed in India in some part of other in some form or other just along with the spread of the Vedic cult. The branches and sub-branches of the Sramana cult were so many and of these the names of Samkhya, Jaina, Buddha and Ajiyava are famous. In the beginning many of these were diametrically opposed to the Vedic cult, but in due course they merged in the Vedic cult due to one reason or another. To illustrate, we can give the names of the Vaisnava and Saiva cults. Ancient Vaisnava and Saiva Agamas were not only different from the vedic tradition, they even opposed it. That is the reason why the Acaryas who uphelp the Vedic ult, looked upon the ancient Vaisnava and Saiva Agamas as opposed to the Vedas and therefore outside the pale of the Vedas. To-day, however, we can see that the Vaisnava and Saiva traditions and their branches, have merged completely in the vedic cult, and are taken as vedic. In spite of this, there are some Sramana cults that call themselves non-Vedic; even scholars of the Vedas know them to be so. The dominant ones here are the Jaina and Buddha.
Ageneral and brief acquaintance of the Sramana cult is this. It does not accept the supreme authority of the Vedas as not composed by any human being or eternal of composed by god. It does not accept the supremacy of the brahmin class because it acts as Purohita. The Vedic cult accepts this authority of the Vedas and brahmins in the present context. All the Sramana traditions
*. "Essence of Jainism".
L.D. Institute of Indology, 1988, Ahmedabad.
