Sramana Tradation

Author(s): G C Pandey
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 73

Śramana Tradition
it is now proposed by some scholars to connect them with the fact that the emergence of the caste-system served as a social solvent of the Ganas so that the thoughtful or leaders of this passing clan society were led to protest against the Brahmaṇically formulated caste-system. However, it is not really established that the Ganas lay outside the purview of the Varna system. So far as clearly known the Gaṇas were a form of polity rather than society. Even the Vedic clans or Janas were not free fron the distinction of Varnas. When the Janas turned into Janapadas, whether these were gaṇādhina or Rājādhina, they did not exclude the Varnas which all along stood primarily for a class distinction, arising functionally but gradually becoming more and more hereditary, especially on account of the privileged position of the upper classes and sacerdotal theory. Even as regards polity, the new empires rising into prominance at the time were not firmly wedded to either Brāhmaṇism or Śramanism so that to seek to explain these ideologies in terms of social and political set-up does not appear convincing.
If we turn to the early Jaina canon we discover an anticaste attitude similar to that of the Buddhist texts. In the famous legend of Hariesa Bala from the Uttarajjhayana we find that a monk who belonged to the lowest caste of the Svapaka or Caṇḍāla is reviled by the Brahmanas engaged in a sacrifice who feel that the presence of the outcastes will pollute the ritual. The incident makes one recall the ancient Vedic legend of Kavașa Ailuṣa where a priest having been discovered of low birth is turned out by the others as ineligible and inauspicious. At another place a Brahmaṇa turned monk instructs the Brahmaṇas about what is a true sacrifice and who is a true Brāhmaṇa. "The binding of animals (to the sacrificial pole), all the Vedas, and sacrifices, being causes of sin, cannot save the sinner, for his Karman is very powerful, one does not become a Śramana by tonsure, nor a Brahmana by the sacred syllable Om, nor a Muni by living in the woods, nor a Tapasa by wearing clothes of Kusa-grass and bark. One becomes a Śramana by equanimity, a Brahmaṇa by chastity, a Muni by knowledge, and a Tapasa by penance. By one's actions one becomes a Brahmana. or a Kṣattriya, or a Vaiśya, or a Sudra. him who is exempt from all Karman, we call a Brahmana ".1
1. Jacobi, Jaina Suttras, Vol. II, pp. 130-40.