Character of the Age:
6th century B.C., the age in which Mahavira was born, was a period of
great intellectual stir practically all over the world. Greece, Persia and
China as well as India- all centers of important civilizations-
experienced ferment in the realm of thought. The advent of Socrates and
his distinguished pupils and contemporaries in Greece, of Zoroaster in
Persia, and of Lao Tse and Confucius in China marked a revolution in the
thought of those countries in just the same way as the coming of Mahavira
and the Buddha meant the advent of philosophical rationalism in our own
country.
In Indian society this age was in many ways a period of transition and
uncertainty. The state of society which is revealed in the religious
literature of the Jainas and the Buddhists is quite different from that
which is depicted in the Epics of the later Vedic literature and is, of
course, fundamentally different from that depicted in the Vedas. From the
simple and on the whole republican social organization of the Vedic times
the country and been passing through a process of gradual statification
until by the time of the birth of Mahavira caste distinctions and priestly
oligarchy had become a source of enormous social irritation and a means of
popular exploitation. The simple religion of nature worship implied in the
hymns of the Rigveda had similarly been developing into a curious
combination of theoretical monotheism and practical worship of a
multiplicity of gods and divine satellites with an admixture of elaborate
rituals and superstition. This development was disturbing to the
equanimity of the thinking part of the population, and already there had
grown up a school of mediators who discarded the rituals and pantheistic
worship under priestly auspices and retired to forests for meditation and
contemplation of the truth, thus giving rise to a form of philosophical
pantheism. In economic life agriculture was still the main occupation of
the people and the village (gram) the unit of administration and
the center of all activities, but the period was marked by a transition to
cottage industrialism and a remarkable growth of trade and commerce.
Politically, a new type of republican and tribal kingdom was arising,
which was rapidly assuming a monarchical form of government and
imperialistic designs in the sense of territorial conquests. The whole
life of the community was in short undergoing fundamental transformation.
The geographical outlook of Indo-Aryans, limited for a long time to the
Gangetic valley, had extended to the eastern and southern regions. The
art of writing had got diffused among men and women, and because of the
development of commercial contacts with foreign lands the mental horizon
of the people had greatly broadened. These changes had their impact on the
social, religious, economic and political conditions of the country, and
this needs to be examined in some detail.
Social Conditions:
Society in 6th century B.C. had definitely come to be organized on the
basis of caste. Historians are not always agreed on the origin of the
caste system in India. When the Aryans came to India, it seems quite
certain that they were a homogenous mass of people and were not divided
into distinct castes or even classes. The formation of classes did not
occur until after their settlement over extensive territories in the
Gangetic plains, and it took place in the age of the later samhitas,
but not in the form of a rigid caste system at first. There are passages
in Sruti literature which indicate quite clearly that the knowledge
of Vedic texts and ceremonies rather than the fact of birth in a Brahmana
family, qualified a person to be a Brahmana. The development of
caste rigidly can be traced through the period of latter samhitas,
the Vajasaneya Samhita for instance prefers a Brahmana
for priestly duties descended from three generations of Rsis. Such
rules are evidence of a deliberate attempt to make caste system more and
more static. But as yet those essential features, the prohibition of inter
dining and inter-marriage, which are the special characteristics of caste
system today, had not developed in their fulness, nor had the Brahmana
yet attained and unquestioned position of supremacy, the Ksatriya
being able to contest it with him at every step. In establishing the
supremacy of the Brahmanas the most important part was played by the
sacrifice (yagya), the ritual.
The early Vedic age was one of creative impulses. It was marked by �a
charming appreciation of all that is good and sublime in nature, leading
to outburst of individual enthusiasm in inspiring stanza addressed to
various divinities.� The theology of the later Vedic literature did not
much differ from the theology of the hymns, but the religious spirit had
undergone a change. The creative age had changed into an age of criticism,
and inspiration naturally yielded place to formalism. Of this formalism
the priestly class now devoted its whole attention to find out the hidden
and mystic meaning of the rites and ceremonies. The ceremonies were
multiplied until they comprehended both domestic and other great
sacrifices. The domestic ceremonies embraced the whole course of a man�s
life, right from the conception in the mother�s womb up to death, or
rather beyond it, for several ceremonies refer to the departed souls. The
well known forty samskaras or sacraments, although finally drawn up
at a later period, reflected the conditions of the age before the birth of
Mahavira. These sacraments included twenty-six Grhya-rituals (1)
Garbhadhan, the rite to cause conception: (2) Punsvan, the rite to
secure the birth of a male child; (3) Simnthotryan, the parting of
the pregnant wife�s hair by the husband; (4) Jatkarm, the rite for
the new-born child; (5) Namkaranr, the ceremony of naming the
child; (6) Atrprashan, the first feeding of the child with solid
food; (7) Choodakarm, the tonsure of the child�s head; (8)
Upnyan, initiation ceremony; (9) to (12) the four vows undertaken for
studying the different Vedas; (13) Smavartan, the completion of
studentship; (14) Sehdharmcharinreesanyog, marriage; (15) to (19)
five great daily sacrifices to the Gods, manes, men, goblins and Brahmana;
(20) to (26) the seven Pakyagya small sacrifices-which had to be
performed mostly by the householder himself, and fourteen major
rituals-the seven kinds of Haviryagya and seven kinds of
somyagya in which three sacred fires were kindled, to which offerings
of cake, grain, milk, honey, etc., were made. In the Samayajnas
even animals were killed. To this list could be added numerous other
sacrifices, like the vratya-stoma, the Rajasuya, the
Asvamedha, and the Purusamedha. Some of these sacrifices
were informed by a new spirit of symbolism and spirituality, evident for
instance in the building of the altar, and lasted from twelve days to a
year or years.
The elaboration of these rituals led to the growth of Brahmanism, or the
hierarchy of Brahmanas; and with Brhmanism came the rigidity of the caste
system. Under rigid caste system, in which a man�s caste was determined by
the fact of birth, the Brahmanas became parasites living on the resources
of the industrial classes without doing anything worthwhile to compensate
the other classes. The Ksatriya class which had always been active
evolving philosophical system and which had stood for experience as
against the Brahmanic emphasis on intellect, felt the inequity and
injustice of this position and revolted against it. Mahavira and the
Buddha freely denounced the arbitrary distinctions of caste and proclaimed
the equality of all human beings, and in doing so they were giving an
effective expression to the innermost feeling of the masses.
With the growing rigidity of the caste system, the position of women had
also deteriorated. During even the later Vedic age there were exceptional
cases of women attaining a high position in society and in the learned
world. The stories of Gargi and Maritreyi mentioned in
Brihdaranryak Upanisad are remarkable examples of this. But by
the 6th century B.C. the position had become deteriorated. With the
increase in royal power, Indo Aryan chiefs had become polygamous. Women
were denied the right of inheriting property, and a father had the right
to divide his property among his sons according to his will. On the death
of her husband, a widow passed on to his family like his property. The
prevailing attitude towards women is apparent in the initial reluctance of
the Buddha to admit them into his religious order. A little later,
Megtasthenes also said that �the Brahmans do not communicate a knowledge
of philosophy to their wives.� But Mahavira and the Buddha took a highly
rational attitude in this matter; both permitted the inclusion of women
into their sanghas, and this step marked a revolutionary
improvement of their status in society.
Religion and
Philosophy
In the domain of religion and philosophy, 7th and 6th centuries B.C. were
a period of great confusion and doubt. The period was marked by growing
orthodoxy on one side and extensive revolt against it on the other. The
Buddhist literature mentions as many as sixty-three different
philosophical schools, all presumably non-Brahmana, existing at the time
of the Buddha; Jaina literature, which is more analytical in its approach,
mentions an even larger number of such heretical doctrines.
The religion of the early Aryans had been simple nature-worship. Its
simplicity stands in striking contrast to the later elaboration of the
religious side of life by the priests. The objects of worship were the
great phenomena of nature, conceived as alive and usually represented in
anthropomorphic shape like dyo: (the Heaven), Prithvee (the
Earth), Surya (the Sun), Usha (the dawn), Agnee (the
Fire) and Som (the well-known sacrificial drought). In the late
tenth book of the Rgveda, beginning of philosophy made its
appearance; the multiplicity of Gods was questioned and the unity of the
universe asserted. As the center of culture shifted from the west to east,
new gods- originally perhaps of the aborigine-like Brahma, Vishnu and
Shiva, came to be included in the Hindu pantheon, the original Vedic gods
were thrust into the background, and as a result a change occurred in the
spirit of religion and in the spirit of worship. The borrowed gods
belonged to a system which was nurtured under a different conception of
godhead from that underlying the Aryans nature-gods; they had to be
dreaded and appeased by the performance of sacrifices and not approached
in confidence, but once propitiated they were supposed to help their
worshippers against their enemies, open or hidden. Their gods were
terrific, and so the propitiatory ritual became weird and mystic.
Originally the post-priest of the Rgveda was content to invite the gods,
in the fullness of his heart, to partake of his offerings; now the priest
becomes more anxious to secure a monopoly of the God to himself and to his
patrons and to avert him and his grace from his rival worshippers. So the
technique of sacrifice became enormously elaborated and obscured, religion
became formalized and completely divorced from ethics.
