[In reality, the Buddha had been a beneficiary of an already established Hindu tradition of pluralism. In a Muslim country, he would never have preached his doctrine in peace and comfort for 45 years, but in Hindu society, this was a matter of course. There were some attempts on his life, but they emanated not from “Hindus” but from jealous disciples within his own monastic order.]
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The
Buddha in a preaching pose flanked by bodhisattvas, Cave 4 Ajanta.
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Orientalists have started treating Buddhism as a
separate religion because they discovered it outside India India India
Buddhism In Modern India
In India
Conversion itself, not just the embracing of
a new tradition (which any Hindu is free to do, all while staying a Hindu) but
the renouncing of one’s previous religion, as the Hindu-born politician
Ambedkar did, is a typically Christian concept.
The model event was the conversion of the Frankish king Clovis
But where he was a bit right and a bit mistaken, his later
followers have gone all the way and made nothing but a gross caricature of
history, and especially about the place of Buddhism in Hindu history.
The Ambedkarite worldview has ultimately only radicalized the
moderately anti-Hindu version of the reigning Nehruvians. Under Jawaharlal Nehru , India India
Essentially, Nehru’s knowledge of Indian history was limited to
two spiritual figures, viz. the Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi, and three political
leaders: Ashoka, Akbar and himself. The concept of Cakravarti (“wheel-turner,”
universal ruler) was in fact much older than Ashoka, and the 24-spoked wheel
can also be read in other senses, e.g. the Sankhya philosophy’s worldview, with
the central Purusha/Subject and the 24 elements of Prakrti/Nature.
The anglicized Nehru, “India India
In reality, the Buddha had been a beneficiary of an already
established Hindu tradition of pluralism. In a Muslim country, he would never have
preached his doctrine in peace and comfort for 45 years, but in Hindu society,
this was a matter of course. There were some attempts on his
life, but they emanated not from “Hindus” but from jealous disciples within his
own monastic order.
So, both Nehru and Ambedkar, as well as their followers,
believed by implication that at some point in his life, the Hindu-born
renunciate Buddha had broken away from Hinduism and adopted a new religion,
Buddhism. This notion is now omnipresent, and through school textbooks, most
Indians have lapped this up and don’t know any better.
However, numerous though they are, none
of the believers in this story have ever told us at what moment in his life the
Buddha broke away from Hinduism. When did he revolt against it?
Very many Indians repeat the Nehruvian account, but so far, never has any of
them been able to pinpoint an event in the Buddha’s life which constituted a
break with Hinduism.
The Term “Hinduism”
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Darius
relief from the northern stairs of the Apadana of Persepolis
(Archaeological
museum,
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Their first line of defence, when put on the spot, is sure to
be:“Actually, Hinduism did not yet exist at the time.”So, their position really
is:Hinduism did not exist yet,
but somehow the Buddha broke away from it.Yeah, the secular
position is that he was a miracle-worker.
Let us correct that: the word “Hinduism” did not exist yet. When
Darius of the Achaemenid Persians, a near-contemporary of the Buddha, used the
word “Hindu,” it was purely in a geographical sense: anyone from inside or
beyond the Indus region.
When the medieval Muslim invaders brought the term into India
This definition was essentially also adopted by V.D. Savarkar in
his book Hindutva (1923), and by the Hindu
Marriage Act (1955).
By this historical definition, which also has the advantages of primacy and of
not being thought up by the wily Brahmins, the Buddha and all his Indian followers are
unquestionably Hindus. In
that sense, Savarkar was right when he called Ambedkar’s taking refuge in
Buddhism “a sure jump into the Hindu fold.”
But the word “Hindu” is a favourite object of manipulation.
Thus, secularists say that all kinds of groups (Dravidians, low-castes, Sikhs,
etc.) are “not Hindu,” yet when Hindus complain of the self-righteousness and
aggression of the minorities, secularists laugh at this concern: “How can the
Hindus feel threatened? They are more than 80%!”
The missionaries call the tribals “not Hindus,” but when the
tribals riot against the Christians who have murdered their Swami, we read
about “Hindu rioters.” In the Buddha’s case, “Hindu” is often
narrowed down to “Vedic” when convenient, then restored to its wider meaning
when expedient.
One meaning which the word “Hindu” definitely does not have, and
did not have when it was introduced, is “Vedic.” Shankara holds it against
Patanjali and the Sankhya school (just like the Buddha did) that they don’t
bother to cite the Vedas, yet they have a place in every history of Hindu
thought.
Hinduism includes a lot of elements which have only a thin Vedic
veneer, and numerous ones which are not Vedic at all. Scholars say that it
consists of a “Great Tradition” and many “Little Traditions,” local cults
allowed to subsist under the aegis of the prestigious Vedic line. However, if
we want to classify the Buddha in these terms, he should rather be included in
the Great Tradition.
Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha was a Kshatriya, a scion of the
Solar or Ikshvaku dynasty, a descendant of Manu, a self-described reincarnation
of Rama, the son of the Raja of the Shakya tribe, a member of its Senate, and
belonging to the Gautama gotra (roughly “clan”).
Though monks are often known by their monastic name, Buddhists prefer
to name the Buddha after his descent group, viz. the Shakyamuni, “renunciate of
the Shakya tribe.” This tribe was as Hindu as could be, consisting according to
its own belief of the progeny of the eldest children of patriarch Manu, who
were repudiated at the insistence of his later, younger wife.
The Buddha is not known to have rejected this name, not even at
the end of his life when the Shakyas had earned the wrath of king Vidudabha of
Kosala and were massacred. The doctrine that he was one in a line of
incarnations which also included Rama is not a deceitful Brahmin Puranic
invention but was launched by the Buddha himself, who claimed Rama as an
earlier incarnation of his. The numerous scholars who like to
explain every Hindu idea or custom as “borrowed from Buddhism” could well
counter Ambedkar’s rejection of this “Hindu” doctrine by pointing out very
aptly that it was “borrowed from Buddhism.”
Career
At 29, he renounced society, but not Hinduism. Indeed, it is a
typical thing among Hindus to exit from society, laying off caste marks
including civil name.
The Rg-Veda already describes the Muni-s as having matted hair
and going about sky-clad: such are what we now know as Naga Sadhus. Asceticism
was a recognized practice in Vedic society long before the Buddha. Yajnavalkya,
the Upanishadic originator of the notion of Self, renounced life in society
after a successful career as court priest and an equally happy family life with
two wives.
By leaving his family and renouncing his future in politics, the
Buddha followed an existing tradition within Hindu society. He didn’t practice Vedic
rituals anymore, which is normal for a Vedic renunciate (though Zen Buddhists
still recite the Heart Sutra in the Vedic fashion, ending with“sowaka,”i.e., svaha).
He was a late follower of a movement very much in evidence in
the Upanishads, viz. of spurning rituals (Karmakanda)
in favour of knowledge (Jnanakanda).
After he had done the Hindu thing by going to the forest, he tried several
methods, including the techniques he learned from two masters and which did not
fully satisfy him−but nonetheless enough to include them in his own and the
Buddhist curriculum.
Among other techniques, he practised Anapanasati,“attention
to the breathing process,” the archetypal yoga practice popular in practically
all yoga schools even today. For a while he also practised an extreme form of
asceticism, still existing in the Hindu sect of Jainism. He exercised his Hindu
freedom to join a sect devoted to certain techniques, and later the freedom to
leave it, remaining a Hindu at every stage.
He then added a technique of his own, or at least that is what
the Buddhist sources tell us, for in the paucity of reliable information, we don’t
know for sure that he hadn’t learned the Vipassana (“mindfulness”) technique elsewhere.
Unless evidence of the contrary comes to the surface, we assume
that he invented this technique all by himself, as a Hindu is free to do. He
then achieved Bodhi, the “Awakening.” By his own admission,
he was by no means the first to do so. Instead, he had only walked the same
path of other Awakened beings before him.
At the bidding of the Vedic gods Brahma and Indra, he left his
self-contained state of Awakening and started teaching his way to others. When
he “set in motion the wheel of the Law” (Dharma-cakra-pravartana,
Chinese Falungong), he
gave no indication whatsoever of breaking with an existing system.
On the contrary, by his use of existing Vedic and Upanishadic
terminology (Arya, “Vedically civilized”;Dharma), he confirmed his Vedic
roots and implied that his system was a restoration of the Vedic ideal that had
become degenerate. He taught his techniques and his analysis of the human
condition to his disciples, promising them to achieve the same Awakening if
they practiced these diligently.
Caste
On caste, we find him in full cooperation with existing caste
society. Being an elitist, he mainly recruited among the upper castes, with
over 40% Brahmins. These would later furnish all the great philosophers who
made Buddhism synonymous with conceptual sophistication.
Conversely, the Buddhist universities trained well-known
non-Buddhist scientists such as the astronomer Aryabhata. Lest the impression
be created that universities are a gift of Buddhism to India, it may be pointed
out that the Buddha’s friends Bandhula and Prasenadi (and, according to a
speculation, maybe the young Siddhartha himself) had studied at the university
of Takshashila, clearly established before there were any Buddhists were around
to do so. Instead, the Buddhists greatly developed an institution which they
had inherited from Hindu society.
The kings and magnates of the eastern Ganga plain treated the Buddha as
one of their own (because that is what he was) and gladly patronized his
fast-growing monastic order, commanding their servants and subjects to build a
network of monasteries for it. He predicted the coming of a future Awakened
leader like himself, the Maitreya (“the one practising friendship/charity”), and specified that he
would be born in a Brahmin family.
When king Prasenadi discovered that his wife was not a Shakya
princess but the daughter of the Shakya ruler by a maid-servant, he repudiated
her and their son; but his friend the Buddha made him take them back.
Did he achieve this by saying that birth is unimportant, that
“caste is bad” or that “caste doesn’t matter,” as the Ambedkarites claim? No, he
reminded the king of the old view (then apparently in the process of
being replaced with a stricter view) that caste was passed on exclusively in the
paternal line.
Among hybrids of horses and donkeys, the progeny of a horse
stallion and a donkey mare whinnies, like its father, while the progeny of a
donkey stallion and a horse mare brays, also like its father. So, in the oldest
Upanishad, Satyakama Jabala is accepted by his Brahmins-only teacher because
his father is deduced to be a Brahmin, regardless of his mother being a
maid-servant. And similarly, king Prasenadi should accept his son as a
Kshatriya, even though his mother was not a full-blooded Shakya Kshatriya.
When he died, the elites of eight cities made a successful bid
for his ashes on the plea: “We are Kshatriyas, he was a Kshatriya, therefore we
have a right to his ashes”. After almost half a century, his disciples didn’t mind being
seen in public as still observing caste in a context which was par excellence
Buddhist.
The reason is that the Buddha in his many teachings never had
told them to give up caste, e.g. to give their daughters in marriage to men of
other castes. This was perfectly logical: as a man with a spiritual message,
the Buddha wanted to lose as little time as possible on social matters. If
satisfying your own miserable desires is difficult enough, satisfying the
desire for an egalitarian society provides an endless distraction from your
spiritual practice.
The Seven Rules
There never was a separate non-Hindu Buddhist society.
Most Hindus worship various gods and teachers, adding and
sometimes removing one or more pictures or statues to their house altar. This
way, there were some lay worshippers of the Buddha, but they were not a society
separate from the worshippers of other gods or Awakened masters. This
box-type division of society in different sects is another Christian prejudice
infused into modern Hindu society by Nehruvian secularism.
There were only Hindus, members of Hindu castes, some of whom had a veneration
for the Buddha among others.
Buddhist buildings in India India
When Buddhism spread to China Japan Japan
At the fag end of his long life, the Buddha described the seven
principles by which a society does not perish (which Sita Ram Goel has given
more body in his historical novel Saptasheel, in Hindi), and among
them are included: respecting and maintaining the existing festivals,
pilgrimages and rituals; and revering the holy men.
These festivals etc. were mainly “Vedic,” of course, like the
pilgrimage to the Saraswati River Ganga which the elderly Pandava brothers made. Far
from being a revolutionary, the Buddha emphatically outed himself as a conservative,
both in social and religious matters. He was not a rebel or a
revolutionary, but wanted the existing customs to continue.
The Buddha was every inch a Hindu.
This article was published
in Hindu Human Rights, on 10 August
2013 , and in Sutra Journal, October, 2015.