An Analysis of Religion in Classical India

Religion in Classical India

3 doctrines came into Indian History that tried to establish Cultural order. They were Jainism, Buddhism, and Hinduism.

Jainist doctrines first appeared during the seventh-century b.c., they became popular only when the greater teacher Vardhamana Mahavira turned to Jainism in the late sixth-century b.c. Mahavira expounded his thought to a group of dedicated disciples who formed a monastic order to perpetuate and spread his message. These disciples refer to him as Jina (“the conqueror”) and borrowing from this title his followers referred to themselves as Jains.

Jains believed that everything in the universe: humans, animals, plants, bodies of water, and even inanimate physical objects such as rocks possessed a soul. They were very careful in their movements, they also tried not to make any sudden moves, because they didn’t want to harm any living thing or physical object that may have a soul. They were strict vegetarians and filtered their water using a cloth to prevent harming the invisible souls and unwittingly consuming tiny animals.

The ethics of Jainism were so demanding that very few people other than monks could hope to observe them closely. For most people, Jainism was not a practical alternative to the religion of the Brahmins.

Despite the moral respect it has commended and the influence it has wielded through the centuries, however, Jainism has always been the faith of a small minority. It has simply been too difficult or even impossible for most people to observe. A more popular and practical alternative to the brahmins’ cults came in the form of Buddhism.

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Like Mahavira, the founder of Buddhism came from a Kshatriya family, but he gave up his position and inheritance to seek salvation. His name was Siddhartha Gautama, born about 563 b.c. in a small tribal state governed by his father in the foothills of the Himalayas. Later in life, he left his family to find the reason for pain and suffering, he spent 49 days under the bo tree so he can understand the problem of suffering and how humans could eliminate it from the world. At that time Gautama became the Buddha “the enlightened one”. The Buddha publicly announced his doctrine for the first time about 528 b.c. at the Deer Park of Sarnath, near the Buddhist city of Banaras (modern Varanasi), in a sermon delivered to friends who had formerly been his companions in asceticism. Buddhists refer to this sermon as the “Turning of the Wheel of the Law” because it represented the beginning of the Buddha’s quest to promulgate the law of righteousness.

The fundamental doctrine of Buddhism, known as the Four Noble Truths, teaches that all life involves suffering; that desire is the cause of suffering; that the elimination of desire brings an end to suffering; and that a disciplined life conducted by the Noble Eightfold Path brings the elimination of desire. The Noble Eightfold Path calls for individuals to lead balanced and moderate lives, rejecting both the devotion to luxury often found in human society and the regimes of extreme asceticism favored by hermits and Jains. Apart from the social implication of the doctrine, there were several other reasons for the immense popularity of early Buddhism in India.

Later after several innovations in the doctrine; Mahayana Buddhism emerged, it spread rapidly throughout India and became established in central Asia, China, Japan, and Korea. Mahayana Buddhism flourished partly because of educational institutions that efficiently promoted the faith. Most monasteries provided basic education, and larger communities offered advanced instructions as well. The best known of all was the Buddhist monastery at Nalanda, founded during the Gupta dynasty in the Ganges River valley near Pataliputra. At Nalanda, it was possible to study not only Buddhism but also the Vedas, Hindu philosophy, logic, and medicine. Nalanda soon became famous as an educational center where pilgrims and students from foreign lands traveled there to study with the most renowned masters of Buddhist doctrine. By the end of the Gupta dynasty, several thousand students may have been in residence there.

As Buddhism generated new ideas and increased its popularity, Hinduism underwent a similar evolution that transformed it into a popular religion of salvation. While drawing inspiration from the Vedas and Upanishads, popular Hinduism increasingly departed from the older traditions of the brahmins. As in the case of Mahayana Buddhism, changes in the doctrine and the observance resulted in a faith that addressed the interests and met the needs of ordinary people. The great epic poems, that Mahabharata and the Ramayana illustrate the development of Hindu values. The Mahabharata dealt with a massive war for the control of northern India between two groups of cousins. The Ramayana too was originally a love and adventure story involving the trials faced by the legendary Prince Rama and his loyal wife Sita. These epics Mahabharata, a secular poem revised by brahman scholars to honor the god Vishnu, the preserver of the world Ramayana, a secular story of Rama and Sita, was changed into a Hindu story. A short poetic work known as the Bhagavad Gita (“song of the lord”) best illustrates both the expectations that Hinduism made of individuals and the promise of salvation that it held out to them. Hindu Ethics thus differed considerably from those of early Indian moralists. The Upanishad had taught that only through renunciation and detachment from the world could individuals escape the cycle of incarnation. Hindu ethical teachings made life much easier for the lay classes by holding out the promise of salvation precisely to those who participated actively in the world and met their caste responsibilities. And also leading honorable lives in the world. With time Hinduism became more and more popular while Buddhism declined. Within a few centuries, devotional Hinduism and the more recently introduced faith of Islam almost completely eclipsed Buddhism in its homeland.