Orientalists have started treating Buddhism as a
separate religion because they discovered it outside India, without any
conspicuous link with India, where Buddhism was not in evidence. At first, they
didn’t even know that the Buddha had been an Indian. It had at any rate gone
through centuries of development unrelated to anything happening in India at
the same time. Therefore, it is understandable that Buddhism was already the
object of a separate discipline even before any connection with Hinduism could
be made.
Buddhism
in modern India
In India, all kinds of invention, somewhat logically
connected to this status of separate religion, were then added. Especially the
Ambedkarite movement, springing from the conversion of Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar in
1956, was very driven in retro-actively producing an anti-Hindu programme for
the Buddha. 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, possibly in 496, who “burned what he had worshipped and worshipped what
he had burnt”. (Let it pass for now that the Christian chroniclers slandered
their victims by positing a false symmetry: the Heathens hadn’t been in the
business of destroying Christian symbols.) So, in his understanding of the
history of Bauddha Dharma (Buddhism),
Ambedkar was less than reliable, in spite of his sterling contributions
regarding the history of Islam and some parts of the history of caste. 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’s first Prime Minister, Buddhism was turned into the
unofficial state religion of India, adopting the “lion pillar” of the Buddhist
Emperor Ashoka as state symbol and putting the 24-spoked Cakravarti wheel in
the national flag. 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’s last Viceroy”, prided himself on
his illiteracy in Hindu culture, so he didn’t know any of this, but was
satisfied that these symbols could glorify Ashoka and belittle Hinduism, deemed
a separate religion from which Ashoka had broken away by accepting Buddhism. More
broadly, he thought that everything of value in India was a gift of Buddhism
(and Islam) to the undeserving Hindus. Thus, the fabled Hindu tolerance was
according to him a value borrowed from Buddhism. 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 way 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”
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, they used it to
mean: any Indian except for the Indian Muslims, Christians or Jews. It did not
have a specific doctrinal content except “non-Abrahamic”, a negative definition.
It meant every Indian Pagan, including the Brahmins, Buddhists (“clean-shaven
Brahmins”), Jains, other ascetics, low-castes, intermediate castes, tribals, and
by implication also the as yet unborn Lingayats, Sikhs, Hare Krishnas, Arya
Samajis, Ramakrishnaites, secularists and others who nowadays reject the label
“Hindu”. This definition was essentially also adopted by VD 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) 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 Aikshvaku dynasty, a descendant of Manu, a self-described
reincarnation of Rama, the son of the Raja (president-for-life) 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 your caste
marks including your 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 till 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 which 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 is 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 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, eventhough 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 often follow the designs
of Vedic habitat ecology or Vastu Shastra. Buddhist temple conventions follow
an established Hindu pattern. Buddhist mantras, also outside India, follow the
pattern of Vedic mantras. When Buddhism spread to China and Japan, Buddhist monks
took the Vedic gods (e.g. the twelve Aditya’s) with them and built temples for
them. In Japan, every town has a temple for the river-goddess Benzaiten, i.e.
“Saraswati Devi”, the goddess Saraswati. She was not introduced there by wily
Brahmins, but by Buddhists.
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 Sapta Shila, 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 which Balaram made in
the Mahabharata, or the pilgrimage to the Ganga which the elderly Pandava
brothers made. Far from being a revolutionary, the Buddha emphatically outed
himself as a conservative, both in social and in religious matters. He was not
a rebel or a revolutionary, but wanted the existing customs to continue. The Buddha
was every inch a Hindu.
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