Chapter 1. India before the Buddha: the Vedas, Brahmanism, and social structure¶

An account of Buddhism must first explain the world before the Buddha's birth. The chapter traces changes in the northern Indian subcontinent from the second millennium BCE to around the sixth century BCE. It examines the social, religious, and intellectual conditions that had developed by the Buddha's time. Such conditions directly determined the problems he faced, the vocabulary available to him, and the opponents he had to answer. They are essential to the account.

The method needs explaining first. No reliable chronological history survives for this period. The available written materials are either religious texts, such as the Vedas and Upaniṣads, or later works with sectarian commitments. The book will identify legends and acknowledge their existence, but will rely mainly on linguistics, archaeology, and recent ancient DNA evidence to infer the circumstances of the time. Wherever possible, the discussion will distinguish established facts, inferences, and the book's own judgments.

A broad timeline comes first, with details to follow in the sections below.

1. When did the Buddha live?¶

To discuss "before the Buddha," we first need to know when he lived, and even that remains unsettled.

The dates given in the southern tradition come from Sri Lankan chronicles. They are figures passed down within the tradition and cannot simply be treated as reliable history. Since the 1980s, a series of critical studies led by Heinz Bechert has prompted many scholars to place the Buddha's death several decades later.¹ No consensus has emerged, however. The volumes edited by Bechert themselves contain conflicting conclusions. Some scholars still defend a long chronology close to the traditional one, while others consider the available evidence insufficient to decide between the two. The difference is as follows:

The book adopts the revised chronology and places the Buddha's activity roughly around the turn of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. It is a working hypothesis, not a settled conclusion. Adopting the long chronology would not substantially affect the philosophical account, although several relative dates would need to move earlier together. "Before the Buddha" thus covers the millennium from the beginnings of Vedic civilization, around 1500 BCE, to around 500 BCE. Specific dates still allow a margin of several decades, and all dates in the text are approximate. The broad scale is reliable enough to support the account that follows.

2. The Indus civilization and a discontinuous beginning¶

Many general histories begin with the Indus, or Harappan, civilization. Its mature period ran from 2600 to 1900 BCE, with carefully planned cities, drainage systems, and a script that remains undeciphered. It declined around 1900 BCE.²

Some readers are tempted to see "proto-Śiva" or "proto-yoga" in the figures sitting cross-legged on Harappan seals, and to treat them as the origin of later Indian religions or even meditative traditions. Interpretations based on undeciphered images rest on evidence too slight to support them. The book mentions them without building a causal chain to Buddhism on such a basis. On the evidence currently available, no direct doctrinal inheritance from the Indus civilization to the later Vedic and Brahmanical tradition can be established. In the book's judgment, the beginning is marked by a break, not an unbroken succession.

3. The Aryans and the formation of the Vedas¶

The bearers of the Vedic tradition were groups of Indo-European speakers who called themselves "Aryan" (ārya, meaning noble).

Their origins were once a question heavily distorted by politics. The nineteenth-century "Aryan invasion theory" was abused, and a reaction produced an "indigenous origin theory," according to which the Aryans had always lived in India and spread outward. The latter has strong nationalist motives in contemporary India. Recent ancient DNA research provides a clearer conclusion. In the earlier part of the second millennium BCE, groups with Central Asian steppe pastoralist ancestry did enter South Asia. Their timing and route agree with the introduction of Indo-European languages, including what later became Vedic Sanskrit.^{3 4} The inference supports migration. The book adopts the migration account and judges the indigenous origin theory to lack evidence and to be politically driven. One qualification is necessary. It was a gradual process of migration and intermingling of populations and languages over a long period, rather than a single military conquest. The older word "invasion" can mislead.

The earliest text these groups left is the Ṛgveda, whose core was composed around 1500 to 1200 BCE in the region of present-day Punjab. The rivers named in the poems suggest a somewhat wider area, extending from present-day eastern Afghanistan and the Swat Valley, through the Punjab to the Indo-Gangetic watershed, the region later called the "land of seven rivers" (sapta-sindhu).⁵ Oral transmission preserved it with an elaborate system of memorization and astonishing accuracy. It was thus a work memorized and passed down by successive generations. Orthodox Brahmanism later claimed that the Vedas were beginningless revelation, "not made by humans" (apauruṣeya). The book rejects that claim. The Vedas are texts composed by specific historical populations, with a location, a period, and groups of authors.

What the four Vedas contain¶

The four Vedas serve different functions within sacrifice. They are not four parallel bodies of doctrine.⁶

Several Vedic gods recur in later Indian religious history and Buddhist literature, so an initial acquaintance with them is useful.

When these gods enter Buddhism, their standing falls considerably. Indra becomes Śakra, a protector of the teaching, while Yama becomes the ruler of hell. In biographical literature about the Buddha, Brahmā asks him to teach, but everything depends on the Buddha's consent. The change in standing itself expresses a position. Buddhism does not deny the existence of these gods, but refuses to recognize them as ultimate authorities.

Several philosophical hymns in the later Ṛgveda, Book 10, deserve fuller discussion. The Puruṣa-sūkta (10.90), the "Hymn of the Cosmic Person," explains the origins of all things and social ranks through a cosmic sacrifice. The Hiraṇyagarbha hymn (10.121), the "Golden Embryo," asks who the creator is. Most intriguing is the Nāsadīya-sūkta (10.129), the "Hymn of Nonbeing." It asks how the world arose from "neither being nor nonbeing," and ends by doubting whether even the overseer high in heaven knows the answer. Leaving the inquiry open and questioning even the highest god's omniscience amounts to an early form of metaphysical doubt in Indian thought.

The Vedas thus already contain two competing tendencies. One, found in the Yajurveda and Sāmaveda, directs religion toward increasingly elaborate sacrificial techniques. The other, found in the later Ṛgveda and the speculative hymns of the Atharvaveda, begins to ask about "the One" and the origin of all things. The book regards the latter inquiry as a precursor to the Upaniṣads and to Indian philosophy as a whole. The inquiry had already continued for centuries before the Buddha's birth.

The layers of Vedic literature¶

Vedic literature accumulated in layers, which fall into four broad chronological groups. Their succession shows that the Brahmanical tradition itself kept changing. By the last layer, attention had shifted from performing sacrifice correctly to asking what the self and ultimate reality are.

The Upaniṣads are the immediate intellectual prelude to the Buddha's time, and will be discussed in detail in 1.2.

4. Brahmanism: sacrifice, priests, and a worldview¶

Sacrifice (yajña) is central to Vedic religion. Within its worldview, cosmic order (ṛta) depends on correctly performed sacrifice. No part of the fire offering, the offerings themselves, or the spells may go wrong. The Brahmin priestly class possesses the relevant expertise.⁷

By the Brāhmaṇa period, claims for the efficacy of sacrifice had been taken to their extreme. This efficacy was thought to derive from the correctness of the ritual itself, independently of divine will, so that the gods themselves were subject to the effects of sacrifice. Brahmins therefore held immense power through their monopoly of sacrificial expertise. Seeking results through external rites would later be a direct target of the renunciant movement and early Buddhism. Buddhism shifted the focus from external sacrifice to the mind and conduct. The opposition will recur throughout the book.

The Brahmanical tradition also devised a timetable for the ideal life in four stages (āśrama). Studentship (brahmacarya), in which one studies the Vedas with a teacher, leads to household life (gṛhastha), with marriage, children, and the duties of a householder. Forest life (vānaprastha) follows when the children have established households of their own, and involves retreat to the forest for practice. Renunciation (sannyāsa) finally abandons property and social identity altogether in the pursuit of liberation. Within the Brahmanical system, renouncing worldly life was therefore a proper course for the latter part of life, rather than a transgression. The most radical feature of the renunciant movement, including Buddhism, was to bring renunciation much earlier. People left while young instead of waiting for old age, and often remained renunciants for life without returning. The timing is a key difference between the Buddhist monastic community and the Brahmanical four-stage system. It also helps explain why the community could be culturally accepted while conservative Brahmins regarded it as heretical.

5. Varṇa as an early theoretical model of caste¶

The Brahmanical tradition supplied an account of social order through the four varṇas, or castes. Its canonical source is the Puruṣa-sūkta mentioned above. The hymn says that the four castes arose from different parts of the Cosmic Person's body during his sacrifice, giving hierarchy the appearance of a cosmic origin.⁸

Varṇa must be distinguished from jāti. Varṇa is a theoretical model, while the rigid hereditary occupational groups known as jāti matured later. Caste in the Buddha's time was far less fixed than it would become. Another fact is crucial for understanding Buddhism. In the eastern Ganges basin, Kṣatriyas and newly wealthy people in trade and crafts were rising in status. Brahmanical theoretical authority there was less secure than in its western heartland. The Buddha was born a Kṣatriya, and his community accepted people from every social stratum. In the book's judgment, those features fit his geographical and social setting.

6. The second urbanization and the eastern world¶

Around the sixth century BCE, a profound material transformation took place on the plains of the middle and lower Ganges. As iron tools became widespread, forests were cleared for cultivation. Rice farming generated a stable surplus. The surplus supported cities, specialized groups in crafts and trade, and long-distance commerce. The earliest forms of currency, including punch-marked silver coins, began to circulate. The changes are usually called India's "second urbanization," the first having been the Indus civilization.⁹

Politically, several states occupied the plains. Buddhist and Jain texts both preserve the account of "sixteen great states." Magadha was rising among them and would later annex its neighbors to provide the basis for India's first great empire.² Alongside the monarchies, the Ganges basin contained another kind of political community, a tribal republic governed jointly by a council of aristocrats. Indian texts call such communities gana, "group," or sangha, "assembly," sometimes combining the words as gana-sangha. The Śākyas belonged to this type. They had no hereditary absolute monarch, and assemblies of aristocratic members voted on major decisions.² The background bears directly on Buddhism. The monastic community founded by the Buddha was also called sangha and likewise handled important matters through collective voting, including procedures consisting of a motion followed by three proclamations. The word sangha already carried a political sense of equal deliberation. The Buddha's direct adoption of it may well have been deliberate, using republican organization to oppose Brahmanical hierarchical authority.

For intellectual history, the main consequence of the transformation was a new social group. City dwellers with money had loosened their ties to the old tribal and sacrificial order and were willing to support new ideas. We can infer that wandering thinkers gained audiences and support, and new teachings gained a market in which to circulate. The rise of the Buddha's community and its support from kings and wealthy merchants depended on such material conditions. The book rejects any account of Buddhism as a purely spiritual event appearing from nowhere. It grew within specific social and economic conditions that were changing rapidly.

7. Intellectual unrest and the question of "Greater Magadha"¶

By the Buddha's time, several ideas were already in circulation. They included karma, understood as action that brings consequences; saṃsāra, the continuation of birth and death; and the pursuit of liberation from that cycle. Almost all Indian schools of the period shared this set of questions, including Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Chapters 2 and 3 will discuss the details.

A contemporary debate needs introducing here. Traditional accounts treat karma, rebirth, and the pursuit of liberation through asceticism as products of the Vedic and Brahmanical tradition, with Buddhism merely a "reaction" against it. In Greater Magadha (2007), Johannes Bronkhorst proposes a different view. The eastern Ganges basin where the Buddha was active already had a culture distinct from the Brahmanical heartland in the west. Some central ideas of karma and rebirth may have originated in that eastern culture rather than in the Vedas.¹⁰ The hypothesis is disputed. The book regards it as deserving serious consideration, without treating it as settled. At a minimum, it shows that deriving karma, rebirth, and liberation wholesale from the Vedas is not the only available explanation. The eastern Ganges basin may have had intellectual sources of its own.

The next chapter turns to the Upaniṣads and asks how the questions of self, ultimate reality, and liberation were formulated. The discussion in 1.3 then turns to the renunciant schools, bringing us closer to the Buddha's own circumstances.

References¶