Rethinking India’s past

This article shows how Brahmanism was a regional tradition, confined to the northwestern parts of the Indian subcontinent, that passed through a difficult period—which it barely survived—roughly between the time of Alexander and the beginning of the Common Era. It then reinvented itself, in a different shape. No longer primarily a sacrificial tradition, it became a mainly socio-political ideology that borrowed much (including the belief in rebirth and karmic retribution) from the eastern region in which Buddhism and Jainism had arisen. Its revival went hand in hand with the elaboration of behavioural and theoretical innovations, one of whose purposes was to justify the claimed superiority of Brahmins.

Brahmanism is the term I use to refer to a movement that arose out of Vedic religion. Vedic religion was what the German Egyptologist Jan Assmann (2003) might call a primary religion. It was a priestly religion, not unlike the priestly religions of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. As such it was indissociably linked to one single culture, to one single society, and to one single language. It had a close association with the rulers of the society to which it belonged, for whom it provided ritual services. Like other primary religions, Vedic religion had no exclusive truth claims of a religious nature, and did not try to make converts.

Contributions to Indian Sociology

This article shows how Brahmanism was a regional tradition, confined to the northwestern parts of the Indian subcontinent, that passed through a difficult period—which it barely survived—roughly between the time of Alexander and the beginning of the Common Era. It then reinvented itself, in a different shape. No longer primarily a sacrificial tradition, it became a mainly socio-political ideology that borrowed much (including the belief in rebirth and karmic retribution) from the eastern region in which Buddhism and Jainism had arisen. Its revival went hand in hand with the elaboration of behavioural and theoretical innovations, one of whose purposes was to justify the claimed superiority of Brahmins.

Routledge Handbook of South Asian Religions, 2020

Brahmans play a prominent role in Hinduism in most of its forms. They constitute a caste-class (varṇa) and claim descent from the seers who "saw" the ancient Vedic hymns. They o ciated in Vedic times at the sacrifi ces that were (or aspired to be) an essential part of political life. Their vital role in all kinds of rituals continued beyond those days, well into the present. From a Brahmanical point of view, the history of Brahmans and of the institutions for which they have been responsible is continuous. From their perspective, Brahmans were there from immemorial time to look after the ritual aspects of society, incorporating traditional knowledge and wisdom and advising rulers on the correct way to run society and their kingdoms. What is more, Brahmans considered themselves to be, and to have always been, at the top of the social hierarchy. An inspection of the historical evidence shows that this vision of the past is not correct. Such an inspection brings up a far more complex picture, in which the rise of Brahmanism was a long and di cult process, with several ups and downs. Our point of departure is the late Vedic period, the period during which texts were composed dealing with complex rituals-we'll call them Vedic sacrifi ces. These Vedic sacrifi ces were carried out by sacrifi cial priests, the Brahmans, for the benefi t of rich and powerful patrons. This happened in the northwestern regions of the Indian subcontinent, including regions that now lie in Pakistan. This sacrifi cial and priestly tradition was closely associated with the political order in those regions, just as the sacrifi cial and priestly traditions of ancient Egypt and of ancient Mesopotamia were part of the political systems in those parts of the world. The sacrifi cial and priestly traditions of ancient Egypt and ancient Mesopotamia did not survive the collapse of those political systems. One might have expected the same in South Asia, but this is not what happened. The following pages will consider how the Vedic political systems came to an end and how the responses of those primarily a ected, the Brahmans, led to something altogether new. A succession of political events e ectively put an end to the Vedic sacrifi cial tradition. The fi rst one we know about in some detail is the invasion of the Indian subcontinent (327-325 BCE) by Alexander of Macedonia, often called Alexander the Great. He and his army did not penetrate deeply into the subcontinent; in fact, their movements were confi ned to what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan and never reached present-day India. But the regions they did visit, especially in what is now Pakistan, had an infl uential population of Brahmans, and we learn

2016

Indian history writing has witnessed biased writings from the beginning by modern writers. Mauryas, Guptas etc has been tried to be part of the Brahmin social order exclusively known as the Varnashram system. The historians intended to prove that Brahmin ideology and traditions were prevalent from the earliest time possible. They took advantage of the weak historical evidences and eventually made efforts to disfigure the History. They refused all evidences deliberately that supported the cause of the non-Brahmin traditions. They tried to place the period of Vedic evidences far earlier than it could be. They accepted or refuted the very evidences of Puranas according to their suitability. They calculated the reigning years of pre-Brahmin dynasties less to keep non-Brahmanic era shorter. They tried to establish that Kshatriyas were people evolved accordingly to the Purushshukta. They tried to establish that Buddhism was evolved after Brahmanism. They keep silence over the fact that if...

2016

This book may be looked upon as the third of a trilogy that deals with the early development of classical Indian culture. The first, Greater Magadha, studied the culture of the eastern parts of the Ganges valley, a culture that was originally independent but came to be largely absorbed into Brahmanical culture, and which contributed many defining features to the latter. The second book in the trilogy, Buddhism in the Shadow of Brahmanism, depicted how Buddhism in India, in spite of remaining nominally independent, underwent such strong brahmanization that it can be said to have joined forces with Brahmanism, in vain as it turned out. The present book concentrates on the extraordinary success story of Brahmanism, which developed from a movement in danger of extinction during the last centuries before the Common Era into one that, in less than a millennium, succeeded in imposing its imprint on the Indian subcontinent and much of Southeast Asia, and did this without the help of a conquering army or an all-powerful empire. Religious conversion cannot have played a role, for one could not convert to Brahmanism. This book seeks to understand how the Brahmins did it. This book uses material that has been published elsewhere. The material concerned has been freely modified, updated, and translated where necessary. A list of publications from which material has been taken includes the following: "The orthoepic diaskeuasis of the Ṛgveda and the date of Pāṇini.

Thinking with J. Z. Smith: Mapping Methods in the Study of Religion, 2023

This chapter will bring Smith’s insights on ritual to bear on scholarly discussions of the historical process in late ancient South Asia known as “Brahmanization.” In particular, I will discuss scholarly claims about how the political and cultural phenomenon of “Brahmanization” affected the Indian Buddhist monastic institution at the turn of the Common Era. By Brahmanization, I am referring to the spread of those social forces associated with the Brahmanical class of ritual specialists at the turn of the Common Era, which, over many centuries, and in piecemeal fashion, have insinuated purity norms into a variety of religious and political contexts throughout South Asia. In this chapter, I will challenge the notion that the process of Brahmanization in South Asia at the turn of the Common Era was the pervasive socio-religious juggernaut that it is often depicted as in Indological scholarship. In particular, I will argue that there was substantial resistance within the Buddhist establishment to the new ritual systems of the late ancient period, which was designed in Brahmanical circles of power to govern the relationship to the dead.