Introduction

It is in the sixth century B.C. that Indian history emerges from legend and traditions. Now for the first time arose large states with towns as their seats of power sh reference to which is found in our traditional literature. All these states did not play the same role in contemporary polities. Kashi, which was most important at first, lost its position to Kosala and Magadh. These two kingdoms vied with each other for control of the Ganga basin, which owing to reverine commercial traffic, had certain clear strategic and economic advantages. In this fight of political hegemony, which lasted for nearly a hundred years, Magadha emerged victorious and became the centre of political activity not only in Bihar and eastern U.P., but in the whole of north India. Thus we find the tribal and semi tribal political organization which was the hall-mark of the Vedic times being given a good-bye.

Coming to the changes taking place in the realm of economy the basic factor that seems to have transformed the life of the people living in Bihar and eastern U.P. during this period seems to be the use of iron on a wider scale. This helped the peasants to produce more surplus, which in turn helped the growth of towns. Taking the country as a whole about sixty towns may be assigned to the period 600-300 B.C. The big cities were about twenty in number, six of them namely Champa (modern Bhagalpur in Bihar), Rajagrha (about sixty miles south of Patna in Bihar), Saket (in eastern U.P.), Kausambi (near Allahabad), Benaras and Kusinara (modern Kasia in Deoria district of U.P.) were important enough to be associated with the passing away of the Buddha. Excavations, however, prove Rajagrha, Vesali, Rajghat, Chirand (near Chapra in Bihar) and Kausambi to be the only urban settlements of the sixth century B.C. Trade received fillip from the use of metal coins, issued probably by the merchants. These are the earliest discovered coins in India (called punchmarked coins) and can not be dated beyond the time of Buddha. We also notice, simultaneously the proliferation in arts and crafts which implies increasing specialization in the field of commodity production. The emergence of gahapati from the Vedic householder to a comparatively wealthy head of the household may indicate the growing disparity of wealth in society. Thus around 500 B.C. a remarkable beginning of town life seems to have taken place in Bihar and eastern U.P.

The rise of a new wealthy class in villages and towns caused economic inequalities which further liquidated tribal ideas of kinship and equality. This period also witnessed the growth of untouchability and prostitution. Brahmana-Ksatriya conflict is noticed while niyoga, a Vedic pratice seems to have vanished but significantly family (Kula) became quite important in the new emerging scenario during this period.

Around sixth century B.C. many new religious sects emerged but of all the sects only Buddhism and Jainism came to stay in India. What is historically striking is the sharp differences between the Brahmanical and the Buddhist religion. The newly developed features of the social and economic life of the people did not fit in with the Vedic ritualism and animal sacrifices, which had become a source of the senseless decimation of animal wealth, the main basis of the new plough agriculture. The conflict between the Vedic religious practices and the aspirations of the rising social groups led to the search for new religious and philosophical ideas which would fit with the basic changes in the material life of the people. Thus in the sixth century B.C., emerged many religious leaders in the Gangetic Valley who preached against Vedic religion. Ajeta Keshakambalin propagated a thoroughly materialist doctrine called annihilationism (uchchhedavada). From this the Lokayata or Charvaka school of philosophy is believed to have derived a lot. The Lokayata (literally, widespread in the world) philosophy was supposed to have been popular among the people. The Brhaspatisutra (also Lokayatasutra), on which much of India’s materialist thinking was based, existed in some form as early as second century B.C., as can be judged from Patanjali’s reference to it. But it is now lost. The only materialistic Philosophical text that has survived in the Tattvopaplavasimha written by a certain Jayarashi in the eight century A.D., Materialism, however, remained an important undercurrent of Indian thought. The Lokayatikas were thought of as preaching unabashed Epicureanism and were therefore viewed with scorn by the orthodox. From the early centuries of the Christian era the Lokayata philosophy came to be increasingly associated with Charvaka, who is supposed to have been a pupil of Brhaspati.^[1]

Pakhuda Katyayana, another religious leader, held that just as the earth, water, air and light are primary indestructible elements, so are sorrow, happiness and life. It has been suggested that from his ideas the later Vaisheshika school originated. Purana Kassapa, the third contemporary preacher, regarded the soul as distinct from the body and laid the foundations of what later came to be known as the Samkhya system of philosophy. There has been a few works on the proposed time span of the study but no comprehensive work has been attempted on the proposed topic per se. We acknowledge and appreciate great scholars, especially Rhys Davids and Fick for their valuable works but this must be admitted that their works show many shortcomings. One of the most outstanding of these is that both these scholars accepted the whole of the pali cannon and also the commentarial literature ascribed to Buddhaghosa together with the prose Jataka all of equal validity. For a more reliable account of social conditions, much less social processes (during our proposed period of study) the Jataka and the commentaries cannot be used as these seem to have been composed after the period, proposed in the study. Besides, they have attempted to study a vast geographical tract. N. Wagle’s work can be regarded as a serious study. But he too, like the earlier two scholars, has attempted to bring under his ambit of study the entire India and therefore the conclusions are at best generalizations which need to be tested at the micro levels. His work, again like Davids and Fick, does not use archaeological sources.

Uma Chakervarty’s work^[2] is rooted priminarily in a classical Marxist framework sh therefore has overlooked the autonomy of socio-cultural processes, which to her seems to be part of the ‘superstructure’.

Wherever possible information glanced through Pali canons could have been cross checked from archaeological sources. Generalization thus arrived, would have been much closer to reality.

The proposed study intends to analyze the social processes occurring only in Bihar and eastern U.P. using not only Buddhist sources but also archeological sources including numismatic. Here stratification of the Pali texts is a major problem. Our present study is based mainly on the first four Nikayas, the Vinay and the Sutta Nipata of the canonical texts. Rhys Davids places the Vinay and the first four Nikayas in the same chronological stratum. This he has done on the basis of showing internal unity of texts^[3]. The pre Mauryan dating of the Vinay and the first four Nikayas of Sutta Pitaka has been done on the basis of a reference to seven selected passages of the Pali canon in the Bhabhra edict of Asoka. Four of the passages have been identified as being in the first four Nikayas, one in the Vinaya and the rest in the Sutta Nipata^[4]. It has also been suggested that the fifth Nikaya of the Sutta Pitaka does not appear to have been recognized by schools other than the Theravada^[5] , and is therefore likely to have been a later supplementary Nikaya.

Wagle, following Pande, has accepted major portions of the Sutta Pitaka and Vinay Pitaka as pre-Asokan and considers the first four Nikayas and the Vinay material reflective of the conditions between 500-300 B.C. On the basis of a study of the Sutta Nipata by Jayawickrame, Wagle has accepted it as belonging to the earliest stratum of Buddhist literature.^[6]

There are archeological sources also for the period of our study. Rajagaha, city closely associated with the Buddhas life, was excavated in the year 1905^[7]. Excavations carried out there later have found Jivakaramavana monastery building donated by the famous physician Jivaka^[8]. Ghositrarama has been found in excavations at Kosambi which was a high rampart of Udayana^[9]. George Erdosy, while reviewing the chronology of urban sites connected with the Buddha, observes that of the six great cities mentioned in the Pali texts sh Campa, Rajagaha, Savatthe, Saketa, Kosambi and Varanasi sh “Only Kasi and Campa can be assumed to possess fortifications by the fifth century B.C., while the rest must be dated to the fourth century B.C. at the earliest. The cities became fully evolved urban centres only from the latter period^[10]. Therefore, placing Vinay and the Nikayas in 400-300 B.C. on the basis of textual analysis also synchronizes with archaeological findings.

Methods are known by the preferred conceptual schemes employed in pursuit of a research work. The nature of the research work under study is as such which presupposes use of methodological predications that engage underpinnings of philosophical and historical as much as comparative and political economic.

Historical method serves the basis to undertake investigation of realities and / or truth, in view of analyzing the constitutive elements of past in shaping the present. Analytical enterprise on a research study of historical nature, therefore, neceeitates the use of time scale as an instrument of scrutinizing truth or lack of it. Analytical and investigative tools of numismatics, archeology and archival sources and evidences form the basis of research investigations. The centrality of the historicity of a truth or reality is examined with the help of evidence accrued by using the tools of historical method.

The historical methods tends to examine the processes which have been informality in facilitating the transitions from the Vedic to the post-Vedic, as also from the Vedic to the Buddhist and the main views of historical truths. Also, the means and ways deployed to construct and reconstruct realities in specificities of historical imaginings. Historicity of truth is investigated not only in continuity but also in change, discreteness and ruptures of realities, the way they were differently perceived by different segment of peoples living in different set of socio-cultural and political economic milieu.

The historical period under study in remarkably vibrant in terms of deliberations and dispositions in philosophical engagements with truth. The coordinates of philosophical intersect on the interface of Vedic and non-Vedic as much as on Vedic, Buddhist and Jaina reflections on the specificities and dialectics truth.

Almost all the socio-political cultural and economic institutions prevalent during the period of the study have been witness to differential philosophical investigations. These institutions have been philosophically problematical, reformed, and in the process reconstructed in popular philosophical and normative imagery.

These philosophical traditions are compared in their nature and latitude of investigative deliberations to truth and deconstructive and constructive philosophical enterprises as formative contours in canvass of re-constituted realities.

The work under study looks at realties also with the political-economy perspective as a particular mode of production produces specific relations of production. The political economy method looks at history as a political economic system which has a characteristic production process in which political economy works as economizing process as well as shaping the material dimensions of human life.

The agrarian economy and iron-ores play a decisive role in shaping the material milieu of the social formations in that the whole process of urbanization, empire-building and production-product relations are found in inextricable woven web of realties. Institutions-social, cultural or political, are also in ways show their dynamic in response to the political-economy of the time and space.

Therefore, the research understudy uses historical, comparative, philosophical and political-economic methods in order to investigate the interconnections between the formative and re-constitutive processes of realities of the historical time frame.

The research work is organized into five chapters. The introductory chapter deals with clarification of certain conceptual categories used in the work. Moreover, the chapter brings out the objectives, scope, and justification for the research topic. The chapter delves into the methodological predictions as employed in investigative journey to the pursuit of successive and yet linked aspects of the work. Introductory chapter also underlines limitations of the works of a range of scholars obliquely or incidentally linked / related to varied aspects of the work under study.

The second chapter of the study is entitled with sh Political Formations: Ganasanghas and Monarchies at the time of Buddha, undertakes a brief analysis of political transitions from semi-nomadic-tribal political formation to emergence of territorial state formations with definite layers of administrative structure and institutions. The chapter also touches upon the internecine warfare amongst the Janapadas for their ceasloss quest for territorial acquisitions and expansions. The chapter three is titled as sh Economic and Urban Processes: Agriculture, Craft-productions, Trade and Urban Settlements. This chapter explores the linkages between the emergence of heterodox sects and the changing material milieu during the 6^th century BC. The chapter seeks to establish rising serial aspirations of the newly emerged propertied class, and the latter in terms extending their beliefs and patronage to the rise and spread of the heterodox sects in general, and Buddhism in particular.

The fourth chapter is titled as the Religion, Beliefs, Institutions and Practices: New Perspectives. This chapter discusses at length canons of new beliefs and practices emerged with the rise of Buddhism. The chapter also simultaneously undertakes analysis of other prevalent religious beliefs, philosophies and practices.

The fifth chapter bears the title sh The Social Processes, Structures and Reformations, attempts to unlayer the complexities of social intricacies at work in the age of vertiginous transitions. Unlike the classical Marxist formulations, the present chapter gives centrality to the socio-cultural dimensions as they unfolded during the age of Buddha. The chapter doesn’t negate the findings or the research insights of the classical Marxist perspective on Buddhism, however, it makes a significant departure by giving centrality to the socio-cultural processes with their new meanings, connotation and vocabulary.

The concluding chapter brings forth the key findings of the research work.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

D.N. Jha, Ancien India sh An Introductory Outline, P. 32.

[2]:

The Social Dimensions of Early Buddhism, 1996, Munshi Ram Manohar Lal Publishers.

[3]:

Rhys Davids, Cambridge History of India, I, 192-97; see also B.C. Law, History of Pali literature, II, 15, 30-33, 42. Though he differs from the textual stratification suggested by Rhys Davids, but accepts the pre-Mauryan dating of the Nikayas and the Vinaya.

[4]:

Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, II, p. xiii; Maurice Winternitz, History of Indian Literature, pp. 16, 606-9; B.M. Barua, Asoka and his Inscriptions, 31 ff.

[5]:

N.N. Wagle, Society at the time of the Buddha, p-2; G.C. Pande, Studies in the origin of Buddhism, p. 7.

[6]:

N.K. Wagle, Society at the time of the Buddha, p. 3

[7]:

Archacological Summary of India, Annual Report, 1905-06, 86-102; New Imperial Services, Vol. 1, L-1, 1931, 112-31.

[8]:

Indian Archaeology, A Review, 1953-54, 9; 1954-55, 16 and 1957-58, 1.

[9]:

G.R. Sharma, The Excavations at Kausambi (1957-59), 26, 37 ff.

[10]:

Vn, II. 46.