The Snake and the Mongoose

Book: The Snake and the Mongoose: The Emergence of Identity in Early Indian Religion
Author: Nathan McGovern

Na jaṭāhi na gottena, na jaccā hoti brāhmaṇo,
Not because of matted hair, family or birth is one a true brahmin,

yamhi saccañ-ca Dhammo ca, so sucī so va brāhmaṇo. [393]
in whom there is truth and Dhamma, that one is pure, that one is surely a brahmin.

— The Dhammapada

The primary sources in reconstructing identity in early Indian religions are the Vedas, Ashoka’s edicts (a little over 4,000 words), the Pali canon, the three early Jain Agamas, Panini’s Ashtadhyayi, and Patanjali’s commentary, Mahabhasya, the Dharmasastras, and the Arthasastra. Then there’s the lost Megastenes’ Indica, parts of which have been reproduced in later Greek and Latin works.

The earliest date in Indian history one can be sure of is 326 BC, the year of Alexander’s invasion. All the other events are a guesstimate, anchored around that year. The earliest Vedas are probably 3,500 years old. The first Dharmasastra, Apastamba, is dated to between 450 BCE and 350 BCE. Buddha’s date ranges from around 500 BCE to 400 BCE. Since the Ashokan edicts mention rulers whose dates are more certain, such as Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Magas of Cyrene, Ashoka is dated to the early 3rd century BCE.

Buddhism had been positioned as rising in opposition to an existing Hindu and Brahmin orthodoxy during colonial re-discovery of Buddhist heritage in India. Over time, it became clear that there are many Buddhisms in Asia. Almost none of the theologies of these varied Buddhisms were ever articulated against Brahmin or Vedic religion. In Thailand, for example, Brahmin priests and Ganeshas nestle comfortably with official endorsement of Buddha’s precepts. Johannes Bronkhorst, in his trilogy on the origins of Buddhism, made the case that Buddhism was not a rebellion against late-Vedic religion. It arose in the Greater Magadha region where there were Jainas, Ajivikas, and others. Both Buddhism and what he called Brahmanism contested for political power, and the Brahmins prevailed in the long run.

Nathan McGovern takes this thesis further in this book and says even the category of Brahmin was not exclusively a Vedic phenomenon by this time. The earliest Buddhist and Jain texts appropriate the Brahmin identity for Mahavira and the Buddha. The word Brahmin is of Vedic origin, appearing frequently in the Rig Veda, but it was never conceived as determined by birth. The four varnas don’t appear that frequently together in the Vedas. The Purusha Sukta, where they appear together for the first time, doesn’t even use the word varna. In the earliest Buddhist and Jain texts, and some Upanishads, a Brahmin is always determined by behavior and by a devotion to a life of contemplation in the forests. Nathan McGovern ties the notion of this shared understanding of the category of the Brahmin to a common commitment to Brahmacharya.

His contention is that Buddhism was positioned as a rebellion against Brahmins by the Europeans in the 19th century because they took as a model the Protestant reformations in Europe in the preceding centuries. This supposed opposition of the Buddhist to the Brahmin has been read into Indian texts of antiquity since then. This animus has been located in Sanskrit grammarian Panini in his Asthadyayi and the commentary on Asthadyayi by Patanjali, Mahabhasya. In academic scholarship, it is a convention that the sramana and brahmana are oppositional categories, just as a snake and the mongoose are. The origin of the Indian religions in academia lies in this Patanjali-derived image. Nathan McGovern right at the onset shows how erroneous this assumption has been.

But at no point in this work does he compare the relationship between the śramaṇa and the Brahman to that between the snake and the mongoose, nor does he ever mention the compound “snake and mongoose” (ahi-nakula) in conjunction with the compound “śramaṇa and Brahman” (śramaṇa-brāhmaṇa).

Apparently, the two commentaries on Pāṇini’s rule 2.4.9 were conflated at some point by a modern scholar (although it is not entirely clear when or how this happened), and the conflation was then propagated in scholarship from there.

Everywhere the compound sramana-brahamna is found, as in the Ashokan edicts, they should be read as not as distinct oppositional groups, but instead having a relationship such as that of religion and clergy.

McGovern disputes the Bronkhorst position that Buddha articulated his innovations without any Vedic influence in Greater Magadha. Witzel, for example, locates the geography of the earlier Vedas in Punjab, moving eastwards, and the latest ones in the Indo-Gangetic plains. McGovern’s thesis is that there were many groups of teachers and disciplines in the Indo-Gangetic plains that had much in common with each other, such as notions of karma, rebirth, and moksha/nirvana. One of these shared beliefs is that in Brahmacharya. All of them lay claim to the category of the Brahmin. Some time around or after the time of the Buddha, in Apastamba Dharmasutra, a case is first made against Brahmacharya being the highest ideal. While identifying Brahmins as those who could partake in asceticism, Apastamba privileges those with households, i.e. wife and children. Hence, rather than a Vedic versus non-Vedic fault line, or the Sramana against the Brahmana, the primary disagreement in the second half of the 1st millennium BCE is between householder Brahmins and the ascetic Brahmins. The Buddhists, Jain, Vedic forest-dwelling Brahmins, the householder Brahmins, and others all participated in the development of Brahmanical thought in India, and these traditions brought each other into existence.

The householder Brahmins - as articulated in the Dharmasastras - were successful in appropriating the category of Brahmin to themselves and in arguing for a birth-based varna. These “neo-Brahmins” did this, according to McGovern, by producing texts which positioned a Brahmin-hood that has always been an essential characteristic derived from birth. The ashrama system was designed to accommodate celibate impulses. While Buddha was seen to debate householder Brahmins in the Pali canon, in the Dharmasastras non-Vedic streams of thought are not even acknowledged. Gradually, the Buddhists lost the battle for the Brahmin status due to their failure in providing an alternative praxis that could be used to articulate their vision.

McGovern's arguments for his position are persuasive. His primary materials include works in Greek, Prakrit, Pali, and Sanskrit. He paints a picture of a landscape where the dominant tendency is towards syncretism. I buy that. Indian religions, if anything, are inclusivist, finding ways to accommodate diverse streams of thought. What else after all can explain the presence of the Buddha in Vishnu Puranas by the 10th century? Or a Sai Baba in 20th-century mainstream Hinduism? Or a Lakshmi in Jainism and Buddhism across the ages? Or the assimilation of Vishnu into Buddhism?