CHAPTER 1

Buddhism and the Culture of India

THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDIAN CULTURE

The formation and growth of any religion is sure to have a cultural background.As is common knowledge, in the present-day world, if we speak of civilizationswith a long history and cultural tradition, there are only China and India inthe East, and Egypt and Greece in the West. These are called the world's fourgreat ancient civilizations.

The glorious history of Greece is already a thing of the past, but its culturallegacy has mixed with other elements and spread, contributing to the formationof the modern civilization of Europe and America. Egyptian civilization isalready remote and hidden in the mists, and only some fragments of its grandeurremain. Indian civilization, especially the Buddhist civilization which has madesuch an impact on the world and has shone brightly from ancient to modern times,has already been completely assimilated in the territory of Chinesecivilization, through a process that lasted from the end of the Han dynastythrough the Song dynasty.

Greek civilization represents the West. It developed first from a religion to aphilosophy; from a philosophy it evolved into science, bringing about the modernWestern culture. Thus one can say that it has many flourishing offshoots.

If people in today's world want to inquire into the source of the various greatreligious civilizations, they soon find that, ultimately, all thesecivilizations had their origins in the East. This is particularly true ofBuddhist civilization, which long ago became interconnected with Chinesecivilization to form a single whole. Its widespread influence thus goes withoutsaying. But when we trace the source and seek the background of the sudden riseof Buddhism in India, and examine its development into a great stream radiatingin all directions after its transmission to China, we are sure to uncover adefinite sequence of cause and effect. Therefore, to understand the birth ofBuddhist civilization and its gestation in the civilization of the precedingperiod, we must first have some elementary knowledge of traditional Indiancivilization.

The Background of Indian Culture

Humans are born between heaven and earth, and it is unavoidable that bothclimate and geographical circumstances are important factors in shaping apeople's civilization. India is a peninsula in southern Asia, and its geographyand climate have obvious differences from lands in other regions. Southern Indiaextends into the tropics, while northern India is next to the Himalaya Mountainsand central India has a temperate climate. For the people of ancient India, theyearly cycle, in accord with the climate, was divided into three seasons of fourmonths each. Because of India's location between the temperate and the tropicalzones, the physical and mental activity of its people, and, generally speaking,their way of thinking, was very lively. This is particularly true of thesouthern regions, which were even richer in mystical imagination.

From ancient times until today, the cultures and languages of India have neverbeen unified. In ancient India, there were more than fifty or sixty writingsystems. These are generally lumped together under the single term Sanskrit forall forms of Indian written language, but in reality, Sanskrit is just one ofthe many written languages of India. There are still several dozen languagescurrent in India today. China was able to unify its weights and measures and itswritten language because of the great unification it underwent in the Qin andHan dynasties (c. 220 B.C.-A.D. 200). But such was not the case for India.Though from ancient times until now it has always been called one country, inreality, India is still divided into various ethnic groups, each occupying itsown area. Hence Indian culture has never really been unified.

During the period from the Zhou dynasty to the Qin dynasty in Chinese history(c. eleventh to third centuries B.C.), India was divided into various smallstates, just as China was. There were two or three hundred small principalities,each occupying its own territory and each having its own ruler. During thisperiod, many schools of learning were established. The various schools ofthought all claimed to teach the truth, although in just a single region therewere more than a hundred different schools. In the cultural life of the people,there was one special characteristic: class divisions were very strict, and sonoble and humble were sharply separated into castes and received very differenttreatment. This outlook remains deep-rooted and strong, despite all the attacksof 20th-century ideas of freedom and equality. Concerning this, we can onlyquote the proverbial observation: Something that has been so since ancient timeswill not change now.

The Indian system of four castes creates four traditional classes of people.First, the brahmans were hereditary specialists in rituals and sacrifices. Theywere the heart of instruction in religion and culture and ranked the highest ofthe castes. Hence of all the castes, they merited the highest respect. They werethe upper stratum, functioning as spiritual and intellectual leaders. Allmilitary and political affairs were influenced by them. Second were thekshatriyas, the royal officers and warriors. They gathered together military andpolitical power in a single lineage and became hereditary rulers. Third, camethe vaisyas, the class of merchants, who possessed wealth and controlled trade,while the fourth class, the sudras, were a class of peasants who worked tillingand planting the land.

Besides these four, there was also a class of hereditary slaves and debasedpeople who performed lowly occupations like butchering animals and so on. Theirposition was the lowest of all and their lives were very difficult and full ofsuffering. This ancient Indian system of four castes has remained solid andunbreakable for over three thousand years. The remnants of this way of thinkinghave still not been totally obliterated.

The brahman class controlled cultural education and, relying on the four Vedas,upheld the concepts of Brahman (the absolute) and Atman (the true self). Thisformed the Brahmanical religion that was the center of historical Indiancivilization. This gradually spread out and influenced the thinking andconsciousness of the three upper castes, the brahmans, kshatriyas, and vaisyas,toward the way of life of the shramana who leaves home to cultivate the path toself-realization.

For them, the ideal course of a person's life was divided into four periods. Thefirst was a period of pure conduct, a period of life devoted to a young person'seducation. When they reached a certain age, young people would leave home tostudy the Vedas and other branches of learning. (For the disciples of brahmans,this was from age 8 to 16; for the...