Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age

by Robert N. Bellah

  Although I want to argue that theory begins to emerge in the Upanisads, I also want to affirm that it does not do so by way of systematic reasoning, by logical deduction or empirical induction. It is revealed in metaphors, in teachings that are intentionally cryptic (“the gods love the cryptic” is a frequent Upanishadic saying, but is also found in much older texts), and its contents are in a way “secret”: to be explained to those ready to understand but definitely not to be shouted from the housetops. I would argue that disciplined rational thinking begins with the Upanisads but only gradually reaches a mature form, such as in the grammar of Panini, dated around 400 BCE.12’ For an understanding of how reason works in the Upanisads, let us turn to a famous dialogue in chapter 6 of the Chandogya Upanisad in which Svetaketu, who has been sent away at the age of 12 to learn the Vedas, returns at the age of 24, “swell-headed, thinking himself to be learned, and arrogant,” to be tested by his father, Uddalaka Aruni.122

  Uddalaka asks his son if he has been taught “that rule of substitution by which what has been unheard becomes heard, what has been unthought becomes thought, what has been unknown becomes known.” Svetaketu doesn’t know, so his father explains, “It is like this, son. By means of just one lump of clay one would perceive everything made of clay-the transformation is a verbal handle, a name-while the reality is just this: `It’s clay”’ (Chdndogya Upanisad 6.1.3-4).“3

  There has been much argument about what Uddalaka is saying, but at one level he is arguing for the existence of universals. Given the power the Upanisads give to names, we should not hear “the transformation is just a name,” assuming a nominalist argument. Rather Uddalaka is saying that from this lump of clay we can understand all forms of clay, just as eventually he will show his son that once one understands the basic nature of reality, the nature of all things will be known. The example of the lump of clay is simply the first step toward what is coming:

  “Bring a banyan fruit.”

  “Here it is, sir.”

  “Cut it up.”

  “I’ve cut it up, sir.”

  “What do you see there?”

  “These quite tiny seeds, sir.”

  “Now, take one of them and cut it up.”

  “I’ve cut one up, sir.”

  “What do you see there?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  Then he told him: “This finest essence here, son, that you can’t even see-look how on account of that finest essence this huge banyan tree stands here.

  “Believe me, my child, that which is this finest essence-this whole world has that as its self. That is the real. That is the self (dtman). Thus are you, Svetaketu. (Chandogya Upanisad 6.12)124

  The myriad “equations” of the Brahmanas have now come to a culmination: The widest external reality (brahman) and the deepest internal reality (atman) are identical.

  If the Upanisads mark the beginning of theoretical reflection at the level of metaphysics, where metaphors are still central but used to clarify concepts, and the argument is at the level of universal truth, then they can rightly be seen as a cognitively axial moment in the development of early Indic thought. Gananath Obeyesekere, however, has raised a question as to whether this new level of cognitive thinking involved an axial “ethicization” (his term) as well. He notes that the mid-first millennium BCE was a period “conducive to philosophical and soteriological probing and the systematization of thought (what Max Weber called the `rationalization’ of religious life).” He goes on to say, “Nevertheless, speculative and systematic thinking need not produce ethicization. The Upanishads produced a great speculative soteriology that was not concerned with ethicization.“125 Obeyesekere’s point is not that there was no axial ethicization in early India, but that it occurred in the Buddhist canon, not the Vedas.

  In reading Olivelle’s translation of the first twelve Upanisads, I tried to note each instance of ethical reflection. Even stretching the definition to the limit of a mention of the word “good,” and including some antinomian material as well, I found fewer than twenty such references in 290 pages of text. Perhaps the fullest ethical discussion occurs early in the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad:

  Now, this self (atman) is a world for all beings. So, when he makes offerings and sacrifices, he becomes thereby a world for the gods. When he recites the Vedas, he becomes thereby a world for the seers. When he offers libations to his ancestors and seeks to father offspring, he becomes thereby a world for his ancestors. When he provides food and shelter for human beings, he becomes thereby a world for human beings. When he provides fodder and water for livestock, he becomes thereby a world for livestock. When creatures, from wild animals and birds down to the very ants, find shelter in his houses, he becomes thereby a world for them. Just as a man desires the well-being of his own world, so all beings desire the well-being of anyone who knows this. (Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 1.4.16)126

  One could argae that dharma is a central ethical term in the Upanisads, and in a sense it is, though whether it meets Obeyesekere’s criterion of ethicization is a matter we will need to consider more fully below.

  If, however, it can be granted for the moment that ethics is not a central Upanishadic concern, we can ask why. One reason has to do with the private, even secret, nature of the Upanishadic teaching (the word uanisad perhaps has the basic meaning of “connection,” but also carries the meaning of “secret teaching”). Transmission of the teaching is not, therefore, public, and is in some instances extremely limited. The Chandogya Upanisad at one point restricts the teaching to the eldest son but to no one else (3.11.5) and the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad at one point restricts it to the son or the pupil (6.3.12). In other instances it is said that the teaching might be communicated to members of the twice-born-that is, the initiated, varnas, the Brahmins, Ksatriyas, and Vaisyas-but on no account to the Sudras.

  The teaching about the identity of brahman and atman would seem to be absolutely universal in content, and, as Brereton notes, social, not individual: “The true self is not the individual self, but rather the identity that one shares with everything else. There is no true distinction among living beings, for they all emerge from being and retreat to it. All things, both animate and inanimate, are united in being, because they are all the transformations of being.“127 Modern Hindu thinkers have drawn profound ethical consequences from these teachings, but in the early period any social and ethical consequences of these teachings remained latent: in the early texts the concern was, above all, with the possible salvation of the individual.128 Salvation or liberation was a heroic ideal that only exceptional people could attain. Further, religious truth was of such transcendent importance that concern for the world of daily life could be seen as secondary. This assertion needs to be qualified in two directions: Vedic religion never lost its concern for everyday life, as exemplified in its emphasis on the (Brahmin) householder, particularly in the framework of caste obligations; and Buddhism had an equally transcendent idea of religious truth, but developed a significant concern for the ethical quality of everyday life.

  The Upanisads, we should always remember, continue many of the concerns of the Brahmanas, including “food, prosperity, power, fame, and a happy afterlife,” as Olivelle puts it.129 Older ideas of the afterlife, including the idea that one might simply join the gods in an everlasting happy domain not too different from life at its best on this earth, are to be found in these texts. The notion of moksa, radical salvation (Obeyesekere’s term), freedom (Olivelle’s term) or liberation (Halbfass’s term), which will be matched by the Buddhist idea of nirvana, is new and requires a radical reorientation of life. It is linked to ideas of karma, no longer simply ritual actions, but all forms of human action that can affect one’s rebirth chances, ideas that are just emerging in the early Upanisads, where they are infrequent and still secret.

  In one quite complex discussion of what happens after death, a king privately answers Svetaketu’s question on the subject, something he did not learn from his father, saying, “As to
what you have asked me, let me tell you that before you this knowledge had never reached the Brahmins. As a result in all the worlds government has belonged exclusively to royalty [Ksatriya]” (Chandogya Upanisad 5.3.7).130 This secret knowledge turns out not to be so different from the teachings of the Brahmanas with respect to those who are able to escape this world and take the path leading to the gods. But for those who rely on offerings and sacrifices, “those whose behavior is pleasant can expect to enter a pleasant womb, like that of a woman of the Brahmin, Ksatriya, or the Vaisya class. But people of foul behavior can expect to enter a foul womb, like that of a dog, a pig, or an outcaste woman.” However, there is one more possibility: “Then there are those proceeding on neither of these two paths-they become the tiny creatures revolving here ceaselessly. Be born! Die!’-that is the third state” (Chandogya Upanisad 5.10.7-8).131

  Kenneth Post makes a good deal out of the fact that it is the Ksatriya and not the Brahmin who knows the truth about karma and rebirth, even arguing that there could not be a Vedic political philosophy because the truth of rebirth in terms of varna is simply a given that falls outside the teaching about the identity of brahman and atman, so ideas of karma and rebirth, involving required and proscribed social behavior, are of more concern to rulers than to Brahmins.112 But it would seem that Brahmins have their own reasons for being concerned with these matters. Yajnavalkya, the great Brah min sage, secretly communicates an abbreviated version of the same teaching to one who questioned him about what happens after death, saying,

  “My friend, we cannot talk about this in public. Take my hand; let’s go and discuss this in private.”

  So they left and talked about it. And what did they talk about?-they talked about nothing but action [karma]. And what did they praise?they praised nothing but action. Yajnavalkya told him: “A man turns into something good by good action and into something bad by bad action.” (Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 3.2.13)133

  Yajnavalkya, it turns out, is the first example of the renouncer (samnydsin), who turns his back on the world to pursue the goal of religious liberation from karma and rebirth When asked to explain brahman, the self that is within all, Yajnavalkya replies:

  He is the one who is beyond hunger and thirst, sorrow and delusion, old age and death. It is when they come to know this self that Brahmins give up the desire for sons, the desire for wealth, and the desire for worlds, and undertake the mendicant life. The desire for sons, after all, is the same as the desire for wealth, and the desire for wealth is the same as the desire for worlds-both are simply desires. Therefore, a Brahmin should stop being a pundit and try to live like a child. When he has stopped living like a child or a pundit, he becomes a sage, And when he has stopped living like a sage or the way he was before he became a sage, he becomes a Brahmin. He remains just such a Brahmin, no matter how he may live. All besides this is grief. (Brhaddranyaka Upanisad 3.5.1)135

  The renouncer role is one way to step entirely out of the Vedic varna system, as the great renouncer, the Buddha will do, but Yajnavalkya seems to link it indelibly to the Brahmin role. We will need to consider how varna relates to the relative lack of ethicization in the Vedic tradition.

  When Yajnavalkya decided to leave his household to take up the life of a mendicant renouncer, he spoke to his two wives about making a settlement between them. One of them, Maitreyi, had taken part in philosophical discussions and asked for instruction before Yajnavalkya departed. He tries to explain, in a way that she finds confusing, the fundamental nature of a self without any kind of duality, a self that is complete without anything to perceive: “When, however, the Whole has become one’s very self (atman) then who is there for one to see and by what means?” He concludes:

  “About this self (atman), one can only say `not-, not-‘. He is ungraspable, for he cannot be grasped. He is undecaying, for he is not subject to decay. He has nothing sticking to him, for he does not stick to anything. He is not bound, yet he neither trembles in fear nor suffers injury.

  “Look-by what means can one perceive the perceiver? There, I have given you the instruction, Maitreyi. That’s all there is to immortality.”

  After saying this, Yajnavalkya went away. (Brhaddranyaka Upanisad

  In this powerful expression of a view that might be analogous to negative theology in the West, Yajnavalkya gives evidence for the cognitively axial breakthrough in Vedic religion. We must now consider those aspects of the Vedic tradition that seem to have prevented an axial ethicization.

  After giving the teaching that “in the beginning this world was only brahman” (Brhaddranyaka Upanisad 1.4.10, see above), the text goes on to say, using the word brahman with a double meaning of absolute reality and what we have been calling for convenience “Brahmin,” though in Sanskrit both are brahman, that brahman had not fully developed and so “created the ruling power, a form superior to and surpassing itself.” The text continues:

  Hence there is nothing higher than the ruling power. Accordingly, at a royal anointing, a Brahmin pays homage to a Ksatriya by prostrating himself. He extends this honour only to the ruling power. Now, the priestly power (Brahman) is the womb of the ruling power. Therefore, even if a king should rise to the summit of power, it is to the priestly power that he returns in the end as to his own womb. (Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 1.4.11)137

  One could hardly find a better expression of the alliance of Brahmins and Ksatriyas (brahmaksatra). The text then goes on to say that in order to further its development, brahman went on to create the Vaisya and Sudra classes. Again we have the idea of the Brahmin varna “encompassing” the others-it is from its “womb” that they emerge. But then the passage concludes:

  It [brahman] still did not become fully developed. So it created the Law (dharma), a form superior to and surpassing itself. And the Law here is the ruling power standing above the ruling power. Hence there is nothing higher than the Law … Now the Law is nothing but the truth. (Brhadaranyaka Upanisad 1.4.14)138

  Dharma is a central term in the Vedic tradition, as central in its own sphere as brahman and atman are in theirs, but its meanings are complex. Contrary to what might appear from the immediately preceding quote, the one thing Dharma is not is universal law.

  In considering the etymology and development of the term, I will be heavily dependent on Wilhelm Halbfass’s magisterial discussion of It is worth reminding the reader of one of Halbfass’s major points: the textual material we have from early India is ideological, not descriptive, and it comes from a particular social group, the Brahmins, and undoubtedly expresses its interests. Other groups must often have thought differently, but, until the emergence of Buddhism and Jainism, we don’t know what those differences were. If the Ksatriyas thought differently, as many of them probably did, they found it politic to cooperate with the Brahmins rather than to challenge them.

  Dharma is a term similar to but not identical with rta, which was discussed above. Michael Witzel, in developing the idea that rta means something like “the force of active truth,” points out that it has no equivalent in Western languages and is perhaps similar to the equally untranslatable ancient Egyptian term ma’at (see Chapter 5).140 In the typology that underlies the argument of this book, that means that rta, like ma’at, is an archaic, not an axial, term, even though we are tempted to give it axial implications. Dharma, which is found alongside rta in the Rgveda and largely replaces it in later texts, is subject to the same misunderstanding: though different from rta, it is still an archaic term that looks axial. It becomes axial in Buddhism and at moments, incipiently, in the Vedic tradition, yet, I will argue, remains archaic in subsequent Indian understanding.

  One key to the difference between the two terms is that whereas rta is always in the singular in the RV, dharma is in the plural not only in the RV but in the Brahmanas as well, and sometimes even later as in the Mahabharata. Its first use in the singular is in the Chandogya Upanisad2.23.1, traditionally translated, “There are three branches of the Law,””’ so even in the singula
r its reference is plural. The term derives from the root AT, which means “to support,” “to uphold,” “to maintain” (note that dharma, like rta, is active, not static), and in its early uses refers almost exclusively to religious rituals.142 The connection with the root is the belief that ritual “upholds” or “maintains” the cosmos, but dharmas are the many rituals that in a variety of ways do this, and not a notion of natural law, either physical or ethical. According to Vedic cosmogony, separation, holding apart, as with heaven and earth, is extraordinarily important, so the ritual action of dharma involves holding apart as well as upholding. It would be well to go back to the text of RV 10.90, which concludes that the primeval sacrifice that created the cosmos gave rise to “the first ritual laws,” that is, the first dharmas, and to remember that in this hymn what is being held apart is not only features of the natural world, but the four varnas.143

  Even in the Rgveda, however, ritual is not the only meaning of dharma: it already has the wider sense of ethical and social “norms,” “statutes,” or And in the later development of the Vedic tradition, while never losing an enormous variety of references, it comes to have a particular focus:

  In traditional Hinduism, dharma is primarily and essentially the varndsramadharma, the “order of the castes and the stages of life” which breaks down into countless specific rules and cannot at all be derived from a general principle of behavior. The varnasramadharma allocates each of the various castes and stages of life “duties” (svadharma); it links them to certain roles and ways of life and excludes them from the ways of life of others; it controls their access to ritual performance, to the sources of sacred knowledge, and to the means of salvation.145