Buddhism and Jainism

The sixth century BCE was an age of great questioning across India. As society grew more unequal and rituals more costly, thinkers asked deep questions about life, suffering and the meaning of it all. Out of this churning came new religions that rejected expensive sacrifice and the dominance of birth, above all Buddhism and Jainism, whose ideas still shape the world today.

Buddhism was founded by Siddhartha Gautama, a prince of the Sakya clan born at Lumbini. Troubled by the sight of old age, sickness and death, he gave up his palace life to seek the truth.

After years of searching, he attained enlightenment while meditating under a tree at Bodh Gaya. From then on he was called the Buddha, "the enlightened one". He gave his first sermon at Sarnath and spent the rest of his life teaching.

Tradition recalls a dramatic moment at the enlightenment. The demon Mara tried to tempt and frighten Gautama away from his goal. In reply, the seated Gautama touched the earth with his right hand, calling the Earth itself to witness his purity and steadfastness. Buddhist art fixes this gesture as the Bhumisparsha Mudra, the earth-touching pose, one of the most common ways the Buddha is shown.

The Buddha is known by several epithets, and they are easy to confuse:

• Shakyamuni: "the sage of the Shakyas", from his clan name.
• Tathagata: "the one who has thus gone", the title the Buddha used for himself.
• Nayaputta: an epithet of Mahavira, the Jain teacher, not of the Buddha.

The Buddha taught that life is full of suffering, but that suffering can be ended. He set out this message in his first sermon at Sarnath, known as the Dharmachakra Pravartana Sutta, "the setting of the wheel of dharma in motion". That sermon expounded the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. His core teachings are:

• The Four Noble Truths: there is suffering, suffering is caused by desire (craving), suffering can be ended by ending desire, and the way to end it is the Eightfold Path.
• The Eightfold Path: eight rules of right living, including right thought, right speech, right action and right effort, often called the middle path because it avoids both luxury and harsh self-denial.

The Buddha taught in Prakrit, the people's own language, not Sanskrit. He welcomed people of all castes. This made his message widely popular.

At about the same time, Vardhamana Mahavira spread the teachings of Jainism. Like the Buddha, he was born into a ruling family and gave up his home to seek the truth.

Jain tradition holds that the faith was taught by a line of twenty-four great teachers called Tirthankaras, "ford-makers" who show the way across the river of existence. Mahavira was the twenty-fourth and last Tirthankara, not the founder of a wholly new creed. His predecessor Parshvanatha, the twenty-third Tirthankara, belonged to Banaras. The family ties of the two great teachers are favourite exam details. Mahavira's mother Trishala was the sister of the Lichchhavi chief Chetaka, not his daughter. The Buddha's mother Maya, by contrast, was a Koshalan princess.

The central principle of Jainism is ahimsa, meaning complete non-violence towards all living beings, however small. Jains believe one must avoid harming any creature in thought, word or deed. Jainism also stressed honesty, simple living and severe self-discipline. These ideas of non-violence later influenced many people, including Mahatma Gandhi.

Three doctrines set Jainism apart from every other sect of the age:

• Jiva (soul): every object possesses a soul, even rocks, running water and the smallest particles of matter. This universal animism is unique to Jainism and explains why its ahimsa is so absolute.
• Karma: karma is the bane of the soul and must be brought to an end. The surest way to annihilate karma is penance (tapas), which is why Jain ascetic practice is so severe.
• No creator god: Jainism recognises no creator god. The world is created and maintained by universal law, not by divine will.

Jain ethics rest on vows, graded by the follower's station. Monks take the five mahavratas, the great vows of total renunciation. Lay followers take the anuvratas, the five lesser vows, milder versions of the same rules fitted to household life.

The strictness of ahimsa shaped who joined the faith. Even the unintentional killing of insects during ploughing counted as sinful. Agriculturalists therefore could not embrace Jainism, and the religion appealed mainly to traders, whose work shed no blood. Buddhism, less severe on this point, drew farmers as well.

Both Buddhism and Jainism spread quickly, for several connected reasons:

• They taught in Prakrit, the common tongue, so ordinary people could understand them.
• They rejected costly sacrifices and the dominance of birth and caste, attracting traders and the lower varnas. Buddhism drew farmers too; Jainism, as seen above, largely did not, because ploughing kills insects.
• They organised communities of monks and nuns called sanghas, who lived simply and spread the teachings.
• They won the support of kings and rich merchants, who built monasteries and stupas.

In time, Buddhism spread far beyond India, reaching Sri Lanka, Central Asia, China and South-East Asia. It became one of the world's great religions.

Buddhism crossed political frontiers with unusual ease. The foreign ruling peoples who settled in India, the Greeks, Shakas and Kushanas, embraced Buddhism rather than Hinduism. The reason tested in exams is precise: Buddhism, free of caste barriers, gave these outsiders easier access into Indian society, which caste-bound Hinduism could not offer.

The most famous foreign convert story is preserved in the Milindapanho ("Questions of Milinda"). The text records the dialogue between the Indo-Greek king Menander (Milinda) and the Buddhist monk Nagasena, who resolved the king's doubts about the faith.

Indian monks also carried the faith outward. Sanghabhuti, an Indian Buddhist monk, travelled to China in the late fourth century AD and is remembered for a commentary on the Sarvastivada Vinaya, the monastic rule book of the Sarvastivadin school.

The age of the wandering teachers had its own vocabulary, and the exam tests these terms:

• Parivrajaka: a wandering renunciant who left home to seek the truth.
• Shramana: an ascetic renunciant who strove for liberation outside the priestly order; the word does not mean a high-status priest.
• Upasaka: a lay follower of Buddhism who supported the monks without renouncing the world.
• Magadha: a professional bard who memorised chronicles, dynastic histories and epic tales.
• Pavarana: the ceremony held at the end of the rainy-season retreat, in which monks confess the offences committed during their stay in the monastery.

After the Buddha's death, his followers met in great assemblies called Buddhist councils to settle the teachings and the rules of the sangha. Four councils matter most:

• First Council (Rajagriha): held soon after the Buddha's death to compile his teachings and the monastic rules.
• Second Council (Vaishali): a dispute over monastic discipline split the sangha into the Sthaviravadins (the "elders", the conservative line that led to Theravada, part of the Hinayana tradition) and the Mahasanghikas (the "great assembly", the more liberal line).
• Third Council (Pataliputra): held under Emperor Ashoka, it compiled the Abhidhamma and sent missionaries abroad.
• Fourth Council (Kundalvana, Kashmir): held under the Kushana king Kanishka and presided over by Vasumitra, with the poet Ashvaghosha as his deputy. It marked the formal division between Hinayana and Mahayana.

The Mahasanghikas began to treat the Buddha as a divine being. This deification prepared the ground for Mahayana Buddhism. The Lokottaravadins, an offshoot of the Mahasanghikas, held that the Buddha was a supramundane (lokottara) being. A great Mahasanghika centre flourished at Dhanyakataka (modern Amaravati) in the Andhra region. Other early Buddhist schools include the Sarvastivadins, who held that the constituents of phenomena are not wholly momentary but exist forever in a latent form, and the Sautrantika and Sammitiya schools. All of these are Buddhist sects, not Jain ones.

Jainism split in a parallel way. During a famine, a body of monks led by Bhadrabahu migrated to south India, while those who stayed in Magadha under Sthulabhadra held a council at Pataliputra. The migrants became the Digambaras (the "sky-clad", who renounce clothing), and those who remained became the Shvetambaras (the "white-clad"). The early Jains did not worship images; image worship grew only later. A later Shvetambara reform sect, the Sthanakvasi, rejects idol worship altogether and worships in plain halls called sthanakas. Jainism won royal patronage too: the Kalinga king Kharavela supported it in the first century BCE, as his Hathigumpha inscription (a rock record near Bhubaneswar) attests.

The two faiths built large bodies of scripture, and the exam often tests which text belongs to which religion.

The core Buddhist canon is the Tripitaka ("three baskets") in Pali: the Vinaya Pitaka (monastic rules), the Sutta Pitaka (discourses) and the Abhidhamma Pitaka (philosophy). Important Buddhist works include:

• Therigatha: verses of the elder nuns, part of the Pali canon and one of the earliest collections of women's voices in India.
• Nettipakarana: a Pali work on how to interpret the Buddha's teaching.
• Avadanashataka: a Sanskrit collection of a hundred edifying tales of past deeds.

The Jain scriptures are the Agamas, written in a Prakrit called Ardhamagadhi. Important Jain works include:

• Acharangasutra: the oldest Agama, laying down rules of conduct for monks.
• Sutrakritanga: an Agama refuting rival doctrines.
• Brihatkalpasutra: an Agama on monastic discipline.
• Parishishtaparvan: a history of the early Jain teachers by the scholar Hemachandra.
• Trishashtilakshana Mahapurana: a Jain purana narrating the lives of the great souls of the faith.

Around the beginning of the Common Era, a new movement reshaped Buddhism. Mahayana ("the great vehicle") had three defining features: the deification of the Buddha as a god to be worshipped, the ideal of treading the path of the Bodhisattva, and image worship with rituals. The older school, which Mahayanists called Hinayana ("the lesser vehicle"), kept the Buddha as a human teacher and did not centre worship on images.

A Bodhisattva is a compassionate being on the way to enlightenment who deliberately delays his own salvation in order to help all sentient beings reach theirs. This ideal is central to Mahayana, not to Hinayana. To become a Buddha, the Bodhisattva must perfect the paramitas, the ten perfections such as generosity, morality, patience and wisdom. Famous Bodhisattvas include:

• Avalokitesvara: the Bodhisattva of compassion, also known as Padmapani ("the lotus-bearer"); the celebrated Ajanta mural shows him holding a lotus.
• Manjusri: the Bodhisattva of wisdom, shown with a sword that cuts through ignorance.
• Vajrapani: the Bodhisattva of power, holding a thunderbolt.
• Maitreya: the future Buddha, who is yet to come to save the world when the dharma has been forgotten.

Buddhism slowly declined in India during the early medieval centuries. Several causes worked together:

• Absorption into Hinduism: the Buddha came to be treated as one of the incarnations of Vishnu, so Buddhism lost its distinct identity and merged into the Vaishnava fold.
• Brahmanical revival: reformed Hinduism, with its own devotional worship, won back followers.
• Decay of the sangha: monasteries grew rich, corrupt and cut off from ordinary people, and monks shifted from Pali to Sanskrit, the language of the few.
• Loss of patronage and invasions: royal support dried up, and the Turkish invasions later destroyed great monasteries such as Nalanda.

Two common misconceptions deserve care. The Gupta kings were Vaishnavas by faith but were tolerant of Buddhism, not opposed to it. And the Central Asian tribes who invaded India did not uniformly adopt Hinduism and persecute Buddhists: the Kushanas, most famously Kanishka, embraced and patronised Buddhism.

The devotional impulse that the new faiths had stirred continued long afterwards in the bhakti movement, and its saints appear in the same set of exam questions. Keep the attributions exact:

• Kabir: his teachings are compiled in the Bijak, the sacred book of the Kabirpanthi tradition.
• Dadu Dayal: a nirguna saint of Rajasthan who preached devotion to a formless God; the Bijak is not his work.
• Vallabhacharya: propounded the Pushti Marg ("the path of grace"), a Krishna-devotional school based on his Shuddhadvaita philosophy.
• Madhvacharya: taught the Dvaita (dualist) philosophy; he did not found Pushti Marg.