MAHAVIRA & BUDHHA ( 600 BC)

( from Glimpses of World History by Jawaharlal Nehru)

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Let us march on the long road of history. We have reached a big milestone,2500 years ago, or , to put it a little differently, about 600 years before Christ . Do not think this is an accurate date. I am merely giving you a rough period of time. About this time we find a number of great men, great thinkers, founders of religions, in different countries, from China and India to Persia and Greece. They did not live at exactly the same time. But they were near enough to each other in point of time to make this period of the sixth century before Christ a period of great interest.

There must have been a wave of thought going through the world, a wave of discontent with existing conditions and of hope and aspiration for something better. For remember that the great founders of religions were always seeking something better and trying to change their people and improve them and lessen their misery. They were always revolutionaries who were not afraid of attacking existing evils. Where old tradition had gone wrong or where it pretended future growth, they attacked it and removed it without fear. And, above all, they set an example of noble living which for vast numbers of people, generation after generation ,became an ideal and an inspiration.

In India, in that sixth century before Christ, we had the Buddha and Mahavira; in China, Confucius and

Lao-Tse; in Persia, Zarathushtra or Zoroaster [Zarathushtra probably lived in the eighth century BC];in the Greek island of Samos , Pythagoras. You may have heard these names before, though perhaps in different connections. The average school boy or girl thinks of Pythagoras as a busybody who proved a theorem in geometry, which he or she ,unhappy person ,has to learn now! This theorem deals with the squares on the sides of a right-angled triangle and is to be found in Euclid or any other geometry. But, apart from his discoveries in geometry, Pythagoras is supposed to have been a great thinker . we do not know much about him and indeed some people doubt if he ever existed!

Zoroaster of Persia is said to have been the founder of Zoroastrianism; but I am not sure if it is quite correct to call him the founder. It is better perhaps to say that he gave a new direction and a new form to the old thought and religion of Persia. For a long time past this religion has hardly existed in Persia. The Parsis, who long ago came to India from Persia, brought it with them, and they have practiced it ever since.

In China, there were two great men, Confucius and Lao-Tse, during this period. A more correct way of writing Confucius is Kong Fu-Tse. Neither of these men was a founder of a religion in the ordinary sense of the word. They laid down systems of morals and social behaviour, what one should do and what one should not do. But after their deaths numerous temples were built to their memory in China, and their books were as much respected by the Chinese as the Vedas by the Hindus or the Bible by the Christians. And one of the results of the Confucian teaching has been to make the Chinese people the most courteous and perfect-mannered and cultured in the world.

In India there were Mahavira and the Buddha. Mahavira started the Jain religion as it exists today. His real name was Vardhamana, Mahavira being the title of greatness given to him. Jains live largely in western India and in Kathiawad, and today they were often included among the Hindus. They have beautiful temples in Kathiawad and in Mount Abu in Rajputana. They are very great believers in ahimsa or non-violence , and are wholly against doing anything which might cause injury to any living being. In this connection, it might interest you to know that Pythagoras was a strict vegetarian and insisted on all his pupils and chelas being vegetarians.

We come now to Gautama , the Buddha. He was,as you no doubt know, a Kshattriya, a prince of a royal house, and Siddhartha was his name. His mother was Queen Maya-“joyously reverenced by all, even as the young moon strong and calm of purpose as the earth ,pure of heart as the lotus was Maya, the great lady, ”says old chronicle. His parents brought him up in comfort and luxury, and tried to keep him away from all sight of suffering or misery. But this was not possible, and tradition says that he did see poverty and suffering and death, and that he was greatly affected by them. There was no peace for him then in his palace, and all the luxury with which he was surrounded, and even his beautiful wife whom he loved, could not keep his mind away from suffering humanity. And the thought grew in him and the desire to find a remedy for these evils, till he could bear it no longer; and, in the silence of the night, he left his palace and his dear ones, and marched out alone into the wide world to find the answers to the questions which troubled him. Long and weary was his search for these answers. At last, many years later, it is said that sitting under a peepal tree in Gaya, enlightenment came to him ,and he became the Buddha, ”Enlightened”. And the tree under which he had sat come to be known as the Bodhi tree, the Tree of Enlightment. In the Deer Park at Sarnath, called Isipatana then, under the shadow of ancient Kashi, Buddha began his teaching .He pointed out the “path of good living”. He condemned the sacrifices of all manner of things to the gods, and said we must sacrifice, instead, our anger and hatred and envy and wrong-thinking.

When Buddha was born the old Vedic religion prevailed in India. But already it had changed and fallen from its high estate. The Brahman priests had introduced all manner of rites and pujas and superstition, for the more there is of puja the more do the priests flourish. Caste was becoming stricter, and the common people were frightened by omens and spells and witchcraft and quackery. The priests got the people under their control by these methods and challenged the power of the Kshattriya rulers. There was thus rivalry between the Kshattriyas and Brahmans. Buddha came as a great popular reformer , and he attacked this priestly tyranny and all the evils which had crept into the old Vedic religion. He laid stress on people living a good life and performing good deeds, and not performing pujas and the like. He organized the Buddhist Sangha, an association of monks and nuns, who followed his teaching.

Buddhism, as a religion, did not spread much in India for some time. Later, we shall see how it spread and how again, in India, it almost ceased to exist as a separate religion. While it triumphed in distant countries from Ceylon to China, in India ,the land of its birth , Buddhism was absorbed back into Brahminism or Hinduism. But it exercised a great influence on Brahminism, and rid it of some at least of its superstition and ritual.

Buddhism today is the religion of the greatest number of people in the world. Other religions which have the largest number of followers are Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. There are, besides ,the religions of the Hebrews, of the Sikhs, of the Parsis, and others. Religions and their founders have played a great part in the history of the world, and we cannot ignore them in any survey of history. But I find some difficulty in writing about them. There can be no doubt that the founders of the great religions have been among the greatest and noblest men that the world has produced. But their disciples and the people who have come after them have often been far from great or good. Often in history we see that religion, which was meant to raise us and make us better and nobler, has made people behave like beasts. Instead of bringing enlightenment to them, it has often tried to keep them in the dark; instead of broadening their minds, it has frequently made them narrow minded and intolerant of others. In the name of religion many great and fine deeds have been performed. In the name of religion also thousands and millions have been killed, and every possible crime has been committed.

What, then,is one to do with religion? For some people religion means the other world: heaven, paradise or whatever it may be called. In the hope of going to heaven they are religious or do certain things . This remainds me of the child who behaves in the hope of being rewarded with a jam puff or jalebi! If the child is always thinking of the jam puff or the jalebi, you would not say that it had been properly trained, would you? Much less would approve of boys and girls who did everything for the sake of jam puffs and the like. What, then, shall we say of grown up persons who think and act in this way? For, after all, there is no essential difference between the jam puff and the idea of paradise. We are all more or less selfish. But we try to train up our children so that they may become as unselfish as possible. At any rate, our ideals should be wholly unselfish , so that we may try to live up to them.

We all desire to achieve ,to see the result of our actions. That is natural. But what do we aim at? Are we concerned with ourselves only or with the larger good-the good of society, of our country, or of humanity? After all , this larger good will include us also. Some days ago I think I gave you a Sanskrit verse in one of my letters. This stated that the individual should be sacrificed for the family , the family for the community, and the community for the country. I shall give you the translation of another verse from Sanskrit. This is from the Bhagavata. It runs thus:” I desire not the supreme state of bliss with its eight perfections, nor the cessation of re-birth. May I take up the sorrow of all creatures who suffer and enter into them so that they may be made free from grief”.

One religious may says this, and another says that. And, often enough, each one of them considers the other a fool or a knave. Who is right? As they talk of things which cannot be seen or proved, it is difficult to settle the argument. But it seems rather presumptuous of both of them to talk with certainty of such matters and to break each other’s heads over them. Most of us are narrow-minded and not very wise. Can we presume to imagine that we know the whole truth and to force this down the throat of our neighbour? It may be we are right. It may be that our neighbour is also right. If you see a flower on a tree, you do not call it the tree. If another person sees the leaf only, and yet another the trunk, each has seen part of the tree only. How foolish it would be for each one of them to say that the tree was the flower only or the leaf or the trunk, and to fight over this!

I am afraid the next world does not interest me. My mind is full of what I should do in this world, and if I see my way clearly here, I am content. If my duty here is clear to me, I do not trouble myself about any other world.

As you grow up, you will meet all kinds of people: religious people, anti-religious people, and people ,and people who do not care either way. There are big churches and religious organizations possessing great wealth and power, sometimes using them for good purposes, sometimes for bad. You will meet very fine and noble people who are religious, and knaves and scoundrels who, under the cloak of religion ,rob and defraud others. And you will have to think about these matters and decide for yourself. One can learn much from others, but everything worthwhile one has to find out or experience oneself. There are some questions which each person has to answer for himself or herself.

Do not be in a hurry to decide. Before you can decide anything big or vital you will have to train yourself and educate yourself to do so. It is right that people should think for themselves and decide for themselves, but they must have the ability to decide. You would not ask a new-born babe to decide anything! And there are many people who, though grown in years, are almost like new-born babes so far as their minds are concerned.

I have written a longer letter than usual today, and you may find it dull. But I wanted to have my little say on this subject. If you do not understand anything now it does not matter. You will understand soon enough.