The Upanisads The "heterodoxies"
Jainism
Early Buddhism
Recommended reading
The time from roughly the seventh century bce through the fifth was a period when culture and the geographical center of Indian creativity was shifting.
Sometimes known as the post-Vedic period, these were centuries when one finds the locus of culture shifting to the Gangetic basin. (The Rg Veda had made no mention of the Ganges, though the later Vedic corpus does refer to the area between the upper Jumna and the Ganges.) Agriculture had intensified; crafts were being produced; pottery of a black polished variety was common. People were organized, not tribally, or in rural settlements as in the earlier period, but territorially - that is, in units of land sometimes referred to as chiefdoms. Cities were emerging in the Ganges valley with diverse populations, with increasingly wealthy mercantile communities and would-be rulers carving out large roles and territories for themselves. At the same time, these cities were not yet stable economic or political centers; changing lifestyles, political infighting and disease reduced the viability of these urban centers.1 Indeed, there is evidence of heavy taxation on the peasantry and exploitation of the people by those in power. As the Satapatha Brahmana, an apparent textual product of this period, aptly put it: “The state authority (rostra) feeds on the people; the state is the eater and the people are the food.”2Whatever the factors, the seventh through the fifth centuries bce were marked by a significant shift in the paradigms of religious life. There was a search for alternative lifestyles, given neither to the unpleasantries of protourban life nor to the grandiose expense of the sacrificial system. To be sure, some chieftains and would-be rulers called on brahmana priests for the conduct of elaborate sacrifices such as the rajasuya or the asvamedha. But for increasing numbers, the “forest” became a place of refuge. Not only were there still heavy forests in the upper Ganges valley; but the “forest” also became a metaphor for the life of seeking and reflection, a haven from urban problems and a liminal space for finding the “truth”; the life of contemplation and asceticism was viewed favorably by the “trendsetters.” If there was an ongoing dialectic in Indian culture and religion in subsequent centuries between city and forest, culture and nature, the favored metaphors in this period of transition appear to have been those of nature and forest.