The Many, the Few, the One: Peace and Peacemaking in Ancient India

The vast array of circumstances and lifestyles that have defined the Indian subcontinent’s identities also bring together a core strand throughout its ancient history: harmony. As in Ancient China, harmonic policies and prac­tices effectively promoted peace by laying grounds for unity in diversity.

A mosaic of chiefdoms (rashtras) arose between the Indus Valley and the Ganges River Valley to the east, in which natives were generally subordinated to the more or less unwelcome newcomers. However, bio- genetic, cultural and ideological imperatives required that their ways of life be fused together or doomed to die apart.

Chakravatins and Rajas were not the only driving forces behind these individually short-lived but as a whole long-lasting Vedic states (c. 1500­300 BCE). They ruled by the consent and legislated with the approval of four councils of unequal weight. The vidhata and gana were elite bodies with religious and economic clout; the sabha and samiti were popular assemblies of lesser bearing. Vedic cities were also divided along occupa­tional lines, though the strife of stratification replaced egalitarian harmony as the sustaining basis and goal of society. Hence, India’s caste system orig­inates with the Vedic civilization’s socio-political structures. The Veda- prescribed castes (varnas) were, in declension: Brahmins, scholar-priests, bureaucrats; Kshatriya, warrior-rulers; Vaisya, farmers, traders; and Sudra, manual workers, artisans.

The Brahmins’ lingua franca, Sanskrit, had a developed lexicon of peace in these overall non-peaceful conditions. Pragmatic peace terms are expounded in Kautalya’s Arthashastra (fourth century BCE), an encyclo­pedic treatise on autocratic statecraft which deals with economics, edu­cation, jurisprudence, clandestine operations and peacemaking, among many other topics. A Six-Fold Policy between states is elaborated: peace (sandhi), war, neutrality, preparing for war, alliance, and making peace with one state while waging war with another, called double policy. To name a few of the peace processes described: peace made with a promise is called paripanita and with no promise, aparipanita; on the condition that troops along with the ruler would be turned over, atmamisha; on the condition that the commander would march with the army to a specified place, adrishtapurusha; when concluded by offering goods carriable away on men’s backs, upagraha; when obtained by ceding all of a war-torn realm, uchchhinnasandhi (“peace cut off from profit”); and, when bought with an large amount of money, kapala. The thrust of these peace policies is economic so that, for example, if “any two kings hostile to each other and deteriorating expect to acquire equal amount of wealth in equal time, they shall make peace with each other;” and if “by making peace with one, I can augment my own resources, and by waging war with another, I can destroy the works of my enemy,” then he may adopt the double policy and increase his resources.

Reinforcing implementations of these political peace-related terms were parallel religious ones based on polytheistic belief systems, Vedism and Hinduism, likewise formative of Indian culture, specifically in rela­tion individual minds, bodies and spirits. Similarities between Vedism and Hinduism outweigh their differences for our purposes and lie primarily in their respective emphases within the same textual tradition, Hinduism being an outgrowth of Vedism. Of primary importance to inner peace in Vedism is the recitation of hymns and the performance of rituals; in Hinduism, bodily drills like yoga and exercises of the spirit and mind take precedence. A salient peaceful feature of Ancient Indian polytheism, aside from ongoing syncretism and henotheism, is that unnumbered gods and goddesses represented everything from elements of local landscapes and natural phenomena to everyday objects and timeless ideals were all part of one pantheon and system of belief. Ways of worshiping them included individual or group meditations, festivities, rituals and drills. War did require religious legitimatization, but this astonishing plurality meant that religion was seldom a valid pretext for war on its own. Presupposing tol­erance, polytheism fostered a peaceful coexistence of spiritualities coor­dinated by shared pantheist concept: atmans, the individual souls of humans as well as divinities; brahman, the universal soul governing them by an eternal law, karma, by which atmans’ actions are held accountable.

In a sense, the sole purpose of Vedic and Hindu practices is to restore individual atmans’ lost peace by identifying or unifying them with brahman, which is why purification rituals to “decontaminate” atmans from impurities play key roles in Hindu spiritual and bodily inner peace practices. By following the Vedas, atmans can generate qualitatively pos­itive karma while also reducing it quantitatively; not doing so generates negative karma and increases it. Reincarnation (samsara) occurs through a hierarchical order of beings so that, and until, atmans become empty of karma. At that point, liberation from the cycle of reincarnation (moksha), identification with the brahman and immaculate peace are attained. This process was adapted, with variations, by Mahavira in the Janaist religion he founded in the fifth century BCE. Although stress is placed on the indi­vidual, karma also had strong collective connotations. The proportion and degree of the karma-free in society serve as a gauge of its general peaceful state, which in turn influences the feasibility of individual karmic pursuits. Shanti is sometimes used interchangeably with sandi (associa­tion, combination), the opposite of vigraha (separation, isolation); corol­lary terms are the absence of isolation (vigrahabhava) and absence of strife (yuddhabhava). Believing that our actions in this lifetime determine our state in the next is a tremendous impetus for peace, the logic being not only that the peace we bring about now will follow us, but also that violence will too.

As a rule, the preceding socio-political and religious traditions com­bined sustained the caste-based dynastic system through the Magadha Empire (684 BCE-550 CE) despite the Persian occupation under Darius

I, and those of the Indian Middle Ages (230 BCE-1279 CE) despite the Greek invasion of Alexander the Great. Tumultuous as they were, these mixed native dynasties and periods of foreign rule left largely unchanged the Vedic socio-political and Hindu religious forms until the Islamic Sultanates of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries CE. Two peaceful excep­tions that proved this structurally violent rule were the first explicitly non­violent religion, Buddhism, and the part of Ashoka’s reign based on its principles. Like those of future peace leaders, their stories mingle history, legend and allegory but with distinctively peace-oriented messages. Siddhartha Gautama, Buddha’s given name, was the son of a Kshatriya prince in modern Nepal. Soon after birth (c. 563 BCE), a seer foretold that he would be a great teacher if he left the palace grounds and a great king if he did not. So his family immersed him in luxurious distractions to shield him from sufferings that might motivate his departure. But on escaping his comfortable confines, and after having married and contin­ued the family line, he witnessed three commonplace sights from which he had previously been safeguarded: an old, a sick and a dead man. These sights made him aware of human suffering’s universality, of which the unnecessary persistence, he decided, precluded individual and social peace, to which he then devoted his life.

To his family’s dismay, he deserted the palace and began practicing in the most ascetic veins of Hinduism, through which he discovered that denying the spirit, mind and body can be as detrimental to inner peace as indulging them. The “middle path” between these two extremes he fol­lowed from then on was the basis of the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path and the Three Jewels that govern much of Buddhist life. These he began to preach after becoming Buddha, or “enlightened one,” which is said to have occurred in one night as he meditated under a tree. His first disciples quote him saying that the Truths together lead “to peace, to direct knowledge, to enlightenment.”³ Dukkha, the central tenet of these Truths, is usually reduced in English to suffering, but is more insightfully understood as the deeper meaning of Siddhartha’s three sights: a needless inhibition of inner and social peace. In sum, the Truths are: Dukkha is uni­versal and is entangled in humanity’s materiality, sensory perception, cog­nition, habits and experience, the five aggregates; Dukkha’s origins lie in expectations and attachments, to the five aggregates or anything else of this world; the cessation of Dukkha, or the state of enlightened peace Buddha reached (Nirvana), is possible for all; and the way to the cessa­tion of Dukkha is the Eightfold Path. The Truths are principles more than prescriptions, like the Eightfold Path, which represents the Buddhist per­spective on pacific wisdom, conduct and discipline.

Each of Path’s eight elements are qualified as samyanc, usually trans­lated as “right,” but which more accurately combines the meanings of

completeness and perfection, in the sense of both a state of being and a process:

1. Understanding of the Four Noble Truths and of the impermanence of Dukkha;

2. Intention, a commitment to non-violence and the pursuit of enlighten­ment;

3. Speech, to abstain from lying and divisive discourse, as well as idle chatter;

4. Action, specifically to refrain from killing, stealing and intoxicants;

5. Livelihood, not engaging in a profession that is violent or dishonest;

6. Effort, to always show goodwill and positivity while rejecting their opposites;

7. Mindfulness, being alert, clear- and open-minded to one’s being in the world around; and

8. Concentration, the practice of meditation both as an activity and as a way of life.

Of all the overtly peaceful religious tenets ever proposed, the Path is among the simplest and most directly applicable in everyday life. It requires tremendous dedication but, like the Socratic Methods of peace, is democratic in that anyone can follow it - which in Buddha’s time meant regardless of caste, a radical religious move. Yet, the Path has not once been used to justify war or conflict. Although individual and groups of Buddhists have participated in wars, its internal logic and external reme­dies preclude it from being so abused. The Path is also the cornerstone of Buddhism’s Three Jewels: the Dharma or “teachings,” the Buddha who originally taught them, and the Sangha or sodalities of enlightened who have ever since provided guidance to Buddhist individuals and the societies in which they lived.

Buddhism’s pacific power is nowhere more evident in the Ancient East than in the life of Emperor Ashoka (c. 304-232 BCE), who came to rule lands that stretched from modern Iran to Bengal. However, had he not lived past middle age, he certainly would not have been granted the hon­orary title Beloved of the Gods. His father, ruler of the largest empire in Indian history, was nicknamed Slayer of Enemies, and emulating him Ashoka’s abilities as a warrior-statesman made him popular throughout the empire. When, seeking his embarrassment, his elder brother and heir to the throne sent him to govern a region ripe for war, fighting ceased upon his arrival. But as it resumed, Ashoka ordered an all-too successful suppressive massacre, for which he was ostracized, a form of counter­dominant behavior also practiced by Ancient Greeks. Called back from exile to quell a rebellion against his father, who died soon after, Ashoka was injured and taken into hiding so as not to be killed by his brothers. The care he received from a Sangha was his first exposure to Buddha’s peaceful principles. They did not leave an immediate impression, for when he was well enough he led another massacre, this time of the city in which his brothers lived (modern Patna), killing them off one by one. Ashoka, now Emperor by default, subjected peoples and lands beyond even his father’s dreams, enriching the Empire but also earning him the moniker Chandashoka, the Cruel. These campaigns culminated in the Kalinga War (c. 265 BCE), a kingdom which refused to submit to Chandashoka. His army butchered 100,000 Kalingians and displaced as many. Amidst the ruins, he realized all the suffering he had caused, screaming the adage “What have I done?” in horror. Tormented, he went sleepless for days - until he recalled the benevolence the Sangha once bestowed.

From that day on, he committed himself not only to the Eightfold Path as his personal way of life, but also adopted it as his public policy. Chandashoka soon came to be known as Dharmashoka, the Good Teacher. The basis of his policy was ahimsa or non-violence towards humans and animals, a Hindu concept adapted by Janaism, Buddhism and Gandhi in the twentieth century. Dharmashoka prohibited outright as well as structural violence, abolishing slavery, outlawing discrimina­tion based on caste and promoting vegetarianism. Reinvigorating the unity in diversity of Ancient Indian polytheism, he set up networks of free hostels for pilgrims of all faiths. He founded institutions of higher learn­ing for agriculture, handicraft and spiritual studies, and secured the basic needs by sanitation, hospitals and roads, as did the partnership-modeled Vedic societies of old. He also built thousands of Stupas, temple-mounds of earth around which Buddhist devotees are meant to walk in meditation (as at Sanchi) as well as Viharas, housing for the Sangha who had put him on the Path of non-violence for the rest of his reign. These peaceful objec­tives and achievements, to which archaeological remains attest, are also described in Ashoka’s eminent Edicts, which harken back to Hammurabi. Inscribed in languages from Pali to Aramaic on columns scattered across and beyond his vast empire, his Edicts are one of the earliest and widest known multilingual disseminations of universal isonomic law. To spread the Dharma, he sent diplomatic missions as far as Greece and Egypt in the West and modern Sri Lanka and Thailand in the East, the first ruler in recorded history to do so on such a scale. When the modern Indian state gained independence from Britain in 1949, the symbol of Ashoka’s trans­formation from feared warmonger to beloved peacemaker, an octagonal crest representing the Eightfold Path placed atop an Edictal column, was adopted as the emblem on its flag.

Buddhism’s peaceful proliferation can also be attributed to Ashoka, but requires a brief retrogression to be understood. Shortly after Buddha passed, a First Council of the Sangha was held to establish his teachings. A Second Council of this still small, regional religion was held a century later to determine the Sangha Code’s applicability. The principal point of contention was whether it should be relaxed to attract more lay practi­tioners; the Council held that it should not, originating the subsequent schism between the Mahayana (“Greater Vehicle”) schools which suc­cessfully spread Buddhism by contravening the Second Council’s decree, and the Hinayana (“Lesser Vehicle”) schools which did so by following it, each non-violently to the other and converts. The Ashoka-sponsored Third Council (250 BCE) sought to reunite the growing number of schools, write the Dharma down for the first time, and organize missions to spread Buddhism around the known world. All Ashoka’s goals, except reunification, were achieved. A benefit of remaining rifts was that priests propagated their own schools instead of a centrally determined one, allowing for localizations that would have otherwise been limited or pro­hibited. Thanks to a commitment to non-violence, these Councils were peaceable despite their disputed resolutions, an example their delegates abroad followed. For centuries after Ashoka’s peaceful proselytizing, Buddhism flourished in almost as many forms as places reached. Hinayana sects like Theravada spread west to modern Iran and Turkey, and Southeast to Cambodia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and else­where. Mahayana sects were slower-moving but reached even farther east, including to Korea and Japan, then annexes of Imperial China.