MAX WEBER THE RELIGION OF INDIA THE SOCIOLOGY OF HINDUISM AND BUDDHISM cory TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY Hans H. Gerra anp Don MARTINDALE THE FREE PRESS, GLENCOE, ILLINOISCopyright 1958 by The Free Press, a Corporation MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Format by Sidney Solomon Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 58-6491————— CONTENTS PART ONE—THE HINDU SOCIAL SYSTEM I. India and Hinduism The General Place of Hinduism . Diffusion Patterns of Hinduism Hindu Doctrine and Ritual . The Place of the Vedas The Brahmans and the Castes Caste and Tribe . Caste and Guild . Caste and Status group . The Social Rank Order of the Castes . Caste and Sib Semrgauswpr _ Il. The Main Grouping of the Castes 1. The Brahmans 2. The Kshatriyas “ 3. The Vaishyas ‘~~ 4. The Shudras Ill. Caste Forms and Schisms 1, Caste Criteria 2. Caste Schism 3. Caste Discipline PAGE 21 25 29 30 33 39 49 55 87 63 7 93 101 101 102 1084. 5. 6. CONTENTS Caste and Traditionalism The Religious Promise of the Caste System The Developmental Conditions of the Caste System PART TWO—ORTHODOX AND HETERODOX HOLY TEACHING OF THE INDIAN INTELLECTUALS IV. Anti-orgiastic and Ritualistic Character of Brahmanical Religiosity 1 2. 3. 4, 5. Brahmanical, Hellenistic, and Confucian Intellectual Strata Dharma and the Absence of the Concept of Natural Law Knowledge, Asceticism, and Mysticism in India Sramana and Brahmanical Asceticism Brahmanical Writings and Science < iV. Orthodox Hinduism 1 2. 3. Holy Technique (Yoga) and the Development of Religious Philosophy Orthodox Salvation Doctrines Holy Teaching and the Professional Ethic of the Bhagavadgita VI. The Heterodox Soteriologies of the Cultured Professional Monks L 2. 3. The Two Great Heterodoxies Jainism Ancient Buddhism PACE iL 7 123 137 137 143 146 154 158 163 163 166 180 192 192 193 204 PART THREE—THE ASIATIC SECTS AND THE REDEMPTION RELIGIONS VII. The Transformation of Ancient Buddhism 1 2, 3. General Reasons for the Transformation of Ancient Buddhism King Ashoka Mahayana Buddhism 233, 233 235 244CONTENTS VI. The Missions 1. Ceylon and Outlying Indian ‘Territories 2, China 3. Korea 4, Japan 5. Inner Asia: Lamaism IX. The Orthodox Restoration in India 1. General Character 2, Shivaism and the Lingam Cult 3. Vishnuism and Bhakti Piety 4, The Sects and the Gurus X. The General Character of Asiatic Religion Notes Index oli PAGE 257 257 264 269 270 282 291 291 - 298 306 318 329 344 389PART I THE HINDU SOCIAL SYSTEMCHAPTER I INDIA AND HINDUISM 1. The General Place of Hinduism NbIA, in contrast to China, has been, and remains, a land of villages and of the most inviolable organization by birth. But at the same time it was a land of trade, foreign, particularly with the Occident, as well as domestic. Trade and credit usury ap- peared in India from ancient Babylonian times. In the northwest Indian commerce was under constant perceptible Hellenic in- fluence. At an early period the Jews settled in the South. Zara- thustrians from Persia immigrated to the Northwest, constituting a stratum wholly devoted to wholesale trade. Into this situation came the influence of Islam and the rationalistic enlightenment of the great mogul Akbar. Under the great moguls, and also re- peatedly before them, all or almost all of India for generations was formed into one political unit. Such periods of unity were interrupted, however, by long periods of disintegration with the country divided into numerous, constantly warring political dominions, Princely methods of warfare, politics, and finance were ration- alized, made subject to literary and, in the case of politics, even quite Machiavellian theorizing. Knightly combat and the dis- ciplined army equipped by the prince appeared. While, as is occasionally maintained, use of artillery did not develop here for the first time, it appeared early. State creditors, tax farming, state contracting, trade and communication monopolies, etc., developed in the fashion characteristic of occidental patrimonial logic. For centuries urban development in India paralleled that of the Occident at many points. The contemporary rational num- ber system, the technical basis of all “calculability,” is of Indian »Be»4« THE RELIGION OF INDIA origin. The “positional” number system has existed for an un- determined time. The zero was invented and used sometime after the fifth or sixth century A.D. Arithmetic and algebra are considered to have been independently developed in India. For negative magnitudes the term “debts” (Ksaya) was used. In contrast to the Chinese, the Indians cultivated rational science (including mathematiks and grammar). They developed numer- | ous philosophic schools and religious sects of almost all possible sociological types. For the most part the schools and sects de- veloped out of the basic need for rational consistency which was expressed in the most varied spheres of life. For long periods tolerance toward religious and philosophic doctrines was almost absolute; at least it was infinitely greater than anywhere in the Occident until most recent times. Indian justice developed numerous forms which could have served capitalistic purposes as easily and well as corresponding institutions in our own medieval law. The autonomy of the mer- chant stratum in law-making was at least equivalent to that of our own medieval merchants. Indian handicrafts and occupa- tional specialization were highly developed. From the standpoint of possible capitalistic development, the acquisitiveness of In- dians of all strata left little to be desired and nowhere is to be found so little antichrematism and such high evaluation of wealth. Yet modern capitalism did not develop indigenously before or during the English rule. It was taken over as a finished artifact without autonomous beginnings. Here we shall inquire as to the manner in which Indian religion, as one factor among many, may have prevented capitalistic development (in the occi- dental sense). The national form of Indian religion is Hinduism. The term “Hindu” was first used under the foreign domination of the \\tammedns to mean unconverted native Indians. Only in ‘ecent literature have the Indians themselves begun to designate their religious affiliation as Hinduism. It is the official designa- tion of the English census for the religious complex also de- scribed in Germany as “Brahmanism.” The term “Brahmanism” refers to the fact that a definite type of priest, the Brahman, was the leader of the religion. It is known that the Brahmans con- stituted a caste and that, in general, the institution of the castes— a system of particularly rigid and exclusive hereditary estates— played and continue to play a role in the social life of India.INDIA AND HINDUISM. »d« Also, the names of the four main castes of classical Indian learn- ing as represented in the Laws of Manu are known: Brahmans_ (priest); Kshatriyas (knights); Vaishyas (free commoners); Shudras (serfs).° Tee Me The general public is quite unfamiliar with the details of the castes with the possible exception of vague ideas about the transmigration of souls, These ideas are not false, they merely require clarification in terms of the abundant sources and litera- ture, Under the heading “religion” the tables of the Census of India for 1911 list, in round numbers, 217% million people as “Hindus,” ite. 69.39 per cent of the population. Among the imported faiths there are: Mussulmen (66-2/3 million or 21.26 per cent); Chris- tians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and “Animists” (10.29 million or 3.28 per cent). The following non-Hindu religions are listed as native to India: Sikhs? (around three million or 0.86 per cent); Jains (1.2 million or 0.40 per cent); Buddhists (10.7 million or 3.42 per cent). However, all but a third of a million of the Buddhists reside in Burma (which since early times was almost nine-tenths Buddhistic); the remainder live in the bordering territories of Tibet (hence not on classically Indian but Mongolian territory), partly in outlying Indian territories, partly in central Asia. To be sure, the census figures by decades cannot be compared without reservations. The percentage of Hindus since 1881 de- creased from 74.32 per cent to 69.39 per cent; Islam rose from 19.74 per cent to 21.22 per cent; Christians, from 0.73 per cent to 1.24 per cent; and, finally, Animists, from 2.59 per cent to 3.28 per cent. This last figure, and also part of the percentage shifts, rests not only upon the considerable numbers of children of the uncultured animistic tribes but to a large extent upon differences in census enumeration. A further small part of the proportional decrease of Hindus is to be accounted for by the extension of the census to Burma, which resulted in a consider- able increase in counted Buddhists. For the rest, the relative decline of the Hindu is partially to be attributed to differential birth and mortality rates. The relatively low social status and correspondingly low standard of living of the Hindu masses has, to some extent, religious causes. Child marriage, female infanti- ° Translator’s note: The spelling of caste names follows Jawaharlal Nehru’s The Discovery of India (New York: John Day, 1946).