Buddhism and Jainism were social movements under the umbrella of religion. Comment.

Answer:

Buddhism and Jainism arose in the sixth century BCE as religious systems, yet their appeal and their consequences were substantially social. By rejecting caste, ritual and priestly monopoly they answered the needs of groups whom the Brahmanical order marginalised.

Their social content

• Both rejected the ritual authority of the Brahmana and the necessity of sacrifice.
• Both admitted members of every varna, and even outcastes, into their orders.
• The Buddhist sangha admitted women as bhikkhunis, a radical step for the age.
• They preached in Prakrit and Pali rather than in Sanskrit, reaching ordinary people.
• Both condemned costly animal sacrifice that destroyed cattle needed for agriculture.

Why particular groups responded

• Vaishya merchants gained a respectability the varna order had denied them.
• Non-violence and the prohibition of usury's stigma suited trade and money-lending.
• Kshatriyas welcomed a challenge to Brahmanical ritual primacy.
• The shudras and the poor found a path to salvation open to them.
• R.S. Sharma linked their rise to the material changes of the eastern Ganga plains.

The religious dimension

• Both were fundamentally concerned with suffering, karma and liberation.
• The Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path form a spiritual, not a social, programme.
• Jain doctrines of anekantavada and syadvada are philosophical rather than social.
• Monastic renunciation implied withdrawal from society rather than its reform.

A balanced comment

• Neither movement set out to abolish caste in society at large.
• Buddhism later developed its own hierarchy and accepted royal patronage.
• Jain lay society retained caste distinctions in practice.
• They nonetheless widened social participation and challenged inherited privilege.

Lasting social consequences

• Monasteries became centres of learning open to a wider public.
• The emphasis on non-violence discouraged wasteful animal sacrifice.
• Merchant patronage of stupas and viharas raised the status of the commercial classes.
• Prakrit and Pali literature developed as vehicles of popular instruction.

The comment is thus valid as a description of their effect rather than their intention. As historians such as R.S. Sharma and Romila Thapar argue, these were religions of salvation whose egalitarian ethic gave voice to rising social groups, so their religious message carried a genuine and far-reaching social charge.