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Chandragupta at court

Chanakya - more artistic imagination

Ashoka the Great

The story of Ashoka as a child giving a bowl of dirt to The Buddha, the child dreaming that the dirt is food. The Buddha, who has become a god, foresees that Ashoka will rule India and spread the Buddhist faith. A story that develops by the 100s BCE.

Scythian Warriors archaeological find

Chandragupta - Emperor and Martyr

Shortly after the passing of Alexander, India's first great empire arose, ruled by Chandragupta Maurya. According to legend, Chandragupta Maurya was the son of a herdsman. When he was a young man he met Alexander the Great, and days later he was awakened by a lion gently licking his body - an omen that he would become royalty.

Chandragupta's counselor and advisor was his adoptive father, Chanakya, who is said to have kept Chandragupta's youthful impulses in check and to have been learned in medicine, Hellenism and Zoroastrianism. And it is said that he guided Chandragupta in a bloody war that began two years after Alexander left India, a war that ended with Chandragupta overthrowing the Nanda dynasty that had been ruling the state of Magadha.

Chanakya became Chandragupta's Prime Minister, and legend describes Chanakya (Kautilya) as the author of a book entitled Arthasastra, which appears to have been written during the time of Chandragupta but with writings added centuries later. Arthasastra means science of property and material success, and in the book this success includes political and diplomatic strategy aimed at uniting India. It has a flavor to it similar to the Legalism that rivaled Confucianism and Taoism in China. The book advises a king to control his subjects, especially his ministers, and the Brahmins, wealthy merchants and his beautiful women. And to help in this, according to the author, the king should employ an army of various artful persons as spies who keep watch at all levels of society. Arthasastra advises a king to be energetic, ever wakeful, to make himself accessible to his subjects and to guard against six enemies: anger, greed, lust, exuberance, hauteur and vanity. But foremost is the book's advocacy of military expansion. In Arthasastra it is claimed that aggrandizement is human nature, that a power superior in strength to another power should launch a war against that power, and that war keeps a nation's blood circulation regular. Chanakya was aware that toward the northwest, in the Indus Valley, were tribal republics and monarchies that had been weakened by war against Alexander. Moreover, Alexander had demonstrated that a disciplined and strong force could conquer the region. And it appeared that an India united by a great conqueror was the best defense against a recurring foreign intrusion. Chandragupta, in accordance with the views of Chanakya, sent an army of infantry, cavalry, many chariots and elephants to the Indus Valley, extending his rule there and beyond, into the Hindu Kush. The first Seleucid king, Seleucus I, attempted to recover lands taken by Chandragupta. But in the year 305 BCE, Chandragupta turned back Seleucus' drive. Seleucus was forced to settle with Chandragupta. Chandragupta then conquered northward from Magadha, into the Himalayas, and he conquered the rest of northern India.

Life in and around Chandragupta's Capital

Chandragupta's capital was Pataliputra (today, Putra), a city nine by two miles, surrounded by walls of timber, 570 towers, a moat 900 feet wide and 30 feet deep. The wealthy of Pataliputra had sumptuously furnished homes surrounded by gardens, fruit trees and ornamental ponds. They enjoyed festivals, gambling, horsemanship, horseracing, archery, swimming competition, and private parties on each other's terraces. They were literate, and their city had a university, where Brahmins taught grammar, rhetoric, economics and politics. Pataliputra also had trade guilds and schools that taught crafts and technical subjects.

An ambassador, Megasthenes, sent to Pataliputra by the Seleucus, described the people of Pataliputra as skilled in the arts, as having an abundance of nourishing food, a low incidence of thievery and people often leaving their houses and property unguarded. Megasthenes described the people of Pataliputra as uncomplicated in their manners, never drinking wine except at sacrifices, and as seldom going to court against one another.

According to Megasthenes, some upper class women received an education and some were recognized as accomplished in the arts, but he added that ordinarily Brahmins did not wish to educate their wives, believing that knowledge and learning were not for females. Megasthenes described a deterioration in the position of women accompanied by a rise in honor bestowed upon courtesans. He described a drop in the age at which females could be married, which was a better guarantee that a man would acquire a virgin. A man of twenty-four might marry a girl as young as eight, or a man of thirty might marry a twelve year-old - marriages that were to be consummated when the bride matured.

Chandragupta as Autocrat, Sensualist and Martyr

The agricultural lands around the capital belonged to Chandragupta, which he "rented" for a quarter or sometimes a half of what was produced on them. And Chandragupta made those peasants working his fields exempt from service in his military or other obligations to the state.

Chandragupta divided his empire into districts, which were administered by his closest relatives and most trusted generals. Civil servants ruled various departments such as trade, taxation, mining, roads, and irrigation canals. His  government held trade monopolies and owned slaughter-houses, gambling halls, mines, shipbuilding operations, armament factories and spinning and weaving operations. His government oversaw the standardization of weights, measures and coinage. It controlled prices and trade, including trade in liquor and prostitution. It obliged drinking places to have couches, scents, water and other amenities, and drinking places and "public houses" were not to be near each other.

Chandragupta feared revenge and assassins. Against these possibilities he had a  network of spies. He expected authorities in various districts to know all comings and goings. People who were considered dangerous to his rule might disappear without a trace. He had food tasters to avoid being poisoned. And, like Shih Huang-ti, he never slept in the same bed two nights in succession.

Eliciting confessions by torture remained a normal method in police work. Punishment depended on class: Brahmin's were not tortured, but upon conviction of a crime they could be branded, exiled or sent to work in the mines. The low incidence of thievery described by Megasthenes might have been a result of the punishment for such a crime. Common people were executed for theft, for damaging property of the king, breaking into someone's home, evading taxes, injuring an artisan working for the state and many other crimes. Failure to meet a contract could lead to a fine if not a harsher penalty, as could incompetence in various forms of work, from washing clothes to treating the ill.

Toward the end of his more than twenty years of rule, Chandragupta surrounded himself with dancing girls and courtesans - women who also worked as housemaids, cooks, garland makers, shampooers and who fanned Chandragupta or held an umbrella for him. He seldom left his palace, except for an occasional festival. But he remained a man of religion and concerned about his subjects. According to legend he was converted to Jainism by a sage who had predicted a twelve-year drought. With the drought came famine in place of the affluence described by Megasthenes. In an effort to combat the drought, Chandragupta, in 301 BCE, abdicated in favor of one of his sons, Bindusara, and he withdrew with the Jainist sage to a religious retreat in India's southwest. There, according to legend, while appealing to God for relief from the drought, he fasted to death.

The Buddhist Emperor, Ashoka
 

Bindusara, ruled for twenty-five years. He warred occasionally, reinforcing his authority within India, and he acquired the title "Slayer of Enemies." Then in the year 273 BCE, he was succeeded by his son Ashoka
 (Ashoka), who in his first eight years of rule did what was expected of him: he looked after the affairs of state and extended his  rule where he could. Around the year 260 Ashoka fought great battles and imposed his rule on people southward along the eastern coast of India - an area called Kalinga. The sufferings created by the war disturbed Ashoka. He found relief in Buddhism and became an emperor at least a little different in values from his father, grandfather and others. He was a Buddhist lay member and went on a 256-day pilgrimage to Buddhist holy places in northern India. Buddhism benefited from the association with state power that Hinduism had enjoyed - and that Christianity would enjoy under Constantine the Great.

Like Jeroboam and other devout kings, Ashoka was no revolutionary. Rather than India changing politically, Buddhism was changing. In the years to come, Ashoka mixed his Buddhism with material concerns that served the Buddha's original desire to see suffering among people mitigated: Ashoka had wells dug, irrigation canals and roads constructed. He had  rest houses built along roads, hospitals built, public gardens planted and medicinal herbs grown. But Ashoka maintained his army, and he maintained the secret police and network of spies that he had inherited as a part of his extensive and powerful bureaucracy. He kept his hold over Kalinga, and he did not allow the thousands of people abducted from Kalinga to return there. He announced his intention to "look kindly" upon all his subjects, as was common among kings, and he offered the people of Kalinga a victor's conciliation, erecting a monument in Kalinga which read:

All men are my children, and I, the king, forgive what can be forgiven.

Ashoka converted his foreign policy from expansionism to that of coexistence and peace with his neighbors - the avoidance of additional conquests making his empire easier to administer. In keeping with his Buddhism he announced that he was determined to ensure the safety, peace of mind and happiness of all "animate beings" in his realm. He announced that he would now strive for conquest only in matters of the human spirit and the spread of "right conduct" among people. And he warned other powers that he was not only compassionate but also powerful.

Ashoka's wish for peace was undisturbed by famines or natural disasters. His rule did not suffer from the onslaught of any great migration. And during his reign, no neighboring kings tried to take some of his territory - perhaps because these kings were accustomed to fearing the Maurya monarchs and thinking them strong.

The resulting peace helped extend economic prosperity. Ashoka relaxed the harsher laws of his grandfather, Chandragupta. He gave up the kingly pastime of hunting game, and in its place he went on religious pilgrimages. He began supporting philanthropies. He proselytized for Buddhism, advocating non-violence, vegetarianism, charity and tenderness to all living things.

Ashoka had edicts cut into rocks and pillars at strategic locations throughout his empire, edicts to communicate to passers-by the way of compassion, edicts such as "listen to your father and mother," and "be generous with your friends and relatives." In his edicts he spread hope in the survival of the soul after death and in good behavior leading to heavenly salvation. And in keeping with the change that was taking place in Buddhism, in at least one of his edicts Ashoka described Siddhartha Gautama not merely as the teacher that Siddhartha had thought of himself but as "the Lord Buddha."

Ashoka called upon his subjects to desist from eating meat and attending illicit and immoral meetings. He ordered his local agents of various ranks, including governors, to tour their jurisdictions regularly to witness that rules of right conduct were being followed. He commanded the public to recite his edicts on certain days of the year.

Ashoka's patronage of Buddhism gave it more respect, and in his empire Buddhism spread. More people became vegetarian, and perhaps there was some increase in compassion toward others. Ashoka
 served harmony by pleading for tolerance toward Hindus and Jains. He worshiped no jealous god, and mindful of the close ties between Buddhism and Hinduism he claimed that the Brahmin's creed deserved respect, and he included Brahmins among his officials.

Not all Brahmins returned Ashoka's kindness. They were displeased with Ashoka's campaign against their sacrificial slaughtering of living creatures. But Ashoka's opposition to such sacrifices did please many among India's peasantry, whose flocks had long been plundered by local rulers seeking animals for their sacrifices.

Ashoka sent missionaries to the kingdoms of southern India, to parts of Kashmir in the northwest, to Persia, Egypt and Greece, but as Christians were to learn, old habits are not easily broken. Buddhism outside his kingdom took root only on the island of Lanka.

Work, taxation, class relations, government bureaucracy and village politics changed little, all of which - like Ashoka's authority - were considered the natural order of things. Whether prostitution had ended is unknown. In religion, old habits continued among Buddhists, as they looked to Brahmins to conduct those rites associated with births, marriages and deaths. Ashoka
 attempted to resolve differences among the Buddhists - as the Christian emperor Constantine would among the Christians - but  conflicts among the Buddhists remained and would grow.

In the final years of his reign, Ashoka withdrew from public life, and in 232 BCE - after thirty-seven years of rule - he died. During the reign of his heirs the empire begin to split apart, including the breaking away of Kalinga. Why this happened is unknown. Buddhist writings suggest that decay had come before Ashoka's death. Some scholars attribute the decline to economic pressures: revenues from taxing agriculture and trade that were inadequate in maintaining the large military and army of bureaucrats. Perhaps palace politics reduced the ability of Ashoka
's heirs to govern. Perhaps Ashoka's heirs inherited from Ashoka
 a pacifism that discouraged their using force in keeping the empire together. Whatever the cause or causes, regions within the empire asserted their independence, and the empire disintegrated while the Maurya family, in Pataliputra, continued to rule.

Collapse of the Maurya Empire

In 185 BCE, the rule of the Maurya family ended when an army commander-in-chief, Pusyamitra Sunga, murdered the last Maurya king during a parade of his troops. Pusyamitra's rise to power has been described, perhaps inaccurately, as a reaction by Brahmins to the Buddhism of the Maurya family. Nevertheless, the influence of state power on religion continued, with Pusyamitra supporting orthodox Brahminism and appointing Brahmins to state offices. And, with Pusyamitra's rule, animal sacrifices returned that had been prohibited under Ashoka and his heirs. Other matters outlawed by the Mauryas also returned, including musical festivals and dances.

Then came invasions. Perhaps the collapse of the Maurya Empire signaled to outsiders that India was now vulnerable - much as division after Alexander's death had brought an assault by Celts. The first of the great invasions began roughly two years after Pusyamitra took power. The king of Bactria, Demetrius, followed the footsteps of Alexander through the Khyber Pass and extended his power into the northern Indus Valley, where he began what was to become a series of wars between the Greeks and Indians.

The Greeks brought with them a better coin than was being used in India, which contributed to regional and inter-regional trade. They brought with them ideas in astronomy, architecture and art that spread through India, and with the new art came new depictions of Hindu gods and a new image of the Buddha.

Between the years 155 and 130, a Greek named Menander (known to Indians as Milinda) ruled in India's northwest. He sent his army into the Ganges Valley as far as Magadha's capital, Pataliputra. But, failing to capture that city, he returned to his kingdom in the northwest. In Pataliputra the Sunga dynasty, created by Pusyamitra Sunga, continued its rule.

Like Ashoka, Menander converted to Buddhism. This conversion may have facilitated the passage of Buddhist ideas west to Bactria and from Bactria farther west. The Greeks in India helped in spreading ideas westward. The road between India and Bactria and India had become a bridge to and from the West. To the Indus Valley came ideas from Zoroastrianism, and in India arose the belief in a savior who at the end of time would lead the forces of light and goodness in a final victory against of the forces of darkness and evil.

Scythian and Kushan Invasions

Pushed upon by a Chinese resurgence, those whom the Chinese called Xiongnu pushed on the Indo-European speaking tribes whom the Chinese called the Yüeh Chih - a people also called Kushans. The Kushans pushed on Scythians, who left their homeland in Central Asia and pushed into an area southeast of the Caspian Sea, an area to become known as Parthia. From 141 to 128 BCE the Scythians were able to push into lush, agricultural Bactria, against the Greeks there, who were already weakened by warfare. Soon thereafter, the Kushans invaded Bactria. Then around 50 BCE, the Parthian empire - which in Persia had replaced the power of the Seleucid dynasty - invaded northwestern India. And also invading India were the Scythians from Bactria.

The last of the Greek kings in India, Hermaeus, tried unsuccessfully to defend his rule from these attacks. In the Indus Valley, Greeks, Scythians and Parthians fought into the first century CE, and the Scythians extended their rule into north-central India and south along India's western coast, to the Gulf of Cambay. They ended Greek rule in India but maintained the Indo-Greek culture, some of which they had acquired in Bactria. In India, the Scythians became known as Sakas. Like other conquerors, the Sakas kept the local royalty as their subordinates. And Saka rulers became known as Satraps or Viceroys.

In the middle of the first century CE, another tribe of Kushans left Bactria and pushed into northwest India. After a generation or more a Kushan named Kanishka became the greatest of the Kushan kings. He expanded his rule from Bactria to the center of the Ganges valley and south along the Indus River to the Arabian Sea, and like the Saka rulers he absorbed lesser kings and made them sub-rulers.

Trade, Prosperity and Cultural Diffusions

The centuries of invasions were dark times for much of India, but not so for the southern part of the sub-continent, which was peopled by Dravidians. Unlike other Dark Ages, during the period of invasions into India much of its roads and ports were maintained. Southern India benefited from expanded economic and cultural contacts with the world outside India and an expanded trade with West Asia and the Roman Empire. The south had become the most prosperous part of India. Leaving southern ports were ivory, onyx, cotton goods, silks, pepper and other spices, and from the Roman empire the Indians imported tin, lead, antimony and wine.

Indian ships sailed south to Lanka and then east to Southeast Asian ports, where Indian merchants sold cotton cloth, ivory, brass wear, monkeys, parrots and elephants to Chinese merchants, who transported their goods by sea to China. From Southeast Asian ports Indian merchants acquired spices that they traded elsewhere. Trade between India and China passed also across Central Asia by camel caravan, across what would become known as the great northern silk route, China sending musk, raw and woven silk, tung oil and amber westward into India.

Accompanying this seagoing trade, wave after wave of Indians emigrated. These colonists reached Lanka, the coast of Burma, what is now Thailand and Cambodia, the Malay Peninsula, Java, Sumatra and Borneo, and a few reached Taiwan and the Philippines.

In India, meanwhile, the increase in India's trade led to the rise of bankers and financiers among the Indians, and these men of wealth gave support to monarchies and landlords short on cash. Families in banking and commerce extended their enterprises into as many urban centers as they could, in India and abroad. And the increase in trade brought a rise in intellectual activity among the Indians - as it had among the Greeks. Science and the arts flourished, stimulated too by ideas that the Greeks brought from Bactria.

Kanishka's Empire and Buddhism

Like tribal people before them - and like the Germans who would invade the Roman Empire - Kanishka and the Kushans adopted aspects of the civilization they had conquered. Kanishka's empire prospered economically, and it is said that to his court, from all over Asia,  the wealth and wisdom of Kanishka attracted merchants, artists, poets and musicians. Like other barbarian rules, Kanishka found Buddhism more accessible than Hinduism. Kanishka became a patron of Buddhism, and Buddhists would rank him as one of their own and with Ashoka
 and Menander as a great king. Kanishka would remain attached to warfare for the remainder of his life, while his attachment to Buddhism remained an ideal separate from the struggle over power.

Kanishka was eclectic in religion. He appears also to have been inclined toward the Persian cult of Mithras, to Zoroastrianism, and to have also worshiped Greek and Hindu deities. Buddhism dominated in the cities of Kanishka's empire and in Kanishka's court, while through his empire Brahmin families maintained orthodox Hinduism.

Kanishka is said to have converted to Buddhism a Brahmin who was attempting to reconcile Hinduism and Buddhism. Kanishka convened a Buddhist council in Kashmir - much as the emperor Constantine would call a council of Christians - in hope of resolving conflict that had developed among Buddhists, between Mahayana Buddhism, meaning the Great Vehicle, and Hinayana Buddhism, the  Little Vehicle. Hinayana Buddhism was mainly in the southern half of India.

Changes in Buddhism and Hinduism

Buddhism had developed within a predominately Hindu society, and just as Christianity was to cling to a Judaism in its religion, Buddhism clung to the Hindu beliefs in karma and reincarnations: in one's past life determining the karma of his next life. Buddhists believed that life is an illusion and that there is no permanent existence of self in the form of soul. The aim of an individual, according to Buddhist doctrine, should be to escape from oneself, from the cycles of births and pains of the material world. Buddhists believed that one blended with the universal spirit and acquired nirvana by living an exemplary moral life, by becoming pure in word, deed and thought, and by respecting one's superiors and animal life.

A difference remained between the religious habits of Buddhist monks and Buddhist laymen. A tightly organized fraternity of ordained monks, the Sangha, dominated the Buddhist movement. They had opted for a strict morality: remaining celibate, ingesting no intoxicants, not eating after noon, not singing or dancing or attending any entertainments, not using scents or wearing ornaments, not sleeping on a raised bed and not receiving money or valuable objects. Buddhist laymen, on the other hand, were allowed a normal life, including having children, eating dinner, enjoying entertainments and intoxicants - a partaking in those appetites that Siddhartha had thought one should not persist in.

The Buddha becomes a Compassionate and Loving Savior

Buddhism had been changing from a cult with a philosophy and sprinkles of Hinduism to a full-blown religion. The Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, was elevated from a teacher to a god, and possessing, as gods do, miraculous powers. Siddhartha as God was said to be the latest of a series of his incarnations.

Mahayana Buddhists were interested in grasping for nirvana. They believed that by acquiring freedom from self-concern, one's energies flowed outward in love for all beings. Hinayanists continued to believe that one could be saved only by oneself, while the Mahayanists believed that a devotee could help save others through love. It became a Mahayanist ideal to emulate the Buddha and to sacrifice one's own effort at accomplishing nirvana in order to help others find their nirvana. Following this ideal, the most devoted among the Mahayanists acquired what was seen as saintliness. Among the Mahayanists arose many saints, called Bodhisattvas, whom the faithful worshiped. It was at Kanishka's capital, Peshawar, that the first images of the Buddha and the Bodhisattvas have been found, marking a difference between Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhism.

While the Hinayanists continued to advocate salvation by accomplishing the rigid demands listed by Siddhartha Gautama, the Mahayanists permitted people salvation merely by trying, an effort of the heart as would develop in Christianity. This had a greater appeal than that offered by the Hinayanists, and it was Mahayana Buddhism that became the most popular, spreading to hundreds of millions in Asia.

Hinduism, Scripture, and Krishna

Hinduism also was changing. From the tribal, outdoor, fire and blood sacrifices that had been a part of the Vedic worship of the Aryan invaders more than a thousand years before, Hinduism was shifting to a worship of gods residing within temples and gods concerned with individuals. Elaborate rituals in beautiful temples had a popular appeal. Vishnu, an old Vedic sun god, was transformed into a savior of humankind, and Vishnu gradually emerged as one of Hinduism's two great gods.

The other great god was Shiva. Shiva had origins among non-Aryans. Shiva was hailed in several myths as the supreme god, a god of death and destruction, a god who was thought to dwell in the Himalayas. He was a god of many attributes: a god of art, especially dancing, a god represented as having five heads and three eyes, and one of his representations was half-male and half-female, signifying a unity within creation.

Hinduism was becoming more of a religion that warmed the heart, but intellectuality and physical exercises also were a part of the new Hinduism. A description of formal logic appeared in Hindu writings, with only minor variations in method from Aristotle's syllogism. And a man named Patanjali built upon references in Hindu scriptures to create a physical and sensual means of attaining independence of one's soul. Patanjali believed that knowledge was not enough in working toward salvation. His exercises, called yoga,  included religious observance and regulation of breathing to concentrate the mind, enhance self-control and restrain the senses.

The Mahabharata and a New Holy Book, the Bhagavad Gita

New contributions to Hinduism's epic poem, the Mahabharata gave greater focus to the gods Vishnu and Shiva. A story incorporated into the Mahabharata became known as the Bhagavad Gita (the Lord's Song), composed perhaps as early as 200 BCE. The Bhagavad Gita became Hinduism's most popular scriptures and into modern times it would be read by many for daily reference - a work that Mahatma Gandhi would describe as an infallible guide to conduct.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Vishnu acquired a new incarnation: Krishna. Krishna was originally a non-Aryan god in northwestern India. In the old Mahabharata he was a secondary hero, a god who had appeared as a human. But in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna became the Supreme Deity in human form. The Bhagavad Gita is an account of the origins, course and aftermath of a great war between royalty. In the Bhagavad Gita a dialogue takes place between a prince, Arjuna, and the charioteer alongside him as the two ride into battle at the head of Arjuna's army. The charioteer is really Krishna in disguise. Arjuna sees that his opponents ahead of him are his relatives. He drops his bow and announces that he will not give the signal to begin the battle. He asks whether power is so important that he should fight his own kinsmen, and he states that the pain of killing his kinsmen would be too much, that it would be better to die than to kill just for power and its glory. Krishna is like the god of war of former times: Indira. He gives Arjuna a formula for accepting deaths in war, a Hindu version close to the claim that those who die in battle will go to paradise. He tells Arjuna that bodies are not really people, that people are souls and that when the body is killed the soul lives on, that the soul is never born and never dies. Krishna reminds Arjuna that he is a warrior and that to turn from battle is to reject his karma, in other words his duty or place in life. He states that Arjuna should make war because it is his destiny to do so. He states that it is best to fulfill one's destiny with complete detachment because detachment leads to liberation and allows one to see the irrelevance of one's work.

To give weight to his argument, Krishna reveals to Arjuna that he is not just his charioteer, that he is the god Krishna - a claim that Arjuna accepts. Some readers of the Bhagavad Gita interpret this to mean that Arjuna does not need to step from his chariot to find God and that humanity does not need to search for the divine: that God is with a person and for a person.

Krishna became the most loved of the Hindu gods, a god viewed as a teacher, a personal god much like Yahweh, a god who not only believes in war but a god of love who gives those who worshiped Him a gift of grace. A loving god could be found here and there in the old Vedic hymns of the Aryans, but this new focus on a loving god and the satisfaction it brought to the people of India was a challenge to Hindu priests, for it offered salvation without the need for ritual sacrifices.

In the Bhagavad Gita (1:41), Krishna says: "Give me your heart. Love me and worship me always. Bow to me only, and you will find me. This I promise." Arjuna expresses his support for family values, and he is a defender of tradition. He complains of lawlessness corrupting women, and when women are corrupted, he says, a mixing of caste ensues. The Gita (2.22) describes Hinduism's belief in reincarnation:

As leaving aside worn-out garments
A man takes new ones,
So leaving aside a worn-out body
To a new one goes the soul.

According to Krishna, as expressed in the Bhagavad Gita (2:37), one could accumulate possessions and not lose blessedness so long as one remained indifferent about success and failure. According to Krishna, if one died in battle he went to heaven, or if he conquered he would "enjoy the earth." So, according to Krishna, one should go into battle with "a firm resolve." Attitude was of the utmost importance. "Let not the fruits of action be thy motive, nor be thy attachment to inaction." One can attain salvation so long as one restrains one's passions in whatever one does. One should be fearless, steadfast generous and patient. One should be compassionate toward other creatures. One should be without greed, hypocrisy, arrogance, overweening pride, wrath or harshness in speech. One should "study the Holy Word, austerities and uprightness." (16:1-2)

Hinduism and the Law Code of Manu

The uncertainties of the era of invasions may have inspired a new book of laws, called the Law Code of Manu. These were books that combined Hinduism with law - a sacred law much as law was among the Jews and Zoroastrians - and laws that kings and commoners alike were obliged to follow. The Law Code of Manu drew from the Vedas, where Manu was described as the world's first king, as the father of the human race and the one who had received the god Brahma's plans. Manu, according to the Vedas, was the first who described the universe and the first who sacrificed to the gods. The Law Code of Manu included Manu's story about the creation of the universe, and it attempted to bring together, in the form of maxims, Brahma's commandments regarding ritual, custom, caste and other institutions.

The Law Code of Manu expressed the values of India's Hindu priesthood. It claimed that authoritarian rule and class privilege were best for everyone. Among Manu's commandments, expressed in the Law Code, was that one should give no pain to any creature. Such behavior would, according to the Law Code, allow one to gather spiritual merit that stayed with one after death. Another commandment held that in childhood a female had to be subject to the authority of her father. When she married she was to be under the authority of her husband. She was to remain cheerful, clever in the management of her household affairs, careful in using utensils, economical in spending, and to do nothing independent of male authority. As a widow or in old age she was to be under the authority of her sons. According to the Law Code, if a female sought to separate herself from her father, husband or son, she made her family contemptible.

The Law Code of Manu declared that rulers were obliged to be considerate in judging and punishing their subjects. It claimed that punishment kept the world in order, that punishment properly applied kept all people happy, but applied without consideration it destroyed everything. The Law Code of Manu claimed that without punishment, inferior people would "take the place" of their superiors, that the castes would be corrupted by intermixture, that "all barriers" would fall and "men would rage against each other."    [READER COMMENT]

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