Nalin Swaris

In the Vasettha Sutta, Gotama Buddha discloses how the illusion of fixed and unchangeable occupations arises due to social practices repeated from generation to generation. The practice of endogamy in clan societies was adapted to suit new social conditions by the Brahmins. By imposing endogamy on occupational groups, the Brahmins could argue that occupational specialisation was a function of biology and not a historical development. By making people forget its historical origins, they claimed that their normative social order existed from the beginning of time when God created Man and produced the four social ranks out of his body.

With Knowledge of Beginnings

The Agganna Sutta unravels the origins of the social division of labour. The Buddha uses the Law of Conditioned Co-Genesis as a method of historical explanation. The title of this discourse is often translated as a Buddhist ‘genesis’ story. The term may serve as a convenient translation so long as ‘genesis’ is not understood as ‘a beginning out of nothing.’ The Buddha rejected suggestions that his explanation refers to spontaneous generation or divine creation. ‘Genesis’ in the Buddha’s usage is always a conditioned genesis, and human agency is always an intrinsic factor. The word agganna literally means ‘with knowledge of beginnings.’ The term was consciously used to refute the spurious theory of creation propagated by the Brahmins. The Buddha unravels step by step the stages of social evolution that produced the stratified society of his day. He offers a superlative archaeological-genealogical explanation. It is also a study on the archaeology of power because the Buddha explains how power differentials arose with the emergence of property differences during a long historical process culminating in the rise of monarchies and the State.

In striking contrast to most Western social theories, the Agganna Sutta does not begin with an assumption that at the beginning of social evolution there were only separate individuals or, as in most patriarchal genesis stories, a solitary male. The Buddha points out that in the beginning there were just ‘beings.’ Anthropologists and palaeontologists today agree that the human species spent the greater part of its existence on this planet hunting and gathering. The Buddha begins with human groups in this ‘primitive’ food-gathering stage. Society at that initial stage-and contemporary anthropology confirms this-was simple and undifferentiated. There was no social differentiation or hierarchy nor even differentiation between masculine and feminine (not to be confused with ‘sexlessness’ as some celibate commentators have piously imagined). Humans lived as food gatherers for a long period of time, shifting from place to place as local resources were depleted.

A qualitative change took place when food cultivation techniques were invented. Instead of moving from place to place, ever dependent on the spontaneous products of nature, they could settle down and produce their means of subsistence. The consolidation of production and the creation of food surpluses changed the character of social relations. The primitive, undifferentiated and egalitarian clan began to disintegrate. Pairing marriage, rather than group marriage, became the norm for biological reproduction. Instead of the clan, the separate household became the basic unit of the new society. The settled way of life and the establishment of separate households made possible the accumulation and hoarding of goods. People began to grab and store wealth, and anarchic conditions developed. In the earlier clan societies, the means of production, especially land, were held in common, and wealth was equitably distributed among all members. Under new conditions, it was no longer clear who was entitled to what. Thus, the institution of private property was a historical, not natural, necessity. Boundaries were marked to divide the hitherto undivided earth into privately owned plots. Instead of restoring peace, the right to private property further inflamed greed to accumulate wealth. Unconscionable individuals grabbed the lands of others by force. The institution of property increased theft, lying and violence.

It was at this stage, when egoism and greed had developed under specific historical conditions, that the need for a central institution to regulate social affairs became a necessity. In order to maintain peace and ensure the just distribution of property, the people, the Buddha recalls, came together as they had done in the earlier tribal assemblies and proposed:

‘Come let us appoint a certain being from among ourselves who would show anger where anger is due, censure those who deserve censure and banish those who deserve banishment! And in return, let us grant him a share of the rice. So they went to the one who was the handsomest, the most pleasant and capable and asked him to do this for them in return for a share of the rice, and he agreed.’

A Ruler’s Titles

The Buddha then goes on to explain the titles given by the people to their rulers when they first elected them. A ruler’s ‘first and enduring title’ was Mahajana Sammata: The People’s Consensus. The Buddha calls this ‘the first constituting element.’ In other words, the title indicates the historical genesis and juridical basis of the right to govern.

The second title and constituting element was ‘Ksatriya.’ The Buddha states that originally the term meant ‘Lord of the Fields.’ It was a function created by the people, not a divine institution as the Brahmins claimed. The second title defined the nature and limits of a ruler’s jurisdiction. He was given powers of ‘overlordship’ but not rights of proprietorship over the people or lands. Yet proprietary claims were made by monarchs of the Buddha’s Day by right of conquest. By attributing the original right to rule to a social convention, and not to a privilege of birth or armed conquest, it implies that the people have the right to withdraw the mandate if a ruler violates the contract.

The third title and constituting element was ‘Raja.’ Etymologically, the word means ‘radiant’: this defines the quality that should inform just governance and which gives legitimacy to the rule of the Great Elect. The Buddha states that in the beginning people called a ruler ‘Raja’ because he was expected to ‘gladden others with Dhamma (the Buddha’s Teaching).’ In ancient India, it was used variously as the title of a tribal hero-chief, the head of a settled agricultural community, the elected head of a federation of tribes or the monarch of a kingdom. The rulers of imperial states were addressed as ‘Maharaja’: Great King. ‘Raja’ had come to stand for ‘radiant power.’ The Buddha returns to the term’s preceding ethical connotation and states that in the beginning people understood it to mean ‘radiating righteousness.’

The Original Social Contract

Since the Mahajana Sammata was freed from productive labour in order to govern the people, he would have no personal means of subsistence. Following the ancient tribal custom of balanced reciprocity, the people decided to remunerate him for the services he agreed to perform on their behalf. Here again the Buddha provides a socio-genetic explanation for taxation. In the early Rig Vedic period, the people belonging to a clan brought their produce to a central pool or treasury, kosa. It was then redistributed in equitable shares, bhaga, among all the clanspeople. With the emergence of monarchy, the portion allocated to the Raja as remuneration for services rendered to the community also came to be called bhaga, which, in turn, came to mean ‘tax.’ Similarly, kosa came to stand for the royal or state treasury. It is worth noting that originally bhaga was a share of the produce, but not the principal means of production, land. Taxation, according to the Buddha, began as a voluntary tribute for services rendered, but later it degenerated into extortion and violent expropriation.

The Buddha’s explanation of kingship’s origins is in striking contrast to the Brahmin theory attesting that because of alarming conditions and social anarchy the people turned to the gods for help. Manu agreed to become the humans’ ruler on condition that he would receive lavish gifts (grain, animals and the most beautiful of young women) in return for maintaining law and order. The people’s fear of social anarchy was used to justify the privileges of a king functioning as guardian of the Brahmanic cosmo-social order, which, in turn, provided a theological rationale for overtaxation. Brahmin ideologists placed the first kings outside the varna scheme; kingship resulted from a separate act of creation. Kings were established in office by a divine legate, a Brahmin priest empowered to anoint rulers. Like the Christian kings’ Divine Right, the Brahmin theory provided a descending analysis of power. Power and majesty were privileges that the gods deign to share with the sons of their choice; the priest mediated this election.

In the Agganna Sutta, the Buddha rejects this mystification of royal power. After recalling the circumstances that led to the Mahajana Sammata’s election, he immediately adds that he was ‘a certain being-ekam sattam-chosen from among the people themselves.’ There is no mention of gender, birth, wealth or armed might as qualifications. The qualities stressed are ethical. The Great Elect was expected to rule justly and ‘gladden the hearts of his people.’ The Theory of Constituting Elements clarifies the factors by which legitimate power was established; the limits within which legitimate power can be exercised.

Having traced the archaeology of state power, the Buddha further explained the emergence of various occupational groups with the monogamous household as the principle unit of ownership and production. At each stage marking the emergence of a particular social stratum, including the monarchy and the various occupational groups, the Buddha repeatedly emphasised:

‘They originated among these very same beings, like ourselves, no different, in accordance with Dhamma (conditioned co-genesis) and not contrary to Dhamma.’

The Vasettha and Agganna Suttas assert the same universal principle: whether conventionally labelled ‘Brahmin,’ ‘king’ or ‘outcaste,’ everyone shares a common human nature. They belong to the same species. Birth does not differentiate; the mind and social conventions do.

Implications of the Agganna Sutta

(1) The Buddha was the first thinker in world history to formulate a theory of contractual power. The Agganna Sutta is the earliest known discourse on politics where the source of state power is traced to popular consensus. Unlike Western philosophers of the 18th century, the Buddha did not argue that a social contract was necessary because the human species consists essentially of separate and egoistic individuals. The Buddha disclosed that individualism and egoism manifest themselves under specific, historically arisen conditions: the transition from a mobile to a settled way of life after humans had developed techniques for the production of their means of subsistence, the breakdown of clan solidarity and the setting of separate households as the principle unit of ownership and production all changed people’s moral sentiments:

‘What was once regarded as immoral (the private ownership of the means of production) came to be regarded as moral.’

(2) The Buddha rejected Brahmin theory about the divine origin of language, which was the basis for their theory of creation. The Brahmins traced language to the Creative Word of God. In Brahmin fantasy, all realties originate with a Father-God who begot a Word-Son from his mouth. This Divine Word-Son was the exteriorisation of the invisible mind of God. All perceivable realities are fragmentary reflections of the Divine Mind. Every separate individual is a partial, imperfect and finite incarnation of the Divine Word. To know the hidden meaning of a thing or a person, we must know its true meaning as conceived and uttered by the Word. All words are made up of stable sound elements that have fixed and immutable meanings that are revealed in the Vedas: the Word of God. To understand the meaning and the purpose of everything on earth, one must know the Vedas. The Brahmins have been chosen by God to act as custodians and interpreters of the Word; they alone have access to the true meaning determined by God. By tracing the power of their words to God, the Brahmins could claim that their discourse about social order was based on divine revelation.

Before commencing his genealogical study of power, the Buddha demolished the Brahmin theory of creation by the Word of God. He wielded a two-edged sword in the Agganna Sutta, undercutting not only the Brahmin theological view of society, but also the very language used to substantiate it. He provided a historical explanation for the origin of the Vedas: language, like society, is a constructed reality. The meaning attached to a word is a social convention, not divine creation. Caught in the web of language, humans break even impersonal events into subject-predicate differences and say, ‘it rains,’ ‘the river flows.’ Language reinforces delusion that the conceptualised world is real, whereas outside the thinking head the perceived form from which a concept is derived and fixed by a verbal signifier is subject to the law of impermanence and flux. One never steps into the same river twice. It is human recognition that makes it the same river and not an underlying, unchanging essence of ‘riverness.’ The Buddha further ridiculed the notion that Father-Gods could beget Word-Sons from their mouths. The Brahmins, he said, could cook up such a fantasy only by cultivating amnesia about their real origins. However much they might like to forget it, everyone knows that Brahmin women, like those of other social strata, menstruate, conceive their children and feed them at their breasts. These ‘vulva-born’ Brahmins, bandying the view that they were conceived in the head of Brahma and born out of his mouth, must first come out of the nether-mouth of woman before making their silly claims.

By emphasising real origins and rejecting the meaningless practice of ritual rebirth by male priests, the Buddha revalidated the feminine-maternal order which the Brahmins disqualified as intrinsically impure. Birth from woman does not differentiate; king and pauper alike share the same process. Patriarchal, empirically non-verifiable discourse about a Creative Word differentiates and sets people against one another, not nature. In the beginning, there is a matrix, not a patrix. The Buddha exposed the fallacy of paternal creation and returned it to the feminine-maternal side.

(3) From the Buddha’s point of view, every just social order must begin by recognising the common species-nature of all human beings. There is no basis for discrimination between human beings before the Law (Dhamma), individually or collectively. This Law is not a social convention or positive legislation enacted by an authority. It is inferred through insight into the conditioned co-genesis of perceived differences. Among humans, these are nominal, not essential. The transformation of perceived differences into substantial differences enables hierarchies of things and beings. Thus, justification of dominance over many by a few can be made to appear ‘natural.’ Institutionalised violence can be argued as necessary and, according to ‘reason,’ divine and human. From the Buddha’s viewpoint, these are violent reasons masquerading as reasonable violence. He concluded the Agganna Sutta with this declaration:

‘Human beings are not different from one another. They are equal, not unequal. This is in accordance with Dhamma.’

The Buddha’s ascending analysis of power demolishes conventional theories of right. Power does not come down from a divine or mysterious source; it is the crystallisation and concentration of relationships developed in society under specific historical conditions. Neither the decentralisation of power nor the ‘empowerment’ of people are necessary, but rather renunciation of power accumulated through gradual appropria-tion of its circuits, which arose and began to circulate in ever wider circles through society. Oppressive ideologies, like Brahminism, seek to inscribe dominant-submissive relationships into the consciousness and very bodies of people. The greatest victims of this demonology-that is what this ‘theology’ of power is-are women, sudras and ‘untouchables.’

(4) The Vasettha and Agganna Suttas together provide the basic principles for the formulation of a bill of fundamental human rights: