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Democratic impulses in Buddhism

Nalin Swaris

When we look for democratic impulses in religion, we are faced with a paradoxical reality. Struggles for democracy have invariably been a struggle against beliefs and values instilled into cultures by organised religions. The most glaring example is the denial of full and equal participation in religious life to women. The character of the great religions of the world, including Theravada Buddhism remains androcratic and patriarchal. Organised religions have often been an obstacle to, rather than a catalyst of, social emancipation. Invariably, they have had to catch up with and introduce into their institutions, freedoms long enjoyed by citizens in vigorous democracies.

So when we look for emancipatory impulses in religion, we have to look for inspiration, where possible in the original teachings of the founders of great religions. What we call Buddhism is no exception. The development of monastic landlordism in Buddhist countries structurally integrated Buddhist institutions into the feudal mode of production and led to an alliance between the leaders of the Buddhist church with the feudal powers and the monarchy. Tibetan Buddhism represents perhaps the most extreme form of the coincidence of political, religious and economic interest, where the Head of the Buddhist Church was also the Head of State.

To give a meaningful response to the theme of this conference, one must return to the sources. My primary source material is the canon of Theravada Buddhism, which scholars agree is the oldest, largest and most authentic tradition we have of early Buddhist thought and practice. The teachings of Buddha can be a source of inspiration for socially engaged Buddhists and others, struggling against socially engendered inhumane conditions of living which has made the world a vale of tears for the majority of our fellow human beings. There are several discourses of the Buddha which deal with the question of social equity or economic democracy – the most outstanding of these being the Kutadanta Sutta and the Sigalovada Sutta. Given the limitations of time, I will confine myself to the question of political democracy. What I attempt in this paper is to provide a contemporary reading of three major social discourses of the Buddha, the Vasettha, Agganna and Cakkavatti Sihanada Suttas.

The Vasettha Sutta

If we take the Vasettha Sutta out of the realm of religious discourse, it can be ranked together with the Magna Carta (1215) and The Declaration of the Rights of Man (1791) as one of the Great Charters for Human Emancipation in world history. This declaration is an intellectual and ethical achievement of the highest order because it was expounded in the sixth century BCE. In comparison, the Ethics the Politics of Aristotle, written about two centuries later pale into insignificance. Aristotle's Ethics and Politics is a form of Greek Brahmanism because it is based on the spurious theory of innate natures. Given this assumption Aristotle was able to construct a naturally fixed hierarchical order in nature and society. He could then argue that slaves are by their innate nature and destiny meant to be slaves just as women by their nature are destined to be their husbands' subordinates.

The Vasettha Sutta was given in response to a question put to the Buddha by two Brahmin students of theology. What did the teacher Gotama think, they asked, of the doctrine taught by their masters that the four separate ranks of society are different by birth (jati) and that their social positions are an articulation of their separate natures?

In reply, the Buddha invited the two young scholars to descend from the airy heights theological speculation and take a look at the real world around them. It is an empirically verifiable fact, he said, that there is an immense variety of life-forms in the world. In the first place, there are different forms of plant life. Plants could be classified into separate species, by their distinct species marks and environment. The same applies to animal life. Some animals live in water, others on the land and there are the birds that fly in the skies. All these types of animals can be classified into separate species because of their distinct species-marks and habitats. But when it comes to the human life-form, he emphasised, there are no marks which indicate that humans are subdivided into separate species:

Not in the hairs nor in the head Not in the ears nor in the eyes Not in the mouth nor in the nose Not in the lips nor in the brows Not in the shoulders or the neck Not in the belly or the back Not in the buttocks or the breast Not in the anus or genitals
Not in the hands nor in the feet Not in the fingers nor the nails Not in the knees nor in the thighs Not in the colour nor in voice Birth (jati) produces no distinctive marks as with other kinds of birth (jati)
As corporeal beings, there are indeed perceptible differences among humans. But the differences spoken of among humans are purely conventional.

The word jati has the dual connotation of 'birth' and 'race' or 'species'. The Buddha exposes and debunks the strategy behind racist and sexist theories and ancient and modern. The human body is morphologically the same. Distinctions are created by selecting one or more features of the human form – skin, colour, shape of nose, the texture of the hair or the genitals – to identify them as 'marks' signifying significant intrinsic biological differences between culturally and socially differentiated people. There are indeed differences in corporeal beings. But the differences spoken about among human beings (like brahmins, kastariya, vaishya and dudra) are purely verbal designations and cultural constructs. Despite the Buddha's unambiguous assertion that all human beings belong to the same jati, in Sri Lanka the Sinhala language uses this term for different ethnic and caste groups. The Buddha's preferred term for various cultural or ethnic groups was jana – 'people'.

The Buddha then went on to explain how racist and sexist theories feed on the average person's ignorance and deluded perception of social reality. When a group engages in the same occupation from generation to generation the illusion arises that a person is a 'farmer', 'warrior' or 'priest' or ruler by birth. But, it is because a person practices agriculture, that we call him a 'farmer' and not a raja or priest or soldier. Similarly a person who rules is called a raja, a farmer or soldier. Repeated activities produce the concepts of 'farmer', 'ruler' or 'priests', etc. It is a falsification of facts to claim that it is the concept (of a God or human), which produces the empirically existing peasant, ruler or priest. The practical order is antecedent to the conceptual order. Their teachers, the Buddha told the two brahmin youths, gave a spurious explanation for the occupational differentiation in society. It is action not birth which differentiates people into different occupational groups. If society permitted it, anyone born into one occupational group could lead the skills of another group and practise that profession. Birth or divine ordination does not make a man a priest. Any one could pick up the bag of tricks, perform rituals and call himself a priest. It is culture and institutionalised power-systems which prevent people from changing their occupations, but the brahmins say it is nature. The Buddha summed up his analysis of the basis of social differences in a pithy philosophical formulation:

The world thus become through action (and is) the conditionally co-arisen result of action.

The implication of this analysis is revolutionary. What has been produced by human under specific social and historical conditions, humans can also change. What is necessary is insight into the law of conditioned co-genesis, proper investigation of conditions and right goal-oriented action.

The Agganna Sutta: A Contractual Theory of Right

In the Agganna Sutta the Buddha uses his basic theory of explanation Conditioned Co-genesis as a tool for historical analysis. The title of this discourse if often translated as a Buddhist 'genesis' story. The term may serve as a convenient translation of the purpose of this discourse as long as 'genesis' is not understood as 'a beginning out of nothing'. The word agganna in the title of this discourse literally means 'with knowledge of beginnings'. The term was consciously used to refute the theory of creation being propagated by the Brahmins. All tyrannies, religious or political keep the people ignorant and erase from their memories the real historical origins of a given social reality.

The Brahmins invariably began their attacks, on this occasion on the Buddha by trotting of their divine credentials. As the privileged custodians of the divine word the Vedas, they were the sons of Brahma, "born of his mouth, born of his breast" mukhata jato, orasa jato. The Great Brahma, they further claimed, is Conqueror, the Unconquered, the All Seeing, All powerful, the Lord, the Maker and Creator, the Rule, the Appointer and Orderer Father of all That have been and Shall be" (Digha Nikaya I.221). The Brahmin theological claim that the Ground of All Being is a Father Almighty and his Creative Word Son turns religious and political discourse into a discourse of patriarchal power. Before proceeding to provide a historical explanation of the origins of social differentiation the Buddha challenged the theological foundations of Brahminism – its claim that life comes from the mouth of a male god.

The Brahmins could make this fantastic claim only by cultivating a selective amnesia about their real origins: "Have these Brahmins forgotten that they Brahmin like women of every other social group, menstruate, become pregnant, have babies and suckle them at their breasts? And it is these yoni jato – vulva-born Brahmins who prattle about being born of the mouth and the breast of Brahma!". The Buddha explodes one of the originating myths of patriarchal discourse. The inversion of the feminine-maternal order and the substitution of the womb and the nether mouth of women with the head and the mouth of a male deity. This mythic inversion is acted out through rituals of rebirth by which children born of women are purified and re-birthed into a sacred masculine order. This need for ritual re-birth has to be justified by the wholly spurious contention that the process of birth through women is unclean. Before explaining social differentiation the Buddha returns life and consciousness to their feminine-maternal site of origin.

Even a king has to be born of woman. The processes of birth, decay and death radically equalises all human beings. Patriarchal theologies are based on a radical erasure of the feminine from the divine. In the Brahmin originating myth of their normative hierarchical ordering of society (Rig Veda X.90), a male hero was sacrificed to the god, the body dismembered, reassembled and resurrected as the mystical body of the god Brahma: the Brahmins were the mouth, the warrior aristocrats (ksatriyas), the arms, the peasants, his stomach and the propertyless labourers, his feet (sudras). The pure eternal and unchanging order of the spirit is masculine. The realm of anicca – the impermanent, seductive, and deceitful corporeal is Woman – Eve and Maya.

Having first grounded thought in reality, or as the Buddha puts it yoniso manasikara making the mind work by way of its yoni – womb or matrix, he proceeds to explain how the common species potential developed and expressed itself through a social division labour. He begins with an initial stage and then step by step by step unravels the stages of social evolution that produced the differentiated and stratified society of his day.

In striking contrast to most Western social theories, the Agganna Sutta does not begin with the assumption that at the beginning of social evolution there were only separate individuals or as in most patriarchal genesis stories a solitary male. In the beginning, the Buddha points out, there were just beings – sattha. Palaeontologists today agree that the human species had spent the greater part of its existence on this planet in the stage of foraging and hunting. The Buddha begins with human groups in the 'primitive' stage of food-gathering. Society at that initial stage – and contemporary anthropology confirms this – was simple and undifferentiated stage. There was no social differentiation or hierarchy – not even the differentiation between masculine and feminine. (Not to be confused with 'sexless' as some celibate commentators have piously imagined). Humans lived for a long period of time as food gatherers. They shifted from place to place, ever dependent on the spontaneous products of nature, they could now settle down in one place and produce their means of subsistence. It is at this stage, the Buddha points out that the masculinisation and feminisation of the human form began. People began to see 'marks' of femininity in the female form and 'marks' of masculinity in the male form. Men and women began to lust for each other and burning with desire they yearned to possess each other exclusively. They began to set up separate households and the notion of exclusive property rights arose.

The development of agriculture became the genetic stage for further developments. Consolidation of food production and the creation of surpluses in food changed the character of social relationships. 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. Social changes, as the Buddha points out brought about changes in moral sentiments. This can be seen with the shift in signification of the word visya – literally 'clan wife'. A term derived from the same root 'vesya' or 'vesi' became the designation for a prostitute. Similarly, the honorific – ganika – literally 'woman of the tribe' or 'group-wife' came to be used as the designation for a courtesan. (Kosambi 1992:67)

The settled way of life and the setting up of separate households made accumulation and hoarding of goods possible. People began to grab and to hoard wealth and anarchic conditions developed in society. In the earlier clan societies the means of production especially the land was held in common and wealth was equitably distributed among all members of the clan. Under new conditions, it was no longer clear who was entitled to what. This made the institution of private property 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 the greed to accumulate wealth. Unconscionable individuals grabbed the lands of others by force and retained them as their private property. The institution of property increased theft, lying and violence.

It is at this stage, when egoism and greed had developed under historically developed conditions, that the need for a central institution to regulate social affairs became a social necessity. In order to maintain peace and to ensure a just distribution of property, the people, the Buddha recalls, came together as they did 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. (vs. 20)

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 'The People's Consensus' – Mahajana-Sammata. The Buddha calls this title the pathaman akkharam – 'the first constituting element'. In other words, the title asserts the historical genesis and the juridical basis of the right to govern.

The second title and constituting element (aksara) 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 'over-lordship' but not rights of proprietorship over the people or lands. Monarchs of the Buddha's Day however, made proprietary claims 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, implies that the people have the right to withdraw the mandate if a ruler violates the contract.

The third title and constituting element (aksara) 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 explanation of the origins of kingship and the state is in striking contrast to the Brahmin theory of the divine origin of the monarchy. In the Brahmanic reading of ancient history, because of alarming conditions of social anarchy the people turned to the gods for help. The god Manu agreed to become the ruler of humans on condition that he would be given lavish gifts (grain, animals and the most beautiful of young women) in return for maintaining law and order. This theory provided a theological rationale for over-taxation. The peoples' fear of social anarchy is used to justify the privileges of the king who functions as the guardian of the brahmanic cosmo-social order. Brahmanic ideologists placed the first kings like Prthu and Manu outside the varna scheme. Kingship was the result of a separate act of creation. Kings were established in the office by a divine legate – a Brahmin priest – who was empowered to anoint the king. Like the Christian divine right of kings, the Brahmin theory provides a descending analysis of power. Brahmin and Christian myth traces the origin of power to a patrix.

The Buddha rejected this mystification of royal power. After, recalling the circumstances that led to the election of a Mahajana Sammata, 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'.

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 production. At each of the stages, which marked 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 and not contrary to Dhamma.

Dhamma in the context of this genealogical explanation has to be understood primarily as the law of paticca samuppada – conditioned co-genesis. When the notion of masculinity arises the notion of femininity arises. When property relationships arise, propertylessness and poverty arise. When rulers arise, subjects arise. But, whether a person is a called Brahmin, a king, a sudra or an untouchable outcast, everyone shares a common human nature. They belong to the same species – jati. Birth does not differentiate between humans, the mind does.

Theoretical Implications of the Agganna Sutta

1. The equality of all beings, asserted by the Buddha is based on a wholly empirical premise: the primacy and inevitability of anicca. Man and woman, prince and pauper, ministers of religion or of state are alike subject to this law. If humans realise this basic conditionality of life, they would give up clinging to the various projects of immortality by which they seek to perpetuate their personal (atman) and collective identities (paramatman). The corner stone of Buddhist ethics – the doctrine of anatta – asserts that there is no hidden, unchanging essence or permanent substance, which we can pin down and identify as the source of our self-identity. What we call our unique self-identity is made up, layer by layer of cultural labels – 'male', 'female', 'Sinhala' Tamil, 'Buddhist', Christian Moslem, Jew etc.

When these cultural constructs – sankharas and the labels we give them are stripped off, layer by layer like the trunk of a banana tree, the Buddha pointed out, one does not come to an unique core or essence. "What essence" he asked, "could there be in a consciousness? Consciousness is a magic show, a juggler's trick entire" (Samyutta Nikaya 111.142). When we see a form, our culturally conditioned consciousness is activated. The perceived form becomes a signifier of sex ethnicity, class or caste – automatically triggering reactive responses of lust or hate. The aim of Buddhist training is to free us from this compulsive need to sign and reify all our precepts. For this, the Buddha pointed out one must learn to reflect by way of the mind's matrix – yoniso manisikara (Samyutta Nikaya ibid). Then one would discover that all one's notions of 'material and spiritual, internal and external, superior and inferior are hollow and void of substance.

The writings of Roland Barthes provides contemporary corroboration of the Buddha's brilliant insight into the psychology of human perception. In the Western cultural tradition, the red rose, Barthes points out, is a sign of passion. But as a flower growing in the wilderness a rose is 'empty' and innocent of the significations humans attach to it. But as a signifier it is full – of passion. We thus have three terms: i) a horticultural form, ii) perceived as a signifier and iii) its signification. We now have 'possionified' roses. (Mythologies 1995:113). What transforms the perceived form into a sign of passion is human desire. A person not raised in the Western cultural tradition would not be aware of this signification, but in the Indian tradition the lotus flower evokes the same unconscious association with passion as the rose. Culturally conditioned human consciousness no longer sees a red rose or a lotus flower dispassionately. That is why the first Buddhists described the act of perception as sannan karoti - 'sign making' (Jataka II.71). The Buddha clarified what this process of reification and signification as follows: "Name friends is at one end; form is at the other, consciousness is in the middle. It is craving that stitches it into the arising of this and that existence" (Anguttara Nikaya III.400).

The mind is fully liberated when craving is eradicated. It is then capable of bare perception without naming and labelling. The Buddha called this animitta cetovimutti – the signless deliverance of the mind. Even the act of perception is 'innocens' ahimsaic – because it does not do violence to the perceived form by imposing on it the constructs of craving – in its triple form – lust, hate and delusion.

2. Before launching into an attack of the Buddha, Brahmins began by trotting off their credentia: they were born of Brahma's mouth and were excellent grammarians with true knowledge of the constituent sound of language – the aksaras. In their theory all significations come from the Transcendental Signifier – the Primal Word, who was in the beginning and by whom all things were made. Individual words are made up of sound elements, which are fragmentations of the Primal Word. This Word was revealed to them in the Vedas. As the Vedas were their monopoly possession, they alone knew the true meaning of words and were the sole competent speakers on any subject. Brahmin grammatology and ontology mutually reinforced each other. Centuries before Ferdinand de Saussure, the Buddha pointed that all languages are linguistic conventions and that the relationship between a linguistic sign and its signification is wholly arbitrary not eternally fixed by a Transcendental Signifier. In language there are no positive elements but only sets of differences. Meaning is not intrinsic to the sound. They become signifiers in a linguistics system because we hear differences. By repeatedly re-valuing the titles of a monarch and calling the meaning the people gave to these words aksaras. The Buddha not only demolished Brahmin ontology but also the grammatology they used to buttress it..

3. The Buddha explodes one of the originating myths of patriarchal discourse. The inversion of the feminine-maternal order and the substitution of the womb and the nether mouth of women with the head and the mouth of male deity. This mystic inversion is acted out through rituals of re-birth by which children born of women are purified and re-birthed into a sacred masculine order. This need for ritual re-birth has to be justified by the wholly spurious contention that the process of birth through women is unclean. The Buddha bluntly dismissed Brahmin claims. Father's cannot beget sons – however priestly. No body comes out of the mouth of a male god. We all come out of the nether mouth of women – the vulva.

Having first grounded thought in reality, or as the Buddha put it yoniso manasikara making the mind work by way of its yoni – womb or matrix, he proceeds to explain how the common species potential developed and expressed itself through a social division labour. He begins with an initial stage and then step by step by step unravels the stages of social evolution that produced the differentiated and stratified society of his day. We have to look for fundamental human values not in the realm of the spirit but in the despised realm of the corporeal and the feminine especially that part of the body beneath the navel which has been disqualified as the realm of the ritually unclean. The Buddha repeatedly pointed out that men and women despite culturally erected differences of religion, caste, class and ethnicity have sexual intercourse and produce human offspring, not some monstrous hybrid. The concepts of the womb refute in practice the proud concepts of the head. Similarly stomach can digest wholesome food and is oblivious of the ethnic labels we give to them. Before explaining social differentiation, the Buddha returned life and consciousness to their feminine-maternal site of origin.

4. The Buddha, is the first thinker in the history of the world, to formulate a contractual theory of power. The Agganna Sutta is the earliest known discourse on politics where the source of state power is traced back to a great consensus among the People (Mahajana Sammata). The Buddha does not, like the Western philosophers of the eighteenth century, argue that a social contract was necessary because the human species consists of essentially separate and egoistic individuals. In the Buddha's disclosure, individualism and egoism began to manifest themselves under specific, historically arisen conditions: the transition from a mobile to a settled way of life, after human beings had developed techniques for the productions of their means of subsistence, the breakdown of clan solidarity and the setting of separate households as the principle unit of ownership and production. Changed conditions changed the moral sentiments of people:

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

From the Buddha's point of view, every just social order and every just political constitution must begin with the recognition of the common species – nature – jati of all human beings. There is no basis for discrimination before the Law (Dhamma) between human beings, individually or collectively. This Law is not a social convention or a positive legislation enacted by an authority. It is through insight into the conditioned co-genesis of perceived differences. Perceived differences among humans are nominal, not essential. The transformation of perceived differences into substantial differences, enables the hierarchisation of things and beings. The justification of the actual domination of the many by a few can now be made to appear as 'natural'. An institutionalised violence, it can be argued is necessary and according to reason – divine and human. Violent reasons masquerading as reasonable violence. The Buddha concluded the Aganna Sutta with the declaration:

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

What the Buddha provides is an ascending analysis of power demolishing conventional theories of right. Power does not come down from a divine or mysterious source. State power is the crystallisation and concentration of relationships of power which had developed in society under specific historical conditions. What is necessary is not a decentralisation of power or the 'empowerment' of people but the renunciation of power which had been accumulated through the gradual appropriation of the circuits of power which arose and began to circulate in ever wider circles in society. Power is not a quantum of might descending from above it is made up of conditioned-conditioning social relationships. Oppressive ideologies like Brahmanism seek to inscribe relationships of domination and subjugation into the consciousness and the very bodies of people. The greatest victims of this demonology – for that is what this 'theology' is – of power were women, the sudras and the untouchables.

The Vasettha and Agganna Suttas together, provide basic principals for the formulation of a Bill of Fundamental Human Rights and a humane constitution:

All men and women are equal according to a Fundamental Dhamma or Law.

Rulers, whether by dynastic succession or election, have been elevated to power which originated in a contract among and with the people. Governments which do not enjoy the free mandate of the people and violate the rights of the people are illegitimate. The people have the right too to use them from power.

These truths are – dhammena – according to the Law of Righteousness and rulers as well as the ruled are subject to this basic law.

The Buddha's trace of power to an original contract suggest favoured a type of polity in which rulers too are subject to the same Rule of Law. In this he has anticipated the constitutional monarchies and republics of modern times. The Buddha saw the social miseries spawned by kings the absolute monarchies of his day. He was trained in the art of governance in his youth and he would have understood the necessity of containing the exercise of power within clearly defined legal and moral limits. This is clear from the answer that the Buddha gave to a question put to him. The great kings called themselves Maharajas – Great Kings and Rajadhi Raja – King of kings. When he was asked Who master is the King of kings? He replied:

The Dhamma alone is the King of kings (Anguttara Nikaya 111.149)

The Cakkavatti Sihanada Sutta: The Buddha's Theory of Statecraft

In the non Brahmanised states of North East India, the great kings projected themselves as 'wheel turners' or cosmocrats who had the power to reproduce the cosmo-social order and prevent it from falling back into a primordial chaos. These kings were not merely monarchs to whom their vassals paid tribute. They had at their command a powerful state apparatus, which consisted of a centrally controlled administration and a salaried standing army owing allegiance only to them. Backed by ruthless rulers and armed men, tax collectors terrorised the countryside. According to the Buddhist The Jataka Stories, the people regarded tax collectors as a scourge and referred to them as niggahakas – 'torturers' and 'man eating demons' – yakkas.

The Wheel an evocative symbol of state power because the power of the state extends in concentric circles along two axes of power, one vertical and the other horizontal. Along the vertical axis, at the apex of the social pyramid was the Maharaja – 'Great King', who was assisted by a council of ministers and the commander-in-chief of the army. Social order is maintained by descending relationships of super- and sub-ordination. At the bottom of the social heap were the propertyless wage labourers and domestic slaves. Along the horizontal axis, conquered territories were centrally control and secured in a hub of power symbolised by the Royal Palace. From the Palace, power extended in concentric circles from the mahanagara – the royal capital, the nagaras (towns), negamas (market towns) and – rural settlements (gamas) where agriculture, livestock breeding and craft production took place. This was "the great wide circle of the earth" over which the kings of the day, proudly claimed to exercise power. The power and prestige of a king's imperial might was symbolised by the possession of 'seven gems' or insignia. The first and foremost of these was the Wheel (of the War Chariot). It symbolised the power of the king and the state to dominate and rule if necessary by physical coercion.

Brahmin theoreticians of statecraft list danda/bala punitive and coercive force among their seven indispensable elements of state power. The Buddha, on the other hand took the Wheel which symbolised absolute power and gave it a new signification. He began his teaching career by presenting himself as a new type of hero and conqueror, who had gained mastery over himself not others. He called his first sermon the "Turning of the Wheel of Dhamma". Through this revaluation of values the Buddha formulated not only a general ethic, but an inspiring theory of statecraft as well. He replaced the despotic and amoral principles of statecraft promulgated by political philosophers of his day, with principles and policies imbued with righteous values. He called upon kings to abandon violence and to turn themselves into noble ('ariya') Turners of the Wheel. The Brahmins identified nobility with birth status, property and power. The Buddha took this evaluation of nobility and gave it a new valuation. The true, he pointed out were people who are morally unimpeachable. The real candala – untouchable is the grossly immoral person. A king could claim to be ariya by birth, but be a moral sudra or candala by his actions.

The Lion's Roar of the Noble Wheel Turner

The Buddha begins his morality tale by recalling that a long long time ago there lived a Noble Wheel-Turner monarch, named Dalhanemi – the 'Well Girded' (in righteousness). He was a cakkavatti dhammiko dhamma-raja -a 'wheel turning, righteous king of righteousness'. This king ruled over the entire earth, from ocean to ocean, andandena, asatthena, – dhammena – without the sword and without the rod, but righteously'. The rod and the sword symbolise the monopolisation of the means of violence by the king and the state. In patriarchal cultures, the rod or the sceptre is also symbol of virility or phallic power. By ruling 'without the sword and the rod', the righteous king had renounced despotic and patriarchal power. The Noble Wheel Turner is in possession of the seven gems of power, but the first of these attributes the 'Heavenly Wheel' is not a power descending from the skies. As we shall see, it ascends to its place in the heavens through righteous rule, and functions as the guardian and guarantor of righteousness in the kingdom.

After a period of just rule, king Dalhanemi decides to make a significant innovation. He appoints 'a person' (ekam sattam) in his kingdom to act as the Watchman of the Wheel and to report to him if the former notices that the Wheel of Righteousness was becoming unsteady. The laconic ekam sattam shows an indifference to privileges of birth, wealth or status. What matters is whether the person would conscientiously perform his duty.

The Duties of a Righteous Ruler

After a long period of time the Watchman reported to the king that the Wheel had sunk and had slipped a little from its place. The king, now well advanced in years, had not deviated from righteousness, but the omen seemed to suggest that age was weakening his control over the affairs of state. In ancient India, as elsewhere, kings tended to cling to power, even when senility made their rule ineffective. Impatient princes often committed parricide to usurp the throne. The Arthasastra warns kings that 'princes like crabs are father eaters'. Kings are warned to be ever vigilant and guard themselves against the machinations of the heir-apparent. In the very next chapter advises the heir to the throne how to circumvent his father's precautions and capture the throne. (Kosambi 1977: 144-145) The Buddha recommends a different policy. The Watchman warns the king that the Wheel is unsteady. The good king sees it as a sign that the time has come for him to retire. He abdicates in favour of his heir. The transfer of royal power takes place through the formal handing over of the seven gems to the new ruler. The old king retires to the forest to devote his last years to meditation and order to prepare himself for his death.

The ascent of the new king to the throne is marked by a dramatic disappearance of the Wheel Treasure. The Watchman informs the new incumbent of the throne of this portent. Without the Wheel the king would lose his power to rule credibly. Disturbed by the disappearance of the Wheel Treasure, the young king hastens to his father to seek an explanation for the strange phenomenon. The stage had been set for the Buddha to present his own views about the art of governance through the mouth of the royal sage. The opening sentence thunders like a 'lion's roar' against rulers who use their birth rite and religious ceremony to mystify the legitimacy of their rule:

The Heavenly Wheel Treasure, my son, is not a paternal inheritance.

Considers the period when it was made, this is a truly astonishing statement. Until recent times, all over the world, the right to rule was regarded as a birth-right. The Buddha through the mouth of the royal sage is stating that societies may have various conventions for deciding who will rule over them. Dynastic succession, for him is one such convention. This gives him a legal right to rule. But the seal of legitimacy has to be earned through righteous rule. The disappearance of the Wheel symbolically expresses this. The new king asks his father how he can regain the Wheel Treasure and he is told:

You must, my son, turn yourself into an Ariyan Wheel-Turner.

The young king then asks: "In what way, sir, must an Ariyan Wheel-Turner turn the Wheel"? Through the mouth of the royal sage the Buddha presents his views on statecraft:

It is this, my son, Yourself depending on the Dhamma, honouring the Dhamma, revering the Dhamma, cherishing the Dhamma, doing homage to the Dhamma, and venerating the Dhamma, with the Dhamma as your Badge, with the Dhamma as your Banner, acknowledging the Dhamma as your Master, you should establish guard and protection, according to Dhamma, for your household, your nobles and vassals, for brahmins and householders, town and country folk, samanas and brahmins, for beasts and birds. Let no unrighteousness prevail in your kingdom and to those who are in need give wealth).

What the royal sage enunciates is a concise but comprehensive state policy which embraces all sentient beings. The Buddha begins by revaluing all the conventional insignia of royal power and makes them signifiers of righteousness. The state is morally obliged to protect and foster the welfare not only of humans but also of the beasts and birds in its territory. In establishing 'guard and protection', the new king is admonished to be vigilant about the practice of righteousness in his kingdom: "Let no unrighteousness (adhamma) prevail in your kingdom". The royal sage immediately mentions one policy of state by which the righteousness of any government must be judged: to those who are in need, distribute wealth. Following his father's advice, the young king conscientiously performs the duties of an Ariyan Wheel-Turner and the Wheel Treasure reappears in the heavens. Having established himself in righteousness the Noble Wheel-Turner resolves to spread righteousness throughout his realm.

Establishing the Legitimacy of Government

In describing how a just king spread righteousness, the Buddha presents a counter model to the Brahmin ideal enacted through the liturgy of the Horse Sacrifice – Asvamedha. His listeners would have been familiar with this bizarre rite and would have grasped the early Buddhist revaluation of values. The rubrics of the Horse Sacrifice are recorded in the Brahmin scriptures enabling us today to appreciate the revolutionary character of the Buddha's teaching on statecraft. The Horse Sacrifice was unabashed glorification of violence and warfare, the subjugation of the working people and degradation of women to the status of child-bearing vessels and objects of masculine lust. As the prelude to a military campaign a pure bred stallion would be unloosed and driven into enemy territory. The horse, which was regarded as an incarnation of Indra, the god of warfare would be followed by the king and his fourfold army consisting of elephant, horse, archery and infantry brigades. A rival who allowed the horse free passage was deemed to have surrendered to the invader. If passage is denied or resisted, it was regarded as a causus belli and war would break out. After a victorious campaign the horse was brought back to an esplanade and tied to a post. This was followed by an obscene and revolting ritual. The presiding priests engage in an exchange of lewd remarks with the king's chief consort and her female escorts. After this build up of sexual tension, the horse was forced to lie down, covered with a cloth of gold and suffocated to death. Thereafter, the king's chief consort was required to lie down beside the dead animal and press the equine phallus into her vagina, while begging it to lay its divine seed inside her. Once this union of queen and beast was completed the horse was offered as a burnt sacrifice to Indra. Its marrow was extracted, cooked and offered to the king who breathed in the fumes, symbolically taking in the virility of the stallion and by extension of the warrior god.

The Buddha recasts this sordid ritual in terms of righteousness and non-violence. The Wheel of Dhamma replaces the War Horse. Accompanied by his fourfold army the king approaches the Wheel Treasure and exhorts it:

May the noble Wheel-Treasure roll on! May the noble Wheel-Treasure conquer!

The Wheel rolls on across the four quarters of the earth, followed by king and fourfold army, until the entire kingdom is brought under the reign of righteousness. Into whatever territory the Wheel-Treasure entered, its rulers and people see it as a harbinger of righteousness and peace. They welcome the king with enthusiasm, freely submit to his rule and seek instruction from him. The king gladly complies and instructs his subjects in the five moral precepts: Do not take life. Do not take what has not been given. Do not abuse pleasures of the senses. Do not make wrong use of speech and do not take intoxicating substances. In a radical reversal of the invader's war cry "Woe to the conquered!", the righteous king tells his subjects "Continue to enjoy your possessions as you have been accustomed to do". Having established the Rule of Righteousness throughout the Four Quarters, the King returns to the royal city, led by the Wheel-Treasure. The Heavenly Wheel stands above the Palace of Justice and casts its radiance into the inner chambers of the royal residence.

There follows a long line of righteous kings, until an ascendant to the throne decides to abandon the noble traditions of his ancestors. He does not seek the advice of his father the royal sage or the counsel of the moral guardians of society. He uses his fourfold army to consolidate his rule and begins "to rule the people according to his own ideas". As a result, "the people did not prosper so well as they had done under the previous kings". With the king departing from righteousness, a gradual process of moral degeneration sets in and engulfs the whole of society. The Buddha traces the moral degeneration of society to a single root cause: the unjust king "did not give wealth to the needy, and as a result poverty became rife".

Beginning with the maldistribution of the wealth as the genetic cause, a process of moral degeneration sets in and engulfs society. Eventually, the Buddha says, society will be plunged into a sword period. Humans will be filled with a brutish sense – miga sanna and feeling as little compassion for each other as a hunter for its prey they will fall on each other with sharp swords shouting This is a beast Kill Kill!

A change is effected in this situation when a moral minority opts out of society to go into the wilderness to ponder the calamity that had befallen them. When after a period of reflection they come out of their places of seclusion – they fall on each other's shoulder's embrace each other, crying out with joy Oh Human! Human! how good to know that you are alive. All the former labels by which they identified each other have been shed and only their common humanity is recognised. Beginning with the resolve Let us not kill or be killed they set in motion a process of social renewal until they build up a just and prosperous new society. But even in this new kingdom, the law of anicca is not superseded. Even in the most perfect of society human will be subject to three kinds of necessity – physical needs, indispositions and decay. The Buddha envisages the possibility of creating a just social order, but his vision remains firmly grounded in actuality: the realm of freed can blossom forth only with the realm of necessity - anicca as its basis.

Theorectical Implications of the Cakkavatti Sihanada Sutta

1. In this as in several other discourses, the Buddha repeatedly stressed that the well-being of a society depends largely on the moral character of those who claim to be its elites, especially is religious and political leaders. The moral degeneration of society began when the king deviated from righteousness:-

When brahmanas (the moral guardians) deviate from Dhamma the guiltless bleed. And with Dhamma brought to nought, nobles war with nobles, peasants with traders, husbands and wives despise each other .... (and everyone) falls into the power of lust (Sutta Nipata vs 3850.

When kings are righteous, ministers are righteous. When ministers are righteous, householders, townsfolk and villagers are righteous. When society is righteous the nature-gods would look benignly and favourably on humankind and the rains would fall in due season. The crops would ripen in due season. And human beings who depend on these crops would live long, strong and free from disease. (Anguttara Nikaya 11.85).

In order to create a just social order, what the world needs first and foremost is not an economic or political vanguard but a moral vanguard. The Buddha repeatedly stressed the primacy of the ethical in economics and politics. A morally and culturally degenerate society will of necessity produce degenerate politicians.

2. Social disintegration and decadence began when the king decided to establish "watch and ward" (coercive power) only for the internal and external security of his kingdom. Unconcerned about the disappearance of the Wheel Treasure, the king began "to rule according to his own ideas". This is an accurate description of despotism, which Thomas Paine defined as "aggressive government accountable only to itself" (in Keane 1988:47).

Rulers who, like the unjust king of this discourse place themselves above universal norms of justice and righteousness are despots. So called Buddhist leaders who usurp the Teaching of the Buddha and claim that their aim is to establish a righteous society – Dharmishta Samajaya – while blatantly flouting its noble values are guilty of a heinous sacrilege. They and the religious leaders who provide them with ideological cover, seem to have forgotten the first axiom pronounced by the Buddha in this discourse – the epithet of righteousness cannot be arbitrarily appropriated. The Wheel of Righteousness is not a paternal heritage. It has to be earned by righteous practice. Rulers must first "depend on Dhamma, revere Dhamma, cherish Dhamma – take Dhamma as the Badge and the Banner of society".

3. A just constitution should be in accord with the Five Precepts. These are not present as 'Buddhist' laws but as ethical principles indispensable for all societies, irrespective of its religious label. The first right on which all other rights depend is the Right to Life. The 'right to life' becomes a platitude, if the conditions which are necessary to safeguard and promote life are absent. Social decline began when wealth was not shared with the needy. The second precept "Do not take what has not been given" is the logical concommitent of the first: do not take life". The second precept is generally translated as "Do not steal". Its implication is somewhat different to what is understood by 'theft' – which implies 'taking what belongs to another'. The notion of theft is based on the assumption that private property is an inalienable right. The Buddha uses the compound term adinnadana adinna = not given: a dana = 'taking, seizure, appropriation'. The practice of seising what has not been freely given began as the custom of equitable wealth distribution was abandoned if not sanctioned by the unjust king. What the Buddha advocated was Dana – literally 'sharing'. The word subsequently same to denote 'almsgiving' or 'charity' practised with the selfish intention gain invisible merit. The shift of moral sentiment from distributive justice to charity was first inculcated by the Brahmins. Later, it became part of Buddhism as well.

A radical Buddhist understanding of 'theft' has to be comprehended in the context of Dana as wealth sharing. Poverty did not arise from natural causes – it co-arises with the refusal to practise true dana which originally meant sharing wealth. The Buddha is perhaps the first thinker who came to the radical conclusion that poverty is the result of theft.

4. The Buddha was not a naive moralist. He recognised that a country must be protected from external aggression and internal disorder. The just king is always accompanied on his tours by his four-fold army. But the Buddha understood that despotism is the perpetuation of war for the internal conquest of society. His just king, however, does not see "the rod and the sword" as the principle instruments of government. The just king engages in a conquest, but to create a state of affairs where the affairs of state would be conducted justly, with the informed participation of his subjects. In such a situation the armed forces would be necessary to defend the kingdom from external threats.

5. The Buddha knew from experience that the power vested in the State could degenerate into an instrument of oppression if citizens are not vigilant. Brahmin theoreticians listed durga/pura – a 'well fortressed city' among their seven elements necessary for consolidating royal power. The Buddha recognised that constant vigilance is the price of peace, but extends this to include moral vigilance as well. Even a just king needs to have a built-in safeguard lest he become complacent. The king therefore took the initiative to appoint a Watchman to 'keep an eye' on the Wheel of Dhamma and inform him if it becomes unsteady or is slipping from its place. Despotism began when the king ignored the Watchman warning that the Wheel had disappeared from its place.

Discussing the fledgling democracy of the United States, Alexis de Tocqueville warned that democratically elected governments could easily become despotic. As John Keane notes:

de Tocqueville was never tired of repeating the point that the 'independent eye of society' – an eye comprising a plurality of interacting, self-organised and constantly vigilant associations, is necessary for consolidating the democratic revolution (1988:61).

The recommendation of a 'Sentinel-Function' reveals the great political sagacity of the Buddha. Even an Ariya Cakkavattin needs critical monitoring of his rule. Governments that deny the importance of a Sentinel Function and cannot stand the scrutiny of the 'independent eye of society' are by definition despotic. On the other hand, a government desirous of rule justly according to accepted constitution of a land, would not only permit but even encourage the monitoring of its rule by an independent body of citizens.

5. The Buddha does not condone the double morality which prescribes one set of standards for the public life and another for the private life of rulers and politicians. In anticipation of contemporary calls for an independent and incorrupt judiciary and for transparency in governance, the Wheel of Dhamma is positioned above the Palace of Justice cast its on courts of justice and the inner chambers of the royal palace.

6. The Ariya Cakkavatti King is portrayed as preferring a de-centralised form of government where the regions of the state enjoy considerable autonomy. When he visits the various regions of his kingdom, the people welcome him with joy. He in turn assures the people that they could continue "to enjoy what they had, as before". At a time when there was constant rebellion in the border provinces, that Buddha suggests that if kings rule righteously they will freely and gladly accept their authority.

7. The Buddha traces the right to rule to an originary social contract. (Note to editor 'Originary' is a technical term in poststructuralist discourse – referring to that which gives rise as distinct from 'original' which has come to mean 'the first'. So please retain) The Brahmins founded the right to rule on conquest and subjugation. The Buddhist and Brahmin represent two different philosophies of right. The first is the basis of the contractual theory of power expounded by eighteenth century philosophers. The second was the basis for justifying the conquest of lands and the subjugation of non-Western peoples by Western colonial powers. Michel Foucault (Truth and Power (1980:78-92) clarifies the practical implications of these two models as follows:

The first, found in the philosophies of the eighteenth century, is the conception of power as an original right (of the individual) that is given up in the establishment of sovereignty, and the contract as the matrix of political power, providing its points of articulation. A power so constituted risks becoming oppression whenever it over extends itself, whenever – that is – it goes beyond the terms of the contract. Thus we have contract-power, with oppression as its limit, or rather as the transgression of this limit...

In the other system or approach, one no longer tries to analyse political power according to the schema of contract-oppression, but in accordance with that, of war-repression, and, at this point, repression no longer occupies the place that oppression occupies in relation to the contract, that is, it is not abuse, but is on the contrary, the mere effect and continuation of a relation of domination. In this view, repression is none other than the realisation, within the continual warfare of this pseudo peace, of a perpetual relationship of force. Thus we have two schemes for the analysis of power: the contract-oppression schema, which is the juridical one, and the domination-repression or, war-repression schema. The pertinent opposition (in the latter), is not between the legitimate and the illegitimate, as in the first schema, but, between struggle and submission (ibid: 91-92).

Though presented in symbolic terms The Horse Sacrifice and the Noble Wheel represent two contrasting philosophies of right corresponding to Foucault's contra-positioning of the war-repression model and contract-oppression model. The Buddha clearly advocates the contract-oppression model. As noted earlier, the Jataka Stories is the only literature from ancient India which records the rebellions of people against oppressive rule. These insurrections are not condemned as acts of terrorism but are presented as the revolts of people against unjust rulers who have broken their compact with the people.

The practical criticism of anti-democratic practices in Buddhist cultures does not have to await modernity or lean on liberalism or Marxism or any other 'ism'. It is there in the Path to Human Liberation taught by Siddhattha Gotama. The struggle for democracy is the attempt to create conditions most favourable for the blossoming of human freedom. But the struggle for democracy in civil society is doomed to failure if it is not accompanied by a movement for the moral transformation of society. The Buddha and the first Buddhist renouncers did not seek political alliances or the patronage of the powerful. "They opted out of society to preserve their freedom. They knew that only from an independent vantage point could they hope to infuse into the society they had left behind better values than greed and violence". (Warder 1980:30-31).

The Buddha called for a Compassionate Revolution in which the only enemy is Craving in its triple form: Greed for power and profit, no matter what it may cost in terms of human suffering; Hatred of anything we perceive is a threat to our security and self advancement and delusion which makes us cling to the very things which enslave and debase us.

References

Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge, New York: Pantheon Books Ltd, 1980 (1966)

Keane, John, (editor). Civil Society and the State, London: Verso Publications, 1988

Kosambi, D D Myth and Reality Popular, Prakashan Pvt Ltd Private Ltd.

Saussure Ferdinand de, Course in General Linguistics, trans Roy Harris La Salle Illinois Open Court 1986

Warder, A K Indian Buddhism, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1980 (1970).