DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

6.6} PROPERTY AND RELIGION 167
upon ahimsa, “ non-killing” , as strongly opposed to war as to
ritual sacrifice.*
Truth, justice, non-stealing, not encroaching upon the
possessions of others show that a totally new concept of private,
individual property had arisen. In the older traditions, the most
valuable property within the tribe (cattle) was held in common,
assigned to clans or households by mutual consent; property of
strangers was not recognised 1 . The injunction against adultery
denotes a rigid concept of family and the passing of group-marriage.
Withoiit such a morality, taken for granted today, trade would have
been impossible. The staun-chest of the Buddha’s lay followers
were traders; merchants are the prominent element among the Jains
to this day. The ahimsa doctrine first expressed the basic fact that
agriculture can support at least ten times the number of people per
square mile than a pastoral economy in the same territory. It
affected the caste which lived by ritual killing, to the extent of
being written prominently into the Mbh, though the great epic
remains devoted entirely to the glory of yajnas, universal conquest,
and a murderous civil war fought to mutual annihilation. New gods
had to be invented thereafter, because Indra and his vedic fellowdeities
had been discredited and went out of fashion with their
vedic sacrifices. On the other hand, the new ideology was equally
against tribal exclusiveness. Because of good or evil karma, a
living creature would be reborn ; not into a special totem, but into
any species particularly suited to and measured by the action, from
the vilest insect to a god. Indra was as subject to karma as an
earthworm. Evil deeds would ultimately cause the fall of Indra
from the world of the gods, ultimately to become an animal; the
insect could, by good deeds in successive births, be reborn to human
and then to divine estate, though even that did not free him from
the power of his further karma.
Karma therefore was a religious extension of an elementary
* Not even the bull-calves could be slaughtered profitably, because many oxen,
beyond those used in ploughing, were needed for transport, either hitched to carts,
or for the pack-caravans. This gave a secure economic for the tabu. Male buffaloes
are too sluggish to be used profitably in transport over long distances.