Unit 16 · Comparison and Critique

English uses one word, caste, for two different Sanskrit ideas. Varna means the four classes named in the texts: Brahmins (priests and teachers), Kshatriyas (rulers and warriors), Vaishyas (farmers and merchants) and Shudras (laborers and servants). Varna is a textual and ideal scheme that appears first in Rig Veda 10.90.12.

Jati means "birth" and names the thousands of real communities, often linked to a traditional occupation, region and language, into which people were born and within which they married. Historians note that jatis were numerous and varied, and that how they ranked themselves differed from place to place. Some jatis were placed outside the four varnas and treated as untouchable.

Scholars stress that the relation between the textual scheme and real life changed over time. British colonial censuses from 1871 onward tried to classify every jati in a fixed ranking, which some historians argue made caste more rigid. Understanding the difference between varna and jati helps students read the texts and the history accurately.

The Manusmriti, or Laws of Manu, is a Sanskrit text on dharma credited by tradition to Manu, the first human. Scholars date it roughly to the 2nd century BCE to 3rd century CE. It covers ritual, family life, kingship, law and punishment in about 2,700 verses. It belongs to smriti, texts "remembered" and ranked below shruti.

The Manusmriti sets strict rules by varna, with harsher punishments for Shudras than for others in some crimes, and it bars Shudras from Vedic learning. On women it contains verses that seem to pull in different directions. Verse 3.56 says the gods rejoice where women are honored. Verse 9.3 says a woman should be protected by father, husband and son and is not fit for independence.

Scholars note that the Manusmriti was one of many dharma texts and was not a code applied everywhere. It gained new weight under British rule, when colonial courts used it and similar texts to decide Hindu family law. Today many Hindus reject its caste and gender rules; some honor other parts of it; and critics like Ambedkar rejected it entirely.

In the Uttara Kanda of Valmiki’s Ramayana, a Brahmin’s young son dies, and the sage Narada says it is because a Shudra, Shambuka, is performing austerities, which the text treats as forbidden to his varna. Rama finds Shambuka and kills him, and the boy returns to life. Many scholars note that this episode is in the Uttara Kanda, which they judge to be a later part of the epic.

In the Adi Parva of the Mahabharata, Ekalavya, a tribal prince of the Nishadas, asks the teacher Drona to teach him archery and is refused. He makes a clay image of Drona and teaches himself before it, becoming a superb archer. When Drona learns of this, he demands Ekalavya’s right thumb as his teacher’s fee, so that Arjuna will remain the best archer. Ekalavya gives it.

Readers respond in many ways. Some devotees say these episodes must be understood within their own world, or note that some later retellings, such as Bhavabhuti’s drama, grieve over Shambuka’s death. Dalit and reformist writers read them as clear examples of caste injustice. Many teachers now tell Ekalavya’s story to honor his skill and devotion while naming the wrong done to him.

Basava, also called Basavanna, lived in the 12th century in what is now Karnataka. He was a minister at the court of Kalyana and a devotee of Shiva. With other poet-saints he composed vachanas, short prose poems in Kannada, which criticized empty ritual, temple wealth and caste pride.

Basava gathered a community, later called the Lingayats or Virashaivas, in which devotees of Shiva were to be treated as equals regardless of birth. Tradition says he supported a marriage between a family of Brahmin birth and a family of low-caste birth. The marriage provoked a violent backlash in Kalyana, and the community scattered.

One famous vachana contrasts the rich who build temples for Shiva with the poor devotee who has nothing, and says: my legs are pillars, my body the shrine, my head a cupola of gold. Basava’s followers, today many millions in Karnataka and beyond, honor him as a saint and reformer. His vachanas are still sung and studied.

Ravidas, also spelled Raidas, was a bhakti poet of North India, usually dated to the 15th and early 16th centuries, who lived near Varanasi. He was born into a family of leatherworkers, a community treated as untouchable. He worked as a cobbler and became one of the most honored poet-saints of his age.

In one song Ravidas describes Begampura, "the city without sorrow," where there is no tax, no fear, no second-class or third-class people, and everyone may go where they please. Scholars read it as one of the earliest visions of an equal society in Indian literature. About forty of his hymns are included in the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh scripture.

Tradition says Mirabai, the Rajput princess-poet, honored Ravidas as her guru. Today the Ravidassia community, many of whom live in Punjab and in the diaspora, honors him as its founder, and temples to him stand in many countries, including the United States. His life shows how bhakti opened space for voices outside the Brahmin tradition.

Jyotirao Phule (1827 to 1890) was born in Pune into the Mali, or gardener, community. With his wife Savitribai Phule he opened a school for girls in Pune in 1848, one of the first in India run by Indians. Savitribai became its teacher, facing insults and thrown mud on her way to work. The couple also opened schools for children of castes treated as untouchable.

In 1873 Jyotirao published Gulamgiri, "Slavery," which compared caste to slavery and dedicated the book to the American abolitionists. That year he founded the Satyashodhak Samaj, the "Society of Truth-Seekers," to work for equality. He read the Puranas and Vedic stories critically, arguing that they had been used to justify Brahmin power.

Phule influenced later leaders, including Ambedkar, who called him one of his three gurus, alongside the Buddha and the poet Kabir. Many Hindus admire the Phules as social reformers even when they read the texts differently. They are especially honored in Maharashtra, and Savitribai is remembered as a pioneer of women’s education.

In March 1927 Ambedkar led thousands to drink from the Chavdar Tale, a public tank in Mahad, to assert a right already granted in law. This is called the Mahad Satyagraha. Afterward, some local residents held rites to purify the tank, and a court case over access followed for years.

On December 25, 1927, at a second conference in Mahad, the Manusmriti was burned. Ambedkar explained that the act was a protest against the rules that had denied his community dignity, education and equal rights. The burning, his followers said, was not an attack on all Hindus but on a code of inequality. The act was meant as a symbol, and it was read as one on every side.

Responses varied. Many orthodox Hindus condemned the act. Some reformist Hindus understood it even if they disliked the method. Gandhi, who opposed untouchability, did not endorse the burning. Among Dalits, the day became a symbol of self-respect. The event remains a key moment in the history of caste and scripture.

India’s Constitution came into force on January 26, 1950. Ambedkar chaired its drafting committee. Article 14 guarantees equality before the law. Article 15 forbids discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. Article 17 declares that untouchability is abolished and that its practice in any form is forbidden.

The Constitution also created reservations, a system of set-aside places in legislatures, government jobs and universities for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, to repair long exclusion. Laws such as the Protection of Civil Rights Act (1955) and the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act (1989) followed.

Many Hindus, including religious leaders, supported these reforms as true to their faith. Others resisted. Scholars and activists note that caste discrimination has not ended, in India or in some diaspora communities. The debate over caste has reached the United States, where some colleges and cities have considered or adopted caste in anti-discrimination policies, and Hindu American groups have disagreed about these steps.

In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, King Janaka holds a debate among learned Brahmins. The sage Yajnavalkya claims the prize. Among those who question him is Gargi Vachaknavi, a woman philosopher. In 3.6 she presses him with questions about what the world is woven upon, until he warns her not to ask too much.

In 3.8 Gargi returns and says she will ask two questions, like a warrior with two sharp arrows. Yajnavalkya answers with a teaching about the imperishable, akshara. Gargi then tells the assembly that no one will defeat him in debate. Readers note that she is both a challenger and a fair judge.

In 2.4 and 4.5, Yajnavalkya’s wife Maitreyi asks him, as he prepares to leave home, whether wealth would make her immortal. When he says no, she asks for the knowledge that would. Many Hindu women scholars and teachers today point to Gargi and Maitreyi as evidence that women took part in the highest learning of the Upanishads.

Mirabai was a 16th-century Rajput princess and poet devoted to Krishna. Her songs, in Rajasthani and Braj, tell of loving Krishna as her true husband. Tradition says her in-laws tried to stop her from singing and dancing in temples with holy people, and even tried to poison her, but she kept her devotion. Scholars note that many songs credited to her were composed later by others in her name.

Mirabai is loved across India. Her songs are sung in homes, temples and concerts, and she appears in films and comics. Readers see her in different ways: as a model of bhakti, as a woman who chose her own path, or both. Gandhi admired her courage and saw in her a model of gentle resistance.

In modern times many women have become Sanskrit scholars, professors of religion and teachers of Vedic chanting, roles once closed to them in many communities. Some traditional groups resisted this change; others welcomed it. Women scholars have also led new readings of figures such as Sita, Draupadi and Gargi, adding their voices to a very old conversation.

Comparative religion is an academic field that studies religions side by side. A good comparison places two texts next to each other on a shared question, such as "What should I do when duty and feeling clash?" It then notes how each text answers, in its own terms. Scholars call the shared question the tertium comparationis, the third thing that makes comparison possible.

A good comparison notices differences as carefully as likenesses. It is tempting to say that all scriptures teach "the same thing." Many scholars warn that this can erase what makes each tradition itself. The Gita’s karma yoga and the Dhammapada’s teaching on action are related, but they rest on different views of the self.

A good comparison also avoids ranking. In a public school, we do not declare one scripture truer, wiser or more advanced than another. We describe each fairly, attribute each belief to its tradition, and let the comparison show what each text cares about. Students may hold their own views, but essays in this course argue about meaning, not about truth.

The texts in this chapter come from very different worlds. The Gita is Sanskrit poetry inside a Hindu epic. The Book of Job is Hebrew poetry in the Jewish and Christian Bibles. The Dhammapada is a Pali collection of the Buddha’s sayings. The Analects are Chinese sayings of Confucius. The Sermon on the Mount is Greek, in the Gospel of Matthew.

Each text also has a living community that reads it. Jews read Job in the Hebrew Bible, Christians in the Old Testament. Theravada Buddhists chant the Dhammapada. Confucian tradition shaped schools and families across East Asia. A fair comparison names the community each time, so that a reader never mistakes one tradition’s belief for another’s.

Translations matter too. When we quote the Gita we name Telang or Arnold. When we paraphrase other scriptures, we still say which text and passage we mean: Job 38, Dhammapada 5, Analects 15.24, Matthew 5:44. Citation lets any reader check our work, and it shows respect for each tradition’s own words.

In the Book of Job, a righteous man loses his children, his wealth and his health. His friends insist he must have sinned. Job refuses to accept this and demands an answer from God. In chapters 38 to 41, God answers out of a whirlwind, asking Job where he was when the foundations of the earth were laid, and showing the vastness of creation.

Readers of the Gita often notice a likeness. Arjuna, too, faces an unbearable situation and questions what is right. He, too, receives a vision of the divine, the universal form in Gita 11, which overwhelms him. Both men respond with awe. Both texts treat human understanding as small beside what they present as the divine view.

The differences are just as important. Job suffers and protests injustice; Arjuna hesitates to act. In Jewish and Christian readings, God speaks as Creator, distinct from creation. In many Hindu readings, the universal form shows all beings existing within Krishna. The two scenes answer different questions in different ways, and each community reads its own text in its own light.

The Dhammapada opens with a famous pair of verses. The mind comes first, it says; all things are made by mind. If one speaks or acts with a corrupted mind, suffering follows as the wheel follows the ox. If one speaks or acts with a pure mind, happiness follows like a shadow that never leaves.

The Gita also teaches that the state of mind behind an action matters, as in its teaching of action without attachment. Both texts use the word karma for action and its results. Both urge self-control. Many readers find in both a practical ethics of watching one’s own mind.

But Buddhists and Hindus understand the self very differently. The Gita teaches an eternal self, atman, that is not slain. The Buddha, as Buddhists understand his teaching, taught anatman, "no fixed self." So even where the ethics sound alike, the reasons behind them differ. A careful comparison names that difference rather than hiding it.

The Analects of Confucius, compiled by his students in China after his death in 479 BCE, teach how to become a junzi, an exemplary person. In Analects 12.11, Confucius says good order comes when the ruler is a ruler, the minister a minister, the father a father and the son a son. Each person should fulfill the role they hold.

The Gita’s teaching of svadharma, one’s own duty, in 3.35 also links right action to one’s role. Readers often compare the two. Both texts value doing one’s part well within a larger order. Both treat family and social duties seriously. Each also warns against people who ignore their duties to others.

Yet the grounds differ. Confucius rarely speaks of gods or the afterlife and says he transmits the ways of the ancients. He stresses learning, ritual propriety (li) and humaneness (ren). The Gita grounds duty in Krishna’s teaching about the self and God. In Analects 15.24 Confucius gives a principle close to the Golden Rule: do not impose on others what you do not wish for yourself.

Ahimsa, non-harming, is a key value in Jainism. The Acaranga Sutra, one of the oldest Jain texts, teaches that all breathing, living beings should not be killed, harmed or abused. Jain monks and nuns sweep their path to avoid harming insects. Gandhi grew up in Gujarat among Jain neighbors and counted a Jain teacher, Shrimad Rajchandra, as a guide.

The Dhammapada also teaches non-harming. Verses 129 and 130 say that all tremble at violence and all fear death; putting oneself in another’s place, one should not kill or cause to kill. Verse 5 says that hatred is never ended by hatred, but by non-hatred; this is an eternal law.

The Gita lists ahimsa among good qualities (for example 16.2), yet it is set in a war. Hindus have held many views on how these fit together. Gandhi read the Gita through ahimsa. Others read it as allowing just war. Comparing texts helps readers see where each tradition places non-harming among its values.

In Matthew 5 to 7, Jesus teaches a crowd on a mountain. He blesses the peacemakers (5:9). He says not to resist an evildoer with force but to turn the other cheek (5:39). He says to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (5:44). Christians have read these words in many ways, from strict pacifism to guidance for personal life.

Tolstoy read the Sermon as a strict command of nonviolence. Gandhi said the Sermon went straight to his heart when he first read it in London, and that he saw it as close to the Gita’s teaching. He combined them in his own method, satyagraha. Christians and Hindus have since discussed whether his blend was faithful to each text.

Readers point to likenesses: both texts teach acting without seeking reward (Matthew 6:1 to 6:4; Gita 2.47). They also note differences: the Sermon speaks of a loving Father in heaven; the Gita speaks of Krishna and the eternal self, and it is set on a battlefield. Christians and Hindus each read their own scripture in their own tradition’s terms.

The Psalms are 150 songs and prayers in the Hebrew Bible, sung in Jewish and Christian worship for centuries. Psalm 23 pictures God as a shepherd who leads, restores and protects. Psalm 42 opens with longing: as a deer longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, O God.

The Gita’s chapters on bhakti also speak of trust and closeness. Krishna says he accepts a leaf or flower offered with love (9.26) and that his devotee does not perish (9.31). Later bhakti poets, such as Mirabai and the Tamil Alvars, speak of longing for God in words close in feeling to the Psalms.

Differences matter. The Psalms address the God of Israel, known through covenant and history; they include laments, cries for justice and songs of the whole people. Hindu bhakti is addressed to Krishna, Rama, Shiva or the Goddess, often through a murti in a temple or home. Comparing them shows that devotion is a shared human form with many distinct voices.

Sufism is a tradition within Islam that stresses inward love of God. The Persian poet Rumi (1207 to 1273) opens his Masnavi with a reed flute that cries because it was cut from its reed bed; it longs to return to its source. Many readers see this as a picture of the soul longing for God.

Hindu bhakti poets also sing of separation and longing, called viraha. Krishna’s flute is itself a famous image: in the Bhagavata Purana, the cowherd women of Vraj leave everything when they hear it. In India, bhakti and Sufi poets lived side by side for centuries. Kabir (15th century) drew from both and was claimed by Hindus and Muslims alike.

A careful comparison notices that both use the flute and longing, but they mean different things. For Rumi, the reed longs for God as understood in Islam, the One with no partner. For Krishna devotees, the flute is Krishna’s call to the soul. Comparing them shows how shared images carry different meanings in different traditions.