..续本文上一页 the practice of sacrifice - sacrifice was an important means of communication with the gods, of achieving victories in battles, of gaining offspring, of going to heaven. While in the Indus Valley Civilization we have belief in the Law of Karma, and rebirth, in the Aryan Civilization we have no conception of rebirth. Just as in the Indus Valley Civilization we have the notion of moral responsibility extending over a series of lives, in the Aryan Civilization we have no such notion. In fact the highest ideal was loyalty, those values that contributed to the power of the community. Finally while in the Indus Valley Civilization we have liberation as the goal of religious life, in the Aryan Civilization we have heaven as the goal of religious life. The idea that they had of heaven was a heaven modelled upon a perfected version of this life. So if we want to sum up the differences between the religions of these two civilizations, we can say that on the one hand the Indus Valley Civilization stresses renunciation, meditation, rebirth, karma, the goal of liberation; on the other hand the Aryan religion stresses this life, material well-being, wealth, power, fame and sacrifices as means of achieving these goals. It would be hard to find a set of more diametrically opposed religious attitudes. In addition, there are two more important elements of Aryan religion that we ought to recall caste: the pision of society into social strata; and belief in the authority of the revealed scriptures, the Vedas. These two elements were not present in the Indus Valley Civilization.

　　The history of Indian religion from 1500 B.C. up to 600 or 500 B.C., the time of the Buddha, the history of those 1000 years in India is a history of gradual interaction between these two totally opposed religious views. As the Aryans gradually spread and settled across the gigantic Indian subcontinent, as their pioneering exploits diminished, gradually these two totally opposed religious views began to influence, interact and merge with each other. This is the merging I had in mind when I talked about the merging of the two great rivers. Consequently by the time of the Buddha, we have a very heterogeneous religious scene. We can understand this clearly if we look at some of the facts regarding the life of the Buddha. For instance, we find that when the Buddha was born, two groups of people made prophecies regarding His future greatness. The first prophecy was made by Asita. Asita was a hermit, who lived in the mountains and yet sources tell us that he was a Brahmin, that he belonged to the priestly class. This in itself is already evidence of the interaction of the two traditions. In the Buddha”s time, Brahmins had begun to go forth as hermits. This was unheard of a thousand years before. A little later, we are told that 108 Brahmins were invited to the naming ceremony. Here we have examples of priests who had not renounced the household life, an example of an institution that properly and originally belonged to the Aryan Civilization.

　　How is it that the two traditions - the Indus Valley tradition and the Aryan tradition, initially so different were able to merge

　　 I think the answer to this lies in the dramatic changes which took place in the life of the Indian people between the 2nd Millennium B.C. and the time of the Buddha. The Aryan expansion came to an end when they had conquered the plains of India. This end of expansion brought about many social, economic and political changes. In the first place, the tribal political society evolved into the institution of the territorial state so that no longer do you have a tribe with a very close personal set of loyalties. You have now a territorial state where many people of various tribes exist together. The kingdom of Magadha…

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