Stories, other schools, and the common trunk

The Jātaka tales, loved by generations of Indian children and adults, tell stories of the Buddha's former births and teach Buddhist values in simple words.

In one, the Buddha is the king of a troop of monkeys living in a tree whose fruit has a heavenly smell and taste. One ripe fruit falls into the stream, floats to a human king's palace, and the king sends soldiers to find the tree. They attack the monkeys. The monkey-king, being much bigger, holds on to a tree on the other bank and lets the monkeys use his body as a bridge to cross the stream. He is badly bruised and finally dies. The human king, watching from a distance, is deeply moved by this selfless sacrifice, and thinks about what a king owes to his people.

A Jain story does something different. Rohineya was a very skilled burglar whom nobody could catch. On his way to a city, he happened to overhear a few sentences of a sermon by Mahāvīra. In the city he was recognised and arrested, and pretended to be a simple farmer. A minister made a clever plan to trick him into confessing, but Rohineya, remembering Mahāvīra's words, saw through it.

Then, feeling sorry, Rohineya went to Mahāvīra, confessed his crimes, returned the stolen treasure and asked for forgiveness. He became a monk. The story shows the importance of right action and right thinking, and that everyone should have a second chance.

In both Buddhism and Jainism, monks, and sometimes nuns, began travelling across the land to spread their teachings. Some built new monasteries in faraway places; others lived strict lives in caves cut into the rock. Archaeologists have found many traces of these monasteries, sometimes even the names of monks who lived in rock-cut caves and slept on stone beds! At Ellora in Maharashtra, caves were cut between the 6th and 10th centuries CE: some Hindu, others Buddhist and Jain, side by side in the same rock.

In English, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism are often called 'religions'. This book avoids that word and prefers 'schools of thought' or 'belief systems', because they have many sides: philosophical, spiritual, religious, ethical, social and more. Many scholars agree that the word 'religion' is too narrow for the Indian civilisation.

There were other schools too. The Chārvāka school (also called Lokāyata) believed that this material world is the only thing that exists, so there can be no life after death. It did not become very popular and disappeared over time. The book mentions it to show the wide variety of belief systems: people were free to choose what suited them.

Although the Vedic, Buddhist and Jain schools had important differences, they also shared some ideas: dharma, karma, rebirth, the search for an end to suffering and ignorance, and many important values. This is the 'trunk' of the tree the chapter began with.