Shared trunk and folk-tribal roots

Detail

The shared trunk: what Vedic, Buddhist and Jaina schools held in common

• The three big streams of early Indian thought — Vedic (Brahmanical), Buddhist and Jaina — fought hard over ideas. But they grew from one trunk. They shared:
• dharma (right conduct, moral duty),
• karma (your acts shape what happens to you later),
• rebirth (the soul or the life-stream is reborn again and again),
• the goal of ending suffering and ignorance,

• many everyday values — non-harm, truth, self-control, charity.

• Differences were real (on the Vedas, on sacrifice, on the soul, on caste). The common vocabulary is why debate between them was possible at all — they argued inside a shared frame, not across a gap.

• Practical sharing too. Monks and nuns of both heterodox schools (Buddhist and Jaina) travelled long distances, founded monasteries, and lived in rock-cut caves cut into hillsides.
• Some caves still keep the names of the monks who lived there, carved into the rock.
• Some keep the stone beds the monks slept on — a bench cut from the living rock, with a raised stone pillow.

Ellora: three religions on one cliff

• At Ellora, caves of Hindu, Buddhist and Jain faiths stand side by side, cut between the 6th and 10th centuries CE. One hillside, three religions, no destruction of one by the other.
• Ellora has 34 caves cut over more than 2 km of a high basalt cliff (basalt = hard black volcanic rock) near Aurangabad, Maharashtra [2].
• The split by faith [2][3]:
• Caves 1–12 — Buddhist,
• Caves 13–29 — Brahmanical/Hindu,

• Caves 30–34 — Jain.

• Dating by group: Buddhist caves c. 5th–8th centuries (Mahayana), Brahmanical c. 7th–10th centuries, Jain c. 9th–12th centuries [3].

  Note: NCERT gives the Ellora span as 6th–10th centuries CE; Britannica stretches the outer ends to the 5th and 12th centuries [3]. Use the NCERT range in the exam; the wider range only shows work started earlier and ended later.

• Cave 16, the Kailasa temple, is the most famous — it was carved downward from the top of the rock, not dug sideways into a cliff face like the others, so it stands open to the sky [3].

• Ellora became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983, listed for showing the spirit of tolerance of ancient India [2][3].

Pre-Buddhist sacred geography absorbed into Buddhism

• Long before the Buddha, people already treated certain places as sacred:
• places with special trees,
• unique rocks or rock formations,

• spots of natural beauty.

• Such places, often with a small shrine, were called chaityas. The word may come from chitā (the funeral pyre) — so the earliest chaityas may have been burial or cremation spots that became holy.

• Buddhism did not wipe this out. It laid its own map on top of the old one. Four sites from the Buddha's life became the new sacred geography:
• Lumbini — birth,
• Bodh Gaya — enlightenment,
• Sarnath — first sermon,

• Kusinagara — nibbāna (final release at death).

• Asoka put up a pillar at Lumbini about 200 years after the Buddha.

• The pillar is sandstone, and its inscription is in Pali language, Brahmi script [4].
• UNESCO dates the pillar to 249 BCE — Asoka's own record of his pilgrimage there. The text says he visited in person, names the site as the birthplace of the "Sage of the Shakyas", and records that he cut the tax on the nearby village [4].
• Lumbini (Terai plains, southern Nepal) was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997, under criteria (iii) and (vi) [4].
• Brick remains inside the Maya Devi Temple run from the 3rd century BCE to modern times, and the Shakya Tank (the sacred pond) lies in the same protected area [4].

Popular motifs that walked into Buddhist art

• New converts did not arrive empty-handed. They brought their old beliefs with them, and those beliefs show up carved on Buddhist stupas and gateways:
• śhālabhañjikā — a woman whose touch was believed to make a tree flower. A sign of good luck and fertility, placed on Buddhist railings and gateways.
• the serpent (naga) — an old nature/water spirit, now part of Buddhist scenes.

• the Maya / Gajalakshmi ambiguity — one common sculpture shows a woman with lotuses and elephants pouring water over her. Is she Maya, the Buddha's mother, or Gajalakshmi, the goddess of good fortune? Historians cannot always tell, and that is the point: the same image worked for both.

• What this shows: converts enriched Buddhism with pre-Buddhist and non-Buddhist beliefs. Religion spread by absorbing, not only by replacing.

What is a 'tribe'?

• A tribe is a group of families or clans that share common descent, culture and language, live as a close-knit community under a chief, and hold no private property — land and resources are held together, not owned by individuals.
• Ancient India had no separate word for 'tribe'. Such groups were simply called janas — peoples living in their own settings: forests, hills, mountains. The sharp "tribe vs. civilisation" line is a later, colonial-era idea.
• The Constitution of India uses the term 'tribes'; in Hindi, janjāti.
• In 2011, India had 705 tribes with about 104 million people (roughly 10.45 crore) — about 8.6 per cent of India's population [5].

• Over 730 Scheduled Tribes are notified under Article 342 of the Constitution [5].

  Note: NCERT gives 705 tribes (2011 Census). PIB cites "over 730 Scheduled Tribes notified under Article 342" [5] — the difference is between Census-counted communities and legally notified entries, which are counted state-wise and so overlap. For prelims, 705 with the 2011 Census is the safe NCERT figure.

• Nineteenth-century anthropologists labelled such groups 'primitive' or 'inferior'. Those labels have been largely abandoned — they said more about colonial attitudes than about the communities.

Two-way exchange: folk-tribal traditions and the leading schools

• The flow went both ways. This is the key point for exams.
• Tribal → mainstream:
• Jagannath of Puri was originally a tribal deity, later taken into the Hindu fold.
  • At the Puri temple the daitas (Daitapati) — servitors held to be of local tribal (Adivasi) origin — and not the usual Brahmin priests, are the ones who touch the deities during key festivals [6].
  • The Nabakalebara ("new body") rite, in which the wooden images are replaced with fresh ones, echoes ritual practice of the Saura, Gond, Kondh and other Odisha tribes, who claim Jagannath as their original deity [7].

• Several forms of the mother goddess also began as tribal deities.

• Mainstream → tribal:

• Some tribes took up Hindu deities.
• Many tribes hold their own versions of the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa — with their own heroes, endings and local settings. These have been recorded from the northeastern states down to Tamil Nadu.

The shared substrate: nature as sacred

• Under both streams lies one common layer — nature treated as sacred: mountains, rivers, trees, animals, even stones.
• For the Todas of the Nilgiris, over thirty peaks are the homes of gods — so sacred that one must not even point at them.
• Many tribes also hold a supreme-deity concept — one high god above the many local spirits:
• Donyipolo — Arunachal Pradesh; donyi (Sun) and polo (Moon) joined and raised into one supreme god.
• Khandoba — parts of central India.
• Singbonga — the creator deity of the Munda and Santhal.

Béteille's summation

• The sociologist André Béteille put the whole relationship in one line: castes and tribes have influenced each other's religious beliefs "since the beginning of history and before".
• His two-sided claim:
• tribal religions were influenced by Hinduism — yes;

• but Hinduism, "not only in its formative phase but throughout its evolution, has been influenced by tribal religions."

• The result is mutual enrichment, not one-way absorption. Indian religion is better read as a long exchange than as a centre spreading out to a margin.

Prelims Hooks

• Ellora has 34 caves over 2 km of basalt cliff; caves 1–12 Buddhist, 13–29 Hindu, 30–34 Jain; UNESCO World Heritage Site 1983 [2][3]. NCERT dates the complex 6th–10th centuries CE.
• Kailasa temple = Cave 16, Ellora — carved downward from the top, unlike the other horizontally cut caves [3].
• Chaitya may derive from chitā, meaning funeral pyre; pre-Buddhist chaityas were sacred spots with special trees or unique rocks.
• Four sites of the Buddha's life: Lumbini (birth), Bodh Gaya (enlightenment), Sarnath (first sermon), Kusinagara (nibbāna).
• The Asoka pillar at Lumbini is sandstone, inscribed in Pali language / Brahmi script, dated 249 BCE; it records Asoka's personal visit and a tax cut for the village [4]. NCERT: erected about 200 years after the Buddha.
• Lumbini — UNESCO World Heritage Site 1997, criteria (iii) and (vi); contains the Maya Devi Temple and the Shakya Tank [4].
• Śhālabhañjikā = woman whose touch makes a tree flower; an auspicious motif taken into Buddhist art. Maya vs. Gajalakshmi is a famous identification puzzle.
• 2011: India had 705 tribes, about 104 million people — around 8.6% of the population [5]; Article 342 is the constitutional provision for Scheduled Tribes [5].
• Supreme deities: Donyipolo (Arunachal Pradesh, Sun + Moon), Khandoba (central India), Singbonga (Munda and Santhal creator god).
• Todas of the Nilgiris — over thirty peaks are divine homes, too sacred to point at.
• Jagannath of Puri — originally a tribal deity; the daitas who handle the deities are of tribal origin [6]; Nabakalebara mirrors Saura/Gond/Kondh practice [7].

Mains Points

• Argue coexistence from evidence, not sentiment. Ellora is the strongest single exhibit: Buddhist, Hindu and Jain sanctuaries cut on one 2 km cliff across roughly the 6th–10th centuries, with no sign of one group destroying another's work [2]. Pair this with the shared vocabulary of dharma, karma, rebirth and release from suffering to argue that early Indian religions competed inside a common frame rather than as sealed rivals.
• Sacred geography is layered, not new-built. Buddhism grew on top of an older map of sacred trees, rocks and chaityas; the word chaitya itself may come from chitā, the funeral pyre. Asoka's Lumbini pillar of 249 BCE [4] is state power confirming a sacred site, not creating one. Useful for any question on how a new religion becomes popular — it spreads by absorbing local sanctity.
• Reject the one-way "Sanskritisation only" model. Béteille's point is the analytical core: the influence ran both ways. Tribal deities became mainstream (Jagannath, mother-goddess forms, with tribal-origin daitas still serving at Puri [6][7]); mainstream epics became tribal, with distinct Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa versions from the northeast to Tamil Nadu. Conclusion for an answer: mutual enrichment.
• Terminology has a politics. Ancient India had no word for 'tribe' — only janas. 'Tribe' and the 19th-century tags 'primitive'/'inferior' are colonial imports, now discarded; the Constitution's 'Scheduled Tribes' / janjāti (705 communities, ~104 million, ~8.6% in 2011 [5]) is an administrative category, not a statement about levels of civilisation. Good for GS-I questions linking ancient society to modern identity.