Chapter 2 : INDIAN SOCIETY THROUGH THE AGES

INDIAN SOCIETY THROUGH THE AGES

Indian society is one of the oldest and most complex in the world. Scholars debate its antiquity, with some dating it as far back as 5000 B.C.

• S.C. Dube notes: "a popular estimate it has covered a span of five thousand years since the period of its first known civilisation. During this long period, several waves of immigrants, representing different ethnic strains and linguistic families, have merged into its population to contribute to its diversity, richness and vitality."
• Jadunath Sarkar highlights its supreme characteristic—vitality and a distinct civilisation: "The Indian people of today are no doubt a composite ethnic product; but whatever their different contituent elements may have been in origin, they have all acquired a common Indian stamp, and have all been contributing to a common culture and building up a common type of tradition, thought and literature."
• Sir Herbert Risley (a British ethnographer initially sceptical of India as one people) admitted: "Beneath the manifold diversity of physical and social type, language, custom and religion, which strikes the observer in India, there can still be discerned a certain “underlying uniformity of life from the Himalayas to Cape Camorin.” There is, in fact, an Indian character, a general Indian personality, which we cannot resolve into its component elements."

Impact of Buddhism on Indian Society

Buddhism emerged as a challenge to Brahmanical supremacy and caste inequality. Though it initially gained royal support, its popularity within India eventually faded (today hardly 0.80% of Indians are Buddhists), while it flourished outside India (in Ceylon, Burma, Nepal, Tibet, China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, and other Asian nations).

The 13 major impacts of Buddhism on Indian society are:

1. Indirectly Reduced the Intensity of Caste Inequality: Buddhism and Jainism protested against Hinduism's rigid formalism, tyrannical ritualism, hierarchical value system, Brahmin supremacy, and religious orthodoxy. Buddhism declared that varna would not block anyone from obtaining "Nirvana". This protest prevented a social explosion and forced Brahmins to self-correct, pursue education, attain self-restraint/purification, and educate the masses to meet the intellectual challenge.
2. Enriched Intellectual and Spiritual Life:

It gained worldwide recognition…