Buddhism and Jainism: Teachings and Sects

Buddhism and Jainism questions cluster around a handful of specific facts: the Buddha's own life story, the exact texts that preserved his teaching, a terminology trap between three named sects, and the building history of one particular monument, the stupa at Sanchi. Getting the specific fact right, not just the general period, is what separates a confident answer from a guess.

Why the sixth century BCE produced new teachers

NCERT places the Buddha and Mahavira inside a wider list of contemporaries across the ancient world, Zarathustra in Iran, Confucius in China, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in Greece, all wrestling with the same broad question of how a human being related to the cosmic order. In India this coincided with real material change: new kingdoms and cities were emerging across the Ganga valley, and social and economic life was shifting in ways that unsettled older certainties.

The oldest layer of belief on offer was the Vedic sacrificial tradition. The Rigveda's hymns to deities such as Agni, Indra and Soma were originally chanted at sacrifices performed collectively; later, roughly from 1000 to 500 BCE, householders performed simpler sacrifices for their own families, while kings and chiefs turned to elaborate rites such as the rajasuya and ashvamedha, always conducted through Brahmana priests. That priestly monopoly rested on a specific gatekeeping mechanism worth remembering on its own terms: the sacrificial verses were composed in a special form of Sanskrit, Vedic Sanskrit, and taught orally, but only to men born into priestly families.

By around the sixth century BCE, the Upanishads show this settled world being questioned from within: what happens after death, whether rebirth is shaped by past action, whether there is even a single ultimate reality behind appearances. Buddhist texts describe a livelier scene still, naming as many as 64 rival schools of thought, with teachers travelling from place to place to debate one another and lay audiences in public spaces such as the kutagarashala, literally a hut with a pointed roof, or in groves where wandering mendicants halted. A philosopher who won a debate typically won his rival's disciples too, so a school's following could grow or shrink quickly. Two named teachers from this milieu survive only because Buddhist texts happen to record them: the Ajivika Makkhali Gosala, a fatalist who held that pleasure and pain unwind on their own regardless of effort, and the materialist Ajita Kesakambalin, who denied any world beyond this one. Neither school's own texts survived, a reminder of how much of this intellectual world historians can reconstruct only secondhand.

Mahavira and the Buddha belonged to this same world of debate, but both went further than adding one more school to it: they questioned the authority of the Vedas outright and argued that spiritual progress rested on an individual's own conduct and effort, not on the accident of birth into a particular caste or gender, which was the Brahmanical position instead. Exactly where this fits inside Magadha's own political rise (iron tools, agricultural surplus, river-borne trade, and the ambitions of kings such as Bimbisara) is covered in this site's Mahajanapadas and Mauryan Empire note; what matters for this chapter is that religious dissent and political consolidation were happening in the same stretch of the Ganga valley at the same time, and neither is fully explained without the other.

The Buddha's life and the four sights that changed everything

Siddhartha, born into the Sakya clan, had a sheltered upbringing within the palace. On his first journey outside it, he was shaken by the sight of an old man, a sick man, and a corpse, evidence that decay was inevitable, then by a homeless mendicant who had made peace with all three. He left the palace, explored several paths including severe bodily mortification, abandoned that extreme too, and finally attained enlightenment through meditation, becoming the Buddha, "the Enlightened One". His last words to his followers, per Buddhist tradition, urged them to work out their own liberation rather than rely on any external saviour.

Core teachings: anicca, anatta, dukkha, and the sangha

The Buddha taught that the world is transient (anicca) and constantly changing, soulless (anatta) since nothing in it is permanent, and that sorrow (dukkha) is intrinsic to existence within it. The way past this was the middle path, moderation between severe penance and self-indulgence, leading to nibbana, literally the extinguishing of the ego and desire. He founded the sangha, an order of monks (bhikkhus) who lived on alms with only essential possessions like a bowl. Women were admitted later, through the mediation of the disciple Ananda; the Buddha's own foster mother, Mahapajapati Gotami, became the first bhikkhuni.

How the Buddha's word survived: the Tipitaka

None of the Buddha's teachings were written down in his lifetime. After his death (around the fifth to fourth century BCE), his teachings were compiled by a council of "elders" (senior monks) at Vesali, into three collections known as the Tipitaka, literally "three baskets": the Vinaya Pitaka (rules for the sangha), the Sutta Pitaka (the Buddha's own teachings), and the Abhidhamma Pitaka (philosophical matters). As Buddhism spread, later regional histories such as Sri Lanka's Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa were composed; the oldest surviving Buddhist texts are in Pali, later ones in Sanskrit.

Inside the sangha: rules, equality, and a different way of teaching

The sangha was not simply an idea, it was a working organisation with its own procedure. Its internal functioning drew on the older republican tradition of ganas and sanghas, tribal assemblies that operated by consensus among their members; when a sangha discussion failed to reach consensus, the matter went to a vote instead. Admission cut across the existing social order deliberately: kings, wealthy householders (gahapatis) and humbler workers, slaves and craftspeople all entered the sangha as equals, shedding their earlier social identity the moment they became bhikkhus or bhikkhunis. Women were admitted later than men, and only through the mediation of the disciple Ananda, who persuaded the Buddha to allow it; many women who joined the sangha went on to become theris, respected teachers of dhamma in their own right.

The rules binding this community are not abstractions, they survive as specific, checkable clauses in the Vinaya Pitaka. A monk's newly made blanket had to be kept for at least six years before he could have another made, unless the sangha authorised an exception. A monk visiting a household could accept only two or three bowlfuls of food, sharing anything more with the rest of the sangha rather than keeping it for himself. Bedding set out in a sangha lodging had to be put away, or someone deputed to put it away, before a monk left. Rules this granular are worth knowing by example, since a UPSC question testing "Buddhist monastic discipline" rewards a candidate who has actually seen a Vinaya clause, not one who only recognises the word sangha as a label.

The Therigatha, a section of the Sutta Pitaka made up of verses composed by bhikkhunis, preserves one particularly telling exchange. Punna, a dasi (slave woman) who fetched water each morning, challenges a Brahmana performing his bathing ritual on the riverbank, asking what a mere dip in cold water could possibly wash away, since if it could, every frog, turtle and water snake in the river would earn heaven along with him. The verse matters structurally, not just as colour: Buddhism gave someone of Punna's own standing, a woman, a dasi, a direct voice against Brahmanical ritual, something the sacrificial tradition's closed, priestly transmission could never have produced on its own terms.

That contrast in transmission is a genuine, testable difference between the two traditions, not merely a difference of style. The Vedic sacrificial verses were composed in Vedic Sanskrit and taught orally, but only to men of priestly families. The Buddha's own teaching, by contrast, was delivered through open discussion and debate that men, women and, by tradition, children could all attend, and the stories illustrating it were narrated in the language ordinary people actually spoke, only later written down and compiled as Pali. Much of Buddhism's rapid growth, both in the Buddha's own lifetime and after his death, is attributed to this combination: an emphasis on conduct and values over birth, and metta (fellow feeling) and karuna (compassion) held up as central virtues, at a moment when rapid social change had left many people dissatisfied with existing practice.

Jainism: Mahavira and the tirthankaras

Jaina philosophy existed in north India before Vardhamana, who came to be known as Mahavira, in the sixth century BCE. By Jaina tradition itself, he was preceded by 23 other tirthankaras, literally "those who guide men and women across the river of existence". Jainism's central idea is that the entire world is animated, even stones, rocks and water have life, which makes non-injury to living beings (ahimsa) central to the philosophy. Jaina monks and nuns took five vows: to abstain from killing, stealing, and lying, to observe celibacy, and to abstain from possessing property, four of which (all but celibacy) go back to Parshvanatha; Mahavira's own real contribution was adding celibacy as a fifth, distinct vow. As in Buddhism, karma shapes the cycle of rebirth, and only renouncing the world through asceticism and penance can free a person from it.

The stupa: from relic mound to Sanchi's survival

Stupas were mounds built over relics of the Buddha, his bodily remains or objects he had used. The Buddhist text Ashokavadana credits Ashoka with distributing the Buddha's relics to important towns and ordering stupas built over them; by the second century BCE, stupas stood at Bharhut, Sanchi and Sarnath. A stupa's structure had specific named parts: the anda (the mound itself), the harmika (a balcony-like structure above it, representing the abode of the gods), and a mast called the yashti rising from the harmika, often topped with an umbrella (chhatri). A railing separated the sacred mound from the secular world, and donations recorded on inscriptions came from kings such as the Satavahanas, guilds, and ordinary bhikkhus and bhikkhunis.

Sanchi and Amaravati had very different fates after their nineteenth-century "discovery". Sanchi's gateways and railings were found largely intact in 1818, and a proposal to move one gateway to a Paris or London museum ultimately failed, so the site survives largely in situ. Amaravati was far less fortunate: a local raja stumbled on its ruins in 1796 while searching for treasure, and by 1854 the British official Walter Elliot had shipped sculpture panels away to Madras (the "Elliot marbles"), with more scattered to Calcutta, London, and colonial gardens. The archaeologist H.H. Cole called this "a suicidal and indefensible policy", but only Sanchi's in situ preservation was actually adopted.

The exam trap: Hinayana, Theravada, and Mahayana

By the first century CE, a new tradition, Mahayana ("the great vehicle"), had developed the idea of the Buddha as a saviour and of Bodhisattvas, compassionate beings who postponed their own nibbana to help others attain liberation; image-worship of the Buddha and Bodhisattvas became central to this tradition. Mahayana supporters described the older tradition as Hinayana ("the lesser vehicle"), but that is not what its own followers called themselves: they used Theravadins, "those who followed the path of the old, respected teachers (theras)". A question is far more likely to test which name the older tradition used for itself (Theravada) than the dismissive label attached to it by a rival school (Hinayana), so keep the two straight rather than treating them as interchangeable.

The Chola temple economy: a different alias, the same chapter

This chapter's syllabus entry carries a second alias, "Chola Temple Economy", pointing to a real 2016 UPSC question built entirely around Chola-era administrative terms, nothing to do with Sanchi or the sangha above. It sits here because of how this site groups chapters, not because NCERT's own Theme 4 discusses the Cholas at all; the fuller narrative, Rajaraja I building the Brihadishvara temple at Thanjavur between 1003 and 1010 CE, its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the historian Burton Stein's research on South Indian temples functioning as lenders and redistributive economic hubs, is covered in depth in this site's own Chola Empire note.

What that note does not spell out is the specific vocabulary UPSC has actually tested, so it belongs here instead. Chola inscriptions distinguish several kinds of land grant and revenue unit with real precision, and mixing them up is the trap. Devadana was land gifted outright to a temple, typically tax free, whose produce funded the temple's own upkeep and its resident staff. Brahmadeya (sometimes called agrahara) was land, often an entire village, gifted specifically to a Brahmin or a group of Brahmins, a distinct category from devadana even though both were religious endowments. Eripatti was narrower still: land whose revenue was earmarked purely for maintaining a village's irrigation tank (eri), regardless of who the land itself had been donated to. Taniyur denoted something different again: a large settlement granted the status of an independent revenue unit in its own right, sitting outside the nadu it would otherwise have belonged to, not land handed to Brahmins (that exact mix up is what the 2016 question was built to test). Ghatikas, finally, were institutions of higher learning generally attached to a temple, the best known being at Kanchipuram.

Treating these five terms as one undifferentiated "land grant" category is what a wrong option is usually built on; keeping eripatti, taniyur, brahmadeya, devadana and ghatikas separate in memory is what a matching or statement-based question on this alias actually rewards.

Quick revision points

• The Buddha: Sakya clan, four sights (old man, sick man, corpse, mendicant), the middle path, nibbana.
• Core teachings: anicca (transient), anatta (soulless), dukkha (sorrow intrinsic to existence).
• Sixth-century BCE ferment: the Vedic sacrificial tradition and Vedic Sanskrit taught only to priestly men, Upanishadic doubt, 64 rival schools debating in the kutagarashala, Mahavira and the Buddha both rejecting Vedic authority and birth-determined status.
• Sangha organisation: consensus and vote, modelled on gana-sangha tradition; admission open to all social groups and, later, women (Ananda's mediation, Mahapajapati Gotami as first bhikkhuni); Vinaya Pitaka rules were concrete (six-year felt blankets, two or three bowlfuls of alms); the Therigatha preserves Punna the dasi's own voice.
• Tipitaka: Vinaya (rules), Sutta (teachings), Abhidhamma (philosophy), compiled by a council of elders at Vesali.
• Jainism: Mahavira, 23 tirthankaras before him, ahimsa, the five vows, sixth century BCE.
• Stupa parts: anda (mound), harmika (balcony above it), yashti (mast); relic distribution credited to Ashoka in the Ashokavadana.
• Sanchi survived in situ from 1818; Amaravati did not (the "Elliot marbles", scattered from 1854).
• The trap: the older tradition called itself Theravada, not Hinayana, a dismissive term coined by Mahayana followers.
• Chola temple economy terms: devadana (temple land), brahmadeya (Brahmin land), eripatti (tank-maintenance land), taniyur (independent revenue village), ghatikas (temple colleges), each a distinct category.

Once the sect names and the Tipitaka's three baskets are secure, practise the matching-style questions UPSC builds around this period, and do not let the Chola vocabulary above blur into a single "land grant" idea.