Johannes Bronkhorst

Dharma and Abhidharma

Most commonly it is presented as a list of beneficial psychic characteristics ( kuśala dharma ) or simply psychic characteristics ( dharma ). Sometimes practising the items of this list is stated to be a precondition for liberation from the intoxicants (āśrava). Or else the list is said to constitute the ‘cultivation of the road’ ( mārgabhāvanā ). In a few instances the items of the list are characterized as ‘jewels’ ( ratna ). This characterization occurs where doctrine and discipline ( dharmavinaya ) are compared with the ocean, and finds its justification in this comparison.

How the Brahmins Won

This is the first study to systematically confront the question how Brahmanism, which was geographically limited and under threat during the final centuries BCE, transformed itself and spread all over South and Southeast Asia.

Can Religion be Explained?: The Role of Absorption in Various Religious Phenomena

This article claims that the study of religion has overlooked a feature of the human mind that may yet help to explain certain aspects of religion. Awareness, it is here argued, can vary along a dimension that is characterized by the density of associations and other inputs that accompany it. The mechanism behind this is concentration, including the stronger form of concentration here called absorption. Absorption has cognitive effects, and is at least in part responsible for the human tendency to believe in a different, “higher,” reality. Various other features usually associated with religion—including ritual behavior and asceticism—also make sense in the light of this observation.

Brahmanism: its place in ancient Indian society

This article shows how Brahmanism was a regional tradition, confined to the northwestern parts of the Indian subcontinent, that passed through a difficult period—which it barely survived—roughly between the time of Alexander and the beginning of the Common Era. It then reinvented itself, in a different shape. No longer primarily a sacrificial tradition, it became a mainly socio-political ideology that borrowed much (including the belief in rebirth and karmic retribution) from the eastern region in which Buddhism and Jainism had arisen. Its revival went hand in hand with the elaboration of behavioural and theoretical innovations, one of whose purposes was to justify the claimed superiority of Brahmins.This article shows how Brahmanism was a regional tradition, confined to the northwestern parts of the Indian subcontinent, that passed through a difficult period—which it barely survived—roughly be...

Rites without Symbols

Abstract In this article the argument is that there are rites, or parts of rites, that can be understood by all concerned without recourse to symbolical interpretation. This position is illustrated with the help of examples from different cultures and religions that impose a social hierarchy: typically there is one person or party that is superior, another one that is inferior. The initiator of such rites can be the superior or the inferior person/party. A discussion of these illustrations gives rise to further reflections, notably about the role of violence in ritual.

Who were the Cārvākas

A great number of classical Sanskrit texts, most of them philosophical, refer to the Cārvākas or Lokāyatas (also Laukāyatikas, Lokāyatikas, Bārhaspatyas) who must have constituted a school of thought which has left us almost no literary documents. !ey once possessed a Sūtra text and several commentaries thereon, for fragments have been preserved in the works of those who criticise them. In modern secondary literature the Cārvākas are usually referred to as “materialists”, which is somewhat unfortunate. It is true that the Sūtra text (sometime called Bārhaspatya Sūtra) accepts as only principles (tattva) the four elements earth, water,

THE TWO TRADITIONS OF MEDITATION IN ANCIENT INDIA

re and air; yet the term “materialism” and its cognates evoke in the modern world associations which are not necessarily appropriate for this ancient school of thought.