Shramana

(from the Sanskrit verb shram, “to
strive”) General term denoting religious
adepts from the middle of the first millennium before the common era whose
beliefs stressed renunciation, ascetic
practices, and the search for intuitive
insights. Shramana religious practice
was individualist, experiential, freeform, and independent of society. All of
these qualities put them in religious
competition with the brahmin priests,
whose practice stressed mastery of
sacred texts and performing enormously
complex rituals; the need for sponsors
for these rituals made brahmin religion
“establishment” religion, serving its
patron classes. Indian grammarians use
the pair shramana and brahmin to illustrate typically bitter opponents, along
with examples such as mongoose and
cobra, and their difference seems to be
between a religious model stressing
individual charisma (shramana), and
one stressing highly trained technical
expertise (brahmin). Part of the shramana tradition remained outside the
Hindu fold by virtue of resolutely rejecting the authority of the Vedas; the Jains,
Buddhists, Ajivikas, and other religious
groups developed as a result of this
rejection of the Vedas. Part of the shramana tradition was absorbed into traditional Hinduism in the dharma literature, which found a place for renunciant
asceticism in the form of the Sanyasi,
the last of the four traditional stages
of life (ashramas). For further information on the shramanas and the
development of this tradition, see
Padmanabh S. Jaini, “Sramanas: Their
Conflict with Brahmanical Society,” in
Joseph Elder (ed.), Chapters in Indian
Civilization, 1970.