Namaste Yajvan,
As christmas approaches, I suppose the time is ripe for consideration of who is “nasty” (nAstika) and who is “nice” (Astika); but in truth that is a judgment only a great shAnta can make.
An Astika is “believing, pious, or faithful”, and especially “one who believes in the existence of god”.
And a nAstika is “unbelieving, atheistic, or unfaithful”, and thus “an unbeliever, atheist, or infidel”.
Only cArvAka is entirely nAstika, while bauddha denies the possibility of unchanging eternity (and thus also the basis for vaidika authority) but not necessarily the existence of god, and jaina certainly doesn’t deny the existence of god (only the ultimate authority of the veda and brAhmaNa).
Orthodox, however, generally means “according to the doctrines of scripture”, and as soon as this idea is connected with Astika the concept changes from believing in the existence of god to believing in the authority of the veda and the brAhmaNa.
Religion was anciently derived from the phrase rem legere (“to choose that which is right”), but it has come to mean religare (“obligation to the established rule”); and similarly Astika has developed from simply “faithful to god” into “faithful to a particular revelation of god”.
The strict brAhmaNa opinion is that only brAhmaNa vidyA is truly Astika, while kshatriya vidyA (jaina and bauddha), and all else, is nAstika unless informed by and in accord with brAhmaNa revelations. But it seems wrong to define bauddha and especially jaina dharma as “faithless” or “infidel”.
bauddha dharma depends on the mahat (buddhi) of prakRti (mAyA, the mother of gautama) and the individual jIva, but ignores nirguNa brahma as shUnya.
And jaina dharma arises from the AdinAtha puruSaRSabha (the first incarnation of shiva, the virile bull man remembered as nandi) and unites the verities of sAMkhya in a paramparA of 24 incarnations.
The cosmology of sAMkhya does not depend on the existence of any deity that can be worshipped, although it does not deny the existence of brahma (as the infinite sum of every individual puruSa). And both bauddha and jaina have followed the lead of sAMkhya and focused their attention on divine incarnations (and reincarnation) rather than on the incomprehensible, inactive, invisible and anonymous whole that exists beyond manifest creation. And in this sense, the jaina and bauddha preoccupation with divine incarnation and incarnate divinity is not different from the vaiSNava preoccupation with nArAyaNa at the expense of nara (or christian devotion to the explicit son of man rather than to his implicit father).
You have given the orthodox brAhmaNa position, but nAstika is a divisive term that should be applied with care.
Bookmarks