Editing Marxist Interpretations of Buddhism in India (section)

== The Tribal-Sangha Thesis ==
The most durable claim of this literature is that the early Buddhist order was organized on the model of the tribal assemblies (ganas) of the Gangetic region, with assembly decision making, voting, and collective property. The claim did not originate with Marxists. K.P. Jayaswal's ''Hindu Polity'' (1924) read the Buddhist samgha as a copy of the political samgha, and later writers mentioned below, Chattopadhyaya and Ram Bilas Sharma, both rely on or argue with his work.<ref>Chattopadhyaya, Debiprasad (1959). ''Lokāyata: A Study in Ancient Indian Materialism''. People's Publishing House (7th ed. 1992), pp. 468–469, 489; Sharma, Ram Bilas (1970). "Some Aspects of the Teaching of Buddha". In: ''Buddhism: The Marxist Approach'': 54–65. People's Publishing House, pp. 54–55.</ref> Dharmanand Kosambi (1910), Rahul Sankrityayan (1935), D.D. Kosambi, and Chattopadhyaya each state a version of it.

=== D.D. Kosambi ===
Damodar Dharmanand Kosambi (1907–1966), the son of Dharmanand Kosambi, was a mathematician and a historian of ancient India.<ref>M. Kosambi (Ed.) (2010), ''Essential Writings'', Introduction.</ref> His book ''The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India in Historical Outline'' (preface dated 31 July 1964) is a Marxist-influenced outline of Indian history in which Buddhism appears as a product of social change. Its method statement defines history as the account of successive changes in the means and relations of production, and also rejects mechanical determinism and the rigid stage scheme: "Indian history does not fit precisely into this rigid framework either."<ref name="kos65">Kosambi, D.D. (1965). ''The Culture and Civilisation of Ancient India in Historical Outline''.</ref> (Nevertheless, the book does not appear to name Marx or Engels anywhere.)

In his account, the religions of the sixth-century Gangetic region answered the needs of new classes of free peasants and traders, and all rejected Vedic ritual. The sangha, he writes, conducted its meetings "precisely on the lines of the tribal sabha assembly," and early Buddhism was "the most social of religions." He reads Asoka's dhamma as a tool by which the state reconciled classes, and holds that the civilizing work of the Buddha and of Asoka was never continued. His account of decline is economic: the monasteries became landholding, wealth-bearing institutions, which at Nalanda was, in his judgment, "nowhere near the Buddhism preached by the Founder," and a drain on the economy. It differs in emphasis from Ambedkar's, which, in Geetha's account, drew on Jayaswal's thesis of a Brahmanical counter-revolution against Buddhism.

=== Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya ===
Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya (1918–1993) was a Bengali Marxist philosopher best known for ''Lokāyata'' (1959) and ''Indian Philosophy: A Popular Introduction'' (1964).<ref>Chattopadhyaya (1959), ''Lokāyata''.</ref> He wrote as a self-declared Marxist and took his comparative method from George Thomson.<ref>Chattopadhyaya (1959), ''Lokāyata'', pp. xii, xvi, xviii.</ref> The chapter "Samgha and Niyati" (pp. 459–524) is his main treatment of Buddhism. It rejects both of the older views of early Buddhism, that it was a movement of social reform, as Rhys Davids held, and that it was nothing of the kind, as Oldenberg held, and argues that the Buddha alone among his contemporaries could give people "the illusion of liberty, equality and fraternity" that was being destroyed in reality.<ref>Chattopadhyaya (1959), ''Lokāyata'', pp. 459–467.</ref> The monarchies of Kosala and Magadha were annihilating the free tribes, including the Sakyas and Vajjians, and the Order was modeled deliberately on surviving tribal democracies: the seven conditions of welfare that the Buddha gave to the Vajjians reappear for the monks, admission to the Order recalls adoption in Morgan's account of the Iroquois, and the communal ownership of robes and the ban on handling gold and silver are read as "communistic" custom.<ref>Chattopadhyaya (1959), ''Lokāyata'', pp. 468–475, 483–494.</ref> Doctrine, in this reading, is ideology: the Four Noble Truths and dependent origination turned the concrete suffering of the age into a "metaphysics of misery," and the samgha was a classless colony inside a class society.<ref>Chattopadhyaya (1959), ''Lokāyata'', pp. 494–504, 507.</ref> He treats the Buddha's contemporaries among the teachers of the age, such as Makkhali Gosala and Ajita Kesakambali, as "philosophers of frustration" who tried to understand reality and not to build an illusion.<ref>Chattopadhyaya (1959), ''Lokāyata'', pp. 507, 524.</ref>

=== Primitive Communism: Three Positions ===
Chattopadhyaya builds on Morgan's primitive communism, which he treats as the inspiration for the sangha.<ref>Chattopadhyaya (1959), ''Lokāyata'', pp. 483–493; Chattopadhyaya, Debiprasad (1970). "Some Problems of Early Buddhism". In: ''Buddhism: The Marxist Approach'': 9–36. People's Publishing House, p. 14, where he adds that this does not make the Buddha a communist.</ref> D.D. Kosambi names primitive communism neutrally as the first stage in the standard sequence but rejects its idealized form as the "Golden Age" legend in modern dress, while agreeing that the sangha copied the tribal sabha.<ref>Kosambi (1965), ''Culture and Civilisation'', PDF 22, 24, 28, 94, 107. Both PDF 22 and PDF 28 must be cited, since they say different things.</ref> Sharad Patil, as reported by Sarwate, calls it a rhetorical device used by Marx and Engels.<ref name="sarwate">Sarwate, [given name] (2025). "The Caste Subconscious and the Dialectical Logic of Sharad Patil". In: Banerjee, Prathama (Ed.), ''Textual Lives of Caste Across the Ages: Hierarchy, Humanity and Equality in Indian History'': 211–227. Bloomsbury Academic, p. 213.</ref> Ramkrishna Bhattacharya is reported to have grouped D.D. Kosambi with Chattopadhyaya as holding that early Buddhism amounted to primitive communism; Kosambi's book of 1965 does not support that grouping.<ref>Bhattacharya, Ramkrishna (1994). "From Buddha to Marx". In: Chattopadhyaya, Alaka (Ed.), ''Essays in Indology: Birth Centenary Tribute to Mahapandita Rahula Sankrityayana''. Manisha Granthalaya, as discussed in Joshi (2009), "Journeys of the Self," p. 138. The essay was not read directly.</ref>