Nathan McGovern's The Snake and the Mongoose draws upon a zoological metaphor to introduce a central issue in ancient Indian history that he considers widely misunderstood. Numerous scholars have written that the implacable opposition between śramaṇa (striver, an appellation often applied to Jains and Buddhists) and brāhmaṇa (Brahmin) is likened by the Sanskrit grammarian Patañjali to the opposition between the snake and the mongoose. McGovern observes that although Patañjali (second century BCE) does offer the word śramaṇa-brāhmaṇa as an example of an “oppositional compound,” he never in fact compares the relationship of these two types of people to the snake-mongoose relationship. For McGovern, this scholarly confusion is symbolic of a bigger mistake. The central issue he reexamines in this book is the oft-repeated narrative that the “śramaṇa movement” was a response to a well-established system of Brahmanical hegemony based on Brahmins’ status by birth. Like recent work by Johannes Bronkhorst, The Snake and the Mongoose employs close readings of texts to problematize this dominant historical narrative. However, differing from Bronkhorst's interpretation in important ways, McGovern's central claim is that “the conflict in ancient India was not between Brahmans and śramaṇas. It was, rather, over Brahmanhood itself” (p. 217).
Much of The Snake and the Mongoose is an exploration of what the word brāhmaṇa and its cognates would have meant for different communities in northern India in the mid-first millennium BCE. McGovern's special expertise is in the Pāli Canon and other early Buddhist texts, and it is here that his analyses are most groundbreaking. After a helpful review of the challenges of dating and interpreting early Buddhist texts in chapter 2, he presents lengthy evidence to overturn one of the central assumptions of recent textual scholarship on early Buddhism. The Pāli Canon presents repeated scenes in which the Buddha teaches that a true brāhmaṇa is one who is wise and virtuous. According to the consensus opinion represented by Richard Gombrich and Greg Bailey, this is an example of Buddhism “defining itself by its relationship to the pre-existing orthodoxy” (p. 52), a playful rejection of the literal meaning of the word brāhmaṇa and of the Brahmanical hegemony that preceded the Buddha. But what if the Buddhists were serious in their claim that the Buddha and other enlightened persons are brāhmaṇas? Or if the authors of some of these early texts were not even familiar with the “literal” meaning of the word brāhmaṇa as someone who is born into Brahminhood? Chapters 4, 6, and 7 present close readings of certain early Buddhist and Jain texts that do indeed seem to mean what they say about brāhmaṇa status being conferred by virtue. Early sections of the Pāli Canon (e.g., the Aṭṭhaka Vagga and Pārāyaṇa Vagga in the Sutta Nipāta) differ in their language from later narratives, such as the “encounter dialogues” between the Buddha and various brāhmaṇas in the Dīgha Nikāya. This is portrayed as evidence of a shift over time from a genuine claim of brāhmaṇa status to the more familiar rhetorical strategy. McGovern also examines later Pāli commentaries and Chinese translations of early Buddhist texts to show how early claims to Brahminhood were assimilated by Buddhists themselves to this later understanding taught by “Neo-Brahmanism.”
What then accounts for the apparent discrepancy in these earlier and later parts of the Pāli Canon? McGovern attempts to answer this question in chapter 5 with an analysis of the meaning of brāhmaṇa in certain parts of the Vedas and Dharma Sūtras, suggesting that it is only with the Āpastambha Dharmasūtra (early third century BCE) that all four varṇas are first named “using the term varṇa” (p. 135) and stated explicitly to be based on birth. He further speculates, drawing upon a brief observation in Timothy Lubin's work on the gṛhyasūtras, that “it is possible that undergoing brahmacarya (celibacy) was originally what made one a Brahman” (p. 109). On this basis, it seems that the Buddha and other celibate monastics could have claimed brāhmaṇa status.
To support this revisionist history of varṇa, McGovern also argues that the idea of varṇa being determined by birth appears nowhere in the Ṛg Veda Saṃhitā. This includes the famous Puruṣa Sūkta (RV 10.90) where the brāhmaṇa, rājanya, vaiśya, and śūdra are described as arising from a sacrifice of a giant man (puruṣa). Michael Witzel, Stephanie Jamison, Joel Brereton, and other leading scholars understand this to indicate that the doctrine of birth varṇa was present during the Middle Vedic Period. McGovern disagrees, noting that the word varṇa is never used in the hymn. He points to later texts such as the Chāndogya Upaniṣad’s story of Satyakāma Jābāla, a boy of uncertain paternal lineage who is nonetheless accepted as a student by a brāhmaṇa teacher, as evidence that throughout the pre-Buddhist period, Vedic authors did not understand varṇa to be determined exclusively by birth.
In the introductory and concluding chapters of The Snake and the Mongoose, McGovern briefly attempts to locate his study of the history of Indian identity formation in the context of critical works in the history of religions by Talal Asad, Tomoko Masuzawa, and Daniel Boyarin. He also alludes to recent scholarship on modern Hindu identity formation. Though he mentions the Ārya Samāj in this context, he fails to note that his own arguments about birth varṇa put him in proximity to the doctrine of guṇa-karma popularized by this organization and other modern defenders of what has come to be called sanātana dharma. The basic idea, taught today in classrooms in India and summer camps throughout the Hindu diaspora, is that the authentic Vedic system of varṇa was a meritocracy based on an individual's qualities and actions. This pure original system was later corrupted into a doctrine based on birth. McGovern criticizes what he calls “metahistorical” arguments by other historians about the essence of Brahmanism; I believe he would also reject such claims about original or authentic Brahminhood. Nonetheless, in today's highly politicized field of South Asian religions, it is important to anticipate the ways in which scholarly work can be appropriated, and to explicitly disavow possible misrepresentations.
McGovern remarks that the mid-third century BCE functions as a kind of “horizon of Indian history” (p. 40)—pushing back beyond the age of Aśoka, the dating and interpretation of texts becomes increasingly speculative. This uncertainty opens up possibilities for creative historical reinterpretation. Although his nuanced reading of Buddhist texts provides convincing evidence that the idea of a “Brahmin Buddhist” was not always an oxymoron, more needs to be done if he wishes to succeed in his ambitious project of overturning scholarly consensus on the early history of varṇa. Nevertheless, The Snake and the Mongoose is well worth reading. Its greatest contribution is that it will compel historians to reexamine the scholarly construct called “Brahmanism” and to look at the early textual evidence for the śramaṇa/brāhmaṇa divide in a new light.
