Society and Nature in Early India: Forest in Pali Literature as Sources for Enivormental History

This paper examines the role and significance of forests in early Indian society through the evidence of Buddhist literature dating from approximately the sixth century BCE to the third century CE. Rather than treating forests as marginal spaces outside the sphere of settled life, the study approaches them as integral components of the social, economic, and religious landscape of early historic India. Early Buddhist texts provide detailed references to forests as spaces of habitation, economic activity, religious practice, and cultural imagination, making them a particularly valuable source for reconstructing the environmental history of the period. The paper explores four interrelated dimensions of forest–society interaction. First, it examines the relationship between mobility and settlement, analysing how forests formed the transitional zone between wandering ascetics and expanding agrarian communities. Second, the paper investigates forests as spaces of spiritual expression, where monks and ascetics practised meditation and renunciation, and where monastic establishments often developed in proximity to woodlands. Third, the study considers the economic uses of forests, including the gathering of forest produce, hunting, wood collection, and other forms of resource utilisation that supported both rural households and monastic communities. Finally, the paper analyses forests in cultural imagination as depicted in Buddhist narratives, where forests appear simultaneously as places of danger, refuge, moral testing, and transformation. By integrating these perspectives, the paper argues that forests occupied a central position in the environmental and social world described in early Buddhist literature. The study demonstrates that Buddhist sources provide a unique window into the environmental history of early India and reveal the complex and varied relationships between forests and human society in the early historic period.