The Beginnings of Buddhist Art and Other Essays in Indian and Central-Asian Archaeology c6.s1.12

c6.s1.12

XXI. The Bodhisattva knew all social positions, even that which consists in being under the ban of society, as is the case with the pariah. However, in the lowest position in which we recognise him on the bas-reliefs of Barhut, he has already arrived at the third class, that of the Vaiçyas, that is to say, of peasant proprietor or town shopkeeper. It is as a son of a citizen of Çrâvastî that by an ingenious stratagem he consoles his father, who was still inconsolable for the death of his grandfather (Jāt. 352; CUNNINGHAM, XLVII, 3). He brings water and food to the dead body of an ox, abandoned at the gates of the town; and when his father, informed by friends, runs up to remonstrate with him, he answers him in the same tone and has not much trouble in proving to him that the more foolish of the two is not the one whom people think. For it is folly, according to Buddhist ideas, to weep for the dead.