India as Known to Panini: A Study of the Cultural Material in the Ashtadhyayi c13.7

c13.7

*PĀṆINI AND BUDDHISM*—The fact that Maṅkhali Gosāla was a contemporary of the Buddha and also known to Pāṇini helps us to understand some of the *sūtras* dealing with a few terms which have greater association with Buddhism, *e.g.* *Nirvāṇa* (VIII.2.50); *Kumārī Śramaṇā* (maiden nuns, II.1.70); *chīvarayate* in the sense of 'donning the monk's robe' as explained by the *Kāśikā* (*saṁchīvarayate bhikshuḥ*, III.1.20), and the religious *Saṅgha* called *Nikāya* which did not know the distinction of upper and lower (*anuttarādharya*). Such a *Saṅgha* was a typical Buddhist institution. It had been the custom among the primitive religious wanderers to be organised under a head who was called master (*Satthā*). But the Buddhist sect after his decease developed on different lines, which was looked upon by contemporaries as somewhat strange. The headship was abolished, all members of the *Saṅgha* were on a footing of equality. The principle of obedience to a Master was watered down to respect and reverence for elders and politeness for equals. For the discharge of the functions of its collective life, the whole body of monks constituted a perfectly democratic community. This is exactly the nature of the new religious *Saṅgha* envisaged in the significant Paninian term *anauttarādharya*, III.3.42). The political *Saṅgha* called *Gaṇa*, although professing to be democratic, worked on a different model in which some were *rājānaḥ* and the others commoners. These institutions mark out a date for Pāṇini after the Buddha.