The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c22.29

v1.c22.29

The main difference in the presentation of social data given by the Brāhman and the Buddhist is the one already referred to. The Buddhist does not accept the spiritual authority of the Brāhman and belittles him as a caste-member; but he cannot rid himself of inherited faith and phrase, and so constantly recognises him as member of a caste or order like that of the monks. On the other hand, the Buddhist state was a democracy in spirit; the teaching of the church (to use the word) was apt to exalt the humble and lower the aristocracy. The emperor himself was humbled by himself, and his nobles became subject to the religious law of love and kindness, while any common person was magnified for piety and could obtain high office in the council chamber. This was not only theoretically true; it affected the whole constitution of the State. The merchants and farmers and the mass of working people were endowed with a new influence, which superseded for a short time the influence of priest and noble. It is sometimes said that this was no supersession; that Buddhism arose before the four orders were recognised as state constituents, and that in the freer use of householder and merchant (such was really the Seṭṭhi or gildman) we have the expression of a freer life not yet bound in four-caste orders. It is probable that at all times the third ‘caste’ was an elastic term for every Āryan not priest or warrior; but it connoted pure blood and hence excluded those ‘mixed castes’ which were sometimes higher, but more often lower, than the house-slave. A great mass of these people were the hill-tribes reduced to servitude or to low pursuits, such as leather-workers, fowlers, etc., all those useful but dirty and disagreeable people whom the Brāhman despised and the Buddhist affected to love and honour. But the consideration shown to the low orders and the dignity attained by the merchants under a king who had no use for war are no proof that these traits were antecedent to an acknowledgment of the aristocratic classes. In fact, in the same district in which Buddhism arose and where the Buddhist emperors reigned, some at least of the Upanishads and Brāhmaṇas were composed, and these pre-Buddhist works all acknowledge as a matter of course the high rank of the two upper castes and the vulgarity of the lower, who exist, especially the farmers, 'to be eaten' by the king. The Buddhist attitude then is not an archaic attitude or one subsequently followed by the evolution of a theory of 'four castes,' but is due to a revolutionary insistence on virtue and use as tests of nobility. It is clear from both epics that the attitude toward the lower castes was not dissimilar to that held by every aristocracy toward the useful but undesirable proletariat. Both epics are from the beginning court-epics, to be recited before nobles and kings and priests at the great sacrifice which designated a supreme ruler, as the earlier texts indicate; but, as the epics themselves intimate, to be recited first at court and then popularised and recited among the people. The description of a recitation of the Mahābhārata given in the work itself implies, however, that this was not such a popular recitation as occurs to-day (for the great epic of India is still recited dramatically to village throngs), but one conducted in the house of a gentleman of leisure for his private entertainment.