Tribes in Ancient India c53.46

c53.46

It is stated in the *Jātaka* that the Śākyas were a haughty people, and did not do obeisance to Siddhārtha on the ground that he was younger in age, but were afterwards made to do so on seeing a miracle performed by him.³ Hsüan Tsang, however, says that the manners of the people were ‘soft and obliging’,⁴ while in Rockhill’s *Life of the Buddha* it is said that they did not kill any living thing, ‘not even a black bectle’.⁵ The produce of their cattle and rice-fields supplied their only means of livelihood. The villages were grouped around the rice-fields, and the cattle wandered through the outlying forest over which the peasantry had rights of common.⁶