A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s3.t2.86

v2.c19.s3.t2.86

A poem like the Kasibhāradvāja-Sutta (I, 4) seems to carry us back to the early days of Buddhism, when the monk was probably looked askance as an idler by the labouring people, by farmers and shepherds. Here the Brahman farmer Bhāradvāja scornfully repels the begging Buddha, giving him to understand that he who will not work, neither shall he eat. Thereupon Buddha shows him that he too is working, and wherein his “ploughing” consists. In one of the most beautiful of these old poems, the Dhaniya-Sutta (I, 2), the comfort and happiness of the rich owner of herds, who rejoices in his prosperity and his domestic happiness, is contrasted with the quiet joy of the Buddha, without possessions, homeless, but free from all earthly bonds. In a magnificent dialogue the wealthy Dhaniya and the Buddha alternately utter a verse each with the same refrain, “Rain, O heaven, if thou wilt.”