The Mauryan Polity c11.s2.t6.1

c11.s2.t6.1

The next question is who these Śramaṇas were, why they were tacked on with the Brahmanas and what public services they rendered to the state to claim special privileges. From what Megasthenes has to say of these Śramaṇas it is certain that he does not mean Buddhists or Jaina by the term. He seems to divide apparently the Brahmana class into two divisions, one purely following the Śrauta sacrifices and engaged in study and teaching, and the other adept in Atharvan rites serving the state as physicians, diviners and sorcerers. This latter division includes probably those Brahmans of the third and fourth āśramas. Elphinstone who has made a study of these classical writings remarks "it is indeed a remarkable circumstance that the religion of the Buddha should never have been expressly noticed by the Greek authors though it had existed for two centuries before Alexander. The only explanation is that the appearance and the manners of its followers were not so peculiar as to enable a foreigner to distinguish them from the mass of the people”. The Pāli Sammana is the Sanskrit Śramaṇa. Lassen sustains the view that from the nature of their functions and their description in the Indika, the Śarmanes or Śarmani of Megasthenes, Germanes of Strabo and Samanæans of Porphyrius agree better with the Brahmana Sannyāsins.¹