The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c11.15

c11.15

This ideal of a virtuous Buddhistic layman, the king in the old stories does not always follow. Very often we see in him an unrestrained tyrant guided by his own whims and caprices, “who oppresses and puts down his subjects by punishments, taxes, torture and robbery, as one pounds sugar in a sugar mill, who is as odious to them as a particle of dust in the eye, as a particle of sand in the rice or as a thorn that has pierced the hand” (II. 240). To the virtues mentioned under Dasarâjadhamme of the idealised ruler there stand in opposition as many vices;