The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c14.144

c14.144

We notice clearly enough that ridicule is thrown upon the incapacity and treachery of the Brâhmaṇas in the words of the narrative. To see in such things, as fortune-telling, interpretations of dreams, etc., only lying and deception, shows that these stories are a product of their age and their land. Originating in the circles of the common people in whose religious thought superstition occupied a large place, they retain traces of their origin notwithstanding complete rejection and deprecation of superstitious ideas. But in the hands of the Buddhist monks to whom the above-named arts appear as endangering "right conduct" and as unworthy of a samaṇa or Brâhmaṇa, they receive a transformation which is directed against the conduct of the Brâhmaṇas practising these things for the sake of their own profit. Often these, according to the account of the Jâtakas, made their prophecies to a certain extent depend upon the gifts falling to their share; thus we read in the Kunâla Jâtaka how the dream-readers are bribed by the jealous wives of the king and predict before the latter that the dreams of his principal consort signify evil for him, to avert which he must place the queen in a ship and leave it at the mercy of the waves. In the opening chapter of the Pañcâvudha Jâtaka it is narrated how the parents of the new-born prince on the day of the naming ceremony please the Brâhmaṇas by granting all they desire before they ask him about the signs which indicate the future (brâhmaṇe subbakâmehi santappetvâ lakshaṇâni patipucchimsu, I. 272).