The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c14.153

c14.153

To magic incantations the Brâhmaṇas owe also the power over demons ascribed to them in the Juṇha Jâtaka. The ancient belief in an innumerable number of small super-terrestrial beings, who as tree or snake gods endanger the life of man, frighten him as man-eating or child-robbing demons or torture him as disease-bringing spirits, occupies naturally in our narratives, which reflect the conceptual world of the lower people, an important place and the art of making these beings harmless or useful through magic practices—a privilege of the Brâhmaṇas as old as the belief in the demons itself—received also in Buddha’s time no small recognition among the people. These people who had power over demons are called in the Pali texts *bhûtavejjas*, knowers of the science of the spirits (*bhûtavijjâ*), exorcists; such a *bhûtavejja* we come across in the Padakusulamânava Jâtaka: the thief who sees an old woman in the hole where he has placed his stolen bundle, believes that she is a *yakkhini* and calls a *bhûtavejja*. The latter enters the hole and recites a magic verse (*mantam karonto*, III. 511). The art of exorcism was chiefly employed where the question was of freeing the “possessed” of the evil spirit dwelling in them. “Some cure men bitten by snakes, the wise cure people possessed by evil spirits,” so it is said in a verse of the Kâmanîta Jâtaka and the method of cure used by the wise Brâhmaṇas (*paṇḍitas*) is mentioned in the commentary: making sacrifice (*balikamma*), incantations for preventing threatened evil (*parittakaraṇas*) and herbs (*osadhas*). “Physicians they resemble,” says Vidhûra in the Dasabrâhmaṇa Jâtaka of these herb-gathering and verse-uttering Brâhmaṇas, and it is probable that not only certain branches of the curative art, such as, exorcism practised upon a person bitten by a snake and expulsion of evil spirits, were practised by the Brâhmaṇas, but that the medical profession in general, which among most people separated itself from the beginning from the spiritual, was in ancient times even in India principally a matter for the Brâhmaṇas. Still there occur in the Jâtakas, side by side with the Brâhmaṇa physicians (vejJabrâhmaṇa, II. 213), some who are simply called vejjas (I. 455; III. 202; visavejjakula, I. 310; vejjakuláni, III. 145) and who probably at a later period, through the unity of a hereditary profession, were bound together to form a caste by themselves.