The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c14.177

c14.177

With the Brâhmaṇa agriculturists, merchants, hunters and carpenters we leave the solitary height upon which is enthroned the Brâhmaṇa, who is raised according to his own theory above all other members of society, and descend to the motley groups of people where the care for material existence drives out all spiritual interests and throws into the shade the question relating to birth and caste. Or, shall we suppose that even here the Brâhmaṇa, remembering the special rights and duties, arising from his belonging to the Brâhmaṇa caste, separates himself clearly from the rest of the population, that along with his (so to speak) civil occupation he has practised sacerdotal functions and in that way has secured a certain superiority over other classes? The Jâtakas give no instance from which such a double function can be inferred. Something must have been said somewhere in our sources of one of these Brâhmaṇa agriculturists or tradesmen which related to specifically Brahmanical functions and stamped him as a Brâhmaṇa. The poor Brahmana farmer of the Somadatta Jâtaka (II. 165) whom his son forces at great pains to commit to memory a verse and who at the decisive moment says before the king exactly the opposite of what he wants to say, does not give one the impression that he can help his neighbours with advice in spiritual things.¹ We have to suppose in that age gradations and contradictions within the Brâhmaṇa caste similar to those which India of to-day shows, where a wide gap separates the proud priests of Benares and the pandits of Bihar in their spotless garments from the potato-cultivating Brâhmaṇas of Orissa, half-naked farmers whom no one would think of as belonging to their caste, if the ornamental piece of Brahmanical thread round their neck had not proclaimed this.¹