The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c14.37

c14.37

That this Brâhmaṇa without property and without desires is even for the Buddhistic narrator a thoroughly honourable person, appears from numerous passages of the Jâtakas, for example, from the Saccamkira Jâtaka (I. 323 sq.), where with a hard-hearted and cruel prince an amiable and sympathetic Brâhmaṇa ascetic is contrasted. The frequent occurrence of *samaṇa* and *brâhmaṇa* together shows that the homeless ascetic and the Brâhmaṇa were for the Buddhist identical, just as for him the attributes of a homeless ascetic, propertylessness and desirelessness, inhere in the notion of a "true" Brâhmaṇa.