The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c14.86

c14.86

¹ Sk. *udicca* signifies as an adjective “living in the north” and as a substantive “the land lying in the north-west up to the river Saraswati,” in the plural, “the inhabitants of this land.” That by the *udicca brāhmaṇas* of our text is not meant, as I believe it does, “hailing from the north” but “Brāhmaṇas living in the north”—as Chalmers (Jātaka translation, Cambridge, 1895, pp. 178, 274, 308, 317) appears to suppose—is for this reason improbable that the scene of action of these narratives, in which *udicca brāhmaṇas* occur, is the kingdom of Kâsi. Moreover, in the Saccamkira Jātaka (I. 324) these very words occur: *Bodhisatto pi kho tasmim kāle Kāsiraṭṭhe udiccabrāhmaṇakule nibbattitvā* : “now even the Bodhisatta was at that time born in a northern (or north-western) Brāhmaṇa family in the kingdom of Kâsi.”