[Pramāṇa](https://indike.org/pramana/) › [Studies](https://indike.org/pramana/ins) › [Polity, law and society](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity) › [The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.fick-1897) › c19.5 # The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c19.5 The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c19.5 - **Language:** English ### [c19.5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.fick-1897.c19.5) Later, in the course of centuries, the játis, as we know them in the Jâtakas, have experienced continuous changes under the most divers influences: the official theory of the Brâhmaṇas, ethnical and geographical influences, the tendency of the Indians to schematise, the placing of the concepts "profession" and "caste" side by side—all this has worked upon the játis, transformed them and made them resemble one another more and more, so far as their essence and organisation are concerned, until, finally, they became modern castes. This process of transformation is in no way, as one hears it maintained so often to-day, broken by Buddhism, nay, not even retarded. Buddha's doctrine does not aim at a transformation or improvement of the social conditions: the worldly life and its forms are a matter of indifference to the virtuous Buddhist who renounces the world. He never raises the question whether the worldly life could be different from what it is but accepts it in its incompleteness and badness as something unchangeable. The destiny of man, the external organisation of his earthly life is for the Buddhist a necessary consequence of his karman, his former deeds: wealth or poverty, high or low caste, the individual has deserved through his deeds in a former existence. The human social order was for the Indians even of that time a reproduction of natural life and moved, according to their view, like this in eternally identical paths; he who was born a Caṇḍāla must—so long as he did not retire from human society and pass into asceticism—remain a Caṇḍāla during his life-time and bear the lot of such a one, just as everybody who expiates the sins of former existence by re-birth as low beast, has to live through the whole existence of such a beast till death makes him pass into another existence. - [Previous: c19.4](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.fick-1897.c19.4) - [Next: c19.6](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.fick-1897.c19.6) - [Up: c19](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.fick-1897.c19) --- Source: [https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.fick-1897.c19.5](https://indike.org/pramana/ins.polity.fick-1897.c19.5) · Pramāṇa