The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c4: Author's Preface
The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c4
- Language
- English
Author's Preface
c4.1
The title requires some explanation and justification. The sources upon which the inquiry that follows is based are the so-called Jâtakas or legends of previous births contained in the Pâli Canon of Southern Buddhism, that is, they are the stories which relate to the five hundred and fifty existences which Buddha in his various forms, ranging from that of an animal to that of a god, must have gone through before his final existence. The true and most ancient germ of the Jâtaka collection is contained in the verses (gâthâs) which exhibit *in nuce* the essential events of the legends and whose number determines the arrangement of the Jâtakas. These verses constitute, with the prose-commentary which gives the legend a more explicit form, the so-called *atîtavatthu*, the "story of the past" which has for its subject-matter the experiences of Buddha in one of his former existences. Each of these stories is preceded as an introduction by a *paccuppannavatthu* or "history of the present times," which tells us of the event in Buddha's life which impelled him to narrate the history of the past for illustrating the events of the present day. Then follows the *samodhāna*, or “connexion” by which Buddha, who remembers not only his own previous existence but that of people around him, identifies the persons of the *atītavatthu* with those of the *paccuppannavatthu*.
c4.2
The Jātakas are most varied in their subject-matter: they consist, in part, of stories, parables or fables of animals, partly, of scenes from Indian folk-life of a cheering or edifying character. Consequently, our source is not only competent to arouse interest in the domain of the history of literature; the collection of legends is of more importance as a reservoir for materials for culture-history. Every account of the life in ancient India which will ever be written in future must take account of the Jātaka which has justly been called a thesaurus of Indian antiquities, State and private.
c4.3
That I have placed the culture which the Jātakas exhibit in North-Eastern India, will, I hope, not provoke any opposition. For although most of the stories contained in our sources are, so far as their contents are concerned, the common property of the Indian people and were known all over India, yet in the form in which they appear in the Jātakas, they belong to a particular part of India, namely, the north-east, the home of Buddhism.
c4.4
Here, in the kingdom of the Kâsi-Kosala and Magadha, in the States where Buddha, according to tradition, lived and taught, the somewhat ancient stories took the garb of Buddhistic birth-legends; here the acts of by far the largest majority of the Jâtakas were performed, and if some particular incidents among them occurred elsewhere, even in the most distant west, still the whole mass of detail, in which all the Jâtakas agree, points to the fact that what we find here is only an external transference of the scene.
c4.5
It may seem to be a very bold thing to take an entirely determinate period, namely, the age of Buddha, for the age of the legends and the state of civilization depicted in them. Taken as a whole, the collection of Jâtakas in their present form surely does not represent any single culture period. Many of the Jâtakas are undoubtedly very old and belong, so far as their origin is concerned, to the pre-Buddhistic period. That they were known in the third century B. C. and that too in the form of legends of previous births of Buddha designed for the education of laymen—for this we have irrefutable evidence in the sculptures in the third century B. C. which are found in the tombstones of Sanchi, Amaravati and Bharhut; these reliefs represent scenes from the Jâtakas and the superscriptions which are added to the individual representations agree with the titles contained in our texts. If these sculptures give us, as the lower limit of the age of the Jâtakas, the third century B.C., there are reasons—as has been shown clearly by Bühler (Indian Studies, No. 3, p. 17 sq. in the “Sitzungsberichten der Wiener Akademie, Philoshist. Classe” Vol. 132)—for placing it in a still earlier age.
c4.6
On the original bed much clay was deposited in the course of centuries, till the Jâtakas came to acquire the form which they at present have. The introductory narratives are, although they relate to the time of Buddha and go back to the older portions of the Pali canon, manifestly composed after the beginning of the Christian era; the conditions described in the paccuppannavatthu, the life of the cloister which is portrayed with the minutest detail and regulated by precise rules, the relation between the laymen and the confederation and many other matters show a departure from the culture-period of the atītavatthu and point to a time when Buddhism had already become a power and ruled over everything. If the view of culture to be sketched by me appears somewhat uniform, it is because the later components of the Jâtaka collection are left out of account; where they have been considered, I have brought out always very prominently their character as *paccuppannavatthu*. Now, even in the oldest form, there was some portion which was specifically Buddhistic and there was a good deal of subsidiary matter that was introduced later to continue the thread of the narrative. In general, we can suppose that our legends have changed very little from their original form, as the oral transmission of such stories is generally true to the letter of the original and has preserved the form in which they obtained currency among the disciples of Buddha and spread from mouth to mouth.
c4.7
Out of the rich historical material which the Jâtakas contain, I have put together in the present work first that which refers to the social organisation and specially to the caste-relationship; from this, the inquiry has no doubt at times drifted to other matters. A thorough-going account of the political and economical relations, as they ruled in Buddha's time in North-East India, I hope to be able to give at a later time on a broader basis by drawing upon the whole Pali canon, but I do not think of dealing with this problem before I have made myself clear on a question without a solution of which a complete understanding of the life of ancient India is unthinkable.
c4.8
The responsibility for this work is entirely mine but I feel it my duty to thank Prof.
c4.9
Oldenberg for various suggestions and kind help. I have also to give my thanks to Prof. Jacobi, who was kind enough to go through the proofs, as well as to my friend and former colleague, Dr. Wischmann, who has also helped me in reading the proofs.
c4.10
The quotations from the Jātakas refer to Fausböll's editions, of which up to now five volumes have appeared. The sixth volume which is being published I have not been able to make use of.
c4.11
Regarding the transliteration of Pali and Sanskrit words it is to be remarked that *c* (च) sounds like the German "tsch" and *j* has the same sound as in the English word 'journey'; *ś* and *sh* are pronounced like the German* 'sch,' *s* is as sharp as "ss" and *e* and *o* are always long.
c4.12
∗ That is, like *sh* in the English word *shame*—Translator.
Linked texts (1)
- Jātaka — Pāli