The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c7.23

c7.23

Now let us leave the province of a priori suppositions and take our stand upon firm ground which will form the basis of the inquiry that follows. From the Pali texts and especially, the Jâtakas, we will take the material for the reconstruction of such a picture as the Indian society in Buddha’s age and the field of his work may have presented. Here, however, we must consider that when this picture differs from that which is presented by the Brâhmanical sources, this difference arises not necessarily from local variations but in part from the nature of the texts. Just as the Brâhmaṇa texts, the lawbooks and even the Brahmanical epics reflect very little the real state of Indian culture and just as in reality they represent the state of culture as it occurs in the imagination of their Brâhmaṇa authors, so also in the case of the Buddhist texts, one should not lose sight of the subjective element. The authors of the Pali canon were Buddhist monks, and as such, kept aloof from, if they were not hostile to, Brahmanical culture. The sacrificial ceremony, the study of the Vedas, the Brahmanical caste, in short, everything which gave the Brâhmaṇas their special position, was looked upon as worthless and challenged. Many of the disciples of Buddha belonged, before their acceptance of the homeless life (pabbajjâ), like Buddha himself, to the Kshatriya caste and showed a preference for their former caste even when they entered the monk’s state; many were rich, influential citizens, before they renounced the world, and in consequence of this, looked at their own former condition with more favourable eyes than the Brâhmaṇas; and whoever, among these classes even accepted Buddhism was very likely to view Brahmanism with great and even unjust severity. But the Buddhist monks among whom the tradition spread and to whom we owe its fixation, showed a more objective attitude towards the worldly life which they had renounced and in exchange for which they had adopted the homeless life, than the Brâhmaṇas who were always conscious of their Brahmanism which they spread over the society in which they lived.