The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c8.3

c8.3

"Just so, you monks"—with these words Buddha teaches his disciples in the Cullavagga of the Vinaya-Piṭaka (IX, 1, 4) about the relation of the castes to the Order—"just as the great rivers, such as, the Gaṅgā, the Yamunā, the Aciravatī, the Sarabhū and the Mahī, when they pour their waters into the great ocean, lose their names and origins and become the great ocean, precisely so, you monks, do these four castes, the Khattiya (=Skr. Kshatriya), the Brâhmaṇa, the Vessa (=Skr. Vaiśya) and Sudda (=Skr. Sûdra) when they pass, according to the doctrines and prescriptions of those who have attained perfection, from home to homelessness,