The Social Organisation in North-East India in Buddha's Time c9.47

c9.47

Similar domestic difficulties a potter encounters who wants to exchange his profession for the life of an ascetic (III. 381). It appears in all these stories where the question is of the retirement of people of a lower class into the ascetic life, that there is some irony which rests upon this, that in the later Buddhistic society such *pabbajitás*, although no doubt they had the right to be initiated, were not considered to have attained full asceticism. Only rarely in the Pali texts are people of a lower caste spoken of as members of the Buddhistic order,² and as this represents according to its external organisation only a development of pre-Buddhistic asceticism, it is probable that even among ascetics the lower castes were only represented in exceptional cases. No doubt in the Jâtakas we come across even Caṇḍâlas who adopt the homeless condition (IV. 392);