Pre-Buddhist India: A Political, Administrative, Economic, Social and Geographical Survey of Ancient India Based Mainly on the Jataka Stories c6.s4.2

c6.s4.2

WITH much hesitation we enter into that mystic and all-pervading world, the world of religious beliefs and superstitions, which has always baffled the most acute mind in grasping and analysing its true character. The material at hand is indeed vast in its scope and weighty in substance. On the theoretical side, the *Jātakas* present before us more or less the same Buddhistic religious thought which we find in other recognised Buddhist canonical works, specially the *Nikāyas*. So that it would be simply tiresome, and not at all necessary, to go into minute details in this connection. Our main interest lies on the other side, *viz.*, the practical one. And, in so far as the stories give us a realistic picture of the religious ideas and beliefs, manners and customs prevalent among the folk, of the pre-Buddhistic days, the information would, we hope, be useful and welcome. Therefore, in the course of our discussion on this, religious, aspect of Ancient Indian life, we shall have to try to leave aside, as best we can, the purely academic and philosophical discussions, hair-splitting debates as the Buddhists themselves would say, which abound in the *gāthās* of this collection, and to get a glimpse of the popular mind and practices of the time, retaining, at the same time, the harmonious connection that may have existed between the two. Just as the beliefs and ideas recorded in the *RgVeda* do not, for the most part, represent the popular or the folk mind,¹ but an advance on, or reform of, the ideas and beliefs commonly held, so also these stories do not, when they speak in didactic strain, represent the mass-mind : they do so only when they mingle with the masses for the time being, and not among their adversaries only. And it is here that our work lies. Here we find ample evidence which unfolds to us the minds of the people at large, their conception of the universe, its regulative forces, the chief sources of detriment to man, and the ways and means of averting the evil influences which now and then assail mankind.