Local Government in Ancient India c8.38

c8.38

¹ It is this ‘marked leaning to aristocracy in ancient Buddhism’ which has led Hermann Oldenberg to remark that ‘it seems as if the actual composition of the band which surrounded Buddha’s person, and the composition of the early church especially was by no means in due keeping with the theory of equality’ professed by Buddhism, which did not reserve to Brahmans only the right of entry into a spiritual life, but acknowledged the equal right of all persons without distinction to be received into the order. The Buddha himself describes the actual situation when in his first