The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c13.s3.t1.17

c13.s3.t1.17

According to Brihaspati the Buddhist family is destroyed either in the present generation or in that of the sons and grandsons (34). The Buddhist is one of those *pāṣaṇḍas* (abominable creatures) or heretics with whom contact is forbidden even in thought (35). Such mores (II. 12-35, III. 15) are promulgated in regard to the other heretics, for example, the *Laukāyatika*, the *Kāpālika* and the *Kṣapaṇaka*. The presence of such prejudices, on the one hand, as well as the mention of *Tāntrikas* (III. 144) as important in the *Dvāpara* age, on the other, may easily suggest an epoch in which the late *Mahāyāna* and the neo-Hindu systems are jumbled together in the social polity. The compiler does not happen to be a symbol of *rapprochement* or synthesis and reconciliation between the diverse elements. We can believe of course that even in the epoch of Harṣa's eclecticism not every Indian was an eclecticist like the Emperor himself. The anti-heretical and anti-Buddhist sentiments of previous epochs have therefore found a place side by side with the pro-Tantrik sentiments of the age of Harṣa and his successor (600-800) in this queer collection that goes by the name of Brihaspati.