Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c7.s2.16

c7.s2.16

Soon teachers appeared in more than one place who professed to have discovered independently of Vedic tradition a new, and the only true path of deliverance, and such teachers failed not to attract scholars, who attached themselves to them in their wanderings through the land. Under the protection of the most absolute liberty of conscience which has ever existed, sects were added to sects, the Niggantha “those freed from fetters,”* the Acelaka “the naked,” and by whatever other name those communities of monks and nuns named themselves, into whose midst the young brotherhood of Buddha entered. The name which people gave to these persons of self-constituted religious standing in contradistinction to the Brahmans, whose dignity rested on their birth, was "Samana," i.e., Ascetic; thus Buddha was called the Samana Gotama; people called his disciples "the Samanas who follow the son of the Sakya house." It is probable also that already one and another among the older Samana-sects had gone so far as to attribute to the teacher round whom they gathered, dogmatic attributes in a way similar to that in which the Buddhists acted at a later time with reference to the founder of their Church; the man of the Sakya race is not the only, and probably not even the first, who has been honoured in India as "the enlightened one" (Buddha) or as "the conqueror" (Jina); he was only one among the numerous saviours of the world and teachers of gods and men who then travelled through the country, preaching in monastic garb.