Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c7.t1.15

c7.t1.15

The days of the Brahman passed in solemn routine. At every step those narrow, restraining limits held him in, which the holy dignity that he represented imposed on the inner and outer man. He passed his youth in hearing and learning the sacred word, for a true Brahman is he alone “who has heard.” And if he acquired the reputation “of having heard,” his adult life passed in teaching, in the village or out in the solitude of the forest in the consecrated circle, on which the sun shone in the east, where alone the most secret instruction could be imparted openly to the muffled scholar. Or he was be found at the place of sacrifice, performing for himself and for others the sacred office, which, with its countless observances, demanded the most painful minuteness and the most laborious proficiency, or he fulfilled the life-long duty of Brahma-offering, that is, the daily prayer from the sacred Veda. Well might riches flow into his hands by the remuneration for sacrifice, which kings and nobles gave to the Brahmans, but he passed as most worthy, who lived, not by offerings for others, but by the gleanings of the field, which he gathered, or by alms for which he had not asked, or such charity as he had begged as a favour. Still, living even as a beggar, he looked on himself as exalted above earthly potentates and subjects, made of other stuff than they. The Brahmans call themselves gods, and, in treaty with the gods of heaven, these gods of earth know themselves possessed of weapons of the gods, weapons of spiritual power, before which all earthly weapons snap powerless. "The Brahmans," says a Vedic song, "carry sharp arrows: they have darts; the aim, which they take, fails not. They attack their enemy in their holy ardour and their fury, they pierce him through from afar." The king, whom they anoint to rule over their people, is not their king; the priest, at the coronation, when he presents the ruler to his subjects, says: "This is your king, O people; the king over us Brahmans is Soma." They, the Brahmans, standing without the pale of the State, bind themselves together in a great confederacy, which extends as far as the ordinances of the Veda are current. The members of this confederacy are the only teachers of the rising youth. The young Indian of Aryan birth is as good as out-caste, if he be not brought at a proper age to a Brahman teacher, to receive from him the sacred cord, the mark of the spiritual twice-born, and to be inducted into the wisdom of the Vedas. "Into my control," then says the teacher, "I take thy heart, let thy thought follow my thought, with all thy soul rejoice in my word." And through the long years, which the pupil passes in the master's house, he is coerced by his fear and obedience to him. The house of the Brahman is, like the army in the modern State, the great school, which demands of every one a share of the best part of his life, to discharge him eventually with the indelibly implanted consciousness of subordination to the idea embodied, in the one case in the State, in the other case in the Brahman-class.