Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c7.t1.8

c7.t1.8

In a Vedic work, the “Brahmana of the hundred paths,” we have a remarkable legend, in which is clearly depicted the course which the extension of the cult and culture of the Veda took. The flaming god Agni Vaiçvânara, the sacrificial fire, wanders eastward from the river Sarasvatî, beyond the old sacred home-land of the Vedic Sacra. Rivers cross his path, but Agni burns on across all streams, and after him follow the prince Mâthava and the Brahman Gotama. Thus they came to the river Sadânîrâ, which flows down from the snowy mountains in the north: Agni does not cross it. “Brahmans crossed it not in former ages for Agni Vaiçvânara had not burned beyond it. But now many Brahmans dwelt beyond it to the east. This was formerly very bad land, inundated soil, for Agni Vaiçvânara had not made it habitable. But now it is very good land, for Brahmans have since made it enjoyable through offerings;"—in India bad land is not converted into good, as in the rest of the world, by peasants who plough and dig, but by sacrificing Brahmans. Prince Mâthava takes up his abode to the east of the Sadânîrâ, in the bad land, which Agni had not essayed to enter. His descendants are the rulers of Videha. The opposition is clear in which these legends place the eastern tribes to the western, among whom Agni Vaiçvânara, the ideal champion of Vedic life, is from of old at home. Whoever pursues an inquiry into the beginning of the extension of Buddhism, must remember that the home of the oldest Buddhist communities lies in the tracts or near the limits of those tracts, into which Agni Vaiçvânara did not cross in his flaming course when he travelled to the east.