Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.17

c8.17

Let us now examine more closely how far the collective picture of the age of which the sacred texts speak, bears on the question of Buddha’s personality. The Pâli books give us an exceedingly concrete picture of the movements of the religious world of India at the period in which Buddha, if he really lived, must have played a part in it; we possess the most minute details of all the holy men who, sometimes standing alone and sometimes surrounded by communities of adherents, with and without organization, some in more profound and some in more shallow terms, preached to the people salvation and deliverance. There are mentioned, among others, as contemporaries of Buddha, six great teachers, to the Buddhists naturally false teachers, the heads of six sects holding other faiths; and we find one of them, Nâtaputta, according to Bühler’s and Jacobi’s learned researches, mentioned in the texts of the Jaina sects, still numerously represented in India at the present day, as the founder of their faith and the saviour of these sects, with whom he occupies a place analogous to that which is given to Buddha in the Buddhist texts. As regards this Nâtaputta, we are, therefore, in such a position that we possess two groups of accounts—those of his own followers, to whom he is the holy, the enlightened one, the victor (Jina), the Buddha—the texts of the Jainas also use this last expression—and the statements of the Buddhists, who stigmatize him as an ascetic leader, teaching an erroneous doctrine—as a pretender, claiming the dignity which properly belongs to Buddha. The Buddhists, as well as the Jainas, casually mention the place where Nâtaputta died; both name the same place, the town of Pâvâ—a small but by no means insignificant contribution to the value of these traditions. The harmony of the testimony regarding a collateral fact of this description makes us conscious that we are here treading on the sure ground of historical reality.