Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.s1.t2.13

c8.s1.t2.13

It is the case, as we have seen, that the Buddhist theory acknowledged the equal right of all persons without distinction to be received into the order, and it could not but acknowledge it, or it would have given up the consequences of its own principles. And indeed it does not appear to have been likely to occur that postulants should be rejected contrary to the law, on the score of caste.* Nevertheless it seems as if the actual composition of the band, which surrounded Buddha’s person, and the composition of the early Church especially, was by no means in due keeping with the theory of equality: if even Brahman exclusiveness was not maintained in its full extent, still a marked leaning to aristocracy seems to have lingered in ancient Buddhism as an inheritance from the past. The sacred writings, in what they openly record as well as in what they imply between the lines, give us sufficient means of drawing a conclusion as to these matters. In the first great address which tradition puts in Buddha’s mouth, the sermon at Benares, there occurs an expression, which unwittingly characterizes, and withal criticizes, as briefly as it did sharply, the state of the early Church. Buddha speaks on that occasion of the highest consummation of religious aspirations, for the sake of which “the sons of noble families (kulaputtâ) leave their homes and go into homelessness.” The disciples who gathered round the teacher coming from the noble house of the Sakyas, the descendant of king Ikshvâku, were themselves for the most part "sons of noble families." If we review the ranks of personages, whom we are accustomed to meet in the texts, we find it clearly indicated, that the real situation was by this phrase described conformably to fact; here are young Brahmans like Sâriputta, Moggallâna, Kaccâna, nobles like Ânanda, Râhula, Anuruddha, sons of the greatest merchants and highest municipal dignitaries, like Yasa, invariably men and youths of the most respectable classes of society, and with an education in keeping with their social status.* Besides there were the numerous ascetics of other sects, converts to the faith of Buddha, who undoubtedly occupied, by birth and breeding, the same social position.† I am not aware of any instance in which a Caṇḍâla—the Pariah of that age—is mentioned in the sacred writings as a member of the order. For the lower order of the people, for those born to toil in manual labour, hardened by the struggle for existence, the announcement of the connection of misery with all forms of existence was not made,* nor was the dialectic of the law of the painful concatenation of