Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c8.s1.t4.7

c8.s1.t4.7

Buddha discredited the sacrificial system; he censured with bitter irony the knowledge of Vedic scribes as sheer folly, if not as shameless swindle; Brahmanical pride of caste was not more gently handled. He who repeats the lays and sayings of the poetic sages of antiquity and then fancies himself a sage, is like a plebeian or a slave, who should mount up to the place from which a king has addressed his retinue, and speak the same words and then fancy himself also a king.† The pupil believes what the teacher has believed, the teacher what he has received from the teachers before him. "Like a chain of blind men, I take it, is the discourse of the Brahmans: he who is in front sees nothing, he who is in the middle sees nothing, he who is behind sees nothing, what then? Is not, if this be so, the faith of the Brahmans vain?"‡