Vol. 3 · pages 176–180

163 A SUNKEN PRIESTHOOD The Brahmins, while living on food provided by the faithful, earn their living by wrong means of livelihood, by low arts, such as: (1) Arranging a lucky day for marriages in which the bride or bridegroom is brought home. (2) Arranging a lucky day for marriages in which the bride or bridegroom is sent forth. (3) Fixing a lucky time for the conclusion of treaties of peace (or using charms to procure harmony). (4) Fixing a lucky time for the outbreak of hostilities (or using charms to make discord). (5) Fixing a lucky time for the calling in of debts (or charms for success in throwing dice). (6) Fixing a lucky time for the expenditure of money (or charms to bring ill luck to an opponent throwing dice). (7) Using charms to make people lucky. (8) Using charms to make people unlucky. (9) Using charms to procure abortion. (10) Incantations to keep a man’s jaws fixed. (11) Incantations to bring on dumbness. (12) Incantations to make a man throw up his hands. (13) Incantations to bring on deafness. (14) Obtaining oracular answers by means of the magic mirror. (15) Obtaining oracular answers through a girl possessed. (16) Obtaining oracular answers from a god. (17) The worship of the Sun. (18) The worship of the Great One. (19) Bringing forth flames from one’s mouth. (20) Invoking Siri, the goddess of Luck. The Brahmins earned their living by wrong means of livelihood, by low arts, such as these: (1) Vowing gifts to a god if a certain benefit be granted. (2) Paying such vows. (3) Repeating charms while lodging in an earth house. (4) Causing virility. (5) Making a man impotent. (6) Fixing on lucky sites for dwellings. (7) Consecrating sites. (8) Ceremonial rinsings of the mouth. (9) Ceremonial bathings. (10) Offering sacrifices. (11-14) Administering emetics and purgatives.

164 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES (15) Purging people to relieve the head (that is by giving drugs to make people sneeze). (16) Oiling people’s ears (either to make them grow or to heal sores on them). (17) Satisfying people’s eyes (soothing them by dropping medicinal oils into them). (18) Administering drugs through the nose. (19) Applying collyrium to the eyes. (20) Giving medicinal ointment for the eyes. (21) Practising as an oculist. (22) Practising as a surgeon. (23) Practising as a doctor for children. (24) Administering roots and drugs. (25) Administering medicines in rotation. (INCOMPLETE) zz

CHAPTER 8 Reformers and Their Fate This is a typed bound copy consisting of 87 pages. The Ambatta Sutta starts at page 69 of the manuscript and after page 70, pages are numbered from A to Z. The beginning of page 71 starts with Lohikka Sutta. —Editors. I. Aryan Society. II. Buddha and Reform. III. I It was Sir T. Madhava Raw who speaking of Hindu Society of his time said: “The longer one lives, observes, and thinks, the more deeply does he feel that there is no community on the face of the earth which suffers less from political evils and more from self-inflicted or self-accepted or self-created, and therefore avoidable evils, than the Hindu Community.” This view expresses quite accurately and without exaggeration the necessity of social reform in Hindu Society. The first Social Reformer and the greatest of them all is Gautama Buddha. Any history of Social Reform must begin with him and no history of Social Reform in India will be complete which omits to take account of his great achievements. Siddhartha, surname Gautama, was born in the Sakya clan at Kapilvastu in Northern India, on the borders of Nepal in 563 B.C. Tradition says he was a prince. He received education fit for a prince, was married and had a son. Oppressed by the evils and misery then prevalent in the Aryan Society he renounced the world at the age of twenty-nine and left his home in search for truth and deliverance. He became a mendicant and studied with two distinguished teachers, but finding that their teachings did not satisfy him he left them and became an ascetic. He gave up that also as being futile. By hard thinking he got insight into things and as a result of this insight he formulated his own

166 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES Dhamma. This was at the age of thirty-five. The remainder of his eighty years he spent in spreading his Dhamma and founding and administering an order of monks. He died about the year 483 B.C. at Kusinara surrounded by his devoted followers. To the carrying out of his mission, the Buddha devoted all his days after the achievement of enlightment. His time was divided between feeding the lamp of his own spiritual life by solitary meditation— just as Jesus spent hours in lonely prayer—and active preaching to large audiences of his monks, instructing the more advanced in the subtle points of inner development, directing the affairs of the Order, rebuking breaches of discipline, confirming the faithful in their virtue, receiving deputations, carrying on discussions with learned opponents, comforting the sorrowful, visiting kings and peasants, Brahmins and outcasts, rich and poor. He was a friend of publicans and sinners, and many a public harlot, finding herself understood and pitied, gave up her evil ways to take refuge in the “Blessed One” Such a life demanded a variety of moral qualities and social gifts, and among others a combination of democratic sentiments with an aristocratic Savoir Faire which is seldom met with. In reading the dialogues one can never forget that Gotama had the birth and upbringing of an aristocrat. He converses not only with Brahmins and pundits but with princes and ministers and kings on easy and equal terms. He is a good diner-out, with a fund of anecdotes and apparently a real sense of humour, and is a welcome quest at every house. A distinguished Brahmin is pictured as describing him thus: ‘The venerable Gotama is well born on both sides, of pure descent…… is handsome, pleasant to look upon, inspiring trust, gifted with great beauty of complexion, fair in colour, fine in presence, stately to behold, virtuous with the virtue of the Arhats, gifted with goodness and virtue and with a pleasant voice and polite address, with no passion of lust left in him nor any fickleness of mind. He bids all men welcome, is congenial, conciliatory, not supercillious, accessible to all, not backward in conversation.’ But what appealed most to the India of his time, and has appealed most to India through the ages, is expressed by the Brahmin in these words: “The monk Gotama has gone forth into the religious life, giving up the great clan of his relatives, giving up much money and gold, treasure both buried and above ground. Truly while he was still a young man, without a gray hair on his head, in the beauty of his early manhood he went forth from the household life into the homeless state.”

167 REFORMERS AND THEIR FATE “Such a life as his, demanded not only pleasant manners, sympathy and kindness, but firmness and courage. When the occasion required it, he could be calmly severe with those who worked evil for the Order. Physical pain, he bore not only with equanimity but with no diminution of his inner joy. Courage also was needed and was found; as, for example, in the Buddha’s calm attitude during Devadatta’s various attempts to assassinate him, in facing threats of murder, and in the conversion of the famous bandit in the Kingdom of Kosala, whom all the countryside feared, and whom the Buddha visited, alone and unarmed, in his lair, changing him from a scourge of the kindom to a peaceful member of the Order. Neither pain, danger, nor insults marred his spiritual peace. When he was reviled he reviled not again. Nor was he lacking in tender thoughtfulness for those who needed his comfort and support.” He was beloved of all. Repeatedly he is described or describes himself, as one born into the world for the good of the many, for the happiness of the many, for the advantage, the good, the happiness of gods and men, out of compassion for the world. He left an indelible mark on the Aryan Society and although his name has gone out of India the impression of his teaching still remains. His religion spread like wild fire. It soon became the religion of the whole of India. But it did not remain confined to India. It reached every corner of the then known world. All races accepted it. Even the Afghans were once Buddhists. It did not remain confined to Asia. There is evidence to show that Buddhism was the religion of Celtic Britain.* What was the cause of this rapid spread of Buddhism ?On this point what Prof. Hopkins has said is worth quoting. This is what he says: “The cause, then, of the rapid spread of Buddhism at the beginning of its career lies only in the conditions of its teaching and the influential backing of its founder. It was the individual Buddha that captivated men; it was the teaching that emanated from him that fired enthusiasm; it was his position as an aristocrat that made him acceptable to the aristocracy, his magnetism that made him the idol of the people. From every page stands out the strong, attractive personality of this teacher and winner of hearts. No man ever lived so godless yet so godlike. Arrogating to himself no divinity, despairing of future bliss, but without fear as without hope, leader of thought but despising lovingly the folly of the world, exalted but * Dr. Donald A. Mackenzie. ‘Buddhism in Pre-Christian Britain. Blackie & Son. London. 1928.—Editors