Vol. 3 · pages 186–190

173 REFORMERS AND THEIR FATE There was no rule of chastity for maidens. A girl could have sexual intercourse with and also progeny from anybody without contracting marriage. This is evident from the root meaning of the word Kanya which means a girl. Kanya comes from the root Kam which means a girl free to offer herself to any man. That they did offer themselves to any man and had children without contracting regular marriage is illustrated by the case of Kunti and Matsyagandha. Kunti had children from different men before she was married to Pandu and Matsyagandha had sexual intercourse with the sage Parashara before she was married to Shantanu the father of Bhishma. Beastiality was also prevalent among the Aryans. The story of the sage Dam having sexual intercourse with a female deer 1 is well known. Another instance is that of Surya cohabiting with a mare 2. But the most hideous instance is that of the woman having sexual intercourse with the horse in the Ashvamedha Yadna. The religion of the Aryan consisted of the Yadna or sacrifice. The sacrifice was a means to enter into the godhead of the gods, and even to control the gods. The traditional sacrifices were twenty one in number divided into three classes of seven each. The first were sacrifices of butter, milk, corn, etc. The second class covered Soma sacrifices and third animal sacrifices. The sacrifice may be of short duration or long duration lasting for a year or more. The latter was called a Sattra. The argument in favour of the sacrifice is that eternal holiness is won by him that offers the sacrifice. Not only a man’s self but also his Manes stood to benefit by means of sacrifice. He gives the Manes pleasure with his offering, but he also raises their estate, and sends them up to live in a higher world. 3 The sacrifice was by no means meant as an aid to the acquirement of heavenly bliss alone. Many of the great sacrifices were for the gaining of good things on earth. That one should sacrifice without the ulterior motive of gain is unknown. Brahmanic India knew no thank offering. Ordinarily the gain is represented as a compensating gift from the divinity, whom they sacrifice. The sacrifice began with the recitation: “He offers the sacrifice to the god with this text: ‘Do thou give to me (and) I (will) give to thee; do thou bestow on me (and) I (will) bestow on thee’.” The ceremony of the sacrifice was awe-inspiring. Every word was pregnant with consequences and even the pronunciation of the word or accent was fateful. There are indications, however, that the priest themselves understood that, much in the ceremonial was pure hocuspocus, and not of much importance as it was made out to be. 1 Mahabharat Adhyaya 1-118. 2 Ibid. Adhyaya 66. 3 This is taken from Hopkins—The Religions of India.

174 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES Every sacrifice meant fee to the priest. As to fee, the rules were precise and their propounders were unblushing. The priest performed the sacrifice for the fee alone, and it must consist of valuable garments, kine, horses or gold—when each was to be given was carefully stated. The priests had built up a great complex of forms, where at every turn fees were demanded. The whole expense, falling on one individual for whose benefit the sacrifice was performed, must have been enormous. How costly the whole thing became can be seen from the fact that in one place the fee for the sacrifice is mentioned as one thousand cows. For this greed, which went so far that he proclaimed that he who gives a thousand cows obtains all things of heaven. The priest had a good precedent to cite, for, the gods of heaven, in all tales told of them, ever demand a reward from each other when they help their neighbour gods. If the Gods seek rewards, the priest has a right to do the same. The principal sacrifice was the animal sacrifice. It was both costly and barbaric. In the Aryan religion there are five sacrificial animals mentioned. In this list of sacrificial animals man came first. The sacrifice of a man was the costliest. The rules of sacrifice required that the individual to be slaughtered must be neither a priest nor a slave. He must be a Kshatriya or Vaishya. According to the ordinary valuation of those times the cost of buying a man to be sacrificed was one thousand cows. Besides being costly and barbaric, it must have been revolting because the sacrificers had not only to kill the man but to eat him. Next to man came the horse. That also was a costly sacrifice because the horse was a rare and a necessary animal for the Aryans in their conquest of India. The Aryans could hardly afford such a potent instrument of military domination to be offered as sacrifice. The sacrifice must have been revolting in as much as one of the rituals in the horse-sacrifice was the copulation of the horse before it was slaughtered with the wife of the sacrificer. The animals most commonly offered for sacrifice were of course the cattle which were used by the people for their agricultural purposes. They were mostly cows and bullocks. The Yadnas were costly and they would have died out of sheer considerations of expense involved. But they did not. The reason is that the stoppage of Yadna involved the question of the loss of the Brahmin’s fees. There could be no fees if the Yadna ceased to be performed and the Brahmin would starve. The Brahmin therefore found a substitute for the costly sacrificial animals. For a human sacrifice the Brahmin allowed as a substitute for a live man, a man of straw or metal or earth. But they did not altogether give up human sacrifice for fear that this Yadna might be stopped and they should

175 REFORMERS AND THEIR FATE lose their fees. When human sacrifice became rare, animal sacrifice came in as a substitute. Animal sacrifice was also a question of expense to the laity. Here again rather than allow the sacrifice to go out of vogue, the Brahmins came forward with smaller animals for cattle just as cattle had been allowed to take the place of the man and the horse. All this was for the purpose of maintaining the Yadna so that the Brahmin did not lose his fees which was his maintenance. So set were the Brahmins on the continuance of the Yadna that they were satisfied with merely rice as an offering. It must not however be supposed that the institution of substitutes of the Yadnas of the Aryans had become less horrid. The introduction of substitutes did not work as a complete replacement of the more expensive and more ghastly sacrifice by the less expensive and the more innocent. All that it meant was that the offering may be according to the capacity of the sacrificer. If he was poor his offering may be rice. If he was well to do it might be a goat. If he was rich it might be a man, horse, cow or a bull. The effect of the subsitutes was that the Yadna was brought within the capacity of all so that the Brahmin reaped a larger harvest of feast on the total. It did not have the effect of stopping animal sacrifice. Indeed animals continued to be sacrificed by the thousands. The Yadna often became a regular carnage of cattle at which the Brahmins did the work of butchers. One gets some idea of the extent of this carnage of innocent animals from references to the Yadnas which one comes across in Buddhist literature. In the Suttanipat a description is given of the Yadna that was arranged to be performed by Pasenadi, king of Kosala. It is stated that there were tied to the poles for slaughter at the Yadna five hundred oxen, five hundred bulls, five hundred cows, five hundred goats and five hundred lambs and that the servents of the king who were detailed to do the jobs according to the orders given to them by the officiating Brahmin priests were doing their duties with tears in their eyes. The Yadna besides involving a terrible carnage was really a kind of carnival. Besides roast meet there was drink. The Brahmins had Soma as well as Sura. The others had Sura in abundance. Almost every Yadna was followed by gambling and what is most extraordinary is that, side by side there went on also sexual intercourse in the open. Yadna had become debauchery and there was no religion left in it. The Aryan religion was just a series of observances. Behind these observances there was no yearning for a good and a virtuous life. There was no hunger or thirst for rightousness. Their religion was without any spiritual content. The hymns of the Rig Veda furnish very

176 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES good evidence of the absence of any spiritual basis for the Aryan religion. The hymns are prayers addressed by the Aryans to their gods. What do they ask for in these prayers ? Do they ask to be kept away from temptation ? Do they ask for deliverance from evil ? Do they ask for forgiveness of sins? Most of the hymns are in praise of Indra. They praise him for having brought destruction to the enemies of the Aryans. They praise him because he killed all the pregnant wives of Krishna, an Asura. They praise him because he destroyed hundreds of villages of the Asuras. They praise him because he killed lakhs of Dasyus. The Aryans pray to Indra to carry on greater destruction among the Anaryas in the hope that they may secure to themselves the food supplies of the Anaryas and the wealth of the Anaryas. Far from being spiritual and elevating, the hymns of the Rig-Veda are saturated with wicked thoughts and wicked purposes. The Aryan religion never concerned itself with what is called a righteous life. II Such was the state of the Aryan Society when Buddha was born. There are two pertinent questions regarding Buddha as a reformer who laboured to reform the Aryan Society. What were the chief planks in his reform ? To what extent did he succeed in his reform movement ? To take up the first question. Buddha felt that for the inculcation of a good and a pure life, example was better than precept. The most important thing he did was to lead a good and a pure life so that it might serve as a model to all. How unblemished a life he led can be gathered from the Brahma-Jala Sutta. It is reproduced below because it not only gives an idea of the pure life that Buddha led but it also gives an idea of how impure a life the Brahmins, the best among the Aryans led. Brahma Jala Sutta 1. Thus have I heard. The Blessed One was once going along the high road between Rajagaha and Nalanda with a great company of the brethren with about five hundred brethren. And Suppiya the mendicant too was going along the high road between Rajagaha and Nalanda with his disciple the young Brahmadatta. Now just then Suppiya the mendicant was speaking in many ways in dispraise of the Buddha, in dispraise of the Doctrine, in dispraise of the Order. But young Brahmadatta, his pupil, gave utterance, in many ways, to praise of the Buddha, to praise of the Doctrine, to praise of the Order. Thus they two, teacher and pupil, holding opinions in direct contradiction of one to the other, were following, step by step, after the Bleased one and the company of the brethren.

177 REFORMERS AND THEIR FATE 2. Now the Blessed one put up at the royal rest-house in the Ambalatthika pleasance to pass the night, and with him the company of the brethren. And so also did Suppiya the mendicant, and with him his young disciple Brahmadatta. And there, at the rest-houses, these two carried on the same discussion as before. 3. And in the early dawn a number of the brethren assembled as they rose up, in the pavilion; and this was the trend of the talk that sprang up among them, as they were seated there. ‘How wonderful a thing is it, brethren, and how strange that the Blessed One, he who knows and sees, the Arahat, the Buddha Supreme, should so clearly have perceived how various are the inclination of men! For see how while Suppiya the mendicant speaks in many ways in dispraise of the Buddha, the Doctrine, and the Order, his own disciple, young Brahmadatta, speaks, in as many ways, in praise of them. So do these two, teacher and pupil, follow step by step after the Blessed One and the company of the brethren, giving utterance to views in direct contradiction of one to the other. 4. Now the Blessed One, on realising what was the drift of their talk, went to the pavilion, and took his seat on the mat spread out for him. And when he had sat down he said: “What is the talk on which you are engaged sitting here, and what is the subject of the conversation between you ?” And they told him all. And he said: 5. Brethren, if outsiders should speak against me, or against the Doctrine, or against the Order, you should not on that account either bear malice, or suffer heart-burning, or feel ill-will. If you, on that account, should be angry and hurt, that would stand in the way of your own self-conquest. If, when others speak against us, you feel angry at that, and displeased, would you then be able to judge how far that speach of theirs is well said or ill? ‘That would not be so, Sir.’ ‘But when outsiders speak in dispraise of me, or of the Doctrine, or. of the Order, you should unravel what is false and point it out as wrong, saying: “For this or that reason this is not the fact, that is not so, such a thing is not found among us, is not in us.” 6. But also, brethren, if outsiders should speak in praise of me, in praise of the Doctrine, in praise of the Order, you should not, on that account, be filled with pleasure or gladness, or be lifted up in heart. Were you to be so that also would stand in the way of your self-conquest. When outsiders speak in praise of me, or of the Doctrine, or of the Order, you should acknowledge what is right to be the fact, saying: “For this or that reason this is the fact, that is so, such a thing is found among us, is in us.”