Buddhist India

Abstract

THE keynote to Prof. Rhys-Davids's work on Buddhist India is to be found in his preface. He presents to us a picture of Indian social existence at the time when Buddhism first dawned on the world, avowedly depicted from the point of view of the Rajput rather than from that of the Brahmin. Nor is any apology needed for assuming this position. A history of England completed entirely from such references to its social and economic condition from time to time as might be found in the theological treatises of eminent churchmen would certainly not be regarded as satisfactory, and it is an immense gain to our power of realising past problems of Oriental life and civilisation that the learned professor should have been able to marshal so many points of valuable information from independent lay sources, and to give us new views from a new standpoint. He is at great pains to show the real position which the priesthood of India held in the seventh century A.D., when the world was ripe for Buddhism; and he deduces from an analysis of Pali writings (previous to the general adoption of Sanscrit as the classical language of literature) a very clear idea of early Brahminism in days when the alphabet, indeed, had long been introduced to India from Mesopotamia, but when “literature” existed in men's memories and not in the concrete form of manuscript. All this part of the book is excellent. We see the Kshatriyas—of the noble “colour” (not caste) —in their proper position of relative importance to the Brahmin, and the latter by no means enjoying that social status of dominant and arrogant priesthood which we have always been accustomed to regard as even more distinctive of early Brahminism than of the Brahminism of to-day.

Buddhist India.

(Stories of the Nations Series.) By Prof. Rhys-Davids . Pp. xv + 332. (London: Fisher Unwin, 1903.) Price 5s.