No More Learning

Ind. VIII, 176.
3 Attha-sālini, 26.
4 Ibid. 27; Sum. V'il. I, 15. So also Mil. 21, 90 ; Thig. A. 199; Dhp. A. III, 385.
5 Rh. D. , Questions of King Milinda, I, xxxvii ff.


## p. 172 (#206) ############################################

172
[CH.
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE BUDDHISTS
edifying passages selected from an existing literature. It is as if an old
inscription had been found asking Christians to learn and ponder over the
Beatitudes, the Prodigal Son, the exhortation to the Corinthians on
Charity, and so on.
There are
no such titles in the New Testament,
Before short passages could be spoken of by name in this familiar manner
a certain period of time must have elapsed; and we should be justified in
assuming that the literature in which the passages were found was therefore
older than the inscription'.
Further, in certain inscriptions in the Asoka characters of a
somewhat later date there are recorded names of donors to Buddhist
monuments. The names being similar, distinguishing epithets are used
--X. who knows Suttantas, X. who knows the Pitaka (or perhaps the
Pitakas, Peaki), X. who knows the five Nikāyas. These technical terms as
names fir books are, with one exception, found only is that collection we
now call the Pāli Pitakas. The exception is the word Pijaka. That is not
found in the four Nikāyas in that sense ; and even in the fifth Nikāya it is
only approximating to that sense and has not yet reached it. One
would naturally think, if these Nikāyas had been put together after these
inscriptions, that they would have used the term in the sense it then
had, and has ever since continued to have ; more especially as that sense--
the whole collection of the books-is so very convenient, and expresses an
idea for which they have no other word.
Thirdly, the commentators both in India and Ceylon say that the
Kathā-vatthu, the latest book in the three Pitakas, as we now have them,
was composed by Moggaliputta Tissa at Asoka's court at Pataliputta in
N. India at the time of the Council held there in the eighteenth year of
Asok a's reign. At the time when they made this entry, the commentators
held the Pițakas to be the word of the Buddha, and believed also that
the Dhamma had been already recited at the Council held at Rājagaha
after the death of the Buddha. It seems quite impossible, therefore, that
they could have invented this information about Tissa. They found it in
the records on which their works were, based ; and felt compelled to
hand it on. Being evidence, as it were, against themselves, it is especially
worthy of credit. And it is in accord with all that we otherwise know.
Anyone at all acquainted with the history of the gradual change in
Buddhist doctrine, and able to read the Kathāvatthu, will find that it is
just what we should expect for a book composed in Asoka's time. It has
now been edited and translated for the Pāli Text Society; and not a single
phrase or even word has been found in it referable to a later date. It
quotes largely from all five Nikāyas? .
1 See J. P. T. S. , 1896.
2 See the passages collectnd in Dialogues of the Buddha, I, pp. xi, xii.


## p. 173 (#207) ############################################

VII]
THE NIKĀYAS
173
or
The above is all the external evidence as yet discovered, and the
third point, though external as regards the Nikāyas, is internal at regards
the Pitakas. The internal evidence for the age of the Nikāyas is very
small, but it is very curious.
Firstly, the four Nikāyas quote one another. Thus Anguttara v, 46
quotes Samyutta í 126 ; but in giving the name of the work quoted it
does not say Samyutta but Kumāri-pañha—the title of the particular Sutta
quoted. The Samyutta quotes two Suttantas in the Digha by name-
the Sakka-pañha and the Brahma-Jāla'. It follows that, at the time when
the four Nikāyas were put together in their present form, Suttas and
Suttantas known by their present titles were already current, and handed
down by memory, in the community.
More than that there are, in each of the four Nikāyas, a very large
number of stock passages on ethics found in identical words in one
more of the others These accepted forms of teaching, varying in length
from half a page to a page or more, formed part of the already existing
material out of which the Nikāyas were composed. Some of the longer
Suttantas consist almost entirely of strings of such stock passages.
There are also entire episodes containing names of persons and
places and accounts of events-episodes which recur in identical terms in
two or more of the Nikāyas. About two-thirds of the Mahā-parinibbāna
Suttanta consists of such recurring episodes or stock passages? . This
will help to show the manner in which the books were built up.
Several conversations recorded in the Nikāyas relate to events which
occurred two or three years after the Buddha's death ; and one passage
(Anguttara 111 57-62) is based on an event about 40 years after it.
The four Nikāyas occupy sixteen volumes of Pāli text. They contain
a very large number of references to places, No place on the East
of India south of Kalinga, and no place on the West of India, south
of the Godāvari, is mentioned. The Asoka Edicts, dealing in a few
pages with similar matter, show a much wider knowledge of South India,
and even of Ceylon. We must allow some generations for this increase of
knowledge
At the end of each of the four Nikāyas there are added portions
which are later, both in language and in psychological theory, than the
bulk of each Nikāya.
1 S. III, 13 (with a difference of reading), and S. IV, 287.
. For instance, the Samgiti, D. III, 207,
3 See the table of references, and detailed discussion, in the introduction to
Dialogues, II, 71. 77.
4 This point is disc issed more fully in Buddhist India, pp. 28. 34.


## p. 174 (#208) ############################################

174
[ch.
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE BUDDHISTS
All the facts thus emphasised would be explained if these collections
had been put together out of older material at a period about half
way between the death of the Buddha and the accession of Asoka.
Everything has had to be stated here with the utmost brevity. But
it is important to add that this is the only working hypothesis that has been
put forward. It is true that the old battle cries, such as 'Ceylon books' or
'Southern Buddhism' are still sometimes heard. But what do they mean?
The obvious interpretation is that the Pāli Pițakas were composed in
Ceylon - that is, that when the Ceylon bhikkhus began to write in Pāli
(which was about Buddhaghosa's time) they wrote the works on which
Buddhaghosa had already commented. This involves so many palpable
absurdities that it cannot be the meaning intended. Until those who use
such terms tell us what they mean by them, we must decline to accept
as a working hypothesis the vague insinuation of question-begging epithets.
We do not demand too much. A working hypothesis need not propose to
settle all questions. But it must take into consideration the evidence set
out above ; and it must give a rational explanation of such facts as that this
literature does not mention Asoka, or S. India, or Ceylon; and that,
though there is a clear progress in its psychology and its Buddhology, it
gives no connected life of the Buddha, such as we find in Sanskrit poems
and Pāli commentaries.
On the last point the evidence, being very short, may be given here.
There are a large number of references to the places at which the Buddha
was stopping, when some conversation or other on an ethical or philosophi-
cal question took place. These have not yet been collected and analysed.
Then there are a small number of short references, in a sentence or two or
a page or two, to some incident in his life. And lastly we have two episodes,
of a considerable number of pages, describing the two important crises in
his career, the beginning and the close of his mission. Out of approximately
6000 pages of text in the four Nikāyas less than two hundred in all are
devoted to the Buddha's life.
Of the long episodes the first is in the Majjhima', and describes the
events of the period from the time when he had first become a Wanderer
down to his attainment of Nibbāna (or Arahantship) under the Bodhi Tree. ?
The events are not the names and dates of kings and battles, but events in
religious experience, the gradually increased grasp of ethical and philosophi-
cal concepts, the victory won over oneself. The Vinaya, very naturally,
continues this episode down to the time of the founding of the Order,
the sending forth of the sixty and the accession of the most famous
of the Arahants. This episode covers about seven years, the Vinaya
1 Vol. I, pp. 163-175 and 240-249. Repeated at vol. II, p. 93, and again p. 212.
2 Tho werd Nibhana occurs, p. 167.
3 Vinaya I, 1. 44.


## p. 175 (#209) ############################################

VII ]
GROWTH OF LITERATURE
175
;
addition to it being responsible for one. The other long episode, about
twice as long as the first, describes in detail the events of the last month of
the Buddha's life. It is contained in the Digha, and forms a whole
Suttanta, the Mahā-parinibbana Suttanta, referred to above as a composite
document.
We have no space to consider the shorter references, but the following
table specifies the more important, arranged chronologically :
1. Youth ; three residences. Digha II, 21 ; Ang. I, 145.
2. The going forth. Digha, I, 115 ; II, 151 ; Ang. I, 146 ; Majjhima I, 163 ; S. N. 405.
424.
3. His teachers. Majjhima I, 163 ; Samyutta IV, 83 ; Digha III, 126.
4. His trial of asceticism. Majjhima I. 17-24, 114, 167, 240-248.
5. Nibbằna. Majjhima I, 23, 116-118, 167, 73, 248. 250 ; Vinaya J, 1-4.
6. Explanation of the Path. Samyutta JII, 66 ; IV, 34 ; 421 ; Majjihima I, 135,
300 ; Vinaya I, 8. 14.
7. Sending out of the Sixty. Samyutta I, 105 ; Vinaya I, 21.
8. The last month. Dīgha II, 72. 168.
The relative age, within the Canon, of each of these passages, has to
be considered as a question distinct from that of the book into which they
are now incorporated. Towards the solution of these questions some little
progress has been made, and the tentative conclusions so far reached are
shown in the following table.
GROWTH OF BUDDHIST LITERATURE FROM THE TIME OF THE BUDDHA
DOWN TO ASOKA
1. The simple statements of doctrine now found in identical words
recurring in two or more of the present books -- the stock passages or
Suttas.
2. Episodes (not of doctrine only) similarly recurring.
Books quoted in the present books but no longer existing sepa-
rately-the Silas, the Pārāyana, the Octades, the Pātimokkha, etc.
4. Certain poems, ballads, or prose passages found similarly recur-
ring in the present anthologies, or otherwise showing signs of greater age.
5. The four Nikayās, the Sutta Vibhanga and the Khandakas.
Approximate dates 100 A. B.
6. Sutta Nipāta, Thera- and Theri-gatha, the Udanas, the Kuddaka
Patha.
7. The Jātakas (verses only), and the Dhammapadas.
8. The Niddesa, the Iti-vuttakas, and the Patisambhidā.
9. The Peta- and Vimāna-vatthu, the Apadānas, and the Buddha-
vamsa.
10. The Abhidhamma books, the latest of which is the Kathā-vatthu
and the oldest, perhaps, the Dhamma-sargaội.


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CHAPTER VIII
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS ACCORDING TO EARLY
PUDDHIST LITERATURE
The following analysis is constructed from a number of incidental
allusions to economic conditions in the great Pāli thesaurus of the Jātaka,
and, to a more limited extent in the Vinaya, and also in the other books of
the Sutta Pițaka, of which the Jātaka is a part Dr. Fick's admirable mono.
graph Die sociale Gliederuny in Indien is similarly based. That work deals
chiefly with social conditions. The present chapter, on the other hand, is
mainly economic in scope, and only in a minor degree sociological. It is
true that the evidence is drawn very largely from stories. But it is fairly
clear that the folk in those tales have given them a parochial setting and
local colour. And this is frequently borne out by the coincident testimony
of other books not dealing with folk-lore.
The rural economy of India at the coming of Buddhism was based
chiefly on a system of village communities of landowners, or what in
Europe is known as peisant proprietorship. The Jätaka bears very clear
testimony to this. There is no such clear testimony in it to isolated large
estates, or to great feudatories, or to absolute lords of the soil holding such
estates. In the monarchies, the king, though autocratic and actively govern-
ing, had a right to a tithe on raw produce, collected as a yearly tax ; and
only to this extent could he be considered the ultimate owner of the soil.
All abandoned, all forest land the king might dispose of1 ; and under this
right was included the reversion to the crown of all property left intestate or
'ownerless”? a custom which may or may not be a survival of an older
feudalism. The sovereign was moreover entitled to ‘milk money,' a
perquisite paid by the nation when an heir was born to him? , and he could
declare a general indemnity for prisoners at any festal occasion“. Besides
1 D. I, 87.
2 S. I, 89 (Kinrired Sayings, I, 115) ; Jūt, III, 3023 ; cf. IV, 485 ; VI, 348.
3 16. IV, 323.
4 1b. IV, 176 ; V', 285 ; VI, 327.
176


## p. 177 (#211) ############################################

VIII]
TITHES AND TAXES -
177
these privileges he could impose forced labour or rājakāriya on the people,
but this may have been limited to the confines of his own estates. Thus
the peasant proprietors enclose a deer-reserve for their king, that they
might not be summoned to leave their tillage to beat up game for himi.
A
much more oppressive extent of corvee is predicted only of a state
of civic decay? The tithe on produce was levied in kind, measured
out either by the village syndic or headman (gāma-bhojaka), or by an
official (a mahāmatta) at the barn doors, or by survey of the crops
Some of the rice and other grain may presumably have been told off
for the special granaries kept filled for urgency, in war or famine", but
Buddhist books make no clear reference to such an institution. The amount
levied seems to have varied from to 19, according to the decision of the
ruling power? or other circumstances. And the contributions raised at one
or more gāmas (villages), rural or suburban, could be made over by a
monarch (or by his chief queen®) to anyone he wished to endow, e. g. , to a
daughte ron her marriage', a ministerio, a Brahman', a merchant, etc12
Again, the king could remit the tithe to any person 13 or group".
4
We have no direct evidence of such a tithe or other tax being levied
on the commonwealth by any of the republics or oligarchies mentioned in
the Buddhist capon, such as the Sākiyas, Koliyas, Licchavis, Mallas, etc15.
But that they did so raise the state revenue, in the case at least of the
Sākiyas, seems to be attested by Asoka's inscription on the Lumbini or
Rumminder pillar6. The tithe thus remitted on the occasion of Asoka's
visit to the birthplace of the Buddha, must have been imposed by the
Sākiyas at a date prior to the Mauryan hegemony. The Sākiyas and
other republics are recorded as meeting for political business at their own
mote-halls"? , and must inevitably have had a financial policy to discuss
and carry out. That their enactments could be somewhat drastically
paternal appears in the case of the Malla clansmen of Kusinārā, who
imposed a fine of 500 (pieces) on anyone who 'went not forth to welcome
the Blessed One' when he drew near, on his tour, to their town18. These
Mallas were also possessed of a mote-hall (santhāgāra) for parliamentary
1 At Benares, Jāt I, 149; the Añjana Wood at Sāketa, ib. III, 270.
2 16. I, 339. A certain familiarity with oppressive taxation is suggested by ib. V,
99 ff ; cf. I, 339 ; II. 240.
3 Ib. II, 378.
4 lb. IV, 169.
5 Ind. Aạt. , 1896, pp. 261 f.
6 Cf Gautama X, 24 : Manu. VII, 130 ; Bühler, Trans Vienna Acad. Jan. 1897 ;
V. A. Smith, J. R. A. S. , 1897, 618 f.
8 164 V. , 4.
9 15. II, 237, 403.
10 15 I, 354 ; VI, 261.
11 D. I, 87 ; Jat, III, 229.
12 16. VI, 344.
13 lb. IV, 169.
14 16. I, 200.
15 See Buddhist India, 22.
16 J. R. A. S. 1898,546 f.
17 D. I, 91; cf. Dialogues of the Buddha, I, 113, n. 2.
18 Vin. I, 247 (Mah. VI, 36).
;
7 Jā. III,
9


## p. 178 (#212) ############################################

178
(c. u.
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
discussions? —a class of buildings illustrated by the bas-relief of a celestial
House of Lords on the Bhārhut Stūpa? .
Land might, at least in the kingdom of Magadha, be given away, and
in that of Kosala, be sold. In the former case, a Brāhman landowner
offers a thousand karisas of his estate as a gifts ; in the latter, a merchant
(by a little sharp practice) entangles an unwilling noble in the sale of a
park“. And in the law-books we read that land might be let against a
certain share of the produce. The holdings too in the arable land, called
the khetta, of each village would be subject to redistribution and redivision
among a family, as one generation succeeded another. It is not clear
whether any member of a village community could give or sell any of the
khetta to an outsider. It is just possible that the old tradition, expressed
in the Brāhmanas when a piece of land was given as a sacrificial fee-'And
the Earth said : Let no mortal give me away ! 8 — may have survived in
the villages as a communal, anti-alienising feeling concerning any disinte-
gration of the basis of their social and economic unity. We should anyway
expect, from what is revealed in the early Buddhist books, to find such a
sentiment upheld, less by the infrequent rural autocrat and his little king-
dom of country-seat, tenant-farmers, and serfs, than by the preponderating
groups of cultivators, each forming a gāma.
When, in the Jataka legend, a king of Vedeha abandons the world as
anchorite, he is described as renouncing both his capital, the city (nagara)
of Mithilā, seven yojanas (in circumference), and his realm of sixteen
thousand gāmas”. It may sound incredible that a country owning such a
wealth of ‘villages' should contain but one town, and that so vast in
extent, as to suggest inclusion not only of parks but of suburban gāmass.
There was not, however, any such hard and fast line between gāma and
nigama (small town) to warrant the exclusion, in this description, of some
gāmas which may have amounted to nigamas. A similar vagueness holds
between our town' and 'village'.
A gāma might apparently mean anything from a group of two or
three houses to an indefinite number. It was the generic, inclusive term
for an inhabited settlement, not possessing the fortifications of a nagara
or the ruler's palace of a rājadhāni. The number of inhabitants in the
gāmas of the Jātaka tales varied from 30 to 1000 families. And family
(kula), it must be remembered, was a more comprehensive unit than it is
with us, including not only father and mother, children and grandparents,
but also the wives and children of the sons. Gāma, it is true, might be
used to differentiate a class of settlement, as in the compound gama-nigama,
1 D II, 117. 2 Cunningham, Stūpa of Bhārhut, pl. XVI. 3 Jāl. IV, 281.
4 l'in. II, 158 f. (Cull. V'. VI, 4, 9 f. )
5 Āpast. II, 11, 28 (1); 1, 6, 18 (20).
6 Catap. Br. XIII, 7, 15.
7 Jät. III, 365.
8 16. VI, 330.
9 Childers, Pali Dictionary 8. 1.


## p. 179 (#213) ############################################

VIII]
CITIES AND VILLAGES
179
'villages and towns'; but it is also used in the wider, looser sense of group
as opposed to single house. For instance, a fire, when starting in a house,
may extend to the whole gāmal. When a bhikkhu leaves park, forest, or
mountain to seek alms, he 'enters the gāma”,' whether it be a neighbouring
village, or the suburbs of great Sāvatthi'.
Of such cities there were but few in Northern India. Less than
twenty are named“. Six of them only are reckoned by the Thera Ananda
as sufficiently important cities (mahā-nagarā) to be the scene of a Buddha's
final passing away :-Sāvatthi, Champā, Rājagaha, Sāketa, Kosambi,
Benares, Kusinārā, where that event actually took place, he depreciates as
not a 'village,' but a jungle townlet' (nagaraka)". The greatness of
'
Pātaliputra (Patna) was yet to come. In the absence of any systematic
account of this rural organisation in ancient records, it is better to refrain
from laying down any homogeneous schemie. No doubt different villages,
in different districts, varied one from another in the customs of land-tenure,
and in the rights of individual householders as against the community. '
The jungles and rivers of the vast Ganges valley fostered independent
development probably at least as much as the hill-barriers in the Alps have
done in the case of Swiss and Italian peasant communities down to this day.
Around the gāma, which appears to have been classed as of the
country(janapada), of the border (paccanta), or as suburban, lay its thetta,
or pastures, and its woodland or uncleared jungle :-primeval forest like
the Andhavana of Kosala, the Sitavana of Magadha, the Pācīnavamsa-
dāya of the Sākiya Territory, retreates traditionally haunted by wild beast
and by gentler woodland sprites, and where Māra, the Lucifer of seductive
evil influences, might appear in one shape or another'. Different from
these were such suburban groves as the Bamboo Grove belonging to
Magadha's king, the Anjanavana of Sāketa, the Jetavana of Sāvatthi.
Through those other uncleared woodlands and moorlands, where the folk
went to gather their firewood, and litterlo, ran caravan routes, roads
that were at times difficult because of swampy passages after rain, and
here and here dangeroues, less on account of aggressive beasts
than because of brigands not to mention demonic bipeds.
Adjoining or merged into these wilder tracts were supplementary
:
.
1 Milinda panha, 47.
2 Vin. passim, e. g. Cull V v, 12 ; 29. Cf. Thig. ver. 304 ; Comm. p. 175.
3 Jā I, 106 ; Psalms of the Brethren, p. 34, cf. 24; v. inf. p. 208.
4 Buddhist India, 34 ff
6 D. II, 116.
6 Buddh. Ind. 44. f.
? Jāti, 318.
8 16. I , 215 ; cf, V. 46.
9 See Psalms of the Early Buddhists I, II paesim ; cf. II, p. 151. , n. 1.
10 Jat I, 317 ; V, 103.
11. Ib. 1, 99.
>
;


## p. 180 (#214) ############################################

180
(CH.
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS
>
grazing pastures of herds of cattle and goats3 – herds belonging to king' or
commoners). Commoners customarily entrusted their flocks to a commu-
nal neatherd, as we find in the Pennine Alps to-day(le fromageur). We find
him either penning his herds at night in sheds, or, more often, bringing
them back every evening and counting them out to the several owners,
varying the pasturage from day to day? The official name gopālaka and
the context suggest that dairy work was not usually expected of him so
much as sagacity in minding his beasts.
The arable ground of the gāma lay without the clustered dwellings,
since these were apparently enclosed by a wall or stockade with gates
gāmadvāra,, Fences 10, snares', and field watchmen? guarded the khetta
or gāmakhetta from intrusive beasts and birds, while the internal bound-
aries of each householder's plot were apparently made by channels dug for
co-operative irrigation 13. These dividing ditches, rectangular and curvili-
near, were likened, at least in the Magadha khettas, to a patchwork robe,
,
and prescribed by the Buddha as a pattern for the uniform of his Order :
torn pieces of cast-away cloth sewn together, 'a thing which could not be
coveted 14. The limits of the whole khetta might be extended by fresh clear-
ing of forest land's. And whereas the majority of holdings were probably
small, manageable single-handed or with sons and perhaps a hired manis,
estates of 1000 karisas (acres ? ) and more occur in the Jātakas, farmed by
Brāhmans 17. In the Suttas, again the Brāhman Kasibhāradvājais employ-
ing 500 ploughs and hired men (bhatikāls to guide plough an oxen 9,
Rice was the staple article of food0 ; besides which seven other kinds
of grain are mentioned21, sugar-cane" and fruits, vegetables and flowers
were also cultivated.
Instances of collectivist initiative reveal a relatively advanced sense
of citizenship in the gamas The peasant proprietors had a nominal head
in the bhojaka or headman, who, as their representative at political
headquarters and municipal head, was paid by certain dues and fines23.
But all the village resident met to confer with him and each other on civic
1 lb. I, 388.
2 lb. III, 149 ; IV, 326.
3 lb, ITI, 401.
116. 240. 5 lb I, 194, 388 : cf. Rigveda, X, 19.
6 12. I 388 ; 111,149. 7 A. I, 205 ; M. Dhp. Comm. I, 157. A. V, 305,
9 Jat. I, 239 ; II, 76, 135 ; III 9; IV, 370 (nigama)
10 Ib. I, 215.
11 16 I 143, 154.
1. Ib. II, 110 ;IV, 277.
13 Dip. rer.