CHAPTER II

THE STAGE ON WHICH S'AKYAMUNI MADE HIS APPEARANCE

THE Sutras which are commonly received as giving an authentic account of the teachings of the S'akyamuni, will also furnish us with certain geographical and other data which are necessary for us if we would form a correct picture of India in the sixth century B.C., the India in which S'akyamuni taught and laboured.

We need not take a very wide geographical survey. What actually concerns us is a small portion of the valley of the Ganges, comprising practically the two districts of Oudh and Behar, stretching to the east as far as Patna, to the west as far as Allahabad. The Himalayas form the northern boundary of S'akyamuni's country, the Ganges is practically its southern limit; the only exception being that Bodhigaya and the district intimately connected with the Enlightenment of the Tathagata lie to the south of

the sacred river. Later developments of the Buddhist communities may make it necessary for us to enlarge our geographical inquiries, but for the present these boundaries will suffice for our consideration. They will enable us to follow the life of the Great Master in all its principal phases.

The Buddhist Sutras tell us a good deal about the population of the country in which the Wheel of the Law was set in motion.

The India of S'akyamuni's time was under the domination of an Aryan race, which had conquered the land and brought into it institutions not unlike those which we find in some other Aryan countries, Athens, for instance. They had divided the population into four great castes, of whom the fourth, possibly also the third, may have been mixed with some of the conquered races, whilst the two higher ones certainly belonged to the nobility of the conquest. In S'akyamuni's time the Sudras, or low-caste people, and the Vais'yas, or merchants and farmers, lived quietly, without any part or lot in the privileges of national life, contented to devote themselves to the pursuit of their several vocations; the Kshatriyas and Brahmans, having accomplished the subjugation of the other two castes, were struggling against each other for supremacy in State and Society. Chief among the Kshatriyan tribes which resisted the supremacy claimed by the Brahmans were the clans known collectively as the S'akyans, who were politically supreme in the districts actually affected by S'akyamuni's life. S'akyan was, however, only a collective name: the clans were distinguished