Gaina sutras

Author(s): Hermann Jacobi
Publisher: Clarendon Perss

Page 26

XXX
GAINA SUTRAS.
confined, at least in the first two centuries of their church, to a small part of the country, and therefore could not have been imitated by all the Samnyâsins; thirdly, Gautama, the lawgiver, was certainly older than the rise of Buddhism. For Professor Bühler thinks that the lower
limit for the composition of the Âpastamba Sûtra must be placed in the fourth or fifth century B. C.1 Baudhâyana is older than Âpastamba; according to Bühler, the distance in years between them must be measured rather by centuries than by decades. Again, Gautama is older than Baudhâyana. Gautama, therefore, and perhaps Baudhâyana, must have lived before the rise of Buddhism, and as the former teaches already the complete system of Brahmanic ascetism, he cannot have borrowed it from the Buddhists. But if Bühler should be wrong in his estimation of the time when those codes of sacred laws were composed, and if they should turn out to be younger than the rise of Buddhism, they certainly cannot be so by many centuries. Even in that case, which is not a probable one, those lawgivers are not likely to have largely borrowed from the Buddhists whom the Brahmans at that time must have despised as false pretenders of a recent origin. They would certainly not have regarded laws as sacred which were evidently appropriated from heretics. On the other hand the Buddhists had no reason not to borrow from the Brâhmans, because they greatly respected the latter for the sake of their intellectual and moral superiority. Hence the Gainas and Buddhists use the word Brahmana as an honorific title, applying it even to persons who did not belong to the caste of Brâhmans.
It may be remarked that the monastical order of the Gainas and Buddhists though copied from the Brâhmans were chiefly and originally intended for Kshatriyas. Buddha addressed himself in the first line to noble and rich men, as has been pointed out by Professor Oldenberg. For
1 Sacred Laws of the Aryas, part i, introduction, p. xliii. 2 L. c. p. xxii.
3 L. c. p. xlix.
* Buddha, sein Leben, &c., p. 157 seq.