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210 INDIA AS DESCRIBED IN EARLY TEXTS
and girls and for making the journey to a distant place successful.1 Secular Brahmanism provided the people with appropriate rituals for all domestic rites of the Indo-Aryan householders. To bring and keep them within their fold, the Jains and Buddhists were required to suggest better substitutes. But in point of fact, they did the work so imperfectly that even their own lay supporters had to be left to adhere to the Brahmanic scheme of social life and to their own family, tribal, national and local customs, with minor modifications here and there.
The Brahmins as Lakkhaņa-pāthakas suggested certain prominent bodily characteristics of a Mahāpurisa or Great Man. As the early Jain and Buddhist texts go to prove that the Jainas and Buddhists simply utilised them in establishing that the founder of their own order was the greatest of men,
Secular Brahmanism allowed the Brahmins to marry from all social grades, and they did, as a matter of fact, marry girls from all sections of the people. The Jains and Buddhists who were otherwise strongly opposed to the caste system, stood as great champions for the purity
1 Agoka's Rock Ediot, is; D. R. Bhandarkar, Adoka, p. 322f.; R. K. Mookerjee, Asoka, p. 153ff.
8 Aupapātika Sūtra, seg. 16; Digha, iii, Lakkhana-Suttanta, p. 142f.
