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LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
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and in teaching to their pupils, the Suttas containing the tenets of their school. Much time was spent in gathering fruits and roots for their susten. ance, or in going into the village for alms. And there was difference of opinion, and of practice, as to the comparative importance attached to the learning of texts. But the hermitages where the learning, or the repeating, of texts was unknown were the exceptions.
Then, besides the Hermits, there was another body of men, greatly respected throughout the country, quite peculiar to India, and not known even there much before the rise of Buddhism, called the Wanderers (Paribbājaka). They were teachers, or sophists, who spent eight or nine months of every year wandering about precisely with the object of engaging in conversational discussions on matters of ethics and philosophy, nature lore and mysticisin. Like the sophists among the Greeks, they differed very much in intelligence, in earnestness, and in honesty. Some are described as “ Eel-wrigglers," “ Hair-splitters," and not without reason if we may fairly judge from the specimens of their lucubrations preserved by their opponents. But there must have been many of a very different character, or the high reputation they enjoyed, as a body, would scarcely have been maintained. We hear of halls put up for their accommodation, for the discussion by thein of their systems of belief. Such was “ The Hall” in Queen Mallikā's park at Săvatthi, and the “Gabled Pavilion " put up by the Licchavi clan in 1 Dialogues of the Buddha, 1. 37 3S.
? Ibid., p. 24.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
