The Lalitavistara Sutra was written hundreds of years after the Buddha’s death. There is an entire sect of Buddhists, who do not consider such sutras or any other “Mahayana” Sutras as authentic simply because it was never taught by the Buddha.
But for the sake of the argument, even if this particular sutra was authentic, would this sutra hold true if somehow the entire world was dominated by strict Monotheists such as Muslims and Jews ? Much of the Indian subcontinent was already ruled by Islamic Empires. And some nations from said subcontinent today, are Muslim Majority as well. So such a hypothetical scenario was quite plausible.
Doesn’t matter if you were born Brahmin or Kshatriya then, if you were born in a monotheistic theocratic state whose followers wrote laws to have you stoned to death for being a polytheist/pagan(Sanhedrin 60b), does it ?
There is this sutta that mentions some patterns of the last rebirth of the Buddhas. The last seven Buddhas were either aristocrats or brahmins:
Probably, a Sammasambuddha would not arise in such a society. However, Paccekabuddhas might. It is also possible for non-enlightened spiritual leaders to arise with teachings that lead to rebirth in the heavens. Some of these leaders might even be bodhisattas.
the teachings that a buddha won’t be born to a lower caste or as a woman are statements found in the pali canon.
the reason these are so is because being born with power / social mobility, or as a certain gender or race, are matters of past kamma. a buddha is a being who has performed the highest kinds of kamma in the past, and is born with a particular goal in mind - that of asceticism and renunciation for the sake of finding and teaching the eightfold path.
regarding the gender we are born to, the female body suffers far more than the male. a buddha is born with a body that is supportive of an ascetic lifestyle. that’s neither superior nor inferior but simply fit for purpose.
Do we know what were the births of every Buddha though ?
The Historical Buddha may have been born into a privileged family, but he would definitely would not have been considered as high born, atleast in the Vedic sense.
“Worthy Gotama, the Sakyans are rude, harsh, touchy, and argumentative. Primitive they are, and primitive they remain! They don’t honor, respect, revere, worship, or venerate brahmins. Ambaṭṭha despises the Sakyans as “primitives” (ibbha) who do not respect Vedic culture. It is neither proper nor appropriate that the Sakyans—primitives that they are—don’t honor, respect, revere, worship, or venerate brahmins.”
No Vedic Kshatriya would be treating Brahmins as slaves, they would be protecting them instead.
“But, recollecting the ancient name and clan of your mother and father, the Sakyans were the children of the masters, while you’re descended from the son of a slavegirl of the Sakyans.”
Social class is another example of the difference between the indigenous peoples and the incoming Aryans. The Buddha did not subscribe to the validity of the Aryan fourfold social class system (brāhmaṇa-khattiya-vessa-sudda) for it was not part of his ethnic heritage.
This passage bears a striking resemblance to an extra-canonical work, the Mahābuddhāvamsa. It is possible that the authors of the Lalitavistara Sutra drew from sources related to the Mahābuddhāvamsa when composing their text, or the reverse may have been the case. However, I have not analyzed the Lalitavistara Sutra in detail enough to offer a qualified answer.
In Vedic terms, the Brahmins were considered to be of a higher birth than the Kshatriyas (Khattiyas). However, in practical terms, during the time of the Historical Buddha, the Kshatriyas were considered the more privileged class. The warriors were, in practice, more powerful than the priests. From a Buddhist perspective, what matters most is this practical view, as Vedic doctrine itself holds less significance in Buddhist thought.
In any human society, there tends to be some form of social stratification. The caste system in India is an extreme example, but it is not necessarily
a universal feature in all societies where Buddhas arise. Generally, the privileged strata in such societies either hold political and military power (the warriors) or spiritual and intellectual power (the priests). Thus, even if Buddhas are born into one of these two classes, it does not necessarily imply that their society is adopting a caste system like that of India. It simply suggests that those social classes would resemble, in some form, the Brahmin (priest) or Kshatriya (warrior) castes.
The religious thought of Ancient India was more receptive to some of the Buddha’s teachings, such as Kamma, rebirth, and the striving for deliverance from Samsāra. If the predominant beliefs had been too divergent from the Dhamma, it would have been more difficult for the Buddha to establish his Dispensation. Perhaps the potential receptivity to the Dhamma influences the place of the Bodhisattas’ final rebirth.
In the crowded “spiritual marketplace” of ancient India, claiming your founder was a shudra (a lower caste laborer) would be commercial suicide. Humanity, then as now, is hardwired for a compelling narrative of sacrifice. The story of a prince renouncing unimaginable wealth and power is infinitely more potent and marketable than that of a poor man renouncing poverty. The former is a profound sacrifice; the latter is just an upgrade.
I cannot seem to find the exact source for the fact that Bodhisattas in their final life are only born into either Brahmin or Khattiya family. In the Mahapadana sutta in the Dighanikaya - SuttaCentral the Buddha states that the Buddhas - Vipassi, Sikhi, and Vessabhu were born into the Khattiya family, and the Buddhas - Kakusandha, Konagamana, and Kassapa were born into Brahmin families. So the past seven Buddhas have all been born into either Khattiya or Brahmin families. The Buddha Vipassi was born 91 aeons ago which is an inconceivably long period of time.
Brahmin Ambattha called the Sakyans primitive because he was resentful that the sakyans did not greet him with respect when he went to their place. Ambattha later accepts the fact that the Sakyans were of a higher lineage than the lineage Ambattha was from. The Buddha’s aim to raise this argument seems to be to humble Ambattha and to stop him from making further bad merits by disrespecting the Buddha.
And what could be the reason the Shakyans did not treat him well, despite being a Brahmin ?
Why would the Shakyans treat Ambattha’s ancestors as slaves ?
Are actual Vedic Kshatriyas even supposed to treat Brahmins like this ?
Also, iirc, Ambattha does not necessarily accept that the Buddha’s “lineage” was superior to his. He accepts that “Khattiyas” were superior to Brahmins, well, atleast where the Buddha’s tribe dominated.
Now here’s the kicker, the only extant Vedic/Brahmanical scriptures that are absolutely confirmed to be Pre-Buddhist, are the 3 Vedas. And none of them mention the term “Kshatriya/Khattiya” for warriors, they mention Rajanya instead.
So where exactly did the Pali word for Khattiya come from ?
“Aristocrat” (khattiya; Sanskrit kṣatriya) is related to khatta (“authority”, “power”; in eg. Rig Veda 8.25.8 it is an adjective, “powerful”), hence “ruling class”. The sutta, however, relates it to khetta, “field”. The two senses possibly stem from the same root kṣi in the sense “owner”, “master” with the “field” being the dominion owned by the chief. In Pali suttas, the primary connotation of the khattiya was of an aristocratic land-owning class, so the connection with “field” is apt. Khattiyas are often said to be a “warrior” caste, but that is not a primary association in the suttas. They are rarely depicted as having anything to do with the military, which had become professionalized by the time of the Buddha. Nonetheless, at MN 96:10.7 a khattiya’s wealth is said to be the bow and arrow. At SN 3.24, the Buddha argues that someone from any caste could be as proficient a warrior as someone from the khattiya class.”
That Sutta (DN3) is most likely not authentic. An Ambaṣṭha in Sanskrit (Pāli Ambaṭṭha) is the ‘class’ name of a person who is neither pure Brahmin nor a pure Kṣatriya but a person who may have one parent as Brahmin or Kṣatriya and the other parent from another class (Vaiṣya or Śūdra). The social consequence of which is that they are not treated as being from the class of their ‘more-respectable’ class parentage but were either accepted as belonging to the class of their lower-class other parent, or of another lower class than that of both parents.
So an Ambaṣṭha is not a brahmin in Brahminical terms but someone of a lower class. If his parents were Kṣatriya and Vaiṣya, he may be called an Ambaṣṭha too - but Kṣatriyas very likely would not have consider Ambaṣṭhas as brahmins, neither would Brahmins have considered an Ambaṣṭha to be a brahmin. The word literally means (of the mother’s position i.e. a person not entitled to their patrilineal gotra & class).
Here the person called Ambaṭṭha in the DN3, although the Sutta claims it was his proper name, was very likely the name of his ‘mixed’ class and not his personal name. Nobody names their child an “Ambaṭṭha”. The Buddha using this name and concocting a wholly fanciful origin story of his ancestry makes the sutta even less authentic than it might otherwise be, and finally the young Ambaṭṭha, the sutta claims, was forced to confess by duress by a mythical being waiting to strike his head off if he didnt accept the Buddha’s version of his ancestry was right - That makes it even less reliable as an authentic narrative of history.
Using this sutta or its fantasy stories to prove generally that Kṣatriyas as a whole, not just the ruling King or just the Śākyas (whether in the Buddha’s time or elsewhere) generally considered their class to be more highly respectable/respected than the Brahminical class is merely sloppy research. We need better evidence than the Ambaṭṭha sutta, whose very title betrays its concocted nature. The more you read the Ambaṭṭha sutta and understand its historical implications, the less enlightening it gets.
So much is incorrect in this quote. Kṣi (which is connected etymologically/grammatically to the word Kṣetra “field”) has nothing to do with Kṣatriya. Kṣetra has nothing to do with ‘owner’ or ‘master’. The sutta relates kṣatriya to kṣetra because of etymological sloppiness and perhaps due to also the gullibility of their intended audience and not because of anything else more serious. In Pali suttas, the primary connotation of the khattiya was of an aristocratic land-owning class because the aristocratic/noble/feudal/vassal class paying tributes to their king were also likely part of the king’s extended family being potential claimants to the throne somewhere down the line of succession, and wherefore belonged to the same class (as is the case in the British aristocracy even now) regardless of whether they actually participated in wars. That they were feudal landowners is a given but there is no link between agriculture (which is what the words kṣi and kṣetra primarily connote) and being a kṣatriya. In SN3.24 what the Buddha says is it is valour which is useful in battle, not one’s class that one inherits at birth, however the warrior from another class is here presented as an exception to the general rule that it is primarily the kṣatriyas who were primarily expected to fight wars. It is like saying in today’s world that a trained and brave civilian can fight wars better than a soldier who is a coward. That does not constitute an evidence that soldiers dont fight wars today. So take these personal interpretations of most translators with a very large bowl of salt - most of it is nothing more than flights of fancy.
Completely incorrect. Rajanya and Kshatriya are both used in Vedic applied with very similar meanings to the same social class right from the earliest attested sources hundreds and hundreds of times (rajanya fell out of use in a relative sense although still well understood even now as it is a slightly modified variant of the more common word rājan like ‘roi’ denoting the king and ‘royalty’ denoting his class), and virtually all of Vedic literature, including even the latest of the Vedic texts, and a good chunk of pre-Mauryan era Early Classical Sanskrit texts, is pre-EBT. Regardless, the volume of Sanskrit texts there is out there is at least 100x the volume of the EBTs put together - it is not at all the case that extremely common words like Kṣatriya entered sanskrit literary and spoken discourse from Buddhist sources.
Why would nonsense like that be enlightening? The author of the article can’t tell the difference between Nagaraka (the name of a Śakyan town) and Nagakara. Leaving aside the typo, he seems blissfully ignorant of the grammar and etymology behind the word Nagaraka (literally meaning “town/small city”, from the Skt nagara “city” which itself is derived from naga “mountain” affixed with ra by the grammatical rule described at 5.2.107 ūṣasuṣimuṣkamadho raḥ by Pāṇini, and more specifically the vārttika comment thereunder nagapāṃsupāṇḍubhyaśceti vaktavyam) instead taking it to be a dravidian word without offering any evidence whatsoever — should we assume that this level of academic sloppiness comes from an enlightening source?
Except in this instance it is the name of a person ? But of course you know every extant personal name, class name etc that existed during that time period and region. Who is being sloppy here exactly ?
Again how do you know that was the case back then ?
Well, you will need to mention that to Sutracentral’s tech support/translator of that Sutta then
I see, could you name the earliest attested source where “Kshatriya” is mentioned then ? Please let me know about the verse number as well.
Ahh yes, a couple of supposed mistakes/typos and the entirety of an Author‘s years of cross cited research is bogus. By this criteria no scholar can ever be trusted again.
Also do you have any credible source that proves Ambattha Sutta is interpolated ?
I have already noted this above - “Here the person called Ambaṭṭha in the DN3, although the Sutta claims it was his proper name, was very likely the name of his ‘mixed’ class and not his personal name”
So I know enough about naming conventions in ancient India to know that it is not a proper given name, but a class name or a surname - in the same way that I know the name Gautama is not the Buddha’s given name but a gotra name i.e. an remote-patrilineal-ancestry patronymic, while Śāriputra is a matronym and his other name Upatiṣya is a nakṣatra name, he likely had an elder brother called Tiṣya (Pali: Tissa) based on ancient Indian naming conventions, but the Pāli canon makes no mention of his brothers.
There are hundreds or even thousands of cases in the Canon, practically in every other sutta, where people are surnamed routinely after their
clan/family names,
class names,
patronyms,
matronyms,
gotra names,
literary names (based on texts they are associated with),
city/village/region/country names (of birth),
place of current residence names
regnal names (for ruling dynasties),
epithets (based on physical characteristics or qualities),
nakṣatra names (i.e. based on day of the month they were born),
sect-names (sects based either on a religious identity or a secular identity basis),
profession/vocation names,
sub-sect names,
belief-names, and
other kinds of non-given names -
which were and even now is usual in Indian culture. I am from India myself, and it is my job to understand my culture of origin in its totality. Which name is from what etymological source is only understandable to people who know the language and the culture and conventions well enough. So I am not suggesting anything uniquely or out of ordinary about the name Ambaṭṭha. But not every academic or non-academic out there can be expected to recognize these cultural contexts straight away as most of them are not that deep into it as they may pretend to be.
Quoting just one from the very earliest source:
Rig-Veda 4.042.01
a. máma dvitā́ rāṣṭaráṃ kṣatríyasya
b. višvā́yor víšve amṛ́tā yáthā naḥ
c. krátuṃ sacante váruṇasya devā́
d. rā́jāmi kṛṣṭér upamásya vavréḥ
Translation by RTH Griffith:
I AM the royal Ruler, mine is empire, as mine who sway all life are all Immortals.
Varuna’s will the Gods obey and follow. I am the King of men’s most lofty cover.
Of course poor quality research always does makes claims based on such research bogus, regardless of authorship.
You were relying on this paper’s claim to make your point claiming it was enlightening, and I am showing where the claims in the paper you’ve cited are wrong. There may be several other mistakes in the paper that I dont want to waste my time on as the samples I have already mentioned are enough to substantiate my opinion.
My research is original, I’ve been reading and translating hundreds of Pali suttas into Sanskrit and English, and I have explicitly and briefly stated the nature of the problems present in the DN3 sutta itself that I find to be evidences of its inauthenticity as a narrative of historical events. I have just stated a few of the problems, but there are other problems with it too that I don’t state, because this is not a place to be 100% comprehensive and deep about it. I do not need to derive my thoughts from any other secondary or tertiary sources to make my own findings clear, I state my findings of the problems directly from the original text. If you want to compare what I say against what other researchers say about the text, you may seek those other sources yourself.
After a secondary reading of your initial response in your thread, I realise how all the more baseless/nonsensical it is,
Two questions,
1, Is whatever you said mentioned in the Pali Canon itself ?
2,Considering if Ambattha is just that, a mixed class name, here is what wikipedia says:
“Citing the Hindu text Parasara, Leslie mentions that the Ambastha is supposed to treat the Brahmins only, and hence considered as “a clean caste, definitely below the brahman, but certainly well within the twice-born group”.[5] This differentiates the Ambasthas from the average Vaidyas, who were considered “unclean” and were denied the status accorded to the Ambastha.[5] “
So that would make Ambattha atleast a Kshatriya ? If he is Kshatriya, then his rant against the Non-Vedic Shakyans who you consider to be Kshatriyas would be moot. And if he wasn’t, he would still be a Brahmin. Was he not a student of another Brahmin named Pokkharassati ?
That same Sutta says this:
“Now at that time Pokkharasāti had a student named Ambaṭṭha as his resident pupil. He was one who recited and remembered the hymns, and had mastered in the three Vedas, together with their vocabularies and ritual performance, their phonology and word classification, and the testaments as fifth. He knew them word-by-word, and their grammar.
He was well versed in cosmology and the marks of a great man. He had been authorized as a master in his own tutor’s scriptural heritage of the three Vedas with the words: ““What I know, you know. And what you know, I know."
So.. are you still not convinced he was a Brahmin whose Brahmanical ancestors were treated as slaves by the Shakyas ? Would an actual Kshatriya even do something like that ? Much less disrespect a Brahmin ?
Now coming back to your latest piece,
In other words you are just speculating ? How exactly is Levman’s work “nonsensical” but your own statements aren’t ?
So the whole crux of your argument is that because Gautama, Ambattha etc are class,gotta names etc, they cannot be used as personal names or they are fake or something ? By that logic Germanic Names like Schmidt/Smith, Müller/Miller etc can no longer serve as personal names now , just because they were once labour/class/guild related names ? What nonsensical logic is this. So Ambattha’s or Gotama’s name is no longer their name ? I’m sorry, but this seems like a terrible argument based off spurious logic.
And again what’s with the “likely had an elder brother called Tissa” etc, is it more of your “original research”, AKA, speculation ?
Perhaps, I wasn’t being clear, but does the Rig Veda or any of the extant pre-Buddhist Vedas mention anything about “Kshatriya” being a caste/lineage ? The Purusha Sukta for example mentions “Rajanya” as the Warrior caste along with the other castes with no mention of “Kshatriya”.
That “poor quality research” has countless citations/references from other scholarly articles. And what exactly did you “show” again ?
While you could say it is a typo, he actually cites another scholar’s paper, did you have a chance to look into that paper too, or will you call it “nonsense” as well as it suits you ?
And why on Earth are you quoting Panini for backing up the etymology of a Pali word ? Did he synthesize/standardize Pali/Prakrits too ? Who is being sloppy here now ?
That’s all I need to know, given you are the same person, if I’m not mistaken, to have falsely claimed that “Buddhists and Jains call themselves Hindu” in another thread, and then failed to give any proof when called out on it, I’d say Levman’s work is more credible than what you’ve ranted here, notwithstanding the countless other author’s work that he has cited in his paper, unlike your “original research”, but please go ahead and proceed to call all of them as trash,nonsense, or Ambedkarite publications etc as you please, as if that actually changes anything.
The Pali canon is not an encylopedia to mention everything within itself. It needs to be read along with other Buddhist and non-Buddhist sources of the same culture and era. The scholar whose paper you cited as being enlightening is very underwhelming for me, who considers wide reading a sine qua non of Indology. Pali-only scholars rarely have the sufficient background to form valid conclusions about early Buddhism.
That accords very well with my statement that they were not considered Brahmins. Twice-born (Dvija) means the first 3 classes i.e. Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vaishyas - so an Ambastha being considered a dvija does not thereby make him = Brahmin. He could have had one brahmin parent or one Kshatriya parent - but as your quoted source above says, an Ambastha was “definitely below the brahman”, or at any rate not one of the Brahmin class. “Below” or “above” is all subjective hierarchialization so I dont want to get into that.
He would be neither considered a brahmin nor a kshatriya - as your quoted source itself says above. The ambasthas were a mixed class that were considered part of the dvijas (which means they could learn the vedas and participate in vedic rituals, sacrifices and the like - like every other Brahmin, Kshatriya or Vaishya) but they were not Brahmin nor Kshatriya. The Ambattha sutta speaks a bit about the social dynamics between the mixed-parentage classes (such as ambasthas) and the pure classes (such as brahmins, kshatriyas, vaishyas and shudras) - but calling an Ambattha a brahmin there is mostly a misleading polemic against the Brahmanical social order - to advance the fanciful idea that because the Sakyas as kshatriyas insulted Ambattha the (ostensible) Brahmin, Kshatriyas as a whole considered themselves above all brahmins. The Ambattha sutta claims that Kshatriyas are considered the best class over Brahmins but historically that was not the case in the Buddha’s time, so there is plenty of special pleading going on there.
Yes, Ambasthas being considered as dvijas would have the right to everything a dvija could do, including learning the vedas and getting a full Indo-Aryan education and training. Even Kshatriyas and Vaishyas could and usually did get a Vedic education under Brahmins, that doesnt mean they become brahmin by doing so. Even the Buddha would have invariably learnt the Vedas and participated in vedic rituals in his youth, where else could he have got such an insider’s insight into the Vedic religion.
That is just a concocted story that is put into the mouth of the Buddha in this sutta, this sutta is a polemic against the pre-existing Vedic social order, and claims that this Ambattha is a Brahmin, and invents a story of him visiting the Buddha’s land where he was not respected by Kshatriyas even though he was a brahmin deserving of such respect, and then comes the concocted story describing the mythology of an original eponymous Kanha (dark) ancestor who was supposedly treated as a slave of the ancestral Sakyas due to which the present-day sakyas were entitled to treat Ambattha (Kanha’s far descendant) the way they did. Then comes the mythical fiend threatening Ambattha to accept the words of the Buddha as true else warning that his head was going to be be blown to pieces. So under duress Ambattha confesses that the concocted story is exactly as he had heard it from his own ancestors. The whole narrative of DN3 is mostly/predominantly absurd from the beginning.
Actual Kshatriyas could disrespect brahmins, but not normatively. It was a normative expectation that kshatriyas should treat scholarly brahmins with reverence, and brahmins were normally exempted from the death penalty. That doesnt mean actually every single brahmin who may have committed a serious crime invariably escaped being executed.
But all that has nothing to do with an Ambastha who is not recognized as a Brahmin.
It is not ignorant speculation, it is an educated inference. I am a native Dravidian and Sanskrit speaker and I know all 3 languages (Tamil, Sanskrit, Pali) among an acquaintance of other Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages like Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu, and Hindi etc better than most non-Indian academics. People who focus on just Pali studies rarely can make authoritative statements on Indic philological issues such as this. What language or language family a word belongs or doesnt belong to needs a significant knowledge of several languages and their relevant language families. I don’t think your sources evidence this knowledge.
They were not given names, but they were acquired surnames as I have explained above. I can only say a surname is not a given name, and typically surnames in India were not given names. That is the whole concept of having an apatyārthaka taddhita and other taddhita derivatives (both in Sanskrit and Pali). You can’t simply use a given name as surname or vice versa either in Sanskrit or Pali, both of which were in fact not two different languages in the Buddha’s time and which are 90% identical grammatically and etymologically.
Upatissa means ‘Tissa the younger’, so there must have been an older Tissa in the family, typically this was an elder brother. Tissa itself is a ‘nakshatra’ name (i.e. based on a specific day in the month in which the child is born). These kinds of inferences are called educated inferences, which are very unlike uninformed speculations of the kind you’re quoting.
Kshatriya is not a kuṭumba (family) or gotra (patrilineal descendant/coparcenery) or kula (clan) or caste (jāti) but a class (varṇa). There are hundreds of castes that consider themselves as belonging to the kshatriya class, but kshatriya is not a caste by itself.
But are you being facetious? The puruṣa-sūkta of the Ṛgveda mention the 4 classes brāhmaṇa, kṣatriya, vaiśya and śūdra - but calls kṣatriya by its synonym rājanya. So you are saying simply because the author said rājanya, he was not talking of kṣatriyas at all but of another class called rājanya - even though as I’ve said that in 100s of other places in the vedas the word kṣatriya is used instead of rājanya (and almost normatively in classical sanskrit kṣatriya is the word used along with brāhmaṇa, vaiśya and śūdra in the same sense as rājanya is used in the puruṣasūkta).
The source your authority quotes as his authority is Manfred Mayrhofer’s KEWA Sanskrit-German dictionary, and Mayrhofer knew no Dravidian himself either i.e. he was no authority on the topic. Rather the Dravidian languages themselves are full of sanskrit borrowings, and Panini precedes every single attested Dravidian literature.
Anyone can cite “countless”+1 references, but that doesnt mean they know what they are talking about. I am not in the business of seeking tenure in academia, so I dont need to seek favours by buttering up the egos of other academics by citing them ad-nauseum whether or not they are relevant or lend support to one’s own claims. I can hold and defend my own opinions and it is for those academics to defend their own papers. Nobody became right simply because they could quote countless sources of information.
Intelligence and Knowledge are two different things. Someone aggregating knowledge is not ipso facto intelligent enough to make sense of that knowledge, and someone who is intelligent may not know everything of relevance to use their intelligence on. Someone citing countless references are ipso facto neither knowledgeable nor intelligent as a result of it. Their knowledge and intelligence still needs to be demonstrated, and it needs to be relevant to the topic. That is exactly what I’ve tried to do, by quoting Panini and explaining the etymology of the word that your source claimed was non-Indo-Aryan.
You are telling me without telling that you dont know the relation between Pali and Sanskrit. Practically the whole (99%+) of the Pali native vocabulary has direct Sanskrit/Vedic antecedents - that is why Pali is an Indo-Aryan language, and it is not even that different from Sanskrit to begin with grammatically and etymologically. But I am not going to belabour what is perfectly obvious to scholars of advanced Pali so keep arguing about this if you like.
I said they are considered ‘Hindu’ religions under the Indian constitutional law - not that they call themselves Hinduism - as Hindu is a loosely-defined umbrella term used in the Indian constitution comprising closely related religions of Indic origin. Hinduism itself is a collection of several closely related worldviews, some of which are more doctrinally divergent than Buddhism or Jainism is from other strains of Hinduism. So that being the case, if you choose to misquote me, please be my guest, I dont have to argue about it ad-nauseum with a person who doesnt live in India and doesnt know Indian Constitutional law.
The Agannasutta DN 27: Aggaññasutta—Bhikkhu Sujato gives a very detailed explanation of the origin of the four castes during the devolution of mankind.
The Sakyans were very proud of their lineage and they could be very arrogant at times which is probably why they did not show respect to Ambattha. Also it was a common practice to keep slaves during those times and Ambattha was born from a Slave woman.
Indian Buddhists and Jains call themselves Hindus when it suits them, and vice versa Hindus claim to have become Buddhists but there is nothing to evidence such conversions.
Let me know if you want me to dm a screenshot to rekindle the recollection of your faux pax on this very statement. Though I have a feeling your memory isn’t the issue here, your integrity is.
I am a Theravadin Buddhist who originates from India. I can one hundred percent assure you, no practicing Buddhist be it from India or otherwise , will in their right mind, call themselves “Hindu” when it “suits them”, whatever that means.
And you’ve wrote quite a lot just to change the goalpost. How is this proof for your blanket statement that “Buddhists and Jains call themselves Hindus” , that too Indians ?
Perhaps read further on how the revised colonial definition for what constituted a Hindu came to be. Regardless, Buddhists, Jains etc would never call themselves as Hindu, and the Jains in particular have been rather feisty about this for a long time.
If Levman, whose work has multiple references from multiple scholars , and has been overall mentioned atleast a 100 times in other papers, is not credible because you supposedly spotted a few instances of his “sloppy” research, then what does your blatant lack of integrity here make for your own credibility behind your arguments ?
As I’ve mentioned before in another thread, this is getting tiring. This is the longest I’ve been on Suttacentral now. I usually debate in other online forums rather than here, but I always follow one rule, if the other guy is insincere, block and move on, for life is too short to argue with everyone. Now I won’t block you here. But this is definitely my last response to you.
Edit:
Mate… you literally said
“Not that they call themselves”….
So you were aware that I was not simply talking about the “constitutional situation” of such religions, only to then fold faster than a lawn chair when I actually quoted your statement from the other thread. This is not a good look, whatever way you spin it, even with those record number of edits but oh well.
Edit 2:
About that:
Either you are being ignorant here as usual or you are being dishonest, which is not surprising given your previous responses, and what point are you trying to make here ? That religious followers deviating from their practice somehow means that Indian Buddhists and Jains “call themselves Hindus when it is convenient for them” ? You don’t seem to understand how logic works.
Even if you take the constitutional definition of who is considered to be Hindu as an objective fact, that is quite stretching it if not misleading, considering that only India and possibly other South Asian countries that were part of the British Raj consider Buddhists and Jains to be Hindus according to the colonial origin term.
India is not the only country that exists on this planet, but since you live in a bubble where you believe Dalits and Non-Hindu minorities living in India are having the time of their lives and are all dancing under a rainbow in a circle of joined hands, mistaking between subjective and objective truths becomes quite the tendency.
And really ? Quora answers that can be written by anyone including those masquerading as someone else ? I’m not telling this out of assumptions, I’m telling this out of experience. There is a “French CEO” in Quora that goes around intimidating people for speaking against the current genocide that’s going on. That’s how authentic you can expect the supposed identities of Quora users to be.
Again, who is being “sloppy” here ? You are clearly not arguing in good faith, if your previous responses are anything to go by, you are here to spread the classic Hindutva narrative that all is well in India when it clearly is not. Which is why this is my last reply/response to you.
That is true, I said that - and I misunderstood the context of your post earlier so I thought you were talking about the constitutional situation of Buddhism and Jainism.
But yes Jains and Buddhists in India do call themselves Hindus on occasions and do celebrate Hindu festivals like Diwali, Holi etc. This is known to people of Indian origins who are born or live in India, I am one of them. This doesnt mean every single Jain or Buddhist in India calls themselves Hindu, but there are many of them who do.
In Buddha’s time and before there were no castes as we see it today in India. There were only classes. Buddha was born in Sakya clan but the class was “ khattiya” which in that time meant farming. So by all standards this wasn’t a so called higher class. His birth place Kapilavastu was a republic, and his father was a chosen king by the people. Thus it’s wrong to believe “ Buddha’s are born only in so called high caste.
