ries of years, to call the Brahmans back to the high ideals which were in their spiritual heredity, and which had been reinforced when the King Initiates of the Rajput race had accepted Brahmans as their disciples, as recorded in the great Upanishads; a strong and sustained effort at the same time to draw them back from the dangerous path, which, as a class, they were already entering. Unhappily, it must be added that, on the whole, this splendid and generous effort failed. Many spiritually gifted Brahmans were drawn to the Buddha, and therefore to the Lodge, by the splendour of his character and his teaching, as Brahmans have been drawn to the Lodge through the intervening centuries. But the Brahmans as a class went headlong forward on the dangerous path which the Buddha so clearly saw opening before them. They drove his teachings and his Order from India, and they have in fact become the most astute and oppressive priestcraft in the world.
So much in introduction to one of the Suttas, which shows, first, the way in which the Buddha made his potent effort to draw the Brahmans back again to their ancient ideals of a spiritual life; then, the high qualities, gifts and endowments of certain Brahmans, which so fully justified this effort; and, finally, the forces of reaction and obscurantism which were working in opposition to the Buddha’s effort, and which, so far as the whole Brahman caste is concerned, finally gained complete mastery over spiritual aspiration.
The Sutta, like so many of the Suttas, tells a story, and tells it well. And the story is suffused with that fine ironical humour which is characteristic of so many of these records of the Buddha’s teachings. The dramatic elements in the tale are brought out with finesse and skill, and with a delicate appreciation of their ironical colouring.
The Sutta follows a conventional form, and contains many repetitions, and much that is found in other Suttas. Rightly to estimate these qualities of iteration and convention, we should keep in mind that while we think of a volume of Suttas as a book to be read, the Suttas were originally stories to be told, and to be told to separate audiences, each of which might hear one story and only one. Therefore it was imperative that this story should be told in such a way that it would easily be remembered; hence the repetitions of parts of other Suttas, and the iterations within the Sutta itself. Further, each Sutta, each story designed thus to be told, must carry the pure essence of the Buddha’s teachings, so that it might supply spiritual sustenance to those who might hear no second Sutta. Indeed it is an explicit condition of the collection of Twelve Suttas on which we are drawing, that each one of them should contain the Buddha’s teaching and should contain it in identical terms; therefore, while the stories differ, and their differences are exceedingly informative, telling us a great deal regarding the Buddha, his methods and his message, yet the essence of all the stories is the same; each one would serve for the instruction of a disciple, and would set his feet firmly on the path of life.
The Sutta with which we are at present concerned bears the name of the Brahman Sonadanda, that is “Golden-staff” or “Golden Sceptre”, a name which is in itself an outline of his character. But we are given much more than an outline; the personality of Sonadanda is so fully depicted that we see both his strength and his weakness as a representative Brahman; the strength which justified the Buddha’s effort, and the weakness which, growing and increasing in the Brahmans as a caste, was fated to defeat the Buddha’s effort, and to bring that effort to frustration.
The Master, we are told, was journeying through the Anga country, accompanied by five hundred disciples, and had settled for a time at Champa, on the bank of Gaggara lake, a body of artificial water which had been excavated through the piety of Queen Gaggara as a halting place for Pilgrims. By the lake there was a grove of the heavily scented Champaka trees, from whose white flowers, lik