| The Brahmans claim to direct the religious life and | | | | following an ascetic discipline. They probably belonged |
| thought of India and apart from Islam may be said to | | | | chiefly to the warrior caste as did Gautama, the |
| have achieved their ambition, though at the price of | | | | Buddha known to history. |
| tolerating much that the majority would wish to | | | | The Pitakas represent him as differing in details from |
| suppress. But in earlier ages their influence was less | | | | contemporary teachers but as rediscovering the truth |
| extensive and there were other currents of religious | | | | taught by his predecessors. They imply that the world |
| activity, some hostile and some simply independent. | | | | is so constituted that there is only one way to |
| The most formidable of these found expression in | | | | emancipation and that from time to time superior minds |
| Jainism and Buddhism both of which arose in the sixth | | | | see this and announce it to others. Still Buddhism does |
| century B.C. This century was a time of intellectual | | | | not in practice use such formulae as living in harmony |
| ferment in many countries. In China it produced Lao-tzu | | | | with the laws of nature. |
| and Confucius: in Greece, Parmenides, Empedocles, | | | | Indian literature is notoriously concerned with ideas |
| and the sophists were only a little later. In all these | | | | rather than facts but the vigorous personality of the |
| regions we have the same phenomenon of restless, | | | | Buddha has impressed on it a portrait more distinct |
| wandering teachers, ready to give advice on politics, | | | | than that left by any other teacher or king. His work |
| religion or philosophy, to any one who would hear them. | | | | had a double effect. Firstly it influenced all departments |
| In Gautama's youth Bihar was full of wandering | | | | of Hindu religion and thought, even those nominally |
| philosophers who appear to have been atheistic and | | | | opposed to it. Secondly it spread not only Buddhism in |
| disposed to uphold the boldest paradoxes, intellectual | | | | the strict sense but Indian art and literature beyond the |
| and moral. There must however have been | | | | confines of India. The expansion of Hindu culture owes |
| constructive elements in their doctrine, for they | | | | much to the doctrine that the Good Law should be |
| believed in reincarnation and the periodic appearance | | | | preached to all nations. |
| of superhuman teachers and in the advantage of | | | | |