Buddha and his Dhamma Written by Dr. B R Ambedkar Samarthya India - Dalit Parivar www.onlinejaibhim.com AUTHOR OF THE BOOK: Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (M.A, PH.D, LL.D., D.LITT., D. Sc, BARRISTER-AT-LAW) Born: 14th April 1891 Dhammadeeksha: 14th October 1956 (Asok Viajayadashmi ) Mahaparinirvana: 6th December 1956 2 Samarthya India - Dalit Parivar www.onlinejaibhim.com PREFACE: In response to the request by Buddhist here in India and elsewhere in the Buddhist countries of the world and also by some philosophers and religious leaders in other countries, we are now bringing out a second edition of "The Buddha and His Dhamma". We had first published Dr. Ambedkar's "The Buddha and His Dhamma" in 1957 almost within a year of his Nirvana. As this new and consistent commentary of the Dhamma by Dr. Ambedkar became almost the Bible of the Indian Buddhists, we later published a Hindi as well as Marathi version of The Dhamma. These publications served a very useful purpose to Indian Buddhist who treat this book as the New Testament for studying The Dhamma singly or in groups in their localities and for devoting some of their time every day to reflect on it. It is the way of the Buddha without comparison that they find a substantial source of religious inspiration. After attaining omniscient enlightenment on Wednesday the Vaishakha Purnima day in 588 B.C., the Buddha taught the Dhamma for 45 years by discourse on the truth of sufferings, the truth of the origin of sufferings, the truth of the cessation of sufferings and the truth of the path leading to the cessation of sufferings. The first conversion of Buddhism was started by the Blessed One with the five Parivrajakas after the first discourse (Dhamma Chakka Pavattan Sutta) to them and then with Yesa and his 54 companions at Sarnath in Isipatana who all became Arahats and ended after 45 years on the Vaishakha Purnima at Kusinara with the conversion of the Malla Princes of Kusinara and Subhadda who all became Arahats. During the life of the Buddha, Buddhism was confined only to the valley of Ganges. After the funeral, the relics of the 3 Samarthya India - Dalit Parivar www.onlinejaibhim.com Buddha were distributed among the kings of Northern and Central Indian and the Stupas were built over them. In later centuries the relics were to be of great importance in the expansion of Buddhism which spread to other parts of India and Ceylon, Burma and South East Asia and elsewhere later on. During the period when the Buddha lived, there were three religious views prevalent in this country, they were: (1) different conditions of life are due to good and evil actions done in their former existence (past Karma); (2) all the creations and conditions of life are the products of the will of God, who never dies; (3) there is no cause for coming into existence and all the beings are of spontaneous existence. The views, as a result of the changing concept of the word ‗religion‘, were passing from one stage to the other. The world ‗religion‘, according to Dr. Ambedkar, is an unidentified word with no fixed meaning and this is because ‗religion‘ has passed through many stages. The concept of each stage was called religious thought. The concept at one stage has not had the same connotation which it had in the preceding stage. Its meaning is likely to differ in the succeeding stage. The concept of religion was never fixed but it has varied from time to time. As primitive man could not explain most of the phenomena such as lightning, rain and floods, any weird performance done to control these phenomena was called magic and religion therefore came to be identified with magic. Then came the second stage in the evolution of religion and in this stage, religion came to be identified with beliefs, rituals, ceremonies, prayers and sacrifices. The Vedas are a collection of Mantras which are invocations to Indra, 4 Samarthya India - Dalit Parivar www.onlinejaibhim.com Varuna, Agni, Soma and others. They are prayers with rituals for help and gift and for acceptance of offerings. Some sages have also speculated philosophically on the origin of the world and on the being who created it with belief and faith as a pivot. But this concept of belief that there existed some power which caused this phenomenon which a primitive man did not know and could not understand. Magic therefore lost its place at this stage and this power which was originally malevolent was felt to be benevolent and this led to beliefs, rites, ceremonies and sacrifices which became necessary both to venerate a benevolent power and also to propitiate an angry power. Later that power was called God or Creator. Then came the third stage, that it is this God who created this world and also man. This was followed by the belief that man has a soul and the soul is eternal and is answerable to God for man‘s action in the world. This in short was the evolution concept of religion at the time when Buddha was born. Thus was it that religion has come to be, connoted belief in God, belief in the soul, worship of God, curing of the erring soul, propitiating God by Prayers, Ceremonies, Sacrifices etc. The Vedas and the other scriptures therefore speculated on this philosophy and those who wrote them at that time were a historical product of their environment, in which the above doctrines had flourished during before their time. What Buddha called the Dhamma differed fundamentally from what was called religion at that time. Buddha‘s Dhamma was based on doctrines which are rationally possible. In no other religion at the values of knowledge and evil of ignorance so much insisted upon as they are in Buddhism, His religion had the glory of having rightly judge the intrinsic greatness of man‘s capacity of work out 5 Samarthya India - Dalit Parivar www.onlinejaibhim.com his salvation without any extraneous aid, and of having perceived that far more of the world‘s misery is caused by stupidity and blind faith without any stress on knowledge. If the worth of a truly great man consist in his raising the worth of all mankind, who is better entitled to be called truly greater than the Blessed One? The Buddha instead of degrading him by placing another being over him has exalted him to the highest pinnacle of wisdom and love. Dr. Ambedkar, while writing this Nikaya of Buddhism—―The Buddha and his Dhamma‖ tested the discourses with the rigid tests laid down by the Buddha. To see whether the Buddhists canon is not adulterated with Brahminism, one has to test them and he tested them. The tests are: As the Buddha was nothing if not rational, if not logical, anything, therefore, which is rational or logical, other things being equal may be taken to be the word of Buddha. The second test is that the Buddha never cared to enter into a discussion which was not profitable for man‘s welfare. Therefore anything attributed to the Buddha which did not relate to man‘s welfare cannot be accepted to the word of the Buddha. There is also a third test. This is that the Buddha divided all matter into two classes, viz. about which he was certain and about which he was not certain. On matters which fell into the first category he had stated his views definitely and conclusively and on matters which fell into the second category, he had expressed his views that they are only tentative views. Bearing these test in mind before deciding what the view of the Buddha was, Dr. Ambedkar wrote this version ―The Buddha and his Dhamma‖. How was the Dhamma preserved? Sariputta and Muggallana, the senior-most disciples of the Buddha were 6 Samarthya India - Dalit Parivar www.onlinejaibhim.com no more at the time of the Mahaparinirvana of the Buddha at Kusinara in 483 B.C. The first council of Bhikkhu after the passing away of the Buddha had to be held at Rajgriha under the presidentship of the most senior monk Mahakashyap. The aim of this council was to preserve the teachings of the Buddha in their truth and the purity without change or modification and also to achieve unity in that order; the first disadvantage was that there was no written script at that time and the second reason was that there was a tendency among some monks to be lax towards the Rules of the Order. Therefore the Vinaya, as given out by Upali and the Dhamma as repeated by Anand in the council were learnt up byheart by the monks and thus preserved orally. The second council was held at Vesali after a period of 100 years again because of certain laxities which crept into the Order. The Vajji clan monks had modified their conduct by adding 10 modifications to the Vinaya rules to the orthodox. They started carrying salt in a horn, taking a second meal in another village and taking meals and butter milk even in the evening, drinking unfermented palm wine, using rugs without fringes, accepting gold and silver, holding fortnightly congregations in the same parish and taking decisions in the absence of some members. These were all contrary to Vinaya. The first Monk, Yesa, of the orthodox Order convened this council which was presided over by Sabbhakami. There were 700 monks gathered categorically rejected the 10 indulgences practiced by the Vajji clan monks. As a counter-blast to this convention of the orthodox Order the liberal Vajji clan monks, later convened the Mahasangika council consisting of 10,000 monks. This was, therefore, the first unfortunate split over the 10 indulgences without any doctrinal differences. Ultimately this split led to the formation of other sects and finally to 7 Samarthya India - Dalit Parivar www.onlinejaibhim.com Mahayana Buddhism. Yet a third council was convened by Moggaliputta under the patronage of the Great Buddhist Emperor Asoka but it restricted itself to the orthodox order, the Thervada sect. It is after this convention by Emperor Asoka that Buddhism spread not only all over India but also to Ceylon, Burma and South-East Asian countries. The Arahata son of Emperor Asoka, Mahinda was sent along with other monks to Ceylon for propagating Buddhism and that was the landmark in the migration of Theravada outside India to Ceylon and South East Asia which resulted in a rich harvest later. There was yet a fourth council in Ceylon of the Thervada School which by that time was also called Hinayana, in the year 106 B.C. By this time there was already a script in vogue and therefore this council committed the entire Pali canon and the commentaries to writing on palm leaves for the first time. The Buddhist‘s canon consist Vinaya Pitaka (rules of monastic life) Sutta Pitaka (discourses of the Buddha) and Abhidhamma Pitaka (philosophical contents of teachings). The Vinaya consist of a large number of rules and Sutta of Nikayas. The Abhidhamma is in Seven Prakaranas. Early Buddhism prevailed from about 450 B.C. to 100 B.C. but the Hinayana School started getting mixed up with the liberal Order and the liberal Order Mahayana started growing only after 100 B.C. on account of the fact that it also started inventing anecdotes in the grab of purvanusmritis to attract the masses. What is the history of Buddhism in India and how did it disappear? On account of the new rational and sensitive tenets as propounded by the Buddha which make man and not faith and belief as the centre of the picture, a clash between Brahminism and Buddhism was inevitable. 8 Samarthya India - Dalit Parivar www.onlinejaibhim.com Brahminism was shaken to its foundation by Buddhism and Buddhism thrived and these continue till the end of the first century A.D. when Brahminism again started recovering the poise. With the gradual decline of Buddhism there were persecutions launched by the Brahmins against Buddhists. Bhaskar Varma of Kamrup had threatened to destroy Nalanda. There was also the murder of Aryadeva, the disciple of Nagarjun, because the Brahmins were defeated in a debate with on religion. Sasanka expelled all the monks from Kushinagar and uprooted the Gaya Bodhi tree and burnt the rest of it and replaced it by Shiva. The final flicker of Buddhism was at Magadha under the Pala Kings; and the death –blow finally came with the Muslim conquest in the 10th Century. It is during the decline of Buddhism after Asoka that north-west India fell before the Greek invaders but the Greeks were intolerant and an Indo- Greek King Milinda even became a great Buddhist after his first debate with monk Nagasena. Then there was conquest by the Kushans of the Greek Kingdom but they were also acquainted with Buddhism even before they entered India and a couple of their Kings had also embraced Buddhism. The Kushan King Kaniska (A.D 78) was the first unsympathetic towards Buddhism but later became a Buddhist, though he also showed special favours of Brahminism. It was he who had called a freat Council of the monks which was recognized in India as the 4th Council, but which the Thervada School always ignored. The Mahayanists have however recognized the 4th Council although it was not organized by the Mahasanghikas but was done by the less orthodox branch of the school, the Sarvastivada with its many sects. It was because of the indulgent attitude of Kaniska towards Brahminism that during this period many ideas of Brahminism were mixed up with Buddhism especially in northern India. The main 9 Samarthya India - Dalit Parivar www.onlinejaibhim.com task of Kanishka‘s council was the fact that the language of the commentaried was Sanskrit and not traditional Pali of the Thervada School. It is here that the Mahayana school of Buddhism came into being. With the fall of Kaniska dynasty by about the thirf century A.D., Busshism lost a line of great patrons and the reign of the Imperial Guptas, who came to power in Magadha in the fourth century A.D. and who controlled later the whole of the North India, marked the triumph of Hindu culture and Hindu thaught and except for occasional spurts, Buddhism in India started fading. The Chinese pilgrim Fahien travelling in India during these period from 399 to 414 A.D. found Buddhism prospering at many places like Kapilvastu and Gaya, though on the whole, it was one decline. That is also the account given by Hieuntsang during his travel in 629 to 645 A.D. and he too found quite a few monasteries desolate. The Huns by then came down like floods from the North into Gandhara at the end of the fifth century and the Buddhist monasteries and the sacred edifices of North-west India were the special object of there fury; monks, scholars, manuscripts and buildings alike vanished in flame and blood and even the University of Taxila fell into silence without any hope of its revival. The sacred alms bowl disappeared from Gandhara (Kabul) and passed on to Persia. In the meanwhile at about that time Buddhism was also engaged in an unequal struggle with Brahminism in Bengal, in west-India and in south-India. The invasion of the Huns brought disaster and confusion for the Gupta Empire and it split into a series of petty kingdoms. With the appearance of Harsha in 605 A.D. there was again a respite and it was at this time that the Chinese pilgrim Hieungtsang met Harsha and was greatly 10 Samarthya India - Dalit Parivar www.onlinejaibhim.com