Note 2 — Chapter VI

The five Rahans alluded to are the very same individuals who met Phralaong in the solitude at the time he was undergoing a great fast and performing all sorts of works of self-denial and corporal austerities in the most rigorous manner. During all the time he spent in those hard exercises of strict mortification, to conquer his passions and secure the complete triumph of the mind over the senses, he was assisted in all his wants by those five Rahans, who rendered to him the usual services disciples are wont to perform to their teacher. When they saw Phralaong at the end of his mighty efforts in that great struggle resuming the habits of a mendicant, they left him at once, unwilling to believe that he would ever become a Buddha. Our Phra, not unmindful of the good services he had received from them, resolved to impart first to them the blessings of his preachings. Alara and Oodaka, his two first teachers in the science of Dzan, were destined to be the first who would have heard the good news had they not been dead. Gratitude seems to have been the first and main motive that induced him to select as the first objects of his mission the very same persons who had been instrumental in furthering his efforts to acquire the Buddhaship.

The unpleasant epithet of heretic is given to those five Rahans, as well as to another named Upaka, as designed to mean that they held tenets at variance with those of Buddha, and refused to acknowledge him as possessed of the perfect intelligence. Buddhists, in their writings, invariably call their opponents by the name of holders of false doctrines. The Brahmins or Pounhas who refused to seek refuge in Buddha, his law, and the assembly of his disciples, are spoken of as professors of heterodoxical doctrines.

From the narrative of this Legend we may conclude, with a probability amounting almost to certitude, that Buddha in his preachings addressed himself first to the Brahmins, as being by their caste the most influential portion of the Hindu community. Those that are called by the name of Pounhas are the Brahmins living in the world and following the ordinary pursuits of life. Those that are mentioned by the names of Rahans and Rathees are probably Brahmins, or at least belong to some other distinguished caste like that of the Kchatrias, but are members of some religious order or ascetics. They were in those days men whom, in imitation of the ancient Greeks, we may call philosophers, and who belonged to one or other of the branches into which the great Indian school was divided. We may conjecture that at that time India exhibited a scene much resembling that which Greece subsequently offered to the eyes of the observer in the days of Socrates and Plato, when schools of philosophy were to be met with in every direction. The Hindu philosophers, favoured by climate and their ardent imagination, carried much further than the Greek wise men, both in theory and practice, the discussion of dogmas and the fervour of religious practices. If credit is to be given to our Legend in a historical point of view, we may safely conclude that such was the state of India when Buddha began his preachings. His first hearers were Rahans, Rathees, and Pounhas, that is to say, the most learned and wisest men in those days. The latter in particular seemed at first disinclined to offer opposition to Buddha; they listened to him as to a distinguished philosopher; his arguments were examined, discussed, and answered by them in the best way they could. In that polemical warfare, arguments were at first the only offensive and defensive weapons used and handled by the combatants on both sides. Buddha's two favourite doctrines of Atheism and Neibban, which established the two broad lines of separation between the two systems, begat much discussion and created some animosity between him and his adversaries. But what widened the gap between the two parties, and placed them in a hostile array against each other, was the broad principle of equality amongst men, latent in the bosom of Buddha's doctrines, and levelled at the distinction of castes. Buddha preached to men of all conditions without exception; he opened before all the ways that lead to Neibban; made no distinction between man and man, except that which is drawn by virtue and vice, merits and demerits. He allowed every one to approach him and take rank among his disciples; faith in his doctrine entitled any man to be numbered amidst his followers; the entrance into the order of Rahans or perfect was open to all those who, by their meritorious actions and renouncing the world, qualified themselves for this dignity. This principle, which put on a footing of equality men of all castes and nations, and recognised no real superiority but that which is conferred by virtue and merit, could not prove agreeable to the proud Brahmins. It provoked, by its gradual development, the animosity of the opponents of Buddha's doctrines. The battle of arguments, after having raged with various success, was afterwards converted into one of a bloody character, which ended in the total extermination or expulsion of the Buddhists from the Indian peninsula.