Lives of Alcyone

Life XLVIII
The wonderful influence of the Lord Buddha changed for
Alcyone the length of the interval between his lives, but it in no way
affected the tendency to spend these lives in India. Once more we
find him in the sacred land—born in the nineteenth year of the reign
of King Harsha (3726 Kali Yuga, or A.D. 624), near Kanyakubja,
now Kanauj, on the Ganges. King Harsha was also called Siladitya;
he came to the throne in the year A.D. 606. Alcyone was the son of
a brahman named Jayasekara (Ant); the family was Buddhist by
religion, though Brahman by descent.
Large numbers of people of all castes had at this period
definitely embraced Buddhism as their religion, and they did not
therefore recognise caste as such; but notwithstanding this, those
among them who were Brahmans by descent were still socially
recognised and treated as Brahmans by the others who held their
ancestral religion. The bonds of caste were strong, but yet the
restrictions were not so irksome as at present, because these
Brahmans who became Buddhists certainly did not in any way lose
caste by doing so, even though it involved receiving and eating with
men of other castes who also professed Buddhism. The Brahman
families who still held the Hindu religion intermarried quite freely with
those Brahmans who embraced Buddhism, each party to the
contract keeping to his or her religion without interfering with the
other. However, those Brahmans who because Buddhists do not