6_Glorious_Epochs_of_Indian_History

140 SIX GLORIOUS EPOCHS OF INDIAN HISTORY
UNTOUCHABILITY AGGRAVATED BY THE BUDDHIST
RELIGION
344. Even today not only common people and good
many propagandists but even historians seem to be labouring
under the delusion that the Buddhists did not recognize the
principle of untouchability, and that no one was considered
untouchable in the Buddhist regime*'. What is laid down in
someone's religious texts is beside the point. What the actual
practice was is the most pertinent thing. One unavoidable
result of the violent way in which the Buddhists tried to
establish the principle of 'Ahimsa', and of their declaring
animal-hunting and flesh-eating punishable by death, of
their over-enthusiastic and relentless efforts to search out
such offenders and give the harshest capital and other severe
punishments, was that the practice of untouchability instead
of being wiped out became still more firmly rooted, wide­
spread and most distressing**. The limited space at our
disposal prevents any further discussion of it in these pages ;
and of course it is needless ! An unimpeachable proof can be
found, not in the Vedic nor in the Buddhist texts of the
times, but in the account of the foreign-Chinese travellers
who had espoused Buddhism and who had travelled all over
India. They avow, "whichever caste or community—as for
example the 'Chandals'—did not give up the violent profes­
sions and did not observe Ahimsa according to the Buddha
faith, were banished from the towns as untouchables; they
had to form colonies of their own outside the towns and cities
like those of the lepers. If at all they had an occasion and
were permitted to come to the town on some market-day
these untouchables had to carry in one hand a stick, to the
end of which was tied a child's rattle or a small drum which
they had to beat while going along the road so that the
people in the streets might see them and avoid every possible
contact with them**."
345. Those, who ignorantly or maliciously blame the
Peshwas*® for the evil treatment given to the untouchables
when they entered the town, should also criticize, equally