Legend And Reality
India/Buddhist
Behind the general grandiloquence of the legend as it comes to us in this Sanskrit version, certain features of the historical scene in the India of the Buddha's day can be discerned. Amid the growth of urban life, and the emergence of great monarchies extending their power across the Ganges plain and engulfing the older, simpler life of the villages in vast and much less personal systems, the individual in many places was ill at ease in the new world of that day (as so often before and since) and was asking basic questions about the nature and purpose of human existence. A number of different new philosophies had arisen which attempted to provide answers to these questions, and these are conventionally referred to in Buddhist tradition as seven in number, the philosophy of Buddha being the seventh, and, it was claimed, able more satisfactoryily and surely than any other to bring men peace, serenity, and health.
The effect upon a village, tribe or country of adherence to Buddhist norms and values can fairly be said to have been, as the legend claims, and amelioration in the general social condition of the people, the replacement of older aggressive attitudes by more peaceable ones, and even an improvement in general physical conditions. It is still the practice for people, in Burma for example, to resort to the monastery when they need medical help. There is thus a general truth which the legend rests upon, that the coming of the Buddha, representing the coming of Buddhist monks, means the staying of 'disease and strife, riot, calamity and trouble.'
Legends Of The World
Edited by
Richard Cavendish
ISBN 1-56619-462-8
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