Buddhism in India

Buddhist Civilisation 131

So the whole nation was destroyed of Mejjha, as they say;

for glorious Matanga’s death, the kingdom swept away.

This may be the record, in distorted form, of a considerable battle.

Matanga, may in fact have been a ‘standard’ name for well-known

Candalas or untouchables. Besides the Kashyapa Matanga who

was a Buddhist missionary in the 1st century, Taranatha records a

Matangi-pa said to have been a disciple of Nagarjuna, as well as

another person who became a Tantric siddha (Taranatha 1990:

137, 139n, 272–73).

It is also significant that while Brahmans and many rich house-

holders are depicted as horrified of being polluted, this is not true

of everyone. For example, the man who learns a charm from the

Candala guru is willing to submit to demeaning service to get it

(#474), and a king who is told by a ‘pariah’ that it is not proper to

sit higher than a Brahman ascetic-teacher, praises him and says that

if the man had been high-caste he would have given him the king-

dom, but since he is ‘low’ he could be king by night only (#309).

A high degree of antagonism between Brahmans and Candalas is

shown in a story where Sariputta, perhaps the most esteemed

bhikku of the Buddha’s time, takes birth as a Candala (#377).

A haughty Brahman student encounters him with horror:

He feared the wind after striking the candala’s body might touch his

own body, so he cried, ‘Curse you, you ill-omened candala, get to lee-

ward,’ and went quickly to windward, but the candala was too quick

for him and stood to windward of him. Then he abused and reviled

him the more...The candala asked him, ‘Who are you?’ ‘I am a brah-

man student.’ ‘Very well, if you are, you will be able to answer me a

question...If you can’t, I will put you between my feet.’ The brahman,

feeling confident, said, ‘Proceed.’ ‘The candala asked...‘Young

brahmin, what are the quarters?’ ‘The quarters are four, the East and

the rest.’ The candala said, ‘I am not asking about that kind of quar-

ter; and you, ignorant even of this, loathe the wind that has struck my

body,’ so he took him by the shoulder and forcing him down put him

between his feet (#377).

When the whole story is told to the teacher (the Bodhisattva), he

admonishes the Brahman student for getting angry. Here the

Candala represents an esoteric learning. More important, with the

antagonism between untouchables and Brahmans, the Candalas

are shown as resisting their untouchability—in contrast to later

none but the Khattiya exercises sway,

The Vessas plough, the Suddas must obey.

These greedy liars propagate deceit,

and fools believe the fictions they repeat;

he who has eyes can see the sickening sight:

why does not Brahma set his creatures right? ...

At first there were no women and no men;

‘twas mind first brought mankind to light,—and then,

though they all started equal in the race,

their various failures made them soon change place;

it was no lack of merit in the past,

but present faults which made them first or last.

A clever low-caste lad would use his wit,

and read the hymns nor find his head-piece split....

The Brahman’s Veda, Khattiya’s policy,

both arbitrary and delusive be,

they blindly grope their way along a road

by some huge inundation overflowed (#543).

‘We see these rules enforced before our eyes’: the Vedas, the sacrifice,
and the theory of the varnas are all attacked here, but it seems to be
a context in which they are penetrating the society and being imposed.
Dumont’s argument that the ultra-pure, the Brahman, requires
dialectically a symbol of ultra-impurity, the untouchable, is also
reflected in the Buddhist literature, especially in stories about the
Candalas, the archetypal untouchables. What was the origin of the
Candalas? They are mentioned occasionally in the Upanishads, as
early as the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, but the Jatakas featuring
Candalas are said to be later ones, and the first recorded mention of
them by an outside observer is by the Chinese pilgrim Fa Hsien, who
visited India in the early 5th century, and apparently toured Gupta ter-
ritory (Beal 1983: I, xxxviii). They are described as conquered hunting-
gathering tribes who have their own villages (not just settlements
outside villages and towns), and their own dialect or language.
Matanga, who seems to have been a famous hero-leader of the
Candalas, is in direct conflict with Brahmans. In the Matanga-
Jataka(#497) he kidnaps a wife from a rich merchant family,
becomes an ascetic to win renown and powers, then humbles his
son who has become dissolute, then resolves to humble another
proud Brahman and finally humbles the ‘sixteen thousand
Brahmans’ who have misled his son; he is killed by a king but the
kingdom is destroyed in revenge by the angry gods:

130 Buddhism in India