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Prologue continues.....
Dr Radhakrishnan writes:
“He (Buddha) belongs to the history of the world’s thought, tothe general inheritance of all cultivated men; for, judged by intellectual integrity, moral earnestness, and spiritual insight, he isundoubtedly one of the greatest figures in history.” (RadhakrishnanReader – An Anthology; Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1988)
The transcendentalism of Buddhism is divorced from any spiritualexperience centering around the supernatural. Buddhism took India andthen the world by storm and it triumphantly transcended the geographicalboundaries of India and reached other parts of the world. Buddhism wascertainly a great challenge to Hinduism, which was the dominant religion of the time.
This challenge could not be successfully met because the entire moral, spiritual and intellectual assets of Hinduism were monopolized bythe priestly class who, despite their great contribution to the developmentof Hindu philosophy, reduced the religion to meaningless mumbo-jumboand a mere means of livelihood. At some stage, Hinduism had lost itsvitality and intellectual depth.
The Indian mind was thrilled by the
freshness of the teachings of Buddha and the egalitarianism it represented.In place of the exclusivism practised by Hinduism or, as Pandit Nehru called it, Brahminism, Buddha practised inclusivism.
For the first time in the history of India, the people could interact with each other without being inhibited by the restrictions and restraints of caste. Buddha defied
the logic of racialism that was at the root of the caste system in India. His message to the disciples was: “Go unto all lands and preach this gospel.
Tell them that the poor and the lowly, the rich and the high, are all one,
and all castes unite in this religion as do the rivers in the sea.”3
To be continued.....