[Buddha-l] Rice & Dragons

[Artur Karp]

2012/4/16 Richard Hayes <rhayes at unm.edu>:
> On Apr 15, 2012, at 3:52 PM, "L.S. Cousins" <selwyn at ntlworld.com> wrote:

>
>> In Sri Lanka there are nikāyas within the bhikkhu-sangha
>>> that are closed to all non-brahmins.
>>
>> There are probably no Sinhalese brahmins and certainly no such Nikāyas.
>
> I am quite sure I have read this certainly false claim, but I can't recall where. No doubt it was written by someone who was making it up just to be contrary.
>
> But these minor quibbles aside, I still stand by the claim that it is almost entirely a modern myth that the Buddhists in India questioned caste. But I stand by it because I like the sound of it, not because I have any evidence for it. I'm not now, never have been and never intend to be an historian.
>
> R. Hayes

Richard,

this is from R. Gombrich, Theravada Buddhism. A social history from
ancient Benares to modern Colombo (2nd ed.), Routledge 2006, p. 166:

"The Sangha’s life as landowners in peasant communities led to yet
a further deviation from the pristine ideal: organization by caste. We
know next to nothing about this before 1753, but the logic of the situ-
ation suggests that what we can observe since then continues a much
older state of affairs. Though at least two low-caste monks were
ordained in Kandy by the Thai mission in 1753, within a few years the
Kandy headquarters were refusing to ordain anyone who was not of the
dominant, landholding caste which makes up about half the Sinhalese
population. While acknowledging that this contravenes the spirit of
Buddhism, they maintain this restriction till today. Indeed, they have
been imitated by some branches of the other Nikayas, while yet others
restrict entry to other particular castes; those which admit pupils of any
caste are in a small minority."

Artur