भारतीय इतिहास के ६ स्वर्णिम पृष्ठ (वीर सावरकर - विदेशी आक्रान्ताओं पर विजय गाथा)

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 offender 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, widespread 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 professions and did not observe ahimsa, according to the Buddha faith, were banished from the town 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 occassion 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 vehemently and for the same offence Ashoka, Shree Harsha and Buddhist kings, and all the Kshatriya kings right from Vikramaditya to the Rajput rulers, when they see this evidence. For this evil tradition of untouchability was not begun by the Peshwas, for the first time, but it had been prevalent even since the Vedic, the Buddhist and the Jain regimes, and in the Buddhist period, especially, instead of being weakened, it was most scrupulously and mercilessly observed. Even the untouchables themselves treated those below their own ranks as equally or even more untouchable. Those of the untouchables who are still under the delusion, that the Buddhists gave no quarter to untouchability and so extol that sect, should do well to remember that the Chandals, the Mahars and other untouchables were far more miserable under the violently non-violent