166 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
Dhamma. This was at the age of thirty-five. The remainder of his eighty years he spent in spreading his Dhamma and founding and administering an order of monks. He died about the year 483 B.C. at Kusinara surrounded by his devoted followers.
To the carrying out of his mission, the Buddha devoted all his days after the achievement of enlightment. His time was divided between feeding the lamp of his own spiritual life by solitary meditation— just as Jesus spent hours in lonely prayer—and active preaching to large audiences of his monks, instructing the more advanced in the subtle points of inner development, directing the affairs of the Order, rebuking breaches of discipline, confirming the faithful in their virtue, receiving deputations, carrying on discussions with learned opponents, comforting the sorrowful, visiting kings and peasants, Brahmins and outcasts, rich and poor. He was a friend of publicans and sinners, and many a public harlot, finding herself understood and pitied, gave up her evil ways to take refuge in the “Blessed One” Such a life demanded a variety of moral qualities and social gifts, and among others a combination of democratic sentiments with an aristocratic Savoir Faire which is seldom met with. In reading the dialogues one can never forget that Gotama had the birth and upbringing of an aristocrat. He converses not only with Brahmins and pundits but with princes and ministers and kings on easy and equal terms. He is a good diner-out, with a fund of anecdotes and apparently a real sense of humour, and is a welcome quest at every house. A distinguished Brahmin is pictured as describing him thus:
‘The venerable Gotama is well born on both sides, of pure descent…… is handsome, pleasant to look upon, inspiring trust, gifted with great beauty of complexion, fair in colour, fine in presence, stately to behold, virtuous with the virtue of the Arhats, gifted with goodness and virtue and with a pleasant voice and polite address, with no passion of lust left in him nor any fickleness of mind. He bids all men welcome, is congenial, conciliatory, not supercillious, accessible to all, not backward in conversation.’
But what appealed most to the India of his time, and has appealed most to India through the ages, is expressed by the Brahmin in these words:
“The monk Gotama has gone forth into the religious life, giving up the great clan of his relatives, giving up much money and gold, treasure both buried and above ground. Truly while he was still a young man, without a gray hair on his head, in the beauty of his early manhood he went forth from the household life into the homeless state.”