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