________________
RELIGION
209 Nandiyāvatta (Nandyāvarta), Vaddhamanaga
Vardhamāna), Bhaddāsana (Bhadrāsana), Kalasa. Maccha (Matsya), and Dappaña (Darpaņa). Other enumerations of mangalas are also met with in the Jaina texts. The Buddhists introduced chanting of the Mungala Sutta laying much stress on the thirty-seven points of mangala or moral condition of human welfare.8
In seeking to draw a sharp distinction between the Brahmin as he was and the Brahmin as he ought to have been, the Jains and Buddhists served only to bring the Brahmanio religious ideal into bold relief with the result that Māhaņa (= Brāhmaṇa) became one of the distinctive epithets of Mahāvīra, and the Buddhist arahants came to be praised as Brāhmaṇas par excellence.
By mangalas the people of India understood the sight of certain auspicious objects, all-white „chariots, etc., the hearing of certain auspicious sounds, and the touch of certain auspicious things. They also understood by them the performance of certain auspicious rites for the birth of a male child or for the marriage of boys
1 Aupapătrka Sitra, seo, 49. 2 Idrid., Becs. 53, 55.
8 Mangala Sutta in the Khuddakapagha (pp. 2-3); and Sutta-nipata lpp. 46-47), ar. also Mahamangala Jätaks (No. 453).
- Jätaka, wv, p. 72f.
