Mahâ-Parinibbâna-Suttanta: The Book of the Great Decease

56. And when he had thus spoken the venerable Ânanda said to the mendicant Subhadda: 'Enough! friend Subhadda. Trouble not the Tathâgata. The Blessed One is weary.' 57. And again the mendicant Subhadda [made the same request in the same words, and received the same reply]; and the third time the mendicant Subhadda [made the same request in the same words, and received the same reply] p. 105 58. Now the Blessed One overheard this conversation of the venerable Ânanda with the mendicant Subhadda. And the Blessed One called the venerable Ânanda, and said: 'It is enough, Ânanda! Do not keep out Subhadda. Subhadda, Ânanda, may be allowed to see the Tathâgata. Whatever Subhadda may ask of me, he will ask from a desire for knowledge, and not to annoy me. And whatever I may say in answer to his questions, that he will quickly understand.' 59. Then the venerable Ânanda said to Subhadda, the mendicant: 'Enter in, friend Subhadda; for the Blessed One gives you leave.' 60. Then Subhadda, the mendicant, went in to the place where the Blessed One was, and saluted him courteously, and after exchanging with him the compliments of esteem and of civility, he took his seat on one side. And when he was thus seated, Subhadda, the mendicant, said to the Blessed One: 'The Brâhmans by saintliness of life[1], Gotama, who [1. Samana-brâhmanâ, which compound may possibly mean Samanas and Brahmans as it has usually been rendered, but I think not necessarily. Not one of those here specified were Brâhmans by caste, as is apparent from the Sumangala Vilâsinî on the Sâmañña Phala Sutta, p. 114. Compare the use of Kshatriya-brâhmano, 'a soldier priest,' a Kshatriya who offered sacrifice; and of Brâhmano, absolutely, as an epithet of an Arahat. In the use of the word samana there seems to me to be a hopeless confusion between, a complete mingling of the meanings of, the two roots sram and sam (which, in Pâli, would both become sam). It connotes both asceticism and inward peace, and might best be rendered 'devotee,' were it not for the intellectual inferiority implied by that word in our language. A Samana Brâhman should therefore mean a man of any caste, who by his saintliness of life, by his renunciation of the world, and by his reputation as a religious thinker, had acquired the position of a quasi Brâhman, and {footnote p. 106} was looked up to by the people in the same way as that in which they looked up to a Brâhman by caste. Compare further my 'Buddhist Birth Stories,' vol. i. p. 260; and also Mr. Beal's remarks in the Indian Antiquary for May, 1880; and Professor Max Müller's note on Dhammapada, verse 265.]