Young Man: “In our family, Uncle, not a single person has foreign blood mixed in. Heh, heh.”
Elder: “So what?”
Young Man: “Well, that means we’re a ‘pure race,’ doesn’t it?”
Elder: “And what does being ‘pure race’ mean?”
Young Man: “It means we’re reliable when it comes to protecting our race, religion, and Buddhism.”
Elder: “Do you know Devadatta?”
Young Man: “Of course. He was the one who harmed the Buddhist religion.”
Elder: “Which religion did Devadatta try to undermine?”
Young Man: “Buddhism.”
Elder: “What ethnicity was Devadatta?”
Young Man: “Uh…”
Elder: “Wasn’t he a member of the Sakyan clan?”
Young Man: “Well, yes.”
Elder: “Then wasn’t his lineage considered pure?”
Young Man: “Uh…”
Elder: “Speak up. Have you run out of words?”
Young Man: “Well…”
Elder: “His lineage was so pure that he was the Buddha’s brother-in-law.”
Young Man: “Uh…”
Elder: “He was Yasodhara’s brother.”
Young Man: “Uh…”
Elder: “He was the son of the Buddha’s uncle.”
Young Man: “Hmm…”
Elder: “In other words, he was the Buddha’s cousin.”
Young Man: “Fine, but what does that prove?”
Elder: “It means there was hardly anyone whose lineage was considered purer than his.”
Young Man: “True.”
Elder: “And hardly anyone more proud of that lineage.”
Young Man: “What do you mean?”
Elder: “When the Buddha appointed Venerable Sariputta and Venerable Moggallana as his chief disciples on the right and left, do you remember what happened?”
Young Man: “Yes.”
Elder: “Devadatta complained: ‘Why appoint men from Brahmin families instead of members of our royal clan?'”
Young Man: “Oh…”
Elder: “He didn’t stop there. He even tried to take control of the Sangha, suggesting that the Buddha should hand over authority and retire peacefully.”
Young Man: “Really?”
Elder: “Tell me again. Was Devadatta of pure lineage or not?”
Young Man: “He was.”
Elder: “So what became of this great champion of ‘pure blood’?”
Young Man: “What happened?”
Elder: “He became the man who split the Sangha.”
Young Man: “Is that so?”
Elder: “Yes. And do you know the consequence of that?”
Young Man: “What?”
Elder: “He incurred the grave karma of causing schism within the monastic community.”
Young Man: “Oh…”
Elder: “So if people become arrogant about their ancestry and constantly boast about being ‘racially pure,’ what do you think may happen?”
Young Man: “What?”
Elder: “They may end up harming the very religion they claim to protect, my young friend.”
Young Man: “…”
Elder: “To be honest, many self-proclaimed defenders of ‘racial purity’ have been damaging the religion for a long time.”
Young Man: “Since when?”
Elder: “Since the time of Devadatta.”
(speechless)
Author: Aung Gyi
Fact Check
The post is primarily a satirical opinion piece, not a historical essay. However, its central references are broadly rooted in Buddhist tradition.
Accurate Points
1. Devadatta was a close relative of the Buddha. According to traditional Buddhist sources, Devadatta was a member of the Sakya clan and is commonly described as the Buddha’s cousin. Some traditions also identify him as Yasodhara’s brother, making him the Buddha’s brother-in-law. [en.wikipedia.org], [britannica.com]
2. Devadatta attempted to assume leadership of the Sangha. Traditional accounts describe Devadatta proposing that the Buddha retire and hand leadership of the Sangha to him. The Buddha rejected the proposal. [britannica.com], [en.wikisource.org]
3. Devadatta is associated with causing a schism in the Sangha. In Theravada Buddhist literature, Devadatta is portrayed as attempting to create a breakaway monastic faction and is remembered as a divisive figure. [en.wikipedia.org], [ancient-bu…-texts.net], [britannica.com]
Points That Are More Interpretive
4. Devadatta as a symbol of “racial pride.” The post interprets Devadatta’s behavior as arising from clan pride and elitism. While Buddhist texts record his rivalry, ambition, and opposition to others, the modern political concept of racial purity is not explicitly the central theme in the original canonical accounts. This is the author’s contemporary interpretation rather than a direct doctrinal teaching.
5. Sariputta and Moggallana being opposed because they were Brahmins. Some Buddhist traditions associate Devadatta’s jealousy with the prestige accorded to these chief disciples. However, the exact dialogue presented in the post is a literary reconstruction rather than a verbatim canonical quotation.
On the Idea of “Pure Race”
Modern genetics and anthropology overwhelmingly reject the notion that any contemporary human population constitutes a biologically “pure race.”
UNESCO’s scientific statements on race concluded that:
“Pure races in the sense of genetically homogeneous populations do not exist in the human species.” [courier.unesco.org]
UNESCO further emphasizes the essential unity of humankind and the absence of scientific grounds for doctrines of racial superiority. [unesco.org], [unesdoc.unesco.org]
In other words:
- Ethnic groups and peoples exist.
- Cultural identities exist.
- Historical communities exist.
- But modern science does not support the existence of completely “pure” human races. Human populations have mixed and interacted throughout history. [courier.unesco.org], [en.wikipedia.org]
Suggested Further Reading
Buddhist Sources
- Cullavagga VII (Vinaya Pitaka) – accounts of Devadatta and the attempted schism. [ancient-bu…-texts.net], [britannica.com]
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: Devadatta – concise scholarly overview. [britannica.com]
- Dhammapada Commentary, Chapter 12.7 – traditional account of Devadatta’s effort to divide the Sangha. [ancient-bu…-texts.net]
Race and Human Genetics
- UNESCO Statement on Race and Racial Prejudice (1978). [unesco.org], [unesdoc.unesco.org]
- UNESCO Biological Statement on Race (1964), which explicitly states that genetically pure human races do not exist. [courier.unesco.org]
- UNESCO Statements on Race (1950-1967), foundational international documents against scientific racism. [en.wikipedia.org], [unesdoc.unesco.org]
Key Takeaway
The author’s core argument is not really about genealogy. It is a moral lesson: virtue, wisdom, and loyalty to a religion are determined by conduct, not by ancestry. Using Devadatta as an example, the post argues that even someone from the Buddha’s own clan and family could become a source of division, while people of different backgrounds could become the Buddha’s foremost disciples. This message is broadly consistent with Buddhist teachings that place ethical conduct above birth, caste, or lineage.
Birth does not guarantee virtue.
Lineage does not guarantee wisdom.
Ethnic purity does not guarantee loyalty to religion.
Character and conduct are what matter.
That theme is deeply compatible with many Buddhist teachings, where morality (sīla), wisdom (paññā), and wholesome action are valued above ancestry, caste, or clan status. The traditional accounts portray Devadatta as a close relative of the Buddha who nevertheless became associated with division and schism within the monastic community.
အလဇ္ဇီ ဒုဿီလ ကို ပြစ်တင် ရှုံချသူများ ဂရုသစ်
“ကျော်တို့ မိသားစုအတွင်းမှာ နိုင်ငံခြားသား
သွေးနှောတာ တစ်ယောက်မှ မပါဘူးဗျ ဟင်း ဟင်း”
“အဲ့ဒီတော့ ဘာဖြစ်လဲ”
“အဲ့ဒီတော့ ‘အမျိုးသန့်’ တာပေါ့ ဦးလေးရယ်”
“အမျိုးသန့်တော့ ဘာဖြစ်လဲ”
“အမျိုးသန့်တော့ အမျိုးဘာသာ သာသနာအတွက် စိတ်ချရတာပေါ့ဗျ”
“မင်း ဒေဝဒတ် ကို သိလား”
“အင်း သိတယ်လေ … သာသနာဖျက်”
“အဲ့ဒီ ဒေဝဒတ်က ဘယ်သာသနာကိုဖျက်တာလဲ”
“ဗုဒ္ဓသာသနာလေ”
“ဒေဝဒတ်က ဘာလူမျိုးလဲ”
“အဲ”
“သာကီဝင် ပဲ မဟုတ်ဘူးလား”
“အဲ”
“အမျိုးရော မသန့်ဘူးလား”
“အဲ … “
“ပြောလေကွာ … စကားမပြောတတ်ဘူးလား”
‘’ဟာဗျာ .. “
“အမျိုးက သန့်တာမှ မြတ်စွာဘုရားရဲ့ ယောက်ဖ”
“အဲ”
“ယသော်ဓယာနဲ့ မောင်နှမ”
“အဲ”
“မြတ်စွာဘုရား ဦးလေးရဲ့ သား”
“အမ်”
“ဘုရားနဲ့ ညီအကို ဝမ်းကွဲကွာ”
“ဟာဗျာ .. အဲ့ဒါဘာဖြစ်လဲဗျာ”
“သူ့လောက် အမျိုးသန့်တာမရှိဘူး”
“အင်း”
“သူ့လောက် အမျိုးမာန်တက်တာလည်းမရှိဘူး”
“ဘယ်လို မာန်တက်တာလဲဟင်”
“ရှင်မောဂ္ဂလန်နဲ့ ရှင်သာရိပုတ္တရာ ကိုယ်တော်ကြီး နှစ်ပါးကို လက်ဝဲ လက်ယာရံ တွေ မြတ်စွာဘုရားက ခန့်အပ်တယ်မဟုတ်လား”
“ဟုတ်တယ်လေ”
“အဲ့ဒီအချိန်မှာ မင်းမျိုးကို မခန့်ပဲ ပုဏ္ဏားမျိုးကို ခန့်ရမလားဆိုပြီး ထပြဿနာရှာတာ ဒေဝဒတ်ပဲ”
“ဪ … “
“ပြဿနာရှာတာမှ သံဃာထုကို သူ့လက်ထဲအပ်ပြီး မြတ်စွာဘုရားကို အေးအေးဆေးဆေး နေပါဆိုပြီး အာဏာသိမ်းသလို ထ လုပ်တာ”
“ဟုတ်လား”
“ပြန်ပြောစမ်းပါဦး ဒေဝဒတ်က အမျိုးမသန့်ဘူးလား”
“သန့်တယ်လေ … “
“အဲ့ဒီလို သန့်တဲ့ ကိုမျိုးသန့်ကြီး ဘာဖြစ်သွားလဲ”
“ဘာဖြစ်သွားလဲဟင်?”
“သံဃာဂိုဏ်းခွဲတဲ့ကောင် ဖြစ်သွားတယ်လေ”
“ဟုတ်လား”
“အဲ့ဒီတော့ ဘာဖြစ်လဲသိလား”
“ဘာဖြစ်လဲဟင်”
“သံဃဘေဒကကံ ထိုက်တာပေါ့”
“ဪ … “
“အဲ့ဒီတော့ အမျိုးမာန်တက်ပြီး ‘မျိုးသန့်’ တယ်လို့
ခဏခဏအော်နေရင် ဘာဖြစ်မလဲ”
“ဘာဖြစ်မှာလဲဟင် … “
“သာသနာဖျက် ဖြစ်မှာပေါ့ ငါတို့အမသားလေးရယ်”
“အမ်”
“ပြောသာပြောရတာပါကွာ … မင်းတို့ ‘ကိုမျိုးသန့်တွေ’ သာသနာကိုဖျက်နေတာ ကြာလှပါပြီ”
“ဘယ်တုန်းက ဖျက်လို့လဲဗျာ”
“ဒေဝဒတ်ခေတ်တုန်းကတည်းကလေ”
“(*&^%$#@!”
_________
အောင်ကြီး
