XIII. BUDDHISM…

XIII. BUDDHISM

While the pantheistic believer proceeded to anthropomorphize in a still greater degree the [=a]tm[=a] of his fathers, and eventually landed in heretical sectarianism; while the orthodox Brahman simply added to his pantheon (in Manu and other law-codes) the Brahmanic figure of the Creator, Brahm[=a]; the truth-seeker that followed the lines of the earlier philosophical thought arrived at atheism, and in consequence became either stoic or hedonist. The latter school, the C[=a]rv[=a]kas, the so-called disciples of Brihaspati, have, indeed, a philosophy without religion. They simply say that the gods do not exist, the priests are hypocrites; the Vedas, humbug; and the only thing worth living for, in view of the fact that there are no gods, no heaven, and no soul, is pleasure: 'While life remains let a man live happily; let him not go without butter (literally ghee) even though he run into debt,' etc.[1] Of sterner stuff was the man who invented a new religion as a solace for sorrow and a refuge from the nihilism in which he believed.

Whether Jainism or Buddhism be the older heresy, and it is not probable that any definitive answer to this question will ever be given, one thing has become clear in the light of recent studies, namely, the fact already shown, that to Brahmanism are due some of the most marked traits of both the heretical sects. The founder of Buddhism did not strike out a new system of morals; he was not a democrat; he did not originate a plot to overthrow the Brahmanic priesthood; he did not invent the order of monks.[2] There is, perhaps, no person in history in regard to whom have arisen so many opinions that are either wholly false or half false.[3]

We shall not canvass in detail views that would be mentioned only to be rejected. Even the brilliant study of Senart,[4] in which the figure of Buddha is resolved into a solar type and the history of the reformer becomes a sun-myth, deserves only to be mentioned and laid aside. Since the publication of the canonical books of the southern Buddhists there is no longer any question in regard to the human reality of the great knight who illumined, albeit with anything but heavenly light, the darkness of Brahmanical belief. Oldenberg[5] has taken Senart seriously, and seriously answered him. But Napoleon and Max Müller have each been treated as sun-myths, and Senart's essay is as convincing as either jeu d'esprit.

In Nep[=a]l, far from the site of Vedic culture, and generations after the period of the Vedic hymns, was born a son to the noble family of the Ç[=a]kyas. A warrior prince, he made at last exclusively his own the lofty title that was craved by many of his peers, Buddha, the truly wise, the 'Awakened.'

The Ç[=a]kyas' land extended along the southern border of Nep[=a]l and the northeast part of Oude (Oudh), between the Ir[=a]vat[=i] (Rapti) river on the west and south, and the Rohini on the east; the district which lies around the present Gorakhpur, about one hundred miles north-northeast of Benares. The personal history of the later Buddha is interwoven with legend from which it is not always easy to disentangle the threads of truth. In the accounts preserved in regard to the Master, one has first to distinguish the P[=a]li records of the Southern Buddhists from the Sanskrit tales of the Northerners; and again, it is necessary to discriminate between the earlier and later traditions of the Southerners, who have kept in general the older history as compared with the extravagant tradition preserved in the Lalita Vistara, the Lotus of the Law, and the other works of the North. What little seems to be authentic history is easily told; nor are, for our present purpose, of much value the legends, which mangonize the life of Buddha. They will be found in every book that treats of the subject, and some of the more famous are translated in the article on Buddha in the Encyclopædia Brittanica. We content ourselves with the simplest and oldest account, giving such facts as help to explain the religious significance of Buddha's life and work among his countrymen. Several of these facts, Buddha's place in society, and the geographical centre of Buddhistic activity, are essential to a true understanding of the relations between Buddhism and Brahmanism.

Whether Buddha's father was king or no has rightly been questioned. The oldest texts do not refer to him as a king's son, and this indicates that his father, who governed the Ç[=a]kya-land, of which the limits have just been specified,[6] was rather a feudal baron or head of a small clan, than an actual king. The Ç[=a]kya power was overthrown and absorbed into that of the king of Oude (Kosala) either in Buddha's own life-time or immediately afterwards. It is only the newer tradition that extols the power and wealth which the Master gave up on renouncing worldly ties, a trait characteristic of all the later accounts, on the principle that the greater was the sacrifice the greater was the glory. Whether kings or mere chieftains, the Ç[=a]kyas were noted as a family that cared little to honor the Brahmanic priests. They themselves claimed descent from Ikshv[=a]ku, the ancient seer-king, son of Manu, and traditionally first king of Ayodh[=a] (Oude). They assumed the name of Gautama, one of the Vedic seers, and it was by the name of 'the Ascetic Gautama' that Buddha was known to his contemporaries; but his personal name was Siddh[=a]rtha 'he that succeeds in his aim,' prophetic of his life! His mother's name M[=a]y[=a] (illusion) has furnished Senart with material for his sun-theory of Buddha; but the same name is handed down as that of a city, and perhaps means in this sense 'the wonderful.' She is said to have died when her son was still a boy. The boy Siddh[=a]rtha, then, was a warrior r[=a]jput by birth, and possibly had a very indifferent training in Vedic literature, since he is never spoken of as Veda-wise.[7] The future Buddha was twenty-nine when he resolved to renounce the world. He was already married and had a son (R[=a]hula, according to later tradition). The legends of later growth here begin to thicken, telling how, when the future Buddha heard of the birth of his son, he simply said 'a new bond has been forged to hold me to the world'; and how his mind was first awakened to appreciation of sorrow by seeing loathy examples of age, sickness, and death presented to him as he drove abroad. Despite his father's tears and protests Siddh[=a]rtha, or as one may call him now by his patronymic, the man Gautama, left his home and family, gave up all possessions, and devoted himself to self-mortification and Yoga discipline of concentration of thought, following in this the model set by all previous ascetics. He says himself, according to tradition, that it was a practical pessimism which drove him to take this step. He was not pleased with life, and the pleasures of society had no charm for him. When he saw the old man, the sick man, the dead man, he became disgusted to think that he too would be subject to age, sickness, and death: "I felt disgust at old age; all pleasure then forsook me." In becoming an ascetic Gautama simply endeavored to discover some means by which he might avoid a recurrence of life, of which the disagreeable side in his estimation outweighed the joy. He too had already answered negatively the question Is life worth living?

We must pause here to point out that this oldest and simplest account of Gautama's resolve shows two things. It makes clear that Gautama at first had no plan for the universal salvation of his race. He was alert to 'save his own soul,' nothing more. We shall show presently that this is confirmed by subsequent events in his career. The next point is that this narration in itself is a complete refutation of the opinion of those scholars who believe that the doctrine of karma and reincarnation arose first in Buddhism, and that the Upanishads that preach this doctrine are not of the pre-Buddhistic period. The last part of this statement of opinion is, of course, not touched by the story of Gautama's renunciation, but the first assumption wrecks on it. Why should Gautama have so given himself to Yoga discipline? Did he expect to escape age, sickness, death, in this life by that means? No. The assumption from the beginning is the belief in the doctrine of reincarnation. It was in order to free himself from future returns of these ills that Gautama renounced his home. But nothing whatever is said of his discovering or inventing the doctrine of reincarnation. Both hell and karma are taken for granted throughout the whole early Buddhistic literature. Buddha discovered neither of them, any more than he discovered a new system of morality, or a new system of religious life; although more credit accrues to him in regard to the last because his order was opposed to that then prevalent; yet even here he had antique authority for his discipline.

To return to Gautama's[8] life. Legend tells how he fled away on his horse Kanthaka, in search of solitude and the means of salvation, far from his home to the abode of ascetics, for he thought: "Whence comes peace? When the fire of desire is extinguished, when the fire of hate is extinguished, when the fire of illusion is extinguished, when all sins and all sorrows are extinguished, then comes peace." And the only means to this end was the renunciation of desire, the discipline of Yoga concentration, where the mind fixed on one point loses all else from its horizon, and feels no drawing aside to worldly things.

What then has Gautama done from the point of view of the Brahman? He has given up his home to become an ascetic. But this was permitted by usage, for, although the strict western code allowed it only to the priest, yet it was customary among the other twice-born castes at an earlier day, and in this part of India it awakened no surprise that one of the military caste should take up the life of a philosopher. For the historian of Indic religions this fact is of great significance, since such practice is the entering wedge which was to split the castes. One step more and not only the military caste but the lower, nay the lowest castes, might become ascetics. But, again, all ascetics were looked upon, in that religious society, as equal to the priests. In fact, where Gautama lived there was rather more respect paid to the ascetic than to the priest as a member of the caste. Gautama was most fortunate in his birth and birth-place. An aristocrat, he became an ascetic in a land where the priests were particularly disregarded. He had no public opinion to contend against when later he declared that Brahman birth and Brahman wisdom had no value. On the contrary, he spoke to glad hearers, who heard repeated loudly now as a religious truth what often they had said to themselves despitefully in private.

Gautama journeyed as a muni, or silent ascetic sage, till after seven years he abandoned his teachers (for he had become a disciple of professed masters), and discontentedly wandered about in M[=a]gadha (Beh[=a]r), 'the cradle of Buddhism,' till he came to Uruvel[=a], Bodhi Gay[=a].[9] Here, having found that concentration of mind, Yoga-discipline, availed nothing, he undertook another method of asceticism, self-torture. This he practiced for some time. But it succeeded as poorly as his first plan, and he had nearly starved himself to death when it occurred to him that he was no wiser than before. Thereupon he gave up starvation as a means of wisdom and began to eat. Five other ascetics, who had been much impressed by his endurance and were quite ready to declare themselves his disciples, now deserted him, thinking that as he had relaxed his discipline he must be weaker than themselves. But Gautama sat beneath the sacred fig-tree[10] and lo! he became illumined. In a moment he saw the Great Truths. He was now the Awakened. He became Buddha.

The later tradition here records how he was tempted of Satan. For M[=a]ra (Death), 'the Evil One' as he is called by the Buddhists, knowing that Buddha had found the way of salvation, tempted him to enter into Nirv[=a]na at once, lest by converting others Buddha should rob M[=a]ra of his power and dominion. This and the legend of storms attacking him and his being protected by the king of snakes, Mucalinda, is lacking in the earlier tradition.

Buddha remains under the bo-tree fasting, for four times seven days, or seven times seven, as says the later report. At first he resolves to be a 'Buddha for himself.'[11] that is to save only himself, not to be 'the universal Buddha,' who converts and saves the world. But the God Brahm[=a] comes down from heaven and persuades him out of pity for the world to preach salvation. In this legend stands out clearly the same fact we have animadverted upon already. Buddha had at first no intention of helping his fellows. He found his own road to salvation. That sufficed. But eventually he was moved through pity for his kind to give others the same knowledge with which he had been enlightened.[12]

Here is to be noticed with what suddenness Gautama becomes Buddha. It is an early case of the same absence of study or intellectual preparation for belief that is rampant in the idea of ictic conversion. In a moment Gautama's eyes are opened. In ecstacy he becomes illuminated with the light of knowledge. This idea is totally foreign to Brahmanism. It is not so strange at an earlier stage, for the Vedic poet often 'sees' his hymn,[13] that is, he is inspired or illumined. But no Brahman priest was ever 'enlightened' with sudden wisdom, for his knowledge was his wisdom, and this consisted in learning interminable trifles. But the wisdom of Buddha was this:

I. Birth is sorrow, age is sorrow, sickness is sorrow, death is sorrow, clinging to earthly things is sorrow.

II. Birth and re-birth, the chain of reincarnations, result from the thirst for life together with passion and desire.

III. The only escape from this thirst is the annihilation of desire.

IV. The only way of escape from this thirst is by following the Eightfold Path: Right belief, right resolve, right word, right act, right life, right effort, right thinking, right meditation.[14]

But Buddha is said to have seen more than these, the Four Great Truths, and the Eightfold Path, for he was enlightened at the same time (after several days of fasting) in regard to the whole chain of causality which is elaborated in the later tradition.

The general result of this teaching may be formulated thus, that most people are foolishly optimistic and that the great awakening is to become a pessimist. One must believe not only that pain is inseparable from existence, but that the pleasures of life are only a part of its pain. When one has got so far along the path of knowledge he traverses the next stage and gets rid of desire, which is the root of life,--this is a Vedic utterance,--till by casting off desire, ignorance, doubt, and heresy, as add some of the texts,[15] one has removed far away all unkindness and vexation of soul, feeling good-will to all.

Not only in this scheme but also in other less formal declarations of Buddha does one find the key-note of that which makes his method of salvation different alike to that of Jain or Brahman. Knowledge is wisdom to the Brahman; asceticism is wisdom to the Jain; purity and love is the first wisdom to the Buddhist. We do not mean that the Brahman does not reach theoretically a plane that puts him on the same level with Buddhism. We have pointed out above a passage in the work of the old law-giver Gautama which might almost have been uttered by Gautama Buddha: "He that has performed all the forty sacraments and has not the eight good qualities enters not into union with Brahm[=a] nor into the heaven of Brahm[=a]; but he that has performed only a part of the forty sacraments and has the eight good qualities, enters into union with Brahm[=a] and into the heaven of Brahm[=a]"; and these eight good qualities are mercy, forbearance, freedom from envy, purity, calmness, correct behavior, freedom from greed and from covetousness. Nevertheless with the Brahman this is adventitious, with the Buddhist it is essential.

These Four Great Truths are given to the world first at Benares, whither Buddha went in order to preach to the five ascetics that had deserted him. His conversation with them shows us another side of Buddhistic ethics. The five monks, when they saw Buddha approaching, jeered, and said: "Here is the one that failed in his austerities." Buddha tells them to acknowledge him as their master, and that he is the Enlightened One. "How," they ask, "if you could not succeed in becoming a Buddha by asceticism, can we suppose that you become one by indulgence?" Buddha tells them that neither voluptuousness nor asceticism is the road that leads to Nirv[=a]na; that he, Buddha, has found the middle path between the two extremes, the note is struck that is neither too high nor too low. The five monks are converted when they hear the Four Great Truths and the Eightfold Path, and there are now six holy ones on earth, Buddha and his five disciples.

Significant also is the social status of Buddha's first conversion. It is 'the rich youth' of Benares that flock about him,[16] of whom sixty soon are counted, and these are sent out into all the lands to preach the gospel, each to speak in his own tongue, for religion was from this time on no longer to be hid behind the veil of an unintelligible language. And it is not only the aristocracy of wealth that attaches itself to the new teacher and embraces his doctrines with enthusiasm. The next converts are a thousand Brahman priests, who constituted a religious body under the leadership of three ascetic Brahmans. It is described in the old writings how these priests were still performing their Vedic rites when Buddha came again to Bodhi Gay[=a] and found them there. They were overcome with astonishment as they saw his power over the King of Snakes that lived among them. The gods--for Buddhism, if not Buddha, has much to do with the gods--descend from heaven to hear him, and other marvels take place. The Brahmans are all converted. The miracles and the numbers may be stripped off, but thus denuded the truth still remains as important as it is plain. Priests of Brahman caste were among the first to adopt Buddhism. The popular effect of the teaching must have been great, for one reads how, when Buddha, after this great conversion, begins his victorious wanderings in Beh[=a]r (M[=a]gadha), he converted so many of the young nobles that--since conversion led to the immediate result of renunciation--the people murmured, saying that Gautama (Gotama) was robbing them of their youth.[17]

From this time on Buddha's life was spent in wandering about and preaching the new creed mainly to the people of Beh[=a]r and Oude (K[=a]çi-Kosala, the realm of Benares-Oude), his course extending from the (Ir[=a]vati) Rapti river in the north to R[=a]jagriha (gaha, now Rajgir) south of Beh[=a]r, while he spent the vasso or rainy season in one of the parks, many of which were donated to him by wealthy members of the fraternity.[18]

Wherever he went he was accompanied with a considerable number of followers, and one reads of pilgrims from distant places coming to see and converse with him. The number of his followers appears to have been somewhat exaggerated by the later writers, since Buddha himself, when prophesying of the next Buddha, the "Buddha of love" (Maitreya) says that, whereas he himself has hundreds of followers, the next Buddha will lead hundreds of thousands.

Although, theoretically, all the castes give up their name, and, when united in the Buddhistic brotherhood, become "like rivers that give up their identity and unite in the one ocean," yet were most of the early recruits, as has been said, from influential and powerful families; and it is a tenet of Buddhism in regard to the numerous Buddhas, which have been born[19] and are still to be born on earth, that no Buddha can be born in a low caste.

The reason for this lies as much as anything in the nature of the Buddhistic system which is expressly declared to be "for the wise, not for the foolish." It was not a system based as such on love or on any democratic sentiment. It was a philosophical exposition of the causal nexus of birth and freedom from re-birth. The common man, untrained in logic, might adopt the teaching, but he could not understand it. The "Congregation of the son of the Ç[=a]kyas"--such was the earliest name for the Buddhistic brotherhood--were required only to renounce their family, put on the yellow robe, assume the tonsure and other outward signs, and be chaste and high-minded. But the teachers were instructed in the subtleties of the 'Path,' and it needed no little training to follow the leader's thought to its logical conclusion.

Of Buddha's life, besides the circumstances already narrated little is known. Of his disciples the best beloved was [=A]nanda, his own cousin, whose brother was the Judas of Buddhism. The latter, Devadatta by name, conspired to kill Buddha in order that he himself might get the post of honor. But hell opened and swallowed him up. He appears to have had convictions of Jain tendency, for before his intrigue he preached against Buddha, and formulated reactionary propositions which inculcated a stricter asceticism than that taught by the Master.[20]

It has been denied that the early church contained lay members as well as monks, but Oldenberg appears to have set the matter right (p. 165) in showing that the laity, from the beginning, were a recognized part of the general church. The monk (bhikshu, bhikku) was formally enrolled as a disciple, wore the gown and tonsure, etc. The lay brother, 'reverer' (up[=a]saka) was one that assented to the doctrine and treated the monks kindly. There were, at first, only men in the congregation, for Buddhism took a view as unfavorable to woman as did Jainism. But at his foster-mother's request Buddha finally admitted nuns as well as monks into his fold. When [=A]nanda asks how a monk should act in presence of a woman Buddha says 'avoid to look at her'; but if it be necessary to look, 'do not speak to her'; but if it be necessary to speak, 'then keep wide awake, [=A]nanda.'[21]

Buddha died in the fifth century. Rhys Davids, who puts the date later than most scholars, gives, as the time of the great Nirv[=a]na, the second decade from the end of the fourth century. On the other hand, Bühler and Müller reckon the year as 477, while Oldenberg says 'about 480.'[22] From Buddha's own words, as reported by tradition, he was eighty years old at the time of his death, and if one allots him thirty-six years as his age when he became independent of masters, his active life would be one of forty-four years. It was probably less than this, however, for some years must be added to the first seven of ascetic practices before he took the field as a preacher.

The story of Buddha's death is told simply and clearly. He crossed the Ganges, where at that time was building the town of Patna (P[=a]taliputta, 'Palibothra'), and prophesied its future greatness (it was the chief city of India for centuries after); then, going north from R[=a]jagriha, in Beh[=a]r, and V[=a]iç[=a]l[=i], he proceeded to a point east of Gorukhpur (Kasia). Tradition thus makes him wander over the most familiar places till he comes back almost to his own country. There, in the region known to him as a youth, weighed down with years and ill-health, but surrounded by his most faithful disciples, he died. Not unaffecting is the final scene.[23]

'Now the venerable [=A]nanda (Buddha's beloved disciple) went into the cloister-building, and stood leaning against the lintel of the door and weeping at the thought: "Alas! I remain still but a learner, one who has yet to work out his own perfection. And the Master is about to pass away from me--he who is so kind." Then the Blessed One called the brethren and said: "Where then, brethren, is [=A]nanda?" "The venerable [=A]nanda (they replied) has gone into the cloister-building and stands leaning against the lintel of the door, weeping." ... And the Blessed One called a certain brother, and said "Go now, brother, and call [=A]nanda in my name and say, 'Brother [=A]nanda, thy Master calls for thee.'" "Even so, Lord," said that brother, and he went up to where [=A]nanda was, and said to the venerable [=A]nanda: "Brother [=A]nanda, thy Master calls for thee." "It is well, brother," said the venerable [=A]nanda, and he went to the place where Buddha was. And when he was come thither he bowed down before the Blessed One, and took his seat on one side. Then the Blessed One said to the venerable [=A]nanda, as he sat there by his side: "Enough, [=A]nanda, let not thyself be troubled; weep not. Have I not told thee already that we must divide ourselves from all that is nearest and dearest? How can it be possible that a being born to die should not die? For a long time, [=A]nanda, hast thou been very near to me by acts of love that is kind and good and never varies, and is beyond all measure. (This Buddha repeats three times.) Thou hast done well. Be earnest in effort. Thou, too, shalt soon be free." ... When he had thus spoken, the venerable [=A]nanda said to the Blessed One: "Let not the Blessed One die in this little wattle and daub town, a town in the midst of the jungle, in this branch township. For, Lord, there are other great cities such as Benares (and others). Let the Blessed One die in one of them."'

This request is refused by Buddha. [=A]nanda then goes to the town and tells the citizens that Buddha is dying. 'Now, when they had heard this saying, they, With their young men and maidens and wives were grieved, and sad, and afflicted at heart. And some of them wept, dishevelling their hair, and stretched forth their arms, and wept, fell prostrate on the ground and rolled to and fro, in anguish at the thought "Too soon will the Blessed One die! Too soon will the Happy One pass away! Full soon will the Light of the world vanish away!"' ... When Buddha is alone again with his disciples, 'then the Blessed One addressed the brethren and said "It may be, brethren, that there may be doubt or misgiving in the mind of some brother as to the Buddha, the truth, the path or the way. Inquire, brethren, freely. Do not have to reproach yourselves afterwards with this thought: 'Our Teacher was face to face with us, and we could not bring ourselves to inquire of the Blessed One when we were face to face with him.'" And when he had thus spoken they sat silent. Then (after repeating these words and receiving no reply) the Blessed One addressed the brethren and said, "It may be that you put no questions out of reverence for the Teacher. Let one friend communicate with another." And when he had thus spoken the brethren sat silent. And the venerable [=A]nanda said: "How wonderful a thing, Lord, and how marvellous. Verily, in this whole assembly, there is not one brother who has doubt or misgiving as to Buddha, the truth, the path or the way." Then Buddha said: "It is out of the fullness of thy faith that thou hast spoken, [=A]nanda. But I know it for certain." ... Then the Blessed One addressed the brethren saying: "Behold, brethren, I exhort you saying, transitory are all component things; toil without ceasing." And these were the last words of Buddha.'

It is necessary here to make pause for a moment and survey the temporal and geographical circumstances of Buddha's life. His lifetime covered the period of greatest intellectual growth in Athens. If, as some think, the great book of doubt[24] was written by the Hebrew in 450, there would be in three lands, at least, about the same time the same earnestly scornful skepticism in regard to the worn-out teachings of the fathers. But at a time when, in Greece, the greatest minds were still veiling infidelity as best they could, in India atheism was already formulated.

It has been questioned, and the question has been answered both affirmatively and negatively, whether the climatic conditions of Buddha's home were in part responsible for the pessimistic tone of his philosophy. If one compare the geographical relation of Buddhism to Brahmanism and to Vedism respectively with a more familiar geography nearer home, he will be better able to judge in how far these conditions may have influenced the mental and religious tone. Taking Kabul and Kashmeer as the northern limit of the period of the Rig Veda, there are three geographical centres. The latitude of the Vedic poets corresponds to about the southern boundary of Tennessee and North Carolina. The entire tract covered by the southern migration to the time of Buddhism, extending from Kabul to a point that corresponds to Benares (35° is a little north of Kabul and 25° is a little south of Beh[=a]r), would be represented loosely in the United States by the difference between the northern line of Mississippi and Key West. The extent of Georgia about represents in latitude the Vedic province (35° to 30°), while Florida (30° to 25°) roughly shows the southern progress from the seat of old Brahmanism to the cradle of young Buddhism. These are the extreme limits of Vedism, Brahmanism and proto-Buddhism. South of this the country was known to Brahmanism only to be called savage, and not before the late S[=u]tras (c. 300 B.C.) is one brought as far south as Bombay in the West. The [=A]itareya Br[=a]hmana, which represents the old centre of Brahmanism around Delhi, knows of the [=A]ndhras, south of the God[=a]var[=i] river in the southeast (about the latitude of Bombay and Hayti), only as outer 'Barbarians.' It is quite conceivable that a race of hardy mountaineers, in shifting their home through generations from the hills of Georgia and Tennessee to the sub-tropical region of Key West (to Cuba), in the course of many centuries might become morally affected. But it seems to us, although the miasmatic plains of Bengal may perhaps present even a sharper contrast to the Vedic region than do Key West and Cuba to Georgia, that the climate in effecting a moral degradation (if pessimism be immoral) must have produced also the effect of mental debility. Now to our mind there is not the slightest proof for the asseveration, which has been repeated so often that it is accepted by many nowadays as a truism, that Buddhism or even post-Buddhistic literature shows any trace of mental decay.[25] There certainly is mental weakness in the Br[=a]hmanas, but these cannot all be accredited to the miasms of Bengal. They are the bones of a religion already dead, kept for instruction in a cabinet; dry, dusty, lifeless, but awful to the beholder and useful to the owner. Again, does Buddhism lose in the comparison from an intellectual point of view when set beside the mazy gropings of the Upanishads? We have shown that dogma was the base of primal pantheism; of real logic there is not a whit. We admire the spirit of the teachers in the Upanishads, but we have very little respect for the logical ability of any early Hindu teachers; that is to say, there is very little of it to admire. The doctors of the Upanishad philosophy were poets, not dialecticians. Poetry indeed waned in the extreme south, and no spirited or powerful literature ever was produced there, unless it was due to foreign influence, such as the religious poetry of Ramaism and the Tamil Sittars. But in secondary subtlety and in the marking of distinctions, in classifying and analyzing on dogmatic premises, as well as in the acceptance of hearsay truths as ultimate verities--we do not see any fundamental disparity in these regards between the mind of the Northwest and that of the Southeast; and what superficial difference exists goes to the credit of Buddhism. For if one must have dogma it is something to have system, and while precedent theosophy was based on the former it knew nothing of the latter. Moreover, in Buddhism there is a greater intellectual vigor than in any phase of Brahmanism (as distinct from Vedism). To cast off not only gods but soul, and more, to deny the moral efficacy of asceticism this was a leap into the void, to appreciate the daring of which one has but to read himself into the priestly literature of Buddha's rivals, both heterodox and orthodox. We see then in Buddhism neither a debauched moral type, nor a weakened intellectuality. The pessimism of Buddhism, so far as it concerns earth, is not only the same pessimism that underlies the religious motive of Brahmanic pantheism, but it is the same pessimism that pervades Christianity and even Hebraism. This world is a sorry place, living is suffering; do thou escape from it. The pleasures of life are vanity; do thou renounce them. "To die is gain," says the apostle; and the Preacher: "I have seen all the works that are done under the sun and behold all is vanity and vexation of spirit. He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. For what hath man of all his labor and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun? For all his days are sorrows and his travail grief. That which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the spirit of man whether it goeth upward? I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive. The dead know not anything, their love and their hatred and their envy is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun. The wandering of the desire, this also is vanity."

The Preacher is a fairly good Buddhist.

If pessimism be the conviction that life on earth is not worth living, this view is shared alike by the greatest of earth's religions. If pessimism be the view that all beauty ends with life and that beyond it there is nothing for which it is worth while to live, then India has no parallel to this Homeric belief. If, however, pessimism mean that to have done with existence on earth is the best that can happen to a man, but that there is bliss beyond, then this is the opinion of Brahmanism, Jainism, and Christianity. Buddhism alone teaches that to live on earth is weariness, that there is no bliss beyond, and that one should yet be calm, pure, loving, and wise.

How could such a religion inspire enthusiasm? How could it send forth jubilant disciples to preach the gospel of joy? Yet did Buddhism do even this. Not less happy and blissful than were they that received the first comfort of pantheism were the apostles of Buddha. His progress was a triumph of gladness. They that believed in him rejoiced and hastened to their fellows with the good tidings. Was it then a new morality, a new ethical code, that thus inspired them? Let one but look at the vows and commandments respectively taken by and given to the Buddhist monk, and he will see that in Buddhism there is no new morality.

The Ten Vows are as follows:

I take the vow not to kill; not to steal; to abstain from impurity; not to lie; to abstain from intoxicating drinks which hinder progress and virtue; not to eat at forbidden times; to abstain from dancing, singing, music and stage plays; not to use garlands, scents, unguents, or ornaments; not to use a high or broad bed; not to receive gold or silver.

The Eight Commandments are as follows:

Do not kill; do not steal; do not lie; do not drink intoxicating drinks; do not commit fornication or adultery; do not eat unseasonable food at night; do not wear garlands or use perfumes; sleep on a mat spread on the ground.

The first five of these commands are given to every Buddhist, monk, or layman; the last three are binding only on the monk.[26]

These laws and rules were, however, as we have indicated in the chapter on Jainism, the common property, with some unimportant variations and exceptions, of the Brahman ascetic, the Jain, and the Buddhist. There was surely nothing here to rouse especial interest. No. But there was one side of Buddhism that was new, not absolutely new, for it formed part of the moral possession of that early band which we may call the congregation of the Spirit. The Brahman theoretically had done away with penance and with prayer, with the Vedic gods and with the Vedic rites. Yet was it impossible for him practically to absolve the folk of these. The priest might admit that he knew a better way to salvation, but he still led the people over the hard old road, and he himself went that way also, because it was the way of the fathers, because it was the only way for them that were unwise, and perhaps, too, because it was the only way in which the priest could keep his place as guide and leader of the people.

Jainism smote down some of the obstacles that the Brahman had built and kept. Mah[=a]v[=i]ra made the way to salvation shorter, but he did not make it easier for the masses. Asceticism, self-mortification, starvation, torture,--this was his means of gaining happiness hereafter.

But Buddha cut down all obstacles. He made the lowest equal with the highest. It is true that he was no democrat. It is true that his success depended, in great part, on political influence, on the conversion of kings and nobles, men of his own class. It is true also that Buddha at first, like every other Hindu theosophist, sought no salvation for the world around him, but only for himself. But he was moved with pity for the multitude. And why? The sages among them knew no path to happiness save through life-long torture; the common people knew only a religion of rites in which they took no interest, the very words of which were unintelligible; and its priests in their eyes, if not contemptible, at least were unsympathetic. And at the same time the old caste-system oppressed and insulted them. It is evident that the times were ripe for a more humane religion and a new distribution of social privileges. Then Buddha arose and said: "He that is pure in heart is the true priest, not he that knows the Veda. Like unto one that standeth where a king hath stood and spoken, and standing and speaking there deems himself for this a king, seems to me the man that repeateth the hymns, which the wise men of old have spoken, and standing in their place and speaking, deems himself for this a sage. The Vedas are nothing, the priests are of no account, save as they be morally of repute. Again, what use to mortify the flesh? Asceticism is of no value. Be pure, be good; this is the foundation of wisdom--to restrain desire, to be satisfied with little. He is a holy man who doeth this. Knowledge follows this."

Here is the essence of Buddhism, here is its power; and when one reflects that Buddha added: "Go into all lands and preach this gospel; tell them that the poor and lowly, the rich and high, are all one, and that all castes unite in this religion, as unite the rivers in the sea"--he will understand what key was used to open the hearts of Buddha's kinsmen and people.

But, it will be said, there is nothing in this of that extreme pessimism, of which mention has just been made. True. And this, again, is an important point to bear in mind, that whereas the logic of his own system led Buddha into a formal and complete pessimism, which denies an after-life to the man that finds no happiness in this, he yet never insists upon this. He not only does not insist, but in his talks with his questioners and disciples he uses all means to evade direct inquiry in regard to the fate of man after death. He believed that Nirv[=a]na (extinction of lust) led to cessation of being; he did not believe in an immortal soul. But he urged no such negative doctrine as this. What he urged repeatedly was that every one accepting the undisputed doctrine of karma or re-birth in its full extent (i.e., that for every sin here, punishment followed in the next existence), should endeavor to escape, if possible, from such an endless course of painful re-births, and that to accomplish this it was necessary first to be sober and good, then to be learned, but not to be an ascetic. On the other hand the doctrine, in its logical fullness, was a teaching only for the wise, not for fools. He imparted it only to the wise. What is one to understand from this? Clearly, that Buddha regarded the mass of his disciples as standing in need merely of the Four Great Truths, the confession of which was the sign of becoming a disciple; while to the strong and wise he reserved the logical pessimism, which resulted from his first denials and the premises of causality on which was created his complicated system. Only thus can one comprehend the importance of Buddhism to his own time and people, only in this light reconcile the discrepancy between the accounts of a religion which roused multitudes to enthusiasm and joy, while on the other hand it stood on the cold basis of complete nihilism. Formally there was not an esoteric[27] and exoteric Buddhism, but practically what the apostles taught, what Buddha himself taught to the mass of his hearers was a release from the bondage of the law and the freedom of a high moral code as the one thing needful. But he never taught that sacrifice was a bad thing; he never either took the priest's place himself or cast scorn upon the Brahman caste: "Better even than a harmless[28] sacrifice is liberality" he says, "better than liberality is faith and kindness (non-injury) and truth, better than faith, kindness, and truth is renunciation of the world and the search for peace; best of all, the highest sacrifice and greatest good, is when one enters Nirv[=a]na, saying "I shall not return again to earth." This is to be an Arhat (Perfect Sage).

These are Buddha's own words as he spoke with a Brahman priest,[29] who was converted thereby and replied at once with the Buddhist's confession of faith: "I take refuge in Buddha, in the doctrine, in the church."

A significant conversation! In many ways these words should be corrective of much that is hazarded today in regard to Buddhism. There is here no elaborate system of metaphysics. Wisdom consists in the truth as it is in Buddha; and before truth stand, as antecedently essential, faith and kindness; for so may one render the passive non-injury of the Brahman as taught by the Buddhist. To have faith and good works, to renounce the pomps and vanities of life, to show kindness to every living thing, to seek for salvation, to understand, and so finally to leave no second self behind to suffer again, this is Buddha's doctrine.

We have avoided thus far to define Nirv[=a]na. It has three distinct meanings, eternal blissful repose (such was the Nirv[=a]na of the Jains and in part of Buddhism), extinction and absolute annihilation (such was the Nirv[=a]na of some Buddhists), and the Nirv[=a]na of Buddha himself. Nirv[=a]na meant to Buddha the extinction of lust, anger, and ignorance. He adopted the term, he did not invent it. He was often questioned, but persistently refused to say whether he believed that Nirv[=a]na implied extinction of being or not. We believe that in this refusal to speak on so vital a point lies the evidence that he himself regarded the 'extinction' or 'blowing out' (this is what the word means literally) as resulting in annihilation. Had he believed otherwise we think he would not have hesitated to say so, for it would have strengthened his influence among them to whom annihilation was not a pleasing thought.

But one has no right to 'go behind the returns' as these are given by Buddha. The later church says distinctly that Buddha himself did not teach whether he himself, his ego, was to live after death or not; or whether a permanent ego exists. It is useless, therefore, to inquire whether Buddha's Nirv[=a]na be a completion, as Müller defines it, or annihilation. To one Buddhistic party it was the one; to the other, the other; to Buddha himself it was what may be inferred from his refusal to make any declaration in regard to it.

The second point of interest is not more easily disposed of. What to the Buddhist is the spirit, the soul of man? It certainly is not an eternal spirit, such as was the spirit of Brahmanic philosophy, or that of the Jain. But, on the other hand, it is clear that something survived after death till one was reborn for the last time, and then entered Nirv[=a]na. The part that animates the material complex is to the Buddhist an individuality which depends on the nature of its former complex, home, and is destined to project itself upon futurity till the house which it has built ceases to exist, a home rebuilt no more to be its tabernacle. When a man dies the component parts of his material personality fall apart, and a new complex is formed, of which the individuality is the effect of the karma of the preceding complex. The new person is one's karmic self, but it is not one's identical ego. There appears, therefore, even in the doctrine of Nirv[=a]na, to lie something of that altruism so conspicuous in the insistence on kindness and conversion of others. It is to save from sorrow this son of one's acts that one should seek to find the end. But there is no soul to save.

We cannot insist too often on the fact that the religion of Buddha was not less practical than human. He practiced, as he taught, that the more one worked for others, was devoted to others, the less he cared for himself, the less was he the victim of desire. Hence he says that a true Nirv[=a]na may come even in one's own lifetime--the utter surrender of one's self is Nirv[=a]na,[30] while the act of dying only draws the curtain after the tragedy has ended. "Except," Buddha says, "for birth, age, and death, there would be no need of Buddha."

A review of Buddha's system of metaphysics is, therefore, doubly unnecessary for our present purpose.[31] In the first place we believe that most of the categories and metaphysical niceties of Buddhism, as handed down, are of secondary origin; and, were this not so, it is still evident that they were but the unimportant, intellectual appendage of a religion that was based on anything but metaphysical subtleties. Buddha, like every other teacher of his time, had to have a 'system,' though whether the system handed down as his reverts to him it is impossible to say. But Buddha's recondite doctrine was only for the wise. "It is hard to learn for an ordinary person," says Buddha himself. But it was the ordinary person that Buddhism took to its bosom. The reason can be only the one we have given. For the last stage before Arhat-ship Buddha had ready a complicate system. But he did not inflict it on the ordinary person.[32] It was not an essential but the completing of his teaching; in his own eyes truth as represented by the Four Great Truths was the real doctrine.

The religion of Buddha, for the mass of people, lies in the Four Great Truths and their practical application to others, which implies kindness and love of humanity. For Buddha, whatever may have been the reluctance with which he began to preach, shows in all his teachings and dealings with men an enduring patience under their rebuffs, a brotherly sympathy with their weakness, and a divine pity for their sorrows. Something, too, of divine anger with the pettiness and meanness of the unworthy ones among his followers, as when, after preaching with parable and exhortation to the wrangling brothers of the monastery of Kosamb[=i], he left them, saying, "'Truly these fools are infatuate; it is no easy task to administer instruction to them,' and," it is added simply, "he rose from his seat and went away."[33]

The significance of the church organization in the development of Buddhism should not be under-estimated. Contrasted with the lack of an organized ecclesiastical corporation among the Brahmans the Buddhistic synod, or congregation, Sangha, exerted a great influence. In different places there would be a park set apart for the Buddhist monks. Here they had their monastery buildings, here they lived during the rainy season, from this place out as a centre the monks radiated through the country, not as lone mendicants, but as members of a powerful fraternity. To this monastery came gifts, receipts of all kinds that never would have been bestowed upon individuals. Undoubtedly organization did much for the spread of Buddhism. Yet we think its influence has been emphasized almost too much by some scholars, or rather the effect has been represented as too radical. For the monasteries, as represented by tradition, with their immense wealth and political importance as allies of the heretical kings of the East, are plainly of secondary growth. If one limit their national and political importance to a period one or two hundred years after the Master's time, he will not err in attributing to this cause, as does Barth, the reason for the rapid rise and supremacy of Buddhism over India. But the first beginnings of the institution were small, and what is to be sought in the beginning of Buddhism is rather the reason why the monasteries became popular, and what was the hold which Buddha had upon the masses, and which induced the formation of this great engine of religious war. And when this first question is raised the answer must still be that the banding together of the monks was not the cause but the effect of the popularity of Buddhism. The first monasteries, as Barth well says, were only assemblies of pious men who formed a spiritual band of religious thinkers, of men who united themselves into one body to the end that they might study righteousness, learning together how to imitate the Master in holiness of living. But the members converted soon became so many that formal assemblies became a necessity to settle the practical disputes and theoretical questions which were raised by the new multitude of believers, some of whom were more factious than devout. Brahmanism had no need of this. The Brahman priest had his law in tradition; his life and conduct were regulated by immemorial law. The corporations of these priests were but temporary organizations for specific purposes. They made no attempt to proselytize. Their members never exceeded the bounds of the caste. The cause, then, of the rapid spread of Buddhism at the beginning of its career lies only in the conditions of its teaching and the influential backing of its founder. It was the individual Buddha that captivated men; it was the teaching that emanated from him that fired enthusiasm; it was his position as an aristocrat that made him acceptable to the aristocracy, his magnetism that made him the idol of the people. From every page stands out the strong, attractive personality of this teacher and winner of hearts. No man ever lived so godless yet so godlike. Arrogating to himself no divinity, despairing of future bliss, but without fear as without hope, leader of thought but despising lovingly the folly of the world, exalted but adored, the universal brother, he wandered among men, simply, serenely; with gentle irony subduing them that opposed him, to congregation after congregation speaking with majestic sweetness, the master to each, the friend of all. His voice was singularly vibrant and eloquent;[34] his very tones convinced the hearer, his looks inspired awe. From the tradition it appears that he must have been one of those whose personality alone suffices to make a man not only a leader but a god to the hearts of his fellows. When such an one speaks he obtains hearers. It matters little what he says, for he influences the emotions, and bends whoever listens to his will. But if added to this personality, if encompassing it, there be the feeling in the minds of others that what this man teaches is not only a verity, but the very hope of their salvation; if for the first time they recognize in his words the truth that makes of slaves free men, of classes a brotherhood, then it is not difficult to see wherein lies the lightning-like speed with which the electric current passes from heart to heart. Such a man was Buddha, such was the essential of his teaching; and such was the inevitable rapidity of Buddhistic expansion, and the profound influence of the shock that was produced by the new faith upon the moral consciousness of Buddha's people.

The literature of early Buddhism consists of a number of historical works embodying the life and teaching of the master, some of more didactic and epigrammatic intent, and, in the writings of the Northern Buddhists, some that have given up the verbose simplicity of the first tracts in favor of tasteless and extravagant recitals more stagey than impressive. The final collection of the sacred books (earlier is the Suttanta division into Nik[=a]yas) is called Tripitaka, 'the three baskets,' one containing the tracts on discipline; one, the talks of Buddha; and one, partly metaphysical; called respectively Vinaya, Sutta, and Abhidhamma. The Southern[35] P[=a]li redaction--for the writings of the Northern[36] Buddhists are in Sanskrit--was commented upon in the fifth century of this era by Buddha-gosha ('Buddha's glory'), and appears to be older than the Sanskrit version of Nep[=a]l. Some of the writings go back as far as the Second Council, and their content, so far as it concerns Buddha's own words, in many cases is doubtless a tradition that one should accept as authoritative. The works on discipline, instead of being as dull as one might reasonably expect of books that deal with the petty details of a monastery, are of exceeding interest (although whole chapters conform to the reasonable expectation), for they contain fragments of the work and words of Buddha which give a clearer idea of his personality and teaching than do his more extended, and perhaps less original discourses. They throw a strong light also on the early church, its recalcitrant as well as its obedient members, the quarrels and schisms that appear to have arisen even before Buddha's death. Thus in the Mah[=a]vagga (ch. X) there is found an account of the schism caused by the expulsion of some unworthy members. The brethren are not only schismatic, some taking the side of those expelled, but they are even insolent to Buddha; and when he entreats them for the sake of the effect on the outer world to heal their differences,[37] they tell him to his face that they will take the responsibility, and that he need not concern himself with the matter. It is on this occasion that Buddha says, "Truly, these fools are infatuate," leaves them, and goes into solitude, rejoicing to be free from souls so quarrelsome and contentious. Again these tracts give a picture of how they should live that are truly Buddha's disciples. Buddha finds three disciples living in perfect harmony, and asks them how they live together so peaceably and lovingly. In quaint and yet dignified language they reply, and tell him that they serve each other. He that rises first prepares the meal, he that returns last at night puts the room in order, etc. (ib. 4). Occasionally in the account of unruly brothers it is evident that tradition must be anticipating, or that many joined the Buddhist fraternity as an excuse from restraint. The Cullavagga opens with the story of two notorious renegades, 'makers of strife, quarrelsome, makers of dispute, given to idle talk, and raisers of legal questions in the congregation.' Such were the infamous followers of Panduka and Lohitaka. Of a different sort, Epicurean or rather frivolous, were the adherents of Assaji and Punabbasu, who, according to another chapter of the Cullavagga (I. 13), 'cut flowers, planted cuttings of flowers, used ointment and scents, danced, wore garlands, and revelled wickedly.' A list of the amusements in which indulged these flighty monks includes 'games played with six and ten pieces, tossing up, hopping over diagrams, dice, jackstraws,[38] ball, sketching, racing, marbles, wrestling,' etc; to which a like list (Tevijja, II) adds chess or checkers ('playing with a board of sixty-four squares or one hundred squares'), ghost stories, and unseemly wrangling in regard to belief ("I am orthodox, you are heterodox"), earning a living by prognostication, by taking omens 'from a mirror' or otherwise, by quack medicines, and by 'pretending to understand the language of beasts.' It is gratifying to learn that the scented offenders described in the first-mentioned work were banished from the order. According to the regular procedure, they were first warned, then reminded, then charged; then the matter was laid before the congregation, and they were obliged to leave the order. Even the detail of Subhadda's insolence is not wanting in these records (Cull. XI. 1. and elsewhere). No sooner was Buddha dead than the traitor Subhadda cries out: "We are well rid of him; he gave us too many rules. Now we may do as we like." On which the assembly proceeded to declare in force all the rules that Buddha had given, although he had left it to them to discard them when they would. The Confessional (P[=a]timokkha), out of which have been evolved in narrative form the Vinaya texts that contain it, concerns graded offences, matters of expiation, rules regarding decency, directions concerning robes, rugs, bowls, and other rather uninteresting topics, all discussed in the form of a confession.[39] The church-reader goes over the rules in the presence of the congregation, and asks at the end of each section whether any one is guilty of having broken this rule. If at the third repetition no one responds, he says, 'They are declared innocent by their silence.' This was the first public confessional, although, as we have shown above, the idea of a partial remission of sin by means of confession to the priest is found in Brahmanic literature.[40] The confession extends to very small matters, but one sees from other texts that the early congregation laid a great deal of weight on details, such as dress, as the sign of a sober life. Thus in Mah[=a]vagga, V. 2 ff., certain Buddhists dress in a worldly way. At one time one is informed of the color of their heretical slippers, at another of the make of their wicked gowns. All this is monastic, even in the discipline which 'sets back' a badly behaved monk, gives him probation, forces him to be subordinate. In Cullavagga, I. 9, there is an account of stupid Seyyasaka, who was dull and indiscreet, and was always getting 'set back' by the brethren. Finally they grow weary of probating him and carry out the nissaya against him, obliging him to remain under the superintendence of others. For, according to Buddha's rule, a wise novice was kept under surveillance, or rather under the authority of others, for five years; a stupid uninformed monk, forever. Buddha's relations with society are plainly set forth. One reads how his devoted friend, King Seniya Bimbis[=a]ra, four years younger than Buddha, and his protector (for he was King of M[=a]gadha), gives him a park, perhaps the first donation of this sort, the origin of all the monastic foundations: "The King of M[=a]gadha, Bimbis[=a]ra, thought 'here is this bamboo forest Venuvana, my pleasure-garden, which is neither too near to the town nor too far from it.... What if I were to give it to the fraternity?' ... And he took a golden vessel (of water) and dedicated the garden to Buddha, saying, 'I give up the park to the fraternity with Buddha at its head.' And the Blessed One accepted the park" (Mah[=a]vagga, i. 22).[41] Another such park Buddha accepts from the courtezan, Ambap[=a]li, whose conversation with Buddha and dinner-party to him forms a favorite story with the monks (Mah[=a]v. v. 30; Cull. ii). The protection offered by Bimbis[=a]ra made the order a fine retreat for rogues. In Mah[=a]v. 1. 41 ff. one reads that King Seniya Bimbis[=a]ra made a decree: "No one is to do any harm to those ordained among the Ç[=a]kya-son's monks.[42] Well taught is their doctrine. Let them lead a holy life for the sake of complete extinction of suffering." But robbers and runaway slaves immediately took advantage of this decree, and by joining the order put the police at defiance. Even debtors escaped, became monks, and mocked their creditors. Buddha, therefore, made it a rule that no robber, runaway slave, or other person liable to arrest should be admitted into the order. He ordained further that no son might join the order without his parents' consent (ib. 54). Still another motive of false disciples had to be combated. The parents of Up[=a]li thought to themselves: "What shalt we teach Up[=a]li that he may earn his living? If we teach him writing his fingers will be sore; if we teach him arithmetic his mind will be sore; if we teach him money-changing his eyes will be sore. There are those Buddhist monks; they live an easy life; they have enough to eat and shelter from the rain; we will make him a monk." Buddha, hearing of this, ordained that no one should be admitted into the order under twenty (with some exceptions).

The monks' lives were simple. They went out by day to beg, were locked in their cells at night (Mah[=a]v. i. 53), were probated for light offences, and expelled for very severe ones.[43] The people are represented as murmuring against the practices of the monks at first, till the latter were brought to more modest behavior. It is perhaps only Buddhist animosity that makes the narrator say: "They did not behave modestly at table.... Then the people murmured and said, 'These Buddhist monks make a riot at their meals, they act just like the Brahman priests.'" (Mah[=a]v. i. 25; cf. i. 70.)

We turn from the Discipline to the Sermons. Here one finds everything, from moral exhortations to a book of Revelations.[44] Buddha sometimes is represented as entering upon a dramatic dialogue with those whom he wishes to reform, and the talk is narrated. With what soft irony he questions, with what apparent simplicity he argues! In the Tevijja[45] the scene opens with a young Brahman. He is a pious and religious youth, and tells Buddha that although he yearns for 'union with Brahm[=a],'[46] he does not know which of the different paths proposed by Brahman priests lead to Brahm[=a]. Do they all lead to union with Brahm[=a]? Buddha answers: 'Let us see; has any one of these Brahmans ever seen Brahm[=a]?' 'No, indeed, Gautama.' 'Or did any one of their ancestors ever see Brahm[=a]?' 'No, Gautama.' 'Well, did the most ancient seers ever say that they knew where is Brahm[=a]?' 'No, Gautama.' 'Then if neither the present Brahmans know, nor the old Brahmans knew where is Brahm[=a], the present Brahmans say in point of fact, "We can show the way to union with what we know not and have never seen; this is the straight path, this is the direct way which leads to Brahm[=a]"--and is this foolish talk?' 'It is foolish talk.' 'Then, as to yearning for union with Brahm[=a], suppose a man should say, "How I long for, how I love the most beautiful woman in this land," and the people should ask, "Do you know whether that beautiful woman is a noble lady, or a Brahman woman, or of the trader class, or a slave?" and he should say, "No"; and the people should say, "What is her name, is she tall or short, in what place does she live?" and he should say, "I know not," and the people should say, "Whom you know not, neither have seen, her you love and long for?" and he should say, "Yes,"--would not that be foolish? Then, after this is assented to, Buddha suggests another parallel. 'A man builds a staircase, and the people ask, "Do you know where is the mansion to which this staircase leads?" "I do not know." "Are you making a staircase to lead to something, taking it for a mansion, which you know not and have never seen?" "Yes." Would not this be foolish talk?... Now what think you, is Brahm[=a] in possession of wives and wealth?' 'He is not.'

'Is his mind full of anger or free from anger? Is his mind full of malice or free from malice?' 'Free from anger and malice.' 'Is his mind depraved or pure?' 'Pure.' 'Has he self-mastery?' 'Yes.' 'Now what think you, are the Brahmans in possession of wives and wealth, do they have anger in their hearts, do they bear malice, are they impure in heart, are they without self-mastery?' 'Yes.' 'Can there then be likeness between the Brahmans and Brahm[=a]?' 'No.' 'Will they then after death become united to Brahm[=a] who is not at all like them?' Then Buddha points out the path of purity and love. Here is no negative 'non-injury,' but something very different to anything that had been preached before in India. When the novice puts away hate, passion, wrong-doing, sinfulness of every kind, then: 'He lets his mind pervade the whole wide world, above, below, around and everywhere, with a heart of love, far-reaching, grown great, and beyond measure. And he lets his mind pervade the whole world with a heart of pity, sympathy, and equanimity, far-reaching, grown great, and beyond measure.' Buddha concludes (adopting for effect the Brahm[=a] of his convert): 'That the monk who is free from anger, free from malice, pure in mind, and master of himself should after death, when the body is dissolved, become united to Brahm[=a] who is the same--such a condition of things is quite possible' Here is no metaphysics, only a new religion based on morality and intense humanity, yet is the young man moved to say, speaking for himself and the friend with him: 'Lord, excellent are the words of thy mouth. As if one were to bring a lamp into the darkness, just so, Lord, has the truth been made known to us in many a figure by the Blessed One. And we come to Buddha as our refuge, to the doctrine and to the church. May the Blessed One accept us as disciples, as true believers, from this day forth, as long as life endures.'

The god Brahm[=a] of this dialoge is for the time being playfully accepted by Buddha as the All-god. To the Buddhist himself Brahm[=a] and all the Vedic gods are not exactly non-existent, but they are dim figures that are more like demi-gods, fairies, or as some English scholars call them, 'angels.' Whether Buddha himself really believed in them, cannot be asserted or denied. This belief is attributed to him, and his church is very superstitious. Probably Buddha did not think it worth while to discuss the question. He neither knew nor cared whether cloud-beings existed. It was enough to deny a Creator, or to leave no place for him. Thaumaturgical powers are indeed credited to the earliest belief, but there certainly is nothing in harmony with Buddha's usual attitude in the extraordinary discourse called [=A]kankheyya, wherein Buddha is represented as ascribing to monks miraculous powers only hinted at in a vague 'shaking of the earth' in more sober speech.[47] From the following let the 'Esoteric Buddhists' of to-day take comfort, for it shows at least that they share an ancient folly, although Buddha can scarcely be held responsible for it: "If a monk should desire to become multiform, to become visible or invisible, to go through a wall, a fence, or a mountain as if through air; to penetrate up or down through solid ground as if through water ... to traverse the sky, to touch the moon ... let him fulfil all righteousness, let him be devoted to that quietude of heart which springs from within ... let him look through things, let him be much alone." That is to say, let him aim for the very tricks of the Yogis, which Buddha had discarded. Is there not here perhaps a little irony? Buddha does not say that the monk will be able to do this--he says if the monk wishes to do this, let him be quiet and meditate and learn righteousness, then perhaps--but he will at least have learned righteousness!

The little tract called Cetokhila contains a sermon which has not lost entirely its usefulness or application, and it is characteristic of the way in which Buddha treated eschatological conundrums: 'If a brother has adopted the religious life in the hope of belonging to some one of the angel (divine) hosts, thinking to himself, "by this morality or by this observance or by this austerity or by this religious life I shall become an angel," his mind does not incline to zeal, exertion, perseverance and struggle, and he has not succeeded in his religious life' (has not broken through the bonds). And, continuing, Buddha says that just as a hen might sit carefully brooding over her well-watched eggs, and might content herself with the wish, 'O that this egg would let out the chick,' but all the time there is no need of this torment, for the chicks will hatch if she keeps watch and ward over them, so a man, if he does not think what is to be, but keeps watch and ward of his words, thoughts, and acts, will 'come forth into the light.'[48]

The questions in regard to Buddha's view of soul, immortality, and religion are answered to our mind as clearly in the following passages as Buddha desired they should be. 'Unwisely does one consider: "Have I existed in ages past ... shall I exist in ages yet to be, do I exist at all, am I, how am I? This is a being, whence is it come, whither will it go?" Consideration such as this is walking in the jungle of delusion. These are the things one should consider: "This is suffering, this is the origin of suffering, this is the cessation of suffering, this is the way that leads to the cessation of suffering." From him that considers thus his fetters fall away' (Sabb[=a]sava). In the Vang[=i]sa-sutta Buddha is asked directly: "Has this good man's life been vain to him, has he been extinguished, or is he still left with some elements of existence; and how was he liberated?" and he replies: "He has cut off desire for name and form in this world. He has crossed completely the stream of birth and death." In the Salla-sutta it is said: "Without cause and unknown is the life of mortals in this world, troubled, brief, combined with pain.... As earthen vessels made by the potter end in being broken, so is the life of mortals." One should compare the still stronger image, which gives the very name of nir-v[=a]na ('blowing out') in the Upas[=i]vam[=a]navapucch[=a]: "As a flame blown about by wind goes out and cannot be reckoned as existing, so a sage delivered from name and body disappears, and cannot be reckoned as existing." To this Upas[=i]va replies: "But has he only disappeared, or does he not exist, or is he only free from sickness?" To which Buddha: "For him there is no form, and that by which they say he is exists for him no longer." One would think that this were plain enough.

Yet must one always remember that this is the Arhat's death, the death of him that has perfected himself.[49] Buddha, like the Brahmans, taught hell for the bad, and re-birth for them that were not perfected. So in the Kok[=a]liya-sutta a list of hells is given, and an estimate is made of the duration of the sinner's suffering in them. Here, as if in a Brahman code, is it taught that 'he who lies goes to hell,' etc. Even the names of the Brahmanic hells are taken over into the Buddhist system, and several of those in Manu's list of hells are found here.

On the other hand, Buddha teaches, if one may trust tradition, that a good man may go to heaven. 'On the dissolution of the body after death the well-doer is re-born in some happy state in heaven' (Mah[=a]parinibb[=a]na, i. 24).[50] This, like hell, is a temporary state, of course, before re-birth begins again on earth. In fact, Buddhist and Brahmanic pantheists agree in their attitude toward the respective questions of hell, heaven, and karma. It is only the emancipated Arhat that goes to Nirv[=a]na.[51]

When it is said that Buddha preaches to a new convert 'in due course,' it means always that he gave him first a lecture on morality and religion, and then possibly, but not necessarily, on the 'system.' And Buddha has no narrow-minded aversion to Brahmans; he accepts 'Brahman' as he accepts 'Brahm[=a],' only he wants it to be understood what is a real Brahman: 'A certain Brahman once asked Buddha how one becomes a Brahman,--what are the characteristics that make a man a Brahman. And the Blessed One said: "The Brahman who has removed all sinfulness, who is free from haughtiness, free from impurity, self-restrained, who is an accomplished master of knowledge, who has fulfilled the duties of holiness,--such a Brahman justly calls himself a Brahman."'[52] "The Mah[=a]vagga, from which this is taken, is full of such sentiments. As here, in i. 2, so in i. 7: "The Blessed One preached to Yasa, the noble youth, 'in due course,'" that is to say, "he talked about the merit obtained by alms-giving, the duties of morality, about heaven, about the evils of vanity and sinfulness of desire," and when the Blessed One saw that the mind of Yasa, the noble youth, was prepared, "then he preached the principal doctrine of the Buddhists, namely, suffering, and cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering, the Path;" and "just as a clean cloth takes the dye, thus Yasa, the noble youth, even while sitting there, obtained the knowledge that whatsoever is subject to birth is also subject to death."[53]

The "spirit and not the letter of the law" is expressed in the formula (Mah[=a]vagga, i. 23): "Of all conditions that proceed from a cause, Buddha has explained the cause, and he has explained their cessation." This is the Buddhist's credo.

In several of the sermons the whole gist is comprised in the admonition not to meddle with philosophy, nor to have any 'views,' for "philosophy purifies no one; peace alone purifies."[54]

Buddha does not ignore the fact that fools will not desire salvation as explained by him: "What fools call pleasure the noble say is pain; this is a thing difficult to understand; the cessation of the existing body is regarded as pleasure by the noble, but those wise in this world hold the opposite opinion" (Dvayat[=a]nup. sutta, 38).[55] But to him the truly wise is the truly pure: "Not by birth is one a Brahman, not by birth is one an outcast; by deeds is one a Brahman, by deeds is one an outcast" (Vasala-sutta); and not alone in virtue of karma of old, for: "The man who knows in this world the destruction of pain, who lays aside the burden and is liberated, him I call a Brahman; whosoever in this world has overcome good and evil, both ties, who is free from grief and defilement, and is pure,--him I call a Brahman; the ignorant say that one is a Brahman by birth, but one is a Brahman by penance, by religious life, by self-restraint, and by temperance" (V[=a]settha-sutta).

The penance here alluded to is not the vague penance of austerities, but submission to the discipline of the monastery when exercised for a specific fault.

Later Buddhism made of Buddha a god. Even less exaltation than this is met by Buddha thus: S[=a]riputta says to him, "Such faith have I, Lord, that methinks there never was and never will be either monk or Brahman who is greater and wiser than thou," and Buddha responds: "Grand and bold are the words of thy mouth; behold, thou hast burst forth into ecstatic song. Come, hast thou, then, known all the Buddhas that were?" "No, Lord." "Hast thou known all the Buddhas that will be?" "No, Lord." "But, at least, thou knowest me, my conduct, my mind, my wisdom, my life, my salvation (i.e., thou knowest me as well as I know myself)?" "No, Lord." "Thou seest that thou knowest not the venerable Buddhas of the past and of the future; why, then, are thy words so grand and bold?" (Mah[=a]parinibb[=a]na.)

Metaphysically the human ego to the Buddhist is only a collection of five skandhas (form, sensations, ideas, faculties of mind, and reason) that vanishes when the collection is dispersed, but the factors of the collection re-form again, and the new ego is the result of their re-formation. The Northern Buddhists, who turn Buddha into a god, make of this an immortal soul, but this is Buddhism in one phase, not Buddha's own belief. The strength of Northern Buddhism lies not, as some say, in its greater religious zeal, but in its grosser animism, the delight of the vulgar.

It will not be necessary, interesting as would be the comparison, to study the Buddhism of the North after this review of the older and simpler chronicles. In Hardy's Manual of Buddhism (p. 138 ff.) and Rockhill's Life of Buddha will be found the weird and silly legends of Northern Buddhism, together with a full sketch of Buddhistic ethics and ontology (Hardy, pp. 460, 387). The most famous of the Northern books, the Lotus of the Law and the Lalita Vistara, give a good idea of the extravagance and supernaturalism that already have begun to disfigure the purer faith. According to Kern, who has translated the former work again (after Burnouf), the whole intent of the Lotus is to represent Buddha as the supreme, eternal God. The works, treating of piety, philosophy, and philanthropy, contain ancient elements, but in general are of later form. To this age belongs also the whole collection of J[=a]takas, or 'birth-stories,' of the Buddhas that were before Gautama, some of the tales of which are historically important, as they have given rise to Western fables.[56] These birth-stories represent Buddha (often as Indra) as some god or mortal, and tell what he did in such or such a form. It is in a future form that, like Vishnu, who is to come in the avatar of Kalki, the next Buddha will appear as Maitreya, or the 'Buddha of love.'[57] Some of the stories are very silly; some, again, are beautiful at heart, but ugly in their bizarre appearance. They are all, perhaps, later than our era.[58]

The history of Buddhism after the Master's death has a certain analogy with that of Mohammedanism. That is to say it was largely a political growth. Further than this, of course, the comparison fails. The religion was affected by heretical kings, and by nouveaux riches, for it admitted them all into its community on equal terms--no slight privilege to the haughty nabob or proud king who, if a believer and follower of Brahman orthodoxy, would have been obliged to bend the head, yield the path, and fear the slightest frown of any beggar priest that came in his way.

The M[=a]ruya monarch Açoka adopted Buddhism as a state religion in the third century B.C., and taught it unto all his people, so that, according to his own account, he changed the creed of the country from Brahmanism to Buddhism.[59] He was king over all northern India, from Kabul to the eastern ocean, from the northern limit of Brahmanic civilization to its southern boundary. Buddhist missionaries were now spread over India and beyond it. And here again, even in this later age, one sees how little had the people to do with Buddha's metaphysical system. Like the simple confession 'I take refuge in Buddha, in the doctrine, and in the church' was the only credo demanded, that cited above: "Buddha has explained the cause of whatever conditions proceed from a cause, and he has declared their cessation." In this credo, which is en-graved all over India, everything is left in confidence to Buddha. However he explained the reason, that creed is to be accepted without inquiry. The convert took the patent facts of life, believing that Buddha had explained all, and based his own belief not on understanding but on faith.

With the council of Patna, 242 B.C, begins at thousands of the missionaries the geographical separation of the church, which results in Southern and Northern Buddhism.[60]

It is at this period that the monastic bodies become influential. The original Sangha, congregation, is defined as consisting of three or more brethren. The later monastery is a business corporation as well as a religious body. The great emperors that now ruled India (not the petty clan-kings of the centuries before) were no longer of pure birth, and some heresy was the only religion that would receive them with due honor. They affected Buddhism, endowed the monasteries, in every was enriched the church, built for it great temples, and in turn were upheld by their thankful co-religionists. Among the six[61] rival heresies that of Buddha was predominant, and chiefly because of royal influence. The Buddhist head of the Ceylon church was Açoka's own son. Still more important for Buddhism was its adoption by the migratory Turanians in the centuries following. Tibet and China were opened up to it through the influence of these foreign kings, who at least pretended to adopt the faith of Buddha.[62] But as it was adopted by them, and as it extended beyond the limits of India, just so much weaker it became at home, where its strongest antagonists were the sectarian pantheistic parties not so heterodox as itself.

Buddhism lingered in India till the twelfth or thirteenth century, although in the seventh it was already decadent, as appears from the account of Hiouen-Thsang, the Chinese pilgrim. It is found to-day in Tibet, Ceylon, China, Japan, and other outlying regions, but it is quite vanished from its old home. The cause of its extinction is obvious. The Buddhist victorious was not the modest and devout mendicant of the early church. The fire of hate, lighted if at all by Buddhism,[63] smouldered till Brahmanism, in the form of Hinduism, had begotten a religion as popular as Buddhism, or rather far more popular, and for two reasons. Buddhism had no such picturesque tales as those that enveloped with poetry the history of the man-god Krishna, Again, Buddhism in its monastic development had separated itself more and more from the people. Not mendicant monks, urging to a pure life, but opulent churches with fat priests; not simple discourses calculated to awaken the moral and religious consciousness, but subtle arguments on discipline and metaphysics were now what Buddhism represented. This religion was become, indeed, as much a skeleton as was the Brahmanism of the sixth century. As the Brahmanic belief had decomposed into spiritless rites, so Buddhism, changed into dialectic and idolatry (for in lieu of a god the later church worshipped Buddha), had lost now all hold upon the people. The love of man, the spirit of Buddhism, was dead, and Buddhism crumbled into the dust. Vital and energetic was the sectarian 'love of God' alone (Hinduism), and this now became triumphant. Where Buddhism has succeeded is not where the man-gods, objects of love and fear, have entered; but where, without rivalry from more sympathetic beliefs, it has itself evolved a system of idolatry and superstition; where all that was scorned by the Master is regarded as holiest, and all that he insisted upon as vital is disregarded.[64] One speaks of the millions of Buddhists in the world as one speaks of the millions of Christians; but while there are some Christians that have renounced the bigotry and idolatry of the church, and hold to the truth as it is in the words of Christ, there are still fewer Buddhists who know that their Buddhism would have been rebuked scornfully by its founder.

The geographical growth of formal Buddhism is easily sketched. After the first entrance into Kashmeer and Ceylon, in the third century B.C., the progress of the cult, as it now may be called, was steadily away from India proper. In the fifth century A.D., it was adopted in Burmah,[65] and in the seventh in Siam. The Northern school kept in general to the 'void' doctrine of N[=a]g[=a]rjuna, whose chief texts are the Lotus and the Lalita Vistara, standard works of the Great Vehicle.[66] In Tibet Lamaism is the last result of this hierarchical state-church.[67] We have thought it much more important to give a fuller account of early Buddhism, that of Buddha, than a full account of a later growth in regions that, for the most part, are not Indic, in the belief that the P[=a]li books of Ceylon give a truer picture of the early church than do those of Kashmeer and Nep[=a]l, with their Çivaite and Brahmanic admixture. For in truth the Buddhism of China and Tibet has no place in the history of Indic religions. It may have been introduced by Hindu missionaries, but it has been re-made to suit a foreign people. This does not apply, of course, to the canonical books, the Great Vehicle, of the North, which is essentially native, if not Buddhistic. Yet of the simple narrative and the adulterated mystery-play, if one has to choose, the former must take precedence. From the point of view of history, Northern Buddhism, however old its elements, can be regarded only as an admixture of Buddhistic and Brahmanic ideas. For this reason we take a little more space, not to cite from the Lotus or the grotesque Lalita Vistara,[68] but to illustrate Buddhism at its best. Fausböll, who has translated the dialogue that follows, thinks that in the Suttas of the Sutta-nip[=a]ta there is a reminiscence of a stage of Buddhism before the institution of monasteries, while as yet the disciples lived as hermits. The collection is at least very primitive, although we doubt whether the Buddhist disciples ever lived formally as individual hermits. All the Samanas are in groups, little 'congregations,' which afterwards grew into monasteries.

This is a poetical (amoebic) contest between the herdsman Dhaniya and Buddha, with which Fausböll[69] compares St. Luke, xii. 16, but which, on the other hand reminds one of a spiritualized Theocritus, with whom its author was, perhaps, contemporary.

I have boiled the rice, I have milked the kine--so said the herdsman Dhaniya--I am living with my comrades near the banks of the (great) Mah[=i] river; the house is roofed, the fire is lit--then rain if thou wilt, O sky!

I am free from anger, free from stubbornness--so said the Blessed One--I am abiding for one night near the banks of the (great) Mah[=i] river; my house has no cover, the fire (of passion) is extinguished--then rain if thou wilt, O sky!

Here are no gad-files--so said the herdsman Dhaniya--The cows are roaming in meadows full of grass, and they can endure the rain--then rain if thou wilt, O sky!

1 have made a well-built raft--so said the Blessed One--I have crossed over, I have reached the further bank, I have overcome the torrent (of passions); I need the raft no more--then rain if thou wilt, O sky!

My wife is obedient, she is not wanton--so said the herdsman Dhaniya--she has lived with me long and is winning; no wickedless have I heard of her--then rain if thou wilt, O sky!

My mind is obedient, delivered (from evil)--so said the Blessed One--it has been cultivated long and is well-subdued; there is no longer anything wicked in me--then rain if thou wilt, O sky!

I support myself by my own earnings--so said the herdsman Dhaniya--and my children are around me and healthy; I hear no wickedness of them--then rain if thou wilt, O sky!

I am the servant of none--so said the Blessed One--with what I have gained I wander about in all the world; I have no need to serve--then rain if thou wilt, O sky!

I have cows, I have calves--so said the herdsman Dhaniya--cows in calf and heifers also; and I have a bull as lord over the cows--then rain if thou wilt, O sky!

I have no cows, I have no calves--so said the Blessed One--no cows in calf, and no heifers; and I have no bull as a lord over the cows--then rain if thou wilt, O sky!

The stakes are driven in and cannot be shaken--so said the herdsman Dhaniya--the ropes are made of holy-grass, new and well-made; the cows will not be able to break them--then rain if thou wilt, O sky!

Like a bull I have rent the bonds--so said the Blessed One--like an elephant I have broken through the ropes, I shall not be born again--then rain if thou wilt, O sky!

Then the rain poured down and filled both sea and land. And hearing the sky raining, Dhaniya said: Not small to us the gain in that we have seen the Blessed Lord; in thee we take refuge, thou endowed with (wisdom's) eye; be thou our master, O great sage! My wife and myself are obedient to thee. If we lead a pure life we shall overcome birth and death, and put an end to pain.

He that has sons has delight in sons--so said the Evil One--he that has cows has delight in cows, for substance is the delight of man, but he that has no substance has no delight.

He that has sons has care with his sons--so said the Blessed One--he that has cows has likewise care with his cows, for substance is (the cause of) care, but he that has no substance has no care.

From Buddha's sermons choice extracts were gathered at an early date, which, as well as the few longer discourses, that have been preserved in their entirety, do more to tell us what was the original Buddha, before he was enwrapped in the scholastic mysticism of a later age, than pages of general critique.

Thus in the Mah[=a]parinibb[=a]na casual allusion is made to assemblies of men and of angels (divine beings), of the great thirty-three gods, Death the Evil One and Brahm[=a] (iii. 21). Buddha, as we have said, does not deny the existence of spiritual beings; he denies only their power to affect the perfect man and their controlling part in the universe. In the same sermon the refuge of the disciple is declared to be truth and himself (ii. 33): "Be ye lamps unto yourselves. Betake yourselves to no external refuge. Hold fast to the truth as to a lamp."

And from the famous 'Path of Duty' or 'Collection of truths':[70]

All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts; it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought pain follows him as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage, (but) if a man speaks or acts with a pure thought happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him.

Earnestness is the path that leads to escape from death, thoughtlessness is the path that leads to death. Those who are in earnest do not die;[71]

those who are thoughtless are as if dead already. Long is the night to him who is awake; long is a mile to him who is tired; long is life to the foolish.

There is no suffering for him who has finished his journey and abandoned grief, who has freed himself on all sides and thrown off the fetters.

Some people are born again; evil-doers go to hell; righteous people go to heaven; those who are free from all worldly desires attain Nirv[=a]na.

He who, seeking his own happiness, punishes or kills beings that also long for happiness, will not find happiness after death.

Looking for the maker of this tabernacle I shall have to run through a course of many births, so long as I do not find; and painful is birth again and again. But now, maker of the tabernacle, thou hast been seen; thou shalt not make up this tabernacle again. All thy rafters are broken, thy ridge-pole is sundered; thy mind, approaching Nirv[=a]na, has attained to extinction of all desires.[72]

Better than going to heaven, better than lordship over all worlds, is the reward of entering the stream of holiness.

Not to commit any sin, to do good, and to purify one's mind, that is the teaching of the Buddhas.

Let us live happily, not hating them that hate us. Let us live happily, though we call nothing our own. We shall be like bright gods, feeding on happiness.

From lust comes grief, from lust comes fear; he that is free from lust knows neither grief nor fear.

The best of ways is the eightfold (path); this is the way, there is no other that leads to the purifying of intelligence. Go on this way! Everything else is the deceit of Death. You yourself must make the effort. Buddhas are only preachers. The thoughtful who enter the way are freed from the bondage of Death.[73]

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Compare Colebrooke's Essays, vol. ii. 460; and Muir, OST. iv. 296]

[Footnote 2: Compare Oldenberg. Buddha, p. 155.]

[Footnote 3: Especially Köppen views Buddha as a democratic reformer and liberator.]

[Footnote 4: Emile Senart, Essai sur la légende du Buddha. 1875.]

[Footnote 5: Buddha (1881), p.73 ff.]

[Footnote 6: The exact position of Kapilavastu, the capital of the Ç[=a]kyas, is not known, although it must have been near to the position assigned to it on Kiepert's map of India (just north of Gorakhpur). The town is unknown in Brahmanic literature.]

[Footnote 7: This is Oldenberg's opinion, for the reason here stated. On the other hand it may be questioned whether this negative evidence be conclusive, and whether it be not more probable that a young nobleman would have been well educated.]

[Footnote 8: Siddhartha, the boy, Gautama by his family cognomen, the Ç[=a]kya-son by his clan-name, was known also as the Ç[=a]kya-sage, the hermit, Samana (Çrama[n.]a); the venerable, Arhat (a general title of perfected saints); Tath[=a]gata 'who is arrived like' (the preceding Buddhas, at perfection); and also by many other names common to other sects, Buddha, Jina, The Blessed One (Bhagavat), The Great Hero, etc. The Buddhist disciple may be a layman, çravaka; a monk, bhikshu; a perfected saint, arhat; a saintly doctor of the law, bodhisattva; etc.]

[Footnote 9: South of the present Patna. Less correct is the Buddha Gay[=a] form.]

[Footnote 10: The famous bo or Bodhi-tree, ficus religiosa, pippala, at Bodhi Gay[=a], said to be the most venerable and certainly the most venerated tree in the world.]

[Footnote 11: A pacceka Buddha (Oldenberg. Buddha, p.122).]

[Footnote 12:

"Then be the door of salvation opened! He that hath ears to hear let him hear. I thought of my own sorrow only, and, therefore, Have not revealed the Word to the world."]

[Footnote 13: He sometimes, however, quite prosaically 'makes' or 'manufactures' it.]

[Footnote 14: Dhammacakkappavattana. Rhys Davids in his introduction to this sutta gives and explains the eight as follows (SBE. XI. p.144): 1, Right views; freedom from superstition or delusion. 2, Right aims, high and worthy of the intelligent, earnest man. 3, Right speech, kindly, open, truthful. 4, Right conduct, peaceful, honest, pure. 5, Right livelihood, bringing hurt to no living thing. 6, Right effort in self-training and in self-control. 7, Right mindfulness, the active watchful mind. 8, Right contemplation, earnest thought on the deep mysteries of life.]

[Footnote 15: Hardy, Manual,, p.496.]

[Footnote 16: "A decided predilection for the aristocracy appears to have lingered as an heirloom of the past in the older Buddhism," Oldenberg, Buddha, p.157.]

[Footnote 17: Mah[=a]vagga, 1.24. On the name (Gautama) Gotama, see Weber, IS. L 180.]

[Footnote 18: The parks of Venuvana and Jetavana were especially affected by Buddha. Compare Oldenberg, Buddha, p.145.]

[Footnote 19: Like the Jains the Buddhists postulate twenty-four (five) precedent Buddhas.]

[Footnote 20: Buddha's general discipline as compared with that of the Jains was much more lax, for instance, in the eating of meat. Buddha himself died of dysentery brought on by eating pork. The later Buddhism interprets much more strictly the rule of 'non-injury'; and as we have shown, Buddha entirely renounced austerities, choosing the mean between laxity and asceticism.]

[Footnote 21: Or 'take care of yourself'; Mah[=a]parinibb[=a]na, v. 23.]

[Footnote 22: The chief Buddhistic dates are given by Müller (introduction to Dhammapada, SBE. vol. X.) as follows: 557, Buddha's birth; 477, Buddha's death and the First Council at R[=a]jagriha; 377, the Second Council at V[=a]iç[=a]l[=i]; 259, Açoka's coronation; 242, Third Council at P[=a]taliputta; 222, Açoka's death. These dates are only tentative, but they give the time nearly enough to serve as a guide. From the Buddhists (Ceylon account) it is known that the Council at V[=a]iç[=a]li was held one hundred years after Buddha's death (one hundred and eighteen years before the coronation of Açoka, whose grandfather, Candragupta, was Alexander's contemporary). The interval between Nirvana and Açoka, two hundred and eighteen years, is the only certain date according to Köppen, p.208, and despite much argument since he wrote, the remark still holds.]

[Footnote 23: Englished by Rhys Davids, Mah[=a]parinibb[=a]na-sutta (SBE. XI. 95 ff.).]

[Footnote 24: Ecclesiastes.]

[Footnote 25: The common view is thus expressed by Oldenberg: "In dem schwülen, feuchten, von der Natur mit Reichthümern üppig gesegneten Tropenlande des Ganges hat das Volk, das in frischer Jugendkraft steht, als es vom Norden her eindringt, bald aufgehört jung und stark zu sein. Menschen und Völker reifen in jenem Lande ... schnell heran, um ebenso schnell an Leib und Seele zu erschlaffen" (loc. cit. p. 11).]

[Footnote 26: Rhys Davids, Buddhism, pp. 160,139.]

[Footnote 27: Buddha taught, of course, nothing related to the thaumaturgy of that folly which calls itself today 'Esoteric Buddhism.']

[Footnote 28: That is a sacrifice where no cattle are slain, and no injury is done to living beings.]

[Footnote 29: K[=u]tadanta-sutta Oldenberg, Buddha, p. 175.]

[Footnote 30: Sometimes distinguished from pari-nirv[=a][n.]a as absolute annihilation.]

[Footnote 31: Some scholars think that the doctrine of Buddha resembles closely that of the S[=a]nkhya philosophy (so Barth, p. 116), but Müller, Oldenberg, and others, appear to be right in denying this. The Sankhyan 'spirit' has, for instance, nothing corresponding to it in Buddha's system.]

[Footnote 32: The twelve Nid[=a]nas are dogmatic, and withal not very logical. "From ignorance arise forms, from forms arises consciousness, from consciousness arise name and bodiness; from name and bodiness arise the six senses (including understanding as the sixth) and their objects; from these arises contact; from this, feeling; from this, thirst; from this, clinging; from clinging arises becoming; from becoming arises birth; from birth arise age and sorrow." One must gradually free himself from the ten fetters that bind to life, and so do away with the first of these twelve Nid[=a]nas, ignorance.]

[Footnote 33: Mah[=a]vagga, X. 3 (SBE. XVII. 306).]

[Footnote 34 36 1: Compare Kern, the Lotus, III. 21, and Fausböll, P[=a]r[=a]yana-sutta, 9 (1131), the "deep and lovely voice of Buddha." (SBE. XXI. 64, and X. 210.)]

[Footnote 35: As Southern Buddhists are reckoned those of Ceylon, Burmah, Siam, etc.]

[Footnote 36: As Northern Buddhists are reckoned those of Nep[=a]l, Tibet, China, Corea, Japan, Java, Sumatra, Annam, and Cambodia.]

[Footnote 37: "Let your light so shine before the world, that you, having embraced the religious life according to so well-taught a doctrine and discipline, may be seen to be forbearing and mild." (SBE. XVII. 305, David's and Oldenberg's translation.)]

[Footnote 38: 'Removing pieces from a pile without moving the remainder' must, we presume, be jackstraws.]

[Footnote 39: For instance, rules for eating, drinking (liquor), and for bathing. The Buddhist monk, except in summer, bathed once a fortnight only.]

[Footnote 40: No one is so holy that sin does not hurt him, according to Buddhistic belief. The Brahman, on the contrary, was liable to become so holy that he could commit any sin and it did not affect his virtue, which he stored up in a heap by cumulative asceticism.]

[Footnote 41: The offering and reception of gifts is always accompanied with water, both in Buddhistic and Brahmanic circles. Whether this was a religious act or a legal sign of surrender we have not been able to discover. Perhaps it arose simply from water always being offered as refreshment to a guest (with fruit), as a sign of guest-friendship.]

[Footnote 42: Sakyaputtiya Samanas, i.e., Buddhists.]

[Footnote 43: In the case of a monk having carnal connection with a nun the penalty was instant expulsion(ib. 60). The nuns were subject to the monks and kept strictly in hand, obliged always to greet the monks first, to go to lessons once a fortnight, and so forth.]

[Footnote 44: Mah[=a]sudassana, the great King of Glory whose city is described with its four gates, one of gold, one of silver, one of Jade and one of crystal, etc. The earlier Buddha had as 'king of glory' 84,000 wives and other comforts quite as remarkable.]

[Footnote 45: Translated by Davids, Buddhist Suttas and Hibbert Lectures.]

[Footnote 46: What we have several times had to call attention to is shown again by the side light of Buddhism to be the case in Brahmanic circles, namely, that even in Buddha's day while Brahm[=a] is the god of the thinkers Indra is the god of the people (together with Vishnu and Çiva, if the texts are as old as they pretend to be).]

[Footnote 47: Mah[=a]parinibb[=a]na iii, to which Rhys Davids refers, is scarcely a fair parallel.]

[Footnote 48: The imitation of the original play on words is Rhys Davids', who has translated these Suttas in SBE. vol. XI. For the following see Fausböll, ib. vol. X.]

[Footnote 49: After one enters on the stream of holiness there are only seven more possible births on earth, with one in heaven; then he becomes arhat, venerable, perfected, and enters Nirv[=a]na.]

[Footnote 50: Compare the fairies and spirits in ib. v. 10; and in i. 31, 'give gifts to the gods.']

[Footnote 51: We agree with Rhys Davids, Buddhism, pp. 111, 207, that Buddha himself was an atheist; but to the statement that Nirv[=a]na was the "extinction of that sinful, grasping condition of mind and heart which would otherwise be the cause of renewed individual existences" should in our opinion be added "and therewith the extinction of individuality." Compare Rhys Davids' Hibbert Lectures, p. 253.]

[Footnote 52: Compare the definition of an 'outcast' in the Vasala-sutta: "He that gets angry and feels hatred, a wicked man, a hypocrite, he that embraces wrong views and is deceitful, such an one is an outcast, and he that has no compassion for living things."]

[Footnote 53: Compare ib. 5. 36: "In due course he spoke, of charity, morality, heaven, pleasure, and the advantage of renunciation."]

[Footnote 54: See especially the _Nandaman., Paramatthaka, M[=a]gandiya_, and Suddhatthaka Suttas, translated by Fausböll, SBE. vol. X.]

[Footnote 55: Fausböll, in SBE. vol. X, Suttanip[=a]ta.]

[Footnote 56: The distinction between the Northern and Southern doctrine is indicated by the terms 'Great Vehicle' and 'Little Vehicle' respectively, the former the works of N[=a]g[=a]rjuna's school (see below).]

[Footnote 57: As M[=a]itrakanyaka Buddha came once to earth "to redeem the sins of men."]

[Footnote 58: Of historic interest is the rapport between Brahmanic, Jain. and Buddhist tales. A case of this sort has been carefully worked out by Leumann, Die Legende von Citta und Sambh[=u]ta, WZKM. v. III; vi. 1.]

[Footnote 59: "The gods who were worshipped as true divinities in India have been rendered false ... by my zeal"; inscription cited by Barth, p. 135. But Açoka was a very tolerant prince. Barth's notion of Buddhistic persecution can hardly be correct.]

[Footnote 60: Köppen, Die Religion des Buddha, p. 198.]

[Footnote 61: Not to be confused with the seventeen heresies and sixty-three different philosophical systems in the church itself.]

[Footnote 62: For more details see Barth, loc. cit., p. 130 ff. According to tradition Buddhism was introduced into Tibet in the fourth century, A.D., the first missionaries coming from Nep[=a]l (Rockhill, p. 210).]

[Footnote 63: Barth justly discredits the tale of Buddhism having been persecuted out of India. In this sketch of later Buddhism we can but follow this author's admirable summary of the causes of Buddhistic decline, especially agreeing with him in assigning the first place to the torpidity of the later church in matters of religion. It was become a great machine, its spiritual enthusiasm had been exhausted; it had nothing poetical or beautiful save the legend of Buddha, and this had lost its freshness; for Buddha was now, in fact, only a grinning idol.]

[Footnote 64: Here are developed fully the stories of hells, angels, and all supernatural paraphernalia, together with theism, idolatry, and the completed monastic system; magic, fable, absurd calculations in regard to nothings, and spiritual emptiness.]

[Footnote 65: At the same time the Ceylon canon was fixed by the commentary of Buddhaghosha.]

[Footnote 66: Later it follows the mystical school. Both schools have been affected by Brahmanism. The Great Vehicle, founded by N[=a]g[=a]rjuna, was recognized at a fourth council in Kashmeer about the time of the Christian era. Compare Köppen, p. 199.]

[Footnote 67: On the Lamaistic hierarchy and system of succession see Mayers, JRAS. IV. 284.]

[Footnote 68: For the same reason we do not enter upon the outer form of Buddhism as expressed in demonology, snake-worship (JRAS. xii. 286) and symbolism (ib. OS. xiii. 71, 114).]

[Footnote 69: SBE. vol. x, part ii, p. 3.]

[Footnote 70: Dhammapada (Franke, ZDMG. xlvi, 731). In Sanskrit one has dharmapatha with the same sense. The text in the main is as translated by Müller, separately, 1872, and in SBE., voL x. It was translated by Weber, Streifen. i. 112, in 1860.]

[Footnote 71: That is, they die no more; they are free from the chain; they enter Nirv[=a]na.]

[Footnote 72: Buddha's words on becoming Buddha.]

[Footnote 73: It is to be observed that transmigration into animal forms is scarcely recognized by Buddha. He assumes only men and superior beings as subjects of Karma. Compare Rhys Davids' Lectures, pp. 105,107. To the same scholar is due the statement that he was the first to recognize the true meaning of Nirv[=a]na, 'extinction (not of soul but) of lust, anger, and ignorance.' For divisions of Buddhist literature other than the Tripitaka the same author's Hibbert Lectures may be consulted (see also Müller, SBE. X, Introduction, p. i).]

* * * * *

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XIV. EARLY HINDUISM

While the great heresies that we have been describing were agitating the eastern part of India,[1] the old home of Brahmanism in the West remained true, in name if not in fact, to the ancient faith. But in reality changes almost as great as those of the formal heresies were taking place at the core of Brahmanism itself, which, no longer able to be the religion of a few clans, was now engaged in the gigantic task of remodelling and assimilating the indigenous beliefs and religious practices of its new environment. This was not a conscious act on the part of Brahmanism. At first it was undertaken almost unwittingly, and it was accomplished later not without repugnance. But to perform this task was the condition of continued existence. Brahmanism had to expand, or shrink, wither, and die.

For a thousand years almost the only source of information in regard to this new growth is contained in the epic poetry of the time, with the help of a few additional facts from the law, and some side light from inscriptions. It is here that Vishnuism and Çivaism are found as fully developed sectarian beliefs, accepted by Brahmanism with more or less distrust, and in more or less fulness of faith. It is to the epic that one must turn to study the budding and gradual flowering of the modern religions, which have cast strict orthodoxy into the shade.

Of the two epics, one, the R[=a]m[=a]yana,[2] has become the Old Testament of the Ramaite Vishnuites of the present day. The Bh[=a]rata,[3] on the other hand, is scriptural for all sects, because it is more universal. The former epic, in its present form, is what the Hindus call an 'art-poem,' and in its finish, its exclusively romantic style, and its total lack of nervous dramatic power, it is probably, as the Hindus claim, the work of one man, V[=a]lm[=i]ki, who took the ancient legends of Eastern India and moulded them into a stupid sectarian poem. On the other hand, the Bh[=a]rata is of no one hand, either in origin or in final redaction; nor is it of one sect; nor has it apparently been thoroughly affected, as has the R[=a]m[=a]yana, by Buddhistic influences. Moreover, in the huge conglomeration of stirring adventure, legend, myth, history, and superstition which goes to make up the great epic there is contained a far truer picture of the vulgar custom, belief, and religion of the time than the too polished composition of V[=a]lm[=i]ki is able to afford, despite the fact that the latter also has many popular elements welded into it. There are, in fact, only two national works in India, only two works which, withal, not in their entirety, but in their nucleus, after one has stripped each of its priestly toggery, reflect dimly the heart of the people, not the cleverness of one man, or the pedantry of schools. For a few Vedic hymns and a few Bh[=a]rata scenes make all the literature, with perhaps the exception of some fables, that is not markedly dogmatic, pedantic, or 'artificial.'[4] So true is this that even in the case of the R[=a]m[=a]yana one never feels that he is getting from it the genuine belief of the people, but only that form of popular belief which V[=a]lm[=i]ki has chosen to let stand in his version of the old tale. The great epic is heroic, V[=a]lm[=i]ki's poem is romantic; the former is real, the latter is artificial; and the religious gleaning from each corresponds to this distinction.[5]

Ths Bh[=a]rata, like other Hindu works, is of uncertain date, but it was completed as a 'Great Bh[=a]rata' by the end of the sixth century A.D., and the characters of the story are mentioned, as well known, by P[=a]nini, whose work probably belongs to the fourth century B.C. Furthermore, Dio Chrysostomos, probably citing from Megasthenes, refers to it; and the latter authority describes the worship of the chief gods of the epic; while the work is named in one of the domestic S[=u]tras, and a verse is cited from it in the legal Sutra of B[=a]udh[=a]yana.[6] On the other hand, in its latest growth it is on a par with the earlier Pur[=a]nas, but it is not quite so advanced in sectarianism as even the oldest of these writings. It may, then, be reckoned as tolerably certain that the beginnings of the epic date from the fourth or fifth century before the Christian era, and that it was quite a respectable work by the time that era began; after which it continued to grow for five centuries more.[7] Its religious importance can scarcely be overestimated. In 600 A.D., far away from its native home, in Cambodia, it was encircled with a temple, and an endowment was made by the king providing for the daily recitation of the poem. Its legal verses are authoritative; its religion is to-day that of India as a whole. The latest large additions to it were, as we think, the Book of Laws, the Book of Peace, and the genealogy of Vishnu, which together form a sort of pseudo-epic. But portions of other books, notably the first, fourth, and seventh, are probably almost as recent as are the more palpable interpolations.

The Bh[=a]rata (or the epic [Greek: kat exochên] gives us our first view of Hinduism in its sectarian developments. But no less does it show us a changing Brahmanism. The most typical change in the Brahmanism of this period, which covers all that time called by Müller the era of the Renaissance, and ends with the pedantically piquant literature of the drama,[8] is the abnormal growth of the ascetic religious exercise. Older Brahmanism, like the sects, admitted Yogis and ascetics of various kinds, but their aim was to attain oneness with God; and 'union' (with God) is the yoga (Latin jugum has the same origin) which they sought. But it was not long before the starved ascetic, with his wild appearance and great reputation for sanctity, inspired an awe which, in the unscrupulous, was easily turned to advantage. The Yogi became more or less of a charlatan, more or less of a juggler. Nor was this all. Yoga-practices began to take precedence before other religious practices. In the Br[=a]hmanas it is the sacrifice that is god-compelling; but in the epic, although sacrifice has its place, yet when miraculous power is exerted, it is due chiefly to Yoga concentration, or to the equally general use of formulae; not formulae as part of a sacrifice, but as in themselves potent; and mysterious mantras, used by priest and warrior alike, serve every end of magic.[9] Apart from acquisition of power, this Yoga-training is, moreover, all that is needful from the point of view of righteousness. Physical prowess here is the one thing admirable. To stand for years on one leg, to be eaten by ants, to be in every way an ascetic of the most stoical sort, is the truest religion. Such an ascetic has no ordinary rules of morality. In fact, his practices are most peculiar, for to seduce young women is one of his commonest occupations; and in his anger to cause an injury to his foes is one of the ends for which he toils. The gods are nothing to him. They are puppets whom he makes shake and tremble at will. As portrayed in the epic, in terms of common sense, the Muni (silent saint) is a morose[10] and very vulgar-minded old man, who seeks to intimidate others by a show of miraculous power. In the matter of penances those of the law are extended beyond all bounds. The caste-restrictions are of the closest, and the most heinous crime is to commit an offence against caste-order. On the other hand, the greatest merit is to give gifts to priests. This had already proceeded far enough, as was indicated by a passage cited above from Manu. But in the epic the greed and capacity of the priest exceeds all imaginable limits. He takes whatever he can get and asks for more. He has, by his own showing, scarcely one estimable trait. Avarice, cupidity, sensuality, gluttony, love of finery, effeminacy, meanness, and pride--everything charged against him by the Buddhist--are his most marked characteristics. He appears, however, to be worse than he always was. For nothing is plainer, from this very epic, than that the priests, although united as a caste, were sharply distinguished in their lives. The ascetic described above represents the fourth period of the priestly life. Below these stood (apart from students)[11] hermits and householders. The householders, or such of them as the epic unfortunately is busied with, the royal priests, seem to be those that are in reality priests only in name. In the king's palace, his constant advisors, his most unscrupulous upholders in wickedness, they gave themselves up to quest of wealth and power. But one would err if he thus dismissed them all. There were others that had no preferment, who lived in quiet content in their own houses, and deserved none of the opprobrium rightly bestowed upon their hypocritical brothers. The hermits, too, appear to have been a mild and inoffensive race, not presuming too much on their caste-privileges.

To offset rapaciousness there are tomes of morality of the purest sort. Even in the later additions to the epic one reads: "Away with gifts; receiving gifts is sinful. The silkworm dies of its wealth" (xii. 330. 29). One should compare, again, the exalted verse (Buddhistic in tone) of ib. 321. 47: "The red garment, the vow of silence, the three-fold staff, the water-pot--these only lead astray; they do not make for salvation." There were doubtless good and bad priests, but the peculiarity of the epic priest, rapacious and lustful, is that he glories in his sins.

The chief objects of worship (except for the influence of the sectarian religions) were priests, Manes, and, for form's sake, the Vedic gods. These gods, with the addition of the Hindu Plutus (Kubera, the god of riches), are now called the eight 'world-guardians,' viz., Indra, Yama, Varuna, Kubera, Agni, S[=u]rya, V[=a]yu, Soma, and are usually simple and shadowy subordinates of the greater new gods.

In the shifting of religious opinion and in the development of theological conceptions what difference can be traced between the same gods as worshipped in the Veda and as worshipped in the epic? Although the Vedic divinities have been twice superseded, once by the Father-god and again by the [=a]tm[=a], Lord, they still remain adorable and adored, active in many ways, though passive before the great All-god. It is, indeed, extremely difficult, owing to the superstruction of sectarian belief, to get down to the foundation-religion of the epic. The best one can do is to see in what way the old gods differ, as represented in the poem, from their older selves of the Rig Veda. From this point of view alone, and entirely irrespective of the sects, manifold changes will be seen to have taken place. Great Soma is no more. Soma is there, the moon, but the glory of the Vedic Soma has departed. His lunar representative is of little importance. Agni, too, is changed. As Fire in the Rig Veda is not only the altar-fire, but also common, every-day fire, so, too, in the epic this god is the material flame, and as such even performs his greatest deeds for his worshippers. He takes on every form, even becoming a priest, and a dove. He remains the priest of the gods, but his day of action in war is over. He no longer wins battles. But he burns down a forest to aid his party. For the Vedic gods are now but weak partizans of the combatants. In the sectarian parts of the epic Agni is only a puppet. His new representative, Skanda, is the chief battle-god, a name almost unknown before. He himself is either the son of Vishnu or a form of Çiva. He is the All-god, the [=a]tm[=a]. It is he who burns the world when the time shall have come for the general destruction.

The high and mighty Varuna of the Rig Veda is no longer great. He is no longer serene. He descends and fights on earth. Indra, too, battles with Vritra as of old, but he is quite anthropomorphic, and of no marked value in the contest of heroes. Not only this, but all the gods together are represented as weaker than a good hero, not to speak of a priestly ascetic. In a word, the gods are believed in, but with what a belief! They no longer, as natural powers, inspire special respect. Their nature-origin is for the most part lost. They are thoroughly anthropomorphic. Even S[=u]rya, the sun, in action if not in laudation, is often more man than god. This gives a strange effect to the epic battle-scenes as compared with those of Homer. Unless Vishnu is active on the field the action is essentially human. No great god or goddess stands ready to save the fainting warrior. He fights and falls alone. Save for the caresses and plaudits of the half-gods, the most that the Vedic gods can do is to wipe away the sweat from the hero's brow.[12] The All-god does not take the place of the band of watchful and helpful gods pictured by Homer. Vishnu fights on the field; he saves only his protégés, and much as a mortal warrior would do it. But the Vedic gods hang like a mist upon the edge of battle, and are all but idle spectators of the scene. Abstractions, as well as the All-god, have routed them, and Dharma or Duty is a greater god than Indra. But there is an older side to this, as we shall presently show. On the moral side the heroes of the epic profess great belief in the power and awfulness of this god Duty. And so far as go rules of chivalry, they are theoretically moral. Practically they are savage, and their religion does not interfere with their brutal barbarity. The tendency to cite divine instances of sin as excuse for committing it is, however, rebuked: "One should neither practice nor blame the (wrong) acts of gods and seers," xii. 292. 17-18.

From an eschatological point of view it is most difficult to get back of the statements made by the priestly composers,[13] who, in their various reëditings of the epic, uniformly have given the pantheistic goal as that in which the characters believe. But it is evident that the warriors were not much affected by this doctrine. To them there was one law of righteousness exceeding all others--to die on the field of battle. And for such as did so, over and over again is the assurance given that 'happiness in Indra's heaven' is their reward. And probably a true note is struck in this reiterated promise. To the mass of the vulgar, union with brahma would have been no attractive end.

It is interesting to see the remains of the older belief still flourishing in midst of epic pantheism. Although Indra has no such hymn as has S[=u]rya, yet is he still lauded, and he is a very real person to the knight who seeks his heaven.[14] In fact, so long as natural phenomena were regarded as divine, so long as thunder was godly, it was but a secondary question which name the god bore; whether he was the 'chief and king of gods,' or Vishnu manifesting himself in a special form. This form, at any rate, was to endure as such till the end of the cycle. There are other Indras. Each cycle has its own (i. 197. 29). But sufficient unto the age is the god thereof. If, relinquishing the higher bliss of absorption, the knight sought only Indra's heaven, and believed he was to find it, then his belief practically does not differ much from that of his ancestor, who accepts Indra as an ultimate, natural power. The question arises whether, after all, the Indra-worship of the epic is not rather popular than merely old and preserved. Certainly the reality of the belief seems quite as strong as that of the ever-newly converted sectary. It may be doubted whether the distribution of theological belief is very different in the epic and Vedic ages. Philosophical pantheism is very old in India. The priest believes one thing; the vulgar, another. The priest of the Vedic age, like the philosopher of the next age, and like the later sectarian, has a belief which runs ahead of the popular religion. But the popular religion in its salient features still remains about the same. Arjuna, the epic hero, the pet of Krishna, visits Indra's heaven and stays there five years. It is the old Vedic gods to whom he turns for weapons, till the Çivaite makes Indra send the knight further, to Çiva himself. The old name, king of the Vasus, is still retained for Indra; and though the 'divine weapons,' which are winged with sacred formulae, are said to be more than a match for the gods; though in many a passage the knight and the saint make Indra tremble, yet still appear, through the mists of ascetic and sectarian novelties, Indra's heaven and his grandeur, shining with something of their old glory. Vishnu still shows his solar origin. Of him and of the sun is it said in identical words: "The sun protects and devours all," and " Vishnu protects and devours " (of Vishnu, passim; of the sun, iii. 33. 71). A good deal of old stuff is left in the Forest Book amongst the absurd tales of holy watering places. One finds repeated several times the Vedic account of Indra's fight with Vritra, the former's thunderbolt, however, being now made of a saint's bones (ii. ch. 100-105). Agni is lauded (ib. ch. 123). To the Açvins[15] there is one old hymn which contains Vedic forms (i. 3). Varuna is still lord of the West, and goes accompanied with the rivers, 'male and female,' with snakes, and demons, and half-gods (d[=a]ityas, s[=a]dhyas, d[=a]ivatas). Later, but earlier than the pseudo-epic, there stands with these gods Kubera, the god of wealth, the 'jewel-giver,' who is the guardian of travellers, the king of those demons called Yakshas, which the later sect makes servants of Çiva. He is variously named;[16] he is a dwarf; he dwells in the North, in Mt. K[=a]il[=a]sa, and has a demoniac gate-keeper, Macakruka. Another newer god is the one already referred to, Dharma V[=a]ivasvata, or Justice (Virtue, Right), the son of the sun, a title of Yama older than the Vedas. He is also the father of the new love-god, K[=a]ma. It is necessary to indicate the names of the gods and their functions, lest one imagine that with pantheism the Vedic religion expired. Even that old, impious Brahmanic fable crops out again: "The devils were the older brothers of the gods, and were conquered by the gods only with trickery" (in. 33. 60), an interesting reminiscence of the fact that the later name for evil spirit was originally the one applied to the great and good spirit (Asura the same with Ahura).[17] According to a rather late chapter in the second book each of the great Vedic gods has a special paradise of his own, the most remarkable feature of the account being that Indra's heaven is filled with saints, having only one king in it--a view quite foreign to the teaching that is current elsewhere in the epic. Where the sectarian doctrine would oppose the old belief it set above Indra's heaven another, of Brahm[=a], and above that a third, of Vishnu (i. 89. 16 ff.). According to one passage Mt. Mandara[18] is a sort of Indian Olympus. Another account speaks of the Him[=a]layas, Himavat, as 'the divine mountain, beloved of the gods,' though the knight goes thence to Gandham[=a]dana, and thence to Indrak[=i]la, to find the gods' habitat (III. 37. 41). Personified powers lie all around the religious Hindu. And this is especially true of the epic character. He prays to Mt. Mandara, and to rivers, above all to the Ganges. Mt. Kol[=a]hala is divine, and begets divine offspring on a river (I. 63). The Vindhya range of mountains rivals the fabled Meru (around which course the sun and all the heavenly bodies), and this, too, is the object of devotion and prayer.[19] In one passage it is said that in Beh[=a]r (M[=a]gadha) there was a peak which was continuously 'worshipped with offerings of flowers and perfumes,' exactly as if it were a god. The reason why flowers are given and worn is that they bring good luck, it is said in the same chapter (II. 21. 15, 20, 51).

What is, perhaps, the most striking feature of Hindu religious thought, as a whole, is the steadfastness with which survive, even in the epic and in Buddhism, the forms and formulae of the older faith. At a time when pantheism or nihilism is the avowed creed the ancient gods still exist, weak, indeed, yet infused with a true immortality. This is noticeable even more in unnoticeable ways, in the turns of speech, in little comparisons, in the hymns, in short, in the by-play of the epic. 'Withered are the garlands of the gods, and their glory is departed,'[20] but they still receive homage in time of need. And in that homage is to be seen, and from the same cause, the revived or surviving worship of the Veda. Each god in turn is mighty, though Agni is the mightiest of the old divinities. In an epic hymn to him it is said: "Thou art the mouth of the worlds; the poets declare thee to be one and three-fold; as carrier of the sacrifice they arrange thee eight-fold. By thee was all created, say the highest seers. Priests that have made reverence to thee attain the eternal course their acts have won, together with their wives and sons. They call thee the water-giver in the air, together with lightning. On thee first depends water. Thou art the creator and Brihaspati, thou art the two Horsemen, the two Yamas, Mitra, Soma, Wind" (i. 229. 23 ff.).[21] And yet this is in a pantheistic environment! The Rig Veda is directly invoked, though, of course, not directly cited, in the old hymn to the Horsemen, who are, however, elsewhere put with low animals and Guhyakas, demons (i. 66).[22] They are the "physicians of the gods," the "first-born" the golden birds which weave the white and black of time, create the wheel of time with all its seasons, and make the sun and sky (i. 3. 55 ff., "v[=a]gbhir [r.]gbhis"). Indra himself is extolled in Kadr[=u]'s hymn; he is the slayer of Namuci, the lord of Çac[=i]; he is the great cloud, cloud and its thunder, creator and destroyer; he is Vishnu, 'Soma, greatly praised,' as well as fire, air, time in all its divisions, earth and ocean; when lauded he drinks the soma, and he is sung in the Ved[=a]ngas (i. 25. 7 ff.). Praised with this hymn in time of need of rain, Indra "commanded the clouds, saying, 'rain down the ambrosia'" (26. 2); where there is still the rain as synonymous with ambrosia, and Indra not very differently conceived from his Vedic self. Thus in comparisons: "As Indra standing in heaven brings bliss to the world of the living, so Vidura ever brought bliss to the Pandus" (i. 61. 15). But at the same time what changes! The gods assemble and sing a hymn to Garuda, the epic form of Garutman, the heavenly bird, who here steals the soma vainly guarded by the gods. Garuda, too, is Praj[=a]pati, Indra, and so forth.[23] The gods are no longer divinities distinct from the dead Fathers, for they are "identical in being." So Agni says when the latter is cursed by Bhrigu: "The divinities and the Manes are satisfied by the oblation in fire. The hosts of gods are waters, so, too, are the Manes. The feasts of the new and full moon belong to the gods with the Manes; hence the Manes are divinities and the divinities are Manes. They are of one being (ek[i]bh[=u]t[=a]s). I (Fire) am the mouth of both, for both eat the oblation poured upon me. The Manes at the new moon, the gods at the full, are fed by my mouth" (i. 7. 7 ff.).[24] Such gods the epic hero fears not (i. 227. 38 ff.). Hymns to them are paralleled by hymns to snakes, as in i. 3. 134 ff., against whom is made the "sarpasattram (snake sacrifice) of the Pur[=a]nas" (i. 51. 6). Divinity is universal. Knights are as divine as the divinest god, the All-god. Arjuna, the god-born man, to whom Krishna reveals the Divine Song, is himself god.[25] In this case whether god becomes human, or vice versa, no one knows.

Under the all embracing cloak of pantheism the heart of the epic conceals many an ancient rite and superstition. Here is the covenant of blood, the covenant of death (represented by the modern 'sitting'[26]), and the covenant of water, which symbolizes both friendship and the solemnity of the curse. The former are illustrated by Bhima's drinking blood as a sign that he will fulfil his vow,[27] and by R[=a]ma lying by Ocean to die unless Ocean grants his wish. Of the water-rite that of offering water in hospitality and as a form in reception of gifts is general; that of cursing by 'touching water' (v[=a]ry upasp[r.]çya), occurs in iii. 10. 32. For this purpose holy-grass and other symbols are known also,[28] and formulae yield only in potency to love-philters and magic drugs. Another covenant besides those just noticed seems to lie concealed in the avoidance of the door when injury is intended. If one goes in by the door he is a guest who has anticipated hospitality, and then he dares not refuse the respect and offering of water, etc, which makes the formal pact of friendship. If, on the contrary, he does not go in by the door he is not obliged to receive the offering, and may remain as a foe in the house (or in the city) of his enemy, with intent to kill, but without moral wrong. This may be implied in the end of the epic, where Açvatth[=a]man, intent on secret murder of his foe, is prevented by god Çiva from entering in at the gate, but going in by stealth, and 'not by the door' of the camp, gets to his foe, who lies asleep, and kills him (x. 8. 10). This might be thought, indeed, to be merely strategic, but it is in accordance with the strict law of all the law-books that one, in ordinary circumstances, shall avoid to enter a town or a house in any other way than through the door (Manu, iv. 73; Gaut. 9. 32, etc.), and we think it has a moral significance, for this a-dv[=a]ra (non-door) rule occurs again in the epic in just the circumstances we have described. The heroes in this case are not afraid of their foe, who is in his town. They insult every one as they approach, but they find some other way of getting in than by passing through the gate, for the express purpose of being morally able to make the king fight with them after they have entered his city. And they cite the rule 'according to law,' which is that one may enter his foe's house by a-dv[=a]ra, 'not by door,' but his friend's house only 'by door.' As they have not entered 'by door' they say they may refuse the hospitality which the king urges them to accept, and so they kill him (ii. 21. 14, 53). Stepping in through the door seems, therefore, to be a tacit agreement that one will not injure the resident.[29]

In the epic, again, fetishism is found. The student of the 'science of war,' in order to obtain his teacher's knowledge when the latter is away, makes a clay image of the preceptor and worships this clay idol, practicing arms before it (i. 132. 33). Here too is embalmed the belief that man's life may be bound up with that of some inanimate thing, and the man perishes with the destruction of his psychic prototype (iii. 135). The old ordeals of fire and water are recognized. "Fire does not burn the house of good men." "If (as this man asserts) he is Varuna's son, then let him enter water and let us see if he will drown" (iii. 134. 27 ff.). A human sacrifice is performed (iii. 127); although the priest who performs it is cast into hell (ib. 128).[30] The teaching in regard to hells is about the same with that already explained in connection with the law-books, but the more definite physical interpretation of hell as a hole in the ground (garta, just as in the Rig Veda) is retained. Agastya sees his ancestors 'in a hole,' which they call 'a hell' (n[=i]ray[=a]). This is evidently the hell known to the law-punsters and epic (i. 74. 39) as puttra, 'the put hell' from which the son (putra) delivers (tra). For these ancestors are in the 'hole' because Agastya, their descendant, has not done his duty and begotten sons (i. 45. 13; iii. 96. 15); one son being 'no son' according to law and epic (i. 100. 68), and all the merit of sacrifice being equal to only one-sixteenth of that obtained by having a son. The teaching, again, in regard to the Fathers themselves (the Manes), while not differing materially from the older view, offers novelties which show how little the absorption-theory had taken hold of the religious consciousness. The very fact that the son is still considered to be as necessary as ever (that he may offer food to his ancestors) shows that the believer, whatever his professed faith, expects to depend for bliss hereafter upon his post mortem meals, as much as did his fathers upon theirs. In the matter of the burial of the dead, one finds, what is antique, that although according to the formal law only infants are buried, and adults are burned, yet was burial known, as in the Vedic age. And the still older exposure of the body, after the Iranian fashion, is not only hinted at as occurring here and there even before the epic, but in the epic these forms are all recognized as equally approved: "When a man dies he is burned or buried or exposed" (nik[r.][s.]yate)[31] it is said in i. 90. 17; and the narrator goes on to explain that the "hell on earth," of which the auditor "has never heard" (vs. 6) is re-birth in low bodies, speaking of it as a new doctrine. "As if in a dream remaining conscious the spirit enters another form"; the bad becoming insects and worms; the good going to heaven by means of the "seven gates," viz., penance, liberality, quietism, self-control, modesty, rectitude, and mercy. This is a union of two views, and it is evidently the popular view, that, namely, the good go to heaven while the bad go to new existence in a low form, as opposed to the more logical conception that both alike enter new forms, one good, the other bad. Then the established stadia, the pupil, the old teaching (upanishad) of the householders, and the wood-dwellers are described, with the remark that there is no uniformity of opinion in regard to them; but the ancient view crops out again in the statement that one who dies as a forest-hermit "establishes in bliss" ten ancestors and ten descendants. In this part of the epic the Punj[=a]b is still near the theatre of events, the 'centre region' being between the Ganges and Jumna (I. 87. 5); although the later additions to the poems show acquaintance with all countries, known and unknown, and with peoples from all the world. Significant in xii. 61. 1, 2 is the name of the third order bh[=a]ikshyacaryam 'beggarhood' (before the forest-hermit and after the householder).

It was said above that the departed Fathers could assume a mortal form. In the formal classification of these demigods seven kinds of Manes are enumerated, the title of one subdivision being 'those embodied.' Brahm[=a] is identified with the Father-god in connection with the Manes: "All the Manes worship Praj[=a]pati Brahm[=a]," in the paradise of Praj[=a]pati, where, by the way, are Çiva and Vishnu (II. 11. 45, 50, 52; 8. 30). According to this description 'kings and sinners,' together with the Manes, are found in Yama's home, as well as "those that die at the solstice" (II. 7 ff.; 8. 31). Constantly the reader is impressed with the fact that the characters of the epic are acting and thinking in a way not conformable to the idea one might form of the Hindu from the law. We have animadverted upon this point elsewhere in connection with another matter. It is this factor that makes the study of the epic so invaluable as an offset to the verisimilitude of belief, even as belief is taught (not practiced) in the law. There is a very old rule, for instance, against slaughtering animals and eating meat; while to eat beef is a monstrous crime. Yet is it plain from the epic that meat-eating was customary, and Vedic texts are cited ( iti çrutis) to prove that this is permissible; while a king is extolled for slaughtering cattle (III. 208. 6-11). It is said out and out in iii. 313. 86 that 'beef is food,' g[=a]ur annam. Deer are constantly eaten. There is an amusing protest against this practice, which was felt to be irreconcilable with the ahims[=a] (non-injury) doctrine, in III. 258, where the remnant of deer left in the forest come in a vision and beg to be spared. A dispute between gods and seers over vegetable sacrifices is recorded, XII. 338. Again, asceticism is not the duty of a warrior, but the epic hero practices asceticism exactly as if he were a priest, or a Jain, although the warning is given that a warrior 'obtains a better lot' (loka) by dying in battle than by asceticism. The asceticism is, of course, exaggerated, but an instance or two of what the Hindu expects in this regard may not be without interest. The warrior who becomes an ascetic eats leaves, and is clothed in grass. For one month he eats fruits every third day (night); for another month every sixth day; for another month every fortnight; and for the fourth month he lives on air, standing on tiptoe with arms stretched up. Another account says that the knight eats fruit for one month; water for one month; and for the third month, nothing (III. 33. 73; 38. 22-26; 167). One may compare with these ascetic practices, which are not so exaggerated, in fact, as might be supposed,[32] the 'one-leg' practice of virtue, consisting in standing on one leg, ekap[=a]dena, for six months or longer, as one is able (I. 170. 46; III. 12. 13-16). Since learning the Vedas is a tiresome task, and ascetic practice makes it possible to acquire anything, one is not surprised to find that a devotee undertakes penance with this in view, and is only surprised when Indra, who, to be sure has a personal interest in the Vedas, breaks in on the scene and rebukes the ascetic with the words: "Asceticism cannot teach the Vedas; go and be tutored by a teacher" (III. 135. 22).

One finds in the epic the old belief that the stars are the souls of the departed,[33] and this occurs so often that it is another sign of the comparative newness of the pantheistic doctrine. When the hero, Arjuna, goes to heaven he approaches the stars, "which seen from earth look small on account of their distance," and finds them to be self-luminous refulgent saints, royal seers, and heroes slain in battle, some of them also being nymphs and celestial singers. All of this is in contradiction both to the older and to the newer systems of eschatology; but it is an ancient belief, and therefore it is preserved. Indra's heaven,[34] Amar[=a]vati, lies above these stars[35]] No less than five distinct beliefs are thus enunciated in regard to the fate of 'good men after death. If they believe in the All-god they unite with him at once. Or they have a higher course, becoming gradually more elevated, as gods, etc, and ultimately 'enter' the All-god. Again they go to the world of Brahm[=a]. Again they go to Indra's heaven. Again they become stars. The two last beliefs are the oldest, the brahmaloka belief is the next in order of time, and the first-mentioned are the latest to be adopted. The hero of the epic just walks up to heaven, but his case is exceptional.

While angels and spirits swarm about the world in every shape from mischievous or helpful fairies to R[=a]hu, whose head still swallows the sun, causing eclipses (I. 19. 9), there are a few that are especially conspicuous. Chief of the good spirits, attendants of Indra, are the Siddhas[36] 'saints,' who occasionally appear to bless a hero in conjunction with 'beings invisible' (III. 37. 21). Their name means literally 'blessed' or 'successful,' and probably, like the seers, Rishis, they are the departed fathers in spiritual form. These latter form various classes. There are not only the 'great seers,' and the still greater 'brahma-seers,' and the 'god-seers,' but there are even 'devil-seers,' and 'king-seers,' these being spirits of priests of royal lineages.[37] The evil spirits, like the gods, are sometimes grouped in threes. In a blessing one cries out: "Farewell (svasti gacchahy an[=a]mayam); I entreat the Vasus, Rudras, [=A]dityas, Marut-hosts and the All-gods to protect thee, together with the S[=a]dhyas; safety be to thee from all the evil beings that live in air, earth, and heaven, and from all others that dog thy path."[38] In XII. 166. 61 ff. the devils fall to earth, mountains, water, and other places. According to I. 19. 29. it is not long since the Asuras were driven to take refuge in earth and salt water.[39]

These creatures have every kind of miraculous power, whether they be good or bad. Hanuman, famed in both epics, the divine monkey, with whom is associated the divine 'king of bears' J[=a]mbavan (III. 280. 23), can grow greater than mortal eye can see (III. 150. 9). He is still worshipped as a great god in South India. As an illustration of epic spiritism the case of Ilvala may be taken. This devil, d[=a]iteya, had a trick of cooking his embodied younger brother, and giving him to saints to eat. One saint, supposing the flesh to be mutton (here is saintly meat-eating!), devours the dainty viand; upon which the devil 'calls' his brother, who is obliged to come, whether eaten or not, and in coming bursts the saint that has eaten him (iii. 96). This is folk-lore; but what religion does not folk-lore contain! So, personified Fate holds its own as an inscrutable power, mightier than others.[40] There is another touch of primitive religious feeling which reminds one of the usage in Iceland, where, if a stranger knocks at the door and the one within asks 'who is there?' the guest answers, 'God.' So in the epic it is said that 'every guest is god Indra' (Parjanyo nn[=a]nusa[.m]caran, iii. 200. 123. In the epic Parjanya, the rain-god, and Indra are the same). Of popular old tales of religious bearing may be mentioned the retention and elaboration of the Brahmanic deluge-story, with Manu as Noah (iii. 187); the Açvins' feats in rejuvenating (iii. 123); the combats of the gods with the demons (Namuci, Çambara, Vala, Vritra, Prahl[=a]da, Naraka), etc. (iii. 168).

Turning now to some of the newer traits in the epic, one notices first that, while the old sacrifices still obtain, especially the horse-sacrifice, the r[=a]jas[=u]ya and the less meritorious v[=a]japeya, together with the monthly and seasonal sacrifices, there is in practice a leaning rather to new sacrifices, and a new cult. The soma is scarce, and the p[=u]tika plant is accepted as its substitute (iii. 35. 33) in a matter-of-course way, as if this substitution, permitted of old by law, were now common. The sacrifice of the widow is recognized, in the case of the wives of kings, as a means of obtaining bliss for a woman,[41] for the religion of the epic is not entirely careless of woman. Somewhat new, however, is the self-immolation of a man upon the pyre of his son. Such a case is recorded in iii. 137. 19. where a father burns his son's body, and then himself enters the fire. New also, of course, are the sectarian festivals and sacrifices; and pronounced is the gain in the godhead of priests, king, parents, elder brother, and husband. The priest has long been regarded as a god, but in the epic he is god of gods, although one can trace even here a growth in adulation.[42] The king, too, has been identified before this period with the gods. But in the epic he is to his people an absolute divinity,[43] and so are the parents to the son;[44] while, since the elder brother is the same with a father, when the father is dead the younger brother worships the elder. So also the wife's god is her husband; for higher even than that of the priest is the husband's divinity (III. 206). The wife's religious service is not concerned with feasts to the Manes, with sacrifice to the gods, nor with studying the Veda. In all these she has no part. Her religion is to serve her husband (III. 205. 23), and to die, if worthy of the honor, on his funeral pyre. Otherwise the epic woman has religious practices only in visiting the holy watering-places, which now abound, and in reading the epic itself. For it is said of both practices: "Whether man or woman read this book (or 'visit this holy pool') he or she is freed from sin" (so in III. 82. 33: "Every sin committed since birth by man or woman is absolved by bathing in 'holy Pushkara"). It may be remarked that as a general thing the deities invoked by women are, by predilection, female divinities, some of them being mere abstractions, while 'the Creator' is often the only god in the woman's list, except, of course, the priests: "Reverence to priests, and to the Creator ... May Hr[=i], Çr[=i] (Modesty and Beauty), Fame, Glory, Prosperity, Um[=a] (Çiva's wife), Lakshmi (Vishnu's wife), and also Sarasvat[=i], (may all these female divinities) guard thy path, because thou reverest thy elder brother," is a woman's prayer (III. 37. 26-33).[45]

Of the sectarian cults just mentioned the brahmamaha, I. 164. 20, elsewhere referred to, is the all-caste[46] feast in honor of Brahm[=a] (or of the Brahmans); as ib. 143. 3 one finds a sam[=a]ja in honor of Çiva; and distinctly in honor of the same god of horror is the sacrifice, i.e., immolation, of one hundred kings, who are collected "in the temple of Çiva," to be slaughtered like cattle in M[=a]gadha (II. 15. 23); an act which the heroes of the epic prevent, and look upon with scorn.[47] As a substitute for the r[=a]jas[=u]ya, which may be connected with the human sacrifice (Ind. Streifen, I. 61), but is the best sacrifice because it has the best largesse (III. 255. 12), the Vaishnava is suggested to Duryodhana. It is a great sattram or long sacrifice to Vishnu (ib. 15 and 19); longer than a Vishnuprabodha (26 Oct.). There is a Smriti rite described in III. 198. 13 as a svastiv[=a]canam, a ceremony to obtain a heavenly chariot which brings prosperity, the priests being invoked for blessings (svasti). Quite modern, comparatively speaking, is the cult of holy pools; but it is to be observed that the blessings expected are rarely more than the acquirement of brahma-worlds, so that the institution seems to be at least older than the sectarian religions, although naturally among the holy pools is intruded a Vishnu-pool. This religious rite cannot be passed over in silence. The custom is late Brahmanic (as above), and still survives. It has been an aspect of Hindu religion for centuries, not only in the view taken of the pools, but even occasionally in the place itself. Thus the Ganges, Gay[=a], Pray[=a]ga, and Kuru-Plain are to-day most holy, and they are mentioned as among the holiest in the epic catalogue.[48] Soma is now revamped by a bath in a holy pool (IX. 35. 75). As in every antithesis of act and thought there are not lacking passages in the epic which decry the pools in comparison with holy life as a means of salvation. Thus in III. 82. 9 ff., the poet says: "The fruit of pilgrimage (to holy pools)--he whose hands, feet, and mind are controlled;[49] he who has knowledge, asceticism, and fame, he gets all the fruit that holy pools can give. If one is averse from receiving gifts, content, freed from egoism, if one injures not, and acts disinterestedly, if one is not gluttonous, or carnal-minded, he is freed from sin. Let one (not bathe in pools but) be without wrath, truthful, firm in his vows, seeing his self in all beings." This is, however, a protest little heeded.[50] Pilgrimage is made to pool and plain, to mountain, tree, and river. Even then, as now, of all pilgrimages that to Ganges was most esteemed: "Originally all were holy; in the second age Pushkara[51] was holy; in the third age the Plain of the Kurus was holy; and in this age Ganges is holy" (III. 85. 90).[52] Besides Ganges, the Plain of the Kurus and Pray[=a]ga, the junction of Ganges and Jumna, get the highest laudation. Other rivers, such as the Gomal and Sarasvat[=i], are also extolled, and the list is very long of places which to see or to bathe in releases from sin. "He who bathes in Ganges purifies seven descendants.[53] As long as the bones of a man touch Ganges-water so long that man is magnified in heaven." Again: "No place of pilgrimage is better than Ganges; no god is better than Vishnu; nothing is better than brahma--so said the sire of the gods" (iii. 85. 94-96). The very dust of Kuru-Plain makes one holy, the sight of it purifies; he that lives south of the Sarasvat[=i], north of the Drishadvat[=i] (i.e., in Kuru-Plain), he lives in the third heaven (iii. 83. 1-3=203-205[54]). This sort of expiation for sin is implied in a more general way by the remark that there are three kinds of purity, one of speech, one of act, and one of water (iii. 200. 82). But in the epic there is still another means of expiating sin, one that is indicated in the Brahmanic rule that if a woman is an adulteress she destroys half her sin by confessing it (as above), where, however, repentance is rather implied than commanded. But in the epic Pur[=a]na it is distinctly stated as a Çruti, or trite saying, that if one repents he is freed from his sin; na tat kury[=a]m punar is the formula he must use, 'I will not do so again,' and then he is released from even the sin that he is going to commit a second time, as if by a ceremony--so is the Çruti in the laws, dharmas (iii. 207. 51, 52).[55] Confession to the family priest is enjoined, in xii. 268. 14, to escape punishment.

Two other religious practices in the epic are noteworthy. The first is the extension of idolatry in pictures. The amiable 'goddess of the house' is represented, to be sure, as a R[=a]kshas[=i], or demoniac power, whose name is Jar[=a]. But she was created by the Self-existent, and is really very friendly, under certain conditions: "Whoever delineates me with faith in his house, he increases in children; otherwise he would be destroyed." She is worshipped, i.e., her painted image is worshipped, with perfumes, flowers, incense, food, and other enjoyable things (II. 18).[56] Another practice that is very common is the worship of holy trees. One may compare the banyan at Bodhi Gay[=a] with the 'worshipful' village-tree of II. 24. 23. Seldom and late is the use of a rosary mentioned (e.g., III. 112. 5, aksham[=a]l[=a], elsewhere aksha), although the word is employed to make an epithet of Çiva, Aksham[=a]lin.[57]

As has been said already, an extraordinary power is ascribed to the mere repetition of a holy text, mantra. These are applied on all occasions without the slightest reference to the subject. By means of mantra one exorcises; recovers weapons; calls gods and demons, etc.[58] When misfortune or disease arrives it is invariably ascribed to the malignant action of a devil, although the karma teaching should suggest that it was the result of a former misdeed on the victim's part. But the very iteration, the insistence on new explanations of this doctrine, show that the popular mind still clung to the old idea of demoniac interference. Occasionally the naïveté with which the effect of a mantra is narrated is somewhat amusing, as, for instance, when the heroine Krishn[=a] faints, and the by-standers "slowly" revive her "by the use of demon-dispelling mantras, rubbing, water, and fanning" (iii. 144. 17). All the weapons of the heroes are inspired with and impelled by mantras.

Sufficient insight into the formal rules of morality has been given in the extracts above, nor does the epic in this regard differ much from the law-books. Every man's first duty is to act; inactivity is sinful. The man that fails to win a good reputation by his acts, a warrior, for example, that is devoid of fame, a 'man of no account,' is a bh[=u]mivardhana, [Greek: achthos arourês] a cumberer of earth (iii. 35. 7). A proverb says that man should seek virtue, gain, and pleasure; "virtue in the morning; gain at noon; pleasure at night," or, according to another version, "pleasure when young, gain in middle-age, and virtue in the end of life" (iii. 33. 40, 41). "Virtue is better than immortality and life. Kingdom, sons, glory, wealth, all this does not equal one-sixteenth part of the value of truth" (ib. 34. 22).[59] One very strong summing up of a discourse on virtuous behavior ends thus: "Truth, self-control, asceticism, generosity, non-injury, constancy in virtue--these are the means of success, not caste nor family" (j[=a]ti, kula, iii. 181. 42).

A doctrine practiced, if not preached, is that of blood-revenge. "The unavenged shed tears, which are wiped away by the avenger" (iii. 11. 66); and in accordance with this feeling is the statement: "I shall satiate my brother with his murderer's blood, and thus, becoming free of debt in respect of my brother, I shall win the highest place in heaven" (ib. 34, 35).

As of old, despite the new faith, as a matter of priestly, formal belief, all depends on the sacrifice: "Law comes from usage; in law are the Vedas established; by means of the Vedas arise sacrifices; by sacrifice are the gods established; according to the rule of Vedas, and usage, sacrifices being performed support the divinities, just as the rules of Brihaspati and Uçanas support men" (iii. 150. 28, 29). The pernicious doctrine of atonement for sin follows as a matter of course: "Whatever sin a king commits in conquering the earth is atoned for by sacrifices, if they are accompanied with large gifts to priests, such as cows and villages." Even gifts to a sacred bull have the same effect (iii. 33. 78, 79; ib. 35. 34; iii. 2. 57), the occasion in hand being a king's violation of his oath.[60] Of these sacrifices a great snake-sacrifice forms the occasion for narrating the whole epic, the plot of which turns on the national vice of gambling.[61] For divine snakes are now even grouped with other celestial powers, disputing the victory of earthly combatants as do Indra and S[=u]rya: "The great snakes were on Arjuna's side; the little snakes were for Karna" (viii. 87. 44, 45).[62] They were (perhaps) the local gods of the Nagas (Snakes), a tribe living between the Ganges and Jumna.

The religion of the epic is multiform. But it stands, in a certain sense, as one religion, and from two points of view it is worthy of special regard. One may look upon it either as the summing up of Brahmanism in the new Hinduism, as the final expression of a religion which forgets nothing and absorbs everything; or one may study it as a belief composed of historical strata, endeavoring to divide it into its different layers, as they have been super-imposed one upon another in the course of ages. From the latter point of view the Vedic divinities claim the attention first. There are still traces of the original power of Agni and S[=u]rya, as we have shown, and Wind still makes with these two a notable triad,[63] whereas Indra, impotent as he is, hymnless as he is,--save in the oldest portions of the work,--still leads the gods, now godkins, of the ancient pantheon, and still, in theory, at least, off a paradise to the knight that dies nobly on the field.[64] But one sees at once that the preservation of the dignity of these deities is due to different causes. Indra cannot even save a snake that grasps his hand for safety; he wages war against the demons' 'triple town,' and signally fails of his purpose, for the demons are as strong as the gods, and there are D[=a]navendras as well as D[=a]navarshis.[65] But Indra is the figure-head of the whole ancient pantheon, and for this reason he plays so constant, if so weak, a rôle, in the epic. The only important thing in connection with him is his heaven. As an individual deity Indra lives, on the whole, only in the tales of old, for example, in that of his cheating Namuci (ix. 43. 32 ff.). Nothing new and clever is told of him which would indicate power, only a new trick or two, as when he steals from Karna. It is quite otherwise with Agni and S[=u]rya. They are not so vaguely identified with the one god as is 'Indra and the other Vasus.' It is merely because these gods are prominently forms of Vishnu that they are honored with hymns in the epic. This is seen from the nature of the hymns, and also from the fact that it is either as fire or as sun that Vishnu destroys at the end of the aeons. For it is, perhaps, somewhat daring to say, and yet it seems to be the fact, that the solar origin of Vishnu is not lost sight of.

The pantheistic Vishnu is the [=a]tm[=a], and Vishnu, after all, is but a form of fire. Therefore is it that the epic Vishnu is perpetually lapsing into fire; while fire and sun are doubly honored as special forms of the highest. It is, then, not so much on account of a survival of ancient dignity[66] that sun and fire stand so high, but rather because they are the nearest approach to the effulgence of the Supreme. Thus while in one place one is told that after seven suns have appeared the supreme gods become the fire of destruction and complete the ruin, in another he reads that it is the sun alone which, becoming twelvefold, does all the work of the Supreme.[67]

Indra has hymns and sacrifices, but although he has no so exalted hymn as comes to his 'friend Agni,' yet (in an isolated passage) he has a new feast and celebration, the account of which apparently belongs to the first period of the epic, when the worship of Indra still had significance. In i. 63, an Indramaha, or 'glorification of Indra,' is described a festivity extending over two days, and marked by the erection of a pole in honor of the god--a ceremony which 'even to-day,' it is said, is practiced.[68] The old tales of the fire-cult are retold, and new rites are known.[69] Thus in iii. 251. 20 ff., Prince Duryodhana resolves to starve to death (oblivious of the rule that 'a suicide goes to hell'), and since this is a religious ceremony, he clothes himself in old clothes and holy-grass, 'touches water,' and devotes himself with intense application to heaven. Then the devils of Rudra called D[=a]iteyas and D[=a]navas, who live underground ever since they were conquered by the gods, aided by priests, make a fire-rite, and with mantras "declared by Brihaspati and Uçanas, and proclaimed in the Atharva-Veda," raise a ghost or spirit, who is ordered to fetch Duryodhana to hell, which she immediately does.[70] The frequent connection of Brihaspati with the Atharva-Veda is of interest (above, p. 159). He is quite a venerable, if not wholly orthodox, author in the epic, and his 'rules' are often cited.[71]

That Vedic deity who, alone of pre-Vedic powers, still holds his proud place, Yama, the king of departed spirits, varies in the epic according to the period represented. In old tales he is still quite Vedic in character; he takes the dead man's soul off to his own realm. But, of course, as pantheism prevails, and eschatology becomes confused, Yama passes into a shadow, and at most is a bugbear for the wicked. Even his companions are stolen from another realm, and one hears now of "King Yama with his Rudras" (III. 237. 11),[72] while it is only the bad[73] that go to Yama (III. 200. 24), in popular belief, although this view, itself old, relapses occasionally into one still older, in accordance with which (ib. 49) all the world is hounded on by Yama's messengers, and comes to his abode. His home[74] in the south is now located as being at a distance of 86,000 leagues over a terrible road, on which passes a procession of wretched or happy mortals, even as they have behaved during life; for example, if one has generously given an umbrella during life he will have an umbrella on this journey, etc. The river in Yama's abode is called Pushpodaka, and what each drinks out of it is according to what he deserves to drink, cool water or filth (ib. 46, 58).[75] In the various descriptions it is not strange to find discordant views even in portions belonging approximately to the same period. Thus in contradistinction to the prevailing view one reads of Indra himself that he is Yamasya net[=a] Namuceçca hant[=a] 'Yama's leader, Namuci's slayer' (iii. 25. 10.), i.e., those that die in battle go to Yama.

On the other hand, in the later speculative portions, Yama is not death. "Yama is not death, as some think; he is one that gives bliss to the good, and woe to the bad."[76] Death and life are foolishness and lack of folly, respectively (literally, 'non-folly is non-mortality'), while folly and mortality are counter opposites. In pantheistic teaching there is, of course, no real death, only change. But death is a female power, personified, and sharply distinguished from Yama. Death as a means of change thus remains, while Yama is relegated to the guardianship of hell. The difference in regard to the latter subject, between earlier and later views, has been noted above. One comparatively early passage attempts to arrange the incongruous beliefs in regard to sams[=a]ra (re-birth) and hell on a sort of sliding scale, thus: "One that does good gets in the next life a good birth; one that does ill gets an ill birth"; more particularly: "By good acts one attains to the state of gods; by 'mixed' acts, to the state of man; by acts due to confusion of mind, to the state of animals and plants (viyon[=i][s.]u); by sinful acts one goes to hell" (adhog[=a]mi, iii. 209. 29-32).[77] Virtue must have been, as the epic often declares it to be, a 'subtile matter,' for often a tale is told to illustrate the fact that one goes to hell for doing what he thinks (mistakenly) to be right. Thus K[=a]uçika is sent to hell for speaking the truth, whereas he ought to have lied to save life (viii. 69. 53), for he was "ignorant of virtue's subtilty."[78] A passage (i. 74. 27 ff.) that is reflected in Manu (viii. 85-86) says that Yama V[=a]ivasvata takes away the sin of him with whom is satisfied "the one that witnesses the act, that stands in the heart, that knows the ground"; but Yama tortures him with whom this one (personified conscience) is dissatisfied. For "truth is equal to a thousand horse-sacrifices; truth is highest brahma" (ib. 103, 106).

Following downward the course of religious development, as reflected in the epic, one next finds traces of Brahmanic theology not only in the few passages where (Brahm[=a]) Praj[=a]pati remains untouched by sectarianism, but also in the harking back to old formulae. Thus the insistence on the Brahmanical sacredness of the number seventeen is preserved (xii. 269. 26; iii. 210. 20, etc); and Upanishadic is the "food is Praj[=a]pati" of iii. 200. 38 (Yama in 40). There is an interesting rehabilitation of the primitive idea of the Açvins in the new ascription of formal divinity to the (personified) Twilights (Sandhy[=a]) in iii. 200. 83, although this whole passage is more Puranic than epic. From the same source is the doctrine that the fruit of action expires at the end of one hundred thousand kalpas (ib. vs. 121). One of the oddest religious freaks in the epic is the sudden exaltation of the Ribhus, the Vedic (season-gods) artisans, to the position of highest gods. In that heaven of Brahm[=a], which is above the Vedic gods' heaven, there are the holy seers and the Ribhus, 'the divinities of the gods'; who do not change with the change of kalpas (as do other Vedic gods), III. 261. 19-23. One might almost imagine that their threefoldness was causative of a trinitarian identification with a supreme triad; but no, for still higher is the 'heaven of Vishnu' (vs. 37). The contrast is marked between this and [=A]it. Br. III. 30, where the Ribhus with some difficulty obtain the right to drink soma.

There is an aspect of the epic religion upon which it is necessary to touch before treating of the sectarian development. In the early philosophical period wise priests meet together to discuss theological and philosophical questions, often aided, and often brought to grief, by the wit of women disputants, who are freely admitted to hear and share in the discussion. When, however, pantheism, nay, even Vishnuism, or still more, Krishnaism, was an accepted fact upon what, then, was the wisdom of the priest expended? Apart from the epic, the best intellects of the day were occupied in researches, codifying laws, and solving, in rather dogmatic fashion, philosophical (theological) problems. The epic presents pictures of scenes which seem to be a reflection from an earlier day. But one sees often that the wisdom is commonplace, or even silly. In dialectics a sophistical subtlety is shown; in codifying moral rules, a tedious triteness; in amoebic passes of wit there are astounding exhibitions, in which the good scholiast sees treasures of wisdom, where a modern is obliged to take them in their literal dulness. Thus in III. 132. 18, a boy of twelve or ten (133. 16), who is divinely precocious, defeats the wise men in disputation at a sacrifice, and in the following section (134. 7 ff.) silences a disputant who is regarded as one of the cleverest priests. The conversation is recorded in full. In what does it consist? The opponent mentions a number of things which are one; the boy replies with a verse that gives pairs of things; the other mentions triads; the child cites groups of fours, etc., until the opponent, having cited only one half-verse of thirteens, can remember no more and stops, on which the child completes the verse, and is declared winner. The conundrums which precede must have been considered very witty, for they are repeated elsewhere: What is that wheel which has twelve parts and three hundred and sixty spokes, etc.? Year. What does not close its eye when asleep, what does not move when it is born, what has no heart, what increases by moving? These questions form one-half verse. The next half-verse gives the answers in order: fish, egg, stone, river. This wisdom in the form of puzzles and answers, brahmodya, is very old, and goes back to the Vedic period. Another good case in the epic is the demon Yaksha and the captured king, who is not freed till he answers certain questions correctly.[79] But although a certain amount of theologic lore may be gleaned from these questions, yet is it of greater interest to see how the priests discussed when left quietly to their own devices. And a very natural description of such a scene is extant. The priests "having some leisure"[80] or vacation from their labors in the king's house, sit down to argue, and the poet calls their discussion vita[n.][d.][=a], i.e., tricky sophistical argumentation, the description bearing out the justness of the phrase: "One cried, 'that is so,' and the other, 'it is not so'; one cried, 'and that is so,' and the other, 'it must be so'; and some by arguments made weak arguments strong, and strong weak; while some wise ones were always swooping down on their opponent's arguments, like hawks on meat."[81] In III. 2. 15, the type of clever priest is 'skilled in Yoga and S[=a][.n]khya,' who inculcates renunciation. This sage teaches that mental diseases are cured by Yoga; bodily, by medicine; and that desire is the root of ill.

But by far the most interesting theological discussion in the epic, if one except the Divine Song, is the conversation of the hero and heroine in regard to the cause of earthly happiness. This discussion is an old passage of the epic. The very fact that a woman is the disputant gives an archaic effect to the narration, and reminds one of the scenes in the Upanishads, where learned women cope successfully with men in displays of theological acumen. Furthermore, the theological position taken, the absence of Vishnuism, the appeal to the 'Creator' as the highest Power, take one back to a former age. The doctrine of special grace, which crops out in the Upanishads,[82] here receives its exposure by a sudden claim that the converse of the theory must also be true, viz., that to those not saved by grace and election God is as cruel as He is kind to the elect. The situation is as follows: The king and queen have been basely robbed of their kingdom, and are in exile. The queen urges the king to break the vow of exile that has been forced from him, and to take vengeance on their oppressors. The king, in reply, sings a song of forgiveness: "Forgiveness is virtue, sacrifice, Veda; forgiveness is holiness and truth; in the world of Brahm[=a] are the mansions of them that forgive." This song (III. 29. 36 ff.) only irritates the queen, who at once launches into the following interesting tirade (30. 1 ff.): "Reverence to the Creator and Disposer[83] who have confused thy mind! Hast thou not worshipped with salutation and honored the priests, gods, and manes? Hast thou not made horse-sacrifices, the r[=a]jas[=u]ya-sacrifice, sacrifices of every sort (pu[n.][d.]arika,[84] gosava)? Yet art thou in this miserable plight! Verily is it an old story (itih[=a]sa) that 'the worlds stand under the Lord's will.' Following the seed God gives good or ill in the case of all beings. Men are all moved by the divinity. Like a wooden doll, moving its limbs in the hands of a man, so do all creatures move in the Creator's hands. Man is like a bird on a string, like a bead on a cord. As a bull is led by the nose, so man follows the will of the Creator; he never is a creature of free will ([=a]tm[=a]dhina). Every man goes to heaven or to hell, as he is sent by the Lord's will. God himself, occupied with noble or with wicked acts, moves about among all created things, an unknown power (not known as 'this one'). The blessed God, who is self-created, the great forefather (prapit[=a]maha), plays with his creatures just as a boy plays with toys, putting them together and destroying them as he chooses. Not like a father is God to His creatures; He acts in anger. When I see the good distressed, the ignoble happy, I blame the Creator who permits this inequality. What reward does God get that he sends happiness to this sinful man (thy oppressor)? If it be true that only the individual that does the act is pursued by the fruit of that act (karma doctrine) then the Lord who has done this act is defiled by this base act of His. If, on the other hand, the act that one has done does not pursue and overtake the one that has done it, then the only agency on earth is brute force (this is the only power to be respected)--and I grieve for them that are without it!"

To this plea, which in its acknowledgment of the Creator as the highest god, no less than in its doubtful admission of the karma doctrine, is of peculiar interest, the king replies with a refutation no less worthy of regard: "Thy argument is good, clear and smooth, but it is heterodox (n[=a]stikyam). I have sacrificed and practiced virtue not for the sake of reward, but because it was right. I give what I ought to give, and sacrifice as I should. That is my only idea in connection with religious observances. There is no virtue in trying to milk virtue. Do not doubt. Do not be suspicious of virtue. He that doubts God or duty goes to hell (confusion), but he that does his duty and is free from doubt goes to heaven (becomes immortal). Doubt not scriptural authority. Duty is the saving ship. No other gets to heaven. Blame not the Lord Creator, who is the highest god. Through His grace the faithful gets immortality. If religious observances were without fruit the universe would go to destruction. People would not have been good for so many ages if there had been no reward for it. This is a mystery of the gods. The gods are full of mystery and illusion."

The queen, for all the world like that wise woman in the Upanishads, whose argument, as we showed in a preceding chapter, is cut short not by counter-argument, but by the threat that if she ask too much her head will fall off, recants her errors at this rebuke, and in the following section, which evidently is a later addition, takes back what she has said. Her new expression of belief she cites as the opinion of Brihaspati (32. 61, 62); but this is applicable rather to her first creed of doubt. Perhaps in the original version this authority was cited at the end of the first speech, and with the interpolation the reference is made to apply to this seer. Something like the queen's remarks is the doubtful saying of the king himself, as quoted elsewhere (III. 273. 6): "Time and fate, and what will be, this is the only Lord. How else could this distress have come upon my wife? For she has been virtuous always."

We turn now to the great sectarian gods, who eventually unite with Brahm[=a] to form a pantheistic trinity, a conception which, as we shall show, is not older than the fifth or sixth century after Christ.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The rival heresies seem also to belong to the East. There were thus more than half a dozen heretical bodies of importance agitating the region about Benares at the same time. Subsequently the Jains, who, as we have shown, were less estranged from Brahmanism, drifted westward, while the Buddhist stronghold remained in the East (both, of course, being represented in the South as well), and so, whereas Buddhism eventually retreated to Nep[=a]l and Tibet, the Jains are found in the very centres of old and new (sectarian) Brahmanism, Delhi, Mathur[=a], Jeypur, [=A]jm[=i]r.]

[Footnote 2: 'The wandering of R[=a]ma,' who is the sectarian representative of Vishnu.]

[Footnote 3: The 'Bh[=a]rata (tale)', sometimes called Mah[=a]-Bh[=a]rata, or Great Bh[=a]rata. The Vishnuite sectarianism here advocated is that of Krishna. But there is as much Çivaism in the poem as there is Vishnuism.]

[Footnote 4: Dramatic and lyric poetry is artificial even in language.]

[Footnote 5: Schroeder, p. 453, compares the mutual relation of the Mah[=a]bh[=a]rata and R[=a]m[=a]yana to that of the Nibelungenlied and the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach. Jacobi, in his 'R[=a]m[=a]yana,' has lately claimed a considerable antiquity for the foundation legends of the R[=a]m[=a]yana, but he does not disprove the late completed form.]

[Footnote 6: i. 78. 10; see Bühler's Introduction.]

[Footnote 7: Jacobi seeks to put the completed nucleus at the time of the Christian era, but it must have been quite a large nucleus in view of the allusions to it in precedent literature. Holtztmann puts the completion at about 1000 A.D.; but in 700 A.D., it was complete, and most scholars will agree with Bühler that the present Mah[=a]-Bh[=a]rata was completed by the sixth or seventh century. In 533 A.D. it contained 100,000 distichs, that is, it was about the size it is now.]

[Footnote 8: By the time the drama began the epic was become a religious storehouse, and the actual epic story represented not a fifth of the whole work, so that, with its simple language, it must have seemed, as a literary production, very wearisome to the minds that delighted in the artificial compounds and romantic episodes of the drama and lyric. But even to-day it is recited at great fêtes, and listened to with rapt attention, as the rhapsodes with more or less dramatic power recite its holy verses.]

[Footnote 9: The later law-books say expressly that women and slaves have a right to use mantra, mantr[=a]dhik[=a]ri[n.]as. But the later legal Smritis are no more than disguised sectarian Pur[=a]nas.]

[Footnote 10: Compare the visit of the old Muni on the prince in iii. 262. 8. He is paramakopana, 'extremely irritable'; calls for food only to reject it; growls at the service, etc. Everything must be done 'quickly' for him. "I am hungry, give me food, quick," is his way of speaking, etc. (12). The adjective is one applied to the All-gods, paramakrodhinas.]

[Footnote 11: Each spiritual teacher instructed high-caste boys, in classes of four or five at most. In xii. 328. 41 the four students of a priest go on a strike because the latter wants to take another pupil besides themselves and his own son.]

[Footnote 12: The saints in the sky praise the combatants (vii. 188. 41; viii. 15. 27); and the gods roar approval of prowess "with roars like a lion's" (viii. 15. 33). Indra and S[=u]rya and the Apsarasas cool off the heroes with heavenly fans (ib. 90. 18). For the last divinities, see Holtzmann's essays, ZDMG. xxxii. 290; xxxiii. 631.]

[Footnote 13: The original author of the Mah[=a]bh[=a]rata is reputed to be of low caste, but the writers of the text as it is to-day were sectarian priests. It was written down, it is said, by Ganeça, 'lord of the troops' of Çiva, i. 1. 79, and some historic truth lies in the tale. The priests of Çiva were the last to retouch the poem, as we think.]

[Footnote 14: Agni-worship is partly affected by the doctrine that the Samvartaka fire (which destroys the world at the cycle's end) is a form of Vishnu. In Stambamitra's hymn it is said: "Thou, O Agni, art the all, in thee rests the universe ... Sages know thee as single yet manifold. At the expiration of time thou burnest up the three worlds, after having created them. Thou art the originator and support of all beings" (i. 232. 12). Elsewhere more Vedic epithets are given, such as 'mouth of the gods' (ii. 31. 42), though here 'the Vedas are produced for Agni's sake.' In this same prayer one reads, 'may Agni give me energy; wind, give me breath; earth, give me strength; and water, give me health' (45). Agni, as well as Çiva, is the father of Kum[=a]ra K[=a]rtikeya, i.e., Skanda (ib. 44).]

[Footnote 15: But the Açvins are Ç[=u]dras In the 'cast-hood of gods' (the caste-order being Angirasas, [=A]dityas, Maruts and AÇvins), xii. 208. 23-25; and Indra in one passage refuses to associate with them, xiii. 157. 17 (cited by Holtzmann, ZDMG. xxxii. 321).]

[Footnote 16: Manibhadra, in iii. 64, is king of Yaksash; he is the same with Kubera, ib. ch. 41 (V[=a]içinavana).]

[Footnote 17: In the Cosmogony the gods are the sons of the Manes, xii. 312. 9.]

[Footnote 18: When the gods churn the ocean to get ambrosia, an ancient tale of the epic, Mandara is the twirling-stick. It is situated in modern Beh[=a]r, near Bhagalpur.]

[Footnote 19: III. 42; 139. 14, where the Ganges and Jumna are invoked together with the Vedic gods. So in III. 104 (Vindhya); and Damayanti prays to mountains. Mt. Meru is described in III. 163. 14 (compare I. 17. 5 ff.). In I. 18. 1 ff., is related the churning of the ocean, where Indra (vs. 12) places Mt. Mandara on Vishnu, the tortoise.]

[Footnote 20: Mbh. I. 30. 37, mamlur m[=a]ly[=a]ni dev[=a]n[=a]m, etc. The older belief was that the gods' garlands never withered; for the gods show no mortal signs, cast no shadows, etc.]

[Footnote 21: Compare the four hymnlets to Agni in i. 232. 7 ff.]

[Footnote 22: After the mention of the thirty-three gods, and Vishnu 'born after them,' it is said that the Açvins, plants, and animals, are Guhyakas (vs. 40), though in vs. 35: "Tvashtar's daughter, the wife of Savitar, as a mare (va[d.]av[=a]) bore in air the two Açvins" (see above), in Vedic style. For Çruti compare iii. 207. 47; 208. 6, 11.]

[Footnote 23: i. 23. 15 ff. His name is explained fancifully in 30. 7.]

[Footnote 24: It is at the funeral feasts to the Manes that the Mah[=a]bh[=a]rata is to be recited (i. 62. 37).]

[Footnote 25: Arjuna is an old name of Indra, and in the epic Arjuna is Indra's son.]

[Footnote 26: The legal dharma or sitting at a debtor's door, which still obtains in India, is, so far as we know, not a very ancient practice. But its application in the case of heralds (who become responsible) is epic.]

[Footnote 27: This is the covenant (with friends) of revenge; the covenant of mutual protection in the sacrifice is indicated by the 'protection covenant' of the gods (see the chapter on Brahmanism above, p. 192).]

[Footnote 28: See an essay on the Ruling Caste in the epic, in JAOS. xiii. 232 ff.]

[Footnote 29: Reverend Doctor H.C. Trumbull has kindly called our attention to Robert's Oriental Illustrations, p. 148 ff., where it is said that in India today the threshold is sacred. In reference to threshold offerings, common in the law, Dr. Trumbull's own forthcoming book on Covenants may be compared.]

[Footnote 30: But these are by no means the last examples of human sacrifices. Several of the modern Hindu sects have caused to be performed such sacrifices, even in this century.]

[Footnote 31: This can hardly mean 'put out on the river' as has been suggested as an explanation of the corpse 'thrown aside' in accordance with the earlier text, AV. xviii. 2. 34 (paropta), where the dead are 'buried, thrown aside, burned, or set out.']

[Footnote 32: It is assumed in XII. 364. 2 that "leaves and air" are food enough for a great saint. Compare below the actual asceticism of modern devotees.]

[Footnote 33: III. 25. 14: saptar[s.]ayas ... divi viprabh[=a]nti. Compare ib. 261. 13, and the apocalypse in VII. 192. 52 ff., where Drona's soul ascends to heaven, a burning fire like a sun; In sharp contrast to the older 'thumbkin' soul which Yama receives and carries off in the tale of Satyavant. Compare also Arundhati in I. 233. 29.]

[Footnote 34: Described, as above, as a place of singers and dancers, where are the Vedic gods and sages, but no sinners or cowards (III. 42. 34 ff.).]

[Footnote 35: From another point of view the stars are of interest. They are favorable or unfavorable, sentient, kind, or cruel; influential in man's fate. Compare III. 200. 84, 85, where the sun is included with the grahas (planets) which influence men, and ib. 209. 21, tulyanak[.s]atrama[.n]gala.]

[Footnote 36: Other of Indra's spirits are the singers, Gandharvas and Apsarasas; also the horse-headed Kinnaras and C[=a]ranas, who, too, are singers; while later the Vidy[=a]dharas belong both to Indra and to Çiva. In modern times the South Indian Sittars, 'saints,' take their name from the Siddhas.]

[Footnote 37: In d[=a]nnavar[s.]i there is apparently the same sort of compound as in devar[s.]i and brahmar[s.]i, all associated with the siddhas in III. 169. 23. But possibly 'demons and seers' may be meant.]

[Footnote 38: III. 37. 32-35 (prapadye viçvedev[=a]n!).]

[Footnote 39: Weber finds in the Asuras' artisan, Asura Maya, a reminiscence of Ptolemaios. He is celebrated in I. 228. 39, and II. 1, and is the generai leader of the d[=a]navas, demons, perhaps originally a folk-name of enemies.]

[Footnote 40: See below. The formal division is, d[=a]iva, hatha, karma, i.e., man's fate depends on gods, Fate, and his own acts; although hatha, Fate, is often implied in d[=a]iva, 'the divine power.' But they are separated, for example, in iii. 183. 86.]

[Footnote 41: Compare the tales and xii. 148. 9, sat[=i] (suttee). In regard to the horse-sacrifice, compare Yama's law as expounded to Gautama: "The acts by which one gains bliss hereafter are austerities, purity, truth, worship of parents, and the horse-sacrifice." xii 129. 9, 10.]

[Footnote 42: Compare III. 200. 88, even pr[=a]k[r.]ta priests are divine and terrible (much more in later books). Here pr[=a]k[r.]ta, vulgar, is opposed to samsk[r.]ta, refined, priests.]

[Footnote 43: III. 185. 26-31.]

[Footnote 44: "My father and mother are my highest idol; I do for them what I do for Idols. As the three and thirty gods, with Indra foremost, are revered of all the world, so are my parents revered by me" (III. 214. 19, 20). The speaker further calls them paramam brahma, absolute godhead, and explains his first remark by saying that he offers fruits and flowers to his parents as if they were idols. In IV. 68. 57 a man salutes (abhivadya) his father's feet on entering into his presence. For the worship of parents compare XII. 108. 3; 128. 9, 10; 267. 31, XIII. 75. 26: "heroes in obedience to the mother."]

[Footnote 45: The marked Brahm[=a] Creator-worship is a bit of feminine religious conservatism (see below).]

[Footnote 46: Weber has shown that men of low caste took a subordinate part even in the r[=a]jas[=u]ya sacrifice.]

[Footnote 47: In II. 18. there is a brand-new festival appointed in honor of a female fiend, etc.]

[Footnote 48: III. 84. 83 (87. 11). We see the first idea in the injunction of Indra to 'wander,' as told in the tale of Dogstail in the Brahmana (see above).]

[Footnote 49: The usual formula (also Avestan) is 'pure in thought, speech, and act.' The comparison of the six senses to unrestrained wild horses is familiar (III. 211. 24).]

[Footnote 50: There is, further, no unanimity in regard to the comparative value of holy places. In XII. 152. 11, Sarasvat[=i] is holier than Kurukshetra, etc.]

[Footnote 51: At Pushkara is Brahm[=a]'s only (?) shrine--the account is legendary, but half historical. The modern shrine at Ajm[=i]r seems to be meant.]

[Footnote 52: Ganges, according to epic legend, was a goddess who sacrificed herself for men when the earth was parched and men perished. Then Ganges alone of immortals took pity on men, and flinging herself from heaven became the stream divine. Her name among the gods is Alakanand[=a], the 'Blessed Damosel.']

[Footnote 53: In iii. 87.10, "ten descendants and ten ancestors." The epic, i. 170. 19, regards the Sarasvat[=i] and Jumna as parts of the sevenfold Ganges, which descends from the heavens as these three, and also as the Vitasth[=a] (Rathasth[=a]), Saray[=u], Gomat[=i], and Gan[d.]ak[=i]; being itself 'V[=a]itara[n.][=i] among the Manes.' So xii. 322. 32.]

[Footnote 54: According to the commentator the "(northern altar of the Father-god) Kurukshetra-Samantapañcakam, between Tarantuka, Arantuka, R[=a]mahrada, and Macakruka," mentioned in iii. 83. 208, lies in Benares; but this must be a late addition, as Kurukshetra's position is without doubt. Compare i. 2. i ff.; ix. 53. i, 23-25.]

[Footnote 55: In ib. 47, mah[=a] d[r.]tiriv[=a]dhm[=a]ta[h.] p[=a]pas, there is an interesting reminiscence of Rig Veda, vii. 89. 2. The rules of virtue are contained in Vedas and law-books, and the practice of instructed men, ib. 83 (the 'threefold sign of righteousness'). A Çruti cited from dharmas is not uncommon, but the latter word is not properly used in so wide a sense. See note below, p. 378.]

[Footnote 56: Some scholars see in the use of the verb, piç, a Vedic picturing of gods; but in all instances where this occurs it may be only the poet's mind-picture of the god 'adorned' with various glories.]

[Footnote 57: In VII. 201. 69, Çiva wears an aksham[=a]l[=a]. In XII. 38. 23, the C[=a]rv[=a]ka wears an aksha, for he is disguised as a bhikshu, beggar.]

[Footnote 58: It must be remembered that the person using the mantra probably did not understand what the words meant. The epic says, in fact, that the Vedas are unintelligible: brahma pracuracchalam, XII. 329. 6. But an older generation thought the same. In Nirukta, I. 15, K[=a]utsa is cited as saying that the mantras are meaningless.]

[Footnote 59: Compare xii. 174. 46: "The joy of earth and heaven obtained by the satisfaction of desire is not worth one-sixteenth of the bliss of dead desire."]

[Footnote 60: By generosity the Hindu poet means 'to priests.' In III. 200, where this is elaborated, sixteen persons are mentioned (vs. 4) to whom to give is not meritorious.]

[Footnote 61: Little is known in regard to the play. The dice are thrown on a board, 'odd and even' determine the contest here (III. 34. 5) ayuja and yuja. At times speed in counting is the way to win (Nala). Dicing is a regular part of the r[=a]jas[=u]ya sacrifice (Weber, p. 67), but not, apparently, an ancient trait.]

[Footnote 62: The snakes belong to Varuna and his region, as described in v. 98. It is on the head of the earth-upholding snake Çesha that Vishnu muses, III. 203.12. The reverence paid to serpents begins to be ritual in the Atharva Veda. Even in the Rig Veda there is the deification of the cloud-snake. In later times they answered to the Nymphs, being tutelary guardians of streams and rivers (Buhler). In i. 36, Çesha Ananta supports earth, and it is told why he does so.]

[Footnote 63: These three are the witnesses for the soul at the judgment, xii. 322. 55. V[=a]yu, Wind, is said to be even mightier than Indra, Yama, Indra and Varuna, ib. 155. 9, 10.]

[Footnote 64: But (in a later account) not if he dies ignobly; for if one is slain by a man of low caste he goes to hell, xii. 298. 7.]

[Footnote 65: Demoniac Indras (i.e., demon-leaders) and seers, xii. 166. 26.]

[Footnote 66: 'The god of gods,' who rains blood in i. 30. 36, is declared by the commentator to be--Parjanya! The gods are here defending Soma from the heavenly bird, Garuda, and nearly die of fright.]

[Footnote 67: xii. 313. 1-7, with the same watery finale as is usual.]

[Footnote 68: The morning prayer, etc, to the sun is, of course, still observed, e.g., vii. 186. 4. Indra is thanked for victory and invoked for rain (iii. 117. 11; i. 25. 7; Holtzmann, loc. cit. p. 326) in an hymn that is less fulsome than those to Agni and S[=u]rya.]

[Footnote 69: 111. 222, Atharvan's rediscovery of fire. As to Çrutis they are probably no more valuable than Smritis. The one given in iii. 208. 11, agnayo in[=a]i[.n]sak[=a]m[=a]s, seems to be adapted (cf. [=A]çv. Gs. iv. 1; the adjective, by the way, is still starred in Pw.). So [=A]çv. Gs. i. 15. 9, is repeated Mbh[=a]; i. 74. 63, as a "Vedic mantragr[=a]ma " (ang[=a]d ang[=a]t sambhavasi, etc.).]

[Footnote 70: The devils are on the Prince's side, and wish to keep him from death. The proverb is found ib. 252. 2; [=a]tmaty[=a]g[=i] hy adho y[=a]ti. The holy-grass is used in much the same way when R[=a]ma lies down by Ocean, resolved to die or persuade Ocean to aid him. The rites (vs. 24) are "in the Upanishad."]

[Footnote 71: According to XII. 59. 80-84, the 'treatise of Brihaspati' comes from Çiva through Brahm[=a] and Indra.]

[Footnote 72: In Buddhism Yama's messengers are Yakkhas. Scherman, loc. cit. p. 57.]

[Footnote 73: Compare II. 22. 26: gaccha yamak[s.]ayam, 'go to Yama's destruction'; whereas of a good man it is said, 'I will send Indra a guest' (VII, 27.8).]

[Footnote 74: Yamasya sadana. III. 11. 66. He now has hells, and he it is who will destroy the world. He is called 'the beautiful' (III. 41. 9), so that he must, if one take this Rudrian epithet with the citation above, be loosely (popularly) identified with Çiva, as god of death. See the second note below.]

[Footnote 75: The old story of a mortal's visit to Yama to learn about life hereafter (Çat. Br. xi. 6.1; Katha Up., of N[=a]ciketas) is repeated in xiii. 71.]

[Footnote 76: v. 42. 6: Çiva[h.] çiv[=a]n[=a]m açivo 'çiv[=a]n[=a]m (compare xii 187. 27: 'only fools say that the man is dead'). Dharma (Justice) seems at times to be the same with Yama. M[=a]ndavya goes to Dharma's sadana, home (compare Yama's sadana), just as one goes to Yama's, and interviews him on the justice of his judgments. As result of the angry interview the god is reborn on earth as a man of low caste, and the law is established that a child is not morally responsible for his acts till the twelfth year of his age (i.108. 8 ff.). When Kuru agrees to give half his life in order to the restoration of Pramadvar[=a], his wife, they go not to Yama but to Dharma to see if the exchange may be made, and he agrees (i. 9. 11 ff., a masculine S[=a]vitr[=i]i).]

[Footnote 77: The hells are described in xii. 322. 29 ff. The sight of 'golden trees' presages death (ib. 44).]

[Footnote 78: The ordinary rule is that "no sin is greater than untruth," xii. 162. 24, modified by "save in love and danger of life" (Laws, passim).]

[Footnote 79: The same scenes occur in Buddhistic writings, where Yakkhas ask conundrums. For example, in the Hemavatasutta and [=A]tavakasutta the Yakkha asks what is the best possession, what brings bliss, and what is swettest, to which the answer is: faith, law, and truth, respectively.]

[Footnote 80: Karm[=a]ntaram up[=a]santas, i.e., vir[=a]mak[=a]lam upagacchantas.]

[Footnote 81: II. 36. 3 ff. The phraseology of vs. 5 is exactly that of [Greek: ton êttô ldgon kreittô poithnsi], but the Pundit's arguments are 'based on the law.']

[Footnote 82: See above. In a later period (see below) the question arises in regard to the part played by Creator and individual in the workings of grace, some claiming that man was passive; some, that he had to strive for grace.]

[Footnote 83: Perhaps ironical. In V. 175. 32, a woman cries out: "Fie on the Creator for this bad luck," conservative in belief, and outspoken in word.]

[Footnote 84: III. 30. 17. The gosava is a 'cow-sacrifice.' The pu[n.][d.]ar[=i]ka is not explained (perhaps 'elephant-sacrifice').]

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