THE HIBBERT LECTURES SECOND SERIES 1921 THE HIBBERT LECTURES SECOND SERIES THEISM IN MEDIEVAL INDIA LFXTURES DELIVERED IN ESSEX HALL, LONDON OCTOBER-DECEMBER 1919 BY J. ESTLIN CARPENTER, D.Litt. LONDON WILLIAMS & NORGATE t4 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.2 1921 PREFACE This volume is an attempt to present to the English reader a general view of the phases of Theism in Medieval India. The term is understood in its widest aspect, for even the philosophic pantheism of the Vedanta admitted a relative reality to the Theistic interpretation of the world and man. The labours of the great Sanskrit scholars of the last century were largely devoted to the varied products embraced under the compre- hensive term Veda, and the later aspects of the higher religions of Hinduism after the formulation of its great schools of philosophy received less attention. But the learning and in- dustry of the last thirty years in England, on the Continent, and among distinguished Indian scholars, have rendered a large amount of material accessible to the modern student unequipped with knowledge of the vernacular languages or with first-hand familiarity with modern conditions. I am fully conscious of the drawbacks of such ignorance, and cannot hope to have escaped error. If the object of these Lectures is only partially attained, I shall be content. In the admitted uncertainties of Indian chronology it seemed desirable to secure a firm point of departure. This is provided by the journey of the Chinese Buddhist Yuan Chwang to Nalanda in the seventh century a.d. Buddhism had then de- veloped its significant Theistic types and its chief philosophical schools. The interaction and mutual influence of Buddhism and Hinduism present many problems of great interest, but also of great difficulty. It is no part of the purpose of this book to enter into their technical discussion. But as other histories of T 4CG67'4 vi PREFACE the Religions of India have not always realised the importance of the part played by Buddhism, it seemed well to start with the presentation of its teachings as they were open to Yuan Ch Wang's study. The close of the reign of Akbar, the contemporary of Queen Elizabeth, sees the failure of his attempt to establish an Imperial Monotheism which should transcend both Islam and the ancient native faiths, while it finds Hinduism provided with its greatest religious poem, the Ramayana of Tulsl Das, and the community of the Sikhs passing into a small but vigorous church-nation. With this era the volume ends. In accordance with growing modern practice, the diacritical marks on Sanskrit and Pali words have been for the most part abandoned, save in the notes. Thus Vishnu and Krishna are more intelligible to the English reader than Visnu and Krsna. For the Sanskrit c the English pronunciation ch is adopted ; though the ugly combination chchh, representing the Sanskrit cch, has been modified. The quantities of long vowels are usually marked (except in such well-known words as Veda, etc., the e being always long) ; a long vowel produced by contraction is indicated thus, a. Sanskrit words are usually quoted in their uninflected forms ; but such terms as Karma and Dharma, already partly naturalised in English, are employed in the shape now familiar. It remains only to express my grateful acknowledgments to the Hibbert Trustees for the invitation with which they honoured me, and for their generous willingness to undertake the publication of these Lectures in an expanded form. To the Delegates of the Clarendon Press I am indebted for kind per- mission to quote translations by tlie late Mr Macauliffe of the hymns of Namdev, Kablr, and Nanak ; Messrs Macmillan have with similar kindness allowed me to cite extracts from the beautiful rendering of poems of Kablr by Rabindra Nath Tagore and Miss Evelyn Underbill. Prof, de la Vallee Poussin PREFACE vii generously read the MS. of the first two lectures. The Editor of the Hibbert Journal sanctioned the use of materials in articles contributed to his pages ; Prof. Macdonell aided me with valuable advice ; Mr E. L. Thomas gave me helpful facilities in the loan of books from the library of the India Office ; and Dr Morison, Curator of the Indian Institute, Oxford, enabled me with unfailing goodwill to make the fullest use of the Library under his charge. Several works of recent publication came to hand too late for use, after the MS. had been completed and sent to the Publishers in April, 1920, J. ESTLIN CARPENTER. Oxford, April, 1921. TABLE OF CONTENTS LECTURE I THE ORIGINS OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM Yuan Chwang, a.d. 629 . Journey to India . Buddhism at Nalanda Early Modes of Speculation The Conception of Karma The Doctrine of " No-Self" Constituents of a Human Being . . . . . Theological Consequences PAGE 1 3 Would the Buddha live after Death? .... 28 The Growth of Cultus . . 30 Ambiguities of the early Texts 31 The Nature of the Buddha . 34 Comparison with Jainism . 35 The Dhamma as unconditioned 40 The Buddha as Mahxi-Purusha 42 A Metaphysical Reality . . 44 LECTURE II THE DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM Acts of Commemoration The Buddha as King Criticisms of Theism The Buddha "above the world " The Multitude of the Buddhas The Bodhisattvtt and the "Great Vehicle" .... New Stages of Discipline Manju9ri and Ava]okite9vara Theology in the " Lotus of the Good Law". The Demand for Universal Salvation .... Parables of Spiritual Training Philosophy of the " Void " 47 Nagarjuna and the Madhy- 49 amakas .... 87 50 Asanga and the Yogachfira 90 55 The "Three Bodies" . 94 57 Bodhisattva and Buddha ^antideva's "Guide to the 99 60 Devout Life" . 100 65 The "Buddha of Boundless 68 Light" . . . . 104 Salvation by Faith . 107 76 Buddhism under Harsha- Vardhana .... 109 79 The Cultus of Tani 112 83 Doctrine of Adi- Buddha . 113 85 The Decline of Buddhism 116 TABLE OF CONTENTS LECTURE III POPULAR THEISM : BRAHMA PAGE PAGE Yuan Chwang at Kanauj , Position of Vedic Deities 147 A.D. 643 . 122 Fate, Time, Nature 153 Characteristics of Hinduism 123 Brahman and Karma 155 Its literary Products 128 Action and Renunciation 160 The Law-book of Manu . 129 The Value of Austerity . 163 The MaMhhdrata . 131 Yama and the Judgment 165 Grounds of Belief and Prac Heavens of Indra and Brahma 169 tice .... 135 Problems of Philosophy . 172 The Sceptics . 139 The " Real of the Real" . 174 Doctrine of Brahman 140 The Path to Liberation . 176 LECTURE IV RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY IN THE GREAT EPIC Varieties of Philosophical Thought .... Post-Vedic Speculation . Theology, Cosmology, and Psychology .... Yajnavalkya and Non- Duality .... The Absolute .... Contrasts and Parallels in 183 Greece . 199 185 The Sankhyan Scheme . 201 Dualism and Evolution . 205 188 Reply to Theism . . 208 The Disciplines of Yoga . 211 191 Its Theistic Character . 215 194 Note on other Systems . 220 LECTURE V THE TRIMURTI Harsha Vardhana and Qiva . 225 The Cvetdgvatara Upanishad . 227 Civa's complex Character . 230 Vishnu and his Benevolence . 235 The " Descents " . . . 239 The Bhagavatas and Bhakti . 244 Vasudeva, Krishna . . 245 The Bhagavad Gitd . . . 250 New Aspects of Religion, Love and Grace .... 253 Divine Immanence and Tran- scendence .... 255 The Path to Deliverance Nilrayana and the Religion of Devotion .... Two Paths of Renunciation . The Holy Triad, Brahma, Vishnu, and (^iva The divine Caktis . Religion in the Puranas . The Temple Dedications Cults of Vishnu and (^iva 261 269 273 278 280 286 291 TABLE OF CONTE>sTS LECTURE VI PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION IN ^AIVISM Philosophy after the Great Epic 296 The Sutras of Badarayana . 298 Vedunta and Aldyd . . . 301 Gaudapada's Kdrilcds . . 303 (^ankara and " Non-Duality " . 307 Grounds and Sources of Truth 310 Consciousness and its Impli- cations .... 315 Criticism of Buddhist and Sankhyan Doctrines . . 317 PAGE The Nature of Brahman . 322 Maya and Ignorance . . 327 Brahman, the "World, and the Soul 332 The Way to the Goal . . 336 Union with Brahman . . 338 Brahman and Civa . . . 343 (^aiva Teaching in Kashmir . 346 The Saints of South India . 351 Hymns of Manikka Vagagar . 355 The gaiva-Siddhdnta . . 358 The Religion of Divine Grace 365 LECTURE VII RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY IN VAISHNAVISM The Vishnu-Purdna Paths to the Blessed Life The Tamil Saints . Eelations of Caivism and Vaishnavism Eamanuja and the Vedanta . Criticism of (^ankara's Monism Bralmr.n and the Soul . The Life Eternal . Nimharka and " Qualified Duality" .... Madhva and Christian Lecend 370 Dualism in five Relations 409 373 Developments of the Doctrine 377 of Grace .... 413 Philosophy of BJmkti 419 379 The Bhdgavata Furdna . 421 386 Eiima in the Kdmdyana . 423 391 Ramananda .... 428 395 The Cultus of Krishna . 430 401 Vallabhacharya 434 Chaitanya .... 437 404 His Teaching and its Mission- 406 aries 444 LECTURE VIII HINDUISM AND ISLAM Mohammedan Rule in India . 449 The Early Maratha Poets . 451 Kabir 456 The Divine Omnipresence . 463 The Vision of God . . . 465 Nanak 47U Hia Missionary Activity . The Succession of the Gurus The Adi Granth and the Com munity The Religion of the Sikhs Akbar and his Coiut 473 479 481 485 TABLE OF CONTENTS LECTURE Ylll—contd. PAGE His Interest in Religion . . 493 Detacliinent from Islam . . 498 The First Jesuit Mission . 501 " Divine Monotheism " . . 504 TulsT Das and the Worship of Rama 506 PAGE " The Lake of Rama's Deeds " 508 Incarnation out of Love . . 510 The Philosophical Background 512 The Religion of Faith and Love 514 NOTE ON CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA 521 INDEX I. : TO SANSKRIT WORDS 525 INDEX II. : ENGLISH . .531 ABBREVIATIONS Epigr. Ind., Epigraphia Indica. ERE, . . Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. Imp. Gaz.y . Imperial Gazetteer. JAOS, . . Journal of the American Oriental Society. JRAS, . . Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. JRASB, . Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal. Mbh., . . Mahabharata. PTS, . . Pali Text Society. RER, . . Revue de I'Histoire des Religions. SBE, . . Sacred Books of the East. Up., . . . Upanishad. Page ERRATA 32, L15, for cuti read chuti. „ 1.17, „ cavati „ chavati. 67^ „ acald „ achald. 161, L22, „ Devasthana „ Devasthana. 175, 1.16, „ jnana „ jnmia. 175, 1.24, „ dnandd „ dnanda. 2421 „ caturmurti „ chaturnmrti. 312 2 , „ Sdijana „ Sdyana. 387, 1.19, „ Pardgara „ Pardgira. THEISM IN MEDIEVAL INDIA LECTURE I THE ORIGINS OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM In the year a.d. 629 a young Buddhist scholar named Yuan Chwang ^ arrived at Chang'an, in the province of Shen-se, in the north-west of China, the modern Sian or Singanfu, latitude 34-° 17'. He was then about twenty -nine, and had already greatly distinguished himself as a student of the sacred lore. His family claimed descent from the ancient Emperor Shun, and counted magistrates and administrators, men of learning and genius, in its long line. In one generation its head was recognised as one of the "Three Reverends"; in a later day father and sons and grandsons were known as a cluster of " Stars of Virtuous Merit." Yuan Chwang's grandfather was Professor in the National College in the capital. His father, a strict Confucianist, entered the service of the State, but withdrew into seclusion when the public order was threatened with anarchy. Yuan Chwang, gentle and pious, caring little for the sports of boyhood, was early trained in the Confucian classics. But his ' On the spelling of the pilgrim's name, see Prof. T. W. Rhys Davids in Waiters' commentary 0?t Yuan Chwang's Travels in India (1904), I. p. xi. The Chinese documents have been translated by Julien, Histoire de la Vie de Hiouen Thsang (1853), and Meiiioires sur les Contrees (Jccidcntalns, etc. (1857) ; and by Beal, Buddhist Records of the Western World (1884), and Life of Hiuen Tsiang (1888). The "Life" was compiled by Hwui-li, who assisted Yuan Chwang after his return from India in the translation of the sacred books (Julien, Histoire, p. Ixxvii), and was completed by another disciple. I 1 2 THE ORIGINS OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM youth fell in troubled days, and violence and disorder finally brought about the collapse of the reigning dynasty. In 626 the great Emperor known as T'ai Tsung succeeded to the throne, and restored peace and welfare to the distracted land. Mean- time Yuan Chwang''s second brother had sought tranquillity in a Buddhist monastery, and Yuan Chwang followed his example. He was admitted as a novice at thirteen, and at twenty received full orders. Travelling as a preacher from place to place, he sought and imparted instruction. The teachers at Chang'an, who were already famous, at once recognised him as a master ; but when the new-comer paid his respects to the celebrated doctors at the capital, he found that the sacred books differed greatly, and he knew not which system to follow. He then resolved to make the journey to India and consult the depositories of Buddhist learning in the midst of the places hallowed by the Master"'s life.^ There, round the Ganges, were the famous scenes of Buddhist piety ; the sacred spot where the Teacher had completed his quest of the Truth and attained supreme enlightenment ; the deer-park at Benares where he preached his first discourse, and laid the foundation of the Kingdom of ' Biiddliism had been introduced into China a.d. 67 ; and a long series of missionary teachers had carried its literature into the Flowery Land. Some came from India, others from Parthia or Tibet, " moved by desire to convert the world," princes, ex-cavalry oflBcers, holy and humble men of heart of varying rank, calling, and nationality, besides unknown translators who busied themselves with the huge difficulties involved in rendering the gigantic compilations of Buddhist piety into a language so different in genius as Chinese from Sanskrit. A private catalogue by a Chinese monk, Sang Yiu, in the reign of the Emperor Wu, 502-549, mentions 2213 distinct works, whether translations or native productions, of which 276 may be identified Avith those of the present day. The first imperial catalogue, made in the same century, arranged a still larger number in twenty classes. This copiousness far exceeds in magnitude anything in Christian history. The labours of Jerome on the Old Testament in his cell at Bethlehem were light compared with the task which Yuan Chwang undertook after his return in turning the Prajnd Pdramitd or "Perfect Gnosis " into Chinese. The treatise is estimated at eighty times the length of the New Testament, or twenty- five times that of the whole Bible, and its translation occupied four years (Beal, Catena of Buddhist Scriptures, 1871, p. 278 f.). Cp. Bunyiu Nanjio, A Catalogue of the Chinese Translation of the Buddhist Tripiiaka (1883), p. xvii. THE JOURNEY OF YUAN CHWANG S Righteousness ; the hill known as the Vulture's Peak, near Rajagaha, overlooking the river, where he had sat to instruct the disciples ; the garden where he had been born, the grove where he had died. And there, not far from Buddha-Gaya, was the great university of Nalanda, where Buddhist learning had been established for centuries. Yuan Chwang was not the first to make the journey to India from the north. In a.d. 399 Fah-Hien and a little company had left Chang'an on a similar errand;^ and in 518 Sung Yun and Hwui Sang had been despatched from the great temple of Lo-Yang by the Empress of the Northern Wei dynasty. In Yuan Chwang's own youth a mission of sixteen persons was sent from Tibet in 616 to investigate the Faith in its actual birthplace.' Yuan Chwang himself was followed during the seventh century by a long train of pilgrims, moved by the same desire. Some went by sea and suffered shipwreck. Some, like Yuan Chwang himself, were robbed. Some perished of disease after they reached India. But with extraordinarv persistence they pursued their way, and one of their number, I-Ching, afterwards recorded their devotion.^ I For Yuan Chwang the journey was full of difficulty. An imperial rescript forbade foreign travel. The route lay through vast deserts to the west, over dangerous mountain passes, and among peoples of unknown tongues. The companions who had agreed to join him one by one abandoned the project. But obstacles and disappointments could not deter him. There were rivers to be crossed, frontier fortresses to be passed, orders for his detention to be evaded. On one occasion the truthful- 1 See Dr Legge's translation of his Reconl of Buddhistic Kingdoms (Oxford, 1886). * Thon-mi was studying at Nalanda during Yuan Chwang's visit ; cp. Sarat Chandra Das, Indian Fandits in the Land of Snow (Calcutta, 1893), p. 47. 3 See the translation by Edouard Chavannes, Memoire compose a I'Epoque de la r/rande Dynastie Tang sur les Rdigievx eminents qui allerent chercher la Loi dans les pays d'0ccide7it, par I-tsing (Paris, 1894). The modern spelling transliterates the name I-Ching. His own observations will be found in A Rerord of the Buddhist Religion, translated by J. Takakusu (Oxford, 1896). 4 THE ORIGINS OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM ness of his answers excited such admiration that the governor who was examining him tore the warrant for his arrest to pieces with his own hands. At length the king of Kao Ch'ang,^ a pious Buddhist, provided him with an escort, and a whole caravan of horses and servants was arranged, with boots and gloves and face-coverings for the dreaded transit of the range now known as the Ping-shang or " ice mountains." It took seven days to accomplish the passage ; " there was no dry place for a halt ; the pot must be hung for cooking, and the mat spread for sleep, upon the ice." Twelve or fourteen of the company died of hunger or cold ; and the number of oxen and horses which perished was still greater. But the undaunted pilgrim resolutely pressed on. From country to country he noted the hallowed spots and sacred monuments, the numbers in the monasteries, and the schools of doctrine and practice to which they belonged. In Kashmir he rested two vears, the king placing the services of twenty scribes at his disposal for copying the sacred books. On his way into India his little company was attacked by robbers, who stripped them of their baggage and even of their clothes. The escort wept, but Yuan Chwang preserved his cheerfulness. " The greatest gift which living creatures possess," said he, " is life. If life is safe, what need we care about the rest ? " But life, even, might be endangered. Starting from Ayudha,^ the travellers sailed down the Ganges, with about eighty country- folk. The vessel was boarded by pirates, who brought it to the bank. They were worshippers of the unhallowed goddess Durga, who was propitiated every year with human sacrifice. The distinguished appearance of the Master of the Law led them to select him as their victim. Vainly did his fellow- passengers beseech his life; some even begged to be allowed to die in his stead. The captain of the gang ordered an altar to be erected in an adjoining grove, and Yuan Chwang was bound and laid upon it. He showed no fear, but only asked that he might have a little time, and that they would not crowd around him painfully. "Let me with a joyous mind," ' In the district which is now called Turfan (Waiters, i. 44). - Watters, i. 354, accepts the identification with Ayodhya, the old capital of Oudh, on a large affluent of the great river. THE JOURNEY OF YUAN CHWANG 5 said he, "take my departure." Then he lifted hi.s thoughts to the courts of the Tusita heaven, the dwelling of the future Buddha Maitreva, the Buddhist impersonation of charity,* and prayed that he might be reborn there and receive from him the teaching of the Truth. So, having perfected himself in wisdom, — " I^et me return and be reborn here below, that I may instruct and convert these men, and cause them to give up their evil deeds, and practise themselves in doing good." With such meditations he seemed to rise into that land of bliss. Rapt into ecstasy, he knew nothing of the altar on which he lay bound with closed eyes, waiting the knife. He took no heed of a sudden storm, which lashed the river into waves, blew up clouds of sand, and tore the creaking branches from the trees. The terrified Thugs accepted it as a warning, and made obeisance round the altar. One of them accidentally touched the Master's person. He opened his eyes. " Has the hour come.?" he calmly asked. "We pray you," was the answer, "to receive our repentance." They unbound their victim, restored the property which they had taken from the passengers, threw their weapons into the river, and took on themselves the first obligations of disciples. Further and further east Yuan Chwang travelled, visiting the spots famous in Buddhist story. There had been many changes since the days of Fah Hien. In some places the monasteries were deserted and the faith was almost extinct. The city of Pataliputra (the modern Patna), where Asoka had held his famous council, was still prosperous in the time of the earlier visitor. Yuan Chwang saw only the splendid ruins, covering an area of fourteen miles. But at Buddha Gaya there still stood the hallowed tree beneath which the Teacher had attained Buddhahood. All round it were niemorial shrines and monasteries ; and there rose the temple, already all but nine hundred years old, which, after more than another millennium, the British Government has recently restored. Thence the Chinese pilgrim proceeded on the tenth day to Nalanda. Four of the most eminent professors had been sent to escort him. At a farm on the way to the precincts he was met by a great procession. Some two hundred members of the ' Pali metteyya, from metkl, love, goodwill. See below, p. 59 f. 6 THE ORIGINS OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM Order and about a thousand laymen came forth to meet the distinguished traveller. They carried standards and umbrellas, garlands and perfumes, and surrounded him with joyous chants. He had spent seven years upon the journey, and thus was he welcomed as he reached his goal. This was the famous centre of Buddhist learning. Half monastery, half university, it had been a sacred place from immemorial tradition, though it had only recently attained the height of its prosperity. The Buddha had himself rested there occasionally, and so had his elder rival, Nataputta, the tradi- tional founder of the community of the Jains,^ There as the centuries ran on the piety of generations had reared an immense establishment. Misfortune had indeed overtaken it from time to time. Since the days of Kanishka, at the end of the first century of our era, it was said to have been thrice destroyed.^ Five hundred merchants, so the story ran, had bought the original grounds and presented them to the Buddha. Succes- sive endowments had created a vast pile, with towers, domes, pavilions, shady groves, secluded gardens, and deep ti-anslucent pools filled with blue lotus and crimson kanaka. The great entrance was approached under four large columns, and was surmounted by a tower which rose so high into the air that it made I-Ching giddy to look at it.'^ There were eight temples with about a hundred relic shrines, many of them decorated with gold and precious stones which glittered in the sunlight. There were also a hundred lecture-rooms where the ten thousand clergy and students daily gave and received instruction, and six immense blocks of dormitories each four storeys high. There, for periods amounting in all to about two years, Yuan Chwang resided, devoting himself to the study of the Buddhist Scriptures, ' Cp. Majjhima Nikdya, i. 371 ; Digha N., ii. 81 {Dialogues of the Buddha, tr. Prof. Rhys Davids, pt. ii. p. 87). On the Jains see below, p. 35 f. 2 Beal, Catena, p. 371 ; Vassilief, Le Bouddhisme (Paris, 1865), p. 203. Yuan Chwang has his own tales of the injury done to the sacred Bo tree at Gaya and the adjacent monasteries, by a hostile king ^a§anka, in an invasion from Eastern Bengal not long before his visit, but he does not mention any attack on Nalanda. Cp. Beal, ii. 91, 118 ; Watters, ii. 115. 3 Hwui Lun described the whole mass of buildings as four-square, like a city, with four large gateways, each three storeys high, the chief being on the west. Beal, JRAS (1881, new series, xiii.), p. 571. THE UNIVERSITY OF NALANDA r the Sanskrit grammar of Panini, and the books of the Brahmans with the varied lore founded upon them, philological, legal, philosophical, and religious. Meantime students for ever came and went. The spirit of the place was strenuous. The brethren, says Yuan Chwang, were renowned through all India for their strictness in observ- ing the regulations of the Order ; grave, earnest, decorous, " learning and discussing they found the day too short." Those who did not talk of the mysteries of the Canon were put to shame and lived apart. But the teaching included secular knovvledge. There were professors of arithmetic and mathe- matics (perhaps also astronomy), geography and medicine.^ The teaching was conducted partly by recitation of the sacred texts after the mode of Vedic study, partly by expository lectures and disputations. Yuan Chwang reckoned a thousand brethren who could explain twenty collections of Sutras ; five hundred who could teach thirty ; perhaps ten (including himself) who could explain fifty ; the venerable President, ^'Ilabhadra, alone had mastered the entire number.- The Buddhism of Yuan Chwang's time in the twelfth century of the Buddha was no more homogeneous than the Christianity of the twelfth century of our era. In some respects, indeed, it was far less so. Like the Hinduism in the midst of which it had been developed, it was in fact a complex of many difterent elements. Beneath a common moral ideal room was found for the widest possible diversity of philosophy and religion. These varieties coexisted within an ecclesiastical discipline which was itself not absolutely identical from school to school, and per- mitted opposite modes of devotion, while it possessed sufficient coherence to embrace all antagonisms within one unity. At an early date after the Founder's death differences of view and still more of practice had begun to appear ; and two hundred years later, in the middle of the third century b.c, under the great Buddhist emperor Asoka, whose inscriptions supply the first ' Many pious kings had established hospitals ; others appointed medical officers at the rate of one doctor for ten villages, whose duty it was to look after the sick. '^ Beal, Records, ii. 170 ; Life, p. 112. For the early history of (^Ilabhadra, Beal, Records, ii. 110 ; Watters, ii. 109. 8 THE ORIGINS OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM monumental evidence in Indian history, there were already reckoned eighteen sects. The primitive Buddhism of Gotama had really consisted in a system of ethical culture which would enable the disciple to reach the goal of perfect wisdom and holiness, and set him free from the necessity of rebirth. This famous Eightfold Path of moral progress, however, was quite compatible with various interpretations of the world and its reality. Surrounded by eager disputants, the teaching of the Order began to reflect the influences of alien modes of thought. The Pali Canon of the Scriptures itself bears witness to opposite movements of feeling, imagination, and reflection, which were destined to acquire more and more importance. They finally issued in different schools with their own sacred books, and a scale of doctrine ranging all the way from a nihilistic psychology and an atheistic interpietation of the universe, at one end, to an ontological idealism at the other which affirmed that every phenomenon throughout the infinite worlds was a manifestation of Mind.^ A profound theological cleavage had thus been introduced into the early doctrine, leading to contradictory conceptions of the Buddha's nature and his relation to the disciple. These led in their turn to a complete transformation of the believer''s aim, and generated the two main divisions known respectively as the Hma-Ydna, the "low" or Little Vehicle, and the Mahd-Ydna or Great Vehicle.- Both of these modes were studied and taught at Nalanda. It was even pos- sible for their adherents to sing the same hymns to celebrate the perfections of the Buddha.^ No exclusive orthodoxy impugned the piety of either group, or threatened to drive their members out of the fellowship. What, then, was the type of theism thus generated, and by what process had it emerged out of the original Dhamma ? 1 Cp. the Surangama Sutra, Beal, Catena, pp. 285, 303. Fa Hien, Record, xxix. (tr. Legge, p. 83), mentions a Sutra of this name, delivered by the Buddha on the hill known as the Vulture's Peak, not tar from Rajagaha, the capital of the kingdom of Magadha. Cp. Nanjio, Catalogue, No. 446, p. 107. 2 Cp. below, p. 93, Lect. II. ^ See I-Ching's account of the hymns of 'Sla.trineta., which were taught to everyone becoming a monk as soon as he could recite the five and ten Commandments (Record, p. 157). THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 9 II The thinkers of the Middle Ganges valley had very early formulated some of the great philosophical problems which will never cease to interest human thought. As they contem- plated the world of nature without them and the world of mind within they reached an imaginative conception of the ultimate Unity which absorbed the manifoldness at once of the universe and of man. The gods of popular theology were no longer ade- (juate. There were various ways in which they might be treated. They could be amalgamated or identified in attribute and function with one another. They might be regarded as the delegates among whom the Supreme distributed his powers. Or they might be conceived as multiform manifestations of the One who lay behind. All kinds of hints, of insights, gleams of speculation, penetrating philosophical intuitions, along with the crudest physiology and psychology, run through the later Vedic hymns and the early literature founded upon them. The days of systematised thought, organised in the famous six Dar^anas,^ were yet to come. But in the interval between the discussions reported in the oldest Upanishads and the preaching of Gotama as it is portrayed in the Pali texts a great development had taken place. The main conceptions had been already reached by which the religious life of India has been moulded ever since. The presentation of the world has undergone an immense expansion, and new features have been added unknown to the Vedic literature. Fancy could, indeed, conduct the soul on a pilgrimage through various realms belonging to the different deities ; but no coherent cosmography combined them into an ordered whole.- The Buddhist scheme for the first time in- troduces the great central mountain Meru, 84,000 yojanas in height, on whose south side lies the favoured land of India ^ Literally " seeing?,'' theories, or views, the term applied to the recognised schools of a later age. Gotama uses the word ditthi, from the same root, designating under different conditions right or wrong views or beliefs, true or false. 2 Thus compare the Brahman heaven, "the third from hence," Chhandogya Upanishad, viii. b, 3 (SBE, i. p. 131), with the fuller series in Kaushitaki Up., i. 3 (ibid., p. 275), \vhere the Brahman world is sixth, above five Vedic deities. 10 THE ORIGINS OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM (in the continent of Jambudipa). On its four sides are the dwellings of the Four Great Kings, rulers of the four quarters of the world. ^ Upon the north is the Kuru-land, where the dwellers do not need to plough or sow, for the ground produces food spontaneously and the fruit-trees are always green.^ At the summit is the city of the Thirty-Three gods of the ancient Vedic reckoning under the sovereignty of Indra, better known as Sakka (Sanskr. ^akra).^ He holds the same place in later mythology, and the poets loved to describe the heavenly capital with its thousand gates, its jewelled walls and wondrous fruit- trees, where the sun did not scorch, cold and weariness were unknown, and grief and despondency, anger and covetousness, could never enter.^ Far, far above this rose the heaven of the great Brahma. Its numerous tiers, and the series of deities who occupied them, culminated in four realms of immaterial beings, made only of mind, who shone as radiances and were fed on joy.^ These are the peculiar product of pious Buddhist imagination, demanded by the requirements of the moral order to provide for every grade of merit. But the figure of the Great Brahma which crowns the whole reveals him as the god of popular theology. In a frequently recurring formula he is described as " the Supreme, the Mighty, the All-seeing, the Ruler, the Lord, the Maker, the Creator, Chief of all, appointing to each his place, the Ancient of Days, Father of all that are and are to be."" ^ Here is a figure of contemporary theism ; to him alone belonged 1 On the Babylonian analogue, cp. J. E. C. in Studies in the Hist, of Religions, edd. Lyon and Moore (New York, 1912), p. 75 ff. 2 Atanatiya Suttanta, § 7, Dlgha Nikmja, xxxii. The inhabitants do not claim any personal rights or private property ; they are amamd aparig- gaha. See the more elaborate description in the Mahdbhdrata, vi. 254. ^ Sakko devdnam Indo, the Strong or Mighty One. * See below, Lect. III., p. 169. * For the enumeration, cp. Kevaddha Suttanta, in Digha Nikdya, xi. 69-79 ; Rhys Davids, Dialogues, i. 280. It is often repeated, e.g. D., xxxiii. 3, 1 (vii). With the hells beneath the earth a single world was complete in spherical form. The ordinary universe was conceived as a system of ten thousand of such worlds, a vast increase upon previous notions. ^ Brahmajala Sutta, ii. 5, Rhys Davids, Dialogues, i. 31. The term "lord," issara (Sanskr. i^vara), gains the recognised meaning of "God," and is so employed in the translation of the Bible into Sanskrit. In later days it is an especial title of (^iva as Mahecvara, " Great God." See below, p. 225. PSYCHOLOGY IN THE UPANISHADS 11 Self-Existence or eternal being above the crowd of lesser deities who, after periods of varying length of life, passed on to some other scene, and had no claim to immortality. While the universe is thus conceived upon an enormously extended scale, the analysis of the human being has made advances which must have required generations of observation and reflection. The early thinkers whose teachings are reflected, for example, in the " Brahmana of a Hundred Paths " and the older Upanishads, had busied themselves with the conception of the soul or self, and its relation to the soul or self of the world.^ Many penetrating glances flash out in question and answer between laymen and women on the one hand, and distinguished Brahmans on the other, sometimes one and some- times the other taking the lead. But the terminology is extraordinarily fluctuating, confused, uncertain, inexact. The same document may contain a bewildering medley of figures and speculations which cannot be reduced into psychological or metaphysical coherence. Thus in the long conversation of King Janaka with the Brahman Yajnavalkya the latter describes what happens at the approach of death through sickness or old age. The Purusha (spirit)- separates himself from his body like a mango or pipphala-fruit from the stalk, and the Prdnas all gather round the departing Atman (soul or self) like the court functionaries round a departing king.^ What, then, are the Pranas ? The word has the common meaning of " breath," and could thus be applied to the essential element of human life, and extended even to the ultimate energy of the world, so that a Vedic poet could sing " Homage to Prana, in whose control is this All, who hath been Lord of all, in whom all stands firm.*"^ But while the breath might be inhaled or ' Cp., for different points of view, Prof. Rhys Davids, "The Theory of Soul in the Upanishads," in JRAS, xxxi. (1899), p. 71 ; Deussen, The Philosophy of the Upanishads, tr. Geden (1906), p. 256 ff. ; Mrs Rhys Davids, Buddhist Psychology (1914), \>. 57 fF. ^ One of the terms employed for the principle of personality ; literally " man." See below, p. 44. 3 Bnhaddranyaka Upanishad, iv. 3, 36, SEE, xv. p. 173. * Atharva Veda, V. xi. 4, tr. Whitney-Lanman (1905). Cp. Yajuavalkya's reply to the questions of ^akalya, Catap. Brdhm., xi. 6, 3, 10-11, SBE, xliv. p. 117, and the later form of the story in Brihad. Up., iii. 9, 26. 12 THE ORIGINS OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM exhaled, and might be even viewed as triple or fourfold,^ the word was extended to cover the senses. The quarrelling Pranas, each desirous of supremacy, repair to Brahman for a decision. He awards the palm to that one whose departure injures the body most. So they successively go forth and return after a year's absence, speech, eye, ear, mind, seed, but on re-entry find the body, though inconvenienced, still alive. At last it is the turn of the vital breath (prdna) which tears up the other pranas as a fine horse from the land of the Indus might tear up the pegs which tethered him.^ Here the activities of thought and utterance are included with the organs of sight and hearing under the common head of " breaths."' Elsewhere Jaratkarava Artabhaga sets forth the common view of the dispersion of the humrai elements at death, speech into the fire, breath into the air, the eye into the sun, the mind into the moon, the body into the earth, the self into the ether. But Yajnavalkya, in con- tradiction of the doctrine that the pranas depart, affirms that they do not leave the frame, but are gathered up within it.^ And (to sum up these illustrations) he tells King Janaka that the self consists of " consciousness (vijiidna), mind, prdna, eye, ear, earth, water, wind, etlier, light and no light, desire and no desire, wrath and no wrath, righteousness and no righteousness, and all things." '* To pass from these random imaginative combinations to the careful analyses of the Buddhist texts is like the transition from the poetry of the forest, with its sunshine and gloom and its sound of the wind among the trees, to the orderly arrangement ' Brihad. Up., iii. 1, 10 ; iii. 4, 1. ■■^ Brikad. Up., vi. 1, 7-14 ; cp. Chhdndog. Up., v. 1, 5-15. In another story of a dispute between the younger Devas and the elder Asuras, the super- human powers of good and evil, the Devas invoke successively speech, prdua (here identified with smell), eye, ear, mind, and the pram in the mouth (dsanya-prfcua), Brihad. Up.,i. 3, 1-7 ; mukhya-prdna, Chhdndog. Up,, i. 2, 1-7. ^ Brihad. Up., iii. 2, 11-13. He has just analysed human activity into eight grahas, "seizers" or " apprehenders," and eight atigrahas, objects thus apprehended. The eight grahas are prdua, speech, tongue, eye, ear, mind, arms, skin ; and the corresponding atigrahan, smell, name, taste, form, sound, desire, work (or action, karma), and touch. ■• Brihad. Up., iv. 4, 5. PSYCHOLOGY IN THE UPANISHADS 13 of the professor's lecture-room. Here is an attempt to express the facts of conscious experience in the fields of sense and thought. The language is, naturally, not entirely new. Some of the old terms reappear.^ Others are occasionally employed in new meanings.- The distinction between sensation (vedand) and perception {sanna) is clearly marked. The confusion of the prdnas has vanished. The incongruous enumerations of the mental and the material, of inward states and outward objects, are replaced by careful classifications. ' And the conspectus of wrong theories of the Self which occupies the second chapter of the discourse of " the Perfect Net,"* implies a range of specula- tion far exceeding that of the debates in the Upanishads, and requires a corresponding lapse of time for its extension. But the most significant advance to which the earlv Buddhist texts bear witness lies in the development of the idea of trans- migration under the law of Action or the Deed, familiarly known as Karma. This great doctrine, which has ever since ruled the thought of India, and has exercised so profound an influence even over China and Japan, first comes dimly into view in the later Vedic literature. That it cannot be traced in the ancient hymns is now generally conceded.^ Its speculative origins begin to appear in the apprehension that the life of the departed in the worlds of bliss may, after all, not be enduring. The ritual of sacrifice was designed to secure for the believer admission to the sphere of the deity whom he served, Agni, Varuna, Indra, Prajapati, even Brahma, each in his own realm. '• A man," it was said, " is born into the world that he has ^ Thus buddhi, indriya, manas, vijudna. - Cp. saiind in Brihad. Up., ii. 4, 12-13; iv. 5, 13, with its Buddhist use. Vedand does not occur. ^ Cp. the doctrine of the six dyatanas, internal and external ; on the one hand the organs of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and manas (the " common sensory " '^\here sensations are converted into perceptions), and objects or forms (? colours, Mrs Ehys Davids), sounds, scents, tastes, tangibles, and dhammas (mental states) : Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, ii. 336. The enumeration frequently recurs, e.g. Digha Nikdya. iii. pp. 102, 243, 280 ; and in the long section " Salayatana" in Samyatta Nikdya, iv. I flF. * Brahmajala Sutta, in Dialogues, i. 30. ^ Cp. A. Berried ale Keith, Taittiriya Sahhitd (Cambridge, Mass., 1914), vol. i. p. ccxx\-iii f. 14 THE ORIGINS OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM made,"^ and in the mystical interpretation of the act of sacrifice it was supposed that a new body was prepared to fit him for ascension to the world above.- There he dwelt in blessed fellowship with the glorious object of his devotion ; he shared the radiant scene of his existence ; he was united even with his very Self.-^ Such was the privilege of rebirth on high. But the suspicion could not be kept out — Might not rebirth after all involve redeath .'' Imagination had striven in one of the most famous hymns to picture a far-off condition when there was neither being nor no-being, neither death nor death- lessness.* The great contrast between the mortal and the immortal was unknown. What brought Death into the world, and when he had appeared what were the limits of his power? There were various answers to such questions, and the course of nature supplied its own analogies. Night and morning were for ever successively reborn ; ^ to the discerning mind existence presented itself as a continuous process ; but each new beginning implied also another end. There might, indeed, be a scene beyond Death's reach, and to attain it was the purport of a special rite.^ Such was the efficacy of sacrifice that it would enable the worshipper to conquer recurring Death,' and even the proper reading of the Veda would lift him into union with Brahma's own Self.^ Redeath would in its turn involve rebirth, and the recluses of the forest had already pictured the soul whose term in the spheres of sun and moon had come to an end, as descending to earth once more in the rain, and there, through incorporation in herb and grain, passing into new forms of animal or man.*' What was it that regulated this succession .? Some cause there must be for its innumerable varieties. They could not be 1 Kritam loham purusho 'bhijayate, in the <^atap. Brdhm., vi. 2, 2, 27. 2 He was thus complete in all his limbs, sarvdnga, with a whole body, sarvatanu ; cp. Catap. Brdhm., xi. 1, 8, 6 ; xii. 8, 3, 31. ^ Sdyujya, salokatd, sdtmatd. Cp. Catap. Brdhm., ii. 6, 4, 8 ; xi. 6, 2, 2-3. * Rig Veda, x. 129 ; sat, asat, mrityu, avirita. 5 Punarbhu, cp. R.V., i. 62«, 1-232." 6 gatap. Brdhm., ii. 3, 3, 7-9. ' gatap. Brdhm., x. 1, 4, 14 ; x. 2, 6, 19 ; 5, 1, 4 ; xi. 4, 3, 20. * Ibid., xi. 5, 6, 9, sdtmatd. " Chhdndog. Upanishad, v. 10, 5-7. KARMA OR THE LAW OF THE DEED 15 permanently ascribed to chance. Outside the ceremonial practice lay the whole field of the moral life, and its collective expression in the social order. There was a mysterious reser- voir of powers to which each thought, each word, each act contributed. '• The Deed," said the early lawgivers, " does not perish." ^ At every moment every conscious being still involved in liability to death was laying up secret forces of good or evil which time would never fail to bring into operation. Their activity might be postponed for thousands of years, but it could never be escaped. At first the new doctrine was only whispered in secret. When Jaratkarava Artabhaga inquired of Yajnavalkya what became of a dead man when his constit- uent elements were dispersed,- the Brahman replied, " Take my hand, my friend ; we two alone shall know of this. Let this question of ours not be discussed in public." So they went out for private talk, and the teacher unfolded the profound principle of the results of action ; what is permanent is Karma ; a man becomes good by good Karma, evil by evil Karma. To apply this conception in all directions must have been the task of centuries. It provided the form in which every problem of human destiny was set and answered. The whole scene of existence was shaped to match it, and the universe was arranged on a scale suited to its demands. This immense transformation has already taken place when Gotama begins to teach. The principle of " fruit " has gener- ated a complete vocabulary for its expression, and previous thinkers have elaborated an intricate system of rewards and punishments appropriate for different kinds of conduct in the four great castes, for the secular life of the householder, for the religious life of the ascetic and the devotee. Nor was this all. The spectacle of an incessant round of births in various forms of being from hell to heaven had filled some minds with an intolerable sense of pain. Was there no escape from the weariness of this unending succession ? The question begot ' Gautama, xix. 5, SBE, ii. 271. The principle formulated by the "Brahmana of a Hundred Paths" (in the sphere of sacrifice, an 100. 2 18 THE ORIGINS OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM rivers, lakes, and ocean ; till at length the whole fabric of the world up to the Brahma heavens will burst forth in flames, and the entire universe will be consumed.^ Ill In a scene thus conceived, amid the clash of speculations, theories, affirmations, and denials, Gotama launched his bold endeavour to win men from selfishness by persuading them that they had no Selves. The Indian mind had been concen- trated on its own interior processes, it had little interest in the external world. The path of Greek science was already opened by Thales, but no traveller from the Ganges valley had begun to gabher observations on which to found the demonstrations of geometry, or watch the heavens so as to predict eclipses. Gotama''s picture of the evolution of the heavens and the earth from chaos at the beginning of a new cosmic period is childish and confused compared with the attempt to conceive the stately march of creation in the first chapter of Genesis.- Those who only sought to escape from Nature could not be expected to love her.^ Over all her beauty brooded the shadow of pain ; life began and ended with suffering. Popular Brahmanism might promise happiness in the next world to those who trod the appointed round of ritual and sacrifice, performed the householder's duties, and paid their debts to the fathers and the gods. But philosophy found no satisfaction in such pleasures. The trail of cupidity lay over them all. The true teaching must aim at lifting men out of the ever-flowing stream of birth, death, and rebirth, and cutting off the roots of the craving for life. Who would wish to be for ever entangled in existence when he realised the impurities of the body,^ * On the probable derivation of this eschatologic doctrine from Babylonia, cp. J. E. C. in Studies in the History of Religions, p. 79. - See the Agganiaa Suttanta, Dlgha Nikaya, xxvii. ^ There is, of course, another side to such a statement. In spite of the danger of being carried off by a tiger, the recluses in the forest could sing of its pleasures (see the Psalms of the Brethren, tr. by Mrs Rhys Davids). Indian imagination was especially susceptible to the beauty of moonlight. •* See the Vijaya Sutta, in Sutta Nipdta, xi., SEE, x. p. 32. On the meditations for the production of disgust, asubha-kammatthdna, cp. Spence Hardy, Eastern Monachism (1850), p. 247. THE MIDDLE PATH 19 or confessed that the tears shed in traversing the age-long road of transmigration exceeded the waters of the Four Great Oceans ? ^ The sources of suffering lay in two spheres, without and within, Man dwelt in a scene of incessant change. His person was subjected to birth and decay, to old age and death. He must constantly bear the presence of conditions and objects which he did not like : he must submit to the deprivation of those for which he longed. He was exposed to all " the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune " ; he was incessantly tormented with the burning pangs of unfulfilled desire. Like the Hebrew Preacher, Gotama saw " Vanity of Vanities " inscribed over the entry into every field of existence. But he would have scorned to draw the Preacher's conclusion, " There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink."- He opens his career as Teacher with the announcement that he has discovered a Middle Path between two extremes : the life of sensual pleasure, low, vulgai', and unprofitable ; and the life of self-mortification, equally ignoble and profitless.'^ And he closes his ministry with the solemn warning to his disciples, " Behold now, I exhort you, all that is compound is liable to decav, with diligence do ye attain."* The Brahmans had elaborated a scheme of discipline for the religious student or Brahmachdrin^ and the teachers outside their ranks had their own methods for realising their different aims. Gotama, also, devised a special type of devout practice, a hrahmachariya or holy life ; and he invited the five mendicants whom he first addressed to join him in this life, in order to make a complete end of suffering.-^ Surrounded by various theories in the Brahmanical schools and the separatist doctrines of the Wanderers, Gotama formu- lated his own conceptions with the aid of the current vocabulary. The brief summaries of heretical views presented in the * Cp. Samyutta Nikdya, in. 179. Eccles. ii. 24. 3 Sermon to the five Mendicants, Mahclvagga, i. 6, 17, in Vinaya Texts, SBE, xiii. 94. * The object to be attained is not specified ; it is, of course, the supreme Buddhist holiness which would bring deliverance from rebirth. Cp. Dialogues, ii. 173. ^ " Samma dukkhassa antakiriyaya," Mahdvagga, i. 6, .32, SBE, xiii. 99. 20 THE ORIGINS OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM Scriptures were no doubt made intelligible in oral exposition, but in their condensed form their differences necessarily remain obscure. They might, however, be divided into two main groups.^ There were those who affirmed the real existence of a Self both in this world and in the world to come. This was the heresy of the Eternalists, who had their own varying notions as to its constitution, material or immaterial, conscious or unconscious, finite or infinite. In stark antagonism to this principle of perpetual being was the heresy of the Annihila- tionists, who indeed affirmed the real existence of a Self in this world, but denied it for the world to come."^ If the Self perished with the body, there was of course no " fruit "^ of good or evil in another life. The Moral Order of the world was shattered. The Law of the Deed lost its field of operation. The issues of action were cut off by death. Against this sweeping rejection of what he regarded as the fundamental principle of the universe, Gotama threw the whole weight of his authority. With an ethical passion strong enough to bear the burden of the repudia- tion of a permanent personality, he upheld the conception of an endless succession of rebirths, of recompense and retribution, of heaven and hell. But at the same time he proclaimed that individuality was an illusion, the craving for pleasure was vain, and the only worthy aim of life was to get rid of it by the suppression of the ignoble thirst for continuous transit in search of happiness. Gotama sought, therefore, to cure men of selfish- ness by convincing them that they had no Selves. But that involved the necessity of explaining how a man could subsist at all without one. And it was faced by the further difficulty that if there was no Self to pass from world to world, there was no person in whom the " fruit " of the past could ripen, and the principle of Karma was annulled. How were these apparent contradictions to be overcome ? There are strange hints of opposite answers in the early texts, which show that the disciples who compiled them found their Mastery's doctrine sometimes too difficult, and instinctively admitted language out of which new metaphysical developments might proceed. What explanation, then, did Gotama offer to the question, 1 Puggala-PaMatti (in the Abhidhamraa Pitaka), PTS, p. 38. Cp. the Brahmajfila Sutta, Dialogues, i, 53. THE EYE OF THE TRUTH 21 " What makes an ordinary human being ? '" The natural duahst sums him up as " body and soul." and the Brahmanical teachers had already on this ancient basis worked out a rough psychology, and laid down the lines of a metaphysical unity between the self of our common experience and the universal Self. From such transcendental topics Gotama turned resolutely away. Such speculations only encouraged the disputatious temper, and no great moralist has left more impressive warnings against the perils of the over-confident controversialist. His own doctrine is repeated over and over again in curt summaries which could be preserved in memory, and tradition assigned its first state- ment to the scene in the deer-park at Benares, when the declaration of the Four Noble Truths to the five mendicants had been rapturously welcomed by the devas from earth to the topmost heavens as the foundation of the supreme Kingdom of Truth.^ In one after another the mysterious insight known as the " Pure and Spotless Eye of the Truth " arose within them, the principle of no-permanence, the law of incessant flux, the discernment that whatever has a beginning must also have an end. This conviction is not dependent on the authority of the Buddha ; it is no act of faith in his wisdom, still less in his omniscience. It is an immediate vision, an apprehension of an ultimate fact, a direct perception of an intrinsic reality. It thus constitutes the foundation of the higher life, the initiation into the pathway which will lead to deliverance.- 1 Mahavagga, i. 6, 30, in Viuaya Texts, SBE., xiii. 97. '■^ See the Mahavagga, i. 6, 29 ff. The Pfili phrase dhamma-chakkhum ■lufapddi describes the rise within the mind of a new way of looking on the world, and ia constantly figured as the appearance of light in the midst of darkness. Many instances occur in the records of conversion, e.g. Dialogues, i. 135, 157, 263, 271, 296, 319. The term is sometimes applied even to the dwellers in the upper worlds ; in the Sakka-Panha Suttauta, Dialogues, ii. 320, the Dhamma-chakkhu arises in Sakka and 80,000 devas. Cp. the description of Kutadanta as dittha-dhamvia, patta-dhamma, vidita- dhamma, pariyogdlha-dhamma, in Dlgha Nikdya, i. p. 148, Dialogues, i. 184. An(Jther form of vision was known as the dibba-chakkhu, the " heavenly eye," which enabled the possessor to see the transit of beings from one state of existence to another, e.g. Sdmanna-fhala Sulfa, § 95, Dialogues, i. 92, or to behold the Buddha seated cross-legged in the Brahma world above Brahma himself, Samyutta Nikdya, i. p. 144 (Book of the Kindred Saying!;, i. 182). There was also an ariga-chakkhu, or "noble eye," whicli enabled the saint 22 THE ORIGINS OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM The rise of the " Eye of the Truth " prepared the disciple to realise the constituents of his own person. (1) He had a bodily form (rupa). (2) He experienced sensations {vedana)} (3) He converted these into perceptions {sannd) of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, through which he came into contact with the ex- ternal world. (4) To these was added the complex group known as sankhdras, a term of very wide application to all compounds.- It implies a process of preparing or constructing, and then denotes what is so prepared. Later elaborations sought to define their number ; earlier formulae assembled them under three heads. In the first place, they affected the body (kayo), and constituted the sum of the conditions of corporeal existence on earth, in hell, or in heaven ; secondly, they covered the whole field of speech {vacM) ; and, thirdly, they bore a similar relation to thought (chitta). They did not include the physical organs themselves, they were the mental and moral antecedents (or, as Mrs Rhys Davids has happily termed them, the " coeiRcients ") which brought about birth in a particular sphere. They were the tendencies arising out of the past to right or wrong activities of utterance or mind. In this aspect they were very nearly identical with Karma. Only two entities lay outside their range, space (okdsa) and Nirvana. (5) Lastly, in curious vagueness above the experiences of sensation and perception and the whole multiform collection of determining influences, rose consciousness {vinndna% including, it would seem, the whole sum of mental activities, from the most concrete elements of sight or touch to the most abstract processes of reason or meditation. But neither the external world nor the realm of consciousness existed in itself They to see Nirvana, Majjhima NikCtya, i. 510 ; cp. panfm-chakkhu, Samyutta Nikdya, iv. 292, v. 467. The terminology appears to be new ; it does not occur in the older Upanishads. Col. Jacob's I'oncordancc gives but one instance, Hamsa, 2. 1 To the usual live was added the manas (philologically though not psychologically equated with the Latin mens), which organised the feelings into their corresponding perceptions, intermediary between sensation and thought. - Cp. Mrs Rhys Duvids, Buddhist Psychology, p. 50, quoting Buddhaghosa, "Why, bhikkhus, do ye say sankhdra's'i Because they compose what is compound {sankhdtain):' THE CONSTITUENTS OF A PERSON 23 constituted a relation which was for ever liable from either side to incessant change. All objects might be included under the head of rupa or " form " ; all modes of thought and feeling were summed up in the word ndma, "name." And the relentless conclusion was that if consciousness ceased ^ " name and form " would disappear together. These five groups went by the name of the Khandhas or " supports." " Concerning each of them Gotama asked in turn if it could be identified with the attan or Self, and in each case the equation is denied. He had thus accounted for the whole product of a given person by the union of the Five Supports, without any connecting or ruling Self. No permanent im- perishable Soul was needed. The Suppoi'ts came together in temporary combination, and a man-child was born. In his old age they separated and fell away, their junction was dissolved, and the man died. Of this doctrine one of the most famous illustrations occurs in a post-canonical work entitled the Ques- tio7is of Milinda.^ This striking book, preserved in Pali by the Buddhists of Ceylon, Siam, and Burma, professes to record a series of dialogues between the Greco-Bactrian king Menander (probably reigning 140-115 b.c.) and a Buddhist sage named Nagasena. The king courteously introduces himself, and inquires his name.* " I am known as Nagasena," he replies ; but he warns the royal inquirer against supposing that such personal names covered any permanent individuality (puggala). " Then who," retorts the astonished monarch, " gives to you members of the Order your robes and food and lodging and necessaries for the sick ? Who is it who follows righteousness or sins ? " The puzzled sovereign sees the whole " fruit " of Karma vanish. He ' Vinnanassa iiirodhena ; see the conclusion of the Kevaddha Siittanta, Dialogues, i. 284, " when intellection ceases." 2 Sanskrit skandhas. Neither this term nor the samkhdras occurs in the Upanishads. Another term, upadhi, " substrate," has almost the same meaning. Cp. sahha-samkhdra-samatho sahhiipadhi-patmissago, in Mahdvagga, i. 5, 2, Vinaya Texts, SBE, xiii. 85 ; Samyutta Nikaya, i. p. 136. In Anguttara iV., i. p. 49, Wanderers are said to adopt the homeless life to rid themselves of the upadhis. ' Milinda-Pmha, ed. Trenckner (1880) ; tr. Rhys Davids, SBE, xxxv., xxxvi. 1 SBE, XXIV. 40 tt. 24 THE ORIGINS OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM proceeds to enumerate one after another of the Five Supports, and asks whether each in turn is Nagasena. The answer of course is always in the negative, and to suit the Buddhist dialectic Nagasena is made to reject the suggestion that the whole Five together constitute the learned Elder. The indig- nant king feels that he is being played with, " Nagasena is a mere empty sound, who then is the Nagasena that we see before us?"" and roundly charges the famous teacher with falsehood. It is then Nagasena's turn to ask questions, and he challenges Milinda to explain what was the carriage in which he had driven to the hermitage where Nagasena was staying : was it the pole, the axle, the framework, the yoke, or the spokes of the wheels, or all the parts together that was the chariot .'' and the royal inquirer in each case answers "No." "Then chariot is a mere empty sound, and you, too, speak untruth." The king gently replies that it was on account of its having all those items that it came under the generally understood term " chariot." " Just so," says the Sage, quoting a Scripture verse from a dialogue between a holy sister, Vajira, and the Prince of Evil, Mara : " For just as, when the parts are rightly set, The word ' chariot ' [ariseth in our minds]. So doth our usage covenant to say 'A being' when the Five Supports are there." ^ It followed, of course, from this analysis that human experi- ence could only be interpreted as a succession of states of con- sciousness, without any permanent "subject" in which they inhered.- Gotama accordingly described thought (chitta), mind {manas% and consciousness (vmfidna) as rising up by night and day as one thing and perishing as another.'' To this position the Sinhalese tradition remained constant. No writer has faced it with more boldness than Buddhaghosa in his Path of Purity : 1 Samyutta Nihlya., i. p. 135 ; tr. Mrs Rhys Davids, Book of the Kindred Sayings, i. 170. '- Cp. the Analysis of the Human Mind, by .James Mill (1829) ; aud .1. S. Mill's Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy (1865). •' Cp. Samyutta Nihlya, ii. \). 96, and Warren's Buddhism in Translations (1896), p. 151. THE DOCTRINE OF NO-SELF 1'5 " Strictly speaking, the life of a living being is exceedingly brief, lasting only while a thought lasts. Just as a chariot-wheel in rolling rolls only at one point of the tire, and in resting rests only at one point ; in exactly the same way the life of a living being lasts only for one thought. As soon as that thought has ceased, the being is said to have ceased. As it has been said : ' The being of a past moment of thought has lived, but does not live, nor will it live. 'The being of a future moment of thought will live, but has not lived, nor does it live. 'The being of the present moment of thought does live, but has not lived, nor will it live.' " ^ The Heraclitean doctrine of flux, irdi/ra pel, applied to con- sciousness, can go no further. But though the doctrine of No-Self thus lay at the heart of Gotama's teaching, the disciple was as strenuously forbidden to dwell on the view " I have not a Self" as upon its contrary " I have a Self."- He would only involve himself the more deeply in the jungle of delusion. At a higher stage of inward culture he might, indeed, attain to the anatta-sanna^^ the perception of No-Self, following on that of aniccha, the perception of Imper- manence.* That was, after all, essential for anyone who would tread the path that led to Nirvana. He must be weaned from attachment to this world, he must suppress wrath and ill will. And the angry man might well be asked with what he was angry ? Was it with the hair of the head or the body, or their elements of earth, water, fire, and air ? The Venerable N. N. was only the Five Supports, remarks Buddhaghosa, " with which of their groups are you angry, form, sensations, perceptions, . . . an organ of sense, or an object of sense, or a sense-consciousness ? For a person who has made the above analysis," he concludes, " there is no hold for anger, any more than there is for a grain of mustard-seed on the point of an awl, or for a painting in the sky." ^ ^ Warren, Buddhism in Translations, p. 150. ^ Cp. the Sabbasava Sutta, Majjhima Nikdya, i. p. 8 ; tr. Rhys Davids, Buddhist Suttas, SBE, xi. 299. 2 The Pali attan is the equivalent of the Sanskrit dtman. * Cp. Mahapariuibbana-Suttanta, Dialogues, li. 84. In later lists, Sangiti Suttanta and Dasuttara Suttanta, iJixjha Nikdya, iii. pp. 243,251,290-1, dukkha-sailnd is inserted between. ^ Visuddhi Magga, Warren, Buddhism in TravAilatiwhs, p. 159. 26 THE ORIGINS OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM It was a dangerous argument. The plea for charity, which occupies so splendid a place in Buddhist ethics, might have been subverted on the same grounds. In such a view of existence there was no room for an Absolute, eternal and immutable, like the ultimate Being of Greek philosophy. When Megasthenes, the ambassador of Seleucus Nicator, was resident at the court of Chandraguptaat Pataliputra (the modern Patna), he observed that the opinions of the Brahmans on many subjects coincided with those of the Greeks, for they also affirmed that the world had a beginning and was liable to destruction, that it was spherical in shape, and that the Deity who made and governed it was diffused through all its parts.^ It was a crude summary of one type of Brahmanical philosophy, to which Gotama appears to have been completely indifferent. The polemic against the notion of a permanent Self as a necessary element in a human being was never advanced against the further conception of an Everlasting Self as the indispensable foundation of the universe. Gotama leaves on one side the doctrine of the Brahman, developed by the forest- teachers of the Upanishads, as completely as if he had never heard of it. The gods of popular mythology are, of course, involved in the round of births, and must tread the Noble Eightfold Path if they would escape their transference in due course to some less happy lot." This was only the Buddhist form of the current application of the Law of the Deed to the occupants of the successive heavens. The throne of Indra had already seen a series of rulers. But above the deities who played their part, enjoyed their privileges, and passed away, rose the real Lord of all beings, past, present, and to come. The goal of aspiration was to win fellowship with the great Brahma.^ Two young Brahmans, disputing about the way, agree to refer the difficulty to the Samana Gotama.* A series of questions in Socratic style draws out the fact that no contemporary or ' M'Crindle, Anciejit India as described by Megasthenes aittl Arrian (1877), p. 101. 2 Cp. the group of discourses in Dialogues, ii., beginning with tlie .Jana- vasabhtt Suttanta, and the comments of Prof. Ehys Davids. ^ Cp. ante, p. 10. '' Tevijja Suttanta, Dialogues, i. 302. THE TREATMENT OF BRAHMA 27 preceding teacher in the Brahman ranks, nor even the Rishis of old, had ever seen Brahma ; how then could they know how to attain union with him ? The argument then takes an unexpected turn. The Buddha claims to have himself entered the Brahma world, and been reborn in it. He therefore is aware of its conditions, and can declare the means for their fulfilment. So he sets forth the type of character by which it may be reached, the method ?.id achievement of self-conquest, the resultant joy and peace of the believer, the love, the pity, the sympathy, the equanimity with which he will pervade the whole wide world, above, beneath, around. Brahma himself is deeply concerned for the world's welfare. When Gotama has solved the secret of existence and seen and learned the Truth, he realises the difficulty of making it intelligible to those who are lost in lust and hatred. Why should he undertake a task which could only result in weariness and annoyance ? Then Brahma, per- ceiving his hesitation, and apprehending that the world will be undone if he keeps silence, presents himself before him, and with lowly homage thrice pleads for perishing humanity. And the Blessed One, casting his compassionate Buddha-eye over all sentient beings, yields to Brahma's entreaty, and opens the door of the Deathless to all who have ears to hear.^ Elsewhere, however, the figure of Brahma is treated with daring irony,- and his appearance on the evolution of a new world-system has to be explained.^ He is the first to come into being in the Palace of Brahma through the operation of the Law of the Deed, and when after a long time he yearns for companionship and others are reborn at his side, he supposes himself their creator, and they in their turn accept him in that capacity.* But the claim to be " the Lord of all, appointing to each his place,'' did not pass without protest. In a long poem in the Jataka book ^ on the worthlessness of the Brah- manical sacrifices, put into the mouth of the future Buddha, 1 Mahuvagga, i. 5, Vinaya Texts, in SBE, xiii. 84. •^ See the Kevaddha Suttanta, Dialogues, i. 280 ff. ^ Brahmajrda Siitta, Dialogties, i. 30 ; Patika Suttanta, Digha Nikdya, iii. p. 28. * Dialogues, i. 31 ; cp. Aggauna Suttanta, in JJigha Isikdya, iii. p. 84. ^ Vol. vi., tr. Cowell and Rouse, p. 109 fF. 28 THE ORIGINS OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM the whole caste-system is denounced, and the divine beneficence is bitterly impeached. " He who has eyes can see the sickenmg sight ; Why does not Brahma set his creatures right ? If his wise power no Umits can restrain, Why is his hand so rarely spread to bless ? Why are his creatures all condemned to pain r Why does he not to all give happiness ? Why do fraud, lies, and ignorance prevail ? Why triumphs falsehood — truth and justice fail ? I count your Brahma one th' unjust among. Who made a world in which to shelter wrong." The implication is that all the phenomena of tlie human lot, its inequalities of happiness and misery, of social distinction or oppression, of good and evil dispositions, tempers, impulses, and acts, are the result of past conditions which cannot be changed or evaded. In such a sequence no interference by a Deity claiming to be outside or above it can be allowed. The solemn law of moral causation cannot be broken. It will be one of the problems of later Hindu theology to show that Karma is no self-acting energy, but the mode or instrument through which the righteous will of God for ever works. Karma will then be incorporated into Theism. The doctrine of No-Self has its natural counterpart in a doctrine of No-God. But it was not accepted without difficulty. Was it really the case that the man who had attained the Truth ^ would wholly pass away and cease to be ? Gotama wound up his first sermon to the Five Mendicants at Benares with a formula of con- stant recurrence : " Rebirth has been destroyed, the higher life has been fulfilled, what has to be done has been accomplished, after this present life there will be no beyond." - As long as the body lasted he was, of course, there for gods and men to see. But when death broke up the union of the Supports, the bond to rebirth was severed as completely as the cutting of a mango- ' The Tathagata. - Mahdvagga, i. 6, 46, Vinaya Texts, in SBE, xiii. 101 ; Hdmaiinafliala Sutta, § 97, Dialogues, i. 93. QUESTIONS LEFT UNDETERMINED 29 stalk separated the bunch of fruit from the tree/ and gods and men would see him no more. It sounded like a doctrine of annihilation. Among the stock questions of the Wandering Mendicants, known as the Ten Indeterminates,^ was the destiny of the Tathagata after death. Would he live again or not ; would he both live again and not live; would he neither live again nor not live ? To none of these queries would Gotama vouchsafe an answer. They did not aid right conduct, peace of heart, or the higher insight. Dr Oldenberg first pointed out the indicati(ms of dissatisfaction with this silence on the part of his followers.-' The monk Malukya demanded a straightforward confession of ignorance if the Teacher did not really know.* Gotama replies by asking whether he had ever undertaken to decide these topics as a condition of instruction concerning the religious life, and Malukya admits that he had not. The problems of the eternity and infinity of the world, or its limits in time and space, of the identity or difference of soul and body, of the existence or non- existence of the Tathagata after death, are all waived aside as irrelevant for progress in holiness : " Keep what I have not deter- mined undetermined." King Pasenadi of Kosala is troubled with the same metaphysical uncertainties, and on meeting with a nun named Khema as he travels from Saketa to Savatthi, he pauses to ask her whether the Tathagata will live again.^ She only assures him that his alternatives are not apposite. Death releases the Tathagata from being measured by the Five Supports. They are cut off from the loot as the palm-tree is hewn down. The Tathagata is like the great ocean, deep, unfathomable.^ There the canonical texts leave the departed Teacher. De- votion could not be satisfied without acts of piety and affection, 1 Brahmajdla Sutta, iii. § 73, Dialogues, i. 54. 2 Cp. Dialogues, i. 187 3 Buddha, his Life, etc. (1882), p. 275. * Majjhima Nikdya, i. p. 427. '• Samyutta Nikaya, iv. p. 374 ; Oldenberg, Buddha, p. 279. ^ The whole paragraphs are repeated in a conver.«ation with a Wanderer named Vaccha (Majjhima Nihlya. i. p. 487). Cp. Sariputta's rebuke to Yamaka for holding the heretical view that a monk in whom sin was ended would be "cut off," the doctrine of the Annihilationists (Samyutta Nihlya, iii. p. 109: Oldenberg, Buddha, pp. 279, 281). 30 THE ORIGINS OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM and a cultus gradually arose which at length demanded some explanation. The Tathagata was supposed to have himself prescribed four places for reverent pilgrimage : the scene of his Birth, the sacred spot where he attained Supreme Enlighten- ment, the deer-park at Benares where he had preached the discourse on the Foundation of the Kingdom of Truth, and the Sala grove where he died.^ Memorial mounds should be reared where four roads met, and garlands and perfumes and paint laid there as gifts. After his solemn cremation the relics unconsumed were carefully gathered and distributed, and hal- lowed cairns preserved them for the homage of succeeding generations. Festivals of commemoration followed each other in the annual round, and art was summoned to present the leading incidents of the long series of the Buddha's previous lives. "If the Buddha accepts such gifts," argued King Milinda, "he cannot have entirely passed away, he must be still in union with the world. But if he has escaped from all existence, he is no longer there to accept these honours, and such acts are vain." - Nagasena replies that the Blessed One was certainly entirely set free, and no gifts could reach him. But the treasure of his wisdom remained ; had he not himself laid it down that the Truth and the Rule of Discipline should still survive, and be the Teacher of those whom he had left ! ^ The concentration of the believer''s thought on the great aim of the Buddha's long career would thus produce a kind of communion with him through the medium of the past. Acts of com- memoration had consequently a faint semblance of sacramental efficacy. But no prayer carried the confession of sin or the aspiration after holiness into the realm which was deathless, because in it there was no rebirth.* The fellowship which was possible with Brahma could not unite the disciple with a leader who had not only passed beyond his ken but ceased to be. The power of the relic might, indeed, work wonders. " If we behold the relics, we behold the Conqueror," said Prince Mahinda (sent ' Dialogues, ii. 153. - " Questions of Milinda," in SBE, xxxv. p. 144, cp. p. 246. 2 Cp. Dialogues, ii. 171. * The Pali amaia, though identical with the Sanskrit amrta, is used in a quite different sense, and does not mean "immortal," i.e. undying. DID THE BUDDHA LIVE AFTER DEATH? 31 on a mission to Ceylon by his father, the Emperor Asoka) to King Devanampiyatissa.^ And when the sacred oollar-bone relic had been fetched from India, and a vast assembly gathered to see it deposited in a mighty inound prepared for its recep- tion, it rose in the air, assuming the Buddha's form, and wrought the mysterious "Double Miracle."- But this was not due to the immediate presence or will of the Tathagata. It was the issue of a resolution made by his foresight on the couch of death, imparting this wondrous energy to a portion of the frame he was about to quit for ever. Thus was the pre- paration made for the first great mission beyond the bounds of India. But in that enterprise the departed Gotama had no living share. Earnestly as Gotama sought to withdraw the doctrine of No-Self from controversial discussion, he could not avoid using language which frequently seemed to imply its contrary. It has been already pointed out that the canonical texts declared it to be as heretical to deny the possession of a Self as to affirm it. Among the later sects was one which did actually affirm it, and their teachers relied (amongst other reasons) on a discourse on the " Burden " and its " Bearer "" attributed to the Buddha at Savatthi."' The Burden is the group of the Five Supports, the Bearer is the Puggala ; to take up this burden in the world is pain, to lay it down is bliss. Who or what, then, is the Puggala ? It is the individual or person, born in a par- ticular familv, known by a special name. Are we, with Prof. Hardy, to declare the Burden and the Bearer identical .'* Why, then, should they be distinguished .'' Language, at any rate, which is the involuntary deposit of age-long experience, protests against this equation of the active and passive, the subjective and objective. That which generates the Burden, the union of the Five Supports, is the well-known energy of tanhdy " desire,"" 1 MahCivamsa, xvii. 3, tr. Geiger. * The simultaneous issue of streams of water and fire from diflFerent parts of liis person, as it sat in the air, with the manifestation of the Six Colours. Cp. Sanianta Pasadikii in Oldenberg's Vinaya Pitaka, iii. p. 332 ; and for a late version, Bigandet's Legend of Gaudama (1866), p. 207. 3 Samyutta Nikdya, iii. p. 25 ; ti'. Warren, Buddhism in Translations, p. 161. Cp. Poussin in JRAS (1901), p. 308 ; Hardy, ibid., p. .573 ; Poussin, Bouddhisms (1909), p. 83. 32 THE ORIGINS OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM the craving for existence, for the gratifications of sense, and the pleasures of power and prosperity. How this remained at death among the factors of Karma, ready to produce a new being, was one of the mysteries which the Teacher never ex- plained. But it is worth while to notice how the vocabulary of the doctrine of " fruit," which Gotama so resolutely main- tained, led easily to the interpretation of the origin of a new person by the transmission of some form of consciousness. " Ananda has committed such and such an act ; who but he," inquired the Buddha, " will eat its fruit ? " ^ The higher insight, of course, enabled him to tell the conditions of rebirth for those who quitted this world, just as it also enabled him to retrace their previous lives.- The passage from one condition to another might be regarded as a " fall," or a " rise." The term " fall " {cuti) implied first of all a descent from a higher condition to a lower, but it came to be employed (with its associated verb cavati) more generally for the transit from one world to another.^ A similar process was expressed by another verb, okkamati, to " descend." These words doubtless belonged to the current usage in the sphere of transmigration, and enter Indian literature in its existing deposits for the first time in the early Buddhist texts. They were originally coined to express the ancient notion of a Self which, as in the elder speculations of the forest-sages, travelled by different paths to the realms of the Fathers or the Gods and back again to earth. In the Buddhist theory of man's constitu- tion what was there to " descend " ? It is with surprise that we read in the discourse which traces the origin of a human being,"* '■' If consciousness did not descend into the mother's womb, would name and form [a new person] consolidate therein ? " ^ The descending element is vinndna, the last and highest of the Five Supports. Prof. Rhys Davids prefers the rendering ' Cp. Poussin, The Way to Nirvana (1917), p. 133 f. * Thus, Dialogues, i. 91, ii. 98, "The brother named Salha hat; died at Nadika, where has he been reborn, and what is his destiny 'I " Note the formula at the end of a Jataka tale, passim, where the Buddha " makes the connexion " and identifies tlie characters, winding up with himself. ^ I)hammapa Compare the elevation of the Purusha in the Yoga school above the plurality of the Saiikhyan souls, Lect. IV., p. 214. 6 Sutk-kritanga, Jaina Sutras, in SBE, xlv. 244. THE JAINS 37 intelligent cause.^ But at the same time the desire to seek a support for the sustained moral effort which the attainment of moksha demands is plainly at work. The Jina, who is ab- solutely free from all passions and delusions, who has gained the supreme insight and has reached perfection, has passed out of the world of change and dwells at the summit of the universe. Devoid of all emotion, he resembles the gods of Epicurus in his indifference to the events and persons of the world below. As such he is superior to the devas who can still concern themselves with the affairs of men, and he may consequently be designated paramadevatd, " the highest Deity."" The believer who placed himself in thought before him, meditating on his exaltation and aspiring after his holiness, was invigorated and purified ; there was, indeed, no communion of spirit with spirit, no strength flowed in from on high to sustain the shrinking flesh ; but the act of concentration was itself a significant moral exercise. When Mahavira descended from heaven to become incarnate in the womb of the lady Devananda, the great god Qakra. performed a solemn act of " Reverence to the Arhats and Bhagavats, the perfectly enlightened ones, to the highest of men, the guides, benefactors, and enlighteners of the world, the saved and the saviours.- ... I here adore the Revered One yonder." The religious tendency is plain. Jainism is a case of arrested development. In Buddhism, on the other hand, this movement will attain much fuller expression. Both disciplines make their way amid the same environment of thought and practice. Both are confronted with the older metaphysic of Brahmanism, with the Vishnu-Krishna cult, with the devotion of the Bhagavatas.'^ The presuppositions of Buddhism, with its rejection of any permanent subject, might seem in some respects less favourable to the advance towards any form of Theism than those of its rival. Both the Jina and the Buddha are represented as only 1 But later developments admitted a Jina-pati, a Supreme Creator ; see Inscriptions of the Dekhan, 7n(fwi?(- Antiquary, vii. 106,1. 51, "the maker of the first creation." " See the long string of epithets in " Lives of the Jinas," Jairia Sfitras, in SBE, xxii. 224. 3 Cp. below, Lect. 111., p. 244 f. 38 THE ORIGINS OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM the last of a long series of twenty-four predecessors all known by name, with an endless unnamed succession stretching back through all the ages of unbeginning time. These Jinas were all separate and independent : they all possessed eternal souls ; they could not be amalgamated as manifestations of an ulterior unity, because they all coexisted together for ever and ever, and there was no superior conception which could embrace them in a real identity. What was there, then, in Buddhist doctrine which rendered this possible ? How was it that in spite of its nihilistic psychology Buddhism culminated in a doctrine of iqvara (God), who from time to time appeared among men, like Vishnu-Krishna, to teach and save ? The causes were no doubt complex. Prominent among them was the greater intensity of moral passion which marks the Buddhist literature compared with the Jain. True, the legend of Mahavira relates that the orders of the gods reached him with the command, " Arhat ! propagate the religion which is a blessing to all creatures in the world." ^ Gotama, however, is filled with an intense compassion for the world's suffering, its ignorance, and sin. He sends out his disciples to teach, as he himself teaches, in the oft-repeated formula, " for the good, the gain, and the welfare of gods and men." ^ This ethical energy is expressed in the story of the Temptation and the great conflict with Mara, to which the biography of Mahavira presents no counterpart.^ And it pervades the ideal history of Gotama's previous lives, which is traced back through the long practice of the Ten Perfections to the great moment when, as the hermit Sumedha under the Buddha Dipankara, he made the solemn act of renunciation, and instead of immediately attaining his own deliverance and crossing the ocean of samsara by himself, resolved to become a Buddha and guide men and dtvas to the 1 HBE, xxii. 195. 2 MaMvagga, i. 11, 1, in SEE, xiii. 112. 3 Cp. Mahavagga, i. 1, 7 ; 11, 2, in SEE, xiii. 78, 113. Later legend elaborated the early hints in the Padhana Sutta, Sutta Nipdta, in SEE, X. (ii.) 69, and the monograph of Windisch, Mara and Buddha (1895). See the Nidana Katha, tr. Ehys Davids, Euddhist Birth- Stories, i. (1880), 96 S. Prof. Berriedale Keith, Mythology of All Nations, vi. 197, dismisses the moral significance of the conception in favour of " the obvious conclusion that the conflict with Mara represents a nature-myth " ! THE PERSON OF THE BUDDHA 39 other side of the mighty flood.^ This resolve not to enter final peace alone, but to devote himself to the world's liberation, enables him to sustain innumerable trials, and with a strength that never falters to pace unweariedly the round of births which leads him at last to the secret of all existence. The immense force which generated this idea of an age-long pilgrimage through successive births, bearing the burden of perpetual pain for the release of all conscious existence, must have proceeded ultimately from Gotama himself. The imaginative forms in which it was expressed were no doubt at hand in many an ancient tale. But their embodiment into the scheme of the Buddhahood was due to the same enthusiasm which demanded that love should pervade all quarters of the world, sent forth the disciples to carry their Master's teaching through the length and breadth of India, and afterwards generated the splendid foreign missions which the Jains do not seem ever to have attempted. The call to labour " for the welfare of gods and men " plays a constant part in the evolution of Buddhist doctrine. But the moral demand implicit in the disciple's vow would not of itself have generated the new conception of the Buddha's person. It could not have overcome the consequences of the psychology of No-Self without the aid of a metaphysic. Gotama might refuse to reply to the inquiry whether the Tathagata would or would not exist after death. He might veil the future in mystery, and hint that it lay beyond the categories of the phenomenal world. " There is an unborn, an unoriginated, an unmade, an uncompounded ; were there not, O mendicants, there would be no escape from the world of the born, the originated, the made, the compounded." '^ How are such words to be interpreted ? Are they merely negative, a declaration of release from an existence of ceaseless change into a void where there is no birth or death, composition or dissolution ? Or do they point to a dim ontological background where there was something that endured beneath the ever-shifting appearances of the visible scene, and remained stable amid all vicissitudes of 1 Cp. Buddhist Birth- Stories, i. 13. Dipankara is entitled Jina and lokandyaka, "lord (leader) of the world," Buddhavamsa, PTS, vv, 35, 41, « Udana, viii. 3, PTS, p. 80, 40 THE ORIGINS OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM growth and decay ? That primitive Buddhism understood them in the first sense seems clear. That subsequent generations might put new meanings into them was quite possible, if any imaginative objects rose into view above the sphere of pheno- menal causation. At a very early date, probably in the lifetime of Gotama himself, the disciple who entered the Order declared his faith in " the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha." The " Dhamma " was a comprehensive term for the Teaching, embracing all the facts and conditions of existence and of escape from it, summed up in the Four Noble Truths. To realise these Truths, to see them with the inward vision of the alert mind and the pure heart, was to possess the " Eye of the Truth." ^ Under the powerful impulse of the Buddha's personality this insight is said again and again to arise in the hearer's mind. The Buddha himself was designated chakkhumd, " possessed of the Eye " ; and as the hour of death approaches on the last night, the devas who gather unseen above him weep and lament, " Full soon will the Eye of the world disappear." Among his parting counsels to his followers the dying leader warns them against supposing that they no longer had a Teacher; the Dhamma and the Vmaya, the Truth and the Rule, which he had set forth, should be their Teacher after he had gone.^ They called themselves " Sons of the Blessed One," they were " Dhamma-hoTn, Dhavima- formed, Z)Aam7nfl-heirs,"^ just as the Brahmans Avere "Sons of Brahma," " Brahma-born, Brahma-formed, Brahma-heirs." For the Tathagata might be designated " Dhamma-body Brahma- body, Dhamma-being Brahma-being.""* The Dhamma, then, formed a kind of body for the departed Teacher, through which piety could still realise an inward fellowship with him.^ Here was a new order of unseen reality. The Dhamma had a being of its own, independent of any particular Buddha. Each member of the long succession in the past had taught ^ The Dhamma- Ghakkhu, cp. ante, p. 21. 2 Dialogues, ii. 171. 3 Aggaiina Suttanta, iu Dlgha NikCnja, iii. p. 84. * Brahma is apparently used here in the sense of excellence or perfection, cp. dhamma-chakka and hrahma-chakka. ^ Cp. the dharma-h'iya of Vishnu, Vishim-Smviti (in SBE, vii.), i. 54. THE DHAMMA AS UNCONDITIONED 41 the same Dhamma ; each of those yet to come would do so like- wise. So the " Reed-Picker " Sarabhanga sang — " The self-same Path by which VipassI went, The Path of Sikhi and of Vessabhu, Of Kakusandha, Konagamanaj And Kassapa, e'en by that very Road Lo ! now to us there cometh Gotama. And all these seven Buddhas,— they for whom Craving was dead, and nought was grasped, and who Stood planted on Abolishing of 111, They taught this Norm {dhamma), ay, even such as they, Who were themselves the body of the Norm." ^ The Dhamma^ therefore, which was seen by one after another in the successive ages of an endless world-process, belonged in some way to the realm of the Unborn, the Uncompounded. In one of the latest books of the Pali canon, said to have been first published at Asoka's great Council at Patna about 246 B.C., entitled the Kathd- Vatthu,^ there is a discussion whether certain terms do not belong to unconditioned realities. Among them are Space, Nirvana, and the Four Truths.^ They are all de- scribed as asamkhata, " uncompounded." They are uncaused ; they do not belong to the realm of time and change ; they are not involved in the phenomenal order ; the Four Truths are not occasional, fetched out of the vicissitudes of experience, they are permanent ; like Plato's eiSrj, they are eternal. Just so the ancient Rishis were said to have seen the hymns of the Rig Veda in the sphere of the Deathless and the Infinite ; and the belief arose in their transcendental existence in the eternal world, while elaborate explanations were devised to account for their inclusion (for example) of the names of a country, a city, or a king.^ The Four Truths, then, had an independent being of their own, and the Dhamma thus constituted a mystical body for the Buddha when his actual person had disappeared. In ^ Dhammabhutd, as though the Dhamma were successively incarnated in them. See Mrs Rhys Davids, Psalms of the Early Buddhists, ii.. The Brethren (1913), p. 2,36. 2 Translated by She Zan Aung and Mrs Rhys Davids, under the title Points of Controversy, or Subjects of Discourse (1915), Cp. below, p. 56. 3 Book vi., 1-6, pp. 185-192. * Cp. Muir, Sanskrit Texts, in. (2nd ed. 1868), 79. 42 THE ORIGINS OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM the " Questions of Milinda " Nagasena lays it down that when his material form {rupa-hdya) had been dissolved, his Dhammu- body remained.^ Here was the beginning of a spiritual con- tinuity. The Buddha lived in his Truth. But that had been the same for all the Buddhas, and bound them into a mysteri- ous unity. If all the Dhammas were really one and the same Dhamma, might not all the Buddhas be one and the same Buddha ? Of such a conclusion there is, of course, no hint in the Pali texts. But there is a conception allied with the Buddha's person which contained large possibilities of development. It was apparently a current expectation among the Brahmans that an exalted being named Maha-Purusha - would appear, and in conformity with ancient prophecies {mantras) he would assume one of two characters : he would become a Universal Monarch ruling in righteousness, or a Blessed Buddha. Thus on the news that Gotama is reported to be a Buddha, the Brahman Pokkharasadi directs his pupil Ambattha to go and see if the reputation noised abroad regarding him is correct. Ambattha inquires how he is to know, and his teacher replies : — " " Thei'e have been handed down in our mystic verses {mantras) thirty-two bodily signs of Maha-Purusha — signs which, if a man has, he will become one of two things, and no other. If he dwells at home he will become sovi-an of the world, a righteous king, bearing rule even to the shores of the four great oceans , . . without the need of baton or sword. But if he goes forth from the household life into the houseless state, then he will become a Buddha who removes the veil from the eyes of the world." ^ The knowledge of the mantras is represented as part of the sacred lore of a Brahman, in which Ambattha has been duly instructed ;^ he is aware of the marks which will prove the claim 1 Milinda-Panha, p. 73, HBE, xxxv. 114. 2 So the Sanskrit ; Pali Mahi-Purisa, literally "Great Man." 3 Dialogues, i. 110. * Cp. Sela Sutta, in Sutta Nipdta, SBE, x. (ii.) 100 ; Majjhima Nikdya, ii. 134. ^ Cp. Dialogues, i. 146, 153 ; Majjhima N., ii. 165, 167 ; Anguttara N., i. 163, 166 ; Nfdaka Sutta, in Sutta Nipdta, ver. 690, SBE, x. (ii.) 126. Cp. four conditions entitling Mahd-Purisa to be described as of supreme intelligence, Anguttara N., ii. 35. THE BUDDHA AS MAHA-PURUSHA 43 of Gotama to the Buddhahood, and after being very rude to him he is duly convinced that the wandering Samana possesses them. What the mantras descriptive of these signs actually were no one can tell. The science of the marks was contained, we are informed by Buddhaghosa/ in 12,000 treatises, and the mantras extended through 16,000 verses. This part of Buddhist doctrine had been irrecoverably lost. There is a rough parallel with the Jewish Messianic expectation which had already bifur- cated before our era into the regal and the teaching or prophetic types. The foundations of Israel's hopes lie open in the Old Testament, but the sources of the Brahmanical verses are hidden in inaccessible obscurity. The figure of Maha-Purusha, however, is not equally obscure. Far, far back out of the recesses of the Vedic cultus he emerges as the symbol of creation by sacrifice.- A vast cosmic Man, human in person but divine in nature, submits to be offered up by the gods. To whom the oblation was made, what deities were engaged in the rite, where the altar was built, how long the ceremony lasted, we are not told. It was apparently connected with the three seasons of the year which in later speculation became the unit of time, for the spring was its ghee, the summer its fuel, and the autumn its accompanying offering. The poefs attention is concentrated on the victim and the issue of the solemn mystery. The Purusha has a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet, expressive of omniscience and omnipresence. He envelops the earth and transcends it ; he is identical with the whole universe ; he is the sum of all existence ; he includes all that is and all that shall be. From this exalted Person spring all the objects and beings of the world. It is a strange haphazard catalogue. First came curds and butter, the adjuncts of the sacrifice itself; then animals, both wild and tame. The verses of the Rig Veda followed, with their metres and sacrificial formulae. Horses came next, and all animals with two rows of teeth. From the divine mouth sprang the Brahmans, from the feet the ^udras ; and last of all appeared the visible scene, moon and sun, Indra and Agni, air, sky, earth. Here is the first expression of the idea that creation is the self- ' Sumangala Vildsini, i. 248. 2 See the famous Purusha-Sukta, Rig Verhi, x. 90. 44 THE ORIGINS OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM limitation of a transcendent Person, who manifests himself in the realm of our experience, and thereby surrenders other modes of action, pledging himself to one fixed order for his creatures' good.^ Purusha thus becomes one of the names of the ultimate Reality which early Indian philosophy discerned within the sphere of incessant change. He was the lord of the Deathless, and in that character was practically equated on the speculative side with the ground of all existence, the universal Spirit or Self, the Atman or Supreme Spirit {Paramdtman), the Brahman. Here is the repeated theme of the dialogues of the forest thinkers, summed up in the famous doctrine of ^andilya,- Purusha is the essence of all human consciousness ; only through him can we think and feel and be ourselves. He dwells in the heart, smaller than the small,^ yet he transcends all and is greater than the great. Like the Pythagorean or Platonic Monad, he is a point without parts or dimensions, and withal he is boundless as space. He is mano-maya, " made of mind," and thus grasps without hands, runs without feet, sees without eyes, hears Avithout ears, the infinite Knower, yet is known of none.* He is the goal, and also the highest way.^ But the first object with which he is identified is the sun, and meta- physic passes over into mythology ; he is " the golden " who knows all things. He shines beyond the darkness, and like the sun he fills the world. "^ He has golden hair and a golden beard ; he is golden to the tips of his nails.' Among the mysterious and elusive figures which enter the early literature is Naniyana,^ who is already identified with Purusha in the " Brahraana of a Hundred Paths," ^ and by sacrifice is said to have become the 1 Cp. Atharva Veda, xix. 6 ; x. 2. 2 Cp. Catap. Brdhmam, x. 6, 3, in SEE, xliii. 400, and CliMndog. Upanishad, iii. 14, SEE, i. 48. 3 Sometimes in the shape of a thumb. * Cp. ErUiad. Up., ii. 1, 1-20, and 3, 6 ; with the parallel in Kaushltahi Up., iv. 3 ff., SEE, XV. 100, and i. 302. Cvet. Up., ibid., xv. p. 248. 5 Katha Up., iii. 11, iv. 13, vi. 8 : SEE, xv. 13, 16, 22. 6 Cvet. Up., iii. 8 : SEE, xv. 245. ' Chhdndog. Up., i. 6, 6 : SEE, i, 13. 8 Cp. Lect. v., p. 265. 9 Cp. xii. 3, 4, 1, and xiii. 6, 1, 1 : SEE, xliv. 172, 403. THE BUDDHA AS MAHA-PURUSHA 45 universe. Narayana is the central Deity of a strange episode in the twelfth book of the great epic, the Mahahhdrata^^ where he is identified with Maha-Purusha. He is golden in colour, with a thousand eyes, a thousand arms, a hundred heads, a hundred feet.- His praises are sung in a long list of two hundred names, where he is equated with Brahman,^ as he is elsewhere with Vishnu.'* When Narada returns from the distant White Island beyond Mount Meru to the hermitage of Badari, he finds Narayana with a peculiar double, named Nara, in the form of two Rishis or sages, performing devout austerities. They are more brilliant than the sun, and they are endowed with the sacred marks of Maha-Purusha. Upon the soles of their feet, for instance, are the circles or wheels which are the emblem of the solar disc ; their fingers and toes are united by a delicate membrane ; they have sixty teeth.^ Now the marks of Maha-Purusha upon the person of the Buddha are described in a special discourse, with elaborate explanations of the moral characteristics in his previous lives to which they were due.^ The soles of his feet bear the sacred wheels with a thousand rays, because he had laboured for the welfare of the world, dispelling anxiety, terror, and fear, and providing righteous protection, defence, and guard.^ His hands and feet displayed the network between fingers and toes, because he had gathered people together by gifts and gentle words, by the practice of good, and by indifference to pain or pleasure.^ He was golden-hued ^^because he had been free from anger, hate, or discontent, and had given away soft coverlets and garments of linen, cotton, silk, or wool.'-^ Inasmuch as he 1 Cp. Lect. v., p. 264 ff. ^ xii., cantos 339, 340. ^ xii. 339. ■* xii. 340, 100. Qiva is not here mentioned. But Rudra (^iva) is described as Puruslia in a verse from R.V., x. 90, in the Cvet. Up., iii. 14, BBE, XV. 247. Cp. Lect. V., p. 230. As Uttama Purusha or Purushot- tama the identification with Vishnu becomes especially frequent in later literature, e.g. Bhagavad-Gitd, viii. 22 (Vishnu-Knshna) ; cp. the passage from the Vana Parvan, Mahabh., iii. 12, 11 ft'., quoted by Muir, Sanskrit T&ds, iv. 251 (Krishna); Vishnu-Smviti, i. 51, 58 (Narayana- Vishnu), SjB£ vii. 9, 11 ; Rdmdyana, vi. 102. " Malulhh., xii., canto 344. '' Lakkhana Suttanta, in Digha Nikdjja, iii. 142. T n. M. 16. '■> i. 28. 46 THE ORIGINS OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM had abstained from slander, had not caused discord by repeating gossip, but delighted in bringing the divided together and encouraging the united, he had forty teeth.^ It is needless to pursue the parallel. The story of the wondrous Signs goes sounding on, and in the Lalita Vistara the Buddha is formally assimilated with Narayana ; he is endowed with his might ; like him he is invincible ; he has the very being of Narayanan's Self." What process of thought led to the precise form of expecta- tion described in the Buddhist texts it is no longer possible to determine. There are earlier traces of the mysterious produc- tion of Purushas, five or seven in number, by creative energy. But no figures corresponding to the Universal Monarch ruling in righteousness, or to the All- Wise Teacher of gods and men, appear in antecedent literature.^ This dual type first comes clearly into view in connection with Gotama ; and his identifica- tion as Buddha with this exalted personality was so close that the earliest symbolic representations of him as an object of devout homage took the form of so-called " footprints," where the wheels were traced upon the soles of his feet.^ Here then was a possible starting-point for the development of a new doctrine of the Buddha's transcendent personality. If later generations of disciples should feel themselves impelled to seek for a permanent object of faith and worship, the mysterious figure of Maha- Purusha, capable of interpretation in so many different ways, provided a form of thought by which the Buddhas could be unified and grow into the likeness of God. 1 ii. 19. 2 Ndrdyandtmabhdva, quoted by Senart, La Legende du Buddha (1875), p. 148. 3 The late Maitrdyana-Brdhmana- U-panishad enumerates sixteen chakra- rartin sovereigns. For the Buddhist ideal, see the Mahd-Sndassana-Sidtanta in Dialogues, ii. 199. ^ Cp. Cunningham, The Stfipa of Bharhut (1879), p. 112. Statues and images were of later development under Greek influence ; Foucher, L'Art Gre'co-Bouddhique du Gandhdra (1905-1914), and The Begmnings of Buddhist Art, tr. L. A. Thomas and F. W. Thomas (1917), " The Greek Origin of the Image of Buddha," p. 111. The 2)dda continued to be employed aloug with complete figures, cp. Burgess, Notes on the Amardvati Stupa (1882), p. 40, Nos. 201 and 204. The Mahd-Purusha conception does not seem to have affected speculation concerning the founder of the Jains. LECTURE II THE DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM On the last night of the Teacher's life Ananda, the beloved disciple, recalls the visits which the brethren used to pay him in reverent homage, and for their own encouragement in the faith ; when he is no more they will be deprived of this help. The dying Buddha prescribes four places for pious pilgrimage : the scenes of his birth, his attainment of Supreme Enlighten- ment, the first proclamation of the Kingdom of Truth, and bis final passage from the world. Such merit would attach to those who died in these acts of devotion that they should be reborn after death in the happy realms of heaven. After the solemn rites of the cremation were completed, ands even days had been spent in every demonstration of respect with dance and music and song, garlands and perfumes, by the Mallas of Kusinara, in whose Sala-grove the Great Decease had taken place, the hallowed remains were distributed among eight adjoining clans, and mounds were raised over them for their preservation.^ When King Dutthagamini (101-77 b.c.) built the Great Mound in Ceylon on a huge platform five acres in extent, reared on four hundred elephants, each nine feet high, coated with white enamel and provided with ivory tusks,^ the miracles which had accompanied the first transport of the relics in Mahinda's day'^ were duly repeated on their deposition in the central chamber.^ "Thus are the Buddhas incomprehen- ^ Cp. ante, p. 30. On the discovery of a relic shrine of the Buddha at Piprahwa in January 1898, see the JRAS (1898), p. 573. - Cave, Ruined Cities of Ceylon (1897), p. 54. 3 Cp. ante, p. 31. * Mahdvamsa, tr. Geiger, xxxi. 98, 99. 47 48 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM sible," exclaims the pious chronicler a second time,^ " and incom- prehensible is the nature of the Buddhas, and incomprehensible is the reward of those who have faith in the incomprehensible." But Dutthagamini was visited with mortal disease, and charged his brother Tissa to complete the immense structure. When it was finished the sick king was carried in his palanquin to pay it homage in the midst of a vast assemblage of the brethren. As they chanted in chorus hymns of devout praise, six heavenly cars arrived, each with its divine charioteer, who invited him to ascend to his special heaven. " Which of the celestial worlds is the most beautiful ? " inquired the king ; and the venerable Elder Abhaya told him of the Tusita city where dwelt — not the Buddha — but the compassionate Metteyya, the Buddha-to-be, waiting for the time of his future birth on earth.'- And Dutthagamini closed his eyes and passed away, and was immedi- ately seen reborn in celestial form and standing in the Tusita car. Thrice did he drive round the Great Thupa, showing himself in all his glory to the people ; and when he had done reverence to the Mound and to the Order, he passed into the Tusita heaven.^ I Piety could, however, use the language of religion. When the Buddha'^s cousin, the ambitious Devadatta, endeavoured to create a schism in the brotherhood, and the earth opened and swallowed him up, he took refuge in the Teacher for the rest of his lives as devdtideva, ^^deva above all devas.'''"^ But in * Mahdva>»sa, tr. Geiger, p. 125, cp. xvii. 56, 65. 2 Cp. ante, p. 5. ^ Ibid., xxxii. * Milinda-Pauha,]^. Ill, "god of gods," tr. Rhys Davids, SBE, xxxv. 167. The king starts a dilemma parallel with that of Gelsus, who asked how it was that Jesus, who knew what was in man, should have admitted a traitor among the Twelve. The Buddha must have foreseen that Devadatta would seek his life and render himself liable to age-long suifering in hell ; either, therefore, he was not really omniscient, or he was not all-merciful, in ordaining him and thus exposing him to what would prove over- mastering temptation and involve a terrible penalty. The Buddha is justified by the promise that the penal discipline would do its corrective work, and at the end of the world -age Devadatta would become a Paccheka-Buddha (a peculiar modification of the ideal, " a Buddha for one," i.e. possessing Enlightenment, but unable to communicate it). THE BUDDHA AS KING 49 Buddhist theory devas were, as we have seen, still mortal, and their superior, the Tathagata, was distinguished from them by passing away — not into some new birth — but out of all limitations of existence without leaving a trace behind. Yet faith could still conceive him as its king. "Why did the Buddha claim that title ? " asks Milinda. And Nagasena, among other reasons, vindicates his sovereign thus : — ^ "A king means one who rules and guides the worlds and the Blessed One rules in righteousness over the ten thousand world- systems ; he guides the whole world with its men and gods, its Maras and Brahmas [powers of evil and good], and its teachers, whether Samanas or Brahmans. A king is one who, when pleased with a strenuous servant, gladdens his heart by bestowing on him, at his own good pleasure, any costly gift the officer may choose. And the Blessed One, when pleased with anyone who has been strenuous in word or deed or thought, gladdens his heart by bestowing upon him, as a selected gift, the supreme deliverance from all sorrow, — far beyond all material gifts," This is the style not of a dead but of a living Lord. " If thou hast thy thought on me," says Krishna to Arjuna, "thou shalt by my grace pass over all hard ways. . . . Surrendering all the Laws, come for refuge to me alone. I will deliver thee from all sins."^ The devotional idiom is different, but the fundamental conception is not dissimilar. Buddhism was sur- rounded with religions and philosophies which could hardly fail to affect many of its adherents.^ Brahma still held his place as the God of the " lower knowledge " as the Vedanta afterwards designated it, the world of a relative reality.* The great sectarian deities, Vishnu and ^iva, were rising into prominence.^ The monotheistic worshippers of the Bhagavat Vasudeva were winning converts in the West.^ To the Scinkhyan philosophy, with its plurality of eternal souls, Patanjali, whom tradition named as the author of the Yoga Sutras,' added one Supreme Purusha, and thus converted an atheistic {mrl(;vara) system into 1 SBE, xxxvi. 28 f. - Bhagavad Glta, tr. Barnett, xviii. ^8, 66. 3 Just as, in its turn, it exerted influence on them. See below, p. 303. ^ Cp. Lect. VI., p. 326. ^ Cp. Lect. V., iMssim. « Cp. Lect. v., p. 245. ? Cp. Lect. IV., p. 212. 4> 50 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM a kind of limited theism {se^vara). Speculation was active on all hands, and the tragic vicissitudes of life brought typical expressions of despair or unbelief. No poet ever formulated the great problem with the poignancy of Job. But when King Yudhishthira and his queen Draupadi were robbed of their king- dom and driven into exile, the royal lady could not forbear from impeaching the divine justice.^ She urges vengeance on the oppressor, but the king proclaims the duty of forgiveness : " For- giveness is virtue, is sacrifice, is the Vedas, is Brahma, is truth ; by forgiveness is the world upheld." The outraged queen, however, will have none of it : his virtues and his sacrifices count for nothing, men have no more freedom in God's hands than dolls pulled by wires ; like a bird tied by a string or a bull with a rope through his nose, man must follow his Creator's will ; he has no self-direction ; God plays with his creatures like a child with his toys. Falling back upon the doctrine of the Deed, she boldly applies it to God as universal Agent, and declares that he who has done such wrong is defiled by it. What fruit, then, shall he reap ? If no consequence touches him, then there is no moral order, might is the only power, "and I grieve," adds the unhappy sufferer, "for the weak." " That is the doctrine of the Nastikas," replies the king : - he had given what should be given and done what should be done, seeking no " fruit," desiring no reward. " Doubt not nor censure Providence"; revelation and experience confirm each other ; " Learn to know God and submit to him, by whose mercy mortals become immortal." The Buddhist criticism of theism starts from a similar point of view, and assumes that God, if he exists, must be the sole cause of all that happens. The whole series of events issues from his arbitrary will; man has no freedom of his own; the interpretation of life is rigidly determinist. In one of the Jataka stories-' the future Buddha, in the guise of an ascetic, has occasion to refute the several heresies of a king of Benares 1 Mahdbhdrata, iii. (Vaua Parvau), canto 30 ; cp. Hopkins, Religim.s of India (1895), p. 384. Cp. below, p. 158 f. - Ihid., canto 31, the sceptics, who say "Na asti," "there is not,'' ante, p. 17. 3 No. 528, Engl, trans., v. 122. EARLY CRITICISM OF THEISM 51 and his five councillors. He is charged with having killed a monkey and eaten its flesh. " Why," he asks the believer in a Supreme Being {issnra = li^vara), " do you blame me if you really fall back on the doctrine of creation by God ? " " If there exists some Lord all powerful to fulfil In every creature bliss or woe, and action good or ill, That Lord is stained with sin. Man does but work his will." The argument is elaborated in a Sanskrit version of the same tale in the Jdtaka-Mdld or Garland of Birth- Stories, ascribed to Ariya ^ura.^ If the liOrd does everything, he killed the monkey ; but if because of his compassionateness this act is not to be imputed to him, the doctrine of his sole causation falls to the ground, and his exclusive sovereignty with it. Praise and supplication can have no propitiatory value if the Self-Born himself offers them to himself, and sacrifice is unmeaning when he is the sacrificer. Moreover, if it is the Lord who commits all sins, what virtue does he possess to call forth devotion {bhakti) } '^ And if, since he abhors wickedness, he is not their author, it is wrong to affirm that he is the universal agent, and his claim to supreme power is undone. Similar reasoning is still further developed in a Chinese work professing to be a translation of the Buddha-Charita of the famous Indian poet A9vaghosha, made by Dharmaraksha about A.D. 420.-^ Anathapindika, " the Friend of the Orphan and the Destitute," entered the first Path after hearing the Buddha 1 Translated Ijy Speyer, Sacred. Books of the Buddhists, i. (1895), 210 f. 2 See below, Lect. V., p. 244. 3 Translated by Beal, SBE, xix. The Chinese work is much expanded from A§vaghosha's original composition ; cp. Cowell's transl., SBE, xlix. From what source the additions were derived is not known ; the passage in question is among them. Beal assumes (p. xxxiii) that the Chinese version represents the entire poem as it came from the author's hands. Agvaghosha is now recognised as one of the most eminent poets of India, equally at home in epic, dramatic, and lyric modes. He was converted from Brahmanism, to which he belonged hereditarily, and joined the school of the Realists (sarvdsti-vddAns), and flourished in the reign of the Indo- Scythian King Kanishka, whose date is unfortunately uncertain, ± 100 A.D. Cp. Winternitz, Geschichte der IndAschen Literatur, ii. (erste Hiilfte, 1913), 201 ff. 52 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM preach, and by so doing dispersed a number of erroneous views as the autumn winds scatter piles of cloud.^ How is the world with all its varieties and contradictions to be explained ? Are its vicissitudes due to its intrinsic constitution {svabhdva, " self- nature"), to Time, to the (Universal) Self?^ Are they un- caused, or may they be referred to a common origin in God? The arguments under the last head are curiously though briefly intertwined. On moral lines it is urged that if all acts are his, all ethical distinctions disappear, the pure and the impure deeds come alike from him, and nothing is any longer wrong or right. Good and evil as we know them lose all their opposition when both issue from one will. If the Lord is really the world's creator, there should be no question about his existence, for how can he be the author of doubts of his own being.? Nor should there be any rebellion against his ordinances, as if he were divided against himself; nor any adoration of more gods than one, implying that he wor- shipped others than himself. Metaphysically, the conception of Self-existence involved the ideas of eternity, completeness, immutability. But the world of our experience is full of change. Its events move on from moment to moment, and this Time-succession is inconsistent with the Everlasting. Moreover, if he was his own cause, what need had he to pro- duce at all? What was the object of creating a phenomenal world? If it issued from some purpose, or expressed some desire, or satisfied some want, a new element must have arisen in the divine consciousness, a sense of need betraying incompleteness; his Self-existence was not all-inclusive. And if he created with no definite aim, his action was no better than a child's. Further, if God were sole cause, the totality of being, the world must have been created as a corresponding totality. The cause could not exist without its effect. But the universe is no static whole, complete at once. It is a process, unfolding a series of different occurrences. Each fresh step would require a fresh causal act ; whenever the divine will was moved to operate, something must have determined him to bring about this result instead of some other, and thus a 1 Beal, p. 206. - Cp. gvetd^v. Up., i. 2 : SBE, xv. 232. THE BELIEVER'S NEEDS 53 plurality of causes would be carried back into the indivisible and immutable essence of the ultimate Deity.^ II These difficulties Theistic Buddhism quietly ignored. It was concerned rather with the believer's moral needs than with the intellectual interpretation of the world. Not the universe and the nature of its cause was the theme of inquiry, but the character of human experience, its dangers and its victory. The issues of good and evil, the perils of temptation, the call to self-conquest, the peace of attainment, filled the disciple's mind. The early conversions, effected under the immediate influence of Gotama, placed the believer in direct relations with a powerful personality. When the first mission- aries went forth to proclaim the saving truth, they could not set their hearers in the same immediate contact with the Teacher, and a new demand for faith was naturally awakened. Once started, this element in the believer's consciousness of dependence on the Master who was the Revealer of the secret of existence, the Guide of erring mortals through the snares of earth, the Deliverer of the stormed-tossed on the ocean of mortality, rose higher and higher. It was not enough that he should have committed his doctrine and discipline to faithful followers whose concord should guarantee their transmission without change.'^ Nor did it suffice that piety should be fed by contemplation of the scenes and incidents of the past, as the pilgrim meditated in the garden of the Birth, beneath the tree of the Enlightenment, or in the grove of the most holy Death. Struggling with weakness and buffeted by trial, he longed for the support of a living fellowship. Around him were devotions which offered the help of divine grace to those who sought it with sincere and humble minds. Philosophy might exhort men ' Cp. the later argument of Yasomitra, in his commentary on the AbkidJumna-Koga of Vasubandhu, cited by Burnouf, Introduction a I'Histoire du Bouddhisme Indien- (1876), p. 510. The hypothesis of I§vara, as presented by Buddhist criticism, was unguarded by any form of Logos doctrine. * Cp. the " Four Great Authorities," in the Mahd-Parinihhdna Suttanta, iv. 7, Dialogues, ii. 133. 54 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM to be their own lamps, their own refuge ; ^ religion craved for the promise of a present aid. The endeavour of Gotama to withdraw a number of difficult questions from the field of discussion was only partially success- ful. He might strive to concentrate attention and effort on the moral conditions needful for release from rebirth. But this analysis only stimulated intellectual activity, and the disciples, exposed to opposition and criticism, soon began to raise difficulties and develop differences which resulted in the formation of divergent though not necessarily hostile schools. In the second century after the Buddha's death no less than eighteen of these varieties can be already traced.- They may be grouped in two main divisions. On one side stood the Thera-vddins, or followers of the doctrine of the Elders, who maintained the orthodox tradition, now preserved in the Pali Canon. On the other were the Mahd-sanghikas, or adherents of the Great Council or Assembly. The story of this movement is involved in hopeless confusion. Between the Ceylonese and Tibetan accounts the conflict of testimony is too great to allow of any definite conclusion as to the origin of the schism. When the Council was held, what circumstances led to its meeting, what members of the Order attended it and in what numbers, where the gathering took place and what resolutions it adopted — all these particulars needful for adequate historical judgment are beyond our present reach.^ But the seceders from the original fellowship were strong enough to produce seven inde- pendent branches within their own ranks, and they held their ground for many centuries. The first Chinese pilgrim, who came to find the proper Vinaya or Rule of Discipline, discovered a Mahasanghika copy in a monastery at Patna belonging to the Maha- Yana type (the so-called Great Vehicle % which was supposed to be derived from the original work preserved in the famous Vihara in the Jeta-grove.^ Along the lines of practical 1 » Atta-dipa atta-saraiifi," ihvl, ii. 26, Dialogues, ii. p. 108. 2 Cp. Prof. Rhys Davids, in the JRAS (1891), "The Sects of the Buddhists," p. 409. 3 Cp. Poussin, in Hastings' ERE, iv., " Councils (Buddhist)." 4 See below, p. 63 \ '•> Legge, Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, p. xxxv. THE BUDDHA AS ABOVE THE WORLD 55 observance the Mahasanghikas might thus believe themselves in harmony with orthodox tradition. But other departments of the Scriptures might be enriched with new works. Yuan Chwang, whose interests were much wider than those of his predecessor, studied some Abhidharma treatises in a monastery in the Andhra country ^ belonging to this great school. Among its subdivisions was an important body which held the doctrine that the Buddha was lol'uttara, " above the world," transcending the needs and habits of ordinary life. This view is elaborated in a lengthy work known as the Mahd-Vastu, or "Sublime Story,"- which presents (amid a large mass of incongruous material) the tale of the Teacher"'s life as far as the beginning of his long ministry. What new elements does it add to the traditions of the Elders ? ^ The doctrine of the descent of the future Buddha from the Tusita heaven to take his last birth on earth was well established in the early texts, with all the detail of holy incident investing an event so august. The Lumbini garden where he entered this mortal scene, the sacred Bodhi-tree, the deer-park at Benares where he founded the Kingdom of the Truth, the grove at Kusinara where he passed away, — did not these witness to the reality of his career ? One of the latest books of the Piili Canon throws an interesting light on the beginnings of fresh * On the eastern coast, north of Madras, along the river Krishna ; Beal, Life of Hiuen Tsiang, p. 137 ; Watters, On Yua7i Chwang, ii. 214-217. - So Rhys Davids, or otherwise " the Great Matter " (Poussin). 3 This work was published by M. Senart. in three vols. (Paris, 1882- 1897), on the basis of texts from Nepal. It is written in " mixed Sanskrit," and was reckoned as a Vinaya text, though it contains no rules for the Order, but only relates the events preceding its formation. Cp. the demonstration by Windisch, Die Konqjosition des Mahuvastu (Leipzig, 1909), that much of Mahdvagga, 1-24, is reproduced with verbal dependence in its last section. Its contents appear to be of various ages. Some of its verses are of the old ballad type scattered in some of the Pali books ; but it mentions the late school of the Yogacfiras, and it refers to Chinese and Huns. It has doubtless received successive additions, and while the origin of the compilation may well be ancient, its present form can hardly be earlier than the sixth century. Cp. Barth, Jourital des Bavants (1899), p. 628 f.; Winternitz, Gesch. der Lid. Lit., ii. (erste Hfilfte), 187. The Mahasanghikas belonged to the so-called Hina-Yilna (below, p. 63 '^) ; but this did not exclude some exalted views of the person of the Buddha. 56 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM exaltation of his person. At the council of Patna in the reign of Asoka, about 246 b.c, the presiding elder Tissa brought forward a work known as the Kathd-Vatthtc, or "Subjects of Discourse." ^ It deals with a great variety of disputed themes, psychological, ethical, metaphysical, " that there is a persisting personal entity," " that everything exists " {i.e. there is a direct perception of external objects, a form of realism opposed to the empirical idealism of the true faith), "that an Arahat could fall away " because previous Karma may cause him to sin (an implicit determinism repudiating all spontaneous initiative or personal effort), " that animals may be reborn in heaven," " that the sphere of Infinite Space is unconditioned." Few problems are suggested concerning the Buddha, but they already show that faith and imagination are at work to elevate his person above human limits. " Was not his ordinary vohdra,'''' his habit, usage, practice, " loJcuttara, above the world," super- mundane?^ Was it not wrong to say that the Buddha had lived in personal contact with the world of men?^ Beneath the query, the commentator explains, lay the belief that he had remained in the Tusita heaven, sending to earth a specially created form.^ This involved the further question who taught the Dhamma ? to \. hich two answers were given, the phantom shape produced from above the sky, and the venerable Ananda.^ Bolder still was the speculation that Buddhas could "stand" (i.e. pervade or persist) in all directions, in the four quarters, the nadir or the zenith.^ This was especially attributed to the Maha- sanghikas, and plays a conspicuous part in the Mahd- Vastu. 1 Translated by Shwe Zaii Aung and Mrs Rhys Davids, under the title Points of Gontrorersy (1915). Prof, de la Vallee Poussin has expressed grave doubt of the accuracy of the tradition. Cp. ante, p. 41. 2 ii. 10, p. 134. Mrs Rhys Davids points out that vohdra " refers to common, worldly matters in general," but in the discussion which follows the illustrations are all confined to speech. The subsequent lokuttara doctrine far transcended this limitation. 2 xviii. 1. ** Cp. the early Christian Docetism. On this whole question see Anesaki, in Hastings' EBE, iv., "Docetism (Buddhist)"; Oltramare, "Un Pro- blfeme de I'Ontologie Bouddhique," in Le Museon (3™^ serie), I. i. (Cam- bridge), 1915. ^ xviii. 2. ^ xxi. 6. THE EXALTATION OF THE BUDDHA 57 The length of this work far exceeds that of the oldest surviv- ing presentation of the sacred story, now embodied in the Nidana-Kaihd, at the opening of the commentary of the Jataka-book,^ just as it also surpasses the expanded form of the Lalita Vistara." Here are numerous birth-stories, some of which belong to the common stock, while others have no known parallels ; tales about earlier Buddhas ; hymns of praise such as were sung in other devotions to Vishnu ; wonders of ancient sages; a story of creation (i. 338 fF.) following that of the Agganna Suttanta in the ancient Canon ;^ a scheme of moral discipline for those who sought to become Buddhas. With the grandiosity of Indian imagination the universe is conceived on an enormously extended scale. A single Buddha-kshetra or field of action embraces no less than sixty-one Great Chiliocosms : * the number of Buddhas existing at any moment defies all reckoning.^ In these exalted conditions they have nothing in common with the world ; ^ everything about them is lokoitara, " super-natural " ; true, they may seem to think, speak, act, suffer like ourselves, but they are only conforming to the world's usage (for the welfare of others), while they conform at the same time to the transcendent doctrine.' The miracles of con- ception and birth are all outside nature ; they are self-caused ; the Buddhas owe nothing to father or mother, they produce themselves,^ they are svagtma-nirvrittd, " complete by their own qualities," almost equivalent to the designation of Brahma himself as svayam-bhu, " self-existent." ^ This absolute character ' Cp. Rliys Davids, Buddhist Birth-Stm-ies, 1880, p. 2 flf. 2 See below, p. 64 '\ ^ Digha Nikdya, iii. p. 80. * A Great Chiliocosm appears to have comprised a thousand million worlds, each with its sun and moon, mountains and continents, up to the Brahma heavens ; Beal, Catena of Buddhist Scriptures, p. 102. ^ i. 121, 126 ; and p. xxxii. " "Lokena samam," i. 159^. ^ Cp. i. 168 8-9; " Lokanuvartanfim Buddha anuvartanti laukiklm, Prajnaptim anuvartanti yatha lokottaram api." 8 i. 145*, "upapaduka bhavanti," the equivalent of the Pilli opapatika. M. Senart refers to his notes in Journ. Asiat. (1876), t. ii. pp. 477-478. 9 Cp. Earth, Journal des Savants (1899), p. 468. 58 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM does not yet belong to the Buddhas, though Dipankara promises its " likeness " to the future ^akya-muni.^ No attempt, how- ever, is yet made to connect the innumerable Buddhas with each other, still less to unify them. Imagination can multiply them indefinitely without difficulty; it cannot so far conceive them as One. No single personality as yet embraces them all as manifestations of himself.- The multiplication of the Buddhas and the exaltation of their powers are not, however, the only significant features of this book. As the Buddhas have become practically infinite in number, the multitudes of the Buddhas- to-be, the Bodhi- sattvas, have increased in like manner. The change is significant. A new moral aim is now set before the believer. The old ideal of the Arahat or saint, intent on working out his own deliver- ance, has been found too narrow. Personal holiness is, indeed, still essential ; but the true disciple looks beyond his own attainment ; he, too, must seek to become a Buddha, and take his share in the great process of the world's salvation. Ill It had been the task of primitive Buddhism to conduct the believer across the ocean of existence. Like the early Christian, he was concerned primarily with his own escape from the conse- quences of ignorance and sin. But, like the Christian disciple, he was no sooner himself converted than he was summoned to convert others. He must, indeed, prepare himself to meet opposition, obloquy, blows; he may be stoned, beaten with swords, or deprived of life. When Punna asks the Buddha's permission to go and preach to the Sunas (? Huns) of the West, these possibilities are successively pressed upon him, and each shall be met, he says, with thankfulness that it is no worse. The story was evidently impressive, for it is related twice in the 1 i. 4^*^, "svayamblifi-samata." 2 Mahfi-Purusha, of course, is not forgotten, cp. purushottamatcl, i. 3, 8. Cp. some passages from Vasumitra's Treatise on the Points of Contention by the Different Schools of Buddhism, first translated by Kumfirajiva, who came to China a.d. 401, reproduced by Suzuki, Outlines of Mahdydna Buddhism (1907), pp. 248-251. TASKS OF CONVERSION 59 Pali Canon/ and reappears with much greater elaboration in a Nepalese Sanskrit text known since the days of Burnouf as the Divydvaddnar The last suggestion, that the brutal Sunas may actually kill him, only draws from Punna (in the Pali) the quiet remark : " I shall say to myself — there are disciples who go forth loathing and despising the body and life, to seek the weapons of destruction ; now, without seeking, I have found them." The Buddha approves his forbearance, and gives his consent. The later Sanskrit version, however, adds a fresh touch. When Purna says that he will think " How kindly are these ^ronas to free me from this body with so little pain," the Buddha approvingly bids him depart upon his venture : " Go, Purna, delivered thyself, deliver others ; arrived at the other shore, guide others over ; having attained Nirvana, lead others thither." But was the ordinary Arahat equal to this duty.? The Buddha had announced that, like all human things, his Order would be exposed to corruption and decline. What provision would then be made for the maintenance and diffusion of the Teaching "? Would the Path of Release disappear amid the dis- tractions of the world, and the call to Liberation be heard no more? An answer was found for a time in the promise that a Buddha-to-be, the Bodhisatta Metteyya — the impersonation of that mettd which was the Buddhist counterpart to love or charity — should descend from the Tusita heaven where he dwelt in bliss till the appointed hour.^ No other figure was ever placed beside him in the Pali tradition, nor was any cultus offered to him in Ceylon, Burma, or Siam. But he played an important part in later faith. The Chinese pilgrims Fah Hien * and Yuan Chwang ^ both describe a wonderful statue of him in * Majjhima Nikdya, iii. 267 ; Samyutta N., iv. 60. 2 Edited by Cowell and Neill (1886), p. 24. 3 Cakkavatti-Sihanada-Suttanta, in Dlgha Nikdya, iii. p. 76 ; Questions of Milinda, in SEE, xxxv. 225. •* Tr. Legge, chaps, vi.-vii. ^ Beal, i. 134 ; Watters, i. 239. For artistic representations, cp. Foucher, L'Iconographie Bouddhique (1900), p. Ill ; Griinwedel-Burgess, Buddhist Art in India (1901), p. 185 ; Griinwedel, Mijthologie des Buddhismus in Tibet (1900), p. 120. In a Chinese inscription at Bodh Gaya (date about 60 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM the Upper Indus valley beside a great monastery. Carved in wood, it rose to a height of one hundred feet, and on fast-days it emitted a mysterious light. Thrice had the sculptor been taken up to the Tusita heaven (so legend told) by the Arahat Madhyantika to study his person and marks ; and Fah Hien piously ascribed to its influence the spread of Buddhism in the West. In the " Lotus of the Good Law ''' ^ Maitreya is ajita or invictus. To his heaven Yuan Chwang aspired to ascend when the pirates' knife set him free from the bonds of the flesh ; ^ and when he lay on his death-bed in his native land, his labours done, it was with a hymn of praise to Maitreya on his lips that he passed away.^ The Pali tradition looked no further. Its work was done when the saint had perfected his personal holiness. But a whole people of saints could do no more for the world when they died except bequeath to posterity the memory of their example. Meanwhile the great idea of Deliverance never ceased to summon fresh labourers into the field. It impelled Asoka, the first Buddhist sovereign, whose dominions are said to have exceeded the British Empire in India to-day, to dedicate his son to the cause, and send him to plant the new truth in Ceylon. In the midst of incredible perils it was carried by a long succession of teachers, converted Brahmans, princes, nobles, men of various races and degrees, moved (as the chronicler has it) by a desire to convert the world — " for when the world's welfare is con- cerned who could be slothful or indifferent.^" — over the great mountain barrier through Eastern Asia. Under this potent impulse vast new developments took place. Imagination ranged freely through immense magnitudes of space and time. The picture of the saint, victor over temptation and enjoy- ing his own peace, ceased to satisfy pious aspiration. Were there not beings in other realms, above, below, who needed the saving knowledge just as much as the children of men ? Had not the Buddha himself ascended to the Tusita heaven A.D. 1000) a figure of Maitreya surmounts those of Qakya Muni and his six predecessors ; Chavannes, Rev. de VHist. des Religions, xxxiv. (1896), p. 2. 1 See below, p. 78. - Cp. p. 5. ^ Life, tr. Beal, p. 217. Cp. Dutthagilmini in Ceylon, above, p. 48. DEMAND FOR THE WORLD'S DELIVERANCE 61 to preach the Dhamma to his mother ? His purpose, therefore, must embrace all orders of existence, and extend itself from heaven to hell. So a new type of devotion was elaborated. As the Buddhas were multiplied, the Buddhas-to-be were increased to match. The disciple was presented with a fresh task. A larger demand was made upon his energy. His own salvation ceased to be his first object ; his personal escape from the sorrows of transmigra- tion was merged in a wider summons. He must enter the war- fare with evil on behalf of the whole world's emancipation, and share the perpetual labours of universal release. For this end he, too, must make his toilsome way along the far-stretching road to Buddhahood and prepare to engage in the long contest with ignorance and suffering and sin. The elder Buddhism had already created the imaginary type of the great choice between personal escape from liability to rebirth and the rescue of others from the pains and perils of the samsdra in the vow of the hermit Sumedha. Far, far back in the days of the Buddha Dlpankara,^ he had realised that he might, if he pleased, then and there cut off the roots of life and cease to be. " But why,'' he thought to himself, " should I attain deliverance alone ? I will embark on the ocean of existence in a ship that will convey men and devas."" The discipline which would open the way to perfect knowledge was summed up in the practice of Ten Pdramitds or transcendent virtues, which were illustrated in the stories of the Buddha's previous births.^ What emotions might be roused by 1 The love of gigantic numbers is already at work. Between Sumedha'a vow and the birth of Gotama the future Buddha must labour for four asankhcyyas and 100,000 world-ages. An asankheyya was 10,000,000-'^, or 1 followed by 140 cyphers. During all this period his purpose could never falter, and its ultimate achievement was foreseen by Dlpankara. See the Niddna-Katha, tr. Rhys Davids, in Buddhist Birth-Stories, p. 13. Fah Hien (tr. Legge, p. 106) and I-Ching, tr. Takakusu, p. 197, only reckoned three asankhja kalpas, cp. p. 213. 2 According to the Buddhavamsa, they were " giving," morality, renuncia- tion of the world, msdom or knowledge, energy, forbearance or patience, truthfulness, resolution, charity or love, equanimity. The enumeration is quite unsystematic. Each virtue might be practised in three degrees, e.g. " giving " rose from ordinary alms or the bestowal of ordinary goods through the sacrifice of limbs or eyes to the surrender of child or wife or life. Cp. the frequent enumerations of similar virtues in the Mahabharata, Lect. III. 62 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM their moving incidents was recorded by the pious Fah Hien on witnessing a semi-dramatic presentation of them at a great festival in Ceylon.^ To this end now was the disciple of the higher devotion himself summoned. How the impulse to take part in the world's deliverance first acquired this form we cannot tell. It was the natural sequel of the Imitatio Buddhce which had been held up before believers from the first. That which had been possible for the Buddhas of the past must be no less open to the efforts of the future. To Gotama the whole scene of existence had appeared wrapped in flames. As he sat on a hill called Gaya-Head, near the place of the Great Enlightenment, surrounded by a thousand disciples who had all been worshippers of the sacred Fire, he declared that everything was burning.^ The flames of lust and anger and ignorance, of birth and death, of grief and lamentation and suffering and despair, were con- suming all outward objects and all inward feelings. The parable is presented anew in a famous text, the "Lotus of the Good Law," ^ under the image of a house on fire. The house- holder sees his children within playing with their toys, uncon- scious of danger even though scorched by the flames, and calls them out into safety by promises of delightful carts drawn by bullocks, goats, or deer, waiting outside for them to play with.* They represent three " goings " or " courses," and so three modes of transportation, three forms of transit across the world of transmigration into the safety of Nirvana. The ordinary disciple who takes refuge in the authority of the Buddha and the observance of his precepts for the acquisition of the know- ledge of the Four Truths, cares only for his own deliverance, and chooses a cart yoked with deer. Others for the same end seek the higher knowledge independently, without a teacher, aiming at self-restraint and tranquillity, and the comprehension ^ Legge, p. 105 f. 2 MaMvagga, i. 21, in Vinaya Texts, SBE, xiii. 134. Tradition said that the figure was suggested by the outbreak of a fire on the opposite hill ; Rhys Davids, Buddhism (SPCK), p. 59. 3 See below, p. 76, SBE, xxi. 72 ff. * In the sequel of the story only bullock carts are actually provided, a symbolic detail, of which more hereafter. MODES OF DELIVERANCE 63 of causes and effects. They are the Pratyeka-Buddhas, " singly enhghtened," who attain the truth themselves but cannot impart it to others.^ Theirs are the carts drawn by goats. Yet a third group desire a yet fuller knowledge, the knowledge which secures also the powers of the Tathagata himself, " for the sake of the common weal and happiness, out of compassion to the world, for the benefit, weal, and happiness of the world at large, both gods and men, for the sake of the complete Nirvana of all beings." These choose the largest carts, to which the bullocks are harnessed. They are the Bodhisattvas who, " coveting the Great Vehicle, fly from the triple world." ■^ ^ Individual Buddhas who bear tlie same relation to the supreme Buddha which the Pratyeka-Brahmas bear to the supreme Brahma ; Senart, Mahdvashi, i. 457. Cp. Devadatta, ante, p. 48 *. 2 Lotus, p. 80. These three classes are recognised in the Pali Canon, e.g. Anguttara Nikdya, ii. 245 ; Khuddaka N., canto viii. 15 ; according to the late commentary on the Buddhavamsa (PTS, 1882), ed. Morris, p. 10 f., each of the three has a vachana, "word" or teaching. The term " Vehicle," employed by modern students since the days of Burnouf, was used by Reniusat in his translation of Fah Hien (Foe Koue Ki, 1836, p. 9), as the equivalent of the Chinese ching. Ta ching is first rendered by "la grande translation," or "revolution." Its counterpart is siao ching, "la petite translation." Ching denotes not only "le passage d'un lieu a un autre," but also the means of transport, such as a car. It is thus the equivalent of the Sanskrit and Pali ydna, which has the same meanings. Remusat goes on to observe that the "vehicule" which is common to all these " translations " is the contemplation of the Four Truths. The term " Vehicle " then became the accepted equivalent of ydiia. Three ydnus are recognised in the Mahdvasta, ii. 362^, where they provide the means by which homage to the Buddha leads to Nirvana ; they are not, however, separately characterised. The Lalita Vistara already mentions the two terms afterwards so clearly distinguished by the Chinese pilgrims, the Hlna-Ydna ("low" or "little Vehicle") and ^\ie Mahd-Ydna (the "great Vehicle"), see Prof. Vidyfibhushana's citations, JBAS (1900), p. 29. But the Hma-Yana is there contrasted with the Uddr a- Buddha- Dharma, the " glorious Buddha-religion," as if it was an altogether different " course " or method of deliverance. Arya-deva, who passed in later generations as one of the great masters of Maha-Yana " in antiquity," and is several times cited by Yuan Chwang as a disciple of Nugarjuna (in the second century ; cp. Beal, ii. 97, 302 ; Watters, ii. 100, 200, etc.), also contrasts the "people of the Hina-Yana," " afraid of death at every step," with the " man of the Maha-Yana," " clad with the armour of mercy" ; and there certainly seems some ground for the suggestion of Prof. Vidyabhushana that the term 64 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM The figure has changed since Sumedha resolved to traverse the ocean of existence in a ship which would hold men and devas besides himself. The vessel which would make its labori- ous course over life's stormy sea is now presented as a majestic car, driven through a field of battle in the great warfare with ignorance and sin. The charioteer is " clad with the armour of mercy " ; his weapons are sympathy and morality : he is " intent on rescuing the world" ;^ "great in force, efficient in means, firm in purpose, unwearied, he conquers in the strenuous fight and sets others free." For selfish ends men will submit to suffering from cold and wind ; " Why," asks the poet, " will they not suffer for the sake of the world ? " This is the note of the new Buddhism, as the disciple is challenged to enter the fellowship of the Bodhisattvas, and devote himself to the welfare of beings of every rank.^ In the gigantic expansion of the universe and the boundless multiplicity of its Buddhas, the Maha-Yana texts summon myriads of Bodhisattvas to attend them, numerous as the sands of the Ganges, or even nine or twenty such sacred streams.^ In practical application the may have been originally used of non-Buddhists, i.e. Brahmans. Its use by the Chinese pilgrims is, however, quite clear ; it is applied to the older Buddhism of the Pali Canon. Prof, Bendall (in a note on the communica- tion of Prof. Vidyabhushana, ibid.., p. 41) quotes from an early Maha-Yana Sutra (of course without a date) the identification of the Hina-Yana with " the ijdna of the (^rfivakas (" hearers " or disciples) and Pratyeka-Buddhas." Pandit H. P. ^astri, in the Journal of the Buddhist Text Society (1894), ii. 6, proposed the terms "Higher Road" and "Lower Road," on the ground that the word " Vehicle " did not convey all the meanings involved in the word ydna. 1 Jagad-uddharana, Arya-deva, in JRAS (1900), p. 31. 2 This aim was not unrecognised in the older teaching. The Buddha- vamsa, after relating Sumedha's vow, enumerates eight conditions (dhammas) as necessary for success ; the aspirant must be a human being, male, an arahat, must make his vow before a Buddha, have attained the necessary knowledge and virtue, have abandoned the world, and possess the needful resolution and steadfastness of purpose. See ver. 69, and the commentary, Jdtaka, i. 14 ; and Warren, Buddhism in Translations, p. 14. But no discipline was laid out for his advance. ' So the Lotus., and the Lalita Vistara. In the latter book the career of the Bodhisattva Gautama from birth to Buddhahood is related on the basis of the older tradition as a wondrous "sport" with every fantastic supernatural embellishment. Its date is unknown. Chinese records LABOUR FOR THE WORLD'S DELIVERANCE 65 surrender of this high aim for the more modest effort of the Hina-Yana was considered an act of selfishness. The welfare of others was subordinated to individual security. When Dinnaga followed the suggestion of the sovereign in whose dominions he Avas residing, and resolved to devote himself to Arahatship, the Bodhisattva Manju9rl^ him.self deigned to remonstrate with him : " Alas, how have you given up your great purpose, and only fixed your mind on your own per- sonal profit, with narrow aims, giving up the purpose of saving all ! " ^ Such a purpose, however, could not be undertaken lightly. The future Gotama passed, as we have seen, from age to age in the prolonged practice of the Ten Perfections. When the followers of " the Great Assembly " began the imaginative expansion of the universe and peopled its vast spaces with innumerable Buddhas, it became necessary to provide its im- mensities with corresponding hosts of Buddhas-to-be. But the task of saving others was not to be easily accomplished. It made the highest demands on the combined energies of heart and will and mind. The force of compassion must never slacken ; the ardour of self-devotion must be perpetually maintained at its highest tension ; the powers of reflection and insight must be cultivated to their utmost clarity. The early teaching of the Founder of Buddhism had thrown his system of moral culture into certain fixed forms of personal practice. He who aspired to reach Nirvana must make the appointed progress along the Eightfold Noble Path. A similar course was pro- vided for the believer who sought to give himself to the rescue of his fellow-beings.^ The Mahdvastu contains what is ap- parently the earliest extant scheme of discipline for the duties mention various " translations," of which the first and third have been lost. The second was made by Dharraaraksha, a.d. 308, but whether it repro- duced the present Sanskrit text is not known. Cp. Foucaux, in the Annates du Musee Guimet,Yi.(l884) and xix. (1892); Nanjio, Catalogue of the Chinese Translation, etc., Nos. 159, 160; Winternitz, Gesch. der Lid. Lit., ii. (erste Halfte), 194 fF. * See below, p. 70. 2 Yuan Chwang, in Beal, Records, ii. 220, with correction of Watters, ii. 212-214, and a similar case, ibid., i. 271 (Vasumitra). ' Cp. Suzuki, Outlines of Mahd-Ydna Buddhism (1907), chaps, xi. and xii. 5 66 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM and privileges of the Bodhisattva.^ It was laid out in ten hhmnis or stages, and the later teachers of the Great Vehicle arranged their preparatory course with the same number of steps. Each bhumi had its own subdivisions, in some systems ten in number, with monotonous regularity.- Each required that the proper dispositions suitable for advance should have been attained. At the outset these were the results of previous lives already planted in the character, together with the tempers and emotions generated by the believer's own ex- perience. How each aspirant might be led to dedicate himself to the service of the suffering world, could not be determined beforehand. There was no sudden call from on high, no divine constraint diverting one or another from his secular path. The word of the preacher might suggest it ; the praises of the Buddha might quicken it ; compassion for human misery might foster it. When once the thought arose, " May I become a Buddha," the foundation of the first stage was laid. But no grace from heaven prompted it,^ nor did any election guarantee final pel-severance. Impressed with the mutability of human impulses, the scheme of the Mahdvastu tabulates various causes which may lead to the aspirant's relapse as far as the seventh stage. It starts on the lowest level with the demand for renunciation,*^ compassion, untiring zeal, freedom from pride, the study of the Scriptures, strength, abandonment of the world, steadfastness. No special order seems to mark the believer's progress ; he must be active in doing good to all creatures ; he must maintain a firm faith in the Buddha, and despise the doctrines of heretics ; he must practice charity without pride or expectation of recompense in heaven ; he must be averse to slaughter or to criticism on the 1 Cp. Senart's Analysis, i. pp. xxvi-xxxvi, and Poussin, in ERE, ii. 744. 2 These were aids to memory, of which Christianity, like Buddhism, furnishes abundant examples. 3 On this element, however, see below, pp. 106, 101, in the worship of Amitabha Buddha, and the Bodhicarydvatdra of Qjlntideva. * Mahdvastv,, I. p. 78, 1. 16. Tydga (rendered by "almsgiving," Mitra, Sanskrit Buddhist Literature of Nepal, 1852, p. 116) seems rather to mean the surrender of all claims to personal merit on account of good works. But it is used also of gifts on a great scale, such as the Bodhisattva's bestowal of himself to feed a hungry tiger. THE BODHISATTVA'S PROGRESS 67 Buddha's character ; he must see the whole world on fire with passion and hatred ; he must face cheerfully all the perils of temptation. Once, however, let him gain the seventh stage of self-control, and he was safe against further danger of fall. With the ascent to the eighth a heart of great compassion would arise within him ; his works would be no more mixed with good and evil ; perfectly purified, they would bear him on to the paripilrmia^ the fulfilment or completion of his toil. After serving in successive births as a chaki'avartin king, he would enter in the ninth stage on the rank o^ yuva-rdjd or heir apparent to the sovereignty of the Dharma\ in the tenth he would receive in the Tusita heaven the abhisheka or royal unction for his high office ; and he would be ready to descend for his last incarnation to gain the knowledge and undertake the labours of Buddhahood. The first seven of these stages belong to the ordinary experi- ence of moral endeavour. The disciple who aims at becoming a Buddha is a man frankly struggling upwards towards a higher life. The schemes of the " Great Vehicle "" are conceived upon a somewhat different plane. The first degree of attainment, known as pramuditd or "Joyful," finds the believer already secure of success in his great quest ; he has entered the super- normal order (lokottara-gati) ; he is raised above all risk of relapse;^ full of joy that he is "born into the family of the Buddhas,"" he has reached a point of departure from Avhich he will never fall away.^ All fear of life's difficulties, of ill-repute, death, or future evil-births, fades from his thought. He has gladly given himself for the welfare of others, he is willing that their sins should "ripen" in himself, i.e. that he should bear their penalty in hell, and so release them from the " fruits " of guilt. So he advances to the second stage of freedom from all stain, vimald, the " Immaculate," making ten Great Resolves of which the central purpose is to mature all creatures for Buddha- * Not, however, of temptation. On the efforts of Mara, which are appar- ently sometimes successful, cp. the Ashtasahasrika Prajna-puramita, xi., tr. H. P. (^astri, Journcd Buddhist Text Soc. (1894), ii. 8. ^ Prof. Poussin points out that as the eighth stage is called acald, " unshakable " or " immovable," the Mahayana system must have originally corresponded in this respect with that of the Mahavastu. 68 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM hood. Higher and higher he rises on an ethical progress which brings increasing clarity of mind. Purity of character was ever for the Buddhist the ground and condition alike of intellectual insight and of transcendent power. In the vision of the Buddhas in the fifth bhiimi, the "Invincible" (durjaya)^ imagi- nation, memory, judgment, "capacity for assimilating the truth," ^ are all strengthened. The wondrous might gained in the seventh enables him to make a hundred universes tremble, and he passes into the " Immovable." Undistracted by the appeals of seemingly outward things on his attention, he is no longer conscious of duality, of self and not-self,- in the simplicity and concentration of his purpose ; and he goes forward to the " Arrival at the End," the sovereignty of the Dharma, when he is wrapped in its beneficent "Cloud" and rains down on all creatures its fertilising power.^ He is a Bodhisattva who has become a Tathdgata^ " he who has reached the Truth." IV Such was the conception of the heroic life demanded of those who vowed to devote themselves to the far-reaching aim of universal deliverance. The disciple made his slow advance in the presence of innumerable witnesses, partners in the great enterprise, and under the guidance of those who had completed their course, yet still refrained from claiming the supreme privilege of Buddhahood that they might continue to devote themselves to their beneficent toil. Among these "Great Bodhisattvas " two acquired especial prominence and became the objects of special religious homage. When Fah Hien visited India he found the followers of the Great Vehicle making their offerings to the Prajhd Pdramitd, an extensive collection of works under the general title of "Transcendent Know- ledge,"* and the two eminent Bodhisattvas, Manju9rl and 1 Mitra, Literature of Nepal, on the Dagabhumigvara, p. 83, translated into Chinese by Dharmaraksha under the Western Tsin dynasty, a.d. 265- 316 (Nanjio, Catalogue, 110). 2 Cp. Lect. IV., p. 197. 3 See the use of this figure in the Lotus, below, p. 83 f. * Or "Perfect Gnosis." Cp. Mitra, Nepalese Buddhist Literature, p. 177 if. THE GREAT BODHISATTVAS 69 Avalokite9vara.i The tendency to arrange sacred persons in groups of three, which affects so many religions, was no less conspicuous in Buddhism. Even the impersonal Dhamma and the generalised Sangha could be associated with the Buddha as the three " Jewels " of the faith. In Ceylon and Siam art presented Gotama in the centre with his two chief disciples, Sariputta and Moggallana, upon either hand. The Mahayana replaced them sometimes by Manju^ri and Avalokite^vara, or by Avalokite9vara (in the form of Padmapani, the "lotus- handed") and Vajrapani;- while a third arrangement placed Avalokitecvara in the centre, with Manju^ri and Vajrapani on his right and left. Only the last of these three figures has been derived from the older Buddhism, where he appears as a degraded form of Indra, thunderbolt {vaj?-a) in hand, ready like a common demon (yakkha) to split the head of an obstinate unbeliever.^ Tradition related that when the Buddha visited his father Suddhodana he was escorted by no less than eight guardians of the same name."* To later imagination he became a Bodhisattva in whom the demonic power was vested on a transcendent scale.'' His association with the other two members of the Triad may perhaps symbolise the control of evil by the supernatural force of the Supreme Enlightenment. But in the personal work of deliverance he takes no share. * Legge, p. 46. The worship of the Bodhisattvas was noted by I-Ching (Takakiisu, p. 14) as the distinctive characteristic of the Mahfiyaua. ^ See the instances in Fergusson and Burgess, Cave Temples of India (1880), and Burgess, Elura Gave Temples (1883). Cp. a Chinese stela, dated a.d. 554, tigured by Anesaki, Buddhist Art (1916), pi. ii. Cp. Soderblom on "Holy Triads," in Transactions of the Third Congress of the History of Religion (Oxford, 1908), ii. 399 ff. * Dialogues, i. 117. * So Yuan Chwang, Beal, Records, ii. 22. s Cp. Watters, On Yuan Chwang, i. 229, cp. 295, ii. 224. In this aspect he is not without analogies with (^iva. In later days he was degraded into a figure of magic : cp. Waddell, Buddhism of Tibet (1895), p. 150; Griinwedel, Mythol. des Buddh., p. 158. In the Ades du Congres des Orientalistes (Alger, 1905), i, 127, Senart connects his develop- ment into a Bodhisattva with tlie intrusion of Tantric doctrines into later Buddhism, and compares it with the vajrdsana or " thunder-seat " of the Buddha, 70 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM Manju9rl first appears in the Lotus, ^ where he is designated " prince," as one who is already consecrated to the sovereignty of the Dhm-ma, and he seems to take precedence of the companion so often afterwards associated with him. Under the name of "Sweet (or Gentle) Glory"" he is presented as constantly engaged in the task of rescue, or in personal attendance on the Buddha. As he rises in princely dignity upon a hundred- leaved lotus out of the sea,^ and goes to hear the Buddha on the traditional seat of his teaching, the hill named the Vulture's Peak, above Rajagriha, another Bodhisattva inquired, " How many hast thou led forth ? " Straightway thousands upon thousands rise on lotuses out of the sea (symbol of the ocean of existence), and fly through the air to the Peak like meteors to prove the activity of their deliverer. Did he not say when he took his Bodhisattva vow, " I do not wish to become a Buddha quickly, because I wish to remain to the last in this world to save its beings " ? ^ His special function was that of revelation. He was the Teacher with the " gentle voice " {Manjughosha *) ; he was the embodiment of wisdom and learning, author of the scriptures of the " Transcendent Knowledge,"" Vdg-l^vara, " Lord of Speech.""^ In his right hand he wielded a sword, with which to cleave the dark clouds of ignorance ; and in his left he carried a book (often resting upon a lotus-flower), the treasured PrajM-Pdramitd.^ To him the disciple must resort for perfect knowledge ; he is the founder of civilisation, the giver of order and of law.' Hymns and prayers were addressed to him in 1 Tr. Kern, SBE, xxi. 34. 2 Lotus, p. 248. 3 Quoted by Poussin (Hastings' ERE, viii. 4056, note 2) from the Manjugri-gunakshetra-vyuha, tr. into Chinese, a.d. 300. * So in the Lotus, p. 11. s Koeppen, Religion des Buddha, ii. (1859), 21 ; Sir Monier Williams, Buddhism, p. 201. Cp. the parts played by Apollo and Hermes in the later Greek theology. ^ Bnrgesn, Rock Tem2Jles of Ajanta (1819), fig. 18; Elura,ixl1 ; Grimwedel- Burgess, Buddhist Art in India, p. 199. ' Cp. the story of Sudhana in the Ganda Vijaha, one of the nine Dharmas of Nepal, Mitra, Nepalese Buddhism, p. 90 ff. A number of legends connect him especially with China and Nepal, cp. Sylvain Levi, Le Nepal, i. (1905), 330 ff. ; Pandit Haraprasad ^astri on the Svayamhhu Purana, in Journal of the Buddhist Text Society (1894), pt. ii. p. 33 ; Foucher, Iconographie AVALOKITEgVARA 71 pious adoration, and finally he came to bear the name Brahma, and was elevated to the loftiest rank as Adi-Buddha, the Primordial Source of all existence.^ With Maiiju^rl Fah Hien found another Bodhisattva associated as an object of worship, Avalokite9vara. Of unknown origin, he gathered manifold attributes into his personality, and became the exalted expression of the passion for universal salvation. Mystery hangs about his name as well as his source.- But there is no obscurity about his character. He is Mahd-karuna., " of great mercy," or " the great and merciful." Unknown, apparently, among the disciples of the Great Assembly, for he does not appear in the Mahdvastu, he is probably to be recognised among the 32,000 Bodhisattvas of the Lalita Vistara under the epithet Mahd-lcarund-chandrin,^ " radiant with great compassion," just as Manju9rl is indicated under the title Dharani^vara^ " lord of mystic wisdom." But it is in the Lotus Bouddhique de VInde, p. 114. The question is complicated by the possi- bility that there may have been a real person of tlie same name. Yuan Chwang reported a Stupa in his honour at Mathura associated with others of historical significance, dedicated to early disciples like Sariputta, Upfdi, Ananda, and others. I-Ching relates that he was regarded by Indians as a contemporary sage in China (Takakusu, pp. 136, 169). For his Tibetan incarnations, cp. Waddell, Buddhism in Tibet, pp. 35, 231. 1 Cp. Poussin, ERE, viii. 406rt ; and Getty, The Gods of Northern Buddhism (1914), p. 96. Hodgson, however, found that in Nepal he was equated with Vi^va-karman, the Creator or Architect of the universe, who constructed the world at the command of Adi-Buddha ; see his Essays (1874), p. 43. On Adi-Buddha, see below, p. 113. ^ Avalokita + lgvara. The first term is a passive participle, but (as Sanskrit admittedly allows) such forms may be occasionally used actively, and Burnoiif observed that the early translators so understood it, "the Lord who looks down" (e?t has), Introd.^, p. 201. It is generally recognised now that the preposition ava has in this combination no special local significance ; the word simply denotes the constant outlook of the Bodhisattva over all beings in the universe whom he labours in his great mercy to deliver. As such he is designated samanta-mukha, " with a face on every side" {Lotus, xxiv.). On the expression of this in art see below, p. 74. Interpreted passively, the name yielded the meaning "the Lord who is seen" or manifested (Beal, Catena, pp. 282 2, 284). For another suggestion by Mr F. W. Thomas cp. Prof. Poussin's important article in Hastings' EKE., ii. 257a. ^ Lai. Vtst., i. 72 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM that he is first celebrated in extant literature.^ How should all beings be rescued from ignorance and suffering and sin ? The Buddha relates the story of Prince Vimala-garbha, " of the Stainless Womb," who devoted himself for many hundred thousand myriads of kotis of auspicious ages {bhadra-kalpas) to practising the meditation on the " Abandonment of Evil by all beings.""- To achieve this end Avalokite9vara gave himself unceasingly. Endowed by his attainments of knowledge and virtue with the utmost capacity of magic power (riddhi)^^ he could pass from world to world, assuming the form of deva^ man or demon, able to convert the dwellers in the upper spheres, to rescue the sinful from their animal incarnations, and to deliver the condemned from hell. Theologically he is not indeed supreme. He is the son of the Buddha Amitabha, "of Infinite Light."* As befits such august parentage, he shines himself like the sun. But this does not imply his derivation from any solar cult. Such traits had become conventional decorations, poetic trappings thrown around exalted forms, the imaginative expression of the light which they brought to eyes darkened with passion or blinded with self-love. Surveying all things, Avalokite9vara was " lord " and "protector" of the world, the chief of kings.^ Now on Amitabha's right hand, now on his left, he is ever ready to hear the believer's prayer, and rescue him from danger by fire or flood, from perils of goblins or giants, from poison or robbers, and from the impulses of impure desire or hate.^ So he was ahhayam-dada, "Giver of Fearlessness" or security, and pious art loved to surround his image with representations of "Eight 1 See the hymn in xxiv. The first translation of the Lotus into Chinese dates between a.d. 265 and 316 (see below, p. 77). Avalokite§vara, how- ever, is already mentioned in the Sukhdvatl Vy/lha, first translated into Chinese a.d. 147-186, cp. Max Mtiller, SBE, xlix. (pt. ii.), p. xxii. 2 Sarva-sattva-pdpa-jahana, cp. SBE, xxi. 424. 3 Lotus, p. 415, ver. 18. * Sukhdvati-vyfiha, § 31, 13, in SBE, xlix. pt. ii. p. 48 ; tr. into Chinese as early as a.d. 148-170, text by Max Mliller and Bunyiu Nanjio (1883), p. iv. On Amitabha, see below, p. 104. 5 Lotus, p. 415, ver. 17, trdtclr jage sadevake ; p. 417, ver. 28, lokegvara rdja-ndyako. G Lotus, pp. 406, 413. AVALOKITEgVARA 78 Saving Acts," sometimes designated the "litany " of Avalokite- 9vara.^ For his aid Fah Hien prayed in a tremendous storm on his voyage home ; and Yuan Chwang tells how unbelieving merchants in the extremity of want, after a three years' voyage, had vainly called on all the gods to whom they sacrificed, and were then delivered by an act of faith in his name.^ In the interv^als of his visitations to all parts of the world he conde- scended to dwell, so Yuan Chwang related, on Mount Potalaka; and the disciple who forded its streams and scaled its crags might see him as Igvara-deva, and hear gracious words in satis- faction of his desires. Attempts have been made to locate this mountain on the south-east coast of India or in Ceylon. Yuan Chwang did not himself see it, and the student may well conclude that it was no earthly height.^ Art, however, could provide a substitute, such as that of which Yuan Chwang tells in Maharattha land, of marvellous efficacy in answering prayer.* The representations of Avalokite9vara at Ajanta and elsewhere (often in his character as Padrna-pdni, " lotus-handed," an epithet also of Brahma and Vishnu), show him with a lotus in one hand and a rosary and vase of the drink of immortality in the other, said to be the insignia also of Brahma.^ Upon his forehead or twined in his hair he often bears a small figure of his Sovereign -Father Amitabha.^ Sometimes this figure appears at the top of a strange pile of eleven heads, arranged in three tiers of three, with a tenth and eleventh in single order above.' Yet another effort was made ^ Fergusson and Burgess, Cave Temples of India (1880), at Ajanta, caves iv. and xxvi. Cp. at Aiirangabad, Archseol. Siirvcy, IV. India, vol. iii. pi. liii. The Ajanta frescoes are described by Waddell, JRAS (1893), p. 9 f. For China, cp. Edkins, Gldnese Buddhism (1880), p. 245 f. "" Legge, p. 112; Beal, ii. 125 f. 3 Cp. Walters, ii. 231. * Waiters, ii. 239. 5 Waddell, JBAS (1894), p. 57. ^ Poussin conjectures that this practice may be of Greek origin, as it is met with at Palmyra ; cp. Hastings' ERE, i. 976. ^ Legend attributed this polycephalic character to his distress at dis- covering the wickedness of the world and the hopelessness of the aim at universal salvation, for as soon as one sinner was converted and delivered another took his place. His head split into ten pieces, and Amitabha thereupon made each one of them a head ; cp. Getty, The Gods of Northern 74 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM to indicate at once his all-embracing gaze and his readiness to succour the distressed. He was endowed with a thousand arms, and in the palm of each hand was placed an eye ! In view of the curious change of sex which Chinese Buddhism subsequently effected, so that Kwan-Yin became a goddess of pity, somewhat resembling the Virgin Mary of Catholic devotion, it is not uninteresting to notice that in one instance in the caves at Elura^ he wears a woman's robe. Yuan Chwang, however, knew Avalokite9vara in his male dignity. When the famous king ^'Tladitya Harshavardhana, who paid the Chinese pilgrim such distinguished attention, was called to the throne (about A.D, 610"), it was to a famous statue of Avalokite9vara that he repaired for guidance. His father was dead. The elder brother who had succeeded him had been treacherously murdered by the intrigues of a neighbouring sovereign. The councillors of state at Kanauj summoned him to the duties of the crown, but he shrank from assuming its responsibilities. In his distress he betook himself to a sacred image in a grove near the Ganges, and there with fasting and prayer sought for direction. Like Yahweh to Solomon at Gibeon, the Bodhisattva vouchsafed to appear to him. No burnt- offerings were needed to win the divine favour. His good harrna had secured him his royal birth. Let him, therefore, fulfil his duty to the realm, raise up the true religion after the persecutor's oppression, and show his zeal by love and pity for the distressed. Then he should secure increase of wisdom and prosperity, and no enemy should triumph Buddhism, p. 64. The multiplication of heads symbolised the extension of his vision ; and the later fancy added a thousand arms, when the palm of each hand was endowed with an eye, to combine the widest outlook and the readiest help. In the statement that there are no poly- cephalic images in India, Dr Waddell {JBAS, 1894, p. 59) appears to have overlooked those at Ajanta (Fergusson and Burgess, Gave Temples, p. 357) and at Kaaheri (an island of Salsette at the head of the Bombay harbour), Griinwedel-Burgess, Buddhist Art in India, p. 203. On the different types of representation cp. also Foucher, Iconografhie Bouddhique, p. 97 ft'. They may be traced even in Ceylon, ibid., p. 109, catal. i. 20, p. 193, and ii. 28, p. 212. ^ Twelve miles east of Aurungabad, in the Nizam's territory (Fergusson and Burgess, Cave Temples, p. 375). ^ Cp. Max Midler, Indian Antiquary, xii. 234. Watters, Yuan Chwang, ii. 347, prefers 612. AVALOKITEgVARA 75 over him. The promise was abundantly fulfilled by the conquests and splendour of his reign. With the advance of theological speculation yet higher functions were assigned to Avalokite9vara. Among the Scrip- tures of Nepal Hodgson had early noticed two, one in prose and one in poetry, in praise of the " Lord of the World," Padnia-Pani.^ From the first of these Prof. Cowell translated an account of the Bodhisattva's descent into hell, which he compared with the narrative in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus."^ Long ages back the Buddha ^'ikhin saw Ava- lokite^vara approaching him with a present of flowers from Amitabha. Where, he inquired, was the Bodhisattva perform- ing his works of devotion ? And Avalokite9vara answered that he had made the Great Resolve not to grasp the perfect know- ledge of a Buddha until all beings had been not only delivered from punishment and guilt, but were established in the world of Nirvana. In pursuance of this vow he was visiting the innumerable hells of the universe. In due course he came to Avici, the dread abode of " joylessness." Its iron realm, girdled with walls and ramparts, seemed one mass of flame. As he drew near the hideous fires cooled, and when he entered lotuses large as chariot wheels burst forth to greet the bringer of Deliverance. As the sufferers were converted and i-escued, Yama, the infernal king, stripped of his power, did homage to him and departed. In his next visit to the city of the pretas or famished ghosts, abundance was poured around them, and they, too, were set free. The second version ^ portrayed similar activities on earth. He converted the demon Rdkshasas and their wives in Ceylon, as well as King Bali, whom Vishnu had sent to hell. He repaired to Benares and relieved even the insects and worms from their low estate ; * he saved the inhabitants of Magadha from famine. Thus the whole world-systems in the deeps of space were open everywhere to his activity. Nothing to him was too small for his beneficence, nothing was too great for his power. For was ^ Th^Kdranda Vyuha and the Guna-Kurawja-Vyuha. C-p. Essays, -p. 17. 2 Journal ojf Philology (1876), p. 224 ff. ' 3 Described by Burnouf, IntrocU, p. 198 ff. * On birth as worms or flies cp. Chhdndog. Upanishad, v. 10, 8, in SBE, i. 82, and Bvihad. Ux)., vi. 2, 16, ihid., xv. 209. 76 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM he not now the son of one older and mighter even than Amitabha, the mysterious Adi-Buddha, the Primal Origin of all ? In the recesses of unimaginable time this ancient Being, conceived as Dante figured the Central Power of Paradise under the emblem of simple flame, gave himself to the meditation styled the " Creation of the Universe." Thence was born Avalokite9vara, who produced sun and moon from his two eyes, Qiva, (like Athena) from his forehead, Brahma from his shoulders, and Narayana^ from his heart. So he became a vast and all- embracing Providence, the author of the visible scene, the hope of the struggling, the conqueror of evil, and the pledge of the final beatitude of all.- V What, then, was the relation of these multitudinous Bodhi- sattvas to the no less numerous Buddhas, and how were these Buddhas themselves regarded ? Were they really all separate and unconnected beings ? The answer to these questions carries us into the heart of the theology of the Great Vehicle, and may best be studied in the famous text commonly known as the " Lotus of the Good Law." ^ First discovered by Bryan Hodgson 1 See below, p. 265. " The limits of this sketch do not permit of any description of the functions of Avalokite§vara in China or Japan. See, for example, the very remarkable liturgy written by the Emperor Yung Loh, a.d. 1412, in Beal's Catena, p. 398 ff. Dr Timothy Richard informed me some years ago that he had several times himself heard it performed. In Buddhist China (1913), p. 170 ff., Mr R. F. Johnston has given an account of a sort of duplicate, the Bodhisattva Ti-tsang, the Chinese form of the Indian Kshiti-garbha (" Womb of Earth,") who was credited with a similar vow and a corre- sponding beneficent activity. Cp. Beal, Catena, p. 59 ; Naujio, Catal, 65. Hodgson, quoted by Dr Waddell, Tibetan Buddhism, p. 181 (note to p. 179), mentions him as eighth in a group of nine Bodhisattvas saluted by the candidate for initiation into the Vajracarya order in Nepal. For his Tibetan form cp. Grimwedel, Mythologie des Buddhismus in Tibet, p. 141. 2 "Saddharma Pundarika," in SBE, xxi., tr. Kern. The term Dharma has many senses, and might be rendered here by " religion." Beal, Catena, p. 12, observes that the title has no reference to the moral law, and that the object of the Sutra is to exhibit the infinite extent of the Lotus creation ; the term Dharma is thus equivalent to the " cosmos." On the symbolism of the Lotus-flower, see Waddell, in ERE, viii. 144 ; Anesaki, Buddhist THE LOTUS OF THE GOOD LAW 77 among the nine Sanskrit Dharmas of Nepal, it was translated by Burnouf in 1852, and in the absence of works of the Pali Canon was accepted as a standard of Buddhist doctrine. In the hands of Kern^ it supplied hints for his interpretation of the Buddha on the lines of solar mythology which further investigation led him to modify. Its Chinese translations are included in the Imperial canons, the earliest being dated between a.d. 265 and 316.^ It served as the foundation scripture of the great Tien-dai sect, and is said to be found at the present day on the lecterns of all the twelve denomi- nations of Japan. The time and place of composition are unknown, but pious tradition ascribes it to the last years of the Teacher's life, between the ages of seventy-one and seventy-nine.^ Even Kern thotight that some of its material might be of very early date. Its chapters are partly in prose and partly in verse, and sometimes the poetical form seems the older, while in other cases the prose perhaps takes priority.* Its contents were not always precisely fixed ; there are traces of omission and incorpora- tion ; fragments of " Central Asian " texts from Khotan and Kashgar show some divergences from the Nepalese.^ What devotion it inspired may be gathered from the statement of I-Ching that Huihsi, his second teacher, " read it once a day for more than sixty years ; thus the perusal amounted to twenty thousand times i " ° The central figure is still the Buddha (^'akya Muni. He sits with his disciples on the familiar hill, the Vulture's Peak, near Rajagriha. But he is no longer human ; his personality is Art (1915), p. 15. Prof. Anesaki happily translates the title as " The Lotus of the Perfect Truth," implying the identity of the Buddha -with "the eternal Truth which manifests itself as the phenomena of the visible universe." 1 SBE, xxi. (1884). 2 Nanjio, Catalogue, No. 138. ^ Nanjio, Short History of the Twelve Japanese Buddhist Sects (1886), Tokyo, p. xviii. * Winternitz suggests a date for the whole work about a.d. 200. Poussin, ERE, viii. 146, favours an earlier date. ^ Cp. Poussin, JRAS (1911), p. 1067, on passages in the collection of Sir Aurel Stein. Takakusu, p. 205. 78 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM " everlasting "" ; he sees all dharmas as ever-present, sub specie eternitatis.^ The presentation may not satisfy the metaphysic of theology, but for the religious consciousness it has the value of God. He bears the epithet " Supreme Purusha "^ {Picrushot- tama), which belongs to Vishnu ; and while the Mahavastu could only assign him Svayamhhu-samatd^ "likeness to self- existence,'" the Lotus does not shrink from ascribing to him the full title, " the Father of the world, the Self-Existent," the solemn designation of Brahma.- The difficulty arises from the traditional conception of the Buddhahood as the goal of a long process when the Perfect Enlightenment is reached at last. This cannot properly be harmonised with the conception of Absolute and Eternal Being. A God who develops in character and wisdom and thus ascends to the topmost heights of existence, may not satisfy the demands of philosophy, and a Greek would have found him inadequate. But by carrying back the attain- ment through countless kotis of ages, and veiling it in abysmal deeps of Time, Indian imagination secured for the Tathagata a practical or working Deity, which sufficed for the purpose of universal Deliverance. This is the real theme of this Buddhist Apocalypse. It opens with a vast concourse of beings of every rank, human and divine, gathered around the Lord, who has entered on the samddhi, known as the " Station of the Exposition of Infinity." ^ As he sits motionless in perfect tranquillity, a shower of heavenly flowers falls on the assembly. The whole Buddha-field is shaken in six ways, and a wondrous ray issues from between his eye- brows, and illuminates eighteen thousand Buddha-fields, down to the hell Avici and up to the limit of existence. The immense multiplicity of the inhabitants of all these worlds is suddenly revealed to Maitreya. He sees all orders of beings in incessant 1 Sadd sthitah, " perpetually stablislied " ; 2i'>'aiyi^^sha-dharvid ; text by- Kern and Nanjio(St Petersbourg, 1908), p. 318. 2 Literally "who is by himself." This is often understood to mean that he had obtained Buddhahood without receiving the teaching from another (so Poussinin ERE, "Lotus"). But the other exalted attributes attached to him seem to justify the higher interpretation when compared with the tempered style of the lokottara-vdda. 3 "Ananta-nirdega-pratishthrinani," SBE, xxi. 20. Savuldhi was an ancient term for the sacred trance. THE MULTIPLICITY OF THE BUDDHAS 79 passage from one condition to another : Buddhas preaching to the distressed and weary ; Bodhisattvas producing enlightenment according to the degrees of their power ; some studying in the forest, some rescuing the sufferers in the hells ; some practising energy, or purity, or forbearance under abuse ; some making splendid offerings of gifts and devotions ; some setting forth the law of quietness or seeking after wisdom.^ What does the vision mean ? It is to be explained by the Buddha's upaya- kax(^alya^ his skilful adaptation of means to ends, his wonderful knowledge and his power to impart it.' For the Buddha has but one sole aim, one lofty object, in coming forth into the world ; it is that he may show all beings the sight of the Tathagata-knowledge, and thus lead them to the supreme goal of Perfect Enlightenment. The various means employed by the countless Buddhas of the past in reasoning and illustration were all adapted to various temperaments and dis- positions. They constituted but one ycina, one vehicle (or road) to omniscience, and all who travelled by it reached the goal. Still would the Buddhas of the future continue in innumerable spheres the beneficent work in which the Buddhas of that hour were engaged, and everywhere in all worlds, and all time through in every age, the great process of Deliverance should be fulfilled. This is no static universe, it is an infinite flux, in which an endless succession of Tathagatas arise and pass away ; and when Qakya Muni himself has attained " complete extilic- tion " ^ there will be others who will preach fresh discourses and solve old doubts in different ways. Yet there is but one ydna and one " way,"" though there seem to be three,* and the Buddhas of the future will reveal the stability of the Dharma^ its fixed character, its permanent establishment in the world. ^ Yet it is also revealed in its manifoldness to meet the needs of all beings ; " I use different means to rouse each according to ^ These are among tlie stages of the discipline of Boclhisattvaship. 2 This is the theme of chap. ii. ' Parinirvuta ; this must be understood in the sense in which Sfiriputra afterwards declares it of himself (SBE, xxi. p. 61), and says, "My burning has left me." * ii. ver. 68 (Sanskr. naya, 69), SBE, xxi. p. 48. 5 ii. ver. 102 (103). 80 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM his own character."^ Here is the primitive tradition of the unity of the Buddhas' Teaching expanded on the scale of an infinite series in an infinite number of worlds. By gigantic accumulations of figures Indian imagination sought to express the boundless majesty of the Lord of the Universe. For as the several Dharmas were all really one and the same, so was it also with the Buddhas. These mighty myriads, past, present, and to come, were not after all really different. They shared the unity of the Truth which they preached ; they were all forms of one and the same Buddha who in this book is portrayed as ^akya Muni. " My body has existed in thousands of hotis of regions ; during a number of kotis of ages beyond comprehension I teach the Dharma to beings." ^ Once more he sits upon the Vulture's Peak, surrounded by crowds of adoring Bodhisattvas.^ A mighty Stupa or relic- shrine arises in the sky adorned with arches and terraces, flowers, jewels, and bells. The vast assembly of hearers rise in joy from their seats with outstretched hands, and devas, men, and demons are alike filled with wonder. Suddenly a Buddha-ray illumin- ates the worlds in ten directions, and countless myriads of Buddhas appear, formed in circle after circle like the petals of the mystic rose of Paradise. This boundless multitude awaits with awe the opening of the Stupa, Cross-legged within sits the Lord Prabhutaratna, who had entered Nirvana many hundred thousand myriads of Jcotis of ages before. Faint and emaciated he declares, as if in abstract meditation, that he has come to hear the exposition of the " Lotus of the True Rehgion," and ^'akya Muni rises into the sky and sits beside him on his jewelled throne. They are in fact identical. The hosts around are all the productions of ^'akya Muni's own proper body, wrought by his magic power, the manifestations of his omnipresent and unending energy. Not only at Gaya did he attain Supreme Enlightenment, he had really reached it many hundred thousand 1 ii. ver. 108 (109). The implication is that the various Scriptures are all forms of the same Dharma (cp. chap. xv. p. 301), just as in the Bhagavad Gita (ix. 23) Krishna declares that offerings made in faith to other gods are really made to himself. Cp. Malachi i. 11. 2 X. ver. 26 ; SBE, xxi. p. 224. A koti is ten millions. * Chap. xi. THE GREAT APOCALYPSE 81 myriads of Tiotis of ages before.^ Then in those ages he brought myriads of beings to ripeness. Time after time he appeared to pass away, but it was only an educative device, he really con- tinued to preach the Law. "Repeatedly am I born in the world of the living.""^ So Krishna has taught, "Though birth- less and unchanging, I come into birth age after age." ^ From the infinite past the Tathagata had been proclaiming the Dharma in this and in all other worlds, in different ages satisfy- ing the wants of all orders of beings in their several ways, appearing indeed to be born and die, but always living, infinite and everlasting, seeing the universe as it really is, beholding all things always present to him. That is in truth the vision of the Eternal, and the amazing piles of numbers which are multi- plied with such facile extravagance are so many attempts to express in terms of space and time the unity and infinity of God.* Finally, as the two Lords sit side by side in the jewelled Stupa in the sky, surrounded by hosts of Buddhas on their jewelled thrones, on every side in all directions in the different worlds a great Apocalypse takes place.^^ From beneath the earth rise many hundred thousand myriads of kotis of Bod- hisattvas, all with the gold-hued bodies and the thirty-two marks of Maha-Purusha. They salute the feet of the two Tathagatas, who sit on high silent and calm while they chant hymns of praise, and the multitude of the four classes of Hearers remains mute. Fifty aeons roll by, and they seem to the vast concourse no longer than one afternoon. Here is a picture of "central peace subsisting at the heart of end- less agitation." This is the ultimate reality for faith. The Buddhas in all the worlds who are actually the numberless projections of the Lord, represent the abiding victory of the Truth. They have given themselves for the welfare of gods and men, and their work is done. The Bodhisattvas continue the great strife with evil, and approach continually the com- pletion of their quest, where the world of ignorance and suffering and sin is transfigured into the fruition of achieved knowledge and realised good. 1 Chap. XV., SBE, xxi. jj. 299. '^ xv. ver. 7. 3 Bhagavad GUcl, iv. 6, 8, tr. Barnett. Cp. below, p. 259. * Cp. chap. vii. = Chap. xiv. p. 282. 6 82 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM What is the inner motive of this immense transformation? The older scheme provided a succession of Buddhas, but they followed each other without any regularity. No world-age could ever count more than one, and whole aeons might pass through recurring dissolutions and renewals without one. The various ranks of beings must fulfil their several lives unaided by any opportunity of hearing the saving Truth. The advent of a Buddha depended on antecedents in the distant past : had anyone been found, like the hermit Sumedha, the spiritual ancestor of Gotama, to make the Great Resolve and maintain it untarnished through the long discipline of preparation ? But meanwhile the needs of conscious beings were for ever fresh. Religion could not be content with leaving their satisfaction to accident. If Sumedha had preferred to cross the ocean of existence on his own merits and escape from life at once, there would have been no Buddha, no Dhamma, and no Sangha.^ Evil would have had no Conqueror ; the veils of ignorance and sin enveloping the world would never have been removed. Once admit into human thought the idea of rescue from apathy and sloth, from lust and pain, from mental doubt and moral guilt, and the religious consciousness will call for some more perma- nent provision than casual saviours, contingent deliverers, inter- mittent revealers. It will first demand one always at hand, and will finally plead that his help shall be available for all. The unity of the Dhamma recognised a perpetual Teaching. Where could the Supreme Wisdom exist save in an unchanging Mind ? And how could a Being of Perfect Enlightenment and endless devotion to the welfare of all classes of conscious existence from the topmost heaven to the lowest hell fail to achieve his pur- pose and establish righteousness throughout the world? The peculiar metaphysic of the Great Vehicle may declare everything void, and plunge the Tathagata, the Four Truths, and Nirvana into a sea of negation. Its moral energy will culminate in a practical Theism and a promise of universal Salvation. The process of deliverance may, indeed, be lengthy ; two ' The " Union " or Order of disciples. On the original use of the term for various forms of association, military, political, industrial, cp. Prof, B. R. Bhandarkar, Lectures on the Ancient History of India, Calcutta (1919), p. 143 ff. THE BUDDHA AS FATHER AND HELPER 83 remarkable parables throw light upon it. The first ^ has often been compared with the Gospel story of the Prodigal. Wordy and diffuse, it wholly lacks the incomparable art of the Evangelist, but it carries the treatment of the sinner through a much more advanced stage. A son leaves home and wanders for many years in distant lands, seeking at last for food and clothing. The father, searching for him, removes to another country, and there becomes rich, with treasure and granaries, slaves, elephants, horses, carriages, and a great retinue. But he constantly thinks of his lost son, and yearns that he were with him to enjoy his wealth. Seated one day at his palace-gate with attendants from the four castes around him, he sees his son approaching. The wanderer supposes that he has come unexpectedly into the presence of some grandee, and slinks away to find a modest alms in a street of the poor. Meanwhile the father devises a discipline of restoration. The son is engaged to clear away a heap of dirt, and his father watches his steady labour from a window day by day. Putting on old clothes, he goes and talks to him, promises him little gifts and extra pay, and bids him look upon him as a father. Through twenty years this preparation of service is prolonged, until the father, still unknown, makes over his wealth to his son, who by that time is indifferent to riches, inured to duty, and weaned from the temptations of the world. At length, as death approaches, he gathers king and citizens together, and formally presents him as his son and heir. Such is the way in which the Buddha trains his sons. He seems to take no notice ; he is biding his time ; he tests the temper of his disciples. " Be constant," he says, " in subduing your low dispositions," and to those who overcome he gives his wealth. As li^vara of all the world he is aware of the circumstances of being of every grade. He indicates their duties, considers the variety of their characters, and thus for ever guides them to their goal. Here he is presented as Father and Helper, Providence and Friend. A second parable - tells of a mighty cloud which comes up ' In chap. iv. The prose form appears in an address of four leading Elders to the Bhagavat. The subsequent poem is ascribed to Maha- Ka9yapa only. 2 Chap. V. 84 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM over the world, and sheds its fertilising rain on mountain and valley throughout the wide earth. The grasses and shrubs, the herbs and trees of every sort, are quickened by the same water. They sprout and grow, they bloom and yield their fruit, each after its kind, by its own laws, still partaking of one and the same essence. Such is the manifestation of the Buddha. Like a great cloud he appears in the world to refresh the withered and promote further growth. To all beings does he proclaim the Dharma without distinction, instructing all alike, depraved and good, sectarian, heretic, and true believer — " Inaccessible to weariness, I spread in season the rain of the Truth." So it is affirmed that in the education of his sons the Tathagata is equal and not unequal, impartial and not partial. As the light from sun and moon shines upon all, the virtuous and wicked, the fragrant and ill-smelling, so does the wisdom of the All-Knowing guide all beings alike. Here are the Gospel images, the sun that shines on the evil and the good, the rain that falls on the just and on the unjust, symbols of the equal beneficence of God. But the figure of the great loving cloud full of invigorating help for all, is the emblem of something more than natural bounty. It is a type of spiritual energy, of educative grace, for ever working in the sphere of souls. The same idea lies at the heart of yet another parable which has its counterpart in Johannine teaching. A man born blind ^ in consequence of former sin cannot believe what he is told about the scene around. A kindly physician searches on the Himalaya for four rare drugs,^ and opens his eyes. He is at first elated by his deliverance, and supposes himself in the possession of all knowledge. Wise seers convict him of ignorance in which he takes darkness for light and light for darkness, and he retires from the world and meditates upon the higher Wisdom. Just so does the Tathagata, the Great Physician, open the eyes of the ignorant, revealing different truths to different minds, and lead them finally to the vision of the entire Dharma. The age-long process of spiritual training is for ever going on, and powers divine and human are linked in one purpose and co-operate for one end. So as " all beings are his children ; ... he causes all to reach complete Nirvana "; 3 and in the fulness of universal Buddhahood — for 1 V. p. 129 ff. 2 xiie Four Truths. ^ iii_ p. gl. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE "VOID" 85 the promise runs, " Ye shall all become Buddhas ■" — the life of communion with the Eternal will be at last attained. VI The "Lotus" is a book of religion and not of philosophy. Its author is conscious that his teaching is new, and he does not expect it to be at once or generally received. He is the first herald of an esoteric Truth, the mystery of the doctrine of the Adhydtmd or Supreme Spirit.^ But Buddhism had started as a peculiar blend of philosophical thought and moral culture, and it never insisted upon any form of metaphysical or anti-meta- physical orthodoxy.- Just as it accommodated the gods of popular devotion within its field of transitory existence, so also it could be hospitable to different interpretations of the external world, and opposite tendencies to natural Realism and Empiri- cal Idealism soon began to divide its schools. The Lotus parades vast multitudes of devas under the leadership of Brahma and ^iva, — Vishnu is significantly absent, though his title PurusJiottama is freely applied to ^'akya Muni and the multitudinous Buddhas. And just as it uses again and ao-ain the religious terminology of Brahmanism, it glances also at the language of philosophy. When the future destiny of the emi- nent disciple ^ariputra to Perfect Enlightenment is announced, some of the venerable Elders are moved to confess that in spite of the Bhagavafs instruction they are unable to realise the fact that all is Void ; ^ while the Bodhisattvas of high degree delight in hearing of it.* The term opens up very different modes of thought. Gotama himself employed it in the polemic against the doctrine of a permanent transmigrating attan or self.^ The world, he taught, was void of self; no soul was to be found in eye or ear or any organs or objects of sense ; nor could it be ^ Adhijatmika-dharma-rahasyam, chap. x. p. 219, "the transcendent spiritual esoteric love of the Law" (Kern). 2 Even Gotama himself left some important consequences of his main doctrine (of No-Self) undetermined. 3 Chap. iv. p. 99. 4 Chap. v. 41, p. 127 ; iv. 45, p. 114. 5 The Pfili term sunnata (Sanskr. gmiyata) does not occur in the early Upanishads. Whether Gotama borrowed it from previous philosophical use, or first employed it himself, must remain uncertain. 86 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM discovered in the co-ordinating manas which organised the sense impressions for thought, or in the higher consciousness.^ All these were, therefore, in that sense " void." Similarly there was an " Emancipation of Thought " which was " void," empty of the three fires of passion, ill-will, and infatuation, or lust, hate, and dulness, whose extinction brought the blessed calm of Nirvana.- The "Void" accordingly became a designation of this aspect of Buddhist holiness. It was the " pasture " or " field " of the Arahat or saint.'' But by a process which it is no longer possible to trace in detail, the doctrine of the " Void " received a wholly new philosophical application. A precious link would indeed be available if it were possible to attribute to Acvaghosha, the poet, scholar, and musician at the court of Kanishka, the Kushan sovereign of North-West India ^ (about A.D. 120), the text known as "The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana." ^ But the incongruity of the doctrines of this book with the poem known as the Biiddha-charita, which there is good reason to believe was his composition,^ renders his authorship in 1 Samjutta Nikdya, iv. p. 54. 2 Ibid., p. 297, ceto-vimutti suufid rdgena, sunnd dosena, sunnd mohena. 3 Cp. Dhamma2)ada, vii. 92, suilnato animitto ca vimokho yesam gocaro. The adjective animitto, "without marks," is also applied to the ceto-vimutti just named. A third term is also applied to vimokho in Dhp. atthakathd p. 172, appanihita," not hankered after" (cp. Aung and Mrs Rhys Davids, Compendium of Philosophy, 1910, p. 211), where they are all identified as names of Nibbana, and sufmato vimokho is explained by the absence of rdga- dosa-moha. The same three terms are also applied to phasso or contact, Samyutta Nikdya, iv. 295, and to samddhi, religious meditation, ibid., p. 297. They reappear in the Lotus, iv. p. 99, ^unyatdnimittdpranihitam sarvam, where they apparently characterise the " all " or universe. If so, their meaning has been already diverted from the " vmconditioned " character of Nirvana to the metaphysical unreality of the external world. How did this transfer take place unless <;unya had already possessed that meaning before Gotama took it over for his own purposes ? It seems less likely that later teaching should have appropriated it in a new connection when Gotama had stamped it with a distinct ethical significance. * Cp. Vincent A. Smith, Early History of India (1904), p. 225. 6 Translated from the Chinese version of a.d. 710 (an earlier one is dated 554) by Teitaro Suzuki, Chicago (1900). Cp. Dr T. Richard, The Neiv Testament of Higher Buddhism (1910). 6 Cp. Cowell, in 8BE, xlix., and Winternitz, Oesch. der Ind. Lit., ii. (erste Halfte), 203 ff. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE "VOID" 87 the highest degree doubtful.^ We must be content, therefore, to indicate the new significance of the " Void " as it appears in the doctrine of the Madhyamakas or school of " the Mean." Its reputed founder Nagarjuna was a Brahman from South India. Legend gathered around his name and obscured the details of his life. That he was trained in one of the schools of philo- sophy before his conversion to Buddhism may be inferred from the metaphysical doctrines which he introduced into the Great Vehicle a generation or two after A^vaghosha had passed away.^ So great was his fame that throughout the sixteen great pro- vinces of India he was known as a " Buddha without his char- acteristic marks," and his works were respected as if they had been the Buddha's own words. Prophecy foretold his birth and assigned to him the function of overthroAving the doctrines of the Astikas (Natural Realists) on one side, and their opponents the Ndstikas (Sceptics) on the other.^ Thus, like the original teaching of Gotama, which provided a Middle Way between the Eternalists and the Annihilationists,^ the founder of the Madhyamakas sought to mark out a Middle Way between the affirmation and the denial of all existence. A long list of works was attached to his name, and the first Aphorism ascribed to him expressed his homage to the Perfectly Enlightened who had taught that the origin and destruction of the universe were but appearance, it had neither begun nor would it cease to be, it could not be annihilated nor would it last for ever, it never came into being and would never pass away.^ What was the meaning of these riddles ? ^ The Madhyamaka philosophy started from the distinction 1 So two of Suzuki's most distinguished fellow-scholars, Professors, Anesaki and Takakusu. - Kern, Manual of Buddhism, p. 122 f., places him towards the end of the second century a.d., and Winteinitz, o^j. cit., p. 253, follows. Watters ii. 204, with some hesitation, adopts the third century. Poussin prefers an earlier date. ^ Cp. Nanjio, Twelve Japanese Buddhist Sects, p. 48 f. * Cp. ante, p. 19 f. ^ Cp. Journal of the Buddhist Text Sucietij (Calcutta, 1895), ii. 7 ; Poussin, Miilamddhyamaka-Kdrikds (St Petersbourg, 1903), p. 11. 6 Cp. Kern, Manual, p. 127 ; Poussin, Bouddhisme (1909), p. 195 If. ; Suzuki, Outlines of MaJulyuna Buddhism, p. 95 ff. 88 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM between two kinds of truth. The first concerns the world of our common experience, which from the empirical point of view is real enough. We are involved in the round of rebirths ; the processes of thought or action are for ever going on ; we are laying up merit or demerit ; and the moral passion of Buddhism had sufficient vitality to maintain the energy of the ethical life through the most relentless affirmation that meta- physically it was all " empty," destitute of reality, founded upon illusion. The world as we view it is no solid earth or fretted vault of sky ; those are only the shifting sense-perceptions of our consciousness ; they do not correspond with what is. The whole dualism of subject and object is a false division, "void" of truth {(^uni/a\ and our object must be to extricate ourselves from this fundamental error and recognise that neither affirmation nor denial on that plane of thought has any mean- ing. There is, indeed, so much congruity even in these errors that we can classify these appearances and actually reason upon them. And this is a kind of truth, but it is temporary and conditional. It covers the world with a veil of illusion.^ The Buddha's aim is to deliver men from this illusion, for it is the cause of their misery. They have created all kinds of relations out of " emptiness," and they are entangled in them like the flies in a spider's web. Had not the Teacher laid it down that " there is no wife here, nor husband, no being, no living soul, no person ? All these phenomena (dharmas) are without reality." " A mendicant brother whose sight is affiicted thinks he sees flies or hairs in his almsbowl, and endeavours to remove them.^ " What are you doing ? " asks some clear-sighted passer- 1 Loka-satnvviti-satiia, according to the Indian interpretation of the difficult word samvviti. Kern understands it in the sense of " reason," and supposes that the second and higher kind lies outside its domain. But cp. Cautideva, Bodhicarydvatdra, ix. 2, "Samvritih paramartha9ca satya- dvayani idani matam." 2 Cp. Lotus, xiii. 17-20, p. 267. Kern wrongly translates dharmas by " laws." The word is a constant difficulty. On p. 222 we read " What is the pulpit of the Tathagata?" Sanskr. (p. 234), his dharmdsana, literally " his truth (or teaching) seat." The answer is with a play on the word dharma, his sarva-dharma-gfinijatd-pravega, his " penetration into the empti- ness of all phenomena." 3 Poussin, Bouddhisme, p. 192, the stock illustration of the Madhyamakas. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE "VOID" 89 by, looking into the bowl and seeing that it is empty. " I am taking out the flies and the hair." "But there are no flies or hair in the bowl." Yet still the man of troubled sight persists. It is a very homely parable. The sufferer from ophthalmia is the type of the man who is involved in the illusion of pseudo- reality. The questioner who tries to convince him of his error stands for the Buddha and his " supreme truth." ^ He perceives that neither affirmation nor negation of the flies and hair has any real meaning. They do not belong to the field at all. The recognition of this apparitional or dream-like character of our common knowledge is the first step towards the apprehension of the Absolute. The true knowledge is, however, itself a non- knowledge ; it refuses to assert anything of the ultimate Reality ; it says " I do not know," not in the spirit of agnostic denial, but in the sense that "a God who is understood is no God."'^ Hence this, too, is "void." It transcends all the op- positions of being and not-being, of the abiding and the phenomenal, the permanent and the transient, of subject and object, of mind and matter. It contains nothing concrete or individual, making it an object of particularisation. Contrasted with the empirical reality of sensible existences it is " void " ; just as the empirical reality of change and succession in its turn contrasted with the thing-in-itself is "void." Here thought is landed in universal desolation. A hollow illusion and a blank Absolute confront each other. Nothing but an extraordinary vigour of moral enthusiasm could have carried believers through the cult of an illusory Buddha to reach an illusory Nirvana. It was a singular result of this method that everything was doubted except the doubt. If everything is void, said the objector, if nothing arises or passes away, there can be no Noble Truths, no "fruit" of good or evil deeds,^ no conduct of life along the Eightfold Noble Path, no Dharma, no Sangha, and no Buddha. 1 Paramdrtha-satya. ^ Cp. the old Ujmnishad formula, "neti neti," and the "negative" theologies of the West, Lect. VI., below, pp. 325, 342. 3 This denial of the results of action was a heresy of the gravest kind • it cut off the roots of good, and led men to hell. Adherence to " voidness " was said to be " incurable," and kept the adherent in the scmsdra without means of escape (Poussin). 90 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM Not so, replied Nagarjuna; beneath the conventions of our common life, concealed by apparent truth, lies the doctrine of the Supreme Truth which quenches all craving and brings inward peace. For who will continue to desire that which he knows does not exist ? ^ In due time philosophy avenged itself on these negations. The experience which was thus described as " empty " was, after all, a fact. What, then, was its nature, what was its origin, what determined its form, what explained its matter ? " Empty " was the opposite of " full " ; fulness implied something contained and something containing. What was it that kept the contents together ? Where was the principle which supplied the outline, or constituted the boundary, that marked out an interior into which, or out of which, experience could flow ? The answer to such questions was found in the second great school of Mahayanist doctrine, known as the Yogdchdra or " Yoga-Rule," ^ founded or developed by Asanga in the latter half of the fourth or early in the fifth century. He was the oldest of three brothers, belonging to a Brahman family in Peshawar.^ What influences led them to take orders in Buddhism is not recorded ; they all joined the school of the Sarvdsti-vddhis or Realists. But in the midst of Mahayanist teaching Asanga sought to understand the conception of the " Void," and strove by meditation to free himself from the bonds of desire. Deeply engaged in the austere practices of Yoga which had played a great part in Buddhism (as in all the higher systems of philosophy ^) since its first days, he aspired to attain the vision of " Supreme Truth." Legend attributed to him the intention of suicide in his failure 1 On the type of religious experience generated in this school, cp. (^anti- deva's Bodhicarydvatdra, below, p. 100. The "Void" was also the theme of the group of works included in Nepal under the title of Prajfid-Pdramitd, the "Perfect Gnosis" or " Transcendental Knowledge" ; cp. Mitra, op. cit., p. 177 ff., which began to be known in China by the end of the fourth century (Nanjio, Catal., 19). Yuan Chwang was engaged in translating the Great SvTtra (in 200,000 Sanskrit verses !) in the years 660-661, and completed the work before his death (Beal, Life, p. 217). " Also as the Vijndna-vddin. ^ Cp. Prof. Sylvain Levi, MaMydna-SiUrdlahikdra (1911), ii. 2 ; Winter- nitz, op. cit., p. 255. * See Lect. IV., p. 211 ff. REACTION AGAINST THE "VOID" 91 and despair. Rescued by the Arahat Pindola, who discerned his danger afar off, he ascended to the Tusita heaven, and there received the instruction of the future Buddha Maitreya on the mystery of Vacuity. After all, the inward apprehension of sublime Reality required something positive to apprehend. In universal negation there was no road to the ultimate solution of the whole problem of the relation of phenomenal experience to the Absolute. Behind Asanga lay the philosophies of the Brahmanical schools and the opposing schemes of early Buddhist Empirical Idealism and the Natural Realism which he had himself embraced. Foreign influences had penetrated the north-western culture; Greek art had exercised a far-reaching influence on Buddhist sculpture ; Greek science had lent terms to Hindu astronomy ; different types of Gnostic speculation were spread through Western Asia, and the religion of Manes had made its way from the Mediterranean to Turkestan. What commerce of ideas may have been promoted by travel and trade it is not possible to define. But it may at least be noted that Christian writers from the fourth century onwards connect the origins of Manichseism with a certain Terebinthus-Buddha who claimed miraculous birth and taught a doctrine of transmigration.^ If these names and ideas could have gained a footing in Syria, it is not impossible that suggestions of Platonic or Neoplatonic thought might have reached India. But the ulti mates of metaphysical speculation are few, and there is no need to invoke an alien stimulus for the course of Asanga's inquiry into the constitution of his own mind. What, he asked himself, was the real organ or instrument of knowledge ? It was easy enough to show that our senses often play us false, and give inaccurate reports of the external world. What lay at the back of sensa- tion and rendered its various forms possible? Buddhism had early fixed attention on the manas as the agent which co-ordinated the impressions of sense and with the help of vijhdna (sometimes equivalent to " consciousness," sometimes more narrowly limited * See the account of the Disputation of Archelaus with Manes (Routh, Eeliquice Sacrce, v. 3-206, Hi.), supposed to have taken place about A.D. 277. The work (whether genuine or fictitious) was known to Jerome and Epiphanius in the fourth century. 92 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM to "cognition") turned them into perceptions and laid the foundations of knowledge. Beneath their endless variety and transient succession there must be some permanent element, some " home " or " abode " of this power {dlaya-vijMna), where these transformations took place and the edifice of thought was reared. Here was the ground of the whole fabric of our interior activity. It was not a person or a soul, it had no separate individual] tv ; to that doctrine of early Buddhism Asanga remained faithful. It could only be regarded as a kind of principle or energy involved in all feelings and judgments, and it was expressed in the bottom-affirmation of consciousness, " I am." ^ Here was the potency which gave all fleeting im- pressions their form, and was consequently superior in value to them all. It dwells in each as a common element from mind to mind throughout the whole hierarchy of existence, and provides the means for the mystical apprehension of the Final Unity. Of this apprehension the agent or instrument was Bodhi, the " Enlightenment " which was the abstract essence of the Dharma, and was concretely realised in the infinite multitude of the Buddhas. Here is the true Absolute, which excludes all duality, and the aim of the disciple is to rise to its full discernment through the ten stages of Bodhisattvaship from the first entry on the course in Joy up to the final Unction in the sacred Cloud, when he is prepared to attain Perfect Illumination and become a Buddha.- To this type of thought Prof. Max Mliller proposed to give the title Bodhi-ism, to distinguish it from the early teach- ing of Gotama. It is laboriously expounded in the Chinese translation of the Surangama Sutra, ascribed to Kumarajlva, A.D. 384-417.^ Its vast extent (Beal reckons it as long as the New Testament)* has probably prevented scholars from attempting to grapple with it, and the abstract by Prof. Beal must be received with some reserve. But the main course of its argument seems fairly clear. Seated in the preaching hall 1 Cp. Levi, ii. 20. 2 Cp. ante, p. 68. Levi, of. cif., ii. 21-27, has delineated the special forms of the Ten Stages in Asanga's scheme. 3 Nanjio, Catal, 399. •» Catena, p. 286. THE MANIFESTATION OF MIND 93 of the famous Jeta-grove, the Buddha inquires of Ananda what causes led him to become a disciple. He saw the thirty-two marks, he replies, in their golden splendour, and he felt in his mind the delight of love. " Then where is your sight," is the Buddha's next question, " and where is your mind ? " " In my eyes without me in my head,"" is the answer, " and in the understanding heart within." A series of Socratic thrusts drives Ananda from one position to another, till the final suggestion that the mind is without local habitation, indefinite and unattached, independent in fact of space, is triumphantly refuted. The Buddha then introduces the fundamental dis- tinction between the conditioned mind entangled in the net of sense-experience, and the True Nature, the ultimate ground of all thinking. Sitting on his lion throne he lays his hand on Ananda's head and declares : " Every phenomenon that presents itself to our knowledge is but the manifestation of Mind. The entire theory of the causes of production throughout the infinite worlds is simply the result of Mind, which is the true substratum of all." i When Ananda respectfully suggests that this involves the heresy that there is a true personal Ego diffused throughout the universe, the conclusion is evaded by a reference to the unreality of the world as we know it. A man afflicted with cataract sees a five-coloured shadow round the light of a lamp. The circular halo has no existence independent of the lamp or of the diseased eye. The visible scene, in the same way, with its mountains and rivers, is the result of a kind of cataract on the True Sight. Banish the influences which have mingled with the True, and you may put an end to the causes of life and death and reach " the Perfection of Bodhi, the Ever Pure and Composed Heart, the Changeless Condition of Accomplished Wisdom." 2 Under these and similar exhortations the whole assembly by the Buddha's power perceives that all things in the universe are all alike the primeval Heart of Bodhi which comprehends all things in itself; and in a rapture of aspiration they desire to be the means of converting endless worlds of beings and causing them to experience the same deep heart of gratitude. "Thus would we return the boundless love of » Beal, p. 303. ^ Ibid., p. 329. 94 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM the Buddha, and rescue the countless beings yet immersed in sin, and in the end with them find Rest." ^ VII The Great Vehicle thus exhibits the Buddha in incessant activity and yet presents him as "completely extinct." Its teachers inherited the language which described him as dead, and at the same time declared him to be everywhere and for ever alive. To harmonise these opposites and provide the believer with an imaginative form in which they might dwell together was the object of the perplexing doctrine of the Tri-hdya or " Three Bodies." - Undeveloped in the Lotus, it comes into view in the later literature, and held its own for centuries ; its last definite trace occurs in an inscription by a pious Chinese pilgrim named Yun Chu at Buddha-Gaya in 1022. It has some analogy with the Hindu Tr'i-Murti or " Triple Form,"^ and in the employment of the sacred number Three it could lend itself to something bearing a remote resemblance to the Christian Trinity.^ It had already been observed that a very close relation was early established between the Buddha and his Dhamma. Among his titles was Dhamma-kiiija, "Dhamma-bodied."^ So intimately were they connected, so complete in fact was their identification, that the Buddha could say to the venerable Vakkali in the Bamboo-grove at Rajagriha, " He that sees the Dhamma sees me, and he who sees me sees the Dhamma."^ ' Beal, p. 343 f. Cp. the similar doctrines of extreme idealism in the "Diamond-Cutter," 8BE, xlix. pt. ii. (with Max Muller's introduction), first translated into Chinese, 384-417, and the larger and smaller PrajM- Pdramitd-Hrhdaija Siltras in the same volume. 2 M. Poussin has lavished upon it a wealth of learning in the JRAS (1906), " The Three Bodies of a Buddha," p. 943 ff. ; and it is expounded in less technical form by Suzuki, Outlines of Mahay ana Buddhism, x. and xi. 3 Brahma, Vishnu, (^iva ; cp. Lect. V., p. 276. * Cp. Beal, Catena, p. 10, on the works of a Chinese Buddhist, Jin Ch'au of Pekin, published by the Emperor Wan Leih in 1573, on the relation of the three Bodies to the one Substance. Cp. Soderblom on " Holy Triads," in Transactions of the Third Congress for the Hist, of Rel, Oxford, ii. 400. ^ Lect. I., ante, p. 40. 6 Samyutta Nikaya, iii. 122 ; Itivuttalca, p, 91. THE THREE BODIES 95 After his death the Dhamma and the Vinaya will take his place as Teacher.^ The Dhamma is thus a kind of continuum of his living enei-gy, a survival of the Master's moral activity un- embarrassed by decay of his material form. It is an impalpable presence which provides a permanent standard of truth and a fountain of energy for all believers. When King Milinda asks the venerable Nagasena whether the Buddha can be pointed out as hei-e or there, the Elder promptly answers, " No, the Blessed One has come to an end, and it cannot be pointed out of him that he is here or there. But in the Dliamma-kaya he can be pointed out, for the Dhamma was preached by the Blessed One."- The doctrine thus started with an imaginative con- ception of the abiding presence of the Buddha in his Teaching. For there was, as we have seen, an ideal and unchanging Dhamma which was proclaimed in the same terms by every member of the long succession ; and the unity of the Dhamma provided a basis for the later doctrine of the unity of the Buddhas.^ The Truth was immutable, and those who revealed it were no more many but One. Behind an everlasting Dhamma stood an Absolute and Eternal Buddha. In the presence of this transcendent Reality the Dharma- kdya received a totally new interpretation. It ceased to be a religious tradition, it became a metaphysical entity. What was the relation of the Buddha in his immutability to the world of our experience ? He was the ground of all existence, the ultimate source whence all phenomena proceed, the principle of identity beneath all diversity. To this principle scholastic ^ Dlgha Nikdya, ii. 154 ; Dialogues, ii. 171. 2 SBE, XXXV. 114. In particular it came to be identified with a famous Sanskrit verse, " Whatever dharmas arise from some cause, of these the Tathagatas have declared the cause, and their cessation (or destruction) likewise has been declared by the Great (^ramana." A Sutra translated into Chinese by Divakara, a.d. 680, relates that this was spoken by the Buddha to Avalokitecvara in the heaven of the Thirty-three Gods (under the lordship of Indra, on the summit of Mount Meru). It was to be written down and placed in a memorial shrine as the Buddha's Dharma-kdya ; cp. Nanjio, Catalogue, 523. On the wide diffusion of the formula in cave- inscriptions as well as in literature, see Burgess, Report on the Elura Gave Temples (1883), p. 13. ^ Cp. ante, p. 41. 96 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM philosophy gave the awkward name Tathatd, "trueness," i.e. "true nature,"''^ — that inner essence which was the foundation and support of the whole universe, with all its infinite variety of phases and conditions determining the samsdra under the Law of the Deed. These conditions had very early received the name of dhamrna, and from this point of view the Dharma- Tidya acquired quite a new meaning. It came to denote that which lay beneath all phenomena, but continually manifested itself through them. It was identical with Supreme Enlighten- ment, with the Perfect Knowledge.- Herein lay the dharmatd of all the Buddhas, the primal element common to them all. This intrinsic nature (sva-bhdva) of course transcended the temporal incidents of birth and death. It was declared to be invisible, undefiled, unchanging. The modern Japanese scholar who finds the word "God" unsuitable to describe the object of his religious faith, because it suggests the idea of an arbitrary Creator and does not recognise the truth of moral causation, of the Deed and its fruit,^ tells us that the Dliarma-kdya is actually his God. This is the Reality beyond all limitations of the transient and apparent. This is the omnipresent immanent energy of the whole universe, and in it we " live and move and have our being." On this the disciple meditates with a kind of triumphant joy, and to realise communion with it is the aim of long moral discipline and spiritual concentration. " Homage to the incomparable Dhanna-hody of the Conquerors," sang the philosophical poet,* " which is neither one nor multiple, which supports the great blessing of salvation for oneself and for one"'s neighbour , . . unique in its kind, diffused, transcendent, and to be known by every one in himself." As the pious pilgrim Yun Chu contemplates its sublime and mysterious Reality above the phenomenal sequence of causes and effects, abiding through- out all time without entanglement in a world of change, the 1 Sometimes more fully bhuta-tathatd, " trueness of being." 2 Bodhi, Prajiid Pdramitd. 3 Or because of Christian associations witli a Being wlio "caused tbe downfall of mankind, and, touched by the pang of remorse, sent down his only Son to save the depraved" (Suzuki, Outlines, p. 219). 4 Poussin, JRAS (1906), p. 955, suggests Niigarjuna (?) ; cp. L6vi in M. Chavannes' article on the Chinese Inscriptions at Buddha-Qaya, in Bev. de I'Histoire des Religions, xxxiv. 17 ; and Nanjio, Catalogue, 1066. THE THREE BODIES 97 language of gratitude and praise is exhausted, the meaning of his rehgion breaks upon him as though he had never under- stood it before, " I have met for this time this Body pure and cahn."^ By its very nature the Dharriia-kdya could not be compacted into a human form. When a Buddha appeared among men or in any one of the innumerable worlds, he needed, therefore, a body of some other kind. Historic Buddhism provided one of flesh and blood like that of an ordinary man, nourished with food, refreshed by sleep, subject to all natural processes from birth to death. It was, indeed, adorned with the Thirty-two Marks of Maha-Purusha, and in that respect surpassed the common frame which the believer was taught to regard as a mere bundle of loathsome impurities. Piety soon began to demand that the Buddha should be lifted above all liability to weakness or defilement, and the early efforts of thought in this direction have been already described.- In the Lotus the Docetic tendency is full blown ; the Buddha only seems to be born and die, to enter into Nirvana, to become extinct. Whether on this earth in the fashion of ^akya Muni, or in other realms among other beings, he assumes a temporary body, fabricated for the specific purpose, and condescends to transform himself so as to become visible to gods or demons. Such bodies could be produced and laid aside, as his manifestations were repeated from age to age and world to world ; they went by the name of Nirmana-kaya^ "creation-body,"" wrought by the Buddha's wondrous power to bring succour to men, said Yun Chu, in the midst of life's "fire,""^ the cure for all ills, for the children of his great compassion. But there was yet a third form corresponding to the incessant activity of the Buddha to save and bless. He is the Eternal Teacher, for ever sending forth the Truth which will rescue the various orders of creatures from their suffering and sin. As he sits in scene after scene in the Lotus upon the Vulture's Peak, he is at the same time engaged in his beneficent work in myriads 1 Chavannes, op. cit., p. 12. 2 Cp. ante, p. 56. 3 Chavaimes, op. cit., p. 11. For the figure, cp. the Fire Sermon ante, p 62. 7 98 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM of worlds. The Buddhas in these distant " fields "" are really so many projections of his own personality, his dtma-bhdva, or " self-being," his spiritual essence made visible in radiant form. They have had, as it were, their own separate careers ; they have fulfilled the long courses of self-denial, of patience, and the other stages of Bodhisattvaship ; some of them are, in fact, only potential Buddhas, whose ripened merits qualify them for Nirvana,^ while they refrain from claiming this supreme attain- ment that they may continue their labours of deliverance. On the wondrous appearance of the celestial Stupa - innumerable multitudes of these Buddhas are revealed by a ray from the brow of the Lord Cakya Muni in crystal fields with jewelled trees. Slowly they assemble with their attendant Bodhisattvas round the Centre of their Being, each one on his own jewelled throne five leagues in height at the foot of a jewelled tree created for him ten times as high. " All these," says the Lord, *' are my dtma-hhdvas^'' the manifold reproductions (" made of mind," said other texts, using an ancient phrase descriptive of the Atman-Brahman ^) of himself. This glorified existence came to be known by the name of Samhhoga-kdya or " Enjoy- ment-Body"; it was an attempt to express imaginatively the combination of two ideas, on the one hand the original view of the Buddhahood as something won by age-long concentration of beneficent purpose, and on the other the conception of it as an infinite and eternal energy — not, however, in its character of the metaphysical ground of the universe, but as a perpetual organ of Revelation, a constant teaching for the enlightenment of all. "Homage," sang the poet, "to the Enjoyment-Body which develops in the midst of the assembly for the joy of the medita- tive saints, his large, manifold, supramundane, uncogitable mani- festation, acquired by numberless good actions, which shines into all the Buddha's worlds, which uninterruptedly emits the sublime sound of the Good Law, which is enthroned in the kingship of the Law." * And Fa Hien, bowing before its wondrous union of ^ They possess a vipdka-Mya, a "body of ripeness," due to tlieir devoted toil for the universal welfare. - Lotus, chap, xi., ante, p. 80. 3 Brihad-Aran. Upanishad, iv. 4, 5 ; v. 6, 1. Tait, i. 6, 1, etc. ^ Poussin, JRAS (1906), p. 961. i BODHISATTVASHIP AS UNIVERSAL DUTY 99 power and traiKjiiillity, beheld it as a centre of light like the sun illumining all, full of compassion, transforming and saving the multitude of Bodhisattvas.^ The vow of Bodhisattvaship thus became the ideal of universal duty, and for its fulfilment the help of the Buddha was ever at hand. The primitive ethical Buddhism was thus transformed into a religion of communion between the Lord and the disciple. The Tathagata, " who is born in this world to save," is for ever preaching with the same voice, and his theme is bodhi, " enlighten- ment ■" ; the lustre of his wisdom shines like sun and moon on all ; ^ and to those who proclaim the discourses of the Lotus to others, or meditate on it themselves, exceptional blessings are promised. The preacher must, indeed, renounce all falsehood and pride, all calumny and envy. He must speak no disparaging words of others ; he must be always sincere, gentle, and for- bearing ; ^ he must prepare to endure without resentment threats and abuse, injuries and blows;"* when he enters the abode of the Conqueror, he must put on his robe and sit down upon his Dharma-seat. For the Conqueror's abode is the strength of charity, his robe the apparel of forbearance, his Dharma-seat is " penetration into the emptiness of all phenomena."" ^ There he learns that though he searches for phenomena they are not to be found, as they have never existed.'' Let him be concentrated in mind, firm as Sumeru's peak, and look on all dharmas as having the nature of space void of all essence and reality.' Then as he dwells alone engaged in meditation among the hills or in the forest, the Buddha will reveal to him his shining spirit- form,^ and recall the lesson that had slipped from his mind.^ Wondrous are the transcendent powers of sight and hearing, smell and taste, gained by the preacher of the I^otus-Sutra ; ^" and so intimate was the communion of the Lord with one who kept it in the path of piety on the way to Enlightenment for 1 Chavannes, op. cit., p. 16. ^ Lotus, v. 17, 19, 46. 3 Lotus, xiii. 39 ft'., cp. xvi. 53 ff. * Lotus, x. 11, 29 ; xii. 3. ^ Sarva-dharma-gu7iyatd-pravega, ibid., x. 23, 24. ^ Ibid., xiii. 17, ajatatvd ; cp. p. 19, ajdtakd. ^ Ibid., xiii. 21 f. ^ Ibid., X. 41, dtmabhdva-prabhdsvaram. » Cp. SEE, pp. 223, 433. i" Cliap. xviii. 100 DEVELOPMENT OF TIIEISTIC BUDDHISM the welfare of the world, that the Buddha could say of the place where he had walked or sat, "That spot of earth has been enjoyed by myself; there have I walked myself, and there I sat ; where that Son of Buddha stood, there I am." ^ VIII The philosophy of the Void was not incompatible with a lofty ethical purpose and a tender piety. In the seventh century ^antideva, a teacher of the Madhyamaka school, contemporary with Yuan Chwang, the Chinese Master of the Law, wrote a little "Guide to the Devout Life" for those who aspire to become Bodhisattvas and take their share in the labour needed for the world's deliverance.- The experiences which it describes have many common features with those depicted in Christian manuals. Here are confessions of sin and aspirations after purity, prayers for strength in weakness, and warnings against anger, worldliness, or pride- — the familiar themes of tempta- tion and self-conquest which liulong all the world over to the discipline of the soul. But the atmosphere is different. Not only is the scenery that of the Indian forest, with its gentle glades and silent breezes, its elephants and its snakes, or its field the vast Buddhist universe with its multitudinous domains full of beings working out the issues of interminable pasts from hell to heaven, but the writer is not concerned for his own happiness, he has dedicated himself to the healing of " the sick in body and soul " in every realm, he aspires to help all beings from demons to devas to "cease from sin and everlastingly do righteousness," so that they "may lie for ever in bliss and the very name of death may perish."' All thought of self has disappeared. The Great Resolve of absolute devotion to the welfare of all is in process of fulfilment, and the saint can aspire to bear the sufferings and overcome the sorrows of the whole world.^ 1 xvi. 62. 2 See the Bodhi-carydvatura, tr. Poussin, Paris (1907); and the Englisli translation (abridged) by Dr L. D. Barnett, under the title of the Path of Light (Wisdom of the East series, 1909). In this edition the verse-numera- tion is discarded, and the work is printed as prose. A useful introduction and notes have been added. 3 See the extract from chap, x., tr. Barnett, p. 28, THE BODHISATTVA'S RESOLVE 101 It is a far-reaching purpose, it requires ages for its accom- plishment. Modestly does (Jantideva approach the task of setting forth " the way whereby the Sons of the Blessed Ones enter the godly life " : ^ " Nothing new will be told here, nor have I skill in writing of books ; therefore I have done this work to hallow my own thoughts, not designing it for the welfare of others. By it the holy impulse within me to frame righteousness is strengthened ; but if a fellow-creature should see it, this my book will fulfil another end likewise." The secret of the self-discipline which he has undertaken lies in the Bodhi-chitta, the "Thought of Enlightenment," which contains within it the summons to the high Endeavour. The Mahayanist literature was deeply concerned with this emotion of pity, and treatise after treatise was devoted to its origin and operation." While still entangled in the life of the world the word of a preacher might light on the believer's heart, awaken- ing him to the great Reality ; he might hear the praises of the Buddha or think of his wondrous body ; or he might be roused to compassion for the vain struggles of his fellows amid the delusive pleasures of the fitful joys of sense. Or he might not know whence the impulse came;^ but it opens the fountains of sympathy and fills his heart with hhal'ti or adoring love, so that he offers himself to the Buddhas without reserve as their slave, while it also lifts him into the great family of their sons.'* Full of joy in this spiritual birth, and in goodwill towards all beings, he longs to be a soother of all sorrows, a balm to the sick, an unfailing store to the poor, a guide of wayfarers, a ship, a dyke, and a bridge for them who seek the further shore.^ The path to the fulfilment of this aim is traced on the lines of the Ten Stages of Bodhisattvaship already described. Many a shrewd observation drops from the loving moralist, as he recalls his own conflict with his passions or pleads for watchfulness 1 Barnett, i. 37. 2 Cp. Suzuki, Outlines, p. 292 ff. * Poussin, iii. 27 ; iv. 26. Barnett ascribes it to the special grace of the Buddha, p. 96, but Quntideva is content to confess his ignorance. Cp., how ever, the description of the effect of the Buddha's anubhdva, i. 5. * Poussin, i. 8 ; iii. 24, 25. 5 Poussin, iii. 6 f., 17 ; Barnett, p. 44 f. .102 DEYEtOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM over thought. Its fickle waywardness must be bound like a young elephant with the rope of remembrance, the great tradition of the Master's teaching. Otherwise the thief Heed- lessness, on the look-out to plunder Memory, will rob men of the merit they have gathered. But when Memory stands on guard at the portal of the soul, then Watchfulness arrives and departs not again.^ To watchfulness must be added patience or long-suffering, and to patience strength, for " without strength there is no work of merit, as without wind there is no motion," - The Bodhisattva, however, is not left unaided. The troops of an army are at his command. Among them are devoted heed and self-submission, love of right, firmness (or pride), joy, and abandonment. Two others sum up his whole endeavour, pardtma-samatd and pardtma-parivartana, " equality of self and others " and " turning round of self for others " {i.e. substitution of others for self).^ As he communes with himself, he must remember : "All have the same sorrows^ the same joys, as I, and I must guard them Hke myself. The bod)', manifold of parts in its division of members, must be preserved as a whole ; and so likewise this manifold universe has its sori'ow and its joy in common. Although my pain may bring no hurt to other bodies, nevertheless it is a pain to me, which I cannot bear because of the love of self : and though I cannot in myself feel the pain of another, it is a pain to him which he cannot bear because of the love of self. I must destroy the pain of another because it is a pain ; I must show kind- ness to others, for they are creatures as I am myself. . . . Then, as I would guard myself from evil repute, so I will frame a spirit of helpfulness and tenderness towards others." * Such a doctrine led straight to the paradoxical warning, " If thou lovest thyself, thou must have no love of self; if thou wouldst save thyself, thou dost not well to be saving of self.""^ The Bodhisattva, then, must be ever ready to transfer to others ^ Poussin, V. 3, 27, 33. ^ Poussin, vii. 1. 3 Poussin, vii. 16, 3L On this principle the Hina-Yana is of inferior quaHty, p. 29. * Barnett, p. 88. This may even require him to plunge into hell like a swan into a lotus-grove (Poussin, viii. 107). 5 Ibid., p. 90 ; Poussin, vii. 93. Cp. Marhx. 35. AIDS TO DELIVERANCE 103 the merits which he had himself acquired, and thus lift them out of the suffering which they had brought upon themselves. This involved a complete contradiction of the early teaching, in which the dying Gotama bade men be " their own lamps, their own refuge," ^ and laid on each the whole burden of his own de- liverance. Prof. Poussin has pointed out indications in old India, even within Buddhist circles, of the belief " that merit, together with its reward, is something that can be given by one individual to another." - The new conception which made it possible was the unity of the Buddha-nature through all manifestations and forms of existence. The wondrous rain-cloud in the Lotus- parable, quickening herb and shrub and tree of every kind with new life, was a symbol of the pervading energy which set all beings in possible communion with each other, and enabled the achievements of one to be applied for the good of all. The process of deliverance was indeed perpetual. No fixed term could be set to it. It was as endless in the future as it was without beginning in the past. Unlike the Greek imagination, the Hindu rebelled against all limits. Demands for measure and proportion did not appeal to it. Time and space must be presented without bounds. Philosophy could conceive its dharma-Jcdija, the abiding ground of all existence, as always and everywhere identical ; and within its scope the wisdom and love which flov/ed forth as part of its essence into the hearts prepared to receive it, were of no private possession, they could be turned to universal benefit, and made available for all. All individual souls sprang from a common source and possessed a common nature. They were not independent of each other. They had travelled together along the great road of the Samsara; they were all alike the subjects of the Law of the Deed ; and just as the powers of evil might contaminate and depress, so the influ- ences of good (interpreted, doubtless, in semi- material shape) could be diffused to elevate and save. And along these lines of the communion of all beings, the perpetual teaching of the Truth, and the purpose of untiring helpfulness, some of the Buddhist schools were led on to the doctrine of "universal salvation." * Ante, p. 54. -' Tlie Way to Nirvana (1917), p. 33. Cp. in Brahmanisni, Lect. TIL, p. 167 2. 104 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM IX This was developed especially in the worship of Amitdbha, the Buddha of Boundless Light.^ And as " light " and " life " are everywhere associated in religious imagination as attributes of Deity, he could be designated also Amitmjus, the Buddha of " Boundless Life." - Early in our era this gracious figure appears in Buddhist devotional literature. His wondrous " Vow " or prayer, and the Western Paradise to which the believer was admitted after death by faith in him, are the theme of glowing description in a Sanskrit book bearing the name of Sukhdvati Vijuha, the " Exposition of the Land of Bliss." Its author is unknown and its date is uncertain. It was translated into Chinese between a.d. 148 and 170;^ and its popularity is indicated by the fact that no less than eleven more versions can be traced in the next five hundred years.^ A smaller work of the same kind followed, which in its turn was reproduced in Chinese in 402.^ The two books became the chief Scriptures of a special cultus, which acquired immense vogue in China and Mongolia, and retains considerable popularity at the present day.^ Further developments took place in Japan, where it begot forms of religious experience presenting remarkable correspondence with well-known types of Christian belief.' The Lotus presents Amitabha as the Ndyaka, the " Leader " or Chief of the world, throned in the pure land of the West, with Avalokite9vara now on his right hand, now on his left ; the corresponding Bodhisattva to complete the triple group being Mahasthanaprapta, whose functions are entirely undefined.^ He appears in the caves at Elura, in the territory of the Nizam, * Amita, " unmeasured " and so immeasurable, infinite {trui, to measure) ; dbM, "light." 2 I here use some paragraphs from an article on " Religion in the Far East," in The Quest (April, 1910). 3 A century before the Lotus was translated, where Amitayus appears, xxiv. 20. * Nanjio, Catalogue, p. 10, Class II., 23 (5). ^ Cp. Max Miiller's translations, SBE, xHx. (pt. ii.), 6 Cp. R. F. Johnston, Buddhist China (1913), p. 95 S. ^ Cp. Hihhert Journal, iv. 523. 8 SEE, xlix. (pt. ii.) 52 ; Lotus, pp. 4, 354 ff. THE BUDDHA OF BOUNDLESS LIGHT 105 between the fourth and sixth centuries ; in the seventh he may be seen at Ajanta;^ he may be found among the Nepalese miniatures, or among the ruins of mediaeval temples in mid- India.- Neither Fah Hien nor Yuan Chwang mentions him, but I-Ching piously records the devotion of his teacher, Shan Yii. " As regards the practice of the meritorious deeds necessary for entrance into the Pure Land (Sukhavati), he used to exert himself day and night, purifying the ground where the images of the Buddhas were kept, and where the priests abode. He was rarely seen idle during his life. He generally walked barefooted, fearing lest he should injure any insects. Training his thought and direct- ing his heart, as he did, he was hardly ever seen inactive and remiss. The stands of incense dusted and cleaned by him were beautiful, like the lotus flowers of Sukhavati that unfolded for the nine classes of saved beings. . . . ^ One could not but praise his religious merit when one saw his work in the sanctuary. He was personally never conscious of getting tired ; he expected the end of his life to be the end of his work. His leisure from reading he devoted to the worship of the Buddha Amitayus. The four signs of dignity were never wanting in him. The sun's shadow never fell upon him idle (i.e. ' he never wasted a minute of time marked by the sun's course '). The smallest grains of sand, when accumulated, would fill up heaven and earth. The deeds which make up salvation are of various kinds." * Seated (as in the Lotus) upon the Vulture's Peak, ^'akya Muni relates the early history of Amitabha. Many ages before he had been a mendicant named Dharmakara (the " Source of Truth"), who after long prayer and meditation attained the holiness of a Buddha-to-be. He might have entered at once into the joy and peace of Nirvana. But he looked back upon the world and saw his fellow-men lying in their ignorance and sin. He thought of the long and arduous journey by which he had climbed the ascent to Enlightenment ; he felt it impossible to lay this burden of obligation upon all ; and he made a series of vows that unless he could discover some simpler way of salvation for others, he would not pass into the final rest. The 1 Fergusson and Burgess, Gave Temples (1880), x>p. 370, 337. ^ Foucher, Iconogr. Bouddhique, p. 98 ; Waddell, in ERE, i. 386. ^ Cp. SEE, xlix. (pt. ii.) 188 ff. * Tr. Takakusu, p. 202. 106 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM eighteenth of these vows became the foundation of the whole doctrine, and is thus translated by Max Mliller : — " O Bhagavat, if those beings who have directed their thought towards the highest perfect knowledge in other worlds, and Avho, having heard my name when I have ohtained the Bodhi (know- ledge), have meditated on me Avith serene thoughts, — if, at the moment of death, after having approached them, surrounded by an assembly of bhikshus, I should not stand before them, worshipped by them (that is, so that their thoughts should not be troubled) — then may I not attain the highest Perfect Knowledge."^ As his prayers ended the earth trembled in assent, flowers fell from the sky, the air was full of music and of sweet perfumes, and a voice was heard saying, "Thou wilt be a Buddha in the world." This solemn vow, with the long passion following it by which Supreme Enlightenment and Holiness were finally attained, was destined to become the central element of a new Buddhism ; and it took the place in the worship of Amitabha which the Christian Evangelical has often assigned to the Cross of Christ.^ By a protracted series of self-denials, austerities, labours, and penances, Dharmakara gave himself for the deliverance of the world, and at length became thereby the Buddha Amitabha. Indian arithmetic again piles up colossal figures to impress the sluggish imagination. At last, after an inconceivable multitude of years, during which no thought of lust, malevolence, or cruelty ever entered his mind, walking in the highest perfections of knowledge, meditation, strength, patience, and virtue, and rousing others to walk therein also, he became the Lord of Infinite Light. In the power of his immeasurable splendour he founded a Paradise in the West which all might enter who had faith to believe what he had done for them, and call with lowly trust upon his name. The disciple must meditate on him with serene thought ; he must again and again dwell on him with reverence ; he must direct his mind towards the Bodhi ; he must make the stock of good works grow, and pray for rebirth in the Land of Bliss ; and then as death drew nigh 1 SBE, xHx. (pt. ii.) 15. For the Chinese version, cp. Nanjio, ihid., p. 73. 2 The date of the first Chinese version at once disposes of the unlucky suggestion that the worship of Amitabha was prompted by Nestorianism. THE WESTERN PARADISE 107 Amitabha would draw nigh also with an escort of saints, and full of joy the believer would be borne away in their care to the Western heaven. A gorgeous Apocalypse follows. From that land all evil is banished for ever. No hapless ghosts, no savage beasts, no cruel demons, haunt its lovely scenes. No mountains bar the way to intercourse by wastes of rock and snow. It is a realm of fragrant flowers, of sweet- voiced birds, jewelled trees and luscious fruits. The soft-flowing rivers are full of perfume ; the air resounds with heavenly music. No sin or misfortune can enter there ; sickness and distress, accident and destruction, are unknown. The very food is consumed simply by desire. The dwellers in this heavenly land are not grasping or eager for gain. There is no idea of " self or others." No one requires property, and hence there is no inequality. Strife, dispute, and oppression have all ceased. Full of equanimity, the saints live in the enjoyment of benevolent, serene, and tender thought. By the light of wisdom and purity of knowledge they shine more brightly than the sun.^ They are free alike from doubt and from self-confidence. With love unlimited they resemble the all-embracing sky. By patiently bearing the good and evil deeds of all beings, they are like the enduring earth. Without attachment to personal ends, they are free as the wind. Devoid of envy, they do not hanker after the happiness of others. They abide in the presence oi Boundless Light and Life. They have reached the goal, and " enjoy God for ever." The devotion to Amitabha became exceedingly popular.- But it was still attached to the older ethical disciplines by a demand for righteous conduct as well as for pious affections. The doctrine of the Deed, with its conceptions of merit and requital, still kept its powerful hold on Buddhist thought. The author of the smaller SCitra on the same theme, however, took a further step. Faith and prayer were indeed needful ; but rebirth in the Land of Bliss was not the fruit of good works in » Cp. Matt. xiv. 43. 2 It is perhaps an indication of the influence of Buddhism on Hinduism that the Vislinu Puriina (Wilson, tr., iii. 9, 23) mentions a whole class of gods named Amitabha. Cp. Virochana {ib., p. 23) and the Buddha Vairochana. 108 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM this world. No one could earn admission to the happy realm by so much merit. The joy of communion with the heavenly Light and Life depended on spiritual conditions. These belonged to another plane of thought and feeling, where time and the external world entered no more ; the Lord looked only on the dispositions of the heart. " In the great sea of the Law of Buddha," said the famous teacher Nagarjuna,^ "Faith is the only means to enter."" The ancient formula of "refuge" in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha, was founded upon this trust for those in whom the " Eye of the Truth " did not at once arise.^ With all the warmth of a convert Sariputta declared his ecstatic conviction that neither past, present, nor future could show any teacher of the higher wisdom greater than the Bhagavat.* In the analysis of the conditions which would determine the next birth, special importance came to be attached to the moral dispositions at the hour of death.^ And among these an act of faith might have supreme value. King Menander found this a serious difficulty. " Your people say," he objected to the venerable Nagasena, "that though a man should have lived a hundred years an evil life, yet if, at the moment of death, thoughts of the Buddha should enter his mind, he will be reborn among the gods."^ Nagasena's reply sounds slightly inadequate, though the monarch was satisfied. Later speculation occupied itself with establishing the continuity of the consciousness in the new birth with that preceding dis- solution. The imaginative form assumed by this belief in the later Amitabha cultus was that a few nights, seven — six — five — four — three — two — even one, of undistracted true and lowly thought, sent forth to the Lord of Boundless Light and Life, would secure his advent with the host of the delivered to guide 1 Founder of the Madliyamaka school, ante, p. 87. 2 Nanjio, Short History of the Twelve Japanese Buddhist Sects, p. 113. 3 Cp. ante, Lect. I., p. 21. '' Rhys Davids, Dialogues, ii. 87. ^ Cp. Poussin, The Way to Nirvana, p. 86. ^ "Questions of Milinda," in SBE, xxxv. 123 f. The importance of the thoughts at the hour of death in determining the subsequent lot appears in the teaching of the Upanishads, e.g. Frapla Up., iii. 10, SBE, XV. 278. Cp. ^aiikara, on the Vedanta Sutras, iv. 1, 12, SBE, xxxviii. 352. YUAN CHWANG AND KING HARSHA 109 the dying sinner to the Pure Land of the West. Here was the germ of a doctrine which was afterwards developed in Japan under the teaching of Honen (1133-1212) and Shinran (1173- 1262) into a complete scheme of "Salvation by Faith." ^ X Such were some of the religious aspects of Buddhism in the seventh century, when Yuan Chwang visited India. It had made its way among the multitudinous peoples from the Hima- laya to Ceylon, from the mouths of the Ganges to the Western Sea. It had been carried into Burma and Siam ; it was at home in China and Corea ; it was being preached in Japan. Students from Tibet were studying it at Nalanda while Yuan Chwang was in residence there, and it had been planted in the highlands of Parthia. The fame of the founder had reached the lands around the Mediterranean, and the name of Buddha was known to men of learning like Clement of Alexandria and the Latin Jerome. The most powerful sovereign in India during Yuan Chwang's travels was the brilliant monarch Harsha-Vardhana (606-648),'^ The long years of his warfare (which had gained him the title of Conqueror of the Five Indies) were drawing to a close when the Chinese Master of the Law was summoned to attend him. Yuan Chwang had already been designated by the President of Nfdanda to take part in a great debate with the doctors of the Hlna-Yana in King Harsha's presence. From the court of Kumara, one of the kings of Eastern India, he proceeded with his host to attend the imperial durbar. With a magnificent retinue Kumara sailed up the Ganges to meet (^'lladitya, and after complimentary conversations with Yuan Chwang (Jlladitya led the way on the south bank to Kanyakubja (Kanauj), where an immense convocation was gathered, Kumara following on the north. Twenty kings were present, with all the pomp of elephants and chariots. The two monarchs, wearing the emblems of (^akra. and Brahma, escorted a golden statue of the Buddha. Three thousand members of the Order belonging to 1 Cp. Troup, Hibbert Journal, iv. 281 ff. ; J.E.C. in The Quest., vol. i. - The royal name of Prince Qiladitya. 110 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM both Vehicles had assembled. Brahmans and Jains also attended, making three thousand more, and about a thousand brethren besides came over from Nalanda. The festivities and debates lasted many days, Yuan Chwang being of course victorious. Jealousy of the Buddhists (according to Yuan Chwang's narrative ^) led the Brahmans to destroy the tower in which the golden image of the Buddha had been placed, and they even attempted to compass the assassination of (^aladitya. (The biographers of Yuan Chwang do not mention the incident ; but they relate instead that the defeated supporters of the Little Vehicle plotted to take his life.)- The leaders were punished. Five hundred were banished to the frontiers of India ; the rest were pardoned. From Kanauj the royal cavalcades moved on to Prayaga (now Allahabad), at the confluence of the Ganges and the Jumna. Between the two streams lay an extensive plain, the immemorial scene of donations of largesse, so that it bore the name of the great " Plain of Charity." There Harsha held the sixth " Quinquennial Assembly ^ of his reign.^ The summons had previously gone forth through the Five Indies, and drew together a vast concourse, estimated at half a million,* The first three days were occupied with ceremonial installations of images of the Buddha, Vishnu, and ^iva.^ On the fourth day gifts were distributed to ten thousand members of the Order. The distribution to the Brahmans occupied no less than twenty days, and to the heretics ten. Pilgrims from distant regions received alms for ten days, and the poor, the orphans, and the destitute for a month. Stripping himself of 1 Beal, Records, i. 219-221. '^ Beal, Life, p. 179. 3 This practice was traditionally ascribed to Asoka (Watters, On Yuan Ohioang, i. 98). Yuan Chwang had Ijeen present at a similar celebration on a smaller scale in Kuchih (in what is now the Chinese province of Kansu), Watters, i. 58, 63 ; Beal, i. 21. There were meetings of clergy and laity, processions in honour of sacred images, holidays, fasts, and religious dis- courses. In Bamian on these occasions the king was wont to bestow all his possessions on the Order from the queen down. The valuables were afterwards redeemed by his officials from the monks. Watters, i. 119 ; Beal, i. 52. 1 Beal, Life, p. 185. ^ Buddha here takes the place of Brahma. Cp. the doctrine of the Trimurti, below, Lect. V., p. 276. BUDDHISM UNDER KING HARSHA 111 his robes and jewels, ^Tladitya borrowed from his sister a second-hand garment, and clasping his hands in adoration prayed that in his future births he might act with like charity to mankind, and thus win the Ten Powers of a Buddha. " In amassing all this wealth and treasure I ever feared that it was not safely stored in a strong place ; but now, having bestowed this treasure in the field of religious merit, I can safely say it is well bestowed." Such are some aspects of Buddhist teaching and practice in the seventh century a.d. A contemporary Brahman, Bana, author of the famous historical romance, the Harsha-charita, has left a singular picture of its relation to the general culture of the time. He describes a visit paid by the king to a Buddhist recluse, named Divakara-Mitra." ^ Bnxhman by birth and education, he had embraced the religion of the (^'akyan, and made his home in the forest of the Vindhya. There Harsha sought him with a royal retinue. Dismounting from his chariot when it could advance no further, he left his suite behind, and proceeded with a few attendants to the hermitage. Numbers of Buddhists were there from various provinces, perched upon pillars,'- dwelling in bowers of creepers, lying in thickets or in the shadow of great boughs, or squatting on the roots of trees. There, too, were Jains in white robes, and worshippers of Krishna. The singular assembly included mendicants of various orders, and religious students of all kinds ; disciples of Kapila (adherents of the great Sankhyan school), Lokayatikas (materi- alists), students of the Upanishads (Vedantins), followers of Kanada (the reputed author of the Vai9eshika philosophy), believers in God as a Creator (the Nyaya school), students of the Institutes of Law, students of the Puranas, adepts in sacri- fices and in grammar, and others beside — all diligently following their own tenets, pondering, urging objections, raising doubts and resolving them, discussing and explaining moot points of doctrine, in perfect harmony. The satirist gravely adds that lions couched peacefully near the sage's seat ; tigers had abandoned their carnivorous diet under Buddhist teaching ; monkeys were performing the ritual of the memorial shrine; 1 Tr. Cowell and Thomas (1897), p. 233. '^ Was this after the fashion of Simeon Stylites ? 112 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM and parrots were devoutly explaining the Koqa^ a Buddhist exposition by Vasubandhu. Here is a picture of mutual inde- pendence and good-will on a still wider scale than that at Nalanda. But the poefs mockery would have been unmeaning had there been no basis for it in fact. These forest instructions were far older than Buddhism itself. By such means was the intellectual life of India continuously upheld. Far, far back the student of Indian thought pursues his way till he finds the earliest efforts to state the chief problems of existence in the discussions reported in the Upanishads and the philosophic hymns which preceded them. Brahmanical orthodoxy con- trived to acconnnodate both atheistic {nirl(;.vara) and theistic {sec^vara) schemes of thought within its cultus. But we have no account of any great centre of teaching where these opposite lines were pursued without antagonism under the sanction of a common life save in the great Buddhist univer- sity of Nalanda. Surrounded by the complex mythology and the different philosophical schools of Hinduism, it was inevitable that Buddhism should be exposed to constant pressure from its religious environment, and that there should be continuous action and reaction between the various systems of thought and practice. The great sectarian deities, as they are sometimes called, Vishnu and (^^iva, had long been (in the seventh century) well established, with their consorts, who came to be regarded as embodiments of their qakt'i or divine energy.^ The tendency was not without influence in Buddhism. When Yuan Chwang was in India he noted at a monastery some twenty miles west of Nalanda, a " rendezvous of eminent scholars who flocked to it from all regions," three temples on the road through the middle gate. The central shrine held a stone statue of the Buddha thirty feet in height. Upon the right hand was an image of Avalokite9vara ; upon the left, of the Bodhisattva Tara.'^ The 1 Cp. below, Lect. V., p. 278. 2 Watters, On Yuan Chwang, i. 105 ; Beal, ii. 103 ; cp. p. 174, where Yuan Chwang mentions a large image of the same Bodhisattva very near Nalanda itself, and describes the popular worship offered to it. Poussin doubts that there ever was a masculine Tara (as the word Tara, " star," is feminine), and suspects some confusion on the part of the Chinese pilgrim. THE BODHISATTVA TARA 113 origin of this figure is unknown. But before long he is con- verted into a goddess, and becomes the wife of Avalokite^vara, a "Holy Mother" and Saviour deity. She may be traced in art all over India, from Orissa in the East to Bombay in the West, from Nepal under the shadow of the Himalaya to Potalaka on the coast fronting Ceylon.^ In the cave temples of various localities, at NasTk, Ajanta, Aurangabad, Elura, she appears associated with similar figures, Locana and Mamuki, consorts of other Bodhisattvas.^ Her worship becomes popular for centuries, and her inscribed images are still found at old Buddhist sites in the classic land of Magadha""* — on the last night of his life Gotama had bidden Ananda to conduct himself to womankind as not seeing them^ — and far beyond. Even in the thirteenth or fourteenth century devout Burmese built a temple to her at Buddha Gaya itself.^ Her cult acquired especial popularity in Tibet,^ where it was blended with magic and spells, but it really added nothing to the essential re- ligious ideas of the Great Vehicle out of which it sprang, and it passed ultimately into the degraded forms of Tantric belief and practice which accompanied the decline of Buddhism in India. A significant difference marked the development of the theistic conception of l^wara in the schools of Nepal. There, nearly a century ago, the young British Resident, Bryan Hodgson, dis- covered an extensive religious literature founded on the doctrine of Adi-Buddha., the Primeval Source of all existence.' The intellectual demand for unity required the clearer formulation of the ultimate fount of Being for all the Buddhas with which religious imagination had filled the innumerable worlds. The ' Foucher, Iconographie Buuddhique, i. (1900), 100, 228. 2 Fergusson and Burgess, Care Temples, pp. 278, 298, 371, 384, 391. 3 Waddell, JBAS (1894), p. 63. * Dialogues, ii. 154. s Gave Temples, p. 133. « Cp. Waddell, Buddhism in Tibet (1895), p. 358. ' Essays on the Languages, Literature, and Religion of Nepal and Tibet (London, 1874). Cp. the elaborate article of Prof. Poussin in Hastings' ERE, vol. i. The doctrine did not arise in Nepal. It was already known to Asanga in North-West India about a.d. 400. Poussin, in a letter to Prof. Garbe, Indian und das Christenthum (1914), p. 182. 8 114 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM movement of thought culminated in the establishment of a true Absolute or Self-Existent (svat/arnhhii) at the head of the whole hierarchy of the world's powers. He is the counterpart of the ancient Brahman. From all eternity he had existed in sublime and undivided unity when Time was not ; but there arose within him the mysterious desire from one to become many,^ identified with the wondrous Prc0nd or " Wisdom " which played so large a part in other schools.- Figured under the form of light {jyoti-rupd), a simple flame, but the fundamental reality of all forms {vic^va-rupd)^ he produced by intense energy of meditation {dhydna'^) five Buddhas of meditation {dhyani-Buddhas^), Amitabha being the fourth. These in their turn by similar powers of wisdom and meditation brought five Dhydni-Bodhisattvas into being, Avalokitec^vara being the spiritual offspring of Amitabha. These Bodhisattvas became the creators of successive universes ; the first three have passed away, and we live in the fourth under the care of the " Lord of Great Compassion,"''' who is its guardian and deliverer, beneath the sovereignty of its Protector (ndtha) and Conqueror (jma), the " Buddha of Boundless Light." Behind these derived powers is their eternal Source. Meta- physically the ultimate reality is Adi-Buddha, the sum of all perfections. As in the "negative theology" which Christian speculative philosophy borrowed from Neo-Platonism, considered in his intrinsic being he could only be designated in terms of the Void. He is a point, without parts or passions, yet he manifests himself in the visible universe, and the Three Strands which constitute its physical basis have their ground in him.^ But for religion he has a new value. " He delights in making all creatures happy ■" ; " he tenderly loves those who serve him " ; " he assuages pain and grief."" Fountain of virtue, he is known by 1 Cp. Chhcmdog. Uj}., vi. 2, 3, in SBE, i. 93. 2 So the Guiia Kdrandd Vyuhd, Hodgson, Essays, p. 42. 3 He possessed the Dharma kdya and the thirty-two marks. « The Thli jJuJiui. ° So in Hodgson's nomenclature, but cp. Poussin's note, ERE, i. 946. According to Hodgson, p. 77, they are produced out of five kinds of jtidna or mystic knowledge. ^ On the Three Strands of the Sfiukhyan system which appear in the different Hindu philosophies, cp. Lect. IV., p. 206. ADI-BUDDHA 115 spiritual wisdom, which inchides observance of the command- ments, pious meditation, release from the world's bondage, and the higher knowledge. This perfect "Enlightenment" is his divine gift, and will at length be bestowed on all. Here is the promise of universal salvation, transcending all differences of sex, rank, or caste.^ Cognate with this sublime Deity was the mysterious figure of the divine Prajna. The wise, indeed, " made no distinction between them " ; but under the influence of Hinduism she was conceived sometimes as Adi-Buddha's (^aMi or Energy ; - intellectually she was (like the Greek Sophia or Logos) the " Wisdom of absolute truth."" She might even be represented as the universal Mother. As the Hindu Brahma was the Grandfather of the world (Pitd-maha)^ she could be quaintly designated in feminine form Pitd-maht ! The merciful Buddhas were her children, for she was merciful to all her worshippers. Thus the believer lived encompassed by the divine Wisdom and Love, and in homage to this eternal Reality the men of good will, voyaging over the ocean of existence, were secure at last of perfect happiness.^ A simpler scheme, of a less philosophical or Gnostic character, is presented in the Vavisdvall or " Genealogical History of Nepal," brought to this country by Dr Wright, and founded on traditional Buddhist material.* Here the Buddha "who was first of all" bears the title Sach-chit, " Being and Intelligence," the first two terms of the summary of the characteristics of Brahman, Sach-chid-dnanda, " Being, Intelligence, and Bliss." ^ From him sprang the first Buddha Mahe9vara (the " Great Lord," the well-known title of ^iva), and from him came i9vara, who created the valley of Nepal.^ In distant ages the Svmjamb/m-\\g^h.t was sometimes seen, and once at least he was ^ Hodgson, Essays, pp. 37, 83 f. 2 Cp. Lect. v., p. 278. 3 Hodgson, ihid., p. 85 f. On Adi Bnddha, cp. Oldfield, Sketches from Nipal (1880), ii. 89 ; temples, ii. 206, 218 ff. * History of Nepal (1877). ^ Wright, History, p. 77. 6 For the syncretism which identified the Biiddha with both (^iva and "Vishnu, cp. Sylvain Levi, Le Nepal, i. (1905), 375 ; Buddhist images in Qiva temples, and shrines to Hindu deities in Buddhist temples (Oldfield, Sketches, ii. 284 f.). 116 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM beheld by Manju9ri as Vi^va-riipa, but he was never visible to mortal eye. The great temple near Kathmandu dedicated to his worship is of uncertain date, and not the oldest in the valley.^ There simple prayers are offered, such as that ascribed in legendary antiquity to Prince Mandeva, and still " repeated by every Buddhist when performing pujd in holy places," — " Reverence to the Three Jewels ! I bow to thy lotus-like feet, O Lord ! Thou art Buddha — thine asylum I seek. There are countless merits in worshipping Buddha. Thou art the Master of Religion." ^ In spite of the brilliant patronage of ^iladitya, the Buddhism of the seventh century was already stricken with decline in India. Where Fah Hien had sometimes found flourishing communities, Yuan Chwang saw ruined monasteries and deserted shrines. Legends of persecution gathered around the names of Kumarila Bhatta and ^ankaracarya in the eighth and ninth centuries. Hostile kings may sometimes have attacked particular religious establishments ; whole provinces may have suffered from Mohammedan inroads ; ^ outbreaks of sectarian animosity may occasionally have tarnished the good name of Brahmans. There was certainly much debate and philosophical argument. But the main cause of the gradual disappearance of Buddhism from India was, after all, its own internal weakness. The spirit of its missionary energy was exhausted. It was surrounded by immense developments of poetry, philosophy, and law, which were most intimately connected with the whole fabric of the national life.^ Buddhism might elaborate the imaginary * Wright, pi. iv. ; Fergusson, Indian and Eastern Architecture (1891), p. 302. 2 Wright, p. 101. At this point the native translators unfortunately break off with " etc." 3 In 647, fifteen years after Mohammed's death and two after Yuan Chwang left India, Osman raided the Bombay coast, and the long series of Mohammedan invasions began. Niilandfi was destroyed by them, cp. Rhys Davids, Journal PTS (1896), p. 91. * For the influence of Buddhism on the later Indian philosophy, cp. below, Lect. VI., p. 303. THE DECLINE OF BUDDHISM 117 biographies of its "Conquerors" {Jinas\ but it produced no poetry like the great epics, the story of Rama and Sita, or the tale of the Five Pandava brothers which grew into the colossal aggregate of the Mahabharata, a veritable cyclopaedia of tradition, mythology, philosophy, and religion. Here were the exploits of heroes, the genealogies of kings, the wisdom of sages, the loves of the gods, and the pieties of the devout — a mirror in song of the complex life of the world, to which Buddhism could offer no parallel. Secluded in their vihdras, the members of the Order could not secure the same interest in the moving narrative of Gotama's renunciation of home and wife and child, or even in the folk-tales of old time, in which the hero was always the same whatever part he played. These had nothing to tell of the splendour of courts, the glories and dangers of battle, the loss and gain of kingdoms, the wonders wrought by ascetics, the sports of Krishna, the beneficence of Vishnu, the might of ^iva. The cloistered virtue of the Sangha, even if it had been always maintained at the high tension of the first days, could not hold its own beside these more robust types. The forces of Hinduism were rooted in a remoter past, they were intertwined more closely even with the localities as well as with the habits of the popular religion, they sprang more directly out of the common heart, they appealed more directly to the common mind. The Jains do not seem to have drawn down upon themselves so much criticism ; they took little part in the great philosophical debate ; and they held their own, though probably in dimin- ished numbers, against the influences which gradually drove Buddhism off the field. The religious forces of Hinduism embodied in the two great deities Vishnu and ^'iva, associated with the once popular Brahma in a group of the Holy Three,^ had the support of an immense tradition and a powerful priestly caste. Founded upon the ancient hymns, the codes of sacred law, the records of primitive speculation, the cults of Vishnu and ^iva were no fixed or rigid forms. They could adapt themselves to new modes of thought and take without difficulty the likeness of their rival. The " Descents " of Vishnu embodied the same 1 Gp. Lect. v., p. 276. 118 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM motive as the manifestations of the Buddha, and Vishnu was at last installed in the temple first reared by Asoka in the hallowed precincts at Gaya. Prof. D. C. Sen has emphasised the influence of Buddhism on the conception of (^Jiva as he is presented in the Puranas, and finds him embodying all the elements of the Buddha''s greatness.^ In the obscurity of the history of Bengal after the death of Harsha-Vardhana the process cannot be traced in detail. The earlier kings of the great Pala dynasty were zealous Buddhists of the Maha-Yana type. But the worship of ^iva began to gain a footing in Buddhist sanctuaries, and temples were built to ^iva, where his image wore the aspect of the Buddha Loke9vara.- The followers of the two cults attended each others' festivals, and by the reign of Dharmapala II. in the eleventh century the fusion was well advanced. Among the distinguished teachers who adorned his reign was Ramai Pandit, the reputed author of the Qunya Purana, or Purana of the "Void." Here were sung the praises of the Void, without beginning or end, without form or image, sole Lord of all the worlds;^ and from it sprang Dharma the Spotless {Niranjana\ designated in another late poem the Son of Adi-Buddha.* Ramai devoted himself to spreading the particular form of Dharma worship known as Dharma's Gajan.^ He travelled widely, preaching it to all people independently of caste or creed, and these popular festivals are observed to this day in Western Bengal. " Who is there in these three worlds," still sings the Dharma priest, " that can know thee, who art Buddha, the protector of the meek and the poor. Travelling over the whole world, no one has ever found, O Formless Lord, thy beginning or thy end, thy hands or feet. Thou hast neither form nor figure, and thou art above all attributes."^ In such pale and attenuated 1 History of the Bengali Lajiguage and Literature (Calcutta, 1911), p. 63 ff. 2 F. K. Sarkar, The Folk Element in Hindu Culture (1917), p. 169. 3 Quoted by Nagendranath Vasu, Archeeol. Survey of Mayurahhanja (1911), p. cxii. « Sarkar, ibid., pp 197, 94 f. " The word means literally " Festivities in honour of Qiva," ibid., p. 73. 6 Ibid., p. 101. Cp. H. P. (^astrl, "Buddhism in Bengal since the Mohammedan Conquest," JASB (1895), p. 55 tf. LATER TRACES OF BUDDHISM 119 form does folk-usage still preserve the memory of a once powerful philosophy. The teachers of the Vedanta itself did not escape the reproach of "crypto-Buddhism,"^ and the influence of the Buddhist schools on the development of the several systems founded on the ancient Brahmanical Scriptures is only now coming to be seriously studied. In Southern India an interesting picture of Buddhism is presented in the Tamil epic relating the romantic story of Mani-Mekhalai, but the uncertainty of its date prevents its definite use as evidence.'- ^ankara finds it needful in the ninth century to array his critical objections against the Buddhist schools, and in his survey of philosophical systems Madhava, four hundred years later, still includes Buddhism.^ Travelling preachers or professors of philosophy still encountered members of the Order, as Govinda Das relates of his master Chaitanya, who converted their leader at Trimanda in 1509, on his missionary journey to South India, and pressed the learning of the monks into the service of Vaishnavism.* In its early home Buddhism suffered severely from the Mohammedan conquest of Bihar, probably in 1197. Large numbers of the " shaven -headed " were mercilessly slaughtered. Monasteries were destroyed, images were shattered, a great library was burnt. Some of the brethren escaped and found refuge in Nepal, Tibet, or the South.^ The pilgrims came no more to Buddha Gaya, though an inscription of a king of Arakan records pious gifts and repairs to the Maha-Bodhi temple as late as a.d. 1298.^ In the next century Rfunananda is said to have disputed with Buddhists, apparently in the Ganges valley ; and a Buddhist Tantra^ written in Magadha in a.d. 1446, shows that in Eastern India Buddhism had still some interest for the 1 Cp. Lect. VI., p. 303. ^ See the account by Dr Pope in the Siddhihita-D/pikd, Madras, xi. 305 ft". Dr Pope places it very late, while a modern native scholar, Mr M. S. Aiyangar, attributes it to the third century a.u, (Tatnil Studies, 1914, p. 208). ^ Sarva-Bargana-tSaijigraha, tr. Cowell and Gough (1882). * " Diary of Govinda Dfis," Calcutta Review (1898), cvi. 91. On Trimanda, cvii. 197. For Buddhists in Oriasa in the sixteenth century, cp. Lect. VII., p. 447. s V. A. Smith, The Oxford History of India (1919), p. 221. ^ Epigr. Ind., xi. (1911), 118. 120 DEVELOPMENT OF THEISTIC BUDDHISM educated.^ The more secluded parts of the Peninsula, the sub- Himalayan highlands, Orissa, Central India, the Deccan, still held sanctuaries for pious pilgrimage. A Tibetan text gives an account of the travels of an Indian Buddhist Yogin in the sixteenth century. The youngest of eight sons of a merchant on the sea-coast in the South, he came under the influence of a Buddhist teacher named Tirthinatha, who gave him the religious name of Buddhanatha. For several years he accom- panied his master, visiting Buddhist shrines and receiving instruction in Yoga ; and he afterwards spent his whole life in wandering through India and the adjoining countries, finding his way even to the Eastern Archipelago.'^ The decline was grievous. The days of enthusiastic literary and religious activity were over. No one could emulate the ardent labours of the past. But here and there the authentic note of faith and love was still sounded. A learned Brahman convert, Ram Chandra Kavibharati from Bengal, who had found a refuge in Ceylon during the reign of Parakramabahu (1153- 1186), poured out his trust in a century of verse with passionate piety. ^ His devotional idiom is different from ours, but his needs are the same. " Have mercy on me," he cries, " I have lost my way ! " " Thy mercy in this world makes no distinc- tion. O Conqueror, by means of that mercy sanctify me, so full of sin." " Thou art the way that leads me to all that is good, thou art my Father, thou art my Salvation." He who keeps the commandments is a member of the Buddha's family : " O Buddha, thy worship consists in doing good to the world. O Lord of the world, doing evil to the world is doing injury to thee." " Let kings punish, let wicked pandits deride, let relations forsake me ; O Father Jina, I cannot live without thee. Whether I live in heaven or in hell, in the city of ghosts or of men, or elsewhere according to my karma, from that place let my mind take shelter with thy good qualities. 1 Bendall, Buddhist Sanskrit MSS. in Cambridge (1883), p. iv. * Dr Waddell, in the Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (Feb. 1893), p. 55. 3 Bhakti-Cataka, tr. H. P. Castri, in the Journal of the Buddhist Text Society, Calcutta, vol. i. (1893), pt. ii. p. 21. A BUDDHIST'S PIETY 121 I am thy servant, purchased by thee at the price of thy good qualities ; I am thy disciple, disciplined by thee with thy precepts ; I am thy son, I feel pleasure in remembering thee ; and I go the way that thou hast gone. Thou art my father, mother, brother, sister ; thou art my fast friend in danger ; thou art my Lord, my Preceptor, who impartest to me knowledge sweet as nectar. Thou art my wealth, my enjoy- ment, my pleasure, my affluence, my greatness, my reputation, my knowledge, and my life. Thou art my all, O all-knowing Buddha." LECTURE III POPULAR THEISM : THE BRAHMAN When Yuan Chwang attended King Harsha-Vardhana in his progress along the Ganges in a.d. 643,^ he witnessed at Kanya- kubja (Kanauj) the solemn installation of a golden statue of the Buddha.- A special hall had been erected to receive it. A long procession of more than three hundred elephants followed King Harsha and the royal companion of his journey, Kumara- raja. Yuan Chwang was in immediate attendance on the sovereign, and led his personal retinue. The princes, ministers, and chief priests of eighteen countries rode in double file, chant- ing hymns of praise. Costly offerings were made to the Buddha in the presence of a great assembly of the princes, the most dis- tinguished clergy of the Buddhist Order, Brahmans renowned for learning, followers of heretical doctrine, and ministers of state. The two monarchs wore tiaras like the gods; Harsha assumed the insignia of the Lord (_'akra,^ while Kumara imper- sonated Brahma. Three weeks later Harsha, still accompanied by Yuan Chwang and the princes of the eighteen countries, proceeded to Prayaga, at the confluence of the Jumna and the Ganges,* to attend his sixth Quinquennial Convocation on the field of charity. Some half million of people had arrived in response to the royal proclamation. On the first day an image of the Buddha was installed upon the broad arena, and gifts and sweet food were distributed amid the scattering of flowers and the sound of music. The ceremonies were repeated the next day on behalf of an image of Aditya-deva (Vishnu), and on the » So Mr V. A. Smith, iu Waiters' O71 Yuan Chwang, ii. 336. 2 Life, tr. Beal, p. 177. * Tlie ancient deity Indra. * Tlie modern Allahabad. MEANINGS OF HINDUISM 123 third day for an image of i9vara-deva (^iva), though on these occasions only half the amount of precious articles and clothing was given away.^ How came it that the cultus of the Buddha could be thus combined with homage to other deities ? Kings were no doubt regarded as divine ; even an infant monarch must be treated as a great deity in human form.^ But why should they choose the characters of ^'akra and Brahma in which to celebrate the glory of the Buddha ; or why should they dedicate on the same hallowed ground the images of rival gods ? Such incidents belong to modes of religious life so different from those of the West that the student of the complex elements of what is commonly known as Hinduism has great difficulty in comprehending them. Founded upon the ancient literature of ritual, philosophy, and law, dependent on the Veda, the medieval theism of India presents an extraordinary variety of deities, at the head of which stands the sacred Triad, Brah- man, Vishnu, (^'iva. Of these Holy Three each is in turn described as infinite, eternal, self-existent, absolute. In the economy of the universe they have their own shares, yet each is apparently capable of discharging the functions of the others, and in solitary majesty conducting the whole process of the world alone. How are such incompatible conceptions to be reconciled ? The figures of popular devotion are strangely elusive. With the aid of mythology they can for ever shift and change ; they pass into each other with mystical identifications ; they proceed from each other into distinct individualities ; imagination is ever at hand to elevate their personal forms into supremacy ; it remains for philosophy to reunite them in thought, and for the practice of piety to realise a fellowship of spirit with the One Supreme. The fact is that the conception of religion which underlies ^,, the mass of beliefs and usages embraced in the term Hinduism, \ rests upon social habits wholly unlike the European. For such \ immense historic generalisations as Brahmanism or Christianity 1 Life, p. 186. '^ Laws ofManu, tr. Biihler, SEE, xxv. (1886), vii. 5-8. 124 POPULAR THEISM: THE BRAHMAN the Indian languages have no single word. Nor have they any exact equivalent for the yet wider idea of religion which tran- scends and includes the multitudinous varieties of the world's faiths.^ Hinduism had no founder, and it has created no creed. It is centred in no ecclesiastical authority ; its worship has no unity; its cults are constantly taking fresh forms; its local interests frequently produce new gods ; it has an astonishing power of generating additional devotions and creating multi- tudinous sects. It presents the strangest contrasts of practical magic and transcendental metaphysics ; universal idolatry and the most subtle spirituality ; the most rigid asceticism and promiscuous debauchery ; a lofty personal morality and an undisguised antinomianism. What bond can hold all these different modes of thought and feeling and action together? The most comprehensive term which Sansicrit contributed to the various languages founded upon it is Dharma, often vaguely translated by such words as law, teaching, truth, religion, morality, righteousness, duty. It also has the meaning of quality or characteristic, the attribute of a genus, the mark of a species. The dharma of gold is its colour and its glitter ; of a tiger its carnivorous ferocity ; of a man his endowments and powers, and the conduct appropriate to them. The rules of human behaviour which everyone is expected to follow consti- tute man's dharma {mdnava-dharma). For each individual there are particular dharmas arising from his civil status, his caste, his rank, his occupation, and the stages of his life from youth to age. Following the earlier law-books, Manu defined the general duties obligatory on all the four castes as "absten- tion from injuring others, veracity, abstention from unlawfully appropriating others' goods, purity, and self-control."^ This is a summary of universal dharma. How, then, shall the house- holder or the hermit, the cattle-owner or the herdsman, know his own ? Manu answers : " The whole Veda is the first source of dharma ; next the smYxt'is (the traditions embodied in the law-books), and the ^lla (the rules of virtue or morality) of those who know the Veda; also the customs of holy men" {e.g. 1 Cp. Dr S. V. Ketkar's History of Caste in India, ii. (1911), "An Essay on Hinduism." 2 X. 63. Cp. the first five commandments of Buddhism. ASPECTS OF HINDUISM 125 certain rites at marriage, or special ascetic habits such as the wearing of bark-clothes). But in the impossibility of foreseeing every contingency room must be left for the varying application of fundamental prniciples, and the scheme of guidance accord- ingly concludes with what is curiously termed "self-satisfaction,"^ the independent judgment or option of the virtuous, where no definite rule has been laid down. When, therefore, the word Christianity is translated into a modern language like Marathi, for instance, by such a combina- tion as " Khristi-dharma," the meaning for the native mind is the duty of observing the customs and ceremonies required from the followers of Christ, such as baptism and confirmation. They must also walk along the " Khristi-marga," the path or way ,2 the conduct prescribed for attaining salvation, just as a Hindu must tread one of the three ways of works, of knowledge, and ascetic devotion.^ Such paths are sometimes based on the mata or teaching^ of the founders of sects, such as Bauddha-mata, the doctrines of the Buddha. Under Khristi-mata are included \ such beliefs as the following : — (i) All men and possibly women are possessed of an object called "soul," while no other creatures have any soul, (ii) Salva- tion can be attained through faith in Christ, (iii) There is a personal God. (iv) The world is created and ruled by two distinct individuals, God and the Devil. ^ Hinduism thus employs three terms to express different elements or aspects of religion, dha?-ma, murga, mata. Modern writers are beginning to speak of " Hindu-dharma " or " Arya- dharma," in contrast with foreign systems, " Mleccha-dharma," such as Christianity or Islam. The ancient Mleccha was a " barbarian," speaking another tongue, with alien customs as well as unintelligible speech. Such a designation implied that Hinduism is much more than the group of beliefs and rites commonly gathered under the description "religious." It is ^ ii. 6. On the Law-book of Manu, see below, p. 129, and on Brahman's creation of Dharma, p. 150. 2 Cp. Acts ix. 2, and the well-known Eightfold Noble Path (magrja) of Buddhism. 3 Karvia-mdrga, jndna-manja, and bhakti-mdrga. See below, p. 244 f. * Literally "thought," from the root man. ^ Ketkar, Histonj of Caste in India, ii. 14. 126 POPULAR THEISM: THE BRAHMAN inextricably bound up with the ideas of race and caste. Derived ultimately from the great tradition embodied in the Veda and the many branches of its literature, it is the faith and practice of the majority of the peoples of India, who adore more or less distinctly the Brahmanic gods, worship their chief incarnations or symbols, venerate the cow, observe certain caste-rules about marriage and the sharing of food, follow a simple ritual pre- scribed by the Brahmans, and resort to them for all the appro- priate ceremonies of family life from birth to death. Such was the general judgment of English students a generation ago, represented, for example, by Sir Alfred Lyall.^ In the very valuable Report on the great Census of 1901, Sir Herbert Risley wrote : " In belief, though seldom perhaps in practice, most Hindus recognise the existence of One Supreme God {Parames'var).'''"^ This statement was confirmed by Mr Burns with the remark : "■ The general result of my inquiries is that the great majority of Hindus have a firm belief in One Supreme God, Bhagwan, Parameshwar, Ishwar, or Narain."^ Ten years later the British Indian civilian is a little more definitely anthropological. Writing of the Bombay Presidency, Messrs Mead and Macgregor, after describing the elasticity of a system which permits men of various castes to flock to the tomb of S. Francis Xavier at Goa whenever an exposition of the saint's body takes place, or to deny the supremacy of the Brahmans, lay it down broadly that in the religion of the unlettered masses sectarian distinctions have no place. " If a coolie or a cartman were asked if he were a Vaishnava or a (^aiva, he would not understand the question."'* The ordinary villager is content to worship the local " godlings," to whom he looks for rain, bountiful harvests, and escape from plague, cholera, and smallpox.^ There are in reality two religions, one which has been rooted in the soil from immemorial antiquity and contains innumerable survivals of aboriginal usages, trans- mitted through whole millenniums with immense tenacity of 1 Cp. Asiatic Studies, ii. (1899), 288. ^ Eeiwrt, part i., p. 362. " Ibid., p. 63. On Bhagavat, see below, p. 244 ; and on Narayana, p. 265. 4 Report, p. 66. s Cp. Dr Whitehead, Bishop of Madras, on The Village Gods of South India (1916). ASPECTS OF HINDUISM 127 habit ; the other superimposed by the Brahmans, of very various degrees of refinement, but still capable of soaring into heights of lofty spirituality, which the average man makes no pretence to understand, though he may vaguely revere its manifestation in the austerities or devotion of the saint. The Report on the Punjab (1912), by a distinguished native scholar. Pandit Harikishan Kaul, is marked (as is natural) by more minute and intimate knowledge. His definition of the Hindu requires that "he should be born of parents not belonging to some recognised religion other than Hinduism, marry within the same limits, believe in God, respect the cow, and cremate the dead,"^ but he adds that the word Hindu as now used is based upon no principle. The term is neither geographical, religious, nor racial. The daily practice is extremely simple. The ordinary villager, not belonging to the Brcihman or other higher castes, unversed in sacred literature or ceremonial ritual, will (except under special disabilities) bathe every morning. The elderly men and women will visit a temple of Vishnu or (."iva, of a goddess or some saint, if one happens to be within reach. In the early hours or after the bath they will recite the name of God, Parmeshvar, Bhagwan, Ram-Ram, Krishna, or his consort Radha, an elementary form of daily worship. The uneducated masses do not understand the philosophic differences which divide the religious orders. But they maintain with great tenacity, though often with curious fresh applications, the traditional outlook of centuries past ; and beneath the colossal productions of poetry, the commentaries of the learned, the debates of the schools, and the hymns of the devout, the vast and varied mass of usages founded on the conception of a vague energy, lodged in specific objects and responding in different ways to human needs, still controls the imagination, and claims its annual dues,"^ 1 Re2Mrt, p. 109. 2 See, for example, the description by Sir Herbert Risley of the festival at the spring equinox, " when it is incumbent on every leligious-minded person to worship the implements or insignia of the vocation by which he lives." The student of the Rig Veda recalls the invocation of the arrow and the drum, the praise of armour and bow, the homage to agricultural implements, probably the ploughshare and the plough. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology (1897, Buhler's Grundriss), p. 155. Similarly to-day, "the 128 POPULAR THEISM: THE BRAHMAN II The higher thought of Hinduism must, of course, be sought in its literature ; and while Buddhism was actively at work in producing its long series of sacred books to embody the teachings of its numerous sects, the rising forces of Hinduism took the national traditions in hand, and under different in- fluences of philosophy and devotion endeavoured to organise the immense collections of mythology, religion, and law. In spite of the enormous difficulties surrounding their origin and history, a few words must be said about the Law-book of Manu and the great epic known as the Mahabharata, which reflect the de- velopment of Hindu thought and life during the period when Buddhism was rising into power, and organising its great foreign missions. The religious and literary processes by which the sacred hymns of the sacrificial formulae of the immigrant Aryans were finally gathered into four great collections under the name of Vedas, can no longer be traced with any certainty or assigned to any definite dates. But the necessity of maintaining the text (for example, of the chief group, the Rig Veda) when it was still transmitted only by memory, early led to the develop- ment of various subsidiary studies which were finally embodied in six Angus or " limbs " of the Vedic corpus, and constituted different branches of Vedic science. Beside the ritual treatises known as Brahmanas, and the philosophical tracts designated Upanishads, these works were concerned with phonetics,^ metre, grammar, etymology, astronomy (for the regulation of the soldier worships his sword ; the cultivator his plough ; the money-lender his ledger ; . . . and to take the most modern instance, the operatives in the jute mills near Calcutta bow down to the Glasgow-made engines which drive their looms." A group of Government clerks set up an office despatch box as a kind of altar, placed an inkpot and all kinds of stationery upon and around it, draped the whole with festoons of red tape, and under the direction of a Punjabi Brahman (a clerk like themselves) made their offerings of rice, turmeric, spices, pepper, etc. Risley, The People of India - (1915), p. 235. Contrast with this the Daily Practice of the Hindus^ (1919, Allahabad), by Srlsa Chandra Vasu, with offerings and prayers to Brahma, Vishnu, Rudra, Prajapati, and others. 1 Sikshd, cp. Taittirlya Upanish., i. 2, SEE, xv. 146. THE LAW-BOOK OF IVIANU 129 calendar and times of sacrifice), and ceremonial (kalpa).^ These works assumed the form of short summaries condensed into the utmost brevity, embodying rules which were expounded orally by the teachers of the hallowed lore. The production of such *?7^ra5 (or " threads") needed long experience and patient effort, so that the famous grammarian Patanjali (in the second century b.c.) could affirm that a Sutra-composer rejoiced more over saving half a vowel than over the birth of a son.^ The ceremonial Sutras fell into two groups : one possessing the authority of revelation, concerned with three great groups of sacrificial ritual ; the other based upon established tradition. To this latter branch belonged the treatises of household law, regulating the domestic usages and daily sacrifices, with their appropriate ceremonies from birth to death ; while a second series, known as Dharma- Sutras, dealt with religious and secular law, inseparable parts of one great system. Out of these Dharma-Sutras, compiled in difiierent schools of Brahmanical teaching, came longer works in verse, expanding and illustrating the peremptory sternness of the dogmatic rules, under the name of Dharma-(^dstras. Large numbers of such works are known to have been composed in the centuries reaching from our era to the Mohammedan conquest ; and the most famous by common consent throughout India is the Mdnava-Dharma-^dstra, or Law-book of Manu.^ In Vedic mythology Manu is the son of the Aditya Vivasvat, the " Shining One," the sun. He is even the offspring of the Self-Existent Brahman, and may be equated with Prajapati, the "lord of creatures." The Rig V^eda calls him "Father Manu," and he becomes the eponymous hero of the human race, 1 How these studies grew up, and what period of time was needed for their development, is obscure. The list of items in a Brahman's training in an early Buddhist text (Ambattha S., i. 3 : Rhys Davids, SBE, i. 109) is rather scantier than that in the Bvihadilranyaka Upan., ii. 4, 10 ; iv. 1, 2 : SBE, XV. Ill, 153. On the itiMsas (legends) and purunas (cosmogonies), see below, pp. 133, 280. 2 Winternitz, Gesch. der Indischen Literatur, i. 230. ' Blihler succeeded in demonstrating that a prior work of the Dharma- Stitra class had once existed under Manu's name. But beyond one or two quotations no manuscript of such a text has been discovered. Cp. hia translation, SBE, xv., Introd.j p. Ixiii. 9 130 POPULAR THEISM: THE BRAH^L\N part god. part maa.^ He founded the moral order and the instdtutions in which it was embodied : crowned himself, he was the progenitor of kings : he kindlfd the SMcred fire, invoited the sacrificial rites, demised the faoenl offErings, and revealed the sacred verses. The twelve chaptezs open with an account of the creation of the world, and doee with the principles governing the sequences of transmigration and the attainment a£ imioD with the eternal Brahman. T^ actual Laws are eoBeoBed with the holv rites which must be per&mied fiir the " twice-born,"" which sanctifv the bodv and purify from obJ Here are the rules of studentship, the duties of the householder:, the laws of food and pmitr. the ordinances of behaviour fvoper foe women, for fewest hermits, and wanderiiig ascetics, the ofaligBtions and responsibilities of kings, and mmmtjumi £ar the adaiiiisixation of justice. So ignorant are w, however, cod- cembig the devdopmeot of Indian social cHgankatian, that it has been impnaabie to £x its date bv anj oorapaiisoBS with f>fyijl«T history. No such history exists.^ \Miai the work first became known. Sir William J, a histoiT of Ka^iViinii, bj Ka3>»ajia^ iras mat camfoaed till ^e twelftii oeutarr of oxn era. A.S. 1148-49 (Ibedoadll, SoMfcrd LUenbm*, IdOO, p. 430). The help which the xmadau atodeat «i tke Pentatenek deriveE iram t.he Insiorioal boc4u of the Old Testament ib t r ac in g the de- Telopment oi tit sacred Law, is next available for giTrn"b.T inTesbigataaa ia Ipdia. yrji does geographv proride any cluee to the IfxaJitT of ilc odgin. « /ftdfco ri883>, pp. &1^ iJCW. -" Redii wad ."yiiU (1696, in Buhlei'e Grwryirin), p. 16. Op. Uawinprfl, Santkrvt Lueratvrt, p. 43%, not much later than a^. 200. TjQgfhn^ Eucf. Brii.^, jjdr, 175, thinkf the que6t:on cannot be anewered. THE GREAT EPIC 131 ran h X The ludaanal cfK of bdia dadbHeBs lad ite distaiii Dssz. but Ike two poess in wladt il vss sdbBeqacBify c HxlnUnnlai and Use BaaiL^OBB, ch^mA be "res«Ht: fona before am- en.^ Like tbe bardb .ted tiie deeds of bcstseSh, fbe jumjh * ! : siMexs -^-^^t; iaibes cefehratad iise pro-wessrf their Ji^tas. -wiHwe ~ Greai Ccn^Bct "" k itiato d - ^han, appeu- in tJK B% ¥edm as m ibe Upper ;•. -• : ^55 at ci:^ r.f::-t -rruggle ar.-. tbe TOTsi boose, tbe Dhritaxisblim are borr with fin a»d the King of Matsra, with •*« - - ' .TcOJt, p. 1,\ * On tbe KaaisTmna (~Ri