II THE CREED OF HALF JAPAN /or THE CREED OF HALF JAPAN HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF JAPANESE BUDDHISM ARTHUR J^LOYD, M.A. LECTURER IN THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY, NAVAL ACADEMY, NAVAL MEDICAL COLLEGE, AND HIGHER COMMERCIAJ. SCHOOL, TOKYO ; SOMETIME FELLOW OF PETERHOUSE, CAMBRIDGE LONDON SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15, WATERLOO PLACE 1911 {All rights reserved) LU TO THE MEMORY OF MY DEAR WIFE MARY WHOSE LOVING CARE AND CONSTANT GOOD COMRADESHIP, DURING EIGHTEEN EVENTFUL YEARS, HELPED ME ALONG MANY OF THE STONY DEFILES OF HUMAN LIFE 253206 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/creedofhalfjapanOOIIoyrich PREFACE I CAN only plead for my book that it is the work of a pioneer, and every pioneer knows that his labours must necessarily be crude and imperfect. I foresee all the strictures that criticism will pass upon my labours, and shall be more than content if what I have written stimulates others to further research. More should have been said about the lives and teachings of Honen, Shinran, and other leaders of the Jodo or Pure Land sects. The omission is due to the fact that I have already dealt with these thinkers in a monograph entitled " Shinran and His Work," which I published in Tokyo last year. Even with these omissions I fear this book will seem rather bulky. My best thanks are due to the Master of Peterhouse, who has put himself to much trouble on my behalf. A. LLOYD. Tokyo, June 24, 1911. CONTENTS CHAPTEK PAGE I. Mahayana 1 II. The Stage on which S'akyamuni made his Appearance 5 III. The Buddha and his Greatest Disciple . . 18 IV. The Pre-Christian Expansion of Buddhism . 28 V. PUSHYAMITRA 47 VI. The New Testament in Touch with the East . 51 VII. Alexandria and Antioch at the Time of Christ 58 VIII. The Legend of St. Thomas 71 IX. The Call from China 76 X. Buddhism just before the Coming of Christianity 85 XI. As'VAGHOSHA 96 XII. Nagarjuna 105 XIII. The Missionaries of the Han .... 117 XIV. Dharmagupta 181 XV. Manichjeism 145 XVI. China in the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Centuries 152 XVII. Buddhism reaches Japan 168 XVIII. The Crown Prince Shotoku Taishi . . , 178 X CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XIX. Buddhism during the Nara Period (with x'^PPENDIX) 191 XX. Heian Buddhism . 225 XXI. Namudaishi 243 XXII. The Buddhism of the Gempei Period . . 259 XXIII. The Buddhism of Kamakura . . . .275 XXIV. NiCHIREN AND THE EaRLIER SeCTS . . 287 XXV. EissHo Ankoku Bon 307 XXVI. The Mongols 329 XXVII. The Buddhism of the Muromachi Age . . 341 XXVIII. The Period of the Catholic Missions . . 350 XXIX. The Buddhism of the Tokugawa Period . . 367 XXX. Eecapitulation 381 Index 387 The ornament on the side of the cover is a facsimile of Shinran's handwriting, representing the character for Buddha. THE CEEED OF HALF JAPAN CHAPTER I J Mahayana The Mahayana is a form of Buddhism. The word means " the Large Vehicle " or " Conveyance," and is used to distinguish the later and amplified Buddhism from the Hinayana or Small Vehicle, which contains the doctrines of that form of Buddhism which is purely Indian. The original language of the Hinayana Scriptures is Pali, the language of Magadha in S'akyamuni's lifetime ; that of the Mahayana books is Sanskrit, the literary tongue of the Brahmans, adopted by Greeks, Parthians, and Scythians as a means of theological expression, when they came in turns to be masters of North- West India and the fertile valleys watered by the Indus and its tributaries, in the Punjaub and in Afghanistan, the language of many a controversy about philosophy human and divine, as Brahman and Buddhist strove in the early centuries of our era for the spiritual supremacy of India. It would be a mistake to suppose that the Greater Vehicle differs from the Lesser only because it contains in it more of subtle dialectic and daring speculation. The case is not so: the Pali books are every whit as deep and every whit as full of speculation as their Sanskrit B 2'' 'THE CREED- OF HALF JAPAN rivals. The Hinayana is the Lesser Vehicle only because it is more limited in its area. It draws its inspiration from India and from India only, and had it been possible to confine Buddhism within the limits of the Magadhan kingdom, or even within the limits of As'oka's actual dominions, we may safely infer that it would have continued to be Hinayana only, as has been the case in Ceylon, where it has not been obliged to rub shoulders with deeply modifying or disturbing influences. But when once Buddhism stepped outside the limits of India pure and simple, to seek converts amongst Greeks and Parthians, Bactrians, Medes, Turks, Scythians, Chinese, and all the chaos of nations that has made the history of Central Asia so extremely perplexing to the student, immediately its horizon was enlarged by the inclusion of many outside elements of philosophic thought. It was no longer the comfortable family coach in which India might ride to salvation : it was the roomy omnibus intended to accommodate men of all races and nations and to convey them safely to the Perfection of Enlightened Truth. It is true that it never forgot the rock from whence it had been hewn ; that it always spoke of itself as a religion intended primarily for the world of India. With a touching shamefacedness, it tried to gloss over the in- consistency of its own missionary zeal. The boundaries of India were supposed to enlarge themselves as the missionaries of Buddhism advanced towards the East. The Hindu Kush and the Himalayas ceased to be the boundaries of the sacred land of Jambudvipa. In process of time Jambudvipa included Central Asia, China, and even Japan.^ ^ Nichiren, for instance, constantly speaks of icM em bu dm (which is his way of writing Jambudvipa) as = India, China, and Japan. It was a protest, by way of adaptation, against the idea that a Buddha could not be bom outside of India. MAHAYANA 3 The Mahayana was probably a matter of slow and, at first, unobserved growth. Among the numerous sects which divided the Hinayana at the commencement of the Christian era, some were probably more comprehensive, more advanced, than others, and there must have been some which had almost reached to the expansive fulness of the Mahayana itself. Very little indeed is known of the history of Buddhism between the death of As'oka and the dawn of the Christian era — during the period, that is, when the Mahayana was in the state of gestation. What we do know is that about the end of the first century of the Christian era, between five and six hundred years after the death of Buddha, the Mahayana comes into existence in Kashmir and North-West India and the valley of the Indus ; that it enjoys the patronage of the Scythian conquerors of those districts, whose conversion to Buddhism may have been due, in the first place, to a politic desire to stand well with their newly acquired Buddhist subjects ; that it was adorned by some great names of saints and doctors ; and that it spread from the land of its birth to the most distant regions of Northern and Eastern Asia. It is not necessary in this work to write a long and elaborate life of S'akyamuni. That subject has been exhaustively treated of by many great scholars, and Japan has very little of new material to contribute towards it. I shall take up the main thread of my story from the time when the Mahayana makes its first distinct appearance on the stage of Eastern religious life, that is, during the first century of the Christian era. In doing so, I shall have to touch on the first beginnings of Christianity also, the contemporary faith which, in those early days, converted the West, while failing, comparatively, to win the East for Christ, just as the Mahayana seemed to be hindered from 4 THE CREED OF HALF JAPAN impressing itself on the West, while it has had a free course and a lasting success in the lands of the Far East. In the course of these pages certain considerations will be advanced (with how much of convincing power it must rest with the reader to decide) to show that the two faiths came into actual contact with one another in many points during the first and second centuries of our era, and that each contributed, something to the success and failure of the other. It is a most difficult subject to handle, and before setting myself to work at it, I can but pray — a good old-fashioned custom for which I am almost ashamed to feel myself obliged to offer an apology — that nothing I write may offend against that sacred cause of Truth, which should be the only aim of the scientific and Christian scholar. But, before plunging into my subject proper, it seems but right that I should devote a few short chapters to the consideration of the person of the Founder, and of the extent of As' oka's influence, as shown by the rock in- scriptions which that monarch has left behind him. These chapters will enable the reader more accurately to estimate the extent of the acquaintance which we may suppose Europe and India to have had of one another at the time when Christianity and the Mahayana sprang simultane- ously into life. CHAPTER II The Stage on which S'akyamuni made his Appearance The Sutras which are commonly received as giving an authentic account of the teachings of the S'akyamuni,^ will also furnish us with certain geographical and other data which are necessary for us if we would form a correct picture of India in the sixth century B.C., the India in which S'akyamuni taught and laboured.^ We need not take a very wide geographical survey. What actually concerns us is a small portion of the valley of the Ganges, comprising practically the two districts of Oudh and Behar,^ stretching to the east as far as Patna, to the west as far as Allahabad. The Himalayas form the northern boundary of S'akyamuni' s country, the Ganges is practically its southern limit ; the only exception being that Bodhigaya and the district intimately connected with the Enlightenment of the Tathagata lie to the south of ^ Cf., in Japanese, " Buddha no Juseiron " (by Maeda) ; in English, •'Buddhism in Translation" (Warren), "Gospel of Buddha" (Paul Carus) ; and in German, " DieEeden des Gotama Buddhas " (Neumann). The first of these is the most useful for the purposes of this book, because it has been compiled from a frankly Mahayanistic point of view. * The importance of the sixth century B.C., which inaugurated so many movements of a religious and philosophical nature, it is hard to overestimate. , 3 Behar is said to derive its name from Vihara, a Buddhist monastery. It was one of the last, as it was also one of the first, strongholds of Buddhism in India. 6 THE CREED OF HALF JAPAN the sacred river. Later developments of the Buddhist communities may make it necessary for us to enlarge our geographical inquiries, but for the present these bound- aries will suffice for our consideration. They will enable us to follow the life of the Great Master in all its principal phases. The Buddhist Sutras tell us a good deal about the population of the country in which the Wheel of the Law was set in motion. The India of S'akyamuni's time was under the domina- tion of an Aryan race, which had conquered the land and brought into it institutions not unlike those which we find in some other Aryan countries, Athens, for instance.^ They had divided the population into four great castes, of whom the fourth, possibly also the third, may have been mixed with some of the conquered races, whilst the two higher ones certainly belonged to the nobility of the conquest. In S'akyamuni's time the 8udras, or low-caste people, and the Vaisyas, or merchants and farmers, lived quietly, without any part or lot in the privileges of national life, contented to devote themselves to the pursuit of their several vocations ; the Kshatriyas and Brahmans, having accomplished the subjugation of the other two castes, were struggling against each other for supremacy in State and Society. Chief among the Kshatriyan tribes which resisted the supremacy claimed by the Brahmans were the clans known collectively as the S'akyans, who were politically supreme in the districts actually affected by S'akyamuni's life. S'akyan was, how- ever, only a collective name : the clans were distinguished * In Athens we find, e.g., the population of the autochthons divided into four classes corresponding to the four castes of India. Gf. Grote's " Hist, of Greece," chap. x. For the Aryan races, see Hunter, *• Brief History of the Indian people," chap. iv. pp. 52-73, S'AKYAMUNI'S STAGE 7 from one another by tribal names as well, such as Lic- chavis, Vrijjis, Mallas, Andhas, etc., some of which remain to the present day. The S'akyan nobles,^ it is said, welcomed the person of S'akyamuni, their kinsman prophet, whose teachings encouraged them in their resist- ance to Brahman usurpations, but they were not always equally willing to adopt his practical teachings. The Brahmans, ultimately victorious in the struggle for political and religious supremacy in India, have had their revenge on these S'akyan tribes by refusing to consider them as families of pure descent. It is hard to determine the point. All Buddhists claim that S'akyamuni's lineage came from Ihshvaku^ the descendant of Manu, the de- scendant of Brahma. Licchavis ruled later, by virtue of Kshatriyan descent, in Nepaul, Bhutan, Ladakh, and (through marriage) in Tibet, and the Licchavi dynasty in Nepaul was succeeded by a line of Malla kings. At the same time it must be admitted that we have from the very earliest times traces of intercourse between ]N"epaul, Tibet, and China, which should be considered. China, as shown by the late Prof. Lacouperie and others, e.g. Mr. Morse (in his " Trade and Administration of the Chinese Empire "), was occupied, before the advent of the Chinese from Western Asia, by many aboriginal ^ The documents tell us how eagerly the S'akyans of Kapilavastu and Magadha welcomed the teachings of Buddha. The very name S'akya- muni implies that he was officially accepted as the "teacher of the S'akyans," and that his creed became, as it were, the national religion of the district, though Brahmanism still continued to be tolerated. There are, however, e.g. in Kern's " History of Buddhism," stories which show that S'akyamuni had to maintain his claim as a religious teacher by demonstrating to the satisfaction of the S'akyan nobles that he was as skilful in the use of arms as they were themselves. ^ Hewett, "Notes on Early History of India," pt. ii., in J.B.A.S,, April, 1889, p. 276, has a note to show that the Ikshvakus came from Assyria and the Euphrates valley. 8 THE CREED OF HALF JAPAN tribes, whom it took the Chinese centuries to absorb successfully into themselves. Many of these original tribes, such as the Lolo, the Mantsze, and the Miao, took leading parts in Chinese history, and many of them would seem to have had dealings with nations beyond the borders of their empire. The earliest traditions of Nepaul ascribe the first draining and development of their land, in pre- Buddhistic times, to the Bodhisattva Manjusri (Jap. Monju), whose chief temple is at Wu-tai-chan, near Pekin, who is the patron deity, par eoccellence, of the western and northern tribes of China, and who is considered to be perpetually reincarnated in the person of the Manchu sovereign of China.^ It seems probable, therefore, that Manjusri^ was originally the deified hero of one of the tribes of Northern China, possibly the Mantsze, that he distinguished himself during his lifetime by his successful development and colonization of Nepaul, and .that he was » Prof. Pelliot, in " Bulletin de L'Ecole Fran9aise de I'Extrgme Orient," viii. 3 and 4, has an account of a recent find of manuscripts and books wliich will do much to settle the question of Manjusri. According to the Tibetan history recently published at Calcutta, with Index and Analysis, by Sarat Chandra Das, the conversion of India must be ascribed to S'akyamuni and his consort Tara, that of Bactria and Central Asia to the labours of the Bodhisattvas, that of China to Manjusri or Manju- ghosha, and that of Tibet to Avalokitesvara. The mention of Tara clearly shows the lateness of the tradition, but there is in Mr. Tada Kanae's lectures on the SJioshinge(" Shoshinge Kowa," p. 289) mention of a certain Buddhist patriarch who went from India to China because he heard that Manjusri had been there, as though Manju&ri had once been a real person living in China. If ManjuSri may be considered as a real person, and if theiBodhisttvas of Central Asia are also historical, it may be possible to assign the place of origin of many of the Mahayana Sutras according to the speakers in them, those of Central Asian origin being mainly spoken by one or other of the Bodhisattvas, and those intended, as it were, for the Chinese market bearing the Manjuferi influence, at least in later revisions. But it is impossible to dogmatize with the scanty information at hand. « Sylvain Levi, " Histoire du Nepal," vol. ii. p. 69. S'AKYAMUNI'S STAGE 9 subsequently adopted into the Buddhist pantheon by the all-embracing Mahayana. As M. Sylvain Levi has said, it is impossible as yet adequately to define the extent of the influence exerted on Buddhism in remote times by China and neighbouring countries. Buddhism has always been the religion of merchants. The Sutras tell us of many wealthy traders who supported the order by their generous donations. There must have been a great volume of trade. The S'akyan nobles, who constantly address S'akyamuni as gotama, " herdsman " (apparently a common mode of address), were of the same race as the herdsmen of the Himalayas. There is at least one Sutra which speaks of the wool merchant from across the mountains, and it is indeed to wandering S'akyan herdsmen that is attributed the opening up of the valley of Lhassa in Thibet. One of S'akyamuni's earliest disciples was a merchant's son from Benares named Yasas. He has been identified (wrongly, as I think) with S'anavasas, the third patriarch of the Northern succession. ISTow, S'anavasas is described as having been a ship-captain. True, he may only have been the skipper of a Ganges barge ; but there are two later patriarchs of whom it is ex- pressly stated that they had penetrated as far as Turkestan in their travels. To the lowest class, the Sudras, belonged one at least of S'akyamuni's disciples, Upali, the barber. But there are traces of lower strata of society more degraded even than the Sudras. There is a record of a mission,^ conducted by the master in person, to a tribe of cannibals, whom he ^ This incident i3 of importance as showing one of the beat features of the creed as taught by S'akyamuni. The Brahman religion frankly left out of consideration all those who were not of the "Twice-born," which was the name given to the privileged castes. The Kshatriyas, or Warriors (amongst whom we must include the S'akyans), whilst eager to assert the privileges of their order as against the sacerdotal caste, were 10 THE CREED OF HALF JAPAN converted to better ways; and many have seen in the Nagas, Gandharas, Kinnaras, and other half-mythical companies of beings, the traces of aboriginal tribes of a low order. This is especially the case with the Nagas, who are so constantly appearing in the Sutras. They were most probably savages whose name was given to them from their worship of serpents (still practised in India). In the ^N'epaulese legend they appear as the original inhabitants of the swamps opened up by the civilizing Manjusri. Driven out by Manjusri, they take refuge in Nagaloka^ the world of the Nagas, or serpents, which to the Nepaulese is Thibet. Strange to say, the Thibetan records also speak of Nagas and ISTagaloka ; but in their case Nagaloka is China. This seems to me to be another instance of a very early intercourse between India and China, or at least with those districts of Central Asia which had early connections with that empire. Hindoo philosophy, such as we now understand it,^ not perhaps equally eager to have emphasis laid on the universal character of the new faith. The Buddha was not fighting for the privileges of any class, but was busied with a salvation which was to be a blessing to all men alike. His mission to the cannibals must have been as distasteful to the Kshatriyas as it was to the Brahmans. See Watanabe's " Story of Kalmasapada," published by Pali Text Society, 1910. * See Sylvain Levi, i.e., and the Analytical Index to the Tibetan " History of the Kise, Progress, and Downfall of Buddhism in India," edited by Sarat Chandra Das (Calcutta, 1908). See also article on •* Serpent Worshipiin India," by Surgeon-Major Oldham in J.B.A.S. for July, 1891. For us the question of the Nagas will have special interest, because the Mahayana tradition asserts that it was a Naga king that revealed to Nagarjuna, in the Dragon Palace imder the Sea, the holy text of the Avatamsaka, or Kegon Scriptures. 2 I think it may be shown that there was very little philosophy be- fore S'akyamuni's time, nothing like the six definite schools which appear in later centuries. The philosophy of the Hindoos arose partly from the need for definite thought brought out by the controversies between Brahmans, Buddhists, and sectaries, and partly also from S'AKYAMUNI'S STAGE ii did not exist. That would seem to have been the product of a later age. The Brahman religion existed, but in its infancy. The day of the Vedic gods was not yet over ; men still bowed before Indra, Varuna, and the rest of the ancient deities, and the gods whom Buddhism has adopted into its pantheon, such as, e.g., the twin deities that guard the entrance to the temples of the older sects in Japan, belong exclusively to the early period. The Brahmans had doubtless begun the formation of the theological system which was to fetter the intellect as it had fettered the social liberties of the people ; but the system was not yet completed, and there were many among the Kshatriyas who openly resisted the pretensions of the sacerdotal class.^ It was, also, a period of great religious zeal and inquiry. Time and again, in reading the biographical notices connected with the proceedings of S'akyamuni, we find that his converts were men who had for years been searchers after truth; in some cases, as, e.g., that of Uruvilva Kasyapa, they had themselves been religious teachers, and drew their own followers after them to swell the ranks of S'akyamuni's disciples. But it would seem as though before S'akyamuni's time there was but one path known for the searcher after truth to follow — the way of austerities and penance, which brought power and influence to the sacerdotal Brahmans, without always leading the searcher to the much-coveted enlightenment and peace.^ contact with extraneous thought, especially Greek. It is interesting to trace the contemporaneous development of philosophy in India and in Greece. ^ The order of the castes in Buddhist authors is (1) Kshatriyas, (2) Brahmans, (3) Vaisyas, (4) Sudras. See J.R.A.S., April, 1894, pp. 341 ff. ^ And yet S'akyamuni's preaching was nothing new. He was appeal- ing to truths which had been overlaid and forgotten. Nichiren speaks of a Buddhism before Buddha. 12 THE CREED OF HALF JAPAN Not all these searchers were convinced by Buddha's methods. S'akyamuni had many rivals, of whom one at least founded a system of belief which has endured to our own time. Mahavira, the founder of the Jain sect, was the contemporary of S'akyamuni, and died in the Kosala country, not many miles from the place where S'akyamuni went to his rest, apparently in the same year as his more celebrated rival. Jainism and Buddhism are kindred faiths, and the Jainists and Buddhists seem to have always looked upon one another as brethren, or, at least, as spiritual cousins.^ It was in such a country and in such an age that S'akyamuni was born. The son of Suddhodhana, King of Kapilavastu, and of his wife, the Lady Maya, his birth is said to have been accompanied with marvels which really belong to a later chapter of our book, and his boyhood was marked by a singular precocity of intellect and purity of character. The wise men summoned to the palace at the time of his birth,^ and especially one of their number, the aged sage Asita, told the happy father that the new- born babe would be either an epoch-making emperor or a world-saving Buddha ; and the father, feeling perhaps that charity should begin at home, determined that, if possible, his son should be prepared for the former of the two alternatives. The young Prince Siddhartha was brought up as became a S'akyan prince of high degree ; trained in arms, literature, and science, he was surrounded * It is quite in accordance with the proper fitness of things that in Kim E-udyard Kipling should make the old Lama seek a home for himself at Benares in a Jain monastery. 2 A Chinese legend, undoubtedly false, says that Laotze was present on that occasion. It is perhaps also worthy of notice that later Chinese legend credits Laotze with a virgin birth from the side of his mother, which is very much like that ascribed to S'akyamuni in the Buddhist traditions. The same claim was made for Jinghis Khan and Christ. S'AKYAMUNI'S STAGE 13 with nothing but objects pleasant for his eye to rest upon, and the most beautiful person in his harem was his wife, the carefully selected Princess Yasodhara.^ Many incidents, however, show that his mind was not at ease in the midst of all his luxury, and this feeling of dissatisfaction was increased by several sights which brought home to him the inherent misery of the world. A ceremonial ploughing-festival, which, as Crown Prince, it was his duty to attend, revealed to him the strife that there is in Nature, the upturned earth showing the worms cut in two by the ploughshare to become the prey of the birds that followed in the wake of the plough- man. Shortly after, he met, at short intervals, an aged person, a sick man, a corpse, and a holy monk. He learned about the sorrow and pain that there are in the world, he also learned that there was a way by which escape from the " Welt-schmerz " was possible, and he resolved to follow it. He had received his call, and he obeyed the vocation. It was not mere selfishness that induced him to leave his home to follow after the Truth. When he bent over the sleeping forms of his beloved wife and his new-born son at the moment of his departure, he resolved that, when he had found the Way, he would come back and save his loved ones, and he kept his promise. But the Way was not easy to find, and the search was long and difficult. Por six long years, by self-imposed fastings, austerities, and penance, his strained soul, dwelling in an emaciated body, constantly exposed to the temptations of Mara, the Evil One, searched patiently for the Truth, but ^ Out of whom later Buddhist legend has developed the goddess Tard, the spiritual consort of the glorified S'akyamuni, intended, possibly, to ofiset the claims of the B.V.M. as S'akyamuni in the Mahayana was intended to offset those of Christ. 14 THE CREED OF HALF JAPAN in vain. At last he gave up his fruitless efforts, partook of food after a long abstinence, had one last combat with the Evil One who strove to appeal to his pride and fear, and then sat down " under the fig-tree " at Bodhi-Gaya and awaited enlightenment. Had he been a Christian or a Jew, we might have said that " he listened to what the Lord God should say unto him." What his soul heard was as follows : " (1) There is Pain in the world, and Pain is universal. (2) All pain is the result of Concupiscence (Trishna). (3) Destroy Concupiscence and you free yourself from Pain. (4) There is a path by which you can attain to the Destruction of Concupiscence, and its end is Liberation." The Libera- tion is what is known as Nirvana, and the "result of Concupiscence," which leads to action, is Karma. These propositions are known as the Four Great Truths. They contained nothing new, and yet the Light which S'akyamuni threw upon them was a fresh one. Karma and Nirvana were words well known to India before S'akyamuni's discovery of them ; the things them- selves were known in Greece and to the Jewish people. The great question of the retribution that waits on human actions had been brought solemnly before the Asiatic world by the impressive fall of the Babylonian Empire, before both Asia and Europe, during the lifetime almost of S'akyamuni himself, by the overthrow of Xerxes at Marathon and Salamis. The Greek theologian-poet .^schylus treated of this theme in his " Eumenides," and again in his tragedy of the " Persians." The prophet of the Captivity, Ezekiel, had been proclaiming to his country- men (Ezek. xviii.) a new law of retribution. Each soul, said the prophet, should bear its own burdens; there should be no more reason to say in Israel, " the fathers had eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth had been S'AKYAMUNrS STAGE 15 set on edge." We shall also do well to remember that the deutero-Isaiah and Ezekiel had both insisted on the value and benefit of the sabbath day, and that a fresh impetus had been given to the moral law by the labours of Ezra, the reviser of Holy Scripture (Isa. Ivi. 6, 7; Ezek. XX. 12, etc., xviii. 2, etc. ; Deut. viii. 12 ; Ps. cxix.). What S'akyamuni taught was this : the universal existence of Pain (and Pain must be taken in its widest sense) ; the root of Pain, which is the Lust that is in the human heart ; the end to be attained, which is the Destruc- tion of Desire ; and the way to obtain it. Desire, Karma, the wheel of Life and Death : the quenching of Desire, the Destruction of Karma, the Peace of Nirvana.^ Karma is no Nemesis, such as in ^schylus pursues the unjust and the slayer. Nemesis is vengeful, seems to be given to wrath, and to be guided by anger ; Nemesis, to men's eyes, is fitful, irregular, and therefore unjust. Karma, as S'akyamuni saw it, is a universal law, working quietly and steadily along a twelve-fold chain of causation, and binding its victim to the ever-revolving wheel of Life and Death. It works unobtrusively, but surely ; yet it can be broken. There is what S'akyamuni calls a noble Eight-fold Path, of right views, right aims, right actions, etc., which leads in time to the destruction of evil Karma by the quenching of Desire, and it seems to have been S'akya- muni's life-work to instil into his hearers the way of the Noble Path, which alone can lead to emancipation. Of philosophy he spoke but little ; ^ the so-called Philosophy of Buddhism was a later product. * If we remember that most Pali writers speak of the Enlightenment as the Nibbana and of the Death as Parinibbana, we shall have some light on the word Nirvana. S'akyammii had had a vision of the Truth, and " the Truth had made him free." He had many doubts and troubles after that, but he was at peace {J.A.S.B., Jan. 1908, p. 9, fwte). * Neumann, " Buddha " (Danish edit.). i6 THE CREED OF HALF JAPAN He did not profess to teach a new doctrine. What he taught was the " Way of the Buddhas." ^ He recognized that there had been Buddhas before him,^ as there would be Buddhas after him. He was thus enabled freely to adopt many things that seemed good in systems other than his own, and flexibility has always been a mark of his religion. To us it will seem easy to conjecture the quarter from which he got his idea of a weekly sabbath,^ and the fact that the Order of Monks kept their sabbath days for many centuries after the Nirvana will make it easier for us to recognize and admit the doctrine held by a large section of northern Buddhists, that Buddha also taught, personally and during his earthly life, the salvation worked out for many by another Buddha, who is Boundless in Life, Light, and Compassion, and whom Japan knows as Amitabha.* * " Do not commit evil, Do all that is good, Cleanse your own heart — This is the way of the Buddhas." " Light of Buddha," p. 37. ' There is a list given of these pre-Buddhistic Buddhas, in, c.gr., Hardy's '• Manual of Buddhism." ^ Sabbath. In the Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. iv. part 1, Jan. 1908, there is an article by Mr. H. C. Norman, showing that the question of the keeping of the UposatJms or sabbath days was one of the causes that led to the convening of As'oka's Council. The sabbath was, however, a Babylonian and Assyrian institution as well as a Jewish one. See Mahler, " Der Sabbat," in Z.D.M.Q., vol. Ixii. part i. p. 36, etc. * On this point the Japanese Buddhists with few exceptions are very clear. They place the Sutras in which S'akyamuni spoke of Amitabha in that period of silence towards the end of his ministerial life when we lose our track of him, and can no longer follow him from year to year. The doctrine thus proclaimed was taken with the seceders after the Second Council beyond the Himalayas (some say to south India). It reappears after many years, in the country to which it had been taken, in the lifetime of Nagarjuna, and when the Kushan conquests S'AKYAMUNFS STAGE 17 S'akyamuni was no atheist. He did indeed teach that the enlightened Buddha was higher than the gods of the Brahman pantheon, higher than Indra, Varuna, Agni, Emma-San or Kompira Sama, who now fill subordinate places in Buddhist temples. These gods were creatures of fancy, subject, like Venus, Juno, Neptune, to the Law of Change, and liable to that extinction which has befallen the gods of Assyria and Babylon, of Egypt, Greece, and ancient Eome. From the denial of such gods to the denial of all gods is a very long step, and I think it may be shown that S'akyamuni never took it. Eather I would say, and this I hope to make clear as I proceed, that wherever S'akyamuni's own influence reached, it served to give men higher and truer ideas of the Divine Nature, and that his teachings were thus intended to prepare the way for the acceptance of the highest of all truths. had united North-West India and the Central Asian lands for a short while under one sceptre. The history of the Amitabha doctrine is well worked out in the ' ' Shoshinge Kowa," to which I have already alluded. Amitabha is the original Buddha, the First Cause, the Father, not exactly the Creator, but the originator of the Law of Cause and Effect through which the universe came into existence. He has revealed himself many times, the long list of previous Buddhas in the Sukhuvati Vyuha being recorded to give definiteness to this idea, and S'akyamuni was the latest of these manifestations. The Ophite Gnostics held exactly this idea, making Christ a still later manifestation superseding all that had gone before, just as Amitabha supersedes all other previous Buddhas. In connection with the questions thus raised, a Japanese scholar, much interested in religion, has pointed out to me that in some early forms of the Apostle's Creed there is no clause " Creator of heaven and earth." I shaU have to refer to the character used for writing " Buddha " later on. Here I would point out that Buddha to the Shinshu believer is always Amitabha, whose "Divine Name " is pronounced in worship as Namu Amida Butsu. This formula is interpreted to mean, " Trust in me, I will save you," which is not a translation of the formula, but is one of the Name of Christ. The Shinshuists call this formula " the Divine Name of the Six Letters," for which see Irenaeus, ii. 24. CHAPTER III The Buddha and his Greatest Disciple Thanks to the labours of many students of the Buddhist books, both Pali and Sanskrit, we are able to form a vivid mind's eye picture of the ministerial life of the Founder of Buddhism ; indeed, the general indications of time are so wonderfully precise that we can trace his labours year by year for quite one-half of the forty-six years which his ministry occupied. There is a gap of about fifteen years near the end of his career for which we have no precise sequence of events ; but even here we are not left entirely in the dark, for there are many indications given of the troublous days through which India in general, and the Buddhist community in particular, was then passing.^ * Northern Buddhists assign to the closing years of this period of silence the pronouncement of two or three most important Sutras. The " Saddharmapundarika Sutra " is said to have taken seven years to deliver in its fulness, and (as we have seen) the three Sutras relating to the Mercies and Vow of Amitabha are all ascribed to this period. It is hard to believe that they can all have come from the same mouth at about the same time, for in the one set Amitabha is exalted to the highest of all places ; in the other, he occupies only a very inferior position. It seems certain that these Sutras in their present form were not composed until long after S'akyamuni's time. It is possible, however, that in the case of Vaidehi, the Queen of Bimbisara, S'akya- muni may actually have pointed the distressed lady to the Mercies of Amitabha. That amongst the Kshatriyas many monotheistic ideas were afloat about the period of S'akyamuni's activity seems very probable. The worship given by the Bhagavatis to Krishna Vasudeva, which Dr. Grierson has treated of in J.B.A.S., is very much akin to the cult of BUDDHA AND HIS GREATEST DISCIPLE 19 We are shown the successes which attended on S'akya- muni's first preaching. Conversions were numerous and rapid, converts of all ages and both sexes flocked into his community from every class of society, and were welcomed without distinction of caste and rank. Thousands caught the enthusiasm of the Buddha, and left all to follow him, while in the crowds who felt no vocation to the monastic life were kings and merchants, who vied with each other in the generosity of their gifts. Among all these varied personages S'akyamuni moves like a king among men. Bimbisara recognizes the king- ship that is in him, and offers to make him the Crown Prince of the Magadhan kingdom, S'akyan noblemen herald him as the teacher and saint of their clan ; and the universal esteem in which he is held is shown by nothing more strikingly than by the settlement of a dispute about rights of water which is referred to his arbitration by the tribes concerned. Evidently, the historical Tathagata was a practical person, far removed from the ecstatic dreamer of the Hokekyo.^ Religious India had need of a sound mind with a practical bent, for the times were fraught with evil. Wars and rumours of war vexed the minds of the people ; there was civil strife in Magadha, and sounds of more distant thunder came rolling over from Western Asia. All these hindered " the running of the wheel ; " so did Amitabha. Clearly such conceptions as the unity of the Godhead and salvation by faith were known in India at a very early date. The troubles in Magadha, the civil wars which ended in the destruction of Kapilavastu, as well as some of the conspiracies against S'akyajnuni's life, all fall into this " period of silence." Beyond the limits of India all Asia was in the excitement of the great preparations for the expedi- tion of Xerxes against Greece. Dr. Maeda, in the appendix to " Bukkyo Seiten," gives a very convenient chronology of S'akyamuni's life, which is probably, however, based on the work of Western scholars. * This is the Japanese name for the " Saddharmapundarika Sutra." 20 THE CREED OF HALF JAPAN also the conflicts with heretics, the dissensions among the disciples, and the many breaches of discipline which weakened the strength and vigour of his Buddhist followers. S'akyamuni was a brave man and strong, but he felt the dissensions among his disciples most keenly, and there were many moments in which he sank into the lowest pit of despondency, and which his biographers have described as conflicts with the Evil One. These conflicts came at many periods in his life; they cannot be said to have shortened his days, for he lived to be over eighty, but they were evidently the result of the sorrows and anxieties which embittered the later years of his life.^ The end had probably been drawing on for some time ; strange to say, it was hastened by a meal of dried boar's flesh, of which he partook in the house of Chanda, the blacksmith — a proof that abstinence from flesh cannot have been an integral portion of the early rules of Bud- dhism .^ His death has been very touchingly described in the " Sutra of the Great Decease," which gives us also ^ I have heard a Buddhist preacher draw a contrast between Buddha and Christ. The latter, he said, lived all His life in the midst of enemies who were constantly seeking opportunities to destroy Him. He was therefore perpetually in an atmosphere of suspicion, fear, and danger, and the quiet and repose which are so necessary for the teacher of religion, and which were so conspicuous a feature in the life of S'akyamuni, were lacking in the case of Christ. But a perusal of S'akya- muni's life, as it is given, e.g., in the pages of Kern's scholarly work on Buddhism, tends to show that Buddha was a fighter quite as much as was our Lord or St. Paul, and that there was in his ministerial life just as little of rest and quietude as there was for Christ during His three years of similar activities. 2 The doctrine of transmigration is given as one of the reasons for abstinence from animal food. If S'akyamuni on this occasion deliberately partook of boar's flesh, it will strengthen the position taken up by many that the Twelvefold Chain of Causation implies, not transmigration or re-birth, but heredity. BUDDHA AND HIS GREATEST DISCIPLE 21 his last words to his disciples, as well as the account of his obsequies. The extent of his influence and the high esteem in which he was held throughout Central Asia are shown by the eagerness with which the sur- rounding tribes craved for a portion of his cremated bones for purposes of reverence and adoration. The evidence to hand seems to show that it was the strong ruling hand of the master that alone was able to preserve the unity of the large number of his disciples and followers in his later years. The Tathagata had been attended during his last moments by the well-beloved Ananda, the disciple who had for some time been acting as his private secretary and coadjutor; Kasyapa, the most weighty of all the Sthaviras, or Seniors, did not arrive in time to see his master again in life. When a Council was summoned at Eajagriha soon after the interment, it was Kasyapa who took the chair, whilst Ananda, in spite of his intimate relations with the master, found himself at first excluded altogether (Kern, "Buddhism," vol. ii. p. 239). There is a northern tradition of a rival Council held outside the Grotto, whilst the official Council within was pursuing its labours.^ Other traditions (see Kern, l,c.) » In " Bukkyo Kakushu Koyo " (vol. i. fol. 1 and 2), a semi-official manual of Buddhism published in Tokyo in the twenty-second year of Meiji (1889), mention is made of three Councils, one within the grotto (}|^ pfi) at Eajagriha, consisting of 600 arhats under the presidency of Kasyapa, which drew up the Canon of three Pitakas ; another outside the Grotto (^ ^), at which Bashika (^ gf ^Jp) and others drew up a Canon of five Pitakas; and again a third, a Council of the Mahayana, under the presidency of Ananda and Maitreya (not to be confounded with the Buddha of the Future). The two Hinayana Councils represent the Sthavira and Mahasanghika respec tively ; the third is possibly an invention of later times, fabricated as a means of accounting for the existence of the Northern or Mahayana Canon. This account is based on Hiouen Thsang (Kern). The five Pitakas will be found in Nanjo's catalogue. They comprise nothing but Mahayana Sutras (no Vinaya or Abhidharma), there being in the 22 THE CREED OF HALF JAPAN make the exclusion of Ananda from the official Council to have been but temporary, but the fact remains that the successions of Patriarchs in north and south were from the very beginning different. Both successions begin with Kasyapa, but both assign to him only a short tenure of office. He was an old man, older than S'akyamuni, and most probably died soon after his master. After Kasyapa, we have, in the south, Upali the Barber, who recited the Vinaya-pitakam; then Dasaka, Sonaka, Siggava, and Chandavajji, and Tishya Maudgalyayaniputra, who is said to have presided over As' oka's Council. In the north, during the same period, we get Ananda, the coadjutor of Buddha and the reciter of the Sutra-pitakam ; Madhyan- tika, the Apostle of Kashmir ; S'anavasas, who was present at the Second Council, Upagupta, who acted as guide to As'oka when that monarch, in the interval between his conversion and his ordination to the priesthood, made a tour of the holy places ; ^ and finally Dhitika, who, during the period of missionary fervour which followed the Third Council under As'oka (possibly even independently of that Council's authority), went into Turkestan and there Chinese Canon a special section for the Hinayana Sutras, and a miscellaneous section for Sutras of later addition. The five sections are : (i.) Prajnaparamita, 22 works ; (ii.) Ratna Kiita, 37 ; (iii.) Maha- sannipata, 27 ; (iv.) Avatamsaka or Kegon, 35 ; and (v.) Nirvana, 12. It seems probable that these sections represent each the books cultivated by a particular school, sect, or country, and that they have thus been grouped together so as to preserve the characteristic features of the different schools. Thus the Amitabha books fall entirely into the Ratnakuta class, etc. Strange to say, the Saddharmapundarika, which plays so important a part in Japanese Buddhism, is classed among the miscellaneous Sutras of later addition. ^ According to the Record of the Transmission of the Dharmapitaka (Nanjo Cat. Trip., No. 1340), both Dhitika and his successor Micchaka laboured in Turkestan, their activities coming somewhat after the times of As'oka. BUDDHA AND HIS GREATEST DISCIPLE 23 became a successful apostle of Buddhism.^ The two lists have no names in common, except the first, and the northern histories ignore As' oka's Council. The inference seems to be a legitimate one, that north and south were independent of one another. A second Council (for we must consider the meetings at Rajagriha to have constituted but one Council) was held at Vaisali just about one hundred years after the Parinirvana of the Master to settle some questions of discipline which had arisen within the community of monks. Was it permissible for the monks to keep a little salt in a horn, in case the food supplied by the charitable should contain none ? Was it permissible to dine after midday, when the sun cast shadows more than two inches in length ? Was it permissible for brethren belonging to the same community to keep the sabbaths separately ? Might the brethren drink palm-wine, sit on elaborate cushions, handle gold and silver, etc. ? ^ These and similar questions were brought before the Council of Vaisali by the monks of Vaisali, who maintained their lawfulness. We can see how strong was the current of party feeling from the question about the sabbath. The opposing parties could evidently no longer meet together for the joint celebration of the customary observances, and the tension between the monks of the east and west was very great. A leading part in the Synod was taken (Kern, vol. ii. p. 248) by Yasas, whose identification with S'anavasas, the Mahayana patriarch, would, if accepted,^ ^ This tour, according to the Chinese (see Prof. Pelliot in Bulletin de VJ^cole Frangaise de V Extreme Orient) ^ extended as far as to Wu-tai- shan in North China, the traditional home of the mythological Man- ju^ri. * These are technically known as the Ten Indulgences, ' Whilst some traditions seem to identify the two, the authorities quoted by Kern treat them as distinct persons, and represent Yasas as 24 THE CREED OF HALF JAPAN show that the breach between Hinayana and Mahay ana was not yet definitely recognized. The decision went against the Vaisali monks, who seem to have belonged chiefly to the proud Vrijji clan of S'akyans, and from that moment Buddhism began to be hopelessly shattered by ever-increasing schisms and divisions.^ Before a third Council was summoned, India had undergone the shock of invasion, and Alexander's vic- torious arms had penetrated as far as the Punjaub. The immediate effect on Buddhism of the Macedonian invasion was not so great as might be imagined.^ When the Greek armies came to a check in the Punjaub, there were still several hundreds of unconquered miles between them and the kingdom of Magadha. The strictly Hellenistic influences came later: the immediate effect lay in the shock and terror with which the weak princelets and peoples of India must have viewed the advancing invader, and the despair which must have paralyzed every one. With the sole exception of King Porus, there does not appealing to S'anava^s for his advice and assistance. But the accounts are hopelessly inconsistent and confusing. Kdla As'oka was the king under whom the Council met. * Murakami, in his "Handbook of Buddhism," gives the 18 Hina- yana sects immediately after the Second Council. A fuller list will be found in J.B.A.S. for January, 1892, p. 5. It is impossible and un- advisable to burden the memory with what are after all mere names, though some of the sects, the Dharmaguptas, for instance, and the Sarvastivadins, appear frequently in Chinese Buddhism. The followers of the two Vehicles lived side by side for several centuries after Christ : sometimes we have cases of a teacher following the Mahayana in his theological speculations, and the Hinayana in his tenets on discipline. ^ It would almost seem as though, in the interval between the Parinirvana of S'akyamuni and the accession of As'oka, Buddhism in India had lost a great deal of ground, and that it was the patronage of As'oka only that saved S'akyamuni from the oblivion which befel his predecessors in the Buddhaship. Megasthenes describes Brahmanic religious rites and life, but is practically silent about Buddhism. BUDDHA AND HIS GREATEST DISCIPLE 25 seem to have been a single native prince of any power or weight, and the kingdom of Magadha was especially- helpless under the rule of the effeminate Nanda dynasty. A mere adventurer, the son of a barber, who had found his way to Alexander's camp, conceived the bold idea of raising himself to the throne which its feeble occupants left practically unprotected. After trying in vain to engage Alexander in further enterprises, Chandragupta bided his time till the conqueror's death gave him the opportunity for action. Then a successful mutiny made him master of the Punjaub, the possession of which secured for him the command of the necessary sinews of war. A few months later we see him master of Magadha, with a capital at Pataliputra and dominions extending from the mouths of the Ganges to the Indus, from the Hima- layas to the Vindhya. Chandragupta was the founder of the so-called Mauryan dynasty ; he first defied Seleucus Nicator, and then entered into an alliance with him, compacted by a marriage with the Greek king's daughter. It was to his court that Megasthenes ^ was sent as minister resident of the Seleucid monarch, and it is to Megasthenes that Europe owes its first just notions of India. Chandra- gupta was not a Buddhist, and he has no importance for the historian of religions. He is, nevertheless, a personage far too weighty to be passed over without mention. Chandragupta's grandson was the celebrated As'oka, who changed Buddhism from the form of belief adopted by a few unimportant tribes in Central India to a creed of world-wide importance. Chandragupta (b.c. 320-297) was succeeded by his son Bindusara (297-272), a sovereign of whom very little is known beyond the fact that he extended his dominions considerably ; that, whilst he was • Megasthenes was the author of a book, still extant, which gives a very detailed account of the life at the court of Chandragupta. 26 THE CREED OF HALF JAPAN on the throne, the King of Egypt sent an embassy, under a certain Dionysus, to Pataliputra; and that on one occasion he wrote a letter to Antiochus, King of Syria, asking to have a professor of Greek sent to him. Greek writers speak of him as 'A/uLiTpoxarrig, a name which suggests that he adopted the Sanskrit title Amitraglidti, " the slayer of his foes." He was succeeded in B.C. 272 by his son As' oka, one of the greatest of the rulers of India. Of As'oka we know that in his early days he bore anything but a good reputation; indeed, it was said of him that, like a traditional Oriental potentate, he waded to the throne through the blood of his near kinsmen and their friends. His coronation, for some unknown reason, was deferred for some two or three years after his accession, a fact which inclines us to believe that in the early years of his reign he may have met with a good deal of opposi- tion. In B.C. 261 he was engaged in a successful war with the Kalingas in southern India, a war so full of horrors and misery that the contemplation of it filled the conqueror with remorse and pity, and caused his con- version, not necessarily to Buddhism, but at any rate to religion. He soon took political measures for acquainting his subjects with his change of views ; and he has left us a series of edicts, inscribed on rocks and pillars in different parts of India, which give us our best insight into the character of his religious aspirations. Whatever his re- ligious views were, he was not ashamed to publish them abroad, for he sent embassies^ to many of the leading * These embassies must have been sent in the early part of his reign, soon after his conversion to religion. One of the kings thus approached was Magas, King of Gyrene, who died in B.C. 258. One can see a possible reason for the alliancei between As'oka and Antiochus Theos in the fact that the year B.C. 256, in which it was concluded, also saw the establishment of the Parthian kingdom of the Arsacides, and the revolt of Bactria under Diodotus. In such a crisis the friendship of As'oka, who was practically sole ruler of Hindustan (as may be gathered from BUDDHA AND HIS GREATEST DISCIPLE 27 Hellenic sovereigns of Western Asia, and the treaty of amity which he concluded with Antiochus Theos in B.C. 256 must have given him a much-desired opportunity for impressing his beliefs on the Hellenic mind. By the year 249 his mind was turning definitely towards the acceptance of the teachings of S'akyamuni in preference to those of any other of the religious teachers who laid claim to the allegiance of religious India. He went on a solemn pilgrimage to the sacred places of India with Upagupta, the patriarch of the ISTorthern School, as his guide, and the sight of the Lumbini grove, where S'akyamuni was born, of Bodhigaya, where he attained to Enlightenment, of Benares, where the Wheel of the Law was set in motion, and of the Sacred Grove, in which he died, moved him apparently to a further step. In 240 he was ordained as a monk, and in the Bhabhra Edict, dated soon after that, he proclaimed himself definitely as a Buddhist. Between As'oka's ordination and his death (which Vincent Smith assigns to B.C. 231) must be placed his Council, the data for which are so confusing that writers like Kern have come to the conclusion that it never took place at all, but was a mere figment of chrono- logists and history-writers of the Southern School. Northern Buddhism, it is true, knows nothing of As'oka's Council, but there is nothing in this fact to justify a denial of its having taken place. It is probable that the Council took place, and that it was an effort on As'oka's part to procure reforms of abuses which had crept in during the 230 years which had elapsed since the death of the Founder. It is also reasonable to suppose that he laboured at the Council for the promotion of those views which he had so persistently advocated in the long succession of rock edicts. the locations of the inscriptions), must have been of paramount import- ance to the Seleucid government. CHAPTER IV The Pre-Christian Expansion of Buddhism The great As'oka, king of Maghada, the Constantine of Indian and Ceylonese Buddhism, has no official place, as I have said, in the history of the Mahayana, which takes absolutely no notice of the Council that is said to have been held during his reign. The Council naturally concerned only those monks that lived within As'oka's extensive dominions ; the Mahayana seems to have originated beyond the Indus, among people, possibly, o Indian origin, but still not subjects of any purely Indian state. Yet As'oka is of importance in the study of the Mahayana. For, first, he enables us to correct a great error as to S'akyamuni's date, still commonly made by many of the ofi&cial defenders of Buddhism in Japan. The Mahayana books place the date of S'akyamuni's birth in B.C. 1027, and his death, consequently, about B.C. 950 — a chronological misstatement which vitiates all their other calculations. Por if this be true, then Asvaghosha, who lived 500 years after the Nirvana, and Nagarjuna, who lived in the sixth century after the same occurrence, must be supposed to have flourished respectively about the years B.C. 450 and 400, and the whole Mahayana system predates the Christian era by some centuries.^ ^ It is said that the falsification of the date was made in China, where the Buddhists were anxious to show that their religion was much EXPANSION OF BUDDHISM 29 Fortunately As'oka is well known to us, not only from books, but also from the edicts which he has left engraved in stone in various parts of his former dominions, and the data thus furnished enable us to give both As'oka's exact year, and approximately that of S'akyamuni's entrance into Nirvana. From the materials at hand, Dr. Fleet ^ has been able to fix the dates for the principal events between the death of Buddha and that of As'oka. We may accept them with confidence. As'oka was anointed king on the 25th of April, B.C. 264, 218 years after the death of Buddha, which consequently took place in B.C. 483 — in the interval, it is well to remember, between the battles of Marathon and Salamis. Again, As' oka's monuments give us data whereby to gauge the extent of his influence. Edict No. 2, translated by Dr. V. A. Smith,^ is on the subject of comforts for men and animals, and runs thus : " Everywhere in the dominions of King Priyadarsin, and likewise in the neighbouring realms, such as those of the Chola, Pandya, Sattyaputra, and Keralaputra, in Ceylon, in the dominions of the Greek king Antiochus, and in those of the other kings subordinate to that Antiochus — everywhere, on behalf of his Majesty King Priyadarsin, have two kinds of remedies been disseminated — remedies for men, and remedies for beasts. Healing herbs, medicinal for man and medicinal for beasts, wherever they were lacking, have everywhere been imported and planted. On the more ancient than anything of native Chinese origin, it being claimed that Laotze, in particular, had borrowed much from S'akyamuni. It may also be that, supposing the Buddhists of North- West India and Afghanistan to have had any acquaintance with Judaism, there may also have been a desire to antedate Isaiah's prophecy of the Virgin Birth. See Hultzsch, " The Rupnath Edict," in J.B.A.S. for July, 1909. ^ Fleet, " The Day on which the Buddha died," J.B.A.S., January, 1909. ' V. A. Smith, " Asoka," pp. 115 ff. 30 THE CREED OF HALF JAPAN roads, trees have been planted, and wells dug for the use of man and beast." Edict No. 5 concerns the Censors of the Law of Piety : " They (i.e. the Censors) are engaged among people of all sects in promoting the establishment of piety, the progress of piety, and the welfare and happiness of the lieges, as well as of the Yonas, Kambojas, Gandharas, Kashtrikas, Pitenikas, and other nations on my borders." (c) Edict. 13 is on the subject of the " True Conquest " (i.e. the Conquest of Self) : " Even upon the forest tribes in his dominions. His Majesty has compassion, and he seeks their conversion, inasmuch as the might even of His Majesty is based on conversion." ... [It has been communicated] "even to where the Greek King named Antiochus dwells, and beyond that Antiochus, to where dwell the four kings severally named Ptolemy, Antigonus, Magas, and Alexander ; and in the south, to the Kings of the Cholas, and Pandyas, and of Ceylon, — and likewise here, in the King's dominions, among the Yonas, and Kam- bojas, in Nabhaka of the Nabhitis, among the Bhojas and Pitenikas, among the Andhras and Palindas, everywhere men follow the law of Piety as proclaimed by His Majesty. "Even in those regions where the envoys of His Majesty do not penetrate, men now practise and will continue to practise the Law of Piety. . . . " ^ (d) Minor Eock Edict No. 1, if accurately translated by Senart, speaks of 256 missionaries who have gone forth to proclaim the law.^ 1 V. A. Smith, " Asoka," p. 132. * Smith translates this Edict to the effect that "256 years have elapsed since the Tathagata, a statement which, if correct, would make S'akyamuni's death to have been B.C. 608. Kern gives many details about these missionaries and their spheres of labour. I have not dwelt at any length on them, as I think what I have given in the present chapter will suffice for showing the expansion of Buddhism. EXPANSION OF BUDDHISM 31 We have here a picture of As'oka's missionary activity. It embraced his own subjects, those living in his capital, those living in the remote provinces and dependencies of his empire within India, the Yonas or immigrant Greeks, the Cholas, Pandyas, and Andhras, the degraded tribes of the forests, the King of Ceylon, the Greek kings who ruled as the Diadochi of Alexander the Great, and last, but not least, the unmentioned lands to which As* oka had sent no envoy, but in which Buddhism was nevertheless being actively and piously pursued. These sovereigns and peoples As'oka addresses, mainly on two subjects — care for the health and welfare of the people, and " True Conquest " over themselves and their passions — a lesson which was surely not superfluous in those troublous days. The Indian states and peoples need not delay us long. The mention of Cholas, Pandyas, etc., serves to show how widely spread, in India itself, was the Buddhist faith which As*oka strove to promote and reform. Nor need we linger over Ceylon.^ That island is said to have owed its conversion to the labours of Mahendra, the son or son- in-law of As'oka, and, whoever may have been its apostle, it has remained true to the faith which it then received. The mention of the Yonas or Yavanas {i.e. the lonians or Greeks ; we have the authority of Aristophanes that by the Oriental the name " Greek " was pronounced laonau, which is very near to Yavana) is a little ambiguous ; for it may refer to the Greek kingdom of Bactria, which set up for itself a few years after the publication of the earlier ^ Japanese writers assert that Buddhism was preached at this time in Further India and Burma. There is nothing in As'oka's inscriptions to justify this assertion, for the Kamboja mentioned there have nothing to do with Cambodja. The list given in the Singhalese books (see Kern, ii. 287) of the apostles sent forth after As'oka's Council is some- what vague in its statements. 32 THE CREED OF HALF JAPAN Rock Edicts, or it may refer to the Greek mercliants trading and travelling in India, whose votive inscriptions have been found in ancient Buddhist temples in the peninsula. It is possible, though we cannot make a positive assertion on the point, that some of the nations on his borders, to whom As'oka refers, may have dwelt on the frontiers of what in later times became the Parthian kingdom. The ruler of Syria at the time when As'oka published his Edicts was Antiochus II. (Theos), the unfortunate monarch who inherited the splendour but not the genius of his more illustrious father, Antiochus I. (Soter). He had only just come to the throne when the Edicts contain- ing his name were published, and we must therefore, I believe, refer the allusions to the state of the Syrian Kingdom to his father's reign rather than to his own. It was to Antiochus I. that As'oka had applied for assistance as to medical herbs and trees, and whom he had consulted as to wells and fountains in streets and by roadsides, and for trees to give shade to man and beast. In Antiochus I., the Founder of Cities (the Syrian kingdom was dotted over with them), many bearing his name, and one of them, Antioch in Syria, justly famed as one of the most beautiful cities of the ancient world, As'oka's request would find a sympathetic welcome. The ideas of municipal and civil government encouraged by Antiochus Soter were just such as would commend themselves to As'oka. How far Antiochus profited by As'oka's suggestions, we cannot say, but Antiochus styled himself fdamXbvg j^acriXecjv, and amongst his " subordinate kings " mentioned in the Edict on " creature comforts " were Philetserus (B.C. 281-263) of Pergamus, Nicomedes of Bithynia, and, for a short while, Magas of Cyrene, who was availing himself of assistance from Antiochus in a revolt against Egyptian EXPANSION OF BUDDHISM 33 suzerainty. In the wars which Antiochus I. waged against the Gauls and Celts, who had invaded Asia Minor at the invitation of Mcomedes, a rebel against the suzerainty of the " King of Kings," he had used elephants, which he, like his contemporary, Pyrrhus of Epirus, had obtained ^ from As'oka's father, Bindusara, King of Magadha, a favour which, it may be, As'oka was expected to continue in the case of Antiochus II. The kings of Pergamus were famous for their collections of books and parchments (the latter a jpergamene substitute for the papyrus which the Egyptian government would not allow to be exported) ; also for the botanical gardens of medicinal herbs, which antedated the more famous collections of Alexandria, into which they were afterwards merged ; and Cyrene was noted, the whole world over, for a medicinal plant called silphium (a kind of asafcetida), which formed one of the staple articles of its extensive commerce. The plant was almost extinct in the West in Pliny's time (though it is still, I believe, to be found in India),^ but it is to be found engraven on the coins of Cyrene as the emblem of the city, and there has been found a silver cup from Cyrene, with a representation of the king himself personally superintending the packing, weighing, and dispatching of the precious herb.^ We can imagine that Antiochus Soter would have much pleasure in forwarding As'oka's memo- randum touching medicinal herbs to his subordinate kings. We can also imagine that Antiochus II., who surnamed himself "the God," would not be equally pleased to receive the sermon about the " True Conquest." And yet As'oka would have us believe that the Dharma was being ^ There was absolutely no other monarch in the world from whom elephants could be obtained. 2 And, significantly enough, in the neighbourhood of the ancient Pataliputra, according to the " Encyclopaedia of India." ^ See Haeser, " Geschichte der Medizin," vol. i. p. 101. D 34 THE CREED OF HALF JAPAN observed and practised in the territories of the Syrian king. Stoicism was already a power in the world of philosophy and morals, and Stoicism is notoriously a semi- oriental mode of thought.^ Antigonus Gonatas, King of Macedonia, claimed possession of the European dominions of Alexander the Great. Macedonia must have been full of men who had been in Central Asia and India in those days of constant coming and going, and there must have been a great interest taken in things Indian. When Alexander took Babylon, he had the books in the library sent to his old tutor Aristotle, who, we may be sure, appreciated the gift, and found some way of discovering the contents of the books before they reached their final resting-place in the library of Alexandria. One of Alexander's successors, Cassander, who thoroughly disapproved of Alexander's policy of adopting Oriental habits and ways of life, had, living at his court, a philosopher named Euhemerus, who had travelled in Asia, at Cassander's request, and had returned with stories which had gained for him the reputa- tion of a liar. And yet much that Euhemerus related accurately described what must have been going on in Buddhism at the time of his visit. The island of Panchaia may have been an Utopia ; the history of the earthly life of Zeus before he became a god, which he brought back with him, may have been a fabrication ; still, the process described was exactly the process which was going on in Buddhism.^ S'akyamuni had been just such a man as * Kircliner, " Geschichte der Philosophie," p. 137. ' Miillach, " Fragmenta Philosophorum Graecormn," vol. ii. (Paris, 1831). Miillach gives a passage from Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math. ix. 17) : Ev-fjfxepos 54 (prjcriv • 8t€ ^v aruKTOS avQpwirwv fiios, oi TrepiyefS/xfvoi ruv &\\cav (o'X'^^ '''* ''"^ (Tvu€(rei SxTre nphs rk vvr' avriau KcKeuo/xeva iravras ^lovv, (nrov5d(ovr€s /jLel^oi/os Oavixacriiov koX