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Religions Ancient and Modern 
 
 EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
RELIGIONS: ANCIENT AND MODERN. 
 
 ANIMISM. 
 
 By Edward Clodd, Author of The Story of Creation. 
 PANTHEISM. 
 
 By James Allanson Picton, Author of The Religion of the 
 
 Universe. 
 THE RELIGIONS OF ANCIENT CHINA. 
 
 By Professor Giles, LL.D., Professor of Chinese in the University 
 
 of Cambridge. 
 THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE. 
 
 By Jane Harrison, Lecturer at Newnham College, Cambridge, 
 
 Author of Prolegomena to Study of Greek Religion. 
 ISLAM. 
 
 By Syed Ameer Ali, M.A., CLE., late of H.M.'s High Court 
 
 of Judicature in Bengal, Author of The Spirit of Islam and The 
 
 Ethics of Islam. 
 MAGIC AND FETISHISM. 
 
 By Dr. A. C. H ADDON, F.R.S., Lecturer on Ethnology at Cam- 
 bridge University. 
 THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT. 
 
 By Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie, F.R.S. 
 THE RELIGION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA. 
 
 By Theophilus G. Pinches, late of the British Museum. 
 BUDDHISM. 2 vols. 
 
 By Professor Rhys Davids, LL.D., late Secretary of The Royal 
 
 Asiatic Society. 
 HINDUISM. 
 
 By Dr. L. D. Barnett, of the Department of Oriental Printed 
 
 Books and MSS., British Museum. 
 SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. 
 
 By William A. Craigik, Joint Editor of the Oxford English 
 
 Dictionary. 
 CELTIC RELIGION. 
 
 By Professor Anwyl, Professor of Welsh at University College, 
 
 Aberystwyth. 
 THE MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 
 
 By Charles Squire, Author of The Mythology of the British 
 
 Islands. 
 JUDAISM. 
 
 By Israel Abrahams, Lecturer in Talmudic Literature in 
 
 Cambridge University, Author oi Jewish Life in the Middle Ages. 
 SHINTO. By W. G. Aston, C.M.G. 
 THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT MEXICO AND PERU. 
 
 By Lewis Spence, M.A. 
 THE RELIGION OF THE HEBREWS. 
 
 By Professor Yastrow. 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 By 
 
 T. W. RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., Ph.D. 
 
 M 
 
 PROFESSOR or COMPARATIVE RELIGION AT OWENS COLLEGE 
 
 PROFESSOR OF BUDDHIST LITERATURE, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON 
 
 FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY, ETC.. ETC. 
 
 LONDON 
 ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO Ltd 
 
 1908 
 
^c 
 
 if 
 
 „ / 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. Introductory : 
 
 The Sakiya Clan, . . 
 Kosala and its Language, 
 The Wanderers, 
 The Hermits, . 
 Economic conditions, 
 Caste not yet established. 
 
 1 
 2 
 4 
 6 
 9 
 10 
 
 11. Older Beliefs : 
 Vedic faith, 
 Death of the gods, 
 Details as to gods. 
 Animism, . 
 The soul-theory, 
 Summary, 
 
 13 
 
 14 
 16 
 17 
 
 18 
 
 III. Life of the Buddha : 
 No Buddhist Gospel, 
 The Buddha not a king's son, 
 Prophecy at his birth, 
 His ' going forth,' 
 His teachers, . 
 His attainment of Nirvana, 
 
 26 
 27 
 29 
 30 
 34 
 35 
 
 464G56 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 III. The first discourse, . 
 
 . 
 
 40 
 
 Daily life, . 
 
 . 
 
 44 
 
 His death, 
 
 
 46 
 
 IV. The Aryan Path : 
 
 
 
 The word Aryan, 
 
 
 49 
 
 The first discourse,' . 
 
 
 51 
 
 The origin and end of p 
 
 lin, 
 
 53 
 
 Impermanencc, 
 
 
 56 
 
 Eight desires and right 
 
 cflort, . 
 
 59 
 
 Love, 
 
 . 
 
 60 
 
 Joy, .... 
 
 
 62 
 
 V. Lions in the Path : 
 
 The ten Bonds, 
 
 The Intoxications, 
 
 The Indeterminates, 
 
 The Victory (Nirvana), 
 
 VI. ADorTED Doctrines : 
 
 Transmigration, 
 
 Karma, the bridge bet^veen one life and the 
 
 next, 
 
 East and West, 
 
 VII. Other Adopted Doctrines : 
 
 Cosmogony, 
 
 Wheel of Life, 
 
 Ecstasy, 
 
 67 
 69 
 72 
 
 75 
 
 76 
 
 78 
 
 82 
 84 
 86 
 
EAKLY BUDDHISM 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 The Sakiya Clan. — The founder of Buddhism was 
 born about 560 e.g. at Kapila-vastu, the principal 
 town in the territory of the Sakiya clan, situate 
 about one hundred miles nearly due north of 
 Benares. 
 
 At that time the Aryan settlers along the lower 
 slopes of the Himalaya range, and down the valley 
 of the Ganges, had reached a stage of political and 
 social evolution very similar to that reached about 
 the same time in Greece. The country was politi- 
 cally split up into small communities, usually 
 governed under republican institutions, some more 
 aristocratic, some more democratic in character. 
 But in four or five of these republics tyrants 
 had succeeded in enforcing their power over their 
 compatriots, and an irresistible tendency was lead- 
 ing to the absorption of all the small republics 
 
 A I 
 
• KA-RLY BFbbHISM 
 
 in tlie neighbouring larger kingdoms. Thus the 
 Sukiya clan was already under the suzerainty of 
 the adjoining kingdom of Kosala. 
 
 Kosala. — The exact boundaries of Kosala at 
 that time are not known; but it must have in- 
 cluded nearly all of the present United Provinces, 
 together with a large portion of Nepal. Its 
 capital, Savatthi, lay in the mountains, in what 
 is now Nepal. Benares, formerly an independent 
 state, was already incorj^orated under the rising 
 power of this important kingdom, which must 
 have been three hundred miles in length from 
 north to south, and about the same in breadth 
 from west to east — nearly twice the size of 
 England. The supremacy of this warlike clan 
 of mountaineers, and the peace preserved through- 
 out the wide extent of their domain, were the 
 main political factors of the time. And the 
 issue of the struggle, then already in progress, 
 between Kosala and Magadha, its neighbour on 
 the south-east, was about to decide the fate of the 
 great continent of India through the following 
 centuries. 
 
 Language of Kosala. — Two points are especially 
 worthy of notice in this connection. In the first 
 place, the language of Kosala, owing to the in- 
 fluence of the court, the army, and the oflBcials 
 
 2 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 stationed throughout its territory, tended to sup- 
 plant the local dialects. These bore about the 
 same relation to the Vedic speech as Italian does 
 to Latin, and will have differed among themselves 
 about as much as the different dialects of the 
 different counties in England. They were no 
 doubt mutually intelligible. But the particular 
 variety in use in court and official circles became 
 more and more the language in daily use among 
 people of culture or wealth or birth throughout 
 Kosala, a kind of lingua franca, the Hindustani 
 of the sixth century B.C. The Buddha, as a 
 native of Kosala, spoke Kosalan. And we can 
 deduce evidence of the condition the lano^uao^e 
 had then reached in its official form from the 
 edicts of Asoka and other early inscriptions ; and 
 in its literary form from the Pali, that is the 
 canon, of the sacred books.^ 
 
 The Brahmins. — In the second place, the ruling 
 clan in Kosala was settled to the east and to the 
 north of the portion of India most subject to 
 brahmin influence. The brahmins had not yet, 
 in the districts where Buddhism arose, acquired 
 that supreme authority in social and religious 
 
 1 This question of the language is discussed at length in the 
 present writer's Bii/ldhut Indvx ; and in Professor Otto 
 Franke's Pcxli und Sanskrit. 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 questions which they now have in modern India, 
 and which they are represented in Manu and the 
 Epics to have acquired when those books were 
 composed. The Kshatriya clansmen, no doubt, 
 esteemed the brahmins highly; but they esteemed 
 themselves more highly still. They mentioned 
 themselves first, and designated the brahmins as 
 ' of low birth ' compared to the Kshatriyas. The 
 position was not quite the same as, but can be 
 better understood by a comparison with, the state 
 of things in Europe during a long period of its 
 history, and even now. The established clergy 
 were, and are, much respected. But in social 
 esteem they rank, not above, but below the nobles. 
 In matters of astrology, the interpretation of 
 dreams and omens, the performance of certain 
 lucky ceremonies, the knowledge of ritual, the 
 people had recourse to brahmins. In matters of 
 ethics, religion, and philosophy they listened 
 rather to the Wanderers. 
 
 The Wanderers. — These were wandering 
 teachers, celibates, but not necessarily ascetics, 
 Avho resembled in many respects the Greek 
 sophists. Like them they differed much in in- 
 telligence, earnestness, and honesty. Some are 
 described as ' Eel-wrigglers,' ' Hair-sphtters ' ; and 
 this not without reason, if one may judge fairly 
 
 4 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 from the specimens of their arguments as re- 
 ported by their adversaries. But there must have 
 been many of a very different character, or the 
 high reputation they enjoyed among all classes of 
 the people would scarcely have been maintained. 
 They held no formal meetings, and made no set 
 speeches ; but they used to call on the cultured 
 people in the settlements they visited, and wel- 
 comed, in their own lodging places, any one 
 willing to talk of higher matters. So large was 
 the number of such people that the town com- 
 munities, the clans, and the rajas vied one with 
 another to provide the Wanderers with pavilions, 
 meeting halls, and resting-places where such con- 
 versations or discussions could take place. 
 
 Some of the Wanderers were women, some were 
 brahmins by birth (not, of course, by profession), 
 but the majority were clansmen. For the three 
 months of the rains they remained in the same 
 spot. The rest of the" year they wandered 
 through the land, living on alms, holding their 
 sessions wherever they went. And just as the 
 Strolling Students in pre - Reformation times 
 throughout Central Europe were both a sign of the 
 coming change, and also largely helped to bring 
 it about, so the conditions which made it possible 
 for the Wanderers in northern India to live as 
 
 5 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 they did, were the signs of a general movement 
 in reHgious and philosophical thought, the fore- 
 shadowing of that great uprising which we now 
 call Buddhism. 
 
 The Hermits. — Less numerous than the 
 Wanderers, but still an important sign of the 
 times, were the Hermits. Much older in date, 
 the custom of adopting this mode of Hfe has its 
 roots deep in human nature. It is already 
 mentioned in the latest of the Vedic poems, and 
 has maintained its power from that time down 
 to to-day. In one of the earliest of the Buddhist 
 records we have a full statement of the stage it 
 had reached in the Buddha's time, as set forth 
 by a naked ascetic in one of the Dialogues.^ 
 DwelHng for the most part in the forests, but 
 also in caves in the mountains, the Hermits gave 
 themselves up to renunciation and self-mortifica- 
 tion, living on roots and fruits. The professor of 
 self-torture referred to above enumerates twenty- 
 two methods of mortifying the body in respect of 
 food, thirteen in respect of clothing, and five in 
 respect of posture. 
 
 As is well known, such ideas are not confined 
 to India. Tennyson, in his monologue of St. 
 
 ^ Translated by the present writer in Dialogues of the 
 Buddha, vol. i. pp. 226-232. 
 
 6 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 Simeon Stylites, has given us a powerful analysis 
 of the feelings that lay at the root of similar 
 practices among Christians. But the Indian way 
 of treating the whole conception is more akin to 
 the way Diogenes thought when he lived, like a 
 dog, in his tub-kennel. There is no question of 
 penance for sin, of an appeal to the mercy of an 
 offended deity. It is the boast of superiority 
 advanced by the man able, by strength of will, 
 to keep his body under, and not only to despise 
 comfort, but to welcome pain. 
 
 Both in the West and in the East such claims 
 were often gladly admitted. We hear in India 
 of the reverence paid to the man who (to quote 
 the words of a Buddhist poet) — 
 
 ' Bescorclied, befrozen, loue iu fearsome woods, 
 Naked, without a fire, afire within, 
 Struggled, in awful silence, toward the goal.' ^ 
 
 Simeon, by the acclaim of the populace, became 
 a saint even before he died. Diogenes, and his 
 parallel in India, Mahavira the Jain, founded 
 important schools that have left their mark in 
 history. But experience soon shows the other 
 side of the question. In Greece it was the 
 sophists and the philosophers, rather than the 
 
 1 Majjhima, i. 79 ; quoted Jataka, 1. 390. 
 7 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 ascetics, who came to be the acknowledged 
 leaders of opinion. In India, it was the newer 
 method of the Wanderers that received, and 
 mainly, as we shall see, through the influence of 
 Buddhist teaching, the higher recognition. 
 
 Freedom of Thought. — One remarkable circum- 
 stance was that the most perfect freedom, both of 
 thought and of expression, was permitted, not 
 only to Hermits and Wanderers, but to every one 
 else. There had probably never been before, 
 there certainly has seldom been since, any time 
 and place at which such absolute liberty of 
 thought prevailed. This argues a considerable 
 degree of culture, a habit of courtesy and gentle- 
 ness, among the people ; a tolerance all the more 
 noteworthy when we bear in mind the zeal and 
 earnestness of so large a proportion of the com- 
 munity in matters of religion. It is, in fact, a 
 very great mistake to conclude, on the evidence 
 of the priestly law books (which are centuries 
 later), that at this period also the Indians were 
 more superstitious than other folk, more under 
 the thumb of the sacrificial priesthood. All the 
 evidence points the other way. There was, on 
 the contrary, in spite of much naive speculation 
 and vain sophistry, a real independence of any 
 shackles of authority, a well-marked lay feeling, 
 
 8 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 and a love of humour and irony that was a potent 
 defence. 
 
 Economic Conditions.— One reason for the 
 large amount of attention devoted to ethical and 
 philosophical questions was undoubtedly the 
 state of the economic conditions of the period. 
 None of the difficulties that have arisen in 
 modern times w^ere then much felt. The popula- 
 tion to be supported were probably barely one- 
 tenth of the number now occupying the same 
 territory. The vast majority of the people were 
 peasant proprietors, living in village communities 
 on their own land, under the supervision of 
 village officers elected by themselves, with power 
 limited by immemorial custom. There was a 
 tithe payable in kind to the government, whether 
 a local republic, or a distant king. Kings some- 
 times made what was called a grant of a village 
 to some noble, or official, or priest. But this was 
 a grant only of the government dues; and the 
 land still belonged to the peasants, or to the 
 peasant community. There were a few isolated 
 cases of landlords, where a rich man had, by hired 
 labour, made a clearing in the forest. But the 
 number of hired labourers was small. It was 
 considered a disgrace for a free man to let him- 
 self out for hire ; and though it was difficult for a 
 
 9 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 free-lance to gain admission to an existing village 
 community, there was plenty of land not absorbed 
 in the existing settlements, and open to squatters. 
 The very widely extended inter-state commerce 
 afforded other openings ; and the guilds of crafts- 
 men, organised under their own Elders, provided 
 occupation for those who could secure admission 
 to their ranks. 
 
 While, therefore, there was but little abject 
 poverty, the number of those who could be con- 
 sidered wealthy from the standpoint of those 
 days (and still more so from our own) was also 
 very hmited. We hear of about a score of rajas 
 or maharajas, whose income consisted mainly of 
 the land tax supplemented by certain dues and 
 perquisites ; of a considerable number of wealthy 
 nobles, and of some wealthy priests ; and of about 
 a score of millionaire merchants in the few large 
 towns. There were no great manufacturers and 
 no powerful landlords. The wants of the people 
 were few. And the great mass of them were 
 well-to-do peasantry or handicraftsmen, mostly 
 with land of their own, and troubled neither with 
 poverty nor wealth. 
 
 Caste. — There was no caste in India, in those 
 days, in the sense in which that word is now 
 used. There were social grades, technically called 
 
 ft' 
 
 lO 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 Colours, the boundary lines of which were not 
 always or strictly observed. There w^ere restric- 
 tions as to intermarriage, and as to eating 
 together, just as there were then everywhere 
 throughout the world among peoples in a similar 
 stage of culture. Certain trades, especially among 
 the most despised occupations (such as scavengers, 
 leather workers, and butchers), tended to become, 
 a few of them had already become, hereditary. 
 There w^as a strong feeling on the part of the 
 Aryans of the superiority of their race. But 
 this feeling had not prevented, and did not then 
 prevent, a quite considerable degree of inter- 
 marriage. So much, indeed, was this the case^ 
 that though there were a considerable number of 
 clansmen, and especially of Kshatriyas and 
 Brahmins, who claimed pure Aryan descent on 
 both sides for seven generations, the number of 
 those whose claims were justified was probably 
 not very large. Mixed up with this question of 
 race there was a good deal of pride of birth, not 
 less than is observed to-day in the West. All 
 these factors were present at the same period 
 among the Aryans in Europe. They were the 
 factors on which the present caste system of 
 India was long afterwards, after the decay of 
 Buddhism, built up. But it was not yet then 
 
 II 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 built up. We have numerous instances in the 
 books which show that the lines were not then at 
 all strictly drawn. The elements, the foundations, 
 of the caste system were there ; but the system 
 itself did not, as yet, exist. 
 
 \ 
 
 12 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 CONDITION OF RELIGION IN INDIA AT THE TIME 
 OF THE RISE OF BUDDHISM 
 
 It will be necessary, in order to explain the views 
 put forward by the Buddha, to give a summary 
 of the views previously current among the com- 
 munities in whose territories he taught. 
 
 Vedic Beliefs. — And firstly, the views then 
 current were not the views we find enunciated or 
 implied in the thousand and odd Yedic hymns. 
 As, through the centuries, the Aryans had pushed 
 on into the land, their language, through the 
 inevitable laws of the growth, or decay, of a 
 living language, had so altered that they under- 
 stood the hymns no longer. The hymns were 
 still known only in the schools of the sacrificing 
 priests, and were there split up into texts to be 
 used as charms {mantras) in the sacrifice. 
 Beyond the circles of those connected with the 
 schools they were disregarded and unknown. 
 When originally composed in the Panjab, the 
 13 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 hymns had included only a portion of the beliefs 
 of the people; and with each generation, with 
 each change of domicile, the gap between the 
 actual beliefs and those recorded in the hymns 
 grew wider and wider. 
 
 Death of the Gods. — Such a process is just as 
 inevitable as the change in a living language, or 
 in a living structure. We should never forget in 
 what degree all these their gods were real. They 
 had no objective existence; but they were real 
 enough, for a moment, as ideas in men's minds. 
 At any given time the gods of a nation seem to the 
 onlooker eternal, unchangeable. As a matter of 
 fact they are always slightly changing. No two 
 men, even though brought up in the same sur- 
 roundings, when they are thinking on the same 
 day of the same god have quite the same mental 
 image. Nor can the proportionate importance 
 of the image be the same to each of them ; for 
 that could only be the case if all their other ideas 
 were exactly the same, which, of course, they 
 never are. Just as a man's visible frame, though 
 no change is at any moment perceptible, is never 
 really the same for two consecutive moments, 
 and the result of constant minute variations 
 becomes visible after a lapse of time ; so the 
 ideas summed up by the name of a god become 
 14 
 
KELIGION IN INDIA AT ITS RISE 
 
 changed by the gradual accretion of minute 
 variations. This change, after a lapse of time (it 
 may be generations, it may be centuries), becomes 
 so clear that a new name arises, and graduall}^ 
 very gradually, ousts the older one. Then the 
 older god is dead. As the Buddhist poet puts it : 
 ' The flowers of the garlands he wore are 
 withered, his robes of majesty have waxed old 
 and faded, he falls from his high estate, and is 
 reborn into a new life.' He lives again, as we 
 might say, in the very result of his former life, 
 in the new god, that is, who under the new name 
 reigns in men's hearts. 
 
 The Gods in the Buddha's Time.—We are able 
 to estimate how far this was true in the Buddha's 
 time of the Vedic gods from the statements in 
 two very interesting poems, included by a for- 
 tunate chance in the Buddhist canon.^ These 
 give lists of gods supposed to be friendly to the 
 new teaching. Remarkable as works of art, these 
 lists are of great value as evidence of what the 
 actual deities were whose worshippers the new 
 teaching desired to conciliate. It is most im- 
 probable that the unknown poets would have 
 
 ^ They are in the Digha Nikaya, and have been trans- 
 lated by Gogerly. A new edition of Gogerly's works is now 
 being published in Ceylon. 
 
 IS 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 omitted any deity with a large or influential 
 following. First come the spirits of Mother 
 Earth and of the Great Mountains. Then the 
 Four Great Kings, the lords of the spirits sup- 
 posed to dwell in all the four quarters of the 
 world, north and south, east and west. These are 
 in the east the Gandharvas, heavenly musicians, 
 supposed to preside over child-birth, and to be 
 helpful in many ways to mortals. In the south 
 are the hungry ghosts, supposed to be full of dire 
 influences, but open to be appeased by the proper 
 means. The west is the special home of the 
 Nagas, the Siren-serpents, whose worship played 
 so great a part in the folk-lore of the people, and 
 who are so often represented on the monuments. 
 Cobras in the ordinary shape, they were supposed 
 to live, like mermen and mermaids, beneath the 
 waters, in great luxury, especially of gems, or to 
 haunt the giant trees of the forest. They could 
 at will, and often did, adopt the human form ; 
 and though terrible if angered, were kindly and 
 mild by nature. To the north, in the mysterious 
 heights of the Himalayas, were assigned the 
 Yakshas, under their king, Kuvera Vessavana, 
 the god of wealth and prosperity. After these 
 comes in both lists a miscellaneous company — 
 the souls or spirits supposed to animate the moon 
 
 i6 
 
RELIGION IN INDIA AT ITS RISE 
 
 and the sun (the moon is always mentioned 
 tirst), the winds, the clouds, the summer heat ; 
 then follows a curious assortment of impersona- 
 tions of various mental qualities ; and lastly, the 
 gods who dwell in the highest heavens (that is, 
 are the outcome of the highest speculation), 
 like Brahma himself, and Paramatta, and Sanang 
 Kumara. 
 
 Without going into any detailed analysis, it is 
 sufficient to state that we find ourselves here, 
 in this description of the religion of the peoples 
 among whom Buddhism arose, face to face with 
 a conception quite different from that recorded 
 in the Vedas, and not even derived from it. Of 
 the hundred or so deities enumerated, barely half- 
 a-dozen are Yedic. 
 
 Animism. — The above are the higher gods 
 revered by the people at the time we are con- 
 sidering. The lower forms of animistic delusion 
 popular among them are set forth in another very 
 ancient document entitled 'On Conduct.'^ It 
 is a list of practices disapproved by the early 
 Buddhists. In the middle of this tract it states 
 that some people are tricksters, droners out of 
 holy words for pay, diviners, exorcists, or earning 
 
 ^ In Pali, 'The Silas,' a tract translated in my Dialogues oj 
 the Buddha, vol. i. pp. 3-25. 
 
 B 17 
 
/ 
 
 EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 their living by low arts; and there then follows 
 a list of such low arts. We are told of palmistry^ 
 divination of various sorts, auguries drawn from 
 eclipses, prognostications based on dreams, auguries 
 drawn from marks on cloth gnawed by mice, 
 sacrifices to the god of fire, oblations of various 
 kinds to gods, determining lucky sites, laying 
 ghosts, working charms on snakes or beasts or 
 birds, astrology, interpreting signs on the bodies 
 of children, consulting gods by means of a mirror 
 or through a girl possessed ; and so on. Some of 
 these undoubtedly refer to practices enjoined in 
 the priestly books. Others cannot be traced 
 there. And the whole list is proof, if such were 
 needed, that then, in the valley of the Ganges, 
 as elsewhere, all kinds of the animism that had 
 preceded the book religion had also survived in 
 sufficient degree to continue to afford, to those 
 who would condescend to take advantage of it, 
 opportunity for gain. 
 
 The Soul Theory.— Further than that the 
 evidence does not, I think, take us. It is a 
 matter of degree. There was, one would be in- 
 clined to think, an almost universal and un- 
 questioned belief in the existence, round and 
 about, of an infinite number of non-human 
 beings. These the people took as a matter of 
 i8 
 
RELIGION IN INDIA AT ITS RISE 
 
 course, just as they took the existence of souls 
 inside their own bodies as a matter of course. It 
 was by these souls, within them and without, that 
 they explained to themselves the mysteries of 
 death and trance and dreams, of motion and 
 of life. Handed down from an immemorial 
 antiquity, this hypothesis or theory of souls was 
 current at that time in India, just as it has been 
 current before and since among civilised and 
 uncivilised races throughout the world. 
 
 Endless were the applications of this theory, 
 the methods of explanation for which it was 
 used. To enumerate and explain them all (for 
 the applications of it often need a good deal of 
 explanation) would fill volumes. A man falls 
 in a faint, and then comes to again. It is clear 
 that it is his soul that has gone away for a time, 
 and then come back to him. The majestic sun 
 passing in his daily path across the firmament, 
 so resplendent a centre of life and heat and 
 motion, must be alive. It is animated as men 
 are by a soul, only that its soul is more glorious, 
 more powerful, than theirs. The giant monarch 
 of the forest, stretching its weird arms through 
 the dusk, contains a soul, a Naga, a tree-fairy, 
 whose thought and action explain all the mysteries 
 of the tree. And so on, through the long list 
 19 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 of those objects that appeared to man's senses 
 as fearsome, bounteous, mysterious, inspiring awe. 
 The Forms of Worship. — All these souls were 
 supposed to have human passions, human nature, 
 even human form. They were amenable, like 
 humans, to flattery and presents ; and could be 
 compelled by charms to do, or to refrain from 
 doing, what the workers of the charm desired. 
 The Yedic sacrifices, as performed by brahmins 
 at this period, were almost exclusively of this 
 magical character. For these there were no 
 temples. One of the main sources of emolument 
 to the priests was the building, accompanied by 
 the use of many charms, of a new altar for each 
 sacrifice. The altar was put up on private 
 ground, and the sacrifice was a private cere- 
 monial designed to secure personal advantages 
 to the person at whose cost the sacrifice was 
 carried out. There were no images of the gods. 
 These sacrifices being long and very costly were 
 also therefore rare, and could only be carried out 
 by the wealthy. That was perhaps an additional 
 reason why the mass of the people, at the period 
 and in the districts we are considering, followed 
 other gods. Of their cults wo unfortunately know 
 very little, and that only as yet from incidental 
 references in the Buddhist books. A\'e are told of 
 
 20 
 
RELIGION IN INDIA AT ITS RISE 
 
 chetiyas or shrines, and their names and approxi- 
 mate situations are known. Some are supposed 
 to have been burial mounds, and others sacred 
 trees. But we know as yet next to nothing as 
 to what was done there. No pre-Buddhistic shrine 
 in India has, so far, been excavated; and the 
 incidental references to them in the books have 
 not been collected and studied. So also we hear 
 of Samajjas, clan meetings on sacred heights, 
 with dances sacred and secular, and other 
 accompaniments of what in modern times we 
 might expect to find at a fair. But the references 
 to these meetings presuppose in their readers 
 a knowledge of all that went on, and of what 
 it really meant. And that is precisely what we 
 should like to knoAv. 
 
 Speculation. — On the other hand we have 
 fairly detailed and intelhgible accounts of what, 
 as compared with the local cults, may be called 
 the higher speculation. In records older than 
 the Buddhist we see the monistic mysticism, 
 which reached its highest expression in the 
 theosophic poetry of the Upanishads, gradually 
 taking shape. And in the earliest Buddhist 
 books we not only have the names of various 
 sects or groups, either of Wanderers or Hermits, 
 but elaborate classifications of a large number 
 
 21 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 of the theories held by them. The names are 
 suggestive : The Unfettered, the Followers of the 
 Shaveling, the Men of braided hair (these are 
 brahmin hermits), the Bearers of the triple staff, 
 the Friends, the Worshippers of the god (we are 
 not told which), the Men of pure livelihood, and 
 so on. The theories are given, in the first of 
 the Dialogues, in a list that is too long to re- 
 produce. There are thirty-six different views as 
 to the state, after the death of the body it in- 
 habited, of the soul; and one theory that the 
 soul dies when the body dies. Curiously enough 
 the theory of the transmigration of souls is not 
 referred to ; and the theory of the absorption of 
 the individual soul into the supreme soul is not 
 mentioned. There are a number of divergent 
 views as to whether all the gods, or only some, 
 or only one should be considered eternal; and 
 as to how far the world and individual souls are 
 eternal. And there are discussions as to ethics, 
 and as to the various means of salvation in 
 this life. 
 
 Summary of Beliefs. — We have, then, in India 
 in the valley of the Ganges at the time when 
 Buddhism arose, a maze of interacting ideas 
 which may be divided, for clearness in exposition, 
 under the followin*^- heads : — 
 
 22 
 
RELIGION IN INDIA AT ITS RISE 
 
 Firstly, the very wide and varied group of 
 ideas about souls supposed to dwell within the 
 bodies of men and animals, and to animate 
 moving objects in nature (trees and plants, rivers, 
 planets, and so on). These may be summed 
 under the convenient modern term of Animism. 
 
 Secondly, we have later and more advanced 
 ideas about the souls supposed to animate the 
 greater phenomena of nature. These may be 
 summed up under the convenient modern term 
 of Polytheism. 
 
 Thirdly, we have the still later idea of a unity 
 lying behind all these phenomena, both of the 
 first and of the second class, the hypothesis of 
 a one first cause on which the whole universe 
 in its varied forms depends, in which it lives 
 and moves, and which is the only reality. This 
 may be summed up in the convenient modern 
 term of Monism. 
 
 Fourthly, we have the opposite view. In this 
 the first cause has either not been reached in 
 thought, or has been considered and deliberately 
 rejected : but otherwise the whole soul- theory has 
 been retained and amplified, and the hypothesis 
 of the eternity of matter is held at the same 
 time. This may be summed up under the 
 convenient modern name of Ducdism. 
 
 23 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 These modern Western terms, though useful 
 for classification, never exactly fit the ancient 
 Eastern thought. And we must never forget 
 that the clear-cut distinctions we now use were 
 then perceptible to only quite a few of the 
 clearest thinkers. Most of the people held a 
 strange jumble of many of the notions current 
 around them. The enumeration here made is 
 Qv merely intended to show that, when Buddhism 
 arose, the country was seething, very much as 
 the Western world was at the same period, with 
 a multitude of more or less opposing theories on 
 all sorts of questions, ethical, philosophical, and 
 religious. There was much superstition, no 
 doubt, and no little sophistry. But owing partly 
 to the easy economic conditions of those times, 
 partly also to the mutual courtesy and intel- 
 lectual alertness of the people, there was a very 
 large proportion of them who were earnestly 
 occupied in more or less successful attempts to 
 solve the highest problems of thought and 
 conduct. 
 
 24 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 LIFE OF THE BUDDHA 
 
 Edifying Poetry. — If an Eastern scholar desired 
 to ascertain the facts about the life of Christ 
 he would not have recourse to such works as 
 Klopstock's Messiah or Milton's Paradise Re- 
 gained. They do not even purport to be historical. 
 Such value as they have is due to the literary 
 skill with which they recast a story derived from 
 earlier documents ; and perhaps also to the part 
 they play as Teiulenzschriften, as supporting a 
 certain trend of opinion. The historical inquirer 
 would go to the original documents, he would 
 ignore the later poetry. 
 
 It is unfortunately precisely such later books 
 of edifying poetry that have been the source of 
 modern popular notions about the life of the 
 Buddha. Sir Edwin Arnold's well-known poem, 
 The Light of Asia, is an eloquent expression in 
 English verse (based on the Lalita Vistara) of 
 Buddhist beliefs at the time when, centuries after 
 25 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 the time of the Buddha, the Sanskrit poem was 
 composed. Any one who wishes to know the 
 truth, so far as it can now be ascertained, 
 about the actual events of the Buddha's hfe 
 will obviously ignore these productions, however 
 edifying, of literary imagination. He will go 
 to the earliest documents. 
 
 No Buddhist Gospel— The first discovery he 
 would make is that there is no book in the 
 Buddhist Canon exactly corresponding to a 
 gospel. The nearest approach to one is the 
 Mahdparinibhdna-Suttanta, the Book of the Great 
 Decease, describing the last journey of the 
 Buddha, and his death.^ Besides this we have 
 two considerable episodes: one describing the 
 time before his attainment, under the Wisdom 
 Tree, of Nirvana, and the other describing the 
 events that immediately followed.- Apart from 
 these consecutive narratives there are accounts 
 more or less circumstantial, in many of the 
 Dialogues, of various episodes in Gotama's career. 
 Some of the ancient ballads and poems also 
 relate to such episodes; and there are other 
 incidental references elsewhere in the literature. 
 
 The Buddha not a King's Son.— From these 
 
 ^ Translated in my Dialogues of the Buddha, vol. ii. 
 " Majjhima, i. 163-175, and Vinaya, i. 1-44. 
 
 26 
 
LIFE OF THE BUDDHA 
 
 notices, scanty as they are, it is quite possible to 
 piece together a very clear idea as to the main 
 events in the life of the founder of Buddhism. 
 His father is, in one passage,^ called a raja. But 
 raja is a courtesy title used of any member of the 
 recognised clans ; and the texts, always punctilious 
 in the use of titles, never use this word of a king, 
 who is invariably styled mahdrdja. The family 
 is lauded, in half-a-dozen passages, as well con- 
 nected, and of high repute ; but not once as royal. 
 We may be sure, from the context, that had the 
 future Buddha's father been really a king the 
 fact would, in this connection, have been clearly 
 stated. As used of the clansmen generally the 
 title raja, though really of not much more weight 
 than our modern ' esquire,' was more polite, as the 
 word connoted a position of hereditary importance 
 in the clan, and perhaps even a temporary official 
 post, of an honorary character, such as consul or 
 archon. In any case this was the simple basis on 
 which the latter legends of royalty were built 
 up. 
 
 The Family and Clan. — His father's name, Sudd- 
 hodana, Pure Rice, is suggestive of the occupation 
 followed by the clan. It occupied a small territory , 
 not exceeding about nine hundred square miles in 
 
 ^ Digha, ii. 7. Compare Buddhavangsa, xxvi. l.S. 
 2; 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 extent, partly on the lower slopes of the Hima- 
 layas, partly on the plains below. There the 
 clansmen had their rice-fields watered by the 
 unfailing streams fed from the heights behind. 
 All the year round they had in full view the 
 glorious snow peaks of the great mountains, and 
 the breezes from the north brought down to them 
 the breath of the glaciers. When I was in the 
 lower part of the Sakiya territory, just over the 
 Nepal frontier, in January 1900, the climate was 
 cool and pleasant. No doubt in the summer it 
 would be desirable to escape into the hills. And 
 we are told ^ that, in his youth, the future Buddha 
 had three homes, one for the winter, one for the 
 summer, and one for the rainy season; and that 
 he was clad, not in coarse cloth, but in fine muslin 
 of Benares. 
 
 The Lumbini Garden. — The boy was named 
 Siddhattha, that is ' desire accomplished,' and the 
 meaning of the name may have given rise to the 
 story, found only in the later legends, that he 
 was born after the hope of a son had almost 
 passed aAvay. The family name was Gotama. By 
 that he was usually addressed in after life by 
 non-Buddhists, and it is the name we shall use in 
 this sketch. 
 
 ^ Auguttara, i. 4.'. Compare Digha, ii. '21 
 28 
 
LIFE OF THE BUDDHA 
 
 His father's home was at Kapilavastu, in the 
 plains, the capital town of the clan, where their 
 Mote Hall was situate. But he was born, as a 
 very ancient ballad tells us, at Lumbini. 
 
 This was a pleasaunce half way between Kapi- 
 lavastu and the chief town of the Koliyans, 
 neighbours and relatives of the Sakiyas. The 
 later explanation, that his mother was then on 
 her way to be confined at her mother's house, 
 sounds very probable. The exact spot assigned 
 by tradition to this event has lately been redis- 
 covered. A pillar, erected on the site by Asoka, 
 in the middle of the third century B.C., states that 
 ' Here the Exalted One was born.' 
 
 The ballad just referred to, ' The Nalaka Sutta,' ^ 
 is most interesting. The poem describes how an 
 old man of wisdom, Asita by name, seeing the 
 angels rejoice, asks them why they are glad. They 
 say:— 
 
 ' The Wisdom Child, that jewel so precious, 
 That cannot be matched, 
 
 Has been born in Lumbini, in the Sakiya land, 
 For weal and lor joy in the world of men.' 
 
 So the old sage goes there, and sees the babe, 
 and prophesies : — 
 
 ^ Translated by Professor Faubb^U in Sacred Books of the. 
 East, vol. X. p. 124. 
 
 29 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 ' The topmost height of insight will he reach, 
 this child, he will see that which is most pure, 
 and will set rolling the chariot wheel of righteous- 
 ness, he who is full of compassion for the multi- 
 tude. Far will his religion spread.' 
 
 The going forth. — Gotama was married: and 
 had one son whose name was Rahula. When he 
 (the father, that is) was twenty-nine years of age, 
 he left his home and became a religieux ' to seek 
 after what was right.' ^ Thus early in the career 
 of the future teacher do we find the ethical trend 
 of his mind and action emphasised. Many writers 
 in East and West have suggested reasons for this 
 momentous step ; and some things plausible, some 
 beautiful, have been said. Our authoritative texts 
 have but two short utterances on this point, both 
 put into the mouth of the Buddha himself. The 
 first is as follows : — ^ 
 
 ' An ordinary unscholared man, though himself 
 subject to old age, not escaped beyond its power, 
 when he beholds another man old is hurt, ashamed, 
 disgusted, overlooking the while his own condition. 
 Thinking that that would be unsuitable to me 
 the infatuation of a youth in his youth departed 
 utterly from me.' 
 
 1 Digha, ii. 151. '^ Anguttara, i. 140. 
 
LIFE OF THE BUDDHA 
 
 Then identical words are used of health and 
 life. The other text says : — 
 
 ' Before the days of my enlightenment, when I 
 was still only a Bodhisat, though myself subject 
 to rebirth, old age, disease, and death, to sorrow 
 and to evil, I sought after things subject also to 
 them. Then methought : Why should I act thus? 
 Let me, when subject to these things, seeing the 
 danger therein, seek rather after that which is not 
 subject thereto, even the supreme bliss and 
 security of Nirvana.' ^ 
 
 The gist of all the later poetry is found in 
 these simple but pregnant words ; and the oldest 
 poem we have keeps very closely to the spirit of 
 these equally ancient texts. It is the following 
 ballad which, as it is short, can be quoted. Even 
 in a bald prose version it will give a taste of the 
 spirit of those far-off days. 
 
 THE GOING FOKTH 
 
 1. I will praise going forth as the far-seeing One 
 did, the Wanderer's life, such as when he had thought 
 the matter out he deliberately chose. 
 
 2. 'Full of hindrances is this household life, the 
 haunt of passion. Free as the air is the homeless state.' 
 Thus he considered, and went forth. 
 
 1 Majjhima, i. 163. 
 
 31 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 3. When he had gone forth he gave up "wrong-doing 
 in action^ and evil speech he left behind ; pure did he 
 make his mode of livelihood. 
 
 4. To the king's town the Buddha ^ went, to Girib- 
 baja in Magadha. Full of outward signs of worth, he 
 was collecting alms for food. 
 
 5. Him saw Bimbisara standing on the upper 
 terrace of his palace. On seeing that he had those 
 signs, thus did he speak : — 
 
 6. 'Hearken to this man, Sirs, handsome is he, great 
 and pure ; guarded in conduct, he looks not more than 
 a fathom's length before him. 
 
 7. ' With downcast eye and self-possessed is he, surely 
 of no mean birth. Let the king's messengers hasten 
 and find out : Where is the mendicant going ? ' 
 
 8. Thus sent, the messengers hurried after him, and 
 asked themselves : ' AYhere is the Bhikshu going, where 
 does he mean to stay ? 
 
 9. 'Going on his round for alms regularly from 
 house to house, guarded as to the door (of his senses), 
 well restrained, quickly has he filled up his bowl, he 
 the while calm and self-possessed. 
 
 10. ' His round for alms accomplished, the Sage has 
 
 ^ This expression is suggestive. In our sense of the word, 
 Gotama -was not yet a Buddha. To the mind of the poet 
 Buddha meant merely ' awakened' (its literal meaning). The 
 corresponding word in Christian technical usage would be 
 ' converted.' And the mind of the converted man is awakened, 
 but to diflferent conceptions. It is very doubtful whether in 
 old texts the word Buddha ever means anything more than 
 * awakencil.' 
 
 32 
 
LIFE OF THE BUDDHA 
 
 gone out from the town. He has gained the mountain 
 Pandava. There is it that he means to stay.' 
 
 11. No sooner had they seen him stop than the 
 messengers in their turn stopped. One messenger 
 alone returned, and to the king made speech : — 
 
 12. *0u the eastern slope of Mount Pandava, that 
 Bhikshu, O King, has taken his seat, like a tiger-king, 
 like a lion in his mountain cave.' 
 
 13. When he heard his servant's word the warrior, 
 in all haste, went forth in his state chariot to the 
 mountain Pandava. 
 
 14. Where the carriage-road ended, there alighting 
 from his car, on foot the prince went on till he came 
 near ; and then he took his seat. 
 
 15. On sitting down the king, with courteous words, 
 exchanged with him the greetings of a friend. Then he 
 spake thus : — 
 
 16. 'Young art thou and of tender years, a lad in 
 his first youth^ fine is thy colour like a high-born 
 noble's. 
 
 17. 'As the glory of the vanguard of the army, at 
 the head of a band of heroes I would give thee wealth. 
 Do thou accept this, and tell me thy lineage now that 
 I ask it.' 
 
 18. 'Hard by Himalaya's slopes, King, there is a 
 land of wealth and power, the dwellers therein are of 
 the Kosalas ; 
 
 19. 'Descendants of the Sun by race, Sakiyas they 
 are by birth. 'Tis from that clan I have gone forth, 
 longing no more for sensual delights. 
 
 20. 'Seeing the danger in them, looking on going 
 
 C 33 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 forth as bliss, I shall go on in the struggle, for in that 
 my mind delights.' 
 
 His Teachers. — Gotama had now become a 
 Wanderer. Whether before or after his interview 
 with the King of Magadha we do not know, he 
 attached himself as a disciple first to Alara 
 Kalama, and afterwards to Uddaka son of 
 Rama. Centuries later certain writers pretend 
 to know their doctrines. In the old texts we are 
 only told that each of these teachers held out as 
 an ideal a particular stage of mystic ecstasy 
 (whether mental only, or the result of self-induced 
 hypnotism, or partly one, partly the other, is not 
 stated).^ And two mystic utterances of Udda- 
 ka's have also been preserved.^ Beyond this we 
 know nothing of what, or even where, they 
 taught. Whatever it was, Gotama so quickly 
 mastered it that they each asked him to become 
 co-teacher of their band of disciples. But these 
 offers he refused, as he had refused Bimbisara's, 
 and went out into the forest round Gaya to 
 struggle on by himself to the light. 
 
 The Struggle. — We have several accounts of 
 this struggle given in nearly identical words.^ 
 
 1 Majjhima, i. 163-166. 
 
 ' Samyutta, iv. 83, and Pasudika Suttanta in the Digha. 
 
 8 Majjhima, i. 17-24; 114-118; 167; 240-250. 
 
 34 
 
LIFE OF THE BUDDHA 
 
 No attempt is made to give a consecutive or 
 chronological relation of what happened in the 
 six years during which it lasted. The various 
 severe penances that Gotama inflicted on himself 
 are described at length ; and various thoughts 
 that occurred to him, subjects that he discussed 
 with himself, are enumerated. At the end of the 
 penances, when he was worn to a skeleton, and 
 indeed at the point of death, he resolves that 
 this is not the right path to enlightenment, and 
 begins again to take nourishment. Thereupon, 
 we are suddenly told : ^ ' Then those five mendi- 
 cants [of whom no previous mention had been 
 made] forsook him, and went away, on the ground 
 that he had given up the struggle, and gone back 
 to a life of abundance.' 
 
 To this time we have probably to refer the 
 ballad 2 in which Mara, the Evil One, is repre- 
 sented as tempting him to give up the quest. 
 
 The Nirvana. — Then comes the reaction, the 
 victory. This is uniformly described as a mental 
 state of exaltation, bliss, insight, altruism. The 
 different Suttas emphasise different phases, differ- 
 ent facets as it were, of this condition. But they 
 
 1 Majjhima, i. 247. 
 
 2 Translated bj^^ FausboU in Sacred Boohs of the East, yoI. x. 
 pp. 69-71. 
 
 35 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 regard it as one and the same upheaval of the 
 whole mental and moral nature, — will, emotion, 
 and intellect being equally concerned. Thus one 
 Sutta (the Maha-saccaka) lays stress on the four 
 Raptures, and the three forms of Knowledge; 
 another (the Dvedha-vitakka) on the certainty, 
 the absence of doubt; another (the Bhaya- 
 bherava) on the conquest over fear and agitation ; 
 another (the Ariya-pariyesana) on the bhss and 
 security of the Nirvana to which he then 
 attained. 
 In the first of these Suttas the recital ends : — 
 * When this knowledge, this insight, had arisen 
 within me, my heart was set free from the intoxi- 
 cation of lusts, set free from the intoxication of 
 becomings, set free from the intoxication of 
 ignorance. In me, thus emancipated, there arose 
 the certainty of that emancipation. And 1 came 
 to know : " Rebirth is at an end. The higher life 
 has been fulfilled. What had to be done has been 
 accomplished. After this present life there will 
 be no beyond." This last insight did I attain to 
 in the last watch of the night. Ignorance was 
 beaten down, insight arose, darkness was de- 
 stroyed, the light came, inasmuch as I was there 
 strenuous, aglow, master of myself.' 
 
 There is nothing miraculous in it all, nothing 
 
 36 
 
LIFE OF THE BUDDHA 
 
 supernatural. Supranormal it undoubtedly is. 
 But recent researches in psychology, such as are 
 summed up, for instance, in James's Varieties 
 of Religious Experience, shoAv that phenomena 
 of a similar kind, though not quite the same, 
 are well authenticated in the lives of men 
 of deep religious experience. And no one of all 
 the experiences described in these accounts is, 
 in the canonical books, confined to the Buddha. 
 Each of them is related, in other passages, of one 
 or other of the men and women who afterwards 
 adopted the new teaching and fell under its 
 influence. These conditions are constituent parts 
 of the state of mind called Arahatship. They all 
 recur in the standard description, repeated in so 
 many of the Dialogues, of the manner in which 
 Arahatship is reached.^ And the sum of them 
 is, in this connection, called Nirvana,^ one of the 
 many epithets of Arahatship.^ In the opinion of 
 the early Buddhists their Buddha was an Arahat; 
 but in his case there was no limit at all to the 
 depth and intensity of his insight, or to the grace 
 and perfection of those powers and characteristics 
 he shared with other Arahats. The distinction 
 
 1 Translated in full in my Dialogues of the Buddha, vol. i. 
 pp. 79-93. 
 » Majjhima, i. 167. '^ Ibid. 173. 
 
 37 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 between Arahat and Buddha became the main 
 factor in the subsequent history of the com- 
 munity.i In the early passages here referred to 
 as descriptive of this crisis, there is no mention 
 either of Buddha or of Buddhahood. 
 
 After Gotama had thus attained Nirvana (if we 
 use the expression of the text), or attained to 
 Buddhahood (if we use the expression which soon 
 became of use in the community), he remained 
 for four times seven days ' enjoying the bUss of 
 emancipation.' 2 The records give us several 
 episodes revealing the thoughts that passed 
 through his mind during that time. He re- 
 iterates the twelve Nidanas, the links in the 
 chain of dependent origination, and then gives 
 utterance to three stanzas, to the effect that when 
 an Arahat, in moments of intense insight, sees 
 into the real nature of things, how they all have a 
 cause and how the causes tend to pass away, then 
 his doubts fade away, and he remains steadfast, put- 
 ting to rout the armies of the Evil One, just as the 
 sun fills the dark spaces of the sky with light.^ 
 
 ^ See Later Buddhism, published in this series of small 
 manuals, and my note on Sambodhi in the Dialogues of the 
 Buddha, vol. i. p. 190. 
 
 "^ Vinaya, i. 1-4. 
 
 ^ Vinaya, i. 2, translated by Oldenberg in Vinaya Texts, 
 i. 78. 
 
 38 
 
LIFE OF THE BUDDHA 
 
 The phrase in this last verse is probably the 
 origin of the legend in another authority^ that 
 the Evil One then came to him and tempted, 
 him, now that he had won the victory, to pass 
 away at once. But he refuses to do so ' till the 
 wonder-working truth shall have been spread 
 abroad, well proclaimed among men.' 
 
 Then a haughty brahmin, who relied for salva- 
 tion on the utterance of the mystic syllable Om, 
 comes by and asks Gotama what makes a man a 
 brahmin. He is answered that it is the putting 
 away of evil, the living of a life of purity, the 
 conquest of haughtiness and greed. 
 
 The next episode gives us a stanza explaining 
 
 the basis of the bliss that he is said to have 
 
 felt:— 
 
 ' Happy the solitude of him who is full of joy, 
 Who has learnt the Truth, who has seen the Truth. 
 Happy he who in this world has no ill-will, 
 — Self-restrained to all beings that have life. 
 
 Happy is freedom from lusts, the getting right away from 
 
 them, 
 The highest bliss is freedom from the pride of the thought 
 "lam."' 
 
 The Hesitation. — At the end of this period 
 of bliss follows a period of hesitation, in which 
 Gotama doiiMs, whether, after all, it will be of 
 
 ^ Digha,'ii. 112, translated by the present writer in Dialogues 
 of the Buddha, vol. ii. 
 
 39 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 any use to proclaim to a world sunk in darkness 
 a doctrine not only so difficult to grasp, but so 
 repugnant to tlie ordinary mind. We may 
 estimate the importance attached by the early 
 church to this matter by the fact that Brahm^ 
 himself, the highest of the gods, is introduced as 
 coming on the scene to urge that there will still 
 be some who will have eyes to see. Then the 
 Buddha, ' out of compassion for sentient beings,' 
 K determines to preach the word. A similar ex- 
 perience is related in identical words ^ of other 
 early Indian teachers, the previous Buddhas. 
 And this overpowering sense of utter apartness, 
 aloofness, is an experience that falls sooner or 
 later to the lot of all great leaders of thought. 
 
 The First Discourse. — When this resolve to 
 preach the word had become clear in the 
 Buddha's mind, he is said to have walked to 
 Benares, about one hundred miles to the north- 
 west, to tell his former companions, who were 
 then in a wood near that city, of the discovery he 
 had made. He did so in a discourse entitled, 
 the 'Foundation of the Kingdom of Righteous- 
 ness,' in which his new views of life were sum- 
 marised in a way they would understand. This 
 summary has been preserved to us in two places 
 
 1 Digha, ii. 37. 
 40 
 
LIFE OF THE BUDDHA 
 
 in the canon, and will be translated and explained 
 in the next chapter. Buddhist poets have been 
 moved to descriptions of the scene, descriptions 
 remarkable for much subtle beauty. Buddhist 
 sovereigns have lavishly decorated with architec- 
 ture and sculpture the spot memorable for what 
 they considered so memorable an event. Had a 
 Greek been passing at the time he would have 
 scarcely stooped to notice the few barbarians 
 seated under the trees, talking quietly in earnest 
 tones ; and would have scarcely realised that one 
 of them was giving utterance to ideas that would 
 move the world. 
 
 The Buddha had no easy task in trying to 
 persuade the five to give up their belief in 
 penance. Only one of them, a Konclanna by 
 birth, was at first convinced — to be known for 
 the rest of his life as ' the Konclanna who 
 understood.' But in the course of a few days all 
 of them had given way, and become disciples. 
 Gotama then advanced a step further, and dis- 
 coursed to them on the absence of any sign of 
 soul in the constituent elements of a human 
 being. An outline of this discourse has also been 
 preserved in several parts of the scriptures ; ^ and 
 
 1 Samyutta, iii. 66, and iv. 34 ; Majjhima, i. 135 and 300 ; 
 Vinaya, i. 14. 
 
 41 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 when they had been convinced of this the record 
 states, ' Then there were six Arahats in the 
 world.' From being merely disciples, followers, 
 they had become Arahats. 
 
 The Sending Forth of the Disciples. — Then 
 ensued what has many points of analogy with a 
 modern revival, but it must have been of a 
 strangely dignified and intellectual sort. Resi- 
 dents in the neighbouring townships came to 
 listen to the new teacher. The number of ad- 
 herents, laymen, and laywomen, Bhikshus and 
 Arahats, increased until the record states, ' Then 
 there were sixty-one Arahats in the world.' At 
 that time Gotama said to them that he and they 
 ' were free from snares, whether human or divine. 
 Let them, therefore, go forth as wanderers for the 
 sake of the many, for the welfare of the many, 
 out of compassion for the world, for the good and 
 the weal and the gain of gods and men. No 
 two were to go together. They were to make 
 known the teaching, lovely in its origin, lovely in 
 its progress, lovely in its consummation, both in 
 the spirit and in the letter ; to explain the higher 
 life in all its fullness and in all its purity.' ^ As 
 for himself he was going back to Uruvela with 
 that purpose in view. 
 
 ^ Saniyutta, i. 105, reproduced in Vinaya, i. 21. 
 42 
 
LIFE OF THE BUDDHA 
 
 According to our authorities, the success of this 
 first mission was very great. It is but natural to 
 suppose that it loomed somewhat larger in the 
 eyes of the early Buddhists than the facts 
 actually warrant. But it has been shown above 
 how very favourable were the conditions for a 
 new movement of this kind ; and, either then or 
 soon afterwards, we know that the new teaching 
 did become a power in the land. From this time 
 forth Gotama, who from being a Wanderer had 
 become a Hermit, now became a Wanderer again. 
 Those of his followers who ' went forth ' became 
 members of the Order he founded, and were also 
 Wanderers, that is, they abjured all penance and 
 self-mortification (unless their vow of celibacy be 
 reckoned as such). Both he and they spent nine 
 months of each year in wandering from village to 
 village, and making the new doctrine known, as 
 they went, to such as cared to hear. They held 
 no public meetings, gave no set discourses : the 
 propaganda was by way of conversation only. 
 
 Gotama's Daily Life. — The manner in which 
 Gotama spent each day is somewhat as follows. 
 He rose quite early, about 5 a.m. If he were to 
 stay at the place where he had slept he would 
 remain alone till it was time to go on his round 
 for alms to the neighbouring village. If he were 
 43 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 moving from one place to another, a walk of from 
 eight or ten miles would occupy the time. He 
 was often invited for the morning meal, the 
 principal meal of the day, to some particular 
 house. If not he took his bowl, and went from 
 house to house, collecting enough for the meal, 
 which was always over before sun-turn. When 
 he was an invited guest he Avould, after the meal, 
 ' give thanks/ as the phrase ran, in the form of a 
 talk on some one or other of the more elementary 
 points of religion. When he carried his meal 
 back to his lodging-place this thanksgiving would 
 take the form of an exhortation or dialogue with 
 the disciples on one of the deeper matters of the 
 faith. The heat of the day was given up to 
 repose or meditation. As the afternoon drew in, 
 either the journey to the next stage was resumed, 
 or if the stay in the same place was to be prolonged, 
 an informal reception was held under the trees. 
 The folk from the neighbouring villages would 
 come in, bringing presents of flowers ; and one of 
 the visitors, either a layman or a recluse of some 
 other Order, would ask questions or start a dis- 
 cussion, the rest listening as they sat round on 
 the grass under the trees. By sundown the 
 assembly was dismissed. Then Gotama, should 
 he feel so inclined, was wont to take his bath ; 
 44 
 
LIFE OF THE BUDDHA 
 
 after which he would talk with the disciples, 
 perhaps far into the night. 
 
 The current Methods of Publishing.— In so 
 steady and warm a climate such an open-air 
 life was not only possible but agreeable; and in 
 the absence of any books, libraries, or news- 
 papers, such a method of instruction and of 
 propaganda was probably the best available. Any 
 one who had anything to say could not sit in 
 his study, write a book, and publish it to the 
 world. He had to gather round him a number 
 of adherents, followers, disciples (call them what 
 you will), persuade them to understand, and 
 learn by heart, his doctrines; and then send 
 them forth into the world. They w^ere his books. 
 His personal influence over them, their adapta- 
 bility, earnestness, and intelligence were factors 
 quite as important for his success as the intrinsic 
 value and fitness for the times of his teaching 
 itself. It was a method of publication that had 
 been used before, and was being used in Gotama's 
 time by others besides himself. The necessity of 
 adopting this method was also one of the main 
 practical reasons for the establishment of an Order. 
 Without the Order the new teaching could neither 
 have been propagated among the people then, 
 nor have been preserved for future generations. 
 45 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 For forty-five years after his attainment of 
 Nirvana, Gotama went up and down through the 
 plains of Northern India and the neighbouring 
 highlands of Nepal. During this period he had 
 ample time both to work out his system very 
 fully, and to instruct the disciples in its details. 
 They are really very few and simple. Such 
 difficulty as European scholars find is concerned 
 with the translation into Western language of 
 certain of the technical terms that were used. 
 There is none of the elaborate minuteness charac- 
 teristic of the priestly books of ritual exegesis. 
 Most of the earlier Buddhist technical terms must 
 have been chosen and defined within the teacher's 
 life-time; and it is highly probable that the 
 actual words of the short paragraphs in which 
 most of the essential points — the Three Signs, 
 the Four Truths, the Five Hindrances, the 
 Eightfold Path, the constituents of Arahatship, 
 and so on — were also settled by him. 
 
 Gotama died, full of years and held in high 
 esteem by the clansmen, when he was eighty 
 years old, at Kusinara, a site not j^et identified, 
 but probably in Nepal. After the cremation, 
 carried out by the clansmen of the M alias, in 
 whose territory the town lay, the ashes are said 
 to have been divided into eight portions. Of 
 46 
 
LIFE OF THE BUDDHA 
 
 these six were given to the six clans in the 
 neighbourhood, one being the Sakiyas, one was 
 given to the King of Magadha, and one to a 
 brahmin in Yethadipa near by. Stupas or cairns 
 are said to have been put up over all eight ; but 
 only one of these has as yet been rediscovered. 
 This is the one put up by the Sakiyas in the 
 new Kapilavastu, built after the destruction of 
 the older town a few years before the Buddha's 
 death, by Vidudubha, King of Kosala. 
 
 47 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE ARYAN PATH 
 
 The summary of the main features of his system 
 of behefs which Gotama is said, in our earliest 
 authorities, to have put before his five friends 
 at Benares, gives us what those authorities held 
 to be most important in his teaching. We may 
 possibly go even further. It is not very probable, 
 after the long and careful course of instruction 
 they had received from him, that the early 
 disciples can have misunderstood him on such 
 a point. There are distinct traces in our earliest 
 documents of a development of thought in the 
 views of his followers regarding the personality 
 of their master, in their Buddhology. No such 
 traces have yet been found of development in 
 fundamental doctrine. The balance of proba- 
 bility is therefore in favour of the tradition 
 having preserved the actual views of Gotama 
 himself; and very possibly the expressions he 
 used. But even if we adopt the more difiicult 
 
 48 
 
THE ARYAN PATH 
 
 hypothesis, and suppose that the tradition em- 
 bodies the views of the early disciples, and that 
 they invented these utterances, put forward by 
 them as the first discourse of their Master, — even 
 then we have in these words the oldest and most 
 authoritative statement of Buddhist doctrine that 
 we possess. 
 
 The Word Aryan. — In the text, preserved in 
 two separate places in the Canon,^ the Path 
 pointed out is called the Aryan path, the Truths 
 enumerated are called the Aryan truths. The 
 word Aryan is ambiguous. Already in the Vedas 
 it means both ' of Aryan race ' and ' gentle, noble, 
 kindly.' Some etymologists give different deriva- 
 tions for the different meanings. It is more 
 probable that the second meaning is derived from 
 the first, just as our word gentle meant originally 
 of gentle birth. By the time of the rise of 
 Buddhism, the secondary meaning had become 
 so fixed in the connotation of the word that it 
 conveyed all the senses of belonging to the Aryan 
 race, gentle and noble. In some passages the 
 stress is laid upon the point of race, in others 
 on the ethical, in others on the aesthetic side. 
 But all three were present together to the minds 
 of speakers and hearers alike. In the text we 
 
 ^ Samyutta, v. 420, and Vinaya, i. 10. 
 
 D 49 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 are now discussing, all three would be applicable, 
 and were probably meant to be implied. I have 
 rendered the word ' noble ' ; and that translation 
 can easily be defended. But I am inclined to 
 think that at least one idea hinted at by the 
 use of this epithet was, that the new system then 
 promulgated was considered worthy of, suitable 
 for, the free clansmen, for the men of Aryan race. 
 The Buddhist commentators, writing long after- 
 wards, when the word had quite lost its racial 
 sense, always interpret it as meaning ' worthy of, 
 suitable for Arahats.' And there are several 
 passages in the old texts in which Ariya and 
 Arahat are used as synonymous terms.^ This is 
 only one of many instances of a new, and as the 
 speakers thought, a better, deeper meaning being 
 put into older words, and may, therefore, have 
 been intended by Gotama in this case also. 
 
 One other remark by way of introduction is 
 necessary. The words we have are a condensed 
 summary of a talk that lasted over some days. 
 Whoever chose the words, they are very carefully 
 chosen. To translate them without using words 
 with a Christian bias or modern ideas is not 
 easy, as so many excellent English words are 
 
 1 For instance Majjhima, i. 280, and my wife's note at Duka 
 Patthana, i. 366. 
 
 50 
 
THE ARYAN PATH 
 
 thus shut out. Every word is iuiportant, and 
 it is a great pity that, in popular works on 
 Buddhism, the expressions have been usually 
 further condensed (which they will not bear), 
 or so altered as to misrepresent the meaning. 
 The full text is as follows : — 
 
 ^ There are two extremes which he ivho has 
 (joneforth^ ought not to follow — habitual devotion 
 on the one hand to the passions, to the pleasures 
 of sensual things^ a low and pagan way {of 
 seeking satisfaction), ignoble, unprofitable, fit only 
 for the worldly-minded ; and habitual devotion, 
 on the other hand, to self -mortification, which is 
 painful, ignoble, unprofitable. There is a Middle 
 Path discovered by the Tathdgata ^ — a path ivhich 
 opens the eyes, and bestows understanding, which 
 leads to peace, to insight, to the higher wisdoin, to 
 Nirvana. Verily! it is this Aryan Eightfold 
 Path; that is to say Right Views, Right Aspira- 
 tions, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right mode 
 of livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfidness, 
 and Right Rapture. 
 
 ' Novj this is the Noble Truth as to suffering. 
 
 ^ See above p. 31. 
 
 2 That is by the Arahat ; the title the Buddha always uses 
 of himself. He does not call himself the Buddha; and his 
 followers never address him as such. 
 
 51 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 Birth is attended with pain, decay is ixLinful, 
 disease is painful, death is painful. Union with 
 the unpleasant is p)ainful, 'painful is separation 
 from the p)leasant ; and any craving unsatisfied, 
 that, too, is pxiinfid. In brief the Ave aggregates 
 of clinging {that is, the conditions of individu- 
 ality) are painful. 
 
 ' No^y this is the noble Truth as to the 
 origin of sufferirig. Verily ! it is the craving 
 thirst that causes the renewal of becomings, that 
 is accompanied by sensual delights, and seeks, 
 satisfaction, now here now there — that is to say, 
 the craving for the gratification of the senses, or 
 the craving for a future life, or the craving for 
 prosperity. 
 
 ' Now this is the Noble Truth as to the passing 
 away of pain. Verily ! it is the passing aivay 
 so that no passion ranains, the giving up, the 
 getting rid of, the emancipation from, the har- 
 bouring no longer of this craving thirst. 
 
 ' Now this is the Noble Truth as to the way that 
 leads to the passing away of pain. Verily ! it is 
 this Aryan Eightfold Path, that is to secy, Right 
 Views, Right Aspirations, Right Speech, conduct, 
 and mode of livelihood, Right Effort, Right 
 Mindfulness, and Right Rapture/ 
 
 A few words follow as to the threefold way in 
 52 
 
THE ARYAN PATH 
 
 which the speaker claimed to have grasped each 
 of these Four Truths. That is all. There is not 
 a word about God or the soul, not a word about 
 the Buddha or Buddhism. It seems simple, al- 
 most jejune ; so thin and weak that one won- 
 ders how it can have formed the foundation for 
 a system so mighty in its historical results. But 
 the simple words are pregnant with meaning. 
 Their implications were clear enough to the 
 hearers to whom they were addressed. They were 
 not intended, however, to answer the questionings 
 of a twentieth-century European student, and are 
 liable now to be misunderstood. Fortunately 
 each word, each clause, each idea in the discourse 
 is repeated, commented on, enlarged upon, almost 
 ad nauseam, in the Suttas.^ A short comment 
 in the light of those explanations, though it can 
 only be a repetition of what I have often said 
 before, is necessary to bring out the meaning that 
 was meant. 
 
 The End of Pain. — The passing away of pain 
 or suffering is said to depend on an emancipation. 
 And the Buddha is elsewhere (Vinaya i. 239) 
 made to declare : ' Just as the great ocean has one 
 taste only, the taste of salt, just so have this 
 
 ^See, for instance, Diglia, ii. 305 to 307, and 311 to 313 ; 
 Majjhima, iii. 231 ; Samyutta, v. 8 ; Patisambhida, i. 37-42. 
 
 53 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 doctrine and discipline but one flavour only, the 
 flavour of emancipation.' And again : ' When a 
 brother has, by himself, known and realised, and 
 continues to abide, here in this visible Avorld, in 
 that emancipation of mind, in that emancipation 
 of heart which is Arahatship — that is a condition 
 higher still, and sweeter still, for the sake of which 
 the brethren lead the religious hfe under me.' ^ 
 
 The emancipation is found in a habit of mind, 
 in the being free from a specified sort of craving 
 that is said to be the origin of certain specified 
 sorts of pain. In some European books this is 
 completely spoiled by being represented as the 
 doctrine that existence is misery, and that desire 
 is to be suppressed. Nothing of the kind is said 
 in the text. The description of suffering or 
 pain is, in fact, a string of truisms quite plain and 
 undisputable until the last clause. That clause 
 declares that the five Updddna Skandhas, the 
 five groups of bodily and mental qualities that 
 make up an individual, involve pain. 
 
 Pain and Individuality. — One can express that 
 in more modern language by saying that the con- 
 ditions that make an individual are precisely the 
 conditions that also give rise to pain. No sooner 
 
 ^ Mahali Suttanta ; translated in Rhys Davids, Dialogues 
 of the Buddha^ vol. i. p. 201. Compare p. 204. 
 
 54 
 
THE ARYAN PATH 
 
 has an individual arisen, become separate, than 
 disease and decay begin to act upon it. Indi- 
 viduaHty involves limitation, limitation involves 
 ignorance, ignorance ends in sorrow. All the 
 sorts and sources of pain here specified — 
 birth, decay, death, union with the pleasant, 
 separation from the pleasant, unsatisfied long- 
 ings — are each simply a result of individuality. 
 This is a deeper generalisation than that which 
 said : ' A man is born to trouble as the sparks fly 
 upward.' But it is put forward as a mere state- 
 ment of fact. And the previous history of reli- 
 gious belief in India would tend to show that 
 emphasis was laid on the fact, not as an explana- 
 tion of the origin of evil, but rather as a protest 
 against the then current pessimistic idea that 
 salvation could not be reached on earth, and must 
 therefore be sought for in rebirth in heaven. For 
 if the argument were admitted, it would follow 
 that even in heaven the individual would still be 
 subject to sorrow ; and by admitting this the five 
 ascetics, to whom the words were addressed, would 
 have to admit also all that followed. 
 
 Craving. — The threefold division of craving at 
 the end of the second truth might be rendered : 
 * The lust of the flesh, the lust of life, and the love 
 of this present world.' The two last are said else- 
 
 55 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 where to be directed against two sets of thinkers, 
 called the Eternalists and the Annihilationists, 
 who held respectively the everlasting-life heresy, 
 and the let-us-eat-and-drink-for-to-morrow-we-die 
 heresy.^ This may be so. But in any case the 
 division of craving would have appealed to the 
 five hearers as correct. 
 
 Impermanence. — The details of the Path in- 
 clude several terms whose meaning and implica- 
 tion arc by no means apparent at first sight. 
 Right views, for instance, mean mainly right 
 views as to the Four Truths and the Three 
 Signs. Of the latter, one is identical, or nearly so, 
 with the First Truth. The others are Imperma- 
 nence, and non-soul (the absence of a soul) — 
 both declared to be ' signs ' of every individual, 
 whether god, animal, or man. Of these two, 
 again, the Impermanence has become an Indian 
 rather than a Buddhist idea ; and we are familiar 
 enough with it also in the West. There is no 
 Being, there is only a Becoming. The state of 
 every individual is unstable, temporary, sure to 
 pass away. Even in things we find, in each 
 individual. Form and other Material qualities. In 
 living organisms there is a continually ascend- 
 ing series of Mental qualities also. It is the 
 
 ^ See Iti-vuttaka, p. 44 ; Samyutta, iii, 57. 
 
 56 
 
THE ARYAN PATH 
 
 union of these that makes the individual. Every 
 person, or thing, or god is therefore a putting 
 together, a compound. And in each individual, 
 without any exception, the relation of its com- 
 ponent parts is ever changing, is never the 
 same for two consecutive moments. It follows 
 that no sooner has separateness, individuality, 
 begun, than dissolution, disintegration, also 
 begins. There can be no individuality without 
 a putting together: there can be no putting 
 together without a becoming: there can be no 
 becoming without a becoming different: and 
 there can be no becoming different without a 
 dissolution, a passing away, which sooner or later 
 will inevitably be complete. 
 
 Herakleitos, who w^as a generation or two 
 later than the Buddha, had very similar ideas ; ^ 
 and similar ideas are found in post-Buddhistic 
 Indian works.^ But in neither case are they 
 worked out in the same uncompromising way. 
 Both in Europe, and in all Indian thought 
 except the Buddhist, souls, and the gods who 
 are made in imitation of souls, are considered as 
 exceptions. To these spirits is attributed a Being 
 without Becoming, an individuality without 
 
 ^ Burnet, Early Greek PMlosopliy^ p. 149. 
 2 Katha Up., 2.10; Bhag. Gita2.14; 9.33. 
 
 57 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 change, a beginning without an end. To hold 
 any such view would, according to the doctrine 
 of the Noble (or Aryan) Path, be erroneous, and 
 the error would block the way against the very 
 entrance on the Path. 
 
 So important is this position in Buddhism that 
 it is put in the forefront of Buddhist expositions of 
 Buddhism. The Buddha himself is stated in 
 the books to have devoted to it the very first 
 discourse he addressed to the first converts.^ 
 The first in the collection of the Dialogues of 
 Gotama discusses and completely, categorically, 
 and systematically rejects all the current theories 
 about 'souls.' Later books follow these pre- 
 cedents. Thus the Katha Vatthu, the latest book 
 included in the canon, discusses points of dis- 
 agreement that had arisen in the community. It 
 places this question of ' soul ' at the head of all 
 the points it deals with, and devotes to it an 
 amount of space quite overshadowing all the 
 rest.2 So also in the earliest Buddhist book later 
 than the canon — the very interesting and sugges- 
 tive series of conversations between the Greek 
 King Menander and the Buddhist teacher 
 
 ^ The Anatta-lakkhana Sutta (Vinaya, i. 13 = Samyutta, iii. 
 66 and iv. 34), translated in Vinaya Texts, vol. i. pp. 100-102. 
 
 ^ See my article on Buddhist Schools of Thought in the 
 J.R.A.S. for 1892. 
 
 58 
 
THE ARYAN PATH 
 
 Nagasena. It is precisely this question of the 
 'soul' that the unknown author takes up first, 
 describing how Nagasena convinces the king 
 that there is no such thing as the ' soul ' in the 
 ordinary sense. And he returns to the subject 
 again and again. ^ 
 
 Right Desires. — After Right Views come Right 
 Aspirations. It is evil desires, low ideals, useless 
 cravings, idle excitements that are to be sup- 
 pressed by the cultivation of the opposite — of 
 right desires, lofty aspirations. In one of the 
 Dialogues 2 instances are given — the desire for 
 emancipation from sensuality, aspirations towards 
 the attainment of love to others, the wish 
 not to injure any living thing, the desire for the 
 eradication of wrong, and for the promotion of 
 right, dispositions in one's own heart ; and so on. 
 This portion of the Path is indeed quite simple ; 
 and would require no commentary were it not 
 for the still constantly repeated blunder that 
 Buddhism teaches the suppression of all desire. 
 
 Right Effort. — Of the remaining stages of the 
 Path it is only necessary to mention two. The 
 
 ^ Questions of King Milinda, translated b}' Rhys Davids 
 (Oxford, 1890-1894), vol. i. pp. 40, 41, 85-87 ; vol. ii. pp. 21- 
 25, 86-89. 
 
 2 Majjhima, iii. 251. Compare Samyutta, v. 8. 
 
 59 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 one is Right Effort, a constant intellectual alert- 
 ness is required. This is not only insisted upon 
 elsewhere in countless passages, but of the three 
 cardinal sins in Buddhism (rdga, dosa, moha) the 
 last and worst is stupidity or dullness, the others 
 being sensuality and ill-will. Right Effort is closely 
 connected with the seventh stage, Right Mindful- 
 ness. Two of the Dialogues are devoted to this 
 subject, and it is constantly referred to elsewhere.^ 
 The disciple, whatsoever he does — whether going 
 forth or coming back, standing or walking, 
 speaking or silent, eating or drinking, — is to 
 keep clearly in mind all that it means, the 
 temporary character of the act, its ethical 
 significance, and, above all, that behind the act 
 there is no actor (goer, seer, eater, speaker) that 
 is an eternally persistent unity. It is the 
 Buddhist analogue to the Christian precept: 
 ' Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever 
 ye do, do all to the glory of God.' 
 
 Love. — Under the head of Right Conduct the 
 two most important points are Love and Joy. 
 Love is in Pali Mctfd, and the Metta Sutta- (no 
 
 1 Digha, ii. 290-315 ; Majjhima, i. 55 fol. Compare Rhys 
 Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, p. 81. 
 
 2 No. 8 in tiie Sutta Niputa (p. 26 of Fausbiill's edition). It 
 ifl translated by FausbiJll in vol. x. of the S.B.E. and by 
 Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 109. 
 
 Go 
 
THE ARYAN PATH 
 
 doubt with reference to the Right Mindfulness 
 just described) says : — 
 
 ' As a mother, even at the risk of her own life, 
 protects her son, her only son, so let him cultivate 
 love vjithoiit measure towards all beings. Let 
 him cultivate towards the whole world — above, 
 below, around — a heart of love unstinted, un- 
 mixed with the sense of differing or opposing 
 interests. Let a man maintain this mindfulness 
 all the while he is awake, whether he be standing, 
 walking, sitting, or lying down. This state of 
 heart is the best in the world.' 
 
 Often elsewhere four such states are described, 
 the Brahma Vihdra or Sublime Conditions. 
 They are Love, Sorrow at the sorrows of others, 
 Joy in the joys of others, and Equanimity as 
 regards one's own joys and sorrows.^ Each of 
 these feelings was to be deliberately practised, 
 beginning with a single object and gradually 
 increasing till the whole world was suffused with 
 the feeling. 
 
 ' Our mind shall not waver. No evil speech 
 will we utter. Tender and comjjassionate will 
 we abide, loving in heart, void of malice within. 
 And we will be ever suffusing such an one with 
 the rays of our loving thought. And with that 
 1 Digha, ii. 186, 187. 
 6l 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 feeling as a basis we will ever he suffusing the 
 ivhole world with thought of love, far-reaching ^ 
 grown great, beyond measure, void of anger or 
 ill-will} 
 
 The relative importance of Love, as compared 
 with other habits, is thus described : — 
 
 'All the means that can he used as bases for 
 doing right are not worth the sixteenth part of the 
 emancijoation of heart through Love. That takes 
 all those up into itself outshining them in 
 radiance and glory. Just as whatsoever stars 
 there be, their radiance avails not the sixteenth 
 part of the radiance of the moon. That takes 
 all those up into itself, outshining them in 
 radiance and glory— just as in the last month of 
 the rains, at harvest time, the sun, mounting up 
 on high into the clear and cloudless sky, over- 
 whelms cdl darkness in the realms of space, and 
 shines forth in radiance and glory — just as in 
 the night, when the daivn is breaking, the 
 Morning Star shines out in radiance and glory 
 — just so all the means that can be used as helps 
 towards doing right avail not the sixteenth part 
 of the emancipation of heart through Love."^ 
 
 Joy. — The intense bhss, pervading the whole 
 being, which follows on the assurance of salvation 
 
 ^ Majjhima, i. 129. - Itivuttaka, pp. 19-21. 
 
 62 
 
THE ARYAN PATH 
 
 won, is independent of the dogmas or beliefs of 
 those who have felt the disenchantment, passed 
 through the struggle, and won the victory. We 
 have undoubted and most interesting examples 
 among the adherents of the most antagonistic 
 forms of Christian belief. And Moslem Sufis and 
 Buddhist Arahats have had the same experience. 
 There are preserved in the canon t^vo collections 
 of the Songs of the Elders, ascribed respectively 
 to one hundred and seven men and seventy-three 
 women who became Arahats in the life- time of 
 the Buddha. They are, with a very few excep- 
 tions, pseans of joy and victory. They have, 
 unfortunately, not been translated as yet into 
 English; but the spirit they breathe is shown 
 in the following prose passage.^ After pointing 
 out that the Hindrances (Mvarana) — sensuality, 
 ill-will, torpor of mind or body, worry, and waver- 
 ing — affect a man like debt, disease, imprisonment, 
 slavery, and anxiety — it goes on : — 
 
 ' When these five Hindrances have been put 
 o.way within him, he looks upon himself as freed 
 from debt, rid of disease, out of jail, a free man, 
 and secure. And gladness springs up within 
 him on his realising that, and joy arises to him 
 thus gladdened, and so rejoicing all his frame 
 
 ^ Taken from my Dialogues of the Buddha, vol. i. p. 84. 
 
 63 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 becomes at ease, and being thus at ease he is per- 
 vaded with a sense of peace, and in that peace his 
 heart is stayed' 
 
 There is a string of verses in the Dhammapada 
 on this state of bliss, the Right Rapture, the last 
 stage of the Path. The following is one of 
 them : — 
 
 'It is in very bliss lue dwell, we who hate not those 
 
 who hate us ; 
 Among men full of hate, we continue void of 
 
 hate. 
 It is in very bliss we dwell, we in health among 
 
 the ailing ; 
 Among men weary and sick, we continue well. 
 It is in very bliss we dwell, free from care 
 
 among the careworn ; 
 Among men fidl of worries, we continue calm. 
 It is in very bliss we dwell, we who have no 
 
 hindrances ; 
 We will become feeders on joy, like the gods in 
 
 their shining splendour ! ' ^ 
 
 Another verse from the same anthology 
 says : — 
 
 ' When the wise man by earnestness hath driven 
 Vanity far away, the terraced heights 
 
 ^ Dhammapada, verses 197-200. 
 
 64 
 
THE ARYAN PATH 
 
 Of wisdom doth he climb, and, free from care, 
 Looks down on the vain world, the careworn 
 
 crowd — 
 As he who stands wpon cc mountain top 
 Can watch, serene himself, the toilers in the 
 
 plains.' ^ 
 
 ^ Dhammapada, verse 28. 
 
 65 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE LIONS IN THE PATH 
 
 Though the texts are full of assurance of the 
 possibility of happiness here, in this world, with- 
 out waiting for a better, they are not blind to 
 the opposite side of the question, and recognise, 
 frankly and fully, the obstacles and dangers. As 
 usual, in the absence of books, these were arranged, 
 for the convenience of memory, into classes. The 
 most dangerous are the five Hindrances (see above 
 p. 63), the ten Bonds, and the four Intoxications. 
 The Bonds are : — 
 
 1. Delusions about the soul (Sakkaya-ditthi). 
 
 2. Doubt (Vicikiccha). 
 
 3. Dependence on works (Silabbata-paramasa). 
 
 4. Sensuality (Kama). 
 
 5. Ill-will (Patigha). 
 
 6. Desire for rebirth on earth (Rupa-raga). 
 
 7. Desire for rebirth in heaven (Arupa-raga). 
 
 8. Pride (Muno). 
 
 66 
 
THE LIONS IN THE PATH 
 
 9. Self-righteousness (Uddhacca). 
 10. Ignorance (Avijja). 
 
 These words are all perfectly simple, except six 
 and seven, which are explained below. The 
 curious thing is that these evil dispositions are 
 supposed to be conquered in order — so that, for 
 instance, to conquer delusions about the soul is 
 the very entrance on the Path, and to conquer 
 Ignorance (the direst foe, the worst enemy of the 
 human race) is only possible at the end of it. I 
 am not prepared to say there is not some reason 
 in this, especially when we consider the frequent 
 instances, in the texts, of individuals, in moments 
 of spiritual exaltation or insight, breaking three, 
 or four, or five of the Bonds at a bound. To have 
 broken the first three Bonds is what we should 
 call conversion, what they call 'the entrance 
 into the stream/ And as the doctrine of Final 
 Assurance is part of early Buddhism, there can 
 then be no permanent relapse. Sooner or later, 
 in this or another birth, final salvation is assured. 
 
 The Intoxications. — The intoxications were 
 originally three — the mental infatuation arising 
 from sensual pleasures, from the pride of life, and 
 from ignorance respectively. Then there was 
 added a fourth. This addition must have been 
 made very early in the progress of the new move- 
 67 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 ment ; and it is of remarkable interest from the 
 point of view of the history of human thought. 
 It was the infatuation arising from speculation — 
 speculation as to uncertainties, ultimate causes, 
 questions of no moment for the practical conduct 
 of life. The stigma thus attached to this sort of 
 speculation was the most formidable attack that 
 had been made so far, in the history of the world, 
 on theology and metaphysics. The rival theories 
 purported to explain the origin and end of all 
 things, to be able to give a clear and absolute 
 decision as to the finiteness or infinity of the 
 world, as to the eternity of the soul, and of those 
 bigger souls, the gods. Buddhism declares that 
 /" everything has a cause, the cause (or causes) 
 included ; that there is nothing permanent ; and 
 that it is not only a sufiStcient, it is the only true, 
 method to argue from one cause back to the next, 
 and so on, without any hope, or even desire, to 
 explain the ultiuiate cause of all things. The 
 most famous of all Buddhist stanzas, found 
 engraved on ten thousand votive gifts to Buddhist 
 shrines in India, put, in the Canon, into the mouth 
 of the fifth of the Arahats, and quoted as authori- 
 tative in the works of all but the very latest of 
 the various schools of Buddhist thought, tells 
 us: — 
 
 68 
 
THE LIONS IN THE PATH 
 
 ' Of all the phenomena sprung from a cause 
 The Buddha the cause Jtath told, 
 And he tells too how each shcdl come to its end, 
 Such alone is the ivord of the Sage.' ^ 
 
 The Indeterminates. — This position seemed to 
 many of Gotama's contemporaries to be a con- 
 fession of failure. And it was a failure from the 
 point of view of those to whom precisely such 
 questions seemed of the utmost importance. But 
 Gotama was perfectly firm. He refused not only 
 to answer, but even to discuss such points. They 
 were of course being constantly raised. His 
 answer was a list of Indeterminates, questions 
 barred. 
 
 1, 2. Whether the world is eternal or not. 
 
 3, 4. Whether the world is infinite or not. 
 
 5, 6. Whether the soul is the same as the body, 
 or different from it. 
 
 7-10. Whether a man exists in any way, or not, 
 after death.- 
 
 There were others ; but these are the ones most 
 frequently mentioned. 
 
 ^ Vinaya, i. 40. Compare laii Upanishad, 14. E. Hardy in 
 the Netti, p. xxiii. 
 
 - For references, see my discussion of the Indeterminates in 
 Dialogues of the Buddha, vol. i. p. 186 fol. 
 
 69 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 ' On 8uch points brahmins and recluses sticky 
 Wrangling on them they violently discuss ; 
 Poor folk ! they see hut one side of the shield! 
 
 Such expressions as the following are several 
 times found in the Dialogues : — 
 
 The jungle, the desert, the inippet-show, the 
 writhing, the entanglement of such speculations is 
 accompanied by sorrow, wrangling, resentment, 
 the fever of excitement It conduces neither 
 to detachment of heart, nor to freedom from lusts, 
 nor to tranquillity, nor to peace, nor to wisdom, 
 nor to the insight of the higher stages of the path, 
 nor to Nirvana.' ^ 
 
 We find here two propositions : Do not let us 
 discuss things on which we have not good evi- 
 dence. Do not let us discuss things which are no 
 use, no good, but the contrary, for us. Whether 
 right or wrong, both propositions seem to me 
 quite intelligible. Subtle arguments have, how- 
 ever, been brought forward to show that, behind 
 this deliberate silence of Gotama, there lay, after 
 all, a covert and esoteric belief, not communicated 
 to his disciples, in a future life and other points 
 of his opponents' creed. That, to me, is not in- 
 telligible. 
 
 How possible Gotama's position is can be seen 
 
 ^ Majjhima, i. 431, 485. 
 70 
 
THE LIONS IN THE PATH 
 
 from Frederic Harrison's description of a similar 
 view held now in Europe : — 
 
 'When men of high moral and intellectual 
 power assure us that they find rest, unity, and 
 fruit in . . . conceptions about themselves, their 
 own natures, the external world, its origin, con- 
 struction, and maintenance, the future state of 
 what they conceive to be some part of, or the 
 essence of, themselves, ... far be it from us to 
 dispute the value and reality of this knowledge. 
 ... If we do not adopt them, it is not because 
 we believe them to be false, but because they fail 
 to interest us. We can get no practical good out 
 of them.' 1 
 
 Or compare this, from a very different school. 
 Professor James says : — 
 
 ' Is the world one or many ? fated or free ? 
 material or spiritual ? — here are notions either of 
 which may or may not hold good of the world ; 
 and disputes over such notions are unending. 
 The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to 
 interpret each notion by tracing its respective 
 practical consequences.' ^ 
 
 The Buddha was neither Comtist nor Prag- 
 matist. But these extracts may show how un- 
 
 1 Philosophy of Common Sense (London, 1907), p. 40. 
 
 2 Pragmatism (London, 1907), p. 45. 
 
 71 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 necessary it is to try to read between the lines of 
 very distinct passages to the contrary in order to 
 find in them the metaphysical sweetmeats dear to 
 so many hearts. In any case, it is clear that to 
 the early Buddhists the habit of theosophic 
 speculation was by no means the least dangerous 
 of the Lions in the Path. 
 
 To have realised the Truths, and traversed the 
 Path; to have broken the Bonds, put an end to 
 the Intoxications, got rid of the Hindrances, mas- 
 tered the craving for metaphysical speculation 
 was to have attained the ideal, the Fruit, as it is 
 called, of Arahatship. One might fill columns 
 with the praises, many of them among the most 
 beautiful passages in Pali poetry and prose, 
 lavished on this condition of mind, the state of 
 the man made perfect according to the Buddhist 
 faith. Many are the pet names, the poetic 
 epithets, bestowed upon it, each of them — for 
 they arc not synonyms — emphasising one or 
 other phase of this many-sided conception — the 
 harbour of refuge, the cool cave, the island amidst 
 the floods, the place of bliss, emancipation, libera- 
 tion, safety, the supreme, the transcendental, the 
 uncreated, the tranquil, the home of ease, the 
 calm, the end of suffering, the medicine for all 
 evil, the unshaken, the ambrosia, the immaterial, 
 ;2 
 
THE LIONS IN THE PATH 
 
 the imperishable, the abiding, the further shore, 
 the unending, the bhss of effort, the supreme joy, 
 the ineffable, the detachment, the holy city, and 
 many others. Perhaps the most frequent in the 
 Buddhist texts is Arahatship, ' the state of him 
 who is worthy ' ; and the one exclusively used in 
 Europe is Nirvana, the ' dying out,' that is, the 
 dying out in the heart of the fell fire of the three 
 cardinal sins — sensuality, ill-will, and stupidity.^ 
 
 The choice of this term by European writers, a 
 choice made long before any of the Buddhist 
 canonical texts had been published or translated, 
 has had a most unfortunate result. Those writers 
 did not share, could not be expected to share, the 
 exuberant optimism of the early Buddhists. 
 Themselves giving up this world as hopeless, and 
 looking for salvation in the next, they naturally 
 thought the Buddhists must do the same ; and in 
 the absence of any authentic scriptures to correct 
 the mistake, they interpreted Nirvana, in terms of 
 their own belief, as a state to be reached after 
 death. As such they supposed the ' dying out ' 
 must mean the dying out of a ' soul ' ; and endless 
 were the discussions as to whether this meant 
 eternal trance, or absolute annihilation, of the 
 soul. It is now thirty years since I first put 
 
 1 Samyutta, iv. 251, 261. 
 
 73 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 forward the right interpretation.^ But outside 
 the ranks of Pali scholars the old blunder is still 
 often repeated. It should be added that the 
 belief in salvation in this world, in this life, was 
 really implicit, though never clearly or openly 
 expressed, in pre-Buddhistic thought. And it 
 appealed so strongly to Indian sympathies that 
 from the time of the rise of Buddhism down to 
 the present day it has been adopted as a part of 
 general Indian belief, and Jivaninuldi, salvation 
 during this life, has become a commonplace in 
 the religious language of India. 
 
 ^ In the first edition of my manual Buddhhm, published by 
 the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in 1877. 
 
 74 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 ADOPTED DOCTRINES — KARMA 
 
 Transmigration. — The above are the essential 
 doctrines of the original Buddhism. They are 
 at the same time the distinctive doctrines : that 
 is to say, the doctrines that distinguish it from 
 all previous teaching in India. But the Buddha, 
 while rejecting the sacrifices and the ritualistic 
 magic of the brahmin schools, the animistic 
 superstitions of the people, and the pantheistic 
 speculations of the poets of the pre-Buddhistic 
 Upanishads, still retained the belief in trans- 
 migration. This belief — the transmigration of 
 the soul, after the death of the body, into other 
 bodies, either of men, beasts or gods — is part of 
 the animistic creed, and is so widely found 
 throughout the world that it was probably 
 universal. In India it had already, before the 
 rise of Buddhism, been raised into an ethical 
 conception by the associated doctrine of Karma, 
 7S 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 according to which a man's social position in life 
 and his physical advantages, or the reverse, were 
 the result of his actions in a previous birth.^ 
 The doctrine thus afforded an explanation, quite 
 complete to those who could believe it, of the 
 apparent anomalies and wrongs in the dis- 
 tribution here of happinesK or woe. A man, 
 for instance, is bhnd. This is owinq- to his lust 
 of the eye in a previous birth. But he has also 
 unusual powers of hearing. This is because he 
 loved, in a previous birth, to listen to the preach- 
 ing of the law. The explanation could always 
 be exact, for it was scarcely more than a repetition 
 of the point to be explained. It fits the facts 
 because it is derived from them. And it cannot 
 be disproved, for it lies in a sphere beyond the 
 reach of human inquiry. 
 
 The Bridge. — It was because it thus provided a 
 moral cause that it was retained in Buddhism. But 
 as the Buddha did not acknowledge a soul, the link 
 of connection between one life and the next had 
 to be found somewhere else. The Buddha found 
 it (as Plato also found it^) in the influence 
 
 ^ Compare *S"rt^. i>r., translated by'Eggeling, i. 267, with 
 Ghdndogi/a Up., 5-10, Brihad Ar. Up., vi. 2-15, and Kaushitaki 
 Up., J). 116 (ed. Cowcll). 
 
 ^ Phccdo, 69 fol. The idea is there also put forward in 
 connection with a belief in transmigration. 
 
 76 
 
ADOPTED DOCTRINES — KARMA 
 
 exercised upon one life by a desire felt in the 
 previous life. When two thinkers of such 
 eminence (probably the two greatest ethical 
 thinkers of antiquity) have arrived independently 
 at this strange conclusion, have agreed in ascrib- 
 ing to cravings felt in this life so great, and to 
 us so inconceivable, a power over the future life, 
 we may well hesitate before we condemn the 
 idea as intrinsically absurd. And we may take 
 note of the important fact that, given similar 
 conditions, similar stages in the development of 
 religious belief, men's thoughts, even in spite of 
 the'most unquestioned individual originality, tend, 
 though they may never produce exactly the same 
 results, to work in similar ways, however strange. 
 Modes of Karma. — In India, before Buddhism, 
 conflicting and contradictory views prevailed as to 
 the precise mode of action of Karma, and we find 
 this confusion reflected in Buddhist theory. The 
 prevailing views are tacked on, as it were, to the 
 essential doctrines of Buddhism, without being 
 thoroughly assimilated to them, or logically 
 incorporated with them. Thus in the story of 
 the good layman Citta, it is an aspiration ex- 
 pressed on the death-bed,^ in a dialogue on the 
 subject it is a thought dwelt on during life,^ in 
 
 1 Samyutta, iv. 302. 2 Majjhima, iii. 99 fol. 
 
 77 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 the numerous stones in the Peta and Yimana 
 Yatthus it is usually some isolated act; in the 
 discussions in the Dhamma Sangani it is some 
 mental disposition, which is the Karma (Doing 
 or Action) in the one life determining the position 
 of the individual in the next. These are really 
 conflicting propositions. They are only alike in 
 the fact that in each case a moral cause is given 
 for the position in which the individual finds 
 himself now, and the moral cause is his own 
 act. 
 
 The New Body. — In the popular belief, followed 
 also in the brahmin theology, the bridge between 
 the two lives was a minute and subtle entity, 
 called the soul, which left the one body at death, 
 (usually through a hole at the top of the head), 
 and entered into the new body. The new body 
 happened to be there, ready, with no soul in it. 
 The soul did not make the body. In the Buddhist 
 adaptation of this theory, no soul, no conscious- 
 ness, no memory, goes over from one body to the 
 other. It is the grasping, the craving, still exist- 
 ing at the death of the one body that causes the 
 new set of skandhas, that is, the new body with 
 its mental tendencies and capacities, to arise. How 
 this takes place is nowhere explained. 
 
 East and West.— The Indian theory of Karma 
 78 
 
ADOPTED DOCTRINES — KARMA 
 
 has been worked out with many points of great 
 beauty and ethical vahie. And the Buddhist 
 adaptation of it, avoiding some of the difficulties 
 common to it and to the allied European theories 
 of fate, providence, and predestination, tries to 
 explain the weight of the universe in its action 
 on the individual; the heavy hand of the im- 
 measurable past we cannot escape, the close 
 connection between all forms of life, and the 
 mysteries of inherited character. The European 
 theories lay the stress upon the future, the 
 Indian on the past. A sufferer believing in the 
 soul, and in fate, or providence, can say : ' This 
 was pre-ordained, I must submit,' and he can try 
 to rectify the balance of justice by assuming a 
 remedy, for which he has no evidence, in a more 
 satisfactory world beyond the grave. If he 
 believes in Karma he will think : ' This is my 
 OAvn fault.' And he can try to rectify the balance 
 of justice by assuming an identity, for which he 
 has no evidence, between himself and some one 
 else in the past. 
 
 The Indian theories lay stress upon a law, the 
 European theories upon the action of a sovereign 
 will. And it is very suggestive that the mistake 
 in the Platonic and Buddhist view is precisely the 
 very same mistake against which Buddhism, in 
 79 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 the case of the soul-theory, entered so strong a 
 protest. Early Buddhism recognised all the 
 qualities, feelings, etc., included under the term 
 ' soul ' ; but it said that the mistake lay in postu- 
 lating an eternal unity instead of a changing 
 plurality. In the case of Karma, it was Buddhism 
 itself that put a unity where a plurality should be; 
 it represented the action of past lives on present 
 ones — which is a profound truth — as the action of 
 a past life on a present one, in a manner not 
 supported by the facts of experience. 
 
 How can we explain this difference of method ? 
 Is it not because in Karma the Buddhists found, 
 at one and the same time, a moral cause, a reign 
 of law, and an escape from the endless waves of 
 the dark ocean of transmigration ? And the fact 
 underlying the Indian theory of Karma is ac- 
 knowledged to be very real. The history of an 
 individual does not begin with his birth. He has 
 been countless a3ons in the making. And he 
 cannot sever himself from the past; no, not for 
 a moment. The tiny snowdrop droops its fairy 
 head just so much, and no more, because it is 
 balanced by the universe. It is a snowdrop, not 
 an oak, because it is the outcome of the Karma of 
 an endless series of past existences ; and because 
 it did not begin to be when the flower opened, or 
 80 
 
ADOPTED DOCTRINES — KARMA 
 
 when the mother-plant first peeped above the 
 ground, or first met the embraces of the sun, or 
 at any point m time which you or I can fix. A 
 great American writer says : — 
 
 ' It was a poetic attempt to lift this mountain 
 of Fate, to reconcile with liberty this despotism 
 of Race, which led the Hindoos to say " Fate is 
 nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state 
 of existence." I find a coincidence in the ex- 
 tremes of Eastern and Western speculation in 
 the daring statement of the German philosopher 
 Schelling: "There is in every man a certain 
 feeling that he has been what he is from all 
 eternity.'" 
 
 We may put a new and a deeper meaning into 
 the words of the poet : — 
 
 ' . . . Our deeds follow us from afar, 
 
 And what we have been makes us what we are.' ^ 
 
 1 No one has yet attempted to write a history of the growth 
 in India of the various forms of the Karma theory. Professor 
 Hopkins has a suggestive paper on it in the Journal of the Royal 
 Asiatic Society for 1906. On the Buddhist side the reader may 
 consult Rhys Davids's ^iffZcZAzsm (S.P.C.K.), 21st ed., pp. 93- 
 106, and Dahlke's Aufsdtze zum Vei^stdndnis des Buddhisjma 
 (Berlin, 1903), i. 92-106, and ii. Ml. 
 
 8i 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 ADOPTED DOCTRINES (continued) : COSMOGONY. 
 WHEEL OF LIFE 
 
 The Kalpas and World - Systems. — Another 
 Indian idea had a great influence on the Buddha's 
 view of life. Just as the doctrine of Karma 
 brought every Indian thinker face to face with 
 immeasurable periods of time, in the past more 
 especially, but also in the future ; so the views as 
 to the world brought him face to face with 
 immeasurable realms in space. In the oldest 
 Buddhist texts it is taken for granted that there 
 are ten thousand world-systems, in which expres- 
 sion ten thousand merely means an incalculably 
 large number. They are arranged throughout 
 space in groups of three; and are subject to a 
 continual process of disintegration and evolution. 
 The time occupied by one such process, that is 
 from the commencement of the dissolution to the 
 completion of the restoration, was called a Great 
 82 
 
ADOPTED DOCTRINES— SPACE 
 
 iEon, or Mahd Kalpa. And each Great ^Eon was 
 divided into four Incalculables, AsanJcheyyas. 
 In later books the details are worked out with a 
 wealth of numbers running into millions. In the 
 older texts we find only the general scheme still 
 quite vague in its immensity. The scheme has 
 not been traced in pre-Buddhistic writings ; but, 
 for reasons too long to specify here, I have no 
 doubt it was, in its essential points, older than the 
 rise of Buddhism. 
 
 I venture to think that these ideas of the im- 
 mensity of time and space, of the insignificance, 
 compared with the universe, of our own world- 
 system ; of the essential unity between man and 
 all animals (and even plants) ; of the immense 
 periods of the disintegration and reconstruction 
 of each world-system ; of the fact that all things, 
 the whole universe, is in a process of becoming, 
 must have contributed very largely to the con- 
 clusions reached as to the immense peril and 
 evil of transmigration, as to the complete hope- 
 lessness of looking for any salvation in any other 
 world, as to the essential necessity of a system of 
 mental and moral training, self-mastery, becom- 
 ing, that would ensure security and happiness 
 here and now. This conclusion will probably be 
 considered inevitable by those who recollect how 
 
 83 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 large a part the then current ideas of cosmogony 
 played in the scholastic theology of Europe ; and 
 how great was the change brought about gener- 
 ally in European thought by the new ideas as to 
 the position of our world, and as to the evolution 
 of man. The details of the Buddhist scheme, as 
 worked out in later times by the commentators, 
 are all quite wrong. The general scheme itself, 
 as held in the Buddha's time, is not accurate. 
 But it was so very much nearer to the actual facts 
 than the theory held, in the sixth century B.C., 
 anywhere else in the world, that it would certainly 
 lead to historical error were we to omit to attach 
 to it a very great importance in our estimate of 
 the probable reasons for the growth of early 
 Buddhism. 
 
 The Wheel of Life, — There is found in several 
 places in the Canon the following formula : — 
 
 1. On account of Ignorance, the Sankharas. 
 
 2. On account of the Sankharas, Consciousness. 
 
 3. On account of Consciousness, Name and 
 Form. 
 
 4. On account of Name and Form, the six 
 Provinces (of the six senses). 
 
 5. On account of the six Provinces, Contact. 
 G. On account of Contact, Sensation. 
 
 7. On account of Sensation, Craving. 
 84 
 
ADOPTED DOCTRINES— CAUSE 
 
 8. On account of Craving, Attachment. 
 
 9. On account of Attachment, Becoming. 
 
 10. On account of Becoming, Birth. 
 
 11, 12. On account of Birth, old age, and 
 death, grief, lamentation, suffering, dejection, and 
 despair. 
 
 This formula, called the Paticca-Samuppada 
 (origination through dependence), is repeated, and 
 certain explanations of the terms used are given. 
 But there is nowhere any explanation, intelligible 
 to modern ideas, as to why each link in the 
 chain causes the next, or even as to the exact 
 meaning of the words. The consequence is that 
 no two scholars agree as to its interpretation. I 
 have discussed it in my American Lectures, but 
 am not particularly enamoured of my explana- 
 tion. It seems to me to be an attempt (and, of 
 course, an unsuccessful one, for the notion is 
 wrong) to describe the way in which the Karma 
 in one life makes an individual in the next. If 
 that be so, clauses 1 and 2 refer to the previous, 
 clauses 3-9 to the present, and clauses 10 to 
 12 to the future birth. 
 
 Now Professor Jacobi has shown that in Yoga 
 and Sankhya writings some centuries later than 
 the Buddha there are found expressions some- 
 what similar to these, though not arranged in a 
 85 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 chain, and referring to successions of psycho- 
 logical experience in a single birth. The technical 
 terms used are indeed not the same, and it 
 sometimes requires no little subtlety to harmonise 
 them. But there is enough similarity to show 
 that similar ideas as to the succession of psycho- 
 logical states were current in non-Buddhist 
 schools of thought at the time when those writ- 
 ings were composed. The Buddhist formula 
 stands outside the main tenets of the system, 
 like mistletoe on an oak, and could be cut out 
 without modifying the system in any appreciable 
 degree. The theory of the action of Karma 
 in producing a new individual was certainly 
 borrowed. It would seem very likely that this 
 chain, designed to explain the process, was also 
 either borrowed, or adapted, from some previous 
 chain. 
 
 Ecstasy. — Another point of Buddhist teaching 
 adopted from previous belief was the practice of 
 ecstatic meditation. In the very earliest times 
 of the most remote animism we tind the belief 
 that a person, rapt from all sense of the outside 
 world, possessed by a spirit, acquired from that 
 state a degree of sanctity, was supposed to have 
 a degree of insight, denied to ordinary mortals. 
 In India from the Soma frenzy in the Yedas, 
 S6 
 
ADOPTED DOCTRINES— ECSTASY 
 
 through the mystic reveries of the Upanishads, 
 and the hypnotic trances of the ancient Yoga, 
 alHed beHefs and practices had never lost their 
 importance and their charm. It is clear from 
 the Dialogues,^ and other of the most ancient 
 Buddhist records, that the belief was in full 
 force when Buddhism arose, and that the practice 
 was followed by the Buddha's teachers. It was 
 quite impossible for him to ignore the question ; 
 and the practice was admitted as a part of the 
 training of the Buddhist Bhikshu. But it was 
 not the highest or the most important part, 
 and might be omitted altogether. The states of 
 Rapture are called Conditions of Bliss, and are 
 regarded as useful for the help they give towards 
 the removal of the mental obstacles to the attain- 
 ment of Arahatship.2 Of the thirty-seven con- 
 stituent parts of the Buddha's teaching they 
 enter into one group of four. To seek for Arahat- 
 ship in the practice of ecstasy alone is considered 
 a deadly heresy.^ So these practices are both 
 pleasant in themselves, and useful as one of the 
 means to the end proposed. But they are not 
 the end, and the end can be reached without 
 them. The most ancient form these exercises 
 
 ^ For instance, Majjhima, i. 163-166. 
 
 2 Anguttara, iii. 119. ^ Digha, i. 38. 
 
 87 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 took is recorded in the often-recurring paragraphs 
 translated in my Dialogues of the Buddha (i. 
 84-92), More modern, and much more elaborate, 
 forms are given in the Yogdvacara's Manual of 
 Indian Mysticism as Practised by BuddJiists, 
 edited by me from a unique MS. for the Pali 
 Text Society in 1896. In the introduction to 
 this last work the various phases of the question 
 are discussed at length. 
 
 There are other points on which earlier thought 
 and practice had prepared the way for Buddhism. 
 And as we know approximately both the date of 
 the Buddha's activity, and that of the earliest 
 Buddhist texts, these points of resemblance will 
 be of the greatest value when a history of philo- 
 sophy in India comes to be written. But the 
 ones here mentioned are perhaps those of most 
 importance. And we may conclude in the words 
 of Professor Huxley, at the end of his exposition 
 of early Buddhism : — ^ 
 
 ' A system which knows no God in the Western 
 sense, which denies a soul to man ; w^hich counts 
 the belief in immortality a blunder, and the hope 
 of it a sin ; which refuses any efficacy to prayer 
 or sacrifices ; which bids men look to nothing but 
 their own efforts for salvation; which, in its 
 
 * Romanes Lecture, London, 1893, p. 21. 
 
 88 
 
ADOPTED DOCTRINES 
 
 original purity, knew nothing of vows of obedience 
 and never sought the aid of the secular arm ; 
 yet spread over a considerable moiety of the old 
 world with marvellous rapidity, and is still, with 
 whatever base admixture of foreign supersti- 
 tions, the dominant creed of a large fraction of 
 mankind.' 
 
 89 
 
SELECTED WORKS ON EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 TRANSLATIONS 
 Rules of the Order 
 
 Vinaya Texts, by Rhys Davids and Oldenberg. Oxford, 
 1881-5. 
 
 Doctrine 
 
 Buddhist Suttas, by Rhys Davids. Oxford, 1881. 
 Dialogues of the Buddha, by Rhys Davids, vol i. Oxford, 
 
 1899. 
 Buddhism in Translations, by H. C. Warren. Cambridge, 
 
 Massachusetts, 1896. 
 DieBeden des Gotamo Buddho, by K. E. Neumann. Leipzig, 
 
 1896-1908. 
 
 Abhidhamma 
 Buddhist Psychology, by Mrs. Rhys Davids. London, 1900. 
 
 Tales and Poetry 
 
 The Jdtaka, edited by E. B. Co well. 6 vols. Cambridge, 
 
 1895-1908. 
 Buddhist Birth Stories, by Rhys Davids. London, 1880. 
 BhamniaiKida and Sutta Nipdta, by Max Miiller and 
 
 V. Fausbdll. Oxford, 1881. 
 Uddna, by Major-General Strong. London, 1902. 
 Lieder der Mbnche und Nonnen, by K. E. Neumann. Berlin, 
 
 1899. 
 Der Wahrheitspfad, von K. E. Neumann. Leipzig, 1893. 
 
 91 
 
EARLY BUDDHISM 
 
 Selected Works, continued — 
 
 MANUALS AND ESSAYS 
 
 Oldenberg.—B itdd/ia. 5tli ed. Berlin, 1906. English 
 translation of 1st ed. by W. Hoey. London, 1882. 
 
 Rhys Davids. — Buddhism. 21st ed. London, 1907. Trans- 
 lated into Dutch, Amsterdam, 1879 ; into German, 
 Leipzig, 1899. 
 
 Rhys Davids. — American Lectures. 2nd ed. London and 
 New York, 1906. 
 
 Dahlke. — Aufsatze zum Verstdndnis des Biiddhismus. 
 Berlin, 1903. English by J. M'Kechnie. London, 
 1908. 
 
 Narasu. — The Essence of Buddhism. Madras, 1907. 
 
 E. Hardy. — Der Buddhismus. Miinster, 1890. 
 
 R. PiscHEL. — Lehen und Lehre des Buddha. Leipzig, 1906. 
 
 Bibliography 
 There is a very careful list of all European books and 
 articles on Buddhism in 
 
 Albert J. Edmunds. — Buddhist Bihliograj^hy^ in Journal of 
 the Pali Text Society, 1903. 
 
 Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Mjyesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press 
 
 
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