BUDDHISM 
 
 ITS HISTORY AND 
 LITERATURE 
 
 by 
 
 T. W. RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., Ph.D. 
 
 Chairman of the Pali Text Society, Secretary a-ux 
 Librarian of the Roval Asiatic Society 
 professor of Pali and Buddh^t 
 Literature at University 
 
 LONDON fcf NEW YORK 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, LTD. 
 
First Published - 1896 
 New Edition - 1926 
 
 Made and Printed in G reat Britain ai ths 
 tiotolph Printing Works, Gate Street, Kings way, W. 
 
3L 
 
 NOTE 
 
 The Lectures comprising this volume were 
 delivered at Cornell University, Ithaca, 
 New York, under the auspices of the 
 American Committee for Lectures on the 
 History of Religions. 
 
 292217 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 # in 2013 
 
 http://archive.org/details/buddhismitshistoOOdavi 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. RELIGIOUS THEORIES IN INDIA BEFORE 
 
 BUDDHISM. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Religion, the meaning of the word ...... I 
 
 Value, from the comparative point of new, of the history of the 
 
 Buddhist religion ........ 6 
 
 Theories of God and the Soul, generally ..... 10 
 
 The same in India ; the Vedas ...... 14 
 
 Rise of monotheism, especially in India . . . .19 
 
 The Lokayatas and Jains ....... 24 
 
 The Sankhya system ........ 24 
 
 The Sixty-two Heresies ........ 30 
 
 Summary of this chapter ........ 36 
 
 Importance attached by Buddhist writers to the question of 
 
 the soul-theory ......... 39 
 
 LECTURE II. AUTHORITIES ON WHICH OUR KNOW- 
 LEDGE OF BUDDHISM IS BASED 
 
 Interest of the discover}' of new literatures ... 44, 45 
 First discovery of Pali . . . . . . .46 
 
 Tumour's Maha Vansa ........ 47 
 
 Prof. Fausboli's Dhammapada ...... 48 
 
 The Dictionary . . . . . . . -49 
 
 The Three Pitakas ......... 52 
 
 The Vinaya, Rules of the Order ...... 54 
 
 The Great Nikayas . . . . . . . .58 
 
 The Abhidhamma . . . . . . . .62 
 
 The miscellaneous books ....... 65 
 
 Quotations from the Songs of the Sisters . . . 73—75 
 
 The Pali Text Society 80-86 
 
 List of the Pitakas 83 
 
 vii 
 
viii Table of Contents 
 
 LECTURE III. NOTES ON THE LIFE OF THE BUDDHA. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 No ancient biography extant . . . . . . .87 
 
 The Pali and Sanskrit poems ....... 88 
 
 The Sakya clan 91 
 
 The Buddha not a king's son ....... 92 
 
 The legends of his birth and childhood ..... 93 
 
 The Great Renunciation ........ 96 
 
 King Bimbisara's offer ........ 99 
 
 The Teachers . . . . - . . . . 102 
 
 Attainment of Nirvana ........ 104 
 
 First Sermon .......... 105 
 
 Daily life 108 
 
 The Buddha and the Brahmins . . . . . .113 
 
 LECTURE IV. THE SECRET OF BUDDHISM. 
 
 Part I. The Signs, the Path, and the Fetters. 
 
 The Ajanta cave fresco of the Wheel 118 
 
 Wonders of the Wheel . . . . . . . .120 
 
 Impermanence . . . . . . . . 123 
 
 Sorrow and individuality . . . . . . .124 
 
 Delusions about self or soul 125 
 
 Karma ........... 129 
 
 Future life 131 
 
 J The Noble Eightfold Path 135 . 
 
 txThe Four Noble Truths 136 
 
 Modern parallels ......... 140 
 
 The Ten Fetters 141 
 
 Nirvana . .151 
 
 LECTURE V. THE SECRET OF BUDDHISM. 
 Part II. The Wheel of Life and Arahatship (or Nirvana). 
 
 Salvation, from what ? . 153 
 
 The Twelve Causes 155 
 
 ^ <jrasping the cause of rebirth . . . . . . 159 
 
 Western parallels . . . . . „ „ . .160 
 
Table of Contents ix 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Nirvana ........... 162 
 
 Poems on ......... 166 
 
 The bliss of 171 
 
 The longing for it . . . . . . .172 
 
 Where it can be got . ..... 175 
 
 The ideal Recluse . . . . . . . . .176 
 
 Intellectual activity part of ideal Arahatship . . . .181 
 
 Suppression of desire not a part of it . . . . .182 
 
 The Freedom in Arahatship . . . . . . 1S4 
 
 Real basis of the importance of the study of this ideal . 1S6 
 
 LECTURE VI. SOME NOTES ON THE HISTORY OF 
 BUDDHISM. 
 
 The various Buddhisms . . . . . . . .187 
 
 Council of Vesali . . . . . . . . .190 
 
 Katha Vatthu 195 
 
 The seventeen schools ........ 197 
 
 Bodhisatship . . . . . . . . . .199 
 
 The Greater Vehicle ........ 204 
 
 The Tantra books ......... 207 
 
 Theosophy .......... 209 
 
 Schopenhauer and Huxley on Buddhism .... 220 
 
 Index 223 
 
■ m 
 
 | 
 
BUDDHISM, 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 Religious Theories in India before Buddhism. 
 
 IT has often been maintained that there is no 
 nation or tribe without religion. But what is 
 meant by religion ? The word, as is well known, is 
 not found in languages not related to our own, and 
 its derivation is uncertain. Cicero, in one passage, 
 derived it from re and lego, and held that its real 
 meaning was the repetition of prayers and incanta- 
 tions. Another interpretation derives the word from 
 re and ligo, and makes its original sense that of 
 attachment, of a continual binding (that is, no doubt, 
 to the gods). A third derivation connects the word 
 with lex, and explains it as a law-abiding, scrupu- 
 lously conscientious, frame of mind. This last 
 seems to be most in accordance with the concep- 
 tions prevalent when the use of the phrase began, 
 
2 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 and more in harmony with the similar expressions 
 that arose under similar circumstances elsewhere — 
 in China, for instance, and in India. In India, in- 
 deed, the same word is used by the followers of 
 every school of thought for law and for religion — the 
 word Dharma, etymologically equivalent to the 
 Latin forma, and constantly reminding us in its im- 
 plied connotation of the English phrase "good 
 form." 
 
 Law did not, of course, in that early time, mean 
 legislation. It was rather custom, established pre- 
 cedent ; and a sense of duty to the established order 
 of things included and implied a reverential attitude 
 toward the gods. This last side of the idea tended, 
 even in Roman usage, to become predominant ; and 
 when the early Christians began to write in Latin, 
 they not only limited the sense of the word religion to 
 this part of its original meaning, but so used it in this 
 limited sense as to fit it in with their own theology, 
 till it gradually becomes nearly a synonym first for 
 Christianity, and then for Catholic Christianity. The 
 completion of this revolution in meaning was, 
 however, only opening the door to fresh modifica- 
 tions. 
 
 Thus we find St. Thomas Aquinas, in one place, 
 defining religion as " goodness rendering to God the 
 honour due to Him " ; and in another as " the mani- 
 
Religious Theories in India 
 
 3 
 
 festation of that faith, hope, and charity toward God 
 to which man is, above all, ordained." But as the 
 monastic system grew, a " religious house " came to 
 mean a monastery, a " religious " — that is a religious 
 person — a member of a monkish order, a " going into 
 religion" the taking of the vows, and even a " religion " 
 an order of monks. Most curious is it to read the 
 decree of the famous fourth Lateran council regret- 
 ting the confusion brought about in the church of 
 God by the diversity of " religions," and laying down 
 that none should ferment a new " religion," but 
 whoso desired to adopt " a religion," should select 
 one of those already approved. Religion through- 
 out this passage means simply an order of friars. An 
 Irish Protestant, Archbishop Trench, finds in this 
 use of the word a notable evidence of the moral con- 
 tagion of papal domination, and asks " what an awful 
 light does this one word, so used, throw on the en- 
 tire state of mind and habit of thought in those 
 ages ! " Writers of all the numerous sects of 
 Protestant belief have accordingly endeavoured to 
 bring the meaning of the word religion back to those 
 points which each of them regard as of vital im- 
 portance. 
 
 But how can they hope to keep it there, and only 
 there ? For writers who discard the dogmas of 
 Christianity endeavour to put a meaning into the 
 
 L. 4* 
 
4 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 word which will harmonise with their newer viewo of 
 life. The author of Ecce Homo says that religion is 
 "habitual and regulated admiration," or "worship 
 of whatever in the known universe appears worthy 
 of worship." Mr. Frederic Harrison defines it as 
 " veneration for the power which exercises a 
 dominant influence over our life." And Matthew 
 Arnold found in it only " morality touched with 
 emotion." 
 
 It is evident that man's definitions of religion will 
 be precisely as numerous, as different, and as accurate 
 as their own beliefs. There is only one definition 
 which all must accept, the historical one, and 
 the history of the word goes back a long 
 way before Cicero, and is still, to-day, in the 
 making. For the word is a convenient expression 
 for a very complex set of mental conditions, including, 
 firstly, beliefs as to internal and external mysteries 
 (souls and gods) — secondly, the mental attitude in- 
 duced by those beliefs — and thirdly, the actions and 
 conduct dependent upon both. No one of these 
 constituent elements of religion is stable. They are 
 never exactly the same in any two individuals, even 
 when these profess the same faith and live under the 
 same conditions. The beliefs especially (which are 
 independent, except in a very indirect way, of the 
 will of the individual) vary, and that in a definitely 
 
Religious Theories in India 
 
 5 
 
 progressive way, from century to century. And in 
 those countries where the expression " religion " has 
 once obtained currency, it has been always and must 
 still, in the future, be applied to each new variation. 
 The connotation of the word is determined by 
 popular usage, and popular convenience.* It can 
 never be limited by scholars or by the self-regard- 
 ing definition of the apologists of any particular creed. 
 
 Of the paramount importance of religion, there 
 can be no doubt. The life of every individual is 
 profoundly affected by religious views and religious 
 feelings, either his own or those of the people by 
 whom he is surrounded, and there is nothing which 
 so deeply affects the happiness of a nation as the 
 predominant religion. It is not surprising, there- 
 fore, that the present revival of historical research 
 should have been accompanied by a deep interest in 
 the comparative study of the history of religious be- 
 liefs. And we may congratulate the Organising 
 Committee of this scheme of lectures on their de- 
 sire to bring before American students the latest 
 results to which these enquiries have at pres- 
 
 * Professor Max Miiller, in his Lectures on ike Science of 
 Religion, 1873, p. 287, talks of " the broad foundations on which all 
 religions are built up, — the belief in a divine power, the acknowledg- 
 ment of sin, the habit of prayer, the desire to offer sacrifice, and the 
 hope of a future life." But popular usage has been too strong for 
 him. No one of these five is found in Buddhism, yet he calls Bud- 
 dhism a religion (p. 142 and elsewhere), 
 
6 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 ent reached ; and on the wisely thought-out arrange- 
 ments which ensure to their efforts so great a 
 measure of success. 
 
 To me, I confess, the choice your Committee have 
 made of the first subject for exposition seems par- 
 ticularly happy. For it is precisely in India that, 
 for us Westerns, the evolution of religious belief is 
 most instructive. It can be traced there with so 
 much completeness, and so much clearness ; we can 
 follow it there with so much independence of judg- 
 ment, with so great an impartiality ; and it runs, in 
 spite of the many differences, on general lines so 
 similar to the history of religion in the West, that 
 the lessons to be learnt from it are of the highest 
 value. Nowhere else do we find the records of a 
 movement stretching uninterruptedly over more than 
 three thousand years. Nowhere else has greater earn- 
 estness or so much ability been devoted so con- 
 tinuously to religious questions. Nowhere else has 
 there been so much freedom of thought. Nowhere 
 else has the evolution of religion been so little in- 
 fluenced from outside. Yet nowhere else do we find 
 a system at once so similar to our own in the stages 
 and manner of its growth, and so interestingly and 
 absolutely antagonistic to our own in the ultimate 
 conclusions it has reached. And nowhere else do 
 we find so complete a picture of the tendencies and 
 
Religious Theories in India 7 
 
 influences which have brought about the marvellous 
 change from the crude hypotheses of the earliest 
 faith to the sublime conceptions of such original 
 thinkers as those who put the finishing touches to 
 the beautiful Indian picture of the Palace of Truth. 
 
 Our own religious beliefs grew up in the basin of 
 the Mediterranean.. Jews and Greeks, assisted and 
 influenced in no small degree by Egyptians, laid the 
 foundations. All the most earnest culture of the 
 West has only availed, through so many centuries, 
 to build the superstructure. Ideas similar to the two 
 main and essential conceptions which underlie the 
 whole — the belief in " God " and the belief in the 
 "soul" — are no doubt to be found throughout the 
 world. But in three places only do we find these 
 two ideas developed into systems which can bear 
 comparison with our own, either in the manner or 
 in the length of the period of their growth, or in the 
 complexity and richness of the final result. These 
 three places are Persia, China, and India. 
 
 Now, as to Persia, the original beliefs of the Ak- 
 kadians are only rlow just beginning to be known. 
 Even as modified and recast by the Assyrians, the 
 records are still for the most part unpublished and 
 untranslated, and the few foremost scholars of 
 Zoroastrianism are not in agreement either as to the 
 date of its sacred books or as to the part it played 
 
s 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 up to the final struggle when all was submerged 
 under the flood of a ruthless Muhammadanism. The 
 labours of many generations of scholars will be re- 
 quired to unravel this strange story, and to tell, with 
 any fulness and accuracy of detail, the tragic tale. 
 So in China history is almost a blank, a kind of 
 battle-field for conjecture, before the time of Kon- 
 fucius. Much has been done, no doubt, towards 
 the elucidation of the religion founded by him on the 
 more ancient faith. But Konfucius did not stand 
 alone in China. We have only one work, of sufficient 
 insight and authority, on the conceptions of Lao 
 Tsii, which seem to the comparative student so 
 much more original. And of the curious history 
 of Buddhism in that country, of the influence it 
 exercised on other beliefs, of the modifications it 
 had itself to submit to, we have no systematic ac- 
 count at all. It is only in India that we have a 
 very complete and authentic record, from a period 
 more than fifteen centuries before the birth of Christ 
 down to the present time, of the evolution of reli- 
 gious belief among a people practically isolated from 
 the rest of the world. There remains, it is true, here 
 also a great deal of important work to be done. 
 But on the main lines at least the history is already 
 remarkably clear. It is full of interest from the 
 comparative point of view. And it reaches its 
 
Religious Theories in India 9 
 
 culminating point in the Buddhist movement, — the 
 main subject of the present course of lectures, — a 
 movement which carried the evolution of religious 
 belief one step farther than has been reached by 
 any other of the numerous religions that history 
 offers to our view. 
 
 That step — and it is a step of the first importance 
 — is that Buddhism, alike in its ethics and in its 
 views of the past and of the future, ignores the two 
 theories of God and the soul. This came about in 
 a very curious and instructive way. The oldest 
 records in India (as is true also of the oldest records 
 in every country that has records at all) show us a 
 stage in culture in which the existence of gods and 
 souls is taken for granted. The origin of these two 
 theories is at present shrouded in mystery. Primi- 
 tive man has left no records. We have only the 
 evidence of those beliefs which are the later out- 
 come of his crude hypotheses. And in attempting 
 to read between the lines of these later records — 
 even in the light, itself very meagre and uncertain, 
 of the existing beliefs of very savage peoples — schol- 
 ars are not altogether at one. 
 
 One or two principal points seem, amid difference of 
 opinion as to details, to be generally admitted. Primi- 
 tive man, whatever the race he belonged to, made no 
 distinction at all between his experiences in every- 
 
IO 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 day life and his experiences in dreams. And that 
 was so, not because he looked upon life as a dream, 
 but that he looked upon dreams as realities. When, 
 in his dream, he saw a person he knew, on his awak- 
 ening, to be dead, he at once concluded, on the 
 mere evidence of his dream, that the person in ques- 
 tion was still alive. And when he further recol- 
 lected, as he sometimes must have done, that the 
 body of the living man had been destroyed — his 
 very nightmare may have been the result of his hav- 
 ing feasted on the body of his foe, — then it was quite 
 clear to him that there was a something (a breath, 
 a life, he knew not what) which existed within the 
 body, and was like the body, and which left it when 
 the breath or life departed, to carry on a separate 
 existence of its own. He did not reason much 
 about it, or stay to consider whether its life was 
 eternal or not. But he was too much frightened of 
 it to forget it. And the dread reality afforded him 
 a perfectly simple and a perfectly clear explanation 
 of many otherwise mysterious things. 
 
 When he awoke in the morning after hunting all 
 night in his dreams, and learnt from his companions 
 that his body had been there all the time, it was of 
 course his " soul " that had been away. The theory 
 grew and flourished exceedingly. In all ancient 
 books and in most modern ones too, and in travel- 
 
Religious Theories in India n 
 
 lers' tales about uncivilised and civilised men, we 
 find it cropping up at every turn. Exactly how it 
 grew, the order in which the applications of the 
 theory took shape, is one of the battle grounds of 
 the students of what is so oddly called Anthro- 
 pology. To discuss the opinions on this point 
 would take us too far from our subject. Suffice to 
 say that the souls outside a man developed into 
 gods. Souls were believed to wander from body to 
 body. Animals had souls, and all things that men 
 feared, and all that moved. The awe-inspiring phe- 
 nomena of nature were instinctively regarded as the 
 result of spirit action ; and rivers, plants, and stars, 
 the earth and air and heavens, became full of 
 ghosts. 
 
 One distinguished writer who has turned aside 
 from the easy devious paths of philosophy to the 
 straight and difficult one of history, thinks that all 
 gods were, in origin, the ghosts of ancestors. So 
 uniform an explanation is most improbable. A 
 much more solid basis seems to support the argu- 
 ment that as the oldest recorded gods are goddesses, 
 and as man makes God in his own image, the origi- 
 nal deities must have arisen at a time when women 
 were the leaders, as in other things, so also in theo- 
 logy. They were born of women, for it was woman 
 who conceived them. And we must make room in 
 
12 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 our theory at least as much for the awe inspired by 
 Mother Earth, and by the mysteries of the stars, as 
 for the worship of ancestors. We have to explain 
 how it was that the oldest divinities were almost, if 
 not quite, exclusively feminine. We have to ex- 
 plain why the moon was worshipped before the sun, 
 and certain stars before either, and the Mother 
 Earth before them all. 
 
 It is precisely the succession of these curious be- 
 liefs that is the interesting point. It was only among 
 the advancing peoples that the changes went very 
 far at all. And these changes are full of informa- 
 tion about tribal conflicts and social Conditions. 
 For the gods had no existence except in the brains 
 of their worshippers. They were ideas, a rough kind 
 of scientific hypotheses. The arrival of a new god 
 meant the birth of a new idea ; and a book on The 
 Birth Days of the Gods would be not only an epitome 
 of human hopes and fears, but a history of men's 
 views on social questions too. 
 
 For the gods, like the men who made them, grew 
 old and feeble and passed away, and their very 
 ghosts were degraded in the minds of the descend- 
 ants of their creators to the rank of devils. The 
 change in the object of worship was not merely a 
 change in name, with the same or a similar worship ; it 
 was accompanied also by a change of view as to the 
 
Religious Theories in India 
 
 13 
 
 relations of sex, as to mode of life, as to questions 
 of organisation and government, and as to the forms 
 of possession of goods and land. The worshippers 
 of the new god thought themselves reformers, and 
 often were so. The worshippers of the old gods 
 looked upon the supporters of their rivals as athe- 
 ists (just as the polytheists on the shores of the 
 Mediterranean called the Christians atheists). But 
 they were not in any case atheists, nor were they 
 the founders of a new era, that was to last and to 
 cure all woes. They only registered a new stage in 
 the progress of thought, which (in this matter as in 
 others) has, in the historic sense, an evolution of its 
 own, independent of the men in whose brain the 
 thought takes shape, and following (in all times and 
 countries) precisely similar lines. 
 
 Many such changes had taken place in Indian 
 spirit beliefs before the time of the oldest records 
 that have come down to us. These show a very 
 advanced stage in the ancient soul-theory. And 
 there are no older records of its development along 
 this particular line. The Akkadian records, it is 
 true, go much farther back, and they have many 
 points of analogy which seem to supply the actual 
 historical origin of several later Hindu beliefs But 
 this is only because those beliefs have been incor- 
 porated into orthodox Hinduism from the descend- 
 
14 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 ants of those Dravidian peoples, related to the 
 Akkadians, who preceded the Aryans in India. 
 Nothing has yet been found in the Akkadian 
 books showing any historical connection with Vedic 
 beliefs. 
 
 On the other hand, we have in the ancient books 
 of the Greeks and Persians, records of beliefs histori- 
 cally connected with the Indian. But these records 
 are later in time than the oldest records in India, 
 and preserve a later phase of the common beliefs. 
 When we find, for instance, in the Zoroastrian books, 
 that the hypothetical beings called in the Vedas 
 " gods " have there already become " devils," we 
 know that we have a later phase of a common be- 
 lief. For it is the new religion which looks upon 
 the gods of its predecessor as devils, and it is un- 
 known that, in the course of the development of the 
 same system of faith, devils should ever become 
 gods. 
 
 The oldest Indian books — that is, the Vedas and 
 Brahmanas — therefore, though they themselves show 
 us an advanced stage in the ancient soul theory, are 
 still the most ancient records of the particular line of 
 development which we have to follow. And in 
 them we find the germs of all the subsequent steps 
 in philosophy and in religion that were taken in the 
 valley of the Ganges. 
 
Religious Theories in India 15 
 
 The collection of Vedic hymns, as we now have 
 it, bears of course no date. It resembles in this 
 respect all other collections of similar antiquity, 
 without exception, known to us. The date of the 
 earliest books of each religion can be ascertained 
 only by historical criticism, and so in India also. 
 We have to start with facts that are known. We 
 can argue back from the well established date of the 
 great Buddhist Emperor of India, the famous Asoka. 
 For we find in the literature extant in his time a 
 series of strata, so to speak, of literary and philo- 
 sophic activity, each of them indisputable evi- 
 dence of the previous existence of the one before it. 
 The last of these strata, the Buddhist Pitakas and 
 the Sanskrit books of the same period, belong to his 
 time. Estimates have been made of the previous 
 interval that must be allowed successively for each 
 of the other strata, between the time of Asoka and 
 the close of the Vedic period, when the hymns were 
 put into their present shape. And scholars are 
 practically unanimous in the opinion that the Vedas 
 must have been existing as we now have them at 
 least 1000-1200 B.C., to allow time for the subse- 
 quent developments. Scholars also agree that they 
 contain a good deal of material even much older 
 than that, and the hymns stand in this last re- 
 spect again on the same footing as the Buddhist 
 
i6 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 Pitakas, or the Old Testament, or any other ancient 
 canon.* 
 
 They reveal to us a most interesting and instruc- 
 tive picture of a number of clans, closely related to 
 ourselves, engaged in forcing their way into a coun- 
 try already more or less occupied, and occasionally 
 turning aside from their contests with the darker 
 natives to fight among themselves. 
 
 Judging from the hymns, the invaders — Aryans as 
 we now call them — were intensely religious ; but of 
 morality, except as to customs within the clans, they 
 seem to have had very primitive conceptions. To 
 them the killing of opponents was no murder, and 
 the " conveying " of their neighbour's goods a mat- 
 ter of pride. They have left us no idea on the 
 rights of man (or of woman either) ; and in foreign 
 politics their guiding principle was conquest. With- 
 in the clan, too, life was simple for them. There 
 were no poor, and none too rich. They were not 
 troubled with either priests or landlords. And the 
 desire of their hearts was for increase in children, 
 and in cows. The picture afforded us in the hymns 
 of their daily life, and of their habitual thoughts, has 
 a peculiar charm. It was a childlike and clearly a 
 
 * Attempts have recently been made to carry the age of the Vedas 
 still farther back, by arguments based on supposed astronomical 
 allusions. But the basis for these arguments seems very unreliable. 
 
Religious Theories in India 
 
 * 7 
 
 happy race, full of activity, and but little troubled by 
 contemplation or by doubt. Probably even their 
 religion sat lightly upon them, but it would seem 
 from the hymns that they had an unhesitating and 
 childlike faith, which looked upon the great souls 
 animating the nature round them as all-powerful in 
 their worldly affairs. 
 
 As time went on it is evident that some of them 
 had however commenced to speculate on the na- 
 ture of the gods, and had dimly begun to think 
 that there was a unity underlying the manifold 
 forms of spirit life in which the people believed. 
 This is plain from those speculative hymns incor- 
 porated into the last and latest book of the great 
 collection called the Rig Veda. 
 
 But it is also clear that the ancient Aryans were 
 far too manly and free to be troubled much about 
 their own souls, either before or after the death of 
 the body. There are only a very few short and iso- 
 lated passages bearing on this side of their spirit 
 theory. They still held with a simple faith to the 
 ancient hypothesis of their savage ancestors as to 
 the existence of a " soul " inside their bodies. And 
 it never occurred to them to doubt for a moment 
 that these souls continued to exist in a sort of misty 
 way after death, or to discuss the question of the 
 duration or cessation of that future life. In all this 
 
i8 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 we see the bright side of the ancient nature worship, 
 of religion based on the soul theory as held in its 
 early simplicity by a free and advancing and pros- 
 perous people. The darker side, which played in all 
 probability a greater part in the daily thoughts and 
 average life of the ordinary man and woman of 
 those days, was that medley of strange beliefs and 
 fears, revealed in the Atharva Veda, — the reliance 
 on omens, and spells, and magic rites, the vague 
 terrors of a life surrounded by all sorts of malign in- 
 fluences, the poisonous fruit of the superstitions of 
 demonology. 
 
 While all these ideas, good and bad, were ferment- 
 ing together, the bolder spirits were ever pushing 
 farther and farther on into the hot plains of India. 
 The details of their gradual progress are indeed hidden 
 in an obscurity which we can scarcely hope now ever 
 to clear up. But the general results are already well 
 ascertained. Before the rise of Buddhism the whole 
 of the country as far East as Patna, had become 
 more or less Aryanised, either by alliance or by 
 conquest, and the Aryan gods (that is to say, the 
 men who worshipped them) held sway from the 
 Kabul hills down to the plains of Bengal. 
 
 The religion was, however, not altogether uniform. 
 As the tribes pushed on, their language, partly by 
 the ordinary and necessary growth or decay, partly 
 
Religious Theories in India 19 
 
 by intercourse with other peoples, continually 
 changed. The favour of the gods was to be won 
 only by the spell, as it were, cast over them by the 
 faithful repetition of the ancient words. The words 
 themselves had now become but dimly understood. 
 Schools of priests had been formed to guard the 
 words from destruction, not by writing — which was 
 unknown — but by constant rehearsing. To aid them 
 in their task, elaborate commentaries were composed 
 and handed down, also by memory. Rules of gram- 
 mar and of exegesis were devised and formulated 
 into schemes of exposition. The whole intellectual 
 power of the nation became for a time concentrated 
 on these subsidiary studies. Works of original power, 
 with the free and child-like spirit which animated the 
 older hymns, became unknown. 
 
 The training in these schools was of a curious kind. 
 History in our sense, and science too, were of course 
 entirely unrepresented. The chief weight was placed 
 on memory, and the ingenuity of commentators was 
 much exercised in reconciling the diverse statements 
 of the ancient texts — which could not err — and in 
 finding mystic reasons to explain all the various 
 details of the sacrifice. 
 
 Now one of the most striking things about the 
 ancient hymns is the way in which each poet, 
 partly no doubt through his want of expertness in 
 
20 Buddhism 
 
 the use of language, his inability to give due expres- 
 sion to shades of meaning ; but partly also through 
 the real fervour of his religious feeling, directed at 
 the time on the one object of his praise — is the way 
 in which each poet so often refers to different gods 
 (Indra, Agni, Prajapati, Varuna, etc.), as being, each 
 one of them, the greatest and the best. There was 
 not really any clear sense of comparison, though the 
 words now seem to imply it. It was simply that 
 the one God, that is to say, the one idea, loomed 
 largest at the time before the mental eye of the 
 poet. And in the explanation of such passages the 
 Brahman Commentators carefully avoid all appear- 
 ance of rivalry. A truer and — what was probably 
 of more importance from the theologian's point of 
 view — a more edifying explanation lay close to 
 their hands. Already in the Vedas certain of the 
 great souls, the gods, are identified with certain 
 others, and there is even reference to a divinity 
 which, as it were, lay behind them all, and was the 
 basis of their godhead. 
 
 Thus there is a reference in the often quoted pass- 
 age, Rig Veda, iii., 55, 1, to that "great godhead of 
 the gods which is one." And the Brahmins grad- 
 ually elaborated out of such expressions a concep- 
 tion of a single being out of whom all gods, and 
 all men, and all things had proceeded. 
 
Religious Theories in India 21 
 
 It nK«y be noticed in passing that a precisely sim- 
 ilar result was reached, though not exactly by the 
 same process, and at a slightly different chronologi- 
 cal stage, in both Greece and China. And though 
 we have no evidence of a like logical process in 
 Assyria, it would seem that Egyptian thinkers also 
 had their speculations of a similar sort. There is 
 nothing strange in this coincidence. It is the excep- 
 tion of Assyria that is really curious. And we need 
 not think to explain the coincidence by any theory 
 of borrowing by anyone of these peoples from the 
 other. For the fact is, that, whenever there is suffi- 
 cent intelligence and sufficient leisure in a country 
 where the soul theory is held, there, by a logical 
 process which is inevitable, men will come to believe 
 in a number of gods ; and then, later on, to perceive 
 a unity behind the many, and to postulate a single 
 divinity as the supposed source of the many gods 
 whom they themselves have really fashioned. 
 
 The characteristics of the new divinity, of the one 
 god — that is to say, the connotations of the new 
 idea — will differ according to the different concep- 
 tions out of which it has arisen. And in this respect 
 the speculations of the Brahmins in India are espe- 
 cially worthy of consideration. With them the first 
 conception was reached, not as among the Jews, by 
 gradual additions to, and modifications of the char- 
 
22 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 acter of one divinity, but by a purely philosophical 
 reasoning as to the necessary nature of the first 
 cause. The predicates they applied to him — or, 
 more accurately, to it — were almost exclusively nega- 
 tive. It is the unknowable cause of the knowable, 
 itself however without cause. It is the light in which 
 all that is perceived is seen, but there is no light by 
 means of which it can be seen. It is invisible, in- 
 comprehensible, without descent or colour, without 
 eyes, or ears, or hands, or feet, the everlasting, all 
 pervading, ever-present, extremely subtle, unchange- 
 able source and support of all that is.* All the rest, 
 including the great gods whom the ignorant worship 
 and rightly worship as the highest that they know, 
 is delusion. And the real insight, the only abiding 
 salvation, consists in getting to know the imperman- 
 ence of all else, and the identity of one's own soul 
 with this Great Soul in which all else lives and 
 moves and has its being. 
 
 There is great beauty and poetry in the passages 
 in which this very ancient Pantheism is set out in 
 the literature older than the rise of Buddhism, and 
 though the exact formulation of this system of 
 thought — well known as Vedantism — is due to later 
 hands, it is evident that there was much earnest 
 thinking and fearless philosophising in the time of 
 
 * Mund., Up., i., I, 5. 
 
Religious Theories in India 23 
 
 the oldest Upanishads in which these ideas find 
 their earliest and most poetical expression. 
 
 The Indian formulation of this monistic theory 
 of the universe is indeed in all probability the most 
 logical and most thorough-going of all similar at- 
 tempts that have been preserved to us. The very 
 striking analogies in Greek philosophy, more es- 
 pecially in Parmenides (though he was a century 
 later), cannot even be properly worked out owing to 
 the fragmentary condition in which alone the earlier 
 Greek speculations have survived. And the corre- 
 sponding Chinese conceptions, either of the Kon- 
 fucian or Taoist schools, seem to be altogether 
 wanting in clearness and precision. 
 
 This very able and beautiful monistic philosophy 
 was the dominant factor in Indian thought, when 
 Gotama the Buddha appeared. Many centuries 
 afterwards it was elaborated and systematised, more 
 especially by Sankara, into that Vedantist philoso- 
 phy now quite supreme in India. In those early 
 days it had no doubt stronger rivals. When the 
 Pancaratra books have been made accessible to 
 scholars it will be found, I think, that they contain 
 a systematic philosophy — built of the same cards, 
 perhaps, as the Vedanta (god and soul) — but inde- 
 pendent of it, and at least equal to it in beauty if 
 not in logical power. We hear also of Lokayatas, 
 
 g 
 
2 4 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 or Materialists, who must have preceded Buddhism, 
 as they are mentioned in the oldest Buddhist books. 
 The Jaina faith, which arose at the same time as 
 Buddhism, has also a voluminous literature. When 
 that is published it cannot fail to throw much light 
 upon the religious life of India at the time when the 
 founders of the two new religions were rivals. But 
 there was little original thought in Jainism. Its 
 views are rather isolated propositions than a system 
 of philosophy, and it would never have been a for- 
 midable rival to Vedantism.* 
 
 It was quite otherwise with the Sankhya system. 
 Centuries afterwards, when Buddhism had become 
 corrupted, it would seem that the Sankhya was 
 almost about to supplant the Vedanta ; and as it has 
 often been held by European scholars that Buddh- 
 ism is more or less based on the Sankhya, it will 
 be necessary to consider the question of its priority. 
 Logically it stands half-way between the Vedanta 
 and Buddhism, and was therefore a possible step- 
 ping-stone to the Buddhist position. And the 
 Buddhists themselves acknowledge that Kapila, to 
 whom the Sankhya books ascribe the foundation 
 of their philosophy, lived several generations before 
 the Buddha. It is therefore, to say the least, pos- 
 
 * See the remarks of Professor Jacobi (and there could be no better 
 authority) in his Kalpa Sutra, p. 3. 
 
Religious Theories in India 25 
 
 sible that the Sankhya system also preceded the 
 Buddhist, or was the outcome of the same intel- 
 lectual movement. 
 
 But what we know is, that in the centuries imme- 
 diately before and after the birth of Christ (that is, 
 some centuries after the rise of Buddhism) it was 
 the Sankhya rather than the Vedanta, which was 
 the predominant school ; and that its adherents 
 claimed a still more remote origin for their specula- 
 tions. Professor Garbe, of Tubingen, who is the 
 best authority on the subject, — he has done for the 
 Sankhya the same sort of service as has been so 
 well rendered to the Vedanta by Professor Deussen, 
 of Kiel, — is of opinion that the Sankhya teachers are 
 right, and that their teaching does indeed go back 
 before the rise of Buddhism. The point seems to 
 me, I confess, to be most doubtful. All the Sankhya 
 books are much later in date. The very oldest of 
 them — the Sankhya Karika of Isvara Krishna — can- 
 not be fixed at an earlier period than a full thousand 
 years after the time of Gotama the Buddha. And 
 though it is quite certain that the system, as a 
 system already well worked out, was older than 
 that, — we find it referred to, and in great part 
 adopted, along with Vedantism, in books, certainly 
 two or three centuries older ; in Manu, for instance, 
 and in the Bhagavad Glta, — yet there is still a great 
 
26 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 gap to be bridged over. All the available evidence 
 on the point is collected, with great care and com- 
 pleteness, by Professor Garbe, in his just published 
 Sdnkhya Philosophic, a book which will, I hope, soon 
 be translated into English. And on weighing all 
 the evidence it seems to me that the only conclusion 
 to be rightly drawn is that, though there is no evi- 
 dence that Kapila was the real author of the whole 
 Sankhya philosophy, there were, before the time of 
 the Buddha, isolated thinkers, of whose words we 
 have no trace, who elaborated views similar to those 
 out of which the Sankhya was eventually developed. 
 
 For what do we find ? There is ample evidence 
 even in the books of the orthodox body of Brahmin 
 teachers to show that when Buddhism arose there 
 was not only much discussion of the ultimate prob- 
 lems of life, and a keen interest in the result, but 
 also that there was a quite unusually open field for 
 all sorts of speculations. In no other age and 
 country do we find so universally diffused among 
 all classes of the people so earnest a spirit of en- 
 quiry, so impartial and deep a respect for all who 
 posed as teachers, however contradictory their doc- 
 trines might be. 
 
 It is true that the orthodox books are filled with 
 the orthodox view. But this is only quite natural. 
 How very little of precise and accurate information 
 
Religious Theories in India 
 
 27 
 
 do we find even in Christian books of the early cen- 
 turies concerning the views of opponents ? Even 
 the Buddhist writings do not tell us much. But we 
 have a detailed list in the first Suttanta of the Dlgha 
 Nikdya of sixty-two different theories of existence ; 
 and in the second Suttanta of the same collection, 
 the views of six leading opponents are discussed at 
 length. I shall return to these passages later on. 
 It is sufficient for the present argument to point out 
 that they confirm in every particular the picture we 
 find in the Brahmanas and in the old Upanishads, 
 and that one at least of the sixty-two views thus 
 condemned seems to be a forecast of the Sankhya. 
 The passage is as follows — it is the Buddha himself 
 who is represented as speaking : 
 
 " And in the fourth place, brethren, on what 
 grounds and for what reason do the recluses and 
 Brahmins who are believers in the eternity of exist- 
 ence declare that both the soul and the world are 
 eternal ? 
 
 " In this case, brethren, some recluse or Brahmin 
 is addicted to logic and reasoning. He gives utter- 
 ance to the following conclusion of his own reached 
 by his argumentations, and based on his sophistry.* 
 ' Eternal is the soul, eternal is the world. They give 
 birth to nothing ; but are themselves unshaken as a 
 
 * For instances of this sophistry see the commentary. 
 
28 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 mountain peak, as a pillar firmly fixed. And though 
 these living beings pass along, transmigrate, fall out 
 of one state of existence and are born in another, 
 yet they are for ever and ever.' " * 
 
 Now this last is precisely the point in the soul 
 theory on which the latter Sankhya teaching differs 
 from the Vedanta. According to the latter it is only 
 God who is everlasting, the world is a phantom as it 
 were, a dream, a delusion, and has its only real ex- 
 istence in God. And the souls themselves have no 
 independent existence. They are God itself. But 
 the Sankhya on the other hand holds that there is 
 no God, that the primordial Prakriti (or stuff out of 
 which the world is formed) is eternal, and that the 
 souls have a separate existence of their own, and 
 continue to exist for ever in infinite numbers. 
 
 It will be noticed on the other hand that in the 
 Buddhist description of this particular heresy the 
 technical expression employed in the Sankhya 
 books for the primordial stuff is not used. It is here 
 " the world " which the heretics are said to consider 
 eternal, and that is not the view entertained by the 
 Sankhya. And if we should hold that the vague 
 
 * The Pali text will be found at vol. I, p. 16 of the Dlgha 
 Nikaya edited by myself and Mr. J. Estlin Carpenter, for the Pali 
 Text Society in i8qo. Buddhaghosa's commentary on the passage 
 has also been published by us in the Sumanfala Vi/dsini, vol. i., 
 pp. 105-107. (Pali Text Society, 1886.) 
 
Religious Theories in India 
 
 ^9 
 
 expression " world " may be taken here in the special 
 sense of the " original matter " of the Sankhya 
 books, then we only come to another contradiction. 
 According to the Sankhya it is precisely out of the 
 "original matter" and the individual souls that 
 the visible world and living beings are produced. 
 The heretics described in our passage hold that the 
 soul and the world are barren, give birth to nothing. 
 I am at a loss therefore to understand how this pass- 
 age can be considered as good evidence that the 
 Sankhya system existed as a whole, just as we find 
 it in books many centuries later, at the time when 
 the passage was composed, — much less at the time 
 of -the legendary author, Kapila. 
 
 It is unfortunately impossible here to go into the 
 details either of the Sankhya explanation of how the 
 world and living beings arose out of the original 
 Prakriti (or matter) and the individual souls, or into 
 the details of its psychological analysis. They also 
 present very instructive analogies with the dualistic 
 theories in Greece — analogies which will be consid- 
 ered of greater importance as the Indian side of the 
 picture becomes better known. It is sufficient to 
 point out there is nothing at all in any of the details 
 peculiar to the Sankhya which has been borrowed 
 by Gotama, or is even to be found at all in any of 
 the oldest Buddhist writings. 
 
30 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 We have no body of writings other than those 
 mentioned, to throw light on the religious specula- 
 tions of India before Buddhism. But as regards the 
 soul and salvation we have the very interesting list 
 of the heresies on those points condemned by the 
 early Buddhists, from which an extract has already 
 been read. With your permission I will read this 
 list. It does not follow, of course, that each one of 
 the opinions quoted in it represents the teaching of 
 a separate and distinct school. But the whole of it 
 is full of suggestion as to the kind of discussions 
 which were going on when Buddhism arose. 
 
 The extract occurs in a work of more importance 
 than any other on Buddhism — the collection of the 
 dialogues, mostly of Gotama himself, brought to- 
 gether in the DigJia and MajjJiima Nikdyas. This 
 work contains the views of the Buddha set out, as 
 they appeared to his earliest disciples, in a series of 
 186 conversational discourses which will some day 
 come to hold a place, in the history of human 
 thought, akin to that held by the Dialogues of 
 Plato. The first of these 186 Dialogues is called the 
 Brahma Jala, that is the Perfect Net — the net whose 
 meshes are so fine that no folly of superstition, 
 however subtle, can slip through. In it are set out 
 sixty-two varieties of existing hypotheses ; and after 
 each of them has been rejected, the doctrine of 
 Arahatship is put forward as the right solution. 
 
Religious Theories in India 31 
 
 These sixty-two heresies are as follows : 
 1-4 Sassata-Vadd. People who, either from medi- 
 tation of three degrees, or fourthly through 
 logic and reasoning,* have come to believe 
 that both the external world as a whole, 
 and individual souls are eternal. 
 5-8 Ekacca-Sassatika. People who, in four ways 
 hold that some souls are eternal, and some 
 are not. 
 
 a. Those who hold that God is eternal, 
 
 but not the individual souls. 
 
 b. Those who hold that all the gods are 
 
 eternal, but not the individual souls. 
 
 c. Those who hold that certain illustrious 
 
 gods are eternal, but not the indi- 
 vidual souls. 
 
 d. Those who hold that, while the bodily 
 
 forms are not eternal, there is a 
 subtle something, called Heart or 
 Mind, or Consciousness, which is. 
 9-12 Antanantika. People who chop logic about 
 finity and infinity. 
 
 a. Those who hold the world to be finite. 
 
 b. Those who hold it to be infinite. 
 
 c. Those who hold it to be both. 
 
 d. Those who hold it to be neither. 
 
 * This fourth case is the one quoted in full above, p. 27. 
 
32 Buddhism 
 
 13-16 Amara-VikkJiepika. People who equivocate 
 about virtue and vice. 
 
 a. From fear lest, if they express a de- 
 
 cided opinion, grief (at possible mis- 
 take) will hurt them. 
 
 b. From fear lest they may form attach- 
 
 ments which will injure them. 
 
 c. From fear lest they may be unable to 
 
 answer skilful disputants. 
 
 d. From dulness or stupidity. 
 
 17-18 A dhicca-Samuppannikd. People who think 
 that the origin oi things can be explained 
 without a cause. 
 
 19-50 Uddhama-AgJiatanika. People who believe 
 in the future existence of human souls. 
 
 a. Sixteen phases of the hypothesis of a 
 
 conscious existence after death. 
 
 b. Eight phases of the hypothesis of an 
 
 unconscious existence after death. 
 
 c. Eight phases of the hypothesis of an 
 
 existence between consciousness 
 and unconsciousness after death. 
 51-57 Uccheda-Vdda. People who teach the doc- 
 trine that there is a soul, of one or other 
 of seven degrees of subtlety, but that in 
 each case that soul ceases to exist in any 
 way after the death of the body. These 
 thinkers are Annihilationists. 
 
Religious Theories in India 
 
 33 
 
 58-62 Dittha-Dhamma-Nibbana-Vdda. People who 
 hold that there is a soul, and that it can 
 attain to perfect bliss in the present world, 
 or wherever it happens to be 
 
 a. By a full, complete, and perfect enjoy- 
 
 ment of the five senses. 
 
 b. By an enquiring mental abstraction 
 
 (the first Jhana). 
 
 c. By undisturbed mental bliss, untar- 
 
 nished by enquiry (the second 
 Jhana). 
 
 d. By mental calm, free alike from joy and 
 
 pain and enquiry (the third Jhana), 
 
 e. By that mental peace plus a sense of 
 
 purity (the fourth Jhana). 
 The list is a formidable one, and it only trenches 
 on certain selected points out of those that we know 
 were the subjects of philosophical discussion in the 
 India of that day. It must not be forgotten that 
 we are dealing with an extent of country vastly 
 greater than the region which was the seat, at a 
 somewhat later period, of the beginning of Western 
 philosophy. It is not only the numerous schools 
 of the Brahmins in Middle India that we have to 
 consider. We also must take into consideration the 
 schools in the countries to the west of them (which 
 the Aryans had left before the caste system had been 
 
34 Buddhism 
 
 established, and the Brahmin ritual had been de- 
 veloped), and the schools in the countries to the 
 east of them where the Aryans, and no doubt Brah- 
 mins with them, had indeed penetrated, (which had 
 been, so to speak, Aryanised,) but where the full 
 power and influence of the Brahmins had not be- 
 come so overwhelmingly predominant. It is pre- 
 cisely in these two regions, separated one from the 
 other by a thousand miles of fertile and civilised 
 plains, that we should expect to find the most unfet- 
 tered thought, the widest dissension from the ortho- 
 dox Vedantist view, the most original and daring 
 speculation. And it is not without significance that 
 it is precisely there that in after years the two great 
 universities of India were established — the one 
 Takka Sila, in the extreme north-west, and the 
 other, Nalanda, in Rajgir, in the extreme south- 
 east. 
 
 I do not think, therefore, that the list I have read 
 to you is at all exaggerated. The records of the 
 thinkers referred to have all been lost. But this 
 should raise no difficulty in our minds. Books 
 were not written in India in those days. Even 
 the wonderful powers of memory which those highly 
 cultured people possessed, did not reach to learning 
 by heart and handing down elaborate expositions of 
 doctrines held to be insufficient or erroneous. To 
 
Religious Theories in India 35 
 
 the life-long industry and marvellous memory of the 
 scholars of that time, we owe the preservation of the 
 extensive, and historically invaluable, literatures of 
 the Vedic schools, and of the Buddhist Order ; and 
 instead of being astonished that the greater part of 
 the rest has perished, we ought to be supremely 
 grateful that so much has been preserved. After all, 
 the old scholars of India, who were compelled to 
 make a choice, were right in the choice they made. 
 
 These two systems are the highest expression, 
 from the theological and the anti-theological points 
 of view, respectively, of Indian thought. There is no 
 one man to whom the original exposition of Vedantist 
 philosophy can be ascribed, no one name pre-eminent 
 in pre-Buddhistic Vedantism. But Sankar Acarya, 
 centuries afterwards, systematised and formulated 
 the Vedantist creed, and it is to Gotama the Buddha, 
 that we owe what we call the Buddhist religion. 
 There can be no doubt that these two, Sankar Acarya 
 and Gotama the Buddha, are the greatest names in 
 the intellectual life of India, and that in preserving 
 for us the records of the two systems of belief with 
 which those names are associated, the repeaters of 
 the Indian books have done for the world the greatest 
 service they could do. 
 
 We have then in India in the valley of the Ganges, 
 at the time when the Buddhist theory of life was first 
 
36 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 propounded, a maze of interacting ideas which may 
 be divided for clearness' sake, into the following 
 heads. Firstly, the very wide and varied group of 
 ideas about souls, whether in man or in the lesser 
 powers of Nature and also in animals, and even in 
 trees and plants. These may be summed up under 
 the convenient modern term of Animism , and include 
 all the conceptions preserved in the books of 
 astrology, magic, and folk-lore, the ideas of a future 
 life and of the transmigration of souls, the beliefs as 
 to all sorts of minor demons, and fairies, and spirits, 
 and ghosts, and gods. 
 
 Secondly, we have the later and more advanced 
 ideas about the souls or spirits supposed to animate 
 the greater forces and phenomena of Nature. These 
 may be summed up under the convenient modern 
 term of Polytheism, and include all the conceptions 
 as to the great gods preserved in the Vedas, and 
 elaborated and explained in the Brahmanas. 
 
 Thirdly, we have the still later and still more ad- 
 vanced idea of a unity lying behind the whole of 
 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, in which it has its whole 
 and only being. This may be summed up in the con- 
 venient modern term of Pantheism. It is preserved 
 
Religious Theories in India 
 
 37 
 
 in the Upanishads, and was subsequently elaborated 
 and systematised by Sankar Acarya. 
 
 Then we have the still subsequent stage now pre. 
 served in the already quoted Sankhya books, and 
 then probably already existing in earlier and less 
 systematised forms, of a view of life in which the 
 First Cause is expressly rejected, but in which with 
 that exception the whole soul-theory is still retained 
 side by side with the tenet of the eternity of matter. 
 This may be summed up under the convenient 
 modern term of Dualism. And we have slight 
 glimpses of very numerous other views (among others 
 of philosophies allied to what we now understand in 
 the West by Epicureanism and Materialism). 
 
 These modern Western terms, though most useful 
 as suggestions, never, however, exactly fit the ancient 
 Eastern modes of thought. And we must never forget 
 that these really contradictory explanations of the 
 problem of life, now so carefully differentiated and 
 kept apart by modern scholars, were not then 
 mutually exclusive. We have to deal with a state of 
 society in which, not history, nor science, but pre- 
 cisely these ultimate questions engaged the ardent 
 attention and passionate patience of a surprisingly 
 large number of men, of whom only a very few had 
 the logical clearness and moral fearlessness to take a 
 deliberate and exclusive stand. So also afterwards 
 
 00004 *H 
 
38 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 the Vedantist could accept parts of the Sankhya 
 position really incompatible with the rest of his 
 belief, and both of them could believe in the actual 
 truth, if not in the supreme importance, of animistic 
 delusions. You will follow this the more readily in- 
 asmuch as a similar state of mind is still the most 
 prevalent one in the West — where, for instance, a 
 man may be a scientist and at the same time a 
 spiritualist ; or may accept the Darwinian hypothesis 
 and the results of historical research, and also the 
 substantial accuracy of the Hebrew cosmogony. 
 
 Such were the intellectual surroundings in which 
 Buddhism arose. What I have had the honour of 
 laying before you is of course the merest sketch. 
 You will listen some day, I trust, to a whole course 
 of lectures on Animism ; to another on the Vedanta ; 
 to another on the Sankhya ; and to yet another on 
 the remaining points of Indian belief in the sixth 
 century B.C., to which allusion has been made. In 
 the very narrow limits of time to which I am con- 
 fined, it has only been possible to dwell on the more 
 salient points, and I must apologise for having 
 attempted to crowd so much into a single hour. But 
 I have considered it my duty to bring out into as 
 clear a relief as possible the points most essential to 
 a right understanding of what we call Buddhism, and 
 what the founder of that religion called the Dhamma, 
 that is the Law, or the Norm. 
 
Religious Theories in India 39 
 
 Now the central position of the Buddhist alterna- 
 tive to those previous views of life was this — that 
 Gotama not only ignored the whole of the soul 
 theory, but even held all discussion as to the ultimate 
 soul problems with which the Vedanta and the other 
 philosophies were chiefly concerned, as not only 
 childish and useless, but as actually inimical to the 
 only ideal worth striving after — the ideal of a perfect 
 life, here and now, in this present world, in Arahat- 
 ship. 
 
 And I am only following the most ancient and the 
 best of the Buddhist authorities in placing this most 
 important point in the front of my exposition. The 
 very first sermon which Gotama preached to his first 
 converts is the Anatta Lakkhana Sutta, (the discourse 
 on the absence of any sign of " soul " in any of all 
 the constituent elements of individual life) preserved 
 in the Vinaya* and recapitulated in full in the 
 Samyutta Nikaya ; f and translated by Professor 
 Oldenberg and myself in our Vinaya Texts.% The very 
 first of the collection of the dialogues of Gotama, 
 forming the principal book on the Dhamma in the 
 Buddhist Scriptures, is the one already quoted in 
 which the Buddha so completely, categorically, and 
 systematically rejects all the possible current theories 
 about " souls." And later books of the first import- 
 
 * Maha Vagga, i., 6, 38-47. f Samyutta, xxii., 59. 
 
 X Vinaya Texts, vol. i., pp. roo, 101. 
 
4 o 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 ance follow the same order. The Katha Vatthu, a 
 book of controversy composed in the third century 
 B.C., against dissenters within the fold, is one of the 
 latest included in the Buddhist Scriptures. But it 
 also places this question of the " soul " at the head 
 of all the points it discusses, and devotes to it an 
 amount of space which makes it completely over- 
 shadow all the rest.* So also with regard to the 
 earliest Buddhist book after the canon was closed, 
 the very interesting and instructive series of conver- 
 sations between the Greek king, Menanda (Milinda), 
 of Baktria, and Nagasena, the Buddhist teacher. It 
 is precisely this question of the " soul " that the un- 
 known author makes the subject of the very first dis- 
 cussion in which Nagasena convinces the king that 
 there is really no such thing as the " soul " in the 
 ordinary sense. And he returns to the subject again 
 and again. I have no time left in which to read you 
 these clear and decisive passages of this most ancient 
 Buddhist author outside the Scriptures known to us. 
 You can find them in full in my translation of the 
 Milinda just published at Oxford, f and in abstract in 
 my little manual entitled Buddhism.% 
 
 * See my article on " Buddhist Sects," in the Journal of the Royal 
 Asiatic Society, 1892. I am glad to be able to add that this work, so 
 important from the historical point of view, is now being edited for 
 the Pali Text Society, by Mr. Arnold C. Taylor. 
 
 \ The Questions of King Milinda, vol. i„ pp. 40, 41, 85-87 ; vol. 
 ii., pp. 21-25, 86-89. 
 
 % Rh. D., Buddhism, 16th ed., 1894, pp. 95-98. 
 
Religious Theories in India 
 
 4i 
 
 We cannot be far wrong in attaching weight to a 
 view considered in these ancient and authoritative 
 Buddhist books to be of such transcendent import- 
 ance. It is precisely the not having grasped this 
 essential preliminary to a right understanding of 
 Buddhism that has rendered so very large a portion 
 of the voluminous Western writings on the subject 
 of so little value. And the point is historically also 
 of the very highest interest, for the Buddhist position 
 is the inevitable logical outcome of all discussion of 
 the soul theory ; and the Buddhists of course hold 
 that in the West also people must inevitably come 
 to the same conclusion when they have leisure to 
 turn from the at present all-engrossing questions of 
 the accumulation and distribution of wealth. 
 
 You will, however, understand that this apparently 
 at first sight purely negative position is not the 
 Dharma proclaimed by the Buddha. It is merely his 
 answer to the previous religious and philosophical 
 systems. Without the " soul " they, one and all, fall 
 at once to the ground. And the point is only made 
 of so much importance in Buddhist writings, because 
 the Buddhist teachers held, and rightly held, it im- 
 possible, before the rubbish had been cleared away 
 from the site, to build the new Palace of Good 
 Sense. They held it impossible, so long as men were 
 harassed by doubts and fears about their " souls," to 
 
42 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 induce in them the emancipated state of mind essen- 
 tial to a calm pursuit of the higher life ; they held it 
 impossible to stir men up to the ardent and earnest 
 and hopeful struggle after a perfect life here and 
 now, in this world, so long as they were still ham- 
 pered, and all their virtue tarnished, by a foolish 
 craving (that could never be satisfied, and would be a 
 disaster if it could be) for an eternal future life in 
 Heaven. 
 
 It must remain an open question how far this 
 position is really negative. It is a matter to a great 
 extent of degree. The rival theories are occupied, 
 to the virtual exclusion of other matters, predomi- 
 nantly with questions of soul. Buddhism says that 
 any real advance in ethical theory, and also in the 
 practical conduct of life, really begins only when the 
 delusions about the soul have been fully, and freely, 
 and finally renounced. The rival theories purport 
 to explain the origin and end of all things. Bud- 
 dhism declares that everything has a cause ; and that 
 it is not only a sufficient, 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 ulti- 
 mate cause of all things. The most famous Bud- 
 dhist stanza found engraved on ten thousand votive 
 gifts to Buddhist shrines in India, says, that, 
 
Religious Theories in India 43 
 
 " Of all the things that proceed from a cause, 
 The Buddha the cause hath told ; 
 And he tells too how each shall come to its end, 
 Such alone is the word of the Sage." * 
 
 But the positive side of the Dharma must be 
 reserved to a future lecture. The present one is only 
 intended to show the surroundings among which 
 this remarkably original and interesting view took 
 shape, and its attitude towards the rival theories, not 
 only of that day, but also of our own. 
 
 * Vinaya Texts, i., p. 146. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 The Authorities on which our Knowledge of 
 Buddhism is Based. 
 
 HOW keen must have been the intellectual 
 pleasure of that small band of scholars in the 
 West of Europe, who, at the end of the fifteenth 
 century, were able to appreciate the meaning and the 
 value of Greek MSS. The taking of Constantinople 
 by the Turks (1453) was the last step in a great 
 catastrophe which threatened no less than destruc- 
 tion to the MS. treasures preserved in the Greek 
 Empire, and death or poverty to their cultured if 
 effeminate owners. The owners were scattered to 
 the West, and their MSS. changed hands and found 
 new homes. Whoever has had the good fortune 
 to study the entrancing story of that time, more 
 especially as it is focussed in the life of Scaliger, 
 will be able to realise the vivid state of expectancy 
 with which the advent of each new MS. was hailed. 
 The scholars had a very considerable knowledge 
 
 44 
 
The Authorities 
 
 45 
 
 of what had been written in Greece, and lost in the 
 West ; and devoured each new MS. to see whether 
 it would fill up any of the gaps. Too many of those 
 gaps are, alas, still unfilled ; and hope has almost 
 faded away now. But in those days almost any- 
 thing could be hoped for, and the indescribable 
 charm of reading something quite new, of editing a 
 work never edited before, of translating a book 
 never translated before, was within the reach of all. 
 Well ; we can now live a life of equal expectancy and 
 hope, rewarded quite as often with an equal intel- 
 lectual prize. 
 
 The discoveries that have been made in the ancient 
 libraries of Mesopotamia will no doubt have some 
 day become of even greater importance to the histo- 
 rian of human ideas and institutions than the MSS. 
 acquired by the scholars of the Renaissance. For 
 when completely understood and interpreted they 
 will reveal a whole series of phenomena, independent 
 of the Greek, and reaching farther back into the 
 mists of antiquity. So also the discoveries in Egypt, 
 made piecemeal from year to year, have the charm 
 of constant expectancy in a very high degree. And 
 now we have as a third factor of the same kind in 
 the intellectual life of modern Europe, the gradual 
 unveiling of that unique and original literature, 
 which is our subject-matter to-day- 
 
46 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 Compared with the Egyptian and the Assyrian, it 
 has the disadvantage of youth. For the Pali books 
 are no older than the Greek ones rediscovered in the 
 fifteenth century. But they have the corresponding 
 advantage of containing a rounded and complete 
 picture of a new and strange religious movement, 
 the outcome of many generations of intelligent and 
 earnest thought, and of the very curious social 
 conditions by which it was surrounded and fur- 
 thered. 
 
 The story of the discovery of Pali is not without 
 its interest. When in the thirties that most gifted 
 and original of Indian archaeologists, James Prin- 
 sep — clarum et venerabile nomen — ,was wearing 
 himself out in his enthusiastic efforts to decipher the 
 coins and inscriptions of India, whilst the very 
 alphabets and dialects were as yet uncertain, he 
 received constant help from George Tumour, of the 
 Ceylon Civil Service. For in Ceylon there was a 
 history, indeed several books of history, whereas in 
 Calcutta the native records were devoid of any relia- 
 ble data to help in the identification of the new 
 names Prinsep thought he could make out. It is 
 not too much to say that without the help of the 
 Ceylon books the striking indentification of the King 
 Piyadassi of the inscriptions with the King Asoka 
 of history would never have been made. Once made 
 
The Authorities 
 
 47 
 
 it rendered subsequent steps comparatively easy, and 
 it gave to Prinsep and his co-adjutors just that en- 
 couragement, and that element of certainty, which 
 were needed to keep their enthusiasm alive. 
 
 Tumour was of course much pleased. He was a 
 very busy man, at the head of the Ceylon Civil Ser- 
 vice. But he had most intelligent and learned native 
 assistants at his command. And by their help he 
 published in the Bengal Asiatic Society's journal a 
 short series of articles on the Pali books, and finally 
 brought out in 1837 a complete edition of the text 
 of the Mahd Vansa (or " Great Chronicle " of Ceylon) 
 with a translation into English, and a most interest- 
 ing introductory essay. 
 
 The value of this editio princeps was at once and 
 widely acknowledged. But on the death of Tum- 
 our, no one was found to carry on his work. There 
 was no dictionary of Pali, and no grammar worthy 
 of the name. European scholars could not go out 
 to Ceylon, and there enjoy the benefit of the help 
 which had made Tumour's labours possible. His 
 book remained, like a solitary landmark in an unex- 
 plored country, chiefly useful as a continual in- 
 ducement to some scholar with ability and leisure to 
 explore beyond. Only a few insignificant essays, 
 nibbling inefficiently at the outskirts of the subject, 
 appeared in Europe, till at last in 1855 Mr. Vincent 
 
4 8 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 Fausboll came forward with an editio princeps of an- 
 other Pali text. 
 
 Mr. Fausboll, now Professor of Sanskrit at Copen- 
 hagen, was then engaged at the University Library 
 there, and it was a very bold undertaking to attempt 
 such a task with the limited aids at his disposal. He 
 chose, not an historical work, but a religious one, 
 the Dhammapada, a collection of 423 verses mostly 
 culled from the Buddhist Scriptures (a sort of hymn- 
 book); and he published, with the text, not only a 
 translation into Latin, but also very copious ex- 
 tracts from the ancient Pali commentary upon it. 
 His work has been of the utmost service, and it is 
 the second landmark in the story of our knowledge 
 of Pali. It is pleasant to be able to remind the 
 reader that the veteran scholar has steadily adhered 
 to his first love. He subsequently brought out a 
 number of specimens of that wonderful collection 
 of ancient folk-lore included by a fortunate chance 
 in the canon of the Buddhist Scriptures. And find- 
 ing how great was the interest they excited, he has 
 now, for many years, been printing an editio princeps 
 of the whole collection. Five substantial volumes 
 have already appeared, the sixth is well advanced in 
 the press, and we may legitimately turn aside for a 
 moment to send to Professor Fausboll our congratu- 
 lations, and our thanks, and to express a hope, in the 
 
The Authorities 
 
 49 
 
 interests of historical study, that he will be spared 
 not only to complete this magnum opus, but to add 
 in other ways to the great services he has already 
 rendered to historical research. 
 
 But to return to our story. After the publication 
 of the Dhammapada by Professor Fausboll in 1855, 
 the study of Pali again languished for a whole gen- 
 eration, and would in all probability have languished 
 still had it not been for the third landmark in the 
 history of our knowledge of Pali, the publication in 
 two volumes in the years 1870 and 1873, of the 
 Dictionary. 
 
 This great work was due to the self-sacrificing 
 labour of Robert Caesar Childers of the Ceylon Civil 
 Service. Soon after his retirement in 1866 he set to 
 work to arrange alphabetically all the words found 
 in the Abhidhana Padipika, a vocabulary of Pali in 
 1203 Pali verses, then already edited by Subhuti 
 Unnanse, a well known Ceylon scholar. In making 
 this re-arrangement Childers carefully added refer- 
 ences to, and also other words taken from, the pub- 
 lished texts, and from scholarly European books on 
 the subject of Buddhism. His work rapidly im- 
 proved as it went on, and there can*be no doubt 
 that its completion was almost a necessary prelimi- 
 nary to any further serious work in Pali scholarship. 
 
 The Doints to which I would most especially de- 
 
5o 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 sire to invite your attention in this slight sketch are, 
 that up to the year 1870 only two Pali texts of any 
 size or importance had appeared in editions access- 
 ible to scholars in the West ; and that, of these two, 
 only one was a book out of the Buddhist Scriptures, 
 and that this one was a short collection of edifying 
 stanzas, not composed as a book by themselves, but 
 selected, without their original context, from other 
 Buddhist books, then, in 1870, still buried in MS. 
 
 Nevertheless, the number of books, good, bad, 
 and indifferent, published on the subject of Buddh- 
 ism, was at that date very large. The reader will 
 be able to judge how far they were likely to be of 
 any permanent value when he calls to mind that no 
 one of the authors of any one of these books had 
 ever even read the Buddhist Bible in the original. 
 Now I would not for a moment quarrel with the 
 enthusiasm for the study of Buddhism which leads 
 people to write so much about it. But surely an 
 enthusiasm according to knowledge would lead peo- 
 ple to devote their leisure, their ability, and their 
 means, rather to the publication and translation of 
 the sacred books themselves, than to discussions 
 about their contents carried on in much the same 
 way as some chess-players play chess, sans voir, 
 without seeing the pieces. What we want then is 
 the texts themselves, and not extracts or abstracts, 
 
The Authorities 
 
 5* 
 
 but the whole texts. And we want also the whole 
 of such aids to the right understanding of the text, 
 as are still extant in the shape of ancient Pali com- 
 mentaries, and even of more modern Pali treatises, 
 written by Buddhist authors. To this aim — the 
 publication and elucidation of the Buddhist texts 
 — I have devoted what remains of my life ; and I 
 must trust myself entirely to your courtesy when I 
 find myself here to-day — in spite of what I have just 
 said, and have so often said before — turning away 
 from that work to tell you how far it has got, what 
 prospects it has of going on, and chiefly in some 
 detail what is the nature and magnitude of the work 
 that has to be accomplished. 
 
 A rough list of the Pitakas, with notes on the con- 
 tents of each book, will be found in my little manual 
 of Buddhism* and another list in my Milinda gives 
 the number of pages, printed and not yet printed, 
 in each of the twenty-nine books.f A similar list 
 brought up to date is appended to this lecture. 
 
 From this last list it appears that the whole of the 
 Pitakas will occupy about 10,000 pages 8vo., of 
 the size and type used by the Pali Text Society (about 
 the same as these lectures). And from the calcula- 
 tions set out in the note to the list in Buddhism it 
 
 ^Buddhism, 16th edition. Appendix to chapter i. 
 f Questions of King Milinda, vol. i., p. xxxvi. 
 
52 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 follows that the number of Pali words in the whole 
 is about twice the number of words in our English 
 Bible. These figures are sufficient to show the 
 extent of the Buddhist Scriptures. To give an idea 
 of their contents is not so easy, and it would be 
 really impossible to frame any general description 
 of the whole. The most accurate, and I believe 
 also the most interesting method will be to run 
 through the whole list (it is not a very long one), 
 giving a paragraph or two to each. You will thus 
 be able to realise what it is that the books do, and 
 what is perhaps of more importance, what they do 
 not, contain. 
 
 And firstly: The whole collection as we have it 
 is divided into three parts, now called Pitakas or 
 Baskets. In that technical sense the word Pitaka 
 does not of course occur in the books themselves, 
 just as the word Testament (in its technical sense of 
 a division of the Bible) does not occur in the Bible 
 itself. The meaning of the term Pitaka or Basket 
 is not to be taken in the sense of a thing to put 
 things away in, like a box or other receptacle, but 
 in the sense of tradition. Excavations in early 
 times, and not in the East only, used to be carried 
 out by the aid of baskets handed on from workman 
 to workman, posted in a long line from the point of 
 removal to the point of deposit. So we are to 
 
The Authorities 
 
 53 
 
 understand a long line of teachers and pupils hand- 
 ing on, in these three sacred Pitakas or Baskets, 
 from ancient times down to to-day, the treasures of 
 the Dhamma (of the Norm). 
 
 The first of the three — the Vinaya — contains all 
 that relates to the Order of Mendicant Recluses, 
 how it came about that the Order was founded ; the 
 rules which the Brethren and Sisters have to observe, 
 and so on. The second — the Suttas — contains the 
 truths of the religion itself presented from very- 
 varied points of view, and in very varied style ; 
 together with the discussion and elucidation of the 
 psychological system on which those truths are 
 based. The third — the Abhidhamma — contains a 
 further supplementary and more detailed discussion 
 of that psychological system, and of various points 
 arising out of it. 
 
 So much for the leading division into Pitakas or 
 Baskets. We will now consider the details of each. 
 
 Vinaya — the Canon Law — (literally "guidance") is 
 divided into three partitions, the Sutta Vibhanga, 
 the Khandhakas, and the Parivara. 
 
 The word Sutta (sutra in Sanskrit) is a very ancient 
 literary term in India. The literal meaning is 
 "thread," and it is applied to a kind of book, the 
 contents of which are, as it were, a thread, giving 
 the gist or substance of more than is expressed in 
 
54 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 them in words. This sort of book was the latest 
 development in Vedic literature just before and after 
 the rise of Buddhism. The word was adopted by 
 the Buddhists to mean a discourse, a chapter, a small 
 portion of a sacred book in which for the most part 
 some one point is raised, and more or less disposed 
 of. But the Sutta par excellence, is that short state- 
 ment of all the rules of the Order, which is also 
 called the Patimokkha, and is recited on every Upo- 
 satha day. On that day, the day of the full moon, 
 the members of the Order resident in any one 
 district are to meet together and hear this statement 
 of the rules read. 
 
 The 227 rules are divided into eight sections, 
 according to the gravity of the matter dealt with, 
 and at the end of each section the reciter asks the 
 assembly, whether it is blameless in respect thereof, 
 and receives the assurance that it is. If any member 
 has offended, he has then and there to confess, and 
 receive absolution, or withdraw. The completion 
 of the recitation is therefore evidence that all who 
 have taken part in it are pure in respect of the speci- 
 fied offences. And this is the origin of that second 
 name, the Patimokkha, which means the Acquittal, 
 or Deliverance, or Discharge. A complete transla- 
 tion, with notes, of this statement of the Rules of 
 the Order will be found in Vinaya Texts, the joint 
 
The Authorities 
 
 55 
 
 work of Professor Oldenberg and myself, contrib- 
 uted to the Oxford series of Sacred Books of the 
 East. 
 
 This is the Sutta, of which the first book in the 
 Vinaya, the Sutta Vibhanga, is the exposition in full 
 — for that is the meaning of Vibhanga. The book 
 deals with each of the 227 rules in order and follow- 
 ing throughout one set scheme or method. That is 
 to say it tells us firstly how and when and why the 
 particular rule in question came to be laid down. 
 This historical introduction always closes with the 
 words of the rule in full. Then follows a very 
 ancient word-for-word commentary on the rule- — a 
 commentary so old that it was already about B.C. 
 400 (the probable approximate date of the Sutta 
 Vibhanga) considered so sacred that it was included 
 in the canon. And the Old Commentary is suc- 
 ceeded, where necessary, by further explanations 
 and discussions of doubtful points. These are some- 
 times of very great historical value. The discus- 
 sions, for instance (in the rules as to murder and 
 theft), of what constitutes murder, and what consti- 
 tutes theft, anticipate rn a very remarkable degree 
 the kind of fine-drawn distinctions found in modern 
 law books. These passages when made accessible, 
 in translation, to Western scholars, must be of the 
 greatest interest to students of the history of law, 
 
 E 
 
56 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 as they are quite the oldest documents of that par- 
 ticular kind in the world. 
 
 The second book in the Vinaya Pitaka is called 
 simply the KhandJiakas or Treatises. It deals one 
 after another with all those matters relating to the 
 Order which are not stated in so many words in the 
 Rules of the Patimokkha. There are twenty of 
 these treatises, and the points discussed in them are 
 of the following kind : 
 
 1. Admission into the Order. 
 
 2. The Uposatha Ceremony and the Patimokkha. 
 
 3. On retreats, to be held during the rainy season 
 
 4. On a ceremony called Pavarana held at the end 
 of the retreat. 
 
 5. On food, dwellings, etc. 
 
 6. On medicaments. 
 
 7. On clothes. 
 
 8. On the regulation by arbitration of differences 
 of opinion. 
 
 9. On suspension and rehabilitation. 
 
 10. On the special rules for Sisters of the Order. 
 It would carry us too far to attempt a description 
 
 "n detail of these treatises. But I may describe one 
 of them, as a specimen, and will choose that on 
 Tiedicaments, as it has an especial interest of its 
 own. 
 
 The general rule as to the food of members of the 
 
The Authorities 
 
 57 
 
 Order is stated quite clearly in the Patimokkha. 
 There was a slight repast of fruit and cakes, with 
 milk or water as the beverage, in the early morning, 
 no doubt very early according to our ideas. Then 
 between II and 12 was taken the principal meal 
 of the day, usually consisting of curry and rice, and 
 great importance was attached to the regulation 
 that this meal was not to be prolonged beyond the 
 time when the sun cast a shadow.* In the latitude 
 of the valley of the Ganges that means midday. 
 After sunturn no more solid substantial food was to 
 be taken that day. But slight repasts in the after- 
 noon, and at what we should call supper-time, were 
 allowed and practised. Now it became a pretty 
 point of casuistry to determine what was solid food 
 and what was not, and a longish list of things held 
 permissible might be compiled from the earlier por- 
 tions of the Khandhakas. Among the rest there 
 was a considerable number of things allowed as 
 medicine in the case of sufferers from certain speci- 
 fied diseases. And so in the Khandhaka or Treatise 
 on this matter we obtain quite incidentally a very 
 fair insight into a good deal of the medical lore cur- 
 rent at that early period, that is about 400 B.C., in 
 the valley of the Ganges. It is a pity that the cur- 
 
 * Pacittiya, 37 ; Khuddaka Patha, par. 2 ; Culla Vagga, xii., 2, 3 ; 
 Rh. D., Buddhism, pp. 160, 164. 
 
53 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 rent authorities on the history of law and medicine 
 have entirely ignored the details obtainable from 
 these ancient books of Buddhist Canon Law. The 
 whole of these Khandhakas have been translated by 
 myself and Professor Oldenberg in the Vinaya Texts 
 already referred to. 
 
 There is only one other book included in the 
 canon under the head of Vinaya. This is the book 
 called the Parivara (or Appendix). It is very short, 
 and is little more than a kind of student's manual, 
 containing lists to assist the memory, and various 
 sets of puzzles which are not unlike some modern 
 examination papers. It is of course later than the 
 other books on which it is founded, and is a very 
 interesting bit of evidence on early methods of 
 education. 
 
 The next great division is the Sutta Pitaka, or 
 the Basket of Discourses, and here we come to the 
 sources of our knowledge of the most ancient 
 Buddhism. The whole Basket consists of four great 
 Nikayas (or collections), and of these the first two 
 form what we should now call a single book. It is 
 in two volumes, so to speak, called respectively 
 Digha and Majjhima — that is to say, long and of 
 medium length (or to translate more idiomatically, 
 longer and shorter). It contains 186 dialogues of 
 Gotama arranged according to their length. They 
 
The Authorities 
 
 59 
 
 are discussions on all the religious and philosophical 
 points of the Buddhist view of life. The Buddha 
 himself is the principal interlocutor, but several of 
 his principal disciples play a distinguished part in 
 the book. In depth of philosophic insight, in the 
 method of Socratic questioning often adopted, in 
 the earnest and elevated tone of the whole, in the 
 evidence they afford of the most cultured thought 
 of the day, these discourses constantly remind the 
 reader of the Dialogues of Plato. It would be 
 worse than foolish to attempt any description of 
 their contents. Each of the 186 dialogues would 
 demand at least a single lecture to make its mean- 
 ing clear. They have a style of their own, always 
 dignified and occasionally rising into eloquence. It 
 is a style intended, however, not to be read, but to 
 be learnt by heart. You will easily understand 
 therefore that it is a style intensely abhorrent to the 
 modern devourer of newspapers and reviews and the 
 last new novel. Scholars however will revere this 
 book as one of the most priceless of the treasures of 
 antiquity still preserved to us. And it is quite inevi- 
 table that, as soon as it is properly translated and un- 
 derstood, this collection of the Dialogues of Gotama 
 will come to be placed, in our schools of philosophy 
 and history, on a level with the Dialogues of Plato. 
 The whole of these 1 86 have now been edited 
 
6o 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 in the original Pali for the Pali Text Society, and 
 about a score have been translated into English, 
 thirteen of them by myself in the volume entitled 
 " Dialogues of the Buddha." 
 
 A disadvantage of the arrangement in dialogues, 
 more especially as they follow one another accord- 
 ing to length and not according to subject, is that it 
 is not easy to find the statement of doctrine on any 
 particular point which is interesting one at the 
 moment. It was very likely just this consideration 
 which led to the compilation of the other two 
 collections included in this Pitaka. In the first, 
 called the Anguttara Nikaya, all those points of 
 Buddhist doctrine capable of expression in classes 
 are set out in order. This practically includes most 
 of the psychology and ethics of Buddhism. For it 
 is a distinguishing mark of the Dialogues them- 
 selves to arrange the results arrived at in carefully 
 systematised groups. You are familiar enough in 
 the West with similar classifications, summed up in 
 such expressions as the Seven Deadly Sins, the Ten 
 Commandments, the Thirty-nine Articles, the Four 
 Cardinal Virtues, the Seven Sacraments, and a host 
 of others. These numbered lists (it is true) are 
 going out of fashion. The aid which they afford to 
 memory is no longer required in an age in which 
 books of reference abound. It was precisely as a 
 
The Authorities 61 
 
 hetp to memory that they were found so useful in 
 the early Buddhist times, when the books were all 
 learnt by heart, and had never as yet been written. 
 And in the Anguttara we find set out in order first 
 of all the ones, then all the pairs, then all the trios, 
 and so on up to the eleven qualities necessary to the 
 attainment, in this life, of Nirvana or the eleven 
 Gates to Arahatship. It is the longest book in the 
 Buddhist Bible (and fills 1837 pages 8vo. The whole 
 of the Pali text has been published by the Pali Text 
 Society, but only fragments of it have yet been trans- 
 lated into English). 
 
 The next — and last — of these great collections 
 contains again the whole of the Buddhist doctrine, 
 but arranged this time in the order of subjects. It 
 consists of fifty-five so-called Samyuttas, or Groups, 
 and in each of these a number of short chapters 
 (Suttas), either on the same subject or addressed to 
 the same sort of people, are grouped together. The 
 Samyutta is divided into five volumes (all of which 
 have been already published by the Pali Text Society, 
 with a full index as a sixth volume). None of it has 
 been translated into English. 
 
 It would be useless to speculate whether these 
 two re-arrangements of the Buddhist doctrine are 
 entirely dependent upon the Dialogues for their mat- 
 ter, or vice versa, or whether they are drawn also from 
 
62 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 other sources. We know that large portions of 
 them recur bodily in the Dialogues, and that those 
 portions not yet traced in the Dialogues contain 
 nothing inconsistent with them. And it will not be 
 very long before the publication of the whole of the 
 three books, Dialogues, Anguttara, and Samyut- 
 tas, will enable us to state with accuracy the relation 
 between them. This concludes the second Basket. 
 
 The third and last of the Pitakas or Baskets, is 
 the Abhidhamma Pitaka, containing seven books of 
 which at present only three have been published by 
 the Pali Text Society. Abhidhamma has hitherto 
 been rendered Metaphysics. 1 But this is an entirely 
 misleading translation. You will have realised from 
 the previous lecture that the whole Buddhist view 
 of life is constructed without the time-honoured con- 
 ception of a soul within the body. We know nothing, 
 according to Buddhism, except that which is derived 
 from experience, the apprehension of phenomena. 
 In such a system there is no room for Metaphysics 
 at all. The noumenon is not discussed. What the 
 Buddhists themselves understand by Abhidhamma 
 is clear from the explanation given of the word by 
 the great Buddhist scholar and commentator, Budd- 
 haghosa. The passage, discovered by Mr. Arnold 
 C. Taylor, has been edited and translated by him in 
 a recent issue of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic 
 
The Authorities 
 
 63 
 
 Society.* According to that greatest of Buddhist 
 scholars, Abhidhamma means merely the expansion, 
 enlarged treatment, exposition in detail, of the 
 Dhamma. And the Dhamma, as you know, is the 
 Religion, the Truth, the Norm. The three books 
 already published entirely, and the complete abstract 
 of a fourth printed by me two years ago,f entirely 
 confirm this view. 
 
 One, the Puggala Paiiiiatti, or " Identification of 
 Individuals," is a small tract of less ' than eighty 
 pages, in which men and women are considered and 
 classified from the ethical point of view. Another, 
 the Dhatu Kathd y is on the bases of character, and 
 discusses the mental characteristics most likely to be 
 found in conjunction in converted and earnest folk. 
 
 The third already printed is the Dhamma Sangani, 
 or " Enumeration of States," and it analyses the 
 states of mind reached by religious people, Buddhists 
 and others.^ The fourth book above referred to is 
 the Kathd Vatthu, or " Account of Opinions," and is 
 the only book in the Buddhist Scriptures of which 
 
 * J. R. A. S. t 1894, p. 560. 
 f y. R. A. S., 1892, pp. 1-37. 
 
 % The commentary on this book, the first work of the celebrated 
 Buddhaghosa, is just being edited for the Pali Text Society by 
 Professor Ed. Miiller of Bern ; and a complete translation into 
 English by Mrs. Rhys Davids, with introduction and notes, has been 
 published by the Royal Asiatic Society. 
 
64 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 we know the author and date. It was written (or 
 rather put together, for books were not then written) 
 by Tissa, the son of Moggali, about the year 250 
 B.C., at the Court of Asoka, the famous Buddhist 
 Emperor of India. At that late period in the 
 history of early Buddhism, the church or community 
 was much torn by dissension and heresies. Asoka 
 took great pains to restore the purity of the original 
 faith. And Tissa, in furtherance of that object, re- 
 futed in this most curious ancient book two hundred 
 and fifty-two of the most dangerous and important 
 heresies put forward by the leading opponents of 
 the orthodox school. There is nothing metaphysical 
 in it. But it is most interesting from the compara- 
 tive point of view that the most far-reaching cause 
 of the decay of the primitive faith is here shown to 
 have been the growth of what we should call super- 
 stitious views about the person of the Buddha. You 
 will recollect how, in the history of the Christian 
 Church, a very similar state of things existed, how 
 the early Church was rent by dissensions arising out 
 of the differing views as to the person of Christ, and 
 as to his relation to the First Person in the Trinity. 
 But in the Christian Church it was the new views, 
 not found in the New Testament, that prevailed. 
 In the Buddhist community, the new views were 
 held at bay, and only succeeded, after a long inter- 
 
The Authorities 
 
 65 
 
 val, and in distant lands, in obtaining wide recog- 
 nition. We shall have to deal with this subject 
 further in our last lecture, so it need not detain us 
 longer here. Mr. Arnold C. Taylor has now com- 
 pleted his edition of the Kathd Vatthu for the 
 Pali Text Society, and has undertaken to translate 
 it also. 
 
 We have now gone through the principal books in 
 the Three Pitakas, but there is a miscellaneous col- 
 lection, mostly of shorter works, which has come to 
 be included in the Canon. I have left this to the 
 last, because Buddhists themselves from the very 
 earliest times have been divided in opinion about it ; 
 some of them considering this Nikaya as an appen- 
 dix to the Sutta Pitaka, some of them considering it 
 as an appendix to the Abhidhamma Pitaka. The 
 reason of this difference of opinion was probably 
 something of the following kind. The most import- 
 ant things for the members of the Buddhist Order to 
 preserve most carefully in their memory were essen- 
 tially the Rules of the Community or Association 
 they had joined, and the tenets of the Faith they 
 professed. These were contained in the Canon Law, 
 and in the Dialogues of Gotama, and in the various 
 other books already referred to in which the doctrine 
 set out in the Dialogues was re-arranged, elucidated, 
 and expounded. During the time when the Canon 
 
66 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 was still unsettled, there was great activity in learn- 
 ing, rehearsing, repeating, and discussing these sacred 
 books. But there was also considerable activity in 
 what we should now call a more literary direction. 
 There was a great love of poetry in the communities 
 among which Buddhism arose. The adherents of 
 the new faith found pleasure in putting into appro- 
 priate verse the feelings of enthusiasm and of ecstasy 
 which their faith inspired. When peculiarly happy 
 in their literary finish, or peculiarly rich in religious 
 feeling, such poems would not be lost. They would 
 be handed on from mouth to mouth in the small 
 companies of the Brethren or Sisters, and some of 
 them, either the oldest or the most popular, would 
 gradually come to inspire so much veneration, so 
 much love, that when the Canon was finally fixed, 
 they could scarcely be left out. The question where 
 to put them was however difficult. They could not, 
 except in a very few instances, be inserted either in 
 the books on the Rules of the Order, nor in the col- 
 lection of the Dialogues of the Master. They must 
 be added therefore either to the other parts of the 
 Sutta Pitaka in which the doctrine is set out, or to 
 the Abhidhamma where the psychological side of it 
 is enlarged upon in detail. It was not a point of 
 vital importance, and we need not be too much sur- 
 prised that some put these books as an appendix in 
 one place, and some in another. 
 
The Authorities 
 
 67 
 
 It was not only poems that found their way into 
 this appendix. It contains at least one very ancient 
 commentary ascribed to a famous leader and teacher 
 in the Order. There is also a book on the Lives of 
 the Saints, and another of ancient folk-lore. But the 
 same sort of reason that led to the inclusion of the 
 poetry, covered also these other works. And the 
 whole collection is so very interesting as evidence of 
 the literary life in the valley of the Ganges in those 
 early times, that I hope you will allow me to devote 
 a short time to each of these curious books. 
 
 The first, the Khuddaka Patha, or " Short Recita- 
 tions," is a little tract of only a few pages, starting 
 with the so-called Buddhist creed : 
 
 " I take my refuge in the Buddha, 
 I take my refuge in the Religion, 
 I take my refuge in the Order." 
 
 Then follows a paragraph setting out the thirty- 
 four constituents of the human body — bones, blood, 
 nerves, and so on, — strangely incongruous with what 
 follows. For that is simply a selection of a few of 
 the most beautiful poems to be found in the Buddh- 
 ist Scriptures. There is no apparent reason, except 
 their exquisite versification, why these particular 
 pieces should have been here brought together. I 
 cannot help thinking that this tiny volume was sim- 
 ply a sort of first lesson book for young neophytes 
 
68 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 when they joined the Order. In any case that is one 
 of the uses to which it is put at present. 
 
 The Dhammapada, already mentioned to you (as 
 having been edited by Professor Fausboll in 1855), 
 is another of such selections, but this time not of 
 entire poems. Here are brought together from ten 
 to twenty stanzas on each of twenty-six selected 
 points of Buddhist self-training or ethics. In al- 
 most all cases these verses, gathered from various 
 sources, are here strung together without any other 
 internal connection than that they relate more or 
 less to the same subject, and the collector has 
 not thought it at all necessary to choose stanzas 
 written in the same metre or in the same num- 
 ber of lines. We know that the early Christians 
 were accustomed to sing hymns both in their homes 
 and on the occasions of their meeting together. 
 These hymns are now irretrievably lost. Had some 
 one made a collection of about twenty isolated stan- 
 zas, chosen from those hymns, on each of about 
 twenty subjects — such as Faith, Hope, Love, The 
 Converted Man, Times of Trouble, Quiet Days, The 
 Saviour, The Tree of Life, The Sweet Name, The 
 Dove, The King, The Angels, The Land of Peace, 
 The Joy Unspeakable, and so on — we should have a 
 Christian Dhammapada ; and very precious such a 
 collection would be. ihe Buddhist Dhammapada 
 
The Authorities 
 
 6q 
 
 has been frequently translated. Where the verses 
 deal with those ideas that are common ground to 
 Christians and Buddhists, the versions are easily in- 
 telligible and some of the verses appeal very strongly 
 to the Western sense of religious beauty. Where 
 the stanzas are full of the technical terms of the 
 Buddhist system of self-culture and self-control, it is 
 often impossible, without expansions that spoil the 
 set of the thought, or learned notes that ruin the 
 poetry, to convey the full sense of the original. In 
 all these distinctively Buddhist verses the existing 
 translations are inadequate, and sometimes quite 
 erroneous. The ancient commentary on these 423 
 verses tells a story about each of them, setting forth 
 how, and when, and by whom, and on what occasion 
 each of these stanzas was originally pronounced. 
 These stories are written in very easy Pali and many 
 of them are full of human interest. The late Dr. 
 Wenzel and myself were preparing in collaboration 
 a complete editio princeps of these stones — the copy 
 is finished and nearly ready for the press, and will be 
 issued as soon as I can find the time and the money. 
 Cannnot some one undertake a translation for us 
 into English of these strange and interesting old- 
 world stories about a collection of verses so widely 
 popular among Buddhists, and now attracting so 
 much attention in the West ? 
 
7o 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 As a general rule such stories explanatory of 
 ancient verses — and without which very often the 
 verses themselves would be quite unintelligible- — 
 were handed down in India by way of traditional 
 comment. In two cases the Buddhists have included 
 the stories themselves as well as the verses in the 
 miscellaneous appendix to their Canon. One in- 
 stance is the Uddna, or " Ecstatic Utterances." The 
 Buddha is represented on various occasions during 
 his long career to have been so much moved by some 
 event, or speech, or action, that he gave vent, as it 
 were, to his pent up feelings in a short ecstatic utter- 
 ance, couched for the most part in one or two lines 
 of poetry. These outbursts, very terse and enig- 
 matic, are charged with religious emotion, and turn 
 often on some subtle point of Arahatship, that is of 
 the Buddhist ideal of life. The original text has been 
 published by the Pali Text Society. But the little 
 book — a garland of fifty of these gems — has been 
 translated by General Strong (London, 1902). 
 
 The other instance (also edited but not translated) 
 is the Iti Vuttakam. This contains 120 short pas- 
 sages, each of them leading up to a terse, deep say- 
 ing of the Buddha's, and introduced in each case with 
 the words Iti Vuttam Bhagavatd, " Thus was it said 
 by the Blessed One." It is always invidious to look 
 a gift horse in the mouth, and even did we wish to 
 
The Authorities 
 
 7i 
 
 do so, the time has not yet come to discuss with 
 profit whether these sayings were actually said 
 as here represented. What we know, is, that these 
 (often delicately beautiful) puzzles of thought on 
 some of the deepest questions of human life were 
 actually extant and so widely known and appreciated 
 that they were included in the Canon, when the 
 Canon was finally fixed. I think it would be impos- 
 sible to assign them to a later date than 400 B.C., and 
 I have no hesitation in saying that, at that time, 
 there had been produced nowhere in the world any 
 works approaching to these four booklets in delicacy 
 of construction, in exquisite beauty of terse enigmatic 
 expression, in depth of earnestness, and in real grasp 
 of the most difficult problems that mankind has had 
 to face. 
 
 These ecstatic utterances and deep sayings are 
 attributed to the Buddha himself. There is also in- 
 cluded in the Canon a collection (called, the Thera- 
 theri-gdthd, or " Songs of the Elders," men and 
 women) of stanzas attributed to 264 of the leading 
 Theras (z. e., Brethren), and 73 of the leading Theris 
 (t. e., Sisters), in the Order during the lifetime of Go- 
 tama himself. The stories explanatory of the verses, 
 giving a short account of the life history of each 
 of the authors and authoresses, are handed down 
 in the commentary. The commentary on the men's 
 
 F 
 
7 2 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 verses has not yet been published ; but that on 
 the women's verses has just been edited by Pro- 
 fessor Eduard Miiller, of Bern, for the Pali Text 
 Society. With the help of this commentary my 
 wife wrote an account of these Buddhist lady scholars 
 for the Oriental Congress, held in London in 1892. 
 It is published in the Procecdi?igs of the Congress,* 
 and affords a very instructive picture of the life they 
 led in the valley of the Ganges in the time of Gotama 
 "~"t the Buddha. It was a bold step on the part of the 
 leaders of the Buddhist reformation to allow so 
 much freedom, and to concede so high a position to 
 women. But it is quite clear that the step was a 
 great success, and that many of these ladies were as 
 distinguished for high intellectual attainments as they 
 were for religious earnestness and insight. A good 
 many of the verses ascribed to them are beautiful in 
 form, and not a few give evidence of a very high 
 degree of that mental self-culture which played so 
 great a part in the Buddhist ideal of the perfect life. 
 Women of acknowledged culture are represented as 
 being the teachers of men, and as expounding, to 
 less advanced Brethren or Sisters in the Order, the 
 deeper and more subtle points in the Buddhist 
 philosophy of life. 
 
 As I have not so far troubled you with quota- 
 
 * London, 1894, vol. i., pp. 344 to 361, 
 
The Authorities 
 
 tions, I venture to give the substance of two of these 
 legends. The first is about Soma. She was born, 
 says the Commentator, Dhammapala, as the daugh- 
 ter of the Court Chaplain of King Bimbisara at 
 Rajagaha. Then, after taking the vows, she, with 
 insight and good works, became an Arahat (that is, 
 attained to Nirvana, the Buddhist ideal of the per- 
 fect life). Dwelling thus in the happiness of free- 
 dom at Savatthi, she entered one day the Andha 
 Grove to pass the heat of the day, and sat there at 
 the foot of a tree. Then Mara, the Evil One, wish- 
 ing to frighten her from her meditations, stood there 
 in invisible form and uttered the words, 
 
 " The vantage ground the sages may attain, is hard to 
 reach. 
 
 With her two-finger test, woman cannot achieve those 
 distant heights." 
 
 The Commentator pauses here to explain that 
 what the Evil One refers to, is that women, though 
 from their seventh year upwards they are always 
 cooking rice, yet they cannot tell whether it has 
 been boiled or not. They have to take some out in 
 a spoon and squeeze it between their two fingers ; 
 then they know. 
 
 Now when she heard this the Then rebuked the 
 Evil One, and said : 
 
74 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 " How should our woman's nature hinder us, 
 Whose hearts are firmly set, whose feet mount up 
 Unfaltering to those cool heights of Truth, 
 In growing knowledge of the Arahat way ? 
 On every hand the love of pleasure yields, 
 Borne down by knowledge and the sense of Law, 
 And the thick gloom of ignorance is rent 
 In twain. Know this, O Evil One ! and know 
 Thyself, O death ! found out and worsted ! " 
 
 Then the Evil One, thus rebuked, vanished away; 
 and the Then, strong in the sense of base suggest- 
 ions overcome, continued in meditation till the cool 
 of the evening. 
 
 The other poem is Sukka's. Born of a wealthy 
 family in Rajagaha, she became an adherent of the 
 Buddha's, already in the first year of his public ap- 
 pearance as a teacher, and afterwards studying 
 under another famous lady teacher (the Dhamma- 
 Dinna, whose story Mrs. Bode has told us in the 
 J. R. A. S. for 1893), she was converted, and became 
 an Arahat. She then attained to such mastery in 
 exegesis and extemporary exposition that, in her 
 hermitage near Rajagaha, she gave lectures open to 
 the public, and gained great influence for good 
 among the residents in her native city. Such was 
 her eloquence as she taught, walking to and fro in 
 her shady terrace, all who came from the city to see 
 her, that the Dryad in the tree at the end of the 
 
The Authorities 
 
 terrace was filled with impetuous enthusiasm at her 
 wisdom, and quitting its cool shrine, went off to 
 Rajagaha and called aloud : 
 
 " What would ye men of Rajagaha have ? 
 What have ye done ? that mute and idle here 
 Ye lie about, like men bemused with wine, 
 Nor upon Sukka wait, while she reveals 
 The precious truths of the Ambrosial way. 
 The wise in heart, methinks, were fain to quaff 
 That life's Elixir (once gained, never lost,) 
 That welleth ever up in her sweet words 
 E 'en as the wayfarer* welcomes the rain." 
 
 And when the people heard, they forthwith with 
 eagerness went forth to Sukka, and would not make 
 an end of listening to her. 
 
 And when the Then had reached her appointed 
 span of life, and was about to pass away, she bore 
 witness to the victory she had gained, and to her- 
 self, as to another person, uttered these words: 
 
 " O child of light, Sukka, f by Truth set free 
 From cravings dire ; firm, self-possessed, serene, 
 Bear to the end this thy last transient frame ; 
 For thou hast conquered Mara and his hosts ! " 
 
 There is one instance, and one only, of a commen- 
 tary, detached from its subject-matter, having been 
 
 * Addhagu, possibly the sun. 
 •j- Sukka means bright, radiant, lustrous. 
 
7 6 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 allotted a place among the Sacred Books. There 
 must be some special reason for this. But it would 
 be premature to discuss the matter till we have the 
 text before us, and I am very happy to say that a 
 distinguished American scholar, Professor Lanman 
 of Harvard College, has undertaken an edition of 
 this unique text for the Pali Text Society. It is 
 called the Niddesa ; and it is a commentary ascribed 
 to Sariputta, one of the most distinguished of the 
 personal disciples of the Buddha, on the first part of 
 the Sutta Nipata. This last book, also included in 
 our appendix to the canon, has been edited * and 
 translated f by Professor Fausboll of Copenhagen. 
 It consists of poems arranged in five books, the first 
 four of which contain fifty-four separate poems, each 
 of them only a page or two in length. But the fifth 
 book is one poem almost certainly forming an inde- 
 pendent whole. It is very unlikely that the other 
 poems are all the work of the same hand. In all 
 probability we have here another collection, — this 
 time not of verses, but of complete hymns, — popular 
 among the early Buddhists, but due to separate 
 minds. 
 
 I hope to read to you in a future lecture transla- 
 tions of two of these lyrics. 
 
 * Pali Text Society, London, 1885 and 1893. 
 f Oxford, 1886. 
 
The Authorities 
 
 77 
 
 There are two other short poems included in our 
 appendix, each of them the work of one unknown 
 author, and probably later than the other books in 
 the appendix. One of these is the Btiddha Vansa, 
 poetical memoranda on the legends of the Buddhas 
 supposed to have preceded the historical Buddha, 
 the founder of Buddhism. The other is the Cariyd 
 Pitaka — a fragment never completed — giving a few 
 short verses (scarcely more than an aid to the mem- 
 ory) on thirty-four of the supposed previous births of 
 the historical Buddha himself. Both of these short, 
 and from a literary point of view uninteresting, texts 
 have been published for the Pali Text Society. 
 
 There are two other short poems in which legends 
 regarding the future life are put into verse. They 
 are called respectively the Peta- and Vimana-Vatthu, 
 and have been edited for the Pali Text Society, but 
 not yet translated. Some of the longer legends are 
 interesting as poems, and the whole set of beliefs 
 exemplified in these books is historically interesting 
 as being in all probability the source of a good deal 
 of mediaeval Christian belief in Heaven and Hell. 
 But the greater part of these books, composed ac- 
 cording to a set pattern, is devoid of style ; and the 
 collection is altogether of an evidently later date 
 than the bulk of the books included in this ap- 
 pendix. 
 
7& 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 We now come to the Jdtakas. These are stones 
 nominally of the 550 previous births of the Buddha, 
 but really a collection of the most popular folk-lore 
 tales of all kinds — fables, fairy tales, riddles, puzzles, 
 old-world legends, clever and witty judgments, in- 
 stances of current superstitions good-humouredly 
 laughed at, tales of magic cups and vanishing caps 
 and wishing trees, stories of old mythology, and so 
 on. At some period not quite ascertained, but cer- 
 tainly before 300 B.C., it had become the custom to 
 identify the principal hero of each of these popular 
 tales with the Buddha himself in a previous birth. 
 It would be ungenerous to lay stress on the fact that 
 this identification is entirely without foundation. 
 For it is solely due to the fortunate chance of the 
 growth of this idea that we have thus preserved to 
 us the most complete, the most authentic, and the 
 most ancient collection of folk-lore in the world — a 
 collection entirely unadulterated, as modern folk-lore 
 stories so often are, by the inevitable process of pass- 
 ing through a Western mind. Each story contains a 
 stanza or stanzas attributed to the Buddha himself, 
 either in his present or in his previous births. And 
 it is only the verses that are included in the canon. 
 They are usually unintelligible by themselves ; but 
 the comment, which gives the whole story in prose, 
 gives also a further explanation of them ; and Pro- 
 
The Authorities 
 
 79 
 
 fessor Fausboll edits the whole, text and commentary, 
 together. I had at one time contemplated a trans- 
 lation into English of this most interesting, but also 
 most voluminous work. The first volume of this 
 translation appeared in 1881, under the title of 
 Buddhist Birth Stories. But I have long been obliged 
 to give up the hope of carrying on this work, and am 
 now delighted to be able to say that a complete 
 translation is being brought out by a syndicate of 
 English scholars, under the editorship of Professor 
 Cowell of Cambridge, and that the first two volumes, 
 by Mr. Robert Chalmers and Mr. W. H. D. Rouse, 
 members of the Pali Text Society, have just been 
 issued by the Cambridge University Press. 
 
 There are one or two other books included in this 
 appendix to the Three Pitakas, but as they are not 
 yet published, it would be premature to discuss 
 their contents. You will have sufficiently understood 
 the nature of the authorities on which our knowledge 
 of early Buddhism must principally rest. You will 
 have noticed that the rules of the Order — the books 
 of Canon Law, if I may be allowed so to describe 
 them — and the books of the Abhidhamma, the ex- 
 pansion of the psychological doctrines laid down in 
 the Dialogues, are of historical rather than of literary 
 value. But in the Dialogues themselves, and in 
 some of the more ancient poems, we have documents 
 
So 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 of the first literary importance. You will have ob- 
 served also that the contents of the books are not 
 mythological, nor theological, nor metaphysical, but 
 above all ethical, and in the second place psycho- 
 logical. You will have observed also that there is 
 very little of what is popularly supposed to be the 
 essential characteristic of religion — nothing about 
 God and the soul, and the nature of them both, and 
 the relation between the two. But Buddhism is none 
 the less a religion ; and it is the religion which comes 
 nearest of all the other religions in the world to 
 Christianity, and the religion which has influenced 
 more lives than any other religion, not excepting 
 even Christianity. It would not be the place here to 
 discuss the doctrines of Buddhism, or to attempt to 
 give the reasons of its great successes, and of its 
 equally great failures. I shall have time in the sub- 
 sequent lectures to lay before- you the essence at 
 least of its positive philosophy of life. Here I would 
 only invite your attention to the fact that a small 
 band of scholars are endeavouring, without pecuniary 
 reward of any kind, to make accessible to the West 
 the earliest documents of one of the most important 
 and most interesting intellectual movements the 
 world has ever seen. And I do not hesitate to 
 appeal to you for your cordial sympathy with their 
 self-denying labours. 
 
The Authorities 
 
 Si 
 
 When I returned from Ceylon, I made up my 
 mind that, if my life was spared, I would try to get 
 the whole of this literature edited and translated. 
 When I began to speak of the advisability of start- 
 ing a Pali Text Society w T ith this object, I was told 
 that the project was doomed to failure. No one 
 cared enough for Pali to contribute the necessary 
 funds ; and even if they did, there were no compe- 
 tent scholars, not already otherwise engaged, to carry 
 out the work. Well ! the King of Siam, one of the 
 most cultured and enlightened of sovereigns, sent 
 me enough money to bring out the first volume ; 
 and private friends of my own showed their interest 
 in historical enquiry by subscribing enough to bring 
 out a second ; and I soon had a small list of sup- 
 porters, mostly poor men and scholars, willing to 
 subscribe a guinea a year. This was enough for me 
 to venture on a beginning. It was no easy task 
 to find MSS. and competent scholars willing to 
 spend years of labour without fee or reward of any 
 kind. But both difficulties have been surmounted. 
 The work has now gone on for twelve years. We 
 have published thirty-four volumes, amounting in the 
 whole to 7200 pages. Out of the twenty-seven books 
 in the Buddhist Pitakas, thirteen are now published 
 in full, five others in part, one more is in the press, 
 and nearly all the remainder are in preparation. 
 
82 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 About one half of the work has been done, and the 
 interest of scholars throughout the world has been 
 so thoroughly aroused, that it is now only a question 
 of money whether the work shall go on, and how 
 soon it shall be completed. There are already three 
 or four public libraries in Europe which have a fair 
 collection of Buddhist MSS. ; and I have a good 
 many in my private collection, and correspondents 
 both in Burma and Ceylon, who are helping to pro- 
 cure others as they are wanted. The number of 
 scholars able and willing to co-operate in the under- 
 taking is slowly but steadily increasing. But the 
 printers will not work for nothing, and the only dif- 
 ficulty is the want of money to pay the printer's bills. 
 Will not America come forward to assist in the im- 
 portant work of disentombing this ancient literature, 
 now buried in MSS.? 
 
 I shall be happy to receive the subscriptions or 
 donations of any one intelligent enough to see the 
 importance of the work, and generous enough to 
 give.* 
 
 * Pages 8 1-86 have been left as they stood in 1895. The Pali Text 
 Society has received nearly ^"iooo in donations, of which ^50 came 
 from America. It has published 63 volumes, and is still working, 
 Present address, 1908: Harbors Grange, Ashton-on Mersey, England. 
 
The Authorities 
 
 APPENDIX TO LECTURE II. 
 
 LIST OF THE PITAKAS. 
 
 The Vinaya Pitaka. 
 
 PRINTED 
 
 NAME. PAGES 8vo. 
 
 1. The Sutta Vibhanga 617 
 
 2. The Khandhakas — 
 
 a. Maha. Vagga 360 
 
 b. Culla Vagga 305 — 663 
 
 3. The Parivara 226 
 
 1511 
 
 The Sutta Pitaka. 
 
 4. The Dlgha Nikaya 261 
 
 5. The Majjhima Nikaya 254 
 
 6. The Samyutta Nikaya 1125 
 
 7. The Anguttara Nikaya 560 
 
 2200 
 
 The Khuddaka Nikaya. 
 
 8. The Kuddaka Patha 10 
 
 9. The Dhamma Padas 40 
 
 10. The Udanas So 
 
 11. The Iti-vuttakas 125 
 
 12. The Sutta Nipata 210 
 
 13. The Yimana Vatthu 84 
 
 14. The Peta Vatthu 68 
 
 15. The Thera Gatha 115 
 
 16. The Then Gatha. 52 
 
 17. The Jatakas 170 
 
 18. The Niddesa — 
 
 19. The Patisambhida .... — 
 
 20. The Apadanas — 
 
 21. The Buddha Vansa 60 
 
 22. The Cariya Pitaka 30 
 
 1044 
 
 * In preparation. 
 
8 4 
 
 Pali Text Society 
 
 ESTIMATED 
 
 PRINTED PAGES 
 
 NAME. PAGES 8VO. UNPRINTED 
 
 The Abhidhamma Pitika. 
 
 23. The Dhamma SangariT 264 None. 
 
 24. The Vibhanga — 300* 
 
 25. The Katha Vatthu — 400* 
 
 26. The Puggala Pafmatti 75 None. 
 
 27. The Dhatu Katha 122 None. 
 
 28. The Yamakas — 400 
 
 29. The Patthana — 600 
 
 461 1700 
 
 Totals 5216 5335 
 
 ISSUES OF THE PALI TEXT SOCIETY, 
 
 22 ALBEMARLE STREET, LONDON, W. 
 
 I. Arrangement by Years. 
 
 1882. 
 
 1. Journal. 
 
 2. Buddhavansa and Cariya Pit- 
 
 aka. 
 
 3. Ayaranga. 
 
 1883. 
 
 1. Journal. 
 
 2. Thera-therl-gatha. 
 
 3. Puggala. 
 
 1885. 
 
 1. Journal. 
 
 2. Anguttara, Parts I. -III. 
 
 3. Dhamma Samgam. 
 
 4. Udana. 
 
 1. Journal. 
 
 2. Sumangala, Vol. I. 
 
 3. Vimana Vatthu. 
 
 1. Journal. 
 
 2. Samyutta, Vol. I. 1. Journal. 
 
 3. Sutta Nipata, Vol. I. f 2. Majjhima, Vol. I. 
 
 * In preparation. 
 
 f This volume was an extra volume presented as a gift to the sub- 
 scribers in 1884. There are no copies left. 
 
Pali Text Society 
 
 1888. 
 
 r. Journal. 
 
 2. Samyutta, Vol. II. 
 
 3. Anguttara, Part IV. 
 
 1889. 
 
 1. Journal. 
 
 2. Digha, Vol. I. 
 
 3. PetaVatthu. 
 
 1890. 
 
 1. Journal. 
 
 2. Samyutta, Vol. III. 
 
 3. Iti-vuttaka. 
 
 1891. 
 
 1. Journal (1891-3). 
 
 2. Bodhi Vamsa. 
 
 Total fourteen years : 36 texts ; 38 volumes ; 8400 pages. 
 
 II. Texts Published in the above Volumes 
 Arranged Alphabetically. 
 
 
 NAME OF TEXT. 
 
 YEAR. 
 
 EDITOR. 
 
 I. 
 
 *Abhidhammattha Samgaha. . 
 
 . . I8S4 
 
 Prof. Rhys Davids. 
 
 2. 
 
 
 IS86 
 
 Prop. Minayeff. 
 
 3- 
 
 
 1885 
 
 Dr. Morris. 
 
 
 IV 
 
 I8S8 
 
 
 4- 
 
 
 . . IS94 
 
 Prof. E. Miiller. 
 
 5. 
 
 
 . . 1882 
 
 Prof. Jacobi. 
 
 6. 
 
 
 . 1882 
 
 Dr. Morris. 
 
 7- 
 
 
 , 1891 
 
 Mr. Strong. 
 
 8. 
 
 Cariya Pitaka 
 
 1882 
 
 Dr. Morris. 
 
 9- 
 
 * Cha Kesa Dhatu Vamsa , . 
 
 I8S5 
 
 Prof. Minayeff. 
 
 10. 
 
 
 1884 
 
 Prof. Rhys Davids. 
 
 11. 
 
 
 , . 1885 
 
 Prof. Ed. Miiller. 
 
 12. 
 
 
 . . IS93 
 
 Mr. Gooneratne. 
 
 •J* In the press. % In preparation, 
 
 1. Dhatu Katha. 
 
 2. Paramattha-dlpanl. 
 
 1893. 
 
 1. Samyutta, Vol. IV. 
 
 2. Sutta Nipata, Vol. II. 
 
 1894.1 
 
 1. Attha Salinl. 
 
 2. Journal. 
 
 18954 
 
 1. Katha Vatthu. 
 
 2. Journal. 
 
86 Pali Text Society 
 
 
 NAME OF TEXT. 
 
 YEAR. 
 
 EDITOR. 
 
 13- 
 
 
 . . I889- 
 
 Prof. Rhys Davids 
 Mr. J. E. Carpente 
 
 14. 
 
 
 
 Prof. Minayeff. 
 
 15. 
 
 
 
 Prof. Windisch. 
 
 16 
 
 
 
 AT- A C T„-A 
 
 Mr. A. I aylor. 
 
 *7« 
 
 Katha Vatthu Commentary . . 
 
 
 Prof. Minayeff. 
 
 18. 
 
 V V. 1 , A A n CM.l.kn 
 
 
 Prof. Ed. M tiller. 
 
 19. 
 
 
 
 
 20. 
 
 
 
 Mr. Trenckner. 
 
 
 
 
 Mr. Gooneratne. 
 
 22 
 
 
 I8S4 
 
 M. Leon Feer. 
 
 2 3- 
 
 
 
 p,.( T< A AT 11 
 
 I rot. rLa. iviutler. 
 
 24. 
 
 
 I889 
 
 Prof. Minayeff, 
 
 25. 
 
 
 
 Dr. Morris. 
 
 26. 
 
 
 
 
 27. 
 
 
 I89O 
 
 Saddhananda. 
 
 2o. 
 
 
 
 M. Leon Feer. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Vol. Ill . 
 
 . . I889 
 
 
 
 Vol. IV. . . 
 
 • • I893 
 
 
 29. 
 
 
 . . I885 
 
 Prof. Minayeff. 
 
 30. 
 
 
 
 
 31. 
 
 Sumangala Vilasinl, Vol. I. . . 
 
 , , 1886 
 
 Prof. Rhys Davids 
 Mr. J. E. Carpente 
 
 32. 
 
 -NT- 
 
 
 Prof. Fausboll. 
 
 
 
 .. I893 
 
 
 33- 
 
 
 I884 
 
 Mr Gooneratne 
 
 34- 
 
 
 .. I883 
 
 Prof. Oldenberg. 
 
 35- 
 
 
 .. I883 
 
 Prof. Pischel. 
 
 36. 
 
 
 . . I885 
 
 Dr. Steinthal. 
 
 37. 
 
 
 
 Mr. Gooneratne. 
 
 and 
 
 and 
 
 Note. — Those texts marked with an asterisk are printed in the 
 Journal. 
 
 The subscription to the Pali Text Society (22 Albemarle Street, 
 London, W.) is one guinea/^ annum, payable in advance. 
 
 The publications are sent post free to subscribers. 
 
 Public-spirited friends of historical research have given donations 
 amounting to about ^450. Further help of this kind is urgently 
 needed. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 The Life of the Buddha. 
 
 IT is a strange thing, and very characteristic of 
 the real meaning of the true Buddhism, that 
 there is no life of Gotama the Buddha in the 
 Buddhist Scriptures. Indeed the only work, so far 
 known to us, that can be called a biography in our 
 Western sense is a quite modern book called the 
 Mdldlankdra Watthu, of unknown date, but almost 
 certainly quite two thousand years later than the 
 Buddha himself.* There is a much older sketch of 
 the first part of the Buddha's life, down to his thirty- 
 sixth year, in the Introduction to the collection of 
 Buddhist Folk-Lore called the Jataka Book, and 
 written about the fifth century of our era.f Both of 
 these prose works rest on the same tradition, and are 
 written in Pali, one in Burma and the other in Ceylon. 
 Then there is a Pali poem called the Jina Carita, 
 
 * It has been translated into English by Bishop Bigandet under 
 the title The Life or Legend of ' Gaudama (3d ed., London, 1887). 
 
 f This also has been translated into English by myself in the 
 Buddhist Birth Stories, London, i3Si, pp. 36-210. 
 
 87 
 
88 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 " The Conqueror's Career," written in Ceylon by 
 Buddhadatta in the thirteenth century of our era, and 
 dealing at length with the traditional episodes down 
 to the thirty-sixth year, and also with the events of 
 the last few months of the Teacher's life.* There 
 are also two well known Sanskrit poems, the Buddha 
 Carita and the Lalita Vistara, both of which have 
 been translated, the first into English by Professor 
 Cowellf and the second into French by Professor 
 Foucaux.+ The former, of which a portion is lost, 
 can be dated with considerable certainty at the end 
 of the first century of our era, and the second (though 
 its date is unknown) is probably even later still. 
 
 These poems are not historical biographies. 
 Milton's Paradise Regained is of value not for 
 what it tells us about the life of its hero, but for the 
 literary ability with which it has recast a story 
 derived entirely from older documents. The histori- 
 cal value of those documents must be determined by 
 a criticism which will, of course, take no notice of 
 the later poetical version. A corresponding argu- 
 ment ought to hold good with respect to these Pali 
 and Sanskrit poems, and a fortiori with respect to 
 the Chinese and Tibetan reproductions of the San- 
 
 * Edited and translated by Dr. Rouse in the Journal of the Pali 
 Text Society, 1905. 
 f Sacred Books of the East, Oxford, 1894. 
 %Mus/e Gut met, Paris, 18S8. 
 
The Life of the Buddha 89 
 
 skrit ones. They are literary not historical docu- 
 ments, and such historical value as they have is the 
 very instructive way in which they show how far 
 the older beliefs about the life of the Buddha had 
 been, at the time when these books were composed, 
 developed (or rather corrupted) by the inevitable 
 hero-worship of the followers of his religion. 
 
 It is unfortunately precisely these later Sanskrit 
 poetical accounts which have been the source of 
 modern popular notions about the life of the Buddha, 
 and the beautiful poem of Sir Edwin Arnold entitled 
 the Light of Asia, no doubt well known to many 
 of you, is an eloquent expression in English verse of 
 the Buddhist beliefs at the stage when those later 
 poems were composed. Clearly the only proper 
 course to pursue is to go back, behind these later 
 poetical documents, to the actual text of the Three 
 Pitakas themselves, to collect there whatever is said 
 incidentally about the life, family, and personal sur- 
 roundings of the Buddha, and to piece them together 
 into a connected whole. This has not yet been done, 
 and cannot of course be done in a satisfactory way 
 until the whole of the text of the Sacred Canon shall 
 have been published by the Pali Text Society or 
 elsewhere. 
 
 But certain progress has been made. There are 
 accounts more or less circumstantial, in the intro- 
 
9 o 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 ductory parts of many of the Dialogues, of various 
 episodes in Gotama's career. Occasionally in an 
 argument in support of one or another ethical pro- 
 position, autobiographical reminiscences are placed 
 in the mouth of the Buddha himself as the principal 
 interlocutor in the dialogue. Some of the ancient 
 poems also relate to similar episodes, and in the intro- 
 ductory stories to certain of the rules of the Order, 
 specifying the occasion on which the rule in question 
 was originally established by the Founder, other 
 autobiographical incidents are incidentally alluded 
 to. 
 
 It will be impossible for me, within the limits of 
 time at my disposal, to do more than summarise the 
 results which can be reached from a comparison of 
 such passages as these. 
 
 As you are all aware, the actual date of the birth 
 of the Buddha is still a matter of controversy, but 
 may be fixed approximately at about B.C. 600. He 
 was born in the city of Kapila-vastu, about one 
 hundred miles due north of the city of Benares. 
 This was one of those portions of the valley of the 
 Ganges which had not yet been brought under 
 the influence of the Brahmins. It was far to the 
 east of the Holy Land of Brahmin tradition, and 
 there can be but little doubt that, at the time of 
 which we speak, the inhabitants of that district were 
 
The Life of the Buddha 91 
 
 in many respects more independent of the Brahmins 
 than the countries farther west. We have no evi- 
 dence that there was any large number of Brahmins 
 settled in the country, which was inhabited by a 
 high-caste tribe, forming the Sakya clan. Mr. Beal, 
 the late translator of so many Chinese Buddhist 
 books, was of opinion that this very word " Sakya " 
 was sufficient evidence to show that the clan was of 
 Skythian, and therefore of Mongolian, origin. This 
 seems to me a very wide conclusion to draw from a 
 chance similarity of name, and also a very rash con- 
 clusion when so many details confirm the native 
 tradition that the clan, or at least its principal mem- 
 bers, was of Aryan descent. Its government was 
 certainly aristocratic. We find indeed, in the sixth 
 century before Christ, in the valley of the Ganges, a 
 stage of social evolution very similar to that reached 
 in Greece at the time of Plato. With one or two 
 exceptions, kingdoms had not yet arisen. The 
 country was politically split up into small communi- 
 ties, governed under republican institutions, some 
 aristocratic, and some more democratic in character. 
 These were just beginning to lose their independence 
 by being merged into kingdoms formed by some 
 successful despot. The later legends represent the 
 Buddha as having been the son of such a king. But 
 this is distinctly contradicted by the earliest docu- 
 
9 2 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 ments. The texts are most particularly, almost 
 ludicrously, careful to speak of everyone with the 
 exact degree of reverence or respect due to their 
 worldly position. Now Gotama's father is not 
 spoken of as a king until we come to later docu- 
 ments* whereas his first cousin, Bhaddiya, is ad- 
 dressed by the title of Raja. Even Raja, however, 
 is not necessarily the same as " king" in English. It 
 means " ruler," and may well have no stronger sig- 
 nification than that of " archon " or "consul." 
 
 The probability therefore is that Gotama was 
 born in a family belonging to the highest ruling 
 caste of the small Aryan community centred at 
 Kapila-vastu in Kosala. The later accounts would 
 lead one to infer that the Sakya domain was a rich 
 and extensive country. There is nothing in the 
 older books to confirm this opinion. Indeed, from 
 the references to the adjoining states, it would seem 
 to have been a small territory ; not much more than 
 1500 square miles in extent. 
 
 His people were agriculturists and, no doubt, the 
 economic position even of the principal families 
 among them was of a very simple kind. All the 
 marvellous details of the wealth and glory of the 
 royal palace, in which he lived in Oriental luxury, 
 
 * For instance Mahapadana Sutta, and Buddha Vamsa (both 
 included in the Canon). 
 
The Life of the Buddha 93 
 
 are due to the natural desire to magnify the splen- 
 dour of the position he renounced, when, for the 
 sake of others, he " came out " as a mendicant 
 teacher. The name of his mother has not yet been 
 found in the oldest texts, but it is given in the 
 Buddhavansa as Maya, and we are told that she 
 died when he was seven days old, and that he was 
 brought up by his aunt, Maha Pajapatl of the Go- 
 tamids. We also know that he was married (though 
 the name of his wife is not given), that he had a son 
 named Rahula, and that this son afterwards became 
 an insignificant member of the Order founded 
 by his father. Of Gotama's childhood and early 
 youth we know next to nothing from the earlier 
 texts. But there are not wanting even there de- 
 scriptions of the wonders which attended his birth, 
 and of the marvellous precocity of the boy. "JHe 
 was not born as ordinary men are ; he had no earthly 
 father ; he descended of his own accord into his 
 mother's womb from his throne in heaven ; and he 
 gave unmistakable signs, immediately after his birth, 
 of his high character and of his future greatness. 
 Earth and heaven at his birth united to pay him 
 homage, the very trees bent of their own accord over 
 his mother, and the angels and archangels were 
 present with their help. His mother was the best 
 2nd the purest of the daughters of men, and his 
 
94 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 father was of royal lineage, a king of wealth and 
 power. It was a pious task to make his abnegation 
 and his condescension greater by the comparison be- 
 tween the splendour of the position he was to aban- 
 don, and the poverty in which he afterwards lived.] 
 And in countries distant from Kapila-vastu the 
 inconsistencies between such glowing accounts, and 
 the very names they contain, passed unnoticed by 
 credulous hearers."* 
 
 Such legends are indeed of the greatest possible 
 historical value from the comparative point of view. 
 Similar legends are related of all the founders of 
 great religions, and even of the more famous kings 
 and conquerors in the ancient world. In a certain 
 stage of intellectual progress it is a necessity of the 
 human mind that such legends should grow up. 
 They are due, in every case, to similar causes, and 
 most instructive is it to watch those causes at work. 
 I have dealt with this most interesting subject at 
 considerable length both in my manual Buddhism 
 and in my Hibbert Lectures. I have there pointed 
 out the sources of the Buddhist Legend, and have 
 shown how the two ideas of the King of the Golden 
 Age and of the Prophet-Sage have influenced Bud- 
 dhists in precisely the same way as the two ideas of 
 the Messiah and the Logos have influenced Chris- 
 
 * Rh. D., Buddhism, 1894, pp., 182, 183. 
 
The Life of the Buddha 95 
 
 tians, and how strikingly similar are the results at- 
 tained by each. I will therefore content myself with 
 referring on this occasion to those expositions, and 
 will only remind you of the extreme importance of 
 noting, not only the source of each particular inci- 
 dent in the legend, but also the date, as nearly as 
 possible, when each episode became actually incor- 
 porated into the ever-growing tale. How long does 
 it take people, perfectly sincerely and honestly, to 
 believe in the Divine fatherhood of their hero, in 
 his immaculate conception, in the extraordinary and 
 even supernatural instances of the precocity of the 
 child, and so on through all the list ? 
 
 In this respect it is desirable to call attention to 
 the publication by Mr. Robert Chalmers in the last 
 volume of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 
 of the important text entitled the Acchariya Ab- 
 bhuta Sutta, or " The Discourse on Wonders and 
 Marvels." This is one of the dialogues referred to 
 in the last chapter, No. 123 in the shorter collection. 
 In it is laid down as true of each Buddha (and there- 
 fore also of the historical Buddha) that the universe 
 is illumined with brilliant light at the moment of his 
 conception ; that the womb is transparent so that 
 his mother can see the babe before it is born ; that 
 the pregnancy lasts exactly 280 days ; that the 
 mother stands during parturition ; that on the birth 
 
9 6 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 of the babe it is received first into the hands of 
 heavenly beings, and that supernatural showers pro- 
 vide first hot and then cold water in which the child 
 is bathed ; that the future Buddha walks and speaks 
 at once, and that the whole universe is again illu- 
 mined with a brilliant light. There are other details, 
 but this is enough to show — as the collection of 
 dialogues is certainly one of the very oldest texts 
 we have — how very short is the time (less than a 
 century) required for such belief in the marvellous to 
 spring up. 
 
 We know that in his twenty-ninth year Gotama 
 abandoned his home, his young wife, and his infant 
 son, and went forth into the world to become a 
 homeless wanderer, and to spend his life, first in 
 thinking out for himself the deepest problems of ex- 
 perience, and then in spreading abroad to others 
 the good tidings of the salvation which he deemed 
 himself to have discovered. It may seem strange 
 to western people, even of the most earnest and cul- 
 tured sort, that any man, aiming at such results, 
 should have thought it necessary to take this step. 
 But the conditions of life at that time in the valley of 
 the Ganges were very different from those obtaining 
 at present. To work in one's study for the regen- 
 eration of mankind was almost impossible. There 
 were no written books through which to communi- 
 
The Life of the Buddha 97 
 
 cate with the outside world. On the other hand 
 the necessities were much fewer and much simpler. 
 In that gorgeous climate and in that half occupied 
 country, to retire into the woods and devote one's 
 self to the higher life was not only practicable, but 
 was even not uncommon. We hear of many in- 
 stances of a similar kind. In the law-books, by 
 which the lives of the Brahmins were regulated, it is 
 considered so much a matter of course that a man 
 should retire from the world, that the life of the 
 good Brahmin is divided into three stages, during 
 the first of which he is to be a student — during the 
 second of which he is to marry, rear a family, and 
 perform all the religious rites and sacrifices, and the 
 household duties of a good Brahmin — and during 
 the third of which he is to leave his home and retire, 
 with or without his wife, into the forest, and live, as 
 a recluse, a life of meditation. We are not unfa- 
 miliar, even among Christians, with the idea of a 
 Retreat, into which a man may retire and, getting 
 rid of the world, devote himself to the education of 
 his heart. And at that time in India the doctrine 
 of the Retreat was a favourite one, not only among 
 Brahmins, but among the numerous sects which pro- 
 fessed, each in a different way, to propound a solu- 
 tion, independent of the Brahmin theories, of the 
 problems of life. We have constant reference in the 
 
9 8 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 Buddhist books to wandering ascetics of every race 
 and caste and sect, men and women alike, who wan- 
 dered from village to village, and were ready to hold 
 discussions with all the world. 
 
 Thus we are told, in the just published Paramat- 
 tha DipanT, of a lady who was in the habit of wan- 
 dering from village to village, and setting up at the 
 entrance to the village a broomstick with the 
 announcement, that she was willing to discuss with 
 anyone who should overturn the broomstick. At 
 one village which she reached a follower of the 
 Buddha accepted her challenge. On the following 
 day a public discussion was held between the two 
 in the presence of all the village. The Buddhist 
 answered all her puzzles, but she could not answer 
 his, and full of confusion at a defeat (which for so 
 many years she had never suffered) she threw her- 
 self at the feet of her opponent, and acknowledged 
 herself a disciple from that day forth of the Blessed 
 One. Again, in the Ratthapala Suttanta, one of 
 the dialogues of Gotama, translated by Mr. Lupton, 
 of the Indian Civil Service, in the Journal of the 
 Royal Asiatic Society for 1894, there is a full discus- 
 sion of the motives which led at that time in India 
 to the adoption of such a life. Ratthapala, I may 
 add, who is the recluse of this dialogue, is repre- 
 sented as young and rich, and in every sense of the 
 
The Life of the Buddha 99 
 
 word happy, when he retired from the world. And 
 he explains to the king why persons should adopt 
 this course from other motives than those of disap- 
 pointment, poverty, or old age. 
 
 Having " gone forth," as the technical expression 
 runs, Gotama went first to Rajagaha, the capital 
 city of the neighbouring kingdom of Magadha. 
 His visit is described in one of the ancient poems I 
 have referred to as being included in the canon, and 
 I will quote it as a specimen of the kind of bio- 
 graphical material we find in these records. It is 
 called the Pabbajjd Sutta, and is contained in the 
 Sutta Nipata. Of course all the beauty of the rhythm 
 in the Pali text of the simple ballad is lost in my 
 prose version. 
 
 1. I will praise the homeless life, such as the Far- 
 Seeing One led, such as when he had thought the 
 matter o'er he deliberately chose as the homeless 
 life. 
 
 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. 
 
 3. And when he had gone forth he gave up wrong- 
 doing, both in action and in words, and he made 
 his mode of livelihood quite pure. 
 
 4. To the King's town the Buddha, went, to Girib- 
 
IOO 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 baja in Magadha ; full of outward signs of worth, 
 he collected alms for food. 
 
 5. Him saw Bimbisara, standing on the upper 
 terrace of his palace. On seeing him with such 
 signs, he spake as follows : 
 
 6. " Be careful, Sirs, of this man, 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. 
 Such an one is of no low caste. Let the king's mes- 
 sengers run forth and ask: Where is the mendicant 
 going? " 
 
 8. Thus sent, the messengers hurried after him. 
 They asked : " Where is the Bhikkhu going ? Where 
 does he mean to stay ? " 
 
 9. Wandering straight on from house to house, 
 guarded as to the door (of his senses), well restrained, 
 mindful and self-possessed, he quickly filled his bowl. 
 
 10. When he had finished his round for alms the 
 Sage went forth from the city, and gained the moun- 
 tain Pandava. " There shall my dwelling be." 
 
 11. On seeing where he stopped, there the mes- 
 sengers stayed ; and one messenger went back, and 
 told this to the king : 
 
 12. " The mendicant, O King, is now seated on 
 Pandava hill, like to a mighty tiger, like a lion in a 
 mountain cave." 
 
The Life of the Buddha 101 
 
 13. On hearing the messenger's words the prince 
 in a state chariot hurriedly went forth towards the 
 Pandava rock. 
 
 14. And where the carriage road ended there 
 alighting from his car, on foot the prince went on 
 till he came near ; and then sat down. 
 
 15. On sitting down, the King, with courtesy, ex- 
 changed with him the greetings of a friend. Then 
 he spake thus : 
 
 16. "Young art thou and delicate, a lad in his 
 first youth ; fine is thy colour, like a high-born 
 noble's, 
 
 17. " The glory of the vanguard of the army, at 
 the head of a band of heroes. I will give thee 
 wealth. Do thou accept it, and tell us thy lineage, 
 when asked." 
 
 18. " Hard by Himalaya's slopes, O King, there 
 is a country strong in wealth, the dwellers therein 
 are of the Kosalas, 
 
 19. " Descendants of the Sun by race, Sakyas they 
 are by birth. 'T is from that stock I have gone 
 forth, longing no more for sensual delights. 
 
 20. " Seeing the danger therein, looking on going 
 forth as bliss, I shall go on in the struggle, for in 
 that my mind delights." 
 
 Here ends the Pabbajja Sutta. 
 
 Having thus rejected the royal offer the recluse 
 
102 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 placed himself as a pupil under one of the recluses 
 who had established themselves in the mountains 
 near Rajagaha. We have an account in the Ariya 
 Pariyesana Sutta, given by Gotama himself,* of the 
 essence of the teaching of this sage, whose name was 
 Alara Kalama, and of the reasons which led Gotama 
 to be dissatisfied with the result. 
 
 He then went to another of these recluses, to 
 Uddaka, the son of Rama, but was again dissatisfied 
 with the teaching that he heard. 
 
 We have other accounts of these two sages, a 
 propos of certain propositions which they put for- 
 ward, in passages of the Samyutta, in which similar 
 propositions are discussed. From these passages it 
 appears that the teaching of these masters was of no 
 simple kind. It was an elaborately thought-out solu- 
 tion of the problems discussed (as already pointed 
 out in our first lecture) by such later schools as the 
 Sankhya and Vedanta. And it is certainly evident 
 that Gotama, either during or before this period, 
 must have gone through a very systematic and con- 
 tinued course of study in all the deepest philosophy 
 of the time. All the oldest accounts agree in stating 
 that after working as a pupil under Alara and 
 Uddaka, Gotama devoted himself, during a period 
 the length of which is not known, to a regular sys- 
 tem of what we should now call penance. 
 
 * Majjhima Nikdya, vol. i., pp. 163-5. 
 
The Life of the Buddha 103 
 
 It was a matter of common belief at that time, 
 that by the practice of austere self-mortification a 
 man could compel the gods to manifest themselves 
 to him and reveal the truth ; and also that the sup- 
 pression of bodily feeling would in itself open out the 
 way to a greater vigour of the mind, and to extra- 
 ordinary insight. From one or other of these mo- 
 tives Gotama accustomed himself gradually to live 
 on smaller and smaller quantities of food, and, by 
 checking and repressing his breath, sought to plunge 
 himself into that state of trance in which he might 
 experience the illumination that he sought for. 
 
 In carrying out these self-mortifications he was 
 watched by five ascetics, who wondered at his self- 
 resolution and waited to see him made partaker of 
 the long-expected enlightenment. We need not, 
 therefore, be surprised to learn that his fame is said 
 to have spread round about like the sound of a great 
 gong hung in the canopy of the skies. * 
 
 But he found himself no nearer the goal ; and one 
 day, after he had suddenly staggered and fallen in a 
 faint to the ground, he determined to give up this 
 method also, and again gradually to return to the 
 ordinary life of a recluse. Then, when he was 
 apparently most in need of sympathy, when his 
 sense of failure might have been assuaged by the 
 tender trust and respect of faithful followers, his 
 *Rh. D., Buddhism, p. 35. 
 
io4 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 companions forsook him, and went away to Benares. 
 To them it was an axiom that mental conquest lay 
 through bodily suppression. In giving up his pen- 
 ance he had to give up their esteem ; and, in what 
 might have been his sore distress, they left him to 
 bear, alone, the bitterness of doubt. 
 
 There then ensued that mental struggle which 
 culminated on the day when, under the Bo Tree, 
 Gotama the recluse attained to Buddhahood and to 
 Nirvana, deemed himself to have discovered at last 
 the right solution of the mysteries of life, and be- 
 came henceforth Gotama the Buddha. The later 
 legends have described this, the most important 
 event in Gotama's career, in poetical language not 
 found in the earliest texts. * Even the well-known 
 scene of the temptation by Mara, the Evil One 
 (which fills so many pages in the later records, and 
 in Sir Edwin Arnold's beautiful poem), is in those 
 accounts entirely wanting. And when it is first 
 incidentally referred tof we find only the bare men- 
 
 * The Ariya Pariyesana Sutta in the Majjhima Nikaya, vol. i., p. 
 167 ; and Malta Vagga, i., i, 1 to i., 4, 5. 
 
 f In the Book of the Great Decease, iii., 42-45. Translated in my 
 Buddhist Suttas, p. 53. Compare also the Padhdna Sutta in the 
 Sutta Nipdta (Fausboll's translation, pp. 69-72) where the suggestion 
 is quite different. The origin of this whole legend of Mara, to which 
 we have two of these early references, inconsistent with one another, 
 is perhaps to be found in the simple words at the end of the Ariya 
 Pariyesana Sutta (pp. 174, 175). 
 
The Life of the Buddha 105 
 
 tion of a suggestion to the Blessed One that now, 
 having solved the mystery, his work is done, and that 
 the time had arrived for him to pass away without 
 attempting to proclaim to others the glad tidings of 
 the Noble Way. 
 
 But he rejected the thought (veiled under this 
 figure of a suggestion from without), and resolved 
 to preach his gospel to the world. First he sought 
 out and proclaimed it to the five recluses who had 
 been till lately his companions. In the oldest ac- 
 count of this episode * it is stated that when they 
 saw him coming, they concerted with each other, 
 saying : 
 
 " Friends, there comes the Samana Gotama, who 
 lives in abundance, who has given up his exertions, 
 and has turned back to a life of ease. Let us not 
 salute him, nor rise from our seats when he ap- 
 proaches, nor take his bowl and his robe from his 
 hands. But let us just put there a seat. If he likes, 
 let him sit down." 
 
 But when the Blessed One gradually approached 
 nigh unto those five recluses, the five could not 
 keep their agreement. They went forth to meet 
 the Blessed One. One took his bowl and his robe, 
 another prepared a seat ; a third brought water 
 
 * Maha Vagga, i., vi., 10, a little more expanded than Ariya 
 Pariyesana Suita, loc. cit. 
 
io6 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 wherewith to wash his feet, and a footstool thereto 
 and a towel. Then the Blessed One sat down on 
 the seat they had prepared. 
 
 Now they addressed the Blessed One by his name, 
 and with the appellation " Friend." But he said to 
 them : " Do not address the Tathagata by his name, 
 or by the appellation 1 Friend.' The Tathagata has 
 become an Arahat, the supreme Buddha. Give ear, 
 O recluses. The ambrosia has been won by me. I 
 will teach you. To you I preach the Dharma (the 
 Law, the Norm). If you walk in the way that I 
 will show, you will ere long, having yourselves 
 known it and seen it face to face, live in the posses- 
 sion of that highest goal of the holy life, for the 
 sake of which clansmen give up the world and go 
 forth into the homeless state." < * ^ T 
 
 They then object that, having given up his aus- 
 terities, how can he claim to have gained the insight 
 he had been seeking. But he repeats to them his 
 assurance of knowledge ; and when they again ob- 
 ject, he says : " Do you admit that I have never 
 unburdened myself to you in this way before this 
 day ? " 
 
 " You have never spoken so, lord," is the reply. 
 He then sets out to them his view of life in a dis- 
 course called the Dhamma-cakka-ppavattana-siitta, or 
 the " Foundation of the Kingdom of Righteousness." 
 
The Life of the Buddha 107 
 
 In my next lecture I shall give you the actual 
 words which he is related to have used on this im- 
 portant occasion, which the later accounts have sur- 
 rounded once again with poetical legends which are 
 sometimes of surprising beauty, and are remarkable 
 as anticipating some of the very expressions used in 
 the Christian legend of the day of Pentecost.* 
 
 The five recluses were converted to the new doc- 
 trine, and Gotama stayed with them in the hermitage 
 near Benares. There he preached his doctrines and 
 made other conversions until, after three months, 
 the number of his disciples amounted already to 
 sixty persons. Then he sends out his disciples f to 
 wander through the villages, and preach the glorious 
 gospel to the world ; and himself goes on to Uruvela 
 with a similar purpose in view. 
 
 From this time his career as a teacher may be 
 fairly said to have commenced. Henceforth till his 
 death his mode of life was very simple. Like other 
 recluses of the time he was in the habit of spending 
 three months of each year — the three months of the 
 rainy season — in residence at some particular spot. 
 The other nine months of the year he wandered 
 from village to village, through the valley of the 
 Ganges, preaching and teaching his new gospel. I 
 have not time, and it would be tedious, to attempt 
 
 * See my manual, Buddhism, p. 46. f Maha Vagga, i., ii., I. 
 
io8 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 to follow him through all these wanderings. It is 
 true that, in each dialogue and poem, we have the 
 account of the place at which it was spoken, and of 
 the occasion which gave rise to it. But it is difficult 
 to trace any chronological sequence, as the principal 
 thing in the minds of the narrators has always been, 
 not the time at which any word was spoken, but the 
 portion of truth which it revealed. 
 
 We know that he returned eventually to his home, 
 and very affecting is the account of his interview 
 with his father, his wife, and his only son. And 
 there are a number of other episodes which are both 
 interesting in themselves as stories, and as throwing 
 light upon the character of the Buddha. I have 
 given in my Manual a statement of the most im- 
 portant of these episodes for the first twenty years of 
 his career as a teacher. But I can here only deal 
 with the more general features. 
 
 Now there is a very interesting picture in Buddha- 
 ghosa's commentary on the first of the Dialogues of 
 Gotama, of the manner in which Gotama was wont, 
 under ordinary circumstances, to spend each day. 
 As this has never been translated, it may interest 
 you to hear it. It runs as follows : 
 
 " For the Blessed One used to rise up early [i, e. 
 about 5 A.M.), and, out of consideration for his per- 
 sonal attendant, was wont to wash and dress himself, 
 
The Life of the Buddha 109 
 
 without calling for any assistance. Then, till it 
 was time to go on his round for alms, he would 
 retire to a solitary place and meditate. When that 
 time arrived he would dress himself completely in 
 the three robes (which every member of the Order 
 wore in public), take his bowl in his hand and, some- 
 times alone, sometimes attended by his followers, 
 would enter the neighbouring village or town for 
 alms, sometimes in an ordinary way, sometimes won- 
 ders happening such as these. As he went towards 
 the village soft breezes would waft before him cleans- 
 ing the way, drops of rain would fall from the sky 
 to lay the dust, and clouds would hover over him, 
 spreading as it were a canopy protecting him from 
 the sun. Other breezes would waft flowers from 
 the sky to adorn the path ; the rough places would 
 be made plain and the crooked straight, so that 
 before his feet the path would become smooth and 
 the tender flowers would receive his footsteps. And 
 betimes a halo of six hues would radiate from his 
 form (as he stood at the threshold of the houses) 
 illuminating with their glory, like trails of yellow 
 gold or streamers of gay cloth, the gables and veran- 
 dahs round about. The birds and beasts around 
 would, each in his own place, give forth a sweet and 
 gentle sound in welcome to him, and heavenly 
 music was wafted through the air, and the jewellery 
 
I IO 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 men wore jingled sweetly of itself. At signs like 
 these the sons of me n could know — ' To day it is 
 the Blessed One has come for alms.' Then clad in 
 their best and brightest, and bringing garlands and 
 nosegays with them, they would come forth into 
 the street and, offering their flowers to the Blessed 
 One, would vie with one another, saying, 'To-day, 
 Sir, take your meal with us ; we will make provision 
 for ten, and we for twenty, and we for a hundred of 
 your followers.' So saying they would take his 
 bowl, and, spreading mats for him and his attendant 
 followers, would await the moment when the meal 
 was over. Then would the Blessed One, v/hen the 
 meal was done, discourse to them, with due regard to 
 their capacity for spiritual things, in such a way that 
 some would take the layman's vow, and some would 
 enter on the paths, and some would reach the high- 
 est fruit thereof. And when he had thus had mercy 
 on the multitude, he would arise from his seat and 
 depart to the place where he had lodged. And 
 when he had come there he would sit in the open 
 verandah, awaiting the time when the rest of his 
 followers should also have finished their meal. And 
 when his attendant announced they had done so, 
 he would enter his private apartment. Thus was he 
 occupied up to the mid-day meal. 
 
 " Then afterwards, standing at the door of his 
 
The Life of the Buddha in 
 
 chamber, he would give exhortation to the brethren 
 such as this : ' Be earnest, my brethren, strenuous 
 in effort. Hard is it to meet with a Buddha in the 
 world. (Hard is it to attain to the state of (that is 
 to be born as) a human being. Hard is it to find a 
 fit opportunity. Hard is it to abandon the world. 
 Difficult to attain is the opportunity of hearing the 
 word.' J 
 
 " Then would some of them ask him to suggest a 
 subject for meditation suitable to the smxitnal 
 capacity of each, and when he had done so they 
 would retire each to the solitary place he was wont 
 to frequent, and meditate on the subject set. Then 
 would the Blessed One retire within the private 
 chamber, perfumed with flowers, and calm and self- 
 possessed would rest awhile during the heat of the 
 day. Then when his body was rested he would 
 arise from the couch and for a space consider the 
 circumstances of the people near that he might do 
 them good. And at the fall of the day the folk 
 from the neighbouring villages or town would gather 
 together at the place where he was lodging, bringing 
 with them offerings of flowers. And to them, seated 
 in the lecture hall, would he, in a manner suitable to 
 the occasion, and suitable to their beliefs, discourse 
 of the Truth. Then, seeing that the proper time 
 had come he would dismiss the folk, who, saluting 
 
ii2 Buddhism 
 
 him, would go away. Thus was he occupied in the 
 afternoon. 
 
 " Then at close of the day should he feel to need 
 the refreshment of a bath he would bathe, the while 
 some brother of the Order attendant on him would 
 prepare the divan in the chamber, perfumed with 
 flowers. And in the evening he would sit awhile 
 alone, still in all his robes, till the brethren returned 
 from their meditations began to assemble. Then 
 some would ask him questions on things that puz- 
 zled them, some would speak of their meditations, 
 some would ask for an exposition of the Truth. 
 Thus would the first watch of the night pass, as the 
 Blessed One satisfied the desire of each, and then 
 they would take their leave. And part of the rest 
 of the night would he spend in meditation, walking 
 up and down outside his chamber ; and part he 
 would rest lying down, calm and self-possessed, 
 within. And as the day began to dawn, rising from 
 his couch he would seat himself, and calling up be- 
 fore his mind the folk in the world he would con- 
 sider the aspirations which they, in previous births, 
 had formed, and think over the means by which he 
 could help them to attain thereto." * 
 
 It is true that this picture is charged with super- 
 natural details such as we must expect to find in 
 
 * SumangalaVildsini, pp. 45-48. 
 
The Life of the Buddha 113 
 
 the wording of a tradition which had been handed 
 down for about a thousand years, but the expres- 
 sions used are not without a certain poetical beauty 
 of their own ; and in the incidents which are here 
 said to have filled up the time of the teacher, we 
 have a picture substantially confirmed, as to its main 
 features, by the incidental references in the earlier 
 books. I have no doubt that this was actually the 
 way in which the Buddha used to spend the working 
 days of his useful and peaceful career ; and that the 
 tone of the narrative, the life of intellectual activity, 
 the peace and harmony and gentleness pervading 
 the picture, may be actually regarded as true. Of 
 course we have here the description of a day spent 
 altogether at one place, and it should not be for- 
 gotten that the Buddha was constantly moving 
 about, and that then the hours of the early morning 
 as well as of the close of the day would have been 
 occupied, not in meditation, but in actual walking 
 from one place to another. 
 
 There is one book or chapter, included in the 
 Dialogues, and the longest of them all, which ap- 
 proaches in character to a gospel, and gives a de- 
 tailed description of all the events of the last three 
 months of his career. This Sutta * I have trans- 
 lated in full in my volume entitled Buddhist Sui- 
 
 * The Ma Ad Parinibbdna Sutta from the Dlgha Nikdya. 
 
ii 4 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 /as, and have analysed in my Manual. It is plain 
 from this document, as well as from other passages 
 in the earlier books, that, in his wanderings during 
 the nine months of good weather, the Buddha was 
 accustomed, as a regular practice, to walk from fif- 
 teen to twenty miles a day ; and this may account, 
 in great measure, for the vigorous health which he 
 enjoyed, and for the ripe old age to which he at- 
 tained. He retired from the world at twenty-nine ; 
 he spent six years in study and meditation prior to 
 his appearance as a teacher, and for forty-five years 
 after that he lived this life of constant travelling, 
 teaching, thinking. He had time, therefore, during 
 this long period, to think out very thoroughly the 
 views of life which are set out in the Dialogues and 
 which will form the subject of our next two lectures. 
 And by his constant intercourse with, all the most 
 cultured and earnest thinkers of the day through a 
 large extent of territory, stretching from Patna in 
 the south-east to Savatthi in the north-west, about 
 three hundred miles long by one hundred miles in 
 breadth, he had frequent opportunities of comparing 
 his views with those of such men. 
 
 Moreover, by mixing daily with all sorts and con- 
 ditions of men, from kings and wealthy merchants 
 down to the peasants in the villages, as well as with 
 Brahmins and leaders of sects, he was able, in an 
 
The Life of the Buddha 115 
 
 extraordinary degree, to enter into the needs and 
 aspirations, the hopes and fears, of our common 
 humanity. 
 
 It is very interesting, as evidence of the wonderful 
 toleration which prevailed at that time, through the 
 valley of the Ganges, that a teacher, whose whole 
 system was so diametrically opposed to the domi- 
 nant creed, and logically so certain to undermine the 
 influence of the Brahmins, the parsons of that day, 
 should, nevertheless, have been allowed to carry on 
 his propaganda so ceaselessly and so peacefully 
 through a considerable period of time. It is even 
 more than that. Wherever he went, it was precisely 
 the Brahmins themselves who often took the most 
 earnest interest in his speculations, though his re- 
 jection of the soul theory, and of all that it involved, 
 was really incompatible with the whole theology of 
 the Vedas, and therefore, with the supremacy of the 
 Brahmins. Many of his chief disciples, many of 
 the most distinguished members of his Order, were 
 Brahmins. 
 
 He admitted equally, it is true, men from all 
 the other castes, and there were certain individ- 
 uals, among the dominant school, who foresaw that 
 this course of action would, in the long run, be fatal 
 to the maintenance of the distinguished social posi- 
 tion and pecuniary advantages of the Brahmins. 
 
ii6 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 But on the whole he was regarded by the Hindus 
 of that time as a Hindu. We hear of no persecution 
 during his life, and of no persecution of his followers 
 till many centuries afterwards. And it is a striking 
 result of the permanent effect which this spirit of 
 toleration had, that we find the great Buddhist Em- 
 peror Asoka, in his famous edicts, inculcating rever- 
 ence to the Brahmins and to the teachers of rival 
 sects, as much as to the leaders of his own persuasion, 
 v Throughout the long history of Buddhism, which is 
 the history of more than half the people in the world 
 for more than two thousand years, the Buddhists 
 have been uniformly tolerant ; and have appealed, 
 not to the sword, but to intellectual and moral sua- 
 J sion. We have not a single instance, throughout the 
 whole period, of even one of those religious persecu- 
 tions which loom so largely in the history of the 
 Christian church. Peacefully the Reformation began ; 
 and in peace, so far as its own action is concerned, 
 the Buddhist church has continued till to-day. 
 
 But this is only one proof out of many of the fact 
 we should never forget, that Gotama was born and 
 brought up and lived and died a Hindu. His teach- 
 ing, far-reaching and original as it was, and really 
 subversive of the religion of the day, was Indian 
 throughout. Without the intellectual work of his 
 predecessors his own work, however original, would 
 
The Life of the Buddha 117 
 
 have been impossible. He was no doubt the great- 
 est of them all ; and most probably the world will 
 come to acknowledge him as, in many respects, the 
 most intellectual of the religious teachers of mankind. 
 But Buddhism is essentially an Indian system. The 
 Buddha himself was, throughout his career, a char- 
 acteristic Indian. And, whatever his position as com- 
 pared with other teachers in the West, we need here 
 only claim for him, that he was the greatest and 
 wisest and best of the Hindus. 
 
 [Note on page 104. — Since the above was in type Professor 
 Windisch, of Leipzig, has published his very able and interesting 
 monograph — Mara and Buddha, in which all the documentary 
 evidence as to the growth of the legends about the relation of the 
 Buddha to Mara is critically set forth.] 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 The Secret of Buddhism. 
 
 Part I. — The Signs, the Path, and the Fetters. 
 
 OU have all heard of the wonderful remains of 
 
 X Buddhist art which are the wonder and ad- 
 miration of all travellers in India. Amongst the 
 most striking of these ancient relics of a faith now 
 forgotten in India are the Buddhist caves, the most 
 famous of which have been discovered in the Centre 
 and the West. There are the wonderful caves of 
 Elephanta on an island in what was once a lonely- 
 bay, and has now become the busy centre of English 
 trade in the East — the harbour of Bombay. There, 
 remote from all the thronged haunts of men, the 
 Indians of old hollowed out of the solid rock a num- 
 ber of apartments, some of them small, some of them 
 so large as to be spacious halls, in which the recluses 
 of that age might dwell far from the madding 
 crowd, living a life of meditation and of peace. 
 There are the still more impressive caves of Ajanta 
 in Central India, where in a woody and hilly region 
 
The Signs, the Path, and the Fetters 119 
 
 now called the district of Nagpur, equally remote 
 from busy life, the Buddhists of that time hollowed 
 out the perpendicular face of a granite bluff, carving 
 the entrance like some cathedral doorway and facade, 
 and the interior into a series of lecture-halls and 
 dwelling-places, supported by pillars left untouched 
 in the solid rock, and ornamented with elaborate 
 carvings and paintings, which make these caves one 
 of the wonders of the world. Abandoned for 
 centuries, the frescoes have yielded to the ravages of 
 time, until in many instances, it is difficult to recog- 
 nise what the artists intended to depict. I am glad 
 to say that the School of Art at Bombay has made 
 careful copies of what remains of these precious 
 records of the past, and it is a great pity that these 
 copies have not been reproduced in lithograph so as 
 to make them accessible to scholars throughout the 
 world. 
 
 One of the pictures so copied was long supposed 
 to be an ancient representation of the signs of the 
 Zodiac, and it is so called in the Bombay copy. It 
 gives the figure, unfortunately in a very incomplete 
 state, of a wheel divided into six compartments 
 separated by spokes, and containing figures both in 
 these compartments and around the rim. Mr. 
 Waddell, of the Indian Medical Service, has shown in 
 an article read this year before the Royal Asiatic 
 
120 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 Society of England, that the subject of this curious 
 fresco is not anything so material as the signs of the 
 Zodiac at all, but is an attempt to represent the so- 
 called " Wheel of Life " or " Chain of Causation." 
 Gotama in one of the most ancient of the Buddhist 
 texts,* is said to have thought out this wheel in that 
 supreme moment of his life when, sitting under the 
 Bo Tree, he attained to that high degree of insight 
 which gave him his name of "The Buddha," " The 
 Enlightened One." There is no doubt about this 
 result, Dr. Waddell having discovered in Thibet an 
 almost exact reproduction of this ancient picture, 
 which reproduction being both complete and intact 
 is readily intelligible. 
 
 I will read you from the Maha Vagga the words in 
 which this " Wheel of Life " or " Chain of Causa- 
 tion " was first formulated, and I venture to predict 
 that though it is written in English, you will not 
 understand a word of it. 
 
 " From Ignorance spring the Sankharas. 
 
 " From the Sankharas springs Consciousness. 
 
 " From Consciousness spring Name and Form. 
 
 " From Name and Form spring the Six Provinces 
 (of the six senses). 
 
 H From the Six Provinces springs Contact. 
 
 " From Contact springs Sensation. 
 
 * Vinaya, i., I. 
 
 I 
 
The Signs, the Path, and the Fetters 121 
 
 " From Sensation springs Thirst (or Desire). 
 
 " From Thirst springs Attachment. 
 
 " From Attachment springs Existence. 
 
 " From Existence springs Birth. 
 
 " From Birth spring Old Age and Death, grief, 
 lamentation, suffering, dejection, and despair." * 
 
 Now what does all this mean ? 
 
 It would be impossible to explain it without first 
 setting forth certain fundamental principles of the 
 Buddhist doctrine which are here taken for granted 
 and not expressed. 
 
 In the first place, it is an essential doctrine, con- 
 stantly insisted upon in the original Buddhist texts, 
 and still held, so far as I have been able to ascertain, 
 by all Buddhists, that there is nothing, either divine 
 or human, either animal, vegetable, or material, which 
 is permarient. There is no being, — there is only a 
 becoming. And this is true of the mightiest god of 
 gods, as much as of the tiniest material atom. The 
 state of an individual, of a thing or person, distinct 
 from its surroundings, bounded off from them, is 
 unstable, temporary, sure to pass away. It may last, 
 as for instance in the case of the gods, for hundreds 
 of thousands of years ; or, as in the case of some in- 
 sects, for some hours only ; or, as in the case of some 
 
 * Maha Vagga, i., I, translated in Vinava Texts, vol. i., pp. 75- 
 77- 
 
122 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 material things (as we should say, some chemical 
 compounds), for a few seconds only. But, in every 
 case, as soon as there is a beginning, there begins 
 also, that moment, to be an ending. 
 
 In the lowest class of being, we have form of one 
 sort or another, and various material qualities ; in the 
 higher classes, we find also mental qualities. The 
 union of these constitutes the individual. Every 
 person, or thing, or god is, therefore, a putting 
 together, a component individuality, a compound, 
 a confection (to coin an equivalent for the Buddhist 
 technical term).* As the relation of its component 
 parts one to another is ever changing, so it is never 
 the same for two consecutive moments ; and 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, no Confection, 
 without a becoming different. And there can be no 
 becoming different without, sooner or later, a passing 
 away.f 
 
 Such thoughts are really quite familiar to us. We 
 acknowledge them as true of all inorganic substances, 
 and of living organisms, including our own. Geology 
 has taught how the mightiest mountain chains, the 
 
 * Sankharo. 
 
 f See for the orthodox Buddhist terms the notes in my Buddhist 
 Stittas (Oxford, 1881), pp. 240, 241. 
 
The Signs, the Path, and the Fetters 123 
 
 " eternal hills," and the deepest ocean depths grow 
 into being and pass gradually away, as surely, and, 
 compared with eternity, as quickly, as the gorgeous 
 butterfly. Astronomy has taught us how the broad 
 earth itself had once no individuality, and how, as 
 soon as it began to be, it entered also on a progress of 
 becoming, of continual change, which will never end 
 till it has ceased to be. But the peoples of the West 
 have inherited a belief in spirits inside their bodies, 
 and in other spirits, good and evil, outside them- 
 selves, and to these spirits they attribute an individu- 
 ality without change, a being without becoming, a 
 beginning without an end. The Buddhists, like 
 them, inherited from the Animism (the spirit theo- 
 ries) of their remote ancestors the belief in the exist- 
 ence of these external spirits. But the belief (which 
 is not necessarily false because it is derived from the 
 Animism of the savage) has not constituted in their 
 minds any exception to the great Law of Imperman- 
 ence,* the most important of the conceptions which 
 underlie the Buddhist religion. 
 
 Buddhism goes even further, and says that all 
 those subtle and excellent qualities, emotions, senti* 
 ments, and desires which make up the noblest life of 
 man (and are now often referred to as " soul " ) are 
 really discouraged and hindered by this belief in the 
 
 * In Pali, Aniccam, see p. 43. 
 
124 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 permanence and eternity of a semi-material soul. 
 No training in ethics will be of any real advantage 
 to the man who still nourishes this worst of all 
 superstitions. 
 
 Secondly, it is a belief common to all schools of the 
 Buddhists that the origin of sorrow is precisely iden- 
 tical with the origin of individuality. Sorrow is in 
 fact the result of the effort which an individual has 
 to make to keep separate from the rest of existence. 
 To the universal law of composition and dissolution 
 men and gods form no exception. The unity of 
 forces which makes every sort of Being must sooner 
 or later be dissolved ; and it is to the effort to delay 
 that dissolution that all sorrow and all pain are due. 
 Wherever an individual has become separate from 
 the rest of existence, then immediately disease, de- 
 cay, and death begin to act upon it. Wherever 
 there is individuality there must be limitation ; 
 wherever there is limitation there must be ignorance ; 
 wherever there is ignorance there must be error; 
 wherever there is error there must sorrow come. As 
 soon as an individual begins to be, the outside world 
 plays upon that individual through the open doors 
 of its six senses, sensations are stirred up within it, 
 giving rise to ideas of attachment or of repugnance, 
 and hence to a desire to satisfy the feelings so ex- 
 cited. Sometimes, more often indeed than not, it is 
 
The Signs, the Path, and the Fetters 125 
 
 impossible for the being thus affected to satisfy these 
 cravings ; it cannot gain what it wants, it cannot 
 avoid what it dislikes. This inability involves pain 
 or sorrow. Birth (the springing of the being into 
 temporary individuality) is fraught with pain. It 
 brings in its wake the liability to disease and to de- 
 cay. And no separate entity can escape from 
 change, disintegration, and at last from death.- All 
 these result inseparably from the struggle necessary 
 to maintain and to carry on its separateness, its in- 
 dividuality. This is indeed, as I have elsewhere 
 pointed out, a larger generalisation than that which 
 says " A man is born to trouble as the sparks fly 
 upward." It is an attempt to give a scientific ex- 
 planation of the great fact of the existence of evil, 
 and certainly the most consistent, if not the most 
 successful, of all the efforts that have been made in 
 that direction. 
 
 The third doctrine only applies and carries on 
 these teachings of Buddhism with regard to indi- 
 viduality. It will be seen that individuality is not 
 denied. The quarrel of the Buddhist teacher is 
 against those delusions with respect to individu- 
 ality by which all persons still in the animistic 
 stage of thought are necessarily deceived. People 
 naturally think that they are quite separate both from 
 the world on which they tread, and from the people 
 
126 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 and other beings who inhabit it. They naturally think 
 that they are separate both from all things and beings 
 who have existed in the past, and all things and 
 beings who will have their existence in the future. 
 They even think that their own self is so important 
 that it cannot possibly ever cease to be, and they are 
 constantly concerning themselves with the ways and 
 means of making that little self of their own happy 
 and comfortable for ever, j The Buddhist theory is, 
 that these ideas are for the most part delusions ; 
 that men are blinded by delusion as to their ^parate- 
 ness from the external world, that they are blind- 
 ed by delusion as to their separateness from other 
 beings in the past and in the future. Men overlook 
 the fact that they are really no more separate than a 
 bubble in the foam of an ocean wave is separate 
 from the sea, or than a cell in a living organism is 
 separate from the organism of which it forms a part. 
 It is ignorance that thus leads them to think " This 
 is I," or " This is mine," just as a bubble or a cell 
 might think itself an independent being. 
 
 A watchman in a lofty tower sees a charioteer 
 driving his horse along the plain. The driver thinks 
 he is moving rapidly, and the horse in the pride of 
 life seems to scorn the earth from which it thinks 
 itself so separate ; but to the watchman above, horse 
 and chariot and driver seem to crawl along the 
 
The Si^ns, the Path, and the Fetters 127 
 
 ground, and to be as much a part of the earth as the 
 horse's mane, waving in the wind, is a part of the 
 horse itself, As a child grows up, its mind reflects 
 as in a mirror the image of the surrounding world, 
 and practically though unconsciously it regards itself 
 as the centre round which the whole universe turns. 
 Gradually its circle widens somewhat. But the 
 grown man never escapes from the delusions of self, 
 and spends his life in a constant round of desires 
 and cares, longing for objects which, when attained, 
 produce not happiness, but fresh desires and cares. 
 With the majority of men these cares are mean, 
 petty, and contemptible ; but even those whose am- 
 bition urges them to higher aims are equally seeking 
 after vanity, and only laying themselves open to 
 greater sorrows and more bitter disappointments. 
 
 So also it is with regard to the past and to the 
 future. Men, dazed by the soul theory, and wrapped 
 up in the present, are full of delusions about that. 
 But they fail also to see that they are the mere tem- 
 porary and passing result of causes that have been 
 at work during immeasurable ages in the past, and 
 that will continue to act for ages yet to come. It 
 has been the great service which Comtism has ren- 
 dered to humanity, that it has taught people to try 
 to realise the solidarity of the human race. The 
 Buddhist doctrine of Karma is an attempt made five 
 
128 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 hundred years before the birth of Christ to formulate 
 a similar but wider idea, j Men are merely the present 
 and temporary links in a long chain of cause and 
 effect, a chain in which no link is independent of the 
 rest, can get away from the rest, or can really, as 
 men think they can, start off, and continue to be by 
 itself without the rest. Each link is the result of all 
 that have gone before, and is part and parcel of all 
 that will follow. And just as truly as no man can 
 ever escape from his present surroundings, so can he 
 never really dissociate himself, though he always 
 takes it for granted that he can, either from the past 
 which has produced him, or from the future he is 
 helping to make, re is a real identity between 
 a man in his present life and in the future! But the 
 identity is not in a conscious soul which shall fly out 
 away from his body after he is dead. The real iden- 
 tity is that of cause and effect.^ A man thinks he 
 began to be a few years — twenty, forty, sixty years — 
 ago. There is some truth in that ; but in a much 
 larger, deeper, truer sense he has been (in the causes 
 of which he is the result) for co^m tless ages in the 
 past ; and those same causes (of which he is the tem- 
 porary effect) will continue in other like temporary 
 forms through countless _ ages yet to com e. In that 
 sense alone, according to Buddhism, each of us has 
 after death a continuing life. 
 
The Signs, the Path, and the Fetters 129 
 
 It is worse than no use, it is full of hindrance to a 
 man to 
 
 " Inflate himself with sweet delusive hope M 
 
 in the impossible. And not only is there no such 
 thing as an individuality which is permanent ; — even 
 were a permanent individuality to be possible, it 
 would not be desirable, for it is not desirable to be 
 separate. The effort to keep oneself separate may 
 succeed indeed for a time ; but so long as it is suc- 
 cessful it involves limitation, and therefore ignorance, 
 and therefore pain. No ! it is not separateness 
 you should hope and long for," says the Buddhist, 
 " it is union — the sense of oneness with all that now 
 is, that has ever been, that can ever be — the sense 
 that shall enlarge the horizon of your being to the 
 Umits_of the universe, to the boundaries of time and 
 space, that shall lift you up into a new plane far 
 beyond, outside, all mean and miserable care for self. 
 Why stand shrinking there? Give up the fool's 
 paradise of 'This is I,' and 'This is mine.' It is a 
 real fact — the greatest of realities — that you are 
 asked to grasp. Leap forward without fear ! You 
 shall find yourself in the ambrosial waters of Nir- 
 vana^ arM'^p^rt with the Arahats who have conquered 
 birth and death ! " 
 
 This theory of Karma is the doctrine which takes 
 
13° 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 the place in the Buddhist teaching of the very ancient 
 theory of " souls," which the Christians have inher- 
 ited from the savage beliefs of the earliest periods 
 of history. It is, at the same time, the Buddhist 
 explanation of the mystery of Fate, of the weight 
 of the universe pressing against each individual, 
 which the Christians would explain by the doctrine 
 of predestination. As I have said elsewhere: "The 
 fact underlying all these theories is acknowledged to 
 be a very real one. The history of an individual 
 does not begin with his birth, but has been endless 
 ages in the making ; and he cannot sever himself 
 from his surroundings, no, not for an hour. The 
 tiniest 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, and just that kind of 
 snowdrop, 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 
 when the mother plant first peeped above the 
 ground, or first met the embraces of the sun, or 
 when the bulb began to shoot above the soil, or at 
 any time which you and I can fix." A great Ameri- 
 can writer says : " It was a poetic attempt to lift this 
 mountain of Fate, to reconcile this despotism of race 
 with liberty, which led the Hindoos to say, Fate is 
 nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of 
 
The Signs, the Path, and the Fetters 131 
 
 existence. I find the coincidence of the extremes 
 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 deeper meaning into the words of the 
 poet : 
 
 * Our deeds follow us from afar ; 
 And what we have been makes us what we are.' "* 
 
 It follows from the above that the good Buddhist 
 cannot seek for any salvation which he is himself to 
 enjoy in any future world. The result of his good 
 actions, the fruit of his Karma, as the Buddhists 
 would call it, will survive when he is dead, and 
 advance the happiness of some other being, or of 
 some other beings, who will have no conscious iden- 
 tity with himself. But, so far as he can reach salva- 
 tion, he must reach it in this present world, he must 
 enjoy it in this present life. The Buddhist books 
 are constantly insisting upon the foolishness of 
 wasting time (when there is so much to do, both 
 for one's self and for others) in any hankering after 
 a supposed happiness of heaven. And salvation 
 here is precisely the being delivered from delusions 
 with regard to individuality, in which the ordinary 
 
 * Hibbert Lectures, p. 1 14. 
 
132 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 unconverted man is still entangled. When the mind 
 has become clear from these delusions, a new and 
 wider, brighter world reveals itself to the mind of 
 him who has " entered upon the Path." And the 
 Buddhist books are full of descriptions of the means 
 which must be adopted first to get rid of the delu- 
 sions, and secondly to gain the full heights of the 
 peaceful city of Nirvana, in which he who is free 
 from these delusions lives and moves and has his 
 being. 
 
 It was necessary to explain these three funda- 
 mental ideas, or what follows would not have been 
 understood ; for, though much in them is undeni- 
 ably true, and quite familiar to Western thought, yet 
 the union of the three implies a view of life quite 
 contradictory to the animistic notions accepted in 
 the West. For, if the very conditions of individu- 
 ality prevent its being permanent, and render inevit- 
 able its subjection to sorrow, then most of the 
 Western ideas on the subject would require modifi- 
 cation. And though the Buddhists do believe, in a 
 sense of their own, in a future life, in the hereafter, 
 yet that sense is so different from the one in which 
 Christians use the terms, that Christian theologians 
 would rightly class the Buddhists among those who 
 do not believe in it at all. 
 
 For two essential conditions of a future life, as 
 
The Signs , the ^ath, and the Fetters 13^ 
 
 ■ held in the West, and indeed wherever the " soul " 
 " theory is in vogue, are the continuation of memory 
 ; and the consciousness of identity. The " soul," in 
 
 flying away from the body, is supposed, by those 
 hypotheses, to carry with it the memory of these 
 I things at least which it recollected when in the body 
 I (and even, in some writers, of things which it had 
 : then forgotten), and to retain quite distinctly the 
 < sense of personal identity. The " soul " then en- 
 I ters upon a new life, either of weal, or of woe ; and 
 I though there has of late years been much discussion 
 I whether the life of woe is permanent or not, there 
 I is no question either as to the permanence or the 
 happiness of the life of those who are supposed to 
 • have entered the state of bliss. All this would be 
 
 ■ denied by the Buddhists. There is no passage of a 
 1" soul " or of an " I " in any sense, from the one life 
 
 |to the other. Their whole view of the matter is inde- 
 pendent of the time-honored soul theories, held in 
 icommon by the followers of every other creed. The 
 Ijonly link they acknowledge between the two beings 
 *(in the one existence and in the next) who belong 
 to the same series of Karma, is the Karma itself. 
 The new existence is never either absolutely per- 
 manent or absolutely free from sorrow. And it is not 
 ■b. future life of the same being, but a new life of 
 \what we should call) another being. For there is 
 
134 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 neither memory nor conscious identity to make the 
 two lives one. 
 
 It would be a pretty piece of casuistry to say the 
 Buddhist believes in a future life in our sense. But 
 they are none the less earnest in their belief in it in 
 their own. In that, it has been a deep reality to 
 them, all through the long history of their faith, 
 and in whatever age or clime their religion has been 
 adopted. This is at least suggestive, in showing 
 that one may pour a very different meaning into 
 the terms " future " and "life," and yet they may 
 still retain their influence over the hearts of men. 
 
 We have had thus far an explanation of three fun- 
 damental doctrines which are to be understood as 
 underlying all Buddhist statements. These are the 
 three doctrines of Aniccam, Dukkham, and Anat- 
 tam, that is to say, of 
 
 The Impermanence of every Individual, 
 
 The Sorrow inherent in Individuality, 
 VThe Non-reality of any abiding Principle, 
 of any Soul in the Christian sense. ^ How then did 
 Gotama, having accepted propositions so funda- 
 mentally opposed to all that we are accustomed to 
 find in our own religion, propose to solve the prob- 
 lem of salvation, to untie the knot of existence, to 
 find a way of escape. 
 
 The solution was summed up in that memorable 
 
The Signs, the Path, and the Fetters 135 
 
 discourse to his first converts, the circumstances of 
 which were described to you at some length in the 
 last lecture. I told you then how, in the discourse 
 entitled the " Foundation of the Kingdom of Right- 
 eomsness " the Buddha had laid down the essence 
 of his system. This sermon has a merit very great 
 in sermons, that of exceeding brevity, and with your 
 permission I will read it you, omitting repetitions, 
 and adding a few notes of my own. 
 
 " There are two extremes, O recluses, which he 
 who has gone forth ought not to follow : The habit- 
 ual practice, on the one hand, of those things whose 
 attraction depends upon the pleasures of sense, 
 and especially of sensuality (a practice low and 
 pagan, fit only for the worldly-minded, unworthy, 
 of no abiding profit) ; and the habitual practice, 
 on the other hand, of self-mortification (a practice 
 painful, unworthy, and equally of no abiding 
 profit). 
 
 " There is a Middle Way, O recluses, avoiding 
 these two extremes, discovered by the Tathagata — 
 a path which opens the eyes and bestows under- 
 standing, which leads to peace of mind, to the 
 higher wisdom, to full enlightenment, to Nirvana. [ W<^) 
 
 " And which is that Middle Way ? Verily it is 
 the Noble Eightfold Path. That is to say : 
 
 x 
 
136 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 " Right Views (free from superstition or delu- 
 sion) — 
 
 " Right Aspirations (high, and worthy of the in- 
 telligent, worthy man) — 
 
 " Right Speech (kindly, open, truthful) — 
 u Right Conduct (peaceful, honest, pure) — 
 " Right Livelihood (bringing hurt or danger to no 
 living thing) — 
 
 " Right Effort (in self-training and in self-con- 
 trol)— 
 
 " Right Mindfulness (the active, watchful mind) — 
 " Right Rapture (in deep meditation on the reali- 
 ties of life). 
 
 " Now this, O recluses, is the noble truth concern- 
 ing suffering. 
 
 " Birth is painful, and so is old age ; disease is 
 painful, and so is death. Union with the unpleas- 
 ant is painful, painful is separation from the pleas- 
 ant ; and any craving that is unsatisfied, that too is 
 painful. In brief, the five aggregates which spring 
 from attachment (the conditions of individuality 
 and its cause), they are painful. 
 
 " Now this, O recluses, is the noble truth concern- 
 ing the origin of suffering. Verily it originates in 
 that craving thirst which causes the renewal of be- 
 comings, is accompanied by sensual delight, and 
 
The Signs, the Path, and the Fetters 137 
 
 seeks satisfaction now here, now there — that is to 
 say, the craving for the gratification of the passions, 
 or the craving for a future life, or the craving for 
 success in this present life (the lust of the flesh, the 
 lust of life, or the pride of life). 
 
 " Now this, O recluses, is the noble truth concern- 
 ing the destruction of suffering. 
 
 " Verily, it is the destruction, in which no craving 
 remains over, of this very thirst ; the laying aside 
 of, the getting rid of, the being free from, the har- 
 bouring no longer of, this thirst. 
 
 " And this, O recluses, is the noble truth concern- 
 ing the way which leads to the destruction of suffer- 
 ing. 
 
 " Verily, it is this Noble Eightfold Path ; that is 
 to say : 
 
 " Right Views (free from superstition and delu- 
 sion) — 
 
 " Right Aspirations (high, and worthy of the in- 
 telligent, earnest man) — 
 
 " Right Speech (kindly, open, truthful) — 
 " Right Conduct (peaceful, honest, pure) — 
 " Right Livelihood (bringing hurt or danger to no 
 living thing) — 
 
 " Right Effort (in self-training and in self-con- 
 trol)— 
 
 u Right Mindfulness (the active, watchful mind) — 
 
138 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 " Right Rapture (in deep meditation on the reali- 
 ties of life)." 
 
 Then with regard to each of the Four Truths, the 
 Teacher declared that it was not among the doctrines 
 handed down ; but that there arose within him the 
 eye firstly to see it, then to know that he would un- 
 derstand it, and thirdly, to know that he had grasped 
 it; there arose within him the knowledge (of its 
 nature), the understanding (of its cause), the wis- 
 dom (to guide in the path of tranquillity), and the 
 light (to dispel darkness from it). And he said : 
 
 " So long, O recluses, as my knowledge and in- 
 sight were not quite clear regarding each of these 
 four noble truths in this triple order, in this twelve- 
 fold manner — so long I knew that I had not at- 
 tained to the full insight of that wisdom which is 
 unsurpassed in the heavens or on earth, among the 
 whole race of recluses and Brahmins, gods or men. 
 But now I have attained it. This knowledge and 
 insight have arisen within me. Immovable is the 
 emancipation of my heart. This is my last exist- 
 ence. There will be no rebirth for me. 
 
 " Thus spake the Blessed One. The five ascetics, 
 glad at heart, exalted the words of the Blessed 
 One."^ 
 
The Signs, the Path, and the Fetters 139 
 
 The passages in brackets have been added chiefly 
 from the commentary, for the reasons stated in my 
 Buddhist Sattas. There is no doubt, I think, that 
 we have here not only the actual basis of the Bud- 
 dha's teaching, but also the very words in which he 
 was pleased to state it. The early disciples who 
 have preserved this record are not likely to have 
 been mistaken on the first point, and the essential 
 words of the discourse, however shortened, are not 
 likely to have been much altered. The views here 
 set forth are so remarkable as the basis of a religion 
 promulgated in the sixth century B. C, that to sup- 
 pose the disciples to have invented them is to credit 
 them with a power of intelligence and imagination 
 no less than that of their revered master. But to 
 the historian it would be much the same thing 
 whether the Foundation of the Kingdom of Right- 
 eousness were really due to the master or his follow- 
 ers. The remarkable fact is, that we have here set 
 forth a view of religion entirely independent of the 
 soul theories, on which all the various philosophies 
 and religions then current in India were based ; en- 
 tirely free from the idolatries and superstitions of 
 the day. And if this Buddhist ideal of the perfect 
 life is remarkable when compared with the thought 
 of India at that time, it is equally instructive when 
 looked at from the comparative point of view. 
 
140 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 We are struck at once with the analogy between 
 it and the ideals of the last pagan thinkers in Europe 
 before the rise of Christianity, and of some of the 
 most advanced thinkers of to-day. And the similar- 
 ity is no mere chance. It is due to the influence of 
 similar causes. When, after many centuries of 
 thought, a pantheistic or monotheistic unity has 
 been evolved out of the chaos of polytheism — which 
 is itself only a modified form of animistic polydae- 
 monism, — there is a natural tendency towards the 
 formation of a school in which theological discus- 
 sions have lost their interest ; and men have sought 
 for a new solution of the deeper questions of life in 
 a new system in which man was to work out, here 
 on earth, his own salvation. It is their place in the 
 progress of thought that explains why there is so 
 much in common between the greatest philosopher 
 of India, the Konfucian School in China, the Stoics 
 of Greece and Rome, and some of the newest schools 
 in France, in Germany, and among ourselves. 
 
 But we must not push the analogy too far. Each 
 of these schools, though dispensing with the theo- 
 logies, has peculiarities of its own, the result of the 
 circumstances of its birth. None of the others are 
 quite so frankly and entirely independent as Bud- 
 dhism of the two theories of God and the soul. 
 None of them have combined the conditions of self- 
 
The Signs, the Path, and the Fetters 141 
 
 mastery in quite the method or order found in the 
 Noble Path. None of them have laid quite the 
 same stress on the necessity of a co-ordinated activ- 
 ity of moral earnestness, emotional culture, and 
 intellectual strength. 
 
 There is a sentence, often repeated in the oldest 
 Suttas, which runs as follows : 
 
 " Great is the fruit, great the advantage of the 
 rapture of contemplation (Samadhi) when set round 
 with upright conduct. Great is the fruit, great the 
 advantage of intellect when set round with the 
 rapture of contemplation. The mind set round with 
 intelligence is set free from the great evils — that is 
 to say, from sensuality, from future life, from de- 
 lusion, and from ignorance." * 
 
 Now we have here set forth in this Eightfold 
 Noble Path the positive side of Gautama's ideal. 
 In discussing the path in other Dialogues or Suttas, 
 there is constant reference to the Ten "Samyo- 
 janas " or Fetters, which those who have entered 
 upon the Path have gradually to break. It would 
 complete the picture if I give you a short sketch of 
 these ten points, though of course to make them 
 fully clear one ought to have a lecture for each. 
 
 * See, for instance, Book of the Great Decease, i., 12 ; and my note 
 on that passage in Buddhist Suttas, p. n ; and compare the Bhaga- 
 vad Glta, xii., 19 ; West, Pahlavi Texts, iii., 37 ; Sumangala Vila- 
 sini, 291, 298 ; and Anguttara Nikaya. iii. 86. 
 
142 Buddhism 
 
 The first is the " Sakkaya-ditthi," or Delusion 
 of Self. After what has been said, you will easily 
 understand what is implied by this term. And it is 
 most significant that this delusion of self should be 
 the very first fetter that the good Buddhist has to 
 break, should be placed at the very entrance, as 
 it were, of the path to perfection. So long as a man 
 harbours any of those delusions of self which are 
 the heritage of the thoughtless, so long is it impossi- 
 ble for him even to enter upon the path. So long 
 as a man does not realise the identity of himself 
 with those incalculable causes in the past, which 
 have produced his present temporary fleeting in- 
 dividuality, so long as he considers himself to be a 
 permanent being, and is accustomed to use the ex- 
 pression " This is I " and " This is mine," without a 
 full knowledge of the limitations which the actual 
 facts of existence impose upon their meaning, so 
 long is it impossible for him to make any progress 
 along the line of Buddhist self-culture and self-con- 
 trol. Until he has become fully conscious of the 
 sorrow that is inherent in individuality, it will be 
 impossible for him to begin to walk along the path 
 which is the destruction of sorrow, and the end 
 whereof is peace. 
 
 The next Fetter that he has to break is the fetter 
 off Vicikiccha, or Doubt. This is already defined 
 
The Signs, the Path, and the Fetters 143 
 
 in the Dhamma sangani (§ 1004), one of the books of 
 the Abhidhamma, as being divided into eight 
 divisions. It is doubt in the Teacher, in the 
 Dhamma, in the Order ; in the System of Training, 
 and in the past, future, and present action of Karma, 
 and in the qualities which arise from Karma. Hav- 
 ing realised the impermanence of self and the sorrow 
 wrapped up in individuality, he must be harassed 
 by no doubts as to the insight of the Blessed One, 
 or as to the efficacy of the means set forth in the 
 Dhamma by which a man (working himself for 
 himself, and being a lamp and a guide to himself) 
 can, without relying on any external assistance, real- 
 ise his aspirations after the higher life. In this con- 
 nection I would like to read you a few words from 
 the Mahd Parinibbdna Sictta (or Book of the Great 
 Decease}, addressed by Gotama, just before his death, 
 to his favourite disciple Ananda. 
 
 " Now very soon afterwards the Blessed One be- 
 gan to recover. When he had quite got rid of the 
 sickness he went out and sat down behind his cham- 
 ber, on a seat spread out there. And the venerable 
 Ananda went to the place where the Blessed One 
 was, and saluted him, and took a seat respectfully 
 on one side, and addressed the Blessed One and 
 said : 
 
144 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 " I have beheld, Lord, how the Blessed One was 
 in health, and have beheld how the Blessed One had 
 to suffer, and though at the sight of the illness of 
 the Blessed One my body became weak as a creeper, 
 and the horizon became dim to me, and my faculties 
 were no longer clear, yet notwithstanding I took 
 some little comfort at the thought that the Blessed 
 One would not pass away until at least he had left 
 instructions as touching the Order." 
 
 " What then, Ananda ? Does the Order expect that 
 of me ? I have preached the Truth without making 
 any distinction between exotericandesoteric doctrine. 
 For in respect of the truth, Ananda, the Tathagata 
 has no such thing as the closed fist of a teacher who 
 keeps some things back. Surely, Ananda, should 
 there be anyone who harbours the thought, ' It is I 
 who should lead the brotherhood,' or 1 The Order is 
 dependent upon me,' it is he who should lay down 
 instructions in any matter concerning the Order. 
 Now the Tathagata, Ananda, thinks not that it is 
 he who should lead the brotherhood, or that the 
 Order is dependent upon him. Why then should he 
 leave instructions in any matter concerning the Or- 
 der? I too, O Ananda, am now grown old and full 
 of years, my journey is drawing to a close, I have 
 reached my sum of days, I am turning eighty years 
 of age. And just as a worn out cart, Ananda, can 
 
The Signs, the Path, and the Fetters 145 
 
 only by careful tying up be made to move along, so, 
 methink, the body of the Tathagata can only by 
 much patching up be still kept going. It is only, 
 Ananda, when the Tathagata, ceasing to attend to 
 any outward thing, or to experience any sensation, 
 becomes plunged in the rapture of contemplation 
 that is concerned with no material object — it is only 
 then that the body of the Tathagata is at ease. 
 
 " Therefore, O Ananda, be ye lamps unto your- 
 selves. Be ye a refuge to yourselves. Betake your- 
 selves to no external refuge. Hold fast to the truth 
 (the Dhamma) as your lamp. Hold fast as a refuge 
 to the truth. Look not for refuge to any one except 
 yourselves . . . and whosoever, Ananda, either 
 now or after I am dead, shall act thus, it is only they 
 among my recluses who shall reach the very Top- 
 most Height, (that is, the Nirvana of Arahatship) — 
 and even they must be willing to learn." * 
 
 It is perfectly clear from this striking passage that 
 doubt in the Buddha cannot mean doubt in his abil- 
 ity to save. No man can save another. No one can 
 save a man, save only himself. But the Master has 
 discovered and shewn the way by which a man can 
 save himself. It is that which constitutes his Buddha- 
 hood, and the doubt referred to is doubt in that. 
 
 * Book of the Great Decease, ii., 31-35, translated in my Buddhist 
 Suttas, pp. 35-39- 
 
146 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 And there is a good reason for the place this link, 
 the link of doubt, occupies in the chain. To enter 
 on the path one has to get rid, not of individuality, 
 but of the delusions that cluster round the idea. 
 When a man has seen through the mist, and realised 
 that there is no permanent ego within him to gain an 
 eternal paradise beyond the grave, then the tempta- 
 tion lies near, having found the old theologies want- 
 ing, to give up everything in despair, and betake 
 himself to the lower life of ease and pleasure. Then 
 is felt the necessity of confidence in the insight of 
 the Buddha who has pointed the way along which a 
 man may work out his own salvation, confidence in 
 the adequacy of the Dhamma he has proclaimed, 
 confidence in the reliability of the Order who hand 
 it oh, confidence in the unchangeable reality of the 
 law by which the past and the future are bound in 
 one. 
 
 The third Fetter is the Fetter of SlLABBATAPARA- 
 MASA, or of the efficacy of good works and cere- 
 monies. It is essential that the man, who enters on 
 the system of ethical training which we now call 
 Buddhism, should begin by clearing away the rub- 
 bish of false beliefs, of sham supports which really 
 afford no aid. Years ago, in Ceylon, when my old 
 teacher Yatramulle Unnanse was explainingthis term 
 to me, he let drop the admission that in his eyes Chris- 
 
The Signs, the Path, and the Fetters 147 
 
 tianity came under this category. But of course in 
 the early days of Buddhism the protest was against 
 the existing rites and ceremonies then practised by 
 the Brahmins in India ; and it also included a pro- 
 test (precisely similar to one that has^ often been 
 urged by Christian theologians of the reformed 
 schools) against the notion, that mere morality in 
 the ordinary sense, the mere performance, however 
 exact, of outward duties, can alone suffice. 
 
 To have broken these three Fetters constitutes 
 what the Buddhists call conversion, a state of mind 
 similar in its results, and in much of its connotation, 
 to conversion as understood by Christians. A con- 
 verted man, free from the delusions of self, from 
 doubt, and from dependence upon works and cere- 
 monies, is called technically the sotdpanno — he who 
 has entered upon the stream. And having once 
 entered upon the stream he can never be turned 
 back. For the doctrine of the Final Assurance of 
 the saints is part of the Buddhist system. 
 
 The fourth Fetter that he has to break is the Fet- 
 ter of Kama (not Karma), or sensuality, bodily pas- 
 sions. This protest is common to all the ethical 
 systems of the world ; and the centre of interest 
 from the comparative point of view is the degree in 
 which the suppression of the bodily passions is incul- 
 cated in any one of them. In the Buddhist system 
 
(48 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 we find that asceticism is as strongly objected to on 
 the one hand as lust is on the other. You will have 
 noticed that point in the first sermon, and also in 
 the description of the Buddha's daily life. The 
 Buddha himself is always represented as having been 
 well clothed, well fed. And there are elaborate 
 regulations in the rules of the order for the constant 
 use of the bath, with which most of the hermitages 
 were provided. Lay Buddhists were mostly mono- 
 gamists, but the practice of celibacy and abstinence 
 from intoxicating drinks was enjoined upon the 
 members of the Order, and was a necessary condition 
 of Arahatship. The point evidently is, that the 
 mind should not be occupied either with the satisfac- 
 tion or with the suppression of the ordinary passions 
 of mankind, and, with the two exceptions above men- 
 tioned (of celibacy and abstinence in the Order), the 
 doctrine was one of moderation and temperance. 
 
 The next Fetter, the fifth, which the converted 
 man has to break is Patigha, or ill-will. The state 
 of mind here denoted is that which is produced by 
 a consciousness of difference, and is best illustrated 
 by the meditation called the Brahma Vihara, or 
 " the Highest Condition," — practised by the early 
 Buddhists to get rid of this sense of difference. It 
 is the Buddha who is represented as speaking : 
 
 " And he lets his mind pervade one quarter of the 
 
The Signs, the Path, and the Fetters 149 
 
 world with thoughts of love, and so the second, and 
 so the third, and so the fourth. And thus the whole 
 wide world, above, below, around and everywhere, 
 does he continue to pervade with heart of Love, far 
 reaching, grown great, and beyond measure. 
 
 u Just, Vasettha, as a mighty trumpeter makes 
 himself heard, and that without difficulty, towards 
 all the four directions ; even so of all things that 
 have shape or form, there is not one that he passes 
 by or leaves aside, but regards them all with mind 
 set free and deep-felt love." * 
 
 The exercise is then repeated, substituting each 
 time for Love, first Pity, then Sympathy, and then 
 Equanimity. By this means the strength of the 
 fifth fetter is gradually weakened, and at last 
 destroyed. 
 
 To have conquered these two enemies of the 
 higher life lands the " sotapanno " at the end of the 
 Third Stage, the whole of the Second and Third 
 Stages being occupied with the struggle against 
 them. The path leading immediately to Arahatship 
 is occupied with sundering the last five of these fet- 
 ters, which one may take together. They are : (6) 
 Ruparaga, the love of life on earth, literally, in the 
 worlds of Form ; (7) ARUPARAGA, desire for a future 
 
 * Mahd Sudassana Sutta, ii., 8, and often elsewhere. See my 
 note at Buddhist Suttas, p. 2QT. 
 
Buddhism 
 
 life in heaven, literally, in the Formless worlds ; (8) 
 MANO, which is Pride; (9) UDDHACCA, or Self- 
 righteousness, and (10) AvijjA, or Ignorance. We 
 find here again that the Buddhist ethics harps once 
 more upon the old question, which crops up so often, 
 of the folly of a craving after a future life. And we 
 ought not to be surprised to find that it is not ex- 
 pected that this inherited desire, which really owes 
 its strength to the great length of time during which 
 it has grown up, should be quite extinguished until 
 nearly the end of the struggle, until victory is nearly 
 won. It is quite characteristic also of the Buddhist 
 faith to find self-righteousness and ignorance placed 
 at the very end of the list, as the last and most diffi- 
 cult enemies which the good Buddhist, in his struggle 
 for self-mastery, has to overcome. 
 
 To have acquired, as an habitual frame of mind, 
 the eight positive characteristics laid down in the 
 Noble Path, to have got rid of the ten failings speci- 
 fied in the list of the Fetters, constitutes Arahatship, 
 the Buddhist ideal of life. Directly or indirectly 
 this is the one subject of the earliest Buddhist books. 
 The most eloquent passages lead up to it ; the long- 
 est (and to us, sometimes I am afraid, the most 
 tedious) deal with the details of it. One might fill 
 pages with the awe-struck and ecstatic praise lavished 
 in the writings of the early Buddhists, men or 
 
The Signs, the Path, and the Fetters 151 
 
 women, who had reached this state, upon the glori- 
 ous bliss and peace of the mental condition it in- 
 volved. They had endless love names for it, each 
 based on one of the phases of the many-sided whole. 
 It is Emancipation, the Island of refuge, the End 
 of craving, the State of purity, the Supreme, the 
 Transcendent, the Uncreate, the Tranquil, the Un- 
 changing, the Going-out, the Unshaken, the Imperish- 
 able, the Ambrosia, and so on, in almost endless 
 variety. One of the epithets is very familiar to us 
 in the West ; being indeed much more exclusively 
 used by European, than by Buddhist writers, as a 
 name for the Buddhist ideal. This epithet is Nirvana, 
 " the going out " ; that is to say, the going out, in 
 the heart, of the three fires of lust, ill-will, and dul- 
 ness. It is very characteristic that the going out of 
 dulness should be part of the Buddhist salvation. 
 But our hour has come to its close. We have no 
 time left in which to discuss the exact force of each 
 of these epithets, or to attempt, further than has 
 already been possible, to describe the Arahat. We 
 shall have to return to the subject in the next 
 lecture. It must suffice to remind you here that so 
 predominant is this subject in the Buddhist Pitakas 
 that it is not too much to say that Arahatship is 
 Buddhism. And I will close by quoting (with the 
 alteration of a single word) a poem by an English 
 
152 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 author, who, while not thinking at all of Buddhism, 
 has managed to convey, in the language of the nine- 
 teenth century, the kind of feeling that animated the 
 Arahats of old. 
 
 u 'T is self whereby we suffer. 'T is the greed 
 To grasp, the hunger to assimilate 
 All that earth holds of fair and delicate, 
 The lust to blend with beauteous lives, to feed 
 And take our fill of loveliness, which breed 
 
 This anguish of the soul intemperate. 
 'T is self that turns to harm and poisonous hate 
 The calm clear life of love that Arahats lead. 
 Oh ! that 't were possible this self to burn 
 
 In the pure flame of joy contemplative ! 
 Then might we love all loveliness, nor yearn 
 With tyrannous longings ; undisturbed might live 
 Greeting the summer's and the spring's return, 
 Nor wailing that their bloom is fugitive."* 
 
 * From John Addington Symonds's Animi Figura (Eros and 
 Anteros). 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 The Secret of Buddhism. 
 
 Part II. — The Wheel of life and Arahatship. 
 
 WE can now, I think, venture on an explana- 
 tion of the Wheel of Life with which we 
 opened the last lecture. You will recollect that I 
 read you a list of the successive links in the circum- 
 ference of that wheel, an ancient picture of which 
 has been discovered in Ajanta. It was the discovery 
 of the chain of causation depicted on this wheel, 
 which, in the Vinaya account of the attainment 
 of Buddhahood, is said to be one result of the 
 Buddha's extraordinary insight. And the chain of 
 causation itself is a kind of summary of the way in 
 which the real facts of existence presented them- 
 selves to the Buddha's mind. We had yesterday a 
 description of the Noble Eightfold Path, and of the 
 Ten Fetters which the Buddhist has to break. But 
 why should he go along the path ? Why should he 
 break the fetters? What is the prison-house in 
 153 
 
154 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 which he is chained up ? What is the goal to which 
 he hopes the path will carry him ? 
 
 The answers to these questions must occupy us 
 to-day. The salvation the Buddhist seeks cannot 
 be accurately described either as a salvation from 
 hell, or as a salvation from sin. The Indian belief 
 in transmigration made the belief in a hell 
 (and for the matter of that, in a heaven, in the 
 Christian sense) impossible. All the beings in all 
 the heavens and hells would necessarily die (as we 
 should say), fall from that state (as the Indians 
 would say), when the causal efficacy of the Karma 
 which put them there had been exhausted. The 
 terrible thing was not a re-birth in hell so much as 
 the far more staggering and terrifying conception 
 that there was no escape from the round of trans- 
 migration at all. A being in a state of misery, or in 
 a state of happiness, might be perfectly sure that 
 that state would sooner or later come to an end ; 
 but it would come to an end only by the commence- 
 ment of another state, of another birth. And that 
 birth would be inevitably attended by all the results 
 inherent in the limitations of individuality. And 
 the struggle necessary to keep the individuality alive 
 would bring with it fresh cares and troubles, old age 
 and death, grief, lamentations, wailings, and despair. 
 This is the evil to be avoided. 
 
The Wheel of Life and Arahatship 155 
 
 Arahatship is no doubt an end in itself. It is a 
 state of bliss unspeakable. But it is also an escape 
 from the whirlpool of re-births, and it is as a salva- 
 tion from that, that it is put forward as the goal to 
 be sought for, the aim to be realised. And the 
 wheel of life is an attempt to describe the real 
 causes which keep men bound in the whirlpool of 
 re-births. 
 
 This belief in the whirlpool of re-births was part 
 of the dominant creed at the time when the Buddha 
 worked out his system. The theologies had their 
 theory of escape from it — a theory only made work- 
 able by the introduction of a deus ex machind. The 
 Buddha was bound to give his answer too. It is a 
 kind of necessary argumentum ad hominem. But 
 though the doctrine of Arahatship can be considered 
 on its merits, apart from the theory of transmigra- 
 tion, yet the Wheel of Life also is none the less a 
 part, and an important part, of his system. 
 
 AvijjA — ignorance — is the first link in the chain 
 of causation. It is the picture of Avijja which stands 
 hard-by the first spoke in the wheel of life. The 
 symbol in the Ajanta fresco is a blind camel led by 
 a driver. In the Tibetan picture it is simply a blind 
 man feeling his way with a stick. And in the repro- 
 duction of a Japanese illustration of the wheel, pub- 
 lished last year by Professor Bastian of Berlin, the 
 
15^ 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 figure is demon. In any case, what is meant is, 
 that it is Ignorance which is the cause of Individu- 
 ality. To attempt to explain what lies behind this 
 enigmatic expression would occupy the rest of my 
 time, nor even then perhaps would the mystery be 
 satisfactorily cleared up. The course of reasoning 
 is analogous to that by which a modern European 
 philosopher seeks to find the explanation of life in 
 the " unconscious will to live " ; and you may un- 
 derstand Avijja, for our present purpose, as a pro- 
 ductive unconscious ignorance. 
 
 The second link is the Sankharas, or conforma- 
 tions (literally, Confections). In the Dialogues 
 they are divided into three — thought, word, and 
 deed.* But in the Abhidhamma and in the later 
 books, they are divided into fifty-two divisions of 
 thought, word, and deed, and mean practically all 
 those immaterial qualities and capabilities which go 
 to make up the individual. They are represented 
 in the Ajanta fresco, by a potter working at his 
 wheel, surrounded by pots ; in the later Tibetan 
 picture, by the wheel and the pots without the pot- 
 ter; and in the still later Japanese picture, by the 
 potter's wheel alone. 
 
 It is curious that, as is pointed out by Mr. Wad- 
 dell, this is precisely the Egyptian symbol of the 
 Creator. It represents no doubt the sbanino- nf the 
 
 * See my wife's article in the Journal R. A. 
 
The Wheel of Life and Arahatship 157 
 
 crude and formless mental aggregates by the Karma, 
 and an old Sanskrit poem sheds light upon it when 
 it says : 
 
 " Our mind is but a lump of clay 
 Which Fate, grim potter, holds 
 On sorrow's wheel that rolls alway, 
 And, as he pleases, moulds." 
 
 The third is VlSfNANA, or Consciousness, repre- 
 sented in the fresco and the Japanese picture by an 
 ape; in the Tibetan counterpart, by an ape climbing 
 a tree. The Tibetan lamas explain this as showing 
 the rudimentary being becoming anthropoid, but 
 still an unreasoning automaton. I am very doubt- 
 ful of the validity of this explanation ; but there 
 can, I think, be no question that the stage typified 
 is the first rise of consciousness. 
 
 The fourth link is Nama-RUPA, or Name and 
 Form, represented on the fresco by two figures, the 
 meaning of which I cannot make out. In the Tib- 
 etan picture, it is a boat crossing a stream ; and in 
 the Japanese, the same with a man in the boat. 
 The idea is no doubt that of a man crossing the 
 ocean of life. He has now acquired a name and 
 outward form, and has started on an earthly career 
 as a man, endowed with self-consciousness and all 
 the capacities of a sentient individual.* 
 
 * That the word " name" should imply mind is due to the pre- 
 Buddhistic use of the word, the result of the superstition that a man's 
 name was a part of his personality. 
 
i5« 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 The fifth is the Sal-Ayatana, the six " pro- 
 vinces " or " territories," i. e., of the senses • to wit, 
 our five senses and the mind (or mano), regarded 
 as itself an organ of sense. These are represented in 
 the fresco as the mask of a face, with eyes, nose, 
 ears, and mouth, and with blank eye-sockets in the 
 forehead to represent the inner sense or mind. 
 This face is, as it were, " The Empty House of the 
 Senses," and is represented in the Tibetan picture 
 by a house with six windows ; and in the Japanese, 
 by the figure of a man. 
 
 The sixth link is Phasso, or Contact, which, in 
 the fresco, is unfortunately missing, but is repre- 
 sented in the Tibetan picture by a man seated with 
 an arrow entering the eye. The idea, no doubt, is, 
 that for a sense-perception to be complete you must 
 have the object-impression from without, as well as 
 the sense-organ to receive the impression. 
 
 The seventh link in the chain is Vedana, or Sensa- 
 tion, effaced in the fresco, but represented in both the 
 Tibetan and Japanese pictures by lovers embracing. 
 
 Then we have Tanha, or Thirst, also effaced in 
 the fresco, but represented in the two pictures by a 
 man drinking. That craving should follow from 
 sensation, and sensation from contact, is perfectly 
 simple ; and has been well illustrated by Sir Edwin 
 Arnold's lines in The Light of Asia : 
 
The Wheel of Life and Arahatship 159 
 
 " Trishna, that thirst which makes the living drink 
 Deeper and deeper and deeper of the false salt waves, 
 Whereon they float, — pleasures, ambition, wealth, 
 Praise, fame or domination, conquest, love. 
 Rich meats and robes and fair abodes and pride 
 Of ancient lines, and lust of days, and strife 
 To live, and sins that flow from strife, some sweet, 
 Some bitter. Thus Life's thirst quenches itself 
 With draughts which double thirst."* 
 
 The ninth link is U pad ANA — literally, Grasping — 
 represented in the Tibetan picture by a man pick- 
 ing flowers. It typifies the attachment to worldly 
 things which the human being ignorantly grasps at, 
 supposing they will quench this craving thirst which 
 has arisen from sensation. 
 
 Now the tenth link is BHAVA, literally, "Becom- 
 ing," the tendency to be. This idea, the symbol for 
 which is effaced in the fresco and indistinct in the 
 Japanese, is represented in the Tibetan picture by a 
 pregnant woman ; and the eleventh link — J ATI, Birth, 
 — is represented by the birth of a child. The idea, no 
 doubt, is that it is the grasping disposition which 
 leads to re-birth. So Plato in his simile of re-birth 
 (in the Phaedd) represents the soul, which should 
 rise to heaven, as dragged down into re-existence by 
 the steed Epithumia, that is, craving or appetite; 
 and he explains this by saying: "Through craving 
 
 * Light of 'Asia, p. 165. 
 
i6o 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 after the corporeal, which never leaves them, they 
 are imprisoned finally in another body," etc. He 
 then goes on to give examples, and winds up with 
 the absolutely Indian saying, that " He who is a 
 philosopher, or lover of learning, and is entirely pure 
 at departing, is alone permitted to attain to the 
 divine nature." As I have quoted the whole pas- 
 sage, together with its context, in my Hibbert Lect- 
 ures, pp. 95-98, I will only remind you here of this 
 curious coincidence between Eastern and Western 
 thought. 
 
 The twelfth and last link in the chain of causa- 
 tion is simply the inevitable result of the eleventh 
 — the old age, decay, and death, with the accom- 
 panying grief, which follow upon each new birth. 
 
 The whole picture of this wheel or chain of causa- 
 tion seems to me to be an attempt at expressing 
 what happens in every human life. I do not think 
 that each separate link is necessarily intended to 
 follow the preceding one in time. It is not intended, 
 e.g., that link No. 3 is necessarily posterior in time 
 to link No. 2. There is a dependence of each one 
 of these links upon the other, but the dependence is 
 not always of the same kind, either of time or of 
 cause and effect. This has been well pointed out by 
 Mr. H. C. Warren of Cambridge, Mass., in a very 
 
The Wheel of Life and Arahatship 161 
 
 suggestive article in the Journal of the American 
 Oriental Society for 1893. But the interpretation of 
 the wheel is not yet, to my mind, entirely satis- 
 factory. The text only lies at present before us in 
 the extremely curt phraseology of the passage I 
 have read; and no commentary upon it is as yet 
 accessible. And even when we have the help of 
 further passages in the Pali, the whole subject will 
 have to be studied by someone more intimately ac- 
 quainted with the history of philosophic conceptions 
 than I can claim to be. My wife has pointed 
 out, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 
 for 1894 (p. 388), that, in the Orphic theogony, 
 we come across the notion of re-birth considered 
 as a weary unending circle of birth, a wheel of 
 fate {xvhXos tt}$ ysveasoos, 6 rijs poipas rpoxo5). 
 From this wheel the soul longs to escape, and en- 
 treats the gods, especially Dionysos, for release from 
 the wheel. Again, in the verses inscribed on one 
 of the three golden funereal tablets dug up near the 
 site of Sybaris, it is said, "And thus I escape from 
 the cycle, the misery-laden." 
 
 Pindar, Empedokles, and Plato, as is well known, 
 all entertained the notion of repeated re-birth in this 
 world, which, according to the later writers, often 
 included in its phases incarnation as an animal or 
 even as a vegetable. It is possible that all three de- 
 
Buddhism 
 
 rived this notion from Pythagoras, and throughout 
 there runs the Orphic (and also the Buddhist) idea 
 of each re-birth being a stage in a course of moral 
 evolution and effort after purification. Empedokles, 
 however, sees not a wheel, but rather a toilsome 
 road or roads of life. Professor Garbe, in his book 
 which I quoted in the first lecture, the just published 
 Sdnkhya Philosophie y repeats his opinion expressed 
 in the Monist of January, 1894, that the Greeks did 
 actually borrow, in other respects, from the Indian 
 philosophers. And Professor von Schroeder, in his 
 treatise Pythagoras und die Inder, seems to me to 
 have quite clearly made out his case in favour of a 
 borrowing by Pythagoras. It is at least certain that 
 the students of ancient philosophy will do well to 
 study more carefully than hitherto the Indian paral- 
 lels ; and I hope I shall therefore be excused for 
 having turned aside, in this connection, to notice a 
 few of the most interesting. 
 
 What is at least certain is that the Buddhist, like 
 the Vedantist, the Sankhya, and the Greek views 
 just referred to (as well as in the Keltic parallels 
 quoted in my Hibbert Lectures, pp. 76, 77), looked 
 upon salvation, not as an escape from sin or hell, 
 but from this unending, hopeless wheel of life, 
 on which the ordinary man was being relentlessly 
 whirled round. All the Indian philosophies unite 
 
The Wheel of Life and Arahatship 163 
 
 in supposing ignorance to be the origin of the whole 
 evil, the great enemy to be conquered. But they 
 differ in their view as to what the destruction of this 
 ignorance will bring about. According to the Ve- 
 dantist, an insight into the pregnant fact that the 
 soul of man is identical with the great soul, the First 
 Cause of all, will lead to a union between God and the 
 " soul," which has only been temporarily interrupted 
 or obscured by the conditions of individuality. So 
 Plato, as we have seen, says that it is only the philos- 
 opher, entirely pure at departing, who is permitted 
 to attain to the divine nature. 
 
 Buddhism has gone a step beyond this. It holds 
 also that that destruction of ignorance is the way of 
 escape from the wheel of life, but the escape is not 
 reached, and, of course, in the Buddhist system, could 
 not be reached, in a union with God to be attained 
 only in an after-life. The victory to be gained by the 
 destruction of ignorance is, in Gotama's view, a vic- 
 tory which can be gained and enjoyed in this life, 
 and in this life only. This is what is meant by the 
 Buddhist ideal of Arahatship — the life of a man 
 made perfect by insight, the life of a man who has 
 travelled along the " Noble eightfold path " and 
 broken all the " Fetters," and carried out in its en- 
 tirety, the Buddhist system of self-culture and self- 
 control. The Christian analogue to this state of 
 
164 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 mind (which, in English books on Buddhism, is 
 usually called Nirvana), is the advent of the King- 
 dom of Heaven within a man, the " peace that 
 passeth understanding." 
 
 As I have reminded you in the last lecture the 
 meaning of the phrase Nirvana, is literally the 
 " g°i n g out " I an d it is used, in its primary sense, of 
 the going out of the flame of a lamp. In its second- 
 ary ethical sense it signifies (not, of course, the going 
 out of a "soul," nor the going out of life), but the 
 going out of the threefold fire of lust, ill-will, and 
 delusion or dulness or stupidity. But it involves 
 the going out also of that " Upadana " or grasping, 
 which would lead to the formation, in another birth, 
 of a new individual. This point is dealt with at 
 greater length in my manual, Buddhism, pp. 110- 
 115, where (already in 1877) this view of the real 
 meaning of Nirvana, since confirmed by the publica- 
 tion of the texts, was first put forth. 
 
 This then is Buddha's reply to those of his con- 
 temporaries who were concerned above all things in 
 escaping from the whirlpool of re-births. "Arahat- 
 ship will save you : you can save yourselves by 
 Arahatship." 
 
 We find a precisely similar state of things when, 
 in the Tevijja Sutta,* the two young Brahmins 
 
 * Translated in my Dialogues of the Buddha, I., 298-320. 
 
The Wheel of Life and Arahatship 165 
 
 come to him and ask him to shew them the way to 
 a union with God, with Brahma. " Very well," says 
 the reformer, " I will shew you." And he gives a 
 long exposition of Arahatship. " That is the way." 
 
 In both cases the exposition of Arahatship is clear 
 enough. The obscurities begin with the reasoning 
 which endeavours to adapt so untheological a posi- 
 tion to a solution of difficulties really based on the 
 current theologies. It is all very well to complain 
 how much easier it would have been simply to deny 
 the facts (the facts of the whirlpool of re-births, and 
 the union with God) rather than to attempt to recon- 
 cile them w r ith the new doctrine of Arahatship. 
 But that course of action could have led to only 
 one result. Buddhism would have died in its birth. 
 In any case Gotama adopted the opportunist posi- 
 tion, and seems to have thought the reconciliation 
 both clear and complete. And though it is, in my 
 opinion, neither the one nor the other in our present 
 state of knowledge, it is surely wiser to suspend our 
 judgment as to the logical adequacy of the reason- 
 ings put forth till the publication of the other half 
 of the texts shall have put us in possession of all the 
 materials on which a judgment should really be 
 formed. 
 
 What we have at present ascertained is that, in 
 both cases, Arahatship is the Buddhist solution of 
 
i66 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 the puzzle put. Now as to what constitutes Arahat- 
 ship we had, in the last lecture, descriptive lists, 
 and discussions of their details. It will be advisable, 
 on this central and most important point of Budd- 
 hism, to quote more fully the actual words of the 
 early Buddhist writers. 
 
 The Buddhist poems reach their highest level of 
 beauty when they attempt to describe the glory of 
 this state of victory over the world, and over birth 
 and death, of an inward peace that can never be 
 shaken, of a joy that can never be ruffled. Thus, 
 when Kassapa, a distinguished Brahmin teacher, had 
 left all to join the new leader, and the people were 
 astonished at it, he is asked, in the presence of the 
 multitude, to explain the nature of the change that 
 has come over him : 
 
 What hast thou seen, O thou of Uruvela, 
 
 That thou, for penances so far renowned, 
 
 Forsakest thus thy sacrificial fire ? 
 
 I ask thee, Kassapa, the meaning of this thing. 
 
 How comes it that thine altar lies deserted ? 
 
 What is it, in the world of men or gods, 
 
 That thy heart longs for ? Tell me that, Kassapa ! " 
 
 And the convert answers : 
 
 " That state of peace I saw, wherein the roots 
 Of ever fresh re-birth are all destroyed, and greed 
 And hatred and delusion all have ceased, 
 
The Wheel of Life and Arahatship 167 
 
 That state from lust for future life set free, 
 That changeth not, can ne'er be led to change. 
 My mind saw that ! What care I for those rites ? "* 
 
 The following two poems are taken from the 
 Sutta Nipata, from the same collection that con- 
 tained the ballad, already quoted above, about the 
 first meeting of Gotama and King Bimbisara. 
 
 Dhaniya Sutta, 
 
 1. Hot steams my food. My cows are milked. 
 — So said the herdsman Dhaniya— 
 Along the banks of the Mahi 
 
 With equals and with friends I dwell. 
 Right well is my trim cottage thatched, 
 And on my hearth the fire burns bright. 
 So let the rain pour down now, if it likes, to-night ! 
 
 2. Cool is my mind. No fallow land lies there. f 
 — So said the Exalted One — 
 
 For one night only, as I wander on, 
 I dwell upon the banks of the Mahi. 
 My lodging 's open to the sky. The fires 
 Are out (for in my heart the flames 
 Of Lust, Ill-will, and Dulness burn no more). 
 So let the rain pour down now, if it likes, to-night ! 
 
 3. There are no gadflies here. My kine 
 — So said the herdsman Dhaniya — 
 
 * Maha Vagga i., 22, 4. 
 
 f On the five fallow lands of the mind see Majjkima Nikaya^ i.„ 
 101. 
 
 ■ 
 
Buddhism 
 
 Are roaming thro' the meadows rich with grass ; 
 Well can they bear the fickle rain god's blows. 
 So let the rain pour down now, if it likes, to-night ! 
 
 4. My basket raft was woven well together 
 — So said the Exalted One — 
 
 Crossed over now, I 've reached the farther bank 
 And overcome the floods (the Lust of Sense 
 The Lust of Life, Delusion, Ignorance). 
 So let the rain pour down now, if it likes, to-night ! 
 
 5. Obedient is my wife, no wanton she, 
 — So said the herdsman Dhaniya — 
 
 Long has she dwelt with me, my well beloved, 
 I hear no evil thing in her against me. 
 So let the rain pour down now, if it likes, to-night ! 
 
 6. Obedient is my heart, wholly set free, 
 — So said the Exalted One — 
 
 Long has it been watched over, well subdued, 
 No evil thing is found within my breast. 
 So let the rain pour down now, if it likes, to-night ! 
 
 7. On my own earnings do I live at ease. 
 — So said the herdsman Dhaniya — 
 
 My boys are all about me, strong in health, 
 I hear no evil thing in them against me. 
 So let the rain pour down now, if it likes, to-night ! 
 
 8. No man can call me servant, and I wander 
 — So said the Exalted One — 
 
 At will, o'er all the earth, on what I find. 
 I feel no need of wages, or of gain. 
 So let the rain pour down now, if it likes, to-night ! 
 
The Wheel of Life and Arahatship 169 
 
 9. I 've barren cows and sucking calves, 
 — So said the herdsman Dhaniya — 
 And cows in calf, and heifers sleek, 
 And a strong bull, lord o'er the cows. 
 So let the rain pour down now, if it likes, to-night ! 
 
 10. No barren cows have I, nor sucking calves, 
 — So said the Exalted One — 
 
 No cows in calf, nor heifers sleek, 
 Nor a strong bull, lord o'er the cows. 
 So let the rain pour down now, if it likes, to-night ! 
 
 11. The stakes are driven in, nothing can shake them, 
 — So said the herdsman Dhaniya — 
 
 The ropes of Munja grass are new and strong, 
 No calves could break them loose, and stray. 
 So let the rain pour down now, if it likes, to-night ! 
 
 12. I 've broken all the bonds loose, like a bull, 
 
 Or like the lordly elephant, calm in his strength, 
 Contemning the weak strands of jungle rope. 
 I ne'er again shall enter the dark womb. 
 So let the rain pour down now, if it likes, to-night ! 
 
 13. Then lo ! a thunder-cloud, filling the hollows, 
 
 And the high ground, that moment poured forth rain, 
 
 And Dhaniya the herdsman, as he heard 
 
 The god's rain rushing, yielded him, and said ; 
 
 14. O, great the gain that has accrued to us, 
 In that we met the Exalted One to-day ! 
 In thee of the seeing eye we put our trust. 
 Be thou, O mighty Sage, a teacher to us. 
 My wife and I will be obedient; 
 
170 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 Under the Happy One we both will lead 
 
 A holy life, and pass beyond old age and death, 
 
 And put an end, for aye, to every pain ! 
 
 15. The man with sons takes pride in sons, 
 — So said Mara, the Evil One — 
 
 The man with kine takes joy in kine. 
 
 Lusts, evil, and Karma bring delights to men ; 
 
 He, who has none of these, has no delights. 
 
 16. He, who has sons, has sorrow in his sons, 
 — So said the Exalted One — 
 
 He, who has kine, has trouble with his kine. 
 Lusts, evil, and Karma are the source of care ; 
 He, who has none of these, is not careworn. 
 
 Dhaniya Sutta is ended. 
 
 Utthdna Sutta. 
 
 1. Rise ! sit up ! what is the use of sleeping ? 
 How can sleep wait upon the sick at heart ? 
 Upon sick men pierced with the dart of care, 
 In whose sad heart the dart is rankling still ? * 
 
 2. Rouse yourselves then, sit up ! and steadfastly 
 Train yourselves, learn, for the sweet sake of peace ! 
 Let not the King of Death, knowing you indolent 
 Befool you, fallen into his deadly power ! 
 
 3. That clinging bond in which both gods and men, 
 Craving with wants, stand caught, — O, conquer that! 
 Let not the moment pass ! For those who let 
 The moment pass them, mourn in states of woe ?f 
 
 * See Jataka, i., 369. 
 
 \ The two last lines of this verse recur at Thera Gatha, 404, and at 
 Then Gatha, 5. 
 
The Wheel of Life and Arahatship 171 
 
 4. Carelessness is dust and dirt, and carelessness 
 On carelessness heaped up, defiles the mind. 
 By earnestness and wisdom let the wise 
 Draw out the dart that rankles in his heart;* 
 
 Utthana Sutta is ended. 
 
 Here is a passage descriptive of the bliss of the 
 Nirvana of Arahatship : 
 
 " Let us live happily then, free from hatred among 
 the hating ! Among men who hate let us dwell 
 free from ill-will ! 
 
 " Let us live happily then, free from ailments 
 among the ailing ! Among men sick at heart let us 
 dwell free from repining ! 
 
 " Let us live happily then, free from care among 
 the careworn ! Among men devoured by eagerness 
 let us be free from excitement ! 
 
 " Let us live happily then, we who have no hin- 
 drances ! We shall be like the bright gods who feed 
 upon happiness ! " f 
 
 In a later prose description of the kind of feelings 
 that lead a man to seek after Nirvana, we find the 
 words — it is King Milinda who is speaking to Na- 
 gasena the Buddhist — 
 
 * This verse is attributed to the son of the Malunkya woman in the 
 Thera Gatha, 404. 
 
 f Dhamma Pada, verses 197-200. 
 
Buddhism 
 
 " Venerable Nagasena, your people say : ' Nirvana 
 is not past, nor future, nor present, nor produced, 
 nor not produced, nor produceable.' In that case, 
 Nagasena, does the man who, having ordered his 
 life aright, realise Nirvana, realise something al- 
 ready produced, or does he himself produce it first, 
 and then realise it ?" 
 
 " Neither the one, O King, nor the other. And, 
 nevertheless, O King, that essence of Nirvana 
 which he, so ordering his life aright, realises — that 
 exists." 
 
 " Do not, venerable Nagasena, clear up this puz- 
 zle by making it dark ! Make it open and plain as 
 you elucidate it. With a will, strenuous in endeav- 
 our, pour out upon it all that has been taught you. 
 It is a point on which this people is bewildered, 
 plunged in perplexity, lost in doubt. Dissipate this 
 guilty uncertainty ; it pierces like a dart." 
 
 " That principle of Nirvana, O King, so peaceful, 
 so blissful, so delicate, exists. And it is that which 
 he who orders his life aright, grasping the idea of 
 things according to the teachings of the Conquerors, 
 realises by his wisdom — even as a pupil, by his 
 knowledge, makes himself, according to the instruc- 
 tion of his teacher, master of an art. 
 
 " And if you ask : 1 How is Nirvana to be known ? 9 
 it is by freedom from distress and danger, by confi- 
 
The Wheel of Life and Arahatship 1 73 
 
 dence, by peace, by calm, by bliss, by happiness, by 
 delicacy, by purity, by freshness. . . . 
 
 " And if again you should ask : 1 How does he 
 who orders his life aright realise that Nirvana ? ' I 
 should reply : 1 He, O King, who orders his life 
 aright grasps the truth as to the development of 
 all things, and when he is doing so he perceives 
 therein birth, he perceives old age, he perceives dis- 
 ease, he perceives death. But he perceives not 
 therein, whether in the beginning or the middle or 
 the end, anything worthy of being laid hold of as 
 lasting satisfaction . . . And discontent arises 
 in his mind when he thus finds nothing fit to be re- 
 lied on as lasting satisfaction, and a fever takes pos- 
 session of his body, and without a refuge or pro- 
 tection, hopeless, he becomes weary of repeated 
 lives. . . . And in the mind of him who thus 
 perceives the insecurity of transitory life, of starting 
 afresh in innumerable births, the thought arises: 
 * All on fire is this endless becoming, burning and 
 blazing ! Full of pain is it, of despair ! If only one 
 could reach a state in which there were no becom- 
 ing, there would there be calm, that would be sweet 
 — the cessation of all these conditions, the getting 
 rid of all these defects (of lusts, of evil, and of 
 Karma), the end of cravings, the absence of passion, 
 peace, Nirvana J ' 
 
174 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 " And therewith does his mind leap forward into 
 that state in which there is no becoming, and then 
 has he found peace, then does he exult and rejoice 
 at the thought : ' A refuge have I gained at last ! ' 
 Just, O King, as a man who, venturing into a strange 
 land, has lost his way, on becoming aware of a path, 
 free from jungle, that will lead him home, bounds 
 forward along it, contented in mind, exulting and 
 rejoicing at the thought : 1 I have found the way at 
 last ! ' — Just so in him who thus perceives the inse- 
 curity of transitory births there arises the thought : 
 ' All on fire is this endless becoming, burning and 
 blazing ! Full of pain is it and despair ! If only 
 one could reach a state in which there were no be- 
 coming, there would there be calm, that would be 
 sweet — the cessation of all these conditions, the 
 getting rid of all these defects, the end of craving, 
 the absence of passion, peace, Nirvana ! ' And 
 therewith does his mind leap forward into that state 
 in which there is no becoming, and then has he 
 found peace, then does he exult and rejoice at the 
 thought : ' A refuge have I found at last ! ' And 
 he strives with might and main along that path, 
 searches it out, accustoms himself thoroughly to it ; 
 to that end does he make firm his self-possession, to 
 that end does he hold fast in effort, to that end does 
 he remain steadfast in love toward all beings in all 
 
The Wheel of Life and Arahatship 1 75 
 
 the worlds ; and still to that does he direct his mind 
 again and again, until, gone far beyond the transi- 
 tory, he gains the Real, the highest fruit of Arahat- 
 ship. And when he has gained that, O King, the 
 man who has ordered his life aright has realised, seen 
 face to face, Nirvana ! " * 
 
 Then after this discussion as to the time at which, 
 and the manner by which, Nirvana can be obtained, 
 the author goes on to discuss where Nirvana is 
 stored up. The answer is that there is no such 
 place, and the discussion then goes on : 
 
 " Venerable Nagasena, let it be granted that there 
 is no place where Nirvana is stored up. But is there 
 any place on which a man may stand and, by order- 
 ing his life aright, realise Nirvana? " 
 
 »" Yes, O King, there is such a place." 
 
 "Which, then, Nagasena, is that place? " 
 
 " Virtue, O King, is the place. For if grounded in 
 virtue, and careful in attention — whether in the land 
 of the Skythians or the Greeks, whether in China or 
 in Tartary, whether in Alexandria or Nikumba, 
 whether in Benares or in Kosala, whether in Kashmir 
 or in Gandhara, whether on a mountain top or in the 
 highest heavens — wheresoever he may be, the man 
 who orders his life aright will attain Nirvana." f 
 
 * Questions of King Milinda, vol. ii., pp. 195-201. 
 f Questions of King Milinda , pp. 202-204. 
 
176 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 We have several descriptions in the older books of 
 the man who has actually attained this Nirvana of 
 Arahatship. But there are none of them, so far as 
 I know, that purport to contain the whole descrip- 
 tion. Perhaps we may find this in the Visuddhi 
 Magga, or Path of Purity, now being edited and 
 translated by Mr. Henry C. Warren of Cambridge, 
 Mass. We have a more complete characterisation of 
 the ideal Buddhist Recluse (which comes to much 
 the same thing) in a work later than the Canon : 
 
 " Just, O King, as a lotus flower of glorious, pure, 
 and high descent and origin is glossy, soft, desirable, 
 sweet-smelling, longed for, loved, and praised, untar- 
 nished by the water or the mud, graced with tiny 
 petals and filaments and pericarps, the resort of 
 many bees, a child of the clear, cold stream, just so 
 is that disciple of the Noble Ones endowed with the 
 thirty Graces. And what are the thirty ? 
 
 " 1. His heart is full of affectionate, soft, and ten- 
 der love. 
 
 " 2. Evil is killed, destroyed, cast out from within 
 him. 
 
 " 3 and 4. Pride and self-righteousness are put an 
 end to and cast down. 
 
 " 5. Stable and strong and established and unde- 
 viating is his self-confidence. 
 
The Wheel of Life and Arahatship 177 
 
 " 6. He enters into the enjoyment of the heart's 
 refreshment, the highly praised and desirable peace 
 and bliss of the ecstasies of contemplation fully felt. 
 
 " 7. He exhales the most excellent and unequalled 
 sweet savour of righteousness of life. 
 
 " 8. Near is he and dear to gods and men alike. 
 
 "9. Exalted by the best of beings, the Arahat 
 Noble Ones themselves. 
 
 " 10. Gods and men delight to honour him. 
 
 "11. The enlightened, wise, and learned approve, 
 esteem, and appreciate him. 
 
 " 12. Untarnished is he by the love either of this 
 world or the next. 
 
 " 13. He sees the danger in the smallest, most in- 
 significant offence. 
 
 " 14. Rich is he in the best of wealth — the wealth 
 that is the fruit of the Path, the wealth of those 
 who are seeking the highest of the Attainments. 
 
 " 15. He is in receipt, in full measure, of the four 
 requisites of a recluse (food, lodging, clothing, and 
 medicine). 
 
 " 16. He lives without a home, addicted to that 
 best austerity that is dependent on meditation. 
 
 " 17. He has unravelled the whole net of evil. 
 He has broken and burst through, doubled up and 
 utterly destroyed, the possibility of re-birth in any 
 of the five future states. 
 
1 7 8 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 " 1 8. He has broken and burst through the five 
 obstacles to the highest life in this world (lust, 
 malice, sloth, pride, and doubt). 
 
 " 19. He is unalterable in character. 
 
 " 20. He is excellent in conduct. 
 
 "21. He transgresses none of the rules as to the 
 four requisites of a recluse. 
 
 " 22. He has passed beyond all perplexity. 
 
 " 23. His mind is set upon complete emancipa- 
 tion. 
 
 " 24. He has seen the truth. 
 
 "25. The sure and steadfast place of refuge from 
 all fear has he gained. 
 
 " 26. The seven evil inclinations (to lust, and 
 malice, and heresy, and doubt, and pride, and desire 
 for future life, and ignorance) are rooted out in him. 
 
 " 27. He has reached the end of the Great Evils 
 (lust, future life, delusion, and ignorance). 
 
 " 28, 29. He abounds in peace, and the bliss of 
 the ecstasies of contemplation. 
 
 " 30. He is endowed with all the virtues a recluse 
 should have. 
 
 " These, O King, are the thirty Graces he is 
 adorned withal." * 
 
 I might go on quoting such passages, but they 
 
 * Questions of King Alilinda, ii., pp. 271-273. 
 
The Wheel of Life and Arahatship 179 
 
 would weary you, and I must find time to mention 
 the thirty-seven constituent elements of Arahat- 
 ship. 
 
 The word itself means " the-state-of-one-who-is- 
 worthy," or " noble," and this state of mind is 
 divided, in the oldest books, into these thirty-seven 
 constituent parts. They are called the Medicines 
 Discovered by the Great Physician.* 
 
 " Of all the medicines found in all the world, 
 Many in number, various in their powers, 
 Not one equals this medicine of the Truth. 
 Drink that, O brethren. Drink, and drinking, — live ! 
 
 " For having drunk that medicine of the Truth, 
 Ye shall have passed beyond old age, and death 
 And — evil, lusts, and Karma rooted out — 
 Thoughtful and seeing, ye shall be at rest ! " 
 
 Or, to put it in another way : Just before Gotama 
 died, he is said f to have convened a special meeting 
 of the Order, and to have said : 
 
 " Which then, O Brethren, are the dispositions 
 which, when I had perceived, I made known to you ; 
 which, when you have mastered, it behoves you to 
 practise, meditate upon, and spread abroad, in order 
 that pure religion may last long and be perpetuated, 
 
 * Milinda, ii., 2 1 8. 
 
 f In the Mahd Parinibbdna Sutta, translated in my Buddhist 
 Suttas, p. 60. 
 
i8o 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 in order that it may continue to be for the good and 
 happiness of the great multitude, out of pity for the 
 world, to the good and the gain and the weal of gods 
 and men ? They are these: 
 
 The Four Earnest Meditations. 
 
 The Fourfold Great Struggle against Error. 
 
 The Four Roads to Saintship. 
 
 The Five Moral Powers. 
 
 The Five Organs of Spiritual Sense. 
 
 The Seven Kinds of Wisdom, and 
 
 The Noble Eightfold Path. 
 " Behold, now, O Brethren, I exhort you, saying : 
 " All component things must grow old. Work out 
 your salvation with diligence. The final passing 
 away of the Tathagata will take place before long. 
 At the end of three months from this time the 
 Tathagata will die. 
 
 " My age is now full ripe ; my life draws to its close. 
 I leave you, I depart, relying on myself alone. 
 Be earnest then, O brethren, active, full of thought ; 
 Be steadfast in resolve ! Keep watch over your own 
 hearts. 
 
 Who wearies not, but holds fast to this truth and law, 
 Shall cross this sea of life, shall make an end of 
 grief ! " * 
 
 Now I very deeply regret that, being obliged to 
 
 * Book of the Great Decease, iii., 65, translated in ray Buddhist 
 Suttas % pp. 62, 63. 
 
The Wheel of Life and Arahatship 1 8 1 
 
 put the whole of the higher Buddhism into two lect- 
 ures, I am precluded from dealing at any length 
 with any of the above thirty-seven details. I am 
 painfully aware how uninteresting such bare lists are 
 apt to be, when the full meaning implied by the 
 pregnant terms enumerated is not completely brought 
 out and illustrated by examples drawn from similar 
 systems in the West. But I have endeavoured, so 
 far as in me lies, to bring out, in what I have already 
 said, the essential points of the deeper view of life 
 which lies behind all Buddhism ; and I can only ven- 
 ture to trouble you now with a few general remarks 
 on this system of ethical discipline. 
 
 And first I would observe that the whole system 
 is based on intellectual activity. It is no doubt often 
 related in the Buddhist books, and must often have 
 happened, that an eloquent address on the imper- 
 manence of all things, on the delusions of self, on the 
 vanity of earthly things (wealth, power, and renown), 
 will have led to the conversion of some hearer whose 
 personal experience had prepared him for the recep- 
 tion of the truth. But though, in that way, a hearer 
 may, in the eloquent words of the passage I have 
 read you from the Milinda, have leaped forward 
 along the way and arrived by a sudden flash of in- 
 sight at some, even advanced, stage of the Noble 
 Path ; still it was required of him to keep up a con- 
 
182 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 stant intellectual activity in order to hold fast what he 
 had attained, and reach out to further things beyond. 
 
 Secondly, it is throughout regarded that wrong 
 belief, the nursing of delusions, the dulness which 
 cannot open its eyes to the deep realities of life, are 
 in themselves ethically wrong ; that to believe a lie 
 is an obstacle to any advance along the path, and 
 that the Arahat has to be constantly steadfast and 
 earnest in keeping his views whole and sound. 
 
 Thirdly, that it is the greatest mistake to suppose 
 that the suppression of desire is a part of the higher 
 Buddhism. It is really just the contrary. Evil de- 
 sires are, no doubt, to be suppressed. It is true 
 that some of the desires which in modern Western 
 life are held to be natural, and worthy of satisfac- 
 tion, such as the desire for a wife and family, for 
 wealth and power and titles, are, in Arahatship, re- 
 garded as obstacles to the attainment of the goal. 
 But to the Buddhist layman the satisfaction of these 
 desires is freely permitted and even regulated by 
 precept ; and it is at least an open question whether 
 we could not match every expression as to the sup- 
 pression of such desires with equivalents from the 
 teachings of Western prophets. Even with regard 
 to the sexual relations Gotama finds himself in 
 agreement with many earnest Christian writers. It 
 is at all events certain, that the ideal is not one of 
 
The Wheel of Life and Arahatship 183 
 
 mere quietism, but of intellectual activity and of 
 exalted desire, not only entertained, but reached 
 and enjoyed. " Entering the Order did not mean," 
 as my wife has said in the article already quoted, 
 " mere mortification of feeling or deadening of ener- 
 gies. It was a diversion of both into new channels. 
 The Arahats are as exalted and virtually as hedonis- 
 tic in their aspirations as any Christian saint. Of 
 them too, Matthew Arnold could have said : 
 
 " Ye like angels appear 
 Radiant with ardour divine, 
 Beacons of hope ye appear, 
 Languor is not in your heart, 
 Weakness is not in your work, 
 Weariness not on your brow." 
 
 The fourth point is the joyousness of the Arahat, 
 springing more especially from the emancipation of 
 heart to which he has attained, and on which so 
 much stress is laid. Thus, in the Mahaparinibbana 
 Sutta (a few pages after Gotama, on the eve of his 
 decease, has insisted on his disciples being a lamp 
 unto themselves), the Blessed One says : 
 
 u It is through not understanding and grasping 
 four conditions, O Brethren, that we have had to 
 run so long, to wander so long, in this weary path 
 of transmigration — both you and I. And what are 
 these four? When noble conduct is realised and 
 
Buddhism 
 
 known, and noble meditation and noble wisdom, and 
 noble freedom, is realised and known, then is the 
 craving for becoming rooted out, that which leads to 
 renewed life is destroyed, and there is no more birth. 
 
 Righteousness, earnest thought, wisdom and freedom 
 sublime, 
 
 These are the truths realised by Gotama far-renowned. 
 Knowing them, he the knower, proclaimed the truth to 
 the brethren ; 
 
 The Master with eye divine, the quencher of grief must 
 die."* 
 
 The emancipation of heart is one of the " Seven 
 Jewels" of the Blessed One, and describing it, the 
 author of the Milinda says : f 
 
 " There is one diadem that is the chief of all, and 
 that is this diadem of Emancipation of heart ! 
 
 " All the people that dwell in a house look up 
 To their Lord when he wears his crown of gems — 
 The wide world of the gods and of men looks up 
 To the wearer of Freedom's diadem ! " 
 
 It was the "gentle liberty" of a higher, wider 
 law by which to regulate and concentrate their lives, 
 that all those who had realised the doctrine of im- 
 permanence were to strive after. The emancipation 
 was no doubt an emancipation from delusions ; the 
 freedom did not extend to license to revert to the 
 
 * Book of tht Great Decease, iv., 2. f Milinda ii., p. 224. 
 
The Wheel of Life and Arahatship 185 
 
 errors which they had renounced, or to embrace, in 
 intellectual anarchism, any analogous errors in their 
 ethical development. But within those limits, which 
 must have been clear to you from the earlier part of 
 this lecture, there was perfect freedom from dogma, 
 perfect liberty of thought. 
 
 But I am not concerned to defend the accuracy, 
 or the completeness, or the adequacy of the solution 
 put forward by Gotama of the problem of practical 
 ethics. It is true that in my humble opinion no 
 historian can be an adequate historian without 
 sympathy, and indeed I confess I should not have 
 devoted my life to the study of Buddhism, had I 
 not felt the intrinsic worth of much that Gotama 
 laid down. And it is at least interesting to remem- 
 ber that Gotama was the only man of our own race, 
 the only Aryan, who can rank as the founder of a 
 great religion. Not only so, but the whole intellec- 
 tual and religious development of which Buddhism 
 is the final outcome was distinctively Aryan, and 
 Buddhism is the one essentially Aryan faith. 
 
 But we do not need to go back 2500 years to seek 
 for truth. We have to fight out the problem of 
 ethics for ourselves and for our own times. The 
 point I stand here to submit to your consideration, 
 is that the study of ethics, and especially the study 
 of ethical theory in the West, has hitherto resulted 
 
Buddhism 
 
 in a deplorable failure through irreconcilable logo- 
 machies and the barrenness of speculation cut off 
 from actual fact. The only true method of ethical 
 inquiry is surely the historical method. As the 
 President of Cornell University in his " Ethical Im- 
 port of Darwinism " has so ably put it : 
 
 " How is ethics as a science possible? If it is 
 ever to rise above the analytic procedure of logic, it 
 can only be by becoming one of the historical 
 sciences. Given the earliest morality of which we 
 have any written record, to trace from it, through 
 progressive stages, the morality of to-day — that is 
 the problem, and the only problem, which can fall 
 within the scope of a truly scientific ethic. The dis- 
 covery of these historical sequences constitutes the 
 peculiarity of the science, which, like every other, 
 pre-supposes observation, analysis, and classification." 
 
 Surely this is the sound gospel, and I cannot be 
 wrong in maintaining that the study of Buddhism 
 should be considered a necessary part of any ethi- 
 cal course, and should not be dismissed in a page or 
 two, but receive its due proportion in the historical 
 perspective of ethical evolution. I venture to ap- 
 peal, therefore, in conclusion, to the friends of higher 
 education in America, to recognise the importance of 
 finding a place in their curriculum for the proper treat- 
 ment of this most interesting and suggestive study. 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 Some Notes on the History of Buddhism. 
 A NY presentation of Buddhism would be very 
 
 £ \ imperfect without at least an attempt to 
 sketch the most instructive and suggestive history 
 of the curious developments which, during its long 
 career, it has, in different times and places, under- 
 gone. This history is especially interesting from a 
 comparative point of view. Buddhism starts with a 
 complete philosophical and psychological theory- 
 worked out by men of great intellectual power and 
 considerable culture. It took its rise among an ad- 
 vancing and conquering people full of pride in their 
 colour and their race, in their achievements and 
 their progress. It advocated a view in many re- 
 spects far in advance of what had been reached and, 
 for the matter of that, of what has even now been 
 reached by the average philosophic and religious 
 mind. It made its first conquests in a great conti- 
 nent occupied by peoples of various races and hold- 
 ing widely different views ; their leaders often, it is 
 
i88 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 true, well trained in philosophic thought, but the 
 mass of the folk entangled in multiform varieties of 
 an indiscriminating animism. And it soon spread 
 over the frontiers among nations, some of them 
 more barbarous still than the then most uncultured 
 Indians. Buddhism has been adopted by the wild 
 hordes on the cold table-lands of Nepal, Tartary, 
 and Tibet, by the cultured Chinese in their varying 
 climes, in the peninsula of Korea, whence it spread 
 to the islands of Japan, and by the Sinhalese and 
 Siamese under the palm groves of the south. It has 
 penetrated on the west to the confines of Europe ; 
 on the north it numbers its adherents amid the 
 snow and ice of Siberia ; and in the far east it was 
 the dominant religion for centuries in the beautiful 
 islands of the Javanese archipelago. Wherever it 
 has gone it has been so modified by the national 
 characteristics and the inherited beliefs of its con- 
 verts, acting upon the natural tendencies within it- 
 self to alteration and decay, that it has developed, 
 under these conditions, into strangely inconsistent 
 and even antagonistic beliefs and practices. But 
 each of these beliefs breathes more or less of the 
 spirit of the system out of which they all alike 
 have grown, and most interesting it is to trace the 
 causes which have produced out of it such different 
 results. 
 
Notes on the History of Buddhism 189 
 
 It would be premature to attempt, in our present 
 state of knowledge, to trace any development in doc- 
 trine in the sacred books themselves. Except in one 
 particular, the system presented to our view in the 
 dialogues, as repeated in the Anguttara and Sam- 
 yutta Nikayas, as developed in the psychological 
 books, and as used as the basis of the poetry, pre- 
 sents the picture of a continuous and consistent 
 whole. And this is not surprising considering the 
 perfection of the system as it came from the hands 
 of the Master, and the intellectual activity, and en- 
 thusiastic culture, of the men by whom it was first 
 handed down. But in the century or two after the 
 death of Gotama, during which the books, as we 
 have them, were put into their present shape, there 
 was time enough for a very considerable growth of 
 opinion concerning the person of their revered 
 teacher. 
 
 Most of these developments were due to the later 
 books after the canon was closed. The various de- 
 tails referred to in Lecture III., in which the later 
 accounts of the Jataka, and of the Sanskrit poems, 
 have been anticipated in an unpublished Suttanta, 
 relate only to the legend of his birth. * And even 
 on this matter the later versions are, as one would 
 expect, much more expanded. 
 
 * Journ. R. A. S., 1894, pp. 386, 387. 
 
190 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 But the first disruption in the Order took place 
 on other questions, namely, on matters connected 
 with the regulation of the Order itself. One hun- 
 dred years after the death of Buddha, according to 
 the oldest account preserved in an appendix to the 
 Khandakas, there arose a certain party in the Order 
 which proclaimed and practised a loosening of the 
 rules in ten particulars. These ten particulars seem 
 to us now to be very trumpery ; just as the disputes 
 between the Irish and Romish sections of the Chris- 
 tian Church at the synod of Whitby, held in the 
 seventh century, seem to us moderns to be concern- 
 ing matters of little moment, — the exact position 
 and shape of the tonsure and the exact dating of 
 the Easter festival. No doubt in both cases there 
 were greater differences behind, and though these 
 are not apparent in the most ancient Buddhist ac- 
 count they come out very strongly in later writers. 
 As I have given the whole list of the ten indul- 
 gences in my manual, Buddhism, I need not repeat 
 them here ; and will only remind you that the last 
 and most important of them was, that gold and 
 silver might be received by members of the Order. 
 
 To put an end to the disputes upon these points 
 a Council of the leading members of the Order was 
 held at Vesali and the heretical opinions were con- 
 demned. The long-continued struggle on the ques- 
 
Notes on the History of Buddhism 19! 
 
 tion — as important for the history of Buddhism as 
 the Arian controversy for that of Christianity — agi- 
 tated the whole Buddhist world to its very centre. 
 And the decision on the point, given at this Coun- 
 cil of Vesali, led to a serious schism in the Buddhist 
 Church. 
 
 Now the ten indulgences are each summed up in 
 a single word ; and these words are, each and all of 
 them, conspicuous by their absence from the books 
 on the laws and regulations of the Order included 
 in the canon, except that they appear in an histori- 
 cal account added, quite evidently as an appendix, 
 to the collection of treatises, or Khandakas, de- 
 scribed in my second lecture. This fact is of the 
 very greatest importance in determining the date at 
 which those Khandakas must have been composed. 
 The ten points in dispute were all matters of ecclesi- 
 astical law. They all related to observances of 
 the Brotherhood. Is it probable that, in a set of rules 
 and treatises which seek to set forth, down to the 
 minutest detail, and even with hair-splitting diffuse- 
 ness, all that has any relation to the daily life of the 
 Brethren and the regulation of the Buddhist Order, 
 — is it probable that, in such a collection, if, when it 
 was compiled, the struggle on these ten points had 
 already burst into flame, there should be no refer- 
 ence at all, even in interpolations, to any one of 
 
192 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 these ten disputes ? That the difference of opinion 
 on each of the ten points remains altogether unno- 
 ticed in that part of the rules and treatises where, 
 in the natural order of things, it would be obviously 
 referred to — that the rules are not in any way altered 
 to cover, or to suggest, any decision of the points in 
 dispute, — and that they are only mentioned in an 
 appendix where the Council held to decide them 
 is described, shows clearly that the rules and trea- 
 tises, as we have them, must have been put together 
 before the time when the Council of Vesali was 
 held* 
 
 The ancient story of the Council stops at the 
 point where the ten indulgences are rejected. But 
 the Ceylon chronicles, which have preserved the 
 tradition of the orthodox school (and are therefore, 
 notwithstanding their later date, very good evidence 
 as against that school), admit that the matter did 
 not rest there. They say that the adherents of the 
 ten indulgences proceeded to hold a council of their 
 own, and I will read you the account of what they 
 admit that the heretics did. The animus of the 
 description only entitles it to a greater confidence. 
 
 The Dlpa Vansa, the older of the two Chronicles 
 in question, has the following words : f 
 
 * The above argument is taken from the Introd. to Vinaya Texts 
 from the Pali, pp. xxi., xxii. 
 
 f Book v., verses 32 and following. 
 
Notes on the History of Buddhism 193 
 
 " The monks of the Great Council twisted the teaching 
 round. 
 
 They broke up the original scriptures and made a new 
 recension, 
 
 A chapter put in one place they put in another, 
 And distorted the sense and the doctrine of the Five 
 Nikayas. 
 
 These monks — who knew neither what had been spoken 
 at length 
 
 Nor what had been spoken in abstract, neither 
 What was the obvious nor what the higher meaning — - 
 Put things referring to one matter as if they referred 
 to another, 
 
 And destroyed much of the spirit by holding to the 
 
 shadow of the letter. 
 They partly rejected the Sutta, and the Vinaya so 
 
 deep, 
 
 And made another rival Sutta and Vinaya of their 
 own. 
 
 The Parivara abstract, and the six books of the 
 
 Abhidhamma, 
 The Patisambhida, the Niddesa, and a portion of the 
 Jataka, 
 
 So much they put aside, and made others in their 
 place. 
 
 They rejected the well known rules of nouns and 
 genders too, 
 
 Of composition and of literary skill, and put others in 
 their place." 
 
 This council of the heretics we see was called, as 
 the orthodox chroniclers admit, " The Great Coun- 
 cil," which seems to show that the number of its 
 
i 9 4 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 adherents was not to be despised ; and from it, in 
 the next two centuries and a half, seventeen bodies 
 of more or less heretical doctrine were gradually 
 formed in the Buddhist Church. These were not 
 sects in our sense. There was no division of organ- 
 isation, or church government. There were no such 
 things as churches, or church services ; and the divi- 
 sions, such as they were, remained solely differences 
 of opinion. Various schools were named, for the 
 most part, after the names of some great teachers, 
 or after the locality in which they took their rise. 
 Only a few of the names refer to matters of doctrine. 
 The division did not therefore correspond to the 
 division between Greek Catholics, Roman Catholics, 
 Episcopalians, Independents, and so forth, but rather 
 to the division between Broad, High, and Low 
 Church. We have, unfortunately, none of their 
 early books surviving. It would appear, from the 
 passage just read from the Dlpa Vansa, that all the 
 schools continued to use the books in the Pitakas, 
 though they made changes in some of them. For 
 the only books which they are stated to have rejected 
 are those of the Abhidhamma, and three prose works 
 included in the Appendix described to you in my 
 second lecture, and one other, the Parivara, or 
 student's manual, which has been added to the 
 canon law, that is to the Rules and the Treatises. 
 
Notes on the History of Buddhism 195 
 
 The canon law itself was in fact retained, subject no 
 doubt to slight alterations and differences of inter- 
 pretation. So also it is not stated that they rejected 
 any of the Dialogues, or even the great rearrange- 
 ments of Buddhist doctrine in the Anguttara and 
 Samyutta Nikayas. 
 
 It is scarcely credible that, had they done so, it 
 would not have been thrown in their teeth by the 
 orthodox chroniclers and commentators ; and it is 
 expressly implied that they accepted, and continued 
 to use, all the books of religious and philosophical 
 poetry. Even as late as the time of Asoka we find 
 that Tissa, the son of Moggalr, the author of the 
 Katha Vatthu, in his arguments against those who 
 differed from the orthodox school, appeals through- 
 out to the Pitaka texts, and takes it for granted that 
 his opponents will acknowledge them as decisive. 
 But no doubt the leaders of the various schools did, 
 from time to time, compile works now lost, but of 
 which we may some day be able to gather some 
 fragments from Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese 
 manuscripts still extant, though not translated. 
 
 As to the actual points at issue, the best authority 
 is, of course, the Katha Vatthu itself. The author 
 states the various theses put forward by his oppo- 
 nents, but does not specify who they are, nor to 
 what school they belong. This information is 
 
196 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 afforded to us by the Commentary on the Katha 
 Vatthu, which has been edited in full for the Pali 
 Text Society, although it has not been translated. 
 This traditional interpretation and identification of 
 the schools referred to was handed down in the seats 
 of orthodox learning ; and the Pali version of it, 
 still preserved to us, has come from the great Bud- 
 dhist seminary of the Maha Vihara in Ceylon. There 
 is no reason why the supporters of the orthodox 
 school should have modified or recast this tradition. 
 There may have been mistakes, no doubt, but, in the 
 absence of any motive to the contrary, there is no 
 valid reason for refusing to accept the tradition as a 
 bona-fide statement of what they held to be true. 
 
 Now this work and its commentary are so import- 
 ant for a history of the development of Buddhism 
 that, although much pressed by other work which 
 prevented my undertaking an edition of the text, I 
 made a complete analysis, from a manuscript in my 
 possession, of each of the questions raised in the 
 Katha Vatthu, and published it in 1892 in the 
 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. It is impos- 
 sible here to discuss the results in any detail, but two 
 general conclusions may be stated with advantage. 
 
 In the first place, there had survived, at the time 
 when the Katha Vatthu was written (that is to say, 
 in B. C. 250), only a small proportion of the seven- 
 
Notes on the History of Buddhism 197 
 
 teen schools, whose names have been handed down 
 by tradition. Some of them only come before us 
 in the pages of the Katha Vatthu Commentary as 
 the supporters of one or two theses of no very great 
 importance. 
 
 But five of the schools are mentioned pretty fre- 
 quently, and of these, the two principal are the 
 Uttarapathakas, or Northerners, and the Dakkhina- 
 pathakas, or Southerners. This conclusion is entirely 
 confirmed from two sources, which are mutually 
 quite independent. 
 
 The one is the inscriptions. Among the ruins of 
 the Buddhist topes, now being investigated by the 
 Archeological Survey of India, are found a number 
 of votive tablets on which are inscribed the names 
 of the donors. For the most part these are personal 
 names only, but quite occasionally the name of the 
 school to which the person belonged is incidentally 
 added. No doubt at the time when the tablets were 
 put up there may have been two or more persons of 
 the same name living in the locality, and the de- 
 scription is added for the sake of distinction. I 
 have collected all the instances of this in my article, 
 and the result agrees with the conclusions derived 
 from the Katha Vatthu and its Commentary. 
 
 The other confirmation comes from a source not 
 so authoritative as being much later, But it is 
 
198 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 equally independent and more complete. Yuan 
 Thsang, in the account of his travels in India, men- 
 tions, in regard to each locality, the estimated 
 number of Buddhist recluses in each place at that 
 time, i. e., the early part of the seventh century. 
 The list is a very long one, but I have thoroughly 
 analysed it in an article in the Journal of the Royal 
 Asiatic Society for 1892. The conclusions to be 
 drawn from it as to the comparative prevalence of 
 the various schools substantially coincide with the 
 conclusions drawn from the Katha Vatthu and its 
 commentary. 
 
 The subject-matter of the differences in opinion 
 between the orthodox and the other schools had, no 
 doubt, in the time of Yuan Thsang assumed greater 
 proportions. He gives no details, but it seems from 
 the Katha Vatthu that, in B. C. 250, the differences 
 were principally of three kinds. In the first place 
 we find that in the North and also in the South the 
 old heresy of the soul-theory had crept back by side 
 issues into the doctrine from which it had been 
 categorically and explicitly excluded by Gotama 
 and his earlier followers. In the second place we 
 find that the exaltation of their revered Master had 
 led some of his followers to go far beyond the belief 
 in objective miraculous phenomena at his birth and 
 at his death, and had produced a belief also in 
 
Notes on the History of Buddhism 199 
 
 the personal superiority of their Master above the 
 ordinary laws which govern human life. They not 
 only believed that the earth was illumined at his 
 birth, that flowers fell from heaven, that his mother's 
 conception was immaculate, that he was transfigured 
 before the eyes of his disciples, that an earthquake 
 was occasioned by his birth and death, but that he 
 himself was " Lokuttara " (above the common, super- 
 human, transcendental), not only in moments of 
 supreme enlightenment, but in all the ordinary 
 affairs of life. And thirdly, we find the germs of a 
 belief we shall meet with farther on which proved 
 even more disruptive in its tendency than either of 
 the two we have mentioned — that is, that the real 
 ideal for the Buddhist to aim at was, not Arahat- 
 ship, the centre point and crown of the earlier 
 Buddhism, but Bodhisatship, the essential doctrine of 
 what is self-complacently called by its followers the 
 Maha Yana, or Greater Vehicle. 
 
 All these three notions do in fact hang together, 
 support one another, and have eventually developed 
 into a system diametrically antagonistic to Gotama's 
 own doctrine of a salvation in this life in Arahatship 
 by self-culture and self-control. The materials are 
 not yet available from which an accurate history of 
 the fall can be drawn out in consecutive order, or in 
 sufficiency of detail ; and I do not envy the his- 
 
 O 
 
200 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 torian who shall take up the task of tracing the 
 gradual intrusion of animistic and transcendental 
 views, and beliefs in the supernatural, into the purely 
 human and psychological ethics of the earlier sys- 
 tem. But it is already possible to show the lines 
 along which the later speculation went, and to trace 
 the causes of the recrudescence of the errors which 
 Gotama's reform was intended to kill. 
 
 You will recollect that there is included in the 
 Buddhist canon a collection of the Indian folk-lore 
 of that time, in which Gotama the Buddha himself 
 in a previous birth has been identified with the hero 
 of each particular story. The greatness and good- 
 ness and insight of the Buddha were in the eyes of 
 his followers much too perfect to have been wrought 
 out or developed in a single lifetime. Through ages 
 upon ages he had gradually exercised himself in the 
 Pdrdmitds (or sublime conditions), necessary to the 
 attainment of Buddhahood. These are Generosity 
 and Kindness and Renunciation and Wisdom and 
 Resolution and Patience and Love of Truth and 
 Energy and Good-will and Equanimity. At the end 
 of each existence the Karma, that is, the doing or 
 action accumulated in the previous birth, was handed 
 on to a new individual who (though from the Chris- 
 tian point of view different from the others as hav- 
 ing no continuing memory and no consciousness of 
 
Notes on the History of Buddhism 201 
 
 identity) was, according to the Buddhist standpoint, 
 the same individual, as being the product of the 
 same Karma. And the Buddhist books glow with 
 the fervour of gratitude in passages where they de- 
 scribe the self-abnegation of the Blessed One who 
 submitted to be born again and again, that he might 
 bring about the emancipation of mankind. For all 
 through this time, whenever he was re-born as a 
 man, he might, according to the view even of the 
 orthodox school, have attained to Arahatship. The 
 Karma which he inherited would no longer, then, 
 have been re-individualised. It would have been 
 dissipated in the good effect which his actions, his 
 Karma, might have had upon other individuals. 
 But that particular chain of existence would have 
 been broken, the Pdrdmitds would never have been 
 accomplished, and Gotama would not have become 
 the Buddha. The Buddha therefore had, in his pre- 
 vious existences, deliberately abandoned that ideal 
 which, in his historical existence, he urged men to 
 set before them as their goal. 
 
 It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that the mistake 
 began to be made of regarding the Bodhisat (that 
 is, one of the individuals in the chain of those who 
 were perfecting the Pdrdmitds) as a higher being 
 than the Arahat. I say the mistake, for it was a 
 mistake in two senses. The old Buddhist tradition 
 
202 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 rarely states that the Bodhisat was consciously pur- 
 suing the aim of becoming a Buddha. I only know 
 of one passage older than the fifth century of 
 our era in which this idea is put forward. And it 
 was also a mistake from the ethical point of view. 
 For from the moment that Arahatship began to be 
 looked down upon in comparison with Bodhisatship, 
 the whole system of mental training and self-control 
 began to be neglected and even ignored. 
 
 The results of this took a long time to work out 
 their full effect. One standard work of perhaps the 
 principal of the seventeen schools — the Lokuttara- 
 vadins, or Transcendentalists — has survived. It is 
 written in Sanskrit, and has been now edited, with a 
 quite unusual degree both of care and of scholar- 
 ship, by M. Emile Senart of Paris. The date of 
 the work has not been ascertained with any cer- 
 tainty, but it is probably at least as old as the 
 second century B.C. These Transcendentalists were 
 the school which represented most nearly the views 
 of those who held the Great Council ; and so far as 
 the edition tells us, it gives a very curious view of 
 the position which they held. I have not noticed a 
 single passage in which any of the propositions laid 
 down in the Dialogues, is, in so many words, denied 
 or even disputed ; but the whole point of view has 
 become entirely different, and it must have required 
 
Notes on the History of Buddhism 203 
 
 a considerable time for so great a change to have 
 taken place. Practically speaking the whole burden 
 of the Dialogues is Arahatship, or one or other of the 
 thirty-seven constituent elements of Arahatship. In 
 the Maha Vastu, which is the name of this manual of 
 the Transcendentalists, Arahatship is indeed inci- 
 dentally taken for granted as an ideal, if not the 
 ideal. But the burden of the book is the considera- 
 tion, from various points, of the stages which lead, 
 not to Arahatship, but to Bodhisatship. It will be 
 easier to speak more absolutely when this book shall 
 have been more studied, but this is the impression 
 which the volumes as now published make upon the 
 careful reader. 
 
 In the " Lotus of the Good Law " (the Sad- 
 dharma Pundarlka, as it is called in Sanskrit), of 
 which we have a French translation by M. Burnouf, 
 and a translation into English by Prof. Kern of 
 Leiden, we find a stage far beyond that which has 
 been reached in the Maha Vastu of the Transcen- 
 dentalists. In the Lotus we find that Arahatship is 
 explicitly condemned, and Bodhisatship held up as 
 the goal at which every good Buddhist has to aim ; 
 and the whole exposition of this theory, so subver- 
 sive of the original Buddhism is actually placed in 
 the mouth of Gotama himself. The doctrine of 
 Bodhisatship as the ideal is here called the Greater 
 
204 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 Vehicle, as opposed to the Lesser Vehicle of 
 Arahatship. 
 
 The Maha Yana doctors said, in effect : " We grant 
 you all you say about the bliss of attaining Nirvana 
 in this life. But it produces advantage chiefly to 
 yourselves. And according to your own theory 
 there will be a necessity for Buddhas in the future 
 as much as there has been for Buddhas in the past. 
 Greater, higher, nobler, then, than the attainment 
 of Arahatship must be the attainment of Bodhisat- 
 ship from a desire to save all living creatures in the 
 ages that will come." 
 
 The new teaching therefore was in no conscious 
 contradiction to the old. It accepted it all and was 
 based upon it. Its distinguishing characteristic was 
 the great stress which is laid on one point of the 
 earlier doctrine to the gradual overshadowing of the 
 rest. Its strength lay in the grandeur of its appeal 
 to self-renunciation. It is true the newer school un- 
 consciously thereby changed the centre point of the 
 system, the focus of their mental vision. But it 
 was at least no slight merit to have been led, even 
 though they were led astray, by a sense of duty to 
 the race. They might have been wiser, had they 
 seen more clearly the originality of Gotama's sys- 
 tem of ethics, and perceived that the race would 
 really be benefited much more largely by the older 
 
Notes on the History of Buddhism 205 
 
 doctrine of Arahatship, than by the new stress laid 
 upon Bodhisatship. But readers of the Maha Yana 
 books, tedious as these have so often been called, 
 and rightly called, will find them acquire a new sig- 
 nificance, and even a new beauty, when they are 
 read in the light of this conception. The whole 
 history of this development of belief, firstly in the 
 putting of Arahatship into the background, and 
 putting the Jataka stories and the road of Bodhisat- 
 ship into the foreground ; and then the actual con- 
 tempt of Arahatship, and the adoption, to its 
 explicit as well as its virtual exclusion, of Bodhisat- 
 ship, has yet to be written. The final step is at- 
 tributed by later chroniclers, Tibetan and Chinese, 
 to Nagarjuna. And there are works extant, though 
 only in Tibetan and Chinese translations, which are 
 attributed to him. These works, however, are not 
 yet accessible to the West ; and of the Hlna Yana 
 books (that is to say, the books of the older schools 
 which led on to the final result) we have only the 
 Maha Vastu, and the Sanskrit poems on the life of 
 Buddha which were mentioned in my third lecture. 
 But it is possible already to point out some of the 
 results which followed from the newer doctrine. 
 That the progress was very slow we know from the 
 statements of Yuan Chwang. For in his time, that is, 
 as late as the seventh century of our era, two thirds 
 
206 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 of the members of the Buddhist Order still adhered 
 to the older doctrine. And in Nalanda, the great 
 Buddhist university of that time, both the schools 
 seem to have been represented. 
 
 As the Bodhisat theory loomed larger and larger 
 before the minds of the Buddhists, their thoughts nat- 
 urally turned with peculiar reverence to the Bodhis- 
 ats of the past, the present, and the future, rather 
 than to the Arahats whose names are recorded in the 
 sacred books. Thus Nagarjuna himself is looked 
 upon by the Chinese as a Bodhisat, and Yuan 
 Chwang mentions a number of persons, leaders in 
 the newer school, with the title of Bodhisat. So 
 the " Lotus of the Good Law" imitates the older 
 Dialogues by giving a kind of introductory story 
 describing the place and the occasion, on which 
 Gotama is said to have propounded this much later 
 work. And the persons to whom it is addressed, 
 the assembly which surrounded him on that oc- 
 casion, consists of a number of Bodhisats, instead 
 of the actual persons by whom we know that the 
 historical Buddha was in his lifetime surrounded. 
 For not only were distinguished human beings 
 singled out as Bodhisats, but a vast number of 
 hypothetical beings were introduced as objects of 
 reverence and worship on the ground that they were 
 Bodhisats. As time went on, converts to this 
 
Notes on the History of Buddhism 207 
 
 later Buddhism, who were well acquainted with the 
 Hindu gods and goddesses of the day, thought to 
 bring about a reconciliation between the two faiths 
 by simply turning the Hindu gods and goddesses 
 into Bodhisats, and representing them as supporters 
 of the Buddha. 
 
 One of the chief agents in this line of develop- 
 ment seems to have been Asanga, an influential 
 monk of Peshawur in the Pan jab, who lived and 
 wrote the first text-book of the creed — the Yogacara 
 Bhumi (Jastra — about the sixth century of our era. 
 He managed with great dexterity to reconcile the 
 two opposing systems by placing a number of Saiv- 
 ite gods in the Pantheon of his newer Buddhism, 
 and by incorporating into it a great deal of mystic 
 Tantric doctrine from the prevalent animism. He 
 thus made it possible for the half-converted, rude 
 tribes to remain Buddhists while they brought offer- 
 ings, and even bloody offerings, to these more con- 
 genial shrines ; and while their practical beliefs had 
 no relation at all to the four Truths or the Noble 
 Eightfold Path, but busied itself almost wholly 
 with attaining magic powers (Siddhi), by means of 
 magic phrases (Dharani) and magic circles (Man- 
 dala). These Maha Yana books inculcating the new 
 doctrines were translated, along with the older ones, 
 into Chinese. Yuan Chwang regarded himself as a 
 
208 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 Mahayanist, took many books of the Greater Vehi- 
 cle back to China, and in his labours as a translator 
 was imitated by a long line of workers in the same 
 field. The later books were afterwards translated into 
 Tibetan, and the new doctrine attained in Tibet to 
 so great a development, that Tibetan Buddhism, or 
 rather Lamaism, has come to be the exact contrary 
 of the earlier Buddhism. It has been worked up 
 there into a regular system which has shut out all 
 of the earlier Buddhism, although a few of the 
 earlier books are also to be found in Tibetan trans- 
 lations. 
 
 In China, on the contrary, we find no evidence of 
 a special system. All the books, early and late, are 
 mixed together in one heterogeneous collection. 
 Though no doubt the books of the Great Vehicle 
 have by far the preponderating influence, yet books 
 of various ages are still studied, and different schools 
 in China have adopted different degrees of the newer 
 doctrine. 
 
 Buddhism was introduced into Japan in the sixth 
 century from the Korea, and having started there 
 at so late a date, it has retained very little of the 
 older doctrine, except the theories of impermanence, 
 of the sorrow inherent in individuality, and of the 
 absence of any abiding principle as set out in my 
 fourth lecture. There are indeed now many sects 
 
Notes on the History of Buddhism 209 
 
 of Buddhists in that country, but their divisions are 
 entirely distinct from the divisions into Greater and 
 Lesser Vehicle. All of them are founded on the 
 Greater Vehicle, and they have developed in vari- 
 ous ways along purely local lines. There are even 
 members of the Order to be found there who are 
 married clergy, and who preach a salvation to be 
 reached in heaven. 
 
 But it is especially in Tibet that the doctrine of 
 Bodhisatship has received its most curious develop- 
 ment ; and there alone is it, that the head of the 
 Buddhist Order has also become the temporary 
 ruler of the state, and is considered as being him- 
 self a living Bodhisat. In my Hibbert Lectures 
 there will be found (pp. 192-195) a statement of the 
 very curious and interesting similarities between 
 this latest phase of the corruption of Buddhism, 
 and the latest phase of Christianity in Rome. 
 
 In this connection I shall doubtless be expected 
 to say a few words on Theosophy, if only because 
 one of the books giving an account of that very 
 curious and widely spread movement has been 
 called Esoteric Buddhism. It has always been a 
 point of wonder to me why the author should have 
 chosen this particular title for his treatise. For if 
 there is anything that can be said with absolute cer- 
 tainty about the book it is, that it is not esoteric, 
 
210 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 and not Buddhism. The original Buddhism was 
 the very contrary of esoteric. Gotama was accus- 
 tomed, throughout his long career, to speak quite 
 openly to everyone of the whole of the view of life 
 which he had to propound. No doubt there were a 
 certain number of questions to which it was his 
 habit to refuse to reply. These were questions the 
 discussion of which, in his opinion, was apt to lead 
 the mind astray, and so far from being conducive 
 to a growth in insight, would be a hindrance to the 
 only thing which was supremely worth aiming at, — ■ 
 the perfect life in Arahatship. The reason for his 
 reticence was not at all that he had formulated any 
 doctrine upon them which he wished to conceal from 
 some people, and reveal only to other more intimate 
 disciples. Such questions as — What shall I be during 
 the ages of the future ? Do I after all exist, or am 
 I not ? How am I? This is a being : Whence did 
 it come ? And whither will it go ? — are regarded as 
 worse than unprofitable, and the Buddha not only 
 refused to discuss them, but held that the tendency, 
 the desire to discuss them was a weakness, and that 
 the answers usually given were a delusion. There 
 are a whole set of such questions, drawn up in iden- 
 tical words in several of the Dialogues, a considera- 
 tion of which is called the Walking in Delusion, the 
 Jungle, the Wilderness, the Puppet Show, the 
 
Notes on the History of Buddhism 211 
 
 Writhing, the Fetter of Delusion. Gotama says, 
 just before he dies, in a passage I have already read 
 to you : " I have preached the truth without mak- 
 ing any distinction between exoteric and esoteric 
 doctrine ; for in respect of the truths, Ananda, the 
 Tathagata has no such thing as the closed fist of a 
 teacher who keeps some things back." And it is 
 quite impossible for anyone who reads the Pali 
 books to avoid seeing that everything which the 
 Master himself, and his early disciples, regarded as 
 important is not only set out with a lavish exposi- 
 tion which seeks above all to make the whole mat- 
 ter clear to everybody, but is even explained with a 
 length of detail which those not interested in the 
 system find tedious in the extreme. There is not 
 the slightest hint throughout the whole of the 
 Pitakas of any esoteric teaching. And even as 
 late as the Milinda we find the ideal teacher de- 
 scribed in the following words : " He should be 
 zealous, teach nothing partially, keep nothing secret, 
 and hold nothing back." * It is only when the 
 Maha Yana books, written many centuries after the 
 time of Gotama, wished to father on the Buddha 
 opinions different from those which he actually pro- 
 mulgated, that we find the allegation, in Buddhist 
 
 * Questions of King Milinda, vol. i., p. 142 of my translation. 
 Compare also the note at pp. 267, 268, 
 
212 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 books, of an esoteric teaching. It was the only 
 way in which the writers of those books could at 
 the same time call themselves Buddhist followers of 
 Gotama, and yet put forward the new ideas, con- 
 trary to those of Gotama, which they were anxious 
 to propagate. 
 
 And not only was there nothing esoteric in the 
 real original Buddhism. The views expressed in 
 Esoteric Buddhism, so far as they are Indian at all, 
 are not esoteric. The study of self-induced trance 
 is common to all the Indian schools. All that is 
 taught on the subject is accessible in handbooks, 
 and the teachers who practised themselves in such 
 things are always willing to teach them to anyone 
 who will submit to the necessary discipline. In this 
 sense only is it that Indian teachers, other than the 
 Buddhist, can occasionally be described as esoteric. 
 And this is a sense in which the word is also applica- 
 ble to our own teachers in the universities of the 
 West. They will not admit to their classes any 
 chance comer who has not undergone the necessary 
 discipline to enable him to appreciate what they 
 have to say. All the talk about " astral body " and 
 the different kinds of " soul," seven more or less, 
 which is, or rather was, put forward as esoteric 
 Buddhism, is a part of the Yoga philosophy of In- 
 dia, which is perfectly accessible to all the world- 
 
Notes on the History of Buddhism 213 
 
 And so far as I have been able to ascertain (though 
 the later Buddhists were much given to magic and 
 Tantric charms), this happens to be a part of the 
 current Indian belief on those subjects which even 
 they have never adopted. It is of course diametric- 
 ally opposed to all the most essential Buddhist doc- 
 trines as set out in outline in my last two lectures. 
 You will see therefore, why I venture to say that the 
 views put forward, in the work referred to, are neither 
 esoteric, nor are they Buddhism. 
 
 At the same time it is fair to add that Theo- 
 sophists in general do not any longer, I believe, 
 describe their tenets under the name of Esoteric 
 Buddhism, and we must not forget that there are 
 Theosophists and Theosophists. There are not a 
 few among them who are doing good service in 
 helping to break down that ignorant self-compla- 
 cency which regards any notions differing from the 
 current notions held in the West as quite unworthy 
 of notice. There are not a few of them who have 
 really devoted themselves to a patient study of 
 Eastern philosophies and Eastern religions, and who 
 have rendered real service to scholarship by bringing 
 over MSS. and providing funds for the publication 
 of translations of Eastern books. There may be 
 much in Theosophy which suggests a superficial 
 curiosity into obscure questions of psycho-physics, 
 
214 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 and into half-savage practices of magic, black and 
 white. But no one can doubt the sincerity of such 
 Theosophists as those to whom I have just referred. 
 I regret that an unfortunate title, now no longer 
 emphasised by Theosophists themselves, should 
 have led very widely to a confusion between a great 
 and sane system of philosophical ethics, and specu- 
 lations of very doubtful validity (really in many 
 instances, the rebound of half-trained intellects 
 from a crass materialism) and mixed up with his- 
 torical heresies of a most startling character. 
 
 It is very instructive to notice the fact that the 
 name of Buddhism has been rejected by the leading 
 expounders of Theosophy. This fact is really an 
 unconscious tribute to the success of the efforts that 
 have been made in the last few years to render the 
 authorities of the real, original Buddhism accessible 
 to the Western world. And I venture to think that 
 the publication and translation of the Buddhist texts 
 may possibly have no little influence among the 
 more cultured of those Eastern peoples, who still 
 call themselves Buddhists although they have wan- 
 dered, in many respects, so far from the ancient 
 faith. When Japanese students, for instance, come 
 to our Western colleges and learn there to read 
 their Pali and Sanskrit books under the guidance of 
 professors trained in historical criticism, it is almost 
 
Notes on the History of Buddhism 215 
 
 impossible that they can return to their own coun- 
 try without the accuracy of their knowledge being 
 greatly improved, and their ideas of Buddhism, to 
 some extent at least, corrected and modified. We 
 have an admirable instance of this in the very valua- 
 ble catalogue of Chinese Sanskrit books published 
 by Mr. Bunyiu Nanjio, at the University Press of 
 Oxford. Prepared under the guidance of the dis- 
 tinguished Professor of Comparative Philology at 
 Oxford, Professor Max Miiller, this book is a model 
 of what such a catalogue ought to be, with discus- 
 sions about dates, and careful indexes to all the 
 names of the books and authors mentioned. Mr. 
 Bunyiu Nanjio, while in London and Oxford, stu- 
 died Buddhist Sanskrit, and has now returned 
 to Japan to occupy the post of Professor at the 
 University of Tokio. 
 
 This is one of the excellent results following on 
 the increased intercommunication between East and 
 West which are now becoming so frequent, and 
 which we owe to the victories over nature achieved 
 by Western science. It was the desire of peoples to 
 travel and have intercourse with one another which 
 was one of the principal means of spurring on inven- 
 tions. And the inventions, in their turn, have made 
 possible such a meeting as the Parliament of Re- 
 ligions at Chicago, where minds steeped exclusively 
 
2l6 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 in Western and New-World ideas listened, not only 
 with interest, but also with sympathy, greatly 
 heightened by the presence of their representatives, 
 to the expositions of Eastern creeds. 
 
 It is true that a perusal of the numerous speeches 
 made at that Congress (and I have read the Buddhist 
 ones very carefully) show how astounding is the gulf 
 on all sides between popular beliefs and the conclu- 
 sions of scholarship. To take only one instance 
 from the address on Buddha by the Right Rev. 
 Zitsuzen Ashitsu of Japan. He says : "The Person 
 of Buddha is perfectly free from life and death. We 
 call it Nehan or Nirvana. Nehan is divided into 
 four classes : (i) The name given to the nature of 
 Buddha which has neither beginning nor end and is 
 entirely clear of lust like a perfect mirror. But such 
 an excellent nature as I have mentioned is not the 
 peculiar property of Buddha, but every being in the 
 world has just the same constitution. (2) The name 
 given to the state, little advanced from the above, 
 where we perceive that our solicitude is fleeting, 
 our lives are inconstant, and even that there is no 
 such thing as Ego. In this state our mind is quite 
 empty and clear, but there still remains one thing, 
 the body. So it is called Uyo, or something left. 
 (3) The state in which our body and intellect come 
 to entire annihilation and there is nothing traceable, 
 
Notes on the History of Buddhism 217 
 
 therefore this state is called Muyo, or nothing left. 
 (4) The state when we get perfect intellectual wis- 
 dom. We are not any more subject to birth and 
 death. Also we become perfectly merciful ; we are 
 not content with the indulging state of highest 
 Nirvana ; but we appear to the beings of every class 
 to save them from prevailing pains by imparting the 
 pleasure of Nirvana. Out of these four classes of 
 Nirvana the first and last are called the Nirvana of 
 Mahayana, the Greater Vehicle, while the remainder 
 are that of Hlna Yana, the Lesser Vehicle." 
 
 We must of course take into consideration, in this 
 quotation, the imperfection of the English. But the 
 curious thing about it is that the views here ascribed 
 to the Hlna Yana, can not be found, so far as we 
 know, in any Hlna Yana book. And this difficulty 
 does not seem to have occurred to the learned 
 author, who also distinctly states that the Maha 
 Yana books (really many centuries later) were com- 
 piled by the disciples of the Buddha, meaning no 
 doubt his personal followers. It will be very inter- 
 esting to be able to trace how these notions passed 
 through the intermediate stages between the doc- 
 trine of the Pitakas and the doctrine here set forth. 
 I have not time now to discuss the resemblances and 
 differences which are involved, but it will be appar- 
 ent to you all how different is the tone of the pas- 
 
218 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 sage I have just quoted from the passages I have 
 had occasion to read from the Buddhist Pitakas 
 themselves. 
 
 Another excellent result which may, and I hope 
 will, follow from our increased acquaintance with 
 the actual thoughts and literature, as well as with 
 the personalities of Oriental peoples, is a loosening 
 of that prejudice which undoubtedly obtains, even 
 among scholarly circles, in the West. It would be 
 perhaps too much to complain that classical schol- 
 ars, for instance, should have a decided repugnance 
 to admit any actual influence on Greek thought or 
 institutions as having been exercised by the think- 
 ers of the East, however ungrudgingly that privi- 
 lege is conceded to Egypt. Personally I think that 
 they are quite in the right in maintaining that such 
 an influence is, except in a few instances, at present 
 entirely unproven. But surely there are many points 
 of analogy which are most instructive, and suggest- 
 ive at least of more than an analogical connection; 
 points that may throw light upon the natural course 
 of the evolution of human conceptions and, in 
 doing so, help to throw light on dark corners of the 
 history of that culture out of which our own has 
 arisen. It is a common saying that it is impossible 
 to know any one language well without at the same 
 time knowing another, and I venture to think that 
 
Notes on the History of Buddhism 219 
 
 a similar remark holds good of the history of religion 
 or of ethics, or of institutions, or of philosophy. 
 
 Should I be considered too bold if I were to go 
 one step farther and suggest that there are really 
 some points in the philosophy of the East, and es- 
 pecially of India, which are fated sooner or later to 
 find their place in, and to exercise a not inconsid- 
 erable influence over, the thought of Western na- 
 tions. I know it is a common idea, and one held 
 not only by Philistines, that the study of Bud- 
 dhism, for instance, is of no use except as a matter 
 of curiosity, since it has no connection with the ori- 
 gins of our own culture, which is, after all, in the 
 commonly accepted opinion, the only progressive 
 culture in the world. This view not only entirely 
 ignores the value of the comparative study of all 
 historical questions, but it ignores also, with an 
 almost wilful ignorance, the real originality of 
 Gotama's ethics and philosophy. 
 
 But this, I know, is not the view which is held by 
 those I have the honour of addressing, or indeed 
 by some of the most unprejudiced and original lead- 
 ers of thought in Europe. You all know how 
 Schopenhauer claims to have arrived, in the very 
 deepest foundation of his system, at a practical 
 agreement with Buddhism, and he writes, alluding 
 to other thinkers : 
 
220 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 " If I am to take the results of my philosophy as 
 the standard of truth, I should be obliged to con- 
 cede to Buddhism the pre-eminence over the rest. 
 In any case it must be a satisfaction to me to find 
 my teaching in such close agreement with a religion 
 professed by the majority of men. This agreement 
 must be all the more satisfactory because in my 
 philosophising I have certainly not been under its 
 influence." 
 
 These words are at least conclusive evidence to 
 show that, so far as Schopenhauer is worth studying, 
 the Buddhist philosophy is worthy of study also ; 
 and I need not stay therefore to point out the rea- 
 sons which have led me to believe that Schopen- 
 hauer was influenced, not only by Vedantism, but 
 also by Buddhism. 
 
 And with this great philosophical thinker I would 
 also remind you of the words of the veteran leader 
 of scientific thought in England, Professor Huxley, 
 who, comparing Gotama's idealism with that of 
 Bishop Berkeley, says, in one of his latest utter- 
 ances : 
 
 " It is a remarkable indication of the subtlety of 
 Indian speculation that Gotama should have seen 
 deeper than the greatest of modern idealists." 
 
Notes on the History of Buddhism 221 
 
 And throughout his whole essay he insists very 
 strongly on the value, even to actual belief in the 
 West, of a critical study of the Buddhist system. 
 
 Dr. Deussen, Professor of Philosophy at Kiel, has 
 even gone so far as to publish a handbook for stu- 
 dents entitled Elements of Metaphysics, in which In- 
 dian thought is throughout compared and used, 
 alongside with European speculation. And I know 
 from your presence here to-day, that you at least 
 will cordially agree with the committee representing 
 centres of higher education in America, that the 
 comparative study of religious belief (which must 
 be very largely, and even mainly, the history of 
 Oriental belief) has come to be a matter of real im- 
 portance to Western students. It would be beyond 
 the scope of a lecturer on this subject to touch upon 
 the possible influence of its study upon the religion 
 of the future. But it is a matter of historic fact 
 that the great epochs of intellectual progress have 
 been precisely those when two different and even 
 antagonistic systems of thought have been ferment- 
 ing in the same minds. The two systems are, as it 
 were, the father and mother, whose progeny, more 
 like, perhaps, to one of its parents, still possesses 
 some of the characteristics of both, and escapes 
 from the evil results of too exclusive and narrow an 
 interbreeding. 
 
222 
 
 Buddhism 
 
 We may at least venture to hope that the series 
 of lectures, of which this course is only the first in- 
 stalment, will do much to promote that feeling of 
 respect for opinions we ourselves can never hold, 
 which lends so much assistance to a right under- 
 standing of the causes at work in the evolution of 
 thought and in the history of our race. 
 
 THE END. 
 
INDEX, 
 
 Abhidhamma, 62 
 Abhidhana Padlpika, 49 
 Acchariya Abbhuta Sutta, 95 
 Ajanta, cave hermitages, 118 
 Alara Kalama, 102 
 Anatta Lakkhana Sutta, 39 
 Anguttara, 60, 61 
 Animism, 36, 140 
 
 Arahatship, 145, 148, 149, 155 ; defined, 150, 164 ; poems on, 166 
 foil. 
 
 Arbitration, 56. 
 Ariya Pariyesana Sutta, 102 
 Arnold, Matthew, 183 
 Arnold, Sir Edwin, 89 
 Aryan religion, 185 
 Aryans, 16-18 
 
 Ascetics, 96-99 ; the five, 103-106 
 Asoka, 15, 46, 64 
 
 Aspiration, its importance, 137, 182 
 Atheists, 13 
 
 Bastian, Prof., 155 
 Beal, the Rev. Samuel, 91 
 Bhagavad Gita, 141 
 Bigandet, Bishop, 87 
 Bode, Mrs., 74 
 Bodhisatship, 201-203 
 Brahma Vihara. 148 
 
 223 
 
224 
 
 Index 
 
 Brahmins, their treatment of Buddhism, 115, 116 
 " Buddha Carita," the poem, 88 
 Buddhaghosa, the great commentator, 28, 62, 108 
 " Buddha Vansa," poem on the Buddhas, 77 
 
 Carpenter, Mr. J. E., 28 
 
 Cause, universality of, 32, 42 
 
 Cave dwellings, ancient Buddhist, 118, 119 
 
 Ceremonies, evil of, 147 
 
 Ceylon books, 46 
 
 Chalmers, Mr. Robert, 79, 95 
 
 Chicago Parliament of Religions, 215, 216 
 
 Childers, Prof., 49 
 
 Chinese Buddhism, 8 
 
 Cicero, 1, 4 
 
 Conduct, the right, 137 
 Confections, 130, 156 
 
 Council, of Vesali, 190-194 ; the Great, 193, 202 
 Cowell, Prof., 79, 88 
 
 Dakkhina-pathakas, the, 197 
 Delusion of self, 126-129, 131, 141, 142 
 Desires, see Aspiration. 
 Deussen, Prof., 25, 221 
 
 Development of Buddhist doctrine, 189, 196 
 
 Devils, formerly gods, 12, 14 
 
 Dhammapada, 48, 68 
 
 Dhammapala, the commentator, 71 
 
 Dhamma Sangani, 63 
 
 Dhaniya Sutta, translated, 166 
 
 Dharma = Dhamma, 2, 38, 41, 63, 106, 145 
 
 Dialogues of the Buddha, 58, 59, 156, 189, 195, 203 
 
 Digha Nikaya, 27, 28, 30 
 
 Dlpa Vansa, quoted, 193 
 
 Doubt, the fetter of, 142-145 
 
 Dreams, 10, II 
 
 Drink, 148 
 
 Dualism, 37 
 
Index 
 
 225 
 
 " Ecce Homo," 4 
 
 Education, early methods of, 19, 58 
 Effort, the right, 137 
 Elephanta cave hermitages, n3 
 Emancipation, 183, 184 
 Empedokles, 161 
 Equanimity, 149 
 
 Esoteric teaching, none in Buddhism, 209, 21 r 
 
 Evil, origin of, 125 
 
 Evils, the four great, 141, 178 
 
 Evolution, of religious belief, 140 ; of ethical character, 162 
 
 Faith and works, 146, 176 
 
 Fate, mystery of, 130, 157 
 
 Fausboll, Prof., 48 
 
 Fetters, the Ten, 141 foil. 
 
 Final assurance, Buddhist doctrine of, 147 
 
 Finity and infinity, 31 
 
 Foucaux, Prof., 83 
 
 Foundation of the Kingdom of Righteousness, 106, 135-140 
 Freedom, Buddhist, 1S4 
 
 Future life, 32; poems on, 77; in Buddhism, 128, 131, 132, 134; 
 one of the four great evils, 141 ; love of, is one of the fetters, 
 150 ; the Arahat untarnished by love of, 177 
 
 Garbe, Prof., 25, 162 
 
 God, 21 ; eternity of, 31 
 
 Gods, the earliest, 11 ; eternity of, 31 
 
 Harrison, Frederic, 4 
 
 Heaven, not to be desired, 131, 150 ; Buddhist idea of, not the 
 Christian, 154 
 
 Heresies, the, 27, 31 foil., 62 ; at the Council of Vesali, 190-192 
 Huxley, Prof., 220 
 
 Ignorance, 126, 141 ; the last fetter, 150 ; in the Wheel of Life, 
 
 155, 165 
 Ill-will, the fifth fetter, 14S 
 
226 
 
 Index 
 
 Impermanence, Indian doctrine of, 121 foil., 129 
 
 Individuality, the cause of sorrow, 124, 142 ; not denied in Bud 
 
 dhism, 125 ; the delusions regarding it, 126, 127, 131 
 Indulgences, the ten, 191 
 Intelligence, result of, 141 
 " Iti Vuttaka," book so called, 70, 71 
 
 Jacobi, Prof., 24 
 
 Japanese Buddhism, 208, 215 
 
 Jatakas, old stories, 78 
 
 Jewels, the seven, of the Blessed One, 184 
 
 Jina Carita, poem on Buddha's life, 88 
 
 Kapila, founder of the Sankhya, 24, 26, 29 
 Karma, theory of, 129 foil., 133, 170, 200 
 Kassapa of Uruvela, 166 
 Katha Vatthu, 40, 63, 195 foil. 
 Kern, Prof., 203 
 Khandakas, 56 
 Khuddaka Patha, 67 
 Konfucius, 8, 140 
 
 " Lalita Vistara," poem, 88, 89 
 Lanman, Prof., 76 
 Lao Tsu, 8 
 
 Law, ancient meaning of 2 ; early discussion of points of, 55, 58 
 
 Liberty of thought, 115, 116, 184 
 
 " Light of Asia," the poem, 89, 104, 158 
 
 Livelihood, right means of, 137 
 
 Lotus of the good law, 203 
 
 Love, Buddhist exercise of, 149, 174, 176 
 
 Lupton, Mr., 98 
 
 Maha Pajapati, the Buddha's aunt, 93 
 Maha Parinibbana Sutta, 113, 143, 179 
 Maha Vastu, 202-204 
 Mara, the Evil One, 73, 75, 104 
 Materialists, Indian, 24, 37 
 
Index 
 
 227 
 
 Maya, the Buddha's mother, 93 
 Medicine, 400 B.C., 57, 179 
 Memory, 19, 34 
 Milinda, 40, 171, 184 
 Mindfulness, the right, 137 
 Monistic theories, 23 
 Monotheism, 21, 140 
 Morality, mere, not enough, 147 
 Miiller, Prof. Edward, 63, 72 
 Muller, Prof. Max, 5 
 
 Nagarjuna, 206 
 
 Nagasena, 40, 171 
 
 Name, part of personality, 157 
 
 Niddesa, an ancient commentary, 76 
 
 Nirvana, referred to, 135, 145 ; defined, 150, 164 ; poems on, 167 
 
 foil. ; realisation of, 172-175 ; place of, 175 
 Noble Condition, 148 
 Noble Eightfold Path, 135-137 
 Noble Truths, the four, 138 
 
 Pabbajja Sutta, translated, 99 foil. 
 
 Pahlavi Texts, 141 
 
 Pali, 45 foil., 81 
 
 Pali Text Society, Si-86 
 
 Pantheism, 36 
 
 Paramitas, the ten, 200 
 
 Parivara, 58 
 
 Path, the noble eightfold, 135-13? 
 
 Patimokkha, 54. 57 
 
 Pavarana, 56 
 
 Penance, 102 
 
 Peta-Vatthu, 77 
 
 Pindar, 161 
 
 Pitakas, 51-53. 81, 195 
 Pity, practice of, 149 
 Piyadassi, 46 
 
 Plato, 59, 159, 161, 163 * 
 Polytheism, 36, 140 
 
228 
 
 Index 
 
 Potter and his wheel, 156, 157 
 Predestination, 130 
 
 Pride, last enemy to be conquered, 150 
 
 Primitive man, g 
 
 Primordial stuff, 28 
 
 Prinsep, 46 
 
 Puggala Pannatti, 63 
 
 Pythagoras, 162 
 
 Rahula, the Buddha's son, 93 
 
 Rama, Uddaka's father, 102 
 
 Rapture, the right, 137, 146, 152, 177 
 
 Ratthapala Suttanta, 98 
 
 Recluse, the Buddhist, described, 176 foil. 
 
 Religion, defined, 1-5 ; in India, 6-9 
 
 Renunciation, 96, 97 
 
 Rhys Davids, Mrs., 63, 72, 183 
 
 Rouse, Mr. W. H. D., 79 
 
 Rules of the Order, 53-58 ; 190-192 
 
 Salvation, what it is, 131, 154 
 Samyutta, 61 
 
 Sankhya philosophy, 24 foil. 
 
 Scaliger, 44 
 
 Schelling, Prof., 131 
 
 Schism, the first, 190 
 
 Schopenhauer, 219, 220 
 
 Schurman, President, 186 
 
 Self, delusions of, see Delusion. 
 
 Self-reliance, essential in Buddhism, 143, 176, 180 
 
 Self-righteousness, the ninth fetter, 150 
 
 Senart, M. Emile, 202 
 
 Sense-perception, 158 
 
 Sensuality, one of the four great evils, 141, 147 
 Sisters of the Order, 56 
 Sorrow, cause of, 124, 125 
 
 Soul, early belief in, 10 ; eternity of the, 31 ; Buddhist doctrine 
 about, 39-41 ; belief in a, fatal to goodness, 123, 124 ; not the 
 real link between this life and the next, 128, 133 
 
Index 
 
 Speech, the right, 137 
 
 Stoics, why like the Buddhists, 140 
 
 St. Thomas Aquinas, 2 
 
 Sutta, 53 
 
 Sutta Nipata, poems so-called, 76 
 Sutta Vibhanga, 55 
 Symonds, Mr. J. A., 152 
 Sympathy^ 149 
 
 Tanha, see Thirst. 
 Taylor, Mr. Arnold C, 62, 65 
 Temperance, Buddhist, 148, 152 
 Tevijja Sutta, 164 
 Theosophy, 209-212 
 
 Thera-therl-gatha, Songs of the Elders, 71 
 Thirst, 136, 158 
 
 Thought, the method of its growth, 13 
 
 Tissa, author of Katha Vatthu, 63, 195 
 
 Toleration, in India, 115 ; among the Buddhists, 116, rSi 
 
 Transcendentalists, 199, 202 
 
 Transmigration, 128-131, 154. 183 
 
 Trench, Archbishop, 3 
 
 Truth, see Dhamma. 
 
 Truths, the four noble, 136 
 
 Tumour, George, 46, 47 
 
 Udana, Ecstatic utterance, 70 
 Uddaka, son of Rama, 102 
 Upadana, grasping, 158, 164 
 Uposatha, 54, 56 
 
 Uttara-pathakas, the Northerners, 197 
 Vedantism, 22, 24 
 
 Vedas, show an advanced stage in the soul theory, 13, 14 
 Vehicles, the Greater and the Less, 204 
 Vesali, Council of, 191 
 Views, the right, 137 
 Vimana Vatthu, the poem, 77 
 
Index 
 
 Vinaya, Canon Law, 53-58 
 von Schroeder, Prof., 162 
 
 Waddell, Mr., rig, 156 
 Wandering ascetics, 96-99 
 Warren, Mr. H. C, 160, 176 
 West, Mr., 141 
 
 Wheel of Life, 120, 155 foil., 161 
 Whirlpool of rebirths, 155 
 
 Women, made the earliest gods, 11 ; teachers and poets in early 
 
 Buddhism, 72-75 
 Works and faith, 146, 147 
 
 Yuan Thsang, 205, 207 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 REC'D LD-ijfti 
 
 REC'DYRL 3CT 1 8 2005 
 
 JUN 26 2001] 
 
 'Z ■ AUG ?«» 
 
 OCT i 9 1976 
 
 Form L9-Series44^w ,, c ^976 
 
 i 4 
 OISCHA! 
 
 APR 1 1981