FOOTNOTES:
[50] 'The Manners and Customs of the Parsees.' By Dadabhai Naoroji, Esq. Liverpool, 1861.
'The Parsee Religion,' By Dadabhai Naoroji, Esq. Liverpool, 1861.
[51] See page 140.
IX.
BUDDHISM.[52]
f the command of St. Paul, 'Prove all things, hold fast that which is good,' may be supposed to refer to spiritual things, and, more especially, to religious doctrines, it must be confessed that few only, whether theologians or laymen, have ever taken to heart the apostle's command. How many candidates for holy orders are there who could give a straightforward answer if asked to enumerate the principal religions of the world, or to state the names of their founders, and the titles of the works which are still considered by millions of human beings as the sacred authorities for their religious belief? To study such books as the Koran of the Mohammedans, the Zend-Avesta of the Parsis, the King's of the Confucians, the Tao-te-King of the Taoists, the Vedas of the Brahmans, the Tripitaka of the Buddhists, the Sûtras of the Jains, or the Granth of the Sikhs, would be considered by many mere waste of time. Yet St. Paul's command is very clear and simple; and to maintain that it referred to the heresies of his own time only, or to the philosophical systems of the Greeks and Romans, would be to narrow the horizon of the apostle's mind, and to destroy the general applicability of his teaching to all times and to all countries. Many will ask what possible good could be derived from the works of men who must have been either deceived or deceivers, nor would it be difficult to quote some passages in order to show the utter absurdity and worthlessness of the religious books of the Hindus and Chinese. But this was not the spirit in which the apostle of the Gentiles addressed himself to the Epicureans and Stoics, nor is this the feeling with which a thoughtful Christian and a sincere believer in the divine government of the world is likely to rise from a perusal of any of the books which he knows to be or to have been the only source of spiritual light and comfort to thousands and thousands among the dwellers on earth.
Many are the advantages to be derived from a careful study of other religions, but the greatest of all is that it teaches us to appreciate more truly what we possess in our own. When do we feel the blessings of our own country more warmly and truly than when we return from abroad? It is the same with regard to religion. Let us see what other nations have had and still have in the place of religion; let us examine the prayers, the worship, the theology even of the most highly civilised races,—the Greeks, the Romans, the Hindus, the Persians,—and we shall then understand more thoroughly what blessings are vouchsafed to us in being allowed to breathe from the first breath of life the pure air of a land of Christian light and knowledge. We are too apt to take the greatest blessings as matters of course, and even religion forms no exception. We have done so little to gain our religion, we have suffered so little in the cause of truth, that however highly we prize our own Christianity, we never prize it highly enough until we have compared it with the religions of the rest of the world.
This, however, is not the only advantage; and we think that M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire has formed too low an estimate of the benefits to be derived from a thoughtful study of the religions of mankind when he writes of Buddhism: 'Le seul, mais immense service que le Bouddhisme puisse nous rendre, c'est par son triste contraste de nous faire apprécier mieux encore la valeur inestimable de nos croyances, en nous montrant tout ce qu'il en coûte à l'humanité qui ne les partage point.' This is not all. If a knowledge of other countries and a study of the manners and customs of foreign nations teach us to appreciate what we have at home, they likewise form the best cure of that national conceit and want of sympathy with which we are too apt to look on all that is strange and foreign. The feeling which led the Hellenic races to divide the whole world into Greeks and Barbarians is so deeply engrained in human nature that not even Christianity has been able altogether to remove it. Thus when we cast our first glance into the labyrinth of the religions of the world, all seems to us darkness, self-deceit, and vanity. It sounds like a degradation of the very name of religion to apply it to the wild ravings of Hindu Yogins or the blank blasphemies of Chinese Buddhists. But as we slowly and patiently wend our way through the dreary prisons, our own eyes seem to expand, and we perceive a glimmer of light where all was darkness at first. We learn to understand the saying of one who more than anybody had a right to speak with authority on this subject, that 'there is no religion which does not contain a spark of truth.' Those who would limit the riches of God's goodness and forbearance and long suffering, and would hand over the largest portion of the human race to inevitable perdition, have never adduced a tittle of evidence from the Gospel or from any other trustworthy source in support of so unhallowed a belief. They have generally appealed to the devilries and orgies of heathen worship; they have quoted the blasphemies of Oriental Sufis and the immoralities sanctioned by the successors of Mohammed; but they have seldom, if ever, endeavoured to discover the true and original character of the strange forms of faith and worship which they call the work of the devil. If the Indians had formed their notions of Christianity from the soldiers of Cortez and Pizarro, or if the Hindus had studied the principles of Christian morality in the lives of Clive and Warren Hastings; or, to take a less extreme case, if a Mohammedan, settled in England, were to test the practical working of Christian charity by the spirit displayed in the journals of our religious parties, their notions of Christianity would be about as correct as the ideas which thousands of educated Christians entertain of the diabolical character of heathen religion. Even Christianity has been depraved into Jesuitism and Mormonism, and if we, as Protestants, claim the right to appeal to the Gospel as the only test by which our faith is to be judged, we must grant a similar privilege to Mohammedans and Buddhists, and to all who possess a written, and, as they believe, revealed authority for the articles of their faith.
But though no one is likely to deny the necessity of studying each religion in its most ancient form and from its original documents, before we venture to pronounce our verdict, the difficulties of this task are such that in them more than in anything else, must be sought the cause why so few of our best thinkers and writers have devoted themselves to a critical and historical study of the religions of the world. All important religions have sprung up in the East. Their sacred books are written in Eastern tongues, and some of them are of such ancient date that those even who profess to believe in them, admit that they are unable to understand them without the help of translations and commentaries. Until very lately the sacred books of three of the most important religions, those of the Brahmans, the Buddhists, and the Parsis, were totally unknown in Europe. It was one of the most important results of the study of Sanskrit, or the ancient language of India, that through it the key, not only to the sacred books of the Brahmans, the Vedas, but likewise to those of the Buddhists and Zoroastrians, was recovered. And nothing shows more strikingly the rapid progress of Sanskrit scholarship than that even Sir William Jones, whose name has still, with many, a more familiar sound than the names of Colebrooke, Burnouf, and Lassen, should have known nothing of the Vedas; that he should never have read a line of the canonical books of the Buddhists, and that he actually expressed his belief that Buddha was the same as the Teutonic deity Wodan or Odin, and Sâkya, another name of Buddha, the same as Shishac, king of Egypt. The same distinguished scholar never perceived the intimate relationship between the language of the Zend-Avesta and Sanskrit, and he declared the whole of the Zoroastrian writings to be modern forgeries.
Even at present we are not yet in possession of a complete edition, much less of any trustworthy translation, of the Vedas; we only possess the originals of a few books of the Buddhist canon; and though the text of the Zend-Avesta has been edited in its entirety, its interpretation is beset with greater difficulties than that of the Vedas or the Tripitaka. A study of the ancient religions of China, those of Confucius and Lao-tse, presupposes an acquaintance with Chinese, a language which it takes a life to learn thoroughly; and even the religion of Mohammed, though more accessible than any other Eastern religion, cannot be fully examined except by a master of Arabic. It is less surprising, therefore, than it might at first appear, that a comprehensive and scholarlike treatment of the religions of the world should still be a desideratum. Scholars who have gained a knowledge of the language, and thereby free access to original documents, find so much work at hand which none but themselves can do, that they grudge the time for collecting and arranging, for the benefit of the public at large, the results which they have obtained. Nor need we wonder that critical historians should rather abstain from the study of the religions of antiquity than trust to mere translations and second-hand authorities.
Under these circumstances we feel all the more thankful if we meet with a writer like M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, who has acquired a knowledge of Eastern languages sufficient to enable him to consult original texts and to control the researches of other scholars, and who at the same time commands that wide view of the history of human thought which enables him to assign to each system its proper place, to perceive its most salient features, and to distinguish between what is really important and what is not, in the lengthy lucubrations of ancient poets and prophets. M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire is one of the most accomplished scholars of France; and his reputation as the translator of Aristotle has made us almost forget that the Professor of Greek Philosophy at the Collège de France[53] is the same as the active writer in the 'Globe' of 1827, and the 'National' of 1830; the same who signed the protest against the July ordinances, and who in 1848 was Chief Secretary of the Provisional Government. If such a man takes the trouble to acquire a knowledge of Sanskrit, and to attend in the same College where he was professor, the lectures of his own colleague, the late Eugène Burnouf, his publications on Hindu philosophy and religion will naturally attract a large amount of public interest. The Sanskrit scholar by profession works and publishes chiefly for the benefit of other Sanskrit scholars. He is satisfied with bringing to light the ore which he has extracted by patient labour from among the dusty MSS. of the East-India House. He seldom takes the trouble to separate the metal from the ore, to purify or to strike it into current coin. He is but too often apt to forget that no lasting addition is ever made to the treasury of human knowledge unless the results of special research are translated into the universal language of science, and rendered available to every person of intellect and education. A division of labour seems most conducive to this end. We want a class of interpreters, men such as M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, who are fully competent to follow and to control the researches of professional students, and who at the same time have not forgotten the language of the world.
In his work on Buddhism, of which a second edition has just appeared, M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire has undertaken to give to the world at large the really trustworthy and important results which have been obtained by the laborious researches of Oriental scholars, from the original documents of that interesting and still mysterious religion. It was a task of no ordinary difficulty, for although these researches are of very recent date, and belong to a period of Sanskrit scholarship posterior to Sir W. Jones and Colebrooke, yet such is the amount of evidence brought together by the combined industry of Hodgson, Turnour, Csoma de Körös, Stanislas Julien, Foucaux, Fausböll, Spence Hardy, but above all, of the late Eugène Burnouf, that it required no common patience and discrimination in order to compose from such materials so accurate, and at the same time so lucid and readable a book on Buddhism as that which we owe to M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire. The greater part of it appeared originally in the 'Journal des Savants,' the time-honoured organ of the French Academy, which counts on its staff the names of Cousin, Flourens, Villemain, Biot, Mignet, Littré, &c., and admits as contributors sixteen only of the most illustrious members of that illustrious body, la crême de la crême.
Though much had been said and written about Buddhism,—enough to frighten priests by seeing themselves anticipated in auricular confession, beads, and tonsure by the Lamas of Tibet,[54] and to disconcert philosophers by finding themselves outbid in positivism and nihilism by the inmates of Chinese monasteries,—the real beginning of an historical and critical study of the doctrines of Buddha dates from the year 1824. In that year Mr. Hodgson announced the fact that the original documents of the Buddhist canon had been preserved in Sanskrit in the monasteries of Nepal. Before that time our information on Buddhism had been derived at random from China, Japan, Burmah, Tibet, Mongolia, and Tartary; and though it was known that the Buddhist literature in all these countries professed itself to be derived, directly or indirectly, from India, and that the technical terms of that religion, not excepting the very name of Buddha, had their etymology in Sanskrit only, no hope was entertained that the originals of these various translations could ever be recovered. Mr. Hodgson, who settled in Nepal in 1821, as political resident of the East-India Company, and whose eyes were always open, not only to the natural history of that little-explored country, but likewise to its antiquities, its languages, and traditions, was not long before he discovered that his friends, the priests of Nepal, possessed a complete literature of their own. That literature was not written in the spoken dialects of the country, but in Sanskrit. Mr. Hodgson procured a catalogue of all the works, still in existence, which formed the Buddhist canon. He afterwards succeeded in procuring copies of these works, and he was able in 1824 to send about sixty volumes to the Asiatic Society of Bengal. As no member of that society seemed inclined to devote himself to the study of these MSS., Mr. Hodgson sent two complete collections of the same MSS. to the Asiatic Society of London and the Société Asiatique of Paris. Before alluding to the brilliant results which the last-named collection produced in the hands of Eugène Burnouf, we must mention the labours of other students, which preceded the publication of Burnouf's researches.
Mr. Hodgson himself gave to the world a number of valuable essays written on the spot, and afterwards collected under the title of 'Illustrations of the Literature and Religion of the Buddhists,' Serampore, 1841. He established the important fact, in accordance with the traditions of the priests of Nepal, that some of the Sanskrit documents which he recovered had existed in the monasteries of Nepal ever since the second century of our era, and that the whole of that collection had, five or six hundred years later, when Buddhism became definitely established in Tibet, been translated into the language of that country. As the art of printing had been introduced from China into Tibet, there was less difficulty in procuring complete copies of the Tibetan translation of the Buddhist canon. The real difficulty was to find a person acquainted with the language. By a fortunate concurrence of circumstances, however, it so happened that about the same time when Mr. Hodgson's discoveries began to attract the attention of Oriental scholars at Calcutta, a Hungarian, of the name of Alexander Csoma de Körös, arrived there. He had made his way from Hungary to Tibet on foot, without any means of his own, and with the sole object of discovering somewhere in Central Asia the native home of the Hungarians. Arrived in Tibet, his enthusiasm found a new vent in acquiring a language which no European before his time had mastered, and in exploring the vast collection of the canonical books of the Buddhists, preserved in that language. Though he arrived at Calcutta almost without a penny, he met with a hearty welcome from the members of the Asiatic Society, and was enabled with their assistance to publish the results of his extraordinary researches. People have complained of the length of the sacred books of other nations, but there are none that approach in bulk to the sacred canon of the Tibetans. It consists of two collections, commonly called the Kanjur and Tanjur. The proper spelling of their names is Bkah-hgyur, pronounced Kah-gyur, and Bstan-hgyur, pronounced Tan-gyur. The Kanjur consists, in its different editions, of 100, 102, or 108 volumes folio. It comprises 1083 distinct works. The Tanjur consists of 225 volumes folio, each weighing from four to five pounds in the edition of Peking. Editions of this colossal code were printed at Peking, Lhassa, and other places. The edition of the Kanjur published at Peking, by command of the Emperor Khian-Lung, sold for £600. A copy of the Kanjur was bartered for 7000 oxen by the Buriates, and the same tribe paid 1200 silver roubles for a complete copy of the Kanjur and Tanjur together.[55] Such a jungle of religious literature—the most excellent hiding-place, we should think, for Lamas and Dalai-Lamas—was too much even for a man who could travel on foot from Hungary to Tibet. The Hungarian enthusiast, however, though he did not translate the whole, gave a most valuable analysis of this immense bible, in the twentieth volume of the 'Asiatic Researches,' sufficient to establish the fact that the principal portion of it was a translation from the same Sanskrit originals which had been discovered in Nepal by Mr. Hodgson. Csoma de Körös died soon after he had given to the world the first fruits of his labours,—a victim to his heroic devotion to the study of ancient languages and religions.
It was another fortunate coincidence that, contemporaneously with the discoveries of Hodgson and Csoma de Körös, another scholar, Schmidt of St. Petersburg, had so far advanced in the study of the Mongolian language, as to be able to translate portions of the Mongolian version of the Buddhist canon, and thus forward the elucidation of some of the problems connected with the religion of Buddha.
It never rains but it pours. Whereas for years, nay, for centuries, not a single original document of the Buddhist religion had been accessible to the scholars of Europe, we witness, in the small space of ten years, the recovery of four complete Buddhist literatures. In addition to the discoveries of Hodgson in Nepal, of Csoma de Körös in Tibet, and of Schmidt in Mongolia, the Honourable George Turnour suddenly presented to the world the Buddhist literature of Ceylon, composed in the sacred language of that island, the ancient Pâli. The existence of that literature had been known before. Since 1826 Sir Alexander Johnston had been engaged in collecting authentic copies of the Mahâvansa, the Râgâvalî, and the Râgaratnâkarî. These copies were translated at his suggestion from Pâli into modern Singhalese and thence into English. The publication was entrusted to Mr. Edward Upham, and the work appeared in 1833, under the title of 'Sacred and Historical Works of Ceylon,' dedicated to William IV. Unfortunately, whether through fraud or through misunderstanding, the priests who were to have procured an authentic copy of the Pâli originals and translated them into the vernacular language, appear to have formed a compilation of their own from various sources. The official translators by whom this mutilated Singhalese abridgment was to have been rendered into English, took still greater liberties; and the 'Sacred and Historical Books of Ceylon' had hardly been published before Burnouf, then a mere beginner in the study of Pâli, was able to prove the utter uselessness of that translation. Mr. Turnour, however, soon made up for this disappointment. He set to work in a more scholarlike spirit, and after acquiring himself a knowledge of the Pâli language, he published several important essays on the Buddhist canon, as preserved in Ceylon. These were followed by an edition and translation of the Mahâvansa, or the history of Ceylon, written in the fifth century after Christ, and giving an account of the island from the earliest times to the beginning of the fourth century a.d. Several continuations of that history are in existence, but Mr. Turnour was prevented by an early death from continuing his edition beyond the original portion of that chronicle. The exploration of the Ceylonese literature has since been taken up again by the Rev. D. J. Gogerly (Clough), whose essays are unfortunately scattered about in Singhalese periodicals and little known in Europe; and by the Rev. Spence Hardy, for twenty years Wesleyan Missionary in Ceylon. His two works, 'Eastern Monachism' and 'Manual of Buddhism,' are full of interesting matter, but as they are chiefly derived from Singhalese, and even more modern sources, they require to be used with caution.[56]
In the same manner as the Sanskrit originals of Nepal were translated by Buddhist missionaries into Tibetan, Mongolian, and, as we shall soon see, into Chinese and Mandshu,[57] the Pâli originals of Ceylon were carried to Burmah and Siam, and translated there into the languages of those countries. Hardly anything has as yet been done for exploring the literature of these two countries, which open a promising field for any one ambitious to follow in the footsteps of Hodgson, Csoma, and Turnour.
A very important collection of Buddhist MSS. has lately been brought from Ceylon to Europe by M. Grimblot, and is now deposited in the Imperial Library at Paris. This collection, to judge from a report published in 1866 in the 'Journal des Savants' by M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, consists of no less than eighty-seven works; and, as some of them are represented by more than one copy, the total number of MSS. amounts to one hundred and twenty-one. They fill altogether 14,000 palm leaves, and are written partly in Singhalese, partly in Burmese characters. Next to Ceylon, Burmah and Siam would seem to be the two countries most likely to yield large collections of Pâli MSS., and the MSS. which now exist in Ceylon may, to a considerable extent, be traced back to these two countries. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Tamil conquerors of Ceylon are reported to have burnt every Buddhist book they could discover, in the hope of thus destroying the vitality of that detested religion. Buddhism, however, though persecuted—or, more probably, because persecuted—remained the national religion of the island, and in the eighteenth century it had recovered its former ascendency. Missions were then sent to Siam to procure authentic copies of the sacred documents; priests properly ordained were imported from Burmah; and several libraries, which contain both the canonical and the profane literature of Buddhism, were founded at Dadala, Ambagapitya, and other places.
The sacred canon of the Buddhists is called the Tripitaka, i. e. the three baskets. The first basket contains all that has reference to morality, or Vinaya; the second contains the Sûtras, i. e. the discourses of Buddha; the third includes all works treating of dogmatic philosophy or metaphysics. The second and third baskets are sometimes comprehended under the general name of Dharma, or law, and it has become usual to apply to the third basket the name of Abhidharma, or by-law. The first and second pitakas contain each five separate works; the third contains seven. M. Grimblot has secured MSS. of nearly every one of these works, and he has likewise brought home copies of the famous commentaries of Buddhaghosha. These commentaries are of great importance; for although Buddhaghosha lived as late as 430 a.d., he is supposed to have been the translator of more ancient commentaries, brought in 316 b.c. to Ceylon from Magadha by Mahinda, the son of Asoka, translated by him from Pâli into Singhalese, and retranslated by Buddhaghosha into Pâli, the original language both of the canonical books and of their commentaries. Whether historical criticism will allow to the commentaries of Buddhaghosha the authority due to documents of the fourth century before Christ, is a question that has yet to be settled. But even as a collector of earlier traditions and as a writer of the fifth century after Christ, his authority would be considerable with regard to the solution of some of the most important problems of Indian history and chronology. Some scholars who have written on the history of Buddhism have clearly shown too strong an inclination to treat the statements contained in the commentaries of Buddhaghosha as purely historical, forgetting the great interval of time by which he is separated from the events which he relates. No doubt if it could be proved that Buddhaghosha's works were literal translations of the so-called Attakathâs or commentaries brought by Mahinda to Ceylon, this would considerably enhance their historical value. But the whole account of these translations rests on tradition, and if we consider the extraordinary precautions taken, according to tradition, by the LXX translators of the Old Testament, and then observe the discrepancies between the chronology of the Septuagint and that of the Hebrew text, we shall be better able to appreciate the risk of trusting to Oriental translations, even to those that pretend to be literal. The idea of a faithful literal translation seems altogether foreign to Oriental minds. Granted that Mahinda translated the original Pâli commentaries into Singhalese, there was nothing to restrain him from inserting anything that he thought likely to be useful to his new converts. Granted that Buddhaghosha translated these translations back into Pâli, why should he not have incorporated any facts that were then believed in and had been handed down by tradition from generation to generation? Was he not at liberty—nay, would he not have felt it his duty, to explain apparent difficulties, to remove contradictions, and to correct palpable mistakes? In our time, when even the contemporaneous evidence of Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy, or Jornandes is sifted by the most uncompromising scepticism, we must not expect a more merciful treatment for the annals of Buddhism. Scholars engaged in special researches are too willing to acquiesce in evidence, particularly if that evidence has been discovered by their own efforts and comes before them with all the charms of novelty. But, in the broad daylight of historical criticism, the prestige of such a witness as Buddhaghosha soon dwindles away, and his statements as to kings and councils eight hundred years before his time are in truth worth no more than the stories told of Arthur by Geoffrey of Monmouth, or the accounts we read in Livy of the early history of Rome.
One of the most important works of M. Grimblot's collection, and one that we hope will soon be published, is a history of Buddhism in Ceylon, called the Dîpavansa. The only work of the same character which has hitherto been known is the Mahâvansa, published by the Honourable George Turnour. But this is professedly based on the Dîpavansa, and is probably of a much later date. Mahânâma, the compiler of the Mahâvansa, lived about 500 A. D. His work was continued by later chroniclers to the middle of the eighteenth century. Though Mahânâma wrote towards the end of the fifth century after Christ, his own share of the chronicle seems to have ended with the year 302 a.d., and a commentary which he wrote on his own chronicle likewise breaks off at that period. The exact date of the Dîpavansa is not yet known; but as it also breaks off with the death of Mahâsena in 302 a.d., we cannot ascribe to it, for the present, any higher authority than could be commanded by a writer of the fourth century after Christ.
We now return to Mr. Hodgson. His collections of Sanskrit MSS. had been sent, as we saw, to the Asiatic Society of Calcutta from 1824 to 1839, to the Royal Asiatic Society in London in 1835, and to the Société Asiatique of Paris in 1837. They remained dormant at Calcutta and in London. At Paris, however, these Buddhist MSS. fell into the hands of Burnouf. Unappalled by their size and tediousness, he set to work, and was not long before he discovered their extreme importance. After seven years of careful study, Burnouf published, in 1844, his 'Introduction à l'Histoire du Buddhisme.' It is this work which laid the foundation for a systematic study of the religion of Buddha. Though acknowledging the great value of the researches made in the Buddhist literatures of Tibet, Mongolia, China, and Ceylon, Burnouf showed that Buddhism, being of Indian origin, ought to be studied first of all in the original Sanskrit documents, preserved in Nepal. Though he modestly called his work an Introduction to the History of Buddhism, there are few points of importance on which his industry has not brought together the most valuable evidence, and his genius shed a novel and brilliant light. The death of Burnouf in 1851, put an end to a work which, if finished according to the plan sketched out by the author in the preface, would have been the most perfect monument of Oriental scholarship. A volume published after his death, in 1852, contains a translation of one of the canonical books of Nepal, with notes and appendices, the latter full of the most valuable information on some of the more intricate questions of Buddhism. Though much remained to be done, and though a very small breach only had been made in the vast pile of Sanskrit MSS. presented by Mr. Hodgson to the Asiatic Societies of Paris and London, no one has been bold enough to continue what Burnouf left unfinished. The only important additions to our knowledge of Buddhism since his death are an edition of the Lalita-Vistara or the life of Buddha, prepared by a native, the learned Babu Rajendralal Mittra; an edition of the Pâli original of the Dhammapadam, by Dr. Fausböll, a Dane; and last, not least, the excellent translation by M. Stanislas Julien, of the life and travels of Hiouen-Thsang. This Chinese pilgrim had visited India from 629 to 645 a.d., for the purpose of learning Sanskrit, and translating from Sanskrit into Chinese some important works on the religion and philosophy of the Buddhists; and his account of the geography, the social, religious, and political state of India at the beginning of the seventh century, is invaluable for studying the practical working of that religion at a time when its influence began to decline, and when it was soon to be supplanted by modern Brahmanism and Mohammedanism.
It was no easy task for M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire to make himself acquainted with all these works. The study of Buddhism would almost seem to be beyond the power of any single individual, if it required a practical acquaintance with all the languages in which the doctrines of Buddha have been written down. Burnouf was probably the only man who, in addition to his knowledge of Sanskrit, did not shrink from acquiring a practical knowledge of Tibetan, Pâli, Singhalese, and Burmese, in order to prepare himself for such a task. The same scholar had shown, however, that though it was impossible for a Tibetan, Mongolian, or Chinese scholar to arrive, without a knowledge of Sanskrit, at a correct understanding of the doctrines of Buddha, a knowledge of Sanskrit was sufficient for entering into their spirit, for comprehending their origin and growth in India, and their modification in the different countries where they took root in later times. Assisted by his familiarity with Sanskrit, and bringing into the field, as a new and valuable auxiliary, his intimate acquaintance with nearly all the systems of philosophy and religion of both the ancient and modern worlds, M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire has succeeded in drawing a picture, both lively and correct, of the origin, the character, the strong as well as weak points, of the religion of Buddha. He has become the first historian of Buddhism. He has not been carried away by a temptation which must have been great for one who is able to read in the past the lessons for the present or the future. He has not used Buddhism either as a bugbear or as a beau idéal. He is satisfied with stating in his preface that many lessons might be learned by modern philosophers from a study of Buddhism, but in the body of the work he never perverts the chair of the historian into the pulpit of the preacher.
'This book may offer one other advantage,' he writes, 'and I regret to say that at present it may seem to come opportunely. It is the misfortune of our times that the same doctrines which form the foundation of Buddhism meet at the hands of some of our philosophers with a favour which they ill deserve. For some years we have seen systems arising in which metempsychosis and transmigration are highly spoken of, and attempts are made to explain the world and man without either a God or a Providence, exactly as Buddha did. A future life is refused to the yearnings of mankind, and the immortality of the soul is replaced by the immortality of works. God is dethroned, and in His place they substitute man, the only being, we are told, in which the Infinite becomes conscious of itself. These theories are recommended to us sometimes in the name of science, or of history, or philology, or even of metaphysics; and though they are neither new nor very original, yet they can do much injury to feeble hearts. This is not the place to examine these theories, and their authors are both too learned and too sincere to deserve to be condemned summarily and without discussion. But it is well that they should know by the example, too little known, of Buddhism, what becomes of man if he depends on himself alone, and if his meditations, misled by a pride of which he is hardly conscious, bring him to the precipice where Buddha was lost. Besides, I am well aware of all the differences, and I am not going to insult our contemporary philosophers by confounding them indiscriminately with Buddha, although addressing to both the same reproof. I acknowledge willingly all their additional merits, which are considerable. But systems of philosophy must always be judged by the conclusions to which they lead, whatever road they may follow in reaching them; and their conclusions, though obtained by different means, are not therefore less objectionable. Buddha arrived at his conclusions 2400 years ago. He proclaimed and practised them with an energy which is not likely to be surpassed, even if it be equalled. He displayed a child-like intrepidity which no one can exceed, nor can it be supposed that any system in our days could again acquire so powerful an ascendency over the souls of men. It would be useful, however, if the authors of these modern systems would just cast a glance at the theories and destinies of Buddhism. It is not philosophy in the sense in which we understand this great name, nor is it religion in the sense of ancient paganism, of Christianity, or of Mohammedanism; but it contains elements of all worked up into a perfectly independent doctrine which acknowledges nothing in the universe but man, and obstinately refuses to recognise anything else, though confounding man with nature in the midst of which he lives. Hence all those aberrations of Buddhism which ought to be a warning to others. Unfortunately, if people rarely profit by their own faults, they profit yet more rarely by the faults of others. (Introduction, p. vii.)
But though M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire does not write history merely for the sake of those masked batteries which French writers have used with so much skill at all times, but more particularly during the late years of Imperial sway, it is clear, from the remarks just quoted, that our author is not satisfied with simply chronicling the dry facts of Buddhism, or turning into French the tedious discourses of its founder. His work is an animated sketch, giving too little rather than too much. It is just the book which was wanted to dispel the erroneous notions about Buddhism, which are still current among educated men, and to excite an interest which may lead those who are naturally frightened by the appalling proportions of Buddhist literature, and the uncouth sounds of Buddhist terminology, to a study of the quartos of Burnouf, Turnour, and others. To those who may wish for more detailed information on Buddhism, than could be given by M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, consistently with the plan of his work, we can strongly recommend the work of a German writer, 'Die Religion des Buddha,' von Köppen, Berlin, 1857. It is founded on the same materials as the French work, but being written by a scholar and for scholars, it enters on a more minute examination of all that has been said or written on Buddha and Buddhism. In a second volume the same learned and industrious student has lately published a history of Buddhism in Tibet.
M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire's work is divided into three portions. The first contains an account of the origin of Buddhism, a life of Buddha, and an examination of Buddhist ethics and metaphysics. In the second, he describes the state of Buddhism in India in the seventh century of our era, from the materials supplied by the travels of Hiouen-Thsang. The third gives a description of Buddhism as actually existing in Ceylon, and as lately described by an eye-witness, the Rev. Spence Hardy. We shall confine ourselves chiefly to the first part, which treats of the life and teaching of Buddha.
M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, following the example of Burnouf, Lassen, and Wilson, accepts the date of the Ceylonese era 543 b.c. as the date of Buddha's death. Though we cannot enter here into long chronological discussions, we must remark, that this date was clearly obtained by the Buddhists of Ceylon by calculation, not by historical tradition, and that it is easy to point out in that calculation a mistake of about seventy years. The more plausible date of Buddha's death is 477 b.c. For the purposes, however, which M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire had in view, this difference is of small importance. We know so little of the history of India during the sixth and fifth centuries b.c., that the stage on which he represents Buddha as preaching and teaching would have had very much the same background, the same costume and accessories, for the sixth as for the fifth century b.c.
In the life of Buddha, which extends from p. 1 to 79, M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire follows almost exclusively the Lalita-Vistara. This is one of the most popular works of the Buddhists. It forms part of the Buddhist canon; and as we know of a translation into Chinese, which M. Stanislas Julien ascribes to the year 76 a.d., we may safely refer its original composition to an ante-Christian date. It has been published in Sanskrit by Babu Rajendralal Mittra, and we owe to M. Foucaux an edition of the same work in its Tibetan translation, the first Tibetan text printed in Europe. From specimens that we have seen, we should think it would be highly desirable to have an accurate translation of the Chinese text, such as M. Stanislas Julien alone is able to give us.[58] Few people, however, except scholars, would have the patience to read this work either in its English or French translation, as may be seen from the following specimen, containing the beginning of Babu Rajendralal Mittra's version:
'Om! Salutation to all Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Âryas, Srâvakas, and Pratyeka Buddhas of all times, past, present, and future; who are adored throughout the farthest limits of the ten quarters of the globe. Thus hath it been heard by me, that once on a time Bhagavat sojourned in the garden of Anâthapindada, at Getavana, in Srâvastî, accompanied by a venerable body of 12,000 Bhikshukas. There likewise accompanied him 32,000 Bodhisattvas, all linked together by unity of caste, and perfect in the virtues of pâramitâ; who had made their command over Bodhisattva knowledge a pastime, were illumined with the light of Bodhisattva dhâranîs, and were masters of the dhâranîs themselves; who were profound in their meditations, all submissive to the lord of Bodhisattvas, and possessed absolute control over samâdhi; great in self-command, refulgent in Bodhisattva forbearance, and replete with the Bodhisattva element of perfection. Now then, Bhagavat arriving in the great city of Srâvastî, sojourned therein, respected, venerated, revered, and adored, by the fourfold congregation; by kings, princes, their counsellors, prime ministers, and followers; by retinues of kshatriyas, brâhmanas, householders, and ministers; by citizens, foreigners, srâmanas, brâhmanas, recluses, and ascetics; and although regaled with all sorts of edibles and sauces, the best that could be prepared by purveyors, and supplied with cleanly mendicant apparel, begging pots, couches, and pain-assuaging medicaments, the benevolent lord, on whom had been showered the prime of gifts and applauses, remained unattached to them all, like water on a lotus leaf; and the report of his greatness as the venerable, the absolute Buddha, the learned and well-behaved, the god of happy exit, the great knower of worlds, the valiant, the all-controlling charioteer, the teacher of gods and men, the quinocular lord Buddha fully manifest, spread far and wide in the world. And Bhagavat, having by his own power acquired all knowledge regarding this world and the next, comprising devas, mâras, brâhmyas (followers of Brahmâ), srâmanas, and brâhmanas, as subjects, that is both gods and men, sojourned here, imparting instructions in the true religion, and expounding the principles of a brahmakarya, full and complete in its nature, holy in its import, pure and immaculate in its character, auspicious is its beginning, auspicious its middle, auspicious its end.'
The whole work is written in a similar style, and where fact and legend, prose and poetry, sense and nonsense, are so mixed together, the plan adopted by M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, of making two lives out of one, the one containing all that seems possible, the other what seems impossible, would naturally recommend itself. It is not a safe process, however, to distil history out of legend by simply straining the legendary through the sieve of physical possibility. Many things are possible, and may yet be the mere inventions of later writers, and many things which sound impossible have been reclaimed as historical, after removing from them the thin film of mythological phraseology. We believe that the only use which the historian can safely make of the Lalita-Vistara, is to employ it, not as evidence of facts which actually happened, but in illustration of the popular belief prevalent at the time when it was committed to writing. Without therefore adopting the division of fact and fiction in the life of Buddha, as attempted by M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, we yet believe that in order to avoid a repetition of childish absurdities, we shall best consult the interest of our readers if we follow his example, and give a short and rational abstract of the life of Buddha as handed down by tradition, and committed to writing not later than the first century b.c.
Buddha, or more correctly, the Buddha,—for Buddha is an appellative meaning Enlightened,—was born at Kapilavastu, the capital of a kingdom of the same name, situated at the foot of the mountains of Nepal, north of the present Oude. His father, the king of Kapilavastu, was of the family of the Sâkyas, and belonged to the clan of the Gautamas. His mother was Mâyâdêvî, daughter of king Suprabuddha, and need we say that she was as beautiful as he was powerful and just? Buddha was therefore by birth of the Kshatriya or warrior caste, and he took the name of Sâkya from his family, and that of Gautama from his clan, claiming a kind of spiritual relationship with the honoured race of Gautama. The name of Buddha, or the Buddha, dates from a later period of his life, and so probably does the name Siddhârtha (he whose objects have been accomplished), though we are told that it was given him in his childhood. His mother died seven days after his birth, and the father confided the child to the care of his deceased wife's sister, who, however, had been his wife even before the mother's death. The child grew up a most beautiful and most accomplished boy, who soon knew more than his masters could teach him. He refused to take part in the games of his playmates, and never felt so happy as when he could sit alone, lost in meditation in the deep shadows of the forest. It was there that his father found him, when he had thought him lost, and in order to prevent the young prince from becoming a dreamer, the king determined to marry him at once. When the subject was mentioned by the aged ministers to the future heir to the throne, he demanded seven days for reflection, and convinced at last that not even marriage could disturb the calm of his mind, he allowed the ministers to look out for a princess. The princess selected was the beautiful Gopâ, the daughter of Dandapâni. Though her father objected at first to her marrying a young prince who was represented to him as deficient in manliness and intellect, he gladly gave his consent when he saw the royal suitor distancing all his rivals both in feats of arms and power of mind. Their marriage proved one of the happiest, but the prince remained, as he had been before, absorbed in meditation on the problems of life and death. 'Nothing is stable on earth,' he used to say, 'nothing is real. Life is like the spark produced by the friction of wood. It is lighted and is extinguished—we know not whence it came or whither it goes. It is like the sound of a lyre, and the wise man asks in vain from whence it came and whither it goes. There must be some supreme intelligence where we could find rest. If I attained it, I could bring light to man; if I were free myself, I could deliver the world.' The king, who perceived the melancholy mood of the young prince, tried every thing to divert him from his speculations: but all was in vain. Three of the most ordinary events that could happen to any man, proved of the utmost importance in the career of Buddha. We quote the description of these occurrences from M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire:
'One day when the prince with a large retinue drove through the eastern gate of the city on the way to one of his parks, he met on the road an old man, broken and decrepit. One could see the veins and muscles over the whole of his body, his teeth chattered, he was covered with wrinkles, bald, and hardly able to utter hollow and unmelodious sounds. He was bent on his stick, and all his limbs and joints trembled. "Who is that man?" said the prince to his coachman. "He is small and weak, his flesh and his blood are dried up, his muscles stick to his skin, his head is white, his teeth chatter, his body is wasted away; leaning on his stick he is hardly able to walk, stumbling at every step. Is there something peculiar in his family, or is this the common lot of all created beings?"
'"Sir," replied the coachman, "that man is sinking under old age, his senses have become obtuse, suffering has destroyed his strength, and he is despised by his relations. He is without support and useless, and people have abandoned him, like a dead tree in a forest. But this is not peculiar to his family. In every creature youth is defeated by old age. Your father, your mother, all your relations, all your friends, will come to the same state; this is the appointed end of all creatures."
'"Alas!" replied the prince, "are creatures so ignorant, so weak and foolish, as to be proud of the youth by which they are intoxicated, not seeing the old age which awaits them! As for me, I go away. Coachman, turn my chariot quickly. What have I, the future prey of old age,—what have I to do with pleasure?" And the young prince returned to the city without going to his park.
'Another time the prince drove through the southern gate to his pleasure garden, when he perceived on the road a man suffering from illness, parched with fever, his body wasted, covered with mud, without a friend, without a home, hardly able to breathe, and frightened at the sight of himself and the approach of death. Having questioned his coachman, and received from him the answer which he expected, the young prince said, "Alas! health is but the sport of a dream, and the fear of suffering must take this frightful form. Where is the wise man who, after having seen what he is, could any longer think of joy and pleasure?" The prince turned his chariot and returned to the city.
'A third time he drove to his pleasure garden through the western gate, when he saw a dead body on the road, lying on a bier, and covered with a cloth. The friends stood about crying, sobbing, tearing their hair, covering their heads with dust, striking their breasts, and uttering wild cries. The prince, again calling his coachman to witness this painful scene, exclaimed, "Oh! woe to youth, which must be destroyed by old age! Woe to health, which must be destroyed by so many diseases! Woe to this life, where a man remains so short a time! If there were no old age, no disease, no death; if these could be made captive for ever!" Then betraying for the first time his intentions, the young prince said, "Let us turn back, I must think how to accomplish deliverance."
'A last meeting put an end to his hesitation. He drove through the northern gate on the way to his pleasure gardens, when he saw a mendicant who appeared outwardly calm, subdued, looking downwards, wearing with an air of dignity his religious vestment, and carrying an alms-bowl.
'"Who is this man?" asked the prince.
'"Sir," replied the coachman, "this man is one of those who are called bhikshus, or mendicants. He has renounced all pleasures, all desires, and leads a life of austerity. He tries to conquer himself. He has become a devotee. Without passion, without envy, he walks about asking for alms."
'"This is good and well said," replied the prince. "The life of a devotee has always been praised by the wise. It will be my refuge, and the refuge of other creatures; it will lead us to a real life, to happiness and immortality."
'With these words the young prince turned his chariot and returned to the city.'
After having declared to his father and his wife his intention of retiring from the world, Buddha left his palace one night when all the guards that were to have watched him, were asleep. After travelling the whole night, he gave his horse and his ornaments to his groom, and sent him back to Kapilavastu. 'A monument,' remarks the author of the Lalita-Vistara (p. 270), 'is still to be seen on the spot where the coachman turned back,' Hiouen-Thsang (II. 330) saw the same monument at the edge of a large forest, on his road to Kusinâgara, a city now in ruins, and situated about fifty miles E.S.E. from Gorakpur.[59]
Buddha first went to Vaisâlî, and became the pupil of a famous Brahman, who had gathered round him 300 disciples. Having learnt all that the Brahman could teach him, Buddha went away disappointed. He had not found the road to salvation. He then tried another Brahman at Râgagriha, the capital of Magadha or Behar, who had 700 disciples, and there too he looked in vain for the means of deliverance. He left him, followed by five of his fellow-students, and for six years retired into solitude, near a village named Uruvilva, subjecting himself to the most severe penances, previous to his appearing in the world as a teacher. At the end of this period, however, he arrived at the conviction that asceticism, far from giving peace of mind and preparing the way to salvation, was a snare and a stumbling-block in the way of truth. He gave up his exercises, and was at once deserted as an apostate by his five disciples. Left to himself he now began to elaborate his own system. He had learnt that neither the doctrines nor the austerities of the Brahmans were of any avail for accomplishing the deliverance of man, and freeing him from the fear of old age, disease, and death. After long meditations, and ecstatic visions, he at last imagined that he had arrived at that true knowledge which discloses the cause, and thereby destroys the fear, of all the changes inherent in life. It was from the moment when he arrived at this knowledge, that he claimed the name of Buddha, the Enlightened. At that moment we may truly say that the fate of millions of millions of human beings trembled in the balance. Buddha hesitated for a time whether he should keep his knowledge to himself, or communicate it to the world. Compassion for the sufferings of man prevailed, and the young prince became the founder of a religion which, after more than 2000 years, is still professed by 455,000,000 of human beings.[60]
The further history of the new teacher is very simple. He proceeded to Benares, which at all times was the principal seat of learning in India, and the first converts he made were the five fellow-students who had left him when he threw off the yoke of the Brahmanical observances. Many others followed; but as the Lalita-Vistara breaks off at Buddha's arrival at Benares, we have no further consecutive account of the rapid progress of his doctrine. From what we can gather from scattered notices in the Buddhist canon, he was invited by the king of Magadha, Bimbisâra, to his capital, Râgagriha. Many of his lectures are represented as having been delivered at the monastery of Kalantaka, with which the king or some rich merchant had presented him; others on the Vulture Peak, one of the five hills that surrounded the ancient capital.
Three of his most famous disciples, Sâriputra, Kâtyâyana, and Maudgalyâyana, joined him during his stay in Magadha, where he enjoyed for many years the friendship of the king. That king was afterwards assassinated by his son, Agâtasatru, and then we hear of Buddha as settled for a time at Srâvastî, north of the Ganges, where Anâthapindada, a rich merchant, had offered him and his disciples a magnificent building for their residence. Most of Buddha's lectures or sermons were delivered at Srâvastî, the capital of Kosala; and the king of Kosala himself, Prasênagit, became a convert to his doctrine. After an absence of twelve years we are told that Buddha visited his father at Kapilavastu, on which occasion he performed several miracles, and converted all the Sâkyas to his faith. His own wife became one of his followers, and, with his aunt, offers the first instance of female Buddhist devotees in India. We have fuller particulars again of the last days of Buddha's life. He had attained the good age of three score and ten, and had been on a visit to Râgagriha, where the king, Agâtasatru, the former enemy of Buddha, and the assassin of his own father, had joined the congregation, after making a public confession of his crimes. On his return he was followed by a large number of disciples, and when on the point of crossing the Ganges, he stood on a square stone, and turning his eyes back towards Râgagriha, he said, full of emotion, 'This is the last time that I see that city.' He likewise visited Vaisâlî, and after taking leave of it, he had nearly reached the city of Kusinâgara, when his vital strength began to fail. He halted in a forest, and while sitting under a sâl tree, he gave up the ghost, or, as a Buddhist would say, entered into Nirvâna.
This is the simple story of Buddha's life. It reads much better in the eloquent pages of M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, than in the turgid language of the Buddhists. If a critical historian, with the materials we possess, entered at all on the process of separating truth from falsehood, he would probably cut off much of what our biographer has left. Professor Wilson, in his Essay on Buddha and Buddhism, considers it doubtful whether any such person as Buddha ever actually existed. He dwells on the fact that there are at least twenty different dates assigned to his birth, varying from 2420 to 453 b.c. He points out that the clan of the Sâkyas is never mentioned by early Hindu writers, and he lays much stress on the fact that most of the proper names of the persons connected with Buddha suggest an allegorical signification. The name of his father means, he whose food is pure; that of his mother signifies illusion; his own secular appellation, Siddhârtha, he by whom the end is accomplished. Buddha itself means, the Enlightened, or, as Professor Wilson translates it less accurately, he by whom all is known. The same distinguished scholar goes even further, and maintaining that Kapilavastu, the birthplace of Buddha, has no place in the geography of the Hindus, suggests that it may be rendered, the substance of Kapila; intimating, in fact, the Sânkhya philosophy, the doctrine of Kapila Muni, upon which the fundamental elements of Buddhism, the eternity of matter, the principles of things, and the final extinction, are supposed to be planned. 'It seems not impossible,' he continues, 'that Sâkya Muni is an unreal being, and that all that is related of him is as much a fiction, as is that of his preceding migrations, and the miracles that attended his birth, his life, and his departure.' This is going far beyond Niebuhr, far even beyond Strauss. If an allegorical name had been invented for the father of Buddha, one more appropriate than 'Clean-food' might surely have been found. His wife is not the only queen known by the name of Mâyâ, Mâyâdêvî, or Mâyâvatî. Why, if these names were invented, should his wife have been allowed to keep the prosaic name of Gopâ (cowherdess), and his father-in-law, that of Dandapâni, 'Stick-hand?' As to his own name, Siddhârtha, the Tibetans maintain that it was given him by his parent, whose wish (artha) had been fulfilled (siddha), as we hear of Désirés and Dieu-donnés in French. One of the ministers of Dasaratha had the same name. It is possible also that Buddha himself assumed it in after life, as was the case with many of the Roman surnames. As to the name of Buddha, no one ever maintained that it was more than a title, the Enlightened, changed from an appellative into a proper name, just like the name of Christos, the Anointed, or Mohammed, the Expected.[61] Kapilavastu would be a most extraordinary compound to express 'the substance of the Sânkhya philosophy.' But all doubt on the subject is removed by the fact that both Fahian in the fifth, and Hiouen-Thsang in the seventh centuries, visited the real ruins of that city.
Making every possible allowance for the accumulation of fiction which is sure to gather round the life of the founder of every great religion, we may be satisfied that Buddhism, which changed the aspect not only of India, but of nearly the whole of Asia, had a real founder; that he was not a Brahman by birth, but belonged to the second or royal caste; that being of a meditative turn of mind, and deeply impressed with the frailty of all created things, he became a recluse, and sought for light and comfort in the different systems of Brâhman philosophy and theology. Dissatisfied with the artificial systems of their priests and philosophers, convinced of the uselessness, nay of the pernicious influence, of their ceremonial practices and bodily penances, shocked, too, by their worldliness and pharisaical conceit, which made the priesthood the exclusive property of one caste and rendered every sincere approach of man to his Creator impossible without their intervention, Buddha must have produced at once a powerful impression on the people at large, when breaking through all the established rules of caste, he assumed the privileges of a Brahman, and throwing away the splendour of his royal position, travelled about as a beggar, not shrinking from the defiling contact of sinners and publicans. Though when we now speak of Buddhism, we think chiefly of its doctrines, the reform of Buddha had originally much more of a social than of a religious character. Buddha swept away the web with which the Brahmans had encircled the whole of India. Beginning as the destroyer of an old, he became the founder of a new religion. We can hardly understand how any nation could have lived under a system like that of the Brahmanic hierarchy, which coiled itself round every public and private act, and would have rendered life intolerable to any who had forfeited the favour of the priests. That system was attacked by Buddha. Buddha might have taught whatever philosophy he pleased, and we should hardly have heard his name. The people would not have minded him, and his system would only have been a drop in the ocean of philosophical speculation, by which India was deluged at all times. But when a young prince assembled round him people of all castes, of all ranks, when he defeated the Brahmans in public disputations, when he declared the sacrifices by which they made their living not only useless but sinful, when instead of severe penance or excommunications inflicted by the Brahmans sometimes for the most trifling offences, he only required public confession of sin and a promise to sin no more: when the charitable gifts hitherto monopolised by the Brahmans, began to flow into new channels, supporting hundreds and thousands of Buddhist mendicants, more had been achieved than probably Buddha himself had ever dreamt of; and he whose meditations had been how to deliver the soul of man from misery and the fear of death, had delivered the people of India from a degrading thraldom and from priestly tyranny.
The most important element of the Buddhist reform has always been its social and moral code, not its metaphysical theories. That moral code, taken by itself, is one of the most perfect which the world has ever known. On this point all testimonies from hostile and from friendly quarters agree. Spence Hardy, a Wesleyan Missionary, speaking of the Dhamma Padam, or the 'Footsteps of the Law,' admits that a collection might be made from the precepts of this work, which in the purity of its ethics could hardly be equalled from any other heathen author. M. Laboulaye, one of the most distinguished members of the French Academy, remarks in the 'Débats' of the 4th of April, 1853: 'It is difficult to comprehend how men not assisted by revelation could have soared so high, and approached so near to the truth.' Besides the five great commandments not to kill, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to lie, not to get drunk, every shade of vice, hypocrisy, anger, pride, suspicion, greediness, gossiping, cruelty to animals, is guarded against by special precepts. Among the virtues recommended, we find not only reverence of parents, care for children, submission to authority, gratitude, moderation in time of prosperity, submission in time of trial, equanimity at all times, but virtues unknown in any heathen system of morality, such as the duty of forgiving insults and not rewarding evil with evil. All virtues, we are told, spring from Maitrî, and this Maitrî can only be translated by charity and love. 'I do not hesitate,' says Burnouf,[62] 'to translate by charity the word Maitrî; it does not express friendship or the feeling of particular affection which a man has for one or more of his fellow-creatures, but that universal feeling which inspires us with good-will towards all men and constant willingness to help them.' We add one more testimony from the work of M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire:
'Je n'hésite pas à ajouter,' he writes, 'que, sauf le Christ tout seul, il n'est point, parmi les fondateurs de religion, de figure plus pure ni plus touchante que celle du Bouddha. Sa vie n'a point de tâche. Son constant héroisme égale sa conviction; et si la théorie qu'il préconise est fausse, les exemples personnels qu'il donne sont irréprochables. Il est le modèle achevé de toutes les vertus qu'il prêche; son abnégation, sa charité son inaltérable douceur, ne se démentent point un seul instant; il abandonne à vingt-neuf ans la cour du roi son père pour se faire religieux et mendiant; il prépare silencieusement sa doctrine par six années de retraite et de méditation; il la propage par la seule puissance de la parole et de la persuasion, pendant plus d'un demi-siècle; et quand il meurt entre les bras de ses disciples, c'est avec la sérénité d'un sage qui a pratiqué le bien toute sa vie, et qui est assuré d'avoir trouvé le vrai.' (Page v.)
There still remain, no doubt, some blurred and doubtful pages in the history of the prince of Kapilavastu; but we have only to look at the works on ancient philosophy and religion published some thirty years ago, in order to perceive the immense progress that has been made in establishing the true historical character of the founder of Buddhism. There was a time when Buddha was identified with Christ. The Manichæans were actually forced to abjure their belief that Buddha, Christ, and Mani were one and the same person.[63] But we are thinking rather of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when elaborate books were written, in order to prove that Buddha had been in reality the Thoth of the Egyptians, that he was Mercury, or Wodan, or Zoroaster, or Pythagoras. Even Sir W. Jones, as we saw, identified Buddha, first with Odin, and afterwards with Shishak, 'who either in person or by a colony from Egypt imported into India the mild heresy of the ancient Bauddhas.' At present we know that neither Egypt nor the Walhalla of Germany, neither Greece nor Persia, could have produced either the man himself or his doctrine. He is the offspring of India in mind and soul. His doctrine, by the very antagonism in which it stands to the old system of Brahmanism, shows that it could not have sprung up in any country except India. The ancient history of Brahmanism leads on to Buddhism, with the same necessity with which mediæval Romanism led to Protestantism. Though the date of Buddha is still liable to small chronological oscillations, his place in the intellectual annals of India is henceforth definitely marked: Buddhism became the state religion of India at the time of Asoka; and Asoka, the Buddhist Constantine, was the grandson of Kandragupta, the contemporary of Seleucus Nicator. The system of the Brahmans had run its course. Their ascendency, at first purely intellectual and religious, had gradually assumed a political character. By means of the system of caste this influence pervaded the whole social fabric, not as a vivifying leaven, but as a deadly poison. Their increasing power and self-confidence are clearly exhibited in the successive periods of their ancient literature. It begins with the simple hymns of the Veda. These are followed by the tracts, known by the name of Brâhmanas, in which a complete system of theology is elaborated, and claims advanced in favour of the Brahmans, such as were seldom conceded to any hierarchy. The third period in the history of their ancient literature is marked by their Sûtras or Aphorisms, curt and dry formularies, showing the Brahmans in secure possession of all their claims. Such privileges as they then enjoyed are never enjoyed for any length of time. It was impossible for anybody to move or to assert his freedom of thought and action without finding himself impeded on all sides by the web of the Brahmanic law; nor was there anything in their religion to satisfy the natural yearnings of the human heart after spiritual comfort. What was felt by Buddha, had been felt more or less intensely by thousands; and this was the secret of his success. That success was accelerated, however, by political events. Kandragupta had conquered the throne of Magadha, and acquired his supremacy in India in defiance of the Brahmanic law. He was of low origin, a mere adventurer, and by his accession to the throne an important mesh had been broken in the intricate system of caste. Neither he nor his successors could count on the support of the Brahmans, and it is but natural that his grandson, Asoka, should have been driven to seek support from the sect founded by Buddha. Buddha, by giving up his royal station, had broken the law of caste as much as Kandragupta by usurping it. His school, though it had probably escaped open persecution until it rose to political importance, could never have been on friendly terms with the Brahmans of the old school. The parvenu on the throne saw his natural allies in the followers of Buddha, and the mendicants, who by their unostentatious behaviour had won golden opinions among the lower and middle classes, were suddenly raised to an importance little dreamt of by their founder. Those who see in Buddhism, not a social but chiefly a religious and philosophical reform, have been deceived by the later Buddhist literature, and particularly by the controversies between Buddhists and Brahmans, which in later times led to the total expulsion of the former from India, and to the political re-establishment of Brahmanism. These, no doubt, turn chiefly on philosophical problems, and are of the most abstruse and intricate character. But such was not the teaching of Buddha. If we may judge from 'the four verities,' which Buddha inculcated from the first day that he entered on his career as a teacher, his philosophy of life was very simple. He proclaims that there was nothing but sorrow in life; that sorrow is produced by our affections, that our affections must be destroyed in order to destroy the root of sorrow, and that he could teach mankind how to eradicate all the affections, all passions, all desires. Such doctrines were intelligible; and considering that Buddha received people of all castes, who after renouncing the world and assuming their yellow robes, were sure of finding a livelihood from the charitable gifts of the people, it is not surprising that the number of his followers should have grown so rapidly. If Buddha really taught the metaphysical doctrines which are ascribed to him by subsequent writers—and this is a point which it is impossible to settle—not one in a thousand among his followers would have been capable of appreciating those speculations. They must have been reserved for a few of his disciples, and they would never have formed the nucleus for a popular religion.
Nearly all who have written on Buddhism, and M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire among the rest, have endeavoured to show that these metaphysical doctrines of Buddha were borrowed from the earlier systems of Brahmanic philosophy, and more particularly from the Sânkhya system. The reputed founder of that system is Kapila, and we saw before how Professor Wilson actually changed the name of Kapilavastu, the birthplace of Buddha, into a mere allegory:—Kapilavastu meaning, according to him, the substance of Kapila or of the Sânkhya philosophy. This is not all. Mr. Spence Hardy (p. 132) quotes a legend in which it is said that Buddha was in a former existence the ascetic Kapila, that the Sâkya princes came to his hermitage, and that he pointed out to them the proper place for founding a new city, which city was named after him Kapilavastu. But we have looked in vain for any definite similarities between the system of Kapila, as known to us in the Sânkhya-sûtras, and the Abhidharma, or the metaphysics of the Buddhists. Such similarities would be invaluable. They would probably enable us to decide whether Buddha borrowed from Kapila or Kapila from Buddha, and thus determine the real chronology of the philosophical literature of India, as either prior or subsequent to the Buddhist era. There are certain notions which Buddha shares in common not only with Kapila, but with every Hindu philosopher. The idea of transmigration, the belief in the continuing effects of our good and bad actions, extending from our former to our present and from our present to our future lives, the sense that life is a dream or a burden, the admission of the uselessness of religious observances after the attainment of the highest knowledge, all these belong, so to say, to the national philosophy of India. We meet with these ideas everywhere, in the poetry, the philosophy, the religion of the Hindus. They cannot be claimed as the exclusive property of any system in particular. But if we look for more special coincidences between Buddha's doctrines and those of Kapila or other Indian philosophers, we look in vain. At first it might seem as if the very first aphorism of Kapila, namely, 'the complete cessation of pain, which is of three kinds, is the highest aim of man,' was merely a philosophical paraphrase of the events which, as we saw, determined Buddha to renounce the world in search of the true road to salvation. But though the starting-point of Kapila and Buddha is the same, a keen sense of human misery and a yearning after a better state, their roads diverge so completely and their goals are so far apart, that it is difficult to understand how, almost by common consent, Buddha is supposed either to have followed in the footsteps of Kapila, or to have changed Kapila's philosophy into a religion. Some scholars imagine that there was a more simple and primitive philosophy which was taught by Kapila, and that the Sûtras which are now ascribed to him, are of later date. It is impossible either to prove or to disprove such a view. At present we know Kapila's philosophy from his Sûtras only,[64] and these Sûtras seem to us posterior, not anterior, to Buddha. Though the name of Buddha is not mentioned in the Sûtras, his doctrines are clearly alluded to and controverted in several parts of them.
It has been said that Buddha and Kapila were both atheists, and that Buddha borrowed his atheism from Kapila. But atheism is an indefinite term, and may mean very different things. In one sense every Indian philosopher was an atheist, for they all perceived that the gods of the populace could not claim the attributes that belong to a Supreme Being. But all the important philosophical systems of the Brahmans admit, in some form or other, the existence of an Absolute and Supreme Being, the source of all that exists, or seems to exist. Kapila, when accused of atheism, is not accused of denying the existence of an Absolute Being. He is accused of denying the existence of Îsvara, which in general means the Lord, but which in the passage where it occurs, refers to the Îsvara of the Yogins, or mystic philosophers. They maintained that in an ecstatic state man possesses the power of seeing God face to face, and they wished to have this ecstatic intuition included under the head of sensuous perceptions. To this Kapila demurred. You have not proved the existence of your Lord, he says, and therefore I see no reason why I should alter my definition of sensuous perception in order to accommodate your ecstatic visions. The commentator narrates that this strong language was used by Kapila in order to silence the wild talk of the Mystics, and that, though he taunted his adversaries with having failed to prove the existence of their Lord, he himself did not deny the existence of a Supreme Being. Kapila, however, went further. He endeavoured to show that all the attributes which the Mystics ascribed to their Lord are inappropriate. He used arguments very similar to those which have lately been used with such ability by a distinguished Bampton Lecturer. The supreme lord of the Mystics, Kapila argued, is either absolute and unconditioned (mukta), or he is bound and conditioned (baddha). If he is absolute and unconditioned, he cannot enter into the condition of a Creator; he would have no desires which could instigate him to create. If, on the contrary, he is represented as active, and entering on the work of creation, he would no longer be the absolute and unchangeable Being which we are asked to believe in. Kapila, like the preacher of our own days, was accused of paving the road to atheism, but his philosophy was nevertheless admitted as orthodox, because, in addition to sensuous perception and inductive reasoning, Kapila professed emphatically his belief in revelation, i. e. in the Veda, and allowed to it a place among the recognised instruments of knowledge. Buddha refused to allow to the Vedas any independent authority whatever, and this constituted the fundamental difference between the two philosophers.
Whether Kapila's philosophy was really in accordance with the spirit of the Veda, is quite a different question. No philosophy, at least nothing like a definite system, is to be found in the sacred hymns of the Brahmans; and though the Vedânta philosophy does less violence to the passages which it quotes from the Veda, the authors of the Veda would have been as much surprised at the consequences deduced from their words by the Vedântin, as by the strange meaning attributed to them by Kapila. The Vedânta philosopher, like Kapila, would deny the existence of a Creator in the usual sense of the word. He explained the universe as an emanation from Brahman, which is all in all. Kapila admitted two principles, an absolute Spirit and Nature, and he looked upon the universe as produced by a reflection of Nature thrown on the mirror of the absolute Spirit. Both systems seem to regard creation, or the created world, as a misfortune, as an unfortunate accident. But they maintain that its effects can be neutralised, and that emancipation from the bonds of earthly existence is possible by means of philosophy. The Vedânta philosopher imagines he is free when he has arrived at the knowledge that nothing exists but Brahman; that all phenomena are merely the result of ignorance; that after the destruction of that ignorance, and of its effects, all is merged again in Brahman, the true source of being, thought, and happiness. Kapila taught that the spirit became free from all mundane fetters as soon as it perceived that all phenomena were only passing reflections produced by nature upon the spirit, and as soon as it was able to shut its eyes to those illusory visions. Both systems therefore, and the same applies to all the other philosophical systems of the Brahmans, admitted an absolute or self-existing Being as the cause of all that exists or seems to exist. And here lies the specific difference between Kapila and Buddha. Buddha, like Kapila, maintained that this world had no absolute reality, that it was a snare and an illusion. The words, 'All is perishable, all is miserable, all is void,' must frequently have passed his lips. But we cannot call things unreal unless we have a conception of something that is real. Where, then, did Buddha find a reality in comparison with which this world might be called unreal? What remedy did he propose as an emancipation from the sufferings of this life? Difficult as it seems to us to conceive it, Buddha admits of no real cause of this unreal world. He denies the existence not only of a Creator, but of any Absolute Being. According to the metaphysical tenets, if not of Buddha himself, at least of his sect, there is no reality anywhere, neither in the past nor in the future. True wisdom consists in perceiving the nothingness of all things, and in a desire to become nothing, to be blown out, to enter into Nirvâna. Emancipation is obtained by total extinction, not by absorption in Brahman, or by a recovery of the soul's true estate. If to be is misery, not to be must be felicity, and this felicity is the highest reward which Buddha promised to his disciples. In reading the Aphorisms of Kapila, it is difficult not to see in his remarks on those who maintain that all is void, covert attacks on Buddha and his followers. In one place (I. 43) Kapila argues that if people believed in the reality of thought only, and denied the reality of external objects, they would soon be driven to admit that nothing at all exists, because we perceive our thoughts in the same manner as we perceive external objects. This naturally leads him to an examination of that extreme doctrine, according to which all that we perceive is void, and all is supposed to perish, because it is the nature of things that they should perish. Kapila remarks in reference to this view (I. 45), that it is a mere assertion of persons who are 'not enlightened,' in Sanskrit a-buddha, a sarcastic expression in which it is very difficult not to see an allusion to Buddha, or to those who claimed for him the title of the Enlightened. Kapila then proceeds to give the best answer that could be given to those who taught that complete annihilation must be the highest aim of man, as the only means of a complete cessation of suffering. 'It is not so,' he says, 'for if people wish to be free from suffering, it is they themselves who wish to be free, just as in this life it is they themselves who wish to enjoy happiness. There must be a permanent soul in order to satisfy the yearnings of the human heart, and if you deny that soul, you have no right to speak of the highest aim—of man.'
Whether the belief in this kind of Nirvâna, i. e. in a total extinction of being, personality, and consciousness, was at any time shared by the large masses of the people, is difficult either to assert or deny. We know nothing in ancient times of the religious convictions of the millions. We only know what a few leading spirits believed, or professed to believe. That certain individuals should have spoken and written of total extinction as the highest aim of man, is intelligible. Job cursed the day on which he was born, and Solomon praised the 'dead which are already dead, more than the living which are yet alive,' 'Yea, better is he than both they,' he said, 'which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun,' Voltaire said in his own flippant way, 'On aime la vie, mais le néant ne laisse pas d'avoir du bon;' and a modern German philosopher, who has found much favour with those who profess to despise Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, writes, 'Considered in its objective value, it is more than doubtful that life is preferable to the Nothing. I should say even, that if experience and reflection could lift up their voices they would recommend to us the Nothing. We are what ought not to be, and we shall therefore cease to be.' Under peculiar circumstances, in the agonies of despair, or under the gathering clouds of madness, such language is intelligible; but to believe, as we are asked to believe, that one half of mankind had yearned for total annihilation, would be tantamount to a belief that there is a difference in kind between man and man. Buddhist philosophers, no doubt, held this doctrine, and it cannot be denied that it found a place in the Buddhist canon. But even among the different schools of Buddhist philosophers, very different views are adopted as to the true meaning of Nirvâna, and with the modern Buddhists of Burmah, Nigban, as they call it, is defined simply as freedom from old age, disease, and death. We do not find fault with M. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire for having so emphatically pressed the charge of nihilism against Buddha himself. In one portion of the Buddhist canon the most extreme views of nihilism are put into his mouth. All we can say is that that canon is later than Buddha, and that in the same canon[65] the founder of Buddhism, after having entered into Nirvâna, is still spoken of as living, nay, as showing himself to those who believe in him. Buddha, who denied the existence, or at least the divine nature, of the gods worshipped by the Brahmans, was raised himself to the rank of a deity by some of his followers (the Aisvarikas), and we need not wonder therefore if his Nirvâna too was gradually changed into an Elysian field. And finally, if we may argue from human nature, such as we find it at all times and in all countries, we confess that we cannot bring ourselves to believe that the reformer of India, the teacher of so perfect a code of morality, the young prince who gave up all he had in order to help those whom he saw afflicted in mind, body, or estate, should have cared much about speculations which he knew would either be misunderstood, or not understood at all, by those whom he wished to benefit; that he should have thrown away one of the most powerful weapons in the hands of every religious teacher, the belief in a future life, and should not have seen, that if this life was sooner or later to end in nothing, it was hardly worth the trouble which he took himself, or the sacrifices which he imposed on his disciples.
April, 1862.