FOOTNOTES:
[66] 'Voyages des Pèlerins Bouddhistes.' Vol. I. Histoire de la Vie de Hiouen-thsang, et de ses Voyages dans l'Inde, depuis l'an 629 jusqu'en 645, par Hoeili et Yen-thsong; traduite du Chinois par Stanislas Julien.
Vol. II. Mémoires sur les Contrées Occidentales, traduits du Sanscrit en Chinois, en l'an 648, par Hiouen-thsang, et du Chinois en Français, pas Stanislas Julien. Paris, 1853-1857: B. Duprat. London and Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate.
[67] See W. Spottiswoode's 'Tarantasse Journey,' p. 220, Visit to the Buddhist Temple.
[68] The only trace of the influence of Buddhism among the Kudic races, the Fins, Laps, &c., is found in the name of their priests and sorcerers, the Shamans. Shaman is supposed to be a corruption of Sramana, a name applied to Buddha, and to Buddhist priests in general. The ancient mythological religion of the Kudic races has nothing in common with Buddhism. See Castren's 'Lectures on Finnish Mythology,' 1853. Finland was ceded by Sweden to Russia in 1809, See the Author's 'Survey of Languages,' second edition, p. 116. Shamanism found its way from India to Siberia viâ Tibet, China, and Mongolia. Rules on the formation of magic figures, on the treatment of diseases by charms, on the worship of evil spirits, on the acquisition of supernatural powers, on charms, incantations, and other branches of Shaman witchcraft, are found in the Stan-gyour, or the second part of the Tibetan canon, and in some of the late Tantras of the Nepalese collection.
[69] Helps, The Spanish Conquest, vol. iii. p. 503: "Que cosa tam inquieta non le parescia ser Dios."
[70] On the servitude of the gods, see the "Essay on Comparative Mythology," Oxford Essays, 1856, p. 69.
[71] See Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 444. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, 'Du Bouddhisme,' p. 132. Ch.F.Neumann, 'Catechism of the Shamans.'
[72] Vol. i. p. 89, vol. ii. p. 167.
[73] These 'four stages' are described in the same manner in the canonical books of Ceylon and Nepal, and may therefore safely be ascribed to that original form of Buddhism from which the Southern and the Northern schools branched off at a later period. See Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 800.
[74] See Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 814.
[75] See the 'Dhammapadam,' a Pâli work on Buddhist ethics, lately edited by V. Fausböll, a distinguished pupil of Professor Westergaard, at Copenhagen. The Rev. Spence Hardy ('Eastern Monachism,' p. 169) writes: 'A collection might be made from the precepts of this work, that in the purity of its ethics could scarcely be equalled from any other heathen author.' Mr. Knighton, when speaking of the same work in his 'History of Ceylon' (p. 77), remarks: 'In it we have exemplified a code of morality, and a list of precepts, which, for pureness, excellence, and wisdom, is only second to that of the Divine Lawgiver himself.'
[76] 'Mahavanso,' ed. G. Turnour, Ceylon, 1837, p. 71.
[77] See 'Foe Koue Ki,' p. 41, and xxxviii. preface.
[78] See 'Foe Koue Ki,' p. 41.
[79] 'Lalita-Vistara,' ed. Foucaux, p. xvii. n.
[80] 'Lalita-Vistara,' p. 17.
[81] Two parts of the Sanskrit text have been published in the 'Bibliotheca Indica.'
[82] They have since been published.
XI.
THE MEANING OF NIRVÂNA.
To the Editor of The Times.
ir,—Mr. Francis Barham, of Bath, has protested in a letter, printed in 'The Times' of the 24th of April, against my interpretations of Nirvâna, or the summum bonum of the Buddhists. He maintains that the Nirvâna in which the Buddhists believe, and which they represent as the highest goal of their religion and philosophy, means union and communion with God, or absorption of the individual soul by the divine essence, and not, as I tried to show in my articles on the 'Buddhist Pilgrims,' utter annihilation.
I must not take up much more of your space with so abstruse a subject as Buddhist metaphysics; but at the same time I cannot allow Mr. Barham's protest to pass unnoticed. The authorities which he brings forward against my account of Buddhism, and particularly against my interpretation of Nirvâna, seem formidable enough. There is Neander, the great church historian, Creuzer, the famous scholar, and Hue, the well-known traveller and missionary,—all interpreting, as Mr. Barham says, the Nirvâna of the Buddhists in the sense of an apotheosis of the human soul, as it was taught in the Vedânta philosophy of the Brahmans, the Sufiism of the Persians, and the Christian mysticism of Eckhart and Tauler, and not in the sense of absolute annihilation.
Now, with regard to Neander and Creuzer, I must observe that their works were written before the canonical books of the Buddhists, composed in Sanskrit, had been discovered, or at least before they had been sent to Europe, and been analysed by European scholars. Besides, neither Neander nor Creuzer was an Oriental scholar, and their knowledge of the subject could only be second-hand. It was in 1824 that Mr. Brian Houghton Hodgson, then resident at the Court of Nepal, gave the first intimation of the existence of a large religious literature written in Sanskrit, and preserved by the Buddhists of Nepal as the canonical books of their faith. It was in 1830 and 1835 that the same eminent scholar and naturalist presented the first set of these books to the Royal Asiatic Society in London. In 1837 he made a similar gift to the Société Asiatique of Paris, and some of the most important works were transmitted by him to the Bodleian Library at Oxford. It was in 1844 that the late Eugène Burnouf published, after a careful study of these documents, his classical work, 'Introduction à l'Histoire du Buddhisme Indien,' and it is from this book that our knowledge of Buddhism may be said to date. Several works have since been published, which have added considerably to the stock of authentic information on the doctrine of the great Indian reformer. There is Burnouf's translation of 'Le Lotus de la bonne Loi,' published after the death of that lamented scholar, together with numerous essays, in 1852. There are two interesting works by the Rev. Spence Hardy—'Eastern Monachism,' London, 1850, and 'A Manual of Buddhism,' London, 1853; and there are the publications of M. Stanislas Julien, E. Foucaux, the Honourable George Turnour, Professor H. H. Wilson, and others, alluded to in my article on the 'Buddhist Pilgrims.' It is from these works alone that we can derive correct and authentic information on Buddhism, and not from Neander's 'History of the Christian Church' or from Creuzer's 'Symbolik.'
If any one will consult these works, he will find that the discussions on the true meaning of Nirvâna are not of modern date, and that, at a very early period, different philosophical schools among the Buddhists of India, and different teachers who spread the doctrine of Buddhism abroad, propounded every conceivable opinion as to the orthodox explanation of this term. Even in one and the same school we find different parties maintaining different views on the meaning of Nirvâna. There is the school of the Svâbhâvikas, which still exists in Nepal. The Svâbhâvikas maintain that nothing exists but nature, or rather substance, and that this substance exists by itself (svabhâvât), without a Creator or a Ruler. It exists, however, under two forms: in the state of Pravritti, as active, or in the state of Nirvritti, as passive. Human beings, who, like everything else, exist svabhâvât, 'by themselves,' are supposed to be capable of arriving at Nirvritti, or passiveness, which is nearly synonymous with Nirvâna. But here the Svâbhâvikas branch off into two sects. Some believe that Nirvritti is repose, others that it is annihilation; and the former add, 'were it even annihilation (sûnyatâ), it would still be good, man being otherwise doomed to an eternal migration through all the forms of nature; the more desirable of which are little to be wished for; and the less so, at any price to be shunned.'[83]
What was the original meaning of Nirvâna may perhaps best be seen from the etymology of this technical term. Every Sanskrit scholar knows that Nirvâna means originally the blowing out, the extinction of light, and not absorption. The human soul, when it arrives at its perfection, is blown out,[84] if we use the phraseology of the Buddhists, like a lamp; it is not absorbed, as the Brahmans say, like a drop in the ocean. Neither in the system of Buddhist philosophy, nor in the philosophy from which Buddha is supposed to have borrowed, was there any place left for a Divine Being by which the human soul could be absorbed. Sânkhya philosophy, in its original form, claims the name of an-îsvara, 'lordless' or 'atheistic' as its distinctive title. Its final object is not absorption in God, whether personal or impersonal, but Moksha, deliverance of the soul from all pain and illusion, and recovery by the soul of its true nature. It is doubtful whether the term Nirvâna was coined by Buddha. It occurs in the literature of the Brahmans as a synonyme of Moksha, deliverance; Nirvritti, cessation; Apavarga, release; Nihsreyas, summum bonum. It is used in this sense in the Mahâbhârata, and it is explained in the Amara-Kosha as having the meaning of 'blowing out, applied to a fire and to a sage.'[85] Unless, however, we succeed in tracing this term in works anterior to Buddha, we may suppose that it was invented by him in order to express that meaning of the summum bonum which he was the first to preach, and which some of his disciples explained in the sense of absolute annihilation.
The earliest authority to which we can go back, if we want to know the original character of Buddhism, is the Buddhist Canon, as settled after the death of Buddha at the first Council. It is called Tripitaka, or the Three Baskets, the first containing the Sûtras, or the discourses of Buddha; the second, the Vinaya, or his code of morality; the third, the Abhidharma, or the system of metaphysics. The first was compiled by Ânanda, the second by Upâli, the third by Kâsyapa—all of them the pupils and friends of Buddha. It may be that these collections, as we now possess them, were finally arranged, not at the first, but at the third Council. Yet, even then, we have no earlier, no more authentic, documents from which we could form an opinion as to the original teaching of Buddha; and the Nirvâna, as taught in the metaphysics of Kâsyapa, and particularly in the Pragnâ-pâramitâ, is annihilation, not absorption. Buddhism, therefore, if tested by its own canonical books, cannot be freed from the charge of Nihilism, whatever may have been its character in the mind of its founder, and whatever changes it may have undergone in later times, and among races less inured to metaphysical discussions than the Hindus.
The ineradicable feeling of dependence on something else, which is the life-spring of all religion, was completely numbed in the early Buddhist metaphysicians, and it was only after several generations had passed away, and after Buddhism had become the creed of millions, that this feeling returned with increased warmth, changing, as I said in my article, the very Nothing into a paradise, and deifying the very Buddha who had denied the existence of a Deity. That this has been the case in China we know from the interesting works of the Abbé Huc, and from other sources, such as the 'Catechism of the Shamans, or the Laws and Regulations of the Priesthood of Buddha in China,' translated by Ch. F. Neumann, London, 1831. In India, also, Buddhism, as soon as it became a popular religion, had to speak a more human language than that of metaphysical Pyrrhonism. But, if it did so, it was because it was shamed into it. This we may see from the very nicknames which the Brahmans apply to their opponents, the Bauddhas. They call them Nâstikas—those who maintain that there is nothing; Sûnyavadins-those who maintain that there is a universal void.
The only ground, therefore, on which we may stand, if we wish to defend the founder of Buddhism against the charges of Nihilism and Atheism, is this, that, as some of the Buddhists admit, the 'Basket of Metaphysics' was rather the work of his pupils, not of Buddha himself.[86] This distinction between the authentic words of Buddha and the canonical books in general, is mentioned more than once. The priesthood of Ceylon, when the manifest errors with which their canonical commentaries abound, were brought to their notice, retreated from their former position, and now assert that it is only the express words of Buddha that they receive as undoubted truth.[87] There is a passage in a Buddhist work which reminds us somewhat of the last page of Dean Milman's 'History of Christianity,' and where we read:
'The words of the priesthood are good; those of the Rahats (saints) are better; but those of the All-knowing are the best of all.'
This is an argument which Mr. Francis Barham might have used with more success, and by which he might have justified, if not the first disciples, at least the original founder of Buddhism. Nay, there is a saying of Buddha's which tends to show that all metaphysical discussion was regarded by him as vain and useless. It is a saying mentioned in one of the MSS. belonging to the Bodleian Library. As it has never been published before, I may be allowed to quote it in the original: Sadasad vikâram na sahate,—'The ideas of being and not being do not admit of discussion,'—a tenet which, if we consider that it was enunciated before the time of the Eleatic philosophers of Greece, and long before Hegel's Logic, might certainly have saved us many an intricate and indigestible argument.
A few passages from the Buddhist writings of Nepal and Ceylon will best show that the horror nihili was not felt by the metaphysicians of former ages in the same degree as it is felt by ourselves. The famous hymn which resounds in heaven when the luminous rays of the smile of Buddha penetrate through the clouds, is 'All is transitory, all is misery, all is void, all is without substance.' Again, it is said in the Pragnâ-pâramitâ,[88] that Buddha began to think that he ought to conduct all creatures to perfect Nirvâna. But he reflected that there are really no creatures which ought to be conducted, nor creatures that conduct; and, nevertheless, he did conduct all creatures to perfect Nirvâna. Then, continues the text, why is it said that there are neither creatures which arrive at complete Nirvâna, nor creatures which conduct there? Because it is illusion which makes creatures what they are. It is as if a clever juggler, or his pupil, made an immense number of people to appear on the high road, and after having made them to appear, made them to disappear again. Would there be anybody who had killed, or murdered, or annihilated, or caused them to vanish? No. And it is the same with Buddha. He conducts an immense, innumerable, infinite number of creatures to complete Nirvâna, and yet there are neither creatures which are conducted, nor creatures that conduct. If a Bodhisattva, on hearing this explanation of the Law, is not frightened, then it may be said that he has put on the great armour.[89]
Soon after, we read: 'The name of Buddha is nothing but a word. The name of Bodhisattva is nothing but a word. The name of Perfect Wisdom (Pragnâ-pâramitâ) is nothing but a word. The name is indefinite, as if one says "I," for "I" is something indefinite, because it has no limits.'
Burnouf gives the gist of the whole Pragnâ-pâramitâ in the following words: 'The highest Wisdom, or what is to be known, has no more real existence than he who has to know, or the Bodhisattva; no more than he who does know, or the Buddha.' But Burnouf remarks that nothing of this kind is to be found in the Sûtras, and that Gautama Sâkya-muni, the son of Suddhodana, would never have become the founder of a popular religion if he had started with similar absurdities. In the Sûtras the reality of the objective world is denied; the reality of form is denied; the reality of the individual, or the 'I,' is equally denied. But the existence of a subject, of something like the Purusha, the thinking substance of the Sânkhya philosophy, is spared. Something at least exists with respect to which everything else may be said not to exist. The germs of the ideas, developed in the Pragnâ-pâramitâ, may indeed be discovered here and there in the Sûtras.[90] But they had not yet ripened into that poisonous plant which soon became an indispensable narcotic in the schools of the later Buddhists. Buddha himself, however, though, perhaps, not a Nihilist, was certainly an Atheist. He does not deny distinctly either the existence of gods, or that of God; but he ignores the former, and he is ignorant of the latter. Therefore, if Nirvâna in his mind was not yet complete annihilation, still less could it have been absorption into a Divine essence. It was nothing but selfishness, in the metaphysical sense of the word—a relapse into that being which is nothing but itself. This is the most charitable view which we can take of the Nirvâna, even as conceived by Buddha himself, and it is the view which Burnouf derived from the canonical books of the Northern Buddhists. On the other hand, Mr. Spence Hardy, who in his works follows exclusively the authority of the Southern Buddhists, the Pâli and Singhalese works of Ceylon, arrives at the same result. We read in his work: 'The Rahat (Arhat), who has reached Nirvâna, but is not yet a Pratyeka-buddha, or a Supreme Buddha, says: "I await the appointed time for the cessation of existence. I have no wish to live; I have no wish to die. Desire is extinct."'
In a very interesting dialogue between Milinda and Nâgasena, communicated by Mr. Spence Hardy, Nirvâna is represented as something which has no antecedent cause, no qualities, no locality. It is something of which the utmost we may assert is, that it is:
Nâgasena. Can a man, by his natural strength, go from the city of Sâgal to the forest of Himâla?
Milinda. Yes.
Nâgasena. But could any man, by his natural strength, bring the forest of Himâla to this city of Sâgal?
Milinda. No.
Nâgasena. In like manner, though the fruition of the paths may cause the accomplishment of Nirvâna, no cause by which Nirvâna is produced can be declared. The path that leads to Nirvâna may be pointed out, but not any cause for its production. Why? because that which constitutes Nirvâna is beyond all computation,—a mystery, not to be understood.... It cannot be said that it is produced, nor that it is not produced; that it is past or future or present. Nor can it be said that it is the seeing of the eye, or the hearing of the ear, or the smelling of the nose, or the tasting of the tongue, or the feeling of the body.
Milinda. Then you speak of a thing that is not; you merely say that Nirvâna is Nirvâna;—therefore there is no Nirvâna.
Nâgasena. Great king, Nirvâna is.
Another question also, whether Nirvâna is something different from the beings that enter into it, has been asked by the Buddhists themselves:
Milinda. Does the being who acquires it, attain something that has previously existed?—or is it his own product, a formation peculiar to himself?
Nâgasena. Nirvâna does not exist previously to its reception; nor is it that which was brought into existence. Still to the being who attains it, there is Nirvâna.
In opposition, therefore, to the more advanced views of the Nihilistic philosophers of the North, Nâgasena maintains the existence of Nirvâna, and of the being that has entered Nirvâna. He does not say that Buddha is a mere word. When asked by king Milinda, whether the all-wise Buddha exists, he replies:
Nâgasena. He who is the most meritorious (Bhagavat) does exist.
Milinda. Then can you point out to me the place in which he exists?
Nâgasena. Our Bhagavat has attained Nirvâna, where there is no repetition of birth. We cannot say that he is here, or that he is there. When a fire is extinguished, can it be said that it is here, or that it is there? Even so, our Buddha has attained extinction (Nirvâna). He is like the sun that has set behind the Astagiri mountain. It cannot be said that he is here, or that he is there: but we can point him out by the discourses he delivered. In them he lives.
At the present moment, the great majority of Buddhists would probably be quite incapable of understanding the abstract speculation of their ancient masters. The view taken of Nirvâna in China, Mongolia, and Tatary may probably be as gross as that which most of the Mohammedans form of their paradise. But, in the history of religion, the historian must go back to the earliest and most original documents that are to be obtained. Thus only may he hope to understand the later developments which, whether for good or evil, every form of faith has had to undergo.
April, 1857.