Buddhism in the West.
The great basis, however, on which any proof of the existence of a connexion between the East and West must eventually rest, will probably be found in the amount of pure Buddhism which crept into Christianity in the early age of the Church. The subject has not yet been fairly grappled with by any one capable of doing it justice. It has been frequently alluded to by travellers, who have been struck with resemblances which could hardly be accidental, and used sometimes by scoffers in order to depreciate Christianity; but no serious historian of the Latin Church has had sufficient knowledge of Buddhism or of its forms to be able to appreciate correctly either the extent or the cause of its introduction; and till some one does this, it will be treated by the general reader as an idle speculation. Yet it probably is not too much to assert, that at least nine-tenths of the institutions and forms which were engrafted on pure evangelical Christianity in the middle ages, are certainly derived from Buddhist sources.
Of these, one of the most striking is the introduction of monastic institutions, which exercised so important an influence on the forms of Christianity during the whole period of the middle ages. It is in vain to look for their origin in anything that existed in Europe before the Christian era. Nothing can be more forced than the analogies it has been attempted to establish between the Vestal virgins and the nuns of the middle ages, and no trace of conventual life can be found among the semi-secular priesthood of classical times. According to the usually received opinion, Antony (A.D. 305[584]) was the first monk, and from him and about his time a prolific progeny are traced to the Thebais, which is usually assumed to be the cradle of the institution. Monastic life was, however, absolutely antithetical to the religious institutions of the ancient Egyptians, amongst whom the king was high priest and god, and where civil could hardly be distinguished from religious rank. It was equally opposed to the feelings of the Arabic or at least Semitic races, that superseded the Coptic in that country, and could consequently hardly have existed at all, unless introduced from some foreign source and maintained by some extraneous influence. The Essenes are the only sect to whom in the ancient world in the West anything like the peculiar institutions of monasticism can be traced; but unfortunately we do not know how or when they adopted them. Josephus represents them as only one of the three principal sects into which the Jews in his time were divided; but the silence not only of the Bible but of the Rabbis weakens the force of his statement, while his unfortunate omission of the name of their Lawgiver[585] leaves us in the dark on the most essential point. That it was not Moses, whose name is usually interpolated, is quite certain. He never inculcated any such doctrines, and one hardly dares to suggest the Indian name, which would clear up the whole mystery at once. Be this as it may, the sect only arose apparently in the time of the Maccabees, and practically disappeared with the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus; all which would accord perfectly with the hypothesis of their Indian origin, but would hardly suffice to support the idea that they were the sect from whom, in the fourth century, the Christian Church adopted the principles and practices of Asceticism.
When from these sparse indications we turn to the East, we are met by the difficulty that none of the books we possess were reduced to writing in their present form till the time of Buddhaghosa, A.D. 412,[586] or even later; and any one who knows what wild imaginings can in the fertile East creep into works during the remodellings of a thousand years, will easily understand with what caution they must be used. Fortunately in this instance the monuments and inscriptions come to our assistance, and we are enabled to form a fair idea of the progress of monasticism in India from what they tell us.
Before the first monuments, the books tell us of three great convocations: the first held immediately on the death of the founder of the religion, B.C. 543, at Rajagriha; the second 100 years afterwards, at Vaisali; and the third by Asoka, 250 B.C., at Pataliputta, or Patna. These we are told were attended by thousand and tens of thousands of monks.[587] But Asoka's edicts give no countenance to any such extension of the system in his day. Shortly after this, however, the earlier caves show cells appropriated to hermits, or even for the reunion of a limited number of monks under one roof. These Viharas or monasteries are small at first, and insignificant as compared with the Chaityas or church caves to which they are attached, as at Karlee, Baja, Bedsa and elsewhere; but shortly afterwards, at Nassick and Jooneer, in the first or second centuries they become more important; and when we reach such a series as that at Ajunta or Baug, for instance, we find the Vihara becoming all important, the Chaitya sinking into comparative insignificance. This great change took place apparently about the end of the third or beginning of the fourth century of our era, and continued till Buddhism actually perished, smothered under the weight of its enormously developed hierarchy some three centuries later.
The sculptures tell the same story. There are no representations of priests in the form we afterwards find them in at Sanchi, in the first century of our era. Ascetics there are, dwelling in woods and lonely places, but not congregated in monasteries, nor jointly performing ceremonies. But at Amravati, three centuries later, we have shaven priests in their distinctive robes, and every symptom of a well developed system.
If this is so, it could hardly have been before the era of the Roman Empire that these peculiar institutions penetrated to the West; nor could they have done so during its supremacy without attracting attention. But in the great "débacle" which followed the change of the seat of government and the destruction of the old faith, it is easy to see how these forms may have crept in, together with the new Eastern faith, which an illiterate people were adopting, without much knowing whence it came, and without being able to discriminate what was Christian and what Buddhist in the forms or doctrines that were being presented to them.
Among the peculiarities then introduced, one of the most remarkable was the segregation of the clergy from the laity, and the devotion of the former wholly to the performance of religious duties. Still more so was their seclusion in monasteries, living a life of the most self-denying asceticism, subsisting almost wholly on alms, and bound by vows of poverty, chastity and temperance, to a negation of all the ordinary enjoyments of life. That the two systems are identical no one has doubted, and no one, indeed, can enter now a Buddhist monastery in the East and watch the shaven priests in the yellow robes at matins, or at vespers, issue from their cells and range themselves on either side of a choir, on whose altar stands an image of the Queen of Heaven, or of the three precious Buddhas, and listen to their litanies, chanted in what to them is a dead or foreign tongue, without feeling that he is looking in the East on what is externally the same as he had long been familiar with in the West.[588] If he follows these monks back to their cells and finds them governed by a mitred abbot, and subordinated as deacons, priests, and neophytes, learns that they are bound by vows of celibacy, live by alms, and spend their lives in a dull routine of contemplation and formal worship, he might almost fancy he was transported back into some Burgundian convent in the middle ages, unless he is prepared, like Huc and Gabet, to believe that it is a phantasm conjured up by the author of all evil for the confusion of mankind. We know from the form and arrangement of the great Chaitya caves, that these forms prevailed as early at least as the first century B.C., and, as they are practised without change in the East to the present day, it seems clear that it is thence that they were introduced into Europe.
Canonization is another remarkable institution common to the Buddhist and Christian Churches, and to them only. It has frequently been attempted to draw a parallel between the demigods of Greece and Rome and the institution of Saints in the mediæval Church; but this argument has always failed, because in fact no two institutions could in their origin be more essentially different. The minor gods of the heathen pantheon, though sometimes remarkable for their prowess or virtues, were all more or less connected by ties of blood or marriage with the great Olympic family, and owed their rank rather to their descent than to their merits. It is true that in later times the deification of Roman emperors and others of that class, which the abject flattery of a corrupt age had introduced, was a nearer approach to the practice of Buddhism, which was then flourishing in the East, than anything before known in the pagan world. But canonization in its purity, as practised both in the East and West, is not to be attained through either birth or office, but by the practice of ascetic virtues on the part of the clergy, and by piety coupled with benefactions to the Church by those outside its pale. In these casteless institutions any man, however obscure his origin, by devotion to the interests of his adopted order, and the practice of the asceticism, heightened if possible by the endurance of self-inflicted tortures, might attain to Buddhahood or saintship. But such a path to adoration in this world, or to worship hereafter, was utterly unknown in Europe until it was introduced from the East, after the Christian era.
Relic-worship is another peculiarity which the mediæval Church certainly borrowed from the East. No tradition is more constant than that which relates that the relics of Buddha were, after cremation, divided into eight parts, and distributed to eight different kingdoms, and the history of some portions of these can be traced to comparatively modern times. Perhaps too much reliance should not be placed on these very early traditions, as no material evidence of them exists, nor in the often-repeated assertion that Asoka built 84,000 dagobas,[589] to receive relics. That he built several is quite certain. The fact of the relics of two of the favourite disciples of Buddha—Mogalana and Sariputra—and of ten of the principal dignitaries of the Buddhist Church in the time of Asoka having been found at Sanchi in topes certainly anterior to the Christian era, [590] is quite sufficient for our present purpose. As is well known, the Tooth relic, whose history can be traced back with certainty for more than fifteen centuries, is now worshipped under British protection in Ceylon.
No such form of worship existed in classical antiquity, nor is it quite clear how it came to be adopted by the Christian Church. Buddhism was a reform of a material, ancestral-worshipping, body-respecting form of religion. The sepulchral tumulus with them became in consequence a dagoba, or relic shrine, containing a bone, or a vessel, or rag, or something that belonged to Buddha or some of his followers; and all the grosser superstitions of the Turanian natives, whose faith he was trying to elevate and refine, were sublimated into something immaterial and more pure. But Christianity never could have wanted this, and its adoption of relic worship was either a piece of blind imitation adopted without thinking, among other things, for which there was more excuse, or it was one of the many instances of the toleration of foreign elements which characterized the Christian priesthood in the early age of the Church.
It is as little clear when this worship was introduced as why it was done, for Christian legends in regard to relics are not more to be depended upon than those of the Buddhists. It could not have been common in the days of Clemens of Alexandria, or he would not have mentioned as a wonder that the Indians worshipped a bone enclosed in a pyramid;[591] but shortly after Constantine's time the fashion became prevalent, and the miracles performed by the touch of relics became one of the favourite delusions of the middle ages. If this is correct, and we are justified in assuming that the Buddhism which we find in mediæval Christianity was introduced after Constantine's time, we may take it for granted that any influence which the East exercised on the Western rude-stone monuments was also subsequent to that monarch's reign. If this is so, a considerable portion, at least, of those found in both countries must also belong to the dark ages that closed with the Crusades.
It would be easy to go on multiplying instances of Eastern customs introduced into the Western Church were this the place to do it. All that is required here, however, is to adduce sufficient evidence to accentuate an assertion which no one, probably, who knows anything of the subject would be found to dispute. It is, that the mediæval Church borrowed many of its forms from pre-existing Buddhism, and that these were introduced not before but after the time of Constantine. If, after having reached conviction on this point, we turn to our books to ascertain what light they throw on the subject, we find them absolutely silent. You may wade through all the writings of the Fathers, all the ponderous tomes of the Bollandists, without finding a trace, or even a hinted suspicion, that such a transference of doctrine took place. Except from one or two passages in Clemens of Alexandria, we should not be able to show that before the time of Constantine the nations of the West knew even the name of Buddha,[592] much less anything of his doctrines. While this is so it is obviously idle to ask for written evidence with regard to the influence of either country on the architectural style of the other. Men write volumes on volumes with regard to doctrines and faiths, but rarely allude to anything that concerns mere buildings; and while written history is so absolutely silent respecting the introduction of Buddhist forms into the West, it is in vain to hope that any allusion will be found to the influence Eastern forms may have had on the sepulchral monuments of Northern Africa or Europe. In this case, the "litera scripta" is not to be depended upon, but the monuments and their inscriptions are, and it is from them and them only, that either correct dates or reliable materials for such an investigation can be obtained. So far as I am capable of forming an opinion, their evidence is amply sufficient, in the first place, to take away all à priori improbability from the assumption that there may have been a direct influence exercised by the East on the Western rude-stone monuments. But it seems to me at the same time sufficient to render it extremely probable that while influencing to so great an extent the religious institutions of the country, they should also have modified their sepulchral forms so as fully to account for all the similarities which we find existing between them.
It may not be possible, in the present state of our knowledge, to explain exactly how this influence was exercised, and we must, consequently, rest content with the fact that as Buddhism did so influence the religion of the West in those early ages, the same agency may equally have acted upon the architectural or sepulchral forms of the same class in our population.
To explain this it is necessary to revert for a moment to a proposition I have often had occasion to advance, and have not yet seen refuted—that Buddhism is the religion of a Turanian race, using that word, as used by its inventors, in the broadest possible sense. The Persians say Iran and Turan, and Iran and Aniran, terms equivalent to our Aryan and non-Aryan; and Buddhism is not and never was, but exceptionally, the religion of the Aryan race, and is not now professed by any Aryan people in any quarter of the globe. It is essentially the faith of a quiescent, contemplative race, with no distinct idea of a god external to this world, or of a future state other than through transmigrations accomplished in this world, leading only to eternal repose hereafter; its followers, however, still believing in the direct influence of the temporarily-released spirits of their forefathers in guiding and controlling the destiny of their offspring, thus leading directly to ancestral worship. In India this primitive faith was refined and elevated into one of the most remarkable and beneficent of human institutions by the Aryan Sakya Muni and his Brahmin coadjutors, and did at one time nearly obliterate the Aryan faith which it superseded. After, however, a thousand years of apparent supremacy, the old faith came again to the surface and Buddhism disappeared from India, but still remains the only faith of all the Turanian nations around it and wherever the Aryan races never seem to have settled.
If any Turanian blood remained in the veins of any of the various races who inhabited Europe in the middle ages, it is easy to understand how the preaching or doctrines of any Buddhist missionaries or Turanian tribes must have struck a responsive chord in their hearts, and how easily they would have adopted any new fashion these Easterns may have taught. As we have had occasion to point out above, the dolmen-builders of Europe certainly were not Aryan. Nor, if we may trust M. Bertrand and the best French antiquaries, were they Celts; but that an old pre-Celtic people did exist in those parts of France in which the dolmens are generally found appears to me indisputable. Though the more active and progressive Celts had commenced their obliteration of this undemonstrative people at the time when written history first began in their country, there is no reason to suppose that their blood or their race was entirely exterminated till a very recent period, and it may still have been numerically the prevalent ingredient in the population between the fourth and the tenth centuries of our era.
Of course, it is not intended to assert or even to suggest that the Western nations first adopted from the East the practice of using stone to accentuate and adorn their sepulchral monuments. The whole evidence of the preceding pages contradicts such an assumption. But what they do seem to have borrowed is the use or abuse of holed stones, and the arrangement of external dolmens on the summit of tumuli combined with two or three circles of rude stones. These I fancy to have been among the latest of the forms which rude-stone architecture adopted, and may very well have been introduced in post-Constantinian times; and when we become more familiar with the peculiarities of these monuments, both in the East and the West, there may be other forms which we may recognize as modern and interchangeable, while many others, such as the great chambered tumuli and the tall solitary menhirs, seem as original and as peculiar to the West.
Having now made the tour of the Old World, it will be convenient to try to resume, in as few words as possible, the principal results we have arrived at from the preceding investigation.
First, with regard to their age. It seems that the uncivilized, ancestral-worshipping races of Europe first borrowed from the Romans—or, if any one likes, from the Phœnicians or Greeks of Marseilles—the idea of using stone to accentuate and adorn the monuments of their dead. In like manner, it certainly was from the Bactrian Greeks that the Indians first learned the use of stone as a building material. How early the Eastern nations adopted it in its rude form we do not know. In its polished form it was used as early as the middle of the third century B.C., but we have no authentic instance of the rude form till at least a century or two after Christ; but, once introduced, its use continued to the present day. Its history in the West seems somewhat different. The great chambered tumuli at Gavr Innis, and others in France, as well as those at Lough Crew, in Ireland, seem to belong to a time before the Romans occupied the states of Western Europe; but no stone monument of this class has yet made out its claim to an antiquity of more than two centuries, if so much, before the Christian era. Some of those in Greece about Mycenæ, and those at Saturnia, may be earlier, but they are as yet undescribed scientifically, and we cannot tell. From shortly before the Christian era, till the countries in which they are found became entirely and essentially Christian, the use of these monuments seems to have been continual, whenever a dolmen-building race—or, in other words, a race with any taint of Turanian blood in their veins—continued to prevail. This, in remote corners of the world, seems to have extended in France and Britain down to the eighth or ninth century. In Scandinavia it lasted down to the eleventh or twelfth, and sporadically, in out-of-the-way and neglected districts, as late both in France and Great Britain.
These results do not, of course, touch the age of the earthen tumuli or barrows, for the determination of whose age no scale has yet been invented; still less do they approach the question of the antiquity of the Cave men or the palæolithic stone implements, the age of which we must, for the present at least, leave wrapped in the mists of the long prehistoric past.
Their uses seem more easily determined than their dates; with only a few rare and easily-recognizable exceptions, all seem originally to have been intended for sepulchral or cenotaphic purposes. Either, like the great chambered tumuli and the dolmens, they were actually the burying-places of the illustrious dead; or, like the greater circles and the alignments, they marked battle-fields, and were erected in honour of those slain there, whether their bodies were actually laid within their precincts or not; or, like the rude stone pillars of the Khassia hills, they were offerings to the spirits of the departed.
With the fewest possible exceptions[593] and these of the most insignificant character, their connexion with the relics of the dead can be proved from all having become places for ancestral worship and having under various forms been used for commemorating or honouring departed spirits. No single instance has been authenticated of either circles or dolmens in any other form, except perhaps single stones, having ever been used for the worship of Odin, or of the gods called Mercury, Mars, Venus, or the other gods of the Druids, still less is there any trace of the worship of the sun or moon or any of the heavenly host; nor, I am sorry to think, can the serpent lay claim to any temple of this class. Honour to the dead and propitiation of the spirits of the departed seem to have been the two leading ideas that both in the East and West gave rise to the erection of these hitherto mysterious structures which are found numerously scattered over the face of the Old World.
Footnotes
[531] 'History of Architecture,' by the Author, ii. p. 459, fig. 968.
[532] 'Caves of Baja and Bedsa in Western Ghâts;' unpublished.
[533] 'Tree and Serpent Worship,' quotation from Hiouen Thsang, p. 135, and plates, passim.
[534] 'History of Architecture,' by the Author, ii. p. 649.
[535] 'Architecture of Ahmedabad.' 120 photographs, with text. Murray, 1868.
[536] Yule, 'Mission to the Court of Ava,' p. 43, pl. ix.
[537] 'J. A. S. B.,' vii. p. 930.
[538] 'J. R. A. S.,' new series, iv. p. 88.
[539] 'Tods Rajastan,' i. p. 224.
[540] The information regarding the Khonds is principally derived from a work entitled 'Memorials of Service,' by Major Charteris-Macpherson (Murray, 1865), and his papers in 'J. R. A. S.' xiii. pp. 216 et seq. I quote by preference from the latter, as the more generally accessible.
[541] For several years past I have officially and privately been exerting all the influence I possess to try and get two bassi relievi that exist in these caves cast or photographed, or at least carefully copied in some form, but hitherto in vain. In 1869 the Government sent an expedition to Cuttack with draftsmen, photographers, &c., but they knew so little what was wanted that they wasted their time and money in casting minarets and sculptures of no beauty or interest, and, having earned their pay, returned re infecta. I am not without hopes that something may be done during the present cold season. When representations are obtained, they will throw more light on the history of the Yavanas or Greeks in that remote part of India than anything else that could be done, and would clear up some points in the history of Indian art that are now very obscure.
[542] Sterling's account of Cuttack, 'Asiatic Researches,' xv. p. 306.
[543] Loc. s. c. p. 315.
[544] Tacitus' 'Germania,' 9.
[545] H. Walters, 1828, 'Asiatic Researches,' xvii. pp. 499 et seq. Colonel Yule, 'Proceedings, Soc. of Antiq. Scot.' i. p. 92. Hooker's 'Himalayan Journals,' ii. p. 276. Major Godwin Austen, 'Journal Anthropological Institute,' vol. i. Part II.
[546] Schlagintweit, in 'Ausland,' No. 23, 1870, pp. 530 et seq.
[547] 'Asiatic Researches,' xvii. p. 502.
[548] Major Godwin Austen, 'Journal Anthrop. Institute,' i. p. 127.
[549] 'Journal Anthrop. Inst.' i. p. 126.
[550] 'Mémoires sur les Contrées occidentales,' iii. p. 76.
[551] Colonel Forbes Leslie, 'Early Races of Scotland,' vol. ii. pls. lviii. lix. lx. They have also been described by Dr. Stevenson, 'J. R. A. S.' v. pp. 192 et seq. It would be extremely interesting, in an ethnographic point of view, if some further information could be obtained regarding these stone rows.
[552] 'Early Races of Scotland,' ii. 459.
[553] 'J. R. A. S.' xiii. p. 268.
[554] I quote from a paper by him, published in the 'Trans. R. Irish Academy,' xxiv. pp. 329 et seq. There is an earlier paper by him in the 'J. B. B. R. A. S.' vol. iii. p. 179, but it is superseded by the later publication.
[555] 'Proceedings, Asiat. Soc. Bengal, 1868,' p. 152.
[556] 'International Prehistoric Congress,' Norwich volume, p. 200.
[557] 'International Prehistoric Congress,' Norwich volume, p. 245.
[558] 'J. R. A. S.' new series, iii. p. 143.
[559] 'International Prehistoric Congress,' Norwich volume, p. 257.
[560] Published on a reduced scale, 'Tree and Serpent Worship,' p. xlvi.
[561] The principal sources of information on the subject are the papers of Sir Walter Elliot and Col. Meadows Taylor, so often referred to above. But I am also indebted to Mr. M. J. Walhouse, M.C.S., for a great amount of valuable information on the subject. His private letters to me are replete with details which if he would only consent to arrange and publish would throw a flood of light on the subject.
[562] Norwich volume, 'International Prehistoric Congress,' pp. 252 et seq. He places the destruction of the Karumbers as early as the seventh century, but the dates are, to say the least, often very doubtful. When, for instance, Hiouen Thsang visited Conjeveran in 640—the Buddhist establishment—they were still flourishing, and no signs apparent of the storm, which did not, I fancy, break out till at least a century after that time. See also 'The Seven Pagodas,' by Capt. Carr, Madras, 1869, p. 127.
[563] Second Report by the Rev. W. Taylor, 'Madras Lit. Jour.' vii. p. 311 et passim.
[564] Caldwell's 'Dravidian Grammar,' pp. 9 et seq. 'The Tribes of the Nilgiri Hills,' by a German missionary (Madras, 1856)—the Rev. F. Metz, who probably knows more of their language than any one now living. Mr. Walhouse's letters are also strong on this point.
[565] See 'Rock-cut Temples,' by the Author, p. 50.
[566] Sir Walter Elliot, 'J. R. A. S.' iv. pp. 7 et seq.; and new series, i. 250.
[567] Sir W. Elliot, 'Journal Ethnological Soc.,' new series, 1869, p. 110.
[568] Lieut. Cole, R.E., has brought home a cast of the upper part of this pillar, which is now at the South Kensington Museum.
[569] 'Journal Asiatic Soc. Bengal,' vii. p. 629.
[570] The crack and bend in the upper part of the pillar are caused by a cannon shot, the dent of which is distinctly visible on the opposite side. I hope it was not fired by the English, but I do not know who else would, or could, have done it.
[571] Hooker's 'Himalayan Journals,' ii. p. 310. Percy's 'Metallurgy: Iron and Steel,' p. 254 et seq. All the original authorities will be found referred to in the last-named work.
[572] Josephus, 'Bell. Jud.,' v. p. 6.
[573] 'Journal Madras Lit. Soc.' xiv. pl. 8.
[574] 'J. A. S. B.' xxxvii. p. 116 et seq.
[575] An elaborate paper by the Rev. Mr. Joyce, in the 'Archæological Journal,' 108, 1870, shows, I think clearly, that these crosses could not be earlier than 470 A.D.—all the crosses he quotes being of the usual Greek form, though possessing one longer limb. Indeed, I do not myself know of any crosses like those at Nirmul earlier than the 10th or 11th century; but, as my knowledge of the subject is not profound, I have allowed the widest possible margin in the text. I cannot prove it, but my impression is, that they belong to the 11th or 12th century.
[576] As it is wholly beside the object of this work I have not attempted to go into the history of the Siganfu Tables, nor the records of the early churches in the East. If the reader cares to know more, he will find the subject fully and clearly discussed in Col. Yule's 'Cathay, and the Way Thither,' published by the Hakluyt Society, 1866. It is the last work on the subject, and contains references to all the earlier ones.
[577] 'J. R. A. S.,' xiii. 164 et seq.
[578] Wilson's 'Ariana Antiqua,' Introduction passim. Cunningham, 'Bhilsa Topes,' &c., passim.
[579] Hiouen Thsang, 'Vie et Voyages,' p. 77.
[580] 'Madras Journal of Lit. and Science,' xiii. pl. 14.
[581] 'Tree and Serpent Worship,' p. 82, woodcut 8.
[582] 'Foe Koué Ki,' p. 335.
[583] 'J.R.A.S.' xii. p. 233. 'J.B.A.S.' vii. p. 261 et seq.
[584] Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall,' iv. p. 392, where the original authorities are found.
[585] Josephus, 'B. J.,' II. viii. p. 9.
[586] "The prestige of such a witness as Buddhaghosa soon dwindles away, and his statements as to kings and councils 800 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"—Chips from a German Workshop, i. p. 198. As a mere linguist, and dependent wholly on books, Max Müller was perfectly justified in making this statement, while his ignorance of everything connected with the archæology or art of India, prevented his perceiving how these wild statements could be verified or controlled. Till he learns that there are other means of investigation than mere words his statements on these subjects are untrustworthy, and, in many cases, absolutely worthless.
[587] Turnour's 'Mahawanso,' 12 et seq. 'J. A. S. B.,' vii. passim.
[588] Huc and Gabet, in their 'Travels in Thibet,' give a most amusing account of their bewilderment on observing there these things:—"La crosse, la mitre, la dalmatique, la chape ou pluvial, que les grands Lamas portent en voyage, ou lorsqu'ils font quelque cérémonie hors du temple; l'office des deux chœurs, la psalmodie, les exorcismes, l'encensoir soutenu par cinque chaines, et pouvant s'ouvrir et se fermer à volonté; les bénédictions données par les Lamas, en étendant la main droite sur la tête des fidèles; le chapelet, le célibat ecclesiastique, les retraites spirituelles, le culte des saints, les jeûnes, les processions, les litanies, l'eau bénite: voilà autant des rapports que les Bouddhistes ont avec nous."—Vol. ii. p. 110.
[589] 'Mahavanso,' p. 26.
[590] Cunningham, 'Bhilsa Topes,' p. 289 et seq.
[591] Clemens, i. 194. Oxford, 1715.
[592] Clemens, i. 132. Translation by Potter, ut sup. p. 504.
[593] The accidental resemblance of the microlithic temples of the Deccan mentioned above ([p. 467]) can hardly be quoted as an exception. They are said to be dedicated to Vetal, but it is not clear that the stones of the circle do not represent dead, as they certainly do absent persons, and the sacrifice, after all, is offered up to their departed spirits; it being a form of the present day we do not know how much its spirit may not be changed from the ancient rite which it was originally intended to typify.
[CHAPTER XIV.]
AMERICA.
If this work had any pretension to being a complete history or statistical account of the Rude Monuments of the world, it might be necessary to describe somewhat in detail, and to illustrate those of the New World as well as those of the Old. In the form that it has now taken, however, nothing more is required than to point out as briefly as possible what the American monuments really are, with sufficient detail to show whether they have or have not any connexion with those we have been describing, and to point out what bearing—if any—their peculiarities may have on the main argument of this work.
In so far as the rude monuments of North America are concerned, there is fortunately no difficulty in speaking with confidence. In the first volume of the 'Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge,'[594] the Americans possess a detailed description of their antiquities of this class such as no nation in Europe can boast of. The survey was carefully and scientifically carried out by Messrs. Squier and Davis, to whom it was entrusted. The text is tersely and clearly written, mere theories or speculations are avoided, and the plates are clearly and carefully engraved. If we had such a work on our own antiquities we should long ago have known all about them; but unfortunately there are no Smithsons in this country, and among our thousand and one millionaires, to whom the expense would be a flea-bite, there is not one who has the knowledge requisite to enable him to appreciate the value of such a survey, nor consequently the liberality sufficient to induce him to incur the expense necessary for its execution.