The Making of a Pantheon.

Let us glance again at this Nepal Buddhism. In the tenth century we find what at first seems to be a growth out of Polytheism into Monotheism, for a new Being, to whom the attributes of infinity, self-existence and omniscience are ascribed, is invented and named Adi-Buddha, or the primordial Buddha. According to the speculations of the thinkers, he had evolved himself out of the five Dhyani-Buddhas by the exercise of the five meditations, while each of these had evolved out of itself by wisdom and contemplation, the corresponding Buddhas elect. Again, each of the latter evolved out of his own essence a material world,—our present world being the fourth of these, that is of Avaloki. One almost might consider that this setting forth of the primordial Buddha was real Monotheism; but on looking more carefully one sees that it is as little real Monotheism as was possible in the system of Gnosticism. Indeed the force of evolution could not stop here; for, since even this primordial Buddha rested upon Ossa of hypothesis piled upon Pelion of hypothesis, there must be other hypotheses yet to come, and so the Tantra system, a compound of old Brahminism with the magic and witchcraft and Shamanism of Northern Asia burst into view. As this was to travel into Japan and be hailed as purest Buddhism, let us note how this tenth century Tantra system grew up. To see this clearly, is to look upon the parable of the man with the unclean spirit being acted out on a vast scale in history.

In the sixth century of our era, one Asanga, or Asamga, wrote the Shastra, called the Shastra Yoga-chara Bhumi.[²⁸] With great dexterity he erected a sort of clearing-house for both the corrupt Brahminism and corrupt Buddhism of his day, and exchanging and rearranging the gods and devils in both systems, he represented them as worshippers and supporters of the Buddha and Avalokitesvara. In such a system, the old primitive Buddhism of the noble eight-fold path of self-conquest and pure morals was utterly lost. Instead of that, the worshipper gave his whole powers to obtaining occult potencies by means of magic phrases and magic circles. Then grew up whole forests of monasteries and temples, with an outburst of devilish art representing many-headed and many-eyed and many-handed idols on the walls, on books, on the roadside, with manifold charms and phrases the endless repetitions of which were supposed to have efficacy with the hypothetical being who filled the heavens. That was the age of idols for China as well as for India; and the old Chinese house, once empty, swept and garnished by Confucianism, was now filled with a mob of unclean spirits each worse than the first. With more courageous logic than the more matter-of-fact Chinese, the Tibetan erected his prayer-mills [²⁹] and let the winds of heaven and the flowing waters continually multiply his prayers and holy syllables. And these inventions were duly imported into Japan, and even now are far from being absent.[³⁰]

Passing over for the present the history of Buddhism in China,[³¹] suffice it to say that the Buddhism which entered Japan from Korea in the sixth century, was not the simple atheism touched with morality, the bald skepticism or benevolent agnosticism of Gautama, but a religion already over a thousand years old. It was the system of the Northern Buddhists. These, dissatisfied, or unsatisfied, with absorption into a passionless state through self-sacrifice and moral discipline, had evolved a philosophy of religion in which were gods, idols and an apparatus of conversion utterly unknown to the primitive faith.