The part played by woman in the early history of Buddhism was analogous to that assumed by woman in relation to primitive Christianity. Women were among the most zealous supporters of Buddha, ministering to him of their substance. Subsequently, as in the case of the Christian Church, the largest proportion of the wealth which was lavished in such marvellous munificence upon the Order came from female votaries. Evidently in those days in India the position of woman was not so degraded and helpless as it afterwards became. Women in old Indian literature are seen to be much more on an equality with men; they are not only represented as receiving scholastic instruction, but even to them as authoresses some of the Vedic hymns were ascribed.[[298]] At any rate, women appear in almost every Buddhist episode, and they move about with a freedom which contrasts strangely with the seclusion and restraint in which in India they have lived for ages. In the character of Buddha there seems to have been much that was peculiarly attractive to the best type of women, and at least one of these stands forth with very clearly marked individuality.[[299]] His mother is only a shadow in the legends, and we can only conjecture what the parent of so good and gentle a man must have been. But his wife confronts us with so much that is womanly in the picture that we feel she must have been drawn from life. Very pathetic and tender is the graphic account of her first interview with him, upon his return as the illustrious Buddha to his father’s house.[[300]] When all came to do him honour, Yasodhara did not come, for she said, “If I am of any value in his eyes, he will come himself, and I can welcome him better here.” Buddha, noting her absence, went attended by two of his disciples to the place where she was, and he warned his companions not to prevent her should she seek to embrace him, although no member of the Order could touch or be touched by a woman. And when she saw him, a mendicant in yellow robes, with shaven head and face—though she knew it would be so—she could not contain herself, but fell at his feet, which she held, passionately weeping. Then remembering the great and impassable gulf which he had fixed between them, she rose and stood at his side. His father sought to apologise for her, telling how in the greatness of her love she mourned and afflicted her soul for loss of him, and refused to be comforted. She became his disciple; and when afterwards, much against his inclination, he admitted women into a separate branch of the Order, the poor wife, whom he had not only widowed, but had bereft of her only child, “passed into the silent life,” as one of the first of Buddhist nuns.

All candid readers of the early Buddhist scriptures will admit that Buddha must not only have been gentle in disposition but pure in character. From male and female disciples alike he demanded chastity, in the Christian conception of the virtue. In the reported discourses of Buddha there is the same absence of direct denunciation of the vices that corrupt society which is observable in the Gospels; but the impression made by the reading of both narratives, is that of characters so far removed from such vices, that people in their presence or under their influence could not even think of them. In both narratives we have presentations of “women who were sinners” in relation to Buddha and Christ, but it will be confessed that the effect produced upon us is very different in each case. The Indian episodes lack the stirrings of the depths of spiritual feeling, the creative word of command exorcising the lust, and unsealing the long congealed fountains of penitence, which confront us so prominently in the scenes of the gospel. Buddha was a pure man, demanding purity from all who would be saved, but demanding it only as moralists have demanded it all along. There did not radiate from him that blending of horror of sin and of pity for sinners which makes the influence of Christ upon the wickedness and infirmities of men to be unique in its regenerative power. Had Christ insisted upon purity just as Buddha did, the world would have profited little by the teaching. Unquestionably the mission of Buddha, though intended to make for chastity, has not purified Eastern Asia from the gross and unnatural vices to which all along it has been prone.

For Buddha’s conception and estimate of woman was very inferior to that of Christ.[[301]] She was regarded by him through the medium of the traditional prejudice of her inferiority to man in every respect. To him, as to Plato, women, of all snares which the tempter spreads for man, were the most dangerous. Not only was the very smallest love for them to be destroyed, but they were to be avoided, not to be spoken to, not looked upon,[[302]] not to be helped even when in distress. Of their future as women in the life hereafter he had no hope,[[303]] and the only reward which he could hold out to them for obedience or benevolent service, the very highest object of aspiration which he could present, was that they might be re-born as men in another stage of existence. His disciple Ananda did good service when he wrung from him permission to form the order of Nuns,[[304]] for a nun might hope for salvation; but alas for woman and for the progress of society if she had no other gospel to trust in than that which Buddha preached!

His ideal of purity was from the first vitiated by his celibate views of life, and from these views human nature has always revolted in proportion to the honesty with which men have striven to realise them. Celibacy, when dominant or prevalent, has only produced a more vicious and unnatural condition of society than that from which it attempted to escape. The Son of Man represented nobler traditions, and taught far sublimer doctrine. Woman, though different from, and in some respects weaker, is in others higher and purer than man, and altogether his consort. The pure love of the man for the woman was recognised by Christ as one of the most sanctifying influences in life; and marriage, the most sacred of all Divine institutions, as the bond which more than any other keeps society together, obtained His special benediction, and was committed by Him to His Church to guard as the palladium of social freedom and dignity. Notwithstanding its many defections, the Church has never been permitted to lose sight of the Lord’s ideal. Even in the days of corrupted faith, when its laudation of virginity was most extravagant, its unmistakable tendency was to acknowledge the true dignity of the wife.[[305]] A recent writer professes to be unable “to see that Christianity has had any favourable effect on the position of women—on the contrary, it tended rather to lower their character and contract the range of their activities.”[[306]] It is noticeable that his facts or quotations are drawn from a period when asceticism had deeply tainted the Church, and that they cannot be held to represent the tendency of the teaching of Christ. The unmistakable influence of His religion has been to ennoble family relations, and to secure woman in her true position as the companion and helpmeet of man. It has been stated by one who cannot be regarded as a special pleader, that what most differentiates the European from the Hindu branch of the Aryan race, is that the first has steadily carried forward, for the elevation of woman, the series of reforms[[307]] from which the other, though going a little way, recoiled. No one need fear to assert that the chief factor in these reforms, sometimes carried against the resistance and opposition of the Church, was the spirit of Christianity. In proportion as the example of Christ has been honoured, and His teaching has been accepted and obeyed, the emancipation of woman and the recognition of her real rights have been secured. In any case it is certain that the religion of Buddha, though probably not intended to perpetuate the inferior position characteristic of woman in the East, has succeeded neither in lifting her out of it, nor in preventing her from lapsing more deeply into it.

The time for discovering the worth of woman had not come in Buddha’s age, and we must remember his antecedents and surroundings before we condemn his estimate of or his relations to her. If the tradition be reliable, he prophesied, upon yielding to Ananda’s intercession, that because of women holy living would not long be preserved. They would prove in the fair field of his Order what “the disease of mildew proved to be in a field of rice.”[[308]] So though he admitted them to a separate branch of the Order, he placed them under very stringent regulations, and thoroughly under the tutelage of the monks. “A nun, though admitted a nun a hundred years ago, must bow reverentially before a monk, though only admitted to-day.” She must not pass the rainy season in a district in which monks were not residing; she must report herself twice a month to the Sangha for confession and instruction; she must give the Pavâranâ invitation, and she must, if guilty of offence, atone for it before both monks and nuns. She could only be admitted after a two years’ novitiate; under no circumstances must she revile or rebuke a monk; yea, on no occasion whatever must she charge him with any offence.[[309]] Between them and the superior sex the strictest separation was maintained from the first. The brother who was to teach and exhort them was never allowed to enter their nunnery, unless a sister was very ill. For a monk to journey alone with a nun, to cross a river in the same boat with one, to sit alone with a nun, with or without witnesses, was a very grave offence.[[310]] In short, in the Buddhist Sangha women were only tolerated at the best, and they were very severely guarded and restrained, as creatures not at all calculated to influence any one for good, and who could only be prevented or tamed from doing mischief or harm.[[311]]

The Sangha, as a brotherhood and sisterhood leading a celibate life, coupled with abstinence from labour and from active services of charity, was simply vicious in its tendency, and it proved one of the most obstinate hindrances to the realisation of Buddha’s best ideas, and one of the most powerful factors in the degradation of his religion. Human nature was too strong to submit to such artificial restrictions; so very early there gathered around him and his monks many who would not abandon their families and their callings, though they took refuge in Buddha, and proved the reality of their devotion by faithful service of the Order and practice of the Law. These were the votaries, “upasaka” (masc.), “upasika” (fem.), corresponding with the lay associates of the great Mendicant Orders of Christendom. Converted to the observance of the precepts, they could only, as long as they continued in the world, be sustained by a very faint and far-off hope of deliverance. Theoretically they might attain to sainthood, and from “this shore” of common life, in most exceptional cases they might “pass across the dominion of death,” and reach to the other shore.[[312]] The father of Buddha is said to have done so on his deathbed, and another is recorded in the legends as having gained Nirvana.[[313]] As a rule, however, it was reckoned impossible for them to gain what was considered as so barely possible for the Order of Mendicants, that only one or two even of them did actually gain it here. Pious votaries, however, could hope for a happy re-birth, and for strength of merit to be acquired; in some hereafter sufficient to enable them eventually to pluck the fruit of Nirvana. For such lay associates no ceremony of initiation was required; only in presence of a monk the candidates made profession that they took refuge in Buddha and Dharma and Sangha. They had to observe certain precepts and prohibitions; had to renounce any trade involving the making or selling of arms, or the killing of animals; they had to abstain from all traffic in and use of intoxicating drinks, and to put far away from them all falsehood, and theft, and unchastity. To seal this, however, no formal vow was demanded of the votary, and to maintain them in their obedience no pastoral supervision was accorded. When they transgressed, even in the matter of scandalous living, there was neither censure nor discipline, and when they offended by injuring the Order or insulting one of its members, the only penalty inflicted was the refusal of their invitations to dine, and the withdrawal from them of the alms-bowl.[[314]] Into the Uposatha assemblies they dared not intrude, and from the very slightest share of the business of the Order they were strictly excluded.[[315]] They could only listen to the preaching of the monks, whom they could feed, and lodge, and endow with houses and lands; and all the reward they could hope for, was the prospect of acquiring in some future life merit sufficient to enable them to renounce the world and become mendicants like them. For the present they were not inside, but only about, the circle of the Sakkya-putta-Samanas; he was not a member of the family, but only a servitor and a slave.[[316]] The elect, the disciples in deed and in truth, the heirs of salvation, were exclusively the monks; and the Upâsaka at the best was one for whom it was good “continuously to dispense rice milk, and honey lumps, if he had a longing for joy, whether he desired heavenly joy or coveted only human prosperity,”[[317]] His merit was most likely to be acquired by being useful to the good, who served him by accepting his offerings,[[318]] and taught him—though to a purpose undreamed of by St. Paul when he quoted his Saviour’s saying—that in his case, at least, it was “more blessed to give than to receive.”

It is to the lasting honour of Buddha that he converted the Sangha into a propaganda for preaching to all his way of salvation. He did not, for he could not, conceive of that better society which our Lord has created in the Holy Catholic Church. It is true, alas! that the actual or visible Church has often caricatured, and has never yet properly represented, its Lord’s ideal; but it has never been permitted wholly to lose sight of that Kingdom whose citizenship is free to all who believe and repent, and of that royal priesthood of which all are members who trust in the one sacrifice and prevailing intercession of the Great High Priest of our profession. If the visible Church has failed to convert, or even to attract, the members of the Buddhist Sanghas, it is because of something wrong in its methods, or false in its presentation; for notwithstanding its failure, it possesses in the great gospel of the Divine Fatherhood intrusted to its keeping, potentialities for gathering all mankind into the only brotherhood which will satisfy their heaven-born aspirations. The manifestation of it may still be a far-off Divine event, and to bring it about God may employ many agencies other than those which the Church as at present organised may be willing to recognise or to use; but once that holy brotherhood is manifested, He alone will be found at the head of it, who on His way to His agony, and to the cross on which He was to reveal to the uttermost the love of the Creator for the human race, paused by the brook Kedron, and made this supplication mingle with the ripple of its waters and the whispers of the olives of Gethsemane, “I pray ... that they all may be one, even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us.”

LECTURE VI.
THE TWO RELIGIONS IN HISTORY.

I.—External Diffusion.

In His apostles, and the disciples who gathered round them, endowed with the memory of His words and deeds, two simple sacraments, and a promise that He would be with them to the end of the æon, while they fulfilled His commission to evangelise and baptize all nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, the continuance of the Church which our Lord had founded was secured. Buddha left behind him neither sacrament to signify and seal the benefits which he had conferred, nor any promise of personal fellowship with or interest in his followers; but he was survived by the Monastic Order which he had founded, by a law containing the essentials of his system, and a form of discipline containing the customs to be observed in their assemblies, and the rules to which all the brethren were to be subject. Though the personal guide to Nirvana was lost to them, they still in the law possessed his way to it, and by observing the law, and following his way, they would fulfil his last stirring exhortation,[[319]] “Be ye lamps unto yourselves, be ye a refuge to yourselves, O monks.”