Having thus cleared the way, I will now proceed with the history of the progress of Buddha's religion. Before, it would have been unintelligible.
Buddha died B.C. 470. Asoka, the Buddhist Constantine, gained India B.C. 260. Unfortunately, between these two dates there is scarcely any authentic history at all. Buddha left behind him brief instructions to his disciples, which are called the "Twelve Observances." They were never to sleep under a roof. In Ceylon even to this day a Buddhist monk is called Abhyâvakâsika (he whose covering is the heavens). They were never to stop two nights in the same spot. What was to be their food? Refuse victuals. What was to be their dress? Rags from the graveyard, dung-heap, etc. What was his following to be called? The "Mob of Beggars" (Bhikshu Sangha). Jumping from B.C. 470 to B.C. 302, history flashes a sudden light upon these wandering beggars.
At this date Seleucus Nicator sent an ambassador named Megasthenes to King Chandragupta at Patna. His account of the India of that day is, unfortunately, lost; but through Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Arrian, and Clement of Alexandria, some valuable fragments have come down to us. Patna, it must be remembered, was in the heart of the Buddhist Holy Land. Clement of Alexandria cites a passage from Megasthenes about the Indian "philosophers." "Of these there are two classes, some of them called Sarmanæ (Sramanas) and other Brahmins. And those of the Sarmanæ, who are called Hylobii, neither inhabit cities nor have roofs over them, but are clothed in the bark of trees, feed on nuts, and drink water in their hands. Like those called Encratites in the present day, they know not marriage, nor begetting of children. Some, too, of the Indians obey the precepts of Buddha, whom, on account of his extraordinary sanctity, they have raised to divine honours."
Strabo also describes the Brahmins and the Hylobii, or Germanes, with similar details. He draws a distinction between the Germanes and the Brahmins on the subject of continency, the Brahmins being polygamists.
No doubt these Sarmanæ and Brahmins of Megasthenes were the Brahmins and Buddhist Sramanas, or ascetics. To the first were confided sacrifices and ceremonies. They were a caste apart, and none outside this caste could officiate. Their ideas of life and death, it is announced, were similar to those of Plato and the Greeks. The Brahmins ate flesh and had many wives. Every new year there was a great synod of them. They dwelt in groves near the great cities on "couches of leaves and skins."
The Hylobii, on the other hand, insisted on absolute continence and strict vegetarianism, and water drinking. Clitarchus gives us an additional fact from Megasthenes. The Hylobii "derided the Brahmins." "By their means," says Strabo, "kings serve and worship God." (See for all that can be recovered from Megasthenes, Cory, "Ancient Fragments," pp. 225-227.)
That the Buddhists at first were wandering beggars without any convents is the opinion of the Russian Orientalist, Wassiljew, who supports it from a valuable Chinese history by Daranatha. It asserts that the King Ajatasatru passed Varsha or Lent in a graveyard; and that until the date of Upagupta, a contemporary of Asoka, there were no temples. The first was built at Mathura. (Ch. iv., cited by Wassiljew, "Buddhism," p. 41.)
Daranatha asserts that a disciple of Ananda reached Cashmir. M. Wassiljew remarks that this would mean a spread of the doctrines in intermediate lands. I must point out that the first ritual of Buddhism was the "Praise of the Seven Mortal Buddhas," who were worshipped, as Gen. Cunningham has shown from the Bharhut Stupa, in the form of trees. This seems to have been the sole form of worship even in the days of King Asoka, who enjoins his subjects to worship round Buddha's tree, the ficus indicus.
I think that my readers are now in a position to judge whether India was gained by houseless Parivrajakas, ever marching, ever preaching, ever enduring hunger, thirst, buffets, death if necessary, or by lazy monks, living in sumptuous convents, and debating whether their couches should have fringes and their dress be silk or cotton. This last is the contention of the Buddhist histories, and these dishonest documents have even deceived learned men in the West, more skilful in Pâli roots, perhaps, than judicial analysis. These books record that three months after Buddha's death a vast convocation of monks was assembled at Râjâgriha to render canonical certain holy books, in bulk four times as big as our Bible. Eighteen disused monasteries were hastily cleared of their cobwebs and rubbish, and set in order for these monks, and a cave temple, whose columns and splendid stone carvings vied with Ellora, was cut out of the rock in what must be thought a very small space of time, namely, two months. I have shown in my "Popular Life of Buddha" that we have here most probably the details of a real convocation, that of King Kanerkos, assembled about 20 A.D., by the "Carriage that drives Nowhere" (Sunyapushpa) to force their Pyrrhonism on the old faith, and that they have dishonestly antedated this convocation by nearly 500 years, to make it appear that their innovations were the earliest Buddhism. Hweng Thsang, the Chinese pilgrim, has given us the details of the convocation.
The number of monks was fixed at four hundred and ninety-nine. The ambitious Vasubandhu, leader of the "Great Vehicle" movement, presented himself at the door, but the traditions of early Buddhism were still strong. Some of the monks desired him to depart, as none but Arhats (the fully enfranchised) could remain near the building.