It was not only the miraculous acts of the saints which forced their way from Brahmanism into Buddhism; even the gods and spirits, the heaven and hell of the Brahmans, had a place in the new religion. The old divinities of the Indian nation, as we have seen, could only maintain a very subordinate position in the system of the world-soul, inferior to that soul and to the great power of the rishis. They also had become emanations of the world-soul; though ranked among the earliest of these, they came immediately after the great saints of old time. But every penitent who by his asceticism concentrated a larger part of the power of the world-soul in himself, became superior to Indra and to the personal Brahman. The same position in respect to the ancient deities and the personal Brahman was allotted to Buddha. From the beginning of the third century B.C. he appears to have been worshipped by his followers as a god.[698] This was due not merely to the desire to place the power of the penitent, of meditation and knowledge, higher than the power of the gods, but also to the deep necessity on the part of the new religion and the believers in Buddha to possess a God. Later legends put the deities far below Buddha. He converts the spirits of the earth, of the air, of the serpents to his doctrine, and in return these spirits serve and obey him. Even the great gods come and listen to his words, and Buddha declares the new law to Brahman and to Indra.[699] In the relic-cell of a stupa of the second century B.C. Brahman is holding a parasol over Buddha, and Indra anoints him out of a large shell to be king of gods and men.[700]
Thus to his believers Buddha is not only the lion, the bull, and the elephant, stronger than the strongest, mightier than the mightiest, surpassing all men in compassion and good works, beautiful beyond the most beautiful of mankind; not only is he the king of doctrine, the ocean of grace, the founder of the eternal pilgrimages, he is also the father of the world, redeemer and ruler of all creatures, god of gods, Indra of Indras, Brahman of Brahmans. Nothing, of course, is now said of independent action, or power on the part of these Indras and Brahmans. To later Buddhism they are a higher but completely human class of beings; in the retinue of Buddha they are only a troop of supernumerary figures whose essential importance consists merely in bowing themselves before Buddha, serving him, and placing in the fullest light his power and greatness. Like men, these deities have to seek the light of higher wisdom, the salvation of liberation by effort and labour. To Indra, for instance, the Buddhists assign no higher dignity than that of the first stage of illumination; he stands on the level of the Çrotaapanna.[701]
In this transformation, which we find in the later writings of the Buddhists, the entire Indian and Brahmanic view of the world reappears in its widest extent. The divine mountain Meru forms the centre of the earth. Beneath it, in the deepest abyss, is hell. The Buddhists are even more minute than the Brahmans in describing the torments and subdivisions of hell, and with them also Yama is the god of death and the under world.[702] On the summit of Meru Indra is enthroned, who with the Buddhists also is the special protector of kings, and with him are the thirty-three gods of light (p. 161). In the Buddhist mythology the evil spirits, the Asuras, attack Indra and the bright spirits, as in the Vedic conception; but the Asuras could not advance further than the third of the four stages which the Buddhists ascribed to Meru, after the analogy of the four truths and the four stages of sanctification. The Gandharvas have to defend the eastern side of Meru against the Asuras; the Yakshas (the spirits of the god Kuvera, p. 161), the northern; the Kumbhandas (the dwarfs), the southern; and the Nagas or serpent spirits, the western side. In the Buddhist view the earth, the divine mountain, and the heaven of Indra above it make up the world of desire and sin. Indra and his deities are supreme over certain supernatural powers, but they are powerless against the man who has controlled himself;[703] they propagate themselves like men, are subject to the doom of regeneration, and can decline into lower existences. In this sense, with the Buddhists, the evil spirit of desire and sensual pleasure is enthroned over the heaven of Indra; his name is Kama or Mara; he is the cause of all generation, and hence of the restless revolution of the world, and of all misery. Above this heaven of the god of sin, which is filled with innumerable troops of the spirits of desires, begin the four upper heavens, the heaven of the liberated, into which those pass who have delivered themselves from sensual appetite, desire, and existence.[704]
Among the Buddhists there could be no question of the worship of these unreal deities, without power to bless or destroy. Their cultus was limited to the person of the founder, the symbols and memorials of his life, the relics of his body, the places sanctified by his presence. But they could not slay animals in sacrifice to the relics or the Manes of Buddha, nor invite the extinguished etherealized dead to the enjoyment of the soma. Of what value was the blood or flesh of victims to one who would never wake again; and how could they offer bloody sacrifices to one with whom it was the first commandment not to slay any living thing? Agni could carry no gift up to him who was perfected; and moreover Buddha had himself expressly forbidden sacrifice by fire; the Buddhists were to tend the law as the Brahmans tended the fire.[705] They could only place offerings of flowers, fruits, and perfumes at the sacred shrines, before the relics of the Enlightened, as signs of thankfulness and reverence, as symbols of worship (puja). Prayer was in reality unknown to a cultus which was directed to a deceased man, and not to a deity. Believers must be content with the symbols of reverence, with singing hymns of praise and thanksgiving to the Enlightened, for having discovered truth, proclaimed liberation, shown pity, and brought help to all creatures; they must limit themselves to the confessions which these doctrines comprised, to hearing moral exhortations, to pronouncing and wishing blessings: "that all creatures may be free from sickness and wicked pleasure, that every man may become an Arhat in the future regeneration."[706] The gradual elevation of the position of Buddha, and the more complete apotheosis which was granted to him, led to direct invocations of the Enlightened. As the benefactor of all creatures he was besought for his blessing; as the liberator he was entreated to confer the power of liberation, and liberation. When after the end of the third century B.C. statues of Buddha stood in the halls of the Viharas, it became usual to invoke Buddha to be present in these statues. By the consecration which they underwent at the hands of the priests they received a ray of the spirit of Buddha, and thus acquired a beneficent miraculous power.
At morning, midday, and evening, i. e. at the times when it was customary among the Aryas to offer prayers, or gifts, or strew grains of corn, the monks of the Enlightened were summoned to prayers. At the new and full moon, when the Bhikshus fasted, and met for confession, the laity also discontinued their occupations, assembled to read the law, or hear preachers, or utter prayers. In no religious community was prayer so frequent and so mechanical as among the Buddhists, and this is still the case. Greater festivals were celebrated at the beginning of the spring, in the later spring, and at the end of the rainy season. The festival held at the new moon in the first month of spring, is said to have been a festival in commemoration of the victory which Buddha won in the disputation and contest of miracles with the Brahmanic penitents (p. 356). Buddha himself is said to have indulged in secular enjoyment for eight days after this success. As a fact, it was, no doubt, the customary spring festival—a remnant of the old Arian custom, to celebrate in the spring the victory gained by the spirits of light and the clear air over the gloom of the winter—which the Buddhists now celebrated in honour of their great teacher. At the full moon of the month Vaiçakha in the later spring, the day was celebrated on which the Enlightened saw the light for the salvation of the world. With the Buddhists the rainy season was the sacred season, the time for reflection and retirement. At the end of the rains Buddha had always revisited the world, in order to announce to it salvation; and like him, his followers, the Bhikshus, who could not leave the Vihara in the rainy season, returned on this day to the world, in order to recommence their wanderings and preaching for the salvation of living creatures. This return of the teachers to the world was marked by a great festival, at which the Bhikshus received presents from the laity; sermons were preached, and processions held in which the lamps, no doubt, represented the light returning after the gloom of the rains, or the light of salvation which Buddha had kindled for the world.
The combination of the clergy and laity in the Buddhist church was even less close than the connection of the Brahmanic priesthood with the other orders. In their traditional position at the funeral feasts of the families the Brahmans retained the guidance of certain corporations. With the Buddhists the care of souls lay entirely in the hands of the wandering Bhikshus, the mendicant monks, unless indeed in a few cases laymen attached themselves of their own free will to some not too distant monastery. But the separation of the Bhikshus from the family and house, their exclusive devotion to teaching and religion, the constant mission and preaching which occupied them for two-thirds of the year, throughout the spring and the hot season, quickly showed itself more efficacious than the sacrificial service of the Brahmans, which was linked with house and home. These travelling monks, who could enter into closer relations with the people because they had no impurities to avoid, such as in many cases entirely excluded the Brahmans from the lower castes, caused their exhortations and counsel to be heard in every house; they were asked about the names to be given to new-born children; they assisted at the ceremony of the cutting of the hair of boys when they reached the age of puberty, at marriages and burials, and undertook prayers for the happy regeneration of the dead. And not only were the Bhikshus nearer the people, and more easily brought into relations with them, but they obtained far greater hold on their conscience than the Brahmans. This was not merely due to the precepts of their practical morality, which included the whole life and activity of the believers, and of the application and observance of which they took account in the confessional—a duty devolving on the laity as well as the clergy—the doctrine of regeneration was developed more fully in Buddhism, and formed more distinctly the centre of the system than among the Brahmans.
We saw that it was the active force of merit or guilt in earlier existences which fixed the fate of the individual in the kind of regeneration, in the happiness or misfortune of his life. In the same way the good and evil of this life had its effects. "He who goes out of the world, him his deeds await"[707]—such is the formula of the Buddhists. The various divisions of hell, the distinctions of the castes, which with the Buddhists counted as gradations of rank among men (p. 362), the heavenly spirits and the ancient gods, which had been received into the Buddhist heaven, served to increase the graduated series of regenerations to a considerable degree. "He who has lived foolishly goes into hell after the dissolution of the body;"[708] he is born again as a creature of hell in a department of greater or less torment according to his guilt. The less guilty are born again as evil spirits. Higher in the scale stood regeneration as an animal; among animal regenerations the Buddhists counted birth as an ant, louse, bug, or worm the worst. Among mankind men were born again in a bad or good way, in a lower or higher caste, under easier or harder circumstances, according to their guilt or merit. Birth as a heavenly spirit counted higher than any human regeneration; higher still was birth as a god. But even when born again as a god, man was still under the dominion of desire; as we have seen, Indra only held the rank of a Çrotaapanna. From this stage it was possible to decline; it was by further conquest and liberation that a man must work his way upwards. Above the heaven of Indra and Mara, in the four high heavens, dwelt the spirits which had liberated themselves from desire and existence; in the lowest of these were the spirits who, though free from desire, are fettered by plurality, i. e. by ignorance; in the next, the heaven of clearer light, are those who, though free from desire and ignorance, are not so free that they cannot again sink under their dominion; the highest heaven but one receives the spirits who have no relapse to fear; and in the highest of all are the Arhats who have exhausted existence. As we see, the Buddhists avail themselves of the Brahmanic heaven and hell, and the intervals which the Brahmans place between regenerations in hell or in Indra's heaven, in order to construct out of them a more complete system. In this the process of the purification of the soul ascends from the lowest place in hell through the evil spirits, the creeping, flying, and four-footed animals, through men of all positions in life, and then through the heavenly spirits and deities to the highest heaven, till the point is reached at which all earlier guilt is exhausted, and the total of merit so extended that the original sin of the soul, desire and its possibility, is removed; and thus liberation from existence takes place, the Ego is extinguished. It is an inconsistency, no doubt, that those who have annihilated themselves and the roots of their existence by attaining Nirvana, shall still have a kind of existence in the highest heaven; but by this means the system was made more complete and realistic.
And not merely this wide development of the system of regenerations, but the practical application of it must have given the Bhikshus greater power over the consciences and heart of the nation than that exercised by the Brahmans. Buddha had known his own earlier existences. The tradition of the Singhalese ascribes to him 550 earlier lives before he saw the light as the son of Çuddhodana. He had lived as a rat and a crow, as a frog and a hare, as a dog and a pig, twice as a fish, six times as a snipe, four times as a golden eagle, four times as a peacock and as a serpent, ten times as a goose, as a deer, and as a lion, six times as an elephant, four times as a horse and as a bull, eighteen times as an ape, four times as a slave, three times as a potter, thirteen times as a merchant, twenty-four times as a Brahman and as a prince, fifty-eight times as a king, twenty times as the god Indra, and four times as Mahabrahman. Buddha had not only known his own earlier existences (p. 345), but those of all other living creatures; and this supernatural knowledge, this divine omniscience was, as we have seen, ascribed to those who after him attained the rank of Arhats. Though it did not reside in the full extent in Anagamins, Sakridagamins, Çrotaapannas, and still less in all the Bhikshus, it was nevertheless found in an imperfect degree in all "who advanced on the way." The people believed that the Çramanas could not only foretell from the present conduct of a man his future lot, and his regenerations in hell, among animals or men, but that they could also declare his future in this life from his previous existences. Hence the Bhikshus were masters not of the future only but also of the past of every man; and as they had his fate completely in view, the rules which they laid down from this point received an importance calculated to ensure their observance.[709]
It was no hindrance to morality that in this doctrine every man had his fate in his own hands at least so far that he could alleviate it for the future, and the practical results which the ethics of the Buddhists achieved on the basis of this imaginary background of regeneration are far from contemptible. The essential points in the Buddhist ethics, the moderate, passionless life, and patience and sympathy, have been dwelt upon (p. 355). It was not without value that the Buddhists taught, that no fire was like hatred and passion, and no stream like desire;[710] that the desires bring little pleasure and much pain; only he who controlled himself lived in happiness, and contentment is the best treasure.[711] He who merely saw the deficiencies of others, his offences would increase; and he who was always thinking: Such a man injured me, annoyed me, will never attain repose. Hard words were answered with hard words; therefore a man should bear slighting speeches patiently, as an elephant endures arrows in the battle, and lives without enmity among his enemies.[712] To tend fire for a hundred years, or offer sacrifice for a thousand,[713] was of no avail; neither the penance of the moon nor sacrifice changes anything in the evil act, even though it were offered for a year.[714] Those who lie and deny the acts they have done will go into hell.[715] The evil act pursues the doer; there is no place in the world in which to escape it; it destroys the doer unless it is conquered and covered by good deeds.[716] Duties come from the heart; if the act is good it leaves no remorse in the heart. A man should give alms though he has but little; the covetous will not come into the world of the gods. These earnest exhortations to acquire before all things the feeling which gives rise to good works, to extinguish offences by confession and good actions, to moderate greed and covetousness, to live contentedly and peaceably, to be gentle in our deeds, could not be without effect. This peaceableness the Buddhists showed in the tolerance they extended to those who were of a different faith than their own; and for the family the rules of affection impressed on children towards their parents, of chastity and forbearance impressed on husbands and wives, were wholesome and advantageous in their results.[717] The limitations set up by the arrangement of the castes, worship, and custom of the Brahmans began to waver; man was guided from the fortune of birth, the sanctification of works, to his inward effort, and led to the moral education of self. Disposition and personal merit obtained the first place in the community, and fixed a man's fortune in a future life. Thus the pride of higher birth as against the lower born has to give way; and hence slaves were treated with greater kindness. Fantastic as was the heaven and hell reconstructed by the Buddhists, marvellous as was the elevation of a man to be god, superstitious as was the worship of relics, exaggerated as was the conception of the way, the increasing supernatural power of him who was attaining liberation, and indubitable as was the tendency of Nirvana to end in the last instance in mere stolid indifference—the individual and morality were again restored by this doctrine and placed in their rights; society could again acquire free movement in personal intercourse and free choice of a vocation; all men were in reality equal, and could help each other as brothers.