Tradition tells us that at this synod the question was put to every Bhikshu: "What is the doctrine of Buddha?" and all who did not answer it satisfactorily or answered it in a sectarian sense, to the number of 60,000, were expelled from the community of the faithful. Then Maudgaliputra selected a thousand out of the number of the orthodox Bhikshus, men distinguished by virtue and true knowledge of the holy scriptures, that he might with them re-establish the purity of the sutras and the Vinaya, i. e. the rules of discipline. We cannot doubt that the synod at the Açokarama had revised the collection of sayings and rules of discipline established by the first two councils in order to excise interpolations and cut off false requirements; but this revision did not exclude extensions and additions which had been made in order to fill up in something more than a negative manner the ground occupied by the errors and heresies that had crept in. By this council, no doubt, the speculative part of the doctrine of Buddha received its first canonical basis. This may be inferred both from the mention of the investigation of Çariputra and the instructions of Rahula in the letter of Açoka to the assembly, and from the statement that the president of this council, Maudgaliputra, had founded a new school in order to unite the doctrines of the Sthaviras and the Mahasanghikas.[795] What we possess of the canonical writings of the Buddhists does not go back in form or condition beyond this synod; yet it has been already remarked that in the sutras we can distinguish the older nucleus from the additions made to it, and retained or first added in the redaction of the third council. The assembly is said by the Singhalese to have occupied nine months in this new settlement of the canonical writings of the 'triple basket' (sutras, vinaya, abhidarma).

Açoka was in earnest with the doctrine of Buddha. "The man of loving spirit, beloved of the gods," we are told in the inscriptions at Girnar, "causes the observance of the law to increase, and the king's grandson, great-grandson, and great-great-grandson will cause the law to increase, and continuing stedfast down to the end of the Kalpa in law and virtue will observe the law."[796] "In past days the transaction of business and the announcement of it did not take place at all times. Therefore I did as follows. At any hour, even when recreating myself with my wives in their chamber, or with my children, when conversing, riding, or in the garden, Pratidevakas (men who announce) were appointed with orders to announce to me the affairs of the people, and at all times I pay attention to their affairs."[797] "I find no satisfaction in the effort to accomplish business; the salvation of the world is the thing most worth doing. The cause of this is the effort to accomplish business. There is no higher duty than the salvation of the whole world. My whole care is directed to the discharge of my debt to all creatures, that I may make them happy on earth, and that hereafter they may gain heaven. For this object I have caused this inscription of the law to be written. May they continue long, and may my grandson and great-grandson also strive after the salvation of the whole world. This it is difficult to do without the most resolute effort."[798] In other inscriptions Açoka declares it to be his glory that he has administered justice properly, and inflicted punishment with gentleness; as we have seen, the book of the law required that it should be administered with severity. The growth of the law, king Açoka says, is brought about by submission to it, and the removal of burdens. "My Rajakas (overseers) are placed over many hundreds of thousands of my people, and their corrections and punishments are inflicted without pain. More especially I would have the Rajakas transact business in the neighbourhood of the Açvatthas (fig-trees), and bring happiness and prosperity to the people. I would have them be friendly, ascertain misfortune and prosperity, and speak to the people, as the law directs, saying: Receive with favour the law that has been given and established. In such a way are my Rajakas established for the good of the people, that they may transact their business in the neighbourhood of the Açvatthas quietly and without disinclination; for this reason painless corrections and punishments are prescribed for them."[799] Açoka further informs us that in the war against the Kalingas he neither carried away the prisoners nor put them to death. For many offences he had abolished capital punishment. In the thirty-first year of his reign he appears to have abolished it altogether. The criminals condemned to death, he tells us in an inscription, must to the day of their death give the gifts that relate to a future life, and fast.[800] According to the teaching of Buddha no animal is to be put to death. In earlier times, we are told in Buddha's inscriptions, for many centuries the killing of living things and the injuring of creatures had increased, as well as contempt for relations, and disregard for Brahmans and Çramanas; at one time even in his, Priyadarçin's, kitchen a hundred thousand animals were daily slaughtered for food. Now this was abolished. He absolutely forbade the slaying of certain animals, and everywhere introduced the two cures for sick men and animals, caused shelters to be erected for men and animals, fig-trees and groves of mangoes to be planted, wells to be dug on the highways, and resting-places for the night to be built.[801] Himself anxious to follow the law of Buddha, he wished it also to be spread abroad and practised in his kingdom among his subjects. We have already mentioned the assemblies held at his command every fifth year, at which the chief rules of morals were taught to the people. In addition he nominated Dharmamahamatras, i. e. masters of the law, for the cities of his kingdom, the lands of the Vratyas (p. 388), and the territories dependent on him, whose duty it was to forward the reception and observance of the law. According to the inscriptions there were magistrates of this kind even at the court, to "divide gifts to the sons and other princes for the purpose of the observance of the law," and these magistrates had to perform the same duties in the chambers of the queens.[802]

What the tradition of the Buddhists tells us of the inexhaustible liberality of Açoka is exaggerated beyond all measure. The strangest statement of all, that he presented his kingdom to the Bhikshus, seems to find some sort of confirmation in the assertion of the Chinese pilgrim Fa-Hian, who was on the Ganges towards the year 400 A.D. He tells us that he had seen a pillar at Palibothra on which the inscription related that Açoka had presented all India, his wives and his servants, thrice to the Bhikshus, and had only retained his treasures, in order to purchase again these gifts. If this was really stated in the inscription, the matter can only have had a symbolical meaning; the king in this expressed figuratively his submission to the law of Buddha, and recognised it as his duty to allow the initiated, the representatives and preachers of this law, to suffer no want. Açoka's extant inscriptions prove that he not only exhorted his subjects to give (p. 530), but made presents to the Sthaviras, and commanded his masters of the law to divide gifts.[803] How eagerly he strove to realise Buddha's precept to be helpful to every one, is proved by a sentence in the inscriptions of Dhauli in which the king says: "Every good man is my descendant."[804]

However foolish may be the tradition that Açoka built 84,000 stupas and as many viharas, it is true that he did erect numerous buildings which were mainly intended to glorify the Enlightened. Mention has already been made of the Açokarama at Palibothra, and tradition is not wrong in saying that the king honoured the places at which Buddha stayed by the erection of monuments. Of his buildings at Gaya we have, it is true, only the remains of pillars and other ruins.[805] Some miles to the north of Gaya, on the bank of the Phalgu, in the rocks of the heights now called Barabar and Nagarjuni, are artificial grottoes. They are hewn in the granite, simple in plan and moderate in dimensions, but of very careful execution. The inscription on one tells us that it was consecrated by Açoka in the twelfth year of his reign, and on the other that Açoka caused it to be excavated in the nineteenth year of his reign.[806] At Kuçinagara, on the place where the Enlightened slept never to wake again, the Chinese traveller Hiuan-Thsang found a pillar of Açoka's with inscriptions.[807] The number of the monasteries or viharas in the territory of Magadha was so great that the old name of the country was changed for a name derived from them; it was called the land of monasteries: Vihara (Behar). The inscriptions already mentioned at Bhuvaneçvara refer to a stupa which Açoka built at Tosali in Orissa. According to the account of Hiuan-Thsang stupas of Açoka existed at his time in the Deccan among the Andhras and Cholas, the Kanchis and Konkanas; in Nagara he saw a stupa, and in Udyana a vihara of Açoka.[808] The inscriptions of Açoka at Girinagara show that he erected a large bridge there and other buildings. Hence there is no reason to doubt the construction of considerable buildings in Cashmere, ascribed to him by the tradition of the land. On the northern slope of the Vindhyas, to the east of Ujjayini, at Sanchi, in the neighbourhood of the ancient Bidiça (now Bhilsa), there are nearly thirty stupas of very various sizes, standing in five groups. The longest of them rises on a substructure of more than one hundred feet in diameter to an elevation of sixty feet. The simplicity and unadorned dignity of the building mark this, the largest of the stupas, as also the oldest, and we may the more certainly regard it as a work of Açoka because relics are found in the neighbouring stupas which the inscriptions state to be those of Çariputra and Maudgalyayana, the eminent disciples of Buddha; others again which are said to be the relics of Gotriputra the teacher of Maudgaliputra, who presided over the third synod.[809] The wall surrounding the great stupa presents an entrance through four noble portals of slender pilasters, united by cross-beams of singular workmanship. On the eastern gate there is found an inscription from the second century A.D. It is therefore possible that the outer wall dates from that time, though the inscription merely speaks of the presentation of a vihara situated there.[810]

However great Açoka's zeal for Buddha's doctrine might be, however numerous and splendid the buildings erected in honour of the Enlightened, he allowed complete toleration to prevail, partly from obedience to the gentleness which pervades Buddha's doctrine, but not less from motives of political sagacity. There was no oppression, no persecution of the Brahmans or their religion. It can hardly be called a proof of this feeling and attitude, that a ruined temple of Indra was restored at his command, for we have seen that Buddhism adopted the ancient gods of the Brahmans as subordinate spirits, yet as beings of a higher order, into its system. But in a part of his edicts Açoka mentions the Brahmans even before the Çramanas (in others the Çramanas have the first place); like the Çramanas the Brahmans are to be honoured and to receive presents. The inscription of Delhi declares that even those who are of another religion than the Brahmans and Buddhists are to live undisturbed; that all possessed sacred books and saving revelations. In one of the inscriptions at Girnar we are told: "Priyadarçin, the king beloved by the gods, honours all religions, as well as the mendicants and householders, by alms and other tokens of respect. Every one should honour his own religion, without reviling that religion of others. Only reverence makes pious. May the professors of every religion be rich in wisdom and happy through virtue."[811]

With all this toleration and gentleness there is no doubt that the reign of Açoka did the greatest service in promoting the spread of Buddhism through his wide kingdom. Whether and to what extent political motives could and did operate on his conversion we cannot even guess. In any case Buddha's doctrine released the ruler of the mighty kingdom from a very burdensome ceremonial; it put an end to the contrast in which the free life of the Indus stood to the restricted life of the Ganges; it counteracted the pride with which the Brahmans looked down on the not unimportant tribes on the Indus, placed the Arians on the Indus with equal rights at the side of the twice-born of Aryavarta, allowed the king to deal equally with all Aryas, all castes, and even with the non-Arian tribes of his kingdom; and not only permitted but commanded him to interest himself specially in the oppressed classes. The care, which his grandfather had already bestowed on husbandmen, Açoka could exercise over a wider territory and with greater earnestness; and that he did this, as well as how he did it, has been shown by his inscriptions (p. 535).

Tradition tells us that after the council of Palibothra, the Sthavira Madhyantika was sent into Cashmere and the land of the Gandharas to convert them, and the Buddhists could boast that the inhabitants of these districts received the law which Madhyantika preached to them; "that the Gandharas and Kaçmiras henceforth shone in yellow garments (the colour of the Bhikshus), and remained true to the three branches of the law."[812] As a fact Cashmere became and remained a prominent seat of Buddhism. At the same time, according to tradition, Madhyama and Kaçyapa were sent to convert the Himalayas. In one of the smaller stupas at Sanchi chests of relics were found, the inscriptions on which describe one as containing the remains "of the excellent man of the race of Kaçyapa, the teacher of the whole of Haimavata;" the other as containing the remains of Madhyama.[813] The conversion of the island of Ceylon at the time of Açoka, which was supported and advanced by Açoka's power and his relation to the king of the island, Devanampriya-Tishya, the successor of Vijaya, Panduvançadeva, and Pandukabhaya—who reigned from 245 B.C.[814] to 205 B.C.—is a fact. Like Cashmere in the north, Ceylon became in the south a centre of the Buddhist faith, the mother-church of lower India and the lands of the East. It has been shown in detail above how the worship of relics arose among the Buddhists. Açoka's stupas exhibit it in the fullest bloom, and this form of worship is prominent in the tradition of the conversion of Ceylon. Beside the branch of the sacred tree of Buddha, which took root in the Mahamegha-garden at Anuradhapura, Ceylon boasts since that time the possession of the alms-jar of Buddha and his right shoulder-bone, to which his water-jug was added, and five hundred years later his left eye-tooth. This had previously been among the Kalingas, then in Palibothra, whence it was taken back to the Kalingas, from whence it was carried to Ceylon, after escaping the attempts made by the Brahman king of Magadha to destroy it. Saved at a later time from the arms of the Portuguese, it is preserved at the present day as the most sacred relic of the Buddhist church, and carried yearly in solemn procession.[815]

Buddhism had removed the privilege of birth. As it summoned the men of all castes equally to liberation, so it did not confine its gospel to the nation of the Aryas. When it had broken through the limits of caste it broke for the first time in history through the limits of nationality. All men, of whatever order, language, and nation, are in equal distress and misery; they are brothers, and intended to assist each other as such. To all, therefore, must be preached the message of renunciation and pity, of liberation from pain and regeneration. The tradition of the Buddhists has already told us that after the third synod messengers of the new religion were sent into the western land to the Yavanas, and into the gold land; and Açoka's inscriptions showed us that he had entered into connections not only with his neighbour, Antiochus Theos, but also with the kings of Macedonia and Epirus, of Egypt and Cyrene, concerning the good law. It is not likely that Buddhism was preached in the West beyond the eastern half of Iran and Bactria; but it found adherents there. Tradition tells us that a century after the council in the Açokarama at Palibothra belief in the Enlightened flourished in "Alassadda,"[816] by which is obviously meant one of the three Alexandrias founded by Alexander in the East, apparently the Alexandria on the southern slope of the Hindu Kush nearest to Cashmere. When in the seventh century of our era the Chinese Hiuan-Thsang climbed the heights of the Hindu Kush on his pilgrimage to Cabul and India, he found the inhabitants of the city of Bamyan high up in the mountains zealously devoted to the religion of the Enlightened; he found ten viharas and a large stone image of Buddha in the city, covered with gold and other ornaments.[817] On an isolated mountain wall in the midst of the mountain valley of Bamyan we find in a deep niche excavated in the wall a statue, now mutilated, 120 feet in height, and at a distance of two hundred paces, a second somewhat smaller statue of the same kind. In the broad lips and drooping ears of these statues our travellers seem to find portraits of Buddha. If this religion penetrated west of Cabul, in the Hindu Kush and to Bactria, it also extended from Cashmere to Nepal and Tibet, and from Ceylon struck root in lower India.

FOOTNOTES:

[769] "Mahavança," p. 21. Burnouf, loc. cit. 1, 364.