[265] Ibid. viii. 312.
[266] Laws of Manu, viii. 313.
[267] Gautama or Buddha, “The Enlightened,” the founder of Buddhism, died about B.C. 480. Long before he began his teachings moral reform was in the air in India. Many reforming sects came into existence. The most important of these was the sect of the Jains. The central teaching of Jainism is the sacredness of all life, and its first and chief commandment, Do no harm to any living thing. Its spirit of universal benevolence left a deep impress not only upon Buddhism but also upon later Hinduism.
[268] Dhammapada (Sacred Books of the East, 2d ed., vol. x), xiv. 190, 191. Cf. Oldenberg, Buddha (1882), p. 209.
[269] Oldenberg, Buddha, p. 286.
[270] Cf. Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures (1881), p. 21; Hopkins, The Religions of India (1895), pp. 316 f.
[271] Oldenberg, Buddha (1882), p. 220.
[272] Dhammapada, xx. 283. This doctrine that peace and contentment of mind come through suppression of desire was also the teaching of the Greek Cynics.
[273] “No sentient being can tell in what state the karma that he possesses will appoint his next birth, though he may be now, and continue to be until death, one of the most meritorious of men. In that karma may be the crime of murder, committed many ages ago, but not yet expiated; and in the next existence its punishment may have to be endured. There will ultimately be a reward for that which is good, but it may be long delayed. It acts like an hereditary disease.”—Hardy, Manual of Buddhism (1880), p. 411.
[274] “The difficulties attendant upon this peculiar dogma [karma] may be seen in the fact that it is almost universally repudiated.... In historical composition, in narrative, and in conversation, the common idea of transmigration is continually presented” (Hardy, Manual of Buddhism (1880), p. 412). By 250 B.C. “in the North and also in the South the old heresy of the soul-theory had crept back by side issue into the doctrine from which it had been categorically and explicitly excluded by Gautama and his earlier followers” (Rhys Davids, Buddhism (1896), p. 198).