Buddhism, in Its Connexion with Brahmanism and Hinduism, and in Its Contrast with Christianity

by Sir Monier Monier-Williams

But such a reply would have only reference to the truest and earliest form of Buddhism. It would cover a very minute portion of the vast area of a subject which, as it grew, became multiform, multilateral, and almost infinite in its ramifications.

Innumerable writers, indeed, during the past thirty years have been attracted by the great interest of the inquiry, and have vied with each other in their efforts to give a satisfactory account of a system whose developments have varied in every country; while lecturers, essayists, and the authors of magazine articles are constantly adding their contributions to the mass of floating ideas, and too often propagate crude and erroneous conceptions on a subject, the depths of which they have never thoroughly fathomed.

It is to be hoped that the annexation of Upper Burma, while giving an impulse to Pāli and Buddhistic studies, may help to throw light on some obscure points.

Certainly Buddhism continues to be little understood by the great majority of educated persons. Nor can any misunderstanding on such a subject be matter of surprise, when writers of high character colour their descriptions of it from an examination of one part of the system only, without due regard to its other phases, and in this way either exalt it to a far higher position than it deserves, or depreciate it unfairly.

And Buddhism is a subject which must continue for a long time to present the student with a boundless field of investigation. No one can bring a proper capacity of mind to such a study, much less write about it clearly, who has not studied the original documents both in Pāli and in Sanskṛit, after a long course of preparation in the study of Vedism, Brāhmanism, and Hindūism. It is a system which resembles these other forms of Indian religious thought in the great variety of its aspects. Starting from a very simple proposition, which can only be described as an exaggerated truism—the truism, I mean, that all life involves sorrow, and that all sorrow results from indulging desires which ought to be suppressed—it has branched out into a vast number of complicated and self-contradictory propositions and allegations. Its teaching has become both negative and positive, agnostic and gnostic. It passes from apparent atheism and materialism to theism, polytheism, and spiritualism. It is under one aspect mere pessimism; under another pure philanthropy; under another monastic communism; under another high morality; under another a variety of materialistic philosophy; under another simple demonology; under another a mere farrago of superstitions, including necromancy, witchcraft, idolatry, and fetishism. In some form or other it may be held with almost any religion, and embraces something from almost every creed. It is founded on philosophical Brāhmanism, has much in common with Sāṅkhya and Vedānta ideas, is closely connected with Vaishṇavism, and in some of its phases with both Ṡaivism and Ṡāktism, and yet is, properly speaking, opposed to every one of these systems. It has in its moral code much common ground with Christianity, and in its mediæval and modern developments presents examples of forms, ceremonies, litanies, monastic communities, and hierarchical organizations, scarcely distinguishable from those of Roman Catholicism; and yet a greater contrast than that presented by the essential doctrines of Buddhism and of Christianity can scarcely be imagined. Strangest of all, Buddhism—with no God higher than the perfect man—has no pretensions to be called a religion in the true sense of the word, and is wholly destitute of the vivifying forces necessary to give vitality to the dry bones of its own morality; and yet it once existed as a real power over at least a third of the human race, and even at the present moment claims a vast number of adherents in Asia, and not a few sympathisers in Europe and America.

Evidently, then, any Orientalist who undertakes to give a clear and concise account of Buddhism in the compass of a few lectures, must find himself engaged in a very venturesome and difficult task.

Happily we are gaining acquaintance with the Southern or purest form of Buddhism through editions and translations of the texts of the Pāli Canon by Fausböll, Childers, Rhys Davids, Oldenberg, Morris, Trenckner, L. Feer, etc. We owe much, too, to the works of Turnour, Hardy, Clough, Gogerly, D’Alwis, Burnouf, Lassen, Spiegel, Weber, Koeppen, Minayeff, Bigandet, Max Müller, Kern, Ed. Müller, E. Kuhn, Pischel, and others. These enable us to form a fair estimate of what Buddhism was in its early days.

But the case is different when we turn to the Northern Buddhist Scriptures, written generally in tolerably correct Sanskṛit (with Tibetan translations). These continue to be little studied, notwithstanding the materials placed at our command and the good work done, first by the distinguished ‘founder of the study of Buddhism,’ Brian Hodgson, and by Burnouf, Wassiljew, Cowell, Senart, Kern, Beal, Foucaux, and others. In fact, the moment we pass from the Buddhism of India, Ceylon, Burma, and Siam, to that of Nepāl, Kashmīr, Tibet, Bhutān, Sikkim, China, Mongolia, Manchuria, Corea, and Japan, we seem to have entered a labyrinth, the clue of which is continually slipping from our hands.

Nor is it possible to classify the varying and often conflicting systems in these latter countries, under the one general title of Northern Buddhism.

For indeed the changes which religious systems undergo, even in countries adjacent to each other, not unfrequently amount to an entire reversal of their whole character. We may illustrate these changes by the variations of words derived from one and the same root in neighbouring countries. Take, for example, the German words selig, ‘blessed,’ and knabe, ‘a boy,’ which in England are represented by ‘silly’ and ‘knave.’