It was indeed by a strange irony of fate that the man who denied any god or any being higher than himself, and told his followers to look to themselves alone for salvation, should have been not only deified and worshipped, but represented by more images than any other being ever idolized in any part of the world. In fact images, statues, statuettes, carvings in bas-relief, paintings, and representations of him in all attitudes are absolutely innumerable. In caves, monasteries, and temples, on Dāgabas, votive Stūpas, monuments and rocks, they are multiplied infinitely and in endless variety, and not only are isolated images manufactured out of all kinds of materials, but rows on rows are sculptured in relief, and the greater the number the greater religious merit accrues to the sculptor, and—if they are dedicated at sacred places—to the dedicator also.
And not only images of the Buddha, but representations of every object that could possibly be connected with him, became multiplied to an indefinite extent.
The gradual growth of what may be called objective Buddhism, and the steps which led to every kind of extravagance in the idolatrous use of images, may be described in the following manner:—
It was only natural that the disciples of an ideally perfect man, who had taught them that in passing away at death he would become absolutely extinct, should have devised some method of perpetuating his memory and stimulating a desire to conform to his example. Their first method was to preserve the relics of his burnt body, and to honour every object associated with his earthly career. Then, in process of time, they began to worship not only his relics but the receptacles under which they were buried, and around these they placed sculptures commemorative of his life and teaching. Thence they passed on to the carving or moulding of small statuettes of his person in wood, stone, metal, terra-cotta, or clay, and on these they often inscribed the well-known Buddhistic formulæ mentioned before (see [p. 104]). Eventually, too, painting was pressed into the service, and frescoes on walls became common. Indeed in some temples paintings take the place of images, as objects of adoration.
It seems likely that the use of images and paintings was at first confined to the brotherhood, and it is alleged that they were only honoured and not worshipped. But the more the circle of uncultured and unthinking Buddhists became enlarged, the more did visible representations of the founder of Buddhism become needed, and the more they became multiplied.
Nor was this all. The reaction from the original simplicity of Buddhism led to a complete repudiation of its anti-theistic doctrines. It adopted polytheistic superstitions even more rapidly and thoroughly than Brāhmanism did. People were not satisfied with representations of the founder of Buddhism. They craved for other visible and tangible objects of adoration—for the images of other Buddhas and Bodhi-sattvas—of gods many and lords many—insomuch that a Buddhist Pantheon was gradually created which became peopled with a more motley crowd of occupants than that of Brāhmanism and Hindūism.
Furthermore, it was only natural that the manufacture of the whole array of divinities and semi-divinities, of saints and sages, should have been committed to the monks. They alone possessed this privilege. They alone, too, had the power of consecrating each image by the repetition of mystical texts and formularies. And when images and idols were thus consecrated, they were believed to be animated with the spirit, and to possess all the attributes of the beings they represented.
In fact, the development of every phase of idolatrous superstition reached a point of extravagance unparalleled in any other religious system of the world. The monks of Buddhism vied with each other in the ‘pious fraud’ with which they constructed their idols. They so manipulated them that they appeared to give out light or to flash supernatural glances from their crystal eyes. Or they made them deliver oracular utterances, or they furnished them with movable limbs, so that a head would unexpectedly nod, or a hand be raised to bless the worshipper. Then they clothed them with costly vestments, and adorned them with ornaments and jewels, and treated them in every way as if they were living energizing personalities.
It ought, however, to be noted here, that in some temples images of the Buddhas and Bodhi-sattvas were said to exist which were not manufactured or consecrated by monks. They were believed to have been self-produced, or to have been created supernaturally out of nothing, or to have emerged in a miraculous manner out of vacuity. The child-like faith of uncultured and imaginative races in the virtue supposed to be inherent in such images was perhaps not surprising. The power of working all kinds of miracles was gradually ascribed to them; sicknesses were said to be healed by them, rain to be produced, and the course of nature itself to be subject to their direction and control.
The two Chinese pilgrims Fā-hien and Hiouen Thsang are never tired of describing the wonders supposed to have been wrought by the statues and idols they saw during their travels, especially by the marvellous sandal-wood statue mentioned before (see [p. 408]).