And in the first place it must not be forgotten that Gautama himself seems to have foreseen this result.
He seems to have been quite aware of the ineradicable tendency inherent in the nature of human beings, impelling them to elevate their saints and heroes to the position of gods. He therefore took pains to make his beloved disciple and cousin Ānanda understand that the truth embodied in the Dharma or Law which he had taught, was all that ought to take his place and represent him when he was gone.
Accordingly we learn from ancient inscriptions that for many years afterwards the only allowable object of veneration among primitive Buddhists was the Law—that is, the precepts, rules, and ordinances propounded by Gautama himself—many of which may have been committed to writing in early times, though oral transmission was at first the usual rule, as it was among Brāhmans.
In time, however, the interconnexion between Brāhmanism and Buddhism, and the tendency to group sacred objects in triads[78], which showed itself very early in Hindū religious thought and mythology, seems to have led to the idea of a corresponding triple arrangement of venerated objects among Buddhists. Hence three precious things—sometimes called the three jewels (tri-ratna), or the ‘three Holies[79]’—came first to be held in honour and then actually worshipped; a kind of personality being accorded to all three, very similar to that supposed to belong to the three chief gods of the Hindū Pantheon.
This triad of personalities consisted of (1) the Buddha himself, that is to say, Gautama Buddha, or the Buddha of the present age of the world; (2) his Dharma or Law, that is, the word and doctrine of the Buddha personified, or so to speak incarnated and manifested in a visible form after his Pari-nirvāṇa; and (3) his Saṅgha or Order of monks, also in a manner personified—that is, embodied in a kind of ideal impersonation or collective unity of his true disciples.
This last word, Saṅgha, which means in Sanskṛit ‘a collection’ or ‘assemblage,’ is sometimes, as we have already seen ([p. 85]), very unsuitably rendered by the expression ‘Buddhist Church.’ It simply denotes ‘the collective body of Buddhist monks;’ that is to say, the entire monastic fraternity, comprising in its widest sense the whole assemblage of monks, Arhats, Pratyeka-Buddhas, Bodhi-sattvas, perfected Buddhas and not yet perfected saints of all classes, whether on the earth or in any other division of the Universe; but not including—be it carefully borne in mind—the still vaster community of living persons constituting the whole body of the Buddhist laity.
These three, then,—the Buddha, his Law, and his Order of Monks,—passed into the first three divine personifications of early theistic Buddhism, commonly known as the first Buddhist Triad.
Hence we find that the Khuddaka-pāṭha or ‘lesser readings[80]’ of the fifteen divisions of the Khuddaka-nikāya ([p. 63]) begins thus:—
‘I put my trust in the Buddha, in the Law, in the Order’ (repeated three times).
‘Ye beings (Bhūtāni) here assembled of earth and air, let us bow, let us bow before the Buddha, revered by gods and men. May there be prosperity!