‘Ye beings of earth and air, let us bow before the Law.
‘Ye beings of earth and air, let us bow before the Order of Monks.’
When Fā-hien was on his return home and in great peril at sea, he committed his life to the protection of the Saṅgha, saying:—‘I have travelled far in search of the Law, let me, by your dread and supernatural power, return from my wanderings and reach my resting-place.’
And again, on ending his travels, he gratefully acknowledged that he had been guarded in his perils by the dread power of the ‘three honoured ones’ or ‘three precious ones’ or ‘three Holies’—thus acknowledging the personality of the Law as well as of the Buddha himself and of the Saṅgha or collective body of Monks[81].
But it must be borne in mind that this did not necessarily imply any worship of images. It is certain that for a long time even Buddha himself was not represented visibly. This is proved by the sculptures on the Bharhut Stūpa. Even in the present day the simple expression of trust in the three revered ones constitutes the only formula of worship current in Ceylon. It is true that images of the Buddha are now common in that country, and while travelling there I saw numbers of persons offering homage and flowers to these images. But no prayer was addressed to them, and I noticed no visible representations of the personified Law or Saṅgha[82].
Nor, when I was at the Buddhist monastery near Darjīling, did I see any image of the Law side by side with that of Gautama, though every book examined by me in the temple-library began with the words:—Namo Buddhāya, ‘reverence to the Buddha;’ namo Dharmāya, ‘reverence to the Law;’ namo Saṅghāya, ‘reverence to the Order.’ The only visible symbol of the three so-called ‘Holies’ was a long staff with three prongs, like the Indian Tri-ṡūla.
It seems clear, therefore, that while, in process of time, images of Gautama Buddha were multiplied everywhere—and, as we shall see, in various attitudes and shapes—images of the personified Law and Saṅgha were never common, and indeed rarely found, except among Northern Buddhists. Those images of the Law which I have examined are in the form of a man[83] with four arms and hands, two of which are folded in worship, while one holds a book (or sometimes a lotus) and the other a rosary[84].
Sometimes, however, the representation of a book alone is held to be a sufficient symbol of the Law.
The Saṅgha, on the other hand, is generally symbolized by the image of a man with two arms and hands, one of which, as in the images of Buddha, rests on the knees and the other holds a lotus.
And it may be observed here that of the three images of the Buddha, the Law, and the Order, sometimes one occupies the central position and sometimes the other. This circumstance has led scholars to speak of what it is the fashion to term a Buddhist trinity; but in real fact neither Buddhism nor Brāhmanism has any trinity in the true meaning of the term, for although Buddhists claim a kind of tri-unity for their triad, and say that the first contains the second, and that the third proceeds from the first two and contains them, yet the first is clearly never regarded as either the Father or Creator of the world, in the Christian sense.