THE RELIGION OF THE BUDDHISTS.
In the century and a half which passed between the date of Kalaçoka of
Magadha, the council of the Sthaviras at Vaiçali, and the reign of
Vindusara, the doctrine of the Enlightened had continued to extend, and
had gained so many adherents that Megasthenes could speak of the
Buddhist mendicants as a sect of the Brahmans. The rulers of Magadha who
followed Kalaçoka, the house of the Nandas, which deposed his son, and
the succeeding princes of that house, Indradatta and Dhanananda, were
not favourable to Buddhism, as we conjectured above. If the Buddhist
tradition quoted extols and consecrates the descent and usurpation of
Chandragupta, this must be rather due to the services his grandson
rendered the believers in Buddha than to any merits of his own in that
respect. The accounts of the Greeks about the religious services of the
Indians towards the end of the fourth century B.C., the description
given by Megasthenes of the Indian philosophers and their doctrines, as
well as his express statement that the Brahmans were the more highly
honoured among the Indian sages, leave no doubt that the Brahmans
maintained their supremacy under the reign of Chandragupta. Of Vindusara
the Buddhists tell us that he daily fed 600,000 Brahmans.
In the doctrine of Buddha the philosophy of the Indians had made the
boldest step. It had broken with the results of the history of the
Arians on the Indus and the Ganges, with the development of a thousand
years. It had declared internecine war against the ancient religion, and
called in question the consecrated order of society. The philosophy
capable of such audacity was a scepticism which denied everything except
the thinking _Ego_, which emptied heaven and declared nature to be
worthless. Armed with the results of an unorthodox speculation, and
pushing them still further, Buddha had drawn a cancelling line through
the entire religious past of the Indian nation. The world-soul of the
Brahmans existed no longer; heaven was rendered desolate; its
inhabitants and all the myths attaching to them were set aside. No
reading, no exposition of the Veda was required; no inquiry about the
ancient hymns and customs. The contention of the schools about this or
that rite might slumber, and no sacrifice could be offered to gods who
did not exist. Dogmatism was banished in all its positions and
doctrines; the endless laws about purity and food, the torturing
penances and expiations, the entire ceremonial was without value and
superfluous. The peculiar sanctity of the Brahmans, the mediatory
position which they occupied in the worship between the gods and the
nation, were valueless, and the advantages of the upper castes fell to
the ground. And this doctrine, which annihilated the entire ancient
religion and the basis of existing society, and put in their place
nothing but a new speculation and a new morality, had come into the
world without divine revelation, and was without a supreme deity, or
indeed any deity whatever. Its authority rested solely on the dicta of a
man, who declared that he had discovered truth by his own power, and
maintained that every man could find it. That such a doctrine found
adherence and ever increasing adherence is a fact without a parallel in
history. The success of it would indeed be inconceivable, if the
Brahmans had not themselves long prepared the way for Buddha, if the
harsh contrast in which Buddha placed himself to the Brahmans had not
been in some degree a consequence of Brahmanism.
The wildly-luxuriant and confused imagination of the Brahmans had
produced a moderation, a rationalistic reaction in faith, worship, and
morality no less than in social life. The speculative conception of
Brahman had never become familiar to the people. The ceaseless increase
in the number of gods and spirits, their endless multitude, had lessened
the value of the individual forms and the reverence felt for them. The
acts of the great saints of the Brahmans went far beyond the power and
creative force of the gods. The saints made the gods their playthings.
Could it excite any great shock when these playthings were set aside?
The Brahmans dethroned the gods, and themselves fell in this
dethronement. They allowed that sacrifice and ritual, and the pious
fulfilment of duties and expiations, the entire sanctification by works,
was not the highest aim that men could and ought to attain; that
asceticism, penance, and meditation ensured something higher, and could
alone lead back to Brahman; was it not a simple consequence of this view
that Buddha should set aside the whole service of sacrifice and form of
worship? The Brahmans granted that the distinction of caste could be
removed, at any rate in the three higher orders, by the work of inward
sanctification; was it not logical that Buddha should declare the
distinction of castes altogether to be unessential? According to the
Brahmans nothing but deep and earnest meditation on Brahman could raise
man to the highest point, to reabsorption into Brahman, and therefore
the Sankhya doctrine could consistently maintain that meditation free
from all tradition was the highest aim, that only by unfettered
knowledge could liberation from nature be attained; while Buddha was
enabled to find ready credence to his position that neither asceticism
nor penance, neither sacrifice nor works, but the knowledge of the true
connection of things guided men to salvation. From all antiquity the
Indians had allowed human devotion to have a certain influence on the
gods; in the oldest poems of the Veda we find the belief that the
correct invocation brings down the deities and exercises compulsion over
them. Following out this view, the Brahmans had developed the compulsion
exercised upon the gods to such a degree that fervour of asceticism and
holiness conferred divine power--power over nature; they held that man
could attain the highest point by penance and meditation; that he could
draw into himself and concentrate there the divine power and essence.
Was it not an easy step further in the same path when Buddha taught that
the highest, the only divine result, which he admitted, the knowledge of
truth, could be attained by man's own power; that his adherents and
followers, when the rishis of the Brahmans had been gifted with so many
mighty, divine, and super-divine powers, had not the least difficulty in
believing that the Enlightened had found absolute truth; that by his own
power he had attained the highest wisdom and truth? If the man who had
duly sanctified himself, attained, according to the Brahmanic doctrine,
divine power and wisdom, Buddha on his part required no revelation from
above. By his own nature and his own power, by sanctification, man could
work his way upwards to divine absolute liberty and wisdom.
To religious tradition and the Veda Buddha opposed individual knowledge;
to revelation of the gods the truth discovered by men, to the dogmatism
of the Brahmanic schools the doctrine of duties; to sacrifice and
expiation the practice of morality; to the claims of the castes personal
merit; to lonely asceticism common training; to the caste of the priests
a spiritual brotherhood formed by free choice and independent impulse.
But two essential points in the Brahmanic view of the world, that the
body and the _Ego_ are the fetters of the soul, that the soul must
migrate without rest, he not only allowed to stand, but even insisted on
them more sharply to the conclusion that existence is the greatest evil
and annihilation the greatest blessing for men, inasmuch as freedom from
evil can only be attained by freedom from existence, and freedom from
existence only by annihilation of self. Salvation is the negation of
existence. But not only the bodily life of the individual must be
annihilated, the spiritual root of his existence must be torn up and
utterly destroyed. "What wilt thou with the knot of hair, or with the
apron (_i.e._ with the Brahmanic asceticism); thou art touching merely
the outside; the gulf is within thee?"[663]
The Sankhya doctrine had announced that Brahman and the gods did not
exist, but only nature and the soul. Buddha in reality struck out nature
also. According to his doctrine there was neither creation nor creator.
The existence of the world is merely an illusion; there is nothing but a
restless change of generation and decay, an eternal revolution
(_sansara_). Hence the world is no more than a total of things past and
perishable, in which there is but one reality, one active agency. This
is the souls of men and animals, breathing creatures. These have been
existent from the first, and remain in existence till they find the
means of their annihilation and accomplish it. They have created the
corporeal world, by clothing themselves with matter, and this robe they
change again and again. The Brahmans had taught that "the desire which
is in the world-soul is the creative seed of the world" (p. 132).
Buddha, transferring this to the individual souls, taught that the
desire and yearning for existence, by which individual creatures were
impelled, produced existence. Existences are the fruit of the
inalienable impulse inherent in the soul; this brings the evil of
existence upon the soul, and causes it in spite of itself to cleave
thereto; "it is the chain of being" in which the soul is fettered. This
desire (_kama_) is a mistake; it rests on an inability to perceive the
true connection between the nature of existence and the world; it is not
only a mistake but a sin, nay, sin itself, from which all other sins
arise; desire is the great, original sin, hereditary sin (_kleça_).[664]
Hence the existence of men is in itself the product of sin. The
perpetual yearning for existence ever draws the soul after the death of
the body into new existence, impels it into the corporeal world, and
clothes it with a new body. "All garments are perishable, all are full
of pain, and subject to another."[665] Each new bodily life of the soul
is the fruit of former existences. The merit or the guilt which the soul
has acquired in earlier existences, or brought upon itself, is rewarded
or punished in later existences; here also Buddhism retains the doctrine
of the Brahmans that the prosperity or misfortune of man is regulated
according to the acts of a former existence. The total of merit and
guilt accumulated in earlier existences determines the fortune of the
individual; it forms the rule governing the kind of regeneration, the
happy or unhappy life, the fate which rules each soul, the moral order
of the world. If the merit is greater than the guilt, man is not born as
an animal but as a man, and in better circumstances, with less trouble
and sorrow to go through; and according as a man bears these, and
practises virtue in this life, are the future existences defined. It is
the duty of man to acquire a tolerable existence for himself by his
merit, and also to remove the active guilt of earlier deeds, which are
not always punished in the next but often in far later existences, and
to destroy the yearning after existence in the soul. This is done by the
knowledge which perceives that existence is evil, that all is worthless,
and consequently lessens and removes the yearning after existence. This
removal is rendered more complete by renunciation, the resolution to
receive no conceptions or impressions, and hence to feel no desire for
anything; by placing ourselves in a condition where we are incapable of
feeling, and therefore incapable of desire. With this annihilation of
desire the fetters of the soul are broken; man is separated from the
revolution of the world, the alternation of births, because nothing more
remains of that which makes up the soul, and thus there is no substratum
left for a new existence.[666]
There were converted Brahmans who declared that a penance of twelve
years did not confer so much repose as the truths which Buddha
taught.[667] For the satisfaction of the interest in philosophic
inquiry, to which earnest minds among the Brahmans were accustomed, the
speculative foundation of Buddha's doctrine provided amply and with
sufficient subtilty. Others might be attracted by the wish to be
relieved from tormenting themselves any longer with the formulas of the
schools and the commentaries on the Veda. And if the Brahmans objected
to the disciples of Buddha that they punished themselves too little,
there were without doubt members of the order who found the Buddhist
asceticism more agreeable than the Brahmanic.
But the most efficient spring of the success of Buddha's doctrine did
not lie in this. It lay in the practical consequences which he derived
from his speculation or connected with it. The prospect of liberation
from regeneration, of death without resurrection, the gospel of
annihilation, was that which led the Indians to believe in Buddha. To
the initiated he opened out the prospect that this life would be the
last; to the laity he gave the hope of alleviation in the number and
kind of regenerations. And as this doctrine proclaimed to all without
exception an amelioration in their future fortunes, and declared that
every one was capable of liberation, it was at the same time a gospel of
social reform. Even among the Kshatriyas and Vaiçyas there were, no
doubt, many who were quite agreed that the privilege of birth, which the
Brahmans claimed in such an extravagant manner, ought to give way to
personal merit. To all who were oppressed or pushed into the background
the way was pointed out, to withdraw from the stress of the
circumstances which confined and burdened them; every one found a way
open for him to escape from the trammels of caste. The doctrine of the
Brahmans excluded the Çudras entirely from good works and liberation.
The doctrine of Buddha was addressed to all the castes, and destroyed
the monopoly of the Brahmans even in regard to teaching. The natural and
equal right of every man, whatever be his origin, to sanctification and
liberation from evil was recognised; the Buddhist clergy were recruited
from all the orders. The Çudra and even the Chandala received the
initiation of the Bhikshu. The attraction of this universality was all
the greater, especially for the lower orders, because Buddha, following
the whole tendency of his doctrine, turned more especially to the most
heavily laden; in his view wealth and rank were stronger fetters to bind
men to the world than distress and misery. "It is hard," the Enlightened
is declared to have said, "to be rich and to learn the way;" and in a
Buddhist inscription of the third century B.C. we read, "It is difficult
both for the ordinary and important person to attain to eternal
salvation, but for the important person it is certainly most
difficult."[668] Finally, the doctrine of Buddha was also a gospel of
peaceful life, of mutual help and brotherly love. The quietistic
morality of obedience, of silent endurance, which the disciples of
Buddha preached, corresponded to the patient character which the Indians
on the Ganges had gained under the training of the Brahmans and their
despotic princes, and to the instinct of the nation at the time. As
Buddha's doctrine justified and confirmed submission towards oppression,
it also pointed out the way in which to alleviate an oppressed life for
ourselves and for others. The gentleness and compassion which Buddha
required towards men and animals, suited the prevailing tone of the
people; men were prepared to avail themselves of them as the means of
salvation; and this patient sympathetic life, without the torments of
penances and expiations, without the burden of the laws of purification
and food, without sacrifice and ceremonial, was enough to guide future
regenerations into the "better" way.
The Brahmans had never established a hierarchical organisation; they had
contented themselves with the liturgical monopoly of their order, with
their aristocratic position and claims against the other castes. It was
only as presidents at the feasts of the dead in the clans that they
exercised a powerful censorship over their fellows, as we have seen; a
censorship involving the most serious civic consequences for those on
whom its sentence fell. At the head of the Buddhists there was no order
of birth; the first place was taken by those who lived by alms, and were
content to abandon the establishment of a family. The two vows of
poverty and chastity withdrew the initiated among the Buddhists from the
acquisition of property, from the family, and life in the world; their
maintenance consisted in the alms offered to them. In this way they were
gained for the interests and the work of their religion to an extent
that never was and never could be the case with the Brahmans who did not
remove the obstacles of the family by celibacy, and indeed could not do
so, because their pre-eminence was founded on birth. The Brahman was and
must be the father of a family; he must provide for himself and his
family, while the Bhikshus without care for themselves or their families
gave themselves up exclusively to their spiritual duties. All the legal
precepts of the Brahmans, which made the maintenance of their order by
gifts the duty of the other castes, could not set their families free
from the care of their support and property; even the book of the law
was obliged to allow the Brahman to carry on other occupations besides
the sacrifice and study of the Veda; it could do no more than demand
that the Brahman father, when he had begotten his children and
established his house, should retire into solitude to do penance and
meditate (p. 184, 242). Buddhism excluded its clergy entirely from the
family and social life; it permitted them to live together in
communities, combined all the initiated into one great brotherhood, and
thus gained a firmer connection, a better organisation of its
representatives, a body engaged in constant work and preparation without
any other interests than those of religion. "He is not a Brahman," we
are told in an old Buddhist formula, 'the Foot-prints of the Law,' "who
is born as a Brahman." "He is a Brahman who is lean, and wears dusty
rags, who possesses nothing, and is free from fetters."[669] The
entrance into this community was open; Buddha imparted the consecration
of the mendicant to every one in whom he found belief in his doctrine
and the desire to renounce the world; and said, "Come hither; enter into
the spiritual life." With this simple formula the reception was
complete.[670] This pillar of Buddhism was never shaken, though after
the second council of Vaiçali (433 B.C.) a certain knowledge of the
canonic scriptures, the sutras and the Vinaya, as fixed by that
assembly, was required in addition to the qualifications of poverty and
chastity. Buddha had fixed that admission into the clerical order could
not take place before the twentieth year. After the pattern of the
Brahman schools (p. 178) it was the custom to receive boys and youths as
novices as soon as the parents gave permission, and one of the
consecrated was found willing to undertake the instruction of the
novice. At a later time this institution of the noviciate found a far
more solid basis in the monastic life of the Bhikshus than that which
the isolated Brahman could offer to the pupils in his own house. The
novice (_Çramanera_) might not kill anything, or steal, or lie; he must
commit no act of unchastity, drink no intoxicating liquor, eat nothing
after mid-day, neither sing nor dance, neither adorn nor anoint himself,
and receive no gold or silver. When the period of instruction was over,
the admission took place in the presence of the assembled clergy of the
monastery. When he had taken the vows of poverty, chastity, and
obedience, the newly-initiated received the yellow robe and the
mendicant's jar with the admonition: "To have no intercourse with any
woman, to take away nothing in secret, to wear a dusty garment, to dwell
at the roots of trees, to eat only what others had left, and use the
urine of cows as a medicine."[671]
With his entrance into the community of the initiated, the Bhikshu had
left the world behind, and broken the fetters which bound him to his
kindred. If married before his admission, he was no longer to trouble
himself for his family: "those who cling to wife and child are, as it
were, in the jaws of the tiger." He is separated from his brothers and
sisters, and great as is the importance elsewhere attached in Buddhism
to filial affection, he is not to lament the death of his father or
mother. He is free from love; he holds nothing dear; for "love brings
sorrow, and the loss of the loved is painful."[672] He is without
relations; nothing but his mendicant's robe is his own; he may not work.
Not even labour in a garden is permitted to him; worms might be killed
in turning up the earth. Thus for the initiated the fetters of family,
possessions, and the acquisition of property, which bind us most
strongly to life, are burst asunder. He has nothing of his own, and
consequently can feel no desire to keep his possessions, or pain at
their loss; he inhabits an "empty house."[673] The rules of external
discipline were not too many. Beard, eye-brows, and hair were to be
shaved, a regulation which arose in contrast to the various hair-knots
of the Brahmanic schools and sects, and was an extension of the
Brahmanic view of the impurity of hair. With the Buddhists the hairs are
an impure excretion of the skin, refuse which must be thrown away; the
tonsure was performed at every new and full moon.[674] The Bhikshu was
never to ask for a gift, he must receive in silence what is offered. If
he receive more than he requires, he must give the remainder to others.
He must never eat more than is required for his necessities, nor after
midday, nor may he eat flesh. Even among the Buddhists the rules of food
are tolerably minute, and many of the prescripts of the Brahmans were
adopted by them. Essential importance was attributed to moderation;
desires were not to be excited by unnecessary satisfaction. The Bhikshu
must especially guard against women. He must not receive alms from the
hand of a woman, or look on the women he meets, or speak with them, or
dream of them. "So long as the least particle of the desire which
attracts the man to the woman remains undestroyed, so long is he
fettered like the calf to the cow;"[675] and Buddha is said to have
declared that if there were a second passion as strong as the passion
for women no one would ever attain liberation. It was reasons of this
kind, of modesty and chastity, which made it a rule for the Bhikshus, in
contrast to the nudity of the Brahmanic penitent, never to lay aside his
garments: his shirt and yellow garment which came over the shirt as far
as the knee--the rule required that it should be made of sewn rags--and
his mantle, worn over the left shoulder. The Bhikshu is to watch himself
like a tower on the borders, without a moment's intermission,[676] and
bridle his desires with a strong hand, as the leader holds back the
raging elephant with the spear.[677] He must always bear in mind that
the body is a tower of bones, smeared with flesh and blood, the nest of
diseases; that it conceals old age and death, pride and flattery; that
life in this mass of uncleanness is death.[678] In contrast to the
multitude who are driven by desire like hunted hares,[679] he is to live
without desire among those who are filled with desire; the passions
which run hither and thither like the ape seeking fruit in the forest,
which spring up again and again like creeping-plants if they are not
taken at the roots, he must tear up root and all, and strive after the
sundering of the toils, the conquest of Mara (p. 481) and his troop.
Freedom from desire is "the highest duty; and he is the most victorious
who conquers himself."[680] Victory is won by taming the senses, and
schooling the soul; no rain penetrates the well-roofed house, no passion
the well-schooled spirit.[681] "A man is not made a Bhikshu by tonsure,"
nor by begging of another, nor by faith in the doctrine, but only by
constant watchfulness and work. The Bhikshu who fails in these had
better eat hot iron than the fruits of the field; the "ill practised
restraint of the senses leads into hell."[682]
We know that the Bhikshus had to support each other mutually in this
work. Following the pattern of the master they passed the rainy season,
in common shelter, in monasteries. These, as we saw (p. 378), existed as
early as the reign of Kalaçoka. At first they sought protection in
hollows of the mountains like the cave of Niagrodha, near Rajagriha.
Then these caves were extended artificially, and in this way they came
by degrees to be cave cloisters with halls for assembly of considerable
extent. In the detached monasteries the halls were the central points,
and the monks had separate cells on the surrounding wall. The
description given in the sutras of these Viharas is far from
discouraging. Platforms, balustrades, lattice-windows were provided, and
good places for sleeping. The sound of metal cymbals or bells summoned
the monks to prayer or to meeting. In these monasteries the elders
instructed the disciples, those who had advanced on the way of
liberation, the less advanced. The four 'truths' were considered in
common (p. 340); in common the attempt was made "to cleave the twenty
summits of uncertainty with the lightning of knowledge." In the place of
the sacrifice, expiations, and penances by which the Brahmans held that
crimes, and sins, and transgressions of the rules of purity could be
done away, Buddha had established the confession of sin before the
brethren. Had a brother failed in the control of desire, and been
over-mastered by his impulses, he was to acknowledge his error before
the rest. As Buddha removed painful asceticism, so he desired no
external and torturing expiations. "Not nakedness," we are told in the
footsteps of the law, "nor knots of hair (such as the Brahman penitents
wore), nor filthiness, nor fasting, nor lying on the earth, nor rubbing
in of dust, nor motionless position, purify a man;"[683] the only
purification is the conquest of lust, the amelioration of the mind. Not
on works, but on the spirit from which they proceed, does Buddha lay the
chief weight. Sins when committed could be removed only by improvement
of spirit, by the pain of remorse. Confession was the proof and
confirmation of remorse, and thus the confirmation of a good mind. In
Buddha's view confession removed the sin when committed, and was
immediately followed by absolution.[684] In the monasteries the
initiated fasted in the days of the new and full moon, and after the
fast came the confessional. The list of duties was read;[685] after
every section the question was thrice asked whether each of those
present had lived according to the precepts before them. If a confession
was made that this had not been the case, the offence was investigated,
and absolution given by the president of the meeting. In accordance with
Buddha's command a common confession of all the brethren in every
monastery took place after the rainy season before the mendicants
recommenced their travels.[686] At a later time it was common at
confession to divide the offences into such as received simple
absolution, such as required reproof before absolution, such as were
subject to penance, and lastly such as involved temporary or entire
expulsion from the community. Obstinate heresy and unchastity entailed
complete expulsion; the man who indulged in sexual intercourse could no
longer be a disciple of Buddha. The penances imposed for errors of a
coarser kind were very slight and are so still; the performance of the
more menial services in the monastery, otherwise discharged by the
novices, or the repetition of a forced number of prayers. No one was
compelled because he had once taken a vow to observe it for ever; any
initiated person could and still can come back into the world at any
moment. The vow was not binding for the whole of life, and no one was to
discharge his duties against his will.
Among the Bhikshus the authority of age was maintained; respect was paid
to experience, proved virtue, and wisdom; the teacher ranked above the
pupil, the older believer before the younger. Hence the Sthaviras,
_i.e._ the elders, held the foremost place among them. Still it was not
years, but liberation from the evil of the world, that made the
Sthavira.[687] Each monastery had a Sthavira at the head, whom the
Bhikshus had to obey, for in addition to vows of poverty and chastity
they took vows of obedience. Nevertheless Buddhism gave the greater
weight to the feeling and sense of equality and brotherly love.
Authority resided less in the Sthavira than in the assembly of the
initiated. Had not the first disciples of Buddha established his sayings
in common at the first council at Rajagriha, even though one of his most
beloved followers presided over them? The second synod at Vaiçali was
conducted in the same way; the community of the Bhikshus (_sangha_, the
assembly) had given their authoritative sanction to the rules of
discipline, which were to have general currency, after they had been
fixed by the elders. The monasteries were similarly organised; there
also the community gave the consecration of the priest, heard
confession, imposed penances, ordered temporary or complete expulsion
under the presidency of the Sthavira.
There were merits of another kind among the Bhikshus which transcended
the rank of the teachers, of the elder, of the head of the monastery.
These were the merits of religious service, of deeper knowledge, of more
complete conquest over the natural man, the _Ego_. The Aryas, _i.e._ the
honourable or the rulers, who had learned "the four truths" (p. 340),
formed a privileged class of the Bhikshus. On the path "which is hard to
tread,"[688] the path of Nirvana, the Buddhists distinguish four stages.
The first and lowest has been entered upon by the Çrotaapanna; he cannot
any longer be born again as an evil spirit or an animal; and has only
seven regenerations to pass through.[689] The second stage is reached by
the Sakridagamin, _i.e._ "the once-returning;" who will only be born
once after his death. The third stage is that of the Anagamin, the
not-returning, who has to expect his regeneration in the higher regions
only, not as a man. On the highest stage stands the Arhat; he has
entered on the path which neither the gods nor the Gandharvas know; his
senses have entered into rest; he has overcome the impulse to evil as
well as the impulse to good; he desires nothing more, neither here nor
in heaven. He has "left behind every habitation, as the flamingo takes
his way from the sea;"[690] the gods envy him; he has attained the end
after which all the Bhikshus strive; he has arrived at Nirvana, and is
in the possession of supernatural powers. When he wills, he dies, never
to be born again. Like the Brahmans the Buddhists attempted to express
in numbers the eminence and value of those who had gone through the four
stages. The Çrotaapanna surpasses the ordinary man ten thousand-fold;
The Sakridagamin is a hundred thousand times higher than the
Çrotaapanna, the Anagamin a million times higher than the Sakridagamin.
The Arhat is free from ignorance, free from hereditary sin, _i.e._ free
from desire, and attachment to existence; he is free from the limitation
of existence, and therefore from the conditions of it. He possesses the
power to do miracles, the capacity of surveying in one view all
creatures and all worlds; of hearing all the sounds and words in all the
worlds; he has knowledge of the thoughts of all creatures, and
remembrance of the earlier habitations, _i.e._ of the past existences of
all creatures.[691]
Buddha's system required, at bottom, that every man should renounce the
world, and take the mendicant's robes, in order to enter upon the path
of liberation. This requirement could not be realised any more than the
demand of the Brahmans that every Dvija should go into the forest at the
end of his life and live as a penitent; the Catholic view of the
advantage of monastic over secular life has not brought all Catholics
into monasteries; how could the Church live and the world exist if every
one abandoned the world? Yet the Enlightened was of opinion that help
might be given even to those who could not leave the world. In contrast
to the pride and exclusiveness of the Brahmans it was precisely the
promise of help to all, the strongly-marked tendency to relieve every
one, even the meanest, the sympathy with the sorrows of the oppressed,
the turning aside from the powerful and rich to the lonely and poor,--it
was the fact that mendicants took the highest place in the new
Church--which won adherents to Buddha's teaching from the oppressed
classes of the people. If the layman, so Buddha thought, resolved to
live according to the precepts of his ethics, he would not only lighten
the burden of existence for himself and others; by the practice of these
virtues he attained such merit that his regenerations became more
favourable, and followed in "good paths," so that he was allowed
eventually to receive initiation and thus attain the end of sorrows,
death without any return to life. He who would adopt this doctrine, had
only to declare that it was his will to perform the commands of its
ethics. The formula of entrance and adoption into the community of the
believers in Buddha ran thus: "I take my refuge in Buddha; I take my
refuge in the law (_dharma_); I take my refuge in the community
(_sangha_)," _i.e._ of the believers. With this declaration the convert
took a pledge not to kill anything that had life, not to steal, to
commit no act of unchastity, not to babble, nor lie, nor calumniate, nor
disparage, nor curse; not to be passionate, greedy, envious, angry,
revengeful. The layman is to control his appetites as far as possible,
to moderate his selfishness, and in the place of his natural corrupt
desires to put the right feeling of contentment and submission, of
beneficence, and pity, and love to his neighbour, a feeling out of
which, in Buddha's view, "the avoidance of evil and doing of good"
spontaneously arose. This repose, patience, and moderation would cause
even the laymen to bear the evils of existence more lightly, and keep
themselves as far as possible from the complications of the world. His
adherence to the doctrines of Buddha was to be shown in the first
instance by gifts to the clergy. The Church had no means of subsistence
except the alms of the laymen; their gifts, in the eyes of the
Buddhists, bring salvation for the giver no less than the receiver; the
latter ought humbly to beg the clergy to accept their presents.[692]
Buddha's doctrine acknowledged no God. It was man who by the power of
his knowledge could attain to absolute truth; who by the force of his
will, the eradication of desire, the sacrifice of his goods and his body
for his nearest relations, the annihilation of his own self, would win
complete virtue and sanctity. "Self is the protector and the refuge of
self,"[693] But were the inculcation of prayers and precepts, the
discussion of the sayings of Buddha, on which they rested, enough to
make the laity and clergy able and willing to observe and perform them?
Must there not be some proof that these doctrines could be carried out,
that they had the most beneficial results, that the object at which they
aimed was really attainable? Clergy as well as laity needed a living
pattern to strive after, a fixed support and rule on which they could
lean in their conscience, their thoughts, actions, and sufferings, and
by which they could measure themselves. This pattern was given in the
person of the master, in his life, his acts, his end. His life and
actions were to be the subject of meditation; on this a man might raise
and elevate himself; after that pattern every one should guide his acts
and thoughts. If the initiated clung to his lofty wisdom which saw
through the web of the worlds, and could liberate self from nature and
annihilate it, the picture of the mendicant prince, who had left palace
and wife and child and kingdom and treasures in order to share and
alleviate the lot of the poorest, could not be of less influence on the
hearts of the laity. This wonderful religion had no object of worship
beside the person of the founder; on this it must be concentrated. The
pious remembrance of the profound teacher, thankfulness for the
salvation which he brought into the world, the study of the pattern of
wisdom and truth which he gave, of the ideal of perfect sanctification
and liberation, displayed in him,--these motives quickly made Buddha an
object of reverence, and ere long of worship, though to himself and his
disciples he was no more than a mere man. In this religion of
man-worship Buddha took the place of God; he was God to his believers.
But the religion could not long remain contented with a thoughtful
remembrance, a vague recollection, and assurances of reverence towards
the departed as the means of arousing the heart and elevating the
spirit. Some external excitement, some symbol or sensuous sign was
needed, however rationalistic in other respects Buddha's doctrine might
be. But he who brought salvation and liberation into the world lived no
longer in the other world; he was dead, never to rise again. Nothing was
left of him but the bones and ashes of his body. We know that in ancient
times the Aryas buried their dead; and afterwards they burned them. The
additional emphasis which the old conceptions of the impurity of the
corpse, the worthlessness of the flesh, had received in the system of
the Brahmans, was no doubt the reason why they sought to remove the
remains of the cremation, the ashes and bones, by throwing them into
water. Buddha did not treat the body better than the Brahmans; with him,
though not strictly the cause, it was the bearer and medium of the
destruction and pain of mankind, inasmuch as in his eyes the perverse
direction of the soul and its dependence on existence were destruction.
This body, which Brahmans and Buddhists vied with each other in
regarding as a perishable and worthless vessel containing the Ego, which
a man must either break asunder, or liberate himself from it, the relics
of which had been considered for so many centuries as impure and
spreading impurity, received quite a new importance in the Buddhist
religion. Not long after the death of the Enlightened, when the
generation of disciples who had seen him and lived with him had passed
away, the need of some representation and idea of the pattern and centre
of these thoughts and efforts, of the person of their teacher, impelled
the believers to pay honour to his ashes and bones, to his relics. This
honour was soon extended to the bones of his leading disciples, a form
of worship which must have been shocking to the Brahmans. Similar honour
was then paid to the robes and vessels which Buddha had used, to his
mendicant's garment, his staff, his jar for alms and pitcher, and also
to the places which he had sanctified by his presence. Two centuries
after the death of the Enlightened, this worship of relics and
pilgrimage to the holy places were established customs. The believers in
Buddha travelled to Kapilavastu, his father's city. There they beheld
the garden in which Buddha had seen the light, the pool in which he was
washed, the ground on which he had contended in exercises with his
fellows, the places where he had seen the old man, the sick man, and the
corpse. In the neighbourhood of Uruvilva on the Nairanjana pilgrims
visited the dwellings where Buddha had lived for six years as an
ascetic, at Gaya the sacred fig-tree under which in the night truth was
revealed to him. Not far from thence was the place where the maiden of
Uruvilva had given food to the son of Çakya, where he had first
announced his doctrine to the two merchants. At Rajagriha the stone was
pointed out which Devadatta had hurled from the height of the vulture
mountain on Buddha. Even the bamboo garden at this city, which Buddha
was said to have taken pleasure in frequenting, and the place at
Çravasti where he had held his disputations with the Brahmanic
penitents, were shrines of pilgrimage.[694]
From the same need of representing and realising the religious example,
and of elevating the heart and spirit to that pattern, which gave rise
to the worship of relics and shrines, there sprang, in addition, the
worship of the pictures of Buddha. He who had placed the body of man so
low was now thought to have had a body of the greatest beauty; his
perfect wisdom and virtue had found expression in the most perfect body.
The sutras compare Buddha's gentle eye with the lotus; they even tell us
of the thirty-two signs of complete beauty, and the eighty-four marks of
physical perfection in his body.[695]
Buddha's doctrine was definitely based on the fact that man must
liberate himself by his own power and wisdom, and to himself and his
disciples Buddha was a man and no more, but in a nation so eager for
miracles and inclined to believe in them, Buddha's life and actions
inevitably became surrounded with the supernatural. He could not remain
behind the Brahman penitents and saints, who had done great miracles.
Could anything so great as Buddha's life and doctrine have occurred
without a miracle; was a mission possible without miracles; could the
greatest mission, the liberation of the world from misery, have taken
place without being accredited by miracles? Could he who had reached the
summit of wisdom and virtue have been without supernatural powers? That
sanctification and meditation were and must be followed by such powers,
was a matter of course among the Indians. Even in the third century B.C.
miraculous powers were ascribed to the Bhikshus who had attained the
fourth stage in the path, and therefore the same must have been done
even earlier for Buddha himself. The same legends which represent Buddha
as saying to king Prasenajit of Ayodhya: "I do not bid my disciples
perform miracles; I tell them; Live so that your good deeds may remain
concealed, your errors confessed,"[696] surround his birth and his
penances at Gaya (p. 337 ff. 356) with miraculous signs; and in the
disputations with the Brahmans they represent him as contending in
miracles also, and gaining the victory. But these and other miracles of
Buddha, though he travels with his disciples through the air, are
nevertheless not to be compared with the achievements of the Brahmanic
penitents, narrated in the Brahmanas and the Epos. They are for the most
part the healing of disease and restoration to life, intended to bring
out his compassion for living creatures,[697] and beside these the
exercise of the miraculous powers which the Buddhists ascribe to all
who have attained the fourth stage in the path (p. 472).
It was not only the miraculous acts of the saints which forced their way
from Brahmanism into Buddhism; even the gods and spirits, the heaven and
hell of the Brahmans, had a place in the new religion. The old
divinities of the Indian nation, as we have seen, could only maintain a
very subordinate position in the system of the world-soul, inferior to
that soul and to the great power of the rishis. They also had become
emanations of the world-soul; though ranked among the earliest of these,
they came immediately after the great saints of old time. But every
penitent who by his asceticism concentrated a larger part of the power
of the world-soul in himself, became superior to Indra and to the
personal Brahman. The same position in respect to the ancient deities
and the personal Brahman was allotted to Buddha. From the beginning of
the third century B.C. he appears to have been worshipped by his
followers as a god.[698] This was due not merely to the desire to place
the power of the penitent, of meditation and knowledge, higher than the
power of the gods, but also to the deep necessity on the part of the new
religion and the believers in Buddha to possess a God. Later legends put
the deities far below Buddha. He converts the spirits of the earth, of
the air, of the serpents to his doctrine, and in return these spirits
serve and obey him. Even the great gods come and listen to his words,
and Buddha declares the new law to Brahman and to Indra.[699] In the
relic-cell of a stupa of the second century B.C. Brahman is holding a
parasol over Buddha, and Indra anoints him out of a large shell to be
king of gods and men.[700]
Thus to his believers Buddha is not only the lion, the bull, and the
elephant, stronger than the strongest, mightier than the mightiest,
surpassing all men in compassion and good works, beautiful beyond the
most beautiful of mankind; not only is he the king of doctrine, the
ocean of grace, the founder of the eternal pilgrimages, he is also the
father of the world, redeemer and ruler of all creatures, god of gods,
Indra of Indras, Brahman of Brahmans. Nothing, of course, is now said of
independent action, or power on the part of these Indras and Brahmans.
To later Buddhism they are a higher but completely human class of
beings; in the retinue of Buddha they are only a troop of supernumerary
figures whose essential importance consists merely in bowing themselves
before Buddha, serving him, and placing in the fullest light his power
and greatness. Like men, these deities have to seek the light of higher
wisdom, the salvation of liberation by effort and labour. To Indra, for
instance, the Buddhists assign no higher dignity than that of the first
stage of illumination; he stands on the level of the Çrotaapanna.[701]
In this transformation, which we find in the later writings of the
Buddhists, the entire Indian and Brahmanic view of the world reappears
in its widest extent. The divine mountain Meru forms the centre of the
earth. Beneath it, in the deepest abyss, is hell. The Buddhists are even
more minute than the Brahmans in describing the torments and
subdivisions of hell, and with them also Yama is the god of death and
the under world.[702] On the summit of Meru Indra is enthroned, who
with the Buddhists also is the special protector of kings, and with him
are the thirty-three gods of light (p. 161). In the Buddhist mythology
the evil spirits, the Asuras, attack Indra and the bright spirits, as in
the Vedic conception; but the Asuras could not advance further than the
third of the four stages which the Buddhists ascribed to Meru, after the
analogy of the four truths and the four stages of sanctification. The
Gandharvas have to defend the eastern side of Meru against the Asuras;
the Yakshas (the spirits of the god Kuvera, p. 161), the northern; the
Kumbhandas (the dwarfs), the southern; and the Nagas or serpent spirits,
the western side. In the Buddhist view the earth, the divine mountain,
and the heaven of Indra above it make up the world of desire and sin.
Indra and his deities are supreme over certain supernatural powers, but
they are powerless against the man who has controlled himself;[703] they
propagate themselves like men, are subject to the doom of regeneration,
and can decline into lower existences. In this sense, with the
Buddhists, the evil spirit of desire and sensual pleasure is enthroned
over the heaven of Indra; his name is Kama or Mara; he is the cause of
all generation, and hence of the restless revolution of the world, and
of all misery. Above this heaven of the god of sin, which is filled with
innumerable troops of the spirits of desires, begin the four upper
heavens, the heaven of the liberated, into which those pass who have
delivered themselves from sensual appetite, desire, and existence.[704]
Among the Buddhists there could be no question of the worship of these
unreal deities, without power to bless or destroy. Their cultus was
limited to the person of the founder, the symbols and memorials of his
life, the relics of his body, the places sanctified by his presence. But
they could not slay animals in sacrifice to the relics or the Manes of
Buddha, nor invite the extinguished etherealized dead to the enjoyment
of the soma. Of what value was the blood or flesh of victims to one who
would never wake again; and how could they offer bloody sacrifices to
one with whom it was the first commandment not to slay any living thing?
Agni could carry no gift up to him who was perfected; and moreover
Buddha had himself expressly forbidden sacrifice by fire; the Buddhists
were to tend the law as the Brahmans tended the fire.[705] They could
only place offerings of flowers, fruits, and perfumes at the sacred
shrines, before the relics of the Enlightened, as signs of thankfulness
and reverence, as symbols of worship (_puja_). Prayer was in reality
unknown to a cultus which was directed to a deceased man, and not to a
deity. Believers must be content with the symbols of reverence, with
singing hymns of praise and thanksgiving to the Enlightened, for having
discovered truth, proclaimed liberation, shown pity, and brought help to
all creatures; they must limit themselves to the confessions which these
doctrines comprised, to hearing moral exhortations, to pronouncing and
wishing blessings: "that all creatures may be free from sickness and
wicked pleasure, that every man may become an Arhat in the future
regeneration."[706] The gradual elevation of the position of Buddha, and
the more complete apotheosis which was granted to him, led to direct
invocations of the Enlightened. As the benefactor of all creatures he
was besought for his blessing; as the liberator he was entreated to
confer the power of liberation, and liberation. When after the end of
the third century B.C. statues of Buddha stood in the halls of the
Viharas, it became usual to invoke Buddha to be present in these
statues. By the consecration which they underwent at the hands of the
priests they received a ray of the spirit of Buddha, and thus acquired a
beneficent miraculous power.
At morning, midday, and evening, _i.e._ at the times when it was
customary among the Aryas to offer prayers, or gifts, or strew grains of
corn, the monks of the Enlightened were summoned to prayers. At the new
and full moon, when the Bhikshus fasted, and met for confession, the
laity also discontinued their occupations, assembled to read the law, or
hear preachers, or utter prayers. In no religious community was prayer
so frequent and so mechanical as among the Buddhists, and this is still
the case. Greater festivals were celebrated at the beginning of the
spring, in the later spring, and at the end of the rainy season. The
festival held at the new moon in the first month of spring, is said to
have been a festival in commemoration of the victory which Buddha won in
the disputation and contest of miracles with the Brahmanic penitents (p.
356). Buddha himself is said to have indulged in secular enjoyment for
eight days after this success. As a fact, it was, no doubt, the
customary spring festival--a remnant of the old Arian custom, to
celebrate in the spring the victory gained by the spirits of light and
the clear air over the gloom of the winter--which the Buddhists now
celebrated in honour of their great teacher. At the full moon of the
month Vaiçakha in the later spring, the day was celebrated on which the
Enlightened saw the light for the salvation of the world. With the
Buddhists the rainy season was the sacred season, the time for
reflection and retirement. At the end of the rains Buddha had always
revisited the world, in order to announce to it salvation; and like him,
his followers, the Bhikshus, who could not leave the Vihara in the rainy
season, returned on this day to the world, in order to recommence their
wanderings and preaching for the salvation of living creatures. This
return of the teachers to the world was marked by a great festival, at
which the Bhikshus received presents from the laity; sermons were
preached, and processions held in which the lamps, no doubt, represented
the light returning after the gloom of the rains, or the light of
salvation which Buddha had kindled for the world.
The combination of the clergy and laity in the Buddhist church was even
less close than the connection of the Brahmanic priesthood with the
other orders. In their traditional position at the funeral feasts of the
families the Brahmans retained the guidance of certain corporations.
With the Buddhists the care of souls lay entirely in the hands of the
wandering Bhikshus, the mendicant monks, unless indeed in a few cases
laymen attached themselves of their own free will to some not too
distant monastery. But the separation of the Bhikshus from the family
and house, their exclusive devotion to teaching and religion, the
constant mission and preaching which occupied them for two-thirds of the
year, throughout the spring and the hot season, quickly showed itself
more efficacious than the sacrificial service of the Brahmans, which was
linked with house and home. These travelling monks, who could enter into
closer relations with the people because they had no impurities to
avoid, such as in many cases entirely excluded the Brahmans from the
lower castes, caused their exhortations and counsel to be heard in every
house; they were asked about the names to be given to new-born
children; they assisted at the ceremony of the cutting of the hair of
boys when they reached the age of puberty, at marriages and burials, and
undertook prayers for the happy regeneration of the dead. And not only
were the Bhikshus nearer the people, and more easily brought into
relations with them, but they obtained far greater hold on their
conscience than the Brahmans. This was not merely due to the precepts of
their practical morality, which included the whole life and activity of
the believers, and of the application and observance of which they took
account in the confessional--a duty devolving on the laity as well as
the clergy--the doctrine of regeneration was developed more fully in
Buddhism, and formed more distinctly the centre of the system than among
the Brahmans.
We saw that it was the active force of merit or guilt in earlier
existences which fixed the fate of the individual in the kind of
regeneration, in the happiness or misfortune of his life. In the same
way the good and evil of this life had its effects. "He who goes out of
the world, him his deeds await"[707]--such is the formula of the
Buddhists. The various divisions of hell, the distinctions of the
castes, which with the Buddhists counted as gradations of rank among men
(p. 362), the heavenly spirits and the ancient gods, which had been
received into the Buddhist heaven, served to increase the graduated
series of regenerations to a considerable degree. "He who has lived
foolishly goes into hell after the dissolution of the body;"[708] he is
born again as a creature of hell in a department of greater or less
torment according to his guilt. The less guilty are born again as evil
spirits. Higher in the scale stood regeneration as an animal; among
animal regenerations the Buddhists counted birth as an ant, louse, bug,
or worm the worst. Among mankind men were born again in a bad or good
way, in a lower or higher caste, under easier or harder circumstances,
according to their guilt or merit. Birth as a heavenly spirit counted
higher than any human regeneration; higher still was birth as a god. But
even when born again as a god, man was still under the dominion of
desire; as we have seen, Indra only held the rank of a Çrotaapanna. From
this stage it was possible to decline; it was by further conquest and
liberation that a man must work his way upwards. Above the heaven of
Indra and Mara, in the four high heavens, dwelt the spirits which had
liberated themselves from desire and existence; in the lowest of these
were the spirits who, though free from desire, are fettered by
plurality, _i.e._ by ignorance; in the next, the heaven of clearer
light, are those who, though free from desire and ignorance, are not so
free that they cannot again sink under their dominion; the highest
heaven but one receives the spirits who have no relapse to fear; and in
the highest of all are the Arhats who have exhausted existence. As we
see, the Buddhists avail themselves of the Brahmanic heaven and hell,
and the intervals which the Brahmans place between regenerations in hell
or in Indra's heaven, in order to construct out of them a more complete
system. In this the process of the purification of the soul ascends from
the lowest place in hell through the evil spirits, the creeping, flying,
and four-footed animals, through men of all positions in life, and then
through the heavenly spirits and deities to the highest heaven, till the
point is reached at which all earlier guilt is exhausted, and the total
of merit so extended that the original sin of the soul, desire and its
possibility, is removed; and thus liberation from existence takes
place, the _Ego_ is extinguished. It is an inconsistency, no doubt, that
those who have annihilated themselves and the roots of their existence
by attaining Nirvana, shall still have a kind of existence in the
highest heaven; but by this means the system was made more complete and
realistic.
And not merely this wide development of the system of regenerations, but
the practical application of it must have given the Bhikshus greater
power over the consciences and heart of the nation than that exercised
by the Brahmans. Buddha had known his own earlier existences. The
tradition of the Singhalese ascribes to him 550 earlier lives before he
saw the light as the son of Çuddhodana. He had lived as a rat and a
crow, as a frog and a hare, as a dog and a pig, twice as a fish, six
times as a snipe, four times as a golden eagle, four times as a peacock
and as a serpent, ten times as a goose, as a deer, and as a lion, six
times as an elephant, four times as a horse and as a bull, eighteen
times as an ape, four times as a slave, three times as a potter,
thirteen times as a merchant, twenty-four times as a Brahman and as a
prince, fifty-eight times as a king, twenty times as the god Indra, and
four times as Mahabrahman. Buddha had not only known his own earlier
existences (p. 345), but those of all other living creatures; and this
supernatural knowledge, this divine omniscience was, as we have seen,
ascribed to those who after him attained the rank of Arhats. Though it
did not reside in the full extent in Anagamins, Sakridagamins,
Çrotaapannas, and still less in all the Bhikshus, it was nevertheless
found in an imperfect degree in all "who advanced on the way." The
people believed that the Çramanas could not only foretell from the
present conduct of a man his future lot, and his regenerations in hell,
among animals or men, but that they could also declare his future in
this life from his previous existences. Hence the Bhikshus were masters
not of the future only but also of the past of every man; and as they
had his fate completely in view, the rules which they laid down from
this point received an importance calculated to ensure their
observance.[709]
It was no hindrance to morality that in this doctrine every man had his
fate in his own hands at least so far that he could alleviate it for the
future, and the practical results which the ethics of the Buddhists
achieved on the basis of this imaginary background of regeneration are
far from contemptible. The essential points in the Buddhist ethics, the
moderate, passionless life, and patience and sympathy, have been dwelt
upon (p. 355). It was not without value that the Buddhists taught, that
no fire was like hatred and passion, and no stream like desire;[710]
that the desires bring little pleasure and much pain; only he who
controlled himself lived in happiness, and contentment is the best
treasure.[711] He who merely saw the deficiencies of others, his
offences would increase; and he who was always thinking: Such a man
injured me, annoyed me, will never attain repose. Hard words were
answered with hard words; therefore a man should bear slighting speeches
patiently, as an elephant endures arrows in the battle, and lives
without enmity among his enemies.[712] To tend fire for a hundred years,
or offer sacrifice for a thousand,[713] was of no avail; neither the
penance of the moon nor sacrifice changes anything in the evil act, even
though it were offered for a year.[714] Those who lie and deny the acts
they have done will go into hell.[715] The evil act pursues the doer;
there is no place in the world in which to escape it; it destroys the
doer unless it is conquered and covered by good deeds.[716] Duties come
from the heart; if the act is good it leaves no remorse in the heart. A
man should give alms though he has but little; the covetous will not
come into the world of the gods. These earnest exhortations to acquire
before all things the feeling which gives rise to good works, to
extinguish offences by confession and good actions, to moderate greed
and covetousness, to live contentedly and peaceably, to be gentle in our
deeds, could not be without effect. This peaceableness the Buddhists
showed in the tolerance they extended to those who were of a different
faith than their own; and for the family the rules of affection
impressed on children towards their parents, of chastity and forbearance
impressed on husbands and wives, were wholesome and advantageous in
their results.[717] The limitations set up by the arrangement of the
castes, worship, and custom of the Brahmans began to waver; man was
guided from the fortune of birth, the sanctification of works, to his
inward effort, and led to the moral education of self. Disposition and
personal merit obtained the first place in the community, and fixed a
man's fortune in a future life. Thus the pride of higher birth as
against the lower born has to give way; and hence slaves were treated
with greater kindness. Fantastic as was the heaven and hell
reconstructed by the Buddhists, marvellous as was the elevation of a man
to be god, superstitious as was the worship of relics, exaggerated as
was the conception of the way, the increasing supernatural power of him
who was attaining liberation, and indubitable as was the tendency of
Nirvana to end in the last instance in mere stolid indifference--the
individual and morality were again restored by this doctrine and placed
in their rights; society could again acquire free movement in personal
intercourse and free choice of a vocation; all men were in reality
equal, and could help each other as brothers.
FOOTNOTES:
[663] "Dhammapadam," translated by A. Weber, v. 394.
[664] Köppen, "Religion des Buddha," s. 294.
[665] "Dhammapadam," v. 277.
[666] _Supra_, p. 348. "Dhammapadam," v. 418. Köppen, _loc. cit._ 289
ff.
[667] Burnouf, "Introd." p. 170.
[668] Köppen, "Religion des Buddha," s. 131.
[669] "Dhammapadam," v. 395.
[670] Köppen, "Rel. des Buddha," s. 336.
[671] Köppen, _loc. cit._ s. 338.
[672] "Dhammapadam," v. 211.
[673] "Dhammapadam," v. 373.
[674] Köppen, _loc. cit._ s. 343.
[675] "Dhammapadam," v. 284.
[676] "Dhammapadam," v. 315.
[677] "Dhammapadam," v. 327.
[678] "Dhammapadam," v. 149, 154.
[679] "Dhammapadam," v. 343.
[680] "Dhammapadam," v. 103, 274, 334.
[681] "Dhammapadam," v. 15.
[682] "Dhammapadam," v. 308, 312.
[683] "Dhammapadam," v. 141.
[684] Burnouf, "Introd." p. 274.
[685] There are 227 commands and prohibitions among the Singhalese at
the present day, and 253 among the Tibetans.
[686] Köppen, _loc. cit._ s. 367 ff.
[687] "Dhammapadam," v. 260.
[688] "Dhammapadam," v. 270.
[689] Schlagintweit, "Buddhism in Tibet," p. 191 ff.
[690] "Dhammapadam," v. 20, 94, 181, 412. Cf. v. 267.
[691] Köppen, "Relig. des Buddha," s. 411. The supernatural powers of
the Arhats are mentioned in the inscriptions of Açoka, and the
ordination service of the Çramanas forbade them to boast falsely of
supernatural powers. Köppen, _loc. cit._ s. 413.
[692] Köppen, _loc. cit._ s. 358 ff.
[693] "Dhammapadam," v. 300.
[694] _Supra_, p. 339, 357. Köppen, _loc. cit._ s. 63-118.
[695] Burnouf, "Introduction," p. 381. Köppen is undoubtedly right in
regarding the worship of relics as older than the worship of images. The
worship of relics and pilgrimages was in vogue when Açoka became a
convert to Buddhism, but nothing is there said of the worship of images.
I do not think it a certain fact that there were no images in the
grottoes of Buddhagaya which date from Açoka and his grandson Daçaratha;
sockets and niches for images are found there (Cunningham, "Survey," 1,
46), and the images may have been removed later; it is more decisive
that in the transference of Buddhism to Ceylon, nothing is said of the
transportation of images, though we do hear of relics. Rajendralala
Mitra ("Antiq. of Orissa," p. 152), concludes from Panini, who as we
have seen lived, according to M. Müller and Lassen, in the second half
of the fourth century B.C., that at that time there were little idols of
Vasadeva, Vishnu, Çiva, and the Adityas. We may assume that the worship
of images came into vogue towards the end of the third century, and
afterwards rose rapidly.
[696] Burnouf, "Introd." p. 170.
[697] Burnouf, "Introd." p. 180, 195, 262.
[698] This date would be fixed if the passage in Clement of Alexandria:
"The Indians who follow the doctrines of Butta, whom they regard with
the greatest reverence as a god," certainly came from Megasthenes.
Megasth. fragm. 44, ed. Müller.
[699] Burnouf, _loc. cit._ p. 132, 139.
[700] This is the Mahastupa of king Dushatagamani of Ceylon. Lassen,
_loc. cit._ 2, 426, 454.
[701] Köppen, "Relig. des Buddha," s. 402, 430.
[702] "Dhammapadam," v. 44, 235, 237.
[703] "Dhammapadam," v. 105.
[704] Köppen, _loc. cit._ 235 ff.
[705] "Dhammapadam," v. 392.
[706] Köppen, _loc. cit._ s. 554 ff.
[707] "Dhammapadam," v. 230.
[708] "Dhammapadam," v. 141.
[709] Köppen, _loc. cit._ s. 320, 489 ff.
[710] "Dhammapadam," v. 251, 202.
[711] "Dhammapadam," v. 186, 199.
[712] "Dhammapadam," v. 134, 320, 197.
[713] "Dhammapadam," v. 106, and at the beginning.
[714] "Dhammapadam," v. 70; _supra_, p. 170 f.
[715] "Dhammapadam," v. 177, 306, 224.
[716] "Dhammapadam," v. 161, 173, 223.
[717] "Dhammapadam," v. 332. Köppen, _loc. cit._ s. 472.