CHAPTER LIV

JAPAN

This work as originally planned contained a section on Japanese

Buddhism consisting of three chapters, but after it had been sent to

the publishers I was appointed H.M. Ambassador in Tokyo and I decided

to omit this section. Let not any Japanese suppose that it contained

disparaging criticism of his country or its religions. It would, I

hope, have given no offence to either Buddhists or Shintoists, but an

ambassador had better err on the side of discretion and refrain from

public comments on the institutions of the country to which he is

accredited.

The omission is regrettable in so far as it prevents me from noticing

some of the most interesting and beautiful developments of Buddhism,

but for historical purposes and the investigation of the past the loss

is not great, for Japanese Buddhism throws little light on ancient

India or even on ancient China. It has not influenced other countries.

Its interest lies not in the relics of antiquity which it has

preserved but in the new shape and setting which a race at once

assimilative and inventive has given to old ideas.

Though the doctrine of the Buddha reached Japan from China through

Korea[1069], Chinese and Japanese Buddhism differ in several respects.

Lamaism never gained a footing in Japan, probably because it was the

religion of the hated Mongols. There was hardly any direct intercourse

with India. Whereas the state religion of China was frequently hostile

to Buddhism, in Japan such relations were generally friendly and from

the seventh century until the Meiji era an arrangement known as

Ryō-bu Shintō or two-fold Shintō was in force, by which

Shintō shrines were with few exceptions handed over to the custody

of Buddhist priests, native deities and historical personages being

declared to be manifestations of various Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

Again, Buddhism in Japan has had a more intimate connection with

social, political and even military matters in various periods than in

China. This is one reason for its chief characteristic, namely,

the large number and distinct character of its sects. They are not

merely schools like the religious divisions of India and China, but

real sects with divergent doctrines and sometimes antagonistic to one

another.

It became the fashion in Japan to talk of the twelve sects, but the

names given are not always the same.

One of the commonest lists is as follows[1070]:

1. Kusha. 5. Hossō. 9. Jōdo.

2. Jo-jitsu. 6. Kegon. 10. Zen.

3. Ritsu-shu or Risshu 7. Tendai. 11. Shin.

4. Sanron. 8. Shingon. 12. Nichiren.

This list is historically correct, but Nos. 1-4 are almost or quite

extinct, and the number twelve is therefore sometimes made up as

follows:

1. Hossō. 5. Yūzū Nembutsu. 9. Ōbaku.

2. Kegon. 6. Jōdo. 10. Shin.

3. Tendai. 7. Rinzai. 11. Nichiren.

4. Shingon. 8. Sōdō. 12. Ji.

Here Nos. 7, 8, 9 are subdivisions of the Zen and 5 and 12 are two

small sects.

Taking the first list, we may easily distinguish two classes. The

first eight, called by the Japanese Hasshū, are all old and all

imported from China. They represent the Buddhism of the Nara and

Hei-an periods. The other four all arose after 1170 and were all

remodelled, if not created, in Japan. Chronologically the sects may be

arranged as follows, the dates marking the foundation or introduction

of each:

(i) Seventh century: Sanron, 625; Jo-jitsu, 625; Hossō, 657;

Kusha, 660.

(ii) Eighth century: Kegon, 735; Ritsu, 745.

(iii) Ninth century: Tendai, 805; Shingon, 806.

(iv) Twelfth and thirteenth centuries: Yūzū Nembutsu,

1123; Jōdo, 1174; Zen, 1202; Shin, 1224; Nichiren,

1253; Ji, 1275.

All Japanese sects of importance are Mahayanist. The Hinayana is

represented only by the Kusha, Jo-jitsu and Risshu. The two former are

both extinct: the third still numbers a few adherents, but is not

anti-Mahayanist. It merely insists on the importance of discipline.

Though the Hossō and Kegon sects are not extinct, their survival is

due to their monastic possessions rather than to the vitality of their

doctrines, but the great sects of the ninth century, the Tendai and

Shingon, are still flourishing. For some seven hundred years,

especially in the Fujiwara period, they had great influence not only

in art and literature, but in political and even in military matters,

for they maintained large bodies of troops consisting of soldier monks

or mercenaries and were a considerable menace to the secular

authority. So serious was the danger felt to be that in the sixteenth

century Nobunaga and Hideyoshi destroyed the great monasteries of

Hieizan and Negoro and the pretensions of the Buddhist Church to

temporal power were brought to an end.

But apart from this political activity, new sects which appeared in

the twelfth and thirteenth centuries suited the popular needs of the

time and were a sign of true religious life. Two of these sects, the

Jōdo and Shinshū[1071], are Amidist--that is to say they teach

that the only or at least the best way of winning salvation is to

appeal to the mercy of Amida, who will give his worshippers a place in

his paradise after death. The Jōdo is relatively old fashioned, and

does not differ much in practice from the worship of Amida as seen in

China, but the Shinshū has no exact parallel elsewhere. Though it

has not introduced many innovations in theology, its abandonment of

monastic discipline, its progressive and popular spirit and its

conspicuous success make it a distinct and remarkable type. Its

priests marry and eat meat: it has no endowments and relies on

voluntary subscription, yet its temples are among the largest and most

conspicuous in Japan. But the hierarchical spirit is not absent and

since Shinshū priests can marry, there arose the institution of

hereditary abbots who were even more like barons than the celibate

prelates of the older sects.

The Nichiren sect is a purely Japanese growth, without any prototype

in China, and is a protest against Amidism and an attempt to

restore Shaka--the historical Buddha--to his proper position from

which he has been ousted. Nichiren, the founder, is one of the most

picturesque figures of Japanese history. His teaching, which was based

on the Lotus Sûtra, was remarkable for its combative spirit and he

himself played a considerable part in the politics of his age. His

followers form one of the most influential and conspicuous sects at

the present day, although not so numerous as the Amidists.

Zen is the Japanese equivalent of Ch'an or Dhyâna and is the name

given to the sect founded in China by Bodhidharma. It is said to have

been introduced into Japan in the seventh century, but died out.

Later, under the Hōjō Regents, and especially during the

Ashikaga period, it flourished exceedingly. Zen ecclesiastics managed

politics like the French cardinals of the seventeenth century and

profoundly influenced art and literature, since they produced a long

line of painters and writers. But the most interesting feature in the

history of this sect in Japan is that, though it preserves the

teaching of Bodhidharma without much change, yet it underwent a

curious social metamorphosis, for it became the chosen creed of the

military class and contributed not a little to the Bushido or code of

chivalry. It is strange that this mystical doctrine should have spread

among warriors, but its insistence on simplicity of life, discipline

of mind and body, and concentration of thought harmonized with their

ideals.

Apart from differences of doctrine such as divide the Shinshu,

Nichiren and Zen, Japanese sects show a remarkable tendency to

multiply subdivisions, due chiefly to disputes as to the proper

succession of abbots. Thus the Jōdo sect has four subsects, and the

first and second of these are again subdivided into six and four

respectively. And so with many others. Even the little Ji sect, which

is credited with only 509 temples in all Japan, includes thirteen

subdivisions.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1069: The accepted date is A.D. 552.]

[Footnote 1070: These names are mostly borrowed from the Chinese and

represent: 1. Chü-shê; 2. Ch'êng-shih; 3. Lü; 4. San-lun; 5.

Fa-hsiang; 6. Hua-yen; 7. T'ien-t'ai; 8. Chên-yen; 9. Ching-t'u; 10.

Ch'an. See my remarks on these sects in the section on Chinese

Buddhism. See Haas, _Die Sekten dea Japanischen Buddhismus_, 1905:

many notices in the same author's _Annalen des Jap. Bud._ cited

above and Ryauon Fujishima, _Le Buddhisme Japonais_, 1889.]

[Footnote 1071: As well as the smaller sects called Ji and

Yūzūnembutsu.]:

BOOK VII

MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF EASTERN AND WESTERN RELIGIONS

CHAPTER LV

INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA

In phrases like the above title, the word influence is easy and

convenient. When we hesitate to describe a belief or usage as borrowed

or derived, it comes pat to say that it shows traces of external

influence. But in what circumstances is such influence exercised? It

is not the necessary result of contact, for in the east of Europe the

Christian Church has not become mohammedanized nor in Poland and

Roumania has it contracted any taint of Judaism. In these cases there

is difference of race as well as of religion. In business the Turk and

Jew have some common ground with the oriental Christian: in social

life but little and in religion none at all. Europe has sometimes

shown an interest in Asiatic religions, but on the whole an antipathy

to them. Christianity originated in Palestine, which is a

Mediterranean rather than an Asiatic country, and its most important

forms, particularly the Roman Catholic Church, took shape on European

soil. Such cults as the worship of Isis and Mithra were prevalent in

Europe but they gained their first footing among Asiatic slaves and

soldiers and would perhaps not have maintained themselves among

European converts only. And Buddhism, though it may have attracted

individual minds, has never produced any general impression west of

India. Both in Spain and in south-eastern Europe Islam was the

religion of invaders and made surprisingly few converts. Christian

heretics, such as the Nestorians and Monophysites, who were expelled

from Constantinople and had their home in Asia, left the west alone

and proselytized in the east. The peculiar detestation felt by the

Church for the doctrines of the Manichæans was perhaps partly due to

the fact that they were in spirit Asiatic. And the converse of this

antipathy is also true: the progress of Christianity in Asia has been

insignificant.

But when people of the same race profess different creeds, these

creeds do influence one another and tend to approximate. This is

specially remarkable in India, where Islam, in theory the

uncompromising opponent of image worship and polytheism, is

sometimes in practice undistinguishable from the lower superstitions

of Hinduism. In the middle ages Buddhism and Hinduism converged until

they coincided so completely that Buddhism disappeared. In China it

often needs an expert to distinguish the manifestations of Taoism and

Buddhism: in Japan Buddhism and the old national religion were

combined in the mixed worship known as Ryōbu Shintō. In the

British Isles an impartial observer would probably notice that

Anglicans and English Roman Catholics (not Irish perhaps) have more in

common than they think.

There are clearly two sets of causes which may divide a race between

religions: internal movements, such as the rise of Buddhism, and

external impulses, such as missions or conquest. Conquest pure and

simple is best illustrated by the history of Islam, also by the

conversion of Mexico and South America to Roman Catholicism. But even

when conversion is pacific, it will generally be found that, if it is

successful on a large scale, it means the introduction of more than a

creed. The religious leader in his own country can trust to his

eloquence and power over his hearers. The real support of the

missionary, however little he may like the idea, is usually that he

represents a superior type of civilization. At one time in their

career Buddhism and Christianity were the greatest agencies for

spreading civilization in Asia and Europe respectively. They brought

with them art and literature: they had the encouragement of the most

enlightened princes: those who did not accept them in many cases

remained obviously on a lower level. Much the same thing happens in

Africa to-day. The natives who accept Mohammedanism or Christianity

are moved, not by the arguments of the Koran or Bible, but by the idea

that it is a fine thing to be like an Arab or a European. A pagan in

Uganda is literally a pagan; an uninstructed rustic from a distant

village.

Now if we consider the relations of India with the west, we find on

neither side the conditions which usually render propaganda

successful. Before the Mohammedan invasions and the Portuguese

conquest of Goa, no faith can have presented itself to the Hindus with

anything like the prestige which marked the advent of Buddhism in

China and Japan. Alexander opened a road to India for Hellenic culture

and with it came some religious ideas, but the Greeks had no

missionary spirit and if there were any early Christian missions they

must have been on a small scale. The same is true of the west: if

Asoka's missions reached their destination, they failed to inspire any

record of their doings. Still there was traffic by land and sea. The

Hindus, if self-complacent, were not averse to new ideas, and before

the establishment of Christianity there was not much bigotry in the

west, for organized religion was unknown in Europe: practices might be

forbidden as immoral or anti-social but such expressions as contrary

to the Bible or Koran had no equivalent. Old worships were felt to be

unsatisfying: new ones were freely adopted: mysteries were

relished. There was no invasion, nothing that suggested foreign

conquest or alarmed national jealousy, but the way was open to ideas,

though they ran some risk of suffering transformation on their long

journey.

As I have repeatedly pointed out, Hinduism and Buddhism are

essentially religions of central and eastern, not of western Asia, but

they came in contact with the west in several regions and an enquiry

into the influence which they exercised or felt can be subdivided.

There is the question whether they owe anything to Christianity in

their later developments and also the question whether Christianity

has borrowed anything from them[1072]. Other questions to be

considered are the relations of Indian religions to Zoroastrianism in

ancient and to Islam in more recent times, which, if of less general

interest than problems involving Christianity, are easier to

investigate and of considerable importance.

Let us begin with the influence of Christianity on Indian religion.

For earlier periods the record of contact between Hindus and

Christians is fragmentary, but the evidence of the last two centuries

may give a significant indication as to the effect of early Christian

influence. In these two centuries Christianity has been presented to

the Hindus in the most favourable circumstances: it has come as the

religion of the governing power and associated with European

civilization: it has not, like Mohammedanism, been propagated by force

or accompanied by any intolerance which could awaken repugnance, but

its doctrines have been preached and expounded by private

missionaries, if not always with skill and sympathy, at least with

zeal and a desire to persuade. The result is that according to the

census of 1911 there are now 3,876,000 Christians including Europeans,

that is to say, a sect a little stronger than the Sikhs as against

more than sixty-six million Mohammedans. Of these 3,876,000 many are

drawn from the lowest castes or from tribes that are hardly considered

as Hindus. Some religious associations, generally known as Somaj, have

been founded under the influence of European philosophy as much as of

Christianity: imitation of European civilization (which is quite a

different thing from Christianity) is visible in the objects and

methods of religious and philanthropic institutions: some curious

mixed sects of small numerical strength have been formed by the fusion

of Christian with Hindu or Mohammedan elements or of all three

together. Yet the religious thought and customs of India in general

seem hardly conscious of contact with Christianity: there is no sign

that they have felt any fancy for the theology of the Athanasian

Creed or the ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church which might have

interested speculative and ritualistic minds. Similarly, though

intellectual intercourse between India and China was long and fairly

intimate and though the influence of Indian thought on China was very

great, yet the influence of China on Indian thought is negligible.

This being so, it would be rash to believe without good evidence that,

in the past, doctrines which have penetrated Indian literature during

centuries and have found acceptance with untold millions owe their

origin to obscure foreign colonists or missions.

Writers who wish to prove that Indian religions are indebted to

Christianity often approach their task with a certain misconception.

They assume that if at some remote epoch a few stray Christians

reached India, they could overcome without difficulty the barriers of

language and social usage and further that their doctrine would be

accepted as something new and striking which would straightway

influence popular superstition and philosophic thought. But Lyall

gives a juster perspective in his poem about the Meditations of a

Hindu Prince who, grown sceptical in the quest of truth, listens to

the "word of the English," and finds it:

"Naught but the world wide story how the earth and the heavens began,

How the gods were glad and angry and a deity once was man."

Many doctrines preached by Christianity such as the love of God,

salvation by faith, and the incarnation, had been thought out in India

before the Christian era, and when Christian missionaries preached

them they probably seemed to thoughtful Hindus a new and not very

adequate version of a very old tale. On the other hand the central and

peculiar doctrine of dogmatic Christianity is that the world has been

saved by the death of Christ. If this doctrine of the atonement or the

sacrifice of a divine being had appeared in India as an importation

from the west, we might justly talk of the influence of Christianity

on Indian religion. But it is unknown in Hinduism and Buddhism or

(since it is rash to make absolute statements about these vast and

multifarious growths of speculation) it is at any rate exceedingly

rare. These facts create a presumption that the resemblances between

Christianity and Indian religion are due to coincidence rather than

borrowing, unless borrowing can be clearly proved, and this

conclusion, though it may seem tame, is surely a source of

satisfaction. The divagations of human thought are manifold and its

conclusions often contradictory, but if there is anything that can be

called truth it is but natural that logic, intuition, philosophy,

poetry, learning and saintship should in different countries sometimes

attain similar results.

Christianity, like other western ideas, may have reached India both by

land and by sea. After the conquests of Alexander had once opened the

route to the Indus and established Hellenistic kingdoms in its

vicinity, the ideas and art of Greece and Rome journeyed without

difficulty to the Panjab, arriving perhaps as somewhat wayworn and

cosmopolitan travellers but still clearly European. A certain amount

of Christianity _may_ have come along this track, but for any

historical investigation clearly the first question is, what is the

earliest period at which we have any record of its presence in India?

It would appear[1073] that the first allusions to the presence of

Christians in Parthia, Bactria and the border lands of India date from

the third century and that the oldest account[1074] of Christian

communities in southern India is the narrative of Cosmas

Indicopleustes (_c._ 525 A.D.). These latter Christians probably came

to India by sea from Persia in consequence of the persecutions which

raged there in 343 and 414, exactly as at a later date the Parsees

escaped the violence of the Moslims by emigrating to Gujarat and

Bombay.

The story that the Apostle Thomas preached in some part of India has

often been used as an argument for the early introduction and

influence of Christianity, but recent authorities agree in thinking

that it is legendary or at best not provable. The tale occurs first in

the Acts of St. Thomas[1075], the Syriac text of which is considered to

date from about 250. It relates how the apostle was sold as a slave

skilled in architecture and coming to the Court of Gundaphar, king of

India, undertook to build, a palace but expended the moneys given to

him in charity and, when called to account, explained that he was

building for the king a palace in heaven, not made with hands. This

sounds more like an echo of some Buddhist Jâtaka written in praise of

liberality than an embellishment of any real biography. Other legends

make southern India the sphere of Thomas's activity, though he can

hardly have taught in both Madras and Parthia, and a similar

uncertainty is indicated by the tradition that his relics were

transported to Edessa, which doubtless means that according to other

accounts he died there. Tradition connects Thomas with Parthians quite

as much as with Indians, and, if he really contributed to the

diffusion of Christianity, it is more likely that he laboured in

the western part of Parthia than on its extreme eastern frontiers. The

fact that there really was an Indo-Parthian king with a name something

like Gondophares no more makes the legend of St. Thomas historical than

the fact that there was a Bohemian king with a name something like

Wenceslas makes the Christmas carol containing that name historical.

On the other hand it is clear that during the early centuries of our

era no definite frontier in the religious and intellectual sphere can

be drawn between India and Persia. Christianity reached Persia early:

it formed part of the composite creed of Mani, who was born about 216,

and Christians were persecuted in 343. From at least the third century

onwards Christian ideas _may_ have entered India, but this does not

authorize the assumption that they came with sufficient prestige and

following to exercise any lively influence, or in sufficient purity to

be clearly distinguished from Zoroastrianism and Manichæism.

By water there was an ancient connection between the west coast of

India and both the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. Traffic by the former

route was specially active, from the time of Augustus to that of Nero.

Pliny[1076] complains that every year India and the East took from

Italy a hundred million sesterces in return for spices, perfumes and

ornaments. Strabo[1077] who visited Egypt tells how 120 ships sailed

from Myos Hormos (on the Red Sea) to India "although in the time of

the Ptolemies scarcely any one would undertake this voyage." Muziris

(Cranganore) was the chief depot of western trade and even seems to

have been the seat of a Roman commercial colony. Roman coins have been

found in northern and even more abundantly in southern India, and

Hindu mints used Roman models. But only rarely can any one except

sailors and merchants, who made a speciality of eastern trade, have

undertaken the long and arduous journey. Certainly ideas travel with

mysterious rapidity. The debt of Indian astronomy to Greece is

undeniable[1078] and if the same cannot be affirmed of Indian

mathematics and medicine yet the resemblance between Greek and Indian

treatises on these sciences is remarkable. Early Tamil poems[1079]

speak of Greek wines and dumb (that is unintelligible) Roman soldiers

in the service of Indian kings, but do not mention philosophers,

teachers or missionaries. After 70 A.D. this trade declined, perhaps

because the Flavian Emperors and their successors were averse to the

oriental luxuries which formed its staple, and in 215 the massacre

ordered by Caracalla dealt a blow to the commercial importance of

Alexandria from which it did not recover for a long time. Thus the

period when intercourse between Egypt and India was most active is

anterior to the period when Christianity began to spread: it is hardly

likely that in 70 or 80 A.D. there were many Christians in Egypt.

As already mentioned, colonies of Christians from Persia settled on

the west coast of India, where there are also Jewish colonies of

considerable antiquity. The story that this Church was founded by St.

Thomas and that his relics are preserved in south India has not been

found in any work older than Marco Polo[1080]. Cosmas Indicopleustes

states that the Bishop of Kalliana was appointed from Persia, and this

explains the connection of Nestorianism with southern India, for at

that time the Nestorian Catholicos of Ctesiphon was the only Christian

prelate tolerated by the Persian Government.

This Church may have had a considerable number of adherents for it was

not confined to Malabar, its home and centre, but had branches on the

east coast near Madras. But it was isolated and became corrupt. It is

said that in 660 it had no regular ministry and in the fourteenth

century even baptism had fallen into disuse. Like the popular forms of

Mohammedanism it adopted many Hindu doctrines and rites. This implies

on the one hand a considerable exchange of ideas: on the other hand,

if such reformers as Râmânuja and Râmânanda were in touch with these

Nestorians we may doubt if they would have imbibed from them the

teaching of the New Testament. There is evidence that Roman Catholic

missions on their way to or from China landed in Malabar during the

thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and made some converts. In 1330

the Pope sent a Bishop to Quilon with the object of bringing the

Nestorians into communion with the see of Rome. But the definite

establishment of Roman Catholicism dates from the Portuguese conquest

of Goa in 1510, followed by the appointment of an Archbishop and the

introduction of the Inquisition. Henceforth there is no difficulty in

accounting for Christian influence, but it is generally admitted that

the intolerance of the Portuguese made them and their religion

distasteful to Hindus and Moslims alike. We hear, however, that Akbar,

desiring to hear Christian doctrines represented in a disputation held

at his Court, sent for Christian priests from Goa, and his Minister

Abul Fazl is quoted as having written poetry in which mosques,

churches and temples are classed together as places where people seek

for God[1081].

Such being the opportunities and approximate dates for Christian

influence in India, we may now examine the features in Hinduism which

have been attributed to it. They may be classified under three

principal heads, (i) The monotheistic Sivaism of the south. (ii)

Various doctrines of Vaishnavism such as _bhakti_, grace, the love and

fatherhood of God, the Word, and incarnation. (iii) Particular

ceremonies or traditions such as the sacred meal known as Prasâda and

the stories of Krishna's infancy.

In southern India we have a seaboard in communication with Egypt,

Arabia and the Persian Gulf. The reality of intercourse with the west

is attested by Roman, Jewish, Nestorian and Mohammedan settlements,

but on the other hand the Brahmans of Malabar are remarkable even

according to Hindu standards for their strictness and aloofness. As I

have pointed out elsewhere, the want of chronology in south Indian

literature makes it difficult to sketch with any precision even the

outlines of its religious history, but it is probable that Aryan

religion came first in the form of Buddhism and Jainism and that

Sivaism made its appearance only when the ground had been prepared by

them. They were less exposed than the Buddhism of the north to the

influences which created the Mahâyâna, but they no doubt mingled with

the indigenous beliefs of the Dravidians. There is no record of what

these may have been before contact with Hindu civilization; in

historical times they comprise the propitiation of spirits, mostly

malignant and hence often called devils, but also a strong tendency to

monotheism and ethical poetry of a high moral standard. These latter

characteristics are noticeable in most, if not all, Dravidian races,

even those which are in the lower stages of civilization[1082]. This

temperament, educated by Buddhism and finally selecting Sivaism, might

spontaneously produce such poems as the Tiruvâçagam. Such ideas as

God's love for human souls and the soul's struggle to be worthy of

that love are found in other Indian religions besides Tamil Sivaism

and in their earlier forms cannot be ascribed to Christian influence,

but it must be admitted that the poems of the Sittars show an

extraordinary approximation to the language of devotional literature

in Europe. If, as Caldwell thinks, these compositions are as recent as

the sixteenth or seventeenth century, there is no chronological

difficulty in supposing their contents to be inspired by Christian

ideas. But the question rather is, would Portuguese Catholicism or

corrupt Nestorianism have inspired poems denouncing idolatry and

inculcating the purest theism? Scepticism on this point is

permissible. I am inclined to think that the influence of

Christianity as well as the much greater influence of Mohammedanism

was mostly indirect. They imported little in the way of custom and

dogma but they strengthened the idea which naturally accompanies

sectarianism, namely, that it is reasonable and proper for a religion

to inculcate the worship of one all-sufficient power. But that this

idea can flourish in surroundings repugnant to both Christianity and

Islam is shown by the sect of Lingâyats.

The resemblances to Christianity in Vishnuism are on a larger scale

than the corresponding phenomena in Sivaism. In most parts of India,

from Assam to Madras, the worship of Vishnu and his incarnations has

assumed the form of a monotheism which, if frequently turning into

pantheism, still persistently inculcates loving devotion to a deity

who is himself moved by love for mankind. The corresponding phase of

Sivaism is restricted to certain periods and districts of southern

India. The doctrine of _bhakti_, or devotional faith, is common to

Vishnuites and Sivaites, but is more prominent among the former.

It has often been conjectured to be due to Christian influence but the

conjecture is, I think, wrong, for the doctrine is probably

pre-Christian. Pâṇini[1083] appears to allude to it, and the idea

of loving devotion to God is fully developed in the Śvetâśvatara

Upanishad and the Bhagavad-gîtâ, works of doubtful date it is true,

but in my opinion anterior to the Christian era and on any hypothesis

not much posterior to it. Some time must have elapsed after the death

of Christ before Christianity could present itself in India as an

influential doctrine. Also _bhakti_ does not make its first appearance

as something new and full grown. The seed, the young plant and the

flower can all be found on Indian soil. So, too, the idea that God

became man for the sake of mankind is a gradual Indian growth. In the

Veda Vishnu takes three steps for the good of men. It is probable that

his avatâras were recognized some centuries before Christ and, if this

is regarded as not demonstrable, it cannot be denied that the

analogous conception of Buddhas who visit the world to save and

instruct mankind is pre-Christian[1084]. Similarly though passages may

be found in the writings of Kabir and others in which the doctrine of

Śabda or the Word is stated in language recalling the fourth

Gospel, and though in this case the hypothesis of imitation offers no

chronological difficulties, yet it is unnecessary. For Śabda, in

the sense of the Veda conceived as an eternal self-existent sound, is

an old Indian notion and when stated in these terms does not appear

very Christian. It is found in Zoroastrianism, where Manthra Spenta

the holy word is said to be the very soul of God[1085], and it is

perhaps connected with the still more primitive notion that words and

names have a mysterious potency and are in themselves spells. But even

if the idea of Śabda were derived from the idea of Logos it need

not be an instance of specifically Christian influence, for this Logos

idea was only utilized by Christianity and was part of the common

stock of religious thought prevalent about the time of Christ in

Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor, and it is even possible that its earlier

forms may owe something to India. And were it proved that the

teaching of Kabir, which clearly owes much to Islam, also owes much to

Christianity, the fact would not be very important, for the followers

of Kabir form a small and eccentric though interesting sect, in no way

typical of Hinduism as a whole.

The form of Vishnuism known as Pancarâtra appears to have had its

origin, or at least to have flourished very early, in Kashmir and the

extreme north-west, and perhaps a direct connection may be traced

between central Asia and some aspects of the worship of Krishna at

Muttra. The passage of Greek and Persian influence through the

frontier districts is attested by statuary and coins, but no such

memorials of Christianity have been discovered. But the leaders of the

Vishnuite movement in the twelfth and subsequent centuries were mostly

Brahmans of southern extraction who migrated to Hindustan. Stress is

sometimes laid on the fact that they lived in the neighbourhood of

ancient Nestorian churches and even Garbe thinks that Râmânuja, who

studied for some time at Conjevaram, was in touch with the Christians

of Mailapur near Madras. I find it hard to believe that such contact

can have had much result. For Râmânuja was a Brahman of the straitest

sect who probably thought it contamination to be within speaking

distance of a Christian[1086]. He was undoubtedly a remarkable scholar

and knew by heart all the principal Hindu scriptures, including those

that teach _bhakti_. Why then suppose that he took his ideas not from

works like the Bhagavad-gîtâ on which he wrote a commentary or from

the Pancarâtra which he eulogizes, but from persons whom he must have

regarded as obscure heretics? And lastly is there any proof that such

ideas as the love of God and salvation by faith flourished among the

Christians of Mailapur? In remote branches of the oriental Church

Christianity is generally reduced to legends and superstitions, and

this Church was so corrupt that it had even lost the rite of

baptism and is said to have held that the third person of the

Trinity was the Madonna[1087] and not the Holy Ghost. Surely this

doctrine is an extraordinary heresy in Christianity and far from

having inspired Hindu theories as to the position of Vishnu's spouse

is borrowed from those theories or from some of the innumerable Indian

doctrines about the Śakti.

It is clear that the Advaita philosophy of Śankara was influential

in India from the ninth century to the twelfth and then lost some of

its prestige owing to the rise of a more personal theism. It does not

seem to me that any introduction or reinforcement of Christianity, to

which this theistic movement might be attributed, can be proved to

have taken place about 1100, and it is not always safe to seek for a

political or social explanation of such movements. But if we must have

an external explanation, the obvious one is the progress of

Mohammedanism. One may even suggest a parallel between the epochs of

Śankara and of Râmânuja. The former, though the avowed enemy of

Buddhism, introduced into Hinduism the doctrine of Mâyâ described by

Indian critics as crypto-Buddhism. Râmânuja probably did not come into

direct contact with Islam[1088], which was the chief enemy of Hinduism

in his time, but his theism (which, however, was semi-pantheistic) may

have been similarly due to the impression produced by that enemy on

Indian thought[1089].

It is easy to see superficial parallels between Hindu and Christian

ceremonies, but on examination they are generally not found to prove

that there has been direct borrowing from Christianity. For instance,

the superior castes are commonly styled twice born in virtue of

certain initiatory ceremonies performed on them in youth, and it is

natural to compare this second birth with baptismal regeneration. But,

though there is here a real similarity of ideas, it would be hard to

deny that these ideas as well as the practices which express them have

arisen independently[1090]. And though a practice of sprinkling

the forehead with water similar to baptism is in use among Hindus, it

is only a variety of the world-wide ceremony of purification with

sacred water. Several authors have seen a resemblance between the

communion and a sacred meal often eaten in Hindu temples and called

_prasâd_ (favour) or mahâprasâd. The usual forms of this observance do

not resemble the Mass in externals (as do certain ceremonies in

Lamaism) and the analogy, if any, resides in the eating of a common

religious meal. Such a meal in Indian temples has its origin in the

necessity and advantage of disposing of sacrificial food. It cannot be

maintained that the deities eat the substance of it and, if it is not

consumed by fire, the obvious method of disposal is for mankind to eat

it. The practice is probably world-wide and the consumers may be

either the priests or the worshippers. Both varieties of the rite are

found in India. In the ancient Soma sacrifices the officiants drank

the residue of the sacred drink: in modern temples, where ample meals

are set before the god more than once a day, it is the custom, perhaps

because it is more advantageous, to sell them to the devout. From this

point of view the _prasâd_ is by no means the equivalent of the Lord's

Supper, but rather of the things offered to idols which many early

Christians scrupled to eat. It has, however, another and special

significance due to the regulations imposed by caste. As a rule a

Hindu of respectable social status cannot eat with his inferiors

without incurring defilement. But in many temples members of all

castes can eat the _prasâd_ together as a sign that before the deity

all his worshippers are equal. From this point of view the _prasâd_ is

really analogous to the communion inasmuch as it is the sign of

religious community, but it is clearly distinct in origin and though

the sacred food may be eaten with great reverence, we are not told

that it is associated with the ideas of commemoration, sacrifice or

transubstantiation which cling to the Christian sacrament[1091].

The most curious coincidences between Indian and Christian legend

are afforded by the stories and representations of the birth and

infancy of Krishna. These have been elaborately discussed by Weber in

a well-known monograph[1092]. Krishna is represented with his mother,

much as the infant Christ with the Madonna; he is born in a

stable[1093], and other well-known incidents such as the appearance of

a star are reproduced. Two things strike us in these resemblances.

Firstly, they are not found in the usual literary version of the

Indian legend[1094], and it is therefore probable that they represent

an independent and borrowed story: secondly, they are almost entirely

concerned with the mythological aspects of Christianity. Many

Christians would admit that the adoration of the Virgin and Child is

unscriptural and borrowed from the worship of pagan goddesses who were

represented as holding their divine offspring in their arms. If this

is admitted, it is possible that Devakî and her son may be a replica

not of the Madonna but of a pagan prototype. But there is no

difficulty in admitting that Christian legends and Christian art may

have entered northern India from Bactria and Persia, and have found a

home in Muttra. Only it does not follow from this that any penetrating

influence transformed Hindu thought and is responsible for Krishna's

divinity, for the idea of _bhakti_, or for the theology of the

Bhagavad-gîtâ. The borrowed features in the Krishna story are

superficial and also late. They do not occur in the Mahâbhârata and

the earliest authority cited by Weber is Hemâdri, a writer of the

thirteenth century. Allowing that what he describes may have existed

several centuries before his own date, we have still no ground for

tracing the main ideas of Vaishnavism to Christianity and the later

vagaries of Krishnaism are precisely the aspects of Indian religion

which most outrage Christian sentiment.

One edition of the Bhavishya Purana contains a summary of the book

of Genesis from Adam to Abraham[1095]. Though it is a late

interpolation, it shows conclusively that the editors of Puranas had

no objection to borrowing from Christian sources and it maybe that

some incidents in the life of Krishna as related by the Vishnu,

Bhâgavata and other Puranas are borrowed from the Gospels, such as

Kamsa's orders to massacre all male infants when Krishna is born, the

journey of Nanda, Krishna's foster-father, to Mathurâ in order to pay

taxes and the presentation of a pot of ointment to Krishna by a

hunchback woman whom he miraculously makes straight. In estimating the

importance of such coincidences we must remember that they are merely

casual details in a long story of adventures which, in their general

outline, bear no relation to the life of Christ. The most striking of

these is the "massacre of the Innocents." The Harivaṃsa, which is

not later than the fifth century A.D., relates that Kamsa killed all

the other children of Devakî, though it does not mention a general

massacre, and Pâtanjali (_c._ 150 B.C.) knew the legend of the

hostility between Krishna and Kamsa and the latter's death[1096]. So

if anything has been borrowed from the Gospel account it is only the

general slaughter of children. The mention of a pot of ointment

strikes Europeans because such an object is not familiar to us, but it

was an ordinary form of luxury in India and Judæa alike, and the fact

that a woman honoured both Krishna and Christ in the same way but in

totally different circumstances is hardly more than a chance

coincidence. The fact that both Nanda and Joseph leave their homes in

order to pay their taxes is certainly curious and I will leave the

reader to form his own opinion about it. The instance of the Bhavishya

Purana shows that Hindus had no scruples about borrowing from the

Bible and in some Indian dialects the name Krishna appears as Krishto

or Kushto. On the other hand, whatever borrowing there may have been

is concerned exclusively with trivial details: the principal episodes

of the Krishna legend were known before the Christian era.

This is perhaps the place to examine a curious episode of the

Mahâbhârata which narrates the visit of certain sages to a region

called Śvetadvîpa, the white island or continent, identified by

some with Alexandria or a Christian settlement in central Asia. The

episode occurs in the Śantiparvan[1097] of the Mahâbhârata and is

introduced by the story of a royal sacrifice, at which most of the

gods appeared in visible shape but Hari (Vishnu or Krishna) took his

offerings unseen. The king and his priests were angry, but three sages

called Ekata, Dvita and Trita, who are described as the miraculous

offspring of Brahmâ, interposed explaining that none of those present

were worthy to see Hari. They related how they had once desired to

behold him in his own form and after protracted austerities repaired

under divine guidance to an island called Śvetadvîpa on the

northern shores of the Sea of Milk[1098]. It was inhabited by beings

white and shining like the moon who followed the rules of the

Pancarâtra, took no food and were continually engaged in silent

prayer. So great was the effulgence that at first the visitors were

blinded. It was only after another century of penance that they began

to have hopes of beholding the deity. Then there suddenly arose a

great light. The inhabitants of the island ran towards it with joined

hands and, as if they were making an offering, cried, "Victory to

thee, O thou of the lotus eyes, reverence to thee, producer of all

things: reverence to thee, Hṛishikeśa, great Purusha, the

first-born." The three sages saw nothing but were conscious that a

wind laden with perfumes blew past them. They were convinced, however,

that the deity had appeared to his worshippers. A voice from heaven

told them that this was so and that no one without faith (abhakta)

could see Nârâyaṇa.

A subsequent section of the same book tells us that Nârada visited

Śvetadvîpa and received from Nârâyaṇa the Pancarâtra, which is

thus definitely associated with the locality.

Some writers have seen in this legend a poetical account of contact

with Christianity, but wrongly, as I think. We have here no mythicized

version of a real journey but a voyage of the imagination. The sea of

milk, the white land and its white shining inhabitants are an attempt

to express the pure radiance proper to the courts of God, much as the

Book of Revelation tells of a sea of glass, elders in white raiment

and a deity whose head and hair were white like wool and snow. Nor

need we suppose, as some have done, that the worship of the white

sages is an attempt to describe the Mass. The story does not say that

whenever the White Islanders held a religious service the deity

appeared, but that on a particular occasion when the deity appeared

they ran to meet him and saluted him with a hymn. The idea that prayer

and meditation are the sacrifice to be offered by perfected saints is

thoroughly Indian and ancient. The account testifies to the

non-Brahmanic character of this worship of Vishnu, which was

patronized by the Brahmans though not originated by them, but there is

nothing exotic in the hymn to Nârâyaṇa and the epithet first-born

(pûrvaja), in which some have detected a Christian flavour, is as old

as the Rig Veda. The reason for laying the scene of the story in the

north (if indeed the points of the compass have any place in this

mythical geography) is no doubt the early connection of the Pancarâtra

with Kashmir and north-western India[1099]. The facts that some

Puranas people the regions near Śvetadvîpa with Iranian

sun-worshippers[1100] and that some details of the Pancarâtra (though

not the system as a whole) show a resemblance to Zoroastrianism

suggest interesting hypotheses as to origin of this form of Vishnuism,

but more facts are needed to confirm them. Chronology gives us little

help, for though the Mahâbhârata was substantially complete in the

fourth century, it cannot be denied that additions may have been made

to it later and that the story of Śvetadvîpa may be one of them.

There were Nestorian Bishops at Merv and Herat in the fifth century,

but there appears to be no evidence that Christianity reached

Transoxiana before the fall of the Sassanids in the first half of the

seventh century.

Thus there is little reason to regard Christianity as an important

factor in the evolution of Hinduism, because (_a_) there is no

evidence that it appeared in an influential form before the sixteenth

century and (_b_) there is strong evidence that most of the doctrines

and practices resembling Christianity have an Indian origin. On the

other hand abundant instances show that the Hindus had no objection to

borrowing from a foreign religion anything great or small which took

their fancy. But the interesting point is that the principal Christian

doctrines were either indigenous in India--such as _bhakti_ and

_avatâras_--or repugnant to the vast majority of Hindus, such as the

crucifixion and atonement. I do not think that Nestorianism had any

appreciable effect on the history of religious thought in southern

India. Hellenic and Zoroastrian ideas undoubtedly entered

north-western India, but, though Christian ideas may have come with

them, few of the instances cited seem even probable except some

details in the life of Krishna which affect neither the legend as a

whole nor the doctrines associated with it. Some later sects, such as

the Kabirpanthis, show remarkable resemblances to Christianity, but

then the teaching of Kabir was admittedly a blend of Hinduism and

Islam, and since Islam accepted many Christian doctrines, it remains

to be proved that any further explanation is needed. Barth observed

that criticism is generally on the look out for the least trace of

Christian influence on Hinduism but does not pay sufficient attention

to the extent of Moslim influence. Every student of Indian religion

should bear in mind this dictum of the great French savant. After the

sixteenth century there is no difficulty in supposing direct contact

with Roman Catholicism. Tukaram, the Maratha poet who lived

comparatively near to Goa, may have imitated the diction of the

Gospels.

Some authors[1101] are disposed to see Christian influence in Chinese

and Japanese Buddhism, particularly in the Amidist sects. I have

touched on this subject in several places but it may be well to

summarize my conclusions here.

The chief Amidist doctrines are clearly defined in the Sukhâ

vatî-vyûha which was translated from Sanskrit into Chinese in the

latter half of the second century A.D. It must therefore have existed

in Sanskrit at least in the first century of our era, at which period

dogmatic Christianity could hardly have penetrated to India or any

part of Central Asia where a Sanskrit treatise was likely to be

written. Its doctrines must therefore be independent of Christianity

and indeed their resemblance to Christianity is often exaggerated, for

though salvation by faith in Amida is remarkably like justification by

faith, yet Amida is not a Saviour who died for the world and faith in

him is coupled with the use of certain invocations. The whole theory

has close parallels in Zoroastrianism and is also a natural

development of ideas already existing in India.

Nor can I think that the common use of rites on behalf of the dead in

Buddhist China is traceable to Christianity. In this case too the

parallel is superficial, for the rites are in most cases not prayers

_for_ the dead: the officiants recite formulae by which they acquire

merit and they then formally transfer this merit to the dead. Seeing

how great was the importance assigned to the cult of the dead in

China, it is not necessary to seek for explanations why a religion

trying to win its way in those countries invented ceremonies to

satisfy the popular craving, and Buddhism had no need to imitate

Christianity, for from an early period it had countenanced offerings

intended to comfort and help the departed.

Under the T'ang dynasty Manichæism, Nestorianism and new streams of

Buddhism all entered China. These religions had some similarity to one

another, their clergy may have co-operated and Manichæism certainly

adopted Buddhist ideas. There is no reason why Buddhism should not

have adopted Nestorian ideas and, in so far as the Nestorians

familiarized China with the idea of salvation by faith in a divine

personage, they may have helped the spread of Amidism. But the

evidence that we possess seems to show not that the Nestorians

introduced the story of Christ's life and sacrifice into Buddhism but

that they suppressed the idea of atonement by his death, possibly

under Buddhist influence.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1072: The most learned and lucid discussion of these

questions, which includes an account of earlier literature on the

subject, is to be found in Garbe's _Indien und das Christentum_, 1914.

But I am not able to accept all his conclusions. The work, to which I

am much indebted, is cited below as Garbe. See also Carpenter, _Theism

in Medieval India_, 1921, pp. 521-524.]

[Footnote 1073: See Garbe and Harnack, _Mission und Ausbreitung des

Christentums_, ii. Chrysostom (Hom. in Joh. 2. 2) writing at the end

of the fourth century speaks of Syrians, Egyptians, Persians and ten

thousand other nations learning Christianity from translations into

their languages, but one cannot expect geographical accuracy in so

rhetorical a passage.]

[Footnote 1074: Eusebius (_Ecc. Hist_. v. 10), supported by notices in

Jerome and others, states that Pantænus went from Alexandria to preach

in India and found there Christians using the Gospel according to

Matthew written in Hebrew characters. It had been left there by the

Apostle Bartholomew. But many scholars are of opinion that by India in

this passage is meant southern Arabia. In these early notices India is

used vaguely for Eastern Parthia, Southern Arabia and even Ethiopia.

It requires considerable evidence to make it probable that at the time

of Pantænus (second century A.D.) any one in India used the Gospel in

a Semitic language.]

[Footnote 1075: See, for the Thomas legend, Garbe, Vincent Smith,

_Early History of India_, 3rd ed. pp. 231 ff., and Philipps in _I.A._.

1903, pp. 1-15 and 145-160.]

[Footnote 1076: _Nat. Hist_. xii. 18 (41).]

[Footnote 1077: II. iv. 12. Strabo died soon after 21 A.D.]

[Footnote 1078: It is seen even in borrowed words, _e.g._ hora =

ὢρα: Jyau = Ζεὺς: Heli = ἢλιος.]

[Footnote 1079: See Kanakasabhai's book, _The Tamils 1800 years ago_.]

[Footnote 1080: Harnack (_Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums_,

II. 126) says "Dass die Thomas-Christen welche man im 16 Jahrhundert

in Indien wieder entdeckte bis ins 3 Jahrhundert hinaufgehen lässt

sich nicht erweisen."]

[Footnote 1081: For Akbar and Christianity, see _Cathay and the Way

Thither_ (Hakluyt Society), vol. IV. 172-3.]

[Footnote 1082: See Gover, _Folk Songs of Southern India_, 1871.]

[Footnote 1083: iv. 3. 95, 98.]

[Footnote 1084: Cf. the Pali verses in the Therîgâthâ, 157: "Hail to

thee, Buddha, who savest me and many others from suffering."]

[Footnote 1085: See Yasht, 13. 81 and Vendidad, 19. 14.]

[Footnote 1086: The liberal ideas as to caste held by some Vishnuites

are due to Râmânand (c. 1400) who was excommunicated by his

coreligionists. I find it hard to agree with Garbe that Râmânuja

admitted the theoretical equality of all castes. He says himself

(Srî-Bhâshya, II. 3. 46, 47) that souls are of the same nature in so

far as they are all parts of Brahman (a proposition which follows from

his fundamental principles and is not at all due to Christian

influence), but that some men are entitled to read the Veda while

others are debarred from the privilege. All fire, he adds, is of the

same nature, but fire taken from the house of a Brahman is pure,

whereas fire taken from a cremation ground is impure. Even so the soul

is defiled by being associated with a low-caste body.]

[Footnote 1087: See Grieson and Garbe. But I have not found a

quotation from any original authority. Mohammed, however, had the same

notion of the Trinity.]

[Footnote 1088: But the Mappilahs or Moplahs appear to have settled on

the Malabar coast about 900 A.D.]

[Footnote 1089: Similarly the neo-Confucianism of the Sung dynasty was

influenced by Mahâyânist Buddhism. Chu-hsi and his disciples condemned

Buddhism, but the new problems and new solutions which they brought

forward would not have been heard of but for Buddhism.]

[Footnote 1090: The idea of the second birth is found in the Majjhima

Nikâya, where in Sutta 86 the converted brigand Angulimala speaks of

his regenerate life as _Yato aham ariyâya jâtiyâ jâto_, "Since I was

born by this noble (or holy) birth." Brahmanic parallels are numerous,

_e.g._ Manu, 2. 146.]

[Footnote 1091: It is said, however, that the celebration of the

Prasâd by the Kabirpanthis bears an extraordinary resemblance to the

Holy Communion of Christians. This may be so, but, as already

mentioned, this late and admittedly composite sect is not typical of

Hinduism as a whole.]

[Footnote 1092: Krishṇajanmâshṭamî, _Memoirs of Academy of

Berlin_, 1867.]

[Footnote 1093: In spite of making enquiry I have never seen or heard

of these representations of a stable myself. As Senart points out

(_Légende_, p. 336) all the personages who play a part in Krishna's

early life are shown in these tableaux in one group, but this does not

imply that shepherds and their flocks are supposed to be present at

his birth.]

[Footnote 1094: Though the ordinary legend does not say that Krishna

was born in a stable yet it does associate him with cattle.]

[Footnote 1095: Pargiter, _Dynasties of the Kali age_, p. xviii.]

[Footnote 1096: Commentary on Pânini, 2. 3. 36, 3. 1. 36 and 3. 2.

111. It seems probable that Pâtanjali knew the story of Krishna and

Kamsa substantially as it is recounted in the Harivaṃsa.]

[Footnote 1097: Section 337. A journey to Śvetadvîpa is also

related in the Kathâsarit sâgara, LIV.]

[Footnote 1098: The most accessible statement of the geographical

fancies here referred to is in Vishnu Purâna, Book II, chap. IV. The

Sea of Milk is the sixth of the seven concentric seas which surround

Jambudvîpa and Mt. Meru. It divides the sixth of the concentric

continents or Śâkadvîpa from the seventh or Pushkara-dvîpa. The

inhabitants of Śâkadvîpa worship Vishnu as the Sun and have this

much reality that at any rate, according to the Vishnu and Bhavishya

Purânas, they are clearly Iranian Sun-worshippers whose priests are

called Magas or Mṛigas. Pushkara-dvîpa is a terrestrial paradise:

the inhabitants live a thousand years, are of the same nature as the

gods and free from sorrow and sin. "The three Vedas, the Purânas,

Ethics and Polity are unknown" among them and "there are no

distinctions of caste or order: there are no fixed institutes." The

turn of fancy which located this non-Brahmanic Utopia in the north

seems akin to that which led the Greeks to talk of Hyperboreans.

Fairly early in the history of India it must have been discovered that

the western, southern, and eastern coasts were washed by the sea so

that the earthly paradise was naturally placed in the north. Thus we

hear of an abode of the blessed called the country of the holy Uttara

Kurus or northern Kurus. Here nothing can be perceived with human

senses (Mahâbh. Sabhâ, 1045), and it is mentioned in the same breath

as Heaven and the city of Indra (_ib._ Anusâs. 2841).

It is not quite clear (neither is it of much moment), whether the

Mahâbhârata intends by Śvetadvîpa one of these concentric world

divisions or a separate island. The Kûrma and Padma Purânas also

mention it as the shining abode of Vishnu and his saintly servants.]

[Footnote 1099: Garbe thinks that the Sea of Milk is Lake Balkash. For

the Pancarâtra see book v. iii. 3.]

[Footnote 1100: See note 2 on last page.]

[Footnote 1101: _E.g._ several works of Lloyd and Saeki, _The

Nestorian Monument in China_.]

CHAPTER LVI

INDIAN INFLUENCE IN THE WESTERN WORLD

The influence of Indian religion on Christianity is part of the wider

question of its influence on the west generally. It is clear that from

200 B.C. until 300 A.D. oriental religion played a considerable part

in the countries round the Mediterranean. The worship of the Magna

Mater was known in Rome by 200 B.C. and that of Isis and Serapis in

the time of Sulla. In the early centuries of the Christian era the

cultus of Mithra prevailed not only in Rome but in most parts of

Europe where there were Roman legions, even in Britain. These

religions may be appropriately labelled with the vague word oriental,

for they are not so much the special creeds of Egypt and Persia

transplanted into Roman soil as fragments, combinations and

adaptations of the most various eastern beliefs. They differed from

the forms of worship indigenous to Greece and Italy in being personal,

not national: they were often emotional and professed to reveal the

nature and destinies of the soul. If we ask whether there are any

definitely Indian elements in all this orientalism, the answer must be

that there is no clear case of direct borrowing, nothing Indian

analogous to the migrations of Isis and Mithra. If Indian thought had

any influence on the Mediterranean it was not immediate, but through

Persia, Babylonia and Egypt. But it is possible that the doctrine of

metempsychosis and the ideal of the ascetic life are echoes of India.

Though the former is found in an incomplete shape among savages in

many parts of the world, there is no indication that it was indigenous

in Egypt, Syria, Babylonia, Asia Minor, Greece or Italy. It crops up

now and again as a tenet held by philosophers or communities of

cosmopolitan tastes such as the Orphic Societies, but usually in

circumstances which suggest a foreign origin. It is said, however, to

have formed part of the doctrines taught by the Druids in Gaul.

Similarly though occasional fasts and other mortifications may have

been usual in the worship of various deities and though the rigorous

Spartan discipline was a sort of military asceticism, still the idea

that the religious life consists in suppressing the passions,

which plays such a large part in Christian monasticism, can be traced

not to any Jewish or European institution but to Egypt. Although

monasticism spread quickly thence to Syria, it is admitted that the

first Christian hermits and monasteries were Egyptian and there is

some evidence for the existence there of pagan hermits[1102]. Egypt

was a most religious country, but it does not appear that asceticism,

celibacy or meditation formed part of its older religious life, and

their appearance in Hellenistic times may be due to a wave of Asiatic

influence starting originally from India.

Looking westwards from India and considering what were the

circumstances favouring the diffusion of Indian ideas, we must note

first that Hindus have not only been in all ages preoccupied by

religious questions but have also had a larger portion of the

missionary spirit than is generally supposed. It is true that in wide

tracts and long periods this spirit has been suppressed by Brahmanic

exclusiveness, but phenomena like the spread of Buddhism and the

establishment of Hinduism in Indo-China and Java speak for themselves.

The spiritual tide flowed eastwards rather than westwards; still it is

probable that its movement was felt, though on a smaller scale, in the

accessible parts of the west. By land, our record tells us mainly of

what came into India from Persia and Bactria, but something must have

gone out. By water we know that at least after about 700 B.C. there

was communication with the Persian Gulf, Arabia and probably the Red

Sea. Semitic alphabets were borrowed: in the Jâtakas we hear of

merchants going to Baveru or Babylon: Solomon's commercial ventures

brought him Indian products. But the strongest testimony to the

dissemination of religious ideas is found in Asoka's celebrated edict

(probably 256 B.C.) in which he claims to have spread the Dhamma as

far as the dominions of Antiochus "and beyond that Antiochus to where

dwell the four kings named Ptolemy, Antigonus, Magas and Alexander."

The kings mentioned are identified as the rulers of Syria, Egypt,

Macedonia, Cyrene and Epirus. Asoka compares his missionary triumphs

to the military conquests of other monarchs. It may be that the

comparison is only too just and that like them he claimed to have

extended his law to regions where his name was unknown. No record of

the arrival of Buddhist missions in any Hellenistic kingdom has

reached us and the language of the edict, if examined critically, is

not precise. On the other hand, however vague it may be, it testifies

to two things. Firstly, Egypt, Syria and the other Hellenistic states

were realities to the Indians of this period, distant but not fabulous

regions. Secondly, the king desired to spread the knowledge of the law

in these countries and this desire was shared, or inspired, by the

monks whom he patronized. It is therefore probable that, though the

difficulties of travelling were great and the linguistic difficulties

of preaching an Indian religion even greater, missionaries set out for

the west and reached if not Macedonia and Epirus, at least Babylon and

Alexandria. We may imagine that they would frequent the temples and

the company of the priests and not show much talent for public

preaching. If no record of them remains, it is not more wonderful than

the corresponding silence in the east about Greek visitors to India.

It is only after the Christian era that we find Apollonius and

Plotinus looking towards India as the home of wisdom. In earlier

periods the definite instances of connection with India are few.

Indian figures found at Memphis perhaps indicate the existence there

of an Indian colony[1103], and a Ptolemaic grave-stone has been

discovered bearing the signs of the wheel and trident[1104]. The

infant deity Horus is represented in Indian attitudes and as sitting

on a lotus. Some fragments of the Kanarese language have been found on

a papyrus, but it appears not to be earlier than the second century

A.D.[1105] In 21 A.D. Augustus while at Athens received an embassy

from India which came _viâ_ Antioch.

It was accompanied by a person described as Zarmanochegas, an Indian

from Bargosa who astonished the Athenians by publicly burning himself

alive[1106]. We also hear of the movement of an Indian tribe from the

Panjab to Parthia and thence to Armenia (149-127 B.C.)[1107], and

of an Indian colony at Alexandria in the time of Trajan. Doubtless

there were other tribal movements and other mercantile colonies which

have left no record, but they were all on a small scale and there was

no general outpouring of India westwards.

The early relations of India were with Babylon rather than with Egypt,

but if Indian ideas reached Babylon they may easily have spread

further. Communication between Egypt and Babylon existed from an early

period and the tablets of Tel-el-Amarna testify to the antiquity and

intimacy of this intercourse. At a later date Necho invaded Babylonia

but was repulsed. The Jews returned from the Babylonian captivity (538

B.C.) with their religious horizon enlarged and modified. They were

chiefly affected by Zoroastrian ideas but they may have become

acquainted with any views and practices then known in Babylon, and not

necessarily with those identified with the state worship, for the

exiles may have been led to associate with other strangers. After

about 535 B.C. the Persian empire extended from the valley of the

Indus to the valley of the Nile and from Macedonia to Babylon. We hear

that in the army which Xerxes led against Greece there were Indian

soldiers, which is interesting as showing how the Persians transported

subject races from one end of their empire to the other. After the

career of Alexander, Hellenistic kingdoms took the place of this

empire and, apart from inroads on the north-west frontier of India,

maintained friendly relations with her. Seleucus Nicator sent

Megasthenes as envoy about 300 B.C. and Ptolemy Philadelphus (285-247

B.C.) a representative named Dionysius. Bindusâra, the father of

Asoka, exchanged missions with Antiochus, and, according to a

well-known anecdote[1108], expressed a wish to buy a professor

(σοφισθήν). But Antiochus replied that Greek professors

were not for sale.

Egyptologists consider that metempsychosis is not part of the earlier

strata of Egyptian religion but appears first about 500 B.C., and

Flinders Petrie refers to this period the originals of the earliest

Hermetic literature. But other authorities regard these works as being

both in substance and language considerably posterior to the

Christian era and as presenting a jumble of Christianity, Neoplatonism

and Egyptian ideas.

I have neither space nor competence to discuss the date of the

Hermetic writings, but it is of importance for the question which we

are considering. They contain addresses to the deity like I am Thou

and Thou art I (_ἐγώ εἰμι σὺ καὶ σὺ ἐγώ_). If such words

could be used in Egypt several centuries before Christ, the

probability of Indian influence seems to me strong, for they would not

grow naturally out of Egyptian or Hellenistic religion. Five hundred

years later they would be less remarkable. Whatever may be the date of

the Hermetic literature, it is certain that the Book of Wisdom and the

writings of Philo are pre-Christian and show a mixture of ideas drawn

from many sources, Jewish, Neoplatonic and Neopythagorean. If these

hospitable systems made the acquaintance of Indian philosophy, we may

be sure that they gave it an unprejudiced and even friendly hearing.

In the centuries just before the Christian era Egypt was a centre of

growth for personal and private religious ideas[1109], hardly

possessing sufficient organization to form what we call a religion,

yet still, inasmuch as they aspired to teach individual souls right

conduct as well as true knowledge, implicitly containing the same

scheme of teaching as the Buddhist and Christian Churches. But it is

characteristic of all this movement that it never attempted to form a

national or universal religion and remained in all its manifestations

individual and personal, connected neither with the secular government

nor with any national cultus. Among these religious ideas were

monotheism mingled with pantheism to the extent of saying that God is

all and all is one: the idea of the Logos or Divine Wisdom, which

ultimately assumes the form that the Word is an emanation or Son of

God; asceticism, or at least the desire to free the soul from the

bondage of the senses; metempsychosis and the doctrine of conversion

or the new birth of the soul, which fits in well with metempsychosis,

though it frequently exists apart from it. I doubt if there is

sufficient reason for attributing the doctrine of the Logos[1110] to

India, but it is possible that asceticism and the belief in

metempsychosis received their first impulse thence. They appear

late and, like the phraseology of the Hermetic books, they do not grow

naturally out of antecedent ideas and practices in Egypt and

Palestine. The life followed by such communities as the Therapeutæ and

Essenes is just such as might have been evolved by seekers after truth

who were trying to put into practice in another country the religious

ideals of India. There are differences: for instance these communities

laboured with their hands and observed the seventh day, but their main

ideas, retirement from the world and suppression of the passions, are

those of Indian monks and foreign to Egyptian and Jewish thought.

The character of Pythagoras's teaching and its relation to Egypt have

been much discussed and the name of the master was clearly extended by

later (and perhaps also by early) disciples to doctrines which he

never held. But it seems indisputable that there were widely spread

both in Greece and Italy societies called Pythagorean or Orphic which

inculcated a common rule of life and believed in metempsychosis. The

rule of life did not as a rule amount to asceticism in the Indian

sense, which was most uncongenial to Hellenic ideas, but it comprised

great self-restraint. The belief in metempsychosis finds remarkably

clear expression: we hear in the Orphic fragments of the circle of

birth and of escape from it, language strikingly parallel to many

Indian utterances and strikingly unlike the usual turns of Greek

speech and thought. Thus the soul is addressed as "Hail thou who hast

suffered the suffering" and is made to declare "I have flown out of

the sorrowful weary wheel[1111]." I see no reason for discrediting the

story that Pythagoras visited Egypt[1112]. He is said to have been a

Samian and during his life (_c._ 500 B.C.) Samos had a special

connection with Egypt, for Polycrates was the ally of Amasis and

assisted him with troops. The date, if somewhat early, is not far

removed from the time when metempsychosis became part of Egyptian

religion. The general opinion of antiquity connected the Orphic

doctrines with Thrace but so little is known of the Thracians and

their origin that this connection does not carry us much further. They

appear, however, to have had relations with Asia Minor and that region

must have been in touch with India[1113]. But Orphism was also

connected with Crete, and Cretan civilization had oriental

affinities[1114].

The point of greatest interest naturally is to determine what were the

religious influences among which Christ grew up. Whatever they may

have been, his originality is not called in question. Mohammed was an

enquirer: in estimating his work we have often to ask what he had

heard about Christianity and Judaism and how far he had understood it

correctly. But neither the Buddha nor Christ were enquirers in this

sense: they accepted the best thought of their time and country: with

a genius which transcends comparison and eludes definition they gave

it an expression which has become immortal. Neither the substance nor

the form of their teaching can reasonably be regarded as identical,

for the Buddha did not treat of God or the divine government of the

world, whereas Christ's chief thesis is that God loves the world and

that therefore man should love God and his fellow men. But though

their basic principles differ, the two doctrines agree in maintaining

that happiness is obtainable not by pleasure or success or philosophy

or rites but by an unselfish life, culminating in the state called

Nirvana or the kingdom of heaven. "The kingdom of heaven is within

you."

In the Gospels Christ teaches neither asceticism nor metempsychosis.

The absence of the former is remarkable: he eats flesh and allows

himself to be anointed: he drinks wine, prescribes its use in religion

and is credited with producing it miraculously when human cellars run

short. But he praises poverty and the poor: the Sermon on the Mount

and the instructions to the Seventy can be put in practice only by

those who, like the members of a religious community, have severed all

worldly ties and though the extirpation of desire is not in the

Gospels held up as an end, the detachment, the freedom from care, lust

and enmity prescribed by the law of the Buddha find their nearest

counterpart in the lives of the Essenes and Therapeutæ. Though we have

no record of Christ being brought into contact with these communities

(for John the Baptist appears to have been a solitary and erratic

preacher) it is probable that their ideals were known to him and

influenced his own. Their rule of life may have been a faint reflex of

Indian monasticism. But the debt to India must not be exaggerated:

much of the oriental element in the Essenes, such as their frequent

purifications and their prayers uttered towards the sun, may be due to

Persian influence. They seem to have believed in the pre-existence of

the soul and to have held that it was imprisoned in the body, but this

hardly amounts to metempsychosis, and metempsychosis cannot be found

in the New Testament[1115]. The old Jewish outlook, preserved by the

Sadducees, appears not to have included a belief in any life after

death, and the supplements to this materialistic view admitted by the

Pharisees hardly amounted to the doctrine of the natural immortality

of the soul but rather to a belief that the just would somehow acquire

new bodies and live again. Thus people were ready to accept John the

Baptist as being Elias in a new form. Perhaps these rather fragmentary

ideas of the Jews are traceable to Egyptian and ultimately to Indian

teaching about transmigration. That belief is said to crop up

occasionally in rabbinical writings but was given no place in orthodox

Christianity[1116].

With regard to the teaching of Christ then, the conclusion must be

that it owes no direct debt to Indian, Egyptian, Persian or other

oriental sources. But inasmuch as he was in sympathy with the more

spiritual elements of Judaism, largely borrowed during the Babylonian

captivity, and with the unworldly and self-denying lives of the

Essenes, the tone of his teaching is nearer to these newer and

imported doctrines than to the old law of Israel[1117].

Some striking parallels have been pointed out between the Gospels and

Indian texts of such undoubted antiquity that if imitation is

admitted, the Evangelists must have been the imitators. Before

considering these instances I invite the reader's attention to two

parallel passages from Shakespeare and the Indian poet Bhartrihari.

The latter is thus translated by Monier Williams[1118]:

Now for a little while a child, and now

An amorous youth; then for a season turned

Into the wealthy householder: then stripped

Of all his riches, with decrepit limbs

And wrinkled frame man creeps towards the end

Of life's erratic course and like an actor

Passes behind Death's curtain out of view.

The resemblance of this to the well-known lines in _As You Like It_,

"All the world's a stage," etc., is obvious, and it is a real

resemblance, although the point emphasized by Bhartrihari is that man

leaves the world like an actor who at the end of the piece slips

behind the curtain, which formed the background of an Indian stage.

But, great as is the resemblance, I imagine that no one would maintain

that it has any other origin than that a fairly obvious thought

occurred to two writers in different times and countries and

suggested similar expressions.

Now many parallels between the Buddhist and Christian scriptures--the

majority as it seems to me of those collected by Edmunds and

Anesaki--belong to this class[1119]. One of the most striking is the

passage in the Vinaya relating how the Buddha himself cared for a

sick monk who was neglected by his colleagues and said to these

latter, "Whosoever would wait upon me let him wait on the sick[1120]."

Here the resemblance to Matthew xxv. 40 and 45 is remarkable, but I do

not imagine that the writer of the Gospel had ever heard or read of

the Buddha's words. The sentiment which prompted them, if none too

common, is at least widespread and is the same that made Confucius

show respect and courtesy to the blind. The setting of the saying in

the Vinaya and in the Gospel is quite different: the common point is

that one whom all are anxious to honour sees that those around him

show no consideration to the sick and unhappy and reproves them in the

words of the text, words which admit of many interpretations, the

simplest perhaps being "I bid you care for the sick: you neglect me if

you neglect those whom I bid you to cherish."

But many passages in Buddhist and Christian writings have been

compared where there is no real parallel but only some word or detail

which catches the attention and receives an importance which it does

not possess. An instance of this is the so-called parable of the

prodigal son in the Lotus Sûtra, Chapter iv, which has often been

compared with Luke xv. 11 ff. But neither in moral nor in plot are the

two parables really similar. The Lotus maintains that there are many

varieties of doctrine of which the less profound are not necessarily

wrong, and it attempts to illustrate this by not very convincing

stories of how a father may withhold the whole truth from his children

for their good. In one story a father and son are separated for fifty

years and _both_ move about: the father becomes very rich, the son

poor. The son in his wanderings comes upon his father's palace and

recognizes no one. The father, now a very old man, knows his son, but

instead of welcoming him at once as his heir puts him through a

gradual discipline and explains the real position only on his

deathbed. These incidents have nothing in common with the parable

related in the Gospel except that a son is lost and found, an event

which occurs in a hundred oriental tales. What is much more

remarkable, though hardly a case of borrowing, is that in both

versions the chief personage, that is Buddha or God, is likened to a

father as he also is in the parable of the carriages[1121].

One of the Jain scriptures called Uttarâdyayana[1122] contains the

following remarkable passage, "Three merchants set out on their

travels each with his capital; one of them gained much, the second

returned with his capital and the third merchant came home after

having lost his capital; The parable is taken from common life; learn

to apply it to the Law. The capital is human life, the gain is

heaven," etc. It is impossible to fix the date of this passage: the

Jain Canon in which it occurs was edited in 454 A.D. but the component

parts of it are much older. It clearly gives a rough sketch of the

idea which is elaborated in the parable of the talents. Need we

suppose that there has been borrowing on either side? Only in a very

restricted sense, I think, if at all. The parable is taken from common

life, as the Indian text truly says. It occurred to some teacher,

perhaps to many teachers independently, that the spiritual life may be

represented as a matter of profit and loss and illustrated by the

conduct of those who employ their money profitably or not. The idea is

natural and probably far older than the Gospels, but the parable of

the talents is an original and detailed treatment of a metaphor which

may have been known to the theological schools of both India and

Palestine. The parable of the sower bears the same relation to the

much older Buddhist comparison of instruction to agriculture[1123] in

which different classes of hearers correspond to different classes of

fields.

I feel considerable hesitation about two other parallels. What

relation does the story of the girl who gives two copper coins to the

Sangha bear to the parable of the widow's mite? It occurs in

Aśvaghosa's Sûtrâlankâra, but though he was a learned poet, it is

very unlikely that he had seen the Gospels, Although his poem ends

like a fairy tale, for the poor girl marries the king's son as the

reward of her piety, yet there is an extraordinary resemblance in the

moral and the detail of the _two_ mites. Can the origin be some

proverb which was current in many countries and worked up differently?

The other parallel is between Christ's meeting with the woman of

Samaria and a story in the Divyâvadâna[1124] telling how Ananda asked

an outcast maiden for water. Here the Indian work, which is probably

not earlier than the third century A.D., might well be the

borrower. Yet the incident is thoroughly Indian. The resemblance is

not in the conversation but in the fact that both in India and

Palestine water given by the impure is held to defile and that in both

countries spiritual teachers rise above such rules. Perhaps Europeans,

to whom such notions of defilement are unknown, exaggerate the

similarity of the narratives, because the similarity of customs on

which it depends seems remarkable.

There are, however, some incidents in the Gospels which bear so great

a likeness to earlier stories found in the Pitakas that the two

narratives can hardly be wholly independent. These are (_a_) the

testimony of Asita and Simeon to the future careers of the infant

Buddha and Christ: (_b_) the temptation of Buddha and Christ: (_c_)

their transfiguration: (_d_) the miracle of walking on the water and

its dependence on faith: (_e_) the miracle of feeding a multitude with

a little bread. The first three parallels relate to events directly

concerning the life of a superhuman teacher, Buddha or Christ. In

saying that the two narratives can hardly be independent, I do not

mean that one is necessarily unhistorical or that the writers of the

Gospels had read the Pitakas. That a great man should have a mental

crisis in his early life and feel that the powers of evil are trying

to divert him from his high destiny is eminently likely. But in the

East superhuman teachers were many and there grew up a tradition,

fluctuating indeed but still not entirely without consistency, as to

what they may be expected to do. Angelic voices at their birth and

earthquakes at their death are coincidences in embellishment on which

no stress can be laid, but when we find that Zoroaster, the Buddha and

Christ were all tempted by the Evil One and all at the same period of

their careers, it is impossible to avoid the suspicion that some of

their biographers were influenced by the idea that such an incident

was to be expected at that point, unless indeed we regard these

so-called temptations as mental crises natural in the development of a

religious genius. Similarly it is most remarkable that all accounts of

the transfiguration of the Buddha and of Christ agree not only in

describing the shining body but in adding a reference to impending

death. The resemblance between the stories of Asita and Simeon seems

to me less striking but I think that they owe their place in both

biographies to the tradition that the superman is recognized and

saluted by an aged Saint soon after birth.

The two stories about miracles are of less importance in substance but

the curious coincidences in detail suggest that they are pieces of

folklore which circulated in Asia and Eastern Europe. The Buddhist

versions occur in the introductions to Jatakas 190 and 78, which are of

uncertain date, though they may be very ancient[1125]. The idea that

saints can walk on the water is found in the Majjhima-nikâya[1126], but

the Jâtaka adds the following particulars. A disciple desirous of seeing

the Buddha begins to walk across a river in an ecstasy of faith. In the

middle, his ecstasy fails and he feels himself sinking but by an effort

of will he regains his former confidence and meets the Buddha safely on

the further bank. In Jâtaka 90 the Buddha miraculously feeds 500

disciples with a single cake and it is expressly mentioned that, after

all had been satisfied, the remnants were so numerous that they had to

be collected and disposed of.

Still all the parallels cited amount to little more than this, that

there was a vague and fluid tradition about the super man's life of

which fragments have received a consecration in literature. The

Canonical Gospels show great caution in drawing on this fund of

tradition, but a number of Buddhist legends make their appearance in

the Apocryphal Gospels and are so obviously Indian in character that

it can hardly be maintained that they were invented in Palestine or

Egypt and spread thence eastwards. Trees bend down before the young

Christ and dragons (nâgas) adore him: when he goes to school to learn

the alphabet he convicts his teacher of ignorance and the good man

faints[1127]. When he enters a temple in Egypt the images prostrate

themselves before him just as they do before the young Gotama in the

temple of Kapilavastu[1128]. Mary is luminous before the birth of

Christ which takes place without pain or impurity[1129]. But the

parallel which is most curious, because the incident related is

unusual in both Indian and European literature, is the detailed

narrative in the Gospel of James, and also in the Lalita-vistara

relating how all activity of mankind and nature was suddenly

interrupted at the moment of the nativity[1130]. Winds, stars and

rivers stayed their motion and labourers stood still in the attitude

in which each was surprised. The same Gospel of James also relates

that Mary when six months old took seven steps, which must surely be

an echo of the legend which attributes the same feat to the infant

Buddha.

Several learned authors have discussed the debt of medieval Christian

legend to India. The most remarkable instance of this is the

canonization by both the Eastern and the Western Church of St. Joasaph

or Josaphat. It seems to be established that this name is merely a

corruption of Bodhisat and that the story in its Christian form goes

back to the religious romance called Barlaam and Joasaph which appears

to date from the seventh century[1131]. It contains the history of an

Indian prince who was converted by the preaching of Barlaam and became

a hermit, and it introduces some of the well-known stories of Gotama's

early life, such as the attempt to hide from him the existence of

sickness and old age, and his meetings with a cripple and an old man.

The legends of St. Placidus (or Hubert) and St. Christopher have also

been identified with the Nigrodha and Sutasoma Jâtakas[1132]. The

identification is not to my mind conclusive nor, if it is admitted, of

much importance. For who doubts that Indian fables reappear in Aesop

or Kalilah and Dimnah? Little is added to this fact if they also

appear in legends which may have some connection with the Church but

which most Christians feel no obligation to believe.

But the occurrence of Indian legends in the Apocryphal Gospels is more

important for it shows that, though in the early centuries of

Christianity the Church was shy of this oriental exuberance, yet the

materials were at hand for those who chose to use them. Many wonders

attending the superman's birth were deliberately rejected but some

were accepted and oriental practices, such as asceticism, appear with

a suddenness that makes the suspicion of foreign influence legitimate.

Not only was monasticism adopted by Christianity but many

practices common to Indian and to Christian worship obtained the

approval of the Church at about the same time. Some of these, such as

incense and the tonsure, may have been legacies from the Jewish and

Egyptian priesthoods. Many coincidences also are due to the fact that

both Buddhism and Christianity, while abolishing animal sacrifices,

were ready to sanction old religious customs: both countenanced the

performance before an image or altar of a ritual including incense,

flowers, lights and singing. This recognition of old and widespread

rites goes far to explain the extraordinary similarity of Buddhist

services in Tibet and Japan (both of which derived their ritual

ultimately from India) to Roman Catholic ceremonial. Yet when all

allowance is made for similar causes and coincidences, it is hard to

believe that a collection of such practices as clerical celibacy,

confession, the veneration of relics, the use of the rosary and bells

can have originated independently in both religions. The difficulty no

doubt is to point out any occasion in the third and fourth centuries

A.D. when oriental Christians other than casual travellers had an

opportunity of becoming acquainted with Buddhist institutions. But the

number of resemblances remains remarkable and some of them--such as

clerical celibacy, relics, and confession--are old institutions in

Buddhism but appear to have no parallels in Jewish, Syrian, or

Egyptian antiquity. Up to a certain point, it is a sound principle

not to admit that resemblances prove borrowing, unless it can be shown

that there was contact between two nations, but it is also certain

that all record of such contact may disappear. For instance, it is

indisputable that Hindu civilization was introduced into Camboja, but

there is hardly any evidence as to how or when Hindu colonists arrived

there, and none whatever as to how or when they left India.

It is in Christian or quasi-Christian heresies--that is, the sects

which were rejected by the majority--that Indian influence is

plainest. This is natural, for if there is one thing obvious in the

history of religion it is that Indian speculation and the Indian view

of life were not congenial to the people of Europe and western Asia.

But some spirits, from the time of Pythagoras onwards, had a greater

affinity for oriental ways of thinking, and such sympathy was

specially common among the Gnostics. Gnosticism consisted in the

combination of Christianity with the already mixed religion which

prevailed in Alexandria, Antioch and other centres, and which was an

uncertain and varying compound of Judaism, Hellenistic thought and the

ideas of oriental countries such as Egypt, Persia and Babylonia. Its

fundamental idea, the knowledge of God or Gnosis, is clearly similar

to the Jñânakâṇḍa of the Hindus[1133], but the emphasis laid on

dualism and redemption is not Indian and the resemblances suggest

little more than that hints may have been taken and worked up

independently. Thus the idea of the Demiurgus is related to the idea

of Iśvara in so far as both imply a distinction not generally

recognized in Europe between the creator of the world and the Highest

Deity, but the Gnostic developments of the Demiurgus idea are

independent. Similarly though the Aeons or emanations of the Gnostics

have to some extent a parallel in the beings produced by Brahmâ,

Prajâpati or Vâsudeva, yet these latter are not characteristic of

Hinduism and still less of Buddhism, for the celestial Buddhas and

Bodhisattvas of the Mahâyâna are justly suspected of being additions

due to Persian influence.

Bardesanes, one of the latest Gnostic teachers (155-233), wrote a book

on Indian religion, quoted by Porphyry. This is important for it shows

that he turned towards India for truth, but though his teaching

included the pre-existence of the soul and some doctrine of Karma, it

was not specially impregnated with Indian ideas. This, however, may be

said without exaggeration of Carpocrates and Basilides who both taught

at Alexandria about 120-130 A.D. Unfortunately we know the views of

these interesting men only from the accounts of their opponents.

Carpocrates[1134] is said to have claimed the power of coercing by

magic the spirits who rule the world and to have taught metempsychosis

in the form that the soul is imprisoned in the body again and again

until it has performed all possible actions, good and evil. Therefore

the only way to escape reincarnation (which is the object of religion)

and to rise to a superior sphere of peace is to perform as much action

as possible, good and evil, for the distinction between the two

depends on intention, not on the nature of deeds. It is only through

faith and love that a man can obtain blessedness. Much of the

above sounds like a caricature, but it may be a misrepresentation of

something analogous to the Indian doctrine that the acts of a Yogi are

neither black nor white and that a Yogi in order to get rid of his

Karma creates and animates many bodies to work it off for him.

In Basilides we find the doctrines not only of reincarnation, which

seems to have been common in Gnostic schools[1135], but of Karma, of

the suffering inherent in existence and perhaps the composite nature

of the soul. He is said to have taught that the martyrs suffered for

their sins, that is to say that souls came into the world tainted with

the guilt of evil deeds done in another existence. This guilt must be

expiated by commonplace misfortune or, for the nobler sort, by

martyrdom. He considered the world process to consist in sorting out

confused things and the gradual establishment of order. This is to

some extent true of the soul as well: it is not an entity but a

compound (compare the Buddhist doctrine of the Skandhas) and the

passions are appendages. He called God οὐκ ὢν θεός which

seems an attempt to express the same idea as Brahman devoid of all

qualities and attributes (nirguṇa). It is significant that the

system of Basilides died out[1136].

A more important sect of decidedly oriental affinities was Manichæism,

or rather it was a truly oriental religion which succeeded in

penetrating to Europe and there took on considerably more Christianity

than it had possessed in its original form. Mani himself (215-276) is

said to have been a native of Ecbatana but visited Afghanistan,

Bactria and India, and his followers carried his faith across Asia to

China, while in the west it was the parent inspiration of the Bogomils

and Albigenses. The nature and sources of his creed have been the

subject of considerable discussion but new light is now pouring in

from the Manichæan manuscripts discovered in Central Asia, some of

which have already been published. These show that about the seventh

century and probably considerably earlier the Manichæism of those

regions had much in common with Buddhism. A Manichæan treatise

discovered at Tun-huang[1137] has the form of a Buddhist Sûtra: it

speaks of Mani as the Tathâgata, it mentions Buddhas of Transformation

(Hua-fo) and the Bodhisattva Ti-tsang. Even more important is the

confessional formula called Khuastuanift[1138] found in the same

locality. It is clearly similar to the Pâtimokkha and besides using

much Buddhist terminology it reckons killing or injuring animals as a

serious sin. It is true that many of these resemblances may be due to

association with Buddhism and not to the original teaching of Mani,

which was strongly dualistic and contained many Zoroastrian and

Babylonian ideas. But it was eclectic and held up an ascetic ideal of

celibacy, poverty and fasting unknown to Persia and Babylon. To take

life was counted a sin and the adepts formed an order apart who lived

on the food given to them by the laity. The more western accounts of

the Manichæans testify to these features as strongly as do the records

from Central Asia and China. Cyril of Jerusalem in his polemic against

them[1139] charges them with believing in retributive metempsychosis,

he who kills an animal being changed into that animal after death. The

Persian king Hormizd is said to have accused Mani of bidding people

destroy the world, that is, to retire from social life and not have

children. Alberuni[1140] states definitely that Mani wrote a book

called Shâburkân in which he said that God sent different messengers

to mankind in different ages, Buddha to India, Zarâdusht to Persia

and Jesus to the west. According to Cyril the Manichæan scriptures

were written by one Scythianus and revised by his disciple Terebinthus

who changed his name to Boddas. This may be a jumble, but it is hard

to stifle the suspicion that it contains some allusion to the Buddha,

Śâkya-muni and the Bo tree.

I think therefore that primitive Manichæism, though it contained less

Buddhism than did its later and eastern forms, still owed to India its

asceticism, its order of celibate adepts and its regard for animal

life. When it spread to Africa and Europe it became more

Christian, just as it became more Buddhist in China, but it is

exceedingly curious to see how this Asiatic religion, like the widely

different religion of Mohammed, was even in its latest phrases the

subject of bitter hatred and persistent misrepresentation.

Finally, do the Neoplatonists, Neopythagoreans and other pagan

philosophers of the early centuries after Christ owe any debt to

India? Many of them were consciously endeavouring to arrest the

progress of Christianity by transforming philosophy into a

non-Christian religion. They gladly welcomed every proof that the

higher life was not to be found exclusively or most perfectly in

Christianity. Hence bias, if not accurate knowledge, led them to

respect all forms of eastern mysticism. Apollonius is said to have

travelled in India[1141]: in the hope of so doing Plotinus accompanied

the unfortunate expedition of Gordian but turned back when it failed.

We may surmise that for Plotinus the Indian origin of an idea would

have been a point in its favour, although his writings show no special

hostility to Christianity[1142]. So far as I can judge, his system

presents those features which might be expected to come from sympathy

with the Indian temperament, aided perhaps not by reading but by

conversation with thoughtful orientals at Alexandria and elsewhere.

The direct parallels are not striking. Plato himself had entertained

the idea of metempsychosis and much that seems oriental in Plotinus

may be not a new importation but the elaboration of Plato's views in a

form congenial to the age[1143]. Affirmations that God is τὸ ὄυ and τὸ ἕυ

are not so much borrowings from the Vedânta philosophy as a

re-statement of Hellenic ideas in a mystic and quietist spirit, which

may owe something to India. But Plotinus seems to me nearer to India

than were the Gnostics and Manichæans, because his teaching is not

dualistic to the same extent. He finds the world unsatisfying not

because it is the creation of the Evil One, but because it is

transitory, imperfect and unreal.

His system has been called dynamic pantheism and this description

applies also to much Indian theology which regards God in himself as

devoid of all qualities and yet the source of the forces which move

the universe. He held that there are four stages of being: primæval

being, the ideal world, the soul and phenomena. This, if not exactly

parallel to anything in Indian philosophy, is similar in idea to the

evolutionary theories of the Sânkhya and the phases of conditioned

spirit taught by many Vishnuite sects.

For Plotinus neither moral good nor evil is ultimate: the highest

principle, like Brahman, transcends both and is beyond good

(ὑπεράγαθον). The highest morality is a morality of inaction and

detachment: fasting and abstinence from pleasure are good and so is

meditation, but happiness comes in the form of ecstasy and union with

God. In human life such union cannot be permanent, though while the

ecstasy lasts it affords a resting place on the weary journey, but

after death it can be permanent: the divine within us can then return

to the universal divine. In these ideas there is the real spirit of

India.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1102: See Scott Moncrieff, _Paganism and Christianity in

Egypt_, p. 199. Petrie, _Personal Religion in Egypt_, p. 62. But for a

contrary view see Preuschen, _Mönchtum und Serapiskult_, 1903.]

[Footnote 1103: Flinders Petrie, _Man_, 1908, p. 129.]

[Footnote 1104: _J.R.A.S._ 1898, p. 875.]

[Footnote 1105: Hultzsch, _Hermas_, xxxix. p. 307, and _J.R.A.S._

1904, p. 399.]

[Footnote 1106: Nicolaus Damascenus, quoted by Strabo, xv. 73. See

also Dion Caasius, ix. 58, who calls the Indian Zarmaros.

Zarmanochegas perhaps contains the two words Śramana and Acârya.]

[Footnote 1107: _See J.R.A.S._ 1907, p. 968.]

[Footnote 1108: See Vincent Smith, _Early History of India_, edition

III. p. 147. The original source of the anecdote is Hegesandros in

Athenæus, 14. 652.]

[Footnote 1109: See Flinders Petrie, _Personal Religion in Egypt

before Christianity_, 1909.]

[Footnote 1110: As I have pointed out elsewhere there is little real

analogy between the ideas of Logos and Śabda.]

[Footnote 1111: _Κύκλου δ᾽ ἔξεπταν βαθυπένθεος ἀργαλέοιο_ From the

tablet found at Compagno. Cf. Proclus in Plat. _Tim._ V. 330, _ἧς καὶ

οἳ παρ᾽ Ὄρφει τῷ Διονύσῳ καὶ τῇ κόρῃ τελούμενοι τυχεῖν εὔχονται Κύκλου

τ᾽ αὖ λῆξαι καὶ ἀναπνεῦσαι κακότητος_. See J.E. Harrison, _Proleg. to

the study of Greek Religion_, 1908, chap. XI. and appendix.]

[Footnote 1112: Burnet, _Early Greek Philosophy_, p. 94, says that it

first occurs in the Busiris of Isocrates and does not believe that the

account in Herodotus implies that Pythagoras visited Egypt.]

[Footnote 1113: Whatever may have been the true character and history

of the enigmatic people of Mitanni it appears certain that they adored

deities with Indian names about 1400 B.C. But they may have been

Iranians, and it may be doubted if the Aryan Indians of this date

believed in metempsychosis.]

[Footnote 1114: J.E. Harrison, _l.c._ pp. 459 and 564, seems to think

that Orphism migrated from Crete to Thrace.]

[Footnote 1115: The question of the Disciples in John ix. 2. Who did

sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? must if taken

strictly imply some form of pre-existence. But it is a popular

question, not a theological statement, and I doubt if severely logical

deductions from it are warranted.]

[Footnote 1116: The pre-existence of the soul seems to be implied in

the Book of Wisdom viii. 20. The remarkable expression in the Epistle

of James iii. 6 τρόχος τἣς γενήσεως suggests a comparison with the

Orphic expressions quoted above and Samsâra, but it is difficult to

believe it can mean more than "the course of nature."]

[Footnote 1117: As in their legends, so in their doctrines, the

uncanonical writings are more oriental than the canonical and contain

more pantheistic and ascetic sayings. _E.g._ "Where there is one

alone, I am with him. Raise the stone and thou shalt find me: cleave

the wood and I am there" (_Oxyrhynchus Logia_). "I am thou and thou

art I and wheresoever thou art I am also: and in all things I am

distributed and wheresoever thou wilt thou gatherest me and in

gathering me thou gatherest thyself" (Gospel of Eve in Epiph. _Haer_.

xxvi. 3). "When the Lord was asked, when should his kingdom come, he

said: When two shall be one and the without as the within and the male

with the female, neither male nor female" (_Logia_).]

[Footnote 1118: _Hinduism_, p. 549. The original is to be found in

Bhartrihari's Vairogyaśatakam, 112.]

[Footnote 1119: _The Buddhist and Christian Gospels_, 4th ed. 1909.]

[Footnote 1120: Mahâvagga, VIII. 26.]

[Footnote 1121: _Lotus_, chap. V.]

[Footnote 1122: VII. 15-21 in _S.B.E._ XLV. p. 29.]

[Footnote 1123: Sam. Nik. XLII. VII.]

[Footnote 1124: Ed. Cowell, p. 611.]

[Footnote 1125: See Rhys Davids, _Buddhist India_, p. 206, and

Winternitz, _Ges. Ind. Lit_. II. 91.]

[Footnote 1126: Maj. Nik. VI.]

[Footnote 1127: Gospel of Thomas: longer version, chaps, VI. XIV. See

also the Arabic and Syriac Gospels of the Infancy, cf. Lalita-vistara,

chap. X.]

[Footnote 1128: Pseudo-Matthew, chap, XXII.-XXIV. and Lal. Vist. chap.

VIII.]

[Footnote 1129: Pseudo-Matthew, XIII. Cf. Dig. Nik. 14 and Maj. Nik.

123. Neumann's notes on the latter give many curious medieval

parallels.]

[Footnote 1130: See Gospel of James, XVIII. and Lal. Vist. VII. _ad

init_.]

[Footnote 1131: See Rhys Davids, _Buddhist Birth stories_, 1880,

introduction; and Joseph Jacobs, _Barlaam and Josaphat_, 1896.]

[Footnote 1132: Nos. 12 and 537.]

[Footnote 1133: As is also the idea that γνὣσις implies a special

ascetic mode of life, the βίος γνωστικός.]

[Footnote 1134: Irenæus, I. XXV.]

[Footnote 1135: It appears in the Pistis Sophia which perhaps

represents the school of Valentinus. Basilides taught that "unto the

third and fourth generation" refers to transmigration (see Clem. Al.

fragm. sect. 28 Op., ed. Klotz, IV. 14), and Paul's saying "I was

alive without the law once" (Rom. vii. 9), to former life as an animal

(Orig. in Ep. ad Rom. V. Op. iv. 549).]

[Footnote 1136: For Gnosticism, see _Buddhist Gnosticism_, J. Kennedy

in _J.R.A.S._ 1902, and Mead, _Fragments of a faith Forgotten_.]

[Footnote 1137: Chavannes et Pelliot, "Un traité Manichéen retrouvé en

Chine," _J.A._ 1911, I, and 1913, II.]

[Footnote 1138: Le Coq in _J.R.A.S._ 1911, p. 277.]

[Footnote 1139: Catechetic Lectures, VI. 20 ff. The whole polemic is

curious and worth reading.]

[Footnote 1140: Alberuni, _Chronology of ancient nations_, trans.

Sachau, p. 190.]

[Footnote 1141: The account in Philostratus (books II. and III.) reads

like a romance and hardly proves that Apollonius went to India, but

still there is no reason why he should not have done so.]

[Footnote 1142: He wrote, however, against certain Gnostics.]

[Footnote 1143: Similarly Sallustius (_c._ 360 A.D.), whose object was

to revive Hellenism, includes metempsychosis in his creed and thinks

it can be proved. See translation in Murray, _Four Stages of Greek

Religion_, p. 213.]

CHAPTER LVII

PERSIAN INFLUENCE IN INDIA

Our geographical and political phraseology about India and Persia

obscures the fact that in many periods the frontier between the two

countries was uncertain or not drawn as now. North-western India and

eastern Persia must not be regarded as water-tight or even merely

leaky compartments. Even now there are more Zoroastrians in India than

in Persia and the Persian sect of Shiite Mohammedans is powerful and

conspicuous there. In former times it is probable that there was often

not more difference between Indian and Iranian religion than between

different Indian sects.

Yet the religious temperaments of India and Iran are not the same.

Zoroastrianism has little sympathy for pantheism or asceticism: it

does not teach metempsychosis or the sinfulness of taking life. Images

are not used in worship[1144], God and his angels being thought of as

pure and shining spirits. The foundation of the system is an

uncompromising dualism of good and evil, purity and impurity, light

and darkness. Good and evil are different in origin and duality will

be abolished only by the ultimate and complete victory of the good. In

the next world the distinction between heaven and hell is equally

sharp but hell is not eternal[1145].

The pantheon and even the ritual of the early Iranians resembled those

of the Veda and we can only suppose that the two peoples once lived

and worshipped together. Subsequently came the reform of Zoroaster

which substituted theism and dualism for this nature worship. For

about two centuries, from 530 B.C. onwards, Gandhara and other parts

of north-western India were a Persian province. Between the time of

Zoroaster (whatever that may be) and this period we cannot say what

were the relations of Indian and Iranian religions, but after the

seventh century they must have flourished in the same region.

Aristobulus[1146], speaking of Taxila in the time of Alexander the

Great, describes a marriage market and how the dead were devoured by

vultures. These are Babylonian and Persian customs, and doubtless were

accompanied by many others less striking to a foreign tourist. Some

hold that the Zoroastrian scriptures allude to disputes with

Buddhists[1147].

Experts on the whole agree that the most ancient Indian architecture

which has been preserved--that of the Maurya dynasty--has no known

antecedents in India, but both in structure (especially the pillars)

and in decoration is reminiscent of Persepolis, just as Asoka's habit

of lecturing his subjects in stone sermons and the very turns of his

phrases recall the inscriptions of Darius[1148]. And though the king's

creed is in some respects--such as his tenderness for animal

life--thoroughly Indian, yet this cannot be said of his style and

choice of themes as a whole. His marked avoidance of theology and

philosophy, his insistence on ethical principles such as truth, and

his frank argument that men should do good in order that they may fare

happily in the next world, suggest that he may have become familiar

with the simple and practical Zoroastrian outlook[1149], perhaps when

he was viceroy of Taxila in his youth. But still he shows no trace of

theism or dualism: morality is his one concern, but it means for him

doing good rather than suppressing evil.

After the death of Asoka his Empire broke up and races who were

Iranian in culture, if not always in blood, advanced at its expense.

Dependencies of the Persian or Parthian empire extended into India or

like the Satrapies of Mathurâ and Saurâshṭra lay wholly within it.

The mixed civilization which the Kushans brought with them included

Zoroastrianism, as is shown by the coins of Kanishka, and late Kushan

coins indicate that Sassanian influence had become very strong in

northern India when the dynasty collapsed in the third century A.D.

I see no reason to suppose that Gotama himself was influenced by

Iranian thought. His fundamental ideas, his view of life and his

scheme of salvation are truly Hindu and not Iranian. But if the

childhood of Buddhism was Indian, it grew to adolescence in a motley

bazaar where Persians and their ways were familiar. Though the

Buddhism exported to Ceylon escaped this phase, not merely Mahayanism

but schools like the Sarvâstivadins must have passed through it. The

share of Zoroastrianism must not be exaggerated. The metaphysical and

ritualistic tendencies of Indian Buddhism are purely Hindu, and if its

free use of images was due to any foreign stimulus, that stimulus was

perhaps Hellenistic. But the altruistic morality of Mahayanism, though

not borrowed from Zoroastrianism, marks a change and this change may

well have occurred among races accustomed to the preaching of active

charity and dissatisfied with the ideals of self-training and lonely

perfection. And Zoroastrian influence is I think indubitable in the

figures of the great Bodhisattvas, even Maitreya[1150], and above all

in Amitâbha and his paradise. These personalities have been adroitly

fitted into Indian theology but they have no Indian lineage and, in

spite of all explanations, Amitâbha and the salvation which he offers

remain in strange contradiction with the teaching of Gotama. I have

shown elsewhere[1151] what close parallels may be found in the Avesta

to these radiant and benevolent genii and to the heaven of boundless

light which is entered by those who repeat the name of its master.

Also there is good evidence to connect the early worship of Amitâbha

with Central Asia. Later Iranian influence may have meant

Mithraism and Manichæism as well as Zoroastrianism and the school of

Asanga perhaps owes something to these systems[1152]. They may have

brought with them fragments of Christianity or doctrines similar to

Christianity but I think that all attempts to derive Amitâbhist

teaching from Christianity are fanciful. The only point which the two

have in common is salvation by faith, and that doctrine is certainly

older than Christianity. Otherwise the efforts of Amitâbha to save

humanity have no resemblance to the Christian atonement. Nor do the

relations between the various Buddhas and Bodhisattvas recall the

Trinity but rather the Persian Fravashis.

Persian influences worked more strongly on Buddhism than on Hinduism,

for Buddhism not only flourished in the frontier districts but

penetrated into the Tarim basin and the region of the Oxus which lay

outside the Indian and within the Iranian sphere. But they affected

Hinduism also, especially in the matter of sun-worship. This of course

is part of the oldest Vedic religion, but a special form of it,

introduced about the beginning of our era, was a new importation and

not a descendant of the ancient Indian cult[1153].

The Brihatsaṃhita[1154] says that the Magas, that is Magi, are the

priests of the sun and the proper persons to superintend the

consecration of temples and images dedicated to that deity, but the

clearest statements about this foreign cult are to be found in the

Bhavishya Purana[1155] which contains a legend as to its introduction

obviously based upon history. Sâmba, the son of Krishna, desiring to

be cured of leprosy from which he suffered owing to his father's

curse, dedicated a temple to the sun on the river Candrabhâgâ, but

could find no Brahmans willing to officiate in it. By the advice of

Gauramukha, priest of King Ugrasena, confirmed by the sun himself, he

imported some Magas from Śâkadvîpa[1156], whither he flew on the

bird Garuda[1157]. That this refers to the importation of

Zoroastrian priests from the country of the Śâkas (Persia or the

Oxus regions) is made clear by the account of their customs--such as

the wearing of a girdle called Avyanga[1158]--given by the Purana. It

also says that they were descended from a child of the sun called

Jaraśabda or Jaraśasta, which no doubt represents Zarathustra.

The river Candrabhâgâ is the modern Chenab and the town founded by

Samba is Mûlasthana or Multan, called Mu-la-san-pu-lu by the Chinese

pilgrim Hsüan Chuang. The Bhavishya Purana calls the place Sâmbapuri

and the Chinese name is an attempt to represent Mûlasâmba-puri. Hsüan

Chuang speaks enthusiastically of the magnificent temple[1159], which

was also seen by Alberuni but was destroyed by Aurungzeb.

Târanâtha[1160] relates how in earlier times a king called Śrî

Harsha burnt alive near Multan 12,000 adherents of the Mleccha sect

with their books and thereby greatly weakened the religion of Persians

and Sakas for a century. This legend offers difficulties but it shows

that Multan was regarded as a centre of Zoroastrianism.

Multan is in the extreme west Of India, but sun temples are found in

many other parts, such as Gujarat, Gwalior and the district of Gaya,

where an inscription has been discovered at Govindapur referring to

the legend of Sâmba. This same legend is also related in the Kapila

Saṃhita, a religious guide-book for Orissa, in connection with the

great Sun temple of Konarak[1161].

In these temples the sun was represented by images, Hindu convention

thus getting the better of Zoroastrian prejudices, but the costume of

the images shows their origin, for the Brihatsaṃhitâ[1162] directs

that Sûrya is to be represented in the dress of the northerners,

covered from the feet upwards and wearing the girdle called avyaṇga

or viyaṇga. In Rajputana I have seen several statues of him in high

boots and they are probably to be found elsewhere.

Fortuitously or otherwise, the cult of the sun was often associated

with Buddhism, as is indicated by these temples in Gaya and Orissa and

by the fact that the Emperor Harsha styles his father, grandfather and

great-grandfather _paramâdityabhakta_, great devotees of the

sun[1163]. He himself, though a devout Buddhist, also showed honour to

the image of Sûrya, as we hear from Hsüang Chuang.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1144: They are forbidden by strict theology, but in practice

there are exceptions, for instance, the winged figure believed to

represent Ahura Mazda, found on Achæmenian reliefs.]

[Footnote 1145: Though the principles of Zoroastrianism sound

excellent to Europeans, I cannot discover that ancient Persia was

socially or politically superior to India.]

[Footnote 1146: See Strabo, XV. 62. So, too, the Pitakas seem to

regard cemeteries as places where ordinary corpses are thrown away

rather than buried or burnt. In Dig. Nik. III, the Buddha says that

the ancient Sakyas married their sisters. Such marriages are said to

have been permitted in Persia.]

[Footnote 1147: "He who returns victorious from discussions with

Gaotama the heretic," Farvadin Yasht in _S.B.E._ XXIII. p. 184. The

reference of this passage to Buddhism has been much disputed and I am

quite incompetent to express any opinion about it. But who is Gaotama

if not the Buddha? It is true that there were many other Gautamas of

moderate eminence in India, but would any of them have been known in

Persia?]

[Footnote 1148: The inscriptions near the tomb of Darius at

Nakshi-Rustam appear to be hortatory like those of Asoka. See Williams

Jackson, _Persia_, p. 298 and references. The use of the Kharoshtri

script and of the word _dipi_ has also been noted as indicating

connection with Persia.]

[Footnote 1149: Perhaps the marked absence of figures representing the

Buddha in the oldest Indian sculptures, which seems to imply that the

holiest things must not be represented, is due to Persian sentiment.]

[Footnote 1150: Strictly speaking there is nothing final about

Maitreya who is merely the next in an infinite series of Buddhas, but

practically his figure has many analogies to Soshyos or Saoshant, the

Parsi saviour and renovator of the world.]

[Footnote 1151: See chap. XLI. p. 220.]

[Footnote 1152: See chap, on Mahâyâna, VI.]

[Footnote 1153: A convenient statement of what is known about this

cult will be found in Bhandarkar, _Vaishnavism and Saivism_, part II.

chap. XVI.]

[Footnote 1154: Chap. 60. 19. The work probably dates from about 650

A.D.]

[Footnote 1155: Chap. 139. See, for extracts from the text, Aufrecht.

Cat. Cod. Sansc. p. 30.]

[Footnote 1156: For Śâkadvîpa see Vishnu, p. II. IV. where it is

said that Brahmans are called there Mṛiga or Maga and Kshattriyas

Mâgadha. The name clearly means the country of the Śâkas who were

regarded as Zoroastrians, whether they were Iranian by race or not.

But the topography is imaginary, for in this fanciful geography India

is the central continent and Śakadvîpa the sixth, whereas if it

means Persia or the countries of the Oxus it ought to be near India.]

[Footnote 1157: The Garuḍa may itself be of Persian provenance, for

birds play a considerable part in Persian mythology.]

[Footnote 1158: The Aivyâonghen of the Avesta.]

[Footnote 1159: Watters, vol. II. 254, and _Life_, chap. IV.]

[Footnote 1160: Târanâtha, tr. Schiefner, p. 128, and Vincent Smith's

remarks in _Early History_, p. 347, note 2.]

[Footnote 1161: See Râjendralâla Mitra, _Antiquities of Orissa_, vol.

n. p. 145. He also quotes the Sâmba Purâna. The temple is said to have

been built between 1240 and 1280 but the beauty of its architecture

suggests an earlier date.]

[Footnote 1162: 58. 47.]

[Footnote 1163: See Epig. Ind. 72-73.]

CHAPTER LVIII

MOHAMMEDANISM IN INDIA

Let us now turn to Mohammedanism. This is different from the cases

which we have been considering and we need not trouble ourselves with

any enquiry into opportunities and possibilities. The presence and

strength of the Prophet's religion in India are patent facts and it is

surprising that the result has not been greater.

The chief and most obvious method by which Islam influenced India was

the series of invasions, culminating in the Mughal conquest, which

poured through the mountain passes of the north-west frontier. But

there was also long established communication and to some extent

intermigration between the west coast and Mohammedan countries such as

Arabia and Persia. Compared with the enormous political and social

changes wrought by the land invasions, the results of this maritime

intercourse may seem unworthy of mention. Yet for the interchange of

ideas it was not without importance, the more so as it was

unaccompanied by violence and hostility. Thus the Mappilas or Moplahs

of Malabar appear to be the descendants of Arab immigrants who arrived

by sea about 900 A.D., and the sects known as Khojas and Bohras owe

their conversion to the zeal of Arab and Persian missionaries who

preached in the eleventh century. Apart from Mohammedan conquests

there must have been at this time in Gujarat, Bombay, and on the west

coast generally some knowledge of the teaching of Islam.

In the annals of invasions and conquests several stages can be

distinguished. First we have the Arab conquest of Sind in 712, which

had little effect. In 1021 Mahmud of Ghazni annexed the Panjab. He

conducted three campaigns against other kingdoms of India but, though

he sacked Muttra, Somnath and other religious centres, he did not

attempt to conquer these regions, still less to convert them to Islam.

The period of conquests as distinguished from raids did not begin

until the end of the twelfth century when Muhammad Ghori began his

campaigns and succeeded in making himself master of northern

India, which from 1193 to 1526 was ruled by Mohammedan dynasties,

mostly of Afghan or Turki descent. In the south the frontiers of

Vijayanagar marked the limits of Islam. To the north of them Rajputana

and Orissa still remained Hindu states, but with these exceptions the

Government was Mohammedan. In 1526 came the Mughal invasion, after

which all northern India was united under one Mohammedan Emperor for

about two centuries. Aurungzeb (1659-1707) was a fanatical Mohammedan:

his intolerant reign marked the beginning of disintegration in the

Empire and aroused the opposition of the Mahrattas and Sikhs. But

until this period Mohammedan rule was not marked by special bigotry or

by any persistent attempt to proselytize. A woeful chronicle of

selected outrages can indeed be drawn up. In the great towns of the

north hardly a temple remained unsacked and most were utterly

destroyed. At different periods individuals, such as Sikander Lodi of

Delhi and Jelaluddin (1414-1430) in Bengal, raged against Hinduism and

made converts by force. But such acts are scattered over a long period

and a great area; they are not characteristic of Islam in India.

Neither the earlier Mughal Emperors nor the preceding Sultans were of

irreproachable orthodoxy. Two of them at least, Ala-ud-Din and Akbar,

contemplated founding new religions of their own. Many of them were

connected with Hindu sovereigns by marriage or political alliances.

The works of Alberuni and Mohsin Fani show that educated Mohammedans

felt an interest not only in Indian science but in Indian religion. In

the Panjab and Hindustan Islam was strengthened by immigrations of

Mohammedan tribes from the north-west extending over many centuries.

Mohammedan sultans and governors held their court in the chief cities,

which thus tended to become Mohammedan not only by natural attraction

but because high caste Hindus preferred to live in the country and

would not frequent the company of those whom they considered as

outcasts. Still, Hindus were often employed as accountants and revenue

officers. All non-Moslims had to pay the jiziya or poll tax, and the

remission of this impost accorded to converts was naturally a powerful

incentive to change of faith. Yet Mohammedanism cannot record any

wholesale triumph in India such as it has won in Persia, Egypt and

Java. At the present day about one-fifth of the population are Moslim.

The strength of Islam in the Panjab is due to immigration as well as

conversion[1164], but it was embraced by large numbers in Kashmir and

made rapid progress in Oudh and Eastern Bengal. The number of

Mohammedans in Bengal (twenty-five millions out of a total of

sixty-two in all India) is striking, seeing that the province is out

of touch with the chief Mohammedan centres, but is explicable by the

fact that Islam had to deal here not with an educated and organized

Hindu community but with imperfectly hinduized aboriginal races, who

welcomed a creed with no caste distinctions. Yet, apart from the

districts named, which lie on the natural line of march from the

Panjab down the Ganges to the sea, it made little progress. It has not

even conquered the slopes of the Himalayas or the country south of the

Jumna. If we deduct from the Mohammedan population the descendants of

Mohammedan immigrants and of those who, like the inhabitants of

Eastern Bengal, were not Hindus when they embraced the faith, the

impression produced by Islam on the religious thought of India is not

great, considering that for at least five centuries its temporal

supremacy was hardly contested.

It is not until the time of Kabir that we meet with a sect in which

Hindu and Mohammedan ideas are clearly blended, but it may be that the

theology of Râmânuja and Madhva, of the Lingayats and Sivaite sects of

the south, owes something to Islam. Its insistence on the unity and

personality of God may have vivified similar ideas existing within

Hinduism, but the expression which they found for themselves is not

Moslim in tone, just as nowadays the Arya Samaj is not European in

tone. Yet I think that the Arya Samaj would never have come into being

had not Hindus become conscious of certain strong points in European

religion. In the north it is natural that Moslim influence should not

have made itself felt at once. Islam came first as an enemy and a

raider and was no more sympathetic to the Brahmans than it was to the

Greek Church in Europe. Though Indian theism may sometimes seem

practically equivalent to Islam, yet it has a different and gentler

tone, and it often rests on the idea that God, the soul and matter are

all separate and eternal, an idea foreign to Mohammed's doctrine of

creation. But from the fifteenth century onwards we find a series

of sects which are obviously compromises and blends. Advances are made

from both sides. Thoughtful Mohammedans see the profundity of Hindu

theology: liberal Hindus declare that no caste or condition, including

birth in a Moslim family, disqualifies man for access to God.

The fusion of Islam with Hinduism exhibited in these sects has for its

basis the unity and omnipresence of God in the light of which minor

differences have no existence. But fusion also arises from an opposite

tendency, namely the toleration by Indian Moslims of Hindu ideas and

practices, especially respect for religious teachers and their

deification after death. While known by some such title as saint,

which does not shock unitarian susceptibility, they are in practice

honoured as godlings. The bare simplicity of the Arabian faith has not

proved satisfying to other nations, and Turks, Persians and Indians,

even when professing orthodoxy, have allowed embellishments and

accretions. Such supplementary beliefs thrive with special luxuriance

in India, where a considerable portion of the Moslim population are

descended from persons who accepted the new faith unwillingly or from

interested motives. They brought with them a plentiful baggage of

superstitions and did not attempt to sever the ties which bound them

to their Hindu neighbours. In the last century the efforts of the

Wahabis and other reformers are said to have been partly successful in

purifying Islam from Hindu observances, but even now the mixture is

noticeable, especially in the lower classes. Brahmans are employed to

cast horoscopes, Hindu ceremonies are observed in connection with

marriages and funerals, and the idea of pollution by eating with

unbelievers is derived from caste rules, for Mohammedans in other

countries have no objection to eating with Christians. Numerous sacred

sites, such as the shrine of Sheikh Chisti at Ajmere and of Bhairav

Nath at Muttra[1165], are frequented by both Moslims and Hindus, and

it is an interesting parallel to find that the chief Moslim shrines of

Turkestan are erected on spots which were once Buddhist sanctuaries.

Sometimes the opposite happens: even Brahmans are known to adopt the

observances of Shiahs[1166]. But on the whole it is chiefly the

Mohammedans who borrow, not the main doctrines of Hinduism, but

popular magic and demonology. Ignorant Mohammedans in Bengal worship

Sitalâ, Kâlî, Dharmarâj, Baidyanath and other Hindu deities and also

respect certain mythical beings who seem to have a Moslim origin, but

to have acquired strange characters in the course of time. Such are

Khwaja Khizr who lives in rivers, Zindah Ghazi who rides on a tiger in

the Sandarbans, and Sultan Shahid who is said to be the bodyguard and

lover of Devî. But it is in the adoration of Pirs that this fusion of

the two religions is most apparent. A Pir is the Moslim equivalent of

a Guru and distinct from the Mollahs or official hierarchy. Just as

Hindus receive initiation from their Guru so most Moslims, except the

Wahabis and other purists, make a profession of faith before their

Pir, accept his guidance and promise him obedience. When an eminent

Pir dies his tomb becomes a place of prayer and pilgrimage. Even

educated Mohammedans admit that Pirs can intercede with the Almighty

and the uneducated offer to them not only direct supplications but

even sacrifices. The Shrine of an important Pir, such as Hazrat

Moin-ud-Din Chisti at Ajmere, is an edifice dedicated to a superhuman

being as much as any Hindu temple.

This veneration of saints attains its strangest development in the

sect of the Panchpiriyas or worshippers of the five Pirs. They are

treated by the last census of India as "Hindus whose religion has a

strong Mohammedan flavour[1167]." There is no agreement as to who the

five saints or deities are, but though the names vary from place to

place they usually comprise five of the best known semi-mythical

Pirs[1168]. Whoever they may be, they are worshipped under the form of

a small tomb with five domes or of a simple mound of clay set in the

corner of a room. Every Wednesday the mound is washed and offerings of

flowers and incense are made. A somewhat similar sect are the Mâlkânas

of the Panjab. These appear to be Hindus formerly converted to Islam

and now in process of reverting to Hinduism.

The influence of Hinduism on Indian Mohammedanism is thus obvious.

It is responsible for the addition to the Prophet's creed of much

superstition but also for rendering it less arid and more human. It is

harder to say how far Moslim mysticism and Sufiism are due to the same

influence. History and geography raise no difficulties to such an

origin. Arabia was in touch with the western coast of India for

centuries before the time of Mohammed: the same is true of the Persian

Gulf and Bagdad, and of Balkh and other districts near the frontiers

of India. But recent writers on Sufiism[1169] have shown a disposition

to seek its origin in Neoplatonism rather than in the east. This

hypothesis, like the other, presents no geographical difficulties.

Many Arab authors, such as Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Averroes (Ibn

Rushd) were influenced by Greek Philosophy: Neoplatonists are said to

have taken refuge in Persia at the Court of Nushirwan (_c._ A.D. 532):

the Fihrist (_c._ 988) mentions Porphyry and Plotinus. If, therefore,

Sufiism, early or late, presents distinct resemblances to

Neoplatonism, we need not hesitate to ascribe them to direct

borrowing, remembering that Neoplatonism itself contains echoes of

India. But, admitting that much in the doctrine of the Sufis can be

found to the west as well as to the east of the countries where they

flourished, can it be said that their general tone is Neoplatonic?

Amongst their characteristics are pantheism; the institution of

religious orders and monasteries; the conception of the religious

life as a path or journey; a bold use of language in which metaphors

drawn from love, wine and music are freely used in speaking of divine

things and, although the doctrine of metempsychosis may be repudiated

as too obviously repugnant to Islam, a tendency to believe in

successive existences or states of the soul. Some of these features,

such as the use of erotic language, may be paralleled in other ancient

religions as well as Hinduism but the pantheism which, not content

with speaking of the soul's union with God, boldly identifies the soul

with the divinity and says I am God, does not seem traceable in

Neoplatonism. And though a distinction may justly be drawn between

early and later Sufiism and Indian influence be admitted as stronger

in the later developments, still an early Sufi, Al-Hallaj, was

executed in 922 A.D. for saying Ana 'l-Haqq, I am the Truth or

God, and we are expressly told that he visited India to study magic.

Many important Sufis made the same journey or at least came within the

geographical sphere of Indian influence. Faridu-'d-Din Attar travelled

in India and Turkestan; Jalalu-'d-Din er-Rumi was born at Balkh, once

a centre of Buddhism: Sa'di visited Balkh, Ghazna, the Panjab, and

Gujarat, and investigated Hindu temples[1170]. Hafiz was invited to

the Deccan by Sultan Muhammad Bahmani and, though shipwreck prevented

the completion of the visit, he was probably in touch with Indian

ideas. These journeys indicate that there was a prevalent notion that

wisdom was to be found in India and those who could not go there must

have had open ears for such Indian doctrines as might reach them by

oral teaching or in books. After the establishment of the Caliphate at

Bagdad in the eighth century translations of Indian authors became

accessible. Arabic versions were made of many works on astronomy,

mathematics and medicine and the example of Alberuni shows how easily

such treatises might be flavoured with a relish of theology. His book

and still more the Fihrist testify to the existence among Moslims,

especially in Bagdad and Persia, of an interest in all forms of

thought very different from the self-satisfied bigotry which too often

characterizes them. The Caliph Ma'mun was so fond of religious

speculation and discussion that he was suspected of being a Manichee

and nicknamed Amiru-'l-Kafirin, Commander of the Unbelievers.

Everything warrants the supposition that in the centuries preceding

Mohammed, Indian ideas were widely disseminated in western Asia,

partly as a direct overflow from India, for instance in Turkestan and

Afghanistan, and partly as entering, together with much other matter,

into the doctrines of Neoplatonists and Manichæans. Amid the

intolerant victories of early Islam such ideas would naturally

retreat, but they soon recovered and effected an entrance into the

later phases of the faith and were strengthened by the visits of Sufi

pilgrims to Turkestan and India.

The form of Jewish mysticism known as Kabbala, which in Indian

terminology might be described as Jewish Tantrism, has a historical

connection with Sufiism and a real analogy to it, for both arise

from the desire to temper an austere and regal deism with concessions

to the common human craving for the interesting and picturesque, such

as mysticism and magic. If the accent of India can sometimes be heard

in the poems of the Sufis we may also admit that the Kabbala is its

last echo.

Experts do not assign any one region as the origin of the Kabbala but

it grew on parallel lines in both Egypt and Babylonia, in both of

which it was naturally in touch with the various oriental influences

which we have been discussing. It is said to have been introduced to

Europe about 900 A.D. but received important additions and

modifications at the hands of Isaac Luria (1534-72) who lived in

Palestine, although his disciples soon spread his doctrines among the

European Jews.

Many features of the Kabbala, such as the marvellous powers assigned

to letters, the use of charms and amulets, the emanations or phases of

the deity and the theory of the correspondence between macrocosm and

microcosm, are amazingly like Indian Tantrism but no doubt are more

justly regarded as belonging to the religious ideas common to most of

Asia[1171]. But in two points we seem able to discern definite Hindu

influence. These are metempsychosis and pantheism, which we have so

often found to have some connection with India when they exist in an

extreme form. Their presence here is specially remarkable because they

are alien to the spirit of orthodox Judaism. Yet the pre-existence and

repeated embodiment of the soul is taught in the Zohar and even more

systematically by Luria, in whose school were composed works called

Gilgûlim, or lists of transmigrations. The ultimate Godhead is called

En soph or the infinite and is declared to be unknowable, not to be

described by positive epithets, and therefore in a sense non-existent,

since nothing which is predicated of existing beings can be truly

predicated of it. These are crumbs from the table of Plotinus and the

Upanishads.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1164: But see on this point _Census of India_, 1911, vol. I.

part I. p. 128.]

[Footnote 1165: Another instance is the shrine of Saiyad Salar Masud

at Bahraich. He was a nephew of Mahmud of Ghazni and was slain by

Hindus, but is now worshipped by them. See Grierson, _J.R.A.S._ 1911,

p. 195.]

[Footnote 1166: See for examples, _Census of India_, 1901, Panjab, p.

151, _e.g._ the Brahmans of a village near Rawal Pindi are said to be

Murids of Abdul-Kadir-Jilani.]

[Footnote 1167: _Census of India_, 1911, vol. I. part I. p. 195. The

Mâlkânas are described on the same page.]

[Footnote 1168: Such as Ghazi Miyan, Pir Badar, Zindha Ghazi, Sheikh

Farid, Sheikh Sadu and Khwaja Khizr.]

[Footnote 1169: E.G. Browne, _Literary History of Persia_: R.A.

Nicholson, _Selected Poems from the Divan of Shems-i-Tabriz_.]

[Footnote 1170: He describes how he discovered the mechanism by which

the priests made miraculous images move. See Browne, _Lit. Hist.

Persia_, II. 529.]

[Footnote 1171: But there is something very Indian in the reluctance

of the Kabbalists to accept creation _ex nihilo_ and to explain it

away by emanations, or by the doctrine of limitation, that is God's

self-withdrawal in order that the world might be created, or even by

the eternity of matter.]

INDEX

Abbot. _See_ Monasteries, and Organisation--ecclesiastical

Abdul Kadir Jilani, III. 459

Abhakta, III. 426

Abhayagiri, I. 292, 293; III. 16, 19, 33, 297

Abhayakara, II. 112; III. 360, 387

Abhaya Râjâ, II. 113

Abhidhamma, I. 208, 256, 258, 276 _sq._, 280, 289, 291, 299, 300; II.

47 _sq._, 80, 82, 102; III. 30, 39, 61, 71, 372, 374

Abhidhammattha-sangaha, III. 71 sangraha, III. 39, 45

Abhidharma, III. 292, 299

Kośâ, II. 89; III. 213, 286, 314

Pitaka, II. 59, 81; III. 285, 373

vibhâshaśâstra, II. 78, 81; III. 213

vyâkhyâ, II. 89

Abhimukhi, II. 11

Abhinava Gupta, II. 223, 224

Abhiñña, I. 317

Abhirâjâ, III. 50

Abhîras, II. 156

Abhisheka, II. 122, 275; III. 355

Ablur inscription, II. 225

Aboriginal deities, I. xxxvi, 6; II. 126, 127, 138, 285; III. 68, 97,

112, 182, 185, 224, 343, 382

Absolute Godhead. _See_ Brahman

Abu (Mount), I. 115, 120; II. 203

Abul Fazl, III. 417

Acala, II. 11; III. 392

Açaranga, I. 116

Acâriyaparamparâ, III. 306

Acârya, II. 114, 221, 257; III. 121

bhimâna, II. 237

Pâśupata, III. 114

Śaiva, III. 114

vada, I. 262

Achæmenian reliefs, III. 449

Aciravati, I. 150

Acit, II. 316

Acts of the Apostles, I. 255

Acyuta, III. 114

Acyutânanda Dâsa, II. 115

Adam, III. 217

Adam's Bridge, II. 150

Peak, I. 7; III. 13, 43

Adhâra Kârikâs, II. 224

Adharma, I. 106

Adhicitta, I. 313, 315; III. 310

Adhipañña, I. 313; III. 310

Adhyâtma Râmâyaṇa, II. 152, 187, 194

Adi-Buddha, II. 13, 26, 31, 57, 117, 118, 119, 129; III. 173, 387

Adi-granth, II. 263, 268

Adityas, I. 61; II. 146

Adityavarman, III. 163

_Adonis, Attis and Osiris_, II. 285

Advaita (philosophy), I. cii, 74, 82, 235; II. 40, 74, 204, 225, 238,

258, 289, 307, 312 _sq_.; III. 305,421

(P. N.), II. 254

Advaya, III. 173-181

Adyar Library, II. 195, 210, 270, 322

_Aeltere vedanta_, II. 315

Aeons, III. 444

Afghanistan, I. 19, 24, 28, 29, 31, 264; II. 272; III. 199, 456

âgamana, II. 43, 92

Agama prâmânya, II. 232

Agamas, II. 128, 188, 189, 190, 204, 216, 222, 282; III. 214, 282,

292, 296, 297, 299

αγαπη, I. 184, 216, 253

Agarwals, II. 177

Agastya, II. 213

Aggabodhi, king, III. 33

Aggañña Sûtra, I. 336

Aghora, II. 198, 234

Aghoris, II. 203, 289

Agiśala, II. 77

Agni, I. 56, 62

Agnihotri, I. 90

Agni Purâna, II. 130, 281

Agnishtoma, I. 66; II. 170

Agnostic teachers, I. 98

Agra, I. 87

Agrayâna, II. 3

Agriculture forbidden, I. 113

Ahamkâra, I. lxxvii; II. 299

Ahan, III. 282, 296

Ahar, III. 116

Ahimsâ, I. lvi; II. 114, 170 _sq_., 200; III. 248

Ahinas, I. 69

Ahirbudhnya Samhitâ, II. 147, 194, 195

of the Pañcarâtra Agama, II. 188

Ahirs, II. 158

Ahmadabad, I. 115, 119; II. 175, 252, 266

Ahmadnagar, I. 29

Ahoms (kingdom, etc.), II. 259, 280, 288; III. 79

Ahriman, I. 336

Ahuna-vairya, III. 220

Mazda, I. 60, 64; II. 198; III. 220, 449

Ai (emperor), III. 245

Aihole, II. 172; III. 106

Aisvarya, II. 196

Aitareya Brahmâna, I. 67

Aivyâonghen, III. 453

Aiyar Sesha, II. 219

Aiyengar, Krishna Swâmi, II. 233, 238

Ajanta, I. 26, 212; II. 108; III. 102

Ajâta Śatru, king (Ajâta Sattu), I. 36, 74, 77, 87, 111, 131, 132,

153, 156, 157, 158, 161, 169, 172, 221, 298; III. 23, 24

Ajayadeva, I. 114

Ajita, I. 99; II. 21

Ajîva, I. 107

Ajîvikas, I. 49, 99, 123, 241, 268; III. 13

Ajmer, I. 29; III. 458, 459

Akâlis, II. 272, 273

Akâśagarbha, II. 24; III. 216, 283

Akbar, I. 30, 31, 115; II. 242, 266, 269; III. 417, 456

Akiñcaññâyatanam, I. 135

Akriyavâdins, I. 99

Akshobhya (Buddha), II. 26, 27; III. 122, 166, 169, 173

Alabaster, III. 98

Alâra Kâlâma, I. 135, 136, 303, 316

Alasanda, III. 18

Ala-ud-din, I. 29, 30; III. 456

Alavandâr, II. 232

stotram, II. 232

Alayavijñâna, I. xxxix; II. 43, 44, 84, 87

Alberuni, II. 187, 189, 228; III. 446, 453, 456, 461

Albigenses, III. 445

Alexander, king, I. 268

Alexander of Macedon, I. xxx, xxxi, 21, 50, 177; III. 189, 413, 430,

450

Alexandria, III. 414

Al Hallaj, III. 460

Alkondavilli Govindacârya, I. 40; II. 233

Allah, I. 8; II. 216, 270. _See also_ God and Islam

Allahabad, II. 99

Allakappa, I. 169

Allopanishad, II. 270

All Souls' Day, III. 264, 332

Alompra, III. 47 _sq._, 169

A-lo-pen, III. 217

Alphabets, I. 61; III. 4, 51, 80, 82, 104, 106, 154, 157, 183, 190,

191, 192, 201, 300 _sq._, 348, 355, 450

Altan, III. 361

Älterer vedanta, II. 74

Alvar. _See_ Arvar

Amarakosha, II. 280; III. 181

Amarapura, III. 36, 37, 49

Amâravati stupa, II. 85, 108, 143

(Quãngnam), III. 137

Amardas Guru, II. 268

Amar Mul, II. 266

Singh, II. 147

Amasis, III. 434

Ambaherana Salamevan, III. 40

Ambalatthika, I. 288

Amban, III. 367 _sq._

Ambapâlâ, I. 163

Ambatthasutta, I. 87, 131; II. 175

Ambhojanetra, III. 122

Ambikâ, II. 277

Amdo, III. 358, 400

Ameretat, III. 220

American Lectures, I. 151, 212

Amesha Spenta, II. 12, 120, 198

Amida, I. 182, 215; III. 312, 321, 404, 418

Amidism, I. xlix; III. 220 _sq._

Amiru-'l-Kafirin, III. 461

Amitâbha (Buddha), I. xxix, xxxii; II. 6, 13, 23, 26, 28, 33, 60, 66,

72, 86, 88, 181, 182; III. 124, 166, 173, 176, 218, 219 _sq._, 292,

313, 327, 365, 385, 390, 451

Amitâyurdhyânasûtra, II. 23, 29, 30; III. 313

Amitâyus, II. 28, 30, 33, 103; III. 391

Amittaranpapâtikad, I. 116

Amogha, III. 39, 264, 293, 327, 349

Amoghapâsa, III. 163, 390

Amoghasiddhi, II. 26; III. 166, 173, 176, 181

Amoghavajra, III. 317

Amoghavarsha, I. 314

Amoy, III. 333

Ampel, III. 161

Amritsar, II. 268, 272

amsa, II. 239

Amulets, I. 109. _See also_ Magic

Anachronistic practices, II. 168

Anâgâmin, I. 227

Anâgata-vamsa, II. 22

Anahit, II. 276

Analecta, I. 177; III. 227

Ananda, I. 133, 151, 153, 155, 156, 160, 162, 163 _sq._, 170, 174,

207, 209, 247, 256, 261, 288, 343, 344; II. 9, 29, 56; III. 20, 307,

342, 439

Garbha, II. 128

Giri, II. 110

Kâya, II. 32

Anandam, I. 84

Ananda Pagoda, III. 74

Anandasrama Press, II. 195

Ananda Temple, II. 55, 56

Tirtha, II. 237

Anantavarman Colaganga, I. 30

ananuvejjo, I. 235

anariyam, I. 241

Anatta, I. 191, 194, 219

anatthapindeka, I. 151, 180

Anawrata (king), I. xxv; III. 7, 11, 47 _sq._

Ancestor-worship, I. 3, 9, 10, 12, 33; III. 68, 116, 236, 344

An-Chou, III. 206, 216

_Ancient Ceylon_, III. 18, 19

_India_, II. 153, 159

Anda, III. 361

Andal, II. 231

Andhakas, I. 261

Andhra (kingdom, etc.), I. 22; II. 85, 100, 108; III. 102

Andras, I. 268

_Anecdota Oxoniensia_, II. 52

Anekantavâda, I. 108

Anesaki, I. 293; III. 294, 296, 297, 299, 317

Angada Guru, II. 268

Angas, I. 116, 149, 281; II. 279

Ang Chan (king), III. 111

Ang Duong (king), III. 112

Angela (St.) of Foligno, I. 160

Angirâsas, I. 54; II. 152

Angkor Wat (Thom), III. 106, 109 _sq._, 132 _sq._

Angulimâla Pitaka, I. 180, 293, 317; III. 422

Angulimâlija Sutra, II. 103

Anguttara Nikâya, I. lxxiii, 134, 212, 223, 278, 288, 289, 295; II.

48, 49; III. 65, 296, 297

an-had, II. 262

An-hsi (Parthia), III. 248

aniccam, I. 219

Aniko Lama, III. 356

Animals, I. lvi, xcix, 68, 115, 267; II. 131, 167; III. 248, 254, 344,

445, 446.

_See also_ Ahimsâ

Animism, I. 104, 332; II. 167; III. 42, 98.

_See also_ Aboriginal deities, Nats, Nature worship, Phis

Aniruddha, II. 196, 235

_Annales du Musée Guimet_, II. 122, 275

Annals (various), III. 104, 105, 108, 110, 111, 153, 344

Annam (Champa), I. xxiv, xxvi; II. 25; III. 6, 8, 111, 129, 135, 140,

141, 340 _sq._

Anomâ, I. 175

An-shih Kao, II. 64; III. 248, 292, 313

Antagadasao, I. 116

Antakritad, I. 116

antarâtman, III. 175

antarâya, I. 107

Antaryâmin, II. 46, 235, 317

Antigonus, I. 268; III. 430

Antioch, I. 255

Antiochus, king, I. 268; III. 430

Anu, II. 223, 292

Anugîtâ, II. 187

Anugraha, II. 180

Anukramani, II. 152

Anula (Princess), III. 17

Anumâna, II. 293

an-upadi-seśa-nibbanam, I. 223

Anurâdhapura, I. 143, 276; III. 16, 23

Anuruddha, I. 134, 155, 168; III. 39, 45

Anusâsana purâna, II. 194

Anuttara Yoga, II. 128, 189

Anuttarovavâidasâo, I. 116

_Any Saint_, II. 162, 183

Apabhramsa, I. 299

Apah, I. 63

Apântaratamas, II. 202

Aparantaka, III. 50, 51

Apararâjagirika, I. 259

Aparaselikas, I. 259

Aparimitâyus Sûtras, III. 191

Apocryphal Gospels, III. 441

Apollo, II. 139

Apollonius, III. 431, 447

Appar, II. 215

Apratishṭhita, I. 323

Apsus (Ephesus) (Chotscho), III. 205

apûrva, II. 311

Apvâ, I. 102

Arabia (Arabs, etc.), I. 28; II. 109; III. 152, 154, 160, 263, 455

Aracosia, I. 23

Arahanta School, III. 59

Thera, III. 55 _sq_.

Arahattam, I. xxi

Arakan, II. 105; III. 14, 36, 47

Aramaic Alphabet, III. 191

Araṇyakas, I. 53; III. 53

Arâti, I. 102

Arcâ (image), I. lxx; III. 185

_Archæological Survey of Mayurabhanj_, II. 114, 126

Archbishop (R.C.), III. 417

Architecture, I. lxvi, 92, 119; II. 109, 211; III. 3, 51, 73, 89, 132

_sq_., 143 _sq_., 165 _sq_., 184 _sq_., 194, 239, 345, 450

arcismati, II. 11

Arcot, II. 113

Ardhanareśvara, II. 145

ardhanarî image, III. 144

Arhat, I. 110, 145, 146, 166, 214, 223, 227, 232, 260; II. 6, 8; III.

57, 326 _sq._

Ariobalo, II. 14

Aris, III. 53

Aristobulus, III. 450

Aristocratic republics. _See_ Mallas, Sakyas, Vajjians

Ariyapariyesana sutta, I. 135, 152

Ariya saccâni, I. 200

vaṃsa, III. 61

Arjun (Guru), II. 268, 269

Arjuna, II. 156, 200, 253

Arjunavijaya, III. 172

Armenians, I. 122; III. 191

Arnold, Matthew, I. xcvi, 328

arogya, I. 201

Arrows in rite, I. 100; III. 219

Arsacidae, I. 22; III. 191

Arsha (Ardha) Magadha, I. 116

Art, I. xiii, xxix, xxxi, xxxiv, lxvi, xc, 22, 92, 137, 173, 212; II.

169, 211; III. 4, 96, 186, 194 _sq_., 240, 241, 242, 252, 269, 356,

382, 405

_l'Art Gréco-Bouddhique du Gandhara_, II. 76

Artaxerxes Longimanus, I. 341

Artha pancaka, II. 237

purâna śâstra, III. 142

śâstra, I. 18

Artjeh, III. 185

Arul, II. 217

Arunandi, II. 221

Arûparâgo, I. 227

Arvars, II. 231, 233, 236

Arya (religion, people), I. xv, 3, 7, 15, 19, 20, 54, 55, 59, 200; II.

177; III. 273

Aryabhaṭa, III. 152

Aryadeva, I. xxxiii; II. 85, 86; III. 219

Aryamahâsanghika, II. 59

nikâya, II. 101

Arya-mañjuśrî-mûla-tantra, III. 375

Arya-mûla-sarvâstivâda-nikâya, II. 91, 102

Arya Samaj, I. xlvii; III. 457

Arya-sammiti, III. 148

Arya-sammitika-nikâya, II. 102

Arya sarvâstivâdin, III. 148

Aryasthavira nikâya, II. 102; III. 20

Asâlha, I. 245

Asanam, I. 305

Asanga, I. xxxviii, 193, 293, 305; II. 11, 22, 31, 48, 57, 59, 82

_sq._, 102, 125, 306; III. 166, 214, 216, 219, 284, 285, 294, 315,

376, 452

Asankhadhâtu, I. 225

asankhato, I. 225, 260

asankhyakalpa, II. 103

Aśâpati, I, 102

Asava, I. 139

Asceticism (also Celibacy), I. xvi, lxi, lxv, 42, 49, 71, 84, 96, 105,

107, 110, 119, 123, 138, 240; II. 207, 320; III. 183, 235, 248, 316,

345, 429, 433, 438, 446

Asclepiadae, I. 69

Asgiri, III. 37

Ashikaga period, III. 405

Asi, II. 245

Asita, I. 133, 174; III. 440

Asoka, I. xxii, c, 16, 18, 21, 50, 99, 103, 113, 127, 132, 248, 254,

274; II. 65, 80, 93, 108, 116, 214; III. 5, 6, 13, 22, 44, 190, 207,

235, 300, 329, 430, 450

Asramas, I. 89, 90; II. 203; III. 113

Asrava, I. 107

Aṣrua, III. 215

Assam, I. xxxvi, lxxv, lxxxvii, 14, 25, 104; II. 126, 127, 143, 175,

185, 191, 244, 259 _sq._; III. 44, 79

Astarte, I. 63; II. 275

Astarte Syriaca, I. lxxxvii

Astral body, I. 317

Astrology, I. xxv; III. 67, 96, 129, 157, 232

Astronomy, I. 335; III. 372, 415

Asuras, I. 61, 335

Asuri, II. 296

Aśvaghosha, I. xxx, 300; II. 5, 49, 59, 65, 68, 79, 82 _sq._, 104,

169, 176; III. 190, 219, 285, 286, 292, 294, 295, 300, 307, 376, 439

Asvamedha, I. 68

Asvapati Kaikeya, I. 74

Asvavarman, III. 164

Asvins, I. 63

Aṭânâṭiya sutta, I. 278; III. 42

Atharvans, I. 54, 63

Atharva Veda, I. 54, 55, 98, 101; II. 50, 142, 270, 275; III. 67

Athenaeus, II. 432

Atîśa, I. xxvii; II. 19, 112; III. 52, 60, 352 _sq._, 375, 380, 386,

398

Atiths, II. 177

Atman, I. lii, lxiii, lxiv, 45, 62, 79, 81, 84, 98, 188, 191, 218,

220; II. 75, 124, 180, 266, 296, 308, 309; III. 175, 305

Atmâ Râm, II. 266

Atnan, III. 342

Atomic theory, I. 109

Atonement, I. xiv, 69; III. 427

Atta, I. 188, 191, 218, 220; II. 101

atthakam, I. 150

Atthakathâ, III. 14

Atthasâlini, III. 28

Atula, III. 63 _sq._

Aufrecht, II. 148; III. 387, 452

Auguries, II. 105

Augustus, I. 26; III. 431

Aulieata, III. 202

Aung, S.Z., I. 189, 259; III. 39, 71

Aurora, I. 63

Aurungzeb, I. xlv, 30, 31; II. 252, 261, 270, 271; III. 453, 456

_Ausgewählte Erzählungen_, I. 116

Ava, III. 48, 58, 61

Avadânas, II. 58 _sq._

Avadhûtas, II. 243

Avalokita, I. xxix; II. 12, 13, 23, 30, 57, 60, 73, 86, 103, 105, 122,

125, 128; III. 39, 53, 123, 144, 149, 165, 218, 219, 221, 239, 295,

343, 348, 360, 365, 390, 393

Avalokiteśvara, III. 120

Avalon, I. 67, 311; II. 121, 188, 190, 274, 281, 282, 320; III. 40

Avanti, I. 282

Avasarpini, I. 107

Avataṃsakasûtra, II. 10, 54, 60; III. 218, 282, 283, 292, 313, 315,

374, 378

Avatâras, I. lxx, 48; II. 73, 130, 197; III. 307, 419

Averroes, III. 460

Avesta, I. 19, 60, 63; II. 28; III. 220, 451

avibhâga, II. 312

Avicenna, III. 460

Avîci, I. 338

avijja, I. 227

avyâkatâni, I. 228, 233

avyanga, III. 453, 454

Awakening of Faith, xxxii; II. 34, 42, 44, 83, 84, 87; III. 219, 286

Ayârângasutta, I. 116

âyatanam, I. 226

Ayenar, II, 164

Aymonier, III. 80, 85, 111, 113, 117, 120, 123

Ayodhya, I. 20, 25; II. 87, 100, 149

Ayushka, I. 107

Ayuthia, III. 30, 79 _sq._

Azhvar, _see_ Arvar

Ba, I. 218

Baber, I. 28, 30

Babylon, I. 61, 204; III. 103, 430, 432

Bacchic groups, II. 159

Bactria, I. 22, 24; II. 139, 276; III. 189, 200, 414

Badakshan, I. xxvi; III. 202

Badami, I. 26; II. 164, 172; III. 7, 107, 114, 116, 146

Bâdarâyana, II. 211, 311, 316

Badarî, II. 238

Badrinath, I. 17; II. 207, 208

Badulla, III. 43

Bagdad, III. 461

Bagyidaw, III. 65

Bahmani dynasty, I. 29, 30

Bahraich, III. 458

bâhyayâga, II. 152

Baidyanath, III. 459

Baishnabs, II. 177

Bajra, III. 172

Bajrapâni, III. 173

Bako, III. 115

Bakus, III. 129

bala, II. 196

Balabhi, II. 105

Baladeva, II. 153, 255

Bâla Gopâla, II. 249

Balambangan, III. 160

Balarâma, II. 154

Bale Agoeng, III. 183

Bali, II. 148; III. 135, 151, 157, 171, 179, 183 _sq._

Bali-Agas, III. 185

Balkh, I. 25; III. 25, 202, 213, 461

Ballantyne, II. 296

Bambino, II. 160

Bamian, II. 102, 177; III. 3, 194, 202, 213

Bamunias, II. 260

Bamyin, I. 25

Bâṇa, I. xxxix, 15; II. 97, 187, 206, 280

bana, III. 36, 42

Banda, II. 271

ban-de, III. 351

Bandha, I. 107

Bandyas, II. 119

Bangkok, III. 79, 86, 93

Baniyas, I. 115

Banon, III. 167

Banyan grove, I, 148

Tree, I. 82

Bâp, II. 206

Ba-phuong, III. 132

Baptism, III. 422; cf. abhiśekha

Barabar, III. 53

Baramba, II. 114

Bardesanes, III. 444

Bargosa, III. 431

Barlaam and Joasaph, III. 442

Barna Brahmans, II. 173

Barnett, II. 222, 224

Baroda, I. 31, 116; II. 202, 252

Barom Recha, II. 259

Barpeta, II. 259

Barth, II. 143, 169, 238; III. 23, 427

Bartholomew (Apostle), III. 414

Basaih, III. 127

Båså Kawi, III. 170

Basava, II. 176, 225

Bashpa, III. 273, 354 _sq._

Basiasita, III. 307

Basidides, III. 444, 445

Bassêt Simâdamataka, III. 113

Basti, I. 120

Basuli, II. 277

Batavia, III. 158

Bat Cum, III. 122

Bathuris, II. 115

Battambang, III. 112

Bauddham, III. 44

Baudhâyana, II. 279

dharma sûtra, III. 102

Bauras, II. 119

Bauris, II. 115

Baveru, III. 103, 430

Bayin Naung, III. 26, 47 _sq._

Bayon, III. 106, 109, 115, 134

Bäzäklik, III. 193

Beal, I. 173, 275; II. 3, 56; III. 213, 276, 284, 312, 331

Beames, II. 244

_Beatae Angelae de Fulginio Visionum et Instructionum Liber_, I. 160

Beatitudes, I. 184, 213

Beckh, III. 195, 373

Bednur, II. 226

Belattha, I. 98

Belgami, II. 108

Beluva, I. 163

Benares, I. xlvi, 20, 87, 89, 132, 140; II. 112, 171, 189, 194, 208,

227, 243, 254, 263; III. 25

Bendall, II. 56, 116, 121, 123, 220

Bendall and Haraprasad, II. 18

Bengal, I. xxxvi, lxxxvii, 19, 25, 29, 31, 87, 114, 121; II. 32, 92,

100, 102, 108, 109, 111, 113, 173, 190, 230, 242, 253, 277, 278, 279,

349 _sq._, 356

Bengali literature, I. xlv, 299; II. 187, 244, 255

Vaishnavas, II. 245

Beng Mealea, III. 109

Berar, I. 31; II. 85

Bergaigne, III. 137

Bergson, I. cii

Berlin Museum, II. 20

Bernheim, I. 318

Bernier, II. 320

Bertholet, I. iv

Besant, Mrs., I. xlvii

Besnagar column, II. 153, 197

Bettu, I. 120

Beveridge, I. 90

de Beylié III. 74, 89

Bhabajanas, II. 261

Bhabru Edict, I. 264, 270, 290, 295

Bhaddiya, I. 131, 224

Bhadrabâhu, I. 114, 116; II. 214

Bhadratittha, III. 45

Bhadravarman, III. 115, 139, 143, 146

Bhadresvara, III. 115, 146

Bhaga, I. 57, 63

Bhagava, I. 152

Bhagavad Gîtâ, I. xxx, xliv, xlv, lxxiv, lxxx, 218, 333; II. 31, 72,

162, 180, 186, 195, 200, 201, 208, 219, 225, 228, 229, 231, 233, 234,

238, 239, 257, 293, 296, 306, 317; III. 174, 420, 423

Bhagavân, II. 255; III. 21

Bhagavat, II. 156, 195

Bhagavata Purâna, I. lxxiv; II. 130, 147, 148, 157, 187, 188, 193,

195, 198, 219, 231, 251, 281

Bhagavatas, II. 97, 153, 156, 194, 195, 197, 209, 211, 234, 280

Bhagavâta Tika subodhini, II. 249

Bhaga vatî, I. 116; III. 144, 145, 147

Bhagavatîśvara, III. 144

Bhagawanis, II. 261

bhairabi, II. 286

Bhairava, II. 145

Bhairavi, II. 277, 288

Bhairav Nath, III. 458

Bhaisajja, I. 201

Bhaishajya guru, III. 390

Bhakats (Bhaktas), II. 260

Bhakta-mâla, II. 147, 191, 199, 245

Bhakti, I. 49; II. 153, 174, 180-183, 228, 255; III. 417 _sq. See

also_ Salvation

Bhallika, III. 50, 215

Bhandagâma, I. 162, 164

Bhandarkar, II. 152, 153, 157, 202, 230, 231, 233, 238, 242, 248, 256,

257, 262, 320, 452

Bhante, I. 152

Bhâratâ, II. 169

Samhitâ, II. 189

yuddha, III. 158, 171

Bharat Dharma Mahamandala, I. xlvii

Bharati, III. 114

Bhârgavîya, III. 142

Bhartrihari, II. 97; III. 437

Bharukaccha (Broach), III. 13

Bhâshya, II. 89; III. 120

Bhaskara Varma, II. 127

Bhatâra, III. 184

Guru, III. 179

Viśesha, III. 173

Bhattacarya (Jogendranath), II. 163, 173, 177, 209, 210, 244, 261

Bhava, I. 208; II. 146

Bhâvâdvaita, II. 322

bhâvanâs, III. 173

Bhavavarman, III. 102, 108, 109, 114

Bhavaviveka, II. 74, 94

Bhâvishya Purâna, I. lxxiv; III. 423, 452, 453

bhedabheda prakâśa II. 255

Bhikkhu (Bhikshu, Bhikku), I. 96, 157, 182, 237-253; II. 104, 119,

210; III. 39, 41, 65, 123, 130, 256

Bhils, II. 155

Bhima, II. 239; III. 146

Bhoi, II. 115, 116

Bhoja, I. 27, 268; III. 162

Bhrikutî, III. 389, 394

Bhringi, II. 278

Bhû, II. 145

Bhubanesvar, I. xlvi; II. 114, 173, 174, 206

bhukti, I. lxxvi

bhûmi, II. 9, 11

Bhutan, III. 370

Bhutas, I. 6; III. 182 (boetas)

Bhûtatathatâ, I. 220; II. 34, 43, 67, 84

bhûtiśakti (matter), II. 196, 197

Bible, The, I. 255

_Bibliotheca Buddhica_, II. 57, 85

_Indica_, II. 9, 51, 195, 202

Bidar, I. 29

Bigandet, I. 173; III. 49

Bihar, I. xix, 20, 95, 113; II. 111, 112, 127

bîja, II. 122

Bijah, II. 263

Bijapur, I. 26, 29, 114, 225; II. 251; III. 106

Bijjala, I. 28, 114; II. 225

Bimbisâra (king), I. 111, 132, 135, 147, 157, 174, 242, 244; II. 30

Bindu, II. 319

Bindusâra, III. 432

Bing Dinh, III. 138

Binh Thuan, III. 137, 138

Binstead, III. 401

_Biographies of Eminent Monks_, III. 156

Biot, III. 259, 270

Bir-va-pa, II. 126

Bishnupad, II. 130

Bishwa Singh, II. 280

Blagden, III. 47

Blake, II. 286

Bland and Backhouse, III. 232

Bloch, III. 330

de Blonay, II. 16, 18

Blue Mahâkâla, The, III. 363

Boar (incarnation), II. 147

Bodawpaya, III. 49

Boddas, III. 446

Boddhâyana, II. 233

Bode, Mrs., I. 248; II. 49, 56, 66, 67

Bodhâyana, II. 234, 316

Bodh Gaya, I. 120, 136, 143, 272; II. 94, 112, 113, 129, 130; III. 56,

349

Bodhi, I. xxxviii; II. 32, 44; III. 56

Prince, I. 152

Bodhibhadra, II. 128

Bodhicaryâvatâra, II. 9; III. 240, 323, 331

Bodhicitta, II. 45; III. 174

Bodhidharma, I. xxvi; II. 46, 95, 316; III. 238, 253, 255, 256, 269,

272, 278, 304, 305, 307, 317, 323, 405

Bodhi-rajâkumâra sutta, I. 135

Bodhisattva, I. xxix, xxxi, xxxii, xl, 11, 174, 261, 343, 344; II. 6,

25, 66, 68, 87, 105, 118, 122, 123, 170; III. 31, 33, 63, 84, 120,

124, 169, 213, 216, 234, 265, 285, 318, 325 _sq._, 329, 389, 390, 451

Bodhi-sattva-bhûmi, II. 87

Pitaka, II. 61

Bodhi tree, I. 142, 143, 175; II. 22

Bodopaya (king), III, 63

Boehme (Jacob), I. 315

Boehtlingk and Rien, II. 153

Roth, III. 118

Boeleling, III. 184

Bog, I. 63

Bogomils, III. 445

Bohras, III. 455

Bokhara, III. 199

Bombay, I. 115, 116; III. 455

Bongard (Mgr), II. 161

Bonpo, III. 351, 380, 384

Bön religion, III. 193

scriptures, III. 381

Bonzes, III. 240 _sq._

Book of Wisdom, III. 433

Borel, H., II. 42

Borneo, I. xii, 16; III. 6, 107, 151, 163

Boroboedoer, III. 102, 133, 155, 162, 165 _sq._, 177, 182, 385

Bosanquet, I. lxvii, ciii; II. 317

Bo Tree, I. 206; II. 96, 130; III. 14, 16, 17, 84, 98, 446

Bôt, III. 89

_Bouddhisme (le)_, II. 9

_Bouddhisme, Etudes et Matériaux_, II. 121, 122

Bowden, III. 41

Bowl (Buddha's), III. 16, 24

Bradley, I. liv, lxiv, xcv, cii, ciii, 85; III. 80, 82

Brahma, I. xviii, 46, 62, 72, 227, 331, 333; II. 122, 137, 199, 228,

266, 284; III. 69, 146, 167, 169, 173, 215, 284, 388

Brahmacârin, I. 88

Brahmadutta, I. 289

Brahmajâla sutta, I. 97, 103; II. 28; III. 322

Brahman (Absolute Godhead, Pantheos), I. xviii, lxxx, 9, 47, 78, 80,

83, 84, 85; II. 40, 75, 234, 238, 289, 292, 308, 309 _sq._; III. 228,

246, 445, 448

(Brahmin, caste and system), I. xvii, xviii, xxii, xxv, xxviii, xli,

lxxxii, 34, 35, 37, 41, 74, 87, 88, 89, 91, 95, 104, 131, 133, 146,

158, 169, 184, 252, 268, 306; II. 99, 115, 116, 117, 118, 169, 171,

173, 176, 191, 192, 193, 210, 235; III. 13, 34, 51, 67, 93 _sq._, 112

_sq._, 176 _sq._, 183, 458

Brâhmaṇas, I. xxxiii, lxxiii, 20, 48, 51, 53, 62, 66, 69, 77, 87

Brâhmaṇâsrama, III. 121

Brâhmandapurâna, III. 172

Brahma Paripriccha, II. 62

Brahmapurâna, III. 186

Brahmaputra (river), II. 288

Brahmarakshas, III. 113

Brahma Sahampati, I. 102, 140, 142, 334

Brahma-sambandha-karaṇât, II. 249, 250

Brahma Saṃhitâ, II. 195

Brahma-sampradâya, II. 239, 255

Brahma Sûtras, I. xliii; II. 293, 314, 318

Brahmatantra-svatantra-swâmi, II. 232

Brahmâvaivarta Purâna, II. 158, 164

Brahmâvihâra, I. 315; II. 122

Brahmayoni (yoen), I. 147

Brahmi (inscriptions), II. 214; III. 190

Brahminism and Hinduism, II. 207 _sq._

Brahmo Somaj, I. xlvii

Brah Sugandha, III. 131

Brahui (affinities), I. 20

Braj, II. 158, 161, 244, 245, 255

Brandes, III. 172

Branding, III. 324, 328

Brantas River, III. 159

Breath (as self), I. 77, 306

Brihad Araṇyaka Upanishad, I. lxxiii, 76, 79, 82, 83, 84, 94, 298;

II. 124, 235, 238, 239, 240, 308

Brihadbrahma Saṃhitâ, II. 195

Brihaspati, II. 320

Brihatsamhita, III. 452

Brihatsannyâsa Upanishad, II. 198

Brindaban, II. 249, 254

Broach, III. 106, 155

Brom-ston, III. 380

Browne, E.G., III. 460

Bruno (Giordano), I. lv

Bruzha, III. 212, 350, 377

Buddha (Jain term), I. 110

Buddha, the, I. xix _sq._, xxix, xlix, lii, lviii, lxxiii, lxxviii,

20, 27, 48, 49, 64, 72, 97, 103, 111, 129 _sq._, 133 _sq._, 143,

146-176, 180, 297; II. 97, 99, 105, 113, 115, 130, 148, 224, 305; III.

89, 446

Buddha-bhadra, II. 85

Buddha Cârita, I. 173, 176; II. 53, 68, 83, 113; III. 286, 294

Buddha-dâsa, king, III. 31

Buddha-deva, II. 114

Buddhâgama, III. 180

Buddhaghosa, I. 151, 190, 205, 209, 212, 255, 270, 281, 293, 312, 321;

III. 13, 14, 15, 23, 28 _sq._, 52, 298

Buddhaghosuppatti, III. 28, 31

Buddhagupta, II. 115

Buddhakapâla, III. 391

Buddhakshetra, II. 12

Buddhamitra, III. 307

Buddhanandi, III. 307

Buddhanirvâna, III. 149

Buddhapamutus, III. 172

Buddhas, I. xix, xxix, 46, 129, 342; II. 6, 123; III. 169, 218, 317,

318, 342

Buddhasammayoga, II. 128

Buddhasanti, II. 126

_Buddha und Mâra_, I. 143

Buddha-vaṃsa, I. 280, 343, 344

Buddhavataṃsaka-sûtra, II. 61

Buddhâvatâri, II. 114

buddhi, II. 299

_Buddhism in Tibet_, I. 336

_in translations_, I. 190, 252, 320

_of Tibet_, II. 128

_Buddhist Art in India_, II. 20, 143; III. 14

_Birth Stories_, I. 171

_China_, II. 18; III. 325

_India_, III. 14

_legends of Asoka and his time_, III. 23

Literature, I. lxxiii, 95, 275-301 (Pali Canon); II. 47-62

(Mahayanist), 71 (Burma); III. 281-302 (Chinese Canon), 372-381

(Tibetan). _See_ Nikâya, Pitakas, Sûtras (Suttas), Vinaya

_psychology_, I. 190, 193, 213

_Records of the Western World_, I. 258

Budge, II. 122

Bühler, I. 105, 113; II. 109, 126, 127; III. 74, 297

Buitenzorg, III. 153

Buiti, III. 218

Bukka, I. 30

Bulis, I. 169

Bundehish, III. 220

Bundelkhand, I. 27; II. 261

Bunmei period, III. 291

Bunrak, III. 84

Burma, I. xii, xix, xxiv, xxv, lxxxii, xciv, 120, 241, 248, 276; II.

80; III. 7, 34, 46-77, 81, 262, 353

Burnet, III. 434

Burnouf, II. 53

Burnt offerings, II. 128

Bushell, III. 351

Bushido, III. 405

Busiris, III. 434

Bu-ston, III. 357, 380, 381, 395

Byamma Nat, III. 69

Byams-chen-chos-nje, III. 359

Byamspa (Jampa), II. 21

Byzantine Empire, I. 39

Cæsar, I. 177

Caitanya, II. 113, 147, 176, 230, 234, 244, 245, 248, 253 _sq._, 268

Caitanya-carit-amrita, II. 113

Caitanya Dâsa, II. 115

Cakkavâlas, I. 336

Cakra, II. 198, 284; III. 387

Cakravartin, I. 36; II. 89; III. 116, 117, 394

Caland and Henri, I. 66

Calcutta, II. 116, 286

Caldwell, II. 219, 220; III. 418

Calicut, I. 31

Caliphate, III. 461

Caliph Ma'mum, III. 461

Câlukya, I. 25, 27, 114

Calvary, I. 66

Camboja, I. 241, 276; II. 143, 159, 164, 169, 203; III. 6, 9, 46, 79,

81, 82, 100 _sq._, 179

Camboja school, III. 59

Campa, I. 150

lCam-sran, III. 392

Camunda, II. 278

Câṇakya, I. 18

Canda, II. 125, 278

Candels, I. 27

Candi, II. 277

Candrabhâga River, III. 452, 453

Candragarbha Sûtra, II. 58; III. 283

Candragomin, II. 95

Candraguhyatilaka, II. 128

Candragupta (I), II. 87, 88

Candragupta, Maurya, I. 18, 21, 24, 114, 127; II. 214

Candrakirti, II. 85

Candraprabha, II. 55

Candrapradîpa-sûtra, II. 55

Candravajji, I. 286

Cangalarâjâ, II. 113

Canton, I. xxvi; II. 95; III. 235, 304

Cao Tien, III. 343

Capua, II. 287

Caracalla, III. 416

Caran Das, II. 253, 262

Car festival, I. lxx; III. 208

Cariya Pitaka, I. 280, 344

Carpenter, III. 30

Carpocrates, III. 444

Cârvakas, II. 320

Carya, II. 128, 189

Caste, I. xxii, xliv, xlvi, xlvii, 34;

II. 120, 175-178, 243, 254, 257, 260, 285; III. 145, 183, 420

_Castes and Tribes of S. India_, I. 20; II. 171, 225

Cataleptic trance, I. 306

_Catalogue of Adyar Library_, II. 270

_Catalogue of the Buddhist Tripitaka_, I. 258

Catalogues (Chinese) of Buddhist Literature, III. 287, 290, 293, 316

_Catechism of Saiva religion_, II. 140, 215, 218, 289

_Catena of Buddhist Scriptures_, II. 56

Cattle-worship, II. 159

Caturbhuja, III. 114

Caturtha, I. lxiii, 83

Causation, I. xxi, 194, 198, 212

Cave of the Seven Sleepers, III. 205

Cave temples, III. 193, 252. _See also_ Ajanta, Ellora

Cedi, I. 27

Celebes, III. 151

Celibacy, I. 237-248; II. 256; III. 235, 430. Cf. Asceticism,

Monasteries

Censors, III. 266

_Census of Assam_, I. xxxviii

_of Bengal_, II. 276

_of India_, I. xxxviii, xl, xlvii, xci; II. 114, 147, 259, 261, 273

Central Asia, I. xxiv, xxvi, 262; II. 4, 81, 129; III. 188 _sq._, 215

_sq._, 345, 451

Asian Gupta, III. 190

India, I. 115, 116; II. 100, 108

Provinces, I. 27

Cera, I. 26

Cetanâ, I. 209

Cetanâtman, III. 175

Cetiyas, II. 171

Ceylon, I. xii, xxiii, xxiv, xlviii, l, lxxxii, xcv, 113, 248, 292,

293; II. 53, 61, 80, 87, 116, 214; III. 4 _sq._, 82, 83

Antiquary, III. 35

Chabbaggiyas, I. 156

Chain of causation, I. 49, 139, 144, 186, 206, 207, 212, 213, 230, 267

Chaitanya, I. xlv; II. 157

_Chaitanya's Pilgrimage and teachings from the Caitanya Carit âmrita

of Krishna Das_, II. 253

Chaityas, III. 194, 212

Chakhar Mongols, III. 380

Chalukyas, II. 225; III. 170

Chambal river, I. 25

Champa (Annam), I. xii, xxiv, xxvii, xxviii, 16; II. 143, 159; III. 6,

9, 79, 102, 103, 123, 137-150, 340 _sq._

Chams, the, III. 124, 127, 138, 150

Ch'an, I. 322; III. 269, 271, 309, 405

Chandîdâs, II. 253

Chândogya Upanishad, I. liv, lxxviii, 66, 76, 81; II. 27, 152, 156,

182, 195, 238, 239

Chandragarbha sûtra, III. 215

Chang An, III. 199, 251, 261, 263

Ch'ien, III. 197, 201, 208, 245

Chang-Ling, III. 227

Ch'ang (long), III. 296

Chang Lu, III. 227

Channa, I. 167, 175

Channabasava, II. 225

Chantaboun, III. 111

Ch'an-tsung, III. 306, 309

Chao (later), III. 249

Chao Phăya Chakkri, III. 86

Phi, III. 97

Chapata, III. 11, 57, 59, 60

Chariar, T. Râjâgôpala, II. 232, 237

Ch'a-ti-li, II. 95

Chatterji, II. 204, 224

Babu Rasik Mohan, II. 281

Bunkim Chandra, II. 287

Chatterji, J.C., II. 291

Châvâ, III. 80, 109

Chavannes, III. 193, 199, 202, 203, 206, 211, 254, 260, 273, 314, 326

Chavannes et Pelliot, II. 199; III. 216, 245, 334, 395, 446

Che-i-lun, III. 288

Chê-kiang, III. 310

Chenab, III. 453

Ch'en dynasty, III. 252, 257

Chêng-Chi, III. 206

Ch'êng Hua (Emperor), III. 360

Chêng-shih-tsung, III. 304

Ch'êng-tsu (Emperor), III. 276, 288

Ch'êng Tsung (Emperor), III. 274

Cheng-wei-shih-lun, III. 315

Chên-la, III. 101, 105

Chen Tsung (Emperor), III. 228

Chen-yen, II. 58, 87, 275; III. 316 _sq._, 349, 385

Chet Râmis, I. xlvi

Chê Tsung, III. 271

Chezarla, III. 194

Chi, III. 312

(dynasty), III. 252, 253, 257

Chia Ch'ing, III. 368

Chiao-ch'ên-ju, III. 185

Chiao-mên, III, 310

Ch'ia-sha (Chieh-ch'a-Kashgar), III. 200

Chidambaram, II. 171, 183, 207, 222

Chief of the World, I. 340

Chieh-ch'a, III. 201

Ch'ien Lung, III. 199, 280, 289, 368, 380

Chih-chê-ta-shih, III. 310

Chih-Chien, III. 292

Chih-I, III. 310

Chih-K'ai, III. 310

Chih-Kuan, III. 310, 312

Chih Li, III. 309

Pan, III. 287

Yüan-lu, III. 290

Child marriages, I. lxxxix

Childers, II. 10

Ch'in dynasty, III. 246

China, I. xiii, xix, xxiv, xxvi, lxxv, lxxxiii, 101, 248, 249, 252,

259, 265, 267; II. 4, 5, 19, 20; III. 3, 25, 39, 223-335

Chinese Annals, II. 64; III. 6, 82, 103, 110, 148, 179, 196, 245

Canon, I. 275; II. 47, 48, 57, 59; III. 234, 282 _sq._

deities, III. 225

and Sanskrit, III. 301

translations, I. 130, 133, 173, 258; II. 51, 71, 74, 89, 125

(Tantras), 259, 296; III. 218, 251-270, 274, 292 _sq._, 373

Tripitaka, I. 299; II. 54, 61, 71, 81, 84, 304; III. 31, 189, 218,

239, 240, 248, 253, 254, 258, 259, 261, 265, 270, 274, 276, 280, 288

_sq._, 306, 323, 336, 356, 372, 374

Ch'ing (dynasty), III. 8, 289

Ching (sûtras), III. 281 _sq._, 374

Chinggiz, III. 353

Ching-tê-ch'uan-têng-lu, III. 287, 307

Ching-ti, III. 277

Ching-tu, II. 28

Ch'ing Yüan, III. 309

Chinnamastaka, II. 277

Ch'i Sung, III. 288

Chitore, I. 120; II. 244

Chiu dynasty, III. 206

Hua, II. 25

Chlas, I. 268

Chohan dynasty, I. 29

Chola, II. 233

Cho-mukhi, I. 120

Chos-kyi-Gyal-tsan, III. 364

Chos-kyi-hod-zer, III. 356

Chos-skyon, III. 391

Chotscho, III. 200, 205, 215

Chou dynasty, III. 268, 343

Chou Ta-kuan, III. 101, 110, 114, 125 _sq._, 135, 179

_Chowkhamba Sanskrit series_, II. 249

Christ, I. 66, 143, 165, 171, 177, 178-184, 213, 214, 215, 224, 226,

228, 330; III. 216, 423, 435

Christianity, I. xiv, xlix, l, xcviii, ci, 14, 65, 204, 238; II. 107,

140, 158, 161, 180, 218, 219, 266, 275, 285; III. 193, 214 _sq._, 409

_sq._

Christian mystics, I. 306 _sq._

Chronology, I. 46, 50; II. 63 _sq._; III. 353

Chu, III. 245

Chua, III. 342

Chuang (Emperor), III. 343

Chuang Tsu, III. 246, 247, 248, 305

Chü-ch'ü, III. 206

Chu Fa Tan, III. 244

Chu Hsi, III. 272 _sq._, 275, 288, 337, 338, 421

Ch'u Ku, III. 125

Chulalongkorn (king), III. 88

Chung (medium), III. 296

Churels, II. 276