BURMAH.
Let us now take a look at the country in which Mr. and Mrs. Judson at
last found themselves. At the present time there are two distinct
Burmahs: British Burmah and Independent Burmah. But at the time when Mr.
and Mrs. Judson arrived in Rangoon, these two countries formed one great
Empire, ruled by one monarch, whose throne was at Ava. Under successive
British invasions the Empire has shrunk to two-thirds of its original
size. The English have appropriated the whole of the seaboard, the
fertile lowlands forming the richest rice-producing district in the
world, and the heavy teak forests of Pegu, which yield ship timber
unrivalled for its durability. At the time of the arrival of the
Judsons, Burmah was 1,020 miles long and 600 miles wide. It was bounded
on the north by Assam and Thibet; on the east by China and Siam; and on
the south and west by the Bay of Bengal and the British provinces of
India. Its area was 280,000 square miles; so that it was four times as
large as the whole of New England.
Burmah is scored by three parallel rivers that flow southward: the
Irrawaddy, Sittang, and the Salwen.[8] By far the largest of these is
the Irrawaddy, which is navigable by steamers to Bhamo, 840 miles from
the mouth. The country is made up of these three parallel river valleys,
and the mountain chains which flank them. The land in Asia gradually
slopes from the Himalayas southward toward the Bay of Bengal. Starting
at the south and moving northward, the traveller finds first broad
paddy-fields, submerged during a part of the year by the network of
streams through which the Irrawaddy finds its way to the sea; then he
traverses upland plains; then a rolling country, with ranges of hills;
and finally deep forests, high mountains, and the magnificent defiles,
through which the rivers flow.
The southern part of Burmah, like Egypt, owes its fertility to an annual
inundation which is thus described by an English officer:[9]
“With the exception of high knolls standing up here and there, and a
strip of high ground at the base of the hills, the whole country,
fields, roads, bridges, is under water from one to twelve feet, or
more, in depth. Boats are the only means of locomotion for even a few
yards. You sail across the country, ploughing through the
half-submerged long grass, piloting a way through the clumps of
brushwood and small trees, into the streets of large agricultural
villages, where the cattle are seen stabled high up in the houses,
twelve feet from the ground; the children are catching fish with lines
through the floor; the people are going about their daily concerns, if
it is only to borrow a cheroot from their next-door neighbor, in
canoes; in short, all the miseries and laughable _contretemps_
sometimes pictured in the illustrated papers as caused by floods in
Europe, may be seen—with this difference, that every one is so
accustomed to them that they never create a thought of surprise.”
The northern part of Burmah abounds in mountain streams of exquisite
beauty. An eye-witness describes them in glowing terms, as follows:[10]
“In some places they are seen leaping in cascades over precipices from
50 to 100 feet high; in others, spreading out into deep, quiet lakes.
In some places they run purling over pebbles of milk-white quartz, or
grass-green prase, or yellow jasper, or sky-blue slate, or variegated
porphyry; in others, they glide like arrows over rounded masses of
granite, or smooth, angular pieces of green stone. In some places
nought can be heard but the stunning sounds of ‘deep calling unto
deep’; in others, the mind is led to musing by the quiet murmur of the
brook, that falls upon the ear like distant music. The traveller’s
path often leads him up the middle of one of these streams, and every
turn, like that of a kaleidoscope, reveals something new and pleasing
to the eye. Here a daisy-like flower nods over the margin, as if to
look at her modest face in the reflecting waters; there the
lotus-leafed, wild arum stands knee-deep in water, shaking around with
the motion of the stream the dew-drops on its peltate bosom like drops
of glittering quicksilver. Here the fantastic roots of a willow,
sprinkled with its woolly capsules, come down to the water’s edge, or
it may be a eugenia tree, with its fragrant white corymbs, or a water
dillenia, with its brick-red, scaly trunk, and green, apple-like
fruit, occupies its place; there the long, drooping red tassels of the
barringtonia hang far over the bank, dropping its blossoms on the
water, food for numerous members of the carp family congregated
below.”
Having studied the _Geography_ and the _Physical Geography_ of Burmah,
we turn to its _Natural History_. The domestic animals are the ox,
buffalo, horse, and the goat. The horses are small, and are used for
riding, never as beasts of burden. The dog is not kept as a pet, or for
hunting, but, as in other Oriental countries, he roams about the cities
in a half-wild condition, devouring offal, and at last becomes the
victim of famine or disease. The jungles swarm with wild animals, the
monkey, elephant, rhinoceros, tiger, leopard, deer, and wild-cat. The
elephants are caught, tamed, and used for riding. The white elephant, or
albino, is especially prized. A specimen is always kept at court as the
insignia of royalty, one of the king’s titles being, “Lord of the White
Elephant.” The tiger sometimes steals out of the jungle into a Karen
village, and carries off a pig or a calf, or even a child. When once he
has tasted human blood, he is very dangerous. An American missionary, a
lady, relates that she came once to a native village which a tiger had
formed the habit of visiting every night. On each occasion he would
carry off some domestic animal. The villagers had taken no measures to
avert the danger. She urged them to try and kill the monster. She
described how speedily an American village would rid itself of such a
nuisance. And so they built an enormous trap or dead-fall. The trunk of
a tree was to fall and break the tiger’s back. A squealing pig was tied
up for bait. The following night some English officers arrived. They sat
up late talking over their adventures, when suddenly a terrific roar
pealed through the village. The officers rushed out and found an
enormous Bengal tiger pinned down in the trap. They speared him to
death, and his beautiful skin was given to the lady as a trophy.
Even in the towns the dove-cote has to be placed on the top of a high
pole, the base of which is sheathed with tin, in order to prevent the
wild-cats from climbing up and devouring the doves. One of the author’s
childish reminiscences is seeing in a cage a wild-cat that had been
caught alive in the belfry of the church at Maulmain.
Venomous and offensive reptiles and insects abound. While you are eating
your dinner the lizard may drop from the bamboo rafters upon the table.
As you step out of your door the gleaming forms of chameleons shoot up
the trunk of your roof-tree and hide themselves in the branches. The
scorpion, with its painful sting, and the centipede, with its poisonous
bite, may be found in your garden. The children must be warned not to
race through the bushes in your compound, lest they encounter the hated
cobra, whose slightest nip is sure and speedy death. The author
remembers his father taking the Burman spear, the only weapon which he
ever used, and going down into the poultry-yard to dispatch a cobra,
whose track had first been discovered in the dust beneath the house.
How much discomfort and suffering are caused, even in our own land, by
rats, mice, snakes, flies, and mosquitoes! And the foreign missionary
has these same pests, but in a more aggravated form. These are larger,
more numerous, and in addition to them he has to cope with the white
ants that in armies destroy his furniture, the scorpion, the centipede,
the cobra, the tiger.
The _inhabitants_ of Burmah next claim our attention. The Burmans belong
to the Mongolian race, the characteristics of which are “long, straight
hair; almost complete absence of beard, and hair on the body; a
dark-colored skin, varying from a leather-like yellow to a deep brown,
or sometimes tending to red; and prominent cheek-bones, generally
accompanied by an oblique setting of the eyes.”[11]
The Burmans are described by a modern writer[12] as “of a stout, active,
well-proportioned form; of a brown, but never of an intensely dark
complexion, with black, coarse, and abundant hair, and a little more
beard than is possessed by the Siamese.”
At the time of Mr. and Mrs. Judson’s arrival, the population numbered
from six to eight millions. This included, however, not only Burmans,
who are the ruling race, and dwell mainly in the larger towns and
cities, but also several subject races—Shans, Karens, Kakhyens—half-wild
people, who live in villages scattered through the jungles and along the
mountain streams. These tribes have different habits, and speak a
different language from the Burmans. They are related to the Burmans
somewhat as the North American Indians are to us, being, perhaps, the
original inhabitants of the country, and having been subjugated at some
remote period of the past. It would seem that wave after wave of
Mongolian conquerors had swept over the country from the North, and
these tribes are the fragments of wrecked nationalities.
Major Yule, in his “Embassy to Ava,” gives the following graphic
description of the mental and moral traits of the Burmese:
“Unlike the generality of the Asiatics, they are not a fawning race.
They are cheerful, and singularly alive to the ridiculous; buoyant,
elastic, soon recovering from personal or domestic disaster. With
little feeling of patriotism, they are still attached to their homes,
greatly so to their families. Free from prejudices of caste or creed,
they readily fraternize with strangers, and at all times frankly yield
to the superiority of a European. Though ignorant, they are, when no
mental exertion is required, inquisitive, and to a certain extent
eager for information; indifferent to the shedding of blood on the
part of their rulers, yet not individually cruel; temperate,
abstemious, and hardy, but idle, with neither fixedness of purpose nor
perseverance. Discipline or any continued employment becomes most
irksome to them, yet they are not devoid of a certain degree of
enterprise. Great dabblers in small mercantile ventures, they may be
called (the women especially) a race of hucksters; not treacherous or
habitual perverters of the truth, yet credulous and given to monstrous
exaggerations; when vested with authority, arrogant and boastful; if
unchecked, corrupt, oppressive, and arbitrary; yet distinguished for
bravery, whilst their chiefs are notorious for cowardice; indifferent
shots, and though living in a country abounding in forest, not bold
followers of field sports.”
But what is the _industrial life_ of the Burmans? The soil of Burmah is
richly productive of all that is needed for food or clothing or shelter
or ornament. The chief crops are rice, maize or Indian corn, wheat,
tobacco, cotton, and indigo. It is computed that 80 per cent. of all the
rice brought from the East to Europe is produced in the rich
paddy-fields of British Burmah.
There is an abundance of delicious fruits—the jack-fruit, the
bread-fruit, oranges, bananas, guavas, pine-apples, and the cocoa-nut.
After the annual inundation, the subsiding rivers leave behind them, in
the depressions of the ground, ponds well stocked with fish. Beef and
mutton the Burman learns to forego, as his religion does not allow him
to eat cattle or sheep unless they die a natural death. His meal of rice
and curry is sometimes enriched by the addition of poultry. The bamboo
yields building material for his houses, and the teak forest timber for
his ships. The mineral resources are large. The earth yields iron, tin,
silver, gold, sapphires, emeralds, rubies, amber, sulphur, arsenic,
antimony, coal (both anthracite and bituminous), and petroleum oil,
which is used by all classes in little clay lamps.
And yet at the time of the arrival of our missionaries, and even now in
Independent Burmah, there is no commerce on a large scale. This is shown
by the high rate of interest, 25 per cent., and 60 per cent. when no
security is given. The very productiveness of his country made the
Burman of fifty years ago feel independent of foreign nations. He took
the narrow view that exportation only tended to impoverishment. The
Government rigidly prohibited all important exportation except that of
the cheap and abundant teak timber. Gold and silver and precious stones
must not be carried out for fear of reducing the country to poverty. If
in those days an English merchant had carried a large quantity of silks
and calicoes to the royal city, and had exchanged them for £5,000 in
gold, he could possess and enjoy the money there, but he could not,
except by bribery, succeed in carrying it home. His wealth made him
practically an exile and a prisoner. The marble could not be exported,
because it was consecrated to the building of idols and pagodas. The
cotton and the rice could not be exported, lest there should not be
enough left for the clothing and food of the population. The only
commerce worth mentioning was with China. The Chinese caravans brought,
overland, large quantities of raw silk, and received cotton in exchange.
On account of the low state of commerce, the science of navigation was
quite unknown to the Burmans. When sailors made their little trips, in
the dry season, along the shore of the Bay of Bengal, they took pains
never to pass out of sight of land.
There were no extensive manufactures in Burmah, for these required an
accumulation of large capital; and a man could never be sure that his
wealth would not be wrested from him by the Government. And so the chief
article of manufacture is lacquer-ware, as this requires but little
capital. Woven strips of bamboo were smeared with mud, and baked, and
polished, and varnished, and then manufactured into beautiful boxes and
trays.
Most of the Burmans, however, are engaged in agricultural pursuits. They
raise rice and catch fish, which they pound up into a mass with coarse
salt, and so produce their favorite relish, _ngapee_. Immense quantities
of rice and _ngapee_ are carried up the Irrawaddy in boats, and sold at
the capital and in the upper provinces of Burmah.
The _government_ of Independent Burmah is an absolute despotism. The
king has supreme power over the life and possessions of every subject.
He may confiscate property, imprison, torture, or execute at his
pleasure,—his only restraint being fear of an insurrection. An English
writer relates that at the sovereign’s command one of the highest
officers of the State was seized by the public executioner, and
stretched on the ground by the side of the road, under a scorching sun,
with a heavy weight upon his chest, and afterward restored to his high
position. There are, indeed, two Councils of State, by which the
government is administered, but the members of these councils are
appointed by the king, and may be degraded or executed at his word. The
late monarch of Burmah saw the evils of this despotic system, and, in
arranging for the succession, formed a plan by which his successor
should be subject to limitation by his prime ministers. But the new
king, Thebaw, a brutal and licentious boy of 20, frustrated this
benignant purpose. He murdered his counsellors, massacred his blood
relations, and Burmah, that had roused herself for a moment from her
long nightmare of despotism, sank again into sleep.
The whole country is divided into provinces, townships, districts, and
villages. Over each province is a governor, or as the Burmese call him,
an _Eater_. Through his underlings he taxes every family. His officers
receive a share of what they can extort, and the rest he divides with
the king. In this way the whole land is a scene of enormous extortion.
There are no fixed salaries for Government functionaries. The higher
officer _eats_ a certain province or district. The lower officer lives
on fees and perquisites. Courts of law are corrupted by bribery. It is
customary to torture witnesses. The criminal is usually executed by
decapitation. He may, however, be disembowelled, or thrown to wild
beasts, or crucified, or have his limbs broken with a bludgeon—if he can
not effect his escape by the plentiful use of money.
“On the 7th of February, 1817, seven persons found guilty of sacrilege
were conveyed to the place of execution near Rangoon, and secured in
the usual way to the stake. The first of them was fired at four
successive times by a marksman without being hit. At every shot there
was a loud peal of laughter from the spectators. The malefactor was
taken down, declared to be invulnerable, pardoned, and taken into a
confidential employment by the governor. He had paid a large bribe.
The second culprit was shot, and the remaining five were
decapitated.”[13]
Who can estimate the miseries which the peasantry must suffer under such
a system of bribery and extortion? It is not strange that the late
Burman monarch, when he came to the throne, uttered the exclamation,
“Great God, I might as well be king over a desert!”
The _religion_ of Burmah is Buddhism. Here and in the Island of Ceylon,
this cult exists in its purest form. Buddhism originated in India about
500 years before Christ. Here it succeeded in supplanting the ancient
religion of the Hindoos, derived from the Vedas, and called Brahminism.
India was in former times saturated with Brahminical philosophy and
Brahminical ceremonial. The people were completely priest-ridden.
Buddhism was an outgrowth from Brahminism, or perhaps rather a recoil
from it. It was related to it somewhat as Christianity is to Judaism, or
Protestantism to the Romish Church. For one hundred and fifty years
Buddhism had a very rapid and vigorous growth in India, but soon after
the beginning of the Christian era it began to decay, and in the eighth
and ninth centuries A.D., in consequence of a great persecution,
Buddhism was completely extirpated in India. The ancient religion,
Brahminism, was reinstated, and Gaudama has no worshipper in the land of
his birth.
But a prophet is not without honor save in his country. Buddhism is
pervaded by a missionary spirit, and has won its way by peaceful
persuasion into Ceylon, Burmah, Siam, Thibet, and China. It is, at the
present day, the religion of more than four hundred millions of human
beings—about one-third of the population of the globe.
Having considered the distribution of Buddhism, let us contrast it with
Brahminism. Buddhism, like Brahminism, holds the doctrine of
transmigration of souls. The soul is at first united with the lowest
forms of organic life. By successive births it may climb into the bodies
of spiders, snakes, chameleons, and after long ages may reach the human
tenement. Then comes the period of probation. According to its behavior
in the flesh it either rises still higher to occupy the glorious forms
of demigods and gods, or it relapses little by little into its low
estate, and again takes up its wretched abode in the degraded forms of
the lower animals.
“Life runs its rounds of living, climbing up,
From mote, and gnat, and worm, reptile and fish,
Bird and shagged beast, man, demon, deva, God,
To clod and mote again.”[14]
“He who is now the most degraded of the demons may one day rule the
highest of the heavens: He who is at present seated on the most
honorable of the celestial thrones, may one day writhe amidst all the
agonies of a place of torment; and the worm that we crush under our
feet may in the course of ages become a supreme Buddha.”[15]
“Eternal process moving on,
From state to state the spirit walks,
And these are but the shattered stalks,
And ruined chrysalis of one.”[16]
This belief pervades the every-day thinking of the most ignorant
Burmese. An English officer writes, that just before the drop fell with
a wretched murderer, he himself heard him mutter as his last word, “May
my next existence be a man’s, and a long one!” An old woman, whose
grown-up son had died, thought that she recognized that son’s voice in
the bleating of a neighbor’s calf. She threw her arms about the animal,
and purchasing it, cherished it until its death, as the living
embodiment of her own child.
Faith in transmigration accounts for the pious Buddhist’s treatment of
the lower animals. The priests strain the gnats out of the water they
drink. “They do not eat after noon, nor drink after dark, for fear of
swallowing minute insects, and they carry a brush on all occasions, with
which they carefully sweep every place before they sit down, lest they
should inadvertently crush any living creature.” Mr. Huxley tells us
that a Hindoo’s peace of mind was completely destroyed by a microscopist
who showed him the animals in a drop of water. The Buddhists often build
hospitals for sick brutes. Perhaps this deep-seated and hereditary faith
in transmigration may account for the singular apathy of the natives to
the destruction of life caused by snakes and tigers. In fact, one of
their legends represents the founder of their religion as sacrificing
his life-blood to slake the parched thirst of a starving tigress.
Although Brahminism and Buddhism both agree in teaching transmigration,
they differ widely in their views of God, and of the soul. Brahminism is
pantheistic; Buddhism atheistic. According to Brahminism matter has no
real existence. All physical forms are the merest illusions. The only
real existences are souls. These are all parts of a great Divine soul,
from which they emanate, and into which they will at last be reabsorbed,
as when a flask of water is broken in the ocean. Buddhism denies the
existence not only of matter, but of the soul and of God. It is a system
of universal negation. There is no trace in it of a Supreme Being. All
is mere seeming. Nothing is real in past, present, or future.
Again, Brahminism betrays a deep consciousness of sin. It teaches the
necessity of doing painful penance and of offering animal sacrifices.
Buddhism regards sin as cosmical. There is no such thing as blame or
guilt. There is no mediation or pardon. The Buddhist brings no animal to
the altar. His worship consists in offering up prayers, and perfumes,
and flowers, in memory of the founder of his religion.
Again, Brahminism is aristocratic; Buddhism democratic. Brahminism is
the religion of caste. It divides the nation into four classes: the
priest, the warrior, the tradesman, and the serf. Besides these, but
lowest of all, are pariahs, or _outcastes_—the offspring of intercourse
that violated the law of caste. There can be no social mingling of the
castes. The condition of the serfs is most wretched and humiliating. The
laws of Menu ordain that their abode must be outside the towns, their
property must be restricted to dogs and asses, their clothes should be
those left by the dead, their ornaments rusty iron; they must roam from
place to place; no respectable person must hold intercourse with them;
they are to aid as public executioners, retaining the clothes of the
dead. Now Buddhism rejected the system of caste. Gaudama taught: “The
priest is born of a woman; so is the _outcaste_. My law is a law of
grace for all. My doctrine is like the sky. There is room for all
without exception, men, women, boys, girls, poor and rich.” The two
beautiful stories that follow remind us of the spirit and behavior of
our own blessed Lord.
Amanda, an eminent disciple of Gaudama, meets an _outcaste_ girl,
drawing water at a well. He asks for a draught. She hesitates, fearing
she may contaminate him by her touch. He says, “My sister, I do not ask,
what is thy caste, or thy descent; I beg for water: if thou canst, give
it me.” It is also related that a poor man filled Gaudama’s alms-bowl
with a single handful of flowers, while the rich could not accomplish it
with ten thousand bushels of rice.
But let us glance at the life of the founder of Buddhism. He is called
Gaudama, Siddartha, or Buddha. Gaudama was the name of his family;
Siddartha his own individual name, and Buddha, “the enlightened one,”
the surname he acquired by his wisdom. He was born about the year 500
B.C., at Kapilivastu, a few days’ journey from Benares, near the base of
the Himalayas. His father was an Indian prince, and ruled over a tribe
called the Sakyas. Buddha is described as of a gentle, ardent, pensive,
philanthropic nature. He was reared in the lap of Oriental luxury, but
his earnest nature became weary with pleasure. Intimations of the
wretchedness of the peasantry of India penetrated even the palace walls.
The winds soughing through the strings of the Æolian harp, seemed to
whisper in his ear the miseries of mankind.
“We are the voices of the wandering wind,
Which moan for rest, and rest can never find;
Lo! as the wind is, so is mortal life,
A moan, a sigh, a sob, a storm, a strife.
“O Maya’s son! because we roam the earth,
Moan we upon these strings; we make no mirth,
So many woes we see in many lands,
So many streaming eyes, and wringing hands.”[17]
The desire to be a savior takes possession of his breast. Four ominous
sights contribute to fix his purpose. He sees in his pleasure-grounds an
old man, broken and decrepit; again, he meets a man smitten with a
malignant disease; again, his eye rests upon a corpse. He learns that
such are the destinies of himself and of all his fellow-beings. At last
he sees a mendicant monk passing by with his alms-bowl. The young prince
resolves to leave his father, his wealth, his power, his wife, and
child, and become a homeless wanderer, that he may search out the way of
salvation for himself and his fellow-men. He first became a Brahminical
ascetic, and gave himself over to the severest penance and self-torture.
Afterward he abandoned this altogether, and at last, while in
profoundest meditation under the bo-tree, he discovers the way of life.
He spends his remaining days in travelling through India, preaching his
gospel, and gaining many disciples. He revisits his home at Kapilivastu.
He lives to be an old man, and at last dies with the words on his lips:
“Nothing, nothing is durable!” The eminent French savant, M. Barthélemy
St. Hilaire, says:
“Je n’hésite pas à ajouter, que, sauf le Christ tout seul, il n’est
point, parmi les fondateurs de religion, de figure plus pure ni plus
touchante que celle du Bouddha. Sa vie n’a point de tache. Son
constant héroîsm égale sa conviction; et si la théorie qu’il préconise
est fausse, les exemples personnels qu’il donne sont irréprochables.
Il est le modèle achevé de toutes les vertus qu’il prêcha; son
abnégation, sa charité, son inaltérable douceur, ne se démentent point
un seul instant; il abandonne à vingt-neuf ans la cour du roi, son
père, pour se faire religieux et mendiant; il prépare silencieusement
sa doctrine par six années de retraite, et de méditation; il la
propage par la seule puissance de la parole et de la persuasion,
pendant plus d’un demi siècle; et quand il meurt entre les bras de ses
disciples, c’est avec la sérénité d’un sage qui a pratiqué le bien
toute sa vie, et qui est assuré d’avoir trouvé le vrai.”[18]
But one eagerly inquires, What was the _way of salvation_ that Buddha
discovered under the bo-tree, and spent half a century of his life in
preaching? Observe successively the _point of departure_, the _goal_,
and the _way_.
Buddha starts out with the idea that misery is the indispensable
accompaniment of existence—sorrow is shadow to life. The foundation of
his philosophy rests in the densest pessimism. While we are bound up in
this material world, we are a prey to disappointment, disease, old age,
death. We find ourselves “caught in this common net of death and woe,
and life which binds to both.” There is no way out of the vast and
monotonous cycle of transmigration except into _Nirvana_—the _blowing
out_—that is, total extinction.
The highest _goal_, therefore, to which we can attain is utter
annihilation. That this is the meaning of _Nirvana_, or _Nigban_, seems
established beyond a doubt. The most eminent authorities on Buddhism,
Barthélemy St. Hilaire, Bigandet, Eugène Burnouf, Spence Hardy, and Max
Müller, all agree with the view presented by Mr. Judson many years ago,
that _Nirvana_ or _Nigban_ is nothing less than a total extinction of
soul and body. It is the final blowing out of the soul, as of a lamp;
not its absorption, as when a “dew-drop slips into the shining sea.”
It is
“To perish rather, swallowed up and lost,
In the wide womb of uncreated night.
Devoid of sense and motion.”
But in what _way_ is this bliss of annihilation to be reached? Only by a
long and arduous struggle. There are four truths to be believed. 1.
There is nothing in life but sorrow. 2. The root of sorrow is desire. 3.
Desire must be destroyed. 4. The way to destroy desire is to follow the
eightfold path, viz., 1. Right doctrine. 2. Right purpose. 3. Right
discourse. 4. Right behavior. 5. Right purity. 6. Right thought. 7.
Right solitude. 8. Right rapture.
But in order to do these eight right things, five commandments must be
kept. 1. Not to kill. 2. Not to steal. 3. Not to commit adultery. 4. Not
to lie. 5. Not to get intoxicated. And upon these commandments Gaudama
himself gives the following commentary:
“He who kills as much as a louse or a bug; he who takes so much as a
thread that belongs to another; he who with a wishful thought looks at
another man’s wife; he who makes a jest of what concerns the advantage
of another; he who puts on his tongue as much as the drop that would
hang upon the point of a blade of grass, of anything bearing the sign
of intoxicating liquor, has broken the commandments.”
There are four stages to be arrived at in the way of salvation. 1. The
believer has a change of heart, and conquers lust, pride, and anger. 2.
He is set free from ignorance, doubt, and wrong belief. 3. He enters the
state of universal kindliness. 4. He reaches _Nirvana_.
In this succession of stages Buddha makes right conduct a precedent
condition to spiritual knowledge; and so is in striking harmony with a
greater than he: “If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of
the doctrine.”
It is clear that the strength of Buddhism lies not in its philosophy or
theology, but in its code of morals. To its system of rightness rigidly
practiced by its founder, it owes its vitality. If the presentation of a
system of morality could save, then long since India, Burmah, Ceylon,
Siam, Thibet, and China ought to have become an earthly paradise.
Besides the virtues ordinarily recognized in heathen codes, Buddhism
teaches meekness and forbearance. The pious Buddhist, when struck a
violent blow, can meekly reflect that it is in consequence of some sin
that he has committed in a previous state of existence. This is a system
that teaches us to love our fellow-men tenderly and perseveringly. “As
even at the risk of her own life a mother watches over her own child,
her only child, so let him—the Buddhist saint—exert good-will without
measure towards all beings.” It even teaches resignation in sorrow. I
give the following beautiful story as it is told by T. W. Rhys Davids:
“Buddha is said to have brought back to her right mind a young mother
whom sorrow had for a time deprived of reason. Her name was
Kisagotami. She had been married early, as is the custom in the East,
and had a child when she was still a girl. When the beautiful boy
could run alone, he died. The young girl, in her love for it, carried
the dead child clasped in her bosom, and went from house to house of
her pitying friends, asking them to give her medicine for it. But a
Buddhist, thinking, ‘She does not understand,’ said to her, ‘My good
girl, I myself have no such medicine as you ask for, but I think I
know of one who has.’ ‘Oh, tell me who that is,’ said Kisagotami. ‘The
Buddha can give you medicine; go to him,’ was the answer.
“She went to Gaudama, and, doing homage to him, said: ‘Lord and
master, do you know any medicine that will be good for my child?’
‘Yes, I know of some,’ said the teacher. Now it was the custom for
patients or their friends to provide the herbs which the doctors
required; so she asked what herbs he would want. ‘I want some mustard
seed,’ he said; and when the poor girl eagerly promised to bring some
of so common a drug, he added: ‘You must get it from some home where
no son, or husband, or parent, or slave has died.’ ‘Very good,’ she
said; and went to seek for it, still carrying her dead child with her.
The people said, ‘Here is mustard seed, take it’; but when she asked,
‘In my friend’s house has any son died, or a husband, or a parent, or
a slave?’ they answer, ‘Lady, what is this that you say? The living
are few, but the dead are many.’ Then she went to other houses, but
one said, ‘I have lost a son’; another, ‘We have lost our parents’;
another, ‘I have lost my slave.’ At last, not being able to find a
single house where no one had died, her mind began to clear, and
summoning up resolution she left the dead body of her child in a
forest, and returning to the Buddha, paid him homage. He said to her,
‘Have you the mustard seed?’ ‘My Lord,’ she replied, ‘I have not; the
people tell me that the living are few, but the dead are many.’ Then
he talked to her on that essential part of his system, the
impermanency of all things, till her doubts were cleared away; she
accepted her lot, became a disciple, and entered ‘the first path.’”
But, after all, Buddhism, with its exquisite code of morals, has never
succeeded in cleansing the Augean stables of the human heart. It is a
religion without God, or prayer, or pardon, or heaven. Its laws lack the
authority of a Law-giver. Its _Nirvana_ is a cheerless and uninviting
prospect. It is a system of despair. The spirits are weighed down by the
vast load of demerits, and haunted by the anticipation of endless ages
of misery. There is no “pity sitting in the clouds.” There is no way of
forgiveness, no sense of Divine presence and sympathy. Under such a
system of cold abstractions, it is not strange that the common people
should distort the conception of _Nirvana_ into an earthly paradise, and
fly for refuge even into demon-worship, and other forms of Shamanism.
In Edwin Arnold’s beautiful poem this religion has been presented in a
most burnished and fascinating form, but no one whose mind is not filled
with misconceptions of Christianity, would think for a moment of
exchanging the “Light of the World” for the “Light of Asia.”[19]
In the _Missionary Magazine_ of 1818 Mrs. Judson writes:
“Let those who plead the native innocence and purity of heathen
nations visit Burmah! The system of religion here has no power over
the heart or restraint on the passions. Though it forbids, on pain of
many years’ suffering in hell, theft and falsehood, yet, I presume to
say, there is not a single Burman in the country, who, if he had a
good opportunity, without danger of detection, would hesitate to do
either. Though the religion inculcates benevolence, tenderness,
forgiveness of injuries, and love of enemies—though it forbids
sensuality, love of pleasure, and attachment to worldly objects—yet it
is destitute of power to produce the former, or to subdue the latter,
in its votaries. In short, the Burman system of religion is like an
alabaster image, perfect and beautiful in all its parts, but destitute
of life. Besides being destitute of life, it provides no atonement for
sin. Here also the Gospel triumphs over this and every other religion
in the world.”
-----
Footnote 8:
See Map II.
Footnote 9:
See Forbes’s “British Burmah.”
Footnote 10:
See Mason’s “The Natural Productions of Burmah.”
Footnote 11:
Oscar Peschel.
Footnote 12:
Major Yule, in his “Embassy to Ava.”
Footnote 13:
See Crawfurd’s “Embassy.”
Footnote 14:
“The Light of Asia,” by Edwin Arnold.
Footnote 15:
Hardwick’s “Christ and other Masters.”
Footnote 16:
Tennyson’s “In Memoriam.”
Footnote 17:
“The Light of Asia.”
Footnote 18:
“I do not hesitate to add that, with the exception of the Christ
alone, there is among the founders of religions no purer or more
affecting figure than that of Buddha. His life has no stain. His
constant heroism equals his conviction; and if the theory which he
extols is false, the personal examples which he gives are
irreproachable. He is the finished model of all the virtues which he
preaches; his self-denial, his charity, his unalterable gentleness do
not fail for a single instant; at twenty-nine years of age he leaves
the court of the king, his father, in order to become a recluse and a
mendicant; he silently prepares his doctrine during six years of
seclusion and meditation; he propagates it for more than half a
century by the power of persuasion alone; and when he dies in the arms
of his disciples, it is with the serenity of a sage who has practiced
the good all his life and who is assured of having found the true.”
Footnote 19:
The reader may be interested to see what weapons Mr. Judson used in
assailing the hoary system of Buddhism, and is therefore referred to
Appendix B.