works were written before the canonical books of the Buddhists,
composed in Sanskrit, had been discovered, or at least before they had
been sent to Europe, and been analysed by European scholars. Besides,
neither Neander nor Creuzer was an Oriental scholar, and their
knowledge of the subject could only be second-hand. It was in 1824
that Mr. Brian Houghton Hodgson, then resident at the Court of Nepal,
gave the first intimation of the existence of a large religious
literature written in Sanskrit, and preserved by the Buddhists of
Nepal as the canonical books of their faith. It was in 1830 and 1835
that the same eminent scholar and naturalist presented the first set
of these books to the Royal Asiatic Society in London. In 1837 he made
a similar gift to the Societe Asiatique of Paris, and some of the most
important works were transmitted by him to the Bodleian Library at
Oxford. It was in 1844 that the late Eugene Burnouf published, after a
careful study of these documents, his classical work, 'Introduction a
l'Histoire du Buddhisme Indien,' and it is from this book that our
knowledge of Buddhism may be said to date. Several works have since
been published, which have added considerably to the stock of
authentic information on the doctrine of the great Indian reformer.
There is Burnouf's translation of 'Le Lotus de la bonne Loi,'
published after the death of that lamented scholar, together with
numerous essays, in 1852. There are two interesting works by the Rev.
Spence Hardy--'Eastern Monachism,' London, 1850, and 'A Manual of
Buddhism,' London, 1853; and there are the publications of M.
Stanislas Julien, E. Foucaux, the Honourable George Turnour, Professor
H. H. Wilson, and others, alluded to in my article on the 'Buddhist
Pilgrims.' It is from these works alone that we can derive correct and
authentic information on Buddhism, and not from Neander's 'History of
the Christian Church' or from Creuzer's 'Symbolik.'
If any one will consult these works, he will find that the discussions
on the true meaning of Nirva_n_a are not of modern date, and that, at
a very early period, different philosophical schools among the
Buddhists of India, and different teachers who spread the doctrine of
Buddhism abroad, propounded every conceivable opinion as to the
orthodox explanation of this term. Even in one and the same school we
find different parties maintaining different views on the meaning of
Nirva_n_a. There is the school of the Svabhavikas, which still exists
in Nepal. The Svabhavikas maintain that nothing exists but nature, or
rather substance, and that this substance exists by itself
(svabhavat), without a Creator or a Ruler. It exists, however, under
two forms: in the state of Prav_r_itti, as active, or in the state of
Nirv_r_itti, as passive. Human beings, who, like everything else,
exist svabhavat, 'by themselves,' are supposed to be capable of
arriving at Nirv_r_itti, or passiveness, which is nearly synonymous
with Nirva_n_a. But here the Svabhavikas branch off into two sects.
Some believe that Nirv_r_itti is repose, others that it is
annihilation; and the former add, 'were it even annihilation
(sunyata), it would still be good, man being otherwise doomed to an
eternal migration through all the forms of nature; the more desirable
of which are little to be wished for; and the less so, at any price to
be shunned.'[83]
What was the original meaning of Nirva_n_a may perhaps best be seen
from the etymology of this technical term. Every Sanskrit scholar
knows that Nirva_n_a means originally the blowing out, the extinction
of light, and not absorption. The human soul, when it arrives at its
perfection, is blown out,[84] if we use the phraseology of the
Buddhists, like a lamp; it is not absorbed, as the Brahmans say, like
a drop in the ocean. Neither in the system of Buddhist philosophy, nor
in the philosophy from which Buddha is supposed to have borrowed, was
there any place left for a Divine Being by which the human soul could
be absorbed. Sankhya philosophy, in its original form, claims the name
of an-i_s_vara, 'lordless' or 'atheistic' as its distinctive title.
Its final object is not absorption in God, whether personal or
impersonal, but Moksha, deliverance of the soul from all pain and
illusion, and recovery by the soul of its true nature. It is doubtful
whether the term Nirva_n_a was coined by Buddha. It occurs in the
literature of the Brahmans as a synonyme of Moksha, deliverance;
Nirv_r_itti, cessation; Apavarga, release; Ni_hs_reyas, summum bonum.
It is used in this sense in the Mahabharata, and it is explained in
the Amara-Kosha as having the meaning of 'blowing out, applied to a
fire and to a sage.'[85] Unless, however, we succeed in tracing this
term in works anterior to Buddha, we may suppose that it was invented
by him in order to express that meaning of the summum bonum which he
was the first to preach, and which some of his disciples explained in
the sense of absolute annihilation.
[Footnote 83: See Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 441; Hodgson, 'Asiatic
Researches,' vol. xvi.]
[Footnote 84: 'Calm,' 'without wind,' as Nirva_n_a is sometimes
explained, is expressed in Sanskrit by Nirvata. See Amara-Kosha, sub
voce.]
[Footnote 85: Different views of the Nirva_n_a, as conceived by the
Tirthakas or the Brahmans, may be seen in an extract from the
Lankavatara, translated by Burnouf, p. 514.]
The earliest authority to which we can go back, if we want to know the
original character of Buddhism, is the Buddhist Canon, as settled
after the death of Buddha at the first Council. It is called
Tripi_t_aka, or the Three Baskets, the first containing the Sutras, or
the discourses of Buddha; the second, the Vinaya, or his code of
morality; the third, the Abhidharma, or the system of metaphysics. The
first was compiled by Ananda, the second by Upali, the third by
Ka_s_yapa--all of them the pupils and friends of Buddha. It may be
that these collections, as we now possess them, were finally arranged,
not at the first, but at the third Council. Yet, even then, we have no
earlier, no more authentic, documents from which we could form an
opinion as to the original teaching of Buddha; and the Nirva_n_a, as
taught in the metaphysics of Ka_s_yapa, and particularly in the
Pra_gn_a-paramita, is annihilation, not absorption. Buddhism,
therefore, if tested by its own canonical books, cannot be freed from
the charge of Nihilism, whatever may have been its character in the
mind of its founder, and whatever changes it may have undergone in
later times, and among races less inured to metaphysical discussions
than the Hindus.
The ineradicable feeling of dependence on something else, which is the
life-spring of all religion, was completely numbed in the early Buddhist
metaphysicians, and it was only after several generations had passed away,
and after Buddhism had become the creed of millions, that this feeling
returned with increased warmth, changing, as I said in my article, the very
Nothing into a paradise, and deifying the very Buddha who had denied the
existence of a Deity. That this has been the case in China we know from the
interesting works of the Abbe Huc, and from other sources, such as the
'Catechism of the Shamans, or the Laws and Regulations of the Priesthood of
Buddha in China,' translated by Ch. F. Neumann, London, 1831. In India,
also, Buddhism, as soon as it became a popular religion, had to speak a
more human language than that of metaphysical Pyrrhonism. But, if it did
so, it was because it was shamed into it. This we may see from the very
nicknames which the Brahmans apply to their opponents, the Bauddhas. They
call them Nastikas--those who maintain that there is nothing;
_S_unyavadins-those who maintain that there is a universal void.
The only ground, therefore, on which we may stand, if we wish to
defend the founder of Buddhism against the charges of Nihilism and
Atheism, is this, that, as some of the Buddhists admit, the 'Basket of
Metaphysics' was rather the work of his pupils, not of Buddha
himself.[86] This distinction between the authentic words of Buddha
and the canonical books in general, is mentioned more than once. The
priesthood of Ceylon, when the manifest errors with which their
canonical commentaries abound, were brought to their notice, retreated
from their former position, and now assert that it is only the express
words of Buddha that they receive as undoubted truth.[87] There is a
passage in a Buddhist work which reminds us somewhat of the last page
of Dean Milman's 'History of Christianity,' and where we read:
'The words of the priesthood are good; those of the Rahats
(saints) are better; but those of the All-knowing are the
best of all.'
[Footnote 86: See Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 41. 'Abuddhoktam
abhidharma-_s_astram.' Ibid. p. 454. According to the Tibetan
Buddhists, however, Buddha propounded the Abhidharma when he was
fifty-one years old. 'Asiatic Researches,' vol. xx. p. 339.]
[Footnote 87: 'Eastern Monachism,' p. 171.]
This is an argument which Mr. Francis Barham might have used with more
success, and by which he might have justified, if not the first
disciples, at least the original founder of Buddhism. Nay, there is a
saying of Buddha's which tends to show that all metaphysical
discussion was regarded by him as vain and useless. It is a saying
mentioned in one of the MSS. belonging to the Bodleian Library. As it
has never been published before, I may be allowed to quote it in the
original: Sadasad vi_k_aram na sahate,--'The ideas of being and not
being do not admit of discussion,'--a tenet which, if we consider that
it was enunciated before the time of the Eleatic philosophers of
Greece, and long before Hegel's Logic, might certainly have saved us
many an intricate and indigestible argument.
A few passages from the Buddhist writings of Nepal and Ceylon will
best show that the horror nihili was not felt by the metaphysicians
of former ages in the same degree as it is felt by ourselves. The
famous hymn which resounds in heaven when the luminous rays of the
smile of Buddha penetrate through the clouds, is 'All is transitory,
all is misery, all is void, all is without substance.' Again, it is
said in the Pra_gn_a-paramita,[88] that Buddha began to think that he
ought to conduct all creatures to perfect Nirva_n_a. But he reflected
that there are really no creatures which ought to be conducted, nor
creatures that conduct; and, nevertheless, he did conduct all
creatures to perfect Nirva_n_a. Then, continues the text, why is it
said that there are neither creatures which arrive at complete
Nirva_n_a, nor creatures which conduct there? Because it is illusion
which makes creatures what they are. It is as if a clever juggler, or
his pupil, made an immense number of people to appear on the high
road, and after having made them to appear, made them to disappear
again. Would there be anybody who had killed, or murdered, or
annihilated, or caused them to vanish? No. And it is the same with
Buddha. He conducts an immense, innumerable, infinite number of
creatures to complete Nirva_n_a, and yet there are neither creatures
which are conducted, nor creatures that conduct. If a Bodhisattva, on
hearing this explanation of the Law, is not frightened, then it may be
said that he has put on the great armour.[89]
[Footnote 88: Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 462.]
[Footnote 89: Ibid. p. 478.]
Soon after, we read: 'The name of Buddha is nothing but a word. The
name of Bodhisattva is nothing but a word. The name of Perfect Wisdom
(Pra_gn_a-paramita) is nothing but a word. The name is indefinite, as
if one says "I," for "I" is something indefinite, because it has no
limits.'
Burnouf gives the gist of the whole Pra_gn_a-paramita in the following
words: 'The highest Wisdom, or what is to be known, has no more real
existence than he who has to know, or the Bodhisattva; no more than he
who does know, or the Buddha.' But Burnouf remarks that nothing of
this kind is to be found in the Sutras, and that Gautama _S_akya-muni,
the son of _S_uddhodana, would never have become the founder of a
popular religion if he had started with similar absurdities. In the
Sutras the reality of the objective world is denied; the reality of
form is denied; the reality of the individual, or the 'I,' is equally
denied. But the existence of a subject, of something like the Purusha,
the thinking substance of the Sankhya philosophy, is spared. Something
at least exists with respect to which everything else may be said not
to exist. The germs of the ideas, developed in the Pra_gn_a-paramita,
may indeed be discovered here and there in the Sutras.[90] But they
had not yet ripened into that poisonous plant which soon became an
indispensable narcotic in the schools of the later Buddhists. Buddha
himself, however, though, perhaps, not a Nihilist, was certainly an
Atheist. He does not deny distinctly either the existence of gods, or
that of God; but he ignores the former, and he is ignorant of the
latter. Therefore, if Nirva_n_a in his mind was not yet complete
annihilation, still less could it have been absorption into a Divine
essence. It was nothing but selfishness, in the metaphysical sense of
the word--a relapse into that being which is nothing but itself. This
is the most charitable view which we can take of the Nirva_n_a, even
as conceived by Buddha himself, and it is the view which Burnouf
derived from the canonical books of the Northern Buddhists. On the
other hand, Mr. Spence Hardy, who in his works follows exclusively the
authority of the Southern Buddhists, the Pali and Singhalese works of
Ceylon, arrives at the same result. We read in his work: 'The Rahat
(Arhat), who has reached Nirva_n_a, but is not yet a Pratyeka-buddha,
or a Supreme Buddha, says: "I await the appointed time for the
cessation of existence. I have no wish to live; I have no wish to die.
Desire is extinct."'
[Footnote 90: Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 520.]
* * * * *
In a very interesting dialogue between Milinda and Nagasena,
communicated by Mr. Spence Hardy, Nirva_n_a is represented as
something which has no antecedent cause, no qualities, no locality. It
is something of which the utmost we may assert is, that it is:
_Nagasena._ Can a man, by his natural strength, go from the
city of Sagal to the forest of Himala?
_Milinda._ Yes.
_Nagasena._ But could any man, by his natural strength,
bring the forest of Himala to this city of Sagal?
_Milinda._ No.
_Nagasena._ In like manner, though the fruition of the paths
may cause the accomplishment of Nirva_n_a, no cause by which
Nirva_n_a is produced can be declared. The path that leads
to Nirva_n_a may be pointed out, but not any cause for its
production. Why? because that which constitutes Nirva_n_a is
beyond all computation,--a mystery, not to be
understood.... It cannot be said that it is produced, nor
that it is not produced; that it is past or future or
present. Nor can it be said that it is the seeing of the
eye, or the hearing of the ear, or the smelling of the nose,
or the tasting of the tongue, or the feeling of the body.
_Milinda._ Then you speak of a thing that is not; you merely
say that Nirva_n_a is Nirva_n_a;--therefore there is no
Nirva_n_a.
_Nagasena._ Great king, Nirva_n_a is.
Another question also, whether Nirva_n_a is something different from
the beings that enter into it, has been asked by the Buddhists
themselves:
_Milinda._ Does the being who acquires it, attain something
that has previously existed?--or is it his own product, a
formation peculiar to himself?
_Nagasena._ Nirva_n_a does not exist previously to its
reception; nor is it that which was brought into existence.
Still to the being who attains it, there is Nirva_n_a.
In opposition, therefore, to the more advanced views of the Nihilistic
philosophers of the North, Nagasena maintains the existence of
Nirva_n_a, and of the being that has entered Nirva_n_a. He does not
say that Buddha is a mere word. When asked by king Milinda, whether
the all-wise Buddha exists, he replies:
_Nagasena._ He who is the most meritorious (Bhagavat) does
exist.
_Milinda._ Then can you point out to me the place in which
he exists?
_Nagasena._ Our Bhagavat has attained Nirva_n_a, where there
is no repetition of birth. We cannot say that he is here,
or that he is there. When a fire is extinguished, can it be
said that it is here, or that it is there? Even so, our
Buddha has attained extinction (Nirva_n_a). He is like the
sun that has set behind the Astagiri mountain. It cannot be
said that he is here, or that he is there: but we can point
him out by the discourses he delivered. In them he lives.
At the present moment, the great majority of Buddhists would probably
be quite incapable of understanding the abstract speculation of their
ancient masters. The view taken of Nirva_n_a in China, Mongolia, and
Tatary may probably be as gross as that which most of the Mohammedans
form of their paradise. But, in the history of religion, the historian
must go back to the earliest and most original documents that are to
be obtained. Thus only may he hope to understand the later
developments which, whether for good or evil, every form of faith has
had to undergo.
_April, 1857._
XII.
CHINESE TRANSLATIONS
OF
SANSKRIT TEXTS.[91]
Well might M. Stanislas Julien put [Greek: heureka] on the title-page
of his last work, in which he explains his method of deciphering the
Sanskrit words which occur in the Chinese translations of the Buddhist
literature of India. We endeavoured to explain the laborious character
and the important results of his researches on this subject on a
former occasion, when reviewing his translation of the 'Life and
Travels of the Buddhist Pilgrim Hiouen-thsang.' At that time, however,
M. Julien kept the key of his discoveries to himself. He gave us the
results of his labours without giving us more than a general idea of
the process by which those results had been obtained. He has now
published his 'Methode pour dechiffrer et transcrire les noms
sanscrits qui se rencontrent dans les livres chinois,' and he has
given to the public his Chinese-Sanskrit dictionary, the work of
sixteen years of arduous labour, containing all the Chinese characters
which are used for representing phonetically the technical terms and
proper names of the Buddhist literature of India.
[Footnote 91: 'Methode pour dechiffrer et transcrire les noms
sanscrits qui se rencontrent dans les livres chinois.' Par M.
Stanislas Julien, Membre de l'Institut. Paris, 1861.]
In order fully to appreciate the labours and discoveries of M. Julien
in this remote field of Oriental literature, we must bear in mind that
the doctrine of Buddha arose in India about two centuries before
Alexander's invasion. It became the state religion of India soon after
Alexander's conquest, and it produced a vast literature, which was
collected into a canon at a council held about 246 B.C. Very soon
after that council, Buddhism assumed a proselytizing character. It
spread in the south to Ceylon, in the north to Kashmir, the Himalayan
countries, Tibet, and China. In the historical annals of China, on
which, in the absence of anything like historical literature in
Sanskrit, we must mainly depend for information on the spreading of
Buddhism, one Buddhist missionary is mentioned as early as 217 B.C.;
and about the year 120 B.C. a Chinese general, after defeating the
barbarous tribes north of the desert of Gobi, brought back as a trophy
a golden statue--the statue of Buddha. It was not, however, till the
year 65 A.D. that Buddhism was officially recognised by the Chinese
Emperor as a third state religion. Ever since, it has shared equal
honours with the doctrines of Confucius and Lao-tse in the Celestial
Empire; and it is but lately that these three established religions
have had to fear the encroachments of a new rival in the creed of the
Chief of the rebels.
Once established in China, and well provided with monasteries and
benefices, the Buddhist priesthood seems to have been most active in
its literary labours. Immense as was the Buddhist literature of India,
the Chinese swelled it to still more appalling proportions. The first
thing to be done was to translate the canonical books. This seems to
have been the joint work of Chinese who had acquired a knowledge of
Sanskrit during their travels in India, and of Hindus who settled in
Chinese monasteries in order to assist the native translators. The
translation of books which profess to contain a new religious doctrine
is under all circumstances a task of great difficulty. It was so
particularly when the subtle abstractions of the Buddhist religion had
to be clothed in the solid, matter-of-fact idiom of the Chinese. But
there was another difficulty which it seemed almost impossible to
overcome. Many words, not only proper names, but the technical terms
also of the Buddhist creed, had to be preserved in Chinese. They were
not to be translated, but to be transliterated. But how was this to be
effected with a language which, like Chinese, had no phonetic
alphabet? Every Chinese character is a word; it has both sound and
meaning; and it is unfit, therefore, for the representation of the
sound of foreign words. In modern times, certain characters have been
set apart for the purpose of writing the proper names and titles of
foreigners; but such is the peculiar nature of the Chinese system of
writing, that even with this alphabet it is only possible to represent
approximatively the pronunciation of foreign words. In the absence,
however, of even such an alphabet, the translators of the Buddhist
literature seem to have used their own discretion--or rather
indiscretion--in appropriating, without any system, whatever Chinese
characters seemed to them to come nearest to the sound of Sanskrit
words. Now the whole Chinese language consists in reality of about
four hundred words, or significative sounds, all monosyllabic. Each of
these monosyllabic sounds embraces a large number of various meanings,
and each of these various meanings is represented by its own sign.
Thus it has happened that the Chinese Dictionary contains 43,496
signs, whereas the Chinese language commands only four hundred
distinct utterances. Instead of being restricted, therefore, to one
character which always expresses the same sound, the Buddhist
translators were at liberty to express one and the same sound in a
hundred different ways. Of this freedom they availed themselves to the
fullest extent. Each translator, each monastery, fixed on its own
characters for representing the pronunciation of Sanskrit words. There
are more than twelve hundred Chinese characters employed by various
writers in order to represent the forty-two simple letters of the
Sanskrit alphabet. The result has been that even the Chinese were
after a time unable to read--i. e. to pronounce--these random
transliterations. What, then, was to be expected from Chinese scholars
in Europe? Fortunately, the Chinese, to save themselves from their own
perplexities, had some lists drawn up, exhibiting the principles
followed by the various translators in representing the proper names,
the names of places, and the technical terms of philosophy and
religion which they had borrowed from the Sanskrit. With the help of
these lists, and after sixteen years consecrated to the study of the
Chinese translations of Sanskrit works and of other original
compositions of Buddhist authors, M. Julien at last caught up the
thread that was to lead him through this labyrinth; and by means of
his knowledge of Sanskrit, which he acquired solely for that purpose,
he is now able to do what not even the most learned among the
Buddhists in China could accomplish--he is able to restore the exact
form and meaning of every word transferred from Sanskrit into the
Buddhist literature of China.
Without this laborious process, which would have tired out the
patience and deadened the enthusiasm of most scholars, the treasures
of the Buddhist literature preserved in Chinese were really useless.
Abel Remusat, who during his lifetime was considered the first Chinese
scholar in Europe, attempted indeed a translation of the travels of
Fahian, a Buddhist pilgrim, who visited India about the end of the
fourth century after Christ. It was in many respects a most valuable
work, but the hopelessness of reducing the uncouth Chinese terms to
their Sanskrit originals made it most tantalising to look through its
pages. Who was to guess that Ho-kia-lo was meant for the Sanskrit
Vyakara_n_a, in the sense of sermons; Po-to for the Sanskrit Avadana,
parables; Kia-ye-i for the Sanskrit Ka_s_yapiyas, the followers of
Ka_s_yapa? In some instances, Abel Remusat, assisted by Chezy, guessed
rightly; and later Sanskrit scholars, such as Burnouf, Lassen, and
Wilson, succeeded in re-establishing, with more or less certainty, the
original form of a number of Sanskrit words, in spite of their Chinese
disguises. Still there was no system, and therefore no certainty, in
these guesses, and many erroneous conclusions were drawn from
fragmentary translations of Chinese writers on Buddhism, which even
now are not yet entirely eliminated from the works of Oriental
scholars. With M. Julien's method, mathematical certainty seems to
have taken the place of learned conjectures; and whatever is to be
learnt from the Chinese on the origin, the history, and the true
character of Buddha's doctrine may now be had in an authentic and
unambiguous form.