No Orientalist, save perhaps, the same wise, not to say deep, Prof.
Weber, opposes more vehemently than Prof. Max Muller Hindu and Buddhist
chronology. Evidently if an Indophile he is not a Buddhophile, and
General Cunningham, however independent otherwise in his archeological
researches, agrees with him more than would seem strictly prudent in
view of possible future discoveries.* We have then to refute in our
turn this great Oxford professor's speculations.
---------
* Notwithstanding Prof. M. Muller's regrettable efforts to invalidate
every Buddhist evidence, he seems to have ill-succeeded in proving his
case, if we can judge from the openly expressed opinion of his own
German confreres. In the portion headed "Tradition as to Buddha's Age"
(pp. 283-288) in his "Hist. of Ind. Lit.," Prof. Weber very aptly
remarks, "Nothing like positive certainty, therefore, is for the present
attainable. Nor have the subsequent discussions of this topic by Max
Muller (1859) ('Hist. A.S.L.' p. 264 ff), by Westergaard (1860), 'Ueber
Buddha's Todesjahr,' and by 'Kern Over de Jaartelling der Zuidel
Buddhisten' so far yielded any definite results." Nor are they likely
to.
---------
To the evidence furnished by the Puranas and Mahavansa, which he also
finds hopelessly entangled and contradictory (though the perfect
accuracy of that Sinhalese history is most warmly acknowledged by Sir
Emerson Tennant, the historian), he opposes the Greek classics and their
chronology. With him, it is always "Alexander's invasion" and
"Conquest," and "the ambassador of Seleucus Nicator-Megasthenes," while
even the faintest record of such "conquest" is conspicuously absent from
Brahmanic record; and although in an inscription of Piyadasi are
mentioned the names of Antiochus, Ptolemy, Magus, Antigonus, and even of
the great Alexander himself, as vassals of the king Piyadasi, the
Macedonian is yet called the "Conqueror of India." In other words,
while any casual mention of Indian affairs by a Greek writer of no great
note must be accepted unchallenged, no record of the Indians, literary
or monumental, is entitled to the smallest consideration. Until rubbed
against the touch-stone of Hellenic infallibility it must be set down,
in the words of Professor Weber, as "of course mere empty boasting."
Oh, rare Western sense of justice! *
----------
* No Philaryan would pretend for a moment on the strength of the
Piyadasi inscriptions that Alexander of Macedonia, or either of the
other sovereigns mentioned, was claimed as an actual "vassal" of
Chandragupta. They did not even pay tribute, but only a kind of
quit-rent annually for lands ceded in the north: as the grant-tablets
could show. But the inscription, however misinterpreted, shows most
clearly that Alexander was never the conqueror of India.
---------
Occult records show differently. They say--challenging proof to the
contrary--that Alexander never penetrated into India farther than
Taxila; which is not even quite the modern Attock. The murmuring of
the Macedonian's troops began at the same place, and not as given out,
on the banks of the Hyphasis. For having never gone to the Hydaspes or
Jhelum, he could not have been on the Sutlej. Nor did Alexander ever
found satrapies or plant any Greek colonies in the Punjab. The only
colonies he left behind him that the Brahmans ever knew of, amounted to
a few dozens of disabled soldiers, scattered hither and thither on the
frontiers; who with their native raped wives settled around the deserts
of Karmania and Drangaria--the then natural boundaries of India. And
unless history regards as colonists the many thousands of dead men and
those who settled for ever under the hot sands of Gedrosia, there were
no other, save in the fertile imagination of the Greek historians. The
boasted "invasion of India" was confined to the regions between Karmania
and Attock, east and west; and Beloochistan and the Hindu Kush, south
and north: countries which were all India for the Greek of those days.
His building a fleet on the Hydaspes is a fiction; and his "victorious
march through the fighting armies of India," another. However, it is not
with the "world conqueror" that we have now to deal, but rather with the
supposed accuracy and even casual veracity of his captains and
countrymen, whose hazy reminiscences on the testimony of the classical
writers have now been raised to unimpeachable evidence in everything
that may affect the chronology of early Buddhism and India.
Foremost among the evidence of classical writers, that of Flavius
Arrianus is brought forward against the Buddhist and Chinese
chronologies. No one should impeach the personal testimony of this
conscientious author had he been himself an eye-witness instead of
Megasthenes. But when a man comes to know that he wrote his accounts
upon the now lost works of Aristobulus and Ptolemy; and that the latter
described their data from texts prepared by authors who had never set
their eyes upon one line written by either Megasthenes or Nearchus
himself; and that knowing so much one is informed by Western historians
that among the works of Arrian, Book VII. of the "Anabasis of
Alexander," is "the chief authority on the subject of the Indian
invasion--a book unfortunately with a gap in its twelfth chapter"--one
may well conceive upon what a broken reed Western authority leans for
its Indian chronology. Arrian lived over 600 years after Buddha's
death; Strabo, 500 (55 "B.C."); Diodorus Siculus--quite a trustworthy
compiler!--about the first century; Plutarch over 700 anno Buddhae, and
Quintus Curtius over 1,000 years! And when, to crown this army of
witnesses against the Buddhist annals, the reader is informed by our
Olympian critics that the works of the last-named author--than whom no
more blundering (geographically, chronologically, and historically)
writer ever lived--form along with the Greek history of Arrian the most
valuable source of information respecting the military career of
Alexander the Great--then the only wonder is that the great conqueror
was not made by his biographers to have--Leonidas-like--defended the
Thermopylean passes in the Hindu Kush against the invasion of the first
Vedic Brahmins "from the Oxus." Withal the Buddhist dates are either
rejected or only accepted pro tempore. Well may the Hindu resent the
preference shown to the testimony of Greeks--of whom some, at least, are
better remembered in Indian history as the importers into Jambudvipa of
every Greek and Roman vice known and unknown to their day--against his
own national records and history. "Greek influence" was felt, indeed,
in India, in this, and only in this, one particular. Greek damsels
mentioned as an article of great traffic for India--Persian and Greek
Yavanis--were the fore-mothers of the modern nautch-girls, who had till
then remained pure virgins of the inner temples. Alliances with the
Autiochuses and the Seleucus Nicators bore no better fruit than the
rotten apple of Sodom. Pataliputra, as prophesied by Gautama Buddha,
found its fate in the waters of the Ganges, having been twice before
nearly destroyed, again like Sodom, by the fire of heaven.
Reverting to the main subject, the "contradictions" between the
Ceylonese and Chino-Tibetan chronologies actually prove nothing. If the
Chinese annalists of Saul in accepting the prophecy of our Lord that "a
thousand years after He had reached Nirvana, His doctrines would reach
the north" fell into the mistake of applying it to China, whereas Tibet
was meant, the error was corrected after the eleventh century of the
Tzina era in most of the temple chronologies. Besides which, it may now
refer to other events relating to Buddhism, of which Europe knows
nothing, China or Tzina dates its present name only from the year 296 of
the Buddhist era* (vulgar chronology having assumed it from the first
Hoang of the Tzin dynasty): therefore the Tathagata could not have
indicated it by this name in his well-known prophecy. If misunderstood
even by several of the Buddhist commentators, it is yet preserved in its
true sense by his own immediate Arhats. The Glorified One meant the
country that stretches far off from the Lake Mansorowara; far beyond
that region of the Himavat, where dwelt from time immemorial the great
"teachers of the Snowy Range." These were the great Sraman-acharyas who
preceded Him, and were His teachers, their humble successors trying to
this day to perpetuate their and His doctrines. The prophecy came out
true to the very day, and it is corroborated both by the mathematical
and historical chronology of Tibet--quite as accurate as that of the
Chinese. Arhat Kasyapa, of the dynasty of Moryas, founded by one of the
Chandraguptas near Ptaliputra, left the convent of Panch-Kukkutarama, in
consequence of a vision of our Lord, for missionary purpose in the year
683 of the Tzin era (436 Western era) and had reached the great Lake of
Bod-Yul in the same year. It is at that period that expired the
millennium prophesied.
--------
* The reference to Chinahunah (Chinese and Huns) in the Vishma
Parva of the Mahabharata is evidently a later interpolation, as
it does not occur in the old MSS. existing in Southern India.
--------
The Arhat carrying with him the fifth statue of Sakya Muni out of the
seven gold statues made after his bodily death by order of the first
Council, planted it in the soil on that very spot where seven years
later was built the first GUNPA (monastery), where the earliest Buddhist
lamas dwelt. And though the conversion of the whole country did not
take place before the beginning of the seventh century (Western era),
the good law had, nevertheless, reached the North at the time
prophesied, and no earlier. For, the first of the golden statues had
been plundered from Bhikshu Sali Suka by the Hiong-un robbers and
melted, during the days of Dharmasoka, who had sent missionaries beyond
Nepaul. The second had a like fate, at Ghar-zha, even before it had
reached the boundaries of Bod-Yul. The third was rescued from a
barbarous tribe of Bhons by a Chinese military chief who had pursued
them into the deserts of Schamo about 423 Buddhist era (120 "B.C.") The
fourth was sunk in the third century of the Christian era, together
with the ship that carried it from Magadha toward the hills of
Ghangs-chhen-dzo-nga (Chitagong). The fifth arriving in the nick of
time reached its destination with Arhat Kasyapa. So did the last two.*
---------
* No doubt, since the history of these seven statues is not in the hands
of the Orientalists, it will be treated as a "groundless fable."
Nevertheless such is their origin and history. They date from the first
Synod, that of Rajagriha, held in the season of war following the death
of Buddha, i.e., one year after his death. Were this Rajagriha Council
held 100 years after, as maintained by some, it could not have been
presided over by Mahakasyapa, the friend and brother Arhat of Sakyamuni,
as he would have been 200 years old. The second Council or Synod, that
of Vaisali, was held 120, not 100 or 110 years as some would have it,
after the Nirvana, for the latter took place at a time a little over 20
years before the physical death of Tathagata. It was held at the great
Saptapana cave (Mahavansa's Sattapanni), near the Mount Baibhar (the
Webhara of the Pali Manuscripts), that was in Rajagriha, the old capital
of Magadha. Memoirs exist, containing the record of his daily life, made
by the nephew of king Ajatasatru, a favourite Bikshu of the Mahacharya.
These texts have ever been in the possession of the superiors of the
first Lamasery built by Arhat Kasyapa in Bod-Yul, most of whose Chohans
were the descendants of the dynasty of the Moryas, there being up to
this day three of the members of this once royal family living in India.
The old text in question is a document written in Anudruta Magadha
characters. (We deny that these or any other characters--whether
Devanagari, Pali, or Dravidian--ever used in India, are variations of,
or derivatives from, the Phoenician.) To revert to the texts it is
therein stated that the Sattapanni cave, then called "Sarasvati" and
"Bamboo-cave," got its latter name in this wise. When our Lord first
sat in it for Dhyana, it was a large six-chambered natural cave, 50 to
60 feet wide by 33 deep. One day, while teaching the mendicants
outside, our Lord compared man to a Saptaparna (seven-leaved) plant,
showing them how after the loss of its first leaf every other could be
easily detached, but the seventh leaf--directly connected with the stem.
"Mendicants," he said, "there are seven Buddhas in every Buddha, and
there are six Bikshus and but one Buddha in each mendicant. What are
the seven? The seven branches of complete knowledge. What are the six?
The six organs of sense. What are the five? The five elements of
illusive being. And the ONE which is also ten? He is a true Buddha who
develops in him the ten forms of holiness and subjects them all to the
one--'the silent voice' (meaning Avolokiteswara). After that, causing
the rock to be moved at His command, the Tathagata made it divide itself
into a seventh additional chamber, remarking that a rock too was
septenary, and had seven stages of development. From that time it was
called the Sattapanni or the Saptaparna cave. After the first Synod was
held, seven gold statues of the Bhagavat were cast by order of the king,
and each of them was placed in one of the seven compartments." These in
after times, when the good law had to make room to more congenial
because more sensual creeds, were taken in charge by various Viharas and
then disposed of as explained. Thus when Mr. Turnour states on the
authority of the sacred traditions of Southern Buddhists that the cave
received its name from the Sattapanni plant, he states what is correct.
In the "Archeological Survey of India," we find that Gen. Cunningham
identifies this cave with one not far away from it and in the same
Baihbar range, but which is most decidedly not our Saptaparna cave. At
the same time the Chief Engineer of Buddha Gaya, Mr. Beglar, describing
the Chetu cave, mentioned by Fa-hian, thinks it is the Saptaparna cave,
and he is right. For that, as well as the Pippal and the other caves
mentioned in our texts, are too sacred in their associations--both
having been used for centuries by generations of Bhikkhus, unto the very
time of their leaving India--to have their sites so easily forgotten.
---------
On the other hand, the Southern Buddhists, headed by the Ceylonese, open
their annals with the following event:--
They claim according to their native chronology that Vijaya, the son of
Sinhabahu, the sovereign of Lala, a small kingdom or Raj on the Gandaki
river in Magadha, was exiled by his father for acts of turbulence and
immorality. Sent adrift on the ocean with his companions after having
their heads shaved, Buddhist-Bhikshu fashion, as a sign of penitence, he
was carried to the shores of Lanka. Once landed, he and his companions
conquered and easily took possession of an island inhabited by
uncivilized tribes, generically called the Yakshas. This--at whatever
epoch and year it may have happened--is an historical fact, and the
Ceylonese records, independent of Buddhist chronology, give it out as
having taken place 382 years before Dushtagamani (i.e., in 543 before
the Christian era). Now, the Buddhist Sacred Annals record certain
words of our Lord pronounced by Him shortly before His death. In
Mahavansa He is made to have addressed them to Sakra, in the midst of a
great assembly of Devatas (Dhyan Chohans), and while already "in the
exalted unchangeable Nirvana, seated on the throne on which Nirvana is
achieved." In our texts Tathagata addresses them to his assembled
Arhats and Bhikkhuts a few days before his final liberation:--"One
Vijaya, the son of Sinhabahu, king of the land of Lala, together with
700 attendants, has just landed on Lanka. Lord of Dhyan Buddhas
(Devas)! my doctrine will be established on Lanka. Protect him and
Lanka!" This is the sentence pronounced which, as proved later, was a
prophecy. The now familiar phenomenon of clairvoyant prevision, amply
furnishing a natural explanation of the prophetic utterance without any
unscientific theory of miracle, the laugh of certain Orientalists seems
uncalled for. Such parallels of poetico-religious embellishments as
found in Mahavansa exist in the written records of every religion--as
much in Christianity as anywhere else. An unbiased mind would first
endeavour to reach the correct and very superficially hidden meaning
before throwing ridicule and contemptuous discredit upon them.
Moreover, the Tibetans possess a more sober record of this prophecy in
the Notes, already alluded to, reverentially taken down by King
Ajatasatru's nephew. They are, as said above, in the possession of the
Lamas of the convent built by Arhat Kasyapa--the Moryas and their
descendants being of a more direct descent than the Rajput Gautamas, the
Chiefs of Nagara--the village identified with Kapilavastu--are the best
entitled of all to their possession. And we know they are historical to
a word. For the Esoteric Buddhist they yet vibrate in space; and these
prophetic words, together with the true picture of the Sugata who
pronounced them, are present in the aura of every atom of His relics.
This, we hasten to say, is no proof but for the psychologist. But there
is other and historical evidence: the cumulative testimony of our
religious chronicles. The philologist has not seen these; but this is
no proof of their non-existence.
The mistake of the Southern Buddhists lies in dating the Nirvana of
Sanggyas Pan-chhen from the actual day of his death, whereas, as above
stated, He had reached it over twenty years previous to his
disincarnation. Chronologically, the Southerners are right, both in
dating His death in 543 "B.C.," and one of the great Councils at 100
years after the latter event. But the Tibetan Chohans, who possess all
the documents relating to the last twenty-four years of His external and
internal life--of which no philologist knows anything--can show that
there is no real discrepancy between the Tibetan and the Ceylonese
chronologies as stated by the Western Orientalists.* For the profane,
the Exalted One was born in the sixty-eighth year of the Burmese
Eeatzana era, established by Eeatzana (Anjana), King of Dewaha; for the
initiated--in the forty-eighth year of that era, on a Friday of the
waxing moon, of May. And it was in 563 before the Christian chronology
that Tathagata reached his full Nirvana, dying, as correctly stated by
Mahavana--in 543, on the very day when Vijaya landed with his companions
in Ceylon--as prophesied by Loka-ratha, our Buddha.
---------
* Bishop Bigandet, after examining all the Burmese authorities
accessible to him, frankly confesses that "the history of Buddha offers
an almost complete blank as to what regards his doings and preachings
during a period of nearly twenty-three years." (Vol. I. p. 260.)
---------
Professor Max Muller seems to greatly scoff at this prophecy. In his
chapter ("Hist. S. L.") upon Buddhism (the "false" religion), the
eminent scholar speaks as though he resented such an unprecedented
claim. "We are asked to believe"--he writes--"that the Ceylonese
historians placed the founder of the Vijyan dynasty of Ceylon in the
year 543 in accordance with their sacred chronology!" (i.e., Buddha's
prophecy), "while we (the philologists) are not told, however, through
what channel the Ceylonese could have received their information as to
the exact date of Buddha's death." Two points may be noticed in these
sarcastic phrases: (a) the implication of a false prophecy by our Lord;
and (b) a dishonest tampering with chronological records, reminding one
of those of Eusebius, the famous Bishop of Caesarea, who stands accused
in history of "perverting every Egyptian chronological table for the
sake of synchronisms." With reference to charge one, he may be asked
why our Sakyasinha's prophecies should not be as much entitled to his
respect as those of his Saviour would be to ours--were we to ever write
the true history of the "Galilean" Arhat. With regard to charge two,
the distinguished philologist is reminded of the glass house he and all
Christian chronologists are themselves living in. Their inability to
vindicate the adoption of December 25 as the actual day of the Nativity,
and hence to determine the age and the year of their Avatar's death--
even before their own people--is far greater than is ours to demonstrate
the year of Buddha to other nations. Their utter failure to establish
on any other but traditional evidence the, to them, historically
unproved, if probable, fact of his existence at all--ought to engender a
fairer spirit. When Christian historians can, upon undeniable
historical authority, justify biblical and ecclesiastical chronology,
then, perchance, they may be better equipped than at present for the
congenial work of rending heathen chronologies into shreds.
The "channel" the Ceylonese received their information through, was two
Bikshus who had left Magadha to follow their disgraced brethren into
exile. The capacity of Siddhartha Buddha's Arhats for transmitting
intelligence by psychic currents may, perhaps, be conceded without any
great stretch of imagination to have been equal to, if not greater than,
that of the prophet Elijah, who is credited with the power of having
known from any distance all that happened in the king's bed chamber. No
Orientalist has the right to reject the testimony of other people's
Scriptures, while professing belief in the far more contradictory and
entangled evidence of his own upon the self-same theory of proof. If
Professor Muller is a sceptic at heart, then let him fearlessly declare
himself; only a sceptic who impartially acts the iconoclast has the
right to assume such a tone of contempt towards any non-Christian
religion. And for the instruction of the impartial inquirer only, shall
it be thought worth while to collate the evidence afforded by
historical--not psychological--data. Meanwhile, by analyzing some
objections and exposing the dangerous logic of our critic, we may give
the theosophists a few more facts connected with the subject under
discussion.
Now that we have seen Professor Max Muller's opinions in general about
this, so to say, the Prologue to the Buddhist Drama with Vijaya as the
hero--what has he to say as to the details of its plot? What weapon
does he use to weaken this foundation-stone of a chronology upon which
are built and on which depend all other Buddhist dates? What is the
fulcrum for the critical lever he uses against the Asiatic records?
Three of his main points may be stated seriatim with answers appended.
He begins by premising that--
1st.--"If the starting-point of the Northern Buddhist chronology turns
out to be merely hypothetical, based as it is on a prophecy of Buddha,
it will be difficult to avoid the same conclusion with regard to the
date assigned to Buddha's death by the Buddhists of Ceylon and of
Burmah" (p. 266). "The Mahavansa begins with relating three miraculous
visits which Buddha paid to Ceylon." Vijaya, the name of the founder of
the first dynasty (in Ceylon), means conquest, "and, therefore, such a
person most likely never existed" (p. 268). This he believes
invalidates the whole Buddhist chronology.