The largest and most popular of the parks in Budapest is the Városliget, on

the north-east side of the town. It has an area of 286 acres, and contains

the zoological garden. On an island in its large pond are situated the

agricultural (1902-1904) and the ethnographical museums. It was in this

park that the millennium exhibition of 1896 took place. A still more

delightful resort is the Margaret island, a long narrow island in the

Danube, the property of the archduke Joseph, which has been laid out in the

style of an English park, with fine trees, velvety turf and a group of

villas and bath-houses. The name of the island is derived from St Margaret,

the daughter of King Bela IV. (13th century), who built here a convent, the

ruins of which are still in existence. To the west of Buda extends the hill

(1463 ft.) of Sváb-Hegy (_Schwabenberg_), with extensive view and numerous

villas; it is ascended by a rack-and-pinion railway. A favourite spot is

the Zugliget (_Auwinkel_), a wooded dale on the northern slope of the hill.

To the north of Ó-Buda, about 4 m. from the Margaret island, on the right

bank of the Danube, are the remains of the Roman colony of Aquincum. They

include the foundations of an amphitheatre, of a temple, of an aqueduct, of

baths and of a castrum. The objects found here are preserved in a small

museum. To the north of Pest lies the historic Rákos field, where the

Hungarian diets were held in the open air from the 10th to the 14th

century; and 23 m. to the north lies the royal castle of Gödöllö, with its

beautiful park.

_History._--The history of Budapest consists of the separate history of the

two sister towns, Buda and Pest. The Romans founded, in the 2nd century

A.D., on the right bank of the Danube, on the site of the actual Ó-Buda, a

colony, on the place of a former Celtic settlement. This colony was named

Aquincum, a transformation from the former Celtic name of _Ak-ink_, meaning

"rich waters." The Roman occupation lasted till A.D. 376, and then the

place was invaded by Huns, Ostrogoths, and later by Avars and Slavs. When

the Magyars came into the country, at the end of the 10th century, they

preserved the names of Buda and Pest, which they found for these two

places. The origin of Pest proper is obscure, but the name, apparently

derived from the old Slavonic _pestj_, a stove (like Ofen, the German name

of Buda), seems to point to an early Slavonic settlement. The Romans never

gained a foothold on this side of the river.

When it first appears in history Pest was essentially a German settlement,

and a chronicler of the 13th century describes it as "Villa Teutonica

ditissima." Christianity was introduced early in the 11th century. In 1241

Pest was destroyed by the Tatars, after whose departure in 1244 it was

created a royal free city by Bela IV., and repeopled with colonists of

various nationalities. The succeeding period seems to have been one of

considerable prosperity, though Pest was completely eclipsed by the sister

town of Buda with its fortress and palace. This fortress and palace were

built by King Bela IV. in 1247, and were the nucleus round which the town

of Buda was built, which soon gained [v.04 p.0682] great importance, and

became in 1361 the capital of Hungary. In 1526 Pest was taken and pillaged

by the Turks, and from 1541 to 1686 Buda was the seat of a Turkish pasha.

Pest in the meantime entirely lost its importance, and on the departure of

the Turks was left little more than a heap of ruins. Its favourable

situation and the renewal of former privileges helped it to revive, and in

1723 it became the seat of the highest Hungarian officials. Maria Theresa

and Joseph II. did much to increase its importance, but the rapid growth

which enabled it completely to outstrip Buda belongs entirely to the 19th

century. A signal proof of its vitality was given in 1838 by the speed and

ease with which it recovered from a disastrous inundation that destroyed

3000 houses. In 1848 Pest became the seat of the revolutionary diet, but in

the following year the insurgents had to retire before the Austrians under

Windischgrätz. A little later the Austrians had to retire in their turn,

leaving a garrison in the fortress of Buda, and, while the Hungarians

endeavoured to capture this position, General Hentzi retaliated by

bombarding Pest, doing great damage to the town. In 1872 both towns were

united into one municipality. In 1896 took place here the millennium

exhibition, in celebration of the thousandth anniversary of the foundation

of the kingdom of Hungary.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The official publications of the Budapest Communal Bureau of

Statistics have acquired a European repute for their completeness, and

their fearless exposure of shortcomings has been an element in the progress

of the town. Reference should also be made to separate works of the

director of that institution, Dr Joseph de Körösy, known in England for his

discovery of the law of marital fertility, published by the Royal Society,

and by his labours in the development of comparative international

statistics. His _Statistique Internationale des grandes villes_ and

_Bulletin annuel des finances des grandes villes_ give valuable comparative

data. See also _Die Österreichisch-Ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild_

(Wien, 1886-1902, 24 vols.); volume xii., published in 1893, is devoted to

Budapest.

(O. BR.)

BUDAUN, a town and district of British India, in the Rohilkhand division of

the United Provinces. The town is near the left bank of the river Sot. Pop.

(1901) 39,031. There are ruins of an immense fort and a very handsome

mosque of imposing size, crowned with a dome, and built in 1223 in great

part from the materials of an ancient Hindu temple. The American Methodist

mission maintains several girls' schools, and there is a high school for

boys. According to tradition Budaun was founded about A.D. 905, and an

inscription, probably of the 12th century, gives a list of twelve Rathor

kings reigning at Budaun (called Vodamayuta). The first authentic

historical event connected with it, however, is its capture by Kutb-ud-din

in 1196, after which it became a very important post on the northern

frontier of the Delhi empire. In the 13th century two of its governors,

Shams-ud-din Altamsh, the builder of the great mosque referred to above,

and his son Rukn-ud-din Firoz, attained the imperial throne. In 1571 the

town was burnt, and about a hundred years later, under Shah Jahan, the seat

of the governorship was transferred to Bareilly; after which the importance

of Budaun declined. It ultimately came into the power of the Rohillas, and

in 1838 was made the headquarters of a British district. In 1857 the people

of Budaun sided with the mutineers, and a native government was set up,

which lasted until General Penny's victory at Kakrala (April 1858) led to

the restoration of British authority.

The DISTRICT OF BUDAUN has an area of 1987 sq. m. Pop. (1901) 1,025,753.

The country is low, level, and is generally fertile, and watered by the

Ganges, the Ramganga, the Sot or Yarwafadar, and the Mahawa. Budaun

district was ceded to the British government in 1801 by the nawab of Oudh.

There are several indigo factories. The district is crossed by two lines of

the Oudh & Rohilkhand railway, and by a narrow-gauge line from Bareilly.

The chief centre of trade is Bilsi.

BUDDEUS, JOHANN FRANZ (1667-1729), German Lutheran divine, was born at

Anklam, a town of Pomerania, where his father was pastor. He studied with

great distinction at Greifswald and at Wittenberg, and having made a

special study of languages, theology and history, was appointed professor

of Greek and Latin at Coburg in 1692, professor of moral philosophy in the

university of Halle in 1693, and in 1705 professor of theology at Jena.

Here he was held in high esteem, and in 1715 became Primarius of his

faculty and member of the Consistory. His principal works are: _Leipzig,

allgemeines historisches Lexikon_ (Leipzig, 1709 ff.); _Historia,

Ecclesiastica Veteris Testamenti_ (4 vols., Halle, 1709); _Elementa

Philosophiae Practicae, Instrumentalis, et Theoreticae_ (3 vols., 1697);

_Selecta Juris Naturae et Gentium_ (Halle, 1704); _Miscellanea Sacra_ (3

vols., Jena, 1727); and _Isagoge Historico-Theologica ad Theologiam

Universam, singulasque ejus partes_ (2 vols., 1727).

BUDDHA. According to the Buddhist theory (see BUDDHISM), a "Buddha" appears

from time to time in the world and preaches the true doctrine. After a

certain lapse of time this teaching is corrupted and lost, and is not

restored till a new Buddha appears. In Europe, Buddha is used to designate

the last historical Buddha, whose family name was Gotama, and who was the

son of Suddh[=o]dana, one of the chiefs of the tribe of the S[=a]kiyas, one

of the republican clans then still existent in India.

We are accustomed to find the legendary and the miraculous gathering, like

a halo, around the early history of religious leaders, until the sober

truth runs the risk of being altogether neglected for the glittering and

edifying falsehood. The Buddha has not escaped the fate which has befallen

the founders of other religions; and as late as the year 1854 Professor

Wilson of Oxford read a paper before the Royal Asiatic Society of London in

which he maintained that the supposed life of Buddha was a myth, and

"Buddha himself merely an imaginary being." No one, however, would now

support this view; and it is admitted that, under the mass of miraculous

tales which have been handed down regarding him, there is a basis of truth

already sufficiently clear to render possible an intelligent history.

The circumstances under which the future Buddha was born were somewhat as

follows.[1] In the 6th century B.C. the [=A]ryan tribes had long been

settled far down the valley of the Ganges. The old child-like joy in life

so manifest in the Vedas had died away; the worship of nature had developed

or degenerated into the worship of new and less pure divinities; and the

Vedic songs themselves, whose freedom was little compatible with the spirit

of the age, had faded into an obscurity which did not lessen their value to

the priests. The country was politically split up into little

principalities, most of them governed by some petty despot, whose interests

were not often the same as those of the community. There were still,

however, about a dozen free republics, most of them with aristocratic

government, and it was in these that reforming movements met with most

approval and support. A convenient belief in the doctrine of the

transmigration of souls satisfied the unfortunate that their woes were the

natural result of their own deeds in a former birth, and, though

unavoidable now, might be escaped in a future state of existence by present

good conduct. While hoping for a better fate in their next birth, the poor

turned for succour and advice in this to the aid of astrology, witchcraft

and animism--a belief in which seems to underlie all [v.04 p.0683]

religions, and still survives even in England.[2] The inspiriting wars

against the enemies of the [=A]ryan people, the infidel deniers of the

[=A]ryan gods, had given place to a succession of internecine feuds between

the chiefs of neighbouring clans. In literature an age of poets had long

since made way for an age of commentators and grammarians, who thought that

the old poems must have been the work of gods. But the darkest period was

succeeded by the dawn of a reformation; travelling logicians were willing

to maintain these against all the world; whilst here and there ascetics

strove to raise themselves above the gods, and hermits earnestly sought for

some satisfactory solution of the mysteries of life. These were the

teachers whom the people chiefly delighted to honour. Though the ranks of

the priesthood were for ever firmly closed against intruders, a man of lay

birth, a Kshatriya or Vaisya, whose mind revolted against the orthodox

creed, and whose heart was stirred by mingled zeal and ambition, might find

through these irregular orders an entrance to the career of a religious

teacher and reformer.

The S[=a]kiya clan was then seated in a tract of country probably two or

three thousand square miles in extent, the chief town of which was

Kapilavastu, situate about 27° 37' N. by 83° 11' E., some days' journey

north of Benares. Their territory stretched up into the lower slopes of the

mountains, and was mostly in what is now Nepal, but it included territory

now on the British side of the frontier. It is in this part of the

S[=a]kiya country that the interesting discovery was made of the monument

they erected to their famous clansman. From their well-watered rice-fields,

the main source of their wealth, they could see the giant Him[=a]layas

looming up against the clear blue of the Indian sky. Their supplies of

water were drawn from the river Rohini, the modern Koh[=a]na; and though

the use of the river was in times of drought the cause of disputes between

the S[=a]kiyas and the neighbouring Koliyans, the two clans were then at

peace; and two daughters of a chieftain of Koli, which was only 11 m. east

of Kapilavastu, were the principal wives of Suddh[=o]dana. Both were

childless, and great was the rejoicing when, in about the forty-fifth year

of her age, the elder sister, Mah[=a] M[=a]y[=a], promised her husband a

son. In due time she started with the intention of being confined at her

parents' home, but the party halting on the way under the shade of some

lofty satin-trees, in a pleasant garden called Lumbini on the river-side,

her son, the future Buddha, was there unexpectedly born. The exact site of

this garden has been recently rediscovered, marked by an inscribed pillar

put up by Asoka (see _J.R.A.S._, 1898).

He was in after years more generally known by his family name of Gotama,

but his individual name was Siddhattha. When he was nineteen years old he

was married to his cousin Yasodhar[=a], daughter of a Koliyan chief, and

gave himself up to a life of luxury. This is the solitary record of his

youth; we hear nothing more till, in his twenty-ninth year, it is related

that, driving to his pleasure-grounds one day, he was struck by the sight

of a man utterly broken down by age, on another occasion by the sight of a

man suffering from a loathsome disease, and some months after by the

horrible sight of a decomposing corpse. Each time his charioteer, whose

name was Channa, told him that such was the fate of all living beings. Soon

after he saw an ascetic walking in a calm and dignified manner, and asking

who that was, was told by his charioteer the character and aims of the

Wanderers, the travelling teachers, who played so great a part in the

intellectual life of the time. The different accounts of these visions vary

so much as to cast great doubts on their accuracy; and the oldest one of

all (_Anguttara_, i. 145) speaks of ideas only, not of actual visions. It

is, however, clear from what follows, that about this time the mind of the

young Räjput must, from some cause or other, have been deeply stirred. Many

an earnest heart full of disappointment or enthusiasm has gone through a

similar struggle, has learnt to look upon all earthly gains and hopes as

worse than vanity, has envied the calm life of the cloister, troubled by

none of these things, and has longed for an opportunity of entire

self-surrender to abstinence and meditation.

Subjectively, though not objectively, these visions may be supposed to have

appeared to Gotama. After seeing the last of them, he is said, in the later

accounts, to have spent the afternoon in his pleasure-grounds by the

river-side; and having bathed, to have entered his chariot in order to

return home. Just then a messenger arrived with the news that his wife

Yasodhara had given birth to a son, his only child. "This," said Gotama

quietly, "is a new and strong tie I shall have to break." But the people of

Kapilavastu were greatly delighted at the birth of the young heir, the

raja's only grandson. Gotama's return became an ovation; musicians preceded

and followed his chariot, while shouts of joy and triumph fell on his ear.

Among these sounds one especially attracted his attention. It was the voice

of a young girl, his cousin, who sang a stanza, saying, "Happy the father,

happy the mother, happy the wife of such a son and husband." In the word

"happy" lay a double meaning; it meant also freed from the chains of

rebirth, delivered, _saved_. Grateful to one who, at such a time, reminded

him of his highest hopes, Gotama, to whom such things had no longer any

value, took off his collar of pearls and sent it to her. She imagined that

this was the beginning of a courtship, and began to build daydreams about

becoming his principal wife, but he took no further notice of her and

passed on. That evening the dancing-girls came to go through the Natch

dances, then as now so common on festive occasions in many parts of India;

but he paid them no attention, and gradually fell into an uneasy slumber.

At midnight he awoke; the dancing-girls were lying in the ante-room; an

overpowering loathing filled his soul. He arose instantly with a mind fully

made up--"roused into activity," says the Sinhalese chronicle, "like a man

who is told that his house is on fire." He called out to know who was on

guard, and finding it was his charioteer Channa, he told him to saddle his

horse. While Channa was gone Siddhattha gently opened the door of the room

where Yasodhara was sleeping, surrounded by flowers, with one hand on the

head of their child. He had hoped to take the babe in his arms for the last

time before he went, but now he stood for a few moments irresolute on the

threshold looking at them. At last the fear of awakening Yasodhara

prevailed; he tore himself away, promising himself to return to them as

soon as his mind had become clear, as soon as he had become a

Buddha,--_i.e._ Enlightened,--and then he could return to them not only as

husband and father, but as teacher and saviour. It is said to have been

broad moonlight on the full moon of the month of July, when the young

chief, with Channa as his sole companion, leaving his father's home, his

wealth and social position, his wife and child behind him, went out into

the wilderness to become a penniless and despised student, and a homeless

wanderer. This is the circumstance which has given its name to a Sanskrit

work, the Mahabhinishkramana Sutra, or Sutra of the Great Renunciation.

Next is related an event in which we may again see a subjective experience

given under the form of an objective reality. Mara, the great tempter,

appears in the sky, and urges Gotama to stop, promising him, in seven days,

a universal kingdom over the four great continents if he will but give up

his enterprise.[3] When his words fail to have any effect, the tempter

consoles himself by the confident hope that he will still overcome his

enemy, saying, "Sooner or later some lustful or malicious or angry thought

must arise in his mind; in that moment I shall be his master"; and from

that hour, adds the legend, "as a shadow always follows the body, so he too

from that day always followed the Blessed One, striving to throw every

obstacle in his way towards the Buddhahood." Gotama rides a long distance

that night, only stopping at the banks of the Anoma beyond the Koliyan

territory. There, on the sandy bank of the river, at a spot where later

piety erected a dagaba (a solid dome-shaped relic shrine), he cuts off with

his sword his long flowing locks, and, taking off his ornaments, sends them

and the horse back in charge of the unwilling Channa to Kapilavastu. The

next seven days were spent alone in a grove of mango trees [v.04 p.0684]

near by, whence the recluse walks on to Rajagriha, the capital of Magadha,

and residence of Bimbisara, one of the then most powerful rulers in the

valley of the Ganges. He was favourably received by the raja; but though

asked to do so, he would not as yet assume the responsibilities of a

teacher. He attached himself first to a brahmin sophist named Alara, and

afterwards to another named Udraka, from whom he learnt all that Indian

philosophy had then to teach. Still unsatisfied, he next retired to the

jungle of Uruvela, on the most northerly spur of the Vindhya range of

mountains, and there for six years, attended by five faithful disciples, he

gave himself up to the severest penance and self-torture, till his fame as

an ascetic spread in all the country round about "like the sound," says the

Burmese chronicle, "of a great bell hung in the canopy of the skies."[4] At

last one day, when he was walking in a much enfeebled state, he felt on a

sudden an extreme weakness, like that caused by dire starvation, and unable

to stand any longer he fell to the ground. Some thought he was dead, but he

recovered, and from that time took regular food and gave up his severe

penance, so much so that his five disciples soon ceased to respect him, and

leaving him went to Benares.

There now ensued a second struggle in Gotama's mind, described with all the

wealth of poetry and imagination of which the Indian mind is master. The

crisis culminated on a day, each event of which is surrounded in the

Buddhist accounts with the wildest legends, on which the very thoughts

passing through the mind of Buddha appear in gorgeous descriptions as

angels of darkness or of light. To us, now taught by the experiences of

centuries how weak such exaggerations are compared with the effect of a

plain unvarnished tale, these legends may appear childish or absurd, but

they have a depth of meaning to those who strive to read between the lines

of such rude and inarticulate attempts to describe the indescribable. That

which (the previous and subsequent career of the teacher being borne in

mind) seems to be possible and even probable, appears to be somewhat as

follows.

Disenchanted and dissatisfied, Gotama had given up all that most men value,

to seek peace in secluded study and self-denial. Failing to attain his

object by learning the wisdom of others, and living the simple life of a

student, he had devoted himself to that intense meditation and penance

which all philosophers then said would raise men above the gods. Still

unsatisfied, longing always for a certainty that seemed ever just beyond

his grasp, he had added vigil to vigil, and penance to penance, until at

last, when to the wondering view of others he had become more than a saint,

his bodily strength and his indomitable resolution and faith had together

suddenly and completely broken down. Then, when the sympathy of others

would have been most welcome, he found his friends falling away from him,

and his disciples leaving him for other teachers. Soon after, if not on the

very day when his followers had left him, he wandered out towards the banks

of the Neranjara, receiving his morning meal from the hands of Sujata, the

daughter of a neighbouring villager, and set himself down to eat it under

the shade of a large tree (a _Ficus religiosa_), to be known from that time

as the sacred Bo tree or tree of wisdom. There he remained through the long

hours of that day debating with himself what next to do. All his old

temptations came back upon him with renewed force. For years he had looked

at all earthly good through the medium of a philosophy which taught him

that it, without exception, contained within itself the seeds of

bitterness, and was altogether worthless and impermanent; but now to his

wavering faith the sweet delights of home and love, the charms of wealth

and power, began to show themselves in a different light, and glow again

with attractive colours. He doubted, and agonized in his doubt; but as the

sun set, the religious side of his nature had won the victory, and seems to

have come out even purified from the struggle. He had attained to Nirvana,

had become clear in his mind, a Buddha, an Enlightened One. From that night

he not only did not claim any merit on account of his self-mortification,

but took every opportunity of declaring that from such penances no

advantage at all would be derived. All that night he is said to have

remained in deep meditation under the Bo tree; and the orthodox Buddhists

believe that for seven times seven nights and days he continued fasting

near the spot, when the archangel Brahm[=a] came and ministered to him. As

for himself, his heart was now fixed,--his mind was made up,--but he

realized more than he had ever done before the power of temptation, and the

difficulty, the almost impossibility, of understanding and holding to the

truth. For others subject to the same temptations, but without that

earnestness and insight which he felt himself to possess, faith might be

quite impossible, and it would only be waste of time and trouble to try to

show to them "the only path of peace." To one in his position this thought

would be so very natural, that we need not hesitate to accept the fact of

its occurrence as related in the oldest records. It is quite consistent

with his whole career that it was love and pity for others--otherwise, as

it seemed to him, helplessly doomed and lost---which at last overcame every

other consideration, and made Gotama resolve to announce his doctrine to

the world.

The teacher, now 35 years of age, intended to proclaim his new gospel first

to his old teachers [=A]l[=a]ra and Udraka, but finding that they were

dead, he determined to address himself to his former five disciples, and

accordingly went to the Deer-forest near Benares where they were then

living. An old _g[=a]thh[=a]_, or hymn (translated in _Vinaya Texts_, i.

90) tells us how the Buddha, rapt with the idea of his great mission, meets

an acquaintance, one Upaka, a wandering sophist, on the way. The latter,

struck with his expression, asks him whose religion it is that makes him so

glad, and yet so calm. The reply is striking. "I am now on my way," says

the Buddha, "to the city of Benares, to beat the drum of the Ambrosia (to

set up the light of the doctrine of Nirvana) in the darkness of the world!"

and he proclaims himself the Buddha who alone knows, and knows no teacher.

Upaka says: "You profess yourself, then, friend, to be an Arahat and a

conqueror?" The Buddha says: "Those indeed are conquerors who, as I have

now, have conquered the intoxications (the mental intoxication arising from

ignorance, sensuality or craving after future life). Evil dispositions have

ceased in me; therefore is it that I am conqueror!" His acquaintance

rejoins: "In that case, venerable Gotama, your way lies yonder!" and he

himself, shaking his head, turns in the opposite direction.

Nothing daunted, the new prophet walked on to Benares, and in the cool of

the evening went on to the Deer-forest where the five ascetics were living.

Seeing him coming, they resolved not to recognize as a superior one who had

broken his vows; to address him by his name, and not as "master" or

"teacher"; only, he being a Kshatriya, to offer him a seat. He understands

their change of manner, calmly tells them not to mock him by calling him

"the venerable Gotama"; that he has found the ambrosia of truth and can

lead them to it. They object, naturally enough, from the ascetic point of

view, that he had failed before while he was keeping his body under, and

how can his mind have won the victory now, when he serves and yields to his

body. Buddha replies by explaining to them the principles of his new

gospel, in the form of noble truths, and the Noble Eightfold Path (see

BUDDHISM).

It is nearly certain that Buddha had a commanding presence, and one of

those deep, rich, thrilling voices which so many of the successful leaders

of men have possessed. We know his deep earnestness, and his thorough

conviction of the truth of his new gospel. When we further remember the

relation which the five students mentioned above had long borne to him, and

that they had passed through a similar culture, it is not difficult to

understand that his persuasions were successful, and that his old disciples

were the first to acknowledge him in his new character. The later books say

that they were all converted at once; but, according to the most ancient

P[=a]li record--though their old love and reverence had been so rekindled

when the Buddha came near that their cold resolutions quite broke down, and

they vied with each other in such acts of personal attention as an [v.04

p.0685] Indian disciple loves to pay to his teacher,--yet it was only after

the Buddha had for five days talked to them, sometimes separately,

sometimes together, that they accepted in its entirety his plan of

salvation.[5]

The Buddha then remained at the Deer-forest near Benares until the number

of his personal followers was about threescore, and that of the outside

believers somewhat greater. The principal among the former was a rich young

man named Yasa, who had first come to him at night out of fear of his

relations, and afterwards shaved his head, put on the yellow robe, and

succeeded in bringing many of his former friends and companions to the

teacher, his mother and his wife being the first female disciples, and his

father the first lay devotee. It should be noticed in passing that the idea

of a priesthood with mystical powers is altogether repugnant to Buddhism;

every one's salvation is entirely dependent on the modification or growth

of his own inner nature, resulting from his own exertions. The life of a

recluse is held to be the most conducive to that state of sweet serenity at

which the most ardent disciples aim; but that of a layman, of a believing

householder, is held in high honour; and a believer who does not as yet

feel himself able or willing to cast off the ties of home or of business,

may yet "enter the paths," and by a life of rectitude and kindness ensure

for himself a rebirth under more favourable conditions for his growth in

holiness.

After the rainy season Gotama called together those of his disciples who

had devoted themselves to the higher life, and said to them: "I am free

from the five hindrances which, like an immense net, hold men and angels in

their power; you too (owing to my teaching) are set free. Go ye now,

brethren, and wander for the gain and welfare of the many, out of

compassion for the world, to the benefit of gods and men. Preach the

doctrine, beauteous in inception, beauteous in continuation, beauteous in

its end. Proclaim the pure and perfect life. Let no two go together. I also

go, brethren, to the General's village in the wilds of Uruvel[=a]."[6]

Throughout his career, Gotama yearly adopted the same plan, collecting his

disciples round him in the rainy season, and after it was over travelling

about as an itinerant preacher; but in subsequent years he was always

accompanied by some of his most attached disciples.

In the solitudes of Uruvel[=a] there were at this time three brothers,

fire-worshippers and hermit philosophers, who had gathered round them a

number of scholars, and enjoyed a considerable reputation as teachers.

Gotama settled among them, and after a time they became believers in his

system,--the elder brother, Kassapa, taking henceforth a principal place

among his followers. His first set sermon to his new disciples is called by

Bishop Bigandet the Sermon on the Mount. Its subject was a jungle-fire

which broke out on the opposite hillside. He warned his hearers against the

fires of concupiscence, anger, ignorance, birth, death, decay and anxiety;

and taking each of the senses in order he compared all human sensations to

a burning flame which seems to be something it is not, which produces

pleasure and pain, but passes rapidly away, and ends only in

destruction.[7]

Accompanied by his new disciples, the Buddha walked on to R[=a]jagaha, the

capital of King Bimbis[=a]ra, who, not unmindful of their former interview,

came out to welcome him. Seeing Kassapa, who as the chronicle puts it, was

as well known to them as the banner of the city, the people at first

doubted who was the teacher and who the disciple, but Kassapa put an end to

their hesitation by stating that he had now given up his belief in the

efficacy of sacrifices either great or small; that Nirv[=a]na was a state

of rest to be attained only by a change of heart; and that he had become a

disciple of the Buddha. Gotama then spoke to the king on the miseries of

the world which arise from passion, and on the possibility of release by

following the way of salvation. The r[=a]ja invited him and his disciples

to eat their simple mid-day meal at his house on the following morning; and

then presented the Buddha with a garden called Veluvana or Bamboo-grove,

afterwards celebrated as the place where the Buddha spent many rainy

seasons, and preached many of his most complete discourses. There he taught

for some time, attracting large numbers of hearers, among whom two,

S[=a]riputta and Moggall[=a]na, who afterwards became conspicuous leaders

in the new crusade, then joined the Sangha or Society, as the Buddha's

order of mendicants was called.

Meanwhile the prophet's father, Suddh[=o]dana, who had anxiously watched

his son's career, heard that he had given up his asceticism, and had

appeared as a Wanderer, an itinerant preacher and teacher. He sent

therefore to him, urging him to come home, that he might see him once more

before he died. The Buddha accordingly started for Kapilavastu, and stopped

according to his custom in a grove outside the town. His father and uncles

and others came to see him there, but the latter were angry, and would pay

him no reverence. It was the custom to invite such teachers and their

disciples for the next day's meal, but they all left without doing so. The

next day, therefore, Gotama set out at the usual hour, carrying his bowl to

beg for a meal. As he entered the city, he hesitated whether he should not

go straight to his father's house, but determined to adhere to his custom.

It soon reached his father's ears that his son was walking through the

streets begging. Startled at such news he rose up, seizing the end of his

outer robe, and hastened to the place where Gotama was, exclaiming,

"Illustrious Buddha, why do you expose us all to such shame? Is it

necessary to go from door to door begging your food? Do you imagine that I

am not able to supply the wants of so many mendicants?" "My noble father,"

was the reply, "this is the custom of all our race." "How so?" said his

father. "Are you not descended from an illustrious line? no single person

of our race has ever acted so indecorously." "My noble father," said

Gotama, "you and your family may claim the privileges of Kshatriya descent;

my descent is from the prophets (Buddhas) of old, and they have always

acted so; the customs of the law (Dharma) are good both for this world and

the world that is to come. But, my father, when a man has found a treasure,

it is his duty to offer the most precious of the jewels to his father

first. Do not delay, let me share with you the treasure I have found."

Suddh[=o]dana, abashed, took his son's bowl and led him to his house.

Eighteen months had now elapsed since the turning-point of Gotama's

career--his great struggle under the Bo tree. Thus far all the accounts

follow chronological order. From this time they simply narrate disconnected

stories about the Buddha, or the persons with whom he was brought into

contact,--the same story being usually found in more than one account, but

not often in the same order. It is not as yet possible, except very

partially, to arrange chronologically the snatches of biography to be

gleaned from these stories. They are mostly told to show the occasion on

which some memorable act of the Buddha took place, or some memorable saying

was uttered, and are as exact as to place as they are indistinct as to

time. It would be impossible within the limits of this article to give any

large number of them, but space may be found for one or two.

A merchant from S[=u]naparanta having joined the Society was desirous of

preaching to his relations, and is said to have asked Gotama's permission

to do so. "The people of S[=u]naparanta," said the teacher, "are

exceedingly violent. If they revile you what will you do?" "I will make no

reply," said the mendicant. "And if they strike you?" "I will not strike in

return," was the reply. "And if they try to kill you?" "Death is no evil in

itself; many even desire it, to escape from the vanities of life, but I

shall take no steps either to hasten or to delay the time of my departure."

These answers were held satisfactory, and the monk started on his mission.

At another time a rich farmer held a harvest home, and the Buddha, wishing

to preach to him, is said to have taken his alms-bowl and stood by the side

of the field and begged. The farmer, a wealthy br[=a]hmin, said to him,

"Why do you come and beg? [v.04 p.0686] I plough and sow and earn my food;

you should do the same." "I too, O brahmin," said the beggar, "plough and

sow; and having ploughed and sown I eat." "You profess only to be a farmer;

no one sees your ploughing, what do you mean?" said the brahmin. "For my

cultivation," said the beggar, "faith is the seed, self-combat is the

fertilizing rain, the weeds I destroy are the cleaving to existence, wisdom

is my plough, and its guiding-shaft is modesty; perseverance draws my

plough, and I guide it with the rein of my mind; the field I work is in the

law, and the harvest that I reap is the never-dying nectar of Nirv[=a]na,

Those who reap this harvest destroy all the weeds of sorrow."

On another occasion he 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

Kis[=a]gotam[=i]. 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 to her bosom, and went from house to house of her pitying friends

asking them to give her medicine for it. But a Buddhist convert 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 Kis[=a]gotam[=i]. "The Buddha can give you medicine;

go to him," was the answer. She went to Gotama; 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 house where no son, or husband, or

parent or slave has died." "Very good," she said; and went to ask 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 slave?" They answered, "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."

For forty-five years after entering on his mission Gotama itinerated in the

valley of the Ganges, not going farther than about 250 m. from Benares, and

always spending the rainy months at one spot--usually at one of the

_viharas_,[8] or homes, which had been given to the society. In the

twentieth year his cousin [=A]nanda became a mendicant, and from that time

seems to have attended on the Buddha, being constantly near him, and

delighting to render him all the personal service which love and reverence

could suggest. Another cousin, Devadatta, the son of the r[=a]ja of Koli,

also joined the society, but became envious of the teacher, and stirred up

Ajatasattu (who, having killed his father Bimbisara, had become king of

Rajagaha) to persecute Gotama. The account of the manner in which the

Buddha is said to have overcome the wicked devices of this apostate cousin

and his parricide protector is quite legendary; but the general fact of

Ajatasattu's opposition to the new sect and of his subsequent conversion

may be accepted.

The confused and legendary notices of the journeyings of Gotama are

succeeded by tolerably clear accounts of the last few days of his life.[9]

On a journey towards Kusin[=a]r[=a], a town about 120 m. north-north-east

of Benares, and about 80 m. due east of Kapilavastu, the teacher, being

then eighty years of age, had rested for a short time in a grove at

P[=a]w[=a], presented to the society by a goldsmith of that place named

Chunda. Chunda prepared for the mendicants a mid-day meal, and after the

meal the Buddha started for Kusin[=a]r[=a]. He had not gone far when he was

obliged to rest, and soon afterwards he said, "[=A]nanda, I am thirsty,"

and they gave him water to drink. Half-way between the two towns flows the

river Kukusht[=a]. There Gotama rested again, and bathed for the last time.

Feeling that he was dying, and careful lest Chunda should be reproached by

himself or others, he said to [=A]nanda, "After I am gone tell Chunda that

he will receive in a future birth very great reward; for, having eaten of

the food he gave me, I am about to die; and if he should still doubt, say

that it was from my own mouth that you heard this. There are two gifts

which will be blest above all others, namely, Suj[=a]t[=a]'s gift before I

attained wisdom under the Bo tree, and this gift of Chunda's before I pass

away." After halting again and again the party at length reached the river

Hiranyavati, close by Kusin[=a]r[=a], and there for the last time the

teacher rested. Lying down under some Sal trees, with his face towards the

south, he talked long and earnestly with [=A]nanda about his burial, and

about certain rules which were to be observed by the society after his

death. Towards the end of this conversation, when it was evening, [=A]nanda

broke down and went aside to weep, but the Buddha missed him, and sending

for him comforted him with the promise of Nirv[=a]na, and repeated what he

had so often said before about the impermanence of all things,--"O

[=A]nanda! do not weep; do not let yourself be troubled. You known what I

have said; sooner or later we must part from all we hold most dear. This

body of ours contains within itself the power which renews its strength for

a time, but also the causes which lead to its destruction. Is there

anything put together which shall not dissolve? But you, too, shall be free

from this delusion, this world of sense, this law of change. Beloved,"

added he, speaking to the rest of the disciples, "[=A]nanda for long years

has served me with devoted affection." And he spoke to them at some length

on the kindness of [=A]nanda.

About midnight Subhadra, a brahmin philosopher of Kusin[=a]r[=a], came to

ask some questions of the Buddha, but [=A]nanda, fearing that this might

lead to a longer discussion than the sick teacher could bear, would not

admit him. Gotama heard the sound of their talk, and asking what it was,

told them to let Subhadra come. The latter began by asking whether the six

great teachers knew all laws, or whether there were some that they did not

know, or knew only partially. "This is not the time," was the answer, "for

such discussions. To true wisdom there is only one way, the path that is

laid down in my system. Many have already followed it, and conquering the

lust and pride and anger of their own hearts, have become free from

ignorance and doubt and wrong belief, have entered the calm state of

universal kindliness, and have reached Nirv[=a]na even in this life. O

Subhadra! I do not speak to you of things I have not experienced. Since I

was twenty-nine years old till now I have striven after pure and perfect

wisdom, and following the good path, have found Nirv[=a]na." A rule had

been made that no follower of a rival system should be admitted to the

society without four months' probation. So deeply did the words or the

impressive manner of the dying teacher work upon Subhadra that he asked to

be admitted at once, and Gotama granted his request. Then turning to his

disciples he said, "When I have passed away and am no longer with you, do

not think that the Buddha has left you, and is not still in your midst. You

have my words, my explanations of the deep things of truth, the laws I have

laid down for the society; let them be your guide; the Buddha has not left

you." Soon afterwards he again spoke to them, urging them to reverence one

another, and rebuked one of the disciples who spoke [v.04 p.0687]

indiscriminately all that occurred to him. Towards the morning he asked

whether any one had any doubt about the Buddha, the law or the society; if

so, he would clear them up. No one answered, and [=A]nanda expressed his

surprise that amongst so many none should doubt, and all be firmly attached

to the law. But the Buddha laid stress on the final perseverance of the

saints, saying that even the least among the disciples who had entered the

first path only, still had his heart fixed on the way to perfection, and

constantly strove after the three higher paths. "No doubt," he said, "can

be found in the mind of a true disciple." After another pause he said:

"Behold now, brethren, this is my exhortation to you. Decay is inherent in

all component things. Work out, therefore, your emancipation with

diligence!" These were the last words the Buddha spoke; shortly afterwards

he became unconscious, and in that state passed away.

AUTHORITIES ON THE LIFE OF THE BUDDHA.--Canonical P[=a]li (reached their

present shape before the 4th century B.C.); episodes only, three of them

long: (1) _Birth_; text in _Majjhima Nik[=a]ya_, ed. Trenckner and Chalmers

(London, P[=a]li Text Society, 1888-1899), vol. iii. pp. 118-124; also in

_Anguttara Nik[=a]ya_, ed. Morris and Hardy (P[=a]li Text Society,

1888-1900), vol. ii. pp. 130-132. (2) _Adoration of the babe_; old ballad;

text in _Sutta Nip[=a]ta_, ed. Fausböll (P[=a]li Text Society, 1884), pp.

128-131; translation by the same in _Sacred Books of the East_ (Oxford,

1881), vol. x. pp. 124-131. (3) _Youth at home_; text in _Anguttara

Nik[=a]ya_, i. 145. (4) _The going forth_; old ballad; text in _Sutta

Nipata_, pp. 70-74 (London, 1896), pp. 99-101; prose account in _D[=i]gha

Nik[=a]ya_, ed. Rhys Davids and Carpenter (P[=a]li Text Society,

1890-1893), vol. i. p. 115, translated by Rhys Davids in _Dialogues of the

Buddha_ (Oxford, 1899), pp. 147-149. (5) _First long episode_; the going

forth, years of study and penance, attainment of Nirv[=a]na and Buddhahood,

and conversion of first five converts; text in _Majjhima_, all together at

ii. 93; parts repeated at i. 163-175, 240-249; ii. 212; _Vinaya_, ed.

Oldenberg (London, 1879-1883), vol. i. pp. 1-13. (6) _Second long episode_;

from the conversation of the five down to the end of the first year of the

teaching; text in _Vinaya_, i. 13-44, translated by Oldenberg in _Vinaya

Texts_, i. 73-151. (7) _Visit to Kapilavastu_; text in _Vinaya_, i. 82;

translation by Oldenberg in _Vinaya Texts_ (Oxford, 1881-1885), vol. i. pp.

207-210. (8) _Third long episode_; the last days; text in _D[=i]gha

Nik[=a]ya_ (the _Mah[=a]parinibb[=a]na Suttanta_), vol. ii. pp. 72-168,

translated by Rhys Davids _in Buddhist Suttas_ (Oxford, 1881), pp. 1-136.

Buddhist Sanskrit Texts: (i) _Mah[=a]vastu_ (probably 2nd century B.C.);

edited by Senart (3 vols., Paris, 1882-1897), summary in French prefixed to

each volume; down to the end of first year of the teaching. (2) _Lalita

Vistara_ (probably 1st century B.C.); edited by Mitra (Calcutta, 1877);

translated into French by Foucaux (Paris, 1884); down to the first sermon.

(3) _Buddha Carita_, by A['s]vaghosha, probably 2nd century A.D. edited by

Cowell (Oxford, 1892); translated by Cowell (Oxford, 1894, S.B.E. vol.

xlix.); an elegant poem; stops just before the attainment of Buddhahood.

(These three works reproduce and amplify the above episodes Nos. 1-6; they

retain here and there a very old tradition as to arrangement of clauses or

turns of expression.) Later P[=a]li: The commentary on the _J[=a]taka_,

written probably in the 5th century A.D., gives a consecutive narrative,

from the birth to the end of the second year of the teaching, based on the

canonical texts, but much altered and amplified; edited by Fausböll in

_J[=a]taka_, vol. i. (London, 1877), pp. 1-94; translated by Rhys Davids in

_Buddhist Birth Stories_ (London, 1880), pp. 1-133. Modern Works: (i)

Tibetan; _Life of the Buddha_; episodes collected and translated by W.

Woodville Rockhill (London, 1884), from Tibetan texts of the 9th and 10th

centuries A.D. (2) Sinhalese; episodes collected and translated by Spence

Hardy from Sinhalese texts of the 12th and later centuries, in _Manual of

Buddhism_ (London, 1897, 2nd edition), pp. 138-359. (3) Burmese: _The Life

or Legend of Gaudama_ (3rd edition, London, 1880), by the Right Rev. P.

Bigandet, translated from a Burmese work of A.D. 1773. (The Burmese is, in

its turn, a translation from a P[=a]li work of unknown date; it gives the

whole life, and is the only consecutive biography we have.) (4) Kambojian:

_Pathama Sambodhian_; translated into French by A. Leclère in _Livres

sacrés du Cambodge_ (Paris, 1906).

(T. W. R. D.)

[1] _Note on the Date of the Buddha._--The now generally accepted date of

the Buddha is arrived at by adding together two numbers, one being the date

of the accession of Asoka to the throne, the second being the length of the

interval between that date and that of the death of the Buddha. The first

figure, that of the date of Asoka, is arrived at by the mention in one of

his edicts of certain Greek kings, as then living. The dates of these last

are approximately known; and arguing from these dates the date of Asoka's

accession has been fixed by various scholars (at dates varying only by a

difference of five years more or less) at about 270 B.C. The second figure,

the total interval between Asoka's accession and the Buddha's death, is

given in the Ceylon Chronicles as 218 years. Adding these two together, the

date of the Buddha's death would be 488 B.C., and, as he was eighty years

old at the time of his death, the date of his birth would be 568 B.C. The

dates for his death and birth accepted in Burma, Siam and Ceylon are about

half a century earlier, namely, 543 and 623 B.C., the difference being in

the date of Asoka's accession. It will be seen that the dates as adopted in

Europe are approximate only, and liable to correction if better data are

obtainable. The details of this chronological question are discussed at

length in Professor Rhys Davids' _Ancient Coins and Measures of Ceylon_

(London, 1877), where the previous discussions are referred to.

[2] See report of _Rex_. v. _Neuhaus_, Clerkenwell Sessions, September 15,

1906.

[3] The various legends of Mara are the subject of an exhaustive critical

analysis in Windsisch's _Mara and Buddha_ (Leipzig, 1895).

[4] Bigandet, p. 49; and compare _Jataka_, p. 67, line 27.

[5] _Vinaya Texts_, i. 97-99; cf. _Jataka_, vol. i. p. 82, lines 11-19.

[6] _Samyutta_, i. 105.

[7] Cf. Big. p. 99, with Hardy, _M.B._ p. 191. The Pali name is

_aditta-pariyaya_: the sermon on the lessons to be drawn from burning. The

text is _Vinaya_, i. 34 = _Samyutta_, iv. 19. A literal translation will be

found in _Vinaya Texts_, i. 134, 135.

[8] These were at first simple huts, built for the mendicants in some grove

of palm-trees as a retreat during the rainy season; but they gradually

increased in splendour and magnificence till the decay of Buddhism set in.

See the authorities quoted in _Buddhist India_, pp. 141, 142.

[9] The text of the account of this last journey is the

_Mah[=a]parinibb[=a]na Suttanta_, vol. ii. of the _D[=i]gha_ (ed. Rhys

Davids and Carpenter) The translation is in Rhys Davids' _Buddhist Suttas_.

BUDDHAGHOSA, a celebrated Buddhist writer. He was a Brahmin by birth and

was born near the great Bodhi tree at Budh Gay[=a]; in north India about

A.D. 390, his father's name being Kes[=i]. His teacher, Revata, induced him

to go to Ceylon, where the commentaries on the scriptures had been

preserved in the Sinhalese language, with the object of translating them

into P[=a]li. He went accordingly to Anuradhapura, studied there under

Sanghap[=a]la, and asked leave of the fraternity there to translate the

commentaries. With their consent he then did so, having first shown his

ability by writing the work _Visuddhi Magga_ (the Path of Purity, a kind of

summary of Buddhist doctrine). When he had completed his many years'

labours he returned to the neighbourhood of the Bodhi tree in north India.

Before he came to Ceylon he had already written a book entitled

_N[=a]nodaya_ (the Rise of Knowledge), and had commenced a commentary on

the principal psychological manual contained in the _Pitakas_. This latter

work he afterwards rewrote in Ceylon, as the present text (now published by

the P[=a]li Text Society) shows. One volume of the _Sumangala

Vil[=a]sin[=i]_ (a portion of the commentaries mentioned above) has been

edited, and extracts from his comment on the Buddhist canon law. This last

work has been discovered in a nearly contemporaneous Chinese translation

(an edition in P[=a]li is based on a comparison with that translation). The

works here mentioned form, however, only a small portion of what

Buddhaghosa wrote. His industry must have been prodigious. He is known to

have written books that would fill about 20 octavo volumes of about 400

pages each; and there are other writings ascribed to him which may or may

not be really his work. It is too early therefore to attempt a criticism of

it. But it is already clear that, when made acceptable, it will be of the

greatest value for the history of Indian literature and of Indian ideas. So

much is uncertain at present in that history for want of definite dates

that the voluminous writings of an author whose date is approximately

certain will afford a standard by which the age of other writings can be

tested. And as the original commentaries in Sinhalese are now lost his

works are the only evidence we have of the traditions then handed down in

the Buddhist community. The main source of our information about

Buddhaghosa is the _Mah[=a]vamsa_, written in Anur[=a]dhapura about fifty

years after he was working there. But there are numerous references to him

in P[=a]li books on P[=a]li literature; and a Burmese author of unknown

date, but possibly of the 15th century, has compiled a biography of him,

the _Buddhaghos' Uppatti_, of little value and no critical judgment.

See _Mah[=a]vamsa_, ch. xxxvii. (ed. Turnour, Colombo, 1837);

"Gandhavaramsa," p. 59, in _Journal of the P[=a]li Text Society_ (1886);

_Buddhghosuppatti_ (text and translation, ed. by E. Gray, London, 1893);

_Sumangala Vil[=a]sin[=i]_, edited by T. W. Rhys Davids and J. E.

Carpenter, vol. i. (London, P[=a]li Text Society, 1886). (T. W. R. D.)

BUDDHISM, the religion held by the followers of the Buddha (_q.v._), and

covering a large area in India and east and central Asia.

_Essential Doctrines._--We are fortunate in having preserved for us the

official report of the Buddha's discourse, in which he expounded what he

considered the main features of his system to the five men he first tried

to win over to his new-found faith. There is no reason to doubt its

substantial accuracy, not as to words, but as to purport. In any case it is

what the compilers of the oldest extant documents believed their teacher to

have regarded as the most important points in his teaching. Such a summary

must be better than any that could now be made. It is incorporated into two

divisions of their sacred books, first among the _suttas_ containing the

doctrine, and again in the rules of the society or order he founded

(_Samyutta_, v. 421 = _Vinaya_, i. 10). The gist of it, omitting a few

repetitions, is as follows:--

"There are two aims which he who has given up the world ought not to

follow after--devotion, on the one hand, to those things whose

attractions depend upon the passions, a low and pagan ideal, fit only

for the worldly-minded, ignoble, unprofitable, and the practice on the

other hand of asceticism, which is painful, ignoble, unprofitable.

There is a Middle Path discovered by the Tath[=a]gata[1]--a path which

opens the eyes, and bestows understanding, which leads to peace, to

insight, to the higher wisdom, to Nirv[=a]na. Verily! it is this Noble

Eightfold Path; that is to say, Right Views, Right Aspirations, Right

Speech, Right Conduct, Right Mode of Livelihood, Right Effort, Right

Mindfulness, and Right Rapture.

"Now this is the Noble Truth as to suffering. Birth is attended with

pain, decay is painful, disease is painful, death is painful. Union

with the unpleasant is painful, painful is separation from the

pleasant; and any craving unsatisfied, that too is painful. In brief,

the five aggregates of clinging (that is, the conditions of

individuality) are painful.

"Now this is the Noble Truth as to the origin of suffering. Verily! it

is the craving thirst that causes the renewal of becomings, that is

accompanied by sensual delights, and seeks satisfaction now here, now

there--that is to say, the craving for the gratification of the senses,

or the craving for a future life, or the craving for prosperity.

[v.04 p.0688] "Now this is the Noble Truth as to the passing away of

pain. Verily! it is the passing away so that no passion remains, the

giving up, the getting rid of, the being emancipated from, the

harbouring no longer of this craving thirst.

"Now this is the Noble Truth as to the way that leads to the passing

away of pain. Verily! it is this Noble Eightfold Path, that is to say,

Right Views, Right Aspirations, Right speech, conduct and mode of

livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Rapture."

A few words follow as to the threefold way in which the speaker claimed to

have grasped each of these Four Truths. That is all. There is not a word

about God or the soul, not a word about the Buddha or Buddhism. It seems

simple, almost jejune; so thin and weak that one wonders how it can have

formed the foundation for a system so mighty in its historical results. But

the simple words are pregnant with meaning. Their implications were clear

enough to the hearers to whom they were addressed. They were not intended,

however, to answer the questionings of a 20th-century European questioner,

and are liable now to be misunderstood. Fortunately each word, each clause,

each idea in the discourse is repeated, commented on, enlarged upon, almost

_ad nauseam_, in the _suttas_, and a short comment in the light of those

explanations may bring out the meaning that was meant.[2]

The passing away of pain or suffering is said to depend on an emancipation.

And the Buddha is elsewhere (_Vinaya_ ii. 239) made to declare: "Just as

the great ocean has one taste only, the taste of salt, just so have this

doctrine and discipline but one flavour only, the flavour of emancipation";

and again, "When a brother has, by himself, known and realized, and

continues to abide, here in this visible world, in that emancipation of

mind, in that emancipation of heart, which is Arahatship; that is a

condition higher still and sweeter still, for the sake of which the

brethren lead the religious life under me."[3] The emancipation is found in

a habit of mind, in the being free from a specified sort of craving that is

said to be the origin of certain specified sorts of pain. In some European

books this is completely spoiled by being represented as the doctrine that

existence is misery, and that desire is to be suppressed. Nothing of the

kind is said in the text. The description of suffering or pain is, in fact,

a string of truisms, quite plain and indisputable until the last clause.

That clause declares that the _Up[=a]d[=a]na Skandhas_, the five groups of

the constituent parts of every individual, involve pain. Put into modern

language this is that the conditions necessary to make an individual are

also the conditions that necessarily give rise to sorrow. No sooner has an

individual become separate, become an individual, than disease and decay

begin to act upon it. Individuality involves limitation, limitation in its

turn involves ignorance, and ignorance is the source of sorrow. Union with

the unpleasant, separation from the pleasant, unsatisfied craving, are each

a result of individuality. This is a deeper generalization than that which

says, "A man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward." But it is put

forward as a mere statement of fact. And the previous history of religious

belief in India would tend to show that emphasis was laid on the fact, less

as an explanation of the origin of evil, than as a protest against a then

current pessimistic idea that salvation could not be reached on earth, and

must therefore be sought for in a rebirth in heaven, in the _Brahmaloka_.

For if the fact--the fact that the conditions of individuality are the

conditions, also, of pain--were admitted, then the individual there would

still not have escaped from sorrow. If the five ascetics to whom the words

were addressed once admitted this implication, logic would drive them also

to admit all that followed.

The threefold division of craving at the end of the second truth might be

rendered "the lust of the flesh, the lust of life and the love of this

present world." The two last are said elsewhere to be directed against two

sets of thinkers called the Eternalists and the Annihilationists, who held

respectively the everlasting-life-heresy and the

let-us-eat-and-drink-for-tomorrow-we-die-heresy.[4] This may be so, but in

any case the division of craving would have appealed to the five hearers as

correct.

The word translated "noble" in Noble Path, Noble Truth, is _ariya_, which

also means Aryan.[5] The negative, un-Aryan, is used of each of the two low

aims. It is possible that this rendering should have been introduced into

the translation; but the ethical meaning, though still associated with the

tribal meaning, had probably already become predominant in the language of

the time.

The details of the Path include several terms whose meaning and implication

are by no means apparent at first sight. Right Views, for instance, means

mainly right views as to the Four Truths and the Three Signs. Of the

latter, one is identical, or nearly so, with the First Truth. The others

are Impermanence and Non-soul (the absence of a soul)--both declared to be

"signs" of every individual, whether god, animal or man. Of these two again

the Impermanence has become an Indian rather than a Buddhist idea, and we

are to a certain extent familiar with it also in the West. There is no

Being, there is only a Becoming. The state of every individual is unstable,

temporary, sure to pass away. Even in the lowest class of things, we find,

in each individual, form and material qualities. In the higher classes

there is a continually rising series of mental qualities also. It is the

union of these that makes the individual. Every person, or thing, or god,

is therefore a putting together, a compound; and in each individual,

without any exception, the relation of its component parts is ever

changing, is never the same for two consecutive moments. It follows that no

sooner has separateness, individuality, begun, than dissolution,

disintegration, also begins. There can be no individuality without a

putting together: there can be no putting together without a becoming:

there can be no becoming without a becoming different: and there can be no

becoming different without a dissolution, a passing away, which sooner or

later will inevitably be complete.

Heracleitus, who was a generation or two later than the Buddha, had very

similar ideas;[6] and similar ideas are found in post-Buddhistic Indian

works.[7] But in neither case are they worked out in the same

uncompromising way. Both in Europe, and in all Indian thought except the

Buddhist, souls, and the gods who are made in imitation of souls, are

considered as exceptions. To these spirits is attributed a Being without

Becoming, an individuality without change, a beginning without an end. To

hold any such view would, according to the doctrine of the Noble (or Aryan)

Path, be erroneous, and the error would block the way against the very

entrance on the Path.

So important is this position in Buddhism that it is put in the forefront

of Buddhist expositions of Buddhism. The Buddha himself is stated in the

books to have devoted to it the very first discourse he addressed to the

first converts.[8] The first in the collection of the _Dialogues of Gotama_

discusses, and completely, categorically, and systematically rejects, all

the current theories about "souls." Later books follow these precedents.

Thus the _Kath[=a] Vatthu_, the latest book included in the canon,

discusses points of disagreement that had arisen in the community. It

places this question of "soul" at the head of all the points it deals with,

and devotes to it an amount of space quite overshadowing all the rest.[9]

So also in the earliest Buddhist book later than the canon--the very

interesting and suggestive series of conversations between the Greek king

Menander and the Buddhist teacher N[=a]gasena. It is precisely this

question of the "soul" that the unknown author takes up first, describing

how N[=a]gasena convinces the king that there is no such thing as the [v.04

p.0689] "soul" in the ordinary sense, and he returns to the subject again

and again.[10]

After Right Views come Right Aspirations. It is evil desires, low ideals,

useless cravings, idle excitements, that are to be suppressed by the

cultivation of the opposite--of right desires, lofty aspirations. In one of

the Dialogues[11] instances are given--the desire for emancipation from

sensuality, aspirations towards the attainment of love to others, the wish

not to injure any living thing, the desire for the eradication of wrong and

for the promotion of right dispositions in one's own heart, and so on. This

portion of the Path is indeed quite simple, and would require no commentary

were it not for the still constantly repeated blunder that Buddhism teaches

the suppression of all desire.

Of the remaining stages of the Path it is only necessary to mention two.

The one is Right Effort. A constant intellectual alertness is required.

This is not only insisted upon elsewhere in countless passages, but of the

three cardinal sins in Buddhism (_r[=a]ga_, _dosa_, _moha_) the last and

worst is stupidity or dullness, the others being sensuality and ill-will.

Right Effort is closely connected with the seventh stage, Right

Mindfulness. Two of the dialogues are devoted to this subject, and it is

constantly referred to elsewhere.[12] The disciple, whatsoever he

does--whether going forth or coming back, standing or walking, speaking or

silent, eating or drinking--is to keep clearly in mind all that it means,

the temporary character of the act, its ethical significance, and above all

that behind the act there is no actor (goer, seer, eater, speaker) that is

an eternally persistent unity. It is the Buddhist analogue to the Christian

precept: "Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to

the glory of God."

Under the head of Right Conduct the two most important points are Love and

Joy. Love is in P[=a]li _Mett[=a]_, and the _Metta Sutta_[13] says (no

doubt with reference to the Right Mindfulness just described): "As a

mother, even at the risk of her own life, protects her son, her only son,

so let him cultivate love without measure towards all beings. Let him

cultivate towards the whole world--above, below, around--a heart of love

unstinted, unmixed with the sense of differing or opposing interests. Let a

man maintain this mindfulness all the while he is awake, whether he be

standing, walking, sitting or lying down. This state of heart is the best

in the world."

Often elsewhere four such states are described, the Brahma Vih[=a]ras or

Sublime Conditions. They are Love, Sorrow at the sorrows of others, Joy in

the joys of others, and Equanimity as regards one's own joys and

sorrows.[14] Each of these feelings was to be deliberately practised,

beginning with a single object, and gradually increasing till the whole

world was suffused with the feeling. "Our mind shall not waver. No evil

speech will we utter. Tender and compassionate will we abide, loving in

heart, void of malice within. And we will be ever suffusing such a one with

the rays of our loving thought. And with that feeling as a basis we will

ever be suffusing the whole wide world with thought of love far-reaching,

grown great, beyond measure, void of anger or ill-will."[15]

The relative importance of love, as compared with other habits, is thus

described. "All the means that can be used as bases for doing right are not

worth the sixteenth part of the emancipation of the heart through love.

That takes all those up into itself, outshining them in radiance and glory.

Just as whatsoever stars there be, their radiance avails not the sixteenth

part of the radiance of the moon. That takes all those up into itself,

outshining them in radiance and glory--just as in the last month of the

rains, at harvest time, the sun, mounting up on high into the clear and

cloudless sky, overwhelms all darkness in the realms of space, and shines

forth in radiance and glory--just as in the night, when the dawn is

breaking, the morning star shines out in radiance and glory--just so all

the means that can be used as helps towards doing right avail not the

sixteenth part of the emancipation of the heart through love."[16]

The above is the positive side; the qualities (_dhamm[=a]_) that have to be

acquired. The negative side, the qualities that have to be suppressed by

the cultivation of the opposite virtues, are the Ten Bonds (_Samyojanas_),

the Four Intoxications (_[=A]sav[=a]_) and the Five Hindrances

(_N[=i]varanas_).

The Ten Bonds are: (1) Delusion about the soul; (2) Doubt; (3) Dependence

on good works; (4) Sensuality; (5) Hatred, ill-feeling; (6) Love of life on

earth; (7) Desire for life in heaven; (8) Pride; (9) Self-righteousness;

(10) Ignorance. The Four Intoxications are the mental intoxication arising

respectively from (1) Bodily passions, (2) Becoming, (3) Delusion, (4)

Ignorance. The Five Hindrances are (1) Hankering after worldly advantages,

(2) The corruption arising out of the wish to injure, (3) Torpor of mind,

(4) Fretfulness and worry, (5) Wavering of mind.[17] "When these five

hindrances have been cut away from within him, he looks upon himself as

freed from debt, rid of disease, out of jail, a free man and secure. And

gladness springs up within him on his realizing that, and joy arises to him

thus gladdened, and so rejoicing all his frame becomes at ease, and being

thus at ease he is filled with a sense of peace, and in that peace his

heart is stayed."[18]

To have realized the Truths, and traversed the Path; to have broken the

Bonds, put an end to the Intoxications, and got rid of the Hindrances, is

to have attained the ideal, the Fruit, as it is called, of Arahatship. One

might fill columns with the praises, many of them among the most beautiful

passages in P[=a]li poetry and prose, lavished on this condition of mind,

the state of the man made perfect according to the Buddhist faith. Many are

the pet names, the poetic epithets bestowed upon it--the harbour of refuge,

the cool cave, the island amidst the floods, the place of bliss,

emancipation, liberation, safety, the supreme, the transcendent, the

uncreated, the tranquil, the home of peace, the calm, the end of suffering,

the medicine for all evil, the unshaken, the ambrosia, the immaterial, the

imperishable, the abiding, the farther shore, the unending, the bliss of

effort, the supreme joy, the ineffable, the detachment, the holy city, and

many others. Perhaps the most frequent in the Buddhist text is Arahatship,

"the state of him who is worthy"; and the one exclusively used in Europe is

Nirv[=a]na, the "dying out"; that is, the dying out in the heart of the

fell fire of the three cardinal sins--sensuality, ill-will and

stupidity.[19]

The choice of this term by European writers, a choice made long before any

of the Buddhist canonical texts had been published or translated, has had a

most unfortunate result. Those writers did not share, could not be expected

to share, the exuberant optimism of the early Buddhists. Themselves giving

up this world as hopeless, and looking for salvation in the next, they

naturally thought the Buddhists must do the same, and in the absence of any

authentic scriptures, to correct the mistake, they interpreted Nirv[=a]na,

in terms of their own belief, as a state to be reached after death. As such

they supposed the "dying out" must mean the dying out of a "soul"; and

endless were the discussions as to whether this meant eternal trance, or

absolute annihilation, of the "soul." It is now thirty years since the

right interpretation, founded on the canonical texts, has been given, but

outside the ranks of P[=a]li scholars the old blunder is still often

repeated. It should be added that the belief in salvation in this world, in

this life, has appealed so strongly to Indian sympathies that from the time

of the rise of Buddhism down to the present day it has been adopted as a

part of general Indian belief, and _J[=i]vanmukti_, salvation during this

life, has become a commonplace in the religious language of India.

_Adopted Doctrines._--The above are the essential doctrines of [v.04

p.0690] the original Buddhism. They are at the same time its distinctive

doctrines; that is to say, the doctrines that distinguish it from all

previous teaching in India. But the Buddha, while rejecting the sacrifices

and the ritualistic magic of the brahmin schools, the animistic

superstitions of the people, the asceticism and soul-theory of the Jains,

and the pantheistic speculations of the poets of the pre-Buddhistic

_Upanishads_, still retained the belief in transmigration. This belief--the

transmigration of the soul, after the death of the body, into other bodies,

either of men, beasts or gods--is part of the animistic creed so widely

found throughout the world that it was probably universal. In India it had

already, before the rise of Buddhism, been raised into an ethical

conception by the associated doctrine of _Karma_, according to which a

man's social position in life and his physical advantages, or the reverse,

were the result of his actions in a previous birth. The doctrine thus

afforded an explanation, quite complete to those who believed it, of the

apparent anomalies and wrongs in the distribution here of happiness or woe.

A man, for instance, is blind. This is owing to his lust of the eye in a

previous birth. But he has also unusual powers of hearing. This is because

he loved, in a previous birth, to listen to the preaching of the law. The

explanation could always be exact, for it was scarcely more than a

repetition of the point to be explained. It fits the facts because it is

derived from them. And it cannot be disproved, for it lies in a sphere

beyond the reach of human inquiry.

It was because it thus provided a moral cause that it was retained in

Buddhism. But as the Buddha did not acknowledge a soul, the link of

connexion between one life and the next had to be found somewhere else. The

Buddha found it (as Plato also found it)[20] in the influence exercised

upon one life by a desire felt in the previous life. When two thinkers of

such eminence (probably the two greatest ethical thinkers of antiquity)

have arrived independently at this strange conclusion, have agreed in

ascribing to cravings, felt in this life, so great, and to us so

inconceivable, a power over the future life, we may well hesitate before we

condemn the idea as intrinsically absurd, and we may take note of the

important fact that, given similar conditions, similar stages in the

development of religious belief, men's thoughts, even in spite of the most

unquestioned individual originality, tend though they may never produce

exactly the same results, to work in similar ways.

In India, before Buddhism, conflicting and contradictory views prevailed as

to the precise mode of action of _Karma_; and we find this confusion

reflected in Buddhist theory. The prevailing views are tacked on, as it

were, to the essential doctrines of Buddhism, without being thoroughly

assimilated to them, or logically incorporated with them. Thus in the story

of the good layman Citta, it is an aspiration expressed on the

deathbed;[21] in the dialogue on the subject, it is a thought dwelt on

during life,[22] in the numerous stories in the _Peta_ and _Vim[=a]na

Vatthus_ it is usually some isolated act, in the discussions in the _Dhamma

Sangani_ it is some mental disposition, which is the _Karma_ (doing or

action) in the one life determining the position of the individual in the

next. These are really conflicting propositions. They are only alike in the

fact that in each case a moral cause is given for the position in which the

individual finds himself now; and the moral cause is his own act.

In the popular belief, followed also in the brahmin theology, the bridge

between the two lives was a minute and subtle entity called the soul, which

left the one body at death, through a hole at the top of the head, and

entered into the new body. The new body happened to be there, ready, with

no soul in it. The soul did not make the body. In the Buddhist adaptation

of this theory no soul, no consciousness, no memory, goes over from one

body to the other. It is the grasping, the craving, still existing at the

death of the one body that causes the new set of _Skandhas_, that is, the

new body with its mental tendencies and capacities, to arise. How this

takes place is nowhere explained.

The Indian theory of _Karma_ has been worked out with many points of great

beauty and ethical value. And the Buddhist adaptation of it, avoiding some

of the difficulties common to it and to the allied European theories of

fate and predestination, tries to explain the weight of the universe in its

action on the individual, the heavy hand of the immeasurable past we cannot

escape, the close connexion between all forms of life, and the mysteries of

inherited character. Incidentally it held out the hope, to those who

believed in it, of a mode of escape from the miseries of transmigration.

For as the Arahat had conquered the cravings that were supposed to produce

the new body, his actions were no longer _Karma_, but only _Kiriy[=a]_,

that led to no rebirth.[23]

Another point of Buddhist teaching adopted from previous belief was the

practice of ecstatic meditation. In the very earliest times of the most

remote animism we find the belief that a person, rapt from all sense of the

outside world, possessed by a spirit, acquired from that state a degree of

sanctity, was supposed to have a degree of insight, denied to ordinary

mortals. In India from the soma frenzy in the _Vedas_, through the mystic

reveries of the _Upanishads_, and the hypnotic trances of the ancient Yoga,

allied beliefs and practices had never lost their importance and their

charm. It is clear from the _Dialogues_, and other of the most ancient

Buddhist records,[24] that the belief was in full force when Buddhism

arose, and that the practice was followed by the Buddha's teachers. It was

quite impossible for him to ignore the question; and the practice was

admitted as a part of the training of the Buddhist Bhikshu. But it was not

the highest or the most important part, and might be omitted altogether.

The states of Rapture are called Conditions of Bliss, and they are regarded

as useful for the help they give towards the removal of the mental

obstacles to the attainment of Arahatship.[25] Of the thirty-seven

constituent parts of Arahatship they enter into one group of four. To seek

for Arahatship in the practice of the ecstasy alone is considered a deadly

heresy.[26] So these practices are both pleasant in themselves, and useful

as one of the means to the end proposed. But they are not the end, and the

end can be reached without them. The most ancient form these exercises took

is recorded in the often recurring paragraphs translated in Rhys Davids'

_Dialogues of the Buddha_ (i. 84-92). More modern, and much more elaborate,

forms are given in the _Yog[=a]vacaras Manual of Indian Mysticism as

practised by Buddhists_, edited by Rhys Davids from a unique MS. for the

P[=a]li Text Society in 1896. In the Introduction to this last work the

various phases of the question are discussed at length.

_Buddhist Texts. The Canonical Books._--It is necessary to remember that

the Buddha, like other Indian teachers of his period, taught by

conversation only. A highly-educated man (according to the education

current at the time), speaking constantly to men of similar education, he

followed the literary habit of his day by embodying his doctrines in set

phrases (_s[=u]tras_), on which he enlarged, on different occasions, in

different ways. Writing was then widely known. But the lack of suitable

writing materials made any lengthy books impossible. Such s[=u]tras were

therefore the recognized form of preserving and communicating opinion. They

were catchwords, as it were, _memoria technica_, which could easily be

remembered, and would recall the fuller expositions that had been based

upon them. Shortly after the Buddha's time the Brahmins had their s[=u]tras

in Sanskrit, already a dead language. He purposely put his into the

ordinary conversational idiom of the day, that is to say, into P[=a]li.

When the Buddha died these sayings were collected together by his disciples

into what they call the Four Nik[=a]yas, or "collections." These cannot

have reached their final form till about fifty or sixty years afterwards.

Other sayings and verses, most of them ascribed, not to the Buddha, but to

the disciples themselves, were put into a supplementary Nik[=a]ya. We know

[v.04 p.0691] of slight additions made to this Nik[=a]ya as late as the

time of Asoka, 3rd century B.C. And the developed doctrine, found in

certain portions of it, shows that these are later than the four old

Nik[=a]yas. For a generation or two the books so put together were handed

down by memory, though probably written memoranda were also used. And they

were doubtless accompanied from the first, as they were being taught, by a

running commentary. About one hundred years after the Buddha's death there

was a schism in the community. Each of the two schools kept an arrangement

of the canon--still in P[=a]li, or some allied dialect. Sanskrit was not

used for any Buddhist works till long afterwards, and never used at all, so

far as is known, for the canonical books. Each of these two schools broke

up in the following centuries, into others. Several of them had their

different arrangements of the canonical books, differing also in minor

details. These books remained the only authorities for about five

centuries, but they all, except only our extant P[=a]li Nik[=a]yas, have

been lost in India. These then are our authorities for the earliest period

of Buddhism. Now what are these books?

We talk necessarily of P[=a]li _books_. They are not books in the modern

sense. They are memorial sentences or verses intended to be learnt by

heart. And the whole style and method of arrangement is entirely

subordinated to this primary necessity. Each s[=u]tra (P[=a]li, _sutta_) is

very short; usually occupying only a page, or perhaps two, and containing a

single proposition. When several of these, almost always those that contain

propositions of a similar kind, are collected together in the framework of

one dialogue, it is called a _sullanta_. The usual length of such a

suttanta is about a dozen pages; only a few of them are longer, and a

collection of such suttantas might be called a book. But it is as yet

neither narrative nor essay. It is at most a string of passages, drawn up

in similar form to assist the memory, and intended, not to be read, but to

be learnt by heart. The first of the four Nik[=a]yas is a collection of the

longest of these suttantas, and it is called accordingly the _D[=i]gha

Nik[=a]ya_, that is "the Collection of Long Ones" (_sci._ Suttantas). The

next is the _Majjhima Nik[=a]ya_, the "Collection of the suttantas of

Medium Length"--medium, that is, as being shorter than the suttantas in the

D[=i]gha, and longer than the ordinary suttas preserved in the two

following collections. Between them these first two collections contain 186

dialogues, in which the Buddha, or in a few cases one of his leading

disciples, is represented as engaged in conversation on some one of the

religious, or philosophic, or ethical points in that system which we now

call Buddhism. In depth of philosophic insight, in the method of Socratic

questioning often adopted, in the earnest and elevated tone of the whole,

in the evidence they afford of the most cultured thought of the day, these

dialogues constantly remind the reader of the dialogues of Plato. But not

in style. They have indeed a style of their own; always dignified, and

occasionally rising into eloquence. But for the reasons already given, it

is entirely different from the style of Western writings which are always

intended to be read. Historical scholars will, however, revere this

collection of dialogues as one of the most priceless of the treasures of

antiquity still preserved to us. It is to it, above all, that we shall

always have to go for our knowledge of the most ancient Buddhism. Of the

186, 175 had by 1907 been edited for the P[=a]li Text Society, and the

remainder were either in the press or in preparation.

A disadvantage of the arrangement in dialogues, more especially as they

follow one another according to length and not according to subject, is

that it is not easy to find the statement of doctrine on any particular

point which is interesting one at the moment. It is very likely just this

consideration which led to the compilation of the two following Nik[=a]yas.

In the first of these, called the _Anguttara Nik[=a]ya_, all those points

of Buddhist doctrine capable of expression in classes are set out in order.

This practically includes most of the psychology and ethics of Buddhism.

For it is a distinguishing mark of the dialogues themselves that the

results arrived at are arranged in carefully systematized groups. We are

familiar enough in the West with similar classifications, summed up in such

expressions as the Seven Deadly Sins, the Ten Commandments, the Thirty-nine

Articles, the Four Cardinal Virtues, the Seven Sacraments and a host of

others. These numbered lists (it is true) are going out of fashion. The aid

which they afford to memory is no longer required in an age in which books

of reference abound. It was precisely as a help to memory that they were

found so useful in the early Buddhist times, when the books were all learnt

by heart, and had never as yet been written. And in the Anguttara we find

set out in order first of all the units, then all the pairs, then all the

trios, and so on. It is the longest book in the Buddhist Bible, and fills

1840 pages 8vo. The whole of the P[=a]li text has been published by the

P[=a]li Text Society, but only portions have been translated into English.

The next, and last, of these four collections contains again the whole, or

nearly the whole, of the Buddhist doctrine; but arranged this time in order

of subjects. It consists of 55 _Samyuttas_ or groups. In each of these the

suttas on the same subject, or in one or two cases the suttas addressed to

the same sort of people, are grouped together. The whole of it has been

published in five volumes by the P[=a]li Text Society. Only a few fragments

have been translated.

Many hundreds of the short suttas and verses in these two collections are

found, word for word, in the dialogues. And there are numerous instances of

the introductory story stating how, and when, and to whom the sutta was

enunciated--a sort of narrative framework in which the sutta is

set--recurring also. This is very suggestive as to the way in which the

earliest Buddhist records were gradually built up. The suttas came first

embodying, in set phrases, the doctrine that had to be handed down. Those

episodes, found in two or three different places, and always embodying

several suttas, came next. Then several of these were woven together to

form a suttanta. And finally the suttantas were grouped together into the

two Nik[=a]yas, and the suttas and episodes separately into the two others.

Parallel with this evolution, so to say, of the suttas, the short

statements of doctrine, in prose, ran the treatment of the verses. There

was a great love of poetry in the communities in which Buddhism arose.

Verses were helpful to the memory. And they were adopted not only for this

reason. The adherents of the new view of life found pleasure in putting

into appropriate verse the feelings of enthusiasm and of ecstasy which the

reforming doctrines inspired. When particularly happy in literary finish,

or peculiarly rich in religious feeling, such verses were not lost. These

were handed on, from mouth to mouth, in the small companies of the brethren

or sisters. The oldest verses are all lyrics, expressions either of

emotion, or of some deep saying, some pregnant thought. Very few of them

have been preserved alone. And even then they are so difficult to

understand, so much like puzzles, that they were probably accompanied from

the first by a sort of comment in prose, stating when, and why, and by whom

they were supposed to have been uttered. As a general rule such a framework

in prose is actually preserved in the old Buddhist literature. It is only

in the very latest books included in the canon that the narrative part is

also regularly in verse, so that a whole work consists of a collection of

ballads. The last step, that of combining such ballads into one long epic

poem, was not taken till after the canon was closed. The whole process,

from the simple anecdote in mixed prose and verse, the so-called

_[=a]khy[=a]na_, to the complete epic, comes out with striking clearness in

the history of the Buddhist canon. It is typical, one may notice in

passing, of the evolution of the epic elsewhere; in Iceland, for instance,

in Persia and in Greece. And we may safely draw the conclusion that if the

great Indian epics, the Mah[=a]-bh[=a]rata and the R[=a]m[=a]yana, had been

in existence when the formation of the Buddhist canon began, the course of

its development would have been very different from what it was.

As will easily be understood, the same reasons which led to literary

activity of this kind, in the earliest period, continued to hold good

afterwards. A number of such efforts, after the Nik[=a]yas had been closed,

were included in a supplementary Nik[=a]ya called the _Khuddaka Nik[=a]ya_.

It will throw very useful light upon the intellectual level in the Buddhist

community just [v.04 p.0692] after the earliest period, and upon literary

life in the valley of the Ganges in the 4th or 5th century B.C., if we

briefly explain what the tractates in this collection contain. The first,

the _Khuddaka P[=a]tha_, is a little tract of only a few pages. After a

profession of faith in the Buddha, the doctrine and the order, there

follows a paragraph setting out the thirty-four constituents of the human

body--bones, blood, nerves and so on--strangely incongruous with what

follows. For that is simply a few of the most beautiful poems to be found

in the Buddhist scriptures. There is no apparent reason, except their

exquisite versification, why these particular pieces should have been here

brought together. It is most probable that this tiny volume was simply a

sort of first lesson book for young neophytes when they joined the order.

In any case that is one of the uses to which it is put at present. The text

book is the _Dhammapada_. Here are brought together from ten to twenty

stanzas on each of twenty-six selected points of Buddhist self-training or

ethics. There are altogether 423 verses, gathered from various older

sources, and strung together without any other internal connexion than that

they relate more or less to the same subject. And the collector has not

thought it necessary to choose stanzas written in the same metre, or in the

same number of lines. We know that the early Christians were accustomed to

sing hymns, both in their homes and on the occasions of their meeting

together. These hymns are now irretrievably lost. Had some one made a

collection of about twenty isolated stanzas, chosen from these hymns, on

each of about twenty subjects--such as Faith, Hope, Love, the Converted

Man, Times of Trouble, Quiet Days, the Saviour, the Tree of Life, the Sweet

Name, the Dove, the King, the Land of Peace, the Joy Unspeakable--we should

have a Christian Dhammapada, and very precious such a collection would be.

The Buddhist Dhammapada has been edited by Professor Fausböll (2nd ed.,

1900), and has been frequently translated. Where the verses deal with those

ideas that are common to Christians and Buddhists, the versions are easily

intelligible, and some of the stanzas appeal very strongly to the Western

sense of religious beauty. Where the stanzas are full of the technical

terms of the Buddhist system of self-culture and self-control, it is often

impossible, without expansions that spoil the poetry, or learned notes that

distract the attention, to convey the full sense of the original. In all

these distinctively Buddhist verses the existing translations (of which

Professor Max Müller's is the best known, and Dr Karl Neumann's the best)

are inadequate and sometimes quite erroneous. The connexion in which they

were spoken is often apparent in the more ancient books from which these

verses have been taken, and has been preserved in the commentary on the

work itself.

In the next little work the framework, the whole paraphernalia of the

ancient akhy[=a]na, is included in the work itself, which is called

_Ud[=a]na_, or "ecstatic utterances." The Buddha is represented, on various

occasions during his long career, to have been so much moved by some event,

or speech, or action, that he gave vent, as it were, to his pent-up

feelings in a short, ecstatic utterance, couched, for the most part, in one

or two lines of poetry. These outbursts, very terse and enigmatic, are

charged with religious emotion, and turn often on some subtle point of

Arahatship, that is, of the Buddhist ideal of life. The original text has

been published by the P[=a]li Text Society. The little book, a garland of

fifty of these gems, has been translated by General Strong. The next work

is called the _Iti Vuttaka_. This contains 120 short passages, each of them

leading up to a terse deep saying of the Buddha's, and introduced, in each

case, with the words _Iti vuttam Bhagaval[=a]_--"thus was it spoken by the

Exalted One." These anecdotes may or may not be historically accurate. It

is quite possible that the memory of the early disciples, highly trained as

it was, enabled them to preserve a substantially true record of some of

these speeches, and of the circumstances in which they were uttered. Some

or all of them may also have been invented. In either case they are

excellent evidence of the sort of questions on which discussions among the

earliest Buddhists must have turned. These ecstatic utterances and deep

sayings are attributed to the Buddha himself, and accompanied by the prose

framework. There has also been preserved a collection of stanzas ascribed

to his leading followers. Of these 107 are brethren, and 73 sisters, in the

order. The prose framework is in this case preserved only in the

commentary, which also gives biographies of the authors. This work is

called the _Thera-ther[=i]-g[=a]th[=a]_.

Another interesting collection is the _J[=a]taka_ book, a set of verses

supposed to have been uttered by the Buddha in some of his previous births.

These are really 550 of the folk-tales current in India when the canon was

being formed, the only thing Buddhist about them being that the Buddha, in

a previous birth, is identified in each case with the hero in the little

story. Here again the prose is preserved only in the commentary. And it is

a most fortunate chance that this--the oldest, the most complete, and the

most authentic collection of folklore extant--has thus been preserved

intact to the present day. Many of these stories and fables have wandered

to Europe, and are found in medieval homilies, poems and story-books. A

full account of this curious migration will be found in the introduction to

the present writer's _Buddhist Birth Stories_. A translation of the whole

book is now published, under the editorship of Professor Cowell, at the

Cambridge University Press. The last of these poetical works which it is

necessary to mention is the _Sutta Nip[=a]ta_, containing fifty-five poems,

all except the last merely short lyrics, many of great beauty. A very

ancient commentary on the bulk of these poems has been included in the

canon as a separate work. The poems themselves have been translated by

Professor Fausböll in the _Sacred Books of the East_. The above works are

our authority for the philosophy and ethics of the earliest Buddhists. We

have also a complete statement of the rules of the order in the _Vinaya_,

edited, in five volumes, by Professor Oldenberg. Three volumes of

translations of these rules, by him and by the present writer, have also

appeared in the _Sacred Books of the East_.

There have also been added to the canonical books seven works on

_Abhidhamma_, a more elaborate and more classified exposition of the Dhamma

or doctrine as set out in the _Nik[=a]yas_. All these works are later. Only

one of them has been translated, the so-called Dhamma Sangani. The

introduction to this translation, published under the title of _Buddhist

Psychology_, contains the fullest account that has yet appeared of the

psychological conceptions on which Buddhist ethics are throughout based.

The translator, Mrs Caroline Rhys Davids, estimates the date of this

ancient manual for Buddhist students as the 4th century B.C.

_Later Works._--So far the canon, almost all of which is now accessible to

readers of P[=a]li. But a good deal of work is still required before the

harvest of historical data contained in these texts shall have been made

acceptable to students of philosophy and sociology. These works of the

oldest period, the two centuries and a half, between the Buddha's time and

that of Asoka, were followed by a voluminous literature in the following

Periods--from Asoka to Kanishka, and from Kanishka to Buddhaghosa,--each of

about three centuries. Many of these works are extant in MS.; but only five

or six of the more important Have so far been published. Of these the most

interesting is the Milinda, one of the earliest historical novels preserved

to us. It is mainly religious and philosophical and purports to give the

discussion, extending over several days, in which a Buddhist elder named

N[=a]gasena succeeds in converting Milinda, that is Menander, the famous

Greek king of Bactria, to Buddhism. The P[=a]li text has been edited and

the work translated into English. More important historically, though

greatly inferior in style and ability, is the Mah[=a]vastu or Sublime

Story, in Sanskrit. The story is the one of chief importance to the

Buddhists--the story, namely, of how the Buddha won, under the Bo Tree, the

victory over ignorance, and attained to the Sambodhi, "the higher Wisdom,"

of Nirv[=a]na. The story begins with his previous births, in which also he

was accumulating the Buddha qualities. And as the Mah[=a]vastu was a

standard work of a particular sect, or rather school, called the

Mah[=a]-sanghikas, it has thus preserved for us the theory of the Buddha as

held outside the followers of the cannon, by those whose views developed,

in after centuries, into the Mah[=a]y[=a]na or modern form of Buddhism in

India. But this book, like all the ancient books, was composed, not in the

north, in Nepal, but in the valley of the Ganges, and it is partly [v.04

p.0693] in prose, partly in verse. Two other works, the _Lalita Vistara_

and the _Buddha Carita_, give us--but this, of course, is later--Sanskrit

poems, epics, on the same subject. Of these, the former may be as old as

the Christian era; the latter belongs to the 2nd century after Christ. Both

of them have been edited and translated. The older one contains still a

good deal of prose, the gist of it being often repeated in the verses. The

later one is entirely in verse, and shows off the author's mastery of the

artificial rules of prosody and poetics, according to which a poem, a

mah[=a]-k[=a]vya, ought, according to the later writers on the _Ars

poetica_, to be composed.

These three works deal only quite briefly and incidentally with any point

of Buddhism outside of the Buddha legend. Of greater importance for the

history of Buddhism are two later works, the _Netti Pakarana_ and the

_Saddharma Pundar[=i]ka_. The former, in P[=a]li, discusses a number of

questions then of importance in the Buddhist community; and it relies

throughout, as does the Milinda, on the canonical works, which it quotes

largely. The latter, in Sanskrit, is the earliest exposition we have of the

later Mah[=a]y[=a]na doctrine. Both these books may be dated in the 2nd or

3rd century of our era. The latter has been translated into English. We

have now also the text of the _Prajn[=a] P[=a]ramit[=a]_, a later treatise

on the Mah[=a]y[=a]na system, which in time entirely replaced in India the

original doctrines. To about the same age belongs also the

_Divy[=a]vad[=a]na_, a collection of legends about the leading disciples of

the Buddha, and important members of the order, through the subsequent

three centuries. These legends are, however, of different dates, and in

spite of the comparatively late period at which it was put into its present

form, it contains some very ancient fragments.

The whole of the above works were composed in the north of India; that is

to say, either north or a few miles south of the Ganges. The record is at

present full of gaps. But we can even now obtain a full and accurate idea

of the earliest Buddhism, and are able to trace the main lines of its

development through the first eight or nine centuries of its career. The

P[=a]li Text Society is still publishing two volumes a year; and the

Russian Academy has inaugurated a series to contain the most important of

the Sanskrit works still buried in MS. We have also now accessible in

P[=a]li fourteen volumes of the commentaries of the great 5th-century

scholars in south India and Ceylon, most of them the works either of

Buddhaghosa of Budh Gaya, or of Dhammap[=a]la of K[=a]ncipura (the ancient

name of Conjeeveram). These are full of important historical data on the

social, as well as the religious, life of India during the periods of which

they treat.

_Modern Research._--The striking archaeological discoveries of recent years

have both confirmed and added to our knowledge of the earliest period.

Pre-eminent among these is the discovery, by Mr William Peppé, on the

Birdpur estate, adjoining the boundary between English and Nepalese

territory, of the st[=u]pa, or cairn, erected by the S[=a]kiya clan over

their share of the ashes from the cremation pyre of the Buddha. About 12 m.

to the north-east of this spot has been found an inscribed pillar, put up

by Asoka as a record of his visit to the Lumbini Garden, as the place where

the future Buddha had been born. Although more than two centuries later

than the event to which it refers, this inscription is good evidence of the

site of the garden. There had been no interruption of the tradition; and it

is probable that the place was then still occupied by the descendants of

the possessors in the Buddha's time. North-west of this another Asoka

pillar has been discovered, recording his visit to the cairn erected by the

Sakyas over the remains of Kon[=a]gamana, one of the previous Puddhas or

teachers, whose follower Gotama the Buddha had claimed to be. These

discoveries definitely determine the district occupied by the S[=a]kiya

republic in the 6th and 7th centuries B.C. The boundaries, of course, are

not known; but the clan must have spread 30 m. or more along the lower

slopes of the Himalayas and 30 m. or more southwards over the plains. It

has been abandoned jungle since the 3rd century A.D., or perhaps earlier,

so that the ruined sites, numerous through the whole district, have

remained undisturbed, and further discoveries may be confidently expected.

The principal points on which this large number of older and better

authorities has modified our knowledge are as follows:--

1. We have learnt that the division of Buddhism, originating with Burnouf,

into northern and southern, is misleading. He found that the Buddhism in

his P[=a]li MSS., which came from Ceylon, differed from that in his

Sanskrit MSS., which came from Nepal. Now that the works he used have been

made accessible in printed editions, we find that, wherever the existing

MSS. came from, the original works themselves were all composed in the same

stretch of country, that is, in the valley of the Ganges. The difference of

the opinions expressed in the MSS. is due, not to the place where they are

now found, but _to the difference of time_ at which they were originally

composed. Not one of the books mentioned above is either northern or

southern. They all claim, and rightly claim, to belong, so far as their

place of origin is concerned, to the Majjhima Desa, the middle country. It

is undesirable to base the main division of our subject on an adventitious

circumstance, and especially so when the nomenclature thus introduced (it

is not found in the books themselves) cuts right across the true line of

division. The use of the terms northern and southern as applied, not to the

existing MSS., but to the original books, or to the Buddhism they teach,

not only does not help us, it is the source of serious misunderstanding. It

inevitably leads careless writers to take for granted that we have,

historically, two Buddhisms--one manufactured in Ceylon, the other in

Nepal. Now this is admittedly wrong. What we have to consider is Buddhism

varying through slight degrees, as the centuries pass by, in almost every

book. We may call it one, or we may call it many. What is quite certain is

that it is not two. And the most useful distinction to emphasize is, not

the ambiguous and misleading geographical one--derived from the places

where the modern copies of the MSS. are found; nor even, though that would

be better, the linguistic one--but the chronological one. The use,

therefore, of the inaccurate and misleading terms northern and southern

ought no longer to be followed in scholarly works on Buddhism.

2. Our ideas as to the social conditions that prevailed, during the

Buddha's lifetime, in the eastern valley of the Ganges have been modified.

The people were divided into clans, many of them governed as republics,

more or less aristocratic. In a few cases several of such republics had

formed confederations, and in four cases such confederations had already

become hereditary monarchies. The right historical analogy is not the state

of Germany in the middle ages, but the state of Greece in the time of

Socrates. The S[=a]kiyas were still a republic. They had republics for

their neighbours on the east and south, but on the western boundary was the

kingdom of Kosala, the modern Oudh, which they acknowledged as a suzerain

power. The Buddha's father was not a king. There were r[=a]jas in the clan,

but the word meant at most something like consul or archon. All the four

real kings were called Mah[=a]-r[=a]ja. And Suddhodana, the teacher's

father, was not even r[=a]ja. One of his cousins, named Bhaddiya, is styled

a r[=a]ja; but Suddhodana is spoken of, like other citizens, as Suddhodana

the S[=a]kiyan. As the ancient books are very particular on this question

of titles, this is decisive.

3. There was no caste--no caste, that is, in the modern sense of the term.

We have long known that the connubium was the cause of a long and

determined struggle between the patricians and the plebeians in Rome.

Evidence has been yearly accumulating on the existence of restrictions as

to intermarriage, and as to the right of eating together (commensality)

among other Aryan tribes, Greeks, Germans, Russians and so on. Even without

the fact of the existence now of such restrictions among the modern

successors of the ancient Aryans in India, it would have been probable that

they also were addicted to similar customs. It is certain that the notion

of such usages was familiar enough to some at least of the tribes that

preceded the Aryans in India. Rules of endogamy and exogamy; privileges,

restricted to certain classes, of eating together, are not only Indian or

Aryan, but world-wide phenomena. Both the spirit, and to a large degree the

actual details, of modern Indian caste-usages are identical [v.04 p.0694]

with these ancient, and no doubt universal, customs. It is in them that we

have the key to the origin of caste.

At any moment in the history of a nation such customs seem, to a

superficial observer, to be fixed and immutable. As a matter of fact they

are never quite the same in successive centuries, or even generations. The

numerous and complicated details which we sum up under the convenient, but

often misleading, single name of caste, are solely dependent for their

sanction on public opinion. That opinion seems stable. But it is always

tending to vary as to the degree of importance attached to some particular

one of the details, as to the size and complexity of the particular groups

in which each detail ought to be observed.

Owing to the fact that the particular group that in India worked its way to

the top, based its claims on religious grounds, not on political power, nor

on wealth, the system has, no doubt, lasted longer in India than in Europe.

But public opinion still insists, in considerable circles even in Europe,

on restrictions of a more or less defined kind, both as to marriage and as

to eating together. And in India the problem still remains to trace, in the

literature, the gradual growth of the system--the gradual formation of new

sections among the people, the gradual extension of the institution to the

families of people engaged in certain trades, belonging to the same group,

or sect, or tribe, tracing their ancestry, whether rightly or wrongly, to

the same source. All these factors, and others besides, are real factors.

But they are phases of the extension and growth, not explanations of the

origin of the system.

There is no evidence to show that at the time of the rise of Buddhism there

was any substantial difference, as regards the barriers in question,

between the peoples dwelling in the valley of the Ganges and their

contemporaries, Greek or Roman, dwelling on the shores of the Mediterranean

Sea. The point of greatest weight in the establishment of the subsequent

development, the supremacy in India of the priests, was still being hotly

debated. All the new evidence tends to show that the struggle was being

decided rather against than for the Brahmins. What we find in the Buddha's

time is caste in the making. The great mass of the people were

distinguished quite roughly into four classes, social strata, of which the

boundary lines were vague and uncertain. At one end of the scale were

certain outlying tribes and certain hereditary crafts of a dirty or

despised kind. At the other end the nobles claimed the superiority. But

Brahmins by birth (not necessarily sacrificial priests, for they followed

all sorts of occupations) were trying to oust the nobles from the highest

grade. They only succeeded, long afterwards, when the power of Buddhism had

declined.