Over against this sketch of Buddhism as it appears in Burma let us
consider a scene in a neighbouring land, the island of Ceylon, where
for twenty-five hundred years, the religion of the yellow robe has
held almost undisputed sway. Here it has a supreme opportunity, and
has often used it nobly, building a great civilisation for a thousand
years.
It is early spring. The rains are over, and in the brilliant
moonlight, the Singhalese peasants have gathered from their little
malarial villages to listen to _bana_, the preaching of the Buddhist
Law.
(a) _The Dullness and Superstition of Village Life in Southern
Ceylon_.--Life is dull in these villages, and any incident and any
teaching will be welcome. It is a strange world in which these people
live, "a world of bare and brutal facts; of superstition, of grotesque
imagination; a world of hunger and fear and devils, where a man is
helpless before the unseen, unintelligible forces surrounding him." As
in Burma, so in Ceylon, demonism is inextricably interwoven with the
Buddhism of the people. In Ceylon, however, it is a darker and more
sinister demonism, blending with a far more sombre and pessimistic
Buddhism. Devils and anti-devils, exorcists and monks, incantations
and prayers to Buddha mingle in the dim confused minds of these poor
Kandyan villagers. It is not very long since human sacrifices were
made to the "demons" of disease.
(b) _The Themes of the Hillside Preacher_.--This darker pessimism
speaks through the monotonous sing-song of the yellow-robed monk on
the hillside, as he speaks to the villagers, urging upon them that
life is transient and full of sorrow, that none the less their chief
duty is to avoid taking the life of the meanest animal, not even
killing the malarial mosquito or the plague-bringing rat against which
government edicts have gone out. Here religion is in conflict with
science and with family love: which is to die, my child or the rat?
There can in the end of the day be but one answer.
(c) _The Stolidity of his Audience_.--The men listen dully, chewing
their betel-nut. They have not much use for the monks, who own
one-third of the arable land of the country and are a heavy drain upon
its resources. Except fitfully, they are not schoolmasters like those
of Burma, but tend to be drones in the hive. When they do teach the
children they only emphasise the doctrines of rebirth and of
not-killing; yet some are kind and teach reading and writing to the
little ones. And occasionally one leads a life of such real piety as
to justify this division of labour--"the people to work, the monk to
meditate." But saints are rare in all lands.