The Buddhists believe their community, their worship, their church, or
whatever one may be inclined to call this, to have been founded 24
centuries ago by the wise and humane king’s son of _Kapilavastu_, called
Gautama, the _Shâkja muni_ or wise _Shâkja_, _Buddha_ or the
_Enlightened_. All that which the later legends related either of Buddha
himself or of his _former lives_, they consider historically true.
Competent Orientalists, among whom the Dutch ex-professor Dr. H. Kern,
stated however that, much about those legends that _cannot_ be true from
a historical point of view, will become quite comprehensible and
possible as soon as taken in a mythical sense, and when we understand
the hero of the myth to be a sun-god. And then it will be perfectly
indifferent to us, non-Buddhists, whether those legends may or may not
have historical foundations and whether the _Buddha_ of the Buddhists
may have really lived and existed or not.
Still it is an indisputed matter of fact, that the Buddhist religion
must have existed as such for about three centuries before the beginning
of our era, and professed by king Ashoka _the great_. Inscriptions
partly saved, and found upon columns, and on the walls of rocks, prove
all this to be just[1].
This Buddhism taught that mankind might be freed from any sensual
passion, and sin by following a pure conduct of life, and from the curse
of being continually reincarnated in either a human or animal being, and
that it could gain eternal rest as the highest reward of virtue on
earth. And therefore Buddhism taught self-command, self-denial and
self-conquest; the love of all beings either man or beast: patience with
others, the sons of different castes, and patience too with the
followers of all other religions.
The original Buddhism can’t be called a religion, for it knew no god and
didn’t believe in a personal immortality. But like any other creation of
time and of human desire to form and reform again and again, Buddhism
also lost much of its original character, and so it came to pass that
Buddhism in the first year of our era after its separation into two main
sections, the so-called _southern_ and _northern_ churches, especially
the last mentioned or the _Mahâyâna_ acknowledged, besides the Buddha of
this world, quite other Buddhas to be the redeemers of former and future
worlds, whilst the Buddhists thought all of them to be the revelations
of a same original and impersonal deity, _Adi-Buddha_; and even the gods
or some of the gods of the Hindus were admitted as the awatâras of the
same first _Buddha_[2]. It may be easily understood that this Buddhism
also invented hell in contradiction to heaven. However, by no means an
abode for the eternal damned, such as the hell of Christianity alludes
to.
But the southern church, the Hînayâna swerved less far from the ancient
doctrine, though it may be true that it did not always keep its
originality, for in its pagodae, are also found a few sculptures
honoured there as the representations of Buddha himself[3].
Since some centuries Buddhism has been repelled from its country of
birth by the ancient Hinduism. Its place was taken by the shivaistic and
other Hindu religions which at their turn again were partly superseded
by Islâmism.
But the Hînayânistic worship still exists in _Ceylon_ and in
Further-India at _Burma_, and _Siam_ and _Kamboja_ and Mahâjânism at
_Népâl_ and at _Tibet_ and, more or less degenerated, in _China_ and
_Japan_. It flourished for some centuries in the island of Java, but
became entirely exterminated by the fanatic and absolutely intolerant
followers of _Allah_ and _Mohammed_.
This was death after life; slavery after the command of senses; the
decline of a civilisation lost for ever, and of a highly developed art
whose products, by time’s tooth changed into ruins, still testify to her
lost greatness.
This Mahâyânism only acknowledged Buddha the redeemer of _this_ world,
next to him were honoured the Buddhas of _three_ former worlds, and even
a _fifth_ Buddha, the redeemer of a future world, which is to exist in
the darkness of ages after the crack of this doom. These are the five
_Dhyâni-Buddhas_: _Wairotyana_, _Akshobya_, _Ratnasambhava_, _Amitâbha_
and _Amoghasiddha_. And with the exception of these five Buddhas they
also honoured the five _Dhyâni-Bodhisattvas_ or Buddha’s sons or Buddhas
in a state of being, that is, in a state of self-exercise or self-denial
which precedes the Buddhaship. They are in the same order of succession:
_Samantabhadra_, _Wadyrapâni_, _Ratnapâni_, _Padmapâni_ and
_Wishvapâni_. The southern church doesn’t know these Dhyâni-Buddhas and
Bodhisattvas, so their images on the Båråbudur and on other tyanḍis in
Java prove to us that the Buddhists of those temples belonged to the
_northern_ church.
Proofs of the existence of Hînayânism in Java, there were none as yet.
But the Chinese Buddhist _J Tsing_, who visited India and the Dutch
Indonésian countries in the seventh century of our era, wrote us that at
that period of time Hînayânism must have ruled here in Java[4].
It goes without saying that even the Mahâyânists honoured, among others,
the Buddha of _this their_ world, _Amitâbha_, as their Lord and
Redeemer, putting faith in his life on earth as man and prince’s son, as
ascetic and preacher, just as the Israelites do believe in the personage
of their _Jahvé_, their Lord God of Hosts, their god of battle and
revenge, and just like our German ancestors trusted in _Odhin_, and
_Thor_, and in the dying sun-god _Baldur_.
And when we wish to judge and understand the temples built by these
Buddhists, we also ought to start from that point of view, and accept
the hero of the legend as if he should have really lived, and suffered
in order to redeem the world from the burden of the sin of life, and
from the curse of death, and infinite regenerations.