the ascetic life, he determined to go back into the world and live for
the good of others instead of sitting wrapped in his own thoughts. He
believed that he had achieved the great good, and he realized the fact
that his attitude was one of utter selfishness, barren of all result,
and leading to nothing. The disappointment and the desertion of his
five followers must have been bitter. But comfort came to him in time,
for they grew to know that he was right and were converted as trusty
disciples to his new creed. From the time that he left the shade of the
Bodhi tree his ministration began. He knew that he had received the
sublime gift of wisdom, and that the gift was not for himself alone, but
for the purification and happiness of all mankind. It was no doubt a
great struggle to give up the illusion of six long years and the dream of
many more. But it was also a great triumph, the turning-point of a life
that was so full of destiny.
I have already told how the first Vihara was established in the Veluvana,
the pious gift of King Bimbisara, but the chief home of the Buddha was
another garden or grove called the Jétavana, which a certain minister
named Anatha Pindaka had bought at a great price from Jéta, the son
of the King of Sravasti. Here the Buddha dwelt for more than twenty
years, and there he uttered the Jātakas, or Birth Stories, which have
been preserved mainly thanks to his kinsman Ananda. For it is a strange
coincidence that, as in Christianity so in Buddhism, there is no written
word by the Master. These Jātakas are of the nature of parables by which
the Buddha was wont to illustrate the events of the present by stories of
what had taken place in a former state of existence; and as the Buddha’s
life was one long struggle against the treacherous designs of his enemy
Devadatta, so in the Jātakas we find a constant reference to the feud as
having existed in previous incarnations.
When first the Buddha began to preach, women were not admitted into the
Holy Order; but there soon came a moment when they, too, yearned to
listen to the teaching of the Master. A certain noble of the Shakya clan
took his wife and a number of Shakya ladies to sit at the feet of the
Blessed One. Among them it is to be inferred were Gopā and others of the
Buddha’s wives. But Yasōdhara was not among the very first, for she still
longed for her lost husband, and hoped against hope that he might yet
come back to her. But when she saw that this could not be, she, too, was
converted and became a saint, earning the praise of the Blessed One for
her modesty and virtue.
Now Devadatta, seeing the great power of the Tathāgata (Buddha), had,
against his will, for it would deprive him of all chance of sovereignty,
become a Bhikshu, and carrying the beggar’s bowl, had set up a Vihara in
rivalry to that of the Buddha. He, too, must needs convert disciples,
both men and women. It chanced that among the latter there was a young
married woman, who, though she knew it not, was with child when she
joined the sisterhood. When she discovered how matters stood with her,
she made no attempt at concealment, but told her superiors of her case.
Upon report being made of this to Devadatta, he was wroth, and declared
that as she had broken her vows she must be disgraced and banished from
the community. In shame and sorrow she came to the Blessed One and laid
her case before him.
He was moved with pity, but saw that it would do harm to the Holy Order
and give offence to the weaker brethren and sisters if he were to admit
a nun who had been rejected as unchaste by Devadatta, unless she could
prove her innocence. So he ordered that an inquiry should be made, and
upon the assurance of a wise woman, named Visakha, that the girl’s
condition was not due to any violation of the rules of the order, but
was only the natural result of her marriage before she entered the
sisterhood, he accepted her, and when the nun’s child was born, he was
known as Kassapa the Prince, and was brought up in royal state. The
Master justified his action by the story told in the following Jātaka,
which is given at great length by Rhys Davids.
Long ages ago the Bodhisatva came to life as a deer. When he was born
he was of a golden colour, his eyes were like round jewels, his horns
were white as silver, his mouth was red as a cluster of Kamala flowers,
his hoofs were bright and hard as lacquer-work, his tail as fine as the
tail of a Tibetan ox, and his body as large as a foal’s. He was known as
the Banyan deer, and lived in a forest with an attendant herd of five
hundred deer, over which he was king. Near him dwelt another deer, also
gold-coloured, with a like herd of deer under him. He was known as the
Monkey deer.
Now the King of Benares at that time was a mighty hunter, and made his
people neglect their work in order to go and beat for him. So the people
took counsel together, and resolved to make an enclosure, driving all the
deer into it and giving them over to the king, so that their work should
be no longer hindered. So the two herds were driven into the enclosure,
and when the king went there, he saw the two gold-coloured deer and
granted them their lives. But he, loving venison, would go sometimes to
shoot a deer and at other times sent his cook to kill one. At last, when
the deer, terrified and often wounded, were in despair, they went to the
Bodhisatva and told him of their piteous case. So he made a bargain with
the king of the other herd—the Monkey deer—that the two herds should in
turn each day by lot send a deer to the place of execution, so that at
the least there should be no more wounding.
One day it happened the lot fell upon a hind in the herd of the Monkey
deer. But she being great with young, went to the Monkey deer and said:
“Lord! I am with young. When I have brought forth my son, we will both
take our turn. Order that the turn shall pass me by.” But the Monkey deer
refused, saying that he could not make her lot fall upon others, and sent
her away.
Seeing that there was no help in him, she appealed to the Bodhisatva, and
he took pity upon her, and went himself and put his neck upon the block
of execution and lay down. When the cook came and saw that the king of
the deer whose life had been promised him was there, he went and told
the king, who, seeing the Bodhisatva, said: “My friend, the king of the
deer! Did I not grant you your life? Why are you here?” The Bodhisatva
answered: “O great king! A hind with young came and told me that the lot
had fallen upon her. How could I transfer her miserable lot to another?
So I, giving my life for hers, am lying here. Have no suspicion, O
mighty king!” Then was the king moved to great compassion, and saying
that never, even among men, had he seen so great pity, gave their lives
both to him and to the hind. But more than that, after listening to the
Bodhisatva, he decreed that no beasts or birds or fish should thenceforth
be killed.
After that, the deer, sure of their lives, began to lay waste and eat
the crops of the people, so they complained to the king, who bade them
begone, for he might give up his kingdom, but not his oath. Then the
Banyan deer called together the herds and forbade them to eat the crops;
and he sent a message to the husbandmen, telling them that they need put
up no fences, but that it would be enough if they tied leaves round the
edge of the fields as a sign. But he continued to instruct the deer thus
throughout his life, and passed away with his herd according to their
deeds. The king also hearkened to the words of the Bodhisatva, and then
in due time passed away according to his deeds.
When the Master had finished this story of the Banyan deer he explained
its meaning to the assembled disciples.
“He who was then the Monkey deer was Devadatta, his herd was Devadatta’s
following, the hind was the Nun, her son was Kassapa the Prince, the King
was Ananda, but the royal Banyan deer was myself.” (Rhys Davids, “Birth
Stories,” Vol. I., pages 201-210.)
Purged of its wild extravagances, the Lalita Vistara, the story told by
Ananda, gives much insight into the purity and sweet reasonableness of
the Blessed One’s teaching. Shortly before descending upon earth to be
born of Queen Maya, he is seated in the Tsushita (Heaven) surrounded
by gods and saints, to whom he delivers this last parting message (I
am translating from the version of Foucaux, quoted by Barthélemy St.
Hilaire):
“Be careful to avoid all immodesty. All the divine and pure pleasures are
the fruit of good work. Take heed, then, of your deeds. If you have not
laid up for yourselves these previous virtues, you are hurrying to that
goal where, far from happiness, we experience misery and suffer every
ill. Desire is neither lasting nor consistent; it is even as a dream, a
mirage, the lightning, the foam of the sea. Observe the practice of the
Law; the man who faithfully observes these holy practices meets with no
evil. Loving tradition, morality and charity, be constant in patience
and purity. Act in a spirit of mutual loving-kindness, in a spirit of
helpfulness. Remember the Buddha, the Law and the congregation of the
faithful. All that you see in me of supernatural power, of science, and
of strength is produced by the agency of virtue, which is its cause,
and comes from tradition, from morality and from modesty. Do you, too,
practise this perfect restraint. It is not by phrases, nor by words, nor
by crying that we can attain the doctrine of virtue. Acquire it by deeds;
act according to your professions; never cease in making efforts. Not
every one who acts is rewarded, but whoso does not act obtains nothing.
Beware of pride, of haughtiness, and of arrogance; always gentle, and
never straying from the straight path, be diligent in following the road
which leads to Nirvana. Bestir yourselves in the search after the Road
of Salvation, and with the lamp of wisdom dispel utterly the darkness
of ignorance. Rid yourselves of the net of sin which is accompanied by
repentance. But what skills it to say more? The Law is full of reason and
of purity. When I shall have obtained the supreme intelligence, when the
rain of the Law which leads to immortality shall fall, then come back to
listen anew to the Law which I shall teach you.”
Then were the Gods consumed by sorrow at the loss of the Blessed One; but
he comforted them by leaving in his place the Bodhisatva Maitriya, whom
he consecrated by giving him his tiara and his diadem. Maitriya, then,
will become Buddha (_vide supra_), when the corrupted world shall have
lost all memory of the teaching of Shakya Muni.
* * * * *
The Buddha’s life upon earth was prolonged far beyond the span which is
allotted to most men. He was some thirty years old when he first began to
preach, and his ministration lasted fifty-three years. Surely it is not
irreverent to apply to him the words of the Hebrew Psalmist: “Mark the
perfect man and behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace.”
Render “Peace” by “Nirvana,” no bad translation, indeed, and you have
the Buddha. When at the last he felt that the dark mystery of death
was overshadowing him, and that the end was at hand, he bade Ananda go
and tell the Mallas of Kusinārā that their master would pass away at
midnight, and invited them to come to him. There was at that time in
Kusinārā an old and decrepit man a hundred and twenty years of age, upon
whom the people looked as a saint. His name was Subhadra. This venerable
man, believing in the greatness of the Blessed One, begged of him the
boon of passing away before him; and, this being granted, Subhadra gave
up the ghost. But when the assembled Bhikshus, being astonished at this
favour, inquired the reason, the Blessed One told two last Birth Stories.
“Bhikshus, in days gone by there lived in a valley a deer, the master of
a thousand deer; he was prudent, wide-awake and of quick perception. One
day a hunter espied him and told the king. So the king assembled his army
and surrounded all the deer and their leader. Then the leader thought:
‘If I do not protect these deer they will all be destroyed.’ So looking
about the place in which they were penned, he perceived a torrent flowing
through the valley; but the stream was so swift that the deer feared lest
it should carry them away. But the leader jumped into the water, and
finding foothold in the middle, cried to the herd: ‘Come, jump from the
bank on to my back and thence to the other bank; it is the only means of
saving your lives; if you do not do this you will surely die!’ The herd
of deer obeyed, and though their hoofs striking his back cut the skin
and tore the flesh, he never flinched. When as it seemed all the deer
had crossed the water, he looked back, and saw a calf that had been left
behind and could not cross over. Then, torn and bruised and racked with
pain, he took the calf on his back, and crossed the stream with it. All
the herd had now passed over, but the great stag knew that death was
near, and he cried: ‘May what I have done to preserve the joy of life to
these deer and this calf make me cast off sin, and obtain boundless and
perfect light; may I become a Buddha, cross over the sea of regeneration
to perfection and salvation, and pass beyond all sorrow.’ ...
“What think ye, Bhikshus? I am he who was then the leader of the herd.
The deer are now the five hundred Mallas and the fawn is Subhadra.”
(Adapted from Rockhill’s “Life of Buddha,” page 137 _et seq._)
One more Jātaka he uttered, and that was the last. He warned his weeping
disciples not to mourn for him, or to look upon him as lost, for inasmuch
as they had his law and his doctrine, he would still be with them. He
spoke to them of the four places where pious men would rear monuments
in his honour: (1) The Lumbini Garden, where he was born; (2) the place
under the Sacred Fig-tree, where he became Buddha; (3) the Mrighadeva,
the deer forest, from where the first sermon was preached; (4) the place
where he died at Kusinārā.
At the last the Blessed One, uncovering his body, said to the Bhikshus:
“Brethren, look well at the Tathāgata’s body, for it is as hard to find
a Tathāgata as to see a flower on a fig-tree. Bhikshus! never forget
it: decay is inherent to all things!” These were the last words of the
Tathāgata. And so in the fullness of time, calm and holy, he entered
Nirvana, that state in which all the desires, all the cares and all
the sorrows of life have ceased to be. Is not that the ideal of “Peace,
perfect peace?”
* * * * *
There is a Japanese proverb which says: “Meeting is the beginning of
parting.” Pregnant, indeed, are those six words, for in them are summed
up all the sorrows and the one inevitable certainty of life. When the
parting with those who are dear to us takes place, how we treasure some
trifle which brings to life recollections of the sweet communion of the
past! And so it is with those relics of which I spoke at the beginning of
this chapter. When Assheton Smith, the famous sportsman, was told that
he must take his ailing wife to the South of France, he, being a wealthy
man, answered: “That I cannot do, but I can and will bring the South of
France to her.” And so there arose that marvellous conservatory, a glass
palace, which I remember well, when nearly sixty years ago I used to go
and stay with Lord Broughton, Byron’s friend, who rented the place. In
our humble way we bring home to ourselves the lands endeared to us by the
careless gaiety of former days, scenes which are peopled by the ghosts of
old friends whom we conjure up, living once more in the sunshine of happy
youth. Is not that the chief sanity of the collector’s madness?
BUDDHA AND ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI AND CASTE—THE ARYANS
There are few days in the year, even in mid-winter, or, what is worse
still, in March, when I cannot sit out in my Veluvana, a sun-trap snugly
sheltered from the north and the biting east. It is my thinking-place,
and on this 28th of January, for some mysterious reason, with his image
before me, my thoughts have been held entirely by the Buddha himself.
Not that I am a Buddhist, or in the remotest degree likely to become
one, though we hear of convinced followers of that religion even among
Englishmen; but, as those who condescend to read me will have guessed,
the story of his life has a great attraction for me, and that none the
less because it is the record of one of the greatest rebellions that ever
took place. Indeed, there is something weirdly fascinating in the history
of all revolution even where we most hate it. What show-place can possess
greater interest than the tragic collections of the Musée Carnavalet in
what was once Madame de Sévigné’s home in Paris? Yet it is made up of
relics which make men shudder, especially those few still left who, like
myself, long ago knew not a few people who had lived through the days of
the Terreur.
I have stood in that house of gruesome memories spellbound by a
fascination such as that by which a snake paralyses its victim. In
quite another way I am entranced by the upheaval which was the work
of the Buddha. There was not the faintest likeness between the two
revolutions—indeed, they were diametrically opposites. The one all fury,
flame and murder—hatred, the guillotine, and the _noyades_ of the Loire.
The other, the calm extinction of all passion, all human desire, all
ambition; a life spent in holy contemplation and in the wooing of that
supreme wisdom which is virtue.
And yet Martin Luther himself, when he passionately scourged the Pope
and his Bishop for the sale of indulgences, was not a more zealous rebel
than this calm and contemplative Buddha, who, renouncing all honours and
titles and worldly possessions for himself, contented, like St. Francis,
to don the monk’s robe and to carry the beggar’s bowl, entered his
peaceful protest against the usurpations and pretensions of the crafty
Brahmans, who had long since drifted away from the simple and poetically
beautiful teaching of the Rig Veda, albeit they acknowledged its
authority as Sruti—inspiration, looking upon it as their one inspired
sacred Book.[4] In that wonderful collection of hymns and prayers about
which I wish to say a few words later there is no allusion to suttee—the
awful institution under which widows are burnt with their dead husbands;
none to child-marriages, another cruelty; none to caste. All of these
were inventions of the Brahmans, and it was upon the doctrine of caste
that they founded their claim to superiority over the kings and princes
whom they had gradually supplanted.
So long as the king and priest were one—so long, that is to say, as the
king conducted the ceremonies and sacrifices of religion—the authority
of the king was unchallenged.[5] But there came a moment when the
kings grew weary of a tedious ritual and delegated their religious
duties to substitutes. That was the opportunity of the priestcraft,
who, as the intercessors between the people and their gods—a powerful
position indeed—were able to claim a rank higher than that of the king
himself. Here was the beginning of Caste. When Buddha entered upon his
ministry there were four castes: (1) The Brahmans, or priests; (2) the
Kshatriya, the warrior and governing class, to which the kings and
princes belonged—a class analogous to the Samurai or Bushi of Japan;
(3) the Vaisiyas—farmers, traders, etc. These three classes, all of
Aryan descent, were, and are, “the twice-born,” whose second birth is
symbolized by their being invested with the sacred cord at an age which
more or less corresponds to that of confirmation with us. (4) The Sudras
were the fourth class; they were the lowest of all—despised as the
descendants of the Dasyu, the enemies of the bright gods, the aborigines
who were defeated by the migration of the white Aryan herdsmen descending
upon India from the lofty plains of the Pamirs.
We talk glibly enough of Caste, yet there are not many of us who have any
glimmering of light as to its real meaning or origin. The majority of
Europeans speak of the word as if it were of Hindu origin, whereas it is
simply a Portuguese word signifying race or family. In its present sense,
indeed, it is of quite modern birth, for the old Portuguese Barbosa,
writing in the sixteenth century, only uses the word _casta_ in the sense
of family, speaking of men and women _de boa casta_, of good family. When
he wished to indicate the mysterious divisions of Indian society, he used
the word _leis_, laws, _leis de gentios_, laws of the heathen. (Sir Henry
Yule’s glossary.) Apart from the word, we are apt to speak of Caste as if
it were an institution, respectable at any rate on account of its hoary
antiquity. Old it certainly is, yet it was not known to the sacred poets
of the Rig Veda.
The word which comes nearest to caste in Sanskrit is “Varna” (colour),
and in the early days of the Aryan invasion of India there were only
two classes: the white conquerors and the “Dasyu,” or enemies, who were
black, and, as the conquered people, looked down upon. What we call
caste, then, which was originally a question of skin, had already in the
Buddha’s time, five centuries before our era, become far more complicated
than that. Ethnologically, the division between the white man and the
black, the Arya and the Dasyu, the conqueror and the conquered, was as
sharp as ever. But whereas the dark man remained as he was—the lowest
of the castes—political reasons and the lust of power had subdivided
the conquering race into three distinct classes, and, as I have said
above, it was upon that subdivision that the Brahmans laid the “precious
corner-stone” of their priestly tyranny.
When the glorious young prince, a Kshatriya and the heir to the throne,
the incomparable scholar and athlete, the man whom men envied and women
loved, cast aside his royal rank and went forth into the wilderness,
taking upon himself all the burthens and privations of the poorest and
meanest, in order that for them he might work, striving for the good
of all mankind without distinction of colour or race, the Brahmans
were forced to see in him a hostile champion, armed to attack their
stronghold. He went further than this: he denied the divine authority of
the Veda, without which the whole structure of Brahmanism crumbles to
dust, and so he finally was branded as a heretic.
What cannot fail to excite surprise is the fact that although Buddhism
“became the state religion of India under Asōka, the Constantine of
India, in the middle of the third century B.C.” (Max Müller), and was
only declining in the seventh century A.D., caste should not utterly
have disappeared. But that was not the case—on the contrary, it has
become more and more involved, for there are now not only the three
divisions of the twice-born Aryas, and the outcast Sudras, but there are,
moreover, the subdivisions to which professions and occupations have
given rise; the goldsmith, for example, looking down upon the bootmaker
and leather worker, and he, in his turn, refusing to hold communion with
some craftsman whose superior he deems himself to be. No wonder caste
has been described as “a standing puzzle to governors and the despair of
all employers of labour.” Life is, indeed, complicated when the shadow
of a man of meaner birth falling upon a boiling pot defiles the food
which it contains by an impurity which is almost worse than poison. As
in an Oriental household, perhaps even in a European household, it
has been said that no matter how low a menial may be, there is always
someone a step lower to whom by payment he may assign some of his duties;
so below the Sudras there is the Pariah, the outcast, who, as the word
implies, should carry a bell to give timely warning of the approaching
contamination of his shadow.
Max Müller, in his “Chips from a German Workshop,” quotes a table by
Berghaus showing the relative numbers of the people professing the chief
religions into which the world is divided. Nothing can better show the
extent of the influence which Buddhism, with an advantage of 500 years
and more over Christianity, 1,100, and more, over Mohammedanism, has
exercised upon mankind.
Buddhists 31.2
Christians 30.7
Mohammedans 15.7
Brahmanists 13.4
Various heathens 8.7
Jews 0.3
In a note, Max Müller adds that: “As Berghaus does not distinguish the
Buddhists in China from the following of Confucius and Lao Tze, the first
place on the scale belongs really to Christianity. It is difficult in
China to say to what religion a man belongs, as the same person may
profess two or three. The Emperor himself, after sacrificing to the
ritual of Confucius, visits a Tao-ssŭ Temple, and afterwards bows before
an image of Fo in a Buddhist chapel.”