THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD.
Temptations--Birth of Buddha--Mara--Temptation of power--Asceticism
and Luxury--Mara's menaces--Appearance of the Buddha's
Vindicator--Ahriman tempts Zoroaster--Satan and Christ--Criticism
of Strauss--Jewish traditions--Hunger--Variants.
The Devil, having shown Jesus all the kingdoms of this world, said,
'All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is
delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will I give it,' The theory
thus announced is as a vast formation underlying many religions. As
every religion begins as an ideal, it must find itself in antagonism
to the world at large; and since the social and political world
are themselves, so long as they last, the outcome of nature, it is
inevitable that in primitive times the earth should be regarded as a
Satanic realm, and the divine world pictured elsewhere. A legitimate
result of this conclusion is asceticism, and belief in the wickedness
of earthly enjoyments. To men of great intellectual powers, generally
accompanied as they are with keen susceptibilities of enjoyment and
strong sympathies, the renunciation of this world must be as a living
burial. To men who, amid the corruptions of the world, feel within them
the power to strike in with effect, or who, seeing 'with how little
wisdom the world is governed,' are stirred by the sense of power, the
struggle against the temptation to lead in the kingdoms of this world
is necessarily severe. Thus simple is the sense of those temptations
which make the almost invariable ordeal of the traditional founders
of religions. As in earlier times the god won his spurs, so to say,
by conquering some monstrous beast, the saint or saviour must have
overcome some potent many-headed world, with gems for scales and
double-tongue, coiling round the earth, and thence, like Lilith's
golden hair, round the heart of all surrendered to its seductions.
It is remarkable to note the contrast between the visible and
invisible worlds which surrounded the spiritual pilgrimage of Sakya
Muni to Buddhahood or enlightenment. At his birth there is no trace
of political hostility: the cruel Kansa, Herod, Magicians seeking to
destroy, are replaced by the affectionate force of a king trying to
retain his son. The universal traditions reach their happy height in
the ecstatic gospels of the Siamese. [89] The universe was illumined;
all jewels shown with unwonted lustre; the air was full of music;
all pain ceased; the blind saw, the deaf heard; the birds paused
in their flight; all trees and plants burst into bloom, and lotus
flowers appeared in every place. Not under the dominion of Mara [90]
was this beautiful world. But by turning from all its youth, health,
and life, to think only of its decrepitude, illness, and death, the
Prince Sakya Muni surrounded himself with another world in which Mara
had his share of power. I condense here the accounts of his encounters
with the Prince, who was on his way to be a hermit.
When the Prince passed out at the palace gates, the king Mara,
knowing that the youth was passing beyond his evil power, determined
to prevent him. Descending from his abode and floating in the air,
Mara cried, 'Lord, thou art capable of such vast endurance, go not
forth to adopt a religious life, but return to thy kingdom, and in
seven days thou shalt become an emperor of the world, ruling over
the four great continents.' 'Take heed, O Mara!' replied the Prince;
'I also know that in seven days I might gain universal empire, but
I have no desire for such possessions. I know that the pursuit of
religion is better than the empire of the world. See how the world
is moved, and quakes with praise of this my entry on a religious
life! I shall attain the glorious omniscience, and shall teach the
wheel of the law, that all teachable beings may free themselves from
transmigratory existence. You, thinking only of the lusts of the flesh,
would force me to leave all beings to wander without guide into your
power. Avaunt! get thee away far from me!'
Mara withdrew, but only to watch for another opportunity. It came when
the Prince had reduced himself to emaciation and agony by the severest
austerities. Then Mara presented himself, and pretending compassion,
said, 'Beware, O grand Being! Your state is pitiable to look on; you
are attenuated beyond measure, and your skin, that was of the colour of
gold, is dark and discoloured. You are practising this mortification
in vain. I can see that you will not live through it. You, who are a
Grand Being, had better give up this course, for be assured you will
derive much more advantage from sacrifices of fire and flowers.' Him
the Grand Being indignantly answered, 'Hearken, thou vile and wicked
Mara! Thy words suit not the time. Think not to deceive me, for I
heed thee not. Thou mayest mislead those who have no understanding,
but I, who have virtue, endurance, and intelligence, who know what
is good and what is evil, cannot be so misled. Thou, O Mara! hast
eight generals. Thy first is delight in the five lusts of the flesh,
which are the pleasures of appearance, sound, scent, flavour, and
touch. Thy second general is wrath, who takes the form of vexation,
indignation, and desire to injure. Thy third is concupiscence. Thy
fourth is desire. Thy fifth is impudence. Thy sixth is arrogance. Thy
seventh is doubt. And thine eighth is ingratitude. These are thy
generals, who cannot be escaped by those whose hearts are set on
honour and wealth. But I know that he who can contend with these thy
generals shall escape beyond all sorrow, and enjoy the most glorious
happiness. Therefore I have not ceased to practise mortification,
knowing that even were I to die whilst thus engaged, it would be a
most excellent thing.'
It is added that Mara 'fled in confusion,' but the next incident
seems to show that his suggestion was not unheeded; for 'after he
had departed,' the Grand Being had his vision of the three-stringed
guitar--one string drawn too tightly, the second too loosely, the third
moderately--which last, somewhat in defiance of orchestral ideas,
alone gave sweet music, and taught him that moderation was better
than excess or laxity. By eating enough he gained that pristine
strength and beauty which offended the five Brahmans so that they
left him. The third and final effort of Mara immediately preceded
the Prince's attainment of the order of Buddha under the Bo-tree. He
now sent his three daughters, Raka (Love), Aradi (Anger), Tanha
(Desire). Beautifully bedecked they approached him, and Raka said,
'Lord, fearest thou not death?' But he drove her away. The two others
also he drove away as they had no charm of sufficient power to entice
him. Then Mara assembled his generals, and said, 'Listen, ye Maras,
that know not sorrow! Now shall I make war on the Prince, that man
without equal. I dare not attack him in face, but I will circumvent
him by approaching on the north side. Assume then all manner of shapes,
and use your mightiest powers, that he may flee in terror.'
Having taken on fearful shapes, raising awful sounds, headed by
Mara himself, who had assumed immense size, and mounted his elephant
Girimaga, a thousand miles in height, they advanced; but they dare not
enter beneath the shade of the holy Bo-tree. They frightened away,
however, the Lord's guardian angels, and he was left alone. Then
seeing the army approaching from the north, he reflected, 'Long have I
devoted myself to a life of mortification, and now I am alone, without
a friend to aid me in this contest. Yet may I escape the Maras,
for the virtue of my transcendent merits will be my army.' 'Help
me,' he cried, 'ye thirty Barami! ye powers of accumulated merit,
ye powers of Almsgiving, Morality, Relinquishment, Wisdom, Fortitude,
Patience, Truth, Determination, Charity, and Equanimity, help me in
my fight with Mara!' The Lord was seated on his jewelled throne (the
same that had been formed of the grass on which he sat), and Mara
with his army exhausted every resource of terror--monstrous beasts,
rain of missiles and burning ashes, gales that blew down mountain
peaks--to inspire him with fear; but all in vain! Nay, the burning
ashes were changed to flowers as they fell.
'Come down from thy throne,' shouted the evil-formed one; 'come down,
or I will cut thine heart into atoms!' The Lord replied, 'This jewelled
throne was created by the power of my merits, for I am he who will
teach all men the remedy for death, who will redeem all beings,
and set them free from the sorrows of circling existence.'
Mara then claimed that the throne belonged to himself, and had been
created by his own merits; and on this armed himself with the Chakkra,
the irresistible weapon of Indra, and Wheel of the Law. Yet Buddha
answered, 'By the thirty virtues of transcendent merits, and the five
alms, I have obtained the throne. Thou, in saying that this throne
was created by thy merits, tellest an untruth, for indeed there is
no throne for a sinful, horrible being such as thou art.'
Then furious Mara hurled the Chakkra, which clove mountains in its
course, but could not pass a canopy of flowers which rose over the
Lord's head.
And now the great Being asked Mara for the witnesses of his acts of
merit by virtue of which he claimed the throne. In response, Mara's
generals all bore him witness. Then Mara challenged him, 'Tell me now,
where is the man that can bear witness for thee?' The Lord reflected,
'Truly here is no man to bear me witness, but I will call on the earth
itself, though it has neither spirit nor understanding, and it shall
be my witness.' Stretching forth his hand, he thus invoked the earth:
'O holy Earth! I who have attained the thirty powers of virtue,
and performed the five great alms, each time that I have performed a
great act have not failed to pour water on thee. Now that I have no
other witness, I call upon thee to give thy testimony!'
The angel of the earth appeared in shape of a lovely woman, and
answered, 'O Being more excellent than angels or men! it is true
that, when you performed your great works, you ever poured water on
my hair.' And with these words she wrung her long hair, and from it
issued a stream, a torrent, a flood, in which Mara and his hosts were
overturned, their insignia destroyed, and King Mara put to flight,
amid the loud rejoicings of angels.
Then the evil one and his generals were conquered not only in power but
in heart; and Mara, raising his thousand arms, paid reverence, saying,
'Homage to the Lord, who has subdued his body even as a charioteer
breaks his horses to his use! The Lord will become the omniscient
Buddha, the Teacher of angels, and Brahmas, and Yakkhas (demons),
and men. He will confound all Maras, and rescue men from the whirl
of transmigration!'
The menacing powers depicted as assailing Sakya Muni appear only
around the infancy of Zoroaster. The interview of the latter with
Ahriman hardly amounts to a severe trial, but still the accent of
the chief temptation both of Buddha and Christ is in it, namely,
the promise of worldly empire. It was on one of those midnight
journeys through Heaven and Hell that Zoroaster saw Ahriman, and
delivered from his power 'one who had done both good and evil.' [91]
When Ahriman met Zoroaster's gaze, he cried, 'Quit thou the pure law;
cast it to the ground; thou wilt then be in the world all that thou
canst desire. Be not anxious about thy end. At least, do not destroy
my subjects, O pure Zoroaster, son of Poroscharp, who art born of
her thou hast borne!' Zoroaster answered, 'Wicked Majesty! it is for
thee and thy worshippers that Hell is prepared, but by the mercy of
God I shall bury your work with shame and ignominy.'
In the account of Matthew, Satan begins his temptation of Jesus in
the same way and amid similar circumstances to those we find in the
Siamese legends of Buddha. It occurs in a wilderness, and the appeal
is to hunger. The temptation of Buddha, in which Mara promises the
empire of the world, is also repeated in the case of Satan and Jesus
(Fig. 6). The menaces, however, in this case, are relegated to the
infancy, and the lustful temptation is absent altogether. Mark has an
allusion to his being in the wilderness forty days 'with the beasts,'
which may mean that Satan 'drove' him into a region of danger to
inspire fear. In Luke we have the remarkable claim of Satan that
the authority over the world has been delivered to himself, and he
gives it to whom he will; which Jesus does not deny, as Buddha did
the similar claim of Mara. As in the case of Buddha, the temptation
of Jesus ends his fasting; angels bring him food (diêkonoun aytô
probably means that), and thenceforth he eats and drinks, to the
scandal of the ascetics.
The essential addition in the case of Jesus is the notable temptation
to try and perform a crucial act. Satan quotes an accredited messianic
prophecy, and invites Jesus to test his claim to be the predicted
deliverer by casting himself from the pinnacle of the Temple,
and testing the promise that angels should protect the true Son
of God. Strauss, [92] as it appears to me, has not considered the
importance of this in connection with the general situation. 'Assent,'
he says, 'cannot be withheld from the canon that, to be credible,
the narrative must ascribe nothing to the devil inconsistent with his
established cunning. Now, the first temptation, appealing to hunger,
we grant, is not ill-conceived; if this were ineffectual, the devil,
as an artful tactician, should have had a yet more alluring temptation
at hand; but instead of this, we find him, in Matthew, proposing to
Jesus the neck-breaking feat of casting himself down from the pinnacle
of the Temple--a far less inviting miracle than the metamorphosis of
the stones. This proposition finding no acceptance, there follows,
as a crowning effort, a suggestion which, whatever might be the bribe,
every true Israelite would instantly reject with abhorrence--to fall
down and worship the devil.'
Not so! The scapegoat was a perpetual act of worship to the Devil. In
this story of the temptation of Christ there enter some characteristic
elements of the temptation of Job. [93] Uz in the one case and the
wilderness in the other mean morally the same, the region ruled over
by Azazel. In both cases the trial is under divine direction. And
the trial is in both cases to secure a division of worship between
the good and evil powers, which was so universal in the East that
it was the test of exceptional piety if one did not swerve from
an unmixed sacrifice. Jesus is apparently abandoned by the God in
whom he trusted; he is 'driven' into a wilderness, and there kept
with the beasts and without food. The Devil alone comes to him;
exhibits his own miraculous power by bearing him through the air to
his own Mount Seir, and showing him the whole world in a moment of
time; and now says to him, as it were, 'Try your God! See if he will
even turn stones into bread to save his own son, to whom I offer the
kingdoms of the world!' Then bearing him into the 'holy hill' of his
own God--the pinnacle of the Temple--says, 'Try now a leap, and see
if he saves from being dashed to pieces, even in his own precincts,
his so trustful devotee, whom I have borne aloft so safely! Which,
then, has the greater power to protect, enrich, advance you,--he who
has left you out here to starve, so that you dare not trust yourself to
him, or I? Fall down then and worship me as your God, and all the world
is yours! It is the world you are to reign over: rule it in my name!
When St. Anthony is tempted by the Devil in the form of a lean monk,
it was easy to see that the hermit was troubled with a vision of his
own emaciation. When the Devil appears to Luther under guise of a holy
monk, it is an obvious explanation that he was impressed by a memory
of the holy brothers who still remained in the Church, and who, while
they implored his return, pointed out the strength and influence he had
lost by secession. Equally simple are the moral elements in the story
of Christ's temptation. While a member of John's ascetic community,
for which 'though he was rich he became poor,' hunger, and such
anxiety about a living as victimises many a young thinker now, must
have assailed him. Later on his Devil meets him on the Temple, quotes
scripture, and warns him that his visionary God will not raise him so
high in the Church as the Prince of this World can. [94] And finally,
when dreams of a larger union, including Jews and Gentiles, visited
him, the power that might be gained by connivance with universal
idolatry would be reflected in the offer of the kingdoms of the world
in payment for the purity of his aims and singleness of his worship.
That these trials of self-truthfulness and fidelity, occurring
at various phases of life, would be recognised, is certain. A
youth of high position, as Christ probably was, [95] or even one
with that great power over the people which all concede, was, in a
worldly sense, 'throwing away his prospects;' and this voice, real
in its time, would naturally be conventionalised. It would put on
the stock costume of devils and angels; and among Jewish christians
it would naturally be associated with the forty-days' fast of Moses
(Exod. xxxiv. 28; Deut. ix. 9), and that of Elias (1 Kings xix. 8),
and the forty-years' trial of Israel in the wilderness. Among Greek
christians some traces of the legend of Herakles in his seclusion as
herdsman, or at the cross-roads between Vice and Virtue, might enter;
and it is not impossible that some touches might be added from the
Oriental myth which invested Buddha.
However this may be, we may with certainty repair to the common
source of all such myths in the higher nature of man, and recognise
the power of a pure genius to overcome those temptations to a success
unworthy of itself. We may interpret all such legends with a clearness
proportioned to the sacrifices we have made for truth and ideal right;
and the endless perplexities of commentators and theologians about
the impossible outward details of the New Testament story are simple
confessions that the great spirit so tried is now made to label with
his name his own Tempter--namely, a Church grown powerful and wealthy,
which, as the Prince of this World, bribes the conscience and tempts
away the talent necessary to the progress of mankind.