FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[640]Arrian, "Anab." 6, 27.[641]Diod. 18, 3. Justin, 13, 4;supra, p. 407.[642]Diod. 18, 39. Arrian, "Succ. Alex." 36; cf. "Ind." 5, 3.[643]Diod. 19, 14.[644]Von Gutschmid has rightly shown that Nandrus must be read for Alexander in Justin (15, 4); "Rhein. Mus." 12, 261.[645]Justin, 15, 4.[646]"Alex." c. 62.[647]Droysen, "Hellenismus," 1, 319.[648]"Mahavanaça," ed. Turnour, p. 39 ff. Westergaard, "Buddha's Todesjahr," s. 113.[649]We can hardly make any use of the description in the drama of Mudra-Rakshasa, which was composed after 1000A.D.(in Lassen, "Ind. Alterth." 22, 211), for the history of Chandragupta.[650]Pliny ("Hist. Nat." 6, 27) gives 600,000 foot soldiers, 30,000 horse, and 9000 elephants.[651]Megasthenes in Strabo, p. 707.[652]Strabo, p. 69, 689, 690.[653]Manu, 9, 282;supra, p. 387.[654]Strabo, p. 708.[655]Manu, 8, 39, 128, 156, 398, 409; 9, 280, 329-332.[656]Burnouf, "Introd." p. 432.[657]Arrian, "Anab." 7, 4. Droysen, "Alex." s. 396.[658]The date of the campaign of Seleucus can only be fixed so far that it must be placed between 310 and 302B.C., and as the subjugation of Eastern Iran must have taken up some time, the campaign to India may be placed nearer the year 302B.C.; we are also compelled to do this by Justin's words (15, 4); cum Sandracotto facta pactione compositisque in oriente rebus, in bellum Antigoni descendit,i. e.to the battle of Ipsus.[659]Justin, 15, 4. Appian, "De reb. Syr." c. 55. Strabo, p. 689, 724. Pliny, "Hist. Nat." 6, 21. Athenæus, p. 18.[660]Diod. Exc. Vat. p. 42. Plut. "Demetr." c. 29.[661]"Açoka-avadana," in Burnouf, "Introd." p. 362.[662]Strabo, p. 70. Athenæeus, p. 653. Pliny, "Hist. Nat." 6, 21.

[640]Arrian, "Anab." 6, 27.

[641]Diod. 18, 3. Justin, 13, 4;supra, p. 407.

[642]Diod. 18, 39. Arrian, "Succ. Alex." 36; cf. "Ind." 5, 3.

[643]Diod. 19, 14.

[644]Von Gutschmid has rightly shown that Nandrus must be read for Alexander in Justin (15, 4); "Rhein. Mus." 12, 261.

[645]Justin, 15, 4.

[646]"Alex." c. 62.

[647]Droysen, "Hellenismus," 1, 319.

[648]"Mahavanaça," ed. Turnour, p. 39 ff. Westergaard, "Buddha's Todesjahr," s. 113.

[649]We can hardly make any use of the description in the drama of Mudra-Rakshasa, which was composed after 1000A.D.(in Lassen, "Ind. Alterth." 22, 211), for the history of Chandragupta.

[650]Pliny ("Hist. Nat." 6, 27) gives 600,000 foot soldiers, 30,000 horse, and 9000 elephants.

[651]Megasthenes in Strabo, p. 707.

[652]Strabo, p. 69, 689, 690.

[653]Manu, 9, 282;supra, p. 387.

[654]Strabo, p. 708.

[655]Manu, 8, 39, 128, 156, 398, 409; 9, 280, 329-332.

[656]Burnouf, "Introd." p. 432.

[657]Arrian, "Anab." 7, 4. Droysen, "Alex." s. 396.

[658]The date of the campaign of Seleucus can only be fixed so far that it must be placed between 310 and 302B.C., and as the subjugation of Eastern Iran must have taken up some time, the campaign to India may be placed nearer the year 302B.C.; we are also compelled to do this by Justin's words (15, 4); cum Sandracotto facta pactione compositisque in oriente rebus, in bellum Antigoni descendit,i. e.to the battle of Ipsus.

[659]Justin, 15, 4. Appian, "De reb. Syr." c. 55. Strabo, p. 689, 724. Pliny, "Hist. Nat." 6, 21. Athenæus, p. 18.

[660]Diod. Exc. Vat. p. 42. Plut. "Demetr." c. 29.

[661]"Açoka-avadana," in Burnouf, "Introd." p. 362.

[662]Strabo, p. 70. Athenæeus, p. 653. Pliny, "Hist. Nat." 6, 21.

In the century and a half which passed between the date of Kalaçoka of Magadha, the council of the Sthaviras at Vaiçali, and the reign of Vindusara, the doctrine of the Enlightened had continued to extend, and had gained so many adherents that Megasthenes could speak of the Buddhist mendicants as a sect of the Brahmans. The rulers of Magadha who followed Kalaçoka, the house of the Nandas, which deposed his son, and the succeeding princes of that house, Indradatta and Dhanananda, were not favourable to Buddhism, as we conjectured above. If the Buddhist tradition quoted extols and consecrates the descent and usurpation of Chandragupta, this must be rather due to the services his grandson rendered the believers in Buddha than to any merits of his own in that respect. The accounts of the Greeks about the religious services of the Indians towards the end of the fourth centuryB.C., the description given by Megasthenes of the Indian philosophers and their doctrines, as well as his express statement that the Brahmans were the more highly honoured among the Indian sages, leave no doubt that the Brahmans maintained their supremacy under the reign of Chandragupta. Of Vindusara the Buddhists tell us that he daily fed 600,000 Brahmans.

In the doctrine of Buddha the philosophy of the Indians had made the boldest step. It had broken with the results of the history of the Arians on the Indus and the Ganges, with the development of a thousand years. It had declared internecine war against the ancient religion, and called in question the consecrated order of society. The philosophy capable of such audacity was a scepticism which denied everything except the thinkingEgo, which emptied heaven and declared nature to be worthless. Armed with the results of an unorthodox speculation, and pushing them still further, Buddha had drawn a cancelling line through the entire religious past of the Indian nation. The world-soul of the Brahmans existed no longer; heaven was rendered desolate; its inhabitants and all the myths attaching to them were set aside. No reading, no exposition of the Veda was required; no inquiry about the ancient hymns and customs. The contention of the schools about this or that rite might slumber, and no sacrifice could be offered to gods who did not exist. Dogmatism was banished in all its positions and doctrines; the endless laws about purity and food, the torturing penances and expiations, the entire ceremonial was without value and superfluous. The peculiar sanctity of the Brahmans, the mediatory position which they occupied in the worship between the gods and the nation, were valueless, and the advantages of the upper castes fell to the ground. And this doctrine, which annihilated the entire ancient religion and the basis of existing society, and put in their place nothing but a new speculation and a new morality, had come into the world without divine revelation, and was without a supreme deity, or indeed any deity whatever. Its authority rested solely on the dicta of a man, who declared that he had discovered truth by his own power,and maintained that every man could find it. That such a doctrine found adherence and ever increasing adherence is a fact without a parallel in history. The success of it would indeed be inconceivable, if the Brahmans had not themselves long prepared the way for Buddha, if the harsh contrast in which Buddha placed himself to the Brahmans had not been in some degree a consequence of Brahmanism.

The wildly-luxuriant and confused imagination of the Brahmans had produced a moderation, a rationalistic reaction in faith, worship, and morality no less than in social life. The speculative conception of Brahman had never become familiar to the people. The ceaseless increase in the number of gods and spirits, their endless multitude, had lessened the value of the individual forms and the reverence felt for them. The acts of the great saints of the Brahmans went far beyond the power and creative force of the gods. The saints made the gods their playthings. Could it excite any great shock when these playthings were set aside? The Brahmans dethroned the gods, and themselves fell in this dethronement. They allowed that sacrifice and ritual, and the pious fulfilment of duties and expiations, the entire sanctification by works, was not the highest aim that men could and ought to attain; that asceticism, penance, and meditation ensured something higher, and could alone lead back to Brahman; was it not a simple consequence of this view that Buddha should set aside the whole service of sacrifice and form of worship? The Brahmans granted that the distinction of caste could be removed, at any rate in the three higher orders, by the work of inward sanctification; was it not logical that Buddha should declare the distinction of castes altogether to be unessential? According to the Brahmans nothing but deep and earnest meditationon Brahman could raise man to the highest point, to reabsorption into Brahman, and therefore the Sankhya doctrine could consistently maintain that meditation free from all tradition was the highest aim, that only by unfettered knowledge could liberation from nature be attained; while Buddha was enabled to find ready credence to his position that neither asceticism nor penance, neither sacrifice nor works, but the knowledge of the true connection of things guided men to salvation. From all antiquity the Indians had allowed human devotion to have a certain influence on the gods; in the oldest poems of the Veda we find the belief that the correct invocation brings down the deities and exercises compulsion over them. Following out this view, the Brahmans had developed the compulsion exercised upon the gods to such a degree that fervour of asceticism and holiness conferred divine power—power over nature; they held that man could attain the highest point by penance and meditation; that he could draw into himself and concentrate there the divine power and essence. Was it not an easy step further in the same path when Buddha taught that the highest, the only divine result, which he admitted, the knowledge of truth, could be attained by man's own power; that his adherents and followers, when the rishis of the Brahmans had been gifted with so many mighty, divine, and super-divine powers, had not the least difficulty in believing that the Enlightened had found absolute truth; that by his own power he had attained the highest wisdom and truth? If the man who had duly sanctified himself, attained, according to the Brahmanic doctrine, divine power and wisdom, Buddha on his part required no revelation from above. By his own nature and his own power, by sanctification, man could workhis way upwards to divine absolute liberty and wisdom.

To religious tradition and the Veda Buddha opposed individual knowledge; to revelation of the gods the truth discovered by men, to the dogmatism of the Brahmanic schools the doctrine of duties; to sacrifice and expiation the practice of morality; to the claims of the castes personal merit; to lonely asceticism common training; to the caste of the priests a spiritual brotherhood formed by free choice and independent impulse. But two essential points in the Brahmanic view of the world, that the body and theEgoare the fetters of the soul, that the soul must migrate without rest, he not only allowed to stand, but even insisted on them more sharply to the conclusion that existence is the greatest evil and annihilation the greatest blessing for men, inasmuch as freedom from evil can only be attained by freedom from existence, and freedom from existence only by annihilation of self. Salvation is the negation of existence. But not only the bodily life of the individual must be annihilated, the spiritual root of his existence must be torn up and utterly destroyed. "What wilt thou with the knot of hair, or with the apron (i. e.with the Brahmanic asceticism); thou art touching merely the outside; the gulf is within thee?"[663]

The Sankhya doctrine had announced that Brahman and the gods did not exist, but only nature and the soul. Buddha in reality struck out nature also. According to his doctrine there was neither creation nor creator. The existence of the world is merely an illusion; there is nothing but a restless change of generation and decay, an eternal revolution (sansara). Hence the world is no more than a total of things past and perishable, in which there is but one reality,one active agency. This is the souls of men and animals, breathing creatures. These have been existent from the first, and remain in existence till they find the means of their annihilation and accomplish it. They have created the corporeal world, by clothing themselves with matter, and this robe they change again and again. The Brahmans had taught that "the desire which is in the world-soul is the creative seed of the world" (p. 132). Buddha, transferring this to the individual souls, taught that the desire and yearning for existence, by which individual creatures were impelled, produced existence. Existences are the fruit of the inalienable impulse inherent in the soul; this brings the evil of existence upon the soul, and causes it in spite of itself to cleave thereto; "it is the chain of being" in which the soul is fettered. This desire (kama) is a mistake; it rests on an inability to perceive the true connection between the nature of existence and the world; it is not only a mistake but a sin, nay, sin itself, from which all other sins arise; desire is the great, original sin, hereditary sin (kleça).[664]

Hence the existence of men is in itself the product of sin. The perpetual yearning for existence ever draws the soul after the death of the body into new existence, impels it into the corporeal world, and clothes it with a new body. "All garments are perishable, all are full of pain, and subject to another."[665]Each new bodily life of the soul is the fruit of former existences. The merit or the guilt which the soul has acquired in earlier existences, or brought upon itself, is rewarded or punished in later existences; here also Buddhism retains the doctrine of the Brahmans that the prosperity or misfortune of man is regulated according to the acts of aformer existence. The total of merit and guilt accumulated in earlier existences determines the fortune of the individual; it forms the rule governing the kind of regeneration, the happy or unhappy life, the fate which rules each soul, the moral order of the world. If the merit is greater than the guilt, man is not born as an animal but as a man, and in better circumstances, with less trouble and sorrow to go through; and according as a man bears these, and practises virtue in this life, are the future existences defined. It is the duty of man to acquire a tolerable existence for himself by his merit, and also to remove the active guilt of earlier deeds, which are not always punished in the next but often in far later existences, and to destroy the yearning after existence in the soul. This is done by the knowledge which perceives that existence is evil, that all is worthless, and consequently lessens and removes the yearning after existence. This removal is rendered more complete by renunciation, the resolution to receive no conceptions or impressions, and hence to feel no desire for anything; by placing ourselves in a condition where we are incapable of feeling, and therefore incapable of desire. With this annihilation of desire the fetters of the soul are broken; man is separated from the revolution of the world, the alternation of births, because nothing more remains of that which makes up the soul, and thus there is no substratum left for a new existence.[666]

There were converted Brahmans who declared that a penance of twelve years did not confer so much repose as the truths which Buddha taught.[667]For the satisfaction of the interest in philosophic inquiry, to which earnest minds among the Brahmans were accustomed, the speculative foundation of Buddha's doctrine provided amply and with sufficient subtilty. Others might be attracted by the wish to be relieved from tormenting themselves any longer with the formulas of the schools and the commentaries on the Veda. And if the Brahmans objected to the disciples of Buddha that they punished themselves too little, there were without doubt members of the order who found the Buddhist asceticism more agreeable than the Brahmanic.

But the most efficient spring of the success of Buddha's doctrine did not lie in this. It lay in the practical consequences which he derived from his speculation or connected with it. The prospect of liberation from regeneration, of death without resurrection, the gospel of annihilation, was that which led the Indians to believe in Buddha. To the initiated he opened out the prospect that this life would be the last; to the laity he gave the hope of alleviation in the number and kind of regenerations. And as this doctrine proclaimed to all without exception an amelioration in their future fortunes, and declared that every one was capable of liberation, it was at the same time a gospel of social reform. Even among the Kshatriyas and Vaiçyas there were, no doubt, many who were quite agreed that the privilege of birth, which the Brahmans claimed in such an extravagant manner, ought to give way to personal merit. To all who were oppressed or pushed into the background the way was pointed out, to withdraw from the stress of the circumstances which confined and burdened them; every one found a way open for him to escape from the trammels of caste. The doctrine of the Brahmans excluded the Çudras entirely from good works and liberation. The doctrine of Buddha was addressed toall the castes, and destroyed the monopoly of the Brahmans even in regard to teaching. The natural and equal right of every man, whatever be his origin, to sanctification and liberation from evil was recognised; the Buddhist clergy were recruited from all the orders. The Çudra and even the Chandala received the initiation of the Bhikshu. The attraction of this universality was all the greater, especially for the lower orders, because Buddha, following the whole tendency of his doctrine, turned more especially to the most heavily laden; in his view wealth and rank were stronger fetters to bind men to the world than distress and misery. "It is hard," the Enlightened is declared to have said, "to be rich and to learn the way;" and in a Buddhist inscription of the third centuryB.C.we read, "It is difficult both for the ordinary and important person to attain to eternal salvation, but for the important person it is certainly most difficult."[668]Finally, the doctrine of Buddha was also a gospel of peaceful life, of mutual help and brotherly love. The quietistic morality of obedience, of silent endurance, which the disciples of Buddha preached, corresponded to the patient character which the Indians on the Ganges had gained under the training of the Brahmans and their despotic princes, and to the instinct of the nation at the time. As Buddha's doctrine justified and confirmed submission towards oppression, it also pointed out the way in which to alleviate an oppressed life for ourselves and for others. The gentleness and compassion which Buddha required towards men and animals, suited the prevailing tone of the people; men were prepared to avail themselves of them as the means of salvation; and this patient sympathetic life, without the torments of penances and expiations,without the burden of the laws of purification and food, without sacrifice and ceremonial, was enough to guide future regenerations into the "better" way.

The Brahmans had never established a hierarchical organisation; they had contented themselves with the liturgical monopoly of their order, with their aristocratic position and claims against the other castes. It was only as presidents at the feasts of the dead in the clans that they exercised a powerful censorship over their fellows, as we have seen; a censorship involving the most serious civic consequences for those on whom its sentence fell. At the head of the Buddhists there was no order of birth; the first place was taken by those who lived by alms, and were content to abandon the establishment of a family. The two vows of poverty and chastity withdrew the initiated among the Buddhists from the acquisition of property, from the family, and life in the world; their maintenance consisted in the alms offered to them. In this way they were gained for the interests and the work of their religion to an extent that never was and never could be the case with the Brahmans who did not remove the obstacles of the family by celibacy, and indeed could not do so, because their pre-eminence was founded on birth. The Brahman was and must be the father of a family; he must provide for himself and his family, while the Bhikshus without care for themselves or their families gave themselves up exclusively to their spiritual duties. All the legal precepts of the Brahmans, which made the maintenance of their order by gifts the duty of the other castes, could not set their families free from the care of their support and property; even the book of the law was obliged to allow the Brahman to carry on other occupations besides the sacrifice and study of the Veda; it could do no more than demandthat the Brahman father, when he had begotten his children and established his house, should retire into solitude to do penance and meditate (p. 184, 242). Buddhism excluded its clergy entirely from the family and social life; it permitted them to live together in communities, combined all the initiated into one great brotherhood, and thus gained a firmer connection, a better organisation of its representatives, a body engaged in constant work and preparation without any other interests than those of religion. "He is not a Brahman," we are told in an old Buddhist formula, 'the Foot-prints of the Law,' "who is born as a Brahman." "He is a Brahman who is lean, and wears dusty rags, who possesses nothing, and is free from fetters."[669]The entrance into this community was open; Buddha imparted the consecration of the mendicant to every one in whom he found belief in his doctrine and the desire to renounce the world; and said, "Come hither; enter into the spiritual life." With this simple formula the reception was complete.[670]This pillar of Buddhism was never shaken, though after the second council of Vaiçali (433B.C.) a certain knowledge of the canonic scriptures, the sutras and the Vinaya, as fixed by that assembly, was required in addition to the qualifications of poverty and chastity. Buddha had fixed that admission into the clerical order could not take place before the twentieth year. After the pattern of the Brahman schools (p. 178) it was the custom to receive boys and youths as novices as soon as the parents gave permission, and one of the consecrated was found willing to undertake the instruction of the novice. At a later time this institution of the noviciate found a far more solid basis in themonastic life of the Bhikshus than that which the isolated Brahman could offer to the pupils in his own house. The novice (Çramanera) might not kill anything, or steal, or lie; he must commit no act of unchastity, drink no intoxicating liquor, eat nothing after mid-day, neither sing nor dance, neither adorn nor anoint himself, and receive no gold or silver. When the period of instruction was over, the admission took place in the presence of the assembled clergy of the monastery. When he had taken the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, the newly-initiated received the yellow robe and the mendicant's jar with the admonition: "To have no intercourse with any woman, to take away nothing in secret, to wear a dusty garment, to dwell at the roots of trees, to eat only what others had left, and use the urine of cows as a medicine."[671]

With his entrance into the community of the initiated, the Bhikshu had left the world behind, and broken the fetters which bound him to his kindred. If married before his admission, he was no longer to trouble himself for his family: "those who cling to wife and child are, as it were, in the jaws of the tiger." He is separated from his brothers and sisters, and great as is the importance elsewhere attached in Buddhism to filial affection, he is not to lament the death of his father or mother. He is free from love; he holds nothing dear; for "love brings sorrow, and the loss of the loved is painful."[672]He is without relations; nothing but his mendicant's robe is his own; he may not work. Not even labour in a garden is permitted to him; worms might be killed in turning up the earth. Thus for the initiated the fetters of family, possessions, and the acquisition of property, which bindus most strongly to life, are burst asunder. He has nothing of his own, and consequently can feel no desire to keep his possessions, or pain at their loss; he inhabits an "empty house."[673]The rules of external discipline were not too many. Beard, eye-brows, and hair were to be shaved, a regulation which arose in contrast to the various hair-knots of the Brahmanic schools and sects, and was an extension of the Brahmanic view of the impurity of hair. With the Buddhists the hairs are an impure excretion of the skin, refuse which must be thrown away; the tonsure was performed at every new and full moon.[674]The Bhikshu was never to ask for a gift, he must receive in silence what is offered. If he receive more than he requires, he must give the remainder to others. He must never eat more than is required for his necessities, nor after midday, nor may he eat flesh. Even among the Buddhists the rules of food are tolerably minute, and many of the prescripts of the Brahmans were adopted by them. Essential importance was attributed to moderation; desires were not to be excited by unnecessary satisfaction. The Bhikshu must especially guard against women. He must not receive alms from the hand of a woman, or look on the women he meets, or speak with them, or dream of them. "So long as the least particle of the desire which attracts the man to the woman remains undestroyed, so long is he fettered like the calf to the cow;"[675]and Buddha is said to have declared that if there were a second passion as strong as the passion for women no one would ever attain liberation. It was reasons of this kind, of modesty and chastity, which made it a rule for the Bhikshus, in contrast to the nudity of the Brahmanic penitent, never to lay aside his garments: his shirt and yellow garment which came over the shirt as far as the knee—the rule required that it should be made of sewn rags—and his mantle, worn over the left shoulder. The Bhikshu is to watch himself like a tower on the borders, without a moment's intermission,[676]and bridle his desires with a strong hand, as the leader holds back the raging elephant with the spear.[677]He must always bear in mind that the body is a tower of bones, smeared with flesh and blood, the nest of diseases; that it conceals old age and death, pride and flattery; that life in this mass of uncleanness is death.[678]In contrast to the multitude who are driven by desire like hunted hares,[679]he is to live without desire among those who are filled with desire; the passions which run hither and thither like the ape seeking fruit in the forest, which spring up again and again like creeping-plants if they are not taken at the roots, he must tear up root and all, and strive after the sundering of the toils, the conquest of Mara (p. 481) and his troop. Freedom from desire is "the highest duty; and he is the most victorious who conquers himself."[680]Victory is won by taming the senses, and schooling the soul; no rain penetrates the well-roofed house, no passion the well-schooled spirit.[681]"A man is not made a Bhikshu by tonsure," nor by begging of another, nor by faith in the doctrine, but only by constant watchfulness and work. The Bhikshu who fails in these had better eat hot iron than the fruits of the field; the "ill practised restraint of the senses leads into hell."[682]

We know that the Bhikshus had to support each other mutually in this work. Following the patternof the master they passed the rainy season, in common shelter, in monasteries. These, as we saw (p. 378), existed as early as the reign of Kalaçoka. At first they sought protection in hollows of the mountains like the cave of Niagrodha, near Rajagriha. Then these caves were extended artificially, and in this way they came by degrees to be cave cloisters with halls for assembly of considerable extent. In the detached monasteries the halls were the central points, and the monks had separate cells on the surrounding wall. The description given in the sutras of these Viharas is far from discouraging. Platforms, balustrades, lattice-windows were provided, and good places for sleeping. The sound of metal cymbals or bells summoned the monks to prayer or to meeting. In these monasteries the elders instructed the disciples, those who had advanced on the way of liberation, the less advanced. The four 'truths' were considered in common (p. 340); in common the attempt was made "to cleave the twenty summits of uncertainty with the lightning of knowledge." In the place of the sacrifice, expiations, and penances by which the Brahmans held that crimes, and sins, and transgressions of the rules of purity could be done away, Buddha had established the confession of sin before the brethren. Had a brother failed in the control of desire, and been over-mastered by his impulses, he was to acknowledge his error before the rest. As Buddha removed painful asceticism, so he desired no external and torturing expiations. "Not nakedness," we are told in the footsteps of the law, "nor knots of hair (such as the Brahman penitents wore), nor filthiness, nor fasting, nor lying on the earth, nor rubbing in of dust, nor motionless position, purify a man;"[683]the only purificationis the conquest of lust, the amelioration of the mind. Not on works, but on the spirit from which they proceed, does Buddha lay the chief weight. Sins when committed could be removed only by improvement of spirit, by the pain of remorse. Confession was the proof and confirmation of remorse, and thus the confirmation of a good mind. In Buddha's view confession removed the sin when committed, and was immediately followed by absolution.[684]In the monasteries the initiated fasted in the days of the new and full moon, and after the fast came the confessional. The list of duties was read;[685]after every section the question was thrice asked whether each of those present had lived according to the precepts before them. If a confession was made that this had not been the case, the offence was investigated, and absolution given by the president of the meeting. In accordance with Buddha's command a common confession of all the brethren in every monastery took place after the rainy season before the mendicants recommenced their travels.[686]At a later time it was common at confession to divide the offences into such as received simple absolution, such as required reproof before absolution, such as were subject to penance, and lastly such as involved temporary or entire expulsion from the community. Obstinate heresy and unchastity entailed complete expulsion; the man who indulged in sexual intercourse could no longer be a disciple of Buddha. The penances imposed for errors of a coarser kind were very slight and are so still; the performance of the more menial services in the monastery, otherwisedischarged by the novices, or the repetition of a forced number of prayers. No one was compelled because he had once taken a vow to observe it for ever; any initiated person could and still can come back into the world at any moment. The vow was not binding for the whole of life, and no one was to discharge his duties against his will.

Among the Bhikshus the authority of age was maintained; respect was paid to experience, proved virtue, and wisdom; the teacher ranked above the pupil, the older believer before the younger. Hence the Sthaviras,i. e.the elders, held the foremost place among them. Still it was not years, but liberation from the evil of the world, that made the Sthavira.[687]Each monastery had a Sthavira at the head, whom the Bhikshus had to obey, for in addition to vows of poverty and chastity they took vows of obedience. Nevertheless Buddhism gave the greater weight to the feeling and sense of equality and brotherly love. Authority resided less in the Sthavira than in the assembly of the initiated. Had not the first disciples of Buddha established his sayings in common at the first council at Rajagriha, even though one of his most beloved followers presided over them? The second synod at Vaiçali was conducted in the same way; the community of the Bhikshus (sangha, the assembly) had given their authoritative sanction to the rules of discipline, which were to have general currency, after they had been fixed by the elders. The monasteries were similarly organised; there also the community gave the consecration of the priest, heard confession, imposed penances, ordered temporary or complete expulsion under the presidency of the Sthavira.

There were merits of another kind among the Bhikshus which transcended the rank of the teachers, of the elder, of the head of the monastery. These were the merits of religious service, of deeper knowledge, of more complete conquest over the natural man, theEgo. The Aryas,i. e.the honourable or the rulers, who had learned "the four truths" (p. 340), formed a privileged class of the Bhikshus. On the path "which is hard to tread,"[688]the path of Nirvana, the Buddhists distinguish four stages. The first and lowest has been entered upon by the Çrotaapanna; he cannot any longer be born again as an evil spirit or an animal; and has only seven regenerations to pass through.[689]The second stage is reached by the Sakridagamin,i. e."the once-returning;" who will only be born once after his death. The third stage is that of the Anagamin, the not-returning, who has to expect his regeneration in the higher regions only, not as a man. On the highest stage stands the Arhat; he has entered on the path which neither the gods nor the Gandharvas know; his senses have entered into rest; he has overcome the impulse to evil as well as the impulse to good; he desires nothing more, neither here nor in heaven. He has "left behind every habitation, as the flamingo takes his way from the sea;"[690]the gods envy him; he has attained the end after which all the Bhikshus strive; he has arrived at Nirvana, and is in the possession of supernatural powers. When he wills, he dies, never to be born again. Like the Brahmans the Buddhists attempted to express in numbers the eminence and value of those who had gone through the four stages. The Çrotaapanna surpasses theordinary man ten thousand-fold; The Sakridagamin is a hundred thousand times higher than the Çrotaapanna, the Anagamin a million times higher than the Sakridagamin. The Arhat is free from ignorance, free from hereditary sin,i. e.free from desire, and attachment to existence; he is free from the limitation of existence, and therefore from the conditions of it. He possesses the power to do miracles, the capacity of surveying in one view all creatures and all worlds; of hearing all the sounds and words in all the worlds; he has knowledge of the thoughts of all creatures, and remembrance of the earlier habitations,i. e.of the past existences of all creatures.[691]

Buddha's system required, at bottom, that every man should renounce the world, and take the mendicant's robes, in order to enter upon the path of liberation. This requirement could not be realised any more than the demand of the Brahmans that every Dvija should go into the forest at the end of his life and live as a penitent; the Catholic view of the advantage of monastic over secular life has not brought all Catholics into monasteries; how could the Church live and the world exist if every one abandoned the world? Yet the Enlightened was of opinion that help might be given even to those who could not leave the world. In contrast to the pride and exclusiveness of the Brahmans it was precisely the promise of help to all, the strongly-marked tendency to relieve every one, even the meanest, the sympathy with the sorrows of the oppressed, the turning aside from the powerful and rich to the lonely and poor,—it was the fact that mendicants took the highest place in the new Church—which won adherents to Buddha's teaching from the oppressed classes of the people. If the layman, so Buddha thought, resolved to live according to the precepts of his ethics, he would not only lighten the burden of existence for himself and others; by the practice of these virtues he attained such merit that his regenerations became more favourable, and followed in "good paths," so that he was allowed eventually to receive initiation and thus attain the end of sorrows, death without any return to life. He who would adopt this doctrine, had only to declare that it was his will to perform the commands of its ethics. The formula of entrance and adoption into the community of the believers in Buddha ran thus: "I take my refuge in Buddha; I take my refuge in the law (dharma); I take my refuge in the community (sangha),"i. e.of the believers. With this declaration the convert took a pledge not to kill anything that had life, not to steal, to commit no act of unchastity, not to babble, nor lie, nor calumniate, nor disparage, nor curse; not to be passionate, greedy, envious, angry, revengeful. The layman is to control his appetites as far as possible, to moderate his selfishness, and in the place of his natural corrupt desires to put the right feeling of contentment and submission, of beneficence, and pity, and love to his neighbour, a feeling out of which, in Buddha's view, "the avoidance of evil and doing of good" spontaneously arose. This repose, patience, and moderation would cause even the laymen to bear the evils of existence more lightly, and keep themselves as far as possible from the complications of the world. His adherence to the doctrines of Buddha was to be shown in the first instance by gifts to the clergy. The Church had no means of subsistence except the alms of the laymen; their gifts, in the eyes of the Buddhists, bringsalvation for the giver no less than the receiver; the latter ought humbly to beg the clergy to accept their presents.[692]

Buddha's doctrine acknowledged no God. It was man who by the power of his knowledge could attain to absolute truth; who by the force of his will, the eradication of desire, the sacrifice of his goods and his body for his nearest relations, the annihilation of his own self, would win complete virtue and sanctity. "Self is the protector and the refuge of self,"[693]But were the inculcation of prayers and precepts, the discussion of the sayings of Buddha, on which they rested, enough to make the laity and clergy able and willing to observe and perform them? Must there not be some proof that these doctrines could be carried out, that they had the most beneficial results, that the object at which they aimed was really attainable? Clergy as well as laity needed a living pattern to strive after, a fixed support and rule on which they could lean in their conscience, their thoughts, actions, and sufferings, and by which they could measure themselves. This pattern was given in the person of the master, in his life, his acts, his end. His life and actions were to be the subject of meditation; on this a man might raise and elevate himself; after that pattern every one should guide his acts and thoughts. If the initiated clung to his lofty wisdom which saw through the web of the worlds, and could liberate self from nature and annihilate it, the picture of the mendicant prince, who had left palace and wife and child and kingdom and treasures in order to share and alleviate the lot of the poorest, could not be of less influence on the hearts of the laity. This wonderful religion had no object of worship beside theperson of the founder; on this it must be concentrated. The pious remembrance of the profound teacher, thankfulness for the salvation which he brought into the world, the study of the pattern of wisdom and truth which he gave, of the ideal of perfect sanctification and liberation, displayed in him,—these motives quickly made Buddha an object of reverence, and ere long of worship, though to himself and his disciples he was no more than a mere man. In this religion of man-worship Buddha took the place of God; he was God to his believers.

But the religion could not long remain contented with a thoughtful remembrance, a vague recollection, and assurances of reverence towards the departed as the means of arousing the heart and elevating the spirit. Some external excitement, some symbol or sensuous sign was needed, however rationalistic in other respects Buddha's doctrine might be. But he who brought salvation and liberation into the world lived no longer in the other world; he was dead, never to rise again. Nothing was left of him but the bones and ashes of his body. We know that in ancient times the Aryas buried their dead; and afterwards they burned them. The additional emphasis which the old conceptions of the impurity of the corpse, the worthlessness of the flesh, had received in the system of the Brahmans, was no doubt the reason why they sought to remove the remains of the cremation, the ashes and bones, by throwing them into water. Buddha did not treat the body better than the Brahmans; with him, though not strictly the cause, it was the bearer and medium of the destruction and pain of mankind, inasmuch as in his eyes the perverse direction of the soul and its dependence on existence were destruction. This body, which Brahmans and Buddhists vied with each otherin regarding as a perishable and worthless vessel containing the Ego, which a man must either break asunder, or liberate himself from it, the relics of which had been considered for so many centuries as impure and spreading impurity, received quite a new importance in the Buddhist religion. Not long after the death of the Enlightened, when the generation of disciples who had seen him and lived with him had passed away, the need of some representation and idea of the pattern and centre of these thoughts and efforts, of the person of their teacher, impelled the believers to pay honour to his ashes and bones, to his relics. This honour was soon extended to the bones of his leading disciples, a form of worship which must have been shocking to the Brahmans. Similar honour was then paid to the robes and vessels which Buddha had used, to his mendicant's garment, his staff, his jar for alms and pitcher, and also to the places which he had sanctified by his presence. Two centuries after the death of the Enlightened, this worship of relics and pilgrimage to the holy places were established customs. The believers in Buddha travelled to Kapilavastu, his father's city. There they beheld the garden in which Buddha had seen the light, the pool in which he was washed, the ground on which he had contended in exercises with his fellows, the places where he had seen the old man, the sick man, and the corpse. In the neighbourhood of Uruvilva on the Nairanjana pilgrims visited the dwellings where Buddha had lived for six years as an ascetic, at Gaya the sacred fig-tree under which in the night truth was revealed to him. Not far from thence was the place where the maiden of Uruvilva had given food to the son of Çakya, where he had first announced his doctrine to the two merchants. At Rajagriha the stone was pointed outwhich Devadatta had hurled from the height of the vulture mountain on Buddha. Even the bamboo garden at this city, which Buddha was said to have taken pleasure in frequenting, and the place at Çravasti where he had held his disputations with the Brahmanic penitents, were shrines of pilgrimage.[694]

From the same need of representing and realising the religious example, and of elevating the heart and spirit to that pattern, which gave rise to the worship of relics and shrines, there sprang, in addition, the worship of the pictures of Buddha. He who had placed the body of man so low was now thought to have had a body of the greatest beauty; his perfect wisdom and virtue had found expression in the most perfect body. The sutras compare Buddha's gentle eye with the lotus; they even tell us of the thirty-two signs of complete beauty, and the eighty-four marks of physical perfection in his body.[695]

Buddha's doctrine was definitely based on the fact that man must liberate himself by his own power and wisdom, and to himself and his disciples Buddha was a man and no more, but in a nation so eager for miraclesand inclined to believe in them, Buddha's life and actions inevitably became surrounded with the supernatural. He could not remain behind the Brahman penitents and saints, who had done great miracles. Could anything so great as Buddha's life and doctrine have occurred without a miracle; was a mission possible without miracles; could the greatest mission, the liberation of the world from misery, have taken place without being accredited by miracles? Could he who had reached the summit of wisdom and virtue have been without supernatural powers? That sanctification and meditation were and must be followed by such powers, was a matter of course among the Indians. Even in the third centuryB.C.miraculous powers were ascribed to the Bhikshus who had attained the fourth stage in the path, and therefore the same must have been done even earlier for Buddha himself. The same legends which represent Buddha as saying to king Prasenajit of Ayodhya: "I do not bid my disciples perform miracles; I tell them; Live so that your good deeds may remain concealed, your errors confessed,"[696]surround his birth and his penances at Gaya (p. 337 ff. 356) with miraculous signs; and in the disputations with the Brahmans they represent him as contending in miracles also, and gaining the victory. But these and other miracles of Buddha, though he travels with his disciples through the air, are nevertheless not to be compared with the achievements of the Brahmanic penitents, narrated in the Brahmanas and the Epos. They are for the most part the healing of disease and restoration to life, intended to bring out his compassion for living creatures,[697]and beside these the exercise of the miraculous powers which the Buddhists ascribeto all who have attained the fourth stage in the path (p. 472).

It was not only the miraculous acts of the saints which forced their way from Brahmanism into Buddhism; even the gods and spirits, the heaven and hell of the Brahmans, had a place in the new religion. The old divinities of the Indian nation, as we have seen, could only maintain a very subordinate position in the system of the world-soul, inferior to that soul and to the great power of the rishis. They also had become emanations of the world-soul; though ranked among the earliest of these, they came immediately after the great saints of old time. But every penitent who by his asceticism concentrated a larger part of the power of the world-soul in himself, became superior to Indra and to the personal Brahman. The same position in respect to the ancient deities and the personal Brahman was allotted to Buddha. From the beginning of the third centuryB.C.he appears to have been worshipped by his followers as a god.[698]This was due not merely to the desire to place the power of the penitent, of meditation and knowledge, higher than the power of the gods, but also to the deep necessity on the part of the new religion and the believers in Buddha to possess a God. Later legends put the deities far below Buddha. He converts the spirits of the earth, of the air, of the serpents to his doctrine, and in return these spirits serve and obey him. Even the great gods come and listen to his words, and Buddha declares the new law to Brahman and to Indra.[699]In the relic-cell of a stupa of the secondcenturyB.C.Brahman is holding a parasol over Buddha, and Indra anoints him out of a large shell to be king of gods and men.[700]

Thus to his believers Buddha is not only the lion, the bull, and the elephant, stronger than the strongest, mightier than the mightiest, surpassing all men in compassion and good works, beautiful beyond the most beautiful of mankind; not only is he the king of doctrine, the ocean of grace, the founder of the eternal pilgrimages, he is also the father of the world, redeemer and ruler of all creatures, god of gods, Indra of Indras, Brahman of Brahmans. Nothing, of course, is now said of independent action, or power on the part of these Indras and Brahmans. To later Buddhism they are a higher but completely human class of beings; in the retinue of Buddha they are only a troop of supernumerary figures whose essential importance consists merely in bowing themselves before Buddha, serving him, and placing in the fullest light his power and greatness. Like men, these deities have to seek the light of higher wisdom, the salvation of liberation by effort and labour. To Indra, for instance, the Buddhists assign no higher dignity than that of the first stage of illumination; he stands on the level of the Çrotaapanna.[701]

In this transformation, which we find in the later writings of the Buddhists, the entire Indian and Brahmanic view of the world reappears in its widest extent. The divine mountain Meru forms the centre of the earth. Beneath it, in the deepest abyss, is hell. The Buddhists are even more minute than the Brahmans in describing the torments and subdivisions of hell, and with them also Yama is the god of death and the under world.[702]Onthe summit of Meru Indra is enthroned, who with the Buddhists also is the special protector of kings, and with him are the thirty-three gods of light (p. 161). In the Buddhist mythology the evil spirits, the Asuras, attack Indra and the bright spirits, as in the Vedic conception; but the Asuras could not advance further than the third of the four stages which the Buddhists ascribed to Meru, after the analogy of the four truths and the four stages of sanctification. The Gandharvas have to defend the eastern side of Meru against the Asuras; the Yakshas (the spirits of the god Kuvera, p. 161), the northern; the Kumbhandas (the dwarfs), the southern; and the Nagas or serpent spirits, the western side. In the Buddhist view the earth, the divine mountain, and the heaven of Indra above it make up the world of desire and sin. Indra and his deities are supreme over certain supernatural powers, but they are powerless against the man who has controlled himself;[703]they propagate themselves like men, are subject to the doom of regeneration, and can decline into lower existences. In this sense, with the Buddhists, the evil spirit of desire and sensual pleasure is enthroned over the heaven of Indra; his name is Kama or Mara; he is the cause of all generation, and hence of the restless revolution of the world, and of all misery. Above this heaven of the god of sin, which is filled with innumerable troops of the spirits of desires, begin the four upper heavens, the heaven of the liberated, into which those pass who have delivered themselves from sensual appetite, desire, and existence.[704]

Among the Buddhists there could be no question of the worship of these unreal deities, without power to bless or destroy. Their cultus was limited to theperson of the founder, the symbols and memorials of his life, the relics of his body, the places sanctified by his presence. But they could not slay animals in sacrifice to the relics or the Manes of Buddha, nor invite the extinguished etherealized dead to the enjoyment of the soma. Of what value was the blood or flesh of victims to one who would never wake again; and how could they offer bloody sacrifices to one with whom it was the first commandment not to slay any living thing? Agni could carry no gift up to him who was perfected; and moreover Buddha had himself expressly forbidden sacrifice by fire; the Buddhists were to tend the law as the Brahmans tended the fire.[705]They could only place offerings of flowers, fruits, and perfumes at the sacred shrines, before the relics of the Enlightened, as signs of thankfulness and reverence, as symbols of worship (puja). Prayer was in reality unknown to a cultus which was directed to a deceased man, and not to a deity. Believers must be content with the symbols of reverence, with singing hymns of praise and thanksgiving to the Enlightened, for having discovered truth, proclaimed liberation, shown pity, and brought help to all creatures; they must limit themselves to the confessions which these doctrines comprised, to hearing moral exhortations, to pronouncing and wishing blessings: "that all creatures may be free from sickness and wicked pleasure, that every man may become an Arhat in the future regeneration."[706]The gradual elevation of the position of Buddha, and the more complete apotheosis which was granted to him, led to direct invocations of the Enlightened. As the benefactor of all creatures he was besought for his blessing; as the liberator he was entreated to confer the power of liberation, and liberation. When after the endof the third centuryB.C.statues of Buddha stood in the halls of the Viharas, it became usual to invoke Buddha to be present in these statues. By the consecration which they underwent at the hands of the priests they received a ray of the spirit of Buddha, and thus acquired a beneficent miraculous power.

At morning, midday, and evening,i. e.at the times when it was customary among the Aryas to offer prayers, or gifts, or strew grains of corn, the monks of the Enlightened were summoned to prayers. At the new and full moon, when the Bhikshus fasted, and met for confession, the laity also discontinued their occupations, assembled to read the law, or hear preachers, or utter prayers. In no religious community was prayer so frequent and so mechanical as among the Buddhists, and this is still the case. Greater festivals were celebrated at the beginning of the spring, in the later spring, and at the end of the rainy season. The festival held at the new moon in the first month of spring, is said to have been a festival in commemoration of the victory which Buddha won in the disputation and contest of miracles with the Brahmanic penitents (p. 356). Buddha himself is said to have indulged in secular enjoyment for eight days after this success. As a fact, it was, no doubt, the customary spring festival—a remnant of the old Arian custom, to celebrate in the spring the victory gained by the spirits of light and the clear air over the gloom of the winter—which the Buddhists now celebrated in honour of their great teacher. At the full moon of the month Vaiçakha in the later spring, the day was celebrated on which the Enlightened saw the light for the salvation of the world. With the Buddhists the rainy season was the sacred season, the time for reflection and retirement. At the end of the rainsBuddha had always revisited the world, in order to announce to it salvation; and like him, his followers, the Bhikshus, who could not leave the Vihara in the rainy season, returned on this day to the world, in order to recommence their wanderings and preaching for the salvation of living creatures. This return of the teachers to the world was marked by a great festival, at which the Bhikshus received presents from the laity; sermons were preached, and processions held in which the lamps, no doubt, represented the light returning after the gloom of the rains, or the light of salvation which Buddha had kindled for the world.

The combination of the clergy and laity in the Buddhist church was even less close than the connection of the Brahmanic priesthood with the other orders. In their traditional position at the funeral feasts of the families the Brahmans retained the guidance of certain corporations. With the Buddhists the care of souls lay entirely in the hands of the wandering Bhikshus, the mendicant monks, unless indeed in a few cases laymen attached themselves of their own free will to some not too distant monastery. But the separation of the Bhikshus from the family and house, their exclusive devotion to teaching and religion, the constant mission and preaching which occupied them for two-thirds of the year, throughout the spring and the hot season, quickly showed itself more efficacious than the sacrificial service of the Brahmans, which was linked with house and home. These travelling monks, who could enter into closer relations with the people because they had no impurities to avoid, such as in many cases entirely excluded the Brahmans from the lower castes, caused their exhortations and counsel to be heard in every house; they were asked about thenames to be given to new-born children; they assisted at the ceremony of the cutting of the hair of boys when they reached the age of puberty, at marriages and burials, and undertook prayers for the happy regeneration of the dead. And not only were the Bhikshus nearer the people, and more easily brought into relations with them, but they obtained far greater hold on their conscience than the Brahmans. This was not merely due to the precepts of their practical morality, which included the whole life and activity of the believers, and of the application and observance of which they took account in the confessional—a duty devolving on the laity as well as the clergy—the doctrine of regeneration was developed more fully in Buddhism, and formed more distinctly the centre of the system than among the Brahmans.

We saw that it was the active force of merit or guilt in earlier existences which fixed the fate of the individual in the kind of regeneration, in the happiness or misfortune of his life. In the same way the good and evil of this life had its effects. "He who goes out of the world, him his deeds await"[707]—such is the formula of the Buddhists. The various divisions of hell, the distinctions of the castes, which with the Buddhists counted as gradations of rank among men (p. 362), the heavenly spirits and the ancient gods, which had been received into the Buddhist heaven, served to increase the graduated series of regenerations to a considerable degree. "He who has lived foolishly goes into hell after the dissolution of the body;"[708]he is born again as a creature of hell in a department of greater or less torment according to his guilt. The less guilty are born again as evil spirits. Higher in the scale stood regeneration as an animal; among animal regenerations theBuddhists counted birth as an ant, louse, bug, or worm the worst. Among mankind men were born again in a bad or good way, in a lower or higher caste, under easier or harder circumstances, according to their guilt or merit. Birth as a heavenly spirit counted higher than any human regeneration; higher still was birth as a god. But even when born again as a god, man was still under the dominion of desire; as we have seen, Indra only held the rank of a Çrotaapanna. From this stage it was possible to decline; it was by further conquest and liberation that a man must work his way upwards. Above the heaven of Indra and Mara, in the four high heavens, dwelt the spirits which had liberated themselves from desire and existence; in the lowest of these were the spirits who, though free from desire, are fettered by plurality,i. e.by ignorance; in the next, the heaven of clearer light, are those who, though free from desire and ignorance, are not so free that they cannot again sink under their dominion; the highest heaven but one receives the spirits who have no relapse to fear; and in the highest of all are the Arhats who have exhausted existence. As we see, the Buddhists avail themselves of the Brahmanic heaven and hell, and the intervals which the Brahmans place between regenerations in hell or in Indra's heaven, in order to construct out of them a more complete system. In this the process of the purification of the soul ascends from the lowest place in hell through the evil spirits, the creeping, flying, and four-footed animals, through men of all positions in life, and then through the heavenly spirits and deities to the highest heaven, till the point is reached at which all earlier guilt is exhausted, and the total of merit so extended that the original sin of the soul, desire and its possibility, is removed; and thus liberation fromexistence takes place, theEgois extinguished. It is an inconsistency, no doubt, that those who have annihilated themselves and the roots of their existence by attaining Nirvana, shall still have a kind of existence in the highest heaven; but by this means the system was made more complete and realistic.

And not merely this wide development of the system of regenerations, but the practical application of it must have given the Bhikshus greater power over the consciences and heart of the nation than that exercised by the Brahmans. Buddha had known his own earlier existences. The tradition of the Singhalese ascribes to him 550 earlier lives before he saw the light as the son of Çuddhodana. He had lived as a rat and a crow, as a frog and a hare, as a dog and a pig, twice as a fish, six times as a snipe, four times as a golden eagle, four times as a peacock and as a serpent, ten times as a goose, as a deer, and as a lion, six times as an elephant, four times as a horse and as a bull, eighteen times as an ape, four times as a slave, three times as a potter, thirteen times as a merchant, twenty-four times as a Brahman and as a prince, fifty-eight times as a king, twenty times as the god Indra, and four times as Mahabrahman. Buddha had not only known his own earlier existences (p. 345), but those of all other living creatures; and this supernatural knowledge, this divine omniscience was, as we have seen, ascribed to those who after him attained the rank of Arhats. Though it did not reside in the full extent in Anagamins, Sakridagamins, Çrotaapannas, and still less in all the Bhikshus, it was nevertheless found in an imperfect degree in all "who advanced on the way." The people believed that the Çramanas could not only foretell from the present conduct of a man his future lot, and his regenerations in hell, among animals ormen, but that they could also declare his future in this life from his previous existences. Hence the Bhikshus were masters not of the future only but also of the past of every man; and as they had his fate completely in view, the rules which they laid down from this point received an importance calculated to ensure their observance.[709]

It was no hindrance to morality that in this doctrine every man had his fate in his own hands at least so far that he could alleviate it for the future, and the practical results which the ethics of the Buddhists achieved on the basis of this imaginary background of regeneration are far from contemptible. The essential points in the Buddhist ethics, the moderate, passionless life, and patience and sympathy, have been dwelt upon (p. 355). It was not without value that the Buddhists taught, that no fire was like hatred and passion, and no stream like desire;[710]that the desires bring little pleasure and much pain; only he who controlled himself lived in happiness, and contentment is the best treasure.[711]He who merely saw the deficiencies of others, his offences would increase; and he who was always thinking: Such a man injured me, annoyed me, will never attain repose. Hard words were answered with hard words; therefore a man should bear slighting speeches patiently, as an elephant endures arrows in the battle, and lives without enmity among his enemies.[712]To tend fire for a hundred years, or offer sacrifice for a thousand,[713]was of no avail; neither the penance of the moon nor sacrifice changes anything in the evil act, even though it were offeredfor a year.[714]Those who lie and deny the acts they have done will go into hell.[715]The evil act pursues the doer; there is no place in the world in which to escape it; it destroys the doer unless it is conquered and covered by good deeds.[716]Duties come from the heart; if the act is good it leaves no remorse in the heart. A man should give alms though he has but little; the covetous will not come into the world of the gods. These earnest exhortations to acquire before all things the feeling which gives rise to good works, to extinguish offences by confession and good actions, to moderate greed and covetousness, to live contentedly and peaceably, to be gentle in our deeds, could not be without effect. This peaceableness the Buddhists showed in the tolerance they extended to those who were of a different faith than their own; and for the family the rules of affection impressed on children towards their parents, of chastity and forbearance impressed on husbands and wives, were wholesome and advantageous in their results.[717]The limitations set up by the arrangement of the castes, worship, and custom of the Brahmans began to waver; man was guided from the fortune of birth, the sanctification of works, to his inward effort, and led to the moral education of self. Disposition and personal merit obtained the first place in the community, and fixed a man's fortune in a future life. Thus the pride of higher birth as against the lower born has to give way; and hence slaves were treated with greater kindness. Fantastic as was the heaven and hell reconstructed by the Buddhists, marvellous as was the elevation of a man to be god, superstitious as was the worship of relics, exaggerated as was the conception of the way, the increasing supernatural power of him who was attaining liberation, and indubitable as was the tendency of Nirvana to end in the last instance in mere stolid indifference—the individual and morality were again restored by this doctrine and placed in their rights; society could again acquire free movement in personal intercourse and free choice of a vocation; all men were in reality equal, and could help each other as brothers.

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