RULES FOR PRONUNCIATION.
LECTURE I.Introductory. Buddhism in relation to Brāhmanism.
LECTURE II.The Buddha as a personal Teacher.
LECTURE III.The Law (Dharma) and Sacred Scriptures of Buddhism.
LECTURE IV.The Saṅgha or Buddhist Order of Monks.
LECTURE V.The Philosophical Doctrines of Buddhism.
LECTURE VI.The Morality of Buddhism and its chief aim—Arhatship or Nirvāṇa.
LECTURE VII.Changes in Buddhism and its disappearance from India.
LECTURE VIII.Rise of Theistic and Polytheistic Buddhism.
LECTURE IX.Theistic and Polytheistic Buddhism.
LECTURE X.Mystical Buddhism in its connexion with the Yoga philosophy.
LECTURE XI.Hierarchical Buddhism, especially as developed in Tibet and Mongolia.
LECTURE XII.Ceremonial and Ritualistic Buddhism.
LECTURE XIII.Festivals, Domestic Rites, and Formularies of Prayer.
LECTURE XIV.Sacred Places.
Sāketa.
LECTURE XV.Monasteries and Temples.
LECTURE XVI.Images and Idols.
LECTURE XVII.Sacred Objects.
LECTURE XVIII.Buddhism contrasted with Christianity.
POSTSCRIPT.
LECTURE I.Introductory. Buddhism in relation to Brāhmanism.
In
my recent work[3]
on Brāhmanism I have traced the progress of Indian religious thought
through three successive stages—called by me Vedism, Brāhmanism,
and Hindūism—the last including the three subdivisions of Ṡaivism,
Vaishṇavism, and Ṡāktism. Furthermore I have attempted to prove
that these systems are not really separated by sharp lines, but that
each almost imperceptibly shades off into the other.I
have striven also to show that a true Hindū of the orthodox school
is able quite conscientiously to accept all these developments of
religious belief. He holds that they have their authoritative
exponents in the successive bibles of the Hindū religion, namely,
(1) the four Vedas—Ṛig-veda, Yajur-veda, Sāma-veda,
Atharva-veda—and the Brāhmaṇas; (2) the Upanishads; (3) the
Law-books—especially that of Manu; (4) the Bhakti-ṡāstras,
including the Rāmāyaṇa, the Mahā-bhārata, the
Purāṇas—especially the Bhāgavata-purāṇa—and the
Bhagavad-gītā; (5) the Tantras.The
chief works under these five heads represent the principal periods of
religious development through which the Hindū mind has passed.Thus,
in the first place, the hymns of the Vedas and the ritualism of the
Brāhmaṇas represent physiolatry or the worship of the personified
forces of nature—a form of religion which ultimately became
saturated with sacrificial ideas and with ceremonialism and
asceticism. Secondly, the Upanishads represent the pantheistic
conceptions which terminated in philosophical Brāhmanism. Thirdly,
the Law-books represent caste-rules and domestic usages. Fourthly,
the Rāmāyaṇa, Mahā-bhārata, and Purāṇas represent the
principle of personal devotion to the personal gods, Ṡiva, Vishṇu,
and their manifestations; and fifthly, the Tantras represent the
perversion of the principle of love to polluting and degrading
practices disguised under the name of religious rites. Of these five
phases of the Hindū religion probably the first three only prevailed
when Buddhism arose; but I shall try to make clear hereafter that
Buddhism, as it developed, accommodated itself to the fourth and even
ultimately to the fifth phase, admitting the Hindū gods into its own
creed, while Hindūism also received ideas from Buddhism.At
any rate it is clear that the so-called orthodox Brāhman admits all
five series of works as progressive exponents of the Hindū
system—although he scarcely likes to confess openly to any adoption
of the fifth. Hence his opinions are of necessity Protean and
multiform.The
root ideas of his creed are of course Pantheistic, in the sense of
being grounded on the identification of the whole external
world—which he believes to be a mere illusory appearance—with one
eternal, impersonal, spiritual Essence; but his religion is capable
of presenting so many phases, according to the stand-point from which
it is viewed, that its pantheism appears to be continually sliding
into forms of monotheism and polytheism, and even into the lowest
types of animism and fetishism.We
must not, moreover, forget—as I have pointed out in my recent
work—that a large body of the Hindūs are unorthodox in respect of
their interpretation of the leading doctrine of true Brāhmanism.Such
unorthodox persons may be described as sectarians or dissenters. That
is to say, they dissent from the orthodox pantheistic doctrine that
all gods and men, all divine and human souls, and all material
appearances are mere illusory manifestations of one impersonal
spiritual Entity—called Ātman or Purusha or Brahman—and they
believe in one supreme personal god—either Ṡiva or Vishṇu or
Kṛishṇa or Rāma—who is not liable (as orthodox Brāhmans say
he is) to lose his personality by subjection to the universal law of
dissolution and re-absorption into the one eternal impersonal
Essence, but exists in a heaven of his own, to the bliss of which his
worshippers are admitted[4].And
it must be borne in mind that these sectarians are very far from
resting their belief on the Vedas, the Brāhmaṇas, and Upanishads.Their
creed is based entirely on the Bhakti-ṡāstras—that is, on the
Rāmāyaṇa, Mahā-bhārata, and Purāṇas (especially on the
Bhāgavata-purāṇa) and the Bhagavad-gītā, to the exclusion of
the other scriptures of Hindūism.Then
again it must always be borne in mind that the terms ‘orthodox’
and ‘unorthodox’ have really little or no application to the
great majority of the inhabitants of India, who in truth are wholly
innocent of any theological opinions at all, and are far too
apathetic to trouble themselves about any form of religion other than
that which has belonged for centuries to their families and to the
localities in which they live, and far too ignorant and dull of
intellect to be capable of inquiring for themselves whether that
religion is likely to be true or false.To
classify the masses under any one definite denomination, either as
Pantheists or Polytheists or Monotheists, or as simple
idol-worshippers, or fetish-worshippers, would be wholly misleading.Their
faculties are so enfeebled by the debilitating effect of early
marriages, and so deadened by the drudgery of daily toil and the dire
necessity of keeping body and soul together, that they can scarcely
be said to be capable of holding any definite theological creed at
all.It
would be nearer the truth to say that the religion of an ordinary
Hindū consists in observing caste-customs, local usages, and family
observances, in holding what may be called the Folk-legends of his
neighbourhood, in propitiating evil spirits and in worshipping the
image and superscription of the Empress of India, impressed on the
current coin of the country.As
a rule such a man gives himself no uneasiness whatever about his
prospects of happiness or misery in the world to come.He
is quite content to commit his interests in a future life to the care
and custody of the Brāhmans; while, if he thinks about the nature of
a Supreme Being at all, he assumes His benevolence and expects His
good will as a matter of course.What
he really troubles himself about is the necessity for securing the
present favour of the inhabitants of the unseen world, supposed to
occupy the atmosphere everywhere around him—of the good and evil
demons and spirits of the soil—generally represented by rude and
grotesque images, and artfully identified by village priests and
Brāhmans with alleged forms of Vishṇu or Ṡiva.It
follows that the mind of the ordinary Hindū, though indifferent
about all definite dogmatic religion, is steeped in the kind of
religiousness best expressed by the word δεισιδαιμονία.
He lives in perpetual dread of invisible beings who are thought to be
exerting their mysterious influences above, below, around, in the
immediate vicinity of his own dwelling. The very winds which sweep
across his homestead are believed to swarm with spirits, who unless
duly propitiated will blight the produce of his fields, or bring down
upon him injury, disease, and death.Then
again, besides the orthodox and besides the sectarian Hindū and
besides the great demon-worshipping, idolatrous, and superstitious
majority, another class of the Indian community must also be taken
into account—the class of rationalists and free-thinkers. These
have been common in India from the earliest times.First
came a class of conscientious doubters, who strove to solve the
riddle of life by microscopic self-introspection and sincere
searchings after truth, and these did their best not to break with
the Veda, Vedic revelation, and the authority of the Brāhmans.Earnestly
and reverently such men applied themselves to the difficult task of
trying to answer such questions as—What am I? Whence have I come?
Whither am I going? How can I explain my consciousness of personal
existence? Have I an immaterial spirit distinct from, and independent
of, my material frame? Of what nature is the world in which I find
myself? Did an all-powerful Being create it out of nothing? or did it
evolve itself out of an eternal protoplasmic germ? or did it come
together by the combination of eternal atoms? or is it a mere
illusion? If created by a Being of infinite wisdom and love, how can
I account for the co-existence in it of good and evil, happiness and
misery? Has the Creator form, or is He formless? Has He qualities and
affections, or has He none?It
was in the effort to solve such insoluble enigmas by their own
unaided intuitions and in a manner not too subversive of traditional
dogma, that the systems of philosophy founded on the Upanishads
originated.These
have been described in my book on Brāhmanism. They were gradually
excogitated by independent thinkers, who claimed to be Brāhmans or
twice-born men, and nominally accepted the Veda with its Brāhmaṇas,
while they covertly attacked it, or at least abstained from
denouncing it as absolutely untrue. Such men tacitly submitted to
sacerdotal authority, though they really propounded a way of
salvation based entirely on self-evolved knowledge, and quite
independent of all Vedic sacrifices and sacrificing priests. The most
noteworthy and orthodox of the systems propounded by them was the
Vedānta[5],
which, as I have shown, was simply spiritual Pantheism, and asserted
that the one Spirit was the only real Being in the Universe.But
the origin of the more unorthodox systems, which denied the authority
of both the Veda and the Brāhmans, must also be traced to the
influence of the Upanishads. For it is undeniable that a spirit of
atheistic infidelity grew up in India almost
pari passu with
dogmatic Brāhmanism, and has always been prevalent there. In fact it
would be easy to show that periodical outbursts of unbelief and
agnosticism have taken place in India very much in the same way as in
Europe; but the tendency to run into extremes has always been greater
on Indian soil and beneath the glow and glamour of Eastern skies. On
the one side, a far more unthinking respect than in any other country
has been paid to the authority of priests, who have declared their
supernatural revelation to be the very breath of God, sacrificial
rites to be the sole instruments of salvation, and themselves the
sole mediators between earth and heaven; on the other, far greater
latitude than in any other country has been conceded to infidels and
atheists who have poured contempt on all sacerdotal dogmas, have
denied all supernatural revelation, have made no secret of their
disbelief in a personal God, and have maintained that even if a
Supreme Being and a spiritual world exist they are unknowable by man
and beyond the cognizance of his faculties.We
learn indeed from certain passages of the Veda (Ṛig-veda II. 12. 5;
VIII. 100. 3, 4) that even in the Vedic age some denied the existence
of the god Indra.We
know, too, that Yāska, the well-known Vedic commentator, who is
believed to have lived before the grammarian Pāṇini (probably in
the fourth century B.C.), found himself obliged to refute the
sceptical arguments of Kautsa and others who pronounced the Veda a
tissue of nonsense (Nirukta I. 15, 16).Again,
Manu—whose law-book, according to Dr. Bühler, was composed between
the second century B.C. and the second A.D., and, in my opinion,
possibly earlier—has the following remark directed against
sceptics:—
‘The
twice-born man who depending on rationalistic treatises (hetu-ṡāstra)
contemns the two roots of law (ṡruti and smṛiti), is to be
excommunicated (vahish-kāryaḥ) by the righteous as an atheist
(nāstika) and despiser of the Veda’ (Manu II. 11).Furthermore,
the Mahā-bhārata, a poem which contains many ancient legends quite
as ancient as those of early Buddhism, relates (Ṡānti-parvan 1410,
etc.) the story of the infidel Ćārvāka, who in the disguise of a
mendicant Brāhman uttered sentiments dangerously heretical.This
Ćārvāka was the supposed founder of a materialistic school of
thought called Lokāyata. Rejecting all instruments of knowledge
(pramāṇa) except perception by the senses (pratyaksha), he
affirmed that the soul did not exist separately from the body, and
that all the phenomena of the world were spontaneously produced.The
following abbreviation of a passage in the Sarva-darṡana-saṅgraha[6]
will give some idea of this school’s infidel doctrines, the very
name of which (Lokāyata, ‘generally current in the world’) is an
evidence of the popularity they enjoyed:—No
heaven exists, no final liberation,No
soul, no other world, no rites of caste,No
recompense for acts; let life be spent,In
merriment[7];
let a man borrow moneyAnd
live at ease and feast on melted butter.How
can this body when reduced to dustRevisit
earth? and if a ghost can passTo
other worlds, why does not strong affectionFor
those he leaves behind attract him back?Oblations,
funeral rites, and sacrificesAre
a mere means of livelihood devisedBy
sacerdotal cunning—nothing more.The
three composers of the triple VedaWere
rogues, or evil spirits, or buffoons.The
recitation of mysterious wordsAnd
jabber of the priests is simple nonsense.Then
again, the continued prevalence of sceptical opinions may be shown by
extracts from other portions of the later literature. For example, in
the Rāmāyaṇa (II. 108) the infidel Brāhman Jāvāli gives
utterance to similar sentiments thus:—
‘The
books composed by theologians, in which men are enjoined to worship,
give gifts, offer sacrifice, practise austerities, abandon the world,
are mere artifices to draw forth donations. Make up your mind that no
one exists hereafter. Have regard only to what is visible and
perceptible by the senses (pratyaksham). Cast everything beyond this
behind your back.’Furthermore,
in a parallel passage from the Vishṇu-purāṇa, it is declared
that the great Deceiver, practising illusion, beguiled other
demon-like beings to embrace many sorts of heresy; some reviling the
Vedas, others the gods, others the ceremonial of sacrifice, and
others the Brāhmans[8].
These were called Nāstikas.Such
extracts prove that the worst forms of scepticism prevailed in both
early and mediæval times. But all phases and varieties of heretical
thought were not equally offensive, and it would certainly be unfair
and misleading to place Buddhism and Jainism on the same level with
the reckless Pyrrhonism of the Ćārvākas who had no code of
morality.And
indeed it was for this very reason, that when Buddhism and Jainism
began to make their presence felt in the fifth century B.C. they
became far more formidable than any other phase of scepticism.Whether,
however, Buddhism or Jainism be entitled to chronological precedence
is still an open question, about which opinions may reasonably
differ. Some hold that they were always quite distinct from each
other, and were the products of inquiry originated by two independent
thinkers, and many scholars now consider that the weight of evidence
is in favour of Jainism being a little antecedent to Buddhism.
Possibly the two systems resulted from the splitting up of one sect
into two divisions, just as the two Brāhma-Samājes of Calcutta are
the product of the Ādi-Samāj.One
point at least is certain, that notwithstanding much community of
thought between Buddhism and Jainism, Buddhism ended in gaining for
itself by far the more important position of the two. For although
Jainism has shown more tenacity of life in India, and has lingered on
there till the present day, it never gained any hold on the masses of
the population, whereas its rival, Buddhism, radiating from a central
point in Hindūstān, spread itself first over the whole of India and
then over nearly all Eastern Asia, and has played—as even its most
hostile critics must admit—an important rôle in the history of the
world.To
Buddhism, therefore, we have now to direct our attention, and at the
very threshold of our inquiries we are confronted with this
difficulty, that its great popularity and its wide diffusion among
many peoples have made it most difficult to answer the question:—What
is Buddhism? If it were possible to reply to the inquiry in one word,
one might perhaps say that true Buddhism, theoretically stated, is
Humanitarianism, meaning by that term something very like the gospel
of humanity preached by the Positivist, whose doctrine is the
elevation of man through man—that is, through human intellect,
human intuitions, human teaching, human experiences, and accumulated
human efforts—to the highest ideal of perfection; and yet something
very different. For the Buddhist ideal differs toto cælo from the
Positivist’s, and consists in the renunciation of all personal
existence, even to the extinction of humanity itself. The Buddhist’s
perfection is destruction (p.
123).But
such a reply would have only reference to the truest and earliest
form of Buddhism. It would cover a very minute portion of the vast
area of a subject which, as it grew, became multiform, multilateral,
and almost infinite in its ramifications.Innumerable
writers, indeed, during the past thirty years have been attracted by
the great interest of the inquiry, and have vied with each other in
their efforts to give a satisfactory account of a system whose
developments have varied in every country; while lecturers,
essayists, and the authors of magazine articles are constantly adding
their contributions to the mass of floating ideas, and too often
propagate crude and erroneous conceptions on a subject, the depths of
which they have never thoroughly fathomed.It
is to be hoped that the annexation of Upper Burma, while giving an
impulse to Pāli and Buddhistic studies, may help to throw light on
some obscure points.Certainly
Buddhism continues to be little understood by the great majority of
educated persons. Nor can any misunderstanding on such a subject be
matter of surprise, when writers of high character colour their
descriptions of it from an examination of one part of the system
only, without due regard to its other phases, and in this way either
exalt it to a far higher position than it deserves, or depreciate it
unfairly.And
Buddhism is a subject which must continue for a long time to present
the student with a boundless field of investigation. No one can bring
a proper capacity of mind to such a study, much less write about it
clearly, who has not studied the original documents both in Pāli and
in Sanskṛit, after a long course of preparation in the study of
Vedism, Brāhmanism, and Hindūism. It is a system which resembles
these other forms of Indian religious thought in the great variety of
its aspects. Starting from a very simple proposition, which can only
be described as an exaggerated truism—the truism, I mean, that all
life involves sorrow, and that all sorrow results from indulging
desires which ought to be suppressed—it has branched out into a
vast number of complicated and self-contradictory propositions and
allegations. Its teaching has become both negative and positive,
agnostic and gnostic. It passes from apparent atheism and materialism
to theism, polytheism, and spiritualism. It is under one aspect mere
pessimism; under another pure philanthropy; under another monastic
communism; under another high morality; under another a variety of
materialistic philosophy; under another simple demonology; under
another a mere farrago of superstitions, including necromancy,
witchcraft, idolatry, and fetishism. In some form or other it may be
held with almost any religion, and embraces something from almost
every creed. It is founded on philosophical Brāhmanism, has much in
common with Sāṅkhya and Vedānta ideas, is closely connected with
Vaishṇavism, and in some of its phases with both Ṡaivism and
Ṡāktism, and yet is, properly speaking, opposed to every one of
these systems. It has in its moral code much common ground with
Christianity, and in its mediæval and modern developments presents
examples of forms, ceremonies, litanies, monastic communities, and
hierarchical organizations, scarcely distinguishable from those of
Roman Catholicism; and yet a greater contrast than that presented by
the essential doctrines of Buddhism and of Christianity can scarcely
be imagined. Strangest of all, Buddhism—with no God higher than the
perfect man—has no pretensions to be called a religion in the true
sense of the word, and is wholly destitute of the vivifying forces
necessary to give vitality to the dry bones of its own morality; and
yet it once existed as a real power over at least a third of the
human race, and even at the present moment claims a vast number of
adherents in Asia, and not a few sympathisers in Europe and America.Evidently,
then, any Orientalist who undertakes to give a clear and concise
account of Buddhism in the compass of a few lectures, must find
himself engaged in a very venturesome and difficult task.Happily
we are gaining acquaintance with the Southern or purest form of
Buddhism through editions and translations of the texts of the Pāli
Canon by Fausböll, Childers, Rhys Davids, Oldenberg, Morris,
Trenckner, L. Feer, etc. We owe much, too, to the works of Turnour,
Hardy, Clough, Gogerly, D’Alwis, Burnouf, Lassen, Spiegel, Weber,
Koeppen, Minayeff, Bigandet, Max Müller, Kern, Ed. Müller, E. Kuhn,
Pischel, and others. These enable us to form a fair estimate of what
Buddhism was in its early days.But
the case is different when we turn to the Northern Buddhist
Scriptures, written generally in tolerably correct Sanskṛit (with
Tibetan translations). These continue to be little studied,
notwithstanding the materials placed at our command and the good work
done, first by the distinguished ‘founder of the study of
Buddhism,’ Brian Hodgson, and by Burnouf, Wassiljew, Cowell,
Senart, Kern, Beal, Foucaux, and others. In fact, the moment we pass
from the Buddhism of India, Ceylon, Burma, and Siam, to that of
Nepāl, Kashmīr, Tibet, Bhutān, Sikkim, China, Mongolia, Manchuria,
Corea, and Japan, we seem to have entered a labyrinth, the clue of
which is continually slipping from our hands.Nor
is it possible to classify the varying and often conflicting systems
in these latter countries, under the one general title of Northern
Buddhism.For
indeed the changes which religious systems undergo, even in countries
adjacent to each other, not unfrequently amount to an entire reversal
of their whole character. We may illustrate these changes by the
variations of words derived from one and the same root in
neighbouring countries. Take, for example, the German words selig,
‘blessed,’ and knabe, ‘a boy,’ which in England are
represented by ‘silly’ and ‘knave.’A
similar law appears to hold good in the case of religious ideas.
Their whole character seems to change by a change of latitude and
longitude. This is even true of Christianity. Can it be maintained,
for instance, that the Christianity of modern Greece and Rome has
much in common with early Christianity, and would any casual observer
believe that the inhabitants of St. Petersburg, Berlin, Edinburgh,
London, and Paris were followers of the same religion?It
cannot therefore surprise us if Buddhism developed into apparently
contradictory systems in different countries and under varying
climatic conditions. In no two countries did it preserve the same
features. Even in India, the land of its birth, it had greatly
changed during the first ten centuries of its prevalence. So much so
that had it been possible for its founder to reappear upon earth in
the fifth century after Christ, he would have failed to recognize his
own child, and would have found that his own teaching had not escaped
the operation of a law which experience proves to be universal and
inevitable.It
is easy, therefore, to understand how difficult it will be to give
any semblance of unity to my present subject. It will be impossible
for me to treat as a consistent whole a system having a perpetually
varying front and no settled form. I can only give a series of
somewhat rough, though, I hope, trustworthy outlines, as far as
possible in methodical succession.And
in the carrying out of such a design, the three objects that will at
first naturally present themselves for delineation will be three
which constitute the well-known triad of early Buddhism—that is to
say, the Buddha himself, His Law and His Order of Monks.Hence
my aim will be, in the first place, to give such a historical account
of the Buddha and of his earliest teaching as may be gathered from
his legendary biography, and from the most trustworthy parts of the
Buddhist canonical scriptures. Secondly, I shall give a brief
description of the origin and composition of those scriptures as
containing the Buddha’s ‘Law’ (Dharma); and thirdly, I shall
endeavour to explain the early constitution of the Buddha’s Order
of Monks (Saṅgha). After treating of these three preliminary
topics, I shall next describe the Law itself; that is, the
philosophical doctrines of Buddhism, its code of morality and theory
of perfection, terminating in Nirvāṇa. Lastly, I shall attempt to
trace out the confused outlines of theistic, mystical, and
hierarchical Buddhism, as developed in Northern countries, adding an
account of sacred objects and places, and contrasting the chief
doctrines of Christianity. In regard to the Buddhism of Tibet, I
shall chiefly base my explanations on Koeppen’s great work—a work
never translated into English and now out of print—as well as on my
own researches during my travels through the parts of India bordering
on that country.And
here I ought to state that my explanations and descriptions will, I
fear, be wholly deficient in picturesqueness. My simple aim will be
to convey clear and correct information in unembellished language;
and in doing this, I shall often be compelled to expose myself to the
reproach contained in the expressions,
ćarvita-ćarvaṇam,
‘chewing the chewed,’ and
pishṭa-peshaṇam,
‘grinding the ground.’ I shall constantly be obliged to tread on
ground already well trodden.To
begin, then, with the Buddha himself.