Introductory. Buddhism in relation to Brāhmanism.
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In my recent work 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.
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The chief works under these five heads represent the principal periods of religious development through which the Hindū mind has passed.
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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 3 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 4 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 5 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. 6 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, 7 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, 8 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 9 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 money
And live at ease and feast on melted butter.
How can this body when reduced to dust
Revisit earth? and if a ghost can pass
To other worlds, why does not strong affection
For those he leaves behind attract him back?
Oblations, funeral rites, and sacrifices
Are a mere means of livelihood devised
By sacerdotal cunning—nothing more.
The three composers of the triple Veda
Were rogues, or evil spirits, or buffoons.
The recitation of mysterious words
And jabber of the priests is simple nonsense.
Then again, the continued prevalence of sceptical opinions may be shown by extracts from other portions 10 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, 11 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 12 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 13 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, 14 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, 15 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 16 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 17 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.
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