Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and Topographical with Notices of Its Natural History Part 94

The most popular portion of the Pittakas are the legendary tales, which profess to have been related by GOTAMO BUDDHA himself, in his _Sutras_ or discourses, and were collected under the t.i.tle of _Pansiya-panas-jataka-pota_, or the "Five hundred and fifty Births." The series is designed to commemorate events in his own career, during the states of existence through which he pa.s.sed preparatory to his reception of the Buddhahood. In structure and contents it bears a striking resemblance to the Jewish Talmud, combining, with aphorisms and maxims, philological explanations of the divine text, stories ill.u.s.trative of its doctrines, into which not only saints and heroes, but also animals and inanimate objects, are introduced, and not a few of the fables that pa.s.s as aesop's are to be found in the Jatakas of Ceylon. There are translations into Singhalese of the greater part of its contents, and so attractive are its narratives that the natives will listen the livelong night to recitations from its pages.[1]

[Footnote 1: HARDY'S _Buddhism_, ch. v. p. 98.]

The other Pali works[1] embrace subjects in connection with cosmography and the Buddhist theories of the universe; the distinctions of caste, topographical narratives, a few disquisitions on medicine, and books which, like the Milindaprasna, or "_Questions of Milinda_,"[2] without being canonical give an orthodox summary of the national religion.

[Footnote 1: A lucid account of the princ.i.p.al Pali works in connection with religion will be found in the Appendix to HARDY'S _Manual of Buddhism_, p. 509, and in HARDY'S _Eastern Manichian_, pp. 27, 315.]

[Footnote 2: The t.i.tle of this popular work has given rise to a very curious conjecture of Turnour's. It professes to contain the dialectic controversies of Nagannoa, through whose instrumentality Buddhism was introduced into Kashmir, with Milinda, who was the Raja of an adjoining country, called Sagala, near the junction of the rivers Ravi and Chenab.

These dicussions must have taken place about the year B.C. 44. Now Sagala is identical with Sangala, the people of which, according to Arrian, made a bold resistance to the advance of Alexander the Great beyond the Hydraotes; and it has been supposed by Sir Alexander Burnes to have occupied the site of Lah.o.r.e. Its sovereign, therefore, who embraced the doctrines of Buddha, was probably an Asiatic Greek, and TURNOUR suggests that the "Yons" or "Yonicas" who, according to the Milinda-prasna, formed his body-guard, were either Greeks or the descendants of Greeks from Ionia.--_Journ. Asiat. Soc. Beng._ v. 523; HARDY'S _Manual of Buddhism_, p. 512; REINAUD, _Memoire sur l'Inde_, p.

65.]

But the _chefs d'oeuvre_ of Pali literature are their chronicles, the _Dipawanso, Mahawanso,_ and others; of these the most important by far is the _Mahawanso_ and its tikas or commentaries. It stands at the head of the historical literature of the East; unrivalled by anything extant in Hindustan[1], the wildness of whose chronology it controls; and unsurpa.s.sed, if it be equalled, by the native annals of China or Kashmir. So conscious were the Singhalese kings of the value of this national monument, that its continuation was an object of royal solicitude to successive dynasties[2] from the third to the thirteenth century; and even in the decay of the monarchy the compilation was performed in A.D. 1696, by an unknown hand, and, finally, brought down to A.D. 1758 by order of one of the last of the Kandyan kings.

[Footnote 1: La.s.sEN, _Indis. Alt_., vol. ii. p. 13-15.]

[Footnote 2: COSMAS INDICO-PLEUSTES, EDRISI, ABOU-ZEYD, and almost all the travellers and geographers of the middle ages, have related, as a trait of the native rulers of Ceylon, their employment of annalists to record the history of the kingdom.--EDRISI, _Clim._ i. sec. 8, p. 3.]

Of the chronicles thus carefully constructed, which exhibit in their marvellously preserved leaves the study and elaboration of upwards of twelve hundred years, PRINSEP, supreme as an authority, declared that they served to "clear away the chief of difficulties in Indian genealogies, which seem to have been intentionally falsified by the Brahmans and thrown back into remote antiquity, in order to confound their Buddhist rivals."[1]

[Footnote 1: PRINSEP, in a private letter to Turnour, in 1836, speaking of the singular value of the _Mahawanso_ in collating the chronology of India, says, "had your Buddhist chronicles been accessible to Sir W.

Jones and Wilford, they would have been greedily seized to correct anomalies at every step."]

But they display in their mysterious rhymes few facts or revelations to repay the ordinary reader for the labour of their perusal. Written exclusively by the Buddhist priesthood, they present the meagre characteristics of the soulless system which it is their purpose to extol. No occurrence finds a record in their pages which does not tend to exalt the genius of Buddhism or commemorate the acts of its patrons: the reigns of the monarchs who erected temples for its wors.h.i.+p, or consecrated shrines for its relics, are traced with tiresome precision; even where their accession was achieved by usurpation and murder, their lives are extolled for piety, provided they were characterised by liberality to the church; whilst those alone are stigmatised as impious and consigned to long continued torments, whose reigns are undistinguished by acts conducive to the exaltation of the national wors.h.i.+p.[1]

[Footnote 1: Asoca, "who put to death one hundred brothers," to secure the throne to himself, is described in the _Mahawanso_, ch. v. p. 21, as a prince "of piety and supernatural wisdom." Even Malabar infidels, who a.s.sa.s.sinated the Buddhist kings, are extolled as "righteous sovereigns"

(_Mahawanso_, ch. xxi. p. 127); but a Buddhist king who caused a priest to be put to death who was believed to be guilty of a serious crime, is consigned by the _Rajavali_ to a h.e.l.l with a copper roof "so hot that the waters of the sea are dried as they roil above it."--_Rajavali_, p.

192.]

The invasions which disturbed the tranquillity of the throne, and the schisms which rent the unity of the church, are described with painful elaboration; but we search in vain for any instructive notices of the people or of their pursuits, for any details of their social condition or ill.u.s.tration of their intellectual progress. Whilst the commerce of all nations was sweeping along the sh.o.r.es of Ceylon, and the s.h.i.+ps of China and Arabia were making its ports their emporiums; the national chronicles, whose compilation was an object of solicitude to successive dynasties, are silent regarding these adventurous expeditions; and utterly indifferent to all that did not affect the progress of Buddhism or minister to the interests of the priesthood.[1]

[Footnote 1: It has been surmised that in the intercourse which subsisted between India and the western world by way of Alexandria and Persia, and which did not decline till the sixth or seventh century, the influences of Nestorian Christianity may have left their impress on the genius and literature of Buddhism; and in the legends of its historians one is struck by the many pa.s.sages that suggest a similarity to events recorded in the Jewish Scriptures. The coincidence may also be accounted for by the close proximity of a Jewish race in Afghanistan (the descendants of those carried away into captivity by Shalmanasar) which eventually extended itself along the west coast of India, and became the progenitors of the Hebrew colony that still inhabits the south of the Dekkan near Cochin, and are known as the "Black Jews of Malabar." The influence of this immigration is perceptible in the sacred books, both of the Brahmans and Buddhists; the laws of Menu present some striking resemblances to the law of Moses, and it was probably from a knowledge of the contents of the Hebrew rolls still possessed by this remnant of the dispersion that the Buddhists borrowed the numerous incidents which we find reproduced in the historical books of Ceylon. Thus the aborigines, when subdued by their Bengal invaders, were forced, like the Israelites, by their masters "to make bricks" for the construction of their stupendous edifices (_Mahawanso_, ch. xxviii.). On the occasion of building the great dagoba, the Ruanwelle, at Anaraj.a.poora, B.C. 161, the materials were all prepared at a distance, and brought ready to be deposited in their places (_Mahawanso_, xxvii.); as on the occasion of building the first temple at Jerusalem, "the stone was made ready before it was brought, so that there was neither hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of iron heard whilst it was building." The parting of the Red Sea to permit the march of the fugitive Hebrews has its counterpart in the exploit of the King Gaja Bahu, A.D. 109, who, when marching his army to the coast of India, in order to bring back the Singhalese from captivity in Sollee, "smote the waters of the sea till they parted, so that he and his army marched through without wetting the soles of their feet."--_Rajaratnacari_, p. 59. King Maha Sen (A.D. 275), seeking a relic, had the mantle of Buddha lowered down from heaven: and Buddha had, previously, in designating Kasyapa as his successor, transmitted to him his robe as Elijah let fall his mantle upon Elisha. (_Rajavali_, p.

238; HARDY'S _Oriental Monachism_, p. 119.) There is a resemblance too between the apotheosis of Dutugaimunu and the translation of Elijah when "in a chariot and horses of fire he went up into heaven" (2 Kings, ii.

11);--according to the _Mahawanso_, ch. xxii p. 199, when the Singhalese king was dying, a chariot was seen descending from the sky and his disembodied spirit "manifested itself standing in the car in which he drove thrice round the great shrine, and then bowing down to the attendant priesthood, he departed for tusita" (the Buddhists' heaven).

The ceremonial and dogmatic coincidences are equally remarkable;--constant allusion is made to the practice of the kings to "wash the feet of the priests and anoint them with oil."--_Mahawanso_; ch. xxv.--x.x.x. In conformity with the denunciation that the sins of the fathers were to be visited on the children, the Jews inquired whether a "man's parents did commit sin that he was born blind?" (John, ix. 3) and in like manner, in the _Rajavali_, "the perjury of Wijayo (who had repudiated his wife after swearing fidelity to her) was visited on the person of the King Panduwaasa," his nephew, who was afflicted with insanity in consequence _(Rajavali_, pp. 174-178). The account in the _Rajaratnacari_ of King Batiya Tissa (B.C. 20), who was enabled to enter the Ruanwelle dagoba by the secret pa.s.sage known only to the priests, and to discover their wealth and treasures deposited within, has a close resemblance to the descent of Daniel and King Astyages into the temple of Bel, by the privy entrance under the table, whereby the priests entered and consumed the offerings made to the idol (Bel and the Dragon, Apocryp. ch. i.-xiii.; _Rajaratnacari_, p. 45). The inextinguishable fire which was for ever burning on the altar of G.o.d (Leviticus, ch. vi.

13) resembles the lamps which burned for 5000 years continually in honour of Buddha (_Mahawanso_, ch. lx.x.xi.; _Rajaratnacari_, p. 49); and these again had their imitators in the lamp of Minerva, which was never permitted to go out in the temple at Athens, and in the [Greek: luchnon asbeston], which was for ever burning in the temple of Ammon. The miracle of feeding the mult.i.tude by our Saviour upon a few loaves and fishes, is repeated in the _Mahawanso_, where a divinely endowed princess fed Pandukabhaya, B.C. 437, and five hundred of his followers with the repast which she was taking to her father and his reapers, the refreshment being "scarcely diminished in quant.i.ty as if one person only had eaten therefrom."--_Mahawanso_, ch. x. p. 62. The preparation of the high road for the procession of the sacred bo-tree after its landing (_Mahawanso_, ch. xix. p. 116), and the order to clear a road through the wilderness for the march of the king at the inauguration of Buddhism, recall the words of the prophet, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight a highway in the desert." (Isaiah, xl. 3.) And we are reminded of the prophecy of Isaiah as to the kingdom of peace, in which "the leopard shall lie down with the kid and the calf with the lion, and a young child shall lead them," by the Singhalese historians, in describing the religious repose of the kingdom of Asoca under the influence of the religion of Buddha, where "the elk and the wild hog were the guardians of the gardens and fields, and the tiger led forth the cattle to graze and reconducted them in safety to their pens."--_Mahawanso_, ch. v. p. 22. The narrative of the "judgment of Solomon," in the matter of the contested child (1 Kings, ch. iii.), has its parallel in a story in every respect similar in the Pansyiapanas-jataka.--ROBERT'S _Orient. Ill.u.s.tr_. p. 101.]

II. SANSKRIT.--In Sanskrit or translations from it, the Singhalese have preserved their princ.i.p.al treatises on physical science, cosmography, materia medica, and surgery. From it, too, they have borrowed the limited knowledge of astronomy, possessed by the individuals who combined with astrology and the casting of nativities, the practice of palmistry and the interpretation of dreams. In Sanskrit, they have treatises on music and painting, on versification and philology; and their translations include a Singhalese version of those portions of the _Ramayana_, which commemorate the conquest of Lanka.

III. ELU AND SINGHALESE.--There is no more striking evidence of the intellectual inferiority of the modern, as compared with the ancient inhabitants of Ceylon, than is afforded by the popular literature of the latter, and the contrast it presents to the works of former ages.

Descending from the gravity of religious disquisition and the dignity of history and science, the authors of later times have been content to limit their efforts to works of fiction and amus.e.m.e.nt, and to ballads and doggerel descriptions of places or pa.s.sing events.

But, to the credit of the Singhalese, it must be said, that in their compositions, however satirical or familiar they may be, their verses are entirely free from the licentiousness which disfigures similar productions in India; and that if deficient in imagination and grace, they are equally exempt from grossness and indelicacy.

The Singhalese language is so flexible that it admits of every description of rhythm; of this the versifiers have availed themselves to exhibit every variety of stanza and measure, and every native, male or female, can recite numbers of their favourite ballads. Their graver productions consist of poems in honour, not of Buddha alone, but of deities taken from the Hindu Pantheon,--Patine, Siva, and Ganesa, panegyrics upon almsgiving, and couplets embodying aphorisms and morals.

A considerable number of the Sutras or Discourses of Buddha have been translated into the vernacular from Pali, but the most popular of all are the _jatakas_, the Singhalese versions of which are so extended, that one copy alone fills 2000 olas or palm leaves, each twenty-nine inches in length and containing nine lines in a page.

The other works in Singhalese are on subjects connected with history, such as the _Rajavali_ and _Rajaratnacai_, on grammar and lexicography, on medicine, topography, and other a.n.a.logous subjects. But in all their productions, though invested with the trappings of verse, there alike is an avoidance of what is practical and true, and an absence of all that is inventive and poetic. They contain nothing that appeals to the heart or the affections, and their efforts of imagination aspire not to please or to elevate, but to astonish and bewilder by exaggeration and fable.

Their poverty of resources leads to endless repet.i.tious of the same epithets and incidents; books are multiplied at the present day chiefly by extracts from works of established popularity, and the number of qualified writers is becoming annually less from the altered circ.u.mstances of the island and the decline of those inst.i.tutions and prospects which formerly stimulated the ambition of the Buddhist priesthood, and inspired a love of study and learning.

CHAP. XI.

BUDDHISM AND DEMON-WORs.h.i.+P.[1]

It is difficult to attempt any condensed, and at the same time perspicuous, sketch of the national religion of Ceylon--a difficulty which arises not merely from the voluminous obscurity of its sacred history and records; but still more from confusion in the variety of forms under which Buddhism exhibits itself in various localities, and the divergences of opinion which prevail as to its tenets and belief.

The antiquity of its wors.h.i.+p is so extreme, that doubts still hang over its origin and its chronological relations to the religion of Brahma.

Whether it took its rise in Hindustan, or in countries farther to the West, and whether Buddhism was the original doctrine of which Brahmanism became a corruption, or Brahmanism the original and Buddhism an effort to restore it to its pristine purity[2],--all these are questions which have yet to be adjusted by the results of Oriental research.[3] It is, however, established by a concurrence of historical proofs, that many centuries before the era of Christianity the doctrines of Buddha were enthusiastically cultivated in Baha, the _Magadha_, or country of the Magas, whose modern name is identified with the _Wiharas_ or monasteries of Buddhism. Thence its teachers diffused themselves extensively throughout India and the countries to the eastward;--upwards of two thousand years ago it became the national religion of Ceylon and the Indian Archipelago; and its tenets have been adopted throughout the vast regions which extend from Siberia to Siam, and from the Bay of Bengal to the western sh.o.r.es of the Pacific.[4]

[Footnote 1: The details of the following chapter have been princ.i.p.ally taken from SIR J. EMERSON TENNENT'S _Christianity in Ceylon_, ch. v.]

[Footnote 2: Those early writers on the religions of India who drew their information exclusively from Brahmanical sources, incline to favour the pretensions of that system as the most ancient of the two.

Klaproth, a profound authority, was of this opinion; but in later times the translations of the Pali records and other sacred volumes of Buddhism in Western India, Ceylon, and Nepal, have inclined the preponderance of opinion, if not in favour of the superior antiquity of Buddhism, at least in support of its contemporaneous development. A summary of the arguments in favour of the superior antiquity of Buddhism will be found in the "_Notes_," &c., by Colonel SYKES, in the 12th volume of the _Asiatic Journal_--and in the _Essai sur l'Origine des Princ.i.p.aux Peuples Anciens_, par F.L.M. MAUPIED, chap. viii. The arguments on the side of those who look on Brahmanism as the original, are given by MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE in his _History of India_, vol. i.

b. ii. c. 4. An able disquisition will be found in MAX MuLLER's _History of Sanskrit Literature_, pp. 33, 260, &c. Mr. GOGERLY, the most accomplished student of Buddhism in Ceylon, says its sacred books expressly demonstrate that its doctrines had been preached by the twenty-four Buddhas who had lived prior to Gotama, in periods incredibly remote; but that they had entirely disappeared at the time of Gotama's birth, so that he re-discovered the whole, and revived an extinguished or nearly extinct school of philosophy.--_Notes on Buddhism_ by the Rev.

Mr. GOGERLY, Appendix to LEE'S Translation of Ribeyro, p. 265.]

[Footnote 3: The celebrated temple of Somnauth was originally a Buddhist foundation, and in the wors.h.i.+p of Jaggernath, to whose orgies all ranks are admitted without distinction of caste, there may still be traced an influence of Buddhism, if not a direct Buddhistical origin. Colonel Sykes is of opinion that the sacred tooth of Buddha was at one time deposited and wors.h.i.+pped in the great Temple of Calinga, now dedicated to Jaggernath, by the Princes of Orissa, who in the fourth century professed the Buddhist religion. (Colonel SYKES, _Notes_, &c., _Asiatic Journal_, vol. xii. pp. 275; 317, 420.)]

[Footnote 4: FA HIAN declares that in the whole of India, including Affghanistan and Bokhara, he found in the fourth century a Buddhist people and dynasty, with traditions of its endurance for the preceding thousand years. "As to Hindostan itself, he says, from the time of leaving the deserts (of Jaysulmeer and Bikaneer) and the river (Jumna) to the west, _all the kings of the different kingdoms in India are firmly attached to the law of Buddha_, and when they do honour to the ecclesiastics they take off their diadems."--See also MAUPIED, _Essai sur l'Origine des Princ.i.p.aux Peuples Anciens_, chap. ix. p. 209.]

Looking to its influence at the present day over at least three hundred and fifty millions of human beings--exceeding one-third of the human race--it is no exaggeration to say that the religion of Buddha is the most widely diffused that now exists, or that has ever existed since the creation of mankind.[1]

[Footnote 1: See _ante_, p. 326. So ample are the materials offered by Buddhism for antiquarian research, that its doctrines have been sought to be identified at once with the Asiatic philosophy and with the myths of the Scandinavians. Buddha has been at one time conjectured to be the Woden of the Scythians; at another the prophet Daniel, whom Nebuchadnezzar had created master of the astrologers, or chief priest of the Magi, as the t.i.tle is rendered in the Septuagint--[Greek: Archonta Magoi]. An antiquarian of Wales, in devising a pedigree for the Oymri, has imported ancestors for the ancient Britons from Ceylon; and a writer in the _Asiatic Researches_, in 1807, as a preamble to the proof that the binomial theorem was familiar to the Hindus, has traced Western civilisation to an irruption of philosophers from India, identified the Druids with the Brahmans, and declared Stonehenge to be "one of the temples of Boodh." (_Asiat. Res_., vol. ii. p. 448.) A still more recent investigator, M. MAUPIED, has collected, in his _Essai sur l'Origine des Peoples Anciens_, what he considers to be the evidence that Buddhism may be indebted for its appearance in India to the captivity of the Jews by Salmanasar, 729 B.C.; to their dispersion by a.s.sar-Addon at a still more recent period; to their captivity in Babylon, 606 B.C.: their diffusion over Media and the East, Persia, Bactria, Thibet, and China, and the communication of their sacred book to the nations amongst whom they thus became sojourners. He ventures even to suggest a possible ident.i.ty between the names Jehovah and Buddha: "Les voyelles du mot Buddha sont les memes que celles du mot Jehovah, qu'on p.r.o.nonce aussi _Jouva_; mais d'ailleurs le nom de Boudda a bien pu etre tire du mot _Jeoudda_ Juda, le dieu de Joudda _Boudda_."--Chap. ix. p. 235. To account for the purer morals of Buddhism, MAUPIED has recourse to the conjecture that they may have been influenced by the preaching of St. Thomas at Ceylon, and Bartholomew on the continent of India. "_Or il nous semble logique de conclure de teus ces faits que le Bouddhisme, dans ses doctrines essentielles, est d'origine Juire et Chretienne; consequence inattendue pour la plus de nos lecteurs sans doute_."--MAUPIED, ch. ix. p. 257; ch.

x. p. 263.]

From the earliest period of Indian tradition, the struggle between the religion of Buddha and that of Brahma was carried on with a fanaticism and perseverance which resulted in the ascendancy of the Brahmans, perhaps about the commencement of the Christian era, and the eventual expulsion some centuries later of the wors.h.i.+p of their rivals from Hindustan; but at what precise time the latter catastrophe was consummated has not been recorded in the annals of either sect.[1]

[Footnote 1: The final overthrow of Buddhism in Bahar and its expulsion from Hindustan took place probably between the seventh and twelfth centuries of the Christian era. Colonel SYKES, however, extends the period to the thirteenth or fourteenth (_Asiatic Journal_, vol. iv. p.

334).]

That Buddhism thus dispersed over eastern and central Asia became an active agent in the promotion of whatever civilisation afterwards enlightened the races by whom its doctrines were embraced, seems to rest upon evidence which admits of no reasonable doubt. The introduction of Buddhism into China is ascertained to have been contemporary with, the early development of the arts amongst this remarkable people, at a period coeval, if not anterior, to the era of Christianity.[1] Buddhism exerted a salutary influence over the tribes of Thibet; through them it became instrumental in humanising the Moguls; and it more or less led to the cessation of the devastating incursions by which the hordes of the East were precipitated over the Western Empire in the early ages of Christianity.

[Footnote 1: MAX MuLLER, _Hist. Sanskrit Literature_, p. 264.]

The Singhalese, and the nations of further Asia, are indebted to Buddhism for an alphabet and a literature[1]; and whatever of authentic history we possess in relation to these countries we owe to the influence of their generic religion. Nor are its effects limited to these objects: much of what is vigorous in the character of its northern converts may be traced to the operation of its principles, in the development of their peculiar idiosyncrasy, which, unlike that of the unwarlike Singhalese, rejected sloth and effeminacy to aim at conquest and power. Looking to the self-reliance which Buddhism inculcates, the exaltation of intellect which it proclaims, and the perfection of virtue and wisdom to which it points as within the reach of every created being, it may readily be imagined, that it must have wielded a spell of unusual potency, and one well calculated to awaken boldness and energy in those already animated by schemes of ambition. In Ceylon, on the contrary, owing more or less to insulation and seclusion, Buddhism has survived for upwards of 2000 years as unchanged in all its leading characteristics as the genius of the people has remained torpid and inanimate under its influence. In this respect the Singhalese are the living mummies of past ages; and realise in their immovable characteristics the Eastern fable of the city whose inhabitants were perpetuated in marble. If change has in any degree supervened, it has been from the corruption of the practice, not from any abandonment of the principles, of Buddhism; and in arts, literature, and civilisation, the records of their own history, and the ruins of their monuments, attest their deterioration in common with that of every other nation which has not at some time been brought under the enn.o.bling influences of Christianity.

[Footnote 1: See BURNOUF et La.s.sEN, _Essai sur le Pali, ou Langue Sacree de la Presqu'ile au-dela du Gange_, ch. i., &c.]

In alluding to the doctrines of Buddhism, as it exists at the present day, my observations are to be understood as applying to the aspect under which it presents itself in Ceylon, irrespective of the numerous forms in which it has been cultivated elsewhere. Even before the decease of the last Buddha, schisms had arisen amongst his followers in India.

Eighteen heresies are deplored in the _Mahawanso_ within two centuries from his death; and four distinct sects, each rejoicing in the name of Buddhists, are still to be traced amongst the remnants of his wors.h.i.+ppers in Hindustan.[1] In its migrations to other countries since its dispersion by the Brahmans, Buddhism has a.s.sumed and exhibited itself in a variety of shapes. At the present day its doctrines, as cherished among the Jainas of Guzerat and Rajpootana[2], differ widely from its mysteries, as administered by the Lama of Thibet; and both are equally distinct from the metaphysical abstractions propounded by the monks of Nepal. Its observances in j.a.pan have undergone a still more striking alteration from their vicinity to the Syntoos; and in China they have been similarly modified in their contact with the rationalism of Lao-tsen and the social demonology of the Confucians.[3] But in each and all the distinction is in degree rather than essence; and the general concurrence is unbroken in all the grand essentials of the system.

[Footnote 1: _Colebrooke's Essays on the Philosophy of the Hindoos_, sect. v. part 5, p. 401.]

[Footnote 2: An account of the religion of the Jains or Jainas, will be found in MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE'S _History of India_, vol. i. b. ii.

ch. 4. They arose in the sixth or seventh century, were at their height in the eleventh, and declined in the twelfth. See also MAX MuLLER, _Hist. Sanskrit Literature_, p. 261, &c.]