The History of Antiquity Volume Iv Part 25

We have already heard the Greeks commending the severity and wisdom of the administration of justice. Megasthenes a.s.sures us that in the camp of Chandragupta, in which 400,000 men were gathered together, not more than two hundred drachmas' worth (7 10_s._) of stolen property was registered every day. If we combine this with the protection which the farmers enjoyed, according to the Greeks, we may conclude that under Chandragupta's reign the security of property was very efficiently guarded by the activity of the magistrates, the police, and the courts.

From all these statements, and from the narratives given above of the luxurious life of the kings, which can only refer to the times of Chandragupta and his immediate successor, so far as they are trustworthy, it follows that Chandragupta knew how to rule with a vigorous and careful hand; and that he could maintain peace and order.

He protected trade, which for centuries had been carried on in a remarkably vigorous manner, took care of the roads, navigation, and the irrigation of the land, upheld justice and security, organised skilfully the management of the cities and the army, paid his soldiers liberally, and promoted the tillage of the soil. The Buddhists confirm what Megasthenes states of the flouris.h.i.+ng condition of agriculture, of the honest conduct of the Indians, and their great regard for justice; they a.s.sure us that under the second successor of Chandragupta the land was flouris.h.i.+ng and thickly populated; that the earth was covered with rice, sugarcanes, and cows; that strife, outrage, a.s.sault, theft, and robbery were unknown.[656] At the same time the taxes which Chandragupta raised were not inconsiderable, as we may see from the fact that in the cities a tenth was taken on purchases and sales, that those who offered wares for sale had to pay licenses and tolls; in addition to these a poll-tax was raised, otherwise the register of births and deaths would be useless. Husbandmen had to give up the fourth part of the harvest as taxes, while the book of the law prescribes the sixth only of the harvest, and the twentieth on purchases and sales (p. 212).

When in the contest of the companions of Alexander for the empire and supremacy Seleucus had become master of Babylon, he left the war against Antigonus in the west, who did not threaten him for the moment, to Ptolemy and Ca.s.sander, established his dominion in the land of the Euphrates over Persia and Media, and reduced the land of Iran to subjection (Alexander had previously given him the daughter of the Bactrian Spitamenes to wife).[657] When he had succeeded in this, he intended to re-establish the supremacy of the Greeks in the valley of the Indus and the Panjab, and to take the place of Alexander. About the year 305 B.C.[658] he crossed the Indus and again trod the soil on which twenty years before he had been engaged in severe conflict by the side of Alexander on the Vitasta against Porus (p. 400). He no longer found the country divided into princ.i.p.alities and free states; he encountered the mighty army of Chandragupta. In regard to the war we only know that it was brought to an end by treaty and alliance. That the course of it was not favourable to Seleucus we may gather from the fact that he not only made no conquests beyond the Indus, but even gave up to Chandragupta considerable districts on the western sh.o.r.e, the land of the Paropamisades, _i.e._ the southern slopes of the Hindu Kush as far as the confluence of the Cabul and Indus, the eastern regions of Arachosia and Gedrosia. The present of 500 elephants, given in exchange by Chandragupta, was no equivalent for the failure of hopes and the loss of so much territory,[659] though these animals a few years later decided the day of Ipsus in Phrygia against Antigonus,[660] a victory which secured to Seleucus the dominion over Syria and the east of Asia Minor in addition to the dominion over Iran, and the Tigris and Euphrates. Chandragupta had not only maintained the land of the Indus, he had gained considerable districts beyond the river.

The man who annihilated Alexander's work and defeated Seleucus, who united India from the Hindu Kush to the mouth of the Ganges, from Guzerat to Orissa, under one dominion, who established and promoted peace, order, and prosperity in those wide regions, did not live to old age. If he was really a youth, as the Greeks state, at the time when Alexander trod the banks of the Indus, he can scarcely have reached his fifty-fifth year when he died in 291 B.C. The extensive kingdom which he had founded by his power he left to his son Vindusara. Of his reign we learn from Indian tradition that Takshacila rebelled in it, but submitted without resistance at the approach of his army, and that he made his son Ac.o.ka viceroy of Ujjayini.[661] The Greeks call Vindusara, Amitrochates, _i.e._, no doubt, Amitraghata, a name which signifies "slayer of the enemies." This is obviously an honourable epithet which the Indians give to Vindusara, or which he gave to himself. We may conclude, not only from the fact that he is known to the Greeks, but from other circ.u.mstances, that Vindusara maintained to its full extent the kingdom founded by his father. The successors of Alexander sought to keep up friendly relations with him, and his heir was able to make considerable additions to the empire of Chandragupta. After the treaty already mentioned, Megasthenes represented Seleucus on the Ganges; with Vindusara, Antiochus, the son and successor of Seleucus, was represented by Daimachus, and the ruler of Egypt, Ptolemy II., sent Dionysius to the court of Palibothra.[662]

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, "h.e.l.lenismus," 1, 319.

[648] "Mahavanaca," 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 1000 A.D. (in La.s.sen, "Ind.

Alterth." 2^2, 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 302 B.C., and as the subjugation of Eastern Iran must have taken up some time, the campaign to India may be placed nearer the year 302 B.C.; we are also compelled to do this by Justin's words (15, 4); c.u.m 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. Athenaeus, p. 18.

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

[661] "Ac.o.ka-avadana," in Burnouf, "Introd." p. 362.

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

CHAPTER VII.

THE RELIGION OF THE BUDDHISTS.

In the century and a half which pa.s.sed between the date of Kalac.o.ka of Magadha, the council of the Sthaviras at Vaicali, 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 Kalac.o.ka, 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 century B.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 thinking _Ego_, which emptied heaven and declared nature to be worthless. Armed with the results of an unorthodox speculation, and pus.h.i.+ng 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 G.o.ds 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 sanct.i.ty of the Brahmans, the mediatory position which they occupied in the wors.h.i.+p between the G.o.ds 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, wors.h.i.+p, 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 G.o.ds and spirits, their endless mult.i.tude, 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 G.o.ds. The saints made the G.o.ds their playthings.

Could it excite any great shock when these playthings were set aside?

The Brahmans dethroned the G.o.ds, 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 wors.h.i.+p? 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 meditation on 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 G.o.ds; 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 G.o.ds 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 ris.h.i.+s 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 work his way upwards to divine absolute liberty and wisdom.

To religious tradition and the Veda Buddha opposed individual knowledge; to revelation of the G.o.ds 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 the _Ego_ are 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 ap.r.o.n (_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 G.o.ds 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 (_kleca_).[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 a former existence. The total of merit and guilt acc.u.mulated 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 Vaicyas 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 circ.u.mstances 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 cudras entirely from good works and liberation.

The doctrine of Buddha was addressed to all 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 cudra 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 century B.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 compa.s.sion 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 censors.h.i.+p over their fellows, as we have seen; a censors.h.i.+p 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 chast.i.ty 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 demand that 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 Vaicali (433 B.C.) a certain knowledge of the canonic scriptures, the sutras and the Vinaya, as fixed by that a.s.sembly, was required in addition to the qualifications of poverty and chast.i.ty. 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 inst.i.tution of the noviciate found a far more solid basis in the monastic life of the Bhikshus than that which the isolated Brahman could offer to the pupils in his own house. The novice (_cramanera_) might not kill anything, or steal, or lie; he must commit no act of unchast.i.ty, 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 a.s.sembled clergy of the monastery. When he had taken the vows of poverty, chast.i.ty, 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 bind us 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 pa.s.sion as strong as the pa.s.sion for women no one would ever attain liberation. It was reasons of this kind, of modesty and chast.i.ty, which made it a rule for the Bhikshus, in contrast to the nudity of the Brahmanic penitent, never to lay aside his garments: his s.h.i.+rt and yellow garment which came over the s.h.i.+rt 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 ma.s.s of uncleanness is death.[678] In contrast to the mult.i.tude who are driven by desire like hunted hares,[679] he is to live without desire among those who are filled with desire; the pa.s.sions 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 pa.s.sion 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 h.e.l.l."[682]

We know that the Bhikshus had to support each other mutually in this work. Following the pattern of the master they pa.s.sed the rainy season, in common shelter, in monasteries. These, as we saw (p. 378), existed as early as the reign of Kalac.o.ka. 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 a.s.sembly 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, bal.u.s.trades, 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 purification is the conquest of l.u.s.t, 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 unchast.i.ty entailed complete expulsion; the man who indulged in s.e.xual intercourse could no longer be a disciple of Buddha. The penances imposed for errors of a coa.r.s.er kind were very slight and are so still; the performance of the more menial services in the monastery, otherwise discharged by the novices, or the repet.i.tion 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.