Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch Volume I Part 26

[Footnote 72: But all general statements about Hinduism are liable to exceptions. The evil spirit Du?saha described in the Markandeya Purana (chaps. L and LI) comes very near the Devil.]

[Footnote 73: I can understand that the immediate reality is a duality or plurality and that the one spirit may appear in many shapes.]

[Footnote 74: _E.g._ Chand. Up. V. 1. 2. Bri. Ar. Up. I. 3. In the Pancaratra we do hear of a jnanabhra?sa or a fall from knowledge a.n.a.logous to the fall of man in Christian theology. Souls have naturally unlimited knowledge but this from some reason becomes limited and obscured, so that religion is necessary to show the soul the right way.

Here the ground idea seems to be not that any devil has spoilt the world but that ignorance is necessary for the world process, for otherwise mankind would be one with G.o.d and there would be no world. See Schrader, _Introd. to the Pancaratra_, pp. 78 and 83.]

[Footnote 75: The Satapatha Brahmana has a curious legend (XI. 1. 6. 8 ff.) in which the Creator admits that he made evil spirits by mistake and smites them. In the Karika of Gau?apada, 2. 19 it is actually said: Mayaisha tasya devasya yaya sammohita? svayam.]

[Footnote 76: He does not say this expressly and it requires careful statement in India where it is held strongly that G.o.d being perfect cannot add to his bliss or perfection by creating anything. Compare Dante, _Paradiso_, xxix. 13-18:

Non per aver a se di bene acquisto, ch' esser non pu, ma perche suo splendore potesse risplendendo dir: subsisto.

In sua eternita di tempo fuore, fuor d' ogni altro comprender, come i piacque, s'aperse in nuovi amor l' eterno amore.]

[Footnote 77: The history of j.a.pan and Tibet offers some exceptions.]

[Footnote 78: There are some exceptions, _e.g._ ancient Camboja, the Sikhs and the Marathas.]

[Footnote 79: But there are other kinds of wors.h.i.+p, such as the old Vedic sacrifices which are still occasionally performed, and the burnt offerings (homa) still made in some temples. There are also tantric ceremonies and in a.s.sam the public wors.h.i.+p of the Vishnuites has probably been influenced by the ritual of Lamas in neighbouring Buddhist countries.]

[Footnote 80: This position is of great importance as tending to produce a similar arrangement of religious paraphernalia. The similarity disappears when Buddhist ceremonies are performed round Stupas out of doors.]

[Footnote 81: As explained elsewhere, I draw a distinction between Tantrism and Saktism.]

[Footnote 82: It does not seem to me to have given much inspiration to Rossetti in his _Aatarte Syriaca_.]

[Footnote 83: But in justice to the Tantras it should be mentioned that the Maha-nirva?a Tantra, x. 79, prohibits the burning of widows.]

[Footnote 84: See _Asiatic Review_, July, 1916, p. 33.]

[Footnote 85: _E.g._ Vijayanagar, the Marathas and the states of Rajputana.]

[Footnote 86: According to the census of 1911 no less than 72 per cent.

of the population live by agriculture.]

[Footnote 87: The chief exceptions are: (_a_) the Tibetan church has acquired and holds power by political methods. It is an exact parallel to the Papacy, but it has never burnt people. (_b_) In mediaeval j.a.pan the great monasteries became fortified castles with lands and troops of their own. They fought one another and were a menace to the state. Later the Tokugawa sovereigns had the a.s.sistance of the Buddhist clergy in driving out Christianity but I do not think that their action can be compared either in extent or cruelty with the Inquisition. (_c_) In China Buddhism was in many reigns a.s.sociated with a dissolute court and palace intrigues. This led to many scandals and great waste of money.]

[Footnote 88: See for instance Huxley's striking definition of Buddhism in his _Romanes Lecture_, 1893. "A system which knows no G.o.d in the western sense; which denies a soul to man: which counts the belief in immortality a blunder and the hope of it a sin: which refuses any efficacy to prayer and sacrifice: which bids men look to nothing but their own efforts for salvation: which in its original purity knew nothing of vows of obedience and never sought the aid of the secular arm: yet spread over a considerable moiety of the old world with marvellous rapidity and is still with whatever base admixture of foreign superst.i.tions the dominant creed of a large fraction of mankind." But some of this is too strongly phrased. Early Buddhism counted the desire for heaven as a hindrance to the highest spiritual life, but if a man had not attained to that plane and was bound to be reborn somewhere, it did not question that his natural desire to be reborn in heaven was right and proper.]

[Footnote 89: It may of course be denied that Buddhism is a religion. In this connection some remarks of Mr Bradley are interesting. "The doctrine that there cannot be a religion without a personal G.o.d is to my mind entirely false" (_Essays on Truth and Reality_, p. 432). "I cannot accept a personal G.o.d as the ultimate truth" (ib. 449). "There are few greater responsibilities which a man can take on himself than to have proclaimed or even hinted that without immortality all religion is a cheat, all morality a self-deception" (_Appearance and Reality_, p.

510).]

[Footnote 90: Mahava?sa, xii. 29, xiv. 58 and 64. Dipava?sa, xn. 84 and 85, xiii. 7 and 8.]

[Footnote 91: _Essays in Criticism_, Second Series, Amiel.]

[Footnote 92: This definition of orthodoxy is due to St Vincent of Lerins. _Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est._]

[Footnote 93: I know that this statement may encounter objections, but I believe that few Indians would be surprised at the proposition that G.o.d is all things. Some might deny it, but as a familiar error.]

[Footnote 94: But orthodox Christianity really falls into the same difficulty. For if G.o.d planned the redemption of the world and we are saved by the death of Christ, then the Chief Priests, Judas, Pilate and the soldiers who crucified Christ are at least the instruments of salvation.]

[Footnote 95: Wm James, _Psychology_, pp. 203 and 216.]

[Footnote 96: I quote this epitome from Wildon Carr's Henri Bergson, _The Philosophy of Change_, because the phraseology is thoroughly Buddhist and appears to have the approval of M. Bergson himself.]

[Footnote 97: _Romanes Lecture_, 1893.]

[Footnote 98: _Appearance_, p. 298.]

[Footnote 99: Thus the Svetasvatara Up. says that the whole world is filled with the parts or limbs of G.o.d and metaphors like sparks from a fire or threads from a spider seem an attempt to express the same idea.

Br. Ar. Up. 2. 1. 20; Mund. Up. 2. 1. 1.]

[Footnote 100: _Appearance_, p. 244; _Essays on Truth_, p. 409; _Appearance_, p. 413. Though the above quotations are all from Mr Bradley I might have added others from Mr Bosanquet's _Gifford Lectures_ and from Mr McTaggart.]

[Footnote 101: "The plurality of souls in the Absolute is therefore appearance and their existence not genuine ... souls like their bodies, are as such nothing more than appearance-Neither (body and soul) is real in the end: each is merely phenomenal." _Appearance_, pp. 305-307.]

[Footnote 102: Since I wrote this I have read Mr Wells' book _G.o.d the Invisible King_. Mr Wells knows that he is indebted to oriental thought and thinks that European religion in the future may be so too, but I do not know if he realizes how nearly his G.o.d coincides with the Mahayanist conception of a Bodhisattva such as Avalokita or Manjusri. These great beings have, as Bodhisattvas, a beginning: they are not the creators of the world but masters and conquerors of it and helpers of mankind: they have courage and eternal youth and Manjusri "bears a sword, that clean discriminating weapon." Like most Asiatics, Mr Wells cannot allow his G.o.d to be crucified and he draws a distinction between G.o.d and the Veiled Being, very like that made by Indians between isvara and Brahman.]

[Footnote 103: The Malay countries are the only exception.]

[Footnote 104: Thus Motoori (quoted in Aston's _s.h.i.+nto_, p. 9) says "Birds, beasts, plants and trees, seas and mountains and all other things whatsoever which deserve to be dreaded and revered for the extraordinary and pre-eminent powers which they possess are called _Kami_."]

[Footnote 105: This impersonality is perhaps a later characteristic. The original form of the Chinese character for T'ien Heaven represented a man. The old Finnish and Samoyede names for G.o.d-Ukko and Num-perhaps belong to this stage of thought.]

[Footnote 106: See the account of the Faunus message in this book.]

[Footnote 107: The chief exception in Sanskrit is the Rajatarangini, a chronicle of Kashmir composed in 1148 A.D. There are also a few panegyrics of contemporary monarchs, such as the Harshacarita of Ba?a, and some of the Puranas (especially the Matsya and Vayu) contain historical material. See Vincent Smith, _Early History of India_, chap.

I, sect. II, and _Pargiter Dynasties of the Kali Age_. The Greek and Roman accounts of Ancient India have been collected by McCrindle in six volumes 1877-1901.]

[Footnote 108: The inscriptions of the Chola Kings however (c. 1000 A.D.) seem to boast of conquests to the East of India. See Coedes "Le royaume de crivijaya" in _B.E.F.E.O._ 1918]

[Footnote 109: Very different opinions have been held as to whether this date should be approximately 1500 B.C. or 3000 B.C. The strong resemblance of the hymns of the ?ig Veda to those of the Avesta is in favour of the less ancient date, but the date of the Gathas can hardly be regarded as certain.]

[Footnote 110: Linguistically there seems to be two distinct divisions, the Dravidians and the Munda (Kolarian).]

[Footnote 111: The affinity between the Dravidian and Ural-Altaic groups of languages has often been suggested but has met with scepticism. Any adequate treatment of this question demands a comparison of the earliest forms known in both groups and as to this I have no pretension to speak.

But circ.u.mstances have led me to acquire at different times some practical acquaintance with Turkish and Finnish as well as a slight literary knowledge of Tamil and having these data I cannot help being struck by the general similarity shown in the structure both of words and of sentences (particularly the use of gerunds and the constructions which replace relative sentences) and by some resemblances in vocabulary. On the other hand the p.r.o.nouns and consequently the conjugation of verbs show remarkable differences. But the curious Brahui language, which is cla.s.sed as Dravidian, has negative forms in which _pa_ is inserted into the verb, as in Yakut Turkish, e.g. Yakut _bis-pa-ppin_, I do not cut; Brahui _khan-pa-ra_, I do not see. The plural of nouns in Brahui uses the suffixes _k_ and _t_ which are found in the Finnish group and in Hungarian.]

[Footnote 112: See the legend in the Sat. Brah. I. 4. 1. 14 ff.]

[Footnote 113: This much seems sure but whereas European scholars were till recently agreed that he died about 487 B.C. it is now suggested that 543 may be nearer the true date. See Vincent Smith in _Oxford History of India_, 1920, p. 48.]

[Footnote 114: Pali Takkasila. Greek Taxila. It was near the modern Rawal Pindi and is frequently mentioned in the Jatakas as an ancient and well-known place.]

[Footnote 115: Most of them are known by the t.i.tle of Satakar?i.]

[Footnote 116: But perhaps not in language. Recent research makes it probable that the Kushans or Yueh-chih used an Iranian idiom.]

[Footnote 117: Fleet and Franke consider that Kanishka preceded the two Kadphises and began to reign about 58 B.C.]