The History of Antiquity Volume Iv Part 26

Among the Bhikshus the authority of age was maintained; respect was paid to experience, proved virtue, and wisdom; the teacher ranked above the pupil, the older believer before the younger. Hence the Sthaviras, _i.e._ the elders, held the foremost place among them. Still it was not years, but liberation from the evil of the world, that made the Sthavira.[687] Each monastery had a Sthavira at the head, whom the Bhikshus had to obey, for in addition to vows of poverty and chast.i.ty they took vows of obedience. Nevertheless Buddhism gave the greater weight to the feeling and sense of equality and brotherly love.

Authority resided less in the Sthavira than in the a.s.sembly of the initiated. Had not the first disciples of Buddha established his sayings in common at the first council at Rajagriha, even though one of his most beloved followers presided over them? The second synod at Vaicali was conducted in the same way; the community of the Bhikshus (_sangha_, the a.s.sembly) had given their authoritative sanction to the rules of discipline, which were to have general currency, after they had been fixed by the elders. The monasteries were similarly organised; there also the community gave the consecration of the priest, heard confession, imposed penances, ordered temporary or complete expulsion under the presidency of the Sthavira.

There were merits of another kind among the Bhikshus which transcended the rank of the teachers, of the elder, of the head of the monastery.

These were the merits of religious service, of deeper knowledge, of more complete conquest over the natural man, the _Ego_. The Aryas, _i.e._ the honourable or the rulers, who had learned "the four truths" (p. 340), formed a privileged cla.s.s of the Bhikshus. On the path "which is hard to tread,"[688] the path of Nirvana, the Buddhists distinguish four stages.

The first and lowest has been entered upon by the crotaapanna; he cannot any longer be born again as an evil spirit or an animal; and has only seven regenerations to pa.s.s through.[689] The second stage is reached by the Sakridagamin, _i.e._ "the once-returning;" who will only be born once after his death. The third stage is that of the Anagamin, the not-returning, who has to expect his regeneration in the higher regions only, not as a man. On the highest stage stands the Arhat; he has entered on the path which neither the G.o.ds nor the Gandharvas know; his senses have entered into rest; he has overcome the impulse to evil as well as the impulse to good; he desires nothing more, neither here nor in heaven. He has "left behind every habitation, as the flamingo takes his way from the sea;"[690] the G.o.ds envy him; he has attained the end after which all the Bhikshus strive; he has arrived at Nirvana, and is in the possession of supernatural powers. When he wills, he dies, never to be born again. Like the Brahmans the Buddhists attempted to express in numbers the eminence and value of those who had gone through the four stages. The crotaapanna surpa.s.ses the ordinary man ten thousand-fold; The Sakridagamin is a hundred thousand times higher than the crotaapanna, the Anagamin a million times higher than the Sakridagamin.

The Arhat is free from ignorance, free from hereditary sin, _i.e._ free from desire, and attachment to existence; he is free from the limitation of existence, and therefore from the conditions of it. He possesses the power to do miracles, the capacity of surveying in one view all creatures and all worlds; of hearing all the sounds and words in all the worlds; he has knowledge of the thoughts of all creatures, and remembrance of the earlier habitations, _i.e._ of the past existences of all creatures.[691]

Buddha's system required, at bottom, that every man should renounce the world, and take the mendicant's robes, in order to enter upon the path of liberation. This requirement could not be realised any more than the demand of the Brahmans that every Dvija should go into the forest at the end of his life and live as a penitent; the Catholic view of the advantage of monastic over secular life has not brought all Catholics into monasteries; how could the Church live and the world exist if every one abandoned the world? Yet the Enlightened was of opinion that help might be given even to those who could not leave the world. In contrast to the pride and exclusiveness of the Brahmans it was precisely the promise of help to all, the strongly-marked tendency to relieve every one, even the meanest, the sympathy with the sorrows of the oppressed, the turning aside from the powerful and rich to the lonely and poor,--it was the fact that mendicants took the highest place in the new Church--which won adherents to Buddha's teaching from the oppressed cla.s.ses of the people. If the layman, so Buddha thought, resolved to live according to the precepts of his ethics, he would not only lighten the burden of existence for himself and others; by the practice of these virtues he attained such merit that his regenerations became more favourable, and followed in "good paths," so that he was allowed eventually to receive initiation and thus attain the end of sorrows, death without any return to life. He who would adopt this doctrine, had only to declare that it was his will to perform the commands of its ethics. The formula of entrance and adoption into the community of the believers in Buddha ran thus: "I take my refuge in Buddha; I take my refuge in the law (_dharma_); I take my refuge in the community (_sangha_)," _i.e._ of the believers. With this declaration the convert took a pledge not to kill anything that had life, not to steal, to commit no act of unchast.i.ty, not to babble, nor lie, nor calumniate, nor disparage, nor curse; not to be pa.s.sionate, greedy, envious, angry, revengeful. The layman is to control his appet.i.tes as far as possible, to moderate his selfishness, and in the place of his natural corrupt desires to put the right feeling of contentment and submission, of beneficence, and pity, and love to his neighbour, a feeling out of which, in Buddha's view, "the avoidance of evil and doing of good"

spontaneously arose. This repose, patience, and moderation would cause even the laymen to bear the evils of existence more lightly, and keep themselves as far as possible from the complications of the world. His adherence to the doctrines of Buddha was to be shown in the first instance by gifts to the clergy. The Church had no means of subsistence except the alms of the laymen; their gifts, in the eyes of the Buddhists, bring salvation for the giver no less than the receiver; the latter ought humbly to beg the clergy to accept their presents.[692]

Buddha's doctrine acknowledged no G.o.d. It was man who by the power of his knowledge could attain to absolute truth; who by the force of his will, the eradication of desire, the sacrifice of his goods and his body for his nearest relations, the annihilation of his own self, would win complete virtue and sanct.i.ty. "Self is the protector and the refuge of self,"[693] But were the inculcation of prayers and precepts, the discussion of the sayings of Buddha, on which they rested, enough to make the laity and clergy able and willing to observe and perform them?

Must there not be some proof that these doctrines could be carried out, that they had the most beneficial results, that the object at which they aimed was really attainable? Clergy as well as laity needed a living pattern to strive after, a fixed support and rule on which they could lean in their conscience, their thoughts, actions, and sufferings, and by which they could measure themselves. This pattern was given in the person of the master, in his life, his acts, his end. His life and actions were to be the subject of meditation; on this a man might raise and elevate himself; after that pattern every one should guide his acts and thoughts. If the initiated clung to his lofty wisdom which saw through the web of the worlds, and could liberate self from nature and annihilate it, the picture of the mendicant prince, who had left palace and wife and child and kingdom and treasures in order to share and alleviate the lot of the poorest, could not be of less influence on the hearts of the laity. This wonderful religion had no object of wors.h.i.+p beside the person of the founder; on this it must be concentrated. The pious remembrance of the profound teacher, thankfulness for the salvation which he brought into the world, the study of the pattern of wisdom and truth which he gave, of the ideal of perfect sanctification and liberation, displayed in him,--these motives quickly made Buddha an object of reverence, and ere long of wors.h.i.+p, though to himself and his disciples he was no more than a mere man. In this religion of man-wors.h.i.+p Buddha took the place of G.o.d; he was G.o.d to his believers.

But the religion could not long remain contented with a thoughtful remembrance, a vague recollection, and a.s.surances of reverence towards the departed as the means of arousing the heart and elevating the spirit. Some external excitement, some symbol or sensuous sign was needed, however rationalistic in other respects Buddha's doctrine might be. But he who brought salvation and liberation into the world lived no longer in the other world; he was dead, never to rise again. Nothing was left of him but the bones and ashes of his body. We know that in ancient times the Aryas buried their dead; and afterwards they burned them. The additional emphasis which the old conceptions of the impurity of the corpse, the worthlessness of the flesh, had received in the system of the Brahmans, was no doubt the reason why they sought to remove the remains of the cremation, the ashes and bones, by throwing them into water. Buddha did not treat the body better than the Brahmans; with him, though not strictly the cause, it was the bearer and medium of the destruction and pain of mankind, inasmuch as in his eyes the perverse direction of the soul and its dependence on existence were destruction.

This body, which Brahmans and Buddhists vied with each other in regarding as a perishable and worthless vessel containing the Ego, which a man must either break asunder, or liberate himself from it, the relics of which had been considered for so many centuries as impure and spreading impurity, received quite a new importance in the Buddhist religion. Not long after the death of the Enlightened, when the generation of disciples who had seen him and lived with him had pa.s.sed away, the need of some representation and idea of the pattern and centre of these thoughts and efforts, of the person of their teacher, impelled the believers to pay honour to his ashes and bones, to his relics. This honour was soon extended to the bones of his leading disciples, a form of wors.h.i.+p which must have been shocking to the Brahmans. Similar honour was then paid to the robes and vessels which Buddha had used, to his mendicant's garment, his staff, his jar for alms and pitcher, and also to the places which he had sanctified by his presence. Two centuries after the death of the Enlightened, this wors.h.i.+p of relics and pilgrimage to the holy places were established customs. The believers in Buddha travelled to Kapilavastu, his father's city. There they beheld the garden in which Buddha had seen the light, the pool in which he was washed, the ground on which he had contended in exercises with his fellows, the places where he had seen the old man, the sick man, and the corpse. In the neighbourhood of Uruvilva on the Nairanjana pilgrims visited the dwellings where Buddha had lived for six years as an ascetic, at Gaya the sacred fig-tree under which in the night truth was revealed to him. Not far from thence was the place where the maiden of Uruvilva had given food to the son of cakya, where he had first announced his doctrine to the two merchants. At Rajagriha the stone was pointed out which Devadatta had hurled from the height of the vulture mountain on Buddha. Even the bamboo garden at this city, which Buddha was said to have taken pleasure in frequenting, and the place at cravasti where he had held his disputations with the Brahmanic penitents, were shrines of pilgrimage.[694]

From the same need of representing and realising the religious example, and of elevating the heart and spirit to that pattern, which gave rise to the wors.h.i.+p of relics and shrines, there sprang, in addition, the wors.h.i.+p of the pictures of Buddha. He who had placed the body of man so low was now thought to have had a body of the greatest beauty; his perfect wisdom and virtue had found expression in the most perfect body.

The sutras compare Buddha's gentle eye with the lotus; they even tell us of the thirty-two signs of complete beauty, and the eighty-four marks of physical perfection in his body.[695]

Buddha's doctrine was definitely based on the fact that man must liberate himself by his own power and wisdom, and to himself and his disciples Buddha was a man and no more, but in a nation so eager for miracles and inclined to believe in them, Buddha's life and actions inevitably became surrounded with the supernatural. He could not remain behind the Brahman penitents and saints, who had done great miracles.

Could anything so great as Buddha's life and doctrine have occurred without a miracle; was a mission possible without miracles; could the greatest mission, the liberation of the world from misery, have taken place without being accredited by miracles? Could he who had reached the summit of wisdom and virtue have been without supernatural powers? That sanctification and meditation were and must be followed by such powers, was a matter of course among the Indians. Even in the third century B.C.

miraculous powers were ascribed to the Bhikshus who had attained the fourth stage in the path, and therefore the same must have been done even earlier for Buddha himself. The same legends which represent Buddha as saying to king Prasenajit of Ayodhya: "I do not bid my disciples perform miracles; I tell them; Live so that your good deeds may remain concealed, your errors confessed,"[696] surround his birth and his penances at Gaya (p. 337 ff. 356) with miraculous signs; and in the disputations with the Brahmans they represent him as contending in miracles also, and gaining the victory. But these and other miracles of Buddha, though he travels with his disciples through the air, are nevertheless not to be compared with the achievements of the Brahmanic penitents, narrated in the Brahmanas and the Epos. They are for the most part the healing of disease and restoration to life, intended to bring out his compa.s.sion for living creatures,[697] and beside these the exercise of the miraculous powers which the Buddhists ascribe to all who have attained the fourth stage in the path (p. 472).

It was not only the miraculous acts of the saints which forced their way from Brahmanism into Buddhism; even the G.o.ds and spirits, the heaven and h.e.l.l of the Brahmans, had a place in the new religion. The old divinities of the Indian nation, as we have seen, could only maintain a very subordinate position in the system of the world-soul, inferior to that soul and to the great power of the ris.h.i.+s. They also had become emanations of the world-soul; though ranked among the earliest of these, they came immediately after the great saints of old time. But every penitent who by his asceticism concentrated a larger part of the power of the world-soul in himself, became superior to Indra and to the personal Brahman. The same position in respect to the ancient deities and the personal Brahman was allotted to Buddha. From the beginning of the third century B.C. he appears to have been wors.h.i.+pped by his followers as a G.o.d.[698] This was due not merely to the desire to place the power of the penitent, of meditation and knowledge, higher than the power of the G.o.ds, but also to the deep necessity on the part of the new religion and the believers in Buddha to possess a G.o.d. Later legends put the deities far below Buddha. He converts the spirits of the earth, of the air, of the serpents to his doctrine, and in return these spirits serve and obey him. Even the great G.o.ds come and listen to his words, and Buddha declares the new law to Brahman and to Indra.[699] In the relic-cell of a stupa of the second century B.C. Brahman is holding a parasol over Buddha, and Indra anoints him out of a large sh.e.l.l to be king of G.o.ds and men.[700]

Thus to his believers Buddha is not only the lion, the bull, and the elephant, stronger than the strongest, mightier than the mightiest, surpa.s.sing all men in compa.s.sion and good works, beautiful beyond the most beautiful of mankind; not only is he the king of doctrine, the ocean of grace, the founder of the eternal pilgrimages, he is also the father of the world, redeemer and ruler of all creatures, G.o.d of G.o.ds, Indra of Indras, Brahman of Brahmans. Nothing, of course, is now said of independent action, or power on the part of these Indras and Brahmans.

To later Buddhism they are a higher but completely human cla.s.s of beings; in the retinue of Buddha they are only a troop of supernumerary figures whose essential importance consists merely in bowing themselves before Buddha, serving him, and placing in the fullest light his power and greatness. Like men, these deities have to seek the light of higher wisdom, the salvation of liberation by effort and labour. To Indra, for instance, the Buddhists a.s.sign no higher dignity than that of the first stage of illumination; he stands on the level of the crotaapanna.[701]

In this transformation, which we find in the later writings of the Buddhists, the entire Indian and Brahmanic view of the world reappears in its widest extent. The divine mountain Meru forms the centre of the earth. Beneath it, in the deepest abyss, is h.e.l.l. The Buddhists are even more minute than the Brahmans in describing the torments and subdivisions of h.e.l.l, and with them also Yama is the G.o.d of death and the under world.[702] On the summit of Meru Indra is enthroned, who with the Buddhists also is the special protector of kings, and with him are the thirty-three G.o.ds of light (p. 161). In the Buddhist mythology the evil spirits, the Asuras, attack Indra and the bright spirits, as in the Vedic conception; but the Asuras could not advance further than the third of the four stages which the Buddhists ascribed to Meru, after the a.n.a.logy of the four truths and the four stages of sanctification. The Gandharvas have to defend the eastern side of Meru against the Asuras; the Yakshas (the spirits of the G.o.d Kuvera, p. 161), the northern; the k.u.mbhandas (the dwarfs), the southern; and the Nagas or serpent spirits, the western side. In the Buddhist view the earth, the divine mountain, and the heaven of Indra above it make up the world of desire and sin.

Indra and his deities are supreme over certain supernatural powers, but they are powerless against the man who has controlled himself;[703] they propagate themselves like men, are subject to the doom of regeneration, and can decline into lower existences. In this sense, with the Buddhists, the evil spirit of desire and sensual pleasure is enthroned over the heaven of Indra; his name is Kama or Mara; he is the cause of all generation, and hence of the restless revolution of the world, and of all misery. Above this heaven of the G.o.d of sin, which is filled with innumerable troops of the spirits of desires, begin the four upper heavens, the heaven of the liberated, into which those pa.s.s who have delivered themselves from sensual appet.i.te, desire, and existence.[704]

Among the Buddhists there could be no question of the wors.h.i.+p of these unreal deities, without power to bless or destroy. Their cultus was limited to the person of the founder, the symbols and memorials of his life, the relics of his body, the places sanctified by his presence. But they could not slay animals in sacrifice to the relics or the Manes of Buddha, nor invite the extinguished etherealized dead to the enjoyment of the soma. Of what value was the blood or flesh of victims to one who would never wake again; and how could they offer b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices to one with whom it was the first commandment not to slay any living thing?

Agni could carry no gift up to him who was perfected; and moreover Buddha had himself expressly forbidden sacrifice by fire; the Buddhists were to tend the law as the Brahmans tended the fire.[705] They could only place offerings of flowers, fruits, and perfumes at the sacred shrines, before the relics of the Enlightened, as signs of thankfulness and reverence, as symbols of wors.h.i.+p (_puja_). Prayer was in reality unknown to a cultus which was directed to a deceased man, and not to a deity. Believers must be content with the symbols of reverence, with singing hymns of praise and thanksgiving to the Enlightened, for having discovered truth, proclaimed liberation, shown pity, and brought help to all creatures; they must limit themselves to the confessions which these doctrines comprised, to hearing moral exhortations, to p.r.o.nouncing and wis.h.i.+ng blessings: "that all creatures may be free from sickness and wicked pleasure, that every man may become an Arhat in the future regeneration."[706] The gradual elevation of the position of Buddha, and the more complete apotheosis which was granted to him, led to direct invocations of the Enlightened. As the benefactor of all creatures he was besought for his blessing; as the liberator he was entreated to confer the power of liberation, and liberation. When after the end of the third century B.C. statues of Buddha stood in the halls of the Viharas, it became usual to invoke Buddha to be present in these statues. By the consecration which they underwent at the hands of the priests they received a ray of the spirit of Buddha, and thus acquired a beneficent miraculous power.

At morning, midday, and evening, _i.e._ at the times when it was customary among the Aryas to offer prayers, or gifts, or strew grains of corn, the monks of the Enlightened were summoned to prayers. At the new and full moon, when the Bhikshus fasted, and met for confession, the laity also discontinued their occupations, a.s.sembled to read the law, or hear preachers, or utter prayers. In no religious community was prayer so frequent and so mechanical as among the Buddhists, and this is still the case. Greater festivals were celebrated at the beginning of the spring, in the later spring, and at the end of the rainy season. The festival held at the new moon in the first month of spring, is said to have been a festival in commemoration of the victory which Buddha won in the disputation and contest of miracles with the Brahmanic penitents (p.

356). Buddha himself is said to have indulged in secular enjoyment for eight days after this success. As a fact, it was, no doubt, the customary spring festival--a remnant of the old Arian custom, to celebrate in the spring the victory gained by the spirits of light and the clear air over the gloom of the winter--which the Buddhists now celebrated in honour of their great teacher. At the full moon of the month Vaicakha in the later spring, the day was celebrated on which the Enlightened saw the light for the salvation of the world. With the Buddhists the rainy season was the sacred season, the time for reflection and retirement. At the end of the rains Buddha had always revisited the world, in order to announce to it salvation; and like him, his followers, the Bhikshus, who could not leave the Vihara in the rainy season, returned on this day to the world, in order to recommence their wanderings and preaching for the salvation of living creatures. This return of the teachers to the world was marked by a great festival, at which the Bhikshus received presents from the laity; sermons were preached, and processions held in which the lamps, no doubt, represented the light returning after the gloom of the rains, or the light of salvation which Buddha had kindled for the world.

The combination of the clergy and laity in the Buddhist church was even less close than the connection of the Brahmanic priesthood with the other orders. In their traditional position at the funeral feasts of the families the Brahmans retained the guidance of certain corporations.

With the Buddhists the care of souls lay entirely in the hands of the wandering Bhikshus, the mendicant monks, unless indeed in a few cases laymen attached themselves of their own free will to some not too distant monastery. But the separation of the Bhikshus from the family and house, their exclusive devotion to teaching and religion, the constant mission and preaching which occupied them for two-thirds of the year, throughout the spring and the hot season, quickly showed itself more efficacious than the sacrificial service of the Brahmans, which was linked with house and home. These travelling monks, who could enter into closer relations with the people because they had no impurities to avoid, such as in many cases entirely excluded the Brahmans from the lower castes, caused their exhortations and counsel to be heard in every house; they were asked about the names to be given to new-born children; they a.s.sisted at the ceremony of the cutting of the hair of boys when they reached the age of p.u.b.erty, at marriages and burials, and undertook prayers for the happy regeneration of the dead. And not only were the Bhikshus nearer the people, and more easily brought into relations with them, but they obtained far greater hold on their conscience than the Brahmans. This was not merely due to the precepts of their practical morality, which included the whole life and activity of the believers, and of the application and observance of which they took account in the confessional--a duty devolving on the laity as well as the clergy--the doctrine of regeneration was developed more fully in Buddhism, and formed more distinctly the centre of the system than among the Brahmans.

We saw that it was the active force of merit or guilt in earlier existences which fixed the fate of the individual in the kind of regeneration, in the happiness or misfortune of his life. In the same way the good and evil of this life had its effects. "He who goes out of the world, him his deeds await"[707]--such is the formula of the Buddhists. The various divisions of h.e.l.l, the distinctions of the castes, which with the Buddhists counted as gradations of rank among men (p. 362), the heavenly spirits and the ancient G.o.ds, which had been received into the Buddhist heaven, served to increase the graduated series of regenerations to a considerable degree. "He who has lived foolishly goes into h.e.l.l after the dissolution of the body;"[708] he is born again as a creature of h.e.l.l in a department of greater or less torment according to his guilt. The less guilty are born again as evil spirits. Higher in the scale stood regeneration as an animal; among animal regenerations the Buddhists counted birth as an ant, louse, bug, or worm the worst. Among mankind men were born again in a bad or good way, in a lower or higher caste, under easier or harder circ.u.mstances, according to their guilt or merit. Birth as a heavenly spirit counted higher than any human regeneration; higher still was birth as a G.o.d. But even when born again as a G.o.d, man was still under the dominion of desire; as we have seen, Indra only held the rank of a crotaapanna. From this stage it was possible to decline; it was by further conquest and liberation that a man must work his way upwards. Above the heaven of Indra and Mara, in the four high heavens, dwelt the spirits which had liberated themselves from desire and existence; in the lowest of these were the spirits who, though free from desire, are fettered by plurality, _i.e._ by ignorance; in the next, the heaven of clearer light, are those who, though free from desire and ignorance, are not so free that they cannot again sink under their dominion; the highest heaven but one receives the spirits who have no relapse to fear; and in the highest of all are the Arhats who have exhausted existence. As we see, the Buddhists avail themselves of the Brahmanic heaven and h.e.l.l, and the intervals which the Brahmans place between regenerations in h.e.l.l or in Indra's heaven, in order to construct out of them a more complete system. In this the process of the purification of the soul ascends from the lowest place in h.e.l.l through the evil spirits, the creeping, flying, and four-footed animals, through men of all positions in life, and then through the heavenly spirits and deities to the highest heaven, till the point is reached at which all earlier guilt is exhausted, and the total of merit so extended that the original sin of the soul, desire and its possibility, is removed; and thus liberation from existence takes place, the _Ego_ is extinguished. It is an inconsistency, no doubt, that those who have annihilated themselves and the roots of their existence by attaining Nirvana, shall still have a kind of existence in the highest heaven; but by this means the system was made more complete and realistic.

And not merely this wide development of the system of regenerations, but the practical application of it must have given the Bhikshus greater power over the consciences and heart of the nation than that exercised by the Brahmans. Buddha had known his own earlier existences. The tradition of the Singhalese ascribes to him 550 earlier lives before he saw the light as the son of cuddhodana. He had lived as a rat and a crow, as a frog and a hare, as a dog and a pig, twice as a fish, six times as a snipe, four times as a golden eagle, four times as a peac.o.c.k and as a serpent, ten times as a goose, as a deer, and as a lion, six times as an elephant, four times as a horse and as a bull, eighteen times as an ape, four times as a slave, three times as a potter, thirteen times as a merchant, twenty-four times as a Brahman and as a prince, fifty-eight times as a king, twenty times as the G.o.d Indra, and four times as Mahabrahman. Buddha had not only known his own earlier existences (p. 345), but those of all other living creatures; and this supernatural knowledge, this divine omniscience was, as we have seen, ascribed to those who after him attained the rank of Arhats. Though it did not reside in the full extent in Anagamins, Sakridagamins, crotaapannas, and still less in all the Bhikshus, it was nevertheless found in an imperfect degree in all "who advanced on the way." The people believed that the cramanas could not only foretell from the present conduct of a man his future lot, and his regenerations in h.e.l.l, among animals or men, but that they could also declare his future in this life from his previous existences. Hence the Bhikshus were masters not of the future only but also of the past of every man; and as they had his fate completely in view, the rules which they laid down from this point received an importance calculated to ensure their observance.[709]

It was no hindrance to morality that in this doctrine every man had his fate in his own hands at least so far that he could alleviate it for the future, and the practical results which the ethics of the Buddhists achieved on the basis of this imaginary background of regeneration are far from contemptible. The essential points in the Buddhist ethics, the moderate, pa.s.sionless life, and patience and sympathy, have been dwelt upon (p. 355). It was not without value that the Buddhists taught, that no fire was like hatred and pa.s.sion, and no stream like desire;[710]

that the desires bring little pleasure and much pain; only he who controlled himself lived in happiness, and contentment is the best treasure.[711] He who merely saw the deficiencies of others, his offences would increase; and he who was always thinking: Such a man injured me, annoyed me, will never attain repose. Hard words were answered with hard words; therefore a man should bear slighting speeches patiently, as an elephant endures arrows in the battle, and lives without enmity among his enemies.[712] To tend fire for a hundred years, or offer sacrifice for a thousand,[713] was of no avail; neither the penance of the moon nor sacrifice changes anything in the evil act, even though it were offered for a year.[714] Those who lie and deny the acts they have done will go into h.e.l.l.[715] The evil act pursues the doer; there is no place in the world in which to escape it; it destroys the doer unless it is conquered and covered by good deeds.[716] Duties come from the heart; if the act is good it leaves no remorse in the heart. A man should give alms though he has but little; the covetous will not come into the world of the G.o.ds. These earnest exhortations to acquire before all things the feeling which gives rise to good works, to extinguish offences by confession and good actions, to moderate greed and covetousness, to live contentedly and peaceably, to be gentle in our deeds, could not be without effect. This peaceableness the Buddhists showed in the tolerance they extended to those who were of a different faith than their own; and for the family the rules of affection impressed on children towards their parents, of chast.i.ty and forbearance impressed on husbands and wives, were wholesome and advantageous in their results.[717] The limitations set up by the arrangement of the castes, wors.h.i.+p, and custom of the Brahmans began to waver; man was guided from the fortune of birth, the sanctification of works, to his inward effort, and led to the moral education of self. Disposition and personal merit obtained the first place in the community, and fixed a man's fortune in a future life. Thus the pride of higher birth as against the lower born has to give way; and hence slaves were treated with greater kindness. Fantastic as was the heaven and h.e.l.l reconstructed by the Buddhists, marvellous as was the elevation of a man to be G.o.d, superst.i.tious as was the wors.h.i.+p of relics, exaggerated as was the conception of the way, the increasing supernatural power of him who was attaining liberation, and indubitable as was the tendency of Nirvana to end in the last instance in mere stolid indifference--the individual and morality were again restored by this doctrine and placed in their rights; society could again acquire free movement in personal intercourse and free choice of a vocation; all men were in reality equal, and could help each other as brothers.

FOOTNOTES:

[663] "Dhammapadam," translated by A. Weber, v. 394.

[664] Koppen, "Religion des Buddha," s. 294.

[665] "Dhammapadam," v. 277.

[666] _Supra_, p. 348. "Dhammapadam," v. 418. Koppen, _loc. cit._ 289 ff.

[667] Burnouf, "Introd." p. 170.

[668] Koppen, "Religion des Buddha," s. 131.

[669] "Dhammapadam," v. 395.

[670] Koppen, "Rel. des Buddha," s. 336.

[671] Koppen, _loc. cit._ s. 338.

[672] "Dhammapadam," v. 211.

[673] "Dhammapadam," v. 373.

[674] Koppen, _loc. cit._ s. 343.

[675] "Dhammapadam," v. 284.

[676] "Dhammapadam," v. 315.

[677] "Dhammapadam," v. 327.

[678] "Dhammapadam," v. 149, 154.

[679] "Dhammapadam," v. 343.

[680] "Dhammapadam," v. 103, 274, 334.

[681] "Dhammapadam," v. 15.

[682] "Dhammapadam," v. 308, 312.

[683] "Dhammapadam," v. 141.

[684] Burnouf, "Introd." p. 274.

[685] There are 227 commands and prohibitions among the Singhalese at the present day, and 253 among the Tibetans.

[686] Koppen, _loc. cit._ s. 367 ff.

[687] "Dhammapadam," v. 260.