Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch Volume I Part 14

The major part of the Buddha's activity was concerned with the instruction of his disciples and the organization of the Sangha or order. Though he was ready to hear and teach all, the portrait presented to us is not that of a popular preacher who collects and frequents crowds but rather that of a master, occupied with the instruction of his pupils, a large band indeed but well prepared and able to appreciate and learn by heart teaching which, though freely offered to the whole world, was somewhat hard to untrained ears. In one pa.s.sage[356] an enquirer asks him why he shows more zeal in teaching some than others. The answer is, if a landowner had three fields, one excellent, one middling and one of poor soil, would he not first sow the good field, then the middling field, and last of all the bad field, thinking to himself; it will just produce fodder for the cattle? So the Buddha preaches first to his own monks, then to lay-believers, and then, like the landowner who sows the bad field last, to Brahmans, ascetics and wandering monks of other sects, thinking if they only understand one word, it will do them good for a long while. It was to such congregations of disciples or to enquirers belonging to other religious orders that he addressed his most important discourses, iterating in grave numbered periods the truths concerning the reality of sorrow and the equal reality of salvation, as he sat under a clump of bamboos or in the shade of a banyan, in sight perhaps of a tank where the lotuses red, white and blue, submerged or rising from the water, typified the various cla.s.ses of mankind.

He did not start by laying down any const.i.tution for his order. Its rules were formed entirely by case law. Each incident and difficulty was referred to him as it arose and his decision was accepted as the law on that point. During his last illness he showed a n.o.ble anxiety not to hamper his followers by the prestige of his name but to leave behind him a body of free men, able to be a light and a help to themselves. But a curious pa.s.sage[357] represents an old monk as saying immediately after his death "Weep not, brethren; we are well rid of the Great Monk. We used to be annoyed by being told, 'This beseems you and this does not beseem you. But now we shall be able to do what we like and not have to do what we don't like.'" Clearly the laxer disciples felt the Master's hand to be somewhat heavy and we might have guessed as much. For though Gotama had a breadth of view rare in that or in any age, though he refused to multiply observances or to dogmatize, every sutta indicates that he was a man of exceptional authority and decision; what he has laid down he has laid down; there is no compulsion or punishment, no vow of obedience or _sacrificium intellectus_; but it is equally clear that there is no place in the order for those who in great or small think differently from the master.

In shepherding his flock he had the a.s.sistance of his senior disciples.

Of these the most important were Sariputta and Moggallana, both of them Brahmans who left their original teacher Sanjaya to join him at the outset of his ministry. Sariputta[358] enjoyed his confidence so fully that he acted as his representative and gave authoritative expositions of doctrine. The Buddha even compared him to the eldest son of an Emperor who a.s.sists his father in the government. But both he and Moggallana died before their master and thus did not labour independently. Another important disciple Upali survived him and probably contributed materially to the codification of the Vinaya.

Anuruddha and ananda, both of them Sakyas, are also frequently mentioned, especially the latter who became his personal attendant[359]

and figures in the account of his illness and death as the beloved disciple to whom his last instructions were committed. These two together with four other young Sakya n.o.bles and Upali joined the order twenty-five years before Gotama's death and perhaps formed an inner circle of trusted relatives, though we have no reason to think there was any friction between them and Brahmans like Sariputta. Upali is said to have been barber of the Sakyas. It is not easy to say what his social status may have been, but it probably did not preclude intimacy.

The Buddha was frequently occupied with maintaining peace and order among his disciples. Though the profession of a monk excluded worldly advancement, it was held in great esteem and was hence adopted by ambitious and quarrelsome men who had no true vocation. The troubles which arose in the Sangha are often ascribed in the Vinaya to the Chabbaggiyas, six brethren who became celebrated in tradition as spirits of mischief and who are evidently made the peg on which these old monkish anecdotes are hung. As a rule the intervention of the Buddha was sufficient to restore peace, but one pa.s.sage[360] indicates resistance to his authority. The brethren quarrelled so often that the people said it was a public scandal. The Buddha endeavoured to calm the disputants, but one of them replied, "Lord, let the Blessed One quietly enjoy the bliss which he has obtained in this life. The responsibility for these quarrels will rest with us alone." This seems a clear hint that the Blessed One had better mind his own business. Renewed injunctions and parables met with no better result. "And the Blessed One thought" says the narrative "'truly these fools are infatuated,' and he rose from his seat and went away."

Other troubles are mentioned but by far the most serious was the schism of Devadatta, represented as occurring in the old age of Gotama when he was about seventy-two. The story as told in the Cullavagga[361] is embellished with supernatural incidents and seems not to observe the natural sequence of events but perhaps three features are historical: namely that Devadatta wished to supersede the Buddha as head of the order, that he was the friend of Ajatasattu, Crown Prince and afterwards King of Magadha[362], and that he advocated a stricter rule of life than the Buddha chose to enforce. This combination of piety and ambition is perhaps not unnatural. He was a cousin of the Buddha and entered the order at the same time as ananda and other young Sakya n.o.bles. Sprung from that quarrelsome breed he possessed in a distorted form some of Gotama's own ability. He is represented as publicly urging the Master to retire and dwell at ease but met with an absolute refusal. Sariputta was directed to "proclaim" him in Rajagaha, the proclamation being to the effect that his nature had changed and that all his words and deeds were disowned by the order. Then Devadatta incited the Crown Prince to murder his father, Bimbisara. The plot was prevented by the ministers but the king told Ajatasattu that if he wanted the kingdom he could have it and abdicated. But his unnatural son put him to death all the same[363] by starving him slowly in confinement. With the a.s.sistance of Ajatasattu, Devadatta then tried to compa.s.s the death of the Buddha. First he hired a.s.sa.s.sins, but they were converted as soon as they approached the sacred presence. Then he rolled down a rock from the Vulture's peak with the intention of crus.h.i.+ng the Buddha, but the mountain itself interfered to stop the sacrilege and only a splinter scratched the Lord's foot. Then he arranged for a mad elephant to be let loose in the road at the time of collecting alms, but the Buddha calmed the furious beast. It is perhaps by some error of arrangement that after committing such unpardonable crimes Devadatta is represented as still a member of the order and endeavouring to provoke a schism by asking for stricter rules.

The attempt failed and according to later legends he died on the spot, but the Vinaya merely says that hot blood gushed from his mouth.

That there are historical elements in this story is shown by the narrative of Fa Hsien, the Chinese pilgrim who travelled in India about 400 A.D. He tells us that the followers of Devadatta still existed in Kosala and revered the three previous Buddhas but refused to recognize Gotama. This is interesting, for it seems to show that it was possible to accept Gotama's doctrine, or the greater part of it, as something independent of his personality and an inheritance from earlier teachers.

The Udana and Jataka relate another plot without specifying the year.

Some heretics induced a nun called Sundari to pretend she was the Buddha's concubine and hired a.s.sa.s.sins to murder her. They then accused the Bhikkhus of killing her to conceal their master's sin, but the real a.s.sa.s.sins got drunk with the money they had received and revealed the conspiracy in their cups.

But these are isolated cases. As a whole the Buddha's long career was marked by a peace and friendliness which are surprising if we consider what innovations his teaching contained. Though in contending that priestly ceremonies were useless he refrained from neither direct condemnation nor satire, yet he is not represented as actively attacking[364] them and we may doubt if he forbade his lay disciples to take part in rites and sacrifices as a modern missionary might do. We find him sitting by the sacred fire of a Brahman[365] and discoursing, but not denouncing the wors.h.i.+p carried on in the place. When he converted Siha[366], the general of the Licchavis, who had been a Jain, he bade him continue to give food and gifts as before to the Jain monks who frequented his house-an instance of toleration in a proselytizing teacher which is perhaps without parallel. Similarly in the Sigalovada-sutta it is laid down that a good man ministers to monks and to Brahmans. If it is true that Ajatasattu countenanced Devadatta's attempts to murder him, he ignored such disagreeable details with a sublime indifference, for he continued to frequent Rajagaha, received the king, and preached to him one of his finest sermons without alluding to the past. He stands before us in the suttas as a man of amazing power of will, inaccessible to fear, promises and, one may add, to argument but yet in comparison with other religious leaders singularly gentle in taking the offensive against error. Often he simply ignored it as irrelevant: "Never mind" he said on his deathbed to his last convert "Never mind, whether other teachers are right or wrong. Listen to me, I will teach you the truth." And when he is controversial his method is often to retain old words in honourable use with new meanings. The Brahmans are not denounced like the Pharisees in the New Testament but the real Brahman is a man of uprightness and wisdom: the real sacrifice is to abstain from sin and follow the Truth.

Women played a considerable part in the entourage of Gotama. They were not secluded in India at that time and he admitted that they were capable of attaining saints.h.i.+p. The work of ministering to the order, of supplying it with food and raiment, naturally fell largely to pious matrons, and their attentive forethought delighted to provide for the monks those comforts which might be accepted but not asked for.

Prominent among such donors was Visakha, who married the son of a wealthy merchant at Savatthi and converted her husband's family from Jainism to the true doctrine. The Vinaya recounts how after entertaining the Buddha and his disciples she asked eight boons which proved to be the privileges of supplying various cla.s.ses of monks with food, clothing and medicine and of providing the nuns with bathing dresses, for, said she, it shocked her sense of propriety to see them bathing naked. But the anecdotes respecting the Buddha and women, whether his wife or others, are not touched with sentiment, not even so much as is found in the conversation between Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi in the Upanishad. To women as a cla.s.s he gave their due and perhaps in his own opinion more than their due, but if he felt any interest in them as individuals, the sacred texts have obliterated the record. In the last year of his life he dined with the courtezan Ambapali and the incident has attracted attention on account of its supposed a.n.a.logy to the narrative about Christ and "the woman which was a sinner." But the resemblance is small.

There is no sign that the Buddha, then eighty years of age, felt any personal interest in Ambapali. Whatever her morals may have been, she was a benefactress of the order and he simply gave her the same opportunity as others of receiving instruction. When the Licchavi princes tried to induce him to dine with them instead of with her, he refused to break his promise. The invitations of princes had no attraction for him, and he was a prince himself. A fragment of conversation introduced irrelevantly into his deathbed discourses[367]

is significant--"How, Lord, are we to conduct ourselves with regard to womankind? Don't see them, ananda. But if we see them, what are we to do? Abstain from speech. But if they should speak to us what are we to do? Keep wide awake."

This spirit is even more evident in the account of the admission of Nuns to the order. When the Buddha was visiting his native town his aunt and foster mother, Mahapraj.a.pati, thrice begged him to grant this privilege to women but was thrice refused and went away in tears. Then she followed him to Vesali and stood in the entrance of the Ku?agara Hall "with swollen feet and covered with dust, and sorrowful." ananda, who had a tender heart, interviewed her and, going in to the Buddha, submitted her request but received a triple refusal. But he was not to be denied and urged that the Buddha admitted women to be capable of attaining saints.h.i.+p and that it was unjust to refuse the blessings of religion to one who had suckled him. At last Gotama yielded-perhaps the only instance in which he is represented as convinced by argument-but he added "If, ananda, women had not received permission to enter the Order, the pure religion would have lasted long, the good law would have stood fast a thousand years. But since they had received that permission, it will now stand fast for only five hundred years[368]."

He maintained and approved the same hard detached att.i.tude in other domestic relations. His son Rahula received special instruction but is not represented as enjoying his confidence like ananda. A remarkable narrative relates how, when the monk Sangamaji was sitting beneath a tree absorbed in meditation, his former wife (whom he had left on abandoning the world) laid his child before him and said "Here, monk, is your little son, nourish me and nourish him." But Sangamaji took no notice and the woman went away. The Buddha who observed what happened said "He feels no pleasure when she comes, no sorrow when she goes: him I call a true Brahman released from pa.s.sion[369]." This narrative is repulsive to European sentiment, particularly as the chronicler cannot spare the easy charity of a miracle to provide for the wife and child, but in taking it as an index of the character of Gotama, we must bear in mind such sayings of Christ as "If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple[370]."

4

Political changes, in which however he took no part, occurred in the last years of the Buddha's life. In Magadha Ajatasattu had come to the throne. If, as the Vinaya represents, he at first supported the schism of Devadatta, he subsequently became a patron of the Buddha. He was an ambitious prince and fortified Pa?aligama (afterwards Pa?aliputra) against the Vajjian confederation, which he destroyed a few years after the Buddha's death. This confederation was an alliance of small oligarchies like the Licchavis and Videhans. It would appear that this form of const.i.tution was on the wane in northern India and that the monarchical states were annexing the decaying commonwealths. In Kosala, Vi?u?abha conquered Kapilavatthu a year or two before the Buddha's death, and is said to have perpetrated a great ma.s.sacre of the Sakya clan[371]. Possibly in consequence of these events the Buddha avoided Kosala and the former Sakya territory. At any rate the record of his last days opens at Rajagaha, the capital of Magadha.

This record is contained in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, the longest of the suttas and evidently a compilation. The style is provokingly uneven.

It often promises to give a simple and natural narrative but such pa.s.sages are interrupted by more recent and less relevant matter. No general estimate of its historical value can be given but each incident must be apprized separately. Nearly all the events and discourses recorded in it are found elsewhere in the canon in the same words[372]

and it contains explanatory matter of a suspiciously apologetic nature.

Also the supernatural element is freely introduced. But together with all this it contains plain pathetic pictures of an old man's fatigue and sufferings which would not have been inserted by a later hand, had they not been found ready in tradition. And though events and sermonettes are strung together in a way which is not artistic, there is nothing improbable in the idea that the Buddha when he felt his end approaching should have admonished his disciples about all that he thought most important.

The story opens at Rajagaha about six months before the Buddha's death.

The King sends his minister to ask whether he will be successful in attacking the Vajjians. The Buddha replies that as long as they act in concord, behave honourably, and respect the Faith, so long may they be expected not to decline but prosper. The compiler may perhaps have felt this narrative to be an appropriate parallel to the Buddha's advice to his disciples to live in peace and order. He summoned and addressed the brethren living in Rajagaha and visited various spots in the neighbourhood. In these last utterances one phrase occurs with special frequency, "Great is the fruit, great the advantage of meditation accompanied by upright conduct: great is the advantage of intelligence accompanied by meditation. The mind which has such intelligence is freed from intoxications, from the desires of the senses, from love of life, from delusion and from ignorance."

He then set forth accompanied by ananda and several disciples. Judging from the route adopted his intention was to go ultimately to Savatthi.

This was one of the towns where he resided from time to time, but we cannot tell what may have been his special motives for visiting it on the present occasion, for if the King of Kosala had recently ma.s.sacred the Sakyas his presence there would have been strange. The road was not direct but ran up northwards and then followed the base of the mountains, thus enabling travellers to cross rivers near their sources where they were still easy to ford. The stopping-places from Rajagaha onwards were Nalanda, Pa?aliputra, Vesali, Bhandagama, Pava, Kusinara, Kapilavatthu, Setavya, Savatthi. On his last journey the Buddha is represented as following this route but he died at the seventh stopping-place, Kusinara. When at Pa?aligama, he prophesied that it would become a great emporium[373]. He was honourably entertained by the officers of the King who decided that the gate and ferry by which he left should be called Gotama's gate and Gotama's ferry. The gate received the name, but when he came to the Ganges he vanished miraculously and appeared standing on the further bank. He then went on to Vesali, pa.s.sing with indifference and immunity from the dominions of the King of Magadha into those of his enemies, and halted in the grove of the courtezan Ambapali[374]. She came to salute him and he accepted her invitation to dine with her on the morrow, in spite of the protests of the Licchavi princes.

The rainy season was now commencing and the Buddha remained near Vesali in the village of Beluva, where he fell seriously ill. One day after his recovery he was sitting in the shade with ananda, who said that during the illness his comfort had been the thought that the Buddha would not pa.s.s away without leaving final instructions to the Order. The reply was a remarkable address which is surely, at least, in parts the Buddha's own words.

"What does the order expect of me, ananda? I have preached the truth without any distinction of esoteric or exoteric, for in respect of the truth, there is no clenched hand in the teaching of the Tathagata. If there is anyone who thinks 'it is I who will lead the brotherhood' or 'the order is dependent on me,' it is he who should give instructions.

But the Tathagata does not think that he should lead the order or that the order is dependent on him. Why then should he leave instructions? I am an old man now, and full of years, my pilgrimage is finished, I have reached my sum of days, I am turning eighty years; and just as a worn-out cart can only be made to move along with much additional care, so can the body of the Tathagata be kept going only with much additional care. It is only when the Tathagata, ceasing to attend to any outward thing becomes plunged in meditation, it is only then that the body of the Tathagata is at ease. Therefore, ananda, be a lamp and a refuge to yourselves. Seek no other refuge. Let the Truth be your lamp and refuge; seek no refuge elsewhere.

"And they, ananda, who now or when I am dead shall be a lamp and a refuge to themselves, seeking no other refuge but taking the Truth as their lamp and refuge, these shall be my foremost disciples-these who are anxious to learn."

This discourse is succeeded by a less convincing episode, in which the Buddha tells ananda that he can prolong his life to the end of a world-period if he desires it. But though the hint was thrice repeated, the heedless disciple did not ask the Master to remain in the world.

When he had gone, Mara, the Evil one, appeared and urged on the Buddha that it was time for him to pa.s.s away. He replied that he would die in three months but not before he had completely established the true religion. Thus he deliberately rejected his allotted span of life and an earthquake occurred. He explained the cause of it to ananda, who saw his mistake too late. "Enough, ananda, the time for making such a request is past[375]."

The narrative becomes more human when it relates how one afternoon he looked at the town and said, "This will be the last time that the Tathagata will behold Vesali. Come, ananda, let us go to Bhandagama."

After three halts he arrived at Pava and stopped in the mango grove of Cunda, a smith, who invited him to dinner and served sweet rice, cakes, and a dish which has been variously interpreted as dried boar's flesh or a kind of truffle. The Buddha asked to be served with this dish and bade him give the sweet rice and cakes to the brethren. After eating some of it he ordered the rest to be buried, saying that no one in heaven or earth except a Buddha could digest it, a strange remark to chronicle since it was this meal which killed him[376]. But before he died he sent word to Cunda that he had no need to feel remorse and that the two most meritorious offerings in the world are the first meal given to a Buddha after he has obtained enlightenment and the last one given him before his death. On leaving Cunda's house he was attacked by dysentery and violent pains but bore them patiently and started for Kusinara with his disciples. In going thither he crossed the river Kakuttha[377], and some verses inserted into the text, which sound like a very old ballad, relate how he bathed in it and then, weary and worn out, lay down on his cloak. A curious incident occurs here. A young Mallian, named Pukkuisa, after some conversation with the Buddha, presents him with a robe of cloth of gold, but when it is put on it seems to lose its splendour, so exceedingly clear and bright is his skin. Gotama explains that there are two occasions when the skin of a Buddha glows like this-the night of his enlightenment and the night before his death. The transfiguration of Christ suggests itself as a parallel and is also a.s.sociated with an allusion to his coming death. Most people have seen a face so light up under the influence of emotion that this popular metaphor seemed to express physical truth and it is perhaps not excessive to suppose that in men of exceptional gifts this illumination may have been so bright as to leave traces in tradition.

Then they went on[378] to a grove at Kusinara, and he lay down on a couch spread between two Sala trees. These trees were in full bloom, though it was not the season for their flowering; heavenly strains and odours filled the air and spirits unseen crowded round the bed. But ananda, we are told, went into the Vihara, which was apparently also in the grove, and stood leaning against the lintel weeping at the thought that he was to lose so kind a master. The Buddha sent for him and said, "Do not weep. Have I not told you before that it is the very nature of things most near and dear to us that we must part from them, leave them, sever ourselves from them? All that is born, brought into being and put together carries within itself the necessity of dissolution. How then is it possible that such a being should not be dissolved? No such condition is possible. For a long time, ananda, you have been very near me by words of love, kind and good, that never varies and is beyond all measure. You have done well, ananda. Be earnest in effort and you too shall soon be free from the great evils-from sensuality, from individuality, from delusion and from ignorance."

The Indians have a strong feeling that persons of distinction should die in a suitable place[379], and now comes a pa.s.sage in which ananda begs the Buddha not to die "in this little wattle and daub town in the midst of the jungle" but rather in some great city. The Buddha told him that Kusinara had once been the capital of King Mahasuda.s.sana and a scene of great splendour in former ages. This narrative is repeated in an amplified form in the Sutta and Jataka[380] called Mahasuda.s.sana, in which the Buddha is said to have been that king in a previous birth.

Kusinara was at that time one of the capitals of the Mallas, who were an aristocratic republic like the Sakyas and Vajjians. At the Buddha's command ananda went to the Council hall and summoned the people. "Give no occasion to reproach yourself hereafter saying, The Tathagata died in our own village and we neglected to visit him in his last hours." So the Mallas came and ananda presented them by families to the dying Buddha as he lay between the flowering trees, saying "Lord, a Malla of such and such a name with his children, his wives, his retinue and his friends humbly bows down at the feet of the Blessed One."

A monk called Subhadda, who was not a believer, also came and ananda tried to turn him away but the Buddha overhearing said "Do not keep out Subhadda. Whatever he may ask of me he will ask from a desire for knowledge and not to annoy me and he will quickly understand my replies." He was the last disciple whom the Buddha converted, and he straightway became an Arhat.

Now comes the last watch of the night. "It may be, ananda," said the Buddha, "that some of you may think, the word of the Master is ended. We have no more a teacher. But you should not think thus. The truths and the rules which I have declared and laid down for you all, let them be the teacher for you after I am gone.

"When I am gone address not one another as. .h.i.therto, saying 'Friend.' An elder brother may address a younger brother by his name or family-name or as friend, but a younger brother should say to an elder, Sir, or Lord.

"When I am gone let the order, if it should so wish, abolish all the lesser and minor precepts."

Thus in his last address the dying Buddha disclaims, as he had disclaimed before in talking to ananda, all idea of dictating to the order: his memory is not to become a paralyzing tradition. What he had to teach, he has taught freely, holding back nothing in "a clenched fist." The truths are indeed essential and immutable. But they must become a living part of the believer, until he is no longer a follower but a light unto himself. The rest does not matter: the order can change all the minor rules if expedient. But in everyday life discipline and forms must be observed: hitherto all have been equal compared with the teacher, but now the young must show more respect for the older. And in the same spirit of solicitude for the order he continues:

"When I am gone, the highest penalty should be imposed on Channa." "What is that, Lord?" "Let him say what he likes, but the brethren should not speak to him or exhort him or admonish him[381]."

The end approaches. "It may be, that there is some doubt or misgiving in the mind of some as to the Buddha, or the truth, or the path, or the way. Enquire freely. Do not have to reproach yourselves afterwards with the thought, 'Our teacher was face to face with us and we could not bring ourselves to enquire when we were face to face with him.'" All were silent. A second and third time he put the same question and there was silence still. "It may be, that you put no questions out of awe for the teacher. Let one friend communicate to another." There was still silence, till ananda said "How wonderful, Lord, and how marvellous. In this whole a.s.sembly there is no one who has any doubt or misgiving as to the Buddha, the truth, the path and the way." "Out of the fulness of faith hast thou spoken ananda, but the Tathagata knows for certain that it is so. Even the most backward of all these five hundred brethren has become converted and is no longer liable to be born in a state of suffering and is a.s.sured of final salvation."

"Behold, I exhort you saying, The elements of being are transitory[382].

Strive earnestly. These were the last words of the Tathagata." Then he pa.s.sed through a series of trances (no less than twenty stages are enumerated) and expired.

An earthquake and thunder, as one might have predicted, occurred at the moment of his death but comparatively little stress is laid on these prodigies. Anuruddha seems to have taken the lead among the brethren and bade ananda announce the death to the Mallas. They heard it with cries of grief: "Too soon has the Blessed One pa.s.sed away. Too soon has the light gone out of the world."

No less than six days were pa.s.sed in preparation for the obsequies[383].

On the seventh they decided to carry the body to the south of the city and there burn it. But when they endeavoured to lift it, they found it immoveable. Anuruddha explained that spirits who were watching the ceremony wished it to be carried not outside the city but through it.

When this was done the corpse moved easily and the heaven rained flowers. The meaning of this legend is that the Mallas considered a corpse would have defiled the city and therefore proposed to carry it outside. By letting it pa.s.s through the city they showed that it was not the ordinary relics of impure humanity.

Again, when they tried to light the funeral pile it would not catch fire. Anuruddha explained that this delay also was due to the intervention of spirits who wished that Mahaka.s.sapa, the same whom the Buddha had converted at Uruvela and then on his way to pay his last respects, should arrive before the cremation. When he came attended by five hundred monks the pile caught fire of itself and the body was consumed completely, leaving only the bones. Streams of rain extinguished the flames and the Mallas took the bones to their council hall. There they set round them a hedge of spears and a fence of bows and honoured them with dance and song and offerings of garlands and perfumes.

Whatever may be thought of this story, the veneration of the Buddha's relics, which is attested by the Piprava vase, is a proof that we have to do with a man rather than a legend. The relics may all be false, but the fact that they were venerated some 250 years after his death shows that the people of India thought of him not as an ancient semi-divine figure like Rama or Krishna but as something human and concrete.

Seven persons or communities sent requests for a portion of the relics, saying that they would erect a stupa over them and hold a feast. They were King Ajatasattu of Magadha, the Licchavis of Vesali, the Sakyas of Kapilavatthu, the Bulis of Allakappa, the Ko?iyas of Ramagama, the Mallas of Pava[384] and the Brahman of Ve?hadipa. All except the last were Kshatriyas and based their claim on the ground that they like the Buddha belonged to the warrior caste. The Mallas at first refused, but a Brahman called Do?a bade them not quarrel over the remains of him who taught forbearance. So he divided the relics into eight parts, one for Kusinara and one for each of the other seven claimants. At this juncture the Moriyas of Pipphalivana sent in a claim for a share but had to be content with the embers of the pyre since all the bones had been distributed. Then eight stupas were built for the relics in the towns mentioned and one over the embers and one by Do?a the Brahman over the iron vessel in which the body had been burnt.

5

Thus ended the career of a man who was undoubtedly one of the greatest intellectual and moral forces that the world has yet seen, but it is hard to arrive at any certain opinion as to the details of his character and abilities, for in the later accounts he is deified and in the Pitakas though veneration has not gone so far as this, he is ecclesiasticized and the human side is neglected. The narrative moves like some stately ceremonial in which emotion and incident would be out of place until it reaches the strange deathbed, spread between the flowering trees, and ananda introduces with the formality of a court chamberlain the Malla householders who have come to pay their last respects and bow down at the feet of the dying teacher. The scenes described are like stained gla.s.s windows; the Lord preaching in the centre, sinners repenting and saints listening, all in harmonious colours and studied postures. But the central figure remains somewhat aloof; when once he had begun his ministry he laboured uninterruptedly and with continual success, but the foundation of the kingdom of Righteousness seems less like the triumphant issue of a struggle than the pa.s.sage through the world of some compa.s.sionate angel. This is in great part due to the fact that the Pitakas are works of edification.

True, they set before us the teacher as well as his teaching but they speak of his doings and historical surroundings only in order to provide a proper frame for the law which he preached. A less devout and more observant historian would have arranged the picture differently and even in the narratives that have come down to us there are touches of human interest which seem authentic.