BUDDHISM: ITS ORIGIN AND CEREMONIES.
Prayer-Wheels of the Buddhists.
Travelling on the borders of Chinese Tartary, in the country of the Lamas
or Buddhists, Miss Gordon Cumming remarks that it was strange, every now
and again, to meet some respectable-looking workman, twirling little brass
cylinders, only about six inches in length, which were incessantly
spinning round and round as they walked along the road. What could they
be? Not pedometers, not any of the trigonometrical instruments with which
the officers of the Ordnance Survey go about armed? No; she was informed
that they were prayer-wheels, and that turning them was just about
equivalent to the telling of beads, which in Continental lands workmen may
often be seen counting as homeward along the road they plod their weary
way.
The telling of beads seems to the Protestant a superfluous piece of
formalism: what then are we to think of prayer by machinery? The prayers,
or rather invocations, to Buddha—the Buddhists never pray, in the
Christian sense—are all closely written upon strips of cloth or paper;
the same sentence being repeated some thousands of times. These strips are
placed inside a cylinder, revolving on a long spindle, the end of which is
the handle. From the wind-cylinder depends a small lump of metal, which,
whirling round, communicates the necessary impetus to the little machine,
so that it rotates with the slightest possible effort, and continues to
grind any required number of acts of worship, while the owner, with the
plaything in his hand, carries on his daily work. His religion requires
that he should be all his time immersed in holy contemplation of the
perfections of Buddha, but to a busy man no such self-absorption is
possible. He is content, therefore, to say the sentences aloud at the
beginning and end of his devotions, and in the interval twirls slowly,
while a tiny bell marks each rotation, and reminds him if he should
unconsciously quicken his pace.
Tennyson finely speaks of Prayer as that by which
“The whole round world is every way
Bound by gold chains around the feet of God;”
but no such efficacy can be ascribed to the cylinders of brass, copper, or
gold, which are fashionable among the Buddhists. Yet we must not condemn
too unreservedly: Prayer, even among Christians, is apt to degenerate into
a dull, mechanical uniformity, and to become scarcely less perfunctory
than that which the Tibetans grind out of their prayer-machine.
In a Lama temple, Miss Gordon Cumming once saw a colossal prayer-wheel,
which might almost have sufficed for the necessities of a nation. It was
turned by a great iron crank, which acted as a handle. The cylinder
measured about twelve feet in height, and six to eight feet in diameter.
Circular bands of gold and vermilion adorned it, each band bearing the
well-known Buddhist ascription, or invocation, “To the jewel on the
Lotus.” Of this inscription, multiplied on strips of paper and cloth, the
cylinder was full, and each time that it revolved on its axis, the devotee
was accredited with having uttered the pious invocation just as often as
it was repeated within the cylinder. The whole history of Superstition
offers scarcely any fact more curious or suggestive than this method of
prayer by machinery; and that such a grotesque extravagance should have
emanated from so subtle and metaphysical a faith as Buddhism is an anomaly
not easily to be explained.
Each votary who is too poor to possess a prayer-wheel of his own, attends
the temple, does homage to the head Lama, receives his benediction, and
then, squatting in front of the great wheel, he turns the crank on behalf
of himself and his family. But if there be a considerable number of
worshippers, the priest himself works the handle, that all may participate
simultaneously in the act of prayer.
The use of these machines is traced back for fully fourteen centuries, and
is supposed to have originated in the belief that it was a meritorious
act, and a patent cure for sin, to be continually reading or reciting
portions of the sacred books of Buddha. But as many of the people could
not read, a substitute had to be found, and it came to be considered
sufficient if they turned over the rolled manuscripts which embodied the
invaluable precepts. And as a vast amount of time and trouble was saved by
this process, a further simplification became possible and popular,—the
invention of wheels termed Tehu-Chor,—great cylindrical bands full of
prayers; a cord being attached to the base of the band, which, when the
cord was pulled, twirled like a children’s toy. Prayer-wheels of this kind
are set up in all public places in Tibet, so that the poor who do not
possess little pocket Wheels of Devotion may not lose their chance of
accumulating merit. In some of the monasteries the rows of small cylinders
are so arranged, that the priest, or any passer-by can set them all in
simultaneous motion, by just drawing his hand along them.
According to Miss Cumming, who is confirmed by other travellers, the
cylinders vary in size, from tiny hand-mills, about as big as a
policeman’s rattle, to huge machines, eight or ten feet in diameter,
worked by a heavy iron crank, or sometimes by wind or water power. The
wind prayer-mills are turned by wings, which, like the cylinder, are
plentifully covered with prayers. The water-mills are placed over streams,
so as to dispense with human aid, and allow the running water to turn them
for the general welfare of the village. Through the cylinder passes a
wooden axle, which is fastened to a horizontal wheel, whose cogs are
turned diagonally to the water.
“One such group of little mills we noticed,” says Miss Cumming,[1] “set in
a clear stream half-way between Rarung and Pangi, a lively, rapid river,
rushing headlong down the mountain side to join the Sutlej. Having never
then heard of prayer-mills, we assumed them to be for corn, as perhaps
they were. At all events, we passed them without inspection, to our
subsequent infinite regret. These wheels rotate with the action of the
water, and so turn the cylinder, which must invariably stand upright.
Sometimes several of these are placed almost across the stream, and the
rudest form of temple is built over them.
“They are so placed that the wheel must invariably turn from right to
left, following the course of the sun; to invert that course would not
only involve ill-luck, but would amount to being a sin. Hence the
exceeding unwillingness of the people we met to let us tend their little
wheels, knowing from sad experience that the English sahibs rather enjoy
the fun of turning them the wrong way, and so undoing the efficacy of all
their morning’s work.
“Some of the little pocket cylinders are very beautifully wrought; some
are even inlaid with precious stones. I saw one great beauty which I
coveted exceedingly. The owner would on no account sell it. I returned to
the temple next morning, wishing at least to make a drawing of it, but I
think he mistrusted me, for he and his plaything had both vanished, and I
had to be content with a much simpler one of bronze, inlaid with copper.
The people have the greatest reluctance to sell even the ugliest old
mills. They cling to them as lovingly as you might do to your dear old
Bible; but, as I said before, not merely from the charm of association,
but from a dread lest a careless hand should turn them against the sun,
and so change their past acts of merit into positive sin. So there was a
great deal of talk, and many irons in the fire, before I was allowed to
purchase two of these, at a price which would have supplied half the
village with new ones.”
The prayer-mill sometimes contains the Tibetan prayer, or litany, for the
six classes of living creatures, namely, the souls in heaven, the evil
spirits in the air, men, animals, souls in purgatory, and souls in hell;
but, as a rule, the Lama worship begins and ends in the famous inscription
to which we have already alluded—Aum Mani Padmi Hoong (to the jewel in
the lotus.) These mystic words are raised in embossed letters on the
exterior of the cylinder, and are closely written on strips of paper
inside. All the sacred places are covered with them; the face of the rock,
the walls of the temple; just as the Alhambra glitters with its
azulejos, its blazoned inscriptions from the Kúran.
This mystic sentence is composed as follows: Aum or Om, equivalent to
the Hebrew Jah or Jehovah, the most glorious title of the Almighty;
Mani, the jewel, one of Buddha’s appellations; Padmi, the lotus, in
allusion to his lotus-throne; and Hoong, synonymous with Amen. The
Buddhists regard this “six-syllabled” charm as a talisman of never-failing
efficacy; but by some of the sects it is more or less varied. For
instance: the Chinese Fo-ists read it as Aum-mi-to-fuh, which is also
one of Buddha’s titles; and every devout Fo-ist aims at repeating it at
least three hundred thousand times in the course of his life. Some of
their priests will shut themselves up in the temples for months at a time,
and devote themselves to the dreary task of repetition, hour after hour,
day and night. Sometimes, ten or twelve devotees will voluntarily
sequester themselves, and continue all day to cry aloud in chorus; and at
night they undertake the task successively, one person droning through the
monotonous chant while the others sleep. Thus do they think to be heard
for their much speaking! Similar excesses of formalism, however, are
recorded in the history of mediæval Christianity,—in the biographies of
saints and ascetics who have substituted for a practical Christianity and
the active performance of social duties the dreary vanity of an
unprofitable solitude, spent in the discharge of useless penances.
The Buddhist prayer which is consecrated to Buddha as the Chakravarta
Rajah, or King of the Wheel, proves, on examination, to be closely related
to that Sun-worship which prevailed in the early ages of the world. The
wheel is, in many creeds, the symbol of the sun’s chariot, that is, of the
revolution of the heavenly bodies. In a sculpture, nearly two thousand
years old, on the Bilsah Tepe, Buddha is represented simply by a wheel,
overshadowed by the mystic chattah, or golden umbrella, which is a
common emblem of his power. His worshippers are represented as making
their offerings to the King of the Wheel. “This sacred Wheel of the Law,
or Wheel of Faith, is found again and again among the fain and Buddhist
sculptures in the caves of Ellora and Ajunta, in most cases projecting in
front of Buddha’s Lotus-Throne. In one instance an astronomical table is
carved above the wheel. In another it is supported on either side by a
stag, supposed to represent the fleetness wherewith the sun runs his daily
circuit, ‘going forth from the uttermost part of the heaven, and running
about unto the end of it again.’”
The Hindu Temples.
Visiting the Temples at Hardwar, one of the sacred cities of India, Miss
Gordon Cumming remarks upon the number of their hideous idols, painted and
carved, their multitudinous brass bells, their brazen horns, their sacred
courts all covered with elaborate carving, and their mythological
sculptures.
She says:—“I frankly confess that there is something startling in the
rapidity with which one gets quite at home amongst all this paraphernalia
of heathenism, and how very soon idolatry ceases to shock the mind, and
becomes merely a curious study with picturesque adjuncts. Six months
previously the sight of a veritable temple with its hideous idols and
devout worshippers was a thing from which one shrank in shuddering pity.”
But she soon became a connoisseur, and “lounged from one temple to
another, inspecting jewels and exquisite stone carving, and anything
wonderful the priests had to show, and quite forgot to be shocked, it was
all so perfectly natural, and seemed so entirely in keeping with the
tastes of the people.” In this remark there is a wonderful naïveté; for
it may reasonably be supposed that the tastes of the people would be in
accord with a religion which, during its career of two thousand years,
must have exercised so great an influence in forming them!
In some of the temples, according to the same writer, there are sacred
bulls, carved in white marble and adorned with costly necklaces. In others
the attendant priests spend the whole day in pouring single drops of
precious oil on holy pebbles brought from the Nerbudda and other sacred
streams, and here arranged in little trays. Amongst the privileged
inhabitants are the monkeys, who frolic about incessantly with their
babies in their arms, or sitting on their backs, and twining their little
arms round the parental necks.
The ceremonies in the different temples are, on the whole, very similar;
and the following description, taken from the Rão Mãlã, applies, except in
minor details, to all.
The day is marked by five services: the first at sunrise, when bells are
rung in the temple, and drums or conch-shells sounded, to rouse the Du, or
god, from his slumbers. After performing copious ablutions, the
officiating priest enters the holy place, and swings before the idol a
lamp with five or seven branches. An hour or two later, the Du is attired
in raiment appropriate to the season. He wears a quilted coat in cold
weather, and has a lighted brazier placed beside him; whereas, in hot
weather, he is anointed with sandal-wood dust and water, clothed in fine
linen, and decked out with gems and flowers. Placed close to a cool
fountain, he is assiduously fanned by his attendants. In rainy weather, he
is wrapped about in scarlet cloth and shawls. When he is dressed, a light
breakfast of rice and milk is served up, and his votaries perform “the
sixteen acts of worship.” At noon a third service takes place. The Du is
again rubbed with oil of sandal-wood, or sandal-dust and water, and
adorned with fresh flowers. The lamps are trimmed; incense is burned; and
his dinner is set before him: after which he is supposed to indulge in his
noonday sleep, and profound silence is maintained throughout the temple.
At three in the afternoon a drum beats, and the god awakes! His attendants
hasten to serve fruits and sweetmeats, and perform various games for his
amusement. At sunset he is enshrined: his feet are basted, he is sprinkled
with water, his mouth is washed, and another offering is made of
sandal-wood dust, and flowers, and incense. He is once more clothed; an
elaborate dinner is spread before him; betel leaves are presented; and
again the many-branched candlestick is waved, while all the votaries
present for the second time perform “the sixteen acts of worship.”
The last service takes place at night, when the image is supposed to sup
on bread and water. After receiving the usual oblations of incense and
flowers, he is undressed, and if he be movable, put to bed, or if not, is
warmly covered with shawls and quilts.
Not the least remarkable objects in the Hindu temples are their great
statues of bulls in marble or in metal. It is worthy of note that “in the
great Brazen Laver, which Solomon was commanded to make for the use of the
Temple at Jerusalem, the symbols selected for the adornment of that
consecrated Molten Sea should have been those which in later ages were to
hold so prominent a place in the symbolism of faiths so widely spread as
those of Brahma and Buddha. That huge laver was supported by twelve oxen
of cast metal, three looking to each point of the compass, while the brim
of the great sea itself was all wrought with flowers of lilies, much the
same as the pattern of lotus or water-lily with which the shrine of Buddha
is invariably edged.” The bull is another symbol which seems to connect
the creed of the Hindu with the old nature-worship; for the vernal equinox
takes place when the sun enters the sign of Taurus, and this event was
always and everywhere a signal for feasting and rejoicing.
But, as Max Müller observes, the ancient religion of the Aryan inhabitants
of India started, like the religion of Greece and Rome, of the Germans,
Slavs, and Celts, with a simple and intelligible mythological
phraseology.[2] In the Veda, the names of all the so-called gods or Devas
undisguisedly betray their original physical character and meaning. Under
the name of Agni (ignis) was praised and invoked the fire; the earth by
that of Prithvî (the brave); the sky by the name of Dyu (Zeus, Jupiter),
and afterwards of Indra; the firmament and the waters by the name of
Οὐρανός. Under many appellations was the sun invoked, such as
Sûrya, Savitri, Vishnu, or Mitra; and the dawn by the titles of Ushas,
Urvasî, Ahanâ, and Sûrya. Nor was the moon forgotten: for though not often
mentioned under its usual name of Kandra, reference is made to it under
its more sacred appellation of Soma; and a particular denomination was
reserved for each of its phases. There is hardly any fact of nature, if it
could impress the human mind in any way with the ideas of a higher power,
of order, eternity, or beneficence,—whether the woods, or the rivers, or
the trees, or the mountains,—without a name and representative in the
early Hindu Pantheon. No doubt there existed in the human mind, from the
very beginning, something, whether we call it a suspicion, an innate idea,
an intuition, or a sense of the Divine. What distinguishes man from the
rest of the animal creation is chiefly his ineradicable feeling of
dependence and reliance upon some higher power; that consciousness of
bondage, from which the very name of “religion” was derived. “It is He
that hath made us, and not we ourselves.” The presence of that power was
felt everywhere, and nowhere more clearly and strongly than in the rising
and setting of the sun, in the change of day and night, of spring and
winter, of birth and death. But although the Divine Presence was felt
everywhere, it was impossible, in that early period of thought, and with a
language incapable as yet of defining anything but material objects, to
conceive the idea of God in its purity and fulness, or to assign to it an
adequate and worthy expression.
It must also be remembered that the influence of the genius and forces of
Nature would necessarily be greater in an age when the human mind was
occupied by few objects of thought, than now when it ranges over the whole
world of art and science. Moreover, to the eye of ignorance everything
seems large and portentous, or dim and inscrutable. The fire from heaven,
the reverberating thunder, the gale that crashed down the mountain ravines
and felled great trees before it, the planetary bodies steadily revolving
in their courses, the stream with its glow and its ripple, the dense
shadows of the haunted forest, the recurring rush and roll of the
sea,—all these were things which for early man had a constant novelty and
strangeness, and seemed incessantly to claim his reverent consideration.
He could not account for them: whether a bane or a delight they were
equally unintelligible. They represented, therefore, some Power which he
could regard only with awe and reverence. And of that Power the sun would
necessarily be the chief type and symbol. All life and love seemed
dependent upon it. The trees throve, and the flowers bloomed, and the
banks rippled, and the birds sang, and the harvests ripened, through the
sun. It was the source of light and heat, of the vigour and activity of
nature. While it shone men’s hearts leaped with joy, and the wheels of
labour revolved with pleasant toil; but when it disappeared, and the
darkness usurped the heavens, the spirits sank, and humanity felt in the
change of scene a presentiment and presage of the darkness of death. All
vitality, all motion centred in the sun. “It was like a deep furrow,” says
Max Müller, “which that heavenly luminary drew, in its silent procession
from east to west, over the fallow mind of the gazing multitude; and in
the impression left there by the first rising and setting of the sun,
there lay the dark seed of a faith in a more than human being, the first
intimation of a life without beginning, of a world without end.” Who can
wonder that the Chaldean, and the Celt, alike ascended to the high places,
and paid their worship of symbolic fires to the great fountain of life and
light, the central force of the universe? Who can wonder that all the
Aryan tribes made it, so to speak, the nucleus of their religious systems?
The Hindu peasant, centuries ago, addressed it in his heart in much the
same language which Gawain Douglas afterwards employed. As its glorious
orb rose above the gleaming horizon, he sent forth to it a message of
welcome:
“Welcome, the lord of light and lamp of day;
Welcome, fosterer of tender herbis green;
Welcome, quickener of flourished flowers’ sheen;
Welcome, support of every root and vein;
Welcome, comfort of all kind fruits and grain;
Welcome, the bird’s green beild upon the brier;
Welcome, master and ruler of the year;
Welcome, welfare of husbands at the ploughs;
Welcome, repairer of woods, trees, and boughs;
Welcome, depainter of the bloomit meads;
Welcome, the life of everything that spreads.”
And because it was all this, and more, the Hindu saw in it something
greater than a mere luminary,—a planetary body; he endowed it with Divine
attributes, he made it a god, he gave it his worship, and by an elaborate
symbolism kept it ever before him.
A necessary consequence of this deification of the sun was the
deification of the other bodies that shared with him the firmament; but as
they were inferior in splendour and utility, they naturally became
recognized as inferior gods. And when once the religious feeling of
humanity had gone thus far, its further development became only a question
of time. The homage given to the stars was soon extended to the winds and
streams and groves. A legion of gods sprang into existence, and for a
while they seemed to satisfy the needs and aspirations of humanity. But as
the thoughts of men expanded, as their intellect ripened with the ages,
and grew strong enough to doubt, and bold enough to question the
conclusions of the common faith, a revolt took place against “the
contradictions of a mythological phraseology, though it had been hallowed
by sacred customs and traditions.” Men grew tired of so complex and
cumbrous a religious system, and having observed a definite fundamental
unity of nature in spite of the diversity of its operations, they came to
believe in a similar unity of the Divine Power. The idea of a supreme
authority once entertained, men soon understood that supremacy meant
oneness; that if there were a God over all, He must be one and
indivisible. One of the earliest proclamations of this sublime truth is
found in the Rig-Veda, which says:[3]—
“That which is one the sages speak of in many ways—they call it Agni,
Yama, Malarisvan.”
And again:[4]—
“In the beginning there came the Source of golden light—He was the only
true Lord of all that is—He stablished the earth and this sky:—Who is
God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
“He who gives life, He who gives strength; whose blessing all the bright
gods desire; whose shadow is immortality; whose shadow is death:—Who is
the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
“He who through His power is the only King of the breathing and awakening
world; He who governs all, man and beast:—Who is the God to whom we shall
offer our sacrifice?
“He whose power these snowy mountains, whose power the sea proclaims,
with the distant river—He whose these regions are, as it were, His two
arms:—Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
“He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm—He through whom
heaven was stablished—nay, the highest heaven—He who measured out the
light in the air:—Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
“He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by His will, look up,
trembling inwardly—He over whom the rising sun shines forth:—Who is the
God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
“Wherever the mighty water-clouds went, where they placed the reed and lit
the fire, thence even He, who is the only life of the bright gods:—Who is
the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
“He, who of His might looked even over the water-clouds, the clouds which
gave strength and lit the sacrifice, He who is God above all gods:—Who
is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
“May He not destroy us—He the creator of the earth; or He, the righteous,
who created Heaven; He who also created the bright and mighty waters:—Who
is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?”
The creed of a plurality of gods was one that carried in itself the seeds
of its destruction. But there was another cause of weakness in their
mortal attributes. Deriving their existence from the life of nature, they
were subject to the accidents which that life involved. Thus, the sun at
noonday might glow with splendour, but at night it was conquered by the
shadows, and in winter it seemed to yield to some stronger Power. The moon
waxed and waned, and was frequently eclipsed. As nature is subject to
change, so also must be the gods that represent its forces and aspects.
Such instability, such inherent weakness could not long satisfy the human
mind; having risen to the height of the idea of one God, it next demanded
that that God should be immutable. What rest, what contentment would it
find in the supposition of deities as changeful as the winds? Tossed about
by the currents of passion and feeling, buffeted by adverse circumstances,
the soul yearns intensely for something fixed, something absolute,
something unaffected by vicissitude, and finds it in the Divine Being, the
same to-day as yesterday, and the same to-morrow as to-day.
These two opposite principles did not come into immediate collision; the
priests of heathendom laboured long and earnestly to avert such a
catastrophe. In Greece they succeeded by transferring the mortal or
changeable element from “the gods” to “the heroes.”[5] The human details
in the characters and lives of Zeus and Apollon were transferred to the
demi-gods or heroes represented as the sons or favourites of the gods. The
two-fold character of Herakles as a god and a hero is recognized even by
Herodotus; and indeed, some of the epithets applied to him sufficiently
indicate his solar and originally divine personality. But to make some of
the solar myths of which Herakles was the centre intelligible and
conceivable, it became needful to depict Herakles as a mere human being,
and to raise him to the seat of the Immortals only after he had endured
toils and sufferings incompatible with the dignity of an Olympian
divinity.
In Peru the same treatment was adopted, but with different results. A
thinking, or, as he was called, a free-thinking Inca, remarked that the
sun’s perpetual travelling—he knew nothing, of course, of the Copernican
theory—was a sign of servitude, and he threw doubts on the divine nature
of aught so restless as the great luminary appeared to him to be. These
doubts led to a tradition, which, even if unhistorical was not wholly
untrue, that in Peru had existed an earlier worship—that of an Invisible
Deity, the Creator of the World—Pachacamac.
“In Greece, also, there are signs of a similar craving after the ‘Unknown
God.’ A supreme God was wanted, and Zeus, the stripling of Creta, was
raised to that rank. He became God above all gods—ἁπάντων κύριος, as
Pindar calls him. Yet more was wanted than a mere Zeus; and then a supreme
Fate or Spell was imagined before which all the gods, and even Zeus, had
to bow. And even this Fate was not allowed to remain supreme, and there
was something in the destinies of man which was called ὑπέρμορον or
‘beyond Fate.’ The most awful solution, however, of the problem belongs
to Teutonic mythology. Here, also, some heroes were introduced; but their
death was only the beginning of the final catastrophe. ‘All gods must
die.’ Such is the last word of that religion which had grown up in the
forests of Germany, and found a last refuge among the glaciers and
volcanoes of Iceland. The death of Sigurd, the descendant of Odin, could
not avert the death of Balder, the son of Odin, and the death of Balder
was soon to be followed by the death of Odin himself, and of all the
immortal gods.”
Such a catastrophe was inevitable, so that Prometheus, the man of
forethought, could safely predict the fall of Zeus.[6]
A similar issue was worked out in India, but with this difference; that
the seeming triumph of reason threatened to end in the destruction of all
religious belief. At the outset no vehement contention took place. On the
basis of the old mythology arose two new formations,—the Brahmanical
philosophy and the Brahmanical ceremonial; the former opening up all
avenues of philosophical inquiry, the latter immuring religious sentiment
and sympathy within the narrowest possible barriers. Both, however,
claimed to find their origin and antiquity in the sacred book of the Veda.
It was in the sixteenth or fifteenth century before Christ that the
Brahmans, a branch of the white Aryans, passed into Hindustan from the
north-west, and mixed with a more numerous race of coloured and barbarous
aborigines. Among their immigrants the sacerdotal and the royal or noble
classes already occupied an authoritative and a distinct position; and
soon after their settlement in India, the lower classes, by a natural
process, sank into the markedly inferior condition of the aborigines. Thus
was established a singularly rigorous system of caste,—the priesthood
and the aristocracy combining to oppress and keep down the two inferior
orders of the Brahmans and the aborigines. Intermarriage was strictly
forbidden, and every device adopted which could be made useful in
strengthening and perpetuating the class-distinction.
This revolution in the social world assisted the revolution in the
religious; and the educated classes rapidly abandoned their nature worship
in favour of the idea of an infinite and everlasting Godhead, which soared
far above the feeblenesses and sins of humanity. To become one with this
Godhead by throwing off the personality linked with a mind that was mean
and miserable, thenceforth constituted the religious aspiration of the
Brahman. And in attaining this object he was instructed to seek the help
of the Brahmanical priesthood; nay, he was taught that without that help
he would never succeed, and for this purpose a complex and comprehensive
ceremonial was enjoined upon him. From his cradle to his grave it dogged
his footsteps. Put forward as a stay and support, it was really a clog, an
encumbrance. Not an event in his life could take place for which a formula
of praise or prayer was not invented. Thanksgiving and sacrifice were
alike minutely regulated. For the benefit of the inferior castes the old
Pantheon of gods and demons had been retained, and the priesthood allotted
to each his share of the worshipper’s offerings and oblations. Each was
represented as insisting so strongly on certain observances, and punishing
so heavily any neglect or violation of them, that the votary feared to
approach their shrine unless under the protection and guidance of their
priests. Otherwise he might unwittingly rush into all kinds of sins. They
alone knew what food might be eaten, what dress might be worn, what god
might be addressed, what sacrifice paid. An error in pronunciation, a
mistake about clarified butter, an unauthorised arrangement of raiment or
hair, might involve the unassisted worshipper in pains and penalties of
the most awful character. Never was so complete and absolute a ceremonial
system known as that by which the Hindu priesthood obtained an entire
mastery over the Hindu people. Never was any law more minute in its
provisions, or more Draconic in the severity with which it punished their
violation.
Yet, strange to say, this ceremonial did not interfere with liberty of
thought. Any amount of heresy was compatible with its observance. A man
might think as he liked so long as he complied with its various
conditions. In some of the Brahmanical schools of thought the names of the
devs or gods were never heard; in others their existence was ignored, was
virtually contradicted. Thus, one philosophical system maintained the
existence of a single Supreme Being, and asserted that everything else
which seemed to exist was but a dream and an illusion which might and
would be dispelled by a true knowledge of the One God. Another contended
for two principles,—first, a Mind, subjective and self-existent; second,
Matter endowed with qualities; and explained that the world with its cloud
and sunshine, its sorrows and joys, was the result of the subjective self,
reflected in the mirror of Matter, and that the freedom of the soul could
be secured only by diverting the gaze from the shows and phantasms of
Nature, and becoming absorbed in the knowledge of the true and absolute
self. A third system allowed the existence of atoms, and referred every
effect, including the elements and the mind, gods, men, and animals to
their fortuitous concourse. This was identical with the Lucretian system,
which in its turn was related to the Epicurean. Hence it has been said
that the history of the philosophy of India is an abridgment of the
history of philosophy. Each of these systems was traced back to the sacred
books of the Vedas, Brâhmanas and Upanishads; and those who believed in
any one of them was considered as orthodox as the most devout worshipper
of Agni,—if the latter were saved by works and faith, the former was
saved by faith and knowledge,—a distinction not unknown in the Christian
philosophy.[7]
Out of this condition of the Hindu mind arose Buddhism, springing from it
as naturally as the flower from the seed.
The remarkable man[8] who founded this wide-spread religion is reputed to
have been a prince of the name of Siddhartha, son of Suddhodana, king of
Kapilavastu, a territory supposed to have been situated on the borders of
Oudh and Nipal. He is often called Sakya, after his family, and also
Gautama, from the great “Solar” race of which the family was a branch.[9]
Having at an early age exhibited an ascetic and contemplative tendency,
his father fearing he might be induced to abandon his high station as
Kshatriga, found him a wife in a princess of great personal charms, and
involved him in all the pomp and luxury of a magnificent court. But
Siddhartha drank of the cup only to taste the bitter in the draught; and
each year’s experience of the world convinced him of its inability to
satisfy the aspirations of the soul; so that, like Solomon, he would
exclaim, “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” The joys of life could not
render him forgetful of its sorrows. The thought would force itself upon
him that at any moment he might be afflicted with some loathsome or
torturing disease; that his friends might be suddenly snatched away; that
however sunny and bright the present, it could not prevent the inevitable
approach of old age, with its grey hairs, its wrinkled brow, and its
tottering limbs; and that the moral of the whole show was to be sought in
the darkness of the grave. Unable to endure any longer the mental conflict
begotten of his keen sense of the realities as compared with the illusions
of the world, he stole from the guarded palace, and at the age of 29 or
30, went forth as a beggar, or religious mendicant, to study in the
schools of the Brahman priests. He underwent their penances; he mastered
their philosophy; but dissatisfied with their cumbrous code of
superstitious ceremonial, he withdrew into the forest, and adopted a
course of religious asceticism.
This lasted for six or seven years, but brought him no repose. Then he
resolved on returning once more to human companionship. Beset by the
Spirit of Evil he fought long and bravely against temptation, and having
triumphed, prepared to attain the secret of happiness by giving himself up
to abstruse meditation. Week after week he was absorbed in thought,
continually investigating the origin of things, and the mystery of
existence. All the evils under which he, in common with his fellow-men,
groaned, he traced back to birth. Were we not born, we could not suffer.
But whence comes birth or continued existence?... We have no room,
however, to dwell on his processes of thought; enough to say that he came
to the conclusion that the ultimate cause of existence is ignorance, and
that the removal of ignorance means, therefore, the termination of
existence, and of all the pain and sorrow which existence implies and
induces. Realising this absolute unconsciousness of the outer world in his
own self, he claimed and assumed the name of the Buddha, or “Enlightened.”
The scene of his victory over life and the world received the name of
Bodhimanda, (the seat of intelligence,) and the tree under which the
religious reformer sat in his hour of moral and intellectual triumph was
called Bodhidruma, (the tree of intelligence,) whence Bo-tree. The
Buddhists believe that it marks the centre of the earth. Hiouen-thsang,
the Chinese pilgrim, professes to have found the Bodhidruma, or some tree
that passed for it, twelve hundred years after Buddha’s death, at a spot
near Gaya Proper, in Bahar, where still may be seen an old dagoba, or
temple, and some considerable ruins.
Having at last attained to a knowledge of the causes of human suffering,
and of the method of removing and counteracting them, the Buddha felt that
the task was imposed upon him of communicating that knowledge to others.
He began “to turn the wheel of the law,”—that is to preach,—at Benares;
and among his earliest disciples was Bimbisara, the ruler of Magadha. His
career as a teacher extended over forty years, during which period he
travelled over almost every part of Northern India, making a large number
of converts, and firmly establishing his religious system. He died at
Kusinagara in Oudh, in 543 B.C., at the age of eighty, and his body being
burned, the relics were distributed among numerous claimants, who raised
monumental tumuli, or topes, for their preservation.
All the expositions and teachings of the Buddha were oral, and the task of
committing them to writing was undertaken by the chief of his disciples
shortly after his death. These canonical books are divided into three
classes, forming the “Tripitaka,” or “three-fold basket.” In the first
class we find the Soutras, or Sermons of the Buddha; in the second, the
Vinaya, or book of discipline; in the third, the Abhidharma, or
philosophy. After a period of a century or so, the Buddhist leaders met
and revised the Tripitaka, and a third revision took place in 250 or 240
B.C., since which date the text has remained without alteration.
The doctrine of Buddha has been defined as a development of four main
principles, (or “Sublime Verities.”) 1st. That every kind of existence is
painful and transitory; 2nd. That all existence is the result of passion;
3rd. That, therefore, the extinction of passion is the one means of escape
from existence and from the misery necessarily attendant upon it; 4th.
That all obstacles to this existence must be swept away.
But what is meant by existence? That separation from the general Being of
the world which is involved in individual life, and in the opposition of
the subject which thinks, and the object which is thought about. And what
is meant by its extinction? Not so much annihilation, as the becoming one
with nature, wherein that form of consciousness which separates subject
and object is set aside. This extinction Buddha called Nirvâna, or “the
blowing out of the lamp;” it does not necessarily mean the annihilation of
consciousness altogether, but only of a finite form of it, which may be as
the light of a lamp compared with the light of day.
Buddha’s doctrine has been stigmatised as Atheism and Nihilism, and was
unquestionably liable on its metaphysical side to both charges. It was
Atheistic, not because it denied, for it simply ignored, the existence of
such gods as Indra and Brahma, but because, like the Sankhya philosophy,
it admitted but one subjective Self, and considered creation as an
illusion of that Self, imaging itself for a while in the mirror of Nature.
If there were no reality in nature, there would be no real Creator.
Says Max Müller,[10] stating with his usual clearness a problem which has
perplexed most students of the history of religion: “How a religion which
taught the annihilation of all existence, of all thought, of all
individuality and personality, as the highest object of all endeavours,
could have laid hold of the minds of millions of human beings, and how at
the same time, by enforcing the duties of morality, justice, kindness, and
self-sacrifice, it could have exercised a decided beneficial influence,
not only on the natives of India, but on the lowest barbarians of Central
Asia, is one of the riddles which no philosophy yet has been able to
solve. The morality which it teaches is not a morality of expediency and
rewards. Virtue is not enjoined because it necessarily leads to happiness.
No; virtue is to be practised, but happiness is to be shunned, and the
only reward for virtue is, that it subdues the passions, and thus prepares
the human mind for that knowledge which is to end in complete
annihilation.”
Probably no religious system has ever attained a wide-spread influence
over the minds of men which has held out so few of those inducements most
alluring to human nature. The idea of complete annihilation might
recommend itself to a philosopher, but would hardly have been regarded as
likely to attract the masses. We suppose the explanation is to be found in
the particularity of ritual enjoined by the Buddhist priests, this
particularity of ritual having always had a fascination for the multitude.
“There are ten commandments which Buddha imposes on his disciples. They
are—not to kill, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to lie, not to
get intoxicated, to abstain from unseasonable meals, to abstain from
public spectacles, to abstain from expensive dresses, not to have a large
bed, not to receive silver or gold. The duties of those who embraced a
religious life were most severe. They were not allowed to wear any dress
except rags collected in cemeteries, and these rags they had to sew
together with their own hands; a yellow cloak was to be thrown over these
rags. Their food was to be extremely simple, and they were not to possess
anything except what they could get by collecting alms from door to door
in their wooden bowl. They had but one meal in the morning, and were not
allowed to touch any food after midday. They were to live in forests, not
in cities, and their only shelter was to be the shadow of a tree. There
they were to sit, to spread their carpet, but not to lie down, even during
sleep. They were allowed to enter the nearest city or village in order to
beg, but they had to return to their forest before night, and the only
change which was allowed, or rather prescribed, was, when they had to
spend some nights in the cemeteries, there to meditate on the vanity of
all things. And what was the object of all this asceticism? Simply to
guide each individual towards that path which would finally bring him to
Nirvâna, to utter extinction or annihilation. The very definition of
virtue was that it helped man to cross over to the other shore, and that
other shore was not death, but the cessation of all being. Thus charity
was considered a virtue; modesty, patience, courage, contemplation, and
science, all were virtues, but they were practised only as a means of
arriving at deliverance.”
Buddha himself was an incarnation of the virtues. His charity, for
example, was melting as day. When he saw a tigress standing, and unable to
feed her cubs, he offered up his body to be devoured by them. The Chinese
pilgrim, visiting the spot on the banks of the Indus where this miracle
was supposed to have occurred, remarks that the soil was still red with
the blood of Buddha, as were also the trees and flowers.
Then as to his modesty, it was as supreme as that of a virgin who has
never seen men. One day Prasenagit, his royal disciple and protector,
besought him to work some miracles in order to silence his adversaries,
the Brahmans. Buddha complied, and performed the required miracles; but at
the same time he exclaimed, “Great King, I do not teach the law to my
pupils, telling them, Go, ye saints, and before the eyes of the Brahmans
and householders perform, by means of your supernatural powers, miracles
greater than any man can perform. I tell them, when I teach the law, Live,
ye saints, hiding your good works and showing your sins.” And yet, all
this self-sacrificing charity, all this self-sacrificing humility by which
the life of Buddha was distinguished throughout, and which he preached to
the multitudes that came to listen to him, had but one object, and that
object was final annihilation.[11]
Annihilation! what drearier prospect can be opened to the heart, or soul,
or mind of man? The utter cessation of that individuality of which the
meanest and wretchedest among us feels proudly conscious; of the thoughts
which animate, the desires which warm, the dreams that delight, the hopes
that stimulate, the affections that inspire! Do we indeed suffer all the
sorrows and uncertainties of life,—do we indeed strive, and endure, and
struggle,—do we, indeed, learn to labour and to wait, to bear the burden
of the day and the torture of the night, for no other purpose, with no
other prospect, than when the brief fever is over, to pass away into
nothingness? With so much difficulty can the mind reconcile itself to such
a dreary hypothesis that the creed of almost every race and people has
contemplated a future stage of existence, even when it has failed to
attain to anything like a clear and full conviction of the immortality of
the soul. The law of compensation seems to demand that a future life shall
redress the inequalities of the present.
Yet this doctrine of Annihilation was preached by Buddha, and apparently
accepted by the millions who became his disciples. But did they really
accept it as he preached it? No; the truth is, they read into it, as it
were, their own innate, unconquerable belief in a hereafter, and converted
his Nirvâna into a Paradise, which they embellished with the bright
colours of imagination. It can hardly be doubted that this was not the
meaning or intention of Buddha himself. Look, for a moment, at his “Four
Verities.” The first of these, as we have already stated, asserts the
existence of pain; the second, that the cause of pain is sin; the third,
that the cessation of pain may be secured by Nirvâna; the fourth, that the
way to this Nirvâna consists of eight things: right faith or orthodoxy,
right judgment or logic, right language or veracity, right purpose or
honesty, right practice or religious life, right obedience or lawful life,
right memory, and right meditation.
These precepts may be understood as the usual laws of an elevated
morality, pointing to and terminating in a state of meditation on the
highest object of thought, such as has been enjoined by several
philosophical or religious systems;—such as was revived in France and
Germany in the seventeenth century under the name of Pietism. There is
nothing in this teaching incompatible with a belief in the immortality of
the soul and the existence of a God. But with the Buddhist Nirvâna it is
otherwise. Its motive principle, by the way, is a mean and cowardly one,
for it makes happiness depend upon the cessation of pain; represents as
the highest purpose of human effort the escape from pain. The Buddhist
insists that life is a prolonged misery; that birth is the cause of all
evil; and he adds that even death cannot deliver him from this evil,
because he believes in transmigration, or an eternal cycle of existence.
To escape from it we must free ourselves from the bondage, not of life
only, but of existence; and this must be done “by extirpating the cause of
existence.”
But what is that cause?
The Buddhist teacher, involving himself in a cloud of metaphysics,
answers, that it is attachment; an inclination towards something, having
its root in thirst or desire. “Desire presupposes perception of the object
desired; perception presupposes contact; contact, at least a sentient
contact, presupposes the senses; and as the senses can only perform what
has form and name, or what is distinct, distinction is the real cause of
all the effects which end in existence, birth, and pain. Now this
conception is itself the result of conceptions or ideas; but these ideas,
so far from being, as in Greek philosophy, the true and everlasting forms
of the Absolute, are in themselves mere illusions, the effects of
ignorance. Ignorance, therefore, is really the primary cause of all that
seems to exist. To know that ignorance, as the root of all evil, is the
same as to destroy it, and with it all effects that flowed from it.”
In Buddha’s own case we may see how such teaching operated upon the
individual.
He entered into the first stage of meditation when he became conscious of
freedom from sin, acquired a knowledge of the nature of all things, and
yearned after nothing but Nirvâna. But he was still open to the sensation
of pleasure, and could employ his powers of discrimination and reasoning.
In the second stage he ceased to use those powers, and nothing remained
but the desire of Nirvâna, and the satisfaction inherent to his
intellectual perfection.
In the third stage indifference succeeded to satisfaction; but
self-consciousness remained, and a certain amount of physical
gratification.
These, too, faded away in the fourth stage, along with memory, and all
sense of pain; and before the neophyte opened the doors of Nirvâna.
After having gone through the four stages once, Buddha began them a second
time, but died before he attained the fourth stage.
After passing through the four stages of meditation, every Buddhist enters
into the infinity of space; thence rises into the infinity of
intelligence; to soar, afterwards, into the region of Nothing. But even
there he finds no repose; something still remains—the idea of the Nothing
in which he rejoices. This is annihilated in the fourth and last region,
and then he enjoys absolute, perfect rest, “undisturbed by nothing, or
what is not nothing.”
Buddha taught that this Nirvâna—which to most persons will seem a
metaphysical incomprehensibility—could be attained by all men. As there
is no difference between the body of a prince and the body of a beggar, so
is there none between their spirits. Every man is equally capable of
coming to a knowledge of the truth, and if he but will to do so, of
working out his own emancipation.
It is important to observe the absence of any theological element in
Buddhism. Its founder seems never to have spoken of God, and his Nirvâna
is wholly different from the Brahmanic idea of absorption into the Divine
Essence. Of the gods of the people he taught that they were, like men,
subject to the law of Metempsychosis, or Transmigration, and therefore
that as they were unable to deliver, they were unworthy to be worshipped.
A recent writer thinks it would be incorrect to speak of Buddha either as
a theist or an atheist, and asserts that he simply describes a condition
of absolute rest as an escape from the popular metempsychosis, which may
be interpreted either in a theistic or an atheistic sense. But a careful
examination of his system shows, we think, that it was wholly alien to a
belief in a Supreme Spirit.
“Buddhism,” says Barthélémy Saint-Hilaire, “has no God; it has not even
the confused and vague notion of a Universal Spirit, in which the human
soul, according to the orthodox doctrine of Brahmanism, and the Sânkhya
philosophy, may be absorbed. Nor does it admit Nature, in the proper sense
of the word, and it ignores that profound division between spirit and
matter which forms the system and the glory of Kapila. It confounds man
with all that surrounds him, all the while preaching to him the laws of
virtue. Buddhism, therefore, cannot unite the human soul, which it does
not even mention, with a God, whom it ignores; nor with nature, which it
does not know better. Nothing remained but to annihilate the soul; and in
order to be quite sure that the soul may not re-appear under some new
guise in this world, which has been cursed as the abode of illusion and
misery, Buddhism destroys its very elements, and never wearies of glorying
in this achievement. What more is wanted? if this be not the Absolute
Nothing, what is Nirvâna?”
Repellent as seems to us the central doctrine of Buddhism, it extended
rapidly. This extension was due, however, to the simplicity of the ritual
which Buddha enjoined; the pure morality which he advocated; the equality
of all men on which he insisted; and the spirit of love, tenderness,
gentleness, compassion, and toleration which he inspired. Hence it came to
pass that his disciples multiplied in the north-western territories of
Hindustan, and his creed found acceptance, at a later period, probably
about three centuries before Christ, all over India. In Ceylon it was
adopted at a very early period; but it was not until the second century
before Christ that it made its way into China and Tibet. From Ceylon it
spread into Birmah and Siam, and the islands of the Indian Archipelago,
and from China it penetrated into Japan. It is now the religion of more
than one fifth of the whole human race.
Its influence has been very considerable, and may distinctly be traced in
some of the Gnostic teaching and in the Alexandrine or Neo-Platonic
philosophy. It modified the old Brahmanic religion, which, acting under
its impulse, threw off its human sacrifices and more barbarous rites. The
festival of Juggernaut, which for the time places in abeyance all caste
distinctions, and adopts many Buddhist symbols, shows that the Brahmans,
even when they drove it out of India, were compelled to retain some of
its relics, just as they were under the necessity of recognising Buddha as
one of the Avatars of their god Vishnu. Buddhism may be described as “the
parent of Indian architecture,” which, fashioned at first on the Greek
patterns, speedily assumed a character of its own, as may be seen in its
colossal temples.
But, as is the case with all religious systems of purely human origin,
Buddhism gradually fell away from the standard of its founder. The heart
craves an object of worship, a something or some one on which or on whom
to rest its hopes and fears, and the Buddhists, untaught to reverence a
Supreme Being, transferred their adoration to Buddha himself, whose life
and work they involved in a cloud of myth and legend. His relics came to
be worshipped, and reliquary towers for their preservation were everywhere
erected.
The enthusiasm which fired the Buddhists, and largely contributed to the
rapid extension of their creed, for Buddhism, unlike Brahmanism, is a
proselytising religion, finds a striking illustration in the career of
Hiouen-thsang, the Chinese pilgrim, who, in the middle of the seventh
century, crossed the deserts and mountains which separate China from
India, and visited the principal cities of the Indian Peninsula.
Hiouen-thsang, a Buddhist Pilgrim.[12]
Hiouen-thsang was born in a provincial town of China, in one of the
revolutionary and anarchical periods of the Chinese Empire. His father,
having quitted the public service, was able to devote his leisure to the
education of his four children, one of whom, Hiouen-thsang, was
distinguished at an early age by his genius and his thirst for knowledge.
After receiving instruction at a Buddhist monastery, he was admitted as a
monk, when only thirteen years old. During the next seven years, he
travelled about with his brethren from place to place, in order to profit
by the lectures of the most eminent professors; but his peaceful studies
were frequently interrupted by the horrors of war, and he was forced to
seek refuge in the more remote provinces of the empire.
At the age of twenty he took priest’s orders, having already become famous
for his multifarious learning. He had studied the chief canonical book of
the Buddhist faith, the records of Buddha’s life and teaching, the system
of ethics and metaphysics, and had completely mastered the works of
K’ung-fu-tze and Lao-tse. But, like many inquiring minds, he was tortured
by doubt. For six years more he prosecuted his studies in the principal
places of learning in China, and was frequently solicited to teach when he
had come to learn. Baffled in all his efforts to satisfy his anxious and
restless intellect, he resolved at last on paying a visit to India, the
parent-land of Buddhism, where he knew he should find the original of the
works, which, in their Chinese translation, had proved so dubious and
excited so much mistrust. From the records of his pilgrim predecessors he
was aware of the dangers of his journey; yet the glory, as he says, of
recovering the Law, which was to be a guide to all men, and the means of
their salvation, seemed to him worthy of attainment. In common with
several other priests, he applied for the Imperial permission to travel
out of China. It was refused, and his companions lost heart. But
Hiouen-thsang was made of sterner stuff. His mother had often told him
how, before his birth, she had had visions of her future offspring
travelling to the Far West in search of the law; and he himself had been
similarly encouraged.
Having no worldly pleasures to enfeeble him, and believing only in one
object as worth living for, he resolved to face danger and difficulty;
made his way to the Hoang-Ho, and the place of departure of the caravans
for the West, and, eluding the vigilance of the Governor, succeeded in
crossing the frontier. He was without friends or helpers; but after
spending the night in fervent prayer, found a guide in a person who, next
morning, unexpectedly presented himself. For some distance this guide
conducted him faithfully, but abandoned him when they reached the Desert.
There were still five watch-towers to be passed, and the uncertain track
through the Desert was indicated only by skeletons and the hoof-marks of
horses. Bravely went the pilgrim on his way, and though misled by the
“mirage” of the Desert, he safely reached the first tower. There he
narrowly escaped death from the arrows of the watchman, but the officer in
command was himself a devout Buddhist, and he not only allowed
Hiouen-thsang to proceed, but gave him letters of recommendation to the
governors of the other towers. At the last tower, however, he was refused
leave to pass, and neither bribes nor entreaties proved of any avail. He
was compelled to retrace his steps, and make a long détour, in the course
of which he lost his way. His water-bag burst, and for the first time his
courage wavered. Should he not return? But no; he had taken an oath never
to make a step backward until he had reached India. It were better to die
with his face to the West, than return to the East and live.
For four nights and five days he traversed the Desert, without a drop of
water to quench his thirst, with no other refreshment than that which he
derived from his prayers; and that these should afford any hope or
consolation seems strange enough, when we remember that Buddhism held out
to him no hope of a God or a Saviour. “It is incredible in how exhausted
an atmosphere the Divine spark within us will glimmer on, and even warm
the dark chambers of the human heart.” Comforted by his prayers, he
resumed his onward march, and in due time arrived at a large lake in the
country of the Oigom Tatars, by whom he was received with an abundant
hospitality. One of the Tatar Khans insisted that he should reside with
him and teach his people; and as he would listen to no remonstrances or
explanations, Hiouen-thsang was driven to a desperate expedient. The king,
he said, might fetter his body, but had no power over his mind and will;
and he refused all food, with a view to put an end to a life which he no
longer regarded as of value. In this resolution he persisted for three
days, and the Khan, afraid that he would perish, was compelled at last to
yield. But he extracted from him a promise that on his return to China he
would visit him, and abide with him for three years. At last, after a
month’s detention, during which the Khan and his court daily attended the
lectures of the pious monk, he resumed his journey, attended by a strong
escort, and furnished with letters of introduction to the twenty-four
princes whose dominions he must cross.
His route lay through what is now called Dsungary, across the
Musur-dabaghan mountains, the northern chain of the Belur-tag, the valley
of the Yaxartes, Bactria, and Kabulistan. The pilgrim’s description of the
scenes through which he passed is interesting and vivid; he was a keen
observer, and gifted with considerable powers of expression.
Of the Musur-dabaghan mountains he says:—
“The crest of these heights rises to the sky. Since the beginning of the
world the snow has been accumulating, and it is now transformed into
masses of ice, which never melt, either in spring or summer. Hard shining
sheets of snow are spread out until they vanish into the infinite, and
mingle with the clouds. If one looks at them, one’s eyes are dazzled by
the splendour. Frozen peaks impend over both sides of the wood, some
hundred feet in height, and some twenty or thirty feet in thickness. It is
not without difficulty and danger that the traveller can clear them or
climb over them. Sudden gusts of hurricane and tornadoes of snow attack
the pilgrims. Even with double shoes, and in thick furs, one cannot help
trembling and shivering.”
But as Max Müller justly observes, what is more important in the early
portion of our traveller’s narrative than any descriptions of scenery, is
his account of the high degree of civilisation that then obtained among
the tribes of Central Asia. Historians have learned to believe in the
early civilisation of Egypt, Babylon, China, India; but they will have to
abandon all their old ideas of barbarism and barbarians now that they find
the Tatar hordes possessing, in the seventh century, “the chief arts and
institutions of an advanced society.” The theory of M. Oppert, who gives
to a Turanian or Scythian race the original invention of the cuneiform
letters and a civilisation anterior to that of Babylon and Nineveh, ceases
to be improbable; since no new wave of civilisation could have touched
these countries between the cuneiform period of their literature and
history and the epoch of Hiouen-thsang’s visit.[13]
“In the kingdom of Okini, on the western portion of China, Hiouen-thsang
found an active commerce, gold, silver, and copper coinage; monasteries,
where the chief works of Buddhism were studied, and an alphabet derived
from Sanskrit. As he travelled on he met with mines, with agriculture,
including pears, plums, peaches, almonds, grapes, pomegranates, rice, and
wheat. The inhabitants were dressed in silk and woollen materials. There
were musicians in the chief cities who played on the flute and the guitar.
Buddhism was the prevailing religion, but there were traces of an earlier
worship, the Bactrian fire-worship. The country was everywhere studded
with halls, monasteries, monuments and statues. Samarkand formed at that
early time a kind of Athens, and its manners were copied by all the tribes
in the neighbourhood. Balkh, the old capital of Bactria, was still an
important place on the Oxus, well-fortified, and full of sacred buildings.
And the details which our traveller gives of the exact circumference of
the cities, the number of their inhabitants, the products of the soil, the
articles of trade, can leave no doubt in our minds that he relates what he
had seen and heard himself. A new page in the history of the world is here
opened, and new ruins pointed out, which would reward the pickaxe of a
Layard.”
Hiouen-thsang passed into India by way of Kabul. Shortly before he reached
Pou-lou-cha-pou-lo, the Sanskrit Purushapura, the modern Peshawer, he was
informed of a remarkable cave, where Buddha had converted a dragon, and
had promised to leave it his shadow, in order that, whenever the fierce
passions of its dragon-nature should awake, it might be reminded of its
vows by the presence of its master’s shadowy features. The promise was
fulfilled, and the dragon-cave became a favourite resort for pilgrims. Our
traveller was warned that the roads to the cave were haunted by robbers,
so that for three years no pilgrim had been known to return from it. But
he replied that it would be difficult during a hundred thousand Kalpas to
meet once with the true shadow of Buddha, and that having come so near it
in his pilgrimage, he could not pass on without paying the tribute of his
adoration.
He left his companions in their security, and having, with some
difficulty, obtained a guide, proceeded on his way. They had accomplished
but a few miles when they were attacked by five robbers. Hiouen-thsang
showed them his shaven head and priestly robes. “Master,” said one of the
fraternity, “where are you going?” “I desire,” replied Hiouen-thsang, “to
adore the shadow of Buddha.” “Master,” said the robber, “do you not know
that these roads are full of bandits?” “Robbers are men,” was the answer,
“and as for me, when I am going to adore the shadow of Buddha, though the
roads might be full of wild beasts, I shall walk on fearless. And inasmuch
as I will not fear you, because you are men, you will not be insensible to
pity.” These words, in their simple faith, produced a strange effect upon
the robbers, who opened their minds to the enlightenment of the wise man’s
teaching.
Hiouen-thsang resumed his journey, with his guide, and passed a stream
which rushed tumultuously between the walls of a precipitous ravine. In
the rock was a door opening into a depth of darkness. With a fervent
prayer the pilgrim entered boldly, advanced towards the east, then moved
fifty steps backwards, and began his devotions. He made one hundred
salutations, but saw nothing. This he conceived to be a punishment for his
sins; he reproached himself despairingly and wept bitter tears, because he
was denied the happiness of seeing Buddha’s shadow. At last, after many
prayers and invocations, he saw on the eastern wall a dim patch of light.
But it passed away. With mingled joy and pain he continued to pray, and
again he saw a light, and again it vanished swiftly. Then, in his ecstasy
of loving devotion, he vowed that he would never leave the place until he
had seen the “Venerable of the age.” After two hundred prayers, he saw the
cave suddenly fill with radiance, and the shadow of Buddha, of a brilliant
white colour, rose majestically on the wall, as when the clouds are riven,
and all at once flashes on the wondering eye the marvellous image of the
“Mountain of Light.” The features of the divine countenance were
illuminated with a dazzling glow. Hiouen-thsang was absorbed in wondering
contemplation, and from an object so sublime and incomparable he could not
turn his eyes away.
After he awoke from his trance, he called in six men, and bade them kindle
a fire in the cave, that he might burn incense; but as the glitter of the
flame made the shadow of Buddha disappear, he ordered it to be
extinguished. Five of the attendants saw the shadow, but the sixth saw
nothing; and the guide, when Hiouen-thsang told him of the vision, could
only express his astonishment. “Master,” he said, “without the sincerity
of your faith and the energy of your vows, you could not have seen such a
miracle.”
Such is the account which Hiouen-thsang’s biographers give of his visit to
Buddha’s cave; but Max Müller remarks, to the credit of Hiouen-thsang
himself, that in the Si-yu-hi, which contains his own diary, the story
is told much more simply. After describing the cave, he merely
adds:—“Formerly, the shadow of Buddha was seen in the cave, bright, like
his natural appearance, and with all the marks of his divine beauty. One
might have said, it was Buddha himself. For some centuries, however, it
has not been possible to see it completely. Though one does perceive
something, it is only a feeble and doubtful resemblance. If a man prays
with sincere faith, and if he have received from above a secret
impression, he sees the shadow clearly, but cannot enjoy the sight for any
length of time.”
From Peshawer the undaunted pilgrim proceeded to Kashmir, visited the
principal towns of Central India, and arrived at last in Magadha, the Holy
land of the Buddhists. There, for a space of five years, he devoted
himself to the study of Sanskrit and Buddhist literature; he explored
every place which was consecrated by memories of the past. Passing through
Bengal, he travelled southward, with the view of visiting Ceylon, the
chief seat of Buddhism. But, unable to carry out his design, he crossed
the peninsula from east to west, ascended the Malabar coast, reached the
Indus, and after numerous excursions to scenes of interest in
North-Western India, returned to Magadha to enjoy, with his old friends,
the delights of learned leisure and intellectual companionship.
Eventually, his return to China became necessary, and traversing the
Punjab, Kabulistan, and Bactria, he struck the river Oxus, following its
course nearly up to its springhead on the remote Pamir tableland; and
after a residence of some duration in the three chief towns of Turkistan,
Khasgar, Yarkand, and Khoten, he found himself again, after sixteen years
of varied experience, in his native land. By this time he had attained a
world-wide reputation, and he was received by the Emperor with the honours
usually accorded to a military hero. His entry into the capital was marked
by public rejoicings; the streets were decked with gay carpets, festoons
of flowers, and waving banners. The splendour of martial pomp was not
wanting; the civic magistrates lent the dignity of their presence to the
scene; and all the monks of the district issued forth in solemn
procession.
If this were a triumph of unusual character, not less unaccustomed were
the trophies which figured in it.
First, 150 grains of Buddha’s dust;
Second, a golden statue of Buddha;
Third, another statue of sandal-wood;
Fourth, a statue of sandal-wood, representing Buddha as descending from
heaven;
Fifth, a statue of silver;
Sixth, a golden statue, representing Buddha victorious over the dragon;
Seventh, a statue of sandal-wood, representing Buddha as a preacher; and
Eighth, a collection of 657 Buddhist works in 520 volumes.
Admitted to an audience of the Emperor in the Phœnix Palace, he was
offered, but declined, a high position in the Government. “The doctrine of
Confucius,” he said, “is still the soul of the administration;” and he
preferred to devote his remaining years to the study of the Law of Buddha.
The Emperor invited him to write a narrative of his travels, and placed at
his disposal a monastery where he might employ himself in peaceful and
happy seclusion in translating the works he had brought back from India.
He quickly wrote and published his travels, but the translation of the
Sanskrit MSS. occupied the rest of his life. It is said that the number of
the works he translated, with the assistance of a large staff of monks,
amounted to 740, in 1335 volumes. Often he might be seen pondering a
passage of difficulty, when suddenly a flash of inspiration would seem to
enlighten his mind. His soul was cheered, as when a man walking in
darkness sees all at once the sun piercing the clouds and shining in its
full brightness; and, unwilling to trust to his own understanding, he used
to attribute his knowledge to a secret inspiration of Buddha and the
Bôdhisattvas.
When his last hour approached, he divided all his property among the poor,
invited his friends to come and see him, and take a cheerful farewell of
the impure body of Hiouen-thsang. “I desire,” he said, “that whatever
merits I may have gained by good works may fall upon other people. May I
be born again with them in the heaven of the blessed, be admitted to the
family of Mi-le, and serve the Buddha of the future, who is full of
kindness and affection. When I descend again upon earth to pass through
other forms of existence, I desire at every new birth to fulfil my duties
towards Buddha, and arrive at the last at the highest and most perfect
intelligence.” He died in the year 664.
The life of Hiouen-thsang, and his narrative of travel, have been
translated into French by M. Stanislas Julien.[14] The foregoing
particulars have been borrowed from a review of M. Julien’s work, by Max
Müller, which originally appeared in the “Times” of April 17 and 20, 1857.
We translate from Stanislas Julien’s “Vie et Voyages de Hiouen-thsang” the
Chinese narrative of the pilgrim’s last days:—
“After completing his translation of the Pradjñâ, the Master of the Law
became conscious that his strength was failing, and that his end was near
at hand. Accordingly he spoke to his disciples: ‘If I came into the palace
of Yu-hoa-kong, it was, as you know, on account of the sacred book of the
Pradjñâ. Now that the work is finished, I feel that my thread of life is
run out. When after death you remove me to my last resting-place, see that
everything be done in a modest and simple manner. You will wrap my body
in a mat, and deposit it in some calm and solitary spot in the bosom of a
valley. Carefully avoid the neighbourhood of palace or convent; a body so
impure as mine should be separated from it by a great distance.’
“On hearing these words, his disciples broke out into sobs and cries.
Drying their tears, they said to him: ‘Master, you have still a reserve of
strength and vigour; your countenance is in no wise altered; why do you
give sudden utterance to such miserable words?’
“‘I know it through and in myself,’ replied the Master of the Law; ‘how
would it be possible for you to understand my presentiments?’
“On the first day of the first moon in the spring of the first year
Lin-te (664), the neighbouring interpreters and all the religious of the
convent, came to solicit him, with the most pressing earnestness, to
translate the collection of the Ratnakoûta soûtra.
“The Master of the Law, yielding to their fervid persistency, made an
effort to overcome his weakness, and translated a few lines. Then, closing
the Hindu text, he said: ‘This collection is as great as that of the
Pradjñâ, but I feel I have not sufficient strength to complete such an
enterprise. My last moments have arrived, and my life can be only of short
duration. To-day I would fain visit the valley of Lantchi, to offer my
last homages to the statues of the innumerable Buddhas.’
“Accordingly, he set forth with his disciples. The monks, at his
departure, did not cease to shed tears.
“After this pious excursion he returned to the convent. Thenceforward he
ceased to translate, and occupied himself solely in his religious duties.
“On the eighth day, one of his disciples, the monk Hiouen-Khio, originally
of Kao-tch’ang, related to the Master of the Law a dream which he had had.
He had seen a Fesu-thou (or Stoûpa,) of imposing aspect and prodigious
height, crumble suddenly to the ground. Awakened by the fall, he ran to
inform the Master of the Law. ‘The event does not concern you,’ said
Hiouen-thsang; ‘it is the presage of my approaching end.’
“On the evening of the ninth day, as he crossed the bridge of a canal in
the rear of his residence, he fell, and injured his leg. From that moment
his strength declined perceptibly.
“On the sixteenth day he cried out, as if awaking from a dream: ‘Before my
eyes I see an immense lotus-flower, charming in its freshness and purity.’
“He had another dream on the seventeenth day, in which he saw hundreds and
thousands of men of tall stature, who, decorated with garments of
embroidered silk, with flowers of marvellous beauty, and jewels of great
price, issued from the sleeping-chamber of the Master of the Law, and
proceeded to set out, both internally and externally, the hall consecrated
to the translation of the holy books. Afterwards, in the rear of that
hall, on a wooded mountain, they everywhere planted rich banners of the
most vivid colours, and created an harmonious music. He saw moreover,
without the gate, an innumerable multitude of splendid chariots loaded
with perfumed viands and fruits of more than a thousand kinds, as
beautiful in form as in colour; no fruits were there of terrestrial
growth! The people brought them to him, one after the other, and offered
him a profusion; but he refused them, saying: ‘Such viands as these belong
only to those who have obtained the superior intelligence. Hiouen-thsang
has not yet arrived at that sublime rank: how could he dare to receive
them?’ In spite of his energetic refusal they continued to serve him
without intermission.
“The disciples who watched by him happening to make some slight sound, he
opened his eyes suddenly, and related his dream to the sub-director
(Karmmadana), a certain Hoeï-te.”
“‘And from these omens,’ added the Master, ‘it seems to me that such
merits as I have been able to acquire during my life have not fallen into
oblivion, and I believe, with an entire faith, that it is not in vain one
practises the doctrine of the Buddha.’
“Immediately, he ordered the master Kia-chang to make a written list of
the titles of the sacred books and the treatises which he had translated,
forming altogether seven hundred and forty works and thirteen hundred and
thirty-five volumes (livres). He wrote down also the Kôti (ten
millions) of paintings of the Buddha, as well as the thousand images of
Mi-le (Mâitrêya bôdhisattva), painted on silk, which he had caused to
be executed. There were, moreover, the Kôtis (one hundred millions) of
statuettes of uniform colour. He had also caused to be written a thousand
copies of the following sacred books:
Nong-touan-pan-jo-king (Vadjra tchhêdika pradjñâ parâmitâ soûtra).
Yo-sse-jou-laï-pou-youen-kong-te-king (Arya bhagavati bhâichadja
gourou poûrwa pranidhâna nâma mahâ yâna soûtra).
Lou-men-t’o-lo-ni-king (Chat moukhi dhârani).”
He had ministered to the wants of upwards of twenty thousand persons among
the faithful and heretical; he had kindled a hundred thousand lamps, and
purchased thousands upon thousands (ocean) of creatures.
When Kia-chang had finished this long catalogue of good works, he was
ordered to read it aloud. After hearing it, the religious crossed their
hands and loaded the Master with congratulations. Then he said to
them:—“The moment of my death approaches; already my mind grows feeble
and seems to be on the point of quitting me. Distribute at once in alms my
clothes and goods; let statues be fabricated; and order the religious to
recite some prayers.”
On the twenty-third day, a meal was given to the poor, at which alms were
distributed. On the same day, he ordered a moulder named Song-kia-tchi, to
raise, in the Kia-cheou-tien palace, a statue of the Intelligence
(Buddha); after which he invited the population of the convent, the
translators, and his disciples, to bid “a joyous farewell to that impure
and contemptible body of Hiouen-thsang, who, having finished his work,
merited no longer existence. I desire,” he added, “to see poured back upon
other men the merits which I have acquired by any good works; to be born
with them in the heaven of the Touchitas; to be admitted into the family
of Mi-le (Mâitrêya); and to serve the Buddha, full of tenderness and
affection. When I shall return to earth to pass through other existences,
I desire, at each new birth, to discharge with boundless zeal my duties
towards the Buddha, and finally to arrive at the Transcendent Intelligence
(Anouttara samyak sambôdhi).”
After having made these adieux, he was silent, and engaged in meditation;
then with his dying tongue he faltered forth his bitter regret that he did
not enjoy more of the “world of the eyes” (the faculty of seeing), of the
“world of the thought” (the faculty of thinking), of “the world of the
knowledge which springs from observation” (the knowledge of sensible
objects); of the “world of the knowledge which springs from the
mind”—l’esprit (the perception of spiritual things); and that he did
not possess the fulness of the Intelligence. Finally, he pronounced two
gubhas, which he caused to be repeated to the persons near him:—
“Adoration to Maitrêya Tathagata, gifted with a sublime intelligence! I
desire, with all men, to see your affectionate visage.
“Adoration to Maitrêya Tathagata! I desire, when I quit this life, to be
born again in the midst of the multitude who surround you.”
The Master of the Law, after having long fixed his gaze upon Te-hoeï, the
sub-director of the convent (Karmmadana), raised his right hand to his
chin and his left upon his breast; then he stretched out his legs, crossed
them, and lay down on the right side.
He remained thus, immovable, without taking anything, until the fifth day
of the second moon. In the middle of the night his disciples asked him:
“Master, have you at length obtained to be born in the midst of the
assembly of Maitrêya?”
“Yes,” he replied, with a failing voice. And having spoken, his breathing
grew rapidly weaker, and in a few moments, his soul passed away.
His servants, feeling quietly, found that his feet were already cold, but
that the back part of the head retained its warmth.
On the seventh day (of the second moon) his countenance had not undergone
any alteration, and his body exhaled no odour.
The religious of the convent having passed several days in prayers, it was
not until the morning of the ninth day that the sad news reached the
capital.
The Master of the Law was seven tchi high; his face was of a fresh
complexion. His eyebrows were wide apart, his eyes brilliant. His air was
grave and majestic, and his features were full of grace and vivacity. The
quality or tone (timbre) of his voice was pure and penetrating, and his
language at times soared to a lofty eloquence, so noble and so harmonious
that one could not refuse to listen. When he was surrounded by his
disciples, or animated by the presence of an illustrious guest, he would
often speak for half-a-day, while his hearers sat riveted in an immovable
attitude. His favourite attire was a robe of fine cotton stuff,
proportioned to his height and figure; his gait was light and easy; he
looked straight before him, throwing his glances neither to the right nor
to the left. He was majestic as those great rivers which embrace the
earth; calm and shining as the lotus which springs in the midst of the
waters. A severe observer of discipline, he was unchanged and
unchangeable. Nothing could equal his affectionate benevolence and tender
pity, the fervour of his zeal or his inviolable attachment to the
practices of the Law. He was reserved in his friendship, made no hasty
bonds, and when once he had entered his convent, nothing but an imperial
decree could have drawn him from his pious retreat.
On the third day of the second moon (of the period Lin-te,—664), the
Master of the Law had sent Hiu-hiouen-pi to inform the Emperor of the
wound he had received, and of the malady it had induced.
On the seventh day of the same month the Emperor, by a decree, ordered one
of the imperial physicians to take with him medicaments and attend upon
the Master of the Law, but by the time he arrived, the Master was already
dead. Teou-sse-lun, governor of Fang-tcheou, announced by a report this
melancholy event.
At the news, the Emperor shed tears copiously, and cried aloud in his
sorrow, declaring that he had just lost the treasure of the empire. For
several days he suspended the usual audiences.
All the civil and military functionaries abandoned themselves to groans
and tears: the Emperor himself was unable to repress his sobs or moderate
his grief. On the next day but one, he spoke to his great officers as
follows:
“What a misfortune for my empire is the loss of Thsang, the Master of the
Law! It may well be said that the great family of Cakya has seen its sole
support shattered beneath it, and that all men remain without master and
without guide. Do they not resemble the mariner who sees himself sinking
into the abyss, when the storm has destroyed his oars and his shallop? the
traveller astray in the midst of the darkness, whose lamp dies out at the
entrance to a bottomless gulf?”
When he had uttered these words, the Emperor groaned again, and sighed
many times.
On the twenty-sixth day of the same month, the Emperor issued the
following decree:
“In accordance with a report addressed to me by Teou-sse-lun on the death
of the Master of the Law, Hiouen-thsang, of the convent Yu-hoa-sse, I
order that his funeral take place at the expense of the State.”
On the sixth day of the third moon, he issued a new decree as follows:
“By the death of Thsang, the Master of the Law, the translation of the
sacred books is stopped. In conformity to the ancient ordinances, the
magistrates will cause the translations already completed to be copied
carefully: as for the (Indian) manuscripts which have not yet been
translated, they will be handed over in their entirety to the director of
the convent Ts’e’-en-sse (of the Great Beneficence,) who will watch over
their safety. The disciples of Hiouen-thsang and the translators’ company,
who previously did not belong to the convent Yu-hoa-sse, will all return
to their respective convents.”
On the fifth day of the third moon appeared the following decree:
“On the day of the funeral of the Master of the Law, Hiouen-thsang, I
permit the male and female religious of the capital to accompany him with
banners and parasols to his last resting-place. The Master of the Law
shone by his noble conduct and his eminent virtues, and was the idol of
his age. Wherefore, now he is no more, it is just that I should diffuse
again abundant benefits to honour the memory of a man who has had no equal
in past times.”
His disciples, faithful to his last wishes, formed a litter of coarse
mats, removed his body to the capital, and deposited it in the convent of
the Great Beneficence, in the middle of the hall devoted to the labours
of translation. United by the sentiment of a common sorrow, they uttered
such cries as might have shaken the earth. The religious and the laics of
the capital hastened to the spot, and poured out tears mingled with sobs
and cries. Every day the crowd was swollen by fresh arrivals.
On the fourteenth day of the fourth month, preparations were made for his
interment in the capital of the West. The male and female religious, and a
multitude of the men of the people, prepared upwards of five hundred
objects necessary for the celebration of his obsequies; parasols of smooth
(unia) silk, banners and standards, the tent and the litter of the
Ni-ouan (Nirvâna;) the inner coffin of gold, the outer one of silver,
the so-lo trees (salas,) and disposed them in the middle of the
streets to be traversed by the procession. The plaintive cadences of the
funereal music, and the mournful dirges of the bearers resounded even to
Heaven. The inhabitants of the capital and of the districts situated
within a radius of five hundred li (fifty leagues,) who formed the
procession, exceeded one million in number. Though the obsequies were
celebrated with pomp, the coffin of the Master nevertheless was borne upon
a litter composed of rude coarse mats. The silk manufacturers of the East
had employed three thousand pieces of different colours in making the
chariot of the Nirvâna, which they had ornamented with flowers and
garlands, loaded with precious stones. They had asked permission to place
the body of the Master of the Law upon this resplendent catafalque; but
afraid of infringing his dying command, his disciples had refused. So it
went first, bearing the Master’s three robes and his religious mantle, of
the value of one hundred ounces of silver; next came the litter
constructed of coarse mats. Not one of the assistants but shed copious
tears or was almost choked with grief!
Upwards of thirty thousand religious and laics spent the night near his
tomb.
On the morning of the fifteenth day the grave was closed; then, at the
place of sepulture, an immense distribution of alms was made, and the
crowd afterwards dispersed in silence.
On the eighth day of the fourth moon of the second year of the
Tsong-tchang period (669,) the Emperor decreed that the tomb of the Master
of the Law should be transported into a plain, situated to the west of the
Fan-tch’ouen valley, and that a tower should be erected in his
honour.[15]
