Knowledge gives real immortality; rites give temporary bliss. The Upanishads teach that the latter is lower than the former, but each answers the question. There were two answers, and Manu gives both. That is the secret of many discrepancies in Hindu rules. The law-giver cannot admit absolutely and once for all that the Vedic ceremony is of no abiding use, as it can be of no use to one that accepts the higher teaching. He keeps it as a training and allows only the ascetic to be a philosopher indeed. But at the same time he gives as a sort of peroration to his treatise some 'elegant extracts' from philosophical works, which he believes theoretically, although practically he will not allow them to influence his ritualism. He is a true Brahman priest.

It is this that is always so annoying in Brahmanic philosophy. For the slavery of tradition is everywhere. Not only does the ritualist, while admitting the force of the philosopher's reasons, remain by Vedic tradition, and in consequence refuse to supplant 'revelation' with the higher wisdom and better religion, which he sees while he will not follow it; but even the philosopher must needs be 'orthodox,' and, since the scriptures themselves are self-contradictory, he is obliged to use his energies not in discovering truth, but in reconciling his ancestors' dogmas, in order to the creation of a philosophical system which shall agree with everything that has been said in the Vedas and Upanishads. When one sees what subtlety and logical acumen these philosophers possessed, he is moved to wonder what might have been the outcome had their minds been as free as those of more liberal Hellas. But unfortunately they were bound to argue within limits, and were as much handicapped in the race of thought as were they that had to conform to the teachings of Rome. For though India had no church, it had an inquisitorial priestly caste, and the unbeliever was an outcast. What is said of custom is true of faith: "Let one walk in the path of good men, the path in which his father walked, in which his grandfathers walked; walking in that path one does no wrong" (Manu iv. 178). Real philosophy, unhampered by tradition, is found only among the heretics and in the sects of a later time.

The gods of old are accepted by the orthodox as a matter of course, although theoretically they are born of the All-god, who is without the need of ceremonial rites. To the other castes the active and most terrible deity is represented as being the priest himself. He not only symbolizes the fire-god, to whom is offered the sacrifice, but he actually is the divinity in person. Hence there is no greater merit than in giving gifts to priests. As to eschatology, opinions are not contrasted any more. They are put side by side. In morality truth, purity, and harmlessness are chiefly inculcated. But the last (ascribed by some scholars to Buddhistic influence) is not permitted to interfere with animal sacrifices.

Some of the rules for the life of a householder will show in brief the moral excellence and theoretical uncertainty of Manu's law-code. The following extracts are from the fourth, the Ten Commandments from the sixth, and the description of the hells (twenty-two in all)[31] from the fourth and twelfth books of Manu's code. These rules may be accepted as a true reflexion of what was taught to the people by stringent Brahmanism as yet holding aloof from Hinduism.

A householder must live without giving any pain (to living creatures). He must perform daily the ceremonies ordained in the Veda. In this way he obtains heaven. Let him never neglect the offerings to seers, gods, spirits (sprites), men, and Manes. Some offer sacrifice only in their organs of sense (not in external offerings); some by knowledge alone. Let him not explain law and rites to the Cūdra (slave) caste; if he does so, he sinks into the hell Boundless. Let him not take presents from an avaricious king who disobeys the law-codes; if he does so, he goes to twenty-one hells (called Darkness, Dense-darkness, Frightful, Hell, Thread of Death, Great Hell, Burning, Place of Spikes, Frying-pan, River of Hell, etc., etc., etc.). Let him never despise a warrior, a snake, or a priest. Let him never despise himself. Let him say what is true and what is agreeable, but not disagreeable truth or agreeable false-hood. Let him not dispute with anybody, but let him say 'very well.' Let him not insult anybody. Remembering his former births, and studying the Veda again and again, he gets endless happiness. Let him avoid unbelief and censure of the Vedas, reviling of gods, hatred, pride, anger, and cruelty. He that even threatens a priest will go to the hell Darkness for one hundred years; if he strikes him he will be born in twenty-one sinful rebirths (according to another passage in the eleventh book he goes to hell for a thousand years for the latter offence). Priests rule the world of gods. But deceitful, hypocritical priests go to hell. Let the householder give gifts, and he will be rewarded. One that gives a garment gets a place in the moon; a giver of grain gets eternal happiness; a giver of the Veda gets union with Brahmā (brahma; these gifts, of course, are all to priests). He that gives respectfully and he that receives respectfully go to heaven; otherwise both go to hell. Let him, without giving pain to any creature, slowly pile up virtue, as does an ant its house, that he may have a companion in the next world. For after death neither father, nor mother, nor son, nor wife, nor relations are his companions; his virtue alone remains with him. The relations leave the dead body, but its virtue follows the spirit: with his virtue as his companion he will traverse the darkness that is hard to cross; and virtue will lead him to the other world with a luminous form and ethereal body. A priest that makes low connections is reborn as a slave. The Father-god permits a priest to accept alms even from a bad man. For fifteen years the Manes refuse to accept food from one that despises a free gift. A priest that sins should be punished (that is, mulcted, a priest may not be punished corporally), more than an ordinary man, for the greater the wisdom the greater the offence. They that commit the Five Great Sins live many years in hells, and afterwards obtain vile births; the slayer of a priest becomes in turn a dog, a pig, an ass, a camel, a cow, a goat, a sheep, etc, etc. A priest that drinks intoxicating liquor becomes various insects, one after another. A priest that steals becomes a spider, snake, etc, etc. By repeating sinful acts men are reborn in painful and base births, and are hurled about in hells; where are sword-leaved trees, etc, and where they are eaten, burned, spitted, and boiled; and they receive births in despicable wombs; rebirth to age, sorrow, and unquenchable death. But to secure supreme bliss a priest must study the Veda, practice austerity, seek knowledge, subdue the senses, abstain from injury, and serve his Teacher. Which of these gives highest bliss? The knowledge of the spirit is the highest and foremost, for it gives immortality. The performance of Vedic ceremonies is the most productive of happiness here and hereafter. The Ten Commandments for the twice-born are: Contentment, patience, self-control, not to steal, purity, control of passions, devotion (or wisdom), knowledge, truthfulness, and freedom from anger. These are concisely summarized again in the following: 'Manu declared the condensed rule of duty for (all) the four castes to be: not to injure a living thing; to speak the truth; not to steal; to be pure; to control the passions' (VI. 92; X. 63). The 'non-injury' rule does not apply, of course, to sacrifice (ib. III. 268). In the epic the commandments are given sometimes as ten, sometimes as eight.

In order to give a completed exposition of Brahmanism we have passed beyond the period of the great heresies, to which we must soon revert. But, before leaving the present division of the subject, we select from the mass of Brahmanic domestic rites, the details of which offer in general little that is worth noting, two or three ceremonies which possess a more human interest, the marriage rite, the funeral rite, and those strange trials, known among so many other peoples, the ordeals. We sketch these briefly, wishing merely to illustrate the religious side of each ceremony, as it appears in one or more of its features.

THE MARRIAGE RITE.

Traces of exogamy may be suspected in the bridegroom's driving off with his bride, but no such custom, of course, is recognized in the law. On the contrary, the groom is supposed to belong to the same village, and special rites are enjoined 'if he be from another village.' But again, in the early rule there is no trace of that taint of family which the totem-scholars of to-day cite so loosely from Hindu law. The girl is not precluded because she belongs to the same family within certain degrees. The only restriction in the House-rituals is that she shall have had "on the mother's and father's side" wise, pious, and honorable ancestors for ten generations (Ācvl. I. 5). Then comes the legal restriction, which some scholars call 'primitive,' that the wife must not be too nearly related. The girl has her own ordeal (not generally mentioned among ordeals!): The wooer that thus selects his bride (this he does if one has not been found already either by his parents or by his own inclination) makes eight balls of earth and calls on the girl to choose one ('may she get that to which she is born'). If she select a ball made from the earth of a field that bears two crops, she (or her child) will be rich in grain; if from the cow-stall, rich in cattle; if from the place of sacrifice, godly; if from a pool that does not dry, gifted; if from the gambler's court, devoted to gambling; if from cross-roads, unfaithful; if from a barren field, poor in grain; if from the burying-ground, destructful of her husband. There are several forms of making a choice, but we confine ourselves to the marriage.[32] In village-life the bridegroom is escorted to the girl's house by young women who tease him. The bridegroom presents presents to the bride, and receives a cow. The bridegroom takes the bride's hand, saying 'I take thy hand for weal' (Rig Veda, X. 85. 36), and leads her to a certain stone, on which she steps first with the right foot (toe). Then three times they circumambulate the fire, keeping it to the right, an old Aryan custom for many rites, as in the deisel of the Kelts; the bride herself offering grain in the fire, and the groom repeating more Vedic verses. They then take together the seven solemn steps (with verses),[33] and so they are married. The groom, if of another village, now drives away with the bride, and has ready Vedic verses for every stage of the journey. After sun-down the groom points out the north star, and admonishes the bride to be no less constant and faithful. Three or twelve days they remain chaste, some say one night; others say, only if he be from another village. The new husband must now see to the house-fire, which he keeps ever burning, the sign of his being a householder.

THE FUNERAL CEREMONY.

Roth has an article in the Journal of the German Oriental Society (VIII. 467) which is at once a description of one of the funeral hymns oL the Rig Veda (X. 18) with the later ritual, and a criticism of the bearing of the latter on the former.[34] He shows here that the ritual, so far from having induced the hymn, totally changes it. The hymn was written for a burial ceremony. The later ritual knows only cremation. The ritual, therefore, forces the hymn into its service, and makes it a cremation-hymn. This is a very good (though very extreme) example of the difference in age between the early hymns of the Rig Veda and the more modern ritual. Mueller, ib. IX. p. I (sic), has given a thorough account of the later ritual and ritualistic paraphernalia. We confine ourselves here to the older ceremony.

The scene of the Vedic hymn is as follows: The friends and relatives stand about the corpse of a married man. By the side of the corpse sits the widow. The hymn begins: "Depart, O Death, upon some other pathway, upon thy path, which differs from the path of gods ... harm not our children, nor our heroes.... These living ones are separated from the dead; successful today was our call to the gods. (This man is dead, but) we go back to dancing and to laughter, extending further our still lengthened lives." Then the priest puts a stone between the dead and living: "I set up a wall for the living, may no one of these come to this goal; may they live an hundred full harvests, and hide death with this stone...."

The matrons assembled are now bid to advance without tears, and make their offerings to the fire, while the widow is separated from the corpse of her husband and told to enter again into the world of the living. The priest removes the dead warrior's bow from his hand: "Let the women, not widows, advance with the ointment and holy butter; and without tears, happy, adorned, let them, to begin with, mount to the altar (verse 7, p. 274, below). Raise thyself, woman, to the world of the living; his breath is gone by whom thou liest; come hither; of the taker of thy hand (in marriage), of thy wooer thou art become the wife[35] (verse 8). I take the bow from the hand of the dead for our (own) lordship, glory, and strength." Then he addresses the dead: "Thou art there, and we are here; we will slay every foe and every attacker (with the power got from thee). Go thou now to Mother Earth, who is wide opened, favorable, a wool-soft maiden to the good man; may she guard thee from the lap of destruction. Open, O earth, be not oppressive to him; let him enter easily; may he fasten close to thee. Cover him like a mother, who wraps her child in her garment. Roomy and firm be the earth, supported by a thousand pillars; from this time on thou (man) hast thy home and happiness yonder; may a sure place remain to him forever. I make firm the earth about thee; may I not be harmed in laying the clod here; may the fathers hold this pillar for thee, and Yama make thee a home yonder."

In the Atharva Veda mention is made of a coffin, but none is noticed here.

Hillebrandt (loc. cit. xl. 711) has made it probable that the eighth verse belongs to a still older ritual, according to which this verse is one for human sacrifice, which is here ignored, though the text is kept.[36] 'Just so the later ritual keeps all this text, but twists it into a crematory rite. For in the later period only young children are buried. Of burial there was nothing for adults but the collection of bones and ashes. At this time too the ritual consists of three parts, cremation, collection of ashes, expiation. How are these to be reconciled with this hymn? Very simply. The rite is described and verses from the hymn are injected into it without the slightest logical connection. That is the essence of all the Brahmanic ritualism. The later rite is as follows: Three altars are erected, northwest, southwest, and southeast of a mound of earth. In the fourth corner is the corpse; at whose feet, the widow. The brother of the dead man, or an old servant, takes the widow's hand and causes her to rise while the priest says "Raise thyself, woman, to the world of the living." Then follows the removal of the bow; or the breaking of it, in the case of a slave. The body is now burned, while the priest says "These living ones are separated from the dead"; and the mourners depart without looking around, and must at once perform their ablutions of lustration. After a time the collection of bones is made with the verse "Go thou now to Mother Earth" and "Open, O earth." Dust is flung on the bones with the words "Roomy and firm be the earth"; and the skull is laid on top with the verse "I make firm the earth about thee." In other words the original hymn is fitted to the ritual only by displacement of verses from their proper order and by a forced application of the words. After all this comes the ceremony of expiation with the use of the verse "I set up a wall" without application of any sort. Further ceremonies, with further senseless use of other verses, follow in course of time. These are all explained minutely in the essay of Roth, whose clear demonstration of the modernness of the ritual, as compared with the antiquity of the hymn should be read complete.

The seventh verse (above) has a special literature of its own, since the words "let them, to begin with, mount the altar," have been changed by the advocates of suttee, widow-burning, to mean 'to the place of fire'; which change, however, is quite recent. The burning of widows begins rather late in India, and probably was confined at first to the pet wife of royal persons. It was then claimed as an honor by the first wife, and eventually without real authority, and in fact against early law, became the rule and sign of a devoted wife. The practice was abolished by the English in 1829; but, considering the widow's present horrible existence, it is questionable whether it would not be a mercy to her and to her family to restore the right of dying and the hope of heaven, in the place of the living death and actual hell on earth in which she is entombed to-day.

ORDEALS.[37]

Fire and water are the means employed in India to test guilt in the earlier period. Then comes the oath with judgment indicated by subsequent misfortune. All other forms of ordeals are first recognized in late law-books. We speak first of the ordeals that have been thought to be primitive Aryan. The Fire-ordeal: (1) Seven fig-leaves are tied seven times upon the hands after rice has been rubbed upon the palms; and the judge then lays a red-hot ball upon them; the accused, or the judge himself, invoking the god (Fire) to indicate the innocence or the guilt of the accused. The latter then walks a certain distance, 'slowly through seven circles, each circle sixteen fingers broad, and the space between the circles being of the same extent,' according to some jurists; but other dimensions, and eight or nine circles are given by other authorities. If the accused drop the ball he must repeat the test. The burning of the hands indicates guilt. The Teutonic laws give a different measurement, and state that the hand is to be sealed for three days (manus sub sigillo triduum tegatur) before inspection. This sealing for three days is paralleled by modern Indic practice, but not by ancient law. In Greece there is the simple [Greek: mudrous airein cheroin] (Ant. 264) to be compared. The German sealing of the hand is not reported till the ninth century.[38]

(2) Walking on Fire: There is no ordeal in India to correspond to the Teutonic walking over six, nine, or twelve hot ploughshares. To lick a hot ploughshare, to sit on or handle hot iron, and to take a short walk over coals is late Indic. The German practice also according to Schlagintweit "war erst in spaeterer Zeit aufgekommen."[39]

(3) Walking through Fire: This is a Teutonic ordeal, and (like the conflict-ordeal) an Indic custom not formally legalized. The accused walks directly into the fire. So [Greek: pur dierpein] (loc. cit.).

Water-ordeals: (1) May better be reckoned to fire-ordeals. The innocent plunges his hand into boiling water and fetches out a stone (Anglo-Saxon law) or a coin (Indic law) without injury to his hand. Sometimes (in both practices) the plunge alone is demanded. The depth to which the hand must be inserted is defined by Hindu jurists.

(2) The Floating-ordeal. The victim is cast into water. If he floats he is guilty; if he drowns he is innocent. According to some Indic authorities an arrow is shot off at the moment the accused is dropped into the water, and a 'swift runner' goes after and fetches it back. "If at his return he find the body of the accused still under water, the latter shall be declared to be innocent."[40] According to Kaegi this ordeal would appear to be unknown in Europe before the ninth century. In both countries Water (in India, Varuna) is invoked not to keep the body of a guilty man but to reject it (make it float).

Food-ordeal: Some Hindu law-books prescribe that in the case of suspected theft the accused shall eat consecrated rice. If the gums be not hurt, no blood appear on spitting, and the man do not tremble, he will be innocent. This is also a Teutonic test, but it is to be observed that the older laws in India do not mention it.

On the basis of these examples (not chosen in historical sequence) Kaegi has concluded, while admitting that ordeals with a general similarity to these have arisen quite apart from Aryan influence, that there is here a bit of primitive Aryan law; and that even the minutiae of the various trials described above are un-Aryan. This we do not believe. But before stating our objections we must mention another ordeal.

The Oath: While fire and water are the usual means of testing crime in India, a simple oath is also permitted, which may involve either the accused alone or his whole family. If misfortune, within a certain time (at once, in seven days, in a fortnight, or even half a year) happen to the one that has sworn, he will be guilty. This oath-test is also employed in the case of witnesses at court, perjury being indicated by the subsequent misfortune (Manu, viii. 108).[41]

Our objections to seeing primitive Aryan law in the minutiae of ordeals is based on the gradual evolution of these ordeals and of their minutiae in India itself. The earlier law of the Sūtras barely mentions ordeals; the first 'tradition law' of Manu has only fire, water, and the oath. All others, and all special descriptions and restrictions, are mentioned in later books alone. Moreover, the earliest (pre-legal) notice of ordeals in India describes the carrying of hot iron (in the test of theft) as simply "bearing a hot axe," while still earlier there is only walking through fire.[42]

To the tests by oath, fire, and water of the code of Manu are soon added in later law those of consecrated water, poison, and the balance. Restrictions increase and new trials are described as one descends the series of law-books (the consecrated food, the hot-water test, the licking of the ploughshare, and the lot), Some of these later forms have already been described. The further later tests we will now sketch briefly.

Poison: The earliest poison-test, in the code of Yājnavalkya (the next after Manu), is an application of aconite-root, and as the poison is very deadly, the accused is pretty sure to die. Other laws give other poisons and very minute restrictions, tending to ease the severity of the trial.

The Balance-test: This is the opposite of the floating-test. The man[43] stands in one scale and is placed in equilibrium with a weight of stone in the other scale. He then gets out and prays, and gets in again. If the balance sinks, he is guilty; if it rises, he is innocent.

The Lot-ordeal: This consists in drawing out of a vessel one of two lots, equivalent respectively to dharma and adharma, right and wrong. Although Tacitus mentions the same ordeal among the Germans, it is not early Indic law, not being known to any of the ancient legal codes.

One may claim without proof or disproof that these are all 'primitive Aryan'; but to us it appears most probable that only the idea of the ordeal, or at most its application in the simplest forms of water and fire (and perhaps oath) is primitive Aryan, and that all else (including ordeal by conflict) is of secondary growth among the different nations.

As an offset to the later Indic tendency to lighten the severity of the ordeal may be mentioned the description of the floating-test as seen by a Chinese traveller in India in the seventh century A.D.:[44] "The accused is put into a sack and a stone is put into another sack. The two sacks are connected by a cord and flung into deep water. If the sack with the man sinks and the sack with the stone floats the accused is declared to be innocent."

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Literally, transmigration, the doctrine of metempsychosis, successive births; first, as in Plato: [Greek: metabole tis tugchanei ousa kai metoikeois te psuche ton topon tou enthende eis allon tochon], then metabole, from 'the other place,' back to earth; then, with advancing speculation, fresh metabole again, and so on; a theory more or less clumsily united with the bell-doctrine.]

[Footnote 2: Weber has lately published two monographs on the sacrifices, the Rājasūya and the Vājapeya rites, both full of interesting details and popular features.]

[Footnote 3: The traditional sacrifices are twenty-one in number, divided into three classes of seven each. The formal divisions are (1) oblations of butter, milk, corn, etc.; (2) soma sacrifices; (3) animal sacrifices, regarded as part of the first two. The sacrifice of the new and full moon is to be repeated on each occasion for thirty years. A sattra, session, is a long sacrifice which may last a year or more.]

[Footnote 4: The latter are the metrical codes, a part of Smriti (smṛti).]

[Footnote 5: The Five Paramount Sacrifices (Observances) are, according to Manu III. 70, study of the Veda (or teaching it); sacrifice to the Manes and to the gods; offerings of foods to ghosts (or spirits); and hospitality.]

[Footnote 6: In the report of the Or. Congress for 1880, p. 158 ff., Williams has a very interesting account of the daily rites of the modern orthodox Hindu ('Rig Veda in Religious Service').]

[Footnote 7: We ignore here the later distinction between the Vedānta and Sānkhya systems. Properly speaking, the latter is dualistic.]

[Footnote 8: At a later date Buddha himself is admitted into the Brahmanic pantheon as an avatar of the All-god!]

[Footnote 9: Sometimes regarded as one with Prajāpati, and sometimes treated as distinct from him.]

[Footnote 10: Thus (for the priestly ascetic alone) in M. vi. 79: 'Leaving his good deeds to his loved ones and his evil deeds to his enemies, by force of meditation he goes to the eternal brahma.' Here brahma; but in Gautama perhaps Brahmā.]

[Footnote 11: That is, when the latter are grouped as in the following list. Our point is that, despite new faith and new gods, Vedic polytheism is taught not as a form but as a reality, and that in this period the people still believe as of old in the old gods, though they also acknowledge new ones (below).]

[Footnote 12: Compare Manu, ix. 245: "Varuna is the lord of punishment and holdeth a sceptre (punishment) even over kings."]

[Footnote 13: In new rites, for instance. Thus in Pārask. Grih. S. 3. 7 a silly and dirty rite 'prevents a slave from running away'; and there is an ordeal for girls before becoming engaged (below).]

[Footnote 14: Blood is poured out to the demons in order that they may take this and no other part of the sacrifice, Āit. Br. ii. 7. 1.]

[Footnote 15: Here. 4. 8. 19, Civa's names are Hara, Mrida, Carva, Civa, Bhava, Mahādeva, Ugra, Bhima, Pacupati, Rudra, Cankara, Icana.]

[Footnote 16: These rites are described in 6. 4. 24 of the Brihad Āranyaka Upanishad which consists both of metaphysics and of ceremonial rules.]

[Footnote 17: Especially mentioned in the later Vasistha (see below); on mīmāmsā a branch of the Vedānta system see below.]

[Footnote 18: The commentator here (19. 12, cited by Buehler) defines Vedānta as the part of the Āranyakas which are not Upanishads, that is, apparently as a local 'Veda-end' (veda-anta), though this meaning is not admitted by some scholars, who will see in anta only the meaning 'goal, aim.']

[Footnote 19: The Rudra (Civa) invocation at 26. 12 ff. is interpolated, according to Buehler.]

[Footnote 20: Here there is plainly an allusion to the two states of felicity of the Upanishads. Whether the law-giver believes that the spirit will be united with Brahmā or simply live in his heaven he does not say.]

[Footnote 21: Gautama, too, is probably a Northerner. The Sūtra, it should be observed, are not so individual as would be implied by the name of the teachers to whom they are credited. They were each texts of a school, carana, but they are attributed uniformly to a special teacher, who represents the caraṇa, as has been shown by Mueller. For what is known in regard to the early 'Sūtra-makers' see Buehler's introductions to volumes ii. and xiv. of the Sacred Books.]

[Footnote 22: Compare Buehler's Introduction, p. XXXV, SBE. vol. XIV.]

[Footnote 23: Bāudh. II. 18. 2-3. Compare Jacobi's Introduction, p. XXIII ff. of SBE. vol. XXII.]

[Footnote 24: Buehler (Introduction, p. XXXI) gives as the district of the Āpastambīya school parts of the Bombay Presidency, the greater parts of the Nizām's possessions, and parts of the Madras Presidency. Apastamba himself refers to Northerners as if they were foreigners (loc. cit.).]

[Footnote 25: In India the latter question is: does the soul immediately at death unite with the ātmā or does it travel to it. In Europe: does the soul wait for the Last Day, or get to heaven immediately? Compare Maine, Early Law and Custom, p. 71.]

[Footnote 26: Thought by some scholars to have been developed out of the code of The Mānavas; but ascribed by the Hindus to Father Manu, as are many other verses of legal character contained in the epic and elsewhere.]

[Footnote 27: Although Sūtras may be metrical too in part, yet is the complete metrical form, as in the case of still later Cāstra, evidence that the work is intended for the general public.]

[Footnote 28: The priest alone, in the post-Vedic age, has the right to teach the sacred texts; he has immunity from bodily punishment; the right to receive gifts, and other special privileges. The three upper castes have each the right and duty of studying the sacred texts for a number of years.]

[Footnote 29: Weber has shown, loc. cit., that the Cūdras did attend some of the more popular ceremonies, and at first apparently even took a part in them.]

[Footnote 30: The 'four orders' or stadia of a priest's life, student, householder, hermit, ascetic, must not be confused with the 'four (political) orders' (castes), priest, warrior, farmer, slave—to which, from time to time, were added many 'mixed castes,' as well as 'outcasts,' and natural pariahs. At the time of Manu's code there were already many of these half-assimilated groups.]

[Footnote 31: Theoretically, twenty-one; but an extra one has slipped in by mistake.]

[Footnote 32: The girl is given or bought, or may make her own choice among different suitors. Buying a wife is reprehended by the early law-givers (therefore, customary). The rite of marriage presupposes a grown girl, but child-marriages also were known to the early law.]

[Footnote 33: The groom 'releases her from Varuna's fetter,' by symbolically loosening the hair. They step northeast, and he says: 'One step for sap; two for strength; three for riches; four for luck; five for children; six for the seasons; seven for friendship. Be true to me—may we have many long-lived sons.']

[Footnote 34: There is another funeral hymn, X. 16, in which the Fire is invoked to burn the dead, and bear him to the fathers; his corporeal parts being distributed 'eye to the sun, breath to the wind,' etc.]

[Footnote 35: See below.]

[Footnote 36: Compare Weber, Streifen, I. 66; The king's first wife lies with a dead victim, and is bid to come back again to life. Levirate marriage is known to all the codes, but it is reprehended by the same code that enjoins it. (M. ix. 65.)]

[Footnote 37: The ordeal is called divyam (pramāṇam) 'Gottesurtheil.' This means of information is employed especially in a disputed debt and deposit, and according to the formal code is to be applied only in the absence of witnesses. The code also restricts the use of fire, water, and poison to the slaves (Yāj. ii. 98).]

[Footnote 38: Kaegi. Alter und Herkunft des Germanischen Gottesurtheils, p. 50. We call especial attention to the fact that the most striking coincidences in details of practice are not early either in India or Germany.]

[Footnote 39: Schlagintweit, Die Gattesurtheile der Indier, p. 24.]

[Footnote 40: This is the earliest formula. Later law-books describe the length and strength of the bow, and some even give the measure of distance to which the arrow must be shot. Two runners, one to go and one to return, are sometimes allowed. There is another water-ordeal "for religious men." The accused is to drink consecrated water. If in fourteen (or more or less) days no calamity happen to him he will be innocent. The same test is made in the case of the oath and of poison (below).]

[Footnote 41: In the case of witnesses Manu gives seven days as the limit. When one adopts the oath as an ordeal the misfortune of the guilty is supposed to come 'quickly.' As an ordeal this is not found in the later law. It is one of the Greek tests (loc. cit.). When swearing the Hindu holds water or holy-grass.]

[Footnote 42: AV. ii. 12 is not a certain case of this, but it is at least Brahmanic. The carrying of the axe is alluded to in the Chāndogya Upanishad (Schlagintweit, Die Gattesurtheile der Indier, p. 6).]

[Footnote 43: Yājnavalkya (loc. cit.) restricts this test to women, children, priests, the old, blind, lame, and sick. On phāla for agni, ib. ii. 99, see ZDMG. ix. 677.]

[Footnote 44: Schlagintweit, loc. cit. p. 26 (Hiouen Thsang).]

* * * * *



CHAPTER XII.

JAINISM.[1]

One cannot read the Upanishads without feeling that he is already facing an intellectual revolt. Not only in the later tracts, which are inspired with devotion to a supreme and universal Lord, but even in the oldest of these works the atmosphere, as compared with that of the earlier Brahmanic period, is essentially different. The close and stifling air of ritualism has been charged with an electrical current of thought that must soon produce a storm.

That storm reached a head in Buddhism, but its premonitory signs appear in the Upanishads, and its first outbreak preceded the advent of Gautama. Were it possible to draw a line of demarcation between the Upanishads that come before and after Buddhism, it would be historically more correct to review the two great schisms, Jainism and Buddhism, before referring to the sectarian Upanishads. For these latter in their present form are posterior to the rise of the two great heresies. But, since such a division is practically uncertain in its application, we have thought it better in our sketch of the Upanishads and legal literature to follow to the end the course of that agitated thought, which, starting with the great identification of jiva, the individual spirit, and ātmā, the world-spirit, the All, continues till it loses itself in a multiplication of sectarian dogmas, where the All becomes the god that has been elected by one communion of devotees.[2]

The external characteristics of Upanishad thought are those of a religion that has replaced formal acts by formal introspection. The Yogin devotee, who by mystic communion desires absorption into the world-spirit, replaces the Sannyāsin and Yati ascetics, who would accomplish the same end by renunciation and severe self-mortification. This is a fresh figure on the stage of thought, where before were mad Munis, beggars, and miracle-mongers. On this stage stands beside the ascetic the theoretical theosophist who has succeeded in identifying himself, soberly, not in frenzy, with God.[3] What were the practical results of this teaching has been indicated in part already. The futility of the stereotyped religious offices was recognized. But these offices could not be discarded by the orthodox. With the lame and illogical excuse that they were useful as discipline, though unessential in reality, they were retained by the Brahman priest. Not so by the Jain; still less so by the Buddhist.

In the era in which arose the public revolt against the dogmatic teaching of the Brahman there were more sects than one that have now passed away forgotten. The eastern part of India, to which appertain the later part of the Catapatha Brāhmana and the schismatic heresies, was full of religious and philosophical controversy. The great heretics were not innovators in heresy. The Brahmans permitted, encouraged, and shared in theoretical controversy. There was nothing in the tenets of Jainism or of Buddhism that from a philosophical point of view need have caused a rupture with the Brahmans.

But the heresies, nevertheless, do not represent the priestly caste, so much as the caste most apt to rival and to disregard the claim of the Brahman, viz., the warrior-caste. They were supported by kings, who gladly stood against priests. To a great extent both Jainism and Buddhism owed their success (amid other rival heresies with no less claim to good protestantism) to the politics of the day. The kings of the East were impatient of the Western church; they were pleased to throw it over. The leaders in the 'reformation' were the younger sons of noble blood. The church received many of these younger sons as priests. Both Buddha and Mahāvīra were, in fact, revolting adherents of the Brahmanic faith, but they were princes and had royalty to back them.

Nor in the Brahmanhood of Benares was Brahmanhood at its strongest. The seat of the Vedic cult lay to the westward, where it arose, in the 'holy land,' which received the Vedic Aryans after they had crossed out of the Punjāb. With the eastward course of conquest the character of the people and the very orthodoxy of the priests were relaxed. The country that gave rise to the first heresies was one not consecrated to the ancient rites. Very slowly had these rites marched thither, and they were, so to speak, far from their religious base of supplies. The West was more conservative than the East. It was the home of the rites it favored. The East was but a foster-father. New tribes, new land, new growth, socially and intellectually,—all these contributed in the new seat of Brahmanhood to weaken the hold of the priests upon their speculative and now recalcitrant laity. So before Buddha there were heretics and even Buddhas, for the title was Buddha's only by adoption. But of most of these earlier sects one knows little. Three or four names of reformers have been handed down; half a dozen opponents or rivals of Buddha existed and vied with him. Most important of these, both on account of his probable priority and because of the lasting character of his school, was the founder or reformer of Jainism, Mahāvīra Jnātriputra,[4] who with his eleven chief disciples may be regarded as the first open seceders from Brahmanism, unless one assign the same date to the revolt of Buddha. The two schisms have so much in common, especially in outward features, that for long it was thought that Jainism was a sub-sect of Buddhism. In their legends, in the localities in which they flourished, and in many minutiae of observances they are alike. Nevertheless, their differences are as great as the resemblance between them, and what Jainism at first appeared to have got of Buddhism seems now to be rather the common loan made by each sect from Brahmanism. It is safest, perhaps, to rest in the assurance that the two heresies were contemporaries of the sixth century B.C, and leave unanswered the question which Master preceded the other, though we incline to the opinion that the founder of Jainism, be he Mahāvīra or his own reputed master, Pārcvanātha, had founded his sect before Gautama became Buddha. But there is one good reason for treating of Jainism before Buddhism,[5] and that is, that the former represents a theological mean between Brahmanism and Buddhism.

Mahāvīra, the reputed founder of his sect, was, like Buddha and perhaps his other rivals, of aristocratic birth. His father is called king, but he was probably hereditary chief of a district incorporated as a suburb of the capital city of Videha, while by marriage he was related to the king of Videha, and to the ruling house of Māgadha. His family name was Jnātriputra, or, in his own Prakrit (Ardhamāgadhī) dialect, Nātaputta; but by his sect he was entitled the Great Hero, Mahāvīra; the Conqueror, Jina; the Great One, Vardhamāna (Vardahmana in the original), etc. His sect was that of the Nirgranthas (Nigganthas), i.e., 'without bonds,' perhaps the oldest name of the whole body. Later there are found no less than seven sub-sects, to which come as eighth the Digambaras, in contradistinction to all the seven Cvetāmbara sects. These two names represent the two present bodies of the church, one body being the Cvetāmbaras, or 'white-attire' faction, who are in the north and west; the other, the Digambaras, or 'sky-attire,' i.e., naked devotees of the south. The latter split off from the main body about two hundred years after Mahāvīra's death; as has been thought by some, because the Cvetāmbaras refused to follow the Digambaras in insisting upon nakedness as the rule for ascetics.[6] The earlier writings show that nakedness was recommended, but was not compulsory.[7] Other designations of the main sects, as of the sub-sects, are found. Thus, from the practice of pulling out the hairs of their body, the Jains were derisively termed Luncitakecas, or 'hair-pluckers.' The naked devotees of this school are probably the gymnosophists of the Greek historians, although this general term may have been used in describing other sects, as the practice of dispensing with attire is common even to-day with many Hindu devotees.[8]

An account of the Jain absurdities in the way of speculation would indeed give some idea of their intellectual frailty, but, as in the case of the Buddhists, such an account has but little to do with their religion. It will suffice to state that the 'ages' of the Brahmans from whom Jain and Buddhist derived their general conceptions of the ages, are here reckoned quite differently; and that the first Jina of the long series of pre-historic prophets lived more than eight million years and was five hundred bow-lengths in height. Monks and laymen now appear at large in India, a division which originated neither with Jain nor Buddhist,[9] though these orders are more clearly divided among the heretics, from whom, again, was borrowed by the Hindu sects, the monastic institution, in the ninth century (A.D.), in all the older heretical completeness. Although atheistic the Jain worshipped the Teacher, and paid some regard to the Brahmanical divinities, just as he worships the Hindu gods to-day, for the atheistical systems admitted gods as demi-gods or dummy gods, and in point of fact became very superstitious. Yet are both founder-worship and superstition rather the growth of later generations than the original practice. The atheism of the Jain means denial of a divine creative Spirit.[10]

Though at times in conflict with the Brahmans the Jains never departed from India as did the Buddhists, and even Brahmanic priests in some parts of India serve today in Jain temples.

In metaphysics as in religion the Jain differs radically from the Buddhist. He believes in a dualism not unlike that of the Sānkhyas, whereas Buddhistic philosophy has no close connection with this Brahmanic system. To the Jain eternal matter stands opposed to eternal spirits, for (opposed to pantheism) every material entity (even water) has its own individual spirit. The Jain's Nirvāna, as Barth has said, is escape from the body, not escape from existence.[11] Like the Buddhist the Jain believes in reincarnation, eight births, after one has started on the right road, being necessary to the completion of perfection. Both sects, with the Brahmans, insist on the non-injury doctrine, but in this regard the Jain exceeds his Brahmanical teacher's practice. Both heretical sects claim that their reputed founders were the last of twenty-four or twenty-five prophets who preceded the real founder, each successively having become less monstrous (more human) in form.

The Jain literature left to us is quite large[12] and enough has been published already to make it necessary to revise the old belief in regard to the relation between Jainism and Buddhism.

We have said that Jainism stands nearer to Brahmanism (with which, however, it frequently had quarrels) than does Buddhism.[13] The most striking outward sign of this is the weight laid on asceticism, which is common to Brahmanism and Jainism but is repudiated by Buddhism. Twelve years of asceticism are necessary to salvation, as thinks the Jain, and this self-mortification is of the most stringent sort. But it is not in their different conception of a Nirvāna release rather than of annihilation, nor in the Sānkhya-like[14] duality they affect, nor yet in the prominence given to self-mortification that the Jains differ most from the Buddhists. The contrast will appear more clearly when we come to deal with the latter sect. At present we take up the Jain doctrine for itself.

The 'three gems' which, according to the Jains,[15] result in the spirit's attainment of deliverance are knowledge, faith, and virtue, or literally 'right knowledge, right intuition, and right practices.' Right knowledge is a true knowledge of the relation of spirit and not-spirit (the world consists of two classes, spirit and non-spirit), the latter being immortal like the former. Right intuition is absolute faith in the word of the Master and the declarations of the Āgamas, or sacred texts. Right practices or virtue consists, according to the Yogacāstra, in the correct fivefold conduct of one that has knowledge and faith: (1) Non-injury, (2) kindness and speaking which is true (in so far as the truth is pleasant to the hearer),[16] (3) honorable conduct, typified by 'not stealing,' (4) chastity in word, thought, and deed, (5) renunciation of earthly interests.

The doctrine of non-injury found but modified approval among the Brahmans. They limited its application in the case of sacrifice, and for this reason were bitterly taunted by the Jains as 'murderers.' "Viler than unbelievers," says the Yogacāstra, quoting a law of Manu to the effect that animals may be slain for sacrifice, "all those cruel ones who make the law that teaches killing."[17] For this reason the Jain is far more particular in his respect for life than is the Buddhist. Lest animate things, even plants and animalculae, be destroyed, he sweeps the ground before him as he goes, walks veiled lest he inhale a living organism, strains water, and rejects not only meat but even honey, together with various fruits that are supposed to contain worms; not because of his distaste for worms but because of his regard for life. Other arguments which, logically, should not be allowed to influence him are admitted, however, in order to terrify the hearer. Thus the first argument against the use of honey is that it destroys life; then follows the argument that honey is 'spit out by bees' and therefore it is nasty.[18]

The Jain differs from the Buddhist still more in ascetic practices. He is a forerunner, in fact, of the horrible modern devotee whose practices we shall describe below. The older view of seven hells in opposition to the legal Brahmanic number of thrice seven is found (as it is in the Mārkandeya Purāna), but whether this be the rule we cannot say.[19] It is interesting to see that hell is prescribed with metempsychosis exactly as it is among the Brahmans.[20] Reincarnation onearth and punishment in hells between reincarnation seems to be the usual belief. The salvation which is attained by the practice of knowledge, faith, and five-fold virtue, is not immediate, but it will come after successive reincarnations; and this salvation is the freeing of the eternal spirit from the bonds of eternal matter; in other words, it is much more like the 'release' of the Brahman than it is like the Buddhistic Nirvāna, though, of course, there is no 'absorption,' each spirit remaining single. In the order of the Ratnatraya or 'three gems' Cankara appears to lay the greatest weight on faith, but in Hemacandra's schedule knowledge[21] holds the first place. This is part of that Yoga, asceticism, which is the most important element in attaining salvation.[22]

Another division of right practices is cited by the Yogacāstra (I. 33 ff.): Some saints say that virtue is divided into five kinds of care and three kinds of control, to wit, proper care in walking, talking, begging for food, sitting, and performing natural functions of the body—these constitute the five kinds of care, and the kinds of control are those of thought, speech, and act. This teaching it is stated, is for the monks. The practice of the laity is to accord with the custom of their country.

The chief general rules for the laity consist in vows of obedience to the true god, to the law, and to the (present) Teacher; which are somewhat like the vows of the Buddhist. God here is the Arhat, the 'venerable' founder of the sect. The laic has also five lesser vows: not to kill, not to lie, not to steal, not to commit adultery or fornication, to be content with little.

According to the Cāstra already cited the laic must rise early in the morning, worship the god's idol at home, go to the temple and circumambulate the Jina idol three times, strewing flowers, and singing hymnsand then read the Pratyākhyāna (an old Pūrva, gospel).[23] Further rules of prayer and practice guide him through his day. And by following this rule he expects to obtain spiritual 'freedom' hereafter; but for his life on earth he is "without praise or blame for this world or the next, for life or for death, having meditation as his one pure wife" (iii. 150). He will become a god in heaven, be reborn again on earth, and so, after eight successive existences (the Buddhistic number), at last obtain salvation, release (from bodies) for his eternal soul (153).

As in the Upanishads, the gods, like men, are a part of the system of the universe. The wise man goes to them (becomes a god) only to return to earth again. All systems thus unite hell and heaven with the karma doctrine. But in this Jain work, as in so many of the orthodox writings, the weight is laid more on hell as a punishment than on rebirth. Probably the first Jains did not acknowledge gods at all, for it is an early rule with them not to say 'God rains,' or use any such expression, but to say 'the cloud rains'; and in other ways they avoid to employ a terminology which admits even implicitly the existence of divinities. Yet do they use a god not infrequently as an agent of glorification of Mahāvīra, saying in later writings that Indra transformed himself, to do the Teacher honor; and often they speak of the gods and goddesses as if these were regarded as spirits. Demons and inferior beings are also utilized in the same way, as when it is said that at the Teacher's birth the demons (spirits) showered gold upon the town.

The religious orders of the Cvetāmbara sect contained nuns as well as monks, although, as we have said, women are not esteemed very favorably: "The world is greatly troubled by women. People say that women are vessels of pleasure. But this leads them to pain, to delusion, to death, to hell, to birth as hell-beings or brute-beasts." Such is the decision in the Āeārānga Sūtra, or book of usages for the Jain monk and nun. From the same work we extract a few rules to illustrate the practices of the Jains. This literature is the most tedious in the world, and to give the gist of the heretic law-maker's manual will suffice.

Asceticism should be practiced by monk and nun, if possible. But if one finds that he cannot resist his passions, or is disabled and cannot endure austerities, he may commit suicide; although this release is sometimes reprehended, and is not allowable till one has striven against yielding to such a means. But when the twelve years of asceticism are passed one has assurance of reaching Nirvāna, and so may kill himself. Of Nirvāna there is no description. It is release, salvation, but it is of such sort that in regard to it 'speculation has no place,' and 'the mind cannot conceive of it' (copied from the Upanishads). In other regards, in contrast to the nihilistic Buddhist, the Jain assumes a doubtful attitude, so that he is termed the 'may-be philosopher,' syādvādin,[24] in opposition to the Buddhist, the philosopher of 'the void.'

But if the Jain may kill himself, he may not kill or injure anything else. Not even food prepared over a fire is acceptable, lest he hurt the 'fire-beings,' for as he believes in water-beings, so he believes in fire-beings, wind-beings, etc. Every plant and seed is holy with the sacredness of life. He may not hurt or drive away the insects that torment his naked flesh. 'Patience is the highest good,' he declares, and the rules for sitting and lying conclude with the statement that not to move at all, not to stir, is the best rule. To lie naked, bitten by vermin, and not to disturb them, is religion. Like a true Puritan, the Jain regards pleasure in itself as sinful. "What is discontent, and what is pleasure? One should live subject to neither. Giving up all gaiety, circumspect, restrained, one should lead a religious life. Man! Thou art thine own friend; why longest thou for a friend beyond thyself?... First troubles, then pleasures; first pleasures, then troubles. These are the cause of quarrels." And again, "Let one think, 'I am I.'" i.e., let one be dependent on himself alone. When a Jain monk or nun hears that there is to be a festival (perhaps to the gods, to Indra, Skahda, Rudra, Vishnu,[25] or the demons, as in Ācārānga Sūtra, ii. 1. 2) he must not go thither; he must keep himself from all frivolities and entertainments. During the four months of the rainy season he is to remain in one place,[26] but at other times, either naked or attired in a few garments, he is to wander about begging. In going on his begging tour he is not to answer questions, nor to retort if reviled. He is to speak politely (the formulae for polite address and rude address are given), beg modestly, and not render himself liable to suspicion on account of his behavior when in the house of one of the faithful. Whatever be the quality of the food he must eat it, if it be not a wrong sort. Rice and beans are especially recommended to him. The great Teacher Jnātriputra (Mahāvīra), it is said, never went to shows, pantomines, boxing-matches, and the like; but, remaining in his parents' house till their death, that he might not grieve his mother, at the age of twenty-eight renounced the world with the consent of the government, and betook himself to asceticism; travelling naked (after a year of clothes) into barbarous lands, but always converting and enduring the reproach of the wicked. He was beaten and set upon by sinful men, yet was he never moved to anger. Thus it was that he became the Arhat, the Jina, the Kevalin (perfect sage).[27] It is sad to have to add, however, that Mahāvīra is traditionally said to have died in a fit of apoplectic rage.

The equipment of a monk are his clothes (or, better, none), his alms-bowl, broom, and veil. He is 'unfettered,' in being without desires and without injury to others. 'Some say that all sorts of living beings may be slain, or abused, or tormented, or driven away—the doctrine of the unworthy. The righteous man does not kill nor cause others to kill. He should not cause the same punishment for himself.'

The last clause is significant. What he does to another living being will be done to him. He will suffer as he has caused others to suffer. The chain from emotion to hell—the avoidance of the former is on account of the fear of the latter—is thus connected: He who knows wrath knows pride; he who knows pride knows deceit; he who knows deceit knows greed (and so on; thus one advances) from greed to love, from love to hate, from hate to delusion, from delusion to conception, from conception to birth, from birth to death, from death to hell, from hell to animal existence, 'and he who knows animal existence knows pain.'

The five great vows, which have been thought by some scholars to be copies of the Buddhistic rules, whereas they are really modifications of the old Brahmanic rules for ascetics as explained in pre-Buddhistic literature, are in detail as follows:[28]

The First vow: I renounce all killing of living beings, whether subtile or gross, whether movable or immovable. Nor shall I myself kill living beings nor cause others to do it, nor consent to it. As long as I live I confess and blame, repent and exempt myself of these sins in the thrice threefold way,[29] in mind, speech, and body.

The five 'clauses' that explain this vow are: (1) the Niggantha (Jain) is careful in walking; (2) he does not allow his mind to act in a way to suggest injury of living beings; (3) he does not allow his speech to incite to injury; (4) he is careful in laying down his utensils; (5) he inspects his food and drink lest he hurt living beings.

The Second Vow: I renounce all vices of lying speech arising from anger, or greed, or fear, or mirth. I confess (etc, as in the first vow).

The five clauses here explain that the Niggantha speaks only after deliberation; does not get angry; renounces greed; renounces fear; renounces mirth—lest through any of these he be moved to lie.

The Third Vow: I renounce all taking of anything not given, either in a village, or a town, or a wood, either of little or much, or small or great, of living or lifeless things. I shall neither take myself what is not given nor cause others to take it, nor consent to their taking it. As long as I live I confess (etc., as in the first vow).

The clauses here explain that the Niggantha must avoid different possibilities of stealing, such as taking food without permission of his superior. One clause states that he may take only a limited ground for a limited time, i.e., he may not settle down indefinitely on a wide area, for he may not hold land absolutely. Another clause insists on his having his grant to the land renewed frequently.

The Fourth Vow: I renounce all sexual pleasures, either with gods, or men, or animals. I shall not give way to sensuality (etc).

The clauses here forbid the Niggantha to discuss topics relating to women, to contemplate the forms of women, to recall the pleasures and amusements he used to have with women, to eat and drink too highly seasoned viands, to lie near women.

The Fifth Vow: I renounce all attachments, whether little or much, small or great, living or lifeless; neither shall I myself form such attachments, nor cause others to do so, nor consent to their doing so (etc.).

The five clauses particularize the dangerous attachments formed by ears, eyes, smell, taste, touch.

It has been shown above (following Jacobi's telling comparison of the heretical vows with those of the early Brahman ascetic) that these vows are taken not from Buddhism but from Brahmanism. Jacobi opines that the Jains took the four first and that the reformer Mahāvīra added the fifth as an offset to the Brahmanical vow of liberality.[30] The same writer shows that certain minor rules of the Jain sect are derived from the same Brahmanical source.

The main differences between the two Jain sects have been catalogued in an interesting sketch by Williams,[31] who mentions as the chief Jain stations of the north Delhi (where there is an annual gathering), Jeypur, and Ājmīr. To these Mathurā on the Jumna should be added.[32] The Cvetāmbaras had forty-five or forty-six Āgamas, eleven or twelve Angas, twelve Upāngas, and other scriptures of the third or fourth century B.C., as they claim. They do not go naked (even their idols are clothed), and they admit women into the order. The Digambaras do not admit women, go naked, and have for sacred texts later works of the fifth century A.D. The latter of course assert that the scriptures of the former sect are spurious.[33]

In distinction from the Buddhists the Jains of to-day keep up caste. Some of them are Brahmans. They have, of course, a different prayer-formula, and have no Stūpas or Dāgobas (to hold relics); and, besides the metaphysical difference spoken of above, they differ from the Buddhists in assuming that metempsychosis does not stop at animal existence, but includes inanimate things (as these are regarded by others). According to one of their own sect of to-day, ahiṁsā paramo dharmas, 'the highest law of duty is not to hurt a living creature.'[34]

The most striking absurdity of the Jain reverence for life has frequently been commented upon. Almost every city of western India, where they are found, has its beast-hospital, where animals are kept and fed. An amusing account of such an hospital, called Pinjra Pol, at Saurarāshtra, Surat, is given in the first number of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society.[35] Five thousand rats were supported in such a temple-hospital in Kutch.[36]

Of all the great religious sects of India that of Nātaputta is perhaps the least interesting, and has apparently the least excuse for being.[37] The Jains offered to the world but one great moral truth, withal a negative truth, 'not to harm,' nor was this verity invented by them. Indeed, what to the Jain is the great truth is only a grotesque exaggeration of what other sects recognized in a reasonable form. Of all the sects the Jains are the most colorless, the most insipid. They have no literature worthy of the name. They were not original enough to give up many orthodox features, so that they seem like a weakened rill of Brahmanism, cut off from the source, yet devoid of all independent character. A religion in which the chief points insisted upon are that one should deny God, worship man, and nourish vermin, has indeed no right to exist; nor has it had as a system much influence on the history of thought. As in the case of Buddhism, the refined Jain metaphysics are probably a late growth. Historically these sectaries served a purpose as early protestants against ritualistic and polytheistic Brahmanism; but their real affinity with the latter faith is so great that at heart they soon became Brahmanic again. Their position geographically would make it seem probable that they, and not the Buddhists, had a hand in the making of the ethics of the later epic.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: We retain here and in Buddhism the usual terminology. Strictly speaking, Jainism is to Jina (the reformer's title) as is Bauddhism to Buddha, so that one should say Jinism, Buddhism, or Jainism, Bauddhism. Both titles, Jina and Buddha ('victor' and 'awakened'), were given to each leader; as in general many other mutual titles of honor were applied by each sect to its own head, Jina, Arhat ('venerable'), Mahāvīra ('great hero'), Buddha, etc. One of these titles was used, however, as a title of honor by the Jains, but to designate heretics by the Buddhists, viz., Tīrthankara (Tīrthakara in the original), 'prophet' (see Jacobi, SBE. xxii. Introd. p. xx).]

[Footnote 2: It is possible, however, on the other hand, that both Vishnuite and Civaite sects (or, less anglicized, Vaishnavas, Caivas, if one will also say Vaidic for Vedic), were formed before the end of the sixth century B.C. Not long after this the divinities Civa and Vishnu receive especial honor.]

[Footnote 3: The Beggar (Cramana, Bhikshu), the Renunciator (Sannyāsīn), the Ascetic (Yati), are Brahmanic terms as well as sectarian.]

[Footnote 4: The three great reformers of this period are Mahāvīra, Buddha, and Gosāla. The last was first a pupil and then a rival of Mahāvīra. The latter's nephew, Jamāli, also founded a distinct sect and became his uncle's opponent, the speculative sectarian tendency being as pronounced as it was about the same time in Hellas. Gosāla appears to have had quite a following, and his sect existed for a long time, but now it is utterly perished. An account of this reformer and of Jamāli will be found in Leumann's essay, Indische Studien, xvii. p. 98 ff. and in the appendix to Rockhill's Life of Buddha.]

[Footnote 5: The Nirgranthas (Jains) are never referred to by the Buddhists as being a new sect, nor is their reputed founder, Nātaputta, spoken of as their founder; whence Jacobi plausibly argues that their real founder was older than Mahāvīra, and that the sect preceded that of Buddha. Lassen and Weber have claimed, on the contrary, that Jainism is a revolt against Buddhism. The identification of Nātaputta (Jnātriputra) with Mahāvīra is due to Buehler and Jacobi (Kalpasūtra, Introd. p.6).]

[Footnote 6: According to Jacobi, ZDMG. xxxviii. 17, the split in the party arose in this way. About 350 B.C. some Jain monks under the leadership of Bhadrabāhu went south, and they followed stricter rules of asceticism than did their fellows in the north. Both sects are modifications of the original type, and their differences did not result in sectarian separation till about the time of our era, at which epoch arose the differentiating titles of sects that had not previously separated into formal divisions, but had drifted apart geographically.]

[Footnote 7: Compare Jacobi, loc. cit. and Leumann's account of the seven sects of the Cvetāmbaras in the essay in the Indische Studien referred to above. At the present day the Jains are found to the number of about a million in the northwest (Cvetāmbaras), and south (Digambaras) of India. The original seat of the whole body in its first form was, as we have said, near Benares, where also arose and flourished Buddhism.]

[Footnote 8: Hemacandra's Yogacāstra, edited by Windisch, ZDMG. xxviii. 185 ff. (iii. 133). The Jain's hate of women did not prevent his worshipping goddesses as the female energy like the later Hindu sects. The Jains are divided in regard to the possibility of woman's salvation. The Yogacāstra alludes to women as 'the lamps that burn on the road that leads to the gate of hell,' ii. 87. The Digambaras do not admit women into the order, as do the Cvetāmbaras.]

[Footnote 9: Die Bharata-sage, Leumann, ZDMG. xlviii. p.65. See also above in the Sūtras. With the Jains there is less of the monastic side of religion than with the Buddhists.]

[Footnote 10: Jains are sometimes called Arhats on account of their veneration for the Arhat or chief Jina (whence Jain). Their only real gods are their chiefs or Teachers, whose idols are worshipped in the temples. Thus, like the Buddhist and some Hindu sects of modern times, they have given up God to worship man. Rather have they adopted an idolatry of man and worship of womanhood, for they also revere the female energy. Positivism has ancient models!]

[Footnote 11: The Jain sub-sects did not differ much among themselves in philosophical speculation. Their differences were rather of a practical sort.]

[Footnote 12: See the list of the Bertin MSS.; Weber, Berlin MSS. vol. ii. 1892; and the thirty-third volume of the German Oriental Journal, pp. 178, 693. For an account of the literature see also Jacobi's introduction to the SBE. vol. xxii; and Weber, Ueber die heiligen Schriften der Jaina in vols. xvi, xvii of the Indische Studien (translated by Smyth in the Indian Antiquary); and the Bibliography (below).]

[Footnote 13: A case of connection in legends between Buddhist and Jain is mentioned below. Another is the history of king Paesi, elaborated in Buddhistic literature (Tripitaka) and in the second Jain Upānga alike, as has been shown by Leumann.]

[Footnote 14: The Jain's spirit, however, is not a world-spirit. He does not believe in an All-Spirit, but in a plurality of eternal spirits, fire-spirits, wind-spirits, plant-spirits, etc.]

[Footnote 15: Compare Colebrooke's Essays, vol. II. pp. 404, 444, and the Yogacāstra cited above.]

[Footnote 16: This is not in the earlier form of the vow (see below).]

[Footnote 17: II. 37 and 41. Although the Brahman ascetic took the vow not to kill, yet is he permitted to do so for sacrifice, and he may eat flesh of animals killed by other animals (Gautama, 3. 31).]

[Footnote 18: Loc. cit. III. 37-38. The evening and night are not times to eat, and for the same reason "The Gods eat in the morning, the Seers at noon, the Fathers in the afternoon, the devils at twilight and night" (ib. 58). For at night one might eat a a living thing by mistake.]

[Footnote 19: Loc. cit. II. 27.]

[Footnote 20: The pun māṁsa, "Me eat will be hereafter whose meat I eat in this life" (Lanman), shows that Jain and Brahman believed in a hell where the injured avenged themselves (Manu, V. 55; HYC. III. 26), just as is related in the Bhrigu story (above).]

[Footnote 21: By intuition or instruction.]

[Footnote 22: Loc. cit. I. 15 ff.]

[Footnote 23: Loc. cit. 121 ff. Wilson, Essays, I. 319, gives a description of the simple Jain ritual.]

[Footnote 24: Who says "may be."]

[Footnote 25: Mukunda.]

[Footnote 26: This 'keeping vasso' is also a Brahmanic custom, as Buehler has pointed out. But it is said somewhere that at that season the roads are impossible, so that there is not so much a conscious copying as a physical necessity in keeping vasso; perhaps also a moral touch, owing to the increase of life and danger of killing.]

[Footnote 27: In the lives of the Jinas it is said that Jnātriputra's (Nātaputta's) parents worshipped the 'people's favorite,' Pārcva, and were followers of the Cramanas (ascetics). In the same work (which contains nothing further for our purpose) it is said that Arhats, Cakravarts, Baladevas, and Vasudevas, present, past, and future, are aristocrats, born in noble families. The heresies and sectaries certainly claim as much.]

[Footnote 28: Ācārānga S. ii. 15. We give Jacobi's translation, as in the verses already cited from this work.]

[Footnote 29: Acting, commanding, consenting, past, present, or future (Jacobi).]

[Footnote 30: SBE. xxii. Introd. p. xxiv.]

[Footnote 31: JRAS. xx. 279.]

[Footnote 32: See Buehler, the last volume of the Epigraphica Indica, and his other articles in the WZKM. v. 59, 175. Jeypur, according to Williams, is the stronghold of the Digambara Jains. Compare Thomas, JRAS. ix. 155, Early Faith of Acoka.]

[Footnote 33: The redaction of the Jain canon took place, according to tradition, in 454 or 467 A.D. (possibly 527). "The origin of the extant Jaina literature cannot be placed earlier than about 300 B.C." (Jacobi, Introduction to Jain Sūtras, pp. xxxvii, xliii). The present Angas ('divisions') were preceded by Pūrvas, of which there are said to have been at first fourteen. On the number of the scriptures see Weber, loc. cit.]

[Footnote 34: Williams, loc. cit. The prayer-formula is: 'Reverence to Arhats, saints, teachers, subteachers, and all good men.']

[Footnote 35: 'A place which is appropriated for the reception of old, worn-out, lame, or disabled animals. At that time (1823) they chiefly consisted of buffaloes and cows, but there were also goats and sheep, and even cocks and hens,' and also 'hosts of vermin.']

[Footnote 36: JRAS. 1834, p. 96. The town was taxed to provide the food for the rats.]

[Footnote 37: Because the Jains have reverted to idolatry, demonology, and man-worship. But at the outset they appear to have had two great principles, one, that there is no divine power higher than man; the other, that all life is sacred. One of these is now practically given up, and the other was always taken too seriously.]

* * * * *



CHAPTER XIII.

BUDDHISM.

While the pantheistic believer proceeded to anthropomorphize in a still greater degree the ātmā of his fathers, and eventually landed in heretical sectarianism; while the orthodox Brahman simply added to his pantheon (in Manu and other law-codes) the Brahmanic figure of the Creator, Brahmā; the truth-seeker that followed the lines of the earlier philosophical thought arrived at atheism, and in consequence became either stoic or hedonist. The latter school, the Cārvākas, the so-called disciples of Brihaspati, have, indeed, a philosophy without religion. They simply say that the gods do not exist, the priests are hypocrites; the Vedas, humbug; and the only thing worth living for, in view of the fact that there are no gods, no heaven, and no soul, is pleasure: 'While life remains let a man live happily; let him not go without butter (literally ghee) even though he run into debt,' etc.[1] Of sterner stuff was the man who invented a new religion as a solace for sorrow and a refuge from the nihilism in which he believed.

Whether Jainism or Buddhism be the older heresy, and it is not probable that any definitive answer to this question will ever be given, one thing has become clear in the light of recent studies, namely, the fact already shown, that to Brahmanism are due some of the most marked traits of both the heretical sects. The founder of Buddhism did not strike out a new system of morals; he was not a democrat; he did not originate a plot to overthrow the Brahmanic priesthood; he did not invent the order of monks.[2] There is, perhaps, no person in history in regard to whom have arisen so many opinions that are either wholly false or half false.[3]

We shall not canvass in detail views that would be mentioned only to be rejected. Even the brilliant study of Senart,[4] in which the figure of Buddha is resolved into a solar type and the history of the reformer becomes a sun-myth, deserves only to be mentioned and laid aside. Since the publication of the canonical books of the southern Buddhists there is no longer any question in regard to the human reality of the great knight who illumined, albeit with anything but heavenly light, the darkness of Brahmanical belief. Oldenberg[5] has taken Senart seriously, and seriously answered him. But Napoleon and Max Mueller have each been treated as sun-myths, and Senart's essay is as convincing as either jeu d'esprit.

In Nepāl, far from the site of Vedic culture, and generations after the period of the Vedic hymns, was born a son to the noble family of the Cākyas. A warrior prince, he made at last exclusively his own the lofty title that was craved by many of his peers, Buddha, the truly wise, the 'Awakened.'

The Cākyas' land extended along the southern border of Nepāl and the northeast part of Oude (Oudh), between the Irāvatī (Rapti) river on the west and south, and the Rohini on the east; the district which lies around the present Gorakhpur, about one hundred miles north-northeast of Benares. The personal history of the later Buddha is interwoven with legend from which it is not always easy to disentangle the threads of truth. In the accounts preserved in regard to the Master, one has first to distinguish the Pāli records of the Southern Buddhists from the Sanskrit tales of the Northerners; and again, it is necessary to discriminate between the earlier and later traditions of the Southerners, who have kept in general the older history as compared with the extravagant tradition preserved in the Lalita Vistara, the Lotus of the Law, and the other works of the North. What little seems to be authentic history is easily told; nor are, for our present purpose, of much value the legends, which mangonize the life of Buddha. They will be found in every book that treats of the subject, and some of the more famous are translated in the article on Buddha in the Encyclopaedia Brittanica. We content ourselves with the simplest and oldest account, giving such facts as help to explain the religious significance of Buddha's life and work among his countrymen. Several of these facts, Buddha's place in society, and the geographical centre of Buddhistic activity, are essential to a true understanding of the relations between Buddhism and Brahmanism.

Whether Buddha's father was king or no has rightly been questioned. The oldest texts do not refer to him as a king's son, and this indicates that his father, who governed the Cākya-land, of which the limits have just been specified,[6] was rather a feudal baron or head of a small clan, than an actual king. The Cākya power was overthrown and absorbed into that of the king of Oude (Kosala) either in Buddha's own life-time or immediately afterwards. It is only the newer tradition that extols the power and wealth which the Master gave up on renouncing worldly ties, a trait characteristic of all the later accounts, on the principle that the greater was the sacrifice the greater was the glory. Whether kings or mere chieftains, the Cākyas were noted as a family that cared little to honor the Brahmanic priests. They themselves claimed descent from Ikshvāku, the ancient seer-king, son of Manu, and traditionally first king of Ayodhā (Oude). They assumed the name of Gautama, one of the Vedic seers, and it was by the name of 'the Ascetic Gautama' that Buddha was known to his contemporaries; but his personal name was Siddhārtha 'he that succeeds in his aim,' prophetic of his life! His mother's name Māyā (illusion) has furnished Senart with material for his sun-theory of Buddha; but the same name is handed down as that of a city, and perhaps means in this sense 'the wonderful.' She is said to have died when her son was still a boy. The boy Siddhārtha, then, was a warrior rājput by birth, and possibly had a very indifferent training in Vedic literature, since he is never spoken of as Veda-wise.[7] The future Buddha was twenty-nine when he resolved to renounce the world. He was already married and had a son (Rāhula, according to later tradition). The legends of later growth here begin to thicken, telling how, when the future Buddha heard of the birth of his son, he simply said 'a new bond has been forged to hold me to the world'; and how his mind was first awakened to appreciation of sorrow by seeing loathy examples of age, sickness, and death presented to him as he drove abroad. Despite his father's tears and protests Siddhārtha, or as one may call him now by his patronymic, the man Gautama, left his home and family, gave up all possessions, and devoted himself to self-mortification and Yoga discipline of concentration of thought, following in this the model set by all previous ascetics. He says himself, according to tradition, that it was a practical pessimism which drove him to take this step. He was not pleased with life, and the pleasures of society had no charm for him. When he saw the old man, the sick man, the dead man, he became disgusted to think that he too would be subject to age, sickness, and death: "I felt disgust at old age; all pleasure then forsook me." In becoming an ascetic Gautama simply endeavored to discover some means by which he might avoid a recurrence of life, of which the disagreeable side in his estimation outweighed the joy. He too had already answered negatively the question Is life worth living?

We must pause here to point out that this oldest and simplest account of Gautama's resolve shows two things. It makes clear that Gautama at first had no plan for the universal salvation of his race. He was alert to 'save his own soul,' nothing more. We shall show presently that this is confirmed by subsequent events in his career. The next point is that this narration in itself is a complete refutation of the opinion of those scholars who believe that the doctrine of karma and reincarnation arose first in Buddhism, and that the Upanishads that preach this doctrine are not of the pre-Buddhistic period. The last part of this statement of opinion is, of course, not touched by the story of Gautama's renunciation, but the first assumption wrecks on it. Why should Gautama have so given himself to Yoga discipline? Did he expect to escape age, sickness, death, in this life by that means? No. The assumption from the beginning is the belief in the doctrine of reincarnation. It was in order to free himself from future returns of these ills that Gautama renounced his home. But nothing whatever is said of his discovering or inventing the doctrine of reincarnation. Both hell and karma are taken for granted throughout the whole early Buddhistic literature. Buddha discovered neither of them, any more than he discovered a new system of morality, or a new system of religious life; although more credit accrues to him in regard to the last because his order was opposed to that then prevalent; yet even here he had antique authority for his discipline.

To return to Gautama's[8] life. Legend tells how he fled away on his horse Kanthaka, in search of solitude and the means of salvation, far from his home to the abode of ascetics, for he thought: "Whence comes peace? When the fire of desire is extinguished, when the fire of hate is extinguished, when the fire of illusion is extinguished, when all sins and all sorrows are extinguished, then comes peace." And the only means to this end was the renunciation of desire, the discipline of Yoga concentration, where the mind fixed on one point loses all else from its horizon, and feels no drawing aside to worldly things.

What then has Gautama done from the point of view of the Brahman? He has given up his home to become an ascetic. But this was permitted by usage, for, although the strict western code allowed it only to the priest, yet it was customary among the other twice-born castes at an earlier day, and in this part of India it awakened no surprise that one of the military caste should take up the life of a philosopher. For the historian of Indic religions this fact is of great significance, since such practice is the entering wedge which was to split the castes. One step more and not only the military caste but the lower, nay the lowest castes, might become ascetics. But, again, all ascetics were looked upon, in that religious society, as equal to the priests. In fact, where Gautama lived there was rather more respect paid to the ascetic than to the priest as a member of the caste. Gautama was most fortunate in his birth and birth-place. An aristocrat, he became an ascetic in a land where the priests were particularly disregarded. He had no public opinion to contend against when later he declared that Brahman birth and Brahman wisdom had no value. On the contrary, he spoke to glad hearers, who heard repeated loudly now as a religious truth what often they had said to themselves despitefully in private.

Gautama journeyed as a muni, or silent ascetic sage, till after seven years he abandoned his teachers (for he had become a disciple of professed masters), and discontentedly wandered about in Māgadha (Behār), 'the cradle of Buddhism,' till he came to Uruvelā, Bodhi Gayā.[9] Here, having found that concentration of mind, Yoga-discipline, availed nothing, he undertook another method of asceticism, self-torture. This he practiced for some time. But it succeeded as poorly as his first plan, and he had nearly starved himself to death when it occurred to him that he was no wiser than before. Thereupon he gave up starvation as a means of wisdom and began to eat. Five other ascetics, who had been much impressed by his endurance and were quite ready to declare themselves his disciples, now deserted him, thinking that as he had relaxed his discipline he must be weaker than themselves. But Gautama sat beneath the sacred fig-tree[10] and lo! he became illumined. In a moment he saw the Great Truths. He was now the Awakened. He became Buddha.

The later tradition here records how he was tempted of Satan. For Māra (Death), 'the Evil One' as he is called by the Buddhists, knowing that Buddha had found the way of salvation, tempted him to enter into Nirvāna at once, lest by converting others Buddha should rob Māra of his power and dominion. This and the legend of storms attacking him and his being protected by the king of snakes, Mucalinda, is lacking in the earlier tradition.

Buddha remains under the bo-tree fasting, for four times seven days, or seven times seven, as says the later report. At first he resolves to be a 'Buddha for himself.'[11] that is to save only himself, not to be 'the universal Buddha,' who converts and saves the world. But the God Brahmā comes down from heaven and persuades him out of pity for the world to preach salvation. In this legend stands out clearly the same fact we have animadverted upon already. Buddha had at first no intention of helping his fellows. He found his own road to salvation. That sufficed. But eventually he was moved through pity for his kind to give others the same knowledge with which he had been enlightened.[12]

Here is to be noticed with what suddenness Gautama becomes Buddha. It is an early case of the same absence of study or intellectual preparation for belief that is rampant in the idea of ictic conversion. In a moment Gautama's eyes are opened. In ecstacy he becomes illuminated with the light of knowledge. This idea is totally foreign to Brahmanism. It is not so strange at an earlier stage, for the Vedic poet often 'sees' his hymn,[13] that is, he is inspired or illumined. But no Brahman priest was ever 'enlightened' with sudden wisdom, for his knowledge was his wisdom, and this consisted in learning interminable trifles. But the wisdom of Buddha was this:

I. Birth is sorrow, age is sorrow, sickness is sorrow, death is sorrow, clinging to earthly things is sorrow.

II. Birth and re-birth, the chain of reincarnations, result from the thirst for life together with passion and desire.

III. The only escape from this thirst is the annihilation of desire.

IV. The only way of escape from this thirst is by following the Eightfold Path: Right belief, right resolve, right word, right act, right life, right effort, right thinking, right meditation.[14]

But Buddha is said to have seen more than these, the Four Great Truths, and the Eightfold Path, for he was enlightened at the same time (after several days of fasting) in regard to the whole chain of causality which is elaborated in the later tradition.

The general result of this teaching may be formulated thus, that most people are foolishly optimistic and that the great awakening is to become a pessimist. One must believe not only that pain is inseparable from existence, but that the pleasures of life are only a part of its pain. When one has got so far along the path of knowledge he traverses the next stage and gets rid of desire, which is the root of life,—this is a Vedic utterance,—till by casting off desire, ignorance, doubt, and heresy, as add some of the texts,[15] one has removed far away all unkindness and vexation of soul, feeling good-will to all.

Not only in this scheme but also in other less formal declarations of Buddha does one find the key-note of that which makes his method of salvation different alike to that of Jain or Brahman. Knowledge is wisdom to the Brahman; asceticism is wisdom to the Jain; purity and love is the first wisdom to the Buddhist. We do not mean that the Brahman does not reach theoretically a plane that puts him on the same level with Buddhism. We have pointed out above a passage in the work of the old law-giver Gautama which might almost have been uttered by Gautama Buddha: "He that has performed all the forty sacraments and has not the eight good qualities enters not into union with Brahmā nor into the heaven of Brahmā; but he that has performed only a part of the forty sacraments and has the eight good qualities, enters into union with Brahmā and into the heaven of Brahmā"; and these eight good qualities are mercy, forbearance, freedom from envy, purity, calmness, correct behavior, freedom from greed and from covetousness. Nevertheless with the Brahman this is adventitious, with the Buddhist it is essential.

These Four Great Truths are given to the world first at Benares, whither Buddha went in order to preach to the five ascetics that had deserted him. His conversation with them shows us another side of Buddhistic ethics. The five monks, when they saw Buddha approaching, jeered, and said: "Here is the one that failed in his austerities." Buddha tells them to acknowledge him as their master, and that he is the Enlightened One. "How," they ask, "if you could not succeed in becoming a Buddha by asceticism, can we suppose that you become one by indulgence?" Buddha tells them that neither voluptuousness nor asceticism is the road that leads to Nirvāna; that he, Buddha, has found the middle path between the two extremes, the note is struck that is neither too high nor too low. The five monks are converted when they hear the Four Great Truths and the Eightfold Path, and there are now six holy ones on earth, Buddha and his five disciples.

Significant also is the social status of Buddha's first conversion. It is 'the rich youth' of Benares that flock about him,[16] of whom sixty soon are counted, and these are sent out into all the lands to preach the gospel, each to speak in his own tongue, for religion was from this time on no longer to be hid behind the veil of an unintelligible language. And it is not only the aristocracy of wealth that attaches itself to the new teacher and embraces his doctrines with enthusiasm. The next converts are a thousand Brahman priests, who constituted a religious body under the leadership of three ascetic Brahmans. It is described in the old writings how these priests were still performing their Vedic rites when Buddha came again to Bodhi Gayā and found them there. They were overcome with astonishment as they saw his power over the King of Snakes that lived among them. The gods—for Buddhism, if not Buddha, has much to do with the gods—descend from heaven to hear him, and other marvels take place. The Brahmans are all converted. The miracles and the numbers may be stripped off, but thus denuded the truth still remains as important as it is plain. Priests of Brahman caste were among the first to adopt Buddhism. The popular effect of the teaching must have been great, for one reads how, when Buddha, after this great conversion, begins his victorious wanderings in Behār (Māgadha), he converted so many of the young nobles that—since conversion led to the immediate result of renunciation—the people murmured, saying that Gautama (Gotama) was robbing them of their youth.[17]

From this time on Buddha's life was spent in wandering about and preaching the new creed mainly to the people of Behār and Oude (Kāci-Kosala, the realm of Benares-Oude), his course extending from the (Irāvati) Rapti river in the north to Rājagriha (gaha, now Rajgir) south of Behār, while he spent the vasso or rainy season in one of the parks, many of which were donated to him by wealthy members of the fraternity.[18]

Wherever he went he was accompanied with a considerable number of followers, and one reads of pilgrims from distant places coming to see and converse with him. The number of his followers appears to have been somewhat exaggerated by the later writers, since Buddha himself, when prophesying of the next Buddha, the "Buddha of love" (Maitreya) says that, whereas he himself has hundreds of followers, the next Buddha will lead hundreds of thousands.

Although, theoretically, all the castes give up their name, and, when united in the Buddhistic brotherhood, become "like rivers that give up their identity and unite in the one ocean," yet were most of the early recruits, as has been said, from influential and powerful families; and it is a tenet of Buddhism in regard to the numerous Buddhas, which have been born[19] and are still to be born on earth, that no Buddha can be born in a low caste.

The reason for this lies as much as anything in the nature of the Buddhistic system which is expressly declared to be "for the wise, not for the foolish." It was not a system based as such on love or on any democratic sentiment. It was a philosophical exposition of the causal nexus of birth and freedom from re-birth. The common man, untrained in logic, might adopt the teaching, but he could not understand it. The "Congregation of the son of the Cākyas"—such was the earliest name for the Buddhistic brotherhood—were required only to renounce their family, put on the yellow robe, assume the tonsure and other outward signs, and be chaste and high-minded. But the teachers were instructed in the subtleties of the 'Path,' and it needed no little training to follow the leader's thought to its logical conclusion.

Of Buddha's life, besides the circumstances already narrated little is known. Of his disciples the best beloved was Ānanda, his own cousin, whose brother was the Judas of Buddhism. The latter, Devadatta by name, conspired to kill Buddha in order that he himself might get the post of honor. But hell opened and swallowed him up. He appears to have had convictions of Jain tendency, for before his intrigue he preached against Buddha, and formulated reactionary propositions which inculcated a stricter asceticism than that taught by the Master.[20]

It has been denied that the early church contained lay members as well as monks, but Oldenberg appears to have set the matter right (p. 165) in showing that the laity, from the beginning, were a recognized part of the general church. The monk (bhikshu, bhikku) was formally enrolled as a disciple, wore the gown and tonsure, etc. The lay brother, 'reverer' (upāsaka) was one that assented to the doctrine and treated the monks kindly. There were, at first, only men in the congregation, for Buddhism took a view as unfavorable to woman as did Jainism. But at his foster-mother's request Buddha finally admitted nuns as well as monks into his fold. When Ānanda asks how a monk should act in presence of a woman Buddha says 'avoid to look at her'; but if it be necessary to look, 'do not speak to her'; but if it be necessary to speak, 'then keep wide awake, Ānanda.'[21]

Buddha died in the fifth century. Rhys Davids, who puts the date later than most scholars, gives, as the time of the great Nirvāna, the second decade from the end of the fourth century. On the other hand, Buehler and Mueller reckon the year as 477, while Oldenberg says 'about 480.'[22] From Buddha's own words, as reported by tradition, he was eighty years old at the time of his death, and if one allots him thirty-six years as his age when he became independent of masters, his active life would be one of forty-four years. It was probably less than this, however, for some years must be added to the first seven of ascetic practices before he took the field as a preacher.

The story of Buddha's death is told simply and clearly. He crossed the Ganges, where at that time was building the town of Patna (Pātaliputta, 'Palibothra'), and prophesied its future greatness (it was the chief city of India for centuries after); then, going north from Rājagriha, in Behār, and Vāicālī, he proceeded to a point east of Gorukhpur (Kasia). Tradition thus makes him wander over the most familiar places till he comes back almost to his own country. There, in the region known to him as a youth, weighed down with years and ill-health, but surrounded by his most faithful disciples, he died. Not unaffecting is the final scene.[23]

'Now the venerable Ānanda (Buddha's beloved disciple) went into the cloister-building, and stood leaning against the lintel of the door and weeping at the thought: "Alas! I remain still but a learner, one who has yet to work out his own perfection. And the Master is about to pass away from me—he who is so kind." Then the Blessed One called the brethren and said: "Where then, brethren, is Ānanda?" "The venerable Ānanda (they replied) has gone into the cloister-building and stands leaning against the lintel of the door, weeping." ... And the Blessed One called a certain brother, and said "Go now, brother, and call Ānanda in my name and say, 'Brother Ānanda, thy Master calls for thee.'" "Even so, Lord," said that brother, and he went up to where Ānanda was, and said to the venerable Ānanda: "Brother Ānanda, thy Master calls for thee." "It is well, brother," said the venerable Ānanda, and he went to the place where Buddha was. And when he was come thither he bowed down before the Blessed One, and took his seat on one side. Then the Blessed One said to the venerable Ānanda, as he sat there by his side: "Enough, Ānanda, let not thyself be troubled; weep not. Have I not told thee already that we must divide ourselves from all that is nearest and dearest? How can it be possible that a being born to die should not die? For a long time, Ānanda, hast thou been very near to me by acts of love that is kind and good and never varies, and is beyond all measure. (This Buddha repeats three times.) Thou hast done well. Be earnest in effort. Thou, too, shalt soon be free." ... When he had thus spoken, the venerable Ānanda said to the Blessed One: "Let not the Blessed One die in this little wattle and daub town, a town in the midst of the jungle, in this branch township. For, Lord, there are other great cities such as Benares (and others). Let the Blessed One die in one of them."'