Early Buddhism

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Religions Ancient and Modern

EARLY BUDDHISM

RELIGIONS: ANCIENT AND MODERN.

ANIMISM.

By Edward Clodd, Author of The Story of Creation.
PANTHEISM.

By James Allanson Picton, Author of The Religion of the

Universe.
THE RELIGIONS OF ANCIENT CHINA.

By Professor Giles, LL.D., Professor of Chinese in the University

of Cambridge.
THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE.

By Jane Harrison, Lecturer at Newnham College, Cambridge,

Author of Prolegomena to Study of Greek Religion.
ISLAM.

By Syed Ameer Ali, M.A., CLE., late of H.M.'s High Court

of Judicature in Bengal, Author of The Spirit of Islam and The

Ethics of Islam.
MAGIC AND FETISHISM.

By Dr. A. C. H ADDON, F.R.S., Lecturer on Ethnology at Cam-
bridge University.
THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT.

By Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie, F.R.S.
THE RELIGION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA.

By Theophilus G. Pinches, late of the British Museum.
BUDDHISM. 2 vols.

By Professor Rhys Davids, LL.D., late Secretary of The Royal

Asiatic Society.
HINDUISM.

By Dr. L. D. Barnett, of the Department of Oriental Printed

Books and MSS., British Museum.
SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION.

By William A. Craigik, Joint Editor of the Oxford English

Dictionary.
CELTIC RELIGION.

By Professor Anwyl, Professor of Welsh at University College,

Aberystwyth.
THE MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.

By Charles Squire, Author of The Mythology of the British

Islands.
JUDAISM.

By Israel Abrahams, Lecturer in Talmudic Literature in

Cambridge University, Author oi Jewish Life in the Middle Ages.
SHINTO. By W. G. Aston, C.M.G.
THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT MEXICO AND PERU.

By Lewis Spence, M.A.
THE RELIGION OF THE HEBREWS.

By Professor Yastrow.

EARLY BUDDHISM

By

T. W. RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., Ph.D.

M

PROFESSOR or COMPARATIVE RELIGION AT OWENS COLLEGE

PROFESSOR OF BUDDHIST LITERATURE, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON

FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY, ETC.. ETC.

LONDON
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO Ltd

1908

^c

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CONTENTS

CHAP.

I. Introductory :

The Sakiya Clan, . .
Kosala and its Language,
The Wanderers,
The Hermits, .
Economic conditions,
Caste not yet established.

1
2
4
6
9
10

11. Older Beliefs :
Vedic faith,
Death of the gods,
Details as to gods.
Animism, .
The soul-theory,
Summary,

13

14
16
17

18

III. Life of the Buddha :
No Buddhist Gospel,
The Buddha not a king's son,
Prophecy at his birth,
His ' going forth,'
His teachers, .
His attainment of Nirvana,

26
27
29
30
34
35

464G56

CONTENTS

CHAP.

PAGE

III. The first discourse, .

.

40

Daily life, .

.

44

His death,

46

IV. The Aryan Path :

The word Aryan,

49

The first discourse,' .

51

The origin and end of p

lin,

53

Impermanencc,

56

Eight desires and right

cflort, .

59

Love,

.

60

Joy, ....

62

V. Lions in the Path :

The ten Bonds,

The Intoxications,

The Indeterminates,

The Victory (Nirvana),

VI. ADorTED Doctrines :

Transmigration,

Karma, the bridge bet^veen one life and the

next,

East and West,

VII. Other Adopted Doctrines :

Cosmogony,

Wheel of Life,

Ecstasy,

67
69
72

75

76

78

82
84
86

EAKLY BUDDHISM
CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

The Sakiya Clan. — The founder of Buddhism was
born about 560 e.g. at Kapila-vastu, the principal
town in the territory of the Sakiya clan, situate
about one hundred miles nearly due north of
Benares.

At that time the Aryan settlers along the lower
slopes of the Himalaya range, and down the valley
of the Ganges, had reached a stage of political and
social evolution very similar to that reached about
the same time in Greece. The country was politi-
cally split up into small communities, usually
governed under republican institutions, some more
aristocratic, some more democratic in character.
But in four or five of these republics tyrants
had succeeded in enforcing their power over their
compatriots, and an irresistible tendency was lead-
ing to the absorption of all the small republics

A I

• KA-RLY BFbbHISM

in tlie neighbouring larger kingdoms. Thus the
Sukiya clan was already under the suzerainty of
the adjoining kingdom of Kosala.

Kosala. — The exact boundaries of Kosala at
that time are not known; but it must have in-
cluded nearly all of the present United Provinces,
together with a large portion of Nepal. Its
capital, Savatthi, lay in the mountains, in what
is now Nepal. Benares, formerly an independent
state, was already incorj^orated under the rising
power of this important kingdom, which must
have been three hundred miles in length from
north to south, and about the same in breadth
from west to east — nearly twice the size of
England. The supremacy of this warlike clan
of mountaineers, and the peace preserved through-
out the wide extent of their domain, were the
main political factors of the time. And the
issue of the struggle, then already in progress,
between Kosala and Magadha, its neighbour on
the south-east, was about to decide the fate of the
great continent of India through the following
centuries.

Language of Kosala. — Two points are especially
worthy of notice in this connection. In the first
place, the language of Kosala, owing to the in-
fluence of the court, the army, and the oflBcials

2

INTRODUCTORY

stationed throughout its territory, tended to sup-
plant the local dialects. These bore about the
same relation to the Vedic speech as Italian does
to Latin, and will have differed among themselves
about as much as the different dialects of the
different counties in England. They were no
doubt mutually intelligible. But the particular
variety in use in court and official circles became
more and more the language in daily use among
people of culture or wealth or birth throughout
Kosala, a kind of lingua franca, the Hindustani
of the sixth century B.C. The Buddha, as a
native of Kosala, spoke Kosalan. And we can
deduce evidence of the condition the lano^uao^e
had then reached in its official form from the
edicts of Asoka and other early inscriptions ; and
in its literary form from the Pali, that is the
canon, of the sacred books.^

The Brahmins. — In the second place, the ruling
clan in Kosala was settled to the east and to the
north of the portion of India most subject to
brahmin influence. The brahmins had not yet,
in the districts where Buddhism arose, acquired
that supreme authority in social and religious

1 This question of the language is discussed at length in the
present writer's Bii/ldhut Indvx ; and in Professor Otto
Franke's Pcxli und Sanskrit.

EARLY BUDDHISM

questions which they now have in modern India,
and which they are represented in Manu and the
Epics to have acquired when those books were
composed. The Kshatriya clansmen, no doubt,
esteemed the brahmins highly; but they esteemed
themselves more highly still. They mentioned
themselves first, and designated the brahmins as
' of low birth ' compared to the Kshatriyas. The
position was not quite the same as, but can be
better understood by a comparison with, the state
of things in Europe during a long period of its
history, and even now. The established clergy
were, and are, much respected. But in social
esteem they rank, not above, but below the nobles.
In matters of astrology, the interpretation of
dreams and omens, the performance of certain
lucky ceremonies, the knowledge of ritual, the
people had recourse to brahmins. In matters of
ethics, religion, and philosophy they listened
rather to the Wanderers.

The Wanderers. — These were wandering
teachers, celibates, but not necessarily ascetics,
Avho resembled in many respects the Greek
sophists. Like them they differed much in in-
telligence, earnestness, and honesty. Some are
described as ' Eel-wrigglers,' ' Hair-sphtters ' ; and
this not without reason, if one may judge fairly

4

INTRODUCTORY

from the specimens of their arguments as re-
ported by their adversaries. But there must have
been many of a very different character, or the
high reputation they enjoyed among all classes of
the people would scarcely have been maintained.
They held no formal meetings, and made no set
speeches ; but they used to call on the cultured
people in the settlements they visited, and wel-
comed, in their own lodging places, any one
willing to talk of higher matters. So large was
the number of such people that the town com-
munities, the clans, and the rajas vied one with
another to provide the Wanderers with pavilions,
meeting halls, and resting-places where such con-
versations or discussions could take place.

Some of the Wanderers were women, some were
brahmins by birth (not, of course, by profession),
but the majority were clansmen. For the three
months of the rains they remained in the same
spot. The rest of the" year they wandered
through the land, living on alms, holding their
sessions wherever they went. And just as the
Strolling Students in pre - Reformation times
throughout Central Europe were both a sign of the
coming change, and also largely helped to bring
it about, so the conditions which made it possible
for the Wanderers in northern India to live as

5

EARLY BUDDHISM

they did, were the signs of a general movement
in reHgious and philosophical thought, the fore-
shadowing of that great uprising which we now
call Buddhism.

The Hermits. — Less numerous than the
Wanderers, but still an important sign of the
times, were the Hermits. Much older in date,
the custom of adopting this mode of Hfe has its
roots deep in human nature. It is already
mentioned in the latest of the Vedic poems, and
has maintained its power from that time down
to to-day. In one of the earliest of the Buddhist
records we have a full statement of the stage it
had reached in the Buddha's time, as set forth
by a naked ascetic in one of the Dialogues.^
DwelHng for the most part in the forests, but
also in caves in the mountains, the Hermits gave
themselves up to renunciation and self-mortifica-
tion, living on roots and fruits. The professor of
self-torture referred to above enumerates twenty-
two methods of mortifying the body in respect of
food, thirteen in respect of clothing, and five in
respect of posture.

As is well known, such ideas are not confined
to India. Tennyson, in his monologue of St.

^ Translated by the present writer in Dialogues of the
Buddha, vol. i. pp. 226-232.

6

INTRODUCTORY

Simeon Stylites, has given us a powerful analysis
of the feelings that lay at the root of similar
practices among Christians. But the Indian way
of treating the whole conception is more akin to
the way Diogenes thought when he lived, like a
dog, in his tub-kennel. There is no question of
penance for sin, of an appeal to the mercy of an
offended deity. It is the boast of superiority
advanced by the man able, by strength of will,
to keep his body under, and not only to despise
comfort, but to welcome pain.

Both in the West and in the East such claims
were often gladly admitted. We hear in India
of the reverence paid to the man who (to quote
the words of a Buddhist poet) —

' Bescorclied, befrozen, loue iu fearsome woods,
Naked, without a fire, afire within,
Struggled, in awful silence, toward the goal.' ^

Simeon, by the acclaim of the populace, became
a saint even before he died. Diogenes, and his
parallel in India, Mahavira the Jain, founded
important schools that have left their mark in
history. But experience soon shows the other
side of the question. In Greece it was the
sophists and the philosophers, rather than the

1 Majjhima, i. 79 ; quoted Jataka, 1. 390.
7

EARLY BUDDHISM

ascetics, who came to be the acknowledged
leaders of opinion. In India, it was the newer
method of the Wanderers that received, and
mainly, as we shall see, through the influence of
Buddhist teaching, the higher recognition.

Freedom of Thought. — One remarkable circum-
stance was that the most perfect freedom, both of
thought and of expression, was permitted, not
only to Hermits and Wanderers, but to every one
else. There had probably never been before,
there certainly has seldom been since, any time
and place at which such absolute liberty of
thought prevailed. This argues a considerable
degree of culture, a habit of courtesy and gentle-
ness, among the people ; a tolerance all the more
noteworthy when we bear in mind the zeal and
earnestness of so large a proportion of the com-
munity in matters of religion. It is, in fact, a
very great mistake to conclude, on the evidence
of the priestly law books (which are centuries
later), that at this period also the Indians were
more superstitious than other folk, more under
the thumb of the sacrificial priesthood. All the
evidence points the other way. There was, on
the contrary, in spite of much naive speculation
and vain sophistry, a real independence of any
shackles of authority, a well-marked lay feeling,

8

INTRODUCTORY

and a love of humour and irony that was a potent
defence.

Economic Conditions.— One reason for the
large amount of attention devoted to ethical and
philosophical questions was undoubtedly the
state of the economic conditions of the period.
None of the difficulties that have arisen in
modern times w^ere then much felt. The popula-
tion to be supported were probably barely one-
tenth of the number now occupying the same
territory. The vast majority of the people were
peasant proprietors, living in village communities
on their own land, under the supervision of
village officers elected by themselves, with power
limited by immemorial custom. There was a
tithe payable in kind to the government, whether
a local republic, or a distant king. Kings some-
times made what was called a grant of a village
to some noble, or official, or priest. But this was
a grant only of the government dues; and the
land still belonged to the peasants, or to the
peasant community. There were a few isolated
cases of landlords, where a rich man had, by hired
labour, made a clearing in the forest. But the
number of hired labourers was small. It was
considered a disgrace for a free man to let him-
self out for hire ; and though it was difficult for a

9

EARLY BUDDHISM

free-lance to gain admission to an existing village
community, there was plenty of land not absorbed
in the existing settlements, and open to squatters.
The very widely extended inter-state commerce
afforded other openings ; and the guilds of crafts-
men, organised under their own Elders, provided
occupation for those who could secure admission
to their ranks.

While, therefore, there was but little abject
poverty, the number of those who could be con-
sidered wealthy from the standpoint of those
days (and still more so from our own) was also
very hmited. We hear of about a score of rajas
or maharajas, whose income consisted mainly of
the land tax supplemented by certain dues and
perquisites ; of a considerable number of wealthy
nobles, and of some wealthy priests ; and of about
a score of millionaire merchants in the few large
towns. There were no great manufacturers and
no powerful landlords. The wants of the people
were few. And the great mass of them were
well-to-do peasantry or handicraftsmen, mostly
with land of their own, and troubled neither with
poverty nor wealth.

Caste. — There was no caste in India, in those
days, in the sense in which that word is now
used. There were social grades, technically called

ft'

lO

INTRODUCTORY

Colours, the boundary lines of which were not
always or strictly observed. There w^ere restric-
tions as to intermarriage, and as to eating
together, just as there were then everywhere
throughout the world among peoples in a similar
stage of culture. Certain trades, especially among
the most despised occupations (such as scavengers,
leather workers, and butchers), tended to become,
a few of them had already become, hereditary.
There w^as a strong feeling on the part of the
Aryans of the superiority of their race. But
this feeling had not prevented, and did not then
prevent, a quite considerable degree of inter-
marriage. So much, indeed, was this the case^
that though there were a considerable number of
clansmen, and especially of Kshatriyas and
Brahmins, who claimed pure Aryan descent on
both sides for seven generations, the number of
those whose claims were justified was probably
not very large. Mixed up with this question of
race there was a good deal of pride of birth, not
less than is observed to-day in the West. All
these factors were present at the same period
among the Aryans in Europe. They were the
factors on which the present caste system of
India was long afterwards, after the decay of
Buddhism, built up. But it was not yet then

II

EARLY BUDDHISM

built up. We have numerous instances in the
books which show that the lines were not then at
all strictly drawn. The elements, the foundations,
of the caste system were there ; but the system
itself did not, as yet, exist.

\

12

CHAPTER II

CONDITION OF RELIGION IN INDIA AT THE TIME
OF THE RISE OF BUDDHISM

It will be necessary, in order to explain the views
put forward by the Buddha, to give a summary
of the views previously current among the com-
munities in whose territories he taught.

Vedic Beliefs. — And firstly, the views then
current were not the views we find enunciated or
implied in the thousand and odd Yedic hymns.
As, through the centuries, the Aryans had pushed
on into the land, their language, through the
inevitable laws of the growth, or decay, of a
living language, had so altered that they under-
stood the hymns no longer. The hymns were
still known only in the schools of the sacrificing
priests, and were there split up into texts to be
used as charms {mantras) in the sacrifice.
Beyond the circles of those connected with the
schools they were disregarded and unknown.
When originally composed in the Panjab, the
13

EARLY BUDDHISM

hymns had included only a portion of the beliefs
of the people; and with each generation, with
each change of domicile, the gap between the
actual beliefs and those recorded in the hymns
grew wider and wider.

Death of the Gods. — Such a process is just as
inevitable as the change in a living language, or
in a living structure. We should never forget in
what degree all these their gods were real. They
had no objective existence; but they were real
enough, for a moment, as ideas in men's minds.
At any given time the gods of a nation seem to the
onlooker eternal, unchangeable. As a matter of
fact they are always slightly changing. No two
men, even though brought up in the same sur-
roundings, when they are thinking on the same
day of the same god have quite the same mental
image. Nor can the proportionate importance
of the image be the same to each of them ; for
that could only be the case if all their other ideas
were exactly the same, which, of course, they
never are. Just as a man's visible frame, though
no change is at any moment perceptible, is never
really the same for two consecutive moments,
and the result of constant minute variations
becomes visible after a lapse of time ; so the
ideas summed up by the name of a god become
14

KELIGION IN INDIA AT ITS RISE

changed by the gradual accretion of minute
variations. This change, after a lapse of time (it
may be generations, it may be centuries), becomes
so clear that a new name arises, and graduall}^
very gradually, ousts the older one. Then the
older god is dead. As the Buddhist poet puts it :
' The flowers of the garlands he wore are
withered, his robes of majesty have waxed old
and faded, he falls from his high estate, and is
reborn into a new life.' He lives again, as we
might say, in the very result of his former life,
in the new god, that is, who under the new name
reigns in men's hearts.

The Gods in the Buddha's Time.—We are able
to estimate how far this was true in the Buddha's
time of the Vedic gods from the statements in
two very interesting poems, included by a for-
tunate chance in the Buddhist canon.^ These
give lists of gods supposed to be friendly to the
new teaching. Remarkable as works of art, these
lists are of great value as evidence of what the
actual deities were whose worshippers the new
teaching desired to conciliate. It is most im-
probable that the unknown poets would have

^ They are in the Digha Nikaya, and have been trans-
lated by Gogerly. A new edition of Gogerly's works is now
being published in Ceylon.

IS

EARLY BUDDHISM

omitted any deity with a large or influential
following. First come the spirits of Mother
Earth and of the Great Mountains. Then the
Four Great Kings, the lords of the spirits sup-
posed to dwell in all the four quarters of the
world, north and south, east and west. These are
in the east the Gandharvas, heavenly musicians,
supposed to preside over child-birth, and to be
helpful in many ways to mortals. In the south
are the hungry ghosts, supposed to be full of dire
influences, but open to be appeased by the proper
means. The west is the special home of the
Nagas, the Siren-serpents, whose worship played
so great a part in the folk-lore of the people, and
who are so often represented on the monuments.
Cobras in the ordinary shape, they were supposed
to live, like mermen and mermaids, beneath the
waters, in great luxury, especially of gems, or to
haunt the giant trees of the forest. They could
at will, and often did, adopt the human form ;
and though terrible if angered, were kindly and
mild by nature. To the north, in the mysterious
heights of the Himalayas, were assigned the
Yakshas, under their king, Kuvera Vessavana,
the god of wealth and prosperity. After these
comes in both lists a miscellaneous company —
the souls or spirits supposed to animate the moon

i6

RELIGION IN INDIA AT ITS RISE

and the sun (the moon is always mentioned
tirst), the winds, the clouds, the summer heat ;
then follows a curious assortment of impersona-
tions of various mental qualities ; and lastly, the
gods who dwell in the highest heavens (that is,
are the outcome of the highest speculation),
like Brahma himself, and Paramatta, and Sanang
Kumara.

Without going into any detailed analysis, it is
sufficient to state that we find ourselves here,
in this description of the religion of the peoples
among whom Buddhism arose, face to face with
a conception quite different from that recorded
in the Vedas, and not even derived from it. Of
the hundred or so deities enumerated, barely half-
a-dozen are Yedic.

Animism. — The above are the higher gods
revered by the people at the time we are con-
sidering. The lower forms of animistic delusion
popular among them are set forth in another very
ancient document entitled 'On Conduct.'^ It
is a list of practices disapproved by the early
Buddhists. In the middle of this tract it states
that some people are tricksters, droners out of
holy words for pay, diviners, exorcists, or earning

^ In Pali, 'The Silas,' a tract translated in my Dialogues oj
the Buddha, vol. i. pp. 3-25.

B 17

/

EARLY BUDDHISM

their living by low arts; and there then follows
a list of such low arts. We are told of palmistry^
divination of various sorts, auguries drawn from
eclipses, prognostications based on dreams, auguries
drawn from marks on cloth gnawed by mice,
sacrifices to the god of fire, oblations of various
kinds to gods, determining lucky sites, laying
ghosts, working charms on snakes or beasts or
birds, astrology, interpreting signs on the bodies
of children, consulting gods by means of a mirror
or through a girl possessed ; and so on. Some of
these undoubtedly refer to practices enjoined in
the priestly books. Others cannot be traced
there. And the whole list is proof, if such were
needed, that then, in the valley of the Ganges,
as elsewhere, all kinds of the animism that had
preceded the book religion had also survived in
sufficient degree to continue to afford, to those
who would condescend to take advantage of it,
opportunity for gain.

The Soul Theory.— Further than that the
evidence does not, I think, take us. It is a
matter of degree. There was, one would be in-
clined to think, an almost universal and un-
questioned belief in the existence, round and
about, of an infinite number of non-human
beings. These the people took as a matter of
i8

RELIGION IN INDIA AT ITS RISE

course, just as they took the existence of souls
inside their own bodies as a matter of course. It
was by these souls, within them and without, that
they explained to themselves the mysteries of
death and trance and dreams, of motion and
of life. Handed down from an immemorial
antiquity, this hypothesis or theory of souls was
current at that time in India, just as it has been
current before and since among civilised and
uncivilised races throughout the world.

Endless were the applications of this theory,
the methods of explanation for which it was
used. To enumerate and explain them all (for
the applications of it often need a good deal of
explanation) would fill volumes. A man falls
in a faint, and then comes to again. It is clear
that it is his soul that has gone away for a time,
and then come back to him. The majestic sun
passing in his daily path across the firmament,
so resplendent a centre of life and heat and
motion, must be alive. It is animated as men
are by a soul, only that its soul is more glorious,
more powerful, than theirs. The giant monarch
of the forest, stretching its weird arms through
the dusk, contains a soul, a Naga, a tree-fairy,
whose thought and action explain all the mysteries
of the tree. And so on, through the long list
19

EARLY BUDDHISM

of those objects that appeared to man's senses
as fearsome, bounteous, mysterious, inspiring awe.
The Forms of Worship. — All these souls were
supposed to have human passions, human nature,
even human form. They were amenable, like
humans, to flattery and presents ; and could be
compelled by charms to do, or to refrain from
doing, what the workers of the charm desired.
The Yedic sacrifices, as performed by brahmins
at this period, were almost exclusively of this
magical character. For these there were no
temples. One of the main sources of emolument
to the priests was the building, accompanied by
the use of many charms, of a new altar for each
sacrifice. The altar was put up on private
ground, and the sacrifice was a private cere-
monial designed to secure personal advantages
to the person at whose cost the sacrifice was
carried out. There were no images of the gods.
These sacrifices being long and very costly were
also therefore rare, and could only be carried out
by the wealthy. That was perhaps an additional
reason why the mass of the people, at the period
and in the districts we are considering, followed
other gods. Of their cults wo unfortunately know
very little, and that only as yet from incidental
references in the Buddhist books. A\'e are told of

20

RELIGION IN INDIA AT ITS RISE

chetiyas or shrines, and their names and approxi-
mate situations are known. Some are supposed
to have been burial mounds, and others sacred
trees. But we know as yet next to nothing as
to what was done there. No pre-Buddhistic shrine
in India has, so far, been excavated; and the
incidental references to them in the books have
not been collected and studied. So also we hear
of Samajjas, clan meetings on sacred heights,
with dances sacred and secular, and other
accompaniments of what in modern times we
might expect to find at a fair. But the references
to these meetings presuppose in their readers
a knowledge of all that went on, and of what
it really meant. And that is precisely what we
should like to knoAv.

Speculation. — On the other hand we have
fairly detailed and intelhgible accounts of what,
as compared with the local cults, may be called
the higher speculation. In records older than
the Buddhist we see the monistic mysticism,
which reached its highest expression in the
theosophic poetry of the Upanishads, gradually
taking shape. And in the earliest Buddhist
books we not only have the names of various
sects or groups, either of Wanderers or Hermits,
but elaborate classifications of a large number

21

EARLY BUDDHISM

of the theories held by them. The names are
suggestive : The Unfettered, the Followers of the
Shaveling, the Men of braided hair (these are
brahmin hermits), the Bearers of the triple staff,
the Friends, the Worshippers of the god (we are
not told which), the Men of pure livelihood, and
so on. The theories are given, in the first of
the Dialogues, in a list that is too long to re-
produce. There are thirty-six different views as
to the state, after the death of the body it in-
habited, of the soul; and one theory that the
soul dies when the body dies. Curiously enough
the theory of the transmigration of souls is not
referred to ; and the theory of the absorption of
the individual soul into the supreme soul is not
mentioned. There are a number of divergent
views as to whether all the gods, or only some,
or only one should be considered eternal; and
as to how far the world and individual souls are
eternal. And there are discussions as to ethics,
and as to the various means of salvation in
this life.

Summary of Beliefs. — We have, then, in India
in the valley of the Ganges at the time when
Buddhism arose, a maze of interacting ideas
which may be divided, for clearness in exposition,
under the followin*^- heads : —

22

RELIGION IN INDIA AT ITS RISE

Firstly, the very wide and varied group of
ideas about souls supposed to dwell within the
bodies of men and animals, and to animate
moving objects in nature (trees and plants, rivers,
planets, and so on). These may be summed
under the convenient modern term of Animism.

Secondly, we have later and more advanced
ideas about the souls supposed to animate the
greater phenomena of nature. These may be
summed up under the convenient modern term
of Polytheism.

Thirdly, we have the still later idea of a unity
lying behind all these phenomena, both of the
first and of the second class, the hypothesis of
a one first cause on which the whole universe
in its varied forms depends, in which it lives
and moves, and which is the only reality. This
may be summed up in the convenient modern
term of Monism.

Fourthly, we have the opposite view. In this
the first cause has either not been reached in
thought, or has been considered and deliberately
rejected : but otherwise the whole soul- theory has
been retained and amplified, and the hypothesis
of the eternity of matter is held at the same
time. This may be summed up under the
convenient modern name of Ducdism.

23

EARLY BUDDHISM

These modern Western terms, though useful
for classification, never exactly fit the ancient
Eastern thought. And we must never forget
that the clear-cut distinctions we now use were
then perceptible to only quite a few of the
clearest thinkers. Most of the people held a
strange jumble of many of the notions current
around them. The enumeration here made is
Qv merely intended to show that, when Buddhism
arose, the country was seething, very much as
the Western world was at the same period, with
a multitude of more or less opposing theories on
all sorts of questions, ethical, philosophical, and
religious. There was much superstition, no
doubt, and no little sophistry. But owing partly
to the easy economic conditions of those times,
partly also to the mutual courtesy and intel-
lectual alertness of the people, there was a very
large proportion of them who were earnestly
occupied in more or less successful attempts to
solve the highest problems of thought and
conduct.

24

CHAPTER III

LIFE OF THE BUDDHA

Edifying Poetry. — If an Eastern scholar desired
to ascertain the facts about the life of Christ
he would not have recourse to such works as
Klopstock's Messiah or Milton's Paradise Re-
gained. They do not even purport to be historical.
Such value as they have is due to the literary
skill with which they recast a story derived from
earlier documents ; and perhaps also to the part
they play as Teiulenzschriften, as supporting a
certain trend of opinion. The historical inquirer
would go to the original documents, he would
ignore the later poetry.

It is unfortunately precisely such later books
of edifying poetry that have been the source of
modern popular notions about the life of the
Buddha. Sir Edwin Arnold's well-known poem,
The Light of Asia, is an eloquent expression in
English verse (based on the Lalita Vistara) of
Buddhist beliefs at the time when, centuries after
25

EARLY BUDDHISM

the time of the Buddha, the Sanskrit poem was
composed. Any one who wishes to know the
truth, so far as it can now be ascertained,
about the actual events of the Buddha's hfe
will obviously ignore these productions, however
edifying, of literary imagination. He will go
to the earliest documents.

No Buddhist Gospel— The first discovery he
would make is that there is no book in the
Buddhist Canon exactly corresponding to a
gospel. The nearest approach to one is the
Mahdparinibhdna-Suttanta, the Book of the Great
Decease, describing the last journey of the
Buddha, and his death.^ Besides this we have
two considerable episodes: one describing the
time before his attainment, under the Wisdom
Tree, of Nirvana, and the other describing the
events that immediately followed.- Apart from
these consecutive narratives there are accounts
more or less circumstantial, in many of the
Dialogues, of various episodes in Gotama's career.
Some of the ancient ballads and poems also
relate to such episodes; and there are other
incidental references elsewhere in the literature.

The Buddha not a King's Son.— From these

^ Translated in my Dialogues of the Buddha, vol. ii.
" Majjhima, i. 163-175, and Vinaya, i. 1-44.

26

LIFE OF THE BUDDHA

notices, scanty as they are, it is quite possible to
piece together a very clear idea as to the main
events in the life of the founder of Buddhism.
His father is, in one passage,^ called a raja. But
raja is a courtesy title used of any member of the
recognised clans ; and the texts, always punctilious
in the use of titles, never use this word of a king,
who is invariably styled mahdrdja. The family
is lauded, in half-a-dozen passages, as well con-
nected, and of high repute ; but not once as royal.
We may be sure, from the context, that had the
future Buddha's father been really a king the
fact would, in this connection, have been clearly
stated. As used of the clansmen generally the
title raja, though really of not much more weight
than our modern ' esquire,' was more polite, as the
word connoted a position of hereditary importance
in the clan, and perhaps even a temporary official
post, of an honorary character, such as consul or
archon. In any case this was the simple basis on
which the latter legends of royalty were built
up.

The Family and Clan. — His father's name, Sudd-
hodana, Pure Rice, is suggestive of the occupation
followed by the clan. It occupied a small territory ,
not exceeding about nine hundred square miles in

^ Digha, ii. 7. Compare Buddhavangsa, xxvi. l.S.
2;

EARLY BUDDHISM

extent, partly on the lower slopes of the Hima-
layas, partly on the plains below. There the
clansmen had their rice-fields watered by the
unfailing streams fed from the heights behind.
All the year round they had in full view the
glorious snow peaks of the great mountains, and
the breezes from the north brought down to them
the breath of the glaciers. When I was in the
lower part of the Sakiya territory, just over the
Nepal frontier, in January 1900, the climate was
cool and pleasant. No doubt in the summer it
would be desirable to escape into the hills. And
we are told ^ that, in his youth, the future Buddha
had three homes, one for the winter, one for the
summer, and one for the rainy season; and that
he was clad, not in coarse cloth, but in fine muslin
of Benares.

The Lumbini Garden. — The boy was named
Siddhattha, that is ' desire accomplished,' and the
meaning of the name may have given rise to the
story, found only in the later legends, that he
was born after the hope of a son had almost
passed aAvay. The family name was Gotama. By
that he was usually addressed in after life by
non-Buddhists, and it is the name we shall use in
this sketch.

^ Auguttara, i. 4.'. Compare Digha, ii. '21
28

LIFE OF THE BUDDHA

His father's home was at Kapilavastu, in the
plains, the capital town of the clan, where their
Mote Hall was situate. But he was born, as a
very ancient ballad tells us, at Lumbini.

This was a pleasaunce half way between Kapi-
lavastu and the chief town of the Koliyans,
neighbours and relatives of the Sakiyas. The
later explanation, that his mother was then on
her way to be confined at her mother's house,
sounds very probable. The exact spot assigned
by tradition to this event has lately been redis-
covered. A pillar, erected on the site by Asoka,
in the middle of the third century B.C., states that
' Here the Exalted One was born.'

The ballad just referred to, ' The Nalaka Sutta,' ^
is most interesting. The poem describes how an
old man of wisdom, Asita by name, seeing the
angels rejoice, asks them why they are glad. They
say:—

' The Wisdom Child, that jewel so precious,
That cannot be matched,

Has been born in Lumbini, in the Sakiya land,
For weal and lor joy in the world of men.'

So the old sage goes there, and sees the babe,
and prophesies : —

^ Translated by Professor Faubb^U in Sacred Books of the.
East, vol. X. p. 124.

29

EARLY BUDDHISM

' The topmost height of insight will he reach,
this child, he will see that which is most pure,
and will set rolling the chariot wheel of righteous-
ness, he who is full of compassion for the multi-
tude. Far will his religion spread.'

The going forth. — Gotama was married: and
had one son whose name was Rahula. When he
(the father, that is) was twenty-nine years of age,
he left his home and became a religieux ' to seek
after what was right.' ^ Thus early in the career
of the future teacher do we find the ethical trend
of his mind and action emphasised. Many writers
in East and West have suggested reasons for this
momentous step ; and some things plausible, some
beautiful, have been said. Our authoritative texts
have but two short utterances on this point, both
put into the mouth of the Buddha himself. The
first is as follows : — ^

' An ordinary unscholared man, though himself
subject to old age, not escaped beyond its power,
when he beholds another man old is hurt, ashamed,
disgusted, overlooking the while his own condition.
Thinking that that would be unsuitable to me
the infatuation of a youth in his youth departed
utterly from me.'

1 Digha, ii. 151. '^ Anguttara, i. 140.

LIFE OF THE BUDDHA

Then identical words are used of health and
life. The other text says : —

' Before the days of my enlightenment, when I
was still only a Bodhisat, though myself subject
to rebirth, old age, disease, and death, to sorrow
and to evil, I sought after things subject also to
them. Then methought : Why should I act thus?
Let me, when subject to these things, seeing the
danger therein, seek rather after that which is not
subject thereto, even the supreme bliss and
security of Nirvana.' ^

The gist of all the later poetry is found in
these simple but pregnant words ; and the oldest
poem we have keeps very closely to the spirit of
these equally ancient texts. It is the following
ballad which, as it is short, can be quoted. Even
in a bald prose version it will give a taste of the
spirit of those far-off days.

THE GOING FOKTH

1. I will praise going forth as the far-seeing One
did, the Wanderer's life, such as when he had thought
the matter out he deliberately chose.

2. 'Full of hindrances is this household life, the
haunt of passion. Free as the air is the homeless state.'
Thus he considered, and went forth.

1 Majjhima, i. 163.

31

EARLY BUDDHISM

3. When he had gone forth he gave up "wrong-doing
in action^ and evil speech he left behind ; pure did he
make his mode of livelihood.

4. To the king's town the Buddha ^ went, to Girib-
baja in Magadha. Full of outward signs of worth, he
was collecting alms for food.

5. Him saw Bimbisara standing on the upper
terrace of his palace. On seeing that he had those
signs, thus did he speak : —

6. 'Hearken to this man, Sirs, handsome is he, great
and pure ; guarded in conduct, he looks not more than
a fathom's length before him.

7. ' With downcast eye and self-possessed is he, surely
of no mean birth. Let the king's messengers hasten
and find out : Where is the mendicant going ? '

8. Thus sent, the messengers hurried after him, and
asked themselves : ' AYhere is the Bhikshu going, where
does he mean to stay ?

9. 'Going on his round for alms regularly from
house to house, guarded as to the door (of his senses),
well restrained, quickly has he filled up his bowl, he
the while calm and self-possessed.

10. ' His round for alms accomplished, the Sage has

^ This expression is suggestive. In our sense of the word,
Gotama -was not yet a Buddha. To the mind of the poet
Buddha meant merely ' awakened' (its literal meaning). The
corresponding word in Christian technical usage would be
' converted.' And the mind of the converted man is awakened,
but to diflferent conceptions. It is very doubtful whether in
old texts the word Buddha ever means anything more than
* awakencil.'

32

LIFE OF THE BUDDHA

gone out from the town. He has gained the mountain
Pandava. There is it that he means to stay.'

11. No sooner had they seen him stop than the
messengers in their turn stopped. One messenger
alone returned, and to the king made speech : —

12. *0u the eastern slope of Mount Pandava, that
Bhikshu, O King, has taken his seat, like a tiger-king,
like a lion in his mountain cave.'

13. When he heard his servant's word the warrior,
in all haste, went forth in his state chariot to the
mountain Pandava.

14. Where the carriage-road ended, there alighting
from his car, on foot the prince went on till he came
near ; and then he took his seat.

15. On sitting down the king, with courteous words,
exchanged with him the greetings of a friend. Then he
spake thus : —

16. 'Young art thou and of tender years, a lad in
his first youth^ fine is thy colour like a high-born
noble's.

17. 'As the glory of the vanguard of the army, at
the head of a band of heroes I would give thee wealth.
Do thou accept this, and tell me thy lineage now that
I ask it.'

18. 'Hard by Himalaya's slopes, 0 King, there is a
land of wealth and power, the dwellers therein are of
the Kosalas ;

19. 'Descendants of the Sun by race, Sakiyas they
are by birth. 'Tis from that clan I have gone forth,
longing no more for sensual delights.

20. 'Seeing the danger in them, looking on going

C 33

EARLY BUDDHISM

forth as bliss, I shall go on in the struggle, for in that
my mind delights.'

His Teachers. — Gotama had now become a
Wanderer. Whether before or after his interview
with the King of Magadha we do not know, he
attached himself as a disciple first to Alara
Kalama, and afterwards to Uddaka son of
Rama. Centuries later certain writers pretend
to know their doctrines. In the old texts we are
only told that each of these teachers held out as
an ideal a particular stage of mystic ecstasy
(whether mental only, or the result of self-induced
hypnotism, or partly one, partly the other, is not
stated).^ And two mystic utterances of Udda-
ka's have also been preserved.^ Beyond this we
know nothing of what, or even where, they
taught. Whatever it was, Gotama so quickly
mastered it that they each asked him to become
co-teacher of their band of disciples. But these
offers he refused, as he had refused Bimbisara's,
and went out into the forest round Gaya to
struggle on by himself to the light.

The Struggle. — We have several accounts of
this struggle given in nearly identical words.^

1 Majjhima, i. 163-166.

' Samyutta, iv. 83, and Pasudika Suttanta in the Digha.

8 Majjhima, i. 17-24; 114-118; 167; 240-250.

34

LIFE OF THE BUDDHA

No attempt is made to give a consecutive or
chronological relation of what happened in the
six years during which it lasted. The various
severe penances that Gotama inflicted on himself
are described at length ; and various thoughts
that occurred to him, subjects that he discussed
with himself, are enumerated. At the end of the
penances, when he was worn to a skeleton, and
indeed at the point of death, he resolves that
this is not the right path to enlightenment, and
begins again to take nourishment. Thereupon,
we are suddenly told : ^ ' Then those five mendi-
cants [of whom no previous mention had been
made] forsook him, and went away, on the ground
that he had given up the struggle, and gone back
to a life of abundance.'

To this time we have probably to refer the
ballad 2 in which Mara, the Evil One, is repre-
sented as tempting him to give up the quest.

The Nirvana. — Then comes the reaction, the
victory. This is uniformly described as a mental
state of exaltation, bliss, insight, altruism. The
different Suttas emphasise different phases, differ-
ent facets as it were, of this condition. But they

1 Majjhima, i. 247.

2 Translated bj^^ FausboU in Sacred Boohs of the East, yoI. x.
pp. 69-71.

35

EARLY BUDDHISM

regard it as one and the same upheaval of the
whole mental and moral nature, — will, emotion,
and intellect being equally concerned. Thus one
Sutta (the Maha-saccaka) lays stress on the four
Raptures, and the three forms of Knowledge;
another (the Dvedha-vitakka) on the certainty,
the absence of doubt; another (the Bhaya-
bherava) on the conquest over fear and agitation ;
another (the Ariya-pariyesana) on the bhss and
security of the Nirvana to which he then
attained.
In the first of these Suttas the recital ends : —
* When this knowledge, this insight, had arisen
within me, my heart was set free from the intoxi-
cation of lusts, set free from the intoxication of
becomings, set free from the intoxication of
ignorance. In me, thus emancipated, there arose
the certainty of that emancipation. And 1 came
to know : " Rebirth is at an end. The higher life
has been fulfilled. What had to be done has been
accomplished. After this present life there will
be no beyond." This last insight did I attain to
in the last watch of the night. Ignorance was
beaten down, insight arose, darkness was de-
stroyed, the light came, inasmuch as I was there
strenuous, aglow, master of myself.'

There is nothing miraculous in it all, nothing

36

LIFE OF THE BUDDHA

supernatural. Supranormal it undoubtedly is.
But recent researches in psychology, such as are
summed up, for instance, in James's Varieties
of Religious Experience, shoAv that phenomena
of a similar kind, though not quite the same,
are well authenticated in the lives of men
of deep religious experience. And no one of all
the experiences described in these accounts is,
in the canonical books, confined to the Buddha.
Each of them is related, in other passages, of one
or other of the men and women who afterwards
adopted the new teaching and fell under its
influence. These conditions are constituent parts
of the state of mind called Arahatship. They all
recur in the standard description, repeated in so
many of the Dialogues, of the manner in which
Arahatship is reached.^ And the sum of them
is, in this connection, called Nirvana,^ one of the
many epithets of Arahatship.^ In the opinion of
the early Buddhists their Buddha was an Arahat;
but in his case there was no limit at all to the
depth and intensity of his insight, or to the grace
and perfection of those powers and characteristics
he shared with other Arahats. The distinction

1 Translated in full in my Dialogues of the Buddha, vol. i.
pp. 79-93.
» Majjhima, i. 167. '^ Ibid. 173.

37

EARLY BUDDHISM

between Arahat and Buddha became the main
factor in the subsequent history of the com-
munity.i In the early passages here referred to
as descriptive of this crisis, there is no mention
either of Buddha or of Buddhahood.

After Gotama had thus attained Nirvana (if we
use the expression of the text), or attained to
Buddhahood (if we use the expression which soon
became of use in the community), he remained
for four times seven days ' enjoying the bUss of
emancipation.' 2 The records give us several
episodes revealing the thoughts that passed
through his mind during that time. He re-
iterates the twelve Nidanas, the links in the
chain of dependent origination, and then gives
utterance to three stanzas, to the effect that when
an Arahat, in moments of intense insight, sees
into the real nature of things, how they all have a
cause and how the causes tend to pass away, then
his doubts fade away, and he remains steadfast, put-
ting to rout the armies of the Evil One, just as the
sun fills the dark spaces of the sky with light.^

^ See Later Buddhism, published in this series of small
manuals, and my note on Sambodhi in the Dialogues of the
Buddha, vol. i. p. 190.

"^ Vinaya, i. 1-4.

^ Vinaya, i. 2, translated by Oldenberg in Vinaya Texts,
i. 78.

38

LIFE OF THE BUDDHA

The phrase in this last verse is probably the
origin of the legend in another authority^ that
the Evil One then came to him and tempted,
him, now that he had won the victory, to pass
away at once. But he refuses to do so ' till the
wonder-working truth shall have been spread
abroad, well proclaimed among men.'

Then a haughty brahmin, who relied for salva-
tion on the utterance of the mystic syllable Om,
comes by and asks Gotama what makes a man a
brahmin. He is answered that it is the putting
away of evil, the living of a life of purity, the
conquest of haughtiness and greed.

The next episode gives us a stanza explaining

the basis of the bliss that he is said to have

felt:—

' Happy the solitude of him who is full of joy,
Who has learnt the Truth, who has seen the Truth.
Happy he who in this world has no ill-will,
— Self-restrained to all beings that have life.

Happy is freedom from lusts, the getting right away from

them,
The highest bliss is freedom from the pride of the thought
"lam."'

The Hesitation. — At the end of this period
of bliss follows a period of hesitation, in which
Gotama doiiMs, whether, after all, it will be of

^ Digha,'ii. 112, translated by the present writer in Dialogues
of the Buddha, vol. ii.

39

EARLY BUDDHISM

any use to proclaim to a world sunk in darkness
a doctrine not only so difficult to grasp, but so
repugnant to tlie ordinary mind. We may
estimate the importance attached by the early
church to this matter by the fact that Brahm^
himself, the highest of the gods, is introduced as
coming on the scene to urge that there will still
be some who will have eyes to see. Then the
Buddha, ' out of compassion for sentient beings,'
K determines to preach the word. A similar ex-
perience is related in identical words ^ of other
early Indian teachers, the previous Buddhas.
And this overpowering sense of utter apartness,
aloofness, is an experience that falls sooner or
later to the lot of all great leaders of thought.

The First Discourse. — When this resolve to
preach the word had become clear in the
Buddha's mind, he is said to have walked to
Benares, about one hundred miles to the north-
west, to tell his former companions, who were
then in a wood near that city, of the discovery he
had made. He did so in a discourse entitled,
the 'Foundation of the Kingdom of Righteous-
ness,' in which his new views of life were sum-
marised in a way they would understand. This
summary has been preserved to us in two places

1 Digha, ii. 37.
40

LIFE OF THE BUDDHA

in the canon, and will be translated and explained
in the next chapter. Buddhist poets have been
moved to descriptions of the scene, descriptions
remarkable for much subtle beauty. Buddhist
sovereigns have lavishly decorated with architec-
ture and sculpture the spot memorable for what
they considered so memorable an event. Had a
Greek been passing at the time he would have
scarcely stooped to notice the few barbarians
seated under the trees, talking quietly in earnest
tones ; and would have scarcely realised that one
of them was giving utterance to ideas that would
move the world.

The Buddha had no easy task in trying to
persuade the five to give up their belief in
penance. Only one of them, a Konclanna by
birth, was at first convinced — to be known for
the rest of his life as ' the Konclanna who
understood.' But in the course of a few days all
of them had given way, and become disciples.
Gotama then advanced a step further, and dis-
coursed to them on the absence of any sign of
soul in the constituent elements of a human
being. An outline of this discourse has also been
preserved in several parts of the scriptures ; ^ and

1 Samyutta, iii. 66, and iv. 34 ; Majjhima, i. 135 and 300 ;
Vinaya, i. 14.

41

EARLY BUDDHISM

when they had been convinced of this the record
states, ' Then there were six Arahats in the
world.' From being merely disciples, followers,
they had become Arahats.

The Sending Forth of the Disciples. — Then
ensued what has many points of analogy with a
modern revival, but it must have been of a
strangely dignified and intellectual sort. Resi-
dents in the neighbouring townships came to
listen to the new teacher. The number of ad-
herents, laymen, and laywomen, Bhikshus and
Arahats, increased until the record states, ' Then
there were sixty-one Arahats in the world.' At
that time Gotama said to them that he and they
' were free from snares, whether human or divine.
Let them, therefore, go forth as wanderers for the
sake of the many, for the welfare of the many,
out of compassion for the world, for the good and
the weal and the gain of gods and men. No
two were to go together. They were to make
known the teaching, lovely in its origin, lovely in
its progress, lovely in its consummation, both in
the spirit and in the letter ; to explain the higher
life in all its fullness and in all its purity.' ^ As
for himself he was going back to Uruvela with
that purpose in view.

^ Saniyutta, i. 105, reproduced in Vinaya, i. 21.
42

LIFE OF THE BUDDHA

According to our authorities, the success of this
first mission was very great. It is but natural to
suppose that it loomed somewhat larger in the
eyes of the early Buddhists than the facts
actually warrant. But it has been shown above
how very favourable were the conditions for a
new movement of this kind ; and, either then or
soon afterwards, we know that the new teaching
did become a power in the land. From this time
forth Gotama, who from being a Wanderer had
become a Hermit, now became a Wanderer again.
Those of his followers who ' went forth ' became
members of the Order he founded, and were also
Wanderers, that is, they abjured all penance and
self-mortification (unless their vow of celibacy be
reckoned as such). Both he and they spent nine
months of each year in wandering from village to
village, and making the new doctrine known, as
they went, to such as cared to hear. They held
no public meetings, gave no set discourses : the
propaganda was by way of conversation only.

Gotama's Daily Life. — The manner in which
Gotama spent each day is somewhat as follows.
He rose quite early, about 5 a.m. If he were to
stay at the place where he had slept he would
remain alone till it was time to go on his round
for alms to the neighbouring village. If he were
43

EARLY BUDDHISM

moving from one place to another, a walk of from
eight or ten miles would occupy the time. He
was often invited for the morning meal, the
principal meal of the day, to some particular
house. If not he took his bowl, and went from
house to house, collecting enough for the meal,
which was always over before sun-turn. When
he was an invited guest he Avould, after the meal,
' give thanks/ as the phrase ran, in the form of a
talk on some one or other of the more elementary
points of religion. When he carried his meal
back to his lodging-place this thanksgiving would
take the form of an exhortation or dialogue with
the disciples on one of the deeper matters of the
faith. The heat of the day was given up to
repose or meditation. As the afternoon drew in,
either the journey to the next stage was resumed,
or if the stay in the same place was to be prolonged,
an informal reception was held under the trees.
The folk from the neighbouring villages would
come in, bringing presents of flowers ; and one of
the visitors, either a layman or a recluse of some
other Order, would ask questions or start a dis-
cussion, the rest listening as they sat round on
the grass under the trees. By sundown the
assembly was dismissed. Then Gotama, should
he feel so inclined, was wont to take his bath ;
44

LIFE OF THE BUDDHA

after which he would talk with the disciples,
perhaps far into the night.

The current Methods of Publishing.— In so
steady and warm a climate such an open-air
life was not only possible but agreeable; and in
the absence of any books, libraries, or news-
papers, such a method of instruction and of
propaganda was probably the best available. Any
one who had anything to say could not sit in
his study, write a book, and publish it to the
world. He had to gather round him a number
of adherents, followers, disciples (call them what
you will), persuade them to understand, and
learn by heart, his doctrines; and then send
them forth into the world. They w^ere his books.
His personal influence over them, their adapta-
bility, earnestness, and intelligence were factors
quite as important for his success as the intrinsic
value and fitness for the times of his teaching
itself. It was a method of publication that had
been used before, and was being used in Gotama's
time by others besides himself. The necessity of
adopting this method was also one of the main
practical reasons for the establishment of an Order.
Without the Order the new teaching could neither
have been propagated among the people then,
nor have been preserved for future generations.
45

EARLY BUDDHISM

For forty-five years after his attainment of
Nirvana, Gotama went up and down through the
plains of Northern India and the neighbouring
highlands of Nepal. During this period he had
ample time both to work out his system very
fully, and to instruct the disciples in its details.
They are really very few and simple. Such
difficulty as European scholars find is concerned
with the translation into Western language of
certain of the technical terms that were used.
There is none of the elaborate minuteness charac-
teristic of the priestly books of ritual exegesis.
Most of the earlier Buddhist technical terms must
have been chosen and defined within the teacher's
life-time; and it is highly probable that the
actual words of the short paragraphs in which
most of the essential points — the Three Signs,
the Four Truths, the Five Hindrances, the
Eightfold Path, the constituents of Arahatship,
and so on — were also settled by him.

Gotama died, full of years and held in high
esteem by the clansmen, when he was eighty
years old, at Kusinara, a site not j^et identified,
but probably in Nepal. After the cremation,
carried out by the clansmen of the M alias, in
whose territory the town lay, the ashes are said
to have been divided into eight portions. Of
46

LIFE OF THE BUDDHA

these six were given to the six clans in the
neighbourhood, one being the Sakiyas, one was
given to the King of Magadha, and one to a
brahmin in Yethadipa near by. Stupas or cairns
are said to have been put up over all eight ; but
only one of these has as yet been rediscovered.
This is the one put up by the Sakiyas in the
new Kapilavastu, built after the destruction of
the older town a few years before the Buddha's
death, by Vidudubha, King of Kosala.

47

CHAPTER IV

THE ARYAN PATH

The summary of the main features of his system
of behefs which Gotama is said, in our earliest
authorities, to have put before his five friends
at Benares, gives us what those authorities held
to be most important in his teaching. We may
possibly go even further. It is not very probable,
after the long and careful course of instruction
they had received from him, that the early
disciples can have misunderstood him on such
a point. There are distinct traces in our earliest
documents of a development of thought in the
views of his followers regarding the personality
of their master, in their Buddhology. No such
traces have yet been found of development in
fundamental doctrine. The balance of proba-
bility is therefore in favour of the tradition
having preserved the actual views of Gotama
himself; and very possibly the expressions he
used. But even if we adopt the more difiicult

48

THE ARYAN PATH

hypothesis, and suppose that the tradition em-
bodies the views of the early disciples, and that
they invented these utterances, put forward by
them as the first discourse of their Master, — even
then we have in these words the oldest and most
authoritative statement of Buddhist doctrine that
we possess.

The Word Aryan. — In the text, preserved in
two separate places in the Canon,^ the Path
pointed out is called the Aryan path, the Truths
enumerated are called the Aryan truths. The
word Aryan is ambiguous. Already in the Vedas
it means both ' of Aryan race ' and ' gentle, noble,
kindly.' Some etymologists give different deriva-
tions for the different meanings. It is more
probable that the second meaning is derived from
the first, just as our word gentle meant originally
of gentle birth. By the time of the rise of
Buddhism, the secondary meaning had become
so fixed in the connotation of the word that it
conveyed all the senses of belonging to the Aryan
race, gentle and noble. In some passages the
stress is laid upon the point of race, in others
on the ethical, in others on the aesthetic side.
But all three were present together to the minds
of speakers and hearers alike. In the text we

^ Samyutta, v. 420, and Vinaya, i. 10.

D 49

EARLY BUDDHISM

are now discussing, all three would be applicable,
and were probably meant to be implied. I have
rendered the word ' noble ' ; and that translation
can easily be defended. But I am inclined to
think that at least one idea hinted at by the
use of this epithet was, that the new system then
promulgated was considered worthy of, suitable
for, the free clansmen, for the men of Aryan race.
The Buddhist commentators, writing long after-
wards, when the word had quite lost its racial
sense, always interpret it as meaning ' worthy of,
suitable for Arahats.' And there are several
passages in the old texts in which Ariya and
Arahat are used as synonymous terms.^ This is
only one of many instances of a new, and as the
speakers thought, a better, deeper meaning being
put into older words, and may, therefore, have
been intended by Gotama in this case also.

One other remark by way of introduction is
necessary. The words we have are a condensed
summary of a talk that lasted over some days.
Whoever chose the words, they are very carefully
chosen. To translate them without using words
with a Christian bias or modern ideas is not
easy, as so many excellent English words are

1 For instance Majjhima, i. 280, and my wife's note at Duka
Patthana, i. 366.

50

THE ARYAN PATH

thus shut out. Every word is iuiportant, and
it is a great pity that, in popular works on
Buddhism, the expressions have been usually
further condensed (which they will not bear),
or so altered as to misrepresent the meaning.
The full text is as follows : —

^ There are two extremes which he ivho has
(joneforth^ ought not to follow — habitual devotion
on the one hand to the passions, to the pleasures
of sensual things^ a low and pagan way {of
seeking satisfaction), ignoble, unprofitable, fit only
for the worldly-minded ; and habitual devotion,
on the other hand, to self -mortification, which is
painful, ignoble, unprofitable. There is a Middle
Path discovered by the Tathdgata ^ — a path ivhich
opens the eyes, and bestows understanding, which
leads to peace, to insight, to the higher wisdoin, to
Nirvana. Verily! it is this Aryan Eightfold
Path; that is to say Right Views, Right Aspira-
tions, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right mode
of livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfidness,
and Right Rapture.

' Novj this is the Noble Truth as to suffering.

^ See above p. 31.

2 That is by the Arahat ; the title the Buddha always uses
of himself. He does not call himself the Buddha; and his
followers never address him as such.

51

EARLY BUDDHISM

Birth is attended with pain, decay is ixLinful,
disease is painful, death is painful. Union with
the unpleasant is p)ainful, 'painful is separation
from the p)leasant ; and any craving unsatisfied,
that, too, is pxiinfid. In brief the Ave aggregates
of clinging {that is, the conditions of individu-
ality) are painful.

' No^y this is the noble Truth as to the
origin of sufferirig. Verily ! it is the craving
thirst that causes the renewal of becomings, that
is accompanied by sensual delights, and seeks,
satisfaction, now here now there — that is to say,
the craving for the gratification of the senses, or
the craving for a future life, or the craving for
prosperity.

' Now this is the Noble Truth as to the passing
away of pain. Verily ! it is the passing aivay
so that no passion ranains, the giving up, the
getting rid of, the emancipation from, the har-
bouring no longer of this craving thirst.

' Now this is the Noble Truth as to the way that
leads to the passing away of pain. Verily ! it is
this Aryan Eightfold Path, that is to secy, Right
Views, Right Aspirations, Right Speech, conduct,
and mode of livelihood, Right Effort, Right
Mindfulness, and Right Rapture/

A few words follow as to the threefold way in
52

THE ARYAN PATH

which the speaker claimed to have grasped each
of these Four Truths. That is all. There is not
a word about God or the soul, not a word about
the Buddha or Buddhism. It seems simple, al-
most jejune ; so thin and weak that one won-
ders how it can have formed the foundation for
a system so mighty in its historical results. But
the simple words are pregnant with meaning.
Their implications were clear enough to the
hearers to whom they were addressed. They were
not intended, however, to answer the questionings
of a twentieth-century European student, and are
liable now to be misunderstood. Fortunately
each word, each clause, each idea in the discourse
is repeated, commented on, enlarged upon, almost
ad nauseam, in the Suttas.^ A short comment
in the light of those explanations, though it can
only be a repetition of what I have often said
before, is necessary to bring out the meaning that
was meant.

The End of Pain. — The passing away of pain
or suffering is said to depend on an emancipation.
And the Buddha is elsewhere (Vinaya i. 239)
made to declare : ' Just as the great ocean has one
taste only, the taste of salt, just so have this

^See, for instance, Diglia, ii. 305 to 307, and 311 to 313 ;
Majjhima, iii. 231 ; Samyutta, v. 8 ; Patisambhida, i. 37-42.

53

EARLY BUDDHISM

doctrine and discipline but one flavour only, the
flavour of emancipation.' And again : ' When a
brother has, by himself, known and realised, and
continues to abide, here in this visible Avorld, in
that emancipation of mind, in that emancipation
of heart which is Arahatship — that is a condition
higher still, and sweeter still, for the sake of which
the brethren lead the religious hfe under me.' ^

The emancipation is found in a habit of mind,
in the being free from a specified sort of craving
that is said to be the origin of certain specified
sorts of pain. In some European books this is
completely spoiled by being represented as the
doctrine that existence is misery, and that desire
is to be suppressed. Nothing of the kind is said
in the text. The description of suffering or
pain is, in fact, a string of truisms quite plain and
undisputable until the last clause. That clause
declares that the five Updddna Skandhas, the
five groups of bodily and mental qualities that
make up an individual, involve pain.

Pain and Individuality. — One can express that
in more modern language by saying that the con-
ditions that make an individual are precisely the
conditions that also give rise to pain. No sooner

^ Mahali Suttanta ; translated in Rhys Davids, Dialogues
of the Buddha^ vol. i. p. 201. Compare p. 204.

54

THE ARYAN PATH

has an individual arisen, become separate, than
disease and decay begin to act upon it. Indi-
viduaHty involves limitation, limitation involves
ignorance, ignorance ends in sorrow. All the
sorts and sources of pain here specified —
birth, decay, death, union with the pleasant,
separation from the pleasant, unsatisfied long-
ings— are each simply a result of individuality.
This is a deeper generalisation than that which
said : ' A man is born to trouble as the sparks fly
upward.' But it is put forward as a mere state-
ment of fact. And the previous history of reli-
gious belief in India would tend to show that
emphasis was laid on the fact, not as an explana-
tion of the origin of evil, but rather as a protest
against the then current pessimistic idea that
salvation could not be reached on earth, and must
therefore be sought for in rebirth in heaven. For
if the argument were admitted, it would follow
that even in heaven the individual would still be
subject to sorrow ; and by admitting this the five
ascetics, to whom the words were addressed, would
have to admit also all that followed.

Craving. — The threefold division of craving at
the end of the second truth might be rendered :
* The lust of the flesh, the lust of life, and the love
of this present world.' The two last are said else-

55

EARLY BUDDHISM

where to be directed against two sets of thinkers,
called the Eternalists and the Annihilationists,
who held respectively the everlasting-life heresy,
and the let-us-eat-and-drink-for-to-morrow-we-die
heresy.^ This may be so. But in any case the
division of craving would have appealed to the
five hearers as correct.

Impermanence. — The details of the Path in-
clude several terms whose meaning and implica-
tion arc by no means apparent at first sight.
Right views, for instance, mean mainly right
views as to the Four Truths and the Three
Signs. Of the latter, one is identical, or nearly so,
with the First Truth. The others are Imperma-
nence, and non-soul (the absence of a soul) —
both declared to be ' signs ' of every individual,
whether god, animal, or man. Of these two,
again, the Impermanence has become an Indian
rather than a Buddhist idea ; and we are familiar
enough with it also in the West. There is no
Being, there is only a Becoming. The state of
every individual is unstable, temporary, sure to
pass away. Even in things we find, in each
individual. Form and other Material qualities. In
living organisms there is a continually ascend-
ing series of Mental qualities also. It is the

^ See Iti-vuttaka, p. 44 ; Samyutta, iii, 57.

56

THE ARYAN PATH

union of these that makes the individual. Every
person, or thing, or god is therefore a putting
together, a compound. And in each individual,
without any exception, the relation of its com-
ponent parts is ever changing, is never the
same for two consecutive moments. It follows
that no sooner has separateness, individuality,
begun, than dissolution, disintegration, also
begins. There can be no individuality without
a putting together: there can be no putting
together without a becoming: there can be no
becoming without a becoming different: and
there can be no becoming different without a
dissolution, a passing away, which sooner or later
will inevitably be complete.

Herakleitos, who w^as a generation or two
later than the Buddha, had very similar ideas ; ^
and similar ideas are found in post-Buddhistic
Indian works.^ But in neither case are they
worked out in the same uncompromising way.
Both in Europe, and in all Indian thought
except the Buddhist, souls, and the gods who
are made in imitation of souls, are considered as
exceptions. To these spirits is attributed a Being
without Becoming, an individuality without

^ Burnet, Early Greek PMlosopliy^ p. 149.
2 Katha Up., 2.10; Bhag. Gita2.14; 9.33.

57

EARLY BUDDHISM

change, a beginning without an end. To hold
any such view would, according to the doctrine
of the Noble (or Aryan) Path, be erroneous, and
the error would block the way against the very
entrance on the Path.

So important is this position in Buddhism that
it is put in the forefront of Buddhist expositions of
Buddhism. The Buddha himself is stated in
the books to have devoted to it the very first
discourse he addressed to the first converts.^
The first in the collection of the Dialogues of
Gotama discusses and completely, categorically,
and systematically rejects all the current theories
about 'souls.' Later books follow these pre-
cedents. Thus the Katha Vatthu, the latest book
included in the canon, discusses points of dis-
agreement that had arisen in the community. It
places this question of ' soul ' at the head of all
the points it deals with, and devotes to it an
amount of space quite overshadowing all the
rest.2 So also in the earliest Buddhist book later
than the canon — the very interesting and sugges-
tive series of conversations between the Greek
King Menander and the Buddhist teacher

^ The Anatta-lakkhana Sutta (Vinaya, i. 13 = Samyutta, iii.
66 and iv. 34), translated in Vinaya Texts, vol. i. pp. 100-102.

^ See my article on Buddhist Schools of Thought in the
J.R.A.S. for 1892.

58

THE ARYAN PATH

Nagasena. It is precisely this question of the
'soul' that the unknown author takes up first,
describing how Nagasena convinces the king
that there is no such thing as the ' soul ' in the
ordinary sense. And he returns to the subject
again and again. ^

Right Desires. — After Right Views come Right
Aspirations. It is evil desires, low ideals, useless
cravings, idle excitements that are to be sup-
pressed by the cultivation of the opposite — of
right desires, lofty aspirations. In one of the
Dialogues 2 instances are given — the desire for
emancipation from sensuality, aspirations towards
the attainment of love to others, the wish
not to injure any living thing, the desire for the
eradication of wrong, and for the promotion of
right, dispositions in one's own heart ; and so on.
This portion of the Path is indeed quite simple ;
and would require no commentary were it not
for the still constantly repeated blunder that
Buddhism teaches the suppression of all desire.

Right Effort. — Of the remaining stages of the
Path it is only necessary to mention two. The

^ Questions of King Milinda, translated b}' Rhys Davids
(Oxford, 1890-1894), vol. i. pp. 40, 41, 85-87 ; vol. ii. pp. 21-
25, 86-89.

2 Majjhima, iii. 251. Compare Samyutta, v. 8.

59

EARLY BUDDHISM

one is Right Effort, a constant intellectual alert-
ness is required. This is not only insisted upon
elsewhere in countless passages, but of the three
cardinal sins in Buddhism (rdga, dosa, moha) the
last and worst is stupidity or dullness, the others
being sensuality and ill-will. Right Effort is closely
connected with the seventh stage, Right Mindful-
ness. Two of the Dialogues are devoted to this
subject, and it is constantly referred to elsewhere.^
The disciple, whatsoever he does — whether going
forth or coming back, standing or walking,
speaking or silent, eating or drinking, — is to
keep clearly in mind all that it means, the
temporary character of the act, its ethical
significance, and, above all, that behind the act
there is no actor (goer, seer, eater, speaker) that
is an eternally persistent unity. It is the
Buddhist analogue to the Christian precept:
' Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever
ye do, do all to the glory of God.'

Love. — Under the head of Right Conduct the
two most important points are Love and Joy.
Love is in Pali Mctfd, and the Metta Sutta- (no

1 Digha, ii. 290-315 ; Majjhima, i. 55 fol. Compare Rhys
Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, p. 81.

2 No. 8 in tiie Sutta Niputa (p. 26 of Fausbiill's edition). It
ifl translated by FausbiJll in vol. x. of the S.B.E. and by
Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 109.

Go

THE ARYAN PATH

doubt with reference to the Right Mindfulness
just described) says : —

' As a mother, even at the risk of her own life,
protects her son, her only son, so let him cultivate
love vjithoiit measure towards all beings. Let
him cultivate towards the whole world — above,
below, around — a heart of love unstinted, un-
mixed with the sense of differing or opposing
interests. Let a man maintain this mindfulness
all the while he is awake, whether he be standing,
walking, sitting, or lying down. This state of
heart is the best in the world.'

Often elsewhere four such states are described,
the Brahma Vihdra or Sublime Conditions.
They are Love, Sorrow at the sorrows of others,
Joy in the joys of others, and Equanimity as
regards one's own joys and sorrows.^ Each of
these feelings was to be deliberately practised,
beginning with a single object and gradually
increasing till the whole world was suffused with
the feeling.

' Our mind shall not waver. No evil speech
will we utter. Tender and comjjassionate will
we abide, loving in heart, void of malice within.
And we will be ever suffusing such an one with
the rays of our loving thought. And with that
1 Digha, ii. 186, 187.
6l

EARLY BUDDHISM

feeling as a basis we will ever he suffusing the
ivhole world with thought of love, far-reaching ^
grown great, beyond measure, void of anger or
ill-will}

The relative importance of Love, as compared
with other habits, is thus described : —

'All the means that can he used as bases for
doing right are not worth the sixteenth part of the
emancijoation of heart through Love. That takes
all those up into itself outshining them in
radiance and glory. Just as whatsoever stars
there be, their radiance avails not the sixteenth
part of the radiance of the moon. That takes
all those up into itself, outshining them in
radiance and glory— just as in the last month of
the rains, at harvest time, the sun, mounting up
on high into the clear and cloudless sky, over-
whelms cdl darkness in the realms of space, and
shines forth in radiance and glory — just as in
the night, when the daivn is breaking, the
Morning Star shines out in radiance and glory
— just so all the means that can be used as helps
towards doing right avail not the sixteenth part
of the emancipation of heart through Love."^

Joy. — The intense bhss, pervading the whole
being, which follows on the assurance of salvation

^ Majjhima, i. 129. - Itivuttaka, pp. 19-21.

62

THE ARYAN PATH

won, is independent of the dogmas or beliefs of
those who have felt the disenchantment, passed
through the struggle, and won the victory. We
have undoubted and most interesting examples
among the adherents of the most antagonistic
forms of Christian belief. And Moslem Sufis and
Buddhist Arahats have had the same experience.
There are preserved in the canon t^vo collections
of the Songs of the Elders, ascribed respectively
to one hundred and seven men and seventy-three
women who became Arahats in the life- time of
the Buddha. They are, with a very few excep-
tions, pseans of joy and victory. They have,
unfortunately, not been translated as yet into
English; but the spirit they breathe is shown
in the following prose passage.^ After pointing
out that the Hindrances (Mvarana) — sensuality,
ill-will, torpor of mind or body, worry, and waver-
ing— affect a man like debt, disease, imprisonment,
slavery, and anxiety — it goes on : —

' When these five Hindrances have been put
o.way within him, he looks upon himself as freed
from debt, rid of disease, out of jail, a free man,
and secure. And gladness springs up within
him on his realising that, and joy arises to him
thus gladdened, and so rejoicing all his frame

^ Taken from my Dialogues of the Buddha, vol. i. p. 84.

63

EARLY BUDDHISM

becomes at ease, and being thus at ease he is per-
vaded with a sense of peace, and in that peace his
heart is stayed'

There is a string of verses in the Dhammapada
on this state of bliss, the Right Rapture, the last
stage of the Path. The following is one of
them : —

'It is in very bliss lue dwell, we who hate not those

who hate us ;
Among men full of hate, we continue void of

hate.
It is in very bliss we dwell, we in health among

the ailing ;
Among men weary and sick, we continue well.
It is in very bliss we dwell, free from care

among the careworn ;
Among men fidl of worries, we continue calm.
It is in very bliss we dwell, we who have no

hindrances ;
We will become feeders on joy, like the gods in

their shining splendour ! ' ^

Another verse from the same anthology
says : —

' When the wise man by earnestness hath driven
Vanity far away, the terraced heights

^ Dhammapada, verses 197-200.

64

THE ARYAN PATH

Of wisdom doth he climb, and, free from care,
Looks down on the vain world, the careworn

crowd —
As he who stands wpon cc mountain top
Can watch, serene himself, the toilers in the

plains.' ^

^ Dhammapada, verse 28.

65

CHAPTER V

THE LIONS IN THE PATH

Though the texts are full of assurance of the
possibility of happiness here, in this world, with-
out waiting for a better, they are not blind to
the opposite side of the question, and recognise,
frankly and fully, the obstacles and dangers. As
usual, in the absence of books, these were arranged,
for the convenience of memory, into classes. The
most dangerous are the five Hindrances (see above
p. 63), the ten Bonds, and the four Intoxications.
The Bonds are : —

1. Delusions about the soul (Sakkaya-ditthi).

2. Doubt (Vicikiccha).

3. Dependence on works (Silabbata-paramasa).

4. Sensuality (Kama).

5. Ill-will (Patigha).

6. Desire for rebirth on earth (Rupa-raga).

7. Desire for rebirth in heaven (Arupa-raga).

8. Pride (Muno).

66

THE LIONS IN THE PATH

9. Self-righteousness (Uddhacca).
10. Ignorance (Avijja).

These words are all perfectly simple, except six
and seven, which are explained below. The
curious thing is that these evil dispositions are
supposed to be conquered in order — so that, for
instance, to conquer delusions about the soul is
the very entrance on the Path, and to conquer
Ignorance (the direst foe, the worst enemy of the
human race) is only possible at the end of it. I
am not prepared to say there is not some reason
in this, especially when we consider the frequent
instances, in the texts, of individuals, in moments
of spiritual exaltation or insight, breaking three,
or four, or five of the Bonds at a bound. To have
broken the first three Bonds is what we should
call conversion, what they call 'the entrance
into the stream/ And as the doctrine of Final
Assurance is part of early Buddhism, there can
then be no permanent relapse. Sooner or later,
in this or another birth, final salvation is assured.

The Intoxications. — The intoxications were
originally three — the mental infatuation arising
from sensual pleasures, from the pride of life, and
from ignorance respectively. Then there was
added a fourth. This addition must have been
made very early in the progress of the new move-
67

EARLY BUDDHISM

ment ; and it is of remarkable interest from the
point of view of the history of human thought.
It was the infatuation arising from speculation —
speculation as to uncertainties, ultimate causes,
questions of no moment for the practical conduct
of life. The stigma thus attached to this sort of
speculation was the most formidable attack that
had been made so far, in the history of the world,
on theology and metaphysics. The rival theories
purported to explain the origin and end of all
things, to be able to give a clear and absolute
decision as to the finiteness or infinity of the
world, as to the eternity of the soul, and of those
bigger souls, the gods. Buddhism declares that
/" everything has a cause, the cause (or causes)
included ; that there is nothing permanent ; and
that it is not only a sufiStcient, it is the only true,
method to argue from one cause back to the next,
and so on, without any hope, or even desire, to
explain the ultiuiate cause of all things. The
most famous of all Buddhist stanzas, found
engraved on ten thousand votive gifts to Buddhist
shrines in India, put, in the Canon, into the mouth
of the fifth of the Arahats, and quoted as authori-
tative in the works of all but the very latest of
the various schools of Buddhist thought, tells
us: —

68

THE LIONS IN THE PATH

' Of all the phenomena sprung from a cause
The Buddha the cause Jtath told,
And he tells too how each shcdl come to its end,
Such alone is the ivord of the Sage.' ^

The Indeterminates. — This position seemed to
many of Gotama's contemporaries to be a con-
fession of failure. And it was a failure from the
point of view of those to whom precisely such
questions seemed of the utmost importance. But
Gotama was perfectly firm. He refused not only
to answer, but even to discuss such points. They
were of course being constantly raised. His
answer was a list of Indeterminates, questions
barred.

1, 2. Whether the world is eternal or not.

3, 4. Whether the world is infinite or not.

5, 6. Whether the soul is the same as the body,
or different from it.

7-10. Whether a man exists in any way, or not,
after death.-

There were others ; but these are the ones most
frequently mentioned.

^ Vinaya, i. 40. Compare laii Upanishad, 14. E. Hardy in
the Netti, p. xxiii.

- For references, see my discussion of the Indeterminates in
Dialogues of the Buddha, vol. i. p. 186 fol.

69

EARLY BUDDHISM

' On 8uch points brahmins and recluses sticky
Wrangling on them they violently discuss ;
Poor folk ! they see hut one side of the shield!

Such expressions as the following are several
times found in the Dialogues : —

The jungle, the desert, the inippet-show, the
writhing, the entanglement of such speculations is
accompanied by sorrow, wrangling, resentment,
the fever of excitement It conduces neither
to detachment of heart, nor to freedom from lusts,
nor to tranquillity, nor to peace, nor to wisdom,
nor to the insight of the higher stages of the path,
nor to Nirvana.' ^

We find here two propositions : Do not let us
discuss things on which we have not good evi-
dence. Do not let us discuss things which are no
use, no good, but the contrary, for us. Whether
right or wrong, both propositions seem to me
quite intelligible. Subtle arguments have, how-
ever, been brought forward to show that, behind
this deliberate silence of Gotama, there lay, after
all, a covert and esoteric belief, not communicated
to his disciples, in a future life and other points
of his opponents' creed. That, to me, is not in-
telligible.

How possible Gotama's position is can be seen

^ Majjhima, i. 431, 485.
70

THE LIONS IN THE PATH

from Frederic Harrison's description of a similar
view held now in Europe : —

'When men of high moral and intellectual
power assure us that they find rest, unity, and
fruit in . . . conceptions about themselves, their
own natures, the external world, its origin, con-
struction, and maintenance, the future state of
what they conceive to be some part of, or the
essence of, themselves, ... far be it from us to
dispute the value and reality of this knowledge.
... If we do not adopt them, it is not because
we believe them to be false, but because they fail
to interest us. We can get no practical good out
of them.' 1

Or compare this, from a very different school.
Professor James says : —

' Is the world one or many ? fated or free ?
material or spiritual ? — here are notions either of
which may or may not hold good of the world ;
and disputes over such notions are unending.
The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to
interpret each notion by tracing its respective
practical consequences.' ^

The Buddha was neither Comtist nor Prag-
matist. But these extracts may show how un-

1 Philosophy of Common Sense (London, 1907), p. 40.

2 Pragmatism (London, 1907), p. 45.

71

EARLY BUDDHISM

necessary it is to try to read between the lines of
very distinct passages to the contrary in order to
find in them the metaphysical sweetmeats dear to
so many hearts. In any case, it is clear that to
the early Buddhists the habit of theosophic
speculation was by no means the least dangerous
of the Lions in the Path.

To have realised the Truths, and traversed the
Path; to have broken the Bonds, put an end to
the Intoxications, got rid of the Hindrances, mas-
tered the craving for metaphysical speculation
was to have attained the ideal, the Fruit, as it is
called, of Arahatship. One might fill columns
with the praises, many of them among the most
beautiful passages in Pali poetry and prose,
lavished on this condition of mind, the state of
the man made perfect according to the Buddhist
faith. Many are the pet names, the poetic
epithets, bestowed upon it, each of them — for
they arc not synonyms — emphasising one or
other phase of this many-sided conception — the
harbour of refuge, the cool cave, the island amidst
the floods, the place of bliss, emancipation, libera-
tion, safety, the supreme, the transcendental, the
uncreated, the tranquil, the home of ease, the
calm, the end of suffering, the medicine for all
evil, the unshaken, the ambrosia, the immaterial,
;2

THE LIONS IN THE PATH

the imperishable, the abiding, the further shore,
the unending, the bhss of effort, the supreme joy,
the ineffable, the detachment, the holy city, and
many others. Perhaps the most frequent in the
Buddhist texts is Arahatship, ' the state of him
who is worthy ' ; and the one exclusively used in
Europe is Nirvana, the ' dying out,' that is, the
dying out in the heart of the fell fire of the three
cardinal sins — sensuality, ill-will, and stupidity.^

The choice of this term by European writers, a
choice made long before any of the Buddhist
canonical texts had been published or translated,
has had a most unfortunate result. Those writers
did not share, could not be expected to share, the
exuberant optimism of the early Buddhists.
Themselves giving up this world as hopeless, and
looking for salvation in the next, they naturally
thought the Buddhists must do the same ; and in
the absence of any authentic scriptures to correct
the mistake, they interpreted Nirvana, in terms of
their own belief, as a state to be reached after
death. As such they supposed the ' dying out '
must mean the dying out of a ' soul ' ; and endless
were the discussions as to whether this meant
eternal trance, or absolute annihilation, of the
soul. It is now thirty years since I first put

1 Samyutta, iv. 251, 261.

73

EARLY BUDDHISM

forward the right interpretation.^ But outside
the ranks of Pali scholars the old blunder is still
often repeated. It should be added that the
belief in salvation in this world, in this life, was
really implicit, though never clearly or openly
expressed, in pre-Buddhistic thought. And it
appealed so strongly to Indian sympathies that
from the time of the rise of Buddhism down to
the present day it has been adopted as a part of
general Indian belief, and Jivaninuldi, salvation
during this life, has become a commonplace in
the religious language of India.

^ In the first edition of my manual Buddhhm, published by
the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge in 1877.

74

CHAPTER VI

ADOPTED DOCTRINES — KARMA

Transmigration. — The above are the essential
doctrines of the original Buddhism. They are
at the same time the distinctive doctrines : that
is to say, the doctrines that distinguish it from
all previous teaching in India. But the Buddha,
while rejecting the sacrifices and the ritualistic
magic of the brahmin schools, the animistic
superstitions of the people, and the pantheistic
speculations of the poets of the pre-Buddhistic
Upanishads, still retained the belief in trans-
migration. This belief — the transmigration of
the soul, after the death of the body, into other
bodies, either of men, beasts or gods — is part of
the animistic creed, and is so widely found
throughout the world that it was probably
universal. In India it had already, before the
rise of Buddhism, been raised into an ethical
conception by the associated doctrine of Karma,
7S

EARLY BUDDHISM

according to which a man's social position in life
and his physical advantages, or the reverse, were
the result of his actions in a previous birth.^
The doctrine thus afforded an explanation, quite
complete to those who could believe it, of the
apparent anomalies and wrongs in the dis-
tribution here of happinesK or woe. A man,
for instance, is bhnd. This is owinq- to his lust
of the eye in a previous birth. But he has also
unusual powers of hearing. This is because he
loved, in a previous birth, to listen to the preach-
ing of the law. The explanation could always
be exact, for it was scarcely more than a repetition
of the point to be explained. It fits the facts
because it is derived from them. And it cannot
be disproved, for it lies in a sphere beyond the
reach of human inquiry.

The Bridge. — It was because it thus provided a
moral cause that it was retained in Buddhism. But
as the Buddha did not acknowledge a soul, the link
of connection between one life and the next had
to be found somewhere else. The Buddha found
it (as Plato also found it^) in the influence

^ Compare *S"rt^. i>r., translated by'Eggeling, i. 267, with
Ghdndogi/a Up., 5-10, Brihad Ar. Up., vi. 2-15, and Kaushitaki
Up., J). 116 (ed. Cowcll).

^ Phccdo, 69 fol. The idea is there also put forward in
connection with a belief in transmigration.

76

ADOPTED DOCTRINES — KARMA

exercised upon one life by a desire felt in the
previous life. When two thinkers of such
eminence (probably the two greatest ethical
thinkers of antiquity) have arrived independently
at this strange conclusion, have agreed in ascrib-
ing to cravings felt in this life so great, and to
us so inconceivable, a power over the future life,
we may well hesitate before we condemn the
idea as intrinsically absurd. And we may take
note of the important fact that, given similar
conditions, similar stages in the development of
religious belief, men's thoughts, even in spite of
the'most unquestioned individual originality, tend,
though they may never produce exactly the same
results, to work in similar ways, however strange.
Modes of Karma. — In India, before Buddhism,
conflicting and contradictory views prevailed as to
the precise mode of action of Karma, and we find
this confusion reflected in Buddhist theory. The
prevailing views are tacked on, as it were, to the
essential doctrines of Buddhism, without being
thoroughly assimilated to them, or logically
incorporated with them. Thus in the story of
the good layman Citta, it is an aspiration ex-
pressed on the death-bed,^ in a dialogue on the
subject it is a thought dwelt on during life,^ in

1 Samyutta, iv. 302. 2 Majjhima, iii. 99 fol.

77

EARLY BUDDHISM

the numerous stones in the Peta and Yimana
Yatthus it is usually some isolated act; in the
discussions in the Dhamma Sangani it is some
mental disposition, which is the Karma (Doing
or Action) in the one life determining the position
of the individual in the next. These are really
conflicting propositions. They are only alike in
the fact that in each case a moral cause is given
for the position in which the individual finds
himself now, and the moral cause is his own
act.

The New Body. — In the popular belief, followed
also in the brahmin theology, the bridge between
the two lives was a minute and subtle entity,
called the soul, which left the one body at death,
(usually through a hole at the top of the head),
and entered into the new body. The new body
happened to be there, ready, with no soul in it.
The soul did not make the body. In the Buddhist
adaptation of this theory, no soul, no conscious-
ness, no memory, goes over from one body to the
other. It is the grasping, the craving, still exist-
ing at the death of the one body that causes the
new set of skandhas, that is, the new body with
its mental tendencies and capacities, to arise. How
this takes place is nowhere explained.

East and West.— The Indian theory of Karma
78

ADOPTED DOCTRINES — KARMA

has been worked out with many points of great
beauty and ethical vahie. And the Buddhist
adaptation of it, avoiding some of the difficulties
common to it and to the allied European theories
of fate, providence, and predestination, tries to
explain the weight of the universe in its action
on the individual; the heavy hand of the im-
measurable past we cannot escape, the close
connection between all forms of life, and the
mysteries of inherited character. The European
theories lay the stress upon the future, the
Indian on the past. A sufferer believing in the
soul, and in fate, or providence, can say : ' This
was pre-ordained, I must submit,' and he can try
to rectify the balance of justice by assuming a
remedy, for which he has no evidence, in a more
satisfactory world beyond the grave. If he
believes in Karma he will think : ' This is my
OAvn fault.' And he can try to rectify the balance
of justice by assuming an identity, for which he
has no evidence, between himself and some one
else in the past.

The Indian theories lay stress upon a law, the
European theories upon the action of a sovereign
will. And it is very suggestive that the mistake
in the Platonic and Buddhist view is precisely the
very same mistake against which Buddhism, in
79

EARLY BUDDHISM

the case of the soul-theory, entered so strong a
protest. Early Buddhism recognised all the
qualities, feelings, etc., included under the term
' soul ' ; but it said that the mistake lay in postu-
lating an eternal unity instead of a changing
plurality. In the case of Karma, it was Buddhism
itself that put a unity where a plurality should be;
it represented the action of past lives on present
ones — which is a profound truth — as the action of
a past life on a present one, in a manner not
supported by the facts of experience.

How can we explain this difference of method ?
Is it not because in Karma the Buddhists found,
at one and the same time, a moral cause, a reign
of law, and an escape from the endless waves of
the dark ocean of transmigration ? And the fact
underlying the Indian theory of Karma is ac-
knowledged to be very real. The history of an
individual does not begin with his birth. He has
been countless a3ons in the making. And he
cannot sever himself from the past; no, not for
a moment. The tiny snowdrop droops its fairy
head just so much, and no more, because it is
balanced by the universe. It is a snowdrop, not
an oak, because it is the outcome of the Karma of
an endless series of past existences ; and because
it did not begin to be when the flower opened, or
80

ADOPTED DOCTRINES — KARMA

when the mother-plant first peeped above the
ground, or first met the embraces of the sun, or
at any point m time which you or I can fix. A
great American writer says : —

' It was a poetic attempt to lift this mountain
of Fate, to reconcile with liberty this despotism
of Race, which led the Hindoos to say " Fate is
nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state
of existence." I find a coincidence in the ex-
tremes of Eastern and Western speculation in
the daring statement of the German philosopher
Schelling: "There is in every man a certain
feeling that he has been what he is from all
eternity.'"

We may put a new and a deeper meaning into
the words of the poet : —

' . . . Our deeds follow us from afar,

And what we have been makes us what we are.' ^

1 No one has yet attempted to write a history of the growth
in India of the various forms of the Karma theory. Professor
Hopkins has a suggestive paper on it in the Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society for 1906. On the Buddhist side the reader may
consult Rhys Davids's ^iffZcZAzsm (S.P.C.K.), 21st ed., pp. 93-
106, and Dahlke's Aufsdtze zum Vei^stdndnis des Buddhisjma
(Berlin, 1903), i. 92-106, and ii. Ml.

8i

CHAPTER VII

ADOPTED DOCTRINES (continued) : COSMOGONY.
WHEEL OF LIFE

The Kalpas and World - Systems. — Another
Indian idea had a great influence on the Buddha's
view of life. Just as the doctrine of Karma
brought every Indian thinker face to face with
immeasurable periods of time, in the past more
especially, but also in the future ; so the views as
to the world brought him face to face with
immeasurable realms in space. In the oldest
Buddhist texts it is taken for granted that there
are ten thousand world-systems, in which expres-
sion ten thousand merely means an incalculably
large number. They are arranged throughout
space in groups of three; and are subject to a
continual process of disintegration and evolution.
The time occupied by one such process, that is
from the commencement of the dissolution to the
completion of the restoration, was called a Great
82

ADOPTED DOCTRINES— SPACE

iEon, or Mahd Kalpa. And each Great ^Eon was
divided into four Incalculables, AsanJcheyyas.
In later books the details are worked out with a
wealth of numbers running into millions. In the
older texts we find only the general scheme still
quite vague in its immensity. The scheme has
not been traced in pre-Buddhistic writings ; but,
for reasons too long to specify here, I have no
doubt it was, in its essential points, older than the
rise of Buddhism.

I venture to think that these ideas of the im-
mensity of time and space, of the insignificance,
compared with the universe, of our own world-
system ; of the essential unity between man and
all animals (and even plants) ; of the immense
periods of the disintegration and reconstruction
of each world-system ; of the fact that all things,
the whole universe, is in a process of becoming,
must have contributed very largely to the con-
clusions reached as to the immense peril and
evil of transmigration, as to the complete hope-
lessness of looking for any salvation in any other
world, as to the essential necessity of a system of
mental and moral training, self-mastery, becom-
ing, that would ensure security and happiness
here and now. This conclusion will probably be
considered inevitable by those who recollect how

83

EARLY BUDDHISM

large a part the then current ideas of cosmogony
played in the scholastic theology of Europe ; and
how great was the change brought about gener-
ally in European thought by the new ideas as to
the position of our world, and as to the evolution
of man. The details of the Buddhist scheme, as
worked out in later times by the commentators,
are all quite wrong. The general scheme itself,
as held in the Buddha's time, is not accurate.
But it was so very much nearer to the actual facts
than the theory held, in the sixth century B.C.,
anywhere else in the world, that it would certainly
lead to historical error were we to omit to attach
to it a very great importance in our estimate of
the probable reasons for the growth of early
Buddhism.

The Wheel of Life, — There is found in several
places in the Canon the following formula : —

1. On account of Ignorance, the Sankharas.

2. On account of the Sankharas, Consciousness.

3. On account of Consciousness, Name and
Form.

4. On account of Name and Form, the six
Provinces (of the six senses).

5. On account of the six Provinces, Contact.
G. On account of Contact, Sensation.

7. On account of Sensation, Craving.
84

ADOPTED DOCTRINES— CAUSE

8. On account of Craving, Attachment.

9. On account of Attachment, Becoming.

10. On account of Becoming, Birth.

11, 12. On account of Birth, old age, and
death, grief, lamentation, suffering, dejection, and
despair.

This formula, called the Paticca-Samuppada
(origination through dependence), is repeated, and
certain explanations of the terms used are given.
But there is nowhere any explanation, intelligible
to modern ideas, as to why each link in the
chain causes the next, or even as to the exact
meaning of the words. The consequence is that
no two scholars agree as to its interpretation. I
have discussed it in my American Lectures, but
am not particularly enamoured of my explana-
tion. It seems to me to be an attempt (and, of
course, an unsuccessful one, for the notion is
wrong) to describe the way in which the Karma
in one life makes an individual in the next. If
that be so, clauses 1 and 2 refer to the previous,
clauses 3-9 to the present, and clauses 10 to
12 to the future birth.

Now Professor Jacobi has shown that in Yoga
and Sankhya writings some centuries later than
the Buddha there are found expressions some-
what similar to these, though not arranged in a
85

EARLY BUDDHISM

chain, and referring to successions of psycho-
logical experience in a single birth. The technical
terms used are indeed not the same, and it
sometimes requires no little subtlety to harmonise
them. But there is enough similarity to show
that similar ideas as to the succession of psycho-
logical states were current in non-Buddhist
schools of thought at the time when those writ-
ings were composed. The Buddhist formula
stands outside the main tenets of the system,
like mistletoe on an oak, and could be cut out
without modifying the system in any appreciable
degree. The theory of the action of Karma
in producing a new individual was certainly
borrowed. It would seem very likely that this
chain, designed to explain the process, was also
either borrowed, or adapted, from some previous
chain.

Ecstasy. — Another point of Buddhist teaching
adopted from previous belief was the practice of
ecstatic meditation. In the very earliest times
of the most remote animism we tind the belief
that a person, rapt from all sense of the outside
world, possessed by a spirit, acquired from that
state a degree of sanctity, was supposed to have
a degree of insight, denied to ordinary mortals.
In India from the Soma frenzy in the Yedas,
S6

ADOPTED DOCTRINES— ECSTASY

through the mystic reveries of the Upanishads,
and the hypnotic trances of the ancient Yoga,
alHed beHefs and practices had never lost their
importance and their charm. It is clear from
the Dialogues,^ and other of the most ancient
Buddhist records, that the belief was in full
force when Buddhism arose, and that the practice
was followed by the Buddha's teachers. It was
quite impossible for him to ignore the question ;
and the practice was admitted as a part of the
training of the Buddhist Bhikshu. But it was
not the highest or the most important part,
and might be omitted altogether. The states of
Rapture are called Conditions of Bliss, and are
regarded as useful for the help they give towards
the removal of the mental obstacles to the attain-
ment of Arahatship.2 Of the thirty-seven con-
stituent parts of the Buddha's teaching they
enter into one group of four. To seek for Arahat-
ship in the practice of ecstasy alone is considered
a deadly heresy.^ So these practices are both
pleasant in themselves, and useful as one of the
means to the end proposed. But they are not
the end, and the end can be reached without
them. The most ancient form these exercises

^ For instance, Majjhima, i. 163-166.

2 Anguttara, iii. 119. ^ Digha, i. 38.

87

EARLY BUDDHISM

took is recorded in the often-recurring paragraphs
translated in my Dialogues of the Buddha (i.
84-92), More modern, and much more elaborate,
forms are given in the Yogdvacara's Manual of
Indian Mysticism as Practised by BuddJiists,
edited by me from a unique MS. for the Pali
Text Society in 1896. In the introduction to
this last work the various phases of the question
are discussed at length.

There are other points on which earlier thought
and practice had prepared the way for Buddhism.
And as we know approximately both the date of
the Buddha's activity, and that of the earliest
Buddhist texts, these points of resemblance will
be of the greatest value when a history of philo-
sophy in India comes to be written. But the
ones here mentioned are perhaps those of most
importance. And we may conclude in the words
of Professor Huxley, at the end of his exposition
of early Buddhism : — ^

' A system which knows no God in the Western
sense, which denies a soul to man ; w^hich counts
the belief in immortality a blunder, and the hope
of it a sin ; which refuses any efficacy to prayer
or sacrifices ; which bids men look to nothing but
their own efforts for salvation; which, in its

* Romanes Lecture, London, 1893, p. 21.

88

ADOPTED DOCTRINES

original purity, knew nothing of vows of obedience
and never sought the aid of the secular arm ;
yet spread over a considerable moiety of the old
world with marvellous rapidity, and is still, with
whatever base admixture of foreign supersti-
tions, the dominant creed of a large fraction of
mankind.'

89

SELECTED WORKS ON EARLY BUDDHISM

TRANSLATIONS
Rules of the Order

Vinaya Texts, by Rhys Davids and Oldenberg. Oxford,
1881-5.

Doctrine

Buddhist Suttas, by Rhys Davids. Oxford, 1881.
Dialogues of the Buddha, by Rhys Davids, vol i. Oxford,

1899.
Buddhism in Translations, by H. C. Warren. Cambridge,

Massachusetts, 1896.
DieBeden des Gotamo Buddho, by K. E. Neumann. Leipzig,

1896-1908.

Abhidhamma
Buddhist Psychology, by Mrs. Rhys Davids. London, 1900.

Tales and Poetry

The Jdtaka, edited by E. B. Co well. 6 vols. Cambridge,

1895-1908.
Buddhist Birth Stories, by Rhys Davids. London, 1880.
BhamniaiKida and Sutta Nipdta, by Max Miiller and

V. Fausbdll. Oxford, 1881.
Uddna, by Major-General Strong. London, 1902.
Lieder der Mbnche und Nonnen, by K. E. Neumann. Berlin,

1899.
Der Wahrheitspfad, von K. E. Neumann. Leipzig, 1893.

91

EARLY BUDDHISM

Selected Works, continued —

MANUALS AND ESSAYS

Oldenberg.—B itdd/ia. 5tli ed. Berlin, 1906. English
translation of 1st ed. by W. Hoey. London, 1882.

Rhys Davids. — Buddhism. 21st ed. London, 1907. Trans-
lated into Dutch, Amsterdam, 1879 ; into German,
Leipzig, 1899.

Rhys Davids. — American Lectures. 2nd ed. London and
New York, 1906.

Dahlke. — Aufsatze zum Verstdndnis des Biiddhismus.
Berlin, 1903. English by J. M'Kechnie. London,
1908.

Narasu. — The Essence of Buddhism. Madras, 1907.

E. Hardy. — Der Buddhismus. Miinster, 1890.

R. PiscHEL. — Lehen und Lehre des Buddha. Leipzig, 1906.

Bibliography
There is a very careful list of all European books and
articles on Buddhism in

Albert J. Edmunds. — Buddhist Bihliograj^hy^ in Journal of
the Pali Text Society, 1903.

Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Mjyesty
at the Edinburgh University Press

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