Division £> 542,3 Section - X* Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/buddhistindiaOOdavi Stories of the Nations A Series of Historical Studies intended to present in graphic narratives the stories of the different nations that have attained prominence in history. In the story form the current of each national life is distinctly indicated, and its picturesque and noteworthy periods and episodes are presented for the reader in their philosophical relations to each other as well as to universal history. i2°, Illustrated, cloth, Half Leather, each . Nos. 62 and following Each . Half leather, gilt top, each . . $1.50 . $ 1-75 Nos. . net $1.35 . (By mail) $1.50 each . net $1.60 (By mail) $1.75 FOR FULL LIST SEE END OF THIS VOLUME BUDDHIST INDIA FIG. 50. — THE GREAT BUDDHIST TOPE AT SANCHI BEFORE RESTORATION. THE STORY OF THE NATIONS Buddhist India BY T. W. RH Ys'dAVIDS, LL.D., Ph.D. PROFESSOR OF PALI AND BUDDHIST LITERATURE AT UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON AUTHOR OF “ BUDDHISM : ITS HISTORY AND LITERATURE,” ETC. NEW YORK G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS LONDON : T. FISHER UNWIN 1 003 Copyright, 1903 By G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London By T. FISHER UNWIN Published, June, 1903 Zbc Iknfcfecrbocfecr |prcss p Heve PREFACE I N the following work a first attempt has been made to describe ancient India, during the pe- riod of Buddhist ascendancy, from the point of view, not so much of the brahmin, as of the rajput. The two points of view naturally differ very much. Priest and noble in India have always worked very well together so long as the question at issue did not touch their own rival claims as against one an- other. When it did — and it did so especially during the period referred to — the harmony, as will be evi- dent from the following pages, was not so great. Even to make this attempt at all maybe regarded by some as a kind of lese majesty. The brahmin view, in possession of the field when Europeans entered India, has been regarded so long with rev- erence among us that it seems almost an imperti- nence now, to put forward the other. “ Why not leave well alone ? Why resuscitate from the well- deserved oblivion in which, for so many centuries, they have happily lain, the pestilent views of these tiresome people? The puzzles of Indian history have been solved by respectable men in Manu and the Great Bharata, which have the advantage of be- iii IV PREFACE ing equally true for five centuries before Christ and five centuries after. Shade of Kumarila! what are W'e coming to when the writings of these fellow's — renegade brahmins among them too — are actually taken seriously, and mentioned without a sneer? If by chance they say anything v'ell, that is only because it was better said, before they said it, by the orthodox brahmins, who form, and have always formed, the key-stone of the arch of social life in India. They are the only proper authorities. Why trouble about these miserable heretics?” Well, I w'ould plead, in extenuation, that I am not the first guilty one. People who found coins and inscriptions have not been deterred from con- sidering them seriously because they fitted very badly with the brahmin theories of caste and his- tory. The matter has gone too far, those theories have been already too much shaken, for any one to hesitate before using every available evidence. The evidence here collected, a good deal of it for the first time, is necessarily imperfect ; but it seems of- ten to be so suggestive, to throw so much light on points hitherto dark, or even unsuspected, that the trouble of collecting it is, so far at least, fairly justi- fied. Any words, however, are, I am afraid, of little avail against such sentiments. Wherever they exist the inevitable tendency is to dispute the evidence, and to turn a deaf ear to the conclusions. And there is, perhaps, after all, but one course open, and that is to declare war, always with the deepest re- spect for those who hold them, against such views. The views are wrong. They are not compatible PREFA CE V with historical methods, and the next generation will see them, and the writings that are, uncon- sciously, perhaps, animated by them, forgotten. Another point of a similar kind, which ought not in this connection to be left unnoticed, is the pre- valent pessimistic idea with regard to historical re- search in India. There are not only wanting in India such books giving consecutive accounts of the history as we are accustomed to in Europe, but even the names and dates of the principal kings, and battles, and authors, have not been preserved in the literature — that is, of course, in the brahmin litera- ture which is all that has hitherto been available to the student. That is unfortunately true, and some of the special causes which gave rise to this state of things are pointed out below. But the other side of the question should not be ignored. If we com- pare the materials available for the history, say, of England in the eighth or ninth century A.D. with the materials available for the history of India at the same period the difference is not so very marked. The more proper comparison, moreover, would be made with Europe ; for India is a continent of many diverse nations. And in the earlier periods, though we have inherited a connected history of one corner in the south-east of the continent, the records handed down for the rest of Europe are perhaps as slight and as imperfect as those handed down in India. What is of more importance, in Europe, for the earlier periods, all the inherited materials have been made available for the historical student by properly edited and annotated editions, and also by VI PREFA CE dictionaries, monographs, and helps of all sorts. In India much of the inherited material is still buried in MS., and even so much as is accessible in printed texts has been by no means thoroughly exploited. Scarcely anything, also, has yet been done for the excavation of the ancient historical sites. We might do well to recollect, when we read these complaints of the absence of materials, that the remedy lies, to a very large extent, in our own hands. We might so easily have more. We do not even utilise the ma- terials we have . 1 To speak out quite plainly, it is not so much the historical data that are lacking, as the men. There are plenty of men able and willing to do the work. But it is accepted tradition in England that all higher education may safely be left to muddle along as it best can, without system, under the not always very wise restrictions of private beneficence. One consequence is that the funds have to be administered in accord with the wishes of benefactors in mediaeval times. The old studies, theology, classics, and mathe- matics, have a superabundance of endowment. The new studies have to struggle on under great poverty and difficulty. There is no chair of Assyriology, for instance, in England. And whereas in Paris and Ber- lin, in St. Petersburg and Vienna, there are great seminaries of Oriental learning, we see in London the amazing absurdity of unpaid professors obliged to devote to the earning otherwise, of their living, 1 See on this question the very apposite remarks of Professor Geiger in his monograph Dipavamsa und Mahavamsa' (Erlangen, 1901). PREFACE vii the time they ought to give to teaching or research. And throughout England the state of things is nearly as bad. In all England, for instance, there are two chairs of Sanskrit. In Germany the Gov- ernments provide more than twenty — just as if Ger- many’s interests in India were more than ten times as great as ours. Meanwhile our Government is supine and placid, confident that, somehow or other, we shall muddle through ; and that this is no busi- ness of theirs. This work has been long delayed, and has suffered much from the necessity laid upon me of trying to write it in scraps of time rescued, with difficulty, from the calls of a busy life. I can only hope that other scholars, more able and less hampered than myself, will be able to give to the problems of en- trancing interest I have ventured to raise a consider- ation more worthy of them, in every way, than I have been able to give. T. W. Rhys-Davids. October, 1902. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE KINGS . • . I II. THE CLANS AND NATIONS . • 17 III. THE VILLAGE • 42 IV. SOCIAL GRADES . • - 5 2 V. IN THE TOWN • • 6 3 VI. ECONOMIC CONDITIONS • 00 VII. WRITING — THE BEGINNINGS • . 107 VIII. WRITING ITS DEVELOPMENT . 121 IX. LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. I. GENERAL VIEW . . 140 X. LITERATURE. II. THE PALI BOOKS • 161 XI. THE JATAKA BOOK 189 XII. RELIGION — ANIMISM . 2 10 XIII. RELIGION THE BRAHMIN POSITION • 238 XIV. CHANDRAGUPTA • 259 ix X CONTENTS CHAPTER XV. ASOKA XVI. KANISHKA . APPENDIX . INDEX 272 308 3 21 3 2 3 ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE THE GREAT BUDDHIST TOPE AT SANCHI BEFORE RESTORATION . . . Frontispiece KING PASENADI IN HIS CHARIOT. ABOVE IS THE WHEEL OF THE LAW ..... 9 From the Bharahctt Tope. PI. xiii. AJAKASATTU STARTING OUT TO VISIT THE BUDDHA 14 KINGS AND QUEENS WATCHING A PROCESSION AS IT LEAVES A FORT ..... 64 From the Sane hi Tope. FACADE OF MANSION ...... 65 From the Bharahat Tope. PI. xxxi. SUDHAMMO, THE MOTE-HALL OF THE GODS . . 67 From the Bharahat 'Tope. PI. xvi. ANCIENT OPEN-AIR BATH AT ANURADHAPURA (NO. l) . . . . . . . .69 ANCIENT OPEN-AIR BATH AT ANURADHAPURA (no. 2) 71 OLD INDIAN SCROLLWORK 72 A Z 1 GGARAT . -73 From Ragozin s “ Story of Chaldea." THE THOUSAND PILLARS. RUINS OF THE FOUNDA- TION OF THE SEVEN-STORIED GREAT BRAZEN PALACE AT ANURADHAPURA . . 75 From Cave’s “ Ruined Cities of Ceylon." xi I L LUSTRA T10NS xii PAGE THE SPLIT ROCK. GAMBLING SCENE FROM THE BHARAHAT TOPE ...... 77 SCROLLWORK ORNAMENT AS USED OUTSIDE HOUSES AND ON TOPES IN BUDDHIST INDIA . . 79 From the Bharahat Tope. PI. xliii. GROUND PLAN AND RESTORATION OF THE BHARA- HAT STUPA 8l From Cunningham' s “ Stupa of Bhar hut." PI. Hi. RES'I ORATION (by W. SIMPSON) OF THE AHIN POSH TOPE ........ 83 From the Proceedings of the R. I. B. A. A STUPA AS CARVED ON THE BAS-RELIEFS . . 84 From Cunningham' s "Stupa of Bhar hut." PI. xxxi. THE JETAVANA DAGABA ..... 85 SPECIMENS OF ANCIENT JEWELRY FOUND IN THE SAKIYA TOPE ....... 89 From J. R. A. S., i 8 q 8 . OLD INDIAN GIRDLE OF JEWELS 91 From the figure of Sirimd Devata on the Bharahat Tope. PI. li. OLD INDIAN NECKLACES ..... 92 OLD INDIAN LOCKET. OLD INDIAN EARRING. OLD INDIAN LOCKET ...... 93 Size of original. MEDALLION ON THE BHARAHAT TOPE ... 95 PI. xxiv. Fig. 3 . ANCIENT INDIAN HEAD-DRESS .... 97 From a medallion on the Bharahat Tope. PI. xxiv. Fig. 2 . ANATHA PI^IDIKA’S GIFT OF THE JETAVANA PARK . 99 From the Bharahat Tope. PI. Ixvii. ANCIENT INDIAN COINS ...... I06 ERAN COINS I I. c , ILL USTRA TIONS xiii PAGE LEAF OF MS. FROM THE GOSINGA VIHARA OF AN OLD BUDDHIST ANTHOLOGY .... 122 DR. HOEY’S BRICK TABLET, WITH BUDDHIST SUTTA INSCRIBED ON IT . . . . . . 123 THE COPPER PLATE FROM TAKKA-SILA . . I25 “ Epigraphia Indica’’ vol. iv. THE MAUNG-GON GOLD PLATE .... I26 From “ Epigraphia Indica” vol. v . , p. 101. LEAF FROM THE BOWER MS. BIRCH BARK CUT TO IMITATE PALM LEAVES, WITH HOLES FOR STRINGS TO TIE THEM UP WITH . . . 127 THE INSCRIBED VASE FROM THE SAKIYA TOPE . 1 29 THE PEPPE VASES ...... 131 Found by Mr. Peppd in the Sakiya Tope. RUINS OF THE SAKIYA TOPE, PUT UP BY HIS RELA- TIVES OVER THEIR PORTION OF THE ASHES FROM THE FUNERAL PYRE OF THE BUDDHA . 133 FRAGMENT OF THE THIRTEENTH ROCK EDICT OF ASOKA, DISCOVERED BY PROFESSOR RHYS- DAVIDS AT GIRNAR ....... 1 35 THE BANYAN DEER J AT AKA STORY . . . 193 Three episodes on one bas-relief. SI RIM A DEVATA ....... 2 l 6 From the Bharahat Tope. PI. xxiii. MODERN IMAGE OF SRI AS CONSORT VISHNU . 218 From Burgess’s “ Cave Temples of India,” p. 524. HINDOO GODDESS OF LUCK . . . . .221 VESSAVANA KUVERA, KING OF THE YAKSHAS, AND REGENT OF THE NORTH .... 222 From the Bharahat Tope. PI. xxii. XIV ILL USTRA T10NS PAGE CHAKAVAKA, KING OF THE NAGAS . . . 222 From Cunningham' s “ Stupa of Bharhut." PI. xxi. Fig- 3- NAGA MERMAIDS IN WATER ..... 223 From Burgess and Griinwedel's “ Buddhist Art in India. ” SEATED NAGA; BACK VIEW .... 225 From a fresco in Cave // at A junta. ELEPHANTS BEFORE THE WISDOM TREE . . 228 Prom Cunningham' s “ Stupa of Bharhut." PI. xxx. THE WISDOM TREE OF KASSAPA, THE BUDDHA . 229 From Cunningham's “ Stupa of Bharhut." PI. xxx. THE BUDDHA PREACHING TO NAGAS DWELLING IN A SACRED TREE ...... 233 From a Buddhist carving at Takt-i-bahi. J. R. A. S., i8Fi7H v & j£ \ Fig. 13. — ground plan and restoration of the bharahat stTTpa. [From Cunningham’s Stupa of Bharhut . PI. iii.] 6 81 *2 BUDDHIST INDIA community were beginning to make them solid brick structures instead of heaps of earth, or of stones covered with earth, as had been the custom in more ancient times. 1 This was done more especially by those who had thrown off their allegiance to the priests, and were desirous to honour the memory of their teachers, who were leaders of thought, or reformers, or philosophers. And whether we agree, or not, with the opinions these thinkers put forth, we must acknowledge the very great interest, from the historical point of view, of the fact that the only monuments of the kind yet discovered were built out of reverence, not for kings or chiefs or warriors or politicians or wealthy benefactors, but precisely for such thinkers, who propounded fresh solutions of the problems of life. We need not be surprised, therefore, to learn that the priestly records carefully ignore these topes. The first step was probably merely to build the cairn more carefully than usual, with stones, and to cover the outside with fine chunam plaster (in the use of which the Indians were adepts) to give a marble-like surface. The next step was to build the cairn of concentric layers of the huge bricks in use at the time, and to surround the whole with a wooden railing. None of the most ancient have survived, or been explored sufficiently to enable a restoration to be drawn. But we can tell very much about what they were from the later examples. This, for instance, is Cunningham’s plan and restoration of the famous Bharahat Stupa. 1 White Yajur Veda, chap. 35. IN THE TOWN 83 And among the bas-reliefs carved on the stone railing are several topes as the sculptor of the day imagined they ought to be. We should notice however in the first of these carvings, designed to fill up the post of a stone railing, that the artist, in order to fill up the tall and mr Fig. 14. — RESTORATION (by w. simpson) of the ahin posh tope. [From the Proceedings of the R. I. B. A.] narrow space he has to deal with, has allowed him- self to give a disproportionate height to the orna- mentation at the top of the dome. Even in the Buddha’s time the size of these monuments had already reached very considerable dimensions. The solid dome erected by the Sakiyas over their share of the ashes from the Buddha’s funeral pyre must have been about the same height 8 4 BUDDHIST INDIA as the dome ot St. Paul’s, measured from the roof . 1 And it is that dome, as seen from Waterloo Bridge, where the intervening houses hide the view of the Fig. 15. — a STurA as carved on the bas-reliefs. [From Cunningham’s Stii/>a of Bharhut. PI. xxxi.] church, and only the beautiful outline of the dome itself is seen against the sky, which gives to those who have never seen them the best idea of what these domes must have been. Unfortunately no one 1 See Mr. Peppe’s measurements in the J. R. A. S. for 1898. The present state of the ruins of this important monument is shown in the above Fig. Fig. 16. — the jetavana dagaba. 86 BUDDHIST INDIA has yet attempted to make a restoration of one of these of the most ancient date. But Mr. W. Simp- son has given us one of later date, and this is here appended for the sake of comparison. The appearance of such a dagaba in the landscape is also well shown in the annexed plate, from Mr. Cave’s Ruined Cities of Ceylon , of the Jetavana Dagaba. (Fig. 16.) This dagaba itself dates from the third century A.D., but the large irrigation “tank” shown in the foreground is probably the oldest dated one in India, as it was constructed before the time of Asoka. CHAPTER VI ECONOMIC CONDITIONS HERE has been as yet no attempt to reconstruct i a picture of the economic conditions at any period in the early history of India. Professor Zim- mer, Dr. Pick, and Professor Hopkins have dealt incidentally with some of the points on the basis respectively of the Vedas, the Jatakas, and the Epics. But generally speaking the books on India have been so exclusively concerned with questions of religion and philosphy, of literature and language, that we seem apt to forget that the very necessities of life, here as elsewhere, must have led the people to occupy their time very much, not to say mostly, with other matters than those, with the earning of their daily bread, with the accumulation and distri- bution of wealth. The following remarks will be chiefly based on Mrs. Rhys-Davids’s articles on this important subject in the Economic Journal , for 1901, and in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , for 1901. And numbers given in this chapter as refer- ences, without letters referring to other sources, refer to the pages of the latter article. 88 BUDDHIST INDIA When the King of Magadha, the famous (and infamous) Ajatasattu, made his only call upon the Buddha, he is said 1 to have put a puzzle to the teacher to test him — a puzzle characteristic of the King’s state of mind. It is this : “ What in the world is the good of your renunciation, of joining an Order like yours? Other people (and here he gives a list), by following ordinary crafts, get something out of them. They can make themselves comfortable in this world, and keep their families in comfort. Can you, Sir, declare to me any such imme- diate fruit, visible in this world, of the life of a recluse ? ” The list referred to is suggestive. In the view of the King the best examples of such crafts were the following : 1. Elephant-riders. 2. Cavalry. 3. Charioteers. 4. Archers. 5-13. Nine different grades of army folk. 14. Slaves. 15. Cooks. 16. Barbers. 17. Bath-attendants. 18. Confectioners. 19. Garland-makers. 20. Washermen. 21. Weavers. 22. Basket-makers. 23. Potters. 24. Clerks. 25. Accountants. These are just the sort of people employed about a camp or a palace. King-like, the King considers chiefly those who minister to a king, and are depend- ent upon him. In the answer he is most politely reminded of the peasant, of the tax-payer, on whom both he and his depended. D. 1. 51. And it is evident enough Fig. 17. — SPECIMENS OF ancient jewelry found in the sakiya TOPE. [From y. R. A. S i8q8.] 89 90 BUDDHIST INDIA from other passages that the King’s list is far from exhaustive. There is mention, in other documents of the same age, of guilds of work-people; and the number of these guilds is often given afterwards as eighteen. Four of these are mentioned by name. 1 But a list of the whole eighteen has unfortunately not yet been found. It would probably have in- cluded the following: 1. The workers in wood. They were not only carpenters and cabinet-makers, but also wheel- wrights; and the builders of houses, and of ships, and of vehicles of all sorts (863). 2. The workers in metal. They made any iron implements — weapons of all kinds, ploughshares, axes, hoes, saws, and knives. But they also did finer work — made needles, for instance, of great lightness and sharpness, or gold and (less often) silver work of great delicacy and beauty (864). 3. The workers in stone. They made flights of steps, leading up into a house or down into a reservoir; faced the reservoir; laid foundations for the wood- work of which the upper part of the houses was built; carved pillars and bas-reliefs; and even did finer work such as making a crystal bowl, or a stone coffer (864). Beautiful examples of these two last were found in the Sakiya Tope. 4. The weavers. They not only made the cloths which the people wrapped round themselves as dress, but manufactured fine muslin for export, and worked costly and dainty fabrics of silk cloth and fur into rugs, blankets, coverlets, and carpets. 2 1 At Jat. 6. 427. ■ D. 1. 7. Fig. 18. — old Indian girdle of jewels. [From the figure of Sirima Devata on the Bharahat Tope. PI. li.] 91 92 B UDDHIS T INDIA 5. Leather workers, who made the numerous sorts of foot-covering and sandals worn by the people mostly in cold weather ; and also the embroidered Fig. 19. — OLD INDIAN NECKLACES. and costly articles of the same kind mentioned in the books (865). 6. Potters, who made all sorts of dishes and bowls for domestic use ; and often hawked their goods about for sale. ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 93 7. Ivory workers, who made a number of small articles in ivory for ordinary use, and also costly carvings and ornaments such as those for which India is still famous (864). 8. Dyers, who coloured the clothes made by the OLD INDIAN LOCKET. OLD INDIAN EARRING. OLD INDIAN LOCKET. reliefs that we know fairly well the shape and size of the ornaments they made. 10. The fisher folk. They fished only in the rivers. There is no mention of sea-fishing known to me. 11. The butchers, whose shops and slaughter- houses are several times mentioned (873). 12. Hunters and trappers, mentioned in various passages as bringing the animal and vegetable pro- ducts of the woods, and also venison and game, for sale on carts into the city (873). It is doubtful whether they were formed into guilds. But their in- dustry was certainly a very important one. The weavers (864). Fig. 20. [Size of original.] 94 BUDDHIST INDIA large stretches of forest, open to all, separating most of the settlements ; the absence of any custom of breeding cattle for the meat-market ; the large de- mand for ivory, fur, sinews, creepers, and all the other produce of the woods ; and the congeniality of the occupation, all tended to encourage the hun- ters. And there is no reason to suppose that the very ancient instinct of the chase was confined to the so-called savages. The kings and nobles also, whether Aryan by blood or not, seem to have taken pleasure in it, quite apart from the economic ques- tion of food supply. But men of good birth followed it as a trade; and when brahmins did so (868) they are represented as doing so for profit. 13. The cooks and confectioners, a numerous class, probably formed a guild. But there is no passage saying that they did. 14. The barbers and shampooers had their guilds. They dealt in perfumes, and were especially skilled in arranging the elaborate turbans worn by the wealthier classes. (Figs. 21, 22.) 15. The garland-makers and flower-sellers (866). 16. Sailors, occupied for the most part in the traffic up and down the great rivers, but also going to sea. In some of our earliest documents 1 we hear of sea voyages out of sight of land ; and in the later documents, such as the Jatakas, the mention of such voyages is frequent (872). So the earlier documents speak of voyages lasting six months made in ships ( nava , perhaps “ boats ”) which could be drawn up on 1 Dlgha, 1. 222 (translated in Dialogues of the Buddha , i. 2S3) ; Anguttara, 3. 368. FlG. 21. — MEDALLION ON THE BHARAHUT TOPE. PI. xxiv. Fig. 3. 95 9 6 BUDDHIST INDIA shore in the winter. 1 And later texts, of about the third century B.C., speak of voyages down the Ganges from Benares to the mouth of the river and thence across the Indian Ocean to the opposite coast of Burma ; and even from Bharukaccha (the modern Baroch) round Cape Comorin to the same destination (871). It is clear, therefore, that during the whole of this period the occupation of sailor was neither unfrequent nor unimportant. 17. The rush-workers and basket-makers (868). 18. Painters (865). They were mostly house- painters. The woodwork of the houses was often covered with fine chunam plaster and decorated with painting. But they also painted frescoes. 2 These passages tell us of pleasure-houses, adorned with painted figures and patterns, belonging to the kings of Magadha and Kosala ; and such frescoes were no doubt similar in character to, but of course in an earlier style than, the well-known ancient frescoes of the seventh and eighth centuries A.D. on the Ajanta Caves, and of the fifth century on the Slgiri Rock in Ceylon. It is doubtful with regard to two or three in this list whether they were organised in guilds ( scniyo , piiga). But it is certain that these were among the most important branches of handicraft apart from agriculture; and most of them had, no doubt, their guilds not unlike the mediaeval guilds in Europe. It is through their guilds that the king summons the people on important occasions (865). The Aldermen 1 Samyutta, 3. p. 155, 5. 51 ; Anguttara, 4. 127. 2 Vin. ii. 151 ; iv. 47, 61, 298 ; Sum. 42, 84. ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 97 or Presidents (jetthaka or paniuklia) of such guilds are sometimes described as quite important persons, wealthy, favourites at the court. The guilds are said to have had powers of arbitration between the mem- Fig. 22. — ANCIENT INDIAN HEAD-DRESS. [From a medallion on the Bharahat Tope. PI. xxiv. Fig. 2 .] bers of the guild and their wives. And disputes between one guild and another were in the jurisdic- tion of the maha-setthi, the Lord High Treasurer, who acted as a sort of chief Alderman over the Aldermen of the guilds (865). 9 8 BUDDHIST INDIA Besides the peasantry and the handicraftsmen there were merchants who conveyed their goods either up and down the great rivers, or along the coasts in boats; or right across country in carts travelling in caravans. These caravans, long lines of small two-wheeled carts, each drawn by two bul- locks, were a distinctive feature of the times. 1 There were no made roads and no bridges. The carts struggled along, slowly, through the forests, along the tracks from village to village kept open by the peasants. The pace never exceeded two miles an hour. Smaller streams were crossed by gullies lead- ing down to fords, the larger ones by cart ferries. There were taxes and octroi duties at each different country entered (875); and a heavy item in the cost was the hire of volunteer police who let themselves out in bands to protect caravans against robbers on the way (866). The cost of such carriage must have been great ; so great that only the more costly goods could bear it. The enormous traffic of to-day in the carriage of passengers, food-stuffs, and fuel was non-existent. Silks, muslins, the finer sorts of cloth and cutlery and armour, brocades, embroideries and rugs, per- fumes and drugs, ivory and ivory work, jewelry and 1 The accompanying plate (Fig. 23) shows, in four scenes on the same bas-relief, Anatha Pindika’s famous gift of the Jetavana Park to the Order. To the left is the park, the ground of which is being covered with Kakapatias. In front is the bullock cart which has brought them. In the centre the donor holds in his hand the water of donation, the pouring out of which is to complete the legality of the gift. To the right are the huts to be afterwards put up in the park for the use of the Wanderers. Fig. 23. — anatha pindika’s gift of the jetavana park. [From the Bharahat Tope. PI. lxvii.] 99 IOO BUDDHIST INDIA gold (seldom silver), — these were the main articles in which the merchant dealt. The older system of traffic by barter had entirely passed away never to return. The later system of a currency of standard and token coins issued and regulated by government authority had not yet arisen. Transactions were carried on, values estim- ated, and bargains struck in terms of the kahapana, a square copper coin weighing about 146 grains, and guaranteed as to weight and fineness by punch- marks made by private individuals.' Whether these punch-marks are the tokens of merchants, or of guilds, or simply of the bullion dealer, is not certain (874). (Fig. 24.) No silver coins were used (877). There were half and quarter kahapanas, and probably no other sort. The references to gold coins are late and doubtful; and no such coins have been found. Some thin gold films with punch marks on them were found in the Sakiya Tope, but these are too flimsy to have been used in circulation as coins (878). It is interesting to notice that Alexander, when in India, struck a half kahapana copper piece, square (in imitation of the Indian money), and not round like the Greek coins of the time. It is only in later times that we hear (as for in- stance in Manu, 8. 401) of any market price being fixed by government regulation. In the sixth cent- ury B.C. there is only an official called the Valuer, whose duty it was to settle the prices of goods 1 See Figs. 1, 3, and 8 in the plate annexed to this chapter for ex- amples of these oldest Kahapanas. ECONOMIC CONDITIONS IOI ordered for the palace — which is a very different thing (875). And there are many instances, inci- dentally given, of the prices of commodities fixed, at different times and places, by the haggling of the market (875). These are all collected together in the article referred to (at pp. 882, foil.); and the gen- eral result seems to be that though the kahapana would be worth, at the present value of copper, only five sixths of a penny, its purchasing power then was about equivalent to the purchasing power of a shilling now. Besides the coins, there was a very considerable use of instruments of credit. The great merchants in the few large towns gave letters of credit on one another. And there is constant reference to pro- missory notes (879). The rates of interest are un- fortunately never stated. But interest itself is mentioned very early ; and the law books give the rate of interest current at a somewhat later date for loans on personal security as about eighteen per cent, per annum (881). There were no banking facilities. Money was hoarded either in the house, or buried in jars in the ground, or deposited with a friend, a written record of the transaction being kept (881). The details of prices above referred to enable us to draw some conclusion as to the spending power of the poor, of the man of the middle classes, and of the wealthy merchants and nobles respectively. Of want, as known in our great cities, there is no evi- dence. It is put down as the direst misfortune known that a free man had to work for hire. And 102 BUDDHIST INDIA there was plenty of land to be had for the trouble of clearing it, not far from the settled districts. On the other hand, the number of those who could be considered wealthy from the standards of those times (and of course still more so from our own) was very limited. We hear of about a score of monarchs, whose wealth consisted mainly of the land tax, supplemented by other dues and perquis- ites ; of a considerable number of wealthy nobles, and some priests, to whom grants had been made of the tithe arising out of certain parishes or coun- ties 1 or who had inherited similar rights from their forefathers; of about a dozen millionaire merchants in Takkasila, Savatthi, Benares, Rajagaha, Vesali, Kosambi, and the seaports (882), and of a consid- erable number of lesser merchants and middlemen, all in the few towns. But these were the exceptions. There were no landlords. And the great mass of the people were well-to-do peasantry, or handicrafts- men, mostly with land of their own, both classes ruled over by local headmen of their own selection. Before closing this summary of the most important economic conditions in Northern India in the sixth century B.C. it may be well to bring together the few notices we have in the books about the trade routes. There is nothing about them in the pre- Buddhistic literature. In the oldest Pali books w r e have accounts of the journeys of the wandering teach- ers ; and as, especially for longer journeys, they will generally have followed already established routes, this is incidental evidence of such as were then in 1 D. 1. 88 ; M. 2. 163, 3. 133 ; S. 82. ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 103 use by traders. Later on, we have accounts of routes actually followed by merchants, either on boats, or with their caravans of bullock carts. We can thus draw up provisionally the following list: 1. North to South-west. Savatthi to Patitthana (Paithan) and back. The principal stopping places are given 1 (beginning from the south) as Mahissati, Ujjeni, Gonaddha, Vedisa, Kosambi, and Saketa. 2. North to South-east. Savatthi to Rajagaha. It is curious that the route between these two an- cient cities is never, so far as I know, direct, but always along the foot of the mountains to a point north of Vesali, and only then turning south to the Ganges. By taking this circuitous road the rivers were crossed at places close to the hills where the fords were more easy to pass. But political consid- erations may also have had their weight in the origi- nal choice of this route, still followed when they were no longer of much weight. 2 The stopping places were (beginning at Savatthi), Setavya, Kapi- lavastu, Kusinara, Pava, Hatthi-gama, Bhandagama, Vesali, Pataliputta, and Nalanda. The road prob- ably went on to Gaya, and there met another route from the coast, possibly at Tamralipti, to Benares. 3 3. East to West. The main route was along the great rivers, along which boats plied for hire. We even hear of express boats. Upwards the rivers were used along the Ganges as far west as Sahajati, 4 ' and along the Jumna as far west as Kosambi. 5 Downwards, in later times at least, the boats went 1 In S. N. 1011-1013. 3 Vinaya Texts , i. Si. 4 Ibid. 3. 401. 2 Sutta Nipata loc. cit., and Dlgha, 2. 5 Ibid. 3. 382. 104 BUDDHIST INDIA right down to the mouths of the Ganges, and thence either across or along the coast to Burma . 1 In the early books we hear only of the traffic downward as far as Magadha, that is, to take the farthest point, Champa. Upwards it went thence to Kosambi, where it met the traffic from the south (Route i), and was continued by cart to the south-west and north-west. Besides the above we are told of traders going from Videha to Gandhara , 3 from Magadha to Sovlra , 3 from Bharukaccha round the coast to Burma , 4 from Benares down the river to its mouth and thence on to Burma , 5 from Champa to the same destination . 6 In crossing the desert west of Rajputana the caravans are said 7 to travel only in the night, and to be guided by a “land-pilot,” who, just as one does on the ocean, kept the right route by observing the stars. The whole description of this journey is too vividly accurate to life to be an invention. So we may accept it as evidence not only that there was a trade route over the desert, but also that pilots, guiding ships or caravans by the stars only, were well known. In the solitary instance of a trading journey to Babylon (Baveru) we are told that it was by sea, but the port of departure is not mentioned . 8 There is one story, the world-wide story of the Sirens, who 1 That is at Thaton, then called Suvanna-bhumi, the Gold Coast. See Dr. Mabel Bode in the Sasana Vatnsa , p. 12. 2 Jat. 3. 365. 4 Jat. 3. 188. 6 Ibid. 6. 32-35. 3 V. V. A. 370. 5 Ibid. 4. 15-17. 1 1 bid . I. 108. 8 Ibid. 3. 126. Has the foreign country called Seruma (Jat. 3. 189) any connection with Sumer or the land of Akkad ? ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 105 are located in Tambapanni-dfpa, a sort of fairy land, which is probably meant for Ceylon. 1 Lanka does not occur. Traffic with China is first mentioned in the Milinda (pp. 127, 327, 359), which is some cent- uries later. APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VI THE MOST ANCIENT COINS OF INDIA EXPLANATION OF FIGS. 24 AND 25. This explanation, being too long to be inserted here, has been transferred to pp. 321, 322. 1 Jat. 2. 127. Fig. 24 — ANCIKNT INDIAN COINS. [See Appendix, pp. 321, 322.] I06 CHAPTER VII WRITING — THE BEGINNINGS ITERATURE of all kinds laboured under a curious disability. There were, for a long time, no writing materials — that is, none that could be used for the production and reproduction of books. And the Indians not only did not feel the want of them, but even continued, for centuries after materials had become available, to prefer, so far as books are concerned, to do without them. The state of things thus disclosed, being unique in the history of the world, deserves a detailed exposition. The oldest reference to writing is in a tract called the Silas , embodied in each of the thirteen Dialogues which form the first chapter of the first division of the Suttantas, or conversational dis- courses of the Buddha. This tract must therefore have been already in existence as a separate work before those Dialogues were put together by the early disciples within the first century after the Buddha’s death. The tract on the Silas may be dated, therefore, approximately about 450 B.C. The 107 io8 BUDDHIST INDIA tract contains lists of things a member of the Buddhist Order would not do. And among these is a list of games, one of which is called Akkharika (Lettering), explained as “ Guessing at letters traced in the air, or on a playfellow’s back.” As the context 1 gives a number of children’s games, this was almost certainly regarded as such. And for children to have such a game, and to call it by the name “ Lettering,” shows that the knowledge of an alphabet was fairly prevalent at the time in question. The collection of canon law laid down for mem- bers of the Order under the generic name of Vinaya (Discipline) is in its present shape somewhat, per- haps two or three generations, younger. In it there are several suggestive references. For instance, writing ( lekha ) is praised at Vin. iv. 7, as a distinguished sort of art ; and whereas the sisters of the Order are, as a rule, to abstain from worldly arts, there are exceptions; and one of these is learning to write. 2 A criminal “ who had been written up in the king’s porch ” (as we should say “who was wanted by the police”) was not to be received into the Order. 3 In a discussion as to what career a lad should adopt, his parents say that if he adopt the profession of a “ writer ” he will dwell at ease and in comfort ; but then, on the other hand, his fingers will ache. 4 Were a member of the Order to write to a man setting out the 1 The whole tract is translated in my Dialogues of the Buddha , vol. i. pp. 3-26. The passage in question is on p. II. 2 Vin. iv. 305. 3 Ibid. i. 75. 4 Ibid. i. 77; iv. 128. WRITING — THE BEGINNINGS 109 advantage of suicide, then, for each letter in the writing, he commits an offence. 1 It is evident, therefore, that writing was in vogue at the time these passages were composed : that it was made use of for the publication of official notices, and for the communication by way of letter between private individuals: that the ability to write was a possible and honourable source of live- lihood : that the knowledge of writing was not con- fined to any particular class, but was acquired by ordinary folk, and by women : and that it was sufficiently prevalent to have been made the basis of a game for children. A long period, probably centuries, must have elapsed between the date when writing first became known to the few, and the date when such a stage could have been reached. But it is a long step from the use of writing for such notifications, public or private, to the use of it for the purpose of writing down any books, much less an extensive literature. And the very same texts we have just quoted show, and show in a manner equally indisputable, that, for such pur- poses, writing, however well known, had not yet come into use. For if books had been known and used in India at the period in question, then the manuscripts themselves, and the whole industry connected with 1 Vin. iii. 76. The expression used for writing is here lekhatn chindati , “scratches a writing.” From this Biihler (Indische Pd- leographie , p. 88) concludes that the material implied is wood. But the reference is to scratching with a style on a leaf. I IO BUDDHIST INDIA them, must have played an important part in the daily life of the members of the Buddhist Order. Now the extant rules of the Order place clearly enough before our eyes the whole of the “ personal property ” of the community, or of its individuals. Every movable thing, down to the smallest and least important domestic utensil, is referred to, and its use pointed out. And articles in ordinary use among laymen, but not allowed to members of the Order, are mentioned also, in order to be dis- allowed. But nowhere do we find the least trace of any reference to books or manuscripts. This is really decisive. It is one of those rare cases where negative evidence, the absence of the mention of something where the mention of it would be reasonably expected, is good evidence. But this is not all. Positive evidence comes in at the precise point where it is wanted. There is pretty constant reference to the texts as existing, but existing only in the memory of those who had learnt them by heart. Here we have the ex- planation of how the difficulty was met. Thus at Anguttara, 3. 107, the dangers that may eventually fall upon the faith are being discussed. One is that the members of the Order will listen and give heed when poetical, pretty, ornate Sut- tantas are being repeated, and think them worthy of the trouble of being learnt by heart ; but will neglect the deeper, more subtle, more philosophical treatises. So at Anguttara, 2. 147, among four causes of the decay of religion one is that WRI TING— THE BEGINNINGS 1 1 1 “ those Bhikshus who have learnt much (literally, heard much), to whom the tradition has been handed on, who carry (in their memory) the doctrine, and the discipline, and the indices thereto (that is, the tables of contents drawn up to assist the memory) they (those Bhikshus) may not be careful to make others repeat some Suttanta; and so, when they shall themselves have passed away, that Suttanta will become cut off at the root, without a place of refuge.” Again at Anguttara, 5. 136, we have the “ nutri- ment ” of a list of mental states, the conditions precedent without which they cannot be and grow. One of these states is learning, scholarship. One would expect to find that study, the reading of books, would be its “ nutriment.” Not at all. It is said to be “ repeating over to oneself.” A chance expression of this sort has particular value. For it implies that the basis of learning was what a man carried in his head, in his memory; and that constant repetition was required to prevent his losing it. It is a sort of expression that would have been impossible if books had been in general use. In the canon law also we find two suggestive rules. In the Vinaya Texts , 1. 267, the rule is that the Patimokkha, consisting of the 227 Rules of the Order, is to be recited monthly in each “ residence” or monastic settlement. And if, among the brethren there, none should know the rules by heart, then they are (not to send for a copy, but) to send one of their younger members to some neighbouring fra- ternity, there to learn the Patimokkha, either with or 1 12 BUDDHIST INDIA without the explanations of the several rules, by heart. Shortly afterwards we have a rule forbidding the brethren to travel in the rainy season. But among the exceptions' we find the case put that a layman knows how to recite some celebrated Suttanta. “ If he send a messenger to the brethren, saying : ‘ Might their reverences come and learn this Suttanta, other- wise this Suttanta will fall into oblivion?’” — then they may go, so important is the emergency, even during the rains. It is evident from such passages — and many others might be quoted to a like effect — that the idea of recording, by writing, even a Suttanta, the average length of which is only about twenty pages of the size of this work, did not occur to the men who composed or used the canonical texts. They could not even have thought of the possibility of using writing as a means of guarding against such painful accidents. Yet, as we have seen, the Indian peoples had been acquainted with letters, and with writing, for a long time, probably for centuries be- fore ; and had made very general use of writing for short communications. It seems extraordinary that they should have abstained from its use on occasions which were, to them, so important. Now the reason why they did so abstain is twofold. In the first place writing was introduced into India at a late period in the intellectual development of its people — so late that, before they knew of it, they had already brought to perfection, to a perfection 1 Vi nay a Texts , I. 305. WRITING — THE BEGINNINGS 1 1 3 unparalleled in the history of the world, another method, and in some respects a very excellent method, of handing down literary productions. They would not lightly give up, for a new-fangled expedi- ent, this tried and ancient one. In the second place, even had they desired to do so, they could not. For they did not become ac- quainted, at the same time when they came to know of writing, with the necessary materials for writing lengthy records. We have only just been able to see clearly this very curious state of things. But we now have three different lines of evidence all converging to a certain date as that of the introduction of writing into India : and it is the knowledge of that date which has led to the true explanation. The first line is that of the oldest references to writing in Indian literature as set out above. The second line is the discovery, due originally to Professor Weber, and lately greatly extended and confirmed by Hofrath Dr. Biihler , 1 that a certain pro- portion of the oldest Indian letters are practically identical with letters on certain Assyrian weights, and on the so-called Mesa inscription of the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. About one-third of the twenty-two letters of the so-called Northern Semitic alphabet of that period are identical with the oldest forms of the corresponding Indian letters. Another third are somewhat similar. And the remaining third can, with great difficulty, be more or less— gene- 1 In Part III. of his Indian Studies (2d ed., 1898), and in his Indisc he Paleographie, 1896. 8 BUDDHIST INDIA ri 4 rally less — harmonised. Other scholars have made similar, but not such satisfactory, comparisons be- tween the Indian letters and those of the Southern forms of the Semitic alphabet. And the conclusion hitherto drawn has been either, with Weber and Biihler, that the Indian alphabet is derived from the Northern Semites; or, with Dr. Deecke, Isaac Tay- lor, and others, that it is derived from that of the Southern Semites, in South Arabia. Now direct intercourse, at the requisite date, was possible, but not probable, along the coast, between India and South Arabia, where the resemblance is least. No one contends that the Indians had any direct communication with the men who, on the borders of Palestine, inscribed the Mesa stone, where the resemblance is greater. I venture to think, therefore, that the only hypothesis harmonising these discoveries is that the Indian letters were de- rived, neither from the alphabet of the Northern, nor from that of the Southern Semites, but from that source from which these, in their turn, had been derived — from the pre-Semitic form of writing used in the Euphrates Valley. As to the date, the derivation must have taken place at a time when the resemblance between the forms of the letters is greatest. It must have been, therefore, in the seventh century B.C. or earlier; for a comparison of later Babylonian or Semitic forms shows no sufficient agreement. And it is to be sup- posed that the origin of the Indian alphabet is previous to the time when the parent script was written from right to left. For the Indian, like our WRITING— THE BEGINNINGS 1 1 5 own, runs from left to right. Only the legend on one coin (described in Cunningham’s Coins of Ancient India)' and a few short inscriptions in Ceylon, not yet published, 2 run from right to left. Certain groups of letters also, in the inscriptions of the third century B.C., are intended to be read, as we should say, backwards. 3 The direction of the writing was open to fluctuation when these (by no means the most ancient) records were made. The third line of evidence is that best brought to- gether by Mr. Kennedy in his article in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1898. It tends to show : 1. That continued and extensive trading took place in the seventh century B.C. between Babylon and ports on the west coast of India. 2. That it is highly improbable that there was any such trade much before that time. 3. That it is not at all likely that the Indian 1 The coin No. 1 is reproduced here by the kindness of Mr. Head and Mr. Rapson, from the coin itself, now in the British Museum ; No. 2 is in Mr. White King’s collection. 2 See Mr. Wickramasinha's letter in the J. R. A. S. 1895. 3 See Mr. Wickramasinha’s article in the J. R. A. S. 1901. Fig. 25. — ERAN COINS. [See pp. 321, 322.] BUDDHIST INDIA 1 16 merchants who went to Babylon went also farther inland, from Babylon to the west ; or that they continued their voyages as far as Yemen; or that they reached Babylon overland, by way of the passes, across Afghanistan. There is still much to be done in the working out of the details of each of these three lines of evid- ence. No one of them is yet conclusive by itself. But the consensus of all three lends confirmation to each. And it may now be accepted as a working hypothesis that : 1. Sea-going merchants, availing themselves of the monsoons, were in the habit, at the beginning of the seventh (and perhaps at the end of the eighth) century B.C., of trading from ports on the south-west coast of India (Sovlra at first, afterwards Supparaka and Bharukaccha) to Babylon, then a great mer- cantile emporium. 2. These merchants were mostly Dravidians, not Aryans. Such Indian names of the goods imported as were adopted in the west (Solomon’s ivory, apes, and peacocks, for instance, and the word “ rice”) were adaptations, not of Sanskrit or Pali, but of Tamil words. 3. These merchants there became acquainted with an alphabetic writing derived from that first invented and used by the white pre-Semitic race now called Akkadians. 4. That alphabet had previously been carried, by wandering Semitic tribes, from Babylon to the west, both north-west and south-west. Some of the particular letters learnt by the Indian merchants WRITING— THE BEGINNINGS I are closely allied to letters found on inscriptions recorded by those Semitic tribes, and also on Baby- lonian weights, both of a date somewhat earlier than the time when the Indians made their trading journeys. 5. After the merchants brought this script to India it gradually became enlarged and adapted to suit the special requirements of the Indian learned and colloquial dialects. Nearly a thousand years afterwards the thus adapted alphabet became known as the Brahml Lipl, the Sublime Writing. What name it bore in the interval — for instance, in Asoka’s time — is not known. From it all the alphabets now used in India, Burma, Siam, and Ceylon have been gradually evolved. 6. When this script was first brought to India in the eighth or seventh century B.C., the Indians had already possessed an extensive Vedic literature handed down in the priestly schools by memory, and by memory alone. The alphabet soon became known to the priests. But they continued as before to hand down their books by the old method only. It is probable, however, that they began to make use of written notes to aid the memory on which they still, in the main, depended. 7. The material on which the signs had been traced in Babylon was clay. They were traced in India with an iron style, on leaves, or on pieces of bark, chiefly birch bark. No ink was used ; and these mere scratchings on such fragile substances were not only difficult to make out, but the leaves or bark were apt easily to be broken up or destroyed. 1 18 BUDDHIST INDIA 8. It was not till long afterwards that a method of preparing large pieces of bark or the leaves of the Corypha talipot palm so as to prevent their break- ing was discovered. It was not till long afterwards that an ink was discovered, which could be rubbed over such a leaf with letters scratched upon it, and would then remain in the scratches, thus making the writing easily legible. Till these discoveries had been made there were really no materials practically available for use as books. And it was probably chiefly because of the fact that the need of such ma- terials was not felt that the discoveries were not much sooner made. 9. To say indeed that the need was not felt is, as regards the Vedic schools, not nearly strong enough. The priests were, as a body, exceedingly keen to keep the knowledge of the mantras (the charms or verses), on which the magic of the sacrifice depended, in their own hands. There are some pretty rules about this in the later priestly law-books — rules that received, it should be noted, the cordial ap- proval of Shankara.' “ The ears of a Sudra who listens, intentionally, when the Veda is being recited are to be filled with molten lead. His tongue is to be cut out if he re- cite it. His body is to be split in twain if he pre- serve it in his memory.” 2 The priestly view was that God himself had bestowed the exclusive right of teaching upon the hereditary priests 3 ; who claimed to be, each of them, great divinities, 4 even to the gods. 5 1 On the Vedanta Sutras, i. 3. 38. 2 Gautama, xii. 4-6. 3 Manu, 1. 88. 4 Ibid. ix. 317, 319. 5 Ibid. xi. 85. WRITING— THE BEGINNINGS 119 We cannot, therefore, be far wrong if we suppose they were not merely indifferent to the use of writ- ing as a means of handing on the books so lucrative to themselves, but were even strongly opposed to a method so dangerous to their exclusive privileges. And we ought not to be surprised to find that the oldest manuscripts on bark or palm leaf known in India are Buddhist ; that the earliest written records on stone and metal are Buddhist ; that it is the Buddhists who first made use of writing to record their canonical books ; and that the earliest mention of writing at all in the voluminous priestly literature is in the Vasishtha Dharma Sutra' — one of the later law books, and long posterior to the numerous references quoted above from the Buddhist canon. It is, of course, not impossible, a priori , that the priests in India had developed an alphabet of their own out of picture writing; and that it was on to such an alphabet that the borrowed letters were grafted. General Cunningham went even farther. He thought the alphabet was altogether developed, independently, on Indian soil. But we have at pre- sent, not only no evidence to that effect, but much the other way. All the present available evidence tends to show that the Indian alphabet is not Aryan at all; that it was introduced into India by Dravidian merchants ; and that it was not, in spite of their invaluable services in other respects to In- dian literature, to the priests, whose self-interests were opposed to such discoveries, but to traders, and to less prejudiced literary circles, that India xvi. 10. 14. 120 BUDDHIST INDIA owes the invention of those improvements in the mechanical aids to writing that enabled the long previously existent knowledge of letters to be applied at last to the production and preservation of books. CHAPTER VIII WRITING — ITS DEVELOPMENT I T may be asked why the Indian merchants who brought the knowledge of the alphabet from Babylon to Western India did not also bring the method, then carried in Babylon to so great a de- gree of success, of writing — and of writing not only mercantile memoranda but also books — on clay tablets, on bricks. The problem is not without difficulty. But it does not arise only in India. Elsewhere also the traders or tribes who learnt the alphabet in the Euphrates Valley never adopted the habit of writ- ing on bricks. Bricks and tablets and seals, all of them of clay, have been found, indeed, in widely separated parts of India, with letters, and even sent- ences, inscribed upon them. But the letters on the bricks, though most interesting as palaeographic evid- ence, are merely mason’s marks ; the inscribed clay tablets contain only short sentences of scripture ; and the legends on the seals are only of the usual kind. The fact remains, therefore, that clay was not in any general use among the people as a 121 122 BUDDHIST INDIA material for writing books upon, or even short com- munications. As a specimen of writing on clay the annexed figure of a tablet discovered by Dr. Hoey, Fig. 26. — LEAF OF MS. FROM THE GOSINGA VIHARA OF AN OLD BUDDHIST ANTHOLOGY. by whose kindness I am allowed to reproduce it, is interesting. It contains a Buddhist tract. Of course copper and gold plates were early and often 124 BUDDHIST INDIA used, of which the Takshila copper plates and one of the Maung-gon gold plates are here shown. On the other hand we have abundant evidence, both literary and archaeological, of the use for such purposes of birch bark and palm leaves. The oldest specimen of a book in such writing hitherto discov- ered is the MS. found in the ruins of the Gosinga Vihara, thirteen miles from Khotan. This MS. is written with ink on birch bark in letters of the Kha- rostrl alphabet, an alphabet introduced overland into the extreme north-west of India about 500 B.C., and used locally in Gandhara (side by side with the other alphabet to which reference has been made above, and to which all existing Indian alphabets can be traced back). 1 This MS., portions of which have just found their way both to Paris and St. Peters- burg, must have been written in Gandhara shortly before or after the Christian era. And it contains an anthology of Buddhist religious verses taken from the canonical books, but given in a local dialect, younger than the Pali of the texts.’ The next MS. in point of age is much younger. It is the one discovered by Captain Bower in Mingai, near Kuchar, containing medical receipts and form- ulas for snake-charming, and written in characters of the fourth or perhaps the fifth century A.D., with 1 The name of this alphabet has always been spelt Kharosthl. But Professor Sylvain Levi in his just published article in the Bul- letin de l ' e'eole fr arifais d' extreme-orient for 1902 has clearly shown that the right spelling is as above, and that the Kharostra is simply the name of a country, to wit, Kashgar. 2 See Senart in the Journal Asia/ique for 1898 ; and compare Rh. D.’s note in the J.R.A.S. for 1899. Fig. 28. — THE COl>PER PLATE FROM TAKKA-S1LA. [. Epigraphia Indica, Vol. IV.] BUDDHIST INDIA ink, on birch bark cut to imitate palm leaves. These leaves are also pierced with holes, through which a string can be passed to keep the leaves together — a plan always adopted for palm leaves, but very unsuitable for birch bark, which is so brittle that the string is apt to tearand break the leaves, as it had done in this case. The language used in this MS. is suf- ficiently near to classi- cal Sanskrit for it to be called Sanskrit. But the five different short treatises of which this MS. consists contain, in varying degree, a good many colloquialisms . 1 Other MSS. of great 1 See now, on this MS., Dr. Hoernle’s magnificent edition of the texts, with lithographed reproductions, transliterations, and translations. Professor Buhler’s preliminary remarks on it are in the fifth volume of the Vienna Oriental Journal. 128 BUDDHIST INDIA age have been recently discovered in Turkestan; but these are the oldest ones so far deciphered and edited. The others are still awaiting decipherment, and are in the hands of Dr. Hoernle for that purpose. Now as the Bower MS. is in Sanskrit (though not good Sanskrit), and the Gosinga MS. is in a dialect allied to, but younger than Pali, the natural conclusion would seem to be that, as Sanskrit is older than Pali, the texts contained in the Bower MS. must be older. That the MS. itself, the par- ticular copy that has survived, is some centuries later, does not matter. Pali is to Sanskrit about as Italian is to Latin. Whatever the age of the MSS. in which the copies of them may be written, the text of a work by Vergil must be older than the text of a work by Dante. The conclusion seems, therefore, obvious that a work in Sanskrit, whatever the age of the MS. in which it is written, must be older than a work in Pali, and, a fortiori , older than a work in a dialect that is, philologically speaking, younger than Pali. Oddly enough the exact contrary is the case. Not only is the Gosinga MS. older than the Bower MS., but the verses contained in it are also older than the texts contained in the Bower MS., and that precisely because they are written in a dialect closely allied to Pali. And we should know this for certain even if we had only printed copies of these two works, that is, even if we had not the palaeographic evidence of the age of the handwriting to guide us. For, in the period we are considering, the more closely a book or an inscription approximates to FlG. 31. — THE INSCRIBED VASE FROM THE SAKIYA TOPE. 130 BUDDHIST INDIA pure Sanskrit, unalloyed by colloquialisms, by Pali phrases and grammatical forms, the later it is — not- withstanding the fact that Sanskrit is, etymologi- cally speaking, older than Pali. The explanation of this apparent anomaly is really perfectly plain and simple. It is clear enough from a comparison of the literature, but it is more easily shown, perhaps, by a comparison of the inscriptions. Take the inscription, for instance, on the vase dis- covered by Mr. Peppe in the Sakiya Tope — which is in my opinion the oldest inscription yet discovered in India — and what do we find? 1 1. As to the language. It is entirely in the living language, in the vernacular. 2. As to the orthography. The consonants are roughly and rudely written. 3. The only vowels expressed, by signs hung on to the consonants, are i and n and (in one doubtful case) either e or 0. 4. No consonants are written double, in spite of the fact that double consonants, pronounced double (as in Italian of to-day), were a marked feature of the vernacular. 5. No groups of consonants (such as the ndr in our word hundred or the pi and st in our word plastic , are written as groups. Thus the word for “of the Sakiyas” is written s ki y ti m , which is the nearest orthography the writer could get, or troubled 1 See the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , 1898 and 1899. The annexed illustrations are from photographs by Mr. Peppe to whose skill and enterprise we owe this most interesting and import- ant addition to our knowledge. WRITING— ITS DEVELOPMENT 1 3 1 himself to get, for the word as spoken in the living local dialect. This may have been either Sakiyanam or Sakkiyanam (pronounced Sak-kiyanang). It will be noticed that the orthography, there- fore, is very imperfect. It is, strictly speaking, not so much an alphabet as a syllabary. The light Fig. 32. — THE PEPPE VASES. Found by Mr. Peppe in the Sakiya Tope. vowel a , pronounced as in our word vocal , is sup- posed inherent in every consonant on to which no other vowel is hung. No attempt is yet made to distinguish between long and short vowels. No diphthongs are written. There is no expedient as yet to show that a consonant is to be pronounced as a final, that is, without the inherent a; and this, together with the absence of groups, is what renders it impossible to express the double consonants so frequent in the actual language. 132 BUDDHIST INDIA The next stage vve have (that is, at present ; no doubt as soon as archaeological explorations are carried on systematically in India intermediate stages will be available) are the Asoka inscriptions. Of these thirty-four have so far been found, and M. Senart, in his Inscriptions de Piyadasi, has subjected all those discovered before 1886 to an exhaustive and detailed analysis. With these ought to be compared the greater number of the inscriptions on the Bharhut Tope, some of which are a little older, some a little younger, and only one or two a good deal younger than Asoka. Two tendencies are very marked in these inscrip- tions of the third century B.C. In the first place the orthographical expedients are very much improved. All the long vowels are now marked as such. Once we have a diphthong. Numerous groups of con- sonants are written as such. The letters as a whole are engraved much more neatly and regularly. The alphabet tends, therefore, to be much more accurate, more phonetic, fuller, more complete. On the other hand, the scribes or engravers, or both, have fallen into the habit of giving expression in their orthography to what they conceived to be the more learned and more proper forms of words, and of grammatical inflexions, rather than to the forms actually in use in the real, living language. The alphabet tends, therefore, to be much less ac- curate, to give a less faithful picture of the living speech. This last tendency is exactly analogous to what happened when our own spelling was being set- PORTION OF THE ASHES FROM THE FUNERAL PYRE OF THE 134 BUDDHIST INDIA tied. Englishmen probably pronounced would and could much as they do now. But some one knew there had been an l in the earlier form of would (as in the German wollte ). And so he spelt it with an /, which no longer existed in the real, living speech. Somebody else (who thought he would be quite learned, and proper, and on the safe side), spelt could also with an /, though the l existed, in this case, neither in the older form of the word nor in the living speech. And now we are saddled with the / in both words whether we like it or not. It was this latter tendency which won the day in India. Very gradually the efforts to represent the real facts of the language gave way to another effort altogether, the effort to give expression to the learned phraseology. The past history of the words came to be considered more than their actual sound. Both the language in the inscriptions, and the methods of spelling adopted in them, became more and more artificial. The double process went on through the centuries, until at last, at the very time when the alphabet had been so continually improved that it had become the most perfect instrument of phonetic expression the world has yet seen, the other process had also reached its climax, the living speech had completely disappeared from the monu- ments, and all the inscriptions are recorded in a dead language, in the so-called classical Sanskrit. The oldest inscription in pure Sanskrit so far dis- covered, that of Rudradaman at Girnar in the Kathiawad, is dated (no doubt in the Saka Era) in the year 72. It belongs, therefore, to the middle of IV R I TING— I TS DE VEL OP MEN T 135 the second century after Christ. It had taken four centuries from Asoka’s time to reach this stage. And though the end was not yet, and inscriptions in Fig. 34. — FRAGMENT OF THE I3TH ROCK EDICT OF ASOKA, DIS- COVERED BY PROFESSOR RHYS-DAVIDS AT G 1 RNAR. the vernacular, pedantically contorted, are still met with, from the fifth century onwards the dead language reigns supreme. The case of the coins is, if possible, even more in- 136 BUDDHIST INDIA structive. The oldest coin which bears an inscription in Sanskrit is a unique coin of Satyadaman, be- longing to the western Kshatrapa dynasty, whose approximate date is 200 A.D. 1 Of the seven words contained in the inscription on this coin all have Sanskrit terminations, and only one offends against the rules of sandhi as observed in Sanskrit. All coins previous to this one bear legends either in Pali or in the vernacular. So, also, oddly enough, do all subsequent coins for a period of about two centuries. The experiment was evidently found to have been a failure, and was not repeated. Spor- adically we find single words in Sanskrit occurring in legends, otherwise in the vernacular. These are evidence of the desire of the mint authorities, or of the mint officials, to appear learned. But the people did not fancy the innovation of Sanskrit legends, and the authorities apparently did not care to go on issuing coins not popular with the people. So in our own country up to as late as the end of the nineteenth century any important monumental record in honour of a wealthy or successful personage was almost always written in Latin. Coins still, for the most part, have their legends in Latin. And throughout Europe, up to a date not so very re- mote, works on a great variety of subjects were written, and education was often carried on, in that language . 3 We have never reached the point, reached in the fifth century A.D. in India, that the 1 Rapson in the J. R. A. S. 1899, p. 379. 5 Even in 1855, the first Pali text edited in Europe was edited with Latin introduction, Latin notes, and a Latin translation. WRI TING — I TS DE VEL OP MEN T *37 dead language was exclusively used. But we were not so very far from it. And the conditions as to this matter in the two continents — for India is more of a continent than a country — were more similar than is often supposed. The dead language in each case was the language used in the sacrifice. The greater credit attaching to it was largely of a re- ligious nature. But it was also a sort of lingua franca widely understood through many countries in which many various languages were respectively the language of the people. There was a time in each case when the clergy were in great part the main custodians of the learning of the day, so that the language of the church was the most convenient language in which to appeal to a larger circle of educated people than could be reached through any one vernacular. And in each case those who first used the vernacular were the men who wished to appeal to the people, who were advocating what they deemed to be reforms. There are, of course, differences also in these two cases. The most important of these is that, in India, the use of the vernacular came first in order of time. And one result of this was the curious dialect half-way between the vernacular and the dead language, which may be called equally well either mixed Sanskrit or mixed vernacular, ac- cording as it approximates more or less to the one or to the other. Another result was that, the ver- nacular being taken so early, the grammatical term- inations still survived in it in a shape more or less akin to those in use in the dead language. When 138 BUDDHIST INDIA Dr. Johnson overlaid his English with a mass of Latin words, the process stopped at a kind of hybrid vernacular. When the Indian writers before and after the Christian Era did the same sort of thing, and began to adopt also the Sanskrit grammatical terminations, the end was inevitable. When they made use of a mixture of some real forms and words drawn from the vernacular, some such words slightly altered to make them look more learned, and some forms wholly artificial with no existence at all in living speech, the only possible consequence was that the first sort were called vulgar, the second blunders, and only the third declared to be right. The hybrid they thus made use of became in- creasingly too like Sanskrit to be able to contend against it ; and from the end of the fourth century the latter alone was used. Then, linguistically speaking, death reigned supreme. The living lan- guage was completely overshadowed by the artificial substitute. The changeling had taken the place of the rightful heir. The parasite had overgrown and smothered the living tree from which it drew its sustenance, from which it had derived its birth. The loss, from the point of view of intellectual advancement, must have been very great. Who can doubt that Europe was fortunate in escaping (and it was a very narrow escape) a similar bondage? Classical Sanskrit, in consequence very largely of the rich fortune it had inherited from the vernacular as previously cultivated, — for Pali is not much farther removed from the vernacular than, say, Hume’s Essay from the spoken English of the day, WRITING— ITS DEVELOPMENT 139 — is rich in varied expressions. But, with its long compounds and its poverty in syntax, it is cumbrous and unwieldy as compared even with the Latin of the Middle Ages, and much more so if compared with any living tongue. It must be a disadvantage to write in any language in which one does not habitually speak and think. And the disadvantage is not lessened when the existing works in that language are charged with an unprogressive (not to say reactionary) spirit in religion, philosophy, and social views of life. It is therefore clear why Pali books written in India, or books in a dialect allied to Pali, or in a mixture of such a dialect and forms taken from pure Sanskrit, are each of them older than the books written in classical Sanskrit ; and why a coin, a book, or an inscription, in so far as its language ap- proximates to the regular Sanskrit, is later, and not earlier. The vernacular was used first. Then, gradually, what were considered more learned forms (taken from the dead language used in the priestly schools) were, in a greater and greater degree, made use of, till, finally, the regular Sanskrit became used exclusively. CHAPTER IX LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE I. GENERAL VIEW I N early times there must have been several systems of literature preserved independently among the followers of different schools. No one of these schools preserved (that is, learnt by heart) the literature of the others. But each knew of the others, talked over the opinions maintained in them, considered in their own Suttas what was preserved in the Suttas of their opponents. We have a fair number of well-established instances of men who had received a long training in one school passing over to another. These men at least had thus acquired a familiarity, more or less complete, with two literatures. In the forests adjoining the settlements, the dis- ciples of the various schools, living a hermit life, occupied themselves, according to the various tend- encies of the schools to which they belonged, either in meditation or in sacrificial rites, or in practices of self-torture, or in repeating over to themselves, 140 LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 14I and in teaching to their pupils, the Suttas contain- ing the tenets of their school. Much time was spent in gathering fruits and roots for their susten- ance, or in going into the village for alms. And there was difference of opinion, and of practice, as to the comparative importance attached to the learn- ing of texts. But the hermitages where the learn- ing, or the repeating, of texts was unknown were the exceptions. Then, besides the Hermits, there was another body of men, greatly respected throughout the country, quite peculiar to India, and not known even there much before the rise of Buddhism, called the Wanderers ( Paribbdjaka ). They were teachers, or sophists, who spent eight or nine months of every year wandering about precisely with the object of engaging in conversational discussions on matters of ethics and philosophy, nature lore and mysticism. Like the sophists among the Greeks, they differed very much in intelligence, in earnestness, and in honesty. Some are described as “ Eel-wrigglers,” “ Hair-splitters,” and not without reason if we may fairly judge from the specimens of their lucubrations preserved by their opponents . 1 But there must have been many of a very different character, or the high reputation they enjoyed, as a body, would scarcely have been maintained. We hear of halls put up for their accommodation, for the discussion by them of their systems of belief. Such was “ The Hall ” in Queen Mallika’s park at Savatthi , 2 and the “Gabled Pavilion” put up by the Licchavi clan in 1 Dialogues of Ike Buddha , 1. 37, 38. 2 Ibid., p. 244. 142 BUDDHIST INDIA the Great Wood adjoining their capital of Vesali, and often mentioned in the books as the resort of the Wanderers. Or a special space was set apart for them in the groves adjoining the settlement, — such were the sweet-smelling Champaka Grove on the borders of the lake dug out by Queen Gaggara at Champa 1 ; the Mora-nivapa, the place where the peacocks were fed, at Rajagaha, 2 and others. The Wanderers are often represented as meeting one another at such places, or at the rest-houses ( chowltries ) which it was a prevalent custom for vil- lagers to put up on the roadside for the common use of travellers. And they were in the habit, on their journeys, of calling on other Wanderers, or on the learned brahmins, or on the Hermits, resident in the neighbourhood of the places where they stopped. So Dlgha-nakha calls on the Buddha, 3 the Buddha visits Sakuludayi, 4 Vekhanassa calls on the Buddha, 6 Keniya does the same, 6 and Potali-putta calls on Samiddhi. 7 The residents also, both to testify respect and to listen to their talk, used to call on the Wanderers when the latter stayed in or near a village — evidence both of the popularity of the Wanderers, and of the frequent interchange of opinion. The Wanderers, some of whom were women, were not ascetics, except so far as they were celibates. The practices of self-mortification are always re- ferred to as carried out by the Hermits in the woods. The Buddha, before he attained Nirvana under the ' Dialogues of the Buddha , 144. 4 M. 2. i. 29. 6 S. N. p. 99. 2 M. 2. 1. 3 M. 1. 497. 6 M. 2. 40. . 7 M. 3. 207. LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE H3 Tree of Wisdom, had been such a self-torturer ( tapasa ) in the woods on the banks of the Nerah- jara. Thenceforward he became a Wanderer. It was easy to pass from one career to the other. But they were quite distinct, were spoken of by different names, and in the priestly law-books we find quite different regulations laid down for the Hermits on the one hand, and the Wanderers on the other . 1 We have the names of a considerable number of the individuals in both of these classes. And not only the personal names. In those cases when a number of individuals acknowledged the leader- ship of one teacher, or adhered to the same set of opinions (whether attributed to one teacher or not), they had also corporate names. Thus the members of that Order which we call the Buddhist Order were called Sakyaputtlya Samanas. Each order was called a Sangha. The members of the Sangha which we call the Jain Order were called the Niganthas, “The Unfettered.” There was an Order the mem- bers of which were called the Ajivakd , the “ Men of the Livelihood.” Both of these orders were older than the Buddhist. The Jains have remained as an organised community all through - the history of India from before the rise of Buddhism down to to-day. The Ajlvakas still existed as an organised community down to the time of Asoka’s grandson Dasaratha, who gave them, as we learn from the in- scriptions on the caves, certain cave-hermitages. They have long ago died out. And with the dis- 1 The references are collected in Dialogues of the Buddha , x. pp. 20S-212, 221. 144 BUDDHIST INDIA appearance of the Order, the Suttas containing their ideas have vanished also. For during a long period they existed only in the memories of the members of the Order ; and even after writing was applied to the preservation of such literary works, it was only the members of the Order or lay adherents of the school who would copy them. There are many references 1 in Jain and Buddhist books to this Or- der, and to the opinions they professed. And it will be possible, when these have been fully com- pared and summarised, to arrive at a more or less complete and accurate view of their tenets. The names of other orders, of which we know little more than the names, have been preserved in the Anguttara. 3 And the existence of at least two or three others can be inferred from incidental refer- ences. There is still in existence a Vaikhanasa Sutra, of about the third century A.D., which pur- ports to contain the rules of an Order founded by one Vikhanas. It has just been mentioned that a certain Vekhanassa, a Wanderer, called on the Bud- dha. It is not improbable that he belonged to that Order. In a note on Panini, iv. 3. no, there are mentioned two brahmin orders, the Karmandinas and the Parasarinas. Now in the Majjhima (3. 298) the opinions of a certain Parasariya, a brahmin teacher, are discussed by the Buddha. It is very probable that he was either the founder or an ad- herent of the second of these schools. In any case the Order still existed at the time when the note ' Collected in Dialogues of the Buddha , 1. pp. 71, 221. 2 Ibid. p. 220. LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 145 to Panini was made; and it is probably referred to in an inscription mentioned by Cunningham. 1 Of the other schools or corporate bodies of Wan- derers, or of Hermits, only the names are known. But as even the names throw light on the movement they may here be mentioned. 2 They are : 1. Munda-savaka . — “The disciples of the Shave- ling.” 2. Jatilakd .— “ Those who wear their hair in braids.” To do so was the rule for those of the Hermits who were brahmins, and perhaps other her- mits also did so. In that case they cannot have formed one corporate body. 3. Magandika . — This name is probably derived from the name of the founder of a corporate body. But all their records have perished, and we know nothing of them otherwise. 4. Tcdandika . — “ The bearers of the triple staff.” This is probably the name given, in the Buddhist community, to those of the Wanderers (not Her- mits) who were brahmins. They were not allowed, by their rules, to wear their hair in braids, but must either have their heads shaved entirely, or so shaved as to leave a forelock only. 5. Aviruddhaka . — “The friends.” We know as yet nothing otherwise about them. 6. Gotainaka . — “ The followers of Gotama.” These are almost certainly the followers of Devadatta, the Buddha’s cousin, who founded an Order in opposi- tion to the Buddhist Order, on the ground that the 1 Archeological Reports , xx. 105. 2 For references see Dialogues of the Buddha , pp. 220-222. 146 BUDDHIST INDIA latter was too eas} r -going in its regulations as to food, and did not favour asceticism. 7. Devadhammika . — “ Those who follow the re- ligion of the gods” or perhaps “ of the god.” On neither interpretation do we know the exact mean- ing of the term. We find in this curious list several names, used technically as the designation of particular orders, or bodies of religicux, but in meaning applicable quite as much to most of the others. They all claimed to be pure as regards means of livelihood (like the Ajlvakas) ; to be unfettered (like the Niganthas) ; to be friends (like the Aviruddhakas) ; they were all, except the Jatilakas, Wanderers, they were all mendicants (Bhikshus). The names can only gradually have come to have the special mean- ing of the member of one division or order, only. We find a similar state of things in the names of Christian sects in England to-day. And a consider- able time must have elapsed before the names could thus have become specialised. All this is very suggestive from more than one point of view. And as some of these points are of the first importance for a right understanding of the questions of language and literature, I may be al- lowed to enlarge a little on one or two of them. It is clear, in the first place, that there was no obstacle, arising from diversity of language, to intercourse — and that not merely as regards ordinary conversa- tion about the ordinary necessities of daily life, but as regards philosophical and religious discussions of a subtle and earnest kind. The common language LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 147 thus widely understood — used from the land of the Kurus in the west to Magadha in the east, north- wards at Savatthi and Kusinara in the Nepal hills, and southwards in one direction as far as Ujjen — could not have been Sanskrit. Classical Sanskrit was not yet in existence ; and the language used in the Brahmanas was neither sufficiently known out- side the widely scattered schools of the brahmins, nor of a nature to lend itself easily to such discus- sions. The very last thing one would say of it would be to call it a conversational idiom. Neither is it probable that each one could have spoken in the dialect of the peasantry of his own place of origin. It would have been impossible to use such a dialect for the discussion of such subjects as are described as the matter of these dialogues. The only reasonable and probable explanation is that the Wanderers talked in a language common among the cultured laity (officials, nobles, mer- chants, and others), which bore to the local dialects much the same relation as the English of London, in Shakespeare’s time, bore to the various dialects spoken in Somersetshire, Yorkshire, and Essex. The growth of such a language had only just then become possible. It was greatly promoted by (if not, indeed, the immediate result of) the growth of the great kingdom of Kosala. This included, just before the rise of Buddhism, all, and more than all, of the present United Provinces. And it gave occasion and security for peaceful intercourse, both of a commercial and of an official kind, from one end to the other of its extensive territory. It was 1 48 BUDDHIST INDIA precisely these political conditions which favoured also the rapid growth of the institution or custom of the Wanderers, of whom we have no evidence prior to the establishment of the Kosalan power, and who doubtless contributed much to the cultivation of the more intellectual side of the common language which was enabled to grow up under the protective shield of the Kosalan peace. The question has been much complicated and obscured by the impressions derived from the San- skrit dramas which early in the history of our ac- quaintance with Indian literature became known to Europeans. In them the men of any social stand- ing speak Sanskrit, except occasionally when ad- dressing women. And even the women, especially those of higher rank, are supposed to understand, and occasionally, mostly when verses are put into their mouths, to speak it. Otherwise in the dramas the characters talk, not the vernacular, but the literary Prakrits . 1 It is probable, even at the time when the dramas were written, that as a matter of fact every one, in ordinary daily life, spoke neither Sanskrit nor Prakrit, but simply the vernaculars. It is only the authors, when addressing a cultured public at a date when Sanskrit had become the paramount literary language, who thought it proper, in their dramas, to divide up the speeches between Sanskrit and the equally unreal literary Prakrits. But how- ever that may be, even if Sanskrit were then used 1 See the instances collected by Pischel, Grammatik der Prakrit- sprachen , pp. 31, 32. LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE I49 by ordinary people in their daily intercourse, — which seems to me quite incredible, — that is still of no value at all as evidence of the condition of things twelve centuries before, in a much more simple and natural state of society. Another point is that though brahmins take part in the religious and philosophical conversations of those early times, and in the accounts of them are always referred to with respect, and treated with the same courtesy that they always themselves (with one or two instructive exceptions) extended also to others, yet they hold no predominant po- sition. The majority of the Wanderers, and the most influential individuals among them, are not brahmins. And the general impression conveyed by the texts is that the Wanderers and other non- priestly teachers were quite as much, if not more esteemed than the brahmins by the whole people — - kings, nobles, officials, merchants, artisans, and peasantry. “ But that is only a matter of course,” will be the obvious objection. “ The books you quote, if not the work of bitter opponents, were at least com- posed under rajput influence, and are prejudiced against the brahmins. The law-books and the epics represent the brahmins as the centre round which everything in India turns ; and that not only be- cause of the sacredness of their persons, but because of their marked intellectual superiority to the rest of the people. Or take the European books on Indian literature and religion. They treat these subjects as practically identical with literature and BUDDHIST INDIA 150 religion as shown in brahmin books. Surely, then, the brahmins must have been predominant in the intellectual life of the period you are considering.” “ These are not two independent testimonies,” one would reply. “ The European writers would be perfectly willing to consider other texts, if they only had them. They have been perfectly right in using the material before them. And in editing texts they naturally chose first those nearest at hand. But even so, with practically only priestly books to judge by, the)'’ are by no means unani- mous in accepting the views of those texts as to the exclusive supremacy of the brahmins in early times.” Consider, for instance, the opinion of Profes- sor Bhandarkar — himself, be it noted, a high-caste brahmin, and not only the most distinguished of native scholars, but so versed in the methods of historical criticism that his opinion is entitled to special weight. In a strikingly suggestive and im- portant paper 1 he calls attention to the evidence of the inscriptions. In the second century after Christ they begin to record grants of land to brahmins. In the third there are also a few in- stances. From the fourth century onwards there are quite numerous inscriptions showing a marked rise in brahmin influence. The Gupta kings are then stated to have carried out the most com- plicated and expensive sacrifices, such as the Horse- sacrifice. Each of two inscriptions records the 1 Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society for igor. LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE I 5 I erection of a sacrificial post, another an endow- ment for lighting lamps in a temple to the sun. There are grants of villages for the performance of sacrificial rites; and numerous grants of land to brahmins, and to the temples in their charge. But for the four centuries before that (that is to say, from 300 B.C. to 100 A.D.) no brahmin, no brahmin temple, no brahmin god, no sacrifice or ritualistic act of any kind is ever, even once, re- ferred to. There is a very large number of gifts recorded as given by kings, princes, and chiefs, by merchants, goldsmiths, artisans, and ordinary householders ; but not one of them is given in support of anything — of any opinion or divinity or practice — with which the brahmins had anything to do. And whereas the later inscriptions, favour- ing the brahmins and their special sacrifices, are in Sanskrit, these earlier ones, in which they are not mentioned, are in a sort of Pali — not in the local vernacular of the place where the inscriptions are found, but in a dialect similar, in many essential respects, to the dialect for common intercourse, based on the vernacular, which, I suggest, the Wanderers must have used, in their discussions, at the time when Buddhism arose. This marked distinction in the inscriptions of the two periods — both as to the object of the gifts they record, and as to the language in which they are written— leads Professor Bhandarkar to the follow- ing conclusion : “ The period that we have been speaking of [that is. 152 BUDDHIST INDIA from the beginning of the second century b.c. to the end of the fourth century after] has left no trace of a building or sculpture devoted to the use of the Brahmin religion. Of course Brahminism existed ; and it was probably, during the period, being developed into the form which it assumed in later times. But the religion certainly does not occupy a prominent position, and Buddhism was followed by the large mass of the people from princes down to the humble workman.” And he goes on to say that the language of the earlier inscriptions “ indicates a greater deference for the peo- ple who used it, than for Brahmanic learning.” If this opinion be accepted as accurate for that period (200 B.C.-400 A.D.) — and it certainly seems incontrovertible — then, a fortiori , it must be ac- cepted in yet larger measure for the period four centuries earlier. As Professor Hopkins says' : “Brahminism has always been an island in a sea. Even in the Brahmanic age there is evidence to show that it was the isolated belief of a comparatively small group of minds. It did not even control all the Aryan population.” With regard to the inscriptions, M. Senart has shown conclusively, by an exhaustive study of the whole subject, that they at no time, either in spelling or in vocabulary, present us with a faithful picture of any vernacular. The degree in which they become more and more nearly allied to Sanskrit is a curious and interesting barometer by which we can gauge the approach of the impending revolution in politics, religion, and literature. And the gradual change in 1 Religions of India (1896), p. 548. LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 153 their form, though that form never gives us the real vernacular, is an invaluable assistance in establishing the linguistic history of India. To treat that ques- tion at all fully, even in an elementary manner, would demand at least a volume. But the main features may be summarised as follows. We have, in the following order (as to time) : 1. The dialects spoken by the Aryan invaders of India, and by the Dravidian and Kolarian inhabitants they found there. 2. Ancient High Indian, the Vedic. 3. The dialects spoken by the Aryans, now often united by marriage and by political union with the Dravidians, in their settlements either along the spurs of the Himalaya range from Kashmir to Nepal, or down the Indus Valley and then across to Avanti, or along the valleys of the Jumna and the Ganges. 4. Second High Indian, Brahmanic, the literary language of the Brahmanas and Upanishads. 5. The vernaculars from Gandhara to Magadha at the time of the rise of Buddhism, not so divergent probably as not to be more or less mutually intel- ligible. 6. A conversational dialect, based probably on the local dialect of Savatthi, the capital of Kosala, and in general use among Kosala officials, among mer- chants, and among the more cultured classes, not only throughout the Kosala dominions, but east and west from Delhi to Patna, and north and south from Savatthi to Avanti. 7. Middle High Indian, Pali, the literary language 154 BUDDHIST INDIA based on No. 6, probably in the form in which it was spoken in Avanti. 8. The Asoka dialect, founded on No. 6, especially as spoken at Patna, but much influenced by the aim at approximation to Nos. 7 and II. 9. The Ardha-Magadhi, the dialect of the Jain Angas. 10. The Lena 1 dialect of the cave inscriptions from the second century B.C. onwards, based on No. 8, but approximating more and more to the next, No. 11, until it merges altogether into it. 11. Standard High Indian, Sanskrit — elaborated, as to form and vocabulary, out of No. 4 ; but greatly enriched by words first taken from Nos. 5 to 7, and then brought back, as to form, into harmony with No. 4. For long the literary language only of the priestly schools, it was first used in inscriptions and coins from the second century A.D. onwards ; and from the fourth and fifth centuries onwards became the literary lingua franca for all India. 12. The vernaculars of the India of the fifth cent- ury A.D. and onwards. 13. Prakrit, the literary form of these vernaculars, and especially of Maharashtri. These are derived, not from No. 11 (Sanskrit), but from No. 12, the later forms of the sister dialects to No. 6. The technical terms Sanskrit and Prakrit are used strictly, in India, as shown in Nos. 11 and 13. San- skrit is never used for No. 2 or No. 4. Prakrit is never used for No. 7 or No. 8. Sanskrit was, and is, ' This is the name suggested by Professor Pischel, Grammatik der Prakritsprachen , 1901, p. 5. LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE »55 written in India in various alphabets, a scribe in the north using that form of the Brahml alphabet cur- rent in the district in which he wrote, and a scribe in the south using the corresponding form of the Dra- vidian alphabet. The particular one of these many alphabets usually selected for use in Europe is an alphabet from Western India of the ninth century A.D. ; and it is, therefore, often called the Sanskrit alphabet. As appears from the foregoing list, the centre of linguistic predominance has naturally shifted, in India, with political power. At first it was in the Panjab; then in Kosala ; then in Magadha; and finally, when Sanskrit had become the lingua franca , it was in Western India that the most important ver- nacular was found. It is only in Ceylon that we have documents sufficient to follow the continuous development of a vernacular that has been able to hold its own against the depressing influence of the dead language used in the schools. And the relation there between the vernacular, the lan- guage of the inscriptions (based on the vernacular, but subject to the constant and increasing influence of a desire to show knowledge of the “higher” languages), the language used in poetry, Elu (the Prakrit of Ceylon), and Pali, which was there a dead language, used in the schools, is most in- structively parallel, throughout, to the history of language in India. Throughout the long history of Aryan speech Dravidian dialects were also spoken ; and in the north, I venture to think, to a much larger ex- 56 BUDDHIST INDIA tent and much later in time than is usually sup- posed. Our No. 2, Vedic, is largely subject to Dravidian influence, both in phonetics and in vo- cabulary. The Aryan vernaculars throughout, and all the literary forms of speech, — Pali, Sanskrit, and Prakrit, — are charged with it in a degree no less than that in which the descent and the blood-rela- tionships of the many peoples of India are charged with non-Aryan elements — and that is saying a great deal. The fact that south of the Godavari we find the reverse state of things — Dravidian dialects charged with Aryan elements — shows that the Aryan settle- ments there were late, and not very important in regard to numbers. And it took a long time, in spite of a fair sprinkling of brahmin colonists, for the brahmin influence, now so supreme, to reach its supremacy in those parts. The mass of the more wealthy classes, and the more cultured people, in the south, were Buddhists and Jain before they were Hindu in faith. As late as the fifth and sixth centuries we have Pali books written in Kancipura and Taftjur; and as Buddhism declined Jainism be- came predominant. It was only after the rise of brahmin influence in Northern India in the fourth and fifth centuries, and after it had become well established there, that it became the chief factor also in the south. But when once it had reached that stage, it developed so strongly as to react with great results on the north, where the final victory was actually won during the period from Kumarila to Sankara (70 o to 830 A.D.), both of them born in the LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 157 south, and one of them, apparently, of half Dra- vidian blood. The victory was won. But how far was it a vic- tory ? The brahmins had become the sole arbiters in law and social institutions. Their theory of castes had been admitted, and to their own castes was accorded an unquestioned supremacy. Their claim to the exclusive right to teach was practically acknowledged. Of those rajputs who had disputed their authority, the Buddhists and Jains were both reduced to feeble minorities, and the rest had be- come mostly subservient. All philosophy, except their own pantheistic theosophy, had been driven out of the field. But Vedic rights and Yedic di- vinities, the Vedic language and Vedic theology, had also gone under in the struggle. The gods of the people received now the homage of the people. Bloody sacrifices were still occasionally offered, but to new divinities; and brahmins no longer presided over the ritual. Their literature had had to be re- cast to suit the new worship, to gain the favour and support of those who did not reverence and worship the Vedic gods. And all sense of history had been lost in the necessity of garbling the story of the past so as to make it tally with their own pretensions. It was when they had ceased to depend on their rights as priests of those sacrifices not much used by the people (who preferred the less costly cult of their local gods), when they had become the champions, the literary defenders, the poets, of the popular gods, that they succeeded in their aim. They had probably gained what most of them 158 BUDDHIST INDIA wanted most. And in deserting the faith of their forefathers to adopt other views it is by no means certain that they were not first really converted, that they gave up anything they themselves still wanted to keep. The most able of them had ceased philosophically to care for any such divinities as the Vedic ones, and it was a matter of indifference to them what gods the people followed. A small and decreasing minority continued to keep alive the flickering lamp of Vedic learning ; and to them the Indian peoples will one day look back with especial gratitude and esteem. This rapid sketch of the general history of lan- guage and literature in India is enough to show that there also, precisely as in Europe, a dominant factor in the story is the contest between the temporal and spiritual powers. Guelph and Ghibelin, priest and noble, rajput and brahmin, these are the contending forces. From India we had had hitherto only that version of the long war, of its causes and of its con- sequences, which has been preserved by the priestly faction. They make out that they were throughout the leading party. Perhaps so. But it is well to consider also the other side ; and not to forget the gravity of the error we should commit if we should happen, in reliance on the priestly books, to ante- date, by about a thousand years, the victory of the priests; to suppose, in other words, that the con- dition of things was the same at the beginning of the struggle as it was at the end. It is difficult to avoid being misunderstood. So I would repeat that the priests were always there, LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE *59 were always militant, were always a power. Many of them were learned. A few of them, seldom the learned ones, were wealthy. All of them, even those neither learned nor wealthy, had a distinct prestige. There was never wanting among them a minority dis- tinguished, and rightly distinguished, for earnestness or for intellectual power, or for both. This minority contributed largely to the influence of forward move- ments both in philosophy and in ethics. Certain members of it were famous as leaders, not only in the brahmin schools, but also among the Wanderers. Even among the Jains and Buddhists a minority of the most influential men were brahmins. But it is a question of degree. Their own later books per- sistently exaggerate, misstate, above all (that most successful method of suggcstio falsi ) omit the other side. They have thus given a completely dis- torted view of Indian society, and of the place, in it, of the priests. They were not the only learned, or the only intellectual men, any more than they were the only wealthy ones. The religion and the customs recorded in their books were not, at any period, the sole religion, or the only customs, of the many peoples of India. The intellectual movement before the rise of Buddhism was in large measure a lay movement, not a priestly one. During the sub- sequent centuries, down to the Christian era, and beyond it, the priests were left high and dry by the vigorous current of the national aims and hopes. Even later than that how different is the colouring of the picture drawn by the Chinese pilgrims from that of the priestly artists. And we shall continue i6o BUDDHIST INDIA to have but a blurred and confused idea of Indian history unless, and until, the priestly views are checked and supplemented throughout by a just and proportionate use of the other views now open to research. CHAPTER X LITERATURE II. THE PALI BOOKS I N the last chapter we have seen that in the sixth century B.C. there was in India a very considerable amount of literature of a special sort. Hampered as it was by the absence of written books, by the necessity of learning by heart, and of constantly repeating, the treatises in which it was contained, the extent of the literature is evidence of a consider- able degree both of intelligence and of earnestness in effort among the people of India in those days. A great deal of it, perhaps the larger portion of it, has absolutely perished. But a considerable part of the results of the literary activity of each of three different schools has survived. It is by a compari- son of three sets of documents, each of them looking at things from a different point of view, that we have to reconstruct the history of the time. Of these three the surviving books — if books they may be called which had never yet been written — composed and used by those of the brahmins who 161 BUDDHIST INDIA 1 62 earned their livelihood by the sacrifices, have been now, for the most part, edited and translated ; and a large part of the historical results to be won from them have been summarised and explained. But much remains to be done. The documents of the other two schools may be expected to throw fresh light on passages in the brahmin books now mis- understood. The unhappy system of taking these ancient records in the sense attributed to them by modern commentators with much local knowledge but no historical criticism, with great learning but also with considerable party bias, was very naturally adopted at first by European scholars who had ev- erything to learn. The most practical, indeed the only then possible, course was to avail oneself of the assistance of those commentaries, or of the living pandits whose knowledge was entirely based upon them. In the interpretation of the Vedic hymns this method, followed in Wilson’s translation, has now been finally abandoned. But it still survives in many places in the interpretation of the documents nearest to the date of the rise of Buddhism. And we still find, for instance, in the most popular versions of the Upanishads, opinions that are really the outcome of centuries of philosophic or theosophic discussions, transplanted from the pages of Sankara in the ninth century A.D. into these ancient texts of the eighth or seventh century B.C. This method of interpretation takes effect in two ways. A passage in the vague and naive style of those old thinkers (or, rather, poets) is made more exact and precise, is given what is, no doubt, a LI TER A TURE 163 clearer meaning, by putting into it the later ideas. And in the translation of single words, especially those of philosophic or ethical import, a connotation, which they had really acquired many centuries after- wards, is held applicable at the earlier date. In both these cases a better commentary could be drawn from the general views, and from the exact meaning oi philosophic terms, preserved in documents much nearer in time to the Upanishads, though opposed to them on many essential points. As Professor Jacobi says 1 : “The records of the Buddhists and Jainas about the philosophic ideas current at the time of the Buddha and the Mahavlra, meagre though they be [he is speaking of the incidental references to the ideas they did not accept], are of the greatest im- portance to the historian of that epoch.” Of these records the Pali ones (thanks, in great part, to the continuous efforts, during the past twenty years, of the Pali Text Society), are very nearly all now available. We can say not only what they do, but (which is often of even more import- ance) what they do not, contain. The Jain records are unfortunately as yet known only in fragments. It is the greatest desideratum for the history of this period that they should be made accessible in full. The philosophical and religious speculations con- tained in them may not have the originality, or intrinsic value, either of the Vedanta or of Bud- dhism. But they are none the less historically im- portant because they give evidence of a stage less 1 Jaina Sutras. 2. xxvii. 164 BUDDHIST INDIA cultured, more animistic, that is to say, earlier. And incidentally they will undoubtedly be found, as the portions accessible already show, to contain a large number of important references to the ancient geo- graphy, the political divisions, the social and eco- nomic conditions of India at a period hitherto very imperfectly understood. It is difficult to appreciate the objections made to the authenticity and authority of these documents. The arguments advanced in 1884 by Professor Ja- cobi 1 seem quite incontrovertible, and indeed they have not been seriously disputed. The books pur- port to be substantially the ones put together in the fourth century B.c. when Bhadrabahu was head of the community. The Jains themselves, of all divis- ions or schools, acknowledge that there had been older books (the Purvas, the Former Ones), now lost. Had they been inventing the story this is not the way in which they would have put it. They would have claimed that the existing books were the origi- nal literature of their Order. The linguistic and epigraphic evidence so far available confirms in many respects both the general reliability of the traditions current among the Jains, and the accuracy of this particular detail. Of course the name given in this tradition to the older books cannot have been the original name. They were only “ former ” as com- pared with the eleven Angas that are still preserved. And the existing books, if of the fourth century, can only be used with critical care as evidence of insti- tutions, or events, of the sixth century B.C. Still, 1 Jaina Sutras , I. xxxvii.-xlv. LI TER A TURE 165 even so, we have here important materials for Indian history, at present only very imperfectly utilised. It is really much the same with the existing records of the other school, of the men we now call Bud- dhists. They have as yet been only very imperfectly utilised, though they are better and more completely known than the last. This is partly, no doubt, be- cause we call them Buddhists, and imagine them, therefore, to belong to a separate class, quite distinct from other Indians of that epoch. The Buddhists were, as a matter of fact, characteristically and dis- tinctively Indian. They probably, at least during the fourth and third centuries B.C., formed the ma- jority of the people. And the movement of thought out of which all these schools arose, so far from being a negligible quantity, as the priestly books suggest, was one of the most dominant factors the historian of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries B.C. has to consider. As to the age of the Buddhist canonical books, the best evidence is the contents of the books them- selves — the sort of words they use, the style in which they are composed, the ideas they express. Objec- tion, it is true, has recently been raised against the use of such internal evidence. And the objection is valid if it be urged, not against the general principle of the use of such evidence, but against the wrong use of it. We find, for instance, that Phallus-worship is often mentioned, quite as a matter of course, in the Mahabharata, as if it had always been common everywhere throughout Northern India. In the 1 66 BUDDHIST INDIA Nikayas, though they mention all sorts of what the Buddhists regarded as foolish or superstitious forms of worship, this particular kind, Siva-worship under the form of the Linga, is not even once referred to. The Mahabharata mentions the Atharva Veda, and takes it as a matter of course, as if it were an idea generally current, that it was a Veda, the fourth Veda. The Nikayas constantly mention the three others, but never the Atharva. Both cases are in- teresting. But before drawing the conclusion that, therefore, the Nikayas, as we have them, are older than the existing text of the Mahabharata, we should want a very much larger number of such cases, all tending the same way, and also the certainty that there were no cases of an opposite tendency that could not otherwise be explained. On the other hand, suppose a MS. were discovered containing, in the same handwriting, copies of Bacon’s Essays and of Hume’s Essay, with nothing to show when, or by whom, they were written; and that we knew nothing at all otherwise about the matter. Still we should know, with absolute certainty, which was relatively the older of the two ; and should be able to determine, within a quite short period, the actual date of each of the two works. The evidence would be irresistible because it would consist of a very large number of minute points of language, of style, and, above all, of ideas expressed, all tending in the same direction. This is the sort of internal evidence that we have before us in the Pali books. Any one who habitually reads Pali would know at once that the Nikayas are LI TER A TURE 167 older than the Dhamma Sangani ; that both are older than the Katha Vatthu ; that all three are older than the Milinda. And the Pali scholars most compet- ent to judge are quite unanimous on the point, and on the general position of the Pali literature in the history of literature in India. But this sort of evidence can appeal, of course, only to those familiar with the language and with the ideas. To those who are not, the following points may be suggestive : On the monuments of the third century B.C. we find the names of donors — donors of different parts of the building — inscribed on those parts (pillars, rails, and bas-reliefs). When the names are common ones, certain epithets are added, to distinguish the donors from other persons bearing the same name. Such epithets are either local (as we might say, John of Winchester) or they specify an occupation (as we might say, John the carpenter, or John the clerk) or are otherwise distinctive. Among these epithets have been found the following : 1. Dhainma-katJiika . — “Preacher of the System ” (the Dhamma) — the “System” being a technical term in the Buddhist schools to signify the philo- sophical and ethical doctrine as distinguished from the Vinaya, the Rules of the Order. 2. Pctakin. — “One who had (that is, knew by heart) the Pitaka.” The Pitaka is the traditional statements of Buddhist doctrine as contained in the Sutta Pitaka. The word means basket, and as a technical term applied to a part of their literature: it is used exclusively by the Buddhists. BUDDHIST INDIA 1 68 3. Suttantika . — “ A man who knows a Suttanta by heart.” 4. Suttantakini . — “A woman who knows a Sut- tanta by heart.” Suttanta is, again, a technical term used exclusively of certain portions of the Buddhist canonical books, more especially of the Dialogues. It means literally the “end of the Suttas.” In its technical sense it is the aim, object, outcome of them ; and is applied to the Dialogues as giving, in a more complete and elaborate form, the general result of those shorter Suttas on which they are based. The brahmins have an analogous term, Vedanta, applied, in post-Buddhistic writings, at first in the Svetasvatara and Mundaka Upanishads and often afterwards, to the Upanishads, as being the highest outcome of the Vedas. Previously to this the word is only found in its literal sense, “ the end of the Veda,” and the secondary sense is, therefore, prob- ably adapted from the corresponding (and earlier) Buddhist term. 5. Panca-nekayika. — “One who knows the Five Nikayas by heart.” The five Nikayas, or “Collec- tions,” as a technical term used of literary works, is applied to the canonical Buddhist texts, and to them only. Of the five, the first two contain the Suttan- tas, the next two are made up of Suttas arranged in two different ways, and the fifth is a supplementary collection, mostly of later works. 1 As the word Nikaya also means a school, or sect, it is somewhat ambiguous, and was gradually replaced by the word Agama, continually used in the later Sanskrit litera- 1 See American Lectures, pp. 60-62. LI TER A TURE 169 ture. The same remark holds good of the technical term Suttanta. That also was gradually replaced by the shorter and easier phrase Sutta. The expressions here explained are used on Bud- dhist monuments and refer to Buddhist books. They are conclusive proof that some time before the date of the inscriptions (that is, roughly speaking, before the time of Asoka), there was a Buddhist literature in North India, where the inscriptions are found. And further, that that literature then had divisions known by the technical names of Pitaka, Nikaya, and Suttanta, and that the number of Nikayas then in existence was five. But this is not all. Asoka, in his Bhabra Edict, addressed to the Buddhist Order (the Sangha), re- commends to the Brethren and Sisters of the Order, and to the lay disciples of either sex, frequently to hear (that is to learn by heart), and to meditate upon, certain selected passages. And of these he, most fortunately, gives the names. They are as follows : Ariya-vasdni (now found in the Dlgha Nikaya, in the portion called the SangTti Suttanta). Anagata-bhayani (now found in the Anguttara Ni- kaya, vol. iii. pp. 105-108). Muni Gathd (now found in the Sutta Nipata, verses 206-220). Moneyya Sutta (now found in the Iti-vuttaka, p. 67, and also in the Anguttara Nikaya, vol. i. p. 272). Upatissa Pasina . — “The question put by Upa- tissa ” (more commonly known as Sariputta). There BUDDHIST INDIA 170 are so many such questions in the books that opinions differ as to which of them is the one most probably referred to. There is a word at the commencement of this list which may either be an adjective applied to the whole list, or the name of another passage. How- ever this may be, this Edict of Asoka’s gives the actual titles of some of the shorter passages included, in his time, in those books, the larger divisions of which are mentioned in the inscriptions just referred to. Now the existing literature, divided into the same larger divisions, contains also the shorter passages. To suppose that it was composed in Ceylon is to suppose that, by an extraordinary series of chances, the Ceylon writers happened to hit upon just the identical technical terms, two of them then almost fallen out of use, that had been used in these old inscriptions (of which they knew nothing) for the names they gave to the larger divisions of the litera- ture they made. And we must further suppose that, by another extraordinary series of chances, they happened to include in those divisions a number of shorter passages, each of them corresponding exactly to those mentioned by name, long before their time, in Asoka’s Edict, of which also they knew nothing. To adopt such a theory as the most probable ex- planation of the facts would be nothing less than absurd. How is it, then, will be the immediate question, that this theory in almost, if not in all, the current books on Buddhism or on Indian history is taken LITER A TURE 171 for granted; that the Pali canonical literature is always called “ the Southern Recension ” or “ the Singhalese Canon ” ? The expression is ambiguous, and apt to be mis- leading. But though it is doubtless sometimes used in such a way as to suggest that these books were composed in Ceylon, this is not its real meaning, and it is never so used by careful writers. It simply means that of the few works known to the European scholars who first studied Buddhism, the MSS. of some came from Ceylon ; and that such works were therefore called southern, to distinguish them from the others, known from MSS. which had come from Nepal, and therefore called northern. It is very possible that Burnouf, to whom the popularity of this mode of speech is mainly due, leaned at first to the opinion that the canonical works had been actually written in Ceylon. He always spoke of them in his first work as “the Pali books of Ceylon,” not as “ the Pali books of India.” But that phrase is also ambiguous. Very conscious how meagre, and for the most part how late, were the works he used, he was much too careful a scholar to express, at first, any clear opinion at all. At the end of his long labours, however, he certainly was quite clearly of the contrary opinion. For at the very close of his magnificent work, at p. 862 of the “ Lotus,” he suggests that the Pali works “ may have been popular among inferior castes, and the great mass of the people, in Magadha and Audh, while the Buddhist Sanskrit works were in use among the brahmins.” He at that time regarded them all, 172 BUDDHIST INDIA herefore, as North Indian works. And considering that he knew nothing of the inscriptions, and had only the internal evidence to guide him, this sugges- tion, though not exactly right, reflects the greatest credit on his literary judgment. Had he started with this view, we should probably have been saved the use of the ambiguous phrases, so suggestive of these works being written in Ceylon, which have had so great an influence in retarding the acceptance of the view that that great pioneer in Buddhist studies came at last, himself, to hold. Not only ought such phrases to be dropt out of any works, on these subjects, claiming to be schol- arly ; but even the phrases “ northern ” and “ south- ern ” should be avoided. This seems a pity, for they look so convenient. But the convenience is delusive if they convey a wrong impression. And I venture to assert that most people draw the con- clusion that we have two distinct Buddhisms to deal with, one made in Nepal, the other made in Ceylon. Every one now agrees that this is all wrong. What we have is not two, but very many different sorts of Buddhism ; for almost every book gives us a different doctrine. The more authoritative and ancient books, whether written in Pali or in Buddhist Sanskrit, are none of them either northern or southern. They all, with- out any exception, — if we disregard the absurdly unimportant detail of the place from which our modern copies of them are derived, — claim to belong, and do actually belong, to the Middle Country, as the Indians call it, that is, to the Ganges Valley. LITERA TURK 173 Each differs from the next (in point of date) by small gradations in doctrine. There are such differ- ences even within the Nikayas themselves. Many Sanskrit books, though they differ, by containing certain details of later opinion, from the oldest Pali ones, still, on the whole, have to be classed with the Pali rather than with the other Sanskrit works. The Sanskrit Maha Vastu, for instance (“ The Sublime Story”) is much nearer to the Pali Cariya Pitaka(“The Tradition as to Conduct ”) than it is to such Sanskrit books as the “ Lotus of the Good Law.” All three alike had their origin in the Middle Country — where exactly, in that country, we cannot, with respect to any one of the three, determine. The only two ancient works we can specify as distinctly northern in origin, the Milinda and the Gosinga Anthology, are neither of them written in Sanskrit, and are identical in doctrine with what is called southern Buddhism. Is it not rather absurd to have to ticket as southern just the very two books we know to be the most northern in origin ? There is not now, and never has been, any unity either of opinion or of language in what is called northern, or in what is called southern Buddhism. There is a distinct disadvantage in continually sug- gesting a unity which has no existence in fact. In a word, the current division of Buddhist literature into northern and southern is entirely unscientific, and misleading. It contains a snggcstio falsi in at least two important respects. It cuts across the only division that has a scientific basis, the division, not according to the locality whence we get our 174 BUDDHIST INDIA modern copies, but according to time, according to date of origin. Why then continue the use of an ambiguous phraseology which may be (and which we know, from experience, will be) misunderstood ? The only way to avoid endless confusion is to drop the use of it altogether. And I take this opportu- nity of acknowledging my error in having used it so long myself. In my Buddhism, from the fifteenth edition onwards the mistake has been corrected. So slight is the change that no one is likely to have noticed it. The word “ northern ” has been re- placed by “Tibetan,” “Japanese,” “ Mahayanist,” etc., according to the context. There has been no loss in clearness, or in conciseness, and much gain in precision. We must take our Pali canonical books then to be North Indian, not Singhalese in origin ; and the question as to whether they have suffered from their sometime sojourn under the palm groves of the mountain vihdras in the south must be decided by a critical study of them in their present condition. Toward such a study there are some points that can already be made. The books make no mention of Asoka. Had they undergone any serious re-editing after the reign of the great Buddhist Emperor (of whom the Buddhist writers, whether rightly or wrongly, were so proud), is it probable that he would have been so completely ignored ? The books never mention any person, or any place, in Ceylon ; or even in South India. They tell us a goodly number of anecdotes, usually as intro- LI TER A TURE 175 ductions to, or in illustration of, some ethical point. It would have been so easy to bring in a passing reference to some Ceylon worthy — in the same way as the brahmin Buddhaghosa does so often, in his Attha SalinI, which was revised in Ceylon. 1 If the Pitaka books had been tampered with, would not opportunity have been taken to yield to this very natural impulse ? We know a great deal now of developed or cor- rupted doctrine current in Ceylon, of new technical terms invented, of new meanings put into the older phrases. Not one single instance has yet been found of any such later idea, any such later form of lan- guage, any such later technical term, in any one of the canonical books. The philosophic ideas of the ancient Buddhism, and the psychological ideas on which they were based, were often curtly, naively, confusedly ex- pressed. In Ceylon they had been much worked up, polished, elucidated, systematised. From several works now accessible we know fairly well the tone and manner of these later — and, as they must have seemed to Ceylon scholars, clearer, fuller — state- ments of the old ideas. In no single instance yet discovered has this later tone and manner found its way into the canonical books. It would seem, then, that any change that may have been made in these North Indian books after they had been brought into Ceylon must have been insignificant. It would be a great advantage if we should be able to find even one or two instances of 1 See Mrs. Rhys Davids’s Buddhist Psychology, p. xxi. iy6 BUDDHIST INDIA such changes. We should then be able to say what sort and degree of alteration the Ceylon scholars felt justified in making. But it is clear that they regarded the canon as closed. While the books were in North India, on the other hand, and the canon was not considered closed, there is evidence of a very different tone. One whole book, the Katha Vatthu, was added as late as the time of Asoka ; and perhaps the Parivara, a mere string of examination questions, is not much older. One story in the Peta Vatthu 1 is about a king Pingalaka, said in the commentary to have reigned over Surat two hundred years after the Buddha’s time ; and another 2 refers to an event fifty-six years after the Buddha’s death. The latter is certainly in its right place in this odd collection of legends. The former may (as the commentator thinks) have been added at Asoka’s Council. Even if it were, that would be proof that they then thought no harm of adding to the legendary matter in their texts. And the whole of this little book of verses, together with the Vimana Vatthu (really only the other half of one and the same work), is certainly very late in tone as compared with the Nikayas. The same must be said of two other short collec- tions of ballads. One is the Buddha Vamsa, con- taining a separate poem on each of twenty-five Buddhas, supposed to have followed one another in succession. The other is the Cariya Pitaka, contain- ing thirty-four short Jataka stories turned into verse. Both of these must also be late. For in the Nikayas 1 IV. 3. 5 V. 2. LI TER A TURE 1 77 only seven Buddhas are known ; and Jatakas, in the technical sense, are not yet thought of. This par- ticular set of Jatakas is also arranged on the basis of the Pdrdmitas, a doctrine that plays no part in the older books. The Ten Perfections (Pdrdmitd) are qualities a Buddha is supposed to be obliged to have acquired in the countless series of his previous rebirths as a Bodhisatva. But this is a later notion, not found in the Nikayas. It gradually grew up as the Bodhisatva idea began to appeal more to the Indian mind. And it is interesting to find already, in these latest of the canonical books, the germs of what after- wards developed into the later Mahayana doctrine, to which the decline of Buddhism, in the opinion of Professor Bhandarkar, was eventually so greatly due . 1 This question of the history of the Jataka stories will be considered in greater detail in our next chap- ter. What has been here said (and other similar evidence will, no doubt, be hereafter discovered) is amply sufficient to show that some parts of the Canon are later than others; and that the books as we have them contain internal evidence from which conclu- sions may fairly be drawn as to their comparative age. Such conclusions, of course, are not always so plain as is the case in the four instances — the Peta and Vimana Vatthus, the Buddha Vamsa, and the Cariya Pitaka — just considered. For example, let us take the case of the Sutta Nipata. This also is a short collection of poems. It con- tains fifty-four lyrics, each of them very short, ar- 1 y. R. A. S , Bombay Branch, 1900, p. 395. 1 78 BUDDHIST INDIA ranged in four Cantos; and then sixteen others, as a fifth Canto, strung together by a framework of story. The last Canto (called the Parayana) had evidently once existed as a separate poem. It is so treated by the commentator, who calls it a Suttanta; and it is in fact about as long as one of those Sut- tantas in the Dlgha Nikaya which consist of verses strung together by a framework of story in prose. It is six times quoted or referred to by name, as a separate poem, in the Nikayas . 1 The preceding Canto, the fourth, is called “ The Eights,” most of the lyrics in it containing eight stanzas apiece. This Canto is also referred to by name as a separate work, in other parts of the Canon . 2 And it must in very earlier times have been already closely associated in thought with the fifth Canto, for the two together are the subject of a curious old com- mentary, the only work of the kind included in the Nikayas. That this commentary, the Niddesa, takes no notice of the other three Cantos would seem to show that, when it was composed, the whole of the five Cantos had not yet been brought together into a single book. Of the thirty-eight poems in the earlier three Cantos no less than six are found also in other parts of the Canon . 3 They had existed as separate hymns, popular in the community, before they were incor- 1 Samyutta, 2. 49; Anguttara, I. 144; 2. 45 ; 3. 399; 4. 63. 2 Samyutta, 3. 12 ; Vinaya , 1. T96 ; Udana, 5. 6. 3 Poem No. 4=S. 1. 172; No. S = Kh. P. No. g ; No. i3=Kh. P. No. 5 ; No. I5=jat. 3. 196 : No. i6=Kh. P. No. 6 ; No. 33 = M. No. 92. LIT ERA 7 LIRE I7Q porated into the several collections in which they are now found. When we find also that numerous iso- lated verses in these thirty-eight poems occur else- where in very ancient documents, the most probable explanation is that these were current as proverbs or as favourite sayings (either in the community, or perhaps among the people at large) before they were independently incorporated in the different poems in which they are now found. We find, then, that single verses, single poems, and single Cantos, had all been in existence before the work assumed its present shape. This is very sug- gestive as to the manner of growth not only of this book, but of all the Indian literature of this period. It grew up in the schools; and was the result rather of communistic than of individual effort. No one dreamed of claiming the authorship of a volume. In the whole of the Buddhist canonical works one only, and that the very latest, has a personal name attached to it, the name of a leading member of the Order said to have lived in the time of Asoka. During the previous three centuries authorship is attributed not to treatises, or even poems, but only to verses; and to verses in two only out of the many collections of verses that have been preserved. Out of twenty- nine books in the Canon no less than twenty-six have no author at all, apart from the community. This is decisive as to popular feeling on the point. And even in the priestly schools the then prevalent custom was not greatly different. Their works also were not produced by individuals, but grew up in the various schools of the priestly community. And i8o BUDDHIST INDIA no priestly work ascribed to an individual author can be dated much before the time of Asoka. And yet another point, which will turn out, unless I am much mistaken, to be of striking importance for the history of Indian literature, arises in connec- tion with the Sutta Nipata. The fifth Canto re- garded as a single poem, and about one-third of all the other poems in the collection, are of the nature of ballads. They describe some short incident, the speeches being always in verse, but the story itself usually in prose (though in a few instances this also is in verse). They resemble in this respect a very large number of Suttas found in other portions of the Canon. And even a few of the Suttantas — such as the “ Riddles of Sakka,” for instance (cer- tainly one of our oldest documents, for it is quoted by name in the Samyutta') — are characteristic specimens of this kind of composition. It is, in fact, next to the prose Sutta, the most popular style for literary effort during this period. This manner of expressing one’s ideas is now quite unknown. But it has been known throughout the world as the forerunner of the epic. Professor Windisch has subjected those of these ballads that are based on the temptation legends to an exhaust- ive study in his masterly monograph, Mara und Buddha. He says, apropos of the two ballads on this subject in the Sutta Nipata : “ These two Suttas might have been regarded as a frag- ment of an epic had we otherwise found any traces of an ancient Buddha Epic. But that is not to be thought 1 Samyutta, iii. 13. LITERA TURE 1 8 1 of. Far rather are these Suttas to be looked upon as the early beginnings out of which, in certain circumstances, a Buddha Epic could eventually arise. “We can mark with special ease how an Epic arises, and of what process an Epic, as a particular form of literature, is the consummation. Some years ago I drew attention to the historical points we have here to take into consideration in a lecture to the Congress of philo- logians at Gera on the Irish legends and the question of Ossian 1 There I laid the chief stress on the old-Irish legends, but compared also the legends in ancient India. The latter subject was independently dealt with by Oldenberg in his well-known articles on the Akhyana hymns where the subject referred to (the relations of the Epic to previous literary forms) is dealt with in detail and thoroughly explained.'' Professor Geldner then con- sidered the same subject, partly from new points of view, inasmuch as he followed them out also in the case of the Avesta, in his article in the ‘Vedische Studien .’ 3 Now we find also in the Buddhist litera- ture, as Oldenberg was the first to point out, this epic narrative in mixed prose and verse. . . . The persons who act, the place where they act, and the action itself form the constituent elements of the nar- rative. But the latter only springs into life when the persons acting are also represented as speaking. Now the speeches are frequently what it is least possible to keep historically accurate, where, therefore, the fancy of the narrator and the art of the poet come most into play. Conversation ( speech and rejoinder ) is the jirst part of the narrative to be put into verse , and that especially at the crucial points of the story. Here the beginnings of 1 Revile Celtique , 5. 70. 2 Z. D. M. G., vols. 37 and 39. 3 1. 2S4, foil. 182 BUDDHIST INDIA epic and drama lie close together. That the more an- cient epics in all countries contain many speeches and counter speeches can be seen too from the Iliad. It is only in the later epic form that this dramatic ele- ment is kept in the background. So in the old-Greek drama also vve have an epic element in the speeches of the messengers. But a poem becomes completely epical only when to the speeches in verse is added also the frame- work of the story in metrical form. And the last stage is that the speeches grow shorter, or fall out, and only events are given in verse.” 1 Both the general accuracy and the great import- ance of this far-reaching generalisation will be ad- mitted by all. Now we have in the Nikayas all sorts of the earliest forms of the evolution referred to. We find (in the Thera- and Therl-Gatha, for instance) only the speeches in verse in the canonical books, and the framework of prose, without which they are often unintelligible, handed on, by tradition, in the Commentary. We find (as in the Suttantas in the second volume of the Dlgha, or in the Udana) speeches in verse, and framework in prose, both pre- served in the canonical book. And we find ballads (such as the two Suttas discussed by Professor Windisch) in which speeches and framework are both preserved in verse. But it is not till long after- wards, in the time of Kanishka, that we have a fully developed Buddha Epic. Are we then to suppose that the Indians had a mental constitution different from that of the other Aryan tribes (after all, their relatives in a certain 1 Windisch, Mara unit Buddha , pp. 222, foil. LI TER A TURK •83 degree) throughout the world ? Or are we to suppose that the Buddhist community formed a sec- tion so completely cut off from the rest of the peo- ple that they were uninfluenced by the existence, in their immediate surroundings, of the great Indian Epics. The Ramayana, as Professor Jacobi has shown, was composed in Kosala, on the basis of bal- lads popularly recited by rhapsodists throughout that district. But the very centre of the literary activity of the Buddhists was precisely Kosala. After the Ramayana had become known there as a perfect epic, with the distinctive marks of the epic style, would such of the people in Kosala as had embraced the new doctrine have continued to use only the ancient method of composition ? This would be quite without parallel. But we have to choose between this supposition (not a probable one) and the alternative proposition — that is to say, that whatever the date to be assigned to this ballad liter- ature, in mixed prose and verse, preserved in the Nikayas, the date of the Maha-bharata and of the Ramayana, as Epics, must be later. We may be pretty sure that if the Epics had existed at the period when this Buddhist literature was composed, they would have been referred to in it. But they are not. On the other hand, the ballads in prose and verse, such as those sung by the rhapsodists (the stage out of which the epics were evolved), are referred to under their technical name of akkhanas (Sanskrit akhydnas ) in one of the oldest documents . 1 Mention is there made of various 1 Dialogues of the Buddha , 1 . 8 . BUDDHIST INDIA 184 sorts of public spectacles, and one of these is the reciting of such Akhyanas. And when the com- mentator in the early part of the fifth century A.D. explains this as the reciting of the Bharata, the Ramayana, and so on, that is, as exegesis, perfectly right. This was the sort of thing referred to. But his remark is evidence of the existence of the perfect Epics, only at his own time, not at the time of the old text he is explaining. This may seem, I am afraid, to have been a digression. But it is really very much to the pur- pose, when discussing Indian literature in this period, to bring out the importance of the wide prevalence of the versifying faculty, and to discuss the stage to which it had reached, the style of composition in which it was mostly used. We hear of four kinds of poets : — the poet of imagination (who makes original verses): the poet of tradition (the repeater of current verses) ; the poet of real life (or perhaps of worldly as distinct from religious topics) ; and the improvis- ator. 1 We have several instances in the books of such impromptu verses. Though they were prob- ably not quite so impromptu as they are described to be, we need not doubt the fact that the art was then a recognised form of ability. And when a man is charged with being “drunk with poesy”’ ( kdvey - yamatto) the rapt and far-away look of the poet in the moment of inspiration cannot have been alto- gether unfamiliar. It is interesting to notice that, just as we have evidence at this period of the first steps having been 1 Anguttara, 2. 230; compare Sum. 95. 2 Samyutta, 1. no. LI TER A TURE 185 taken towards a future Epic, so we have evidence of the first steps towards a future drama — the pro- duction before a tribal concourse on fixed feast days of shows with scenery, music, and dancing. There is ample evidence in the Buddhist and Jain records, and in Asoka inscriptions, of the existence of these samajjas, as they were called, as a regular institution. 1 That they are not mentioned in the priestly books need inspire no doubt upon the point. This is only another instance of the priestly habit of persistently ignoring what they did not like. We see from the Sigalovada Suttanta 2 that recitations, or the telling of stories, in mixed prose and verse ( akkhana ), also took place at these meetings. But this seems, from the evidence at present attainable, to have been distinct ; and the interpretation of the word I have rendered “ scenery ” is open to doubt. We cannot talk, therefore, as yet, of drama. When we see, however, that these meetings took place at sacred places, on the hilltops, and that high officials were in- vited and had special seats provided for them, we find ourselves in presence, not of private undertakings, but of such religious and communal ceremonies as those to which the beginnings of drama have else- where also been traced back. It is true that the kind of religion which we have here to consider is not the religion of the brahmins. The general pro- hibition which forbade a brahmin to see or hear 1 See the passages quoted in Dialogues of the Buddha , i. 9. 10, and Jacobi’s Jaina Sutras, 2. 303. 2 In Grimblot’s Sept Suttas Palis, p. 300, where the reading must be corrected accordingly. BUDDHIST INDIA 1 86 dancing or music 1 must have included such perform- ances. But it was at that time none the less on that account, a very vital and popular part of the national faith.’ I have dealt in this chapter, not with the contents, which I have described elsewhere , 3 but only with the outward form and style of the literature. It shows a curious contrast between the value of the ideas to be expressed and the childlike incapacity to express them well. We have here, as to style, only the untrained adolescence of the Indian mind. But what vigour it has ! The absence of writing materials seems naturally to have affected less the short poems than the style of the prose, and there is much rough and rugged beauty both in the ballads and in the lyrics. Now the style, and much of the thought, is not Buddhist but Indian ; and is in some respects the only evidence we possess of the literary ability, at that time, of the Indian peoples. If only we had still some of the ballads out of which the Epics were subsequently formed, they would, I am convinced, show equal limitations, but also equal power. In after times we have evidence of more successful study of the arts and methods of rhetoric and poetry. But never do we find the same virility, the same curious compound of humour and irony and love of 1 See, for instance, the Paraskara Grhya Sutra, 2. 7. 3. 2 The oldest dramas mentioned by name (second century B.C.) are mystery' plays based on episodes in the life of Krishna. From this time onward there is more frequent mention of actors. But the earliest dramas are all lost. The oldest extant ones are of the sixth or seventh century a.d. 3 American Lectures, chapter ii. LI TER A TURK 187 nature on the one hand, with a deadly earnestness, and really on the whole a surprisingly able grasp of the deepest problems of life, on the other. As we shall see presently in the case of the philosophy, so also is it true of the literature that it is in this period that India came nearest to having a Golden Age. And the learned, ornate poetry of later times is to the literature of this period what the systemisations and learned commentaries of Buddhaghosa and Sankara are to the daring speculations and vivid life of the early Upanishads and of the Four Nikayas. 1 88 BUDDHIST INDIA APPENDIX TO CHAPTER X CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF BUDDHIST LITERATURE FROM the buddha’s time to the time of asoka 1. The simple statements of Buddhist doctrine now found, in identical words, in paragraphs or verses recurring in all the books. 2. Episodes found, in identical words, in two or more of the existing books. 3. The Silas, the Parayana, the Octades, the Pati- mokkha. 4. The Dlgha, Majjhima, Anguttara, and Samyutta Nikayas. 5. The Sutta Nipata, the Thera- and Therl-Gathas, the Udanas, and the Khuddaka Patha. 6. The Sutta Vibhanga and the Khandakas. 7. The Jatakas and the Dhammapadas. 8. The Niddesa, the Itivuttakas, and the Patisam- bhida. 9. The Peta- and Vimana-Vatthus, the Apadanas, the Cariya Pitaka, and the Buddha Vamsa. 10. The Abhidhamma books ; the last of which is the Katha Vatthu, and the earliest probably the Puggala Pannatti. The above table represents the probable order in which the extant Buddhist documents of this period were composed. They were not yet written, and a great deal has no doubt been lost. CHAPTER XI THE JATA.KA BOOK 1 HE Jataka book, which we have now had before us for some years, in full, in the admirable edition of the Pali text by Professor Fausboll, is now also approaching its completion in the English translation published at Cambridge under the super- vision of Professor Cowell. It is so full of informa- tion on the daily habits and customs and beliefs of the people of India, and on every variety of the numerous questions that arise as to their economic and social conditions, that it is of the utmost im- portance to be able to determine the period to which the evidence found in this book is applicable. The problem is somewhat complicated. But if only the right distinctions be drawn, the solution of it seems to me substantially sure, and really perfectly simple. That we should have to draw distinctions between different parts of the same book is nothing sur- 1 The following is an enlarged restatement of views first put for- ward in the introduction (written in August, 1878) to my Buddhist Birth Stories 189 BUDDHIST INDIA I90 prising. As Professor Deussen has said of the early Upanishads, and as Professor Winternitz has said of the Maha-Bharata, so also may be said of the Nikayas and of the Vinaya (and even of some portions of the Abhidhamma), that “ we must judge each separate piece by itself.” And this is really only the very natural and necessary result of what has been pointed out above, 1 that the books grew up gradually, that they were not books in our modern sense, and that they had no single authors. The distinctions we have to draw will best be shown by an example. The following is an abstract of a typical Jataka. THE BANYAN-DEER BIRTH STORY.’ ‘ “ Follow rather the Banyan Deer." This the Mas- ter told when at Jetavana about the mother of Kumara Kassapa,’ and so on. Then follows the story of this lady, how, after being wrongly found guilty of immoral conduct, she had been declared innocent through the intervention of the Buddha. Then it is said that the brethren talking this matter over at eventide, the Buddha came there, and learning the subject of their dis- course said : “ Not now only has the Tathagata proved a support and protection to these two [the lady and her son]; formerly also he was the same.” Then, on request, he revealed that matter, concealed by change of birth. “ Once upon a time, when Brahmadatta was reign- 1 Above, p. 179. 5 No. 12. THE J A TAKA BOOK 191 ing in Benares, the Bodhisatta was reborn as a deer, a king of the deer, by name the Banyan Deer,” and so on. This is the Jataka proper. It tells how there were two herd of deer shut in in the king’s park. The king or his cook went daily to hunt for deer for venison. For each one killed many were wounded or harassed by the chase. So the golden coloured Banyan Deer, king of one of the herds, went to the king of the other herd, the Branch Deer, and per- suaded him to a compact that lots should be cast, and that, every day, the one deer on whom the lot fell should go voluntarily to the cook’s place of exe- cution, and lay his head upon the block. And this was done. And so by the daily death of one the rest were saved from torture and distress. Now one day the lot fell upon a pregnant doe in Branch Deer’s herd. She applied to the king of that herd to order that the lot, “ which was not meant to fall on two at once,” should pass her by. But he harshly bade her begone to the block. Then she went to King Banyan Deer and told her piteous tale. He said he would see to it, and he went him- self and laid his head on the block. Now the king had decreed immunity to the two kings of the respective herds. When the cook saw King Banyan Deer lying there with his head on the block, he went hastily and told the king (the king of the men). The latter mounted his chariot, and with a great retinue went to the spot, and said : “ My friend, the king of the deer, did I not grant your life? Why are you here?” Then the king of 192 BUDDHIST INDIA the deer told him all. And the man-king was greatly touched, and said: “Rise up! I grant you your lives, both to you and to her ! ” Then the rejoinder came : “ But though two be thus safe, what shall the rest of the herds do, O king of men?” So they also obtained security. And when the Banyan Deer had similarly procured protection for all the various sorts of living things, the king of the deer exhorted the king of men to justice and mercy, preaching the truth to him “ with the grace of a Buddha.” And the doe gave birth to a son, beautiful as buds of flowers, and he went playing with the Branch Deer’s herd. Then his mother exhorted him in a verse : “ Follow rather the Banyan, dear; Cultivate not the Branch! Death, with the Banyan, were better far, Than, with the Branch, long life.” 1 And the Banyan Deer made a compact with the men that wherever leaves were tied round a field the deer should not trespass, and he made all the deer keep to the bargain. From that time, they say, the sign of the tying of leaves was seen in the fields.’ This is the end of the Jataka proper, the “ Story of the Past.” Then the Teacher identified the characters in the story as being himself and his contemporaries in a 1 I have tried to imitate the form of riddle in which the verse ap- pears in Pali. 2 Very probably the origin of the fable is to be found in a popular explanation of this curious old custom. THE JATAKA BOOK 193 former birth. “He who was then the Branch is now Devadatta, his herd the members of the Order who Fig. 35. — THE BANYAN DEER JATAKA STORY. [Three episodes on one bas-relief.] followed Devadatta in his schism, the doe is now Kumara Kassapa’s mother, the deer she gave birth to is now her son Kumara Kassapa, the king of the 194 BUDDHIST INDIA men is now Ananda, but Banyan, the king of the deer, was I myself.” The bas-relief here reproduced from the Bharhut 1 Tope illustrates, on one picture, several scenes from this Jataka. In this story we have first the outer framework, constituted by the introductory episode and the concluding identification. Encased in this we have the Jataka proper, the “Story of the past,” as it is called in Pali. And in this again we have what is, in the existing canonical Jataka book, the kernel of the whole, the verse. Each of these has a separate history. The oldest form in which we find any Jataka is, as might be naturally expected, the simple fable or parable itself, without the outer framework at all, and without the verse. Thus in one of the Nikayas 3 we have an exhortation to maintain a constant presence of mind, for that is “the proper sphere” of a religieux. Should he do otherwise, should he allow worldly things to agitate his mind, then will he fall — as the field quail, when he left his custom- ary and ancestral haunts, fell into the power of the hawk. And the fable is told as an introduction to the exhortation. It has, as yet, no framework. And it contains no verse . 3 It has not yet, therefore, be- come a Jataka. 1 Cunningham, Stupa of Bharhut , PI. xxv., Fig. I. 5 Samyutta, vol. 5, p. 146, of the M. Feer’s edition for the Pali Text Society. 3 M. P'eer, indeed, prints two lines as if they were verse. But this is a mistake. The lines so printed are not verse. THE JA TAKA BOOK 195 But one of the Jatakas is precisely this very fable, in identical words for the most part. It is decked out with a framework of introductory story and con- cluding identification, just as in the example just given. And two verses are added, one in the fable itself, and one in the framework. And there can be no question as to which is the older document; for the Jataka quotes as its source, and by name and chapter, the very passage in the Samyutta in which the fable originally occurs . 1 This is not an isolated case. Of the Jatakas in the present collection I have discovered also the follow- ing in older portions of the canonical books, and no doubt others can still be traced. 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Jataka No. 1. Apannaka is based on Digha 2. 342 “ “ g. Makha-deva “ “ “ 10. Sukha-vihari “ “ “ 37. Tittira “ “ “ 91. Litta “ “ “ 95. Maha-sudassana “ “ “ 203. Khandha-vatta “ “ “ 253. Mani-kantha “ “ “ 405. Baka-brahma “ “ “ Majjhima 2. 75 “ “ Vinaya 2. 183 “ “ Vinaya 2. 161 “ “ Digha 2. 348 “ “ Digha 2. 169 “ “ Vinaya 3. 1095 “ “ Vinaya 3. 145 Majjhima 1. 328 Samyutta 1. 142 The heroes of two of these stories, Makha Deva and Maha-sudassana, are already in these older docu- ments identified at the end of the stories with the Buddha in a previous birth. In the Maha-sudassana, in the Litta, and in the second of the two older ver- sions of the Baka story, the verses are given. In all the rest both identification and verses are still, as yet, wanting. 1 Jataka, vol. ii. p. 58. 196 BUDDHIST INDIA The reverse case is about as frequent ; that is to say, stories are told in the older documents, and the hero is expressly identified with the Buddha in a pre- vious birth, and nevertheless these stories are not included in our Jataka collection . 1 Such stories even before the Jataka book grew up rvere called Jatakas. There is a very ancient division found al- ready in the Nikayas, of Buddhist literature into nine classes . 3 One of these is “ Jatakam,” that is to say, Jatakas. And this must refer to such episodes in previously existing books. It cannot refer to the Jataka book now included in the Canon, for that was not yet in existence. And it is important to notice that in no one of these instances of the earliest compositions that were called Jatakas is the Buddha identified in his previous birth with an animal. He is identified only with famous sages and teachers of olden time. This was the first idea to be attached to the word Jataka. What we find in the canonical book is a later development of it. Such are the oldest forms, in the Buddhist litera- ture, of the Jatakas. And we learn from them two facts, both of importance. In the first place these oldest forms have , for the most part , no framework and no verse. They are fables, parables, legends, entirely (with two exceptions) in prose. Secondly, our existing Jataka book is only a partial 1 So for instance Ghatikara (M. 2. 53); Maha-govinda (D. 2. 220); Pacetana’s wheelwright (A. 1. in); and Maha-vijaya’s priest (D. 1. 143). The story of Maha Govinda occurs, as a Jataka, in the Cariya Pitaka. 2 Majjhima, &. 133 ; Anguttara, 2. 7, 103, 108, — P. P., 43. 178 ; Vinaya, 3 S. The phrase Navangatti Buddha-vacanam is later. THE JA TAKA BOOK I 9 7 record. It does not contain all the Jatakas that were current, in the earliest period of their literature, among the Buddhist community. So much is certain. But I venture to go farther and to suggest that the character of these ten earlier Jatakas, in their pre-Jataka shape, enables us to trace their history back beyond the Buddhist litera- ture altogether. None of them are specially Bud- dhist. They are modified, perhaps, more or less to suit Buddhist ethics. But even the Maha-sudassana, which is the most so, is in the main simply an ancient Indian legend of sun worship. And the rest are pre- Buddhistic Indian folklore. There is nothing pecul- iarly Buddhist about them. Even the ethics they inculcate are Indian. What is Buddhist about them, in this their oldest shape, is only the selection made. There was, of course, much other folklore, bound up with superstition. This is left out. And the ethic is, of course, of a very simple kind. It is milk for babes. This comes out clearly in the legend of the Great King of Glory — the Maha-sudassana. In its later Jataka form 1 it lays stress on the impermanence of all earthly things, on the old lesson of the vanity of the world. In its older form, as a Suttanta, it lays stress also on the Ecstasies (the J lianas), which are perhaps pre-Buddhistic, and on the Sublime Con- ditions (the Brahma-Viharas), which are certainly distinctively Buddhistic (though a similar idea occurs in the later Yoga Sutra, 1. 33). These are much deeper, and more difficult, matters. 1 It is translated both from the older and the later form in my Buddhist Suttas , pp. 238, foil. 1 98 BUDDHIST INDIA So much for the earliest forms in which we find the Jatakas. The next evidence in point of date is that of the bas-reliefs on the Bharhut and Sanchi Stupas — those invaluable records of ancient Indian archaeology of which so much use has been made in this volume. Among the carvings on the railings round these stupas are a number of scenes, each bear- ing as a title in characters of the third century B.C., the name of a Jataka; and also other scenes, without a title, but similar in character. Twenty- seven of the scenes have been recognised as illus- trating passages in the existing Jataka Book. 1 Twenty-three are still unidentified, and some of these latter are meant, no doubt, to illustrate Jataka stories current in the community, but not included in the canonical collection. Now let the reader compare the bas-relief above (p. 193) with the Jataka story given above (pp. 190, foil). In the background three deer are being shot at, two are running away, one is looking back in fear, one has fallen. In the foreground, to the left, a deer lies with its head on the block. In the centre fore- ground, the king of the deer, distinguished by his antlers, crouches beside the block, and close by him is a man, presumably the cook. In the centre the king of the deer exhorts the king of the men. It may be noticed in passing that this strange de- vice of putting several scenes of the same story on one plate is not confined to Indian art. The Greeks did the same, and it was common in Europe at the time of the revival of the arts after the dark ages. 1 See the list at the end of this chapter. THE J AT AKA BOOK I99 But while the Indian artist has not hesitated to suggest in his plate so many points in the story, he omits all reference to the verse, or even to that episode in which the verse occurs. The bas-relief, however, resembles the verse in one important re- spect. It would be absolutely unintelligible to any- one not familar with the story as told in prose. It is the same with all these bas-reliefs. None of them, except as explained below, illustrate the verse, or the framework of the story. None are intelligible without a knowledge of the prose. The exception referred to is the figure on the Bharhut Stupa (Plate xxvi.), unfortunately broken, but bearing in clear letters the inscription, “ Yam bamano avaycsi Jdtaka." These are the opening words of the verse in this story which, in the printed edition, is called the Andhabhuta Jataka. 1 This is exactly as if the deer story above were called the “ Follow rather the Banyan ” Jataka. The fact is, as I pointed out already in 1880, that very great un- certainty prevails as to the titles of these stories, the same story being very often called in the existing collection by different names. Even one of these very old bas-reliefs itself has actually inscribed over it two distinct names in full. The carving illustrates a fable about a cat and a cock ; and it is labelled, in Pali, both “Cat Jataka ” and “ Cock Jataka.” 2 As I then said : “ The reason for this is very plain. When a fable about a lion and a jackal was told (as in No. 157) to show 1 Fausboll, vol. i. p. 289. 2 Cunningham, Stupa of Bharhut , PI. xlvii. 200 BUDDHIST INDIA the advantage of a good character, and it was necessary to choose a short title for it, it was called the ‘ Lion Jataka ’ or the ‘Jackal Jataka’ or even the ‘Good Character Jataka.’ And when a fable was told about a tortoise, to show the evil results which follow on talka- tiveness (as in No. 215), the fable might as well be called the ‘Chatterbox Jataka’ as the ‘Tortoise Jataka’ ; and it is referred to accordingly under both those names. It must always have been difficult, if not impossible, to fix upon a short title which should at once characterise the lesson to be taught, and the personages through whose acts it was taught. And different names would thus arise, and become interchangeable.” 1 We should not be surprised, therefore, to find in this one instance the catchwords of the verse used also as a title. And it is a most fortunate thing that in this solitary instance the words of the verse are extant in an inscription of the third century B.C. The next evidence we have to consider is that of the Jataka Book itself. The canonical work, con- taining the verses only (and therefore quite unin- telligible without a commentary), is very rare even in MSS., and has not yet been edited. It would be very interesting to see what it has to say about the titles, and whether it gives any various readings in the verses. What we have, in the well-known edition by Pro- fessor Fausboll, is the commentary. We do not know its date. But as we know of no commentaries of this sort written before the fifth century A.D. — they were all handed down till then by word of 1 Buddhist Birth Stories , p. lxi. THE JA TAKA BOOK 201 mouth — it is probable that this one also is of about the same date. The author gives a slight account of himself in the opening verses, but without men- tioning his name. He names three scholars who in- stigated him to undertake the work, and says it is based on the tradition as then handed on in the Great Monastery at Anuradhapura in Ceylon. Twice in the seven long volumes he alludes to Ceylon scholars of the second century A.D. 1 And though he only does so in notes, we may fairly conclude from all this that he probably wrote in Ceylon. Professor Childers thought he was identical with the Buddhaghosa famous as the author of other great commentaries. But for reasons given elsewhere, this is, I think, impossible . 2 How far, then, did our unknown author vary from the tradition handed down to him ? How far had that tradition, with respect at least to the historical inferences suggested by it, preserved the tone and character of that much more ancient date to which the verses themselves can be assigned? It is a dif- ficult question, and can only be finally solved when, by a careful and detailed study of the whole of these volumes, we shall have been able to discover every case of probable age, and to weigh the general result to be derived from them all. Dr. Liiders, in two admirable articles on the Isisinga Legend, has shown how, in two or three instances, the prose 1 I have discussed these two difficult and interesting notes in an article entitled, “ The Last to go Forth,” J. K. A. S., 1902. 2 Buddhist Birth Stories , pp. lxiii., foil. Also the note in Dia- logues of the Buddha, i. 17. 202 BUDDHIST INDIA version in the commentary gives us a version of the story, later, in some respects, than that implied by the verses . 1 2 * This is not exactly the point we are considering, but it is closely allied to it. Dr. Fick has subjected all the references contained in the Jataka Book to the social conditions in North-east- ern India to a detailed and careful analysis. He has come to the conclusion that, as regards the verses and the prose part of the stories themselves, as distinct from the framework, they have been scarcely altered from the state they were in when they were handed down from mouth to mouth among the early Buddhists, and that they can be referred undoubtedly, in all that relates to those social con- ditions, to the time of the Buddha himself . 5 Hof- rath Buhler, perhaps the very highest authority we had in Indian history, and a scholar whom no one will accuse of partiality to Buddhism, says : “The chief point for consideration is if, in effecting the loan, the Buddhist monks altered much; and espe- cially if the descriptions of life which the Jatakas contain have been made to agree with that of the times when Buddhism had become a power in India. The answer can only be that there are remarkably few traces of Buddhism in those stories, and that they do not describe the condition of India in the third or fourth century b.c., but a?i older one.” 1 In the Proceedings of the Royal Academy at Gottingen, 1897 and 1901. 2 Dr. Richard Fick, Sociale Gliederung im norddstlichen Indian zu Buddha's zeit , pp. vi., vii. THE J A TAKA BOOK 203 And he gives his reasons : “ The descriptions of the political, religious, and social conditions of the people clearly refer to the ancient time before the rise of the great Eastern dynasties of the Nandas and the Mauryas, when Pataliputra had become the capital of India. The Jatakas mention neither the one nor the other, and they know nothing of great empires which comprised the whole or large parts of India. The number of the kingdoms, whose rulers play a part in the Stories, is very considerable. The majority of the names, as Madra, the two Pancalas, Kosala, Videha, Kasi, and Vidarbha, agree with those mentioned in the Vedic literature ; while a few others, like Kalinga and Assaka, occur, in brahminical litera- ture, first in the Epics and in Panini’s Sutras. The characteristic names of the Andhras, the Pandyas, and the Keralas are not mentioned. “ Though a political centre was wanting, frequent statements regarding the instruction of the young brah- mins and nobles show that there was an intellectual centre, and that it lay in Takkasila, the capital of distant Gandhara. . . . And it is very credible that Gan- dhara, the native country of Panini, was a stronghold of brahminical learning certainly in the fourth and fifth centuries b c., and perhaps even earlier. The statements regarding the religious condition of India point to an equally early period. Just as the Three Vedas are the basis of the higher instruction, so the prevalent religion is that of the path of works with its ceremonies and sacrifices, among which several, like the Vajapeya and the Rajasuya, are specially and re- peatedly mentioned. Side by side with these appear popular festivals, celebrated, when the Nakshatra had 204 BUDDHIST INDIA been proclaimed, with general merrymakings and copi- ous libations of surd, as well as the worship of demons and trees, all of which go back to the earliest times. Nor are the hermits in the woods and the wandering ascetics unknown. . . . The state of civilisation described in the Jatakas is in various respects primitive, and particularly noteworthy is the prevalence of wood architecture, which, on the evidence of the earliest sculptures, had almost disappeared in the third century b.c. The Jatakas even describe the palaces of kings as usually constructed of wood. Many other details might be added, but the facts given are sufficient for our purpose.” 1 Professor Fausbbll himself, the editor of the Ja- taka book, expresses, in the preface to the last volume, a very similar opinion. The consensus of opinion among these distinguished scholars — the only ones who have written on this particular point — is sufficient, at least, to shift the burden of proof. Instead of neglecting altogether, for the history of India, what the Jataka says, we may make historical inferences from statements made in the stories them- selves (not in the framework) as presumptive evidence for the period in which, by a fortunate chance, the stories were preserved for us by their inclusion in the Basket of Buddhist tradition. That tradition is found to have preserved, fairly enough, in political and social matters, the earlier view. The verses, of course, are the most trustworthy, as being, in lan- guage, some centuries older. But the prose, which must have accompanied them throughout, and is 1 Georg Biihler, Indian Studies , No. 5 (Vienna, 1S95). THE JA TAKA BOOK 205 taken for granted in the illustrations on the ancient bas-reliefs, ought also, in such questions, to have due weight attached to it. We may already note some points in the com- parative age of the Jatakas, as compared one with another, especially at two stages in the formation of the tradition. The whole of the longer stories, some of them as long as a modern novelette, con- tained in vol. vi. of the edition, are later, both in language and in their view of social conditions in India, than those in the earlier volumes. Yet several of those latest in the collection are shown by the bas-reliefs to have been already in existence in the third century B.C. And this holds good, not only of the verses, but also of the prose, for the bas-reliefs refer to the prose portions of the tales. 1 So also, at an earlier stage, it is possible to con- clude that some of the tales, when they were first adopted into the Buddhist tradition (that is, cer- tainly, not later than the beginning of the third century, B.C.), were already old. We have seen above that, out of those tales of which we can trace the pre-Jataka book form, a large proportion, 60 to 70 per cent., had no verses. Now, in the present collection, there are a considerable number of tales which, as tales, have no verses. The verses (necessarily added to make the stories into Jatakas) are found only in the framework. 2 And there are 1 See in the Appendix, under Vidhura, Sama, Ummagga, and Vessantara Jatakas. 2 See now M. Senart’s article on these Abhisambuddha-Gatha, in the Journal Asiatique for 1902. 206 BUDDHIST INDIA other tales, where the verses do not occur in the story itself, but are put, like a chorus, into the mouth of a fairy (a dcvata) who has really nothing else to do with the story. It follows, I think, that these stories existed, without the verses, before they were adopted into the Buddhist scheme of Jatakas by having verses added to them ; and that they are, therefore, probably, not only pre-Buddhistic, but very old. On the other hand, as we have seen in the last chapter, the very custom, on which the Jataka sys- tem is based, of handing down tales or legends in prose, with only the conversation in verse, is itself pre-Buddhistic. And the Jataka Book is only an- other example, on a very extensive scale, of that pre-Epic form of literature of which there are so many other, shorter, specimens preserved for us in the earlier canonical texts. To sum up : 1. The canonical Book of the Jatakas contains only the verses. It was composed in North India, in the so-called ‘ Middle Country,’ before the time of Asoka. It is still unpublished. 2. It is absolutely certain that, with these verses, there must have been handed down, from the first, an oral commentary giving the stories in prose ; for the verses without the stories are unintelligible. 3. Bas-reliefs of the third century B.C. have been found illustrating a number of these prose stories. One of these bas-reliefs gives also half of a verse. 4. There are Jataka stories in those canonical books that are older than the Jataka Book. 5. These oldest extant Jatakas are similes, parables, THE JA TAKA BOOK 207 or legends. They usually give us neither framework nor verses. In them the Buddha, in his previous birth, is never identified with an animal, or even with an ordinary man. He is identified only with some famous sage of bygone times. 6. Our present edition is not an edition of the text, but of the commentary. It was written prob- ably in the fifth century A.D. in Ceylon by an author whose name is not known. 7. This commentary, which contains all the verses, contains also the prose stories in which they occur. To each such story it further gives a framework of introductory episode (stating when and where and on what occasion the story is supposed to have been spoken by the Buddha) ; and of final identification (of the characters in each story with the Buddha and his contemporaries in a previous birth). 8. This commentary is a translation into Pali of the commentary as handed down in Ceylon. That earlier commentary, now lost, was in the Singhalese language throughout, except as regards the verses, which were in Pali. 9. The Pali commentary, as we now have it, has in the stories preserved, for the most part, the tra- dition handed down from the third century B.c. But in one or two instances variations have already been discovered. 10. As regards the allusions to political and social conditions, they refer, for the most part, to the state of things that existed in North India in and before the Buddha's time. 1 1. When the original Jataka was being gradually 208 BUDDHIST INDIA formed most of the stories were taken bodily over from the existing folklore of North India. 12. Some progress has already been made in de- termining the relative age, at that time, of the stories. Those in the sixth and last volumes are both the longest and latest. Some of these were already selected for illustration on the bas-reliefs of the third century B.C. 13. All the Jatakas have verses attached to them. In a few instances these verses are in the framework, not in the stories themselves. Such stories, without the verses, have probably preserved the original form of the Indian folklore. 14. In a few instances, the verses, though in the stories, are in them only as a sort of chorus, and do not form part of the narrative. In these instances, also, a similar conclusion may be drawn. 15. The whole collection forms the most reliable, the most complete, and the most ancient collection of folklore now extant in any literature in the world. THE JA TAKA BOOK 209 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XI JATAKAS ILLUSTRATED BY BAS-RELIEFS ON THE BHARAHAT STUPA Plate n Cunningham’s Title inscribed on the No. of Jataka Name of Jataka in Stiipa ofBharhut bas-relief in Fausbol Pali 1. XVIII. Vitura Punakiya Jataka 545 Vidhura Pandita Jataka 2. XXV. Fig. 1 Miga Jataka 12 Nigrodha Miga “ 3- “ “ 2 Naga Jataka 267 Kakkata 4- “ “ 3 Yavamajhakiya Jataka 546 Episode in Maha Ummagga “ 5- 44 “ 4 Mugapakaya Jataka 538 Mugapakkha 6. XXVI. “ 5 Latuva Jataka 357 Latukika 7 - “ “ 6 Chadantiya Jataka 514 Chaddanta “ 8. 44 “ 7 Isisingiya Jataka 523 Alambusa “ 9- “ 8 Yam bamano avayesi Jataka 62 Andha-bhuta 10. XXVII. “ 9 206 Kurunga-Miga 11. “ “ IO 349 Sandhi-bheda “ 12. “ “ II Hansa Jataka 32 Nacca “ 13 - 41 44 12 Kinara Jataka 48 5 Canda Kinnara 14 . “ “ 13 181 Asadisa “ 15 - “ “ 14 461 Dasaratha 16. XXXIII. “ 15 407 Maha Kapi 1 7 - XLI. “ r -3 324 Camma-Sataka “ iS. XLIII. “ 2.8 Isimigo Jataka 372 Miga-Potaka 19 XLIV. 4 4 2 Janako raja Sivali devi 539 Maha-Janaka “ 20. XLV. “ 5 46 & 268 Arama-Dusaka “ 21. 4 * “ 7 42 Kapota “ 22. XLVI. “ 2 Uda Jataka 400 Dabbha-Puppha “ 23. 44 “ 8 Secha Jataka 174 Dubhiya-Makkata “ 24 - XLVII. ‘‘ 3 Sujato gahuto Jataka 352 Sujata “ 25 - “ 5 Bidala Jataka Kukuta Jataka 383 Kukkuta 26. XLVIII. “ 2 Maghadeviya Jataka 9 Makha Deva “ 27. 4 4 “ 7 Bhisa Haraniva Jataka 488 Bhisa “ 28. L. 547 Vessantara “ The above table is taken, with a few alterations, from Professor Serge d’Oldenburg’s table published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society , vol. xviii. 1897. It is later and better than the one in my Buddhist Birth Stories, p. cii. As the number of Jatakas in the printed collection is 547 it will be seen that rather more than five per cent, of them are represented in this list as having been illustrated in the third century b.c. As to the spelling of the name of the stupa the more correct form is Bharahat. i+ CHAPTER XII RELIGION— ANIMISM I T is the accepted belief that it is in the literature of the brahmins that we find the evidence as to the religious beliefs of the peoples of India in the sixth and seventh centuries B.C. This seems to me more than doubtful. The priests have preserved for us, not so much the opinions the people actually held, as the opinions the priests wished them to hold. When we consider the enormous labour of keeping up and handing down the priestly books — and this had to be done, as we have seen, 1 entirely through learning the books by heart — we are filled with admiration for the zealous and devoted stu- dents who have thus preserved for us a literature so valuable for the history of human thought. The learned brahmin, and not only in this respect, is a figure of whom India is justly proud. And when we consider how vague and inaccurate are the ac- counts preserved in the writings of the Christian fathers of any views except those they themselves considered to be orthodox, we see how unreasonable 1 Above, p. no, Chapter VII. 210 RELIGION — A NIMISM 21 I it would be to expect that the brahmins, whose difficulties were so much greater, should have been able to do more. What they have done they have done accurately and well. But the record they have saved for us is a partial record. What had happened with respect to religious belief is on a par with what had happened with respect to language. From Takka-sila all the way down to Champa no one spoke Sanskrit. The living lan- guage, everywhere, was a sort of Pali. Many of the old Vedic words were retained in more easily pro- nounceable forms. Many new words had been formed, on analogy, from the existing stock of roots. Many other new words had been adopted from non- Aryan forms of speech. Many Aryan words, which do not happen to occur in the Vedic texts, had nevertheless survived in popular use. And mean- while, in the schools of the priests, and there only, a knowledge of the Vedic language (which we often call Sanskrit) was kept up. But even this Sanskrit of the schools had progressed, as some would say, or had degenerated, as others would say, from the Vedic standard. And the Sanskrit in actual use in the schools was as far removed from the Vedic dialect as it is from the so-called classical Sanskrit of the post-Buddhistic poems and plays. So with the religion. Outside the schools of the priests the curious and interesting beliefs recorded in the Rig Veda had practically little effect. The Vedic thaumaturgy and theosophy had indeed never been a popular faith, that is, as we know it. Both its theological hypotheses and its practical magic (in 2 I 2 BUDDHIST INDIA the ritual) show already a stage very much advanced beyond the simpler faith which the)-, in fact, presup- pose. The gods more usually found in the older systems — the dread Mother Earth, the dryads and the dragons, the dog-star, even the moon and the sun — have been cast into the shade by the new ideas (the new gods) of the fiie, the exciting drink, and the thunderstorm. And the charm of the mystery and the magic of the ritual of the sacrifice had to con- tend, so far as the laity were concerned, with the distaste induced by its complications and its ex- pense. I am aware that these views as to Vedism are at variance with opinions very widely, not to say com- monly, held. Professor Max Muller insisted to the last on the primitive nature of the beliefs recorded in the Rig Veda. Those beliefs seem to us, and in- deed are, so bizarre and absurd, that it is hard to accept the proposition that they give expression to an advanced stage of thought. And one is so accus- tomed to consider the priesthood as the great obsta- cle, in India, in the way of reform, that it is difficult to believe that the brahmins could ever, as a class, have championed the newer views. But a comparison with the general course of the evolution of religious beliefs elsewhere shows that the beliefs recorded in the Rig Veda are not primi- tive. A consideration of the nature of those beliefs, so far as they are not found elsewhere, shows that they must have been, in the view of the men who formulated them, a kind of advance on, or reform of, the previous ideas. And at least three lines of RELIGION— A NIM ISM 213 evidence all tend to show that — certainly all the time we are here considering, and almost certainly at the time when the Rig Veda was finally closed — there were many other beliefs, commonly held among the Aryans in India, but not represented in that Veda . 1 The first of these three lines is the history of the Atharva Veda. This invaluable old collection of charms to be used in sorcery had been actually put together long before Buddhism arose. But it was only just before that time that it had come to be acknowledged by the sacrificial priests as a Veda — inferior to their own three older ones, but still a Veda. This explains why it is that the Atharva is never mentioned as a Veda in the Buddhist canonical books . 2 They are constantly mentioning the three Vedas and the ancient lore connected with the three. They are constantly poking fun at the hocus-pocus of witchcraft and sorcery, and denying any efficiency either to it, or to the magic of the sacrifice. But in the view of the circles in which these books arose the Atharva collection had not yet become a Veda. Yet it is quite certain that the beliefs and prac- tices to which the Atharva Veda is devoted are as old, if not older, than those to which the three other Vedas refer ; and that they were commonly held and followed by the Aryans in India. The things re- corded in the Rig may seem to us as absurd as 1 On religious ideas popular among the people, but only incident- ally referred to in the Veda, and not admitted into it as part of the priestly system of belief, see Kirste in the Vienna Oriental Journal, 1902, pp. 63, foil. 2 See Dialogues of the Buddha , i. 109. 214 BUDDHIST INDIA those in the Atharva. But we cannot avoid the conclusion that the priests who made the older col- lection were consciously exercising a choice, that they purposely omitted to include certain phases of current belief because those phases did not appeal to them, did not suit their purposes, or did not seem to them worthy of their deities. And when we re- member that what they shut out, or nearly shut out, was the lowest kind of savage superstition and sorcery, it is not easy to deny them any credit in doing so. The second is the general view of religious beliefs, as held by the people, given to us in the Epics, and especially in the Maha Bharata. It is, in many re- spects, altogether different from the general view as given in the Vedic literature. We do not know as yet exactly which of the conceptions in the Maha Bharata can be taken as evidence of the seventh cent- ury B.C. The poem has certainly undergone one, if not two or even three, alterations at the hand of later priestly editors. But though the changes made in the poems are due to the priests, they were so made because the priests found that ideas not cur- rent in their schools had so much weight with the people that they (the priests) could no longer afford to neglect them. They must have recast the poem with two main objects in view — in the first place to insist on the supremacy of the brahmins, which had been so much endangered by the great popularity of the anti priestly views of the Buddhists and oth- ers ; and in the second place to show that the brah- mins were in sympathy with, and had formally RELIGION— A NIMISM 215 adopted, certain popular cults and beliefs highly esteemed by the people. In any case, there, in the poem, these cults and beliefs, absent from the Vedic literature, are found in full life and power. And though this line of evidence, if it stood alone, would be too weak to bear much weight, the most likely explanation seems to be that here also we have evi- dence, to some extent at least, of beliefs not in- cluded in the Vedic literature, and yet current among, and powerfully affecting, both the Aryan and the semi-Aryan peoples of India . 1 The third line is based on the references to the religious beliefs, not of the Buddhists themselves, but of the people, recorded in the Buddhist Canon. As these have never yet been collected or analysed, and as they are in many ways both interesting and suggestive, it may be useful to point out shortly here the more important of them. The standard passages on this question are three, the one in prose, the other two in verse, and all found in our oldest documento. The first is in the Silas? and begins thus : “ Whereas some recluses and brahmins, while living on food provided by the faithful, are tricksters, droners out of holy words for pay, diviners, exorcists, ever hungering to add gain to gain, Gotama the recluse holds aloof from such deception and patter.” There then follows a long enumeration, most 1 Compare Professor Hopkins, J. A. O. S. 1899, pp. 315, 365 ; and Religions of India, chap. xiv. 2 Translated by Rh. D. Dialogues of the Buddha , 1. 15. 216 BUDDHIST INDIA Fig. 36. — SI RIM A DRV AT A. [From the Bharahat Tope. PI. xxiii.] valuable to the his- torian, of all kinds of animistic hocus-pocus — evidently forming part of the beliefs of the people in the val- ley of the Ganges in the sixth century B. C., for how otherwise could such “low arts ” have been the source of gain to the brahmins and others who prac- tised them ? We are told of palmistry, divination of all sorts, auguries drawn from the celestial phenom- ena, prognostications by interpretation of dreams, auguries drawn from marks on cloth gnawed by mice, sac- rifices to Agni, — it is characteristic to find these in such company, — oblations of various sorts to gods, deter- mining lucky sites, re- peating charms, laying ghosts, snake charm- ing, using similar arts RELIGION— ANIMISM 217 on other beasts and birds, astrology, the power of prophecy, incantations, oracles, consulting gods through a girl possessed or by means of mirrors, worshipping the Great One, invoking Sir! (the god- dess of Luck), vowing vows to gods, muttering charms to cause virility or impotence, consecrating sites, and more of the same kind. It is a queer list ; and very suggestive both of the wide range of animistic superstitions, and of the proportionate importance, then and to the people at large, of those particular ones included in the Veda. It may be noticed in passing that we have repre- sentations, of a very early date, of this Sir!, the goddess of Luck, of plenty and success, who is not mentioned in the Veda. One of these is marked in plain letters Sirima Devata ; and like Diana of the Ephesians, she bears on her breast the signs of her productivity. The other shows the goddess seated, with two elephants pouring water over her. It is the oldest instance of the most common representa- sentation of this popular goddess ; and figures of her, exactly in this form, can be bought to-day in the bazaars of Northern India. (Figs. 36, 48, 37.) I am allowed, by the kindness of Mrs. Craven, to add a reproduction of a photograph of an image of this popular deity which was recently found in the south of India. It is probably of about the eleventh century, and is decisive evidence that the worship of this non-Vedic goddess prevailed also in the interval between the date of the oldest sculptures and our own time. (Fig. 38.) That Sirl was already a popular deity in the BUDDHIST INDIA 218 Buddha’s time explains the fact that the priests had been compelled to acknowledge her and to invent Fig. 37. — MODERN IMAGE OF SRf AS CONSORT VISHNU. [From Burgess’s Cave Temples 0/ India, p. 524.] a special legend to excuse their doing so 1 ; and that they incidentally mention her, once again, in 1 Satapatha Brahmana, xi. 4, 3. RELIGION — A NIM1SM 219 mystic conjunction with the dread deities of the Moon, and the Sun, and Mother Earth.' Even these other three, though noticed in the Veda, are put far into the background compared with Indra, Agni, Soma, and Varuna; but it is highly probable that they really occupied a very much larger share in the minds of the people of India than these sparse notices in the Veda would tend to show. In mod- ern mythology Sir! or Sri is regarded as a consort of Vishnu. The other two passages, in verse, form whole Sut- tantas — the Maha Samaya Suttanta, No. 20, in the Dlgha, now edited for the Pali Text Society, and translated in my Dialogues of the Buddha , vol. ii. ; and the Atanatiya Suttanta, No. 32, in the same col- lection. In the first of these two poems some un- known early Buddhist poet describes how all the gods of the people come to pay reverence, at Kapi- lavastu, to the new teacher, and to his order of mendicant recluses. In the second of them another unknown poet describes how certain of the gods come to ask him to adopt a form of words which will turn the hearts of other deities unfriendly to the new doctrine, and make them leave it and its followers in peace. And the form of words gives the names of all the gods whom it is considered de- sirable thus to propitiate. These two poems form a suggestive parallel to the method followed by the brahmins of adopting, one by one, the popular faiths. It shows how similar are the motives that influence religious 1 Taittiriya Up. I. 4. 220 BUDDHIST INDIA leaders, however diametrically opposed their views may be. And in both cases the effort had a similar result. The object was to reconcile the people to different ideas. The actual consequence was that the ideas of the people, thus admitted, as it were, by the back door, filled the whole mansion, and the ideas it was hoped they would accept were turned out into the desert, there ultimately to pass abso- lutely away. Nearer home, too, we may call to mind similar events. Our two poets are naturally anxious to include in their lists all the various beliefs which had most weight with those whom they would fain persuade. The poet of the Malta Samaya (the Great Con- course) enumerates first the spirits of the Earth and of the great Mountains. Then the Four Great Kings, the guardians of the four quarters, East and South and West and North. One of these four, Vessavana Kuvera, is the god who in the second poem is the spokesman for all the rest. (Fig. 39.) Then come the Gandharvas, heavenly musicians, supposed to preside over child-bearing and birth, and to be helpful to mortals in many ways. Then come the Nagas, the Siren-serpents, whose worship has been so important a factor in the folklore, superstition, and poetry of India from the earliest times down to-day. Cobras in their ordinary shape, they lived, like mermen and mer- maids, beneath the waters, 1 in great luxury and wealth, more especially of gems, and sometimes, as we shall see, the name is used of the Dryads, 1 See, for instance, Samyutta, vol. v. pp. 47, 63. Fig. 38. — Hindoo goddess of luck. 221 Fig. 39. — VESSAVANA KUVERA, KING OF THE YAKSHAS, AND REGENT OF THE NORTH. [From the Bharahat Tope. PI. xxii.] FlG. 40. — CHAKAVAKA KING OF THE NAGAS. [From Cunningham’s Stupa of Bharkut Pi. xxi. Fig. 3.] 222 RELIGION— A NIMISM 223 the tree-spirits, equally wealthy and powerful. They could at will, and often did, adopt the human form; and though terrible if angered, were kindly and mild by nature. Not mentioned either in Fig. 41. — NAGA MERMAIDS IN WATER. [From Burgess and Griinwedel’s Buddhist Art in India.] the Veda or in the pre-Buddhistic Upanishads, the myth seems to be a strange jumble of beliefs, not altogether pleasant, about a strangely gifted race of actual men ; combined with notions derived 224 BUDDHIST INDIA from previously existing theories of tree-worship, and serpent-worship, and river-worship. But the his- tory of the idea has still to be written. These Nagas are represented on the ancient bas-reliefs as men or women either with cobra’s hoods rising from behind their heads or with serpentine forms from the waist downwards. Then come the Garulas, or Garudas, the Indian counterpart of the harpy and griffin, half man, half bird, hereditary enemies of the Nagas, on whom they feed. They were also, perhaps, originally a tribe of actual men, with an eagle or a hawk as their token on their banner. Then come a goodly crowd of Titans, and sixty kinds of gods, of whom only about half a dozen are Vedic, the other names offering only puzzles which await the solution of future enquirers. First we have the gods of kindly nature and good character; then the souls or spirits supposed to animate and to reside in the moon and the sun (the moon is always mentioned first), in the wind, the cloud, the summer heat; then the gods of light; then a curious list of gods, personifications of vari- ous mental qualities; then the spirits in the thunder and the rain ; and, lastly, the great gods who dwell in the highest heavens (that is, are the outcome of the highest speculation), like Brahma himself, and Paramatta, and Sanam Kumara. The list seems inclusive enough. But why does it make no mention of tree-gods? For if we take as our guide, and we could scarcely do better, Mrs. Philpot’s excellent monograph on The Sacred Tree , Fig. 42. — SEATED NAGA; BACK VIEW. [From a frescoe in Cave II at Ajanta.] 225 226 BUDDHIST INDIA in which the most important facts as to tree- worship throughout the world are collected and classified, we find that a number of fancies about trees, varying from the most naive results of the savage soul-theories up to philosophic speculations of an advanced kind, have been widely current among all forms of faith, and have been traced also in India. Now, so far as I can call to mind, none of these fancies (with one interesting exception, on which see below) is referred to in the principal early books setting out theBuddhist doctrine — the Four Nikayas, for instance, and the Sutta Nipata. But in older and later documents several of these beliefs can be found. The conclusion is obvious. Those beliefs as to tree-worship mentioned in pre-Buddhistic lit- erature formed part, at the time of the rise of Buddhism, of the religion of the people. They were rejected by the early Buddhists. But they continued to form part of the religion of those of the people who were uninfluenced by the new teach- ing. And one or two of them found their way back into one or other of the later schools of Buddhism. Already in the Vedas themselves we have a num- ber of passages in which trees are invoked as deities . 1 This is decisive of the attitude of mind of the Aryans in early times in India. For it was, of course, not the trees as such, but the souls or spirits supposed to dwell within them, to haunt them, that were looked upon as gods. That this notion sur- 1 See Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, p. 154. RELIGION— ANIMISM 227 vived down to the rise of Buddhism is shown in the Upanishads. If the soul leaves the tree, the tree withers, but the soul does not die . 1 These souls may have dwelt, and may dwell again, in human bodies . 2 And long after the rise of Buddhism ideas associated with this belief are often referred to. Offerings are made to these tree-spirits , 3 even human sacrifices are offered , 4 they were consulted as oracles, and expected to give sons and wealth , 3 they injure those who injure the trees in which they dwell , 6 and they are pleased when garlands are hung upon the branches, lamps are lighted round it, and Bali offer- ings are made (that is food is thrown), at the foot of the tree . 7 The brahmin priests, too, are enjoined in their books of sacred law and custom to throw such Bali offerings to the tree-spirits . 8 All the above is tree-worship— or more correctly dryad-worship — pure and simple. When we find the world-soul spoken of as a tree that has its roots in heaven , 9 that is poetry, a simile based perhaps on the mystery of growth, but still only a simile. The idea of the Kalpa-rukkha, the Wishing Tree, which will give one all one wants, has not as yet been traced back earlier than some centuries after the date we are considering . 10 But Fergusson’s explanation of the old monuments 1 Chand. Up. vi. 11 ; see Jat. 4. 154. 3 J. R. A. S. 1901, p. 886. 5 Jat. Nos. 98, 109, 307, 493. 1 Jat. 3. 23 ; 4. 153. 9 Kathaka Up. vi. 1; Svet. Up., iii. 9. 10 The earliest reference to this idea I have been able to find is the Ayaranga, p. 127 (see Jacobi, Jaina Sutras , 1. 197). 2 Kathaka Up. v. 7. 4 Jat. 5- 472, 474. 488. 6 Jat. 4. 210, 353. 8 Manu, iii. 88, etc. 228 BUDDHIST INDIA as being devoted to tree-worship requires altogether restating. With all his genius he was attempting the impossible when he tried to interpret the work FlG. 43. — ELEPHANTS BEFORE THE WISDOM TREE. [From Cunningham’s Stiipa 0/ Bharhut. PI. xxx.] of Indian artists without a knowledge of Indian literature. His mistake was really very natural. At first sight such bas-reliefs as those here figured (Figures 43 and 44) seem most certainly to show RELIGION — A NIMISM 229 men and animals worshipping a tree, that is the spirit residing in a tree. But on looking farther we Fig. 44. — THE WISDOM TREE OF KASSAPA, THE BUDDHA. [From Cunningham’s Stiipa 0/ Bharhut . PI. xxx.] see that the tree has over it an inscription stating that it is “the Bodhi Tree, the tree of wisdom, of Kassapa the Exalted One.” Every Buddha is sup- 230 BUDDHIST INDIA posed to have attained enlightenment under a tree. The tree differs in the accounts of each of them. Our Buddha’s “ Wisdom Tree,” for instance, is of the kind called the Assattha or Pippal tree. Now while in all the oldest accounts of Gotama’s attainment of Buddha-hood there is no mention of the tree under which he was sitting at the time , 1 yet already in a Suttanta’ it is incidentally mentioned that this event took place under a Pippal tree; and this is often referred to in later books. In these old sculp- tures the Buddha himself is never represented di- rectly, but always under a symbol. What we have here then is reverence paid to the tree, not for its own sake, and not to any soul or spirit supposed to be in it, but to the tree either as the symbol of the Master, or because (as in the particular case repre- sented in the figures) it was under a tree of that kind that his followers believed that a venerated Teacher of old had become a Buddha. In either case it is a straining of terms, a misrepresentation or at best a misunderstanding, to talk of tree-worship. The Pip- pal was a sacred tree at the date of these sculptures, — sacred, that is, to the memory of the beloved Master, who had passed away; and it had acquired the epithet of “ Tree of Wisdom.” But the wisdom was the wisdom of the Master not of the tree or of the tree- god, and could not be obtained by eating of its fruit. These ideas are of course post- Buddhistic. They could have arisen in a perfectly natural way simply because the tradition was that Gotama had, at that crisis in his life, sat under a Pippal tree. And it is 1 M. j. 22, 117, 249. ! D. 2. 52. KELIGIOX — A NIM ISM 23I very possible that the tradition may, so soon after- wards, have been perfectly right. We know as an actual fact that thinking was much more frequent, in that beautiful climate, in the open air, than between four walls. The appreciation of the beauties of na- ture, so conspicuous in many of the early Buddhist poems, is an Indian, not a Buddhist trait. And it was to a prevalent Indian, not only a Buddhist, sentiment that the Buddha is represented to have appealed, when at the end of some earnest dialogue on a weighty point of ethics or philosophy, he is said to have been wont to close with the appeal: “Here are trees ; think this matter out!” It is therefore by no means impossible that it was under a Pippal tree the Buddha clenched the essential points in his new doctrine of life. And, if so, is it not quite con- ceivable that his disciples should have recollected so simple and natural a fact connected with what they regarded, not only as the turning-point in his career, as his Nirvana, but as the turning-point in the his- tory of the world ? Another hypothesis is possible — that the disciples, in all good faith, associated their Master with this particular tree because it already, before his time, had been especially sacred above all other trees. The tradition may then have been the result of this feeling. The tree was certainly held in high esteem even as early as the Vedic poems. Vessels for the mystic Soma cult were made of its wood ; and so were the caskets containing the medicinal herbs used in the mystic craft of the physician of the day. The upper portion in the fire-drill — and the production 232 BUDDHIST INDIA of fire was held to be a mystery — was of the wood of the Pippal tree. And in one passage the tree in heaven under which the souls of the blessed recline is likened to a Pippal. 1 Whether this would be sufficient reason for the rise of the tradition inay be doubtful. But such associations would certainly add to its hold on popular imagination, if it had once otherwise arisen. It is, however, never to the Pippal tree to which the folklore quoted above attributed divine power. It happens always to be some other tree. And we know too little to be able to be quite sure that this is merely a matter of chance. The tree-deities were called Nagas, and were able at will, like the Nagas, to assume the human form; and in one story 2 the spirit of a banyan tree who reduced the merchants to ashes is called a Naga-raja, the soldiers he sends forth from his tree are Nagas, and the tree itself is “the dwelling-place of the Naga.” This may explain why it is that the tree-gods are not specially and separately mentioned in the Maha Samaya list of deities who are there said by the poet to have come to pay reverence to the Buddha. In any case we must add tree-wor- ship, the worship of powerful spirits supposed to dwell in trees, to the list of those beliefs, scarcely noticed in the Vedas, that were an important part of the religion of the peoples of Northern India at the time of the rise of Buddhism. In neither of these two lists is Indra, the great god 1 See, on all these points, the passages quoted by Zimmer, Alt- indisc he s Lehen , p. 58. s Jataka No. 493. Fig. 45. — THE BUDDHA PREACHING TO NAGAS DWELLING IN A SACRED TREE. 233 FROM A BUDDHIST CARVING AT TAKT-I-BAHI. \J. R. A.S 1899.] 2 34 BUDDHIST INDIA of the Veda, even mentioned. His place, as bearer of the thunderbolt, is taken by Sakka, who is in many, if not in most, respects a quite different con- ception. We should never forget in what degree all these gods are real. They had no real objective ex- istence. But they were real enough as ideas in men’s minds. At any given moment the gods of a nation seem eternal, unchangeable. As a matter of fact they are constantly slightly changing. No two men, thinking of the same god, even on the same day, and amid the same surroundings, have quite the same mental image; nor is the proportionate importance of that god as compared with their respective con- ceptions of other gods (that is, as compared with their other ideas) quite the same. Just as a man’s visible frame, though no change may at any moment be perceptible, is never really the same for two con- secutive moments, and the result of constant minute variations becomes clear after a lapse of time, so the idea summed up by the name of a god becomes changed by the gradual accretion of minute varia- tions; and this change, after a lapse of time (it may be generations, it may be centuries), becomes so clear that a new name arises, and gradually, very gradu- ally, ousts the older one. Then the older god is dead. As the Buddhist poets put 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 re-born into a new life.” He lives again, as we might say, in the very outcome of his former life, in the new god who, under the new name, reigns in men’s hearts. REL 1 GION- — A NIMISM 235 So Jupiter ousted Chronos, and Indra himself had almost ousted Trita, even in the Veda; and Indra and others had almost ousted Varuna. So in the period we are considering had Sakka, in his turn, al- most ousted Indra. Though the epic poets after- wards did their best to re-establish Indra on the throne, they had but poor success ; for his name and his fame had dwindled away. And we catch sight of him, in these records, just as he is fading dimly away on the horizon, and changing his shape into that of the successor to his dignity and power . 1 It is the same, but in each case in different de- grees, with other Vedic gods. It were tedious here to go at length into each case. Isana, the vigorous and youthful form of the dread Siva of the future, is already on a level with Soma and Varuna. And Pajapati and Brahma 3 will soon come to be consid- ered as co-partners with Sakka in the lordship over all the gods . 3 The worship of Agni is scoffed at as on a par with the hocus-pocus of witchcraft and divination , 4 and it is soon to be laughed to scorn in the amusing tales of the folklore of the people . 5 Vayu, the wind-god, never very important, is just mentioned in our list, but nowhere else in texts of that age, and will soon also be the laughing-stock of the story-teller . 6 Varuna is still a power, ranked with the highest , 7 but he will soon be reduced to a tree-god , 8 a Naga king , 9 a lord of the oracle girls , 10 'Jat., 4. 8. 5 D. 1. 244 ; S. 1. 219. 3 Jacobi, Jaiua Sutras , 1. 198. 4 D. 1. 67. 5 Jatakas Nos. 35 and 162. 6 Jataka No. 17. 1 S. 1. 219 ; Jat. 5. 28, 6. 201. 8 Jat. 4. S. 9 Jat. 6. 164, 257-329. 10 The Varunis, Jat. 6. 586. BUDDHIST INDIA 236 who, possessed by the god, will, as Pythias, prophesy smooth things. And Vishnu, though mentioned in our poem under the name of Venhu, has scarcely as yet appeared above the horizon. Pajjunna is still the rain-god in the Suttantas; he is mentioned in both poems; and has retained this character even in the folklore . 1 I know of no other Vedic gods mentioned in this literature. Dyaus, Mitra, and Savitri, Pushan, the Aditvas, the Asvins and the Maruts, Aditi and Diti and UrvasI, and many more, are all departed. They survive only within the enclosures of the Vedic schools. The people know them no longer. Now there is no doubt a long interval of time between the close of the Rig Veda collection of hymns and the rise of Buddhism. The Vedic an- thology, small as it is, may not give, even for its own time, a complete statement of Indian belief. Some of the differences between Vedic mythology and popular religion at the time of the rise of Buddhism may therefore be due to the influence of an un- recorded past. But this can only explain a part, and probably a small part, of the difference. The old gods, that is the old ideas, when they have survived, have been so much changed ; so many of them have not survived at all; so many new ones have sprung into vigorous life and wide-reaching influence, that one conclusion is inevitable. The common view that the Indians were very different from other folk in similar stages of development, that to that differ- ence was due the stolid, not to say stupid, conserva- 1 J. 1. 332. 4 - 253 ; C. P. 3. 10. 7. RELIGION — A NIM ISM 237 tism of their religious conceptions, that they were more given to superstition, less intellectual, than for instance the Greeks and Romans, must be given up. Derived partly from a too exclusive study of the priestly books, partly from reading back into the past a mistaken view of modern conditions, it can- not stand against the new evidence derived from the Jain and Buddhist literatures written, or rather com- posed, in independence of the priests. The real facts lead to the opposite view. They show a con- stant progress from Vedic times onwards. Some reasons for this will be suggested in the next chapter. But whatever the facts, and whatever the reasons for them, we are not likely to cease from hearing that parrot cry of self-complacent ignorance, “ The im- movable East” — the implied sop to vanity is too sweet to be neglected. CHAPTER XIII RELIGION — THE BRAHMIN POSITION HESE details of the lower phases of religion in India in the sixth century B.C. have great and essential similarity with the beliefs held, not only at the same time in the other centres of civilisation,— in China, Persia, and Egypt, in Italy and Greece,— but also among the savages of then and now. But there is a further and more striking resemblance. Sir Henry Maine has said: “Nothing is more re- markable than the extreme fewness of progressive societies — the difference between them and the sta- tionary races is one of the greatest secrets enquiry has yet to penetrate.” 1 Whatever the secret, above and beyond the influ- ence of economic conditions, may have been, we know that civilisation, of a kind at least, extended back in time, on the four great river basins of the Nile and the Euphrates, the Ganges and the Yellow River, not merely through centuries, but through thousands of years, if reckoned from to-day. Yet in 1 Ancient Law , p. 22. 238 RELIGION — THE BRAHMIN POSITION 239 each of those places — though there was a real and progressive civilisation, and ideas and customs were no doubt constantly changing and growing — there was a certain dead level, if not a complete ab- sence of what we should call philosophic thought. The animistic hypotheses, the soul-theories, of their savage ancestors seemed sufficient, even to the pro- gressive races, to explain all that they saw or felt. Men varied, but never dreamed of rejecting, the soul-theories. They did not even build up on the basis of them any large and general views, either of ethics, or of philosophy, or of religion. Then sud- denly, and almost simultaneously, and almost cer- tainly independently, there is evidence, about the sixth century B.C., in each of these widely separated centres of civilisation, of a leap forward in specula- tive thought, of a new birth in ethics, of a religion of conscience threatening to take the place of the old religion of custom and magic. In each of these countries similar causes, the same laws regulating the evolution of ideas, had taken just about the same number of centuries to evolve, out of similar conditions, a similar result. Is there a more stupen- dous marvel in the whole history of mankind? Does any more suggestive problem await the solu- tion of the historian of human thought ? The solution will not be possible till we have a more accurate knowledge of the circumstances which led up, in each country, to the awakening. And in India one important factor in the preceding circum- stances seems to me to have been, hitherto, too much neglected. The intense interest, from the 240 BUDDHIST INDIA world-history point of view, of the sixth century B.C. — the best dividing line, if there ever was any, be- tween ancient history and modern, between the old order and the new — would be sufficient excuse, if one were needed, for a somewhat detailed con- sideration of this particular point. In India, as elsewhere, the whole of the popular animistic notions mentioned in the last chapter, and no doubt others also, survived in full force. But no one man believed in them all, or even knew of them all. In that part of the priestly literature which has come down to us a certain selected portion of these beliefs is taken, as it were, under priestly patronage, has received the stamp of re- spectability, has been given such social rank as the priests could confer. They seldom, perhaps never, stepped outside the charmed circle of animistic magic. But what they chose was probably, on the whole, of a better kind than what they left to itself. Even so the contents of the priestly books on ritual, though a rich mine of materials for a history of magic and superstition, are unspeakably banal. M. Sylvain Levi, the author of the most authoritative work on this subject, says in the introduction to his summary of the Brahmana theory of sacrifice : “ It is difficult to imagine anything more brutal and more material than the theology of the Brah- manas. Notions which usage afterwards gradually refined, and clothed with a garb of morality, take us aback by their savage realism.” Or again : RELIGION — THE BRAHMIN POSITION 24 I “ Morality finds no place in this system. Sacrifice, which regulates the relation of man to the divinities, is a mechanical act, operating by its own spontane- ous energy (par son energie intime) ; and that, hidden in the bosom of nature, is only brought out by the magic art of the priest.” 1 To these writers, the sacrifice, if only rigidly carried out in each one of its details, is the source of all profit and advantage. The gods (who are quite unmoral, not immoral, though they are represented in these texts as having been guilty of falsehood, chi- canery, and incest) are utterly unable to counteract the effect of such a sacrifice. Indeed they owe their own supremacy, their own position in heaven, to sac- rifices they themselves had thus carried out to older gods. And it is by the same means that they con- tinue to defeat the Asuras, that is the Titans, the rival gods, who would otherwise storm the gates of heaven. There were no temples, and probably no images. The altars were put up anew for each sacrifice in a field or garden belonging to the sacrificer. The benefit to accrue from the sacrifice went to him, and to him alone. He therefore had to pay for the performance ; for the animals to be slaughtered, for the numerous work people employed, and for the fees for the priests. “ As to the fees, the rules are precise, and the pro- pounders of them are unblushing. The priest performs the sacrifice for the fee alone, and it must consist 1 Doctrine die sacrifice chez les Brahmanas , p. g (Paris, 1898). l6 242 BUDDHIST INDIA of valuable garments, kine, horses, or gold ; — when each is to be given is carefully stated. Gold is coveted most, for ‘ this is immortality, the seed of Agni,’ and therefore peculiarly agreeable to the pious priest.” 1 It would be unnecessary to go into the intermin- able detail of such sacrifices. They are expounded very fully and carefully in Professor Hillebrandt’s standard works on the subject . 2 The expense must have been very great, even for the less complicated ; and it is probable that this had something to do with the fact that a way was discovered to obtain the desired result without sacrifice. The nearer we get to the time of Buddhism the greater is the importance we find attached to this second method, that of iapas, — self-mortification, or more exactly, self-torture. The word occurs, in this its technical sense, in the latest hymns included in the Rig Veda. It is literally “ burning, glow ” ; and had then already acquired the secondary sense of retirement into solitude in the forest, and the prac- tise there of austerity, bodily self-mortification, — not at all with the idea of atonement or penance, but under the impression that self-torture of this kind would bring about magical results. Just as the sacrificer was supposed, by a sort of charm that his priests worked for him in the sacrifice, to compel the gods, and to attain ends he desired, so there was supposed to be a sort of charm in iapas by which a man could, through and by himself, attain ■Hopkins, Religions of India, 192. 2 A llindische neu-und vollmondsopfer , Jena, 1879, and Ritual- literatur, Vedische Opfer und Zauber , Strasburg, 1897. RELIGION — THE BRAHMIN POSITION 243 to mystic and marvellous results. The distinction seems to have been that it was rather worldly suc- cess, cattle, children, and heaven, that were attained by sacrifice ; and mystic, extraordinary, superhuman faculties that were attained by Tapas. Then, by a natural anthropomorphism, the gods too, in later works, were supposed — just as they had been supposed to offer sacrifice — to practise tapas , austerity. And it was not a mere distinction with- out a difference, it was a real advance in thought, when this sort of physical self-mastery, of the con- quest of will over discomfort and pain, came to be placed above sacrifice. It had been by sacrifice that the gods had made the world. Now it came to be said, in different cosmological legends, that one god or another had brought forth the world by tapas . 1 And a Brahmana text declares : “ Heaven is established on the air, the air on the earth, the earth on the waters, the waters on truth, the truth on the mystic lore (of the sacrifice), and that on Tapas." 2 It will be noticed that tapas is here put in the most important place, higher than sacrifice, which is, in its turn, higher than truth — a most suggestive order, as we shall see later on. We have no details in the books of this period of the particular prac- tices in which the austerity, the self-mortification, consisted. It was no doubt of various kinds, and would tend, in course of time, to be elaborated. But we have a full statement of the stage it had 1 Satapatha-brahmana vi.1.1.13, and often afterwards. 2 Aitareya Br. xi. 6. 4. 244 BUDDHIST INDIA reached in the Buddha’s time, as set forth by a naked ascetic in a Dialogue he had with Gotama . 1 This professor of self-torture enumerates twenty-two methods of self-mortification in respect of food, and thirteen in respect of clothing, and among these the ascetic may make his choice. And he keeps his body under in other ways: “ He is a ‘ plucker-out-of-hair-and-beard ’ (destroying by a painful process the possibility of pride in mere beauty of appearance) — or he is a ‘ stander-up ’ (reject- ing the use of a seat) — or he is a croucher-down-on- the-heels ’ (moving about painfully by jumps) — or he is a ‘ bed-of-thorns-man ’ (putting thorns or iron spikes under the skin on which he sleeps) — or he sleeps on a plank, or on the bare ground, or always on the same side — or he is ‘ clad-in-dust ’ (smearing his naked body with oil and standing where dust clouds blow, he lets dust and dirt adhere to his body).” Later on, in the epic for instance, the list grows longer, the penances harder, the self-torture more revolting. But from this time onwards, down to quite modern times, this tapas , self-mortification, is a permanent idea and practice in the religious life of India. As is well known it is not confined to India. Tennyson, in the monologue of St. Simeon Stylites, has given us a powerful analysis of the sort of feelings that lay at the root of this superstition in the West. But the theological views that give the tone to the Christian saint’s self-revelation are very 1 Rh. D. Dialogues of the Buddha , I. pp. 226-232. RELIGION — THE BRAHMIN POSITION 245 different from those we find in India. The Indian way of looking at the whole conception is much more akin to the way Diogenes thought when he lived, like a dog, in his tub-kennel. The Greek word cynic is indeed exactly analogous to the Indian expression kukkura-vatiko , “ one who behaves like a dog,” as applied (quite courteously) to the sophist, the naked ascetic, Seniya . 1 There is no question here of penance for sin, or of an appeal to the mercy of an offended deity. It is the boast of superiority advanced by the man able, through strength of will, to keep his body under, and not only to despise comfort, but to welcome pain. By this it is not, of course, intended to imply that the Christian did not advance a similar claim. He did. But it was, in his case, overshadowed by other con- siderations which are absent in India. Both in the East and the West the claim was often accepted. We hear a good deal in India of the reverence paid to the man who (to quote the words of a Buddhist poet), “ Bescorched, befrozen, lone in fearsome woods, Naked, without a fire, afire within, Struggled in awful silence toward the goal ! ” 2 Simeon, by the mere strength of popular acclaim, became a saint, even almost before he died. Diogenes, and his parallel in India, Mahavlra, founded important schools which have left their mark on his- tory. And ought we, after all, to be surprised that those who despise earthly comfort, and subject them- 1 M. 1. 387. 3 M. 1. 79 = Jat. 1. 390. 246 BUDDHIST INDIA selves to voluntary torture, should be looked upon, with a kind of fearsome awe, as more holy, as better, than other men ? There was some justice in the view. And until experience had shown the other side of the question — -the attendant disadvantages, and the inadequate results of strength of will when applied to physical ends — it was inevitable that the self-mastery quite evident in such practices should appeal strongly to the minds of the people. We find the other side put forward in India from two directions, one mainly philosophic, the other mainly ethical. The manner in which both these movements came about was perfectly natural, though it was much influenced by the custom already re- ferred to as peculiar, at that period of the world’s history, to India.' Students are often represented as begging, just as students did in Europe in the Middle Ages . 3 And we hear of sophists, just as we do in the history of Greek thought. But the pecu- liarity was that, before the rise of Buddhism, it was a prevalent habit for wandering teachers also — and not only students — to beg. Such wandering teachers, who were not necessarily ascetics except in so far as they were celibates, are always repre- sented as being held in high esteem by the people. In the monarchies the royal family, in the clans the community, put up (as we have seen above) public halls where such Wanderers (. Paribbajaka ) could lodge, and where conversational discussions, open to everyone, were held on philosophic and religious 1 See above, Chapter VIII. 2 Sat. Br. xi. 3. 3. 5; and often later in the law-books. RELIGION — THE BRAHMIN POSITION 247 questions . 1 The career of such a wandering teacher seems to have been open to anyone, and even to women. And the most perfect freedom, both of thought and of expression, was permitted to them — a freedom probably unequalled in the history of the world. This curious state of things would only have been possible among people of a very fair degree both of average general intelligence and of gentle manners. And just as the Strolling Students in pre-Reforma- tion times throughout Western Europe were both a sign of the coming change, and also helped largely to bring it about, so the conditions which made it possible for the Wanderers in Northern India to live as they did, in pursuit of what they thought to be truth, were the precursors of that movement of thought we now call Buddhism, which the Wan- derers also so largely helped to bring about. The early history of the Wanderers has yet to be written. We hear of a similar custom as already followed in one isolated case by a sacrificing priest. Uddalaka Aruni, of the Gotama family, of whom so many other legends have been preserved, is said to have wandered about the country offering a gold coin, as a lure for the timid, to anyone who, in a disputation on spiritual matters, could prove him wrong . 2 When defeated he becomes the pupil of his conqueror. We may point out, in passing, that these “ spiritual matters ” are very characteristic of the Brahmanas. 1 Rh. D. Dialogues of the Buddha , 1. 244; and above, p. 141. 2 Sat. Br. xi. 4. 1. 248 BUDDHIST INDIA When he is being defeated the problems put are such as this: Why are creatures born without teeth, then teeth grow, and when the creatures become old then the teeth decay? The answer of his opponent, the orthodox priest, is: The preliminary offerings of a sacrifice have no formulas of invitation, therefore creatures are born without teeth (!). The chief sac- rifice has, therefore teeth grow (!). The closing acts in the sacrifice have no such formulas, therefore in old age teeth decay (!). Other explanations, equally lucid and convincing, are given for the growth and decay of the procreative power, etc. Such are the deep mysteries Uddalaka Aruni is scoffed at (in the priestly manual which has pre- served this interesting old story) for not knowing. This is a foreshadowing of the well-known Bud- dhist story of the woman sophist who wandered from village to village offering to meet all the world in argument, and when beaten in a disputation, be- came the pupil of her Buddhist conqueror. In the centuries between the date of these two legends the whole system had grown up. But unfortunately there is so little about it in the priestly books that it is not easy to trace its progress. The priests, very naturally, did not like the gradu- ally growing esteem in which a body of men (and women) were held who despised the sacrifice, the source of the priests’ income and reputation. But they were quite helpless in the matter. The sacri- fices the priests were ready to offer had entirely lost any significance they may have once possessed as national or tribal ceremonies. They were now merely RELIGION — THE BRAHMIN POSITION 249 magic rites performed for the benefit of one indi- vidual and at his expense. In the priestly books it is taken for granted that every one entitled to do so is desirous to have the sacrifices performed for him. In actual life there were probably many who gibed at the cost ; and preferred, if they wanted magic, magic of other and cheaper kinds. In any case there was no central organisation of the priesthood ; there were no permanent temples to their gods, and such sacred shrines as the people could frequent were the sacred trees or other objects of veneration belonging to the worship of the local gods, and quite apart from the cultus or the influence of the priests. And the latter were divided against themselves. They vied with one another for sacrificial fees. The demand for their services was insufficient to main- tain them all. Brahmins followed therefore all sorts of other occupations; and those of them not contin- ually busied about the sacrifice were often inclined to views of life, and of religion, different from the views of those who were. We find brahmins rank- ing tapas , self-torture, above sacrifice. We find brah- mins among those who reckoned insight above either, and who, whether as laymen or as Wander- ers, joined the ranks of the other side. Unable therefore, whether they wanted or not, to stay the progress of newer ideas, the priests strove to turn the incoming tide into channels favorable to their Order. They formulated — though this was some time after the rise of Buddhism — the famous theory of the As'ramas, or Efforts, according to which no 250 BUDDHIST INDIA one could become either a Hermit or a Wanderer without having first passed many years as a student in the brahmin schools, and lived after that the life of a married householder as regulated in the brah- min law-books. It was a bold bid for supremacy. If successful it might have put a stop to the whole movement. But it remained a dead letter — prob- ably always, certainly during the period we are here considering. It is quite true that the priestly man- uals, especially those later than the Christian era, take it as a matter of course that the rule was ob- served. But they do not give us the actual facts of life in India. They give, and are only meant to give, what the priests thought the facts ought to be. And there is ample evidence even in the priestly literature itself of a gradual growth in the theory, of differing views about it, and of its loose hold on the people. I have elsewhere col- lected the evidence, which though most interesting, historically, and quite conclusive, is too long to set out here . 1 In the second place, the priests, already before the rise of Buddhism, had (as appendices to their sacred books on the sacrifice) short treatises setting out, as the highest truth, those forms of speculation which they held most compatible with their own mysteries. Their procedure, in this respect, was exactly parallel to their treatment of gods not in- cluded in their own pantheon, but too powerful and popular to be left alone. It is quite evident, from the outcome of the whole movement, that there 1 Dialogues of the Buddha, i, pp. 2I2-2IQ. RELIGION— THE BRAHMIN POSITION 25 I must have been other ideas current besides those that the priests thus adapted and handed down in their text-books. And we have valuable evidence, in the lay literature of a later date, as to what these other ideas were, so that in this respect also, as in other matters, the priestly books have preserved an invaluable, but still only a partial, record. The ideas they selected are, as would naturally be expected, those based on the same animistic notions as underlay their own views of the sacrifice. A soul in these texts — the pre-Buddhistic Upanishads — is supposed to exist inside each human body, and to be the sole and sufficient explanation of life and motion. In the living body, in its ordinary state, the soul dwells in a cavity in the heart . 1 It is described as being in size like a grain of barley or rice . 2 It is only in later speculation that it grows to be of the size of the thumb, and to be called therefore “the dwarf.” 3 In shape it is like a man . 4 Its appearance was evidently found difficult to por- tray, even in simile; but it is said in different pas- sages to be like smoke-coloured wool, like cochineal, like flame, like a white lotus, like a flash of lightning, like a light without smoke. Beliefs vary as to what it is made of. One passage says it consists of con- sciousness, mind, breath ; eye and ears; earth, water, fire, and ether ; heat and no heat ; desire and no 1 Brhad. iv. 3. 7, v. 6 ; Chand. viii. 3. 3; Tait. i. 6. 1. Compare Katha, ii. 20 ; iii. 1 ; iv. 6 ; vi. 17. 4 Brhad. v. 6 ; Chand. iii. 14.. 3 (this idea is even Vedic). 3 Katha, iv. 12, 13, vi. 17 ; Svet. iii. 13, v. 8. 4 Tait, ii. ; Brhad. i. 41 ; Sat. Br. xiv. 4. 2. 1. 252 BUDDHIST IXD/A desire; anger and no anger; law and no law — in a word, of all things . 1 * We see from this that the soul was supposed to be material — the four elements of matter are there — but selected mental qualities are also in it. In another curious and deeply mystical old text the elements of matter come first, and we are told of five souls, each inside the other, each the same yet different from the one outside it, each of them in shape as a man, and made respectively of food, breath, mind, consciousness, and joy. Certain forms of disease were supposed to be due to the fact that the soul had escaped out of the body ; and charms are recorded for bringing it back . 3 In dream sleep also the “soul ” is away from the body. “ Therefore they say : Let no one wake a man brusquely ; for that is a matter difficult to be cured for him if the soul find not its way back to him.” 3 During the dream the soul, after leaving the body, wanders at its will, builds up a world according to its fancy, creates for itself chariots and houses, lakes and rivers, manifold shapes, a gorgeous playground wherein it acts and enjoys and suffers, “either re- joicing with women, or laughing with its friends, or beholding horrible sights.” Till at last, tired out, — just as a falcon after roaming hither and thither in the sky, tired, flaps its wings and is wafted to its nest, — so the soul returns from that playground of his to the body, when in deep, fast sleep it wants no 1 Brhad. iv. 4. 5. See also iii. 7. 14-22. s Atharva Veda, v. 29. 5 ; vi. 53. 2 ; vii. 67. Compare Ait. Ar. iii. 2. 4. 7. 3 Brhad. iv. 3. 14. RELIGION— THE BRAHMIN POSITION 253 more, and dreams no more . 1 It is a charming and beautiful picture. Such dreams are premonitions of good luck or the reverse, which gave rise, in India then, as throughout the world in similar stages of culture, to many foolish fancies. When the soul has come back to the body, which remains recumbent in dreamless sleep, the soul per- vades the whole of it, down to the tips of the hair and nails, by means of seventy-two thousand arteries called Hita (the Good). And oddly enough it is precisely then that the soul is supposed to obtain light . 2 We are not told how the soul gets out of, and back into, the body. This is not surprising, for the opin- ions expressed as to how the soul got into its first body — whether at conception or at quickening or at birth — are contradictory. All views on this point were no doubt neither more nor less hazy then in India than they are now in the West. There are passages which suppose the soul to have existed, before birth, in some other body 3 ; and other pas- sages which suppose it to have been inserted, at the origin of things, into its first body downw r ards, through the suture at the top of the skull, into the heart . 4 But there is a passage which affirms that the soul was inserted upwards, through the intes- tines and the belly, into the head. And we find a 1 Brhad. iv. 3 ; Chand. viii. 12. 3. 2 Brhad. ii. 1. 19, iv. 3. 20 ; Chand. viii. 6. 3 ; Kaus. iv. 19. 3 Brhad. iii. 2. 13 ; iv. 4. 6. Compare vi. 4, and Ait. Ar. ii. 3. 2. 4 Tait. i. 6. i ; Ait. iii. 12. 254 BUDDHIST INDIA curious speculation, of which there are three variants, on the transfer of the soul by generation, through the seed. One of these is the theory that certain human souls, on going to the moon, become food to the gods there, and are thus united to the gods as a con- sequence of their good deeds. When the efficacy of their good deeds is exhausted, they pass from the gods to the ether, from the ether into the air, from the air into the rain, from the rain on to the earth, from the earth into plants which become food to males, and from the males they pass into females . 1 * 3 4 At the death of an ordinary man the top part of the heart becomes lighted up, and the soul, guided by that light, departs from the heart into the eye, and through the eye to some other body, exalted or not, according to the deeds the man has done in that body the soul is now leaving. But the soul of the man whose cravings have ceased goes, through the suture of the skull (at the top of the head), to Brahman . 5 In each case there are many stopping- places on the way,* but the theories differ both about these and about other details. I have discussed these points elsewhere/ And a careful search would no doubt reveal passages even in other parts of the priestly literature acknowledging views which do 1 Brhad. vi. 2. 16 ; vi. 3. 13. Comp. Kaus. i. 2 ; Ait. ii. 1-4 ; Ait. Ar. iii. 2. 2. 4. s Brhad. iv. 4 ; Kaus. iii. 3 ; Chand. vii. 6. 6 ; Tait. i. 6. 1. 3 Brhad. vi. 2 ; Chand. iv. 15 and v. 9. 4 Dialogues of the Buddha, 1. iSS, 242 ; Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1S99, pp. 79, foil. RELIGION — THE BRAHMIN POSITION 255 not happen to be referred to in the older Upan- ishads, but which bear the stamp of great antiquity — such passages as Maha-bharata, xii. 1 1. 704, where we are told that if, as the dying man draws up his knees, the soul goes out of him by way of the knees, then it goes to the Sadhyas. But there is an almost entire unanimity of opinion in these Upanishads that the soul will not obtain release from rebirth either by the performance of sacrifice in this birth or by the practice of penance. It must be by a sort of theosophic or animistic insight, by the perception, the absolute knowledge and certainty, that one’s own soul is identical with the Great Soul, the only permanent reality, the ulti- mate basis and cause of all phenomena. The ideas had therefore just made, at the time when our history begins, a complete circle. The hypothesis of a soul — a material, but very subtle sort of homunculus within the body — had been started to explain the life and motion, sleep and death, of human beings. By analogy, logically enough, it had been extended, ever more and more widely, to explain similar phenomena in the outside world. There must be a soul in the sun. How else could one explain its majestic march across the heavens, evidently purposeful, its rising and its set- ting, its beauty and light and glow? If its action was somewhat mysterious, who was to limit or de- fine the motives of the soul of so glorious a creature ? There was no argument about it. It was taken for granted ; and any one who doubted was simply im- pious. These souls in nature — gods they called 256 BUDDHIST INDIA them — had, of course, no existence outside the brains of the men who made them. They were logical corollaries of the human soul. And the ex- ternal souls, the gods, were therefore identical in origin and nature with the souls supposed to live in- side human bodies. But the very men who made these external souls, the gods, looked upon them as objective realities, quite different from their own souls. They — the gods — were always changing — that is to say, men’s ideas about them were always changing, moving, being modified. The long history of Indian mythology is the history of such changes, by no means always dependent on theological reas- ons . 1 And with each change the objective reality of the external souls, the gods, their difference from the souls of men, seemed more clear and certain than ever. Then came the reaction. The gods began, not in popular belief, but among thinkers, to be more and more regarded as identical one with the other until at last, just before Buddhism, the hypothesis was started of a one primeval soul, the world-soul, the Highest soul, the Paramatman, from whom all the other gods and souls had proceeded. There was a deep truth in this daring speculation. But the souls inside men were held in it to be identical with god, the only original and true reality ; whereas, histori- cally speaking, soul was the original idea, and the gods (and god) had grown out of it. We have abundant evidence that this grand gen- eralisation was neither due to the priests w r ho 1 See American Lectures , pp 12-14. RELIGION— THE BRAHMIN POSITION 257 adopted it, nor had its origin in the priestly schools. Precisely as regards the highest point of the general- isation, the very keystone of the arch, the priestly literature has preserved the names of the rajput lay- men who thought it out and taught it to the priests. And among the priests who had the greatest share in adopting it, in procuring admission for it into their sacred books, is mentioned the very Uddalaka Aruni, the Gotama, whose defeat in argument on “ spiritual matters ” has been recorded above. When this point had been reached, speculation on the basis of the soul theory could go no further. The only modification possible was in the ideas as to the nature and qualities of the souls, internal and external, and as to the relations between them. And to this point speculation reached, but later, and less clearly, in China also, and in Greece. But it was in India, and in India only, that the further step was taken, by Gotama the rajput and his dis- ciples, to abandon the soul theory altogether ; and to build up a new philosophy (whether right or wrong is not here the question) on other considera- tions in which soul or souls played no part at all. That this thoroughgoing and far-reaching step was taken by laymen should not surprise us. To suppose that the Indians were more superstitious at that time than other folk, more under the thumb of their priests, is to misunderstand the evidence. On the contrary there was a well-marked lay feeling, a real sense of humour, a strong fund of common-sense, a wide-spread feeling, in all such matters, of courtesy and liberality. How otherwise can we explain the 17 258 BUDDHIST INDIA fact, already pointed out, of the most complete and unquestioned freedom, both of thought and expres- sion, which the world had yet witnessed ? We shall probably be ignoring an important factor in the history of the time if we omit to notice that this state of things was due, in great part, to the very easy and simple economic conditions of those days. CHAPTER XIV CHANDRAGUPTA E have sketched in the opening chapters the political divisions of India at the time of the rise of Buddhism. We know, whether from native or foreign sources, very little of what hap- pened during the century and a half that followed after the Buddha’s death. When the curtain rises again it shows considerable changes in the picture. But the new picture is in harmony with the old ; the principal figures and most of the minor ones are the same ; and the changes in their position can be fairly understood in the light of their previous relations. In the middle of the seventh century B.C., the paramount power was the great kingdom of Kosala, then at the height of its prosperity, under Pasenadi’s father, the Great Kosalan (Mahakosala), whose do- minions extended from the mountains to the Ganges, and from the Kosala and Ramaganga rivers on the west to the Gandak on the east. West and south of it a number of small kingdoms maintained their inde- pendence. Eastward Kosala had already extended its suzerainty over the Sakiyas ; but was stopped in 26 o BUDDHIST INDIA its further advance by the powerful confederation of the Licchavis. South of these, again, a death-struggle was going on between the two smaller kingdoms of Magadha and Champa. This was decided in the time of the Buddha’s boyhood by the final victory of Magadha. And the rising of this new star in the extreme south-east was the most interesting factor in the older picture. The new picture, as shown to us in the Ceylon Chronicles and in the Greek accounts of India, espe- cially in those fragments that have survived of the Indika of Megasthenes (300 B.C.), shows us Magadha triumphant. The free clans and the great kingdom of Kosala have been absorbed by it. One by one the kingdoms to the south and west of what had been Kosala have acknowledged its supremacy. In distant Punjab and Ujjen viceroys from Magadha administer the government. And for the first time in the history of India there is one authority from Afghanistan across the continent eastward to Ben- gal, and from the Himalayas down to the central Provinces. We shall probably never know — unless the ancient sites in India shall one day, like those in Assyria and Egypt, be excavated and explored— how these great changes came actually to be brought about. But the two sets of authorities just referred to (which are quite independent one of another, and yet confirm one another in the most important mat- ters) are conclusive evidence that the changes had actually taken place. Taken separately, each of these authorities is CHA NDRA G UP TA 26l open to serious objections. The Chronicles have all the advantages, but also all the disadvantages, that belong to chronicles written by monks, whether in the East or the West. And the Greek accounts are in various ways rendered less useful than they might otherwise have been. The work of Megasthenes has been lost. The fragments that survive in quotations by later authors have been collected by Schwanbeck, and translated in Mr. McCrindle’s excellent work, Ancient India. Where what is evidently intended to be a quotation from the same paragraph of Megasthenes is found in more than one of the later Greek authors, the various presentations of it do not, in several cases, agree. This makes it certain that these quotations do not always give the exact words of Megasthenes, and throws considerable doubt on the correctness of those quotations which, being found in one author only, cannot be so tested. A number of these quota- tions contain statements that are glaringly absurd — accounts of gold-digging ants, men with ears large enough to sleep in, men without any mouths, with- out noses, with only one eye, with spider legs, or with fingers turning backwards. Strabo calls these stories mendacious. But they are evidence, rather, of the small amount of critical judgment possessed by Megasthenes; and also, be it said, by the other Greek writers who chose precisely these foolish puerilities as the portions of Megasthenes they thought it important to repeat. There remain a few pages which, when the mistakes have been cor- rected, afford a residuum of sober information, all of 262 BUDDHIST INDIA it interesting, and some of it not found elsewhere. Perhaps the most important is the all-too-short de- scription of Pataliputta, the capital of Magadha, at which Megasthenes resided. “The greatest city in India is that which is called Palimbolhra, in the dominions of the Prasians, where the streams of the Erannoboas [this a Greek corruption of Hirannavati] and the Ganges unite. . . . Megas- thenes informs us that this city stretched in the inhabited quarters to an extreme length on each side of 80 stadia [nearly 10 miles], and that its breadth was fifteen stadia [nearly 2 miles], and that a ditch encompassed it all round, 600 feet in breadth and 30 cubits in depth, and that the wall was crowned with 570 towers and four-and- sixty gates. The same writer tells us this remarkable fact about India, that all the Indians are free, and that not one of them is a slave.” 1 These particulars about the size and the fortifica- tions of Pataliputta in 300 B.C. are new; and are, no doubt, also true. The number of towers allows one to every seventy-five yards, so that archers, in the towers, could cover the space intervening between any two. The number of gates would allow one to each 660 yards, which is quite a probable and con- venient distance. The extent of the fortifications is indeed prodigious. Ten miles, along the river, is just the distance from the Tower of London to Hammer- smith Bridge; or, if taken in a straight line, is the distance from Greenwich to Richmond ; and from the river at the Chelsea Embankment to the Marble Arch is just two miles, south to north. All of 1 Arrian, Ind., ch. x. CHANDRAGUPTA 263 London from the Tower to the Houses of Parliament, and from the river to the Hampstead Hills, would occupy about the same space. But, as we have seen, the native records confirm the impression that then, as now, Indian towns tended to cover a vast extent. And we may probably accept the estimate made by Megasthenes of the size of the city wherein he dwelt. The statement about slavery is odd. The distinct and unanimous testimony of all the Indian evidence is decisive that the status of slavery was then an actual factor of Indian life, though not a very im- portant one. When the Greek writer states, so emphatically, the contrary, one can only say that he is mistaken in the main fact, and that his evidence only shows how very little the sort of slavery then existing in India would strike a foreigner accustomed to the sort of slavery then existing in Greece. Then Megasthenes says that the population of India was divided into seven classes as follows: 1. Philosophers. 2. Husbandmen. 3. Herdsmen. 4. Artisans. 5. Soldiers. 6. Spies. 7. Councillors. “No one is allowed to marry out of his own class, or to exercise any calling or art except his own. 1 A 1 Strabo, xv. 49, has in place of this last clause, “or to exchange one profession for another, or to follow more than one business. An exception is made in favour of the philosopher, who for his virtue is allowed this privilege.” 264 BUDDHIST INDIA soldier, for instance, cannot become a husbandman, or an artisan a philosopher.” 1 Here again Megasthenes is inaccurate. There were customs of endogamy and exogamy, and of a man following his father’s trade ; but not those that he specifies. He has got his classes all wrong. There were many others he does not mention ; and those he does did not form real groups, either accord- ing to the marriage customs of India, or according to the habits of the people as to occupation. The true account of the matter has been given above at page 55. It is precisely in the details of such a subject that a foreigner, especially if he could not speak the language, is likely to have gone astray. With the official life, on the other hand, he would probably be better acquainted. And this is what Megasthenes says on that point : “ Of the great officers of state some have charge of the market, others of the city, others of the soldiers. Some superintend the rivers [canals ?], — measuring the land as is done in Egypt, — and inspect the sluices by which water is let out from the main canals into their branches, so that every one may have an equal supply of it. “ The same persons have charge also of the huntsmen [surely only the royal huntsmen], and are entrusted with the power of rewarding or punishing them according to their deserts. “ They collect the taxes, and superintend the occupa- tions connected with land [that is, no doubt, look after the royal dues arising out of them], as those of woodcut- ters, carpenters, blacksmiths, and miners. They con- 1 Diodorus Siculus, iii. 63. CM A N DR A GUPTA 265 struct roads, and at every ten stadia set up a pillar to show the byroads and distances.' “ Those who have charge of the city are divided into six bodies of five each. The members of the first look after everything related to the industrial arts. “Those of the second look after the entertainment of foreigners. To these they assign lodgings ; and they keep watch over their modes of life by means of those persons whom they give to them as servants. They escort them on the way when they leave the country; or, in the event of their dying, they forward their pro- perty to their relatives. They take care of them when they are sick, and, if they die, bury them. “ The third body consists of those who inquire when and how births and deaths occur, with a view not only of levying a tax, but also in order that births and deaths among high and low may not escape the cognisance of Government. “ The fourth class superintends trade and commerce. Its members have charge of weights and measures, and see that the products, in their season, are sold by public notice . 1 2 No one is allowed to deal in more than one kind of commodity unless he pays a double tax. “The fifth class supervises manufactured articles, which they sell by public notice. What is new is sold separately from what is old; there is a fine for mixing the two together. “ The sixth and last class consists of those who col- 1 Ten stadia is 2022^ yards. This is, within a few yards, the sixth part of a yojana, the common Indian measure of length at that time. 2 This is very obscure. The words seem to imply either that sale was usually not by private barter, but by auction, or that sales took place through advertisement. Neither of these statements would be correct. See Chapter VI. on economic conditions. 266 BUDDHIST INDIA lect the tenths of the prices of the articles sold. Fraud in the payment of this tax is punished with death.” There follows in the quotations a superficial ac- count of the organisation of the army which is scarcely worth quoting. But the figures given are interesting: “The king [of the Palibothri] has in his pay a standing army of 60,000 foot soldiers, 30,000 cavalry, and 8000 elephants; whence may be formed some conjecture as to the vastness of his resources.” Pliny, in what is evidently an echo of the same paragraph, gives the numbers as 600,000, 30,000, and 9000. But the first of these is clearly a mis- take, and very probably only a copyist’s error.' The same writer has preserved a tradition as to the num- bers of the armies of other Indian kings at the same period. It is, no doubt, derived from Megasthenes, and the numbers as follows: Kalinga, 60,000 foot, 10,000 horse, 700 elephants. Talukta, 50,000 “ 4,000 “ 700 Andhra, 100,000 “ 2,000 “ 1,000 It will be noticed that with a curious equality in infantry, the forces of Magadha show a great super- iority in cavalry, and in elephants-of-war. This is probably correct, as the unanimous testimony of the Indian records ascribes the pre-eminence in the training of horses to the districts in the extreme north and west, which then belonged to Magadha, and the pre-eminence in the training of elephants to the east, which is precisely Magadha. This use 1 Pliny, Hist. Nat. vi. 21. 9-23. See the statement below. CHA NDRA G UP TA 267 of elephants in war, I may observe in passing, may have been an important factor in the gradual rise of Magadha to the supreme power. It would, of course, be a very serious error to regard Chandragupta as the founder of this suprem- acy of Magadha. When Alexander invaded the north-west of India he was informed that the then emperor at Magadha (who must have been Dhana Nanda, the predecessor of Chandragupta) had an army of 200,000 foot, 20,000 cavalry, 2COO war-chari- ots, and 4000 elephants-of-war. 1 It had certainly then already absorbed Kosala, and probably also other kingdoms to the south and west of Kosala. Chandragupta added the Panjab and the provinces along the Indus down to its mouth. It was from the Panjab that he, favoured by the disorder result- ing from Alexander’s invasion, recruited the nucleus of the force with which he besieged and conquered Dhana Nanda. Whether the southern Indus pro- vinces were then also under his sway we do not know, but Pliny, doubtless referring to his time, says that the Magadha empire extended right up to the river. 2 He may have subdued them afterwards, at the same time as he conquered the peninsula of Gujarat, where, as we learn from Rudra-daman’s inscription, a viceroy of his was in possession. The ancient kingdom of Avanti, with its capital Ujjeni, had probably, before his time, been already incorporated into the Empire. Chandragupta thus found himself strong enough 1 Diod. xvii. 93 ; Curtius, ix. 2 ; Plutarch, Alex. 62, ^ Hist. Nat. vi. 22. 5. 268 BUDDHIST INDIA to withstand even the Greeks. At the end of the fourth century B.C. Seleukos Nikator, then at the height of his power, attempted to rival Alexander by invading India. But he met with a very different foe. Alexander found a succession of small king- doms and republics, whose mutual jealousies more than counterbalanced the striking bravery of their forces, and enabled him to attack and defeat them one by one. Seleukos found the consolidated and organised empire of Magadha, against which all his efforts were in vain. After an unsuccessful campaign he was glad to escape by ceding all his provinces west of the Indus, including Gedrosia and Arachosia (about equal to the Afghanistan of to-day), and by giving his daughter in marriage to the victorious Emperor of India in exchange for five hundred elephants-of-war. It was then that Megasthenes was sent as ambassa- dor to Pataliputta. And with the princess and her suite, and the ambassador and his, not to speak of the Greek artists and artisans employed at the court, there must have been quite a considerable Greek community, about 300 B.C., at the distant city on the southern bank of the Ganges, whose foundations, as a mere fort, were being laid by the brahmin minister of the then king of Magadha, when the great Ind- ian Teacher was starting on his last journey a few months before his death. But the Greek commun- ity cared little for these things ; and, so far as we know, Megasthenes, in his account of India, has not a word about the Buddha or his system. The deep impression made by Chandragupta’s CHA NDRA G UP TA 269 marvellous career, in which he worked his way up from the position of a robber chief on the frontier to the mightiest throne then existing in the world, is reflected in the legendary nature of all the accounts that have reached us — Greek, Buddhist, and Hindu. He has suffered the fate of other great conquerors and rulers ; and like Alexander and Charlemagne, has become the hero of popular romance. The reader will recollect how such popular romance has woven a story about our King Alfred the Great, when a defeated refugee, and a peasant woman and her cakes. Just such an anecdote has been told of Chandragupta in the commentary on the Great Chronicle of Ceylon : “In one of these villages a woman [by whose hearth Chandragupta had taken refuge] baked a chupatty 1 and gave it to her child. He, leaving the edges, ate only the centre, and, throwing the edges away, asked for another cake. Then she said, ‘ This boy’s conduct is like Chandagutta’s attack on the kingdom.’ The boy said, ‘ Why, Mother, what am I doing, and what has Chandagutta done ? ’ ‘ Thou, my dear,’ said she, ‘ throwing away the outside of the cake, eatest the middle only. So Chandagutta, in his ambition to be a monarch, without beginning from the frontiers, and tak- ing the towns in order as he passed, has invaded the heart of the country . . . and his army is surrounded and destroyed. That was his folly.’ ” 2 And Chandragupta overheard, and learnt the 1 Literally “ a frying-pan-cake,” (kapalla pfiva). See Jat. I. 345-7. 5 Mahavamsa Tika, p. 123 (Colombo edition, 1895). 270 BUDDHIST INDIA lesson, and prospered. So also the future sovereign is made to owe his success, throughout the long series of adventures, defeats, and victories, of in- trigues, murders, and treasons, which led him to the throne, to the constant advice and aid of a brahmin, nicknamed Chanakya, as deformed in body as he was depraved at heart (or, perhaps, we should rather say that he was, like the gods, not so much immoral as unmoral). Justin (xv. 4), on Greek authority, tells two graceful stories of the effect upon animals of the marvellous nature of the king. Once, when, as a fugitive from his foes, he lay down overtaken, not by them, but by sleep, a mighty lion came and ministered to him by licking his exhausted frame. And again, when he had collected a band of follow- ers, and went forth once more to the attack, a wild elephant came out of the jungle, and bent low to receive Chandragupta on his back. It is curious that in the extant priestly literature Chandragupta is completely ignored for about ten centuries. In spite of his friendship with the brah- min Chanakya, he belonged to, and indeed had the insolence to found, the hated Moriya dynasty, to which, later on, Buddhism owed so much. But the memory of him, or at least of the popular romance attached to him, must have been kept very much alive among the peoples of India. For in the eighth century of our era, a layman, the author of a famous Sanskrit drama, the Mudra-rakshasa, takes that ro- mance as his plot. He gives a number of details out of which Lassen already, half a century ago, tried, with the help of other traditions, to unravel the C//A N DR A G UP TA 271 nucleus of historic fact. 1 He succeeded very well in doing so, but perhaps the most suggestive fact we may learn from the play is, that in spite of the brah- mins, the memory of Chandragupta had survived, in the people’s hearts, all through that long interval of priestly silence — another proof, if any were needed, that it is not very wise to trust altogether exclusively to brahmin evidence. 1 Indische Altherthumskunde , 2nd Ed., pp. 205-222. CHAPTER XV ASOKA HANDRAGUPTA, aided very largely by the V — j previous organisation of the great empire of Magadha, was able, once he had gained the mastery, not only to remain in possession for the long period of twenty-four years (about B.C. 322-298), but to hand on the empire, with enlarged territory, to his son, Bindusara. Of him we know almost nothing. The Ceylon Chronicles merely say that he reigned for twenty-eight years, and the Greeks, who call him Amitrochates (that is, Amitra-ghata, foe-destroyer, no doubt an official title), only tell us that Deima- chos was sent to him as ambassador by Antiokhos, and Dionysiosby Ptolemy Philadelphos. A few sent- ences from the pen of the former are still extant. When he died, about 270 B.C., he was succeeded by his son, Asoka, then the Magadha viceroy at Ujjeni, of whom the Ceylon Chronicles and other Buddhist writings, and his own inscriptions, tell us so much. The Greeks do not mention him, and the brahmin records completely ignore him until the time when, ten or twelve centuries afterwards, all A SO A' A 2 73 danger of his influence had passed definitely away. They then go so far as to include his name among others in a list of kings. When this was done the authors of it had no access to the Buddhist writings, and could not read the inscriptions. It follows that the tradition had been carried down, all the time, in the brahmin schools, though not one word about it had been allowed to transpire. At the beginning of the researches by European scholars the Ceylon Chronicles were of most service. As I have said elsewhere : “When in the thirties that most gifted and original of Indian archaeologists, James Prinsep, — clarion et venera- bile nomen , — was wearing himself out in his enthusiastic efforts to decipher the coins and inscriptions of India, whilst the very alphabets and dialects were as yet uncer- tain, he received constant help from George Tumour of the Ceylon Civil Service. For in Ceylon there was a history, indeed several books of history; whereas in Cal- cutta the native records were devoid of any reliable data to help in the identification of the new names Prinsep thought he could make out. It is not too much to say that without the help of the Ceylon books the striking identification of the KingPiyadassi of the inscriptions with the King Asoka of history would never have been made. Once made, it rendered subsequent steps comparatively easy; and it gave to Prinsep and his coadjutors just that encouragement, and that element of certainty, which were needed to keep their enthusiasm alive.” 1 So Prinsep read the inscriptions. Building on the foundation that he laid, we can read them 1 American Lectures , p. 46. 18 274 BUDDHIST INDIA better now. But we are not likely to forget the genial scholar whose noble life was sacrificed in the seemingly impossible task of laying those foundations. Now that we have the contempor- ary records in all their simplicity, and redolent of the time, the picturesque accounts, written six centuries or more afterwards, by well-meaning members of the Buddhist Order, who were think- ing the while, not of historical criticism, but of religious edification, seem of poor account. It may be human to kick down the ladder by which one has just climbed up. But we need not do so, in this case, with too great violence. We may want it again. And it jars upon the reader to hear the Chronicles called the mendacious fictions of unscrupulous monks. Such expressions are in- accurate ; and they show a grave want of appre- ciation of the points worth considering. Just as in the case of Megasthenes, or of the early Eng- lish chroniclers, so also in the case of the Ceylon chroniclers it would be unreasonable to expect that sort of historical training which is of quite recent growth even in Europe. The Ceylon Chron- icles would not suffer in comparison with the best of the Chronicles, even though so consider- ably later in date, written in England or in France. The opinion of scholars as to the attitude to be adopted towards such works is quite unanimous. The hypothesis of deliberate lying, of conscious forgery, is generally discredited. What we find in such chronicles is not, indeed, sober history, as we should now understand the term, but neither A SOKA 275 is it pure fiction. It is good evidence of opinion as held at the time when it was written. And from the fact that such an opinion was then held we can argue back, according to the circumstances of each case, to what was probably the opinion held at some earlier date. No hard words are needed : and we may be unfeignedly grateful to these old students and writers for having preserved as much as we can gather from their imperfect records . 1 It may be asked, perhaps, why we do not try to save the intellectual effort necessary to balance probabilities in later accounts that cannot be en- tirely trusted, by confining ourselves exclusively to the contemporary documents, the inscriptions? The answer is that such a method would be absurd ; it would not even save trouble. The inscriptions are scanty. The text of all of them together would barely occupy a score of these pages. They give only a limited view of the set of circumstances they deal with. Royal proclamations, and official statements, are not usually regarded as telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. To put it mildly, there is an economy of candour in these documents, intensely interesting though they are. And they are enigmatic. It is not pos- sible to understand them without the light thrown upon them by the later accounts. It would only add to their difficulty to reject, for instance, the identification of the Piyadassi of the inscriptions 1 See now on these Chronicles Professor Geiger’s important re- searches in his Dipavamsa und Mahavamsa. Erlangen, 1902. 2 j6 BUDDHIST INDIA with the Asoka of the literature, or the fact of his relationship to Chandragupta, or of his capital having been at Pataliputta, or any other of the numerous side-lights to be drawn from the Chroni- cles. As M. Senart says : “ I believe that the Chronicles have, in certain details, under the name of Asoka, preserved of our Piyadasi recollections sufficiently exact, not only to allow a substantial agreement ( une concordance sensi- ble) to appear, but even to contribute usefully to the intelligence of obscure passages in our monuments.” 1 Besides numerous passages scattered through other books (which have not yet been collected) we have four connected narratives dealing with Asoka. These are : (1) . The Asoka Avadana, in Buddhist Sanskrit, preserved in Nepal. (2) . The Dlpavamsa, in Pali, preserved in Burma. (3) . Buddaghosa’s account in his commentary on the Vinaya. (4) . The Mahavamsa, in Pali, preserved in Ceylon. Of these the first was composed in the Ganges valley. The author and date are unknown ; but it is probably as late as the third century of our era. It forms one of a collection of legends called the Divyavadana. The exact force of this title is some- what ambiguous. Avadana means a story', but as it is used exclusively of the life-story of a person dis- tinguished in the religion, the collection corresponds to the Vitce Sanctorum of the Christian Church. We 1 Inscription de Piyadasi , 2. 231. ASOKA 2 77 know so little, as yet, of the literature in Buddhist Sanskrit that we cannot form any clear idea of the method by which the tradition it has preserved w r as handed down. It is otherwise with the other three. We know that there were twm great monasteries at Anuradha- pura in Ceylon, the Great Minster and the North Minster. There the canonical books were handed down, in Pali ; and commentaries upon them, in Sinhalese, interspersed with mnemonic verses in Pali. In the third century of our era some one col- lected such of these Pali verses as referred to the history of Ceylon, piecing them together by other verses to make a consecutive narrative. He called his poem, thus constructed, the Dlpa-vamsa, the Island Chronicle. The old verses were atrocious Pali, and the new ones added are not much better. Then, as the old ones were taken, not from one commentary only, but from several, w r e get the same episode repeated in different verses. Added to this the wmrk was supplanted in Ceylon by the much better-written book called the Maha-vamsa, or Great Chronicle ; and was completely lost there. The present text, which is corrupt, has been restored, in the excellent edition by Professor Oldenberg, from MSS., all of which are derived from a single copy that had been preserved in Burma. Shortly after the Island Chronicle was composed, the celebrated Buddhaghosa, a brahmin from Behar, came over to Ceylon, and rewrote in Pali the old Sinhalese commentaries. His work supplanted the latter, which are now lost, and is the only evidence 278 BUDDHIST INDIA we have of the nature of the ancient tradition. He quotes, from the old Sinhalese commentary, a num- ber of the mnemonic verses also contained in the Island Chronicle, and gives us, in Pali, the substance of the Sinhalese prose with which they had originally been accompanied. A generation afterwards Mahanama wrote his great work, the Maha-vamsa. He was no historian, and had, besides the material used by his two pre- decessors, only popular legends to work on. . But he was a literary artist, and his book is really an epic poem of remarkable merit, with the national idol, Dushta Gamini, the conqueror of the invading hosts of the Tamils, as its hero. What he says of other kings, and of Asoka amongst them, is only by way of introduction, or of epilogue, to the main story. I have compared historically the various versions of one episode in these and other narratives (that of Asoka and the Buddha relics), 1 and have shown how interesting are the results to be derived from that method. To retell such an episode in one’s own words may be a successful literary effort, but it would be of no historical value. It would give us merely a new version, and a version that had not been believed anywhere, at any time, in India. By the historical method, a few facts of importance may yet be gathered from amidst the poetical rever- ies of these later authors. So, for instance, the tradition — Indian of course in origin, but preserved in Nepal — states that Asoka’s mother was the daughter of a brahmin living in 1 y. R. A. S., 1901, pp. 397-410. Fig. 46. — DETAILS OF THE SCULPTURES ON THE GATES OF SANCHI TOPE. 279 28 o BUDDHIST INDIA Champa. This may well be so. We hear nothing of his youth or early training. The Ceylon books all say that at the time of his father’s death he was holding the position of viceroy at Ujjeni, and that he had there married a local lady residing at Vedisa, afterwards the site of the celebrated building now known as the Sanchi Tope. They had two children, a son, Mahinda, and a daughter, Sanghamitta. But as this was really a mesalliance, the lady being only of a merchant's family, she was left behind when Asoka left Ujjeni to go to Pataliputta and there se- cure the succession. All the accounts agree that this was no easy task. His elder brother, the viceroy of Takka-sila in the Panjab, opposed him, and it was only after a severe struggle, and not without bloodshed, including the death of his brother, that Asoka made his way to the throne. The details of the struggle differ in the different stories, and there is a passing expression in one of the Edicts (all the more valuable because it is incidental) of brothers of the King being still alive well on in his reign . 1 On the whole, I am inclined to believe that the tradition of a disputed succession is founded on fact. The Chronicles say that Asoka was not formally anointed king till between the fourth and the fifth year after Bindusara’s death, and the language of the Edicts, which are dated, whenever they are dated, from the formal anointing, and not from the succession, would harmonise with this. Of the events of the first few years after Asoka’s 1 Rock Edict , No. 5. Fig. 47.— details of the sculptures on the gates of sanchi tope. 281 282 BUDDHIST INDIA reign we have no information. In the ninth year a war broke out between Magadha and Kalinga, per- haps the then most powerful kingdom in India still independent of the empire ruled over by Asoka. Of the rights and wrongs of the dispute we cannot judge. Our sole information comes from one side only, and is an incidental reference in the thirteenth Edict, published by Asoka five years afterwards. In that document the King states that it was the remorse and pity aroused in his mind by the horrors of the conquest — the killing, death by disease, and forcible carrying away of individuals, to which non- combatants and even peaceable brahmins and re- cluses were exposed — that resulted in his conversion. He does not say to what. That, apparently, was supposed to be quite clear to any one. It was suffi- cient to say that he had come to the opinion that the only true conquest was conquest by the religion (by the Dhamma). We are told, by the King himself, of three stages in his conversion. The Rupnath Edict is of about the same date as the last, but perhaps a little earlier, say the thirteenth year after his being form- ally anointed, or, as we should say, crowned — that is, in the seventeenth year after he became dc jure the king. There he says that for two and a half years he had been a lay disciple (an upasaka ), but had not developed much zeal ; but one year before (before the date of the Edict) he had entered the Order, and begun to show greater zeal. Then in the eighth Rock Edict he declares that in the thirteenth year after his coronation he had set out for the SambodJti Fig. 48. — REAR VIEW OF THE NORTHERN GATE OF SANCHI TOPE. 283 284 BUDDHIST INDIA — that is to say, he had set out, along the Aryan Eightfold Path, towards the attainment (if not in his present life then in some future birth as a man) of the state of mind called Arahatship . 1 So in the ninth year of his reign an Upasaka, in the eleventh year a Bhikshu, in the thirteenth, still reaching up- ward, he enters the Path. This is his own account of the matter, and he gives no one else any credit for his progress. It is not by any suggestion or instruction, received either from layman or recluse, that he has adopted this course. It is his own doing throughout. The Chron- iclers profess to know the name of the bhikshu who was instrumental in his conversion. I am not pre- pared to say, though their evidence is so much later, that there may not be some truth in their view. It is quite true that it is sound Buddhist doctrine that each man is “ to be a lamp unto himself, to hold fast as a refuge to the truth [the Dhamma], to look not for refuge to any one besides himself .” 2 But it is so very likely that one factor at least in the King’s change of heart may have been the exhortation or conversation of one or other of the Arahats, that we may suppose both accounts to have been right. It is strange for a king, whether in India or in Europe, to devote himself strenuously to the higher life at all. It is doubly strange that, in doing so, he should select a system of belief where salvation, independent 1 See, on this meaning of the word sambodhi, my Dialogues of the Buddha , i. 190-192. 2 Book of the Great Decease , iii. 33, translated in my Buddhist Su/tas, p. 38. 286 BUDDHIST INDIA of any belief in a soul, lay in self-conquest. No ordinary man would have so behaved ; and the result must have been due mainly to his own character, his firmness of purpose, his strong individuality. But he was quite incapable of inventing the system. We know it had existed long before. And it is not probable that those who had already trained them- selves in it were wholly without influence upon him. Henceforward he devoted his great energy, and the powerful resources of his wide empire to the realisation of his new ideals. To that end all his edicts were published, all the changes he made in the administration of his empire were directed, and enormous sums were lavished in the erection of costly buildings in aid of the new faith. It is char- acteristic that he says not a word of these last. To his mind it was apparently the teaching that was so much the most important thing that it swallowed up every other consideration. But the unanimous testi- mony of all the later traditions, confirmed as it is by the actual remains discovered, leaves no doubt upon the point. It is true that no building erected by Asoka re- mains intact above ground, but an inscription of his has been found at Sanchi, and it is the unanimous opinion of scholars that he built the first temple at Bodh Gaya. Sanchi, the old name of which is Chetiya Giri (the Hill with the Shrine upon it), must have been a famous place before Asoka went to Ujjeni. There are no less than eleven topes on the plateau at the top of the hill. Some of them were opened in 1822 and the rest in 1851. At the second excav- FlG. 50. THE GREAT BUDDHIST TOPE AT SANCHI BEFORE RESTORATION. 288 BUDDHIST INDIA ation one of the smaller ones was found to contain part of the ashes from the funeral pyres of Sariputta and Moggallana, two of the Buddha’s principal dis- ciples. The village Vedisa, where Asoka made the acquaintance of his first wife, lies close by, and the tops of other hills in the neighbourhood are also crowned with stupas. The person in whose honour the largest tope of all was built has not been discovered, as the relic box within it could not be found. But a large number of inscriptions in characters of the Asoka period have been found on the pillars and railing surrounding it. And General Cunningham was of opinion that, while this tope itself, like the other topes on the plateau, was older and the gateways younger than Asoka’s time, the Buddhist railing round it belonged to his reign. But it is by no means impossible that the gateways also should be ascribed to Asoka. And, in any case, the remains at Sanchi may be fairly used to give us an idea of the kind of building that was likely to be put up by Asoka’s command, and has played so great a part in the history of Buddhist India. The whole site is now a desolate ruin ; and no attempt has yet been made to give, in drawing, a restoration of how it must have appeared in the days of its early beauty. But the annexed illustrations show the present ap- pearance of the principal tope, and some of the details of the surrounding sculptures. And a portion of the railing round Bharahat is added for the sake of comparison. At Bodh Gaya, on the other hand, though it is ■SANCHI TOPE. A GENERAL VIEW FROM THE SOUTH. 290 BUDDHIST INDIA known that Asoka built the original temple, it has been so often changed, and added to, that only a few fragments of railing, and probably the very re- markable sinhasana, or throne, remain of the work done in his time. The present building has been restored, as a national monument, by order of the English Government. It will be noticed how differ- ent it is in outline from the ancient form, as shown in the illustration of the Sanchi Tope. This is due to a difference of ideal. • The ancient tope was an enlarged and glorified circular burial mound. The later ones imitate an ordinary dwelling-hut, the out- line of which was determined by the natural bend of two bamboos, planted apart in the ground, and drawn together at the top. This shape is character- istic of all the mediaeval temples in India, and an illustration of the Jain temple at Khujarao is an- nexed, as one of the best examples of this style. But to return to Asoka’s own doings. The Edicts hitherto discovered are thirty-four in number. We know of others seen in the seventh century, and we know, approximately, the sites on which they were seen, — such, for instance, as those at Savatthi and Ramagama, — and there must be others besides. Further discoveries, therefore, may be confidently anticipated. Of those now known two are merely commemorative proclamations re- cording visits paid by Asoka — one to the stupa erected over the funeral urn of Konagamana the Buddha, and one to the birthplace of Gotama the Buddha. Three others are merely short dedications of certain caves to the use of the Ajlvakas, a body Fig. 52. — EASTERN GATE OF SANCHI TOPE. 29I 292 BUDDHIST INDIA of ascetic recluses often mentioned in the Buddhist canonical books. The remainder are so many tracts, short proclamations on stone, published with the view of propagating the Dhamma, or of explaining the methods adopted by the Emperor to that end. The word “ Dhamma” has given, and will always give, great trouble to the translators. It connotes, or involves, so much. Etymologically it is identical with the Latin word forma ; and the way in which it came to be used as it was in India, in Asoka’s time, is well illustrated by the history of our own colloquialism “ good form.” Dhamma has been rendered Law. But it never has any one of the various senses attached to the word “ law ” in Eng- lish. It means rather, when used in this connection, that which it is “ good form ” to do in accord with established custom. So it never means exactly religion, but rather, when used in that connection, what it behoves a man of right feeling to do — or, on the other hand, what a man of sense will naturally hold. It lies quite apart from all questions either of ritual or of theology. 1 On such Dhamma the brahmins, as such, did not then even pose as authorities. But it was the main subject of thought and discussion among the Wan- derers, and to them the people looked up as teach- ers of the Dhamma. And while, on the one hand, the Dhamma was common property to them all, was Indian rather than Buddhist, yet, on the other hand, 1 Dharmnas, in the plural, meant phenomena, or forms of con- sciousness considered as such. See Mrs. Rhys-Davids’s Buddhist Psychology , pp. xxxii.-xl. Fig. 53. — REAR VIEW OF the eastern gate of sanchi tope. 2 9 4 BUDDHIST INDIA the people we now call Buddhists (they did not call themselves so) were concerned so exclusively with the Dhamma, apart from ritual or theology, that their doctrine was called the Dhamma. It fell, natur- ally, for them into three divisions, quite distinct one from the other, — the theory of what it was right (good form) for the layman (the upasaka) to do and to be, of what it was right for the Wanderer (the Pab- bajita) to do and to be ; and, thirdly, what the men or women, whether laity or Wanderers, who had en- tered the Path to Arahatship, should do, and be, and know. On each of these three points their views, amidst much that was identical with those generally held, contained also, in many details, things peculiar to themselves alone. Now the Dhamma promulgated by Asoka was the first, only, of these three divisions. It was the Dhamma for laymen, as generally held in India, but in the form, and with the modifications, adopted by the Buddhists. The curious thing about this Dhamma, as a descrip- tion of the whole duty of man, of the good layman, is — especially when we consider its date — its extra- ordinary simplicity. This is, historically, so very interesting, that it will be worth while to set it out in full. asoka’s dhamma. Rock Edict, No. i. * 1. No animal may be slaughtered for sacrifice. 2. Tribal feasts in high places are not to be celebrated. A SO A' A 295 Rock Edict, No. 3. 3. Docility to parents is good. 4. Liberality to friends, acquaint- ances and relatives, and to brah- mins and recluses is good. 5. Not to injure living beings is good. 6. Economy in expenditure, and avoiding disputes, is good. Rock Edict, No. 7. < 7. Self-mastery 8. Purity of heart 9. Gratitude 10. Fidelity Rock Edicts, Nos. 9 and 11. are always possible and excellent even for the man who is too poor to be able to give largely. 11. People perform rites or cere- monies for luck on occasion of sickness, weddings, childbirth, or on starting on a journey — cor- rupt and worthless ceremonies. Now there is a lucky ceremony that may be performed, — not worthless like those, but full of fruit, — the lucky ceremony of the Dhamma. And therein is included right conduct towards slaves and servants, honour to- wards teachers, self-restraint towards living things, liberal- ity to brahmins and recluses. These things, and others such as these, are the lucky ceremony 2g6 BUDDHIST INDIA Rock Edicts, Nos. 9 and n. Rock Edict, No. 12. - Pillar Edict, No. 2. < according to the Dhamma. Therefore should one — whether father or son or brother or mas- ter — interfere and say: “So is right. Thus should the cere- mony be done to lasting profit. People say liberality is good. But no gift, no aid, is so good as giving to others the gift of the Dhamma, as aiding others to gain the Dhamma.” 12. Toleration. Honour should be paid to all, laymen and re- cluses alike, belonging to other sects. No one one should dis- parage other sects to exalt his own. Self-restraint in words is the right thing. And let a man seek rather after the growth in his own sect of the essence of the matter. 13. The Dhamma is good. But what is the Dhamma ? The having but little, in one’s own mind, of the Intoxications *; do- ing many benefits to others; com- passion; liberality; truth; purity. 1 This is a technical term of the Buddhist system of self-training. They were originally threefold, — the mental intoxication arising from lusts, that arising from the craving after a future life, and that arising from ignorance. Then a fourth was added — the intoxication of mind arising from dogmas, or speculative metaphysics. The Ara- hat has none at all of these. Asoka’s good layman is to have “ but little.” — See Rhys-Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha , vol i., p. 92. ASOKA 297 Pillar Edict, No. 3. < 14. Man sees but his good deeds, saying: “This good act have I done.” Man sees not at all his evil deeds, saying: “ That bad act have I done, that act is cor- ruption.” Such self-examina- tion is hard. Yet must a man watch over himself, saying: “ Such and such acts lead to corruption, — such as brutality, cruelty, anger, and pride. I will zealously see to it that I slander not out of envy. That will be to my advantage in this world, to my advantage, verily, in the world to come.” That is all. There is not a word about God or the soul, not a word about Buddha or Buddhism. The appeal is made, in apparent confidence that the statements are self-evident, to all the subjects of the empire. Under what conditions would such a state of things have been possible? Had there been then anything new or strange in this view of life (which now seems so strange to a European reader) there would have been phrases in the Edicts striving to meet the natural objection that must certainly have arisen. There is nothing of the kind. It follows that the doctrine, as an ideal, must have been al- ready widely accepted, though men did not always act up to it. It is exactly as if, in a country already Christian, the king should issue proclamations call- ing on the people, in this point or in that, to act up 298 BUDDHIST INDIA to the recognised ideal of the Christian life. Asoka, precisely as in the parallel case of Constantine, em- braced a cause so far successful that it seemed on the verge of victory. And it is not at all unlikely that reasons of state may have had their share in influencing Asoka, just as they certainly did in the case of Constantine. 1 It was not only within the boundaries of his own empire that Asoka tried to spread the Dhamma. In the thirteenth Edict, in about 255 B.C., addressed to his sons and grandsons, after declaring that he himself found pleasure rather in conquests by the Dhamma than in conquests by the sword, he says that he had already made such conquests in the realms of the kings of Syria, Egypt, Macedonia, Epirus, and Kyrene, among theCholas and Pandyas in South India, in Ceylon, and among a number of peoples dwelling in the borders of his empire. “ Everywhere ” he adds, “ men conform to the in- structions of the King as regards the Dhamma; and even where the emissaries of the King go not, there, when they have heard of the King’s Dhamma, the folk conform themselves, and will conform themselves, to the duties of the Dhamma, that dyke against [here the context is lost]. It is difficult to say how much of this is mere royal rhodomontade. It is quite likely that the Greek kings are only thrown in by way of make- weight, as it were; and that no emissaries had been actually sent there at all. Even had they been sent, 1 See Professor Hardy’s Asoka : Ein-Charakter-Bild , etc., p. 30. A SO A' A 299 there is little reason to believe that the Greek self- complacency would have been much disturbed. Asoka’s estimate of the results obtained is better evidence of his own vanity than it is of Greek do- cility. We may imagine the Greek amusement at the absurd idea of a “ barbarian ” teaching them their duty ; but we can scarcely imagine them dis- carding their gods and their superstitions at the bidding of an alien king. Here, fortunately, the Chronicles come to our assistance. In a curt record they give us the names of missionaries sent out by Tissa, the son of Moggali (the author of the Katha Vatthu, and the president of the 3rd Council held in Asoka’s reign and under his patronage). 1 They were sent to Kashmir, to Gandhara, to the Himalaya (Nepal or Tibet), to the border lands on the Indus, to the coast of Burma, to South India and Ceylon. Each party consisted of a leader and four assistants. Of the five missionaries to the Himalaya region three are named as Majjhima, Kassapa-gotta, and Dundub- hissara. Now when Cunningham opened the Topes (brick burial mounds) at and near Sanchi he discovered under them several of the funeral urns containing ashes from the funeral pyres of the distinguished persons in whose honour the Topes had been built. One of the urns has inscribed round the outside of it, in letters of the 3rd Century, B.C., the simple legend : “ Of the good man, Kassapa-gotta, the teacher of all the Himalaya region.” Round the 1 Dlpavamsa, chap. viii. ; Mahavamsa, chap. xii. 300 BUDDHIST INDIA inside of the urn is the legend : “Of the good man, Majjhima.” In another Tope close by at Sonari two urns bear the separate inscriptions: “Of the good man, Kassapa-gotta, son of Koti,' teacher of all the Himalaya region,” and: “ Of the good man Majjhima, the son of Kodini.” 1 2 In the same Tope was a third urn with the inscription : “ Of the good man Gotiputta, of the Himalaya, successor of Dun- dubhissara.” 3 Many of the Topes had been opened, in search of treasure, and the urns in them ruthlessly destroyed, before the archaeologists examined them ; so the evidence is incomplete. Even as it stands the evid- ence of the old characters on those preserved to us will be estimated in different ways by different minds. With these, and similar facts before them, some still consider the literature as a tissue of mendacious fictions ; others still consider that the Buddha is only a sun myth, and his disciples merely stars. I must humbly confess myself unable to follow speculations so bold. The Ceylon scholars knew, of course, nothing of these long-buried in- scriptions ; and could not have read or understood them, even had they had access to them. What we have to explain is how they came, centuries after- wards, to record precisely the same names in pre- cisely the same connection. It is only the wildest 1 Cunningham's Bhilsa Topes , pp. 287, 316. 2 This is his mother’s, not his father’s, name. s The rare and curious form “ Dundubhissara” is a nickname, and may be rendered “ Trumpet-voiced,” though the dundubhi is not a trumpet. ASOKA 301 credulity that could ascribe this to chance. And, dull as it may seem, I see no better explanation than the very simple one that these men really went as missionary teachers to the Himalaya region, and that the fact that they had done so was handed Fig. 54. — DETAILS FROM EASTERN GATE OF SANCHI TOPE. down, in unbroken tradition, till the Chroniclers put it down for us. The Chronicles thus not only confirm but also supplement Asoka’s information about the missions. And when we find that they ascribe the sending out of the missionaries, not to Asoka, but to the leaders of the Order, and that they make no mention of any such missions to the Greek kingdoms in the distant 302 BUDDHIST INDIA West, it is at least probable that the view they take is more accurate, in these respects, than the official proclamation. So Asoka mentions a mission to Ceylon. But it is his mission. No credit is given to any one except himself. He merely says it was successful, and gives no details. As we might expect, the Chroniclers of the island give names and details, which they work up into a picturesque and edifying legend. Its central incident is the transplanting to Ceylon of a branch of the tree at Bodh Gaya under which the Buddha had achieved enlightenment. Now this event is portrayed on two curious bas- reliefs on the Eastern Gateway at Sanchi, which must be nearly as old as the event itself. In the middle of the lower picture is the Bodhi Tree, as it stood at Gaya, with Asoka’s chapel rising half-way up the tree . 1 A procession with musicians is on both sides of it. To the right a royal person, perhaps Asoka, is getting down from his horse by the aid of a dwarf. In the upper picture there is a small Bodhi tree in a pot, and again a great procession, with to the left a city, perhaps Anuradhapura, perhaps Tam- ralipti, to which the young tree was taken before it went to Ceylon. The decorations on either side of the lower bas-relief are peacocks, symbolical of Asoka’s family, the Moriyas (the Peacocks); and lions, symbolical of Ceylon, or of the royal family of Ceylon (that is, of Simhala, the Lion island). 1 It is so represented also in the Bharahat bas-relief, which bears an inscription saying it is the Bodhi Tree. See Cunningham, plates xii. and xxx. A SOX' A 303 Opinions may differ as to the meaning of some of the details, but there can be no doubt as to the main subject. 1 It was a great event, an impressive state ceremony, and a fitting climax to that one of the missionary efforts of Asoka’s reign which was most pregnant of FlG. 55. — DETAILS FROM EASTERN GATE OF SANCHI TOPE. results. For there, in that beautiful land, the pro- vince most fruitful of any in India or its confines in continuous and successful literary work and effort, there have never been wanting, from that day to this, the requisite number of earnest scholars and ' Dr. Griinwedel was, I believe, the first to point this out. See his Buddhist Art in India, translated by Dr. Burgess, pp. 69-72. 304 BUDDHIST INDIA students to keep alive, and hand down to their suc- cessors, and to us, that invaluable literature which has taught us much of the history of religion, not only in Ceylon, but also in India itself. In the seventh Pillar Edict, dated in the twenty- eighth year (that is, in the thirty-second year after Bindusara’s death, say about 248 B.C.), Asoka sums up all the other measures he had taken for the pro- pagation of what he calls his Dhamma. They are as follows : 1. The appointment of functionaries in charge of districts and provinces to instruct the people. 2. The putting up of pillars of the Dhamma (that is, pillars with the Edicts inscribed on them), and the appointment of special ministers at the court to superintend the propagation of the Dhamma. 3. The planting of trees for shade, and the digging of wells, at short intervals, along the roads. 4. The appointment of special ministers to super- intend charities to both householders and Wander- ers, and to regulate the affairs of the Order, 1 and of other sects having jurisdiction apart from the ordin- ary magistrates. 5. The appointment of these and other officers to superintend the distribution of the charities of the Queen and their children. He claims by these means to have had great suc- cess in promoting the Dhamma (as set out above, pp. 294-297), and adds that such positive regulations as he has made are of small account compared with 1 It is noteworthy that he does not say which. The Order would be taken, in his opinion, by everybody to mean the Buddhist Order. A SO A' A 305 the change of disposition which he has been able to bring about ; and that, above all, his own example will lead people to adopt his teachings. Any one who knows Indian feeling will be amazed at the boldness of this program. That the king should appoint Lord High Almoners or Char- ity Commissioners to look after his own gifts would offend none. That these officials should be required to look into the manner in which the great people at the court disbursed their charities and report if they went wrong (wrong, that is, from the king’s point of view), would be unpopular enough in any case, but doubly so when his point of view was what it was. That the king should settle disputes, when brought before him or his court, between members of the various Orders, was right enough. That he should arrogate to himself to look after their private concerns was quite another matter. That he should hold a certain set of opinions, and be bent on pro- pagating them, was comfortable to those that held the same. That he should ignore every one else, even on his own side, and give out that he was the teacher, and that the Dhamma was his Dhamma, would be accepted, of course ; but with a shrug, sug- gestive that much allowance must be made for the self-complacency of kings. That he failed was no wonder. The set of opin- ions he favoured with his patronage was enfeebled and corrupted by his favour. With all his evident desire to do the very best possible things, and always to be open to the appeals of the subjects he looked upon as his children, he left his empire in such a 20 306 BUDDHIST INDIA condition that it soon disintegrated and crumbled away. He made the boast (vain boast) that the brahmins, who claimed to be gods upon the earth, had, by his efforts, ceased to be so regarded, and he himself committed the irreparable blunder of im- agining himself to be a deus ex machind, able and ready to put all things and all men straight. Yet, in spite of all, he surely remains one of the most striking and interesting personalities in the history of the world. There is a personal touch in the Edicts which cannot be ignored. The language must be his own. No minister would have dared to put such confessions and such professions into the mouth of so masterful a master. The language is rugged, uncouth, involved, full of repetitions, re- minding us often of the mannerisms of the speeches of Cromwell. And the preoccupation with himself, his opinions, his example, his good deeds, amounts almost to megalomania. But how sane the grasp of things most difficult to grasp ! How simple, how true, how tolerant, his view of conduct and of life! How free from all the superstitions that dominated so many minds, then as now, in East and West alike ! It was not his own view, it is true, quite as much as he makes out. But he had made it his own, and was keen to bring others to know it. To realise what this means, one may consider how many of the Greek princes in all the vast domains which had once formed the empire of Alexander were intellect- ually capable of rising to the same height. Unless it be maintained that the general average of intel- ligence in such things was higher then in India than A SO A' A 307 in Greece it seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that Asoka must have been a man of quite excep- tional natural ability. The style of his Edicts, on the other hand, is scarcely compatible with much intel- lectual culture or training. His early years were ap- parently otherwise occupied. But his long reign is a a sign of physical vigour; and of his strong will and moral earnestness, even to the point of self-control, there can be no question. Those who think Indian affairs should be looked at through the spectacles of mediaeval brahmins can never forgive him for having made light of the priests, and the gods, and the super- stitious ceremonies of the day. But the gospel he preached was as applicable to the India of that day as it would be to India now. That he was wanting in the most efficient sort of practical statesmanship seems to have been chiefly due to the glamour of his high position, of a majesty that was, indeed (and we should never forget this), so very splendid that it was great enough to blind the eyes of most. The culture of a Marcus Aurelius or an Akbar might have saved him from this. But even as it was, it is, among European rulers, with Marcus Aurelius for some things, with Cromwell for others, that he de- serves to be compared. That is no slight praise, and had Asoka been greater than he was he would not have attempted the impossible. We should have had no Edicts. And we should probably know lit- tle of the personality of the most remarkable, the most imposing, figure among the native princes of India. CHAPTER XVI KANISHKA ROM the death of Asoka onwards to the time 1 of the Guptas, the history of India is, at pre- sent, in a state of the utmost confusion and dark- ness. The Jain and Buddhist literature of this period is still, almost entirely, buried in manuscript. From time to time a ray of light, now in one part of what had been the great Magadha empire, now in another, illumines the darkness. The labours of numismatists and epigraphists have been directed to the reconstruction, from such isolated data as the the coins and inscriptions give us, of a continuous chronology and of a connected history. The pro- gress of this work, especially in the past few years, has been great. But the field is so vast, the data are so sporadic, doubt as to the eras used is so persistent an obstacle, that the difficulty of this reconstruction is immense. One or two of the ancient sites have been partially excavated ; but archaeological exploration has been almost confined, as yet, in India, to what can be found on the surface. There was a widely diffused 308 KAN I SI IK A 309 and continuous literary activity throughout the whole of this (now, to us) dark period ; and much of it is still extant. But only one portion of it, that portion preserved in the brahmin schools of theosophy and the sacrifices, has been as yet, adequately explored. And this portion — partly be- cause it has been mostly recast at a later date, partly because the priests, very naturally, tended to ignore the events of a period when they were not yet in the ascendant- — has yielded but little result. No attempt has, therefore, been made to describe the social or economic condition of the people, or to trace the gradual change of opinion, according to the varying local influences, within this period. And even as regards the bare lists of kings and names of battles, the loss or gain of this or that town or province by this or that combatant, there is at present only little evidence, and a very imperfect consensus of opinion as to the meaning even of that little. It will be sufficient, under these circum- stances, if we confine ourselves here to a rapid out- line of the salient facts. During the whole period there was no really paramount power in India. One or other of the many smaller kingdoms into which it was divided attained, at one time or another, considerable exten- sion of boundary, and held for a generation or two a position superior to the rest. But no one of them attained at any time to so much as a quarter of the size of the old empire of Magadha. It is very suggestive that of Magadha itself we hear almost nothing for more than five centuries 3io BUDDHIST INDIA after the death of Asoka. This is, indeed, scarcely surprising. For while, in the western parts of India, the coins have preserved the names of the kings, in Magadha the people continued to use the coinage bearing only the private mark or marks of the individual or guild that issued them. None of the ancient sites there — Savatthi or Vesali or Mithila, Pataliputta or Rajagaha — have been excavated. And, thirdly, the literature of Magadha in this period, mostly Jain or later Buddhist, lies also still buried in MSS. But as early as 150 B.C. we have one short note in the Elephant Cave inscription of Kharavela, King of Kalinga, who claims to have twice invaded Magadha successfully, having ad- vanced the second time as far north as the Gan- ges. As he also gives us to infer that his father and grandfather had preceded him on the throne, Kalinga must, in that case, have become independ- ent of Magadha very soon after the death of Asoka. It is unfortunate that the name of the then King of Magadha is not mentioned in this inscription. We may fairly conclude, at all events provisionally, from the fact that no neighbouring king claims to have conquered them, that both Magadha and Kalinga retained their independence from the time of Asoka down to that of Kanishka. Magadha, however, must have lost all its outlying provinces, and consisted, usually, only of the ancient kingdoms of Magadha and Champa, together with the eastern portion of Kosala. South of Kalinga was the important and powerful kingdom of the Andhras, with its chief capital at Dha- KANISHKA 3 11 nakataka or Amaravati, at the mouth of the Krishna. We know little of its history in early times (after the death of Asoka), but later on, though it was never able to conquer the other Dravidian states in the south of India, it pushed its conquests to the north, and conquered a large province in the Dekkan. There in Patitthana, the subordinate Andhra capital, ruled a viceroy who was often at war with the sovereigns of Avanti and Gujarat. The south of the peninsula was occupied with the three kingdoms of the Cholas, the Keralas, and the Pandyas. All the ancient traditions of these peoples have been lost. But it is evident from the few refer- ences to them in the second Rock Edict of Asoka, and in the Chronicles of Ceylon, that they had at- tained, at and shortly after Asoka’s time, to a civil- isation not incomparable with that of the Aryan settlements. The conquest of Ceylon by the Chola Tamils under their prince Elara, and the victorious combat afterwards waged against him by the Sin- halese national hero, Dushta Gamini, form the main episode in the Great Chronicle. This must have been about the beginning of the second century B.C. Twice afterwards, in the middle and at the end of the same century, the Chola Tamils, under Bhal- luka and Bahiya respectively, issued from their capital, Madhura, overran the north of Ceylon, and remained for some years in possession of Anuradha- pura, the capital of the island. It is true that they were each time driven back again out of the island. But this shows us at least an amount of military organisation which may make it easier to understand 312 BUDDHIST INDIA how the Andiiras found it easier to push forward to the north-west than to attempt the conquest of the soutli of the peninsula. When they established themselves in the Dekkan, probably shortly after the Christian era, the Andhras found opposed to them in the north and north- west viceroys (called Satraps) of a Scythian overlord. There had probably been distinct viceroys, one rul- ing from Ujjen over Avanti, the other ruling from Giri-nagara over the Kathiawad and Katch. But early in the second century A.D. they had declared themselves independent of their overlord, and had then, by a process we are not yet able to follow, become amalgamated into a powerful kingdom ex- tending about six hundred miles from east to west and more than three hundred miles from north to south. The reigning king, usually resident, it is supposed, at Giri-nagara, was called the Great Satrap. The crown prince bore the title of Satrap. And as their coins have been found in large numbers, and give the names and titles both of the reigning sa- trap and his father, and also a date, it is possible to reconstruct the line of this dynasty with unusual precision. The names, also, of most of the Andhra kings are known to us, but there is a difference of opinion as to the order in which they should be arranged. We thus have the dry bones of the skele- ton of the history of one kingdom, and many of the bones of the history of the adjacent kingdom, for a long period after the commencement of the Christ- tian era. For the more than two centuries between Asoka KANISHKA 3*3 and that time we are still almost in the dark. Only a few hints have survived, and those in Chinese sources, as to how or when the Sakas or Scythians had come into possession of these provinces. These hints enable us to conjecture that immediately after the death of Asoka the provinces to the extreme north-west of the empire of Maghada (those pro- vinces which Seleukos had ceded to Chandragupta) asserted their independence ; and that they did this not as a whole, but in small divisions, under the leadership of local magnates, mostly of Greek ex- traction. In the course of internecine conflicts these smaller states had been gradually amalgamated into one or two, or perhaps three, Greek kingdoms, when, in about 160 B.C., the Sse or Sakas, just then ex- pelled from Sogdiana by the Yueh-ti, appeared upon the scene. After a long-continued series of cam- paigns, with varying fortune, against the possess- ors of the country, they forced their way through, in about 120, into India proper. Their route was prob- bably southward through Sind. But, in any case, in the course of the following years they estab- lished outposts, under the rule of officers called Kshatrapas (the Persian word “satraps”) at Math- ura, Ujjeni, and Giri-nagara, the overlord remaining behind in Seistan, which means simply, “ the land of the Sse,” or Sakas. Meanwhile the five tribes of the Yueh-ti, them- selves pressed on from behind by other nomad tribes, followed close on the heels of the Sakas, and, in about 120 B.C., became the rulers of Baktria. About a century afterwards, one of the five tribes, 3*4 BUDDHIST INDIA the Kushanas, became the predominant partner in the confederation. This added very greatly to the power of the organisation ; and it was probably the pressure they were able to exert on the Saka over- lord that gave opportunity to the Saka satraps in the south to make themselves independent of their suzerain in Seistan. Soon afterwards the Kushanas, also, in their turn, pushed forward into India, but by a northern route, taking possession of the Pan- jab, and then ousting the Saka satrap from Mathura. The capital of the whole of this wide dominion, from Baktria, or even west of Baktria down to the Doab, became Takka-sila, the ancient rock fortress of the Takka tribe, the Taxila of the Greeks. Mathura, however, remained the subordinate capital. And it is chiefly in the course of the systematic excavations carried out there that the numerous inscriptions have been found, giving the names and the dates of Kushan kings. With the help of these, and of the coins, the dynastic list has now been drawn up with comparative certainty ; but there is the greatest diversity of opinion as to the era to which the dates ought to be referred. It is strange that the third line of evidence, that of the Indian literature, has not been hitherto taken in aid towards the decision of this question. It supplies at least one consideration of the first im- portance that should not have been overlooked. By the unanimous testimony of the best authorities we yet have (pending the publication of the Bud- dhist Sanskrit texts themselves) on the later forms of Buddhism, that is to say, the Tibetan and Chinese KANISHKA 315 historiographers, Asvaghosha, the author of the Buddha Carita, lived in the time of the most famous of the Kushan kings, Kanishka. This work is a poem in pure Sanskrit, and in elegant style, on the life of the Buddha. It is addressed there- fore, of course, not to brahmins as such, but to the laity. Now at what period in the history of Indian literature could such a poem have been composed, taking into consideration the facts as to the history of the language set out above in Chapter IX .? 1 The oldest inscription in pure San- skrit is of the middle of the second century A.D. Even if Asvaghosha’s poem be the very earliest literary work written in regular Sanskrit for the use of the laity (and that is not at all impossible), it can scarcely be dated earlier. It is therefore improbable, if the authorities just referred to can be relied on, that the era used in the Kushana inscriptions can be fixed at any date so early as to be incompatible with the evidence as to the history of language, drawn from hundreds of in- scriptions of equal genuineness . 2 On the other hand, if Kanishka be much earlier it is imposs- ible that the poem can have been written at his court ; but the evidence is such that we should, 1 These facts have now been admirably collected and criticised in Professor Franke’s Pali and Sanscrit (1902) ; a work, which, I regret to say, reached me too late to be utilised in Chapter IX. 2 All the authorities on this question of the Kushan era are men- tioned in the valuable article by Mr. Vincent Smith in the Jotirnal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1903. He dates Kanishka from 125 to 153 A.D. Mr. J. F. Fleet will also discuss the question in an article to be immediately published in the same Journal. 3 J 6 BUDDHIST INDIA provisionally, accept this till the authorities on which it rests shall have been proved to be mistaken. In either case the date of the poem must be approximately the last half of the second century A.D. And just as the first public proclamation addressed, in regular Sanskrit, to the public, was written at the court of a foreign king, the Scythian satrap at Giri-nagara, so it would be consistent with all our other information if one of the first, if not the first, literary work addressed, in regular San- skrit, to the laity, should have been written at the court of a foreign king, the Tartar sovereign of the Kushan realm. The above argument is further confirmed by the fact that at a Council of the Buddhist Order, held under the patronage of Kanishka, three works were composed in Sanskrit as official commentaries on the ancient canonical books. These three Sanskrit works are extant in our European libraries, and it is most deplorable that these important documents have not yet been published. But even without having them, in full, before us, we can safely draw the conclusion that Kanishka cannot have reigned before the time when it had become recognised that the right language to use on such an occasion was, not Pali, but Sanskrit, and this would be equally true though the Sanskrit of these works should turn out, when we can consult them, to be less elegant than that written by Asvaghosha . 1 This introduction of the use of Sanskrit as the lingua franca is a turning-point in the mental 1 See, on this Council, my Milinda, vol. ii. , pp. xv., xvi. KANISHKA 317 history of the Indian peoples. The causes that preceded it, the changes in the intellectual stand- point that went with it, the results that followed on both, are each of them of vital importance. The main cause has been supposed to be the study, in the brahmin schools, of the Vedic forms no longer familiar, the evolution in this manner of a grammatical system, and then the gradual application of this system to the vernacular speech, until at last any form not in accordance with the system became considered as vulgar, and fell into disuse. A subsidiary cause, which also deserves consideration, is the influence of the intercourse with foreigners, and especially with the socially powerful Greeks, Scythians, and Tartars. The teaching of grammar, and the spread of ideas of learned diction among the more educated people, would be greatly strengthened by the necessity of explaining linguistic forms to people of this sort. Who so likely to have been asked to do this as those who were known to have already devoted attention to the subject, and had a well- earned reputation, that is, the brahmins ? And why, otherwise, should it be precisely these border districts on the extreme north-west frontier (not looked upon in other matters as the home of or- thodox teaching) that were the home of the most developed and most authoritative grammatical teaching, and the place of residence of the most distinguished grammarians? Hand in hand with the gradual adoption, and at last with the almost exclusive use, of the brahmin 318 BUDDHIST INDIA literary language, must have come a gradual increase in the deference and respect paid to the acknowledged masters of that tongue. There were other reasons, of course ; and there was action and reaction in all these matters. But the result is very striking. Three- fourths or more of the persons named, and the ob- jects of donation specified, in all the inscriptions throughout India, from Asoka’s time to Kanishka’s , 1 are Buddhist, and the majority of the remainder are Jain. From that time onwards the brahmins, the gods they patronised, the sacrifices they carried out, receive ever-increasing notice till the position of things is exactly reversed, and in the fifth century A.D. three-fourths are brahmin, and the majority of the rest are Jain. This is the clearest evidence of a strange revulsion of feeling. What had been the predominant national faith has become the faith of a minority. India, which can fairly, down to the time of Kanishka, be called “ Buddhist India,” ceases to be so. And the process goes on, slowly indeed but continually, until there is not a Buddhist left in the land where Buddhism arose. How slow the process was is shown by the ac- counts of the state of things when the Chinese pilgrims travelled in India. Fa Hian, in the early years of the fourth century A.D., finds Buddhism nearly everywhere in decay. He unfortunately gives no figures. But Yuan Chwang, in the seventh cent- ury, has done so. These I have examined in detail," and the result shows still, at that time, in India, 1 3rd century b.c. to 2nd century a.d. 2 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1S91, pp. 418-421. KANISHKA 319 nearly two hundred thousand of the Buddhist Order, of whom three-fourths still adhered to the older forms of the faith, and one-fourth were Mahayanist. Brahmin accounts attribute the final stages in the movement to a furious persecution brought about at the instigation of the great brahmin apostle, Kumarila Bhatta, in the first half of the eighth cent- ury. This view, having received the support of the distinguished European scholars, Wilson and Cole- brooke, 1 has naturally been widely repeated until we find the Rev. W. T. Wilkins saying: “ The disciples of Buddha were so ruthlessly perse- cuted that all were either slain, exiled, or made to change their faith. There is scarcely a case on record where a religious persecution was so successfully car- ried out as that by which Buddhism was driven out of India.” 2 I do not believe a word of it. In the Journal of the Pali Text Society for 1896, I have discussed the question in detail, and have come to the conclusion, entirely endorsed by the late Professor Biihler, 3 that the misconception has arisen from an erroneous in- ference drawn from expressions of vague boasting, of ambiguous import, and doubtful authority. We must seek elsewhere for the causes of the decline of the Buddhist faith ; and they will be found, I think, partly in the changes that took place in the faith itself, partly in the changes that took place in the 1 Wilson, Sanskrit Dictionary , p. xix. ; Colebrooke, Essays, vol. i., P- 323- 2 Daily Life and Work in India (London, 18S8), p. IIO. 3 y. P. T. S., 1896, pp. 108-110. 320 BUDDHIST INDIA intellectual standard of the people. And in both respects the influence of the foreign tribes that invaded India from the north-west can scarcely be exaggerated. Just as when the Goths and Vandals invaded the Roman Empire in Europe — and it is surprising that an historical parallel so close, and so full of suggest- ive analogues, has not been pointed out before — they did indeed give up their paganism and adopted the dominant Christian faith; but in adopting it they contributed largely to the process of change (some would call it decay) that had already set in ; so also in India the Scythians and the Kushan Tartars, after they had conquered all the Western provinces, gave up their paganism, and adopted the dominant Bud- dhist faith of their new subjects. But in adopting it they contributed largely, by the necessary result of their own mental condition, to the process of change (some would call it decay) that had already set in. Gibbon has shown us, in his great masterpiece, how interesting and instructive the story of such a decline and fall can be made. And it is not unreasonable to hope that, when the authorities, especially the Buddhist Sanskrit texts, shall have been made accessible, and the sites shall have been explored, the materials will be available from which some historian of the future will be able to piece together a story, equally interesting and equally instructive, of the decline and fall of Buddhism in India. APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VI. THE MOST ANCIENT COINS OF INDIA. Mr. Rapson, of the British Museum, has been kind enough to prepare the plates for Figs. 24 and 25. and to draw up the following key, giving explanations of each of the coins. Fig. 24. 1. -F; Taxila: Single-die Coin. In incuse, 1 ., pile of balls; r., chaitya : beneath, wavy line and uncertain designs ( ? vine-branches). 2. At; Punch-marked Coin, showing on both sides various counter- marked symbols. 3. -F; Taxila : Double-die Coin. Obv. Elephant to r. ; above, chaitya. Rev. in incuse. Maneless Fion to 1 .; above, svastika ; in front, chaitya. 4. ,F; Vatasvaka. Chaitya: 1 ., Vatasvaka in Brahml characters; r.. standing figures worshipping ; beneath, pile of balls. 5. -F; Kada : Cast Coin. Obv. and Rev. similar : Kadasa in BrahmT characters ; above, Snake. 6. .F; Mathura. I 'pat iky a in Brahml characters ; above, siastika. 7. -F; Ujjain. Obv. Humped Bull to r. ; above, ‘ Ujjain’ symbol. Rev. Ujeni(ya) in BrahmT characters ; above, a Hand. 321 322 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VI. 8. /E; Uddehika. Obv. Humped Bull to r.; above, Tree within railing repre- sented horizontally. Rev. Udehaki in Brahml characters ; above, three symbols. [J. R. A. S., 1900, p. 98, PI. 1.] 9. IE; Tripuri. In incuse, Tripuri in Brahml characters ; beneath, two symbols. [J. R. A. S., 1894, p. 554, PI. 15.] 10. IE; Kuluta, Vlrayasasa. Obv. Chaitya surmounted by three symbols; r. , Ra ; 1 ., iia, in Kharosthe characters. Rev. Wheel surrounded by circle of dots ; inscr. in Brahml characters. Rdjiia Koliitasya Virayasasya. [rf. Cunningham, Coins of Ancient India , p. 70, PI. IV., 14, and J. R. A. S., 1900, pp. 415, 429.] 11. Ai; Kuninda, Amoghabhuti. Obv. Deer to r., facing female figure; above, symbol; be- low, chaitya. Inscription in Brahml characters. Raha Kunimdasa Amoghabhiitisa Mahdrajasa. Rev. Various symbols ; Inscr. as on obv., but in Kharosthe characters. 12. IE; Ayodhya : Cast Coin. Obv. Fish to 1 .; above, svastika. Rev. Steelyard ; above, crescent. 13. IE; Ayodhya, Suryamitra. Obv. Peacock to r., facing Palm-tree. Rev. in incuse. Humped Bull to 1 .; Suyyamitrasa in Brahml characters. 14. IE; Kosambe, Bahasatimita. Obv. Humped Bull to r., facing chaitya; above, ‘Ujjain’ symbol. Rev. Tree within railing ; on either side, symbols ; Bahasa- timitasa in Brahml characters. Fig. 25. 1. Eran Coin. Dhanapalasa in very ancient Brahm! letters written from right to left. Described in Cunningham’s Coins of Ancient India, PI. XI., No 18. Nowin the British Museum. 2. Eran Coin. Obv. Horse to 1 ; above, Ujjen symbol. Rev. r. and 1 ., Tree within railing. Eraka in Brahml letters. Now in Mr. L. White King’s collection. INDEX A Aboriginal tribes in India, 43, . 44 , 54 , 55 Adityas, the gods, 236 Agama, later term for Nikaya, 168 Agni, 216, 219, 235, 242 Ajatasattu, king of Magadha, 3, 12-16, 89 Ajivakas, an order of ascetics, 143, 290 Akbar, 307 Akhyanas (Akkhanas), 1S3, 185 Aldermen of the guilds, 96, 97 Alexander, his Indian coin, 100 ; his invasion of India, 267, 268 Alphabets, 116-118, 124, 131 Alwis, James, 28 Ambattha's visit to the Sakiyas, 19 Amitra-ghata, 272 Ancient history and modern, the dividing line between, 240 Andhra dynasty, 310-312 Angas, name of a tribe, 23 ; name of Jain books, 164 Animism, 210-230 Aiijana, the Buddha’s grand- father, 18 Aiijana Wood, near Saketa, 39 Anuradhapura, 69, 70, 75, 85, _ 201, 277, 311 Apastamba, date of, 32 Arachosia, 268 Archaeology in India, 41, 132 Architecture in old times, 63 foil. Ardha-Magadhi, 154 Armies, size of, in India, 266 Aryan, immigration, routes of, 31 ; settlements in the South, . !56 Asavas (Intoxications) 296 Asceticism, see Tapas Asoka, not mentioned in the Buddhist canon, 174, nor by the Greeks, 272 ; Indian ac- counts of, 276 ; his treatment of the Buddha relics, 278 ; his marriage, 279 ; his corona- tion, 280 ; his conquest of Ka- linga, 2S2 ; his conversion, 282-2S4 ; his buildings, 286— 290 ; his Edicts, 290-299 ; his missions, 298-300 ; his sending the Bo Tree to Ceylon, 302- 304 ; other measures to pro- pagate his Dhamma, 304 ; his failures, 305 ; his character, 306 Asoka Avadana, 276 Asramas, the four, brahmin theory of, 249, 250 Assakas, an ancient tribe, 27, 203 Assattha tree, 230, 234 j Assyria, 1 1 3 Asuras, see Titans ! Asvaghosha, poet, 315 Asvins, 236 Atanatiya Suttanta, 219 Atharva Veda, 166, 213, 252 323 324 INDEX Attha SalinI, revised in Ceylon, 175 Authors, none known before Asoka, 179, 180 Avanti, one of the four great kingdoms, 3, 4, 27, 28 ; incor- porated into Magadha, 267 ; probable home of Pali, 153, 154 A vesta, 1S1 Ayojjha, 34, 39 B Babylon, 104, 113, 1 1 5 , 116 Bacon’s Essays, 166 Baktria, 313 Bali offerings, 227 Banyan Deer Jataka, 190-194, 198 Barbers, guild of, 94 Barrows, round, the origin of stupas, 80 Barter, traffic by, 100 Basket makers, 54, 96 Baths, hot-air, 74 ; open-air, 75 Baveru (Babylon), 104 Behar, 42 Benares, conquest of, by Kosala, 25 ; size of, 34 Bengal, ignored in old records, 29 Bhaddiya, consul of the Sakiyas, 19 Bhandarkar, Professor, 32, 1 50, 177 Bharahat Tope, 10, 82, 198, 209, 288 Bharhut, see Bharahat Bharukaccha, first mention of, 31 ; trade at, 38 ; sea vogages from, 96, 104, 116 Bimbisara, king of Magadha, 3 ; builds Rajagaha, 37 Bindusara, king of Magadha, 272, 304 Blacksmiths. 264 Boats, 94, 103 Bodh Gaya, 2S8, 302 Bodhi, prince of the Vacchas, 7 Bodhi, the sacred tree, 229 Bodhisatva, progress of the idea, 177 Books and MSS., no Bower MS., 124, 128 Brahma, the god, 235 Brahma-Viharas, 197 Brahmanas, language of, 147 ; morality of, 240, 247 Brahml Lipl, later name of the Asoka alphabet, 117 Brahmin, spelling of the word, 2 ; their social rank, 54 ; trades they followed, 57 ; could marry a Kshatriya, 59 ; were considered low-born as com- pared with Kshatriyas, 60 ; their theories as to learning, 1 1 S ; claimed to be divinities, 1 18 ; as grammarians, 149, 317; their influence in Budd- hist times, 150, 159; their struggle against the rajputs, iii, 158 ; the debt we owe to the learned, 210; their divisions, 249 Bricks used for writing on, 121- 124 Buddha Carita, 315 Buddha Vamsa, age of, 176 Buddhaghosa, 201, 277 Buddhist Literature, down to Asoka, chronological table of, 188 Bidder, Professor, 43, 113, 126, 202, 319 Burgess, James, 31 Burma, 94, 104 Burnouf, 1 7 1 Butchers, 93 C Caravans, 98 Cariya Pitaka, 176, 196 Carpenters, 264 Carts, 93, 98 Caste, 56, 59, 62 Cattle, customs as to village, 45, 46 INDEX 325 Cetis, an ancient tribe, 26, 29 Ceylon Chronicles, 261, 274-277 Ceylon, ignored in the old re- cords, 29 ; date of first Aryan settlement in, 33, 104 ; history of language in, 155 ; were the Pali books forged there? 170 foil. ; scholarship in, 304 Chamba, 32 Champa, 23, 35, 104, 260 Chanakya, 270 Chandragupta, emperor of India, 259-271 Charms, 5 Childers, Professor, 201 Cholas, 298, 311 Chunam work in ancient build- ings, 69, 82 Cities, very few in number, 50 ; architecture of, 61 foil. : great size of, 35, 263 Clans, in ancient India, 17-22 Climate, influence of, 42, 43 Coins, 100 foil., 106; the oldest Sanskrit, 136 Colours, the four, 53, 62 Commensality and connubium, 52. 57. 5§ Common lands, 45-48 Constantine, 298 Copper plates, 122-125 Cowell, Professor, 1S9 Credit, instruments of, 101 Cromwell, 306, 307 Cutch, see Kacch D Dagabas, So Dakkhinapatha, 30 Dancing and music, 1S6 Dantapura, settlement at, 31 Dasaratha, Asoka’s grandson, H3 Dead, curious customs as to dis- posal of the, 7S-82 Dekkan, 30, 31 r, 312 Delhi, 27 Deussen, Professor, 190 Devadaha, the Buddha’s ances- tor, 18 Devadatta, the Buddha’s cousin, 13. 193 Dhamma, meaning of, 292 ; sketch of Asoka’s, 294-297 Dhamma-kathika, 167 Dhana Nanda, king of Magadha, 267 Dialogues of the Buddha, date of, 107 Diana, the goddess, 217 Diogenes, 245 DTpavamsa, 276, 277 Disease due to escape of the soul, 252 Divyavadana, a book of legends, 10 D’Oldenburg, Professor Serge, 209 Drama, use of the, 1S4-1S6 Dravidian, names of imports into the West, 116; tribes, civilisation of, 53. 56 ; dialects, charged with Sanskrit, 156; kingdoms, 31 1 Dreams, 252, 253 Drugs, 9S Dundubhissara, 299, 300 Dushta Gamini, king of Ceylon, 278,311 Dvaraka, capital of Kamboja, 28 Dyaus, 236 Dyers, 93 E Earth, the mother, 47, 219 East, the immovable, 237 Economic conditions, 87 foil., 258 Eights, the name of a book of lyrics, 17S Elephant, legend of the decoy, 5 ; their use in war, 266-26S Elu, the Prakrit of Ceylon, 155 Endogamy and exogamy, 52 Epics, growth of, 179-1S3, 206 Eran coins, 1 1 5 326 INDEX F Family rights, 47 Famines, 49, 50 Fausboll, Professor, 189, 200, 204 Feer, M. Leon, 194 Fergusson, James, 227 Fick, Dr., 62, 87, 202 Fields, custom as to cultivation of, 46 ; not salable, 47 Fire-drill, 231 Fishing, only in rivers, not in the sea, 93 Fleet, Mr. J. F., 3t Folk-lore, 208 Forests, large expanse of, 20, 21; see Maha-vana Fortifications of Pataliputta, 262 Forts in ancient times, 38, 63 Franke, Professor Otto, 315 Freedom of thought in ancient India, 247, 258 Frescoes, 96 G Gaggara, queen of Anga, 35 Gambling halls, public, provided by the king, 71, 72 Games, 108 Gandak, river, 259 Gandhara, the country, 28 Gandharvas, 220 Garudas, harpies or griffins, 224 Gavelkind, custom of, 47 Gedrosia, ceded to Magadha, 268 Geiger, Professor, vi, 275 Gekiner, Professor, 181 Giribbaja, old capital of Ma- gadha, 37, 38 Giri-nagara (Girnar), in the Kathiawad, 134, 312 Gods, origin of, 255 Godhavari river, 27, 30, 156 Gold plates used for writing, 124 Golden Age, in India, 187 Gonaddha, in Avanti, 103 Gosinga Vihara, MS. from, 122, 124, 128, 173 Grammar, studied in the North- West, 203 Grierson, Mr., 32 Grimblot, 185 Griinwedel, Dr., 303 Guilds of work people, the eight- een, go foil. 96 Gupta dynasty, 150, 308 H Hardy, Professor E., 298 Hardy, Spence, 30 Hermits, 140; distinct from Wan- derers, 143 Hillebrandt, Professor, 242 Himalayas, 29 ; dialects of, 32 ; as boundary, 260 ; missionaries sent to, 299-301 Hiranya-kesin, date of, 32 History, how treated in brah- min records, 157 Hoernle, Dr., 126 Hopkins, Professor, 87, 152 Hume’s “Essay,” 166 Hunting and hunters, 44, 93 I Images, none in ancient times, 24 1 Indika of Megasthenes, 260 foil. Indra, the god, 232-235 Inscriptions in India, were first in Pali, 130 ; gradual growth of use of Sanskrit in, 131- 139 ; specimen of an Asoka, 135 ; donations recorded in, 151 Interest on loans, 101 Intermarriages in ancient India, 59 Internal evidence as to the age of literary records, 165 Intoxication, god of, see Soma ; ethical, 296 Irish legends, 1S1 Irrigation, 46, 86, 264 INDEX 3 2 / Isisinga legend, 201 I-Tsing’s travels, 35 Ivory, 94 ; ivory-workers, 93, 98 J Jacobi, Professor, 31, 163, 164, 183, 185, 227, 235 Jain records, 12, 163, 318 Jain temple at Khujarao, 283, 290 Jains, founder of, 41; early name of, 143 Janaka, king of Videha, 26 Jataka Book, discussion of his- tory of, 1 89-208 ; summary of results, 207, 208 Jetavana, 99 Jewellers, 93 Jhanas, 197 Jumna, the river, 27 Jupiter, 235 K Kacch, Gulf of, 28, 32, 38 Kahapana, square copper coin, 100- 1 02 Kalasoka, king of Magadha, makes l’ataliputta the capital, r 37 Kalinga, earliest settlement in, 31 Kalpa - rukkha, the Wishing Tree, 227 Kamboja, the country, 28 Kammassa-dhamma, in the Kuru country, 27 Kampilla, capital of the Kurus, r 27 '. 35 Kahcipura, 156 Kanishka, 315-320 Kanoj, capital of the Kurus, 27 Kapilavastu, the old town and the new, 18, 103 Kasi, township of, matter of dis- pute between Kosala and Magadha, 3 ; the Kasis as one of the sixteen great tribes, 24 Kassapa, the Buddha, 229 Kassapa-gotta, a Buddhist mis- sionary, 299, 300 Katha Vatthu, the book, age of, 167, 176 ; author of, 299 Kennedy, Mr., 115 Kerala, 31 1 Kharavela, king of Kalinga, 310 Kharostrl alphabet, 124 Khotan, MS. from, 124 Kolarian tribes, 53, 56 Konagamana, the Buddha, 290 Kosala, one of the four great Kingdoms, 3 ; importance of, in the Buddha’s time, 25 ; its influence on language, 147; the language of, its place in history, 153; the Ramayana arose in, 183 ; centre of Budd- hist literary activity, 183 Kosambi, city on the Jumna, 3, 36- 103 Kshatriyas, 53 ; working as art- isans, 54, 55 ; not always Aryan by race, 56 ; when made outcaste, 58 ; disputed the claim of the brahmins to social supremacy, 6r Kumarila, iv, 156 Kurus, ancient tribe, 27 Kushanas, 314 foil. Kusinara, the Mallian town, 26, ^ 37 , 103 Kuvera, the god, 220 L Land tenure, 46 foil. Language, outline of history of, in India, 153, 211 Learning, its nutriment, ill Leather-workers, 54, 92 Lena dialect, 154 Lettering, an ancient game, 108 Levi, Professor. 124, 240 Licchavis, the clan, 26, 40 ; their public hall for religious and philosophical discussion, 141 ; their political power, 25, 260 Linga, worship of, 166 328 INDEX Literature, pre-Buddhistic, 120 foil. ; Pali, 161 foil. Luck, goddess of, see Sir! ; Asoka's view of, 295 Liiders, Dr., 201 M McCrindle, his Ancient India , 261 Macchas, an ancient tribe, 27 Macdonell, Professor, 226 Madda, the country, 29, 39 Madhura, on the Jumna, 36; in South India, 31 1 Magadha, one of the four great kingdoms, 3; one of the six- teen main tribes, 24; its strug- gle with Champa, 260; in Alex- ander’s time, 267; after Asoka's death, 309 310 Maha-bharata, iii, 183, 184, 190, 214. 255 Maha Kaccana, lived at Ma- dhura, 36 Maha Kosala, king of Kosala, 8, 10 Maha-nama, 27S Maha-samaya Suttanta, 219 Maha-setthi, 97 Maha-sudassana Jataka, 195- 197 Maha-vamsa, 276-278 Maha-vana, the Great Wood, 20, 21, 41, 142 Maha-vastu, 173 Mahayana, 177, 319 Mahissati, 103 Mahosadha, his underground dwelling, 66 Maine, Sir Henry, 238 M alias, their Mote Hall, 19; their territory, 26; their power, 2Q Mallika, queen at Savatthi, her hall for public debates, 141 Marcus Aurelius, 307 Markets, 100, 101 Maruts, wind gods, 236 Maung-gon, gold plates from, 124, 126 Medicine, ancient, 231 Megasthenes, 49, 50, 260-268, 274 Mesa inscription, 1 1 3 Mesopotamia, its influence on India, 70 Metal- work, 90 Middle Country, the so-called, 172 Milanda, the king, 39 Milinda, the book, 37, 38, 167, 173 | Millionaires, 102 Miners, 264 Mithila, capital of Videha, 37 Mitra, a god, 236 Moggallana, 288 Moon, as a god, 219 Mora-nivapa, 142 Mortgage, not allowed, 46 Mote Halls, in the old republics, 19; in heaven, 66 Mother Earth, 47, 219, 220 Mountains, Spirit of the, 220 N Nagas, siren-serpents, 220-224, 233. 235 Nalanda, in Magadha, 103 Nikayas, the five, 168; differ in doctrine, 173; age of, 176; im- portance of, 187; tree-worship in, 226 Nirvana, under the tree, 231 Northern and Southern Budd- hism, discussion of the phrase, 171-173 O Occupation, facility of change of. 56. 57 Octroi duties, 98 Oldenberg, Professor, 181 Ophir, perhaps - Sovfra, 38 Order, the Buddhist, 304, 316 Orissa, 29 | Ossian, 181 INDEX 329 P Painting, 96 Paithana, see Patitthana Pajapati, the god, 235 Pajjota, king of Avant, 3 foil. Pali, its relation to Sanskrit, 120-153 ; the Pali literature, 161 foil. Text Society, 163 Panca-nekayika, 168 hanchalas, ancient tribes, 27, 203 Pandyas, 298, 31 1 Panini, 144, 203 Panjab, 260, 267 Paramatta, the god, 224, 256 Paramitas, the ten, a late doc- trine, 177 Parantapa, king at Kosambi, 7 Parasariya, a brahmin teacher, 144 Parayana, sixteen lyrics, 178 Pasenadi, king of Kosala, 3, 8- 11. 19 Pataliputta, capital of Magadha, 203; its size and fortifications, 262 Patimokkha, rules of the order, learnt by heart, ill Patitthana, 30. 103, 311 Pava, a capital of the Mallas, 26 Payaga, 30 Peasantry, social position of, 51 Peppe, Mr., his discovery of the Sakiya Tope, 84, 130, 131 Petakin, one who knows a Pit- aka, 167 Peta Vallhu, the book, age of, 176 Phallus-worship, 165 Philpot, Mrs., 224 Pindola, a recluse, 7 Pingalaka, a king, 176 Pippal tree, 230, 234 Pischel, Professor, 148, 154 Piyadassi, name of Asoka, 273- 276 Police, 21, 98, 108 Population in ancient India, 18, 33 Potters, 54, 55, 92 Prakrit, meaning of the term, and date of, 154 Prices of commodities, 101 Prinsep, his first readings of the Asoka inscriptions, 273 Progressive societies, 238, 239 Pukkusati, king of Gandhara, 28 R Rainy season, 112 Raja, meaning of the word on old documents, 19 Rajagaha, capital of Magadha, 3.6. 37 Rajasthan, dialects of, 32 Rajasuya sacrifices, 203 Rama-gama, 290 Rama-ganga river, 259 Ramayana, geography of, 31. 34; place of origin of, 183 Rapson, Mr., 136 Republics, in ancient India, 1, 2; organisation of, 17 foil.: their Mote Halls, 18; consuls in the, 19; list of names of, 22 Rhys-Davids, Mrs., on economic conditions, 87; on the Attha SalinT, 175; on the meaning of Dhamma, 292 Riddles of Sakka, an old Sut- tanta, 180 Rig Veda, 30, 46, 213, 223, 226, 232, 236, 242 Roruka, later Roruva, capital of SovTra, 38 Rudradaman’s inscription, 28, 134, 267 S Sacrifice, brahmin theory of, 240-242; lay view, of 248, 249; Asoka’s view of, 296 Sagala, capital of the Maddas. 38 Sailors, 94 Sakas. 312 foil. Saketa, town in Kosala, 39, 103 330 INDEX Sakiyas, the clan, 17 foil.; Vidu- dabha’s campaign against, 1 1 ; pride of, 11; the Sakiya tope, 17, 90, 100, 130, 133; subject to Kosala, 259 Sakka, the god, the riddles he asked, 180; takes the place of Indra, 234 Samajja, 185 Samaratl, queen of the Vacchas, 7 Sambodhi, 282 Sanam Kumara, the god, 224 Sanchi Tope, 198, 288 Sanitary arrangements, 78 Sankara, 156, 187 Sanskrit, Indian use of the term, 154; its relation to Pali, 128- 139; date of the use of, in India, 134-136, 315, 316; com- pared to Latin, 136, 137; was it a spoken language? 148, 149, 154; its alphabets, 155; of the schools, 211 Sariputta, 169, 288 Satraps, 312-314 Savatthi, in Nepal, capital of Kosala, 25, 40, 103, 290 Scrollwork, along buildings, 77 Seleukos Nikator, 268 Self-torture, see Tapas Semitic alphabets, 114 Senart, on caste, 62 ; on the Gosinga anthology, 124; on the Asoka inscriptions, 132 ; on the post-Asoka inscriptions, 152; on the Jataka verses, 205; on the Ceylon chronicles, 276 Seniya, an ascetic, 245 Setavya, in Kosala, 103 Seven-storied buildings, 70 Sigalovada Suttanta, 185 Silas, a tract, 107, 215 Singhalese, the so-called canon of the, 171 ; commentaries, 201, 207 Siri, the goddess of luck, 217 Sisunaga, king of Magadha, , makes Vesali the capital, 37 Sirva, the god, 166 Sivi, the country, 28 Slaves in ancient India, origin, position, and numbers of, 55, 263 Smith, Mr. Vincent, 315 Social grades in ancient India, 52-62 Soma, the intoxicating drink, as god, 219, 231, 235 Sona, the river, 24 Sophists, 246, 248 Soul-theories, souls in trees, 227 ; size and shape of the soul, 251 ; absent in disease and sleep, 252 South India, not mentioned in the Buddhist canon, 29-32, 174 SovTra, the country, 29, 38, 104 ; the port, 1 16 Spelling, in Indian inscriptions, compared with English, 132- 1 35 Spiritual matters, 247, 257 Stars, beliefs about, 6 Stonework, 66, 90 Strabo, 260 foil. Stylites, St. Simeon, 244 Suddhodana.the Buddha’s father, • r 9 Sudras, their position among the Colours, 54 ; fate of learned, t 1 8 Suicide, 109 Sumana, princess in Kosala, 10 Sun-god, 197, 219, 255 Supparaka, the seaport, 31, 38, 116 Sura, intoxicating drink, 204 Surasenas, ancient tribe, 27 Sutta, as name of book or chap- ter, 168, 169 Sutta Nipata, growth of, 177- 180 ; tree-worship in, 226 Suttantas, treatises so-called, 8 ; learning them by heart, no; cut off at the root, hi ; for- gotten, 1 12 ; afterwards called Suttas, 169 Suttantika, one who knows a Suttanta, 168 INDEX 331 T Tagara, the town, 31 Tagara-sikhin, 31 Takka-sila (Takshila), seat of learning in N. W. India, 8, 28, 203 ; copper plates from, 124; capital of the Kushanas, 3U Tamil words in use in the West, 116 Tamralipti, seaport, 103 Tanks, for bathing, 74, 75 ; for irrigation, 86 Tapas, self-torture, growth of doctrine of, 242 foil. Teaching, etiquette of, 5 ; brah- min views about, 249 Temples, none, in ancient times, 241 Tilaura Kot, site of Kapilavastu, 18 Tirhut, 32, 41 Tissa, son of Moggali, 299 Titans, 224, 241 Toleration, 296 Topes, see Dagabas T rade routes, 102-104 Trades, 89 foil. Tree-worship, 224-233 Tribal migration in India, 32 Tribes, the sixteen chief, in pre- Buddhistic times, 23 foil. T rita, the god, 235 T ruth lower than sacrifice, 243 Turbans, 94, 97 Turkestan, MSS. discovered in, 128 U Uddalaka Aruni, his defeat in ar- gument, 247 ; his influence on pantheistic thought, 257 Udena, king of Kosambi, 3 foil., 7 Udyana, the country 7 , 29 United Provinces, 42 Ujjeni, capital of Avanti, 3, 40. 103 ; Magadha viceroys at, 260. 272 Upanishads, 162, 187, 223, 226, 250, 255 Upasaka, 2S2, 294 UrvasI, 236. V Vacchas, see Vamsas Vaikhanasa Sutra, 144 Vaisyas, their social rank, 54 Vajapeya sacrifices, 203 Vajira, daughter of Pasenadi, married to Ajatasattu, 4 Vajjians, their powerful confed- eration, 25, 26, 40 Valmlki, 31 Vamsas, or Yatsas, 3, 27 Varuna, the god, 219, 235 Vasula-datta, legend of, 4 foil. Vayu, wind-god, 235 Vedanta, 163, 168 Vedic language, 153 ; divinities, 155, 15S; hymns, interpreta- tion of, 162 Vedisa, in Avanti, 103, 288 Vegetable diet, result of, 42 Vekhanassa, follower of Vikha- nas, 142, 144 Vesali, 29, 40 Yessas, 54, 55 Yessavana, the god, see Kuvera Videha, as kingdom and repub- lic, 26, 37 Yidudabha, king of Kosala, 4, 11, 12 Vikhanas, a teacher, 144 Village, customs, 45 foil.; head men, 49 Vimana Vatthu, 176 Vindhya Hills, 29 Vishnu, 219, 236 W Wanderers, the, their discussion halls, 141 ; names of corpo- rate bodies among, 143-146 ; freedom of thought among, 247, 258 ; their Dhamma, 294 332 INDEX Weavers, 54, 57, go Weber, Professor, 113, 114 Wickramasinha, Mr., 115 Windisch, Professor, 180 Winternitz. Professor, igo Wisdom-tree, 23c Woodwork, 66, go, 264 Writers, astrade, 10S Writing, history of, 107-127 Y Yoga Sutras, ig7 Yueh-ti, 313 foil. Z Zimmer, Professor, 87, 232 WORKS BY T. W. RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D., Ph.D., F.B.A. I. American Lectures on the History of Religions. First Series. Buddhism. (8vo, pp. xiv -)- 230 ; New York and Lon- don — G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1896.) $1.50. “ Now, in spite of ourselves, we cannot choose but hear what we ought to have known for at least half a century, the true story of Buddhism as it is.” — Saturday Review. “Aluminous and fascinating introduction to a profoundly inter- esting subject. Apart, however, from its leading purpose, the book is an eloquent plea for the use of the historic method in the study of religions.” — The Nation. “ If all books about Buddhism, or about other religions, were as thoughtful and sober as this one, the scoffer would have less occupa- tion.” — 'Tribune (New York). II. Dialogues of the Buddha. Vol. I. (Svo, pp. xxiv-j-330; London — Oxford University Press, 1S99.) “ Prof. Rhys Davids has produced a book which no future histor- ian of Indian thought can pass over.” — Atheneeum. “ Yery timely, therefore, is the appearance in English form of such ancient and authoritative texts of Buddhism as are these Dialogues of the Dlgha Nikaya, and withal from so masterly a hand as that of Prof. Rhys Davids.” — Prof. Lanman in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. “ These dialogues — some of which are dramatic enough to recall the controversies of St. Patrick with the old pagan Oisin — will open a new world to the Western reader.” — Speaker. “ No better translator could have been selected than the Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, who is admittedly the best Pali scholar in England. ... It will be seen that we have here not only the earliest traditional record of the viva voce teaching of the Buddha, but also a vivid commentary on the manners and customs of his time. Mr. Rhys Davids’s introductions to the several Suttas and his footnotes leave little to be desired.” — Saturday Review. “ The notes throughout are amine of information ; and the whole work is well worthy of the reputation of the learned translator.” — Asiatic Quarterly Review. III. Buddhism: being a Sketch of the Life and Teachings of Gotama the Buddha. With a Map. (Small Svo ; London — Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 1S7S.) Fifteenth Thousand. 2 s. 6 d. “ We do not know of any other work from which so fair and com- plete an account can be obtained of that wonderful religion which has so much in common with Christianity, and has numbered more adherents than any other religion in the world.” — Academy. “Altogether higher stands the little work of Mr. Rhys Davids, . . . written in an agreeable style, and with great knowledge of the facts. . . . which we should wish to see in the hands of all students of religious history, and hope to see translated into our own language.” — Theologisch Tijdschrift. “ Difficult to speak in too high terms of this admirable little book.” — Theological Review. “ Undoubtedly the best introduction to the history of Buddhism at present existing.”— Ceylon Observer. IV. Buddhist Birth Stories, or Jataka Tales; the Oldest Collection of Folk-lore Extant. (8vo ; London — Triibner. Vol. I. 1880.) i8r. “Among the various contributions to the comparative study of folk-lore, Mr. Rhys Davids's translation of the Jatakas must take a foremost place.” — Saturday Review. “ These tales are probably the nearest representatives of the origi- nal Aryan stories from which sprang the folk-lore of Europe as well as of India, and from which the Semitic nations also borrowed much. The Introduction contains a most interesting disquisition on the mi- grations of those fables, tracing their reappearance in the various groups of folk-lore legends known as ‘ .Esop’s Fables,’ ‘The Hito- padesa,’ ‘ The Kalilag and Damnag Series,' and even ‘ The Arabian Nights.’ Among other old friends we meet with a version of the Judgment of Solomon, which proves after all to be an Aryan, and not a Semitic tale.” — Times. “No more competent exponent of Buddhism could be found than Mr. Rhys Davids. These Birth Stories, of which he has now given us the first instalment, will be of the greatest interest and importance to students.” — St. James’s Gazette. “ The translation could not have fallen into better hands. And what is no small merit, when we consider the involved style of Buddh- ist writings, it is easy to read, though at the same time it is faithful throughout.” — Revue de V llisloire des Religions. “The English version, while strictly literal, is thoroughly idio- matic. It is not too much to say that no Pali scholar could have been found more competent for the work than he to whom it has been entrusted. He has thoroughly entered into the spirit of his original, and his renderings, even of the most difficult passages, are always most accurate and felicitous. In a valuable and interesting introduction, the translator traces the course of transmigration of the Buddhist stories and fables from East to West — by many and various courses, Hindu, Persian. Arabic. Syriac, Greek — through the Kalilag and Damnag literature down to the so-called fables of Esop.” — Contemporary Review. V. The Hibbert Lectures, 1881 ; being Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by some points in the History of Indian Buddhism. (Svo ; London — Williams & Norgate, 1SS1.) Second Edition. “ Cannot be too highly praised for learned research and lucidity of expression.” — Spectator. “It is a subject with which Mr. Rhys Davids is singularly well qualified to deal : from his probably unequalled knowledge of the Pali literature, which is the fountain-head of Buddhism ; the wide intellectual cultivation whereby he is able to bring out of his treas- ures things new and old for comparison, for illustration, for embel- lishment : his firm grasp of scientific principles ; and the breadth of his sympathies, at once keen and discriminating. And the manner in which he has executed his task is such as to satisfy the high expec- tations raised by these qualifications. In conclusion, let us add — what, indeed, will have been evident from our extracts — that he is a master of clear, vigorous, and graceful English.” — St. James's Gazette. “ No one has expounded the doctrines of Buddhism as we know them here, in such a trustworthy and scholarly manner.” — Ceylon Times. “Singularly bright and graceful, incisive in criticism, easy and flexible, familiar yet dignified in style, full of suggestive matter sug- gestively presented, and everywhere lighted up with a fine moral en- thusiasm for the higher ideals and nobler personalities of the faith described. When Mr. Rhys Davids is most the critical scholar, he never forgets that he is handling a religion ; when he is most earnest as the interpreter of a religion, he never ceases to be critical and scholarly.” — Principal Fairbairn in the Academy. “ For what I have said about Indian Philosophy I am particularly indebted to the luminous exposition of primitive Buddhism and its relations to earliest Hindu thought, which is given by Professor Rhys Davids in his remarkable * Hibbert Lectures’ for 18S1, and ‘ Buddhism,’ 1890. The only apology I can offer for the freedom with which I have borrowed from him in these notes is my desire to leave no doubt as to my indebtedness." — Professor Huxley in the “ Romanes Lecture,” 1893. “ Mr. Rhys Davids has sought to throw light on religion generally. The exposition clearly indicates the fountains of emotion and thought whence the system issued ; and the process of after crystallization is also put before the reader in clear and impressive outlines. The author’s reflections on the story take the form of suggestions for com- parative study. ... So Buddhism may help the understanding of Christian origins as the Vedas illustrate classical mythology. The inculcation of such methods and principles give the book its greatest value, and it will be esteemed as a discipline even more than as a source of information.” — Mind. Heroes of the Nations. A Series of biographical studies of the lives and work of a number of representative historical char- acters about whom have gathered the great traditions of the Nations to which they belonged, and who have been accepted, in many instances, as types of the several National ideals. With the life of each typical character will be presented a picture of the National conditions surrounding him during his career. 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