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George A. Kjttredge, '55
191.8

1888 119

BUDDHISM.

Buddhism is a common name for very widely differing systems.
Esoteric Buddhism is, I think, on its own showing, if not absolute
nonsense, yet certainly not Buddhism. I will not allude to it any
further. Northern Buddhism, as far as I have read of it, is confess
edly a very free development or adaptation of that nucleus which
it has in common with Southern Buddhism ; in its Tibetan form it
appears to be much more than a development or adaptation, to have
for leading characteristics elements really incompatible with the
leading characteristics of the Buddhism of the ancient books. If I
am not much mistaken, the Northern Buddhism is very little known
to us still, because writers on it have set forth to us in fact the
Buddhism of the books, without making clear the degree in which
the Northern Buddhism has deserted those standards. But of all this
I have no title to write.
My remarks will be directed to certain salient points in the
Southern Buddhism, as it is maintained by Buddhist authorities in
Ceylon. This is the Buddhism of the Sacred Books as preserved
in Ceylon and as there interpreted. There is no difference between
what is maintained by Buddhist authorities in Ceylon, and what is
drawn by them from the books, for they profess to be bound by these,
as final standards. The practical shape which the religion takes
among the mass of the people is a different matter, on which also I
have a little to say.
Of the Buddhism of Ceylon. I have twelve years' practical know
ledge, and have made some first-hand study of the Sacred Books.
If I am entitled to speak of these, it is not so much because I have
read a considerable part of them in the original — for I would not
compare my knowledge of Pali with that of the great European
scholars — as because I have discussed the books on the spot with
those who have been familiar all their lives with the traditional
interpretation. I am convinced that these men know these books
with a thoroughness, familiarity, and feeling of their meaning, to
which no labour of scholars in Europe can possibly attain. They
are probably often wrong on points of scholarship ; but as to the
drift and substantial meaning of words, phrases, or passages, their
interpretation is never lightly to be set aside. The tradition on

120 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July
which it rests is twofold: partly, it is embodied in the ancient.
commentaries, which emanated mainly from Buddhaghosha and his-
school, and, although many centuries later' than the documents com
mented on, are still some fourteen centuries old, and for that time
have been the undisputed authorities ; partly — and to this I attach
even more importance — it is a tradition diffused in the habitual
language and ways of thinking of the Buddhist community at large.
The Sinhalese language itself is a Buddhist commentary, to the-
details of which it is impossible to assign a definite value, but which
includes matter that can be traced back to the times at least of Asoka,,
in the! third century B.C.
I think a general distinction may be drawn between this tradi
tional school of interpretation, and that to which European scholars
incline. The Sinhalese tradition, if it differs, differs almost always
in the direction of a meaning more puerile, more wooden, less inter
esting, less Christian. When, for instance, the word occurs which
the English translate by ' sin,' an English scholar will open up the
wide thoughts which the word ' sin ' suggests to us, while the native
scholars will explain it as ' killing birds or other small animals, and
other kinds of sin.' Or, if the word be ' danarh ' (giving), the English
man will guide his readers' thought, by the word ' charity,' to the
noblest Christian ideas ; the native interpreter will explain it ' giving
rice, robes and other necessaries to monks and others.'
Such words as these have higher and lower meanings, and there
are cases where a higher meaning is acknowledged by the Buddhist
interpreter ; but on the whole the narrow and, so to compare the case,
Rabbinical interpretation is the native one. Now the more spiritual
meaning of old writings may often have become narrowed and de
graded ; and there are cases when that degradation can be almost
proved by the evidence of such a higher meaning in similar passages
in writings of similar date. In these cases the traditional inter
pretation fails, and it is so far discredited for other cases, as a witness
to the original meaning of a passage. But such cases, I fancy, are
rare ; and, even in those, the tradition remains a true witness to
the meaning which those terms have borne for many centuries of
Buddhism. I venture to express my opinion that this consideration applies-
with special force to Professor Max Miiller's translation of the' Dham-
mapada.' That great scholar frequently rejects the traditional inter
pretation in favour of an ampler and nobler meaning. He sometimes-
gives Sanscrit authority for his view, but on the whole I cannot but
think that he often reads into the texts what his high estimate of
the human spirit leads him to expect, or his love of goodness leads-
him to desire.
The truth may sometimes lie between what the tradition would:
degrade it to and what the European would exalt it to ; but the.

1888 BUDDHISM. 121
difference between the two schools is a marked one ; and for my part
I feel bound to see in the tradition, first an unquestionable witness
to what Buddhism has been for many centuries ; and secondly, a
probable guide to what the makers of Buddhism meant.
I venture, therefore, to claim some weight for my judgment as
to the drift of the Pali writings, because I have been guided to it by
the living commentary.
It does not come within my subject to calculate , the number of
the Buddhists as compared with the adherents of other creeds. It is
now well understood that the turn given to such a computation
depends entirely on the way in which the population of China is
reckoned. If all the Chinese are assigned to Buddhism, Buddhism
is the most numerous religion; but then Confucianism and Taoism,
are not reckoned as religions at all. If half the Chinese are reckoned
to Buddhism, the numbers fall below those of Christianity. Our
own Dr. Legge, by his estimate of the relative numbers of Buddhists
in China, brings Buddhism below not only Christianity, but Hinduism
and Mohammedanism in number.
What I have to urge on the point is that no such numerical
estimate can be of the slightest value ; for this important reason,.
that Buddhism differs from the religions with which it is thus
numerically compared — notably from Christianity and Moham
medanism, and to some degree from Hinduism — in not claiming ex
clusive possession of the ground. It is a parasitic religion, ready to
thrive where it can, without displacing or excluding others. A
Christian cannot be a Mohammedan or a Hindu, a Mohammedan
cannot be a Hindu or a Christian, but a Buddhist can be a Con-
fucianist or a Taoist, or both, and, what is more, to a great extent
a Hindu or a planet-worshipper.
For instance, in China, while Dr. Legge speaks, of Confucius as
'reigning supreme, the undisputed teacher of this most populous
land,' and other authorities reckon all the Chinese as Buddhists, Dr.
Edkins solves the difficulty by saying that all 'three religions,.
Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, are truly national, because the
mass of the people believe in them all.' While the facts about
China make it no less than false to say that the Buddhist religion,
is the sole refuge of five hundred millions of mankind, they show the:
futility of any positive statement at all about its numbers.
The case in Ceylon is equally instructive. The statues of the
Hindu deities are found in the precincts of the Buddhist vihdras ;.
on Buddhist festivals, Buddhists visit Hindu and Buddhist temples
alike ; when Buddhists are sick, the Hindu or devil-priest meets the-
Buddhist monk at the door without offence.
Further, what is really most vital — what is most practically the
refuge of a Ceylon Buddhist — is not anything truly Buddhistic,
but the system of astrology, charms, devil-dancing and other low

122 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July
superstitions which clings to the lowest part of Hinduism. It is this,
not the doctrines of the Tipitaka, which a Buddhist has to abandon
when he becomes a Christian ; it is this, not any rule of self-sacrifice,
which the flatterers of Buddhism are fostering. What I report of
Ceylon is paralleled by the recent report on the religions of Corea,
by Bishops Bickersteth and Williams, who say, of that nominally
Buddhist country, ' Buddhism has but little influence here. Buddhist
priests are not allowed inside the capital on pain of death. The
Confucian philosophy remains the religion of the learned classes ; the
unlearned have none, unless it be excessive reverence for, or dread of,
ghosts and evil spirits.'
Hence I maintain that, while it is probably not true in any sense
that Buddhists outnumber Christians, it is utterly misleading to
count heads in this matter at all ; because, unlike the term Jew, or
the term Mohammedan, the term Buddhist is not exclusive.
I come now to the historical life of Gautama and his historical
character. What is a Buddha ?
Buddhism, in Ceylon and in the Sacred Books, is simply a method
of escape from evil which purports to have been discovered, ex
perienced and made known, in this present age, by a man named
Gautama. The truths which he is said to have made known are
held to be unchangeable, but to be lost sight of in every age, until a
Buddha appears, who for the benefit of that age revives the know
ledge of them. Every age — in an infinite sense — has its Buddha,
and all Buddhas do and say exactly the same thing ; they are born
in the same family, leave home at the same hour of the night, throw
away their bowls in the same stream, and so on ; and the Buddha of
this age is Gautama.
There is not the slightest hint that the truths come by revelation
from any person superior to the Buddha, or that the Buddha is in
any sense God. But, if it be asked whether Buddhists believe the
Buddha to be a mere man, or, on the other hand, to be the Supreme
Being, the question cannot be answered in one word. For Buddhism
does not possess the idea, so familiar to us, of distinct grades of being,
permanently separated from one another, such as those of the brute,
the man, the god. To Buddhism all life is one : he who was a god
may be now a brute, and afterwards may be a man. The difference is
not one of indelible character, but of state. He is in the brute state,
or ' gati j ' ' tiracchanagato.' If I may parallel it by a Cambridge phrase,
he has ' gone out ' in the state of brute, or he has gone as man,
' manussagato ; ' or he may be, for the time, in a divine or in an infernal
stage of being. But of all beings, in all stages, a Buddha is the
supreme : he has reached the highest stage ; he will enter on no other
* gati.' He is ' tathagato,' in the true * gati ' of a Buddha. (For, let
me note incidentally, I cannot doubt that the parallels to tathagato

1888 BUDDHISM. 123
are to be found, not in any compounds of agato, ' come,' but in
' sugato,' which is its synonym (entered on a good ' gati '), 'duggato,'
' tiracchanagato ' and the like. And as to the element ' tatha,' it
means virtually ' genuine ' or ' good ' as the characteristic of the
'gati,' just as 'tatharupo,' ' suitable,' and perhaps 'tadi,' 'genuine
or firm.' )
A Buddha is therefore the. supreme being, the highest of men,
and so on ; but such phrases do not imply anything at all like what
we mean by God. The highest deities known to Buddhism are Indra
and Maha-Brahma, but the Buddha attained a position superior to
theirs — not in dominion, but in' enlightenment — and in fact the
Jatakas represent him as having passed through the stages of being
Indra and of being Maha-Brahma on his way to the final birth, in
which he became a Buddha.
Such is the doctrine as to the character of a Buddha. Now what
is there historically known of the Gautama, who is said to have
played the part of the Buddha of this age ?
From the point of view of histofy we must distinguish two very
different sources of information, only one of which I shall hereafter
speak of as historical.
The one source is the Tipitaka, or threefold collection of sacred-
books, which forms the canon of Southern Buddhism. These I call the
books of 250 B.C. The other source is the biographies of Buddha —
that of Asvaghosha, which is attributed to the first century a.d. ; that
which bears the name of Buddhaghosha, but is only very uncertainly
ascribed to him, which may belong to the fifth century a.d. ; and the
Lalita Vistara, or ' beautiful detailed narrative,' which is of uncertain
date, between the first and sixth centuries.
These last works are the chief source of Arnold's Light of Asia ;
while the books of 250 B.C. are the source of the lives given by Bhys
Davids -in Hibbert Lectures, and Dr. Qldenberg in his Buddha.
Back to 250 B.C., in round numbers — the date of Asoka — absolute
evidence exists as to the prevalence at that time of the Buddha's
teaching, and of some of the sermons and traditions. This evidence
is carved in the living rock or on pillars, in different parts of India,
in the form of edicts of that king under the name of Devanampiyo
Piyadasi. The mention in these edicts of contemporary Greek kings
points their date beyond a doubt.
Now the Sinhalese chronicle, the Mahawanso, states that king
Asoka lived at that date, that he issued such edicts, and specially
mentions that besides the name of Asoka he bore that of Piyadasi.
A high degree of credibility is thus established for the Mahaiuanso.
Further, the Mahawanso states that this Asoka sent out missionaries
in nine directions to promote Buddhism (one being to Ceylon), and
in particular that he sent one Majjjhimo to preach it in the Hima-
vanta country — ' Pesesi Majjhimam theram Himavantapadesakam.'

124 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July
On opening a D&gaba at Sanchi, which for other reasons was-
believed to be nearly of Asoka's date, there was found a small relic-box,
which bore the inscription, ' Eelics of the saint Majjhimo, teacher
of the Himavata' ('Sapurisasa Majhimasa Himavatacariyasa'), and
this in the selfsame characters as those of the edicts . The accuracy
of the Mahawanso back to that date (cir. 250 B.C.) is thus wonder
fully established. Now the same Mahawanso states, with full cir
cumstance, that under this Asoka the Tipitaka or Buddhist canon
was finally revised; and there is not the least reason to doubt that
from that time to this it has remained substantially unchanged. The
historical statements therefore contained in the Tipitaka must be
considered to be those of at least as early as 250 B.C. (I omit, of
course, an immense quantity of cpllateral evidence by which the
different stages of this "argument are further supported.)
It will be evident that, in comparison with whatever historical
matter is embodied in the Tipitaka, the sources of information of the
other class, the biographies of Asvaghosha, Buddhaghosha, and, last of
all probably, the Lalita Vistara, are utterly untrustworthy, and that
when anything is included in them which is conspicuous by its absence
from the Tipitaka — that is, which had it been believed must have
been inserted — such is certainly a later fabrication. Such are most
of the points of the biographies which bear any resemblance to-
Christianity — for instance, the miraculous birth.
In this class of later biographies, the Nidana Katha, attributed to
Buddhaghosha, has claims to attention which have not, at any rate
yet, been established for'the Northern ones.
But the student who is really in search of historical material will
not pay much attention to anything except the data which are em
bodied in the Tipitaka. I have shown that these must be held to
have been put together as early as 250 B.C. But the same Sinhalese
chronicles — it is needless for this purpose to distinguish Mahavanso
from Dipavanso — whose authority has been shown to be so high, go
back much further than 250 B.C., and with the same circumstantiality.
They give lists of the kings who preceded Asoka, and lists of the
monks who were leaders of the Buddhist congregation from Gautama's
time till then.
Nothing would be more unreasonable than to refuse all credit to
this earlier part of the same chronicles ; it is hardly possible to dis
trust them so far as to doubt that the Sacred Books, substantially as
we have them, existed a hundred years earlier.
At first sight, it may be wondered that we do not believe in
them in toto. But there are — when the matter is looked into — good
reasons for thinking that they are less trustworthy before Asoka's time
than after. I will venture to express my own belief, that it was to
Asoka or to the Greek influence which acted upon him, that the
Buddhist literature and art owed a great stimulus ; and that much

1888 BUDDHISM. 125
became definite and systematic in his time, which had been only
legendary or inaccurately remembered before.
I have thought it worth while to occupy space to this extent
with a proof of the veracity of the Mahavanso chronicles, and of the
existence of the present Pitaka collection three centuries or more
before Christ, that I may show how immeasurably superior, for his
torical purposes, are the data contained in the Pitakas, to the con
nected biographies, which belong to various dates posterior to the
Christian era : how unreasonable, indeed, it is to treat the latter as
history at all.
The historical Gautama must be sought in the Pitakas.
But at this point it is most important to ask, Are the data of the
Pitakas historical? are they credible, or are they so mixed with fable
as to be inextricable from it ? The answer must be given in view of
the character of Buddhist history in general. In it, substantial facts
are chronicled correctly, but adorned, not overlaid, with fictitious and
often absurd circumstances. In the Mahavanso, we read such things
as this : that such and such a king in his tenth year dedicated such
and such a shrine ; 84,000 monks came flying through the air to
assist on the occasion ; 63,000 gallons of melted butter were first
poured over the shrine, and it was then covered with flowers to the
height of thirty-three leagues ! Yet inscriptions, still extant, will
prove beyond a doubt that that king did inaugurate that shrine in
that year. A certain king, we read, was learned in medicine ; he
founded hospitals all over Ceylon ; he cured a cobra of indigestion ;
and when a monk was very ill from swallowing, in drinking water,
the egg of a water-snake, which snake grew to a terrible size in his
inside, the king put the monk to sleep, and fished out the snake with
line, hook, and bait. Yet it is not to be doubted that the king did
found the hospitals. The falsehood in these stories does not seriously
interfere with the truth ; it falls off harmless directly the story is
handled. The incredible elements of the Pitaka life of Gautama are mostly
of this nature. At the critical moments of his life earthquakes oc
curred, flowers were showered by celestial beings, innumerable deities
came to listen to him, till the air was so full of deities you could not
put a pin between them, and so on. These are harmless enough ;
they belong to what is little else than a conventional mode of narra
tion ; they are little more than the epithets which we used to select,
without thought of truth or falsehood, from our Gradus, to adorn
the plain substantives of our original. The separation of the history
from these requires no exercise of the critical faculty, and gives no
room for arbitrary decisions.
We have been led to the only- source of history, the Pitakas, and
we know what characters to expect in them.
The resultant biography of Gautama shows nothing supernatural

126 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July
and nothing which in those days was strange. Many a highborn man,
in middle life, ' went out,' as it was called, from the ' household
life,' into the ' homeless life,' to pursue in an ascetic career the in
quiry after ' deliverance ; ' many such thought they had found it,
gathered followers, collected them in monastic orders, were looked up
to as saviours, and bore among their own adherents the title of
Buddhas. The Sacred Books describe to us Gautama, with his train
of disciples, as constantly coming across other leaders with trains as
numerous. They take it for granted that for ages past this sort of
thing had been going on. Those other leaders had renounced the world
in the same sense that Gautama had, or— for this phrase ' renuncia
tion ' is an English, not a Buddhist one — had taken the step of ' going
out ' from the household to the homeless life which is inaccurately
called by English writers ' renunciation.' We may marvel at the
state of society in which such a step could be common ; and no doubt
it never was as common as the books represent it, for their numbers
are generally exaggerated. But we must remember that it was pre
scribed — if I remember right, it is in the laws of Manu — prescribed
as a regular part of a Brahmin's life.
What has been magnified into the central and characteristic fact
of Gautama's life by later writers is never so treated by the histori
cal authorities. Nor is Gautama recorded to have performed any act of con
spicuous or extraordinary goodness or self-sacrifice in his historical
life. He is said to have attributed to himself in former births —
when he was a hare, a stag, or what not — all sorts of noble actions ;
but from the point of view of history stories of former births are of
course only another name for fables. That Europeans, at this time
of day, should treat as examples of heroism actions which a man
said he had performed before he was born, is surely a curious
instance of confusion of thought. Lessons of virtue, or at least
eulogies of virtue, they may be called ; but to cite them as examples
or as proofs of any other moral excellence than that which is implied
in the admiration of moral excellence, is evidently absurd. The
absence, in the history of Gautama, of any such conspicuous examples
of heroism, is explained by Dr. Oldenberg on the ground that a
Buddha, in the final stage, having acquired all virtue and all merit,
needs not to perform any such actions ; they belong to the stages of
acquirement. But this explanation supposes the Pitaka life of
Gautama to be unhistorical. It is immensely more probable that
the simplest explanation is the true one ; viz., that the career of
Gautama was as nearly as possible that of an ordinary devoted
student and teacher ; and that he was distinguished not by strange
acts, but by a strange degree of sympathy, insight, and constructive
ability. The life of Gautama contains nothing more strange than

1888 BUDDHISM. 127
does the life of Shakespeare. , If we can imagine Skakespeare's
admirers, in the present or the next century, representing Shake
speare as wondrously born, educated with immense expense, and
spending years in studying every phase of human life under miracu
lous conditions ; his first play set on the stage by angels, witnessed
by monarchs from every part of the world, and causing raptures to
innumerable hosts ; representing him as hunting, with armies of
beaters and rifles of incredible power and value, gigantic stags in
boundless parks and forests ; tortured by brutal squires, and so on —
we shall have imagined a parallel to the stories on which The Light
of Asia is constructed.
Shakespeare's life was strange enough and memorable enough ;
so was Gautama's ; but the earlier Buddhists had no more idea that
its strangeness was external than we have in the case of Shakespeare.
What then did Gautama do ?
Amongmanywho were seeking, he persuaded himself — persuaded
many followers then, persuaded millions since — that he had found
the secret of sorrow and the way of escape; persuaded them of
this, partly by the consistency of the system under which he pre
sented in one light the mass of the facts believed in his day ; partly
by an extraordinary sympathy or capacity for teaching ; partly by a
personal sanctity which seemed to prove that he possessed a moral
secret. By sanctity here I mean almost entirely two qualities,
gentleness and calm. They are the ideal virtues of the Indian
mind ; they are the two poles of Buddhist morality, and they seem to
have been seen in the highest perfection known to India in the
person of Gautama.
When we turn to his teaching, the truest thing we can say of it
is, that the substance, of it is its least valuable part. The addition he
made to existing doctrines seems to me to have been small, and to
have been mainly false. The doctrine of the series of birth and
death, birth and death, as an evil net in which beings were entangled,
or a pathless ocean in which they were wandering, subject to disease,
old age, and disappointment ; the doctrine of action, as a mechanical
cause, distinguishable into merit and demerit, as the electric current
is into positive and negative, a cause determining the course of a
being's wandering in the ocean of rebirth ; the doctrine of various
grade's of life, infra-human, human, and superhuman, not distinguished
by indelible characters, but succeeding one another in the career of
the same being, who might be demon, animal, man, god, animal, and
demon again in turn — these doctrines existed. The strange great
moral doctrine of the evilness of taking life — this was in force. The
question how to obtain deliverance from the evil and to gain the
good, how to be happily born, or, still more, how to escape unhappy
birth : this was the question of the day. An elaborate pyschology
and an elaborate metaphysical vocabulary were ready to hand. The

128 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July
methods of sacrifice, of austerity, of meditation^or trance — of monas
tic life, and mendicancy — these were the methods of his day.
None of this was due to Gautama. If it were not, as I under
stand it is, clear from Brahmanical and Jain works that all this
existed, it would still be perfectly certain that no man, even if he
could invent, could have popularised any considerable part of this
within the utmost time that can be allowed to have elapsed between
Gautama's first preaching and the existence of all this in histori
cal Buddhism. But we may well believe that Gautama was the first to make out
of the chaos of thought a system whose internal consistency made it
appear true. He made it consistent by casting out elements which
were the truest and best. The idea of a Supreme Being — of a
personal squl^-these, hard to reconcile with the idea of an endless
series of existences, and a mechanical Karma ; impossible to reconcile
with the utter cessation of existence — had to be dropped. And the
practice of sacrifices, which witnessed to the responsible character of
action, and the possibility of atonement — -ideas utterly irreconcileable
with Karma, and with non-personality — this had to be fought
against. Sacrifices were also inconsistent with the inviolability of
life, and the latter doctrine was exaggerated in opposition to them.
Perhaps some social or political antipathies conspired to the
disparagement of sacrifices, Brahmin priests, and Brahmin astro
logers ; though few things among the exaggerations of the early
students of Buddhism have been more exaggerated than their
estimate of the hostility between Gautama and the Brahmanical
system. Gautama represented, as the central truth of his discovery, the
doctrine that suffering is inseparable from existence, — this in regard
to the sentient being ; suffering is inseparable from existence ; and,
in regard to the outer world, ' that all things are unabiding.' The
next great principle was, that the cause of existence is ignorance ; —
virtually, ignorance of the unabiding nature of things. Through
ignorance of this, we cling to things ; we try to enter into relations
with them ; we create for ourselves a personality, which really is
illusory, as are the things on attachment to which it rests. By
personality we become agents, and so set in motion that deadly
power of Karma which leads to successive births, in various degrees
of misery. Other teachers had said : This life is suffering ; but satisfy the
gods, and you will obtain a life in their heaven, which will be happy.
Gautama said, ' The misery is inherent in existence. End all, and
that is bliss.' Buddhism seeks no heaven.
Other teachers had said : This life is illusory, because there is
but one true Being, from which we are mistakenly separated or
temporarily isolated by the illusion of personal individuality.

1888 BUDDHISM. 129
Eeturn to the One Being is happiness. Gautama says : There is no
being at all that is not illusory. Buddhism seeks no Absorption.
Such was Gautama's key to metaphysics.
What was his key to morals ?
The Four Noble Truths, about the theory of suffering and escape,
lead up to the Eightfold Noble Way, which is the method of escape.
Here our teacher is exceedingly disappointing. The eightfold way
consists of Bight views, Eight aims, Eight thinking; and so on. At
first sight it reminds me of a man in my undergraduate days who was
laughed at for having run along the bank ' coaching ' his college boat
by crying, ' Eow nicely ! now do row nicely ! ' In other places rules
are given for some, not, I am pretty sure, for all of these parts of
' Eight conduct ' ; but they are of extremely little value as principles.
They are either mechanical directions, like those for Eight meditation,
or they are merely restatements of the former principles, as when
Eight views are explained as believing that all things are uneternal,
and that sorrow is inherent in existence.
It is hardly too much to say that the eightfold summary is vain
and empty. There are not eight things corresponding to it. What
it does embody is not eightfold but onefold, and is the root and
essence of all the morals of Gautama, ' Do your best.' ' Strive ' was
the first and the last word of the Buddha. If you must have an end,
strive to attain deliverance from existence ; but in any case ' strive.'
It is the most consistent, the most pitiless — shall I say the most
desperate ? — assertion that was ever made, that man has no help to
look for, but must help himself. ' Effort,' ' exertion,' ' self-training,"
these words represent Gautama's key to morals.
Utterly unimportant for practical value in comparison with the-
sanction and the motive of morals are the pictures of virtue and the-
exhortations to it. In these Gautama must have excelled ; his tact-
and sympathy are proved by many beautiful instances ; he had
wonderful facility in bringing illustrations, fables, popular stories;
and sayings to bear, perhaps in composing brief and striking utter
ances in verse ; and it is impossible to doubt that he urged his ex
hortations with the utmost grace and tenderness. Some historical
personage at least there must have been, who was held to have
realised the ideal teacher under the name of Gautama. Thence
forward all that successive teachers could add or repeat, in commen
dation of the favourite virtues of gentleness and calm, was gathered
to his writings and ascribed to him.
The Buddhist records are not without some instances of real
examples of virtue in historical lives ; but the fatal defect of the
whole literature, from this point of view, is that the immense
majority of the lessons of virtue are fictitious ; entirely dissociated
from this life in which we really live, and connected with that series
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130 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July
of former births by a belief in which the sense of the paramount
responsibility of this life is destroyed.
From the good rules and good advice which Buddhism provides
little could in any case be expected, when no adequate prospect is
held out in the future, and no divine assistance is offered to man's
weakness ; but even more ruinous, in practice, is the conviction that
the present life is not all-important, but a trifling unit in an immense
series, incapable of resisting in any degree the consequences of the
actions of past lives, and entailing consequences on a future existence
which has only a very shadowy continuity with the present.
Now, in Ceylon, when a criminal is asked why he committed the
crime, he will reply, ' I suppose it is from evil-doings in a former
birth that this fault has happened to me ; ' and if then asked, ' Will
you not suffer for it in another birth,' he will reply, ' It will not be I
that will suffer.' For the shadowiness of the continuity is a dogma
of Buddhism ; the succeeding being, in the next birth, is ' Na ca so,
na ca anfio ' : ' Not the same and not another ' !
Before I leave the subject of morals, I must touch on another
matter. The moral teaching of the Buddhist writings is on the
whole good. In later Buddhist books there is a good deal that is
impure ; there are bad stories among the Jatakas, but on the whole
the tone is good, though far from uniformly elevated. The character
of the Buddha — except as related in the Lalita Vistara class of
biographies, which, to enhance his renunciation, represent him, in
luscious descriptions, as having been a gross voluptuary — the histori
cal character of Gautama is unstained, except by pride. But the
Vinaya Pitaka, or books of discipline, contain passages which, while
they condemn what is wrong, exhibit a degradation of the moral
sense that would have seemed incredible. There is a long passage
in the Par&jika book which I can only describe as the most cold
blooded collection of moral horrors that ever was put together. The
only defence urged of it is that to be sure of preventing sin you must
specify every possible form of it, lest any form of it, remaining un
forbidden, should be thought lawful. The explanation is genuine,
as regards the enumeration in equal detail of sins against the seventh
commandment as of those against the eighth ; but what a dreary un
reality of moral feeling- any such system reveals ; what can be hoped
of a moral system, which must enumerate all the possible forms and
conditions of theft, lest any theft should seem to have been left
unforbidden ?
But I am sorry to say I must deal more fully with this matter in
the interests of truth.
What do I charge upon this passage ? First, that it is an un
necessary enumeration of the forms and details of vice, which can
only do harm to readers ; unnecessary, inasmuch as many of the
things specified are utterly outside the reach of any vileness, except

1888 BUDDHISM. 131
the vileness of the imagination. Secondly, that in the grouping and
proportionate blame assigned to different offences an almost in
human want of moral sense is displayed. Thirdly, that with few
exceptions each instance of wickedness specified is said to have been
committed by some Buddhist monk. I know that this is a mere
conventional formula ; but it is not so read by Buddhists. What
must be the effect on a Buddhist reader's idea of sin to read : ' At
that time a certain monk committed such and such an hideous
offence. They asked the Buddha whether it was allowable or not.
He replied : It is a fault ' ?
What do I assert about the passage which contains all this ?
That it is a genuine part of the Sacred Books of Buddhism ; is main
tained by the most learned Ceylon Buddhists to be the very words of
Buddha (nothing would induce me to believe that the Buddha ever saw
it) ; and is defended, not as being recent, secondary, or secret, but
only on the ground I have already mentioned ; that it has been for
twenty-two centuries and more on the threshold of the Sacred
Books of Buddhism, and has provoked from Buddhists no remon
strance, no qualifying or apologetic commentary.
What do I infer from this? That the boasted morality of
Buddhism has not deeply affected for good the moral tone of
Buddhists at any time since it has been a prevalent religion, and
that the monks, the custodians of it, have been less affected than
others. It is, I think, to be regretted that in the volume of the Sacred Books
of the East which professes to contain the first part of the Vinaya Pitaka,
this passage is not referred to. It is not of its omission that I
complain ; no printer would print it. What I complain of is, that
it is not mentioned : that the omission is not stated or explained
at the place where it occurs, nor explicitly stated anywhere ; and
that there is not a hint from first to last in the volume that any
passage of this objectionable character exists. I do not for a
moment suppose that the translators wished to conceal this part,
or any part, of the matter which they have omitted — for they have
omitted a large amount, some quite unobjectionable. The grounds on
which they have omitted in the English Satred Boohs much which
is printed in Professor Oldenberg's Pali edition of Vinaya Pitaka
may be gathered from the two prefaces, and are, I believe, these :
Professor Oldenberg, of whom and of whose work and personal
courtesy to myself I would speak with the greatest respect, believes
that these instances, or specifications, or examples of the application
of rules, called in Pali ' Matikapadani,' are a later portion of the
book, later than another portion, the Patimokkha, which is now found
along with them, and which contains the general rules. I have no
doubt he is right in a certain sense : the general rules must have
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132 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July
existed before the instances. He may possibly be right— though he
is far from having proved it — in the further sense, that the Patimokkha
existed as a book before the larger book was compiled. This is not
the opinion of Ceylon Buddhists, who believe the Patimokkha to
be an excerpt from the Vinaya; but let it be so; let the Pati
mokkha, in which are the general rules, be the older nucleus, and
the Matikapadani, or specific cases, be the later portion of the
Vinaya. That admitted, how does the case stand? It is still
admitted — it is admitted by Professor Oldenberg himself — that all
have stood together as the Vinaya book, have been held to be the
words of Buddha, have been in the hands of every Buddhist monk
who could read Pali (happily not many) — since when ? for the last
few centuries ? — since 350 B.C. For all that time, it is admitted,
they have formed part of the Sacred Books of Buddhism : Buddhism
has been responsible for them for twenty-two centuries. Ought
this not to be known when Buddhist morality is being judged? To
omit them from a translation of the Vinaya Pitaka (without notice)
is as if a person who thought certain chapters of Genesis were the
older portions — old records which the author had embedded in
newer matter — were to publish a translation of those older chapters
only as the Sacred Book of Judaism and Christianity.
Professor Oldenberg says they are a commentary on the Pati
mokkha. To say so is to use the word ' commentary ' in a misleading
sense. It is used by most writers on Buddhism as the equivalent to
Atthakatha — the uncanonical commentary on a canonical book. But
this is a part of the canonical book itself, never called a commentary
till it was called so by Professor Oldenberg. He is wrong also — in
the opinion of Ceylon Buddhists — in calling the Patimokkha a
canonical book. It is not (in technical language) mul pota, but an
at pota — not an original book, but a handbook, an extract for litur
gical purposes. This idea of the at pota is familiar to Buddhists-;
and an at pota is distinguished by well-known marks from a mul
pota. That, however, is chiefly a matter of words ; the essence of
the matter is this, that the horrible portion I have referred to is, and
has been from the earliest date to which external history can carry
us back, a portion of tHe Sacred Book of Buddha.
I have now finished a very painful duty, and nothing will please
me better than to find that my Buddhist friends, on second thoughts,
relegate this passage to the position of an unauthorised commentary,
and that Professor Oldenberg, in the next edition, specifies more
clearly the omissions that are made.
I must now turn to the comparisons between Buddhism and
Christianity. The historical treatment of the life of Gautama, as I have indi
cated it, which is now I believe generally received, shows nearly all
the points of his biography which are relied on as parallel to belong

1888 BUDDHISM. 133
to the unhistorical Lalita Vistara and the rest. Whether these
Northern biographies borrowed from Christianity is an interesting
question, which depends on the date of Asvaghosha — which some
put as early as 70 B.C., some as late as 70 a.d. (of this historical
question I know nothing) ; on the veracity of the early Christian
traditions as to the travels of Apostles ; and on the degree of inter
course between Kanishka's Indian court and the Western countries.
But even were all admitted, the resemblances to Christianity are
•small and few. When a critic like Seydel is obliged to lay stress
upon the coincidence that Gautama is said to have attained know
ledge under a ficus religiosa, and that Christ saw Nathanael when
he was sitting under the domestic fig-tree, it may be inferred that
the supply of coincidences is scanty.
In the historical narrative there are, I think, only two points
which bear any resemblance to anything in the life of Christ. The
first is the visit of the old sage, who after the birth of Gautama
predicted that he would be a Buddha, and rejoiced to have seen him.
But when it is considered that there is nothing here of carrying the
child to the temple to be presented, no reference to -the mother (such
as is falsely introduced into the Light of Asia), and that it is a
common custom after a child is born in India to get a sage to see
him and pronounce his horoscope — it is difficult to see more than a
slightly interesting coincidence.
The other is the so-called temptation of Buddha by Mara. Now
Mara is rather the opponent than the tempter. He did not try,
according to the early records, to lead Gautama into sin, so much as
to stop his career. And that while the celestial beings were entreat
ing Gautama to become the Buddha or to preach his discovery, Mara
should try to prevent him, was an inevitable element in the story.
In its later developments Mara appears more truly as a tempter, and
as temptation is one of the world-wide facts of human nature, any
expression of that great truth has its value.
Other apparent instances are fictitious. This is the case with
many things in the Light of Asia, and if that is confessedly a work
of fiction, fiction must be excused. I have, read somewhere that
Gautama summoned his disciples with the formula 'Follow me.' As
a fact, he is not represented to have said either ' follow ' or ' me,' but
' Come, mendicant, the doctrine has been well preached,' &c. I take
up Professor Ehys David's Manual of Buddhism and turn over
the pages. On p. 133 I see the heading 'Parable of the Mustard
Seed.' This is no parable, in the sense in which our Lord's was a
parable, and it is about mustard as a drug, not as a seed, and its
aam is to show the certainty of death. On the next page is the
' Parable of the Sower,' which has nothing to do with preaching or
hearing, and would much more properly be called the ' Ploughman.'
On p. 141 I find the ' Sabbath ; ' and since there is approximately a

134 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. July
weekly festival, this is perhaps one of [the least misleading of these
parallels, though it is not on any particular day of the week, nor are
its rules at all like those of the Jewish Sabbath. On p. 142 I come
to ' Lent,' though ' Was ' is not a fast, does not precede a feast, and
does not last forty days, or occur in the spring. Then comes ' Ordina
tion,' though no priestly or ministerial office is conferred, — it is
really- admission to the brotherhood. Other books give us deacons,
priests, and the rest — all as well founded. Much more serious turns
of this kind are often given in translation to moral and religious
words,— much more serious, though not to be so briefly exposed.
Thus by a multitude of little parodies, nearly all of them misleading,
a total impression is conveyed which is very far removed from truth.
Likenesses to Christianity, and most touching ones, there are ; but
they are generally in the expression of man's weakness and need, not
in the method of meeting it.
Although this is not its place, I must not end without a word
about Nirvana. It is certain that the Nirvana of the books and of
present Ceylon conviction is the state in which there is not left any
capacity for re-birth — anything which could give a handle to re
newed existence. He who is in Nirvana neither sees, knows, wills,
nor exists. To inquire whether the soul survives in Nirvana is a
question that cannot be asked, since there never was a soul. It is
equally impossible to say that the soul is destroyed, for the same
reason. Nothing that man can conceive of remains to him who is in
that state. Whether anything is to be had there which is com
patible with the absence of consciousness, personality, life, and of
existence, is a question which Buddha is said to have declined to
settle. The whole of Buddhism, from beginning to end, denies that
anything can be affirmed of Nirvana which would not be false.
And yet it is equally certain that Nirvana is habitually spoken
of as happiness, and praised in positive terms.
I believe the explanation lies in this : that the crisis of Nirvana
is not death, the dissolution of the last life, but the attainment of
the condition in which re-birth is impossible, and a final death within
reach. This might be called the potentiality of final Nirvana, and it
is inaccurately imagined — for of course the' whole thing is imagina
tion at the best — to be happiness to have attained that potential
stage, and to know that one has no more births before one. The
attainment of Nirvana, thus inaccurately thought of, is possible in
life ; its final achievement, in the last death, is Parinirvana. My
opinion is that the notion came in this way. Eoughly looking at
the matter, existence is misery — therefore happiness is non-exist
ence. In experience, to be independent of outward comforts, human
praise, and the like, is happiness. In further experience, to Indian
sages at least, to abstract oneself from all objects of sense and
memory — the state of trance — is greater happiness still. A fortiori-*

1888 BUDDHISM. 135.
and here language leaves the guidance of experience — more complete
abstraction, from consciousness even, would be better still. And so
the two lines of thought seem to meet, and complete cessation of
being is called the highest good. The Buddhist starts from experi
ence and launches into the region of imagination, where he pursues
the matter without seeing that he has reached absurdity.
In practice the Ceylon Buddhist, among the masses, is both better
and worse than his creed. Better, because, instead of a distant
Nirvana or a series of births, he has before him the next birth only,
which he thinks will be in heaven if he is good, and in hell if he is
bad ; because he calls on God in times of distress, and has a sort of
faith in the One Creator, whom his priests would teach him to deny.
Worse, because his real refuge is neither Buddha nor his Books, nor
his Order, but devils and devil-priests and charms, and astrology and
every form of grovelling superstition. And it is that grovelling
superstition that, in Ceylon at least, every word spoken in England
in praise of Buddhism tends to maintain. Beginald Stephen Colombo.

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