638 A.D.

Mahindo1 carried Asoka's version of the Buddhist scriptures in the Magadhi language to Ceylon. He took with him a In the band of fellow-missionaries; and soon afterwards, his sister, South, Ceylon, the princess Sanghamittá, who had entered the Order, followed etc., 244 with a company of nuns. It was not, however, till six hundred B.C. to years later (410-432 A.D.) that the holy books were rendered into Páli, the sacred language of the Southern Buddhists. About the same time, missionaries from Ceylon finally established the faith in Burma (450 A.D.). The Burmese themselves assert that two Buddhist preachers landed in Pegu as early as 207 B.C. Some, indeed, place their arrival just after the Patná Council, 244 B.C., and point out the ruined city of Tha-ton, between the Sitoung (Tsit-taung) and Salwín estuaries, as the scene of their pious labours. Siam was converted to Buddhism in 638 A.D.; Java received its missionaries direct from India between the 5th and the 7th centuries, and spread the faith to Bali and Sumatra.2 While Southern Buddhism was thus wafted across the ocean, another stream of missionaries had found In the their way by Central Asia into China. Their first arrival in that North, China,etc., empire is said to date from the 2nd century B.C., although it 2d century was not till 65 A.D. that Buddhism there became the estab- B.C. to lished religion. The Greco-Bactrian kingdoms in the Punjab, and beyond it, afforded a favourable soil for the faith. The Scythian dynasties that succeeded them accepted it, and the earliest remains which recent discovery has unearthed in Afghánistán are Buddhist. Kanishka's Council, soon after the commencement of the Christian era, gave a fresh impetus to the faith. Tibet, South Central Asia, and China, lay along the great missionary routes of Northern Buddhism; the Kirghis are said to have carried the religion as far west as the Caspian ; on the east, the religion was introduced into the Korea in 372 A.D., and thence into Japan in 552.

552 A.D.

Buddhist doctrines are believed to have deeply affected Buddhist influence religious thought in Alexandria and Palestine. The question is yet undecided as to how far the Buddhist ideal of the holy tianity. 1 Sanskrit, Mahendra.

2

* All these dates are uncertain, they are founded on the Cingalese chronology, but the orthodox in the various countries place their national conversion at remoter periods. Occasionally, however, the dates can be tested from external sources. Thus we know from the Chinese traveller Fa-Hian, that up to about 414 A.D. Java was still unconverted. FaHian says, 'Heretics and Bráhmans were numerous there, and the law of Buddha in nowise entertained.' The Burmese chroniclers go back to a time when the duration of human life was ninety millions of years; and a single dynasty ruled for a period represented by a unit followed by 140 cyphers. See Imperial Gazetteer, vol. viii., s.v. SANDOWAY.

on Chris

life, with its monks, nuns, relic-worship, bells, and rosaries, influenced Christian monachism; and to what extent Buddhist philosophy aided the development of the Gnostic heresies, particularly those of Basilides and Manes, which rent the early church. It is certain that the analogies are striking, and have been pointed out alike by Jesuit missionaries in Asia, and by oriental scholars in Europe. The form of abjuration for those who renounced the Gnostic doctrines of Manes, expressly mentions Βόδδα and the Σκυθιανός (Buddha and the Scythian or Sákya)—seemingly, says Weber, a separation of Buddha the Sákya into two.2 At this moment the Chinese in San Francisco assist their devotions by pictures of the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, imported on thin paper from Canton, which the Irish Roman Catholics identify as the Virgin Mary with the infant in her arms, an aureole round her head, an adoring figure at her feet, and the Spirit hovering near in the form of a bird. But it is right to point out that the early Nestorian Christians in China may have been the source of some of these resemblances. The liturgy of the Goddess of Mercy, Kwanyin, in which the analogies to the Eastern Christian office are most strongly marked, have been traced with certainty only as far back as 1412 A.D. in the Chinese Canon. Professor Max Müller endeavours to show that Buddha himself is the original of Saint Barlaam Josaphat, who has a day assigned to him in Buddha as the Calendar of both the Greek and Roman churches.5 The an avatár Hindus, while denouncing Buddha as a heretic, have been constrained to admit him to a place in their mythology. They regard him as the ninth, and hitherto last, incarnation of Vishnu, the Lying Spirit let loose to deceive men until the tenth or final descent of Vishnu, on the white horse, with a 1 For the latter aspect of the question, see Weber, founding on Lassen, Renan, and Beal, Hist. Ind. Lit., p. 309, note 363, ed. 1878.

of Vishnu.

2 But see post, p. 167.

3 See also post, pp. 188, 189. Polemical writers, Christian and Chinese, have with equal injustice accused Buddhism and Christianity of consciously plagiarizing each other's rites. Thus Kuang-Hsien, the distinguished member of the Astronomical Board, who brought about the Chinese persecution of the Christians from 1665 to 1671, writes of them: 'They pilfer this talk about heaven and hell from the refuse of Buddhism, and then turn round and revile Buddhism.'-The Death-blow to the Corrupt Doctrines of Tien-chu (i.e. Christianity), p. 46 (Shanghai, 1870). See also the remarks of Jao-chow-The man most distressed in heart'—in the same collection. 4 For an excellent account from the Chinese texts of the worship and liturgy of Kwan-yin, 'the Saviour,' or in her female form as the Goddess of Mercy, see Beal's Catena of Buddhist Scriptures, 383-397 (Trübner, 1871). 5 Chips from a German Workshop, vol. iv. pp. 177-189, ed. 1875.

flaming sword like a comet in his hand, for the destruction of the wicked and the renovation of the world.

2

While on the one hand a vast growth of legends has arisen Buddha's around Buddha, tending to bring out every episode of his life personality into strong relief, efforts have been made on the other hand denied. to explain away his personal identity. No date can be assigned with any certainty for his existence on this earth. The Northern Buddhists have fourteen different accounts, ranging from 2422 to 546 B.c.1 The Southern Buddhists agree in starting from the 1st of June 543 B.C. as the day of Buddha's death. This latter date, 543 B.C., is usually accepted by European writers; but it does not fit into Indian. chronology as worked out from inscriptions and coins. Some scholars, indeed, have argued that Buddhism is merely a religious development of the Sánkhya philosophy of Kapila; that Buddha's birth is placed at a purely allegorical site, Kapila-Vastu, 'the abode of Kapila;' that his mother is called Máyá-deví, in reference to the Máyá doctrine of Kapila's system; and that his own two names are symbolical ones, Siddartha, he who has fulfilled his end,' and Buddha, 'the enlightened.' Buddhism and Bráhmanism are unquestionably united by intermediate links. Certain of the sacred texts of the Bráhmans, particularly the Vrihad Aranyaka and the Atharva Upanishad of the Yoga system, teach doctrines which are completely Buddhistic. According to Wilson and others, Buddha had no personal existence.3 Buddhism was merely the Sánkhya philosophy turned into a national religion; and the religious life of the Buddhistic orders was the old Brahmanical type popularized. The theory is at any rate so far true, that Buddhism was not a sudden invention of any single mind, but a development on a broader basis of a philosophy and religion which preceded it. But such speculalations leave out of sight the two great traditional features of

1 Csoma de Körösi, on the authority of Tibetan MSS., Tibetan Grammar, p. 199.

"General Cunningham works back the date of Buddha's death to 478 B.C., and takes this as his starting-point in the Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, p. vii. The subject is admirably discussed by Mr. Rhys Davids in the International Numismata Orientalia (Ceylon fasciculus), pp. 38-56. He arrives at 412 B.C. as the most probable date.

3 Professor H. H. Wilson went so far as to say, 'It seems not impossible that Sakya Muni is an unreal being, and that all that is related of him is as much a fiction as is that of his preceding migrations and the miracles that attended his birth, his life, and his departure.' The arguments are dealt with by Weber, Hist. Ind. Lit., pp. 284-290, ed. 1878.

Buddhism did not oust Bráhmanism.

Buddhism-namely, the preacher's appeal to the people, and the undying influence of his beautiful life.

Buddhism never ousted Bráhmanism from any large part of India. The two systems co-existed as popular religions during more than a thousand years (244 B.C. to about 800 A.D.), and modern Hinduism is the joint product of both. Certain kings and certain eras were intensely Buddhistic; but the continuous existence of Bráhmanism is abundantly proved from the time of Alexander (327 B.C.) downwards. The historians who chronicled his march, and the Greek ambassador Megasthenes, who succeeded them (300 B.C.) in their literary labours, bear witness to the predominance of Bráhmanism in the period immediately preceding Asoka. Inscriptions, local legends, Sanskrit literature, and the drama, disclose the survival of Bráhman influence during the next six Buddhism centuries (244 B.C. to 400 A.D.). From 400 A.D. we have the and Bráh evidence of the Chinese pilgrims, who toiled through Central manism, 400 A.D. to Asia into India to visit the birth-place of their faith. Fa-Hian 645 A.D. entered India from Afghánistán, and journeyed down the whole Gangetic valley to the Bay of Bengal in 399-413 A.D. He found Bráhman priests equally honoured with Buddhist monks, and temples to the Indian gods side by side with the religious houses of the Buddhist faith. Hiouen Thsang also travelled to India from China by the Central Asia route, and has left a fuller record of the state of the two religions in the 7th century. His wanderings extended from 629 to 645 A.D., and everywhere throughout India he found the two systems. eagerly competing for the suffrages of the people. By this time, indeed, Bráhmanism was beginning to reassert itself at the expense of the other religion. The monuments of the great Buddhist monarchs, Asoka and Kanishka, confronted him from the time he neared the Punjab frontier; but so also did the temples of Siva and his dread' queen Bhímá. Throughout North-Western India he found Buddhist convents and monks surrounded by 'swarms of heretics.' The political power was also divided, although the Buddhist sovereigns predominated. A Buddhist monarch ruled over ten kingdoms in Afghánistán. At Peshawar, the great monastery built by Kanishka was deserted, but the populace remained faithful. In Kashmir, the king and people were devout Buddhists, under the teaching of 500 monasteries and 5000 monks. In the country identified with Jáipur, on the other hand, the inhabitants were devoted to heresy and war.

Buddhist influence in Northern India seems, during the 7th

in India,

century A.D., to have centred in the fertile doáb or plain Buddhism between the Jumna and the Ganges. At Kanauj (Kanyákubja), 629-645 on the latter river, Hiouen Thsang found a powerful Buddhist A.D. monarch, Síláditya, whose influence reached from the Punjab to North-Eastern Bengal, and from the Himálayas to the Narbada river. Here flourished 100 Buddhist convents and 10,000 monks. But the king's eldest brother had been lately slain by a sovereign of Eastern India, a hater of Buddhism; and 200 temples to the Bráhman gods reared their heads under the protection of the devout Síláditya himself. This monarch seems to have been an Asoka of the 7th century A.D., and he practised with primitive vigour the two great Buddhist virtues of spreading the faith and charity. The former he Council of Síláditya, attempted by means of a general Council in 634 A.D. Twentyone tributary sovereigns attended, together with the most learned Buddhist monks and Bráhmans of their kingdoms. But the object of the convocation was no longer the undisputed assertion of the Buddhist religion. It dealt with the two phases of the religious life of India at that time. First, a discussion between the Buddhists and Bráhmans, especially of the Sankhya and Vaiseshika schools; second, a dispute between the two Buddhist sects who followed respectively the Northern and the Southern Canons known as 'the Greater and the Lesser Vehicle of the Law.' The rites of the populace were of as composite a character as the doctrines of their teachers. On the first day of the Council, a statue of Buddha was installed with great pomp; on the second, an image of the Sun-god; on the third, an idol of Siva.

634 A.D.

Síláditya held a solemn distribution of his royal treasures Síláditya's every five years. Hiouen Thsang describes how on the plain charity. near Allahábád, where the Ganges and the Jumna unite their waters, all the kings of the Empire, and a multitude of people, were feasted for seventy-five days. Síláditya brought forth the stores of his palace, and gave them away to Brahmans and Buddhists, monks and heretics, without distinction. At the end of the festival, he stripped off his jewels and royal raiment, handed them to the bystanders, and, like Buddha of old, put on the rags of a beggar. By this ceremony the monarch commemorated the Great Renunciation of the founder of the Buddhist faith, and at the same time practised the highest duty inculcated alike by the Buddhist and Bráhmanical religions, namely almsgiving. The vast monastery of Nalanda1 formed Monastery

of Nal

1 Identified with the modern Baragáon, near Gayá. The Great Monas- anda, 640 tery can be traced by a mass of brick ruins, 1600 feet long by 400 feet A.D.

L