able passage which, as bearing upon this point, I here abridge (Röer's edition, p. 315):

A youth called Svetaketu (the son of a Brahman named Gautama) repaired to the court of the king of Panćāla, Pravahaṇa, who said to him, 'Boy, has thy father instructed thee?' 'Yes, sir,' replied he. Knowest thou where men ascend when they quit this world?' 'No, sir,' replied he. 'Knowest thou how they return?' 'No, sir,' replied he. 'Knowest thou why the region to which they ascend is not filled up?' 'No, sir,' replied he. 'Why then saidst thou that thou hadst been instructed?' The boy returned sorrowful to his father's house and said, 'The king asked me certain questions which I could not answer.' His father said, 'I know not the answers.' Then he, Gautama, the father of the boy, went to the king's house. When he arrived, the king received him hospitably and said, 'O Gautama, choose as a boon the best of all worldly possessions.' He replied, 'O king, thine be all worldly possessions; tell me the answers to the questions you asked my son.' The king became distressed in mind (knowing that a Brahman could not be refused a request) and begged him to tarry for a time. Then he said, 'Since you have sought this information from me, and since this knowledge has never been imparted to any other Brahman before thee, therefore the right of imparting it has remained with the Kshatriyas among all the people of the world.'

This story certainly appears to favour the supposition that men of the caste next in rank to that of Brahmans were the first to venture upon free philosophical speculation. However that may be, it was not long before Brahmanism and rationalism advanced hand in hand, making only one compact, that however inconsistent with each other, neither should declare the other to be a false guide. A Brahman might be a rationalist, or both rationalist and Brahman might live together in harmony, provided both gave a nominal assent to the Veda, maintained the inviolability of caste, the ascendancy of Brahmans, and their sole right to be the teachers both of religion and philosophy. But if a rationalist asserted that any one might be a teacher, or might gain emancipation for himself irrespectively of the Veda or caste observances,

he was at once excommunicated as a heretic and infidel. It is evident that a spirit of free inquiry had begun to show itself even during the Mantra period and had become common enough in Manu's time. In the second book of his Laws (verse II) it is declared :

The Brahman who resorting to rationalistic treatises (hetu-sāstra) shall contemn the two roots of all knowledge (viz. śruti and smṛiti), that man is to be excommunicated (vahish-kāryaḥ) by the righteous as an atheist (nāstika) and reviler of the Vedas.

Such heretics, however, soon became numerous in India by the simple law of reaction; for it may with truth be asserted that the Buddhist reformation, when it first began to operate, was the result of a reaction from the tyranny of Brahmanism and the inflexible rigour of caste. Like the return swing of a pendulum, it was a rebound to the opposite extreme-a recoil from excessive intolerance and exclusiveness to the broadest tolerance and comprehensiveness. It was the name for unfettered religious thought, asserting itself without fear of consequences and regardless of running counter to traditional usages, however ancient and inveterate.

According to this view, the lines of free inquiry which ended in the recognized schools of philosophy cannot be regarded as having sprung directly out of Buddhism ; nor did the latter owe its origin to them. Buddhism and philosophy seem rather to have existed contemporaneously'. Buddhism was for the bold and honest free-thinker who cared nothing for maintaining a reputation for orthodoxy, while the schools of philosophy were the homes of those rationalists who sacrificed honesty at the shrine of ecclesiastical respectability. Doubtless the orthodox philosopher usually went through the form of denouncing

1 The Sankhya Sūtras I. 27-47 refer to certain Buddhistic tenets, but, as remarked by Dr. Muir, these may be later interpolations, and so prove nothing as to the priority of Buddhism.

all Buddhist heretics; but except in the three points of a nominal assent to the Veda, adherence to caste, and a different term for final emancipation, two at least of the systems, namely, the Vaiseshika and Sānkhya, went almost to the same length with Buddhism, even to the practical if not ostensible ignoring of a supreme intelligent creator. It is curious, too, that one of the names of the supposed orthodox Brahman founder of the Nyāya was the same as that of the heretical Kshatriya who founded Buddhism.

In fact, not the extremest latitudinarian of the present day could possibly be allowed such liberty of thought as was conceded to the free-thinkers of India, provided they neutralized their heterodoxy by nominally accepting the Veda, or at least its Upanishad portion, and conforming to Hindu Dharma-that is, to the duties of caste, involving of course the recognition of Brahmanical ascendancy.

It would be difficult then, I think, to refer Hindu rationalism to any one special person or school as its founder. Not that Kapila, Gautama, and the great Buddha of the sixth century B.C., were myths. Some men of vigorous intellect and enlightened views doubtless arose who gathered together and formulated the floating free thought of the day; and some one of them, like the Buddha, became a rallying point for the increasing antipathy to sacerdotal domination, a kind of champion of reason and liberator of mind from the tyranny of traditional opinions. It may without hesitation be affirmed that such leaders of rationalistic inquiry once lived in India. I commence, then, with a brief notice of the celebrated Buddha.

Buddhism.

Some particulars in the life of the great Buddha are known with tolerable certainty. He is described as the son of a king, Śuddhodana, who reigned in Kapila

vastu, the capital of a country at the foot of the mountains of Nepal'. He was therefore a prince of the Kshatriya or military caste, which of itself disqualified him in the eyes of the Brahmans from setting up as a religious teacher. His proper family or tribal name was Śākya, and that of his race or clan Gautama or Gotama2; for it is well known that this great reformer never arrogated to himself an exclusive right to the title Buddha, enlightened,' or claimed any divine honours or even any special reverence. He is said to have entered on his reforming mission in the district of Magadha or Behar about the year 588 B.C., but he taught that other philosophers (Budhas) and even numerous Buddhas-that is, perfectly enlightened men had existed in previous periods of the world. He claimed to be nothing but an example of that perfection in knowledge to which any man might attain by the exercise of abstract meditation, self-control, and bodily mortification. Gentle, however, and unassuming as the great reforming Ascetic was, he aimed at the grandest

3

1 His mother's name was Māyā or Māyā-devī, daughter, of king Suprabuddha. The Buddha had also a wife called Yasodhara and a son Rāhula and a cousin Ananda.

2 Gautama is said to have been one of the names of the great Solar race to which king Suddhodana belonged. The titles Sinha and Muni are often added to Sakya, thus Sakya-sinha, 'the lion of the Sakyas;' Sakyamuni, the Sakya-saint.' His name Siddhartha, 'one whose aims have been accomplished,' was either assumed, like Buddha, as an epithet in after life, or, as some say, was given by his parents, 'whose prayer had been granted,' something in the same manner as Deva-datta, Oeodwpnros, Theodore. Sramana, meaning 'ascetic,' is sometimes affixed to Gautama. He is also styled Bhagavat, 'the adorable,' and Tathā-gata or Su-gata, 'one who has gone the right way.' Every Buddhist may be a Śramana (see p. 57) for the more rapid attainment of Nirvāņa.

3 He is said to have given lectures to his disciples in a garden belonging to a rich and liberal householder, named Sudatta or Anātha-piņḍāda, in the city of Sravasti, somewhere in the district now called Oude, north of the Ganges.

practical results. He stood forth as the deliverer of a priestridden, caste-ridden nation,—the courageous reformer and innovator who dared to attempt what doubtless others had long felt was necessary, namely, the breaking down of an intolerable ecclesiastical monopoly by proclaiming absolute free trade in religious opinions and the abolition of all caste privileges'. It may be taken as a fixed law of human nature that wherever there arise extravagant claims to ecclesiastical authority on the one side, there will always arise Buddhas on the other-men who, like the Buddha of India, become rapidly popular by proclaiming

1 Bauddhas or Buddhists believe that after immense intervals of time (Kalpas) men with perfect knowledge, entitled to be called supreme Buddhas, come into the world to teach men the true way to Nirvāņa, which gradually fades away from their minds in the lapse of ages and has again to be communicated by another perfect teacher. The Buddha foretold that one of his followers was to be the next supreme Buddha. An ascetic who has arrived at the stage when there is only one more birth, before attaining to the rank of a Buddha, is called by Buddhists Bodhisattva, 'one who has the essence of perfect wisdom in him.' Few, of course, attain to be supreme Buddhas-completely enlightened teachers -though all may ultimately reach Nirvāṇa. Candidates for Nirvāņa are called Arhats, i. e. 'venerables.'

Dr. Muir, at the end of the second volume of his Texts, gives a most interesting metrical translation of part of the Lalita-vistara, a legendary history in prose and verse of the Buddha's life. The prose of this history is in Sanskrit, but the Gāthās or songs interspersed with it are in a kind of mixed dialect, half Sanskrit, half Prakrit. The passage translated describes Buddha as a deliverer and redeemer in terms which almost assimilate his character to the Christian conception of a Saviour. Professor Max Müller, in his Sanskrit Literature (p. 79), has drawn attention to a passage from Kumārila Bhatta, according to which the following words, claiming the functions of a kind of vicarious redeemer, are ascribed to Buddha :-'Let all the evils (or sins) flowing from the corruption of the fourth or degenerate age (called Kali) fall upon me, but let the world be redeemed.' Bishop Claughton is reported to have said in a recent lecture, that there is nothing out of Christianity equal to Buddhism in a moral point of view.