BUDDHIST ELEMENTŚ IN HINDUISM. 201 intermediate links is found in the darsanas, or philosophical systems, between the Vedic period and the establishment of Buddhism as a national religion under Asoka (1400? to 250 B.C.). A later set is preserved in the compromises effected during the final struggle between Buddhism and Brahmanism, ending in the re-assertion of the latter in its new form as the religion of the Hindus (700 to 1000 A.D.). on Hin Buddhism not only breathed into the new birth its noble Buddhist spirit of charity, but bequeathed to Hinduism many of its influences institutions unimpaired, together with its scheme of religious duism. life, and the material fabric of its worship. At this day, the mahájan or bankers' guild, in Surat, devotes part of the fees that it levies on bills of exchange to animal hospitals; true Beast survivals of Asoka's second edict, which provided a system hospitals. of medical aid for beasts, 250 years before Christ. The cenobitic life, and the division of the people into laity and clergy, have passed almost unchanged from Buddhism into the present Hindu sects, such as the Vaishnavs or Vishnuites. teries. The Hindu monasteries in our own day vie with the Buddhist Monasconvents in the reign of Síláditya; and Purí is, in many respects, a modern unlettered Nalanda. The religious houses of the Orissa delta, with their revenue of £50,000 a year,1 are but Hindu developments of the Buddhist cells and rock-monasteries, whose remains still honeycomb the adjacent hills. If we examine the religious life of the Vishnuite communities, we find their rules are Buddhistic, with Bráhmanical reasons attached. Thus the moral code of the Kabir-panthis The reliconsists of five rules: 2 First, life, whether of man or beast, gious life. must not be violated; because it is the gift of God. Second, humanity is the cardinal virtue; and the shedding of blood, whether of man or beast, a heinous crime. Third, truth is the great principle of conduct; because all the ills of life and ignorance of God are due to original falsehood (máyá). Fourth, retirement from the world is desirable; because the desires of the world are hostile to tranquillity of soul, and to the undisturbed meditation on God. Fifth, obedience to the spiritual guide is incumbent on all. This last rule is common to every sect of the Hindus. But the Kabir-panthís direct the pupil to examine well his teacher's life and doctrine before 1 Report by the Committee of native gentlemen appointed to inquire into the Orissa maths, dated 25th March 1869, par. 15. 2 H. H. Wilson's Religion of the Hindus, vol. i. p. 94 (ed. 1862). Buddhist on later tation : In In he resigns himself to his control. If we did not know that Buddhism was itself an outgrowth from primitive Bráhmanism, we might hold this code to be simple Buddhism, with the addition of a personal God. But knowing, as we do, that Bráhmanism and Buddhism were themselves closely connected, and that they combined to form Hinduism; it is impossible to discriminate how far Hinduism was made up by direct transmission from Buddhism or from Bráhmanism. The influence of Buddhism on the Christianity of the western influences world has been referred to at p. 152. Whatever uncertainties religions. may still obscure that question, the effect of Buddhism upon the present faiths of Eastern Asia admits of no doubt. The best elements in the teaching of Buddha have survived in modern Hinduism; and Buddhism carried with it essential doctrines of Bráhmanism to China and Japan, together with Serpent certain characteristics of Indian religious art. The snake ornamen ornamentation, which figures so universally in the religion of India, is said to have been carried by Buddhism alike to the east and the west. Thus, the canopy or baldachino over Buddha's head delights in twisted pillars and wavy patterns. These wave-like ornaments are conventionalized into Buddhism; cloud curves in most of the Chinese and Japanese canopies; but some of them still exhibit the original figures thus symbolized as undulating serpents or Nágás. A serpent baldachino of this sort may be seen in a monastery at Ningpo.1 It takes the place of the cobra-headed canopy, which in India shelters the head of Siva, or of Vishnu as he slept upon the waters at the creation of the world. The twisted columns which support the baldachino at St. Peter's in Rome, and the fluted ornamentation so common over Protestant pulpits, are said to have a serpentine origin, and an eastern source. The association of Buddha with two other figures, in the Japanese temples, perhaps represents a recollection of the Brahman triad. The Brahmanical idea of trinity, in its Buddhist development as Buddha, Dharma (the Law), and Sangha (the Congregation), deeply penetrates the faith. The Sacred Tooth of Buddha at Ceylon is a reproduction of the phallic linga of India. In Chris tian art. Coalition ism with Buddhism readily coalesced with the pre-existing religions of Buddh- of primitive races. Thus, among the hill tribes of Eastern Bengal, we see the Khyaungthas, or Children of the River,' 1 The authority for this statement is an unpublished drawing by Miss Gordon Cumming. earlier religions: COALITION OF CREEDS. 203 passing into Buddhists without giving up their aboriginal rites. In India; They still offer rice and fruits and flowers to the spirits of hill and stream; and the Buddhist priests, although condemning the custom as unorthodox, do not very violently oppose it. In In Japan. Japan, a Buddhist saint visited the hill-slope of Hotoke Iwa in 767 A.D.; declared the local Shinto deity to be only a manifestation of Buddha; and so converted the old idolatrous highplace into a Buddhist shrine. Buddhism has thus served as Shrines a link between the ancient faiths of India and the modern common to worship of the eastern world. It has given sanctity to the centres faiths. of common pilgrimage, to which the great faiths of Asia resort. Thus, the Siva-worshippers ascend the top of Adam's Peak in Adam's Ceylon, to adore the footprint of their phallic god, the Sivapada; the Buddhists repair to the spot to revere the same symbol as the footmark of Buddha; and the Muhammadans venerate it as a relic of Adam, the Semitic father of mankind. various Peak. Sarwar. Many common shrines of a similar character exist in India. Sakhi The famous place of pilgrimage at Sakhi Sarwar crowns the high bank of a hill stream at the foot of the Suláimán range, in the midst of desert scenery, well adapted to penitents who would mortify the flesh. To this remote spot, the Muhammadans come in honour of a Musalmán saint; the Sikhs to venerate a memorial of their theistic founder, Nának; and the Hindus to perform their own ablutions and rites. The mount near Madras, associated in Catholic legend with the martyrdom of St. Thomas, was originally a common hill-shrine for Muhammadans, Christians, and Hindus. Such hill-shrines for joint worship are usually either rock-fortresses, like Kalinjar in the North-Western Provinces and Chunar overhanging the Ganges, or river-islands, like the beautiful islet on the Indus just below the new railway bridge at Sakkar. The object of common adoration is frequently a footmark in stone. This the Hindus venerate as the footprint of Vishnu or Siva (Vishnupad or Sivapad); while the Musalmáns revere it as the footprint of Muhammad (Kadam-rasul). The mingled architecture of some of these pilgrim-sites attests the various races and creeds that combined to give them sanctity. Buddhism, which in some respects was at first a revolt against Bráhman supremacy, has done much to maintain the continuity between the ancient and the modern religions of India. Hinduism, however, derived its elements not merely from 1 See Hunter's Statistical Account of Bengal, vol. vi. p. 40, etc. Non elements in the two ancient Aryan faiths, the Bráhmanical and the BudAryan dhist. In its popular aspects, it drew much of its strength, Hinduism. and many of its rites, from the Nágá and other non-Aryan peoples of India. Buddhists and Bráhmans alike endeavoured, during their long struggle, to enlist the masses on their side. The Nágá kingdoms were divided, as we have seen, by the Chinese geographers into those which had accepted Buddhism, and those which had not. A chief feature Nágá rites. in Nágá - worship was the reverence for dragons or tailed monsters. This reverence found its way into medieval Buddhism, and became an important element in Buddhist mythology. The historian of Tree and Serpent worship goes so far as to say that Buddhism was little more than a revival of the coarser superstitions of the aboriginal races, purified and refined by the application of Aryan morality.'1 Serpent worship in Hinduism. Phallic emblems in Hinduism. The great monastery of Nalanda owed its foundation to the supposed influence of a tailed monster, or Nágá, in a neighbouring tank. Many Hindu temples still support colonies of sacred crocodiles; and the scholar who has approached the subject from the Chinese point of view, comes to the conclusion that no superstition was more deeply embedded in the [ancient] Hindu mind than reverence for Nágás or dragons. Buddhism from the first had to contend as much against the under current of Nágá reverence in the popular mind, as against the supercilious opposition of the philosophic Bráhman in the upper current. At last, as it would seem, driven to an extremity by the gathering cloud of persecution, the Buddhists sought escape by closing with the popular creed, and endeavouring to enlist the people against the priests; but with no further success than such a respite as might be included within some one hundred years.' 2 This conception of the process is coloured by modern. ideas, but there can be no doubt that Hinduism incorporated many aboriginal rites. It had to provide for the non-Aryan as well as for the Aryan elements of the population, and it combined the Bráhmanism and Buddhism of the Aryans with the fetish-worship and religion of terror which swayed the nonAryan races. Some of its superstitions seem to have been brought by Turanian or Scythian migrations from Central Asia. Serpent-worship is closely allied to, if indeed it does 1 Fergusson's Tree and Serpent Worship, pp. 62, with footnote, et seq. (4to, 1868). This view must be taken subject to limitations. Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese, pp. 415, 416. By not take its origin in, that reverence for the symbols of human reproduction which formed one of the most widely - spread religions of pre-historic man. Phallic or generative emblems are on earth what the sun is in the heavens. The sun, as the type of celestial creative energy, was a primitive object of Aryan adoration. Later Bráhmanism, and its successor Hinduism, seem to have adopted not only the serpent, but the linga and The Hindu yoni, or the terrestrial organs of male and female creative linga and yoni. energy, from the non-Aryan races. The early Aryan ritual of the Vedas was addressed to the elements, particularly to Fire. The worship of the phallic emblem or linga finds only a doubtful sanction, if any at all, in those ancient scriptures;1 but the Puránas disclose it in full vigour (1000 A.D.); and the Muhammadans found it in every part of India. It is not only the chief religion to the south of the Vindhyas, but it is universally recognised by the Hindus. Such symbolism fitted well into the character of the third person of their triad—Siva, the Reproducer, as well as the All-Destroyer. To the Bráhmans it supplied a popular basis for their abstruse doctrines regarding the male and female energy in nature. Phallic The worship harmonized also with their tendency to supply each god 'creative with a correlative goddess, and furnished an easily-understood symbolism for the Sákta sects, or worshippers of the divine creative power, so numerous among the Hindus. For the semi-aboriginal tribes and half- Hinduized low-castes, this conception of Siva as the All-Destroyer and Reproducer, organized on a philosophical basis their old religion of propitiation by blood.3 energy.' The fetish and tree worship of the non-Aryan races also Fetishentered largely into Hinduism. The first Englishman who worship in Hinduism, tried to study the natives as they actually are, and not as the Brahmans described them, was struck by the universal prevalence of a worship quite distinct from that of the Hindu deities. A Bengal village has usually its local god, which it adores The sála 1 H. H. Wilson's Religion of the Hindus, vol. i. p. 220 (ed. 1862). Sakti. 3 The relation of these rites of the semi-Hinduized low-castes to the religion of the non-Aryan races is treated at considerable length, from personal observation, in Hunter's Annals of Rural Bengal, pp. 127-136 and 194, 5th edition. Dr. Francis Buchanan, who afterwards took the name of Hamilton. His survey of the North-Eastern Districts of Bengal, 1807-13, forms a noble grám. |