intuition (paññā, abhiññā), true insight (vipassană), quietude (samatha); he works miracles by fourfold exertion (padhāna); he is par excellence noble (ariya); as a hearer of the doctrine (sävaka) he can be so designated, though the term applies to any disciple. But he is inferior to the individual, Pacceka-Buddha,' the solitary, who in an age when no universal Buddha exists and the order is dissolved, attains enlightenment but cannot preach it, and who is inferior in omniscience to the Buddha proper; the later view is clear that he cannot coexist. with a true Buddha, but this is unknown earlier. In any case the idea is of little consequence. The universal Buddha ranks high over all saints or Pacceka Buddhas. The Canon, we have seen, contains traces of the abnormal character of the Buddha of history, but a strong tendency to treat emphatically the human side is apparent; the Buddha compares himself in his destruction of the enveloping covering of ignorance to the first chicken which breaks its shell; he is the eldest but not in essence different from others; they must free themselves, though they follow his teaching. But even in the .most orthodox view the Buddha possesses characteristics tediously scholasticized which assign to him the perfection of power, of wisdom, of peace, of mercy. He claims himself to be omniscient, all overcoming; he who has taught himself without a master; peerless in the worlds; the perfectly enlightened one, the highest teacher; who has attained Nirvāņa. He is a hero born for the joy of the world to bring gladness to gods and men. The disciple follows his teaching; he does not aspire to become a Buddha, for from the mere fact that he is a disciple he can make no claim to attain such a result. Whether he could become a Pacceka Buddha is left obscure in the texts. Beside the historic Buddha, however, there are others through the ages, all born in eastern India, with varying length of life, but in essence of one type; each preaches the doctrine, and it abides for a period, only to pass away again; that of the Buddha is to abide five hundred years only, for the admission of nuns 1 DN. ii. 142; Apadāna; PP. ix. 1. He appears later as a hermit philosopher, Mhv. i. 301; Kern, Ind. Budd., p. 61. 2 22. Suttavibhanga, Pārājika, i. 1. 4; MN. i. 265. Contrast MV. i. 6. 8; AN. i. See ch. ii. § 2. has shortened the thousand years it else might have claimed.1 No two universal Buddhas can coexist at least in one world system, though possibly even the Canon recognizes that there may be other Buddhas in other such systems. But, if these Buddhas exist and from the teaching of each men attain knowledge and liberation, will the time come when every individual shall be set free? The Mahaparinibbāna Sutta suggests an affirmative reply, with the implication that the necessity of Buddhas themselves would cease, but the Milindapañha suggests a negative reply and this prevails in the later doctrine." The relation of the disciple to the Buddha is one of peculiar character. To the layman' was permitted and inculcated the merit of the worship of the relics of the dead master by his special command, and they did not fail to enshrine them in Stapas, and to adore them at festivals with offerings of flowers, lights, and ceremonial ablutions. We need not deny the roligious quality of such reverence; whether the Buddha himself claimed divine power and origin or not, the laity made him divine. But to the monks and nuns no less than the laity was it enjoined by the master himself to make pilgrimage, with assurance of reward if dying in the task, to one or other of the four holy places, of his birth, enlightenment, setting in motion the wheel of the law, and death. Moreover, every monk and nun can attain liberation only by taking refuge in the Buddha, the law, and the order. The Buddha doubtless is dead; he can extend no grace to the disciple; but he is the finder of the way, who taught the saving texts, and founded the order within whose bosom alone is sainthood to be The reverence he inspires can hardly, then, be denied the name of religion; there are races who recognize high gods, though they have ceased or never begun to make them offerings or to pray to them, and gratitude for the ineffable boon of liberation is surely cause enough for true religious emotion. won. It is in accord with a primitive spirit of devotion and reverence that we find no idea in early Buddhism of seeking to become 1 DN. ii. 2 f.; CV. xii. 2. 3; x. 1. 6. As to coexistence see AN. i. 27; Mhv. i. 123 ff.; Mil., pp. 236 ff. 2 DN. ii. 157; Mil., p. 69; Mhv. i. 126. The Arahant is assumed to pay adoration at relic shrines; KV. xvii. 1. a Buddha; the Buddhas are few and far between; the advent of one Buddha to be, namely Metteyya, is recognized in the Canon,' but the full conception of Bodhisattvas' makes its appearance only in late texts. Metteyya appears as the Buddha of age to come, to supervene on a period of exaggerated evil and sin. At last, wearied of self-destruction, men will practise virtue and abstain from sin, growing in length of life generation by generation as a reward, until the age of man reaches 80,000 years, and maidens are marriageable at 500 years. It is tempting to regard this as a picture of a Kingdom of Love ruled over by a Prince of Love (metta), but it would be to remodel, not to interpret the Buddhist record, which does not here develop the conception of love though it recognizes human solidarity. Nor do the many versions of the Maitreyasamiti known to us alter essentially the picture.' 1 DN. iii. 76; cf. Beckh, Buddhismus, i. 132 f. The exact sense of the term is doubtful; normally it may be held to denote 'one whose existence (sattra) or essence is enlightenment'; cf. ERE. ii. 789. But it has also been rendered 'a being (destined to become possessed of) enlightenment' (cf. Winternitz, Ind. Litt. ii. 89, 367); 'one who has the will (sattva) for enlightenment', a result also obtainable by taking sattva as a misrendering of Pali satta, for çakta, having power', a view defended by Walleser (Prajñāpāramitā, p. 5, n. 3) by the analogy of Sutta, mistaken in his view for Sutra in Sanskrit in lieu of sukta, 'well said '-an implausible hypothesis. Senart (RHR. xlii. 860, n.) finds the explanation of the phrase in the Samkhya idea of Sattva as the highest of the Gunas, but essentially implicated in material existence as opposed to Purușa. See E. Loumann, Die Maitreyasamiti, Strassburg, 1919, who re-odits also the Pali Anagatavansa, a short poom on Metteyya, and fragments of the story in the unknown Iranian dialect styled North-Aryan by Leumann, and ascribed to the Çakas by Konow (GGA. 1912, pp. 551 f.) and Lüders (SBA. 1919, pp. 784 ff.). CHAPTER VII THE PLACE OF BUDDHISM IN EARLY 1. Early Indian Materialism, Fatalism, and Agnosticism FROM the Pali Canon we gather the clear impression that the systems which caused most interest and evoked most serious opposition from the Buddha dealt with life either purely materialistically, or were fatalistic, or denied the possibility of any knowledge. The glimpses we have of these doctrines is tantalizingly slight, and give no appreciation of the arguments by which they were supported. But there is sufficient evidence of the power of these beliefs in the history of Indian thought to show that the schools attacked by the Buddha were not visionary foes, but holders of doctrines popular and widespread among thinking men. The simplest, and most hopeless from the Buddhist point of view, was presumably the creed of Ajita of the garment of hair (kesakambalin). It was a pure materialism; man is built up of the four elements, which at death are resolved into their native earth, water, fire, and air, while the senses, conceived apparently as in the classical form of the Carvāka doctrine as the product of the commixture of the elements, pass into space, whose existence is also accepted. Hence, there is no true birth, whether from father and mother or fortuitous; there is no fruit of gift or sacrifice in this world or the next; wisdom avails not to prevent annihilation in the grave. An essentially similar doctrine doubtless was that of the Lokayatas, who held that the soul was identical with the body, in the sense that it died with it, a doctrine evidently very popular in early India and persisting later, for the Arthaçästra ranks the system with Samkhya and Yoga as prevalent doctrines.1 Not much further advanced is the creed of Pakudha Kaccāyana; in it seven permanent substances, uncreated and without change, are admitted, which do not interact; the four elements, pleasure, pain, and the soul. There is, therefore, neither slayer nor causer of slaying, hearer or speaker, knower, or explainer; there is, in effect, a complete fatalism, a soul, pleasure and pain being merely thrown in to avoid the obvious difficulties of evolving them from matter. Both these theories thus reject transmigration utterly, but Makkhali Gosāla, head of the Ājīvakas or Ājīvikas, a man well known to the Jains also, and who was once in close contact with their leader Mahāvīra, is credited with accepting transmigration, both fools and wise alike being condemned to wander for 8,400,000 periods before achieving an end of their pain. But he is entirely fatalistic in dogma; there is no cause of rectitude or depravity; men become pure or impure without reason or cause. There is no such thing as power, energy, human strength or human vigour. All is determined; it is idle by duty, penance, or righteousness to think that one can counteract the force of destiny. The pessimism of the doctrine can hardly have been diminished by the asceticism of the believers in it; we learn from the Jain scriptures of the utterly repugnant and painful practices to which they resorted, and which it seems impossible to bring into any very logical connexion with their tenets.2 A similarly disquieting doctrine is ascribed to Pūraṇa Kassapa; on what metaphysical basis he rested does not appear. But his view is clearly fatalistic; the committing of crime, even the making of all the creatures on earth one mass of flesh brings no guilt; in generosity, in self-mastery, in control of the senses, in 1 DN. i. 55; cf. SN. iii. 307; MN. i. 515; DS., §§ 1215, 1362, 1361; Hillebrandt, KF., pp. 12 f., 25.; SBE. xlv. 237; SN. iii. 71; refers to casualists, deniers of the deed and deniers of existence; KV. i. 6. 60; DN., p. 56, n. 3. 2 DN. i. 53; MN. i. 31, 198, 238, 250, 483, 512, 524; SN. i. 66, 68; iii. 69, 211; iv. 398; AN. i. 33, 286; iil. 276, 384; VP. i. 8, 291 &c; Hoernle, Uvāsagadasão, pp. 108 ff.; SBB. ii. 71, n. 1; Franke, DN., p. 56; Jacobi, SBE. XLV. xxix; Mil., p. 5; Ui, VP., pp. 19, 22. |