PART I

BUDDHISM IN THE PALI CANON

CHAPTER I

THE PERSONALITY AND DOCTRINES OF THE

BUDDHA

1. The Problem and the Sources

THE most attractive and influential expositions of Buddhism in England and Germany present us with a simple and effective picture of an Indian sage, who spent a blameless life in the years 563 to 483 B. c. engaged in the development of a remarkably sane and modern ethical doctrine. This sage turned aside from idle metaphysical speculations; if he held views on such topics, he deemed them valueless for the purpose of salvation, which was his goal as it was that of his contemporaries, and declined to discuss these issues generally. But he had emancipated himself from the theory of the existence of any permanent entity in the nature of a soul, such as it was understood by his contemporaries; he had abandoned an ego-centric position, and found greater truth in the conception of constant change under a law of causality, thereby effecting a Copernican revolution in the tendency of philosophical thought. This realization of the unreality of the self led him to a wise and reasonable ethical system; the end of man, Nirvāņa, consists not in strivings, inevitably painful, for the sake of a self which has no real existence, but in the eradication of passion of every kind, which brings man to supreme bliss, attainable and attained only on this earth, a view free from the delusion of a life of perpetual happiness after death.

This portrait of an early rationalist, introducing the blessings

of common sense into a world which knew nothing better than the mysticism of the Upanisads, or something still more crude, is unquestionably fascinating. Surely a notable milestone in the history of human ideas,' an enthusiast' has said, 'that a man reckoned for ages by thousands as the Light not of Asia only but of the World,' and the saviour from sin and misery, should call this little formula [the doctrine of the chain of causation] his Norm or Gospel, or at least one aspect of that Gospel.' The exponents of this view are far too well informed to ignore the difficulties in their theory, above all the perplexing fact that a rationalist should have assumed as self-evident the reality of a process of transmigration not less real because it is not the transmigration of an ordinary soul; but their faith can remove mountains, and there are diverse ways of escape. The Buddha could not disregard the ordinary terminology of his time; his teaching had to be expressed in the terms of his day, and accom. modated for practical purposes to ordinary intelligences; the new wine had to be poured into old bottles. Or again, when the crudities of the Buddha's views become painful to modern rationalism, recourse may be had to the subtle irony which distinguishes Buddhist utterances and presents a key which, skilfully turned, is fitted to open any locked door of Buddhist doctrine. Or, more frankly, we may accept the view that the Buddha himself was a true rationalist, and absolutely declined to accept the dogma of transmigration, conscious that to do so would be to stultify, as in fact it does, his teaching and reduce his followers to painful intellectual straits. Further, we must admit, however reluctantly, that the masses of Asia, who have seen in the Buddha the Light of the World, have not done so because of his rationalist doctrines, his chain of causation, which they haye understood as little as do we, or even his wise advice to still passion. They have adored him, because they have regarded

4

1 Mrs. Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 89. A true Buddhist (Aung, Compendium, pp. 283-5) follows authority, not reason.

2 But see Poussin, Nirvāņa, p. 168.

Cf. Mrs. Rhys Davids, Budd. Psych., p. 21; JRAS. 1903, p. 590; Compendium, p. 278.

Rhys Davids, SBB. ii. 33, 160, 163; cf. Poussin, JA. 1902, ii. 250.

him as the God of Gods, and believed that by devotion to him they shall attain eternal salvation, consisting of perpetual bliss. It is necessary, then, for believers in a primitive rationalism to admit that in some manner the simple humanity of the wise teacher has been overlaid by a divinity not his own, one moreover which on his own theory he would have treated as wholly absurd. This is a remarkable fate for a rationalist, and it is idle to claim to render it plausible by quoting the case of Krsna. There is not the slightest ground beyond conjecture for the belief that the character of Kṛṣṇa developed from a devout teacher mentioned once in the Upanisads to the interesting and popular divinity familiar to India. Supporters of this view rely on the parallel of the Buddha, and in both cases the contention is one which must be established, if at all, on its own merits without the insecure support of the other. In Kṛṣṇa's case every consideration of probability points to the view that he was a tribal god who gradually attained the rank of a universal deity'; but the modes of attaining divinity are diverse, and the case of the Buddha should be discussed in the light of the evidence of the relevant texts and not on the basis of dubious and uncertain analogies.

Now it is admitted that the evidence for. the rationalistic theory of the Buddha depends on the texts of the Pali Canon of the school of the Vibhajyavādins, undoubtedly the most precious record of Buddhism preserved to us. The pious respect attributed to the antiquity and authority of these texts by devout Buddhists is as natural as it is laudable. But it is strange to find that western criticism, ruthless in probing the claims of its own sacred scriptures, has treated the Pali Canon with a respect so profound as to regard with open hostility any attempt to apply to these sources of information the same dispassionate scrutiny which is demanded from the researcher into the history of Christianity. The problem, it must be realized, is not whether, given the texts and the orthodox tradition regarding their origin and authenticity, it is possible, by a liberal use of constructive imagination, to 1 See Keith, Indian Mythology, pp. 123 ft., 187 ff.

2

2 Winternitz, Ind. Litt. ii. 357 ff. Walleser's views (PGAB., pp. 15 ff.) are gravely affected by his erroneous identification of the Pali and Northern Abhidharma texts.

make the tradition harmonize more or less tolerably with the obvious facts revealed in the texts themselves. The issue is whether the texts, fairly interpreted, yield a result compatible with the traditional account of their origin and date. Nor is it legitimate in such an examination to adopt the view that what can be shown to be possible really happened. Nothing is more fallacious than the belief which transforms what is conceivable into what is actual. We must accept the limitations which the state of our sources often imposes upon us, and be content, when we have attained a position in which decision is impossible, to recognize that this and nothing else is the legitimate and scientific conclusion to be recorded.

Faith, it would seem clear on normal principles of interpretation, is decisively out of place in Buddhist traditions of the origin of their scriptures, when it is realized that the primary source, the Cullavagga, XI and XII, a chapter appended to the Vinaya Pitaka, gives an account which is frankly incredible.' We are asked to believe that the Vinaya and the Dhamma were rehearsed in a Council held immediately after the death of the Buddha, when in the Dhamma, i. e. the Sutta Piṭaka, itself appear references to a date posterior to the Buddha's death, and the Vinaya can be analysed into sets of rules, an ancient commentary upon them, and a further careful elaboration based on the rules and the comment. If our faith in tradition is thus shattered at the outset, it becomes hard to ask us to accept as valid the legend of a second Council held a hundred years later at Vaiçalı, which condemned ten errors of discipline of the Vajjian monks and at which, the Cullavagga tells us, the Vinaya was once again recited. The Sinhalese sources, beginning with the Dipavansa (c. a. d. 400),2 show their inferior value by further embroidering the story; the excommunicated Vajjiputtakas hold another great concourse of their own, while at the Council of the orthodox both the Dhamma and the Vinaya are recited. When the northern sources are

'Sée Minayeff, Recherches sur le Bouddhisme, chs. ii. and iii; Kern, Ind. Buddh., pp. 101 ff.; Franke, JPTS. 1908, pp. 1 ff.; Poussin, IA. xxxvii. 2 ff.; contra Oldenberg, VP., pp. xxv ff.; ZDMG. lii. 613 ff.; cf. Smith, JRAS. 1901, pp. 843 ff.; Barth, RHR. xlii. 74 ff. See also Franke, DN., pp. xlii. ff. Cf. Franke, VOJ. xxi. 203 ff.; Smith, IA. xxxii. 265 ff.