viously current of the sun-god Sumana, worshipped both on Adam's Peak, and at the great cave of Dambulla, whose ancient name was Sumana Lene.1

3

The worship of local relics has also brought about local additions to the legend. Thus the worshippers of the supposed Buddha's tooth in Ceylon have added to the account of Gautama's death the incident of the Arahat Kshema having taken the tooth from the ashes of the funeral pile.2 So the Burmese have related that the Brahman Drona, who divided the relics, stole another tooth; and the Sinhalese who pretend that the Buddha's neck relic is still preserved under the Mahiyangana Dāgaba, add that the elder named Sarabhu abstracted that relic on the same occasion. None of these incidents are given in the Parinibbāna Sutta, though Drona's division of the relics is described at length, and it is evident that relic-worship was already in full favour when that book assumed its present shape. 5

It is a curious part of the history of the Legend of the Buddha, that it should have been adapted into a Christian form by a father of the Christian Church, and have been found so agreeable to the Catholic lovers of saints, that the hero of it has been entered in the Roman Calendar, and is ordered to be worshipped as a saint on every 27th of November, under the title

1 See the inscription published by me in the Indian Antiquary' for May, 1872.

2' Dāthāvansa,' ii. 52.

3 Bigandet, p. 343 (second edition).

↑ "Dāthāvansa,' ii. 51.

Rh. D., 'Buddhist Suttas,' pp. 133-135.

St. John

Among

of St. Josaphat. How this came about has been told by the present writer in the introduction to his Buddhist Birth Stories or Jātaka Tales,' pp. xxxvi.-xli. A certain St. John of Damascus, who wrote in the eighth century, was the son of Sergius, minister at the Court of Khalif Almansūr. became a monk, and wrote many books. other works ascribed to him is a religious romance called the Life of Barlaam and Jōasaph,' which has been distinctly proved to be derived as to the narrative part of it from the story of Buddha, as told in the Jātaka commentary, or the Lalita Vistara. The Greek text of St. John's romance will be found in Migne's Patrology, with a Latin translation. The bulk of the work consists of long theological and moral instructions to the Prince Joasaph by his teacher, Barlaam, in the course of which some Buddhist Jātaka stories are inserted. As the moral tone of the book, which here and there seems to betray Buddhist influence, was so popular in the Middle Ages that the romance was translated into several European languages, we need not wonder that the hero was subsequently canonized.

To have been made a Christian saint is not the only

IIIe is not mentioned by Butler in his standard work on the saints (under St. Balaam of the 19th of November is given quite another story); but see the 'Bibliothèque Sacrée' of Fathers Richard et Giraud, Paris, 1822, s. v. Barlaarn.

2 See especially Liebrecht 'Jahrbuch der Romanischen und Englischen Literatur,' vol. ii. He compares the Catholic romance with the 'Lalita Vistara,' and the likeness to the 'Jātaka' story is still closer.

THE BUDDHA AS MAN IN THE MOON.

197

curious fate which has befallen the great Teacher. He takes his place also in the 'Dictionnaire Infernel' of M. Collin de Plancy, a quaintly illustrated dictionary of all matters relating to devils, fairies, magic, astrology, and so on. There he appears in a curious woodcut as 'Sakimuni, génie ou dieu,' in the character of the Man in the Moon; or, rather of the Hare in the Moon. M. de Plancy quotes as his authority a Kalmuk story given in the 'Travels' of Pallas, that after the hare had given himself to be eaten by a hungry man, 'the spirit of the earth (!) pleased with the beautiful action, placed the soul of that hare in the moon-where he is still to the Kalmucks plainly visible.'

I think I can trace the origin of this legend, which is very old. In one of the Jātaka stories the future Buddha is a holy hare, who keeps the Sabbath, and and exhorts his friends, carnivorous animals, to charity and piety. One Sabbath day after exhorting them to give to any hungry person part of their food, and recollecting that men cannot eat his food, which is grass, he resolves, if the opportunity arises, to give away his own body. The god Şakra becoming aware of this high resolve comes in the form of a Brahman, and begs; but when the hare really offers himself, and jumps into the fire, the fire does not burn him. Then Şakra saying, 'O wise hare, let your virtue be known through all the Kalpa' (the period till the world will be next destroyed), splits

' Paris, 1863 (sixth edition).

'Reisen durch verschiedene Provinzen des Russischen Reich's, 3 vols. 4to. St. Petersburg, 1771—1776.

open a mountain, and taking the sap of the mountain () draws a picture of the hare on the disk of the moon. If Mr. Fausböll had not published the text of this Jātaka1 we might have found it difficult to discover the connection between our Gautama and the Man in the Moon!

It is given both in Pali and Sanskrit in the 'Five Jātakas,' pp. 51-68. On the subsequent history of this story, compare Benfey, 'Pañca Tantra,' i. 349, and Tawney's English version of the 'Katha Sarit Sagara,' vol. ii. p. 66.

CHAPTER VIII.

DEVELOPMENTS IN DOCTRINE-(continued).

Northern Buddhism.

APART from the legend of the Buddha, there is little evidence of any development from the doctrines of the Pitakas in Burma, Siam, or Ceylon; but the case is very different with Nepal, Tibet, China, Japan, and Mongolia.

The development of the Buddhist doctrine which has taken place in the Panjab, Nepal, and Tibet is exceedingly interesting, and very valuable from the similarity it bears to the development which has taken place in Christianity in Roman Catholic countries. It has resulted at last in the complete establishment of Lāmāism, a religion not only in many points different from, but actually antagonistic to, the primitive system of Buddhism; and this not only in its doctrine, but also in its church organization. The hierarchical system of Lāmāism will be briefly considered in the next chapter; its doctrinal system, with which we have now to deal, has been chiefly modified by the gradual additions to its theory of the Buddhas, in which the legends regarding Gautama play little or no part.