 Section 37 of Hinduism and Buddhism An Historical Sketch, Volume 1 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Hinduism and Buddhism An Historical Sketch, Volume 1 by Charles Eliot Life of the Buddha Parts 4 and 5 Political changes, in which however he took no part, occurred in the last years of the Buddha's life. In Magadha Ajata Satu had come to the throne. If, as the Vinaya represents, he at first supported the schism of Devadatta, he subsequently became a patron of the Buddha. He was an ambitious prince and fortified Patalegama, afterwards Pataliputra, against the Vajrayana Confederation, which he destroyed a few years after the Buddha's death. This confederation was an alliance of small oligarchies like the Likavis and Vidaans. It would appear that this form of constitution was on the wane in northern India and that the monarchical states were annexing the decaying commonwealths. In Kausala, Vida Daba conquered Kapilavattu a year or two before the Buddha's death and is said to have perpetrated a great massacre of the Sakya clan. Footnote 371 No account of this event has yet been found in the earliest texts, but it is no doubt historical. The versions found in the Jataka and commentaries trace it back to a quarrel about a marriage, but the story is not very clear or consistent and the real motive was probably that indicated above. End footnote. Possibly in consequence of these events the Buddha avoided Kausala and the former Sakya territory. At any rate, the record of his last days opens at Rajagaha, the capital of Magada. This record is contained in the Mahaparinibana Sutta, the longest of the Suttas, and evidently a compilation. The style is provokingly uneven. It often promises to give a simple and natural narrative, but such passages are interrupted by more recent and less relevant matter. No general estimate of its historical value can be given, but each incident must be apprised separately. Nearly all the events and discourses recorded in it are found elsewhere in the canon in the same words and it contains explanatory matter of a suspiciously apologetic nature. Footnote 372. See Ries-David's Dialogues 2 page 70 and Przlucki's articles in J.A. 1918 and following pages. The Parinirvana and the Funerae de Buddha, where the Pali texts are compared with the Mula Sarvastivadin Vinaya and with other accounts. End footnote. Also the supernatural element is freely introduced, but together with all this it contains plain, pathetic pictures of an old man's fatigue and sufferings which would not have been inserted by a later hand had they not been found ready in tradition. And though events and sermenets are strung together in a way which is not artistic, there is nothing improbable in the idea that the Buddha, when he felt his end approaching, should have admonished his disciples about all that he thought most important. The story opens at Rajagaha about six months before the Buddha's death. The king sends his minister to ask whether he will be successful in attacking the Vajyans. The Buddha replies that as long as they act in concord, behave honorably and respect the faith, so long may they be expected not to decline but prosper. The compiler may perhaps have felt this narrative to be an appropriate parallel to the Buddha's advice to his disciples to live in peace and order. He summoned and addressed the brethren living in Rajagaha and visited various spots in the neighborhood. In these last utterances one phrase occurs with special frequency. Great is the fruit. Great the advantage of meditation accompanied by upright conduct. Great is the advantage of intelligence accompanied by meditation. The mind which has such intelligence is freed from intoxications, from the desires of the senses, from love of life, from delusion and from ignorance. He then set forth accompanied by Ananda and several disciples. Judging from the route adopted, his intention was to go ultimately to Savvati. This was one of the towns where he resided from time to time but we cannot tell what may have been his special motives for visiting it on the present occasion. For if the king of Kosala had recently massacred the Sakyas, his presence there would have been strange. The road was not direct but ran up northwards and then followed the base of the mountains thus enabling travelers to cross rivers near their sources where they were still easy to forward. The stopping places from Rajagaha onwards were Nalanda, Pataliputra, Vesali, Bandagama, Pava, Kusinara, Kapilavattu, Settavya, Savvati. On his last journey the Buddha is represented as following this route but he died at the seventh stopping place Kusinara. When at Pataligama he prophesied that it would become a great Emporium. Footnote 373 This was probably written after Pataliputra had become a great city but we do not know when its rise commenced. End footnote He was honorably entertained by the officers of the king who decided that the gate and ferry by which he left should be called Gotama's gate and Gotama's ferry. The gate received the name but when he came to the Ganges he vanished miraculously and appeared standing on the further bank. He then went on to Vesali passing with indifference and immunity from the dominions of the king of Magada into those of his enemies and halted in the grove of the courtesan Ambapali. Footnote 374 She was a noted character in Vesali. In Mahavaga 8.1 people are represented as saying that it was through her the place was so flourishing and that it would be a good thing if there were someone like her in Rajagaha. End footnote She came to salute him and he accepted her invitation to dine with her on the morrow in spite of the protests of the Likavi princes. The rainy season was now commencing and the Buddha remained near Vesali in the village of Beluva where he fell seriously ill. One day after his recovery he was sitting in the shade with Ananda who said that during the illness his comfort had been the thought that the Buddha would not pass away without leaving final instructions to the order. The reply was a remarkable address which is surely at least in parts the Buddha's own words. What does the order expect of me Ananda? I have preached the truth without any distinction of esoteric or exoteric for in respect of the truth there is no clenched hand in the teaching of the Tathagata. If there is anyone who thinks it is I who will lead the brotherhood or the order is dependent on me it is he who should give instructions. But the Tathagata does not think that he should lead the order or that the order is dependent on him. Why then should he leave instructions? I am an old man now and full of years. My pilgrimage is finished. I have reached my sum of days. I am turning eighty years and just as a worn out cart can only be made to move along with much additional care. So can the body of the Tathagata be kept going only with much additional care. It is only when the Tathagata ceasing to attend to any outward thing becomes plunged in meditation it is only then that the body of the Tathagata is at ease. Therefore Ananda be a lamp and a refuge to yourselves. Seek no other refuge. Let the truth be your lamp and refuge. Seek no refuge elsewhere. And they Ananda who now or when I am dead shall be a lamp and a refuge to themselves seeking no other refuge but taking the truth as their lamp and refuge. These shall be my foremost disciples. These who are anxious to learn. End quote. This discourse is succeeded by a less convincing episode in which the Buddha tells Ananda that he can prolong his life to the end of a world period if he desires it. But though the hint was thrice repeated the heedless disciple did not ask the master to remain in the world. When he had gone Mara the evil one appeared and urged on the Buddha that it was time for him to pass away. He replied that he would die in three months but not before he had completely established the true religion. Thus he deliberately rejected his allotted span of life and an earthquake occurred. He explained the cause of it to Ananda who saw his mistake too late. Quote. Enough Ananda. The time for making such a request is past. End quote. Footnote 375. The whole passage is interesting as displaying even in the Pali Canon the germs of the idea that the Buddha is an eternal spirit only partially manifested in the limits of human life. In the Maha of Parinibbana Sutta Gotama is only voluntarily subject to natural death. End footnote. The narrative becomes more human when it relates how one afternoon he looked at the town and said, This will be the last time that the Tathagata will behold Vesali. Come Ananda, let us go to Bandagama. After three halts he arrived at Pava and stopped in the mango grove of Kunda, a smith, who invited him to dinner and served sweet rice, cakes and a dish which has been variously interpreted as dried boar's flesh or a kind of truffle. The Buddha asked to be served with this dish and bade him give the sweet rice and cakes to the brethren. After eating some of it he ordered the rest to be buried saying that no one in heaven or earth except the Buddha could digest it. A strange remark to Chronicle since it was this meal which killed him. Footnote 376. The phrase occurs again in the Sutta Nipatta. Its meaning is not clear to me. End footnote. But before he died he sent word to Kunda that he had no need to feel remorse and that the two most meritorious offerings in the world are the first meal given to a Buddha after he has obtained enlightenment and the last one given him before his death. On leaving Kunda's house he was attacked by dysentery and violent pains but bore them patiently and started for Kusanara with his disciples. In going thither he crossed the river Kakuta and some verses inserted into the text which sound like a very old ballad relate how he bathed in it and then weary and worn out lay down on his cloak. Footnote 377. The text seems to represent him as crossing first a streamlet and then the river. End footnote. A curious incident occurs here. A young Malayan named Puquissa after some conversation with the Buddha presents him with a robe of cloth of gold but when it is put on it seems to lose its splendor so exceedingly clear and bright is his skin. Gotama explains that there are two occasions when the skin of a Buddha glows like this, the night of his enlightenment and the night before his death. The transfiguration of Christ suggests itself as a parallel and is also associated with an illusion to his coming death. Most people have seen a face so light up under the influence of emotion that this popular metaphor seems to express physical truth and it is perhaps not excessive to suppose that in men of exceptional gifts this illumination may have been so bright as to leave traces in tradition. Then they went on to a grove at Cusinara and he laid down on a couch spread between two Sala trees. Footnote 378. It is not said how much time elapsed between the meal at Kundas and the arrival at Cusinara but since it was his last meal he probably arrived the same afternoon. End footnote. These trees were in full bloom though it was not the season for their flowering. Heavenly strains and odours filled the air and spirits unseen crowded round the bed. But Ananda, we are told, went into the Vihara which was apparently also in the grove and stood leaning against the lintel weeping at the thought that he was to lose so kind a master. The Buddha sent for him and said, Do not weep. Have I not told you before that it is the very nature of things most near and dear to us that we must part from them, leave them, sever ourselves from them. All that is born brought into being and put together carries within itself the necessity of dissolution. How then is it possible that such a being should not be dissolved? No such condition is possible. For a long time, Ananda, you have been very near me by words of love, kind and good, that never varies and is beyond all measure. You have done well, Ananda. Be earnest in effort and you too shall soon be free from the great evils, from sensuality, from individuality, from delusion and from ignorance. The Indians have a strong feeling that persons of distinction should die in a suitable place and now comes a passage in which Ananda begs the Buddha not to die, quote, in this little wattle-and-dob town in the midst of the jungle, end quote, but rather in some great city. Footnote 379. Compare with Lyle's poem, Anaraj Puchif of the old school who, when nearing his end, has to leave his pleasure garden in order that he may die in the ancestral castle. End footnote. The Buddha told him that Kusunara had once been the capital of King Mahasudasana and a scene of great splendor in former ages. This narrative is repeated in an amplified form in the Sutta and Jattaka called Mahasudasana in which the Buddha is said to have been that king in a previous birth. Footnote 380. Diga Nikaya 17 and Jattaka 95. End footnote. Kusunara was at that time one of the capitals of the Mahas, who were an aristocratic republic like the Sakyas and Vajyans. At the Buddha's command, Ananda went to the council hall and summoned the people, quote, give no occasion to reproach yourself hereafter, saying, the Tathagata died in our own village and we neglected to visit him in his last hours, end quote. So the Malas came and Ananda presented them by families to the dying Buddha as he lay between the flowering trees, saying, quote, Lord, a mala of such and such a name with his children, his wives, his retinue and his friends humbly bows down at the feet of the blessed one, end quote. A monk called Supada, who was not a believer, also came and Ananda tried to turn him away but the Buddha, overhearing, said, quote, do not keep out Supada. Whatever he may ask of me, he will ask from a desire for knowledge and not to annoy me and he will quickly understand my replies, end quote. He was the last disciple whom the Buddha converted and he straightway became an arhat. Now comes the last watch of the night, quote, it may be, Ananda, said the Buddha, that some of you may think the word of the master is ended. We have no more a teacher, but you should not think thus. The truths and the rules which I have declared and laid down for you all, let them be the teacher for you after I am gone. When I am gone, address not one another as hitherto saying friend. An elder brother may address a younger brother by his name or family name or as friend, but a younger brother should say to an elder, sir or lord. When I am gone, let the order, if it should so wish, abolish all the lesser and minor precepts, end quote. Thus in his last address the dying Buddha disclaims, as he had disclaimed before in talking to Ananda, all idea of dictating to the order. His memory is not to become a paralyzing tradition. What he had to teach he has taught freely, holding back nothing in a clenched fist. The truths are indeed essential and immutable, but they must become a living part of the believer until he is no longer a follower, but a light unto himself. The rest does not matter. The order can change all the minor rules if expedient, but in everyday life discipline and forms must be observed. Hitherto all have been equal compared with the teacher, but now the young must show more respect for the older and in the same spirit of solicitude for the order he continues. Quote. When I am gone, the highest penalty should be imposed on Channa. What is that, lord? Let him say what he likes, but the brethren should not speak to him or exhort him or admonish him. End quote. Footnote 381. It is said that this discipline was efficacious and that Channa became an arhat. End footnote. The end approaches. Quote. It may be that there is some doubt or misgiving in the mind of some as to the Buddha or the truth or the path or the way. Enquire freely. Do not have to reproach yourselves afterwards with the thought our teacher was face to face with us and we could not bring ourselves to enquire when we were face to face with him. All were silent. A second and third time he put the same question and there was silence still. Quote. It may be that you put no questions out of all for the teacher. Let one friend communicate to another. End quote. There was still silence till Ananda said how wonderful lord and how marvelous. In this whole assembly there is no one who has any doubt or misgiving as to the Buddha, the truth, the path and the way. Out of the fullness of faith has thou spoken Ananda, but the Tathagata knows for certain that it is so. Even the most backward of all these five hundred brethren has become converted and is no longer liable to be born in a state of suffering and is assured of final salvation. Behold I exhort you saying the elements of being are transitory. Footnote 382. It is difficult to find a translation of these words which is both accurate and natural in the mouth of a dying man. The polytext via dhamma sankara, transitory by nature are the sankaras, is brief and simple, but any correct and adequate rendering sounds metaphysical and is dramatically inappropriate. Perhaps the rendering, all compound things must decompose, expresses the Buddha's meaning best, but the verbal antithesis between compound and decomposing is not in the original, and though sankara is etymologically the equivalent of confection or synthesis, it hardly means what we call a compound thing as opposed to a simple thing. End footnote. Strive earnestly. These were the last words of the Tathagata. Then he passed through a series of trances, no less than twenty stages are enumerated, and expired. An earthquake and thunder, as one might have predicted, occurred at the moment of his death, but comparatively little stress is laid on these prodigies. Anurudha seems to have taken the lead among the brethren and Bade Ananda announced the death to the malas. They heard it with cries of grief. Quote, too soon has the blessed one passed away, too soon has the light gone out of the world. No less than six days were passed in preparation for the obsequies. Footnote 383. The Buddha before his death had explained that the corpse of a Buddha should be treated like the corpse of a universal monarch. It should be wrapped in layers of new cloth and laid in an iron vessel of oil. Then it should be burnt and a dagoba should be erected at four crossroads. End footnote. On the seventh they decided to carry the body to the south of the city and there burn it. But when they endeavored to lift it they found it immovable. Anurudha explained that spirits who were watching the ceremony wished it to be carried not outside the city but through it. When this was done the corpse moved easily and the heaven rained flowers. The meaning of this legend is that the malas considered a corpse would have defiled the city and therefore proposed to carry it outside. By letting it pass through the city they showed that it was not the ordinary relics of impure humanity. Again when they tried to light the funeral pile it would not catch fire. Anurudha explained that this delay also was due to the intervention of spirits who wished that the Mahakasapa the same whom the Buddha had converted at Uruvela and then on his way to pay his last respects should arrive before the cremation. When he came attended by 500 monks the pile caught fire of itself and the body was consumed completely leaving only the bones. Streams of rain extinguished the flames and the malas took the bones to their council hall. There they set round them a hedge of spears and a fence of bows and honored them with dance and song and offerings of garlands and perfumes. Whatever may be thought of this story the veneration of the Buddha's relics which is attested by the Piprava Vas is a proof that we have to do with a man rather than a legend. The relics may all be false but the fact that they were venerated some 250 years after his death shows that the people of India thought of him not as an ancient semi-divine figure like Rama or Krishna but as something human and concrete. Seven persons or communities sent requests for a portion of the relics saying that they would erect a stupa over them and hold a feast. They were King Ajata Satu of Magadha, the Likavis of Vesalli, the Sakyas of Kapilavattu, the Bhullis of Alakapa, the Kuttyas of Ramagama, the Malas of Pava and the Brahmin of Vethadipa. Footnote 384 The Malas had two capitals, Kusinara and Pava corresponding to two subdivisions of the tribe. End footnote All except the last were Kshatriyas and based their claim on the ground that they, like the Buddha, belonged to the warrior caste. The Malas at first refused but a Brahmin called Donna bade them not quarrel over the remains of him who taught forbearance. So he divided the relics into eight parts, one for Kusinara and one for each of the other seven claimants. At this juncture the Moriyas of Pipvalivana sent in a claim for a share but had to be content with the embers of the pyre since all the bones had been distributed. Then eight stupas were built for the relics in the towns mentioned and one over the embers and one by Donna the Brahmin over the iron vessel in which the body had been burnt. End chapter 4 Life of the Buddha, Chapter 5 Thus ended the career of a man who was undoubtedly one of the greatest intellectual and moral forces that the world has yet seen. But it is hard to arrive at any certain opinion as to the details of his character and abilities for in the later accounts he is deified. And in the pitakas, though veneration has not gone so far as this, he is ecclesiasticized and the human side is neglected. The narrative moves like some stately ceremonial in which emotion and incident would be out of place until it reaches the strange deathbed spread between the flowering trees. And Ananda introduces with the formality of a court chamberlain the mala householders who have come to pay their last respects and bow down at the feet of the dying teacher. The scenes described are like stained glass windows, the lord preaching in the center, sinners repenting and saints listening, all in harmonious colors and studied postures. But the central figure remains somewhat aloof. When once he had begun his ministry he labored uninterruptedly and with continual success. But the foundation of the kingdom of righteousness seems less like the triumphant issue of a struggle than the passage through the world of some compassionate angel. This is in great part due to the fact that the pitakas are works of edification. True, they set before us the teacher as well as his teaching, but they speak of his doings and historical surroundings only in order to provide a proper frame for the law which he preached. A less devout and more observant historian would have arranged the picture differently and even in the narratives that have come down to us there are touches of human interest which seem authentic. When the Buddha was dying Ananda wept because he was about to lose so kind a master and the Buddha's own language to him is even more affectionate. He cared not only for the organization of the order but for its individual members. He is frequently represented as feeling that some disciple needed a particular form of instruction and giving it. Nor did he fail to provide for the comfort of the sick and weary. For instance a ballad relates how Panthaka driven from his home took refuge at the door of the monastery garden. Footnote 385. Hiragatha 557 and forward pages. Water to refresh tired and dusty feet is commonly offered to anyone who comes from a distance. Then came the Lord and stroked my head and taking me by the arm led me into the garden of the monastery and out of kindness he gave me a towel for my feet. A striking anecdote relates how he once found a monk who suffered from a disagreeable disease lying on the ground in a filthy state. Footnote 386. Mahavaga 826 and footnote. So with Ananda's assistance he washed him and lifting him up with his own hands laid him on his bed. Then he summoned the brethren and told them that if a sick brother had no special attendant the whole order should wait on him. You monks have no mothers or fathers to care for you. If you do not wait one on the other who is there who will wait on you. Whosoever would wait on me he should wait on the sick. This last recalls Christ's words in as much as ye have done it unto the least of these brethren ye have done it unto me. And if his approval of monks being deaf to the claims of family affection seems unfeeling it should also be mentioned that in the book called Songs of the Nuns women relate how they were crazy at the loss of their children but found complete comfort and peace in his teaching. Footnote 387. Example, Therigatha 133 and pages forward it should also be remembered that orientals particularly Chinese and Japanese find Christ's behavior to his mother as related in the Gospels very strange. And footnote. Sometimes we are told that when persons whom he wished to convert proved refractory he quote suffused them with the feeling of his love and quote until they yielded to his influence. Footnote 388. Example, Roja the Malta in Mahavaga 636 and the account of the interview with the five monks in the Nidhana Katha, Rhys Davids, Buddha Birth Stories page 112. And footnote. We can hardly doubt that this somewhat cumbersome phrase preserves a tradition of his personal charm and power. The beauty of his appearance and the pleasant quality of his voice are often mentioned but in somewhat conventional terms which inspire no confidence that they are based on personal reminiscent nor have the most ancient images which we possess any claim to represent his features for the earliest of them are based on Greek models and it was not the custom to represent him by a figure until some centuries after his death. I can imagine that the truest idea of his person is to be obtained not from the abundant effigies which show him as a somewhat sanctimonious ascetic but from statues of him as a young man such as that found at Sarnath, which may possibly preserve not indeed the physiognomy of Gotama but the general physique of a young Nepalese prince with powerful limbs and features and a determined mouth. For there is truth at the bottom of the saying that Gotama was born to be either a Buddha or a universal monarch. He would have made a good general if he had not become a monk. We are perhaps on firmer ground when we find speakers in the pitakas commenting on his calm and bright expression and his unruffled courtesy in discussion. Footnote 389 Of his eloquence it is hard to judge. The suttas may preserve his teaching and some of his words but they are probably rearrangements made for recitation. Still it is impossible to prove that he did not himself adopt this style particularly when age and iteration had made the use of certain formulae familiar to him. But though these repetitions and subdivisions of arrangement are often wearisome there are not wanting traces of another manner which suggests a terse and racy preacher going straight to the point and driving home his meaning with homely instances. Humour often peeps through the Buddha's preaching. It pervades the jataka stories and more than once he is said to have smiled when remembering some previous birth. Some suttas such as the tales of the great king of glory and of King Mahavijita's sacrifice are simply jatakas in another form. Interesting stories full of edification for those who can understand but not to be taken as a narrative of facts. Footnote 390 At other times he simply states the ultimate facts of a case and leaves them in their droll incongruity. Thus when King Ajatasattu was moved and illuminated by his teaching he observed to his disciples that his majesty had all the makings of a saint in him if only he had not killed that excellent man his own father. Somewhat similar is his judgment on two naked ascetics who imitated in all things the ways of a dog and the cow respectively in the hope of thus obtaining salvation. Footnote 391 Majima Nikaya 57 End footnote When pressed to say what their next birth would be he opined that if their penance was successful they would be reborn as dogs and cows if unsuccessful in hell. Irony and modesty are combined in his rejection of extravagant praise. Quote, Such faith have I, Lord, said Sariputa, that methinks there never has been, nor will be, nor is now any other greater or wiser than the blessed one. Of course, Sariputa, is the reply, you have known all the Buddhas of the past. No, Lord. Well then you know those of the future. No, Lord. Then at least you know me and have penetrated my mind thoroughly. Not even that, Lord. Then why, Sariputa, are your words so grand and bold? Footnote 392 Mahaparenibbana sutta 1 61 End footnote There is much that is human in these passages yet we should be making a fancy portrait did we allow ourselves to emphasize them too much and neglect the general tone of the pitakas. These scriptures are the product of a school but that school grew up under the Buddha's personal influence and more than that is rooted in the very influences and tendencies which produced the Buddha himself. The passionless intellectual aloofness, the elemental simplicity with which the facts of life are stated and explained without any concession to sentiment, the rigor of the prescription for salvation, that all sensual desire and attachment must be cut off are too marked and consistent for us to suppose them do merely to monkish inability to understand a more human side of his character. The Buddha began his career as an Indian muni, one supposed to be free from all emotions and intent only on seeking deliverance from every tie connecting him with the world. This was expected of him and had he done no more it would have secured him universal respect. The fact that he did a great deal more, that he devoted his life to active preaching, that he offered to all happiness and escape from sorrow, that he personally aided with a device and encouragement all who came to him caused both his contemporaries and future generations to regard him as a saviour. His character and the substance of his teaching were admirably suited to the needs of the religious world of India in his day. Judged by the needs of other temperaments which are entitled to neither more nor less consideration, they seem too severe, too philosophic, and the later varieties of Buddhism have endeavored to make them congenial to less strenuous natures. Before leaving the personality of the Buddha we must say a word about the more legendary portions of his biography, for though of little importance for history they have furnished the chief subjects of Buddhist art and influenced the minds of his followers as much as or more than the authentic incidents of his career. Footnote 393 The earliest sources for these legends are the Mahavasthu, the Sanskrit Vinayas preserved in Chinese translations, the Lalita Vistara, the introduction to the Jattaka and the Buddha Karita. For Burmese, Sinhalese, Tibetan and Chinese lives of the Buddha, see the works of Vigand Day, Hardy, Rock Hill and Schiffner, Uyghur and Bihl, see also Foucher, L'Istrandien des actes du Buddha and Haken, Seine de la vie du Buddha d'après des penteurs tibétains. Footnote 394 The later legend has not distorted the old narrative. It is possible that all its incidents may be founded on stories known to the compilers of the pitakas, though this is not at present demonstrable, but they are embellished by an unstinted use of the supernatural and of the hyperbole usual in Indian poetry. The youthful Buddha moves through showers of flowers and an atmosphere crowded with attendant deities. He cannot even go to school without an escort of 10,000 children and 100,000 maidens and astonishes the good man who proposes to teach him the alphabet by suggesting 64 systems of writing. The principal scenes in this legend are as follows. The Bodhisattva, that is the Buddha-to-be, resides in the Tussitta heaven and selects his birthplace and parentage. He then enters the womb of his mother Maya in the shape of a white elephant, which event she sees in a dream. Brahmins are summoned and interpret the vision to mean that her son will be a universal monarch or a Buddha. When near her confinement Maya goes to visit her parents, but on the way brings forth her son in the Lumbini Grove. As she stands upright holding the bow of a tree, he issues from her side without pain to her and is received by deities, but on touching the ground takes seven steps and says, I am the foremost in the world. On the same day are born several persons who play a part in his life, his wife, his horse, Ananda, Bimbisara and others. Asita does homage to him as does also his father and it is predicted that he will become a Buddha and renounce the world. His father in his desire to prevent this secludes him in the enjoyment of all luxury. At the plowing festival he falls into a trance under a tree and the shadow stands still to protect him and does not change. Again his father does him homage. He is of herculean strength and surpasses all as an archer. He marries his cousin Yasodara when sixteen years old. Then come the four visions which are among the scenes most frequently depicted in modern sacred art. As he is driving in the palace grounds the gods show him an old man, a sick man, a corpse and a monk of happy countenance. His charioteer explains what they are and he determines to abandon the world. It was at this time that his son was born and on hearing the news he said that a new fetter now bound him to worldly life but still decided to execute his resolve. That night he could take no pleasure in the music of the singing women who were want to play to him and they fell asleep. As he looked at their sleeping forms he felt disgust and ordered Chana, his charioteer, to saddle Kantaka a gigantic white horse eighteen cubits long from head to tail. Meanwhile he went to his wife's room and took a last but silent look as she lay sleeping with her child. Then he started on horseback attended by Chana and a host of heavenly beings who opened the city gates. Here he was assailed by Mara the tempter who offered him universal empire but in vain. After jumping the river Anoma on his steed he cut off his long hair with his sword and flinging it up into the air wished it might stay there if he was really to become a Buddha. It remained suspended admiring gods placed it in a heavenly shrine and presented Gotama with the robes of a monk. Not much is added to the account of his wanderings and austerities as given in the Pitaka's but the attainment of Buddhahood naturally stimulates the devout imagination. At daybreak Gotama sits at the foot of a tree lighting up the landscape with the golden rays which issue from his person. Sujara a noble maiden and her servant Purna offer him rice and milk in a golden vessel and he takes no more food for seven weeks. He throws the vessel into the river wishing that if he is to become a Buddha it may ascend the stream against the current. It does so and then sinks to the abode of the Nagas. Towards evening he walks to the Bodhi tree and meets a grass cutter who offers him grass to make a seat. This he accepts and taking his seat vows that rather than rise before attaining Buddhahood he will let his blood dry up and his body decay. Then comes the great assault of the tempter. Mara attacks him in vain both with an army of terrible demons and with bans of seductive nymphs. During the conflict Mara asked him who is witness to his ever having performed good deeds or bestowed alms. He called on the earth to bear witness. Earthquakes and thunders responded to the appeal and the goddess of the earth herself rose and bore testimony. The route of Mara is supposed to have taken place in the late evening. The full moon came out and in the three watches of the night he attained enlightenment. The footnote 394. It was the full moon of the month Vaisakha. End footnote. The Pali and early Sanskrit texts place the most striking legendary scenes in the first part of the Buddha's life just as scribes give freest reign to their artistic imagination in tracing the first letter and word of a chapter. In the later version the whole text is colored and gilded with a splendor that exceeds the hues of ordinary life but no incidents of capital importance are added after the enlightenment. Footnote 395. The best known of the later biographies of the Buddha such as the Lalita Vistara and the Buddha Karita of Asva Gosha stop short after the enlightenment. End footnote. Historical names still occur and the Buddha is still a wandering teacher with a band of disciples but his miracles continually convulse the universe. He preaches to mankind from the sky and retires for three months to the Tussita heaven in order to instruct his mother who had died before she could hear the truth from her son's lips and often the whole scene passes into a vision where the ordinary limits of space, time and number cease to have any meaning. End of Chapter 5. End of Section 37. Recording by Linda Johnson. Section 38 of Hinduism and Buddhism and Historical Sketch Volume 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Hinduism and Buddhism and Historical Sketch Volume 1 by Charles Elliott. The Buddha compared with other religious teachers. The personality of the Buddha invites comparison with the founders of the other world religions, Christ and Muhammad. We are tempted to ask too if there is any resemblance between him and Confucius, a contemporary Asiatic whose influence has been equally lasting but here there is little common ground. For Confucius's interest was mainly in social and ethical problems, not in religion. He laid stress on those ties of kinship and society, respecting which the Indian monk, like Christ, sometimes spoke harshly, although there is a strong likeness between the moral code of the Buddhist layman and Confucianism. He was full of humility and respect for antiquity, whereas Gotama had a good share of that self-confidence which is necessary for all who propound to the world a new religion. Footnote 396 There are some curious coincidences of detail between the Buddha and Confucius. Both disliked talking about prodigies. Annelects 720 Confucius concealed nothing from his disciples, Ibidem 23, just as the Buddha had no closed fist, but he would not discuss the condition of the dead. Annelects 1111 Just as the Buddha held it unprofitable to discuss the fate of the saint after death, neither had any great opinion of the spirits worshiped in their respective countries. End footnote But with Muhammad comparison or rather contrast is easier. Both were seekers after truth. Both found what they believed to be the truth only when of mature years, Gotama when about 36, Muhammad when 40 or more. Both lived to be elderly men and possessed great authority. But there the analogy ends. Perhaps no single human being has had so great an effect on the world as Muhammad. His achievements are personal and had he never lived it is not clear that the circumstances of the age would have caused someone else to play approximately the same part. He more than Caesar or Alexander was individually the author of a movement which transformed part of three continents. No one else has been able to fuse the two noble instincts of religion and empire in so perfect a manner. Perfect because the two do not conflict or jar as do the teachings of Christ and the pretensions of his church to temporal power. But it is precisely this fusion of religion and politics which disqualifies Islam as a universal religion and prevents it from satisfying the intellectual and spiritual wants of that part of humanity which is most intellectual and most spiritual. Law and religion are inextricably mixed in it and a Muslim more than the most superstitious of Buddhists or Christians is bound by a vast number of ties and observances which have nothing to do with religion. It is in avoiding these trammels that the superior religious instinct of Gotama shows itself. He was aided in this by the temper of his times. Though he was of the warrior caste and naturally brought into association with princes, he was not on that account tempted to play a part in politics. For to the Hindus, then as now, renunciation of the world was indispensable for serious religion and there is no instance of a teacher obtaining a hearing among them without such renunciation as a preliminary. According to Indian popular ideas, a genius might become either an emperor or a Buddha, but not like Muhammad, a mixture of the two. But the danger which beset Gotama and which he consistently and consciously avoided, though Muhammad could not, was to give authoritative decisions on unessential points as to both doctrine and practice. There was clearly a party which wished to make the rule of his order more severe and had he consented, the religious world of his day would have approved. But by so doing, he would have made Buddhism an Indian sect like Jainism, incapable of flourishing in lands with other institutions. If Buddhism has had little influence outside Asia, that is because there are differences of temperament in the world, not because it sanctions anachronisms or prescribes observances of a purely local and temporary value. In all his teaching, Gotama insists on what is essential only and will not lend his name and authority to what is merely accessory. He will not, for instance, direct or even recommend his disciples to be hermits. Quote, whoever wishes may dwell in a wood, and whoever wishes may dwell near a village. End quote. And in his last days he made them be a light unto themselves and gave them authority to change all the lesser precepts. It is true that the order decided to make no use of this permission, but the spirit which dictated it has shaped the destinies of the faith. A kin to this contrast is another, that between the tolerance of Gotama and the persecuting spirit of Islam. Muhammad and his followers never got rid of the idea that any other form of religion is an insult to the Almighty. That infidels should, if possible, be converted by compulsion, or, if that were impossible, allowed to exist only on sufferance and in an inferior position. Such ideas were unknown to Gotama. He labored not for his own or his creator's glory, but simply and solely to benefit mankind. Conversion by force had no meaning for him, for what he desired was not a profession of allegiance, but a change of disposition, and, amid many transformations, his church has not lost this temper. When we come to compare Gotama and Christ we are struck by many resemblances of thought, but also by great differences of circumstances and career. Both were truly spiritual teachers who rose above forms and codes. Both accepted the current ideals of their time and strove to become the one of Buddha, the other Messiah. But at the age when Christ was executed, Gotama was still in quest of truth and still on the wrong track. He lived nearly fifty years longer and had ample opportunity of putting his ideas into practice. So far as our meager traditions allow us to trace the development of the two, the differences are even more fundamental. Peaceful, as was the latter part of Gotama's life, the beginning was a period of struggle and disillusion. He broke away from worldly life to study philosophy. He broke away from philosophy to wear out his body with the severest mortification. That again he found to be vanity and only then did he attain to enlightenment. And though he offers salvation to all without distinction, he repeatedly says that it is difficult. With hard wrestling has he won the truth and it is hard for ordinary men to understand. Troubled, as was the life of Christ, it contains no struggle of this sort. As a youth he grew up in a poor family where the disenchantment of satiety was unknown. His genius first found expression in sermons delivered in the synagogue, the ordinary routine of Jewish ritual. His appearance as a public teacher and his ultimate conviction that he was the Messiah were a natural enlargement of his sphere, not a change of method. The temptation, though it offers analogies to Gotama's mental struggle and particularly to the legends about Mara, was not an internal revolution in which old beliefs were seen to be false and new knowledge arose from their ashes. So far as we know his inner life was continuous and undisturbed and its final expression is emotional rather than intellectual. He gives no explanations and leaves no feeling that they are necessary. He is free in his use of metaphor and cherry of definition. The teaching of the Buddha, on the other hand, is essentially intellectual. The nature and tastes of his audience were a sufficient justification for his style, but it indicates a temper far removed from the unquestioning and childlike faith of Christ. We can hardly conceive him using such a phrase as our father, but we may be sure that if he had done so he would have explained why and how and to what extent such words can be properly used of the deity. The most skeptical critics of the miracles recorded in the Gospels can hardly doubt that Christ possessed some special power of calming and healing nervous maladies and perhaps others. Sick people naturally turned to him. They were brought to him when he arrived in a town. Though the Buddha was occasionally kind to the sick, no such picture is drawn of the company about him and persons afflicted with certain diseases could not enter the order. When the merchant, Anathapindika, is seriously ill, he sends a messenger with instructions to inform the Buddha and Sariputta of his illness and to add in speaking to Sariputta that he begs him to visit him out of compassion. Footnote 397 He does not presume to address the same request to the Buddha. Christ teaches that the world is evil or perhaps we should say spoiled, but wishes to remove the evil and found the kingdom of heaven. The Buddha teaches that birth, sickness and death are necessary conditions of existence and that disease, which, like everything else, has its origin in karma, can be destroyed only when the cause is destroyed. Footnote 398 The miraculous cure of Supiya, Mahavaga 623, is no exception. She was ill not because of the effects of karma, but because according to the legend, she had cut off a piece of her flesh to cure a sick monk who required meat broth. The Buddha healed her. End Footnote Nor do we find ascribed to him that love of children and tenderness towards the weak and airing which are beautiful features in the portrait of Christ. Footnote 399 The most human and kindly portrait of the Buddha is that furnished by the commentary on the Thera and Thirigatha. See Thirigatha 30, 31 and Mrs. Reese-David's transcript of Thirigatha pages 71, 79. End Footnote He had no prejudices. He turned robust villains like Angulimala, the brigand, into saints and dined with prostitutes, but one cannot associate him with simple friendly intercourse. When he accepted invitations, he did not so much join in the life of the family which he visited as convert the entertainment offered to him into an edifying religious service. Yet in propaganda and controversy, he was gracious and humane beyond the measure of all other teachers. He did not call the priests of his time a generation of vipers, though he laughed at their ceremonies and their pretensions to superior birth. Though the Buddha passed through intellectual crises such as the biographies of Christ do not hint at, yet in other matters it is he rather than Christ who offers a picture and example of peace. Christ enjoyed with a little band of friends an intimacy which the Hindu gave to none. But from the very commencement of his mission, he is at enmity with what he calls the world. The world is evil, and a great event is coming of double import, for it will bring disaster on the wicked as well as happiness for the good. Quote, repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, end quote. He is angry with the world because it will not hear him. He declares that it hates him, and the gospel according to Saint John even makes him say, quote, I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me, end quote. Footnote 400. John 17. Nine. But he prayed for his executioners. End footnote. The little towns of Galilee are worse in his eyes than the wicked cities of antiquity because they are not impressed by his miracles and Jerusalem which has slighted all the prophets and finally himself is to receive signal punishment. The shadow of impending death fell over the last period of his ministry and he felt that he was to be offered as a sacrifice. The Jews even seemed to have thought at one time that he was unreasonably alarmed. Footnote 401. John 7. 19-20. End footnote. But the Buddha was not angry with the world. He thought of it as unsatisfactory and transitory rather than wicked, as ignorant rather than rebellious. He troubled little about people who would not listen. The calm and confidence which so many narratives attribute to him rarely failed to meet with the respect which they anticipated. In his life there is no idea of sacrifice, no element of the tragic, no nervous irritability. When Devadatta meditated his assassination he is represented as telling his disciples that they need not be uneasy because it was physically impossible to kill a Buddha. The saying is perhaps not historical but it illustrates Indian sentiment. In his previous existences, when preparing for Buddhahood, he had frequently given his life for others. Not because it was any particular good to them but in order to perfect his character for his own great career and bring about the selflessness which is essential to a Buddha. When once he had attained enlightenment any idea of sacrifice such as the shepherd laying down his life for the sheep had no meaning. It would be simply the destruction of the more valuable for the less valuable. Even the modern developments of Buddhism which represent the Buddha Amida as a saviour do not contain the idea that he gives up his life for his followers. Gotama instituted a religious order and lived long enough to see it grow out of infancy but its organization was gradual and for a year or two it was simply a band of disciples not more bound by rules than the 70 whom Christ sent forth to preach. Would Christ had he lived longer have created something analogous to the Buddhist Sangha a community not conflicting with national and social institutions but independent of them? The question is vain and to Europeans Christ's sketch of the Christian life will appear more satisfactory than the finished portrait of the Bhikkhu. But though his maxims are the perfect expression of courtesy and good feeling with an occasional spice of paradox such as the command to love one's enemies yet the experience of nearly 20 centuries has shown that this morality is not for the citizens of the world. The churches which give themselves his name preach with rare exceptions that soldiering financing and the business of government things about which he cared as little as do the birds and the lilies of the field are the proper concern of Christian men. And one wonders whether he would not had his life been prolonged have seen that many of his precepts such as turning the other cheek and not resisting evil are incompatible with ordinary institutions and have followed the example of the great Indian by founding a society in which they could be kept. The monastic orders of the Roman and Eastern churches show that such a need was felt. There are many resemblances between the gospels and the teaching of the Buddha, but the basis of the two doctrines are different and if the results are sometimes similar this shows that the same destination can be reached by more than one road. It is perhaps the privilege of genius to see the goal by intuition. The road and the vehicle are subsidiary and may be varied to suit the minds of different nations. Christ being a Jew took for his basis a refined form of the old Jewish theism. He purged Jehovah of his jealousy and prejudices and made him a spirit of pure benevolence who behaves to men as a loving father and bids them behave to one another as a loving brethren. Such ideas lie outside the sphere of Gotama's thought and he would probably have asked why on this hypothesis there is any evil in the world. That is a question which the gospels are cherry of discussing but they seem to indicate that the disobedience and sinfulness of mankind are the root of evil. A godly world would be a happy world. But the Buddha would have said that though the world would be very much happier if all its inhabitants were moral and religious, yet the evil's inherent in individual existence would still remain. It would still be impermanent and unsatisfactory. Yet the Buddha and Christ are alike in points which are of considerable human interest though they are not those emphasized by the churches. Neither appears to have had much taste for theology or metaphysics. Christ ignored them. The Buddha said categorically that such speculations are vain. Indeed it is probably a general law in religions that the theological phase does not begin until the second generation when the successors of the founder try to interpret and harmonize his words. He himself sees clearly and says plainly what mankind ought to do. Neither the Buddha nor Christ nor Muhammad cared for much beyond this. And such of their sayings as have reference to the wents, the wither, and the why of the universe are obscure precisely because these questions do not fall within the field of religious genius and receive no illumination from its light. Argumentative as the Buddhist tsuttas are, their aim is strictly practical, even when their language appears scholastic, and the burden of all their ratiosination is the same and very simple. Men are unhappy because of their foolish desires. To become happy they must make themselves a new heart and will, and perhaps the Buddha would have added new eyes. Neither the Buddha nor Christ thought it worthwhile to write anything and both of them ignored ceremonial and sacerdotal codes in a way which must have astounded their contemporaries. The law books and sacrifices to which Brahmins and Pharisees devoted time and study are simply left on one side. The former are replaced by injunctions to cultivate a good habit of mind, such as is exemplified in the Eightfold Path and the Beatitudes, the latter by some observances of extreme simplicity such as the Patimokka and the Lord's Prayer. In both cases subsequent generations felt that the provision made by the founders was inadequate and the Buddhist and Christian churches have multiplied ceremonies which, though not altogether unedifying, would certainly have astonished Gotama and Christ. For Christ the greatest commandments were that a man should love God and his neighbors. This summary is not in the manner of Gotama, and though love, metta, has an important place in his teaching, it is rather an inseparable adjunct of a holy life than the force which creates and animates it. In other words, the Buddha teaches that a saint must love his fellow men rather than that he who loves his fellow men is a saint. But the passages extolling metta are numerous and striking, and European writers have, I think, shown too great a disposition to maintain that metta is something less than Christian love and little more than benevolent equanimity. The love of the New Testament is not eros but agape, a new word first used by Jewish and Christian writers and nearly the exact equivalent of metta. For both words, love is rather too strong a rendering and charity too weak, nor is it just to say that the Buddha, as compared with Christ, preaches inaction. The Christian nations of Europe are more inclined to action than the Buddhist nations of Asia, yet the beatitudes do not indicate that the strenuous life is the road to happiness. Those declared blessed are the poor, the mourners, the meek, the hungry, the pure and the persecuted. Such men have just the virtues of the patient bhikkhu, and, like Christ, the Buddha praised the merciful and the peacemakers. And similarly, Christ's phrase about rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's seems to disassociate his true followers, like the bhikkhus, from political life. Money and taxes are the affair of those who put their heads on coins. God and the things which concern him have quite another sphere.