SHORT ESSAYS ON BUDDHISM BY T. W. RHYS DAVIDS

TAKEN FROM THE ENCYCLOPÆDEDIA OF RELIGION AND ETHICS

EDITED BY JAMES HASTINGS 1908–1926

Contents THE MONK LIFE SECTS ------1 ARHANT ------6 ELDER ------9 PRECEPTS ------11 CELIBACY ------13 DISCIPLINE ------14 TONSURE ------16 HYMNS ------18 HĪNAYĀNA ------20 THE DOCTRINE PATIMOKKHA ------25 ĀGAMA ------30 WHEEL OF THE LAW ------30 WISDOM TREE ------32 AṄGUTTARA NIKĀYA ------36 APADĀNA ------37 ANĀGATA VAṂSA ------38 PLACES IN BUDDHIST HISTORY BUDDHISM IN CEYLON ------40 ANURĀDHAPURA ------47 ABHAYAGIRI ------52 ADAM’S PEAK ------52 KANDY ------55 LUMBINĪ ------57 BHĪLSA ------59 PEOPLE IN BUDDHIST HISTORY MOGGALLĀNA ------61 ĀNANDA ------65 DEVADATTA ------65 BUDDHAGHOṢA ------70 DHAMMAPĀLA ------73 MILINDA ------75 ASPECTS OF BUDDHIST SOCIETY AHIMSĀ ------79 CHARITY ------80 FAMILY ------81 HOSPITALITY ------83 CHASTITY ------85 ADULTERY ------86 LAW ------86 CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS ------89 EXPIATION AND ATONEMENT ------91

The Monk’s Life

SECTS SECTS (Buddhist).—In none of the older books—the four Nikāyas, e.g., or the Sutta Nipāta—is there any mention of sects. Divisions or dissensions in the order are referred to as follows. He who stirs up such dissensions is guilty of a ‘black act’ (kammaṃ kaṇhaṃ).1 When diversities of opinion exist, it is not a suitable time for effort or energy in self-training.2 Four reasons—not complimentary—are given for members of the order approving of such divisions.3 In one passage ‘ten points’ (dasa vatthūni) are given as constituting such a division in the order (sangha-bhedo). These are: the setting forth as truth what is not truth, and vice versa; as a rule of the order what is not such a rule, and vice versa; as the word or the practice or the precept of the Master what he had not said or practiced or enjoined, and vice versa.4 The same ten points are elsewhere stated to result in harm to the laity.5 Here it is said that by means of these ten points members of the order drag others after them, draw them asunder, hold separate sessions of the chapter at which the formal business of the order is conducted, and recite the Pātimokkha (the 227 rules of the order) at such separate sessions. This is a step towards the foundation of a sect. It is not merely a difference of opinion; it is also an innovation in the conduct of business. But there is no question so far of a sect in the European sense—i.e. of a body of believers in one or more doctrines not held by the majority, a body with its own endowments, its own churches or chapels, and its own clergy ordained by itself. In the Vinaya we get a little farther, but it is still no question of a sect. Devadatta (q.v.), to whose schism the 17th khandaka is devoted, did not originate a sect of Buddhists; he founded a separate order of his own, whose members ceased to be followers of the Buddha. At the end of the chapter, or khandaka, devoted to this subject we are told of the Buddha being questioned by Upāli as to what amounts to a division in the Saṅgha (the order). The reply is the repetition of the above-mentioned ten points, but with eight other points added—points in which bhikkhus put offences against a rule of the order under a wrong category, calling a minor offence a serious one, and so on. Thus we get eighteen occasions for dissension in the order, leading up to the holding of separate meetings of the chapter of the order. Unfortunately we have no historical instance of this having actually happened. There is, however, a case put in illustration of the working of one of the later rules. It occurs in the 10th khandaka,6 the whole of which is concerned with this matter of dissension in the order. There may be some historical foundation for this case, but it is more probably, like so many others, purely hypothetical. It is as follows:

1 Aṅguttara, ii. 234, iii. 146, 436, 439. 2 Ib. iii. 66, 105. 3 Ib. ii. 229. 4 Ib. i. 119. 5 Ib. v. 73 f. 6 Vinaya, i. 337–342 (tr. SBE xvii. 285–291); cf. Majjhima, iii. 152 ff.

1 A bhikkhu (no name is given) thought he had broken one of the rules (which of the rules is not specified). His companions in the settlement thought he had not. Then they changed their minds: he thought he had not broken the rule, they thought he had, and, when be refused to adopt their view, they held a formal meeting of the order and called upon him to retire—in fact, expelled him. The bhikkhu then issued an appeal to other members of the order dwelling in the vicinity, and they took his side. All this being told to the Buddha, he is reported to have said to the expelling party that they should not look only at the particular point in dispute; if the supposed offender be a learned and religious man, they should also consider the possibility of his being so far right that, in consequence of their action, a dissension might arise in the order. He also went to the partisans of the supposed offender and told them, in like manner, that they should consider, not only the particular question, but the possibility of their action leading to dissension. Now the party of the supposed offender held their chapter meetings within the boundary; the other party, to avoid meeting them, held their meetings outside the boundary. The story ends7 with the restoration, at his own request, and at a full chapter held within the boundary, of the expelled bhikkhu. It should be remembered that the order was scattered throughout the countryside, which was divided, for the purpose of carrying out its business, into districts, each about equal in size to two or three English country parishes. Meetings were held as a rule once a fortnight, and every member of the order dwelling within the boundary of the district had either to attend or send to the chapter the reason for his non-attendance. The meeting was quite democratic. All were equal. Each member present had one vote. The senior member present presided and put the resolutions to the meeting; but he had no authority and no casting vote. He was simply primus inter pares. If, then, as in the case just put, a meeting of some only of the resident members in a district was held outside the boundary, all the proceedings of such a chapter became invalid. It will be seen, therefore, how very important the fair fixing of such boundaries (sīmāyo) was to the preservation of the freedom and self-government of the order. Another fact should also be remembered. No one of the 227 rules of the order refers to any question of dogma or belief or meta-physics. No member of the order had any power over any other (except by way of personal influence) in respect of the opinions which the other held. There was no vow of obedience. Of all religious orders mentioned in the history of religions the Buddhist was the one in which there was the greatest freedom, the greatest variety, of thought. One consequence of this, we find, was that, as the centuries passed by, an increasing number of new ideas, not found in the earliest period, became more prevalent among the members of the order. The rules of the order concern such matters of conduct as were involved in the equal division of the limited personal property, held socialistically by the order, among its several members. They are mostly sumptuary regulations or points of etiquette.8 Beliefs or opinions are left free. And this spirit of freedom seems, as far as we can judge, to have survived all through the centuries of Buddhism in India and China. About 100 years after the Buddha’s death there was a formidable dissension in the order, which led to the well-known Council of Vesāli. This dissension was raised by a

7 Vinaya, i. 345 f. 8 See art. PĀTIMOKKHA.

2 party of the bhikkhus resident there who put forward their ten points (dasa vatthūni). It is quite possible that they chose the number ten, and made use of the technical term ‘ten points,’ in deference to the tradition of the older, and quite different, ten points explained above. Their points were ten relaxations in the sumptuary rules of the order. The manner in which the contest was carried on by both sides, and was finally settled, is related in full in the last chapter (a supplementary chapter) in the khandakas.9 In this, the oldest, account of the matter there is no mention of the starting of any sect. Each individual on both sides was at the beginning of the controversy, and remained at the end of it, a member of the Buddhist order. The next work to be considered is the Kathā Vatthu, edited for the Pāli Text Society, and translated under the title of Points of Controversy. The book, probably of gradual rd growth, was put into its present shape by Tissa in the middle of the 3 cent. B.C. ; and it discusses about 200 questions on which different opinions were then held by different members of the order. About a score of these are questions as to the personality of a Buddha; another score are on the characteristics of the arahant, the fully converted man, who has reached, in this world, the end of the Ariyan ‘path.’ Three questions are on the nature of the gods, and four on the nature of the Saṅgha. The rest are disputes on points of cosmology, psychology, or ethics. The whole gives a valuable picture of the great diversity of opinion in the order, sometimes on questions which now seem unimportant, but for the most part on matters of the greatest interest for Buddhists who wished to understand, in detail, the scheme of life unfolded in the more ancient books. No one will dispute the evidence of this collection of ‘points of controversy’ as to the abounding life of the new movement and the wide liberty of thought involved in its teaching. But opinions may differ as to the advantages and disadvantages of the complete absence of any authoritative power in the order. We can find in the ‘points of controversy’ the germs of almost all the astoundingly divergent and even contradictory beliefs which grew in power and influence through the succeeding centuries, and which, though always put forward under the name of Buddhism, resulted in the fall of Buddhism in India, and in its transformation in Tibet, and still more in Japan, into rival sects. The only authority recognized by both sides in each of these ‘points of controversy’ is the actual wording of the more ancient documents of the Pāli canon; and in many cases the controversy turns on diverse interpretations of ambiguous terms in that wording. Of course all the supposed disputants in the book are members of the one Buddhist Saṅgha. There is no mention of sects, or even of differing schools of thought. Unfortunately, after the date of the Points of Controversy there is a gap of many centuries before we get any further evidence. The few books still extant which date nearest to the canon are four or five centuries later; and they—e.g, the Divyā-vadāna, the Netti, and the Milinda—do not consider the matter worthy of their attention. Then suddenly, in the 4th and 5th centuries of our era —i.e. about 1000 years after the founding of Buddhism—we find the famous list of eighteen ‘sects’ supposed to have arisen and to have flourished before the canon was closed. These are at first simply lists of names,10 The list is first found in Ceylon; but similar lists of a later date—three of them from

9 Tr. in Vinaya Texts, iii. (SBE xx.) 386–414; see also art. COUNCILS (Buddhist). 10 Dīpavaṃsa, v. 39 ff.; Mahāvaṃsa, ch. v.

3 Tibetan, five from Chinese, sources—have also been traced.11 Each list contains eighteen names. But the names differ; and the total amounts to nearly thirty. All the lists agree that the Theravādino, ‘those who hold the opinions of the Elders,’ was the original body out of which the others gradually arose. The order in which they are said to have thus arisen is set out in tabular form in the introduction to the Points of Controversy.12 A few details of the opinions maintained by some of these schools, or tendencies of thought, are given either along with the lists or in the commentary on the Points of Controversy. These are curt and scrappy, often obscure, and not seldom contradictory. But one general conclusion we may already safely draw. Precisely as in the earliest days of Christianity the most far-reaching disputes were on the details of Christology, so among the Buddhists the most weighty ones were on the personality of a Buddha; and the greatest innovations came, in India, from the pagan region in the extreme north-west. Apart from these questions of doctrine there is a remarkable silence about other differences. There is not a hint of any difference in church government, in dress, in ritual, in public or private religious observances, in finance, in the custody of buildings or property, in the ordination or the powers of the clergy, or in the gradation of authority among them. This silence is suggestive. Now in the oldest regulations of the order a whole khandaka deals with the duties of the brethren towards other brethren who propose, on their travels, to stay at any settlement occupied by the order.13 It is entirely concerned with questions of courteous treatment on both sides—that of the residents and that of the ‘incoming’ or ‘outgoing’ bhikkhus. Every member of the order is to be equally welcomed. No inquiry is to be made as to opinion. The relation is to be one of host and guest. The story told by the Chinese pilgrims to India shows that in the 4th cent. of our era, and again in the 7th cent., these customs were still adhered to.14 At the time when the pilgrims were in India monasteries had taken the place of the older settlements. Brethren belonging to different ‘sects’ (according to the lists of eighteen above referred to) were found dwelling in the same monastery. If we take all this evidence together, it is possible to draw only one conclusion. There were no ‘sects’ in India, in any proper use of that term. There were different tendencies of opinion, named after some teacher (just as we talk of ‘Puseyites’), or after some locality (as we used to talk of ‘the Clapham sect ‘), or after the kind of view dominant (just as we use ‘Broad’ or ‘Low’ Church). All the followers of such views designated by the terms or names occurring in any of the lists were members of the same order and had no separate organization of any kind. The number eighteen is fictitious and may very probably be derived from the eighteen moral causes of division set out above. As the so-called sects were tendencies of opinion, the number of them was constantly changing, and at no time or place which we can fix were more than three or our of them of any great importance. Two or three could,

11 See Geiger’s tr. of the Mahāvaṃsa, p. 277. 12 Pp. xxvii, xxxvi–xxxvii. 13 Eighth khandaka, tr. in Vinaya Texts, iii. 272–298. 14 All the passages relating to this matter have been tabulated and summarized by the present writer in an art, in JRAS 1891.

4 and did, exist at the same time, not only in the same monastery, but in the same mind. The expression of these ideas was at first in Pāli. Very little of this has survived. But later there are Sanskrit books, mostly as yet not edited, containing detailed statements of the most trustworthy kind of the views of the Sarvāstivādins (q.v.), and perhaps of some others. The condition of things is very much the same in all Buddhist countries at the present day, and even in China. In Ceylon,15 e.g., there are said to be three ‘sects’—the Siamese, the Burmese, and the Rāmañña. They all belong to the same order, (Saṅgha). The Siamese—so called because its members were originally ordained by Siamese bhikkhus—admit only high-caste laymen to the order and habitually wear their upper robe over the left shoulder only, differing in both these points from the early Buddhists. The members of the other two confraternities reject both these innovations, and the Rāmañña bhikkhus, who are very few in number, claim to be particularly strict in the observance of all the ancient rules. But the religious and philosophical opinions of all three are practically the same. We have no information as to the financial arrangements. Probably each bhikkhu recognized by any of these three confraternities would be legally entitled to his share in any land or other property held by the order as a whole. They may, and do, take part together in public religious services, such as the preaching of Baṇa (the Word). They hold separate meetings of the chapter for the admission of new bhikkkus. The laity look upon them all with equal respect, considering them as members of the one Saṅgha. There is said to be, in quite recent years, a tendency in the Siyama Samāgama (the Siamese confraternity) to break up into, or give rise to, other small confraternities. In Burma16 there have been continual differences of opinion (e.g., on the question of boundary, sīmā). Certain bhikkhus have also claimed a superior orthodoxy on the ground that they had been trained either in Ceylon or by others who had been admitted there. But nothing is known of the establishment of any sect apart from the order; and the old differences have now been settled. Of Siam and Annam we know very little; the conditions there seem to have resembled those in Burma. In all these countries discussion has tended to recur to the ancient faith. In China17 the deification of the symbols of the old ideas, begun already in India, has been carried on until Chinese Buddhism, to a careless observer, seems to have relapsed altogether into polytheism. But that is true only of the multitude. The more thoughtful members of the order, even in China, have been able always, in different degrees, to see behind the deified symbols. There are practically only two schools of thought—the mystics and the Amidists (the believers in Amitābha). Every member of the order belongs more or less to both schools; and at the present day the whole order, being thus both mystic and theistic, has arrived at more or less of unity, even of opinion. But the history of the differences and innovations all through the centuries shows as yet (the present writer cannot say what further research may not discover) no evidence at all of any ‘sects’ in our sense of the word. The order has been, and still remains, one.18

15 See art. CEYLON BUDDHISM. 16 See art. BURMA AND SIAM (Buddhism in). 17 See art. CHINA (Buddhism in). 18 On this question see the admirable summary of R. F. Johnston, Buddhist China, London, 1918, ch. v.

5 In Japan19 the case is different. There is a Japanese work, apparently of the 19th cent. of our era, giving an account of twelve separate sects—separate either in dress, in beliefs, in church government, or in finance. We have this little work in two European translations, one into English by Bunyiu Nanjio,20 and one into French by R. Fujishima.21 Its author or authors are lamentably deficient in even the most elementary knowledge of historical criticism; and they do not make clear whether, or how far, all these sects are really existing now. But it gives the names and dates of the teachers who introduced each of the sects from China and the names of the books (mostly Chinese translations of late works in Buddhist Sanskrit) on which they respectively rely. The oldest of these works is the Abhidharma-koṣa-vyākhyā, of about the 12th cent, of Indian Buddhism, and the latest is the Sukhāvati-vyūha, of unknown date. It is curious to note that these authorities breathe the same spirit. There are differences on minor points but not such differences as are adequate in themselves to explain to a European the breaking up into different sects. Lafcadio Hearn unfortunately refuses to say anything about it.22 Possibly the formation of a new sect was the expression of personal devotion to a new teacher. Or possibly the real cause of division was not so much religious or philosophic differences as difference in systems of church government. But the fact remains that in Japan there are sects. The Saṅgha has been broken up. See also artt. HINAYĀNA, TIBET, SARVĀSTIVĀDINS. LITERATURE.—Aṅguttara, 6 vols., ed. R. Morris and E. Hardy, PTS, Oxford, 1885– 1910; Vinaya Piṭakaṃ, 5 vols., ed. H. Oldenberg, London, 1879–83; Majjhima-Nikāya, ed. V. Trenckner and R. Chalmers, PTS, 8 vols., Oxford, 1888–99; Vinaya Texts, tr. Rhys Davids and H. Oldenberg, do. 1881–85. (SBE xiii., xvii., xx.); Kathā Vatthu, PTS, do. 1894–97; Points of Controversy (tr. of last), PTS, London, 1915; Dīpavaṃsa, ed. H. Oldenberg, do. 1879; Mahāvaṃsa, ed. and tr. W. Geiger, PTS, do. 1908–12.

ARHANT ARHAT (lit. ‘fit,’ ‘worthy’).—In its Pāli form, arahat, it is met with in the earliest Buddhist texts, and is used there in two senses, according as it is applied to the Buddhist arahats, or to those belonging to other communities. In the latter sense, which is exceedingly rare (Vinaya, i. 30–32; Saṃyutta, ii. 220), it means a man who has attained to the ideal of that particular community, to what was regarded in it as the fit state for a religious man. This sense is not found in pre-Buddhistic literature; but the usage by the early Buddhists make it almost certain that the term was employed, before Buddhism arose, among the religious communities then being formed in N.E. India. In the more usual, the Buddhist sense, the technical term arahat is applied to those who have reached the end of the Eightfold Path, and are enjoying the fruits of it, the maggaphalaṭṭhā. They had perfected themselves in each of the eight stages of the Path—right views, aspirations,

19 See art. JAPAN, II. 2. 20 Short Hist. of the Twelve Japanese Buddhist Sects, Tokyo, 1887. 21 Le Bouddhisme japonais, Paris, 1889. 22 Japan: an Attempt at Interpretation, New York, 1904, p. 280.

6 speech, conduct, mode of livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and rapture (Saṃyutta, iv. 51; Puggala, 73). They had conquered the three so-called ‘intoxications’ (āsavas) of sensuality, re-births, and ignorance (Dīgha, i. 84). In a list of punning derivations in Majjhima, i. 280, the arahat is said to be one from whom evil dispositions are far (ārakā). The first five disciples attained arahat-ship on perceiving that there was no sign of a soul in any one of the five groups of bodily and mental qualities constituting a sentient being (Vinaya, i. 14). Rāhula, the Buddha’s son, claims to be an arahat because he has overcome the ‘intoxications,’ and will incur no re-birth (Thera Gāthā, 296; cf. 336). Every arahat has the sambodhi, the higher insight, divided into seven parts—self- possession, investigation, energy, calm, joy, concentration, and magnanimity.23 There is extant in the Canon a collection of hymns, 264 of which are by men, and 73 by women, who had become arahats in the time of the Buddha. Fifteen of these claim also to have gained the three vijjas, or ‘sorts of knowledge’: the knowledge of their own and other people’s previous births, and of other people’s thoughts. Laymen could become arahats. A list of twenty who had done so in the time of the Buddha is given in Aṅguttara, iii. 451. Every Buddha was an arahat. The word occurs in the standing description applied to each of the seven Buddhas known in the earliest documents (Dīgha, n. 2) The Jātaka commentator says that the Buddha made arahat-ship the climax of his discourse (Jātaka, i. 114, 275, 393, 401). That is so far the case that either arahat-ship, under one or other of its numerous epithets, or the details of the mental and moral qualities and experiences associated with it, forms the climax of the great majority of the Dialogues. Thus the first Dialogue in the Dīgha deals with the first stage in the Path. The second is started with the question, by a layman, as to what is the use of the religious life. After a lengthy enumeration of various advantages, each nearer than the previous one to arahat-ship, the discussion of the question ends with arahat-ship. The third is on social rank, and ends with the conclusion that arahat-ship is the best. In the fourth the climax is that the arahat is the true Brāhman. The fifth discusses the question of sacrifice, with the result that arahat-ship is the best sacrifice. The sixth is on the aim of the members of the Buddhist Order, and ends with arahat-ship; and so on through the remaining seven Dialogues in that volume. Ten out of thirteen chapters, if we may so call them, lead up to this subject, the other three being concerned with it only incidentally. The proportion in the rest of the Dīgha is less, in the Majjhima it is probably about the same. The last discourse of the Buddha to his disciples is summarized in Dīgha, ii. 120, as follows:— ‘Brethren, ye to whom the truths I have perceived have been made known by me, when you have made yourselves masters of them, practise them, think them over, spread them abroad in order that pure religion may last long for the good and happiness of the great multitudes. . . . Which are these truths? They are these: the four modes of mindfulness, the fourfold struggle against evil, the four footsteps to majesty, the five moral powers, the five organs of spiritual sense, the seven kinds of insight, the noble eightfold path. These are they.’ In Vinaya, ii, 240, these seven groups are called the jewels of the Dhamma-vinaya, the doctrine and discipline, in whose ocean the arahats dwell. The total of the numbers in

23 The question of sambodhi has been discussed at length in the present writer’s Dialogues of the Buddha, Oxford, 1899, pp. 190–102.

7 the seven groups amounts to thirty-seven. These are identified in the commentaries with the Sambodha-pakkiyā dhammā, the qualities which are the ‘sides,’ that is, constituent parts, of the insight of arahat-ship. These are mentioned already in the canonical books (Aṅguttara, iii. 70, 71, iv. 351; Saṃyutta, v. 227, 239). But it would seem from the discussions on the use of this term by E. Hardy in his Introduction to the Netti (p. xxx ff.), and by Mrs. Rhys Davids in her Introduction to the Vibhaṅga (p. xiv ff), that the commentators’ interpretation of its meaning is later, and that it originally referred simply to the Sambodhi, the seven divisions of which, already given above, form only the seventh division of the thirty-seven qualities. The term is so used in the Vibhaṅga, p. 249. It would follow from this that in the later Pāli writers the conception of arahat was extended to include all the thirty- seven of these characteristics. So also the Milinda distinctly adds to the conception of arahat-ship the possession of the four Paṭisambhidās.24 As the meaning of the term was extended, so the reverence for the arahat increased. In the old texts we are informed of a custom by which, when a bhikkhu thought he had attained, he could ‘announce his knowledge,’ as the phrase ran. The 112th Dialogue in the Majjhima gives the six questions which should then be put to the new aspirant. If he answered these correctly, his claim should be admitted. By the time of the commentators this was obsolete. They speak of no arahats in their own day; and we hear of none mentioned, in any source, as having lived later than the 3rd cent of our era. The associations with the word became so high that only the heroes of old were esteemed capable of having attained to it. The Sanskrit form arhat has had a precisely contrary history. First used some centuries after the rise of Buddhism by those Buddhists who then began to write in Sanskrit, its use was confined to those who tended more and more to put the conception of bodhisattva in place of that of arahat, as the ideal to be aimed at. In the literature of this period arahat-ship has ceased to be the climax; it is not even the subject of the discourses put into the mouth of the Buddha. Neither in the Lalita Vistara nor in the Mahāvastu can the present writer trace the word at all, except when used as an epithet of the Buddha, or of the early disciples. In the Divyāvadāna (a collection of stories of different dates, put together probably some time after the Christian era), whenever the legend refers to personages who lived in the Buddha’s time 404, 464) the term arhat is used very much in the old sense. So also in the story of Vitāśoka, the brother of Aśoka, we find at pp. 423f. and 428f. the term used in a manner that shows it was familiar to those who recorded this particular legend, in the sense of one who had reached emancipation in this life. It is used incidentally, in the midst of the narrative; and throughout the volume attention is directed to the edifying legend rather than to the discussion of this or any other point in Buddhist ethics. The word had survived; the interest in the doctrine had waned. In the Saddharma-puṇḍarīka (‘Lotus of the True Law’), arhat is used a score of times of a Buddha, and is, in fact, a standing epithet of each of the numerous Buddhas invented in that work, It is also used as an epithet of the early disciples, but with distinct

24 ed. Trenckner, London, 1880, p. 104 (tr. by Rhys Davids, in SBE, vol. xxxv. p. 157].

8 depreciation. Thus at p. 43 of Kern’s translation25 arhats are called conceited if they do not accept the new doctrine. At p. 189 the stage of arhat is declared to be a lower stage. At p. 330 ff. the merit of one who hears a single word of the new doctrine is said to be greater than that of one who leads a vast number of men to become arhats. There is a similar argument beginning on p. 387. We find, then, in these works that arhat-ship is first passed over, or put on one side, and finally is openly attacked.

ELDER ELDER (Buddhist).—Certain members of the Buddhist Order took rank as elders, and, as such, had considerable weight in the management of its business, and in the preservation of the doctrine. It was not, by any means, all the seniors in the Order who were technically so called, though the word ‘elder’ (therā) is occasionally used in its ordinary sense of such members of the Order as were of longest standing in it (Aṅguttara, i. 78, 247). Four qualities are mentioned as making a man an elder, in the technical sense. These are: (1) virtue; (2) memory and intelligence; (3) the practice of ecstasy; (4) the possession of that emancipation of heart and mind which results from the rooting out of the mental intoxication arising from cravings, love of future life, wrong views, and ignorance (Aṅg. ii. 22; no. 4 in this list, it should be noticed, is the stock description of an arahat).26 The number of those who were thus entitled to be called elders is not given as very large.27 There is a frequently repeated short list of the most distinguished amongst them, ‘the elders who are disciples’ (therā sāvakā). The full number is twelve, and their names usually follow one another in the same order. They are (1) Sāriputta, (2) Moggallana, (3) Kassapa, (4) Kachchāna, (5) Koṭṭhita, (6) Kappina, (7)Chunda, (8) Anuruddha, (9) Revata, (10) Upāli, (11) Ānanda, (12) Rāhula. But the lists are not consistent. Sometimes one, sometimes another name, especially of those at the bottom of the list, is omitted; and there are slight variations in the order. It is quite clear that neither the number nor the names were fixed at the time of the earliest tradition (Vinaya, i. 354–55, ii. 15, iv. 66; Aṅg. iii. 299; cf. Majjhima, i. 212, 462). In one passage (Aṅg. i. 23–25) we have a much longer and very interesting list of those members of the Order who were disciples (bhikkhū sāvakā), specifying after each name the good quality or mental expertness in which the Buddha had declared him pre- eminent. Forty-seven men and thirteen women are mentioned, and Buddhaghoṣa (q.v.), in his commentary on the passage, calls them all ‘elders.’ All the twelve disciples except no. 7 recur in this list, and are said to be pre-eminent respectively in the following ways—

25 SBE, vol. xxi., Oxford, 1881. The text has not yet been translated. 26 So at Dhammapada, verse 261, an elder is defined as a man in whom there is truth and religion, kindness, self-command, and training. 27 There is an anthology of verses ascribed to elders, both men and women, included in the canon under the title, Therā-therī-gāthā. It contains poems of 263 male and 74 female poets. Therās are also often mentioned in the various episodes in the other books, but most of them occur among the above 337.

9 that is, according to the order of the names given above (1) in great wisdom; (2) in the powers of iddhi (q.v.) (3) in discussions as to extra (optional) duties (4) in power of expanding that which has been stated concisely; (5) in the fourfold knowledge of the texts—the knowledge of their philological meaning, of the doctrine they contain, of the derivation of words and ideas, and, finally, in the power of extemporary exposition of them; (6) in ability in exhorting the brethren; (7) not mentioned (8) in inward vision; (9) pre-eminent among those who dwell in the forest; (10) the best of those who knew the canon law; (11) the most distinguished among those who learned the texts, who were self-possessed, whose conduct was right, who had moral courage, and who were of service to others; (12) the best: among those of the brethren who were willing to learn. There is a touch of historical probability in the fact that no better distinction could be found for no. 12, who was the Buddha’s only son, than that he was willing to learn. And, when we notice that only one or two of the whole sixty in this list were among the first disciples to be admitted to the Order, so that there were many others senior to them, we must conclude that the title ‘elder’ was more dependent on other qualities—such qualities as are given in the list, and in the passage quoted above—than on the mere fact of seniority in the community. Even in the Vinaya (the Rules of the Order), in which, as a general rule, so much weight is laid on precedence by seniority, we find the word ‘elder’ (therā) used in this technical sense (Vinaya Texts, i. 228, ii. 17, 61, 237 [SBE xiii., xvii.]). It is sufficiently clear how this happened. In the ordinary meetings of the local chapters administering the affairs of the Order, the senior bhikkhu present (reckoning not by age, but by the date of ordination) presided, and the members present were seated in order of such seniority. But, when it came to talking over questions of ethics and philosophy, or discussing details in the system of self training based on psychology and ethics, something more than seniority was required.28 A certain number of the brethren became acknowledged as leaders and masters in these subjects. Their brethren called them ‘elders’ as a courtesy title. There was no formal appointment by the Order itself, or by any external authority; nor is there any evidence that a bhikkhu became a therā merely by age, or by seniority in the Order. So far had this secondary and special meaning of ‘elder’ driven out the etymological meaning that it is the only one dealt with in Dhammapāla’s exposition of the word at the beginning of his commentary on the Therāgāthā; and the unknown commentator on the Dhammapada, in his explanation of the word at verse 261 (see above, note 1), actually derives therā, by a fanciful and exegetical, not philological, argument, from dhīra in the sense of ‘having moral courage.’ The canonical Buddhism contained in the Pāli texts was called, in the tradition, the Therā-vāda, that is, ‘the opinion of the therās,’ where the word is again used in the secondary sense, and refers especially to the therās who held the First Council (see Childers, Pali Dict., 1875, s.v. ‘Vāda’). In one passage we find the phrase Saṅgha-therā, that is, ‘the elder of the Order.’ The present writer has translated this (Vinaya Texts, iii. 404) by ‘the eldest Therā (then alive) in the world.’ This is probably right, as the number of years of his standing in the Order is

28 The same difficulty was felt when the bhikkhu presiding at a chapter had to recite the Pātimokkha. If he could not do so, a junior bhikkhu, who could, took his place (Vinaya Texts, i. 267).

10 immediately added. But it may also mean ‘the most distinguished and venerable of the then living Therās.’ The Buddhist elders had no more authority in the Order than such as followed from the natural deference paid them for their character and accomplishments; and they had no other authority over laymen. Such slight discipline as was customary was carried out, not by the therās, but by the local chapters (see DISCIPLINE [Buddhist]). The therās, as such, had no special duties or privileges in connection with the temporalities of the Order. In mediæval and modern times, the kings of Ceylon, Burma, and Siam have from time to time recognized some distinguished bhikkhu as Saṅgha-therā; and quite recently the English Government in Burma has followed their precedent, though it left the choice of the bhikkhu to be so distinguished to the local Order in chapter assembled. The title therā is still used, in these three countries, of any bhikkhu of distinction. There is still, as in olden times, no formal grant of the title. In other Buddhist countries it has fallen out of use, and even in these three it is used mainly, though not exclusively, when writing or speaking in Pāli. The modern native languages have other terms, such as nāyaka, ‘leader,’ which tend to take its place. LITERATURE.—The references to the texts are given in the article. The question has not been hitherto discussed by European scholars.

PRECEPTS PRECEPTS (Buddhist).—The early Buddhists had very naturally quite a number of injunctions, precepts, short sentences on ethics or conduct, popular texts, or short verses current in the community. European writers call these ‘precepts.’ The Pāli word thus rendered is usually sikkhā-pada. Sikkhā is ‘training’; pada is ambiguous, meaning either ‘foot-step’ or ‘quarter verse,’ and both meanings were called up by the word. Hence sikkhā-pada is either ‘first steps in self-training’ or ‘textlets of training.’ The basic idea is an influence from within, not an injunction or command from without. An anecdote will show how such rules were looked upon by the new community. There came to the Buddha a bhikkhu of the sons of the Vajjians, and he said: ‘Lord it is more than a hundred and fifty precepts that are intoned to us every fortnight. I cannot, Lord, train myself in all these!’ ‘Could you train yourself, brother, in three—the higher morality, the higher intelligence, the higher wisdom?’ was the reply. He said that he could. And he did. And thereby he put away lust, ill-will, and stupidity (i.e. reached nirvāṇa), and all the lesser matters were gained at once.29 So also it is related of the Buddha that on his death-bed he told the order that they could revoke, if they chose to do so, all the minor and subsidiary precepts.30

29 Aṅguttara, i. 230; cf. Saṃyutta, iv. 251. 30 Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, ii. 171.

11 In both of these cases the ‘precepts’ are for full members of the order. Another group consists of ten precepts for novices. It is often referred to in European books, but is found as a group only in the latest portions of the Nikāyas31 and in the Vinaya (i. 83). In this group the novice takes upon himself in succession ten precepts. These are: (l) not to destroy any living thing, (2) not to steal, (3) to be celibate, (4) not to lie, (5) to abstain from strong drink, (6) not to eat save at the right time, (7) not to frequent variety shows with dances, songs, and music,1 (8) not to wear garlands or to use perfumes, (9) not to use luxurious beds, (10) not to receive gold or silver. Each of the them occurs in different groups and in different order in earlier part, of the Canon—eight of them, e.g., in a different order, in the Sutta Nipata, one the earliest documents.2 But the above are the number and order that have survived in the use of all those Buddhist communities which adhere to the older tradition. It should be added that no one of them is exclusively Buddhist. What is Buddhist is the selecting—the omission, e.g., of any precept as to obedience, or as to belief in any particular doctrine. But we need not here make any comparison between this list of ‘first steps for the Buddhist novice’ and similar lists for the novice in European or non-Buddhist Indian orders. Of the many moral precepts for the use of ordinary Buddhists, not members of the order, it will be sufficient to refer to the well-known Dhammapada, an anthology of such precepts in early books and other sources now lost. They are there arranged in groups of about 20 verses each on 26 selected subjects. Where the verses deal with ideas that are common ground to ethical teachers in Europe and India, the versions are easily intelligible end often appeal strongly to the Western manse of religious beauty. Where any verse is based on the technical terms of the Buddhist system of self-culture and self- control, none of the numerous translations is able to convey the real sense of the Pāli. The best translation is by Sīlāchāra. There is a pretty custom that was current from very early times among the Buddhists in India, and is still current in Ceylon, Burma, and Siam. A layman (or laywoman), moved by some religious influence or emotion, will formally ‘take upon himself,’ for some definite period, the observance of the first five of the above ten precepts for novices. This is done by kneeling with clasped hands before a member of the order, and solemnly repeating after him, usually in Pāli, the words of each of the five precepts. This is called in Ceylon ‘taking pan-sil,’ i.e. taking the five moral precepts. It is not known when or where the custom originated. LITERATURE—Aṅguttera Nikāya, ed. R. Morris, K. Hardy, and C. A. F. Rhys Davids, , 1885–1910; T. W. Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, Oxford, 1899–1910, Buddism23 London, 1910; Khuddaka Pāṭha, ed. H. Smith, PTS, 1915; Vinaya Piṭaka, ed. H. Oldenberg, London, 1879–83; Dhammapada, ed. Sūriyagoḍa, PTS, 1916, tr. Sīlachāra, London, Buddhist Society, 1915.

31 E.g., Khuddaka Pāṭha, 1.

12 CELIBACY CELIBACY (Buddhist).—The Buddhist Order of mendicants was governed by the 227 rules of the Pātimokkha. Of these, the first four were of special gravity. A breach of any one of the four involved expulsion from the Order, and they were therefore calied Pārājikā, rules as to acts involving defeat. The first rule is as follows: ‘Whatsoever Bhikkhu (who has taken upon himself the system of self-training and rule of life, and has not thereafter withdrawn from the training or declared his inability to keep the rule) shall have carnal knowledge of any living thing, down even to an animal, he has fallen into defeat, he is no longer in communion. ‘Withdrawn from the training’ was the technical expression for throwing off the robes, retiring from the Order, and returning to the world—a step which any member of the Order was at liberty at any time to take. There are other rules subsidiary to this, forbidding all actions of an unchaste kind, especially any act or word which might either lead to a breach of the principal rule or give rise to an impression, outside the community, that it was not being strictly observed. For instance, a bhikkhu is not to sleep in any place where a woman is present (Pāc. 5); or to preach the doctrine, in more than five or six words, to a woman, unless a grown man be present (ib. 7); or to exhort the sisters, unless specially deputed to do so (ib. 21); or to journey along the same route with a woman (ib. 67); on his round for alms he is to be properly clad, and to walk with downcast eye (Sekh. 2–7); he is not to accept a robe from a sister not related to him, or from any woman not related to him, except under specified conditions (Niss. 4–6); he is not to sit in a secluded place with a woman (Aniyatā, 1–2), much less to touch or speak to a woman with impure intent (Saṃgh. 2–5). In a book called Sutta Vibhanga, i.e. ‘Exposition of the Rules,’ each one of these 227 rules of the Order is explained; and every possible case of infringement, or doubtful infringement, is considered from the point of view of Canon Law, and a decision is given. It is difficult to draw any conclusion from these cases as to how far the rules of the Order were observed at the time when this book was composed. Almost all the cases are clearly hypothetical, and were drawn up with a view to having a recorded decision on every possible occurrence. They are interesting mainly as evidence of legal acumen, and are of value for the history of law. The other literature does not afford any assistance. Outside of the Canon Law we do not hear of any breach of the rule as to celibacy, though we meet with several cases of bhikkhus availing themselves of their right, when they found the rules too hard for them, to return to the world. The degree in which the rules of Buddhist celibacy are observed, where it is now professed, will be dealt with in the articles on the various countries where Buddhism prevails. LITERATURE—The rules above referred to are translated in Vinaya Texts, by Rhys Davids and Oldenberg, vol. i. (SBA xiii., Oxford, 1881). The Pāli text of the Sutta Vibhanga is in Oldenberg, Vinaya, vols iii. and iv. (London, 1881–82)

13 DISCIPLINE DISCIPLINE (Buddhist).—This subject may best be discussed under four different heads: (1) discipline of the laity by the clergy; (2) discipline of the novices by members of the Order; (3) discipline as carried out by the Order, in Chapter assembled, against individual members of it; and: (4) self-discipline. 1. Discipline of the laity.—The Buddhist doctrine did not recognize either a deity who can punish or a soul to be punished, and denied to the members of the Order (the bhikkhus) any priestly powers by which penalties in the next life could be mitigated or increased. Any disciplinary proceedings against the laity, therefore, were necessarily of a simple character. There are words in Pāli for ‘instruction,’ ‘discussion,’ ‘training,’ and ‘self- restraint’; but there is no word covering the same ground as ‘discipline.’ The ideas of confessional or father-confessor, of absolution, inquisition, and church-membership are wanting. The word ‘Buddhist’ was not invented till many centuries after the rise of what we call Buddhism. By approving wholly or in part the doctrines of the new movement, a layman did not join any new organization or sever himself from any other. When Sīha, the Licchavi general, an adherent of the Jains, became converted by the Buddha, he was expressly enjoined by the Buddha himself to continue his support of the Jain community (Vinaya Texts, ii. 115). The only action of a disciplinary kind adopted by the early Buddhists towards laymen is described in Vinaya Texts, iii. 118 ff. It is called ‘the turning down of the bowl’ (pattassa nikkujjana). In case a layman, in any one of five ways,32 endeavors to do harm to the Order, or speaks in disparagement of the Buddha, the Doctrine, or the Order, then it is permitted to the bhikkhus ‘to turn down the bowl’ in respect of that layman—that is, to refuse to accept a gift of food from him. If in any of the same five ways a bhikkhu should endeavor to do harm to a layman, a Chapter should compel him to beg pardon of that layman (ib. ii. 355 f.). The layman could have the ban removed by a Chapter by confessing his error and asking for forgiveness (ib. iii. 124). No mention of this ceremony of turning down the bowl has been found except in the earliest period, and it is now quite obsolete. Of any formal discipline of laymen in knowledge of the faith we hear nothing; and there was no custom corresponding to the Arcani Disciplina (q.v.) of the early Catholics. The bhikkhus are described as willing to talk over with laymen in an informal way any points of doctrine they wished to discuss. A large number of cases of this informal teaching are given in the books. 2. Discipline of novices.—One of the main objects of the founders of the various Orders that existed in India in the Buddha’s tame was to provide, by the establishment of the Order, for the preservation and propagation of the founder’s teaching. There were then no books and no publishers. The novices and the younger members of the Order learnt the statements of the doctrine (the Suttas) by heart, and the older members expounded and discussed them, and cross-questioned the novices on their knowledge. It was necessary for such an Order to have rules. These the novices learnt, and the elders discussed. Among the early Buddhist literature, thus handed down to us, there are manuals used for the discipline of the novices in the Doctrine, in the Poetry, in the psychological Ethics, and in the Canon Law. The majority of the Abhidhamma books are of this nature. The Parivāra (‘Supplement’) to the Vinaya, which occupies the fifth

32 The details of these five ways are given below in the section on ‘Discipline of novices.’

14 volume of Oldenberg’s edition of the text, consists entirely of a number of questions on the Canon Law, and was evidently used in the teaching of novices. The Khudda- and Mūla-sikkhā (‘Short and Advanced Manuals’) are somewhat later examples of the same thing. These studies and the personal attendance on his teacher occupied most of the time of the novice. If a novice tried to prevent the elder bhikkhus from receiving alms, if he devised mischief against them, if he prevented their finding a lodging-place, if he abused them, or if he caused division among them, then his teacher might interdict him from entering certain parts of the common residence (explained as meaning the bedroom or the sitting-room he has frequented [Vinaya, i. 84]). In ten cases of grievous misconduct, a novice may be expelled by his teacher (ib. i. 85). No other disciplinary proceedings are mentioned. 3. Discipline in the Order—The Buddhist Order was a democracy. There was no vow of obedience and no hierarchy. The administration of the business of the Order was carried out locally by a Chapter on which each member of the Order (each bhikkhu) resident in the locality had a seat. The senior member presided as primus inter pares, and decisions were made by vote of the majority of those present. Should any member of the Order have committed, in the opinion of any other member, any breach of one of the regulations, the latter could bring forward, at the next meeting of the Chapter, a resolution on the subject. If the resolution was carried, the offending member remained for a fixed period under suspension. The suspension could be removed by a similar resolution when the offender had acknowledged his offence. In four cases of grave moral delinquency—murder, theft, impurity, and a false claim to extraordinary spiritual pre- eminence—the penalty was expulsion from the Order. The lawbooks give numerous cases which throw light on the question whether some particular act does or does not amount to a breach of any one of the 227 main rules of the Order, or of any one of the explanatory by-laws subsidiary to those rules. But they afford no evidence as to how frequently recourse was actually had, in the early years of the movement, to such disciplinary proceedings by a Chapter. Meetings of the Chapter are still held in Siam, Burma, and Ceylon for business purposes, for the recitation of the Rules, for admission of new members, etc. Whether disciplinary proceedings are still used, and, if so, how frequently, is not known. In other countries the ancient rules have fallen altogether out of use, and we have no information as to any disciplinary proceedings that may have been substituted for the formal acts of the Chapter (see, further, art. CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS [Buddhist]). 4. Self-discipline.—There were three codes of ethics in early Buddhism—one for the lay adherent, another for a member of the Order, and a third for those, whether laymen or mendicants, who had entered upon the Path to arahat-ship. People joined the Order for a variety of reasons—to earn a livelihood, for a life of literary peace, to escape the troubles of the world, from dislike of authority, or even (as Nāgasena says to King Milinda) out of fear of kings.33 Some were converted men before they joined the Order; the majority were not. They were expected, in addition to their literary studies, to devote themselves to an elaborate system of self-discipline in ethics and psychology, leading up to what were regarded as the highest truths—those constituting the samādhi, the insight of the

33 Milinda, i. 50.

15 higher stages of the Path.34 The existence of this system is the most characteristic feature of Buddhist discipline (see art. HĪNAYĀNA). LITERATURE—The Vinaya Piṭakam, ed. H. Oldenberg (6 vols., London, 1879–1883); H. Oldenberg and Rhys Davids, Vinaya Texts (Oxford, 1881–1885, being tr. of vols. i. and ii. of the last. named work); Dīgha Nikāya, ed. Rhys Davids and J. E. Carpenter (PTS, 1890–1910); Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha (Oxford, 1899–1910), also Questions of King Milinda (Oxford, 1890–1894); Khudda-Sikkhā and Mūla-Sikkhā, ed. E. Müller (JPTS, 1883).

TONSURE TONSURE (Buddhist).—There is no mention of tonsure, and no regulation as to the method to be adopted in wearing or not wearing the hair, in the 227 original rules of the Buddhist order of mendicants. But in the Khandhakas, or collection of subsidiary and supplemental rules, completed at the end of the first century after the Buddha’s death, we find the following paragraphs: 1. ‘You are not, O Bhikkhus, to wear long hair. Whosoever does so, shall be guilty of a minor breach of the regulations [i.e. of a dukkaṭa]. I allow you, O Bhikkhus, hair that is two months old, or two inches long.’ 2. ‘You are not, O Bhikkhus, to smooth the hair with a comb, or with a snake’s hood [i.e. with an ivory instrument so shaped], or with the hand held in that shape, or with pomade, or with hair-oil.’ . . . 3. ‘I allow you, O Bhikkhus, the use of razors, of a hone to sharpen the razors on, of powder prepared with Sipāṭika-gum to prevent them rusting, of a sheath to hold them in, and of all the apparatus of a barber.’ . . . 4. ‘You are not, O Bhikkhus, to have the hair of your head, or on your face cut by barbers, nor to let it grow long.’ . . . 5. You are not, O Bhikkhus, to have your hair cut off with a knife.’35 We should not draw, from the fact of these paragraphs being found among the subsidiary rules, any conclusion that they belong to a later time than the original rules. The subsidiary rules refer quite often to what were evidently older customs in the order, and only legalize and give authority to practices already followed, though not mentioned in the older rules. But we should notice in the first place that there is no mention of scissors. The reason of this is curious; scissors had not then been invented. This is confirmed by an exception to rule 5 above. If a bhikkhu had a sore on the head, and the hair round it could not be removed by a razor, then a knife might be used.36 In this case

34 Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, i. 190–192. 35 Vinaya, ii. 107, 134, tr. in Vinaya Texts, iii. 69 f., 138 f. 36 The word satthaka (Vin. ii. 115) has been rendered ‘scissors by Sten Konow, JPTS, 1909, p. 55. But this cannot be right. See Buddhaghoṣa as quoted in Vinaya Texts, iii. 90.

16 no doubt, if scissors had been then known in the Ganges valley, their use would have been allowed, at least as an alternative.37 The members of the order, we see, were to be shaven, not only on the face, but all over the head; and the shaving had to be performed, not by a barber, but by fellow- members. Why was this the rule? Undoubtedly because this was the custom previously followed by the religieux belonging to the other orders that we know to have been older than the Buddha’s time. It was only natural that men who had devoted themselves to the higher life, and whose main duty was the learning by heart and the repetition of texts dealing with the higher life as they conceived it, should have thought it becoming to themselves to avoid, not only the use of fashionable clothing, but also the elaborate hair- dressing then habitually used by men of the world. The medallions carved in bas-relief on the stone railings round the Bharhut tope may serve as illustrations of these turban-like arrangements, in which strips of brocaded cloth are intertwined with the hair (left long), the faces being clean shaven.38 Though the sculptures are later in date, earlier texts confirm the general style by descriptions ambiguous without the help of such illustrations. There is one passage in a very early text, about the same age as the five paragraphs, which confirms the suggestion that those paragraphs probably give us the earliest customs as to shaving followed in the order. That is Digha, i. 90, in the Ambaṭṭha Suttanta, where a Brāhman, reviling the adherents of the new movement, and in fact referring to the Buddha himself, calls them ‘shavelings, sham friars, the off-scouring of our kinsman’s heels.’39 It is clear that, in the view of the compilers of this passage, the members of the order had their heads shaven. Another such passage is preserved in the popular anthology called Dhammapada, 264, which says: ‘Not by his shaven crown is one a samaṅa (a member of any order of religieux, a ‘religious’), if he be irreligious. It should be noticed that the technical word used is not bhikkhu (a member of the Buddhist order), but samaṅa, which included non-Buddhist orders also. In the much later legend of the Great Renunciation—it is at least about seven centuries later than the event which it purports to relate—we are told that the first act of the future Buddha after he had ‘gone forth’ was: ‘Taking his sword in his right hand, and holding the plaited tresses of his hair, and its twisted decoration with his left, he cut them off. So his hair became two inches long, and lay close to his scalp curling from the right, and so it remained his life-long; and his beard the same.’40 Now the oldest representations of the Buddha that we possess—the so-called Græco- Buddhist bas-reliefs and statues—are an endeavour to reproduce the coiffure thus described. This story, therefore, as to the imperfect form of the tonsure habitually followed by the Buddha himself, must have been credited, incredible as it seems to us, at the date of those sculptures, not only in the Ganges valley, but also beyond the present frontiers of India, in the extreme north-west. In the second place, the inventors of the

37 Vinaya, ii. 134, tr. Vinaya Texts, iii. 139. 38 See figs. 21 and 22 in Rhys Davids, Buddhist India, pp. 94–97. 39 The whole episode is translated in Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, i. 112 ff. 40 Jātaka-nidāna, p. 64 (vol. i. of the Jātaka, ed. Fausböll).

17 story ascribe to the Buddha the belief that every religieux—not only Buddhists, for there were none then—should have the hair cut quite short. In other words, they claim a pre- Buddhist origin for the custom followed in the Buddhist order. Perhaps the whole episode is merely invented as a popular explanation of the odd rule as to two inches in the first of the five paragraphs quoted above. At the present time the bhikkhus in Burma, Siam, and Ceylon hold theoretically to the two-inch rule, but in practice never appear in public without the head and face clean shaven. The numerous sects of Buddhists in Tibet and Mongolia, China, and Japan have long ago forgotten, if they ever knew, the ancient rule. But we have no exact particulars as to when and where they have enacted and carried out any newer rules of their own. LITERATURE.—Vinaya Piṭaka, ed. H. Oldenberg, 5 vols, London, 1879–83; T. W. Rhys Davids and H. Oldenberg, Vinaya Texts, 3 vols., Oxford, 1880–85 (SBE xiii., xvii., xx.); Rhys Davids, Buddhist India (‘Story of the Nations’ ser.), London, 1903, Dialogues of the Buddha, 2 vols., Oxford, 1899–1910 (SBB ii., iii.); The Jātaka, with its Commentary, ed. V. Fausböll tr. Rhys Davids, London, 1877–97, i.

HYMNS HYMNS (Buddhist).—The word ‘hymn’ is ambiguous. It has been defined as a ‘song of praise,’ a ‘religious ode,’ a ‘sacred lyric,’ a ‘poem in stanzas written to be snug in congregational service.’ In the last of these various senses the Buddhists, who have neither churches nor chapels, neither congregations nor services, have consequently no hymns. In the other senses there are quite a number of hymns scattered throughout the longer prose books in the canon; and in the supplementary Nikāya we have twelve anthologies, mostly short, of religious poems of different kinds. These are collected in the anthologies either according to subject (as in the Vimāna and Peta Vatthus) or according to the kind of composition (as in the Udānas and the Iti-vuttākas). An example or two will make this clear. In the Sutta Nipāta, undoubtedly containing some of the very oldest of these hymns, we have seventy-one lyrics of an average length of sixteen stanzas each. These are arranged in five cantos (each of which existed as a separate booklet before they were brought together in one book),41 and in them the arrangement and order of the lyrics have little or no reference to the subjects of which the lyrics treat. Quite the opposite form of arrangement is found in the well-known Dhammapada, where all the verses are arranged according to subjects—such as Earnestness, Thought, Wisdom, Foolishness, the Path, Craving, Happiness, and so on. The title means ‘Verslets of the Norm’—that is, of the Dhamma. This word is often rendered ‘religion’; but the idea is not the same, and the word ‘religion’ is not found outside the European languages. More than half of these ‘Verselets of the Norm’ have

41 See, on the growth of the Sutta Nipāta, Rhys Davids, Buddhist India2, London, 1903, pp. 177–180. The Pāli work has been translated by V. Fausböll (SBE, vol. x.2 [1898]), and a second edition of the text by D. Anderson appears in the PTS for 1913.

18 been traced back to the extant canonical books.42 The rest were verses current in the community at the time of the rise of Buddhism; and some of them may even be pre- Buddhistic, belonging to the stock of moral sayings handed down in verse among the general body of Indians interested in such questions. This will, however, always remain doubtful, as no verse has as yet been traced in pro-Buddhistic literature. We can only say for certain that quite a number of the verses are reproduced in either identical or closely similar words, in the various sectarian books of later speculation. We cannot be sure that these verses were not first composed among the Buddhists. The fact is (though it has not been noticed anywhere in the voluminous literature on the Dhammapada) that the ‘Verselets of the Norm’ deal for the most part with the lower morality of the un-converted man—that is, with the ethics more or less common to all the higher religions. This may explain the great vogue that this anthology has had in Europe.43 Most of its verses were easily understood. They had none of the strangeness and difficulty of those dealing with the ethics of the Path. So also in India. When the Buddhists began to write in Sanskrit, they imitated the Dhammapada, changing the title, however, omitting the difficult verses, and adding others. This new anthology, the Uddānavarga, became very popular, was current in different recensions, and was translated into both Chinese and Tibetan.44 The fate of the Sutta Nipāta has been exactly the opposite. It is concerned mostly with the higher ethics of the Path, and in both form and matter its hymns come much nearer to Christian hymns than do the ‘Verselets of the Norm.’ But it is scarcely read in Europe except by Pāli philologists, and except for three ballads which it contains. In India it did not, survive the decline of Pāli, and it has not been translated into Tibetan or Chinese.45 In early times in N. India such hymns or verses were intoned or chanted either for edification or for propaganda. In the 7th cent. of our era I-Tsing gives an interesting account of the manner in which, in his day, the Sanskrit hymns then current were used as precessionals, either round a monument to some religious leader or through the halls of the great Buddhist monastery at Nālandā.46 The bhikkhus in Ceylon now chant certain of the above-mentioned Pāli hymns in a kind of visitation of the sick—a ceremony called Parittā, instituted as a protest against the charms used by those of the peasantry who are still pagans at heart.47 It is not known when or under what authority this custom was introduced, or to what extent it has been adopted.

42 For the details see. Rhys Davids, JRAS, 1900, p. 559 ff. 43 The translations into European languages are specified by M. Winternitz, Gesch. der ind. Litteratur, ii 63. 44 Sulvain Levy, in JA, 1913, has compared in detail one chapter of this with the corresponding chapter of the Dhammapada. 45 That is as a whole; see Anesaki, in JPTS, 1906, p. 50. 46 I-Tsing, Record of the Buddhist Religion, tr. J. Takakusu, Oxford, 1896, pp. 152–167. 47 See R. C. Childers, Pali-Eng. Dictionary, London, 1872–75, s.v.

19 LITERATURE.—M. Winternitz, Gesch. der ind. Litteratur, Leipzig, 1905 ff., ii. 60– 134, gives a detailed account, with examples of all the early Buddhist anthologies. An earlier account is in Rhys Davids, Buddhism: its Hist. and Lit., London, 1896.

HĪNAYĀNA HĪNAYĀNA.—Hīna means ‘abandoned,’ ‘low,’ ‘mean,’ ‘miserable’; yāna means ‘carriage,’ ‘means of progression,’ ‘vehicle’; the compound word Hīnayāna, as used of religious opinions, means a wretched, bad method, or system, for progress on the way towards salvation. It was a term of abuse occasionally used by some of the later Buddhist authors, who wrote in Sanskrit, to stigmatize or deprecate those older teachings which they desired to supersede. The use of the term in India, however, is exceedingly rare—not that the theologians of the later deistic Buddhist schools were not sure they were right; but the word was not polite, and the needs of controversy could be met without it. It might be now left in fit obscurity, had it not been adopted by one or two well-known Chinese and European writers, to whose sympathies it appealed, and who have made it a cornerstone of their view, on the history of Buddhism. This makes it desirable to summarize the little that is knows on the subject of the so-called Hīnayāna schools. 1. Origin and date of the term.—In the present stage of our knowledge of the history of Buddhism we suffer from a serious gap in the chain of available authorities. From the rise of Buddhism down to the time of Aśoka (q.v.), we have documents of varying age and importance, which enable us to draw a fairly accurate picture of the original Buddhism as understood by the early Buddhists, and also of the change in doctrine down to the close of that period. The majority of these documents are in Pāli, but there are a number of side-lights as to detail from other sources, both early and late. The following period of about three centuries, from Aśoka to Kaniṣka, is an almost complete blank. Even the date of Kaniṣka is uncertain. The able and sober discussion of the question by H. Oldenberg In the JPTS for 1912, the latest utterance on the point, nd suggests the end of the 1st cent. A.D. or the commencement of the 2 as the most probable approximate time of Kaniṣka’s accession. We have notice, from Chinese sources as to national migrations in Central Asia, which resulted in successive movements of nomad tribes into the districts adjacent to the extreme N.W. of India. These notices are not always very clear, and at times appear conflicting; but they are sufficient to show such movements in Central Asia were continually taking place during the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era, and culminated in the conquest, not indeed of India, but of Kashmīr and the Panjāb, and of the districts round Mathurā and Gujarāt by hordes of uncivilized nomads, mostly Huns or Śakas by race. These aliens adopted the religion, language, and civilization of the Indian peoples, mostly Buddhist, whom they conquered. Kaniṣka, the most famous and powerful of their princes, became a Buddhist; and lavishly supported the Buddhist scholars in Kashmīr who belonged to the Sabbatthivāda, the Realist school.

20 The result of these events was a momentous change affecting all the subsequent history of India. Politically the centre of power was moved, for centuries, from the east to the west of the continent. Linguistically the Kosala dialect, of which Pāli is the literary form, had to yield its place, as the lingua franca of political, literary circles, to the dialect of Kashmīr of which Sanskrit is the literary form.48 In religion a complete transformation was gradually but surely brought about. The brave barbarians became Buddhist so far as they were able. But they were so soaked in animistic superstitions that their ability was equal to the task only after they had brought down the religion to the level of their own understanding. There had been a slackening already. It is apparent in the later parts of the Nikāyas themselves, and is shown quite clearly by the questions considered in the Kathā Vatthu as being discussed in the schools at the date when that work was composed (c. 250 B.C.). From the time of Kaniṣka the whole power and influence of the Imperial State were thrown on the side of the animistic tendencies, and it was within the boundaries of the empire of the Kushan Tatars that the more important of the innovations were introduced into Buddhist doctrine. A precisely similar series of events took place in Europe. A wave of invasion, similar to that which broke on the N.W. frontiers of India, aud due, indeed, to similar national movements in Central Asia, broke in its turn over Europe. The Goths and Vandals adopted the faith of the Roman Empire. But, in adopting it, they contributed largely to the changes—some would call them deteriorations—that had already set in. When the conflict of nations subsided, the religion of the Roman Empire had become Roman Catholicism; politically the Continent was broken up among a large number of petty principalities, and such philosophy as survived was perforce of one and the same authorized pattern. At the corresponding period In India, we find Buddhists who had borrowed from the pagans, and pagans who had adopted and improved upon the conflicting speculations of the many Buddhist schools. Philosophy was very much alive; and quite a number of conflicting systems were able, in the absence of even any attempt at authoritative suppression, to appeal to the suffrages of inquirers. It was at this stage that the word Hīnayāna came into use. The oldest datable mention of the word is in the Record of Buddhist Kingdoms by Fa-Hian, written shortly alter his return to China in A.D. 414. He states, in his account of Shen-Shen (N.W. of Tibet): The King professed our Law (Dharma) and there might be in the country more than three thousand monks who were all students of the Hīnayāna.49 In about half a dozen other passages he has similar statements. Legge, in his note on this passage, says that there were three vehicles—the larger, smaller, and middle (mahā, hīna, and madhyama), suggesting, therefore, that Fa-Hian had these three in his mind. It is, however, by no means quite certain what the word, at that date, exactly meant, or what Fa-Hian had in view, whether he had learnt the phrase in China, or picked it up during his travels in India. It is not probable that Legge’s suggestion is right. That group of three vehicles has not been found elsewhere. The Saddharma Puṇḍarika, which is later, gives a

48 Rhys Davids, Buddhist India2, London, 1905, ch. ix., and R. O. Franke, Pāli und Sanskrit, Strassburg, 1902, p.87 ff. 49 J. Legge, Travels of Fa-Hien, Oxford, 1866, p. 15.

21 different group of three: śrāvaka, pacceka-buddha, and mahā—in which Hīnayāna does not occur. This group seems to have been widely known, as it is found also in the 3rd cent. in Ceylon, only applied to the word (vachana) instead of to the vehicle (yāna).50 The word occurs in the Lalita Vistara,51 in a long list of qualities or states of mind, each of which Is said to conduce to some other quality. In this list it is said: ‘Thought, that opening (or beginning) of religious light, conduces to scorn for a mean method’ (hīnayāna). Unfortunately, the date of the existing text of this work (which has been certainly recast once, and perhaps oftener) is late and uncertain.52 Such a list as this lies peculiarly open, in a re-casting of the work, to sectarian interpolation; and the passage throws little light on the meaning of the word, as it is short and ambiguous. It might equally well be rendered ‘scorn for the Hīnayāna.’ Nearly two centuries and a half later we know that another Chinese pilgrim, I-Tsing, explained the word Hīnayāna as meaning one who did not believe in the various deities and heavens created by the later schools. Fa-Hian may have thought the same, or he may have had, not a negative, but a positive test: that a Hīnayānist, for instance, was one who still believed in the Aryan eightfold Path; or he may simply have considered that a Hīnayānist was a man who belonged to one or other of the eighteen primitive schools. The last seems the most probable explanation. It was the easiest way to draw the line. We know from Fa-Hian’s 36th chapter (Legge, p. 98) that he was familiar with the list of these schools current among so many of the Buddhists. But, whatever be the exact meaning attached to the word Hīnayāna by Fa-Hian, it is probable, from his use of the Chinese equivalent of it, that the word, and with it the division of Buddhists into Hīna- th yānists and Mahā-yānists, was already current in India in the 4 cent. A.D. 2. The Hīnayāna schools.—We have quite a number of copies of the list just referred th to. The Siṇhalese give it in half a dozen different books, from the 4 cent. A.D. downwards. They all agree in the names, having taken them from the still older, but now lost, Siṇhalese Atthakathā. St. Julien53 reproduces five distinct lists from the Chinese. Schiefner, Wassilief, and Rockhill give us other lists from the Tibetan.54 These eight differ from one another, and from the Pāli list, in a few of the names; omitting one or two, and adding others. Each of them also pretends to be able to say of each school that it arose out of some other, and gives the name of the latter. In the details of these statements they also differ; and it is most unlikely that their language can ever have been exact except in a very limited sense. They can, at most, when they agree, afford us some guide to the relative age of the various schools within the period of a century and a half—from the time of the Council of Vesāli to that of the Council of Patna (about 400–250 B.C.)— within which they are all said to have arisen.

50 R. Morris, Buddhavaṃsa PTS, 1882, p. xi. 51 Mitra’s ed., Calcutta, 1877, p. 38. 52 See M. Winternitz, Gesch. der ind. Litteratur, ii. (Leipzig, 1913) 199. 53 J A, 1859, p. 327 ff. 54 See W. Geiger, Mahāvaṃsa (tr. PTS, 1912, p. 277). He made a comparative table of all the lists.

22 All the lists agree, however, in one point of great historical importance. Each of them gives one particular school, ‘the School of the Presbyters’ or ‘the School of Distinction’ (Thera-vādins, Vibhajja-vādins), as the original from which each of the seventeen others was ultimately descended.55 We have information as to some of the doctrines of several of these schools in the rd th Kathā Vatthu (3 cent. B.C.) and its commentary (5 cent. A.D.). This has been specified, and discussed, together with other information, in two articles by the present writer.56 The conclusions reached are: (l) The data are not sufficient to enable us to give a complete description of the doctrines, or even of the innovations, current in any one particular school. (2) The principal innovations discussed in the Kathā Vatthu relate, not to ethics or philosophy, but to Buddhology. th (3) Both the commentator and Fa-Hian, writing in the 5 cent. A.D., are agreed in granting only to three or four of these schools any considerable importance. th (4) Yuan Chwāng, writing at the end of the 7 cent. A.D., attaches importance to the same schools only. It is very doubtful whether any of the others had had, at any time, either large numbers or much influence. (5) The figures given us by Yuan Chwāng—he stayed many years in India, travelled extensively, and usually recorded where he stopped, the approximate number of members of the Order, and the school they adhered to—reveal the astounding fact that even as late as the end of our 7th cent., that is, the 13th cent. of Buddhism, no fewer than two-thirds of the 200,000 bhikkhus in India and its confines still adhered to one or other of the primitive schools. The allurement of the myriads of resplendent deities created by the Mahāyāist theologians, and that of the new ethics based on belief on those deities, had equally failed to attract them. (6) These schools have been, and are still, often called ‘sects.’ This is a mistake. They had no separate hierarchies, presbyteries, or other forms of church government; no separate dress, churches, or services. They were more like the Low, Broad, and High Churchmen among the Episcopal clergy. And, as in the Anglican Church, each individual combined the various tendencies in various degrees. This may explain how the same people are classed under the names of different schools. Thus, the bhikkhus in Ceylon called themselves Thera-vādins; Fa-Hian, who stayed two years in the island, apparently thinks (Legge p. 111) that they were Mahīśāsakas; Yuan Chwāng (Watters, On Yuan Chwāng’s Travels, London, 1904–05, ii. 234) calls them Mahāyānist Sthaviras. (7) From what has been stated above as to the many lists of the 18 schools it seems clear that the number 18 is purely conventional—a round number. Were we to make a new list, including all the names found either in the old list, or in inscriptions (much, for example, as those mentioned in JRAS, 1891, p. 410; 1892 p. 597), we should have 28 or

55 R. Pichel (Leben und Lehrs des Budda2, Leipzig, 1910, p. 6) expresses this by saying: ‘The Pāli canon is only the canon of one sect.’ This is inaccurate in several ways. It implies that there were sects (like European sects); that each had a separate canon; and that each canon stood on a level in respect of age. Not one of these implications is supported by the evidence. 56 JRAS, 1891, 1892.

23 30. That none of the names appears in the earliest inscriptions would seem to show that not much weight was attached to them in the earliest times. When the schools are mentioned, the name of each is given separately. A Hīnayāna school as designating a body of men is never referred to. So with the Mahāyāna. There are a score or more of schools that must be included under that name. Some of them to-day in Japan have become sects with separate revenues, government, dress, doctrines, and services. To compare Hīnayāna with Mahāyāna it is necessary, if one would serve any useful historical purpose, to compare the whole of the one with the whole of the other. The position will best be understood in the West if it be pointed out that the Mahāyāna schools bear a relation to the Hīnayāna schools similar to the relation borne by the various Roman and Greek Catholic schools to the early Christian ones. This similarity is due to similar causes (one of which was mentioned above). But there are also remarkable and interesting differences. The most noteworthy of them is that the early forms of thought subsisted in India through so many centuries, while in Europe they were allowed to persist, if they persisted at all, only underground. When toleration was the rule in India, the Inquisition was busy in Europe. Those schools, apart from the original school of the Theravādins, which would seem, from our late and scanty evidence to have been of some importance, are the following:— (i.) Sammitīya.—Yuan Chāng estimates their numbers in the 7th cent. as about 43,000 bhikkhus, of whom about half were in Sind, and the rest scattered through the Ganges valley or in Avanti. They are referred to nineteen times in the commentary on the Kathā Vatthu. (ii.) Sabbatthivādins (Realists).—In the 7th cent. they were in the territories beyond the extreme N.W. frontier of India, and Yuan Chwāng reckons their number there at about 12,000. Fa- Hian does not mention them, and Buddhaghoṣa (q.v.) refers to them only three times. But Takakusu in his important article in the JPTS for 1905, has shown how very great was the influence of this school of thought at the court of Kaniṣka, and afterwards; and has given a summary of the contents of seven of their works. Probably Aśvaghoṣa (q.v.), the celebrated court-poet and dramatist in Kaniṣka’s time, was a Realist. The Lalita Vistara is believed to be founded on the text of an older biography of the Buddha current in this school; and about half of the legends in the collection called Divyāvadāna are also thought to have been taken over from a work on Canon Law used by the Realists.57 (iii.) Andhaka (Andhras.)—Buddhaghoṣa, in his commentary on the Katthā Vatthu, attaches more importance to these, the inhabitants of the S.E., than to all the other schools put together. But they are mentioned nowhere else, and we do not know even the titles of any of their books. (iv.) Mahā-sāṅghika.—They are mentioned by Buddhaghoṣa sixteen times, and a branch of them, the Lokottara-vādins, was found still existing in the 7th cent. by Yuan Chwāng in Bamiyan. They are particularly interesting as being the original authors of the collection of Legends called the Mahā-Vastu, where we find the germ of the docetic theories, dealt with under DOCETISM (Buddhist).

57 Winternitz, op. cit. pp.198, 222.

24 A good deal of the literature of these, and of the other schools of early Buddhism, is still extant in Chinese translations. It is not likely that, in the fine collection of translations of Buddhist Sanskrit works into Tibetan, made from the 9th cent. onwards, there will be anything left of the works of these older schools. In the Buddhist Sanskrit MSS in our libraries there are, however, many books, whose titles we know, that will undoubtedly throw much light on the interesting and important historical problem of the gradual growth and change of early Buddhist thought and doctrine. The publication of these works is the greatest desideratum in the present state of our knowledge. The beginning we know well. The Pāli Text Society has now (1913) published 73 volumes of the works, early and late, of the original school, the Thera-vādins. We know a good deal about the end—the final shapes taken by the various schools of later Buddhism still existing in China, Tibet, and Japan. For the intervening periods very little, apart from story-books and collections of edifying tales, has as yet been made available for European scholars. It will be sufficiently evident from the above why it is that no attempt has yet been made in Europe to elucidate the history of these schools, or to trace, the development of their doctrine. Literature.—The authorities have been given in the article.

The Doctrine

PATIMOKKHA PATIMOKKHA.—This is the name for a collection of 227 rules to be observed by members of the Buddhist order of mendicants. A few of them relate to matters that may, in a sense, be called ethical. But the rules themselves are not at all ethical. They determine only what steps are to be taken in each case by the order; and the cases are matters of the restrictions as to dress, food, clothing, medicine, etiquette, manners, and so on, to be observed by the members. In four cases out of the 227 the punishment, if it can be called punishment, is exclusion from the order. In all the other eases it is merely suspension for a period of time. There had been other orders before the Buddhist order was founded, and no doubt some of the rules were based upon rules already existing in those. There is nothing exclusively Buddhist about any one of them. On the other hand, each of the different orders had, no doubt, some rules which the others had not. It would be very interesting if we could ascertain whether any, and if so which, of the 227 rules were followed by the Buddhist order alone. But this is not yet possible. The Jain order is older; but the rules observed in it before the Buddha’s time, even if they are still extant, are not published. We have also a few rules laid down in the priestly law-books as obligatory on Brāhman mendicants (bhikkhus). These are, however, extant only in law-books centuries later than

25 the period in question. And, though the rules were probably in force before the date of the law-books, it is not possible to say whether or not they were valid in the Buddha’s time. Such evidence as is available tends to show that they were not.58 And it is most probable that the particular rules in question were meant to be supplied to individuals as such, not to members of an order or community. The very fact of the small number of rules that it was considered advisable to record shows how slight was the importance attached by the compilers of these law manuals to the matter of the organization of a religious order. In the absence of detailed knowledge of the rules of other previously existing Indian orders, European writers have so far assumed a similarity between the Buddhist order and the European orders more familiar to them that they have applied to the Buddhist community the technical terms in use in Europe. These organizations are really very different—as different, in fact, as any two such orders could possibly be. To give a few instances only: the Buddhist order in India had no monasteries, no establishments hidden behind walls and inaccessible to the public, presided over by an abbot or superior; there was no hierarchy at all, no authority to which the members of the order had to submit, no power in any one member of the order over any other member, and no vow of obedience; at meetings of the chapter the senior member present, reckoning not by age but by the date on which he had been admitted into the order, took the chair; the decisions were by vote of the majority, and the votes of all members, whatever their seniority, were equal; no member of the order was a priest who could in any way intervene between any god and any man, or offer any sacrifice, or declare any forgiveness of sin, or give absolution; no one of the 227 rules inculcates any creed or dogma or demands any sort of belief; any member of the order could give up his association with it whenever he liked; there is a special set of rules regulating the manner in which he could do so,59 but he could also leave the order, without any formality, simply by putting on a lay man’s dress;60 this was no empty form of words, it was (and is) constantly done. To translate the word bhikkhu by ‘priest’ or ‘monk’ is therefore a suggestio falsi in respect of one or more of these matters, all of them of the first importance. The word means, literally, mendicant, but not mendicant in our sense of the word. With us the word is associated with the false pretenses, the lies, and the trickery habitually used by mendicants to trade upon the sentimentality of the kind-hearted. And, while there doubtless have been periods when some members of the order may have laid themselves open to some such imputation, yet to charge all the members, at all times, with mendicancy is neither fair nor correct. Quite a number of the rules of the Pātimokkha are especially designed to prevent even the very appearance of evil in this respect. A further misconception should here be noticed. The rules of the Pātimokkha are not a list of sins. No such conception as that of the European notion of sin enters even remotely into the Buddhist view of life. The rules of the Pātimokkha are mainly economic; they regulate the behavior of members of an order to one another in respect of clothes, dwellings, furniture, etc., held in common. They were originally established in accordance with the customs of the time. As the customs changed, or as convenience dictated, the rules were changed. A number of such changes even in the very earliest time

58 The evidence is collected in Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, i. 212–220. 59 Sutta Vibhaṅga (Vin. iii.), i. 8. 2 ff. 60 E.g., Vinaya Texts, I. 275.

26 have been pointed out in the Introductions to H. Oldenberg’s edition of the Vinaya, and to his and the present writer’s translation of the Vinaya Texts. These changes have also gone on in later times, until today a large majority of the rules have become obsolete. Notwithstanding this, the 227 rules have been recited every fortnight by the followers of the ancient tradition from the Buddha’s time until today. The institution of this ceremony is recorded in the Sutta Vibhaṅga.61 There had been observed from ancient times a festival on new and full moon days. The orders older than the rise of Buddhism had kept up this observance, utilizing the recurring sacred days for the exposition of their doctrines. The early Buddhists followed this precedent; and once in every fortnight on the sacred day, called the uposatha day, the order met in its various districts, in chapter, and all the rules were recited. There has been considerable difference of opinion as to the exact date of the month on which this ceremony should be held. The Buddhists have disputed on the point as frequently (though without violence) as Christians have on the date of Easter. And they still differ. There is, indeed, a certain ambiguity in the oldest wording of the rule on the point;62 and we know too little about the actual practice as followed in India in the early days of Buddhism to be able to reach a conclusion as to which of the later schools was right in its contention. The word pātimokkha occurs in one of the rules—the 73rd pāchittiya—and also in the introductory phrase to be used at the monthly recitation of the rules.63 It would seem, therefore, to be older than the rules themselves. The manner in which the word is used in the old passage first enjoining the recitation of it upon the bhikkhus64 confirms this supposition. We need not, therefore, be surprised to find that the early Buddhists ascribed the institution, not of the uposatha ceremony, but of the Pātimokkha itself, to a date long antecedent to that of the Buddha.65 If that be correct, the word pātimokkha must have been current in Kosala when Buddhism arose, and, to be more exact, no doubt among the members of the previous orders. What it means exactly and what is its derivation are both uncertain. The Old Commentary (on which see below) explains it as follows: Pātimokkhaṃ. This is the beginning, it is the face (mukhaṃ), It is the principal (pamukhaṃ), of good qualities. Therefore, it is called Pātimokkhaṃ. This as a piece of edifying exegesis is to the point, and it has the advantage of that sort of pun fashionable in ancient folklore and exegesis. India can claim no monopoly in this department of primitive literary art. Some fine specimens of it might be culled from the classic and sacred books most admired in Europe. It was supremely indifferent to accuracy. And to take it au grand sérieux as scientific etymology is not only to miss the point, but to forget the somewhat important fact that scientific etymology was not yet born. When the Buddhists, centuries afterwards, began to write in Sanskrit, they (evidently not understanding the word) Sanskritized it by prātimokṣa,66 apparently

61 In bk. ii. the Uposatha Khandaka, tr. in Rhys Davids and H. Oldenberg, Vinaya Texts i. 239 ff. 62 Cf. Vin. i. 102 with 104 63 See Vinaya Texts, i. 1. 64 Vin. i. 102, tr. in Vinaya Texts, i. 241 f. 65 Dīgha, ii. 46–49. The verse there given, containing the word pātimokkha, is included in the Dhammapada anthology as verse 185. 66 See, e.g., Mahāvastu, iii. 51. 17.

27 supposing that it had something to do with mokṣa (q.v.). This is of course impossible. To have complied with the economic regulations of an order is a very different thing from having attained to the mental state deemed, in that order, to be ideal. Mokṣa would mean from the Buddhist point of view the latter, not the former. In Buddhism at least, though it did not use the technical term mokṣa, the regulations of the Pātimokkha were quite subsidiary. A man might have observed them all his life, and yet not have even entered upon the first stage of the path towards arahant-ship or nirvāna (the Buddhist mokṣa).67 In some one of the pre-Buddhistic orders pātimokkha may possibly have had some such sense.—‘disburdenment,’ e.g., or ‘repudiation,’68 or ‘obligation.’69 In the Buddhist canon pātimokkha is used, quite frankly and simply, in the sense of ‘code’—code of rules for members of their order; thus in the constantly repeated phrase Pātimokkha-samvara- samvuto, ‘restrained according to the restraint of the code’;70 or, again, in ubhayāni Pātimokkhāni, ‘both the codes’ (the one for men, the other for women).71 The Pātimokkha is not one of the books in the Buddhist canon. This is not because it is later, but because it is older, than the canon. And every word of it, though not as a continuous book, is contained in the canon, in the book entitled Sutta Vibhaṅga, ‘Exposition of the Suttas’ (the word ‘Suttas’ meaning, in this title, the 227 rules above referred to). First there was the code itself, handed down by memory. Then there arose a word-for-word commentary on each of the 227 rules; we call this the Old Commentary. Then both these were encased in a new commentary with supplementary chapters. It is this third edition, so to speak, that we have in the extant canon.72 It is in the supplementary chapters that we find evidence of those changes referred to above. One is of especial importance for the question of the Pātimokkha. The rules are arranged in seven sections corresponding very roughly to the degree of weight attached to their observance. At the end of each section, on the uposatha day, at the time of recitation, the reciter goes on: Venerable sirs, the ninety-two rules [here comes the name of the rules in the particular section] have been recited. In respect of them I ask the venerable ones, “Are you pure in this matter?” A second time I ask, “Are you pure in this matter?” A third time I ask. “Are you pure in this matter?”’ [There follows an interval of time.] The venerable ones are pure herein. Therefore do they keep silence. Thus I understand.’73 It is evident that the original intention was that any brother who had been guilty of a breach of any of the regulations laid down in the section recited—e.g. that the legs of his chair or bed had exceeded eight inches in height (pāchittiya 87), or that he had left his

67 See the passages collected by Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, i. 2, 63. 68 See Oldenberg, Buddka6, Berlin, 1914, p. 381. 69 Prati-muc, In pre-Buddhistic works, means ‘to bind on.’ 70 Dīgha, iii. 77, 267, 285; Majjhima, i. 33, iii. 11. 71 Aṅguttara, ii. 14; cf. Vin. i. 65 and Aṅg. iv. 140, v. 80, 201. 72 See the masterly discussion of this history by Oldenberg in the introd. to his ed. of the text. 73 Rhys Davids and Oldenberg, Vinaya Texts, i.5 f.

28 chair or stool lying about in a hut occupied in common (pāchittiya 15)—should then and there acknowledge that he had broken the regulation in that respect. But in one of the supplementary chapters (the Khandakas)74 it is expressly laid down that this shall not be done. The brother who feels himself guilty shall acknowledge the fact beforehand. And, if he recollects only on the uposatha day itself that he has broken a rule, still he is to go (we are informed in another chapter, the Uposatha Khandaka)75 to a fellow-member and say: ‘I have committed, friend, such and such an offence; I confess that offence.’ Let the other say: ‘Do you see it?’ ‘Yes, I see it.’ Refrain from it in future.”76 The members discovered, no doubt, that any such interruption of the proceedings as was involved in a confession at the meeting was in inconvenient; that it distracted the attention of other members from the main object of the recitation; and that it might lead, if several such cases arose, to a very serious prolongation of the formal meeting of the chapter. So the practice was changed. The offending member had to ‘disburden’ his conscience before the ceremony took place. And in any case the recitation of the Pātimokkha was never interrupted in any way. This is still the case in Ceylon and Burma. But the old formula, appealing to the members present to speak, is still part of the recitation. The subsequent history of the Pātimokkha in India is very obscure. It is probable that it was preserved and recited regularly by all the differing early schools of Buddhism. Afterwards, when, some six or seven centuries after the birth of the Buddha, there arose Buddhists who abandoned the use of Pāli, and adopted Sanskrit, it is probable that they abandoned also the use of the Pātimokkha. But we do not really know. It is not used, so far as we have any evidence, by any of the numerous sects in China or Japan who follow the doctrines of one or the other of these later Indian schools. The fragmentary remarks of Bumouf77 are sufficient only to point out the lines on which a future investigation of this problem may be made. Literature.—Burnouf, Introd. á. L’hist. du Bouddhisme indien, Paris, 1844; H. Oldenberg The Vinaya Piṭaka, London, 1879–83; T. W. Rhys Davids and H. Oldenberg, Vinaya Texts (SBE), Oxford, 1881–85; T. W. Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha (SBE) do. 1889–1910; Dīgha Nikāya, ed. T.W. Rhys Davids and J. E. Carpenter (PTS) do. 1890–1913; Dhammapada, ed. Suriyagoda Thera (PTS) do. 1914; Mahāvastu, ed. E. Senart, Paris, 1882–97.

74 Chullavagga. ix. 2; tr. in Vinaya Texts, iii. 306. 75 Ib. i. 282. 76 He is to squat on his heels over against the bhikkhu to whom he is confessing. Now, ‘in front of,’ ‘over against’ would in post-Buddhistic Sanskrit be pati-mukha. If this word could be traced in pre-Buddhistic times, it would be possible to suggest a derivation of pātimokkha (from this practice) in the sense of ‘confession,’ vis. that which pertains to crouching in front of another bhikkhu (cf. upaniṣad, that which pertains to sitting down towards, hence ‘a secret doctrine’). 77 Introduction, p. 300 ff.

29

ĀGAMA ĀGAMA.—In the oldest Buddhist writings this is the standing word for ‘tradition’ (Vinaya, ii. 249; Aṅguttara, ii. 147). This usage is maintained in the Milinda (215, 414) th and in the Mahāvastu (ii. 21). But from the 5 cent. A.D. onwards the word means usually a division of the Sutta Piṭaka—the same portion as was, in the older phraseology (Vinaya, ii. 287), called a nikāya. The reason for this change was that the latter word (nikāya) had come to be used also in the sense of a division of disciples, a school or sect, and had therefore become ambiguous. In Buddhist Sanskrit books this later use of āgama seems to have supplanted entirely the use of Nikāya; but our edited texts are not sufficient in extent to enable us, as yet, to state this with certainty.

WHEEL OF THE LAW WHEEL OF THE LAW.—This Buddhist expression is derived from the earlier Buddhist legend of the Mystic Wheel. This legend, or edifying fairy tale, is told in almost identical terms in several of the most ancient Buddhist documents.78 It is none the less essentially Buddhist because several details (the ethical, not the essential ones) can be traced back to details in one or other of the pre-Buddhistic sun-myths. The Wheel is said to be one of the treasures of a righteous king who rules in righteousness; and it is because of that righteousness that the Wheel appears. The legend says: ‘When he (i.e. the king; the names of course differ) had gone up on to the upper storey of his palace on the sacred day, the day of the full moon, and had purified himself to keep the sacred day, there then appeared to him the heavenly treasure of the Wheel, with its nave, its tire, and all its thousand spokes complete. Then the king arose from his seat, and reverently uncovering his robe from his right shoulder, he held in his left hand a pitcher and with his right he sprinkled water over the Wheel, as he said: “Roll onward, O my lord the Wheel! O my Lord, go forth and overcome.” Then the wondrous Wheel rolled onward toward the region of the East. And, after it, went the king with his fourfold army (cavalry and chariots, war-elephants and men). And wheresoever the Wheel stopped, there too the king stayed, and with him all his army in its fourfold array. Then all the rival kings in the region of the East came to the king and said: “Come on, O mighty king! Welcome, O mighty king! All is thine, O mighty king! Do thou, O mighty king, be a Teacher to us!” And the king said: “Ye shall slay no living thing. Ye shall not take that which has not been given. Ye shall not act wrongly touching the bodily desires. Ye shall speak no lie.

78 E.g., the Mahā Sudassana Suttanta, Dīgha, ii. 172; the Chakka-vatti Sīha-nāda Suttanta, Dīgha, iii. 61.

30 Ye shall drink no maddening drink. And ye may still enjoy such privileges as ye have had of yore.”79 Then all the rival kings in the region of the East became subject to the king. And the wondrous Wheel having plunged down into the great waters in the East, rose up out again, and rolled onward to the South . . . and to the West . . . and to the North (and all happened in each region as had happened In the region of the East). Now when the wondrous Wheel had gone forth conquering and to conquer over the whole earth to its very ocean boundary, it returned back again to the royal city and remained fixed on the open terrace in front of the entrance to the inner apartments of the great king, shedding glory over them all.’80 So far the appearance and work of the Wheel. In another passage we are told that on the approach of the death of the righteous king the Wheel falls from its place, and on his death or abdication disappears. Should the successor carry on the Law of the Wheel, it will reappear and act as before, and this may continue for generations. But, should any successor fail in righteous rule, then the country will fall gradually into utter ruin, and remain so for generations till the Law of the Wheel has been revived. Then only will the Wheel reappear and with it wealth and power and the happiness of the people. All this is set out at length in the Chakka-vatti Sīha-nāda Suttanta. The Chakka-vatti, literally the ‘Wheel-turner,’ and by implication the ruler who conducts himself (and whose subjects therefore conduct themselves) according to the Law of the Wheel, is the technical term for the righteous king or over-lord. It has not been found in any pre-Buddhistic literature; and, though it is so frequent in later books, it has, in Hindu works, lost its ethical connotation, and simply means a war-lord, a mighty emperor, ‘one who unhindered drives the wheels of his chariot over all lands.’ But it should be noticed that the wondrous Wheel of the Buddhist legend is not really a chariot wheel. The idea of sovereignty is no doubt linked up with it. The Wheel, however, is a single disk, not one of a pair. And it is very clear that it is really a reminiscence, not of a chariot wheel, but of the disk of the sun, which travels over all lands from sea to sea and sheds glory over all. By the pouring of new wine into the old bottles, it is the sun-god himself, transmuted into a forerunner of the king of righteousness, whose rule of life brings happiness to all. This is the legend made use of to give a title to the doctrine of the reign of law, the basis of the reformation we call Buddhism and which the leaders of that reformation called ‘the Law.’ The discourse summarizing this doctrine, the first discourse delivered by the founder of the new movement, is entitled ‘The Setting in Motion onwards of the Wheel of Law’ (Dhamma-chakkappavattana). The allusion is to the action of the king of righteousness in the foregoing legend when he baptizes the Wheel, and exhorts it to roll onward, to go forth and overcome. The allusion is apt; and it gains both in poetry and in its appeal to the mental attitude of the time by the irony with which it enlists the service of the ancient and repudiated sun-god in the propagation of the Buddha’s doctrine that the gods too are under the domain of law. Just so was Brahmā made into a convert to the new teaching, and the old god of war and drink, the mighty Indra, had been transmuted into

79 On this phrase see Dialogues of the Buddha, ii. 208; Kindred Sayings, i. 15. 80 Dialogues of the Buddha, ii. 202–204.

31 the peace-loving and sober Sakka, devoted to the doctrine of the reign, not of divine whim, but of law. Very naturally the early European writers on Buddhism, ignorant of the legend of the Wheel, and ignorant also of the doctrine of the reign of law, completely failed to understand this curious title of the oldest summary of the new teaching. It would be wearisome to point out all their mistakes. Perhaps the worst of the many blunders is the identification of the Wheel with what Anglo-Indian writers call, quite erroneously, the praying- wheels of Tibet. They are not so called by any authority, Tibetan or Buddhist. They are not praying-wheels, but wheels of good luck, containing an invocation to some deity—the contrary therefore to the old doctrine of the Wheel. We may learn some day what the original meaning in Tibetan of Om maṇi padme Hūm really was. The phrase is not likely to be less than about 1400 years later than the time of the Buddha. And it is most unlikely that, after that long lapse of time, any memory of the legend of the Wheel or of its adoption to the title of the First Discourse had still survived. To judge from what we know of Lāmaism, the Tibetans had quite forgotten that, in early Buddhism, the reign of gods had been superseded by the reign of law (or, to express the same fact in modem technical terms, that animism had given way to normalism). It remains to add that some centuries after the canon had closed we find also another use of the figure or simile of the wheel. Only the wheel is here, not the disk of the sun, but a chariot wheel. The figure is used of the circle or cycle of rebirths. Mrs. Rhys Davids has pointed out the use of this simile in Greek and Sanskrit,81 and it has since then been discovered in Pāli.82 This is in harmony with the doctrine of the Wheel of Law in early Buddhism, but it is a supplementary idea, and has a different origin, and is never called the Wheel of the Law. It is samsāra-chakka, not dhamma-chakka. LITERATURE.—Dīgha Nikāya, ed. T. W. Rhys Davids and J. E. Carpenter (PTS), Oxford, 1890–1911; T. W. Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, do. 1899–1910; C. A. F. Rhys Davids, Kindred Savings (PTS), do. 1917, Buddhism, London (Home University Library, no date); Visuddhi Magga, ed. Mrs. Rhys Davids (PTS), 1920.

WISDOM TREE WISDOM TREE.—The venerable Bo-tree at Anurādhapura is the oldest historical tree in the world. The planting of the Bo-, or Bodhi-, tree (the Sinhalese Bo is merely a contraction of the Pāli Bodhi, both meaning wisdom) is recorded at length in the Chronicles of Ceylon as having taken place in about 245 B.C.83 Incidental references, in later centuries, to repairs to the enclosure, or to gifts of staircases or statues or ornaments

81 Visuddhi Magga (PTS), 1920, p. 198. 82 JRAS, 1894, p. 388; cf. also Mrs. Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 98, and art. PAṬICCA-SAMUPPĀDA, vol. ix. p. 674. 83 Dīpavaṃsa, ch. xvi.; Mahāvaṃsa, ch. xix.

32 by subsequent kings, show how great was the care that was continually devoted to it.84 It is now (1920) 2165 years old. Its botanical name is ficus religiosa (the Anglo-Indian pipal), and trees of this kind can put out fresh roots if a branch be planted, or if soil be heaped up near the base of the trunk. The soil has been thus so often raised that the tree now appears as three distinct trees (three branches of the old tree), growing from different points of an enclosed plateau about 25 ft. above the level of the spot where the tree was originally planted. A winding staircase of stone leads up to the enclosure of this plateau. Wherever the branches threaten to become too long they have been propped up by rough supports of wood or masonry. A stone slab, a malāsana, or flower-stand, has been provided for the memorial presentation of the white blossoms of the champaka. Everything about the spot gives the impression of a hoary antiquity. But we could not be sure of the identity of the tree without the long chain of documentary evidence.85 The trees are somewhat like elms in size and shape; but the tapering leaves, about six inches long and four inches across the broadest part, are lighter in color underneath, and the never-ceasing rustling of the leaves causes a constant flash of vanishing and reappearing light and color curiously suggestive of one of the main doctrines both of the ancient Buddhist and of much modern philosophy. Anurādhapura (q.v.) and the country round had been for nearly seven centuries, from the middle of the 12th to the middle of the 19th cent., almost abandoned. The Tamils, after centuries of intermittent attempts to take it, had been driven back to the north of the island. The Sinhalese, out-numbered ten to one, had retired to the fastnesses of the mountains to the south. East to west the jungle stretched from shore to shore, and north to south for a hundred miles. In what had been the populous and prosperous part of Ceylon there were left a few far-scattered peasantry and wood-men; and the great capital had become a few mud huts. But there were always devoted bhikkhus to tend the Bodhi, the Wisdom Tree. A railway now runs through the jungle, and roads have been made. The magnificent reservoir, 50 miles in circumference, which had supplied half the country- side with water, has been restored to working order; and population and prosperity are slowly being restored. One consequence is that a constant stream of pilgrims comes from all parts of the world to pay reverence to the tree. Various different, and indeed contradictory explanations have been given of this reverence paid to the Bodhi-tree. The oldest explanation is that given in Ceylon itself. This can be gathered from different passages in the Chronicle and in the Commentaries on the canon, and is best summarized in a book called the Mahābodhivaṃsa (‘Story of the great Wisdom Tree’) probably written about A.D. 950. It is an amplified version in bombastic Sanskritized Pāli prose of what had been already said in the older authorities just referred to; and, however interesting as literary work, the oldest to show that acquaintance with Sanskrit then just beginning in Ceylon it really adds nothing to the historical details contained in the older documents. The Ceylon view is that the tree is held in so much affectionate esteem and awe because it was grown from a branch of the original Bodhi-tree at Gayā (q.v.) in India (often distinguished as Bodh-Gayā, ‘Gayā of the Wisdom Tree’) under which the Buddha had actually sat when he passed through the

84 See the appendix to vol. ii. of J. E. Tennent’s Ceylon for a long list of such references. 85 Much at this is given in an appendix to the second volume of Tennent’s Ceylon.

33 intense mental crisis, the turning-point of his career, which led to his coming forward as the teacher of a new religion. The ‘wisdom’ is the wisdom, not of the tree, but of the teacher. It is derived not from the tree, or from any fruit of the tree, but from the mental struggles and the victory won by the founder of their faith. They adore the tree, not because of the power of any spirit or dryad within the tree, but because the outward form of it is a constant reminder of what they hold to have been the most important event in the history of the world. In other words, their attitude towards the tree is much the same as that of many Christians towards the Cross. And, just as opponents of Christianity have thought quite illogically, that they could score a point against it by showing that the cross was a religious symbol (with quite different associations) before the rise of Christianity, so opponents of Buddhism have sought, and quite successfully, to show that the tree was a religious symbol (with quite different associations) before the rise of Buddhism. They fail to see that that is not the point. Granted that other people had previously used the same (or a similar) symbol in a different sense, the question is: In what sense did the Buddhists us it? We shall deal with only the more important of these theories of the tree. James Fergusson, the eminent historian of Indian architecture, held that the main features of ‘Turanian’ belief were tree- and serpent-worship, that the dispatch of a branch of the Bodhi-tree by Aśoka to Ceylon is a proof of the Turanian tree worship practiced by that Buddhist emperor of India, and that the monuments show that early Buddhism was a ‘Turanian’ faith. What exactly he means by Turanian he does not state. The conclusions put forward in his massive volume, entitled Tree end Serpent Worship, have not been accepted by any other scholar who has written on the subject. E. Senart, the editor of the Mahāvastu and the interpreter of Aśoka’s inscriptions, will have none of this. He holds that Buddhism was, in its origin, Aryan; that it was derived almost entirely from the Brāhman mythology contained in the Vedic records; that the legend of the Buddha is almost a myth; that in that myth the tree is almost, if not quite, as important as the teacher; and that the tree is the cloud-tree of the famous atmospheric struggle for the rain when the god with his thunderbolt defeats the demon who keeps back the rain in the clouds. The wisdom of the tree is the ambrosial rain for is not their nibbāna sometimes called by the Buddhists ‘ambrosia’?86 All the author’s literary skill, poetic imagination, and great learning have not availed to secure acceptance for this theory. For no attempt is made to explain how or why or when or where the transmutation of the one set of ideas into the other can have taken place. Heinrich Kern, the late professor of Sanskrit at Leyden, was of yet another opinion. In his view the Buddhist accounts of their teacher’s life are a euhemerized sun-myth. The Buddha is really the sun, and his disciples are the stars. He regards the tree, not (with Senart) as the cloud-tree, but as ‘the world tree, the tree of life.’ This is obscure, as the two are quite different; and he refers only to a post-Buddhistic Upaniśad (Kaṭha, vi. 1) which does not clearly speak of either.87 Even if it did, what evidence could that be of Buddhist belief?

86 Senart, Légende du Buddha, Index, s.v. ‘Bodhi.’ 87 Kern, Buddhismus, ii. 224. For the world-tree and the tree of life see J. H. Philpot, The Sacred Tree, London, 1897, chs. iv. and vi.

34 It should be pointed out, firstly, that these theories are mutually exclusive, and cannot be combined. If any one of them is right, then each of the others is wrong. Secondly, they are all almost exclusively based, so far as the Buddhist side of the question is concerned, on late records—records eight hundred years or more later than the events they purport to describe. To the present writer it seems indisputable that, if a historian wishes to ascertain the genesis of a ‘legend,’ the only scientific method is, first of all, to ascertain what is the earliest form in which the legend is recorded. The earliest form of the legend about the original tree is as follows. It is well known that there is no consecutive life (or legend) of the Buddha in the canon. But there are incidental references to certain episodes in his career. Of these at least twelve refer to the episode of the Wisdom Tree. But only two of them even mention the tree; and then it is merely to say that when seated under the tree the Teacher thought such and such things. This simple fact is enough to dispose of the theory that the tree was nearly, if not quite, as important as the teacher.88 In one of the longer composite Suttantas contained in the Dīgha there is a short account of six previous Buddhas with a sketch of the life of Vipassi, the first of the six. This is so evidently drawn up as a mere imitation of the life of the historical Buddha that it is suggestive to find that the sketch contains no reference to a wisdom tree. This is the more remarkable since in the tabular paragraphs giving certain details about each of the six the name of the tree under which each attained to enlightenment is also given. In none of the cases is the tree called a wisdom tree. If the above statements of fact are correct, it follows that the expression ‘wisdom tree’ or ‘tree of enlightenment’ does not occur at all in any of the oldest of those canonical works which deal with the Dhamma (the law or religion), that it occurs once in all the other canonical works on the Dhamma, that it occurs only once in those that deal with the regulations of the order (the Vinaya), that that single reference is in the very latest portion of the Vinaya,89 and that the expression is then used merely to distinguish from other trees of the same kind and name that particular one under which the teacher was seated when he obtained enlightenment. For the later history of the original ‘wisdom tree’ at Bodh-Gaya in India see art. GAYĀ. 2 LITERATURE.—J. E. Tennent, Ceylon , London, 1859; Dīpavaṃsa, ed. H. Oldenberg, do. 1879; Mahāvaṃsa, ed. W. Geiger (PTS, do. 1908); Mahā-bodhivaṃsa, ed. S. A. Strong (PTS, do. 1891); James Fergusson, Tree and Serpent Worship, do. 1868; E. Senart, La Légende du Buddha2 Paris, 1882; H. Kern, Der Buddhismus, Germ. tr. H Jacobi, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1882–84; Kaṭha Upaniśad, tr. Max Müller, SBE xv. [Oxford, 1884]; Vinaya, ed. H. Oldenberg, London, 1879–83, tr. in Vinaya Texts, Mahāvagga and Chulavagga, tr. from the Pāli by T. W. Rhys Davids and H. Oldenberg, SBE vole. xiii., xvii., xx. [Oxford, 1881–85]; Saṃyutta, ed. Léon Feer (PTS, London, 1884); Majjhima, ed. V. Trenckner and R. Chalmers (PTS, do. 1888–99); Udāna, ed. Paul Steinthal (PTS, do. 1885); Dīgha, ed. T. W. Rhys Davids and J. E. Carpenter (PTS, do. 1899–1903), tr. T.

88 The mention of the tree is at the opening page of the Vinaya (translated in Vinaya Texts, i. 2= Udāna, i 4, and in Udāna, iii. 10). The other passages, which do not refer to the tree, are Saṃyutta, i. 105, 136 (tr. in Kindred Sayings, i. 128, 171 ff.); Majjhima, i. 22, 167 ff., 240 ff., ii. 93–96; Udāna, i. 4, ii. 1. iii. 10. 89 On the chronological relations of the various portions of the Vinaya to one another see the Introduction to Vinaya Texts.

35 W. Rhys Davids in Dialogues of the Buddha, Oxford, 1899–1910; A. Cunningham, The Stūpa of Bharhut, London, 1879; J. Legge, Travels of Fa-hien, Oxford, 1886; T. Watters, On Yuan Chwang’s Travels in India, ed. T. W. Rhys Davids and S. W. Bushell, 2 vols., London, 1904–06 ; T. W. Rhys Davids, Buddhist India, do. 1903.

AṄGUTTARA NIKĀYA AṄGUTTARA NIKĀYA.—The fourth of the five Nikāyas, or collections, which constitute the Sutta Piṭaka, the Basket of the tradition as to doctrine, the second of the three Piṭakas in the canon of the early Buddhists. The standing calcination in Buddhist books on the subject is that it consists of 9557 suttas or short passages.90 Modem computations would be different. This large number is arrived at by counting as three separate suttas such a statement as: ‘Earnestness, industry, and intellectual effort are necessary to progress in good things,’ and so on. Thus in the first chapter, section 14, occurs the sentence: ‘The following is the chief, brethren, of the brethren my disciples, in seniority, to wit, Aññā Kondaññā.’ The sentence is then repeated eighty times, giving the pre-eminence, in different ways, of eighty of the early followers of the Buddha, who were either brethren or sisters in the Order, or laymen or laywomen. In each case the necessary alterations in the main sentence are made. We should call it one sutta, giving a list of eighty persons preeminent, in one way or another, among the early disciples. According to the native method of repeating by rote, and therefore also of computation, it is eighty suttas. Making allowance for this, there are between two and three thousand suttas.91 The work has been published in full by the Pāli Text Society, vols. i. and ii. edited by Morris, and vols. iii., iv., and v. by E. Hardy (London, 1886–1900). The suttas vary in length from one line to three or four pages, the majority of them being very short; and in them all those points of Buddhist doctrine capable of being expressed in classes are set out in order. This practically includes most of the psychology and ethics of Buddhism, and the details of its system of self-training. For it is a distinguishing mark of the Dialogues themselves, which form the first two of the Nikāyas, to arrange the results arrived at in carefully systematized groups. We are familiar enough in the West with similar groups, summed up in such phrases as the Seven Deadly Sins, the Ten Commandments, the Thirty-nine Articles, the Twelve Apostles, the Four Cardinal Virtues, the Seven Sacraments, and a host of others. These numbered lists are, it is true, going out of fashion. The aid which they afford to memory is no longer required in an age in which books of reference abound. It was precisely as a help to memory that they were found so useful in the early Buddhist days, when the books were all learnt by heart and had never yet been written. And in the Aṅguttara we find set out in order first all the units, then all the pairs, then all the trios, and so on up to the eleven

90 See Aṅguttara, v. 361; Sumaṅgala Vilāsinī, ed. Rhys Davids and Carpenter, London, 1886, p. 23; and Gandha Vaṃsa, p. 36. 91 Professor Edmund Hardy (Aṅguttara, Part 5, vi) makes the number ‘about 2344.’

36 qualities necessary to reach Nirvāṇa, the eleven mental habits the culture of which leads to the best life, or the eleven conditions precedent to a knowledge of human passion. The form, therefore, is conditioned by the necessities of the time. The matter also is influenced, to a large degree, by the same necessities. In a work that had to be learnt by heart it was not possible to have any reasoned argument, such as we should expect in a modern ethical treatise. The lists are curtly given, and sometimes curtly explained. But the explanations were mostly reserved for the oral comment of the teacher, and were handed down also by tradition. That traditional explanation has been preserved for us in the Manorotha Pūraṇī (‘wish-fulfiller’), written down, in Pāli, by Buddhaghosa in the 5th cent. A.D. This has not yet been published. The original book—for we must call it a book, though it is not a book in the modern sense of the word—was composed in North India by the early Buddhists shortly after the Buddha’s death. How soon after we do not know. And the question of its age can be adequately discussed only in connection with that of the age of the rest of the canonical works, which will be dealt with together in the article LITERATURE (Buddhist). LITERATURE.—An analysis of the contents of each sutta, in English, has been given by Edmund Hardy in vol. v. of his edition, pp. 371–416. A few suttas have been translated into English by H. C. Warren, Buddhism in Translations, Cambridge, Mass. 1896; and into German by K. E. Neumann, Buddhistiche Anthologie, Leyden, 1882.

APADĀNA APADĀNA.—The name of one of the books in the Pāli Canon. It contains 550 biographies of male members and 44) biographies of female members of the Buddhist Order in the time of the Buddha. The book is therefore a Buddhist Vitæ Sanctorum. It has not yet been edited, but copious extracts from the 40 biographies are given in Eduard Müller’s edition of the commentary on the Therī Gathā (PTS, 1893). One of those extracts (p. 135) mentions the Kathā Vatthu, and apparently refers to the book so named, which was composed by Tissa about the middle of the 3rd century B.C. If this be so, the Apadāna must be one of the very latest books in the Canon. Other considerations point to a similar conclusion. Thus the number of Buddhas previous to the historical Buddha is given in the Dīgha Nikāya as six; in later books, such as the Buddha Vaṃsa, it has increased to 24. But the Apadāna (see Ed. Müller’s article, ‘Les Apadānas du Sud’ in The Proceedings of the Oriental Congress at Geneva, 1894, p. 167) mentions eleven more, bringing the number up to thirty-five. It is very probable that the different legends contained in this collection are of different dates; but the above facts tend to show that they were brought together as we now have them after the date of the composition of most of the other books in the Canon. There exists a commentary on the Apadāna called the Visuddha-jana-vilāsī. In two passages of the Gandha Vaṃsa (JPTS, 1888), pp. 59, 69, the authorship of this commentary is ascribed to Buddhaghośa.

37 According to the Sumaṅgala Vilāsinī, p. 15 (cf. p. 23), the repeaters of the Dīgha maintained that the Apadāna had been included in the Abhidhamma Piṭaka, while the repeaters of the Majjhima said it was included in the Suttanta Piṭaka. This doubt as to its position in the Canon is another reason for placing the work at a comparatively late date. The word Apadāna means ‘pure action,’ ‘heroic action’; and each of the Apadānas gives us first the life of its hero or heroine in one or more previous births, with especial reference to the good actions that were the cause of his or her distinguished position among the early Buddhists. There then follows the account of his or her life now. An Apadāna therefore, like a Jātaka, has both a ‘story of the past’ and a ‘story of the p resent’; but it differs from a Jātaka in that the latter refers always to the past life of a Buddha, whereas an Apadāna deals usually, not always, with that of an Arhat (q.v.). When the Buddhists, in the first century of our era, began to write in Sanskrit, these stories lost none of their popularity. The name was Sanskritized into Avadāna; and several collections of Avadānas are extant in Sanskrit, or in Tibetan or Chinese translations. Of these the best known are the Avadāna-Sataka, or ‘The Century of Avadānas,’ edited (in part only as yet) by J. S. Speyer, and translated by Léon Feer; and the Divyāvadāna, edited by Cowell and Neil, not yet translated. As a general rule, these later books do not reproduce the stories in the older Apadāna. They write new ones, more in accordance, in spirit and implication, with the later doctrines then prevalent. Most of these Avadānas are on the lives of Arhats. But the main subject of the longest of all time Avadāna books, the Mahā-vastu-avadāna, is a series of the previous lives of the Buddha, though it also includes a few of the old Apadānas in new versions. Literature.—H. Oldenberg, Catalogue of Pāli MSS in the India Office Library (JPTS, 1882, p. 61); V. Fausböll, The Mandalay MSS in the India Office Library (JPTS, 1896, p. 27); Ed. Müller-Hess, Les Apadānas du Sud (Extrait des Actes du Xe Congrès des Orientalistes, Leyden, 1895); Sumaṅgal Vilāsanī, ed. Rhys Davids and Carpenter (PTS, 1886). vol. i. pp.15, 23; Avadāna-śataka, a Century of edifying Tales, ed. J. S. Speyer (St. Petersburg, parts 1–3. 1902–4), translated by Léon Feer in the Annales du Musée Guimet, Paris, 1891; Divyāvadāna ed. Cowell and Neil (Cambridge University Press, 1886); Mahāvastu, ed. E. Senart (3 vols, Paris, 1882–1897).

ANĀGATA VAṂSA ANĀGATA VAṂSA (‘Record of the Future’) —A Päli poem of 142 stanzas on the future Buddha, Metteyya. It is stated in the Gandha Vaṃsa (JPTS, 1886, p. 61) that it was written by Kassapa; and in the Sāsana Vaṃsa Dīpa (v. 1204) we are told that he was a poet who lived in the Chola country. We may probably conclude that he did not reside at Kañchipura, the Chola capital, as in that case the name Kañchipura, which would have suited the metre equally well, would probably have been put in the place of Chola- raṭṭha. The further statement (Gandha Vaṃsa, l.c.), that he also wrote the Buddha Vaṃsa, seems to be a mistake. And we know nothing either of his date or of the other books attributed to him. The poem has been edited for the Pāli Text Society by the late

38 Professor Minayeff (JPTS, 1886, pp. 33–53), with extracts from the commentary, which is by Upatissa (see Gandha Vaṃsa, p. 72). Of the latter writer also nothing is at present known, unless he be identical with the author of the Mahā Bodhi Vaṃsa who wrote in Ceylon about AD. 970.92 Our ignorance about the date of the Anāgata Vaṃsa is regrettable, as the question of the origin and growth of the belief held by the later Buddhists in this future Buddha, Metteyya, is important. As is well known, there are statements in the Nikāyas (e.g. Dīgha, II. 83, 144, 255) that future Buddhas would arise, but, with one exception, neither the Nikāyas nor any book in the Piṭakas mention Metteyya. His name occurs, it is true, in the concluding stanza of the Buddha Vaṃsa, but this is an addition by a later hand, and does not belong to the work itself. Neither is Metteyya mentioned in the Netti Pakaraṇa. The exception referred to is a passage in the 26th Dialogue of the Dīgha which records a prophecy, put into the Buddha’s mouth, that Metteyya would have thousands of followers where the Buddha himself had only hundreds. This passage is quoted in the Milinda (p. 159); but the Milinda does not refer anywhere else to Metteyya. In the Mahāvasatu (one of the earliest extant works in Buddhist Sanskrit) the legend is in full vogue. Metteyya is mentioned eleven times, two or three of the passages giving details about him. One of these agrees with the Anāgata Vaṃsa in its statement of the size of his city, Ketumatī (Mahāv. iii. 240=Anāg. Vaṃ. 8); but discrepancies exist between the others (Mahāv. iii. 246 and iii. 330 differ from Anāg. Vaṃ. 78 and 107). It is in this poem that we find the fullest and most complete account of the tradition, which evidently varied in different times and places. This is really conclusive as to the comparatively late date of the poem. In earlier times it was enough to say that future Buddhas would arise; then a few details, one after another, were invented about the immediately succeeding Buddha. When in the south of India the advancing wave of ritualism and mythology threatened to overwhelm the ancient simplicity of the faith, a despairing hope looked for the time of the next Buddha, and decked out his story with lavish completeness. Three points of importance are quite clear from the statements in this work. (1) There is little or nothing original in the tradition of which it is the main evidence. It is simply built up in strict imitation of the early forms of the Buddha legend, only names and numbers differing. But it is the old form, both of legend and of doctrine. (2) There is sufficient justification for the comparison between Metteyya and the Western idea of a Messiah. The ideas are, of course, not at all the same; but there are several points of analogy. The time of Metteyya is described as a Golden Age in which kings, ministers, and people will vie one with another in maintaining the reign of righteousness and the victory of the truth. It should be added, however, that the teachings of the future Buddha also, like that of every other Buddha, will suffer corruption, and pass away in time. (3) We can remove a misconception as to the meaning of the name. Metteyya Buddha does not mean ‘the Buddha of Love.’ Metteya is simply his gotra name, that is, the name of the gens to which his ancestors belonged—something like our family name. It is probably, like Gotama, a patronymic, and means ‘descendant of Mettayu.’ Another

92 Geiger, Mahāvaṃsa und Dīpavaṃsa, Leipzig, 1905, p. 88.

39 Metteyya, in the Sutta Nipāta, asks the Buddha questions, and is doubtless a historical person. We can admit only that whoever first used this as the family name of the future Buddha may very likely have associated, and probably did associate, it in his mind with the other word mettā, which means ‘love.’ It would only be one of those plays upon words which are so constantly met with in early Indian literature. The personal name of the future Buddha is given in the poem and elsewhere also, as Ajita, ‘unconquered’. The poem in one MS has the fuller title Anāgata Buddhassa Vaṇṇanā, ‘Record of the future Buddha’ (JPTS, 1886, p. 37). There is another work, quite different from the one here described, though the title is the same. It gives an account, apparently, in prose and verse, of ten future Buddhas, of whom Metteyya is one (ib. p. 39). This work is still unedited. LITERATURE.—H. C. Warren, Buddhism in Translations, Cambridge, Mass., 1896, pp. 481–486, has translated a summary of one recension of this work

Important Places in Buddhist History

BUDDHISM IN CEYLON CEYLON BUDDHISM.—According to the tradition handed down at Anurādhapura, Buddhism was introduced into Ceylon by a mission sent by Aśoka (q.v.) the Great. It will be convenient, after (1) discussing this story, to group the rest of the scanty historical material under the following heads: (2) the Order: its temporalities; (3) its literary activity; (4) the outward forms of the religion; (5) the religious life; (6) the Doctrine. 1. The introduction of Buddhism into Ceylon.—We have at least eight accounts, in extant historical works, of the way in which the island of Ceylon became Buddhist. Apart from a few unimportant details, the accounts agree, all of them being derived, directly or indirectly, from the now lost Mahāvaṃsa (see under LITERATURE [Buddhist]), or Great Chronicle, kept at the Great Minster in Anurādhapura. The lost Chronicle was written in Siṅhalese, with occasional mnemonic verses in Pāli, and our earliest extant authority is probably very little else than a reproduction of these verses. The later extant works give us, in varying degree and usually in Pāli, the gist also of the prose portion of the lost Chronicle. We have space only for the main features of the story as told in the oldest of th th our texts—the Dipavaṃsa and the Mahāvaṃsa, composed in the 4 and 5 centuries A.D. respectively.93 rd In the middle of the 3 cent. B.C., Tissa, the then king of Ceylon, though still a pagan, sent an embassy to Aśoka, the Buddhist emperor of India, soliciting his friendship.

93 For these works, see LITERATURE (Buddhist); and W. Geiger, Dīpavaṃsa und Mahāvaṃsa, Leipzig, 1905, for a detailed analysis of their relation to one another and to the other extant works.

40 The emperor sent him presents in return, recommended him to adopt the Buddhist faith, and afterwards sent his own son Mahinda (who had entered the Buddhist Order) as a missionary to Ceylon to convert the king. Mahinda, with his six companions, flew through the air, and alighted on Mount Missaka, the modern Mahintale, seven miles from Anurādhapura. There the king was hunting, and met the new-corners. Mahinda, after some conversation, discoursed to him on the ‘Elephant Trail’— a well-known simile (Majjhima, i. 175) in which the method to be followed in discovering a good teacher is compared with the method adopted by a hunter in following up an elephant trail; and incidentally a summary is given of the Buddha’s teaching. Well pleased with the discourse, the king was still more pleased to find that the missionary was the son of his ally Aśoka. He invited the party to the capital, and sent his chariot for them the next morning; but they declined it, and flew through the air. On hearing of their arrival in this miraculous way, the king went to meet them, conducted them to the palace, and provided them with food. After the meal, Mahinda addressed the ladies of the court on the Heavenly Mansions and the Four Truths. But the crowd grew too great for the hall. An adjournment was made to the park, and there, till sundown, Mahinda spoke to the multitude on the Wise Men and the Fools. On the next day the princess Anulā, with five hundred of her ladies, requested permission of the king to enter the Buddhist Order. The king asked Mahinda to receive them, but the missionary explained how for that purpose it was necessary, according to their rules, to have recourse to the Order of bhikkhunīs, and urged him to write to Atośa to send over his (Mahinda’s) sister Saṅghamittā, a profoundly learned member of the Order, with other bhikkhunīs. The people of the city, hearing of these events, thronged the gates of the palace to hear the new teacher. The king had the elephant stables cleansed and decorated as a meeting-hall, and there a discourse was addressed to the people on the uncertainty of life. For twenty-six days the mission remained at the capital expounding the new teaching, which was accepted by king and people. The king dispatched an embassy, under Ariṭṭha, to Aśoka, asking that Saṇghainittā should be sent over, and also a branch of the Wisdom Tree under which the Buddha had attained nirvāṇa. Both were sent, and received with great ceremony. The tree was planted in a garden at Anurādhpura (and there it still flourishes, an object of reverence to Buddhists throughout the world). A special residence was prepared for Saṇghamittā and presented to the Order, together with the garden in which it stood. The mast and rudder of the ship that brought her and the branch of the Wisdom Tree to Ceylon were placed there as trophies. The Mahāvaṃsa, in giving these details, adds (xix. 71) that through all the subsequent schisms the bhikkhunīs maintained their position there. That may have been so up to the date of the Chronicle. But the Sisterhood was never important in Ceylon, and is now all but extinct. A list has been preserved at the Great Minster (Mahāvaṃsa, xx. 20–25) of the buildings erected by King Tissa in support of his new faith. They were: (1)The Great Minster, close to the palace where the branch of the Wisdom Tree was planted; (2) the Chetiya Vihāra, Mahinda’s residence on Mt. Missaka; (3) the Great Stūpa (still standing); (4) the Vihāra close by it; (5) the Issara Samaṇa Vihāra (still in good preservation), a residence for brethren of good family;94 (6) the Vessa Giri Vihāra for brethren of ordinary birth; (7) the so-called First Stūpa; (8) and (9) residences for the Sisterhood; (10) and (11)

94 This regard paid to birth in assigning buildings to the Order is against the rules. Had the list been invented at a later period, it is scarcely possible that the distinction would have been made.

41 Vihāras at the port where the Wisdom Tree was landed, and at its first resting-place on the way to the capital.95 It is difficult, without fuller evidence, to decide how far the account, here given in abstract, is to be accepted. On the one hand, there are miraculous details that are incredible; and, the original document being lost, we have only reproductions of it some five or six centuries later in date. On the other hand, we know that the tradition was uninterrupted, i.e. the lost documents were extant when our authorities were composed; and such contemporary evidence as we have confirms the story in at least two of its main points. Aśoka’s own edicts claim that he sent missionaries to various countries, and among these he mentions Ceylon;96 and in a bas-relief on one of the carved gateways to the Śānchi Tope, which bears Aśoka’s crest (the peacock), we have a remarkable representation of a royal procession bearing reverently a branch of an assattha tree (the Wisdom Tree was an assattha) to some unmentioned destination.97 It is probable, indeed, that Buddhists had reached Ceylon from North India (the South was still pagan) before the time of King Tissa, and that the ground had been thereby prepared. It is quite possible, and indeed probable, that the formal conversion of the king and the declared adherence of the people were brought about by an official embassy from the ardent Buddhist who was also the powerful emperor of India. It is certain that Tissa was the first Buddhist king of Ceylon, and that it was in the middle of rd the 3 cent. B.C. that Buddhism became the predominant faith. It is needless to add that the then existing animism or paganism still survived, especially among the ignorant, whether rich or poor. It has been constantly in evidence, still exists throughout the island in the treatment of disease, and has been throughout the only religion of the Veddas. 2. The Order: its temporalities.—The evidence as to the numbers of the Order, and its possessions at any particular period, is both meagre and vague. The chronicles afford us little help. They give, it is true, quite a number of names of vihāras constructed or repaired by the kings and their courtiers. But it is only quite occasionally that the size of the residence or the extent of its property is referred to. The inscriptions are more instructive. The oldest date from about 235 B.C., and were cut by order of the niece of King Tissa himself, at a spot where the branch of the Wisdom Tree rested on its way from the seaport on the east coast to Anurādhapura. According to Parker (Ceylon, 420 ff.), this was No. 11 of the list (given above) of vihāras, etc., constructed by King Tissa; and it is most interesting to see what such a vihāra was. There is here a range, about 1½ miles long, of low-lying hills covered with rocks and boulders. The caves have been hollowed out, and had, no doubt, been plastered and painted. Apartments were also made under the boulders, by building walls against them and adding doors. Such apartments were intended for shelter and sleep. The ground outside is more or less levelled, and planted with palms and other trees. The grass, in their shade, commanding a wide view of hill and plain, furnishes what in that warm climate is almost an ideal class-room, sitting-room, and study. There was facility for cultured talk or solitude. A reservoir was constructed below to supply water to the

95 A full statement of all the authorities for each episode is given by Geiger, op. cit. 114–119. 96 Senart, Inscriptions de Piyadasi2, 1881–86, i. 64, 270. 97 See Rhys Davids, Buddhist India, 1903, p. 302, and pls. 52, 54, 55 for illustrations.

42 villagers, who, in their turn, were glad to provide the Brethren with sufficient food and clothing. In other instances the lands had been granted to the Order. Here we have no evidence of such a grant. There are about fifty inscriptions on the cave residences scattered over the hills. They give the name either of the resident Brother or of the ‘maker’ of the cave. In the latter case it is usually added that the cave is given to the Order as a whole. There are many hundreds of such hillside residences in Ceylon; but there is only one other place known to the present writer where so many are found together. That other is Mahintale. Here there is a three-peaked hill, several miles long. Each peak is crowned by a dāgaba. The ascent to a table-land between two of the peaks is assisted by a flight of nearly two thousand steps of granite, each 20 feet broad. Fā-Hien (Travels, tr. by Legge, 1886, p. 107) was told at the beginning of the 5th cent. that there were 2000 bhikkhus dwelling on the hill; and Tennent (Ceylon, ii. 604) says: ‘The rock in many places bears inscriptions recording the munificence of the sovereigns of Ceylon, and the ground is strewn with the fragments of broken carved-work and the debris of ruined buildings.’ An inscription, beautifully engraved on two slabs of polished stone standing at the top of the great staircase, is full of historical matter. It records rules to be observed by the residents in different parts of the hill in their relations toward each other, and in the management of the estates belonging to the Order there. We hear of a bursar, an almoner, a treasurer, an accountant, and other officials. Revenues from certain lands, and the offertory at certain shrines, were to be devoted respectively to the repair of certain buildings. Unfortunately, neither the extent of the lands nor the amount of the revenue is stated. An interesting point is that, whereas each repeater of the Vinaya (Rules of the Order) is to receive five measures of rice as the equivalent for food and robes, a repeater of the Suttas is to receive seven, and a repeater of the Abhidhamma twelve. The date of these rules is somewhat late—end of the 10th or beginning of the 11th cent.—but they are based on earlier regulations. They have been often translated. The best version is by M. Wickremasinghe, in Epigraphia Zeylanica, i. 98 ff.; but even there some of the most instructive passages are still obscure. Spence Hardy gives the number of bhikkhus in Ceylon in the middle of the 19th cent. as 2500 (Eastern Monachism, 57, 309); Fā-Hien (tr. Legge, ch. 38) gives the number in the beginning of the 5th cent. as twenty times as large. The proportion at the later date would be 1 to 1000 of the population, and at the earlier date the population must have been much larger. The actual number ascertained by the Census to be in Ceylon in 1901 was 7331, and these authentic figures throw considerable doubt on both the above estimates. The proportion of rice fields held by the Order to those held by the people seems to have been quite insignificant. The Brethren, with very rare exceptions, have been satisfied with rice for food and cotton clothes for raiment; and Tennent cannot be far wrong when he says (Ceylon, i. 351): ‘The vow of poverty, by which their order is bound, would seem to have been righteously observed.’ 3. The Order: its literary activity.—One of the main duties of the Brethren was the preservation of the literature. There were neither printers nor publishers. Any teacher who desired to make his views known had to gather round him a number of disciples sufficiently interested in the doctrine to learn by heart the paragraphs (Suttas) or verses

43 (Gāthās) in which it was expressed. They, in their turn, had to teach by repetition to others. Were the succession of teachers and pupils once broken, the doctrine was absolutely lost. This has frequently happened. We know the names, and the names only, of systems that have thus perished. Writing was indeed known, and short notes could be scratched on leaves. But materials for writing books were not invented in India or Ceylon st till the 1 cent. B.C., and were even then so unsatisfactory that the long-continued habit of recitation was still kept up.98 The books written on leaves tied together with string were most difficult to consult. There were no dictionaries or books of reference. Practically the whole of the material aids to our modern education were wanting. This may help to explain why, even as late as the 10th cent., we hear (see § 2) of repeaters of the sacred books. In transliterated editions of the size and type used by the Pāli Text Society these books would take more than 30 volumes of about 400 pages each. This literature was in a dead language, almost as foreign to the Siṇhalese as Pāli is to us. Elaborate explanations were required in their own language. These were recorded in books, and repeated in class, but not learnt by heart, as the grammar and dictionary were. In the 4th cent. the Siṅhalese began to use Pāli as the literary language, and soon afterwards these commentaries were re-written in that language. The whole of this literature, text and commentary, has been preserved for us by the untiring industry of the Order in Ceylon. This was possible only by a system so exacting that it left little opportunity for originality. Daily classes, attended for many years, with the constant appeal to authority, are not favorable to subsequent independence of thought. It was mainly in the larger vihāras (groups of residences) that these studies were carried on. In the smaller vihāras, scattered above the villages throughout the country, there was often only one Elder and two or three juniors, One or other of these had probably assumed the robes with a view to education rather than religion, intending to leave at a convenient opportunity (just as the youths in our Grammar Schools used to wear clerical garb). He would not be very keen to learn by heart the volumes of the Canon Law. After learning a little Pāli, he would be taught the poetry and easier prose literature of tile Suttas. Perhaps he would get interested, and desire to remain permanently; but this was the exception. Part of his duty would be to teach the boys and girls of the village to write Siṅhalese, with pointed sticks in the sand. If another of the juniors had joined for good, the Elder would have to give him quite a different training preparatory to his going up to the larger vihāras, which were a sort of university. There were both advantages and disadvantages in such a system, the latter predominating. The Order could not efficiently do what is now expected of Board School teachers, private tutors, Secondary School masters, and Professors, and at the same time act as annalists, record-keepers, librarians, and authors. Their difficulties were increased by the want of all modern mechanical aids, and not a little by incursions of barbarians, who, not seldom, burnt their books and buildings. The advantages of the system are seen in its results. The average intelligence of the Siṅhalese is high; and they alone, of all the semi-Aryan tribes in India, have succeeded in preserving for us a literature extending over two thousand years, and containing materials for the religious history both of India and Ceylon. For the bhikkhus found time not only to repeat the old Pāli books, but to

98 This curious (probably unique) state of things is discussed at length in the present writer’s Buddhist India, 120–140.

44 write a voluminous new literature of their own, in Siṅhalese and Pāli. Of this much has been lost, but much still survives.99 4. The Order: the outward forms of religion.—It is not possible as yet to say how far the religious life of the Order in Ceylon differed from that of the early Buddhists in India, as none of the Siṅhalese religious literature has so far been properly edited or translated. Spence Hardy has translated extracts, and, to judge from his specimens of the Questions of King Milinda, has not been very exact. But a beginning may be made, and first as to the outward forms of the faith. The Kaṭhina ceremony has nearly died out. In N. India100 it was a quaint and pretty affair. A layman or village offered to the bhikkhus resident in a certain locality enough cotton cloth to provide each of them with a new set of robes for the coming year. If, in chapter assembled, the offer was accepted, then a day was fixed, on which all the local bhikkhus had to be present, and to help, while the peasantry marked the cloth where it was to be cut to make the right number of robes, cut it, washed it, dyed it, dried it in the sun, sewed it together, with the requisite seams, gussets, etc., and offered to the senior bhikkhu the particular robe he chose. All this had to be completed in one day, or the gift was void. In Ceylon (S. Hardy, East. Mon. 121) the custom is sometimes extended to making also the cloth from the raw cotton on the same day. On this Tennent (Ceylon, i. 351) quotes Herodotus (ii. 122) as saying that the Egyptian priests held a yearly festival at which one of them was invested with a robe made in a single day; and also the Scandinavian myth of the Valkyries, who weave ‘the crimson web of war’ between the rising and the setting of the sun. This ceremony was carried out in India after the yearly season of retreat during the rains (Vassa). The Retreat was necessary in India, as the bhikkhus did not reside, as a rule, in particular spots, but wandered about teaching. This being impossible during the tropical rains of Northern India (from July to October), they went then into retreat. In Ceylon all this is changed. They retain the name (corrupted into Was) and apply it to the original months. These in Ceylon are, however, not rainy; the bhikkhus do not wander during the other nine months, and do not, as a rule, go into retreat. But they utilize the fine weather in Was to hold what we should call an open-air mission. ‘As there are no regular religious services at any other time, the peasantry make a special occasion of this. They erect under the palm bees a platform, often roofed but open at the sides, and ornamented with bright cloths and flowers. Round this they sit in the moonlight on the ground, and listen the night through to the sacred words repeated and expounded by relays of bhikkhus. They chat pleasantly now and again with their neighbors, and indulge all the while in the mild narcotic of the betel leaf.’101 No such missions were arranged by the early Buddhists. Conversation was the usual means of propaganda, though this lapsed fairly often into monologue, and there are a few cases of arrangements made for a single bhikkhu to address villagers.

99 As full an account of the Siṇhalese literature as is possible in the present state of our studies, with a complete bibliography, will be found in W. Geiger’s handbook, Litteratur und Sprache der Sinahalesen, Strassburg, 1900. 100 See Vinaya, i. 253 ff.; tr. in SBE xvii. 145 ff. 101 Rhys Davids, Buddhism22, p.58 (slightly changed). See also S. Hardy, East. Mon. 232 ff.

45 The ceremony of Upasampadā (Reception into the Order) has remained practically the same. But the authority empowered to conduct it has greatly changed. In the ancient days the basis of government in the Order was the locality. The bhikkhus in any one locality could meet in chapter, and decide any point. For ordination a chapter of five was required, presided over by an Elder of ten years’ seniority. The last kings of Ceylon gave the power to the Malwatte and Asgiri Vihāras at Kandy, thus taking the first step towards the substitution of a centralized hierarchy by the old union of independent republics. A new sect—the Amarapura—disputes the validity of this revolution.102 The same sect objects to another innovation in outward forms—the leaving of the right shoulder bare when adjusting the robe for ordinary use (S. Hardy, East. Mon. 115). There is a third, very small, sect—the Rāmanya—which also objects to these changes, and goes even further in its strict observance of the ancient rules than the Amarapura. 5. The religious life.—As regards the religious spirit of the Order in historical times in Ceylon, the amount of evidence is at present very slight. S. Hardy’s extracts from mediæval Ceylon books deal almost exclusively with the embellished accounts they give of Indian Buddhists. In the few cases of Ceylon Buddhists there seems to be but little difference. On one particular point, that of samādhi (‘concentration,’ often rendered ‘meditation’), the present writer has published a Ceylon text (the only text in the Siṇhalese language as yet edited in transliteration); and the introduction discusses the question as to how far the details differ from the corresponding details in Indian Buddhist books.103 We have in this manual nearly 3000 different exercises to be gone through in order to produce, one after the other, 112 ethical states arranged in ten groups. These deal respectively with joy, bliss, self-possession, impermanence, memory, planes of being, love, knowledge, the noble eightfold Path, and its goal, nirvāṇa. Some of the conceptions are of great ethical beauty; it is doubtful whether the suggested sequence is really of any practical value; most of the groups are found already in the Pāli Suttas, but there are slight variations in detail. A quaint addition is the association, in some of these exercises, of the five elements (earth, fire, water, wind, and space) with the ethical states under practice. This reminds one of the supposed association between color and sound; and it is not easy to see exactly what is meant. 6 The Doctrine.—Ceylon Buddhism, so far as regards the philosophy, the ethics, and the psychology on which the ethics are based, remains much the same as the Buddhism of the Indian Pāli texts. Details are sometimes a little different, but not in essential matters. These are amplified and systematized; occasionally new technical terms are added, or greater stress is laid on terms scarcely used in the Suttas. But the essentials, so far as our present evidence shows, remain the same. Buddhaghoṣa’s Path of Purity, the main authority for the ethics of the middle period, has not yet been published. The Abhidhammattha Saṅgaha (edited by the present writer in JPTS, 1884), the manual used by all bhikkhus in the study of philosophy, psychology, and ontology from the 12th cent. down to the present day, has not yet been translated. When these are available greater precision may be possible. It is far otherwise with the legendary material relating to persons, and especially to the Buddha. A comparison of the episodes quoted by S. Hardy from the Ceylon books

102 Oldenberg, Buddha5, 1907, p. 390 ff.; Dickson, JRAS, 1893, p. 159 ff. 103 ‘Yogāvacara’s Manual,’ PTS, 1896, p. xxviii ff.

46 shows a marked difference from the same episodes in the Indian books. The love of the Siṅhalese for the miraculous, for the art of the story-teller and the folk-lorist, has cast its glamour over them all. These mediæval Ceylon authors far outdistance Buddhaghoṣa, the Indian Buddhist, fond as he was of a story. But it is the same tendency, and we need not be surprised to find that it has grown stronger with the lapse of centuries. It results partly from a want of intellectual exactitude, partly from a craving for artistic literary finish. The mediæval literature was largely devoted to such tales, which we know only from Pāli versions such as the Rasa-vāhinī; there is quite a number of them buried in MSS in the Nevill collection in the British Museum. To sum up: there is no independence of thought in Ceylon Buddhism; and, as in most cases where a pagan country has adopted a higher faith from without, the latter has not had sufficient power to eradicate the previous animism. But Buddhism has had a great attraction for the better educated, and has led to remarkable literary results. The nation as a whole has undoubtedly suffered from the celibacy of many of the most able and earnest; but, on the other hand, there is very little crime, and in certain important particulars, such as caste and the position of women, Ceylon is in advance of other parts of our Indian empire, with the single exception of Burma, where the same causes have been at work and the same disadvantages felt. LITERATURE.—W. Geiger, Litteratur und Sprache der Singhalesen, Strassburg, 1900; M. Wickremasinghe, Cat. of Sinhalese MSS in the British Museum, London, 1900, and Epigraphia Zeylanica, Oxford, 1909; J. G. Smither, Archœological Remains, Anuradhapura, London, 1898; J. E. Tennent, Ceylon2, London, 1859; H. Parker, Ceylon, London, 1909; J. Forbes, Eleven Years in Ceylon, London, 1841; P. and F. Sarasin, Die Weddas von Ceylon, Wiesbaden, 1892; S. Hardy, Eastern Monachism, London, 1850, and Manual of Buddhism, London, 1860; R. Farrer, In Old Ceylon, London, 1908; D. J. Gogerly, Ceylon Buddhism, ed. Bishop, Colombo, 1908.

ANURĀDHAPURA ANURĀDHAPURA.—Anurādhapura was the capital of Ceylon for nearly 1500 years. It was founded, according to the tradition handed down in the earliest sources104, by a chieftain named Anurādha (so called after the constellation Anurādhā) in the 6th cent. B.C. on the bank of the Kadamba River. Nearly a century afterwards king Paṇḍukābhaya removed the capital, which had been at Upatissa, to Anurādhapura; and there it remained down to the reign of Aggabodhi IV in the 8th cent. A.D. It was again the capital in the 11th cent., and was then finally deserted. The name Anurādha as the name of a man fell out of use; and we find in a work of the 10th cent. (Mahābodhivaṃsa, p. 112) the name of the place explained as ‘the city of the happy people’ from Anurādha, ‘satisfaction.’ The Sinhalese peasantry of the present day habitually pronounce the name Anurāja-pura, and explain it as ‘the city of the ninety

104 Dīpavaṃsa, ix. 35; and Mahāvaṃsa, pp. 50, 56, 65.

47 kings,’ anu meaning ‘ninety,’ and rāja meaning ‘king.’ The ancient interpretation of the name—Anurādha’s city—is the only correct one. The second is little more than a play upon words, and the third is a Volksetymologie founded on a mistake. English writers on Ceylon often spell the name Anarajapoora, or Anoorajapura. The exact site of Anurādha’s settlement has not been re-discovered. Paṇḍukābhaya constructed the beautiful artificial lake, the Victoria Lake, Jaya Vāpi, more usually called, after the king’s own name (Abhaya, ‘sans peur’), the Abhaya Vāpi. It still exists, but in a half-ruined state, about two miles in circuit. Its southern shore is rather less than a mile north of the Bodhi Tree. It was on the shores of this lake that the king laid out his city, with its four suburbs, its cemetery, its special villages for huntsmen and scavengers, its temples to various pagan deities then worshipped, and residences for Jotiya (the engineer) and the other officials. There were also abodes for devotees of various sects—Jains, Ājīvikas, and others. North of all lay another artificial lake, the Gāmini Lake, also still existing, and now called the Vilān Lake. Apart from the two lakes, nothing has been discovered of the remains of what must have been even then, to judge from the description in the 10th chapter of the Great Chronicle, a considerable city. But the foundations of the fame and beauty of the place were laid by king Tissa (so called after the constellation Tissā), who flourished in the middle of the 3rd cent, B.C., and was therefore contemporary with the Buddhist emperor of India, Aśoka the Great. The friendship of these two monarchs, who never met, had momentous consequences. Tissa, with his nobles and people, embraced the Buddhist faith; and, no doubt in imitation of Aśoka, erected many beautiful buildings in support of his new religion. Those at Anurādhapura numbered ten,105 the most famous of them being the Thūpārāma, still, even in ruins, a beautiful and striking object. It is a solid dome, 70 feet high, rising from a decorated plinth in the center of a square terrace, and surrounded by a number of beautiful granite pillars in two rows. It is not known what these pillars were intended to support. It would seem to appear from Mahāvaṃsa, ch. xxxvi. (p. 232, ed. Turnour), that they supported a canopy over the tope; but it is difficult to see how that can have been done. Perhaps each of them had, as its capital, some symbol of the faith. Such pillars, surmounted by symbols, put up by Aśoka in various parts of India, still survive. But in that case they are always solitary pillars. Bold flights of steps led up to the terrace from the park-like enclosure in which it stood; and the dome was supposed to contain relics of the Buddha. It was, in fact, a magnificent, highly decorated, and finely placed burial mound. Another still existing building of this time is the Issara Muni Vihāra, a hermitage constructed by king Tissa on the side of a granite hill, for those of his nobles (issara) who entered the Buddhist Order. Naturally only the stonework has survived; but this includes caves cut in the solid rock, bas-reliefs on the face of the granite, two terraces (one half- way up, one on the top of the rock), a small but beautiful artificial tank, and a small dāgaba. It is a beautiful spot, and must have been a charming residence in the days of its glory. Of the rest of the ten buildings no remains have been found; and it is very doubtful whether any of Tissa’s enclosure round the Bodhi Tree has survived. The tree itself, now

105 Enumerated in the Mahāvaṃsa, ch. xx. p. 123 (ad. Turnour).

48 nearly 2200 years old, still survives. The soil has been heaped up round its base whenever it showed any signs of decay. Planted originally on a terrace raised but little above the level of the ground, it now springs up in three detached branches from the summit of a mound that has reached to the dimensions of a small hill, The tree planted by Tissa, a branch of the original Bodhi Tree at Gayā in India, was sent as a present by the Emperor Aśoka. The auspicious event was celebrated in two bas-reliefs on the eastern gateway of the Sānchi Tope,106 pro- bably put up by Aśoka himself.107 The capital was taken by the Tamils not long after Tissa’s death, and was re- captured, about a century afterwards, by Dushta Gāmini Abhaya, the hero of the Great Chronicle. He occupies in Ceylon tradition very much the place occupied in English history and legend by King Arthur. We have information about the buildings he erected in his capital. Undoubtedly the most splendid was the so-called Bronze Palace. This was built on a square platform supported by a thousand granite pillars, which still remain in situ. Each side of the square was 150 feet long. On the platform were erected nine storeys, each square in form and less than the one beneath it, and the total height from the platform was 150 feet. The general effect was therefore pyramidal, the greatest possible contrast to the dome-shaped dāgabas in the vicinity, just as the bronze tiles which covered it contrasted with the dazzling white of the polished chunam which formed the covering of the domes. The building was almost certainly made of wood throughout, and its cost is given in the Chronicle108 as 30 koṭis, equivalent in our money to about £300,000. The other great work of this kin was the Dāgaba of the Golden Sand; but this he did not live to complete. According to the Chronicle (ed. Turnour, p. 195), it cost one thousand koṭis, equivalent to a million sterling. It is still one of the monuments most revered by all Buddhists; and even in ruin it stood, in 1830, 189 feet above the platform on which it rests. Its Pāli name is usually simply Mahā Thūpa, ‘Great Tope,’ the name given above being a rendering of its distinctive title Hemavali in Pāli, Ruwan Wœli Dāgaba in Sinhalese. Five chapters in the Great Chronicle (ch. xxviii.–xxxii.) are devoted to a detailed account of the construction and dedication of this stūpa, and of the artistic embellishment of its central chamber, the relic chamber. This has never, it is believed, been disturbed; and as the exterior has, quite recently, been restored, there is now little chance of the historical secrets there buried being revealed. For some generations after these great events the city enjoyed peace. But in B.C. 109 the Tamils, with their vastly superior numbers, again broke in, and took Anurādhapura. It was not till B.C. 89 that the Sinhalese were able to issue from their fastnesses in the mountains, and drive the Tamils out. Their victorious leader, Waṭṭa Gāmini, celebrated the recovery of the capital by the erection of a still greater tope than all the former ones— the Abhaya Giri Dāgaba. This immense dome-shaped pile was 405 feet high from ground to summit, and built, except the relic chamber, of solid brick. Its ruin is still one of the landmarks of all the country round. The Vihāra attached to this tope, and built on the site of the garden residences given by Paṇḍukābhaya to the Jains, obtained notoriety from a

106 Reproduced in Rhys Davids’s Buddhist India, pp. 301–303 107 For fuller details see BODHI, where the question of the evolution and meaning of the Wisdom-Tree conception will be more appropriately treated. 108 Mahāvaṃsa, ch. xxvii

49 curious circumstance. The principal of the college, though appointed by, and a great favorite of, the king incurred censure at an ecclesiastical court composed mainly of residents at the older Vihāra, the Great Minster, close to the Bodhi Tree. There ensued a long continued rivalry between the two establishments, usually confined to personal questions, but occasionally branching off into matters of doctrine. For five centuries and more this rivalry had an important influence on the civil and religious history of the island. With the completion of these buildings, the city assumed very much the appearance which it preserved throughout its long history. The Chronicle records how subsequent kings repaired, added to, and beautified the existing monuments. It tells us also how they and their nobles built palaces for themselves and residences for the clergy. These have all completely vanished. The only new building of importance that still survives is the Jetavan Arāma, another huge dome-shaped pile, built about two miles due north of the Bodhi Tree at the beginning of the 4th cent. A.D. It is at the beginning of the next century that we have the earliest mention of Anurādhapura from outside sources. Fa Hian, the Buddhist pilgrim from China, stayed there for the two years A.D. 411–412. He gives a glowing account of its beauty, the grandeur of the public buildings and private residences, the magnificence of the processions, the culture of the Bhikshus, and the piety of the king and people. The reason for Fa Hian’s long stay in the city was his desire to study and to obtain copies, on palm leaf, of the books studied. For Anurādhapura was at that time the seat of a great university rivalling in the South the fame, in the North of India, of the University of Nālandā on the banks of the Ganges. Among the laity, law, medicine, astrology, irrigation, poetry, and literature were the main subjects. The Bhikshus handed down from teacher to pupil the words of the sacred books preserved in Pāli, to them a dead language, and the substance of the commentaries upon them, exegetical, historical, and philological, preserved I their own tongue. They had handbooks and the study of the grammar and lexicography of Pāli; of the ethics, psychology, and philosophy of their sacred books; and of the problems in canon law arising out of the interpretation of the Rules of the Order. And they found time to take a considerable interest in folklore and popular and ballad literature, much of which has been preserved to us by their indefatigable and self-denying industry. All this involved not only method, but much intellectual effort. Students flocked to the great center of learning, not only from all parts of the island, but from South India, and occasionally from the far North. Of the latter the most famous was the great commentator, Buddhaghośa (q.v.) who came from Gayā, in Behar, to get the information he could not obtain in the North. For there, in that beautiful land, the most fruitful of any in India or its confines in continuous and successful literary work and effort, there have never been wanting, from Asoka’s time to our own, the requisite number of earnest and devoted teachers and students to keep alive, and to hand down to their successors and to us, that invaluable literature which has taught us so much of the history of religion, not only in Ceylon, but also in India Itself.’109

109 Buddhist India, pp. 303, 304.

50 The Chroniclers were not, therefore, very far wrong in emphasizing this side of the life of Anurādhapura. To it the city owed the most magnificent and the most abiding of its monuments, in historical value only by its intellectual achievements. When Buddhaghośa was in Ceylon, the water supply of the city was being re- organized. The artificial lakes in the vicinity, which added so much to its beauty, were found insufficient; and King Dhātu Sena, in A.D. 450, constructed, 60 miles away, the great reservoir called the Black Lake (Kāla Vāpi). The giant arms of its embankment still stretch for 14 miles through the forest. It was 50 miles in circumference; and the canals for irrigation on the route, and for conducting the water to the capital, are still in fair preservation. A breach in the bank has lately been restored at great expense. This reservoir was, no doubt, at the time of its construction, the most stupendous irrigation scheme in the world. This was the last great work undertaken at Anurādhapura. There ensued a series of dynastic intrigues and civil wars of a character similar to the Wars of the Roses in England. Each party fell into the habit of appealing for help to the Tamils on the mainland, whither the defeated were wont to flee for refuge. The northern part of the island, in which Anurādhapura lay, became more and more overrun with Tamil freebooters and free lances, more and more difficult to defend. Finally, in A.D. 750, it was abandoned as the seat of government., which was established at Pulastipura, under the shelter of the Southern hills. Anurādhapura fell into the hands now of one party, now of another. For a brief interval in the 11th cent., it claimed, under a Sinhalese pretender, supported by Tamil forces, to be again the capital. But the pretender was driven out, and the city reverted to the Pulastipura government. Finally, at what date is not exactly known, but probably about A.D. 1300, the whole district, stretching across the island, from 50 miles north to 50 miles south of Anurādhapura, became a kind of no man’s land, and relapsed rapidly into jungle. Neither the Tamil kings of Jaffna, in the north, nor the Sinhalese kings in the south, were able to exercise any real sovereignty over it. The once beautiful and populous city dwindled away to a few huts round the Bodhi Tree, now left in the charge of two or three solitary monks, The earliest notice of the ruins receive in Europe was in Knox’s Historical Relation of the Island of Ceylon (1681), iv. 10. Held a captive for twenty years in the mountains, Knox escaped in 1679 through the jungle round Anurādhapura, and his naïve words vividly portray the utter desolation of the place. ‘Here is a world of hewn stone pillars, standing upright, and other hewn stones, which I suppose formerly were buildings. In three or four places are ruins of bridges built of stone, some remains of them yet standing on stone pillars. In many places are points built out into the water, like wharfs, which I suppose have been built for kings to sit upon for pleasure.’ The English Government has now made good roads, and a railway has been opened through to Jaffna. Several officials are resident at the station, and a settlement is growing up. For some distance round this settlement the undergrowth has been cut away, and there is now grass growing under spreading trees. The ruins are being cleared, and some of them preserved from further injury; and some excavation has been carried out. LITERATURE—Mahāvaṃsa, ed. George Tumour, Colombo, 1837; Dipavaṃsa, ed. Hermann Oldenberg London, 1879; Sir J. E. Tennent, Ceylon, London, 1859; W.

51 Knighton, History of Ceylon, Colombo, 1845; Mahā-bodhivaṃsa, ed. S. A. Strong, Pāli Text Society 1891; Fa Hian, translated by J. Legge, Oxford, 1886; T. W. Rhys Davids, Buddhist India, London, 1903; Ceylon Archeological Reports, Colombo, 1868–1907; H. W. Cave, Ruined Cities of Ceylon, new ed., London, 1900; Don M. de Zilva Wickramasinghe, Epigraphia Zeylanica, pts. i.–iii., London 1904–1907; Robert Knox, Historical Relation of the Island of Ceylon (1681), 2nd ed., London, 1817.

ABHAYAGIRI ABHAYAGIRI.—Name of a celebrated monastery at Anurādhapura, the ancient capital of Ceylon. Giri means ‘mountain’, and Abhaya was one of the names of King Vaṭṭa Gamini, who erected the monastery close to the stūpa, or solid dome-like structure built over supposed relics of the Buddha. It was this stūpa that was called a mountain or hill, and the simile was not extravagant, as the stūpa was nearly the height of St. Paul’s, and its ruins are still one of the sights of Anurādhapura. There was considerable rivalry from the outset between the monks at this establishment and those at the much older Mahā Vihāra (the Great Minster), founded 217 years earlier. The rivalry was mainly personal, but developed into differences of doctrinal opinion. Of the nature of these latter we have no exact information, and they were probably not of much importance. On one occasion, in the reign of Mahāsena (A.D. 275–302), the Great Minster was abolished, and its materials removed to the Abhayagiri. But the former was soon afterwards restored to its previous position, and throughout the long history of Ceylon maintained its pre- eminence. LITERATURE—H. W. Cave, Ruined Cities of Ceylon, London, 1900, pp. 91–93, with plates.

ADAM’S PEAK ADAM’S PEAK.—This is the English name, adopted from the Portuguese, of a lofty mountain in Ceylon, called in Sinhalese Samanala, and in Pāli Samanta-kūṭa or Sumana- kūṭa. It rises directly from the plains, at the extreme southwest corner of the central mountainous district, to a height of 7420 feet. The panorama from the summit is one of the grandest in the world, as few other mountains, though surpassing it in altitude, present the same unobstructed view over land and sea. But the peak is best known as a place of pilgrimage to the depression in the rock at its summit, which is supposed to resemble a man’s footprint, and is explained by pilgrims of different religions in different ways. It is a most remarkable, and probably unique, sight to see a group of pilgrims gazing solemnly at the depression, one quite undisturbed in his faith by the knowledge that the pilgrim next to him holds a divergent view—the Buddhist thinking it to be the footprint of the Buddha, the Śaivite regarding it as the footprint of Śiva, the Christian holding it to be the

52 footprint of St. Thomas, or perhaps admitting the conflicting claims of the eunuch of Queen Candace, and the Muhammadan thinking he beholds the footprint of Adam. The origin of these curious beliefs is at present obscure. None of them can be traced back to its real source, and even in the case of the Buddhist belief, about which we know most, we are left to conjecture in the last, or first, steps. The earliest mention of the Buddhist belief is in the Samanta Pāsādikā, a commentary on the Buddhist Canon Law written by Buddhaghosa in the first quarter of the 5th cent. A.D. This work has not yet been published, but the passage is quoted in full, in the original Pāli, by Skeen (pp. 50, 51). It runs as follows: ‘The Exalted One, in the eighth year after (his attainment of) Wisdom, came attended by five hundred Bhikshus on the Invitation of Maniakkha, king of the Nāgas, to Ceylon; took the meal (to which he had been invited), seated the while in the Ratana Maṇḍapa (Gem Pavilion) put up on the spot where the Kalyāni Dāgaba (afterwards) stood, and making his footprint visible on Samanta Kūta, went back (to India).’ Seeing that Adam’s Peak is a hundred miles away from the Kalyana Dāgaba, the clause about Adam’s Peak seems abrupt, and looks as if it had been inserted Into an older story written originally without it. But it is good evidence that the belief in the Adam’s Peak legend was current at Anurādhapura when the passage quoted was written there about A.D. 425. The whole context of the passage is known to have been drawn from a history of Ceylon in Sinhalese prose with mnemonic verses in Pāli.110 Those verses were collected in the still extant work, the Dipavaṃsa, written probably in the previous century. That work (ii. 62–69) gives the account of the Buddha’s visit to Maniakkha. It mentions nothing about Adam’s Peak. Ought we to conclude that the legend arose between the dates of the two works? Probably not. The argument ex silentio is always weak; and in another passage of the Samanta Pāsādikā, where this visit of the Buddha is mentioned,111 nothing is said about Adam’Peak. Neither can it be an interpolation; for In the Mahavaṃsa (1. 78, p. 7), written about half a century later112 also at Anurādhapura and also on the basis of the lost Sinhalese history, the Adam’s Peak legend is referred to in almost identical words and in the same abrupt manner. If, then, the few words about Adam’s Peak and the footprint have been inserted in a previous story, they must have been so inserted already in the lost Sinhalese Mahavaṃsa. It seems curious that we hear no more of the legend, or of pilgrimages to the footprint, for many hundred years. Then in the continuation of the Mahavaṃsa (ch. 64, line 30) the footprint is curtly mentioned in a list of sacred objects; and again (ch. 80, line 24), King Kitti Nissaṅka, A.D. 1187–1196, is said to have made a pilgrimage to Samanta-kūta. But as much of the literature of the intervening period has been destroyed, and as what survives is still buried in MS., this should not be deemed so surprising as it looks at first sight. It should perhaps be added that the local tradition, which the present writer heard when a magistrate in the adjoining district of Sītāwaka, was that the footprint was discovered by King Walagam Bāhu (B.C. 88–76) during his exile in the southern mountains in the early years of his reign. But we have found no literary record of this. It remains to say with regard to the Pāli evidence, that there is a poem called the Samanta-kūṭa vaṇṇanā, written at an uncertain date, and probably by an author Wideha (who also wrote a popular

110 Geiger, Mahavaṃsa und Dipavaṃsa (Leipzig, 1905), p. 78. 111 Printed In Oldenberg, Vinaya Piṭaka, vol iii. p. 332. 112 Sir E. Tennent, Ceylon, ii. 133, dates it ‘prior to B.C. 301’!

53 collection of stories in Pāli, and an elementary grammar in Sinhalese), who seems more careful of little correctnesses and little elegances than of more important matters.113 This work contributes nothing of value to the present question. Pa Hian, who visited Ceylon about A.D. 412, mentions the footprint; and Sir Emerson Tennent (Ceylon, i. pp. 584–586) gives, on the very excellent authority of the late Mr. Wylie, quotations from three mediaeval Chinese geographers who speak reverentially of the sacred footmark impressed on Adam’s Peak by the first man, who bears, in their mythology, the name of Pawn-ku. It would seem probable that these geographers may have derived this idea from the Muhammadans. For there were large settlements of Arabs, or at least Muhammadans, in China, before they wrote; the Arab traders were rightly regarded as good authorities in matters relating to foreign countries, and they had already the idea of connecting the footprint with Adam. This idea has been traced back in Arab writers to the middle of the 9th cent.,114 and occurs frequently afterwards. Ibn Batūta, for instance, who saw the footprint of Moses at Damascus, gives a long account of his visit to the footprint of Adam on Adam’s Peak. Whence did they derive the belief? Sir Emerson Tennent (vol. i. p. 135) is confident that it must have been from Gnostic Christians. His combination is, shortly, as follows. It is well known that the Muslims regard Adam in a peculiarly mystic way, not only as the greatest of all patriarchs and prophets, but as the first vice-regent of God. This idea is neither Arabian nor Jewish; but the Gnostics, with whom the early Muhammadans were in close contact, rank Adam as the third emanation of God and assign him a singular pre-eminence as Jeu, the primal man. Now they also say, as recorded in the Pistis Sophia,115 that God appointed a certain spirit as guardian of his footprint; and in Philo Judæus, in his pretended abstract of Sanchoniathon, there is also reference to the footstep of Bauth (? Buddha) visible In Ceylon. So far Sir Emerson Tennent; and we will only say that now, when so much more is known of the Pistis Sophia and Philo Judæus, it is desirable that these curious coincidences should be examined by a competent scholar. The evidence as to the Śaivite belief is much later. Ibn Batūta (circa 1340) mentions that four Jogis who went with him to the Peak had been wont yearly to make pilgrimage to it; and the Pœrakum Bā Sirita (Parakkama Bāhu Charita), which is about a century later, mentions a Brahman returning from a pilgrimage to Samanala, the Sinhalese name of the Peak. But neither of these authorities says that the footprint was Śiva’s; and indeed the latter says that the deity of the spot was Sumana. But in the Mahavaṃsa (ch. 93 8ff) it is stated that King Rāja Siṅha of Sītāwaka (A.D. 1581–1592) granted the revenues of the Peak to certain Śaivite ascetics. Rāja Siṅha had slain his father with his own hand; the Bhikshus had declared they would not absolve him of the crime; the ascetics said they could; so he smeared his body with ashes and adopted their faith, that of Śiva. The sanna or grant, issued by King Kīrti Śri of Kandy in 1751, making a renewed grant to the

113 James D’Alwls, Sidat Saṅgarawa, p. clxxxiii., puts him In the 14th cent.; Wijesinhe, Sinhaleae Manuscripts m the British Museum p. xvii, in the 13th century. This may be the same as the Sumana- kūṭa-vaṇṇanā assigned at p. 72 of the Gandha Vaṃsa (JPTS, 1886) to Vācissara, who belongs to the 12th cent. A.D. 114 Reinaud, Voyages Arabes et Persans dans la ixme siècle, vol. i. p. 5f. It is also found in Tabarī. 115 Schwartze’s translation, p.221.

54 Buddhist Bhikshu at the Peak, calls these Śaivite faqirs Āṇḍiyas.116 Possibly the Śaivite tradition may date from this event. But it may also be somewhat older. In the Thatchana Kailāsa Mānmiyam, a Tamil legendary work on Trinkomali, it is said that rivers flow from the Peak out of Śiva’s foot there. The date of this little work is unknown, and the present writer has seen only the extract given by Skeen (p. 295). Whatever opinion they hold about the footprint, both Tamils and Sinhalese consider the deity of the place to be Saman Dewiyo, as he is called in Sinhalese, or Sumana (also Samanta) as he is called in Pāli. His shrine still stands on the topmost peak just beneath the pavilion over the footprint, and his image has been reproduced by Skeen (p. 258). Skeen also gives (p. 206) a ground plan and woodcut of the buildings on the Peak in 1880; Tennent (ii. 140) gives a ground plan and woodcut of them as they appeared in 1858; and Dr. Rost, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1903, p. 656, gives two woodcuts, one of the upper pavilion and one of the footmark. On the little rock plateau at the top of the mountain—it is only about 50 by 30 ft.—there is the boulder on the top of which is the footprint covered by a pavilion, the shrine of Saman Dewiyo, a shrine containing a small image of the Buddha recently erected, and a hut of wood and plaster work occupied by Buddhist Bhikshus. The four who were there when Rost visited the Peak told him that they had not been down from the mountain for four years. They complained of the cold, but said that otherwise they were quite contented, and had much time for study, and showed him their palm- leaf books. Rost says that the depression in the rock is now 5½ ft. long by 2¾ ft. broad, and that the heel of the footprint is well preserved, but the toes are not visible, being covered by the wail of the pavilion. LITERATURE.—Tennent and Rost as cited above, and William Skeen, Adam’s Peak, Colombo, 1880.

KANDY KANDY.—Kandy is a small modern town in Ceylon, beautifully situated on the border of a lake in a plain about 1718 ft. above sea level, and about 75 miles nearly N.W. of Colombo. The mountains, 2000 to 4000 ft. higher, rise around it; and in the Sinhalese time the town was difficult to approach, being surrounded by thick jungle. It was the residence of the kings of Ceylon from 1592 to 1798. During this period the kingdom of Ceylon had reached the lowest depth of disorder and decay. Half its territory was lost; and the half still remaining was harassed by frequent civil wars between rival claimants to the throne; and, when one or other of these claimants succeeded in gaining the upper hand over his rivals, there were recurring struggles against outside enemies—Tamils, Portuguese, Dutch, and, finally, English. These rival claimants to the throne were not Sinhalese but South Indians by blood, and by religion, though nominally Buddhist were at heart Hindus. They built four Devālas, Hindu temples, in the town.

116 A full translation of the Sanna is given by Skeen. See p. 299.

55 Knox unfortunately gives no description of Kandy. But we have a good one by John Pybus, who was there in l762. It is preserved in Account of Mr. Pybus’s Mission to the King of Kandy, re-printed from the Madras Government records by the Government printer in Ceylon in 1862. We read there (p. 35) that the town then consisted of two main streets (the one running north and south being about a mile long) and several cross streets. Only a few of the houses were tiled. The streets were not lit; but about 8 o’clock a bell was rung along them, and after that no one was allowed abroad unless he carried a large light in his hand. The Palace was a rambling pile to the south of these streets with a large garden in front of it. This is confirmed by J. Forbes,117 but in his time the lake which Pybus does not mention had been constructed ‘by the late king’ Rāja Siñha in 1807. J. E. Tennent, writing about 30 years later,118 describes the modern European town, and the wonderful road to it up the Kadugannāwa Pass. It is now a prosperous little place of about 25,000 inhabitants, with a busy railway station, and many villas on the slopes of the surrounding hills. The English name, Kandy, is a corruption of the old name, not of the town, but of the county or province in which it was situated. This was Kanda-uda (‘Up in the Hills’). The Sinhalese name of the town was Senkada-gala-nuwara. Besides the four Hindu temples there are two small vihāras, or residences for members of the Buddhist Order, named respectively Asgiriya and Malwatte Vihāra. No one, according to a regulation issued, in defiance of the old Vinaya (the Rules of the Order), by the Sinhalese court, can be received into the Order except at a chapter held at one or other of these vihāras119 There is also the well-known Daladā Maligāwa, a pretty little building containing the supposed tooth of the Buddha—really not a human tooth at all, but possibly the tooth of some pre-historic animal. The history of this supposed relic is long and complicated , and has been the subject of various writings. In the 13th cent. Dhamma-kitti wrote a Pāli poem about it based on an older Sinhalese work in prose.120 According to the tradition preserved in this poem, the tooth was brought to Ceylon in the 4th cent. of our era, and had remained there up to the time when the poem, the Dāṭhā Vaṃsa, was written. According to Portuguese accounts quoted by Tennent (loc. cit.), the Portuguese captured the tooth, pound it to powder, and threw the powder into the harbour at Goa. The Sinhalese say that the tooth thus destroyed was a Hindu relic seized by the Portuguese in the Tamil country at Jaffna, and that the Buddhist relic now in Kandy is identical with the one whose history was written by Dhamma-kitti. Kandy was taken by the English in 1815, and the king of Kandy was deported to Vellore in S. India, where he subsequently died. LITERATURE—The authorities are given in the article.

117 Eleven Years in Ceylon2 [1827–38], London, 1841, i. 299– 301. 118 Ceylon2, London, 1859, ii. 194–221. 119 See Forbes, op. cit. i. 299. 120 Edited by the present writer in Roman characters in JPTS, 1884.

56 LUMBINĪ LUMBINĪ—A pleasaunce, or small wood, mentioned in Pāli records as the birthplace of the Buddha. It is now occupied by the shrine of Rummindēī in Nepal, approximately in 83° 20’ E. long., 27° 29’ N. lat., about four miles north of the frontier between the British possessions and the Nepalese Tarai, and half a mile west of the river Tilār.121 The references to it so far traced in the N. Indian Pāi books are only three. One is in an old ballad, containing the prophecy of the aged Asita about the infant Buddha, this Asita story being the Buddhist counterpart of the Christian story of Simeon. The ballad is certainly one of the very oldest extant Buddhist documents, and must be earlier than 400 B.C. It is now included in the anthology called the Sutta Nipāta, and it states at verse 683 that the child was born in the village of Lumbinī (Lumbineyye gāme). The other two rd references are in the Kathā Vatthu, composed in the middle of the 3 cent. B.C. by Tissa, son of Moggali. In that work (ed. A. C. Taylor for PTS, London, 1894–97, pp. 97 and 559) it is stated ‘the Exalted One was born at Lumbinī (Lumbiniyā jāto). Our next information is the inscription found on a pillar in Dec. 1896. The pillar had been known for years to be standing at the foot of the small hill on which the tiny shrine is situated, but the fact that the graffiti on the exposed part of it were mediæval and unimportant, combined with the difficulties resulting from its being in foreign territory, caused it to be neglected until 1896. When it was then uncovered, the top of an inscription was discovered three feet beneath the soil. The inscription is in old Pāli letters, and in a dialect which the present writer would call Kosalī—a dialect so nearly allied to the literary Pāli of the canon that other scholars prefer to call it Pāli. The translation is as follows: ‘The beloved of the gods, King Piyadasi (that is, Aśoka), has cone in person and paid reverence; and to celebrate the fact that the Buddha, the Sākiya sage, was born here, has had a stone horse (?) made and put up on a stone pillar; and because the Honourable One was born here has remitted the tax of one- eighth on Lumbini village (that is, parish).’ There are slight differences in the translations by various other scholars, but not as to the double insistence on the fact that the Buddha was born at the spot where the pillar was erected.122 The letters are beautifully clear, each being nearly an inch in height. When the present writer made a copy of them in 1900, though they had then been three years exposed to the light, they seemed almost as if freshly cut. In the dim light of the cell above, containing the shrine, can be discerned a bas-relief representing the birth-scene. But the Brāhman who claims the right to the petty income arising from the pence of the peasantry refuses any proper examination of it. So far as a cursory inspection permits of a decision, it seems to be much later than the inscription. A legend in the Divyāvadāna123 purports to give the conversation between Aśoka and his guide Upagupta on the occasion of the visit recorded in the inscription. Perhaps

121 See V. A. Smith, in JRAS, 1902, p 143. 122 See A. Führer, Buddha Sakyamuni’s Birthplace, Allāhābād, 1907; G. Bühler, in Epigraphia Indica, v. [1898]; R. Pischel, SBAW, 1908, p. 724 ff.; A. Barth, Journal des Savants, 1897, p. 73. 123 Ed. E. B. Cowell and R. A. Neil, Cambridge, 1886, p. 389.

57 the tradition that Upagupta, very possibly another name of the author of the Kathā Vatthu, accompanied him is historical. The work in question is in Buddhist Sanskrit; and, though its date is unknown, it must be at least five centuries later than Aśoka, who spoke, of course, the language of his inscription, and would not have understood the words here put into his mouth. Still later are certain references in the Pāli commentaries written at Kāñchīpuram124 or Anurādhapura125 (qq.v.). In order to explain how the birth took place in a grove, they say that the mother, on the way to be delivered among her own people, was taken with the pains of delivery half-way between Kapilavatthu, her husband’s home, and Devadaha, her father’s home. This is quite probable; but, on the other hand, it may have been suggested by the meagre facts recorded in the ancient books. Neither the Buddhist Sanskrit writers nor the Pāli commentators could have understood the long-buried inscription, even had they known of its existence. It is very interesting to see that this spot, so deeply revered by all Buddhists, should have retained its original name through so many centuries of neglect and desertion. Watters says that ‘according to some accounts’ it had been named Lumbinī after a great Koliyan lady who had dedicated it to public use.126 This is quite probable. There are other instances of a similar kind; but, unfortunately, Watters gives neither name nor date of any of the Chinese books to which he refers. But we know that both Sākiyas and Koliyas found difficulty in pronouncing the trilled r. Perhaps this was true of all Kosala. The inscription at Lumbinī, for instance, has lāja for rāja; and Lumbinī itself is often written in Pāli MSS with a dotted L, which may represent an untrilled r. Thus Rummindēī stands for Lumbinī Devi, the goddess of Lumbinī. But that goddess was not really a goddess at all, nor even Lumbinī, but only the mother of the Buddha. We have no evidence as to when or how the transformation took place. And in face of the stubborn opposition of the Nepālese Government, and of the Brāhman who has taken possession of the shrine, there is very little hope of any further excavation at the site to throw light on this question, or to explain the divergent statements of Chinese writers as to what they saw at the place.127 LITERATURE.—See the sources cited in the article, and cf. also art. KAPILAVASTU.

124 Com. on Tharigāthā, p. 1. 125 Majjhima Com., JRAS. 1895, p. 767; Jātaka Com. i. 52, 54. 126 T. Watters, On Yuan Chwang’s Travels in India, ed. T. W. Rhys Davids and S. W. Bushell, London, 1906, ii. 15. 127 Watters, op. cit.

58 BHĪLSA BHĪLSA.—Bhīlsa is the name of a village in Central India. The name has been applied by Cunningham in the title of his book, The Bhilsa Topes, to the whole district, about 240 N. by 770 E., in which the village is situated. It is a hilly, well- watered district of considerable natural beauty. Cunningham, for instance (p. 320), speaking of the Satdhāra Hill, says: ‘The hill on which the tope stands forms here a perpendicular cliff, beneath which flows the Besāli river through a deep rocky glen. The view up the river is one of the most beautiful I have seen in India.’ He then describes the view; and has similar remarks (p. 342) on the beauty of the view from the Andherī Hill. As the principal summit was called Chetiya-Giri, ‘the Shrine Hill’ (Mahāvaṃsa, xiii 5), and Chetiya is used of pre-Buddhistic shrines, it was probably already, before the Buddhist movement, the site of one of those sacred places on the hill- tops where tribal festivals used to be held. If that be so, this may have been one of the reasons which led the Buddhists to choose the peak as the site of their hermitages, and of their religious and educational establishments. This main summit is now called Sānchī (q.v.). Remains have also been found at Sonāri, Satdhāra, Bhojpur, and Andhēr. At Sonāri there are two large square terraces, one on the top of the hill, the sides of which are each 240 ft. in length, and one a little lower down, the sides of which are 165 ft. in length. The center of the larger terrace was occupied by a solid hemi-spherical dome, or tope, 48 ft. in diameter, rising from a cylindrical plinth 4 ft. in height. At the height of about 30 ft. the top of the dome was level and surrounded by a stone railing now broken away. The remains of it were found by Cunningham at the foot of the dome. Cunningham sank a shaft down the center of the dome but found nothing. The original height, including that of the ornamental structure which occupied the center of the levelled space at the top of the dome, must have been about 50 feet. Outside the S.W. corner of this square terrace on which the dome stood was a solid square pile of masonry, level at the top, from 12 to 15 ft. high according to the undulations of the ground, and measuring 36 ft. along each side. A flight of steps 4½ ft. wide leads from the hillside to the summit. This was evidently the site for a building of some sort, no doubt constructed entirely of wood, as nothing remains to show for what purpose it was intended. Round the foot of the dome ran a paved processional pathway enclosed by a carved stone railing, with gates at the four cardinal points. Both this and the railing round the top were of white stone brought from a distance. The tope itself was built of the claret-colored stone found on the Sonāri Hill. There are short dedicatory inscriptions on portions of the lower railing, cut in Pāli characters of approximately the rd 3 cent. B.C., giving the names of the donors of those portions. The dome which occupied the lower terrace of 165 ft. square was of a slightly different construction. It was solid like the other, built of stone without mortar, 27½ ft. in diameter, rising from a plinth 4½ ft. in height, the plinth resting on a cylindrical foundation 12 ft. high. The level top of this foundation was reached by a fine double flight of steps, 20 ft. in breadth, leading on to a circular pathway, 6 ft. broad, running all round the dome. The height of the whole had been about 40 ft. from terrace to summit. There was no trace of any stone railing. On a shaft being sunk down the center of the dome five relic-caskets were found, each inscribed with the name of the person of whose

59 funeral pyre portions were enclosed in the casket. Two of these are names of missionaries who, according to the chronicles (Dīpavaṃsa, viii. 10, and Mahāvaṃsa, xii. 42), were sent to the Himalaya regions after the close of the Council at Patna, held in B.C. 254. The discovery of these names was of the utmost importance for the criticism of the Buddhist chronicles written in Ceylon. They are given in the inscriptions as those of missionaries to the Himālaya. Some centuries afterwards they are found in the chronicles in the list of the missions sent out, as those of the men who were sent to the Himālaya. The inscriptions, buried in Northern India, were, of course, unknown in Ceylon. The traditions handed down in the island were sufficiently well guarded to have preserved these details accurately throughout this long interval of time. Besides these two great topes, there were on the top of the Sonāri Hill six smaller ones arranged in two rows to the south-east of the larger terrace. These had all been opened before Cunningham’s visit in 1852, and he found nothing in them. On the Satdhāra Hill, three miles across the valley from Sonāri, there are seven topes remaining on as many terraces. The largest of these solid domes was no less than 101 ft. in diameter, and its height must have been approximately 75 feet. Nothing was found in it. There were three of the solid basements, such as the one found at Sonāri, on which must have stood other buildings probably made of wood. In a second, much smaller tope, 230 ft. to the N.N.W. of this huge pile, were found two caskets, empty, but inscribed with the names of Sāriputta and Mahā Moggallāna, the two principal disciples of Gautama, the Buddha. A third tope had a diameter of 24 ft., and contained relic-caskets, but no inscription. Four smaller ones, all of which had been previously opened, contained nothing. The topes at Bhojpur, which are very numerous, stand on the southern end of a low range of hills on the opposite side from Sonāri and Satdhāra of a broad valley through which flows the river Betwā. The largest stands in the centre of a levelled terrace, 252 ft. long by 214 ft. broad, and was 61 ft. in diameter. The next in size had a diameter of 39 feet. In a third of only 31 ft. diameter the relic-caskets bore names otherwise unknown. Cunningham examined 33 other topes on the slopes of this range of hills, but they had been previously opened; and nothing of importance, and no inscriptions, were found in them. The Andherī topes are perched on the northern declivity of a pear-shaped hill facing Bhojpur across another valley. These are on the very edge of the cliff, about 500 ft. above the plain; and the position is a very fine one, commanding a wide outlook over the Bhīlsa district with its dome-surmounted peaks and fertile valleys. The topes are only three in number, respective y 35 ft., 19 ft., and 15 ft. in diameter. At each of them inscriptions were found, some of the names recurring also at Sānchī, and belonging to contemporaries of Aśoka. One of them is Moggaliputta, who may, or may not, be the same as the Moggaliputta Tissa who presided at Aśoka’s Council at Patna, and who is the traditional author of the Kathā Vatthu, the latest book in the Buddhist Canon, and the only book in it which is ascribed to a particular author. Aśoka, when on his way to take up the vice-royalty during the last years of his father’s life, stayed in the Bhīlsa district, and married a local lady, daughter of a merchant at Vedisa named Deva. Three children were born to them; and then Aśoka succeeded to

60 the throne on the death of his father. As the marriage was a mésalliance he left his wife behind, and she brought up the children. Two of then, Mahinda and his sister Saṅgha Mittā, were afterwards the famous missionaries who carried Buddhism to Ceylon. It is recorded how Mahinda, before he departed on the mission, went to Bhīlsa to take leave of his mother, and stayed there at a vihāra she had built (Dīpavaṃsa, xii. 8–34; Mahāvaṃsa, xiii. 1–14; Samanta Pāsādikā, p. 318 f.; Mahābodhivaṃsa, p. 115 f.). rd It is sufficiently clear from these notices that the district was, in the 3 cent. B.C., and probably earlier, an important center of Buddhist activity. The massive terraces and solid topes are all that remain of the outward signs of this activity; but its intellectual results are still working in Ceylon, and in a less degree in the Himalaya regions. LITERATURE.— Dīpavaṃsa, ed. Oldenberg, London, 1879; Mahāvaṃsa, ed. Geiger, London, PTS, 1908; Samanta Pāsādikā, ed. Oldenberg, in vol. iii. of his Vinaya; A. Cunningham, The Bhīlsa Topes, London, 1854; Fergusson, Hist. of Ind. and East. Architecture, London, 1876, pp. 6–65; Mahābodhivaṃsa, ed. Strong, London, PTS, 1891; Rhys Davids, Buddhist India, 1903, pp. 299–303.

People in Buddhist History

MOGGALLĀNA MOGGALLĀNA.—Moggallāna was one of the two chief disciples of the Buddha. He was a Brāhman by birth, and his mother’s name is given in the Divyāvadāna (p. 52) as Bhadra-kanyā. Nothing is known of his youth, but in a very early document128 we are told the story of his conversion. There was a Wanderer (or Sophist) at Rājagaha named Sañjaya.129 Moggallāna and a friend of his, another young Brāhman from a neighboring village, had become ‘Wanderers’ (paribbājakā) under Sañjaya. Each had given his word to the other that the first to find ‘ambrosia’ should tell the other. One day his friend, Sāriputta, saw Assaji, another Wanderer, passing through Rājagaha on his round for alms. Struck by Assaji’s dignified demeanor, Sāriputta followed him to his hermitage and, after compliments had been exchanged, asked him who was his teacher and what was the doctrine he professed, seeing that his mien was so serene, his countenance so bright and clear. There is great man of religion, one of the of the Sākiyas, who has gone forth from the Sākiya clan. He is my teacher; it is his doctrine I profess,’ was the reply. ‘Well, what is the doctrine?’ asked Sāriputta. ‘I am but a novice, only lately gone forth. In detail I can not explain, but I can

128 Vinaya, ed. H. Oldenberg. i. 39–44; translated in Rhys Davids and H. Oldenberg, Vinaya Texts, i. 144– 151. 129 It is not stated that he was the same as the Sañjaya of Dīgha, i. 58, the famous ‘eel-wriggler.’

61 tell you the meaning of it in brief.’ Sāriputta told him that that was just what he wanted— the spirit, not the letter, of the doctrine. Then Assaji quoted a verse: ‘Of all phenomena sprung from a cause The Teacher the cause hath told; And he tells, too, how each shall come to its end, For such is the word of the Sage.’ On hearing this verse Sāriputta obtained ‘the pure eye for the truth’; that is, the knowledge that whatsoever is subject to the condition of having an origin is subject also to the condition of passing away. (This is the stock phrase in the early Buddhist books for conversion.) He at once acknowledged that this was the doctrine that he had sought for so long a time in vain. He went immediately to Moggallāna, and told him that he had found the ambrosia, and, when he explained how this was, Moggallāna agreed with him in the view that he had taken, and they both went to the Buddha and were admitted into his order. The story here summarized is repeated, in almost identical terms, in various commentaries.130 It is curious in two ways. In the first place, who, on being asked to give the spirit of the Buddhist doctrine in a few words, would choose the words of Assaji’s verse? One may search in vain most manuals of Buddhism to find any mention of the point raised in the verse;131 and yet the verse has been so frequently found on tablets and monuments in India that Anglo-Indians are wont to call it, somewhat extravagantly, ‘the Buddhist creed.’ The Buddhists, of course, have no creed in the European sense of that word, but any one who should draw up one for them ought to include in it a clause on this matter of causation. The quotation may very well have made a special impression upon Sāriputta and Moggallāna. They had already renounced the sacrifice as a satisfactory solution of the problems of life, and were seeking for something more satisfactory than the vague hints now to be found only in later passages, such as Īśā 14, where the ambrosia is brought into a mystic connection with cause and with passing away. Here, in this new theory of causation, was a quite different view of things, which seemed to these inquirers to meet the case. It is also, at first sight, curious that they should have called this particular doctrine ‘ambrosia’ (amata). Though this expression was no doubt first used of the drink that preserved the gods from death, it must before the rise of Buddhism have acquired, among the Wanderers, the secondary meaning of salvation as being the ineffably sweet.132 It is true that the other idea of salvation, as being a deliverance (from evil, or from the eternal round of rebirths and redeaths), is also found in pre- Buddhistic works (see MOKṢA). But it was natural, in the beginnings of speculation, to have varying attempts at the expression in words of so complicated a conception; and it is improbable that the early Buddhists invented such a phrase as ambrosia, connoting, as it does, so much of the earlier polytheism.

130 Dhammapada Com. i. 85–95: Theragāthā Com. on verse 1017; Aṅguttara Com, on i. 83, etc. 131 But see the chapter on causation in C. A. F. Rhys Davids, Buddhism, London, 1912, pp. 78–106. 132 Cf. the use of the phrase by a non-Buddhist, and before the first sermon had been uttered, at Vinaya, i. 7, 8.

62 Moggallāna is frequently mentioned in the canon, and usually with the epithet Mahā (the Great’). A number of verses ascribed to him, including one long poem and several shorter ones, are preserved in the anthology called Theragāthā (‘Psalms of the Brethren’).133 The Dīgha is curiously silent about him; but a whole book is assigned to him in the Saṃyutta;134 and about two score of passages in the Majjhima and the Aṅguttara, and elsewhere in the Saṃyutta, record acts done or words spoken by him.135 We need not give the details of these passages. The general result of them is that he was considered by the men who composed them to have been a master of the philosophy and of the psychological ethics, and especially of the deeper and more mystical sides, of the teaching. There is, e.g., an interesting passage where the Buddha compares Sāriputta with Moggallāna: ‘Like a woman who gives birth to a son, brethern, is Sāriputta to a young disciple, like a master who trains a boy so is Moggallāna. Sāriputta leads him on to conversion, Moggallāna to the highest truth. But Sāriputta can set forth the four Aryan Truths and teach them, and make others understand them and stand firm in them, he can expound and elucidate them.136 In one characteristic Moggallāna is stated to have been supreme over all the other disciples. This is in the power of iddhi (‘potency’).137 Both word and idea are older than the rise of Buddhism; and the meaning is vague.138 The early Buddhists, trying, as they often did, to pour new wine into the old bottles, distinguished two kinds of iddhi—the one lower, intoxicating, ignoble; the other higher, temperate, religious.139 The former has preserved for us the belief common among the people, the latter the modification which the Buddhists sought to make in it. The former reminds us of the mana of the South Seas, or the orenda of some American tribes, or sometimes of the strange accomplishments of a spiritualistic medium. Birds have iddhi, with especial reference to their mysterious power of flight.140 Kings have iddhi141 of four kinds (differently explained at Dīgha, ii. 177 and Jātaka, iii. 454). It is by the iddhi of a hunter that he succeeds in the chase.142 Iddhi is the explanation of the luxury and prosperity of a young chief.143 By iddhi one may have the faculty of levitation, or of projecting an image of oneself to a distant spot, or of becoming invisible, or of walking on water, or of passing through walls, or of visiting the gods in their various heavens.144 All these are worldly iddhi, the iddhi of an unconverted man. That of the converted, awakened man is self-mastery, equanimity.145

133 Theragāthā, 1146–1208, tr. C. A, F, Rhys Davids, in Psalms of the Early Buddhists, ii. 387 f. 134 Moggallāna Saṃyutta, iv. 262–281. 135 See the index volumes to these works. 136 Majjhima, iii. 248. 137 Aṅguttara, i. 23; cf. Milinda, 188, and Divyāvadāna, 395. 138 See art. MAGIC (Buddhist), § x. 139 Dīgha, iii. 112, 113. 140 Dhammapada, 175; but the commentary, iii. 177, interprets the passage otherwise. 141 Udāna, p. 11 142 Majjhima, i. 152. 143 Dīgha, ii. 21; Aṅguttara, i. 145. 144 The stock passages are at Dīgha, ii. 83; Majjhima, i. 34, 494; Aṅguttara, i. 255, iii. 17, 28. 145 Dīgha, iii. 113.

63 Both these kinds of potency were regarded as natural, that is, neither of them was, according to Indian thought, what we should call supernatural. And neither of them, in Buddhist thought, was animistic, that is, either dependent upon or involving the belief in a soul as existing within the human body. In both these respects of iddhi, the worldly and the spiritual, Moggallāna, in the oldest records, is regarded as pre-eminent. An amusing and edifying story is preserved of the way in which, like an ancient St. Dunstan, he outwits the Evil One,146 We are also told how, in order to attract the attention of the gods to the very elementary exposition of ethics that he thought suitable to their intelligence, he shook with his great toe the pinnacles of the palaces of heaven.147 Other instances of Moggallāna’s instructing the gods are given in the Moggallāna Saṃyutta referred to above, and in the Aṅguttara (iii. 331, iv. 85), while two anthologies, probably the latest and certainly the most dreary books in the canon, the Vimāna Vatthu and the Peta Vatthu, consist entirely of short poems describing interviews which Moggallāna is supposed to have had with spirits in the various heavens and purgatories. Most of the episodes in which Moggallāna figures are localized, that is, the place where the incident or conversation took place is mentioned by name. The names are very varied, and it is clear that no one place could be regarded as his permanent residence. Tradition has preserved no further account of his life, but the manner of his death is explained in two commentaries, the two accounts being nearly identical.148 Both Sāriputta and Moggallāna died in the November of the year before the Buddha’s death, just before the Buddha started on his last journey.149 Sāriputta died a natural death; Moggallāna, it is said, was murdered, at the instigation of certain jealous Jain monks, by a bandit named Samaṇa-guttaka, at the Black Rock cave on the Isigili Hill near Rājagaha. When Cunningham opened the topes (memorial mounds) at Sānchī, he found in one of them two boxes containing fragments of bone and inscribed respectively ‘Of Sāriputta’ and ‘Of Moggallāna the Great’ in Pāli letters of Aśoka’s time.150 A similar discovery was made in the neighboring group of topes at Satdhāra.151 It is evident that more than two centuries after their death the memory of the two chief disciples had not yet died out in the community, and that the Buddhist laity who erected these monuments considered it suitable that their supposed relics should be enshrined in the same tomb. The name Moggallāna was occasionally adopted as their name in religion by candidates for the order until the 12th cent. of our era. The belief that the power of iddhi had been actually exercised by Moggallāna the Great and others in the ancient days is still held by those of the orthodox who adhere to the ancient tradition, though, except as practiced long ago, the belief in it soon died out. There is no evidence, later than the canon, of any contemporary cases of the lower, worldly iddhi of the unconverted man.

146 Majjhima, i. 332 ff. 147 Ib. i. 252 ff. 148 Jātaka Com. v. 126; Dhammapada Com. iii. 65 ff. 149 Jātaka Com. i. 391. 150 A. Cunningham, The Bhilsa. Topes, London, 1854, p. 297. 151 Ib. p. 324.

64 LITERATURE.—Vinaya Piṭaka, ed. H. Oldenberg, London, 5 vols., 1879–83; T. W. Rhys Davids and H. Oldenberg, Vinaya Texts (SBE xiii. [1881], xvii. [1882], xx. [1885]); C. A. F. Rhys Davids, Buddhism, London, 1912; Dhammapada Commentary, ed. H. C. Norman, Oxford, 1906–14 (PTS); Therīgāthā Commentary, ed. E. Müller, do. 1893 (PTS); Saṃyutta, ed. L. Feer and C. A. F. Rhys Davids, do. 1884–1904 (PTS); C. A. F. Rhys Davids, Psalms of the Early Buddhists, do. 1909–13 (PTS); Aṅguttara ed. R. Morris and E. Hardy, do. 1885–1910 (PTS); Milinda-pañha, ed. V. Trenckner, London, 1880; Divyāvadāna, ed. E. B. CoweIl and R. A. Neil, Cambridge, 1886; Majjhima, ed. V. Trenckner and R. Chalmers, Oxford, 1888–99 (PTS); Udāna, ed. P. Steinthal, do. 1883 (PTS); Dhammapada, ed. S. Sumangala, do. 1914 (PTS); Dīgha, ed. Rhys Davids and J. E. Carpenter, do. 1890–1911 (PTS).

ĀNANDA ĀNANDA.—One of the principal early disciples of the Buddha. He was the Buddha’s first cousin, and is described as being devoted to him with especial fervour in a simple, childlike way, and serving as his personal attendant (upaṭṭhāka). A panegyric on him is put into the mouth of the Buddha just before his (the Buddha’s) death (Mahā Parinibbāna Suttanta, in Dīgha, ii. 144-146). But it is for his popularity among the people and in the Order, and for his pleasant way of speaking on the religion, not for intellectual gifts or power of insight. So, in the same book (l.c. 157), the stanza put into Anuruddha’s mouth at the death of the Buddha is thoughtful; while that put into Ānanda’s mouth is a simple outcry of human sorrow. Though all the other disciples had attained to arhat-ship long before this, Ānanda remained still a ‘learner’ (sekha); and at the council said to have been held after the Buddha’s death, Ānanda is described as the only one of the five hundred members selected to take part in it who was not an arhat (Vinaya, ii. 285). He became one before the council met ( ib. 286), and took a prominent part in it; but that did not prevent the council from admonishing him for certain faults of inadvertence he had previously committed. Other passages of a similar tendency might be quoted (e.g. Majjhima, No. 32); but these are perhaps sufficient to show that the picture drawn of him is of a man lovable and earnest, but withal somewhat dense.

DEVADATTA DEVADATTA.—A Śākya noble, probably a cousin of the Buddha, who joined the Order in the 20th year of the movement, but held opinions of his own, both in doctrine and in discipline, at variance with those inculcated by the Master. He received a certain amount of support, both within the Order and from laymen, but seems to have remained quiet till about ten years before the death of the Buddha. At that date he asked the latter to retire in his favor, and, being refused, started a new Order of his own. It is curious that

65 these dissensions, and this final rupture, which must have had so important an influence on the early history of the Buddhist community (we find traces of them a thousand years afterwards), should receive so slight a notice in the earliest documents relating to Buddhist doctrine. Devadatta is not even mentioned in the Sutta Nipāta, or in the collection of longer Dialogues (the Dīgha Nikāya). In the other three collections of Suttas he is a few times barely referred to, in the discussion of some ethical proposition, as an example. In the minds of the editors of these collections the doctrine itself loomed so much more largely than any personal or historical matter, that Devadatta and his schism are all but ignored; but in the oldest collection of the rules of the Order (in the Pāli Vinaya), under the head of ‘Schism,’ a chapter is devoted to the final episode in Devadatta’s life. Our discussion of the matter will therefore be most conveniently divided into: (1) the Vinaya account, (2) the isolated passages in the early books of doctrine, and (3) the later notices. 1. The Vinaya account—This is in the 18th khandhaka (chapter) of the Sutta Vibhaṅga, relating to dissensions in the Order.152 It commences with an account of the circumstances under which six young men of the Śākya clan, one of whom was Devadatta, entered the Order together. This must have been in the 20th year of the Buddha’s ministry, as is shown by a comparison of Theragāthā, 1039, with Vin. ii. 286. The latter passage tells us that Ānanda (one of the six) attained arhat-ship in the year of the Buddha’s death; the former states that he had been 23 years in the Order before he did so. Twenty-five years before the Buddha’s death brings us to the 20th year of his ministry. Throughout the passage in question the details given concern the others. At the end it is stated that, whereas each of the other five soon attained to some particular stage of the religious life, Devadatta attained to that magic power and charm which a worldly man may have.153 There follows another episode having no relation to Devadatta, and then a third. As usual, no intimation is given as to whether we are to suppose any interval of time between these episodes, but the very absence of continuity in the narrative seem to imply that the editors supposed that there was. The third episode introduces Devadatta considering whom he could win over so as to acquire gain and honor. He decides on Ajjātasattu, the Crown Prince of Magadha, and accordingly goes there and practices his magic arts upon the Prince. These are quite successful; and Devadatta, dazed with prosperity, aspires to lead the Order. This is revealed by a spirit to Moggallāna, who informs the Buddha; but the latter, in reply, merely discusses the character of an ideal teacher. He then proceeds to Rājagaha, where the brethren inform him of Devadatta’s prosperity. In reply, the Buddha discourses on the text that pride goeth before a fall, and concludes with a verse on honor ruining the mean man.154

152 Vin. ii. 180 ff., tr. T. W. Rhys Davids and H. Oldenberg, in Vinaya Texts, iii. 224 ff. (SBE xx. [1885]). 153 Pothujjanikā iddhī. On the exact meaning of this technical phrase, see the passages collected and discussed by the present writer in Dialogues of the Buddha, i. 88, 273; ii 6. 154 Vin. ii. 188; recurs at Aṅguttara, ii, 73; Saṃyutta, i. 154, ii. 241; Milinda, 166; Netti, 181.

66 In the next episode Devadatta asks the Buddha, in the presence of the king, to give up to him the leadership of the Order, on the ground that the Buddha is now an old man. He is refused, and a formal act of the Chapter of the Order decrees that in future, whatever he may do, Devadatta shall be considered by the people as acting or speaking, not as a member of the Order, but for himself alone. Then Devadatta incites the Crown Prince to kill his father, and to help him (Devadatta) to kill the Buddha. The various attempts, all of which are unsuccessful, are described in detail. There follows an episode in which Devadatta, with four adherents, whose names are given, lays before the Buddha five points to be incorporated in the rules of the Order. They are: (1) that the bhikkhus should dwell in the woods, (2) that they should live entirely by begging, (3) that their clothing should be exclusively made of cast-off rags, (4) that they should sleep under trees, and (5) that they should not eat fish or meat. The existing rules were more elastic. It will be sufficient here to state roughly that: (1) bhikkhus were not to dwell in the woods during the rainy season—It was considered unhealthy; at other seasons they might wander about, or dwell in hermitages in hills or forests, or in huts put up for them in parks, or the like; the only restriction was that they should not dwell in the houses of the laity; (2) they might beg, or accept invitations, or live on food provided at the residences for bhikkhus; (3) they might receive presents of clothing, made either personally to one bhikkhu or generally to the Order; (4) they might sleep anywhere except in houses of the laity, and even there they might stay for a limited period, if on a journey; (5) they might accept any food given, but not fish or flesh if specially caught or killed for the purpose of the meal. The five points recur at Vin. iii. 171, and are therefore probably correct. The five points were rejected. Devadatta rejoiced, and told the people that, whereas Gautama and his bhikkhus were luxurious and lived in the enjoyment of abundance, he and his would abide by the strict rules of the five points. Five hundred of the younger bhikkhus accepted tickets that he issued, and joined his party. The success of the schism seemed assured. The following and final episode introduces Devadatta, surrounded by a great number of adherents, discoursing on his doctrine. Sāriputta and Moggallāna, the principal disciples of Gautama, are seen approaching. On seeing them, Devadatta exults, and, in spite of a warning from Kokālika, he bids them welcome, and they take their seats. Devadatta continues his conversational discourse till far on into the night. Then, feeling tired, he asks Sāriputta to lead the assembly while he rests. Devadatta falls asleep. Sāriputta leads the talk on the subject of preaching, and then Moggallāna leads it on the subject of iddhi. Next Sāriputta suggests that those who approve should return to the Buddha, and most of the assembly do so. Kokālika awakes Devadatta, points out what has happened, and says, ‘I warned you.’ Then hot blood comes forth from Devadatta’s mouth. Sāriputta, on his return, proposes that the renegades who had come back should be readmitted to the Order. This Gautama declares unnecessary, and the chapter closes with edifying discourse. First, we have a parable of elephants who ate dirt and lost their beauty and died. Just so will Devadatta die. Then the eight qualifications of one worthy to be an emissary are pointed out. Next, the eight qualifications of Devadatta, which doom him to remain for an æon (kappa) in states of suffering and woe, are given. Finally, another paragraph gives three reasons for the same result.

67 It is probable, from the details, that the eight have been elaborated out of the three, no doubt to make Devadatta’s qualifications parallel in number with those of Sāriputta, the ideal emissary. 2. Isolated passages.—In Majjhima, i. 192 a Suttanta is dated as having been delivered shortly after Devadatta went away. Not a word is said about him; but the discourse discusses the object of religion, which, it is said, should be cultivated, not for the sake of gain or honor, not for the sake of virtue, not for the sake of mystic concentration, not for the sake of knowledge, ‘but has its meaning, its essence, its ideal in emancipation of mind.’ The objects here rejected are precisely those for which, in the Vinaya passages, Devadatta is said to have striven. At Majjhima, i. 392, a Jain is urged to put Gautama on the following two-horned dilemma (ubhato-koṭikaṃ pañhaṃ): ‘Do you say that one ought to speak words pleasant to others? If so, did you make the statement about the inevitable fate about to befall Devadatta?’ The puzzle is easily solved, and on general grounds (without any reference at all to Devadatta). This passage is important, because it shows that, before the time when the Dialogues were composed, and a fortiori before the time when the Vinaya account arose, the episode about the future fate of Devadatta was already in existence, and was widely known in the community, and even outside of it. The Milinda (p. 107 ff.) has a greatly altered and expanded version of this ‘double- horned dilemma’; and it is probable that the whole of the dilemma portion of that interesting work is based on the scheme of the dilemma in this Suttānta. The Saṃyutta (at ii. 240–242) has the episode of honor bringing ruin to the mean man, in the same words as Vin. ii. 188, but divided into two stories; and at i. 153 it puts the concluding verse of that episode into the mouth of the god Brahmā. At ii. 156 Devadatta and his followers are called ‘men of evil desire.’ In four passages155 the Aṅguttara has, word for word, episodes occurring in the Vinaya account. Besides those, it discusses at iii. 402 the statement about the fate that will inevitably befall Devadatta; and at iv. 402 ff. it discloses a view held by Devadatta that it was concentration of mind (and not the ethical training of the ‘Aryan Path’) that made a man an arhat. This is the only one of these isolated passages in the oldest books which really adds anything to our knowledge of Devadatta. In the later books of the Canon there are two or three more references to him. Thus the episode at Vin. ii. 198 recurs at Udāna, v. 8, and that at Vin. ii. 203 at Iti-vuttaka, no. 89, and at Udāna, i. 5, Devadatta’s name is included in a list of eleven leaders in the Order who are called buddha, ‘awakened.’ This is the only passage in the Canon which speaks of Devadatta with approval; and it doubtless refers to a period before the schism. Lastly, in Vin. i. 115 it is said that Devadatta, before the rule to the contrary had been promulgated, allowed the local chapter of the Order, when the Pātimokkha was being recited, to be attended by laymen. H. Oldenberg has shown, in the Introduction to his edition of the Vinaya, that the work, as we now have it, is composed of material belonging to three periods, the oldest of which goes back nearly, if not quite, to the time of the Buddha. The chapter analyzed above belongs to the latest of those periods. The episodes found also in other parts of the

155 Aṅ. ii. 73 = Saṃ iii. 241 = Vin. ii. 188; Aṅ. iii. 128 = Vin. ii 185; Aṅ. iv. 160; and again 164 = Vin. ii. 202.

68 Canon belong to the earliest period. The summary at the beginning of this article is based exclusively on such episodes. 3. The later notices.—In books later than the Canon, the above story of Devadatta is often told or referred to, and with embellishments which purport to add details not found in the earlier version. Such additional details must be regarded with suspicion: many are insignificant, some are evidently added merely to heighten the edification of the narrative, all are some centuries later than the alleged facts they, for the first time, record. It will be sufficient to mention a few of the most striking. The Mahāvastu, iii. 176, and the Mahāvaṃsa, ii. 21, give contradictory accounts of Devadatta’s parentage. Had these two traditions (the one handed down in the Ganges valley, the other in Ceylon) agreed, the evidence might have been accepted. The Milinda (at p 101) states that Devadatta was swallowed up by the earth; and (at p. 111) that, at the moment of his death, he took refuge in the Buddha. Both traditions were accepted in th Ceylon in the 5 cent. A.D. (see the commentary on the Dhammapada, i. 147). A statement of Fa Hien (Legge’s tr., p. 60) shows that the first of these traditions was still th current in India at the end of the 4 cent. A.D. The same authority (p. 62) tells us that there were still, at that time, followers of Devadatta who paid honor to the three previous Buddhas, but not to Gautama. This is possibly confirmed by Yuan Chwang, more than two centuries later, and in another locality; but Watters (ii. 191) thinks that the pilgrim himself may have supplied the name Devadatta. Yuan Chwāng elsewhere (Watters, i. 339) credits Devadatta with the murder of the nun Uppala-vaṇṇā; but we have no confirmation of this unlikely story, and it depends probably on a Chinese misunderstanding of some Indian text. We have two 5th cent. biographies of Uppala- vaṇṇā, and it occurs in neither. LITERATURE.—Vinaya, ed. Oldenberg, London, 1879; Rhys Davids and H. Oldenberg, Vinaya Texts, Oxford, 1881–85 (SBE xiii., xvii., xx.); Theragāthā, ed. Oldenberg and Pischel (PTS, 1883); Aṅguttara, ed. Morris and Hardy (PTS, 1885–1900); Saṃyutta, ed. Léon Feer (PTS, 1884–1898); Milinda-pañho, ed. Trenckner, London, 1880; Netti, ed E. Hardy (PTS, 1902); Rhys Davids, Questions of King Milinda, Oxford, 1800–94 (SBE xxxv., xxxvi.), Dialogues of the Buddha, Oxford, 1899, 1909; Majjhima Nikāya, ed. Trenckner and Chalmers (PTS, 1887–1902); Iti-vuttaka, ed. Windisch (PTS, 1890), and tr. J. H. Moore, New York, 1908; Mahāvastu, ed. Senart, Paris, 1807; Mahāvaṃsa, ed. Geiger (PTS, 1908); Travels of Fa Hien, tr. J. Legge, Oxford, 1886; T. Watters, On Yuan Chwāng’s Travels in India, ed. Rhys Davids and S. W. Bushell, London, 1904; Com. on the Dhammapada, ed. H. C. Norman (PTS, 1906). See also H. Kern, Manual of Indian Buddhism, Strassburg, 1896. (GIAP iii. 8), pp. 15, 28, 38 ff., where other references to later notices may be found.

69 BUDDHAGHOṢA BUDDHAGHOṢA.—This was the name of several members of the Buddhist Order. It will be sufficient here to deal with the best known among them, the celebrated author th and scholar who flourished early in the 5 century A.D. 1. Life.—The authorities regarding the life of Buddhaghoṣa the Great are as follows. In the first place, certain important portions of his works have already been published. The few details they contain as to the life of the author are the only contemporary records th of it that have survived. Secondly, Dhammakitti, in the middle of the 13 cent. A.D., wrote a continuation of the Great Chronicle (tr. in Turnour’s Mahāvaṃsa, p. 250 ff.) of Ceylon. In it he inserted an account, in thirty-three couplets, of the life and work of Buddhaghoṣa. it is not exactly known from what sources this account was drawn; but it probably gives the tradition as preserved at the Great Minster in Anurādhapura (q.v.) in written documents now no longer extant. Thirdly, we have a life of Buddhaghoṣa, written in Pāli, in the middle of the 18th cent., by a Burmese bhikṣu named Mahā Maṅgala. It is of a legendary and edifying character, and of little independent value. The title is, Buddhaghos-uppatti (‘Advent of Buddhaghoṣa’); and the text has been edited and translated by James Gray. The results to be obtained from these sources will best be stated chronologically. In the introductory verses to his commentary on the Dīgha (ed. Rhys Davids and Carpenter), Buddhaghoṣa says that he compiled it in accordance with the opinions of the Elders at the Great Minster; and that since he had already, in his Visuddhi Magga (‘Path of Purity’), dealt with certain points, he would omit these in his commentary. Lastly, he says that the authorities on which he relied were in the Sinhalese language, and that he reproduces the contents of them in Pāli. In his commentary on the Vinaya (quoted JRAS, 1871, p. 295) he gives the names of some of these Sinhalese works. They are the Great Commentary, the Raft Commentary (i.e. written on a raft), and the Kurundī Commentary (i.e. the one written at Kurunda Veḷu). In his commentary on the Parivāra, Buddhaghoṣa states (teste Gray, p. 12) that he studied these three under Buddhamitta. In his Attha- sālinī (ed. Müller), Buddhaghoṣa also quotes as his authorities these and other commentaries written in Sinhalese; refers frequently to his own Visuddhi Magga, and twice at least to his commentary on the Vinaya; and mentions otherwise (apart from the canonical works) only the Milinda and the Peṭakopadesa.156 These meagre but important details show conclusively that Buddhaghoṣa worked at a date subsequent to that of the two books last mentioned, under the auspices of the scholars at the Great Minster in Ceylon, and on the basis of materials written in Sinhalese. The authority next in point of date explains how this was supposed to have occurred. It tells us that, during the reign in Ceylon of Mahā-Nāma (who ascended the throne A.D. 413), there was a young Brāhman born in India who wandered over the continent maintaining theses against all the world. In consequence of a discussion that took place between him and Revata, a Buddhist bhikṣu, he became interested in Buddhist doctrine, and entered the Order that he might learn more about it. It was not long before he became

156 See the references given in Mrs. Rhys Davids’ Buddhist Psychology. pp. xx–xxv.

70 converted, and wrote a treatise entitled Jñāṇodaya (‘Uprising of Knowledge’); and also an essay entitled Attha-sālinī (‘Full of Meaning’), on the Abhidhamma manual included in the Canon under the title Dhamma-saṅgaṇī. On Revata observing that he contemplated a larger work, he urged him to go to Anurādhapura, where there were better materials and greater opportunities for study, and make himself acquainted there with the commentaries that had been preserved in Sinhalese at the Great Minster, with a view to re-casting them in Pāli. Buddhaghoṣa agreed to this, went to the Great Minster, studied there under Saṅghapāli, and when he had mastered all the subjects taught, asked permission to translate the commentaries. The authorities of the School gave him two verses as the subject of a thesis, to test his ability. What he submitted as this thesis was the work afterwards to become so famous under the title of Visuddhi Magga. This proved, with the assistance of good fairies, so satisfactory that his request was granted. Then, according to the chronicler, ‘he translated the whole of the Sinhalese commentaries into Pāli.’* We need not take every word of this edifying story au pied de la lettre. We know, for instance, that it was not the whole, but only a part, though a very important part, of the Sinhalese commentaries that he reproduced in Pāli. Other scholars, some of whose names we know, while some are not yet known, reproduced other parts of it. The work was by no means a translation in the modern sense. It was a new work based on the older ones. And the intervention of the fairies (devatā) is only evidence of the curious literary taste of the time of the poet. But, in the main, the story bears the impress of probability. The Buddhaghos-uppatti takes over this story, telling it with many flowers of speech and at greater length. It adds a few details not found in Dhammakitti’s couplets, giving, for instance, the names of Buddhaghoṣa’s father and mother as Kesī and Kesinī, and the name of the village they dwelt in as Ghosa. Both the authorities locate it at Gayā in Magadha, near the Bo-tree. The Gandhavaṃśa (JPTS, 1898, p. 66) adds that Kesī was the family chaplain (purohita) of King Saṅ gāma. The Saddhamma Saṅgaha (JPTS, 1890, p. 55) gives the additional detail that Buddhaghoṣa worked at his translations in the Padhānaghara, an apartment to the right of the Great Minster. The Sinhalese chronicler concludes his account with the simple statement that Buddhaghoṣa, when his task was accomplished, returned home to India, to worship at the Wisdom tree. The Burmese authorities (quoted by Gray in his introduction) all agree that be went to Burma. This is merely a confusion between our Buddhaghoṣa and another bhikṣu of the same name (called more accurately Buddhaghoṣa the Less), who went from Ceylon to Burma towards the end of the 15th cent. (Forchhammer, p. 65). 2. Works.—The extant books written by Buddhaghoṣa would fill many volumes. Of these only one, and that one of the shortest, has so far been edited in Europe. The most important is probably the Visuddhi Magga, a compendium of all Buddhism, in three books: on Conduct, Concentration (or mental training), and Wisdom respectively. Henry C. Warren has published an abstract of this work (JPTS, 1891); and a complete edition, with translation, introductions, and notes, is in preparation for the Harvard Oriental Series. The rest are all commentaries. Those on the four great Nikāyas, on the Abhidhamma, and on the Vinaya, would each fill three or four volumes. A late authority, the Saddhamma Saṅgaha (JPTS, 1890, p. 56), gives 137,000 lines as the extent of these six works. Another late authority, the Gandha-vaṃśa (JPTS, 1896, p. 59), in giving a complete list of Buddhaghoṣa’s works, mentions in addition commentaries on the Pātimokkha, Dhammapada, Jātaka, Khuddaka Pāṭha, and Apadāna, adding on p. 68 the

71 Sutta Nipāta. This list probably errs both by excess and by defect. It does not include the Attha-sālinī, which we now know, from the edition published by the Pāli Text Society, to have been written by him, and it does include the commentaries on the Dhammapada and the Jātakas. Now we have before us the text of the introductory verses to each of these works. In each case the author describes the circumstances under which, and names the scholars at whose instigation, he undertook and carried out the work. In neither case is any reference made to Buddhaghoṣa. In both style and matter each of these books differs from the other, and from such portions of the works of Buddhaghoṣa as are accessible to us. In the similar cases of Nāgārjuna and Śaṅkara, works not written by them have been ascribed to famous writers. The tradition of Buddhaghoṣa’s authorship of either of the books above named has not as yet been traced back earlier than the 10th cent.; and, for the above reasons, it is at present very doubtful. A large number of short quotations from Buddhaghoṣa’s commentaries have been printed by the editors of the various texts with which he deals; and sixty consecutive pages from the historical introduction to his commentary on the Vinaya have been edited by H. Oldenberg (Vinaya, vol. iii.). Rhys Davids and Carpenter have published one volume, out of three, of the Sumaṅgala Vilāsinī, his commentary on the Dīgha. And one complete work by him, the Attha-sālinī above referred to, has been edited by B. Müller. This turns out to be, not the essay under that title said by Dhammakitti to have been composed in India, but another work written in Ceylon subsequently to the Visuddhi Magga and the six great commentaries. It is doubtless an enlarged edition of the essay, and the latter has therefore not been preserved. Manuscripts of the undoubted works of Buddhaghoṣa, containing the texts, sufficient to fill some twenty-five volumes more, are extant in European libraries; and the Pāli Text Society, having completed its edition of the canonical works, is now engaged on the publication of these. 3. General conclusions.—Buddhaghoṣa’s greatest value to the modern historian is due largely to the limitations of his mental powers. Of his talent there can be no doubt; it was equaled only by his extraordinary industry. But of originality, of independent thought, there is at present no evidence. He had mastered so thoroughly and accepted so completely the Buddhist view of life, that there was no need for him to occupy time with any discussions on ultimate questions. In his ‘Path of Purity’ he gives, with admirable judgment as to the general arrangement of his matter, and in lucid style, a summary of the Buddhism of his time. There is no argument or discussion. In his six great commentaries—those on each of the four Nikāyas, containing the Doctrine; on the Vinaya, containing the Canon Law; and on the Abhidhamma, containing the advanced Psychology—he adheres to one simple plan. He first gives a general introduction— dealing mainly with literary history—to the work itself. To each of the more important Dialogues, or Suttas, he gives a special introduction on the circumstances under which it was supposed, when he wrote, to have been originally spoken, and on the places and the persons mentioned in it. He quotes in the comment on the Sutta every word or phrase he considers doubtful or deserving of notice from a philological, exegetical, philosophical, or religious point of view. His philology is far in advance of the philology of the same date in Europe, and his notes on rare words are constantly of real value, and not seldom conclusive. He give, and discusses various readings he found in the texts before him; and these notes, together with his numerous quotations, go far to settle the text as it lay before him, and are of great service for the textual criticism of the originals. Of the higher criticism Buddhaghoṣa is entirely guiltless. To him there had been no development in

72 doctrine, and all the texts wore the words of the Master. He is fond of a story, and often relieves the earnestness of his commentary with anecdote, parable, or legend. In this way, without in the least intending it, he has preserved no little material for the history of social customs, commercial values, folk-lore, and belief in supra-normal powers. His influence on the development of the literary faculty among Buddhists throughout the world has been very considerable. It is true, no doubt, that the method adopted in his commentaries follows very closely the method of those much older ones preserved in the Canon; but the literary skill with which he uses it is a great advance, more especially in lucidity, over the older documents. Literature.—Atthasalinī ed. E. Müller (PTS, 1897); Sumaṅgala Vilāsinī, ed. Rhys Davids and Carpenter (PTS, 1886); Mahāvaṃsa, ed. G. Turnour (Colombo, 1837); Buddhaghos-uppatti ed. J. Gray, (London, 1892); Dīgha, ed. Rhys Davids and Carpenter (PTS, 1899, 1903); E. Forchhammer, Jardine Prize Essay (Rangoon, 1885); Mrs. Rhys Davids, ‘Buddhist Psychology’ (RAS, 1900).

DHAMMAPĀLA DHAMMAPĀLA.—This epithet means ‘Defender of the Faith’; it has been chosen as an honorary title by Buddhist kings, and as their name in religion by members of the Buddhist Order, but laymen do not use it. As a royal title it has been traced only in N. India and Burma (Buddhaghoṣuppatti, 11,21); as a name for bhikkhus it has been fairly th prevalent in India and Ceylon from the 6 cent. B.C. down to the present day. A Dhammāpala is included among the theras (‘elders’) contemporary with the Buddha, to whom are ascribed the poems preserved in the Therīgāthā; and several others are mentioned as the authors of minor works of later date. The only one who played an important part in the history of the religion is distinguished from the others by the special title of Āchariya, ‘the Teacher.’ In the colophons to those of his works that have so far been edited we find two statements: (1) that he claimed to have followed the traditional interpretation of his texts as handed down in the Great Minster at Anurādhapura in Ceylon; and (2) that his life was spent at the Badara Tittha-Vihāra. And from the Sāsana-vaṃsa (p. 33) we learn that this place was in the Tamil country, not far from Ceylon. It would seem, therefore, that Dhammapāla was educated at the same university as Buddhaghoṣa, and that he was a Tamil by birth and lived and wrote in South India. The first of these conclusions is confirmed by the published works of the two writers. They have very similar views, they appeal to the same authorities, they have the same method of exegesis, they have reached the same stage in philological and etymological science (a stage far beyond that reached at that time in Europe), they have the same lack of any knowledge of the simplest rules of the higher criticism. So far as we can at present judge, they must have been trained in the same school. As to the second point—the birth and life of Dhammapāla in South India—we have a curious confirmation from outside. Yuan Chwāng visited Kañchīpura, the capital of the

73 Tamil country, in A.D. 640. The brethren there told him that Dhammapāla had been born there. ‘He was a boy of good natural parts which received great development as he grew up. When he came of age, a daughter of the king was assigned to him as wife. But on the night before the ceremony of marriage was to be performed, being greatly distressed in mind, he prayed earnestly before an image of the Buddha. In answer to his prayer a god bore him away to a mountain monastery some hundreds of li from the capital. When the brethren there heard his story, they complied with his request and gave him ordination.’157 It is true that the English translators of Yuan Chwāng use the Sanskritized form of the name (Dharmapāla). This would not necessarily show that the Chinese pilgrim applied the story to a person different from our Dhammapāla; for both he and his translators frequently give the Sanskritized form (which they imagine to be more correct) for Pāli names of persons and places. But Yuan Chwāng adds the title Phusa (that is, Bodhisattva). This shows that he applied the story to the teacher of his own teacher, a Dharmapāla who had been a famous dignitary of the university of Nālandā in North India, and who must have flourished at the end of the 6th century. To him he would naturally and properly apply this title, which was used among the Mahāyāna Buddhists in a sense about equivalent to our honorary degree of D.D. But it is much more probable that the Kāñchīpura bhikkhus told the story of their own distinguished colleague, and that the pilgrim, who knew nothing of him, misapplied it.158 In any case the two scholars are quite distinct. Their views differed as widely as those of a Calvinist and a Catholic; one wrote in Pāli, the other in Sanskrit; one was trained at Anurādhapura, the other at Nālandā; and the Pāli scholar was about a century older than the Sanskrit one, the one having flourished in the last quarter of the 5th cent., the other in the last quarter of the 6th. The Gandha-vaṃsa, a very late librarian’s catalogue, enumerates (p. 60) 14 works ascribed to Dhammapāla. Even the bare names are full of interest. Whereas Buddhaghoṣa commented on the five principal prose works in the Canon, seven of Dhammapāla’s works are commentaries on the principal books of poetry preserved in the Canon, two others are sub-commentaries on Buddhaghoṣa’s works, and two more are sub- commentaries on commentaries not written by Buddhaghoṣa. This shows the importance attached, at that period in the history of the orthodox Buddhists, to the work of re-writing in Pāli the commentaries hitherto handed down in the local dialects, such as Sinhalese and Tamil. In his own commentaries, Dhammapāla follows a regular scheme. First comes an Introduction to the whole collection of poems, giving the traditional account of how it came to be put together. Then each poem is taken separately. After explaining how, when, and by whom it was composed, each clause in the poem is quoted and explained philologically and exegetically. These explanations are indispensable for a right understanding of the difficult texts with which he deals. The remaining three works are

157 Watters, Yuan Chwāng, ii. 226. 158 This question is discussed at length by E. Hardy in ZDMG li. (1898) 100–127).

74 two commentaries on the Netti, the oldest Pāli work not included in the Canon, and a psychological treatise. Of these 14 works by Dhammapāla, three (the commentaries on the Therīgāthā and on the Peta- and Vimāna-vatthus) have been published in full by the Pāli Text Society; and an edition of a fourth, his comment on the Therīgāthā, is being prepared. Hardy and Windisch, in their editions of the texts, have also given extracts from his comments on the Netti and the Iti-vuttaka. It is evident, from Yuan Chwāng’s account of his stay in the Tamil country, that in Dhammapāla’s time it was preponderatingly Buddhist, and that of the non-Buddhists the majority were Jains. It is now all but exclusively Hindu. We have only the vaguest hints as to when and how this remarkable change was brought about. LITERATURE.—Gandha-vaṃsa, ed. Minayeff, PTS, 1886; Buddhaghoṣuppatti, ed. J. Gray, London, 1892; Sāsana-vaṃsa, ed. M. Bode, 1897; T. Watters, On Yuan Chwāng, ed. Rhys Davids and S. W. Bushell, London, 1905; Therīgāthā Commentary, ed. G. Muller, 1892; Peta-vatthu Commentary, ed. E. Hardy, do. 1894; Vimāna-vatthu Commentary, ed. E. Hardy, do. 1901.

MILINDA MILINDA.—Milinda is the Indian name for the Greek king of Bactria called in Greek Menander. When Alexander’s empire broke up on his death, Greek soldiers on the east of India founded separate States, and the names of about thirty of them and their successors are known by their coins. Of these the most powerful and successful was Menander, who must have reigned for at least thirty years at the end of the 2nd and the st beginning of the 1 cent. B.C. He died probably about 95 B.C., but we know neither the boundaries of his kingdom nor how far he was merely over-lord, rather than the actual administrative sovereign over the various portions of his vast domain. He is only one of those Greek or half-Greek potentates whose memory has survived in India; and he is there remembered, characteristically enough, not as a political ruler, nor as a victor in war, but as an intelligent and sympathetic inquirer into the religious beliefs of his subjects.159 This has found expression in a very remarkable book, the Milinda Pañha (‘Questions of Milinda ‘). Just as in one of the most popular of the Dialogues of the Buddha Sakka, the king of the gods, is represented as coming to the Buddha to have his doubts resolved, so in this work the Greek king is represented as putting puzzles in religion to Nāgasena, a wise teacher among the Buddhists of his time. In all probability it was with the Sakka Pañha Suttanta in his mind that the author of the Milinda Pañha, whoever he was, framed his work.

159 See the authorities quoted in Rhys Davids, Questions of King Milinda, i. (SBE xxxv.) pp. xviii–xxiii.

75 The Milinda Pañha is divided into seven books. The first is introductory, and is very cleverly so drawn up as gradually to raise the expectations of the reader regarding the great interest of the encounter of wit and wisdom which be will find in the following books. Bk. ii., ‘On ethical Qualities,’ and bk. iii., ‘On the Removal of Difficulties,’ contain a number of questions, put by the king and answered by Nāgasena, on the elementary doctrines of Buddhism. On the conclusion of this book the king is converted, and devotes himself to a long and careful study of the text of the Pāli canon. In bk. iv., the Meṇḍaka Pañha, or ‘Dilemmas,’ the king submits to Nāgasena the difficulties which he has met in the course of his studies. The discussion of these difficulties leads up to and culminates in the meaning of nirvāṇa, and closes with an eloquent peroration on that subject. Having thus brought his reader up to the bracing plateau of emancipation, the author proceeds in the next book, the Anumāna Pañha, ‘Problem of Inference,’ to describe what is to be found there. In an elaborate allegory of the City of Righteousness he sets out the various mental and moral treasures enjoyed by the arahant who has reached in this life the ideal state. The next book, the Dhutaṅgas, ‘Extra Vows,’ is devoted to an exaltation of those who have adopted the ascetic practices so called. The last book, incomplete in our existing MSS, consists of a long list of types of the arahant, showing how he has, e.g., five qualities in common with the ocean, five with the earth, five with water, and five with fire. The details of sixty-seven such similes are given. Of the remaining thirty- eight only the list is given, the detailed explanations being lost. There are peculiarities both of merit and of defect in this book. The author, or authors, have an unusual command of language, both in the number of words used and in the fitness of the words chosen in each case. There is great charm in the style, which rises occasionally throughout the book to real eloquence; and there is considerable grasp of the difficult and important questions involved. On the other hand, there is a great weakness in logic. The favorite method is to invent an analogy to explain some position, and then to take for granted that the analogy proves the position taken to be true; and quite often, when the right answer to a dilemma would be a simple matter of historical criticism, the answer given savors of casuistry, or is a mere play on the ambiguity of words. Then the author, though he naturally avoids the blunders so often repeated in European books against Buddhism—that nirvāṇa, e.g., is a state to be reached by a ‘soul’ after it has left the body, or a state not attainable except by a ‘priest’ or a ‘monk’—does not stand on the ancient Path. His description of the arahant, whom he calls a yogī (a term not found in the older books), lays more stress on those qualities afterwards ascribed to the bodhisattva (q.v.) than on those belonging to the Path, or mentioned (of the arahant) in the Nikāyas. His Buddhology has advanced beyond that of the Nikāyas. The ethics of the Aryan Path are barely referred to; the doctrine of causation, the necessity of seeing things as they really are (yathābhūtaṃ pi jānanaṃ), is not even mentioned, notwithstanding its cardinal importance in the earlier teaching. The author devotes a whole book to the dhutaṅgas, a term not occurring in the Nikāyas, and in that book manifests a spirit entirely opposed to the early teaching.160 All these peculiarities of style and mental attitude are uniform throughout the work. It would seem, therefore, most probable that it

160 See above, ERE ii. 71b.

76 was the work either of one author or of one school within a limited period of the history of that school. Probably the latter will eventually be found to be the right explanation. The work is four times quoted as an authority by the great Buddhist commentator, Buddhtaghoṣa.161 It is the only work outside the Pāli canon which he thus quotes. It is also quoted as an authority in the Dhammapada commentary (i. 127).162 All these th references may be dated in the 5 cent. A.D. They are taken from the second, third, and fourth books, which at least must be considerably older than the works in which the Milinda is quoted as an authority. None of the quotations is exactly word for word the same as the corresponding passage in Trenckner’s edition of the text,163 and the present writer has pointed out elsewhere the various interpretations possible of these interesting, though slight, discrepancies.164 In one passage (p. 102 of the text) Buddhaghoṣa seems to have the better reading. Nāgasena is also quoted in the Abhidharma-kośavyākhyā, a th 165 Sanskrit Buddhist work which may be dated in the 6 cent. A.D. There are also several incidental references in Chinese ‘translations’ of Indian books. When we know the dates of the latter, and can be sure that the references really occur in them, those references may have importance. At the beginning of the work (p. 2 of the text) there is a table of contents giving the titles of the subdivisions of the book. The editor, V. Trenckner, also gives us titles, which differ, however, from those in the table of contents given in the text. Hīnaṭikumburē’s translation into Siṃhalese166 likewise gives titles, presumably from the much older Pāli MSS which he used. These titles differ from both the other lists. Trenckner, who has certainly made one glaring mistake (p. 362), gives no apparatus criticus for his titles; and, as he used only three of the seven MSS of the work known to exist in Europe,167 one would like to be informed also as to what readings are given by the other four. Even for the canonical books the discrepancies in the subsidiary titles are very frequent, and it is often probable that such titles are later than the text to which they refer. It is clear that, pending further information, Trenckner’s titles to the divisions of the Milinda cannot be relied on as original. B. Nanjio, in his most useful catalogue of Chinese Buddhist books,168 gives under no. 1358 the title of one called Nāsien Bikhiu King, ‘Nāgasena the Bhikkhu’s Book.’ The attempt to reproduce the sound of the words of this title suggests that the words before the translator must have been, not Sanskrit (bhikṣu), but Pāli (bhikkhu) or some other Indian dialect akin to Pāli. J. Takakusu has discussed the date of this work, which purports to be a translation of some Indian book with the same title.169 It is first

161 See the references given In Rhys Davids, op. cit. pp. xiv–xvi. 162 Dhammapada A. i. 380 might, at first sight, be taken for another, but it is from Majjhima, ii. 51. 163 Milinda-pañho, ed. V. Trenckner, London, 1880. 164 Op. cit. p. xv ff. 165 See Rhys Davids’ note in JRAS, 1891, pp. 476–478, and Max Müller, India, What can it teach us?, London, 1883, p. 209. 166 See on this translation Rhys Davids, Questions of King Milinda, i. p. xii ff. 167 Ib. p. xvii. 168 Catalogue of the Chinese Translation of the Buddhist Tripiṭaka, Oxford, 1883. 169 JRAS, 1896, p. 12 ff.

77 mentioned in a catalogue dated A.D. 785–804, and subsequently in others. But, though the compilers of all these catalogues are usually careful to give the name or names and the date of the translators or authors of the books which they mention, they do not do so in this case. They add, however, a remark: ‘The translator’s name is lost, and we register it as belonging to the Eastern Tsin dynasty (A.D. 317–429).’ So we have a book known to have existed at the end of the 8th cent., and then th believed, on grounds not recorded, to have existed in the 4 cent. A.D. There is no evidence that the original was in Sanskrit. There are two recensions of this book in Chinese, the longer one about half as long again as the shorter one. The difference arises mainly from the omission in the shorter of two long passages found in the longer. In other matters the two are much the same. These omissions are probably due to a mere mistake, perhaps of the translator, perhaps of the printer, and the two recensions may be considered as really one. This bears to the Pāli text the following relation. The translation into English by the present writer consists of 580 pages. The Chinese corresponds more or less to 90 of these pages (one recension omitting about 34 of those 90). The paragraphs corresponding in Chinese and Pāli are those on pp. 40–135 of the English version. But there are seven or eight omissions, and three additions of whole paragraphs, and quite a number of smaller variations or discrepancies.170 It is clear that there is some connection between the Chinese and Pāli books. It is possible that the Indian original (for there was only one) of the Chinese book may be the original out of which the Pāli was developed, mainly by the addition of the last three books. It is equally possible that the Indian work translated into Chinese was itself derived from an older work in seven books, and that its author or authors omitted the last three books as dealing with arahant-ship, in which he (or they) took no interest. This would be precisely in accord with the general feeling in the north-west of India at the period in question—the rd end of the 3 cent. B.C. The doctrine of an emancipation to be reached in this life by strenuous mental exertion was, not unnaturally, yielding place to a doctrine of salvation in the next life through bhākti, personal devotion to a deity. The psychological details of the old system of self-control rather bored people. So the Milinda may, quite possibly, have been reduced to a short and easy book, with the sting of arahant-ship taken out of it. A solution of this Milinda problem would be of the utmost importance for the elucidation of the darkest period in the history of Indian literature. Unfortunately, each of the alternatives suggested above involves great difficulties, and none of the scholars who have written on the subject has so far been able to persuade any other to accept his conclusions. The evidence at present available is insufficient. When the Tibetan translation has been properly examined, when all the quotations from the Milinda in the Pāli commentaries are edited, when all the references elsewhere (and especially those in the numerous Buddhist Sanskrit works still buried in MSS) have been collected, we shall be better able to estimate the value of the external evidence as to the history of the Milinda literature in India. When an adequate comparison has been made between the words used and the ideas expressed in the Pāli Milinda and those found in the canon on

170 See the comparative table given by F. O. Schrader, Die Fragen des Königs Menandros, p. 120 f.

78 the one hand and the commentaries on the other, we shall have more valuable internal evidence than is yet available. The lists of about a hundred words peculiar to the Milinda published by the present writer in 1890171 was necessarily inadequate, and has not since then been improved upon. LITERATURE—Milindapañho, ed V. Trenckner, London, 1880; T. W. Rhys Davids, Questions of King Milinda, SBE xxxv [1890], xxxvi. [1894]; F. Otto Schrader, Die Pragen des König Menandros, Berlin, n.d., but probably 1906; R. Garbe, Deutsche Rundschad, cxli. [1902] 268 ff. (reprinted in Beiträge zur indischen Kulturgeschechie, Berlin, 1905 p. 95ff.); A. Pfungst Aus der indischen Kulturwelt, Stuttgart, 1891; J. Takakusu ‘Chinese Translations of the Milinda Paṇho,’ JRAS, 1896, pp. 1–21; Rhys Davids, Nāgasena.’ ib., 1891, pp. 476–478; E. Specht, ‘Deux Traductions chinoises du Milindapañho,’ Trans. of the 9th Oriental Congress, London, 1893, i. 518–529; M. Winternitz, Gesch. der ind. Literatur, ii. Leipzig, 1913, pp 139–146; L. A. Waddell, ‘A Historical Basis for the Questions of King “Menander,”’ JRAS, 1897, pp. 227–237; Hiṇaṭikumburë Sumaṅgala, Milinda Praśnaya (Siṃhalese), Colombo, 1877. For the historic Milinda see V. Smith, Early Hist. of India3, Oxford, 1914.

Aspects of Buddhist Society

AHIMSĀ AHIMSĀ.—Ahimsā is the Indian doctrine of non-injury, that is, to all living things (men and animals). It first finds expression in a mystical passage the Chāndogya Upanishad (3. 17), where five ethical qualities, one being Ahimsā, are said to be equivalent to a part of the sacrifice of which the whole life of man is made an epitome. This is not exactly the same as the Hebrew prophet’s ‘I will have mercy and not sacrifice,’ but it comes near to it. The date of this document may be the 7th cent. B.C. This was also the probable time of the rise of the Jains, who made the non-injury doctrine a leading tenet of their school. (See, for instance, Āchārānga Sutta 1. 4. 2, translated by Jacobi, Jaina Sūtras, 1. 39). It is the first of the five vows of the Jain ascetics (ib. p. xxiii.); and they carried it to great extremes, not driving away vermin from their clothes or bodies, and carrying a filter and a broom to save minute insects in the water they drank or on the ground where they sat (ib. p. xxvii). The doctrine has been common ground in all Indian sects from that time to the present. But each school of thought looks at it in a different way, and carries it out in practice in different degrees. The early Buddhists adopted it fully, but drew the line at what we should now call ordinary, reasonable humanity. It occurs twice in the eightfold

171Questions of King Milinda, i. p. xlii ff.

79 path,—no doubt the very essence of Buddhism,— first under right aspiration, and again under right conduct (Majjhima iii. 251 = Saṃyutta v. 9). It is the first in the Ten Precepts for the Order (sikkkāpadāni), and therefore of the five rules of conduct for laymen (pañcha sīlāni), which correspond to the first five of the Precepts (Vinaya i. 83, Aṅguttara iii. 203). It is the subject of the first paragraph of the old tract on conduct, the Sīlas, which is certainly one of the very oldest of extant Buddhist documents, and is incorporated bodily into so many of the Suttantas (Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, i. 3, 4). Aśoka made it the subject of the first and second of the Rock Edicts in which he recommended his religion to his people, and refers again to it in the fourth. But he had long been a Buddhist before, in the first Edict, he proclaimed himself a vegetarian. The rule of the Buddhist Order was to accept any food offered to them on their round for alms; when Devadatta demanded a more stringent rule, the Buddha expressly refused to make any change (Vinaya Texts, ii. 117, iii. 253); and a much-quoted hymn, the Āmgandha Sutta (translated by Fausböll, SBE x. 40), put into the mouth of Kassapa the Buddha, lays down that it is not the eating of flesh that defiles a man, but the doing of evil deeds. The Buddhist application of the principle differs, therefore, from the Jain. It would be a long, and not very useful, task to trace the different degrees in which the theory has been subsequently held. It is sufficient to note that the less stringent view has prevailed. At the end of the long Buddhist domination the practice of animal sacrifices had ceased, and though with the revival of Brahman influence an attempt was made to restore them, it failed. The use of meat as food had been given up, and has never revived. But the Indians have not become strict vegetarians. Dried fish is still widely eaten; and though there is a deep-rooted aversion to taking animal life of any other kind, the treatment of living animals, draught oxen and camels for instance, is not always thoughtful Nowhere else, however, has the doctrine of Ahimsā had so great and long- continued an influence on national character.

CHARITY CHARITY, ALMSGIVING (Buddhist).—The early Buddhists adopted Indian views on this subject, which forms no part of the teaching peculiar to themselves. Almsgiving (dāna) is not mentioned in the Eightfold Path, or in the Five Precepts for laymen. When the author or editor of the Dhammapada made that anthology of verses on each of twenty-six subjects important in Buddhism, dāna was not one of them. But dāna occurs in several passages of the older books. It is one of the really lucky things (all ethical, Sutta Nipāta, 263). The five right ways of giving are to give in faith, to give carefully, to give quickly, to give firmly, and to give so as not to injure oneself or the other (Aṅguttara, iii. 172). Another set of five are to give carefully, thoughtfully, with one’s own hand, not a thing discarded, and with the hope that the donee will come again (ib.). The theory is that the merit of a gift grows in proportion with the merit of the donee (Aṅguttara, i. 162; Dhammapada, 357–9). As Buddhology began its fatal course, dāna was made one of the pāramitās (not found in the older books), that is, of the qualities in which a Buddha must, in previous births, have perfected himself. It is in this connection

80 that we have the well-known stories of the extremes of almsgiving, such as that of King Sivi who gave away his eyes, and of Vessantara who gave away not only his kingdom, but all that he possessed and even his wife and children. These legends, both of which have a happy ending, are most popular among the Buddhist peasantry. The ethics of the Vessantara story, which is much open to doubt, is discussed in the Milinda (ii. 114–132 of Rhys Davids’ tr). The same book tells of ten gifts which must never be given— intoxicating drinks, weapons, poisons, and so on. But best gift of all is the gift of dhamma, which may be roughly translated, in this connection, by ‘truth’ (Dhammapada, 354), and the Five Great Gifts are the five divisions of one’s own virtuous life (Kathā Vatthu, 7.4) regarded, from a similar point of view, as gifts to others.

FAMILY th FAMILY (Buddhist).—In the 6 cent. B.C., when Buddhism arose in the valley of the Ganges, the family had already been long constituted, and its every detail settled, in accordance with the tribal customs of the Aryan, Dravidian, Kolarian, and other inhabitants. Neither at the beginning, in the precepts put into the mouth of the Buddha in our earliest documents, was any attempt made to interfere in any way with those customs; nor afterwards, as the influence of the new teaching spread, do we find any decree of a Buddhist Council, or any ordinance of a Buddhist king, prescribing a change there in family relations. When Buddhism was subsequently introduced and more or less widely or completely adopted in other countries, the Buddhists evinced no desire, and probably had no power, to reconstitute the family according to any views of their own on the subject. It is possible, therefore, to speak of the family as Buddhist only in a very modified sense—an observation equally true of all religions so late as, or later than, the Buddhist. But the general tone of the Buddhist teaching, and the adoption by a proportion of the inhabitants of any country of the system of self-culture and self-control we now call Buddhism (the Buddhists called it the Dharma), could not fail to exercise a certain influence on the degree in which previously existing customs were modified to suit the new environment. And in our oldest documents, in those portions addressed to beginners in the system, and amounting to little more than milk for babes, we find allusions, not indeed to the re-adjustment of any point of detail, but to the general principles which should guide a good Buddhist in his family relations. Thus in the edifying story of the partridge,172 the Buddha is represented as laying especial stress on the importance of reverence being paid to the aged, and as concluding his discourse thus: ‘So, since even animals can live together in mutual reverence, confidence, and courtesy, so much more should you so let your light shine forth that you, who have left the world to follow so well taught a doctrine and discipline, may be seen to dwell in like manner together’

172 Vinaya, ii. 161, tr. in Vinaya Texts, iii. 194 (SBE xx.).

81 This is here addressed to the bhikkhus. Afterwards the same story was included in the popular collection of Jātakas (Fausböll, Lond. 1877–97, i. 217–220); and it was well known to the Chinese pilgrim, Yüan Chwang (Watters, On Yüan Chwang’s Travels in India, do. 1905. ii. 54). A similar sentiment is found in the popular anthology of favourite stanzas, the Dhammapada (verse 109, a celebrated verse found also in other Buddhist anthologies, and repeated, in almost identical words, by later Sanskrit writers).173 In the Sigāovāda Suttanta the Buddha sees a young man worshipping the six quarters, North, South, East, West, the nadir, and the zenith, and shows him a more excellent way of guarding the six quarters by right conduct towards parents and wife and children, and teachers and friends and dependents. ‘In five ways the son should minister to his mother and father, who are the East quarter. He should say: “I will sustain in their old age those who supported me in my youth; I will take upon myself what they would otherwise have to do (in relation to the State and the family); I will keep up the lineage of their house; I will guard their property; and when they are dead and gone I will duly make the customary gifts.” Thus ministered unto, the father and mother in five ways show their affection to their son. They restrain him from evil, and train him to follow that which is seemly, they have him taught a craft, they marry him to a suitable wife, and in due season they give him his portion of the inheritance. . . . In five ways the husband should minister to his wife, who is the west quarter. He should treat her with reverence; not belittle her; never be false to her; acknowledge her authority; and provide her with things of beauty. Thus ministered unto, the wife should in five ways show her affection for her husband. She should manage her household well; carry out all due courtesies to relatives on both sides; never be false to him; take care of his property; and be able and active in all she has to do.’174 Passages of similar tendency are found in other parts of the Nikāyas addressed to beginners or householders. The principles set forth in them may certainly be called Buddhist, since they have been adopted into the Dhamma. But it is probable that they are a selection from the views as to family and sexual relations already current among the Aryan clans to which the Buddha himself and most of his early disciples—to whom we owe the record—belonged. What is Buddhist about it is the selection. For instance, we know from the later law books that the pre-Buddhistic Aryans performed, at a marriage, magical and religious ceremonies which bore a striking resemblance in important details to ceremonies enacted at a similar date by other Aryan races in Europe. Other religious ceremonies were performed at the name-giving, the initiation, and other important periods in the history of the family. All these are, of course, ignored and omitted in the exhortation. Buddhists could not countenance practices which they held to be connected with superstition. And they put nothing in their place. There are no Buddhist ceremonies of marriage, initiation, baptism, or the like. Marriage is regarded as a purely civil rite, and the Buddhist clergy, as such, take no part in it. This is probably the reason why Asoka, in

173 Manu. ii. 121; Mahābhārata, v. 1521. 174 Tr. from Dīgha, iii. 189 ff.; also tr. by S. Gogerly, Ceylon Buddhism (ed. Bishop, Colombo, 1908), p. 529 ff., and by R. C. Childers, CR, 1876.

82 his edicts on religion, does not mention it. He considers marriage, and the observance of family customs, a civil affair.175 In pre-Buddhistic times, divorce, but without any formal decree, was allowed. So Isidāsī, for instance, explains how she had had to return twice to her father’s house, having been sent back by successive husbands owing to incompatibility of temper (the result of her evil deeds in a former birth).176 No instance is recorded of similar action taken against the husband. In countries under the influence of the Theravāda (the older Buddhism) there is divorce on equal terms for husband or wife on the ground of infidelity, desertion, or incompatibility of temper. This is, however, infrequent. Fielding estimates it, for village communities in Burma, at two to five per cent of the marriages;177 and the present writer, while not able to estimate any percentage, for which there are no statistics available, is able to testify to the very low number of divorces in Ceylon. The wife, after marriage, retains her own name, and the full control of all her property, whether it be dower or inheritance. Property acquired by the partnership (of husband and wife) is joint property. There is no harîm system; marriage is monogamous (that is, among the people; kings often follow the Hindu customs); women go about unveiled, engage in business, can sign deeds, give evidence, join in social intercourse, and have just such liberty as they and their men-folk think expedient. Fielding, who has given the facts for Burma in considerable detail (chs. 13–17), does not discuss the question how far this state of things is due to the influence of Buddhism, and how far to the inherited customs and good sense of the people. But, when we call to mind that the same or closely related races have, under other influences, much less advanced customs, and that in early Buddhism a remarkably high position was allowed to women, we may conjecture that the influence of early Buddhist teaching was not without weight. LITERATURE.—The authorities are given in the article.

HOSPITALITY HOSPITALITY (Buddhist).—This may best be considered under three heads: (1) hospitality of laymen one to the other, (2) hospitality of the laity to members of the religious Orders, and (3) hospitality of the latter to each other. 1. Hospitality among laymen.—In passages in the canonical books dealing with the lower morality and addressed to unconverted laymen we find references to this subject. So in the Dīgha (iii. 190) the ideal wife is said to be hospitable to her husband’s family; in ib. i. 117 it is stated to be the duty of a good citizen to treat guests with honour and respect; in Jātaka, iv. 32 (in the canonical verses), one of the heroes of the tale boasts of the friendly and hospitable reception he always accorded to guests; and in ib. v. 388

175 There is a reference to docility towards parents in the 3rd Rock Edict. See T. W. Rhys Davids, Buddhist India, London, 1903, p. 295. 176 Therī-gāthā, 416, 425, tr. by C. A. F. Rhys Davids, in Psalms of the Sisters, PTS, 1900, p. 160. 177 Soul of a People, London, 1898, p. 246.

83 (again in the canonical verses) it is laid down that his sacrifice is vain who leaves a guest there seated unfed. These injunctions, or expressions of opinion, are not represented as exclusively Buddhist. In the first passage they are put into the mouth of the Buddha, in the others into the mouths of good men not belonging to the Buddhist community. It is evident that the Buddhists adopted current views on the subject, omitting only any reference to superstitious customs, connected with conceptions of taboo or animistic views. 2. Hospitality of the laity to the religious Orders.—When Buddhism arose, there were quite a number of wandering teachers (pabbajitā, ‘wanderers’) who propagated doctrines as varied as those of the Greek sophists. They belonged to all social grades, though most of them were men of noble birth. It was considered a virtue and a privilege to provide these unorthodox teachers with the few simple necessaries of their wandering life—especially lodging, food, and clothing. Many of the ‘wanderers’ were organized into communities with such rules as seemed suitable to their founder for the regulation of such bodies of co-religionists. The people supported all alike, though they had their special favourites. The Buddhists adopted this system, and those among the laity who followed them carried out very willingly the current views as to such hospitality to the ‘wanderers.’ It was enjoined upon them to give to all. Thus, when Sīha, a nobleman who had hitherto followed the Jain doctrine, became a Buddhist, it is specially mentioned that the Buddha urged him to continue, as before, his hospitalities to the members of the Jain Order.178 So in the Edicts of the Buddhist emperor Asoka frequent mention is made of the duty of hospitality to teachers of all the different sects (not only one’s own). 3. Hospitality within the Order.—The Buddhist ‘wanderers’ were accustomed on their journeyings to stay with one another, and a set of rules was drawn up for their guidance when guests of this kind arrived, prescribing the etiquette to be observed both by the incoming bhikkhus (the āgan-tukā) and by their hosts. These regulations are of a simple character, such as might be drawn up now under similar circumstances. They are too long to quote, but have been translated in full by the resent writer and Oldenberg in vol. iii of the Vinaya Texts (SBE xx. [1885]) 273–282. It should be pointed out that all this is considered to belong to the lower morality of the unconverted; it is taken for granted, and never even referred to in those passages of the books in which the essential doctrines of Buddhism are expounded to the converted. It is really Indian (see HOSPITALITY [Hindu]) rather than Buddhist though a detailed comparison of the Buddhist doctrine of hospitality with that of other Indian sects would, no doubt, show that the Buddhists laid more stress than the others did on certain details, e.g. on the importance, in such matters, of disregarding, or paying but little attention to, any difference of sectarian opinion. LITERATURE.—The authorities are quoted In the article.

178 Vinaya Texts, 11. (SBE xvii. [1882]) 115.

84 CHASTITY CHASTITY (Buddhist).—Buddhist ideas as to the relation of the sexes may best be treated under two heads: according as they apply to the ordinary Buddhist layman, or to a member of the Buddhist Order. The rules for the latter will be found in art. CELIBACY (Buddhist). The rules for the layman are laid down very simply and broadly in several parts of the Canon, with the stress placed on purity in general rather than on any particular detail. For instance, in the Sigālovāda Suttanta (a dialogue on elementary ethical precepts to be followed by laymen), Sigāla is seen by the Buddha worshipping the various quarters of the heavens with streaming hair and uplifted hands. The teacher points out to him a better way, in which the six quarters worthy of worship are not the physical quarters of the heavens, but parents, teachers, husband (or wife), friends, dependents, and spiritual masters (Bhikkhus and Brahmans). Under the third head we have the following paragraph: ‘In five ways should the wife, who is the west quarter, be cherished by her husband—by respect, by courtesy, by being faithful to her, by recognizing her authority, by providing for her wants. And in five ways the wife takes thought for her husband—she orders the household aright, is hospitable to kinsfolk and friends, is a chaste wife, is a thrifty housekeeper, and is diligent in all there is to do.’ The same tractate warns young men against riotous living of all kinds—drunkenness, gambling, and unchastity. There is no older document in Indian religious literature devoted to the inculcation of ethical precepts for laymen. In the Itivuttaka, Buddha is represented as declaring that ‘the life of chastity is not lived for the purpose of deceiving or prating to mankind, nor for the sake of the advantage of a reputation for gain and one’s own affairs; but . . . this life of chastity is lived, O monks, for the purpose of Insight and Thorough Knowledge’ (§ 36); while ‘by mutual reliance, O monks, a life of chastity is lived for the sake of crossing the Flood (of earthly longings), and for the sake of properly making an end of Misery’ (§ 107). He who, after taking the vow of chastity, breaks it, and he who thus causes another to fall, suffers ‘in the realm of punishment and in perdition’ (§ 48); yet the same treatise seems to imply that (undue) craving for chastity is, like all other forms of clinging to conditions of earthly existence, essentially evil (§ 54 f.). There is very little ethics in the previous books of ritual, poetry, or exegesis, or even in the theosophy of the Upaniśads; and the level of the mythology and ritual is as low in India as elsewhere, in matters of chastity. But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the Buddhist movement introduced any great revolution in this respect. The people, in the th 6 cent. B.C., had already built up for themselves, quite independently of religion, a social code regarding sexual relations. All that Buddhism did was to adopt the highest ideal current among the clans, and to give to it additional clearness and emphasis. It was this ideal that it carried with it wherever it was introduced. It thus threw its influence on the side of a strict monogamy in marriage, in favor of chastity for both sexes before and after marriage, and against early marriages. On the whole, it has had a fair success. The percentage of illegitimate births is low in those countries where the influence of early Buddhism has been greatest, and its canonical literature is chaste throughout. Some of the th later literature, from the 6 cent. A.D. onwards, especially in Bengal, Nepal, and Tibet, is very much the reverse. See art. TANTRA.

85 LITERATURE—R. C. Childers, ‘The Whole Duty of the Buddhist Layman,’ in CR, 1876; Rhys Davids, Buddhism 21, 1907, ch. v. p. 209; P. Grimblot, Sept Suttas Pālis, Paris, 1876, p. 311 ff.; Itivuttaka, or Sayings of Buddha, tr. J. H. More New York, 1908), pp. 49, 62, 67 f., 125.

ADULTERY ADULTERY (Buddhist).—The last of the five Precepts binding on a Buddhist layman is not to act wrongly in respect of fleshly lusts (Aṅguttara, 3. 212). In a very ancient paraphrase of these Precepts in verse (Sutta Nipāta, 393–398), this one is expressed as follows: ‘Let the wise man avoid unchastity as if it were a pit of live coals. Should he be unable to be celibate, let him not offend with regard to the wife of another.’ This is evidence not so much of Buddhist ethics as of the general standard of ethics in the 6th cent. B.C., in Kosala and Magadha. In the Buddhist Canon Law we find a regulation to be followed by members of the Order, when on their rounds for alms, in order to prevent the possibility of suspicion or slander in this respect (Pācittiya, 43, translated in Vinaya Texts, 1.41). An adulterer taken in the act might be wounded or slain on the spot. This explains the implication of the words used in Samyutta, 2. 188. But adultery was also an offence against the State, and an offender could be arrested by the police, and brought up for trial and judgment (Commentary on Dhammapada, 300). In such texts of the law administered in Buddhist countries as have so far been made accessible to us, the view taken of adultery is based on these ancient customs. So, for instance, of the Siṅhalese, Panabokke says (Nīti Nighaṇḍuwa, p. xxix) that adultery, unless committed in the king’s palace, was seldom punished by the Kandian judges; (1) because the husband was loath, by complaint, to publish his disgrace; and (2) because he was allowed to take vengeance himself if the offender were caught under such circumstances that adultery was presumable. (See also Richardson, The Dhammathat, Burmese text and English translation, Rangoon, 1906). Nothing is said in the Buddhist law-books of any punishment to be inflicted, either by the husband or by the State, on the adulteress. Buddhist influence in this matter, except in so far as it mitigated severity against the woman, was therefore confined to the maintenance of pre-Buddhistic ideas and customs.

LAW LAW (Buddhist).—In the strict sense of the word there is no Buddhist law; there is only an influence exercised by Buddhist ethics on changes that have taken place in customs. No Buddhist authority, whether local or central, whether lay or clerical, has ever enacted or promulgated any law. Such law as has been administered in countries ruled over by monarchs nominally Buddhist has been custom rather than law; and the custom has been in the main pre-Buddhistic, fixed and established before the people became

86 Buddhist. There have been changes in custom. But the changes have not been the result of any enactment from above. They have been brought about by change of opinion among the people themselves. And in order to ascertain whether such change of opinion was, or was not, due to the influence of Buddhism it would be necessary, in each case, to ascertain what the custom had been before the introduction of Buddhism, in what degree or manner it had changed, and what, had been the probable cause of the difference shown. Unfortunately our knowledge of the history of social conditions in Eastern Asia, th whether before or after the 6 cent. B.C., is at present much too meagre to enable us to deal with the subject in so thorough a manner. Nothing has yet been written on the subject, and only a slight beginning may yet be made. The Buddhists, for instance, had from the beginning what we term their canon law, what they called Vinaya, i.e. ‘Guidance.’179 It consists of 227 rules to regulate the conduct of the members in outward affairs, and some supplementary chapters on special subjects. These ‘articles of association’ are quite apart from the Buddhist religion, and indeed have little or nothing that is specifically either Buddhist or religious. No religious community could avoid quarrels and disruption without the assistance of rules of the kind. Now, just before the rise of Buddhism there were quite a number of such Orders. The names of ten of them are preserved in the Aṅguttara.180 Unfortunately, the records of nine out of the ten have perished. They had no writing; and, as each Order died out, both its doctrine and its canon law, kept alive only in the memory of its members, died out also. Only one of these pre-Buddhistic communities has survived—that of the Jains; and the internal regulations of the Jain Order have not yet been published. It was inevitable that the early Buddhists should have adopted in many details the customs already followed by these other wanderers. But in the main, no doubt, the rules were Indian in origin, the common inheritance of all the schools. There is nothing in the 227 rules of the Vinaya which would be included under the English term ‘law’ in its modern sense. In the explanations and applications, however, of the rules, as interpreted in the chapters of the Order when a particular case came up for decision, there is a good deal of what we should now call case law. For example, Rule No. 3 is as follows:181 ‘Whatsoever Bhikkhu shall knowingly deprive of life a human being, or shall seek out an assassin against a human being, or shall utter the praises of death, or incite another to self-destruction, saying, “Ho! My friend! what good do you get from this sinful, wretched life? death is better to you than life!”—if so thinking, and with such an aim, he by various argument, utter the praises of death or incite another to self-destruction—he, too, is fallen into defeat, he is no longer in communion.’ In the elucidation and discussion182 of this rule a very large number of all possible cases of alleged infringement of it are given. The cases are not real ones that actually happened, but hypothetical. The offences, or alleged offences, are sorted into grades, which are distinguished one from another as modern English law-books distinguish

179 Ed. H. Oldenberg, London. 1879–83. 180 See T. W. Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, Oxford. 1899–1910, i. 220–222. 181 Vinaya Texts, i. 4 (SBE xiii. [1881] 4). 182 Vinaya, iii. 68–86; not yet translated.

87 between assault, aggravated assault, manslaughter, and murder. The penalty for the gravest kind is exclusion from the Order; that for the lesser kind is suspension in varying degrees, and for varying duration. For instance a man digs a pit; that is no offence. He digs it in the hope that X will fall into it; that is a dukkaṭa (‘evil act’). The man (X) falls into it; that is another dukkaṭa. He is badly hurt; the man who dug the pit is guilty of a grave offence (thullachchaya). The man falling is killed, then the digger of the pit is guilty of ‘defeat’ (pārājika), involving expulsion.183 This is not criminal law. It is intended only to keep the Order pure; and the penalties are very mild. But it is interesting to find in these discussions the doctrine of malice aforethought, or accessory before (or after) the fact, used much as a modern jurist would use it, and leading up to decisions which are very much what a modern jurist would give. H. Oldenberg, in his introduction to his edition of the text, has carefully considered the manner in which these documents enshrining the Buddhist Vinaya were gradually built up, and their approximate date. He concludes that the whole text, as we now have it, was in existence within a century of the Buddha’s death; and that much of it—for instance, the 227 rules referred to above—is older, and may go back to the generation in which Buddhism arose. It will be seen at once that this is quite modern compared with the Hammurabi Code of customary law. Such value as these Buddhist documents have in the history of law depends upon their being the oldest legal texts which apply the principles of equity to the problems to be solved. They do not pretend to put forward any code of law. They belong to a stage beyond that, and only attempt to utilize for the practical requirements of an association of co-workers the results of previous thought on points. We shall probably never know how far these results may have been modified or softened by the Buddhists for the purpose of application to the new problems to be met. The administration of this law (if law it can be called) was very simple. The decision lay with the Chapter, which was composed of all members of the Order resident within a certain boundary. The boundary, also fixed by the Chapter, was so arranged as to secure the possible attendance of from a dozen to a score of members. All the members were equal, and the senior member presided. If the matter came to a vote—which seldom happened—the voting was by ticket. Complicated matters were referred to a special committee for report, and the decisions in most cases were unanimous. The Chapters had no authority to settle any matters not included in the Vinaya, or to deal with property not the property of the Order. All such matters were the province of the State, to be settled according to the customs of each locality. They were regarded as secular, not religious. Thus customs as to marriage and divorce, the inheritance and division of real or personal estate, the law of contract and criminal law, were all purely secular matters to be determined by the sense of the lay community. This continued to be the attitude of mind of the Buddhists throughout their long and varied history. The expression ‘Buddhist law’ as used of law administered in English courts in Ceylon and Burma has a very different meaning. When the English had taken the whole of Ceylon, they introduced English law except on certain matters, which, they imagined, would or might offend the religious feelings of some of the inhabitants. Thus, with regard

183 ib, iii. 76.

88 to marriage and inheritance, they granted to the Dutch the Roman-Dutch law on these points, and to the Hindus and Muhammadans the Hindu and Muhammadan law respectively. Taking for granted, in their ignorance of Buddhism, that the relation between law and religion on these points as for these others, they decided to incorporate into the law of the Island the customs prevalent there among the majority, the Buddhists, on the same points. For this purpose they made inquiries as to what those customs were, and finally recognized two different groups of custom as valid, the one for the low- country Siṇhaleae, the other for the Kandians in the hills. By so doing they made customs current at the beginning of the 19th cent. valid forever, and deprived the lay community of any power of change or adjustment which they possessed. On the other hand, they soon began, and have continued to change the customs by two methods, one of interpretation by judicial decisions, the other by legislative enactment. By the latter they have introduced the registration of marriages, and conferred upon the laity the power of making wills. The original report on Kandian customs has been recently discovered and a translation of it published by C. J. R. Le Mesurier and T. B. Panabokko, under the title Nīti Nigaṇḍuva (Colombo, 1880). The course of events in Burma since it was taken over, has been very similar. But, whereas we know nothing or next to nothing of Siṇhalese law before the conquest, we have for Burma a most valuable summary of the gradual growth of the customary law in E. Forchhammer’s Jardine Prize Essay (Rangoon, 1885). He shows how the customary law, originally introduced there from S. India in the 10th cent. A.D., has been constantly but slowly modified by the influence of the Buddhist laity. He mentions also the numerous codes in which such alterations have been incorporated. D. Richardson has translated one of the latest of these codes under the title The Damathat, or Laws of Menoo, Rangoon, 1906. LITERATURE.—The authorities are given in the course of the article

CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS (Buddhist).—Crimes are for the most part committed by irreligious people; and the punishments are determined upon and carried out (even under hierarchies like Rome and Tibet) from political or legal, rather than from religious, motives. It is, therefore, a complicated problem to decide how far a religion, dominant at any time in a country, is or is not an important factor either in deciding what acts shall be called crimes, or in determining the punishments for them. This is so even when the facts are known and classified; and no attempt has yet been made to write the history either of crime or of its punishment in any Buddhist country. The following remarks must, therefore, be tentative and imperfect. It will be convenient to discuss the subject (1) as regards the Order, and (2) as regards the laity. 1. The Order.—The standard text-book of Canon Law consists of the ancient Rules of the Order, as current in the time of the Buddha (see ‘Pātimokkha,’ in art. LITERATURE [Buddh.]), edited, about fifty years after his death, with notes and a commentary, and

89 accompanied by twenty supplementary chapters. These additions by the editors show the development that had taken place, during that interval, in the interpretation of the Rules themselves as well as in the method of enforcing them. Of the 227 Rules, more than 200 relate to matters of deportment, to the common property of the Order and the proportion allowed to each member, to the time and manner of taking food, and so on. The penalty for any infraction of these minor regulations was repentance; that is, the offender had to confess his fault to a brother bhikkhu, and promise not to repeat it. This penalty involved forfeiture of any property held contrary to the regulations. The major offences were divided into two classes—pārājika and saṃghādisesa. The former class comprised four crimes—the sexual act, theft, murder, and putting forward a false claim to religious insight. The penalty was expulsion from the Order, or, to use the words of the Rules, ‘he has fallen into defeat, he is no longer in communion.’184 The notes and supplements discuss cases raising the point whether some act does or does not amount to an infringement of one or other of these four Rules. The cases put are ingenious, and the decisions harmonize in a remarkable way with the equitable views of modern writers on criminal law. The second of the above two classes comprises five offences depending on or inciting to sensual impurity, two connected with building a residence without obtaining the approval of the Order; two with slander; two with stirring up discord in the Order; one with intractability; and one with general evil life (being a disorderly person). The penalty for these offences was suspension for as many days as had elapsed between the offence and its confession. A suspended member of the Order is under disability in regard to 94 privileges of an ordinary member—he is to take the worst seat or sleeping-place, cannot sit on a Chapter, cannot travel without restriction, and so on.185 When the fixed number of days has passed, the suspended bhikkhu may be rehabilitated. Both suspension and rehabilitation can be carried only at a formal Chapter, where not fewer than twenty regular bhikkhus must be present. There are somewhat complicated rules to ensure the regularity of the proceedings, the equity of the decision, and opportunity for the putting forward of the defense. These are too long even to summarize. We must be content to note that, for instance, the rules as to the constitution of the court are given in Vinaya Texts, ii. 263 ff., iii. 46; those as to the accusation being invalid, unless brought forward under the right heading, in ii. 276 ff.; those as to both parties being present, in iii 47. Every member of the Order resident in the locality had the right to attend such a Chapter; and, if the matter were too complicated to be adequately considered in so large a meeting, it could be re- ferred to a committee of arbitrators chosen by the Chapter (ib. ilL 49 It). The above are rules and practices evolved by the early Buddhists, for use among themselves only; they do not give, or pretend to give, any adequate treatment of the question of crimes, or of that of punishments, but they show that the early Buddhists had a very fair grasp of the general principles underlying the equitable administration of criminal law, and that in the matter of punishment they took, as might be expected, a lenient view. They show also that, at the time when Buddhism arose, such crimes as

184 Vinaya Texts, i. 4f. 185 The whole of the 94 are given in Vinaya Texts, ii. 386 ff.

90 murder and theft were no longer looked upon as offences against individuals only, but had already come to be considered as offences against the community, as moral offences in themselves—in other words, that this step forward in the treatment of crime was not in any way due to Buddhism, but was the outcome of Indian civilization. 2. Laity—The Buddhist scriptures frequently refer to their ideal of a perfect king, a righteous king who rules in righteousness, without punishment, and without a sword (adaṇḍena asatthena). In the Kūṭadanta,186 King Wide-realm’s country is harassed by dacoits, who pillage the villages and townships and make the roads unsafe. He thinks to suppress the evil by degradation, banishment, fines, bonds, and death, but his Buddhist adviser tells him that there is only one method of putting an end to the disorder, that is, by providing farmers with food and seed-corn, traders with capital, and government officials with good wages. If this method be adopted, ‘the king’s revenue will go up; the country will be quiet and at peace; and the people, pleased with one another and happy, dancing their children in their arms, will dwell with open doors.’ In the legend the plan succeeds; and it represents, no doubt, fairly accurately, the Buddhist vague ideal of the right theory of crime and punishment. In the Buddhist historical chronicles we have no instance of its having been realized. Crime and its punishment have been dealt with according to the views current at each time and place, and it would be impossible, with our present evidences, to attempt any statement as to whether, and in what degree, those views have been modified by the Buddhist ideal. Literature—Vinaya, ed. H. Oldenberg, London, 1879–88; Rhys Davids and Oldenberg, Vinaya Texts (SBB, vols. xii., xvii. xx.), Oxford, 1881–85; Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, Oxford, 1809.

EXPIATION AND ATONEMENT EXPIATION AND ATONEMENT (Buddhist).—In the sense in which these terms are used in Christian theologies, the ideas of expiation and atonement are scarcely, if at all, existent in Indian religions. This holds true especially of Buddhism, constructed without dependence on a deity, and profoundly influenced by the Indian theory of karma (q.v.). According to the theory of karma, as current, it is generally agreed, just before the rise of Buddhism, the fate of a man’s soul, in its next birth, was determined by the man’s karma (lit. ‘doing’) in this birth. The soul was supposed, in this stage of the theory, to be a very minute creature residing in the cavity of the heart, and resembling in every respect (except in size and in the absence of a soul within it) the visible man. Like a man’s, its outward form was material, consisting of the four elements and heat; like a man, it had anger, desire, quality, and other mental traits.187 This hypothesis of a soul was rejected by Buddhism; but in other respects it adopted and systematized the karma theory, and made it one of the foundation-stones of its ethical theory. Karma became for it an inexorable law, working by its own efficacy, subject to no Divine or human interference, and

186 Dīgha, i. 135; tr. in the present writer’s Dialogues of the Buddha, i. 175 f. 187 See Rhys Davids, ‘Theory of the Soul in the Upanishads,’ ix JRAS, 1899.

91 resulting in an effect following without fail upon every deed, word, and thought. As to what effect followed on what deed opinions differed (see KARMA). But on the main fact of karma all Buddhist schools are agreed. They held that the karma and its vipāka (the act and its result) were inextricably interwoven; that no exception by way either of expiation or of atonement was either possible or desirable; and that the contrary doctrine, an explaining away or denial of karma, was pernicious, immoral, a bar to religious progress. The passages in the canonical books in support of the above doctrine are so numerous that only a small selection can be given. In Sutta Nipāta, 666, the Buddha is reported as saying: ‘Karma is never destroyed, not any one’s.’ So also an elder188 is made to say, at Therā Gāthā, 144: ‘The karma a man does, be it lovely, be it evil, that is his inheritance, whatsoever it may have been that he has done.’ At Aṅguttara, i. 286, it is said: ‘Of all woven garments, brethren, a hair shirt is known as the worst. In hot weather it is clammy, in cold weather chilly; it is ugly, evil- smelling, grievous to the touch. Just so, brethren, of all the doctrines commonly known among those of the recluses, that of Makkhali of the Cow-pen is the worst; for that foolish one is of opinion that there is no karma, no action, no energy.’189 Yet, notwithstanding this uncompromising attitude as to the result of any act done, there are two cases in early Buddhism in which, at first sight, there seems to be some mitigation possible. The first is where a bhikkhu is forgiven for a breach of a by-law of the community; the second is in the matter of a patti-dāna, or transfer of merit. The rules as to the first case are translated in Vinaya Texts, ii. 339 ff. and iii. 61–65. Stated quite shortly, they amount to this. If a breach of the rules had been reported to the local chapter, the chapter could, under certain conditions, suspend the offender from certain privileges. On his submission, a motion could be brought forward, at a subsequent meeting of the chapter, for rehabilitation. By leave of the chapter the offender was brought in, and, on his acknowledging his offence, the chapter, through the mouth of the mover of the motion, ‘took the offence back’ (as the standing expression is). Sometimes the Buddha himself, without the matter being laid before a chapter, ‘took back’ an offence (see, for instance, Saṃyutta, i. 128). But in all such cases the offence, it should be noted, is purged only as regards the Order. The law of karma is not broken. The karma of the offence will work out its inevitable result independently of the fact that the offence, so far as the Order is concerned, has been expiated. The other apparent exception, the patti-dāna, or transfer of merit, is interesting as showing development in doctrine. The belief is not found in the Nikāyas themselves, only in the commentaries upon them.190 In the latter, however, it is taken so completely for granted that it must have grown up some considerable time before they were written in the 5th cent. A.D.; and, if the present writer’s note in Questions of King Milinda, ii. 155, be correct, the idea (though not the technical phrase for it) must be as old as the Milinda, nd that is, probably, as old as the 2 cent. A.D. Patti means ‘attainment,’ ‘accomplishment.’ To have done a good deed was to have attained the good result that would inevitably follow. By the law of karma that result would accrue to the benefactor (to him who has

188 On the technical meaning of this epithet, see ELDER (Buddhist). 189 Cf. the note in Rhys Davids, Dialogues of the Buddha, London, 1899, i. 76. 190 Jātaka Com. ii. 112; Dhammapada Com. 161, 402.

92 done the good act) either in this or in some future birth. The doctrine of patti-dāna (lit. ‘gift of the patti’) was that the benefactor could so direct the karma that it would accrue not to his own benefit, but to that of someone else whom he specified. That this amounts to an interference by human will in the action of karma cannot, we think, be disputed. And, if the merit of a good action can be thus transferred, it would seem to follow logically that the result of an evil deed could also be transferred. All this brings us very nearly, if not quite, to the Christian doctrine of atonement, of the imputation of righteousness. The Buddhist might deny this; and would point out, quite rightly, that such transfer of merit was supposed possible only in the case of certain good actions of a minor sort. In fact, the patti-dāna is most frequently found in the colophons to the MSS, the copyist giving expression to the pious hope; that the merit of his having completed the copy may redound to the advantage of all beings. And in other cases, in the stories told in the commentaries, the act of which the merit is transferred is usually the gift of a meal to a bhikkhu, the placing of a white flower at the foot of the monument to a departed arahant, kindness to animals, or some such simple act of piety. It is noteworthy that the transfer of merit is usually from a good Buddhist to a non- Buddhist, and that the latter is usually a friend or relation of the benefactor. There is no instance of a good Buddhist desiring or accepting any transfer of merit to himself. LITERATURE.—V. Fausböll, Dhammapadam, excerptis ex commentario Palico illustravit, Copenhagen, 1855; The Jātaka, together with its commentary, 7 vols., ed. V. Fausböll, London, 1877–1897; Sutta Nipāta, London, 1885; Aṅguttara Nikāya, 6 vols. (PTS, 1885–1910); Saṃyutta Nikāya, 6 vols. (PTS, 1884–1904); T. W. Rhys Davids and H. Oldenberg, Vinaya Texts, 3 vols. (SBE, 1881–1885); Rhys Davids, Questions of King Milinda, 2 vols. (SBE, 1890, 1894); F. L. Woodward, The Buddhist Doctrine of Reversible Merit, Colombo, 1911.

T. W. RHYS DAVIDS.

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