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is its moral significance, and the secret of its original success in India, and subsequent gigantic spread in Tibet, China, Ceylon, and Further India. Acknowledging castes simply as an existing political institution, it received all men, of every colour, rank, and sex, to instruction in its highest truths, in religion acknowledging spiritual gradations of sanctity only; and when extending itself to other unbrahmanical lands, it nowhere caused the introduction of caste. To Brahmanism, where the Brahmans alone were permitted to meditate on the spiritual essence of deity, the polytheistic mythology, with its three great gods and its numberless inferior Dêvas, was natural as the religion of the uninitiated multitude; but with these Buddhism, allowing the loftiest contemplation to all, could dispense. They were not, however, to be easily loosened from their long hold on the Indian mind; and still subsisted, though in diminished glory, the Dêvas remaining as a kind of genii, and Brahmâ himself being subordinate to the founder of Buddhism. And in progress of time a very complex system of Buddhistic hagiology grew up, rivalling the polytheism of the older mythology. Again, Buddhism is opposed to the Vedic religion as a spiritual system is to an unsystematised worship of the powers of nature. And to both stages of the older religion Buddhism stands most distinctly opposed, as a world-religion to a national. The older religion was first a specially-Indian conception of the forces of the physical world as living agents; and later, when it raised itself to more spiritual contemplation, it was bound to a peculiar social system, and pledged to withhold its higher doctrines not only from strange nations, but even from the commonalty of its own nation. Buddha, regarding spiritual worth alone, naturally overstepped the limits of nationality; and his followers, carrying their spiritual truths into distant nations, and propounding them in foreign tongues, are the first grand example the world has seen of missionary energy-of missionary self-sacrifice for spiritual

truth.

Why, then, did Buddhism, after a few centuries of astonishing success, yield to the ultimate greater vitality of the Brahmanism it had supplanted, and cease to be the religion of the Aryan race in India; and why, in the greatly inferior north-Asiatic races with whom it has subsisted, has it degenerated into formalism and atheism? Mrs. Speir's remarks in answer to this question are so much the truest and most beautiful things we have seen on the subject, that we cannot resist transcribing some of the most pregnant sentences:

"Because, we answer, Buddhist morals are like gathered blossoms,— flowers cut away from the root of morals. A Buddhist teacher acknowledges no superior; and if the Edicts are too liberal for Brahmans,

they are also too independent of Almighty power. Brahmans taught in the name of Brahmâ, and looked reverently on the Sun and the Dawn, on the Fire and the Flood, as tokens of supreme and universal soul. But the Edicts* claim no higher authority than that of the king who proclaims them; he has cast aside the gods of the Vêdas, and has not yet deified the memory of Buddha. All previous worship had been swept away, and teaching alone offered in its place. No Agni, no Indra, no Îçvara, under any name, was worshipped; for Buddhism, not content with proclaiming the equality of men, imagined the same equality to pervade the universe. The first feeling of popular Buddhism seems to have implied a cry of 'Down with the Brahmans! all beings are equal! let gods and men start fair!'" (pp. 364-5.) "We have Buddhist literature;-and this is positively repulsive; a formal, conceited, extravagant tone pervades the whole.

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. . Eternal rest, or nirvana, is to be obtained by the extinction of natural emotions. We entirely lose, therefore, the generous love and devotion of the Brahmanical tales; here there is no love conquering death, or brethren emulous of suffering for each other. . . . . A Buddhist teacher is never himself a learner, his sole object is to prove and explain. . . The countenance of the true poet, while at work, is that of one listening or receiving. To the Sanskrit bards this attitude is not unknown; but Buddhists never listen and never 'look up.' The first act of their infant Buddha, according to their admiring chronicle, was to take seven steps upon the earth, and shout forth, 'I am the most exalted on the earth!" (p. 367.)

"Çakya (Buddha) sought for God, although be knew not that it was for God he sought; and with all the power and energy of which man is capable, he devoted his whole being to the pursuit; and he found God in a degree far exceeding that usually vouchsafed to man, but it was unconsciously. He knew that there was something better than earth could give; he knew that benevolence and duty were better than human reward, whether in this world or in a future state; and he knew that he was aspiring above all the gods and the demigods of the popular creed. But he knew not the voice that taught him; he knew not that God drew him,' therefore he did not teach his disciples to watch and seek as he had done; therefore he used no prayer, and taught no prayer, and bade his disciples look no higher than himself; and therefore no sooner was his influence removed than the whole system began to degenerate into self-glorification and lying hypocritical cant. Had Çakyamuni known that duty was the law of God, and that the nirvana for which he yearned was going home to God, he might have saved millions of men from idolatry; but such knowledge was utterly beyond his reach. We may believe that his unconditional surrender of himself to duty gave him a clear perception of right and wrong; he never thought of reward for himself, and abandoned every lighter wish for that which he believed to be right; and, as we believe, he trusted implicitly that this would lead to eternal

The Edicts of the Buddhist king Açôka or Piyadâsi, mentioned above, which were inscribed on rocks and pillars.

union with the Eternal Essence of the Universe; but this was not what he taught. True to the conceit and self-sufficiency of his age and country, he believed that he had wrested a secret from the Eternal; his clear and fresh perception of right and wrong he looked upon as a spell, which he could communicate to others, and thus enable his followers to attain the advantages he had gained, without enduring the painful, tedious, and self-denying probation which he had endured." (pp. 288-289.)

"We could almost fancy that, before God planted Christianity upon earth, He took a branch from the luxuriant tree and threw it down in India. It was from the Tree of Truth, and therefore it taught true morality and belief in future life: but it was never planted, therefore it never took root, and never grew into full proportions; and it was thrown upon earth, not brought, and though man perceived it heavenborn, he knew not how to keep it alive. When its green leaves drooped, he stiffened them and stifled with varnish; and soon, although bedizened with tinsel, it shrank into formal atheism or dead idolatry." (p. 265.)

The age of Buddha is especially to be noted as the earliest commencement of any thing like connected history. Bimbisâra, king of Magadha, whose capital was Râjagriha, was Buddha's patron; he was murdered and succeeded by Ajâtaçatru, who began his reign in hostility to Buddha, but was converted, and became most noted for his faith. The names of the next following kings are confused; the first worth noting is Kâlâçôka, or Açóka I., who removed the royal residence to Pâtaliputra (Patna), and in whose reign the second Buddhistic synod was held (B.c. 443). He was followed by his nine brothers, who were supplanted by the nine kings of the Nanda dynasty. The last Nanda was murdered and supplanted by an adventurer named Candragupta, of whose low origin and surprising elevation many tales are told. His dynasty is called the Maurya, and it came to rule over a powerful empire.

The date of Candragupta is the first date in Indian history which was decisively fixed, and that through Sir W. Jones's discovery that he is the Sandrocottus (more correctly written by Athenæus Sandrakoptus) of the Greek writers, who was contemporary with the immediate successors of Alexander, if not with Alexander himself; for he formed an alliance, both political and matrimonial, with Seleucus Nicator; and the latter appears to have relinquished to him some territories beyond the Indus. His reign lasted from 315 to 291 B.C. Counting backwards from this point, we can arrive at an approximate date for Buddha, and are at once preserved from such gross exaggerations of antiquity as are to be found in old books, which frequently refer him to 2000 B.C. Lassen, after consulting the enormously dis

crepant chronologies of the northern and southern Buddhists, and testing them by what extraneous evidence we have, places Buddha's death 540 B.C., and therefore his birth, 660 в.c. Weber, however, whose tendency seems to be to diminish the antiquity of every thing Indian later than the Vêdas, places his death 370 B.C.; and therefore, we must suppose, discredits the list of kings who have to intervene between Ajâtaçatru and Candragupta.

After Candragupta's son, Vindusâra (291-263 B.C.), reigned the celebrated Buddhist king Açôka II., called on inscriptions Piyadasi. His reign lasted till 226 B.C., and in it was held the third Buddhistic synod, 246 B.C. The empire, the nucleus of which was Magadha, now extended over the greater part of India except the Dekhan: it included Râshtrika (Guzerat), Côla, Pida, and Kalinga (extending down the Coromandel coast), Gandhára (in the Penjâb), and Kambóga (west of the Indus); and he conquered Kaçmîra (Cashmeer). His inscriptions, which have been mentioned before, afford another fixed point in the chronology; for they name as contemporary kings Antiochus II., the Seleucid, who died 247 B.C.; Ptolemy II., Philadelphus, who died 246 B.C.; and Antigonus Gonatas, who died 239 B.C.

The empire of Açóka fell asunder after his death; and a King Pushpamitra, who founded the Çunga dynasty about 178 B.C., we are told, persecuted Buddhists; so early begins the counter-movement. He reunited, however, a large part of Açóka's dominions under his sway, and his dynasty expired in 66 B.C. The Simha dynasty, which bore rule in Râshtrika, with Simhapura (near Ahmedabad) for a capital, is known only by the evidence of coins and one inscription; yet it appears to have possessed a powerful empire in the west and north-west of India. It subsisted from 157-67 B.C., and is remarkable as apparently tributary to the Greek kings of Bactria. The chief interest attaching to the discovery of this dynasty is, that it fills up a gap, and prepares, the way for a king whose memory has never been suffered to perish, but whose antecedents were utterly unknown— Vikramaditya, king of Mâlava, whose capital, Ujjâyinî (Ougein), was the home of poetry and romance, attracted thither by the monarch's liberality. This king commenced his reign in 57 B.C., and appears to have conquered Kaçmîra and Surâshtra (Guzerat, Cattiwar), and probably the Penjâb; his great popularity is believed to have arisen from victories which delivered India from the yoke of the Indo-Scythians (Çaka). The poet Kâlidâsa, the author of Çakuntala and other still-existing plays and lyric poems, which are the true gems of Sanskrit literature, is said to have been one of the nine jewels in King Vikramâditya's crown, and this has hitherto been one of the few sheet-anchors in Indian

literature, that might be held to while all other dates went drifting. But Lassen and Weber show the insufficiency of the grounds on which this has been held, and even its incredibility; the former assigning the poet to the second half of the second century of the Christian era, and the latter apparently leaning to a considerably later date. This correction of the chronology, as Weber well observes, makes it no longer certain, as Sir W. Jones believed, that the Indian drama is perfectly indigenous; it may have been learned from the Greek-Bactrian kings, upon and even within the frontiers of India; more especially as the Indian dramas are discovered to belong to the west of India, and most of all to Mâlava, which formed a part of the dominions held by the Simha viceroys under the Greeks. Still, even if the Hindus should have received their first idea of the drama from scenic representations at the court of the Greek kings, it cannot be denied that they have so transformed it that the finished Indian play bears a very indigenous impress, and betrays nothing of its origin. The Greek play was a religious ceremony performed in honour of Dionysus; the Sanskrit is a purely secular amusement, to which, indeed, solemnity is given by the invocation of a god at the commencement, but which bears no relation to any worship. The Sanskrit play knows nothing of the unities, nor of a limitation in the number of actors. Indeed its freedom of construction reminds one much more of the English drama than of the Greek. The use of the popular dialects for the speech of persons of inferior rank, moreover, may be compared with the Welsh pronunciation of Fluellen and Sir Hugh Evans; and the free employment of prose or verse according to the elevation of the theme, reminds one more of the modern opera than of the Greek drama.

After Vikramaditya's son, who reigned till about the commencement of our era, darkness again obscures the picture; through which, by the dim light afforded by coins, we discover that India is divided among a multitude of not very powerful rulers, and that a foreign and barbarian power, the Indo-Scythian (Yu-chi), reigns in Kaçmira. This dynasty is represented between A.D. 10 and 40 by a prince of brilliant fame and great ability, Kanerki, or Kanishka, who to a greatly extended empire in India united a vast one in Central Asia. His ancestors had wavered between Mithraic, Caiva, and Buddhist worship. Kanerki, at first repelling Buddhism, became a convert, and enthusiastic for the spread of his new faith. Under him the fourth and last great Buddhistic synod was held in Kaçmîra; convents, colleges, and chaityas, were founded, and missionaries sent out. The other Indian rulers of this age were sometimes

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