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
growth, was put into its present shape by Tissa in the middle of the 3rd 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,
suggests the end of the 1st cent. A.D. or the commencement of the 2nd 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-
yānists and Mahā-yānists, was already current in India in the 4th cent. A.D.
2. The Hīnayāna schools.—We have quite a number of copies of the list just referred
to. The Siṇhalese give it in half a dozen different books, from the 4th 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
Kathā Vatthu (3rd cent. B.C.) and its commentary (5th 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.
(3) Both the commentator and Fa-Hian, writing in the 5th cent. A.D., are agreed in
granting only to three or four of these schools any considerable importance.
(4) Yuan Chwāng, writing at the end of the 7th 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)
and in the Mahāvastu (ii. 21). But from the 5th 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.
LITERATURE.—J. E. Tennent, Ceylon2, 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
our texts—the Dipavaṃsa and the Mahāvaṃsa, composed in the 4th and 5th centuries A.D.
respectively.93
In the middle of the 3rd 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
the 3rd 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
till the 1st 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.

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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
references are in the Kathā Vatthu, composed in the middle of the 3rd 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.

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 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
3rd 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.).
It is sufficiently clear from these notices that the district was, in the 3rd 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.

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 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.

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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.

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 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.

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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
Ceylon in the 5th 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
current in India at the end of the 4th 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.

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 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
and scholar who flourished early in the 5th 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
of it that have survived. Secondly, Dhammakitti, in the middle of the 13th 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 Saṅgāma. 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
prevalent in India and Ceylon from the 6th 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
beginning of the 1st 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
references may be dated in the 5th 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
Sanskrit Buddhist work which may be dated in the 6th cent. A.D.165 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
believed, on grounds not recorded, to have existed in the 4th 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
end of the 3rd 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
                                                            
171
Questions 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
6th 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
later literature, from the 6th 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

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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,
whether before or after the 6th 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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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,
that is, probably, as old as the 2nd 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.

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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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