The Contributions

of
Thomas William Rhys Davids
to the
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
 Thomas William Rhys Davids wrote twenty-seven essays for the 1911 Encyclopedia
Britannica. We have arranged them here in the order of subject matter, starting with Buddha,
Dhamma, Saṅgha, and following with different articles on the History of Buddhism. It is
interesting to note that no other expert in this field was asked to submit material to the
Encyclopedia. This is a mark of the great respect that the scholarly community had for Thomas
William Rhys Davids.
The articles named below are reproduced exactly as they appeared in the Encyclopedia with
minor editing for ease of reading.

Contents
Buddha .............................................................................................1
Maitreya ........................................................................................12
Buddhism ......................................................................................13
Pāli ................................................................................................28
Nikāya ...........................................................................................33
Abhidhamma .................................................................................34
Jātaka .............................................................................................35
Milinda Pañho ...............................................................................37
Sāriputta ........................................................................................39
Ānanda ..........................................................................................40
Devadatta ......................................................................................40
Buddhaghosa .................................................................................41
Dhammapāla .................................................................................42
Lumbini .........................................................................................43
Piprāwa .........................................................................................44
Sānchi ............................................................................................46
Ajanta ............................................................................................47
Bharahat ........................................................................................48
Sigiri ..............................................................................................49
Mahāvaṃsa ...................................................................................50
Sāsana vaṃsa ................................................................................50
Jains ...............................................................................................51
Asoka ............................................................................................55
Kanishka .......................................................................................56
Lamaism ........................................................................................57
Nāgārjuna ......................................................................................65
Medhankara....................................................................................66
 BUDDHA
According to the Buddhist theory (see
BUDDHISM), a “Buddha” appears from time to
time in the world and preaches the true doctrine.
After a certain lapse of time this teaching is
corrupted and lost, and is not restored till a new
Buddha appears. In Europe, Buddha is used to
designate the last historical Buddha, whose
family name was Gotama, and who was the son
of Suddhōdana, one of the chiefs of the tribe of
the Sākiyas, one of the republican clans then
still existent in India.
We are accustomed to find the legendary
and the miraculous gathering, like a halo,
around the early history of religious leaders,
until the sober truth runs the risk of being
altogether neglected for the glittering and
edifying falsehood. The Buddha has not
escaped the fate which has befallen the
founders of other religions; and as late as the
year 1854 Professor Wilson of Oxford read a
paper before the Royal Asiatic Society of
London in which he maintained that the
supposed life of Buddha was a myth, and
“Buddha himself merely an imaginary being.”
No one, however, would now support this view;
and it is admitted that, under the mass of
miraculous tales which have been handed down
regarding him, there is a basis of truth already
sufficiently clear to render possible an
intelligent history.
1
 Note on the Date of the Buddha.—The now generally
accepted date of the Buddha is arrived at by adding
together two numbers, one being the date of the
accession of Asoka to the throne, the second being the
length of the interval between that date and that of the
death of the Buddha. The first figure, that of the date of
Asoka, is arrived at by the mention in one of his edicts
of certain Greek kings, as then living. The dates of these
last are approximately known; and arguing from these
dates the date of Asoka’s accession has been fixed by
various scholars (at dates varying only by a difference
of five years more or less) at about 270 B.C. The second
figure, the total interval between Asoka’s accession and
the Buddha’s death, is given in the Ceylon Chronicles
as 218 years. Adding these two together, the date of the
1
The circumstances under which the future
Buddha was born were somewhat as follows.1
In the 6th century B.C. the Aryan tribes had long
been settled far down the valley of the Ganges.
The old child-like joy in life so manifest in the
Vedas had died away; the worship of nature had
developed or degenerated into the worship of
new and less pure divinities; and the Vedic
songs themselves, whose freedom was little
compatible with the spirit of the age, had faded
into an obscurity which did not lessen their
value to the priests. The country was politically
split up into little principalities, most of them
governed by some petty despot, whose interests
were not often the same as those of the
community. There were still, however, about a
dozen free republics, most of them with
aristocratic government, and it was in these that
reforming movements met with most approval
and support. A convenient belief in the doctrine
of the transmigration of souls satisfied the
unfortunate that their woes were the natural
result of their own deeds in a former birth, and,
though unavoidable now, might be escaped in a
future state of existence by present good
conduct. While hoping for a better fate in their
next birth, the poor turned for succor and advice
in this to the aid of astrology, witchcraft and
animism—a belief in which seems to underlie
all religions, and still survives even in
England.2 The inspiriting wars against the
Buddha’s death would be 488 B.C., and, as he was
eighty years old at the time of his death, the date of his
birth would be 568 B.C. The dates for his death and
birth accepted in Burma, Siam and Ceylon are about
half a century earlier, namely, 543 and 623 B.C., the
difference being in the date of Asoka’s accession. It
will be seen that the dates as adopted in Europe are
approximate only, and liable to correction if better data
are obtainable. The details of this chronological
question are discussed at length in Professor Rhys
Davids’ Ancient Coins and Measures of Ceylon
(London, 1877), where the previous discussions are
referred to. 
2
  See report of Rex. v. Neuhaus, Clerkenwell Sessions,
September 15, 1906. 
enemies of the Aryan people, the infidel deniers
of the Aryan gods, had given place to a
succession of internecine feuds between the
chiefs of neighboring clans. In literature an age
of poets had long since made way for an age of
commentators and grammarians, who thought
that the old poems must have been the work of
gods. But the darkest period was succeeded by
the dawn of a reformation; travelling logicians
were willing to maintain these against all the
world; whilst here and there ascetics strove to
raise themselves above the gods, and hermits
earnestly sought for some satisfactory solution
of the mysteries of life. These were the teachers
whom the people chiefly delighted to honour.
Though the ranks of the priesthood were
forever firmly closed against intruders, a man
of lay birth, a Kshatriya or Vaisya, whose mind
revolted against the orthodox creed, and whose
heart was stirred by mingled zeal and ambition,
might find through these irregular orders an
entrance to the career of a religious teacher and
reformer.
The Sākiya clan was then seated in a tract of
country probably two or three thousand square
miles in extent, the chief town of which was
Kapilavastu, situate about 27° 37’ N. by 83° 11’
E., some days’ journey north of Benares. Their
territory stretched up into the lower slopes of
the mountains, and was mostly in what is now
Nepal, but it included territory now on the
British side of the frontier. It is in this part of
the Sākiya country that the interesting
discovery was made of the monument they
erected to their famous clansman. From their
well-watered rice-fields, the main source of
their wealth, they could see the giant Himalayas
looming up against the clear blue of the Indian
sky. Their supplies of water were drawn from
the river Rohini, the modern Kohāna; and
though the use of the river was in times of
drought the cause of disputes between the
Sākiyas and the neighbouring Koliyans, the two
clans were then at peace; and two daughters of
a chieftain of Koli, which was only 11 m. east
of Kapilavastu, were the principal wives of
Suddhōdana. Both were childless, and great
2
was the rejoicing when, in about the forty-fifth
year of her age, the elder sister, Mahā Māyā,
promised her husband a son. In due time she
started with the intention of being confined at
her parents’ home, but the party halting on the
way under the shade of some lofty satin-trees,
in a pleasant garden called Lumbini on the
river-side, her son, the future Buddha, was there
unexpectedly born. The exact site of this garden
has been recently rediscovered, marked by an
inscribed pillar by Asoka (see J.R.A.S., 1898).
He was in after years more generally known
by his family name of Gotama, but his
individual name was Siddhattha. When he was
nineteen years old he was married to his cousin
Yasodharā, daughter of a Koliyan chief, and
gave himself up to a life of luxury. This is the
solitary record of his youth; we hear nothing
more till, in his twenty-ninth year, it is related
that, driving to his pleasure-grounds one day, he
was struck by the sight of a man utterly broken
down by age, on another occasion by the sight
of a man suffering from a loathsome disease,
and some months after by the horrible sight of
a decomposing corpse. Each time his
charioteer, whose name was Channa, told him
that such was the fate of all living beings. Soon
after he saw an ascetic walking in a calm and
dignified manner, and asking who that was, was
told by his charioteer the character and aims of
the Wanderers, the travelling teachers, who
played so great a part in the intellectual life of
the time. The different accounts of these visions
vary so much as to cast great doubts on their
accuracy; and the oldest one of all (Anguttara,
i. 145) speaks of ideas only, not of actual
visions. It is, however, clear from what follows,
that about this time the mind of the young
Rajput must, from some cause or other, have
been deeply stirred. Many an earnest heart full
of disappointment or enthusiasm has gone
through a similar struggle, has learnt to look
upon all earthly gains and hopes as worse than
vanity, has envied the calm life of the cloister,
troubled by none of these things, and has longed
for an opportunity of entire self-surrender to
abstinence and meditation.
 Subjectively, though not objectively, these
visions may be supposed to have appeared to
Gotama. After seeing the last of them, he is
said, in the later accounts, to have spent the
afternoon in his pleasure-grounds by the river-
side; and having bathed, to have entered his
chariot in order to return home. Just then a
messenger arrived with the news that his wife
Yasodharā had given birth to a son, his only
child. “This” said Gotama quietly, “is a new and
strong tie I shall have to break.” But the people
of Kapilavastu were greatly delighted at the
birth of the young heir, the raja’s only grandson.
Gotama’s return became an ovation; musicians
preceded and followed his chariot, while shouts
of joy and triumph fell on his ear. Among these
sounds one especially attracted his attention. It
was the voice of a young girl, his cousin, who
sang a stanza, saying, “Happy the father, happy
the mother, happy the wife of such a son and
husband.” In the word “happy” lay a double
meaning; it meant also freed from the chains of
rebirth, delivered, saved. Grateful to one who,
at such a time, reminded him of his highest
hopes, Gotama, to whom such things had no
longer any value, took off his collar of pearls
and sent it to her. She imagined that this was the
beginning of a courtship, and began to build
daydreams about becoming his principal wife,
but he took no further notice of her and passed
on. That evening the dancing-girls came to go
through the Natch dances, then as now so
common on festive occasions in many parts of
India; but he paid them no attention, and
gradually fell into an uneasy slumber. At
midnight he awoke; the dancing-girls were
lying in the ante-room; an overpowering
loathing filled his soul. He arose instantly with
a mind fully made up—“roused into activity,”
says the Sinhalese chronicle, “like a man who
is told that his house is on fire.” He called out
to know who was on guard, and finding it was
his charioteer Channa, he told him to saddle his
3
  The various legends of Māra are the subject of an
exhaustive critical analysis in Windisch’s Māra und
Buddha (Leipzig, 1895). 
3
horse. While Channa was gone Siddhattha
gently opened the door of the room where
Yasodharā was sleeping, surrounded by
flowers, with one hand on the head of their
child. He had hoped to take the babe in his arms
for the last time before he went, but now he
stood for a few moments irresolute on the
threshold looking at them. At last the fear of
awakening Yasodharā prevailed; he tore
himself away, promising himself to return to
them as soon as his mind had become clear, as
soon as he had become a Buddha, — i.e.
Enlightened,—and then he could return to them
not only as husband and father, but as teacher
and savior. It is said to have been broad
moonlight on the full moon of the month of
July, when the young chief, with Channa as his
sole companion, leaving his father’s home, his
wealth and social position, his wife and child
behind him, went out into the wilderness to
become a penniless and despised student, and a
homeless wanderer. This is the circumstance
which has given its name to a Sanskrit work, the
Mahābhinishkramana Sūtra, or Sūtra of the
Great Renunciation.
Next is related an event in which we may
again see a subjective experience given under
the form of an objective reality. Māra, the great
tempter, appears in the sky, and urges Gotama
to stop, promising him, in seven days, a
universal kingdom over the four great
continents if he will but give up his enterprise.3
When his words fail to have any effect, the
tempter consoles himself by the confident hope
that he will still overcome his enemy, saying,
“Sooner or later some lustful or malicious or
angry thought must arise in his mind; in that
moment I shall be his master”; and from that
hour, adds the legend, “as a shadow always
follows the body, so he too from that day
always followed the Blessed One, striving to
throw every obstacle in his way towards the
Buddhahood.” Gotama rides a long distance
that night, only stopping at the banks of the
Anomā beyond the Koliyan territory. There, on
the sandy bank of the river, at a spot where later
piety erected a dāgaba (a solid dome-shaped
relic shrine), he cuts off with his sword his long
flowing locks, and, taking off his ornaments,
sends them and the horse back in charge of the
unwilling Channa to Kapilavastu. The next
seven days were spent alone in a grove of
mango trees nearby, whence the recluse walks
on to Rājagriha, the capital of Magadha, and
residence of Bimbisāra, one of the then most
powerful rulers in the valley of the Ganges. He
was favorably received by the rāja; but though
asked to do so, he would not as yet assume the
responsibilities of a teacher. He attached
himself first to a brāhmin sophist named Ālāra,
and afterwards to another named Udraka, from
whom he learnt all that Indian philosophy had
then to teach. Still unsatisfied, he next retired to
the jungle of Uruvela, on the most northerly
spur of the Vindhya range of mountains, and
there for six years, attended by five faithful
disciples, he gave himself up to the severest
penance and self-torture, till his fame as an
ascetic spread in all the country round about
“like the sound,” says the Burmese chronicle,
“of a great bell hung in the canopy of the skies.”
4
At last one day, when he was walking in a
much enfeebled state, he felt on a sudden an
extreme weakness, like that caused by dire
starvation, and unable to stand any longer he
fell to the ground. Some thought he was dead,
but he recovered, and from that time took
regular food and gave up his severe penance, so
much so that his five disciples soon ceased to
respect him, and leaving him went to Benares.
There now ensued a second struggle in
Gotama’s mind, described with all the wealth of
poetry and imagination of which the Indian
mind is master. The crisis culminated on a day,
each event of which is surrounded in the
Buddhist accounts with the wildest legends, on
which the very thoughts passing through the
4
 Bigandet, p. 49; and compare Jātaka, p. 67, line 27. 
4
mind of Buddha appear in gorgeous
descriptions as angels of darkness or of light.
To us, now taught by the experiences of
centuries how weak such exaggerations are
compared with the effect of a plain unvarnished
tale, these legends may appear childish or
absurd, but they have a depth of meaning to
those who strive to read between the lines of
such rude and inarticulate attempts to describe
the indescribable. That which (the previous and
subsequent career of the teacher being borne in
mind) seems to be possible and even probable,
appears to be somewhat as follows.
Disenchanted and dissatisfied, Gotama had
given up all that most men value, to seek peace
in secluded study and self-denial. Failing to
attain his object by learning the wisdom of
others, and living the simple life of a student, he
had devoted himself to that intense meditation
and penance which all philosophers then said
would raise men above the gods. Still
unsatisfied, longing always for a certainty that
seemed ever just beyond his grasp, he had
added vigil to vigil, and penance to penance,
until at last, when to the wondering view of
others he had become more than a saint, his
bodily strength and his indomitable resolution
and faith had together suddenly and completely
broken down. Then, when the sympathy of
others would have been most welcome, he
found his friends falling away from him, and his
disciples leaving him for other teachers. Soon
after, if not on the very day when his followers
had left him, he wandered out towards the
banks of the Neranjarā, receiving his morning
meal from the hands of Sujātā, the daughter of
a neighboring villager, and set himself down to
eat it under the shade of a large tree (a Ficus
religiosa), to be known from that time as the
sacred Bo tree or tree of wisdom There he
remained through the long hours of that day
debating with himself what next to do. All his
old temptations came back upon him with
renewed force. For years he had looked at all
earthly good through the medium of a
philosophy which taught him that it, without
exception, contained within itself the seeds of
bitterness, and was altogether worthless and
impermanent; but now to his wavering faith the
sweet delights of home and love, the charms of
wealth and power, began to show themselves in
a different light, and glow again with attractive
colors. He doubted, and agonized in his doubt;
but as the sun set, the religious side of his nature
had won the victory, and seems to have come
out even purified from the struggle. He had
attained to Nirvāna, had become clear in his
mind, a Buddha, an Enlightened One. From that
night he not only did not claim any merit on
account of his self-mortification, but took every
opportunity of declaring that from such
penances no advantage at all would be derived.
All that night he is said to have remained in
deep meditation under the Bo tree; and the
orthodox Buddhists believe that for seven times
seven nights and days he continued fasting near
the spot, when the archangel Brahmā came and
ministered to him. As for himself, his heart was
now fixed,—his mind was made up,—but he
realized more than he had ever done before the
power of temptation, and the difficulty, the
almost impossibility, of understanding and
holding to the truth. For others subject to the
same temptations, but without that earnestness
and insight which he felt himself to possess,
faith might be quite impossible, and it would
only be waste of time and trouble to try to show
to them “the only path of peace.” To one in his
position this thought would be so very natural,
that we need not hesitate to accept the fact of its
occurrence as related in the oldest records. It is
quite consistent with his whole career that it
was love and pity for others—otherwise, as it
seemed to him, helplessly doomed and lost—
which at last overcame every other
consideration, and made Gotama resolve to
announce his doctrine to the world.
The teacher, now 35 years of age, intended
to proclaim his new gospel first to his old
teachers Ālāra and Udraka, but finding that they
were dead, he determined to address himself to
5
his former five disciples, and accordingly went
to the Deer-forest near Benares where they
were then living. An old gāthā, or hymn
(translated in Vinaya Texts, i. 90) tells us how
the Buddha, rapt with the idea of his great
mission, meets an acquaintance, one Upaka, a
wandering sophist, on the way. The latter,
struck with his expression, asks him whose
religion it is that makes him so glad, and yet so
calm. The reply is striking. “I am now on my
way,” says the Buddha, “to the city of Benares,
to beat the drum of the Ambrosia (to set up the
light of the doctrine of Nirvāna) in the darkness
of the world!” and he proclaims himself the
Buddha who alone knows, and knows no
teacher. Upaka says: “You profess yourself,
then, friend, to be an Arahat and a conqueror?”
The Buddha says: “Those indeed are
conquerors who, as I have now, have conquered
the intoxications (the mental intoxication
arising from ignorance, sensuality or craving
after future life). Evil dispositions have ceased
in me; therefore is it that I am conqueror! “His
acquaintance rejoins: “In that case, venerable
Gotama, your way lies yonder!” and he himself,
shaking his head, turns in the opposite
direction.
Nothing daunted, the new prophet walked
on to Benares, and in the cool of the evening
went on to the Deer-forest where the five
ascetics were living. Seeing him coming, they
resolved not to recognize as a superior one who
had broken his vows; to address him by his
name, and not as “master” or “teacher”; only,
he being a Kshatriya, to offer him a seat. He
understands their change of manner, calmly
tells them not to mock him by calling him “the
venerable Gotama”; that he has found the
ambrosia of truth and can lead them to it. They
object, naturally enough, from the ascetic point
of view, that he had failed before while he was
keeping his body under, and how can his mind
have won the victory now, when he serves and
yields to his body. Buddha replies by explaining
to them the principles of his new gospel, in the
form of noble truths, and the Noble Eightfold
Path (see BUDDHISM).
 It is nearly certain that Buddha had a
commanding presence, and one of those deep,
rich, thrilling voices which so many of the
successful leaders of men have possessed. We
know his deep earnestness, and his thorough
conviction of the truth of his new gospel. When
we further remember the relation which the five
students mentioned above had long borne to
him, and that they had passed through a similar
culture, it is not difficult to understand that his
persuasions were successful, and that his old
disciples were the first to acknowledge him in
his new character. The later books say that they
were all converted at once; but, according to the
most ancient Pāli record—though their old love
and reverence had been so rekindled when the
Buddha came near that their cold resolutions
quite broke down, and they vied with each other
in such acts of personal attention as an Indian
disciple loves to pay to his teacher,—yet it was
only after the Buddha had for five days talked
to them, sometimes separately, sometimes
together, that they accepted in its entirety his
plan of salvation.5
The Buddha then remained at the Deer-
forest near Benares until the number of his
personal followers was about threescore, and
that of the outside believers somewhat greater.
The principal among the former was a rich
young man named Yasa, who had first come to
him at night out of fear of his relations, and
afterwards shaved his head, put on the yellow
robe, and succeeded in bringing many of his
former friends and companions to the teacher,
his mother and his wife being the first female
disciples, and his father the first lay devotee. It
should be noticed in passing that the idea of a
priesthood with mystical powers is altogether
repugnant to Buddhism; every one’s salvation
is entirely dependent on the modification or
growth of his own inner nature, resulting from
his own exertions. The life of a recluse is held
to be the most conducive to that state of sweet
serenity at which the more ardent disciples aim;
5
 Vinaya Texts, i. 97–99; cf. Jātaka, vol. i. p. 82, lines 11–
19. 
6
but that of a layman, of a believing householder,
is held in high honor; and a believer who does
not as yet feel himself able or willing to cast off
the ties of home or of business, may yet “enter
the paths,” and by a life of rectitude and
kindness ensure for himself a rebirth under
more favorable conditions for his growth in
holiness.
After the rainy season Gotama called
together those of his disciples who had devoted
themselves to the higher life, and said to them:
“I am free from the five hindrances which, like
an immense net, hold men and angels in their
power; you too (owing to my teaching) are set
free. Go ye now, brethren, and wander for the
gain and welfare of the many, out of
compassion for the world, to the benefit of gods
and men. Preach the doctrine, beauteous in
inception, beauteous in continuation, beauteous
in its end. Proclaim the pure and perfect life. Let
no two go together. I also go, brethren, to the
General’s village in the wilds of Uruvelā.”6
Throughout his career, Gotama yearly adopted
the same plan, collecting his disciples round
him in the rainy season, and after it was over
travelling about as an itinerant preacher; but in
subsequent years he was always accompanied
by some of his most attached disciples.
In the solitudes of Uruvelā there were at this
time three brothers, fire-worshippers and
hermit philosophers, who had gathered round
them a number of scholars, and enjoyed a
considerable reputation as teachers. Gotama
settled among them, and after a time they
became believers in his system,—the elder
brother, Kassapa, taking henceforth a principal
place among his followers. His first set sermon
to his new disciples is called by Bishop
Bigandet the Sermon on the Mount. Its subject
was a jungle-fire which broke out on the
opposite hillside. He warned his hearers against
the fires of concupiscence, anger, ignorance,
birth, death, decay and anxiety; and taking each
6
 Samyutta, i. 105. 
of the senses in order he compared all human accordingly started for Kapilavastu, and
sensations to a burning flame which seems to be stopped according to his custom in a grove
something it is not, which produces pleasure outside the town. His father and uncles and
and pain, but passes rapidly away, and ends others came to see him there, but the latter were
only in destruction.7 angry, and would pay him no reverence. It was
the custom to invite such teachers and their
Accompanied by his new disciples, the
disciples for the next day’s meal, but they all
Buddha walked on to Rajāgaha, the capital of
left without doing so. The next day, therefore,
King Bimbisāra, who, not unmindful of their
Gotama set out at the usual hour, carrying his
former interview, came out to welcome him.
bowl to beg for a meal. As he entered the city,
Seeing Kassapa, who as the chronicle puts it,
he hesitated whether he should not go straight
was as well-known to them as the banner of the
to his father’s house, but determined to adhere
city, the people at first doubted who was the
to his custom. It soon reached his father’s ears
teacher and who the disciple, but Kassapa put
that his son was walking through the streets
an end to their hesitation by stating that he had
begging. Startled at such news he rose up,
now given up his belief in the efficacy of
seizing the end of his outer robe, and hastened
sacrifices either great or small; that Nirvāna
to the place where Gotama was, exclaiming,
was a state of rest to be attained only by a
“Illustrious Buddha, why do you expose us all
change of heart; and that he had become a
to such shame? Is it necessary to go from door
disciple of the Buddha. Gotama then spoke to
to door begging your food? Do you imagine that
the king on the miseries of the world which
I am not able to supply the wants of so many
arise from passion, and on the possibility of
mendicants?” “My noble father,” was the reply,
release by following the way of salvation. The
“this is the custom of all our race.” “How so?”
rāja invited him and his disciples to eat their
said his father. “Are you not descended from an
simple mid-day meal at his house on the
illustrious line? No single person of our race has
following morning; and then presented the
ever acted so indecorously.” “My noble father,”
Buddha with a garden called Veluvana or
said Gotama, “you and your family may claim
Bamboo-grove, afterwards celebrated as the
the privileges of Kshatriya descent; my descent
place where the Buddha spent many rainy
is from the prophets (Buddhas) of old, and they
seasons, and preached many of his most
have always acted so; the customs of the law
complete discourses. There he taught for some
(Dhamma) are good both for this world and the
time, attracting large numbers of hearers,
world that is to come. But, my father, when a
among whom two, Sāriputta and Moggallāna,
man has found a treasure, it is his duty to offer
who afterwards became conspicuous leaders in
the most precious of the jewels to his father
the new crusade, then joined the Sangha or
first. Do not delay, let me share with you the
Society, as the Buddha’s order of mendicants
treasure I have found.” Suddhōdana, abashed,
was called.
took his son’s bowl and led him to his house.
Meanwhile the prophet’s father,
Eighteen months had now elapsed since the
Suddhōdana, who had anxiously watched his
turning-point of Gotama’s career—his great
son’s career, heard that he had given up his
struggle under the Bo tree. Thus far all the
asceticism, and had appeared as a Wanderer, an
accounts follow chronological order. From this
itinerant preacher and teacher. He sent therefore
time they simply narrate disconnected stories
to him, urging him to come home, that he might
about the Buddha, or the persons with whom he
see him once more before he died. The Buddha
                                                            
7
 Cf. Big. p. 99, with Hardy, M.B, p. 191. The Pāli name Samyutta, iv. 19. A literal translation will be found in
is aditta-pariyaya: the sermon on the lessons to be Vinaya Texts, i. 134, 135. 
drawn from burning. The text is Vinaya, i. 34 =

7
was brought into contact,—the same story
being usually found in more than one account,
but not often in the same order. It is not as yet
possible, except very partially, to arrange
chronologically the snatches of biography to be
gleaned from these stories. They are mostly told
to show the occasion on which some
memorable act of the Buddha took place, or
some memorable saying was uttered, and are as
exact as to place as they are indistinct as to time.
It would be impossible within the limits of this
article to give any large number of them, but
space may be found for one or two.
A merchant from Sūnaparanta having
joined the Society was desirous of preaching to
his relations, and is said to have asked
Gotama’s permission to do so. “The people of
Sūnaparanta,” said the teacher, “are
exceedingly violent. If they revile you what will
you do?” “I will make no reply,” said the
mendicant. “And if they strike you?” “I will not
strike in return,” was the reply. “And if they try
to kill you?” “Death is no evil in itself; many
even desire it, to escape from the vanities of
life, but I shall take no steps either, to hasten or
to delay the time of my departure.” These
answers were held satisfactory, and the monk
started on his mission.
At another time a rich farmer held a harvest
home, and the Buddha, wishing to preach to
him, is said to have taken his alms-bowl and
stood by the side of the field and begged. The
farmer, a wealthy brāhmin, said to him, “Why
do you come and beg? I plough and sow and
earn my food; you should do the same.” “I too,
brāhmin,” said the beggar, “plough and sow;
and having ploughed and sown I eat.” “You
profess only to be a farmer; no one sees your
ploughing, what do you mean?” said the
brāhmin. “For my cultivation,” said the beggar,
“faith is the seed, self-combat is the fertilizing
rain, the weeds I destroy are the cleaving to
existence, wisdom is my plough, and its
guiding-shaft is modesty; perseverance draws
my plough, and I guide it with the rein of my
mind; the field I work is in the law, and the
8
harvest that I reap is the never-dying nectar of
Nirvāna, Those who reap this harvest destroy
all the weeds of sorrow.”
On another occasion he is said to have
brought back to her right mind a young mother
whom sorrow had for a time deprived of reason.
Her name was Kisāgotamī. She had been
married early, as is the custom in the East, and
had a child when she was still a girl. When the
beautiful boy could run alone he died. The
young girl in her love for it carried the dead
child clasped to her bosom, and went from
house to house of her pitying friends asking
them to give her medicine for it. But a Buddhist
convert thinking “she does not understand,”
said to her, “My good girl, I myself have no
such medicine as you ask for, but I think I know
of one who has.” “Oh, tell me who that is?” said
Kisāgotamī. “The Buddha can give you
medicine; go to him,” was the answer. She went
to Gotama; and doing homage to him said,
“Lord and master, do you know any medicine
that will be good for my child?” “Yes, I know
of some,” said the teacher. Now it was the
custom for patients or their friends to provide
the herbs which the doctors required; so she
asked what herbs he would want. “I want some
mustard-seed,” he said; and when the poor girl
eagerly promised to bring some of so common
a drug, he added, “You must get it from some
house where no son, or husband, or parent or
slave has died.” “Very good,” she said; and
went to ask for it, still carrying her dead child
with her. The people said, “Here is mustard-
seed, take it”; but when she asked, “In my
friend’s house has any son died, or a husband,
or a parent or slave?” They answered, “Lady!
What is this that you say? The living are few,
but the dead are many.” Then she went to other
houses, but one said “I have lost a son,” another
“We have lost our parents,” another “I have lost
my slave.” At last, not being able to find a
single house where no one had died, her mind
began to clear, and summoning up resolution
she left the dead body of her child in a forest,
and returning to the Buddha paid him homage.
He said to her, “Have you the mustard-seed?”
“My lord,” she replied, “I have not; the people
tell me that the living are few, but the dead are
many.” Then he talked to her on that essential
part of his system, the impermanency of all
things, till her doubts were cleared away, she
accepted her lot, became a disciple, and entered
the “first path.”
For forty-five years after entering on his
mission Gotama itinerated in the valley of the
Ganges, not going farther than about 250 miles
from Benares, and always spending the rainy
months at one spot—usually at one of the
viharas,8 or homes, which had been given to the
society. In the twentieth year his cousin Ānanda
became a mendicant, and from that time seems
to have attended on the Buddha, being
constantly near him, and delighting to render
him all the personal service which love and
reverence could suggest. Another cousin,
Devadatta, the son of the rāja of Koli, also
joined the society, but became envious of the
teacher, and stirred up Ajātasattu (who, having
killed his father Bimbisāra, had become king of
Rājagaha) to persecute Gotama. The account of
the manner in which the Buddha is said to have
overcome the wicked devices of this apostate
cousin and his parricide protector is quite
legendary; but the general fact of Ajātasattu’s
opposition to the new sect and of his subsequent
conversion may be accepted.
The confused and legendary notices of the
journeyings of Gotama are succeeded by
tolerably clear accounts of the last few days of
his life.9 On a journey towards Kusinārā, a town
about 120 miles north-north-east of Benares,
and about 80 miles due east of Kapilavastu, the
teacher, being then eighty years of age, had
rested for a short time in a grove at Pāwā,
presented to the society by a goldsmith of that
place named Chunda. Chunda prepared for the
mendicants a mid-day meal, and after the meal
8
 These were at first simple huts, built for the mendicants
in some grove of palm-trees as a retreat during the rainy
season; but they gradually increased in splendour and
magnificence till the decay of Buddhism set in. See the
authorities quoted in Buddhist India, pp. 141, 142. 
9
the Buddha started for Kusinārā. He had not
gone far when he was obliged to rest, and soon
afterwards he said, “Ānanda, I am thirsty,” and
they gave him water to drink. Half-way
between the two towns flows the river
Kukushtā. There Gotama rested again, and
bathed for the last time. Feeling that he was
dying, and careful lest Chunda should be
reproached by himself or others, he said to
Ānanda, “After I am gone tell Chunda that he
will receive in a future birth very great reward;
for, having eaten of the food he gave me, I am
about to die; and if he should still doubt, say
that it was from my own mouth that you heard
this. There are two gifts which will be blest
above all others, namely, Sujātā’s gift before I
attained wisdom under the Bo tree, and this gift
of Chunda’s before I pass away.” After halting
again and again the party at length reached the
river Hiranyavati, close by Kusinārā, and there
for the last time the teacher rested. Lying down
under some Sal trees, with his face towards the
south, he talked long and earnestly with Ānanda
about his burial, and about certain rules which
were to be observed by the society after his
death. Towards the end of this conversation,
when it was evening, Ānanda broke down and
went aside to weep, but the Buddha missed him,
and sending for him comforted him with the
promise of Nirvāna, and repeated what he had
so often said before about the impermanence of
all things,—“O Ānanda! Do not weep; do not
let yourself be troubled. You know what I have
said; sooner or later we must part from all we
hold most dear. This body of ours contains
within itself the power which renews its
strength for a time, but also the causes which
lead to its destruction. Is there anything put
together which shall not dissolve? But you, too,
shall be free from this delusion, this world of
sense, this law of change. Beloved,” added he,
9
  The text of the account of this last journey is the
Mahāparinibbāna Suttanta, vol. ii. of the Dīgha (ed.
Rhys Davids and Carpenter), The translation is in Rhys
Davids’ Buddhist Suttas. 
speaking to the rest of the disciples, “Ānanda
for long years has served me with devoted
affection.” And he spoke to them at some length
on the kindness of Ānanda.
About midnight Subhadra, a brāhmin
philosopher of Kusinārā, came to ask some
questions of the Buddha, but Ānanda, fearing
that this might lead to a longer discussion than
the sick teacher could bear, would not admit
him. Gotama heard the sound of their talk, and
asking what it was, told them to let Subhadra
come. The latter began by asking whether the
six great teachers knew all laws, or whether
there were some that they did not know, or
knew only partially. “This is not the time,” was
the answer, “for such discussions. To true
wisdom there is only one way, the path that is
laid down in my system. Many have already
followed it, and conquering the lust and pride
and anger of their own hearts, have become free
from ignorance and doubt and wrong belief,
have entered the calm state of universal
kindliness, and have reached Nirvāna even in
this life. O Subhadra! I do not speak to you of
things I have not experienced. Since I was
twenty-nine years old till now I have striven
after pure and perfect wisdom, and following
the good path, have found Nirvāna.” A rule had
been made that no follower of a rival system
should be admitted to the society without four
months’ probation. So deeply did the words or
the impressive manner of the dying teacher
work upon Subhadra that he asked to be
admitted at once, and Gotama granted his
request. Then turning to his disciples he said,
“When I have passed away and am no longer
with you, do not think that the Buddha has left
you, and is not still in your midst. You have my
words, my explanations of the deep things of
truth, the laws I have laid down for the society;
let them be your guide; the Buddha has not left
you.” Soon afterwards he again spoke to them,
urging them to reverence one another, and
rebuked one of the disciples who spoke
indiscriminately all that occurred to him.
Towards the morning he asked whether anyone
had any doubt about the Buddha, the law or the
10
society; if so, he would clear them up. No one
answered, and Ānanda expressed his surprise
that amongst so many none should doubt, and
all be firmly attached to the law. But the
Buddha laid stress on the final perseverance of
the saints, saying that even the least among the
disciples who had entered the first path only,
still had his heart fixed on the way to perfection,
and constantly strove after the three higher
paths. “No doubt,” he said, “can be found in the
mind of a true disciple.” After another pause he
said: “Behold now, brethren, this is my
exhortation to you. Decay is inherent in all
component things. Work out, therefore, your
emancipation with diligence! “These were the
last words the Buddha spoke; shortly afterwards
he became unconscious, and in that state passed
away.
AUTHORITIES ON THE LIFE OF THE
BUDDHA.—
Canonical Pāli (reached their present shape
before the 4th century B.C.); episodes only,
three of them long:
(1) Birth; text in Majjhima Nikāya, ed.
Trenckner and Chalmers (London, Pāli Text
Society, 1888–1899), vol. iii. pp. 118–124; also
in Anguttara Nikāya, ed. Morris and Hardy
(Pāli Text Society, 1888–1900), vol. ii. pp.
130–132.
(2) Adoration of the babe; old ballad; text in
Sutta Nipāta, ed. Fausböll (Pāli Text Society,
1884), pp. 128–131 ; translation by the same in
Sacred Books of the East (Oxford, 1881), vol.
x. pp. 124–131.
(3) Youth at home; text in Anguttara Nikāya,
i. 145.
(4) The going forth; old ballad; text in Sutta
Nipāta, pp. 70–74 (London, 1896), pp. 99–101;
prose account in Dīgha Nikāya, ed. Rhys
Davids and Carpenter (Pāli Text Society, 1890–
1893), vol. i. p. 115, translated by Rhys Davids
in Dialogues of the Buddha (Oxford, 1899), pp.
147–149.
 (5) First long episode; the going forth, years
of study and penance, attainment of Nirvāna
and Buddhahood, and conversion of first five
converts; text in Majjhima, all together at ii. 93;
parts repeated at i. 163–175, 240–249; ii. 212;
Vinaya, ed. Oldenberg (London, 1879–1883),
vol. i. pp. 1–13.
(6) Second long episode; from the
conversation of the five down to the end of the
first year of the teaching; text in Vinaya, i. 13–
44, translated by Oldenberg in Vinaya Texts, i.
73–151.
(7) Visit to Kapilavastu; text in Vinaya, i. 82;
translation by Oldenberg in Vinaya Texts
(Oxford, 1881–1885), vol. i. pp. 207–210.
(8) Third long episode; the last days; text in
Dīgha Nikāya (the Mahāparinibbāna Suttanta),
vol. ii. pp. 72–168, translated by Rhys Davids
in Buddhist Suttas (Oxford, 1881), pp. 1–136.
Buddhist Sanskrit Texts:
(1) Mahāvastu (probably 2nd century B.C.);
edited by Senart (3 vols., Paris, 1882–1897),
summary in French prefixed to each volume;
down to the end of first year of the teaching.
(2) Lalita Vistara (probably 1st century
B.C.); edited by Mitra (Calcutta, 1877);
translated into French by Foucaux (Paris,
1884); down to the first sermon.
(3) Buddha Carita, by Aśvaghosha,
probably 2nd century A.D. edited by Cowell
(Oxford, 1892); translated by Cowell (Oxford,
1894, S.B.E. vol. xlix.); an elegant poem; stops
just before the attainment of Buddhahood.
11
(These three works reproduce and amplify
the above episodes Nos. 1–6; they retain here
and there a very old tradition as to arrangement
of clauses or turns of expression.)
Later Pali: The commentary on the Jātaka,
written probably in the 5th century A.D., gives a
consecutive narrative, from the birth to the end
of the second year of the teaching, based on the
canonical texts, but much altered and amplified;
edited by Fausböll in Jātaka, vol. i. (London,
1877), pp. 1–94; translated by Rhys Davids in
Buddhist Birth Stories (London, 1880), pp. 1–
133.
Modern Works:
(1) Tibetan; Life of the Buddha; episodes
collected and translated by W. Woodville
Rockhill (London, 1884), from Tibetan texts of
the 9th and 10th centuries A.D.
(2) Sinhalese; episodes collected and
translated by Spence Hardy from Sinhalese
texts of the 12th and later centuries, in Manual
of Buddhism (London, 1897, 2nd edition), pp.
138–359.
(3) Burmese: The Life or Legend of
Gaudama (3rd edition, London, 1880), by the
Right Rev. P. Bigandet, translated from a
Burmese work of A.D. 1773. (The Burmese is,
in its turn, a translation from a Pāli work of
unknown date; it gives the whole life, and is the
only consecutive biography we have.)
(4) Kambojian: Pathama Sambodhian;
translated into French by A. Leclère in Livres
sacrés du Cambodge (Paris, 1906).
 MAITREYA
Maitreya is the name of the future Buddha. connection with the word for “love,” which is
In one of the works included in the Pāli canon, Mettā in Pāli. This would only be one of those
the Dīgha Nikāya, a prophecy is put into the punning allusions so frequent in Indian
Buddha’s mouth that after the decay of the literature.
religion another Buddha, named Metteyya, will
Long afterwards, probably in the 6th or 7th
arise who will have thousands of followers
century, a reformer in south India, at a time
instead of the hundreds that the historical
when the incoming flood of ritualism and
Buddha had. This is the only mention of the
superstition threatened to overwhelm the
future Buddha in the canon. For some centuries
simple teaching of the earlier Buddhism, wrote
we hear nothing more about him. But when, in
a Pāli poem, entitled the Anāgata Vaṃsa. In this
the period just before and after the Christian
he described the golden age of the future when,
era, some Buddhists began to write in Sanskrit
in the time of Metteyya, kings, ministers and
instead of Pāli, they composed new works in
people would vie one with the other in the
which Maitreya (the Sanskrit form of Metteyya)
maintenance of the original simple doctrine,
is more often mentioned, and details are given
and in the restoration of the good times of old.
as to his birthplace and history. These are
The other side also claimed the authority of the
entirely devised in imitation of the details of the
future Buddha for their innovations. Statues of
life of the historical Buddha, and have no
Maitreya are found in Buddhist temples, of all
independent value. Only the names differ.
sects, at the present day; and the belief in his
The document in which the original future advent is universal among Buddhists.
prophecy occurs was put together at some date
Authorities.—Dīgha Nikāya, vol. iii., edited
during the 1st century after the Buddha’s death
by J. E. Carpenter, (London, 1908); “Anagata
(see NIKĀYA). It is impossible to say whether
Vamsa,” edited by J. Minayeff in Journal of the
tradition was, at that time, correct in attributing Pali Text Society (1886); Watters on Yuan
it to the Buddha. But whoever chose the name
Chwang, edited by Rhys Davids and S. W.
(it is a patronymic or family, not a personal
Bushell (London, 1904–1905).
name), had no doubt regard to the etymological

  

12
 BUDDHISM
Buddhism is the name given to the religion
held by the followers of the Buddha (q.v.), and
covering a large area in India and east and
central Asia.
Essential Doctrines.—We are fortunate in
having preserved for us the official report of the
Buddha’s discourse, in which he expounded
what he considered the main features of his
system to the five men he first tried to win over
to his new-found faith. There is no reason to
doubt its substantial accuracy, not as to words,
but as to purport. In any case it is what the
compilers of the oldest extant documents
believed their teacher to have regarded as the
most important points in his teaching. Such a
summary must be better than any that could
now be made. It is incorporated into two
divisions of their sacred books, first among the
suttas containing the doctrine, and again in the
rules of the society or order he founded
(Saṃyutta, v. 421= Vinaya, i. 10). The gist of it,
omitting a few repetitions, is as follows: —
“There are two aims which he who has
given up the world ought not to follow after—
devotion, on the one hand, to those things
whose attractions depend upon the passions, a
low and pagan ideal, fit only for the worldly-
minded, ignoble, unprofitable, and the practice
on the other hand of asceticism, which is
painful, ignoble, unprofitable. There is a
Middle Path discovered by the Tathāgata1— a
path which opens the eyes, and bestows
understanding, which leads to peace, to insight,
to the higher wisdom, to Nirvāna. Verily! it is
this Noble Eightfold Path; that is to say, Right
Views, Right Aspirations, Right Speech, Right
Conduct, Right Mode of Livelihood, Right
Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Rapture.
“Now this is the Noble Truth as to suffering.
Birth is attended with pain, decay is painful,
1
 That is by the Arahat, the title the Buddha always uses
of himself. He does not call himself the Buddha, and
his followers never address him as such. 
13
disease is painful, death is painful. Union with
the unpleasant is painful, painful is separation
from the pleasant; and any craving
unsatisfied—that too is painful. In brief, the
five aggregates of clinging (that is, the
conditions of individuality) are painful.
“Now this is the Noble Truth as to the origin
of suffering. Verily! it is the craving thirst that
causes the renewal of becoming, that is
accompanied by sensual delights, and seeks
satisfaction now here, now there—that is to say,
the craving for the gratification of the senses, or
the craving for a future life, or the craving for
prosperity.
“Now this is the Noble Truth as to the
passing away of pain. Verily! it is the passing
away so that no passion remains, the giving up,
the getting rid of, the being emancipated from,
the harboring no longer of this craving thirst.
“Now this is the Noble Truth as to the way
that leads to the passing away of pain. Verily! it
is this Noble Eightfold Path, that is to say, Right
Views, Right Aspirations, Right speech, Right
conduct, Right mode of livelihood, Right
Effort, Right Mindfulness and Right Rapture.”
A few words follow as to the threefold way
in which the speaker claimed to have grasped
each of these Four Truths. That is all. There is
not a word about God or the soul, not a word
about the Buddha or Buddhism. It seems
simple, almost jejune; so thin and weak that one
wonders how it can have formed the foundation
for a system so mighty in its historical results.
But the simple words are pregnant with
meaning. Their implications were clear enough
to the hearers to whom they were addressed.
They were not intended, however, to answer the
questionings of a 20th century European
questioner, and are liable now to be
misunderstood. Fortunately each word, each
clause, each idea in the discourse is repeated,
commented on, enlarged upon, almost ad
nauseam, in the suttas, and a short comment in
the light of those explanations may bring out the
meaning that was meant.1
The passing away of pain or suffering is said
to depend on an emancipation. And the Buddha
is elsewhere (Vinaya ii. 239) made to declare:
“Just as the great ocean has one taste only, the
taste of salt, just so have this doctrine and
discipline but one flavor only, the flavor of
emancipation”; and again, “When a brother has,
by himself, known and realized, and continues
to abide, here in this visible world, in that
emancipation of mind, in that emancipation of
heart, which is Arahatship; that is a condition
higher still and sweeter still, for the sake of
which the brethren lead the religious life under
me.”2
The emancipation is found in a habit of
mind, in the being free from a specified sort of
craving that is said to be the origin of certain
specified sorts of pain. In some European books
this is completely spoiled by being represented
as the doctrine that existence is misery, and that
desire is to be suppressed. Nothing of the kind
is said in the text. The description of suffering
or pain is, in fact, a string of truisms, quite plain
and indisputable until the last clause. That
clause declares that the Upādāna Skandhas, the
five groups of the constituent parts of every
individual, involve pain. Put into modern
language this is that the conditions necessary to
make an individual are also the conditions that
necessarily give rise to sorrow. No sooner has
an individual become separate, become an
individual, than disease and decay begin to act
upon it. Individuality involves limitation,
limitation in its turn involves ignorance, and
ignorance is the source of sorrow. Union with
the unpleasant, separation from the pleasant,
1
  One very ancient commentary on the Path has been
preserved in three places in the canon: Dīgha, ii. 305–
307 and 311–313. Majjhima, iii. 251, and Saṃyutta, v.
8. 
14
unsatisfied craving, are each a result of
individuality.
This is a deeper generalization than that
which says, “A man is born to trouble as the
sparks fly upward.” But it is put forward as a
mere statement of fact. And the previous history
of religious belief in India would tend to show
that emphasis was laid on the fact, less as an
explanation of the origin of evil, than as a
protest against a then current pessimistic idea
that salvation could not be reached on earth, and
must therefore be sought for in a rebirth in
heaven, in the Brahmaloka. For if the fact—the
fact that the conditions of individuality are the
conditions, also, of pain—were admitted, then
the individual there would still not have
escaped from sorrow. If the five ascetics to
whom the words were addressed once admitted
this implication, logic would drive them also to
admit all that followed.
The threefold division of craving at the end
of the second truth might be rendered “the lust
of the flesh, the lust of life and the love of this
present world.” The two last are said elsewhere
to be directed against two sets of thinkers called
the Eternalists and the Annihilationists, who
held respectively the everlasting-life-heresy
and the let-us-eat-and-drink-for-tomorrow-we-
die-heresy.3 This may be so, but in any case the
division of craving would have appealed to the
five hearers as correct.
The word translated “noble” in Noble Path,
Noble Truth, is ariya, which also means
Aryan.4 The negative, un-Aryan, is used of each
of the two low aims. It is possible that this
rendering should have been introduced into the
translation; but the ethical meaning, though still
associated with the tribal meaning, had
probably already become predominant in the
language of the time.
2
 Mahāli Suttanta; translated in Rhys Davids’ Dialogues
of the Buddha, vol. i. p. 201 (cf. p. 204). 
3
 See Iti-vuttaka, p. 44; Samyutta, iii. 57. 
4
See Dīgha, ii. 28; Jātaka, v. 48, ii. 80. 
 The details of the Path include several terms
whose meaning and implication are by no
means apparent at first sight. Right Views, for
instance, means mainly right views as to the
Four Truths and the Three Signs. Of the latter,
one is identical, or nearly so, with the First
Truth. The others are Impermanence and Non-
soul (the absence of a soul)—both declared to
be “signs” of every individual, whether god,
animal or man. Of these two again the
Impermanence has become an Indian rather
than a Buddhist idea, and we are to a certain
extent familiar with it also in the West. There is
no Being, there is only a Becoming. The state
of every individual is unstable, temporary, sure
to pass away. Even in the lowest class of things,
we find, in each individual, form and material
qualities. In the higher classes there is a
continually rising series of mental qualities
also. It is the union of these that makes the
individual. Every person, or thing, or god, is
therefore a putting together, a compound; and
in each individual, without any exception, the
relation of its component parts is ever changing,
is never the same for two consecutive moments.
It follows that no sooner has separateness,
individuality, begun, than dissolution,
disintegration, also begins. There can be no
individuality without a putting together; there
can be no putting together without a becoming;
there can be no becoming without a becoming
different; and there can be no becoming
different without a dissolution, a passing away,
which sooner or later will inevitably be
complete.
Heracleitus, who was a generation or two
later than the Buddha, had very similar ideas;1
and similar ideas are found in post-Buddhistic
Indian works.2 But in neither case are they
worked out in the same uncompromising way.
1
 Burnett, Early Greek Philosophy, p. 149.  4
2
 Kathā Up. 2, 10; Bhag. Gita, 2, 14; 9, 33.  Davids, in the J.R.A.S. for 1892.
3
 The Anatta-lakkhana Sutta (Vinaya, i. 13 = Saṃyutta,
iii. 66 and iv. 34), translated in Vinaya Texts, i. 100–
102.  pp. 21–25, 86–89.
15
Both in Europe, and in all Indian thought except
the Buddhist, souls, and the gods who are made
in imitation of souls, are considered as
exceptions. To these spirits is attributed a Being
without Becoming, an individuality without
change, a beginning without an end. To hold
any such view would, according to the doctrine
of the Noble (or Aryan) Path, be erroneous, and
the error would block the way against the very
entrance on the Path.
So important is this position in Buddhism
that it is put in the forefront of Buddhist
expositions of Buddhism. The Buddha himself
is stated in the books to have devoted to it the
very first discourse he addressed to the first
converts.3 The first in the collection of the
Dialogues of Gotama discusses, and
completely, categorically, and systematically
rejects, all the current theories about “souls.”
Later books follow these precedents. Thus the
Kathā Vatthu, the latest book included in the
canon, discusses points of disagreement that
had arisen in the community. It places this
question of “soul” at the head of all the points it
deals with, and devotes to it an amount of space
quite overshadowing all the rest.4 So also in the
earliest Buddhist book later than the canon—
the very interesting and suggestive series of
conversations between the Greek king
Menander and the Buddhist teacher Nāgasena.
It is precisely this question of the “soul” that the
unknown author takes up first, describing how
Nāgasena convinces the king that there is no
such thing as the “soul” in the ordinary sense,
and he returns to the subject again and again.5
After Right Views come Right Aspirations.
It is evil desires, low ideals, useless cravings,
idle excitements, that are to be suppressed by
the cultivation of the opposite—of right desires,
 See article on “Buddhist Schools of Thought,” by Rhys
 
5
 Questions of King Milinda, translated by Rhys Davids
(Oxford, 1890–1894), vol. i. pp. 40, 41. 85–87; vol. ii.
 
lofty aspirations. In one of the Dialogues1
instances are given—the desire for
emancipation from sensuality, aspirations
towards the attainment of love to others, the
wish not to injure any living thing, the desire for
the eradication of wrong and for the promotion
of right dispositions in one’s own heart, and so
on. This portion of the Path is indeed quite
simple, and would require no commentary were
it not for the still constantly repeated blunder
that Buddhism teaches the suppression of all
desire.
Of the remaining stages of the Path it is only
necessary to mention two. The one is Right
Effort. A constant intellectual alertness is
required. This is not only insisted upon
elsewhere in countless passages, but of the three
cardinal sins in Buddhism (rāga, dosa, moha)
the last and worst is stupidity or dullness, the
others being sensuality and ill-will. Right Effort
is closely connected with the seventh stage,
Right Mindfulness. Two of the dialogues are
devoted to this subject, and it is constantly
referred to elsewhere.2 The disciple,
whatsoever he does—whether going forth or
coming back, standing or walking, speaking or
silent, eating or drinking—is to keep clearly in
mind all that it means, the temporary character
of the act, its ethical significance, and above all
that behind the act there is no actor (goer, seer,
eater, speaker) that is an eternally persistent
unity. It is the Buddhist analogue to the
Christian precept: “Whether therefore ye eat or
drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory
of God.”
Under the head of Right Conduct the two
most important points are Love and Joy. Love
is in Pāli Mettā, and the Metta Sutta3 says (no
doubt with reference to the Right Mindfulness
just described): “As a mother, even at the risk
1
 Majjhima, iii. 251, cf. Saṃyutta, v. 8.  3
2
  Dīgha, ii. 290–315. Majjhima, i. 55 et seq. Cf. Rhys
Davids’ Dialogues of the Buddha, i. 81.  by Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 109.
16
of her own life, protects her son, her only son,
so let him cultivate love without measure
towards all beings. Let him cultivate towards
the whole world—above, below, around—a
heart of love unstinted, unmixed with the sense
of differing or opposing interests. Let a man
maintain this mindfulness all the while he is
awake, whether he be standing, walking, sitting
or lying down. This state of heart is the best in
the world.”
Often elsewhere four such states are
described, the Brahma Viharas or Sublime
Conditions. They are Love, Sorrow at the
sorrows of others, Joy in the joys of others, and
Equanimity as regards one’s own joys and
sorrows.4 Each of these feelings was to be
deliberately practiced, beginning with a single
object, and gradually increasing till the whole
world was suffused with the feeling. “Our mind
shall not waver. No evil speech will we utter.
Tender and compassionate will we abide,
loving in heart, void of malice within. And we
will be ever suffusing such a one with the rays
of our loving thought. And with that feeling as
a basis we will ever be suffusing the whole wide
world with thought of love far-reaching, grown
great, beyond measure, void of anger or ill-
will.” 5
The relative importance of love, as
compared with other habits, is thus described.
“All the means that can be used as bases for
doing right are not worth the sixteenth part of
the emancipation of the heart through love. That
takes all those up into itself, outshining them in
radiance and glory. Just as whatsoever stars
there be, their radiance avails not the sixteenth
part of the radiance of the moon. That takes all
those up into itself, outshining them in radiance
and glory—just as in the last month of the rains,
at harvest time, the sun, mounting up on high
 No. 8 in the Sutta Nipāta (p. 26 of Fausböll’s edition).
It is translated by Fausböll in vol. x. of the S.B.E., and
 
4
 Dīgha, ii. 186–187. 
5
 Majjhima, i. 129. 
into the clear and cloudless sky, overwhelms all
darkness in the realms of space, and shines forth
in radiance and glory—just as in the night,
when the dawn is breaking, the morning star
shines out in radiance and glory—just so all the
means that can be used as helps towards doing
right avail not the sixteenth part of the
emancipation of the heart through love.”1
The above is the positive side; the qualities
(dhammā) that have to be acquired. The
negative side, the qualities that have to be
suppressed by the cultivation of the opposite
virtues, are the Ten Bonds (Samyojanas), the
Four Intoxications (Āsavā) and the Five
Hindrances (Nivaraṇas).
The Ten Bonds are: (1) Delusion about the
soul; (2) Doubt; (3) Dependence on good
works; (4) Sensuality; (5) Hatred, ill-feeling;
(6) Love of life on earth; (7) Desire for life in
heaven; (8) Pride; (9) Self-righteousness; (10)
Ignorance. The Four Intoxications are the
mental intoxication arising respectively from
(1) Bodily passions, (2) Becoming, (3)
Delusion, (4) Ignorance. The Five Hindrances
are (1) Hankering after worldly advantages, (2)
The corruption arising out of the wish to injure,
(3) Torpor of mind, (4) Fretfulness and worry,
(5) Wavering of mind.2 “When these five
hindrances have been cut away from within
him, he looks upon himself as freed from debt,
rid of disease, out of jail, a free man and secure.
And gladness springs up within him on his
realizing that, and joy arises to him thus
gladdened, and so rejoicing all his frame
becomes at ease, and being thus at ease he is
filled with a sense of peace, and in that peace
his heart is stayed.” 3
To have realized the Truths, and traversed
the Path; to have broken the Bonds, put an end
to the Intoxications, and got rid of the
Hindrances, is to have attained the ideal, the
1
 Iti-vuttaka, pp. 19–21.  3
2
 On the details of these see Dīgha, i. 71–73, translated
by Rhys Davids in Dialogues of the Buddha, i. 82–84. 
17
Fruit, as it is called, of Arahatship. One might
fill columns with the praises, many of them
among the most beautiful passages in Pāli
poetry and prose, lavished on this condition of
mind, the state of the man made perfect
according to the Buddhist faith. Many are the
pet names, the poetic epithets bestowed upon
it—the harbor of refuge, the cool cave, the
island amidst the floods, the place of bliss,
emancipation, liberation, safety, the supreme,
the transcendent, the uncreated, the tranquil, the
home of peace, the calm, the end of suffering,
the medicine for all evil, the unshaken, the
ambrosia, the immaterial, the imperishable, the
abiding, the farther shore, the unending, the
bliss of effort, the supreme joy, the ineffable,
the detachment, the holy city, and many others.
Perhaps the most frequent in the Buddhist text
is Arahatship, “the state of him who is worthy”;
and the one exclusively used in Europe is
Nirvāna, the “dying out”; that is, the dying out
in the heart of the fell fire of the three cardinal
sins—sensuality, ill-will and stupidity.4
The choice of this term by European writers,
a choice made long before any of the Buddhist
canonical texts had been published or
translated, has had a most unfortunate result.
Those writers did not share, could not be
expected to share, the exuberant optimism of
the early Buddhists. Themselves giving up this
world as hopeless, and looking for salvation in
the next, they naturally thought the Buddhists
must do the same, and in the absence of any
authentic scriptures, to correct the mistake, they
interpreted Nirvāna, in terms of their own
belief, as a state to be reached after death. As
such they supposed the “dying out” must mean
the dying out of a “soul”; and endless were the
discussions as to whether this meant eternal
trance, or absolute annihilation, of the “soul.” It
is now thirty years since the right interpretation,
founded on the canonical texts, has been given,
 Dīgha, i. 74. 
4
 Saṃyutta, iv. 251, 261. 
but outside the ranks of Pāli scholars the old
blunder is still often repeated. It should be
added that the belief in salvation in this world,
in this life, has appealed so strongly to Indian
sympathies that from the time of the rise of
Buddhism down to the present day it has been
adopted as a part of general Indian belief, and
Jīvanmukti, salvation during this life, has
become a commonplace in the religious
language of India.
Adopted Doctrines.—The above are the
essential doctrines of the original Buddhism.
They are at the same time its distinctive
doctrines; that is to say, the doctrines that
distinguish it from all previous teaching in
India. But the Buddha, while rejecting the
sacrifices and the ritualistic magic of the
brahmin schools, the animistic superstitions of
the people, the asceticism and soul-theory of the
Jains, and the pantheistic speculations of the
poets of the pre-Buddhistic Upanishads, still
retained the belief in transmigration. This
belief—the transmigration of the soul, after the
death of the body, into other bodies, either of
men, beasts or gods—is part of the animistic
creed so widely found throughout the world that
it was probably universal. In India it had
already, before the rise of Buddhism, been
raised into an ethical conception by the
associated doctrine of Karma, according to
which a man’s social position in life and his
physical advantages, or the reverse, were the
result of his actions in a previous birth. The
doctrine thus afforded an explanation, quite
complete to those who believed it, of the
apparent anomalies and wrongs in the
distribution here of happiness or woe. A man,
for instance, is blind. This is owing to his lust
of the eye in a previous birth. But he has also
unusual powers of hearing. This is because he
loved, in a previous birth, to listen to the
preaching of the law. The explanation could
always be exact, for it was scarcely more than a
1
 Phaedo, 69 et seq. The idea is there also put forward in
connection with a belief in transmigration.  3
18
repetition of the point to be explained. It fits the
facts because it is derived from them. And it
cannot be disproved, for it lies in a sphere
beyond the reach of human inquiry.
It was because it thus provided a moral
cause that it was retained in Buddhism. But as
the Buddha did not acknowledge a soul, the link
of connection between one life and the next had
to be found somewhere else. The Buddha found
it (as Plato also found it)1 in the influence
exercised upon one life by a desire felt in the
previous life. When two thinkers of such
eminence (probably the two greatest ethical
thinkers of antiquity) have arrived
independently at this strange conclusion, have
agreed in ascribing to cravings, felt in this life,
so great, and to us so inconceivable, a power
over the future life, we may well hesitate before
we condemn the idea as intrinsically absurd,
and we may take note of the important fact that,
given similar conditions, similar stages in the
development of religious belief, men’s
thoughts, even in spite of the most unquestioned
individual originality, tend though they may
never produce exactly the same results, to work
in similar ways.
In India, before Buddhism, conflicting and
contradictory views prevailed as to the precise
mode of action of Karma; and we find this
confusion reflected in Buddhist theory. The
prevailing views are tacked on, as it were, to the
essential doctrines of Buddhism, without being
thoroughly assimilated to them, or logically
incorporated with them. Thus in the story of the
good layman Citta, it is an aspiration expressed
on the deathbed;2 in the dialogue on the subject,
it is a thought dwelt on during life,3 in the
numerous stories in the Peta and Vimāna
Vatthus it is usually some isolated act, in the
discussions in the Dhamma Sangani it is some
mental disposition, which is the Karma (doing
or action) in the one life determining the
position of the individual in the next. These are
2
 Saṃyutta, iv. 302. 
 Majjhima, iii. 99 et seq 
really conflicting propositions. They are only
alike in the fact that in each case a moral cause
is given for the position in which the individual
finds himself now; and the moral cause is his
own act.
In the popular belief, followed also in the
brahmin theology, the bridge between the two
lives was a minute and subtle entity called the
soul, which left the one body at death, through
a hole at the top of the head, and entered into
the new body. The new body happened to be
there, ready, with no soul in it. The soul did not
make the body. In the Buddhist adaptation of
this theory no soul, no consciousness, no
memory, goes over from one body to the other.
It is the grasping, the craving, still existing at
the death of the one body that causes the new
set of Skandhas, that is, the new body with its
mental tendencies and capacities, to arise. How
this takes place is nowhere explained.
The Indian theory of Karma has been
worked out with many points of great beauty
and ethical value. And the Buddhist adaptation
of it, avoiding some of the difficulties common
to it and to the allied European theories of fate
and predestination, tries to explain the weight
of the universe in its action on the individual,
the heavy hand of the immeasurable past we
cannot escape, the close connection between all
forms of life, and the mysteries of inherited
character. Incidentally it held out the hope, to
those who believed in it, of a mode of escape
from the miseries of transmigration. For as the
Arahat had conquered the cravings that were
supposed to produce the new body, his actions
were no longer Karma, but only Kiriyā, that led
to no rebirth.1
Another point of Buddhist teaching adopted
from previous belief was the practice of ecstatic
meditation. In the very earliest times of the
1
 The history of the Indian doctrine of Karma has yet to
be written. On the Buddhist side see Rhys Davids’
Hibbert Lectures, pp. 73–120, and Dahlke, Aufsätze
zum Verständnis des Buddhismus (Berlin, 1903), i. 92–
106, and ii. 1–11. 
19
most remote animism we find the belief that a
person, rapt from all sense of the outside world,
possessed by a spirit, acquired from that state a
degree of sanctity, was supposed to have a
degree of insight, denied to ordinary mortals. In
India from the soma frenzy in the Vedas,
through the mystic reveries of the Upanishads,
and the hypnotic trances of the ancient Yoga,
allied beliefs and practices had never lost their
importance and their charm. It is clear from the
Dialogues, and other of the most ancient
Buddhist records,2 that the belief was in full
force when Buddhism arose, and that the
practice was followed by the Buddha’s
teachers. It was quite impossible for him to
ignore the question; and the practice was
admitted as a part of the training of the Buddhist
Bhikshu. But it was not the highest or the most
important part, and might be omitted altogether.
The states of Rapture are called Conditions of
Bliss, and they are regarded as useful for the
help they give towards the removal of the
mental obstacles to the attainment of
Arahatship.3 Of the thirty-seven constituent
parts of Arahatship they enter into one group of
four. To seek for Arahatship in the practice of
the ecstasy alone is considered a deadly heresy.4
So these practices are both pleasant in
themselves, and useful as one of the means to
the end proposed. But they are not the end, and
the end can be reached without them. The most
ancient form these exercises took is recorded in
the often recurring paragraphs translated in
Rhys Davids’ Dialogues of the Buddha (i. 84–
92). More modern, and much more elaborate,
forms are given in the Yogāvacaras Manual of
Indian Mysticism as practiced by Buddhists,
edited by Rhys Davids from a unique MS. for
the Pāli Text Society in 1896. In the
Introduction to this last work the various phases
of the question are discussed at length.
2
 For instance, Majjhima, i. 163–166. 
3
 Anguttara, iii. 119. 
4
 Dīgha, i. 38. 
 Buddhist Texts. The Canonical Books.—It
is necessary to remember that the Buddha, like
other Indian teachers of his period, taught by
conversation only. A highly-educated man
(according to the education current at the time),
speaking constantly to men of similar
education, he followed the literary habit of his
day by embodying his doctrines in set phrases
(sūtras), on which he enlarged, on different
occasions, in different ways. Writing was then
widely known. But the lack of suitable writing
materials made any lengthy books impossible.
Such sūtras were therefore the recognized form
of preserving and communicating opinion.
They were catchwords, as it were, memoria
technica, which could easily be remembered,
and would recall the fuller expositions that had
been based upon them. Shortly after the
Buddha’s time the Brahmins had their sūtras in
Sanskrit, already a dead language. He purposely
put his into the ordinary conversational idiom
of the day, that is to say, into Pāli. When the
Buddha died these sayings were collected
together by his disciples into what they call the
Four Nikāyas, or “collections.” These cannot
have reached their final form till about fifty or
sixty years afterwards. Other sayings and
verses, most of them ascribed, not to the
Buddha, but to the disciples themselves, were
put into a supplementary Nikāya.
We know of slight additions made to this
Nikāya as late as the time of Asoka, 3rd century
B.C. And the developed doctrine, found in
certain portions of it, shows that these are later
than the four old Nikāyas. For a generation or
two the books so put together were handed
down by memory, though probably written
memoranda were also used. And they were
doubtless accompanied from the first, as they
were being taught, by a running commentary.
About one hundred years after the Buddha’s
death there was a schism in the community.
Each of the two schools kept an arrangement of
the canon—still in Pāli, or some allied dialect.
Sanskrit was not used for any Buddhist works
till long afterwards, and never used at all, so far
as is known, for the canonical books. Each of
20
these two schools broke up in the following
centuries, into others. Several of them had their
different arrangements of the canonical books,
differing also in minor details. These books
remained the only authorities for about five
centuries, but they all, except only our extant
Pāli Nikāyas, have been lost in India. These
then are our authorities for the earliest period of
Buddhism. Now what are these books?
We talk necessarily of Pāli books. They are
not books in the modern sense. They are
memorial sentences or verses intended to be
learnt by heart. And the whole style and method
of arrangement is entirely subordinated to this
primary necessity. Each sūtra (Pāli, sutta) is
very short; usually occupying only a page, or
perhaps two, and containing a single
proposition. When several of these, almost
always those that contain propositions of a
similar kind, are collected together in the
framework of one dialogue, it is called a
suttanta. The usual length of such a suttanta is
about a dozen pages; only a few of them are
longer, and a collection of such suttantas might
be called a book. But it is as yet neither
narrative nor essay. It is at most a string of
passages, drawn up in similar form to assist the
memory, and intended, not to be read, but to be
learnt by heart.
The first of the four Nikāyas is a collection
of the longest of these suttantas, and it is called
accordingly the Dīgha Nikāya, that is “the
Collection of Long Ones” (sci. Suttantas). The
next is the Majjhima Nikāya, the “Collection of
the suttantas of Medium Length”—medium,
that is, as being shorter than the suttantas in the
Dīgha, and longer than the ordinary suttas
preserved in the two following collections.
Between them these first two collections
contain 186 dialogues, in which the Buddha, or
in a few cases one of his leading disciples, is
represented as engaged in conversation on some
one of the religious, or philosophic, or ethical
points in that system which we now call
Buddhism.
 In depth of philosophic insight, in the
method of Socratic questioning often adopted,
in the earnest and elevated tone of the whole, in
the evidence they afford of the most cultured
thought of the day, these dialogues constantly
remind the reader of the dialogues of Plato. But
not in style. They have indeed a style of their
own; always dignified, and occasionally rising
into eloquence. But for the reasons already
given, it is entirely different from the style of
Western writings which are always intended to
be read. Historical scholars will, however,
revere this collection of dialogues as one of the
most priceless of the treasures of antiquity still
preserved to us. It is to it, above all, that we
shall always have to go for our knowledge of
the most ancient Buddhism. Of the 186, 175 had
by 1907 been edited for the Pāli Text Society,
and the remainder were either in the press or in
preparation.
A disadvantage of the arrangement in
dialogues, more especially as they follow one
another according to length and not according
to subject, is that it is not easy to find the
statement of doctrine on any particular point
which is interesting one at the moment. It is
very likely just this consideration which led to
the compilation of the two following Nikāyas.
In the first of these, called the Anguttara
Nikāya, all those points of Buddhist doctrine
capable of expression in classes are set out in
order. This practically includes most of the
psychology and ethics of Buddhism. For it is a
distinguishing mark of the dialogues
themselves that the results arrived at are
arranged in carefully systematized groups.
We are familiar enough in the West with
similar classifications, summed up in such
expressions as the Seven Deadly Sins, the Ten
Commandments, the Thirty-nine Articles, the
Four Cardinal Virtues, the Seven Sacraments
and a host of others. These numbered lists (it is
true) are 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
21
were found so useful in the early Buddhist
times, when the books were all learnt by heart,
and had never as yet been written. And in the
Anguttara we find set out in order first of all the
units, then all the pairs, then all the trios, and so
on. It is the longest book in the Buddhist Bible,
and fills 1840 pages 8vo. The whole of the Pāli
text has been published by the Pāli Text
Society, but only portions have been translated
into English.
The next, and last, of these four collections
contains again the whole, or nearly the whole,
of the Buddhist doctrine; but arranged this time
in order of subjects. It consists of 55 Saṃyuttas
or groups. In each of these the suttas on the
same subject, or in one or two cases the suttas
addressed to the same sort of people, are
grouped together. The whole of it has been
published in five volumes by the Pāli Text
Society. Only a few fragments have been
translated.
Many hundreds of the short suttas and
verses in these two collections are found, word
for word, in the dialogues. And there are
numerous instances of the introductory story
stating how, and when, and to whom the sutta
was enunciated— a sort of narrative framework
in which the sutta is set—recurring also. This is
very suggestive as to the way in which the
earliest Buddhist records were gradually built
up. The suttas came first embodying, in set
phrases, the doctrine that had to be handed
down. Those episodes, found in two or three
different places, and always embodying several
suttas, came next. Then several of these were
woven together to form a suttanta. And finally
the suttantas were grouped together into the
two Nikāyas, and the suttas and episodes
separately into the two others. Parallel with this
evolution, so to say, of the suttas, the short
statements of doctrine, in prose, ran the
treatment of the verses. There was a great love
of poetry in the communities in which
Buddhism arose. Verses were helpful to the
memory. And they were adopted not only for
this reason. The adherents of the new view of
life found pleasure in putting into appropriate
verse the feelings of enthusiasm and of ecstasy
which the reforming doctrines inspired. When
particularly happy in literary finish, or
peculiarly rich in religious feeling, such verses
were not lost. These were handed on, from
mouth to mouth, in the small companies of the
brethren or sisters.
The oldest verses are all lyrics, expressions
either of emotion, or of some deep saying, some
pregnant thought. Very few of them have been
preserved alone. And even then they are so
difficult to understand, so much like puzzles,
that they were probably accompanied from the
first by a sort of comment in prose, stating
when, and why, and by whom they were
supposed to have been uttered. As a general rule
such a framework in prose is actually preserved
in the old Buddhist literature. It is only in the
very latest books included in the canon that the
narrative part is also regularly in verse, so that
a whole work consists of a collection of ballads.
The last step, that of combining such ballads
into one long epic poem was not taken till after
the canon was closed.
The whole process, from the simple
anecdote in mixed prose and verse, the so-
called ākhyāna, to the complete epic, comes out
with striking clearness in the history of the
Buddhist canon. It is typical, one may notice in
passing, of the evolution of the epic elsewhere;
in Iceland, for instance, in Persia and in Greece.
And we may safely draw the conclusion that if
the great Indian epics, the Mahā-bhārata and
the Rāmāyana, had been in existence when the
formation of the Buddhist canon began, the
course of its development would have been
very different from what it was.
As will easily be understood, the same
reasons which led to literary activity of this
kind, in the earliest period, continued to hold
good afterwards. A number of such efforts,
after the Nikāyas had been closed, were
included in a supplementary Nikāya called the
Khuddaka Nikāya. It will throw very useful
light upon the intellectual level in the Buddhist
22
community just after the earliest period, and
upon literary life in the valley of the Ganges in
the 4th or 5th century B.C., if we briefly explain
what the tractates in this collection contain.
The first, the Khuddaka Pātha, is a little tract
of only a few pages. After a profession of faith
in the Buddha, the doctrine and the order, there
follows a paragraph setting out the thirty-four
constituents of the human body—bones, blood,
nerves and so on—strangely incongruous with
what follows. For that is simply a few of the
most beautiful poems to be found in the
Buddhist scriptures. There is no apparent
reason, except their exquisite versification, why
these particular pieces should have been here
brought together. It is most probable that this
tiny volume was simply a sort of first lesson
book for young neophytes when they joined the
order. In any case that is one of the uses to
which it is put at present.
The next book is the Dhammapada. Here are
brought together from ten to twenty stanzas on
each of twenty-six selected points of Buddhist
self-training or ethics. There are altogether 423
verses, gathered from various older sources,
and strung together without any other internal
connection than that they relate more or less to
the same subject. And the collector has not
thought it necessary to choose stanzas written
in the same metre, or in the same number of
lines. We know that the early Christians were
accustomed to sing hymns, both in their homes
and on the occasions of their meeting together.
These hymns are now irretrievably lost. Had
someone made a collection of about twenty
isolated stanzas, chosen from these hymns, on
each of about twenty subjects—such as Faith,
Hope, Love, the Converted Man, Times of
Trouble, Quiet Days, the Savior, the Tree of
Life, the Sweet Name, the Dove, the King, the
Land of Peace, the Joy Unspeakable—we
should have a Christian Dhammapada, and
very precious such a collection would be. The
Buddhist Dhammapada has been edited by
Professor Fausböll (2nd ed., 1900), and has
been frequently translated. Where the verses
deal with those ideas that are common to
Christians and Buddhists, the versions are
easily intelligible, and some of the stanzas
appeal very strongly to the Western sense of
religious beauty. Where the stanzas are full of
the technical terms of the Buddhist system of
self-culture and self-control, it is often
impossible, without expansions that spoil the
poetry, or learned notes that distract the
attention, to convey the full sense of the
original. In all these distinctively Buddhist
verses the existing translations (of which
Professor Max Müller’s is the best known, and
Dr Karl Neumann’s the best) are inadequate
and sometimes quite erroneous. The connection
in which they were spoken is often apparent in
the more ancient books from which these verses
have been taken, and has been preserved in the
commentary on the work itself.
In the next little work the framework, the
whole paraphernalia of the ancient ākhyāna, is
included in the work itself, which is called
Udāna, or “ecstatic utterances.” The Buddha is
represented, on various occasions during his
long career, to have been so much moved by
some event, or speech, or action, that he gave
vent, as it were, to his pent-up feelings in a
short, ecstatic utterance, couched, for the most
part, in one or two lines of poetry. These
outbursts, very terse and enigmatic, are charged
with religious emotion, and turn often on some
subtle point of Arahatship, that is, of the
Buddhist ideal of life. The original text has been
published by the Pāli Text Society. The little
book, a garland of fifty of these gems, has been
translated by General Strong.
The next work is called the Iti Vuttaka. This
contains 120 short passages, each of them
leading up to a terse deep saying of the
Buddha’s, and introduced, in each case, with
the words Iti vuttam Bhagavatā—“thus was it
spoken by the Exalted One.” These anecdotes
may or may not be historically accurate. It is
quite possible that the memory of the early
disciples, highly trained as it was, enabled them
to preserve a substantially true record of some
23
of these speeches, and of the circumstances in
which they were uttered. Some or all of them
may also have been invented. In either case they
are excellent evidence of the sort of questions
on which discussions among the earliest
Buddhists must have turned. These ecstatic
utterances and deep sayings are attributed to the
Buddha himself, and accompanied by the prose
framework.
There has also been preserved a collection of
stanzas ascribed to his leading followers. Of
these 107 are brethren, and 73 sisters, in the
order. The prose framework is in this case
preserved only in the commentary, which also
gives biographies of the authors. This work is
called the Thera-theri-gāthā.
Another interesting collection is the Jātaka
book, a set of verses supposed to have been
uttered by the Buddha in some of his previous
births. These are really 550 of the folk-tales
current in India when the canon was being
formed, the only thing Buddhist about them
being that the Buddha, in a previous birth, is
identified in each case with the hero in the little
story. Here again the prose is preserved only in
the commentary. And it is a most fortunate
chance that this—the oldest, the most complete,
and the most authentic collection of folklore
extant—has thus been preserved intact to the
present day. Many of these stories and fables
have wandered to Europe, and are found in
medieval homilies, poems and story-books. A
full account of this curious migration will be
found in the introduction to the present writer’s
Buddhist Birth Stories. A translation of the
whole book is now published, under the
editorship of Professor Cowell, at the
Cambridge University Press.
The last of these poetical works which it is
necessary to mention is the Sutta Nipāta,
containing fifty-five poems, all except the last
merely short lyrics, many of great beauty. A
very ancient commentary on the bulk of these
poems has been included in the canon as a
separate work. The poems themselves have
been translated by Professor Fausböll in the
Sacred Books of the East. The above works are
our authority for the philosophy and ethics of
the earliest Buddhists. We have also a complete
statement of the rules of the order in the Vinaya,
edited, in five volumes, by Professor
Oldenberg. Three volumes of translations of
these rules, by him and by the present writer,
have also appeared in the Sacred Books of the
East.
There have also been added to the canonical
books seven works on Abhidhamma, a more
elaborate and more classified exposition of the
Dhamma or doctrine as set out in the Nikāyas.
All these works are later. Only one of them has
been translated, the so-called Dhamma
Sangani. The introduction to this translation,
published under the title of Buddhist
Psychology, contains the fullest account that
has yet appeared of the psychological
conceptions on which Buddhist ethics are
throughout based. The translator, Mrs Caroline
Rhys Davids, estimates the date of this ancient
manual for Buddhist students as the 4th century
B.C.
Later Works.—First, the canon, almost all
of which is now accessible to readers of Pāli.
But a good deal of work is still required before
the harvest of historical data contained in these
texts shall have been made acceptable to
students of philosophy and sociology. These
works of the oldest period, the two centuries
and a half, between the Buddha’s time and that
of Asoka, were followed by a voluminous
literature in the following periods—from Asoka
to Kanishka, and from Kanishka to
Buddhaghosa,—each of about three centuries.
Many of these works are extant in MS.; but only
five or six of the more important have so far
been published.
Of these the most interesting is the Milinda,
one of the earliest historical novels preserved to
us. It is mainly religious and philosophical, and
purports to give the discussion, extending over
several days, in which a Buddhist elder named
Nāgasena succeeds in converting Milinda, that
is Menander, the famous Greek king of Bactria,
24
to Buddhism. The Pāli text has been edited and
the work translated into English.
More important historically, though greatly
inferior in style and ability, is the Mahāvastu or
Sublime Story, in Sanskrit. The story is the one
of chief importance to the Buddhists—the
story, namely, of how the Buddha won, under
the Bo Tree, the victory over ignorance, and
attained to the Sambodhi, “the higher wisdom,”
of Nirvāna. The story begins with his previous
births, in which also he was accumulating the
Buddha qualities. And as the Mahāvastu was a
standard work of a particular sect, or rather
school, called the Mahā-sanghikas, it has thus
preserved for us the theory of the Buddha as
held outside the followers of the canon, by
those whose views developed, in after
centuries, into the Mahāyāna or modern form of
Buddhism in India. But this book, like all the
ancient books, was composed, not in the north,
in Nepal, but in the valley of the Ganges, and it
is partly in prose, partly in verse.
Two other works, the Lalita Vistara and the
Buddha Carita, give us—but this, of course, is
later—Sanskrit poems, epics, on the same
subject. Of these, the former may be as old as
the Christian era; the latter belongs to the 2nd
century after Christ. Both of them have been
edited and translated. The older one contains
still a good deal of prose, the gist of it being
often repeated in the verses. The later one is
entirely in verse, and shows off the author’s
mastery of the artificial rules of prosody and
poetics, according to which a poem, a mahā-
kāvya, ought, according to the later writers on
the Ars poetica, to be composed. These three
works deal only quite briefly and incidentally
with any point of Buddhism outside of the
Buddha legend.
Of greater importance for the history of
Buddhism are two later works, the Netti
Pakarana and the Saddharma Pundarīka. The
former, in Pāli, discusses a number of questions
then of importance in the Buddhist community;
and it relies throughout, as does the Milinda, on
the canonical works, which it quotes largely.
The latter, in Sanskrit, is the earliest exposition
we have of the later Mahāyāna doctrine. Both
these books may be dated in the 2nd or 3rd
century of our era. The latter has been translated
into English.
We have now also the text of the Prajnā
Pāramitā, a later treatise on the Mahāyāna
system, which in time entirely replaced in India
the original doctrines. To about the same age
belongs also the Divyāvādana, a collection of
legends about the leading disciples of the
Buddha, and important members of the order,
through the subsequent three centuries. These
legends are, however, of different dates, and in
spite of the comparatively late period at which
it was put into its present form, it contains some
very ancient fragments.
The whole of the above works were
composed in the north of India; that is to say,
either north or a few miles south of the Ganges.
The record is at present full of gaps. But we can
even now obtain a full and accurate idea of the
earliest Buddhism, and are able to trace the
main lines of its development through the first
eight or nine centuries of its career. The Pāli
Text Society is still publishing two volumes a
year; and the Russian Academy has inaugurated
a series to contain the most important of the
Sanskrit works still buried in MS. We have also
now accessible in Pāli fourteen volumes of the
commentaries of the great 5th century scholars
in south India and Ceylon, most of them the
works either of Buddhaghosa of Budh Gaya, or
of Dhammapāla of Kāncipura (the ancient name
of Conjeeveram). These are full of important
historical data on the social, as well as the
religious, life of India during the periods of
which they treat.
Modern Research.—The striking archaeo-
logical discoveries of recent years have both
confirmed and added to our knowledge of the
earliest period. Pre-eminent among these is the
discovery, by Mr William Peppé, on the
Birdpur estate, adjoining the boundary between
English and Nepalese territory, of the stūpa, or
cairn, erected by the Sakiya clan over their
25
share of the ashes from the cremation pyre of
the Buddha. About 12 miles to the north-east of
this spot has been found an inscribed pillar, put
up by Asoka as a record of his visit to the
Lumbini Garden, as the place where the future
Buddha had been born. Although more than two
centuries later than the event to which it refers,
this inscription is good evidence of the site of
the garden. There had been no interruption of
the tradition; and it is probable that the place
was then still occupied by the descendants of
the possessors in the Buddha’s time.
North-west of this another Asoka pillar has
been discovered, recording his visit to the cairn
erected by the Sakiyas over the remains of
Konāgamana, one of the previous Buddhas or
teachers, whose follower Gotama the Buddha
had claimed to be. These discoveries definitely
determine the district occupied by the Sakiya
republic in the 6th and 7th centuries B.C. The
boundaries, of course, are not known; but the
clan must have spread 30 miles or more along
the lower slopes of the Himalayas and 30 miles
or more southwards over the plains. It has been
abandoned jungle since the 3rd century A.D., or
perhaps earlier, so that the ruined sites,
numerous through the whole district, have
remained undisturbed, and further discoveries
may be confidently expected.
The principal points on which this large
number of older and better authorities has
modified our knowledge are as follows: —
1. We have learnt that the division of
Buddhism, originating with Burnouf, into
northern and southern, is misleading. He found
that the Buddhism in his Pāli MSS., which came
from, Ceylon, differed from that in his Sanskrit
MSS., which came from Nepal. Now that the
works he used have been made accessible in
printed editions, we find that, wherever the
existing MSS. came from, the original works
themselves were all composed in the same
stretch of country, that is, in the valley of the
Ganges. The difference of the opinions
expressed in the MSS. is due, not to the place
where they are now found, but to the difference
of time at which they were originally
composed.
Not one of the books mentioned above is
either northern or southern. They all claim, and
rightly claim, to belong, so far as their place of
origin is concerned, to the Majjhima Desa, the
middle country. It is undesirable to base the
main division of our subject on an adventitious
circumstance, and especially so when the
nomenclature thus introduced (it is not found in
the books themselves) cuts right across the true
line of division. The use of the terms northern
and southern as applied, not to the existing
MSS., but to the original books, or to the
Buddhism they teach, not only does not help us,
it is the source of serious misunderstanding.
It inevitably leads careless writers to take for
granted that we have, historically, two
Buddhisms—one manufactured in Ceylon, the
other in Nepal. Now this is admittedly wrong.
What we have to consider is Buddhism varying
through slight degrees, as the centuries pass by,
in almost every book. We may call it one, or we
may call it many. What is quite certain is that it
is not two. And the most useful distinction to
emphasize is, not the ambiguous and
misleading geographical one—derived from
the places where the modern copies of the MSS.
are found; nor even, though that would be
better, the linguistic one—but the chronological
one. The use, therefore, of the inaccurate and
misleading terms northern and southern ought
no longer to be followed in scholarly works on
Buddhism.
2. Our ideas as to the social conditions that
prevailed, during the Buddha’s lifetime, in the
eastern valley of the Ganges have been
modified. The people were divided into clans,
many of them governed as republics, more or
less aristocratic. In a few cases several of such
republics had formed confederations, and in
four cases such confederations had already
become hereditary monarchies. The right
historical analogy is not the state of Germany in
the middle ages, but the state of Greece in the
time of Socrates. The Sakiyas were still a
26
republic. They had republics for their neighbors
on the east and south, but on the western
boundary was the kingdom of Kosala, the
modern Oudh, which they acknowledged as a
suzerain power. The Buddha’s father was not a
king. There were rājas in the clan, but the word
meant at most something like consul or archon.
All the four real kings were called Mahā-rāja.
And Suddhodana, the teacher’s father, was not
even rāja. One of his cousins, named Bhaddiya,
is styled a rāja; but Suddhodana is spoken of,
like other citizens, as Suddhodana the Sakiyan.
As the ancient books are very particular on this
question of titles, this is decisive.
3. There was no caste—no caste, that is, in
the modern sense of the term. We have long
known that the connubium was the cause of a
long and determined struggle between the
patricians and the plebeians in Rome. Evidence
has been yearly accumulating on the existence
of restrictions as to intermarriage, and as to the
right of eating together (commensality) among
other Aryan tribes, Greeks, Germans, Russians
and so on. Even without the fact of the existence
now of such restrictions among the modern
successors of the ancient Aryans in India, it
would have been probable that they also were
addicted to similar customs. It is certain that the
notion of such usages was familiar enough to
some at least of the tribes that preceded the
Aryans in India. Rules of endogamy and
exogamy; privileges, restricted to certain
classes, of eating together, are not only Indian
or Aryan, but world-wide phenomena. Both the
spirit, and to a large degree the actual details, of
modern Indian caste-usages are identical with
these ancient, and no doubt universal, customs.
It is in them that we have the key to the origin
of caste.
At any moment in the history of a nation
such customs seem, to a superficial observer, to
be fixed and immutable. As a matter of fact they
are never quite the same in successive centuries,
or even generations. The numerous and
complicated details which we sum up under the
convenient, but often misleading, single name
of caste, are solely dependent for their sanction
on public opinion. That opinion seems stable.
But it is always tending to vary as to the degree
of importance attached to some particular one
of the details, as to the size and complexity of
the particular groups in which each detail ought
to be observed.
Owing to the fact that the particular group
that in India worked its way to the top, based its
claims on religious grounds, not on political
power, nor on wealth, the system has, no doubt,
lasted longer in India than in Europe. But public
opinion still insists, in considerable circles even
in Europe, on restrictions of a more or less
defined kind, both as to marriage and as to
eating together. And in India the problem still
remains to trace, in the literature, the gradual
growth of the system—the gradual formation of
new sections among the people, the gradual
extension of the institution to the families of
people engaged in certain trades, belonging to
the same group, or sect, or tribe, tracing their
ancestry, whether rightly or wrongly, to the
same source. All these factors, and others
besides, are real factors. But they are phases of
the extension and growth, not explanations of
the origin of the system.
There is no evidence to show that at the time
of the rise of Buddhism there was any
substantial difference, as regards the barriers in
question, between the peoples dwelling in the
valley of the Ganges and their contemporaries,
Greek or Roman, dwelling on the shores of the
Mediterranean Sea. The point of greatest
weight in the establishment of the subsequent
development, the supremacy in India of the
priests, was still being hotly debated. All the
new evidence tends to show that the struggle
was being decided rather against than for the
Brahmins. What we find in the Buddha’s time
is caste in the making. The great mass of the
people were distinguished quite roughly into
four classes, social strata, of which the
boundary lines were vague and uncertain. At
1
 See Journal of the Pāli Text Society, 1896, pp. 87–92. 
27
one end of the scale were certain outlying tribes
and certain hereditary crafts of a dirty or
despised kind. At the other end the nobles
claimed the superiority. But Brahmins by birth
(not necessarily sacrificial priests, for they
followed all sorts of occupations) were trying to
oust the nobles from the highest grade. They
only succeeded, long afterwards, when the
power of Buddhism had declined.
4. It had been supposed on the authority of
late priestly texts, where boasts of persecution
are put forth, that the cause of the decline of
Buddhism in India had been Brahmin
persecution. The now accessible older
authorities, with one doubtful exception,1 make
no mention of persecution. On the other hand,
the comparison we are now able to make
between the canonical books of the older
Buddhism and the later texts of the following
centuries, shows a continual decline from the
old standpoint, a continual approximation of the
Buddhist views to those of the other
philosophies and religions of India.
We can see now that the very event which
seemed, in the eyes of the world, to be the most
striking proof of the success of the new
movement, the conversion and strenuous
support, in the 3rd century B.C., of Asoka, the
most powerful ruler India had had, only
hastened the decline. The adhesion of large
numbers of nominal converts, more especially
from the newly incorporated and less advanced
provinces, produced weakness rather than
strength in the movement for reform. The day
of compromise had come. Every relaxation of
the old thorough-going position was welcomed
and supported by converts only half converted.
And so the margin of difference between the
Buddhists and their opponents gradually faded
almost entirely away.
The soul theory, step by step, gained again
the upper hand. The popular gods and the
popular superstitions are once more favored by
Buddhists themselves. The philosophical basis
of the old ethics is overshadowed by new
speculations. And even the old ideal of life, the
salvation of the Arahat to be won in this world
and in this world only, by self-culture and self-
mastery, is forgotten, or mentioned only to be
condemned. The end was inevitable. The need
of a separate organization became less and less
apparent. The whole pantheon of the Vedic
gods, with the ceremonies and the sacrifices
associated with them, passed indeed away. But
the ancient Buddhism, the party of reform, was
overwhelmed also in its fall; and modern
Hinduism arose on the ruins of both.
AUTHORITIES.—The attention of the few
scholars at work on the subject being directed
to the necessary first step of publishing the
ancient authorities, the work of exploring them,
of analyzing and classifying the data they
contain, has as yet been very imperfectly done.
The annexed list contains only the most
important works.
Texts.—Pāli Text Society, 57 vols.; Jātaka,
7 vols., ed. Fausböll, 1877–1897; Vinaya, 5
vols., ed. Oldenberg, 1879–1883;
Dhammapada, ed. Fausböll, 2nd ed., 1900;
Divyāvadāna, ed. Cowell and Neil, 1882;
Mahāvastu, ed. Senart, 3 vols., 1882–1897;
Buddha Carita, ed. Cowell, 1892; Milinda-
pañho, ed. Trenckner, 1880.
PĀLl
Pāli is the language used in daily intercourse
between cultured people in the north of India
from the 7th century B.C. It continued to be used
throughout India and its confines as a literary
language for about a thousand years, and is still,
though in a continually decreasing degree, the
literary language of Burma, Siam, and Ceylon.
Two factors combined to give Pāli its
importance as one of the few great literary
languages of the world: the one political, the
other religious.
28
Translations.—Vinaya Texts, by Rhys
Davids and Oldenberg, 3 vols., 1881–1885;
Dhammapada, by Max Müller, and Sutta
Nipāta, by Fausböll, 1881; Questions of King
Milinda, by Rhys Davids, 2 vols., 1890–1894;
Buddhist Suttas, by Rhys Davids, 1881 ;
Saddharma Pundarīka, by Kern, 1884;
Buddhist Mahāyāna Texts, by Cowell and Max
Müller, 1894—all the above in the “Sacred
Books of the East” ; Jātaka, vol. i., by Rhys
Davids, under the title Buddhist Birth Stories,
1880; vols, i.-vi., by Chalmers, Neil, Francis,
and Rouse, 1895–1897; Buddhism in
Translations, by Warren, 1896; Buddhistische
Anthologie, by Neumann, 1892. Lieder der
Mönche und Nonnen, 1899, by the same;
Dialogues of the Buddha, by Rhys Davids,
1899; Die Reden Gotamo Buddhas, by
Neumann, 3 vols., 1899–1903; Buddhist
Psychology, by Mrs Rhys Davids, 1900.
Manuals, Monographs, &c.—Buddhism,
by Rhys Davids, 12mo, 20th thousand, 1903;
Buddha, sein Leben, seine Lehre und seine
Gemeinde, by Oldenberg, 5th edition, 1906;
Der Buddhismus und seine Geschichte in
Indien, by Kern, 1882; Der Buddhismus, by
Edmund Hardy, 1890; American Lectures,
Buddhism, by Rhys Davids, 1896; Inscriptions
de Piyadasi, by Senart, 2 vols., 1881–1886;
Mara und Buddha, by Windisch, 1895;
Buddhist India, by Rhys Davids, 1903.
The political factor was the rise during the
th
7 century B.C. of the Kosala power. Previous
to this the Aryan settlements, along the three
routes they followed in their penetration into
India, had remained isolated, independent and
small communities. Their language bore the
same relation to the Vedic speech as the various
Italian dialects bore to Latin. The welding
together of the great Kosala kingdom, more
than twice the size of England, in the very
center of the settled country, led insensibly but
irresistibly to the establishment of a standard of
speech, and the standard followed was the
language used at the court at Sāvatthi in the
Nepalese hills, the capital of Kosala.
When Gotama the Buddha, himself a
Kosalan by birth, determined on the use, for the
propagation of his religious reforms, of the
living tongue of the people, he and his followers
naturally made full use of the advantages
already gained by the form of speech current
through the wide extent of his own country. A
result followed somewhat similar to the effect,
on the German language, of the Lutheran
reformation. When, in the generations after the
Buddha’s death, his disciples compiled the
documents of the faith, the form they adopted
became dominant. But local varieties of speech
continued to exist.
The etymology of the word Pāli is uncertain.
It probably means “row, line, canon,” and is
used, in its exact technical sense, of the
language of the canon, containing the
documents of the Buddhist faith. But when Pāli
first became known to Europeans it was already
used also, by those who wrote in Pāli, of the
language of the later writings, which bear the
same relation to the standard literary Pāli of the
canonical texts as medieval does to classical
Latin. A further extension of the meaning in
which the word Pāli was used followed in a
very suggestive way.
The first book edited by a European in Pāli
was the Mahāvaṃsa, or Great Chronicle of
Ceylon, published there in 1837 by Turnour,
then colonial secretary in the island. James
Prinsep was then devoting his rare genius to the
decipherment of the early inscriptions of
northern India, especially those of Asoka in the
3rd century B.C. He derived the greatest
assistance from Turnour’s work not only in
historical information, but also as regards the
forms of words and grammatical inflexions.
The resemblance was so close that Prinsep
called the alphabet he was deciphering the Pāli
37
 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1903), p. 398. 
29
alphabet, and the language expressed in it he
called the Pāli language. This was so nearly
correct that the usage has been followed by
other European scholars, and is being
increasingly adopted.
It receives the support of Mahānāma, the
author of the Great Chronicle, who wrote in
Ceylon in the 5th century A.D. He says (p. 253,
ed. Turnour) that Buddhaghosa translated the
commentaries, then existing only in Sinhalese,
into Pāli. The name here used by the chronicler
for Pāli is “the Māgadhī tongue,” by which
expression is meant, not exactly the language
spoken in Migadha, but the language in use at
the court of Asoka, king of Kosala and
Māgadha. With this use of the word,
philologically inexact, but historically quite
defensible, may be compared the use of the
word English, which is not exactly the language
of the Angles, or of the word French, which is
not exactly the language of the Franks.
The question of Pāli becomes therefore
three-fold; Pāli before the canon, the canon, and
the writings subsequent to the canon. The
present writer has suggested that the word Pāli
should be reserved for the language of the
canon, and other words used for the earlier and
later forms of it;37 but the usage generally
followed is so convenient that there is little
likelihood of the suggestion being followed.
The threefold division will therefore be here
adhered to.
For the history of Pāli before the canonical
books were composed we have no direct
evidence. None of the pre-Buddhistic sites have
as yet been excavated; and, with one doubtful
exception, no inscriptions older than the texts
have as yet been found. We have to argue back
from the state of things revealed in the texts, of
various dates from 450–250 B.C., and in the
inscriptions from that date onwards. The
inscriptions have now been subjected to a very
full critical and philological analysis in
Professor Otto Franke’s Pali und Sanskrit
(Strassburg, 1902). He shows that in the 3rd
century B.C. the language used throughout
northern India was practically one, and that it
was derived directly from the speech of the
Vedic Aryans, retaining many Vedic forms lost
in the later classical Sanskrit. His list of such
forms is much more complete than that given
by Childers in the introduction to his Dictionary
of the Pali Language.
The particular form of this general speech
which was used as the lingua franca, the
Hindustani of the period, was the form in use in
Kosala. Franke also shows that there were local
peculiarities in small matters of spelling and
inflexion, and that the particular form of the
language used in and about the Avanti district,
of which the capital was Ujjeni (a celebrated
pre-Buddhistic city), was the basis of the
language used in the sacred texts as we now
have them. Long ago Westergaard, Rhys
Davids and Ernst Kuhn,38 had made the same
suggestion, mainly on historical grounds,
Mahinda, who took the texts to Ceylon, having
been born at Vedisa in that district. The careful
and complete collection, by Franke, of the
philological evidence at present available, has
raised this hypothesis into a practical certainty.
The inscriptions are at present scattered
through a number of learned periodicals; a
complete list of all those that can be
approximately dated between the 3rd century
B.C. and the 2nd century A.D. is given in the first
chapter of Franke s book. M. E. Senart has
collected in his Inscriptions de Piyadasi (Paris,
1881–1886) those inscriptions of Asoka which
were known up to the date of his work,
subjecting them to a careful analysis, and
providing an index to the words occurring in
them. What is greatly needed is a new edition
of this work including the Asoka inscriptions
discovered during the last twenty years, and a
similar edition of the other inscriptions. The
whole of the Pāli inscriptions so far discovered
38
  Westergaard, Über den ältesten Zeitraum der
indischen Geschichte, p. 87; Rhys Davids,
30
might fill somewhat more than a hundred pages
of text. An outline of the history of the Pāli
alphabet has been given, with illustrations and
references to the authorities, in Rhys Davids’s
Buddhist India, pp. 107–140.
The canonical texts are divided into three
collections called Piṭakas, i.e. baskets. This
figure of speech refers, not to a basket or box in
which things can be stored, but to the baskets,
used in India in excavations, as a means of
handing on the earth from one worker to
another. The first Piṭaka contains, the Vinaya—
that is, Rules of the Order; the second the
Suttas, giving the doctrine, and the third the
Abhidhamma, analytical exercises in the
psychological system on which the doctrine is
based. These have now nearly all, mainly
through the work of the Pali Text Society, been
published in Pāli.
The Vinaya was edited in 5 vols, by H.
Oldenberg; and the more important parts of it
have been translated into English by Rhys
Davids and Oldenberg in their Vinaya Texts.
The Sutta Piṭaka consists of five Nikāyas,
four principal and one supplementary. The four
principal ones have been published for the Pāli
Text Society, and some volumes have been
translated into English or German. These four
Nikāyas, sixteen volumes in all, are the main
authorities for the doctrines of early Buddhism.
The fifth Nikāya is a miscellaneous collection
of treatises, mostly very short, on a variety of
subjects. It contains lyrical and ballad poetry,
specimens of early exegesis and commentary,
lives of the saints, collections of edifying
anecdotes and of the now well-known Jātakas
or Birth Stories. Of these, eleven volumes had
by 1910 been edited for the Pali Text Society
by various scholars, the Jātakas and two other
treatises had appeared elsewhere, and two
works (one a selection of lives of distinguished
early Buddhists, and the other an ancient
commentary), were still in MS.
Transactions of the Philological Society (1875), p. 70;
Kuhn, Beiträge zur Pali Grammatik, 7–9. 
 Of the seven treatises contained in the
Abhidhamma Piṭaka five, and one-third of the
sixth, had by 1910 been published by the Pali
Text Society; and one, the Dhamma Sangaṇi,
had been translated by Mrs. Rhys Davids. A
description of the contents of all these books in
the canon is given in Rhys Davids’s American
Lectures, pp. 44–86.
A certain amount of progress has been made
in the historical criticism of these books. Out of
the twenty-nine works contained in the three
Piṭakas only one claims to have an author. That
one is the Kathā Vatthu, ascribed to Tissa the
son of Moggali,39 who presided over the third
council held under Asoka. It is the latest book
of the third Piṭaka. All the rest of the canonical
works grew up in the schools of the Order, and
most of them appear to contain documents, or
passages, of different dates.
In his masterly analysis of the Vinaya, in the
introduction to his edition of the text, Professor
Oldenberg has shown that there are at least
three strata in the existing presentation of the
Rules of the Order, the oldest portions going
back probably to the time of the Buddha
himself. Professor Rhys Davids has put forward
similar views with respect to the Jātakas and
the Sutta Nipāta in his Buddhist India, and with
respect to the Nikāyas in general in the
introduction to his Dialogues of the Buddha.
And Professor Windisch has discussed the
legends of the temptation in his Māra und
Buddha, and those relating to the Buddha’s
birth in his Buddha’s Geburt.
It seems probable that the Vinaya and the
four Nikāyas were put substantially into the
shape in which we now have them before the
council at Vesali, a hundred years after the
Buddha’s death; that slight alterations and
additions were made in them, and the
miscellaneous Nikāya and the Abhidhamma
books completed, at various times down to the
39
  No doubt identical with Upagupta, the teacher of
Asoka (cf. Vincent Smith, Early History of India, 2nd
ed., 1908, and refs.). 
31
third council under Asoka; and that the canon
was then considered closed. No evidence has
yet been found of any alterations made, after
that time, in Ceylon; but there were probably
before that time, in India, other books, now lost,
and other recensions of some of the above.
Of classical Pāli in northern India
subsequent to the canon there is but little
evidence. Three works only have survived.
These are the Milinda-pañha, edited by V.
Trenckner, and translated by Rhys Davids
under the title Questions of King Milinda; the
Netti Pakaraṇa, edited by E. Hardy for the Pāli
Text Society in 1902; and the Petaka Upadesa.
The former belongs to the north-west, the others
to the center of India, and all three may be dated
vaguely in the first or second centuries A.D. The
first, a religious romance of remarkable interest,
may owe its preservation to the charm of its
style, the others to the accident that they were
attributed by mistake to a famous apostle. In
any case they are the sole survivors of what
must have been a vast and varied literature.
Professor Takakusu has shown the possibility
of several complete books belonging to it being
still extant in Chinese translations,40 and we
may yet hope to recover original fragments in
central Asia, Tibet, or Nepal.
At p. 66 of the Gandha Vaṃsa, a modern
catalogue of Pāli books and authors, written in
Pāli, there is given a list of ten authors who
wrote Pāli books in India, probably southern
India. We may conclude that these books are
still extant in Burma, where the catalogue was
drawn up. Two only of these ten authors are
otherwise known. The first is Dhammapala,
who wrote in Kāñcipura, the modern
Conjevaram in south India, in the 5th century of
our era. His principal work is a series of
commentaries on five of the lyrical anthologies
included in the miscellaneous Nikāya. Three of
these have been published by the Pāli Text
40
 Journal of the Pali Text Society (1905). Pp. 72, 86. 
Society; and Professor E. Hardy has discussed
in the Zeitschrift der deutschen morgeni-
ländischen Gesellschaft (1897), pp. 105–127,
all that is known about him. Dhammapala wrote
also a commentary on the Netti mentioned
above. The second is Buddhadatta, who wrote
the Jinālankāra in the 5th century A.D. It has
been edited and translated by Professor J. Gray.
It is a poem, of no great interest, on the life of
the Buddha.
The whole of these Pāli books composed in
India have been lost there. They have been
preserved for us by the unbroken succession of
Pāli scholars in Ceylon and Burma. These
scholars (most of them members of the
Buddhist Order, but many of them laymen) not
only copied and recopied the Indian Pāli books,
but wrote a very large number themselves. We
are thus beginning to know something of the
history of this literature. Two departments have
been subjected to critical study: the Ceylon
chronicles by Professor W. Geiger in his
Mahāvaṃsa und Dīpavaṃsa, and the earlier
grammatical works by Professor O. Franke in
two articles in the Journal of the Pali Text
Society for 1903, and in his Geschichte und
Kritik der einheimischen Pali Grammatik. Dr
Forchhammer in his Jardine Prize Essay, and
Dr Mabel Bode in the introduction to her
edition of the Sāsana-vaṃsa, have collected
many details as to the Pāli literature in Burma.
The results of these investigations show that
in Ceylon from the 3rd century B.C. onwards
there has been a continuous succession of
teachers and scholars. Many of them lived in
the various vihāras or residences situate
throughout the island; but the main center of
intellectual effort, down to the 8th century, was
the Mahā Vihāra, the Great Minster, at
Anurādhapura. This was, in fact, a great
university. Authors refer, in the prefaces to their
books, to the Great Minster as the source of
their knowledge. And to it students flocked
from all parts of India. The most famous of
these was Buddhaghosa, from Behar in North
India, who studied at the Minster in the 5th
32
century A.D., and wrote there all his well-known
works. Two volumes only of these, out of about
twenty still extant in MS., have been edited for
the Pali Text Society.
About a century before this the Dīpa-vaṃsa,
or Island Chronicle, had been composed in Pāli
verse so indifferent that it is apparently the
work of a beginner in Pāli composition. No
work written in Pāli in Ceylon at a date older
than this has been discovered yet. It would seem
that up to the 4th century of our era the Sinhalese
had written exclusively in their own tongue;
that is to say that for six centuries they had
studied and understood Pāli as a dead language
without using it as a means of literary
expression.
In Burma, on the other hand, where Pāli was
probably introduced from Ceylon, no writings
in Pāli can be dated before the 11th century of
our era. Of the history of Pāli in Siam very little
is known. There have been good Pāli scholars
there since late medieval times. A very
excellent edition of the twenty-seven canonical
books has been recently printed there, and there
exist in our European libraries a number of Pāli
MSS. written in Siam.
It would be too early to attempt any estimate
of the value of this secondary Pāli literature.
Only a few volumes, out of several hundred
known to be extant in MS., have yet been
published. But the department of the chronicles,
the only one so far at all adequately treated, has
thrown so much light on many points of the
history of India that we may reasonably expect
results equally valuable from the publication
and study of the remainder. The works on
religion and philosophy especially will be of as
much service for the history of ideas in these
later periods as the publication of the canonical
books has already been for the earlier period to
which they refer. The Pāli books written in
Ceylon, Burma and Siam will be our best and
oldest, and in many respects our only,
authorities for the sociology and politics, the
literature and the religion, of their respective
countries.
 SELECTED AUTHORITIES.—Texts: Pali Text
Society (63 vols., 1882–1908); H. Oldenberg,
The Vinaya Piṭakam (5 vols., London, 1879–
1883); V. Fausböll, The Jātaka (7 vols.,
London, 1877–1897); G. Turnour, The
Mahāvaṃsa (Colombo, 1837); H. Oldenberg,
The Dīpavaṃsa (London, 1879); V. Trenckner,
Milinda (London, 1880). Translations: Rhys
Davids and H. Oldenberg, Vinaya Texts (3
vols., Oxford, 1881–1885); Rhys Davids,
Milinda (2 vols., Oxford, 1890–1894),
Dialogues of the Buddha (Oxford, 1899); H. C.
Warren, Buddhism in Translations (Cambridge,
Mass., 1896); Mrs Rhys Davids, Buddhist
Psychology (London, 1900) ; K. E. Neumann,
Reden des Gotamo Buddha (3 vols., Leipzig,
1896-1898); Lieder der Monche und Nonnen
(Berlin, 1899); Max Müller and V. Fausböll,
Dhammapada and Sutta Nipāta (Oxford,
1881).
NIKĀYA
Nikāya (“collection”) is the name of a
division of the Buddhist canonical books. There
are four principal Nikāyas, making together the
Sutta Piṭaka (“Basket of Discourses”), the
second of the three baskets into which the canon
is divided. The fifth or miscellaneous Nikāya is
by some authorities added to this Piṭaka, by
others to the next. The first two Nikāyas, called
respectively Dīgha and Majjhima (Longer and
Shorter), form one book, a collection of the
dialogues of the Buddha, the longer ones being
included in the former, the shorter ones in the
latter.
The third , called the Aṅguttara (Progressive
Addition), rearranges the doctrinal matter
contained in the Dialogues in groups of ethical
concepts, beginning with the units, then giving
the pairs, then the groups of three, four, five,
&c., up to ten. In the Dialogues the arrangement
in such numbered groups is frequent. In an age
when books, in our modern sense, were
33
Philology: R. C. Childers, Dictionary of the
Pali Language (London, 1872–1875); Ernst
Kuhn, Beiträge zur Pali Grammatik (Berlin,
1875); E. Müller, Pali Grammar (London,
1884); R O. Franke, Geschichte und Kritik der
einheimischen Pali-Grammatik und
Lexicographie, and Pali und Sanskrit
(Strassburg, 1902); D. Andersen, Pali Reader
(London, 1904–1907).
History (of the alphabet, language and
texts): Rhys Davids, American Lectures
(London, 3rd ed., 1908); Buddhist India
(London, 1903); E. Windisch, Māra und
Buddha; (Leipzig, 1895), and Buddha’s Geburt
(Leipzig, 1908); W. Geiger, Mahāvaṃsa und
Dīpavaṃsa (Leipzig, 1905); E. Forchhammer,
Jardine Prize Essay (Rangoon, 1885); Dr
Mabel Bode, Sāsanavaṃsa (London, 1897)
unknown, it was a practical necessity to invent
and use aids to memory. Such were the
repetition of memorial tags, of cues (as now
used for a precisely similar purpose on the
stage), to suggest what is to come. Such were
also these numbered lists of technical ethical
terms. Religious teachers in the West had
similar groups—the seven deadly sins, the ten
commandments, the four cardinal virtues, the
seven Sacraments, and many others. These are
only now, since the gradual increase of books,
falling out of use. In the 5th century B.C. in India
it was found convenient by the early Buddhists
to classify almost the whole of their psychology
and ethics in this manner. And the Aṅguttara
Nikāya is based on that classification.
In the last Nikāya, the Saṃyutta (The
Clusters), the same doctrines are arranged in a
different set of groups, according to subject. All
the Logia (usually of the master himself, but
also of his principal disciples) on any one point,
or in a few cases as addressed to one set of
people, are here brought together. That was, of
course, a very convenient arrangement then. It
saved a teacher or scholar who wanted to find
the doctrine on any one subject from the trouble
of repeating over, or getting someone else to
repeat over for him, the whole of the Dialogues
or the Aṅguttara. To us, now, the Saṃyutta
seems full of repetitions; and we are apt to
forget that they are there for a very good reason.
During the time when the canon was being
completed there was great activity in learning,
repeating to oneself, rehearsing in company and
discussing these three collections. But there
was also considerable activity in a more literary
direction. Hymns were sung, lyrics were
composed, tales were told, the results of some
exciting or interesting talk were preserved in
summaries of exegetical exposition. A number
of these have been fortunately preserved for us
in twenty-two collections, mostly of very short
pieces, in the fifth or miscellaneous Nikāya, the
Khuddaka Nikāya.
ABHIDHAMMA
Abhidhamma is the name of one of the three
Piṭakas, or baskets of tradition, into which the
Buddhist scriptures (see BUDDHISM) are
divided. It consists of seven works: 1. Dhamma
Sanganī (enumeration of qualities). 2.
Vibhanga (exposition). 3. Kathā Vatthu (bases
of opinion). 4. Puggala Paññatti (on
individuals). 5. Dhatu Katha (on relations of
moral dispositions). 6. Yamaka (the pairs, that
is, of ethical states). 7. Patthāna (evolution of
ethical states). These have now been published
by the Pāli Text Society. The first has been
translated into English, and an abstract of the
third has been published.
The approximate date of these works is
probably from about 400 B.C. to about 250 B.C.,
the first being the oldest and the third the latest
of the seven. Before the publication of the texts,
34
The text of the Dialogues fills about 2000
pages 8vo in the edition prepared for the Pāli
Text Society, of which five vols, out of six had
been published in 1909, and the first had been
translated into English. The Samyutta, of about
the same size, and the Aṅguttara, which is a
little smaller, have both been edited. Of the
twenty-two miscellaneous books, twenty have
been edited (see Rhys Davids, American
Lectures (1896), pp. 66–79), five have been
translated into English and two more into
German.
See Dīgha Nikāya, ed. Rhys Davids and
Carpenter (3 vols.); Samyutta Nikāya (5 vols.),
ed. Leon Feer, vol. vi. by Mrs Rhys Davids,
containing indices; Aṅguttara Nikāya, ed. R.
Morris and E. Hardy (5 vols.); all published by
the Pali Text Society. Also Rhys Davids,
Dialogues of the Buddha, vol. i. (Oxford,
1899); A. J. Edmunds, “Buddhist Biblio-
graphy,” in Journal of the Pali Text Society
(1903), pp. 5–12.
when they were known only by hearsay, the
term Abhidhamma was usually rendered
“Metaphysics.” This is now seen to be quite
erroneous. Dhamma means the doctrine, and
Abhidhamma has a relation to Dhamma similar
to that of bylaw to law. It expands, classifies,
tabulates, draws corollaries from the ethical
doctrines laid down in the more popular
treatises. There is no metaphysics in it at all,
only psychological ethics of a peculiarly dry
and scholastic kind. And there is no originality
in it; only endless permutations and
combinations of doctrines already known and
accepted.
As in the course of centuries the doctrine
itself, in certain schools, varied, it was felt
necessary to rewrite these secondary works.
This was first done, so far as is at present
known, by the Sarvāstivādins (Realists), who in
the century before and after Christ produced a
fresh set of seven Abhidhamma books. These
are lost in India, but still exist in Chinese
translations. The translations have been
analyzed in a masterly way by Professor
Takakusu in the article mentioned below. They
deal only with psychological ethics. In the
course of further centuries these books in turn
were superseded by new treatises; and in one
school at least, that of the Mahā-yāna (great
vehicle) there was eventually developed a
system of metaphysics. But the word
JĀTAKA
Jātaka is the technical name, in Buddhist
literature, for a story of one or other of the
previous births of the Buddha. The word is also
used for the name of a collection of 547 of such
stories included, by a most fortunate
conjuncture of circumstances, in the Buddhist
canon. This is the most ancient and the most
complete collection of folk-lore now extant in
any literature in the world. As it was made at
latest in the 3rd century B.C., it can be trusted not
to give any of that modern or European coloring
which renders suspect much of the folk-lore
collected by modern travelers.
Already in the oldest documents, drawn up
by the disciples soon after the Buddha’s death,
he is identified with certain ancient sages of
renown. That a religious teacher should claim
to be successor of the prophets of old is not
uncommon in the history of religions. But the
current belief in metempsychosis led, or
enabled, the early Buddhists to make a much
wider claim. It was not very long before they
gradually identified their master with the hero
of each of the popular fables and stories of
which they were so fond. The process must
have been complete by the middle of the 3rd
41
 A complete list of these inscriptions will be found in
Rhys Davids's Buddhist India, p. 209.
35
Abhidhamma then fell out of use in that school,
though it is still used in the schools that
continue to follow the original seven books.
See Buddhist Psychology by Caroline Rhys
Davids (London, 1900), a translation of the
Dhamma Sanganī, with valuable introduction;
“Schools of Buddhist Belief,” by T. W. Rhys
Davids, in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,
1892, contains an abstract of the Kathā Vatthu;
“On the Abhidhamma books of the
Sarvāstivādins,” by Prof. Takakusu, in Journal
of the Pāli Text Society, 1905.
century B.C.; for we find at that date illustrations
of the Jātakas in the bas-reliefs on the railing
round the Bharahat tope with the titles of the
Jātaka stories inscribed above them in the
characters of that period.41
The hero of each story is made into a
Bodhisatta; that is, a being who is destined,
after a number of subsequent births, to become
a Buddha. This rapid development of the
Bodhisatta theory is the distinguishing feature
in the early history of Buddhism, and was both
cause and effect of the simultaneous growth of
the Jātaka book. In adopting the folk-lore and
fables already current in India, the Buddhists
did not change them very much. The stories as
preserved to us are for the most part Indian
rather than Buddhist. The ethics they inculcate
or suggest are milk for babes; very simple in
character and referring almost exclusively to
matters common to all schools of thought in
India, and indeed elsewhere. Kindness, purity,
honesty, generosity, worldly wisdom,
perseverance are the usual virtues praised; the
higher ethics of the Path are scarcely
mentioned.
 
 These stories, popular with all, were
especially appreciated by that school of
Buddhists that laid stress on the Bodhisatta
theory—a school that obtained its chief support,
and probably had its origin, in the extreme
north-west of India and in the highlands of
Asia. That school adopted, from the early
centuries of our era, the use of Sanskrit, instead
of Pāli, as the means of literary expression. It is
almost impossible, therefore, that they would
have carried the canonical Pāli book,
voluminous as it is, into Central Asia. Shorter
collections of the original stories, written in
Sanskrit, were in vogue among them. One such
collection, the Jātaka-mālā by Ārya Sūra (6th
century), is still extant.
Of the existence of another collection,
though the Sanskrit original has not yet been
found, we have curious evidence. In the 6th
century a book of Sanskrit fables was translated
into Pahlavi, that is, old Persian. In succeeding
centuries this work was retranslated into Arabic
and Hebrew, thence into Latin and Greek and
all the modern languages of Europe. The book
bears a close resemblance to the earlier chapters
of a late Sanskrit fable book called, from its
having five chapters, the Pancha Tantra, or
Pentateuch.
The introduction to the old Jātaka book
gives the life of the historical Buddha. That
introduction must also have reached Persia by
the same route. For in the 8th century St John of
Damascus put the story into Greek under the
title of Barlaam and Josaphat. This story
became very popular in the West. It was
translated into Latin, into seven European
languages, and even into Icelandic and the
dialect of the Philippine Islands. Its hero, that is
the Buddha, was canonized as a Christian saint;
and the 27th of November was officially fixed
as the date for his adoration as such.
The book popularly known in Europe as
Aesop’s Fables was not written by Aesop. It
36
was put together in the 14th century at
Constantinople by a monk named Planudes, and
he drew largely for his stories upon those in the
Jātaka book that had reached Europe along
various channels. The fables of Babrius and
Phaedrus written respectively in the 1st century
before, and in the 1st century after, the Christian
era, also contain Jātaka stories known in India
in the 4th century B.C.
A great deal has been written on this curious
question of the migration of fables. But we are
still very far from being able to trace the
complete history of each story in the Jātaka
book, or in any one of the later collections. For
India itself the record is most incomplete. We
have the original Jātaka book in text and
translation. The history of the text of the
Pancha-tantra, about a thousand years later,
has been fairly well traced out. But for the
intervening centuries scarcely anything has
been done. There are illustrations, in the bas-
reliefs of the 3rd century B.C. of Jātakas not
contained in the Jātaka book. Another
collection, the Cariyā piṭaka, of about the same
date, has been edited, but not translated. Other
collections both in Pāli and Sanskrit are known
to be extant in MS,; and a large number of
Jātaka stories, not included in any formal
collection, are mentioned, or told in full in other
works.
Authorities.—V. Fausböll, The Jātaka, Pāli
text (7 vols., London, 1877–1897), (Eng. trans.,
edited by E. B. Cowell, 6 vols., Cambridge,
1895-1907); Cariyā Piṭaka, edited by R.
Morris for the Pali Text Society (London,
1882); H. Kern, Jātaka-mālā, Sanskrit text
(Cambridge Mass., 1891), English translation,
by J. S. Speyer, Oxford, 895); Rhys Davids,
Buddhist Birth Stories (with full bibliographical
tables) (London, 1880); Buddhist India (chap.
xi. on the Jātaka Book) (London, 1903); E
Kuhn, Barlaam und Joasaph (Munich, 1893);
A. Cunningham, The Stūpa of Bharhut
(London, 1879).
 MILINDA PAÑHO
(The first part of this article is by Eduard Meyer)
Menander (Milinda) was a Graeco-Indian
dynast. When the Graeco-Indian king
Demetrius had been beaten by Eucratides of
Bactria, about 160 B.C., and the kingdom of
Eucratides (q.v.) dissolved after his
assassination (c. 150 B.C.), a Greek dynasty
maintained itself in the Kabul Valley and the
Punjab. The only two kings of this dynasty
mentioned by classical authors are Apollodotus
and Menander, who conquered a great part of
India.
Trogus Pompeius described in his forty-first
book (see the prologue) “the Indian history of
these kings, Apollodotus and Menander,” and
Strabo, xi. 316, mentions from Apollodotus of
Artemita, the historian of the Parthians, that
Menander “conquered more tribes than
Alexander, as he crossed the Hypanis to the east
and advanced to the Isamus; he and other kings
(especially Demetrius) occupied also Patalene
(the district of Patala near Hyderabad on the
head of the delta of the Indus) and the coast
which is called the district of Saraostes (i.e.
Syrastene, in modern Gujarat, Brahman
Saurashtra) and the kingdom of Sigerdis (not
otherwise known); and they extended their
dominion to the Seres (i.e. the Chinese) and
Phryni (?).” The last statement is an exagger-
ation, probably based upon the fact that from
the mouth of the Indus trade went as far as
China.
That the old coins of Apollodotus and
Menander, with Greek legends, were still in
currency in Barygaza (modern Broach), the
great port of Gujarat, about A.D. 70 we are told
by the Periplus maris Erythraei, 48. We
possess many of these coins, which follow the
Indian standard and are artistically degenerate
as compared with the earlier Graeco-Bactrian
and Graeco-Indian coins, with bilingual
legends (Greek and Kharoshti, see Bactria).
Apollodotus, who must have been the earlier of
the two kings, bears the titles Soter, Philopator,
37
and “Great King”; Menander, who must have
reigned a long time, as his portrait is young on
some coins and old on others, calls himself
Soter and “Just” (δίκαιος). Their reigns may be
placed about 140–80 B.C.
Menander appears in Indian traditions as
Milinda; he is praised by the Buddhists, whose
religion he is said to have adopted, and who in
the Milindapañha or Milinda Pañho (see
below), “The Questions of Milinda” (Rhys
Davids, Sacred Books of the East, xxxv.,
xxxvi.) relate his discourses with the wise
Nāgasena. According to the Indians, the Greeks
conquered Ayodhya and Pataliputra
(Palimbothra, modern Patna); so the conjecture
of Cunningham that the river Isamus of Strabo
is the Son, the great southern tributary of the
Ganges (near Patna), may be true. The
Buddhists praise the power and military force,
the energy and wisdom of “Milinda”; and a
Greek tradition preserved by Plutarch (Praec.
reip. ger. 28, 6) relates that “when Menander,
one of the Bactrian kings, died on a campaign
after a mild rule, all the subject towns disputed
about the honor of his burial, till at last his ashes
were divided between them in equal parts.”
(The Buddhist tradition relates a similar story
of the relics of Buddha.)
Besides Apollodotus and Menander, we
know from the coins a great many other Greek
kings of western India, among whom two with
the name of Straton are most conspicuous. The
last of them, with degenerate coins, seems to
have been Hermaeus Soter. These Greek
dynasts may have maintained themselves in
some part of India till about 40 B.C. But at this
time the west, Kabul and the Punjab were
already in the hands of a barbarous dynasty,
most of whom have Iranian (Parthian) names,
and who seem therefore to have been of Arsacid
origin (cf. Vincent A. Smith, “The Indo-
Parthian Dynasties from about 120 B.C. to A.D.
100,” in Zeitschrift der deutschen morgen-
landischen Gesellschaft, 1906, lx. 69 sqq.).
Among them Manes, two kings named Azes,
Vonones and especially Gondophares or
Hyndophares are the most conspicuous. The
latter, whose date is fixed by an inscription
from the Kabul Valley dated from the year 103
(The second part of this article is by TWRD)
The Milinda Pañho is preserved in Pāli, in
Ceylon, Burma and Siam, but was probably
composed originally in the extreme northwest
of India, and in a dialect spoken in that region.
Neither date nor author is known; but the
approximate date must have been about the 2nd
century of our era. The work is entitled Milinda
Pañho—that is, The Questions of King Milinda.
In it the king is represented as propounding to a
Buddhist Bhikshu named Nāgasena a number
of problems, puzzles or questions in religion
and philosophy; and as receiving, in each case,
a convincing reply.
It is a matter of very little importance
whether a tradition of some such conversations
having really taken place had survived to the
time when the author wrote his book. In any
case he composed both problems and answers;
and his work is an historical romance, written
to discuss certain points in the faith, and to
invest the discussion with the interest arising
from the story in which it is set. This plan is
carried out with great skill.
An introduction, giving the past and present
lives of Milinda and Nāgasena, is admirably
adapted to fill the reader with the idea of the
great ability and distinction of the two
disputants. The questions chosen are just those
which would appeal most strongly to the
intellectual taste of the India of that age. And
the style of the book is very attractive. Each
particular point is kept within easy limits of
space, and is treated in a popular way. But the
earnestness of the author is not concealed; and
38
of the Samvat era (= B.C. 46), is famous by the
legend of St Thomas, where he occurs as king
of India under the name of Gundaphar. Soon
afterwards the Mongolian Scyths (called Saka
by the Indians), who had conquered Bactria in
139 B.C., invaded India and founded the great
Indo-Scythian kingdom of the Kushan dynasty.
he occasionally rises into a very real eloquence.
The work is several times quoted as authority
by Buddhaghosa, who wrote about A.D. 450,
and it is the only work, not in the canon, which
receives this honor.
The Milinda has been edited in Pāli by V.
Trenckner, and translated into English by the
present writer, with introductions in which the
historical and critical points made in this article
are discussed in detail. There is space here to
mention only one further fact. M. Sylvain Lévy,
working in collaboration with M. Specht, has
shown that there are two, if not three, Chinese
works, written between the 5th and 7th centuries,
on the Questions of Milinda. They purport to be
translations of Indian works. They are not,
however, translations of the Pāli text. They
give, with alterations and additions, the
substance of the earlier part of the Pāli work;
and are probably derived from a recension that
may be older than the Pāli.
AUTHORITIES.—V. Trenckner, Milinda-
pañho (London, 1880); Rhys Davids, Questions
of King Milinda (2 vols., Oxford, 1890–1894);
R. Garbe, Beiträge zur indischen
Kulturgeschichte (Berlin, 1903, ch. 3, Der
Milinda-pañha); Milinda Prashṇaya, in
Sinhalese, (Colombo, 1877); R. Morns, in the
Academy (Jan. 11, 1881); Sylvain Lévy,
Proceedings of the 9th International Congress
of Orientalists (London, 1892), i. 518–529, and
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1891), p.
476.
 SĀRIPUTTA
Sāriputta was one of the two principal
disciples of Gotama the Buddha. He was born
in the middle of the 6th century B.C. at Nāla, a
village in the kingdom of Magadha, the modern
Bihar, just south of the Ganges and a little east
of where Patna now stands. His personal name
was Upatissa; the name of his father, who was
a brahmin, is unknown; his mother’s name was
Sārī, and it was by the epithet or nickname of
Sāriputta (that is “Sāri’s son”), that he was best
known. He had three sisters, all of whom
subsequently entered the Buddhist Order.
When still a young man he devoted himself
to the religious life, and followed at first the
system taught by Sañjaya of the Belattha clan.
A summary of the philosophical position of this
teacher has been preserved in the Dialogue
called The Perfect Net. According to this
account his main tendency was to avoid
committing himself to any decided conclusion
on any one of the numerous points then
discussed so eagerly among the clansmen in the
valley of the Ganges.
Early in the Buddhist movement Sāriputta
had a conversation with one of the men who had
just joined it; and the Buddhist quoted to him
the now famous stanza, “Of all the things that
proceed from a cause, the Buddha the cause
hath told; and he tells too how each shall come
to an end—such alone is the word of the Sage.”
The result was that Sāriputta, with his friend
Kolita and other disciples of Sañjaya, asked for
admission, and were received into the Buddhist
Order.
He rapidly attained to mastery in the
Buddhist system of self-training, and is
declared to have been the chief of all the
disciples in insight. He was present at a
dialogue between the Buddha and a Wanderer
39
named Aggivessana on the nature of sensations;
and at the end of that discourse he attained to
Arahatship. He is constantly represented as
discussing points, usually of ethics or
philosophy, either with the Buddha himself, or
with one or other of the more prominent
disciples. One whole book of the Saṃyutta is
therefore called after his name.
A number of stanzas inscribed to him are
preserved in the Songs of the Elders (Thera-
gāthā), and one of the poems in the Sutta Nipāta
is based on a question he addressed to the
Buddha. Asoka the Great, in his Bhabra Edict,
enjoins on the Buddhists the study of seven
passages in the Scriptures selected for their
especial beauty. One of these is called The
Question of Upatissa, and this poem may be the
passage referred to.
Feeling his end approaching, he went home,
and died just six months before the death of the
Buddha, that is, approximately in 480 B.C. He
was cremated with great ceremony, and the
ashes placed in a tope or burial-mound. An
inscribed casket in such a mound at Sanchi
opened by Cunningham in February 1851
contained a portion of these ashes which had
been removed to that spot, in General
Cunningham’s opinion by Asoka.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—For the birth, death,
cremation and relics, see Alex. Cunningham,
Bhilsa Topes (London, 1854); Rhys Davids and
S. W. Bushell, Watters on Yuan Chwang
(London, 1904, 1905). For names of mother and
sisters, Therī Gāthā, ed. R. Pischel (London,
1883). For conversion Rhys Davids and H.
Oldenberg, Vinaya Texts (Oxford, 1881), i.
144–151. For attainment of Arahatship, V.
Trenckner, Majjhima Nikāya (London, 1888), i.
501.
 ĀNANDA
Ānanda was one of the principal disciples of
the Buddha (q.v.). He has been called the
beloved disciple of the Buddhist story. He was
the first cousin of the Buddha, and was
devotedly attached to him. Ānanda entered the
Order in the second year of the Buddha’s
ministry, and became one of his personal
attendants, accompanying him on most of his
wanderings and being the interlocutor in many
of the recorded dialogues.
He is the subject of a special panegyric
delivered by the Buddha just before his death
(Book of the Great Decease, v. 38); but it is the
panegyric of an unselfish man, kindly,
thoughtful for others and popular; not of the
intellectual man, versed in the theory and
practice of the Buddhist system of self-culture.
So in the long list of the disciples given in
the Anguttara (i. xiv.) where each of them is
DEVADATTA
Devadatta was the son of Suklodana, who
was younger brother to the father of the Buddha
(Mahāvastu, iii. 76).
Both he and his brother Ānanda, who were
considerably younger than the Buddha, joined
the brotherhood in the twentieth year of the
Buddha’s ministry. Four other cousins of theirs,
chiefs of the Sākiya clan, and a barber named
Upāli, were admitted to the order at the same
time; and at their own request the barber was
admitted first, so that as their senior in the order
he should take precedence of them (Vinaya
Texts, iii. 228).
All the others continued loyal disciples, but
Devadatta, fifteen years afterwards, having
gained over the crown prince of Magadha,
Ajātasattu, to his side, made a formal
proposition, at the meeting of the order, that the
Buddha should retire, and hand over the
leadership to him, Devadatta (Vinaya Texts, iii.
238; Jātaka, i. 142). This proposal was rejected.
40
declared to be the chief in some gift, Ānanda is
mentioned five times (which is more often than
any other), but it is as chief in conduct and in
service to others and in power of memory, not
in any of the intellectual powers so highly
prized in the community.
This explains why he had not attained to
arahatship; and in the earliest account of the
convocation said to have been held by five
hundred of the principal disciples immediately
after the Buddha’s death, he was the only one
who was not an arahat (Cullavagga, book xi.).
In later accounts this incident is explained
away.
Thirty-three verses ascribed to Ānanda are
preserved in a collection of lyrics by the
principal male and female members of the order
(Thera Gatha, 1017–1050). They show a gentle
and reverent but simple spirit.
Devadatta is said in the tradition to have
successfully instigated the prince to the
execution of his aged father and to have made
three abortive attempts to bring about the death
of the Buddha (Vinaya Texts, iii. 241–250;
Jātaka, vi. 131). Shortly afterwards, relying
upon the feeling of the people in favour of
asceticism, he brought forward four
propositions for ascetic rules to be imposed on
the order. These being refused, he appealed to
the people, started an order of his own, and
gained over 500 of the Buddha’s community to
join in the secession.
We hear nothing further about the success or
otherwise of the new order, but it may possibly
be referred to under the name of the Gotamakas,
in the Anguttara (see Dialogues of the Buddha
i. 222), for Devadatta’s family name was
Gotama. But his community was certainly still
in existence in the 4th century A.D., for it is
especially mentioned by Fa Hien, the Chinese
pilgrim (Legge’s translation, p. 62). And it
possibly lasted till the 7th century, for Hsūan
Tsang mentions that in a monastery in Bengal
the monks then followed a certain regulation of
Devadatta’s (T. Watters, On Yuan Chwang, ii.
191).
There is no mention in the canon as to how
or when Devadatta died; but the commentary on
the Jātaka, written in the 5th century A.D., has
preserved a tradition that he was swallowed up
by the earth near Sāvatthi, when on his way to
ask pardon of the Buddha (Jātaka, iv. 158). The
spot where this occurred was shown to both the
pilgrims just mentioned (Fa Hien, loc. cit. p. 60;
and T. Watters, On Yuan Chwang, i. 390). It is
a striking example of the way in which such
BUDDHAGHOSA
Buddhaghosa was a celebrated Buddhist
writer. He was a Brahmin by birth and was born
near the great Bodhi tree at Bodh Gayā in north
India about A.D. 390, his father’s name being
Kesī.
His teacher, Revata, induced him to go to
Ceylon, where the commentaries on the
scriptures had been preserved in the Sinhalese
language, with the object of translating them
into Pāli. He went accordingly to
Anurādhapura, studied there under Sanghapāla,
and asked leave of the fraternity there to
translate the commentaries. With their consent
he then did so, having first shown his ability by
writing the work Visuddhi Magga (the Path of
Purity, a kind of summary of Buddhist
doctrine). When he had completed his many
years’ labours he returned to the neighbourhood
of the Bodhi tree in north India.
Before he came to Ceylon he had already
written a book entitled Nānodaya (the Rise of
Knowledge), and had commenced a
commentary on the principal psychological
manual contained in the Piṭakas. This latter
41
legends grow, that it is only the latest of these
authorities, Hsūan Tsang, who says that, though
ostensibly approaching the Buddha with a view
to reconciliation, Devadatta had concealed
poison in his nail with the object of murdering
the Buddha.
AUTHORITIES.—Vinaya Texts, translated by
Rhys Davids and H. Oldenberg (3 vols.,
Oxford, 1881–1885); The Jātaka, edited by V.
Fausböll (7 vols., London, 1877–1897); T.
Watters, On Yuan Chwang (ed. Rhys Davids
and Bushell, 2 vols., London, 1904–1905); Fa
Hian, translated by J. Legge (Oxford, 1886);
Mahāvastu (ed. Tenant, 3 vols., Paris, 1882–
1897).
work he afterwards rewrote in Ceylon, as the
present text (now published by the Pāli Text
Society) shows. One volume of the Sumangala
Vilāsinī (a portion of the commentaries
mentioned above) has been edited, and extracts
from his comment on the Buddhist canon law.
This last work has been discovered in a nearly
contemporaneous Chinese translation (an
edition in Pāli is based on a comparison with
that translation).
The works here mentioned form, however,
only a small portion of what Buddhaghosa
wrote. His industry must have been prodigious.
He is known to have written books that would
fill about 20 octavo volumes of about 400 pages
each; and there are other writings ascribed to
him which may or may not be really his work.
It is too early therefore to attempt a criticism of
it. But it is already clear that, when made
acceptable, it will be of the greatest value for
the history of Indian literature and of Indian
ideas. So much is uncertain at present in that
history for want of definite dates that the
voluminous writings of an author whose date is
approximately certain will afford a standard by
which the age of other writings can be tested.
And as the original commentaries in Sinhalese
are now lost his works are the only evidence we
have of the traditions then handed down in the
Buddhist community.
The main source of our information about
Buddhaghosa is the Mahāvaṃsa, written in
Anurādhapura about fifty years after he was
working there. But there are numerous
references to him in Pāli books on Pāli
literature; and a Burmese author of unknown
DHAMMAPĀLA
Dhammapāla was one of the early disciples
of the Buddha, and therefore constantly chosen
as their name in religion by Buddhist novices
on their entering the brotherhood. The most
famous of the Bhikkhus so named was the great
commentator who lived in the latter half of the
5th century A.D. at the Badara Tittha Vihāra near
the east coast of India, just a little south of
where Madras now stands.
It is to him we owe the commentaries on
seven of the shorter canonical books, consisting
almost entirely of verses, and also the
commentary on the Netti, perhaps the oldest
Pāli work outside the canon. Extracts from the
latter work, and the whole of three out of the
seven others, have been published by the Pali
Text Society. These works show great learning,
exegetical skill and sound judgment. But as
Dhammapāla confines himself rigidly either to
questions of the meaning of words, or to
discussions of the ethical import of his texts,
very little can be gathered from his writings of
value for the social history of his time. For the
right interpretation of the difficult texts on
which he comments, they are indispensable.
Though in all probability a Tamil by birth,
he declares, in the opening lines of those of his
works that have been edited, that he followed
the tradition of the Great Minster at
42
date, but possibly of the 15th century, has
compiled a biography of him, the Buddhaghos’
Uppatti, of little value and no critical judgment.
See Mahāvaṃsa, ch. xxxvii. (ed. Turnour,
Colombo, 1837); Gandhavaṃsa, p. 59, in
Journal of the Pāli Text Society (1886)
Buddhghosuppatti (text and translation, ed. by
E. Gray, London, 1893); Sumangala Vilāsinī,
edited by T. W. Rhys Davids and J. E.
Carpenter, vol. i. (London, Pāli Text Society,
1886).
Anurādhapura in Ceylon, and the works
themselves confirm this in every respect. Hsūan
Tsang, the famous Chinese pilgrim, tells a
quaint story of a Dhammapāla of Kānchipura
(the modern Konjevaram). He was a son of a
high official, and betrothed to a daughter of the
king, but escaped on the eve of the wedding
feast, entered the order, and attained to
reverence and distinction. It is most likely that
this story, whether legendary or not (and Hsūan
Tsang heard the story at Kānchipura nearly two
centuries after the date of Dhammapāla),
referred to this author. But it may also refer, as
Hsūan Tsang refers it, to another author of the
same name. Other unpublished works, besides
those mentioned above, have been ascribed to
Dhammapāla, but it is very doubtful whether
they are really by him.
AUTHORITIES.—T.Watters, On Yuan
Chwang (ed. Rhys Davids and Bushell,
London, 1905), ii. 169, 228; Edmund Hardy in
Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlandischen
Gesellschaft (1898), pp. 97 foll.; Netti (ed. E.
Hardy, London, Pāli Text Society, 1902),
especially the Introduction, passim, Therī
Gāthā Commentary, Peta Vatthu Commentary,
and Vimāna Vatthu Commentary, all three
published by the Pāli Text Society.
 Places and developments of significance
in the history of Buddhism
LUMBINI
Lumbini is the name of the garden or grove
in which Gotama, the Buddha, was born. It is
first mentioned in a very ancient Pāli ballad
preserved in the Sutta Nipata (verse 683). This
is the Song of Nalaka (the Buddhist Simeon),
and the words put in the mouth of the angels
who announce the birth to him are: “The
Wisdom-child, that jewel so precious, that
cannot be matched, has been born at Lumbini,
in the Sakiya land, for weal and for joy in the
world of men.” The commentaries on the
Jātakas (i. 52, 54), and on a parallel passage in
the Majjhima (J.R.A.S., 1895, p. 767), tell us
that the mother of the future Buddha was on her
way from Kapilavastu (Kapilavatthu), the
capital of the Sakiyas, to her mother’s home at
Devadaha, the capital of the adjoining tribe, the
Koliyas, to be confined there. Her pains came
upon her on the way, and she turned aside into
this grove, which lay not far from Devadaha,
and gave birth there to her son. All later
Buddhist accounts, whether Pāli or Sanskrit
repeat the same story.
A collection of legends about Asoka,
included in the Divyāvadāna, a work composed
probably in the 1st or 2nd century A.D., tells us
(pp. 389, 390) how Asoka, the Buddhist
emperor, visited the traditional site of this
grove, under the guidance of Upagupta. This
must have been about 248 B.C. Upagupta
(Tissa: see PĀLI) himself also mentions the site
in his Kathā Vatthu (p. 559). The Chinese
pilgrims, Fa Hien and Hsuan Tsang, visiting
India in the 5th and 7th centuries A.D., were
shown the site; and the latter (ed. Watters, ii.
15–19) mentions that he saw there an Asoka
pillar, with a horse on the top, which had been
split, when Hsuan Tsang saw it, by lightning.
This pillar was rediscovered under the
following circumstances.
43
The existence, a few miles beyond the
Nepalese frontier, of an inscribed pillar had
been known for some years when, in 1895, the
discovery of another inscribed pillar at Niglīva
nearby, led to the belief that this other, hitherto
neglected, one must also be an Asoka pillar, and
very probably the one mentioned by Hsuan
Tsang. At the request of the Indian government
the Nepalese government had the pillar, which
was half-buried, excavated for examination;
and Dr Führer, then in the employ of the
Archaeological Survey, arrived soon afterwards
at the spot.
The stone was split into two portions,
apparently by lightning, and was inscribed with
Pāli characters as used in the time of Asoka.
Squeezes of the inscription were sent to Europe,
where various scholars discussed the meaning,
which is as follows: “His Majesty, Piyadassi,
came here in the 21st year of his reign and paid
reverence. And on the ground that the Buddha,
the Sākiya sage, was born here, he (the king)
had a flawless stone cut, and put up a pillar. And
further, since the Exalted One was born in it, he
reduced taxation in the village of Lumbini, and
established the dues at one-eighth part (of the
crop).”
The inscription, having been buried for so
many centuries beneath the soil, is in perfect
preservation. The letters, about an inch in
height, have been clearly and deeply cut in the
stone. No one of them is doubtful. But two
words are new, and scholars are not agreed in
their interpretation of them. These are the
adjective vigaḍabhī applied to the stone, and
rendered in our translation “flawless”; and
secondly, the last word, rendered in our
translation” one-eighth part (of the crop).”
Fortunately these words are of minor
importance for the historical value of this
priceless document. The date, the twenty-first
year after the formal coronation of Asoka,
would be 248 B.C. The name Piyadassi is the
official epithet always used by Asoka in his
inscriptions when spcaking of himself. The
inscription confirms in every respect the
Buddhist story, and makes it certain that, at the
time when it was put up the tradition now
handed down in the books was current at the
spot. Any further inference that the birth really
took place there is matter of probability on
which opinions will differ.
The grove is situate about 3 m. north of
Bhagwanpur, the chief town of a district of the
same name in the extreme south of Nepal, just
over the frontier dividing Nepal from the
district of Basti in British territory. It is now
called Rummin-dei, i.e. the shrine of the
goddess of Rummin, a name no doubt derived
from the ancient name Lumbini. There is a
small shrine at the spot, containing a bas-relief
representing the birth of the Buddha. But the
Buddha is now forgotten there, and the bas-
relief is reverenced only for the figure of the
mother, who has been turned into a tutelary
PIPRĀWA
Piprāwa is a village on the Birdpur estate in
the Basti district, United Provinces, India. It lies
on the Uska-Nepal road at mile 19.75; and
about half a mile south of the boundary pillar
numbered 44 on the frontier line between
British and Nepalese territory. The village is
celebrated as the site of the following
discovery:—
In 1896 interest having been aroused by the
discovery, only twelve miles away, of the
Buddha’s birthplace (see LUMBINI), William
Peppe, then resident manager of the Birdpur
estate, opened a ruined tope or burial mound
situate at Piprāwa, but nothing of importance
was found. In January 1897 he carried the work
of excavation farther. A well, 10 ft. sq., was dug
44
deity of the place. Except so far as the
excavation of the pillar is concerned the site has
not been explored, and four small stupas there
(already noticed by Hsuan Tsang) have not
been opened.
AUTHORITIES.—Sutta Nipāta, ed. V.
Fausböll (London, Pali Text Society, 1884);
Kathā Vatthu, ed. A. C. Taylor (London, 1897);
Jātaka, ed. V. Fausböll, vol. i. (London, 1877);
Divyāvadāna, ed. Cowell and Niel (Cambridge,
1886); G. Bühler in the Proceedings of the
Vienna Academy for Jan. 1897, in Epigraphia
Indica, vol. v. (London, 1898) and in the
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1897), p.
429. See also ibid. (1895), pp. 751 ff.; (1897)
pp. 615, 644; (1898) pp. 199–203; A. Barth in
the Journal des Savants (Paris, 1897); R.
Pischel in Sitzungsberichte der Königl,
Preussischen Akademie for the 9th July 1903;
Babu P. Mukherji, Report on a Tour of
Exploration of the Antiquities in the Terai
(Calcutta, 1903); V. A. Smith in Indian
Antiquary (Bombay, 1905).
down the centre of the mound. After digging
through 18 ft. of solid brickwork set in clay a
massive stone coffer was found lying due
magnetic north and south. Its dimensions were,
4 ft. 4 in. by 2 ft. 8¼ in. and 2 ft. 2¼ in. high.
The stone lid of the coffer was split into four
pieces; but the coffer remained perfectly closed,
so accurately was the lid fitted into flanges on
the sides of the box. The pieces were thus firmly
held in their place, and the contents of the coffer
were found intact.
These consisted of five vessels, two vases, a
bowl and a casket being made of steatite, and
the fifth, also a bowl, of crystal. All these
vessels are beautifully worked, the crystal bowl
especially, with its fish-shaped cover handle,
being as a work of art of high merit.42 The coffer
is of fine hard sandstone of superior quality, and
has been hollowed out, at the cost of vast labor
and expense, from a solid block of rock. Peppe
calculates its weight, lid included, at 1537 lb. It
is only the great solidity of this coffer which has
preserved the contents. A cover of one of the
vases was found dislodged and lying on the
bottom of the stone coffer. As this cover fits
very well it must have required a quite violent
shock to remove’ it. This was almost certainly
the shock of an earthquake, and the same shock
probably caused the split in the stone lid of the
coffer itself.
The vessels contained a dark dust,
apparently disintegrated ashes, small pieces of
bone, and a number of small pieces of jewelry
in gold, silver, white and red cornelian,
amethyst, topaz, garnet, coral and crystal. Most
of these are perforated for mounting on threads
or wires, and had been, no doubt, originally
connected together to form one or more of the
elaborate girdles, necklaces and breast
ornaments then worn by the women.43 On the
bottom of the stone box there was similar dust,
pieces of bone and jewelry, and also remains of
what had been vessels of wood. The knob
forming the handle of one of these wooden
receptacles was still distinguishable. The total
quantity of scraps of bone may have amounted
to a wineglassful.
An inscription ran round one of the steatite
vases just below the lid.44 The words mean:
This shrine for ashes of the Buddha, the Exalted
One, is the pious work of the Sakiyas, his
brethren, associated with their sisters, and their
children, and their wives. The thirteen words, in
a local dialect of Pāli, are written in very ancient
characters, and are the oldest inscription as yet
42
  An illustration from a photograph is given in Rhys
Davids’ Buddhist India, p. 131.  45
43
  For figures of the jewelry found see the plate in Mr
Peppé’s article, reproduced in Rhys Davids’ Buddhist
India, p. 89. For the jewelry of the time, ibid., pp. 90,
91. 
45
discovered in India. Twelve out of the thirteen
are well-known words, the interpretation of
which is not open to doubt. One word, rendered
above by ‘pious work,’ has not been found
elsewhere, and its derivation is open to
discussion. The explanation here adopted as
most probable was put forward by Professor
Pischel of Berlin.45 The phrase ‘pious work’
probably had a precise technical connotation
like the English ‘benefaction.’
The monument must have been of imposing
appearance. The diameter (on the ground level)
of the dome is 116 ft. For 8 ft. from the summit
of the ruin it was not possible to trace the
outline. At that point the outer wall, if one may
so call it, of the solid dome could be traced, and
had a diameter of 68 ft. The dome, therefore,
sloped inwards 1 ft. for every 3 ft. in height, in
other words, it was, like all the most ancient of
these artificial burial domes in India, a shallow
dome, and cannot have been more than about 35
ft. high exclusive of the ornament or ‘tee’ on the
summit. We have in bas-reliefs of the 3rd
century representations of what these
ornaments were like—small square erections,
like a shrine or small temple, surmounted by a
canopy called from its shape a T. They were
then more than a third of the height of the dome
itself. The total height of this Sakiya tope will
therefore have been approximately a little under
50 ft. It was probably surrounded by a carved
wooden railing, but this has long since
disappeared.
All such monuments hitherto discovered in
India were put up in honor of some religious
teacher, not in memory of royal persons,
generous benefactors, politicans, or soldiers or
private persons, however distinguished. And
we need have no hesitation in accepting this as
44
 See illustration ibid., p. 129. 
 Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenlündischen
Gesellschaft, lvi. 157. 
a monument put up over a portion of the ashes
from the funeral pyre of Gotama the Buddha.
The account of the death and cremation of the
Buddha, preserved in the Buddhist canon, states
that one-eighth portion of the ashes was
presented to the Sakiya clan, and that they built
a thūpa or memorial mound, over it.46
Mr Peppe presented the coffer and vases
with specimens of the jewelry to the museum at
Calcutta where they still are. He also gave
specimens of the trinkets to the Asiatic Society
in London.
SĀNCHI
Sānchi is a small village in India, at which
there is now a railway station on the Bombay-
Baroda line. It is famous as the site of what are
almost certainly the oldest buildings in India
now standing. They are Buddhist topes (Pāli,
thūpa; Sanskrit, stūpa), that is, memorial
mounds, standing on the level top of a small
sandstone hill about 300 ft. high on the left bank
of the river Betwa.
The number of topes on this and the
adjoining hills is considerable. On the Sanchi
hill itself are only ten, but one of these is by far
the most important and imposing of all. All
these topes were opened and examined by
General Alexander Cunningham and Lieut.-
Colonel Maisey in 1851; and the great tope has
been described and illustrated by them and by
James Fergusson. This is a solid dome of stone,
about 103 ft. in diameter, and now about 42 ft.
high. It must formerly have been much higher,
the top of the tope having originally formed a
terrace, 34 ft. in diameter, on which stood lofty
columns. Cunningham estimates the original
height of the building as about 100 ft.
Round the base is a flagged pathway
surrounded by a stone railing and entered at the
Translated in Rhys Davids’ Buddhist Suttas (Oxford,
46 
1881).
46
Peppe’s original article is in the Journal of
the Royal Asiatic Society for 1898, pp. 573 sqq.
Comments upon it, one or two of them
sceptical, are in the same journal 1898, pp. 579,
588, 387, 868; 1899, p. 425; 1901, p. 398; 1905
p. 679; 1906, pp. 149 sqq. See also A. Barth,
Comptes rendues de l’academie des
inscriptions (1898), xxvi., 147, 233; Sylvain
Levy, Journal des savants (1905) pp. 540 sqq.;
and R. Pischel and Rhys Davids as quoted
above.
four points of the compass by gateways some
18 ft. high. Both gateways and railing are
elaborately covered with bas-reliefs and
inscriptions. The latter give the names of the
donors of particular portions of the architectural
ornamentation, and most of them are written in
the characters used before and after the time of
Asoka in the middle of the 3rd century B.C.
The monuments are Buddhist, the bas-reliefs
illustrate passages in the Buddhist writings, and
the inscriptions make use of Buddhist technical
terms. Some of the smaller topes give us names
of men who lived in the Buddha’s time, and
others give names mentioned among the
missionaries sent out in the time of Asoka. It is
not possible from the available data to fix the
exact date of any of these topes, but it may be
stated that the smaller topes are probably of
different dates both before and after Asoka, and
that it is very possible that the largest was one
of three which we are told was erected by
Asoka himself.
The monuments at Sanchi are now under the
charge of the archaeological department; they
are being well cared for, and valuable
photographs have been taken of the bas-reliefs
and inscriptions. The drawings in Fergusson’s
work entitled Tree and Serpent Worship are
very unsatisfactory and his suggestion that the
carvings illustrate tree and serpent worship is
quite erroneous.
AJANTA
Ajanta (more properly Ājūntha) is a village
in the dominions of the Nizam of Hyderabad in
India (N. lat. 20° 32’ by E. long. 75° 48’),
celebrated for its cave hermitages and halls. The
caves are in a wooded and rugged ravine about
3½ miles from the village. Along the bottom of
the ravine runs the river Wāgura, a mountain
stream, which forces its way into the valley
over a bluff on the east, and forms in its descent
a beautiful waterfall, or rather series of
waterfalls, 200 ft. high, the sound of which
must have been constantly audible to the
dwellers in the caves.
These are about thirty in number, excavated
in the south side of the precipitous bank of the
ravine, and vary from 35 to 110ft. in elevation
above the bed of the torrent. The caves are of
two kinds—dwelling-halls and meeting-halls.
The former, as one enters from the pathway
along the sides of the cliff, have a broad
verandah, its roof supported by pillars, and
giving towards the interior onto a hall averaging
in size about 35 ft. by 20 ft. To left and right,
and at the back, dormitories are excavated
opening on to this hall, and in the center of the
back, facing the entrance, an image of the
Buddha usually stands in a niche. The number
of dormitories varies according to the size of the
hall, and in the larger ones pillars support the
roof on all three sides, forming a sort of cloister
running round the hall.
The meeting-halls go back into the rock
about twice as far as the dwelling-halls; the
largest of them being 94½ ft. from the verandah
47
Bibliography.—Alexander Cunningham,
Bhilsa Topes (London, 1854); James
Fergusson, Tree and Serpent Worship (London,
1873); General F. C. Maisey, Sānchi and its
Remains (London, 1892); Rhys Davids,
Buddhist India (London, 1902).
to the back, and 41¼ ft. across, including the
cloister. They were used as chapter-houses for
the meetings of the Buddhist Order.
The caves are in three groups, the oldest
group being of various dates from 200 B.C. to
A.D. 200, the second group belonging,
approximately, to the 6th, and the third group to
the 7th century A.D.
Most of the interior walls of the caves were
covered with fresco paintings, of a considerable
degree of merit, and somewhat in the style of
the early Italian painters. When first discovered,
in 1817, these frescoes were in a fair state of
preservation, but they have since been allowed
to go hopelessly to ruin. Fortunately, the school
of art in Bombay, especially under the
supervision of J. Griffiths, had copied in colors
a number of them before the last vestiges had
disappeared, and other copies of certain of the
paintings have also been made. These copies
are invaluable as being the only evidence we
now have of pictorial art in India before the rise
of Hinduism.
The expression “Cave Temples” used by
Anglo-Indians of such halls is inaccurate.
Ajanta was a kind of college monastery. Hsūan
Tsang informs us that Dīnnāga, the celebrated
Buddhist philosopher and controversialist,
author of well-known books on logic, resided
there. In its prime the settlement must have
afforded accommodation for several hundreds,
teachers and pupils combined. Very few of the
frescoes have been identified, but two are
illustrations of stories in Ārya Sūra’s Jataka
Mālā, as appears from verses in Buddhist
Sanskrit painted beneath them.
See J. Burgess and Bhagwanlal Indraji,
Inscriptions from the Cave Temples of Western
India (Bombay, 1881); J. Fergusson and J.
BHARAHAT
Bharahat or Barhut is a village in the small
state of Nagod in India, lying about 24° 15’ N.
by 80° 45’ E., about 110 m. S.W. of Allahabad.
General A. Cunningham discovered there in
1873 the remains of a stūpa (i.e. a burial mound
over the ashes of some distinguished person)
which were excavated, in 1874, by his assistant,
J. D. Beglar. The results showed that it must
have been one of the most imposing and
handsome in India; and it is especially
important now from the large number of
inscriptions found upon it. The ancient name of
the place has not been yet traced, but it must
have been a considerable city and its site lay on
the high road between the ancient capitals of
Ujjenī and Kosambi.
The stupa was circular, 70 ft. in diameter and
42 ft. high. It was surrounded by a stone railing
100 ft. in diameter, so that between railing and
stupa there was an open circle round which
visitors could walk; and the whole stood
towards the east side of a paved quadrangle
about 300 ft. by 310 ft., surrounded by a stone
wall. On the top of the stūpa was an ornament
shaped like the letter T, and as the base of the
stūpa was above the quadrangle, the total height
of the monument was between 50 and 60 ft.
But its main interest, to us, lies in the railing.
‘This consisted of eighty square pillars, 7 ft. 1
in. in height, connected by cross-bars about 1 ft.
broad. Both pillars and cross-bars were
elaborately carved in bas-relief, and most of
them bore inscriptions giving either the name of
the donor, or the subject of the bas-relief, or
48
Burgess, Cave Temples of India, (London,
1880) ; J. Griffiths, Paintings in the Buddhist
Cave Temples of Ajanta (London, 2 vols., 1896-
1897).
both. There were four entrances through the
railing, facing the cardinal points, and each one
protected by the railing coming out at right
angles, and then turning back across it in the
shape of the letter L. This gave the whole
ground plan of the monument, and no doubt
designedly so, the shape of a gigantic swastika
(i.e. a symbol of good fortune).
By the forms of the letters of the inscriptions,
and by the architectural details, the age of the
monument has been approximately fixed in the
3rd century B.C. The bas-reliefs give us
invaluable evidence of the literature, and also of
the clothing, buildings and other details of the
social conditions of the people; of Buddhist
India at that period. The subjects are taken from
the Buddhist sacred books, more especially
from the accounts given in them of the life of
the Buddha in his last or in his previous births.
Unfortunately, only about half the pillars,
and about one-third of the crossbars have been
recovered. When the stūpa was discovered the
villagers had already carried off the greater part
of the monument to build their cottages with the
stones and bricks of it. The process has gone on
till now nothing is left except what General
Cunningham found and rescued and carried off
to Calcutta. Even the mere money value of the
lost pieces must be immense, and among them
is the central relic box, which would have told
us in whose honor the monument was put up.
See A. Cunningham, The Stūpa of Bharhut
(London, 1879); T. W. Rhys Davids, Buddhist
India (London, 1903).
 SĪGIRI
Sīgiri or the Lion’s Rock is the ruin of a
remarkable stronghold 7° 59’ N., and 81° E., 14
m. N.E. of Dambulla, and about 17miles nearly
due W. of Pulastipura, the now ruined ancient
capital of Ceylon. There a solitary pillar of
granite rock rises to a great height out of the
plain, and the top actually overhangs the sides.
On the summit of this pencil of rock there are
five or six acres of ground; and on them, in A.D.
477, Kasyapa the Parricide built his palace, and
thought to find an inaccessible refuge from his
enemies.
His father Dhātu Sena, a country priest, had,
after many years of foreign oppression, roused
his countrymen, in 459, to rebellion, led them
to victory, driven out the Tamil oppressors, and
entered on his reign as a national hero. He was
as successful in the arts of peace as he had been
in those of war; and carried to completion,
among other good works, an ambitious
irrigation scheme—probably the greatest feat of
engineering that had then been accomplished
anywhere in the world. This was the celebrated
Kalā Wewa, or Black Reservoir, more than 50
m. in circumference, which gave wealth to the
whole country for two days’ journey north of
the capital, Anurādhapura, and provided that
city also with a constant supply of water.
Popular with the people, the king could not
control his own family; and as the outcome of a
palace intrigue in 477 his son Kasyapa had
declared himself king, and taken his father
prisoner. Threatened with death on his refusing
to say where his treasure lay hid, the old king
told them to take him to the tank. They took him
there, and while bathing in the water he let some
of it drop through his fingers, and said, “This is
my treasure; this, and the love of my people.”
49
Then Kasyapa had his father built up alive into
a wal1.
Meanwhile Kayapa’s brother had escaped to
India and was plotting a counter revolution. It
was then that the parricide prepared his defense.
He utilized his father’s engineers in the
construction of a path or gallery winding up
round the Sīgiri rock. Most of it was made by
bursting the rock by means of wooden wedges,
through the solid granite, and its outside parapet
was supported by walls of brick resting on
ledges far below. It is a marvelous piece of
work. Abandoned since 495—for Kasyapa was
eventually slain during a battle fought in the
plain beneath—it has, on the whole, well
withstood the fury of tropical storms, and is
now used again to gain access to the top.
When rediscovered by Major Forbes in 1835
the portions of the gallery where it had been
exposed for so many centuries to the south-west
monsoon, had been carried away. These gaps
have lately been repaired, or made passable
with the help of iron stanchions; the remains of
the buildings at the top and at the foot of the
mountain have been excavated; and the
entrance to the gallery, between the
outstretched paws of a gigantic lion, has been
laid bare. The fresco paintings in the galleries
are perhaps the most interesting of the extant
remains. They are older than any others found
in India, and have been carefully copied, and,
as far as possible, preserved.
See Major Forbes, Eleven Years in Ceylon
(London, 1841); H. C. P. Bell. Archaeological
Reports (Colombo, 1892–1906); Rhys Davids,
“Sigiri, the Lion Rock,” in Journal of the Royal
Asiatic Society (1875), pp. 191–220; H. W.
Cave, Ruined Cities of Ceylon (London, 1906).
 MAHĀVAṂSA
Mahāvaṃsa or the Great Chronicle, a
history of Ceylon from the 5th century B.C. to
the middle of the 5th century A.D., written in Pāli
verse by Mahānāma of the Dīghasanda
Hermitage, shortly after the close of the period
with which it deals. In point of historical value
it compares well with early European
chronicles. In India proper the decipherment of
early Indian inscriptions was facilitated to a
very great extent by the data found only in the
Mahāvaṃsa. It was composed on the basis of
earlier works written in Sinhalese, which are
now lost, having been supplanted by the
chronicles and commentaries in which their
contents were restated in Pāli in the course of
the 5th century. The particular one on which our
Mahāvaṃsa was mainly based was also called
the Mahāvaṃsa, and was written in Sinhalese
prose with Pāli memorial verse interspersed.
The extant Pāli work gives legends of the
Buddha and the genealogy of his family; a
sketch of the history of India down to Asoka; an
account of Buddhism in India down to the same
date; a description of the sending out of
missionaries after Asoka’s council, and
especially of the mission of Mahinda to Ceylon;
a sketch of the previous history of Ceylon; a
long account of the reign of Devānam-piya
Tissa, the king of Ceylon who received
Mahinda, and established Buddhism in the
island; short accounts of the kings succeeding
him down to Duṭṭha Gāmīni (Dadagamana or
Dutegamunu); then a long account, amounting
SĀSANA VAṂSA
Sāsanavaṃsa is a history of the Buddhist
order in Burma, which was composed, in that
country, by Paññā-sāmi in 1851. It is written in
Pāli prose; and is based on earlier documents,
in Pāli or Burmese, still extant, but not yet
edited. The earlier part of the work deals with
the history of Buddhism outside of Burma. This
50
to an epic poem, of the adventures and reign of
that prince, a popular hero, born in adversity,
who roused the people, and drove the Tamil
invaders out of the island. Finally we have short
notices of the subsequent kings down to the
author’s time.
The Mahāvaṃsa was the first Pāli book
made known to Europe. It was edited in 1837,
with English translation and an elaborate
introduction, by George Turnour, then colonial
secretary in Ceylon. Its vocabulary was an
important part of the material utilized in
Childer’s Pali Dictionary. Its relation to the
sources from which it drew has been carefully
discussed by various scholars and in especial
detail by Geiger. It is agreed that it gives a
reasonably fair and correct presentation of the
tradition preserved in the lost Sinhalese
Mahāvaṃsa; that, except in the earliest period,
its list of kings, with the years of each reign, is
complete and trustworthy; and that it gives
throughout the view, as to events in Ceylon,
of a resident in the Great Minster at
Anurādhapura.
See The Mahāvaṃsa, ed. by George Turnour
(Colombo, 1837): ed. by W. Geiger (London,
1908); H. Oldenberg, in the introduction to his
edition of the Dīpavamsa (London, 1879); 0.
Franke, in Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des
Morgenlandes (1907); W Geiger, Dīpavamsa
und Mahāvamsa (Leipzig, 1905, trans. by Ethel
M. Coomaraswamy, Colombo, 1908).
is based on the Mahāvaṃsa, and other well-
known Ceylon works; and has no independent
value. The latter part of the work, about three-
fifths of the whole, deals with Buddhism in
Burma, and contains information not obtainable
elsewhere. Down to the 11th century the account
is meagre, legendary and incredible. After that
date it is sober, intelligible and in all probability
mostly accurate. This portion occupies about
one hundred pages 8vo in the excellent edition
of the text prepared for the Pāli Text Society in
1897 by Dr Mabel Bode. It shows a continuous
literary effort through the eight and a half
centuries, and constantly renewed ecclesiastical
controversy. The latter is concerned for the
JAINS
Jains are the most numerous and influential
sect of heretics, or nonconformists to the
Brahmanical system of Hinduism, in India.
They are found in every province of upper
Hindustan, in the cities along the Ganges and in
Calcutta. But they are more numerous to the
west—in Mewar, Gujarat, and in the upper part
of the Malabar coast—and are also scattered
throughout the whole of the southern peninsula.
They are mostly traders, and live in the towns;
and the wealth of many of their community
gives them a social importance greater than
would result from their mere numbers. In the
Indian census of 1901 they are returned as being
1,334,140 in number. Their magnificent series
of temples and shrines on Mount Abu, one of
the seven wonders of India, is perhaps the most
striking outward sign of their wealth and
importance.
The Jains are the last direct representatives
on the continent of India of those schools of
thought which grew out of the active
philosophical speculation and earnest spirit of
religious inquiry that prevailed in the valley of
the Ganges during the 5th and 6th centuries
before the Christian era. For many centuries
Jainism was so overshadowed by that
stupendous movement, born at the same time
and in the same place, which we call Buddhism,
that it remained almost unnoticed by the side of
its powerful rival. But when Buddhism, whose
widely open doors had absorbed the mass of the
community, became thereby corrupted from its
51
most part with minor questions relating to rules
of the order, there being a tendency, as
relaxations of the rules crept in with the lapse
of time, to hark back to the original simplicity.
Of differences in matters of doctrine there is no
mention in this manual. Dr Bode has prefixed
to her edition a detailed summary of the
contents of the book.
pristine purity and gradually died away, the
smaller school of the Jains, less diametrically
opposed to the victorious orthodox creed of the
Brahmans, survived, and in some degree took
its place.
Jainism purports to be the system of belief
promulgated by Vaddhamāna, better known by
his epithet of Mahā-vīra (the great hero), who
was a contemporary of Gotama, the Buddha.
But the Jains, like the Buddhists, believe that
the same system had previously been
proclaimed through countless ages by each one
of a succession of earlier teachers. The Jains
count twenty-four such prophets, whom they
call Jinas, or Tīrthankaras, that is, conquerors or
leaders of schools of thought. It is from this
word Jina that the modern name Janinas,
meaning followers of the Jina, or of the Jinas, is
derived. This legend of the twenty-four Jinas
contains a germ of truth. Mahā-vīra was not an
originator; he merely carried on, with but slight
changes, a system which existed before his
time, and which probably owes its most
distinguishing features to a teacher named
Pārṣwa, who ranks in the succession of Jinas as
the predecessor of Mahā-vīra. Pārṣwa is said, in
the Jain chronology, to have been born two
hundred years; before Mahā-vīra (that is, about
760 B.C.); but the only conclusion that it is safe
to draw from this statement is that Pārṣwa was
considerably earlier in point of time than Mahā-
vīra. Very little reliance can be placed upon the
details reported in the Jain books concerning
the previous Jinas in the list of the twenty-four
Tīrthankaras. The curious will find in them
many reminiscences of Hindu and Buddhist
legend; and the antiquary must notice the
distinctive symbols assigned to each, in order to
recognize statues of the different Jinas, other-
wise identical, in the different Jain temples.
The Jains are divided into two great
parties—the Digambaras, or Sky-clad Ones,
and the Swetāmbaras, or the White-robed Ones.
The latter have only as yet been traced, and that
doubtfully, as far back as the 5th century alter
Christ; the former are almost certainly the same
as the Nigaṇṭhas, who are referred to in
numerous passages of the Buddhist Pāli
Piṭakas, and must therefore be at least as old as
the 6th century B.C. In many of these passages
the Nigaṇṭhas are mentioned as contempor-
aneous with the Buddha; and details enough are
given concerning their leader Nigaṇṭha Nāta-
putta (that is, the Nigaṇṭha of the Jñātṛika clan)
to enable us to identify him, without any doubt,
as the same person as the Vaddhamāna Mahā-
vīra of the Jain books. This remarkable
confirmation, from the scriptures of a rival
religion, of the Jain tradition is conclusive as to
the date of Mahā-vīra. The Nigaṇṭhas are
referred to in one of Asoka’s edicts (Corpus
Incriptionum, Plate x.x.). Unfortunately the
account of the teachings of Nigaṇṭha Nāta-putta
given in the Buddhist scriptures are, like those
of the Buddha’s teachings given in the
Brahmanical literature, very meagre.
Jain Literature.—The Jain scriptures
themselves, though based on earlier traditions,
are not older in their present form than the 5th
century of our era. The most distinctively
sacred books are called the forty-five Āgamas,
consisting of eleven Angas, twelve Upangas,
ten Pakiṇṇakas, six Chedas, four Mūla-sūtras
and two other books. Devaddhi Gaṇin, who
occupies among the Jains a position very
similar to that occupied among the Buddhists
by Buddhaghosa, collected the then existing
traditions and teachings of the sect into these
forty-five Āgamas.
52
Like the Buddhist scriptures, the earliest Jain
books are written in a dialect of their own, the
so-called Jaina Prākrit; and it was not till
between A.D. 1000 and 1100 that the Jains
adopted Sanskrit as their literary language.
Considerable progress has been made in the
publication and elucidation of these original
authorities. But a great deal remains yet to be
done. The oldest books now in the possession
of the modern Jains purport to go back, not to
the foundation of the existing order in the 6th
century B.C., but only to the time of
Bhadrabahu, three centuries later. The whole of
the still older literature on which the revision
then made was based, the so-called Pūrvas,
have been lost. And the existing canonical
books, while preserving a great deal that was
probably derived from them, contain much later
material. The problem remains to sort out the
older from the later, to distinguish between the
earlier form of the faith and its subsequent
developments, and to collect the numerous data
for the general, social, industrial, religious and
political history of India.
Professor Weber gave a fairly full and
carefully-drawn-up analysis of the whole of the
more ancient books in the second part of the
second volume of his Catalogue of the Sanskrit
MSS. at Berlin, published in 1888, and in vols.
xvi. and xvii. of his Indische Studien. An
English translation of these last was published
first in the Indian Antiquary, and then
separately at Bombay, 1893. Only a small
beginning has been made in editing and
translating these works. The best précis of a
long book can necessarily only deal with the
more important features in it. And in the choice
of what should be included the précis-writer
will often omit the points some subsequent
investigator may most especially want. All the
older works ought therefore to be edited and
translated in full and properly indexed. The
Jains themselves have now printed in Bombay
a complete edition of their sacred books. But
the critical value of this edition, and of other
editions of separate texts printed elsewhere in
India, leaves much to be desired.
 Professor Jacobi has edited and translated
the Kalpa Sūtra, containing a life of the founder
of the Jain order; but this can scarcely be older
than the 5th century of our era. He has also
edited and translated the Āyāranya Sutta of the
Svetambara Jains. The text, published by the
Pāli Text Society, is of 140 pages octavo. The
first part of it, about 50 pages, is a very old
document on the Jain views as to conduct, and
the remainder consists of appendices, added at
different times, on the same subject. The older
part may go back as early as the 3rd century B.C.,
and it sets out more especially the Jain doctrine
of tapas or self-mortification, in contra-
distinction to the Buddhist view, which
condemned asceticism. The rules of conduct in
this book are for members of the order.
Dr. Rudolf Hoernle edited and translated an
ancient work on the rules of conduct for
laymen, the Uvāsaga Dasāo.47 Professor
Leumann edited another of the older works, the
Aupapātika Sūtra, and a fourth, entitled the
Dasa-vaikālika Sūtra, both of them published
by the German Oriental Society. Professor
Jacobi translated two more, the Uttarā-
dhyāyana and the Sūtra Kritānga.48 Finally, Dr.
Barnett has translated two others in vol. xvii. of
the Oriental Translation Fund (new series,
London, 1907). Thus about one-fiftieth part of
these interesting and valuable old records is
now accessible to the European scholar. The
sect of the Svetambaras has preserved the oldest
literatures. Dr. Hoernle has treated of the early
history of the sect in the Proceedings of the
Asiatic Society of Bengal for 1898. Several
scholars—notably Bhagvanlāl Indraji, Mr.
Lewis Rice and Hofrath Buhler49—have treated
of the remarkable archaeological discoveries
lately made. These confirm the older records in
many details, and show that the Jains, in the
centuries before the Christian era, were a
47
 Published in the Bibliotheca Indica, Calcutta, 1888.  49
48
 These two, and the other two mentioned above, form
vols. i. and ii. of his Jaina Sutras, published in the
Sacred Books of the East (1884, 1895).  v.; Epigraphia Indica, vols, i–vii.
53
wealthy and important body in widely separated
parts of India.
Jainism.—The most distinguishing outward
peculiarity of Mahā-vīra and of his earliest
followers was their practice of going quite
naked, whence the term Digambara. Against
this custom, Gotama, the Buddha, especially
warned his followers; and it is referred to in the
well-known Greek phrase, Gymnosophist, used
already by Megasthenes, which applies very
aptly to the Nigaṇṭhas. Even the earliest name
Nigaṇṭha, which means “free from bonds,” may
not be without allusions to this curious belief in
the sanctity of nakedness, though it also alluded
to freedom from the bonds of sin and of
transmigration. The statues of the Jinas in the
Jain temples, some of which are of enormous
sire, are still always quite naked; but the Jains
themselves have abandoned the practice, the
Digambaras being sky-clad at meal-time only,
and the Svetāmbaras being always completely
clothed. And even among the Digambaras it is
only the recluses or Yatis, men devoted to a
religious life, who carry out this practice. The
lay disciples—the Srāvakas—do not adopt it.
The Jain views of life were, in the most
important and essential respects, the exact
reverse of the Buddhist views. The two orders,
Buddhist and Jain, were not only, and from the
first, independent, but directly opposed the one
to the other. In philosophy the Jains are the most
thorough-going supporters of the old animistic
position. Nearly everything, according to them,
has a soul within its outward visible shape—not
only men and animals, but also all plants, and
even particles of earth, and of water (when it is
cold), and fire and wind. The Buddhist theory,
as is well known, is put together without the
hypothesis of “soul” at all. The word the Jains
use for soul is Jīva, which means life; and there
is much analogy between many of the
  The Hatthi Gumphā and three other inscriptions at
Cuttack (Leyden, 1885); Sravana Belgola inscriptions
(Bangalore, 1889); Vienna Oriental Journal, vols, ii.–
expressions they use and the view that the
ultimate cells and atoms are all, in a more or less
modified sense, alive. They regard good and
evil and space as ultimate substances which
come into direct contact with the minute souls
in everything. And their best-known position in
regard to the points most discussed in
philosophy is Syād-vāda, the doctrine that you
may say “Yes” and at the same time “No” to
everything. You can affirm the eternity of the
world, for instance, from one point of view, and
at the same time deny it from another; or, at
different times and in different connections,
you may one day affirm it and another day deny
it. This position both leads to vagueness of
thought and explains why Jainism has had so
little influence over other schools of philosophy
in India.
On the other hand, the Jains are as
determined in their views of asceticism (tapas)
as they were compromising in their views of
philosophy. Any injury done to the “souls”
being one of the worst of iniquities, the good
monk should not wash his clothes (indeed, the
most austere will reject clothes altogether), nor
even wash his teeth, for fear of injuring living
things. “Subdue the body, chastise thyself,
weaken thyself, just as fire consumes dry
wood.” It was by suppressing, through such
self-torture, the influence on his soul of all
sensations that the Jain could obtain salvation.
It is related of the founder himself, the Mahā-
vīra, that after twelve years’ penance he thus
obtained Nirvāna (Jacobi, Jaina Siūtras, i. 201)
before he entered upon his career as a teacher.
And through the rest of his life, till he died at
Pāvā, shortly before the Buddha, he followed
the same habit of continual self- mortification.
The Buddha, on the other hand, obtained
Nirvāna in his 35th year, under the Bo tree, after
he had abandoned penance; and through the rest
of his life he spoke of penance as quite useless
from his point of view.
There is no manual of Jainism as yet
published, but there is a great deal of
information on various points in the
54
introductions to the works referred to above.
Professor Jacobi, who is the best authority on
the history of this sect, thus sums up the
distinction between the Mahā-vīra and the
Buddha: “Mahā-vīra was rather of the ordinary
class of religious men in India. He may be
allowed a talent for religious matters, but he
possessed not the genius which Buddha
undoubtedly had . . . . The Buddha’s philosophy
forms a system based on a few fundamental
ideas, whilst that of Mahā-vīra scarcely forms a
system, but is merely a sum of opinions
(pannattis) on various subjects, no fundamental
ideas being there to uphold the mass of
metaphysical matter. Besides this . . . it is the
ethical element that gives to the Buddhist
writings their superiority over those of the
Jains. Mahā-vīra treated ethics as corollary and
subordinate to his metaphysics, with which he
was chiefly concerned.”
ADDITIONAL AUTHORITIES.—Bhadrabāhu’s
Kalpa Sutra, the recognized and popular
manual of the Svetambara Jains, edited with
English introduction by Professor Jacobi
(Leipzig, 1879); Hemacandra’s “Yoga
S’āstram,” edited by Windisch, in the
Zeitschrift der deutschen morg. Ges. for 1874;
“Zwei Jaina Stotra,” edited in the Indische
Studien, vol. xv. ; Ein Fragment der Bhagavatī,
by Professor Weber; Memoires de l’Academie
de Berlin (1866); Nirayāvaliya Sutta, edited by
Dr. Warren, with Dutch introduction
(Amsterdam, 1879); Over de godsdienstige en
wijsgeerige Begrippen der Jainas, by Dr.
Warren (his doctor-dissertation, Zwolle, 1875);
Beiträge zur Grammatik des Jaina-prākrit, by
Dr. Edward Müller (Berlin, 1876);
Colebrooke’s Essays, vol. ii. Mr. J. Burgess has
an exhaustive account of the Jain Cave Temples
(none older than the 7th century) in Fergusson
and Burgess’s Cave Temples in India (London,
1880).
See also Hopkins’ Religions of India
(London, 1896), pp. 280–96, and J. G. Bühler
On the Indian Sect of the Jainas, edited by J.
Burgess (London, 1904).
 ASOKA
Asoka was a famous Buddhist emperor of
India who reigned from 264 to 228 or 227 B.C.
Thirty-five of his inscriptions on rocks or pillars
or in caves still exist (see INSCRIPTIONS:
Indian), and they are among the most
remarkable and interesting of Buddhist
monuments (see BUDDHISM).
Asoka was the grandson of Chandragupta,
the founder of the Maurya (Peacock) dynasty,
who had wrested the Indian provinces of
Alexander the Great from the hands of
Seleucus, and he was the son of Bindusāra, who
succeeded his father Chandragupta, by a lady
from Champa. The Greeks do not mention him
and the Brahmin books ignore him, but the
Buddhist chronicles and legends tell us much
about him.
The inscriptions, which contain altogether
about five thousand words, are entirely of
religious import, and their references to worldly
affairs are incidental. They begin in the
thirteenth year of his reign, and tell us that in
the ninth year he had invaded Kalinga, and had
been so deeply impressed by the horrors
involved in warfare that he had then given up
the desire for conquest, and devoted himself to
conquest by “religion.” What the religion was
is explained in the edicts. It is purely ethical,
independent alike of theology and ritual, and is
the code of morals as laid down in the Buddhist
sacred books for laymen.
He further tells us that in the ninth year of
his reign he formally joined the Buddhist
community as a layman, in the eleventh year he
became a member of the order, and in the
thirteenth he “set out for the Great Wisdom”
(the Sambodhi), which is the Buddhist technical
term for entering upon the well-known,
eightfold path to Nirvana. One of the edicts is
addressed to the order, and urges upon its
members and the laity alike the learning and
rehearsal of passages from the Buddhist
scriptures. Two others are proclamations
commemorating visits paid by the king, one to
55
the dome erected over the ashes of
Konāgamana, the Buddha, another to the
birthplace of Gotama, the Buddha (q.v.). Three
very short ones are dedications of caves to the
use of an order of recluses.
The rest either enunciate the religion as
explained above, or describe the means adopted
by the king for propagating it, or acting in
accordance with it. These means are such as the
digging of wells, planting medicinal herbs, and
trees for shade, sending out of missionaries,
appointment of special officers to supervise
charities, and so on. The missionaries were sent
to Kashmir, to the Himalayas, to the border
lands on the Indus, to the coast of Burma, to
south India and to Ceylon. And the king claims
that missions sent by him to certain Greek
kingdoms that he names had resulted in the folk
there conforming themselves to his religion.
The extent of Asoka’s dominion included all
India from the thirteenth degree of latitude up
to the Himalayas, Nepal, Kashmir, the Swat
valley, Afghanistan as far as the Hindu Kush,
Sind and Baluchistan. It was thus as large as, or
perhaps somewhat larger than, British India
before the conquest of Burma.
He was undoubtedly the most powerful
sovereign of his time and the most remarkable
and imposing of the native rulers of India. “If a
man’s fame,” says Köppen, “can be measured
by the number of hearts who revere his
memory, by the number of lips who have
mentioned, and still mention him with honor,
Asoka is more famous than Charlemagne or
Caesar.” At the same time it is probable that,
like Constantine’s patronage of Christianity, his
patronage of Buddhism, then the most rising
and influential faith in India, was not unalloyed
with political motives, and it is certain that his
vast benefactions to the Buddhist cause were at
least one of the causes that led to its decline.
See also Asoka, by Vincent Smith (Oxford,
1901); Inscriptions de Piyadasi, by E. Senart
(Paris, 1891); chapters on Asoka in T. W. Rhys
Davids’s Buddhism (20th ed., London, 1903),
KANISHKA
Kanishka, a king of Kabul, Kashmir, and
north-western India in the 2nd century A.D., was
a Tatar of the Kushan tribe, one of the five into
which the Yue-chi Tatars were divided. His
dominions extended as far down into India as
Madura, and probably as far to the north-west
as Bokhara. Private inscriptions found in the
Punjab and Sind, in the Yusufzai district and at
Madurā, and referred by European scholars to
his reign, are dated in the years five to twenty-
eight of an unknown era. It is the references by
Chinese historians to the Yue-chi tribes before
their incursion into India, together with
conclusions drawn from the history of art and
literature in his reign that render the date given
the most probable.
Kanishka’s predecessors on the throne were
Pagans; but shortly after his accession he
professed himself, probably from political
reasons, a Buddhist. He spent vast sums in the
construction of Buddhist monuments; and
under his auspices the fourth Buddhist council,
the council of Jālandhara (Jullunder) was
convened under the presidency of Vasumitra.
At this council three treatises, commentaries on
the Canon, one on each of the three baskets into
which it is divided, were composed. King
Kanishka had these treatises, when completed
and revised by Asvaghosha, written out on
copper plates, and enclosed the latter in stone
boxes, which he placed in a memorial mound.
For some centuries afterwards these works
survived in India; but they exist now only in
Chinese translations or adaptations. We are not
told in what language they were written.
It was probably Sanskrit (not Pāli, the
language of the Canon)—just as in Europe we
have works of exegetical commentary
composed, in Latin, on the basis of the
56
and Buddhist India (London, 1903); V.A.
Smith, Edicts of Asoka (1909).
Testament and Septuagint in Greek. This
change of the language used as a medium of
literary intercourse was partly the cause, partly
the effect, of a complete revulsion in the
intellectual life of India. The reign of Kanishka
was certainly the turning-point in this
remarkable change. It has been suggested with
great plausibility, that the wide extent of his
domains facilitated the incursion into India of
Western modes of thought; and thus led in the
first place to the corruption and gradual decline
of Buddhism, and secondly to the gradual rise
of Hinduism. Only the publication of the books
written at the time will enable us to say whether
this hypothesis—for at present it is nothing
more—is really a sufficient explanation of the
very important results of his reign.
In any case it was a migration of nomad
hordes in Central Asia that led, in Europe, to the
downfall of the Roman civilization; and then,
through the conversion of the invaders, to
medieval conditions of life and thought. It was
the very same migration of nomad hordes that
led, in India, to the downfall of the Buddhist
civilization; and subsequently, after the
conversion of the Saka and Tatar invaders, to
medieval Hinduism. As India was nearer to the
starting-point of the migration, its results were
felt there somewhat sooner.
AUTHORITIES.—Vincent A. Smith, The
Early History of India (Oxford, 1908); “The
Kushan Period of Indian History,” in J.R.A.S.
(1903); M. Boyer, “L’Epoque de Kaniska,” in
Journal Asiatique (1900); T. Watters, On Yuan
Chwang (London, 1904, 1905); J. Takakusu,
“The Sarvastivadin Abhidharma Books,” in
Journal of the Pāli Text Society (1905), esp. pp.
118–130; Rhys Davids, Buddhist India
(London, 1903), ch. xvi., “Kanishka.”
 LĀMĀISM
Lāmāism is the system of doctrine partly
religious, partly political. Religiously it is the
corrupt form of Buddhism prevalent in Tibet
and Mongolia. It stands in a relationship to
primitive Buddhism similar to that in which
Roman Catholicism, so long as the temporal
power of the pope was still in existence, stood
to primitive Christianity. The ethical and
metaphysical ideas most conspicuous in the
doctrines of Lāmāism are not confined to the
highlands of central Asia, they are accepted in
great measure also in Japan and China. It is the
union of these ideas with a hierarchical system,
and with the temporal sovereignty of the head
of that system in Tibet, which constitutes what
is distinctively understood by the term
Lāmāism. Lāmāism has acquired a special
interest to the student of comparative history
through the instructive parallel which its history
presents to that of the Church of Rome.
The central point of primitive Buddhism was
the doctrine of “Arahatship”—a system of
ethical and mental self-culture, in which
deliverance was found from all the mysteries
and sorrows of life in a change of heart to be
reached here on earth. This doctrine seems, to
have been held very nearly in its original purity
from the time when it was propounded by
Gotama in the 6th century B.C. to the period in
which northern India was conquered by the
Huns about the commencement of the Christian
era.
Soon after that time there arose a school of
Buddhist teachers who called their doctrine the
“Great Vehicle.” It was not in any contradiction
to the older doctrine, which they
contemptuously called the “Little Vehicle,” but
included it all, and was based upon it. The
distinguishing characteristic of the newer
school was the importance which it attached to
“Bodhisatship.”
The older school had taught that Gotama,
who had propounded the doctrine of
Arahatship, was a Buddha, that only a Buddha
57
is capable of discovering that doctrine, and that
a Buddha is a man who by self-denying efforts,
continued through many hundreds of different
births, has acquired the so-called Ten
Pāramitās or cardinal virtues in such perfection
that he is able, when sin and ignorance have
gained the upper hand throughout the world, to
save the human race from impending ruin. But
until the process of perfection has been
completed, until the moment when at last the
sage, sitting under the Wisdom tree acquires
that particular insight or wisdom which is called
Enlightenment or Buddhahood, he is still only
a Bodhisat. The link of connection between the
various Bodhisats in the future Buddha’s
successive births is not a soul which is
transferred from body to body, but the karma,
or character, which each successive Bodhisat
inherits from his predecessor; in the long chain
of existences.
Now the older school also held, in the first
place, that, when a man had, in this life, attained
to Arahatship, his karma would not pass on to
any other individual in another life—or in other
words, that after Arahatship there would be no
rebirth; and, secondly, that five thousand years
after the Buddha had proclaimed the Dhamma
or doctrine of Arahatship, his teaching would
have died away, and another Buddha would be
required to bring mankind once more to a
knowledge of the truth.
The leaders of the Great Vehicle urged their
followers to seek to attain, not so much to
Arahatship, which would involve only their
own salvation, but to Bodhisatship, by the
attainment of which they would be conferring
the blessings of the Dhamma upon countless
multitudes in the long ages of the future. By
thus laying stress upon Bodhisatship, rather
than upon Arahatship, the new school, though
they doubtless merely thought themselves to be
carrying the older orthodox doctrines to their
logical conclusion, were really changing the
central point of Buddhism, and were altering
the direction of their mental vision. It was of no
avail that they adhered in other respects in the
main to the older teaching, that they professed
to hold to the same ethical system, that they
adhered, except in a few unimportant details, to
the old regulations of the order of the Buddhist
mendicant recluses.
The ancient books, preserved in the Pāli
Piṭakas, being mainly occupied with the details
of Arahatship, lost their exclusive value in the
eyes of those whose attention was being
directed to the details of Bodhisatship. And the
opinion that every leader in their religious
circles, every teacher distinguished among
them for his sanctity of life, or for his extensive
learning, was a Bodhisat, who might have and
who probably had inherited the karma of some
great teacher of old, opened the door to a flood
of superstitious fancies.
It is worthy of note that the new school found
its earliest professors and its greatest
expounders in a part of India outside the
districts to which the personal influence of
Gotama and of his immediate followers had
been confined. The home of early Buddhism
was round about Kosala and Magadha; in the
district, that is to say, north and south of the
Ganges between where Allahabad now lies on
the west and Rajgir on the east. The home of the
Great Vehicle was, at first, in the countries
farther to the north and west. Buddhism arose
in countries where Sanskrit was never more
than a learned tongue, and where the exclusive
claims of the Brahmins had never been
universally admitted. The Great Vehicle arose
in the very stronghold of Brahminism, and
among a people to whom Sanskrit, like Latin in
the middle ages in Europe, was the literary
lingua franca.
The new literature therefore, which the new
movement called forth, was written, and has
been preserved, in Sanskrit—its principal
books of Dharma, or doctrine, being the
following nine; (1) Prajñā-pāramitā; (2)
Gaṇḍa-vyūha; (3) Daśa-bhūmiś-vara; (4)
Samādhi-rāja; (5) Lankāvatāra; (6)
58
Saddharma-puṇḍarīka; (7) Tathāgata-
guhyaka; (8) Lalita-vistara; (9) Suvarṇa-
prabhāsa. The date of none of these works is
known with any certainty, but it is highly
improbable that any one of them is older than
the 6th century after the death of Gotama.
Copies of all of them were brought to Europe
by Mr B. H. Hodgson, and other copies have
been received since then; but only one of them
has as yet been published in Europe (the Lalita
Vistara, edited by Lofmann), and only two have
been translated into any European language.
These are the Lalita Vistara, translated into
French, through the Tibetan, by M. Foucaux,
and the Saddharma-puṇḍarīka, translated into
English by Professor Kern. The former is
legendary work, partly in verse, on the life of
Gotama, the historical Buddha; and the latter,
also partly in verse, is devoted to proving the
essential identity of the Great and the Little
Vehicles, and the equal authenticity of both as
doctrines enunciated by the master himself.
Of the authors of these nine works, as of all
the older Buddhist works with one or two
exceptions, nothing has been ascertained. The
founder of the system of the Great Vehicle is,
however, often referred to under the name of
Nāgārjuna, [below] whose probable date is
about A.D. 200.
Together with Nāgārjuna, other early
teachers of the Great Vehicle whose names are
known are Vasumitra, Vasubandhu, Āryadeva,
Dharmapāla and Guṇamati—all of whom were
looked upon as Bodhisats. As the newer school
did not venture so far as to claim as Bodhisats
the disciples stated in the older books to have
been the contemporaries of Gotama (they being
precisely the persons known as Arahats), they
attempted to give the appearance of age to the
Bodhisat theory by representing the Buddha as
being surrounded, not only by his human
companions the Arahats, but also by fabulous
beings, whom they represented as the Bodhisats
existing at that time.
 In the opening words of each Mahāyāna
treatise a list is given of such Bodhisats, who
were beginning, together with the historical
Bodhisats, to occupy a position in the Buddhist
church of those times similar to that occupied
by the saints in the corresponding period of the
history of Christianity in the Church of Rome.
And these lists of fabulous Bodhisats have now
a distinct historical importance. For they grow
in length in the latter works; and it is often
possible by comparing them one with another
to fix, not the date, but the comparative age of
the books in which they occur. Thus it is a fair
inference to draw from the shortness of the list
in the opening words of the Lalita Vistara, as
compared with that in the first sections of the
Saddharma-puṇḍarīka, that the latter work is
much the younger of the two, a conclusion
supported also by other considerations.
Among the Bodhisats mentioned in the
Saddharma-puṇḍarīka, and not mentioned in
the Lalita Vistara, as attendant on the Buddha
are Manju-śrī and Avalokiteśvara. That these
saints were already acknowledged by the
followers of the Great Vehicle at the beginning
of the 5th century is clear from the fact that Fa
Hien, who visited India about that time, says
that “men of the Great Vehicle” were then
worshipping them at Mathura, not far from
Delhi (F. H., chap. xvi.). These were supposed
to be celestial beings who, inspired by love of
the human race, had taken the so-called Great
Resolve to become future Buddhas, and who
therefore descended from heaven when the
actual Buddha was on earth, to pay reverence to
him, and to learn of him. The belief in them
probably arose out of the doctrine of the older
school, which did not deny the existence of the
various creations of previous mythology and
speculation, but allowed of their actual
existence as spiritual beings, and only deprived
them of all power over the lives of men, and
declared them to be temporary beings liable,
like men, to sin and ignorance, and requiring,
like men, the salvation of Arahatship. Among
them the later Buddhists seem to have placed
their numerous Bodhisats; and to have paid
59
especial reverence to Manju-śrī as the
personification of wisdom, and to
Avalokiteśwara as the personification of
overruling love. The former was afterwards
identified with the mythical first Buddhist
missionary, who is supposed to have introduced
civilization into Tibet about two hundred and
fifty years after the death of the Buddha.
The way was now open to a rapid fall from
the simplicity of early Buddhism, in which
men’s attention was directed to the various
parts of the system of self-culture, to a belief in
a whole pantheon of saints or angels, which
appealed more strongly to the half-civilized
races among whom the Great Vehicle was now
professed. A theory sprang up which was
supposed to explain the marvelous powers of
the Buddhas by representing them as only the
outward appearance, the reflection, as it were,
or emanation, of ethereal Buddhas dwelling in
the skies. These were called Dhyāni Buddhas,
and their number was supposed to be, like that
of the Buddhas, innumerable. Only five of
them, however, occupied any space in the
speculative world in which the ideas of the later
Buddhists had now begun to move. But, being
Buddhas, they were supposed to have their
Bodhisats; and thus out of the five last Buddhas
of the earlier teaching there grew up five mystic
trinities, each group consisting of one of these
five Buddhas, his prototype in heaven the
Dhyāni Buddha, and his celestial Bodhisat.
Among these hypothetical beings, the
creations of a sickly scholasticism, hollow
abstractions without life or reality, the
particular trinity in which the historical Gotama
was assigned a subordinate place naturally
occupied the most exalted rank. Amitābha, the
Dhyani-Buddha of this trinity, soon began to fill
the largest place in the minds of the new school;
and Avalokiteśwara, his Bodhisat, was looked
upon with a reverence somewhat less than his
former glory. It is needless to add that, under
the overpowering influence of these vain
imaginations, the earnest moral teachings of
Gotama became more and more hidden from
view. The imaginary saints grew and
flourished. Each new creation, each new step in
the theory, demanded another, until the whole
sky was filled with forgeries of the brain, and
the nobler and simpler lessons of the founder of
the religion were hidden beneath the glittering
stream of metaphysical subtleties.
Still worse results followed on the change of
the earlier point of view. The acute minds of the
Buddhist pundits, no longer occupied with the
practical lessons of Arahatship, turned their
attention, as far as it was not engaged upon their
hierarchy of mythological beings, to questions
of metaphysical speculation, which, in the
earliest Buddhism, are not only discouraged but
forbidden. We find long treatises on the nature
of being, idealistic dreams which have as little
to do with the Bodhisatship that is concerned
with the salvation of the world as with the
Arahatship that is concerned with the perfect
life.
Only one lower step was possible, and that
was not long in being taken. The animism
common alike to the untaught Huns and to their
Hindu conquerors, but condemned in early
Buddhism, was allowed to revive. As the
stronger side of Gotama’s teaching was
neglected, the debasing belief in rites and
ceremonies, and charms and incantations,
which had been the especial object of his scorn
, began to spread like the Bīrana weed warmed
by a tropical sun in marsh and muddy soil. As
in India, after the expulsion of Buddhism, the
degrading worship of Siva and his dusky bride
had been incorporated into Hinduism from the
savage devil worship of Āryan and of non-
Āryan tribes, so, as pure Buddhism died away
in the north, the Tantra system, a mixture of
magic and witchcraft and sorcery, was
incorporated into the corrupted Buddhism.
The founder of this system seems to have
been Asanga, an influential monk of Peshawar,
who wrote the first text-book of the creed, the
50
  Watters’s On Yūan Chwāng, edited by Rhys Davids
and Bushell, i. 210, 356, 271. 
60
Yogāchchāra Bhūmi Śāstra, in the 6th century
A.D. Hsuan Tsang, who travelled in the first half
of the 7th, found the monastery where Asanga
had lived in ruins, and says that he had lived one
thousand years after the Buddha.50 Asanga
managed with great dexterity to reconcile the
two opposing systems by placing a number of
Śaivite gods or devils, both male and female, in
the inferior heavens of the then prevalent
Buddhism, and by representing them as
worshippers and supporters of the Buddha and
of Avalokiteśvara. He thus made it possible for
the half-converted and rude tribes to remain
Buddhists while they brought offerings, and
even bloody offerings, to these more congenial
shrines, and while their practical belief had no
relation at all to the Truths or the Noble
Eightfold Path, but busied itself almost wholly
with obtaining magic powers (Siddhi), by
means of magic phrases (Dhārani), and magic
circles (Maṇḍala).
Asanga’s happy idea bore but too ample
fruit. In his own country and Nepal, the new
wine, sweet and luscious to the taste of savages,
completely disqualified them from enjoying
any purer drink; and now in both countries
Śaivism is supreme, and Buddhism is even
nominally extinct, except in some outlying
districts of Nepal. But this full effect has only
been worked out in the lapse of ages; the Tantra
literature has also had its growth and its
development, and some unhappy scholar of a
future age may have to trace its loathsome
history. The nauseous taste repelled even the
self-sacrificing industry of Burnouf, when he
found the later Tantra books to be as immoral
as they are absurd. “The pen,” he says, “refuses
to transcribe doctrines as miserable in respect of
form as they are odious and degrading in
respect of meaning.”
Such had been the decline and fall of
Buddhism considered as an ethical system
before its introduction into Tibet. The manner
in which its order of mendicant recluses, at first
founded to afford better opportunities to those
who wished to carry out that system in practical
life, developed at last into a hierarchical
monarchy will best be understood by a sketch
of the history of Tibet.
Its real history commences with Srong Tsan
Gampo, who was born a little after 600 A.D.,
and who is said in the Chinese chronicles to
have entered, in 634, into diplomatic
relationship with Tai Tsung, one of the
emperors of the Tang dynasty. He was the
founder of the present capital of Tibet, now
known as Lhasa; and in the year 622 (the same
year as that in which Mahomet fled from
Mecca) he began the formal introduction of
Buddhism into Tibet. For this purpose he sent
the minister Thumi Sambhota, afterwards
looked upon as an incarnation of Mañju-śrī, to
India, there to collect the sacred books, and to
learn and translate them.
Thumi Sambhota accordingly invented an
alphabet for the Tibetan language on the model
of the Indian alphabets then in use. And, aided
by the king, who is represented to have been an
industrious student and translator, he wrote the
first books by which Buddhism became known
in his native land. The most famous of the
works ascribed to him is the Mani Kambum,
“The Myriad of Precious Words”—a treatise
chiefly on religion, but which also contains an
account of the introduction of Buddhism into
Tibet, and of the closing part of the life of Srong
Tsan Gampo. He is also very probably the
author of another very ancient standard work of
Tibetan Buddhism, the Samatog, a short digest
of Buddhist morality, on which the civil laws of
Tibet have been founded. It is said in the Mani
Kambum to have fallen from heaven in a casket
(Tibetan, samatog), and, like the last-
mentioned work, is only known to us in meagre
abstract.
King Srong Tsan Gampo’s zeal for
Buddhism was shared and supported by his two
queens, Bribsun, a princess from Nepal, and
Wen Ching, a princess from China. They are
61
related to have brought with them sacred relics,
books and pictures, for whose better
preservation two large monasteries were
erected. These are the cloisters of La Brang
(Jokhang) and Ra Moché, still, though much
changed and enlarged, the most sacred abbeys
in Tibet, and the glory of Lhasa. The two
queens have become semi-divine personages,
and are worshipped under the name of the two
Dārā-Eke, the “glorious mothers,” being
regarded as incarnations of the wife of Śiva,
representing respectively two of the qualities
which she personifies, divine vengeance and
divine love. The former is worshipped by the
Mongolians as Okkin Tengri, “the Virgin
Goddess”; but in Tibet and China the role of the
divine virgin is filled by Kwan Yin, a
personification of Avalokiteśvara as the
heavenly word, who is often represented with a
child in her arms.
Srong Tsan Gampo has also become a saint,
being looked upon as an incarnation of
Avalokiteśvara; and the description in the
ecclesiastical historians of the measures he took
for the welfare of his subjects do great credit to
their ideal of the perfect Buddhist king. He is
said to have spent his long reign in the building
of reservoirs, bridges and canals; in the
promotion of agriculture, horticulture and
manufactures; in the establishment of schools
and colleges; and in the maintenance of justice
and the encouragement of virtue. But the degree
of his success must have been slight. For after
the death of himself and of his wives Buddhism
gradually decayed, and was subjected by
succeeding kings to cruel persecutions; and it
was not till more than half a century afterwards,
under King Kir Song de Tsan, who reigned
740–786, that true religion is acknowledged by
the ecclesiastical historians to have become
firmly established in the land.
This monarch again sent to India to replace
the sacred books that had been lost, and to invite
Buddhist pandits to translate them. The most
distinguished of those who came were Śānta
Rakshita, Padma Sambhava and Kamala Śīla
for whom, and for their companions, the king
built a splendid monastery still existing, at
Samje, about three days’ journey south-east of
Lhasa. It was to them that the Tibetans owed the
great collection of what are still regarded as
their sacred books—the Kandjur.
It consists of 100 volumes containing 689
works, of which there are two or three complete
sets in Europe, one of them in the India Office
library. A detailed analysis of these scriptures
has been published by the celebrated Hungarian
scholar Csoma de Körös, whose authoritative
work has been republished in French with
complete indices and very useful notes by M.
Leon Feer. These volumes contain about a
dozen works of the oldest school of Buddhism,
the Hīnayāna, and about 300 works, mostly
very short, belonging to the Tantra school. But
the great bulk of the collection consists of
Mahāyāna books, belonging to all the
previously existing varieties of that widely
extended Buddhist sect; and, as the Sanskrit
originals of many of these writings are now lost,
the Tibetan translations will be of great value,
not only for the history of Lāmāism, but also for
the history of the later forms of Indian
Buddhism.
The last king’s second son, Lang Darma,
concluded in May 822 a treaty with the then
emperor of China (the twelfth of the Tang
dynasty), a record of which was engraved on a
stone put up in the above-mentioned great
convent of La Brang (Jokhang), and is still to be
seen there.51 He is described in the church
chronicles as an incarnation of the evil spirit,
and is said to have succeeded in suppressing
Buddhism throughout the greater part of the
land. The period from Srong Tsan Gampo down
to the death of Lang Darma, who was murdered
about A.D. 850, in a civil war, is called in the
Buddhist books “the first introduction of
religion.”
51
 Published with facsimile and translation and notes in
the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1879–1880,
vol. xii. 
62
It was followed by more than a century of
civil disorder and wars, during which the exiled
Buddhist monks attempted unsuccessfully
again and again to return. Many are the stories
of martyrs and confessors who are believed to
have lived in these troublous times, and their
efforts were at last crowned with success, for in
the century commencing with the reign of
Bilamgur in 971 there took place “the second
introduction of religion” into Tibet, more
especially under the guidance of the pandit
Atīsha, who came to Tibet in 1041, and of his
famous native pupil and follower Brom Ston.
The long period of depression seems not to have
been without a beneficial influence on the
persecuted Buddhist church, for these teachers
are reported to have placed the Tantra system
more in the background, and to have adhered
more strongly to the purer forms of the
Mahāyāna development of the ancient faith.
For about three hundred years the Buddhist
church of Tibet was left in peace, subjecting the
country more and more completely to its
control, and growing in power and in wealth.
During this time it achieved its greatest victory,
and underwent the most important change in its
character and organization. After the
reintroduction of Buddhism into the “kingdom
of snow,” the ancient dynasty never recovered
its power. Its representatives continued for
some time to claim the sovereignty; but the
country was practically very much in the
condition of Germany at about the same time—
chieftains of almost independent power ruled
from their castles on the hill-tops over the
adjacent valleys, engaged in petty wars, and
conducted plundering expeditions against the
neighboring tenants, whilst the great abbeys
were places of refuge for the studious or
religious, and their heads were the only rivals to
the barons in social state, and in many respects
the only protectors and friends of the people.
 Meanwhile Jenghiz Khan had founded the
Mongol empire, and his grandson Kublai Khan
became a convert to the Buddhism of the
Tibetan Lamas. He granted to the abbot of the
Sākya monastery in southern Tibet the title of
tributary sovereign of the country, head of the
Buddhist church, and overlord over the
numerous barons and abbots, and in return was
officially crowned by the abbot as ruler over the
extensive domain of the Mongol empire. Thus
was the foundation laid at one and the same
time of the temporal sovereignty of the Lāmas
of Tibet, and of the suzerainty over Tibet of the
emperors of China.
One of the first acts of the “head of the
church” was the printing of a carefully revised
edition of the Tibetan Scriptures—an
undertaking which occupied altogether nearly
thirty years and was not completed till 1306.
Under Kublai’s successors in China the
Buddhist cause flourished greatly, and the
Sākya Lāmas extended their power both at
home and abroad. The dignity of abbot at Sākya
became hereditary, the abbots breaking so far
the Buddhist rule of celibacy that they remained
married until they had begotten a son and heir.
But rather more than half a century afterwards
their power was threatened by a formidable
rival at home, a Buddhist reformer.
Tsongkapa, the Luther of Tibet, was born
about 1357 on the spot where the famous
monastery of Kunbum now stands. He very
early entered the order, and studied at Sākya,
Brigung and other monasteries. He then spent
eight years as a hermit in Takpo in southern
Tibet, where the comparatively purer teaching
of Atīsha (referred to above) was still prevalent.
About 1390 he appeared as a public teacher and
reformer in Lhasa, and before his death in 1419
there were three huge monasteries there
containing 30,000 of his disciples, besides
others in other parts of the country. His
voluminous works, of which the most famous
are the Sumbun and the Lam Nim Tshenpo, exist
in printed Tibetan copies in Europe, but have
not yet been translated or analyzed. But the
63
principal lines on which his reformation
proceeded are sufficiently attested.
He insisted in the first place on the complete
carrying out of the ancient rules of the order as
to the celibacy of its members, and as to
simplicity in dress. One result of the second of
these two reforms was to make it necessary for
every monk openly to declare himself either in
favor of or against the new views. For
Tsongkapa and his followers wore the yellow
or orange-colored garments which had been the
distinguishing mark of the order in the lifetime
of its founder, and in support of the ancient
rules Tsongkapa reinstated the fortnightly
rehearsal of the Pātimokkha or “disburden-
ment” in regular assemblies of the order at
Lhasa—a practice which had fallen into
desuetude. He also restored the custom of the
first disciples to hold the so-called Vassa or
yearly retirement, and the public meeting of the
order at its close. In all these respects he was
simply following the directions of the Vinaya,
or regulations of the order, as established
probably in the time of Gotama himself, and as
certainly handed down from the earliest times
in the piṭakas or sacred books.
Further, he set his face against the Tantra
system, and against the animistic superstitions
which had been allowed to creep into life again.
He laid stress on the self-culture involved in the
practice of the pāramitās or cardinal virtues,
and established an annual national fast or week
of prayer to be held during the first days of each
year. This last institution indeed is not found in
the ancient Vinaya, but was almost certainly
modelled on the traditional account of the
similar assemblies convoked by Asoka and
other Buddhist sovereigns in India every fifth
year. Laymen as well as monks take part in the
proceedings, the details of which are unknown
to us except from the accounts of the Catholic
missionaries—Fathers Hue and Gabet—who
describe the principal ceremonial as, in outward
appearance, wonderfully like the high mass.
In doctrine the great Tibetan teacher, who
had no access to the Pāli Piṭakas, adhered in the
main to the purer forms of the Mahāyāna
school; in questions of church government he
took little part, and did not dispute the titular
supremacy of the Sākya Lāmas. But the effects
of his teaching weakened their power. The
“orange-hoods,” as his followers were called,
rapidly gained in numbers and influence, until
they so overshadowed the “red-hoods,” as the
followers of the older sect were called, that in
the middle of the 15th century the emperor of
China acknowledged the two leaders of the new
sect at that time as the titular overlords of the
church and tributary rulers over the realm of
Tibet. These two leaders were then known as
the Dalai Lāma and the Pantshen Lāma, and
were the abbots of the great monasteries at
Gedun Dubpa, near Lhasa, and at Tashi Lunpo,
in Farther Tibet, respectively. Since that time
the abbots of these monasteries have continued
to exercise the sovereignty over Tibet.
As there has been no further change in the
doctrine, and no further reformation in
discipline, we may leave the ecclesiastical
history of Lāmāism since that date unnoticed,
and consider some principal points on the
constitution of the Lāmāism of today. And first
as to the mode of electing successors to the two
Great Lāmas. It will have been noticed that it
was an old idea of the northern Buddhists to
look upon distinguished members of the order
as incarnations of Avalokiteśvara, of Mañju-śrī,
or of Amitābha. These beings were supposed to
possess the power, whilst they continued to live
in heaven, of appearing on earth in a
Nirmānakāya, or apparitional body.
In the same way the Pantshen Lāma is
looked upon as an incarnation, the Nirmāna-
kāya, of Amitābha, who had previously
appeared under the outward form of Tshonkapa
himself; and the Dalai Lāma is looked upon as
an incarnation of Avalokiteśvara. Theoretic-
ally, therefore, the former, as the spiritual
successor of the great teacher and also of
Amitābha, who occupies the higher place in the
52
  This statement representing the substantial and
historical position, is retained, in spite of the crises of
March 1910, when the Dalai Lāma took refuge from the
64
mythology of the Great Vehicle, would be
superior to the latter, as the spiritual
representative of Avalokiteśvara. But
practically the Dalai Lāma, owing to his
position in the capital,52 has the political
supremacy, and is actually called the Gyalpo
Rinpotshe, “the glorious king”—his companion
being content with the title Pantshen Rinpotshe,
“the glorious teacher.” When either of them
dies it is necessary for the other to ascertain in
whose body the celestial being whose outward
form has been dissolved has been pleased again
to incarnate himself.
For that purpose the names of all male
children born just after the death of the
deceascd Great Lāma are laid before his
survivor. He chooses three out of the whole
number; their names are thrown into a golden
casket provided for that purpose by a former
emperor of China. The Chutuktus, or abbots of
the great monasteries, then assemble, and after
a week of prayer, the lots are drawn in their
presence and in presence of the surviving Great
Lāma and of the Chinese political resident. The
child whose name is first drawn is the future
Great Lāma; the other two receive each of them
500 pieces of silver.
The Chutuktus just mentioned correspond in
many respects to the Roman cardinals. Like the
Great Lāmas, they bear the title of Rinpotshe or
Glorious, and are looked upon as incarnations
of one or other of the celestial Bodhisats of the
Great Vehicle mythology. Their number varies
from ten to a hundred; and it is uncertain
whether the honor is inherent in the abbacy of
certain of the greatest cloisters, or whether the
Dalai Lāma exercises the right of choosing
them. Under these high officials of the Tibetan
hierarchy there come the Chubil Khāns, who fill
the post of abbot to the lesser monasteries, and
are also incarnations. Their number is very
large; there are few monasteries in Tibet or in
Chinese in India, and of 1904, when the British
expedition occupied Lhasa and the Dalai Lāma fled to
China. 
Mongolia which do not claim to possess one of
these living Buddhas.
Besides these mystical persons there are in
the Tibetan church other ranks and degrees,
corresponding to the deacon, full priest, dean
and doctor of divinity in the West. At the great
yearly festival at Lhasa they make in the
cathedral an imposing array, not much less
magnificent than that of the clergy in Rome; for
the ancient simplicity of dress has disappeared
in the growing differences of rank, and each
division of the spiritual army is distinguished in
Tibet, as in the West, by a special uniform. The
political authority of the Dalai Lāma is confined
to Tibet itself, but he is the acknowledged head
also of the Buddhist church throughout
Mongolia and China. He has no supremacy over
his co-religionists in Japan, and even in China
there are many Buddhists who are not
practically under his control or influence.
The best work on Lāmaism is still Köppen’s
Die Lamaische Hierarchie und Kirche (Berlin,
NĀGĀRJUNA
Nāgārjuna was a celebrated Buddhist
philosopher and writer. He is constantly quoted
in the literature of the later schools of
Buddhism, and a very large number of works in
Sanskrit is attributed to him. None of these has
been critically edited or translated; and there is
much uncertainty as to the exact date of his
career, and as to his opinions. The most
probable date seems to be the early part of the
3rd century A.D. He seems to have been born in
the south of India, and to have lived under the
patronage of a king of southern Kosala, the
modern Chattisgarh. Chinese and Tibetan
authorities differ as to the name of this
monarch; but it apparently is meant to represent
an Indian name Sātavāhana, which is a dynastic
title, not a personal name.
65
1859). See also Bushell, “The Early History of
Tibet,” in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society, 1879–1880, vol. xii.; Sanang Setzen’s
History of the East Mongols (in Mongolian,
translated into German by J. Schmidt,
Geschichte der Ost-Mongolen); “Analyse du
Kandjur,” by M. Léon Feer, in Annales du
Musée Gaimet (1881); Schott, Ueber den
Buddhismus in Hoch-Asien; Gutzlaff,
Geschichte des Chinesischen Reiches; Hue and
Gabet, Souvenirs d’un voyage dans la Tartarie,
le Tibet, et la Chine (Paris, 1858); Pallas’s
Sammlung historischer Nachrichten uber die
Mongolischen Völkerschaften; Bābu Sarat
Chunder Das’s “Contributions on the Religion
and History of Tibet,” in the Journal of the
Bengal Asiatic Society, 1881; L. A. Waddell,
The Buddhism of Tibet (London, 1895); A. H.
Francke, History of Western Tibet (London,
1907); A. Grünwedel, Mythologie des
Buddhismus in Tibet und der Mongolei (Berlin,
1900).
Of the works he probably wrote one was a
treatise advocating the Mādhyamaka views of
which he is the reputed founder; another a long
and poetical prose work on the stages of the
Bodhisattva career; and a third a voluminous
commentary on the Mahāprajñā-pārāmitā
Sutra. Chinese tradition ascribes to him special
knowledge of herbs, of astrology, of alchemy
and of medicine. Two medical treatises, one on
prescriptions in general, the other on the
treatment of eye-disease, are said, by Chinese
writers, to be by him. Several poems of a
didactic character are also ascribed to him. The
best known of these poems is The Friendly
Epistle addressed to King Udayana. A
translation into English of a Tibetan version of
this piece has been published by Dr Wenzel.
 AUTHORITIES.—H. Wenzel, Journal of the
Pali Text Society (1866), pp. 1–32; T. Watters,
On Yuan Chwdng, ed. by Rhys Davids and S.
W. Bushcll (London, 1904–1905). Tāranātha’s
MEDHANKARA
Medhankara was the name of several
distinguished members, in medieval times, of
the Buddhist order. The oldest flourished about
A.D. 1200, and was the author of the Vinaya
Artha Samuccaya, a work in the Sinhalese
language on Buddhist canon law. Next to him
came Araññaka Medhankara, who presided
over the Buddhist council held at Polonnaruwa,
then the capital of Ceylon, in 1250. The third
Vanaratana Medhankara, flourished in 1280,
and wrote a poem in Pāli, Jina Carita, on the
life of the Buddha. He also wrote the Payoga
66
Geschichte des Buddhismus in Indien, trans.
Anton Schiefner (Leipzig, 1869); W.
Wassiljew, Der Buddhismus (Leipzig, 1860).
Siddhi. The fourth was the celebrated scholar to
whom King Parākrama Bahu IV. of Ceylon
entrusted in 1307 the translation from Pāli into
Sinhalese of the Jātaka book, the most
voluminous extant work in Sinhalese. The fifth,
a Burmese, was called the Sangharaja Nava
Medhankara, and wrote in Pāli a work entitled
the Loka Padīpa Sura, on cosmogony and allied
subjects.
See the Journal of the Pāli Text Society,
1882, p. 126; 1886, pp. 62, 67, 72; 1890, p. 63;
1896, p. 43; Mahāvaṃsa, ch. xl., verse 85.