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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
The recent annexation of Upper Burmah will probably give an impulse to the study of Buddhism. At any rate, the fact that the sacred books of the Southern Buddhists are beingmade accessible through Professor Oldenberg's edition of the Vinaya-piṭaka,—through the works of Professor Rhys Davids and other scholars,—and more especially through the valuable publications of the Pāli Text Society, is likely, I hope, to cause a considerable accession to the ranks of Pāli scholars.
page 129 note 1 Except it be Karma ‘act,’ but Buddhism does not undertake to explain how the first act originated.
page 130 note 1 This, I admit, is not consistent with what I said in Indian Wisdom (p. 55), but when I wrote that work the Tripitaka was not so well known as it is now.
page 133 note 1 I do not mean by this to affirm as a certainty that the Katha Upanishad, though ancient, was pre-Buddhistic. Its exact date is immaterial; it must be taken in conjunction with the Mantra in the Rig-Veda and other passages, as proving the great antiquity of the idea of this tree's sacredness.
page 135 note 1 Comparing Western with Eastern Monachism, I may remark that the chief duty of the lay hrethren attached to the monastery at Fountain's Abbey in York-shire was to wait upon the monks, procure food and cook it for them and we learn from an interesting article on the Charterhouse in the Times of December 24th, 1885, that the same duty devolved on the Carthusian lay brothers.
page 135 note 2 In China at the present day the Emperor practises simultaneously Confucianism, Buddhism and Tauism.
page 135 note 3 See Wilson's aud Burnouf's translations.
page 136 note 1 No doubt there are places in the South of India where there is evidence of some violent persecution. I may instance among the places I visited the Temples of Tanjore and Madura. When I concluded the reading of this paper at the meeting of the Society on February 15, 1886, our President, Colonel Yule, very justly remarked that the members of two religious communions who hold very similar doctrines often on that account hate and oppose each other all the more; but my point is that the intense tolerance and eclecticism that characterized both Brāhmanism and Buddhism must have prevented mutual persecution, except under special circumstances. Brāhmanism was much more likely to have adopted Buddhism as part of its system than to have persecuted and expelled it. In point of fact, the Brāhmans, as is well known, turned the Buddha into one of Vishnu's incarnations, very much as they are ready to turn the Founder of Christianity also.
page 138 note 1 He even asserted that birth in a Brāhman family would be a reward for merit. According to Burnouf “very little difference appears between the Buddhists and Brāhmans in the early Buddhist writings, and Buddha is often described as followed by a crowd of Brāhmans as well as of Bhikkhus.” See Journal R.A.S. o.s. Vol. XII. p. 242.Google Scholar
page 139 note 1 The three ways are usually expressed in Sanskrit by Karman, Bhakti, and Jñāna respectively; but the doctrine of Bhakti was not fully developed till after the time of Buddha, though the Upanishads prove that the practice of devotion (as expressed by Upāsanā) must have existed.
page 141 note 1 S'ata-patha-brāhmaṇa xiv. 7, 2, 17.
page 142 note 1 Centenarians (S'atāyus, S'ata-varsha) seem to have been rather common in India in ancient times, if we may judge by the allusions to them in Manu and other works. See Manu, iii. 186; ii. 135, 137.
page 143 note 1 By this I do not mean to imply that the Yoga definition was necessarily the first in point of time.
page 145 note 1 Sometimes a human being is said to be made up of the five elements—ether, air, fire, water, earth—with a sixth called Vijñāna, consciousness.
page 148 note 1 Proverbs iv. 18.
page 148 note 2 Dhammapada, 127, 219 (Dr. Oldenberg's Buddha, p. 243), with a slight variation of phraseology.
page 149 note 1 These lines constitute the text of the 70th chapter of George Eliot's “Middlemarch.”
page 150 note 1 Shelley's Hellas.
page 152 note 1 The three chief fires are lust, infatuation and hatred.
page 153 note 1 Prof. Rhys Davids holds that the Buddha did not advocate the suppression of good desires.