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Art. XVI.— Quotations in Proof of his Sketch of Buddhism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2011
Extract
Several distinguished Orientalists having, whilst they applauded the novelty and importance of the information conveyed by the Sketch of Buddhism, called upon me for proofs, I have been induced to prepare for publication the following translation of significant passages from the ancient books of the Saugatas, which are still extant in Nepál in the original Sanskrit. These extracts were made for me (whilst I was collecting the works in question) some years ago by Amrita Nanda Bandya, the most learned Buddhist then, or now, living in this country; they formed the materials from which chiefly I drew my sketch, and they would have been long since communicated to the public had the translator felt sufficiently confident of his powers, or sufficiently assured that enlightened Europeans could be brought to tolerate the rudis indigestaque moles of these original authorities, which, however, in the present instance, are original in a far higher and better sense than those of Csoma De Körös, or of Upham.
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References
page 288 note 1 See Quarto Transactions, R. A. S. vol. ii. page 222.
page 288 note 2 The collection in question consists of some sixty large vols., in Sanskrit, which were procured in Nepál, and the very names of which had previously been unknown; and of nearly 250 volumes (including duplicates) in the Tibetan language, which were obtained from Lassa and Digarchí. But for the existence of the latter at Calcutta, Mr. De Körös's attainments in the Bhoteah tongue had been comparatively useless. I shall be happy to provide copies of the above works for any learned body which may be desirous to possess them. The former, or Sanskrit books preserved in Nepál, are the sole authorities relied on in this paper.
page 289 note 1 The slight difference between high Prákrit and Sanskrit cannot affect the question, though it were conceded that the founders of Buddhism used the former and not the latter — a concession, however, which should not be readily made.
page 290 note 1 See the Buddha Disputation on Caste.—R. A. S. Trans, vol. i. p. 160.Google Scholar
page 290 note 2 See Craufurd's remarks on the purely Indian character of all the great sculptural monuments of Buddhism in Java.
page 291 note 1 Once for all I beg to say, that I disclaim all intention of controversy in reference to my own creed, to which I allude merely for illustration's sake.
page 291 note 2 Its distinguishing doctrine is, that finite mind can be enlarged to infinite. All the schools uphold this towering tenet, and postpone all others to it. As for the scepticism of the Swábhávikas, relative to those transcendent marvels, creation and providence, it is sufficient to prove its remoteness from flat atheism simply to point to the coexistence of the cardinal tenet first named. The essence of atheism is expressed in the ancient “post mortem nihil est, ipsa mors nil.”
page 293 note 1 Observations, p. 29.
page 294 note 1 Dháranátmika iti Dharma, i.e. the holding, containing, or sustaining substance, is Dharma. Again, Prakrités′wari ití Prajná, i.e. the material goddess, is Prajná, one of the names of Dharma.
page 295 note 1 See the classified enumeration of the principal objects of Buddha worship in the sequel, Appendix B.
page 296 note 1 Tathátá, sajs the comment, is Satya jnyán, and Bhávana is Bháva or Sattá, i. e. sheer entity.
page 297 note 1 Here is a plain indication of that denial of self-consciousness, or personality, in the causa causarum, which constitutes the main feature of Buddha philosophical religionism, and into which I have no doubt the Buddhists were drawn by the equally extravagant universal prosopopoeia of the Bráhmans. It is a consequence of the above Saugata maxim, that their moral law is, like Dr. Clarke's fitness of things, a principle independent of the will of God. If such notions constitute atheism, the Buddhists are, for the most part, atheists. Excluding, however, a small and mean sect, they all admit eternal, necessary entity, endowed with intelligence and activity in their first cause or causes; and they all assert the soul's existence beyond the grave, together with the doctrine of atonement. Criticism is not my province; but I can hardly forbear in this place to remark, that Newton's judgment, “Deus sine providentiâ el dominio nihil est nisi fatum et natura,” is the only true and sound one; and that the Swábhávika doctrine is, after all, a sad confusion of cause and effect.
page 298 note 1 One comment on the comment, says átmá here means sthána or álaya, i.e. the ubi of creation.
page 298 note 2 By “et cetera,” understand always “more Brahmanorum.”
page 298 note 3 Swa, own, and Bháva, nature, force.
page 300 note 1 “This important word is compounded of tathá, thus; and gata, gone, or got; and is explained in the three following ways: —1st. Thus got or obtained, viz. the rank of a Tathágata, got by observance of the rules prescribed for the acquisition of perfect wisdom, of which acquisition total cessation of births is the efficient consequence; 2d. Thus-gone, viz. the mundane existence of the Tathágata, gone so as never to return, mortal births having been closed and nirvritti obtained by perfection of knowledge; 3d. Gone in the same manner as it or they (birth or births) came—the sceptical and necessitarian conclusion of those who hold that both metempsychosis and absorption are beyond our intellect (as objects of knowledge) and independent of our efforts, (as objects of desire and aversion, contingencies to which we are liable); and that that which causes births causes likewise (proprio vigore) the ultimate cessation of them. The epithet Tathágata, therefore, can only be applied to the self-existent Ádi Buddha, who was never incarnated in a figurative, or, at least, a restricted sense, cessation of births being the essence of what it implies. I have seen the question and answer—what is the Tathagata? It comes not again — proposed and solved by the Raksha Bhagavati, in the very spirit and even words of the Védas. One amongst a thousand instances that have occurred to me to prove how thoroughly Indian Buddhism is Tathágata, thus gone, or gone as he came, as applied to Ádi Buddha, alludes to this voluntary secession from the versatile world into that of abstraction, of which no mortal can predicate more than that the departure and the advent are alike simple results of his volition. Some authors substitute this interpretation, exclusively applicable to Ádi Buddha, for the third sceptical and general interpretation above given.”
page 302 note 1 So I render, after much inquiry, the Shad Áyatan, or six seats of the senses, external and internal, and which are in detail as follows:—Rúpa, Sabda, Gandha, Rasa, Sparsa, Dharma. There is an obvious difficulty as to Sparsa, and some also as to Dharma. The whole category of the Áyatans expresses outward things, and after much investigation I gather, that under Rúpa is comprised not only colour but form too, so far as its discrimination (or, in Kármika terms, its existence) depends on sight; and that all other unspecified properties of body are referred to Sparsa, which, therefore, includes not only temperature, roughness, and smooth, ness, and hardness, and its opposite, but also gravity, and even extended figure, though not extension in the abstract. Here we have not merely the secondary or sensible properties of matter, but also the primary ones; and, as the existence of the Áyatans, or outward objects perceived, is said to be derived from the Indríyas (or from manas, which is their collective energy), in other words, to be derived from the mere exercise of the percipient powers, the Kármika system amounts to immaterialism. Nor is there any difficulty thence arising in reference to the Karmika doctrine, which clearly affirms that theory, by its derivation of all things from pratyaya or from Avidyá. But the Indriyas and Áyatans, with their necessary connexion (and possibly, also, the making Avidyá the source of all things), belong likewise to the Swábhávika school;* and, in regard to it, it will require a nice hand to exhibit this Berkleyan notion existing co-ordinately with the leading tenet of the Swábhávikas. In the way of explanation I may observe, that the denial of material entity involved in the Indríya and Áyatan theory (as in that of Avidyá), respects solely the versatile world of pravritti, or of specific forms merely, and does not touch the nirvrittika state of formative powers and of primal substances, to which latter, in that condition, the qualities of gravity, and even of extended figure, in any sense cognisable by human faculties, are denied, at the same time that the real and even eternal existence of those substances in that state is affirmed.
page 302 note 2 Though Dharma, the sixth Ayatan, be rendered by virtue, the appropriated object of the internal sense, it must be remembered that most of the Swábhávikas, whilst they deny a moral ruler of the universe, affirm the existence of morality as a part of the system of nature; others again (the minority) of the Swábhávikas reject the sixth Indríya and sixth Áyatan, and with them the sixth Buddha, or Vajra Satwa, who, by the way, is the Magnus Apollo of the Tántrikas— a sect, the mystic and obscene character of whose ritual, is redeemed by its unusually explicit enunciation and acknowledgment of a God above all.
The published explanations of the procession of all things from Avidyá, appear to me irreconcileably to conflict with the ideal basis of the theory.
* I speak generically, and refer to one branch especially of the Swábbávikas.
page 303 note 1 Daivya identified with Ádi Buddha by the theistic, and with fate by the atheistic doctors.
page 304 note 1 Brahmá; but here understood to be Karma.
page 305 note 1 The comment names them thus: — Swábhávika, Aiswarika, Yátnika, and Kármika. I do not find in Bauddha books those titles by which the Bráhmans distinguished the several schools of Saugata philosophy.
page 305 note 2 A Daitya of Kánchanapura, personification of the principle of evil.
page 306 note 1 One in nirvritti, the other in pravritti; and so of all the preceding contrasted epithets.
page 307 note 1 Comment says, Nairátmya is Sarva Dharmánám nirabbás lakshanam, and that tírtha means moksha, and kutírtha, any perversion of the doctrine of moksha; as to say, it consists in absorption into Brahma: and it explains the whole thus:— He thunders in the ears of all those who misinterpret moksha; there is no true moksha but súnyatá. Another comment gives the sense thus, dividing it into two parts:—There is no átma without him; he alarms the wicked as the lion the deer.
page 307 note 2 White, blue, yellow, red, and green, assigned to the five Dhyáni Buddhas. For a detail of the thirty-two lakshanas, eighty vyanjanas, five balas, five basitas, five jnyáns, five káyas, five drishtis, &c, of this and the neighbouring quotations, see Appendix A.
page 308 note 1 The comment on this passage is very full and very curious, inasmuch as it reduces many of these supreme deities to mere parts of speech. Here is the summing up of the comment: — He (Ádi Buddha) is the instructor of the Buddhas, and of the Bodhi-satwas; he is known by the knowledge of spiritual wisdom; he is the creator and destroyer of all tilings—the fountain of virtue. Spiritual wisdom is stated to consist of Síla, Samiáhi, Prajná, Vimukti, and Jnyán.
page 308 note 2 That is, one leg tucked under, and the other advanced and resting on the bow of the moon-crescent.
page 309 note 1 The force of the question, says the comment, is this: “Of course the wise do and thee.”
page 310 note 1 Sugatajá; which the Vámáchárs render, “Of whom Buddha was born;” the Dakshináchárs, “born of Buddha,” or, “the goer to Buddha,” as wife to husband.
page 311 note 1 Composed by Sarvajna Mitrapada, of Cashmir, and in very high esteem, though not of Scriptural authority.
page 311 note 2 Dharmodyasangata Kámarúpini, variously rendered, “Well got from the rise of virtue,” and “Well got from the rise or origin of the world;” also as in the text. Dharmodya, the source of being, means also the Yoni, typified by a triangle (see the twenty-first quotation). The triangle is a constant type of the Buddha saktis, also of the triad, 
the point in the midst symbols either Ádi Buddha, or Ádi Prajná, according to the Dakshináchári, or Vámáchári tendency of his opinions who uses the type. The commentator is a Vámáchári.
page 312 note 1 Type of creative power.
page 312 note 2 Such is the Aiswarika reading; the Prájnikas read, “from the union of Prajná and Upáya.” With the former, Upáya is Ádi Buddha, the efficient and plastic cause, or only the former; and Prajná is Ádi Dharma, plastic cause,—a biunity with Buddha, or only a product. With the latter, Upáya is the energy of Prajná, the universal material cause. The original text, as I believe, is Prajnon páyátmakam jagata, which I thus translate: “From the universal material principle, in a state of activity, proceeded the world.” This original text has, however, undergone two transformations, to suit it to the respective doctrines of the Aiswarikas, and of the Kármikas. The version of the former is, Upáyprajnamakang Sanga; that of the latter is, Upayprajnátmakang manasa. Of both these versions, the Upáya is identical with Ádi Buddha, and the Prajná with Ádi Dharma. But the result—the unsophisticated jagat of the Prájnikas — becomes Ádi Sangi, a creator, with the Aiswarikas; and Manas, the sentient principle in man, the first production and producer of all other things and beings, with the Kármikas.
Avidyá, or the condition of mundane things and existences, is an illusion alike with the Prájnikas and with the Karmikas. But, whilst the former consider Avidya the universal affection of the one material and immediate cause of all things whatever, the latter regard Avidyá as an affection of Manas merely, which they hold to be an immaterial principle, and the mediate cause of all things else. Ádi Buddha, solely, is their final cause. The phenomena of both are homogeneous and unreal; but the Prájnikas derive them directly from a material source; the Kármikas, indirectly, from an immaterial fount. Our sober European thoughts and language can scarcely cope with such extravagances as these; but it would seem we must call the one doctrine material, the other immaterial, idealism. The phenomena of the Prájnikas are mere energies of matter; those of the Kármikas are mere human perceptions. The notions of the former rest on general grounds; those of the latter on particular ones, or, as it has been phrased, upon putting “the world into a man's self.”