Note 77 — INTRODUCTION (continued 2)

[Footnote 77: The history of Japan and Tibet offers some exceptions.] [Footnote 78: There are some exceptions, e.g. ancient Camboja, the Sikhs and the Marathas.] [Footnote 79: But there are other kinds of worship, such as the old Vedic sacrifices which are still occasionally performed, and the burnt offerings (homa) still made in some temples. There are also tantric ceremonies and in Assam the public worship of the Vishnuites has probably been influenced by the ritual of Lamas in neighbouring Buddhist countries.] [Footnote 80: This position is of great importance as tending to produce a similar arrangement of religious paraphernalia. The similarity disappears when Buddhist ceremonies are performed round Stûpas out of doors.] [Footnote 81: As explained elsewhere, I draw a distinction between Tantrism and Śâktism.] [Footnote 82: It does not seem to me to have given much inspiration to Rossetti in his Aatarte Syriaca.] [Footnote 83: But in justice to the Tantras it should be mentioned that the Mahâ-nirvâṇa Tantra, x. 79, prohibits the burning of widows.] [Footnote 84: See Asiatic Review, July, 1916, p. 33.] [Footnote 85: E.g. Vijayanagar, the Marathas and the states of Rajputana.] [Footnote 86: According to the census of 1911 no less than 72 per cent. of the population live by agriculture.] [Footnote 87: The chief exceptions are: (a) the Tibetan church has acquired and holds power by political methods. It is an exact parallel to the Papacy, but it has never burnt people. (b) In mediæval Japan the great monasteries became fortified castles with lands and troops of their own. They fought one another and were a menace to the state. Later the Tokugawa sovereigns had the assistance of the Buddhist clergy in driving out Christianity but I do not think that their action can be compared either in extent or cruelty with the Inquisition. (c) In China Buddhism was in many reigns associated with a dissolute court and palace intrigues. This led to many scandals and great waste of money.] [Footnote 88: See for instance Huxley's striking definition of Buddhism in his Romanes Lecture, 1893. "A system which knows no God in the western sense; which denies a soul to man: which counts the belief in immortality a blunder and the hope of it a sin: which refuses any efficacy to prayer and sacrifice: which bids men look to nothing but their own efforts for salvation: which in its original purity knew nothing of vows of obedience and never sought the aid of the secular arm: yet spread over a considerable moiety of the old world with marvellous rapidity and is still with whatever base admixture of foreign superstitions the dominant creed of a large fraction of mankind." But some of this is too strongly phrased. Early Buddhism counted the desire for heaven as a hindrance to the highest spiritual life, but if a man had not attained to that plane and was bound to be reborn somewhere, it did not question that his natural desire to be reborn in heaven was right and proper.] [Footnote 89: It may of course be denied that Buddhism is a religion. In this connection some remarks of Mr Bradley are interesting. "The doctrine that there cannot be a religion without a personal God is to my mind entirely false" (Essays on Truth and Reality, p. 432). "I cannot accept a personal God as the ultimate truth" (ib. 449). "There are few greater responsibilities which a man can take on himself than to have proclaimed or even hinted that without immortality all religion is a cheat, all morality a self-deception" (Appearance and Reality, p. 510).] [Footnote 90: Mahâvaṃsa, xii. 29, xiv. 58 and 64. Dîpavaṃsa, xn. 84 and 85, xiii. 7 and 8.] [Footnote 91: Essays in Criticism, Second Series, Amiel.] [Footnote 92: This definition of orthodoxy is due to St Vincent of Lerins. Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est.] [Footnote 93: I know that this statement may encounter objections, but I believe that few Indians would be surprised at the proposition that God is all things. Some might deny it, but as a familiar error.] [Footnote 94: But orthodox Christianity really falls into the same difficulty. For if God planned the redemption of the world and we are saved by the death of Christ, then the Chief Priests, Judas, Pilate and the soldiers who crucified Christ are at least the instruments of salvation.] [Footnote 95: Wm James, Psychology, pp. 203 and 216.] [Footnote 96: I quote this epitome from Wildon Carr's Henri Bergson, The Philosophy of Change, because the phraseology is thoroughly Buddhist and appears to have the approval of M. Bergson himself.] [Footnote 97: Romanes Lecture, 1893.] [Footnote 98: Appearance, p. 298.] [Footnote 99: Thus the Śvetâśvatara Up. says that the whole world is filled with the parts or limbs of God and metaphors like sparks from a fire or threads from a spider seem an attempt to express the same idea. Br. Ar. Up. 2. 1. 20; Mund. Up. 2. 1. 1.] [Footnote 100: Appearance, p. 244; Essays on Truth, p. 409; Appearance, p. 413. Though the above quotations are all from Mr Bradley I might have added others from Mr Bosanquet's Gifford Lectures and from Mr McTaggart.] [Footnote 101: "The plurality of souls in the Absolute is therefore appearance and their existence not genuine ... souls like their bodies, are as such nothing more than appearance—Neither (body and soul) is real in the end: each is merely phenomenal." Appearance, pp. 305-307.] [Footnote 102: Since I wrote this I have read Mr Wells' book God the Invisible King. Mr Wells knows that he is indebted to oriental thought and thinks that European religion in the future may be so too, but I do not know if he realizes how nearly his God coincides with the Mahayanist conception of a Bodhisattva such as Avalokita or Mañjuśri. These great beings have, as Bodhisattvas, a beginning: they are not the creators of the world but masters and conquerors of it and helpers of mankind: they have courage and eternal youth and Mañjuśri "bears a sword, that clean discriminating weapon." Like most Asiatics, Mr Wells cannot allow his God to be crucified and he draws a distinction between God and the Veiled Being, very like that made by Indians between Îśvara and Brahman.] [Footnote 103: The Malay countries are the only exception.] [Footnote 104: Thus Motoori (quoted in Aston's Shintō, p. 9) says "Birds, beasts, plants and trees, seas and mountains and all other things whatsoever which deserve to be dreaded and revered for the extraordinary and pre-eminent powers which they possess are called Kami."] [Footnote 105: This impersonality is perhaps a later characteristic. The original form of the Chinese character for T'ien Heaven represented a man. The old Finnish and Samoyede names for God—Ukko and Num—perhaps belong to this stage of thought.] [Footnote 106: See the account of the Faunus message in this book.] [Footnote 107: The chief exception in Sanskrit is the Râjataranginî, a chronicle of Kashmir composed in 1148 A.D. There are also a few panegyrics of contemporary monarchs, such as the Harshacarita of Bâṇa, and some of the Puranas (especially the Matsya and Vâyu) contain historical material. See Vincent Smith, Early History of India, chap. I, sect. II, and Pargiter Dynasties of the Kali Age. The Greek and Roman accounts of Ancient India have been collected by McCrindle in six volumes 1877-1901.] [Footnote 108: The inscriptions of the Chola Kings however (c. 1000 A.D.) seem to boast of conquests to the East of India. See Coedès "Le royaume de Çrîvijaya" in B.E.F.E.O. 1918] [Footnote 109: Very different opinions have been held as to whether this date should be approximately 1500 B.C. or 3000 B.C. The strong resemblance of the hymns of the Ṛig Veda to those of the Avesta is in favour of the less ancient date, but the date of the Gathas can hardly be regarded as certain.] [Footnote 110: Linguistically there seems to be two distinct divisions, the Dravidians and the Munda (Kolarian).] [Footnote 111: The affinity between the Dravidian and Ural-Altaic groups of languages has often been suggested but has met with scepticism. Any adequate treatment of this question demands a comparison of the earliest forms known in both groups and as to this I have no pretension to speak. But circumstances have led me to acquire at different times some practical acquaintance with Turkish and Finnish as well as a slight literary knowledge of Tamil and having these data I cannot help being struck by the general similarity shown in the structure both of words and of sentences (particularly the use of gerunds and the constructions which replace relative sentences) and by some resemblances in vocabulary. On the other hand the pronouns and consequently the conjugation of verbs show remarkable differences. But the curious Brahui language, which is classed as Dravidian, has negative forms in which pa is inserted into the verb, as in Yakut Turkish, e.g. Yakut bis-pa-ppin, I do not cut; Brahui khan-pa-ra, I do not see. The plural of nouns in Brahui uses the suffixes k and t which are found in the Finnish group and in Hungarian.] [Footnote 112: See the legend in the Śat. Brâh. I. 4. 1. 14 ff.] [Footnote 113: This much seems sure but whereas European scholars were till recently agreed that he died about 487 B.C. it is now suggested that 543 may be nearer the true date. See Vincent Smith in Oxford History of India, 1920, p. 48.] [Footnote 114: Pali Takkasila. Greek Taxila. It was near the modern Rawal Pindi and is frequently mentioned in the Jâtakas as an ancient and well-known place.] [Footnote 115: Most of them are known by the title of Śâtakarṇi.] [Footnote 116: But perhaps not in language. Recent research makes it probable that the Kushans or Yüeh-chih used an Iranian idiom.] [Footnote 117: Fleet and Franke consider that Kanishka preceded the two Kadphises and began to reign about 58 B.C.] [Footnote 118: He appears to have been defeated in these regions by the Chinese general Pan-Chao about 90 A.D. but to have been more successful about fifteen years later.] [Footnote 119: Or Hephthalites. The original name seems to have been something like Haptal.] [Footnote 120: Strabo XV. 4. 73.] [Footnote 121: Hist. Nat. VI. 23. (26).] [Footnote 122: For authorities see Vincent Smith, Early History of India, 1908, p. 401.] [Footnote 123: The inscriptions of Asoka mention four kingdoms, Pândya, Keralaputra, Cola and Satiyaputra.] [Footnote 124: Hinduism is often used as a name for the mediaeval and modern religion of India, and Brahmanism for the older pre-Buddhist religion. But one word is needed as a general designation for Indian religion and Hinduism seems the better of the two for this purpose.] [Footnote 125: Excluding Burma the last Census gives over 300,000. These are partly inhabitants of frontier districts, which are Indian only in the political sense, and partly foreigners residing in India.] [Footnote 126: Only tradition preserves the memory of an older and freer system, when warriors like Viśvâmitra were able by their religious austerities to become Brahmans. See Muir's Sanskrit texts, vol. I. pp. 296-479 on the early contests between Warriors and Brahmans. We hear of Kings like Janaka of Videha and Ajâtaśatru of Kâśi who were admitted to be more learned than Brahmans but also of Kings like Vena and Nahusha who withstood the priesthood "and perished through want of submissiveness." The legend of Paraśurâma, an incarnation of Vishnu as a Brahman who destroyed the Kshatriya race, must surely have some historical foundation, though no other evidence is forthcoming of the events which it relates.] [Footnote 127: In southern India and in Assam the superiors of monasteries sometimes exercise a quasi-episcopal authority.] [Footnote 128: Śat. Brâhm. v. 3. 3. 12 and v. 4. 2. 3.] [Footnote 129: The Mârkaṇḍeya Purâṇa discusses the question how Kṛishṇa could become a man.] [Footnote 130: See for instance The Holy Lives of the Azhvars by Alkondavilli Govindâcârya. Mysore, 1902, pp. 215-216. "The Dravida Vedas have thus as high a sanction and authority as the Girvana (i.e. Sanskrit) Vedas."] [Footnote 131: I am inclined to believe that the Lingâyat doctrine really is that Lingâyats dying in the true faith do not transmigrate any more.] [Footnote 132: E.g. Brih.-Âr. III. 2. 13 and IV. 4. 2-6.] [Footnote 133: This is the accepted translation of dukkha but perhaps it is too strong, and uneasiness, though inconvenient for literary reasons, gives the meaning better.] [Footnote 134: The old Scandinavian literature with its gods who must die is equally full of this sense of impermanence, but the Viking temperament bade a man fight and face his fate.] [Footnote 135: But see Rabindrannath Tagore: Sadhana, especially the Chapter on Realization.] [Footnote 136: Cf. Shelley's lines in Hellas:—