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- Lucifer, vol. 2, no. 8, April 1888, pp. 108-117
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Title for references: Edkins J. - Buddhist Doctrine of the Western Heaven
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108
On the interest attaching to the hope of a future life developed amongst the Northern Buddhists, not a word need to be said.
This hope has been powerful amongst them for nearly 2,000 years. In their monastic homes in Tartary, where sometimes as many as 5,000 believers live together, under a system of Buddhist studies, prayers, and ascetic observances, the hope of a future life mingles as an important element. While some think more of the Nirvana as their hope, and give themselves up to happy reverie, as they think of the union with Buddha which is attained by the loss of personality,[2] many more prefer to meditate on the Paradise of Amitabha, the Buddha of a world situated in the West, beyond the region of the fixed stars, as the home they may attain by the merciful help of Buddha.
All over Thibet, China, Mongolia, and Japan, this hope exists amongst the Buddhists. And it is a curious question whether it was occasioned by Persian or by Christian influence, or whether it was entirely self-originated.[3] It is proposed in this paper to place before the reader the evidence from Chinese sources, by which it may be learned that this doctrine began in India and spread in the Punjaub and Affghanistan shortly before the Christian era, and that it was adopted by the Buddhist writers of the age for such reasons as the following: They regarded it as a powerful engine for aiding in the cure of worldliness by intensifying the meditative reveries of the monks. It was adapted to deepen the religious feelings and to multiply the religious activity of lay Buddhists of all classes and both sexes. Further, it added variety to the forms of happiness which Buddhism gives to believers. [4]
Buddhist works began to be translated into Chinese about the year 67 A.D. The first was the book of 42 sections. It is moral and didactic, 109and in no respect legendary. Nothing is said here of the Paradise of the Western Heaven; but the translator was born in Bengal and travelled to China by the route across the mountains in Central Asia. Previous to this he had visited Western India or the Bombay Presidency. Here in a small kingdom Kashiapmadanga our hero was invited to explain the “Book of Golden Light.” Just as the assembly was gathered and he was preparing his instructions, an invading army from a neighbouring country arrived at the border. Here the enemy found difficulties and suspected some magic influence preventing his advance. He sent an ambassador, who, on reaching the capital, found the Buddhist monk addressing the assembly on the mode of protecting the state. The two states then made a treaty of peace at the instance of the invader, and Buddhism was taught in both countries.
Belief in the magical powers of the Buddhists had much to do with the spread of their religions, and not less influential was the superstitious regard for the sacred books,[5] which it was supposed could save kingdoms from war. Among the most famous of these works is the Sutra of Golden Light. It is the Alten Gerel of the Mongols, by whom it is regarded as a talisman of particular efficacy. It is the Chinese Chin kwang ming ching, and is viewed as the most honoured of all the Buddhist sacred books. Hence its title “King of the Sutras.” With the Mongols it is an object of worship, and is kept on the same shelf or table which, in the tents of the land of grass, serves as an altar, and here it is regaled with the same incense and is honoured with the same offerings as the images. In this book, the Buddha of boundless age, Amitabha, is mentioned, and this is apparently the germ from which the doctrine of the Western Heaven was afterwards developed.
In our uncertainty with regard to the origin of the Buddhist hope of a Western Paradise, it is an advantage to find in this book some definite statements. The legend is connected with the city of Rajagriha in Central India, and it originated, it would seem, in a vision of a Bodhisattwa who was named Sinsiang (image of faith). He felt uneasy at the thought that Buddha had only lived to be eighty years of age and yet was so full of merit, as shewn in his avoiding the destruction of life, and his abundant gifts of food to the hungry. To meet his doubts, as he sits at home, his house suddenly begins to grow larger. The floor was tesselated with precious stones and red porcelain. The aspect of everything was glorified as if it were the peaceful land of the Buddhas. Sweet odours breathed through the air, and four thrones were seen, one on each side. Flowers were placed around them, and on each sat a Buddha. That on the east was Akshobya, and that on the west the 110Buddha of boundless age. Light shot forth from each lion-throne, illuminating the city of Rajagriha and the whole universe.
The happy land of the West is not here mentioned, but the Buddha of boundless age, who belonged to the West, would lead to it. The legend then appears here in an imperfect form. The probability is that this is the legend in the germ, and that the works in which it is found fully developed are later. If this supposition be correct, and if this be the germ of the paradise of the Western Heaven, it is a matter of great importance to know that it began in the city of Rajagriha, one of the first cities where Buddhism prevailed, and further, that the occasion of inventing the legend was a desire felt to magnify the perfection of Buddha. The Western paradise is the happy abode of the Buddha of boundless age, and was not, in the first instance, planted in the regions of infinite space, to provide a refuge for those human sufferers to whom the extinction of Nirvana was not a sufficient hope.
The name of the translator who is first mentioned in connection with this legend is Tirukachanva, a native of the Punjaub. Several of his works are named in the list [6] of Buddhist books made in the year A.D. 730, and one of them is said to have been translated A.D. 147. But for the statement in the Book of Golden Light we might suppose, from this translator being a native of the Punjaub, that the legend originated there. In that part of India there is no doubt that many of the Buddhist books were first compiled, As we proceed we shall learn if other reasons support the hypothesis of origin in North Western India.
The author of the list made in the year A.D. 730 was a learned monk, who divides the books, now in libraries, and which he had himself personally seen, from those which were lost. He says of a book called the Sutra of the boundless and pure, that this was the same with the greater Amitabha Sutra. But this is equivalent to saying, that it taught the legend of the Western paradise, and we may, therefore, look upon it as certain that this legend was taught in China, in the years A.D. 147 to 186, when the translator was occupied in his duties in the Chinese capital. It appears that he also rendered from Sanscrit a work on Akshobya, the companion Buddha to Amitabha and ruler of the Eastern Universe. This legend belongs to the same class as the legend of the Western Paradise, and in the “Book of Golden Light” these two Buddhas are mentioned together. They were, therefore, contemporaneous in origin.[7]
The Buddhist works containing the legend of the Western Heaven belong to the school of the great development of the Northern Buddhists, and this class of works was definitely adopted in Cashmere, at the council held in the reign of Kanishka. This prince is stated by the traveller, 111Hiuen Chwang, in more than one place, to have reigned 400 years after the Nirvana. Now Buddha is said to have died B.C. 543.[8] Kanishka was reigning, therefore, in the first century before Christ. He belonged to the Yue ti race, who, according to Chinese accounts, in the third and second century lived to the north-west of China, between the province of Kansu and Lake Lob. From this home they were driven by the powerful Tartar race known as the Hiung noo, who, about B.C. 200, or even later, led by their Emperor Moklek, inflicted on them a severe defeat, and killed their king, whose skull was used as a drinking-cup by his victorious enemy.
The Yue ti are, in fact, the Massagetæ, of Herodotus, whose Queen was Tomoris, the Amazon sovereign that defeated and killed Cyrus, founder of the Persian monarchy. The Massagetae were a large stock, and among their many branches it was this which had moved most to the eastward. On this occasion, when ousted from their lands near China, this wandering tribe crossed the high passes west of Cashgar, and came down upon the valley of the Oxus. Here they looked south on the Hindoo Koosh, and west on the Caspian. Encountering the Dahae, they conquered them, and occupied Balkh and Badakshan. The kingdoms of Cabul and Cashmere had now become their neighbours, and here they were located when the famous Chinese traveller, Chang chien, visited them about B.C. 140. He made diplomatic use of his experiences amongst the Hiung noo, who had kept him as a captive till he escaped. He knew Turkish, because he had lived amongst the Hiung noo. In this new region he would also obtain an acquaintance with some Indo-European dialect; at any rate, he learned the chief facts respecting the wanderings of the Yue ti, and when he went back to China these were embodied in the history of Szma chien, who was then a youth.
In the later Han history it is recorded that about a century after the time of Chang chien, the Yue ti made an irruption into Cabul and India and formed a large and powerful kingdom. They were now possessed of Candahar, Cashmere, and much country beside belonging to India and the modern Affghanistan. Kanishka was their king, and he became a zealous Buddhist. He called the Council of Cashmere, at which Buddhist doctrine according to the northern form was determined. And it included the legend of the Western Paradise. The reign of Kanishka has been fixed by Koeppen and others as extending from B.C. 15 to A.D. 45, and when we remember what is said in the later Han history, and by the traveller Hiuen chwang, we feel that Chinese evidence supports this chronology so far as it goes. We must then assign the legend of the Western Heaven to this time for its definite adoption, and to an earlier period for its origination. The Yue ti in 112their new kingdom practised many useful arts, and it was by artificers from their country that in the fifth century the Chinese learned the secret of glass manufacture, and of the ware called Lieu li. Buddhism in those times helped in communicating civilized arts to new races, and in many countries its missionaries were the first to teach reading and writing. These men were in the third century very assiduous in translating into Chinese the books of their religion. Several hundred titles are preserved, while the books themselves are mostly lost irrecoverably. Many short narratives are among them, containing stories adapted to stir up the feelings and to give popularity to the addresses of Buddhist preachers. Among them are found occasionally the names of books which taught the paradise of the Western Heaven, a belief at that time become thoroughly naturalized in the religion of the northern Buddhists. They are placed in the second class of canonical works, called the “precious collection,” with an allusion to the special attractiveness of this legend.
The country on the west of the Kingdom of the Indian Getae was Parthia, which lasted till the year A.D. 226, when the Persians recovered their independence. One of the translators was An shi kan, son of the Parthian king, his mother being the principal queen. He would naturally know the Zendavesta, and the doctrine of the resurrection. Parthian Jews, too, returned from keeping the Pentecost at Jerusalem to their own country, and carried with them Christian [9] convictions and experiences. This was about a hundred years before this prince went as a missionary to China, He was actively engaged in translation in that country from A.D. 147 to 170. Among the titles of the 95 books he translated, are some which appear in the “precious collection,” such as “the book of unlimited age.” He has two which treat of worlds of punishment (Naraka), which to the Buddhists are prisons, fiery hot, or icy cold, where every kind of torture is used.[10] This prince may be better judged, however, by a little tract translated by him, and still extant, and which teaches the vanity of all appearances, the misery of giving rein to the passions, the evil of greed, the happiness of poverty, the constant victory to be gained over the four evil ones, so as to escape the prisons of the metempsychosis. He also taught that true joy is to be found in acquiring wisdom, and in instructing and saving the lost. He enjoins the practice of pitying wicked men instead of hating them, of forgiving injuries, of avoiding worldly pleasure, while living in the world, always content with the monk’s robe, the rice-bowl, and the time-beater which he uses when reciting his prayers. At the end he adds willingness to suffer for others as their substitute.
113 On the whole, what this man taught in China was Christian morality in the Buddhist shape. The forgiveness of injuries, contentment, pity for men when they sin, suffering in the place of others, are very Christian.[11] But he personifies evil in a four-fold form. He is a thorough monk from habit and conviction, and a firm believer in the delusion practised upon our senses by all the forms of matter. Yet, in this point, the metaphysical doctrine is less to him than the moral danger and evil from contact with the world.
This prince was an adept in astrology, in medicine, and meteorology. He could find a meaning in the sounds uttered by birds and beasts. When walking, he would suddenly say, if a flock of swallows passed, “A swallow tells me I am to have food brought to me.” Soon some messenger with food would arrive. He taught the doctrine of the pulse and the needle used in acupuncture, and could tell the disease from the colour of the patient. While he remained in his father’s palace he kept the Buddhist vows, studied the Sutras, and practised almsgiving. On the death of the king his father, he resolved to resign his throne to his uncle, because the fictitious grandeur of the world was what he had no taste for. He entered a monastery, and gave himself up to the study of Buddhist philosophy. Going abroad to teach, he visited various countries, and at last reached China, where he remained permanently.
King Chosroes, who fought with Trajan, was succeeded about A.D. 122 by Vologeses his son, the second of that name, This Vologeses is thought to have died about A.D. 149, and at this point the succession is uncertain. The Chinese account in stating that the heir-apparent became a monk, leaving the succession to his uncle, adds details that are new to European history. This uncle would be Vologeses the third.
During the second and third centuries, other foreigners from the West and from India were engaged in China in translating books which taught the legend of the Western Heaven, and the other parts of Buddhist doctrine. It is quite possible for the opinions of Zoroaster to have been well known at that time to Chinese Buddhists, for Hindoo fire-worshippers often became Buddhists. One of the Hindoo translators who was in Nanking, the capital of the Wu Kingdom, in A.D. 224, was originally a fire-worshipper. When he was a lad in his old home in India, a Buddhist travelling monk came one night to ask for a lodging. Since the fire-worshippers hated the Buddhists he was told to sleep outside in the court. The Buddhist soon made use of his arts and extinguished the sacred fire without himself approaching it. The fire went out to the astonishment of the family after flaming up in a remarkable manner. They all came out and invited the monk to enter. He did so, and by the 114use of his power caused the fire to rekindle. The lad saw this, became a believer in Buddhism, abandoned the religion of fire, and changing his mode of life adopted the monkish garb. He may have well been acquainted with the opinion on the resurrection held by Zoroaster and the fire-worshippers generally.
The form the doctrine takes is that given to it by the writers of the Sutras, and it is in harmony with the Hindoo metempsychosis. Heaven is in any Paradise inhabited by the Devas. Hell is any subterranean or other prison employed for the punishment of the wicked. The thirty-three heavens mean the heaven of Shakra, inhabited by Devas or angels who are favoured with great longevity, but are not immortal. While the population diminishes by death it is increased by new births from other worlds. So the earth’s prison is divided into eighteen, adapted to punish the guilty in various ways according to their deserts. This view is part of a larger one which embraces six separate paths into which souls wander, or six retributory worlds, viz., heaven, the air occupied by giants, the world of men, the region of hungry ghosts, animals, and hell. This is a Hindoo conception as it stands, but it is not found in the Vedas, and the language of elaboration and definition is Buddhistic, while the metempsychosis belongs equally to all the other Hindoo schools. It is a national and not merely a Buddhist belief. We find in the Nyaya system that the cause of transmigration is in wrong notions which lead to stupidity and vice. Transmigration is one of the many evils which men bring on themselves by wrong notions. The Sankhya philosophy derives all evils suffered by mankind from the connection of man with nature. The Vedanta philosophy finds the origin of transmigration and other evils in God who is the cause of virtue and vice.[12]
Buddhism in its statement of the cause of transmigration finds it in a moral necessity of things, and being atheistic[13] it stops there. Retribution follows all actions by unseen fate compelling it.[14] Here it is that the human conscience utters its voice. Good actions are rewarded by happiness, and evil actions by misery. The force of Buddhist teaching in persuading mankind to accept it surely rested partly on this foundation, it appealed to human conscience as to whether sin is not wrong and deserving of punishment, or if it did not ask the question it assumed the fact, and no one contradicted it.
Indeed it may be said that the acceptance of transmigration by all the Hindoo systems shows that the Hindoo conscience is like that of the rest of the world, an index pointing to moral truth. Whether the 115Hindoo systems known as the Nyaya and Vedanta which are theistic, or those known as Sankhya and Buddhistic which are atheistic, be consulted, all are at one on this point, they regard transmigration as a fact and as a just reward to every man according to his merit or demerit. It is a singular and interesting fact that conscience is here seen acting as the acknowledged umpire in questions appertaining to the moral sphere. The Hindoo sages found a harmony existing between nature without and conscience within, and never thought of questioning the facts offered by the use of the authority claimed by the others.
What Buddhism did in regard to the doctrine of a future life was to make it more definite so far as belief in the Nirvana would allow. In this, what was done by Shakyamuni was simply to state distinctly the popular view and endorse it by his authority in his exoteric teaching. In his exoteric instructions he taught the Nirvana. He was followed by his disciples in this kind of teaching till Ashwagosha’s time, about A.D. 100, who was one of the early champions of the Mahayana school and a prime mover in the inculcation of the doctrine of the Western Heaven. Ashwagosha, called in Chinese Ma ming pu sa, wrote the Shastra called Chi sin lun, and in this argued that the legend of the Western Heaven was necessary on account of the weakness of men’s minds. On their first learning Buddhist doctrines correct faith was difficult for them, and to reverence the Buddhas was impossible. In order to aid faith and to prevent falling back, you should know that Buddha has a most excellent aid. This aid in guiding and guarding the believing heart, consists in becoming entirely absorbed in thinking of Buddha, and in the desire to be born in a Buddha world in the West, to be there seen by Buddha, to leave all wicked doctrines for ever, and as the Sutra says, meditate exclusively on Amida, attain fixity in thought, a right purpose, steady progress, and the constant view of Buddha in the form of the body of the law.
Such is the statement of Ashwagosha as to the intention of the legend of Amida. It was to help in producing and strengthening faith.[15] It was an aid to the Buddhist teachers against scepticism and would prove valuable in their missions among new races not accustomed to Hindoo modes of thought. This appears to have been the object of the invention of the Western Heaven legend.
The occurrence of this passage in a book by Ashwagosha the twelfth patriarch, shows that the legend was quite anterior to the time of Nagarjuna or Lungshu the most prolific of Buddhist writers and the fourteenth patriarch. But its extensive adoption was the work of both, and of other eminent defenders of Buddhism in North Western India, Afghanistan, and countries near. In this there would be the influence of Christianity felt, not possibly in causing the first formation of the legend, but very probably in leading to its spread through the regions just mentioned, and also in the onward progress of the religion through 116Tibet and China in after years. It seems reasonable that so far as the Parthians were acquainted with Christianity in the early centuries, and the Persians of the Sassanide dynasty afterwards, the Buddhists would, being in close connection with them, become aware of Christian tenets. They would notice how much Christians were influenced by the hope of a future life, how it occupied their thoughts and made them superior to the fear of death! This would lead them to reason as did Ma ming in regard to the hope of future happiness in a world without sin as a means of increasing faith. The Apostle Peter is said to have preached the gospel in Parthia, and Bardesanes of Edessa, in the second century, states that Christianity had spread into Parthia, Media, Persia, and Bactria.[16]
The form of the legend, as it is partially dualistic, is more likely to have borrowed, if it borrowed at all, from Persian sources than Christian. Thus Amitabha, ruling in a world of light and holiness, is like Ormuzd. While Shakyamuni’s world, filled with evil, and remaining after his great efforts still unpurified from sin and darkness, reminds of the world of Ahriman. But this is more likely to be accidental resemblance than positive borrowing.
The Persian persecution under Sapor took place in the fourth century. The martyrs were so numerous, and their faithfulness and constancy in the face of death so decided, that Christianity must have become widely known on their account, and a great impulse would be given thus to faith in a happy future life.
Although the shape of the Buddhist doctrine of a future life appears on the whole to be independent of Christian doctrine on the same subject, to which it was anterior by only a few years, yet the stimulus imparted by the many examples of Christian constancy in martyrdoms cannot very well have been without an effect upon the Buddhist missionaries, who spread this peculiar doctrine in Tartary and China as in other northern countries. The Buddhist change of front from the Nirvana to the promise of the Western Heaven may in this have been caused in no slight degree by their knowledge of the great power possessed by the Christians, in their hope of a happy existence hereafter.
Since we find a famous Buddhist author, about A.D. 100, explaining the advantage of faith in the Western Paradise as a help to devotion, and translations teaching the legend made into Chinese A.D. 167, we are not at liberty to regard the legend of the Western Heaven as borrowed 117from Christianity. The Buddhist view on this subject is, in fact, an expansion of the Hindoo universe of the metempsychosis made for argumentative purposes and to aid in promoting faith.
If we wish to go further back, we find that the Hindoo philosophical schools all, very singularly, believed in the metempsychosis, while a few centuries before in the later Vedic treatises it is found only in a rudimentary form. In those works there is language which implies that a man may go through a succession of deaths. Hindoo thinkers had begun to look on life as capable of repetition, but when the philosophical sects were founded, including Buddhism, in the seventh, sixth, and fifth centuries before Christ, the metempsychosis had become the universal belief of India. This change of opinion throughout India regarding the future state must be viewed in connection with the foreign intercourse caused by the very powerful Mesopotamian and Persian monarchies, as also the progress in navigation under Egyptian monarchs. The Persian Empire, B.C. 538 to 331, embraced North-Western India, and promoted intercourse between South-Western Asia and India by land. The communication by sea through the trade in Indian productions, and those of Ultra India, was always active between India and the Persian Gulf. This led necessarily to the residence in Indian seaports and at the courts and capitals of Rajahs, of Babylonian astrologers and diviners. These men would communicate the views held in the West on the future life, and it would be in this way that the Indians, predisposed by the Vedas to believe in a future state, would be led on to the adoption with astrology and the art of writing, of some of the Babylonian and Egyptian doctrines on cosmogony and the future state.[17] This helps to account for the striking contrast between Hindoo opinion on these matters in the Vedas and in the older books of Buddhism.
Ashwagosha’s principle must be steadily kept in view if we would understand the progress of Buddhist faith in India in those times Religious leaders held that an expanded universe was a help to faith They therefore in their writings invented such a universe and advocated it in their Shastras as of great utility. On the other hand primitive Christianity in its teaching on the future state was animated by faith in the doctrine, and not by considerations of utility. It would be impossible to find in any of the early Christian writings a parallel to the passage here given from the Chi sin lun of Ashwagosha.
Buddhism disbelieves the reality of the material universe, and invents at will a fictitious universe as an aid to faith. Christianity believes in the reality of the existing universe made known in nature, and of the future state made known in the Christian books of revelation.
The stand-point of the two religions is, therefore, wide as the poles asunder.
Footnotes
- ↑ The author of this paper is the Rev. Dr. Joseph Edkins, D.D., late of Peking, author also of “Chinese Buddhism,” “Religion in China,” “Introduction to the Study of the Chinese Characters,” “A Mandarin Grammar,” etc., etc.
- ↑ The loss of the false or temporary personality by its transformation into the absolute “Ego.” – [Ed.]
- ↑ Most undeniably the idea was originated by neither of the above-named influences, no more than the knowledge of the Zodiac, astronomy or architecture was ever originated in India “by the Greek influence,” agreeably with Dr. Weber’s and Professor Max Müller’s favourite hobbies. This “hope” is based on knowledge, on the secret esoteric doctrines preached by Gautama Buddha, and flashes of which are still found even in the semi-exoteric tenets of the schools of Mahayana, Aryasangha and others. – [Ed.]
- ↑ Buddhist works may have appeared in China not earlier than 67 A.D.; but there are as good proofs and evidence, from Chinese and Tibetan History as much as from Buddhist records, that the tenets of Gautama reached China as early as the year 683 of the Tzin era (436 b.c.). Of course in this instance we accept Buddhist chronology, not the fanciful annals of the Western Orientalists, who base their chronological and historical computations on the so-called “Vikramaditya era,” while ignorant to this day of the date when Vikramaditya really lived. – [Ed.]
- ↑ No more, we say, than the “miracles” of the New Testament had to do with the spread of the Christian religion. Then why should any fair-minded person, even if a missionary, denounce the reverence of Buddhists for their sacred books as “a superstitious regard,” while enforcing the same “superstitious regard” for the Bible, under the penalty, moreover, of eternal damnation? – [Ed.]
- ↑ This is called the Kai yuen list, and is contained in seven large vols.
- ↑ That origin must be archaic indeed, since both the names are found in the “Book of Dzyan,” classed with the Dhyan-Chohans (Pitris), the “Fathers of man,” who answer to the seven Elohim. – [Ed.]
- ↑ Read in this connection in “Five Years of Theosophy,” the article: “Sakya Muni’s place in History,” pp. 371-375. – [Ed.]
- ↑ It would be more correct, perhaps, to say “Gnostic,” instead of “Christian” convictions. The Jews could be Gnostics without renouncing Judaism. – [Ed.]
- ↑ Which, however, are all metaphorical expressions, whenever used. Buddhists have never believed in their philosophy in any Hell as a locality. Avitchi is a state and a condition, and the tortures therein are all mental. – [Ed.]
- ↑ They are “Christian” only because Christianity has accepted them. All these virtues were taught and practised by Buddha 600 years b.c.; as other Chinese and Indian good men and adepts accepted and taught them to the multitudes thousands of years b.b., or before Buddha. Why call them “Christian,” since they are universal? – [Ed.]
- ↑ The Vedanta philosophy finds nothing of the kind, nor does it teach of a God (least of all with a capital G). But there is a sect of Vedantins, the Visishtadwaita, who, refusing to accept dualism, have, nolens volens, to place the origin of all evil as of all good in Parabrahman. But Parabrahman is not “God” in the Christian sense, at any rate in the Vedanta philosophy. – [Ed.]
- ↑ Atheistic, inasmuch as it very reasonably rejects the idea of any personal anthropomorphous god. Its secret philosophy, however, explains the causes of rebirths or “transmigration.” – [Ed.]
- ↑ This “unseen fate” is Karma. – [Ed.]
- ↑ Buddha preached against blind faith and enforced knowledge and reason. – [Ed.]
- ↑ It would be far more correct to say that it is the early Christians, or the Gnostics rather, who were influenced by Buddhist doctrines, than the reverse.* All these ideas of Devachan, etc., were inculcated by Buddhism from the first. No foreign influence there, surely. It cannot be proved historically, that the “Apostle Peter” had preached the gospel in Parthia, not even that the blessed “Apostle,” whose relics are shown at Goa, went there at all. But it is an historical fact, that a century before the Christian era, Buddhist monks crowded into Syria and Babylon, and that Buddhasp (Bodhisattva), the so-called Chaldean, was the founder of Sabism or baptism. And Renan, in his Vie de Jesus, says, that “the religion of multiplied baptisms, the scion of the still existent sect, named the ‘Christians of St. John’ or Mendaeans, whom the Arabs call el-Mogtasila and Baptists. The Aramean verb seba, origin of the name Sabian, is a synonym of βαπτίζω.” – [Ed.]
- ↑ There is one little impediment, however, in the way of such a “Weberian” theory. There is no historical evidence that the “Chaldean astrologers and diviners” were ever at the courts of Indian Rajahs before the days of Alexander. But it is a perfectly established historical fact, as pointed out by Colonel Vans Kennedy, that it was, on the contrary, Babylonia which was once the seat of the Sanskrit language and of Brahmanical influence. – [Ed.]