The Historians' History of the World 02

We might very easily, from the known laws of human nature, conclude, notwithstanding the language held by the Hindus on the connection between future happiness and the virtue of the present life, that rewards and punishments, very distant and very obscure, would be wholly impotent against temptations to crime, though at the instigation of the priests they might engage the people in a ceaseless train of wretched ceremonies. The fact corresponds most exactly with the anticipation. An admirable witness has said, “The doctrine of a state of future rewards and punishments, as some persons may plead, has always been supposed to have a strong influence on public morals: the Hindus not only have this doctrine in their writings, but are taught to consider every disease and misfortune of life as an undoubted symptom of moral disease, and the terrific appearance of its close-pursuing punishment. Can this fail to produce a dread of vice, and a desire to merit the favour of the Deity? I will still further,” he adds, “assist the objector; and inform him that the Hindu writings declare that till every immoral taint is removed, every sin atoned for, and the mind has obtained perfect abstraction from material objects, it is impossible to be reunited to the great spirit; and that to obtain this perfection, the sinner must linger in many hells, and transmigrate through almost every form of matter.” Our informant then declares: “Great as these terrors are, there is nothing more palpable than that, with most of the Hindus, they do not weigh the weight of a feather compared with the loss of a rupee. The reason is obvious: every Hindu considers all his action as the effect of his destiny; he laments, perhaps, his miserable fate, but he resigns himself to it without a struggle, like the malefactor in a condemned cell.” This experienced observer adds, which is still more comprehensive, that the doctrine of future rewards and punishments has, in no situation and among no people, a power to make men virtuous.d

Fate, as understood by the Hindus, is something very different from that of other people. It is necessity, as the consequence of past acts; that is, a man’s station and fortunes in his present life are the necessary consequences of his conduct in his pre-existence. To them he must submit, but not from despair. He has his future condition in his own power, and it depends upon himself in what capacity he shall be born again. He is not therefore the helpless victim of an irresistible and inscrutable destiny, but the sufferer for his own misdeeds, or the possessor of good which his own merits have secured him.e

BUDDHISM

When Buddhism was first made known to Europe, not so very many years ago, by means of translations of philosophic writings dated six centuries after Buddha, profound astonishment was felt at taking cognisance of the fact that a religion which had brought three hundred million souls under its law should acknowledge no god; should look upon the world as vain illusion, and should offer nothing but annihilation to the aspirations of man.

The examination of the bas-reliefs, with which the ancient monuments of India are covered, proves that the religion of Buddha, as practised by the Hindus during a period of one thousand years, differs completely from the representation of it given us by written documents. Not in books, in fact, but in a close study of the monuments themselves, can be learned what Buddhism was in former days; and the message these monuments deliver to us is a totally different one from that contained in books. The monuments reveal that this religion, which modern scientists have distorted into an atheistic belief, was, on the contrary, the most polytheistic of all religions.

It is true that in the first Buddhist monuments, eighteen to twenty centuries old, such as the balustrades of Bharhut, Sanchi, Buddha-Gaya, etc., the reformer figures solely as an emblem. Worship is accorded to the imprint of his feet, and to the image of the tree under which he entered the state of supreme wisdom; but we shortly begin to see Buddha represented as a god, having a place in all the sanctuaries. At first he is represented as alone, or nearly so, as in the most ancient temples of Ajunta; then gradually he appears in company with Brahman gods: Indra, Kali, Sarasvati, etc., as is to be seen in the Buddhist temples of the Ellora series of monuments. Completely lost a little later in the crowd of gods that he had at first dominated, he comes, after a few centuries, to be regarded as nothing more than an incarnation of Vishnu. From that day Buddhism has been extinct in India.