The Historians' History of the World 02

The disappearance, or rather the transformation which has just been indicated in a few lines, required a thousand years for its accomplishment. The numerous monuments which retrace its history were erected during the period extending from three centuries B.C. to the seventh of our era. During this long interval of time Buddha was constantly worshipped by his followers as an all-powerful god. Legends show him to us appearing before his disciples and according them favours. One of the men most deeply learned in Buddhist practices, the pilgrim, Hwen Tsang, who visited the peninsula in the seventh century and entered a long novitiate, relates having seen Buddha appear before him in a sacred grotto. Legends and monuments are perfectly clear in their teachings, and had the study of Buddhism been primarily based upon them, an entirely different impression of the religion would have gained ground from that which now prevails. Unfortunately, the European writers on India had never visited that country, gaining all their knowledge of Buddhism from books; and ill chance had directed them upon the works of certain philosophical sects, written five or six centuries after the death of Buddha, and containing little or nothing of the religion as actually practised.

Neither did the metaphysical speculations, which so astonished Europe by their depth, contain anything new. Now that the works of Indian writers are better known, the same theories have been found in the writings of the philosophical sects which developed during the Brahmanic period. Atheism, the contempt for life, morality as existing apart from religion, the world considered as illusion—all these had already appeared in certain philosophical works known under the name of Upanishads, of which there exist about two hundred and fifty, dating from all the epochs. In some are found the same doctrines that are presented in the philosophical writings of the Buddhists. Their authors also profess the doctrine of Karma, the fundamental belief of Buddhism as of all the religions of India—a doctrine according to which the acts accomplished by man in this life determine his condition in a future existence, this forming also the base of the code of Manu. The ultimate purpose of these successive reincarnations is absorption in the universal principle of things, the Brahma of which Manu speaks, parent to the Nirvana of Buddhism. Then, and then only is the soul absolved from reincarnation.

For the attainment of this final state of absorption, Buddhists and Brahmanists lay down the same rules; namely, suppression of all desire, renunciation of the things of this world, and a life passed in solitude and contemplation.

The philosophical theories of the age of Buddhism were thus the same as those held in the Brahmanic age which had preceded it. They are theories which developed parallel with the religion that was taught by the priests and practised by the people, yet they differed from it essentially. To look upon these doctrines as being identical with Buddhism would be to commit an error as great as though we were to confound the theories of certain Upanishads with Brahmanism; nevertheless it is these philosophical utterances of some of the disciples of Buddha which have been received in Europe as Buddhism itself.

It would seem to suggest itself at once as improbable that a religion counting five hundred million believers could be founded solely on cold philosophical reasoning; but perhaps an error of such a nature is excusable in the case of learned men who, having passed their lives in the study of books, have had no time to pursue the deeper study of men. In two or three thousand years, when the centre of civilisation shall have again shifted and our present languages and the books written in them have been forgotten, it is quite probable that some professor who has come upon the English language in his researches shall translate the first works that come to his hand, such as Spencer’s First Principles, or Darwin’s Origin of Species, and give them to the world as the beliefs professed by the Christian peoples in the nineteenth century.