Rachel Harriette Busk

“ It grows more or less all over India from Ceylon to the Himâlajas, except perhaps in the arid north-east highland of the Dekhan, but it reaches its most luxuriant development in Malabar and over the whole west coast. Besides its luxuriant shade its blossoms bear the most delicious scent, and its glorious gold-coloured fruit often attains a pound in weight, though its quality is much acted upon by site and climate. ”

“ Rambling on instead of returning home he sat down to rest under the shade of a gambu-tree, and here he found fresh food for his melancholy reflections in the miserable condition of the country people living around. The legend says the Devatâ, or gods, appeared to him in the shape of these suffering people in order further to instruct him in his new views of existence. In all probability his previous mode of life never having brought him in contact with the actual miseries of the needy this sight appeared to him in the light of an apparition. ”

“ When the Khan's son, who was transformed into the horse, had learnt what was the intention of the magicians, he said, "Would that any sort of a living being would appear into which I might transform myself." ”

“ Buddhism nowhere took so firm a grasp of the popular mind as in Tibet, where it was established as early as the 7th century by its greatest king, Ssrong-Tsan-Gampo. No where, except in China, was its influence on literature so powerful and so useful, for not only have we thus preserved to us very early translations from the Sanskrit of most of the sacred writings, but also original treatises of history, geography, and philosophy. Nowhere, either, did it possess so many colleges and teachers; it was by means of these that it was spread over Mongolia in the 13th century ”

“ The Tibetians and Mongolians receiving thus late the doctrines of Shâkjamuni received a version of it very different from his original teaching. The meditations and mystifications of his followers had invested him with ever new prerogatives, and step by step he had come to be considered no longer in the light of an extraordinary teacher, or even a heaven-sent founder of religion, but as himself the essence of truth and the object of supreme adoration. ”

“ When the slave enters the master's tent he never fails to offer him tea and milk; they smoke together and exchange pipes. Round the tents young slaves and young noblemen romp and wrestle together without distinction. ”

“ The magicians at once recognized that it was a magic horse, and they said, among themselves, "If our art is to become thus common, and every body can produce a magic horse, no one will come to our market for wonders. ”

“ Nâgârg'una saw by this answer the man must be of a philosophical turn of mind, and was thus induced to break his rule, which forbid him intercourse with Buddhists, and let him in that he might have more discourse with him. The Samanaer by degrees fascinated his mind with the whole Buddhist doctrine, and ultimately told him that Buddha had left a prophecy, saying, that long years after he had departed this life there should arise a great teacher out of Southern India, who by the wisdom of his teaching should renew the face of the earth ”

“ For once, making an exception to the proverb that a prophet meets with little honour in his own country, fortune favoured him in this matter also, and his father, who violently opposed his withdrawal from his due mode of life in the first instance, sent eight messengers one after the other to beg him to come and adorn his court with his wisdom. Each one of these, however, was so won by his teaching that he never returned to the king, but remained at the feet of Shâkjamuni. ”

“ His brother and successor, Kublai Khan, who reigned from 1259 to 1290, occupied himself with the internal development of his empire. He appears to have regarded Christ, Moses, Muhammed, and Buddha as prophets of equal authority, and to have finally adopted the religion of the last-named, because he discerned the advantages to be derived in the consolidation of his power from the assistance of the Buddhist priests already possessing so great influence in Tibet. ”

“ Lamas born of slave families become free in some degree as soon as they enter the sacerdotal life; they are no longer liable to enforced labour, and can travel without interference." He further describes the Mongols in general as a hardy, laborious, peace-loving people, usually simple and upright in their dealings, devout and punctual in such religious faith and observances as they have been taught, caring, however, little for mental studies, occupied only with their flocks and herds, and continually overreached by the Chinese in all their dealings with them. ”

“ Thomas himself penetrated very far east, and that the early Christian establishments at Taprobane and Ceylon were founded by Persian Christians, though far from conclusive, tend as far as they go but to support all the more the theory of an admixture of Christian with Brahmanical and Buddhist teaching; because, the less pure the source of teaching the more likely it was to have resulted in producing such an admixture in place of actual conversion. ”

“ He himself wandered for nineteen years over the central and eastern districts of the country, teaching,—his agreeable presence and benevolence of manner, and, the legends say, the wonderful things he did, winning him numerous converts wherever he went [8] . Some gave themselves up to a life of contemplation in the jungle, others associated themselves with him in his travels. When the rainy season set in they had to find shelter for the four months in such colleges of Brahmans or houses of families as they found well inclined towards them. ”

“ But from information on the condition of religion in India preserved by the Chinese pilgrim Fahien, who traversed a great part of Asia, A.D. 399–414, Buddhism had already at that time suffered great losses, for at Gaja itself the temple of Buddha was a deserted ruin. From the writings of another Chinese pilgrim, Hiuen Thsang, whose travels took place in the 7th century, it would seem that the greatest Brahmanical persecution of the Buddhists did not take place before 670 [28] . ”

“ Those who labour most to prove that the Brahmanical idea of incarnation preceded the Christian have to allow that it was only subsequently to the spread of Christian teaching that it was fully developed. ”

“ Mongolia is at present divided into several sovereignties, whose chiefs are subject to the Emperor of China, himself a Tartar, but of the Mantchu race. These chiefs bear titles corresponding to those of kings, dukes, earls, barons, &c. They govern their states according to their own pleasure. They acknowledge as sovereign only the Emperor of China. ”

“ Secondly, the worship of the god Crishna, whose name and attributes as well as his substitution for Vishnu, the second god of the Trimurti, present so many analogies with the teaching concerning our Divine Lord [39] . Whatever difficulty there may be in fixing the date of the origin of the great Pânkarâtra sect, there appears none in affirming that the full development of its teaching in the direction of these analogies was subsequent to the establishment of Christianity. ”

“ The Buddhists of Tibet and Mongolia, however, have tortured their imagination to find a mystic interpretation of each of these six syllables. They say the doctrine contained in them is so immense that a life is insufficient to measure it. ”

“ And the Vêda was, we have seen, adopted in the main by Shâkjamuni; but the development of his views came to imply that there was no Creator at all, existences being only a series of necessary evolutions [32] . And when later a Creator came again to be spoken of, the term was involved in the most inconceivable contradictions [33] . A distinguished Roman Orientalist also writes:—"The Vêda, and principally the Jazur-Vêda and the Isa-Upanishad, contain not only many golden maxims, but distinct traces of the primitive Monotheism. ”

“ Lassen (i. 784 and iv. 570) fixes as late a date as 1420–1445 for the introduction of the Trimurti worship, or, as he expresses it, the bootless attempt to unite various schools by propounding the equality and unity of the three great rival gods, Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, who were the chief gods favoured by each respectively. Devarâja of Vigajanagara erected the first temple to the Trimurti about this date. Ganesha, the god of wisdom and knowledge, appeared to his minister Laxmana and bid him build a temple on the banks of the Penar to the Hiranjagarbha, called Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva ”

“ The legend is in this instance more precise than often falls to the lot of works of this nature. Instead of transferring the scene of action to a locality within the limits of the country of the narrator however, he makes Nâgârg'una to have lived on the borders of Magadha [54] . Lassen, speaking in allusion to the kaitja named after him, mentioned above, says there is no allusion in any authentic account of him to his ever being in this part of the country; this Mongolian tradition however corroborates the local tradition of the kaitja. ”

“ Böhtlingk and Roth's Sanskrit Dictionary, iv. 208. In Buddhist writings, however, it is difficult to make out any idea of it distinct from annihilation. Consult Schmidt's Trans. of sSanang sSetzen, pp. 307–331; Schott. Buddhaismus, p. 10 and 127; Köppen, i. 304–309. "Existence in the eye of Buddhism is nothing but misery. . . . Nothing remained to be devised as deliverance from this evil but the destruction of existence. ”

“ Then, a life and death struggle for the upper-hand ensued which lasted for centuries, for while the Buddhists were on the one side fighting against the attempted extermination, on the other side they were spreading their doctrines over an ever-fresh field by the journeyings of their missionaries, a proceeding the more exclusive Brahmans had never adopted. ”

“ It is doubtless only by accident that more do not find mention. Of the demigods Visvakarman, the Gandharba, Kinnara, Garuda, Jaxa the Serpent-god, Asura, and Danava, along with other evil genii and serpent-gods. The most often named—particularly in the colloquies between Buddha and his disciples—is Indra with the adjunctive appellation of Kaushika. Indra was at the time of Shâkjamuni himself the favourite god ”

“ Nevertheless it is the system of religion which next after the Catholic Church counts the greatest number of followers.
Dr. Gützlaff (in his "Remarks on the Present State of Buddhism," in "Journ. of R. As. Soc." xvi. 73.) tells us two-thirds of the population of China is Buddhist. In Ungewitter's Neueste Erdebeschreibung, the whole population is stated from native official statistics at 360,000,000; whence it would follow that there are 270,000,000 Buddhists in China alone; probably, however, the Chinese figures are to some extent an exaggeration. ”

“ At about this age he appears to have grown weary of this desultory kind of life, and one day, meeting in his walks with an old man, a sick man, a corpse, and a priest, he was led to turn his thoughts upon the evils and the evanescence of life. ”

“ His teaching was followed up by two chief disciples, Ârjadeva, a Cingalese, and Buddhapâlita, and still holds sway in the higher schools of Tibet, which accounts for the homage of the editor of these Mongolian tales. He is honoured almost everywhere where Buddhism is honoured; near Gajâ is a kaitja, or rock-cut temple, called Nâgârgunî, probably commemorating some visit of his to the shrine of Shâkjamuni.
3.↑ The whole of Buddhist literature is spoken of by its followers as contained in three "vessels," or "baskets"—tripîtaka (Wassiljew, p. 118, quoted by Jülg) ”

“ After burning his body the ashes were preserved in an urn of gold. His death is reckoned to have taken place in the year 543 B.C. [12] , according to the Buddhists of Ceylon and Southern India generally. Those of the northern provinces, the Japanese and Mongolians, have a very different chronology, and place his birth about the year 950 B.C. The Chinese are divided among themselves about it and say variously, 688, 1070, and 1122 [13] . ”

“ Soc. of Bengal, 722. ↑ Lassen, ii. 440. ↑ Lassen, ii. 453, 454. ↑ Burnouf, Introd. à l'Hist. du Buddh. i. 137. ↑ Burnouf, Introd. &c. i. 131 et seq. ↑ "There is no reference even in the earlier Vêda to the Trimurti: to Donga, Kali, or Rama." (Wilson, Rig-Vêda Sanhîta.) ↑ Burnouf, i. 90, 108. ↑ Lassen, ii. 426, 454, 455 and other places. ↑ "No hostile feeling against the Brahmans finds utterance in the Buddhist Canon." (Max Müller, Anc. Sanskr. Literature.) ↑ Lassen, iv. 644, 710. ↑ Lassen, ii. 440. ↑ Lassen, iv. 646–709. ↑ As. Rec. i. 285. ↑ Genesis iii. 15. ↑ Rig-Vêda, bk. x. ch. xi. ”