Laotze, who was a contemporary of Con fucius and the founder of Taoism, is far more responsible personally for the Tao-te-King than Confucius for his Kings, but he also represents his doctrine of Tao, Right or Reason, as a doctrine of great antiquity, which he preached, but did not invent. This doctrine which was originally highly metaphysical, and destined for the few rather than the many, has become thoroughly vulgarized and degraded in the course of centuries, and we are told that it is now professed by the least educated classes of the people of China.
The same is equally true of the third estab lished religion in China. Buddhism, as intro duced into the country in the first century A. D., was chiefly founded on the Mahayana school. This school presented even in India a secondary and on many points corrupt form of Buddhism, and has been still further misunderstood and de graded in China, Korea and Japan. For a scien tific study of this branch of Buddhism we should depend on the Sanskrit originals rather than on Chinese translations, but we can hardly expect the leaders of the various sects into which the Mahayana Buddhism has been broken up in China, Japan and Mongolia to take this view. In their eyes this doctrine, which, for the sake of clear ness, I proposed to call Bodhism rather than Bud dhism, is the true and genuine doctrine of Buddha, or, as they call him, the great Bodhisattva.
Bodhi, enlightenment, true knowledge, is the highest goal of this sect. Bodhisattva is he who has the essence of that knowledge and becomes in time a Buddha. Philosophical as it was in its first conception, this branch of Buddhism has be come deteriorated by many superstitions.
Nor can it be denied that it may have answered the religious requirements of the great mass of the people far better than the more or less agnos tic teaching of the Buddha. Much still remains here to be cleared up, how to account for the origin of the Mahayana school, for its divergence from the religion as contained in the Pali Tripi taka, and for the many things which, in spite of their differences the two sects share in common, often to their ipsissinta verba.
(6) India. Here we possess the immense ad vantage that the Hindus themselves have recog nized certain ancient texts, not only as sacred but as canonical or invested, as we should say, with supreme authority, and in fact, infallible. Though
we cannot trace these texts in their present form back to more than the second millennium before our era, there have been many changes in the Brahmanic religion which we can watch through various periods of language and literature. Each of these changes represents a religion by itself and can be studied in its own Sacred Books. We have to distinguish in India: The religion of the Veda (the metrical hymns or Mantras).
2. The religion of the Brahmanas (prose).
3. The religion of the Puranas and their mod ern developments.
4. The religion of Buddha in its three modifi. cations: (a) The Hinayana; (b) The Mahayana; (c) The Gaina sect.
The most ancient religion of the Veda has to be studied in the ten Mandala of the poetic hymns of the Rig-Veda-Sanhita.
The religion of the Brihmanas is contained in the prose Brahmanas, and in the Sanhitas of the Yagurveda Sarnaveda, and Atharvaveda.
The later and more popular religion of In dia has left its records in the Ramayana, the legal Sistras and the Puranas. The religious beliefs and customs of the aboriginal inhabitants of India, who are often alluded to in the Mantras, Brahmanas, and in the Mahabharata, etc., have left no documents behind, and it is doubtful whether the superstitious practices of some of the uncivilized races still inhabiting parts of India may be accepted as survivals of their an cient religions.
Buddhism has to be studied in three dis tinct sacred canons : (a) The Hinayana in the Tripitaka or The Three Baskets (Pali) ; (b) The Mahayana in a number of texts written in the so called Gotha dialect and in a corrupt Sanskrit prose. These are sometimes comprehended under the name of Angas, i. e., members, parts; (c) The Gaina religion in its own Agamas.
(7) Persia. The religion of ancient Persia (Media and Bactria) has been rendered accessible to us discovery of MSS. of the so-called Zend-Avesta, and by their first scholarlike de cipherment by Burnouf and his successors. The Avesta contains ancient and modern texts, the most ancient being the Gathas. The later devel opment of the Avestic religion can now be studied in the Pehlevi literature, dating from the Sas sanian period.