BUDDHISM. The religion founded by Gautama, afterwards called the Buddha, who seems to have been born about 567 B.C. Gautania's father was Suddhodana. a prince of the royal family of the Sakyas, a Rh.jput clan, which lived and ruled in the valley of the Ganges about 130 miles N. of Benares. The son was born under some tall trees in the Lambini Grove by the town of Kapilavastu, and lost his mother Mfiya or Maha M5ya a week later. When he grew up he married his cousin, the daughter of the raja of Koh. At the age of twenty-nine, soon after the birth of a son, he was impelled to renounce the world in order to devote him self to the study of religion. Before doing so he visited his wife and child as they lay asleep and took a last look at them. This parting is called by Buddhists the " Great Renunciation." According to legend it was accompanied, like his birth, by miraculous signs. Mara, the prince of evil, tried to turn him back, but without success. He went first to the kingdom of Magadha on the south of the Ganges, where he studied the philosophy of the Brahmans. Then, in company with five ascetics, he withdrew into the jungle and entered upon a course of austerities, which lasted six years. This period is called the " Great Struggle." At the end of it he abandoned the practice of austerities, and was aban doned by the five ascetics. Having bathed and eaten, lie sat down under a banyan tree, and suffered again the onslaught of Mara. Mara was again defeated, and new light came to Gautama. From being a Bodhisattva. one who was destined to attain supreme wisdom, he became a Buddha or " enlightened one "; and the tree came to be known as the Bo-tree or " tree of enlighten ment." The five ascetics had gone to Benares. Thither Gautama went, sought them out, converted them, and admitted them to the order of monks which be estab lished. After thus " setting in motion the wheel of the law," the Master went about from place to place preach ing. He also sent forth many disciples as missionaries. According to tradition, he was eighty years old when he died. Immediately after his death a Council is said to have been held at Rajagriha which established a fixed and authorised version of the sayings of the Master. The Vinaya and the Dharma were rehearsed, but no mention is made of the Abhidharma, the third division of the Buddhist Canon. About a hundred years later a second Council was held at Vaisall to consider certain relaxations asked for by a section of the Budd hist monks. When these relaxations (or ten Indulgences) were rejected by the Council, a schism took place. After about another century a third is said to have been held at Piftaliputra or Patna under the presidency of king Asoka (d. about 230 B.C.), which condemned all innovations and heresies. Asoka's work was of such importance that he has been called the " Buddhist Constantine." In some ways he did much more for Buddhism than Constantine is supposed to have done for Christianity. " Until his reign Buddhism was ap parently confined to a comparatively restricted area in and about Magadha, and was perhaps little more than one of many sects of an all-embracing Hinduism. He gave it predominant influence and prestige. And by his zealous missionary endeavours, his direct inculcation of its principles, and by the example of his own life and practice, won respect and adherence to Buddhist teaching not only throughout the Indian peninsula from the north almost to the extreme south, but beyond its borders. As far as the available evidence enables us to form a judgement, it was Asoka who raised Buddhism from a narrow local sectarian faith to the position of a world-wide religion " (A. S. Geden, Studies). The thoughts and teachings of Asoka have been preserved in numerous edicts which he caused to be engraved on rocks and pillars throughout his empire. From these edicts it appears that he enjoined kindness and gentle ness to animals as well as men, and toleration of other religions; that he appointed overseers or censors of public morals; and that he established hospitals for the care of men and animals. About three hundred years after the third Council, a fourth Buddhist Council met under the Indo-Scythian king Kanisbka, who did for Northern what Asoka had done for Southern Buddhism. The purpose seems to have been to compose differences of opinion and to lay down rules for future guidance. Buddhism was introduced into Ceylon as the result of a mission sent there by Asoka. It has flourished in Ceylon with particular vigour. Indeed, the famous Buddhist monk and commentator Buddhaghosa, who lived there in the fifth century A.D., has been called the second founder of Buddhism. From Ceylon Buddh ism spread to Burma, and then to the Malay peninsula, to Sumatra and Java, and to other islands of the Eastern Archipelago. In Kashmir and Nepfil it appeared at an early date. It was carried to China In 62 A.D., and thence to Korea in 372 A.D., and to Japan in 552 A.D. It reached Tibet during the years 638-40 A.D., probably by way of Nepal. Here it was developed about a century later by the Indian monk and saint Padma-Sambhava, the founder of Lamaism. At about the close of the sixteenth century Tibetan Lamaism seems to have been introduced into Mongolia. From the sixth century Buddhism steadily declined in the land of its origin, and at the opening of the nineteenth century, although it was still supreme on the Himalayas, in Burma and in Ceylon, it had practically disappeared from India proper. It is said to have at the present time about
500,000,000 adherents in the world, and thus to be the religion of about one-third of the human race. The first and fundamental truth that the Buddha proclaimed was that existence itself is an evil, a source of pain and unhappiness. The desire for continuance of exist ence has, like other desires, to be suppressed. The second fundamental truth is an attempt to explain the origin of evil. Human life is linked to its beginnings by a chain of cause and effect. The first link of causa tion and the primary root of all evil is ignorance. With knowledge of the truth, false notions disappear. The formula known as the Buddhist confession of faith, though independent, gives expression to a thought simi lar to that of the Chain of Causation. To get rid of the evils of life, the causes of life itself must be sup pressed or destroyed. The Buddha denied the existence of a soul in the sense of an individual and personal identity. There are five groups of elements (skandhas). These, when a person is born, unite together in various proportions (hence differences in character, disposition, etc.) to form the living sentient creature; and when he dies, they are dissolved again and perish. Apart from them no existence is possible. " The great aim of Buddhist teaching therefore is to show by what means the reconstitution of the skandhas may be prevented, and thus release obtained from existence with its weari ness and sorrow " (Geden). When at death the skandhas are reconstituted and recombined a new individual arises in this or in some other world, and the link between the old and new existences is what is called karma or action. It is karma, and not the individual, that lives on. In the new existence (except for the Buddhas), the memory of the events of previous lives is lost, but penalty is paid for wrong-doing or reward is received for good deeds in a previous existence. This is what is meant by re-birth in Buddhism. The great aim of Buddhism is to break the chain of karma, and to extricate oneself from the mechanical round of re-births. To do this and to enter into the rest which is called Nirvana, one must become enlightened by treading in the Noble Eight fold Path. Nirvana is explained by E. Lehmann in Chantepie de la Saussaye's Lehrbuch. " The Nirvana is the condition in which the suffering life's endless re incarnations are abolished. It is declared to involve the extinction of Desire and of Cognition; and though we are not told that it also includes the extinction of Life, such an extinction would be in the logical conse quence of Buddhism, since the evil from which man is to save himself, namely, suffering, consists precisely in existence." But " the Nirvana can only be defined negatively : not Desire, and not Consciousness, not Life, yet also not Death. Only this can be said positively concerning it,—that it is the condition in which the soul is freed from transmigration; only from the point of view of the endless births, with their life and death and death and life, is it possible to attach any con ception whatsoever to the term Nirvana " (quoted by F. von Htigel). The two chief schools of thought and practice in Buddhism are called the Mahayana or the " Great Vehicle " and the Hinayana or the " Little Vehicle." They are also described, rather inexactly, as Northern Buddhism and Southern Buddhism. " The Mahayana system taught a kind of speculative theism, with which were united especially in Tibet elements of mysticism and fable, derived in large part from the ancient popular religions of the country. This system was moreover tolerant, gentler and more human than its rival, the Hinayana; and permitted greater freedom to the individual, both in action and belief, than did the simpler agnosticism and stern but unattractive morality which claimed to represent primitive Budd hism " (Geden). The Mahayana is often ascribed to Nagarjnna, the thirteenth or fourteenth in succession of the Buddhist patriarchs. He is said also to have taught a " middle way " between the doctrines of the reality and of the deceptiveness of existence (the Middle Vehicle). This system is known in Tibet as the Madhyamayana. In Tibet the religion of the Buddha has been changed and modified by nature and devil worship; and the ritual, with its altars, processions, and incense resembles strikingly that of the Roman Catholic and Greek Churches. Buddhism in fact pre sents various types. " The Buddhism of Nepal and Tibet differs from the Buddhism of Ceylon as much as the Christianity of Rome or of Moscow differs from that of Scotland or Wales. The Buddhism of Mongolia and China is far removed from either of these, and the Buddhism of Japan has peculiarities all its own " (T. W. Rhys Davids, Hibbert Lectures, 1881). An interest ing problem is raised by the resemblance of some of the stories and parables which were in course of time attributed to Gautama and incorporated in the Buddhist scriptures, to passages in the New Testament Gospels. It has been maintained by some that Christianity bor rowed from Buddhism, and by others that Buddhism borrowed from Christianity. " Albert J. Edmunds and Garbe earnestly advocate the indebtedness of Christ ianity to Buddhism. Such borrowing has not yet been fully proved, though shown to have been possible " (G. A. Barton, Religions of the World, 1917). See, in addi tion to works already mentioned : W. Bousset, H. Hack mann, Arthur Lloyd, F. W. Bussell.