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BUDDHISM

THEHOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARYOF MODERN KNOWLEDGE

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EDITORS OF THEHOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARYOF MODERN KNOWLEDGE

Professor GILBERT MURRAY, LL.D., D.Litt,Rt. Hon. H. A. L. FISHER, M.A., LL.D.Professor J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A., LL.D.Professor WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A.

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BUDDHISMA STORY OF THE BUDDHIST NORMX

ByMRS. RHYS DAVIDS, M.A.Lecturer in Indian Philosophy, Manchester UniversityFellow of University College, London

THORNTON BUTTERWORTH LIMITED15 BEDFORD STREET, LONDON

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? $ Si- o>

First published April, 1912Second Impression January, 1924Third November, 1925Fourth February, 1928

OF CHICAGOIIBRARY

All Rights ReservedAND PRJNTEP IN GPPAT

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TO MY TEACHERSG. GROOM ROBERTSONT. W. RHYS DAVIDS

' Too little payment for so great a debt '

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The following volumes of kindred interesthave already been published in the HomeUniversity Library :

No. 25. THE CIVILIZATION OF JAPAN.By Prof. H. A. Giles, LL.D.

No. 37. PEOPLES AND PROBLEMS OF INDIA.By Sir T. W. Holderness.

NO. 97. THE ANCIENT EAST.By D. G. Hogarth, F.B.A.

No. 134. CIVILIZATION OF JAPAN.By J. Ingram Bryan, M.A., M.Litt.

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CONTENTSCHAPTER PAGE

I THE PALI TRADITION ..... 9II DHAMMA AND ABHTDHAMMA . . . .32

III THE NORM AS THEORY OF No-SouL . . 48IV THE NORM AS THE LAW OF CAUSATION . . 78V THE NORM AS MORAL LAW . . . .107VI THE NORM AS IDEAL 150VII THE NORM AS IDEAL (continued) . . . 173VIII THE QUEST OF THE IDEAL .... 198IX THE IMPORT OF DHAMMA .... 234

CONCLUSION 240CHRONOLOGICAL NOTE..... 249BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . 251INDEX ....... 253

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BUDDHISMCHAPTER I

THE PALI TRADITIONTHE general growth of interest in Buddhismis due to more than one assignable cause.But we may class the various causes fairlyenough under the growth of general know-ledge. And under this fact of expandingknowledge we may distinguish between growthof intellectual curiosity and sympathy in theknower, and additional facilities in the meansof knowing.We must resist the temptation, in thelimited scope at our disposal, of lingeringover the former group of causes, and glanceforthwith at the latter.

In the first place we are now beginningto reap the harvest sown by certain pioneers,who returned last century from countrieswhere creed and culture are or have beenBuddhist, in their hearts the wish, on theirshoulders the task, to make known in theWest a literature venerable in its tradition,and, where still followed, a living force in thepresent, but practically unknown outside

9

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10 BUDDHISMAsia. This was the religious literature ofCeylon, Siam, and Burma, written on palm-leaf manuscripts, and, for the most part, ina language not at any time native to any ofthose countries, but nailing from the ancientdialects of North-East India. Closely akin tothis language, which, as a literary diction, isknown in the mediseval portion of the litera-ture as pdli (or The Text), is that of certaininscriptions carved on rock and pillar, foundin different parts of India. These are knownas the Edicts of the Emperor Asoka, the Indianover-lord who reigned about 272-35 B.C. Theyconsist largely of injunctions to righteousand fraternal conduct, and refer to passagescontained in the most ancient of these samePali compositions. These oldest compila-tions are treasured, in the three countriesabove-named, as canonical scriptures. Andthe Pali language is judged to be a literaryversion of an Indo-European or Aryan dialect,later than the language of the Vedas andBrahmawas, or oldest known Brahmin texts,but earlier than what is called Sanskrit, thatis, the literary language of India during nearlythe whole of the Christian era.Now this Pali was the vehicle of what is,so far as we have yet been able to discover,the earliest formulated records of Buddhism.Dead as a vernacular, it still lives on as aliterary instrument in the native collegesor monasteries of Ceylon, Siam, and Burma,just

as Latin was the mediaeval, and is, to

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THE PALI TRADITION 11some extent still, the modern vehicle forecclesiastical Christianity. In its vernacularor spoken form, it appears to have been thelanguage, according to Buddhist commen-tarial tradition, of Mag'adha, according toRhys Davids, of K6sala, about the fifthcentury B.C. (or earlier) and subsequent cen-turies. It was in the kingdom of Kosalathat the Buddhist movement took firmestroot, growing up in the great college atSavatthi, the site of which has during thelast few years been excavated. So thatalthough the first Buddhist Emperor, Asoka,was of Magadha, south of Kosala, andestablished his capital at Patna on theGanges, the Buddhist canon had already beencompiled (though not yet written) more orless in its present form in Kosalese, and notin Magadhi, and so it has since then remainedin the countries of Further India, after theexpulsion of

Buddhism from its birthplace.Buddhism was a missionizing movementfrom the first, and Further India was wonover to Buddhism by missions dispatchedfrom its centres in North-East India. Andit is in Further India, constantly loyal to itsadopted religion, that the Pali books, hand-written on palm-leaves, have been preserved,freshly copied, commented upon, or other-wise elaborated in other palm-leaf manu-scripts, and have thence, in copies old or new,been sold or given to, or appropriated byEuropeans.

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12 BUDDHISMNow while Prinsep on the one hand first

deciphered the rock-cut inscriptions of theEmperor Asoka, containing historical evidenceof inestimable value, Tumour, Childers andGogerly, Oldenberg and Rhys Davids, for overhalf a century, have been educating Euro-pean culture in the contents of the Palipalm-leaf MSS. Prior to this, our knowledgeof early Buddhism was derived from certainbooks of an early mediseval date, such as thatfrom which the late Edwin Arnold derivedhis famous poem, " The Light of Asia." Thesebooks were written in the Sanskrit, which asa general literary vehicle of thought (and notas merely the language of a learned class)had gradually superseded the earlier literaryvehicle of Pali. So far, no manuscriptsfrom Northern India, or from Buddhist cen-tres North and North-East of India, haveyielded us anything, in diction or in subject-matter, so apparently near to the beginningsof Buddhism, as a religion and a body ofculture, as some of these Pali books thatCeylon, Siam and Burma have preserved.These oldest books, together with several ofa somewhat later date, claim, by their owntestimony, and the ancient tradition of thesesouthern Buddhist countries, to have beencollected into a Canon or Bible of sacred docu-ments, entitled the Three Pit'okas, or Basketsof Tradition. They were, and are, held" sacred " in this sense, that they are believedto contain the genuine sayings of Go'tama,

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THE PALI TRADITION 13the Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, aswell as other books, which are elaborationsof subjects stated by him in outline ; sacredalso in this, that they may not be added to,nor otherwise altered.

Besides these Three Pitakas, the Paliliterature contains a great body of exegeticalcommentary on the Pitakas, mainly as to theoldest group of it, the work of two scholars,both Indian Buddhaghosa and Dhamma-pala dating from the fifth century, A.D.a great number of sub-commentaries addedgradually from that date till the present, and,lastly a number of other treatises, some olderand some more recent than the great com-mentaries. These are independent works,in that they are not systematic expositionsof the sacred texts. But they are, again,dependent, in that they express opinions inconformity with those texts, and frequentlycite them as authoritative.Now it is the editing of this palm-leafliterature in printed books, and the trans-lating of them by the scholars I have named,aided by many others, that has been gradually,for the last half century, bringing a knowledgeof early Buddhism to the educated public inEurope and America. The Pali Text Societyalone, founded by Professor Rhys Davids in1881, has published seventy volumes oftexts and translations. The Sacred Booksof the East, founded by the late Max Miiller,published several translations. The Sacred

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14 BUDDHISMBooks of the Buddhists series, the HarvardOriental Series, the German Pali-Society arepublishing more.Recent political events in Asia have alsoaided in bringing Buddhism nearer to us.The annexation of Upper Burma by GreatBritain in 1889 resulted in bringing a numberof Government officials and European teachersto reside in, and become acquainted with,Burma and its religion and culture. Frenchand English interference in Siam has had asomewhat similar result. And the rise ofJapan, as a great power among the GreatPowers, has set Europe considering the partplayed in that rise by the Buddhist factorin Japanese religion. Lastly, the secrets ofthe cult of Tibet a curious adulteratedBuddhism and of its ecclesiastical libraries,seem at length to be becoming a little lessinaccessible to us. More than this onecannot say, but the additional factor in thegeneral interest in Buddhism remains.Once more, there is the awakening to newand international activity in Buddhist coun-tries, in connection with their own religionand culture, that must be taken into account.More than two thousand years after the periodof its first missionary zeal, we hear, simul-taneously from all the five countries namedabove, of fresh movements, not only of self-defence against the invasion of other creeds,but also of attack.

Of these movements the system of ultramon-

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THE PALI TRADITION 15tane, chiefly political propaganda, started bythe Tibetan Church is well known to existand may have important results at least inAsia, but at present of those results, or of itsorganization we can say nothing, and itseffective influence for Europe is as yet nil.Elsewhere the new activity is purely religious,and consists chiefly in (1) the printing of thecanonical and other Pali classical works in thenational script ; (2) the inclusion of theseand other printed books in the monasticmanuscript libraries ; (3) the increase ofBuddhist colleges ; (4) the establishment offoreign missions ; (5) the circulation of periodi-cal propagandist literature in East and West ;(6) the institution of societies, chiefly in theWest, for the study of Buddhism.Whatever may be the final result of theopening up of so many avenues, political,geographical, literary and educational, theimmediate consequences involve a wideracquaintance among ourselves with Buddhistsand with all the varieties of their traditionsand culture as Buddhists.But that wider acquaintance will profitus little, in so far as we honestly wish to get ajust idea of those traditions and an intelligent

appreciation of that culture, if we rigidlyestimate the one or the other by the measureof our own traditional standpoints. Thesestandpoints have been slowly built up in thepast by a certain selection among notions

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16 BUDDHISMand beliefs. Some we threw away ; some weadopted ; and from time to time we madealterations or reforms. And where we altered,we found it not always possible to make ourtraditions of speech conform to our reforms.For instance, we have ceased to believe thatthe sun " rises " or " sets." We believe thatwhen each of those events happens, our portionof earth rolls sunwards, and away from thesun, respectively, in its rotation around its ownaxis and the sun. But the old phrases holdfirm, so that we should expect to hear evenour astronomers use them.

These facts, then : a specific tradition inknowledge, and a vehicle of expression thathas not coincided in its growth with thegrowth of that knowledge should make uswary in estimating another tradition, anotherstandpoint, other modes of expression. Wemay fancy that we are measuring other viewsby standpoints that are not only absolutelytrue, but the only standpoints possible orconceivable. But in fact we are measuring,by what is relatively true, by what has cometo be accepted among ourselves as true, adifferent range of standpoints, which havecome to hold good, analogously and equally,for other sections of humanity.And it is just the otherness in standpoint,in the midst of much that is like our own, thatwe need to discern before we judge, and fromwhich, in contributing unit-wise to modifythe thought of our day, we have most to learn.

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THE PALI TRADITION 17It is not the purpose of this little book to

repeat the story of the origin and growth ofBuddhism, as revealed in the life and teachingof him whom Buddhists and their books adoreas its founder. This has been repeatedlytold, in every language of Europe, and thetelling of it adapted to all classes of readers.Most of us have read, in some form, the storyof the wonderful noble of North-East India,known as Go'tama, the Buddha, or Siddhat-tha, or Sakyamuni, 1 and of the Church orcommunity of religious brethren, and of lay-followers founded by him, and by him taughtand guided for the last forty years of his entire-ly devoted life. A scholar here and there hassought to explain away the legend of theBuddha's renunciation and ministry as anevolution and adaptation of that great groupof fantasies entitled sun-myths. But sincethese explanations were attempted, the pileof historic evidence, archaeological and docu-mentary, has been ever growing, till at thistime of day we may say that the life ofSiddhattha Gotama of the Sakyas, as ahistorical fact, is at least as well demonstratedas that of the founder of any other religionof any antiquity.Draped and embroidered with myth andlegend it is, no less than the story of every

1 Siddhattha (Sanskrit, Siddhartha) Gotama = personaland family names ; Sakyamuni, sage or saint of theSakyans, his clan ; Buddha = Awakened, Enlightened,Wise, a title equivalent to our Messiah or Christ.

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18 BUDDHISMsuch founder's life. But a personal missionextending over years, devolving on to, andcarried on by unbroken apostolic succession,till as an organized institution it was acceptedfor centuries as the paramount religious guidein the culture of India, is a stubborn thingto argue away. The acceptance of it as,in the main, historically true may show a lessextravagant recourse to forced interpretations,and assumptions of improbable happenings,than the denial of it as such.Be that as it may, about the existence of atradition of culture, religious, philosophical,ethical, handed down by that apostolicsuccession till this day in Southern Asiawith remarkable purity and consistency,there can be no reasonable question whatever.Here too, it is true, a few sceptical minds havesuggested that the documents attesting thisunbroken tradition of events alleged to havehappened in North-East India were notoriginally compiled soon after, and there, asthey claim to have been, but were composedmuch later, in the earliest home of theircreed's adoption, to wit, in Ceylon. They aretherefore only the pious romancing of religiouswriters in the Buddhist monasteries of thatisland, working on a basis of stored-up runesand legends.It is true that the Pali Canon was notcommitted to writing till long after it hadexisted as an unwritten compilation, and tillnearly two hundred years after Buddhism

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THE PALI TRADITION 19had been introduced into Ceylon. This last-named event took place in the year 241 B.C. ;the writing down of the Canon began about80 B.C. But it is well known that, in India,memory and oral tradition have ever beenconsidered a safer method of protecting sacreddoctrines from the introduction and perpetua-tion of errors than writing. We read, in thePali Canon itself, of how the Brahmins inIndia met, in certain towns at stated intervals,to con over their own unwritten hymns andprayers. And even the hearing of these wasjealously guarded from certain castes. Evenat the present day, it is we, and not the Hindus,who need the written letter of their sacredliterature. And it was an innovation whenthe Buddhists of Ceylon, fearing lest thebrutal hand of war, in a small island, mightat any moment crush out the existence of thesesplendidly trained memories, decided to makeuse of the secular art of writing, wherewithto register their mental stores. And so weread in the two classic chronicles of Ceylon :The brethren wise ?f former days, they handed down byword of mouthThe Text of the Three Pit'akas, and all the Commentary

too.Seeing how men were perishing, the brethren then togethercame,And that the Faith might be maintained, made writing

of the Law in Books.There is no evidence in any portion of this

literature either in Pitaka or Commentary,

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that this late recourse to writing was due tovany mystery-mongering or esotericism. TheBuddha, it is stated, said that his was notthe hand of a teacher, closed now ind againto withhold doctrines. The teaching wasadapted to the listener : milk for babes,strong meat for those who were strong. Butthis was all.No one then who knew anything of these" memory-libraries," as a remarkable feature

of past and present Indian culture, wouldjudge the Pali books to be late, and quasi-spurious documents because, as written records,they came into being more than four centuriesafter their adherents claim that they werecompiled. It is the fact that there is nosurviving tradition of the Buddhist Churchesin India taking similar steps, when theirexistence was threatened, that has helped tothrow doubt on the authenticity of the Palibooks as genuine North-East Indian compila-tions, put together some in the fourth, somein the third century, before Christ.The whole question of the history of Pali-classic literature is far from being settled.But that it is a question of deep interest forphilology, for the history of writing, for thehistory of Indian culture, for the history ofreligion, is coming at last to be recognized.And it is they who most deeply study theliterature who tend to be convinced that, inthe Canon or Three Pitakas, we have noliterary production composed far away, in

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THE PALI TRADITION 21space and time, from the centre of the move-ment of which it tells, but an accretion ofworks, compiled as the geologist would say,in situ, and at different dates, and at differentcentres, with variations, not in doctrines, butin degree of emphasis on this and that doctrine.The absence of symmetry and of system in itsstructure, its imperfectly coinciding repeti-tions, its variety of diction, all testify againstits being wholly the work of a remote, late,provincial centre. The folk-lore with whichit abounds is of that great stock which madeits way out of North-West India into Europe.The similes with which it abounds are thoseof a sub-tropical continent and a great river-valley, rather than those of a tropical island.The scenes and places are North-East Indian,and may fairly be said to be described oralluded to as things seen.The history of Pali literature does notexhaust the question of Buddhist literature.But so far as we know, it does cover thehistory of the original Canon of Buddhistdoctrine, considered as Canon. By Canon Imean any document or group of documentshanded down, by persons acknowledged to beauthoritative teachers, as containing thedoctrine they teach, and, as to its contents,considered closed. In India itself have sur-vived a few early works by Buddhists, writtenin a transitional diction between the earlierPali or Kosalan, and the encroaching laterSanskrit ; and a few works in purer Sanskrit,

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22 BUDDHISMBut the great majority of Buddhist works,other than those that the Southern centreshave preserved as Canonical, and have them-selves added, are to be found in China, trans-lated into Chinese. It is from re-translationsof these into English, French or Germanand this is the great task before the newergeneration of Buddhist scholars that wemay expect to enrich our knowledge of classicBuddhist literature. From the Tibetanlibraries too, when these become more access-ible, we may yet win materials. But we maynot hope to discover there, or in China, aBuddhist literary tradition handed down inunbroken continuity from the third centuryB.C., like that of the Pali Canon in Ceylon.From the following century China began toincline to the teaching of Buddhism, andfrom then till the seventh century we read ofscholars and pilgrims going or returning toChina laden with Buddhist literature. Butmeanwhile from the parent trunk, representedby the teaching of the Pali Canon, there wasgrowing out the great limb of divergent doc-trines and sects known as Maha-Yanist Bud-dhism. This the "Great Vehicle "firstrivalled, then outgrew the mother Church,which became known among the daughters asHina-Yana : Little (or Low) Vehicle. And itis these departures in Buddhism that appealedmost effectively to the mission Churches inChina, Korea, and Japan, and which becamefurther differentiated how we do not yet

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THE PALI TRADITION 23know into the cult, so far removed fromthe canonical teaching, of the Lamaism ofTibet.

It can hardly be reasonably doubted, in theabsence of any historical testimony, that thisgreat and growing division in Indian Buddhismas a religious institution must have greatlyaided the hostile advance of Brahminismduring the early centuries of the Christian era.Buddhism started from its birth as a religiousmovement among the laity, as distinct fromthat class called Brahmins, who possessedprivileges from of old, to wit, a monopoly oferudition in sacred runes, hymns, doctrine,and spells, and of the right to celebrate priestlyrites. Its first converts were drawn largelyfrom the noble or warrior class (khattfyd's,Sanskrit : kshatriya's). But the majorityamong this class were unfit to appreciate theintellectual and ethical standpoints of the newdoctrine. " Whence," the Buddha is said toask a novice who had tried his 'prentice handat teaching a 'young noble, "whence shouldJayasena, born and bred in the pursuit ofworldly and sensuous desires, know and seeand realize that which can only be knownand seen and realized by coming out of it all ?'Tis like two friends walking hand in handinto the country till, coming to a crag, oneclimbs up, the other stays below and calls :4 What see you up there ? ' And he hears :' I see up here a lovely garden, a lovely wood,a lovely landscape, a lovely lake. ' He answers :

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24 BUDDHISM'That's impossible.' But the other dragshim up. . . ." 1No creed needed so much as Buddhism to beleft severely alone by political patronage, and towork out its slowly permeating and leavening

effect undisturbed by ignorance in high places.But just as, in the Protestant Reforma-tion, with the assumption by civil rulersof states of the headship over the reformedChurches, there went along with it a greatadvance of organization, discipline, and pro-paganda in the Roman Church ; so in India,under Asoka, the development of the khat-tiyas into the new imperialism of civil and(virtually) religious headship over India, wasmet by a corresponding consolidation ofBrahmin tradition and influence. Gods andheavens and beliefs as to the soul and itsdestiny had undergone no little modification,since first their Aryan ancestors brought theVedic hymns into India. Nevertheless thereligious ritual upheld by the Brahmins meta chronic popular demand relatively ignoredby Buddhism. It gave ceremonial dignityand sacramental sanction to all the vitalfeatures of physical and social life. Hardlymay any religion endure as solely sufficient,that does not recognize and enhance theordinary life of man in all its aspects.

If in the long run its political allies provedbad friends, Indian Buddhism, in the philoso-phical aberration of its degeneracy, went far

1Majjhima-Nikaya, iii, 129 /,

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THE PALI TRADITION 25to surrender itself into the hands of its foes.It abandoned its own original trend ofphilosophy, and went off to a side-track whichhas figured so greatly in such metaphysic asthis country has produced the question ofthe reality of the external world. And thus,as Dr. Walleser has recently pointed out, 1 byover-emphasizing the negation of that reality,it

played up to what we should now call theAbsolutist position of its Vedantist opponents,namely, that the only reality behind theillusions which our senses bring us, is thesoul in man and in the universe. Dr. Walleserholds that the consequent victory of Brah-minism over Buddhism was thus won byintellect and logic. And he is right by theextent to which the Buddhist schools in Indiawere unfaithful to their earlier philosophicalposition.To this we may return later. We need nothere dwell on the story, told elsewhere, inmanuals on Buddhism, of the decline andexpulsion of that which once, as cult andculturew, as paramount in India, gatheringunder its wing the learning and the science,the philosophy and the literature, the ethicsand the social melioration of its age. Theevidence as to episodes of persecution at thehands of certain rajas and Brahmins in thedays when Buddhism was going under, is sofar not firmly based. Equally scanty as yetis our knowledge of the decline and fall of

1 Per mere Ved&nta, Heidelberg, 1910,

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26 BUDDHISMthe Asokan empire, of the extension ofBuddhism to Kashmir under the patronage ofthe Scythian king, Kanishka, or of its shrink-age elsewhere in India back to its earliercentres in and around Magadha, the nucleusof Asoka's dominion. Were it not for theinvaluable records left by the three famousChinese Buddhist pilgrims who visited thechief seats of Buddhist, that is, Indian cultureFa-Hien in A.D. 400, Sung Yun in A.D. 518,and Yuan-Chwang in A.D. 629-648 the dark-ness would be yet greater than it is. Whenthe Buddhist and Jain literature of thisperiod i.e., of the centuries just before, andthe first four after the beginning, of our erashall have emerged from their chrysalis-stateof manuscript ; when archaeological researchshall be carried on in a way befitting our rulein India, we may at length be able to constructsomething like a continuous history

If I have alluded, even in the barest outline,to the historical fact of the waning of Buddhistparamountcy in India, it was in order the betterto limit and simplify the scope of our inquiriesin the following pages. The reader shouldnever forget that to treat of " Buddhism " isjust as complex and many-sided as to treatof " Christism," or, as we have selected to say,of " Christianity." The latter subject admitsof very different treatment according to theaspect selected, the period of time, the centreof development, and so on. To the best ofmy belief, no European writer has ever been

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THE PALI TRADITION 27called upon to deal, even in outline, with thewhole subject of Christianity or Christendomin a book of this compass. It is equallyimpracticable to do so in the case of Buddhism,By the foregoing the reader will see that,under that title, a book might be written withequal pertinence either onthe story of the incep-tion of the Buddhist movements and itslegends, on the Buddhism of the Pali Canon,on the history of that Canon, on the Maha-Yanist evolution, on schools of Buddhistphilosophy, on Buddhist India, on Trans-Indian Buddhism, and so forth.

It is true that these subjects are not mutuallyindependent. As with Christianity so here,but one Founder is acknowledged, and but oneand the same cradle land. And that whichwe have seen called the Lower Vehicle, butwhich should, with greater historical propriety,be called by its more ancient name of theTheravada, or School of the Elders or Apostles,is by all admitted to be the parent stem. NoMaha-Yanist, however, and no Lamaist wouldconcede that any treatment entitled " Bud-;dhism " was adequate, that did not show thehistory of the doctrine as a progressive inspira-tion, and their own cult as the expanded andperfect flower of the parent gospel.And more : the range of the subject ofBuddhism is not to be confined to the cult andits adherents. India could not for a time haveso far adopted that cult that we may speak ofBuddhist India, and of Buddhist thought and

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28 BUDDHISMculture, as temporarily Indian thought andculture, without being indelibly modified by it.The influence of Buddhist religion and philo-sophy on the post-Buddhistic Indian litera-ture is well marked. In the words of St. Paul(1 Cor. xiii., 11) when the Indian was a child,he understood as a child, he reasoned as achild. But when, under the influence ofBuddhism, he became for a while a man, he putaway youthful things, at least to this extent,that the graver and more virile concepts ofTheravada Buddhism may be heard rever-berating through the later devotional andphilosophical literature of India, even ofschools opposed to Buddhism. Very forciblywas it said by the late Edmund Hardy ^" Buddhism, wasted away after rival sectshad appropriated everything from it that theycould make any use of." (Indische Religions-geschichte, 101.)

It will now be seen that some selection inthis vast subject is necessary, if the slenderbulk of this volume is to contain anything lesssuperficial than a general outline of the whole.And in selecting, for this reason, and in choos-ing, as I have done, to present some considera-tions on the philosophical concepts containedin the Pali Canon and subsequently developed,it is chiefly for these reasons : Based on thatCanon, a philosophical tradition has been,in the Buddhist countries of Southern Asia,evolved and has survived, as a living vehicleof culture, to the present day. Even then, if

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30 BUDDHISMsection of humanity may not have acceptedsome such fresh point of view. Some othernew synthesis may have extruded it, or thesection was not ripe for it. The new viewof things may have been, in the judgment ofanother section of humanity, or of the samesection, elsewhere in time, sounder, truer,than its then successful rivals. But the"conjuncture," as the Germans say, passedby. The point of view, if it had been accepted,or if it had been put forward elsewhere amongmankind, might have modified the whole trendof any one tradition of thought to an indefinite

degree.What actually has happened is that, in thefirst place, the general view of things under-lying this and that group of human beliefshas not developed along one and the sameline. The differences may be not so much inthe notions conceived, as in the emphasis orproportion

of weight attached to them. Thisdifference becomes a very telling factor inthe religious or philosophical superstructure.Secondly, these underlying notions themselvesare not the same everywhere and at all times.Now that the Pali Pitakas let alone thetradition directly inherited from them canclaim to show any originality in philosophicaldeparture, a that they can, on any ground,claim to occupy a place in the general historyof philosophy, save at best as a degenerateoffshoot of earlier syntheses this is not yetallowed. " The more we advance in Central

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THE PALI TRADITION 31Asiatic research," wrote the late Professor R.Pischel, " the clearer it appears that, for agreat portion of the Orient, Buddhism wasnot less a vehicle of culture than Christianityhas been for the Occident. While Buddhism,he goes on to say, " as a religion gains (by thatresearch) ever in value, as a philosophy it sinksever deeper. With Garbe and Jacobi I amconvinced that Buddha as a philosopher isentirely dependent on Kapila and Patanjali."That is to say, such philosophical concepts aswe may meet with in the Buddhist doctrinesof the Pali Canon for Pischel admits thatthese are the oldest, if only " the canon of oneBuddhist sect," and uses them as his authori-ties are derived from works attributed to twophilosophers so named. The works in questionare the Sankhya Aphorisms and the Yogasutraalso a collection of aphorisms. Of the twothinkers, Kapila and Patanjali, as historicalcharacters, there is no sound survivingevidence, and the works in question appearenshrined in commentaries, the earliest ofwhich are a good deal subsequent to theChristian era. But tradition ascribes tothe original utterances considerably greaterantiquity. (See note, p. 250.)Let this suffice by way of introduction. Myaim here is not to controvert, but only toexpound a few salient philosophical stand-

points, which, whether they be derived ororiginal, are involved in the ethical views andmethods advocated in the Pali Canon.

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CHAPTER IIDHAMMA AND ABHIDHAMMA

WHEN a Burmese, Singhalese or Siamesescholar, in matters religious and philosophical,discourses or writes, not in order to exhortor edify, but to analyze, define, classify andexplain, he is said to be talking or writing notDhamma, but Abhidhamma.Now Dhamma, more familiar perhaps tous in its Vedic and Sanskrit form, Dharmti,is an ancient Indian word, with the very widemeaning of Right, Good, Justice, MoralLaw. The notion even came to be personifiedas a god among the gods. Etymologically,the word is of identical origin with our" form," the common Aryan root, according toDr. Skeat, being ' dhar.' And * dhar,' to quotefurther, means to support, sustain, maintain,hold, keep. We might therefore identifyDhamma with " good form," did this expres-sion apply to higher matters than proprietyor good taste. As signifying then " goodform," raised, as mathematicians say, to ahigher power, Dhamma implies that view orprocedure which is, as we say, accordingto conscience, and constituting a more or less32

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DHAMMA AND ABHIDHAMMA 33recognized standard, guiding rule, or norm.It is also translated by Paliyists as The Ideal,Truth, Law, Right, System or Doctrine, accord-ing to the context. Every religious or ethicalteacher of ancient India had some " Dhamma "to propound. " What, sir," some teacheris now and again recorded as asking theBuddha " is your Dhamma by which youso train your disciples, that they, havingfound consolation, recognize it as their ulti-mate support and fundamental principle ofreligious life ? "" Fundamental " is, by the commentatoron this particular passage, paraphrased byancient or pristine. And indeed this isnever lost sight of in the Pali books : that theBuddha is expressing not only his own con-victions, the fruit of intense effort andself-communing, but also something that was,and had in the infinite past been, and wouldever be, objectively and constantly validand true for any and every human society,nay, something that was cosmic law, eternal,necessary, omnipresent, whether discernedor not. And the function and hall-mark of aBuddha was not to devise, or create a newDhamma, but to rediscover, recreate and re-vive that ancient norm. His it was to bringabout its renascence as a cult in the lives,and apply it to the special needs, of his own ageand its posterity. This, in words ascribed tohim, is how the Buddha viewed his mission :"As a man, brethren, wandering in the

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34 BUDDHISMforest, in the mountain jungle, might see anancient path, an ancient road, trodden bymen of an earlier age ; and following it,might discover an ancient township, anancient palace, the habitation of men of anearlier age, surrounded by park and grove andlotus-pool and walls, a delightful spot ; andthat man were to go back, and announce tothe king or his minister : Behold, sir, andlearn what I have seen ! And, having toldhim, he were to invite the king to rebuildthat city, and that city were to becomeanon flourishing and populous and wealthyonce more : Even so, brethren, have I seenan ancient Path, an ancient Road, trodden byBuddhas of a bygone age ... the whichhaving followed, I understand life, and itscoming to be and its passing away. Andthus understanding, I have declared thesame to the fraternity and to the laity, so thatthe holy life flourishes and is spread abroadonce more, well propagated among men." 1And thus of course says every great reform-er : "In the beginning was the Word". . .

" The words that I speak are notmine." Confucius too follows the Christ andthe Buddha : " My work is to indicate ratherthan to originate."Dhamma, then, is of the common ancientIndian stock of ideas, peculiar as a term to nocreed, and only immensely heightened anddeepened by the Buddhists. For to them, as

1Sutta-Pit'&ka,, Samyutta-Nikaya,

" The City."

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DHAMMA AND ABHIDHAMMA 35meaning the normal, necessary and eternalorder and law of all moral or spiritual things,it stood in place of a theodicy., or cosmoscreated and carried on by a first and a finalcause. Never for them a deity, it was theNecessity behind the god, to which ^Eschylus,at more or less the same epoch, was pointingin his " Prometheus." As gravitation exists,whether Newtons arise to discern its actionor not, so for Buddhists does Dhamma existand act, whether the current age bring fortha Buddha or not.Let us leave the matter for the moment at

that. I may seem to be loading the wordwith a heavier import than is given to it byPali scholars, for instance, than that given byRhys Davids in Buddhist India (p. 292),where he likens it to that " good form,"which a man of right feeling will judge heshould at any moment conform to. But Iam not proposing to supersede this purelyethical aspect of Dhamma at all. In thepassage referred to, the writer is discussingthe use of Dhamma in the Asokan Edicts,and " the way in which it came to be usedas it was in India, in Asoka's time." This,he writes, is not " Law," which is frequentlyused for Dhamma. Here I am not concernedso much with the ethical aspect, as with thatbackground of philosophical postulates which,uttered or unexpressed, lies at the back of ourmost solemn judgments about life and thewhole of things. And just as our use of

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36 BUDDHISM"law" may vary, from mere by-law to anatural sequence of the universe, so did theBuddhist Indian

"in the street," for whom theEdicts were intended, and Buddhaghosa the

scholar, differ in the significance whichDhamma could bear for them.Dhamma, Tao, Anangke (necessity), Aga-thon (Plato's " Good ") : these all, withvarious shades of meaning and emphasis,represent as many utmost fetches of the earlyhuman intellect to conceive an impersonalprinciple, or order of things prior to, andmore constant than, the administrative deityrepresenting it. To ask of the systemsdeveloping severally those four notions :If there, who put it there ? " is to inverttheir point of view. It is contrary to Budd-hism to see in Dhamma the expression of aprior Consciousness. Buddhism is content totrace in human consciousness the evolutionof cosmic norm or Dhamma. Herein wehave come on to a fundamental conceptin Buddhist philosophy.But if Dhamma is a term common toIndian thought, Abhidhamma seems to be aterm exclusively used by Buddhists. Andfor them, Abhidhamma, meaning literallybeyond, or ultra-Dhamma, covers all studyof theory as such, and of logical method. Justas Aristotle found the term physics ready tohand, but was himself the involuntary cause,if not the actual circulator of the term meta-physics, so does the term Abhidhamma start

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DHAMMA AND ABHIDHAMMA 3?with Buddhism. That is to say, with Indianculture when this was Buddhist. The earliestexpression

of this side of that culture as yetknown to be extant, is contained in the sevenbooks of the Pali Pitaka called the Abhi-dhamma-Pitaka. (Other seven books onAbhidhamma are those of the Sarvastivadins-a school that split off early from the originalstem of Buddhism. These are preserved inChinese translations. Their titles and matter

are different, but in method and scope theyappear, from the slender outline of them asyet published, 1 to be akin to the Pali books.In the near future they will become moreaccessible to us.) These seven books showthat their authors were conversant with alogic of terms and propositions, of definitionand division, that is like and also unlike themethods we have inherited from the Greeks.And these books of applied logic and method,formed together probably with the oldestand cognate works of the Jain school, thebasis of the elaborate logic of mediaeval India." The real founders of the mediaeval logic,"writes Professor Vidyabhusana, of Calcutta," were the Buddhists." That logic " wasalmost entirely in the hands of the Jainasand Buddhists " (Mediceval School of IndianLogic), although in the more ancient Abhi-dhamma Pitaka we have the logic applied

j and not yet systematized in text-books.1 By Professor Takakusu, /ournal Pali Text Society,

1905.

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3 BUDDHISMIn fact the somewhat superficial acquaint-ance with these curious old books, which is all

that any of us in Europe can yet claim tohave, would almost lead us to suppose thatthey themselves served to some extent asmanuals of logical method.To a certain extent they select from, andrestate, doctrines contained in the doctrinal,or Sutta, Pitaka. Besides this they defineterms, and formulate propositions to a greaterdegree of precision. They also investigatea vast number of cases where they apply theirformulae. I may not in these brief limitsstay to illustrate, and will add only this :

In the Abhidhamma-Pitaka we see thePegasus of Indian imagination working forthe first time in harness. Nowhere as in Indiado we see human phantasy so elastic andexuberant, sporting in time, space, and theinfinite ; and nowhere else as in this Theravadaliterature appears such determined effort, notwholly to crush all its airy notions, but tocurb, regulate and systematize them. Pega-sus is yoked, but he retains his iridescentwings. The gods are as such become of noaccount. But they persist as happy, rebornhuman beings, longer lived, but no less imper-manent. Any one who had the grit to practisethe system of intense rapt self-hypnotic con-templation called Jhana, and was sufficientlypure in heart thereby to attain abhinna,or supernormal insight, could for himself seebeyond this one plane of life. Were there

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DHAMMA AND ABHIDHAMMA 39&ot many saintly men and women who hadtestified thereto ? And what they had toldand taught had to be exploited and regu-lated in all this body of terms and formulae.Hence the Buddhist Indian, thinking inharness, is by no means so confined inrange of positive materials as the modernEuropean.None the less, Abhidhamma was an instru-ment for regulating the mind. Accordingto the greatest of the scholastic commentators

of the fifth century A.D., Buddhaghosa, itwas calculated to check those excesses inthought away from the norm, which wereshown, by the Buddha, to lead to loss ofmental balance, craziness, insanity. Andthis it was sought to carry out, first, by athorough-going definition and determinationof all terms used in doctrinal tenets. Hereby amutual consistency of denotation and conno-tation was secured. Secondly, by enunciatingthose tenets in a fixed form, and co-ordinatingthem mutually, where desirable. Thirdly,by reducing all possible heterodox positionsto an absurdity. Fourthly, and herein liesthe chief, not to say the only direction inwhich the Abhidhamma-Pitaka has positivelycontributed to early Buddhist philosophyby a study of the most general relations con-ceivable among phenomena. These are reck-oned as twenty-four in number, some of whichwe should subsume, or include under others,perhaps because in English dress their real

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40 BUDDHISMmeaning is not always clear. Here are someof them :A phenomenon may be related to anotherby way of " condition, object, influence, co-

existence, contiguity, reciprocity, succession,". . . and so on.And all this body of mental discipline, beit remembered, was taught without books.The style of the books themselves neverlets us forget it, and they make shockinglybad reading in consequence. Often, the onlyway used to aid the burdened memory is anorderly but endless repetition of a verbalframework, wherein only one term of a seriesis varied at a time. We may smile andyawn over the results, and we may talkpityingly of epigonoi and scholastic pedantry.Yet the aims were lofty, and the execution,in the absence of visible registering apparatus,extraordinary. I am even tempted to wonderhow far the exaggeration of the Indian tem-perament and the temperance of the Greektemperament were due to the absence andpresence respectively,, during the 'florescenceof each, of the fully written thought.Let us agree to see in Abhidhamma, bothin the Pitaka so-called and out of it, Buddhistmental and moral science, based on theDhamma of the Pali Pitakas, and go on toconsider it as tradition. Discounting thechanged skies above it, for as we saw, thetradition of Dhamma and Abhidhamma is anexile, it may rank among the most venerable

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DHAMMA AND ABHIDHAMMA 41survivals of early culture. Assuming thatGotama Buddha died in the fifth century,B.C., and that the Canon started, grew, andfinally took its present shape during the courseof the two following centuries, we see, inthat Canon and the South Asian literaturethat has accumulated round it, a continuousdoctrinal succession, first oral, then both oraland literary, of approximately 2,200 years,if not more. More perhaps in the case ofparts of the first two Pitakas ; parts of theSutta-Pitaka and the Abhidhamma-Pitakabeing certainly not so old. We shall not,therefore, be very wide of the mark if weconsider the unification of Indian learningunder Buddhism to be not many decadesremoved from the unification of Greek learn-ing under Aristotle.Now there is this salient difference in thecontinuity of Buddhist Abhidhamma as com-pared with that of Graeco-Christian philo-sophy ; namely, that for us the thoughts ofPlato, Aristotle, and their forerunners runalongside the current of our Christian doctrinelike two streams that will not wholly mingle.They have been handed down partly by theChristian Church, partly in spite of its earlierefforts. The contentions in the early Chris-tian Church as to how far Greek philosophymight wisely be annexed and taught, forminteresting matter for the historian.But for Buddhists, the method called Abhi-dhamma has sprung from the very tree itself

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BUDDHISMof the Dhamma. It is for them of no paganstock, admitted at first on sufferance by thedoctors of a faith come otherwhence to birthand power. To realize the unity in thetradition of the Theras, we must try to con-ceive the vista that Christian philosophywould present, could we transpose the firstcenturies Anno Domini and the last centuriespreceding them, could we make Socratesand Plato to have been trained at the feet ofSt. Peter or St. Paul, or could we make aChristian Abhidhammika of Aristotle. Notthen would the Christian poet, who called him" Master of them that know," have consignedhis spirit to a neutral after-world in Limbo'stremulous air for having, all unknowing," not rightly worshipped God." (Dante'sInferno, c. iv.)Abhidhamma has, as we know, long ceasedto be taught in the Palestine or Holy Land ofBuddhism. Of the chief centres where it wassuccessively taught, Jetavana's site lies re-vealed in utter ruin, and over Nalanda'suniversity, swept away by fire and sword, thelittle ploughs scratch the obliterating soil.But the torch of the Theras, handed on bymissionary ardour to centres of civilizationin Ceylon and Further India, has furnisheda fire from those Indian mother-altars thathas never become extinct. In the viharasof Ceylon, Siam and Burma, the Pali Canon isand has been taught as authoritative fromits introduction till now. And it is remark-

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DHAMMA AND ABHIDHAMMA 43able, when we compare palm-leaf Pali MSS.,written in the different characters of each ofthese countries, to see how relatively few, andespecially how doctrinally negligeable are themutual discrepancies in the text. To thedoctrines as set forth in the Canon, the mediae-val and modern works on Abhidhamma linesloyally and piously adhere.This was perhaps only to be expected,since all greatly divergent thought had severeditself early from the parent stock. On theother hand, it must be remembered that thisresidual unity of tradition has been maintainedwithout any restriction affecting liberty or lifeimposed by a presiding authority. Could anyother surviving tradition of so long standingsay as much ?But this continuous orthodoxy has by nomeans excluded a quietly evolving vitality.It has resembled, not the dead waters of acanal, but the slow and gentle meandering ofa river of the plains. Our knowledge ofAbhidhamma literature is as yet deplorablydeficient. But we know enough at least ofthe older portion of it to see a considerableadvance in analytic power. Of the threeworks extant known to be prio to, becausequoted by, Buddhaghosa prior, that is, tothe fifth century A.D., the one accessible toEnglish readers is " The Questions of KingMilinda." In the learned Nagasena's replies,even though these are adapted to the relativelyuntrained intelligence of the King, we note a

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44 BUDDHISMmarked psychological progress, and a finedeftness of philosophical exposition. To thiswe may return. The psychology in the worksof Buddhaghosa himself shows a still morenoteworthy evolution.By his time the philosophical culture ofBuddhist India was expressing itself in Sans-krit. In the literature of that culture there isample testimony, in such works as survive, toreveal developments in logic and in meta-physic. But Buddhaghosa belonged to thePali tradition of the Theravadins, and wrotein Ceylon. And in making accessible theworks of him and his successors, much workyet remains to be done. The brief summaryof philosophy called A Compendium ofAbhidhamma, which has for many centuries,together with a great accretion of comment-arial works, formed the nucleus of instructionin southern Buddhist centres till the presentday, shows that attempts at philosophicalsynthesis were ever in progress, even thoughno great constructive intellect made any strik-ing departure. In the present decade thephilosophic world of the Burmese monasteriesis much engaged by the innovations intraditional lines of thought put forward by theThera, Ledi Sadaw (i.e., Professor Ledi).Better knowledge of medieval and modernBuddhist literature may show that thedifferent countries cultivating it Ceylon,Burma, Siam, to go no further may, bynational differences in culture, diction and

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DHAMMA AND ABHIDHAMMA 45environment, have each acquired specificcharacteristics of doctrine. Such divergencewill, however, have been held in check, first,by the carefully preserved unity in the canoni-cal literature, secondly, by the great work ofBuddhaghosa, whose " Way of Purity " (soonto become accessible to English readers) andcommentaries, have served as a causewayof orthodoxy ; thirdly, by the practice,similar to that which obtained among our-selves in the Middle Ages even more than now,of Buddhist students internationalizing theirresorts of learning. As Latin was our linguafranca among travelling scholars, so has Paliever been theirs. Pali is still the language inwhich most Abhidhamma books are written.And a better acquaintance, I repeat, withthose books, old and new, will reveal suchvariation, due to race and environment,as these checks have not sufficed to prevent.No doubt, on the other hand, a traditionwhich has lived so long immune from shocksand strains from without, let alone fromserious schisms from within, is scarcely onethat can be expected to evolve and expandin adequate response to the progressive birth-throes of the human mind. Its long slumberas to any further missionizing efforts of itsown, its long immunity from contact with alienthought, must involve it in some experiencesof Rip van Winkle's, when the sleeper comesforth. We shall expect to find, side by sidewith those great traits that made early

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46 BUDDHISMBuddhism immortal, the clinging nimbus ofchild-like and uncritical fancies and beliefs.We do find them both in the literature of thepast and in the current tradition. But thefact that the long life-span of Buddhismpresents this composite figure of features andnimbus, detracts not an iota from its interestfor us its interest for the history of philosophyand its interest for the thinkers who aremaking the philosophy of to-morrow.For consider a moment the exceeding greathistorical interest that lies in the fact andnature of an ancient unbroken tradition. Weof Europe move along the orbit of a philoso-phical tradition that we like to trace back sometwenty-five centuries to Thales, mid-waybetween east and west. This we call " the "Greek philosophical tradition. But it has notonly assimilated streams from non-Hellenisticsources ; it is the fittest survivor among manywrecks, as are no doubt all other traditions." Fittest " perhaps because it throve moreeasily than others, amid the varying mythsand conventions of the social soil it grew upon.Among those wrecks of thought, we maycount the philosophic syntheses of Herakleitus,and of Leukippus and Demokritus. Theirworks have perished. Their thoughts werenot all drowned, but they were, so to speak,hauled out of the sea on to the decks of theAcademic and Stoan Armadas. In plainwords, they live for us chiefly because Platoand Aristotle quoted them, as good stimulators

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DHAMMA AND ABHIDHAMMA 47for argument and refutation. Even if thesand-buried ruins of Egyptian villas had re-vealed to us anything so precious as the greatDiakosmos by Demokritus, or the untitleddiscourses of Herakleitus, we should have butthe beginnings of that whereof some crumbsonly have survived. We should have noconsecutive tradition.But in the Dhamma we have implicit fromthe first, and, in Abhidhamma teaching wehave, made gradually explicit, a synthesison all fours with the universal flux of Hera-kleitus and with Demokritus's theory ofnatural causation. Hence the enhanceddegree of interest for us in the Buddhistphilosophical tradition as maintained by theTheravada. It is not only of a relativelypure and independent pedigree ; it is also theEastern counterpart of certain notable syn-theses which, originating between East andWest, were never, in the West, made theheadstone of the corner in philosophy'stemple. Modern science, which now swaysphilosophy to and fro, is no doubt in line withthe thought of both Herakleitus and Demo-kritus, and is their ultimate vindicator. Butscience, bent on present and future vision,leaves her tradition to the care of the historicalphilosopher. He has to explain how shearose from a soil which had suffered Demo-kritus's works to perish, while in Buddhistsoil, with the exception of a notable medicaland psychological culture, she failed to grow.

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CHAPTER IIITHE NORM AS THEORY OF NO SOUL

WE have so far gained some idea of the historyand scope of that Pali Buddhism to a limitedstudy of which these pages are confined. Wemust now come to closer grips with thoseinductions and ideals in this Pali Buddhism,which will one day, despite the slenderlybased criticism that would rob them of alloriginality, be considered as a positive con-tribution to the history of philosophy.It was asserted in the preceding chapter, thatDhamma (or Norm) implied, for the philoso-phical Buddhist, an impersonal eternal orderof things, according to which all things,animate and inanimate, gods included, lived,moved and had their being. This is not theBuddhist's usual way of describing it. Never-theless in the oldest books the conviction isthere as a latent, undefined but most vitalpostulate, and is borne in upon us as we read.We find, namely, ( 1 ) a universe ofmany worlds,without first cause, going on from everlastingto everlasting, by alternating integration anddisintegration ; (2) this cosmic procedure asorderly, both as to physical, psychical and

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THEORY OF NO-SOUL 49moral nature ; (3) no caprice, chance or chaosexisting anywhere in this cosmos.When Buddhist-Indian thought had becomesufficiently analytic and self-conscious to

distinguish and formulate its philosophicalpostulates, it analyzed the implications ofthe term Dhamma. We know this analysisthrough the pen of Buddhaghosa, who doesnot claim originality in the matter. Dhamma,he wrote, 1 signifies (1) The Doctrine, as averbal, or literary composition to be learntand mastered (pariyatti). (2) Condition orcause (hetu). This is illustrated by thequotation : " Dhamma-analysis is knowledgeconcerning conditions

" 2(3) Right, or right-eousness. This is illustrated by the verse :

Not of the like result are right and wrong (dhamma,a-dhamma),Wrong leads to baleful, right, to happy doom. 3

(4) phenomenon. The Pali word here used isnissatta-nijjwatd, i.e., non-entity or non-substrate, and non-soul-ness. This is illus-trated elsewhere by the quotations : "Whenmental phenomena arise in consciousness."" He contemplating the nature of pheno-mena." 4

In this fourfold explication of the term1 Commentary on the Dhamma-Sangani ; also that onthe Dhammapada. The identity of the author of the

latter work with Buddhaghosa is doubtful,2 Vibhanga (Abhidhamma-Pitaka).* Psalms of the Brethren (Sutta-Pitaka).* Psychological Ethics, 33 [121] ; Majjhima-Nikaya, i. 61.

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50 BUDDHISMDhamma we may see the whole of TheravadaBuddhist philosophy in a nutshell. In thebeloved person of the Buddha were enshrinedall that Divine Presences, wisdom stoopingfrom on high, transcendent love and powermighty and willing to save, the secret ofgenius knowing and drawing the hearts ofmen, the ideal Superman, have availed andwrought for humanity in other creeds. Inthe institution of an organized Fraternityand a loyal Laity the Order giving, theLaity giving also, but believing it received yetmore than it gave the slow evolution ofsolidarity took the best shape practicable atthe time. Thirdly and lastly, the notion ofDhamma included, and stood for, the fact andgrowth of ideas, fruit of the mind and yetcondition and fashioner of minds ; inter-preted and transmitted by men, and yet thatwherein and whereby they " lived and movedand had their being." And insight intoDhamma, we read in the Sutta-Pitaka,meant the discernment of an eternal, orderly,conditioned sequence of things, the which,when thoroughly grasped, swept out of a man'sthoughts all speculation on the beginning oflife or its ultimate end, or on its present natureas entity or soul. 1Let us now beat out a little more fully eachof these four aspects of the word Dhamma,and thereby test the statement that they giveus together the kernel of Buddhism.

1Samyutta-Nikaya, ii. 25-27, 60.

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THEORY OF NO-SOtTLAnd let us take the last aspect first, namely,that Dhamma might stand for phenomenon,

especially anything that we say is mentalobject, or state of mind. How does itbelong to the essence of Buddhist thoughtto emphasize the fact that in mental stateswe have phenomena, and not anythingbehind phenomena, such as soul or ego, orsubstance ? For Buddhist thought is veryemphatic indeed about it, and makes thisrejection of a something which, as the subjectof mental states, does not come and go withthem, but persists unchanging and unending,its first and last philosophic denial. Somuch so, that it has been accused of beingsimply a system of negation, without anypositive structure whatever.Quotations might be multiplied by thedozen, but I give one or two that best re-present the mass of such rejections of thesubstantialist position. To Vaj'ira, a Sisterof the Order, these verses are ascribed :

MARA.Who hath this being (satta) fashioned ? Where isThe maker of this being ? Whence hath it sprung ?Where doth this being cease and pass away ?

VAJIEA." Being ? " Why dost thou harp upon that word ?'Mong false opinions, Mara, art thou strayed.This a mere bundle of formations is.Therefrom no " being " mayest thou obtain,For e'en as, when the factors are arranged,By the word

" chariot " is the product known,

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52 BUDDHISMSo doth our usage covenant to say" A being " when the Aggregates are there. 1

Again Ananda, the companion of the Bud-dha, asks him : " What is meant, lord, by thephrase, 6_the world is empty ? ' " " That it isempty, Ananda, of a self, or of anything ofthe nature of a self. And what is it that isthus empty ? The five seats of the five senses,and the mind, and the feeling that is relatedto mind : all these are void of a self or ofanything that is self-like." 2Again to the listening brethren or bhikkhus :" Since neither self nor aught belongingto self, brethren, can really and truly exist, the

view which holds that this [I] who am ' world,'who am ' self,' shall hereafter live permanent,persisting, eternal, unchanging, yea, abideeternally : is not this utterly and entirely afoolish doctrine ? " 3

This denial of a permanent self or soul (attd)in any living being whatever was extended,logically enough, to the whole hierarchy ofgods or superhuman beings, wherewith theIndian heavens, not to say earth and all regions,are so liberally populated. All were " livingcreatures," and life in all its manifestations,in the very nature of it, was impermanent andsubject to change and to suffering. Thus we

1 Psalms of the Sisters, p. 190.8 Samyutta-Nikaya, iv. 54. [Aggregates or groups :

constituents, mental and bodily, of a person.]* MajjMma-Nikdya (Sutta-Pitaka), i. 138.

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THEORY OF NO-SOUL 58read in the " Lion " Sutta1 how, in their long,long span of pleasant being, the gods forgetthis, till at length a Buddha arises in the world." And just as the king of beasts at eventidecomes forth from his lair and roars, so thatall the beasts tremble and hide, so does heproclaim the Norm to gods and to men, howall matter and all. mind recombines anddissolves again. Thereat the gods hear andin anguish exclaim : Alas ! we who fanciedourselves permanent, stable, eternal, we areconfined by an individuality that is imper-manent, unstable, temporary ! "

Again, a special case of this illusion beingdispelled is given in the legend-sutta of theBrahma-god Baka, who appears to the Buddhaand declares the Brahma-heaven to be per-manent, etc., without birth, decay, or decease,and that beyond it is no salvation. TheBuddha replies, that only because of hisignorance can Baka affirm his heaven to beeternal, absolute, free from the law of imper-manence, or affording ultimate salvation. 2

It will be seen that there is no attempthere, in denying the absolute in all deity, todeny also that gods exist. That they existedwas taken for granted. They lived longer andmore pleasantly, they had superior, lesslimited organisms, and better powers oflocomotion. But they existed, law-governed,like mankind, that is to say, the world-orderfulfilled itself in them ; they did not create it,

* Samyutta-Nikaya, iii, 85, 2 Op, tit. i. 142,

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54 BUDDHISMnor could they destroy it, or interfere with it.It is true that we read of misdeeds of menaffecting nature locally, e.g., in the supply of,rain, withheld by nature spirits. But theyare not in any way lords and governors to beprayed to and propitiated. The good Bud-dhist knew that he as such had nothing to fearfrom them. And to-day, though they mayno longer be held to flit from heaven to earth," as it were a strong man darting out his arm,"or throng around as when a Buddha preachesthe Norm, .still do they exist for anyorthodox Buddhist. Why limit an infiniteuniverse to humanity ? he would say. Somuch then, and so Jittle is there of atheismin his creed.

Neither had it any quarrel with the con-venient, not to say necessary notion wherebywe each of us speak of, and picture ourselvesas " I," or a self (atta). " The self reproachesthe self " is the Pali idiom for a troubledconscience. And " the taming of self," " theright poising of the self," and " self-advantage "are all terms of Buddhist ethics. All such,as the Commentator remarks, are mereconventions of language. True, the testimonyof normal consciousness is to a unity. Mentalscience tends, however, as we know, tosupport the Buddhist position. Experience,it says, shows that the unity often by nomeans works as such. Pathology tells us agood deal more to the same effect. The unityis not only of factors that are perpetually

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THEORY OF NO-SOUL 55changing, and often fail to co-operate har-moniously, but is liable to be split up intotwo, or even three unities of consciousness.Still, normally each of us is a unified " bundleof formations," as Sister Vajira said. ' And the" bundle " must have its verbal sign. BuddhistAbhidhamma fell in with this popular usage,but guarded itself in so doing. So Buddha-ghosa, commenting on the Pitaka phrase :-" included in the concrete personality "(literally self-state), says : " from the foolishpublic's notion that ' this is my self, 3 bodyand mind are called self-state."But the moment that language serves, notmerely, as here, to signify the temporarybundle in man or god, but to uphold animisticand absolutist beliefs, emphatic repudiation ofthe word " self " or " soul " appears. In otherwords, whenever the word attd implies thatin the temporary bundle is a mysterious littlebeing, which uses the changing body as ashell, coming at or before birth, and flittingaway at death, itself unchanged, eternal,above the laws of nature, then does the wordbecome the sign of the worst of errors. Theconception of the inner sprite or double isuniversal in folk-beliefs, and in this respect wespeak of such conceptions as animistic. Whenthis inner mannikin is still further sublimated,and all that remains is the concept of it as thereal being, or underlying substance or sub-strate, to which all the qualities or attributesof an individual are said to belong, and so to

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56 BUDDHISMbecome a unity, we speak of such conceptionsas absolutistic. The English term in thiscase is usually changed from soul to self, orego. But, in the latter case, the super-phenomenal self or ego must of course beunderstood, and not the mere mark for the" bundle."Now Buddhist philosophy, in repudiatingboth animistic soul and absolutistic self, wasaimed at a special shape assumed by suchtheories in India. This was an aspect of bothwhich sought to satisfy at once, (1) the child-like questioning answered by animism, (2)the logic which sees in all objects first thecompleted whole and then the factors, arid(3) man's veneration for the creative geniusand synthetic ideas of man. All this wascomprised in the Indian cult of the universalself, or soul, conceived, not only, or so much,as external to man while immanent in theuniverse, but as immanent in man, and asman's own and very self. This was the cultof the Atman (Sanskrit for atta), and we mayspeak of it as Atmanism.In the oldest Indian hymns, the Rig-Veda,the wind is called the dtman or breath ofVanma, who is the nearest approach we therefind to a personification of the idea of cosmicorder. But breath came to be identified withdeity, and was also considered as a symptomof soul within. So, analogously to the Christianidea of pneuma, which came to mean bothbreath and spirit, the concept of dtman grew,

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THEORY OF NO-SOUL 57till it was used interchangeably with Brahman,the cosmic principle pervading the universe,and also with the human prana (breath) orsoul. On its more esoteric, mystical, devo-tional side, as revealed in the works nowcommitted to writing, and called Upanishads, 1this cult of the Atman may, nay, must be takeninto account, if we are to understand thestrength of the Buddhist protest, and the pecu-liar logic of its attack. Judging by the descrip-tions given in the Pitakas, the age teemedwith animistic superstition, metaphysicaldogmas_on the soul and mysticism. But itis the Atmanist position against which theBuddhist argument is drawn up, as we shallpresently see.There is no attack worth mentioning madeby Buddhism on the notion of Brahman,the impersonal principle of cosmic life andorder. As a personal deity, Brahma istreated as a leading deva among devas, butone whose approval or displeasure mattersnothing to man's salvation. His eminence ishandled with irony, when the monopoly ofomniscience is claimed for him. 2 And thedevotional exercises, which were currentlybelieved to aid in bringing about after-lifein his heaven, were adopted in Buddhism,less for this purpose, which the Buddha called" low," than to forward emancipation ofheart. (See p. 218 f.)

1 Sacred Books of the East, vols. I., XV.8 Dialogues of the Buddha, i. 280 $,

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58 BUDDHISMBut when that cosmic principle is considerednot only as world-soul, but as the very soul ofMe, the realization of which was held as the

supreme and saving truth, then Buddhismjoins issue and fights without compromise." In the beginning," runs an old Upanishad, 1" the world was only soul, in the shape of aman. . . . He sent forth worlds. . . .If a man understands the Self saying, ' I amHe ' ... he indeed is the creator. . ,his is the world, and he is the world itself . .if a man clearly beholds this Self as God,and as the lord of all that is and that willbe, then he is no more afraid."" Void is the world," rejoins the Buddhist,"of self, or of aught of that nature." If itis contended, that, by the context to thispassage, quoted above (p. 52), only thephenomenal world of sense-perception is statedto be meant, we should inevitably comeelsewhere on passages conceding (or indeedinsisting on) the existence of a soul not im-manent in, but transcending that phenomenalworld.. What we find is (a) the affirmationthat " all the religious world who considerthe soul as variously bestowed, consider it to bethe five constituents of personality (khqndha's)or some one of them," 2 (b) consistent andconstant negation that the soul is "in," orassociated with any of the five.

It is this beholding self as god, this seeing inthe phenomenal " bundle " the superpheno-1 Brihadaranyaka-Up. * Samyutta-NiJcaya, iii. 46.

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THEORY OF NO-SOUL 59menal or absolute, to_ which the Buddhisttakes exception. The Atman was " eternal,""immortal,"

"free from decay, death andsorrow," " real." Well then, said the Budd-

hist, every object, and every means of knowingobjects all, in fact, is impermanent, you willadmit. Now that which is impermanent isliable to change and suffering, and is not free,i.e., it is bound by its law-governed phenomenalnature. Is it then fit to say of any such objector subject ; it is for me Atman ; it is Ego orthe soul of me ? This is the standard stapleform of argument used in a great number ofPitaka Suttas. And if we read into thewords, soul, self, ego the tremendous importattached to them in the preceding Upanishadcitations. . . . "I (Ego) am (world-) At-man " . . . " beholds this Self as God ". . . we realize that a dogmatic mysticismso abnormal was bound to evoke a religiousand philosophical recoil. The protest ofBuddhism, viewed thus in its local context,appears natural and inevitable, rather thancaptious or unreasonable.But the mystical climax of soul-cult inAtmanism was by no means the only form ofit with which Buddhism contended. As anextreme form of soul-dogma it was wellknown (many of the Theras were lapsedBrahmins). But the general contention waswider. The forms of soul-dogma stated inthe Pitakas consist in a number of mutuallycontroversial speculations as to the nature

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60 BUDDHISMand destiny of the self or soul, consideredunder aspects that are not absolute or divine,and which are therefore nearer to similarspeculations in European metaphysic, e.g.,that the self or soul is finite, or infinite, ismaterial or immaterial, happy or miserableafter death, self-made or made by another,eternal or not eternal. These various hypo-theses are catalogued several times in theSutta-Pitaka, 1 or are singly dealt with, 2 as somany futile, unprofitable forms of intellectual.dalliance. One feature in which they differfrom Western theories, is that we never meetwith hypotheses respecting " souls " or"

selves," and their inter-relations, as is thecase, for instance, in Leibnitz's theory ofmonads. They are concerned with " soul."Speculation of this sort is met with chiefly

in the mouths of members of itinerant religiousfraternities, of whom there were many whenBuddhism arose. They foregathered in parkand meeting-hall, discussing such themes withmuch free speech, seeking truth and salvationin their own way. But it was a strained,unhealthy condition of thought, and theinevitable reaction against all this sort ofanimistic speculation, whether pantheisticor individualistic, was constituted by thestandpoint taken up by one such itinerantfraternity, to wit that of the Sakya-sons, asthey were called, or as we say, the Buddhists.

1 E.g. Dialogues of the Buddha, i, 41-53,E,g, Majjhima-Nikaya, ii, 32-7.

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THEORY OF NO-SOUL 61Not less, and to a very conscious degree,was Buddhism a protest against a certain

variety of scepticism current at the time.But with this we shall better be able to dealwhen engaged on its philosophy of causation.Here I wish to dwell on the very definite andremarkable impress given to their religionand philosophy precisely in consequence of,and as a weapon against, this state of over-wrought metaphysical speculation. I referto the science of mind, or psychology, whichthe Buddhist movement initiated, andwhich Buddhist culture subsequently devel-oped. In this respect, the Buddhists are thetrue Eastern compeers of Aristotle andWestern psychology, and the day will comewhen their analysis of mind will rank, in thehistory of psychology, and from a universalstandpoint, equal in achievement with thatof the Greeks, and indeed of Europe generally,up to the time when psycho-physiology wasintroduced.

This mental analysis is quite unmythologicaland scientific. The older, pre-BuddhisticUpanishads contain fine germs of psychologi-cal insight, shadowy outlines of a theoryof sense-perception in particular. But thetone is child-like and poetical ; the utter-ances are sporadic aphorisms. Moon andgods and demons are ever at hand as anexplanation of functions not investigated.There is a lack of sobriety. The Pitakas,on the other hand, not only in Abhidhamma

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62 BUDDHISMcatechism, but even in the doctrinal discoursesand poems of the Suttas, give .us sober andprosaic description of what they find obtainingin mental processes. Of figures, similes andanalogies there is no lack, but these areconsciously and discreetly used in order toillustrate. Fancies are not treated as per-ceptions. The five modes of sense, forinstance, are compared to doors, to the sea,to a field, to an empty village (without head-man or soul), when ethical teaching is therebyrendered more graphic. But when knowingby way of sense has to be analyzed., we thenget simply the results of observation andinference. " Given eye and visible object,visual consciousness arises ; the conjunctionof the three is ' contact,' whereby conditioned,arises feeling, whereby conditioned, arisesperception, etc." 1 Again : " What is thesense of hearing ? The ear, that is, the sen-tient organ, derived from the four elements,forming part of the person (self-state), invisibleand reacting, whereby one has heard, hears,will, or may hear sounds invisible and imping-ing . . . which itself impinges on sounds,and depending on which ear and sound,audible contact arises . . . this is thesense, the constituent element, the faculty ofhearing. "* In the later book, Milinda, theteacher illustrates the collision of sense andobject by two butting rams, and by clashing

1 Mnjjhima-NiMim, i. 111.Psychological Ethics, 178,

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THEORY OF NO-SOUL 63cymbals. But he taught his royal pupil aftera popular fashion.It may be objected that this is no explana-tion, only description. But science is mainlydescription, in so far as it is not experimental,a description of the particular case in termsof a general case, either of object or process.And to start with description is a betterbasis for the advance of knowledge, than toblock the path of inference and synthesisby invoking transcendental agencies.Such a basis, these early and archaic, butsincere and earnest attempts at analysis isproved to be for the expanding culture of thesucceeding centuries. The Milinda containsmany developments in mental science, notablyin a theory of association, and an analysis ofmemory. 1 Similes are again used, for theking's intelligence has to be reckoned with,that is, one without technical training insuch matters. But they are used strictlyto illustrate, and, by illustrating, to extendthe conception of natural law to the workingof the mind, and to dispel the idea of anyanimistic agencies. 3Yet more marked is the psychologicaladvance met with in the works of Buddha-ghosa. From these we can see that theintrospective analysis of mental processeshad been carried far. As among ourselves,it is the process of coming to know by way of

1 Questions of King Milinda, i. 37, 89, 122-8 Cf. below, p.

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64 BUDDHISMsense that has proved most amenable toinvestigation. The result is a more detailedresolution into factors than European psy-chology can show. Very briefly stated, everyconscious act of sense-perception (e.g. thehearing of a bell, the sight of a person enteringthe room), was resolved into these successivemoments : (1) vibrations in sub-conscious-ness ; (2) adverting of the " doors " of sense ;(3) the sense-impression ; (4) the door ofmind receiving ; (5) examining ; (6) deter-mining (the nature of 8) ; (7) full cognition ;(8) retention. All of which might occupy aquite infinitesimal fraction of time.But detailed inquiry of this kind belongsto the history of psychology. The salientfeature in it for our present purpose is thefact that, for Buddhist thought, from thestart, psychological insight is an integralpart of philosophical, nay, of religious insight.It started not with the external universe,and its first or final cause, but with the heartof man, sentient and desiring. " In thisfathom-long conscious be-minded body, Ideclare the world to be, and the uprising ofthe world, and the ceasing of the world, andthe course leading to that cessation." 1 Train-ing in mental analysis was considered essentialboth as ethical discipline, and as clearing theway for sound philosophy.This emphasis on introspective alertnesshas been deprecated both by (modern) Maha-

1 Samyutta-Nik&ya, i, 62 ; Anguttara-Nikaya, ii. 48,

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THEORY OF NO-SOUL 65Yanists and by non-Buddhists, hence it isworth while to pause over it, not in an apolo-getic or contrary spirit, but to understand it.The cities and villages of North-East Indiano doubt comprised not only considerableethnical variety Aryan, Dravidian, Kolarianbut as many varieties of temperament asother populous centres. But, judging byearly Buddhist literature, the prevalent typeseems to have been of a nervous, eager, high-strung, emotional nature, passionate andpleasure-seeking in disposition, swiftly elated 'or depressed, open and amenable to argument,capable of whole-hearted devotion and ofstrenuous effort. To these impulsive, quick-hearted children of the sun, impressions ontheir swift and delicate sense were interestingand absorbing chiefly as feeling, pleasant,painful or neutral. The Suttas emphasizethis aspect of experience as likely to appealto listeners

"There are sights, sounds,touches . . apprehensible by this orthat sense, which are wished-for, agreeable,

delightful, fascinating, involving sensuous sat-isfaction, and exciting passionate longing."We hear in fact no less often about howsense affected, than about what is told.Together with such testimony to muchexuberance in response to sensuous impres-sions, we learn also that the means for grati-fying sensuous and aesthetic impulse and tastewere very numerous. Arts ministering toeye and ear were cultivated ; the ravishing

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66 BUDDHISMeffect of music is especially mentioned.Odours exercised a powerful effect. Skin-sensibility was flattered by bath, massage andshampoo. Food and drinks were refined tosuit the epicure. Dancing and sports werestaple amusements.And where conscious reaction is largelysensuous and emotional, the experience isreferred intensively to the subject or self,more than it is referred extensively or exter-nally to the object.All serious departures in religion and ethicshave of course striven to cope with thetendency to let life be swallowed up in thequest of sensuous gratification. And amongthe remedies sought have been pure askesis,or the suppression to the utmost limit con-sistent with life of the channels of sense-impression, and again the cultivation of theobject-world apart from sense-pleasure, name-ly,

in relation to ethical and intellectualinterests. A third course is so to study andregulate the subject-world, or mind, thatwe can regard it as one object among otherobjects. Now the extent to which theBuddhists initiated and developed this thirdcourse is a notable and practically uniquefeature in their religious culture.From the outset they deliberately andexplicitly rejected asceticism. In the firstsermon ascribed to the Buddha, he declaredhis method to be a middle way between asceti-cism and self-indulgence. Again, he is said,

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THEORY OF NO-SOUL 67in another Sutta, to have asked the pupil ofa Brahmin teacher, whether and how Para-sariya taught a method of disciplining sense ?" Yes," was the reply, " one does not seesights with the eyes, nor hear sounds with theear. This is his method." " On that sys-tem," rejoins the Buddha, " the blind andthe deaf have their senses the best undercontrol." He, proceeded to show how hismethod differs. Namely, sense-impressionsare to be consciously discriminated psycho-logically, and then ethically appraised asinferior to disinterestedness or indifference.Thus cognitive and analytic, man is to beable to dictate to his own feelings. Andthus, by learning habitually to break up thecomplex web of conscious experience, theBuddhist sought to gain a dual vantage-point :control over sense and impulse on the onehand, and, on the other, insight into thecompound and conditioned nature of thatwhich seemed to be a unitary Ego, or subjectof conscious experience.So much was this method felt and realizedby its followers to be really of the essence ofthe doctrine, that it served both to definethat doctrine and to betray its teacher.Thus, in the Sutta called Analysis of Ele-ments " (Majjhima-Nikdya, No. 140), we readof the Buddha lodging for a night at the Pot-ter's House in Rajagaha (Rajgir in Behar),who explains that he has already a lodger,a friar of noble rank, This was Pukkusati,

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68 BUDDHISMex-King of Taxila in Kashmir, who, accordingto the commentarial tradition, had abdicatedand left the world, in consequence of havinglearnt the Buddhist doctrines. These hadbeen sent him, inscribed on a golden tablet,by his friend, King Bimbisara, whose residencewas at Rajagaha. The Buddha apologized :" If it be not disagreeable to you, brother, letus lodge one night together." The otherconsented, addressing the strange friar bythe appellation, used between religious breth-ren, of dvuso. After each, sitting cross-legged,had meditated part of the night, the Buddha,noting the other's serene demeanour, askedhim concerning his motive for leaving thelay-world, his teacher and his " Dhamma " ?Pukkusati confesses that it was the ExaltedOne, Gotama of the Sakyas, whose Dhammahad so moved him." " Where, bhikkhu,is now that Gotama ? " "In the northcountry, friend, at Savatthi." " Have youseen him ? If you saw him, would you knowhim ? " " Nay, friend, if I saw him, I shouldnot know him." " Listen, bhikkhu, I willteach you Dhamma." " So be it, friend."And the Buddha began with a summary.Man consisted of six constituent elements(earth, i.e., extended element, water, heat,air, space and consciousness) ; he had sixfields of contact with the external world (mindbeing the sixth) ; in eighteen ways he wasaffected by that world ; and there is a fourfoldplatform, whereon if he stand, the surgings

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THEORY OF NO-SOUL 69of fancy make no headway, and he is fit to becalled sage and saint. That platform is(1) Ariyan l insight, i.e., knowledge howto destroy all sorrow ; (2) Ariyan truth orNibbana (i.e., Nirvana) ; (3) Ariyan resigna-tion, namely, of all conditions leading torebirth ; (4) Ariyan peace, i.e., the tran-quillization of lust, hate and illusion. Theseheads are then briefly developed, the " surgingsof fancy " being credulous theorizing aboutone's present and future self or identity.As he ceased, Pukkusati, overcome withemotion, as he realized : "I have found theMaster ! I have found the Perfectly Enlight-ened One ! " fell at the teacher's feet, beseech-ing forgiveness for having spoken as to anequal.This simple episode, with the touchingsuggestion of the disciple's growing wonder,his " heart burning within him while hespake," ought to serve as a test case of utter-ances that were definitely and unmistakablywhat we now call Buddhist. And thoseutterances start with analysis of concretepersonality and sense-cognition., Again, the doctrine is sometimes definedas a body of analyses, in the phrase " taughtme the Dhamma : khandhdyatana-dhdtuyo " ;

l " Ariyan" conveyed to Buddhists much what our" Christian " does to us. Originally a racial term, it hadcome to mean " noble, gentle," and specifically, " electin the Dhamma." To distinguish this derived meaning,I retain the Indian spelling (with t).

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70 BUDDHISMi.e., factors, bodily and mental (khandhd),sense-organs and objects (ayatand), and ele-ments (dhdtuyo). We should not imaginethat a doctrine so described could arouse muchemotion. Yet the Buddha's disciples arerecorded as weaving this phrase, when describ-ing how they had found light, into gratefulve