buddha and buddhism 11

7/30/2019 Buddha and Buddhism 11

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CHAPTER XIRITES

I HAVE left myself little space to write of the manypoints of close similarity between the Buddhists andthe Roman Catholics.The French missionary Hue, in his celebrated travels

in Thibet, was much struck with this similarity." The crozier, the mitre, the dalmatic, the cope or

'pluvial, which the grand lamas wear on a journey, orwhen they perform some ceremony outside the temple,the service with a double choir, psalmody, exorcisms,the censer swinging on five chains and contrived tobe opened and shut at will, benediction by the lamas,with the right hand extended over the heads of thefaithful, the chaplet, sacerdotal celibacy, Lenten re-tirements from the world, the worship of saints, fasts,processions, litanies, holy waterthese are the pointsof contact between the Buddhists and ourselves."

Listen also to Father Disderi, who visited Thibet inthe year 1714. " The lamas have a tonsure like ourpriests, and are bound over to perpetual celibacy.They study their scriptures in a language and incharacters that differ from the ordinary characters.They recite prayers in choir. They serve the temple,present the offerings, and keep the lamps perpetuallyalio-ht. They offer to God corn and barley and paste

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i 9 2 BUDDHA AND BUDDHISMand water in little vases, which are extremely clean.Food thus offered is considered consecrated, and theyeat it. The lamas have local superiors, and a superiorgeneral." x

Father Grueber, with another priest, named Dor-ville, passed from Pekin through Thibet to Patna inthe year 1661. Henry Prinsep 2 thus sums up whathe has recorded

" Father Grueber was much struck with the extra-ordinary similarity he found, as well in the doctrineas in the rituals of the Buddhists of Lha Sa, to thoseof his own Romish faith. He noticed, first, that thedress of the lamas corresponded to that handeddown to us in ancient paintings as the dress ofthe Apostles. Second, that the discipline of themonasteries and of the different orders of lamas orpriests bore the same resemblance to that of theRomish Church. Third, that the notion of an In-carnation was common to both, so also the belief inparadise and purgatory. Fourth, he remarked thatthey made suffrages, alms, prayers, and sacrifices forthe dead, like the Roman Catholics. Fifth, that theyhad convents filled with monks and friars to thenumber of thirty thousand, near Lha Sa, who allmade the three vows of poverty, obedience, andchastity, like Roman monks, besides other vows.Sixth, that they had confessors licensed by thesuperior lamas or bishops, and so empowered toreceive confessions, impose penances, and give absolu-tion. Besides all this there was found the practice ofusing holy water, of singing service in alternation, of

1 Lettrcs Aiifiantes, vol. iii. p. 534.2 Thibet Tartary, etc. p. 14.


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RITES 193praying for the dead, and of perfect similarity in thecustoms of the great and superior lamas to those ofthe different orders of the Romish hierarchy. Theseearly missionaries further were led to conclude, fromwhat they saw and heard, that the ancient books ofthe lamas contained traces of the Christian religion,which must, they thought, have been preached inThibet in the time of the Apostles."

In the year 1829 Victor Jacquemont, the Frenchbotanist, made a short excursion from Simla intoThibet. He writes : " The Grand Lama of Kanum hasthe episcopal mitre and crozier. He is dressed justlike our bishops. A superficial observer at a littledistance would take his Thibetan and Buddhist massfor a Roman mass of the first water. He makestwenty genuflexions at the right intervals, turns tothe altar and then to the congregation, rings a bell,drinks in a chalice water poured out by an acolyte,intones paternosters quite of the right sing-songtheresemblance is really shocking. But men whose faithis properly robust will see here nothing but a corrup-tion of Christianity." x

It must be borne in mind that what is calledSouthern Buddhism has the same rites. St. FrancisXavier in Japan found Southern Buddhism so likehis own that he donned the yellow sanglidti, andcalled himself an apostle of Buddha, quieting hisconscience by furtively mumbling a little Latin ofthe baptismal service over some of his " converts."

This is what the Rev. S. Beal, a chaplain inthe navy, wrote of a liturgy that he found inChina :

1 Corr. vol. i. p. 265.13


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194 BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM" The form of this office is a very curious one. It

bears a singular likeness in its outline to the commontype of the Eastern Christian liturgies. That is tosay, there is a ' Proanaphoral ' and an ' Anaphoralportion. There is a prayer of entrance (rrjg ziaohov), aprayer of incense (rov dut/jiccf/jocrog), an ascription ofpraise to the threefold object of worship (rpiffocyiov), aprayer of oblation (rr,c irqoo Qsffsoog), the lections, therecitations of the Dharani (fJbVGT'/jpiov), the Embolismus,or prayer against temptation, followed by a ' Confes-sion ' and a ' Dismissal.' " 1

Turning to architecture, I must point out that Mr.Ferguson, the leading authority in ancient art, was ofopinion that the various details of the early Christianbasilicanave, aisle, columns, semi-domed apse, cruci-form ground planwere borrowed en bloc from theBuddhists. Mr. Ferguson lays special stress on theDagoba and its enshrined relics, represented in theChristian Church by the high altar, the bones of asaint, the baldechino. Relic-worship, he says, wascertainly borrowed from the East. Of the rock-cuttemple of Karle (B.C. 78) he writes" The building resembles, to a great extent, an earlyChristian Church in its arrangements, consisting of anave and side aisles terminating in an apse or semi-dome, round which the aisle is carried. ... As a scalefor comparison, it may be mentioned that its arrange-ments and dimensions are very similar to those of thechoir of Norwich Cathedral, and of the Abbaye auxHommes at Caen, omitting the outer aisles in thelatter buildings.

" Immediately under the semi-dome of the apse, and1 Catena of Buddhist Scriptures, p. 397.


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RITES 195nearly where the altar stands in Christian Churches, isplaced the Dagoba.1 "The list of resemblances is by no means exhausted.

The monks on entering a temple make the gesture thatwe call the sign of the cross. The Buddhists haveilluminated missals, Gregorian chants, a tabernacle onthe altar for oblations, a pope, cardinals, angels withwings, saints with the nimbus. For a full account Imust refer the reader to my Buddhism in Chris-tendom, where I give (pp. 182, 184) drawings ofmonks and nuns, the Virgin and Child (p. 205), theadoration of the rice cake on the altar (p. 83), Buddhacoming down to the altar with the heavenly host(p. 210), the long candles, artificial flowers, cross,incense burner, and divine figure with the aureole, ofthe Buddhist temple (p. 208). The election of theGrand Lama I show to be pin for pin like the electionof the Pope. The list is endless.How is all this to be accounted for? Severaltheories have been started :The first attempts to make light of the matter

altogether. All religions, it says, have sacrifice, incense,priests, the idea of faith, etc. This may be called theorthodox Protestant theory, and many bulky bookshave recently appeared propounding it. But as thesebooks avoid all the strong points of the case, theycannot be called at all satisfactory to the bewilderedinquirer.To this theory the Roman Catholics reply that the

similarities between Buddhism and Catholicism are somicroscopic and so complete, that one religion musthave borrowed from the other. In consequence they

1 Indian and Eastern Architecture, p. 117.


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196 BUDDHA AND BUDDHISMtry to prove that the rites of Buddhism and the life ofits founder were derived from Christianity, from theNestorians, from St. Thomas, from St. Hyacinth ofPoland, from St. Oderic of Frioul.1

In the way of this theory, however, there are alsoinsuperable difficulties. Buddha died 470 years beforeChrist, and for many years the Christian Church hadno basilicas, popes, cardinals, basilica worship, noreven for a long time a definite life of the founder. Atthe date of Asoka (b.c. 260) there was a metrical life ofBuddha (Muni Gatha), and the incidents of this lifeare found sculptured in marble on the gateways ofBuddhist temples that precede the Christian epoch.This is the testimony of Sir Alexander Cunningham,the greatest of Indian archaeologists. He fixes thedate of the Bharhut Stupa at from 270 to 250 B.C.There he finds Queen Maya s dream of the elephant,the Rishis at the ploughing match, the transfigurationof Buddha and the ladder of diamonds, and otherincidents. At the Sanchi tope, an earlier structure(although the present marble gateways, repeatedprobably from wood, are fixed at about A.D 19), heannounces representations of Buddha as an elephantcoming; down to his mother's womb, three out of the" Four Presaging Tokens," Buddha bending the bow ofSinhahanu, King Bimbisara visiting the young prince,and other incidents.A man who invents, let us say, a submarine boat, atonce puts his idea to a practical test. Let us try andconstruct a working model here. Suppose that thepresent ruler of Afghanistan were paying us a visit,and, introduced at Fulham Palace, he were to suggest

1 See Abbe Prouveze, Life of Gabriel Durancl, vol. ii. p. 365.


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RITES 197that the life of Mahomet should supersede that ofJesus in our Bible, and Mussulman rites replace theChristian ritual in the diocese of London. Whatwould be the answer ? The bishop, anxious to dealgently with a valuable ally, would point out that hewas only a cogwheel in a vast machinery, a cogwheelthat could be promptly replaced if it proved the leastout of gear. He would show that the Anglican Churchhad a mass of very definite rules called canon law,with courts empowered to punish the slightest in-fringement of these rules. He would show that evenan archbishop could not alter a tittle of the gospelnarrative. Every man, woman, and child would im-mediately detect the change.

Similar difficulties would be in the way of St.Hyacinth of Poland in, say, a monastery of Ceylon.The abbot there would be responsible to what BishopBigandet calls his " provincial," and he again to his" superieur general " (p. 478), and so on to the Acharya,the " High Priest of all the World," who, in his palaceat Nalanda, near Buddha Gaya, was wont to sit in state,surrounded by ten thousand monks. Buddhism, by thetime that a Christian missionary could have reached it,was a far more diffused and conservative religion thanAnglicanism. It had a canon law quite as definite.It had hundreds of volumes treating of the minutestacts of Sakya Muni.

buddha and buddhism 11

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