CHAPTER XXIX

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BUDDHISM IN INDIA AND CEYLON.

They sat in silent watchfulness The sacred cypress-tree about, And, from beneath old wrinkled brows, Their failing eyes looked out.

They waited for that falling leaf Of which the wandering Jogees sing: Which lends once more to wintry age The greenness of its spring. JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.

[Illustration: RELIGIOUS MEETING OF THE JAINS, THE ONLY BUDDHISTS LEFT IN INDIA.]

In the time of Asoka, Buddhism had almost become the State religion of India. The conversion of the king, however, proved the beginning of its decline. It continued to exist until the eighth or ninth century after Christ. To-day there is scarcely a trace of the religion among all the people of India proper. The only body of people in India that has any connection with Buddhism is the singular sect of the Jains. The views of this body are half Buddhist and half Brahmin. They are found especially on the Western coast of India, in and around the city of Bombay. They are divided into two classes, the Soetambaras, or “clothed in white garments,” and the Digambaras, or “sky-clad,” that is naked. The last class now wear colored garments, though formerly they went naked. Like the Buddhists they reject the Vedas or sacred books of the Brahmins. The principal point of their practice is the reverence paid to holy men, who, by long discipline, have raised themselves to divine perfection. These men are called Jinas or “conquering saints,” whence comes the name of their followers, the Jains. They believe in two ever-returning cycles of time, of immense duration, which defy all human calculation. The first Jina of the second cycle, in which we now live, attained the age of 8,400,000 years, and each Jina since has lived a shorter and shorter time. There are three ways, they say, by which the soul is delivered, viz.: right intuition, right knowledge and right conduct. This last consists in observing five duties, or vows of self-restraint. 1. Do not kill or injure. (Strict Jains carry this to a ridiculous extent. They strain water before drinking it, sweep the ground with a brush before treading it, never eat or drink in the dark, and sometimes wear a muslin strip over their mouths to prevent the risk of swallowing minute insects. They will never eat figs or any fruit containing seeds, nor even touch flesh-meat with their finger-tips). 2. Do not tell lies. 3. Do not steal. 4. Be chaste and temperate in thought, word or deed. 5. Do not desire anything immoderately.

In Bombay there is a hospital temple of the Jains where sick animals are received and cared for. In this temple one may see oxen, some with bandages over their eyes, and some lame lying upon beds of clean straw; others, blind and paralyzed, are having their food brought to them and are being rubbed down by pious devotees. Here are gathered sick or wounded dogs, cats, fowls of every sort, crows, buzzards, vultures, rats, mice, sparrows, peacocks, jackals, etc., and are tenderly cared for.

THE FAMOUS TOPES.

A Tope is a structure built to contain some relic of Buddha. They were generally erected by a king, who used die following form of words in its dedication: “Thrice over do I dedicate my kingdom to the redeemer of the world, the divine teacher, the bearer of the triple canopy, the canopy of the heavenly host, the canopy of mortals, and the canopy of eternal emancipation.” The whole structure was dome-shaped, or, more exactly, canopy-shaped. The relic of Buddha--a tooth, a piece of bone, or the like--was placed in a gold casket. This was placed in the relic-chamber on a golden altar. Then the erection of the building proceeded amidst great rejoicings and with many ceremonies. At its completion the king guided a golden plow, drawn by two elephants, and marked out thus with a furrow a line all around the Tope. All within this line was considered sacred ground. The most famous Topes are those at Sanchi. These are now in ruins. The Topes themselves are all grass-grown and crumbling, and almost all of the magnificent gate-ways lie in ruins. As we have just said, the purpose of these Topes was--not for use as a temple or as a place of living for the Buddhist monks--but simply as a place in which to preserve relics of the dead Buddha. As Byron, in Childe Harold, has sung:

“There is a stern round tower of other days, Firm as a fortress with its fence of stone; Such as an army’s baffled strength delays, Standing with half its battlements alone, And with two thousand years’ of ivy grown, The garland of eternity--where wave The green leaves, over all by Time o’erthrown. What was this tower of strength? Within its case What treasure lays so locked, so hid? _A hermit’s grave._”

THE GREAT SANCHI TOPE.

This is a dome-like structure of solid brick and stone, one hundred and six feet in diameter at the base, and forty-two feet high from the base; the base is fourteen feet high, giving a total height of fifty-six feet. The base is a terrace, extending all around the Tope. On this the worshipers walked. A colonnade extended all around the Tope. There is an extrance to the Tope at each of the four cardinal points. These four gate-ways are very picturesque objects. They are covered with sculptures representing various domestic scenes and religious ceremonies. Each gate-way is formed of two square pillars, two feet three inches thick and thirteen feet eight inches high. The capitals of these pillars vary. Those of the western gate contain four human dwarfs; of the southern gate, four lions; and of the other gate-ways four elephants. The height of these capitals is four feet six inches. The carvings on these gate-ways represent sieges, triumphal processions, worshiping Topes, or the sacred Bo-tree, processions escorting relic-caskets, and certain domestic scenes. These carvings are not surpassed, in the beauty of their design and execution, by those of any other temples in the world.

[Illustration: THE FAMOUS SANCHI TOPE. BUILT TO CONTAIN A RELIC OF GAUTAMA THE BUDDHA.]

[Illustration: CAPITAL OF A PILLAR OF GATEWAY OF SANCHI TOPE.]

Exactly in the centre of the second Sanchi Tope, there was a small chamber. This was opened by Major Alexander Cunningham, an Englishman, in 1851. He found in this chamber a relic-box, of white sandstone, nearly one foot square. On it was inscribed:

“Teacher of all branches of Vinaya, the Arhat[6] Kasyapa, Gotra, Upadiya;[7] and the Arhat[6] Vachhi Suvijayata, teacher of Vinaya.”

Inside the stone box were found four small caskets of mottled steatite. Each one of these contained small pieces of burnt bone, and on each casket was written the name of the holy man whose ashes were enshrined therein. As these holy men, whose names are given, are known to have lived in Asoka’s time, it is almost certain that these Topes, containing their relics, were built not long after their death, or not later than, say, 220 B.C. There are other Topes at Sonari and Sadthara, at Bhojpur and Andher. These were all used as relic structures, like the pagodas of Burmah.

CEYLONESE BUDDHISM.

King Asoka was not content with spreading Buddhism in his own territory. He built hospitals for man and beast, dug wells and planted trees by the roadsides, and performed many other good works in other lands. These lands are described in the old Buddhist chronicles of Ceylon as being Southern India and Ceylon, and “to the land of the Greek king, Antiochus.” He is said to have sent embassies to four Greek kings, and to have “won from them a victory, not by the sword, but by religion.”

[Illustration: SCULPTURED GATEWAY TO THE TOPE OF SANCHI, INDIA.]

The most important of all Asoka’s missionary enterprises was that which he sent to Ceylon. “Tissa, the delight of the gods,” was at this time king of Ceylon. To him, Asoka’s own son, Mahinda, was sent as a Buddhist missionary. Mahinda had been for twelve years a member of the Sangha, or order of mendicants. One year after the great council of the thousand monks, he started for Ceylon. He took with him a band of monks and copies of the Tripitakas, the Buddhist Bible, which had just been adopted by the Patna council. He took also copies of the commentaries upon these.

[Illustration: ROADWAY TO A BUDDHIST TEMPLE IN CEYLON.]

Tissa received Mahinda with great favor, and soon became a zealous worker in the new religion. At Mahinda’s suggestion, Tissa built the Thuparama Dagaba in the city of Anurādha-pura. This relic-house was said to have contained the right collar-bone of Gautama Buddha. Near the Dagaba the king built a beautiful monastery. On this hill the missionary Mahinda spent most of his after life. He had his study cut out of the solid rock, and steps cut in the rock. Before his view spread out the great plains and beautiful forests of Ceylon. Within the cave there still exists the stone couch on which he rested. In this lonely, cool and quiet rock-chamber, the great teacher of Ceylon sat, thought, wrote, more than 2,000 years ago. Mahinda’s sister came over shortly after her brother, to instruct some of the king’s female relations, who wished to become nuns. She brought with her a branch of the sacred Bo-tree, the tree under which Gautama Buddha had fought and won the battle of his life, and where he gained the Buddha-hood.

THE SACRED BO-TREE OF CEYLON.

This branch was planted near the Dagaba, and, as it has always been tended with great care, it still grows there. This is the tree upon which Whittier has founded his poem, “The Cypress-tree of Ceylon;” of which Ibn Batuta, the celebrated Mussulman traveler of the fourteenth century, has spoken. “It was,” says Ibn Batuta, “held sacred by the natives, and its leaves were said to have fallen only at certain intervals; he who had the happiness to find and eat one of them was restored, at once, to youth and vigor.” Sir Emerson Tennent, who wrote about 1860, says of it:

“The Bo-tree of Anurādha-pura is, in all probability, _the oldest historical tree in the world_. It was planted 288 years before Christ, and hence is now 2,147 years old. Ages varying from one to four thousand years have been assigned to the _Baobabs_ of Senegal, the _Eucalyptus_ of Tasmania, the _Dragon-tree_ of Orotava, the _Sequoia_ of California, and the chestnut of Mount Etna. But all these estimates are matters of conjecture, and such calculations, however ingenious, must be purely inferential. Whereas the age of the Bo-tree is _matter of record_, its conservancy has been an object of solicitude to successive dynasties, and the story of its vicissitudes has been preserved in a series of continuous chronicles, among the most authentic that have been handed down to mankind. Compared with it, the Oak of Ellerslie is but a sapling, and the Conqueror’s Oak in Windsor Forest barely numbers half its years. The yew trees of Fountain’s Abbey are believed to have flourished there 1,200 years ago; the olives in the Garden of Gethsemane were full grown when the Saracens were expelled from Jerusalem; and the Cypress of Senna, in Lombardy, is said to have been a tree in the time of Julius Cæsar; yet the Bo-tree is older than the oldest of these by a century, and would almost seem to verify the prophecy pronounced when it was planted, that it would flourish and be green forever.”

To which Rhys-David adds:

“The tree could scarcely have lived so long had it not been for the constant care of the monks. As it showed signs of decay terraces were built up around it, so that it now grows more than twenty feet above the surrounding soil; for the tree being of the fig species--its botanical name is _ficus religiosa_--its living branches could then throw out fresh roots. Where its long arms spread beyond the inclosure, rude pillars of iron or masonry have been used to prop them up; and it is carefully watered in seasons of drought. The whole aspect of the tree and its inclosure bear evident signs of extreme age; but we could not be sure of its identity were it not for the complete chain of documentary evidence which has been so well brought together by Sir Emerson Tennent.”

REDUCING THE TRIPITAKA TO WRITING.

In the year 88 B.C. (Buddhism had long before this become the religion of the whole of this great island), the king built the largest Dagaba in Ceylon, 250 feet in height. It was at this time that the whole of the Three Pitakas were reduced to writing. This was 330 years after Gautama’s death. The Ceylonese history says:

“The wise monks of former days handed down by word of mouth The text of the Three Pitakas, and the Commentary upon them: Seeing the destruction of men, the monks of this time assembled, And, that the Faith might last long, they wrote them in books.”

This has more significance than is at first apparent to a European accustomed to believe that books can only be preserved by writing. The Hindus believe just the opposite. Even at the present time, if all copies of the Vedas were destroyed, the Vedas would still be preserved in the memory of the priests, as they have been for certainly more than 3,000 years; and those priests look upon the Veda, thus authenticated, as the test to which all printed or written copies must give way. If you depend upon written copies, they would argue, you are sure to make and to perpetuate mistakes; but the text, as handed down by word of mouth, is preserved, not only by being itself constantly repeated, but by the assistance of the commentaries, in which every word of the text is carefully enshrined. So long as reliance can be placed on the succession of teachers and pupils, this argument may not be so far from wrong; but when a text has to be preserved in a small country, liable to be overrun by persecuting enemies, the condition of things is changed, and it becomes necessary to preserve it also in writing. Mahinda could have written the texts, had he so chosen. We know that the square alphabet which Asoka used was at least known in Ceylon, if it did not originate there. That he did not choose to do so, ought to throw no doubt upon the identity of the existing version of the text with that which he brought to Ceylon.

[Illustration: DEVIL-DANCERS’ MASK FROM CEYLON.

Drawn from a Mask now in the Missionary House of the Church of England. This mask represents one who being a king’s son and falling into awful sin was doomed in his next transmigration to be a demon. In cases of serious illness the Ceylonese invoke this demon, the “devil-priest” wearing the mask.]

BUDDHAGHOSHA IN CEYLON.

Buddhaghosha, the famous monk, was born near the Bo-tree. He came to Ceylon in 430 A.D. He wrote a cyclopædia of Buddhist doctrine, and was readily accepted as a teacher by the Sangha of Ceylon. He wrote out the Buddhist commentaries in the Pali language, and those that had been made in the Ceylonese language, about 600 years before were completely lost through disuse. From Ceylon he went to Burmah in 450 A.D. He left an indelible impression on the Buddhism of Ceylon, and through it on the Buddhism of the whole of Southern Asia. Of the writings of this distinguished teacher we have before spoken.

A BUDDHIST TEMPLE IN CEYLON.

The Buddhist temples stand in the most beautiful situations. Waving cocoanut palms, broad-leaved bread-fruit trees, flowering shrubs, with sweet-scented blossoms, surround the temple court, and astonish the visitor by their loveliness. But enter the court and what a contrast! What do we see? A long narrow room, with no light but what struggles in through the door, or sometimes arises from a few dim oil-lamps; a shelf running from end to end of it; a huge image of painted clay, more than forty feet long, lying stretched upon the shelf, with fixed staring eyes, as if quite unconcerned with all things round about; and a heavy, oppressive smell of smoking lamps and dead flowers, that have been offered to the image, reminding one strongly of the spiritual death and darkness of the blind worshipers. Such are the places of worship of the one and a half millions of Buddhists in Ceylon. Surrounded by the most luxuriant beauties of the natural world, religiously they are in darkness.

WORSHIP OF BUDDHA’S TOOTH.

[Illustration: BUDDHIST TEMPLE IN THE ISLAND OF CEYLON.]

There is a festival which takes place every year in Kandy, the chief city of the central province of Ceylon and the ancient residence of its native kings. In a Buddhist temple at Kandy there is a large tooth, which from its shape and appearance, seems to be the tooth of a baboon, but which is called Buddha’s tooth, and is believed to have been such by a large number of the people of Ceylon. This is exhibited with great pomp and a gorgeous procession once a year before vast crowds, who come to worship it. Religious embassies come from Siam, and even from Thibet to be present at this great festival of Buddhism.

THE SACRED CEYLONESE BOOKS.

There are three books regarded as sacred by the Buddhists of Ceylon. The first, called the Mahavanso, is the most highly venerated. It has been very carefully handed down and the ancient and modern copies vary but a very little. It contains “The Doctrine, Race and Lineage of Buddha,” and the authentic annals of Ceylonese Buddhism. The second, called the Rajaratnacari, was written by a priest. It contains a history of Buddha, extracts from the most ancient books, records of the erection of temples, and the history of the kings from 540 B.C. down to modern times. The third, called the Rajavali, is the work of different hands, and completes the other books. It narrates the history of Ceylon from the coming of the Dutch to Ceylon down to the time when they expelled the Portuguese and gained possession of Colombo.

[Illustration: WORSHIP OF BUDDHA’S TOOTH AT KANDY, CEYLON.]

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