conquer cattle; with the bow may we conquer in the struggle for the mastery, and in the sharp conflicts. . . . The bowstring approaches close to the bowman's ear, as if to speak to or embrace a dear friend. ... Standing on the chariot, the skilful charioteer directs the horses whithersoever he wills. . . . The strong-hoofed steeds, rushing on with the chariots, utter shrill neighings; trampling the foe with their hoofs, they crush them, never receding.'

1

There cannot be a greater contrast than that between the tumultuous joy in life and action disclosed in the Rig-Veda and that dreary pessimism, that dwelling on the dark side of things, which lies at the root of primitive Buddhism. Even the undeniable excellences of Buddhism can only be understood when viewed in the light which this fact throws upon them. To sum up, very briefly and broadly, the character of Buddhism, we may perhaps regard it as an attempt, it may be the noblest attempt possible under the circumstances, to provide a support under the sorrows of humanity, and at the same time to elevate and to satisfy the moral sense; to render life more tolerable by the repression of selfishness and the development of sympathy and mutual helpfulness; in short, partly by denial, partly by modification of the dominant spiritual conceptions, partly by the adoption of the most refined ethic, to make the best out of despair, at a time when, to quote Professor Max Duncker's words, 'under the most smiling sky, in the midst of a luxuriant vegetation, was enthroned a melancholy, gloomy, monastic view of the absolute corruption of the flesh, the misery of life on earth.' 2

Whatever other causes may have co-operated to produce the contrast between the Aryas of the Panjab and their descendants in the states of the Ganges, causes whose influence we cannot estimate with precision, such as a change of diet, two causes undoubtedly operated with much effect, viz. the more enervating climate and the religious system elaborated by the Brahmans, including in that system the oppressive and injurious restrictions of caste with its subordinate tyrannies, that of the Brahman and that of the king.

The reader who desires to follow a connected account, the best that can be had where history there is none, of the steps by which the Aryas reached the conditions in the midst of which the founder of Buddhism was born, must be referred to Professor Max Duncker's own pages. It is there described how, after the conquest of the land of the upper Ganges, Quoted from Muir's Sanskrit Texts, 'Rigveda.' See The History

of Antiquity, vol. iv. p. 35.

2 See The History of Antiquity, vol. iv. p. 546.

which may have been completed about 1400 B.C., the immigrant tribes grew into nations and monarchies were set up; how the martial spirit which had carried forward their conquering arms expressed itself subsequently in the narrative of the great war, 'the Epos of the Indians,' the Mahabharata, which, along with the later Ramayana, is still a source of endless pleasure to the people; how the three primitive classes, the sacrificing minstrels, the fighters, the agriculturists, with the addition of a fourth class, the remnant of the conquered non-Aryan tribes, became separated by insuperable barriers into the four castes, the Brahmans, the Kshatryias, the Vaisyas, and the Sudras, to one or other of which all the later divisions trace their origin.

The precise year in which the founder of Buddhism was born cannot be ascertained. Dr. Rhys Davids, relying chiefly upon Pâli accounts, an authority not absolutely conclusive, nor indeed quite self-consistent, places it between the middle and end of the sixth century B.C., an estimate which most probably does not err in regard to being too early. We may therefore assume it as definitely established that he was born in the midst of those conditions which Professor Max Duncker describes as characteristic of the Aryas on the upper Ganges in the sixth century. At this time the people suffered under grievous oppression. Royalty, provided that it respected the superior caste of the Brahmans, was upheld by them, and submission to it was inculcated in their teaching. The kings lived in luxury and splendour, though they were only monarchs of petty states, and often inflicted cruel and barbarous punishments for trivial offences. Besides this, they taxed their subjects without mercy. The caste system in its main outlines was rigidly established, and the accident of birth determined each man's career in life as in an iron groove. The enervating influence of climate had repressed any tendencies to effective resistance on the part of those who suffered from the oppression of their rulers, while the common bond that united the first three castes against the aliens of the fourth had contributed to the riveting of the chains which separated those castes from one another.

Were there any consolations of religion? Was there in the Indian conception of the universe and its government

1 'At all festivals and fairs. . . episodes from one of the two poems are recited to the eager crowd of assembled hearers; the audience accompany the acts and sufferings of the heroes with cries of joy, or signs of sorrow, with laughter or tears.'-The History of Antiquity, vol. iv. p. 109.

anything corresponding to the patient trust of the Hebrewthe confidence in God, the belief in the All-powerful, Allholy Friend of every one who sought to live holily--which, out of the bitterest and darkest of human suffering, could distil sweetness and light; the belief that could lead a man to exclaim, 'Unto the godly there ariseth up light in the darkness.' There was nothing of the kind. The fundamental article of the Brahmanic creed had an influence clearly contrary to that which supported the pious Israelite, and which created national heroes and raised up teachers of the world amongst his people. In spite of our fuller knowledge of the highest points reached in Indian religious thought, and of its many excellences, in spite of our wonder at its marvellous subtlety, our admiration of the depth of its philosophic penetration, it still is true that when we pass from Indian ideas of God and man's relation to Him to the perusal of a page of the Psalms, the sensation is like that of exchanging the unwholesome atmosphere of the jungle for the pure air of the mountain height, of exchanging the gloomy canopy of the one for the unclouded heaven of the other.

If to those dwellers by the Ganges life in its secular departments was a burden, the religion of the Brahmans, so far from bringing present consolation and the cheering hope of future redress, added pitilessly to the painfulness of the burden and seemed to crush the soul with the prospect of its endlessness. For the speculative reason had arrived by steps which we cannot now discuss at the conception that the basis and origin of all things is an impersonal Being, the one permanent existence, from whom all other beings are emanations which must undergo a ceaseless succession of transient existences, until they attain, if they ever do attain, final repose and unconsciousness by absorption into Deity. In each of his existences the man was supposed to be reaping the due reward of his past deeds. There was but one way to escape from the endless chain of misery, a way which few could or would practise. Severe self-mortification, carried to such an extent as practically to annihilate the body, might result in the annihilation of the soul, or rather in its absorption through meditation into Brahma. There is of course some truth as to the value of self-discipline and abstinence underlying these views. We cannot, however, now pause to separate the grain from the chaff. For all who did not choose the path laid down, for all who failed in it through the faltering of resolution, through error, through neglect of minute ritual observance, each successive existence was only a further descent into

misery, a further removal from the final goal. Time itself was in the scale against a man. A single lifetime might require several succeeding lives for its expiation, each bringing its own liability of becoming the parent of another series. There was no pity, no mercy in the government of the world, only at the best an awful kind of justice, if indeed that could be called justice, which visited offences often trivial, often even unavoidable, such as breaches of the laws of purification, with such terrible penalties.

There are points in which Dr. Rhys Davids is not quite in accord with Professor Max Duncker. He thinks, for example, that the caste system was neither so rigidly established nor really so oppressive as is represented by the Professor and others; and we are aware that there is some foundation for this view. We have, therefore, the more satisfaction in supporting our statement of the terrible aspect of the Indian religion by a quotation from Dr. Rhys Davids's latest exposition of early Buddhism. Speaking of the regeneration of living beings he tells us that the founder of Buddhism found something like this the accepted belief:—

'The outward condition of the soul is in each new birth determined by its actions in a previous birth; but by each action in succession, and not by the balance struck after the evil has been reckoned off against the good. . . . A robber who has once done an act of mercy, may come to life in a king's body as the result of his virtue, and then suffer torments for ages in hell, or as a ghost without a body, or be re-born many times as a slave or an outcast, in consequence of his evil life.' 2

But here it is to be remarked that Brahmanism has never been an organized religion. Here is the explanation of the fact that thought was absolutely free, as Dr. Rhys Davids tells us, in ancient India. Brahmanism is capable of taking

1 See the Hibbert Lectures for 1881, pp. 22-25. See also the remarks on caste in his Address to the University of Calcutta by Sir Henry Sumner Maine, in the volume entitled Village Communities, p. 219. Sir Henry's contention is that the Brahmanic literature is not a trustworthy authority as to the prevalence of caste or of other institutions. Professor Max Müller, it may be remembered, regards as an essential feature of Buddhism that it was a reaction against caste, and this view can be supported by many passages from the earliest Buddhist books. On the whole, it seems clear that the region which was the theatre of Gotama's teaching was the head-quarters of Brahmanism, and that the caste system had acquired at that period a rigidity in this region which was lacking elsewhere.

2 See Hibbert Lectures, pp. 84-86.

3 See The History of Antiquity, vol. iv. p. 463, and Sir H. S. Maine's Village Communities, pp. 216, 217.

up and adapting new and inconsistent elements when they become sufficiently prevalent. There is no doubt that this was the case to some extent with Brahmanism after the rise of Buddhism, in spite of the fact that the two religions were eventually seen to be so incompatible, that in self-preservation Brahmanism actually expelled its rival from its original home. With this, however, we are not now concerned. The point we have to note is that it was no unheard-of phenomenon when Gotama, son of the petty chief Suddhodana, came forward as the expounder of a better system than that of the Brahmans. How much of early Buddhism was actually due to him, how much he owed to philosophic thinkers who preceded him, in decrying, for example, the importance of ritual and exalting that of moral conduct,' are questions more easily asked than answered. One point, however, is as certain as any in this case can be. The founder of Buddhism owed his success in some measure to his having struck out a new path in regard to the method of his teaching and the audiences whom he addressed. Like a greater than he, he addressed the multitudes, and like Him too he employed popular methods, such as the parable, as the vehicle of his instruction. Among the Fataka Tales, an instalment of which, with an interesting and scholarly Introduction, has already been published by Dr. Rhys Davids, it is very possible that we have some examples of that 'good-natured humour which led to his (Buddha's) inventing as occasion arose some fable or some tale of a previous birth, to explain away existing failures in conduct among the monks, or to draw a moral from contemporaneous events.' 2 And the many elaborate similes which enforce the arguments in the Pâli Suttas leave no reasonable doubt that he was really accustomed to teach much by the aid of parables.'

The fact that he did choose to popularize his doctrine, that he did thus address himself to the multitudes, throws a welcome light upon Buddha's personal character. Through the darkness of our ignorance as to anything beyond the most meagre details of his life, through the mist of legend with which the enthusiasm of his followers surrounded his personality, through the confusion of modern theorizers, who

1 Some even of the Buddhistic teaching that bears the closest resemblance to the precepts of Christianity was perhaps inculcated, though only occasionally and not consistently, by some of the Brahmans of Buddha's time; the duty, for example, of overcoming evil by good. See Fâtaka Tales, or Buddhist Birth Stories, Introduction, pp. xxvii, xxviii.

2 Fataka Tales, vol. i., Introduction, p. lxxxiv. See also The History of Antiquity, vol. iv. p. 359.