THE POPULAR LIFE

OF

BUDDHA,

CONTAINING AN ANSWER TO THE "HIBBERT LECTURES" OF 1881.

BY

ARTHUR LILLIE,

MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY.

WITH FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS.

LONDON:

KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE.

1883.

9410. 14410, e. I

INTRODUCTION.

BUDDHA was a religious reformer who died 470 years before the Christian era.

The following are some of the results due to the sojourn of this one man upon earth :—

1. The most formidable priestly tyranny that the world had ever seen, crumbled away before his attack, and the followers of Buddha were paramount in India for a thousand years.

2. The institution of caste was assailed and overturned.

3. Polygamy was for the first time pronounced immoral, and slavery condemned.

4. Woman, from being considered a chattel and a beast of burden, was for the first time considered man's equal, and allowed to develop her spiritual life.

5. All bloodshed, whether with the knife of the

priest or the sword of the conqueror, was rigidly forbidden.

6. Also, for the first time in the religious history of mankind, the awakening of the spiritual life of the individual was substituted for religion by body corporate. It is also certain that Buddha was the first to proclaim that duty was to be sought in the eternal principles of morality and justice, and not in animal sacrifices and local formalities invented by the fancy of priests.

7. The principle of religious propagandism was for the first time introduced with its two great instruments, the missionary and the preacher.

8. By these, India, China, Bactria, and Japan, were proselytized; and the Buddhist missionaries overran Persia and Egypt. This success was effected by moral means alone, for Buddhism is the one religion virgin of coercion. It is reckoned that one-third of humanity is still in its fold.

That such results should have been achieved is one of the greatest marvels of history; and when an inquirer consults some of the best-known writers to try and get an explanation of this unusual missionary success, the marvel increases. We see Buddhist holy men exhibiting a self-denial worthy of the early Christians, to gain an “immortality"1 which is said Amrita, non-death.

1