oppression and of progress towards freedom, which appears to have been for once excited, even in immovable India. Whether the traditions be connected with one man or with many men, it is equally reasonable to believe some earnest effort to have been made to reject the doctrines and the practices of the Brahmins, and to create in their place a more liberal government and a simpler faith. According to these new principles, however they were proclaimed, the whole constitution of exclusive and hereditary castes was to be done away, and some glimpses, at least, of general freedom were to be revealed. The first subject of reform was, of course, the priesthood. A new hierarchy was proposed, which, taken from all classes, was to exercise authority over the religious affairs alone, which formed its peculiar charge.46 The royal power was at the same time to be increased at the expense of the usurping priesthood; while every part of the political system would be affected through the changes by which the hierocracy was undermined. But the reform of Bouddha was still more distinguished, if we trust tradition, for the purer and juster precepts set forth concerning the nature of Iman and the service of his divinities.47 The Brahmins confounded the Supreme Being, of whom they 46 A more thorough description is given in Creuzer's great work, Book I. ch. 5, of the French translation. 47 In the play of Mrichchakati (Act VIII.) there is a hymn of a Bouddhist, one verse of which may be taken for a sample of the whole: "Why shave the head and mow the chin, had some indistinct imaginations, with the animate and inanimate objects of creation; while the Bouddhists, as if to secure the purity and the superiority of the Deity, believed in the other extreme of an abstract nature and a passive existence. Neither, therefore, were likely to obtain much comfort from their creed; but in an age of idolatry and polluted worship it was better for man that his Divinity should be removed beyond the reach of offensive superstition. In after times, the appellation of Bouddha became synonymous with some divine intelligence; but there seems to be no reason for doubting the traditions concerning the life and character of a mortal of this name. He was by birth a Chatriya. Disturbed by desire either for distinction he could not acquire under existing institutions, or else for truth he could not wrest from out the religion of the Brahmins, he became an anchorite, and afterwards a teacher. It is doubtful whether he and his followers excited immediate alarm, or whether he continued to lead a lowly life, imparting his principles to a few disciples, by whom they were afterwards greatly modified, and upon whom, in much later times, a dire persecution fell. The most probable account,43 judging from the common relations concerning the 48 Bouddha's death is supposed to have taken place A. C. 543, while the expulsion of the Bouddhists from India (Hindostan) is commonly fixed at about the sixth century of our own era. No doubt, however, exists in relation to the Bouddhist colony in Ceylon, more than five centuries before our Saviour; and so remote a settlement would scarcely have been made except under persecution. reformer, is, that he was himself overcome by the omnipotent caste he had dared to assail; while some of his followers, not yet in any numbers, survived to instruct their successors in the moral doctrines of their master. The Bouddhists were then the mendicant friars of India; and the humble lives they led, as well as the favor of the kings and the conversion of many amongst all classes to their comparatively unpretending principles, protected them against the consideration or the anger of the Brahmins, satisfied, as these were, with their early victory in which Bouddha perished. 49 Be this as it may, there are none but meagre accounts 19 of a strife by which India must at some time or other have been convulsed; the more unsatisfactory because they leave the reforms of Bouddha in almost total obscurity. The Brahmins, who triumphed by means easily conjectured, would naturally seek to obliterate all traces of the conflict in which their divine rights had been assailed. The voices against them must have had a noble tone; but they ceased, and their echoes were transported into other lands,50 where they were changed and deadened. Only the superstition, dim and fearful, re 66 49 Consult Elphinstone's History of India, Vol. I. pp. 209-213; and compare an article by Professor the Salisbury, on History of Buddhism," in the second number of the Journal of the American Oriental Society. 50 The missionary enterprises of the Bouddhists were very remark able, especially as the activity with which they were conducted was in such direct contradiction to the habits and the feelings of their countrymen. The religion of Bouddha, then separated from his political system, was taught throughout the centre and the east of Asia. mained in India, that the world had at one time become so excellent, and the Brahmins so little distinguished by their virtues, that the god Vishnu was fain to assume the shape and the name of Bouddha, in order to pervert the minds of the inferior castes by evil teachings which should bring them back to sin and shame. It was by such interposition from their heaven that the Brahmins were content to have preserved their preeminence on earth. The reform, of which we know scarcely more than the name, having been attempted in vain, there was no other sign of hope or progress in the people of India. "Immemorial custom" became "transcendent law," and the one great power of the Brahmins overshadowed religion and government and common life. Even their own liberty dwindled. The labors of the higher minds were more and more devoted to the revelations of deities and the commentaries of priests. Poetry was obliged to diffuse its ardor over the ponderous mythology to which it was enchained, and philosophy, as was only natural, completely lost itself in the vast and unending inquiries suggested by a vain theology, not by a true humanity. If it were true, as the code affirms, that a priest who went through the whole Veda was "equal to a sovereign of all the world," it could only be in reference to the authority of his order, 51 For a different version of this and other traditions concerning Bouddha, see Coleman's Mythology of the Hindus, Ch. XII. part 1. VOL. I. 5 52 Menu, I. 108. and not to the majesty of his knowledge. Intellectual cultivation was still childish and imperfect. It attempted various pursuits, but followed a straightforward or a well-directed course in none. There seemed to be too much impulse and too little wisdom, too much aspiration and too little accomplishment, in all things; the more so, that the aspiration and the impulse were purely speculative. Neither climate nor constitution will account for this universal barrenness of action and of meditation. The preponderance of one class, and of that class only, is alone a sufficient reason for its own inactivity and for the degradation of a whole people. Deep within the mountains of India are still the temples which were buried in darkness by the toil and the superstition of long-forgotten generations; but though they be solitary now, there may be seen in them the images of feelings, heavy, bewildering, and-obscure, with which the living men, as well the priests as the worshippers, who thronged them once, were overpowered. The character of the Brahmins themselves is nearly all that can be rescued from the profound obscurity in which the lives of them and of their subjects are concealed. Their system, as we are now, at last, prepared to judge it, was one of twofold operation, in the authority it established and in the 54 54 Unless it be possible to sketch the habits of the people from their laws, which would be much beyond the limits of the present chapter. The reader is referred to the Vishnu Purana, Book III. ch. 9, for a particular instance in the duties of the "householder." |