A STUDENT of that primitive faith which has become transformed into modern Christianity may now and again, in the difficulties of critical analysis, find himself indulging a wish for the discovery of a fifth gospel. He would welcome the simple and unadulterated collection of inspired sayings which Matthew is recorded as having made in the original Hebraic tongue; he would even be glad of the Gospel of Marcion, or of that according to the Egyptians, or the Nazarenes, or the Hebrews, or of any one of those numerous orderly narratives referred to by the polished later editor, Luke. Or the English scholar might be both inquisitive and proud if among ancient British relics there could but be disentombed a record giving the unconventional views of Simon the Zealot, who is said to have travelled westward as far as our island, and to have been crucified here. Or if any of the notes of unbelieving Thomas should be found, rendered into the languages of the countries he is traditionally reported to have visited, Parthia,

Persia, India, there would indeed be a feast for the curious.

The difficulty with Buddhism is not that there are too few records, but too many. The Buddhist canon in China alone includes nearly fifteen hundred distinct

works.

The peculiar interest in Chinese versions of books that have their origin in India, is that they afford a security that the originals have not been tampered with, or rather a means of discovering in what portions they are scarcely open to suspicion of modification from primitive form. Wherever is found a parallelism, amounting almost to identity, between passages of a work in Pali (the native tongue of Buddhism), and a Chinese version of it made fifteen hundred years ago, the evidence is good that the passage so found has remained intact during that period at least, in spite of those changes of sectarian feeling, which almost insensibly leave their marks upon a text.

A recently published translation from Chinese into English of an authentic Buddhist work,* when

compared with a version already made from the Pali,* affords an excellent verification of Buddhist doctrines before they had become thinly drawn out into metaphysics and intellectuality, or extended into florid idolatry to suit the ignorant.

Between five or six centuries before the era by which we reckon begins, is the date of the young prince who grew up into the commanding prophet, the founder of Buddhism. When he died, leaving no written teachings behind him, as the story goes, his cousin and disciple Ananda took up the task of collecting the words of wisdom. that his memory, and possibly the memory of others also, had stored. Probably a great portion, although put into form, was held in memory -not in manuscript-and only promulgated orally. Councils of disciples met to revise these growing collections-growing first, no doubt out of accruing recollections, afterwards by the additions of ingenious commentators, editors, and improvers. It must not be forgotten that the prophet did not launch his gospel upon ears unaccustomed to the words of philosophy, but introduced it into the midst of the grand and long-established religious tenets of his country, from which beliefs moreover his own differed, as would appear, rather by being a heightening or reawakening of them than a contradiction.

The third of these Buddhist councils was held under King Asoka, about two centuries and a half before our era. Of this Asoka there are authentic inscriptions in existence of the date named. As a Hindu versifier of the present generation writes:

The first redaction is said to have taken place immediately after the death of Sakya-muni, under the care of five hundred monks, three of the principal disciples of the master sharing the task of gathering together his words. The next redaction took place in about a century, for discord had already arisen, and the Buddhist leaders felt the necessity of assembling to decide upon difficult questions of canonicity.

Something over four centuries after the time of the master there were eighteen separate sects of Buddhists. Eighteen sects in four hundred years! At the same rate, this would only allow Christendom in its eighteen hundred years to have eighty bodies dissenting from one another.

In his preface to the "Dhammapada," Max Müller refers to "the problem, so often started, whether it is possible to distinguish between Buddhism and the personal teaching of Buddha." He argues as follows: "We possess the Buddhist canon, and whatever is found in that canon we have a right to consider as the orthodox Buddhist doctrine. But as there has been no lack of efforts in the Christian theology to distinguish between the doctrine of the founder of our religion and that of the writers of the Gospels; to go beyond the canon of the New Testament, and to make the λóyia of the Master the only solid rule of faith, so the same want was felt at a very early period among the followers of Buddha. King Asoka, the Indian Constantine, had to remind the assembled priests at the great council which had to settle the Buddhist canon that 'what had been said by Buddha, that alone was well said.'”

"Works attributed to Buddha, but declared to be apocryphal, or even heterodox, existed already at that time (246 B.C.). Thus we are by no means without authority for distinguishing between Buddhism and the teaching of Buddha; the only question is, Whether in our time such a separation is still practicable."

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'My belief is," continues Professor Müller, "that, in general, all honest inquirers must oppose a 'No' to this question, and confess that it is useless to try to cast a glance beyond the boundaries of the Buddhist canon. What we find in the canonical books in the socalled Three Baskets' is orthodox Buddhism and the doctrine of Buddha, similarly as we must accept in general whatever we find in the Four Gospels as orthodox Christianity and the doctrine of Christ."

This is a most lame and impotent conclusion, and in each case in which an accepted Christian text has been discovered to be the gloss of a commentator, and not found in the earliest manuscripts, and is at the same time manifestly at variance from the doctrine of Christ, Professor Müller's argument can evidently be reduced to an absurdity. Had he said simply the Three Baskets are the accepted scriptures of orthodox Buddhism, the Four Gospels of orthodox Christianity, he would have uttered that which, if a truism, is at least. a fact.

It is disappointing to find a distinguished student of comparative religious lore so resigning himself to the abandonment of a difficulty. It must, however, be allowed that western civilisation is still very young in philosophic experience. Doctrinal fetters have long cramped the mind, and prevented its expansion in the ethical direction. Moreover, the leading race of Europe has not long emerged from insular barbarism, and four centuries ago was almost without culture in foreign languages and foreign thought. The time is not long past when, if a few bones of an extinct animal had been placed before a naturalist, and he were asked to reconstruct the whole anatomy upon their basis, he would have smiled with the superior wisdom of ignorance upon his inquirer's absurd folly. Now he will not only build up the pro bable anatomical form, but certainly eliminate from the bones placed before him such as do not consist with the others as having belonged to a creature of a given type.

May we not hope, therefore, that as sympathetic study of ancient philosophy progresses, the power may be found to grow of distinguishing between characteristic

expressions of thought, as is done with different varieties of bones? And that to body forth the thoughts of a distinctive thinker with more or less fulness and certitude we shall require but to have before us authentic relics known to have proceeded from him.

Professor Müller somewhat fritters away the force of his negative, and, while professing to maintain his stronghold, abandons his separate forts, when he continues as follows in respect to the Buddhist scriptures:

"Still, with regard to certain doctrines and facts, the question, I think, ought to be asked again and again, whether it may not be possible to advance a step further, even with the conviction that we cannot arrive at results of apodictic certainty? If it happens that on certain points we find in different parts of the canon, not only doctrines differing from each other, but plainly contradictory to each other, it follows, surely, that only one of these can have belonged to Buddha personally. In such a case, therefore, I believe we have a right to choose, and I believe we shall be justified in accepting that view as the original one, the one peculiar to Buddha himself, which harmonises least with the later system of orthodox Buddhism."

There is a large amount of force in Professor Müller's concluding suggestion, and we may remark it as curious that he has not carried on his parallelism of Buddhism with Christianity in regard to the applicability of the very searching test he puts forward.

Another Buddhistic student, Mr. D'Alwis, of Ceylon, takes a very different view from that of Professor Max Müller; he urges that "It is indeed possible, according to hints given by Buddha himself, to separate his genuine doctrines from the greater part, if not the

whole, of what has been long accepted as the logia. For example, after a little investigation, we have found no difficulty in expunging the whole of the fable, which goes by the name of Gotama's battle with Mára (Mára himself seems to partake of the nature of the Evil One, Death and Cupid). There is no more mystery in the very logia of Gotama than in works on other religions. We find no authority for the predictions regarding distinguished persons who lived in after times."

Mr. D'Alwis says further, "The Three Baskets do not contain entirely the words of Gotama. None of them are free from additions, and the discourses themselves show that they are not without omissions. The formal

conclusion of several of the Sútras, which is everywhere identically the same, is essentially the language of the disciples. The Kathá Vatthupakarana, the third book of the Abhidhamma, was added by Moggaliputta Tissou, with the avowed intention of refuting the doctrines in the apocryphal and heterodox works' to which Max Müller refers. . . . Then, again, we have grave doubts as to the genuineness of some of the books ... the language of which, both as regards style and grammar, is different from the undoubted logia of Gotama. . . . Again, there is reason to believe that Ananda, the beloved pupil of Gotama, imported much of his own ideas into the Pari-nibbána Sutta."

The order of the Three Baskets or orthodox Buddhist Scriptures, will throw some light upon the growth of a body of religious doctrine. The three great divisions are Sermons, Ethics, Metaphysics. Can we not, to speak broadly, follow the course of the great prophet, and hear the sermon? walk with the disciples, and be treated to ethics, instead of to the burning heart words of an inspired preacher? remove a little further and come upon the disputatious doctors with their metaphysics?

By what tests can we discover the prophet's own utterances amongst imitations? His mission is humanitarian; his utterances must manifest a human tenderness more markedly than an ethical systematisation. He will at times be exceedingly simple from love of the little ones (intellectually speaking). At times from the difficulty of drawing down heavenly truths into a lower and crasser sphere, he will resort to fable, and will scatter caskets for the wise, parables of enshrined significance, even paradoxes of startling form that live and are not forgotten, by reason as it were, of the very audacity of their conception.

It may be well to repeat here in brief the story of Gautama's life. Legendary in part though it be, it no doubt contains a valuable proportion of fact.

Sakya, or Siddharta, was the son of Raja Suddhodana, of the clan of the Gautamas, who lived at Kapila, near Gorukpur, on the confines of Nepaul and Oude. The date of his birth is not known with absolute certainty, but 623 B.C. is most generally accepted. His mother. Suddhodana's queen, was named Maya. She died seven days after his birth, and the child was brought up by a maternal aunt. The story respecting his birth from the side of a virgin, which is said to have reached

Jerome and to have been repeated by Ratramnus, would seem to be an afterthought of foolish followers; the legend is represented on very early temple sculptures.

A conjecture has been hazarded, from some peculiarities of burial rites and other indications, that the Sakyas, who are unknown in the records of India, were foreigners, and of a Scythian royal family. A short time before the reputed birth of the Muni, the Scythians had poured over Media, Judea, and Asia Minor; and it is considered possible that one branch of these invaders had penetrated at an earlier date into Northern India. It is probable that reference is made to them in the description, "It is a mighty nation, it is an ancient nation, a nation whose language thou knowest not, nor understandest thou what they say. Their quiver is as an open sepulchre, they are all warriors:" (Jerem. v. 15-17.)

There is a legend cited from Wassiljew's "Buddhismus," by Schlagintweit in his "Buddhism in Tibet," to the effect that the Sakya tribe had been involved in a disastrous war during the life of the Buddha, and was nearly exterminated, its surviving members being compelled to wander. It is suggested that a son of the race may thus have been led to view existence as the source of pain and sorrow, rather than through the circumstances described in the story presently to be related. But it may be remarked that the effect of a nomad life upon the members of a warlike clan is likely to be rather in the direction of increased hardihood and martial qualities, than in the direction of deep analysis of the problems of existence. A tendency to a contemplative and earnest life, however, the idleness and luxury of a court might by reaction foster in a sensitive nature.