much of its early zeal; its well-endowed monasteries may have sheltered multitudes of indolent and ignorant monks; it is certain that the contamination with Hindu-especially Çivaite superstitions was extensive; but neither corruption nor contention is ordinarily fatal.

Unquestionably the chief cause of the decline of Buddhism was the rise of newer types of religion more attractive to the mass of men. It was an inherent weakness of Buddhism that it was a way of salvation for such only as, renouncing the world, gave themselves exclusively to the task; for others there was no more than the lame consolation that in another existence they too might become monks. In the age when it arose, its competitors, Brahmanic and heretical alike, were at one with it in this; indeed, no small part of the early success of Buddhism may be ascribed to the fact that its "middle way" was a more practicable way for many than the rigorous asceticism or the metaphysical subtleties of other schools. But in the intervening centuries religions had grown up which held out the promise of salvation to pious householders as well as beggar saints. They were religions whose essential features the common man could understand, while the philosopher could make them as profound as he needed. Their living and loving gods answered the longing of the soul for an object of devotion, and rewarded men's devotion not only with the good things of this life but with deliverance from the fear of after lives. These religions were, moreover, in the main line of Indian development; they made no radical break with the gods of the fathers and the rites with which all life was interwoven. In short, it was the growth of the religions which were comprehended under the name Hinduism that undid Buddhism by depriving the order of both recruits and supporters.

The permanent conquests of Buddhism were on missionary ground. It was introduced into China in the first century of our era, was carried thence to Korea in the fourth, and reached Japan in the sixth; it had spread in Afghanistan and far into what we now call Turkestan in the first centuries

after Christ; in later times it made great progress among the Mongols, contesting the field with Christianity and Islam. From large regions once possessed by it in central Asia it was ousted by the triumphs of Mohammedan arms and by the conversion to Islam of Mongol Khans. Buddhism spread to Burmah in the fifth century and to Siam in the seventh, and in these countries has continued to flourish to the present day. The Buddhism of the south, in Ceylon, Burmah, and Siam, has departed much less widely from the primitive type than that of the north. In becoming the religion of whole peoples—a church, rather than an order of mendicant friars-and of peoples on lower levels of civilisation, it has taken up much from the native religions which it superseded; it has its luxuriant Buddha legend and its arid scholasticism; it has had its share of sectarian controversies about dogma and discipline, and not only in its commentaries and systematic treatises but in the canon itself there is doubtless much that Buddha never dreamed of; but it has not adopted an absolutist metaphysics with a transcendental mysticism or gnosis, nor, on the other hand, has it been so deeply infected by Hindu polytheism and magic as the northern branches of the church. The discipline also has kept closer to the original model.

In Tibet, where Buddhism was introduced about 650, there was developed in the ninth century, by a fusion of degraded Buddhism with native superstitions and magic, a religion, called from the title of its highest ecclesiastical dignitary, Lamaism. This patriarch, the Grand Lama, is the incarnation of a Bodhisattva. The Tibetans possess translations of many Buddhist works, besides a great many specifically Lamaist books, so that their canon is of enormous bulk. A reformation early in the fifteenth century divided the Lamaists into two sects, distinguished outwardly by the colour of their garments-red, the unreformed, and yellow, the reformed body.

CHAPTER XIII

INDIA

THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMS

Relation to the Veda-The Vedanta―Idealistic Monism of Çankara -Metaphysics: Brahman as the Absolute-Theology: Brahman as Personal God-The Higher and the Lower Knowledge-The Theistic Vedanta of Ramanuja-The Pluralistic Realism of the Sankhya-The Yoga-Its Practical Methods-Other Orthodox Philosophies-Atheistic Materialism.

In the centuries during which the great heresies were flourishing in India, and partly in opposition to them, the Brahmanic philosophies were systematised—the monistic conception of the Upanishads, as the Vedanta; the dualistic view of the universe with which Jainism and Buddhism have closer affinity, as the Sankhya. The Brahma-Sutras of Badarayana as expounded by Çankara in the eighth century of our era present the Vedanta in the form which has been most widely accepted in India; the oldest extant text of the rival system is the Sankhya-Karika.

The Vedanta professes to be based, not on speculation but on revelation; it is the teaching of the Veda, specifically of the Upanishads, to which it refers as irrefragable authority. The Upanishads, however, proceeding from many individual thinkers or schools of thought, naturally contain numerous inconsistencies, not to say contradictions. These inconsistencies were most keenly felt at the vital point, the nature of the Brahman. On the one hand Brahman is, ontologically, absolute being; on the other hand, Brahman is pantheistically conceived as the ground of being, the soul of the universe, or theistically as a personal god, the supreme Lord.

The metaphysics of the Vedanta develops the first of these conceptions, the higher doctrine of the Upanishads. Brahman is the sole reality, without attributes, distinctions, or determinations; of it nothing more can be said than neti, neti-it is not anything that you can say of it-pure being. This one reality is not material but spiritual, it is absolute intelligence; intelligence is not an attribute of Brahman, which would be irreconcilable with its simple unity, but its essence. Its unknowableness lies in the fact that it is universal subject without object; and for the same reason consciousness, which implies the duality of subject and object, cannot be predicated of it. The true self of man (ātman) is identical with the universal Brahman (paramātman, the supreme self)—"That art Thou!" The world of appearance owes its seeming existence to illusion (māyā), as when our senses are deceived by the art of a conjurer. The illusion is objectively conceived; Brahman is the great magician who projects it. Man's individual consciousness is an illusion of the same kind. The essence of the illusion is man's failure to distinguish the true self from the faculties of mind and sense, the principle of life, the subtle body, and the substratum of moral character, which seem to make him a person distinct from other persons and things, an individual ego.

Yet although the phenomenal world and the empirical ego are in a metaphysical sense non-existent, a kind of reality is allowed to them, as the experiences of a dream are real experiences though no reality corresponds to them;1 but when nescience (avidyā) is overcome, the semblance of reality vanishes as the dream-reality when one awakes. So long as the state of nescience subsists, the round of death and birth continues; the only salvation is the knowledge that the phenomenal world and the individual soul have no true existence, the knowledge of the identity of Brahman-Atman. Therewith the thrall of deed is free, the round of death

1Çankara distinguishes the unreality of our waking world from that of dreams: the latter is not co-ordinated in time, space, and causality.

and birth is ended-"it cometh not again." He is "saved in this life" (jivanmukta); and when the residue of former deed is exhausted, the substrata of existence are dissolved into the elements, and the soul is finally and for ever Brah

man.

Salvation cannot be gained by the works of the law nor by the striving for moral perfection; knowledge alone saves. This knowledge is the opposite of all empirical knowledge in that in it the distinction of subject and object vanishes. It is not a doctrine that can be taught and accepted, even on the authority of scripture, nor can it be reached by any effort of thought. It is an experience that comes like the new birth in the Gospel of John to him that is born of the Spirit. There are, indeed, means which help put a man in the frame to attain this knowledge, but it is not the effect of these means, for the Atman is superior to the category of cause and effect.

There are, however, as has already been observed, numerous passages in the Upanishads in which Brahman appears, not as attributeless being, but as the source of all light, the life from which all beings spring, the principle of order in the universe, or as a personal god, the supreme Lord. The latter conception, relatively infrequent in the Upanishads, has a great place in the systematic Vedanta. Brahman is the creator of the world-its material as well as its efficient cause-and the ruler of the world; the lot of the soul in the round of rebirth is appointed by him in accordance with the deeds of a former life; it is by his grace that the saving knowledge comes to men. When the Upanishads thus endow Brahman with various perfections, it is

so Çankara interprets as an object of adoration, and by way of accommodation to the limitations of men's understanding. This lower knowledge of the Brahman “with at

1 Çankara's distinction of the two Brahmans is more explicitly anticipated in the Upanishads: "There are two manifestations of Brahman, the one personal, the other impersonal; the personal is unreal, the impersonal is real." (Maitri-Upanishad, VI, 3; cf. BrihadaranyakaUpanishad, II, 3, 1.)