Part 15

Without doubt, this more amplified system was the result of a reaction of Brāhmanism on Buddhism. It was at first a mere plan for creating a close Hierarchy like that of the Brāhman caste—that is to say, a privileged class of men possessed of higher knowledge and sanctity and superior to the majority of Bhikshus of the common stamp. Then it soon developed into a scheme for satisfying the craving of the masses for divinities of some kind to whom they might appeal for help in time of need.

In all probability the first to receive the title of Bodhi-sattva, next to Maitreya, were the most celebrated Arhats before mentioned, who were immediate disciples of Gautama, not however till death had separated them from their human frames, when, as a matter of course, they received a kind of worship like that accorded to all leaders of men, just as the earliest saints, heroes, and teachers of Brāhmanism did.

To specify all the Arhats who were elevated to the rank of Bodhi-sattva and became objects of veneration in later times would be a difficult and unprofitable task.

We may also dismiss, as unworthy of note, statements such as that in the Lalita-vistara, in which it is declared that 32,000 Bodhi-sattvas joined the Buddha’s assembly in the Jetavana garden. But we may notice the quasi-deification of a few historical personages mentioned by the two Chinese travellers, whose account of the state of Buddhism in India from the fourth to the seventh centuries has been so often quoted.

First of all came the immediate followers and so-called ‘great pupils’ (see p. 47) of Gautama, namely, his two chief disciples, Ṡāri-puttra and Moggallāna (Maudgalyāyana = Modgala-puttra)[91], both of whom are believed to have died before him. Then came the three great leaders at the first Council: 1. Kāṡyapa (pp. 46, 55); 2. Gautama’s cousin and beloved pupil Ānanda; 3. Upāli (note, p. 56).

Next to these perhaps the most celebrated teacher elevated to Bodhi-sattvaship was Nāgārjuna[92]—noticed before as the alleged founder of the Mahā-yāna system and its introducer into Tibet. According to one account he was the son of a Brāhman of Vidarbha, and taught Buddhism in the south of India. He had a celebrated disciple named Deva (or Ārya-deva)[93]. Nāgārjuna was at any rate a great teacher and developer of the Mahā-yāna. A legend relates that he was skilled in magic, and was able thereby to prolong his own and a Southern Indian king’s life indefinitely. This caused great grief to the mother of the Heir-apparent, who instigated her son to ask Nāgārjuna for his own head. Nāgārjuna complied with the request, and cut his own head off with a blade of Kuṡa grass, nothing else having the power to injure him. He is said by Hiouen Thsang to have lived in Southern Koṡala about 400 years after the death of Gautama, and is worshipped under different epithets in Tibet, China, Mongolia, and even Ceylon. Probably he lived in the first or second century—Beal places him between A.D. 166 and 200. Wassiljew considers him a wholly mythical personage. The additions he made to Buddhist doctrines were undoubtedly great. When he died Stūpas were erected to his memory, and in some places he was even worshipped as Buddha.

Among other deified, or partially deified Bodhi-sattvas, whose images and Stūpas (p. 161) the Chinese pilgrims found scattered in various parts of India, may be mentioned, those of the mythical Buddhas who preceded Gautama, especially Kāṡyapa[94]. Then we have Rāhula (son of Gautama), the patron of all novices, and founder of the realistic school called Vaibhāshika[95]; Dharma-pāla, Vasu-mitra (or Vasu-bandhu), Aṡva-ghosha, Guṇamati, Sthiramati, and others. In this practice of deifying their saints, Buddhists merely followed the example of the adherents of Hindūism. And we may add that this tendency is constantly repeating itself in the religious history of all nations.

There is even a tendency to press the saints of other countries into the service. This is remarkably exemplified in the history of Barlaam and Josaphat, current in Europe in the Middle Ages. The zealous Roman Catholics of those days thought that they could not exclude so noble a monk as Buddha from the catalogue of their own saints, and so they registered him in their list as St. Josaphat (Josaphat being a corruption of Bodhisat). Colonel Yule, in his Marco Polo, states that a church in Palermo is dedicated to this saint.

And here mention may be made of a modern deified Hindū teacher or sage, named Gorakh-nāth, who is said to have gone from India into Nepāl, and is worshipped there as well as at Gorakh-pur and throughout the Panjāb. Very little is known about him, and he belongs more to Hindūism than to Buddhism. Some say that he was a contemporary of Kabīr (1488-1512), and, according to a Janamsākhī, he once had an interview with Nānak, the founder of the Sikh sect. Such legendary accounts as are current are wrapped in much mystery. One legend describes him as born from a lotus.

Others describe him as the third or fourth in a series of Ṡaiva teachers, and the founder of the Kānphāṭā sect of Yogīs. The remarkable thing about him is that he succeeded in achieving an extraordinary degree of popularity among Northern Hindūs and among some adherents of Buddhism in Nepāl. His tomb is in the Panjāb, and he is to this day adored as a kind of god by immense numbers of the inhabitants of North Western India under the hills.

But the canonization of such historical teachers in India and their elevation to semi-divine rank did not satisfy the craving of the uneducated masses, either among Buddhists or Hindūs, for personal deities, possessed of powers over human affairs far greater than any departed human beings, however eminent. In Buddhism the supposed existence of the more god-like Bodhi-sattva Maitreya—venerated by both the Mahā-yāna and the Hīna-yāna schools—was not sufficient to satisfy this craving.

Hence the ‘Great Vehicle’ soon began to teach the existence of numerous mythological Bodhi-sattvas, other than Maitreya, to whom no historical character belonged, but whose functions were more divine.

LECTURE IX. _Theistic and Polytheistic Buddhism._

In the preceding Lecture I have endeavoured to sketch the rise of theistic and polytheistic Buddhism.

We have now to turn our attention to its development, especially in regard to the worship of mythical Bodhi-sattvas, and of the Hindū gods and other mythological beings.

Some of the Bodhi-sattvas of the Mahā-yāna or Great System were merely quasi-deifications of eminent saints and teachers. Others were impersonations of certain qualities or forces; and just as in early Buddhism we have the simple triad of the Buddha, his Law, and his Order, so in Northern Buddhism the worship of mythical Bodhi-sattvas—other than Maitreya—was originally confined to a triad, namely (1) Mañju-ṡrī, ‘he of beautiful glory;’ (2) Avalokiteṡvara, ‘the looking-down lord,’ often called Padma-pāṇi, ‘the lotus-handed;’ (3) Vajra-pāṇi or Vajra-dhara, ‘the thunderbolt-handed.’

These three mythical Bodhi-sattvas were not known to early Buddhists, nor to the Buddhists of Ceylon. They are not even found in the oldest books of the Northern School (such as the Lalita-vistara), though they occur conspicuously in the Saddharma-puṇḍarīka.

All we can say with certainty is, that when Fā-hien visited Mathurā on the Jumnā 400 years after Christ, their cult certainly existed there at that time.

We shall not be far wrong if we assert that it was adopted in about the third century of our era.

As already indicated (see p. 175), the idea of the first Buddhist triad—the Buddha, the Law, and the Monastic Order—accepted by the adherents of both Vehicles—was probably derived from the earliest Brāhmanical triad. (See also Brāhmanism and Hindūism, pp. 9, 44. 74.)

In the same way the second Buddhist triad introduced by the advanced teachers of the ‘Great Vehicle,’ viz. Mañju-ṡrī, Avalokiteṡvara (= Padma-pāṇi), and Vajra-pāṇi, corresponded to the later Hindū triad (tri-mūrti) of deities, Brahmā, Vishṇu, and Ṡiva.

I have explained in ‘Brāhmanism and Hindūism’ (pp. 54, 73) how the gods Vishṇu and Ṡiva gradually usurped the position of the god Brahmā, whom they dispossessed of his co-equality with themselves, and how the whole mythology of the Hindūs, which was originally complicated by a large admixture of pre-Āryan and Vedic elements, ultimately became more simplified by arranging itself under the two heads of Vaishṇavism and Ṡaivism, all other mythological personages being regarded as forms of either Vishṇu or Ṡiva.

In contradistinction to this, we find that each member of the two Buddhist triads holds its own, and we are led on to a system which bewilders us by ever increasing complications—a system which preserves the individuality of its own triads and deified saints, and yet recognizes almost all the gods, demigods, demons, and supernatural beings of Hindūism.

I propose now to offer some account of the development of the Buddhist Pantheon, beginning with the mythical conceptions peculiar to Buddhism, and passing on to those held in common with Hindūism.

And first as to the second Buddhist triad above-named, it may be noted, as a proof of the very gradual growth of Buddhistic mythology, that in the earlier developments of Buddhism the three Bodhi-sattvas constituting that triad have very restricted functions.

When I visited the Buddhist caves at Ellora, I noticed that in the ancient sculptures there, Padma-pāṇi and Vajra-pāṇi (but not Mañju-ṡrī) are represented as attendants of the human Buddha.

Of course it is easy to understand that the duty of guarding the Buddha ultimately expanded into that of watching over and protecting the whole Buddhist world, though it is difficult to determine which of the three mythical Bodhi-sattvas became first celebrated for the effective discharge of this duty, or to which of the three chronological precedence ought to be assigned.

Without taking the order already given, we may begin with Padma-pāṇi as the most popular, and may note that he has a name, Avalokiteṡvara, composed of the two Sanskṛit words avalokita, ‘looking down[96],’ and Īṡvara, ‘lord,’ the latter being the Brāhmanical name for the Supreme God—a name wholly unrecognized by early Buddhism, but assigned by the Hindūs to the three personal gods, Brahmā, Vishṇu, and Ṡiva, especially to the latter.

In the duty of watching over and protecting the whole Buddhist world, Avalokiteṡvara (= Padma-pāṇi), that is, ‘the lord who looks down with pity on all men,’ certainly takes the lead, and his name was in keeping with the reputation for answering prayer which he soon achieved.

In the Lāmism of Tibet, he is, as we shall see hereafter, a kind of divine Pope, existing eternally in the heavens as Vicar of one of the Buddhas of the present age, but delegating his functions to a succession of earthly Popes in whom he is perpetually incarnated and re-incarnated, while at the same time preserving his own personality in his own heaven.

Indeed, the popularity of his worship is one of the chief characteristics of the Mahā-yāna system, and is not confined to Tibet, though he is believed to be the special patron of that country. It is he who during the continuance of the present age of the world presides over the whole cycle of soul-migration. In a word, the temporal welfare of all living beings, and of all who have to wander through the worlds of the gods, men, demons, ghosts, animals, and livers in hell, is especially assigned to him.

People, therefore, pray to him more frequently than to any other Bodhi-sattva, and not only for release from the misery of future re-births, but in all cases of present bodily danger and domestic affliction. Hence he has numerous other names or epithets, such as ‘God of mercy,’ ‘Ocean of pity’ (Karuṇārṇava), ‘Deliverer from fear’ (Abhayaṃ-da), ‘Lord of the world’ (Lokeṡ-vara), ‘World-protector’ (Loka-pāla), ‘Protector of the Āryas’ (Ārya-pāla); and the Chinese traveller Fā-hien says of himself, that he prayed in his heart for the aid of Avalokiteṡvara when in great peril during a storm at sea.

That his worship was very prevalent among Buddhists of the Mahā-yāna School all over India, as well as in Tibet, from the fourth to the seventh century, is attested also by Hiouen Thsang. Both travellers tell us that they frequently met with his images, which were often placed on the tops of mountains. Possibly this fact may account for the name he acquired of the ‘Looking-down lord.’ Or, on the other hand, it is possible that his name may have led to the selection of high situations for his temples and images.

And it may be observed here that although Avalokiteṡvara bears a close resemblance in character to Vishṇu, yet his images often conform to the Brahmā type, and sometimes to that of Ṡiva[97]. He has generally several faces—sometimes even eleven or twelve—and usually four or eight arms. These faces are placed one above the other in the form of a pyramid, in three tiers, and probably indicate that he looks down on all three worlds, namely, the worlds of desire, of true form, and of no form (pp. 213, 214), from all points of the horizon.

Note, however, that two of his hands are generally folded, as if adoring the Buddha, while his two other hands hold such emblems as the lotus and wheel (especially the lotus). This distinguishes the images of the mere Bodhi-sattva Avalokiteṡvara from those of the god Vishṇu, who, although he has four arms, is never represented in an attitude of adoration. Note, too, that the many-headed images of Avalokiteṡvara probably belong to the later phase of the Mahā-yāna, when he was regarded as an emanation or spiritual son of the Dhyāni-Buddha Amitābha, whose head forms the eleventh above his own ten. There are descriptions of earlier idols, which make it probable that Avalokiteṡvara was originally represented in ordinary human shape.

When his worship was introduced into China the name he received was Kwan-she-yin or Kwan-yin (in Japan Kwan-non)—a name denoting (according to Professor Legge) ‘one who looks down on the sounds of the world, and listens to the voices of men.’

We know that each of the chief Hindū gods had his female counterpart or Ṡakti, who is often more worshipped than the male. Similarly the female counterpart of the male Avalokiteṡvara is the form of the god chiefly worshipped in China and Japan[98]. In those countries he is only known in the feminine character of ‘goddess of mercy,’ and in this form is represented with two arms, but oftener with four or more, and even with a thousand eyes.

The connexion of Avalokiteṡvara with Ṡiva, as well as with Vishṇu, is proved by the fact that in some characteristics Kwan-yin corresponds to the Durgā form of Ṡiva’s wife, and in others to the form called Pārvatī, who, as dwelling on mountains, may be supposed to look down with compassion on the world.

As to Vajra-pāṇi (or Vajra-dhara), ‘the thunderbolt-handed,’ this Bodhi-sattva corresponds in some respects to Indra. He is the fiercest and most awe-inspiring of all the Bodhi-sattvas, and was, in time, converted into a kind of Buddhistic form of Ṡiva, resembling that god in his character of controller of the demon-host and destroyer of evil spirits. Hiouen Thsang describes how eight Vajra-pāṇis surrounded the Buddha as an escort, when he journeyed to visit his father Ṡuddhodana. Vajra-pāṇi is of course a popular object of veneration in all Northern Buddhist countries, where a dread of malignant spirits is so prevalent that the waving to and fro of an implement symbolizing a thunderbolt (Vajra, or in Tibetan Dorje) is practised as a method of keeping them at bay and averting their malice.

Nevertheless, Vajra-pāṇi is not so popular as the third Bodhi-sattva, Mañju-ṡrī, ‘he of glorious beauty,’ also called Mañju-ghosha, ‘having a beautiful voice,’ and Vāgīṡvara, ‘lord of speech.’ This Bodhi-sattva, as ‘wisdom personified,’ and as ‘lord of harmony,’ may be regarded as a counterpart of the Brāhmanical Brahmā or Viṡva-Karman, the supposed creator of the universe. Brahmā, however, in his character of chief god, needed no Buddhistic substitute, having been incorporated by name into Buddhism. Mañju-ṡrī, as ‘lord of speech,’ seems also to be a counterpart of Brahmā’s consort Sarasvatī.

According to some, a learned and eloquent Brāhman teacher, named Mañju-ṡrī, introduced Buddhism from India into Nepāl about 250 years after the Nirvāṇa of Buddha, and the mythical Mañju-ṡrī may have been a development of the historical personage. His worship is mentioned by both Fā-hien and Hiouen Thsang[99], and seems to have been very popular.

A personification of Prajñā pāramitā, ‘transcendent wisdom,’ is also named. And indeed it seems natural that so soon as the Buddhists began to personify qualities and invest them with divine attributes, learning should have been among the first selected for deification, as it was by the Hindūs in early times.

Mark, however, that the popular Mañju-ṡrī has no place assigned to him in the Dhyāni-Buddha theory.

This mystical theory was a later development. It may be explained thus:—The term Dhyāna (Jhāna) is a general expression for the four gradations of mystic meditation which have ethereal spaces or worlds corresponding to them (p. 209), and a Dhyāni-Buddha is a Buddha who is supposed to exist as a kind of spiritual essence in these higher regions of abstract thought.

That is to say, every Buddha who appears on earth in a temporary human body—with the object of teaching men how to gain Nirvāṇa—exists also in an ideal counterpart, or ethereal representation of himself, in the formless worlds of meditation (p. 213). These ideal Buddhas are as numerous as the Buddhas, but as there are only five chief human Buddhas in the present age—Kraku-ććhanda, Kanaka-muni, Kāṡyapa, Gautama, and the future Buddha Maitreya—so there are only five corresponding Dhyāni-Buddhas:—Vairoćana, Akshobhya, Ratna-sambhava, Amitābha, and Amogha-siddha (sometimes represented in images as possessing a third eye). But this is not all; each of these produces by a process of evolution a kind of emanation from himself called a Dhyāni-Bodhi-sattva, to act as the practical head and guardian of the Buddhist community between the interval of the death of each human Buddha and the advent of his successor. Hence there are five Bodhi-sattvas—Samanta-bhadra, Vajra-pāṇi, Ratna-pāṇi, Padma-pāṇi (= Avalokiteṡvara), and Viṡva-pāṇi—corresponding to the five Dhyāni-Buddhas and to the five earthly Buddhas respectively. In Nepāl five corresponding female Ṡaktis or Tārā-devīs are named (see p. 216).

It is remarkable that the Chinese pilgrims from the fifth to the seventh centuries, while often mentioning the Bodhi-sattvas, make no allusion to any of the Dhyāni-Buddhas—whence we may gather that Amitābha, though adopted into Indian Buddhism, was not actually worshipped in India at least as a personal god.

In point of fact, it was only the Buddhism of the North which was not satisfied with the original triad of the Buddha, the Law, and the Monkhood. It, therefore, invented in addition five triads, each consisting of a Dhyāni-Buddha, a Dhyāni-Bodhi-sattva, and an earthly Buddha, though of these triads only one was of importance, namely, that consisting of Amitābha, Avalokiteṡvara, and the human Buddha, Gautama. But the Lalita-vistara does not mention this theory.

It should be observed, too, that an important addition to the Mahā-yāna doctrine was made in certain Northern countries about the tenth century of our era.

A particular sect of Buddhists in Nepāl, calling themselves Aiṡvarikas, propounded a theory of a Supreme Being (Īṡvara), to whom they gave the name of a ‘primordial Buddha’ (Ādi-Buddha), and who was declared to be the source and originator of all things, and the original Evolver of the Dhyāni-Buddhas, or Buddhas of contemplation, while they again were supposed to evolve their corresponding Dhyāni-Bodhi-sattvas.

It is clear, of course, that this addition was a mere adaptation of Buddhism to Brāhmanism, and that the Ādi-Buddha was invented to serve as a counterpart of the One Universal Spirit Brahmă—the one eternally existing spiritual Essence, from which all existing things are mere emanations.

Sometimes, however, this Ādi-Buddha is said to have produced all things through union with Prajñā (mentioned before, p. 202), in which case he is rather to be identified with the personal Creator Brahmā.

Observe, moreover, that even in early times one of the Dhyāni-Buddhas—the one called Amitābha, ‘diffusing infinite light,’—lost his purely abstract character, and was worshipped by Northern Buddhists as a personal God. He is in the present day held by them to be an eternal Being, the ideal of all that is beautiful and good, who receives his worshippers into a heaven called Sukhāvati, ‘paradise of pleasures’ (see p. 183).

But it must also be noted that neither Ādi-Buddha nor Amitābha, when regarded as personal gods, were held to be Creators of the World in the Christian sense. They were merely Supreme rulers outside and above it; for Northern Buddhists agree with Southern in thinking that the world exists of itself, and that its only Creator is the force of its own acts.

We pass on now to consider how far and with what modifications the mythology of Brāhmanism and Hindūism was incorporated into Buddhism.

I have already pointed out that although the Buddha changed the character of much of the existing mythology, he never prohibited his lay-followers from continuing their old forms of worship, or bowing down before the deities honoured by their fathers and grandfathers.

Apart indeed from the shrewd policy of not assuming an attitude of hostility to popular creeds and usages, the tolerant tendency and universality of the Buddha’s teaching obliged him, in common consistency, to recognize, and as far as possible appropriate, the various religious elements existing around him, and to subordinate them to his own purposes.

In fact, according to the theory of true Buddhism, as has been well pointed out by other writers, there was only one system of doctrine and only one Law—that Law (Dharma) which Gautama Buddha came to renovate for the benefit of the world in the present age.

Hence all the apparently conflicting creeds, dogmas, forms, ceremonies, and usages of all nations, tribes, and races, were in reality mere outcomes, or dim recollections, or corruptions, of that one and the same universal Dharma which countless Buddhas had preached to mankind, in countless ages before the time of Gautama, and would continue to preach in ages to come.

Hindūism, therefore, like all other creeds, was contained in the Dharma of Buddhism, and the great object of Gautama’s advent was not to uproot the old religion, but to purify it from error and restore it.

It was on this account that he regarded the Hindū gods as occupying a place in his own system, though not without some modification of the nature of their supposed position, offices, and functions.

And here it will be necessary to give an account of the later Buddhist theory of twenty-six successive tiers of heavens, one rising above the other (p. 120).