Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 2

"In the following pages I have occasion to transcribe words belonging to many oriental languages in Latin characters. Unfortunately a uniform system of transcription, applicable...

The obscurest period in the history of Buddhism is that which follows the reign of Asoka, but the enquirer cannot grope for long in these dark ages without stumbling upon the wo...

Let us now consider these doctrines and take first the worship of Bodhisattvas. This word means one whose essence is knowledge but is used in the technical sense of a being who...

This mythology did not grow up around the Buddha without affecting the central figure. To understand the extraordinary changes of meaning both mythological and metaphysical whic...

Thus the theory of the three bodies, especially of the Dharma-kaya, is bound up with a theory of ontology. Metaphysics became a passion among the travellers of the Great Vehicle...

In a previous chapter I have discussed the Pali Canon and I shall subsequently have something to say about the Chinese and Tibetan Canons, which are libraries of religious and e...

In the previous chapters I have enumerated some features of Mahayanism, such as the worship of Bodhisattvas leading to mythology, the deification of Buddhas, entailing a theolog...

Tradition, as mentioned above, connects the rise of the Mahayana with the reign of Kanishka. Materials for forming a picture of Indian life under his rule are not plentiful but...

About the time of Vasubandhu there existed four schools of Indian Buddhism called Vaibhashika, Sautrantika, Madhyamika and Yoga or Yogacara.[230] They were specially concerned w...

The theme of this chapter is sad for it is the decadence, degradation and ultimate disappearance of Buddhism in India. The other great religions offer no precise parallel to thi...

The present book deals with Hinduism and includes the period just treated in Book IV. In many epochs the same mythological and metaphysical ideas appear in a double form, Brahma...

The striking difference between the earlier and later phases of Indian religious belief, between the Vedic hymns, Brahmanas, Upanishads and their accessory treatises on the one...

[Footnote 400: See Maitrayana Up. V. 2. It is highly probable that the celebrated image at Elephanta is not a Trimurti at all but a Mahesamurti of Siva. See Gopinatha Rao, _Hind...

In the last chapter I traced the growth of the great gods Siva and Vishnu. The prominence of these figures is one of the marks which distinguish the later phase of Indian religi...

India is a literary country and naturally so great a change as the transformation of the old religion into theistic sects preaching salvation by devotion to a particular deity f...

[Footnote 459: Mahabh. XII. sec. 283. In the same way the worship of Dionysus was once a novelty in Greece and not countenanced by the more conservative and respectable party. S...

About the sixth century A.D. the decadence of Buddhism and the invigoration of Brahmanism were both well advanced. The Mahabharata existed as a great collection of epic and reli...

Though Sivaism can boast of an imposing array of temples, teachers and scriptures in the north as well as in the south, yet Vishnuism was equally strong and after 1000 A.D. perh...

With the fifteenth century Hinduism enters on a new phase. Sects arise which show the influence of Mohammedanism, sometimes to such an extent that it is hard to say whether they...

The Kartabhajas mentioned at the end of the last chapter show a mixture of Hinduism and Mohammedanism, and the mixture[651] is found in other sects some of which are of consider...

Among the principal subdivisions of Hinduism must be reckoned the remarkable religion known as Saktism, that is the worship of Sakti or Siva's spouse under various names, of whi...

Philosophy is more closely connected with religion in India than in Europe. It is not a dispassionate scientific investigation but a practical religious quest. Even the Nyaya sc...