IN the Triple Jewel the great problem has always been the person of Buddha. The Doctrine and Discipline as officially recorded can be determined, but the conception of the enlightened One has undergone great changes. Hence the modern theories which either rationalise everything, or mythologise everything, or hold that Buddha himself had claims which necessarily conferred upon him a place as high as the greatest of the gods.366
The first question therefore is not whether it is possible to rationalise the traditions, but, as Professor Keith emphasises, whether the evidence they furnish for early Buddhist belief justifies our doing so. The opposition of Pali versus Sanskrit has not the significance that it once had. This meant the rivalry between the legends in the Pali commentaries and those in the Lalita-vistara as sources of history.367 But an these legends are attached to older documents of various schools, and it is now possible to get from them a different kind of historical evidence more certain than that of the legends, that is, we can find what these schools actually believed about the nature of a Buddha, and what they held to be the false views of other schools.
There is no doubt that in the Pali Scriptures we have the earliest materials, but as the collection of one school it has to be determined whether in its assertions and negations this school was opposing other dogmatic views which had an equal claim to be primitive. It is also necessary to avoid begging the question by assuming that the conception of Buddha as a merely human being is the earliest, and that more developed views originated later. One great division between earlier and later documents can be made with certainty, that is between the canonical statements and the commentaries. In the latter we find dogmas some of them never broached in the texts, and others that first appear in what are admittedly the latest compositions in the Canon. Within the Canon itself the distinction between early and late has often been made from very arbitrary considerations, but there is a broad division between the suttas of the first four Nikayas and the Abhidhamma. The suttas, if not in all their details, were common to several schools, but the Abhidhamma is probably peculiar to the Theravadins, and it shows its lateness by quoting the suttas as we now find them. It also contains as one section the Kathavatthu or 'Points of Controversy', between schools which all accepted the authority of the suttas.
The Majjhima contains several accounts of the knowledges and powers attained by Buddha at his enlightenment.368 These are the four trances and the three knowledges, and are merely those which any arahat attains. They are included in the longer list of the fruits of being a monk, and all the supernormal attainments, the working of miracles, feats of levitation and thought-reading, are held to be attainable by all who practise right concentration. Although these qualities are common to a Buddha and his disciples, a Buddha differs in two respects. Firstly, he not only, like all arahats, knows the Path, but he has discovered it. As Ananda declared:
There is no one monk entirely and completely endowed with those qualities with which the Lord, the arahat, the all-enlightened, was endowed. For the Lord was the producer of the unproduced Path, the preacher of the Path that had not been originated, the knower, cognizer, perceiver of the Path. But now the disciples are followers of the Path, being endowed with it afterwards.369
This appears to be all in this passage that distinguishes a Buddha from an arahat, but there is a second quality sometimes asserted, which in the post-canonical literature becomes a standing epithet. He is omniscient (sabbannu). This is explained in various ways, and according to Buddhist accounts was a quality claimed also by the Jain leader, who declared that he was all-knowing and all-seeing, and professed that he had complete knowledge and insight, and that whether he was walking, standing, asleep, or awake, knowledge and insight were continually present. Buddha was asked by a wandering ascetic whether anyone who described Buddha himself in these terms would be speaking truthfully. Buddha denied it, and said that if anyone wished to describe him truthfully and not slander him, he would say, "the ascetic Gotama possesses the three knowledges," and these he described as the three knowledges attained on enlightenment.370 Here no more is claimed for him than for any arahat, but the doctrine of his omniscience did become the accepted view.
King Pasenadi had heard a report that Buddha had declared it impossible for any ascetic or brahmin to be omniscient, and he asked Buddha if he had said so, or anything like it.371 Buddha replied that what he had really said was that it was impossible for anyone to know and see everything at one and the same time. It is this mode of explaining omniscience that is later adopted, especially in the commentary on the Dhammapada.372 Buddha has not all knowledge present in his mind, but he can extend the net of his knowledge over the whole world, and thus bring any part of it within his consciousness. The fullest account is given in the Niddesa (I 355). Buddha has five kinds of vision. (1) With the eye of flesh he can see for a league all round by day and night. Even if a single marked sesame seed were to be thrown into a load of seeds he could pick it out, so pure is his vision. (2) With his divine eye he can see beings being born and passing away, and he knows their merit and demerit. If he wishes he can see one world; two worlds, and so on up to three thousand world-systems and beyond. (3) With the eye of wisdom (panna) he is the producer of the unproduced Path, which the disciples now follow. There is nothing unknown, unseen, unperceived, unrealised, untouched by his wisdom. Everything past, present, and future comes within the range of his knowledge. (4) With his Buddha-eye he surveyed the world and saw beings of little impurity, of great impurity, of keen or dull faculties and conditions.373 He knows that one man is given up to passion, others to hatred, illusion, reasoning, faith, or knowledge. And according to their requirements he preaches to each on impurity, love, contemplation, etc. This is human knowledge infinitely extended, for it is said that those who have wisdom even like Sariputta move in the region of Buddha's knowledge like birds in space. (5) His all-seeing eye is called omniscience. As he is endowed with this there is nothing unseen by him.
In these statements there is quite clearly a development from the earlier canonical utterances, in which omniscience is sometimes not even asserted, to the developed theories of these works of the Abhidhamma stage. It will be seen that in the Niddesa there is no hesitation in applying to Buddha qualities that are held to be divine. This work discusses the meaning of deva (god), and divides gods into three classes, (1) gods by convention, i.e. kings, princes, and queens, deva being a regular form of royal address; (2) gods by birth, i.e. gods in the ordinary sense, from the four great Kings up to the Brahma-gods and beyond; (3) gods of purity, i.e. the disciples who are arahats and the pacceka-buddhas. The Lord himself is the god, the super-god (atideva), the god beyond the gods (devatideva) over the conventional gods, over the gods by birth and the gods of purity.
It is thus possible to say that Buddha is called a god, but only in the sense in which the term god is defined by Buddhists. Every arahat has qualities that place him above the gods of the current polytheism. But neither Buddha nor the arahat has become a god in the sense of the originator of the universe or its ultimate reality. Such a conception indeed never appears, for the polytheistic standpoint remains in the doctrine that there have been many Buddhas, and in the view that all arahats are 'gods', and even this classification of gods, which arose from the necessity of explaining the term devatideva never appears in the suttas.374
In one canonical passage it is denied that Buddha is a god, but it is also there denied that he is a man. Being asked by a brahmin whether he was a god, a gandharva, a yaksha, or a man, he denied them all, and the brahmin asked what then he could be. Buddha replied:
Those asavas, through the non-abandonment of which I might have become a god, have been abandoned and cut off at the root, like a cut off palm tree, with complete cessation of becoming, and without liability to arise in the future; and likewise those asavas through which I might have become a gandharva, a yaksha, or a man. Just as a blue, red, or white lotus born and growing in the water rises and stays beyond it. unstained by the water, even so born and growing in the world, and having overcome the world, do I dwell unstained by the world. Remember, brahmin, that I am a Buddha.375
The gods and other beings are such because of their being subject to the asavas. A god, i.e. 'god by birth', is one who through his asavas has attained that position. And so the denial that Buddha is a man is the denial that he is one who like all those who are not arahats is still in bondage to the asavas. Evidently the possibility of a god free from all bonds is not even thought of. The stage that Buddha has reached is lokuttara, supramundane. The whole of the Path with Nirvana is lokuttara, for it raises the individual out of the causal chain of birth and decay, and sets him on a course that leads to the permanent and undying state.
This conception of the supramundane again is one that has developed in Abhidhamma, and has become a special tenet in several schools. Buddha was held by some to be supramundane in all respects, and hence not subject to the same conditions of existence as ordinary human beings, a view quite parallel to the Christian heresy of docetism. The Kathavatthu376 tells us that the Vetulyaka school held that as Buddha was 'undefiled by the world', he was not really born, but was represented on earth by a mind-born appearance, and another school that as he was above all human feeling, he felt no compassion. The Andhakas also were docetic, holding that in his ordinary acts he was supramundane, and that his power of working miracles was unlimited. Docetism also appears in the Mahavastu, as is implied in the name of the school to which it belonged, the Lokottaravadins. There (ii 20) the Tathagatas are said to be born from the right side of their mothers, whieh is not broken because they have a mind-formed body.377
To show that Buddha was looked upon as a man is not sufficient to prove that he was originally conceived as merely human. The incarnation of a divine being is a well-known feature of Hindu mythology, and the theory has to be considered whether Buddha was merely such another avatar of a god. This view has been put forth and worked out in most detail by H. Kern.378 In the whole marvellous legend of Buddha, and it lost no marvel as he told it, Kern declared that he was unable to see a single untruth. It is all literally true, but it is the truth of myth, all the legends of Buddha being descriptions of the sun and other heavenly bodies. He did not deny that Buddha may have existed, but held that all the stories we have are mythological descriptions of natural phenomena. Buddha's meditation on the twelvefold chain of causation represents the rising of the sun at the spring equinox and the twelve months, but it is also a creation myth and more. "The sun-god had to be represented not only as creator, but also as physician, as Apollo, as healer and saviour. . . . Hence the four truths of the physician were also fitted in, and thus we see under the appearance of a dry scholastic formula a rational fusion of a description of sunrise with the indication of the beginning of the year, a combination of a myth of creation and of salvation."
Buddha's two former teachers, who had died before him, mean two stars that disappear in the light of the sun. The Gautama who according to the Tibetan was an ancestor of Buddha, is the early dawn, or perhaps the planet Jupiter. He too fades before the rising sun. The going to Benares at midsummer to preach the first sermon, a journey of 18 hours, means that the sun was 18 hours above the horizon on the longest day.379 Kassapa of Uruvela, who became Buddha's disciple, is also the personified dawn, and his brightness also was lost in the glory of the sun. The six heretics are the false lights of the five planets and the moon. Rahula is naturally an eclipse: he was born at the time when the Bodhisatta disappeared. Mara is the spirit of darkness defeated and driven away by the sun-god.380 Buddha himself is Vishnu incarnated as Krishna.381
It would be no surprising fact if in the growth of the legend some actual sun-myth traits had been adopted from Hindu mythology. But even those that have been pointed out are inconclusive, and to Kern they were not mere additions, for this would have spoiled his theory, but belonged to the basis of the myth. The contest between the Bodhisatta and Mara, said Kern, belongs in its chief features at least to the most ancient legends of our race. For anyone who chooses it is quite possible to put it beside the fight of Indra with Vritra, of Beowulf with Grendel, and the labours of Hercules, but it is not possible to say that it is one of the oldest parts of the Buddha legend. There is no trace of it in the earliest accounts. It may even be called a sun-myth, but this only goes to show that the legend to which it is attached was something else.382
Buddha's title adityabandhu, 'kinsman of the sun,' is also an unfortunate fact for the sun-myth, even if it is translated with Kern 'a sort of sun'. It is so evidently a part of the family legend, which makes the Sakyas, like many other noble Indian families, belong to the solar race.
The cakravartin with his wheel of empire is also probably pre-Buddhist. For the Buddhists the wheel was not the sun. It may be maintained that it once had that meaning, but that was before the Buddhists knew of it.
The basis of the sun-myth theory does not rest on anything so explicit as these instances. It consists in treating the persons and incidents as an allegory of astronomical events, and trusting for proof to the fitness with which they fall into the astronomical scheme. For Kern it was one of the most important sections of comparative Aryan mythology, but it is not now taken for granted that all myths are nature-myths, or that all myths are prehistoric.383 The Indian imagination has continued to invent stories and develop new conceptions of the gods down to present times, but there is no evidence to show that the habit of telling allegorical stories of natural phenomena assumed for the Vedic period was alive a thousand years later.
In the doctrine of the nature of a Buddha we can see the development of new conceptions. The most important of these, besides those that have been mentioned, are the belief in previous Buddhas, the theory of a Great Man (mahapurusha), who is to become either a universal ruler or a Buddha, the thirty-two bodily marks of such a being, and the theory of a Bodhisattva.
It has been held that the belief in previous Buddhas points to the actual existence of at least some of them. We know that Asoka enlarged the stupa of Konagamana, the fifth of the six preceding Buddhas, and the Chinese pilgrims visited the stupas of the last three of them. This only proves that the legends concerning them then existed, but it does not prove these Buddhas to be historical, any more than the footprint of Buddha on Adam's Peak proves that he visited Ceylon.384
Six previous Buddhas are mentioned in the Suttas. These agree with the list of six in Sanskrit works, but the longer lists vary, though all agree in mentioning Dipankara, under whom Gotama (as the brahmin Sumedha) made the vow to become a Buddha, and who first prophesied his career. This theory of a succession of teachers is common to the Jains, and here there is some evidence that at least one historical teacher preceded Mahavira.385 In the case of the Buddhists there is no reason to doubt that the varying additions to the list of six are all more or less independent inventions and enlargements of an earlier form of legend, and the fact that even the six are absent from most parts of the Pali Canon makes it probable that they too do not belong to the earliest tradition. This is also the case with the future Buddha Metteyya (Maitreya), who is mentioned once in the suttas. The theory of a Great Man is undoubtedly originally non-Buddhist. Here it is only necessary to discuss it as it was developed by the Buddhists. It is found as part of the legend that Buddha was a king's son, and had the marks of a Great Man. If he had remained in the world, he would have become a universal ruler, a cakravartin. The original meaning of this term, as even Kern admitted, was probably 'one who controls (vartayati) or rules over the sphere of his power (cakra)', but it came to be understood as 'one who turns a cakra'. With this change of interpretation cakra became a blank term to be given a meaning according to the ideas of fitness of the commentators. It is usually understood as 'wheel', but how the wheel was conceived never clearly appears in the legends.
The wheel is one of the seven treasures of a universal ruler, and is described in the Mahasudassana-sutta as "a divine wheel-jewel with a thousand spokes, complete in all its parts with rim and nave". The marks of wheels on the feet of Buddha are described in exactly the same terms. The sutta describes how in ancient times the wheel-jewel appeared in the eastern quarter to Mahasudassana, king of Kusavati, the later Kusinara, who sprinkled it, and said, "may the reverend wheel-jewel appear, may the reverend wheel-jewel conquer." He followed it with a fourfold army, and received the homage of all kings in the eastern region. Then it plunged into the eastern ocean, and appeared in the same way in the south, west, and north, and in each region the kings paid homage. Finally the wheel-jewel having conquered the whole earth as far as the ocean came back and stood at the door of the inner apartments.386 Whatever the wheel may have once meant, it is here the symbol of universal rule, and all the phraseology about turning the Wheel of the Doctrine is merely the adaptation of this symbol to the spiritual reign of the king of the Dhamma.
The thirty-two bodily marks (lakkhana) of Buddha indicate most clearly the borrowing of a popular belief. Among the practices reproved as base sciences in the Great Morality is the interpreting of the bodily marks of women, men, children and slaves, and it is described still more fully in the Niddesa.387 This however did not destroy the belief that such a science exists, and in all the forms of the legend of Buddha's birth we find the mention of his marks, which were interpreted by the sage Asita or by brahmin priests. There are thirty-two such marks, which indicate that the individual is a Great Man, and will become either a universal ruler or a Buddha.388
He has (1) well-set feet, (2) wheels with a thousand spokes and rim and nave on the soles of his feet, (3) projecting heels, (4) long fingers, (5) soft hands and feet, (6) netted hands and feet, (7) prominent ankles, (8) antelope limbs, (9) when standing or not stooping his hands reach to his knees, (10) the private member is in a sheath, (11) he has a golden colour, (12) soft skin, (13) there is one hair to each pore of the skin, (14) the hairs of the body are black, rising straight and curling to the right, (15) he is very straight of body, (16) he has seven prominences, (17) the front part of his body is like a lion, (18) he has the space between the shoulders filled out, (19) his height is equal to his outstretched arms, (20) he has even shoulders, (21) keen taste, (22) a lion- jaw, (23) forty teeth, (24) even teeth, (25) is not gap-toothed, (26) has very white teeth, (27) a large tongue, (28) a voice like Brahrna. and as soft as a cuckoo's, (29) very black eyes, (80) eyelashes like an ox, (31) white hair between the eyebrows, and (82) his head is the shape of a cap (unhisasisa).
Besides these there are eighty minor marks (anuvyanjana), having nails copper-coloured. glossy, and prominent, having fingers bright (?), and regular, having the sinews hidden, without knots, etc.389
Several of the marks have a special interest in relation to the statues of Buddha, and their true significance has been discussed by M. Foucher.390 In the earliest representations of scenes in Buddha's life, as at Bharhut (3rd century B.C.) the figure of Buddha is not found. The preaching of the first sermon is indicated by the figure of a wheel, and the fact that it was in a park is shown by the figures of deer. At Sanchi in the scene of the conversion of Kassapa of Uruvela. all the persons concerned are portrayed, except that there is no Buddha. What the actual sentiment of believers was that led to this omission we do not know. It was not the custom to do it, says M. Foucher.
It is in sculptures of the Gandhara school in the first century B.C. that the earliest figures of Buddha are found. With new believers in the foreign invaders, new sculptors introducing the ideals of Hellenistic art, and no doubt a newer and different school of Buddhism, there was a break in the tradition. A type of the figure of Buddha modelled on that of Apollo was created, from which the Indian and all others are derived. In the Gandhara type the hair is long and gathered up with a band into a bunch forming a prominence on the top of the head. It is this feature which, M. Foucher maintains, explains the peculiar shape of the head on the later Indian form. On this the prominence remains, but it becomes part of the skull, and the sculptor being unable to reproduce the flowing lines of hair covered the head with small circular knobs, which are sometimes elaborated into curls turning to the right. The hair of the head is not mentioned at all in the Pali, but the Lalitavistara, which omits marks 15 and 24, inserts two others: having an even and wide forehead, and having the hair of the head turning to the right in black locks like a peacock's tail or mixed collyrium.
The doctrine of marks maybe old, but the lists that we possess have developed from the Gandharian, and they cannot be put earlier than the Christian era. Clearly the lists that contain these marks are very late also, and two considerations need to be made. The suttas which speak of a cakravartin are evidently among the latest parts of the Canon. They belong to a stage in which the whole legend of a cakravartin was fully developed as we find it in the commentaries. It is also probable that the actual lists of marks, as we possess them, are later still, and have been added as comments to the text. They have undergone changes, as the differences between the Pali and Sanskrit lists show. The list of minor marks is still later, and in the Pali they are found only in the commentaries. In any case we cannot be sure that the actual lists recorded are identical with those which may have existed when the doctrine of marks was adopted.
The epithet 'having the hands and feet with a net (or netted)' or as the Lalita-vistara says, 'having the fingers, hands, and feet with a net,' has been taken to mean that the fingers and toes were webbed, and some of the Gandhara statues actually have webbed fingers. But this was only a device of the sculptor to give strength to parts likely to be broken, since this feature only occurs when the fingers stand out. Buddhaghosa appears to have known this view, as he denies that the fingers were webbed,391 and says that one with such a defect could not receive ordination. That the network of lines on the hand was originally intended is a sufficient explanation. Buddhaghosa's own view is not likely to be the primitive one. He says that the four fingers and five toes were of equal length (as he no doubt saw them on statues), and that when Buddha entwined his fingers they were like a window with a lattice made by a skilful carpenter. The unna of white hair (Skt. urna, lit. 'wool ') is said both in Pali and Sanskrit to be between the eyebrows. Buddhaghosa says that it arose between the eyebrows at the top of the nose, but that it went up and grew in the middle of the forehead. It is thus represented on statues as a circular lump, or sometimes by the insertion of a precious stone. In Mahayana sutras the ray of light which Buddha at times emits comes from this, and illumines the worlds.
In the Pali commentaries rays of six colours (six being the traditional number of colours) are said to issue from Buddha's body. They are not usually conceived as issuing from the unna, but as extending in a halo from all parts of his body to the distance of a fathom. If he wishes he hides them with his robe and goes about like an ordinary monk. In one case however he emitted a dark ray from the unna, which plunged everything in black darkness, and then another, which was like the rising of a thousand moons.392
The theory of a bodhisatta is clearly the extension of the doctrines held concerning a Buddha. Gotama was a bodhisatta ever since he made the vow to become a Buddha. After that in his successive lives he was proceeding on his predestined career, and acquiring merits which led to' his final achievement. In particular he performed ten supreme virtues or perfections (parami), which are likewise performed by every bodhisatta: almsgiving, morality, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, resolution, love, and equanimity.
This doctrine of the vow, the career, and the perfections is absent from the four Nikayas, and was evidently quite unknown when they were compiled. But it cannot be assumed that its first appearance in the Theravada school coincides with its origin. It may have been introduced from some other school. We know from the Kathavatthu that various schools were in contact, and that they appealed to the same authoritative texts, so that the Theravadins may have adopted a current doctrine that harmonised with their own principles. We already find in it all the factors for the great development that it attained in Mahayana schools. The difference in the latter is that every individual may make the vow to become a bodhisatta and finally a Buddha. He then aims not merely at his own salvation, but at acquiring merits by which he can win the salvation of countless others.393
It has been thought that at the side of the official doctrine as we find it in the Pali there was a non-clerical Buddhism, and that among the lay people addicted to prayer and adoration there were those who made a god of Buddha and worshipped him as such. This would not be surprising, but to call this non-clerical Buddhism is rather like codifying the beliefs of an Italian peasant and calling it non-clerical Catholicism. When we come to Mahayana utterances, we find enough fervent adoration without seeking it in lay enthusiasm.
In one of the longest statements in the suttas of what laymen thought about Buddha there is no mention of anything divine.394 Sonadanda declares that he is going to visit Buddha for the good report that he has heard of him. After describing the ascetic Gotama as well born on both sides for seven generations back, he continues the recital:
The ascetic Gotama has abandoned a great family circle. He has abandoned great wealth of gold (stored) both below and above ground. Even while a boy, a black-haired lad in the prime of youth, in the first stage of life he has gone forth from a house to a houseless life. While his unwilling mother and father wept with tear-stained faces he cut off his hair and beard, and donning yellow robes has gone forth from a· house to a houseless life. He is beautiful, fair, attractive, with lovely complexion like Brahma, in colour and presence not inferior to look upon. He is virtuous, of noble virtue, of good virtue, endowed with good virtue; of beautiful voice and speech, endowed with urbane voice, clear and distinct for expounding the meaning. He is the teacher of the teachers of many, without lust, passion, or fickleness. He teaches the brahmin race the doctrine of action and sets forth righteousness. He has gone forth from a high family from an unbroken kshatriya family, from a family, rich, of great wealth, of great possessions. Men cross kingdoms and countries to come and ask him questions. Many thousands of divinities have taken refuge with him. This good report has gone abroad about him: "he is the Lord. the arahat, the fully enlightened, endowed with knowledge and conduct, who has well gone (sugata), the knower of the world, the supreme charioteer of men to be tamed, teacher of gods and men, the Buddha, the Lord." He is endowed with the thirty-two marks of a Great Man, offering welcome, friendly, polite, not frowning, speaking plainly and willingly. He is respected, honoured, revered, and esteemed by the four assemblies. Many gods and men are devoted to him. In whatever village or town he enters non-human beings do not hurt men.
Further his fame is described as such that the kings Bimbisara and Pasenadi and the brahmin Pokkharasadi with their whole families have taken refuge with him.
This is not strictly the view of a non-Buddhist layman, but only what the compiler of the sutta thought to be the natural view for a well-disposed layman to hold. It sums up what has been said above about the development of the legend as we find it in the Canon. Buddha is descended from a wealthy family of the kshatriya caste. He has abandoned great wealth, and has become a widely-known teacher. The wealth is naturally connected by the commentator with the four vases of treasure that originated at his birth,395 and the present allusion may well be the source of the later legend. As in the story of the meeting with Bimbisara there is no reference to his royal birth. The mention of the thirty-two marks is natural in the mouth of a brahmin, if the view taken above is accepted that it is the adoption of a popular belief in personal marks, for which it was the custom to seek interpretation from soothsayers. The actual interpretation of those marks that we possess may be due entirely to later Buddhist sagacity, and we know that some of them were in fact invented from a study of the peculiarities in the Indian style of images.
Two distinct questions here present themselves, the question of the historical existence of a teacher in North India, and the quite different question of the credibility of the stories that are told about him. Just as in the case of the Scriptures of the Buddhists, which were compared with the Gospels without any examination of the real facts, so the personalities of the founders have been brought into relation. Ever since the time of David Strauss there has existed a tendency, resting upon a subconscious wish, to mythologise the Gospel story. In the treatment of Buddhism the same impulse had an opposite effect. Not merely was it a relief to- revolt against a tyrannous theology, but in Buddhism appeared a religion equally moral and far more rationalistic. Hence the usual attitude to Buddhism in England and Germany has been to accept Buddha and his career as historical, that is, so far as represented in the judiciously compressed accounts presented to Western readers.
The archeological evidence is important, but less decisive than has been thought. "When Asoka himself appears as witness," says Oldenberg, "will anyone doubt that here (at Piprava) in truth and reality lay the realm of the Sakyas?" Asoka's inscription is only the testimony that he believed what he went to see, the site of an event that had happened two centuries before, and he believed equally in Konagamana. Taken alone it proves no more than the testimony of any devotee to the truth of the relics that he reveres. Asoka's inscription shows that Piprava was certainly the accepted site of Buddha's birthplace in the third century B.C. It is the circumstance that this does not stand alone that makes it impossible to put the Sakya territory elsewhere than in the Himalaya region north of Saketa or Ayodhya. The archeological evidence itself rests on a tradition, but it allows us to date this tradition with certainty much earlier than would be otherwise possible. With the evidence from archeology the topographical data in the suttas agree. They may not be the oldest part of the Canon, but they are older than the legends of the commentaries, they were compiled by those who had actual knowledge of the places, and they are explicable only on the supposition that a real tradition and a real knowledge of the localities were preserved. This tradition is a continuous one, and the centre of it is the person of Buddha. Whatever additions to the legend there may be, the further we go back the less do we find those features that give colour to the theory of a sun myth, or to anything but the view that he was a historical personage, a great religious reformer and moral teacher, and the proclaimer of the Noble Eightfold Path.
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Notes:
366 This last is Prof. A. B. Keith's view, but on his view of the historicity of the records it is difficult to Bee how it can be proved that any such claims were made by the historical Buddha.
367 Cf. Oldenberg, Buddha, pp. 89, 91.
368 See above. p. 181 Whether these and the incidents mentioned below are historical is not now in question. The point here is that they were facts for the disciples, and it was in the light of them that they elaborated their views of the nature of a Buddha.
369 Majjh. iii 8; attributed to Buddha himself in Samy. iii 66. Buddha's qualities are also classified as the ten powers (bala), some of which belong to disciples, Kathav, III 1.
370 Majjh. i 482.
371 Ibid. ii 127.
372 E.g. i 319; this work also explains why Buddha makes inquiries of the monks, when he already knows. The real explanation of course is that in the earlier works there is no theory of omniscience.
373 The phraseology is drawn from the account of Buddha first deciding to preach; cf. p. 82.
374 The polytheistic standpoint is also seen in one or the verses of the nuns, where Khema declares that she worships Buddha, while others worship the lunar constellations and fire. Therig. 144. 145. A further stage of divinisation appears when past Buddhists are conceived as still existing. Waddell says that the Lotus of the Good Law is "a theistic development of the Buddha-theory, which represents Sakyamuni as the supreme god of the universe," art. Lotus in ERE. But the very next article by de la Vallee Poussin says" this god is not God. There is not a single word in the Lotus which is not capable of an orthodox, i.e. 'atheistic' interpretation".
375 Angut. ii 38.
376 Kathav. XVIII 1-3; II 10, etc.
377 For the later developments of docetic views see Anesaki's art. Docetism (Buddhist), and for Lokuttara doctrine De la Vallee Poussin. art. Bodhisattva in ERE.
378 Geschiedenis, i 232 etc., and in still further detail in his translation of the Lotus.
379 The Indian day and night is divided into 30 hours, hence we are to suppose that the place was about 33° north, perhaps in the Panjab or Kashmir. Kern, loc. cit. i 240.
380 The name of Mara as a mythological being is not found outside Buddhism. It occurs in Sanskrit in the sense of 'death'. Kern in accordance with his theory ignored this, and connected it with mala 'dirt', and Latin malus, or perhaps Skt. marici 'ray, mirage'.
381 There is not the slightest evidence that the idea of avatars of Vishnu existed at the time when the Suttas were compiled. In Niddesa i 89 the worship of Krishna under the name Vasudeva is mentioned in a list of popular religions.
382 The fact that Buddha went up to the heaven of the thirty-three in three strides like Vishnu (above p. 114) would have been welcome to Kern; but it is the addition of a late commentary.
383 "Es ist bekannt, dass die Enstehung der Mythen und ihr Verhaltnis zum geschichtlich Thatsachlichen sehr verschieden erklart worden ist. Man ist jetzt zu der Einsicht gelangt, dass ein allgemein gultiges Prinzip durchaus nicht aufzustellen ist, da die Mythen auf verschiedene Art entstehen und sich sehr verschieden artig zu dem Geschichtlichen verhalten, dass daher jeder Mythenkreis ... aus seinen eigenen Bedingungen heraus zu analysieren und zu erklaren ist." E. Bernheim, Lehrbuch der historischen Methode, p. 459.
384 Kern says that it is quite unjust to think that the Singhalese have invented this story from national pride. Ceylon (Lanka) is visited every year by Buddha (the sun) in his southern course, Geschiedenis, i 270.
385 H. Jacobi, art. Jainism in ERE.
386 Rhys Davids called this "nothing more nor less than a spiritualized sun-myth" without explaining the strange behaviour of the sun. Dial. ii 196. The cakra is more usually explained as the royal chariot wheel, but it does not seem that the myth was ever rationalised to this extent. It is one of the king's seven marvellous treasures, each having a special virtue, among which are the magic gem, whose light extends for a league all round, the elephant and horse that fly through the air, and the householder, who can see hidden wealth in the ground. The cakra has the special power of subduing all rivals.
387 Digha. i 9, see above, p. 180; Niddesa, I 381.
388 Digha, ii 17, in the account of Vipaasin; iii 142, describing Buddha; In Lal, 120 (105) and Dharmasamgraha, lxxxiii the order is different, and there are minor variations.
389 Lists in Lal. 121 (106); Dharmasamgraha. lxxxiv; referred to Jat. 112; Vimanav. com. 323.
390 On the whole of this question see A. Fouchcr, L'art greco-bouddhique du Gandhara, and The Beginnings of Buddhist art.
391 Na cammena parinaddho angulantaro; the web appears to be implied in Divy, 56, jalavanaddhena.
392 Jat. i 444; Vimanav. com. 323; Dhp. com. ii 41. iii 102.
393 For the great elaboration of the bodhisatta doctrine when it became the central belief see Art. Bodhisattva in ERE.
394 Digha, i 115 ff.; attributed to Cankin in Majjh. ii 166.
395 pp. 33, 101.