Chapter XV: Semitic Monotheism, 1860 (10)

It is but right to state that we owe the publication, at least of the second volume of M. Julien's work, to the liberality of the Court of Directors of the East-India Company. We have had several opportunities of pointing out the creditable manner in which that body has patronized literary and scientific works connected with the East, and we congratulate the Chairman, Colonel Sykes, and the President of the Board of Control, Mr. Vernon Smith, on the excellent choice they have made in this instance. Nothing can be more satisfactory than that nearly the whole edition of a work which would have remained unpublished without their liberal assistance, has been sold in little more than a month.

_April, 1857._

XI.

THE MEANING OF NIRVANA.

_To the Editor of_ THE TIMES.

Sir,--Mr. Francis Barham, of Bath, has protested in a letter, printed in 'The Times' of the 24th of April, against my interpretations of Nirva_n_a, or the summum bonum of the Buddhists. He maintains that the Nirva_n_a in which the Buddhists believe, and which they represent as the highest goal of their religion and philosophy, means union and communion with God, or absorption of the individual soul by the divine essence, and not, as I tried to show in my articles on the 'Buddhist Pilgrims,' utter annihilation.

I must not take up much more of your space with so abstruse a subject as Buddhist metaphysics; but at the same time I cannot allow Mr. Barham's protest to pass unnoticed. The authorities which he brings forward against my account of Buddhism, and particularly against my interpretation of Nirva_n_a, seem formidable enough. There is Neander, the great church historian, Creuzer, the famous scholar, and Hue, the well-known traveller and missionary,--all interpreting, as Mr. Barham says, the Nirva_n_a of the Buddhists in the sense of an apotheosis of the human soul, as it was taught in the Vedanta philosophy of the Brahmans, the Sufiism of the Persians, and the Christian mysticism of Eckhart and Tauler, and not in the sense of absolute annihilation.

Now, with regard to Neander and Creuzer, I must observe that their works were written before the canonical books of the Buddhists, composed in Sanskrit, had been discovered, or at least before they had been sent to Europe, and been analysed by European scholars. Besides, neither Neander nor Creuzer was an Oriental scholar, and their knowledge of the subject could only be second-hand. It was in 1824 that Mr. Brian Houghton Hodgson, then resident at the Court of Nepal, gave the first intimation of the existence of a large religious literature written in Sanskrit, and preserved by the Buddhists of Nepal as the canonical books of their faith. It was in 1830 and 1835 that the same eminent scholar and naturalist presented the first set of these books to the Royal Asiatic Society in London. In 1837 he made a similar gift to the Societe Asiatique of Paris, and some of the most important works were transmitted by him to the Bodleian Library at Oxford. It was in 1844 that the late Eugene Burnouf published, after a careful study of these documents, his classical work, 'Introduction a l'Histoire du Buddhisme Indien,' and it is from this book that our knowledge of Buddhism may be said to date. Several works have since been published, which have added considerably to the stock of authentic information on the doctrine of the great Indian reformer. There is Burnouf's translation of 'Le Lotus de la bonne Loi,' published after the death of that lamented scholar, together with numerous essays, in 1852. There are two interesting works by the Rev. Spence Hardy--'Eastern Monachism,' London, 1850, and 'A Manual of Buddhism,' London, 1853; and there are the publications of M. Stanislas Julien, E. Foucaux, the Honourable George Turnour, Professor H. H. Wilson, and others, alluded to in my article on the 'Buddhist Pilgrims.' It is from these works alone that we can derive correct and authentic information on Buddhism, and not from Neander's 'History of the Christian Church' or from Creuzer's 'Symbolik.'

If any one will consult these works, he will find that the discussions on the true meaning of Nirva_n_a are not of modern date, and that, at a very early period, different philosophical schools among the Buddhists of India, and different teachers who spread the doctrine of Buddhism abroad, propounded every conceivable opinion as to the orthodox explanation of this term. Even in one and the same school we find different parties maintaining different views on the meaning of Nirva_n_a. There is the school of the Svabhavikas, which still exists in Nepal. The Svabhavikas maintain that nothing exists but nature, or rather substance, and that this substance exists by itself (svabhavat), without a Creator or a Ruler. It exists, however, under two forms: in the state of Prav_r_itti, as active, or in the state of Nirv_r_itti, as passive. Human beings, who, like everything else, exist svabhavat, 'by themselves,' are supposed to be capable of arriving at Nirv_r_itti, or passiveness, which is nearly synonymous with Nirva_n_a. But here the Svabhavikas branch off into two sects. Some believe that Nirv_r_itti is repose, others that it is annihilation; and the former add, 'were it even annihilation (sunyata), it would still be good, man being otherwise doomed to an eternal migration through all the forms of nature; the more desirable of which are little to be wished for; and the less so, at any price to be shunned.'[83]

What was the original meaning of Nirva_n_a may perhaps best be seen from the etymology of this technical term. Every Sanskrit scholar knows that Nirva_n_a means originally the blowing out, the extinction of light, and not absorption. The human soul, when it arrives at its perfection, is blown out,[84] if we use the phraseology of the Buddhists, like a lamp; it is not absorbed, as the Brahmans say, like a drop in the ocean. Neither in the system of Buddhist philosophy, nor in the philosophy from which Buddha is supposed to have borrowed, was there any place left for a Divine Being by which the human soul could be absorbed. Sankhya philosophy, in its original form, claims the name of an-i_s_vara, 'lordless' or 'atheistic' as its distinctive title. Its final object is not absorption in God, whether personal or impersonal, but Moksha, deliverance of the soul from all pain and illusion, and recovery by the soul of its true nature. It is doubtful whether the term Nirva_n_a was coined by Buddha. It occurs in the literature of the Brahmans as a synonyme of Moksha, deliverance; Nirv_r_itti, cessation; Apavarga, release; Ni_hs_reyas, summum bonum. It is used in this sense in the Mahabharata, and it is explained in the Amara-Kosha as having the meaning of 'blowing out, applied to a fire and to a sage.'[85] Unless, however, we succeed in tracing this term in works anterior to Buddha, we may suppose that it was invented by him in order to express that meaning of the summum bonum which he was the first to preach, and which some of his disciples explained in the sense of absolute annihilation.

[Footnote 83: See Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 441; Hodgson, 'Asiatic Researches,' vol. xvi.]

[Footnote 84: 'Calm,' 'without wind,' as Nirva_n_a is sometimes explained, is expressed in Sanskrit by Nirvata. See Amara-Kosha, sub voce.]

[Footnote 85: Different views of the Nirva_n_a, as conceived by the Tirthakas or the Brahmans, may be seen in an extract from the Lankavatara, translated by Burnouf, p. 514.]

The earliest authority to which we can go back, if we want to know the original character of Buddhism, is the Buddhist Canon, as settled after the death of Buddha at the first Council. It is called Tripi_t_aka, or the Three Baskets, the first containing the Sutras, or the discourses of Buddha; the second, the Vinaya, or his code of morality; the third, the Abhidharma, or the system of metaphysics. The first was compiled by Ananda, the second by Upali, the third by Ka_s_yapa--all of them the pupils and friends of Buddha. It may be that these collections, as we now possess them, were finally arranged, not at the first, but at the third Council. Yet, even then, we have no earlier, no more authentic, documents from which we could form an opinion as to the original teaching of Buddha; and the Nirva_n_a, as taught in the metaphysics of Ka_s_yapa, and particularly in the Pra_gn_a-paramita, is annihilation, not absorption. Buddhism, therefore, if tested by its own canonical books, cannot be freed from the charge of Nihilism, whatever may have been its character in the mind of its founder, and whatever changes it may have undergone in later times, and among races less inured to metaphysical discussions than the Hindus.

The ineradicable feeling of dependence on something else, which is the life-spring of all religion, was completely numbed in the early Buddhist metaphysicians, and it was only after several generations had passed away, and after Buddhism had become the creed of millions, that this feeling returned with increased warmth, changing, as I said in my article, the very Nothing into a paradise, and deifying the very Buddha who had denied the existence of a Deity. That this has been the case in China we know from the interesting works of the Abbe Huc, and from other sources, such as the 'Catechism of the Shamans, or the Laws and Regulations of the Priesthood of Buddha in China,' translated by Ch. F. Neumann, London, 1831. In India, also, Buddhism, as soon as it became a popular religion, had to speak a more human language than that of metaphysical Pyrrhonism. But, if it did so, it was because it was shamed into it. This we may see from the very nicknames which the Brahmans apply to their opponents, the Bauddhas. They call them Nastikas--those who maintain that there is nothing; _S_unyavadins-those who maintain that there is a universal void.

The only ground, therefore, on which we may stand, if we wish to defend the founder of Buddhism against the charges of Nihilism and Atheism, is this, that, as some of the Buddhists admit, the 'Basket of Metaphysics' was rather the work of his pupils, not of Buddha himself.[86] This distinction between the authentic words of Buddha and the canonical books in general, is mentioned more than once. The priesthood of Ceylon, when the manifest errors with which their canonical commentaries abound, were brought to their notice, retreated from their former position, and now assert that it is only the express words of Buddha that they receive as undoubted truth.[87] There is a passage in a Buddhist work which reminds us somewhat of the last page of Dean Milman's 'History of Christianity,' and where we read:

'The words of the priesthood are good; those of the Rahats
(saints) are better; but those of the All-knowing are the
best of all.'

[Footnote 86: See Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 41. 'Abuddhoktam abhidharma-_s_astram.' Ibid. p. 454. According to the Tibetan Buddhists, however, Buddha propounded the Abhidharma when he was fifty-one years old. 'Asiatic Researches,' vol. xx. p. 339.]

[Footnote 87: 'Eastern Monachism,' p. 171.]

This is an argument which Mr. Francis Barham might have used with more success, and by which he might have justified, if not the first disciples, at least the original founder of Buddhism. Nay, there is a saying of Buddha's which tends to show that all metaphysical discussion was regarded by him as vain and useless. It is a saying mentioned in one of the MSS. belonging to the Bodleian Library. As it has never been published before, I may be allowed to quote it in the original: Sadasad vi_k_aram na sahate,--'The ideas of being and not being do not admit of discussion,'--a tenet which, if we consider that it was enunciated before the time of the Eleatic philosophers of Greece, and long before Hegel's Logic, might certainly have saved us many an intricate and indigestible argument.

A few passages from the Buddhist writings of Nepal and Ceylon will best show that the horror nihili was not felt by the metaphysicians of former ages in the same degree as it is felt by ourselves. The famous hymn which resounds in heaven when the luminous rays of the smile of Buddha penetrate through the clouds, is 'All is transitory, all is misery, all is void, all is without substance.' Again, it is said in the Pra_gn_a-paramita,[88] that Buddha began to think that he ought to conduct all creatures to perfect Nirva_n_a. But he reflected that there are really no creatures which ought to be conducted, nor creatures that conduct; and, nevertheless, he did conduct all creatures to perfect Nirva_n_a. Then, continues the text, why is it said that there are neither creatures which arrive at complete Nirva_n_a, nor creatures which conduct there? Because it is illusion which makes creatures what they are. It is as if a clever juggler, or his pupil, made an immense number of people to appear on the high road, and after having made them to appear, made them to disappear again. Would there be anybody who had killed, or murdered, or annihilated, or caused them to vanish? No. And it is the same with Buddha. He conducts an immense, innumerable, infinite number of creatures to complete Nirva_n_a, and yet there are neither creatures which are conducted, nor creatures that conduct. If a Bodhisattva, on hearing this explanation of the Law, is not frightened, then it may be said that he has put on the great armour.[89]

[Footnote 88: Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 462.]

[Footnote 89: Ibid. p. 478.]

Soon after, we read: 'The name of Buddha is nothing but a word. The name of Bodhisattva is nothing but a word. The name of Perfect Wisdom (Pra_gn_a-paramita) is nothing but a word. The name is indefinite, as if one says "I," for "I" is something indefinite, because it has no limits.'

Burnouf gives the gist of the whole Pra_gn_a-paramita in the following words: 'The highest Wisdom, or what is to be known, has no more real existence than he who has to know, or the Bodhisattva; no more than he who does know, or the Buddha.' But Burnouf remarks that nothing of this kind is to be found in the Sutras, and that Gautama _S_akya-muni, the son of _S_uddhodana, would never have become the founder of a popular religion if he had started with similar absurdities. In the Sutras the reality of the objective world is denied; the reality of form is denied; the reality of the individual, or the 'I,' is equally denied. But the existence of a subject, of something like the Purusha, the thinking substance of the Sankhya philosophy, is spared. Something at least exists with respect to which everything else may be said not to exist. The germs of the ideas, developed in the Pra_gn_a-paramita, may indeed be discovered here and there in the Sutras.[90] But they had not yet ripened into that poisonous plant which soon became an indispensable narcotic in the schools of the later Buddhists. Buddha himself, however, though, perhaps, not a Nihilist, was certainly an Atheist. He does not deny distinctly either the existence of gods, or that of God; but he ignores the former, and he is ignorant of the latter. Therefore, if Nirva_n_a in his mind was not yet complete annihilation, still less could it have been absorption into a Divine essence. It was nothing but selfishness, in the metaphysical sense of the word--a relapse into that being which is nothing but itself. This is the most charitable view which we can take of the Nirva_n_a, even as conceived by Buddha himself, and it is the view which Burnouf derived from the canonical books of the Northern Buddhists. On the other hand, Mr. Spence Hardy, who in his works follows exclusively the authority of the Southern Buddhists, the Pali and Singhalese works of Ceylon, arrives at the same result. We read in his work: 'The Rahat (Arhat), who has reached Nirva_n_a, but is not yet a Pratyeka-buddha, or a Supreme Buddha, says: "I await the appointed time for the cessation of existence. I have no wish to live; I have no wish to die. Desire is extinct."'

[Footnote 90: Burnouf, 'Introduction,' p. 520.]

* * * * *

In a very interesting dialogue between Milinda and Nagasena, communicated by Mr. Spence Hardy, Nirva_n_a is represented as something which has no antecedent cause, no qualities, no locality. It is something of which the utmost we may assert is, that it is:

_Nagasena._ Can a man, by his natural strength, go from the
city of Sagal to the forest of Himala?

_Milinda._ Yes.

_Nagasena._ But could any man, by his natural strength,
bring the forest of Himala to this city of Sagal?

_Milinda._ No.

_Nagasena._ In like manner, though the fruition of the paths
may cause the accomplishment of Nirva_n_a, no cause by which
Nirva_n_a is produced can be declared. The path that leads
to Nirva_n_a may be pointed out, but not any cause for its
production. Why? because that which constitutes Nirva_n_a is
beyond all computation,--a mystery, not to be
understood.... It cannot be said that it is produced, nor
that it is not produced; that it is past or future or
present. Nor can it be said that it is the seeing of the
eye, or the hearing of the ear, or the smelling of the nose,
or the tasting of the tongue, or the feeling of the body.

_Milinda._ Then you speak of a thing that is not; you merely
say that Nirva_n_a is Nirva_n_a;--therefore there is no
Nirva_n_a.

_Nagasena._ Great king, Nirva_n_a is.

Another question also, whether Nirva_n_a is something different from the beings that enter into it, has been asked by the Buddhists themselves:

_Milinda._ Does the being who acquires it, attain something
that has previously existed?--or is it his own product, a
formation peculiar to himself?

_Nagasena._ Nirva_n_a does not exist previously to its
reception; nor is it that which was brought into existence.
Still to the being who attains it, there is Nirva_n_a.

In opposition, therefore, to the more advanced views of the Nihilistic philosophers of the North, Nagasena maintains the existence of Nirva_n_a, and of the being that has entered Nirva_n_a. He does not say that Buddha is a mere word. When asked by king Milinda, whether the all-wise Buddha exists, he replies:

_Nagasena._ He who is the most meritorious (Bhagavat) does
exist.

_Milinda._ Then can you point out to me the place in which
he exists?

_Nagasena._ Our Bhagavat has attained Nirva_n_a, where there
is no repetition of birth. We cannot say that he is here,
or that he is there. When a fire is extinguished, can it be
said that it is here, or that it is there? Even so, our
Buddha has attained extinction (Nirva_n_a). He is like the
sun that has set behind the Astagiri mountain. It cannot be
said that he is here, or that he is there: but we can point
him out by the discourses he delivered. In them he lives.

At the present moment, the great majority of Buddhists would probably be quite incapable of understanding the abstract speculation of their ancient masters. The view taken of Nirva_n_a in China, Mongolia, and Tatary may probably be as gross as that which most of the Mohammedans form of their paradise. But, in the history of religion, the historian must go back to the earliest and most original documents that are to be obtained. Thus only may he hope to understand the later developments which, whether for good or evil, every form of faith has had to undergo.

_April, 1857._

XII.

CHINESE TRANSLATIONS

OF

SANSKRIT TEXTS.[91]

Well might M. Stanislas Julien put [Greek: heureka] on the title-page of his last work, in which he explains his method of deciphering the Sanskrit words which occur in the Chinese translations of the Buddhist literature of India. We endeavoured to explain the laborious character and the important results of his researches on this subject on a former occasion, when reviewing his translation of the 'Life and Travels of the Buddhist Pilgrim Hiouen-thsang.' At that time, however, M. Julien kept the key of his discoveries to himself. He gave us the results of his labours without giving us more than a general idea of the process by which those results had been obtained. He has now published his 'Methode pour dechiffrer et transcrire les noms sanscrits qui se rencontrent dans les livres chinois,' and he has given to the public his Chinese-Sanskrit dictionary, the work of sixteen years of arduous labour, containing all the Chinese characters which are used for representing phonetically the technical terms and proper names of the Buddhist literature of India.

[Footnote 91: 'Methode pour dechiffrer et transcrire les noms sanscrits qui se rencontrent dans les livres chinois.' Par M. Stanislas Julien, Membre de l'Institut. Paris, 1861.]

In order fully to appreciate the labours and discoveries of M. Julien in this remote field of Oriental literature, we must bear in mind that the doctrine of Buddha arose in India about two centuries before Alexander's invasion. It became the state religion of India soon after Alexander's conquest, and it produced a vast literature, which was collected into a canon at a council held about 246 B.C. Very soon after that council, Buddhism assumed a proselytizing character. It spread in the south to Ceylon, in the north to Kashmir, the Himalayan countries, Tibet, and China. In the historical annals of China, on which, in the absence of anything like historical literature in Sanskrit, we must mainly depend for information on the spreading of Buddhism, one Buddhist missionary is mentioned as early as 217 B.C.; and about the year 120 B.C. a Chinese general, after defeating the barbarous tribes north of the desert of Gobi, brought back as a trophy a golden statue--the statue of Buddha. It was not, however, till the year 65 A.D. that Buddhism was officially recognised by the Chinese Emperor as a third state religion. Ever since, it has shared equal honours with the doctrines of Confucius and Lao-tse in the Celestial Empire; and it is but lately that these three established religions have had to fear the encroachments of a new rival in the creed of the Chief of the rebels.

Once established in China, and well provided with monasteries and benefices, the Buddhist priesthood seems to have been most active in its literary labours. Immense as was the Buddhist literature of India, the Chinese swelled it to still more appalling proportions. The first thing to be done was to translate the canonical books. This seems to have been the joint work of Chinese who had acquired a knowledge of Sanskrit during their travels in India, and of Hindus who settled in Chinese monasteries in order to assist the native translators. The translation of books which profess to contain a new religious doctrine is under all circumstances a task of great difficulty. It was so particularly when the subtle abstractions of the Buddhist religion had to be clothed in the solid, matter-of-fact idiom of the Chinese. But there was another difficulty which it seemed almost impossible to overcome. Many words, not only proper names, but the technical terms also of the Buddhist creed, had to be preserved in Chinese. They were not to be translated, but to be transliterated. But how was this to be effected with a language which, like Chinese, had no phonetic alphabet? Every Chinese character is a word; it has both sound and meaning; and it is unfit, therefore, for the representation of the sound of foreign words. In modern times, certain characters have been set apart for the purpose of writing the proper names and titles of foreigners; but such is the peculiar nature of the Chinese system of writing, that even with this alphabet it is only possible to represent approximatively the pronunciation of foreign words. In the absence, however, of even such an alphabet, the translators of the Buddhist literature seem to have used their own discretion--or rather indiscretion--in appropriating, without any system, whatever Chinese characters seemed to them to come nearest to the sound of Sanskrit words. Now the whole Chinese language consists in reality of about four hundred words, or significative sounds, all monosyllabic. Each of these monosyllabic sounds embraces a large number of various meanings, and each of these various meanings is represented by its own sign. Thus it has happened that the Chinese Dictionary contains 43,496 signs, whereas the Chinese language commands only four hundred distinct utterances. Instead of being restricted, therefore, to one character which always expresses the same sound, the Buddhist translators were at liberty to express one and the same sound in a hundred different ways. Of this freedom they availed themselves to the fullest extent. Each translator, each monastery, fixed on its own characters for representing the pronunciation of Sanskrit words. There are more than twelve hundred Chinese characters employed by various writers in order to represent the forty-two simple letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. The result has been that even the Chinese were after a time unable to read--i. e. to pronounce--these random transliterations. What, then, was to be expected from Chinese scholars in Europe? Fortunately, the Chinese, to save themselves from their own perplexities, had some lists drawn up, exhibiting the principles followed by the various translators in representing the proper names, the names of places, and the technical terms of philosophy and religion which they had borrowed from the Sanskrit. With the help of these lists, and after sixteen years consecrated to the study of the Chinese translations of Sanskrit works and of other original compositions of Buddhist authors, M. Julien at last caught up the thread that was to lead him through this labyrinth; and by means of his knowledge of Sanskrit, which he acquired solely for that purpose, he is now able to do what not even the most learned among the Buddhists in China could accomplish--he is able to restore the exact form and meaning of every word transferred from Sanskrit into the Buddhist literature of China.

Without this laborious process, which would have tired out the patience and deadened the enthusiasm of most scholars, the treasures of the Buddhist literature preserved in Chinese were really useless. Abel Remusat, who during his lifetime was considered the first Chinese scholar in Europe, attempted indeed a translation of the travels of Fahian, a Buddhist pilgrim, who visited India about the end of the fourth century after Christ. It was in many respects a most valuable work, but the hopelessness of reducing the uncouth Chinese terms to their Sanskrit originals made it most tantalising to look through its pages. Who was to guess that Ho-kia-lo was meant for the Sanskrit Vyakara_n_a, in the sense of sermons; Po-to for the Sanskrit Avadana, parables; Kia-ye-i for the Sanskrit Ka_s_yapiyas, the followers of Ka_s_yapa? In some instances, Abel Remusat, assisted by Chezy, guessed rightly; and later Sanskrit scholars, such as Burnouf, Lassen, and Wilson, succeeded in re-establishing, with more or less certainty, the original form of a number of Sanskrit words, in spite of their Chinese disguises. Still there was no system, and therefore no certainty, in these guesses, and many erroneous conclusions were drawn from fragmentary translations of Chinese writers on Buddhism, which even now are not yet entirely eliminated from the works of Oriental scholars. With M. Julien's method, mathematical certainty seems to have taken the place of learned conjectures; and whatever is to be learnt from the Chinese on the origin, the history, and the true character of Buddha's doctrine may now be had in an authentic and unambiguous form.

But even after the principal difficulties have been cleared away through the perseverance of M. Stanislas Julien, and after we have been allowed to reap the fruits of his labours in his masterly translation of the 'Voyages des Pelerins Bouddhistes,' there still remains one point that requires some elucidation. How was it that the Chinese, whose ears no doubt are of the same construction as our own, should have made such sad work of the Sanskrit names which they transcribed with their own alphabet? Much may be explained by the defects of their language. Such common sounds as v, g, r, b, d, and short a, are unknown in Chinese as initials; no compound consonants are allowed, every consonant being followed by a vowel; and the final letters are limited to a very small number. This, no doubt, explains, to a great extent, the distorted appearance of many Sanskrit words when written in Chinese. Thus, Buddha could only be written Fo to. There was no sign for an initial b, nor was it possible to represent a double consonant, such as ddh. Fo to was the nearest approach to Buddha of which Chinese, when written, was capable. But was it so in speaking? Was it really impossible for Fahian and Hiouen-thsang, who had spent so many years in India, and who were acquainted with all the intricacies of Sanskrit grammar, to distinguish between the sounds of Buddha and Fo to? We cannot believe this. We are convinced that Hiouen-thsang, though he wrote, and could not but write, Fo to with the Chinese characters, pronounced Buddha just as we pronounce it, and that it was only among the unlearned that Fo to became at last the recognised name of the founder of Buddhism, abbreviated even to the monosyllabic Fo, which is now the most current appellation of 'the Enlightened.' In the same manner the Chinese pilgrims wrote Niepan, but they pronounced Nirva_n_a; they wrote Fan-lon-mo, and pronounced Brahma.

Nor is it necessary that we should throw all the blame of these distortions on the Chinese. On the contrary, it is almost certain that some of the discrepancies between the Sanskrit of their translations and the classical Sanskrit of Pa_n_ini were due to the corruption which, at the time when Buddhism arose, and still more at the time when Buddhism spread to China, had crept into the spoken language of India. Sanskrit had ceased to be the spoken language of the people previous to the time of A_s_oka. The edicts which are still preserved on the rocks of Dhauli, Girnar, and Kapurdigiri are written in a dialect which stands to Sanskrit in the same relation as Italian to Latin. Now it is true, no doubt, that the canonical books of the Buddhists are written in a tolerably correct Sanskrit, very different from the Italianized dialect of A_s_oka. But that Sanskrit was, like the Greek of Alexandria, like the Latin of Hungary, a learned idiom, written by the learned for the learned; it was no longer the living speech of India. Now it is curious that in many of the canonical Buddhist works which we still possess, the text which is written in Sanskrit prose is from time to time interrupted by poetical portions, called Gathas or ballads, in which the same things are told in verse which had before been related in prose. The dialect of these songs or ballads is full of what grammarians would call irregularities, that is to say, full of those changes which every language undergoes in the mouths of the people. In character these corruptions are the same as those which have been observed in the inscriptions of A_s_oka, and which afterwards appear in Pali and the modern Prakrit dialects of India. Various conjectures have been started to explain the amalgamation of the correct prose text and the free and easy poetical version of the same events, as embodied in the sacred literature of the Buddhists. Burnouf, the first who instituted a critical inquiry into the history and literature of Buddhism, supposed that there was, besides the canon fixed by the three convocations, another digest of Buddhist doctrines composed in the popular style, which may have developed itself, as he says, subsequently to the preaching of _S_akya, and which would thus be intermediate between the regular Sanskrit and the Pali. He afterwards, however, inclines to another view--namely, that these Gathas were written out of India by men to whom Sanskrit was no longer familiar, and who endeavoured to write in the learned language, which they ill understood, with the freedom which is imparted by the habitual use of a popular but imperfectly determined dialect. Other Sanskrit scholars have proposed other solutions of this strange mixture of correct prose and incorrect poetry in the Buddhist literature; but none of them was satisfactory. The problem seems to have been solved at last by a native scholar, Babu Rajendralal, a curious instance of the reaction of European antiquarian research on the native mind of India. Babu Rajendralal reads Sanskrit of course with the greatest ease. He is a pandit by profession, but he is at the same time a scholar and critic in our sense of the word. He has edited Sanskrit texts after a careful collation of MSS., and in his various contributions to the 'Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,' he has proved himself completely above the prejudices of his class, freed from the erroneous views on the history and literature of India in which every Brahman is brought up, and thoroughly imbued with those principles of criticism which men like Colebrooke, Lassen, and Burnouf have followed in their researches into the literary treasures of his country. His English is remarkably clear and simple, and his arguments would do credit to any Sanskrit scholar in England. We quote from his remarks on Burnouf's account of the Gathas, as given in that scholar's 'Histoire du Buddhisme Indien:'

'Burnouf's opinion on the origin of the Gathas, we venture
to think, is founded on a mistaken estimate of Sanskrit
style. The poetry of the Gatha has much artistic elegance
which at once indicates that it is not the composition of
men who were ignorant of the first principles of grammar.
The authors display a great deal of learning, and discuss
the subtlest questions of logic and metaphysics with much
tact and ability, and it is difficult to conceive that men
who were perfectly familiar with the most intricate forms of
Sanskrit logic, who have expressed the most abstruse
metaphysical ideas in precise and often in beautiful
language, who composed with ease and elegance in Arya,
To_t_aka, and other difficult measures, were unacquainted
with the rudiments of the language in which they wrote, and
were unable to conjugate the verb to be in all its forms....
The more reasonable conjecture appears to be that the Gatha
is the production of bards who were contemporaries or
immediate successors of _S_akya, who recounted to the devout
congregations of the prophet of Magadha, the sayings and
doings of their great teacher in popular and easy-flowing
verses, which in course of time came to be regarded as the
most authentic source of all information connected with the
founder of Buddhism. The high estimation in which the
ballads and improvisations of bards are held in India and
particularly in the Buddhist writings, favours this
supposition; and the circumstance that the poetical portions
are generally introduced in corroboration of the narration
of the prose, with the words "Thereof this may be said,"
affords a strong presumptive evidence.'

Now this, from the pen of a native scholar, is truly remarkable. The spirit of Niebuhr seems to have reached the shores of India, and this ballad theory comes out more successfully in the history of Buddha than in the history of Romulus. The absence of anything like cant in the mouth of a Brahman speaking of Buddhism, the _bete noire_ of all orthodox Brahmans, is highly satisfactory, and our Sanskrit scholars in Europe will have to pull hard if, with such men as Babu Rajendralal in the field, they are not to be distanced in the race of scholarship.

We believe, then, that Babu Rajendralal is right, and we look upon the dialect of the Gathas as a specimen of the Sanskrit spoken by the followers of Buddha about the time of A_s_oka and later. And this will help us to understand some of the peculiar changes which the Sanskrit of the Chinese Buddhists must have undergone, even before it was disguised in the strange dress of the Chinese alphabet. The Chinese pilgrims did not hear the Sanskrit pronounced as it was pronounced in the Parishads according to the strict rules of their _S_iksha or phonetics. They heard it as it was spoken in Buddhist monasteries, as it was sung in the Gathas of Buddhist minstrels, as it was preached in the Vyakara_n_as or sermons of Buddhist friars. For instance. In the Gathas a short a is frequently lengthened. We find na instead of na, 'no.' The same occurs in the Sanskrit of the Chinese Buddhists. (See Julien, 'Methode,' p. 18; p. 21.) We find there also vistara instead of vistara, &c. In the dialect of the Gathas nouns ending in consonants, and therefore irregular, are transferred to the easier declension in a. The same process takes place in modern Greek and in the transition of Latin into Italian; it is, in fact, a general tendency of all languages which are carried on by the stream of living speech. Now this transition from one declension to another had taken place before the Chinese had appropriated the Sanskrit of the Buddhist books. The Sanskrit nabhas becomes nabha in the Gathas; locative nabhe, instead of nabhasi. If, therefore, we find in Chinese lo-che for the Sanskrit ra_g_as, dust, we may ascribe the change of r into l to the inability of the Chinese to pronounce or to write an r. We may admit that the Chinese alphabet offered nothing nearer to the sound of _g_a than tche; but the dropping of the final s has no excuse in Chinese, and finds its real explanation in the nature of the Gatha dialect. Thus the Chinese Fan-lan-mo does not represent the correct Sanskrit Brahman, but the vulgar form Brahma. The Chinese so-po for sarva, all, thomo for dharma, law, find no explanation in the dialect of the Gathas, but the suppression of the r before v and m, is of frequent occurrence in the inscriptions of A_s_oka. The omission of the initial s in words like sthana, place, sthavira, an elder, is likewise founded on the rules of Pali and Prakrit, and need not be placed to the account of the Chinese translators. In the inscription of Girnar sthavira is even reduced to thaira. The s of the nominative is frequently dropped in the dialect of the Gathas, or changed into o. Hence we might venture to doubt whether it is necessary to give to the character 1780 of M. Julien's list, which generally has the value of ta, a second value sta. This s is only wanted to supply the final s of kas, the interrogative pronoun, in such a sentence as kas tadgu_n_a_h_? what is the use of this? Now here we are inclined to believe that the final s of kas had long disappeared in the popular language of India, before the Chinese came to listen to the strange sounds and doctrines of the disciples of Buddha. They probably heard ka tadgu_n_a, or ka taggu_n_a, and this they represented as best they could by the Chinese kia-to-kieou-na.

With these few suggestions we leave the work of M. Stanislas Julien. It is in reality a work done once for all--one huge stone and stumbling-block effectually rolled away which for years had barred the approach to some most valuable documents of the history of the East. Now that the way is clear, let us hope that others will follow, and that we shall soon have complete and correct translations of the travels of Fahian and other Buddhist pilgrims whose works are like so many Murray's 'Handbooks of India,' giving us an insight into the social, political, and religious state of that country at a time when we look in vain for any other historical documents.

_March, 1861._

XIII.

THE WORKS OF CONFUCIUS.[92]

In reviewing the works of missionaries, we have repeatedly dwelt on the opportunities of scientific usefulness which are open to the messengers of the Gospel in every part of the world. We are not afraid of the common objection that missionaries ought to devote their whole time and powers to the one purpose for which they are sent out and paid by our societies. Missionaries cannot always be engaged in teaching, preaching, converting, and baptising the heathen. A missionary, like every other human creature, ought to have his leisure hours; and if those leisure hours are devoted to scientific pursuits, to the study of the languages or the literature of the people among whom he lives, to a careful description of the scenery and antiquities of the country, the manners, laws, and customs of its inhabitants, their legends, their national poetry, or popular stories, or, again, to the cultivation of any branch of natural science, he may rest assured that he is not neglecting the sacred trust which he accepted, but is only bracing and invigorating his mind, and keeping it from that stagnation which is the inevitable result of a too monotonous employment. The staff of missionaries which is spread over the whole globe supplies the most perfect machinery that could be devised for the collection of all kinds of scientific knowledge. They ought to be the pioneers of science. They should not only take out--they should also bring something home; and there is nothing more likely to increase and strengthen the support on which our missionary societies depend, nothing more sure to raise the intellectual standard of the men selected for missionary labour, than a formal recognition of this additional duty. There may be exceptional cases where missionaries are wanted for constant toil among natives ready to be instructed, and anxious to be received as members of a Christian community. But, as a general rule, the missionary abroad has more leisure than a clergyman at home, and time sits heavy on the hands of many whose congregations consist of no more than ten or twenty souls. It is hardly necessary to argue this point, when we can appeal to so many facts. The most successful missionaries have been exactly those whose names are remembered with gratitude, not only by the natives among whom they laboured, but also by the savants of Europe; and the labours of the Jesuit missionaries in India and China, of the Baptist missionaries at Serampore, of Gogerly and Spence Hardy in Ceylon, of Caldwell in Tinnevelly, of Wilson in Bombay, of Moffat, Krapf, and last, but not least, of Livingstone, will live not only in the journals of our academies, but likewise in the annals of the missionary Church.

[Footnote 92: 'The Chinese Classics;' with a Translation, Critical and Exegetical Notes. By James Legge, D.D., of the London Missionary Society. Hong Kong, 1861.]

The first volume of an edition of the Chinese Classics, which we have just received from the Rev. Dr. J. Legge, of the London Missionary Society, is a new proof of what can be achieved by missionaries, if encouraged to devote part of their time and attention to scientific and literary pursuits. We do not care to inquire whether Dr. Legge has been successful as a missionary. Even if he had not converted a single Chinese, he would, after completing the work which he has just begun, have rendered most important aid to the introduction of Christianity into China. He arrived in the East towards the end of 1839, having received only a few months' instruction in Chinese from Professor Kidd in London. Being stationed at Malacca, it seemed to him then--and he adds 'that the experience of twenty-one years has given its sanction to the correctness of the judgment'--that he could not consider himself qualified for the duties of his position until he had thoroughly mastered the classical books of the Chinese, and investigated for himself the whole field of thought through which the sages of China had ranged, and in which were to be found the foundations of the moral, social, and political life of the people. He was not able to pursue his studies without interruption, and it was only after some years, when the charge of the Anglo-Chinese College had devolved upon him, that he could procure the books necessary to facilitate his progress. After sixteen years of assiduous study, Dr. Legge had explored the principal works of Chinese literature; and he then felt that he could render the course of reading through which he had passed more easy to those who were to follow after him, by publishing, on the model of our editions of the Greek and Roman Classics, a critical text of the Classics of China, together with a translation and explanatory notes. His materials were ready, but there was the difficulty of finding the funds necessary for so costly an undertaking. Scarcely, however, had Dr. Legge's wants become known among the British and other foreign merchants in China, than one of them, Mr. Joseph Jardine, sent for the Doctor, and said to him, 'I know the liberality of the merchants in China, and that many of them would readily give their help to such an undertaking; but you need not have the trouble of canvassing the community. If you are prepared to undertake the toil of the publication, I will bear the expense of it. We make our money in China, and we should be glad to assist in whatever promises to be a benefit to it.' The result of this combination of disinterested devotion on the part of the author, and enlightened liberality on the part of his patron, lies now before us in a splendid volume of text, translation, and commentary, which, if the life of the editor is spared (and the sudden death of Mr. Jardine from the effects of the climate is a warning how busily death is at work among the European settlers in those regions), will be followed by at least six other volumes.

The edition is to comprise the books now recognised as of highest authority by the Chinese themselves. These are the five King's and the four Shoo's. King means the warp threads of a web, and its application to literary compositions rests on the same metaphor as the Latin word textus, and the Sanskrit Sutra, meaning a yarn, and a book. Shoo simply means writings. The five King's are, 1. the Yih, or the Book of Changes; 2. the Shoo, or the Book of History; 3. the She, or the Book of Poetry; 4. the Le Ke, or Record of Rites; and 5. the Chun Tsew, or Spring and Autumn; a chronicle extending from 721 to 480 B.C. The four Shoo's consist of, 1. the Lun Yu, or Digested Conversations between Confucius and his disciples; 2. Ta Heo, or Great Learning, commonly attributed to one of his disciples; 3. the Chung Yung, or Doctrine of the Mean, ascribed to the grandson of Confucius; 4. of the works of Mencius, who died 288 B.C.

The authorship of the five King's is loosely attributed to Confucius; but it is only the fifth, or 'the Spring and Autumn,' which can be claimed as the work of the philosopher. The Yih, the Shoo, and the She King were not composed, but only compiled by him, and much of the Le Ke is clearly from later hands. Confucius, though the founder of a religion and a reformer, was thoroughly conservative in his tendencies, and devotedly attached to the past. He calls himself a transmitter, not a maker, believing in and loving the ancients (p. 59). 'I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge,' he says, 'I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there' (p. 65). The most frequent themes of his discourses were the ancient songs, the history, and the rules of propriety established by ancient sages (p. 64). When one of his contemporaries wished to do away with the offering of a lamb as a meaningless formality, Confucius reproved him with the pithy sentence, 'You love the sheep, I love the ceremony.' There were four things, we are told, which Confucius taught--letters, ethics, devotion of soul, and truthfulness (p. 66). When speaking of himself, he said, 'At fifteen, I had my mind bent on learning. At thirty, I stood firm. At forty, I had no doubt. At fifty, I knew the decrees of heaven. At sixty, my ear was an obedient organ for the reception of truth. At seventy, I could follow what my heart desired, without transgressing what was right' (p. 10). Though this may sound like boasting, it is remarkable how seldom Confucius himself claims any superiority above his fellow-creatures. He offers his advice to those who are willing to listen, but he never speaks dogmatically; he never attempts to tyrannize over the minds or hearts of his friends. If we read his biography, we can hardly understand how a man whose life was devoted to such tranquil pursuits, and whose death scarcely produced a ripple on the smooth and silent surface of the Eastern world, could have left the impress of his mind on millions and millions of human beings--an impress which even now, after 2339 years, is clearly discernible in the national character of the largest empire of the world. Confucius died in 478 B.C., complaining that of all the princes of the empire there was not one who would adopt his principles and obey his lessons. After two generations, however, his name had risen to be a power--the rallying point of a vast movement of national and religious regeneration. His grandson speaks of him as the ideal of a sage, as the sage is the ideal of humanity at large. Though Tze-tze claims no divine honour for his grandsire, he exalts his wisdom and virtue beyond the limits of human nature. This is a specimen of the language which he applies to Confucius:

'He may be compared to heaven and earth in their supporting
and containing, their overshadowing and curtaining all
things; he may be compared to the four seasons in their
alternating progress, and to the sun and moon in their
successive shining.... Quick in apprehension, clear in
discernment, of far-reaching intellect and all-embracing
knowledge, he was fitted to exercise rule; magnanimous,
generous, benign, and mild, he was fitted to exercise
forbearance; impulsive, energetic, firm, and enduring, he
was fitted to maintain a firm hold; self-adjusted, grave,
never swerving from the Mean, and correct, he was fitted to
command reverence; accomplished, distinctive, concentrative,
and searching, he was fitted to exercise discrimination....
All-embracing and vast, he was like heaven; deep and active
as a fountain, he was like the abyss.... Therefore his fame
overspreads the Middle Kingdom and extends to all barbarous
tribes. Wherever ships and carriages reach, wherever the
strength of man penetrates, wherever the heavens overshadow
and the earth sustains, wherever the sun and moon shine,
wherever frost and dews fall, all who have blood and breath
unfeignedly honour and love him. Hence it is said--He is the
equal of Heaven' (p. 53).

This is certainly very magnificent phraseology, but it will hardly convey any definite impression to the minds of those who are not acquainted with the life and teaching of the great Chinese sage. These may be studied now by all who can care for the history of human thought, in the excellent work of Dr. Legge. The first volume, just published, contains the Confucian Analects, the Great Learning, and the Doctrine of the Mean, or the First, Second, and Third Shoo's, and will, we hope, soon be followed by the other Chinese Classics.[93] We must here confine ourselves to giving a few of the sage's sayings, selected from thousands that are to be found in the Confucian Analects. Their interest is chiefly historical, as throwing light on the character of one of the most remarkable men in the history of the human race. But there is besides this a charm in the simple enunciation of simple truths; and such is the fear of truism in our modern writers that we must go to distant times and distant countries if we wish to listen to that simple Solomonic wisdom which is better than the merchandize of silver and the gain thereof than fine gold.

[Footnote 93: Dr. Legge has since published: vol. ii. containing the works of Mencius; vol. iii. part 1. containing the first part of the Shoo King; vol. iii. part 2. containing the fifth part of the Shoo King.]

Confucius shows his tolerant spirit when he says, 'The superior man is catholic, and no partisan. The mean man is a partisan, and not catholic' (p. 14).

There is honest manliness in his saying, 'To see what is right, and not to do it, is want of courage' (p. 18).

His definition of knowledge, though less profound than that of Socrates, is nevertheless full of good sense:

'The Master said, "Shall I teach you what knowledge is? When
you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do
not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it--this is
knowledge"' (p. 15).