Chapter IV: Brahmanism and Buddhism (2)

There remains to us but the account of a single traveller relative to the epoch of which we speak, that of the Chinese pilgrim Hwen Tsang; and in this we are told how a Hindu sovereign on the occasion of some festival, divides his generosity equally between the two dominant religions of that time; giving presents to Buddhist sectarians the first day, to those of Brahmanism the second. The phase had already been arrived at when the cults were entirely reconcilable, a phase which preceded that of their being united into one. The study of the religion of Nepal at the present time shows exactly how this fusion came about.

The date of the introduction of Buddhism into Nepal is a very ancient one. According to tradition Buddha himself visited the land. In any case it is in the ancient monasteries of Nepal that have been discovered the oldest known writings on Buddhism. To follow the same tradition, Asoka, king of Magadha, who reigned three centuries before Christ, made a pilgrimage to Nepal for the purpose of visiting the temples of Symbhunatha, Pashupatti, etc. He is also said to have founded the city of Patan, of which the Newar name is Lalita Patan, a corruption presumably of Pataliputra, the name given in India to the capital of Asoka. Several tumulus-formed temples have, from time immemorial, been attributed to him.

In Nepal, one of its cradles, the religion of Buddha has reigned for more than two thousand years. The isolation of this region of India may have preserved Buddhism to it for a longer period than is observable in the rest of the peninsula, but it has not prevented its undergoing,--like causes producing always the same effects,--a process of transformation analogous to that preceding its disappearance elsewhere. By reason of certain circumstances the gradual absorption has taken place more slowly in Nepal, and it is thanks to this slowness that we are able to learn what Buddhism was in India during the seventh or eighth century of our era, when its antique monastical institutions had disappeared, when its sacerdotal functions had once more become hereditary, and the ancient divinities had resumed their sway.

Buddhism and Brahmanism form to-day in Nepal, as they did in India in the seventh century, two religions nominally distinct, but having one for the other that tolerance which, according to the facts already cited, must have existed in the rest of India before the disappearance of Buddhism. This tolerance, explained sufficiently by the analogy between the two beliefs, is carried to such a point that their respective followers possess in common a certain number of pagodas, divinities, and feasts.

Instead of holding, with certain philosophical Buddhist sects, that the world is formed of matter alone, imperishable, possessing creative power and constituting the sole divinity of the universe, the Buddhism of Nepal offers for the worship of its followers a supreme trinity. This comprises 1st, Ali-Buddha, who is its principal personage, representing spirit; 2nd, Dharma, representing matter; 3rd, Sangha; representing the visible world, produced by the union of spirit and matter. This trinity, nearly enough related, as one sees, to that of Brahmanism, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, has for symbol a triangle with a point at its centre. This point is the emblem of Ali-Buddha, looked upon definitively as the first cause.

Below this superior trinity are placed the gods of the old Brahmanic pantheon--Vishnu, Siva, Ganesa, Lakshmi, etc. Simple emanations of supreme power, they were created by it to govern the world. Fallen somewhat from the elevated rank they occupied in the Brahmanic religion, they are still sufficiently high to have the right to the worship of mortals.

The theories of the Nepal Buddhists concerning the human soul, do not differ sensibly from the old Brahmanic theories. It is looked upon, as is also the soul of all animals, as an emanation of Ali-Buddha, which, after numerous transmigrations, passes back to the bosom of the supreme being who gave it life. Deliverance from this long series of transmigrations by reabsorption into Ali-Buddha, is the supreme end proposed as recompense to all believers. The number and the nature of these transmigrations depend entirely on the conduct during life, the acts of men determining irrevocably their future destiny.

As for the founder of Buddhism himself; he is looked upon as are all the other Buddhas who have preceded him, as a holy personage purified by long anterior existences, and on the point of attaining the supreme absorption.

The most important of the temples of Nepal, notably that of Symbhunatha, are dedicated to Ali-Buddha. In all, the Buddhist trinity (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha) is represented in the form of a statue seated, with legs crossed upon a lotus-leaf; Buddha having two arms, Dharma and Sangha generally four. Of this trinity, Dharma alone, the goddess of matter, is given the form of woman.

After the Buddhist trinity the most common objects of worship are the images of the founder of Buddhism and of his predecessors, both mortal and divine. Next came the gods of the Hindu Pantheon, Mahenkal, avatar of Siva; Kali, wife of Siva; Indra, king of Heaven; Garuda, god of birds, having a bird’s head; Ganesa, divinity of wisdom, having an elephant’s head, etc. The last is the most venerated, his image being found at the entrance to every temple, and it is with the worship of this purely Brahmanic divinity that all the Buddhist ceremonies commence.

The Hindu lingam has also been adopted by the Nepal Buddhists, but with the complete alteration of its significance. Instead of looking upon it as the male creative power of Siva, it is held to be the emblem of the lotus in which Ali-Buddha manifested himself in the form of a flame. Its shape is also modified. Four figures of Buddha are sculptured upon its lateral parts, and its summit is surmounted in the manner of the Buddhist chaityas.

It is to be seen from the preceding how intermingled with Brahmanism is Buddhism in Nepal. The religion of that part of the population which calls itself Brahmanic is equally tinged with Buddhism. Buddha is frequently represented in the temples dedicated to Siva, and several temples containing divinities common to the two religions are frequented alike by Brahmans and Buddhists.

This fusion of the two religions to be observed in the temples is also found in the legends with which the literature of Nepal abounds during the religious festivals. In the case of some of these it is really impossible to decide whether they are Buddhist or Brahmanic. Pilgrims also visit with equal confidence the shrines of the two religions.

Such is Buddhism at present in Nepal, and it is easy to predict from what has taken place in the past, that with the expiration of two or three centuries it will have been swallowed up in Brahmanism. The traveller of the future, ignorant of the phase of evolution through which Nepal is now passing will attribute, as do modern writers who treat of Buddhism in India, its disappearance to violent causes. The temple ruins with which Nepal will at that time no doubt be strewn, will also be invoked to attest the mercilessness of the persecutions.

But if the traveller whose existence we have supposed, has not confined himself to the study of a single region in India, but has had the patience to go over all the diverse lands of the immense peninsula, the idea of a religious evolution having taken place will have penetrated too deeply in his mind to allow him to commit such an error. In this respect the study of India itself immeasurably exceeds in value the perusal of history in books; it is the one country in the world where by means of a simple passing from one place to another, can be looked upon anew the successive forms that humanity has taken on from prehistoric times to the present day. This living study reveals rapidly to the observer the anterior transformations experienced by institutions and beliefs, of which books but show us the extremest phases.[f]

_New Light on Buddhism_

Recent discoveries and researches have greatly modified our notions of early India. In the last few years nearly the whole of the works composed in the earliest period of Buddhism have been edited in the original Pali, chiefly through the Pali Text Society. A few works of the second period have been edited in the original Pali or Sanskrit, and a number of books of later Buddhism have appeared in the various languages of eastern Asia. To appreciate the additions thus made to our knowledge it is necessary to remember that the Buddha, like other Indian teachers of his period, taught by conversation only. A highly-educated man (according to the education current at the time), speaking constantly to men of similar education, he followed the literary habit of his day by embodying his doctrines in set phrases (_sutras_), on which he enlarged, on different occasions, in different ways. Writing was then widely known. But the lack of suitable writing materials made any lengthy books impossible. Such sutras were therefore the recognised form of preserving and communicating opinion. They were catch-words, as it were, _memoria technica_, which could be easily remembered, and would recall the fuller expositions that had been based upon them.

In the Buddha’s time the Brahmans had their sutras in Sanskrit, already a dead language. He purposely put his into the ordinary conversational idiom of the day, that is to say, into Pali. When the Buddha died these sayings were collected together by his disciples into what they call the Four Nikayas, or “collections.” These cannot have reached their final form till about fifty or sixty years afterwards. Other sayings and verses, most of them ascribed, not to the Buddha, but to the disciples themselves, were put into a supplementary Nikaya. We know of slight additions made to this Nikaya as late as the time of Asoka, third century B.C. And the developed doctrine, found in certain portions of it, shows that these are later than the four old Nikayas. For a generation or two the books so put together were handed down by memory, though probably written memoranda were also used. And they were doubtless accompanied from the first, as they were being taught, by a running commentary.

About one hundred years after the Buddha’s death there was a schism in the community. Each of the two schools kept an arrangement of the canon--still in Pali, or some allied dialect. Sanskrit was not used for any Buddhist work till long afterwards, and never used at all, so far as is known, for the canonical books. Each of these two schools broke up, in the following centuries, into others. Several of them had their different arrangements of the canonical books, differing also in minor details. These books remained the only authorities for about five centuries, but they all, except only our extant Pali Nikayas, have been lost in India. These then are our authorities for the earliest period of Buddhism. Now what are these books?

We talk necessarily of Pali _books_. They are not books in the modern sense. They are memorial sentences or verses intended to be learnt by heart.

In depth of philosophic insight, in the method of Socratic questioning often adopted, in the earnest and elevated tone of the whole, in the evidence they afford of the most cultured thought of the day, these dialogues constantly remind the reader of the dialogues of Plato. But not in style. They have indeed a style of their own; always dignified, and occasionally rising into eloquence. But it is entirely different from the style of Western writings, which are always intended to be read.

The striking archæological discoveries of the last few years have both confirmed and added to our knowledge.

The principal points on which this large number of older and better authorities has modified our knowledge are as follows:--1. We have learnt that the division of Buddhism, originating with Burnouf, into northern and southern, is misleading. He found that the Buddhism in his Pali manuscript, which came from Ceylon, differed from that in his Sanskrit manuscript which came from Nepal. Now that the works he used have been made accessible in printed editions, we find that, wherever the existing manuscript came from, the original works themselves were all composed in the same stretch of country, that is, in the valley of the Ganges. The difference of the opinions expressed in the manuscript is due, not to the place where they are now found, but to the difference of time at which they were originally composed. Not one of the books mentioned above is either northern or southern. They all claim, and rightly claim, to belong, so far as their place of origin is concerned, to the Majjhima Desa, the middle country. It is undesirable to base the main division of our subject on an adventitious circumstance, and especially so when the nomenclature thus introduced (it is not found in the books themselves) cuts right across the true line of division. The use of the terms northern and southern as applied, not to the existing manuscript, but to the original books, or to the Buddhism they teach, not only does not help us, it is the source of serious misunderstanding. It inevitably leads careless writers to take for granted that we have, historically, two Buddhisms--one manufactured in Ceylon, the other in Nepal. Now this is admittedly wrong. What we have to consider is Buddhism varying through slight degrees, as the centuries pass by, in almost every book. We may call it one, or we may call it many. What is quite certain is that it is not two. And the most useful distinction to emphasise is, not the ambiguous and misleading geographical one--derived from the places where the modern copies of the manuscripts are found; nor even, though that would be better, the linguistic one--but the chronological one. The use, therefore, of the inaccurate and misleading terms northern and southern ought no longer to be followed in scholarly works on Buddhism.

2. Our ideas as to the social conditions that prevailed, during the Buddha’s life-time, in the eastern valley of the Ganges have been modified. The people were divided into clans, many of them governed as republics, more or less aristocratic. In a few cases several of such republics had formed confederations, and in four cases such confederations had already become hereditary monarchies. The right historical analogy is not the state of Germany in the Middle Ages, but the state of Greece in the time of Socrates. The Sakyas were still a republic. They had republics for their neighbours on the east and south, but on the western boundary was the kingdom of Kosala, the modern Oudh, which they acknowledged as a suzerain power. Gotama, the Buddha’s father, was not a king. There were rajahs in the clan, but the word meant at most something like consul or archon. All the four real kings were called Maha-rajah. And Suddhodana, the teacher’s father, was not even rajah. One of his cousins, named Bhaddiya, is styled a rajah; but Suddhodana is spoken of, like other citizens, as Suddhodana the Sakyan. As the ancient books are very particular on this question of titles, this is decisive.

3. There was no caste--no caste, that is, in the modern sense of the term. We have long known that the connubium was the cause of a long and determined struggle between the patricians and the plebeians in Rome. Evidence has been yearly accumulating on the existence of restrictions as to intermarriage, and as to the right of eating together (commensality) among other Aryan tribes, Greeks, Germans, Russians, and so on. Even without the fact of the existence now of such restrictions among the modern successors of the ancient Aryans in India, it would have been probable that they also were addicted to similar customs. It is certain that the notion of such usages was familiar enough to some at least of the tribes that preceded the Aryans in India. Rules of endogamy and exogamy; privileges, restricted to certain classes, of eating together, are not only Indian or Aryan, but world-wide phenomena. Both the spirit, and to a large degree the actual details, of modern Indian caste-usages are identical with these ancient, and no doubt universal, customs. It is in them that we have the key to the origin of caste.

At any moment in the history of a nation such customs seem, to a superficial observer, to be fixed and immutable. As a matter of fact they are never quite the same in successive centuries, or even generations. The numerous and complicated details which we sum up under the convenient, but often misleading, single name of caste are solely dependent for their sanction on public opinion. That opinion seems stable. But it is always tending to vary as to the degree of importance attached to some particular one of the details, as to the size and complexity of the particular groups in which each detail ought to be observed.

Owing to the fact that the particular group that in India worked its way to the top, based its claims on religious grounds, not on political power, nor on wealth, the system has, no doubt, lasted longer in India than in Europe. But public opinion still insists, in considerable circles, even in Europe, on restrictions of a more or less defined kind, both as to marriage and as to eating together. And in India the problem still remains to trace, in the literature, the gradual growth of the system--the gradual formation of new sections among the people, the gradual extension of the institution to the families of people engaged in certain trades, belonging to the same group, or sect, or tribe, tracing their ancestry, whether rightly or wrongly, to the same source. All these factors, and others besides, are real factors. But they are phases of the extension and growth, not explanations of the origin of the system.

There is no evidence to show that at the time of the rise of Buddhism there was any substantial difference, as regards the barriers in question, between the peoples dwelling in the valley of the Ganges and their contemporaries, Greek or Roman, dwelling on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The point of greatest weight in the establishment of the subsequent development, the supremacy in India of the priests, was still being hotly debated. All the new evidence tends to show that the struggle was being decided rather against than for the Brahmans. What we find in the Buddha’s time is caste in the making. The great mass of the people were distinguished quite roughly into four classes, social strata, of which the boundary lines were vague and uncertain. At one end of the scale were certain outlying tribes and certain hereditary crafts of a dirty or despised kind. At the other end the nobles claimed the superiority. But Brahmans by birth (not necessarily sacrificial priests, for they followed all sorts of occupations) were trying to oust the nobles from the highest grade. They only succeeded, long afterwards, when the power of Buddhism had declined.

4. It had been supposed on the authority of late priestly texts, where boasts of persecution are put forth, that the cause of the decline of Buddhism in India had been Brahman persecution. The now accessible older authorities, with one doubtful exception, make no mention of persecution. On the other hand, the comparison we are now able to make between the canonical books of the older Buddhism and the later texts of the following centuries, shows a continual decline from the old standpoint, a continual approximation of the Buddhist views to those of the other philosophies and religions of India. We can see now that the very event which seemed, in the eyes of the world, to be the most striking proof of the success of the new movement, the conversion and strenuous support, in the third century B.C., of Asoka, the most powerful ruler India had had, only hastened the decline. The adhesion of large numbers of nominal converts, more especially from the newly incorporated and less advanced provinces, produced weakness rather than strength in the movement for reform. The day of compromise had come. Every relaxation of the old thoroughgoing position was welcomed and supported by converts only half converted. And so the margin of difference between the Buddhists and their opponents gradually faded almost entirely away. The soul theory, step by step, gained again the upper hand. The popular gods and the popular superstitions are once more favoured by Buddhists themselves. The philosophical basis of the old ethics is overshadowed by new speculations. And even the old ideal of life, the salvation of the Arahat to be won in this world and in this world only, by self-culture and self-mastery, is forgotten, or mentioned only to be condemned. The end was inevitable. The need of a separate organisation became less and less apparent. The whole pantheon of the Vedic gods, with the ceremonies and the sacrifices associated with them, passed indeed away. But the ancient Buddhism, the party of reform, was overwhelmed also in its fall; and modern Hinduism arose on the ruins of both.[g]

THE ACTUAL PIETY OF THE HINDUS AND THE HINDU SEPARATION OF RELIGION FROM FINE MORALS

We have now examined the elaborate doctrines of the Hindus in some detail. It remains to be seen how far they affected the real life of the people.

The works of modern science have not yet been able to dispel the false ideas that prevail concerning the religions of India. It is only after studying the practice of these religions on the soil of the peninsula itself that one can begin to have a conception of its contradictions that seem to us so strange, and to comprehend that the word religion has totally different meanings for the Hindu and the European. In the buoyant, illogical, dreamy soul of the Hindu the most contrary beliefs are associated in a manner quite incomprehensible to us. The same man who will believe firmly in the speculations of the most daring atheism will prostrate himself with equal conviction before thousands of strange, grotesque, or terrible divinities, or respectfully kiss the footprint of Buddha or Vishnu. In India, not only do all religions dwell in perfect harmony, but the most contrary dogmas exist side by side in the same religion.

The innumerable sects of Neo-Brahmanism or Hinduism all share in the two dominant cults of Siva the destroyer and Vishnu the preserver, the two great divinities worshipped by every pious Hindu, who, together with the great creator Brahma, make up the Hindu trinity or _trimurti_. Although Brahma is conceived as the most powerful of these three gods, he has no special worshippers, and there is hardly a temple in all India dedicated to him. While the symbols of Siva and the incarnations of Vishnu, people the temples with a crowd of forms and images, Brahma is not represented in visible form, and remains the great impalpable soul that animates all creatures and in whose bosom the Hindu dreams of being absorbed.

Siva, the god of destruction, or rather of transformation, the god of birth and of death, whose symbol is the lingam or phallus and to whom victims are sacrificed, the god of the seed that produces beings and of the death that dissolves them--Siva is the true god of India, the true creation of its racial genius.

The female counterpart of Siva is his spouse, Parvati or Kali, goddess of life and death, the great mother of whom the universe was born, and by whom it will finally be swallowed up again. No cult has been the source of more monstrous scenes than that of the terrible Kali. Her worship was a mixture of obscenity and cruelty. On her altars flowed the blood of the last human sacrifices, which have now been abolished forever among the Brahmanic populations. Scenes of debauchery impossible to describe, gloomy or obscene mysteries are still practised in her temples, especially in those frequented by the sect called “Sivaites of the left hand.”

While Siva appeals rather to the intellect and represents the particular form in which Hindu genius has conceived the universe, Vishnu responds to the eternal needs of the heart. He is the god of love and of faith. He is without question a monistic god; but in order to manifest himself to mortals he has assumed so many different forms that it would be quite impossible to define, or even simply to enumerate them. These incarnations, called the avatars of Vishnu, represent so many special divinities, the worship of each belonging to a particular country, age, or social condition. While the principal ones are only ten in number, there is no limit to the multiplication of the others. One can fearlessly preach to the Hindus whatever god one will, as sublime or as coarse as the imagination of man can conceive; they will very likely adopt it, making it at once an avatar of Vishnu. Thus, Christ, whose history has some analogy with that of Krishna, has become one of these avatars; and to all the representations of the missionaries the Hindus reply that they have nothing to learn from them, being already more Christian than the Christians themselves.

As to external forms, they have always changed, and are still changing. The prodigious imagination of the Hindu, which has so multiplied them, is continually altering them. The Hindus love images and material symbols; they are great formalists in the practice of their religion, whatever it may be. Their temples are full of emblems, the principal ones being the lingam and the yoni, symbols of the male and female natures. Vows, penances, mortifications, the reading of sacred books, litanies, prayers, pilgrimages, are regarded as very meritorious and are very scrupulously observed. No other people has ever shown itself so strict in the performance of religious duties.

The pilgrims of Benares, of Jagannath, and of the great pagodas of the south of India, must still be estimated at hundreds of thousands annually. The celebrated places of pilgrimage are most frequently common to the two great sects. Vishnuites and Sivaites mingle on the solemn day; even Mussulmans sometimes come, not through a motive of curiosity, but for a pious end and to perform a meritorious work.

No place in India is more celebrated for its pilgrimages than Jagannath (popularly known as Juggernaut) or Puri on the coast of Orissa; nowhere, moreover, can one prove so well the singular fraternity of the cults of India, and at the same time their enormous diversity. There is not one of them that is not represented here. To whatever religion a Hindu belongs, at whatever distance his residence, and whatever the difficulties of the journey, he strives to go at least once in his life to Jagannath. In the rites of this temple Vishnu [called here Jagannath] shares with the gloomy and fatal Siva the adorations of the multitude whose over-excited piety rises to the point of delirium. His pagoda on wheels is drawn through the city, and such enthusiasm was aroused in the bosoms of the noisy multitudes that fanatics used to throw themselves beneath the wheels with cries of joy.[22]

There are many other places of pilgrimage in India, generally of less importance than Benares and Jagannath. The shores of the Ganges are sacred from source to mouth, and many of the faithful come from afar to visit them. The water of the river is sacred and is carried at great expense from one end of the peninsula to the other. The Hindus attribute a sacred character to all watercourses, but none approaches the holy Ganges in the veneration it inspires. This cult of waters, like that of the clouds and the monsoons, goes back to a very remote antiquity; it is entirely natural in a country of drought, where water brings life and whole populations die of famine when it fails.

Between the religion and the morals of the Hindu there is an abyss which it is difficult for the occidental mind to comprehend. It has been truthfully said that the Hindus are the most religious of all peoples. From the point of view of European ideas it might be said with no less justice that they are perhaps the least moral.

To please the gods and gain their favour is the end that the Hindu has ever before his eyes. But he would be greatly astonished if one should try to persuade him that the gods have the least particle of interest in the honesty of his relations with his fellowmen, the chastity of his life or the integrity of his word and his conduct, or that these all-powerful beings have the slightest disposition to be angry when he steals his neighbour’s goods or practices infanticide.

Their vengeance will smite him severely if he neglects to say his prayers, if he does not read the sacred books, if he is absent from the religious ceremonies, if he kills a cow, or if he does not perform the required purifications. These are the faults that arouse the anger of the gods. They demand sacrifices, pilgrimages, penances, prayers, the performance of a thousand external rites; they are concerned about nothing else. The rest is man’s affair, the material, utilitarian, practical side of life, quite beneath divine care.

If we turn to the laws of Manu, we find that the infraction of apparently puerile rites constitutes for the Hindu a fearful crime that can be atoned only by torture or even death, while robberies and murders may be expiated by the lightest penances. With the exception of adultery, which so deeply disturbs the constitution of families and consequently that of the race, all the sins of the flesh are of little importance to the Hindus. The voluptuous cults which they practice, rather impel them to license, and love becomes criminal only when its object is a being of an inferior caste. Murder derives its culpability from the rank of the person upon whom it is committed. If the victim is a cow or a Brahman, the crime is a grave one; in any other case it becomes a peccadillo. Certain murders, like the infanticide of girls, are not even faults.

The only great moral element that has penetrated the nature of the Hindu is the spirit of Buddhist charity. This spirit has even crept into the rigid code invented for the pleasure of fantastic and cruel gods and not for the true good of mankind. It has softened it and added precepts of love and liberality to its harsh and severe directions. The Buddhist period was the most moral in the history of India, and its beneficent influence still makes itself felt. The good qualities that the Hindu possesses, such as gentleness, faithfulness to his masters, love of family, an admirable spirit of tolerance, belong to his character and are independent of his morals. The most of his virtues are, moreover, altogether passive; he can obey, and he is never so good as when he yields to the yoke of a master. Let him command in his turn and he quickly becomes unjust, arrogant, and tyrannical. One could not say of a single one of his virtues that it is the fruit of a morality grounded upon the powerful base of religious faith and strengthened by ages of development.

The Hindu is, then, an essentially religious being, but he is not a moral being. His yielding and gentle nature is accustomed to submit to the force of a climate that has sapped all his energy and to a long slavery. If he had no curb but his moral conscience, he would perhaps be one of the most fierce and dangerous peoples of the globe. His character alone has made him one of the most inoffensive.[f]

FOOTNOTES

[21] [This picturesque account by Diodorus has already been given in the history of Mesopotamia.]

[22] [On the matter of the famous “Juggernaut” procession which has become a proverb of relentlessness and fanaticism, it is important to note that Sir W. W. Hunter in his history of _The Indian Empire_ makes a sweeping denial of the traditions concerning Jagannath, declaring that his religion is opposed to suicide or slaughter and that the deaths which happen at his festivals are few in number, less indeed than at ordinary political parades, and are due to accident or hysteria and not at all to religious frenzy.]

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter [a] is reserved for Editorial Matter.]

CHAPTER I. LAND AND PEOPLE

[b] GEORG WEBER, _Allgemeine Weltgeschichte_.

[c] FERDINAND JUSTI, _Geschichte der Orientalischen Völker im Alterthum_.

[d] The _Mahabharata_ and _Ramayana_.

[e] The _Vedas_.

[f] MAX DUNCKER, _Geschichte des Alterthums_.

[g] CHRISTIAN LASSEN, _Commentatio geographica atque historica de Pentapotamia Indica_.

[h] HERODOTUS, _Histories_.

CHAPTER II. INDIAN HISTORY--LEGEND AND REALITY

[b] JAMES MILL, _History of British India_.

[c] SOLOMON LEFMANN, _Geschichte des alten Indiens_.

[d] GUSTAVE LE BON, _Les civilisations de l’Inde_.

[e] W. W. HUNTER, from the article “India” in the Ninth Edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_.

[f] W. W. HUNTER, _Brief History of the Indian People_.

[g] J. FERGUSSON, “On the Sakaa and Samvat and Gupta Eras” (Journal R. As. Soc., N. S. XII).

[h] CESARE CANTÙ, _Storia universale_.

[i] SIR WM. JONES, _Dissertations_.

[j] FA-HIAN and HWEN-TSANG, _Chronicles of Voyages in India_.

CHAPTER III. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE ANCIENT HINDUS

[b] A. H. L. HEEREN, _Historical Researches into the Politics, Intercourse, and Trade of the Principal Nations of Antiquity_ (Asiatic Nations).

[c] MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE, _The History of India_.

[d] JAMES MILL, _op. cit._

[e] H. H. WILSON, Editor of James Mill’s _History of British India_.

[f] H. P. COLEBROKE in _Asiatic Researches_, Vol. LIII.

[g] HANNO, _Periplus_.

[h] PLINIUS SECUNDUS, _Historia Naturalis_.

[i] ARRIAN, _Indica_.

[j] COLEBROKE, in _Transactions of the Asiatic Society_.