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However effective Buddha's method may have been, it was the tendency of his doctrine which could not fail sooner or later to open the hearts of the people. The lower castes were subject to the ill treatment and exactions of the state, to the haughty pride of the Brahmans; they were pressed into the unalterable arrangement of the castes, and thus branded by law and custom, they were exposed to the severest oppression. The doctrine of morals was resolved into the observance of the duties of caste, into the endless series of offerings and sacrifice, purifications and expiations; thus it became degraded into an artificial and painful sanctification by works, which no one could ever satisfy. Religion was lost in a confused medley of gods and magic on the one hand, and of obscure and unintelligible speculation on the other. In opposition to these circumstances, requirements, and doctrines, Buddha declared that no one, not even the lowest and most contemptible castes, were excluded from hearing and finding the truth; that alleviation of pain and rest, salvation and liberation, could be acquired by any one. Instead of the observance of the duties of caste he required the brotherly love of all men; in opposition to distorted ethics he restores its due rights to natural feeling. The sacrifice and sanctification by works of the Brahmans is replaced by the taming of the passions, and sympathy, by the fulfilment of simple duties, painful penances by easy asceticism, by the plain morality of patience and quietism; the Veda and gods of the Brahmans by a theory at any rate more intelligible, accompanied by the doctrine that even without this theory every one of his own heart and will could enter upon the way of salvation, and by such conduct alleviate his fortune in this and the following courses of life, while the initiated could at once force their way to death without regeneration. Any man could assume the yellow robe if he vowed to live in poverty and chastity, and wander through the land as a mendicant, a mode of obtaining a livelihood which is not difficult in India.

If the doctrine of the Brahmans had banished mercy out of heaven, it had reappeared on earth in the "Enlightened," the "pointer of the way," who met the pride and haughtiness of the Brahmans with gentleness and humility; who showed sympathetic pity for the lowest and poorest, for all the weary and heavy-laden;⁴⁷⁵ who in the midst of oppressed nations taught how unavoidable evils could be borne most easily; how they could be alleviated by mutual help; who called on all to ameliorate their lot by their own power, and considered it the highest duty to obtain this amelioration for ourselves and provide it for others.

According to Buddha's view the castes must fall to the ground. There was no world-soul from which all creatures emanated, and therefore the distinctions which rested on the succession of these emanations did not exist. In the first instance, however, he attacked the castes from the point of view that the body can only have a subordinate value. "He who looks closely at the body," he said, "will find no difference between the body of the slave and the body of the prince. The best soul can dwell in the worst body." "The body must be valued or despised in respect of the spirit which is in it. The virtues do not inquire after the castes."⁴⁷⁶ But he also applied the distinction of castes to show that in fact they give a higher or lower position to men; that the arrangement brings external advantages or disadvantages. It was the conception of the more or less favourable regenerations which caused him to assume these distinctions and bring them into the series of regenerations. He allowed that there was a gradation leading from the Chandalas to the Brahmans, that birth in a higher or lower position was a consequence of the virtues or failings of earlier existences; but the distinctions were not of such a kind that they limited the spirit; that they could in any way prevent even the least and lowest from hearing the true doctrine and understanding it, and attaining salvation and liberation. Hence while the castes do indeed form distinctions among men, these distinctions are not essential, but in reality indifferent.

If the Brahmans reproached Buddha that he preached to the impure, he replied: "My law is a law of grace for all."⁴⁷⁷ He received Çudras and Chandalas, barbers and street-sweepers, slaves and remorseful criminals, among his disciples and initiated.⁴⁷⁸ Nor did he exclude women; even to them he imparted the initiation of the mendicant.⁴⁷⁹ On one occasion Ananda, the scholar of Buddha, met a Chandala maiden drawing water at a fountain, and asked to drink. She replied that she was a Chandala and might not touch him. Ananda answered: "My sister, I do not ask about your caste, nor about your family; I ask you for water if you can give it me." Buddha is then said to have received the maiden among his initiated.⁴⁸⁰

For twenty-four years, we are told, Buddha wandered from one place to another, to preach his doctrine, to strengthen his disciples in their faith, to arrange their condition, and in the rainy season to show to the initiated the way to the highest liberation, to death without regeneration. According to the legends of the Northern Buddhists, he saw towards the end of his days the overthrow of his ancestral city, and the defeat of his adherents. The Çakyas of Kapilavastu are said to have become odious to Virudhaka (Kshudraka in the Vishnu-Purana), the successor of king Prasenajit on the throne of the Koçalas. He marched against them with his army; obtained possession of the city of Kapilavastu, and caused the inhabitants to be massacred. Buddha is said to have heard the noise of the conquest, and the cry of the dying. When the king of the Koçalas had marched away with his army, Buddha, we are told, wandered in the night through the ruined corpse-strewn streets of his home. In the pleasure-garden of his father's palace, where he had played as a boy, lay maidens with hands and feet cut off, of whom some were still alive; Buddha gave them his sympathy and comforted them. The massacre of Kapilavastu, the slaughter of the Çakyas, if it took place at all, cannot have been complete, for at a later time the race is mentioned as existing and active.

In the eightieth year of his life Buddha is said to have visited Rajagriha and Nalanda in the land of Magadha; afterwards he crossed the Ganges, and announced to his disciples in Vaiçali, the metropolis of the tribe of the Vrijis (p. 338), that he should die in three months. He exhorted them to redoubled zeal, begged them, when he was no more, to collect his commands, and preach them to the world. Accompanied by his pupils Ananda and Anuruddha he then set out to the north, to the land of the Mallas, and Kuçinagara, where in former days he had laid aside the royal dress and assumed the condition of a mendicant. Falling sick on the way, he came exhausted into the neighbourhood of Kuçinagara, where Ananda prepared a bed for him in a grove. Here he said farewell, sank into meditation, and died with the words "Nothing continues," never to be born again. At Ananda's suggestion the Mallas buried the dead Enlightened with the burial of a king. After preparations lasting through seven days the corpse was placed in a golden coffin, carried in solemn procession before the eastern gate of Kuçinagara, and laid on a wooden pyre. The ashes were placed in a golden urn, and for seven days festivals were held in honour of the "compassionate Buddha, the man free from stain" (543 B.C.).⁴⁸¹

CHAPTER III.
THE KINGDOM OF MAGADHA AND THE SETTLEMENTS
IN THE SOUTH

King Ajataçatru of Magadha, who is said to have dethroned his father Bimbisara in the the year 551 B.C. and put him to death, to have persecuted the "Enlightened," and then, from a persecutor to have changed into a zealous follower, demanded, according to the legends of the Buddhists, that the Mallas should give up to him the remains of Buddha (the ashes and the bones of his corpse) for preservation. But the Mallas refused to do this. The Çakyas also laid claim to them because Buddha sprang from their family; the warrior families of the Vrijis of Vaiçali because Buddha was a Kshatriya; and finally the Koçalas of Ramagrama demanded them. Ajataçatru intended to possess himself of them by force. Then a learned Brahman succeeded in preventing the decision by an appeal to arms; the remains were divided into eight portions, and distributed among the different claimants, of whom each erected a memorial for his portion. Ajataçatru buried his portion under a stupa, i. e. a tower with a cupola, near his metropolis Rajagriha.⁴⁸²

Of the further deeds of Ajataçatru we only learn that he subjugated to his dominion the Vrijis, who were governed by a council formed of the elders of their families.⁴⁸³ Of the immediate successors of Ajataçatru in Magadha, Udayabhadra (519-503 B.C.), Anuruddhaka (503-495 B.C.), and Nagadasaka (495-471 B.C.), nothing further is known than that each murdered his father.⁴⁸⁴ Nagadasaka, the great-grandson of Ajataçatru, is said to have been dethroned by the people, who set up in his place Çiçunaga a son of Ajataçatru, who seems to have previously ruled as a vassal king in the city of the Vrijis, the conquered Vaiçali.⁴⁸⁵ This Çiçunaga, who ruled over Magadha from the year 471 to 453 B.C., was succeeded on the throne by his son, Kalaçoka.⁴⁸⁶

From this subjugation and conquest of the territory of the Vrijis, from a statement of the legend of the Buddhists, according to which Kalaçoka inflicts punishments in Mathura on the Yamuna,⁴⁸⁷– and further from the fact that the lists of the Brahmans for the kingdoms of the Bharatas and the Koçalas, and the territories of Varanasi and Mithila, end with the third or fourth successor of the princes who reigned, according to the legend of the Buddhists, at the time of the Enlightened – we may assume that after the reign of Ajataçatru the power of the kings of Magadha increased, and continued to extend till the neighbouring states on the north and west of Magadha were gradually embodied in this kingdom. Kalaçoka provided a new metropolis; he left Rajagriha and took up his abode in a city of his own building, Pataliputra. The name means son of the trumpet-flower. It lay to the north-west of Rajagriha on the confluence of the Çona and the Ganges, on the bank of the great river, a little above the modern Patna. Megasthenes, who spent some time in this city a century and a half after it was built, tells us that Palibothra (such is the form he gives to the name) was the greatest and most famous city of India. In shape it was a long rectangle, with a circuit of about 25 miles. The longer sides were 80, the shorter sides 15, stades in length. Sixty-four gates allowed entrance through the wooden wall, pierced by windows for archers, and was surrounded by a wonderful trench, 600 feet broad, and 30 cubits deep, which was filled by the waters of the Ganges and the Çona; the wall was in addition flanked by 570 towers. The royal palace in the city was splendid, and the inhabitants very numerous.⁴⁸⁸ We have already learnt from the sutras the circuit, equipment, and wealth of the royal citadels. That Palibothra, at the time when it was the metropolis not only of the whole land of the Ganges but also of the valley of the Indus, was only protected by a wooden wall, provided, it is true, with many towers, i. e. by a palisade, is remarkable, for it is sufficiently proved that the cities and citadels of the Panjab in the fourth century B.C. were surrounded by walls of bricks or masonry.

In the sutras of the Buddhists we have already seen that the Arian life and civilisation extended in the first half of the sixth century from the Panjab to the mouth of the Ganges, and also that the north-western spurs of the Vindhyas, no less than the coast of Guzerat (Surashtra) were occupied by Arian states. The ancient inhabitants of these regions, the Bhillas and Kolas (Kulis), occupied here the same contemptible and degraded position which the Chandalas occupied on the Ganges. In the course of the sixth and in the fifth century B.C. the colonisation and conquests of the Arian Indians made even more important advances. The southern regions of the Deccan were appropriated, and the island of Ceylon conquered. It has been observed that at an early time a trade existed by sea between the land of the Indus and the Malabar coast; in this way alone could the sandal-wood, which flourishes nowhere but this coast, have reached the mouth of the Indus as early as 1000 B.C. (p. 15). The tradition of the Brahmans assigns the colonisation of the Malabar coast, not of the northern part only, but even of Kerala, in the south, to the twelfth century B.C. We shall be more secure if we assume that the Arian settlements were not pushed further to the south till Arian states arose on the coast of Surashtra. The first settlements on the west coast are said to have been founded by Brahmans: an expedition of Brahmans is said to have reached far to the south, and to have founded settlements there; to have converted the inhabitants to Brahmanism, and in this way to have founded the kingdom of Kerala (on the sources of the Kaveri).⁴⁸⁹ On the eastern shore of the Deccan the Arian civilisation passed from the mouths of the Ganges to the south. We do not know in what manner the Odras, who dwelt in the valley and on the mouths of the Mahanadi, were gained over by the Brahmans. In the book of the law they are reckoned among the degenerate warriors.⁴⁹⁰ But in this region the change to the Arian life must have been very complete; there are no remains of an older language in the dialect of Orissa. The language exhibits the stamp of Sanskrit, and the Brahmanic system was afterwards carried out even more strictly here than in the valley of the Ganges. Even on the Coromandel coast the southern parts are said to have been colonised earlier than the centre. The first Arian settlers are said to have landed on the island of Rameçvara, which lies off the mouth of the Vaigaru, in the sixth century B.C., and then to have passed over to the mainland, which was occupied by the tribes of the Tamilas, to have eradicated the forests, and cultivated the land.⁴⁹¹ One of these settlers, Pandya by name, is said to have obtained the dominion, and to have given his name to the land, Sampanna-Pandya, i. e. the fortunate Pandya; one of the successors of this Pandya built a palace further up the Vaigaru, and called the new city Mathura. From this name we may conclude that at least a part of the settlers who colonised the south coast of the Deccan sprang from the banks of the Yamuna, and named the new habitation after the sacred city of the ancient fatherland, just as the name of the ruling family points to the Pandus, the ancient dynasty, which for four generations after Buddha, i. e. down to the time of Kalaçoka, ruled over the Bharatas between the Yamuna and the upper Ganges.

Hither also, to the distant south of the Deccan, the Arian settlers brought the system of castes and the Brahmanic arrangements of the state, which were carried out with greater strictness, as is invariably the case when an arrangement already developed into a complete and close system is authoritatively applied to new conditions. The immigrants were Brahmans and Kshatriyas; they took possession of considerable portions of land. The ancient inhabitants, who did not adapt themselves to the Brahmanic law, occupied on the south of the Coromandel coast, where the Tamil language is spoken, as the colonies spread, a position even worse than the Chandalas on the Ganges; even to this day, under the name of Pariahs, they are more utterly despised, more harshly oppressed, than the Chandalas. Even now the Brahman is allowed without penalty to strike down the Pariah who has the impudence to enter his house;⁴⁹² and contact of a member of the higher castes with a Pariah involves the expulsion of the person thus rendered impure.

The books of the Singhalese, the oldest, and consequently the most trustworthy, among all the historical sources of India, preserve the following tradition about the arrival of the Arians on the island of Ceylon. Vijaya was the son of the king of Sinhapura (lion city) in Surashtra.⁴⁹³ As the king was guilty of many violent actions, the nation required him to put his son to death. The king instead placed him on board a ship with seven hundred companions, and the ship was sent to sea. These exiles called themselves Sinhalas, i. e. lions, after their home, the lion city. The ship arrived at the island of Lanka. Vijaya with his comrades overcame the original inhabitants, who are described as strong beings (Yakshas); on the western coast of the island, at the place where his ship touched the shore, he founded the city of Tamraparni, and named the island, which now belonged to the victorious lions of Surashtra, Sinhaladvipa, i. e. lion island. But Vijaya and his companions had been banished from home without wives, and they would not mingle their pure blood with the bad on the island. So he sent to the opposite coast of the mainland, to Mathura on the Vaigaru, where Pandava was king at that time, and besought his daughter in marriage, and Pandava gave him his daughter with seven hundred other women for his companions, and he in return sent to his father-in-law each year 200,000 mussels and pearls. The marriage of Vijaya was childless, and when he felt himself near his end, he sent to his brother Sumitra, who meanwhile had succeeded his father on the throne of Sinhapura, to come to Lanka, in order to govern the new kingdom. Sumitra preferred to keep his ancestral throne, but sent his youngest son, Panduvançadeva, who reigned over the island for 30 years, and founded the new metropolis of Anuradhapura in the interior of the island. Pandukabhya, the second successor of Panduvançadeva, arranged the constitution of the kingdom. He set up a Brahman as high priest, and had the boundaries of the villages measured. When enlarging the metropolis, he caused dwellings to be erected for the Brahmans, before the city, as the law requires, and made a place for corpses, and near it built a special village for the impure persons who tend the dead. Settlements were also erected for the penitents. The immigrants formed the castes of the Brahmans and the Kshatriyas; the original inhabitants, who submitted to the Brahman law, formed the castes of the Vaiçyas and Çudras; a special caste, the Paravas, we find, at any rate at a later time, entrusted with the pearl fisheries. But Pandukabhya is said not to have confined himself to the Arians in conferring offices; tradition expressly informs us that chiefs of the ancient inhabitants received prominent posts in the new constitution.⁴⁹⁴

We should deceive ourselves if we found in this tradition a credible and certain narrative of the colonisation of Ceylon. The name of the discoverer Vijaya, means victory and conquest; that of his successor, Panduvançadeva, means god of the race of Pandu. In this tradition we can only maintain the fact that the first settlers came from the west of India, the coast of Guzerat; that a family from this region, which claimed descent from the celebrated Pandu, acquired the dominion over the island (the Greeks are acquainted with a kingdom of Pandus on the peninsula of Guzerat, and the kingdom of Pandæa on the southern apex of India); that the settlers in Ceylon entered into combination with the older colony on the south coast of the Deccan, and, in contrast to these, their fellow-tribesmen, formed a friendly relation with the whole of the ancient inhabitants. Nor can we repose absolute faith in the tradition of the Singhalese, which places the arrival of the first settlers in the year 543 B.C. This year, which is the year of Buddha's death, is obviously chosen because Ceylon from the middle of the third century B.C. was a chief seat of Buddhism, and continued to be so when their doctrine had been repressed and annihilated by the Brahmans in the land of the Ganges, and on the whole mainland of India. Down to the period of the introduction of Buddhism into Ceylon, and even for fully a hundred years afterwards, the chronology of Singhalese authorities abounds with impossibilities, contradictions, and demonstrable mistakes.⁴⁹⁵ We must therefore content ourselves with the assumption that the first Arian immigrants landed in Ceylon about the year 500 B.C.

Though the life, manners, and religion of the Indians became firmly rooted on both coasts of the Deccan, and beyond it, the centre of the peninsula remained for the time untouched by Arian colonisation. Here the wild pathless ranges of the Vindhyas opposed insuperable obstacles to the advance of the Arian colonisation from the north, running as they do right across the middle of the land from sea to sea. Thus even to this day the tribes of the black Gondas (p. 9) inhabit the almost inaccessible valleys and gorges of the broad mountain region, in their original barbarism, with their old language and old worship of the earth-god, to whom the tribes bordering on Orissa offered human sacrifice even in our times. Among other tribes on the Narmada, the custom which Herodotus ascribes to certain Indian tribes (p. 19) is still in use: they slay old and weak members of the family, and eat them.⁴⁹⁶ On the other hand, Brahmanic manners and civilisation penetrated gradually from the Coromandel coast to the Godavari, the Krishna, the Palaru, and the Kaveri. Supported by the arms and weight of the increasing power of Magadha, the influence of the Arian nation became powerful enough to subjugate the Kalingas, the Telingas, and the Tamilas, to the religious doctrine and life of the Brahmans. Yet even here the Telingas and the Tamilas, like the Karnatas, the Tuluvas, and the Malabars on the western side, maintained their languages, though transformed, it is true, and intermingled with Sanskrit. The southern apex of the Deccan has remained entirely untouched by Arian colonisation. The sunken plateau, running from the western Ghats to the east coast, which fills up the entire peninsula of the Deccan, here ends in a lofty group of mountains, the Niligiris (Neelgherries), i. e. the blue mountains. Through a deep depression filled with marsh and jungle, which is limited and intersected to the north, this mountain-range rises far above the plateau to a height of 6-8000 feet. The proximity of the equator, combined with the cooling influence of the surrounding ocean, assures at such an elevation the clearest sky, an eternal spring, and a completely European vegetation, in the midst of which a handsome and vigorous race of men, the Tudas, still live and flourish in complete isolation.

The settlements on the coast of the Deccan and on the island of Ceylon must have given a new impulse to the trade of India. The pearls, which are found only on the north-west coast and in the straits of Ceylon, on the numerous coral-banks of that region – the book of the law quotes them, together with coral, among the most important articles of trade of which the merchant ought to know the price – were not only an ordinary ornament at the courts of Indian princes in the fourth century B.C., but were even brought to the West about this period. The companions of Alexander of Macedon tell us that the Persians and Medes weighed pearls with gold, and valued pearl ornaments more than gold ornaments. Onesicritus, the pilot of Alexander, tells us that the island of Taprobane (Tamraparni) was 15,000 stades in the circuit; that there were many elephants there, which were the bravest and strongest in India, and amphibious animals, some like cows, others like horses. Taprobane was twenty days' journey from the southern shore of India in the main sea; but the ships of the Indians sailed badly, for they were ill built and without decks.⁴⁹⁷ Megasthenes tells us that Taprobane is richer in gold and pearls even than India. The pearl oysters, which lay close together, were brought up out of the sea with nets; the fleshy part was thrown away, but the bones of the animals were the pearls, and the price was three times as much as the price of gold.⁴⁹⁸

The death of the Enlightened had not checked the adoption of his doctrine in the land of the Ganges. The legend, mentioned above, of the contest of princes, nations, and families on the middle Ganges for the relics of Buddha, may have owed its origin to the worship of relics, which became current among the Buddhists some considerable time after their master's death. On the other hand, the further narrative, that after Buddha's death, a number of his disciples met to establish the main doctrines of their master, cannot be brought into doubt. As has been already remarked, Buddha is said to have commanded his disciples to collect his doctrines after his death. Obedient to this injunction, Kaçyapa, to whom Buddha formerly gave up the half of his possessions and whom he clothed with his mendicant's garb, caused five hundred believers (Sthavira) in the Enlightened to be gathered together. Ajataçatru of Magadha had caused a special hall to be built for their discussions at Rajagriha, at the entrance of the Niagrodha cave. Here the assembly charged Upali (p. 358) with the duty of drawing up the prescripts of the discipline (vinaya), "the soul of the law," of which Buddha had declared Upali to have the best knowledge. Ananda was to collect the law (dharma). i. e. the words of the master; he knew them all by heart. Kaçyapa was to undertake the philosophical system (abhidharma); and each was to place his collection before the assembly for criticism and approval. These works are said to have occupied seven months.⁴⁹⁹

In the doctrine of Buddha a comparatively simple meaning prevailed, which by its contrast to the fancifulness of the Brahmans must have excited the desire to collect and retain what was in existence. Moreover, the faith and conduct of the Buddhists had their starting-points and centre so eminently in the life, example, and doctrine of the master, that a meeting of disciples at the very moment when their living centre was lost appears thoroughly probable. The need of possessing the pure and entire doctrine of the master for support and guidance, now that he was present in person no more, must have been very deeply felt. But the tradition is obviously wrong in ascribing to the earliest council the compilation of the entire canon of the Buddhist scriptures as they were known at a later period, in the three divisions of discipline, commands, and speculation. This assembly could do no more than collect the speeches, doctrine, and rules of the master from memory, and establish a correct copy of them by mutual control. It is the words and commands, the sutras of Buddha, which were established and collected at this meeting. Unfortunately we do not possess them in their oldest and simplest form, since at a later time the occasion and situation and place at which the master had spoken this or that sentence, had uttered this or that doctrine, were added to the words of Buddha. But in part at least it is possible to distinguish the old simple nucleus from these additions.⁵⁰⁰

Buddha had imparted to all who wished to tread the path of liberation, who undertook vows of poverty and chastity, the initiation of the Bhikshu, i. e. of the mendicant, of the Çramana, i. e. the ascetic, the priest of his new religion. These Çramanas he had recommended to withdraw themselves from the world, and live after his own example in solitary meditation on the four truths: pain, the origin of pain, the annihilation of pain, and the way which leads to this. But his eremites were not to live the life of the eremite continuously any more than himself. Even the mere fact that they had to make a livelihood by begging excluded any long-continued isolation and settled residence; and along with renunciation Buddha's doctrine taught sympathy and help to all creatures. This sympathy the Bhikshus were to carry out in act; more especially they were bound to impart to the brethren who received initiation and to the people the healing truths, which had disclosed themselves to their meditation, in the same way as Buddha had done. According to the command of the master, they might not, like the Brahman penitents, spend the rainy season in the forest; they must pass it together in protected places, in caves, villages or cities, at friendly houses: in this season they must mutually instruct each other and confess their sins. Complete isolation of the initiated would have been opposed to the whole tendency of the doctrine and the pattern of the master. The Bhikshus, who came from various circles of life, and different castes, and had abandoned the hereditary and customary law of the castes, could not but feel the need of assuring themselves mutually of the new law now governing their life, of observing and developing it in common. The adherents, and above all the representatives, of any new doctrine always feel it incumbent on them to keep alive and nourish the sense of their fellowship and mutual support as against existing authority. These motives early led to a monastic life among the adherents of Buddha who had received the initiation of the mendicant, and wished to advance to complete liberation from regeneration. The places of refuge and shelter in which they passed the rainy season were regularly visited. There they resided; but in the finer season of the year they left them in order to beg in the country and to preach, or to meditate in the forest; and at the beginning of the rains (which in the Buddhist calendar extended from the full moon of July to the full moon of November) they again returned to the accustomed shelter. These retreats were partly rocky caves, partly detached buildings, of which a hall of assembly (vihara) must form part.