The Historians' History of the World 02 [Israel, India, Persia, Phoenicia, Minor Nations of Western Asia]

Neither did the metaphysical speculations, which so astonished Europe by their depth, contain anything new. Now that the works of Indian writers are better known, the same theories have been found in the writings of the philosophical sects which developed during the Brahmanic period. Atheism, the contempt for life, morality as existing apart from religion, the world considered as illusion—all these had already appeared in certain philosophical works known under the name of Upanishads, of which there exist about two hundred and fifty, dating from all the epochs. In some are found the same doctrines that are presented in the philosophical writings of the Buddhists. Their authors also profess the doctrine of Karma, the fundamental belief of Buddhism as of all the religions of India—a doctrine according to which the acts accomplished by man in this life determine his condition in a future existence, this forming also the base of the code of Manu. The ultimate purpose of these successive reincarnations is absorption in the universal principle of things, the Brahma of which Manu speaks, parent to the Nirvana of Buddhism. Then, and then only is the soul absolved from reincarnation.

For the attainment of this final state of absorption, Buddhists and Brahmanists lay down the same rules; namely, suppression of all desire, renunciation of the things of this world, and a life passed in solitude and contemplation.

The philosophical theories of the age of Buddhism were thus the same as those held in the Brahmanic age which had preceded it. They are theories which developed parallel with the religion that was taught by the priests and practised by the people, yet they differed from it essentially. To look upon these doctrines as being identical with Buddhism would be to commit an error as great as though we were to confound the theories of certain Upanishads with Brahmanism; nevertheless it is these philosophical utterances of some of the disciples of Buddha which have been received in Europe as Buddhism itself.

It would seem to suggest itself at once as improbable that a religion counting five hundred million believers could be founded solely on cold philosophical reasoning; but perhaps an error of such a nature is excusable in the case of learned men who, having passed their lives in the study of books, have had no time to pursue the deeper study of men. In two or three thousand years, when the centre of civilisation shall have again shifted and our present languages and the books written in them have been forgotten, it is quite probable that some professor who has come upon the English language in his researches shall translate the first works that come to his hand, such as Spencer’s First Principles, or Darwin’s Origin of Species, and give them to the world as the beliefs professed by the Christian peoples in the nineteenth century.

It is only necessary to observe Hindus closely to perceive that they are not the people to adopt the tenets of any religion that is without divinity. The Hindu not believe in gods? Why, the world is full of them for him. He addresses prayers to the tiger that devours his flocks, to the railroad bridge constructed by the European, to the European himself if occasion arises. Make him learn by heart the catechism of the southern Buddhists, recently composed with the assistance of Europeans, which teaches that the universe has no creator, that all is illusion, and you will see that that will not prevent him from feeling the need of still offering up worship to the great Buddha and all the gods of his sanctuary. The most ancient of all books on Buddhism, the Lalita Vistara written some eighteen centuries ago, six centuries later than Buddha himself, contains a number of dissertations on the illusiveness and vanity of the things of this world. But to whom is Buddha teaching these truths? To the gods, principally, to those innumerable gods of whom mention is made on every page and who, Brahma at their head, presided at the birth of the reformer who was to be god in his turn, accompanied him wherever he went and finally came to offer him worship. Naturally contradictions abound in this book; but they are no contradictions to the Hindu. His thought is formed in an entirely different mould from ours, for him our European logic does not exist. Not a single one of his books, from the antique epics of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata to the philosophical works previously referred to, is free from glaring contradictions. Doubtless logic is not always lacking, but it is that feminine form which carries its deductions to their extreme limit without concerning itself with contradictions.

It is quite necessary, if one wishes to comprehend Buddhism, to consider alongside of the philosophical speculations superimposed upon it the multitude of gods which no religion of India can do without. Buddha no more tried to shake the foundations of the Brahmanic Pantheon than he tried—an oft-repeated error notwithstanding—to set at naught the laws of caste. Indeed there has never been a reformer powerful enough to dislodge this corner-stone of India’s social constitution.