Pray then, how has it arisen, that you have never yet converted some of those in Ceylon, and in the parts of India nearest to it, who might appear most favourably situated for the influence of your missions to operate upon them; and again, among those who profess your faith in both those countries, how is it that practices prevail, such as probably Sákya, as much as any man, would have condemned? Not that I here speak of personal vices, such as in the case of reckless men elude or defy the controul of even the purest faith; but I allude to forms of belief and modes of worship, which stand in the strongest contrast to the purity which you have ascribed to Sákya. Need I tell you of the crowds who worship idols? or of the homage paid in such absorbing excess to what you consider sacred relics, as to draw away the worshipper's mind from any thought of the high and holy one, by whatever name we style him, who, as we both agree, ought to be worshipped? Or what shall I say of the devil-worshippers of Tinnevelly, who (if I understand their doctrine aright) endeavour to propitiate the spirit of evil; and certainly their vicious lives, in many cases, prove they have fallen sufficiently below humanity for such a horrid kind of creed to correspond well enough with their practice? Then again, rites are spoken of in India, though, I believe, in parts which no longer fall within the range of your religious influence, in which unclean passions and the sensual vices, such as even bad men generally are ashamed of, are both practised and considered a kind of piety. But what a piety can that be, which thus arrays itself against the modesty of every pure conscience, and enters into alliance as it were with whatever is evil in man, against whatever aspiration he might raise towards the holy and the eternal? Such a kind of religion in fact is on the side of passion and of darkness against intelligence. Yet of those three things you fully admit the first and second to be evil, and the third to be good." SAUG. "Undoubtedly we do; but of the persons you allude to, some are descendants of the old Yakkas*, or the demon race, * The speaker uses here a Pali form, as quoting the Mahawansa.

who never fully received the Saviour, and we have not been able to make an impression upon their obdurate minds; again, as to the others, the ignorance of mankind is always apt to degenerate from a pure religion, and I do not see that such degeneracy is the fault of the luminary of the world."

BLAN. "Certainly not of Him whom we should call the true luminary; nor again is it a fault in the personal character of Sákya, whom you probably mean; but it remains to be inquired, whether the circumstances I have alluded to may not indicate some inherent weakness in his religion. But now I am so anxious to see men happier and better, by whatever name they call themselves, that I would earnestly entreat you in the name of Sákya, if you please, to consider with me how we can enlighten the intelligence, or purify the imaginations of those miserable persons we have spoken of; and this I promise, if your way appears the more likely, I will so far join it as to consent at least to your giving these benighted people the purest form of your faith; whereas, if any other way should appear better, you perhaps will not refuse to follow whatever method the most perfect intelligence may point out as the best?"

SAUG. "Perhaps we will so consider it. At least I quite agree that the practice of virtue is the principal thing."

BLAN. "It appears to my own mind there are several points we so far agree in, that it is worth while attempting to come nearer each other; especially I think we agree that whatever course the most perfect intelligence would approve, that ought to be followed. We are also agreed that bountifulness or beneficence is a virtue to be practised, and that of all gifts we could confer upon men, the gift of salvation, or the knowledge of the true faith, would be the greatest; for certainly we should be most anxious about their souls. You have spoken also of knowledge, and I suppose knowledge implies possession of the highest truth of all; if this then is so valuable, we should not close our eyes against any beam of it, from whatever quarter it may fall."

SAUG. "To all that I see no objection."

BLAN. "Shall we however try to sum up briefly what has been said, lest any one should have dropt as it were the thread from his hand?"

SAUG. "If you please."

BLAN. "It appears then that you distinguish the Bauddha doctrine from that of various Chárvácas or materialists; that you consider intelligence and matter as two things eternally coexistent, of which the one, being visible in its properties, leads us to infer the other, though it is not clear how far either acts upon the other. Nor again, do you object to the opinion of your friends who deny the existence of anything except internal perception or intelligence. In the same manner again, you think that a highest form of intelligence exists, answering more nearly to what we conceive of the Deity, but you do not censure those who think such a supposition unnecessary. Your own reason indeed for making it, seems to be chiefly an application of the analogy of body and soul, to the world and God; or else a perception of the fitness of giving symmetry to the various gradations of intelligence by admitting one form higher and more perfect than the rest; and not in the least any need of attributing the world to a creator; for life and death, decay and quickening, succeed each other, you imagine, in a cyclical series, which may be compared to bubbles and waves rising and falling in alternation around a ball. You are all agreed in resting your essential belief upon the last supreme Buddha, or Sákya; and he, having been once a man, became so enlightened as to share the highest intelligence, and to have authority in matters of belief, though his divinity seems a kind of growth or development rather than an original inheritance; and his doctrine, though superhuman, may more nearly be described as an aspiration than as a revelation; but on this point I found some difficulty in reconciling all that dropt from you. You conceive however of the standard both of your belief and practice as being something external to yourselves, and will not have it described as

a mere deification of any individual man's reason; and lastly, while you appeal to the authority of Sákya, you admit your religious practices in the present day to vary considerably from his doctrine. For while his life might almost seem a solemn mission against caste and sacerdotalism, its result seems to have been the establishment of a system more elaborately sacerdotal than the one against which he protested; and among many of those who are called Buddhists, as well as the neighbours who should be converted by them, the grossest idolatry and superstition prevail. But such things you would probably say were no strong argument against the original truth of your religion, supposing its evidences, and especially its miracles, to be satisfactory, and its sacred books to be written, as you believe, both in an humane spirit, and also by divine inspiration. In other respects you appear to agree with Hindús in general in the belief of the transmigration of souls, and in the endeavour to attain a certain tranquillity in a future life, as the reward of certain conduct here; and this tranquillity appears from what you said of Sákya to consist in freedom from the necessity of being born again, so that some would consider it but a negative kind of enjoyment."

SAUG. As far as I observe, your summary is, for a brief one, tolerably correct; though as we have seen that some of our terms are misapprehended by Europeans, so perhaps I should make allowance for the inadequacy of your language to express the fulness of our sacred truth."

NOTES ON CHAPTER I.

THE Bauddhas have many sects, of which the Saugatas are one. Those who wish to test the assertions of the speaker in this dialogue, may compare them with the numerous citations in Colebrooke's Collected Works; with Eugène Burnouf's splendid and critical Analysis;

with Mr Hodgson's Account of the Nepaulese Buddhists, Trans. R.A.S., Vol. II.; with various notices in the Writings of Professor H. H. Wilson, especially in his edition of the Vishnu Purána; with Mr Turnour's Introduction to the Cingalese Mahawansa; with A. Rémusat's Mélanges Asiatiques, Vols. I. and V.; and with Lassen's Indische Alterthumskunde. Some of the above books may be considered as standing references for subsequent chapters in this volume. M. V. Cousin has somewhere described Buddhism as un nihilisme absolu; and Mr Hodgson as a deification of human reason; while Mr Turnour argues that it should be rather considered as a revelation; and again, Lassen finds no clear intimation of a Deity, he says, in the primitive Sutras. On the whole, however, the citations in Burnouf and Turnour, with the statements of Colebrooke, and the ingenious criticism of A. Rémusat, point to some such doctrine as that of the Saugata Muni in the text. For Bauddha history, Colonel (now Lieut.General) Sykes's paper in the Royal Asiatic Society's Journal has also a real, though a controversial sort of interest. His results cannot be considered probable, but his reasons are worth reading.