CHAPTER XI. RELIGION. I Doctrines of Buddhism. SUSPECT that modern Buddhism in all its forms represents the gross corruptions and adulterations of a simpler and truer philosophy emanating from remote ages, and that these corruptions and adulterations are mostly traceable to the craft of priests and the tyranny of princes, practising upon the ignorance, credulity, and prostration of the masses of the people. The present King of Siam, who must be deemed one of the very highest authorities as to the real character of Buddhism, contends that there is nothing in Buddhism properly understood which is repugnant to the facts established by astronomical and geological science. Such an opinion is, however, clearly incompatible with the teachings of modern Buddhist bonzes as to the cosmogony of the universe. There are some broad analogies between the Buddhism of China, Ceylon, Burmah, and Siam; but when we look into the various ramifications, refinements, and glosses which the various Buddhist teachers have introduced into different countries, the analogies and resemblances are lost in the huge mass of invention and fable which an imaginative tempera ment, ministered to by habits of seclusion and contemplation, has gathered round the original doctrine. The great outline is everywhere the same. The primary cause, by whatever name it may be called, is a sort of omnipotent and almighty Repose, whose original work was the Universe, launched into being at a period so remote as not to be distinguishable from a past eternity; and the machinery once constructed, rolls on, in virtue of its own elementary principles, as it has rolled on for infinite ages and will continue to roll, performing its functions, never deviating from the original law of its existence, and causing neither care nor concern to that pantheistic and spiritual essence called Phra-thain, whose complacency is not to be disturbed by the movement of the spheres, still less by the trifling events which agitate successive generations as they appear and disappear from the stage of being in an infinite variety of forms. Yet, from time to time, and in the course of millions upon millions of years, an emanation from the great Spirituality appears upon earth, the world being always in a state of pregnancy with these emanations. As regards mortal man, he is doomed to pass through countless changes of being, accompanied by a higher order of existence for virtuous deeds, or punished by a lower order of existence for faults and vices; but his ultimate supreme felicity is to be absorption or annihilation, the loss of the individual sensation, and absolute forgetfulness of all that can interfere with eternal, dreamless rest and peace. It will be seen that, in its prominent features, BUDDHISM-DOCTRINAL COLLECTION. 289 Buddhism bears a strong resemblance to Brahminism, and, in fact, to much of that Western philosophy which denies or doubts the active immortality of the soul, and which deems life to be as the lightning, or the electric spark, or any other transitory vitality, shining for a moment, and then lost for ever.* The Buddhism of the Siamese is to be found in a collection of sixty volumes, prepared, by order of a King of Ayuthia, in the year 2145 of the Sacred era of Siam (A.D. 1654). Its title is Trai-phum (The Three Places), and it was composed, by a synod of learned bonzes, from the sacred books. It would be profitless to wander over the waste which these collections display,-utterly vain the endeavour to drag forth historical truth from the masses of fiction, valuable knowledge from clouds of ignorance, or to separate a sound morality from the entanglements of so many childish and useless observances which are deemed merits, and so many unimportant acts which * This utter-absorption Buddhist beatification is in Chinese represented by characters meaning "heaven without thought," or annihilation of thought is heaven.” Abstraction from all thought, all care, all love, All hatred, and all sympathy-can this, The very feeblest dreamings which enshrine Nor weariness, but from the source of Might RELIGION. partake of the character of sin, and to which reference will be made hereafter in speaking of the duties of the bonzes or talapoins. But there are few questions connected with the earlier history and present condition of man more interesting than that of the Buddhistic belief and practice: for Buddhism is the most extensively professed religion of the world; it is the faith of twofifths of the whole human race; and if Brahminism be considered one of its branches or modifications, one-half of mankind may be classed as recognising the great outlines of the Buddhist dogmas. It would thus number as its votaries more than all the Christian, all the Mahomedan, all the other sects of the world united. Such a religion is well worthy of being studied. Its main feature, as above mentioned, is the recognition of the existence of a succession of manifestations of Deity in various shapes and at different periods of the world; that essential Deity can scarcely be said to be personalized, but is rather a calm and cold abstraction into which the human races are ultimately absorbed by the annihilation of all individuality. The mortal life of every human being is, as has been said, but one of a succession of stages through which he is passing,-a stage of reward or punishment, the consequence of the deeds of former forms of existence. The individual may be degraded hereafter if his conduct be unworthy and deserving future discipline, or elevated if he shall so discharge his duties as to entitle him to recompence. The great object of all religious ob HOUSEHOLD DEITIES. 291 servances is to become entitled to be lost in that vast infinity of vague beatitude where all separate and personal sensation shall terminate. The name of atheism can scarcely be properly appended to such a creed, it may be doubtful even if we can properly call it idolatrous; for I cannot discover that any Buddhist deems the images he worships are the real God whose auspices he seeks, or are anything more than a visible representation of one of those incarnations of the Deity by which His will has been revealed for the instruction and guidance of mankind. There is a class of household or tutelary divinities to whom most of the Siamese pay their adorations, erecting altars and offering incense to them in their houses and gardens. With these a sort of friendly and colloquial intimacy is preserved, under a somewhat vague notion of the value of their intercessions with superior agencies. That ignorant devotees would confound the representations of the Godhead with the Godhead himself, is but the natural result of a low civilization, and of a craving after some visible and tangible evidence, something satisfactory to the senses, in the relations. between the created and the Great Cause of creation. Christianity, of all the forms of religious belief, is undoubtedly that which best lends itself to the great law of progress and the development of mind, and in this perhaps will be found the best evidence of its substantial truth; for, after all, this will be the ultimate test, and the sole security for the final triumph of religious teachings, |