sity of his mission for procuring the salvation, in a Buddhist sense, of man. The role of Buddha, from beginning to end, is that of a deliverer, who preaches a law designed to procure to man the deliverance from all the miseries he is labouring under. By an inexplicable and deplorable eccentricity, the pretended saviour, after having taught man the way to deliver himself from the tyranny of his passions, leads him, after all, into the bottomless gulf of total annihilation.""

That Buddha was an atheist, at least in one sense of the word, cannot be denied, but whether he believed in a total annihilation of the soul as the highest goal of religion, is a different question. The gods whom he found worshipped by the multitude, were the gods of the Vedas and the Brahmanas, such as Indra, Agni, and Yama, and in the divinity of such deities, Buddha certainly did not believe. He never argues against their existence; on the contrary, he treats the old gods as superhuman beings, and promises his followers who have not yet reached the highest knowledge, but have acquired merit by a virtuous life, that after death they shall be born again in the world of the gods, and enjoy divine bliss in company with these deities. Similarly he threatens the wicked that after death they shall meet with their punishment in the subterranean abodes and hells, where Asuras, Sarpas, Pretas, and other spirits dwell. The belief in these beings was so firmly rooted in the popular belief and language that even the founder of a new religion could not have dared to reason them away, and there was so little in the doctrine of Buddha that appealed to the senses or lent itself to artistic representation, whether in painting or sculpture, that nothing remained to Buddhist artists

but to fall back for their own purposes on the old mythology, or at least on the popular superstition, the fairy and snake-tales of the people.1

The gods, in general, are frequently mentioned in the Dhammapada:

V. 177. The uncharitable do not go to the world of the gods.

V. 224. Speak the truth, do not yield to anger; give, if thou art asked, from the little thou hast; by those steps thou wilt go near the gods.

V. 417. He who, after leaving all bondage to men, has risen above all bondage to the gods, him I call indeed a Brâhmana.

In vv. 44 and 45 three worlds are mentioned, the earth, the world of Yama (the lord of the departed), and the world of the gods; and in v. 126 we find hell (niraya), earth, heaven (svarga), and Nirvâna.

In v. 56 it is said that the odour of excellent

1 This may be seen from the curious ornamentations of Buddhist temples, some of which were lately published by Mr. Fergusson. Those of the Sanchi tope are taken from drawings executed for the late East-India Company by Lieutenant (now Lieut.Colonel) Maisey, and from photographs by Lieutenant Waterhouse; those of the Amravatî tope are photographed from the sculptured slabs sent home by Colonel Mackenzie, formerly exhibited in the Museum of the East-India Company, and from another valuable collection sent home by Sir Walter Elliot. Architectural evidence is supposed to fix the date of the Sanchi topes from about 250-100 B.C.; that of the gateways in the first century. A.D.; while the date of the Amravatî buildings is referred to the fourth century A.D. No one would venture to doubt Mr. Fergusson's authority within the sphere of architectural chronology, but we want something more than mere affirmation when he says (p. 56), "that the earliest of the (Buddhist) scriptures we have were not reduced to writing in their present form before the fifth century after Christ."

people rises up to the gods; in vv. 94 and 181, that the gods envy him whose senses have been subdued; in v. 366, that they praise a Bhikshu who is contented, pure, and not slothful (cf. v. 230); in v. 224, that good people go near the gods; in v. 236, that a man who is free from guilt will enter into the heavenly world of the elect (the ariya); while in v. 187 we read of heavenly pleasures that fail to satisfy the disciples of Buddha.

Individual deities, too, are mentioned. Of Indra, who is called Maghavan, it is said in v. 30, that by perseverance he rose to the lordship of the gods.1 In vv. 107 and 392 the worship of Agni, or fire, is spoken of as established among the Brahmans. Yama, as the lord of the departed, occurs in vv. 44, 237, and he seems to be the same as Makkurâga, the king of death, mentioned in vv. 45, 170. The men or messengers of Yama are spoken of in v. 235; death itself is represented as Antaka, vv. 48, 288, or as Makku; in v. 46 the king of death (makkurâga) is mentioned together with Mâra; in v. 48 he seems to be identified with Mâra, the tempter (v. 48, note).

This Mâra, the tempter, the great antagonist of Buddha, as well as of his followers, is a very important personage in the Buddhist scriptures. He is in many places the representative of evil, the evil spirit, or, in Christian terminology, the devil, conquered by Buddha, but not destroyed by him. In the Dhammapada his character is less mythological than in other Buddhist writings. His retinue is, however, mentioned (v. 175), and his flower-pointed arrow (v. 46) reminds

There is a curious story of Buddha dividing his honours with Sakka (Sakra) or Indra on p. 162 of the Parables.

one of the Hindu god of love. We read that Mâra will overcome the careless, but not the faithful (vv. 7, 8, 57); that men try to escape from his dominion (v. 34), and his snares (vv. 37, 276, 350); that he should be attacked with the weapon of knowledge (v. 40); that the wise, who have conquered him, are led out of this world (v. 175). In vv. 104 and 105 we find a curious climax, if it is intended as such, from a god to a Gandharva, thence to Mâra, and finally to Brahman, all of whom are represented as powerless against a man who has conquered himself. In v. 230, too, Brahman is mentioned, and, as it would seem, as a being superior to the gods.

But although these gods and demons were recognized in the religion of Buddha, and had palaces, gardens, and courts assigned to them, hardly inferior to those which they possessed under the old régime, they were deprived of all their sovereign rights. Although, according to the Buddhists, the worlds of the gods last for millions of years, they must perish at the end of every kalpa with the gods and with the spirits who, in the circle of births, have raised themselves to the world of the gods. Indeed, the reorganization of the spirit-world in the hands of Buddha goes further still. Already before Buddha, the Brahmans had left the low stand-point of mythological polytheism, and had risen to the conception of the Brahman, as the absolute divine, or super-divine being. To this Brahman also, who, in the Dhammapada, already appears as superior to the gods, a place is assigned in the Buddhist demonology. Over and above the world of the gods with its six paradises, the sixteen Brahma-worlds are erected,-worlds, not to be attained through virtue,

and piety only, but through inner contemplation, through knowledge and enlightenment.

The dwellers in these Brahma-worlds are more than gods; they are spiritual beings, without body, without weight, without desires. Nay, even this is not sufficient, and as the Brahmans had imagined a higher Brahman, without form and without suffering (tato yad uttarataram tad arûpam anâmayam, Svet. Up. 3, 10), the Buddhists too, in their ideal dreams, imagined four other worlds towering high above the worlds of Brahman, which they call Arûpa, the worlds of the Formless. All these worlds are open to man, after he has divested himself of all that is human, and numberless beings are constantly ascending and descending in the circle of time, according to the works they have performed, and according to the truths they have discovered. But in all these worlds the law of change prevails; in none is there exemption from birth, age, and death. The world of the gods will perish like that of men; the world of Brahman will vanish like that of the gods; nay, even the world of the Formless will not last for ever; but the Buddha, the enlightened and truly free, stands higher, and will not be affected or disturbed by the collapse of the universe, Si fractus illabatur orbis, impavidum ferient ruinæ.

Here, however, we meet with a vein of irony, which one would hardly have expected in Buddha. Gods and devils he has located, to all mythological and philosophical acquisitions of the past he had done justice as far as possible. Even fabulous beings, such as Nâgas, Gandharvas, and Garudas, had escaped the process of dissolution and sublimization which was to reach them later at the hands of comparative mytho