Yet the

much courage, confidence, and self-abnegation. principles on which these ethics are based are false; and the errors they contain are at least equal to the virtues they propagate.

We will return later to the journeyings at Hiouen-Thsang, but will now pass on to the metaphysical side of Buddhism.

CHAPTER IV.

Metaphysics of Buddhism, or Abhidharma. Transmigration, its unlimited compass from man to inert matter. Obscurity of the Buddhist doctrine on the origin of transmigration. Explanation of human destiny by the Connecting Chain of the twelve reciprocal Causes. Theory of Nirvana, or Eternal Salvation by annihilation. The Dhyana.

ALTHOUGH Şakya-muni devoted himself more to the practical side of religion, it is impossible to doubt that he had also a theory. He had been a pupil of the Brahmans, and the reflective tendency of his own genius led him to seek for the essential basis of his doctrines. He did not, it is true, positively separate metaphysics from ethics, but the latter naturally obliged him to seek for higher principles, and in his teaching he joins to the precepts he gives on the discipline of life, axioms which explain and justify these precepts. Hence, in the very first Council, his disciples made, under the name of Abhidharma, a collection of his metaphysical axioms, one of the Three Baskets (Tripitaka), in which the canonical books were divided.

The work that contains more particularly Buddhist metaphysics is called the Pradjna-Pāramitā, that is the Perfection. of Wisdom'. It is the first of the nine Dharmas or Nepalese

1 The Pradjna-Pāramitā was probably written three or four hundred years after Buddha. It was the text on which the Madhyamikas, a school founded by the famous Nagardjuna, built their doctrines a hundred and fifty years before the Christian era. Burnouf gives a specimen of this compilation in eight thousand paragraphs, which he has almost all translated, and which he had compared with a hundred thousand articles. This comparison had betrayed no difference of

canonical books. There were three principal compilations: one in a hundred thousand, another in twenty-five thousand, and the last in eight thousand paragraphs; the most developed merely add words to the more concise explanation of the others. In fact, if these different compilations contain fresh deductions, they do not offer a single new principle, and in order to become acquainted with the real metaphysics of Şakya-muni, we must have recourse to the simple Sūtras, as they have much more affinity with his teaching.

We must expect to find in Sakya-muni's metaphysics, as in his ethics, more axioms than demonstrations; more dogmas than systematic and exact developments. But it is necessary that we should bear in mind that we are treating of India, and not of Greece or modern Europe. The doctrines are no less important, but the form in which they are expressed is thoroughly unscientific, even when we endeavour to classify them.

The first theory of Buddhist metaphysics, borrowed indeed from Brahmanism', is that of transmigration. Before his present existence here on earth, man has already gone through a multitude of varied existences; if he does not make the most strenuous efforts, he will probably be obliged to go through a still larger number of lives; and his constant and anxious attention must be devoted to escaping from the fatal law to which his birth has subjected him. Life is but a long series of pain and misery; salvation consists in avoiding existence. Such is, in the whole of the Indian world, from whatever side it is viewed and at whatever epoch it is taken, the universal belief professed by Brahmans and Buddhists of

doctrine. Introd. à l'Hist. du Bouddh. Indien, p. 465. According to Tibetan tradition the Pradjnā-Pāramitā was expounded by Ṣākya-muni himself sixteen years after he became Buddha, that is when he was fifty-one years of age.

See in the Laws of Manu the complete theory of transmigration. Vol. xii, Slokas 39, &c.

every sect, every shade, and every period. The Buddha accepts this general opinion, no one indeed raising any possible objection to it; and the only originality he shows on this point consists in the new means of deliverance he offers to his adherents. But he accepts the principle itself; he accepts without discussion.

Further on we will examine the value of this principle, or rather the terrible consequences it has produced among the people who adopted it. At present we will simply point out its all-powerful and absolutely undisputed domination. We have shown how this monstrous doctrine was ignored in the Vedas', and seen in this silence a proof of the greater purity of Vedic faith. Transmigration is a doctrine invented by the Brahmans, and can be traced back to the origin of the society and religion they founded. Ṣākyamuni, therefore, merely conformed to the current idea in adopting it.

How far did this idea of transmigration extend? Can man, after losing his present form, take again a human form only? Can he equally assume a superior form, or receive at a lower grade that of an animal? Can he even descend lower than the animal, and according to his actions in this world become one of those forms in which life disappears, and nothing but mere existence remains, in its most rudimentary and vague condition? It would indeed, as far as orthodox Brahmans are concerned, be difficult to answer these questions, all that is known of their literature showing no precise limit set to their conception of transmigration 2.

As regards the Buddhists, the answer is decisive: the idea

1 Journal des Savants, Feb., 1854, p. 113; April, 1854, p. 212.

? For transmigration according to the Kapila system, see B. St. Hilaire, Premier Memoire sur le Sankhya; Mémoires de l'Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, tome viii. p. 455.

of transmigration extends to the uttermost limits; it embraces all, from the Bodhisatwa who becomes a perfect Buddha, from man to inert matter.

A being can transmigrate into any form whatever without exception, and according to his good or bad actions he will pass to the highest or the lowest state. The texts are so numerous and so positive that there can be no doubt on the subject, however extravagant this idea may appear to us.

It will be remembered that, according to the Lalita-vistāra legend, the Bodhisatwa entered his mother's right side in the form of a young white elephant armed with six tusks; and that when on the point of becoming a perfectly enlightened Buddha, all the innumerable births, the incalculable hundreds of thousands of kotis1 of incarnations he has already gone through before attaining this one, which is to be his last, pass through his mind. In other legends the Buddha relates the transformations he has undergone, or those that have been undergone by the personages whose good or ill fortune he desires to explain. Hiouen-Thsang saw at Benāres, many splendid stūpas built on the spots where the Buddha had in divers existences assumed the form of an elephant, a bird, a stag, &c.

The Sinhalese Jātakas, which number five hundred and fifty, contain as many accounts of the different births of the Bodhisatwa. The Sinhalese have even been very reasonable in limiting themselves to this number; for it is a general belief that the Buddha went through all the existences of the earth, sea, and air, as well as all the conditions of human life;

A koti is equivalent to 10,000,000.

2 A great difference exists between transmigration and metempsychosis as understood by the Pythagoreans; these latter confined it to the animal series. See H. Ritter, History of Ancient Philosophy; and Aristotle, Traité de l'Âme, vol. i. ch. iii. of Barthélemy St. Hilaire's

translation.