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Read Ebook: The Gases of the Atmosphere: The History of Their Discovery by Ramsay William
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TR?BNER'S ORIENTAL SERIES.
THE LIFE OR LEGEND OF
With Annotations.
THE WAYS TO NEIBBAN, AND NOTICE ON THE PHONGYIES OR BURMESE MONKS.
BY THE RIGHT REVEREND P. BIGANDET, BISHOP OF RAMATHA, VICAR APOSTOLIC OF AVA AND PEGU
Fourth Edition.
LONDON: KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TR?BNER & CO. LTD. DRYDEN HOUSE, GERRARD STREET, W. 1911.
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh
ADVERTISEMENT TO THIRD EDITION.
The origin of the present work dates back to the years 1852, 1853, 1854, and 1855, when portions of it appeared in the "Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia," edited by J. R. Logan of Penang . The first complete edition was printed at Rangoon in Burmah in 1858, and a second, much enlarged, at the same place in 1866.
Very few copies of either of these editions reached Europe, and both are entirely out of print. The present third edition--a faithful reprint of the second--issued, with Bishop Bigandet's sanction, for the benefit of European and American scholars and readers, will, therefore, it is hoped, be gladly received.
Buddhism and Gautama, the faith and its founder, whose followers are between four and five hundred millions of the human race, were comparatively unknown in Europe but a generation ago, and yet this great faith had continued for four and twenty centuries to spread over the vast lands of the East, taking deep and enduring root in all, from Bhotan, Nepaul, and Ceylon, over Further India to China Proper, Mongolia, Mantchooria, Tibet, and Japan.
Buddhism, as it is found in Burmah, has a particular claim to the attention of a diligent and attentive observer. We there have that religious creed or system as pure from adulteration as it can be after a lapse of so many centuries. Philosophy never flourished in Burmah, and, therefore, never modified the religious systems of the country. Hinduism never exercised any influence on the banks of the Irrawaddy. Chinese and Burmese have often met on battlefields, but the influence of the Middle Kingdom has never established itself in Burmah. In other words, Chinese Buddhism has never been able to penetrate into the customs and manners of the people, and has not attempted to communicate its own religion to its southern neighbours. It would seem that the true form of Buddhism is to be found in Burmah, and that a knowledge of that system can only be arrived at by the study of the religious books of Burmah, and by attentively observing the religious practices and ceremonies of the people. This is what Bishop Bigandet has endeavoured to do throughout his work.
Mr. Alabaster, the author of a very popular work on Siamese Buddhism, testifies to the great value of the Bishop's work, which, he remarks, is in one sense complete, for whereas the Siamese manuscript concludes with the attainment of omniscience, the Bishop had materials which enabled him to continue the story to the death of Nirwana . He might have added that the work modestly entitled "Life of Gaudama" is a complete exposition of the great system of Eastern Asia. The metaphysical part, which is the very essence of the system, has received a due consideration, and the body of religious has been fully described. Moreover, the foot-notes help the ordinary reader in understanding clearly the text of the Legend.
Professor Albrecht Weber speaks also of the Bishop's work in terms of high commendation , whilst a still further testimony is accorded to its importance in the recent appearance of a French translation by Lieutenant Victor Gauvain.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
Whether Buddhism be viewed in its extent and diffusion, or in the complex nature of its doctrines, it claims the serious attention of every inquiring mind.
In our own days it is, under different forms, the creed prevailing in Nepaul, Thibet, Mongolia, Corea, China, the Japanese Archipelago, Anam, Cambodia, Siam, the Shan States, Burmah, Arracan, and Ceylon. Its sway extends over nearly one-fourth of the human race.
Though based upon capital and revolting errors, Buddhism teaches a surprising number of the finest precepts and purest moral truths. From the abyss of its almost unfathomable darkness it sends forth rays of the brightest hue.
To the reflecting mind, the study of this religious system becomes the study of the history of one of the greatest religious enterprises that has ever been undertaken to elevate our nature above its low level, by uprooting the passions of the heart and dispelling the errors of the mind. A serious observer sees at a glance the dark and humiliating picture of the sad and barren results of the greatest and mightiest efforts of human wisdom, in its endeavours to find out the real cause of all human miseries, and to provide the remedies to cure the moral distempers to which our nature is subject. The fact of man's wretched and fallen condition was clearly perceived by the Buddhist philosopher, but he failed in his attempts to help man out of the difficulties which encompass him in all directions, and to bring him back to the path of truth and salvation. The efforts begun on the banks of the Ganges at an early period, and carried on with the greatest ardour and perseverance, have proved as abortive as those made at a later period throughout Greece and Italy by the greatest and brightest geniuses of antiquity. What a grand and irresistible demonstration both of the absolute inability of man to rescue from evil and attain good, and of the indispensable necessity of divine interference to help him in accomplishing that twofold achievement!
Buddhism, such as we find it in Burmah, appears to have retained, to a great extent, its original character and primitive genuineness, exhibiting, as it does, the most correct forms and features of that Protean creed. At the epoch the Burmans left the northern valleys and settled in the country they now inhabit, they were a half-civilised Mongolian tribe, with no kind of worship, except a sort of geniolatry, much similar to what we see now existing among the various tribes bordering on Burmah. They were in the same condition when the first Buddhist missionaries arrived among them. Deposited in this almost virginal soil, the seed of Buddhism grew up freely without encountering any obstacle to check its growth.
Philosophy, which, in its too often erratic rambles in search of truth, changes, corrects, improves, destroys, and, in numberless ways, modifies all that it meets, never flourished in these parts; and, therefore, did not work on the religious institutions, which accordingly have remained up to this day nearly the same as they were when first imported into Burmah. The free discussion of religious and moral subjects, which constituted the very life of the Indian schools, and begat so many various, incoherent, and contradictory opinions on the most essential points of religion and philosophy, is the sign of an advanced state of civilisation, such as does not appear to have ever existed on the banks of the Irrawaddy.
Owing to its geographical position, and perhaps, also, to political causes, Burmah has ever remained out of the reach of Hindu influence, which in Nepaul has coloured Buddhism with Hindu myths, and habited it in gross forms of idolatry. In China, where there already subsisted at the time of the arrival of the preachers of the new doctrine the worship of heroes and ancestors, Buddhism, like an immense parasitic plant, extended itself all over the institutions which it covered rather than destroyed, allowing the ancient forms to subsist under the disguise it afforded them. But such was not the state of Burmah when visited by the first heralds of Buddhism.
The epoch of the introduction of Buddhism in Burmah has hitherto been a matter of conjecture. According to Burmese annals, Boudha-gautha, at the end of the fourth century of our era, brought from Ceylon a copy of the scriptures, and did for Burmah what Fa-Hian, the Chinese pilgrim, accomplished a few years afterwards in India and Ceylon for the benefit of his country. But Burmans maintain that they were followers of Buddha long before that epoch. If an inference may be drawn from analogy, it is probable that they are right in their assertion. China is fully as far from the ancient seat of Buddhism as Burmah. Yet it appears from the Chinese annals that the doctrines of the Indian philosopher were already propagated in some parts of that empire in the middle of the first century of our era, and probably at an earlier date. There is no improbability in concluding that, at least at the same time, Buddhist missionaries had penetrated into this country to propagate their tenets. According to Buddhistic annals, it was after the holding of the 3d Council, 236 after Gaudama's death, 207 B.C., that two missionaries carried religion to Thaton, the ruins of which are still to be seen between the mouths of the Tsitang and Salween rivers, and established Buddhism in Pegu. Be that as it may, we know, from the magnificent Buddhist monuments of Pagan, that that religion had reached, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a degree of splendour that has never since been equalled.
The Buddhist scriptures are divided into three great parts, the Thoots or instructions, the Wini or discipline, and the Abidama or metaphysics. Agreeably to this division, the matter of the following pages is arranged under three heads. The Life of Buddha, with some portions of his preaching, will convey notions of his principal teachings and doctrines. It is accompanied with copious annotations intended to explain the text, and to convey detailed notices of the system of Buddhism in general, and particularly as it is found existing in Burmah. We have added a few small dzats, or accounts of some of the former existences of Gaudama, and the summary of two large ones.
In the Notice on the Phongyies will be found the chief points of discipline fully explained and developed. We have endeavoured to render as complete as possible the account of the Buddhist Religious, or Phongyies. It is an exposition and practical illustration of the highest results that can be obtained under the influence of the doctrines of the Indian philosopher.
In the Ways to Neibban an attempt has been made to set forth and unfold the chief points of metaphysics upon which hinges the whole religious system. We confess that the summary of metaphysics is rather concise. We were reluctant to proceed too far in this subject, which, to the generality of readers, is an uninviting one.
A suggestion from Captain H. Hopkinson, Commissioner of the Martaban and Tenasserim Provinces, has induced us to add a few remarks on the names and situations of the principal towns and countries mentioned in the Legend, with the view of identifying them with modern sites and places.
It is hardly necessary to state here that the writer, when he undertook this work, had no other object in view than that of merely expounding the religious system of Buddhism as it is, explaining its doctrines and practices as correctly as it was in his power to do, regardless of their merits and demerits. His information has been derived from the perusal of the religious books of the Burmans, and from frequent conversations on religion, during several years, with the bes
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