On the Origin of the Indian Brahma Alphabet c5.76

c5.76

This discovery makes the question regarding the exact date, at which the loan may have been effected, a matter of minor importance. The chief point for consideration is, if in effecting the loan the Buddhist monks altered much and especially, if the description of Indian life which the Jātakas contain, has been made to agree with that of the times when Buddhism had become a power in India. The answer can only be, that there are remarkably few traces of Buddhism in these stories and that they do not describe the condition of India in the third or fourth century B. C., but an older one. Peculiarly Buddhistic are only the introduction of the future Buddha into most tales, who invariably is identified with the wisest and best of the actors, occasional spiteful remarks against the Vedic animal sacrifices and against the deified national heroes, whom the orthodox sects worshipped, and intentional perversions of the legends told of them. The doctrine of the power of the Karman, the moral maxims and the few religious observances such as the sanctification of the Uposatha or Parvan days, which the stories inculcate, are common to the Buddhists and to all other Indian religions, whether orthodox or heterodox. [19] With respect to these there was not much to change, except perhaps some of the technical expressions.