The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c23.28

c23.28

The preacher looked to men’s hearts rather than to their outward acts, and besought his congregation, the inhabitants of a vast empire, to cultivate the virtues of ‘compassion, liberality, truth, purity, gentleness, and saintliness’. He hoped that the growth of piety would be promoted by the imperial regulations devised for that purpose; but, while enforcing those regulations with all the power of an autocrat, he relied more upon the meditations of individuals, stimulated by his teaching. ‘Of these two means,’ he says, ‘pious regulations are of small account, whereas meditation is of greater value.’²