History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c10.4

v1.c10.4

These two instances will suffice to show how the liberality of kings and grandees had contributed to the accumulation of riches in temples both of the Hindus and the Buddhists and how these in later times became the objects of the cupidity of impious and irreligious brigands. An image is after all an emblem of a higher original but when the sense of its being an image is lost and it becomes truly the god himself the growth of pious ignorance is unavoidable. Not only riches accumulate in temples by the adornment of idols, but superstitious beliefs also accumulate touching their miraculous powers. In the times of which we are writing, Hindus and Buddhists appear to have vied with each other in their superstitious beliefs about the potency of images. Superstition is the bane of every religion and Buddhism was not an exception to the rule. As Buddhism had started with the denial of God it had also started with the denial of all superstitious beliefs. But with the installation of Buddha as the supreme god, the personal worship offered to him was carried to such excess, that bits of his bones and flesh, the parings of his nails and portions of his hair were greedily taken hold of and enshrined in temples and Stūpas which gradually came to be invested with miraculons power. The Records of the travels of Hiuen Tsang are full of stories of the wondrous powers possessed by Buddha's images, and his relics or Śāriras as they were called. It creates a smile in the reader to see that the same Hiuen Tsang who could laugh at the credulity* of the Hindus in believing that the waters of the Ganges (at Hardwar) could save the souls of the dead by mere fretting them and raising the waves or by throwing their bones into it, (Watters Vol. I p. 319), could believe that the Śāriras of Buddha enshrined in a tower near the great Nālandā monastery in Magadha could emit brilliant light at night. He relates having himself seen "the relic tower bright and effulgent as the sun, while from its summit proceeded a lambent flame of five colours reaching to the sky. Heaven and earth were flooded with light, the moon and the stars were no longer seen and a subtle perfume seemed to pervade the precincts" (Life p. 157). Personal adoration can go no further !!!