A History of Indian Literature v2.c19.s3.t2.152

v2.c19.s3.t2.152

It is certain that, in the two collections, there is a considerable number of poems which must be of later origin. When, for instance, a monk relates that, only because he offered a single flower, he wandered through the heavens in eighty hundred million years and finally reached Nirvāṇa, it indicates a Buddha-cult such as we do not see fully developed prior to the later Mahāyāna-texts And when a seven-year-old saint performs miracles, when a monk multiplies himself a thousand times and flies through the air, when ten thousand gods in Brahma's heaven receive Sāriputta and do him honour,³—passages containing these and such other miracles, can scarcely belong to the oldest stratum of Buddhist poetry and thought. The two poems⁴ which speak of the decay of the religion could only have originated centuries after the founding of the order and, as I believe, after the time of Aśoka. In the first poem the simple and pious life of the monks of former times is contrasted with the "present" life of the monks. "They, who once forsook wealth, wife and child, now do evil for the sake of a spoonful of rice," eat what they like, carry on profane conversations, and, in return for vanities which they offer the people, expect rich gifts, collect herbs like physicians, adorn themselves like courtesans, are crafty, cunning, hypocritical and so on. In the second poem, in reply to the question as to what the monks of the future will be like, Phussa draws a picture which seems to indicate a period of the complete decay of Buddhism. The monks, it is said, will be filled with anger and hatred, envy and obstinacy, they will not want to know anything of the truth, will distort the word of the Lord, will accept gold and silver, will despise the virtuous and true monks, monks and nuns will live without discipline, and so on—a remarkable picture, which cannot possibly date from an ancient period. The song of Isidāsī in the "Songs of the Lady Elders" (Therīg. 400-447) seems to belong to the same period of decay. Here it is regarded quite as a matter of course that a girl only becomes a nun in consequence of some misfortune. That a man should become a monk, discard his monk's robe in order to marry and return to the monastic life after a fortnight, seems to be taken from real life, but probably from the life of a time at which Buddhism had already passed through many a crisis. The last of the "Songs of the Lady Elders" (Therīg. 448-521), too, is either a later addition, or else a poem much distorted by later additions and overburdened with quotations.¹