The Religions of India c19.135

c19.135

It will not be necessary, interesting as would be the comparison, to study the Buddhism of the North after this review of the older and simpler chronicles. In Hardy's *Manual of Buddhism* (p. 138 ff.) and Rockhill's *Life of Buddha* will be found the weird and silly legends of Northern Buddhism, together with a full sketch of Buddhistic ethics and ontology (Hardy, pp. 460, 387). The most famous of the Northern books, the Lotus of the Law and the Lalita Vistara, give a good idea of the extravagance and supernaturalism that already have begun to disfigure the purer faith. According to Kern, who has translated the former work again (after Burnouf), the whole intent of the Lotus is to represent Buddha as the supreme, eternal God. The works, treating of piety, philosophy, and philanthropy, contain ancient elements, but in general are of later form. To this age belongs also the whole collection of Jātakas, or ‘birth-stories,’ of the Buddhas that were before Gautama, some of the tales of which are historically important, as they have given rise to Western fables.¹ These birth-stories represent Buddha (often as Indra) as some god or mortal, and tell what he did in such or such a form. It is in a future form that, like Vishnu, who is to come in the avatar of Kalki, the next Buddha will appear as Maitreya, or the ‘Buddha of love.’² Some of the stories are very silly; some, again, are beautiful at heart, but ugly in their bizarre appearance. They are all, perhaps, later than our era.³