Buddha: His Life, his Doctrine, his Order c7.s2.10

c7.s2.10

It appears that these two important occurrences, were materially influenced by a change of geographical scene. We spoke in the beginning of this sketch of the difference of culture in the western and eastern parts of the Gangetic tract: the holy land of the Veda, the home of Vedic poetry and Vedic speculation lies in the west: the east has acquired the Veda and the Brahmanical system from the intellectually more advanced west, but this foreign element was not wholly assimilated, converted into flesh and blood. A different air blows in the east; like the language which gives a preference to the weak *l* above the rough *r* of the west, the whole being is more relaxed; the Brahman is here less, the king and the people more. The movement, which had its origin in the west, here loses much of the fantastically abstruse which was in it, probably also something of the bold vastness and clear sequence of ideas, and thereby gains in popularity; questions, which it was chiefly the schools and the intellectual aristocracy of the nation had touched in the west, change in the east into vital questions for the people. Here men trouble themselves but little about the mystic universal One of Brahmanical speculation;* so much the more decidedly into the foreground come the ideas of the sorrow of every state of being, of moral retribution, of purification of the soul, of deliverance.