The History of Buddhist Thought c26.75

c26.75

The one place where Buddhism has remained is Nepal, Buddha’s native land. When Hodgson during his residence in Nepal (1833–1843) was sending manuscripts to Burnouf, he also tried to obtain information about the doctrine from the Buddhists of the country. He set a questionnaire, arranged according to his own ideas of theology, often with leading questions, such as “ how many avatāras of Buddha have there been?" (It was thus that he got the answer that the last seven Buddhas were avatāras.) "What is the motive of your good acts—the love of God—the fear of God—or the desire of prospering in the world?" It was no wonder that the answers he obtained seemed to him "a sad jumble of cloudy metaphysics", and that Burnouf was surprised that he could not discover in his manuscripts anything like the "Bauddha system" as described by Hodgson. Yet scholars continue to use his terms, some of which, like *dhyāni-buddha*, have never been found outside his writings.