Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch Volume III Part 26

In every monastery the buildings, images and monks obviously bear the stamp of the country. Yet nearly all the doctrines and most of the usages have Indian parallels. The ritual has its counterpart in what I-Ching describes as seen by himself in his Indian travels. China has added the idea of _fng-shui_, and has modified architectural forms.

For instance the many-storeyed paG.o.da is an elongation of the stupa[582]. So, too, in ceremonial, the great prominence given to funeral rites and many superst.i.tious details are Chinese, yet, as I have often mentioned in this work, rites on behalf of the dead were tolerated by early Buddhism. The curious mingling of religious services with theatrical pagents which Hsan Chuang witnessed at Allahabad in the reign of Harsha, has its modest parallel to-day in many popular festivals.

The numerous images which crowd a Chinese temple, the four kings, Arhats and Bodhisattvas, though of unfamiliar appearance to the Indian student, are Indian in origin. A few Taoist deities may have side chapels, but they are not among the princ.i.p.al objects of wors.h.i.+p. The greater part of the Chinese Tripitaka is a translation from the Sanskrit and the Chinese works (only 194 against 1467 translations) are chiefly exegetical. Thus, though Chinese bonzes countenance native superst.i.tions and gladly undertake to deal with all the G.o.ds and devils of the land, yet in its doctrine, literature, and even in many externals their Buddhism remains an Indian importation. If we seek in it for anything truly Chinese, it is to be found not in the const.i.tuents, but in the atmosphere, which, like a breeze from a mountain monastery sometimes freshens the gilded shrines and libraries of verbose sutras. It is the native spirit of the Far East which finds expression in the hill-side hermit's sense of freedom and in dark sayings such as _Buddhism is the oak-tree in my garden_. Every free and pure heart can become a Buddha, but also is one with the life of birds and flowers. Both the love of nature[583] and the belief that men can become divine can easily be paralleled in Indian texts, but they were not, I think, imported into China, and joy in natural beauty and sympathy with wild life are much more prominent in Chinese than in Indian art.

Is then Buddhist doctrine, as opposed to the superst.i.tions tolerated by Buddhism, something exotic and without influence on the national life? That also is not true. The reader will perceive from what has gone before that if he asks for statistics of Buddhism in China, the answer must be, in the Buddha's own phrase, that the question is not properly put. It is incorrect to describe China as a Buddhist country.

We may say that it contains so many million Mohammedans or Christians, because these creeds are definite and exclusive. We cannot quote similar figures for Buddhism or Confucianism. Yet a.s.suredly Buddhism has been a great power in China, as great perhaps as Christianity in Europe, if we remember how much is owed by European art, literature, law and science to non-Christian sources. The Chinese language is full of Buddhist phraseology[584], not only in literature but in popular songs and proverbs and an inspection of such entries in a Chinese dictionary as _Fo_ (Buddha), _Kuan Yin_, _Ho Shang_ (monk)[585] will show how large and not altogether flattering a part they play in popular speech.

Popular literature bears the same testimony. It is true that in what are esteemed the higher walks of letters Buddhism has little place.

The quotations and allusions which play there so prominent a part are taken from the cla.s.sics and Confucianism can claim as its own the historical, lexicographical and critical[586] works which are the solid and somewhat heavy glory of Chinese literature. But its lighter and less cultivated blossoms, such as novels, fairy stories and poetry, are predominantly Buddhist or Taoist in inspiration. This may be easily verified by a perusal of such works as the _Dream of the Red Chamber_, _Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio_, and Wieger's _Folk Lore Chinois Moderne_. The same is true in general of the great Chinese poets, many of whom did not conceal that (in a poetic and unascetic fas.h.i.+on) they were attached to Buddhism.

It may be asked if the inspiration is not Taoist in the main rather than Buddhist. Side by side with ethics and ceremony, a native stream of bold and weird imagination has never ceased to flow in China and there was no need to import tales of the Genii, immortal saints and vampire beauties. But when any coherency unites these ideas of the supernatural, that I think is the work of Buddhism and so far as Taoism itself has any coherency it is an imitation of Buddhism. Thus the idea of metempsychosis as one of many pa.s.sing fancies may be indigenous to China but its prevalence in popular thought and language is undoubtedly due to Buddhism, for Taoism and Confucianism have nothing definite to say as to the state of the dead.

Much the same story of Buddhist influence is told by Chinese art, especially painting and sculpture. Here too Taoism is by no means excluded: it may be said to represent the artistic side of the Chinese mind, as Confucianism represents the political. But it is impossible to mistake the significance of chronology. As soon as Buddhism was well established in China, art entered on a new phase which culminated in the masterpieces of the T'ang and Sung[587].

Buddhism did not introduce painting into China or even perfect a rudimentary art. The celebrated roll of Ku K'ai-chih[588] shows no trace of Indian influence and presupposes a long artistic tradition.

But Mahayanist Buddhism brought across Central Asia new shapes and motives. Some of its imports were of doubtful artistic value, such as figures with many limbs and eyes, but with them came ideas which enriched Chinese art with new dramatic power, pa.s.sion and solemnity.

Taoism dealt with other worlds but they were gardens of the Hesperides, inhabited by immortal wizards and fairy queens, not those disquieting regions where the soul receives the reward of its deeds.

But now the art of Central Asia showed Chinese painters something new; saints preaching the law with a gesture of authority and deities of infinite compa.s.sion inviting suppliants to approach their thrones. And with them came the dramatic story of Gotama's life and all the legends of the Jatakas.

This clearly is not Taoism, but when the era of great art and literature begins, any distinction between the two creeds, except for theological purposes, becomes artificial, for Taoism borrowed many externals of Buddhism, and Buddhism, while not abandoning its austere and emaciated saints, also accepted the Taoist ideal of the careless wandering hermit, friend of mountain pines and deer. Wei Hsieh[589]

who lived under the Chin dynasty, when the strength of Buddhism was beginning to be felt, is considered by Chinese critics as the earliest of the great painters and is said to have excelled in both Buddhist and Taoist subjects. The same may be said of the most eminent names, such as Ku K'ai-chih and Wu Tao-tzu[590], and we may also remember that Italian artists painted the birth of Venus and the origin of the milky way as well as Annunciations and a.s.sumptions, without any hint that one incident was less true than another. Buddhism not only provided subjects like the death of the Buddha and Kuan Yin, the G.o.ddess of Mercy, which hold in Chinese art the same place as the Crucifixion and the Madonna in Europe, and generation after generation have stimulated the n.o.blest efforts of the best painters. It also offered a creed and ideals suited to the artistic temperament: peace and beauty reigned in its monasteries: its doctrine that life is one and continuous is reflected in that love of nature, that sympathetic understanding of plants and animals, that intimate union of sentiment with landscape which marks the best Chinese pictures.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 557: For Chinese Buddhism see especially Johnston, _Chinese Buddhism_, 1913 (cited as Johnston). Much information about the popular side of Buddhism and Taoism nay be found in _Recherches sur les superst.i.tions en Chine_ par le Pre Henri Dor, 10 vols.

1911-1916, Shanghai (cited as Dor).]

[Footnote 558: A curious instance of deification is mentioned in _Muson_, 1914, p. 61. It appears that several deceased Jesuits have been deified. For a recent instance of deification in 1913 see Dor, X. p. 753.]

[Footnote 559: The spirits called San Kuan [Chinese: ] or San Yan [Chinese: ] are a good instance of Chinese deities. The words mean Three Agents or Principles who strictly speaking have no names: (_a_) Originally they appear to represent Heaven, Earth and Water. (_b_) Then they stand for three periods of the year and the astrological influences which rule each, (_c_) As Agents, and more or less a.n.a.logous to human personalities, Heaven gives happiness, Earth pardons sins and Water delivers from misfortune. _(d)_They are identified with the ancient Emperors Yao, Shun, Y. (_e_) They are also identified with three Censors under the Emperor Li-w.a.n.g, B.C.

878-841.]

[Footnote 560: [Chinese: ] Hsan Chuang's own account of his travels bears the slightly different t.i.tle of Hsi-Y-Chi. [Chinese: ] The work noticed here is attributed to Chiu Ch'ang Ch'un, a Taoist priest of the thirteenth century. It is said to be the Buddhist book most widely read in Korea where it is printed in the popular script. An abridged English translation has been published by T. Richard under the t.i.tle of _A Mission to Heaven_.]

[Footnote 561: I am writing immediately after the abolition of the Imperial Government (1912), and what I say naturally refers to a state of things which is pa.s.sing away. But it is too soon to say how the new regime will affect religion. There is an old saying that China is supported by the three religions as a tripod by three legs.]

[Footnote 562: [Chinese: ] strictly speaking the t.i.tle of his reign 1573-1620.]

[Footnote 563: Compare _a.n.a.l_. IX. 1 and xiv. 38. 2. See also _Doctrine of the Mean_, chap, xvi, for more positive views about spirits.]

[Footnote 564: [Chinese: ] and [Chinese: ] See De Groot, "Origins of the Taoist Church" in _Trans. Third Congress Hist. Relig_. 1908.]

[Footnote 565: Chang Yan-hs, who held office in 1912, was deprived of his t.i.tles by the Republican Government. In 1914 pet.i.tions were presented for their restoration, but I do not know with what result.

See _Peking Daily News_, September 5th, 1914.]

[Footnote 566: Something similar may be seen in Mormonism where angels and legends have been invented by individual fancy without any background of tradition.]

[Footnote 567: [Chinese: ]]

[Footnote 568: [Chinese: ]]

[Footnote 569: The sixth neid would seem to a Chinese quite a natural description of the next world. In it we have Elysium, Tartarus, transmigration of souls, souls who can find no resting place because their bodies are unburied, and phantoms showing still the wounds which their bodies received in life. Nor is there any attempt to harmonize these discordant ideas.]

[Footnote 570: [Chinese: ] A somewhat similar pseudo-science called vatthu-vijj is condemned in the Pali scriptures. _E.g._ Digha N. I.

21. Astrology also has been a great force in Chinese politics. See Bland and Backhouse, _Ann. and Memoirs, pa.s.sim_. The favour shown at different times to Buddhist, Manichan and Catholic priests was often due to their supposed knowledge of astrology.]

[Footnote 571: I may again remind the reader that I am not speaking of the Chinese Republic but of the Empire. The long history of its relations to Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, though it concerns the past, is of great interest.]

[Footnote 572: De Groot and Parker. For an elaboration of the first thesis see especially De Groot's _Sectarianism and Religious Persecution in China_.]

[Footnote 573: But it must be remembered that the Chinese canon is not entirely a.n.a.logous to the collections of the scriptures current in India, Ceylon or Europe.]

[Footnote 574: The Emperor is the Lord of all spirits and has the right to sacrifice to all spirits, whereas others should sacrifice only to such spirits as concern them. For the Emperor's t.i.tle "Lord of Spirits," see Shu Ching IV., VI. 2-3, and s.h.i.+h Ching, III., II. 8, 3.]

[Footnote 575: The t.i.tle is undoubtedly very ancient and means Son of Heaven or Son of G.o.d. See Hirth, _Ancient History of China_, pp.

95-96. But the precise force of _Son_ is not clear. The Emperor was Viceregent of Heaven, high priest and responsible for natural phenomena, but he could not in historical times be regarded as sprung (like the Emperor of j.a.pan) from a family of divine descent, because the dynasties, and with them the imperial family, were subject to frequent change.]

[Footnote 576: Similarly it is a popular tenet that if a man becomes a monk all his ancestors go to Heaven. See _Paraphrase of sacred Edict_, VII.]

[Footnote 577: j.a.panese Emperors did the same, _e.g._ Kwammu Tenno in 793.]

[Footnote 578: [Chinese: ]

[Footnote 579: K'ang Hsi is responsible only for the text of the Edict which merely forbids heterodoxy. But his son Yung Chng who published the explanation and paraphrase repaired the Buddhist temples at P'uto and the Taoist temple at Lung-hu-shan.]

[Footnote 580: See Johnston, p. 352. I have not seen the Chinese text of this edict. In Laufer and Francke's _Epigraphische Denkmler aus China_ is a long inscription of Kang Hsi's giving the history both legendary and recent of the celebrated sandal-wood image of the Buddha.]

[Footnote 581: This indicates that the fusion of Buddhism and Hinduism was less complete than some scholars suppose. Where there was a general immigration of Hindus, the mixture is found, but the Indian visitors to China were mostly professional teachers and their teaching was definitely Buddhist. There are, however, two non-Buddhist books in the Chinese Tripitaka. Nanjio Cat. Nos. 1295 and 1300.]

[Footnote 582: It has been pointed out by Fergusson and others that there were high towers in China before the Buddhist period. Still, the numerous specimens extant date from Buddhist times, many were built over relics, and the accounts of both Fa-hsien and Hsan Chuang show that the Stupa built by Kanishka at Peshawar had attracted the attention of the Chinese.

I regret that de Groot's interesting work _Der Thpa: das heiligste Heiligtum des Buddhismus in China_, 1919, reached me too late for me to make use of it.]

[Footnote 583: The love of nature shown in the Pali Pitakas (particularly the Thera and Ther Gth) has often been noticed, but it is also strong in Mahynist literature. _E.g._ Bodhicaryvatra VIII. 26-39 and 86-88.]

[Footnote 584: See especially Watters, _Essays on the Chinese Language_, chaps, VIII and IX, and Clementi, _Cantonese Love Songs in English_, pp. 9 to 12]

[Footnote 585: [Chinese: ]]

[Footnote 586: I cannot refrain from calling attention to the difference between the Chinese and most other Asiatic peoples (especially the Hindus) as exhibited in their literature. Quite apart from European influence the Chinese produced several centuries ago catalogues of museums and descriptive lists of inscriptions, works which have no parallel in Hindu India.]

[Footnote 587: There are said to have been four great schools of Buddhist painting under the T'ang. See Kokka 294 and 295.]

[Footnote 588: Preserved in the British Museum and published.]

[Footnote 589: [Chinese: ] of the [Chinese: ] dynasty.]

[Footnote 590: [Chinese: ]