30th Dec.
Tae foreign traveller in China looks with curiosity in the Buddhist books of some old monastery.,. Here and there a Buddhist priest gives himself tv reading. Some of the fraternity' must do so to ensure a successful career. An Abbot dies and is cremated and his tablet takes its place in the series of chiefs who have in succession ruled the monastery with the long walking staff. These men know what the books mean. Others who may become Abbot also know and will tell the questioner much about Buddhism. You try the method of a little controversy or a little polite inquiry, soon it will be found if the visitor is patient that some one more intelligent than the other members of: the yellow-robed fraternity will speak, and then the visitor can obtain information. They claim that every book translated is Sanscrit, nothing is known of. Pali. There exists a Nepaul Sanscrit original of many of the Chinese Buddhist books. The good result which Bryan Haughten Hodgson obtained for northern Buddhism long ago was just. this. There exists the Sanscrit original for many of the Chinese translated books which are now in use all over China and Japan. That is to say the Mahayana books are the true original Buddhist literature. The Pali books are also original. Both are primitive, both are real. The northern books are, however, more brilliant in invention, bolder in conception, richer in thought than those. of the south. There was no such great clash of opinion to suggest new ideas and favour fertility of illustration in the south of India, the southern Bud-diiists being merely quiet devotees. Northern Buddhists were active combat ants struggling with rival systems. The eternal snows and solemn lofty eminences of Mount Everard and on the northern literature. Buddha Dhawalagiri had an inspiring effect
himself came under this influence. His soul wes highly receptive of such suggestions as high mountain scenery could give. He lived to be eighty and his mind passed through many transformations. Those founders of religion who lived short lives originated systems marked by simplicity. Those who like Buddha lived to a tage taught a philosophy in their age of wider scope than in their youth. This is the true cause of the contrast between northern. and sou-them Buddhism. It is in fact what the Northern Buddhist statements amount to and it: is satisfactory. Buddha was fond of philosophical discussion. Socrates was animal the same feeling. Both were splitters of hairs, Both were founders was condemned to drink the fatal schools of philosophy. Socrates hemlock at Seventy-one years age when he had lived quite long enough. for his wonderfully fertile intellect to pour out suggestive streams of noble age in several different directions. Just as every man sees a different rainbow when same rain shower is falling, so for dvery thinking' mind there exists its qwn particular centre in the same universe. Each man has his own point of view but the universe moves on in its eternal unity notwithstanding the different things men may say of it.
As to Socrates he had long projectipg eyes, a sunken nose turned up at the end, wide nostrils and a huge abdomen. This was his appearance when he was forty-five years old. Aristophanes ridiculed Socrates in B.C. 423 in The Clouds, a play thought th be the masterpiece of this comic t. He represents Socrates as being ko Silenus and the Satyrs of whom e poet was reminded when he heard the severe mockery of the jhilosopher's irony. The dress of socrates was coarse and unattractive, and he seldom wore the sandals (hypodemata) or the pedila which had an upper covering to the sandal and were the boots of that time. As he -walked along the street he was absent-minded "and unconsciously strutted in a haughty and super-bilious manner often staring at persons without intending to offend them. He often did so through that fault of manner to which men of genius are subject. It was about B.C. 410, some twelve years after the burlesque of The Clouds was first performed, that Plate began to attend the lectures of Socrates. He was contemporary with Malachi, the last of the: Hebrew pro-hets whose writings are found-in the Testament. "Socrates would then be thinner in person and was the centre of literary and philosophic thought in the age of the highest Athenian cultivation. Able disciples endowed with high gifts of intellect tual power listened to him with delight.
The Persian Kings swayed their sceptre over north-western India while Buddha was still a preacher of philosophy. Their satraps were governing lands on the east bank of the Indus while he was a hermit on the Himalaya range. The forest land on the borders of Nepaul has under British rule been broken up into farms of rich cultivation. A pillar of Asoka, the Ayo Wang of Chinese books, has lately been unearthed. The posse of Kapilavastu where Buddha preached is now defined as lat. 27° 37' north and long. 83° 8' east. From the Asoka pillar to the Lumbini garden, the traditional birthplace of Gautama Buddha, the distance is about twelve miles, In the neighbourhood there are the remains of many monasteries all of which will ultimately be excavated, and shed historical light on the period of Indian history which they commemorate. Among the relics already found are a fold leaf cross, an elephant in gold leaf, a female figure in gold leaf, with an aureole such as is now seen in Chinese temples, a minute human figure in gold leaf, fragments of coral, and some examples of the triratna or San Pao of Chinese Buddhism. These are all mentioned in the Journal of the Asiatic Society for 1898.in a note by V. A. Smith, M. R. A. S. They indicate an age of tranquillity before the stormy period caused by the conquests of Alexander the Great in Persia and Chinshihuang China. War interrupted Buddhist Progress. and it was not till the Roman empire in the west and the Han dynasty in the east gave peace to the world that Buddhism could extend Turkestan and C a Buddhism is its very quiet propagandism through
a religion which has flourished only in times of peace when the monk with rice bowl and staff can travel unimpeded from one city to another.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.