BUDDHA, BUDDHISM
To proclaim the law, which is thus the solemeans of escaping from the region of ever-renewed birth and death, is the office of aBuddha. Any individual soul, even the meanestworm under our feet, might eventually rise tothat high station; but it is only a few who canpass through the long preliminary trials, andsurmount the almost endless obstacles. The dis-tinguishing characteristic of a Buddha is that henot only seeks nirvana, but desires also to leadothers into it. His aim is benevolent, not selfish.
There have been countless Buddhas in the pasteternity: each has gradually attained this rankby stedfastly carrying out absolute self-negationand virtue through an enormous number of suc-cessive births, never losing sight of the highgoal from the moment when it was first defi-nitely set before him. At length he becomesa Bodhisattwa, u e., a potential Buddha, onewho has only one more birth remaining be-fore he becomes a full Buddha, and mean-while he remains in heaven until his periodcomes round. Every Buddha must finally be bornas a man, since it is only in a human birth thatany soul can attain that rank (Hardy’s Manual ,p. 363). It is curious to mark how the wildestfreaks of imagination are inevitably limited bysurrounding circumstances; and, just as Plato’srepublic is only a reproduction of Greek actuali-ties, Buddhism could not escape from the con-ditions of Indian society, as this existed at thetime of its rise. Thus every Buddha must beborn as a male Brahman or Kshatriya: they areall born in Central India; they must all gainsupreme intelligence under the bodhi tree atGaya, and begin to preach in the deer-park atBenares; and their doctrine of course must beeternally the same. The names of a thousandsuccessive Buddhas are preserved, but it is onlythe last four or seven who have any real celebrity.The present Buddha, Sakya Muni, has establisheda law which is to last 5000 years; then whenall traces of it have disappeared, the new Buddha,Maitreya, whom he left as the regent Bodhi-sattwa in Tushita, will appear on earth andrestore the forgotten doctrine. It is easy to seethat these anterior Buddhas are purely imagi-nary : they are simply an attempt of enthusiasticdisciples to create a spurious antiquity for thegreat revolution inaugurated by Sakya Muni.
The hierarchy of beings in the Buddhist com-munity is as follows:—
1. Buddhas, i.e., the perfect Buddhas ( samyak -
sambuddhcC );
2. Bodhisattwas;
3. Pratyeka-buddhas;
4. Aryas, or the spiritual saints;
5. Prithagjanas, or ordinary mortals.
The Buddhas are those who have successivelyobtained absolute knowledge and infinite power,and, after communicating the law to others, haveentered nirvana. If they have only attained itfor themselves, they are Pratyeka-buddhas, “ in-dividual Buddhas; ” these beings have attainedto supernatural knowledge, and are freed frompersonality; but they have yielded to the temp-
perfect knowledge of the twenty-five principles (see San-khya-pravatfianarbhdshya, p. 8, and Vyfisa’s Comm, on theToga,, ii. 15). We also find a very similar exposition ofthe theory of life in the .Nydya aphorismB, i. 2.
BUDDHA, BUDDHISM 349
tation which Sakya Muni resisted at Gaya, anathey have sought it only for themselves. TheBodhisattwas await the time of their becomingBuddhas in the Tushita heaven ; the LalitaVistara in its opening chapter introduces us to32,000 of these beings, who are described aslistening to Buddha’s words.
The Aryas are those who have entered on theroad to nirvana. They are divided into fourclasses (the four “ paths ”), and each of these issubdivided into those who are still in progresstoward the end of their respective stage, andthose who have attained it. Thus the lowest,the krota-apannas , are they who have “ enteredthe stream,” that surely leads to nirvana; theyhave learned the delusion of consciousness, andhave full faith in Buddha and his precepts, andthey can never be born again except as gods ormen. After seven such future births they willbecome arhats. The next class is that of thesakrid-agdmins, those who have only one morebirth as men and one more as gods, before theybecome arhats . The third is that of the andgd -mins , “those who return no more;” these willbe born in the heaven of Brahma, and there be-come arhats. The fourth is that of the arhats,who are perfectly pure and sinless. They aredescribed as possessing the four forms of perfectunderstanding (pratisamvid ) (Burnouf, Lotus,Append. 14, 17), and the five supernatural in-tuitions (abhijnd) ; by these last they behold allbeings, hear all their words, know all theirthoughts and all their past existences, and canassume any form and appear anywhere. Theperfect Arhat awaits calmly his appointed time,and then enters into nirvana (Hardy’s EasternMonachism , p. 287). The three other paths alleventually end in Arhatship; but only the Arhat,whether in earth or heaven, passes into nirvana ,without any intermediate stage.
Below all these are the prithagjanas , or ordi-nary disciples, who content themselves withordinary duties, and do not aspire to the tran-scendental perfections of the Aryas. It is im-portant to notice that these different distinctionshave no necessary connection with that betweendevotee and laic; a devotee ( bhikshu ) may be onlya prithagjana, and a laic ( [upasaka ) may bealready far advanced in the scale of the Aryas.
(We may here mention a peculiar tenet of thenorthern Buddhist schools, that of the three yarnsor “ vehicula It is said that Buddha, in com-passion for mortal infirmity, has adapted his doc-trine to the capacities of various intelligences,and consequently has revealed three different“ means of transport,” by which the Aryas mayescape from transmigration, and attain a loweror higher degree of bodhi or transcendental know-ledge. These are the lesser, middle, and greaterYana. The lesser comprises morality and externalobservances ( vinaya ), while the others deal withBuddhist metaphysics. The first belongs to ordi-nary disciples ( iravakas ), who will thus becomearhats ; the second to the pratyeka-buddhas ; thethird to the Bodhisattwas. This idea, however,appears to be of later growth, and does not be-long to the original Buddhist theory. In theLotus de la bonne loi, edited by Burnouf, wefind it maintained, that there is in reality onlyone yana (the greater); the hypothesis of theothers being only conceded as an accommodationto the duluess of Buddha’s hearers.)