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to innate necessity. Thus in the material worldwe see the germ spring from the seed, thebranch from the germ, the stem or culm fromthe branch, the leafy gem from the culm, thebud from the leafy gem, the blossom from thebud, the fruit from the blossom, and the seedagain from the fruit, and so on in eternal suc-cession. The twelve steps of Buddha’s analysis,mentioned above, are, to a certain extent, anapplication of the same law to the mental andmoral world. Existence in all its infinite formseverywhere exemplifies the same law of endlesssuccession; inherent necessity, without any super-intending providence, governs every development.
The end of the Buddhist system, as we havesaid, is nirvana ; but what is nirvana f This isone of the most difficult problems in Buddhism;but unless it be answered, our idea of the systemmust be vague and imperfect, for nirvana is thekeynote which runs through every part. Nownirvana is a technical term, and, though used inearly Sanskrit as a passive past participle “ blownout” (from n*r + va), its use as a neuter nounappears to have been introduced by the Bud-dhists, and to have been subsequently borrowedfrom them by the later Sanskrit writers (seeGoldstiicker’s Pdnini , p. 226). “ The Brahmamc
Hindus hope that their soul will ultimately be-come united with the universal spirit; which,in the language of the upanishads, is the neuterBrahman, and, in that of the sects, the supremedeity who takes the place of this philosophicaland impersonal god. And however indefinite thisgod Brahman may be, it is nevertheless, to themind of theBrahmanic Hindu, an entity. Thefinal salvation of a Buddhist is entire non-entity.The various expressions for eternal bliss in theBrahmanic creed, like apavarga , moksha , mukti ,nihsreyasa , all mean either ‘ liberation from thisearthly career,’ or ‘ the. absolute good; ’ theytherefore imply a condition of hope. The abso-lute end of a Buddhist is without hope, it is nir-vana , or extinction” {ibid.). The philosophicalwritings of the Buddhists represent a completenihilism. In an important passage from thegreat text-book, the Prajna paramita (quoted byBurnouf, i. 474), the five skandhas are said tobe only an illusion—conscious existence is itselfonly as a magical show. Now in nirvana thefive skandhas are abolished, and what remains ?Iu the Vedanta system, indeed, a somewhatsimilar phraseology occurs, since, in final eman-cipation, every upadhi , or “ disguise ” caused byignorance, falls off, and the pure undisguisedBrahman remains. This one absolute being hadbeen concealed under the various forms of indi-viduality as the rope is hid under the appear-ance of the snake for which it was mistaken;all individual existence (from the highest GodBrahma down to a plant) is but a similar delu-sive veil, and has no more reality than the snakethus created by our imagination. Yet beneathall these illusions there still remains the ab-solute Brahman, and mukti is thus the returnto reality, when the various delusive veils aredestroyed. But in Buddhism there seems to benothing beneath the illusion—individual ex-istence is not like the imagined snake whichconceals the real rope, but it is merely a magicshow, which, when it passes, 11 leaves not a rackbehind.”
But here we must carefully distinguish be-
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tween the ordinary practical Buddhism andBuddhism as a strictly developed system. As asystem, Buddhism can hardly admit of any goalshort of absolute annihilation. Its aim is toenable its faithful disciple to enter one of the“ four paths,” and any one of these inevitablyconducts, after a briefer or longer interval, tonirvaiux. But it can hardly be disputed that thegreat mass of Buddhist believers in every agehave given to nirvana a vague meaning offuture happiness; human nature has been toostrong to be shackled by a theory—
“ ’Tis life whereof our nerves are scant,
Oil life, not death, for which we pant;
More life and fuller, that we want." dNor is it at all certain that the founder of thesystem held the transcendental nihilism in whichsubsequent philosophers of his sect have lostthemselves. His aim seems to have been ethi-cal rather than metaphysical; and even amongthose philosophical sects, which allow a soul asdistinct from the five skandhas, nirvana canhardly mean absolute annihilation. Hence inthe ordinary Buddhist books we find frequentmention made of three kinds of nirvana , whichhave been by some supposed to correspond tothe three previously mentioned yanas or vehi-cular i. e. nirvana , parinirvana , and, lastly,mahaparinirvana . But just as we saw that inle Lotus de la bonne Loi , it was expressly de-clared that in reality there was only one yana yso the same book as expressly affirms that thereis only one, and that the absolute, nirvana .Similarly among the southern Buddhists we findthe word nibbana applied to two different things,—that annihilation which is the goal of Bud-dhism, and the state of blissful sanctification orarhatship which is destined to end in annihila-tion. [For further details respecting nirvana , cf.Burnouf, i. 516, 589 ff.; Koppen, i. 304-^309.St. Hilaire, le Bouddha (3rd ed.), i. - xxvii.,132-140; Max Muller, Chips , i. 279-290,Lecture on Buddhist Nihilism , 1869; Childers,Pali Diet. art. nibbana.']
In the foregoing pages we have endeavouredto give a general sketch of Buddhism as it existedin its flourishing state in India and Ceylon, asfar as this can be gathered from the older wri-tings in the Sanskrit of the northern Buddhistsand the Pali of the southern; but of course withthe lapse of time the religion gradually undei*-went many changes, especially as it extended toother countries with an inferior or different civi-lization. Its subsequent history in India itself isobscure, and Taranatha’s “ history ” will need arigorous sifting by European criticism, to separatethe fragments of truth from its mass of legend.We find from the accounts of the Chinese travel-lers in India, Fa Hian (a.d. 399-414) and HiouenThsang (629-645), that in their time it was stillflourishing throughout that continent. Thelatter, especially, represents Brahmanism andBuddhism as existing side by side; and, thoughhe often has to lament the wide spread of heresy,it is still evident from his pages that in most ofthe kingdoms into which India was divided,Buddhism had a strong hold on the population,and in many it was even the predominant faith.Shortly after that time it must have begun to
d Cf. Vijnrina Bhlkshu's Comm, on Sdnkbya Siltra*i. 47.
2 A