1894.] Haraprasad ^'astri — Ecmnanis of liidldliism in Buiujal. l-i? 



6. Tlic annual festival in honour of Uhamina takes place on t;lio 

 Vaigakhi Purnima, the hirtli-day of Lord lluddlia. 



7. Athletic sports were a principal feature in ancient Indian festi- 

 vals. 



8. The long poem that is recited at the annual festival is an attempt 

 to prove the Barmati of Dhamnia. Now the word Bdrmati was a 

 great puzzle to me, but looking more carefully into the book I found 

 that it is often replaced b}- the word Brahmati, /. e., Brahmatva. Tlie 

 poem therefore attempts to prove that Dhamma is Brahma, or tlie 

 Supreme Being, above Bidlii, Visnu and f^iva. The scene of the story, 

 given there, is placed in Western Bengal, in Gaud and in Karaariipa, at 

 a time when the son of the great Buddhist king Dharmapala was 

 reigning in Gaud. The Dorns figure in the work largely, and obtain 

 the boon mentioned above. The recension of the work that has been 

 printed was made in 1710, A.D., and is therefore much mixed up with 

 later ideas. But the book itself speaks of older recensions, which I 

 am searching for, at present, and hope to get at no distant future. 



The mantra with which Dhamma is worshiped is this — 



The Sanskrit is absolutely un-grammatical, but there is no doubt 

 that it refers to Buddha. No Hindu would ever conceive any deity as 

 ^(Jjgflf^ : or void, while the Buddhists of the Mahay an a school wei-e 

 ^57?J^T^, that is, they thought that after Nirvana, the Bodhisattva i-e- 

 mains iu a condition of punya, that is, an inconceivable condition of 

 which neither existence, nor non-existence, neither a negation of tlie two 

 nor a combination of the two, can be predicated : ^f%-«rTl%-fT^H^T«f*T? 

 ^g^f^-l^f^'J'^'T 113??J^'T'I. Then Dhamma is said to be ?fr^t=li n.nd 

 one of the synonyms of Buddha is Munlndra ; ^I^^?;: =i1''!:I^: TJT^f {"^flT 

 ?St^O The word f«T^(«f1T is a Buddhist technical term, and it has been 

 recently so expounded in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of 

 Great Britain and Ireland. 



The translation of the mantra will run thus : — 



He who has no beginning, no middle and no end, he who has neither 

 legs nor hands, he who has no germ of a body, he who has no frame 

 and no form, and no birth, may that Lord of sages approachable oiilv 

 through knowledge, the pervader of all living* beings, the Lord of all 

 the worlds, the spotless, the giver of boons to mortals, the void, may he 

 protect you. 



