429 



BUCOLICS. 



BUDDHA ; BUDDHISM. 



430 



An analysis by Horeford, given in Morton's ' Cyclopaedia of Agri- 

 culture,' gives the following as the composition of the seed : 



Organic matter fitted for the formation of flesh 



. 8-58 



. . 51-91 



. 23-12 



Ashes 2-20 



Water 14-19 



Matter fitted for respiration, &c. j 



The ash, as analysed by Sprengel, contains 



Potash 

 Lime 



Magnesia 

 Alumina (!) 

 Silica . 

 Peroxide of iron 

 Peroxide of manganese 

 Chloride of sodium . 

 Sulphuric acid 

 Phosphoric acid 



100- 



10-27 



21-98 



40-34 



0-81 



4-37 



0-47 



1-00 



4-90 



6-77 



9-00 



100-00 



These results will no doubt vary according to the soil in which the 

 plants have grown. The potash is so abundant that it has been 

 suggested as a profitable use of the haulm to burn it for the purpose of 

 obtaining this useful salt. This abstraction from the soil, or its addi- 

 tion to it in the shape of manure, must produce a considerable effect on 

 the fertility. There is another species of buck-wheat mentioned by 

 some authors as superior to the common, and more deserving of 

 culture in northern climates ; it is called the Poltfjonum Tart" 

 Yvart, in his excellent article, ' Succession de Culture,' in the ' Cours 

 Complet d'Agriculture,' Paris, 1820, speaks highly of the Tartarian 

 buck-wheat. It is yellower in the colour, and bears a smaller seed, but 

 is much hardier. Its stubble will remain alive during the winter, 

 grow out in spring, and produce a second crop the next year if let 

 alone ; but this does not seem any great advantage, as the second crop 

 is very apt to be overrun with weeds. Yvart mentions a crop grown 

 in the Department de 1'Isere which appears extraordinary : 12 measures 

 sown produced 1296 measures, or more than a hundredfold, in a very 

 dry season. Another gentleman obtained 80 for one. After all, expe- 

 riments reported iu this way teach very little : a return so many fold 

 the seed may appear large in consequence of very thin seeding, although 

 it is not absolutely a good crop per acre ; and notwithstanding these 

 accounts, Thaer, who has repeatedly tried it, says that " its produce in 

 a field is so insignificant that he cannot join in its praise." (vol. iv. 

 s. 162). Perhaps the experiments made in a rich spot in a garden have 

 given results which multiplied produce the above extraordinary returns. 

 Agricultural experiments are unfortunately often made in this way, ant 

 consequently give very fallacious results. 



BUCO'LICS, from the Greek BovKo\ixd (Bucolica), signifying lite- 

 rally, " poems on the tending of oxen or herds generally." Bucolics 

 are a species of poetry, or rather an exercise in verse, in which the 

 interlocutors are shepherds, husbandmen, and their "mistresses.' 

 Great antiquity is claimed for its invention. Some have babble* 

 about the Golden Age and Arcadia ; and some have attributed it to 

 the Sicilians, perhaps for no better reason than because their islaiu 

 rxhibits abundance of pastoral scenery. Others have said, that ou the 

 invasion of Greece by the Persians, when the festivals of Diana were 

 suspended, the country people thronged the temples, and sang hymns 

 to that goddess concerning their rural occupations, which thence were 

 called Bucolics. There has also been equal difference about the name 

 of the inventor, and Diomua and Daphuis, whoever they may be 

 Stesichorua and Theocritus, has each had his supporters ; for the critics 

 have forgotten that it is one thing to sing as shepherds do while 

 tending then- flocks, and quite another thing to sing as poets do when 

 relating the life of shepherds. 



Theocritus, Moechus, and Bion, have written Bucolics in Greek, anc 

 Virgil hag copied them in his Eclogues. Calpurnius, a later Latin 

 poet, has shown us how tame and insipid Bucolic poetry may be 

 Surh beauties as these compositions contain, are chiefly comprised in 

 ill !iijocy of expression and refinement of language. Bucolic poetry lias 

 been little cultivated by the moderns ; the French have converted i 

 into mawkish gallantry ; and the rank which it maintains in Englam 

 may be estimated, when it is stated that Cunningham and Shenstom 

 have been its princi|al ornaments. Those who deem this subjeci 

 worthy of further investigation may look to the ' Poetics of Scaliger, 

 i. 4; 'Salmasius on Solinus,' pp. 851, 867 ; and the dissertation pre 

 fixecl liy II i-ditiim of the Eclogues of Virgil. 



BUDDHA; BUDDHISM. Among the religions of Asia, that o 

 Buddha is one of the most remarkable, partly for the peculia 

 character of its doctrine, and partly on account of the vast number of it* 

 followers. From India Proper, the country which gave it birth, nearl; 

 every trace of Buddhism has now disappeared ; but it has become thi 

 religion of the great majority of the inhabitants of the high table-lane 

 to the north of the Himalaya, as far as the boundary of Siberia, and i 

 is the prevailing creed of China, of the Peninsula of India beyond the 

 Ganges, of Ceylon, and several islands of the Indian archipelago, and o 

 the empire of Japan. According to an estimate given by Berghaus 



Physikalischer Atlas,' Abth. Anthropographie, No. 4), there are now 

 ipon the globe Christians of all denominations, 390 millions ; Jews, 

 millions ; Mohammedans, 200 millions ; followers of the Brahmaic reli- 

 "ion, 170 millions ; Buddhists, 397 millions ; and heathens, 111 millions. 

 Though much had been written upon Buddhism, a critical investi- 

 ation of its origin, its system of doctrines, and the history of its 

 liffusion among so large a portion of mankind, waa still a desideratum, 

 lardly any of the original authentic documents of the sect, which 

 were written in Sanskrit, had been fully examined, and the information 

 vhich we possessed respecting its dogmas, was almost exclusively derived 

 rom sources of a secondary rank. But several distinguished scholars, 

 among whom we may mention Isaac Jacob Schmidt, of St. Petersburg, 

 Alexander Csoma de KSrb's, at Calcutta, Brian Houghton Hodgson, in 

 ^epal, and George Tumour, in Ceylon, severally engaged in inquiries. 

 At length in 1837, Mr. Hodgson having collected upwards of eighty 

 valuable Sanskrit documents on the subject, generously sent them to 

 3 aris, where M. Eugene Burnouf went to work indefatigably upon 

 .hum, and in 1844 published his ' Introduction a 1'Histeire du Budd- 

 lisme Indien.' He compared his original documents with their trans- 

 ations in four or five other languages, and developed the dogmas and 

 ;he history of this religion, which forms the faith "of so large a 

 jortion of the population of the world. He continued his labours till 

 iis death in 1852, immediately after which was published what he had 

 left fit for publication, though in some degree fragmentary : * Le 

 Lotus de la bonne Loi, traduit du Sanscrit, accompagnd d'un Cominen- 



re, et de vingt-un Mdmoires relatifs au Buddhisme.' These two 

 works form an admirable monument of philological genius united to a 

 sound philosophy. 



The origin of Buddhism is involved in much obscurity. Doubts 

 have been raised whether Buddhism is of Indian growth, or whether it 

 was introduced from abroad ; the relative antiquity of Buddhism and 

 the religion of the Brahmiuical Hindus, who follow the doctrines of the 

 Vedas, has been matter of dispute ; and the greatest discrepancy pre- 

 vails with respect to the epoch which, according to various authorities, 

 should be assigned to the founder of thu sect. It is somewhat remark- 

 able that, after having been described chiefly from those portions of the 

 globe over which Buddhism now prevails, the most reliable accounts 

 of the genuine system should have been at last found in the language 

 in which it was first developed. 



Among those who, contrary to the opinion generally received by the 

 Buddhists themselves, have suspected that the sect did not originate in 

 India, Sir William Jones must be mentioned. The curled or woolly 

 appearance of the hair on the head of the statues of Buddha, many of 

 which are sculptured in a black kind of limestone, combined with 

 other circumstances, led him to form an opinion, that the inhabitants 

 of India, who occupied the country previous to its invasion by the 

 Brahmanic tribes from the north, were of African descent, and that in 

 the sculptured representations of their legislator some of the charac- 

 teristic appearances of the negro race had been preserved. (' Asiatic 

 Res. 1 vol. i. p. 427.) But the foundation on which this opinion rests, 

 is in some degree shaken by the fact, that images of Buddha are as 

 frequently seen in white or gray as in black stone ; while on the con- 

 trary, statues of Krishna, Surya, Ganosa, and other deities of the 

 various Brahmanical sects, 1 with whom the presumed reason of the 

 Buddhists for giving preference to black could have no weight, are 

 nevertheless frequently seen of that colour. Another argument against 

 the supposed African origin of Buddha may be deduced from the 

 enumeration of his lakiluinas and tyanjamui, or points of beauty and 

 peculiar personal appearances, which are so familiar to Buddhists 

 everywhere, that this circumstance alone seems to warrant their 

 antiquity, and to entitle them to at least equal credit in our inquiry 

 into the extant sculptured miages of the sage. The original Sanskrit 

 text of the thirty-two lake/union or " characteristics," and of the eighty 

 ryanjanas or " peculiar signs " of Buddha, were published in the 

 appendix to an interesting paper by Mr. Hodgson in the ' Journal of 

 the Royal Asiatic Society," vol. ii. p. 314, &c. Among the former 

 we observe one (No. 14, suvaitia-variiatd) which describes Buddha as 

 being of a gold-coloured complexion ; and among the later there is 

 one (No. 59, Itmya-ni'uikatd), according to which ho had a prominent 

 (aquiline ?) nose. Both these epithets are utterly inapplicable to an 

 individual of the negro race. (See Abel Kemusat, ' Melanges Asia- 

 tiques," Paris, 1825, 8vo, vol. i. p. 100, &c.) With reference to the 

 curly hair of the statues of Buddha, we may mention that, according 

 to a remark of Colonel Mackenzie (' As. Res.' ix. p. 249), the Afahd- 

 vratax, a class of Jaina ascetics who are not allowed to shave the head 

 with razors, employ their disciples to pull out the hair by the roots ; 

 and to the effects of this operation they attribute the appearance ou 

 the heads of the images of their Gurus or saints, which Europeans 

 suppose to represent curly or woolly hair. It has been suggested by 

 some, that the curls on the head of the images' of Buddha might be 

 accounted for in a similar manner. In the fist of personal character- 

 istics of Buddha, however, no less than six terms descriptive of his 

 hair are enumerated (ryanjanas, Nos. 72 78), which, though some are 

 not very clear in themselves, seem to attach a notion of beauty to its 

 peculiar appearance : this could hardly be the case if the curls had 

 been considered as morbid, and produced by a violent extirpation of 

 the hair. The answer which Mr. Hodgson obtained from a priest in 

 Nepal to aa inquiry respecting the reason of Buddha being represented 



