SIB MONIEB MONIER- WILLIAMS. 3 



cal sentences and by superstitious devices for the acquisition 

 of supernatural faculties, were placed above good works and 

 all the duties of the moral code. 



We might point, too, to the strange doctrine which arose in 

 Nepal and Tibet the doctrine of the Dhyani- Buddhas (or 

 Buddhas of Meditation) certain abstract essences existing in 

 the formless worlds of thought, who were held to be ethereal 

 and eternal representatives of the transitory earthly Buddhas. 



Our present concern, however, is rather with the growth 

 and development of mystical Buddhism in India itself, through 

 its connexion with the system called Yoga and Yogacara. 



The close relationship of Buddhism to that system is well 

 known. The various practices included under the name 

 Yoga did not owe their origin to Buddhism. They were 

 prevalent in India before Gautama Buddha's time; and one 

 of the most generally accepted facts in his biography is that, 

 after abandoning his home and worldly associations, he resorted 

 to certain Brahman ascetics who were practising Yoga. 



What then was the object which these ascetics had in view ? 



The word Yoga literally means " union " (as derived from 

 the Sanskrit root <c yuj," to join), and the proper aim of every 

 man who practised Yoga was the mystic union (or rather 

 re-union) of his own spirit with the one eternal Soul or 

 Spirit of the Universe, and the acquisition of divine know- 

 ledge through that union. 



It may be taken for granted that this was the Buddha's 

 first aim when he addressed himself to Yoga in the fifth 

 century B.C., and even to this hour, earnest men in India 

 resort to this system with the same object. 



In the Indian Magazine for July, 1887 (as well as in my 

 Brdhmanism and Hinduism*) is a short biography of a 

 quite recent religious reformer named Svami Payananda 

 Sarasvati, whose acquaintance I made at Bombay in 1876 

 and 1877, and who only died in 1883. The story of his life 

 reads almost like a repetition of the life of Buddha, though 

 his teaching aimed at restoring the supposed monotheistic 

 doctrine of the Veda. 



It is recorded that his father, desiring to initiate him into 

 the mysteries of Saivism, took him to a shrine dedicated to 

 the god Siva; but the sight of some mice stealing the con- 

 secrated offerings and of some rats playing on the heads of the 

 idol led him to disbelieve in Siva-worship as a means of union 

 with the Supreme Being. Longing, however, for such union 



* Published by John Murray, Albemarle Street (see p. 529). 



