SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OP ABERDEEN. 69 



Near the ruins the Archaeological Department has instituted a 

 museum for the preservation of articles discovered. I got the figure 

 of a Buddha in the attitude of teaching (Plate IX., Fig. 3). We 

 know that lie is teaching from the attitude, and from the represen- 

 tation of the Wheel, under the seat. Note the figures in adoration 

 on each side of the Wheel. 



The Wheel is well known to bear the symbolical meaning of the 

 " Law " the law, that is, as understood by the Buddhist Dharma 

 the moral principle by which the universe and the beings in it 

 persist, Righteousness. Professor Rhys Davids has pointed out an 

 explanation of this symbol which is natural and simple. In the early 

 days in India it was the custom for a prince, on succeeding to the 

 throne, to drive out in his chariot towards each of the four Cardinal 

 Points a certain distance, symbolical of driving unopposed in every 

 direction throughout his dominions. From this the term Chakravartti 

 Raja, or King who causes his chariot-wheel to revolve, came to be 

 applied to the Universal Monarch, or Emperor. The Buddha was the 

 Spiritual Prince exercising universal sway in the world of religious faith. 



The first occasion on which he is represented as causing his chariot-wheel to revolve 

 is when, at Banares, he commenced the teaching of his system. This is expressed in a 

 Pali Sutra thus : " The royal chariot-wheel of the Truth set rolling onwards by the 

 Blessed One. . . . The Supreme Wheel of the Empire of the Truth . . . that 

 Wheel which not by any Brahma or Milra [the Wicked One] nor by any one in the 

 Universe can ever be turned back." The use of the Wheel is not limited to the 

 Buddhists. In India the Jains also have it ; and with the Brahmans it represented the 

 " undisputed reign of the Sacred Law," as they understood this expression. Without 

 doubt the Wheel symbol was Brahmanic before it was Buddhist. The Wheel has also 

 other uses among the Buddhists themselves, witness what are commonly, but not very 

 correctly, known as the "Praying Wheels" of Tibet, and the wheels, occasionally seen 

 by the wayside, or near Buddhist temples in Japan, which the faithful turn in lieu of 

 repeating the formulas written on them. Nay ! the symbol is farther travelled still ; in 

 Miss Harrison's Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion there is a reference to 

 the use of wheels in Egyptian sanctuaries, a use which may be compared with that of the 

 Buddhist Wheels last referred to ; and from Egypt the use of such wheels would appear 

 to have passed to Orphic sanctuaries of the Greeks. It would be of interest to determine 

 if there was a connection between the Brahmanic-Buddhist Wheel and the Egypto-Greek. 



