523 



CHAP. XL 



BUDDHISM AND DEMOX-WOKSHIP. 1 



IT is difficult to attempt any, condensed, and at the same 

 time perspicuous, sketch of the national religion of Ceylon 

 a difficulty which arises not merely from the volumi- 

 nous obscurity of its sacred history and records ; but still 

 more from confusion in the variety of forms under which 

 Buddhism exhibits itself in various localities, and the 

 divergences of opinion which prevail as to its tenets 

 and belief. The antiquity of its worship is so extreme, 

 that doubts still hang over its origin and its chronological 

 relations to the religion of Brahma. Whether it took its 

 rise in Hindustan, or in countries farther to the West, and 

 whether Buddhism was the original doctrine of which 

 Brahmanism became a corruption, or Brahmanism the 

 original and Buddhism an effort to restore it to its 

 pristine purity 2 , are questions which have yet to be 



1 The details of the following 

 chapter have been principally taken 

 from Sir J. EMERSON TENNENT'S 

 Christianity in Ceylon, ch. v. 



a Those early writers on the reli- 

 gions of India who drew their infor- 

 mation exclusively from Brahnianical 

 sources, incline to favour the preten- 

 sions of that system as the most an- 

 cient of the two. Klaproth, a profound 

 authority, was of this opinion ; hut in 

 later times the translations of the 

 Pali records and other sacred volumes 

 of Buddhism in Western India, Cey- 

 lon, and Nepal, have inclined the 

 preponderance of opinion, if not in 

 favour of the superior antiquity of 

 Buddhism, at least in support of 

 its contemporaneous development. 

 A summary of the arguments in 



favour of the superior antiquity of 

 Buddhism will be found in the 

 " Notes," &c., by Colonel STKES, in 

 the 12th volume of the Asiatic 

 Journal and in the Essai sur 

 V Origine des Principaux Peoples An- 

 dens, par F. L. M. MAT/PIED, 

 chap. viii. The arguments on the 

 side of those who look on Brahman- 

 ism as the original; are given by 



MorXTSTUAKT ELPHDfSTONE in his 

 History of India, vol. i. b. ii. c. 4. 

 An able disquisition will be found in 

 MAX MtJLLEE's History of Sanskrit 

 Literature, pp. 33, 260, ' &c. Mr. 

 GOGERLY, the most accomplished 

 student of Buddhism in Ceylon, says 

 its sacred books expressly demonstrate 

 that its doctrines had been preached 

 by the twenty-four Buddhas who 



