14 SIR MONIER MONIER-WILLIAMS. 
tical 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 “ 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. 
lt 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 
Brahmanism and Hindiism*) is a short biography of a 
quite recent religious reformer named Svami Dayananda 
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). 
