NATURE 
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 0, 
1903. 
BUDDHISM IN INDIA. 
Buddhist India. (Stories of the Nations Series.) 
Prof. Rhys-Davids. Pp. xv + 332. 
Fisher Unwin, 1903.) Price 5s. 
HE keynote to Prof. Rhys-Davids’s work on 
Buddhist India is to be found in his preface. 
He presents to us a picture of Indian social existence 
at the time when Buddhism first dawned on the world, 
avowedly depicted from the point of view of the Rajput 
rather than from that of the Brahmin. 
apology needed for assuming this position. A history 
of England completed entirely from such references to 
its social and economic condition from time to time 
as might be found in the theological treatises of 
eminent churchmen would certainly not be regarded 
as satisfactory, and it is an immense gain to our power 
of realising past problems of Oriental life and civilisa- 
tion that the learned professor should have been able 
to marshal so many points of valuable information 
from independent lay sources, and to give us new views 
from a new standpoint. He is at great pains to show 
the real position which the priesthood of India held 
in the seventh century a.p., when the world was ripe 
for Buddhism; and he deduces from an analysis of 
Pali writings (previous to the general adoption of 
Sanscrit as the classical language of literature) a very 
clear idea of early Brahminism in days when the 
alphabet, indeed, had long been introduced to India 
from Mesopotamia, but when ‘‘ literature ’’ existed in 
men’s memories and not in the concrete form of manu- 
script. All this part of the book is excellent. We 
By 
(London : 
see the Kshatriyas—of the noble ‘‘ colour ’’ (not caste) | 
—in their proper position of relative importance to the 
Brahmin, and the latter by no means enjoying that 
social status of dominant and arrogant priesthood 
which we have always been accustomed to regard as 
even more distinctive of early Brahminism than of the 
Brahminism of to-day. 
The early Brahmin is now to be regarded as the 
thinker and learner, the philosopher and minister, 
ready to adapt his views to those of the public if 
necessary, with wide toleration seeking to preserve 
his influence by the adoption of elastic principles. His 
very gods changed with the times, and both free-think- 
ing and free discussion were not only permitted, but 
encouraged to an extent probably unparalleled in the | 
history of the world. The soul of the Upanishads had 
already become the one primeval world-soul from which 
all other souls emanated, when Buddhism arose; and 
the remarkable feature about this approximation to a 
great central truth was that it owed its existence, not 
to Brahmin philosophy, but to the conception of lay 
speculation. Thus Buddhism entered the world at the 
right psychological moment. The world of India at 
least was ready for it. 
But deeply interesting as is this scholarly inquiry into 
the conditions of literature and religion which prevailed 
at the time of Buddha’s birth, perhaps a little too 
much space in what is necessarily a crowded work has 
NO. 1780, VOL. 69] 
Nor is any 
120 
| been devoted to it. It is true that we have graphic 
| pictures presented to the imagination of village and 
town life, of social intercourse and the relations sub- 
ce between the various grades of a society in 
| which caste distinctions were real enough, but possibly 
not more pronounced than analogous distinctions in 
European countries at the same date; but they are 
restricted to Buddhist India, which was, after all, only 
a part of India, and we have very scanty glimpses of 
the relations existing between Buddhist India and the 
rest of the continent. Nor does the book much assist 
| us to.define the geographical boundaries of Buddhist 
India. 
Buddhism was the paramount faith only at certain 
centres; these centres were far apart, necessitating 
long and weary pilgrimages from one to another. 
The earliest Buddhist records contain a “ stock ’’ list 
| of the sixteen Powers which constituted Buddhist 
India, but this list is geographically deficient, for it 
ignores the whole of south India and Ceylon, and only 
deals with the area of northern India bounded 
by the Himalayas on the north, the Vindhyas on the 
south, the Ganges on the east, and the mountains 
beyond the Indus on the west. Undoubtedly the most 
remarkable feature about Buddhism is its absolute 
extinction in India, the land of its birth, at the hands 
of the Brahmins, and its extraordinary development in 
countries beyond India, where it is still a living and a 
proselytising faith. The connection between Buddhist 
India and the countries of the borderland, the gradual 
spread of the faith to the valley of the Kabul River 
and beyond Kabul to Bamian and Haibak; or to the 
Swat Valley and Dir, and over the Himalayas to the 
cities (now buried beneath the sand) of Khotan, would 
have been an interesting subject of inquiry, for it would 
illustrate the enormous influence of Buddhist India 
in the process of civilising the rest of Asia. 
The apostles of Buddhism claim that it has been the 
greatest civilising agent in the world. It has left no 
| mark in India—what has it done elsewhere? Long 
after the Mohammedan wave of conquest swept 
through Sind to the Punjab in the eighth century a.p. 
we know that a Buddhist province of Sind (called Bodh) 
still retained its infidel proclivities, and the capital of 
it (Gandhar or Kandhar) is not far from the Gandava 
oi to-day. Buddhist priests had ruled at Las Bela, 
where Buddhist caves are to be found near by. Was 
this the last stand made by Buddhism on the Indian 
side of the mountains west of the Indus? 
There is a passage in the book which might be 
misunderstood. It is said of the fifteenth of the sixteen 
‘Great countries ’’—or Powers—that 
‘* Gandhara, modern Kandahar, was the district of 
eastern Afghanistan, and it probably included the 
north-west of the Punjab. Its capital was Taxila.”’ 
Gandhara was the north-west of the Punjab (as 
rightly shown in the little sketch map at the end of the 
book), but it had nothing to do with ‘‘ modern 
Kandahar,”’ or even with that other ancient Kandahar 
(or Kandhar) of which we have just spoken. It was 
the almost universal goal of the pilgrims from China 
who flocked in large numbers through the then open 
| routes of Takla Makan in Chinese Turkesan, across 
G 
