1834.] European Speculations on Buddhism. 383 



The scale of Bauddha perfectibility has countless degrees, several of 

 which towards the summit express attributes really divine, however 

 short of the transcendental glory of a tathdgata in nirvritti. Never- 

 theless, these attributes appertain to persons subject to mortal births 

 and deaths, of which the series is as little limited as is that scale of 

 cumulative merits to which it expressly refers. But, if the scale of 

 increasing merits, with proportionate powers in the occupiers of each 

 grade, have almost infinite extent, and yet mortal birth cleave to every 

 grade but the very highest, what wonder that men-gods should be 

 common ? or, that the appearance again in the flesh, of beings, who tire 

 far more largely gifted than the greatest of the devatas, should be 

 called an avaidr ? Such avatars, in all their successive mortal advents 

 till they can reach the estate of a tathdgata, are the arhantas, and the 

 bodhisatwas, the pratyika and the srdvaka-Buddhas. They are gods 

 and far more than gods ; yet they were originally, and still quoad birth 

 and death are, mere men. When I stated that the divine Lamas of 

 Tibet are, in fact, arhantas ; but that a very gross superstition had 

 wrested the just notion of the character of the latter to its own use, I 

 thought I had enabled every reader to form a clear idea of that marvel 

 of human folly, the immortal mortals, or present palpable divinities of 

 Tibet! How few and easy the steps from a theory of human perfecti- 

 bility, with an apparently interminable metempsychosis, to a practical 

 tenet such as the Tibetans hold ! 



But Remusat speaks of the incarnations of the tathdgatas : this is 

 a mistake, and a radical one. A tathdgata may be such whilst yet 

 lingering in the tiesh of that mortal birth in which he reached this 

 supreme grade ; — and here, by the way, is another very obvious founda- 

 tion for the Tibetan extravagance — but when once, by that body's decay, 

 the tathdgata has passed into nirvritti, he can never be again incar- 

 nated. The only true and proper Buddha is the Maha Ydnika or Tathd- 

 gata Buddha. Such are all the ' sapta Buddha:' of whom it is abundantly 

 certain that not one ever was, or by the principles of the creed, could 

 be, incarnated. Sakya's incarnations all belong to the period preced- 

 ing his becoming a Tathdgata. Absolute quietism is the enduring state 

 of a Tathdgata : and, had it been otherwise, Buddhism would have been 

 justly chargeable with a more stupendous absurdity than that from 

 which Remusat in vain essays to clear it. ' Plusieurs absolus — plu- 

 sieurs infinis' there are ; and they are bad enough, though the absolute 

 infinity be restricted to the fruition of the subject. But the case would 

 have been tenfold worse had activity been ascribed to these beings ; 

 for we should then have had an unlimited number of infinite ruling provi- 

 dences ! The infinite of the Buddhists is never incarnated; nor the finite 



