1836.] Authorities on Buddhism. 31 



It is still, I observe, questioned amongst us, whether Brdhmanism or 

 Buddhism be the more ancient creed, as well as whether the latter be of 

 Indian or extra Indian growth. The Buddhists themselves have no 

 doubts upon either point. They unhesitatingly concede the palm of 

 superior antiquity to their rivals and persecutors the Brdhmans ; nor 

 do they in any part of the world hesitate in pointing to India as the 

 cradle of their faith. 



Formerly we might be pardoned for building fine-spun theories of 

 exotic upon the African locks of Buddha's images : but surely it is 

 now somewhat too late*, in the face of the abundant direct evidence 

 which we possess, against the exotic theory, to go in quest of presump- 

 tions to the time-out-of-mind illiterate Scythians, in order to give to 

 them the glory of originating a system built upon the most subtle phi- 

 losophy, and all the copious original records of which are inshrined in 

 Sanscritf, a language which, whencesoever primevally derived, had been, 

 when Buddhism appeared, for ages proper to the Indian continent. 



The Buddhists make no serious pretensions to a very high antiquity : 

 never hint at an extra Indian origin. 



Sakya Stnha is, avowedly, Kshetriya ; and, if his six predecessors 

 had really any historical existence, the books which affirm it, affirm too, 

 that all the six were of Brdhmanical or Kshetriya lineage. Sangata 

 books treating on the subject of caste never call in question the antique 

 fact of a fourfold division of the Hindu people, but only give a more 

 liberal interpretation to it than the carrent Brdhmanical one of their 

 dayj. The Chinese, the Mongols, the Tibetans, the Indo-Chinese, the 

 Ceylonese and other Indian Islanders, all point to India as the father- 

 land of their creed. The records of Buddhism in Nepdl and in Tibet, 

 in both of which countries the people and their mother-tongues are of 

 the Mongol stock, are still either Sanscrit or avowed translations from 

 it by Indian pandits. Nor is there a single record or monument of 

 this faith in existence, which bears intrinsic or extrinsic evidence of an 

 extra Indian origin§. 



* Recent discoveries make it more and more certain, that the cave temples of 

 the Western Coast and its vicinity, are exclusively Bauddha. Every part of India 

 is illustrated by splendid remains of Buddhism. 



t The difference betweenhigh Prdcrit and Sanscrit, could not affect this ques- 

 tion, though it were conceded that the founders of Buddhism used the former 

 and not the latter — a concession however, which should not be facilely made, 

 and to which I wholly demur. 



X See the Bauddha disputation on caste. Royal Asiatic Society's Transactions. 



§ See Crawfurd's remarks on the purely Indian character of all the great 

 sculptural and architectural monuments of Buddhism in Java. Also Barrow's 

 remarks to the same effect in his travels in China. The Chinese Pusd, is Vis~ 

 varupyd Prajnd or the polyform type of Diva Natura. See Oriental Quarterly 



