94 General Observations on [Feb. 



25 K'hanting paliti. 



26 Sangh-karanan sab'hawang angseti. 



27 B'hawa pati sant'hang ukghateti. 



28 Sapp'hang samanyang theti. 



In the Ratana Kalapa I find that under the head Kasina, these or 

 similar recluses must sit before a small circle of earth until a new reve- 

 lation of the universe bursts upon them. They must contemplate water, 

 and fire, and air ; — also the colours, blue, yellow, red, white, the ether, 

 or empyrean, Akasha, the sky, and light, — all of which are explained in 

 the Pali work Wis'uddha Magga. 



It may safely be said, that however humanizing in its effects Bud- 

 dhism may have been, (and it indisputably has always been so in every 

 Eastern country where it has been established), it is of too self-denying 

 a nature, and bears too heavily on the resources of a people to last 

 long in a state of full vigor and purity, and in these degenerate days, 

 revivals, reformations, convocations, and new infusions of zeal are rare 

 or nearly obsolete. 



These reformers were only revivers of the older doctrines of the 

 Buddhas ; but the corruptions had so long prevailed that they could not 

 be easily or completely abated even for a while, and the holy men, or 

 brahmana, coalescing with the brahmanical tribe, their influence, al_ 

 though operating independently of each other, may have caused the 

 Buddhas to have been deemed heretics by them, although, if we are 

 to credit Fa Hain, the term would better apply to the brahmans. These 

 last certainly were heretics from the religion they brought with them to 

 India, if the Vedas are its expositors, and if the Buddhists professed 

 that original faith as emigrants from Persia, so the brahmans were 

 equally dissenters from it, and greater heretics than the Buddhists. 



It is not necessary then while trying to elucidate ancient Buddhist 

 history, to assail that of the brahmans, or to detract from their soaring 

 pretensions to civil and religious antiquity. There is room for both to 

 revel amidst the tortuous mazes of their impalpable chronologies. 



It is assuredly however impossible to everlook the fact that the last 

 Buddha was of a Brahman family, and that his father, a king, support- 

 ed, according to the Mahawanso, 60,000 Brahman priests. We have no 

 means of knowing the actual pedigree or parentage of the previous 

 Buddhas. If what I have (following Sir W. Jones) hinted at, be true, 



