BAUDDHAS, &c. OF NEPAL. 437 



an enlargement of his faculty by habitual abstraction, as will enable a man 

 to know what Nirvritti is. To know this, is to become omniscient, a Buddha^ 

 to be divinely worshipped as such, while yet lingering in Pravritti ; and to 

 become, beyond the grave, or in Nirvritti, all at least that man can become^ 

 an all respecting which, some of the Swabhavikas have expressed much 

 doubt, while others of them have insisted that it is eternal repose, and not eter- 

 nal annihilation* (^SwiT/atd'): though (adds this more dogmatical school,) were 

 it even Sunyatd, it would still be good : man being otherwise doomed to an 

 eternal migration through all the forms of nature — the more desirable of 

 which are little to be wished j and the less so, at any price to be shunned. 



From the foregoing sketch it will be seen, that the most diognostic te- 

 nets of the Swabhdvikas are the denial of immateriality, and the assertion that 

 man is capable of enlarging his faculties to infinity. The end of this enlarge- 

 ment of human fiiculties is association to the eternal rest o? Nirvritti — res- 

 pecting the value of which there is some dispute— and the means of it are 

 T'apas and Dhydn — by the former of which terms, the SwabhdviJcas understand 

 — not penance, or self-inflicted bodily pain — but a perfect rejection of all out- 

 ward (Pravrittika') things j and by the latter, pure mental abstraction. In 

 regard to physics, the Swabhdvikas do not reject design or skill — but a designer, 

 that is, a single, immaterial, self-conscious Being, who gave existence and 

 order to matter by volition. They admit what we call the laws of matter — 

 but insist that those laws are primary causes, not secondary, are inherent 

 eternally in matter, not impressed on it by an immaterial creator. They con- 

 sider creation a spontaneity, resulting from powers which matter has had 

 from all eternity, and will have to all eternity. So with respect to man, they 

 admit intellectual and moral powers, but deny that immaterial essence or 



* This interpretation of the Swabhaviha Sumjati is not the general one, though their enemies 

 have attempted lo malie it so : for the prevalent sense of the word among the Biiddhas, see on. 



