4$' ON MIRACLES-. 



propagator of a new Beligion expressly to disclaim t re- 

 possession of iddhi ; yet we have Gotama's own authority,- 

 as to two facts — 1st, that ' all miraculous acts which he- 

 could work might be easily performedfby Vijja or Magic 1 

 and 2nd, that he abhoned, refrained from, and censured 

 the working of Miracles ;.' vide Kevatta Sutta in the Ap- 

 pendix. So much did he set his face against it, that he 

 not only considered the mere fraudulent representation o£ 

 the possession of iddhi, or a super-human miraculous* 

 power, to amount to an offence as grave as murder, but 

 he visited the offender with the same punishment that he 

 assigned to that offence, and expelled him for ever from 

 the priesthood,* 



It may also be readily believed that the peculiarly 

 practical mind of Gotama did not fail to perceive that, in 

 the state of society in which he lived, and which was by 

 no means inferior in the possession of Arts and Sciences. f 

 to that in which the Magicians of Egypt practised 

 wonders, — the working of ' mb acles f led to no practical 

 benefit. When therefore Moggallana, with an overween- 

 ing confidence in his own prodigious capacity for working 

 miracles, wishing to relieve the distress of his fellow-pupils 

 consequent upon a terrible famine, — asked his Master's 

 permission— not to convert stones into food, but to over- 

 turn the upper stratum of this globe so as to get at whatjs 

 called its honied-substratum, the answer was simply — 

 ' Don't.' The fact, too, involved in the question By 



* See Vinaya Pitaka, lib. 1. 



t Arrian in his History of Alexander's Expedition, speaking of 

 the Indians, says : ' They [Brahmans ?] are the only diviners 

 throughout all India ; neither are any suffered to practise the art of 

 divination except themselves, vol. ii. p. 204. 



