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BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM.
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final, but even this does not seem to be very rigorously enforced.
Belief in a Supreme Being, the Creator and Ruler of the universe, is unquestionably a modern graft upon the unqualified atheism of Sákya Muni: it is still of very limited recognition. In none of the standard authorities translated by M. Burnouf, or Mr. Gogerly, is there the slightest allusion to such a First Cause, the existence of whom is incompatible with the fundamental Buddhist dogma, of the eternity of all existence. The doctrine of an Adi Buddha, a first Buddha, in the character of a Supreme Creator', which has found its way into Nepal, and perhaps into Western Tibet, is entirely local, as is that of the Dhyáni Buddhas and the Bodhisattwas, their sons and agents in creation, as described by Mr. Hodgson. They are not recognised in the Buddhist mythology of any other people, and have no doubt been borrowed from the Hindus. There can be no first Buddha, for it is of the essence of the system that Buddhas are of progressive development: any one may become a Buddha by passing through a series of existences in the practice of virtue and benevolence, and there have been accordingly an infinitude of Buddhas in all ages and in all regions. One of the Páli authorities records the actions of twenty-fou* ; Schmidt, from a Mongol work, has given us the names of a thousand Buddhas. (Trans. Soc. St. Petersburg, 2, 68.) There are Sans
* [Mahawansa, Introd. xxxii ff.]
