Great Indian Religion

Author(s): G T Bettany
Publisher: Ward Lock Bowden and Co

Page 69

TRIUMPH OF BUDDHISM.
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supremacy in India, and greatly depressed it for more than a thousand years, was partly a natural Reaction reaction from the haughty sway of the Brah- from
Brahmanism. mans and their reliance on ritual and sacrifice, and partly the development of a movement which had already risen within the older system. The educated Brahmans came to see that the Vedic gods were poetic imaginations which could not all be true, and that whereas various gods--the Sun, the Encompassing Sky, the Dawn, etc.-were represented as independent and supreme, they must be emanations of one supreme Cause. While they continued to uphold the popular ideas about the gods, and to conduct the customary sacrifices, they began to develop a theological literature, of part of which we have already given an account, the Upanishads and the Puranas, teaching the unity of God and the immortality of the soul, still mingled with many myths and superstitions. Their new system involved the brotherhood of man; but it was reserved for Gautama to break through all the old conventions, and to found the great system of Triumph of Buddhism. All classes found in it something Buddhism. that was lacking in Brahmanism, and rejoiced in the upsetting of many things that had been irksome. From the third century B.c. to the fourth century A.D., Buddhism increasingly triumphed, until it was professed by the majority of the Indian people. But in the fifth century the Buddhists were persecuted by the adherents of the old religion. By the end of that century the Buddhist leaders had taken refuge in China, and many of its priests had carried the faith to new lands. As late as the twelfth century a few remained in India, but now they are non-existent, unless Jainism be regarded as representing the old Buddhism. But the influence of Buddhism upon Brahmanism had been profound, and modern Hinduism is a very different thing from the religion of the Vedas and Brahmanas. Indeed, Sir W. W. Hunter terms modern Hinduism the joint product of Buddhism and Brahmanism. The latter was active and slowly changing during all the time of the predominance of the former, and we have the testimony of Greeks in Alexander's time