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APRIL, 1925)
BOOK-NOTICE
79
BOOK-NOTICE. L'ASTOIRE DES IDES THEOSOPHIQUES DAN subordinated the lay element to the religious,
L'INDE: LA TutoSOPHIE BOUDDHIQUE. By instead of co-ordinating them, and thereby robbed PAUL OLTRAMARK; Annales du Musée Cuimet, it of its freedom of action. He was clearly far Tome XXXI. Paul Gouthner. Paris, 1933. less emancipated than the Buddha from the ancient
This work, which comprises more than 520 superstition, which escribed a separate spiri. pages, is concerned with certain important aspects tual worth, to exterior forms and ceremonies. of the Buddhist faith. The author, whose know. In the history of Buddhism it is the Sangha which lodge of Buddhist literature is profound, sets him has been the stable element; it has maintained self to determine the conditions, external and orthodoxy both in belief and practice. The lay internal, in which the key doctrinus of Buddhuam brethren were more open to the influence of their exercised their influence on the mind of man; surroundings, more mobile, lors attached to tra. in what manner these controlling ideas or doctrines dition. The monks are puror, but more rigid. The are inter-related; what effect they have produced lay congregation is more alive; but tho novelon the conduct of individuals and on the general ties which creep in under their influan community; how they have been transformed casionally opposed violently to the basic principles by the operation of pure thought ; how they have of the Faith. The influence of the lay brother been altered by contact with other schools of increased, as time went on. It was noticeable religious thought; and to what excesses in theory in some sections of the original church; it was and practice they have sometimes led. The au. still more noticeable in the Buddhism of the middle thor is, therefore, concerned with the Buddha and ages. It is supremo to day in Nepal, where preachthe Samgha only in so far as the personality of the ing and external activities are carried on by one and the organization of the other had a direct
married priests, that is to say, by householders, influence upon the direction of the spiritual efforts
and where the monks live in their retreats, comof past ages. Ho lays stress in his earlier pages
pletely cut off from all relations with the outside upon the lay character of the Buddha's teaching,
world. and upon the fact that the Teacher, whom it has often been the practice to represent as an ascetic,
At the close of a long and valuable chapter on divorced from everything external and profane, the landmarks in the literary history of the Bud. was on the contrary possessed of a profound sense dhistio doctrine, M. Oltramare raises the ques. of nature, and of the value of family and social tion as to how and why the religion founded by life. His method of preaching must have been Gautama disappeared slowly, but almost wholly, singularly impressive, for he not only organized from the land of its origin, after achieving at the A church, but also foundod a tradition of teaching, outset such phanomenal success. The Bud. furnishing by his own sermons and exhortations dhists themselves state that their religion suffered A pattern to which later his disciples found it noverely from the attacks of Kumarila in the 7th imperative to conform.
century and of Sankara at the beginning of the Buddhism shattered the fundamental oppoai 9th, and certain facts related by the Chinese piltion between the sacred and the profane, and
grim Hiuen Tsang indicate that Brahman hatred abolished the idea that certain individuals are of faith, which had so often supplanted them necessarily sot apart from the general body of in the favour of the powerful and ruling classes, men, owing to their possesion of some mysterious was intense and prolonged. Even so, instances inhérent virtue. The householder and the monk of violence were only sporadic, and there were no can have an equal share of piety, though their persecutions, properly so-called, on the part of methods of practising it may differ. This mutual the great rulers. Buddhism, indeed, suffered far blending of everyday life and religious feeling.. more from Islam, which destroyed its monasteries which Buddhism taught, marked a new epoch in wholesale. Yet here again the Muhammadan the history of humanity; and in offering a position invasions merely hastened the completion of a in his church to the lay devotee of both sexes, religious dissolution, which had commenced long the Buddha assured the success of the institution previously. What really ruined Buddhism was which he founded. It must not, however, be its over increasing affinity to Hindu cults, and in forgotten that his modification was merely an particular to the cult of Siva. The Chinese pil. extension of a line of evolution which commences grims give numerous examples of the penetration from the Upanishads, and that therefore the Bud- of pagan ideas, even in the monasteries most dha was the beneficiary, rather than the originator, renowned for their orthodoxy. It was especially of a change which hed its roots in a more distant through the Mandyd na that Buddhism became past. The Jain church also has had ito updsaka, infected with the morbid germs that led to its and has indeed tried to link them to itself by closer ultimato dooay. The followers of the Hindy bonds than those which united the householder declared openly that the moales of Nalanda bardly with the bhikalu in Buddhism, But Mahavir differed at all from Saiva friars. Eroploying
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