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RELIGION-ANIMISM
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adopted, certain popular cults and beliefs highly esteemed by the people. In any case, there, in the poem, these cults and beliefs, absent from the Vedic literature, are found in full life and power. And though this line of evidence, if it stood alone, would be too weak to bear much weight, the most likely explanation seems to be that here also we have evidence, to some extent at least, of beliefs not included in the Vedic literature, and yet current among, and powerfully affecting, both the Aryan and the semi-Aryan peoples of India.'
The third line is based on the references to the religious beliefs, not of the Buddhists themselves, but of the people, recorded in the Buddhist Canon. As these have never yet been collected or analysed, and as they are in many ways both interesting and suggestive, it may be useful to point out shortly here the more important of them.
The standard passages on this question are three, the one in prose, the other two in verse, and all found in our oldest documents. The first is in the Silas," and begins thus:
"Whereas some recluses and brahmins, while living on food provided by the faithful, are tricksters, droners out of holy words for pay, diviners, exorcists, ever hungering to add gain to gain, Gotama the recluse holds aloof from such deception and patter."
There then follows a long enumeration, most
1 Compare Professor Hopkins, J. A. O. S. 1899, pp. 315, 365; - and Religions of India, chap. xiv.
2 Translated by Rh. D. Dialogues of the Buddha, I. 15.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
