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BUDDHIST INDIA
of the Veda, even mentioned. His place, as bearer of the thunderbolt, is taken by Sakka, who is in inany, if not in most, respects a quite different conception. We should never forget in what degree all these gods are real. They had no real objective existence. But they were real enough as ideas in men's minds. At any given moment the gods of a nation seein eternal, unchangeable. As a matter of fact they are constantly slightly changing. No two men, thinking of the same god, even on the same day, and amid the same surroundings, have quite the saine mental image; nor is the proportionate importance of that god as compared with their respective conceptions of other gods (that is, as compared with their other ideas) quite the same. Just as a man's visible frame, though no change may at any moment be perceptible, is never really the same for two con. secutive moments, and the result of constant minute variations becomes clear after a lapse of time, so the idea summed up by the name of a god becomes changed by the gradual accretion of minute varia. tions; and this change, after a lapse of time (it may be generations, it may be centuries), becomes so clear that a new name arises, and gradually, very gradu. ally, ousts the older one. Then the older god is dead. As the Buddhist poets put it, “the flowers of the garlands he wore are withered, his robes of majesty have waxed old and faded, he falls from his high estate, and is re-born into a new life." He lives again, as we might say, in the very outcome of his former life, in the new god who, under the new name, reigns in men's hearts.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
