Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) by Charles Eliot

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CHAPTER XV

MYTHOLOGY IN HINDUISM AND BUDDHISM

1

The later phases of Buddhism, described as Mahayana, show this feature
among many others, that the supernatural and mythological side of
religion becomes prominent. Gods or angels play an increasingly
important part, the Buddha himself becomes a being superior to all gods,
and Buddhas, gods and saints perform at every turn feats for which
miracle seems too modest a name. The object of the present chapter is to
trace the early stages of these beliefs, for they are found in the Pali
Canon, although it is not until later that they overgrow and hide the
temple in whose walls they are rooted.

It may be fairly said that Buddhism is not a miraculous religion in the
sense that none of its essential doctrines depend on miracles. It would
seem that such a religion as Mormonism must collapse if it were admitted
that the Book of Mormon is not a revelation delivered to Joseph Smith.
But the content of the Buddha's teaching is not miraculous and, though
he is alleged to have possessed insight exceeding ordinary human
knowledge, yet this is not exactly a miracle and it is a question
whether an unusual intelligence disciplined by meditation might not
attain to such knowledge. Still, though the essence of the doctrine may
be detachable from miracles and even be scientific, one cannot read very
far in the Vinaya or the Sutta Pitaka without coming upon unearthly
beings or supernatural occurrences.

The credibility of miracles is to my mind simply a question of evidence.
Any extraordinary event, such as a person doing a thing totally foreign
to his character, is improbable _a priori_. But the law does not allow
that the best of men is incapable of committing the worst of crimes, if
the evidence proves he did. Nor can the most extraordinary violation of
nature's laws be pronounced impossible if supported by sufficient
evidence, only the evidence must be strong in proportion to the
strangeness of the circumstances. But I cannot see that the uniformity
of nature is any objection to the occurrence of miracles, for as a rule
a miracle is regarded not as an event without a cause, but as due to a
new cause, namely the intervention of a superhuman person. Many of the
best known miracles are such that one may imagine this person to effect
them by understanding and controlling some unknown natural force, just
as we control electricity. Only evidence is required to show that he can
do so. But on the other hand the weakness of every religion which
depends on miracles is that their truth is contested and not
unreasonably. If they are true, why are they not certain? Of all the
phenomena described as miracles, ghosts, fortune telling, magic,
clairvoyance, prophesying, and so on, none command unchallenged
acceptance. In every age miracles, portents and apparitions have been
recorded, yet none of them with a certainty that carries universal
conviction and in many ages contemporary scepticism was possible. Even
in Vedic times there were people who did not believe in the existence of
Indra[714].

It is clear that some miracles require more evidence than others and
many old stories are so fantastic that they may justly be put aside
because those who reported them did not see, as we can, what
difficulties they involve and hence felt no need for caution in belief.
Among ancient Indians or Hebrews tales of seven headed snakes or of
stopping the sun did not arouse the critical spirit, for the phenomena
did not seem much more extraordinary than centipedes or eclipses. Only
those who understand that such stories upset all we know of anatomy and
astronomy can realize their improbability and the weight of evidence
necessary to make them credible. The most important distinction in
miracles (I use the word as a popular description of extraordinary
events which is readily understood though hard to define) is whether
they are in any way subjective, that is to say that they depend in the
last resort on an impression produced in certain, but not all, human
minds or whether they are objective, that is to say that all witnesses
would have seen them like any other event. A man rising into the air
would be an objective miracle if it were admitted that this levitation
was as real as the flight of a bird, and very strong evidence would be
necessary to make us believe that such a movement had really been
executed. But the case is different if we are dealing with the
conviction of an enthusiast that he rose aloft or even with the
conviction of his disciples, that they, being in an ecstasy, saw him do
so. There is no reason to doubt the subjective reality of
well-authenticated visions and as motives and stimuli to action they may
have real objective importance. Miracles of healing are not dissimilar.
A man's mind can affect his body, either directly through his conviction
that certain physical changes are about to take place or indirectly as
conveying the influence of some powerful external mind which may be
either calming or stimulating. That some persons have a special power of
healing nervous or mental diseases can hardly be doubted and I am not
disposed to reject any well-authenticated miraculous cure, believing
that sudden mental relief or acute joy can so affect the whole frame
that in the improved physical conditions thus caused even diseases not
usually considered as nervous may pass away. But though there is no
reason to discredit miracles of healing, it is clear that they are not
only exaggerated but also distorted by reporters who do not understand
their nature. Those who chronicle the cures supposed to be effected at
Lourdes at the present day keep within the bounds of what is explicable,
but a Hindu who had seen a cripple recover some power of movement might
be equally ready to believe that when a man's leg had been cut off the
stump could grow into a complete limb.

The miraculous events recorded in the Pitakas differ from those of later
works, whether Mahayanist literature or the Hindu Puranas and Epics,
chiefly in their moderation. They may be classified under several heads.
Many of them are mere embroidery or embellishment due to poetical
exuberance, esteemed appropriate in those generous climates though
repugnant to our chilly tastes. In every country poetry is allowed to
overstep the prosaic borders of fact without criticism. When an English
poet says that--

The red rose cries She is near, she is near:
And the white rose weeps She is late:
The larkspur listens, I hear, I hear:
And the lily whispers, I wait--

no one thinks of criticizing the lines as absurd because flowers cannot
talk or of trying to prove that they can. Poetry can take liberties with
facts provided it follows the lines of metaphors which the reader finds
natural. The same latitude cannot be allowed in unfamiliar directions.
Thus though a shower of flowers from heaven is not more extraordinary
than talking flowers and is quite natural in Indian poetry, it would
probably disconcert the English reader[715]. An Indian poet would not
represent flowers as talking, but would give the same idea by saying
that the spirits inhabiting trees and plants recited stanzas. Similarly
when a painter draws a picture of an angel with wings rising from the
shoulder blades, even the very scientific do not think it needful to
point out that no such anatomical arrangement is known or probable, nor
do the very pious maintain that such creatures exist. The whole question
is allowed to rest happily in some realm of acquiescence untroubled by
discussions. And it is in this spirit that Indian books relate how when
the Buddha went abroad showers of flowers fell from the sky and the air
resounded with heavenly music, or diversify their theological
discussions with interludes of demons, nymphs and magic serpents. And
although this riot of the imagination offends our ideas of good sense
and proportion, the Buddhists do not often lose the distinction between
what Matthew Arnold called Literature and Dogma. The Buddha's visits to
various heavens are not presented as articles of faith: they are simply
a pleasant setting for his discourses.

Some miracles of course have a more serious character and can be less
easily separated from the essentials of the faith. Thus the Pitakas
represent the Buddha as able to see all that happens in the world and to
transport himself anywhere at will. But even in such cases we may
remember that when we say of a well-informed and active person that he
is omniscient and ubiquitous, we are not misunderstood. The hyperbole of
Indian legends finds its compensation in the small importance attached
to them. No miraculous circumstance recorded of the Buddha has anything
like the significance attributed by Christians to the virgin birth or
the resurrection of Christ. His superhuman powers are in keeping with
the picture drawn of his character. They are mostly the result of an
attempt to describe a mind and will of more than human strength, but the
superman thus idealized rarely works miracles of healing. He saves
mankind by teaching the way of salvation, not by alleviating a few
chance cases of physical distress. In later works he is represented as
performing plentiful and extraordinary miracles, but these are just the
instances in which we can most clearly trace the addition of
embellishments.

2

The elaboration of marvellous episodes is regarded in India as a
legitimate form of literary art, no more blameable than dramatization,
and in sacred writings it flourishes unchecked. In Hinduism, as in
Buddhism, there is not wanting a feeling that the soul is weary of the
crowd of deities who demand sacrifices and promise happiness, and on the
serener heights of philosophy gods have little place. Still most forms
of Hinduism cannot like Buddhism be detached from the gods, and no
extravagance is too improbable to be included in the legends about them.
The extravagance is the more startling because their exploits form part
of quasi-historical narratives. Rama and Krishna seem to be idealized
and deified portraits of ancient heroes, who came to be regarded as
incarnations of the Almighty. This is understood by Indians to mean not
that the Almighty submitted consistently to human limitations, but that
he, though incarnate, exercised whenever it pleased him and often most
capriciously his full divine force. With this idea before them and no
historical scruples to restrain them, Indian writers tell how Krishna
held up a mountain on his finger, Indian readers accept the statement,
and crowds of pilgrims visit the scene of the exploit.

The later Buddhist writings are perhaps not less extravagant than the
Puranas, but the Pitakas are relatively sober, though not quite
consistent in their account of the Buddha's attitude to the miraculous.
Thus he encourages Sagata[716] to give a display of miracles, such as
walking in the air, in order to prepare the mind of a congregation to
whom he is going to preach, but in other narratives[717] which seem
ancient and authentic, he expresses his disapproval of such performances
(just as Christ refused to give signs), and says that they do not
"conduce to the conversion of the unconverted or to the increase of the
converted." Those who know India will easily call up a picture of how
the Bhikkhus strove to impress the crowd by exhibitions not unlike a
modern juggler's tricks and how the master stopped them. His motives are
clear: these performances had nothing to do with the essence of his
teaching. If it be true that he ever countenanced them, he soon saw his
error. He did not want people to say that he was a conjurer who knew the
Gandhara charm or any other trick. And though we have no warrant for
doubting that he believed in the reality of the powers known as iddhi,
it is equally certain that he did not consider them essential or even
important for religion.

Somewhat similar is the attitude of early Buddhism to the spirit
world--the hosts of deities and demons who people this and other spheres.
Their existence is assumed, but the truths of religion are not dependent
on them, and attempts to use their influence by sacrifices and oracles
are deprecated as vulgar practices similar to juggling. Later Buddhism
became infected with mythology and the critical change occurs when
deities, instead of being merely protectors of the church, take an
active part in the work of salvation. When the Hindu gods developed into
personalities who could appeal to religious and philosophic minds as
cosmic forces, as revealers of the truth and guides to bliss, the
example was too attractive to be neglected and a pantheon of
Bodhisattvas arose. But it is clear that when the Buddha preached in
Kosala and Magadha, the local deities had not attained any such
position. The systems of philosophy then in vogue were mostly not
theistic, and, strange as the words may sound, religion had little to do
with the gods. If this be thought to rest on a mistranslation, it is
certainly true that the _dhamma_ had very little to do with _devas_. The
example of Rome under the Empire or of modern China makes the position
clearer. In neither would a serious enquirer turn to the ancient
national gods for spiritual help.

Often as the Devas figure in early Buddhist stories, the significance of
their appearance nearly always lies in their relations with the Buddha
or his disciples. Of mere mythology, such as the dealings of Brahma and
Indra with other gods, there is little. In fact the gods, though freely
invoked as accessories, are not taken seriously[718], and there are some
extremely curious passages in which Gotama seems to laugh at them, much
as the sceptics of the eighteenth century laughed at Jehovah. Thus in
the Kevaddha sutta[719] he relates how a monk who was puzzled by a
metaphysical problem applied to various gods and finally accosted Brahma
himself in the presence of all his retinue. After hearing the question,
which was Where do the elements cease and leave no trace behind? Brahma
replies, "I am the Great Brahma, the Supreme, the Mighty, the
All-seeing, the Ruler, the Lord of all, the Controller, the Creator, the
Chief of all, appointing to each his place, the Ancient of days, the
Father of all that are and are to be." "But," said the monk, "I did not
ask you, friend, whether you were indeed all you now say, but I ask you
where the four elements cease and leave no trace." Then the Great Brahma
took him by the arm and led him aside and said, "These gods think I know
and understand everything. Therefore I gave no answer in their presence.
But I do not know the answer to your question and you had better go and
ask the Buddha." Even more curiously ironical is the account given of
the origin of Brahma[720]. There comes a time when this world system
passes away and then certain beings are reborn in the World of Radiance
and remain there a long time. Sooner or later, the world system begins
to evolve again and the palace of Brahma appears, but it is empty. Then
some being whose time is up falls from the World of Radiance and comes
to life in the palace and remains there alone. At last he wishes for
company, and it so happens that other beings whose time is up fall from
the World of Radiance and join him. And the first being thinks that he
is Great Brahma, the Creator, because when he felt lonely and wished for
companions other beings appeared. And the other beings accept this view.
And at last one of Brahma's retinue falls from that state and is born in
the human world and, if he can remember his previous birth, he reflects
that he is transitory but that Brahma still remains and from this he
draws the erroneous conclusion that Brahma is eternal.

He who dared to represent Brahma (for which name we might substitute
Allah or Jehovah) as a pompous deluded individual worried by the
difficulty of keeping up his position had more than the usual share of
scepticism and irony. The compilers of such discourses regarded the gods
as mere embellishments, as gargoyles and quaint figures in the cathedral
porch, not as saints above the altar. The mythology and cosmology
associated with early Buddhism are really extraneous. The Buddha's
teaching is simply the four truths and some kindred ethical and
psychological matter. It grew up in an atmosphere of animism which
peopled the trees and streams and mountains with spirits. It accepted
and played with the idea, just as it might have accepted and played with
the idea of radio-activity. But such notions do not affect the essence
of the Dharma and it might be preached in severe isolation. Yet in Asia
it hardly ever has been so isolated. It is true that Indian mythology
has not always accompanied the spread of Buddhism. There is much of it
in Tibet and Mongolia but less in China and Japan and still less in
Burma. But probably in every part of Asia the Buddhist missionaries
found existing a worship of nature spirits and accepted it, sometimes
even augmenting and modifying it. In every age the elect may have risen
superior to all ideas of gods and heavens and hells, but for any just
historical perspective, for any sympathetic understanding of the faith
as it exists as a living force to-day, it is essential to remember this
background and frame of fantastic but graceful mythology.

Many later Mahayanist books are full of dharanis or spells. Dharanis are
not essentially different from mantras, especially tantric mantras
containing magical syllables, but whereas mantras are more or less
connected with worship, dharanis are rather for personal use, spells to
ward off evil and bring good luck. The Chinese pilgrim Hsuean Chuang[721]
states that the sect of the Mahasanghikas, which in his opinion arose in
connection with the first council, compiled a Pitaka of dharanis. The
tradition cannot be dismissed as incredible for even the Digha-Nikaya
relates how a host of spirits visited the Buddha in order to impart a
formula which would keep his disciples safe from harm. Buddhist and
Brahmanic mythology represent two methods of working up popular legends.
The Mahabharata and Puranas introduce us to a moderately harmonious if
miscellaneous society of supernatural personages decently affiliated to
one another and to Brahmanic teaching. The same personages reappear in
Buddhism but are analogous to Christian angels or to fairies rather than
to minor deities. They are not so much the heroes of legends, as
protectors: they are interesting not for their past exploits but for
their readiness to help believers or to testify to the true doctrine.
Still there was a great body of Buddhist and Jain legend in ancient
India which handled the same stories as Brahmanic legend--e.g. the tale
of Krishna--but in a slightly different manner. The characteristic form
of Buddhist legend is the Jataka, or birth story. Folk-lore and sagas,
ancient jokes and tragedies, the whole stock in trade of rhapsodists and
minstrels are made an edifying and interesting branch of scripture by
simply identifying the principal characters with the Buddha, his friends
and his enemies in their previous births[722]. But in Hinayanist
Buddhism legend and mythology are ornamental, and edifying, nothing
more. Spirits may set a good example or send good luck: they have
nothing to do with emancipation or nirvana. The same distinction of
spheres is not wholly lost in Hinduism, for though the great philosophic
works treat of God under various names they mostly ignore minor deities,
and though the language of the Bhagavad-gita is exuberant and
mythological, yet only Krishna is God: all other spirits are part of
him.

The deities most frequently mentioned in Buddhist works are Indra,
generally under the name of Sakka (Sakra) and Brahma. The former is no
longer the demon-slaying soma-drinking deity of the Vedas, but the
heavenly counterpart of a pious Buddhist king. He frequently appears in
the Jataka stories as the protector of true religion and virtue, and
when a good man is in trouble, his throne grows hot and attracts his
attention. His transformation is analogous to the process by which
heathen deities, especially in the Eastern Church, have been accepted as
Christian saints[723]. Brahma rules in a much higher heaven than Sakka.
His appearances on earth are rarer and more weighty, and sometimes he
seems to be a personification of whatever intelligence and desire for
good there is in the world[724]. But in no case do the Pitakas concede
to him the position of supreme ruler of the Universe. In one singular
narrative the Buddha tells his disciples how he once ascertained that
Brahma Baka was under the delusion that his heaven was eternal and cured
him of it[725].

3

All Indian religions have a passion for describing in bold imaginative
outline the history and geography of the universe. Their ideas are
juster than those of Europeans and Semites in so far as they imply a
sense of the distribution of life throughout immensities of time and
space. The Hindu perceived more clearly than the Jew and Greek that his
own age and country were merely parts of a much longer series and of a
far larger structure or growth. He wished to keep this whole continually
before the mind, but in attempting to describe it he fell into that
besetting intellectual sin of India, the systematizing of the imaginary.
Ages, continents and worlds are described in detailed statements which
bear no relation to facts. Thus, Brahmanic cosmogony usually deals with
a period of time called Kalpa. This is a day in the life of Brahma, who
lives one hundred years of such days, and it marks the duration of a
world which comes into being at its commencement and is annihilated at
its end. It consists of 4320 times a million years and is divided into
fourteen smaller periods called manvantaras each presided over by a
superhuman being called Manu[726]. A manvantara contains about
seventy-one mahayugas and each mahayuga is what men call the four ages
of the world[727]. Geography and astronomy show similar precision. The
Earth is the lowest of seven spheres or worlds, and beneath it are a
series of hells[728]. The three upper spheres last for a hundred Kalpas
but are still material, though less gross than those below. The whole
system of worlds is encompassed above and below by the shell of the egg
of Brahma. Round this again are envelopes of water, fire, air, ether,
mind and finally the infinite Pradhana or cause of all existing things.
The earth consists of seven land-masses, divided and surrounded by seven
seas. In the centre of the central land-mass rises Mount Meru, nearly a
million miles high and bearing on its peaks the cities of Brahma and
other gods.

The cosmography of the Buddhists is even more luxuriant, for it regards
the universe as consisting of innumerable spheres (cakkavalas), each of
which might seem to a narrower imagination a universe in itself, since
it has its own earth, heavenly bodies, paradises and hells. A sphere is
divided into three regions, the lowest of which is the region of desire.
This consists of eleven divisions which, beginning from the lowest, are
the hells, and the worlds of animals, Pretas (hungry ghosts), Asuras
(Titans)[729] and men. This last, which we inhabit, consists of a vast
circular plain largely covered with water. In the centre of it is Mount
Meru, and it is surrounded by a wall. Above it rise six devalokas, or
heavens of the inferior gods. Above the realms of desire there follow
sixteen worlds in which there is form but no desire. All are states of
bliss one higher than the other and all are attained by the exercise of
meditation. Above these again come four formless worlds, in which there
is neither desire nor form. They correspond to the four stages of Arupa
trances and in them the gross and evil elements of existence are reduced
to a minimum, but still they are not permanent and cannot be regarded as
final salvation. We naturally think of this series of worlds as so many
storeys rising one above the other and they are so depicted[730] but it
will be observed that the animal kingdom is placed between the hells and
humanity, obviously not as having its local habitation there but as
better off than the one, though inferior to the other, and perhaps if we
pointed this out to the Hindu artist he would smile and say that his
many storeyed picture must not be taken so literally: all states of
being are merely states of mind, hellish, brutish, human and divine.

Grotesque as Hindu notions of the world may seem, they include two great
ideas of modern science. The universe is infinite or at least
immeasurable[731]. The vision of the astronomer who sees a solar system
in every star of the milky way is not wider than the thought that
devised these Cakkavalas or spheres, each with a vista of heavens and a
procession of Buddhas, to look after its salvation. Yet compared with
the sum of being a sphere is an atom. Space is filled by aggregates of
them, considered by some as groups of three, by others as clusters of a
thousand. And secondly these world systems, with the living beings and
plants in them, are regarded as growing and developing by natural
processes, and, equally in virtue of natural processes, as decaying and
disintegrating when the time comes. In the Agganna-Sutta[732] we have a
curious account of the evolution of man which, though not the same as
Darwin's, shows the same idea of development or perhaps degeneration and
differentiation. Human beings were originally immaterial, aerial and
self-luminous, but as the world gradually assumed its present form they
took to eating first of all a fragrant kind of earth and then plants
with the result that their bodies became gross and differences of sex
and colour were produced.