Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch Volume III Part 51

fragm. sect. 28 Op., ed. Klotz, IV. 14), and Paul's saying "I was alive without the law once" (Rom. vii. 9), to former life as an animal (Orig. in Ep. ad Rom. V. Op. iv. 549).]

[Footnote 1136: For Gnosticism, see _Buddhist Gnosticism_, J. Kennedy in _J.R.A.S._ 1902, and Mead, _Fragments of a faith Forgotten_.]

[Footnote 1137: Chavannes et Pelliot, "Un trait Manichen retrouv en Chine," _J.A._ 1911, I, and 1913, II.]

[Footnote 1138: Le Coq in _J.R.A.S._ 1911, p. 277.]

[Footnote 1139: Catechetic Lectures, VI. 20 ff. The whole polemic is curious and worth reading.]

[Footnote 1140: Alberuni, _Chronology of ancient nations_, trans.

Sachau, p. 190.]

[Footnote 1141: The account in Philostratus (books II. and III.) reads like a romance and hardly proves that Apollonius went to India, but still there is no reason why he should not have done so.]

[Footnote 1142: He wrote, however, against certain Gnostics.]

[Footnote 1143: Similarly Sall.u.s.tius (_c._ 360 A.D.), whose object was to revive h.e.l.lenism, includes metempsychosis in his creed and thinks it can be proved. See translation in Murray, _Four Stages of Greek Religion_, p. 213.]

CHAPTER LVII

PERSIAN INFLUENCE IN INDIA

Our geographical and political phraseology about India and Persia obscures the fact that in many periods the frontier between the two countries was uncertain or not drawn as now. North-western India and eastern Persia must not be regarded as water-tight or even merely leaky compartments. Even now there are more Zoroastrians in India than in Persia and the Persian sect of Shiite Mohammedans is powerful and conspicuous there. In former times it is probable that there was often not more difference between Indian and Iranian religion than between different Indian sects.

Yet the religious temperaments of India and Iran are not the same.

Zoroastrianism has little sympathy for pantheism or asceticism: it does not teach metempsychosis or the sinfulness of taking life. Images are not used in worship[1144], G.o.d and his angels being thought of as pure and shining spirits. The foundation of the system is an uncompromising dualism of good and evil, purity and impurity, light and darkness. Good and evil are different in origin and duality will be abolished only by the ultimate and complete victory of the good. In the next world the distinction between heaven and h.e.l.l is equally sharp but h.e.l.l is not eternal[1145].

The pantheon and even the ritual of the early Iranians resembled those of the Veda and we can only suppose that the two peoples once lived and worshipped together. Subsequently came the reform of Zoroaster which subst.i.tuted theism and dualism for this nature worship. For about two centuries, from 530 B.C. onwards, Gandhara and other parts of north-western India were a Persian province. Between the time of Zoroaster (whatever that may be) and this period we cannot say what were the relations of Indian and Iranian religions, but after the seventh century they must have flourished in the same region.

Aristobulus[1146], speaking of Taxila in the time of Alexander the Great, describes a marriage market and how the dead were devoured by vultures. These are Babylonian and Persian customs, and doubtless were accompanied by many others less striking to a foreign tourist. Some hold that the Zoroastrian scriptures allude to disputes with Buddhists[1147].

Experts on the whole agree that the most ancient Indian architecture which has been preserved--that of the Maurya dynasty--has no known antecedents in India, but both in structure (especially the pillars) and in decoration is reminiscent of Persepolis, just as Asoka's habit of lecturing his subjects in stone sermons and the very turns of his phrases recall the inscriptions of Darius[1148]. And though the king's creed is in some respects--such as his tenderness for animal life--thoroughly Indian, yet this cannot be said of his style and choice of themes as a whole. His marked avoidance of theology and philosophy, his insistence on ethical principles such as truth, and his frank argument that men should do good in order that they may fare happily in the next world, suggest that he may have become familiar with the simple and practical Zoroastrian outlook[1149], perhaps when he was viceroy of Taxila in his youth. But still he shows no trace of theism or dualism: morality is his one concern, but it means for him doing good rather than suppressing evil.

After the death of Asoka his Empire broke up and races who were Iranian in culture, if not always in blood, advanced at its expense.

Dependencies of the Persian or Parthian empire extended into India or like the Satrapies of Mathur and Saursht?ra lay wholly within it.

The mixed civilization which the Kushans brought with them included Zoroastrianism, as is shown by the coins of Kanishka, and late Kushan coins indicate that Sa.s.sanian influence had become very strong in northern India when the dynasty collapsed in the third century A.D.

I see no reason to suppose that Gotama himself was influenced by Iranian thought. His fundamental ideas, his view of life and his scheme of salvation are truly Hindu and not Iranian. But if the childhood of Buddhism was Indian, it grew to adolescence in a motley bazaar where Persians and their ways were familiar. Though the Buddhism exported to Ceylon escaped this phase, not merely Mahayanism but schools like the Sarvstivadins must have pa.s.sed through it. The share of Zoroastrianism must not be exaggerated. The metaphysical and ritualistic tendencies of Indian Buddhism are purely Hindu, and if its free use of images was due to any foreign stimulus, that stimulus was perhaps h.e.l.lenistic. But the altruistic morality of Mahayanism, though not borrowed from Zoroastrianism, marks a change and this change may well have occurred among races accustomed to the preaching of active charity and dissatisfied with the ideals of self-training and lonely perfection. And Zoroastrian influence is I think indubitable in the figures of the great Bodhisattvas, even Maitreya[1150], and above all in Amitbha and his paradise. These personalities have been adroitly fitted into Indian theology but they have no Indian lineage and, in spite of all explanations, Amitbha and the salvation which he offers remain in strange contradiction with the teaching of Gotama. I have shown elsewhere[1151] what close parallels may be found in the Avesta to these radiant and benevolent genii and to the heaven of boundless light which is entered by those who repeat the name of its master.

Also there is good evidence to connect the early worship of Amitbha with Central Asia. Later Iranian influence may have meant Mithraism and Manichism as well as Zoroastrianism and the school of Asanga perhaps owes something to these systems[1152]. They may have brought with them fragments of Christianity or doctrines similar to Christianity but I think that all attempts to derive Amitbhist teaching from Christianity are fanciful. The only point which the two have in common is salvation by faith, and that doctrine is certainly older than Christianity. Otherwise the efforts of Amitbha to save humanity have no resemblance to the Christian atonement. Nor do the relations between the various Buddhas and Bodhisattvas recall the Trinity but rather the Persian Fravashis.

Persian influences worked more strongly on Buddhism than on Hinduism, for Buddhism not only flourished in the frontier districts but penetrated into the Tarim basin and the region of the Oxus which lay outside the Indian and within the Iranian sphere. But they affected Hinduism also, especially in the matter of sun-worship. This of course is part of the oldest Vedic religion, but a special form of it, introduced about the beginning of our era, was a new importation and not a descendant of the ancient Indian cult[1153].

The Brihatsam?hita[1154] says that the Magas, that is Magi, are the priests of the sun and the proper persons to superintend the consecration of temples and images dedicated to that deity, but the clearest statements about this foreign cult are to be found in the Bhavishya Purana[1155] which contains a legend as to its introduction obviously based upon history. Smba, the son of Krishna, desiring to be cured of leprosy from which he suffered owing to his father's curse, dedicated a temple to the sun on the river Candrabhg, but could find no Brahmans willing to officiate in it. By the advice of Gauramukha, priest of King Ugrasena, confirmed by the sun himself, he imported some Magas from Skadvpa[1156], whither he flew on the bird Garuda[1157]. That this refers to the importation of Zoroastrian priests from the country of the Skas (Persia or the Oxus regions) is made clear by the account of their customs--such as the wearing of a girdle called Avyanga[1158]--given by the Purana. It also says that they were descended from a child of the sun called Jarasabda or Jarasasta, which no doubt represents Zarathustra.

The river Candrabhg is the modern Chenab and the town founded by Samba is Mlasthana or Multan, called Mu-la-san-pu-lu by the Chinese pilgrim Hsan Chuang. The Bhavishya Purana calls the place Smbapuri and the Chinese name is an attempt to represent Mlasmba-puri. Hsan Chuang speaks enthusiastically of the magnificent temple[1159], which was also seen by Alberuni but was destroyed by Aurungzeb.

Trantha[1160] relates how in earlier times a king called Sr Harsha burnt alive near Multan 12,000 adherents of the Mleccha sect with their books and thereby greatly weakened the religion of Persians and Sakas for a century. This legend offers difficulties but it shows that Multan was regarded as a centre of Zoroastrianism.

Multan is in the extreme west Of India, but sun temples are found in many other parts, such as Gujarat, Gwalior and the district of Gaya, where an inscription has been discovered at Govindapur referring to the legend of Smba. This same legend is also related in the Kapila Sam?hita, a religious guide-book for Orissa, in connection with the great Sun temple of Konarak[1161].

In these temples the sun was represented by images, Hindu convention thus getting the better of Zoroastrian prejudices, but the costume of the images shows their origin, for the Brihatsam?hit[1162] directs that Srya is to be represented in the dress of the northerners, covered from the feet upwards and wearing the girdle called avyan?ga or viyan?ga. In Rajputana I have seen several statues of him in high boots and they are probably to be found elsewhere.

Fortuitously or otherwise, the cult of the sun was often a.s.sociated with Buddhism, as is indicated by these temples in Gaya and Orissa and by the fact that the Emperor Harsha styles his father, grandfather and great-grandfather _paramdityabhakta_, great devotees of the sun[1163]. He himself, though a devout Buddhist, also showed honour to the image of Srya, as we hear from Hsang Chuang.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1144: They are forbidden by strict theology, but in practice there are exceptions, for instance, the winged figure believed to represent Ahura Mazda, found on Achmenian reliefs.]

[Footnote 1145: Though the principles of Zoroastrianism sound excellent to Europeans, I cannot discover that ancient Persia was socially or politically superior to India.]

[Footnote 1146: See Strabo, XV. 62. So, too, the Pitakas seem to regard cemeteries as places where ordinary corpses are thrown away rather than buried or burnt. In Dig. Nik. III, the Buddha says that the ancient Sakyas married their sisters. Such marriages are said to have been permitted in Persia.]

[Footnote 1147: "He who returns victorious from discussions with Gaotama the heretic," Farvadin Yasht in _S.B.E._ XXIII. p. 184. The reference of this pa.s.sage to Buddhism has been much disputed and I am quite incompetent to express any opinion about it. But who is Gaotama if not the Buddha? It is true that there were many other Gautamas of moderate eminence in India, but would any of them have been known in Persia?]

[Footnote 1148: The inscriptions near the tomb of Darius at Nakshi-Rustam appear to be hortatory like those of Asoka. See Williams Jackson, _Persia_, p. 298 and references. The use of the Kharoshtri script and of the word _dipi_ has also been noted as indicating connection with Persia.]

[Footnote 1149: Perhaps the marked absence of figures representing the Buddha in the oldest Indian sculptures, which seems to imply that the holiest things must not be represented, is due to Persian sentiment.]

[Footnote 1150: Strictly speaking there is nothing final about Maitreya who is merely the next in an infinite series of Buddhas, but practically his figure has many a.n.a.logies to Soshyos or Saoshant, the Parsi saviour and renovator of the world.]

[Footnote 1151: See chap. XLI. p. 220.]

[Footnote 1152: See chap, on Mahyna, VI.]

[Footnote 1153: A convenient statement of what is known about this cult will be found in Bhandarkar, _Vaishnavism and Saivism_, part II.

chap. XVI.]

[Footnote 1154: Chap. 60. 19. The work probably dates from about 650 A.D.]

[Footnote 1155: Chap. 139. See, for extracts from the text, Aufrecht.

Cat. Cod. Sansc. p. 30.]

[Footnote 1156: For Skadvpa see Vishnu, p. II. IV. where it is said that Brahmans are called there Mr?iga or Maga and Kshattriyas Mgadha. The name clearly means the country of the Skas who were regarded as Zoroastrians, whether they were Iranian by race or not.

But the topography is imaginary, for in this fanciful geography India is the central continent and Sakadvpa the sixth, whereas if it means Persia or the countries of the Oxus it ought to be near India.]

[Footnote 1157: The Garud?a may itself be of Persian provenance, for birds play a considerable part in Persian mythology.]

[Footnote 1158: The Aivyonghen of the Avesta.]

[Footnote 1159: Watters, vol. II. 254, and _Life_, chap. IV.]

[Footnote 1160: Trantha, tr. Schiefner, p. 128, and Vincent Smith's remarks in _Early History_, p. 347, note 2.]

[Footnote 1161: See Rjendralla Mitra, _Antiquities of Orissa_, vol.

n. p. 145. He also quotes the Smba Purna. The temple is said to have been built between 1240 and 1280 but the beauty of its architecture suggests an earlier date.]

[Footnote 1162: 58. 47.]