The Buddhist Catechism Part 14

A. It can be nothing else than its intrinsic excellence: its self-evident basis of truth, its sublime moral teaching, and its sufficiency for all human needs.

283. Q. _How has it been propagated?_

A. The Buddha, during the forty-five years of his life as a Teacher, travelled widely in India and preached the Dharma. He sent his wisest and best disciples to do the same throughout India.

284. Q. _When did He send for his pioneer missionaries?_

A. On the full-moon day of the month _Wap_ (October).

285. Q. _What did he tell them?_

A. He called them together and said: "Go forth, Bhikkhus, go and preach the law to the world. Work for the good of others as well as for your own.... Bear ye the glad tidings to every man. Let no two of you take the same way."

286. Q. _How long before the Christian era did this happen?_

A. About six centuries.

287. Q. _What help did Kings give?_

A. Besides the lower cla.s.ses, great Kings, Rajas and Maharajas were converted and gave their influence to spread the religion.

288. Q. _What about pilgrims?_

A. Learned pilgrims came in different centuries to India and carried back with them books and teachings to their native lands. So, gradually, whole nations forsook their own faiths and became Buddhists.

289. Q. _To whom, more than to any other person, is the world indebted for the permanent establishment of Buddha's religion?_

A. To the Emperor Ashoka, surnamed the Great, sometimes Piyadasi, sometimes Dharmashoka. He was the son of Bindusara, King of Magadha, arid grandson of Chandragupta, who drove the Greeks out of India.

290. Q. _When did he reign?_

A. In the third century B.C., about two centuries after the Buddha's time. Historians disagree as to his exact date, but not very greatly.

291. Q. _What made him great?_

A. He was the most powerful monarch in Indian history, as warrior and as statesman; but his n.o.blest characteristics were his love of truth and justice, tolerance of religious differences, equity of government, kindness to the sick, to the poor, and to animals. His name is revered from Siberia to Ceylon.

292. Q. _Was he born a Buddhist?_

A. No, he was converted in the tenth year after his anointment as King, by Nigrodha Samanera, an Arhat.

293. Q. _What did he do for Buddhism?_

A. He drove out bad Bhikkhus, encouraged good ones, built monasteries and dagobas everywhere, established gardens, opened hospitals for men and animals, convened a council at Patna to revise and re-establish the Dharma, promoted female religious education, and sent emba.s.sies to five Greek kings, his allies, and to all the sovereigns of India, to preach the doctrines of the Buddha. It was he who built the monuments at Kapilavastu, Buddha Gaya, Isipatana and Kusinara, our four chief places of pilgrimage, besides thousands more.

294. Q. _What absolute proofs exist as to his n.o.ble character?_

A. Within recent years there have been discovered, in all parts of India, fourteen Edicts of his, inscribed on living rocks, and eight on pillars erected by his orders. They fully prove him to have been one of the wisest and most high-minded sovereigns who ever lived.

29.5. Q. _What character do these inscriptions give to Buddhism?_

A. They show it to be a religion of n.o.ble tolerance, of universal brotherhood, of righteousness and justice. It has no taint of selfishness, sectarianism or intolerance. They have done more than anything else to win for it the respect in which it is now held by the great pandits of western countries.

296. Q. _What most precious gift did Dharmashoka make to Buddhism?_

A. He gave his beloved son, Mahinda, and daughter, Sanghamitta, to the Order, and sent them to Ceylon to introduce the religion.

297. Q. _Is this fact recorded in the history of Ceylon?_

A. Yes, it is all recorded in the Mahavansa, by the keepers of the royal records, who were then living and saw the missionaries.

298. Q. _Is there some proof of Sanghamitta's mission still visible?_

A. Yes; she brought with her to Ceylon a branch of the very Bodhi tree under which the Buddha sat when he became Enlightened, and it is still growing.

299. Q. _Where?_

A. At Annradhapura. The history of it has been officially preserved to the present time. Planted in 306 B.C., it is the oldest historical tree in the world.

300. Q. _Who was the reigning sovereign at that time?_

A. Devanampiyatissa. His consort, Queen Anula, had invited Sanghamitta to come and establish the Bhikkhuni branch of the Order.

301. Q. _Who came with Sanghamitta?_

A. Many other Bhikkhunis. She, in due time, admitted the Queen and many of her ladies, together with five hundred virgins, into the Order.

302. Q. _Can we trace the effects of the foreign work of the Emperor Ashoka's missionaries?_

A. His son and daughter introduced Buddhism into Ceylon: his monks gave it to the whole of Northern India, to fourteen Indian nations outside its boundaries, and to five Greek kings, his allies, with whom he made treaties to admit his religious preachers.

303. Q. _Can you name them?_

A. ANTIOCHUS of Syria, PTOLEMY of Egypt, ANTIGONUS of Macedon, MARGAS of Cyrene, and ALEXANDER of Epiros.

304. Q. _Where do we learn this?_

A. From the Edicts themselves of Ashoka the Great, inscribed by him on rocks and stone pillars, which are still standing and can be seen by everybody who chooses to visit the places.

305. Q. _Through what western religious brotherhoods did the Buddha Dharma mingle itself with western thought?_

A. Through the sects of the Therapeuts of Egypt and the Essenes of Palestine.

306. Q. _When were Buddhist books first introduced into China?_

A. As early as the second or third century B.C. Five of Dharmashoka's monks are said--in the Samanta Pasadika and the Sarattha Dipani--two Pali books--to have been sent to the five divisions of China.