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treated of Brahman and its relation to the individual soul. This only, and more particularly the Upani- shads, continued to be considered as really necessary for salvation. For salvation was by knowledge only, or, as we should say, by faith, and not by wor s.
The highest object of this contemplative life in the forest was the finding of one’s own soul, the saving of one’s soul alive, the discovery of the Atman t self, and not the mere Ego. This was no easy ma . Even in those early days the existence of a soul had been denied. Some held that body and soul were the same; others, that the soul was i the breath ; others acain, that it was the Ego or the mind with all its experiences, with its perceptions and conceptions and aUthe rest. The hermits in the forest, after they had subdued all the passions of the body and wrenched themselves free from all its fetters, had now to lea n that the soul was something that according o 1 nature could never be seen, or heard or perceived hke the objective world which was visible and perishable because, if perceived, it would at once thine objective, something totally different from the perceiving subject. It would no longer be he soul The unseen and unperceivable something which w as formerly called the soul was now called the self, Atman. Nothing could be predicated of it excep that it was, that it perceived and thought, and that must be blessed. When they had once discovered that the Atman, the self within us, shared its only possible predicates with the Brahman, the mvisib e self behind nature and behind the so-called gods of nature, the next step was easy enough— namely, t discovery of the original identity of the self and of
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Brahman, the eternal oneness of man and God, the substantial identity of human and divine nature. To restore that identity by removing the darkness of ignorance by which it had been clouded— to become as we should say, one with God and He with us, or lathei to lose oui self, and find our self again in God— that was henceforth the highest goal of the remaining years of the old man’s life in the forest.
as it not natural that these doctrines, which were contained in the Upanishads, and which were after- wards minutely elaborated in the Vedanta-sfitras, should have been kept secret from the young and from those who had still to perform the practical duties of life? Nor was there much difficulty in keeping them secret. For as in ancient India there were no books, and as all teaching was oral, a teacher had to be found to communicate the doctrines of the panishads, and it was almost self-interest, if no higher motive, that would have kept the teachers from communicating these so-called mysteries. Still whoever was fit to receive them had a right to become once more a pupil in his old age, and in that sense the Upanishads were no more mysteries than any other book which it is not good for young people to read. Nevertheless, what happened to all mysteries happened to the Upanishads also. Not that there was any wish on the part of the young to share in the ascetic life of their elders, or any idle curiosity ™ er what enabled these solitary sages to preserve such seiemty Of mind, such freedom from all desires, and such perfect happiness during the last period of eii life, spent in the peaceful shade of the forest But the time came when those who had passed
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through all the trials and miseries of life, and who after a stormy voyage had found a refuge m t e harbour of true philosophy, whose anchors were no longer dragging, but resting firmly on the rock of truth — the time came when these men themselves, conscious of the bliss which they enjoyed, said to themselves, ‘ What is the use of this dreary waiting of all the toil of youth, of all the struggle of life of all the trouble of sacrifices, of all the terrors of religion, when there is this true knowledge which changes us in the twinkling of an eye, discloses to us our rea nature, our real home, our real God ? ’ This thought I do not mean the belief in a union between the human and the divine, but this conviction that the preparatory stages of student life and married life were useless, and that it was better at once to face the tru has always seemed to me the true starting-point o Buddhism as an historical religion. Buddhism as come to mean so many things that I always feel a kind of shiver when people speak of Buddhism as teaching this or that. Buddhism had, no doubt an historical origin in the fifth century B.C and here were many causes which led to its rapid growth at that time. But from a social point of view, the first and critical step consisted in Buddhas opening e doors of a forest life to all who wished to enter, whatever their age, whatever their caste That life in the forest, however, is not meant to be what it used to be in former times, a real retirement from the village, and a retreat into the solitude of the forest, but simply a retirement from the cares of the world a life with the brotherhood, and a performance o duties imposed on the brotherhood by the founder o
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the Buddhist order, the young prince of Kapilavastu, called Gautama, Buddha, iS'akyamuni, Siddhartha, Mahasiamana, and many other names. This leaving of the world before a man had performed the duties of a student and of a father of a family was the great offence of Buddhism in the eyes of the Brahmans, for it was that which deprived the Brahmans of their exclusive social position as teachers, as priests, as guides and counsellors. In this sense Buddha may be said to have been a heretic, and to have rejected the system of caste, the authority of the Veda, and the whole educational and sacrificial system as based on the Veda. He could never be forgiven for having- arrogated to himself the right of teaching, which was the exclusive right of a Brahman born. The critical e\ent in the life of Buddha himself was really his leaving father, mother, wife, and children behind, and going alone into the forest. Thus he save of himself: —
‘And I, O disciples, still young, strong, my hair dark, in my ■happy youth, in the flower of my manhood, against the will of my parents who were crying and grieving for me, went forth, my hair cut and my beard shaved, dressed in the yellow garb (the garb of the Buddhist mendicant). I went from my home into homelessness.’
But though this was heresy and rebellion in the eyes of the Brahmans, we must not imagine that Buddhism was from the first, as it has often been supposed to be, a new religion, independent of, nay, in open opposition to, Brahmanism. There has never been in the whole history of the world what could be called an entirely new religiou. Every religion we know presupposes another religion, as every language presupposes an antecedent language. Nay, it seems
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almost impossible to conceive the possibility of an entirely new religion quite as much as of an entirely new language. Mohammedanism presupposes Christianity, Judaism, and a popular faith prevailing among the Arab tribes. Christianity presupposes Judaism and Greek philosophy ; Judaism presupposes an earlier and more widely spread Semitic faith, traces of which appear in the inscriptions of Babylon and Nineveh. Beyond the religion of the Mesopotamian kingdoms there seems to have been an Accadian religion, and beyond that our knowledge comes to an end? The ancient religion of Zoroaster, again, pre- supposes the Yedic religion, while the Yedic leligion points to a more ancient Aryan background. What lies beyond that common Aryan religion is again beyond the reach of history, nay, even of conjecture. But it may certainly be stated that, as no human race has ever been discovered without any language at all, neither do we know of any human tribe without something like a religion, some manifestation of a perception of a Beyond, or that sense of the Infinite beneath the Finite, which is the true fountain head of all religion.
Much as Buddhism in its later development differs from Brahmanism, Buddha’s teaching would be quite inconceivable without the previous growth of Biah- manism. This is too often ignored, and many words and concepts are treated as peculiar to Buddhism which were perfectly familiar to the Brahmans. In many cases, it is true, Buddha gave a new meaning to them, but he borrowed the substance from those who had been the teachers of his youth. It is generally imagined, for instance, that Nirvana, about which so
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much has been written, was a term coined by Buddha. But Nirvana occurs in the Bhagavad-gita, and in some of the Upanishads. It meant originally no more than the blowing out or the expiring of all passion, the calm after the storm, the final emancipation and eternal bliss, reunion with the Supreme Spirit (Brahma- nirva/ua), till in some of the Buddhist schools, though by no means in all, it was made to signify complete extinction or annihilation. Whatever Nirvana may have come to mean in the end, there can be no doubt as to what it meant in the beginning — the extinction of the fire of the passions. But that beginning lies outside the limits of Buddhism ; it is still within the old domain of Brahmanism.
The name, again, by which Buddha and his followers called themselves, and by which they first became
known to Greeks and other nations — Samara is
likewise of Brahman ic growth. It is the Sanskrit Sramana, an ascetic or mendicant, derived from the word Siam, to toil, to weary. Buddha was often called ‘ Samano Gotamo,’ the ascetic Gotamo, though it was he who put down the extreme tortures which Brahmanic ascetics inflicted on themselves during the third stage of their lives, the retreat to the forest. With the Buddhists everybody who has left house home, family, to whatever caste he may have belonged before, may become a Samara, but the word soon assumed the more general sense of a saint, so that a man may be called a Samana even though he has not assumed the humble dress of an ascetic. Thus we read in the Dhammapada, 142 —
‘He who, though dressed in fine apparel, exercises tranquillity is quiet, subdued, restrained .and chaste, and has ceased to find
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fault with other beings — he is indeed a Brahmana, a Sramawa (Samawa), a Bhikshu.’
Here we see at the same time what a high idea Buddha, who used to be represented as the enemy of the Brahmans and of Brahmanism, assigns to the name of Brahmana, and how entirely he remains the child of his time. With him a Brahman is a saint, and a Bhikshu a mendicant not far removed from a saint.
The Greeks changed Samaiia into 2a/xarcuoi and sometimes into 2 e\xvoL. Shavian, however, the Tun- gusian name for a priestly sorcerer *, is not derived from Samaria, but is a word of Tungusian origin.
Many more words might be mentioned which to us seem Buddhistic, but which are really of Brahmanic workmanship. There are, in fact, few Buddhistic words and few Buddhistic concepts which, if we treat them historically, do not disclose their Brahmanic antecedents, more or less modified in the later schools of the Buddhists. Scholars begin to see that, as we cannot fully appreciate Pali, the sacred language of Buddhism, without knowing Sanskrit, we cannot fully understand the teaching of Buddha without knowing the antecedent periods of Brahmanic thought.
Even when Buddha, the young prince of Kapilavastu, determined to leave his family, wife, son, father, and friends, and to embrace the state of homelessness, he followed the example set to him by the Brahmanic ,S ram anas, and submitted to all the cruel tortures to which the dwellers in the forest thought it right to subject themselves. It took him several years before he perceived their utter uselessness, nay, their 1 Koppan, Die Religion des Buddha, i. p. 330, n.
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mischievous influence. He then adopted a more rational life, what he called a via media , equally removed from extreme asceticism and from self- indulgence. In all this there was no secret, nothing esoteric, no mystery. On the contrary, whatever there may have been of mystery among the Brahmanic dwellers in the forest was now proclaimed to all the world by the monks who formed the real Buddhistic brotherhood in the midst of a very independent laity. If there is any religion thoroughly popular, thoroughly unreserved, without admitting any priestly privileges, it was the original religion of Buddha. Brahmanism used Sanskrit as its sacred language ; Buddha adopted the vulgar dialects spoken by the people, so that all might be able to follow his teaching.
I cannot give a better explanation of the change of Brahmanism into Buddhism than by stating that Buddhism was the highest Brahmanism popularized, everything esoteric being abolished, the priesthood replaced by monks, and these monks being in their true character the successors and representatives of the enlightened dwellers in the forest of former ages. The Buddhist community consisted of monks (not priests) and laymen. The monks were what the ascetics (/Sframa??as) had been; only they were no longer obliged to pass through the previous stages of Brahma/carin (religious student) and of Grihastha (householder), though, like Buddha himself, they might have been married and fathers of a family if only after a time they were willing to surrender all they used to call their own. As to keeping any of these doctrines secret, nothing could have been more opposed to the spirit of their founder. Whatever of
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esoteric teaching there may have been in other religions, there was none in the religion of Buddha. Whatever was esoteric or secret was ipso facto not Buddha’s teaching ; whatever was Buddha’s teaching was ipso facto not esoteric. Buddha himself, though he knows well that there is, and that in every honest religion there always must he, a distinction between the few and the many, would approve of no barriers between them except those which they made for themselves. He speaks with open scorn of keeping any portion of the truth secret. Thus he says in one of his short sermons 1 —
‘ 0 disciples, there are three to whom secrecy belongs and not openness. Who are they ? Secrecy belongs to women, not open- ness ; secrecy belongs to priestly wisdom, not openness ; secrecy belongs to false doctrine, not openness. To these three belongs secrecy, not openness.
But there are three things that shine before all the world, and not in secret. Which are they ? The disk of the moon, 0 disciples, shines before all the world, and not in secret ; the disk of the sun shines before all the world, and not in secret ; the doctrines and rules proclaimed by the perfect Buddha shine before all the world, not in secret. These three things shine before all the world, and not in secret.’
And this is by no means a solitary occasion on which Buddha condemns anything like mystery in religion, or what is meant by Esoteric Buddhism. There is a memorable dialogue between him and his disciple Ananda shortly before his death, in which he condemns not only mystery in religion, but any appeal to external authority, any obedience to anything but the voice within. We read in the Mcihdparinibbdna Sutta (p. 35) : —
‘ 28. Now when the Blessed One had thus entered upon the rainy season (when the monks go into retreat) there fell upon him a dire
1 Anguttara Nikaya, pp. 1, 3, 129.
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V
sickness, and sharp pains came upon him, even unto death. But the Blessed One, mindful and self-possessed, bore them without complaint.
29. Then this thought occurred to the Blessed One : It would not be right for me to pass away from existence without addressing the disciples, without taking leave of the order. Let me now, by a stiong effort of the will, bend this sickness down again, and keep my hold on life till the allotted time be come.
30. And the Blessed One, by a strong effort of the will, bent that sickness down again, and kept his hold on life till the time he fixed upon should come. And the sickness abated upon him.
31. how ' ery soon after, the Blessed One began to recover. When he had quite got rid of the sickness, he went out from the monastery, and sat down behind the monastery on a seat spread out there. And the venerable Ananda went to the place where the Blessed One was and saluted him, and took a seat respectfully on one side, and addressed the Blessed One and said : I have beheld, Lord, how the Blessed One was in health, and I have beheld how the Blessed One had to suffer. And though at the sight of the sickness of the Blessed One my body became weak as a creeper, and the horizon became dim to me, and my faculties were no longei clear, yet notwithstanding I took some little comfort from the thought that the Blessed One would not pass away from existence until at least he had left instructions as touching the order.
32. What then, Ananda (he replied)? Does the order expect that of me ? I have preached the Truth without making any distinction between exoteric and esoteric doctrine : for in respect of the truths. Ananda, the Tathagata has no such thing as the closed fist of a teacher, who keeps some things back.’
Then he inveighs against the idea that after his death his disciples should be guided by anything but the Spirit of Truth within them.
‘ Surely, Ananda (he says), should there be any one who harbours the thought, It is I who will lead the brotherhood, or, The order is dependent upon me, it is he who should lay down instructions in any matter concerning the order. Now the Tathagata, 0 Ananda thinks not that he should lead the brotherhood, or that the order is dependent upon him. Why then should he leave instructions in any matter concerning the order? I too, 0 Ananda. am now grown old and full of years ; my journey is drawing to its close, I have reached my sum of days, I am turning eighty years of age, and just
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as a worn-out cart, Ananda, can only with much additional care be made to move along, so, methinks, the body of the Tathagata can only be kept going with much additional care. . . .
33. Therefore, O Ananda, be ye lamps unto yourselves. Be ye a refuge to yourselves. Betake yourselves to no external refuge. Hold feat as a refuge to the Truth. Look not for refuge to any one besides yourselves. . . ^
33. And whosoever, Ananda, either now or after I am dead, shall be a lamp unto themselves, and a refuge unto themselves, shall betake themselves to no external refuge, but holding fast to the Truth as their lamp, and holding fast as their refuge to the Truth, shall not look for refuge to any one besides themselves— it is they, 0 Ananda, among my Bhikkhus, who shall reach the very highest height, provided they are willing to learn.’
Can. anything be more outspoken, more determined 1 No one is to be entrusted with private or secret instruction as to the future rule of the Church, no one is to claim any exceptional authority. But the highest seat of authority is always to be with the man himself and with the voice of truth within.
And this is the religion, of all others, chosen by Madame Blavatsky as an esoteric religion. Buddha, who would have no secrets, whether for the laity or for his own beloved disciples, is represented as withholding the double-edged weapon of knowledge from the uncultivated populace and keeping the innermost corner of the sanctuary in the profoundest shade. No traveller’s tale was ever more audacious and more incongruous than this misrepresentation of the character of Buddha and his doctrine.
I repeat that I do not think that Madame Blavatsky invented Esoteric Buddhism. I am quite willing to believe that, as in her first intercourse with Brah- manism in the person of Saty ananda Saras vati, she was, when face to face with Buddhist Mahatmas, very much like Goethe’s fisherman who was drawn into
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the waves by a mermaid : ‘ Halb zog sie ihn, halb sank er hin!’ — half she sank, half she was drawn. She was deceived b}r persons who saw that she almost wished to be deceived, and that she had no means whatever of defending herself against deceit. I go even further, and admit that even by giving a dis- torted picture of Buddhism she has done some good by attracting general attention to a religion which, with all its shortcomings, deserves our highest regard and our most careful study. If her followers could only give up the idea that no religion can be founded without miracles, if they would only read how Buddha himself denounces all miracles except one, they would learn that what they call miracles has been the bane of all honest religions. It is quite true that Buddha 1 and his contemporaries, whether his followers or opponents, speak of certain miracles as if they had seen them performed every day. As miracles of magic power Buddha mentions the fact that one man may appear as many, or many as one ; that a man may become invisible, may pass through a wall as if through air, may rise through the air as if in water, may walk on water as if on the earth, and may be lifted up through the air like a bird, so that he reaches the moon and the sun, nay, even the world of Brahman. All these miracles are recognized by Buddha as perfectly possible, but he denies that they have anything to do with the truth of his teaching, that they can carry any conviction, or can convert a man who is unbelieving and unloving into a man who believes and loves. Buddha freely admits that some men have the power of reading the thoughts 1 Digha h'ikdya, i. i, ii. Neumann, p.62.
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of other people, and of remembering their own former existences, but again he denies that such things can carry conviction. The greatest miracle with Buddha is teaching, by which an unbeliever is really converted into a believer, an unloving into a loving man. And when his own disciples come to him asking to be allowed to perform the ordinary magic miracles, he forbids them to do so, but allows them to perform one miracle only, which everybody could, but nobody does, perform, namely, to confess our sins, and again not in secret, not in a confessional, but publicly and before the whole congregation.
If Madame Blavatsky would have tried to perform that one true Buddhistic miracle, if she had tried to confess openly her small faults and indiscietions, instead of attempting thought-reading, levitation, or sending letters through the air from Tibet to Calcutta, and from Calcutta to London, or if those who willingly or unwillingly allowed themselves to be deceived by her would openly renounce all these childish tiicks and absurdities, they might still do much good, and really manure a vast neglected field for a new and rich harvest. I must say that one of Madame Bla\atsky s greatest admirers, Colonel Olcott, has of late yeai s entered on a much more healthy sphere of activity, one in which he and his friends may do some real good. He has encouraged and helped the publication of authentic texts of the old Brahmanic and Buddhist religions. He has tried to inspire both Brahmans and Buddhists with respect for their old religions, and has helped them to discover in their sacred books some rays of truth to guide them through the dark shadows of life. He has shown them how, in spite of many
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differences, their various sects share much in common, and how they should surrender what is not essential and keep what is essential as the true bond of a wide religious brotherhood b In all this he has my fullest sympathy. It is because I love Buddha and admire Buddhist morality that I cannot remain silent when I see his noble figure lowered to the level of religious charlatans, or his teaching misrepresented as esoteric twaddle. I do not mean to say that Buddhism has never been corrupted and vulgarized when it became the religion of barbarous or semi-barbarous people in Tibet, China, and Mongolia; nor should I wish to deny that it has in some places been represented by knaves and impostors as something mysterious, esoteric, impenetrable, and unintelligible. It is true, also, that, particularly in the so-called Mahayana Buddhism, there are certain treatises which are called secret— for instance, the Tathdgataguhyalca, the hidden doctrines of the Tathagatas or the Buddhas ; but they are secret, not as being withheld from anybody, but simply as containing more difficult and recondite doctrines. Even the Secret of Hegel is no longer a mystery, as Mr. Hutchinson Sterling has shown, though it requires a certain amount of preparation.’ If Madame Blavatsky had appealed to any one of the canonical books of the Mahayana Buddhists, we should have known what she meant by Esoteric Buddhism. As it is, it is impossible to discuss any one of the doctrines which she and her followers present to the
1 A United Buddhist World: being Fourteen Fundamental Buddhistic Beliefs, certified by the High Priests of Burma, Chittagong, Ceylon and Japan, to be common to Northern and Southern Buddhism. Commit hv H. S. Olcott (Madras, 1892). y
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public as esoteric, because they have never given us chapter and verse for what they call Buddhism,
whether esoteric or exoteric.
I have already alluded to the difficulty of speaking of Buddhism in general, or laying down what, doc- trines are considered as orthodox or as heterodox by Buddha and by his numerous disciples and followers. Buddhism, we must remember, was, from the very beginning, but one out of many philosophical and religious systems which abounded in India at all times. We know that the same freedom of thought which Buddha claimed for himself in forsaking the old Brahmanic traditions was claimed by several of his contemporaries who became founders of new schools. There was very little of what we should call dogma in Buddha’s teaching. He professed to deliver man from suffering by showing them the unreal and transitory character of the world. But with regard to- some of what we call the fundamental questions of religion— the existence of a deity, the reality and immortality of the soul, the creation and government of the world— he allowed the greatest freedom : nay, it seems to be his chief object to protest against any positive dogma on these points. Hence there arose from a very early time a large number of what have been called sects among the Buddhists, thouo-h they seem to have been hardly more than either philosophical schools or small congregations committed to the observance of certain minute points
of discipline. , _ *
We read in the chronicles of Ceylon, the Dipavansa (v. 53) and Mahavansa (v. 8), of eighteen sects the origin of which is referred to the second century after
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Buddha. Though that date seems doubtful, we cannot doubt that at the time of Asoka, or in the third century B. c., these eighteen sects existed, and likewise six so-called modern sects. We know the names of t ese sects as they have been preserved in Sanskrit, Bali, Tibetan, Chinese, and Mongolian documents, but ot their origin and of the points on which each differed from the rest our information is as yet very insufficient. It is curious that so much should have been preserved, and yet so little. We have long lists of names, but very little beyond the names. In some cases the points on which one sect differed from the other were extremely trifling, such as whether salt might be kept longer than seven days; whether animals exist in heaven ; whether a child ean be converted before it is born ; whether the thoughts of a dreamer are indifferent ; whether Buddha was born m all quarters of the universe, and whether some Buddhas surpass others. In other cases the points of difference are of greater importance, such as whether there is a soul in man; whether the dead derive benefit from gifts; whether prophecy is possible; whether a knowledge of other people’s thoughts can be obtained by meditation; whether a layman can become an Arhat and obtain Nirvana; whether Buddha was really born in the world of men ; whether Buddha had mercy; whether he was superhuman in t e ordinary affairs of life1; whether the doctrine of Buddha was altered and made afresh at the great
Rhys Davids, Journ. Roy. Asiatic Soc. (1892'). p. 9. How far such questions on the true character of a Buddha can be carried may be seen from the fact that one sect differed from the rest by holding that excrementa Buddhae sunt suaveolentia. 0
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Councils. The number of these sects seems always to have been on the increase, and when m the faith and the seventh centuries Chinese pilgiims visi ec India, their number had become so great that one can hardly understand how any unity could have
been preserved among them.
If all these points, and many more, were left open questions between the Buddhist sects, we can well understand how there should be so much disagreement among those who undertook to write a history o Buddhism. We know that on some of the most im- portant points Buddha himself declined to pronounce a decided opinion, and, in this sense, Madame Blavatsky would be quite right in saying that we do not know for certain what Buddha taught his disciples and his disciples their followers, who became the founders of these numerous sects. Still, whatever we know of Buddha and Buddhism, we must try to know at first-hand— that is to say, we must be prepared to give chapter and verse in some canonical or authon- tative book ; we must not appeal to Mahatmas on t other side of the Himalayas. Various attempts have been made to show that the Canon of the Southern Buddhists, the so-called TripBaka, the Three Baskets, was more modern than the Buddhists themselves represent it to be. Some scholars have gone so far as' to assign to it a date more recent than that o the New Testament. I have always admitted that the tradition of its being the work of the immediate disciples of Buddha, at the first Counci held m the very year of Buddhas death, is untenable, or at all events doubtful. But I have never doubted that a real Canon of sacred texts was settled at the Counci
INDIAN FABLES AND ESOTERIC BUDDHISM. 131
held under Asoka in the third century before our era. This date has now been confirmed by inscrip- tions. Asoka s well-known inscriptions refer to single portions of the Canon only, but Dr. Hultzsch has pointed out that in one of the smaller Bharhut inscriptions1 there occurs the word ‘ pakanekayika ’ —a man who knows the five Nikayas. These five Nakayas are the five divisions of the Suttapkaka, and as the inscription dates from the third century b. C., we may rest assured that at that time the most important part of the Buddhist Canon, the Suttapkaka, existed as we now have it, divided into five portions the Digha-nikaya, the Map^Mma-nikaya, the Sa?n- yutta-nikaya, the Anguttara-nikaya, and the Khud- daka-nikaya 2.
However, with all that has been done of late for the study of Buddhism, no honest scholar would deny that we know as yet very little, and that we see but darkly through the immense mass of its literature and the intricacies of its metaphysical speculations. This is particularly true with regard to what is called the Mahayana, or Northern Buddhism. There are still several of the recognized canonical books of the Northern Buddhists, the Nine Dharmas, of which the MSS. are beyond our reach, or which frighten even the most patient students by their enormous bulk. In that sense Madame Blavatsky would be quite right — that there is a great deal of Buddhism of which European scholars know nothing. But we need not go to Madame Blavatsky or to her Mahatmas in Tibet in order to know this, and it is certainly not
1 No. 144, Z. D. M. G., xl. 75.
2 See Neumann, Buddhist. Anlhologie, p. xii, n.
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from her hooks that we should derive our information of the Mahay ana literature. We should go to the MSS. in our libraries, even in the Bodleian, in order to do what all honest Mahatmas have to do, copy the MSS., collate them, and translate them. In the translations of the Sacred Books of the East whic the University of Oxford has entrusted to my editor- ship, and to which I have devoted the last sixteen years of my life, any one who takes a serious interest in the Science of Religion will find ample materials, and what is more, important authentic materials, translated, as well as they can be translated at present, by the best • scholars in England, France, Germany, and India. Deeply grateful as I feel to the University of Oxford, and to the Secretary of State for India, lor having allowed me' the leisure and the funds necessary for carrying out so large an undertaking, I cannot but regret that, like all the work we undertake in this life, this too must be left imperfect. It is true, a series of forty-eight volumes is a small library by itself, but, compared with what ought to have been done, it is but a beginning. I have often been blamed for not having included in my series a number ol books every one of which seems to this or that scholar of supreme importance. No doubt I ought to have o-iven a translation of • one at least of the . eighteen Puranas, but my critics have evidently no idea how difficult it is to find at the right time the right trans- lator for the right book. My correspondence about the translation of the V&yu-Pur&na would fill a little volume by itself. The Vedic literature, also, is as yet very imperfectly represented. But Vedic scholarship is in a period of transition, and no Vedic scholar is
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willing to commit himself more than he can help. Everybody is at work in deciphering a word here and a word there ; some may venture on translating a few verses or a few hymns, but a complete transla* tion of the Rig-veda will not, I am afraid, form part of oui jin-de-siecle literature. Sanskrit scholars also must leave something to the next century to do besides deciphering the many as yet undeciphered Egyptian, Accadian, Babylonian, Etruscan, Lycian, and Orkhon inscriptions. Now that my series of the Sacred Books of the East has come to an end, offers of assistance come in from many sides for which foimeily I should have been most grateful. Let others who are younger and stronger take up the work where I left it. To the value of this series the most competent judges have borne their testimony. This only I may venture to say myself— that this collection of the Sacred Books of the East, brought out with the co-operation of the best Oriental scholars, will, for the future, render such aberrations as Madame Blavatsky’s Esoteric Buddhism impossible. I know that it will continue to live and continue to do good as long as people continue to care for what they have hitherto cared most for, namely, religion — not only a religion, not only this or that special religion which they have themselves inherited, but for religion as a universal blessing and as the most precious birth- right of the whole human race.
ESOTERIC BUDDHISM1.
(A Reply to Professor Max Muller by
N any subject connected with the sacred literatuie of the East Professor Max Muller writes— for
English readers— with great authority. His article therefore on Esoteric Buddhism will, no doubt, have been accepted but too widely as fatal to the system of thought identified with that expression. He finds nothing in the Buddhist books about any intexioi teaching behind that plainly conveyed, and con- fidently declares that nothing of the kind exists. I or people altogether ignorant of theosophical doctrine this will be conclusive ; others, acquainted in some measure with theosophical literature, will be puzzled at the professor’s attitude. He refrains from coming in any way to close quarters with the body of beliel he seeks to discredit, ignoring it so entirely that one cannot make out whether he has taken the trouble to look into it at all. And, summed up in a few words, his argument is that Buddhism cannot contain any teaching hitherto kept secret, because the books hitherto published do not disclose any secrets of the kind. If they had done so, where would have been the secrecy1? When we know what the esoteric teaching
1 Reprinted by permission from the Nineteenth Century, June, 1 °93*
Mr. A. P. Sinnett.)
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is we may indeed find evidence in the published books to show that it was known to their authors ; but when any one says ‘ There is an esoteric side to Buddhism,’ that is equivalent to saying there is a view of this subject which is not found in the books. How is he shown to be wrong by the fact that the books do not contain it ?
But the present attack is further embarrassing in this way : it rests chiefly on an unfavourable survey of Madame Blavatsky’s career, associated with criti- cisms of her book Isis Unveiled. That was written some years before Esoteric Buddhism was formulated, and Madame Blavatsky was not the writer who formu- lated that system. All students of theosophy are under deep obligations to her. But Professor Max Muller gives us the history of the movement upside down. Before I can vindicate the ideas he seeks to disparage,
I must comb out the facts which he has left in such curious confusion.
In 1883 I was enabled to bring into intelligible shape a view of the origin and destinies of man derived from certain teachings with which I was favoured while in India. It challenged the attention of Western readers because it seemed to furnish a more reasonable interpretation of man’s spiritual constitution and of the world’s purpose, than any with which European thought had previously been concerned. It provided something like a scientific abstract of all religious doctrine, by the help of which it was easy to separate the wheat from the chaff in various ecclesiastical creeds. Allowing for symbolical methods of treatment as entering largely into popular religions, the new teaching showed that Brahmanism,
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Buddhism, and Christianity could be accounted for as growing up at various periods in India and Europe from the same common root of spiritual knowledge. But since Buddhism had apparently separated itself less widely than other religions from the parent stem, I gave my hook the title Esoteric Buddhism, partly in loyalty to the exterior faith preferred by those from whom my information had come, partly because even in its exterior form that religion was already attracting a great deal of sympathetic interest in Europe, and seemed the natural bridge along w^hich European thinking might be conducted to an appreciation of the beautifully coherent and logical view of Nature I had been enabled to obtain.
The name of the book clung to the system it de- scribed, and no one was more surprised or amused than its author when people, attracted by its means to become theosophists, or students of Divine science, were first spoken of by newspaper writers, dealing hastily with the new departure of thought, as ‘ Esoteric Buddhists.’ In that form the term was a misnomer. Theosophists might just as well have been called Esoteric Christians or Esoteric Brahmins. But it is one thing for reviewers, dealing on the spur of the moment with a new school of philosophy, to appre- hend it imperfectly ; it is another for a learned pro- fessor, attacking it ten years later, to eclipse their worst mistakes.
To begin with, Professor Max Muller calls Madame Blavatsky the founder of Esoteric Buddhism, and describes her as a ‘ clever, wild, and excitable girl,’ in search of a new religion she could honestly embrace. Her clever girlhood had ripened till she was close on
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sixty, when the term Esoteric Buddhism was first brought into use ; and, whether it was a good or a bad term, she had nothing to do with its selection, and indeed quarrelled with it — as I think, rather un- necessarily— in some of her later writings. What she leally founded was the Theosophical Society for the study of Eastern Religions (among other objects), and it was through that Society, and through her aid in the fii st instance for which I can never be sufficiently giateful that I came into relations with the fountain of information from which my teaching has ever since been derived. But when Professor Max Muller pro- ceeds to find fault with Isis Unveiled , and criticizes that interesting and suggestive work by picking out a Greek word that is incorrectly written, fancying in that way to cast discredit on a scheme of philosophy promulgated years after Isis was written, in a book by another author, the misdirection of his fault-finding is on a level with the pettiness of the criticism itself. It is notorious to all who knew Madame Blavatsky that she was not only capable of making any imagin- able mistake in writing a Greek word, but scarcely knew so much as the alphabet of that language. To understand how it came to pass that under those cir- cumstances the manuscripts she wrote with her own hand were freely embellished with Greek quotations, would require a comprehension of many curious human capacities outside the scope of that scholarship of which Professor Max Muller is justly proud, but un- fortunately too often inclined to mistake for universal knowledge.
In so far as his present article is directed to dis- credit Esoteric Buddhism, Professor Max Muller’s
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rapid sketch of Madame Blavatsky’s career is, for the reasons I have pointed out, irrelevant from A to Z. But the careless plan he has followed in dealing with the subject itself is in keeping with the personal notice. ‘ People,’ he says, ‘ were taken aback by the assurance with which this new prophetess spoke of her intercourse with unseen spirits ; of letters flying through the air from Tibet to Bombay ; of showeis ot flowers falling from the ceiling of a dining-room ; of saucers disappearing from a tea-tray and being found in a garden, and of voices and noises proceeding from spirits through a mysterious cabinet. You may ask how educated people could have been deceived by such ordinary jugglery ; but with some people the power of believing seems to grow with the absurdity of what is to be believed.’ There is no item in this catalogue of wonders that correctly quotes any single incident re- corded in any original narrative of Madame Blavatsky s doings. My own book, The Occult T Yovlcl, is the pun cipal reservoir of all such records, but, as usual with people who wish to ridicule its testimony, Professor Max Muller prefers to deal not with the book itself, but with some third-hand caricature of its contents. Modern psychic investigation has already harmonized with subtle forces of nature, some of the surprising powers which Madame Blavatsky exhibited. In talking of jugglery, Professor Max Muller is probably unaware that the leading ‘juggler’ or conjuror of America, Mr. Kellar, has recently written an article in the North American Review acknowledging that his experience of wonder-working in India has intio duced him to some performances that lie quite out- side the domain of the art he professes. That which
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is really absurd in this connexion is the power a good many people still show of disbelieving facts supported by overwhelming evidence if these fail to fit in with their own narrow experience. Credulity is sometimes stupid, no doubt, but irrational incredulity may occa- sionaliy be even more so. On that tempting theme, however, I must not dilate for the moment. Madame Blavatsky s achievements in connexion with psychic faculties and forces not yet generally understood, have nothing to do with the really important question whether theosophical doctrine constitutes an accep- table solution of the mysteries of life and death.
Still, paying no attention to that question, Professor Max Muller says, ‘ No one can study Buddhism unless he learns Sanskrit and Pali.’ No one can comprehend Buddhism, he goes on unconsciously to show us, by virtue merely of scholarship in those tongues. He may do useful work in the preparation of translations for students who deal with living thought rather than with dead language, but Madame Blavatsky with all her literary inaccuracy has done a great deal more than the Sanskrit professor to interpret Eastern thinking, and what are her verbal blunders beside the confusion of the whole attack now made upon hei 1 She certainly showed great shrewdness in withdrawing herself and her description of Esoteric Buddhism from all possible control and contradiction. Her Buddhism, she declared, was not the Buddhism which ordinary scholars might study in the canonical books ; hers was Esoteric Buddhism.’ She did nothing of the sort. She never used the term Esoteric Bud- dhism except in her Secret Doctrine to find fault with my use of it, on the somewhat technical ground
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that, meaning what I did, I ought to have spelled the word with one ‘ d.’ In Isis, she wrote, ‘ it is not in the dead letter of Buddhistical sacred literature that scholars may hope to find the true solution of the metaphysical subtleties of Buddhism,’ but she was not then engaged in developing the system now called Esoteric Buddhism. She was simply pouring out a flood of miscellaneous information concerning the inner meaning of old-world religions and symbologies, the mysteries of Egypt and Greece, the modern initia- tions of the East, and the teaching she had acquired there with reference to super-physical planes of nature already beginning to be recognized in the Western world as connecting our phase of existence, however vaguely and cloudily, with other conditions of being. The book was not designed to teach anything in particular, but to stir up interest in an unfamiliar body of occult mysteries. For many people it did this effectually. The Theosophical Society was set on foot ; it came to pass that I was entrusted with the task of putting into intelligible shape the views of life and nature entertained by certain Eastern initiates who were interested in the Theosophical Society, and the movement gradually assumed its present character. Nothing is further from my wish than to claim— at Madame Blavatsky’s expense — any peculiar merit for myself in the matter. I took charge of a message and carried it to Western readers. But I was a messenger from those whom Madame Blavatsky also to the best of her ability endeavoured to represent
not from herself. This is the important fact for all
to remember who wish to understand the present position of Theosophy. All of us who have been
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concerned, one way or another, with the movement have acknowledged the immense services Madame Blavatsky rendered in bridging the chasm which separated modern thought from esoteric enlighten- ment. But with Theosophy itself as a guide through the mazes of existence, Madame Blavatsky’s merits and demerits have nothing at all to do. Individuals lise ana sink in the stream of a great movement ; they do not constitute it. Those who most love and revere Madame Blavatsky are doing the worst service they can render to the -cause she worked for, by pinning her name to Theosophy, and making it look like a sect with one fallible mortal at its head. The}7 might as well call astronomy Tycho-Brahism, and study the stars exclusively on the basis of the Danish observers ideas. Not less absurd in another way is the. commonplace attack on Theosophy based on the notion that Madame Blavatsky was its fraudulent inventor. The estimation in which she was held to the last by a devoted body of friends — whose contri- butions to theosophical literature effectually rebuke
the theory that they were weak-minded dupes is a
brief but emphatic refutation of unjust accusations on which too much paper and thought have been ex- pended. Either way the time has gone by for treat- ing Theosophy as a question depending on Madame Blavatsky’s personality. Her books remain to be considered on their merits like all other expositions of theosophical doctrine, but neither to be regarded as infallible on the one hand nor as discrediting°Theo- sophy by their mistakes on the other.
At the time of the Oriental Congress last September, theosophical writers were beginning to hope they had
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drawn Professor Max Muller into some appreciation of the inner significance of that Oriental literature to the translation of which he had devoted so much industry. He spoke then of the TJpanishads and of the ancient philosophy of the Vedanta as throwing ‘ new light even to-day on some of the problems nearest to our own hearts.’ This was a great advance on earlier utterances, in which he dealt with the Vedas, at all events, as the prattling of humanity’s baby- hood— or in words to that effect. But now he has again relapsed, and declares there are no mysteiies and nothing esoteric either in Buddhism or Brah- manism, though again, later on, he says, No honest scholar would deny that we know as yet very little [of Buddhism], and that we see but darkly through the immense mass of its literature and the intiicacies of its metaphysical speculations.’ This admission is opposed to the force of the bold statement with which he sets out, ‘ that there is no longer any secret about Sanskrit literature, and . . . that we in England know as much about it as most native scholars.’ In view of information on the subject I have had from ‘ native scholars ’ the contention is ludicrous, but the question whether there are or are not hidden records beaiing on the secrets of Eastern initiation has nothing to do with the main point. Over and above whatever written records exist, there are traditional beliefs and views of nature amongst certain people in India that had not been published anywhere till the current theosophical movement began. I got at these by living in India and coming into relations with those who entertained them, and were willing at last that they should in some measure be made public. Professor
ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.
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Max Muller, without stopping to think how his own testimony corroborates my position, says there is nothing of all this in the sacred books. Of course not ; but, to a greater extent than Professor Max Muller imagines, all this is darkly hinted at in the sacred books. Nobody could pick up these hints unless he had first been instructed in the esoteric doctrine, but to any one who knows something of this the allusions are apparent. From the proper theosophical point of view they are not very important. The theo- sophical teaching is valuable for its intrinsic worth. It ought not to be recommended to European readers because there is authority behind it. For us the authority from which it emanates need only begin to command respect when we understand the teaching. If it had not been found worthy of respect for its own sake, it would have fallen dead. Instead of that, Esoteric Buddhism is read in a dozen editions and languages all over the world. And in time people who read, acquiring from the teaching itself a compre- hension of the sources from which it is now derived, grow interested in questions of authority. Around these a considerable theosophic literature grows up. Professor Max Muller does not even glance at it. He hammers away at the single notion— I do not find your secret teachings in the public Buddhist writings. Why does not he argue — there cannot be any ore in the mine for there is none lying on the surface? But, coming back to the traces on the surface that may show those who can interpret them where there is ore lying below, let me offer an illustration of esoteric canonical records that are mere nonsense taken as the scholar takes them — literally but full
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of luminous significance read in the light of esoteiic teaching.
Rarely have the scholars blundered more absurdly than in dealing with the records of Buddha’s death, and in reading cm pied de la lettre the story of bis fatal illness supervening on a meal of ‘ dried boar s flesh ’ served to him by a certain Kunda — a copper- smith at Pava. Laborious students of Oriental language — never concerning themselves with Oriental thought— accept this as meaning, in words quoted by Alabaster in the Wheel of the Laiv, that Buddha died of ‘ dysentery caused by eating roast pork.’ Dr. Rhys Davids gives currency to this ludicrous misconception. Common sense ought to have been startled at the notion that the diet of so ultra-confirmed a vegetarian as a Hindoo religious teacher could not but be, could be invaded by so gross an article of food as roast pork. But worshippers of the letter which killeth are apt to lose sight of common sense. In reality boar’s flesh is an Oriental symbol for esoteric know- ledge, derived from the boar avatar of Vishnu — an elaborate allegory which represents the incarnate god lifting the earth out of the waters with his tusks— a transaction which Wilson explains in his translation of the Vishnu Purana as representing ‘ the extrication of the world from a deluge of iniquity by the rites of religion.’ Dried boar’s flesh clearly stands in the 1 Book of the Great Decease ’ for esoteric knowledge prepared for popular use — reduced to a form in which it could be taught to the multitude. It was through too daring an attempt to carry out this policy that Buddha’s enterprise came to an end. That is the true meaning of the allegory so painfully debased when
ESOTERIC BUDDHISM.
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taken at the foot of the letter. The esoteric view of the story is shown obviously to be the right one by many subordinate details. For example, Buddha directs that only he shall make use of the dried boar’s ilesh at the allegorical feast. The brethren shall be served with cakes and rice. None but he himself can digest such food, he says, and whatever is left over shall be buried, so that no others may partake of it ; a singular order for him to give on the literal interpretation of the story, seeing that he is repre- sented as not able to digest it, and as dying of its effects. Of course the meaning plainly is that no one of lesser authority than himself must take the respon- sibility of giving out occult secrets.
Even more glaring references to esoteric mysteries are embodied in the Akankheyya Sutta1, where Buddha describes the various attainments open to a Ihikkhu, or disciple who has joined his order.
If a Bhikkhu should desire, brethren, to exercise one by one each of the different Iddhis, being one to become multiform, beino- multiform to become one ; to become visible, or to become in- Vlslble ; to go without being stopped to the further side of a wall or a fence, or a mountain, as if through air ; to penetrate up and down through solid ground, as if through water ; to walk on the water without dividing it, as if on solid ground ; to travel cross- legged through the sky, like the birds on the wing; to touch and feel with the hand even the sun and the moon, mighty and power- ful though they be ; and to reach in the body, even up to the Heaven of Brahma ; let him then fulfil all righteousness ; let him be devoted to that quietude of heart which springs from within • let him not drive back the ecstasy of contemplation ; let him look through things ; let him be much alone.'
So on through several pages. Does this read like nonsense in materialistic Europe ? The esoteric teach-
1 Vol. xi, Sacred Books of the East.
L
II.
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ing makes it all intelligible. The whole passage relates to'the capacities which are possible for the esoterically- trained and initiated disciple who can live in full consciousness in the astral body, who can render that perceptible (or visible) to ordinary senses if he chooses, to whom the solid matter of the physical plane is no impediment, nor distance an embarrassment. The Sutta in which it occurs points to hidden methods of teaching and training from beginning to end. And the White Lotus of Dharma, edited by Professor Max Muller, refers also to the magical faculties of the Buddhist adept, while Ananda was not allowed to sit in the first convocation till he had performed the « miracles ’ recognized as qualifying him to be regarded as an Arhat. Certainly the public writings do not say minutely how an aspirant is to acquire the abnormal knowledge and powers necessary for such achievements. The real esoteric knowledge, never written down, but handed from master to pupil in the processes of initiation, is alone competent to give practical guidance in such matters. But, as we see, the authority of the canonical books can be quoted as showing that the achievements are recognized as attainable. Does Professor Max Muller regard them as the logical outcome of mere virtuous practice? If not, the old writers clearly suppressed some branch of their teaching in addressing the world at large. It is not enough for Professor Max Muller to say that in describing Arhat powers they were talking nonsense. For the moment that is not the question. Had they in their minds the belief that certain processes of training might lead to those powers ? If they had, they were conscious of an esoteric side to their teaching,
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and It is obvious beyond dispute that they did entertain such a belief.
"W 01 ship of the letter in dealing with sacred writings ias been the curse of modern religion, stultifvino- the spiritual meaning of more books than those under consideration. It is hardly probable that Professor Max Muller would be fettered to that system in discussing Western scriptures, so that it is doubly amazing e should apply that disastrous method of interpretation to the Sacred Books of the East, on
which he has bestowed so much of his time and energy.
He tells us that ‘ Buddhism was the highest
flbr:rT^m^PUlariZed’ eveiT^ing esoteric being
18 a misreading even of the exoteric records Buddhism popularized Brahmanism in the
sense of showmg that the attainment of high spiritual beat.tude was open to all men who trod the right pa i not merely, as Brahmanism taught, to the Brahmins The esoteric initiations were not abolished merely held out to all who should become worthy.
B ni!S ?lreai,meaDing °f the Phrase attributed to Buddha, The Tatagatha has no such thing as the
c osed fist of a teacher who keeps some things back ’
k ?aX MUl]er sa37S> f Whatever we , °, Buddha and Buddhism we must try to know
is ant —that is to say, we must be prepared to °\Ve c aP^er and verse in some canonical or authori- tative book ; we must not appeal to Mahatmas on the other side of the Himalayas.’ But whether I obtained the teaching on which Esoteric Buddhism rests from a Mahatma on the other side of the Himalayas or evolved them out of my own head need only interesi
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people who begin to be seriously interested in the teaching on its own prima facie, intrinsic claims. It is childish to condemn a doctrine as wrong because it emanates from somebody unknown to the reader. It may be rationally ignored by any one bold enough to say, ‘I never trust my own judgement ; I only consider ideas when they are hall-marked as fit for acceptance by some acknowledged authority.’ It may be rationally attacked by any one prepared to assail it on its merits,— if it interests the world in spite of its unknown source. But it can only be irrationally attacked by a writer who neglects the thing said, and yet denounces it because he does not know anything about the person who says it. ‘ What I know not is not knowledge,’ as one distinguished professor is supposed to have put the idea. Professor Max Muller improves on the epigram : ‘ Philosophers I know not have no existence.’ He tells us ‘Mahatma’ is a well- known Sanskrit word applied to men who have retired from the world as great ascetics. ‘ That these men are able to perform most startling feats and to suffer most terrible tortures is perfectly true.’ But the term meaning great-souled has become an honorary title. He himself has had letters from Benares addressed to him as Mahatma. With the recollection of the tone in which I have heard Professor Max Muller’s comments on Indian philosophy discussed by native pundits at Benares and elsewhere, it seems just possible there may have been a touch of irony in such a mode of address ; but India is, of course, a land of hyper- bolical compliment. The servants of any European will call him ‘ Huzoor,’ or ‘ your Majesty ’ ; everybody is a lord to the man next below him ; and, in a spirit
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of mockery, so conventional that it has lost all sting, the humblest retainer of every Indian household— the f-?eiTis habitually called by his companions ‘Maharajah.’ This is how it comes to pass that rofessor Max Muller has been misled about the Indian ideas attached to the term Mahatma. Seriously used, it is a term of sublime respect. Applied to the yogi or faqueer who lives in the forest and performs the k startling feats’ which our professor so oddly recognizes— though so scornful of the only such feats abundantly vouched for in recent years— it would merely be a phrase of conventional compliment I never heard it used even in that way in application to the yogi of the jungle, but negative experience does not count for much. Any one knowing India will feel that it might be used in the way I describe.
Inasmuch as Professor Max Muller says no word concerning the views or system of philosophy set forth in Esoteric Buddhism, one can hardly complain that he has travestied or misrepresented them. He has talked up in the air about something else, and, as the article stands, it reads like an attack on the undulatory theory of light grounded on a contention that Sir Isaac Newton mismanaged the Mint. But parting company from him for a moment, to explain the teachino- he ' lsaPProves of— without having been at the pains to ascertain what it is— the leading ideas of Esoteric Buddhism may be summed up briefly as follows :—
The human creature as we know him is a manifesta- tion on the physical plane of nature of a complex spiritual being developed by slow degrees, by the aggregation round a spiritual nucleus of the capacities and most durable characteristics engendered by his
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experience of life through a prolonged series of existences. The body is a mere instrument on which the interior entity performs — such music as he has learned to make. Between the body and the true spiritual nucleus lie intervening principles which express the lower consciousness, active during physical life. The consciousness, both lower and higher, is quite capable of functioning in vehicles independent of the body, and belonging, as regards the material of which they consist, to the next superior plane or manifestation of nature— called for convenience and following the nomenclature of mediaeval occultists — the astral plane, though it has nothing whatever to do with the stars. In every life much of the consciousness that makes up the complete man relates to transitory or ignoble things. After death, therefore, the persistence of this lower consciousness retains the soul for a time on the astral plane, during which period under some conditions it may sometimes become cognizable to still living people, but by degrees the attachment to phases of life which belong exclusively to the incarnate condition wears off, and the real spiritual soul, or in other words the original man, with only the loftier side of his character or nature in activity, passes on to a state of spiritual beatitude analogous to the heaven of exoteric religious teaching. There the person who has passed away is still himself ; his own consciousness is at work, anti for a long time he remains in a state of blissful rest, the correct appreciation of which claims a great deal of attention to many collateral con- siderations. When after a protracted period the specific personal memories of the last lile have laded out though the spiritual soul still retains all its capacities,
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all the cosmic progress that it has earned, it is drawn back into re-incarnation. The process is accomplished by degrees. The whole entity is not at once conscious within, or expressed by, the body of the young child. But as this grows it becomes more and more qualified to express the original consciousness of the permanent soul, and when it is mature, it is once more the oiiginal Ego, minus nothing but the specific memories of its last life.
W hy does it not remember ? is always the first question of the beginner in theosophic study. Because we who do not remember are as yet but nature’s children. Those who are further advanced along the line of cosmic progress do remember. But the science of the matter meanwhile is this. The higher spiritual soul is the permanent element in the Ego, and if sufficiently grown, can infuse each new personality which it develops with memories which it, in that case, can retain. But the lower side of ordinary human con- sciousness, taking the race at its present average development, is a good deal more vigorous than the spiritual nature. The higher soul, immersed again in a material manifestation, is choked as to its con- sciousness for the time being by the weed growth around it. There is plenty of time, however, in the scheme of nature. After many incarnations the higher soul may get strong enough to bear down the accu- mulated tendencies gathering round it during its earth-lives. Then an opportunity will come for remembering past lives, and for many other achieve- ments.
The laws which determine the physical attributes, condition of life, intellectual capacities, and so forth
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of the new body, to which the Ego is drawn by affinities even more complicated than those of chemical atoms, are known to esoteric and less accurately to ordinary Buddhism as Karma. As you sow so shall you reap. The acts of each life build up the conditions under which the next is spent. In regard to his happiness, and all that has to do with his well-being on this earth, every man has been, in the fullest sense of the term, his own creator, creating the conditions into which he passes in accordance with the Divine law that determines the nature of good and evil, and the consequences of devotion to the one or the other. As the earth-life is thus the school of humanity, it is not an end in itself. To achieve higher spiritual conditions of being is to escape beyond the necessity for re-incarnation. Thus exoteric Buddhism talks of escaping the perpetuation of life — meaning incarnate life — as something desirable, in a way which leads those who imperfectly grasp the esoteric significance of the idea to suppose that the extinction of con- sciousness is the object treated as desirable. The end really contemplated is the permanent elevation of consciousness to spiritual conditions. In the vast scheme of nature, comprehended by the esoteric teach- ing as that on which the world is planned, the ultimate realization of such spiritual beatitude is regarded as the destiny in reserve for the majority of mankind, after immensely protracted schooling. But by great efforts at any time after a certain turning-point in evolution has been passed, those who realize the potentialities of their being may enter at a relatively early date on their sublime inheritance. To show mankind at large the path which leads to this goal
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is the final purpose of esoteric teaching. Incidentally, it pours a flood of light on mysteries of nature that are. partially penetrated in some other ways, co- ordinating the otherwise incoherent phenomena of mesmerism and psychic perception and of various occurrences inaptly called supernatural, which some people know to take place but cannot interpret, and which others, content to despise what they cannot account for, thrust aside with irrational laughter. Already Theosophy has vindicated its own teachings for many students whose interior faculties have been lipe for development. The statements of Esoteric Buddhism concerning realms of nature imperceptible to the physical sight have already become realities for some, who are thus enabled to throw back out of their own experience a verification serviceable for others of the occult science to which they owe their progress.
This is the explanation of the fact that the ideas of Esoteric Buddhism which Professor Max Muller does not stoop to comprehend, much less to discuss, have seemed important to many people, caring more for the thing said than for the previous authority of the sayer Though Madame Blavatsky would have been comically ill-described even in her younger days as a person in search of a religion in which she could honestly believe, that attitude of mind is very widely spread throughout the Western world. Theosophy has dealt with it by providing interpretations of established dogma that invest with an acceptable spiritual meaning creeds offensive to healthy intelligence in their clumsv ecclesiastical form. It has lifted thought above the narrowness of the churches. The first thing a broad-
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minded thinker, speculating on the infinite mysteries of nature, feels sure of is that no one body of priests can have a monopoly of the truth. Theosophy shows that scarcely any of them have even a monopoly ol falsehood. It gives us religion in the form of abstract spiritual science which can be applied to any faith, so that we may sift its crudities from its truth. It provides us in the system of re-incarnation — cleared of all fantastic absurdities associated with the idea in ages before the esoteric view was fully disclosed — with a method of evolution that accounts for the inequalities of human life. By the doctrine of Karma, attaching to that system, the principle of the conservation of energy is raised into a law operative on the moial as well as on the physical plane, and the Divine element of justice is brought back into a world from which it had been expelled by European theologians. In ex- plaining the psychic constitution of man, Theosophy as developed by the Theosophical Society, not in the soulless condition to which Professor Max Muller would reduce it, puts on a scientific basis — that is to say, on a footing where law is seen to be uniformly operative
the heterogeneous and bewildering phenomena of
super-physical experience. Every advance ot know- ledge leaves some people aground in the rear, and there are hundreds of otherwise distinguished men amongst us who will probably never in this life realize the importance of new researches on which many other inquirers besides theosophists are now bent. But their immobility will be forgotten in time. Knowledge will advance in spite of them, and views of nature, at first laughed at and discredited, will be taken after a Avhile as matters of course, and, emerging
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from the shadow of occultism, will pass down the main current of science. Those of us who are early in the field with our experience and information would sometimes like to be more civilly treated by the lecognized authorities of the world ; but that is a very subordinate matter after all, and we have our rewards, of which they know nothing. We are well content to be in advance even at the cost of some disparaging glances from our less fortunate companions.
ESOTERIC BUDDHISM1:
A Rejoinder.
IN giving an account of the religious movement which was originated by Madame Blavatsky, and which in England is best known under the name of Esoteric Buddhism , I could not help saying something about the antecedents of that remarkable woman, though I knew that I should give pain to her numerous friends and admirers and expose myself to rejoinders from some of them. I should have preferred saying nothing about her personally, and in order to avoid entering into unpleasant details I referred my readers to the biographical articles written in no unfriendly spirit by her own sister, and published not long ago in the Nouvelle Revue. But the movement which bears her name is so intimately connected with her own history, and depends so much on her personal character and the validity of the claims which she made for herself, or which were made for her by her disciples, that it was quite impossible to speak of Esoteric Buddhism without saying something also of Madame Blavatsky and her antecedents. Though I tried to take as charitable a view as possible of her life and character, yet I was quite prepared that, even after the little I felt bound to say, some of her friends
Nineteenth Century , August, 1S93.
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and disciples would take up the gauntlet and defend theii lately departed prophetess. Death wipes out the recollection of many things which mar the beauty and proportion of every human life, and in the case of our own friends and acquaintances we often see how, as soon as their eyes are closed in death, our own eyes seem closed to every weakness and fault which we saw but too clearly during their lifetime. It is m human nature that it should be so. While the battle of life is going on, and while we have to stand up for what is right against what is wrong, our eyes are but too keen to see the mote in our brother’s eye ; but when we look on our friend for the last time in his placid and peaceful slumber, many things which we thought ought not to be forgiven and could never be forgotten are easily forgiven and wiped out from our memory. De mortuis nil nisi bonum is an old and, if it is rightly interpreted, a very true sayino-. It js’ quite right that we should abstain from sayino- any- thing about the departed except what is kind and tirows no discredit on them ; but it is not right that we should exaggerate their goodness or greatness, and make saints or heroes of them, when we know that they were far from being either the one or the other In cases, more particularly, where the name or authority of a departed teacher is invoked to lend a higher sanction to doctrines which may be either true or false, survivors are often in duty bound to speak out, however distasteful it may be to them
to seem to attack those who can no lono-er defend themselves. °
But though I was quite prepared to see Madame Blavatsky and her life and doctrines warmly defended
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by her disciples, I was not prepared to see one of her favourite pupils coming forward so soon, after her death to throw her over and claim for himself the whole merit of having originated and named and formulated Esoteric Buddhism and all that is implied by that name. I knew indeed that a fierce stiuggle was going on for the mantle of Madame Blavatsky, and that Colonel Olcott had not yet decided who was to be recognized as her legitimate successoi . Few people outside the inner circle would grudge Mr. Sinnett the exclusive paternity of Esoteric Buddhism, but history is history, and I ask all who have watched the origin and growth of Esoteric Buddhism, what would Mr. Sinnett have been without Madame Blavatsky? It is true that Zeus gave birth to Athene without the help of Hera ; but did Esoteric Buddhism spring full-armed from the forehead, of Mr. Sinnett? Though he assures us that he claims no merit at the expense of Madame Blavatsky, yet. he says in so many words that she was not the wiitei who formulated the system of Esoteric Buddhism. He admits that she founded the Theosophical Society, but he adds that with Theosophy itself her own merits and demerits have nothing to do. He admits that it was through Madame Blavatsky that he himself came into relation with the fountains of information from which his own teaching has been derived. He says that he cannot be sufficiently grateful for her aid. But he boldly claims to be an independent thinker, a new messenger from the same Mahatmas whom Madame Blavatsky also endeavoured to represent. He repudiates the idea that he was a mere messenger from her. It was he, not she, who was entrusted with
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the task of putting into intelligible shape the views of life and nature entertained by certain Eastern initiates. Nay, as if afraid that those whose messenger he professes to be might hereafter appear at Simla, and claim the credit of being the real originators of Esoteric Buddhism, he puts in a caveat and says,
‘ V. hether I obtained Esoteric Buddhism from a Ma- hatma on the other side of the Himalaya or from my own head is of no consequence.’ This sounds ominous, and very much like a first attempt to throw over hereafter, not Madame Blavatsky only, but like- wise the trans-Himalayan Mahatmas. V ery few people will agree with Mr. Sinnett that it is of no consequence whether he obtained his transcendent philosophy from ultra-montane Mahatmas or from his own inner con- sciousness. If he had ever crossed from India to the other side of the Himalayan mountain range, he would hold a place of honour among geographical discoverers. If, when arrived at the snowy heights so well described by Hiouen-tsang and others, he had made the acquain- tance there of one or several Mahatmas, and been able to converse with them, whether in Tibetan or in Sanskrit or even in Hindustani, on the profoundest problems of philosophy, he would rank second only to Csoma Korosi; and if, moreover, he could prove that such doctrines as he himself comprehends under the name of Esoteric Buddhism were at present taught there by people, whether of Tibetan, Chinese, or Indian origin, he would have revolutionized the history of human thought in that part of the world. But if he addressed the Geographical or the Asiatic or the Royal Society, the first questions which he would have to answer would surely be, By what route did you cross
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the Himalaya ? What were the names of your Mahat- mas, and where did they dwell? In what language or through what interpreters did you converse with them on such abstruse topics as those which you call Esoteric Buddhism % I have no doubt that Mr. Sinnett has a straightforward answer to all these questions. He probably possesses geographical maps, meteoro- logical observations, and ample linguistic notes, made duringhis long and perilous journeys. But it is carrying modesty too far to say, as he does, that ^ makes no difference whether he obtained what he calls Esotenc Buddhism from Mahatmas on the other side of the Himalaya, or, it may be, from his own head lo the world at large, the only question of real interest is whether the Himalaya has been crossed by him from the Indian side, whether such doctrines as Madame Blavatsky and Mr. Sinnett have published as Esoteric Buddhism are taught by Mahatmas on the snowy peaks of the Himalayan chain, and, if so, in what language Mr. Sinnett was able to converse with his teachers. Mr. Sinnett’s own head and Mr. Sinnett s own philosophy do not concern us, at least at present. I was concerned with Madame Blavatsky and with the movement to which she had given the first impulse, a movement which seemed to me and to many others to have assumed such large proportions, and to cause such serious mischief, that it could no longer be ignored or disregarded. That Hegel’s Logic should have been written in Germany m the nineteenth century, after Kant and after Schellmg is perfectly intelligible, at least quite as much as that Buddhas new doctrine should have originated in India m the sixth century B.C., and after the age of theUpamshads.
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But if we were told that such a system had been iscovered in the moon or in Central Africa, we should be quite as much startled, and our curiosity would have been quite as much roused, as by the assurance
n haS been called’ and [t maJ be wrongly
called, Esoteric Buddhism is taught at present on the
o er side of the Himalaya, and was communicated there to such casual travellers as Madame Blavatsky and Mr. Sinnett. Mr. Sinnett as well as Madame Blavatsky must have the courage, not of their opinions only but likewise of their facts. Anyhow, until the questions as stated above have been answered Mr Sinnett must forgive me if I confine my remarks to Madame Blavatsky and the propaganda carried on in hei name. We do not doubt that in time Mr. Sinnett also may gam a large following, and whenever that tune seems to have arrived we may consider it our duty to study his books and warn the public at larae against what may seem to be either wrong facts or wrong conclusions. The mischief done by Madame Blavatsky and her publications has -been brought to my knowledge by several sad cases, nor should have been induced to write on the subject at all 1 * not rePeatedly been appealed to to say in public what I often said in piivate, and in answer to numerous letters addressed to me.
Mr Sinnett is very angry with me for ,not having read his own books and not having criticized his own octrines. But, though I wrote against Esoteric Buddhism, I never intended to write against him or any of his books published under this or any other name. If he claims an exclusive right in the title of Esoteric Buddhism, he must establish that right
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by better evidence than his own ipse dixit. If, as be tells us, Madame Blavatsky professed to write Esoteric Buddhism with one d instead of two, this only shows that she wTas ignorant of Sanskrit grammar, while Mr. Sinnett, as a bona fide Sanskrit scholar, is well aware that in past participles the final dh of budh followed by t becomes ddh. But considering how Madame Blavatsky declares again and again that her Buddhism was not the Buddhism which ordinary scholars might study in the canonical books, that it is not in the dead letter of Buddhistical sacied literature that scholars may hope to find tne tiue solution of the metaphysical subtleties of Buddhism ; when she adds that in using the term Buddhism she does not mean to imply by it either the exotenc Buddhism instituted by the followers of Gautama Buddha, nor the modern Buddhistic religion, but the secret philosophy of /Sakyamuni ; when she maintains, moreover, that Gautama had a doctrine for his elect, and another for the outside masses, what is her Buddhism if not non-exoteric, i. e. esoteric h Why then should it not be called so Why should Mr. Sinnett wish to repudiate his spiritual wife, if not his spiritual mother? That Mr. Sinnett may have written a book on Esoteric Buddhism, that he may have formulated doctrines which in Isis Unveiled are, as he says, poured out in wild profusion, that he too holds a commission from some unknown Eastern initiates, that his book has been translated into a dozen lan- guages—all this may be perfectly true. All I have to say for myself is that, in criticizing Madame Blavatsky and her own Esoteric Buddhism, I did not feel bound to criticize him and his theosoph) .
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I have now at the end of his > Rejoinder ’ seen for the hist tune an abstract of what he calls his own ormulated system of philosophy, and I have humbly o confess that it is quite beyond me. Though I flatter myself that I understand Plato and Aristotle, bpmoza and even Hegel, I am quite unable to follow
; 1’’ 7unc;tti m his theosophical flights. Perhaps 1 need not be ashamed of this, for he tells us in so many words that he is in advance of all of us, and that he does not mind, therefore, some disparaging g ances from his less fortunate companions. Tilf therefore, he condescends to adapt his teaching to the more limited capacities of his less fortunate companions it would be in vain for us to attempt to comprehend or to criticize his new philosophy, whether it springs from trans-Himalaya Mahatmas or from his own head. We must accept our fate among the vulgus profanum ‘left aground in. the rear, and nevei able to realize the importance of new re- searches on which inquirers besides theosophists are now bent.
mAS 1 kad never, in the whole of my article on Madame Blavatsky and her own Esoteric Buddhism ventured to criticize Mr. Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism’ did not , see that I was bound to answer liis Rejoinder in the June number of this Review.
dpfhlS] ,Rej01ncIer had been inspired by a wish to defend his once revered mistress, I should have felt in duty bound to reply to it. But as his ‘ Rejoinder ’ so _ ai fr om being a defence of Madame Blavatsky is m fact nothing but a plea for Mr. Sinnett himself’ whom I had never attacked, it was only out of respect for the Editor of the Nineteenth Century that I was
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induced to write down a few remarks in reply to what he had allowed to appear in the June number of this Review.
Mr. Sinnett has summed up my argument against Esoteric Euddhism in the following words : ‘ Buddhism cannot contain any teaching hitherto kept secret, because the books hitherto published do not disclose any secrets.’ It is not a favourable summing up of my argument, but even thus I willingly accept it. My argument, as represented by Mr. Sinnett, has the weak point of all inductive arguments. We say, for instance, that the sun will never rise in the west, but we can produce no other proof but that hitherto the sun has always risen in the east, strict reasoners may say, and may truly say, that it may, for all that, rise in the west to-morrow; and if that concession is any comfort to the logical conscience of Mr. Sinnett or anybody else, no one would wish to deprive them of it. Mr. Sinnett takes me to task on the same ground once more. Why., he asks, do I not aigue that there cannot be any ore in a mine because there is none on the surface ? Has Mr. Sinnett never heard of a deserted mine with unused windlass and dangling rope ? Has he never heard what happened to specu- lators who would bore and bore, though geologists assured them that there was and that there could be no coal in the stratum which they had chosen 1 What o-eology can do for the miner, philology can do for the student of literature and religion. Whoever knows the successive strata of Greek literature, knows that it is useless to look for Homeric poetry after the age of Pericles. No scholar would hesitate to say that whatever new papyri of Aristotle s
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waitings may be discovered in the mummy-cases of Egypt or elsewhere they will never contain a plea for atomic theories. It is a well-known proverb in India, that you may judge a sack of rice by a handful taken out at random. The same applies to Buddhist literature. We have the complete catalogue of the Buddhist canon ; we are fully acquainted with large portions of it, and with the same certainty with which the astronomer denies the possibility of the sun rising in the west we may assert that no Buddhist book of ancient date and recognized authority will ever contain esoteric platitudes. Buddha himself, as I have shown, hated the very idea of esoteric exclusiveness. He lived with the people and for the people, he even adopted the vulgar dialects instead of the classical Sanskrit. I therefore maintain my position as strongly as ever, that we shall never find esoteric twaddle in the whole of the Buddhist canon, as little as we shall find coal beneath granite.
Mi. Sinnett finds fault with me for having doubted Madame Blavatsky’s knowledge of Greek. But he never understood the meaning of my remarks.
I pointed out that Madame Blavatsky’s creation of Kakotkodaimon to match the Agathodaimon spoke volumes as to the workings of her mind. Mr. Sinnett imagines that I had simply pointed out an incorrect spelling, and he says that I had made too much of so triflmg a matter. Any readers acquainted with Greek will easily have understood what I really meant. But Mr. Sinnett throws over Madame Blavatsky altogether.
U is notorious to all who knew her’ (he writes) 'that she was not only eapaWe of making any imaginable mistake in writing a Greek woid, but scarcely knew so much as the alphabet of that language ’
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This is rather severe on Madame Blavatsky, and difficult to reconcile with the solemn statement made by another friend of hers, who assures us that she was a scholar and had actually acquired a knowledge of Pali. But, as if conscious of having been rather unkind to Madame Blavatsky, Mr. Sinnett adds
‘To understand how it came to pass that under those circumstances the MSS. she wrote with her own hand were freely embellished with Greek quotations, would require a comprehension of many curious human capacities outside the scope of that scholarship of which Professor Max Muller is justly proud, but unfortunately too often inclined to mistake for universal knowledge.
Mr. Sinnett evidently imagines that this assumption of universal knowledge is a common failing of pro- fessors, and he triumphantly quotes against me the well-known lines —
‘ I am the master of my college,
What I know not is not knowledge.’
If, then, for once I may be allowed to claim universal knowledge and speak in the language of esoteric omniscience, I maintain that it would be by no means difficult to understand these Greek embellishments in Madame Blavatsky ’s publications. May not Madame Blavatsky in a former birth have been a Greek Sibylla 1 And are not those who are further advanced along the line of cosmic progress, and familiar with superphysical phases of nature, able to recall their former experiences 3 Did not Buddha himself, at least according to the testi- mony of his followers, claim that faculty, and was not Madame Blavatsky so far advanced in Arhatship as to be able to remember what in a former Kalpa she knew as Madame BAa/3ar other solutions ; a true Buddhist, like myselt, ac-
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quainted with the iddkis, and the mysterious working of psychic faculties and forces, can have no difficulty in accounting for the presence of the Kahothodaimon in Madame Blavatsky’s books.
As Mr. Sinnett seems to find it hard to deny any of my facts or controvert any of the arguments based on them, he has recourse to the favourite expedient of discrediting or abusing the counsel for true Buddhism. He says that I have no right to speak with authority. I have never claimed to speak with authority. Far from it ! I simply speak with facts and arguments. Facts require no authority nor laws of logic, whether inductive or deductive. In my article on ‘Esoteric Buddhism,’ I have based my case on nothing but facts and arguments. If Mr. Sinnett wifi prove my facts wiong, I shall be most grateful and surrender them at once. If he can show that my arguments offend against the laws of logic, I withdraw them without a pang. I never claimed to be a Pope or a Mahatma. Mr. Sinnett appeals to the authority of ‘native scholars,’ and he assures us that he has heard ‘native scholars’’ at Benares and elsewhere discussing my comments on Indian philosophy. Of course he means that they were discussing them unfavourably. I do not doubt the fact, but Mr. Sinnett does not give us the names of the native scholars,’ nor inform us in what language their discussion took place. Now there are ‘native scholars and native scholars,’ but even the most learned among them would not claim any infallible authority.
I know many native scholars and have had frequent communications with them by letter. I have often expressed my admiration for the knowledge of some of them, particularly of those who are specialists and
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know one book or one subject only, but thoroughly. I have had controversies with some of them, and nothing could be more pleasant and courteous than their manner of arguing. I differ from them on some points, and they differ from me. I must therefore leave it to a Sanskrit scholar like Mr. Sinnett to judge between us, and to determine who is right and who is wrong ; but he must not imagine that he can frighten me or my readers by appeals to unknown and anony- mous ‘ native scholars.’ If ‘ native scholars ’ have declared my contention that there is no longer any secret about Sanskrit literature to be ludicrous, may I remind Mr. Sinnett that he has accidentally forgotten to prove his major premiss that anything that seems ludicrous to any native scholar is ipso facto untrue.
Mr. Sinnett has taken the opportunity of giving, at the end of his ‘Rejoinder,’ a specimen of what he means by Esoteric Buddhism. This is a grave indis- cretion on his part,, and if any native scholar or Mahatma confided it to him, and it did not rather come from his own head, the consequences of such an indiscretion may become very serious to him and his followers, whoever they may be.
It is a well-known and to my mind a very significant episode in Buddha’s life that he dies as an old man after having eaten a meal of boar’s flesh oflered him by a friend. With a man like Buddha, who was above the prejudices of the Brahmans, there is no harm in this, but as it lends itself to ridicule it has always seemed to me to speak very well for the veracity of his disciples that they should have stated this fact quite plainly. But Mr. Sinnett has been initiated by Mahatmas, and he tells us that the roast
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pork of which Buddha partook was not roast pork at all, but was meant as a symbol of Esoteric Know- ledge, derived from the Boar avatar of Visfmu, and that this avatar was an elaborate allegory which represents the incarnate god lifting the earth out of the waters with his tusks— a transaction which Wilson in his translation of the Vishnu Pur&na explains as representing the extrication of the world from the deluge of iniquity by the rites of religion. Dried boars flesh stands, as Mr. Sinnett assures us for esoteric knowledge when prepared for popular ’use, and reduced to a form in which it could be taught t0„ latitude. It was owing to the daring attempt ot Budaha to popularize his esoteric wisdom that Buddhistic enterprise came to an end. If Buddha died of that attempt, no one of lesser authorit}^ than himself, we are told, must take the responsibility of giving out occult secrets.
Mr. Sinnett is evidently running a great risk. He has disregarded this very warning. He has swallowed roast pork, or, what, according to him, is the same, he has ventured to expound esoteric mysteries All we can hope for is that his digestion may prove stronger than that of Buddha, and that he will never repeat so dangerous an experiment, even thouo-h he meant it for the benefit of those who, like myself ‘ worship the letter that killeth and are apt to lose sight of common sense.' Poor Dr. Rhys Davids, who, as Mr. Sinnett maintains, has given currency to the5 ludicrous misconception as to Buddha having eaten real roast pork, instead of having swallowed the Boar who in the Vishnu Purina is said to have extricated the world from the deluge of iniquity, may incur even
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greater penalties, particularly if, with most Sanskrit scholars, native or otherwise, he should commit the still greater heresy of maintaining that the Vishnu Purana did not even exist in Buddha’s time, and that therefore Buddha must have swallowed bona tide pork, and not a merely esoteric boar.
THE ALLEGED SOJOURN OF CHRIST IN INDIA1.
TINEAS SYLVIUS, afterwards Pope Pius the Second, 1458-64, when on a visit to England, was anxious to see with his own eyes the barnacle geese that were reported to grow on trees, and, beino- supposed to be vegetable rather than animal, were allowed to be eaten during Lent. He went as far as Scotland to see them, but arrived there he was told that he must go further, to the Orchades, if he wished to see these miraculous geese. He seemed rather provoked at this, and, complaining that miracles would always flee further and further, he gave up his goose chase ( didicimus miracula semper remotius fugere).
Since his time, the number of countries in which miracles and mysteries could find a safe hidino--plaCe has been much reduced. If there were a single barnacle goose left in the Orchades, i. e. the Orkney Islands, tourists would by this time have given a o-0od account of it. There are few countries left now beyond the reach of steamers or railways, and if there is a spot never trodden by a European foot, that is the very spot which is sure to be fixed upon by some adventurous members of the Alpine Club for their next expedition. Even Central Asia and Central
‘ Nineteenth Century, October, 1894.
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Africa are no longer safe, and hence, no doubt, the great charm which attaches to a country like Tibet, now almost the only country some parts of which are still closed against European explorers. It was in Tibet, therefore, that Madame Blavatsky met her Mahatmas, who initiated her in the mysteries of EsotericBuddhism. Mr. Sinnett claims to have followed in her footsteps, but has never described his or her route. Of course, if Madame Blavatsky and Mr. Sinnett had only told us by what passes they entered Tibet from India, at what stations they halted, and in what language they communicated with the Mahatmas, it would not be courteous to ask any further questions. That there are Mahatmas in India and Tibet no one would venture to deny. The only doubt is whether these real Mahatmas know, or profess to know, any- thing beyond what they can, and what we can, learn from their sacred literature. If so, they have only to give the authorities to which they appeal for their esoteric knowledge, and we shall know at once whether they are right or wrong. Their Sacred Canon is accessible to us as it is to them, and we could, therefore, very easily come to an understanding with them as to what they mean by Esoteric Buddhism. Their Saci'ed Canon exists in Sanskrit, in Chinese, and in Tibetan, and no Sacred Canon is so large and has at the same time been so minutely catalogued as that of the Buddhists in India, China, or Tibet.
But though certain portions of Tibet, and particularly the capital (Lassa), are still inaccessible, at least to English travellers from India, other portions of it, and the countries between it and India, are becoming more and more frequented by adventurous tourists. It
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would therefore hardly be safe to appeal any longer to unknown Mahatmas, or to the monks of Tibetan monasteries, for wild statements about Buddhism, esoteric or otherwise, for a letter addressed to these monasteries, or to English officials in the neighbour- hood, would at once bring every information that could be desired. Where detection was so easy, it is almost impossible to believe that a Russian traveller,