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THIS is the twelfth and last Sutta in the first division of the Digha Nikāya, which is called the Silakkhandha Vaggo, because the whole of its twelve Dialogues deal, from one point of view or another, with Sila, or Right Conduct.
There is another Sutta sometimes called by the same name, No. 21 in the Middle Fifty of the Magghima Nikāya: but it has nothing, except the name, in common with the present. It is called Tevigga Sutta merely because Gotama is there described by the complimentary title of Tevigga, 'Wise in the Vedas;' and its full name is the Tevigga-vakkhagotta-sutta[1].
I have made the present translation from a text constituted from three MSS.,--my own MS. of the Digha Nikāya, referred to as D; the Turnour MS. of the same in the Indian Office, referred to as T; both in Sinhalese characters: and the Phayre MS. in the same place, in Burmese characters, referred to as P.
In this book we have Right Conduct used as a sort of argumentum ad hominem for the conversion of two earnest young Brāhmans.
They ask which is the true path to a state of union (in the next birth) with God. After arguing, in a kind of Socratic dialogue, that on their own showing, on the
[1. It may be noted, in passing, that the substance of it recurs as the Vakhhagotta Samyutta in the Samyutta Nikāya.]
basis of facts they themselves admitted, the Brāhmans could have no real knowledge of their God, Gotama maintains that union with a God whom they admitted to be pure and holy must be unattainable by men impure and sinful and self-righteous, however great their knowledge of the Vedas. And he then lays down, not without occasional beauty of language, that system of Right Conduct, which must be the only direct way to a real union with God.
One would think perhaps that such a Sutta might be adapted, without very great difficulty, for use as a missionary tract, so closely does it remind us of the argument of many a sermon on the text, 'Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven!' And it is true that the Teviggā--the men of special knowledge in the three Vedas--correspond exactly in most essential particulars with the Scribes and Pharisees of the New Testament. They were the official preservers by repeating, as the Scribes were by copying, the sacred books; and they were the recognised interpreters, and the sole custodians of the traditional interpretation--which too often explained away the real meaning--of those books. It follows that as the law in both cases was included in the sacred books, it was they who, in both cases, were the real lawgivers, and practically the only lawyers. And as almost all learning was confined to, or in close connection with the sacred books, the Teviggā were the chief Pandits, as the Scribes were the 'Doctors of the Law.' Like the Pharisees, too, the Brāhmans laid claim to peculiar sanctity; and many of them in the pride of their education, their birth, and their wealth, looked down with self-righteous scorn on the masses of the people. And while, on the other hand, the Brāhmans further resembled the Scribes and Pharisees in that many of them were justly deserving of the respect in which they were held; it is only the undeserving who, in both cases, are intended to be condemned.
But whatever interpretation of the 'kingdom of heaven' the reader may adopt, it must be very different from anything the Sutta can mean by 'a state of union with Brahmā.' It is not easy to say what opinion is really imputed to the young Brāhmans before their conversion. It is probably meant that they were seeking a way by which their Self should become identified, after death, with Brāhman; a way by which they could escape from the immortality of transmigration, from existence altogether as separate individuals[1]. And in holding out a hope of union with Brahmā as a result of the practice of universal love[2], the Buddha is most probably intended to mean 'a union with Brahmā' in the Buddhist sense--that is to say, a temporary companionship as a separate being with the Buddhist Brahmā, to be enjoyed by a new individual not consciously identical with its predecessor. It is just possible that the argumentum ad hominem should be extended to this part of the Sutta; and that the statement in III, 1 should be taken to mean, 'This (universal love) is the only way to that kind of union with your own Brahmā which you desire.' But such a yielding to heretical opinion at the close of his own exposition of the truth would scarcely be imputed to a Buddha.
Just as during the time of the early Christians, in the way which Archbishop Trench has so instructively pointed out, it was not men only who received a new birth and a new baptism, but old words and terms of common use were also infused with a new spirit; so the Indian reformer, while clothing his new system in the current phraseology, infused a different and in many cases a higher meaning into the old expressions.
Thus, for instance, Tevigga (Sanskrit Traividya) meant either knowledge of the Three Vedas, or as an adjective, a Brāhman possessed of that knowledge; and then, as a noun of multitude, such an assembly of those Brāhmans
[1. Compare Professor Max Müller's Preface to the Sacred Books of the East, vol. i. p. xxx.
2. See Chapter III, §§ 1, 2.]
as is described in the first sections of our Sutta. As there were many Brāhmans who had not that knowledge, the word naturally came to imply a person worthy of the respect due to special learning, and was used as a complimentary title, not very different from our Doctor. It is preserved as an epithet of Arahats in the Buddhist writings, but as meaning one possessed of the knowledge of a fundamental threefold doctrine of Buddhism, the doctrine of the impermanency, the inherent pain, and the absence of any abiding principle (any Self) in the confections or component things[1]. That is to say, the knowledge of the Vedas was replaced by a knowledge of the real character of the deceptive and evanescent phenomena by which we are encircled, and of which we form a part.
So also with regard to Brahmā. The name was retained, but the idea was entirely changed. The course of religious belief had passed among the Indian section of the Aryan tribes through the usual stages of animism and polytheism to a kind of pantheism peculiar to India, in which Brahman was held to be a first cause, the highest self, emotionless, infinite, absolute. As the Buddhist system was constructed without any use of the previous idea of a separate soul, or self, or ghost, or spirit, supposed to exist inside the human body, this woven chain of previous speculation had as little importance for it as theological discussions have for positivism. But Buddhism fell into what to the positivist would be the unpardonable sin--perhaps inevitable at the time and place of its youth--of continuing to express a belief in the external spirits, big and little, of the then Hindu pantheon.
They were preserved very much in the previous order of precedence, and were all--except Māra, the Evil One, and his personal following, and a few others--supposed to be passably good Buddhists. They were not feared any more; they were patronized as a kind of fairies, usually beneficent,
[1. See Kulla Vagga VI, 6, 2, = Gātaka, vol. i. p. 217; Mahāvamsa, p. 79; Dipavamsa XV, 80 (where the Arahats are women); and on 'confections' below, in the Introduction to the 'Book of the Great King of Glory.']
though always more or less foolish and ignorant. They were of course not worshipped any more, for they were much less worthy of reverence than any wise and good man. And they were not eternal,--all of them, even the very best or highest, being liable, like all things and all other creatures, to dissolution. If they had behaved well they were then reborn under happy outward conditions, and might even look forward to being some day born as men, so that they could attain to the supreme goal of the Buddhist faith, to that bliss which passeth not away,--the Nirvāna of a perfect life in Arahatship.
The duty of a Buddhist who had entered the Noble Path towards these light and airy shapes--for to such vain things had the great gods fallen--was the same as his duty towards every fellow creature; pity for his ignorance, sympathy with his weakness, equanimity (the absence of fear or malice, or the sense of any differing or opposing interest), and the constant feeling of a deep and lasting love, all pervading, grown great, and beyond measure.
No exception was made in the case of Brahmā. He, like every other creature that had life, was evanescent, was bound by the chain of existence, the result of ignorance, and could only find salvation by walking along the Noble Eightfold Path. It must be remembered that the Brahmā of modern times, the God of the ardent theism of some of the best of the later Hindus, had not then come into existence: that conception was one effect of the influence of Mohammadan and Christian thought upon Hindu minds. And it would be useless to conjecture how the Buddhist theory might have been modified by contact with that ideal.
While regarded however as essentially of the same class as all other external spirits, Brahmā was still regarded as a superior spirit, as a very devout Buddhist, and as a kind of king among the angels. The Brahmā of this world system, who was living in Gotama's time, and who is living now, acquired his present exalted position from his virtue in a previous birth as a Bhikkhu named Sahaka in the time when Kassapa Buddha's religion flourished upon earth[1]. According to the author of the Gātaka commentary, he assisted at the future Buddha's birth[2]; and twice afterwards he rendered service to the Bodisat just before the great conflict with Māra[3]. And when after the victory the Blessed One hesitated whether it would be of any use to tell to others the truth he had found, it was Brahmā who appeared and besought him to proclaim the truth[4] . Brahmā Sahampati was the first to give utterance to the universal sorrow which followed on the death of the Buddha[5]; and at a critical period in the later history of the Buddhist church he is represented to have descended from heaven, and to have appeared to the Thera Sālha, to confirm his wavering faith[6].
These instances will show the high character ascribed to the Brahmā of the world system in which we live; and in each of the infinite world systems which are scattered through space there is supposed to be a like finite, temporary, virtuous Brahmā sitting as king over the most exalted of the angel hosts.
It must be evident that it follows, without the possibility of question, that the early Buddhists cannot with any accuracy be described as 'monotheists,' and it is much to be regretted that even cultured and scholarly writers still speak of them as such, and can suggest that the independent monotheism of the later Jews can be paralleled by a supposed monotheism among the Buddhists[7].
And even if the idea of Brahmā were at all the same as the idea of God, a union with this Brahmā would mean a merely temporary life as an angel in the Brahmā heaven--such a life as is represented below to have been the result
[1. Teste a comment quoted by Childers, Dict. p. 227.
2. 'Buddhist Birth Stories,' p. 66.
3. Ibid. pp. 92, 97.
4. Ibid. p. 111. Related already in the Mahā Vagga I, 2; 6, 7.
5. Book of the Great Decease, Chapter VI, § 4.
6. 'Mahāvamsa, p. 17.
7 'Their (the Jews') monotheism was perhaps independently evolved; but the Buddhists at least showed a contemporary monotheism.' Mr. Huth, in 'Life &c. of Buckle,' p. 238.]
of the noble life and noble thoughts of the Great King of Glory. But this was not the supreme goal of the Buddhist faith; and the angel, though the same person as the king, from the Buddhist point of view (as resulting from, and carrying on, the same Karma), would be a different person from the king, according to the Christian point of view; for there is no mention of the passage of a soul from the earth to heaven, no conscious identity, no continuing memory.
We may draw, from the above, two conclusions. Firstly, that the use of a word in Sanskrit authors is but very little guide to the meaning of the corresponding word in the Pāli Buddhist scriptures whenever the word has reference to an idea of a religious character.
And, secondly, that very little reliance can be placed, without careful investigation, on a resemblance--however close at first sight-between a passage in the Pāli Pitakas and a passage in the New Testament.
It is true that many passages in these two literatures can be easily shown to have a similar tendency. But when some writers on the basis of such similarities proceed to argue that there must have been some historical connection between the two, and that the New Testament, as the later, must be the borrower, I venture to think that they are wrong. There does not seem to me to be the slightest evidence of any historical connection between them; and whenever the resemblance is a real one--and it often turns out to be really least when it first seems to be greatest, and really greatest when it first seems least--it is due, not to any borrowing on the one side or on the other, but solely to the similarity of the conditions under which the two movements grew.
This does not of course apply to the later literature of the two religions; and it ought not to detract from the very great value and interest of the parallels which may be adduced from the earlier books. If we wish to understand what it was that gave such life and force to the stupendous movement which is called Buddhism, we cannot refrain from comparing it--not only in the points in which it agrees with it, but also in the points in which it differs from it--with our own faith. I trust I have not been wrong in making use occasionally of this method, though the absence of any historical connection between the New Testament and the Pāli Pitakas has always seemed to me so clear, that it would be unnecessary to mention it. But when a reviewer who has been kind enough to appreciate, I am afraid too highly, what he calls my 'service in giving, for the first time, a thoroughly human, acceptable, and coherent' account of the 'life of Buddha,' and of the 'simple groundwork of his religion' has gone on to conclude that the parallels I had thus adduced are 'an unanswerable indication of the obligations of the New Testament to Buddhism,' I must ask to be allowed to enter a protest against an inference which seems to me to be against the rules of sound historical criticism.