DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.649#0044
CHAPTER IV.
THE HINAYAM SYSTEM.
Controversies about Sakyamuni's Laws.—The Hinayana Doctrines. The
twelve Nidanas; character of the precepts: incitation to ahstract meditation:
gradations of perfection.
At the time of Sakyamuni's death the inhabitants
of India were not yet so advanced in civilisation as
to have a literature, and the claims of the Buddhist
to scriptural documents of his law written down
during his life (as the Nepalese believe), or imme-
diately after his death (which is the opinion of the
Chinese), are decidedly groundless. New researches have
made it very probable that the alphabets in which the
earliest historical records we know, the inscriptions of
king Asoka (about 250 B.C.), are written, were imitated
from the Phoenician alphabet, communicated to the
Indians by merchants of that nation as early per-
haps as the fifth century B.C., at which period already
Greek letters became known in the ancient districts of
(Jandhara and Sindhu, the countries at the foot of the
THE HINAYAM SYSTEM.
Controversies about Sakyamuni's Laws.—The Hinayana Doctrines. The
twelve Nidanas; character of the precepts: incitation to ahstract meditation:
gradations of perfection.
At the time of Sakyamuni's death the inhabitants
of India were not yet so advanced in civilisation as
to have a literature, and the claims of the Buddhist
to scriptural documents of his law written down
during his life (as the Nepalese believe), or imme-
diately after his death (which is the opinion of the
Chinese), are decidedly groundless. New researches have
made it very probable that the alphabets in which the
earliest historical records we know, the inscriptions of
king Asoka (about 250 B.C.), are written, were imitated
from the Phoenician alphabet, communicated to the
Indians by merchants of that nation as early per-
haps as the fifth century B.C., at which period already
Greek letters became known in the ancient districts of
(Jandhara and Sindhu, the countries at the foot of the