DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27191#0073
INTRODUCTION.
4i
their abominations, we find our means of information painfully
scanty and unsatisfactory. As will appear in the sequel, all that
was written in India that is worth reading was written by the
Aryans; what was built was built by Turanians and Dravidians.
But the known buildings extend back only to the 3rd century
B.C., while the books may be ten centuries earlier, and, as might
be expected, it is only accidentally and in the most contemptuous
terms that the proud Aryans even allude to the abject Dasyus
or their religion. What, therefore, we practically know of them
is little more than inferences drawn from results, and from what
we now see passing in India.
Notwithstanding the admitted imperfection of materials, it
seems to be becoming more and more evident, that we have
in the north of India one great group of native religions,
which we know in their latest developments as the Buddhist,
Jaina, and Vaishnava religions. The first named we only
know as it was taught by Nakyamuni before his death about
480 B.C., but no one I presume supposes that he was the
first to invent that form of belief, or that it was not based
on some preceding forms. The Buddhists themselves, accord-
ing to the shortest calculation, admit of four preceding Buddhas
—according to the more formal accounts, of twenty-four. A
place is assigned to each of these, where he was born, and
where he died, the father and mother’s name is recorded, and
the name, too, of the Bodhi - tree under whose shade he
attained Buddhahood. The dates assigned to each of these
are childishly fabulous, but they may have been real personages,
whose dates extended back to a very remote antiquity.1
The Jains, in like manner, claim the existence of twenty-
four Tirthankars, including Mahavira the last. Their places
of birth and death, ages and numbers of converts, are equally
recorded, all are in northern India, though little else is told
of them; but, from their fabulous ages, stature, and the
immeasurable periods of the past when they are said to have
lived—they can only be looked on as purely fabulous. The
series ends with Mahavira, who was the contemporary of
Nakyamuni, and is said to have died before him at Pawa
in Bihar.
The Vaishnava series is shorter, consisting of only ten
Avatars ; but it, too, closes at the same time, Buddha himself
being the ninth, whilst the last is yet to come. Its fifth
1 A list of the twenty-four Buddhas,
with these particulars, is given in the
introduction to Turnour’s ‘Mahawansa,’
introd. p. 32. See also Spence Hardy’s
‘ Manual of Budhism,’ 2nd. ed. pp. 96ff.
Representations of six or seven of their
Bodhi-trees, with the names attached,
have been found at Bharaut and Ajanta,
showing at least that more than four
were recognised.
4i
their abominations, we find our means of information painfully
scanty and unsatisfactory. As will appear in the sequel, all that
was written in India that is worth reading was written by the
Aryans; what was built was built by Turanians and Dravidians.
But the known buildings extend back only to the 3rd century
B.C., while the books may be ten centuries earlier, and, as might
be expected, it is only accidentally and in the most contemptuous
terms that the proud Aryans even allude to the abject Dasyus
or their religion. What, therefore, we practically know of them
is little more than inferences drawn from results, and from what
we now see passing in India.
Notwithstanding the admitted imperfection of materials, it
seems to be becoming more and more evident, that we have
in the north of India one great group of native religions,
which we know in their latest developments as the Buddhist,
Jaina, and Vaishnava religions. The first named we only
know as it was taught by Nakyamuni before his death about
480 B.C., but no one I presume supposes that he was the
first to invent that form of belief, or that it was not based
on some preceding forms. The Buddhists themselves, accord-
ing to the shortest calculation, admit of four preceding Buddhas
—according to the more formal accounts, of twenty-four. A
place is assigned to each of these, where he was born, and
where he died, the father and mother’s name is recorded, and
the name, too, of the Bodhi - tree under whose shade he
attained Buddhahood. The dates assigned to each of these
are childishly fabulous, but they may have been real personages,
whose dates extended back to a very remote antiquity.1
The Jains, in like manner, claim the existence of twenty-
four Tirthankars, including Mahavira the last. Their places
of birth and death, ages and numbers of converts, are equally
recorded, all are in northern India, though little else is told
of them; but, from their fabulous ages, stature, and the
immeasurable periods of the past when they are said to have
lived—they can only be looked on as purely fabulous. The
series ends with Mahavira, who was the contemporary of
Nakyamuni, and is said to have died before him at Pawa
in Bihar.
The Vaishnava series is shorter, consisting of only ten
Avatars ; but it, too, closes at the same time, Buddha himself
being the ninth, whilst the last is yet to come. Its fifth
1 A list of the twenty-four Buddhas,
with these particulars, is given in the
introduction to Turnour’s ‘Mahawansa,’
introd. p. 32. See also Spence Hardy’s
‘ Manual of Budhism,’ 2nd. ed. pp. 96ff.
Representations of six or seven of their
Bodhi-trees, with the names attached,
have been found at Bharaut and Ajanta,
showing at least that more than four
were recognised.