150 THIRD PEEIOD, A.D. 311-590.
penitential and meritorious acts of self-niortifieation, by which the devotee assumes a proud superiority over the vulgar lierd of mortals, and is absorbed at last into the divine fountain of all being. The ascetic system is esseutial alike to Brahmanism and Buddhism, the two opposite and yet cognate branches of the Indian religion, which in many respects are similarly related to each other as Judaism is to Christianity, or also aa Eomanism to Protestantism. Buddhism is a later reformation of Brahmanism ; it dates probably from the sixth century before Christ (according together accounts much earlier), and, although subsequently expelled by the Brahmins from Hindostan, it embraces more followers than any other heathen religion, since it rules in Farther India, nearly all the Indian islands, Japan, Thibet, a great part of China and Central Asia to the borders of Siberia. But the two religions start from opposite principles. Brahmanic asceticism ' proceeds from a pantheistic view of the world, the Buddhistic from an atheistic and nihilistic, yet very earnest view ; the one is controlled by the idea of the absolute but abstract unity and a feeling ot contempt of the world, the other by the idea of the absoluto Ijut unreal variety and a feeling of deep grief over the emptiness and nothingness of all existence ; the one is predominantly objective, positive, and idealistic, the other more subjective, negative, and realistic ; the one ainis at an absorption into the universal spirit of Brahm, the other consistently at an absorption into nonentity, if it be true that Buddhism starts from an atheistic rather than a pantheistic or dualistic basis. " Brahmanism " — says a modern writer on the subject' — " looks baci to the beginning, Buddhism to the end ; the former loves cosmoo-ony, the latter eschatology. Both reject the existing world ; the Brahman despises it, because he contrasts it with the hio-her being of Brahma, the Buddhist bewails it because of its unrealness ; the former sees God in all, the other emptiness in all." Yet as all extremes meet, the abstract all-entity
' The Iniiaii word for it is tapax, i. e. the burning out, or the extinction of th« Individual being and its aljsoiption into the essence of Biuiuiia.
' Ad. Wuttlce, in bis able and instructive work : Das Geistesleben der Cliiacsciu Japancr, und Indier (second part of Lis History of Ileatlienisni), 1853, p. 593.
§ 28. ORIGIN OF CIIKI8TIAN MONASTICISM. 154
of Bialnnaii 16111 and the equally abstract non-entity or vacuity of Buddhism come to the same thing in the end, and may lead to the same ascetic practices. The asceticism of Brahmanism takes more the direction of anchoretism, while that of Buddhism exists generally in the social form of regular convent life.
The Hindoo monks or gymnosophists (naked philosophers), as the Greeks called them, live in woods, caves, on mountains, or rocks, in poverty, celibacy, abstinence, silence : sleeping on straw or the bare ground, crawling on the belly, standing all day on tiptoe, exposed to the pouring rain or scorching sun with four fires kindled around them, presenting a savage and frightful appearance, yet greatly revered by the multitude, especially the women, and performing miracles, not unfrequently completing their austerities by suicide on the stake or in the waves of the Ganges. Thus they are described by the ancients and by modern travellers. The Buddhist monks are less fanatical and extravagant than the Hindoo Yogis and Fakirs. They depend mainly on fasting, prayer, psalmody, intense contemplation, and the use of the whip, to keep their rebellious flesh in subjection. They have a fully developed system of monasticism in connection with their priesthood, and a large number of convents ; also nunneries for female devotees. The Buddhist monasticism, especially in Thibet, with its vows of celibacy, poverty, and obedience, its common meals, readings, and various pious exercises, bears such a remarkable resemblance to that of the Roman Catholic church that Roman missionaries thought it could be only explained as a diabolical imitation.' But tlie original always precedes the caricature,
' See the older accounts of Catholic missionaries to Thibet, in Pinlcerton's Colleclion of Voyages and Travels, vol. vii., and also the recent work of Hue, a French missionary priest of the congregation of St. Lazare : Souvenirs d'un Voyage dans la Tartaric, le Thibet, et la Chine, pendant les anuses 1844-1846. Comp. also on thfr whole subject the two works of R. S. Hardy : " Eastern Monachism," and " A Manual of Buddhism in its modern development, translated from Singalese MSS.** Lond. 1850. The striking affinity between Buddhism and Romanism extends, by the way, beyond monkery and convent life to the heirarchical organization, with the Grand Lama for pope, and to the worship, with its ceremonies, feasts, processions^ pilgrimages, confessional, a kind of mass, prayers for the dead, extreme unction, &c. The view is certainly at least plausible, to wliich the great geographer Carl Ritter (Erdkunde, ii. p. 283-299, 2d cd.) has given the weight of his name, that the