Sutta Nipáta: Or, Dialogues and Discourses of Gotama Buddha

sophy has yet to be written: How much of the teaching of Gotama is original, and to what extent has he borrowed from other Indian systems? Side by side with it have flourished numberless other schools of thought, some of them teaching the same or similar doctrines. As to the ethics of Buddhism, they are found in equal purity in the Vedántic system; and if Buddha taught atheism and annihilation, these were also the tenets of other teachers, and especially those of the Çúnyavádins or Nihilists. Again, if by Nibbána was meant only absorption, even such was the faith of a sect of Siddhántists. It becomes also important to ascertain which of these schools was the first in the field to modify that intense love of force which the primeval Aryans, like other races in their childhood, so much cultivated. Before and during the Vedic era it was the shedding of blood, the sacrifice of man and beast, the oblations of butter and milk, the worship of fire and the warring elements, which marked the awakening of the supernatural sentiment in the Hindu breast. But anon a change came over the land. Peace, gentleness, and all the mild virtues gained the ascendant. True sacrifice, it was taught, was self-sacrifice. The preparation for heaven consisted in the destruction of all evil passions. And the greatest happiness, it was inculcated, consisted in a life of philosophic apathy. Whence all this? Was it the Sankhya, the Nyáya, the Buddhist, or the Vedántic school that conduced to effect this revolution of ideas? That the subject is worthy of attention will, I trust, be made evident by a comparison

of the teachings of Buddhism with the writings of a Vedántic author, a translation of which it is my intention to publish shortly.

I wish it to be understood, that in thus imperfectly giving prominence to some of the teachings of my countrymen, my object has been simply to point out to the discriminating reader the points of contact between Eastern and Western thought, and not to appear in any way as an apologist for Buddhism.

I have only to add here, that my obligations are due to Pandits Batavantuďávé and Gunasekara in Ceylon for the valuable assistance they have rendered. me in translating Sutta Nipáta, and to several Oriental scholars in Europe, for many useful suggestions made to me in the course of my preparing this work for publication.