THE discoveries of the Portuguese2 and the Spaniards had brought the Christians3 of western Europe into close contact with the people of India and of China. They knew of course that Christianity was not the only religion on this earth. There were the Mohammedans and the heathenish tribes of northern Africa who worshipped sticks and stones and dead trees. But in India and in China the Christian4 conquerors5 found new millions who had never heard of Christ and who did not want to hear of Him, because they thought their own religion, which was thousands of years old, much better than that of the West. As this is a story of mankind and not an exclusive history of the people of Europe and our western hemisphere, you ought to know something of two men whose teaching and whose example continue to influence the actions and the thoughts of the majority of our fellow-travellers on this earth.
In India, Buddha was recognised as the great religious teacher. His history is an interesting one. He was born in the Sixth Century before the birth of Christ, within sight of the mighty6 Himalaya Mountains, where four hundred years before Zarathustra (or Zoroaster), the first of the great leaders of the Aryan race (the name which the Eastern branch of the Indo-European race had given to itself), had taught his people to regard life as a continuous struggle between Ahriman, and Ormuzd, the Gods of Evil and Good. Buddha's father was Suddhodana, a mighty chief among the tribe of the Sakiyas. His mother, Maha Maya, was the daughter of a neighbouring king. She had been married when she was a very young girl. But many moons had passed beyond the distant ridge7 of hills and still her husband was without an heir who should rule his lands after him. At last, when she was fifty years old, her day came and she went forth8 that she might be among her own people when her baby should come into this world.
It was a long trip to the land of the Koliyans, where Maha Maya had spent her earliest years. One night she was resting among the cool trees of the garden of Lumbini. There her son was born. He was given the name of Siddhartha, but we know him as Buddha, which means the Enlightened One.
In due time, Siddhartha grew up to be a handsome young prince and when he was nineteen years old, he was married to his cousin Yasodhara. During the next ten years he lived far away from all pain and all suffering, behind the protecting walls of the royal palace, awaiting the day when he should succeed his father as King of the Sakiyas.
But it happened that when he was thirty years old, he drove outside of the palace gates and saw a man who was old and worn out with labour and whose weak limbs could hardly carry the burden of life. Siddhartha pointed9 him out to his coachman, Channa, but Channa answered that there were lots of poor people in this world and that one more or less did not matter. The young prince was very sad but he did not say anything and went back to live with his wife and his father and his mother and tried to be happy. A little while later he left the palace a second time. His carriage met a man who suffered from a terrible disease. Siddhartha asked Channa what had been the cause of this man's suffering, but the coachman answered that there were many sick people in this world and that such things could not be helped and did not matter very much. The young prince was very sad when he heard this but again he returned to his people.
A few weeks passed. One evening Siddhartha ordered his carriage in order to go to the river and bathe. Suddenly his horses were frightened by the sight of a dead man whose rotting body lay sprawling10 in the ditch beside the road. The young prince, who had never been allowed to see such things, was frightened, but Channa told him not to mind such trifles. The world was full of dead people. It was the rule of life that all things must come to an end. Nothing was eternal. The grave awaited us all and there was no escape.
That evening, when Siddhartha returned to his home, he was received with music. While he was away his wife had given birth to a son. The people were delighted because now they knew that there was an heir to the throne and they celebrated11 the event by the beating of many drums. Siddhartha, however, did not share their joy. The curtain of life had been lifted and he had learned the horror of man's existence. The sight of death and suffering followed him like a terrible dream.
That night the moon was shining brightly. Siddhartha woke up and began to think of many things. Never again could he be happy until he should have found a solution to the riddle12 of existence. He decided13 to find it far away from all those whom he loved. Softly he went into the room where Yasodhara was sleeping with her baby. Then he called for his faithful Channa and told him to follow.
Together the two men went into the darkness of the night, one to find rest for his soul, the other to be a faithful servant unto a beloved master.
The people of India among whom Siddhartha wandered for many years were just then in a state of change. Their ancestors, the native Indians, had been conquered without great difficulty by the war-like Aryans (our distant cousins) and thereafter the Aryans had been the rulers and masters of tens of millions of docile14 little brown men. To maintain themselves in the seat of the mighty, they had divided the population into different classes and gradually a system of "caste" of the most rigid15 sort had been enforced upon the natives. The descendants of the Indo-European conquerors belonged to the highest "caste," the class of warriors16 and nobles. Next came the caste of the priests. Below these followed the peasants and the business men. The ancient natives, however, who were called Pariahs18, formed a class of despised and miserable19 slaves and never could hope to be anything else.
Even the religion of the people was a matter of caste. The old Indo-Europeans, during their thousands of years of wandering, had met with many strange adventures. These had been collected in a book called the Veda. The language of this book was called Sanskrit, and it was closely related to the different languages of the European continent, to Greek and Latin and Russian and German and two-score others. The three highest castes were allowed to read these holy scriptures20. The Pariah17, however, the despised member of the lowest caste, was not permitted to know its contents. Woe21 to the man of noble or priestly caste who should teach a Pariah to study the sacred volume!
The majority of the Indian people, therefore, lived in misery22. Since this planet offered them very little joy, salvation23 from suffering must be found elsewhere. They tried to derive24 a little consolation25 from meditation26 upon the bliss27 of their future existence.
Brahma, the all-creator who was regarded by the Indian people as the supreme28 ruler of life and death, was worshipped as the highest ideal of perfection. To become like Brahma, to lose all desires for riches and power, was recognised as the most exalted29 purpose of existence. Holy thoughts were regarded as more important than holy deeds, and many people went into the desert and lived upon the leaves of trees and starved their bodies that they might feed their souls with the glorious contemplation of the splendours of Brahma, the Wise, the Good and the Merciful.
Siddhartha, who had often observed these solitary30 wanderers who were seeking the truth far away from the turmoil31 of the cities and the villages, decided to follow their example. He cut his hair. He took his pearls and his rubies32 and sent them back to his family with a message of farewell, which the ever faithful Channa carried. Without a single follower33, the young prince then moved into the wilderness34.
Soon the fame of his holy conduct spread among the mountains. Five young men came to him and asked that they might be allowed to listen to his words of wisdom. He agreed to be their master if they would follow him. They consented, and he took them into the hills and for six years he taught them all he knew amidst the lonely peaks of the Vindhya Mountains. But at the end of this period of study, he felt that he was still far from perfection. The world that he had left continued to tempt35 him. He now asked that his pupils leave him and then he fasted for forty-nine days and nights, sitting upon the roots of an old tree. At last he received his reward. In the dusk of the fiftieth evening, Brahma revealed himself to his faithful servant. From that moment on, Siddhartha was called Buddha and he was revered36 as the Enlightened One who had come to save men from their unhappy mortal fate.
The last forty-five years of his life, Buddha spent within the valley of the Ganges River, teaching his simple lesson of submission37 and meekness38 unto all men. In the year 488 before our era, he died, full of years and beloved by millions of people. He had not preached his doctrines39 for the benefit of a single class. Even the lowest Pariah might call himself his disciple40.
This, however, did not please the nobles and the priests and the merchants who did their best to destroy a creed41 which recognised the equality of all living creatures and offered men the hope of a second life (a reincarnation) under happier circumstances. As soon as they could, they encouraged the people of India to return to the ancient doctrines of the Brahmin creed with its fasting and its tortures of the sinful body. But Buddhism42 could not be destroyed. Slowly the disciples43 of the Enlightened One wandered across the valleys of the Himalayas, and moved into China. They crossed the Yellow Sea and preached the wisdom of their master unto the people of Japan, and they faithfully obeyed the will of their great master, who had forbidden them to use force. To-day more people recognise Buddha as their teacher than ever before and their number surpasses that of the combined followers44 of Christ and Mohammed.
As for Confucius, the wise old man of the Chinese, his story is a simple one. He was born in the year 550 B.C. He led a quiet, dignified45 and uneventful life at a time when China was without a strong central government and when the Chinese people were at the mercy of bandits and robber-barons who went from city to city, pillaging46 and stealing and murdering and turning the busy plains of northern and central China into a wilderness of starving people.
Confucius, who loved his people, tried to save them. He did not have much faith in the use of violence. He was a very peaceful person. He did not think that he could make people over by giving them a lot of new laws. He knew that the only possible salvation would come from a change of heart, and he set out upon the seemingly hopeless task of changing the character of his millions of fellow men who inhabited the wide plains of eastern Asia. The Chinese had never been much interested in religion as we understand that word. They believed in devils and spooks as most primitive47 people do. But they had no prophets and recognised no "revealed truth." Confucius is almost the only one among the great moral leaders who did not see visions, who did not proclaim himself as the messenger of a divine power; who did not, at some time or another, claim that he was inspired by voices from above.
He was just a very sensible and kindly48 man, rather given to lonely wanderings and melancholy49 tunes50 upon his faithful flute51. He asked for no recognition. He did not demand that any one should follow him or worship him. He reminds us of the ancient Greek philosophers, especially those of the Stoic52 School, men who believed in right living and righteous thinking without the hope of a reward but simply for the peace of the soul that comes with a good conscience.
Confucius was a very tolerant man. He went out of his way to visit Lao-Tse, the other great Chinese leader and the founder53 of a philosophic54 system called "Taoism," which was merely an early Chinese version of the Golden Rule.
Confucius bore no hatred55 to any one. He taught the virtue56 of supreme self-possession. A person of real worth, according to the teaching of Confucius, did not allow himself to be ruffled57 by anger and suffered whatever fate brought him with the resignation of those sages58 who understand that everything which happens, in one way or another, is meant for the best.
At first he had only a few students. Gradually the number increased. Before his death, in the year 478 B.C., several of the kings and the princes of China confessed themselves his disciples. When Christ was born in Bethlehem, the philosophy of Confucius had already become a part of the mental make-up of most Chinamen. It has continued to influence their lives ever since. Not however in its pure, original form. Most religions change as time goes on. Christ preached humility59 and meekness and absence from worldly ambitions, but fifteen centuries after Golgotha, the head of the Christian church was spending millions upon the erection of a building that bore little relation to the lonely stable of Bethlehem.
Lao-Tse taught the Golden Rule, and in less than three centuries the ignorant masses had made him into a real and very cruel God and had buried his wise commandments under a rubbish-heap of superstition60 which made the lives of the average Chinese one long series of frights and fears and horrors.
Confucius had shown his students the beauties of honouring their Father and their Mother. They soon began to be more interested in the memory of their departed parents than in the happiness of their children and their grandchildren. Deliberately61 they turned their backs upon the future and tried to peer into the vast darkness of the past. The worship of the ancestors became a positive religious system. Rather than disturb a cemetery62 situated63 upon the sunny and fertile side of a mountain, they would plant their rice and wheat upon the barren rocks of the other slope where nothing could possibly grow. And they preferred hunger and famine to the desecration64 of the ancestral grave.
At the same time the wise words of Confucius never quite lost their hold upon the increasing millions of eastern Asia. Confucianism, with its profound sayings and shrewd observations, added a touch of common-sense philosophy to the soul of every Chinaman and influenced his entire life, whether he was a simple laundry man in a steaming basement or the ruler of vast provinces who dwelt behind the high walls of a secluded65 palace.
In the sixteenth century the enthusiastic but rather uncivilised Christians of the western world came face to face with the older creeds66 of the East. The early Spaniards and Portuguese looked upon the peaceful statues of Buddha and contemplated67 the venerable pictures of Confucius and did not in the least know what to make of those worthy68 prophets with their far-away smile. They came to the easy conclusion that these strange divinities were just plain devils who represented something idolatrous and heretical and did not deserve the respect of the true sons of the Church. Whenever the spirit of Buddha or Confucius seemed to interfere69 with the trade in spices and silks, the Europeans attacked the "evil influence" with bullets and grape-shot. That system had certain very definite disadvantages. It has left us an unpleasant heritage of ill-will which promises little good for the immediate70 future.
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Buddha
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| n.佛；佛像；佛陀 | |
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Portuguese
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| n.葡萄牙人；葡萄牙语 | |
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Christians
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| n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 ) | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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conquerors
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| 征服者，占领者( conqueror的名词复数 ) | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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ridge
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| n.山脊；鼻梁；分水岭 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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sprawling
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| adj.蔓生的，不规则地伸展的v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的现在分词 )；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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riddle
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| n.谜，谜语，粗筛；vt.解谜，给…出谜，筛，检查，鉴定，非难，充满于；vi.出谜 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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docile
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| adj.驯服的，易控制的，容易教的 | |
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rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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warriors
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| 武士，勇士，战士( warrior的名词复数 ) | |
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pariah
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| n.被社会抛弃者 | |
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pariahs
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| n.被社会遗弃者( pariah的名词复数 )；贱民 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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scriptures
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| 经文，圣典( scripture的名词复数 )； 经典 | |
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woe
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| n.悲哀，苦痛，不幸，困难；int.用来表达悲伤或惊慌 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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derive
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| v.取得；导出；引申；来自；源自；出自 | |
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consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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meditation
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| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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turmoil
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| n.骚乱，混乱，动乱 | |
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rubies
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| 红宝石( ruby的名词复数 )； 红宝石色，深红色 | |
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follower
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| n.跟随者；随员；门徒；信徒 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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tempt
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| vt.引诱，勾引，吸引，引起…的兴趣 | |
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revered
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| v.崇敬，尊崇，敬畏( revere的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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submission
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| n.服从，投降；温顺，谦虚；提出 | |
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meekness
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| n.温顺，柔和 | |
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doctrines
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| n.教条( doctrine的名词复数 )；教义；学说；（政府政策的）正式声明 | |
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disciple
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| n.信徒，门徒，追随者 | |
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creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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Buddhism
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| n.佛教（教义） | |
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disciples
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| n.信徒( disciple的名词复数 )；门徒；耶稣的信徒；（尤指）耶稣十二门徒之一 | |
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followers
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| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
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dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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pillaging
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| v.抢劫，掠夺( pillage的现在分词 ) | |
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primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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tunes
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| n.曲调，曲子( tune的名词复数 )v.调音( tune的第三人称单数 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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flute
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| n.长笛；v.吹笛 | |
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stoic
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| n.坚忍克己之人，禁欲主义者 | |
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Founder
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| n.创始者，缔造者 | |
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philosophic
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| adj.哲学的，贤明的 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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ruffled
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| adj. 有褶饰边的, 起皱的 动词ruffle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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sages
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| n.圣人( sage的名词复数 )；智者；哲人；鼠尾草（可用作调料） | |
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humility
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| n.谦逊，谦恭 | |
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superstition
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| n.迷信，迷信行为 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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situated
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| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
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desecration
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| n. 亵渎神圣, 污辱 | |
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secluded
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| adj.与世隔绝的；隐退的；偏僻的v.使隔开，使隐退( seclude的过去式和过去分词) | |
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creeds
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| （尤指宗教）信条，教条( creed的名词复数 ) | |
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contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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