Some Buddhist Books
The Religion of Tibet. By Sir Charles" Boll, K.C.I.E., C.M.C., I.C.S.(retd.). (Clarendon Press, Oxford. 18s.) In the Footsteps of the Buddha. By Bond Crowfeet. Translated By Har Dayal, MA., Ph.D. (Kogan Paul. 18s.) Ite Lhasa, and all the lands that pay homage to the Dead and Living Buddhas, Sir Charles Bell is believed to be the re- incarnation of a lama who prayed on his death-bed to be reborn in some powerful country, so as to be able to help Tibet. In his life, as in his books, he has not disappointed those who have placed this trust in him, and we in the West have also reason to be grateful, for he knows more about Tibet than any other living Englishman, and can tell us what he knows in a crisp and cogent way.
Three-fourths of the material in his latest book is derived from valuable manuscripts given to him by the Dalai and Tashi Lamas, or is based on conversations with leading Tibetans. Its purpose is to describe how Buddhism came to High Asia and how it has transformed a warrior people living in a bleak climate into a nation of monks and philosophers. (Perhaps the author would not approve of this summary generalization, but it must serve.) How did a creed of resig- nation and non-violence, evolved in the steaming foothills of the Himalayas, conquer the reivers of the uplands and the horsemen of the Gobi ? The author tells us what happened in Tibet : he does not go beyond his chosen province, but he does suggest that Gautama Buddha had Tartar blood in his veins.
This would explain why Buddhism could not survive in the land of its birth, but flourished in far China : the lofty discipline of Renunciation could not maintain itself amongst a people who turned to adoration more easily than to cold analysis, to bhakti rather than to gnana. Organized religion is largely a matter of race : Christians in Europe have often asked them- selves—still ask themselves, if they have studied Eastern religions—how far their various Churches represent the heart and mind of the Founder of their faith. So with Buddhism The Mahaytmist dogma that spread to Tibet and the simpler, sterner creed of the Hinayanists of Ceylon cannot both be complete versions of what the Lord Buddha taught ; but we who are outside these faiths can learn something from each and look on both with respect.
Perhaps Sir Charles Bell's chapter on Christ in Missions in Tibet will be of the greatest interest to the general reader, but to me the earlier sections, dealing with the ancient Shamanistic worship called Pon were pages of singular excitement and discovery. The method by which the sacred books of India were translated into Tibetan, the rule of life in the convent strongholds, the stigmata which must be discovered on those infants who are destined to be Grand Lamas, and the ad- ministration of the country by an enthroned priesthood are all well described ; and the book is also packed with a " human interest " difficult to convey, for the scenes are not easily re- movable from their context. To appreciate them we must share the adventures of the famous saint 'Mi-la-rupa, a con- temporary of William the Conqueror, who warmed himself by stimulation " of the three nerves that meet at the navel," so that he could sit naked, night-long, in the snow of a Tibetan winter ; and learn of the aseeticisrns practised by his forbears and predecessors—" Lotus Thunderbolt," " Void-Contem- plating Lion," " Playful Thunderbolt," and others ; sit with sorcerers ; meet an intoxicated Living Buddha ; live with the author in the marvellous old monasteries ; hear with him bow the lips of the poor women of Lhasa are touched with prophecy once a year at the time of the Great Prayer ; and above all, acquire something of the calm and detachment of the cultured Tibetans with whom he conversed. I have rarely read a book with more pleasure. The author's excellent photographs are a supererogatory adornment.
Professor Grousset's account of the great age of Buddhism— well translated as it is—has perhaps been misnamed In the Footsteps of the Buddha, for it is concerned with the journeying,: not of the Enlightened One himself, but those of his later disciples, particularly that of the famous Hsuan-tsang, a priest of Honan-fu, who went on a pilgrimage to the shrines of Buddhism more than a thousand years after Gautama " turned the wheel of the law." In those days in the Far East—in the seventh century of our era, when the great-haunched cavalry of the T'angs pawed and snorted on the frontiers of China—there was a conflict between the idealisms that had come from the Ganges and the military needs of a State threatened by Turco-Mongo- lian hordes. T'ai-tsung, the T'ang Emperor who was a con- temporary of " The Master of the Law" (as Hsuamtsang came to be called on account of his wisdom) entertained a hearty dislike for mysticism and all its works, to judge by the description of him quoted by M. Grousset "The Warden of the Marches has never opened a book during all his life, but he is skilful, strong and bold in the chase. In the autumn his horse is fat, the grass of the prairies suits it admirably ; when it gallops -its shadow disappears. How magnificent and scornful is the manlier of this man of the frontiers ! His whip slashes the snow or clanks in its gilded case. Enlivened by heady wine, he summons his falcon and roams far afield. His bow, bent beneath his mighty effort, never misses its mark : two birds often fall together, brought down by a single shot of his whistling arrow. Men' draw aside everywhere to let him pass, for his valour and his warlike spirit are well known in the Gobi." • •
To this ferocious cavalier came Hsuan-tsang, then a boy- priest in his teens, with a petition to be allowed to travel in India in order to collate the scriptures of his faith :
" His colouring was delicate, his eyes brilliant his bearing was grave and majestic, and his features seemed to radiate charm and brightness. His voice was pure and penetrating in quality, so that his hearers never grew weary of listening to him."
The Emperor refused permission; but the Master of the Law was not to be dissuaded from his quest by the formality of a passport. There were gaps in the interpretation of the Buddhist canon, and Hsuan-tsang was determined to discover the true teaching of his Master at its source. So for the next. sixteen years he led a life of travel and discovery unsurpassed in any day or age, considering the difficulties then to be surmounted.
He crossed the frontier at Kao-ehang, and entered India by the "silk route" at Buchan, making his way through Samar- kand and Afghanistan to the then world-famous University of .Taxila, near present-day Rawalpindi. Thence he went into Kashmir, where he spent three years ; then to Benares, Buddh-Gaya, Nalanda ; and southwards by the coast of Orissa towards Ceylon, where he hoped to worship at the Shrine of the Tooth. But Ceylon was in a state of revolution : he was compelled to return by the west coast, and after three more years of wandering reached China safely, with 600 Sanskrit books which he settled down to translate. Twenty years later, at the age of sixty-one, he died in the convent of The Great Beneficence, just after finishing his last book, The Perfection of Sapieuk : a full, well-rounded life, whose adven- tures, as so ably described by M. Groussel, throw a flood of light on the soul of Asia at the time of its flowering in such noble works of art as the earlier frescoes of Ajanta.
Professor Har Dayal's learned study of the Bodhisattva doctrine bears all the marks of a University thesis, which it is ; but, besides being a valuable source book of information for students it does also give a comprehensive description of the Way of Enlightenment, and contains a number of com- parisons between Mahayanist ideals and the active altruism of the Franciscan friars. It is probably true that the later developments of Buddhism sprang from a half-formulated demand in the heart of the Indian people for social service. Yet that heart, infinite in its theoretical tenderness for life created, soon turned again to contemplation rather than action, and delved into the abstractions of tlse Unconscious rather than grappled with the world about. it. We shalLret know for certain why Buddhism withered, bar
flourished farther East, but to those on w'rs:
exercise a fascination greater than any pthzle of the West, Professor Har Dayal has something of interest to say.
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