founder of what we call Buddhism, continued to exist after death was naturally a question of a more than purely speculative interest. It touched the hearts of his disciples, and there must have been the strongest inclination on their part to answer it in the affirmative. The Northern Buddhists admit the existence of Buddha and of all Buddhas after the end of their earthly career. But the Southern Buddhists abstain. Thus in a dialogue between Pasenadi, the King of Kosala, and the nun Khemâ, the King is introduced as asking the question again and again, whether Buddha exists after death, or, as we should say, whether the founder of that religion enjoyed eternal life. But the nun is immovable. She simply repeats the old answer: The perfect Buddha has not revealed it.' And when questioned further, why the perfect Buddha should have left so momentous a question unanswered, she says1:

O great King, have you an arithmetician or a master of the mint or an accountant who could count the grains of sand of the Ganges, and could say, there are there so many grains, so many hundreds, so many thousands, or so many hundreds of thousands of grains ?

The King replied, I have not, O reverend lady.

Or have you, O great King, the nun continued, an arithmetician, a master of the mint, or an accountant who could measure the water in the great ocean, and could say, there are there so many pints of water, so many hundreds, so many thousands, or so many hundreds of thousands of pints?

The King replied, I have not, O reverend lady.

1 Oldenberg, Buddha, p. 284.

And why not? she said. The great ocean is deep, immeasurable, unfathomable. And in the same manner, O King, if one tried to conceive the nature of the perfect Buddha by the predicates of corporeity, these predicates would be impossible in the perfect Buddha, their very root would be annihilated, they would be cut down, like a palm-tree, and removed, so that they could never rise again. The perfect Buddha, O King, is released from having his nature to be counted by the numbers of the corporeal world; he is deep, immeasurable, unfathomable, like the great ocean. To say that the perfect Buddha is beyond death, is wrong; to say that he is not beyond death is wrong likewise; to say that he is at the same time beyond and not beyond, is wrong; and to say that he is neither beyond nor not beyond 1 is wrong again.

With this answer the King must be satisfied, and millions of human beings who call themselves Buddhists have had to be satisfied. They have no God, no creator or ruler whom they could know, there is no modus cognoscendi et colendi Deum for them; and yet who would say that they have no religion?

Buddhism, as practical, not included under any definition.

And so again, if we tried to apply to Buddhism those definitions which see in religion not so much a theory as a practice, which, for instance, as Kant's definition, explain it as a recognition of all our duties as divine commands, how would Buddhism then be brought in?

The Doctrine of Karma.

The essence of Buddhist morality is a belief in

1 N' eva hoti na na hoti tathâgato param maranâ 'ti pi na upeti.

Karma, that is, of work done in this or in a former life, which must go on producing effects till the last penny is paid. The same thought pervades much of the Brahmanic literature, and it is still one of the most familiar ideas among the Hindus of the present day.

We find the first traces of this belief in Karma in the Upanishads. Thus we read in the Brihadâranyaka1 III. 2, 1:

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'Yâgñavalkya,' said Gâratkârava Ârtabhâga, ́ when the speech of a dead person enters into the fire, breath into the air, the eye into the sun, the mind into the moon, the hearing into space, into the earth the body, into the ether the self, into the shrubs the hairs of the body, into the trees the hairs of the head, when the blood and the seed are deposited in the water, where is then that person?'

Yâgnavalkya said: 'Take my hand, my friend. We two alone shall know of this; let this question of ours not be (discussed) in public.'

Then the two went out and argued, and what they said was Karma, work, and what they praised was Karma, work, namely that a man becomes good by good work, and bad by bad work. And after that Gâratkârava Artabhaga held his peace.

Among the Buddhists, however, the belief in Karma took a most prominent place. In the very first verse of the Dhammapada 2, we read:

'All that we are is the result of what we have thought it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil

1 Sacred Books of the East, xv. 126.

2 Sacred Books of the East, x. 3.

thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.'

And again, verse 127:

'Not in the sky, not in the midst of the sea, nor if we enter into the clefts of the mountains, is there known a spot in the whole world where a man might be freed from an evil deed.'

There can be no doubt that this faith has produced very beneficial results, and that it would explain many things which to us remain the riddles of lifebut is it religion?

While to us the inequalities with which men are born into the world seem often unjust, they can be justified at once by adopting the doctrine of Karma. We are born as what we deserved to be born 1, we are paying our penalty or are receiving our reward in this life for former acts. This makes the sufferer more patient, for he feels that he is wiping out an old debt, while the happy man knows that he is living on the interest of his capital of good works, and that he must try to lay by more capital for a future life. It may be said that in the absence of all proof of such a theory, and with the total extinction of any recollection of our former good or evil deeds, very little practical effect could be expected from this assumption. But this is not the case, for the assumption has become a belief, as strong as any belief in a religious dogma. Besides, though it cannot be proved, it helps to explain many difficulties, and this gives it a strong hold on man's convictions. The Buddhist trusting in Karma

1 'My possessions are my Karma, my inheritance is my Karma, my mother's womb is my Karma,' etc.; see Oldenberg, Buddha, p. 248, quotation from the Anguttara Nikâya, Pañkaka Nipâta.

can honestly say, Whatever is, is right, and the same belief which makes him see in what he now suffers and enjoys the natural outcome of his former works, will support him in trying to avoid evil and to do good for its own sake, knowing that whatever may befall in this life, no good and no evil word, thought, or deed, can ever be lost in the life of the uni

verse.

Of course, like every honest belief, this belief in Karma too may degenerate into superstition. I read not long ago in a Ceylon paper, that when an English judge condemned a Buddhist to death, the culprit said quietly: 'Thank you, my lord, you also will die.' He then went on to threaten the judge. You will become a bullock in your next life,' he said, 'and I shall then be a driver, and I'll drive you up the Kadujanava Pass,'-one of the steepest of the steep paths of Ceylon.

While Christian teachers comfort the afflicted by telling them that all injustice in this life will be remedied in the next, that Lazarus will be in Abraham's bosom and the rich man in torments, Buddha teaches those who seem to suffer unjustly in this life that they have deserved their punishment by their former deeds, that they must be grateful to pay off their old debts, and that they should try to lay in a store of good works for the time to come.

While ordinary mortals must be satisfied with this general belief, Buddha himself and those who have reached a high stage of enlightenment, are supposed to possess the power of remembering their former states of existence; and many of the most touching legends in the Buddhist canon are the recollections of his

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