alike.  Out of the theory and practice of religious life current in their time Gotama fashioned a beautiful vase, Mahavira a homely but still durable pot.  The resemblances between the two systems are not merely obvious but fundamental.  Both had their origin outside the priestly class and owed much of their success to the protection of princes.  Both preach a road to salvation open to man’s unaided strength and needing neither sacrifice nor revealed lore.  Both are universal, for though Buddhism set about its world mission with more knowledge and grasp of the task, the Jain sutras are addressed “to Aryans and non-Aryans” and it is said that in modern times Mohammedans have been received into the Jain Church.  Neither is theistic.  Both believe in some form of reincarnation, in karma and in the periodical appearance of beings possessed of superhuman knowledge and called indifferently Jinas or Buddhas.  The historian may therefore be disposed to regard the two religions as not differing much more than the varieties of Protestant Dissenters to be found in Great Britain.  But the theologian will perceive real differences.  One of the most important doctrines of Buddhism—–­perhaps in the Buddha’s own esteem the central doctrine—­is the non-existence of the soul as a permanent entity:  in Jainism on the contrary not only the human body but the whole world including inanimate matter is inhabited by individual souls who can also exist apart from matter in individual blessedness.  The Jain theory of fivefold knowledge is unknown to the Buddhists, as is their theory of the Skandhas to the Jains.  Secondly as to practice Jainism teaches (with some concessions in modern times) that salvation is obtainable by self-mortification but this is the method which the Buddha condemned after prolonged trial.  It is clear that in his own opinion and that of his contemporaries the rule and ideal of life which he prescribed differed widely from those of the Jains, Ajivikas and other wandering ascetics.

BOOK III

PALI BUDDHISM

BOOK III

In the previous book I have treated chiefly the general characteristics of Indian religion.  They persist in its later phases but great changes and additions are made.  In the present book I propose to speak about the life and teaching of the Buddha which even hostile critics must admit to be a turning point in the history of Indian thought and institutions, and about the earliest forms of Buddhism.  For twelve centuries or more after the death of this great genius Indian religion flows in two parallel streams, Buddhist and Brahmanic, which subsequently unite, Buddhism colouring the whole river but ceasing within India itself to have any important manifestations distinct from Brahmanism.