DIIYXNA IN EARLY BUDDHISM 68g

the worthlessness of the rest. If we are to adhere to the

measure of assurance at which we can justly arrive, we must
content ourselves with the view that Zoroaster was a prede·
cessor of the Achaemenids, from whom he was probably
separated by a considerable interval of time ; to seek to fix a
more definite date is idle ; even if we feel little doubt that he
lived not later than 700 :B.C., we must admit that means for
more definitely locating him in flme are wholly wanting.
A. BERRIEDALE KEITH

Dhyana in Early Buddhism

Learned men have told us in a certain Encyclopredia
that there is no mysticism in Buddhism. 1 This is true to some
extent because they, with fellow-writers in that work, have
certain preconceptions about what we have come to call
mysticism. And perhaps it is also because a critical, i.e.,
a historical, knowledge of the Buddhist texts is as yet, or
certainly was a decade and more ago, very immature.
'Mysticism' was unknown to Johnson's Dictionary. But
he defined 'mystical' as 'sacredly obscure', as 'having a hidden
meaning', and again as just 'obscure.' And Dhyana, in Pali
Jhii,na, had a meaning in early Buddhism that is nearly,
if not quite, hidden. It is an 'obscure' subject ; Dr. Hailer's
admirable study in it, also of a decade ago, shows it clearly as
a 'sacredly obscure' subject. 2 For him its obscurity lies more
in the history of its appearance, growth and decadence in
Buddhism, than in its object. He makes wise and suggestive
comments about its history, but about the object of Jbii.na.
he reckons to have found in the texts adequate explanation.

I Encyclopmdia ·of Religion· and Ethics,. art : Dhyana.

2 Die Buddkt'stiscke Versenkung, xgl8.
 DHYAN A IN EARLY BUDDHISM

He sees in Buddhistt J aina and Vedantist Dhyana a triple

expansiont the roots of which run down to obscure pre-Yoga
beginnings. But the object of Buddhist Jhana he claims to
have been a gradual but sure way to attainment, cathartic
and strenuous, of that Nirva:Q.a here and now which is different
only in degree from, and is the antechamber of, the final
goal, Parinirval).a. In other words, he sees in Buddhism "not
philosophy nor metaphysic nor ethic, but a mystical reli-
gion ofdeliveranee,'' the way to which was the way of rapt
musing or absorption known as Dhyana or Jhana. With a
worbhy jealousy for the genius of the Founder-the genius
of warding and leading individually the individual-he repu-
diates the idea, that Gotama himself taught this 'way' in the
stereotyped, fourfold Jhana formula (much less in the four-
and five-fold formula of the abstractions called Arupa-jhana).
With a less worthy rejection of Gotama's significant 'mani·
festo' 1 of the Way, the Marga, of life as a wayfaring
according to a man's inner guidance through the worlds to the
!JOal-_this he calls "an incomplete and inexact popular-
pc;>etical conception of the path of salvation''-he makes the
Founder turn away from the need and the calf of a world he
had set out to help, turn away from the_ warding of Everyman,
and hold out a way of salvation to the world-lorn, world-
forsakingrecluse {a strange picture of a world-saviour I).
For me early Buddhism may be worthed as 'mystical' or
not. The word of course means now not merely obscure ..
But the ascription may produce more obscurity than it clears.
},fysticism in its broadest, its· most real, because its (for
us) most practical, meaning is converse, usually solitary, with
the unseen. Converse is access, It is comm-union ; it is not
:q~ces~arily union. When the earth comes to ac~ept this
h'tllllhler, more practicable aspect of mysticism, instead of
. ~il\~ terms of an as yet inconceivable union with the Highest1
; *~;: J.na..y· then come to worth a mystioi~m that i~ not attain-
i;· ..··--.~~- ...~;_-_:,,..·;-~----~--' •

. . '.
I I refer to' the s<K:alled tfirst serrilorr; ' ·~ -:._ .
 DHYiNA IN EARLY BUDDHISM 6gi

able only by a saintly aspirant now in this continent, now in

that century, but one that is a way for the help of the many :
ye keoi sikkhakamlt ; whosoever are willing to learn. I
If we take converse, communion, with the unseen as our
meaning of 'mystic', we can, as I shall show, claim that
there is mysticism,_ Rnd much of it in early Buddhism. Some
years ago I took a different line in making out such a claim.
It was in connection with a modern untitled Pali and
Sinhalese manuscript, which my husband called the Yoga-
vacara's Manual, and its English translation by Mr. Wood-
ward, which we called the Manual of a Mystic. There I
took penetration (pa#ve<tha) into 'things' as admittedly belong
ing to at least European mysticism. I have been learning
much since then. Later Buddhism dealt far too exclusively
with 'things' (dltammlt). Ea.rly Buddhism, like the true gospel
as which it started, was far more concerned with men, and
in each man with the very man, the puruqa or lttman. .
But so-called mysticism is of both the old world and the
new, hoth of primitive culture anywhere, and of riper cul-
ture in East and West. And the tendency at present is for
the new and the riper to read later traditions and con-
cepts into the old and the more primitive. I propose, here as
elsewhere, to drop the words 'mysticism' and 'mystic' as
more hindersome than helpful, and to try to show whether
the Pali books do not betray, when closely ·scanned, an
evolution in the specific form of Indian Samadhi calle.d Bud-
dhist 'musing' (Jhana).
I find myself in disagreement with much that has lately
been written on Buddhist Jhana. Whatever Dhyana may
now mean in Japan o~ elsewhere in the East, in the Pali books
it does not mean 'meditation'.!! Meditation requires, if it
be worthy, the whole synergy of the thinking man. Early
Buddhist Jhina is a deliberate putting off {pahana) of
applying and sustaining thought. What is stated to be left

z E.R.E., art: Dhyina.

 DHYlN.A lN EARLY BUDDHISM

is sati (with indifference emotionally). And sati in those

books is just lucid awareness, the state needed by the listener
who is purged of preconceptions and waiting to learn.
This nnal state in what is known as Fourth Jhana is not
kept in view by writers on Dhyana or musing. Is it because
such a state is so little worthed by modern writers, both of
East and W esb 1
I agree that Buddhist Jbana and Yoga Dhyana may have
a common root in India's remote past. But when it comes
to calling the former the latter, I would say, they have
naught in common save the fact of the solitary muser and
the unseen. The values placed in the muser and imputed
to the musing are in each cult very different. So different,
that between the formularized Jhana and the Yoga aphorisms
some historic link is needed, a link.which may not show the
one as derived from the other, but which may show them as
.
at one time less widely divergent.
.

Once more, the object in Buddhist Jhana is not to me so

clear as some writers make out. Dr. Heiler, like other
German writers, sees in the object, both of Buddhism and of
Jha.na, the very general Indian ideal of 'deliverance' or re-
lease (:ErlOsug, mokl;a, vimutti). This is not a Vedic
doctrine, and it is not very clear whether its first appearance
in Indian literature is pre-Buddhistic. It became a familiar
word in the Buddhist tradition, but for me it is not in the
mandate of Buddhism, 1 and it is with the early mandate that
I am trying to deal. Nor is it by any. means given as the
constant object of Jhana. What I find in the Pitakas (I
purposely exclude medireval literature) is a double set of
formulas, wording no 'release' but only a 'practice', and inserted
in very different contexts. Taken in themselves, they suggest
a ladder placed against a wall, but not reaching to the top.
Dr. Heiler admits that in Buddhism, Jbana is but · a
-').: .•• ~ '!>- •

· t · ·t~ is only imputed. to Gotama in . one of the records of the

~Enlt~'tentpct~t·-. . ~,ut_ i~ is,made the #.P~:a of.th.e fir~t.~~~iope~.
 DHnNA IN EARLY BUDDHISM

preli~inary, a preparing, not an end in itself. But he calls

the culminating step in the fourfold formula the immediate
threshold (Vorstufe) of full deliverance, i.e. of 'visible Nirviir:Q.a'
palrama-d#ekadhamma·nibbatul, which is "in essence one and
the same saving good and deliverance-ideal" as "NirvaQ.a
of the other side". But this is by no means the position
clearly and unvaryingly assigned to Fourth Jhana in the
canonical books. In the highly authoritative Brahmajala
Suttanta 1 the four Jhanas are classed in the same category
as the healthy enjoyment of sense (which was also a form of
NirvaJ).u, as the Magandiya Sutta testifies!:!), and are stated
to be outclassed by many other higher and better things felt
and known by the 'tathagata'. It is true that these 'things'
may refer to Nirva:Q.a-experience, the error being to see in
Jhana the patti or attainment itself. But it is very improb-
able that had Fourth Jhana. been held as the very 'threshold'
of the highest, it would have been so classed as ib is there.
It is true that we find a baser kind of Jhana contrasted
with that of the formulas, when a man h1·ooding over one of
the 'hindrances' to right Jhana 'muses and bemuses, unmuses
and de-bemuses.' 8 But it is not this but the Jhana of the for-
mulas which is here classified. The Dharnmapada declares that
it is the combination of Jhana and wisdom (panna} that makes
a man "near to Nirviirl).a''. 6 But the less poetical, academic
procedure in Abhidhamma sees in Fourth Jhana, not only a
stage in 'transmundane' (lokuttat"a) study, but a stage no less
in access to the conditions called Rupa, or Rupaloka, the
world, or conditions of Brahma-devas. Now these were not
for Buddhists coincident with NirviirQ.a. ; they are even referr'"
ed to on one occasion as "hina'', inferior. 5 Yasmitp samaye ·

1 DigkO..Nikara, i, I ; cf. Ma1i'kima-Nikaya, ii, 228.

'~ MaJi71ima-Nikiya, no, 75· .
3 J!J,(l., no. xo8. Lord Chalmers' transL Ananda is the speaker~
4 Verse 372•
.5 M4jlk~a, no. 91· I find one caseof a monk making Jltana .
t.:H.o .. DEr.F.M'RF.~. ,n.,.,
 DHYlNA
. .
IN- EARLY :BUDDHISM
..
rupapupatttigli maggarp, bhliveti "at \vhat time .•• he makes a
way to become for access to (or rebirth in) the Rupa
-(-world}'' :-such is the unvarying formula in Jl'lana when
undertaken with this object. 1 In 'supramundane' Jhana, where
we might have expected to find not less a- clearly stated
object, and- thab objecb Nirva:Q.a, o1· anyway _arahantship, none
_is given. We are only told that this Jhiiua is a 'going-away-
from' (niygliwi,karp.), and 'not-making-for-upheaping' (apacaya-
_glimina?Jl), 9 and we are left with the~e negatives._ And so
little is Jhiina here the one threshold, that nineteen other
f~rins of 'making-to-bec~ine' are added, beginning with 'the
Way,' as equal~y importitnt with Jhana. I may add in pas-
.sing, tht~.t the Jhiina placed between these two,that of 'Arupa',
is, like Rilpa-jhana, Haid to have the definite- object of
_'access' to the hypothetical immaterial world.
Let it .not however be supposed, that this relatively tidy
treatment on Jha.na appears throughout the Abhidhamma-
Pitaka, If we pass fro;u the first book just cited, the JJhamma-
salhga'f}i, to the second, the Vibhanga, we seem to light on
curious confusions. The Jhana forrnulas never vary. Here
too the aspirant is said to eliminate all desire}! of sense- and of
things evil, then all active work of
intellect, then all
commotion of emotion, remaining in a state of utterly cleansed
indifference and mindfulness (or m~n-iory). But we read in
what immediately follows, .that 'at tlutt time' the content!!!
of the aspirant's thought (oitta) · include many factors of
intellect and emotion, even after attainment of ]'ourth Jbana,
prior to which all such have been eliminated, It is not
easy, for instance, to understand how a man in Fourth Jhana.
with both thoug~1b a~d emotion eliminated, can be developi~g
tile 'emancipating thought' ''of pity, or ·of a fellow;.feeling
with ~nother's joy (mudita), or be understanding. the cause~ of

h~..;l>-as~' (J~~aka). on w~ich ~e _won arahant~hip; blilt he was 'a~ excep.

~w~a1jba,yi~: Kankha-Revata. Commentat')l on Af.iuttara.: ·
.J ·: '?~~~'!S~if:?ii. ~~~~fV~·.. ·· . •.. . ;~c .1Jh~~.m_;n_~ihg9'1)~~
 DHYXNAIN EARLY BUDDHISM.

ill. Emergence fr6m .Jhana (v1tt[kana) may have firsb been

necessary, but there is no recorded indication of it. 1 And
Mettajhana, 'amity-musing', such as Subhuti and Nanda were
noted for, contravenes that. !J
Any way, it may be said, the ob}ect of Jhana (Bupttpapatti
Arupupapatti) is ·here clear enough. That is true. The
commentary concedes, from the Suttas, that there are higher
things to be got by samadhi, or jhana, but tllat, for this
access; the fourfold Jhana is the only way. 3 And I am not
yet aware of any teaching in the Suttas urging a man to
practise Jhana for rebirth's- sake. Rebirth was 'becoming',
and that led rather to Ill than to the end of Ill. .
Is there then more consistency of treatment in the subject
of Jhana in the other two Pitakas ? What do we learn
in them about the purpose, end, or object of Jhana ?
The Vinaya almost entirely ignores Jhana, This is not a
little remarkable, seeing how much it was commanded in
the Suttas, how much it was said to enter into the life of the
earnest monk. Yet there appear to be only four distinct
references in this bulky work to the Jhanas as a formulated
system, and the same number of references to monks ·as
Jha.yins, needing as such the quiet of the cave (le~za) or other
separate lodging. 4 It may of ·course be replied, that the
Vinaya rules deal mainly with the bad monk, who would not
be Jhayin. The reply does not satisfy. The more worthy
protesting monk, who brings about the making of new rules,
is a prominent feature. If we had a corresponding enoyclo-
predia of Christian discipline, we should never read far with• ·
out reference to prayer or prayers, a factor to which some
writers refer as the equivalent to Jhana. For me there is no ·
doubt that had the Sail.gha, during the centuries· when the

1 The far later Visuddki JJifagga has such 'elnergences'.

2 Commentary on Theragatkli, 1st verse; commentary on
Anguttara (Etad-agga).
3 Commentary on Dhammasanga"')i. 4 Cullavagga,·iv1 ~
 DHYXNA IN EARLY BUDDHISM

Vinaya \Vas growing by accretions, held Jhana in its original

worth, it would have produced a disciplinary chronicle glowing
with Jhana atmosphere throughout. It is true that, in.
the over-elaborated set off, given at the beginning of the Pati-
mokkha-commentary in the Vinaya, the Founder declares
himself to have been a muser, but it is a mere passing allusion
in stereotyped sequence, and there is no recurrence in the
work even of this in connexion with any other saint. So low
~ould the Sail.gha at one time and place fall in piety, both
in general and with reference to Jhana, that during a scarcity
at the important town of Vesali, the monks decided by a
majority not to lend a hand and work with their distressed
lay·fellowmen, but to advertise each other as holy Jhana-
experts, so as the better to wheedle alms. Public rebuke,
ascribed as usual to the Founder himself, albeit probably after
his day, was duly given and an older rule enforced, but the
occurrence is suggesti ve. 1
In the Sutta.Pitaka on the other hand there is never a
long silence about Jhana. In the four p:rincipal Nikayas
alone I have noted some 240 references at least, the average_
distribution being as follows :-.
Digha-Nikaya : once in 39 pages
Majjhima-Nikaya: , 26 ,
Sarpyutta-Nikaya , 19 ,
Anguttara-N ikaya ,, 20 ,,
The formulas never vary, but the context does considerably,
givi~g thereby more or less of living actuality to the cOngealed
ritual of the fixed wording. Certain results are said to be
obtained consequent upon attainment of Jhana, albeit utter·
mosb consumma-tion is nowhere, I believe, given as one. In
the fifth Nikaya., excluding the Jataka, as consisting mainly
of much later commentary, and three other later works,
~l h••: the following rough, approximate quantities :

l ,Tl.infl;t~,
. . :P:~<;:i~tiya_,
: '.
viii.
 DHYlNA IN EARLY BUDDHISM

· In the Dhammapada 12 references

, Sutta-Nipa.ta, 19 ,,
,, Khucldakn-Patha, nci referenc~
, Uda.na 1 reference
, Iti-vuttaka 4 references
, Peta-v~tthu 1 reference
, Vimana-vatthu 1 ,
, Theragatha 5 references
, Therigatha 3 ,
, Niddesa (Maha) 5 reference$
'.' Apadana
{ , Buddhavarpsa 2
. 30 ,,
,
,, Cariya-Pitaka, no reference
t
not included in
estimate 1
, Patisambhida.magga 33 references
This is a very rough estimate, !1 but is sufficiently in-
formative to show an average frequency of reference which
is about the same taken together, as that in the other four
Nikayas. And the average frequency is sufficient to show
Jhana as a very prominent feature in the doctrinal part of the
Canon. The frequency would loom even greater had I
included all references to the contexts where 'samadhi' occurs.
This is sometimes equated with Jhaua, but it is the genus· of
which Jhana is a species, and hence the inclusion would not
be justifiable. For instance in the Uclana, when Sariputta is
said to be rapt in a certain sarnadhi, the commentary claims
that this was the fourth Brahmavihara of indifference or
equanimity. And the calling these states a kind ofJhana, as·
in the case of Subhuti of the Theragatba, is a commentarial,
not a Pitaka usage.
Taking then Jhana and jhayin only, I ask my readers to
consider what conclusion· can we infer from their frequent
occurrence 1 For it may be a different conclusion from
that which might safely be drawn (1) were the Su~ta·

I · Poems in later diction, probably written when competed.

~ · Based ·maz'nly on Index references to /liana and fha'J'in, and
therefore erring on the side of omission.
 Di·I'V!NA IN EARLY BUDDHISM.

Pitaka the whole of the Canon, a,nd {2) were it the

work of a group of men compiling and completing the
group of sayings at the same time and in the _ ~a.me place.
We know that Jhana and jhayin anticipated the beginnings
of Buddhism, just as we know also that even in the Buddhism
of today we :find their resultants, to mention only the Zen
school of Japan and the Diyan centres of Tibet. 1 We are
then, in this matter of Jhana; up against what would seem
to be a chronic need of the Buddhist religious mind, and not
only of that, but of the Indian religious mind when Buddhism
arose. This is by no means to agree with the opinion of a writer,
that 'Buddhism is through and through nothing but Yoga'.~)
Buddhist Jhana may represE~nt what c:urrent Yoga became
in Buddhism. But Jhana is not the whole of Buddhism,
save by a gross misrepresentation. What men value . much,
they word often. But we find the first Pitaka almost
silent on Jhana, and the third Pitaka dropping the subject
more and more after the first two books, . a portion of which
treats· of it. We come back to the proportion in reference
to it in the second Pitaka, and to the question: what did this
frequency of wording mean in terms of value ~ What did the-
recorders and editors of the sayings in prose and verse hold_
there was of welfare and of interest in Jhana to warrant the-
preserving of these references} amounting to a· mention in,
about one out of every twenty of our pages here, or .
perhaps ·rather more, in the middle collection of their
scriptures ?
Our answer is made the less easy by our having -to. say.
no I to the second point above, We - are co.mi~g to .
admit that the Sutta Pitaka, as well as the other two, was .
not the work of one inner group at the same time and place.-

I See (Dhyana and Samiidhi im Mongolischen Lamaismus,' A. M.

Pozdnejey-, Zeitsek# j. Buddlzismus, 1926, 3/4· ,
. 2: H. B~ckh, Buddkismus, II u ; quoted a11d criticized by Dr.
Heiler. . -.
 DHYlNA IN EARLY BUDDHISM

_And when this is conceded, other complications arise. Was

it always one and the same good that was valued and. sought
in Jhana ~ It is true, there was a fixed wording, in some
detail, to serve-· I borrow the Vinaya simile 1 on a more g~neral
case-as a string (sutta) to bind the bunch of flowers together.
:But as to that, we have no sound evidence to feel sure, that
the formulas now in the books were either the original fixed
wordings, or whatever even those, if there were any, truly
expressed what Jhana really meant for Gotama and his first
·rellow·workers, men and women. If Buddhism were indeed
imported Yoga, that is, the very spirit of Indian Yoga, we
are almost forced to postulate some earlier formulas, showing
less sharp severance between the two,-which would show
us at least the more gradual, the more usual method of pour-
ing an old wine into new bottles.
Some likeness there is between Jhana formulas and the
Brahmanized Yoga (nothing earlier being, I find, available),
but it is in detail only. The antithesis to Sankhya is in both
literatures, albeit almost hidden in Buddhism. The Maha-
bharata sets it out more than once and clearly; in Buddhism
we trace it in such outline as "'rhere a;re these two strengths:
reasoned calculation and making-to-become (patisanlckana-
balarp,, bkavana-balarp,) 2 '' where the latter is explained by the
fourfold Jhana·formula. And .there is, in both Yoga a.nd
Buddhist procedure, elimination of sense-impressions and
mind-\vork on them. But in the latter, that which in Yoga
is the heart, the very object, the very justification, is lacking.
''How''a~ks the Yoga inq"Q.irer can a man find deliverance with-
out a God (i8vara) L."Let the Yogin bearing Me within, sit
solely devoted to Me.'' 8 The Buddhist formula not only sees no
perfection of concentration resulting from devotion to God'',
not only sees no "behol~ing of the Self in the Y ogin's sel£~4< in
Jhana, but even bars out all reference to the jhayin as such.

r - Vin~,-1~1; g. _ . .2 Anguttara-Nt'kaya, i, pp. 52>94·

3 Mok~adharma, A~~-:·3~2, 4 /6i4• . __
 DHY!NA IN EARLY BUDDHISM

Gotama,it is true,is shown investing it with emphatic personal

touch in his own case :-So kho aha'J'ft ...jhanarp, upasampajfa
vihasi'l!f,. '1 indeed abode in the attainment etc.. '\ or in
the case of others,~ but no person finds mention in the ·bare
formula, save as understood in the verb, and the pronoun
so. Even where the Jhana is connected with a dSlfinite per-
sonal object,-access to Rupa or Arilpa-the aspirant is
wholly merged in the verb.
This may seem a modern Western captiousness; but no,
the Commentator himself takes note of it. "Why", he
says, "should the foregoing analysis of mind presuppose
things only, and this teaching presuppose a person (puggala) ~
Because we have here a way (or course, pa#pada), which he
makes~to-become ... Ancl a way has to be accomplished, and
this must be accomplished by somebody." 3 0 wise little
Buddhaghosa, why were you not elsewhere, as hare, a 'man
who sees' ? Let no man call you here pernickety. You
are here giving away the whole of that 'anatta' dogma which
yon for the most part so doughtily defend ! You were
not afraid to write, that a way required a wayfarer, a patipada
needed a patipannaka. But had you lived six centuries
earlier,. when even the Master's use of the word puggala had
to be in a sense explained ~way, as in the K.athavatthu, you
might not have trotted out 'the man' so airily. You were
writing in Ceylon, far away from renascent Brahmanism, and
you did not fear to have to eat your words when you
thus brought in the atman and the puru~a.
Both in Buddhist Jhana and in Yoga the process of con-
centration sets out with the individual, the man, the solitary
aspirant. But as soon as we touch on attainment, the values
alter. In Buddhist Jhana the man vanishes ; we are left
with his mind only, refined down to a state of 'purity, indifier-

· I Vin., Ill, 4; MaJi'let'ma, i. 21, etc. 2 Ibid., p. 4.0 etc.

~· .D;ha~sa1l.g'~icommentary, p. 163. He is r~ferring· tothe
analysis of citta'i preceding the Jhana cJoraPters. · ··· •
 DHYlNAIN .EARLY BUDDHISM 1-0I:
ence and mindfulness'. Thi$ last word is sati (smrti), a
term not used in Pali for memory, bub for mental clearness.
And we hear nothing of any object partly or wholly won
beyond the mental state itself. I have in mind here the four..
fold Rupajhana, hub even where, as is often the case, the
jhayin is made to pass on to Artipajhana, the serial attain-
ment reached cannot, even from the Buddhist point of
view, be called truly a religious or spiritual Better. A certain
vantage-point in gripping an abstraction is the utmost that
can be claimed, unless this Jhana was ever seriously held to
promote a man's prospect9 of rebirth in a world believed
to be arupa, or immaterial. But in Yoga the Yogi'it, the man,
is in full view from first to last, and there is no doubt about
•
what is sought. It is the man and not his mind only that
is before us, the man brealdng his bars and bonds, waxing in
strength and fearlessness, winning to absorption in 1 to vision
of, the Atman in him, who also is that Atman.
And with the man thus prominent, the Yoga literature
leaves us with no shadow of doubt as to the good, the 'well',
the alrtha, which comes to him through attaiument. It is the
vision or conception, as 'within his heart', of Man transcen-
dent, akin to the man himself, but above and beyond the best,
the finest he has ever realized. This is declared to bring
him release, that is from pralcrti, or in brief from body and
mind. Nearer perhaps to Western religion is the expression
of the good in the associated description of Sankhya·attain•
ment, albeit ib fits even better with Yoga-attainment :-''This
(Atman) here is my true Kinsman; I can no other than
be with. Him ; won to evenness and unity with Him, then
only become I really he who I am" (Mok~a : Adh. 309}.
WlJat is there in the way of a worded welfare-in-purpose
to set .over against this when we contemplate Buddhist
Jha.na ? It may. be said that, when such ideas are held to be
error and delusion, it is also 1release' to attain t_o and rest 1n a
state where they are not. To this we might reply, in the first
place .:-It is true that Buddhist sa!nts . . are.. s:Pown,. in
I,H.O .• DECRM'"RlUL rn.,'1
 DHYXNA.IN EARLY.BUDDHISM

their own works, as actua1Iy deriving an amount of peace and

even rapture from a negative form of . 'release' coupled
with a purely backward view, such as can scarcely be found
in any other cult. But man's nature is such, that this
attitude cannot vet·y long be maintained in fervour and purity ;
it will degenerate as such into a complacency which we
word sometimes as 'that blessed word Mesopotamia !' In the
second plaQe, whereas it is true that the 'Atmauism' in
the last quotation is closely allied to the (possibly older)
Brahmau-.A.tmanism which is attacked in the Buddhist Suttas,
it is not correct to hold, that there was nothing of 'divine
immanence' in the mandate given by the founder of Buddhism.
F9r the message of the yv ay words the wayfarer, by
implication, as 'self-resorting' (attasara1Ja), naturally choosing
the way he thinks right, that is, willing the better. But
I find in Buddhist Jhana, as such, no clear connection made
out, as is made out, however all too briefly, in the ivY ay-
mandate, a connection between practice and object, as we find
iu Yoga.
I used to puzzle over this and wonder whether, in what
was so evidently a fourfold series in pr·eparation only, the
benefit {discounting rebirth-prospects) was held to lie in the
preparation itself? Coming into Buddhism by way of Abhi~
dhamma, I missed at first the varied contexts of the Sutta-
Pitaka. I was inclined to see in the detached mental lucidity
,of Fourth Jhana a possible starting-point for concentrated
work on concepts, such as the otherwise aimless insertion of
Jhana formula in parts of the Vibhanga seemed to suggest. 1
For I found also a shrunken and specialised meaning of the
thinking :-.vitakka, vicara-which is suppressed after First
Jhana, and not the more inclusive, unspecialized meaning .of
these two words used in older Suttas. The object was not
trance ; e.ave i~ an occasional appendix to the Arupa·
jh~as,. that wa$ quite clear. Theu was it perhaps keener,
. ' .·
.l Cl:u!,pten,on Pa.ccay~kar.a. IddhipadaJ Magga1 -Appam~a. .
 DHY:ANA IN EARLY BUDDHISM

~ublimatecl work of inteltection ? 1\!Iodern training in the

building up of inductions and. the applying of deductions tells
me, that no good beginning to such work could come in
the unworthing of mental application and discursive thinking.
Was it tluit by concentrating without these, fresh insight
might come as in a flash, a thrill of new knowledge, new
worded thought, not got by conscious reasoning ? There is
_talk now about this that we call intuition, not using the word
quite as Bergson does, and it is well that there should be.
But is intuition really a beholding from within ? Tht:l great
musician or artist would not always grant that. Why should
any other muser be so confident about it ? Aristotle was
not. 'l.'hu1·athen, 'from without', is his conclusion as to our
constructive thinking. 1 And is our 'inspiration' a mere
fancy 1 Or did the mental exercise in Jhana, whatever other
advantage it offered, serve as a respite and withdrawal, otiose
yet strenuous, from the preoccupations of daily life, much
as books now afford us f It is not easy for us here and now
to fill out the mental day of the studious meditative man
in a bookless world, :nay, a manusoriptless world, who
had turned away from the life of his fellowmen, nor saw any
good in the study of the world of nature. -
Then I came to learn a little of the Zen (Jhana) sect ·of
Buddhism in Japan, mainly through Professor Takakusu's
essay (Journal of the Pali Text Society, 1906-7}. In that
interesting article there are some sayings of Zen adherents that
are quaint and even foolish, but this essential point was clear:-·
in a world where imported Buddhism had found, not a book~
less world, but a world of books, the jhiiryin flouted books,
and professed to find the good sought in musing in the seeker
himself. If he would, through his musing, divest himself
of everything he considered morally lowering and intellec.. ·
tually hindering, and seek to win to the best self he could
conceive, enHghtenment would come from within. Jhli.na is

. I Peri Neot!tos.
 DHYAN A IN EARLY BUDDHISM

pictured here as a sort of cure or . tonic, purg!n~, rest£~1,

stimulating. And the writer comnders, that th1s spemal
t;Iisciplineea.me to be ernphasized···as a saving power, when
the Buddhist ft\ith began to wither under the baneful
influence of scholasticism'.
It is always interesting to see an idea, or course of.. action,
or attitude, when tra.nsplanted to new soil, flourishing there
with a ne~ and fresh energy. In Zen, Jhana regains that
central well-spring of 'the man', his nature, his objective,
~hich was in Yoga, but which became blurred. and lost in
Buddhism. And yet it is not exactly a replica of Yoga. H is
more positive, m9re self-concentrated, less religious, less super-
personal than Yoga. It is still Buddhist, in that it seeks the
divine in man rather than to develop man into, or raise man
to the divine. Ib_ bids man look within, not beyond himself.
In Indian Buddhism we see both emphases in atman-.
manself and divine self-blurred and lost. What do we find
in Jhana replacing them 1 The emphasis, I would say, is
on, not man, but mind. It is from first to last the mental
process in which we are kept informed :-first the deadening
of sensations by way of the self-hypnosis of the 'kasiQ.a', or
artifice of concentration on a special object of sense ; then
the deadening of active work of mind, and so on, in a curious
and .psychologically interesting procedure. Those who
approach Buddhism through the 'legend' or story of its
founder, and its early church and rule (Vinaya), do not always_
realize the absorbing interest that is betrayed in its scrip-
tpres in :mental phenomena, in the mind. But this interest
colours very markedly its Sutta literature, and points, I
v~nture to think, to a very notable feature in the spirit of the
t~me when Gotama was teaching •. I have said it already
a11d I say it again,-there seems to be herein, if in nothing
·. e~se, something akin between that time-spirit and our own ; the.
'.I.·n~~~e.st ~n., . n9t·t.h:e. v. er.y I.na.n--,·w.·e ~al.l him s~lf, squl,. s·.pir~t-.·
'but 1n h1s complex of body and mmd, the mterest m muid-
procedure, and with this the blurred, lost vision ot 'tha man'.
 DHYA.NA IN. EARLY BUDDIDSM

But when. Gotama's mission began, the 'man' was not

yet dimmed ; the dimness was, I believe, nascent only~
It was rather to the greater appreciation of the 'man', that
the academic lay-(that is, extra-Brahman) movement, founded
by Kapila, had. been analyzing in a way of new thoroughness
all that was of man, yet was not the 'man' (puru~a), We
owe much to the scholars, Drs. Jacobi and Garbe, for point,.
ing out how this Sankhyan influence affected Buddhism.•
They may go too far, in the way prevailing still las we have
just seen) in 'deriving' Buddhism (or at least what is called
its philosophy) from Sankhya, when what we see appears
more like an infiltration into a religious mandate of ideas
in vogue at its birth. But the Sankhyan analysis of 'the
man' as a wondrous being, working upon matter through n
very interesting, complicated procedure (mind)~ which could
be resolved into several factors (angas), was, we may assume,
known to the thoughtful and earnest little group around 'the
foundet• of Buddhism, including the founder himself. So that
in the Buddhist books we :may see how preoccupying, how
absorbing was this mind-citta, mano, vmna~za-how it. was
fed, ho\v it reacted, 1 how it kept changing, whether it
survived death, and how it might be wholly or in. part
suppressed. That this E!Uppressing, this governance implied
a suppressor, a governor-here it was that Buddhist thought,
albeit not in its founder, not in some Dhammapada verses~
slipped up. Gotama is shown as saying: "what if 1 (the
explicit, -emphasized 'aham,') were to repress thought by.
m_ind P"!l And the way of the Dhammapada, e.g.
A.ttana coday' attana'71-, patimase attam attan,a,
(let him censure self by self, let him restrain self by self), a
compiled in a land where attan meant 'the man', the spirit,
both divine and human,-·not to mention many other verses,-
shows the 'governor' not yet blotted out. But blotted out ·he

I 'Struck back', .PaWtanfuzti. Dks.

2 M a1)'kima, i. 242 etc. 3 Verse 379.
706 DHY.A.NA IN EARLY BUDDMSl\1.

was, and that, it may be, at an early date. It is Ananda himself,

who, as an exponent of authority, is shown teaching
Jhana as pure and simple mind-practice (cittaparisuddkiy·
o/liga), to be perfected and kept up, as one of four such
factors, conducing to an end of highest worth, definitely
worded. 1
Bnt so markedly, in the self-willing process of Jhana, has
•the blotting oub of the self taken place, and the mental process
itself become solely of interest, that we come-if we are
thoughtful-to a halt, and ask ourselves : If Buddhism was
indeed a daughter of Yoga, how did she come to value Y oga•
samadhi and to word it in a way so different, that it is as if
we were to reckon mechanical power with no machine, or to
value the music of an instrument leaving out the player ?
Can a period of transition be shown ? Can we show it from
the Pali books, late in date as, in their present form, they
are~ Can we draw out of them (1) that Gotama was an ardent
jhayin, and with him many of his early fello\v-workers,
(2) that for Gotama, and for these, Jhana was valued, not
forjust what the Yogin (of any age} valued it, still less as
mere mind-practice, but for something else-for an 'access'
felt to be, in their work and their 'wayfaring' through the
worlds, as a help and an enlightening y
1 That Gotama. was an habitual muser has hardly.
perhaps till now received the attention it merits. And yet,
apart from the frequency of mention in the discourses father•
ed on him, we find him called muser more than once : -
Hunirp, vanasmirp, jkayantarp, ek-i 11assama Gotamarp,
(Come, see we Gotama the seer, the muser, in the wood). 11
Jhayilf[& viraJam asinalf[&s ......
to the pure the seated the muser (am I come).
1. Anguttara, ii. 195. Much play is now made with the sophisti-
~~ 'Qistinction between philosophic and popular meaning (para·
tNQ/t,_,~t?fut•). This is first mentioned in the late Questions of King
.Milit~ia. · •· · · .
2. Sultt~t:~t)JN, t6s.~ 3 ·Ibid., tios.
 :OHYlNA IN".EARLY :BU.DDHIS~ 70'l

The tempter rallies him ::-

Solcavati'IJ,'f}O nu vanasmiijl ihayasi 1
Art thou sunk in grief that in the wood thou musest P
The muser's posture is said to be peculiarly his, 1 and
.A.nanda's memory of him declared him as ''having both prac-
tised and engaged in Jhantt, and advocated it.'' 8 Of his
fellow-workers we note musing associated with Sariputta, 4
Anuruddha, Kankha-Revata, 5 and Morgallana6 , N anda
the nun, 7 and Uttara Nandamata the lay womr.n. 8
Now this man and these persons and others were at the
well-spring of the movement, and to them. the work of spread-
ing and making. acceptable among the many a gospel of
a self-directed living, such as would bring 'well', welfare, to
man here and in the worlds to come, was the all-absorbing
thing. Can we believe that they would have often gone . aside
to cultivate a stereotyped way of musing which was no-
thing more than a sort of glorified practice in mental, mind-
worsening scale-playing 1 Would they not be far more occu-
pied with the question of man's salvation, witness Sii.riputta's
inquiry about it (amata), 9 than about a practice expou.nded
as an elimination <'f mental phases. So near are we today· to
analysis of these phases, so far are we from the condi-
tions attending the ~irth of a world-gospel, that we need a·
more quickened imagination -than such as our psychology
is usually content to graze upon. What we actually find
Gotama .firs·t bidding men seek was not the mind, but tke:se~f:
''Were it not better that you sought the attan,the atman ~" 1 0

I Sarp,yutta, i, 123. 2 Anguttaf'a, ii, 245. 3 Majjlzima1 iii, 108.

4 Apadana, Sariputta's poem refers 5 times to Jhana. (:f. Buddha·
va71ua; I : Sariputto samadhzjkanakovido.
s· Anguttara, i, 24. 6 Sarp,yutta, ii, 213 ; iv, 26~£.
7 Anguttara, i, 25.
·8 .. Ibid., 26 ; · also iv, 63 where she is shown (iii a curiously edited
record) to be claira,udien:t.
g Vinaya~ I~ 39•
 DHYlNA. IN .EARLY BUDDHISM:

2 Did he then bid men seek, in musing, the world-atman--

Brahman-an Isvara ? He .did not. Much had come to this
man that lay between the Highest and the new pre-occupation
with man's mind as such, and, as I think we might add, the
rising pre-occupation with man's life in this world. He had,
at some time in his life, come to acquire clairaudience and
clairvoyance. It was owing to this psychic development that
he was able to be willed and induced to become a teacher,
for he must have himself told of his lonely hesitation, and of
the entreaty of a man of another world, whom the books
came to call Brahma Sahampati_l And he admitted more
than once, that something he knew was due to information
from a deva, a det•ata, a man of another world. !1 (It is true
that he is made to add, '1 also knew it of myself' ; but where~
as the worshipping recorders of a teacher, ranked later on as
omniscient, would not have invented the informing deva, the
case is different as to the clause vindicating that omniscience.)
Again, there are frequent talks recorded between him and
devas, notably the governor of the next world, entitled Sakka,
and others called devaputtas ; in that, says the Commentary,
their nauies were known. . Among these were sometimes men
whom the clairvoyant Gotama recognized as still resembling,
in their new bodies, men he had known on earth, notably his
wealthy friend Anathapi"Q.Q.ika, his first p~tron, king Bimbi·
siira and a Licohavi officer, Ajita. His gifts as a psychic
medium were ·well-known, for we read that he was c~nsulted
in all the countries where he taught as to what had befallen
.·this person and that whom death had removed. 8 And that he
should have been thus consulted points as
much to a wide-
spread need for light as to interesp in his person and powers.
·. Now is ib unreasonable to hold, that Gotama used -Jhana
:as the best way of obtaining, or at least of facilitating·· access
tQl .and
. . ..
converse with, worthy men who had· been re born in ~

2 Dig-ka, ii, x.o; Cf.. 39£. ; 241 ; m1 17•.

g1f. ; 20(') ; iii, ·Is ( Sa'I'(I-Jiutta; i1 46,-·s-s--;~
·,,
 lJHYA.l.'il\ lJ.'l J:J;.IU<LY J:SUlJlJUl::il.Yl ;vy

other worlds 1 If the word 'reborn' be too Eastern·, let us say,

'had survived the death of their earth-body'. Do the books
help us further 1
We read that, on leaving home to :find help for men
subject, without light and leading, to old age and death, he
resorted to one after another noted teacher of Jhana ; it may
be, in order to develop himself psychically. ],urther we may
note a recurrent appreciation of the practice of Jhana shown by
devas in the chapters on them in the Sa:rp.yutta. "The monk
should be a jkayin," says one, Kassapa. ''The man awake
(buddho) who has understood Jhana,'' says another, Pafi.cala-
canda. Another, Candimasa, commends Jhana ; two others do
no less. Further, the Jhanas (the Four) are in many places
made to serve as a preparation to certain 'higher knowledges'
(abhinna) which are all, with the exception of the last, forms of
psychic or 'super-normal' development. These abhifi.fi.~s are given
in two series. The one we usually find is only three of the six:
memory of former lives, clairvoyance and awareness of 'cankers'
as destroyed, cn.lled together 'te-viiJ'a'. The other, which giveR
the six abhi:iifi.as, and adds two others, gives, as no. 4,
clairaudience and as no. 6, clairvoyance. By a misconception
of the word 'dibba,' these have been rendered in translations
'heavenly' or 'celestial' ear and eye. But dibba is for
Buddhism just 'belonging to devas', that is, men happily
reborn. A man gifted with nos. 4 and 6 can both see such
persons when they a.re near him, and can hear what they tell
him, tell, for instnnce, of the fate of x, Y, and z, who have
passed over and have undergone the verdict of Yama, or
tell concerning matters in which he· may seek guidance.
Thus a man in Fourth Jhana was held to be in the most
favourable conditions to profit by such seeing and hearing,
if they were either inbOTn gifts,. or had been acquired.
But I have not yet found any writer commenting on why
clairvoyance and clairaudience take such an important place
- pp. 46-s~.
t . $a?pf1.1t~a, i~
.I~H.Q., D,ECEMBER1 }927
710 DllYAJ:II A 1!'11 .t;A.I:I..L.:.: .Du J.J.U.nli)LVl

in venerable Sutta[l, not as ultimate objects of Jhana

but as abnormal states to which Jha.ua often appears
as a. preparation. If Jhana was a condition of deva-
converse, then those two states fall, as also essential condi-
tions, into their natural places. If early Buddhism, on the
other hnnd, did not in some at least of its apostles cultivate
deva-convetse, I fail to account for these two abhiii.iias.
Disuse in the Sangha gives them the appearance- of ruins,
but was there not a time when they were 'live wires' ?
Writers, however, c~ll them just 'mystic',or 'hallucinations' and
pass them by. Or they do not even stay to call them: that.
. Modern ,vriters have their own way-a way of today
which may ere long be that of yesterday-of dealing with
this very prominent feature in Buddhism. They either push
it into a corner as ancient super-naturalism, or they speak of
it as so much hn.llucination which is true subjectively.
Both views hinder the enrth from getting at much in
Buddhism that is historically, and objectively true. Take these
two passages~"How does a monk become one who has
r,ea.ched the clevas r· 'rhe answer is the Jhana-formula. 1
And this is ascribed to Gotamn. when-a very precious context
-he is commanding the use of Jhana 2 : He is asked, during
a conversation, 11 wheu is a purely happy world made present 1"
.l{e replies : "As long as a man in Fourth Jhana has
11tt11ined toconverse with those devas who are living in a
purely happy world, is present (santitehati) with them, talks
with them." Do not these show that, at least-at one period
iu the history of Buddhism, Jhana was not a mere discipline
'bf.sense or of mind, any more than it was a straight short-cut
to :NirviJJ,at but was something that lay between the two ?.
T.ba~it was {~n not merely a. training of the earth-body-and-
U)ind, with . the Inner-goer, the antaragamin, left out, nor an
.•.~rt.to · precipitate a mysterious, inconceivable state of
[.g .?~t,' bu~ a. seeking to. enlarge and enrich e~rth-welfare,
;'~l~,N,f,tip~,Ji,l84. .•· · •· M•J/Mma Niki;a, ii, 37.
 DHY!NA IN EARLY BUDDHISM 7II
so bedimmed with sorrow and evil, by converse of man to
man with tho::;e who, not yet by a long way knowing the
highest things, knew more than the man of the earth.
How does it not enrich and enlarge our little knowledge
of Gotama the man, if we picture him, the Muser, musing
in this way 1 Too cramped and prejudiced is our view of
him, for either it is of a monk among monks, preaching a
forced growth or 'making-to-become' (bhavana) in this life,
which shall do away with all becoming (bhava) hereafter, or
it is of a teacher of just earthly ethics, or it is of a superman
who knew everything. Why do we not take the truer view
of him, which we may also find in the books if we look a
little more closely and historically the view of the noble
man who (sdnukampi anuddaya) 1 'moved by compassion and
by kindness' for men, sought to help them and himself
by 'making present' to himself more worlds than one, and by
converse with their inmates learning how this might besb
be done 1 Of him it was said :
And rolling back the (murky) veil,
And pain gone by and weariness,
He sees both this world and the next. 11
By him we are told, it was said, repeatedly, that bhe man-
who could-see, standing between, saw 'the two houses'
clairvoyautly with separate doors and men: faring from the
one to the other. 8
He is recorded as not overrating the value of psychic ·
gifts in religious ends, but as clearly affirming their reality.
"Yes, l\1ahali, such deva-sounds (or words or speech) are,
they are not things of nought. If he (Sunakkhatta) is
clairaudient only, not clairvoyant, it is only because he has
not concentrated on both, as may be done. But in the
matter of joining the religious life, there are higher conside.ra-
tions than these." 4 (I have condensed in
translating.) His

I Sa'Y{IIyutta Nik"P,ya, i, 206. 2 Digka, iii, x;s.

. 3 Majjkimal i, 279; ii, 21 ; m, I78· 4 Digka, i, xsz.
7I2 DHYXNA IN EARLY BUDDHISM

experiences while exercising these gifts figure in a great

number of records, over which modern writers quickly slide.
He is listener; he is interlocutor; often he is recorded as
relating the experience ; often we are left to infer it. One
series of such he decided not to tell, for men would not have
believed him, and that would have hurt them. 1
I see this helper of men as neither the atheist concerning
the world-atman, nor the denier of man the atman as some
make him out, nor as one who spoke of himself as a little god
on earth, nor as just an ascetic, monastic mystic. I see
him as a man with an inspired mandate to the 'man'. There
was in his day no worthy conception of the Highest ; there
was a dawning sense that religion was mainly a matter of
li-oing, and there was a very general belief, that living was no
mere matter of a brief three ~:core years and ten. His mandate
was to show the great significance of life in a figure, and that
figure was the Way, the Way in and for each man, the Way
which 'went to Nirvii.:Q.a, yet 'went on with it, flowed with it,
as Gangi1 and Yam una flowed in and with each other'.~ "He
made a Way where Way was none; he traced out a Way till
then unrevealed ; he knew and saw the Way ; master of the
Way was he. To-day his disciples follow him in the way which
has come down to them from him." 8 His age called him
Saratlfi, 'chariot-driver', Satthavaha, •leader of the caravan.'~
And like a good leader, his immediate aim was not to dwell
only on the ultimate goa], but like England's most famous
general, to try to judge what lay on the other side of the
~ill,round the bend of the Wtty ; 5 the next step, and the
next after that. That was enough for the worthiest, more
than enough for most. ·
.And in his habit of 'musing in the wood' he will have found
:I Qa'Y(I.yutta, ii, 255. 2 .Digha, ii, 223.
:.~·~' Majjltirna, iii, 15. The Speaker is Ananda, but the last clause
ff!i'W$: a:Jater hand.
4· ··~~~·~9·; Theragatlra, 1236 ;.cf. Apadana, p.8o.
5 q~~~ ~if:~.~ W.~ltif'gton~. ·. . .
 DHYlNA IN EARLY BUDDHISM

;hat quiet and concentration \vhich he judged necessary, and

for which he is often made to show his preference. ·He found
boo the 'fhana-sukha' 1 -that fine delicate sense of added
well-being known to those who claim to have been in converse
with the very worthy of the other side. Some of his disciples
knew of it ; we note it in the verses of both women au:l men ;
we can hardly wonder that they ca.ll themselves 'lovers of
m11sing' (ihanat•ata). And the tradition at least of ib yet
lingers in Burma. g
But that the traditional memory of him was closely associ-
ated with the Jhana habit is betrayed by the curious insertion
of the Jhana formulas into the account of the moment of his
passing. 8 The Buddhist would say, that the back and forth
narrative of the process (knowable by none save a thought-
reader) indicates the deliberateness with which the great man
p-qt off mental and bodily life. The critic of my theory will
say, that at any rate the absence of any allusion to clava-
visitants during that Jhana disproves its soundness. To both,
I would say, that whatever induced the insertion here of the
formulas, silence as to presences at the end, when at the begin-
ning at the first 'sermon', there is not silence, may only mean
that, when the man passed, Jhanafor the men about him no
longer meant musing for access to the unseen. Only .A.nanda
and Anuruddba were left, the latter, though a jhayin, a very
timid aged recluse, the former recorded as willing to 'make
inferences' when his cousin Gotarna told of his psychic
experiences. 4 The newer cult of the positive, · the earthly,
the things seen, as alone important was prevailing ; psychic
gifts were held as possible only for the very few ; the man
of the two houses was suffered ta depart with no one
listening, let alone seeing, whetber in. Jbana or not,

I .Digna, iii, 78. · 2 Compendium of PklifJsoplzJ', p, 57·

3 Diglza,. ii, 157;
· 4 . Sa'f(tfu;tia, idS ias far a·s it is :to be got by i!lference! you have
got it.• · · · ·
714 DHYlNA IN EARLY BUDDHISM

Here then was what I conceive may have been for

the co·fouuders of the Sakkaputta movement, later called
Buddhism, the more especial advantage which they sought
in musing. In their days there would seem to have been
the contrasted cultures of Sankhya ( patisankka ) and Yoga
(the bhavana of samadhi or jhana). Never do they appear
to call the latter 'Yoga'. But for them too it meant not
a merely negative eliminating of things seen ; for them ib
was a coming to see or at least to hear the unseen, and
therein not only to taste a joy, but also to come to have
the veil shrouding the long way rolled back for a little
(vivaUachadda ).
Faith in the old Great Devas was in the melting-pot, but
devas, devatas, the men who had p~sssed on, had come
with a new significance to man's help ; they wer~ seen
as intermediaries along the whole upward way to Amata,
aiding their fellow earth-wayfarers with such knowledge as
he was yet able to bear. Modern books, as is natural, estimate
them and their wording variously. But on the whole devas
appear as worthy and kindly warders of the man they have
left behind, who (discounting a Sabbaiiiiu) must, as ·behind the
veil, have known more than those they warded. They
held Gotama in high worth, but not the monk as monk ;
they believed in '~he man' as real ; they believed in the
good life ; they believed in man as willing to seek the Better.
We may. with most writers on Buddhism minimise all that
this converse meant for the founders of the movement ; we
· may with immature pen write it down as rubbish ; or as
not 'of the essence' of the matter. But we shall only do
. ~oby shutting our eyes to very much in the records that
<r we do not wish to see.
:lH, ;Bat Buddhism blotted out the 'man' from its creed, and
'fsl~\::.i~ may be, little by little, during the Founder's day.
M'olli~+4ing his warnings, "nob body, not~mind'', men came
to '8e~lif1: man just body and mind. Then they came to
see in ~- ~l\ in~l;esting procedure in bodily. and mental
training. Ancl then the kindly deva-warders are less and
less heard of. Riipajhana and Arupajhana beca,me associated
with after-death prospects only, and to-day not even with
that. As worded in the Abhidhamma they would seem
to be now dead words in a stereotyped routine.
C. A. F. RaYS DAVIDS

Persian Inscriptions in the Gwalior State

2
I
This epigraph comes from Udayapura 1 (23° 54"N and
78° 6"E) in the Bhilsa district of the Gwalior State, and is four
miles from Bareth Railway Station on· the Great Indian
Peninsula Railway. Though reduced to a mere village at
present, traditionally it is supposed to have been founded by
Udayaditya (A. c. 1059-81), the Parmara ruler of Malwa, aucl
the builder of the great fane of U daye8vara. This exquisitely
fine massive structure which is profusely adorned with sculp-
tures and covered with numerous important mural records is
one of the many interesting traces of importance of the.Hindtt
times, which are found scattered round the t-own. The. earliest
Muhammudan influence dates from thJ 14th century, but
little of consequence has survived.
The town has been visited by Sir A. Cunningham 1 and
his assistant, but the mosque with this· record on it has ·
escaped their notice. Thus the inscription under reference
does not appear to have been edited so far .

.II .
in
~he epigraph is cut in raised letters a slab, .fixed over an:
arch~d window in the outer part of th-e ,north_ern wall ofa fine

• ···I I •.A.; vol. LV~' p: 4• :a"> CASR.~. VII; PP• 81~88·; x; PP· 689-9·<