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This is a relief from the rail of the Bharhnt Stupa of the second century B.C., now in Calcutta Museum. Cunningham, Sitipa of Bharhut, xxxi. succession of Buddhas before Gautama, and that in the next age another, named Maitreya, would arise. (See p. 97.) All these things stirred feelings of piety and reverence in Buddhist hearts. Crowds of lay believers bowed down before the great stupas in reverent meditation, adoring the relics and repeating sacred formulas, and walked round the stupas in solemn religious march. To these observances and to the stated gatherings in the chaityas, or assembly SUTRAS AND SUTTAS 63 halls, we must attribute the beginnings of Buddhist worship. 47. In the ninth year of his reign Asoka became a Bud dhist layman. Later he actually became a monk. He spent a great deal of energy in trying to lead his subjects to the adoption of the moral teaching of Buddhism. For this purpose, he had long edicts cut on rocks in various 8. BUDDHIST WORSHIP A chaitya or Buddhist hall and Buddhists adoring a dkarmackakra, or wheel of the doctrine, a symbol of Buddha's teaching. A relief from the Bharhnt Stupa. Cunningham, xxxi. parts of his empire, calling on the people to cultivate filial piety, righteousness, reverence for all religions, and kind ness to animals. He erected hospitals for man and beast, and in every way sought the welfare of his subjects. Innumerable religious edifices were erected to his order, chiefly stupas, chaityas, monasteries, and rock-cut cells for monks. But the most significant act of his reign was the sending out of missionaries to spread Buddhism 64 OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY throughout India and the neighbouring lands. As a result Ceylon became a Buddhist country, and the religion also made great progress beyond the river Indus and upon the Himalayas. It was Asoka that made Buddhism a world- conquering power. 48. The first beginnings of worship among the Jains appeared in much the same way as they did in Buddhism ; but this community was not so successful at this time in securing royal and wealthy patrons as the Buddhists were. Their earliest monuments are two to three centuries later. Then^the Jain community broke in two in A. u. 82. It was a question of clothes that led to the separation. The monks of one section wore no clothing and were, therefore, called Digambara, ' clothed-in-atmosphere,' while the monks of the other group wore white robes and were called Svetam- l>ara, ' clothed-in-white.' 49. Literature. Quite early in this period, the earliest form of the great epic, the Mahabharata, appeared. It probably arose in the country between the Ganges and the Jumna. It was then a poem of very moderate length, con taining about 8,800 couplets, and was called the Bharata. Krishna is a purely human hero in it. 50. The teaching of each philosophic leader was handed down orally in his monastic school. It is noteworthy, how ever, that Sanskrit was used in the Brahmanic schools, while the Jains and the Buddhists used the vernaculars. As knowledge grew and the compass and the number of the subjects taught in the Brahmanical schools went on increasing, the mass of material to be learned by rote be came more and more unmanageable. It became impossible for the student to store in his memory everything which he wanted to know, so long as it was presented to him in the extraordinarily prolix manner of the Brahmanas. A new method was therefore invented. All the knowledge SUTRAS AND SUTTAS 65 which the student had to acquire was expressed in strings of aphorisms of the briefest and most pregnant description. As time went on and the new method developed, it became a conventional system of technical terms like a modern telegraphic code. These tabloids of condensed knowledge were called sutras. Is not this the very climax of scholas ticism ? These books, if books they can be called when they were not written down, dealt with all the subjects of a priest's education. They were usually summed up under six heads, called the t'eddhgas, or members of the body of the Veda. Of the six, Kalpa, ceremonial, is the most important. Under Kalpa there are three groups of sutras, the Srauta Sutras, which deal with the sacrifices, summarizing the teaching of the Brahmanas, the Grihya Sutras, which deal with domestic ceremonies, and the Dharma Sutras, which provide rules of conduct for the various classes of men and the various stages of life. The Brahmanical schools were now more numerous than ever, many of the earlier schools having split into several branches; and each had its own series of sutras, dealing in turn with all the subjects comprehended under the six veddhgas. Panini, the great grammarian, wrote in sutras, and his work comes under vyakarana, one of the veddhgas (see p. 76). He was connected with Taxila and flourished about 300 B. c. The language used in the Brahmanical schools was gradu ally polished and brought under phonetic and grammatical rules, while, with the spread of the people all over North India, the ordinary language had necessarily developed into a number of provincial vernaculars. The literary tongue of the schools was called samskrita, i. e. polished, while the vernaculars were called prakrita, i. e. natural. Panini's grammar finally fixed the form of Sanskrit. Already in his day it was very distinct from the popular dialects. These 66 OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY latter naturally continued to change, and they have pro duced the great modern Aryan languages of India, Hindi, Punjabi, GujaratI, Marathi, Bengali, Oriya, Assamese, and the rest. 51. In certain of the schools at this time some of the best parts of the old Upanishads were versified and strung together, so as to make new Upanishads. (See p. 73.) The brief, pointed, aphoristic character of these poems shows plainly that they were put together with a view to their being easily committed to memory. 52. As we have seen, the Jains and the Buddhists used, not Sanskrit, but the vernaculars in teaching their hearers. Their sermons were called sutfas, which is the vernacular form of the Sanskrit sufras. These were handed down by word of mouth from teacher to pupil ; but during the earliest generations they were considerably changed and expanded. By the year 200 B. c. the Buddhist Tripitaka, that is, the triple basket, or canon in three parts, was practically complete. Many of these suttas are beautiful as literature, and are filled with a love of righteousness and a mounting passion for spiritual things which give them great distinc tion. When Buddhism was destroyed in India, this litera ture perished also, but it has been most faithfully preserved in Ceylon. The language of the Tripitaka is called Pali. This is not the name of any old Indian vernacular, but merely the Singhalese word for ' text ', which has come to be used to designate the language of the text, in contrast with the Singhalese of the commentary. Scholars have not been able to decide as yet which of the old Indian vernaculars, through being used by the monks who won Ceylon to the faith, has been preserved for us in the Pali text. Jain teaching was similarly handed down, but reached its permanent form later still. SUTRAS AND SUTTAS 67 Many other schools had their traditional sit/fas, but they were necessarily lost when the school died out. NOTE. — The text below is a mnemonic verse giving the names of THE six VEDAI^GAS : — 'siksha, pronunciation; kalpa, ceremonial; vydkarana, grammar ; nirukta, etymology ; chhatidas, metre ; jyotisha, astronomy. E2 68 OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY ILLUSTRATIVE READINGS 10. Sutras NOTE. — A literal translation of each siitra is given in italics, and then the meaning follows in roman. For a more condensed example see p. 94. 1. Now, therefore, the right. Now, therefore, the right of performing sacrificial acts will be laid down here. 2. Acts fruit-attended. Sacrificial acts are attended by fruits, such as heaven, wealth, &rc. 3. Of all without distinction. One would expect that there must be a right of all living beings without distinction to perform sacrificial acts, as all desire fruits. 4. But of human beings from the power of undertaking. But the right belongs to human beings only, because they only have the power of undertaking sacrificial acts. 5. Cripple, ignorant, eunuch, Sudra except.