because by doing so, he does good to himself. How can one be good to others, if he is not good to himself? The deliberate accomplishment of good, even at the sacrifice of the demands of reflex activity and primal instinct, opens out to him the Noble Path of enlightenment. He now perceives under what conditions it would be possible to traverse the path. By means of the efforts he makes to produce a moral transformation in himself, he sees with certainty what further steps have necessarily to be taken to reach the goal. His final emancipation, his salvation from misery and death, is now assured. It is merely a question of time, for he is in possession of the means of hastening his emancipation. He suppresses more and more his egoistic inclinations and works for the good of all beings. When he has trained himself to feel his oneness with all that lives, with the generations past and the generations to come, not only with his fellow-beings, but with the whole world, with every creature that walks the earth, his progress is completed, and he has reached the blissful haven where there is no more struggle, no more pain, but unutterable peace. By breaking the chains which bind him to the world of individuality and growing to be co-extensive with all life, he secures for himself a life ever-lasting, where there is no more the taste of death.

""Tis self whereby we suffer. "Tis greed
To grasp, the hunger to assimilate

All that earth holds of fair and delicate,

The best to blend with beauteous lives, to feed
And take our fill of loveliness, which breed

This anguish of the soul intemperate.

'Tis self that turns to harm and poisonous hate
The calm clear life of love that Arhats lead.
Oh! that't were possible this self to burn
In the pure flame of joy contemplative!
Then might we love all loveliness, nor yearn
With tyrannous longings; undisturbed might live
Greeting the summer's and the spring's return
Nor wailing that their bloom is fugitive."

BUDDHISM AND ASCETICISM.

TH \HE religion of Ancient India was a form of natural religion in which sacrifice played an important part. In the beginning, probably sacrifices were offered with a view to avert the wrath of the gods whom men feared. But in later times sacrifice was regarded as a means of communication between men and gods. As fire is both celestial and terrestrial, Agni, the god of fire, which is kindled in every sacrifice, was supposed to act as the middleman between men and gods and bear the oblation to the gods. If sacrifice could be a means of communicating with the gods, it would not be impossible for man to enter into economic ralations with them. If man could offer the gods something that would please them, it should also be possible for the gods to give man in return what he might desire. Thus in due course sacrifice developed into a kind of bartering with the gods. "Dehi me dadami te-I give in order that you may give" is the burden of almost every Vedic hymn, and is the explicit or implied reason of every Vedic sacrifice. From the conception of sacrifice as a kind of barter easily arose the idea that sacrifices could not only buy the gods, but that the gods could, even against their will, be coerced by means of sacrifices to do what man desired. As Prof. Sylvain Levi* has pointed out, morality finds no place in this system. Sacrifice which regulates the relation of man to the divinities, is a mechanical act, operating by its own spontaneous energy, and the magic art of the priest brings out what is hidden in the bosom of nature. The gods are conquered and subjected by the same power that has given them their greatness. Whether the gods like or not, the sacrificer is elevated to the celestial sphere and assured there a definite place for the future.

Naturally the sacrificial arts rose in the estimation of the people, and eventually those that possessed the knowledge

* La doctrine du sacrifice dans les Brahmnas.

of the sacrificial arts succeeded in dominating the people of India. "Devādhīnam jagat sarvam," says a well-known Sanskrit verse, manträdhinam tadaıvatam; tanmantrā brāhmaṇādhinam, brāhmaṇā mamadevatā.” The universe is subject to the gods, and the gods are subject to the sacrificial mantras. But the mantras themselves are in the hands of the Brahmans. Hence the Brahmans are the real gods, though they live on this earth. The Brahmans could make him a deity that was not a deity, and they could divest one that was a deity of his status as such. Thus, like the pontifices in Ancient Rome, the Brahmans became powerful and mighty in India.

Of all sacrifices the greatest is that in which a human being is offered to the gods. There can be no doubt that human sacrifices were once common in India. "Despite protestant legends, despite formal disclaimers," says Prof. E. W. Hopkins, "human sacrifices existed long after the period of the Rig Veda, where it is alluded to; a period when even old men were exposed to die." The ritual manuals and Brahmanic texts prove that the anadhapurusha is not a fiction and that a real victim was offered. A human sacrifice was very expensive, for ordinarily it cost 'one thousand cattle' to buy a man to be sacrificed. It was indeed meritorious for one to put himself to this heavy expense, and offer a human victim to the gods, but it would be more meritorious for the very individual to whose benefit accrued the sacrifice to immolate himself. Thus was evolved the theory and practice of self-mortification as a means of coercing the gods to bestow gifts on man. The Hindu books are full of legendary accounts of the wonderful powers attained through self-mortification and austere penance. By self-mortification Ravana became invulnerable against gods and demons. By austere fervour Nahusha obtained the undisputed sovereignty of the three worlds. Visvamitra, who was born a Kshatriya, raised himself by intense austerities to the Brahman caste. In order to obtain elevation to the position of a Brahman, Matanga, a Chandala, went through such a course of austerities as alarmed the gods. Indra persistently refused such an impossible request. Nothing daunted Matanga balanced himself on his great toe

till he was reduced to mere skin and bone, and was on the point of falling. Indra even came down to support him, but inexorably refused his request, and when further importuned, he granted him the power of moving about like a bird, and changing his shape at will, and of being honoured and renowned. Such was the deep belief of the people of Ancient India in the efficacy of asceticism and self mortifi⚫cation.

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At the time of the rise of Buddhism the belief in the efficacy of self-mortification would appear to have reached its acme. Asceticism was regarded as identical with religiousness. In both Bramanism and Jainism, which were in a flourishing condition in the time of Sakyamuni, great stress was laid on asceticism. The Jain religion teaches that twelve years of ascesticism of the severest type are necessary to salvation. The ideal life for a Jaina monk is described in the Ākārānga sutra as follows. Giving up his robe, the Venerable One was a naked, world relinquishing, houseless sage. When spoken to or saluted, he gave no answer. For more than a couple of years he led a religious life, without using cold water; he realized singleness, guarded his body, had got intuition and was calm. For thirteen years he meditated day and night and was undisturbed in spirit. Practising the sinless abstinence from killing, he did no injurious acts; he consumed nothing that had been prepared for him; he consumed clean food. Always on his guard, he bore the pains caused by grass, cold, fire, flies, gnats, undisturbed. Whether wounded or unwounded, he desired not medical treatment. Medicines, anointing of the body and bathing, cleansing of the teeth, did not behove him after he had learned the path of deliverance. Sometimes the Venerable One did not drink for half a month or a month. Sometimes he ate only the sixth meal, or the eighth, or the twelfth. Without ceasing in his reflections the Venerable One wandered about, and killing no creatures he begged for his food: moist or dry or cold food, old beans, old pap, or bad grainwhether he did or did not get such food, he was rich in selfcontrol." Logically self-mortification should lead to suicide. And in Jainism, while all other kinds of killing are strictly forbidden, suicide is highly praised. The proper method of

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committing suicide is to retire, after practising mendicancy and the approved austerities for twelve years, to a secluded spot, and having cleared it of all living creatures, starve one's self to death."This method," says the Akārānga sutra, has been adopted by many who were free from delusion. It is good, wholesome, proper, beatifying, meritorious." Consistently with its asceticism Jainism abhors and despises womanhood. The Yogasāstra characterises women as the lamps that burn on the road that leads to the gate of hell.” In the Uttaradhyayana sutra women are called "female demons on whose breasts grow two lumps of flesh, who continually change their minds, who entice men and then make a sport of them as slaves." In the popular romances of the Jains the hero is the pious young man who, when going to his own wedding feast to be united to his bride, is smitten with remorse and pity for the numerous living beings that might be killed during the wedding festival, and so gives away his jewels in charity, plucks out his hair to its roots, and joins the order of ascetics. These austerities practised by the Jain monks form but a poor illustration of the extent to which self-torture and self-mortification had been pushed in the Buddha's time.

Gautama Siddartha also fell into the trap of asceticism, but fortunately for the world he escaped from it. As was the fashion of his day Siddartha also left his home and family, and retired to the forest to seek after truth. He placed himself under the guidance of the wisest hermits of his day. He studied all their teachings and endeavoured to follow their example. He tried to purify himself by ceremonies and sacrifices, by starvation and austerities, by nakedness. and self-torture. He has himself desecribed how for six years in the jungle of Uruvilva he patiently tortured himself and suppressed all the wants of nature. He led the most rigorous ascetic life. He ate each day a single grain of rice. His body became emaciated and shrunken, so much that his arms and legs looked like withered reeds, his buttocks resembled the hump of a camel, and his ribs projected like the rafters of a house. The fame of his austerities spread in the neighbourhood, and crowds came to see him. He pushed his fast even to such an extreme that at last he fell into a