[Footnote 70:  Dhammapada (Franke, ZDMG. xlvi, 731).  In Sanskrit one has dharmapatha with the same sense.  The text in the main is as translated by Mueller, separately, 1872, and in SBE., voL x.  It was translated by Weber, Streifen. i. 112, in 1860.]

     [Footnote 71:  That is, they die no more; they are free from
     the chain; they enter Nirv[=a]na.]

     [Footnote 72:  Buddha’s words on becoming Buddha.]

[Footnote 73:  It is to be observed that transmigration into animal forms is scarcely recognized by Buddha.  He assumes only men and superior beings as subjects of Karma.  Compare Rhys Davids’ Lectures, pp. 105,107.  To the same scholar is due the statement that he was the first to recognize the true meaning of Nirv[=a]na, ’extinction (not of soul but) of lust, anger, and ignorance.’  For divisions of Buddhist literature other than the Tripitaka the same author’s Hibbert Lectures may be consulted (see also Mueller, SBE.  X, Introduction, p. i).]

* * * * *

CHAPTER XIV.

EARLY HINDUISM.

While the great heresies that we have been describing were agitating the eastern part of India,[1] the old home of Brahmanism in the West remained true, in name if not in fact, to the ancient faith.  But in reality changes almost as great as those of the formal heresies were taking place at the core of Brahmanism itself, which, no longer able to be the religion of a few clans, was now engaged in the gigantic task of remodelling and assimilating the indigenous beliefs and religious practices of its new environment.  This was not a conscious act on the part of Brahmanism.  At first it was undertaken almost unwittingly, and it was accomplished later not without repugnance.  But to perform this task was the condition of continued existence.  Brahmanism had to expand, or shrink, wither, and die.

For a thousand years almost the only source of information in regard to this new growth is contained in the epic poetry of the time, with the help of a few additional facts from the law, and some side light from inscriptions.  It is here that Vishnuism and Civaism are found as fully developed sectarian beliefs, accepted by Brahmanism with more or less distrust, and in more or less fulness of faith.  It is to the epic that one must turn to study the budding and gradual flowering of the modern religions, which have cast strict orthodoxy into the shade.

Of the two epics, one, the R[=a]m[=a]yana,[2] has become the Old Testament of the Ramaite Vishnuites of the present day.  The Bh[=a]rata,[3] on the other hand, is scriptural for all sects, because it is more universal.  The former epic, in its present form, is what the Hindus call an ‘art-poem,’ and in its finish, its exclusively romantic style, and its total lack of nervous dramatic power, it is