Mr. Banerjea, in his Dialogues on the Hindu philosophy, considers the Buddhists’ system as closely resembling the Nyaya system.  He regards the Buddhist Nirvana as equivalent to the emancipation of the Nyaya system.  Apavarga, or emancipation, is declared in this philosophy to be final deliverance from pain, birth, activity, fault, and false notions.  Even so the Pali doctrinal books speak of Nirvana as an exemption from old age, disease, and death.  In it desire, anger, and ignorance are consumed by the fire of knowledge.  Here all selfish distinctions of mine and thine, all evil thoughts, all slander and jealousy, are cut down by the weapon of knowledge.  Here we have an experience of immortality which is cessation of all trouble and perfect felicity.[74]

Sec. 7.  Origin of the Hindoo Triad.

There had gradually grown up among the people a worship founded on that of the ancient Vedas.  In the West of India, the god RUDRA, mentioned in the Vedic hymns, had been transformed into Siva.  In the Rig-Veda Rudra is sometimes the name for Agni.[75] He is described as father of the winds.  He is the same as Maha-deva.  He is fierce and beneficent at once.  He presides over medicinal plants.  According to Weber (Indische Stud., II. 19) he is the Storm-God.  The same view is taken by Professor Whitney.[76] But his worship gradually extended, until, under the name of Siva, the Destroyer, he became one of the principal deities of India.  Meantime, in the valley of the Ganges, a similar devotion had grown up for the Vedic god VISCHNU, who in like manner had been promoted to the chief rank in the Hindoo Pantheon.  He had been elevated to the character of a Friend and Protector, gifted with mild attributes, and worshipped as the life of Nature.  By accepting the popular worship, the Brahmans were able to oppose Buddhism with success.

We have no doubt that the Hindoo Triad came from the effort of the Brahmans to unite all India in one worship, and it may for a time have succeeded.  Images of the Trimurtti, or three-faced God, are frequent in India, and this is still the object of Brahmanical worship.  But beside this practical motive, the tendency of thought is always toward a triad of law, force, or elemental substance, as the best explanation of the universe.  Hence there have been Triads in so many religions:  in Egypt, of Osiris the Creator, Typhon the Destroyer, and Horus the Preserver; in Persia, of Ormazd the Creator, Ahriman the Destroyer, and Mithra the Restorer; in Buddhism, of Buddha the Divine Man, Dharmma the Word, and Sangha the Communion of Saints.  Simple monotheism does not long satisfy the speculative intellect, because, though it accounts for the harmonies of creation, it leaves its discords unexplained.  But a dualism of opposing forces is found still more unsatisfactory, for the world does not appear to be such a scene of utter warfare and discord as this.  So the mind comes to accept a Triad, in which the unities of life and growth proceed from one element, the antagonisms from a second, and the higher harmonies of reconciled oppositions from a third.  The Brahmanical Triad arose in the same way.[77]