in some heaven but not more than seven times before he attains nirvana.  He who enters on the next stage is called Sakadagamin or coming once, because he will be born once more in this world[509] and in that birth attain nirvana.  He has broken the fetters mentioned and also reduced to a minimum the next two, lust and hate.  The Anagamin, or he who does not return, has freed himself entirely from these five fetters and will not be reborn on earth or any sensuous heaven but in a Brahma world once only.  The fourth route is that of the Arhat who has completed his release by breaking the bonds called love of life, pride, self-righteousness and ignorance and has made an end of all evil and impurity.  He attains nirvana here and is no more subject to rebirth.  This simple and direct route is the one contemplated in the older discourses but later doctrine and popular feeling came to regard it as more and more unusual, just as saints grow fewer as the centuries advance further from the Apostolic age.  In the dearth of visible Arhats it was consoling to think that nirvana could be won in other worlds.

The nirvana hitherto considered is that attained by a being living in this or some other world.  But all states of existence whatever come to an end.  When one who has not attained nirvana dies, he is born again.  But what happens when an Arhat or a Buddha dies?  This question did not fail to arouse interest during the Buddha’s lifetime yet in the Pitakas the discussion, though it could not be stifled, is relegated to the background and brought forward only to be put aside as unpractical.  The greatest teachers of religion—­Christ as well as Buddha—­have shown little disposition to speak of what follows on death.  For them the centre of gravity is on this side of the grave not on the other:  the all important thing is to live a religious life, at the end of which death is met fearlessly as an incident of little moment.  The Kingdom of Heaven, of which Christ speaks, begins on earth though it may end elsewhere.  In the Gospels we hear something of the second coming of Christ and the Judgment:  hardly anything of the place and character of the soul’s eternal life.  We only gather that a child of God who has done his best need have no apprehension in this or another world.  Though expressed in very different phraseology, something like that is the gist of what the Buddha teaches about the dying Saint.  But this reticent attitude did not satisfy ancient India any more than it satisfies modern Europe and we have the record of how he was questioned and what he said in reply.  Within certain limits that reply is quite definite.  The question, does the Tathagata, that is the Buddha or perfected saint, exist after death, which is the phraseology usually employed by the Pitakas in formulating the problem, belongs to the class of questions called not declared or undetermined[510], because they do not admit of either an affirmative or a negative answer.  Other problems belonging