The desire to accommodate influential ideas, though they might be incompatible with the strict teaching of the Buddha, is well seen in the position accorded to spirits of the dead.  The Buddha was untiring in his denunciation of every idea which implied that some kind of soul or double escapes from the body at death and continues to exist.  But the belief in the existence of departed ancestors and the presentation of offerings to them have always formed a part of Hindu domestic religion.  To gratify this persistent belief, Buddhism recognized the world of Petas, that is ghosts or spirits.  Many varieties of these are described in later literature.  Some are as thin as withered leaves and suffer from continual hunger, for their mouths are so small that they can take no solid food.  According to strict theology, the Petas are a category of beings just above animals and certain forms of bad conduct entail birth among them.  But in popular estimation, they are merely the spirits of the dead who can receive nourishment and other benefits from the living.  The veneration of the dead and the offering of sacrifices to or for them, which form a conspicuous feature in Far Eastern Buddhism, are often regarded as a perversion of the older faith, and so, indeed, they are.  Yet in the Khuddaka-patha[738], which if not a very early work is still part of the Sutta Pitaka, are found some curious and pathetic verses describing how the spirits of the departed wait by walls and crossways and at the doors, hoping to receive offerings of food.  When they receive it their hearts are gladdened and they wish their relatives prosperity.  As many streams fill the ocean, so does what is given here help the dead.  Above all, gifts given to monks will redound to the good of the dead for a long time.  This last point is totally opposed to the spirit of Gotama’s doctrine, but it contains the germ of the elaborate system of funeral masses which has assumed vast proportions in the Far East.

4

What then is the position of the Buddha himself in this universe of many worlds and multitudinous deities?  European writers sometimes fail to understand how the popular thought of India combines the human and superhuman:  they divorce the two aspects and unduly emphasize one or the other.  If they are impressed by the historical character of Gotama, they conclude that all legends with a supernatural tinge must be late and adventitious.  If, on the other hand, they feel that the extent and importance of the legendary element entitles it to consideration, they minimize the historical kernel.  But in India, reality and fancy, prosaic fact and extravagant imagination are found not as successive stages in the development of religious ideas, but simultaneously and side by side.  Keshub Chunder Sen was a Babu of liberal views who probably looked as prosaic a product of the nineteenth century as any radical politician.  Yet his followers were said to regard him as a God,