The Buddhist Millennium in India.

Let us now look at the life of the Founder.  Day after day, the pure-souled teacher attracted new disciples while he with alms-bowl went around as mendicant and teacher.  Salvation merely by self-control, and love without any rites, ceremonies, charms, priestly powers, gods or miracles, formed the burden of his teachings.  “Thousands of people left their homes, embraced the holy order and became monks, ignoring caste, and relinquishing all worldly goods except the bare necessaries of life, which they possessed and enjoyed in common.”  Probably the first monastic system of the world, was that of the Indian Buddhists.

The Buddha preached the good news during forty-five years.  After his death, five hundred of his followers assembled at Rajagriha and chanted together the teachings of Gautama, to fix them in memory.  A hundred years later, in 377 B.C., came the great schism among the Buddhists, out of which grew the divisions known as Northern and Southern Buddhism.  There was disagreement on ten points.  A second council was therefore called, and the disputed points determined to the satisfaction of one side.  Thereupon the seceders went away in large numbers, and the differences were never healed; on the contrary, they have widened in the course of ages.

The separatists began what may be called the Northern Buddhisms of Nepal, Tibet, China, Korea and Japan.  The orthodox or Southern Buddhists are those of Ceylon, Burma and Siam.  The original canon of Southern Buddhism is in Pali; that of Northern Buddhism is in Sanskrit.  The one is comparatively small and simple; the other amazingly varied and voluminous.  The canon of Southern scripture is called the Hinayana, the Little or Smaller Vehicle; the canon of Northern Buddhism is named the Mahayana or Great Vehicle.  Possibly, also, besides the Southern and Northern Buddhisms, the Buddhism of Japan may be treated by itself and named Eastern Buddhism.

In the great council called in 242 B.C., by King Asoka, who may be termed the Constantine of Buddhism, the sacred texts were again chanted.  It was not until the year 88 B.C. in Ceylon, six hundred years after Gautama, that the three Pitakas, Boxes or Baskets, were committed to writing in the Pali language.  In a word, Buddhism knows nothing of sacred documents or a canon of scripture contemporary with its first disciples.

The splendid Buddhist age of India lasted nearly a thousand years, and was one of superb triumphs in civilization.  It was an age of spiritual emancipation, of freedom from idol worship, of nobler humanity and of peace.[12] It was followed by the Puranic epoch and the dark ages.  Then Buddhism was, as some say, “driven out” from the land of its birth, finding new expansion in Eastern and Northern Asia, and again, a still more surprising development in the ultima-Thule of the Asiatic continent, Japan.  There is now no Buddhism in India proper, the faith