Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/648

630 closely connected with reading, and was taught by a stick in the sand; then on palm-leaves with an iron point, and at last on plantain-leaves with a kind of ink. In the higher schools at Benares, the esoterics (which might include members of the second and third classes) were taught grammar, prosody, and mathematics; the esoterics, poetry, history, philosophy, astronomy, medicine, and law. The pupil is a listener for five years; then he is allowed to take part in the discussions. The period of study lasts from twelve to twenty years, and the highest instruction is furnished by a study of the Vedas. Though the Indians had no theory of education, they expressed wise educational maxims most beautifully by fable and poetry. "War-skill and learning are both renowned, but the first turns to folly in old aire, while the second appears worthy for every period of life." "Culture is higher than beauty and concealed treasure, it accompanies you upon your journeys through foreign lands and gives an indestructible power." "As the tree shadows him who would cut it down, and as the moon illumines the huts of the lowest, so should a man love those that hate him." "Be humble, for the tender grass bows itself uninjured to the wind, while mighty trees are rent in pieces by it." "The wise man should strive to attain knowledge as though he were not subject to death, but he should fulfill the duties of religion as though death were settling upon his lips."

Did the special purpose of the present paper allow, it would be instructive at this point to notice the reformation in the religion of India. Brahm and Nirwana as root-ideas appear to have been essentially the same, and the highest glory of man was absorption in the all. That which is especially instructive here is the fundamentally different development of this common idea in Brahminism and Buddhism. For the Brahman, God is in everything: everything is God: from this come the deification of Nature and all forms of animal-worship.

For the Buddhist, on the contrary, since the highest blessing is the loss of one's self in Nirwana, everything that has independent existence must be cursed by the very fact of existence. We must pity, not worship, anything that is. From this interpretation of the common idea, what are wealth and social distinctions? Where all is wretched, how can one thing be better than another? Buddha, well called the Luther of India, could cut clean through the caste-distinctions and make a way for what, long afterward and under, other influences, so mightily prevailed in Christendom, the conventual system, the order of monks.

Buddhist education was training in Buddhist religion. The principles of this education are found in the catechism of the Buddhists, and take the form of such commandments as these: "Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt commit no act of impurity. Thou shalt do no wrong by thy speech. Thou shalt drink nothing intoxicating. Thou shalt not kill any living being."