Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 11.djvu/16

x 3. The  (the  ), which is a controversial dialogue on the right method of attaining to a state of union with Brahmâ.

4. The Sutta entitled ' —', which shows in the course of a very y beautiful argument some curious sides of early Buddhist mysticism and of curiously unjustified belief.

5. The  (the  ), which treats of the Buddhist Order of Mendicants, from the moral, as distinguished from the disciplinary, point of view.

6. The  (the  ), which is an example of the way in which previously existing legends were dealt with by the early Buddhists.

7. The Sutta entitled ' ' (the ), which explains the signification of a constantly recurring technical term, and lays down the essential principles of Buddhist Agnosticism.

The Discipline of the Buddhist Mendicants, the Rules of their Order—probably the most influential, as it is the oldest, in the world—will be fully described, down to its minutest details, in the translation of the Vinaya Pitaka, which will appropriately form a subsequent part of this Series of Translations of the Sacred Books of the East. There was therefore no need to include any Sutta on this subject in the present volume: but of the rest of the matters discussed in the Buddhist Sacred Books—of Buddhist legend, gospel, controversial theology, and ethics—the works selected will I trust give a correct and adequate, if necessarily a somewhat fragmentary, idea.

The age of these writings can be fixed, without much uncertainty, at about the latter end of the fourth or the beginning of the third century before the commencement of the Christian era. This is the only hypothesis which seems, at present, to account for the facts known about them. It should not however be looked upon as anything