TRÜBNER'S

ORIENTAL SERIES.

THE LIFE OR LEGEND

OF

GAUDAMA

THE BUDDHA OF THE BURMES

With Annotations.

THE WAYS TO NEIBBAN, AND NOTICE ON THE PHONGYIES OR BURMESE MONKS.

BY THE
RIGHT REVEREND P. BIGANDET,
BISHOP OF RAMATHA,
VICAR APOSTOLIC OF AVA AND PEGU

IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. I.

Fourth Edition.

LONDON:
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO. L^TD.
DRYDEN HOUSE, GERRARD STREET, W.
1911.

The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved.


Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.
At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh

ADVERTISEMENT TO THIRD EDITION.

The origin of the present work dates back to the years 1852, 1853, 1854, and 1855, when portions of it appeared in the "Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia," edited by J. R. Logan of Penang (vols. vi., vii., viii., and ix.). The first complete edition was printed at Rangoon in Burmah in 1858, and a second, much enlarged, at the same place in 1866.

Very few copies of either of these editions reached Europe, and both are entirely out of print. The present third edition—a faithful reprint of the second—issued, with Bishop Bigandet's sanction, for the benefit of European and American scholars and readers, will, therefore, it is hoped, be gladly received.

Buddhism and Gautama, the faith and its founder, whose followers are between four and five hundred millions of the human race, were comparatively unknown in Europe but a generation ago, and yet this great faith had continued for four and twenty centuries to spread over the vast lands of the East, taking deep and enduring root in all, from Bhotan, Nepaul, and Ceylon, over Further India to China Proper, Mongolia, Mantchooria, Tibet, and Japan.

Buddhism, as it is found in Burmah, has a particular claim to the attention of a diligent and attentive observer. We there have that religious creed or system as pure from adulteration as it can be after a lapse of so many centuries. Philosophy never flourished in Burmah, and, therefore, never modified the religious systems of the country. Hinduism never exercised any influence on the banks of the Irrawaddy. Chinese and Burmese have often met on battlefields, but the influence of the Middle Kingdom has never established itself in Burmah. In other words, Chinese Buddhism has never been able to penetrate into the customs and manners of the people, and has not attempted to communicate its own religion to its southern neighbours. It would seem that the true form of Buddhism is to be found in Burmah, and that a knowledge of that system can only be arrived at by the study of the religious books of Burmah, and by attentively observing the religious practices and ceremonies of the people. This is what Bishop Bigandet has endeavoured to do throughout his work.

Mr. Alabaster, the author of a very popular work on Siamese Buddhism, testifies to the great value of the Bishop's work, which, he remarks, is in one sense complete, for whereas the Siamese manuscript concludes with the attainment of omniscience, the Bishop had materials which enabled him to continue the story to the death of Nirwana (Neibban in the Burmese Pali form). He might have added that the work modestly entitled "Life of Gaudama" is a complete exposition of the great system of Eastern Asia. The metaphysical part, which is the very essence of the system, has received a due consideration, and the body of religious has been fully described. Moreover, the foot-notes help the ordinary reader in understanding clearly the text of the Legend.

Professor Albrecht Weber speaks also of the Bishop's work in terms of high commendation (see "Literarisches Centralblatt," 1870, No. 29, reprinted in "Indische Streifen," vol. iii.), whilst a still further testimony is accorded to its importance in the recent appearance of a French translation by Lieutenant Victor Gauvain.

    London, December 1879.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

Whether Buddhism be viewed in its extent and diffusion, or in the complex nature of its doctrines, it claims the serious attention of every inquiring mind.

In our own days it is, under different forms, the creed prevailing in Nepaul, Thibet, Mongolia, Corea, China, the Japanese Archipelago, Anam, Cambodia, Siam, the Shan States, Burmah, Arracan, and Ceylon. Its sway extends over nearly one-fourth of the human race.

Though based upon capital and revolting errors, Buddhism teaches a surprising number of the finest precepts and purest moral truths. From the abyss of its almost unfathomable darkness it sends forth rays of the brightest hue.

To the reflecting mind, the study of this religious system becomes the study of the history of one of the greatest religious enterprises that has ever been undertaken to elevate our nature above its low level, by uprooting the passions of the heart and dispelling the errors of the mind. A serious observer sees at a glance the dark and humiliating picture of the sad and barren results of the greatest and mightiest efforts of human wisdom, in its endeavours to find out the real cause of all human miseries, and to provide the remedies to cure the moral distempers to which our nature is subject. The fact of man's wretched and fallen condition was clearly perceived by the Buddhist philosopher, but he failed in his attempts to help man out of the difficulties which encompass him in all directions, and to bring him back to the path of truth and salvation. The efforts begun on the banks of the Ganges at an early period, and carried on with the greatest ardour and perseverance, have proved as abortive as those made at a later period throughout Greece and Italy by the greatest and brightest geniuses of antiquity. What a grand and irresistible demonstration both of the absolute inability of man to rescue from evil and attain good, and of the indispensable necessity of divine interference to help him in accomplishing that twofold achievement!

It may be said in favour of Buddhism, that no philosophico-religious system has ever upheld, to an equal degree, the notions of a saviour and deliverer, and of the necessity of his mission for procuring the salvation, in a Buddhist sense, of man. The rôle of Buddha, from beginning to end, is that of a deliverer, who preaches a law designed to secure to man deliverance from all the miseries under which he is labouring. But by an inexplicable and deplorable eccentricity, the pretended saviour, after having taught man the way to deliver himself from the tyranny of his passions, only leads him, after all, into the bottomless gulf of total annihilation.

Buddhism, such as we find it in Burmah, appears to have retained, to a great extent, its original character and primitive genuineness, exhibiting, as it does, the most correct forms and features of that Protean creed. At the epoch the Burmans left the northern valleys and settled in the country they now inhabit, they were a half-civilised Mongolian tribe, with no kind of worship, except a sort of geniolatry, much similar to what we see now existing among the various tribes bordering on Burmah. They were in the same