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[Illustration: BRASS IMAGE OF GAUTAMA BUDDHA FROM CEYLON.]

 He is seated on the Mu[c']alinda Serpent (see p. 480), in an attitude
  of profound meditation, with eyes half closed, and five rays of light
                  emerging from the crown of his head.
                                                        [_Frontispiece._




                               BUDDHISM,
             IN ITS CONNEXION WITH BRAHMANISM AND HINDUISM,
                                  AND
                          IN ITS CONTRAST WITH
                             CHRISTIANITY,


                                   BY
                 SIR MONIER MONIER-WILLIAMS, K.C.I.E.,
             M.A., HON. D.C.L. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,
               HON. LL.D. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALCUTTA,
               HON. PH.D. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF GOeTTINGEN,
       HON. MEMBER OF THE ASIATIC SOCIETIES OF BENGAL AND BOMBAY,
      AND OF THE ORIENTAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETIES OF AMERICA,
                    BODEN PROFESSOR OF SANSK[R.]IT,
            AND LATE FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD, ETC.

[Illustration: ]

                               NEW YORK:
                           MACMILLAN AND CO.
                                 1889.

                        [_All rights reserved._]




                                PREFACE.


The 'Duff Lectures' for 1888 were delivered by me at Edinburgh in the
month of March. In introducing my subject, I spoke to the following
effect:--

'I wish to express my deep sense of the responsibility which the writing
of these Lectures has laid upon me, and my earnest desire that they may,
by their usefulness, prove in some degree worthy of the great missionary
whose name they bear.

'Dr. Duff was a man of power, who left his own foot-print so deeply
impressed on the soil of Bengal, that its traces are never likely to be
effaced, and still serve to encourage less ardent spirits, who are
striving to imitate his example in the same field of labour.

'But not only is the impress of his vigorous personality still fresh in
Bengal. He has earned an enduring reputation throughout India and the
United Kingdom, as the prince of educational missionaries. He was in all
that he undertook an enthusiastic and indefatigable workman, of whom, if
of any human being, it might be truly said, that, when called upon to
quit the sphere of his labours, "he needed not to be ashamed." No one
can have travelled much in India without having observed how wonderfully
the results of his indomitable energy and fervid eloquence in the cause
of Truth wait on the memory of his work everywhere. Monuments may be
erected and lectureships founded to perpetuate his name and testify to
his victories over difficulties which few other men could have overcome,
but better than these will be the living testimony of successive
generations of Hindu men and women, whose growth and progress in true
enlightenment will be due to the seed which he planted, and to which God
has given the increase.'

I said a few more words expressive of my hope that the 'Life of Dr.
Duff'[1] would be read and pondered by every student destined for work
of any kind in our Indian empire, and to that biography I refer all who
are unacquainted with the particulars of the labours of a man to whom
Scotland has assigned a place in the foremost rank of her most eminent
Evangelists.

I now proceed to explain the process by which these Lectures have
gradually outgrown the limits required by the Duff Trustees.

When I addressed myself to the carrying out of their
wishes--communicated to me by Mr. W. Pirie Duff--I had no intention of
undertaking more than a concise account of a subject which I had been
studying for many years. I conceived it possible to compress into six
Lectures a scholarly sketch of what may be called true Buddhism,--that
is, the Buddhism of the Pi[t.]akas or Pali texts which are now being
edited by the Pali Text Society, and some of which have been translated
in the 'Sacred Books of the East.' It soon, however, became apparent to
me that to write an account of Buddhism which would be worthy of the
great Indian missionary, I ought to exhibit it in its connexion with
Brahmanism and Hinduism and even with Jainism, and in its contrast with
Christianity. Then, as I proceeded, I began to feel that to do justice
to my subject I should be