CHAPTER XII.

THE BUDDHIST UNIVERSE.

The universe passes through incessant changes--Kalpas of various lengths--Kalpas of establishment, of destruction, &c.--Saha world--Sumeru mountain--The Southern continent is Jambudvipa--Heaven of the thirty-three--Tushita paradise--Upper tier of paradises--Heavens of form and of desire--Heavens without form--Brahma's paradise--No wise man is born there, because Brahma says he created the universe--The hells--Story from the "Ti-tsang Sutra."

THE universe, according to the Buddhists, is in a constant state of change. The periods in which its changes take place are called kalpas (kie-po or kie.) Eighty small kalpas make one large kalpa. The inhabitants of the Brahma heaven live through twenty small kalpas, and their chief, Mahabrahma, through sixty. Kalpas are divided into the small kalpa, the kalpa of establishment and destruction, and the great kalpa. In the small kalpa, the age of mankind diminishes from an immeasurable length to ten years, and then increases to a length of from ten to eighty thousand years. In twenty of such periods the world is completed. Through twenty more it remains in the same state. After twenty more the world is destroyed, and there remains nothing but vacancy during twenty more. The first forty mean kalpas make up the kalpa of establishment. The other forty compose that of destruction. All of them taken together form a great kalpa. We live in the second intermediate kalpa, or that

in which the world continues in its completed state, in a period called the hien kalpa or "Age of wise men" (Mahabhadra-kalpa). There are still eleven small kalpas to be passed before the age of destruction commences. During the "eighth kalpa" (Mandu-kalpa), immediately preceding the present, a hundred Buddhas successively appear. Shakyamuni is the fourth Buddha of the Mahabhadra-kalpa. In his time the age of man had already gradually diminished to a hundred years, and the same process of gradual subtraction by one year at a time is still going on. In the centre of the Saha world, or that ruled by Shakyamuni, is the Sumeru mountain. A wide sea separates this from eight other mountains. Outside these mountains, beyond another wide sea, is a great circular mountain mass of iron. A thousand such circular iron mountain chains constitute one "small world" (siau-ts'ien-shi-kiai). Three thousand such walls form a "great world" (ta-ts'ien-shi-kiai). This is the Saha world.