CHAPTER XIII.

THE EXTENDED UNIVERSE OF THE NORTHERN BUDDHISTS.

Primitive Buddhism aimed at moral improvement and the Nirvana--Its mythology was of popular growth--The Mahayana mythology was introduced by the metaphysicians of Buddhism itself--Nagarjuna, the chief inventor--Hwa-yen-king--An extended universe invented to illustrate dogma--Ten worlds beyond the Saha world in ten different directions--New divinities to worship--Amitabha--His world in the West--Kwan-yin and Ta-shi-chi--The world of Ach'obhya Buddha in the East--World of Yo-shi Fo, the healing teacher--Mercy, wisdom, &c., are symbolised in the Bodhisattwas--Wu-t'ai shan in China is introduced in the Hwa-yen-king.

ABOUT four centuries after the time of Shakyamuni, or Gautama as he is more commonly called in Birmah and Ceylon, a great increase to the Sanscrit literature of the Buddhist religion began to be made. Very little had been added to the national mythology by the founder and first propagators of this system, except what respected Buddha himself. Their aim was to inculcate virtue, encourage the ascetic life, and urge persons of all castes and both sexes to aim at deliverance from the evils of existence and the attainment of the Nirvana. They based their teaching on the existing doctrine of metempsychosis, of the gods and other classes of beings, and of heaven and hell. These had been united from the earliest infancy of the Hindoo nation in one system. By the transmigration of souls, all in heaven or earth, whether gods, men, demons, or inferior animals, are linked together into one chain of animated existence, and compose one world. It is the

business of a Buddha and a Bodhisattwa to instruct these beings in moral truths, and assist them to escape from all the six forms of life, into a state of perfect enlightenment and tranquillity. The mythological element, as it existed in early Buddhism, was even then an old creation of the popular mind that had grown up with the first literary efforts of the nation. In this respect it agrees with most other mythologies, in the fact of its originating, not in philosophical schools, but among the people themselves.