Buddhism As Presented By The Brahmanical Systems PDF Download

This is a new edition of one of the little manuals of Buddhism which Dr. Carus has published at intervals for several years, and of which his "Gospel of Buddha" is probably the best known. The Dharma, which means "The Law," is not a continuous narrative, but a selection of characteristic excerpts, such as the Noble Eightfold Path, the Four Noble Truths, and similar passages, many of which Dr. Carus has turned into verse. We confess, though perhaps ours is a minority view, that we prefer the most literal prose translation in all such works. But it seems that Dr. Carus has been somewhat oppressed with the baldness and dryness of the Pali Buddhist books. It has always seemed to us that most of these books should be compared, not with the books of the New Testament, but with the brain-spun treatises of the medieval Schoolmen; they all show that they have passed through the minds of dried-up ecclesiastics, and we must seek for the source of the religious enthusiasm which made Buddhism a great missionary religion, elsewhere than in these almost algebraic treatises. We are inclined to take exception to Dr. Carus' description of the Vedanta, and especially the Upanishads, as "Brahmanism." Real Brahmanism consisted of the Vedic sacrificial system, lined by ancestorworship. The Upanishads, as they themselves tell us, convey the teaching, not of the Brahmans, but of the Rajputs, and sharply attack the Brahmanical system. So does the Bhagavad Gita, which declares itself to be the doctrine of "the Rajput sages." Buddhism is the third Rajput revelation, and only to be understood in connection with its two predecessors. After all, it seems to us that Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia" remains, far the truest Western presentation of the religion of "Siddhartha the Compassionate." C. J. -The Theosophical Quarterly, Volume 5