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The Sankya philosophy here came in conflict with the orthodox doctrine of the Brahmins, and prepared the way for Buddhism. d. Buddhism. Against Brahminism Buddhism arose as a reaction. The tendency of the new doctrine was to break up the system of caste, and free the people from the galling yoke of the Brahminical hierarchy and dogmas.
In 1867 the entire administration was reorganized; the supreme power, both military and civil, being restored to the Mikado. Soon afterward the Shinto cult, officially revived in its primal simplicity, was declared the Religion of State; and Buddhism was disendowed.
Even the chief Buddhist prelates addressed to the priests and parishioners of their dioceses injunctions pointing out that freedom of conscience being now guaranteed by the Constitution, men professing alien creeds must be treated as courteously as the disciples of Buddhism and must enjoy the same privileges."* *Brinkley, article "Japan," Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition.
In their later developments Buddhist and Christian ceremonies show an extraordinary resemblance due in my opinion chiefly to convergence, though I do not entirely exclude mutual influence. Both Buddhism and Roman Catholicism accepted pagan ritual with some reservations and refinements.
Summoned to Nara in 754, he was treated with profound reverence, and on a platform specially erected before the temple Todai-ji, where stood the colossal image of Buddha to be presently spoken of the sovereign and many illustrious personages performed the most solemn rite of Buddhism under the ministration of Kanshin. But he declined the honour.
To describe Buddhism as paganism merely shows a lamentable amount of ignorance; nor should I be inclined to include Shintoism in a term which, whatever its precise meaning, is invariably intended to be opprobrious!
For the chief of these he went to that system of philosophy which rests on the idea that the world is to be redeemed by negation of the will to live, the conquering of all desire that the highest happiness is the achievement of nirvana, nothingness. In the reformed Brahmanism called Buddhism, there appeared along with the old principle of self-erasure a compassionate sympathy for others.
Réville reaches this similar conclusion: "Buddhism, born on the domain of polytheism, has fought against it, not by rising above nature in subordinating it to a single sovereign spirit, but by reproving nature in principle, and condemning life itself as an evil and a misfortune.
There had been intercourse of old, too, between Asia and the Western Continent; the elephant-headed god of Mexico, the debased traces of Buddhism in the Aztec religion, the singular coincidences between India and Peru, all seem to show that a stream of communication, however faint, once existed between the Asiatic and American worlds.
In the extreme East, on the other hand, the ancient beliefs and institutions remained stationary, and Buddhism was unable materially to disturb them. It introduced its doctrine of Metampsichosis, its Nirvana, and its hell; but these notions did not modify, they got mixed up with the old conceptions in a jumble of heterogeneous and contradictory beliefs.
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