Identifier: buddhagospelofbu01coom (find matches)
Title: Buddha and the gospel of Buddhism
Year: 1916 (1910s)
Authors: Coomaraswamy, Ananda Kentish, 1877-1947
Subjects: Buddha and Buddhism
Publisher: New York, G. P. Putnam's sons
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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men and others whom we see in the sculpturedreliefs of Sanchi and Amaravati, kneeling with passionatedevotion and with offerings of flowers before an altar,where the Buddha is represented by the symbols of thefootprints or the wisdom-tree (Plate Q)—what did itmean to them to take refuge in the Buddha ?This phrase alone must have operated with the subtlepower of hypnotic suggestion to convince the worshipper—and the majority of men are worshippers rather thanthinkers by nature—that the Buddha still was, and thatsome relation, however vaguely imagined, could be estab-lished between the worshipper and Him-who-had-thus-attained. It was, almost certainly, the growth of thisconviction which determined the development of Buddhist, 1 The doctrine of devotion also occurs in another form, where almostin the words of the Bhagavad Gita^ Gautama is made to say that thosewho have not yet even entered the Paths are sure of heaven if theyhave love and faith towards Me.—Majjhima Nikaya^ 22.224
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Beginnings of the Mahayana iconolatry and all the mystical theology of the Mahayana.It is the element of worship which changed the monasticsystem of Gautama into a world-religion.In the earliest Buddhist literature the word Buddha hasnot yet come to be used in a technical sense: Gautamanever speaks of himself as the Buddha, and when othersdo so the term means simply the Enlightened One, theAwakened. The Buddha is but the wisest and greatestof the Arahats. In course of time the term became morespecialized to mean a particular kind of being; whilethe term Bodhisatta, or Wisdom-Being, first used ofGautama between the Going-forth and the attainment ofNibbana, came to mean a Buddha-designate—any beingdestined to become a Buddha in this or some future life.This doctrine of the Bodhisatta is extensively developedin the book of the 550 Jatakas, or Birth Stories, whichrecount the edifying histories of Gautamas previousexistence as man, animal, or fairy. When the BrahmanSumedha rejects the th

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