Page:A Brief History of the Indian Peoples.djvu/88

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84
BUDDHISM.


peculiar body, but in the religion of the whole Hindu people; in that principle of the brotherhood of man, with the re-assertion of which each new revival of Hinduism starts; in the asylum which the great Hindu sect of Vaishnavs affords to women who have fallen victims to caste rules, to the widow and the outcast; in that gentleness and charity to all men, which take the place of a poor-law in India, and give a high significance to the half-satirical epithet of the 'mild' Hindu.

Materials for Reference.

The most convenient English summary of this subject will be found in Professor Rhys Davids' Buddhism, his Buddhist Birth-Stories, and Hibbert Lectures. Among many other works may be mentioned Bishop Bigandet's Life and Legend of Buddha (London edition, 1880); Spence Hardy's Manual of Buddhism (modern), and his Eastern Monachism; Olden berg's Buddha, sein Leben (and English translation by Hoey, 1882, an admirable work); Rockhill's Life of the Buddha (from Tibetan sources); Senart's Essai sur la Légende du Bouddha; Beale's Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese; Edkin's Chinese Buddhism; Childers' Dictionary of the Páli Language (s. v. Buddho, &c.); General Cunningham's Ancient Geography of India, his Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, and his other archæological writings, of which the latest is the Mahábodhi, or the Great Buddhist Temple at Buddha-Gaya (1892). An interesting Buddhist magazine, entitled The Journal of the Mahábodhi Society, is published monthly in Calcutta (1892).