handed down by tradition as sacred and infallible, and to represent them as containing, or as necessarily implying, fixed and consistent systems of doctrine; as well as (2) of the diversity of view which so generally prevails in regard to the sense of such texts among writers of different schools, who adduce them with equal positiveness of assertion as establishing tenets and principles which are mutually contradictory or inconsistent" (O. S. T., vol. iii. p, xx).
Exactly the same methods were applied to the sacred books of Buddhism. "It is in general," says Burnouf, "the same texts that serve as a foundation for all doctrines; only the explanation of these texts marks the naturalistic, theistic, moral or intellectual tendency" (H. B. I., p. 444). To meet the case of contradictions occurring in the Buddhistic Sutras a theory of a double meaning has been invented. The various schools that had arisen in the course of time did not venture to reject the Sutras that failed to harmonize with their own opinions, as not having emanated from Buddha, but maintained he had not expressed them in the form of absolute truth. He had often, they thought, adapted himself to the conceptions of his hearers, and uttered what was directly contradictory to his veritable ideas. Hence his words must be taken in two senses; the palpable and the hidden sense (Wassiljew, pp. 105, 329). As it has been with the Chinese Classics, with the Veda, and with the Tripitaka, so it has been with the Zend Avesta. Speaking of the progress of scholarship in deciphering the sense of that ancient work, Professor Max Müller justly observes that "greater violence is done by successive interpreters to sacred writings than to any other relics of ancient literature. Ideas grow and change, yet each generation tries to find its own ideas reflected in the sacred pages of their early prophets, and in addition to the ordinary influences which blur and obscure the sharp features of old words, artificial influences are here at work distorting the natural expression of words which have been invested with a sacred authority. Passages in the Veda or Zend Avesta which do not bear on religious or philosophical doctrines, are generally explained simply and naturally, even by the latest of native commentators. But as soon as any word or sentence can be so turned as to support a doctrine, however modern, or a precept,
