Epochs in Buddhist History

What Buddhism has become is to Christians a vindiction also of many of the teachings of Jesus—the Fathehood of God the brotherhood of man the harmonizing of the individual and corporate life in a divine Kingdom on earth: and even more remarkable it is a vindication also of some of the less simple and more controversial of the dogmas of Christianity such as the Logos doctrine the triune [...] Of Nirvana similarly there are various interpretations: (I) that of some parts of the Upanishads which think of it as a waking-up to the fact of the substantial unity of the soul or atman with the supreme Atman or Brahman; (2) that of the Mahayana which rejects the negative interpretation of the Hinayana and regards Nirvana as a permanent supreme Reality blissful and serene though ineffable [...] With this attitude of faith in the teaching should be mentioned that of devotion to the Sangha in which the teaching is embodied: "He that would wait upon me let him wait upon the sick brethren."' One of the earliest formulas of Buddhism that of the ordination ceremony expresses this attitude toward the Three Jewels: "I take refuge in the Buddha in the Sangha and in the Dhamma " and these Thre [...] We have seen that the essence of Sakyamuni's teacing was the universality of the Dhamma and of the Law of Causation and that with this went the conception of the unity of all existence. [...] Their kingdom of Magadha formed the nucleus of the two mighty empires of the Mauryas and Guptas aided no doubt by the Buddhist religion which not only unified the people but helped to keep the Brahmins in their place.' Pkali-putra on the northern bank of the Son was the capital of the Mauryas and though we cannot find evidence of the splendor which made the Chinese pilgrim Fa-Hian (400 A.