Part 14 (1/2)

Their mosaics, executed in colored porcelain of several varieties, gla.s.s of all kinds, mother-of-pearl, and colored marbles, represent chiefly flowers and sprays on a brilliant ground. The most remarkable work of this kind is, I imagine, that which is lavished on the temple Watt P'hra Keau,--the walls, pillars, windows, roofs, towers, and gates being everywhere overlaid with mother-of-pearl and ivory, and profusely gilded. The several facades are likewise inlaid with ivory, gla.s.s, and mother-of-pearl, fixed with cement in the mortar, which serves as a base. In all cases these works are characterized by a touching simplicity, which seems to struggle through much, that is obscure and illegible to get nearer to nature and truth. Most of the tiles employed in the roofing of temples and palaces are colored and gilt.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SPIRE OF THE TEMPLE WATT-POH.]

Among the older pictures, one in the Royal bedchamber of the abandoned palace deserves a parting glance. It is a cartoon (much defaced, and here and there re-touched by clumsy Chinese hands) of The First Sin. In the foreground a newly created world is rudely represented, and here are several illuminated figures, human but gigantic. One of these, discontented with his spiritual food, is seen tasting something, which we are told is ”fragrant earth”; after which, in another figure, he appears to be electrified, and here his monstrous anatomy is depicted with ludicrous attempts at detail. No one could tell me by whom or when this cartoon was painted, and the painting itself is so little appreciated that I might never have seen or heard of it but for a happy chance.

A characteristic effect in the few great works by Siamese painters appears in their management of shade. They impart to darkness a pervading inner light or clearness, and heighten the effect of the deeper shadows by permitting objects to be seen through them. In addition to the pictures I have described, one or two of some merit are to be found in the Watt Brahmanee Waid.

The florid style of architecture seems to have been familiar to the Siamese from a very early period. Their palaces, temples, and paG.o.das afford innumerable examples of it, many of them not unworthy of European art. They build generally in brick, using a cement composed of sand, chalk, and mola.s.ses, in which the skin of the buffalo has been steeped.

Their structures are the most solid and durable imaginable. When the masons building a wall round the new palace at Ayuthia found their bricks falling short, they tried in vain to detach a supply from the ruined temples and walls of that ancient city.

In the art of sculpture the Siamese are in advance of their civilization. Not only in their palaces, temples, and paG.o.das, but in their shops and dwellings likewise, and even in their s.h.i.+ps and boats, all sorts of figures are to be seen, modelled and finished with more or less delicacy.

XXII. BUDDHIST DOCTRINE, PRIESTS, AND WORs.h.i.+P.

”The world is old, and all things old within it.” We plod a trodden path. No truth is new to-day, save only that one which as a mantle covers the face of G.o.d, lest we be blinded by the unveiled glory. How many of earth's departed great, buried out of remembrance, might have lived to-day in the love of the wise and just, had theirs but been that perfect quickening which is the breath of his Spirit upon the heart, the gift that ”pa.s.seth understanding!” The world's helpers must first become borrowers of G.o.d. The world's teachers must first learn of him that only wisdom, which cometh not of books nor jealous cloister cells, but out of the heart of man as it opens yearningly to the cry of humanity,--the Wisdom of Love. This alone may challenge a superior mind, prizing truths not merely for their facts, but for their motives,--motives for which individuals or great communities either act or suffer,--to explore with a calm and kindly judgment the spirit of the religion of the Buddhists; and not its spirit only, but its every look and tone and motion as well, being so many complex expressions of the religious character in all its peculiar thoughts and feelings.

”Who, of himself, can interpret the symbol expressed by the wings of the air-sylph forming within the case of the caterpillar? Only he who feels in his own soul the same instinct which impels the horned fly to leave room in its involucrum for antennae yet to come.” Such a man knows and feels that the potential works in him even as the actual works on him.

As all the organs of sense are framed for a correspondent world of sense, so all the organs of the spirit are framed for a correspondent world of spirit; and though these latter be not equally developed in us all, yet they surely exist in all; else how is it that even the ignorant, the depraved, and the cruel will contemplate the man of unselfish and exalted goodness with contradictory emotions of pity and respect?

We are p.r.o.ne to ignore or to condemn that which we do not clearly understand; and thus it is, and on no better ground, that we deny that there are influences in the religions of the East to render their followers wiser, n.o.bler, purer. And yet no one of respectable intelligence will question that there have been, in all ages, individual pagans who, by the simplicity of their doctrine and the purity of their practice, have approached very nearly to the perfection of the Christian graces; and that they were, if not so much the better for the religion they had, at least far, far better than if they had had no religion at all.

It is not, however, in human nature to approve and admire any course of life without inquiring into the spirit of the law that regulates it. Nor may it suffice that the spirit is there, if not likewise the letter,--that is to say, the practice. The best doctrine may become the worst, if imperfectly understood, erroneously interpreted, or superst.i.tiously followed.

In Egypt, Palestine, Greece, and India, the metaphysical a.n.a.lysis of Mind had attained its noontide splendor, while as yet experimental research had hardly dawned. Those ancient mystics did much to promote intellectual emanc.i.p.ation, by insisting that Thought should not be imprisoned within the mere outlines of any single dogmatic system; and they likewise availed, in no feeble measure, to keep alive the heart in the head, by demanding an impartial reverence for every attribute of the mind, till, by converting these into symbols to impress the ignorant and stupid, they came at last to deify them. Thus, with the uninitiated, their system degenerated into an ign.o.ble pantheism.

The renascence of Buddhism sought to eliminate from the arrogant and impious pantheisms of Egypt, India, and Greece a simple and pure philosophy, upholding virtue as man's greatest good and highest reward.

It taught that the only object worthy of his n.o.blest aspirations was to render the soul (itself an emanation from G.o.d) fit to be absorbed back again into the Divine essence from which it sprang. The single aim, therefore, of pure Buddhism seems to have been to rouse men to an inward contemplation of the divinity of their own nature; to fix their thoughts on the spiritual life within as the only real and true life; to teach them to disregard all earthly distinctions, conditions, privileges, enjoyments, privations, sorrows, sufferings; and thus to incite them to continual efforts in the direction of the highest ideals of patience, purity, self-denial.

Buddhism cannot be clearly defined by its visible results today. There are more things in that subtile, mystical enigma called in the Pali _Nirwana_, in the Birmese _Niban_, in the Siamese _Niphan_, than are dreamed of in our philosophy. With the idea of Niphan in his theology, it were absurdly false to say the Buddhist has no G.o.d. His Decalogue [FOOTNOTE: Translated from the Pali.] is as plain and imperative as the Christian's :--

I. From the meanest insect up to man thou shalt kill no animal whatsoever.

II. Thou shalt not steal.

III. Thou shalt not violate the wife of another, nor his concubine.

IV. Thou shalt speak no word that is false.

V. Thou shalt not drink wine, nor anything that may intoxicate.

VI. Thou shalt avoid all anger, hatred, and bitter language.

VII. Thou shalt not indulge in idle and vain talk.

VIII. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods.

IX. Thou shalt not harbor envy, nor pride, nor revenge, nor malice, nor the desire of thy neighbor's death or misfortune.

X. Thou shalt not follow the doctrines of false G.o.ds.