e are apt to form our notions of what
Buddhism was, while, as a matter of fact, not one in a thousand would
have been capable of following these metaphysical speculations. To the
people at large Buddhism was a moral and religious, not a
philosophical reform. Yet even its morality has a metaphysical tinge.
The morality which it teaches is not a morality of expediency and
rewards. Virtue is not enjoined because it necessarily leads to
happiness. No; virtue is to be practised, but happiness is to be
shunned, and the only reward for virtue is that it subdues the
passions, and thus prepares the human mind for that knowledge which is
to end in complete annihilation. There are ten commandments which
Buddha imposes on his disciples.[71] They are--

1. Not to kill.
2. Not to steal.
3. Not to commit adultery.
4. Not to lie.
5. Not to get intoxicated.
6. To abstain from unseasonable meals.
7. To abstain from public spectacles.

[Footnote 69: Helps, _The Spanish Conquest_, vol. iii. p. 503: "Que
cosa tam inquieta non le parescia ser Dios."]

[Footnote 70: On the servitude of the gods, see the "Essay on
Comparative Mythology," _Oxford Essays_, 1856, p. 69.]

[Footnote 71: See Burnouf, 'Lotus de la bonne Loi,' p. 444. Barthelemy
Saint-Hilaire, 'Du Bouddhisme,' p. 132. Ch.F.Neumann, 'Catechism of
the Shamans.']

8. To abstain from expensive dresses.
9. Not to have a large bed.
10. Not to receive silver or gold.

The duties of those who embraced a religious life were more severe.
They were not allowed to wear any dress except rags collected in
cemeteries, and these rags they had to sew together with their own
hands. A yellow cloak was to be thrown over these rags. Their food was
to be extremely simple, and they were not to possess anything, except
what they could get by collecting alms from door to door in their
wooden bowls. They had but one meal in the morning, and were not
allowed to touch any food after midday. They were to live in forests,
not in cities, and their only shelter was to be the shadow of a tree.
There they were to sit, to spread their carpet, but not to lie down,
even during sleep. They were allowed to enter the nearest city or
village in order to beg, but they had to return to their forest before
night, and the only change which was allowed, or rather prescribed,
was when they had to spend some nights in the cemeteries, there to
meditate on the vanity of all things. And what was the object of all
this as