Abhidharma, or the system of metaphysics. The
first was compiled by Ananda, the second by Upali, the third by
Ka_s_yapa--all of them the pupils and friends of Buddha. It may be
that these collections, as we now possess them, were finally arranged,
not at the first, but at the third Council. Yet, even then, we have no
earlier, no more authentic, documents from which we could form an
opinion as to the original teaching of Buddha; and the Nirva_n_a, as
taught in the metaphysics of Ka_s_yapa, and particularly in the
Pra_gn_a-paramita, is annihilation, not absorption. Buddhism,
therefore, if tested by its own canonical books, cannot be freed from
the charge of Nihilism, whatever may have been its character in the
mind of its founder, and whatever changes it may have undergone in
later times, and among races less inured to metaphysical discussions
than the Hindus.

The ineradicable feeling of dependence on something else, which is the
life-spring of all religion, was completely numbed in the early Buddhist
metaphysicians, and it was only after several generations had passed away,
and after Buddhism had become the creed of millions, that this feeling
returned with increased warmth, changing, as I said in my article, the very
Nothing into a paradise, and deifying the very Buddha who had denied the
existence of a Deity. That this has been the case in China we know from the
interesting works of the Abbe Huc, and from other sources, such as the
'Catechism of the Shamans, or the Laws and Regulations of the Priesthood of
Buddha in China,' translated by Ch. F. Neumann, London, 1831. In India,
also, Buddhism, as soon as it became a popular religion, had to speak a
more human language than that of metaphysical Pyrrhonism. But, if it did
so, it was because it was shamed into it. This we may see from the very
nicknames which the Brahmans apply to their opponents, the Bauddhas. They
call them Nastikas--those who maintain that there is nothing;
_S_unyavadins-those who maintain that there is a universal void.

The only ground, therefore, on which we may stand, if we wish to
defend the founder of Buddhism against the charges of Nihilism and
Atheism, is this, that, as some of the Buddhists admit, the 'Basket of
Metaphysics' was rather the work of his pupils, not of Buddha
himself.[86] This distinction between the authentic words of Buddha
and the canonical books in general, is mentioned more than once. The
priesthood of Ceylon, when the mani