Vol. 11 · pages 611–615
The Buddha and His Dhamma
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EPILOGUE
1. Tributes to the Buddha’s Greatness.
2. A Vow to Spread His Dhamma.
3. A Prayer for His Return to His Native Land.
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595
EPILOGUE
VIII
§ 1. Tributes to the Buddha’s Greatness
1. The Buddha was born 2500 years ago.
2. What do modern thinkers and scientists say of
him and his Dhamma? An anthology of their thoughts
on the subject will be useful.
3. Prof. S. S. Raghavachar says :
4. “The period immediately antecedent to the life of
the Buddha was one of the darkest ages in the history
of India.
5. “It was intellectually a backward age. The thought
of the time was characterised by an implicit veneration
for the authority of the scriptures.
6. “Morally it was a dark age.
7. “Morality meant for the believing Hindus the
correct performance of rites and ceremonies enjoined
in the holy texts.
8. “The really ethical ideas like self-sacrifice or purity
of will did not find appropriate positions in the moral
consciousness of the time.”
9. Mr. R. J. Jackson says:
10. “The unique character of the Buddha’s teaching
is shown forth in the study of Indian Religious thought.
11. “In the hymns of the Rig-Veda we see man’s
thoughts turned outwards, away from himself, to the
world of the gods.
12 “Buddhism directed man’s search inwards to the
potentiality hidden within himself.
13. “In the Vedas we find prayer, praise and worship.
14. “In Buddhism for the first time we find training
of the mind to make it act righteously.”
15. Winwood Reade says:
16. “It is when we open the book of nature, it is
when we read the story of evolution through millions
of years, written in blood and tears, it is when we
study the laws regulating life, the laws productive of
development, that we see plainly how illusive is the
theory that God is love.
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596 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
VIII
17. “In everything there is wicked profligate and
abandoned waste. Of all animals that are born only a
very small percentage survives.
18. “Eat and be eaten is the rule in the ocean, the
air, the forest. Murder is the law of growth.”
19. This is what Reade says in his “Martyrdom of
Man.” How different is the Dhamma of the Buddha.
20. This is what Dr. Ranjan Roy says:
21. “Throughout the second half of the nineteenth
century the three laws of conservation held sway. Nobody
challenged them.
22. “They were the laws of matter, mass and energy.
23. “They were the trump cards of those idealists
who cherished the thought of their being indestructible.
24. “Nineteenth century scientists professed them
as the governing factors of creation.
25. “Nineteenth century scientists professed them as
constituting the fundamental nature of the Universe.
26. “They conceived that the Universe was filled
with indestructible atoms.
27. “Just as the nineteenth century was drawing to
a close, Sir J. J. Thompson and his followers began to
hammer the atoms.
28. “Surprisingly enough the atoms began to break
up into fragments.
29. “These fragments came to be called electrons, all
similar and charged with negative electricity.
30. “Atoms hailed by Maxwell as imperishable
foundation-stones of the Universe or Reality broke down.
31. “They got broken into tiny particles, protons and
electrons charged with positive and negative electricity
respectively.
32. “The concept of a fixed unalterable mass
abandoned Science for good. In this century the
Universal belief is that matter is being annihilated at
every instant.