Self-culture and universal love--this was his
discovery--this is the essence of Buddhism."[8]
From one point of view Buddhism was the logical continuance of Aryan
Hindoo philosophy; from another point of view it was a new departure.
The leading idea in the Upanishads is that the object of the wise man
should be to know, inwardly and consciously, the Great Soul of all; and
by this knowledge his individual soul would become united to the Supreme
Being, the true and absolute self. This was the highest point reached in
the old Indian philosophy[9] before Buddha was born.
So, looking at Buddhism in the perspective of Hindu history and thought,
we may say that it is doubtful whether Gautama intended to found a new
religion. As, humanly speaking, Saul of Tarsus saved Christianity from
being a Jewish sect and made it universal, so Gautama extricated the new
enthusiasm of humanity from the priests. He made Aryan religion the
property of all India. What had been a rare monopoly as narrow as
Judaism, he made the inheritance of all Asia. Gautama was a protestant
and a reformer, not an agnostic or skeptic. It is more probable that he
meant to shake off Brahmanism and to restore the pure and original form
of the Aryan religion of the Vedas, as far as it was possible to do so.
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