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The Training Anthology
of Śāntideva
The Training
Anthology
of Śāntideva
A Translation of the
Śikṣā-​samuccaya
z
Translated by
CHARLES GOODMAN

1
 1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2016

In addition to other sources of the original text, this translation uses Sanskrit text from Śikṣā-
samuccaya of Śāntideva, first edition edited by Dr. P. L. Vaidya, second edition edited by Dr.
Sridhar Tripathi, published by The Mithila Institute, 1960; 1999

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
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by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
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You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Santideva, active 7th century, author. | Goodman, Charles, 1975-

editor, translator.
Title: The training anthology of Santideva : a translation of the
Siksa-samuccaya / Translated by Charles Goodman.
Other titles: Siksasamuccaya. English
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2016. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015044389 (print) | LCCN 2015047765 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780199391349 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780199391356 (pbk. : alk.
paper) | ISBN 9780199391363 (updf) | ISBN 9780199391370 (epub)
Classification: LCC BQ3242.E5 G66 2016 (print) | LCC BQ3242.E5 (ebook) | DDC
294.3/85—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015044389

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Paperback printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
 Contents

List of Abbreviations vii

The Training Anthology in Its Cultural and Religious Contexts ix

Śāntideva’s Life: History and Legends ix

The Great Journey to Awakening xii
The Indian Buddhist Monastery as a Social Institution xviii
The Cultural World of Śāntideva: Some Major Features xxiii
The Structure of the Training Anthology xxvii
The Supreme Worship xxviii
The Training Anthology Today xxx

The Philosophy of the Training Anthology xxxv

Reason, Emotion, and Rhetoric xxxv

Ethical Theory xxxvii
Lexical Priority of Values xlviii
Plants, Animals, and the Environment l
Theory of Well-​Being lii
No-​Self, Causation, and Emptiness liv

Notes on the Translation lix

Root Verses of the Training Anthology lxxiii

1. The Perfection of Generosity 1

2. Upholding the Holy Dharma 38

3. Protecting the Dharma Teacher and So On 49

4. Giving Up What Is Harmful 63

vi Contents

5. Giving Up What Is Harmful through the Perfection of Moral Discipline 100

6. Protecting the Body 116

7. Protecting Possessions and Goodness 139

8. Clearing Away Vile Actions 155

9. The Perfection of Patient Endurance 177

10. The Perfection of Perseverance 186

11. Praise of the Wilderness 190

12. Preparing the Mind 199

13. The Applications of Mindfulness 222

14. Purifying the Body 233

15. Purifying Possessions and Goodness 255

16. The Ritual of Good Conduct 261

17. Benefits of Reverential Actions 279

18. Recollection of the Three Jewels 294

19. Enhancing Goodness 323

Appendix A: Training Anthology Ch. 18, B. 344–​347, Tibetan Version 339

Appendix B: Partial List of Translation Choices 349

Appendix C: Texts Quoted in the Training Anthology of Śāntideva 351

Notes 361

Works Cited 421

Index 425
 List of Abbreviations

BCA Vaidya, P. L., ed. 1988. Bodhicaryāvatāra of Śāntideva with the commentary
Pañjikā of Prajñākaramati. Darbhanga: Mithila Institute. English verses
cited are usually quoted or adapted from Crosby and Skilton, trans. 1995.
The Bodhicaryāvatāra. New York: Oxford World’s Classics.
DN Dīgha-​Nikāya. See Maurice Walshe, trans. 1995. The Long Discourses of the
Buddha. Boston: Wisdom Publications.
Edg. Edgerton, Franklin. 1998 (first published 1953). Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit
Grammar and Dictionary, vol. 2. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
ITD Duff, Tony. 2000–​2014. Illuminator Tibetan-​English Encyclopedic
Dictionary. Mac edition. Kathmandu: Padma Karpo Translation
Committee.
MN Majjhima-​Nikāya. See Bhikkhu Ñānamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi, trans.
1995. The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha. Boston: Wisdom
Publications.
MW Monier-​Williams, Monier. 1995 (first published 1899). Sanskrit-​English
Dictionary. New York: Oxford University Press.
NTD Nītārtha Online Tibetan-​English Dictionary, http://​www.nitartha.org//​
home.html.
PLV Dr. P. L. Vaidya. See Skt.
PT Peking Bstan ‘gyur, dbu ma ki. Draft of electronic edition, prepared by
Central University of Tibetan Studies; on file with the author.
Skt. The Sanskrit language, or the Sanskrit text used for this
translation: Vaidya, P.L., ed. 1999. Śikṣā-​samuccaya of Śāntideva. 2nd
edition Tripathi, Sridhar, ed. Darbhanga: Mithila Institute.
SR Samādhi-​rāja-​sūtra
Tib. The Tibetan language, or the primary Tibetan text used for this
translation: Sde dge Bstan ‘gyur, dbu ma khi. Delhi Karmapae Chodhey,
Gyelwae Sungrab Partun Khang, 1985. Electronic edition, Tibetan
Buddhist Resource Center.
 The Training Anthology in Its Cultural
and Religious Contexts

Śāntideva’s Life: History and Legends

The original author of the Training Anthology was a North Indian monk named
Śāntideva. He is known and revered mostly for his other major work, the
Bodhicaryāvatāra: a summary, in beautiful verse, of the spiritual path of the
Mahāyāna form of Buddhism, of this religion’s distinctive doctrines, and of many
of its most powerful meditation practices. The book’s title means, on one plausible
interpretation, the Introduction to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life (so henceforth, I will
sometimes refer to this text as the Introduction, or often, just as BCA). Other schol-
ars have translated this title differently, rendering it as, for example, A Guide to the
Bodhisattva Way of Life1 or The Way of the Bodhisattva.
Other than what we can glean from his books, we have little reliable evidence
about the events in the life of Śāntideva. As is regrettably common in the study of
pre-​Islamic India, we do not even have very precise information about the dates of
his life. Crosby and Skilton state that “he may have lived sometime between 685
and 763 ce.”2 One of our best pieces of evidence for this dating is offered by Embar
Krishnamacharya, who points out that another Buddhist philosopher, Śāntarakṣita, in
his Tattvasiddhi, quotes a full verse from the Introduction.3 Now we have good chrono-
logical information about Śāntarakṣita from Tibetan sources: we know, for example,
that he made two trips to Tibet, and founded the great monastery of Samye (bsam yas)
on the second of these. Śāntarakṣita’s second trip is standardly dated to 763,4 so we
can conclude that the Introduction must have been composed before that date.

1. Wallace and Wallace 1997.

2. Crosby and Skilton 1995, front matter.
3. Krishnamacharya 1984, pp. xii–​xiv.
4. See, e.g., Blumenthal 2004, p. 25. Note that Krishnamacharya, eccentrically, dates this
first trip to 743 ce.
x Cultural and Religious Contexts

If these dates are correct, then Śāntideva lived during a period of conflict
and political fragmentation in North India, between the fall of Harsha’s empire
(647 ce) and the rise of the Pāla dynasty (around 750 ce).5 During this period,
Buddhism was still strong in North India, but had entered a period of decline that
would ultimately prove terminal.
At one time, the Buddhist monastic community had been lavishly supported
by a flourishing merchant class based in India’s trading cities. High-​caste Hindus,
fettered by rules that forbade eating meals prepared on board a ship, were unable
to make long trading voyages. As a result, Buddhists enjoyed a dominant posi-
tion for centuries in the lucrative trade of the Indian Ocean. But the rise of Islam
brought powerful and aggressive Arab competitors who rapidly seized the lion’s
share of this trade for themselves. India’s total urban population decreased, and
the merchant communities that had supported Buddhist institutions withered.
Most of the Buddhist monasteries gradually disappeared; a few major ones sur-
vived, becoming major centers of higher education. These monastic universities
offered instruction not only in religious and philosophical topics, but in secular
subjects such as grammar, rhetoric, medicine, and astronomy, among others.
Among these, the greatest center of Buddhist learning and scholarship in all of
India was the massive complex of Nālandā, in what is now the modern Indian
state of Bihar, not far from the site of the Buddha’s Awakening. It was here that
Śāntideva studied, practiced, and taught.
The miraculous story of Śāntideva and his first teaching of the Introduction has
been told over and over: in classic Tibetan texts, in works of modern scholarship,
and by spiritual teachers from all the Buddhist lineages of Tibet. According to the
traditional account, Śāntideva was born a crown prince, but after extensive medita-
tion practice, he made a spiritual connection with the great bodhisattva Mañjuśrī
and eventually renounced the world. Śāntideva then took up residence at Nālandā
to pursue his monastic vocation.
Unfortunately, Śāntideva’s fellow monks were not impressed with his motiva-
tion to practice. They considered him so lazy that they began to refer to him as
a bhusuku. This is a kind of Sanskrit acronym composed of the first syllables of
words meaning “eat, sleep, and defecate”—​because so far as they could tell, that
was all he ever did. In particular, Śāntideva did not seem to be engaged in the
central activity of Nālandā’s student monks: the memorization and recitation of
Buddhist texts.
Given that Śāntideva did not seem to be taking advantage of the remarkable
opportunity for study that had been offered him, the leading monks of Nālandā
decided, according to the story, to teach him a sharp lesson. They asked Śāntideva
to publicly recite a text of his choosing at an upcoming religious festival. And to

5. For these dates, see Keay 2000, p. 167 and p. 192.

 Cultural and Religious Contexts xi

make the experience even more humiliating, they built an elaborate throne for
him to sit on while teaching.
On the appointed day, Śāntideva ascended the throne and asked the assembled
crowd whether they wanted him to recite something old or something new. That
is, he was asking whether they wanted to hear an already existing text that he had
memorized, or a text that he had composed. Amused, the monks asked him for
something new, and he began reciting the Bodhicaryāvatāra. It would have been
clear very quickly that this was one of the greatest works of poetry ever composed
in the Sanskrit language.
As he continued to recite, sitting in a meditation posture, Śāntideva rose into
the air, levitating above the throne. When he reached verse IX.34, he vanished
from their sight:

When neither entity nor nonentity remains before the mind, since there
is no other mode of operation, grasping no objects, it becomes tranquil.

The remainder of the Introduction was then recited to the crowd by a disembodied
voice from the sky.
Some readers may see it as superfluous even to investigate the truth of a story
as fantastic as this one; and a few others may be troubled by any attempt to raise
questions about so inspiring and sacred a narrative. Nevertheless, one question
seems hard to avoid: Where does the Training Anthology fit into the story? Verses
V.105–​06 of the Introduction advise the reader to study either the Training Anthology
or another, similar text, the Sūtra Anthology (Sūtra-​samuccaya), attributed to the
greatest of all Mahāyāna philosophers, Nāgārjuna. If we were to assume that the
miraculous recitation included these verses as we have them now, then Śāntideva
must have been able to take for granted that his readers had access to the Training
Anthology already. But if they knew about the Training Anthology—​a huge collec-
tion of quotations from over a hundred scriptures, together with consistently in-
cisive, and often brilliantly illuminating, commentary by the author—​how could
they have considered Śāntideva to be anything less than a great scholar?
If we leave the traditional story aside, charming though it is, what is the relation-
ship between the two texts by Śāntideva? We really have no way of knowing. For
example, it’s possible that Śāntideva wrote the Training Anthology first, and then,
drawing on the teachings he had gleaned from the many scriptural sources he had
consulted, went on to produce his own summary in verse of the teachings as he
understood them. Because of the discovery at Dunhuang, in the Xinjiang province
of China, of a different and significantly shorter version of the Introduction, most
scholars now believe that the Introduction was extensively revised sometime after
its initial composition, either by Śāntideva or by someone else. So we could hy-
pothesize instead that he wrote the Introduction first, then composed the Training
xii Cultural and Religious Contexts

Anthology, and then added V.105–​06 while revising his first book. This latter pos-
sibility coheres well with an attractive analogy suggested to me by Jay Garfield.
He casually commented that the Introduction is like the textbook for a university
course, and the Training Anthology is like a coursepack with supplemental readings
(personal communication).
In terms of this analogy, what is the topic of the course? The answer, of course,
is that what Śāntideva wishes to teach is the path that leads from the reactivity
and confusion of ordinary life to the bliss, clarity, and compassion of Awakening.
Indeed, Śāntideva not only aspires to give us an intellectual understanding of how
Buddhism understands that spiritual path. He also wishes to equip us with practi-
cal tools for navigating obstacles on the way and to inspire us with motivation to
continue our journey regardless of difficulties.
In the section that follows, I explore a few aspects of the path to Buddhahood
as it was understood by Śāntideva’s sources: the sūtras of the Great Way, or in
Sanskrit, the Mahāyāna. I will then proceed to discuss some of the main features
of Indian Buddhist monasticism and of the cultural environment in which the
monasteries existed, before summarizing the intellectual frameworks that shape
the structure of the Training Anthology as a whole. Most of what I will present in
the following sections is relatively elementary in nature. Those readers who are
already familiar both with Buddhist teachings and with what is known about the
religious and cultural environment of first-​millennium India may wish to skip the
rest of this essay and proceed to my discussion of the philosophy of the Training
Anthology.
Before we continue, let me explain how I will cite passages from the text in
these introductory essays. It has become common among scholars to refer to
passages in the Training Anthology by a set of standard page numbers based on
the pagination of the first modern published edition of the text, edited by Cecil
Bendall in the Bibliotheca Buddhica series, vol. 1 (1897–​1902). I have obtained
these page numbers from P. L. Vaidya, who reproduces them on the margin of
his Sanskrit edition, which I have used as the basis of my translation.6 These stan-
dard page numbers can be found in the margins of this book as well, and I will
use them, rather than the page numbers of this book itself, to indicate where the
reader should look to find any given quotation.

The Great Journey to Awakening

Though the different traditions of Buddhism have many values, doctrines and
teachings in common, they do not all share exactly the same religious goal. The

6. See p. vii of PLV. For bibliographic information on this work, see under PLV in the List
of Abbreviations.
 Cultural and Religious Contexts xiii

Pāli Canon of Buddhist scriptures recommends to the vast majority of people a

path whose culmination is the state of an Arhat, or Saint. A Saint is in her very
last life; after her body dies, the cycle of rebirth ceases in the indescribable lib-
eration known as Nirvāṇa. Today, only one form of Buddhism upholds this spiri-
tual aspiration: the Theravāda tradition of Southeast Asia. In the past, however,
there were many Buddhist traditions that taught and recommended a path to
Sainthood—​eighteen, according to one traditional list. Mahāyāna texts sometimes
refer to these traditions using the pejorative term Hinayāna, the “lesser way.” In
other places, though, they use a more neutral term: Śrāvaka-​yāna, the Way of the
Disciples.
Though Sainthood was the goal for almost all followers of the Way of the
Disciples, there was another recognized possibility. For there to be disciples at
all, there had to be a Buddha for them to follow. And Śākyamuni, the histori-
cal Buddha, was not the only Buddha we would ever need. Close to the core
of Buddhist thought is the teaching of impermanence, according to which
everything that begins must eventually end. Buddhism as a social phenom-
enon had a beginning: Śākyamuni’s Awakening under the Bodhi tree, prob-
ably sometime in the fifth century bce. It follows that the Buddhist religion
in its present form will eventually come to an end. But the Dharma, the truth
that the Buddha found, is beginningless and endless. It will eventually be
rediscovered by someone who will again make it available to be practiced
by many aspiring Saints. That someone will be the next Buddha; and there
will be another Buddha after him, and so on. This means that, even from
the point of view of the Way of the Disciples, for a very small proportion of
the religious community, the supreme state of Buddhahood is an appropriate
religious goal.
The Mahāyāna tradition of Buddhism—​ to which, of course, Śāntideva
belonged—​was different from the Way of the Disciples in numerous respects.
Of these, the single difference that was most religiously significant, and per-
haps, historically original, was a difference in spiritual goal. All practitioners
of the Mahāyāna joined that form of the Buddhist religion precisely by arous-
ing the aspiration to become Buddhas—​as Śāntideva often puts it, by “arous-
ing the Awakening Mind” (in Sanskrit, bodhicitta-​utpāda). Śāntideva praises
the value and importance of the Awakening Mind, the motivation to become a
Buddha, in the most exalted terms; he sees the act of arousing the Awakening
Mind for the first time as a decisive juncture in any practitioner’s spiritual
development.
The aspiration to the Awakening of a Buddha, and its relation to other forms
of Buddhist practice, can be understood in terms of three quite different doctri-
nal orientations. In some early Mahāyāna texts, such as the Inquiry of Ugra, the
aspiration to Sainthood is seen not only as a possible path, but as an entirely
xiv Cultural and Religious Contexts

appropriate and legitimate one.7 Other texts accept the possibility of becoming
a Saint, but criticize this goal and those who aspire to it in fairly strong lan-
guage. The Holy Teaching of Vimalakīrti, for example, in a poem recommending
the path to the supreme enlightenment of Buddhahood as against the path to
Sainthood, asks:

Except for some inferior living beings,

Without any intelligence at all,
Is there anyone with any discernment
Who, having heard this teaching,
Would not wish for supreme enlightenment?8

And there is a third way of conceiving of the issue, found in the Lotus Sūtra and
in other texts influenced by it. In this view, there is no possibility of attaining
Nirvāṇa by following the path to Sainthood. The peace experienced by Saints
is a mere illusion; liberation from cyclic existence is possible only through
Buddhahood.
Śāntideva does not make it completely clear which of these views he adopts,
but he does include in his works a number of statements urging respect toward
those who follow Buddhist paths other than the one he recommends. For exam-
ple, at 98, he says: “Blessed One, if from this day forward, we treat people belong-
ing to the Way of the Disciples or the Way of the Solitary Sages with contempt,
thinking ‘We are special; they are not,’ we will have lied to the Tathāgata.” In the
BCA, verse X.50, Śāntideva says: “May Solitary Sages and Disciples be happy,
ever worshipped with great respect by gods, titans, and humans.”9 The belief in
the superiority of the Mahāyāna inculcated by the Holy Teaching of Vimalakīrti,
whether or not it is accurate, may sometimes interact with the human tendency to
arrogance and pride and produce results very much at variance with the humble,
gentle, compassionate ideals taught in all forms of Buddhism.
Though they differ about the viability of the path to Sainthood, Mahāyāna
sūtras agree in teaching that the path to Buddhahood is long and difficult. Thus
at 108 we read the following, presented as an uncontroversial assumption to show
the proper attitude towards those less advanced in their training: “This religion
works in gradual stages; /​No one can attain Awakening in one single lifetime.”
In the mature Indian Mahāyāna, the inconceivably long path to the distant
goal of Buddhahood is seen to have a clear and agreed-​upon structure, in the form

7. See, e.g., Nattier 2007, p. 140.

8. Thurman 2008, p. 72.
9. Crosby and Skilton 1995, p. 142.
 Cultural and Religious Contexts xv

of the Ten Bodhisattva Stages (Skt. bhūmi). Set out in the Sūtra on the Ten Stages,
these steps on the bodhisattva path are then clearly described and analyzed in trea-
tises such as Candrakīrti’s Introduction to the Middle Way (Madhyamaka-​avatāra).10
Śāntideva takes it for granted that his readers will have some familiarity with this
framework.
In understanding the Ten Stages, we should keep in mind that the vast major-
ity of Mahāyāna practitioners have not yet reached them. Attaining even the first of
the Stages is sufficient for the practitioner to be considered a Noble One (Skt. ārya).
All of the Stages involve the possession of spectacular miracle powers, each more
impressive than the ones before. Those who, though aspiring to Buddhahood,
have not yet attained such an exalted level of practice can be referred to as ordinary
people (Skt. pṛthag-​jana).
While still merely an ordinary person, and before entering the Stages, the prac-
titioner must generate an enormous quantity of goodness (Skt. puṇya) and pristine
awareness (Skt. jñāna). This process—​known as the path of preparation—​makes
it possible for the practitioner then to engage in the spiritual practices necessary
to progress further towards Awakening.
The term used to describe the two aspects of the path of preparation has
tripped up some scholars and puzzled others. For example, many translators have
rendered the Tibetan phrase tshogs gnyis as “the two accumulations.” But “accumu-
lation” is not at all a good translation of the underlying Sanskrit word saṃbhāra,
whose meaning is well revealed by its construction: saṃ ‘with’ plus √bhṛ ‘carry’—​
that is, what you carry with you on a journey. So we might translate saṃbhāra as
the “provisions” for the journey; but the resulting image is overly and misleadingly
concrete. I have preferred to render the word as the “equipment” for the journey
to Awakening.
What are these two types of equipment? The practitioner must carry out ac-
tions that generate positive karmic results, or goodness, so as to have access to
the resources and opportunities needed to engage in spiritual practice in this and
future lives. But even a vast quantity of goodness is not enough to make it pos-
sible to transcend cyclic existence. The practitioner must also nourish the develop-
ment of a higher level of awareness. Some Buddhists would illustrate this process
of development by saying that whenever we put down our worries, desires, and
concerns, let things be as they are, and simply drop into the present moment, we
nurture our capacity for pristine awareness.
Both of these processes, of gathering goodness and nurturing pristine
awareness, need to be continued for a very long time and pushed to a very
high level before there is any possibility of making the transition to the first
bodhisattva Stage.

10. See Huntington 1989.

xvi Cultural and Religious Contexts

Yet despite the lofty nature of even the first of the Stages, countless aeons sepa-
rate the attainment of the first Stage from the “meditative absorption like a dia-
mond” (Skt. vajra-​upama-​samādhi) that marks the transition from the tenth Stage
to Buddhahood. These aeons are filled with disciplined and determined practice.
The remarkable scholar Jan Nattier, from whose insights into the Buddhist
tradition I have learned much, claims that this conception of Buddhahood as the
culmination of a cosmically vast and inconceivably demanding course of practice
was not shared by one crucial early Mahāyāna text: the Lotus Sūtra. She writes, “Its
claim that even a child who builds a stūpa out of sand and offers it to the Buddha
will eventually attain Buddhahood himself (i.e., the idea that Buddhahood is easy)
contradicts the dominant early Mahāyāna understanding of the bodhisattva path
as extremely challenging, even grueling, and suited only for ‘the few, the proud,
the brave.’ ”11 Here Nattier refers to a passage that happens to be cited by Śāntideva
at 92–​94; this passage reads, in part:

Those who joyfully make stūpas of the Victor

Out of earth and bricks,
Or who make heaps of dust
As Nirvāṇa stūpas in the forest,
And even those children who, while playing,
Make heaps of sand in various places
As stūpas for those Victors –​
They will all attain Awakening …

Nattier is, of course, correct in pointing out that the strong bodhisattva universal-
ism of the Lotus Sūtra—​the view that Buddhahood is the only liberation from
cyclic existence—​is not widely shared among early Mahāyāna texts. Yet to con-
clude from passages like these that the Lotus Sūtra teaches that Buddhahood is
quickly and easily attained is a serious misinterpretation. The same quotation also
contains this passage:

Those who strike a cymbal or make a single sound,

Or who offer a single flower in worship
To the relics of the Well-​Gone One, even if the relics are small,
And those who have made an image of a Well-​Gone One or painted
one on a wall,
Even if they worship with distracted minds,
Will see ten million Buddhas, one after another.

11. Nattier 2007, p. 7.

 Cultural and Religious Contexts xvii

Given that, according to the scriptures, the appearance of each Buddha in the
world is separated from the next by a minimum of thousands of years, to see ten
million Buddhas would seem to require a long period of spiritual practice!
In fact the conception of the path to Awakening in the Lotus Sūtra is consistent
with that in other Mahāyāna texts. Consider, for example, the story of the night
goddess Samantasattvatrāņojahśrī, from the Array of Stalks Sūtra.12 As the goddess
tells Sudhana,

And do not think it was anyone but I who was the daughter of the king
and queen, who in the time of the teaching left by the buddha Moonlike
Brilliance repaired a ruined image of the Buddha on a lotus. That became a
determining factor for me all the way to supreme enlightenment.13

Yet following that way, even under the influence of the crucial action that made
it possible, includes plenty of further effort and practice; as the goddess says,
“I propitiated all those buddhas, numerous as atoms in the polar mountain, and
honored them with all kinds of offerings. And I listened to their teachings, and
put their instructions into practice.”14 The goddess then goes on to describe her
further spiritual journeys at length and in detail.
Thus, the Buddhahood that is claimed to be the result of even minimal and
trivial-​seeming Buddhist acts is still the result of an extraordinarily long period
of practice. It’s just that the initial religious action, once performed, initiates a
process that, perhaps through many twists and turns, and certainly through great
hardships and difficulties, nevertheless eventually leads in the direction of com-
plete liberation.
The early Mahāyāna conception of Awakening as an inconceivably distant goal
that can be attained only over cosmic timescales, and not at all in this lifetime,
did not continue to characterize that tradition as a whole. Later on it would be
rejected or reinterpreted in both the Zen and Vajrayāna traditions, which taught
methods of practice that were claimed to make it possible to awaken in this very
lifetime.
However the path to Awakening was understood by these various traditions,
though, a particular kind of social institution played a central role for all of them
in making it possible for significant numbers of people to follow that path. This
was the Buddhist monastery. Monasteries provide the background against which

12. Cleary 1993, pp. 1312–​29. Note that Cleary cites a somewhat different version of this name
from the one found at Training Anthology 149.
13. Cleary 1993, p. 1325.
14. Cleary 1993, p. 1325.
xviii Cultural and Religious Contexts

many of the anecdotes and teachings in the Training Anthology unfold. There is
now an extensive literature, drawing on both textual and archaeological evidence,
clarifying how Indian monasteries actually functioned. Most of the discoveries
presented in this literature are not directly relevant to our text; I will present a very
selective, partial, and limited summary of some of the features of the social reality
of Indian Buddhist monasticism with which Śāntideva assumes his readers will
be familiar.

The Indian Buddhist Monastery

as a Social Institution
Some readers may well have been surprised to read that memorization, rather
than meditation, was the primary expectation placed on Nālandā’s students. Yet
this aspect of the religious function of monasteries is reflected in many places in
the Training Anthology itself, especially in ­chapter 11. For Śāntideva, and for the
sūtras he quotes, a monastery is not primarily a place to meditate, but a place to
learn how to meditate. Those who aspire to attain deep states of meditative stabil-
ity are advised, once they understand the techniques they will use and the theory
behind them, to go to the wilderness to practice.
This is not to say that the monks at Nālandā and other Indian Buddhist cen-
ters placed little value on meditation; in fact, the reverse was true. The Sūtra on
Exhortation to Higher Intention, as quoted at Training Anthology 114, shows us an
Indian monastic community divided into three major types of monks: those who
work, those who study, and those who meditate. And the text clearly and emphati-
cally privileges those who study over those who work, and those who meditate over
those who study. The Ākāśagarbha Sūtra, quoted at Training Anthology 64, justifies
the great prestige of meditation practice as follows:

A monk who meditates is a good field. It is not by relying on study and

work—​it is not by any form of study—​that someone gets a share in the
stages of meditative absorption, mnemonic powers, and forbearance, or
becomes worthy of reverence, an appropriate object of gifts. [Those who
have these qualities] bring light to the world; they show people the path.
They lead sentient beings out of the field of karma and the field of reactive
emotions, and set them on the path that leads to Nirvāṇa.

So the practice of meditation was highly valued, but the monastery was not the
primary site for this form of practice. Instead, monks and nuns would often go on
meditation retreats to caves or other remote sites.
The tasks necessary to keep Mahāyāna monasteries clean and functional and to
meet the needs of their practitioners would be performed by worker monks, and
 Cultural and Religious Contexts xix

by all the monks through a system of work assignments. But due to the central
importance of meditation practice to the higher spiritual goals for which the mon-
astery was established, retreat practitioners were exempt from work assignments,
as the Training Anthology tells us at 55.
In the monastery, the monks and nuns would be held to strict standards of
moral discipline and dignified behavior by the monastic code, or Vinaya, and by
specialists in adjudication and enforcement of that code, often called Vinayadhara.
At a biweekly ceremony, monastic practitioners came together to recite all of their
commitments under the monastic code, with a pause between each rule during
which anyone who had broken that rule during the previous two weeks was ex-
pected to confess. The assembled monks, led by the Vinaya specialists, would then
determine the penalties to be imposed on the offenders.
Of these penalties, the most serious was the declaration that a monk or nun
had committed an “offense entailing defeat” (Skt. pārājika) and thus was asaṃvāsa,
“not in communion” or “expelled.” Scholars assumed for a long time that to be
“not in communion” meant that the individual was no longer a Buddhist monas-
tic and could no longer function as such in any Buddhist community anywhere.
Shayne Clarke, however, has discovered evidence suggesting that an asaṃvāsa
monk might, at least in some contexts, merely have been expelled from the par-
ticular monastery in which he had committed the offence, rather than from the
religious community as a whole—​or perhaps even not expelled, but relegated to
a permanently lower status within that community.15 Short of being declared not
in communion, monks might be consigned to different kinds of probationary or
second-​class status, or could receive various minor sanctions within the commu-
nity for corresponding violations.
Buddhist monks wanted the system of internal discipline within the religious
community to be the only one with jurisdiction over them. Several passages in
Chapter 4, including a verse by Śāntideva at page 66, forbid secular rulers to dis-
cipline monks who behave improperly. The verse describes the following as “root
downfalls” for rulers:

Even if a monk is immoral,

Stealing his saffron robe, or beating him,
Having him thrown in prison,
Or forcing him to become a layman …

These teachings can plausibly be read as attempts to persuade political leaders

to concede to monastic disciplinarians a kind of exclusive ecclesiastical jurisdic-
tion over the ordained, similar to that which existed in many regions of medieval

15. See Clarke 2009.

xx Cultural and Religious Contexts

Europe. Under such an arrangement, the ordained persons could not be pros-
ecuted by the king’s courts; they would be punished for transgressions only by the
religious community. Conflicts about this issue between the Catholic Church and
various western European rulers were a major source of controversy during the
Middle Ages. For example, Archbishop Becket’s long quarrel with King Henry II,
which would lead eventually to Becket’s death at the hands of Henry’s knights,
was largely about whether royal or ecclesiastical courts could have jurisdiction
over crimes committed by men in holy orders.16 Exclusive ecclesiastical jurisdic-
tion over clerics survived in a few places until remarkably late. In Poland, Catholic
priests had immunity from state prosecution as late as 1925.17
Whether a system of this type was actually in force in any given Indian state is
another question. Indian Buddhist institutions were clearly in a far weaker posi-
tion vis-​à-​vis state authority than the Catholic Church was at the time when it had a
monopoly over western Europe. It is unlikely that the Indian Buddhist institutions
were able to extract such a substantial concession from very many Indian rulers.
The Training Anthology’s attempt to discourage state punishment of erring
monks is complemented by an attempt to induce in the whole Buddhist popula-
tion a wholly uncritical attitude of devotion towards those high-​status monastics
who take on the role of teaching Buddhist doctrine. This norm is driven home
repetitively and with considerable rhetorical intensity at 96:

Those who find fault with the Dharma teacher’s way of life are reject-
ing the Dharma. Those who say “The Dharma teacher’s spiritual accom-
plishments are not completely perfect” are rejecting the holy Dharma …
Any monk or nun, Buddhist layman or laywoman, who thinks or says
“The Dharma teacher is this” or “is like this,” is rejecting all of the holy
Dharma.

Skeptical readers might ask whether these exhortations might be driven by ig-
noble motives of institutional self-​protection. Doubters might also point out that
similar norms in the Catholic Church played a crucial role in making possible the
scandals that have recently racked that institution.
A more sympathetic reading of the intention of these passages would be that
those who have put the teachings of the Buddha into practice and tasted the ben-
efits that flow from those teachings will naturally have deep-​rooted feelings of re-
spect and gratitude towards those who transmitted the teachings to them. Such an
attitude of respect and gratitude would stop practitioners from lightly pointing out

16. See, e.g., Pain 1964, pp. 89–​96.

17. Davies 2005, p. 311.
 Cultural and Religious Contexts xxi

the shortcomings of their teachers. Conversely, being quick to carp and criticize
would be an indication of a failure to appreciate the value of the teachings.
The kind of monastic teacher at issue in the passage from 96, called in Sanskrit
a dharma-​bhāṇaka, would have been involved in giving sermons to large audi-
ences of monks, nuns, and, often, laypeople. More direct and personal instruction
was also available, though, and played a quite central role in monastic training.
Each newly ordained practitioner in an Indian Buddhist monastery would be as-
signed to work with two teachers, known as the student’s ācārya and upādhyāya.
The Training Anthology repeatedly refers to the close relationships that would de-
velop in this kind of educational context, and to the great respect students were
expected to show towards these teachers.
It is not entirely clear what the differences between the roles of ācārya and
upādhyāya were. The Pāli-​English Dictionary, commenting on the Pāli equivalents
of these words, refers to “the ācariya being only the deputy or substitute of the
upajjhāya.”18 The great Theravādin writer Buddhaghosa, on the other hand, tells
us that the ācariya was responsible for instructing the student in those aspects of
the Buddha’s Dharma that could be conveyed through verbal teachings, whereas
the upādhyāya had the task of examining the student’s good and bad behavior and
guiding him onto the right path.19
So how should we translate the compound ācārya-​upādhyāya, found sev-
eral times in the Training Anthology? The interpretation of the Pāli-​English
Dictionary might justify some such translation as “teachers and assistant
teachers,” whereas the interpretation of Buddhaghosa would underly the more
common rendering, “teachers and preceptors.” Yet since the term “preceptor”
is archaic, and the idea of respect for teachers is one that is applicable outside
a monastic context, I have chosen to render the compound as “spiritual and
academic teachers.” In some respects, this translation also fits the interpreta-
tion of Buddhaghosa.
The great respect and devotion that the Buddhist texts recommended towards
the monastery’s spiritual teachers, when actually present among the surround-
ing laity, may have made it easier for the monks to obtain the material resources
necessary to sustain their own practice. Indian Buddhist monks lived by begging
from the laity; indeed, the Sanskrit word for “monk,” bhikṣu, literally means
“beggar.” From the normative perspective of the texts, and to some extent in
reality, the primary mode of obtaining donations of food and other necessi-
ties was the alms-​round. In the morning, monks would walk slowly through
an inhabited area, carrying their bowls, and providing an opportunity for lay

18. Rhys Davids and Stede 1997, p. 141.

19. Samantapāsādikā vol. I p. 41, quoted in Daswani 2006, pp. 166–​67, and fn. 31 to p. 167.
xxii Cultural and Religious Contexts

people to make gifts to them. Strict and detailed rules, some laid out in the
Training Anthology at 131 and at 268–​269, forbade the monks from asking for
what they needed, or even hinting at what they would like to receive; they were
required to wait for the laity to give on their own initiative. Separately from the
alms-​round, though, major Indian monasteries had land and endowments,
including money to lend at interest, and often received large gifts; from these
resources, they were often able to provide rations of rice and other foodstuffs
to the monks in residence.
Lay people were motivated to make donations in the belief that doing so would
generate goodness that would lead to good fortune in this life and favorable re-
births in the future. Indian Buddhists held that this goodness would depend on
the degree of spiritual development of the recipient; giving to a morally disciplined
monk was better than giving to an immoral monk, and giving to an accomplished
meditator was better than giving to a lowly student. Indeed, a crucial part of this
view was that when a monk or nun reached a high level of spiritual development,
the lay donors who had made their practice possible would benefit greatly. So we
read at 138:

And for those donors and patrons whose gifts are eaten, there is a great
prize, a vast amount of goodness that results from the evolution of that.
Why is this? Because, of all the bases for goodness that consist of ma-
terial things, the highest are those which [support someone in] attaining
the mind of lovingkindness. Kāśyapa, when a monk obtains robes, alms-​
food, {beds, and other necessities} from a donor, a patron, and after con-
suming them, attains immeasurable mental freedom, for that donor, that
patron, an immeasurable result of evolution of goodness may be expected.
Kāśyapa, it is possible that all the great oceans in the three-​million-​fold
world-​realm might dry up, but the flow of goodness from that action could
never dry up.

In this way, the laity and the monastic practitioners within Indian Buddhist re-
ligious communities understood themselves to be mutually interdependent. The
laity would provide gifts of food, clothing, beds and seats, and medicine for the
sick. Through their study, meditation practice, and observance of their commit-
ments, the monks would make it possible for these gifts to generate vast goodness.
And the monks would provide the laity with the “gift of dharma” in the form of
advice and teachings given to the laity at appropriate times.
Given this interdependence with the lay world, the worldview of Buddhist
monks would inevitably be shaped and influenced by the broader surrounding
culture, which was largely non-​Buddhist in outlook. The next section briefly and
selectively discusses a few of the features of Indian culture as a whole that left
their mark on the Training Anthology and its teachings.
 Cultural and Religious Contexts xxiii

The Cultural World of Śāntideva:

Some Major Features
Like all cultures in which the primary means of production is the plow, first-​
millennium North India was a patriarchal society. Most of that society’s wealth,
power, and opportunities were monopolized by high-​status men. Treatises on
customary law exhorted wives to abject, slavish obedience to their husbands and
valorized the dependence of women on male protection.
The widespread practice and great importance of celibacy (Skt. brahma-​carya)
among Indian religious professionals, both Buddhist and non-​Buddhist, led many
of those professionals to join in singing the praises of patriarchy, adding harsh
and strident notes of ascetic misogyny. Confronted with a devout population of
lay women that held them in high regard, but with whom any form of sexual
relations was strictly forbidden, Buddhist monks attempted to use aversion to sup-
press sexual attraction, most notably in the form of the meditation on foulness
(Skt. aśubha-​bhāvanā). Texts inspired by this aversion to women, such as the one
quoted at 81–​82, sometimes strike modern readers as maddening, and sometimes
as funny:

The Buddhas criticized women

For being foul smelling, like dung.
Therefore, only lowly men
Have intercourse with women, who are lowly.

This deplorable tendency to misogyny is balanced, in part, by the remarkably

progressive ideas that women’s spiritual potential is fully equal to that of men and
that the distinction between male and female is merely conventional, not being
established at the ultimate level.20 These teachings, more deeply rooted in the tra-
dition, may today have the potential to support the feminist, egalitarian Buddhism
that is now struggling to be born.
Patriarchy was far from being the only form of unjust hierarchy in Indian soci-
ety. The ancient system of four castes (Skt. varṇa) was a pervasive social reality; its
manifestations are mentioned frequently in the Training Anthology. In fact, during
Śāntideva’s time and for many centuries before it, the caste system had been char-
acterized by a further fragmentation into rigid subcastes (jāti), but these are not
frequently discussed in the Training Anthology.
Brahminical texts such as the Bhagavad Gītā defined the caste system as con-
sisting of Brahmins, hereditary religious professionals; Kṣatriyas, warrior-​nobles;
Vaiśyas, merchants and farmers; and finally, Śūdras, servants and agricultural

20. See, e.g., Thurman 2008, pp. 58–​63.

xxiv Cultural and Religious Contexts

laborers. In this system, valorized by the traditions that would come to be known as
Hinduism, castes were understood to be hereditary and unchangeable. Moreover,
people were expected to marry within their own caste. Outside the system of four
castes were tribal peoples living in wilderness areas. But another group was out-
side the system in a much more problematic way: the untouchables, or Caṇḍālas.
These despised outcasts were required to perform what were seen as the most
degrading tasks, such as cleaning latrines and making leather. Brahmins could
not come into physical contact with them, on pain of becoming ritually impure, a
status which could be removed only through complex ceremonies of purification.
In some parts of South India, even coming into the vicinity of an untouchable was
seen as defiling to a Brahmin, so that the wretched untouchables were expected to
ring bells wherever they went in order to warn of their defiling presence.
Buddhism is sometimes characterized as having rejected the caste system.
This claim is a grave oversimplification that nevertheless contains important ele-
ments of truth. The Bhagavad Gītā upheld the caste system as divinely created and
ordained, but Buddhist texts claimed that it was a social construction, created by
humans. And whereas the Gītā described the system as based on the fundamen-
tally different natures of different types of humans, Buddhism argued for a basic
moral equality among all people.21 With these reservations, Buddhists accepted that
caste was how their society worked, and did not propose to abolish it. Indeed, most
Indian Buddhists seem to have considered themselves as belonging to a caste.
Though Buddhists did not want to get rid of caste, they did want to reform the
system. If humans had created it, then humans could change it. The historical
Buddha seems to have rejected the very idea of a hereditary caste of religious pro-
fessionals;22 so he attempted to redefine the term “Brahmin,” arguing that people
should earn their right to that title through their actions and spiritual accomplish-
ments, not through a mere accident of birth. Moreover, Buddhists were able to see
the needless suffering caused by the concept of untouchability, and they wished to
abolish the category. To the Buddha, no one was untouchable.
Throughout the history of Buddhism in South Asia, the subcontinent was
characterized by considerable religious diversity. For the most part, members of
different Indian religions lived together in harmony and extended to each other
a remarkable degree of toleration, contrasting sharply with the intolerance so
prevalent in Europe and the Middle East after the rise of Christianity and the reign
of Emperor Constantine. However, this toleration was occasionally broken by in-
cidents that leave traces in the texts. The Ākāśagarbha Sūtra, quoted at Training

21. See, e.g., Thompson 2008, p. 85; and the Madhurā Sutta, MN 84, Ñānamoli and Bodhi
1997, pp. 698–​703.
22. See, e.g., the Tevijja Sutta, DN 13, Walshe 1995, p. 192.
 Cultural and Religious Contexts xxv

Anthology 63, gives us a fascinating description, phrased as a prophecy, of a perse-

cution of Buddhism:

Moreover, noble sir, in the future there will be family priests of warrior-​
nobles who are really untouchables; ministers who are untouchables; mili-
tary officers who are untouchables—​fools who think they are wise men, of
great wealth, with lavish lifestyles. They will show the world great meritori-
ous acts of generosity. Drunk with the intoxication of giving things away,
puffed up with the intoxication of pride, they will divide the religious wan-
derers from the warrior-​nobles and the warrior-​nobles from each other.
Through their influence with the warrior-​nobles, they cause the religious
wanderers to be beaten and violently seize their wealth. By this use of vio-
lence, the [ministers] force the monks to offer them personal property, the
property of the religious community, the property of the religious com-
munities in the four directions, stūpa property, or other property stolen by
religious wanderers, as bribes. The untouchables will then give that to the
warrior-​nobles.

One of the most intriguing aspects of this passage is that its denunciation of the
instigators of the persecution is phrased in terms of caste—​indeed, in terms of
untouchability—​despite the rejection of the normative legitimacy of that cat-
egory in most of the Buddhist texts that consider it. Apparently, allegiance to the
Buddhist tradition did not automatically immunize Indians against an attitude
of contempt towards those classified as “untouchables.” On the other hand, the
Training Anthology repeatedly mentions untouchables in a somewhat more posi-
tive light, as models for the humility that bodhisattvas should learn to develop.
One of the most obvious aspects of most of the non-​Buddhist religious tra-
ditions of India, throughout their history, has been their belief in a vast profu-
sion of gods. The Vedic texts that provide our earliest significant evidence about
Indian religion are, for the most part, straightforwardly polytheistic. In addition
to the Vedic gods, people in early India propitiated an immense number of local
gods and spirits, many of them unheard of beyond a single village. By the time of
the Buddha, monotheistic and monistic intellectual currents had begun to flow
through Brahmanical religion; these would eventually come to dominate the phi-
losophy of the tradition we now call Hinduism. According to these new religious
ideas, all of the many gods were manifestations of a single divine principle: either
a personal God, often the great deity Viṣṇu, or an impersonal essence, typically
called Brahman.
While explicitly rejecting the new doctrine of monotheism, Buddhists in India
had no qualms about accepting the existence of many gods, but they mostly as-
signed to these gods a rather marginal and unimpressive role in their religious
xxvi Cultural and Religious Contexts

beliefs and practices. The gods, in Indian Buddhism, are immensely powerful,
knowledgeable, and long-​lived, but they are mortal: they were born and will one
day die. Moreover, they do not know how to find liberation from cyclic existence,
and as such, have no ability to contribute to a practitioner’s salvation from suffer-
ing. The Pāli Canon and the Mahāyāna sūtras portray the Buddha as often inter-
acting in various ways with a variety of gods and spirits. These texts are careful,
though, to make the relative status of these figures quite clear: The Buddha does
not worship the gods. Instead, they worship him. They are prisoners in cyclic
existence, whereas he has transcended the entire cycle. One consequence of this
relatively marginal role played by the gods is that if they happened not to exist,
almost none of the central truth-​claims of the Buddhist tradition would be called
into question by their absence.
Nevertheless, while Indian Buddhists were urged not to worship the gods,
many of them may have aspired to be reborn as gods. The Training Anthology
repeatedly mentions this kind of rebirth as one of the possible results of whole-
some actions. Here there is a basic distinction between three kinds of god-​
realms: those that are part of the world of desire, realms of form, and formless
realms. Divine rebirth within the world of desire, characterized by a profusion
of sensual pleasures, is the karmic result of generosity, moral discipline, and the
practice of the four immeasurable emotions of lovingkindness, compassion, joy,
and equanimity. Rebirth in the form and formless realms, on the other hand, is
the result of very advanced meditation practice that is not accompanied by liberat-
ing insight.
Within this broad threefold categorization are many subtypes of Buddhist
heavens and their divine inhabitants. In the Training Anthology we find references
to such realms as the Tuṣita heaven and the heaven of the thirty-​three gods. The
“gods controlling others’ emanations” are particularly powerful. The title Brahmā,
which Hindus believe names a creator God, one of the three persons of the Hindu
Trinity, was applied by Buddhists to a number of different gods. The Training
Anthology also refers several times to Indra, the leader of the Vedic pantheon,
calling him sometimes by that name and sometimes by such aliases as Śakra and
Kauśika. He is portrayed as leading the gods in their great battles against their
rivals, the titans (Skt. asura).
The Training Anthology thus reflects, in a number of ways, the values and be-
liefs of the surrounding and largely non-​Buddhist culture from which it emerged.
But its primary focus is on the practices that must be followed and on the virtues
that must be developed in order to realize a distinctively Buddhist ethical and
religious ideal. Indeed, as we will shortly see, the structure of the text as a whole
and its division into chapters are based on a complex and interlocking set of clas-
sifications that together present a comprehensive picture of a path of Buddhist
practice.
 Cultural and Religious Contexts xxvii

The Structure of the Training Anthology

Cecil Bendall proposed, and more recent scholars such as Clayton and Mrozik
have agreed, that central features of the structure of the Training Anthology as a
whole are revealed by the fourth of Śāntideva’s root verses:

Giving away to all sentient beings 4

Your body, your possessions, and your good
Gained in the past, present, and future,
And protecting, purifying, and enhancing these.

In this verse, we have a classification of four activities that the practitioner should
carry out with respect to three objects. The multiplication of these categories leads
to twelve main topics to be considered.
In Sanskrit, the four activities are utsarga, translated as “giving away”; rakṣā,
translated as “protecting”; vṛddhi or vardhanam, translated as “enhancing”; and
śuddhi or pariśuddhi, translated as “purifying” or “clearing away.” I regret the fact
that I have been unable to use one consistent translation for the fourth of these
terms and their verbal relatives. Whenever possible I have translated these with
forms and derivatives of English “to purify.” But the attempt of many translators
to create exact parallels to the Sanskrit usages of this term is blocked by a feature
of the semantics of the English verb. The direct object of “to purify” is always that
which becomes pure, that from which impurities are removed. So if you start with
hatred, and you purify that hatred, you end up with pure hatred. To deal with this
problem, I have had to find an expression in English that can take as its direct
object that which is removed; I have chosen “clear away.” Scholarly readers should
be aware of the Sanskrit underlying this expression.
Barbra Clayton has shown how almost all of the Training Anthology’s chapters
are organized in terms of the framework of verse 4.23 Following Bendall, she un-
derstands this structure as based on the three activities of protecting, purifying,
and enhancing; so for Clayton, the framework has only nine components. Ch.
2 begins with a verse about protection and analyzes the topic of protection in
general. A verse at the beginning of ch. 3 defines the “protection of the body” as
“giving up what is harmful”; chs. 3–​5 then go on to discuss how to give up what
is harmful. Ch. 6 focuses directly on other aspects of the protection of the body,
whereas ch. 7 discusses the protection of the other two objects, possessions and
goodness. The chapters from 8 through 13 can all be understood as explaining
various aspects of purification; chs. 14 and 15 then directly address the purification

23. See Clayton 2006, pp. 39–​40.

xxviii Cultural and Religious Contexts

of the three objects. Chs. 16–​19 are all devoted to various aspects of enhancement.
The first part of Ch. 16 explains how to enhance the body and possessions; it then,
along with the following three chapters, addresses ways of enhancing goodness.
Clayton regards ch. 1 as “Introductory,” and therefore as outside the frame-
work. But note that ch. 1 is about generosity and that it discusses the practice of
giving away each of the three objects: the body, possessions, and goodness. Thus,
if we include giving away as one of the activities, as Tibetan scholars would, then
the resulting twelvefold framework would cover every chapter in the Training
Anthology.
There is another and far more famous list that, though a bit less central to the
Training Anthology than the framework in verse 4, also plays a crucial role in the
structure of the text. This is the six perfections, six qualities that a practitioner who
wishes to become a Buddha must cultivate and, eventually, must develop to such
a high degree as to transcend ordinary conceptions of what they involve. This list
occurs many times in the Training Anthology, for instance at 16 and at 37. As trans-
lated in this book, the list of the six perfections is as follows:

1. dāna-​pāramitā, the perfection of generosity

2. śīla-​pāramitā, the perfection of moral discipline
3. kṣānti-​pāramitā, the perfection of patient endurance
4. vīrya-​pāramitā, the perfection of perseverance
5. dhyāna-​pāramitā, the perfection of meditative stability
6. prajñā-​pāramitā, the perfection of wisdom

The titles of c­ hapters 1, 5, 9, and 10 refer directly to a total of four of these six
qualities. A bit less obviously, chs. 12–​13 are devoted to the perfection of meditative
stability, whereas ch. 14 expounds the perfection of wisdom. Meanwhile, of the ten
chapters of the Introduction, four derive their names from the perfections. So the
use of the list of six perfections as a framework for the organization of material is
a thread that unites Śāntideva’s two works.

The Supreme Worship

Śāntideva’s two books also both derive some of their structure from another
shared framework: a well-​established Mahāyāna liturgical format known as the
Supreme Worship (Skt. anuttara-​pūjā). This ritual shapes the structure of chs.
2 and 3 of the Introduction. In the Training Anthology, the Supreme Worship
is most salient in the context of ch. 16. Here Śāntideva recommends that his
readers should practice the Supreme Worship as laid out in a text known as the
Bhadracaryā-​praṇidhāna, the Vow of Good Conduct, which forms part of the
Array of Stalks Sūtra.
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 "All right, Mr. Ireland, all right; there ain't no call for you to go
handling of me; I ain't doing nothing to you. I don't know the lady,
and she don't know me, and I'm only a-trying to see that's it's all
right. You wouldn't do a pore bloke, miss, would you? That fifty'll be
all right?"

Mr. Ireland presented Cooper with a second application of the

previous dose.

"That fifty'll be all right, or rather it'll be all wrong, if you keep me
standing here much longer in the rain."

"You are so hasty, Mr. Ireland, upon my word you are. I'm a-
coming to it, ain't I? Now I'll tell you straight. Tom the Toff, he done
the nicking; and the Baron, he put him up to it." Miss Strong looked
bewildered.

"Tom the Toff? The Baron? Who are they?"

The detective spoke.

"I know who they are, Miss Strong. And I may tell Mr. Cooper that
I've had an eye on those two gentlemen already. What I want to
know is where the diamonds are. They're worth more than the
rogues who took them. Now, Bill, where are the shiners?"

Cooper stretched out both his hands in front of him with a gesture
which was possibly intended to impress Mr. Ireland with a conviction
of his childlike candour.

"That's where it is--just exactly where it is! I don't know where

the shiners are--and that's the trewth! Yet more don't nobody else
seem to know where the shiners are! That's what the row's about!
Seems as how the shiners has hooked theirselves clean off--and ain't
there ructions! So far as I can make out from what I've come across
and put together, don't yer know, it seems as how a cove as they
calls Paxton----"
 "Paxton!"

The name came simultaneously from Ireland and Miss Strong.

"I don't know as that's his name--that's only what I've heard 'em
call him, don't yer know. He's a rare fine toff, a regular out-and-
outer, whatever his name is. It seems as how this here cove as they
calls Paxton has been playing it off on the Toff and the Baron, and
taken the whole blooming lot of sparklers for his own--so far as I
can make out, he has."

"It's a lie!"

This was, of course, Miss Strong. The plain speaking did not seem
to hurt Mr. Cooper's feelings.

"That I don't know nothing at all about; I'm only telling you what
I know. And I do know that they've had a go at this here cove as
they calls Paxton more than once, and more than twice, and that
now they've got him fast enough."

Mr. Ireland twisted Cooper round, so that the electric lamplight

shone on his face.

"What do you mean--they've got him fast enough?"

"I mean what I says, don't I? They got hold of him this evening,
and they've took him to a crib they got, and if he don't hand over
them sparklers they'll murder him as soon as look at him."

Miss Strong turned to the detective with shining eyes.

"Mr. Ireland, save him! What shall we do?"

"Don't put yourself out, Miss Strong. This may turn out to be the
best thing that could have happened to Mr. Paxton. Bill, where's this
crib of theirs?"
 Cooper pushed his hat on to the side of his head.

"I don't know as how I could rightly describe it to you--Brighton

ain't my home, you know. But I daresay I could show it to you if I
was to try."

"Then you shall try. Listen to me, Bill Cooper. If you take me to
this crib of theirs, and if what you say is true, and you don't try to
play any of those tricks of yours, I'll add something of my own to
this lady's fifty, and it'll be the best stroke of business that you ever
did in all your life."

Ireland called a cab. He allowed Daisy to enter first. Cooper got in

after her.

"The police-station, driver--as fast as you can."

Cooper immediately wanted to get out again.

"Where are you a-taking me to? I ain't going to no police-station!"

"Stay where you are, you idiot! So long as you act fairly with me,
I'll act fairly with you. You don't suppose that this is a sort of job
that I can tackle single-handed? I'm going to the station to get help.
Now then, driver, move that horse of yours!"

The cab moved off, leaving Miss Wentworth and Mr. Franklyn to
follow in another if they chose.
CHAPTER XIV
 AMONG THIEVES

Cyril was vaguely conscious of the touch of some one's hand

about the region of his throat; not of a soft or a gentle hand, but of
a clumsy, fumbling, yet resolute paw. Then of something falling on
to him--falling with a splashing sound. He opened his eyes, heavily,
dreamily. He heard a voice, speaking as if from afar.

"Hullo, chummie, so you ain't dead, after all?--leastways, not as

yet you ain't."

The voice was not a musical voice, nor a friendly one. It was
harsh and husky, as if the speaker suffered from a chronic cold. It
was the voice not only of an uneducated man, but of the lowest type
of English-speaking human animal. Cyril shuddered as he heard it.
His eyes closed of their own accord.

"Now then!"

The words were accompanied by a smart, stinging blow on Mr.

Paxton's cheek, a blow from the open palm of an iron-fronted hand.
Severe though it was, Paxton was in such a condition of curious
torpor that it scarcely seemed to stir him. It induced him to open his
eyes again, and that, apparently, was all.

"Look here, chummie, if you're a-going to make a do of it, make a

do of it, and we'll bury you. But if you're going to keep on living,
move yourself, and look alive about it. I ain't going to spend all my
time waiting for you--it's not quite good enough."
 While the flow of words continued, Cyril endeavoured to get the
speaker's focus--to resolve his individuality within the circuit of his
vision. And, by degrees, it began to dawn on him that the man was,
after all, quite close to him: too close, indeed--very much too close.
With a sensation of disgust he realised that the fellow's face was
actually within a few inches of his own--realised, too, what an
unpleasant face it was, and that the man's horrible breath was
mingling with his. It was an evil face, the face of one who had
grown prematurely old. Staring eyes were set in cavernous sockets.
A month's growth of bristles accentuated the animalism of the man's
mouth, and jaw, and chin. His ears stuck out like flappers. His
forehead receded. His scanty, grizzled hair looked as if it had been
shaved off close to his head. Altogether, the man presented a
singularly unpleasant picture. As Paxton grasped, slowly enough,
how unpleasant, he became conscious of a feeling of unconquerable
repulsion.

"Who are you?" he asked.

His voice did not sound to him as if it were his own. It was thin,
and faint like the voice of some puny child.

"Me?" The fellow chuckled--not by any means in a way which was

suggestive of mirth. "I'm the Lord Mayor and Aldermen--that's who I
am."

Paxton's senses were so dulled, and he felt so stupid, that he was

unable to understand, on the instant, if the fellow was in earnest.

"The Lord Mayor and Aldermen--you?"

The man chuckled again.

"Yes; and likewise the Dook of Northumberland and the

Archbishop of Canterbury. Let alone the Queen's own R'yal
physician, what's been specially engaged, regardless of all cost, to
bring you back to life, so as you can be killed again."
 The man's words made Cyril think. Killed again? What had
happened to him already? Where was he? Something seemed
suddenly to clear his brain, and to make him conscious of the
strangeness of his surroundings. He tried to move, and found he
could not.

"What's the matter? Where am I?"

"As for what's the matter, why, there's one or two things as is the
matter. And, as for where you are, why, that's neither here nor
there. If I was you, I wouldn't ask no questions."

Mr. Paxton looked at the speaker keenly. His eyesight was

improving. The sense of accurate perception was returning to him
fast. The clearer his head became, the more acutely he realised that
something beyond the normal seemed to be weighing on his
physical frame, and to clog all the muscles of his body.

"What tricks have you been playing on me?"

The man's huge mouth was distorted by a mirthless grin.

"There you are again, asking of your questions. Ain't I told yer,
not half a moment since, that if I was you I wouldn't? I've only been
having a little game with you, that's all."

The man's tone stirred Paxton to sudden anger. It was all he could
do to prevent himself giving utterance to what, under the
circumstances, would have been tantamount to a burst of childish
petulance. He tried again to move, and immediately became
conscious that at least the upper portion of his body was sopping
wet, and he was lying in what seemed to be a pool of water.

"What's this I'm lying in?"

For answer the man, taking up a pail which had been standing by
his side, dashed its contents full into Cyril's face.
 "That's what you're lying in--about eighteen gallons or so of that;
as nice clean water as ever you swallowed. You see, I've had to give
you a sluicing or two, to liven you up. We didn't want to feel, after
all the trouble we've had to get you, as how we'd lost you."

The water, for which Mr. Paxton had been wholly unprepared, and
which had been hurled at him with considerable force, had gone
right into his eyes and mouth. He had to struggle and gasp for
breath. His convulsive efforts seemed to amuse his assailant not a
little.

"That's right, choke away! A good plucked one you are, from what
I hear. Fond of a bit of a scrap, I'm told. A nice little job they seem
to have had of it a-getting of you here."

As the fellow spoke, the events of the night came back to Cyril in
a sudden rush of memory. His leaving the hotel, flushed with
excitement; the glow of pleasure which had warmed the blood in his
veins at the prospect of meeting Daisy laden with good tidings--he
remembered it all. Remembered, too, how, when he had scarcely
started on his quest, some one, unexpectedly, had come upon him
from behind, and how a cloth had been thrown across his face and
held tightly against his mouth--a wet cloth, saturated with some
sticky, sweet-smelling stuff. And how it had dragged him backwards,
overpowering him all at once with a sense of sickening faintness. He
had some misty recollection, too, of a cab standing close beside him,
and of his being forced into it. But memory carried him no further;
the rest was blank.

He had been kidnapped--that was clear enough; the cloth had

been soaked with chloroform--that also was sufficiently clear. The
after-effects of chloroform explained the uncomfortable feeling
which still prostrated him. But by whom had he been kidnapped?
and why? and how long ago? and where had his captors brought
him?
 He was bound hand and foot--that also was plain. His hands were
drawn behind his back and tied together at the wrists, with painful
tightness, as he was realising better and better every moment. He
had been thrown on his back, so that his whole weight lay on his
arms. What looked like a clothes line had been passed over his body,
fastened to a ring, or something which was beneath him, on the
floor, and then drawn so tightly across his chest that not only was it
impossible for him to move, but it was even hard for him to breathe.
As if such fastenings were not enough, his feet and legs had been
laced together and rendered useless, cords having been wound
round and round him from his ankles to his thighs. A trussed fowl
could not have been more helpless. The wonder was that, confined
in such bonds, he had ever been able to escape the stupefying
effects of the chloroform--even with the aid of his companion's pail
of water.

The room in which he was lying was certainly not an apartment in

any modern house. The floor was bare, and, as he was painfully
conscious, unpleasantly uneven. The ceiling was low and raftered,
and black with smoke. At one end was what resembled a
blacksmith's furnace rather than an ordinary stove. Scattered about
were not only hammers and other tools, but also a variety of other
implements, whose use he did not understand. The place was
lighted by the glowing embers of a fire, which smouldered fitfully
upon the furnace, and also by a lamp which was suspended from the
centre of the raftered ceiling--the glass of which badly needed
cleaning. A heavy deal table stood under the lamp, and this,
together with a wooden chair and a stool or two, was all the
furniture the place contained. How air and ventilation were obtained
Paxton was unable to perceive, and the fumes which seemed to
escape from the furnace were almost stifling in their pungency.

While Paxton had been endeavouring to collect his scattered

senses, so that they might enable him, if possible, to comprehend
his situation, the man with the pail had been eyeing him with a
curious grin.
 Paxton asked himself, as he looked at him, if the man might not
be susceptible to the softening influence of a substantial bribe. He
decided, at any rate, to see if he had not in his constitution such a
thing as a sympathetic spot.

"These ropes are cutting me like knives. If you were to loosen

them a bit you would still have me tied as tight as your heart could
desire. Suppose you were to ease them a trifle."

The fellow shook his head.

"It couldn't be done, not at no price. It's only a-getting of yer

used to what's a-coming--it ain't nothing to what yer going to have,
lor' bless yer, no. The Baron, he says to me, says he, 'Tie 'em tight,'
he says, 'don't let's 'ave no fooling,' he says. 'So as when the Toff's
a-ready to deal with him he'll be in a humbler frame of mind.'"

"The Baron?--the Toff?--who are they?"

"There you are again, a-asking of your questions. If you ask

questions I'll give you another dose from this here pail."

The speaker brandished his pail with a gesture which was

illustrative of his meaning. Paxton felt, as he regarded him, that he
would have given a good round sum to have been able to carry on a
conversation with him on terms of something like equality.

"What's your name?"

"What!"

As, almost unconsciously, still another question escaped Mr.

Paxton's lips, the fellow, moving forward, brandished his pail at
arm's length above his shoulders. Although he expected,
momentarily, that the formidable weapon would be brought down
with merciless force upon his unprotected face and head, Paxton,
looking his assailant steadily in the eyes, showed no signs of
flinching. It was, possibly, this which induced the fellow to change
his mind--for change it he apparently did. He brought the pail back
slowly to its original position.

"Next time you'll get it. I'm dreadful short of temper, I am--can't
stand no crossing. Talk to me about the state of the nation, or the
price of coals, or your mother-in-law, and I'm with you, but
questions I bar."

Paxton tried to summon up a smile.

"Under different circumstances I should be happy to discuss with

you the political and other tendencies of the age, but just at present,
for conversation on such an exalted plane, the conditions can
scarcely be called auspicious."

Up went the pail once more.

"None of your sauce for me, or you'll get it. Now, what's the
matter?"

The matter was that Paxton had closed his eyes and compressed
his lips, and that a suggestive pallor had come into his cheeks. The
pain of his ligatures was rapidly becoming so excruciating that it was
as much as he could do to bear it and keep his senses.

"These ropes of yours cut like knives," he murmured.

Instead of being moved to pity, the fellow was moved to smile.

"Like another pailful--hot or cold?"

It was a moment or two before Paxton could trust himself to

speak. When he did it was once more with the ghastly semblance of
a smile.

"What a pleasant sort of man you seem to be!"

 "I am that for certain sure."

"What would you say to a five-pound note?"

"Thank you; I've got one or two of them already. Took 'em out of
your pocket, as you didn't seem to have no use for them yourself."

While Paxton was endeavouring, seemingly, to grasp the full

meaning of this agreeable piece of information, a door at the further
end of the room was opened and some one else came in. Paxton
turned his head to see who it was. It was with a sense of shock, and
yet, with a consciousness that it was, after all, what he might have
expected, that he perceived that the newcomer was the ill-favoured
associate of Mr. Lawrence, towards whom he had felt at first sight so
strong an aversion. He was attired precisely as he had been when
Paxton had seen him last--in the long, loose, black overcoat and the
amazingly high tall hat. As he stood peering across the room, he
looked like some grotesque familiar spirit come straight from
shadowland.

"Well, my Skittles, and is our good friend still alive--eh?"

The man with the pail thus addressed as Skittles grinned at

Paxton as he answered.

"The blokey's all right. Him and me's been having a little friendly
talk together."

"Is that so? I hope, my Skittles, you have been giving Mr. Paxton
a little good advice?"

The man with the curious foreign accent came, and, standing by
Cyril's side, glowered down on him like some uncanny creature of
evil origin.

"Well, Mr. Paxton, I am very glad to see you, sir, underneath this
humble roof--eh?"
 Paxton looked up at him as steadily as the pain which he was
enduring would permit.

"I don't know your name, sir, or who you are, but I must request
you to give me, if you can, an explanation of this extraordinary
outrage to which I have been subjected?"

"Outrage--eh? You have been subjected to outrage? Alas! It is

hard, Mr. Paxton, that a man of your character should be subjected
to outrage--not true--eh?"

"You'll be called to account for this, for that you may take my
word. My absence has been discovered long ago, and I have friends
who will leave no stone unturned till they have tracked you to your
lair."

"Those friends of yours, Mr. Paxton, will be very clever if they

track me to what you call my lair until it is too late--for you! You
have my promise. Before that time, if you are not very careful, you
will be beyond the reach of help."

"At any rate I shall have the pleasure of knowing that, for your
share in the transaction, you'll be hanged."

The German-American shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, perhaps. That is likely, anyhow. It is my experience that,

sooner or later, one has to pay for one's little amusements, as, Mr.
Paxton, you are now to find."

Paxton's lips curled. There was something about the speaker's

manner--in his voice, with its continual suggestion of a sneer, about
his whole appearance--which filled him with a sense of loathing to
which he would have found it impossible to give utterance in words.
He felt as one might feel who is brought into involuntary contact
with an unclean animal.
 "I don't know if you are endeavouring to frighten me. Surely you
are aware that I am not to be terrified by threats?"

"With threats? Oh, no! I do not wish to frighten you with threats.
That I will make you afraid, is true, but it will not be with threats--I
am not so foolish. You think that nothing will make you afraid? Mr.
Paxton, I have seen many men like that. When a man is fresh and
strong, and can defend himself, and still has hopes, it takes a deal,
perhaps, to make him afraid. But when a man is helpless, and is in
the hands of those who care not what he suffers, and he has
undergone a little course of scientific treatment, there comes a time
when he is afraid--oh, yes! As you will see. Why, Mr. Paxton, what is
the matter with you? You look as if you were afraid already."

Paxton's eyes were closed, involuntarily. Beads of sweat stood

upon his brow. The muscles of his face seemed to be convulsed. It
was a second or two before he was able to speak.

"These cords are killing me. Tell that friend of yours to loosen
them."

"Loosen them? Why, certainly. Why not? My Skittles, loosen the

cords which give Mr. Paxton so much annoyance--at once."

Skittles looked at the Baron with doubtful eyes.

"Do you mean it, Baron?"

The Baron--as the German-American was designated by Skittles--

burst, without the slightest warning, into a frenzy of rage, which,
although it was suggested rather than expressed, seemed to wither
Skittles, root and branch, as if it had been a stroke of lightning.

"Mean it?--you idiot! How dare you ask if I mean it? Do as I say!"

Skittles lost no time in doing his best to appease the other's

anger.
 "You needn't be nasty, Baron. I never meant no harm. You don't
always mean just exactly what you says--and that's the truth,
Baron."

"Never you mind what I mean at other times--this time I mean

what I say. Untie the ropes which fasten Mr. Paxton to the floor--the
ropes about his hands and his feet, they are nothing, they will do
very well where they are. A change of position will do him good--eh?
Lift him up on to his feet, and stand him in the corner against the
wall."

Skittles did as he was bid--at any rate, to the extent of

unfastening the cords, which, as it were, nailed Paxton to the
ground. The relief was so sudden, and, at the same time, so violent,
that before he knew it, he had fainted. Fortunately, his senses did
not forsake him long. He returned to consciousness just in time to
hear the Baron--

"My Skittles, you get a pail of boiling water, so hot it will bring the
skin right off him. It's the finest thing in the world to bring a man
out of a faint--you try it, quick, you will see."

Paxton interposed, feebly--just in time to prevent the drastic

prescription being given actual effect.

"You needn't put your friend to so much trouble. I must apologise

for going off. I was never guilty of such a thing before. But if you
had felt as I felt you might have fainted too."

"That is so--not a doubt of it. And yet, Mr. Paxton, a little time
ago, if I had told you that just because a cord was untied you would
faint, like a silly woman, you would have laughed at me. It is the
same with fear. You think that nothing will make you afraid. My
friends, and myself, we will show you. We will make you so afraid
that, even if you escape with your life, and live another fifty years,
you will carry your fear with you always--always--to the grave."
 The Baron rubbed his long, thin, yellow hands together.

"Now, my Skittles, you will lift Mr. Paxton on to his feet, and you
will stand him in the corner there, against the wall. He is very well
again, in the best of health, and in the best of spirits, eh? Our
friend"--there was a perceptible pause before the name was uttered-
-"Lawrence--you know Mr. Lawrence, my Skittles, very well--is not
yet ready to talk to our good friend Mr. Paxton--no, not quite, yet.
So, till he is ready, we must keep Mr. Paxton well amused, is that not
so, my Skittles, eh?"

Acting under the Baron's instructions, Skittles picked up Mr.

Paxton as if he had been a child, and--although he staggered
beneath the burden--carried him to the corner indicated by the
other. When Cyril had been placed to the Baron's--if not to his own--
satisfaction, the Baron produced from his hip-pocket a revolver. No
toy affair such as one sees in England, but the sort of article which is
found, and commonly carried, in certain of the Western states of
America, and which thereabouts is called, with considerable
propriety, a gun. This really deadly weapon the Baron proceeded to
fondle in a fashion which suggested that, after all, he actually had in
his heart a tenderness for something.

"Now, my Skittles, it is some time since I have had practice with

my revolver; I am going to have a little practice now. I fear my hand
may be a trifle out; it is necessary that a man in my position should
always keep it in--eh? Mr. Paxton, I am going to amuse you very
much indeed. I am a pretty fair shot--that is so. If you keep quite
still--very, very still indeed--I do not think that I shall hit you,
perhaps not. But, if you move ever so little, by just that little you will
be hit. It will not be my fault, it will be yours, you see. I am going to
singe the lobe of your left ear. Ready! Fire!"

The Baron fired.

 Although released from actual bondage to the floor, Mr. Paxton
was still, to all intents and purposes, completely helpless. His hands
remained pinioned. Cords were wound round his legs so many times,
and were drawn so tightly, that the circulation was impeded, and
without support he was incapable of standing up straight on his own
feet. He had no option but to confront the ingenious Baron, and to
suffer him to play what tricks with him he pleased. Whatever he felt
he suffered no signs of unwillingness to escape him. He looked his
tormentor in the face as unflinchingly as if the weapon which he
held had been a popgun. Scarcely had the shot been fired than, in
one sense, if not in another, he gave the "shootist" as good as he
had sent.

"You appear to be a braggart as well as a bully. You can't shoot a

bit. That landed a good half-inch wide of my left ear."

"Did I not say I fear my hand is a little out? Now it is your right
ear which I will make to tingle. Ready! Fire!"

Again the Baron fired.

So far as one was able to perceive, his victim did not move by so
much as a hair's breadth, yet there was a splash of blood upon his
cheek.

"Now I will try to put a bullet into the wall quite close to the right
side of your throat. Ready! Fire!"
CHAPTER XV
 PUT TO THE QUESTION

The noise of the report had not yet died away, and the cloud of
smoke got wholly clear of the muzzle of the Baron's revolver, when
the door of the room was thrown open to admit some one, who in
low, clear, even, authoritative tones, asked a question--

"Who's making this noise?"

Whether the Baron's aim had this time been truer there was, as
yet, no evidence to show. Cyril had, at any rate, escaped uninjured.
At the sound of the voice, which, although it had been heard by him
so seldom, had already become too familiar, he glanced round
towards the questioner. It was Lawrence. He stood just inside the
door, looking from the Baron to the involuntary target of that
gentleman's little pleasantries. Close behind him were two men,
whom Paxton immediately recognised as old acquaintances; the one
was the individual who had taken a bed for the night at Makell's
Hotel, who had shown such a pertinacious interest in his affairs, and
whom he had afterwards suspected of an attempt to effect an
entrance through his bedroom door; the second was the person
who, the next morning, had followed him to the Central Station, and
of whose too eager attentions he had rid himself by summoning a
constable.

In the looks which Lawrence directed towards the Baron there

seemed to be something both of reproach and of contempt.

"Pray, what is the meaning of this?"

 The Baron made a movement in the air with one hand, then
pointed with it to the revolver which he held in the other.

"My friend, it is only a little practice which I have--that is all! It is

necessary that I keep my hand well in--not so--eh?"

Lawrence's voice as he replied was alive with quiet scorn.

"I would suggest that you should choose a more appropriate

occasion on which to indulge yourself in what you call a little
practice. Did it not occur to you, to speak of nothing else, that it
might be as well to make as little, instead of as much, noise as you
conveniently could?" He went and stood in front of Mr. Paxton. "I am
sorry, sir, that we should meet again under such disagreeable
conditions; but, as you are aware, the responsibility for what has
occurred cannot, justly, be laid either on my friends or on myself."

Paxton's reply was curt. The abrupt, staccato, contemptuous tone

in which he spoke was in striking contrast to Lawrence's mellifluous
murmurings.

"I am aware of nothing of the sort."

Lawrence moved his head with a slight gesture of easy courtesy,

which might, or might not, have been significative of his
acquiescence in the other's point-blank contradiction.

"What is that upon your face--blood?"

"That is proof positive of your bungling friend's bad markmanship.

He would, probably, have presented me with a few further proofs of
his incapacity had you postponed your arrival for a few minutes
longer."

Lawrence repeated his former courteous inclination.

 "My friend is a man of an unusual humour. Apt, occasionally, like
the rest of us, to rate his capacities beyond their strict deserts." He
turned to the two men who had come with him into the room. "Untie
Mr. Paxton's legs." Then back again to Cyril. "I regret, sir, that it is
impossible for me, at the moment, to extend the same freedom to
your arms and hands. But it is my sincerest trust that, in a very few
minutes, we may understand each other so completely as to place it
in my power to restore you, without unnecessary delay, to that
position in society from which you have been withdrawn."

Although Paxton was silent outwardly, his looks were eloquent of

the feelings with which he regarded the other's well-turned phrases.
When his legs had been freed, the two newcomers, standing on
either side of him as if they had been policemen, urged him forward,
until he stood in front of the heavy table which occupied the centre
of the room. On the other side of the table Lawrence had already
seated himself on the only chair which the place contained. The
Baron, still holding his revolver, had perched himself on a corner of
the table itself. Lawrence, leaning a little forward on his chair, with
one arm resting on the table, never lost his bearing of apparent
impartiality, and, while he spoke with an air of quiet decision, never
showed signs of a ruffled temper.

"I have already apologised to you, sir, for the discomforts which
you may have endured; but, as you are aware, those discomforts
you have brought upon yourself."

Paxton's lips curled, but he held his peace.

"My friends and I are in the position of men who make war upon
society. As is the case in all wars, occasions arise on which
exceptional measures have to be taken which, though unpleasant for
all the parties chiefly concerned, are inevitable. You are an example
of such an occasion."

Cyril's reply was sufficiently scornful.

 "You don't suppose that your wind-bag phrases hoodwink me.
You're a scoundrel; and, in consort with other scoundrels, you have
taken advantage of a gentleman. I prefer to put the matter into plain
English."

To this little outburst Lawrence paid no attention. For all the

notice he seemed to take of them the contemptuous words might
have remained unuttered.

"It is within your knowledge that, in pursuit of my profession, I

appropriated the Duchess of Datchet's diamonds. I do not wish to
impute to you, Mr. Paxton, acts of which you may have not been
guilty; therefore I say that I think it possible it was by accident you
acquired that piece of information. It is in the same spirit of leniency
that I add that, at the refreshment-rooms at the Central Station, it
was by mistake that you took my Gladstone bag in exchange for
your own. I presume that at this time of day you do not propose to
deny that such an exchange was effected. In that Gladstone bag of
mine, which you took away with you by mistake instead of your
own, as you know, were the Datchet diamonds. What I have now to
ask you to do--and I desire, I assure you, Mr. Paxton, to ask you
with all possible courtesy--is to return those diamonds at once to
me, their rightful owner."

"By what process of reasoning do you make out that you are the
rightful owner of the Datchet diamonds?"

"By right of conquest."

"Right of conquest! Then, following your own line of reasoning,

even taking it for granted that all you have chosen to say of me is
correct, I in my turn have become their rightful owner."

"Precisely. But the crux of the position is this. If the duchess could
get me into her power she would stick at nothing to extort from me
the restitution of the stones. In the same way, now that I have you
in my power, I intend to stick at nothing which will induce their
restoration from you."

"The difference between you and myself is, shortly, this--you are
a thief, and I am an honest man."

"Pray, Mr. Paxton, what is your standard of honesty? If you were

indeed the kind of honest man that you would appear to wish us to
believe you are, you would at once have handed the stones to the
police, or even have restored them to the duchess."

"How do you know that I have not?"

"I will tell you how I know. If you had been so honest there would
not be in existence now a warrant to arrest you on the charge of
stealing them. Things being as they are, it happens that there is."

"It's an impudent lie!"

"Possibly you may believe it to be an impudent lie; still, it is the

truth. A warrant for your arrest has been granted to-day to your
friend Ireland, of Scotland Yard, on his sworn information. I merely
mention this as evidence that you have not handed the stones to the
police, that you have not returned them to the duchess, but that you
have retained them in your possession with a view of using them for
purposes of your own, and that, therefore, your standard of morality
is about on a level with ours."

"What you say is, from first to last, a tissue of lies. You hound!
You know that! Although it is a case of five to one, my hands are
tied, and so it's safe to use what words you please."

Lawrence, coming closer to the table, leaned both his elbows on

the board, and crossed his arms in front of him.

"It seems, Mr. Paxton, as if you, a man of whose existence I was

unaware until the other day, have set yourself to disappoint me in
two of the biggest bids I have ever made for fortune and for
happiness. I am a thief. It has never been made sufficiently plain to
me that the difference between theft and speculation is such a vital
one as to clearly establish the superiority of the one over the other.
But even a thief is human--sometimes very human. I own I am. And
it chances that, for some days now, I had begun to dream dreams of
a most amusing kind--dreams of love--yes, and dreams of marriage.
I chanced to meet a certain lady--I do not think, Mr. Paxton, that I
need name any names?"

"It is a matter of indifference to me whether you do so or not."

"Thank you, very much. With this certain lady I found myself in
love. I dreamt dreams of her--from which dreams I have recently
arisen. A new something came into my life. I even ventured, in my
new-learned presumption, to ask her would she marry me. Then for
the first time I learned that what I asked for already had been given,
that what I so longed for already was your own. It is strange how
much one suffers from so small a thing. You'd not believe it. In our
first fall, then, it seems that you have thrown me.

"Then there is this business of the Datchet jewels. A man of your

experience cannot suppose that an affair of this magnitude can be
arranged and finished in a moment. It needs time, and careful
planning, and other things to boot. I speak as one who knows.
Suppose you planned some big haul upon the Stock Exchange,
collected your resources, awaited the propitious second, and, when
it came, brought off your coup. If in that triumphant moment some
perfect stranger were to carry off, from underneath your very nose,
the spoils for which you had risked so much, and which you
regarded, and rightly regarded, as your own, what would your
feelings be towards such an one? Would you not feel, at least, that
you would like to have his blood? If you have sufficient imagination
to enable you to place yourself in such a situation, you will then be
able to dimly realise what, at the present moment, our feelings are
towards you."
 Paxton's voice, when he spoke, was, if possible, more
contemptuous than ever.

"I care nothing for your feelings."

"Precisely; and, by imparting to us that information, you make our

task much easier. We, like others, can fight for our own hands--and
we intend to. You see, Mr. Paxton, that, although I did the actual
conveying of the diamonds, and therefore the major share of the
spoil is mine, there were others concerned in the affair as well as
myself, and they naturally regard themselves as being entitled to a
share of the profits. You have, consequently, others to deal with as
well as myself, for we, to be plain, are many. And our desire is that
you should understand precisely what it is we wish to do. The first
thing which we wish you to do is to tell us where, at the present
moment, the diamonds are?"

"Then I won't, even supposing that I know!"

Lawrence went on without seeming to pay any heed to Cyril's

unqualified refusal--

"The second thing which we wish you to do--supposing you to

have placed the diamonds where it will be difficult for us to reach
them--is to give us an authority which will be sufficient to enable us
to demand, as your agents, if you choose, that the diamonds be
handed to us without unnecessary delay."

"I will do nothing of the kind."

Again Lawrence seemed to allow the refusal to go unheeded.

"And we would like you to understand that, so soon as the

diamonds are restored to us, you will be free to go, and to do, and
say exactly what you please, but that you will continue to be our
prisoner till they are."
 "If my freedom is dependent on my fulfilling the conditions which
you would seek to impose, I shall continue to be what you call your
prisoner until I die; but, as it happens, my freedom is contingent on
nothing of the sort, as you will find."

"We would desire, also, Mr. Paxton, that you should be under no
delusion. It is far from being our intention that what, as you put it,
we call your imprisonment should be a period of pleasant probation;
on the contrary, we intend to make it as uncomfortable as we can--
which, believe me, is saying not a little."

"That, while I am at your mercy, you will behave in a cowardly

and brutal fashion I have no doubt whatever."

"More. We have no greater desire than you have yourself that you
should continue to be, what we call, our prisoner. With a view,
therefore, to shortening the duration of your imprisonment we shall
leave no stone unturned--even if we have to resort to all the tortures
of the Spanish Inquisition--to extort from you the things which we
require."

Paxton laughed--shortly, dryly, scornfully.

"I don't know if your intention is to be impressive; if it is, I give

you my word that you don't impress me a little bit. Your attempts to
wrap up your rascality in fine-sounding phrases strike me as being
typical of the sort of man you are."

"Mr. Paxton, before we come to actual business, let me advise

you--and, believe me, in this case my advice is quite unprejudiced--
not to treat us to any more of this kind of talk! Can't you realise that
it is not for counters we are playing? That men of our sort, in our
position, are not likely to stick at trifles? That it is a case of head you
lose, tails we win--for, while it is obviously a fact that we have
nothing we can lose, it is equally certainly a fact that there is
nothing you can gain? So learn wisdom; be wise in time; endeavour
to be what I would venture to call conformable. Be so good as to
give me your close attention. I should be extremely obliged, Mr.
Paxton, if you would give me an answer to the question which I am
about to put to you. Where, at the present moment, are the Datchet
diamonds?"

"I would not tell you even if I knew."

"You do know. On that point there can be no room for doubt. We

mean to know, too, before we've done with you. Is that your final
answer?"

"It is."

"Think again."

"Why should I think?"

"For many reasons. I will give still another chance; I will repeat
my question. Before you commit yourself to a reply, do consider. Tell
me where, at the present moment, are the Datchet diamonds?"

"That I will never tell you."

Mr. Lawrence made a movement with his hands which denoted

disapproval.

"Since you appear to be impervious to one sort of reasoning,

perhaps you may be more amenable to another kind. We will do our
best to make you." Mr. Lawrence turned to the man who had been
addressed as Skittles. "Be so good as to put a branding-iron into the
fire, the one on which there is the word 'thief.'"
CHAPTER XVI
 A MODERN INSTANCE OF AN
ANCIENT PRACTICE

Skittles, when he had, apparently with an effort, mastered the

nature of Mr. Lawrence's instructions, grinned from ear to ear.

He went to where a number of iron rods with broad heads were

heaped together on a shelf. They were branding-irons. Selecting one
of these, he thrust it into the heart of the fire which glowed on the
blacksmith's furnace. He heaped fuel on to the fire. After a
movement or two of the bellows it became a roaring blaze.

Lawrence turned to Mr. Paxton--

"Still once more--are you disposed to tell us where the Datchet

diamonds are?"

"No."

Lawrence smiled. He addressed himself to the two men who held

Paxton's arms.

"Hold him tight. Now, Skittles, bring that iron of yours. Burn a
hole under Mr. Paxton's right shoulder-blade, through his clothing."

Skittles again moved the iron from the fire. It had become nearly
white. He regarded it for a moment with a critical eye. Then,
advancing with it held at arm's length in front of him, he took up his
position at Mr. Paxton's back.

"Don't let him go. Now!"

 Skittles thrust the flaming iron towards Paxton's shoulder-blade.

There was a smell of burning cloth. For a second Paxton stood

like a statue; then, leaping right off his feet, he gave first a forward
and then a backward bound, displaying as he did so so much vigour
that, although his guardians retained their hold, Skittles, apparently,
was taken unawares. Possibly, with an artist's pride in good
workmanship, he had been so much engrossed by the anxiety to
carry out the commission with which he had been entrusted
thoroughly well, that he was unprepared for interruptions. However
that may have been, when Paxton moved his grip on the iron
seemed to suddenly loosen, so that, losing for the moment complete
control of it, it fell down between Paxton's arms, the red-hot brand
at the further end resting on his pinioned wrists. A cry as of a
wounded animal, which he was totally unable to repress, came from
his lips--a cry half of rage, half of agony. But the red-hot iron, while
inflicting on him frightful pain, had at least done him one good
service; if it had burned his flesh, it had also burned the cords which
bound his wrists together. Exerting, in his passion and his agony, the
strength of half a dozen men, he severed the scorched strands of
rope as if they had been straws, and, hurling from him the two
fellows who held his arms--who had expected nothing so little as to
find his arms unbound--he stood before them, so far as his limbs
were concerned, free.

Once lost, he was not to be easily regained. He was quicker in his

movements than Skittles had ever been, and the latter's quickest
days were long since done. Dropping on to one knee, plunging
forward under Skittles' guard, he butted that gentleman with his
head full in the stomach, and had snatched the iron by its handle
from his astonished hands before he had fully realised what was
happening. Springing with the rapidity of a jack-in-the-box, to his
feet again, he brought the dreadful weapon down heavily on Skittles'
head. With a groan of agony, that gentleman dropped like a log on
to the floor.
 Armed with the heated iron--a kind of article with which no one
would care to come into close contact--Paxton turned and faced the
others, who as yet did not seem fully alive to what had taken place.

"Now, you brutes! I may be bested in the end, but I'll be even
with one or two of you before I am!"

Lawrence stood up.

"Will you? That still remains to be seen. Shoot him, Baron!"

The Baron fired. Either his marksmanship, or his nerve, or his

something, was at fault, for he missed. Before he could fire again
Paxton's weapon had crashed through his grotesquely tall high hat,
and apparently through his skull as well, for he too went headlong to
the floor. Quick as lightning as he fell Cyril took his revolver from his
nerveless grasp. Lawrence and his two colleagues were--a little late
in the day, perhaps--making for him. But when they saw how he was
doubly armed and his determined front they paused--and therein
showed discretion.

The tables had turned. The fortune of war had gone over to what
hitherto had been distinctly the losing side. So at least Paxton
appeared to think.

"Now, the question is, what shall I do with you? Shall I shoot all
three of you--or shall I brain one of you with this pretty little play-
thing, which I have literally snatched from the burning?"

If one could draw deductions from the manner in which he bore

himself, Lawrence never for an instant lost his presence of mind.
When he spoke it was in the easy, quiet tones which he had used
throughout.

"You move too fast, forgetting two things--one, that you are
caught here like a rat in a trap, so that, unless we choose to let you,
you cannot get out of this place alive; the other, that I have only to
summon assistance to overwhelm you with the mere force of
numbers."

"Then why don't you summon assistance, if you are so sure that it
will come at your bidding?"

"I intend to summon assistance when I choose."

"I give you warning that, if you move so much as a muscle in an

attempt to attract the attention of any other of your associates who
may be about the place, I will shoot you!"

For answer Lawrence smiled. Suddenly, lifting his hand, he put

two fingers to his lips and blew a loud, shrill, peculiar whistle.
Simultaneously Paxton raised the revolver, and, pointing it straight at
the other's head, he pulled the trigger.

And that was all. No result ensued. There was the sound of a
click--and nothing more. His face darkened. A second time he pulled
the trigger; again without result. Mr. Lawrence's smile became more
pronounced. His tone was one of gentle badinage.

"I thought so. You see, you will move too quickly. It is a six-
chambered revolver. I was aware that my highly esteemed friend
had discharged two barrels earlier in the evening, and had not
reloaded. I knew that he had taken two, if not three, little pops at
you, and had had another little pop just now. If, therefore, he had
not recharged in my absence the barrels I had seen him empty, and
had taken, before I interrupted him, three little pops at you, the
revolver must be empty. I thought the risk worth taking, and I took
it."

While Cyril seemed to hesitate as to what to do next, Lawrence,

raising his fingers to his lips, blew another cat-call.

While the shrill discord still travelled through the air, Paxton
sprang towards him. Stepping back, the whistler, picking up the
wooden chair on which he had been sitting, dashed it in his
assailant's face. And at the same moment the two men who had
hitherto remained passive spectators of what had been, practically,
an impromptu if abortive duel, closed in on Paxton from either side.

He struck at one with his clubbed revolver. The other, getting his
arm about his throat, dragged him backwards on to the floor. He was
down, however, only for a second. Slipping from the fellow's grasp
like an eel, he was up again in time to meet the renewed attack
from the man whom he had already struck with his revolver. He
struck at him again; but still the man was not disabled.

Meanwhile, his more prudent companion, conducting his

operations from the rear, again got his arms about Paxton. The three
went in a heap together on the floor.

Just then the door was opened and some one entered on the
scene. Paxton did not stop to see who it was. Exercising what
seemed to be a giant's strength, he succeeded in again freeing
himself from the grasp of his two opponents. Leaping to his feet, he
made a mad dash at Lawrence. That gentleman, springing nimbly
aside, eluded the threatening blow from the clubbed revolver,
delivered neatly enough a blow with his clenched fist full in Mr.
Paxton's face. The blow was a telling one. Mr. Paxton staggered;
then, just as he seemed about to fall, recovered himself, and struck
again at Mr. Lawrence. This time the blow went home. The butt of
the revolver came down upon the other's head with a sickening
thud. The stricken man flung up his arms, and, without a sound,
collapsed in an invertebrate heap.

The whole place became filled with confusion and shouts.

With what seemed to be a sudden inspiration, swinging right

round, with the branding-iron, which he had managed to retain in
his possession, Paxton struck at the hanging lamp, which was
suspended from the ceiling. In a moment the atmosphere began to
be choked by the suffocating fumes of burning oil. A sheet of fire
was running across the floor. Heedless of all else, Paxton rushed
towards the door.

Such was the confusion occasioned by the disappearance of the

lamp, and by the appearance of the flames, that his frantic flight
seemed for the moment to be unnoticed. He tore through the door,
up a narrow flight of steps rising between two walls, which he found
in front of him, only, however, to find an individual awaiting his
arrival at the top. This individual was evidently one who deemed that
there are cases in which discretion is the better part of valour, and
that the present case was one of them. When Paxton appeared,
instead of trying to arrest his progress, he moved hastily aside,
evincing, indeed, a conspicuous unwillingness to offer him any
impediment in his wild career. Paxton passed him. There was a door
in front of him. In his mad haste, throwing it open, he went through
it. In an instant it was banged behind him; he heard the sound of a
bolt being shot home into its socket, and of a voice exclaiming with
a chuckle--on the other side of the door!--

"Couldn't have done it better if I'd tried, I couldn't! Locked hisself

in--straight he has!"

Too late Paxton learned that, to all intents and purposes, that was
exactly what he had done.

The place in which he found himself was pitchy dark. He had

supposed that it might be a passage leading to a door beyond. It
proved to be nothing of the kind. It seemed, instead, to be some
sort of cupboard--probably a pantry--for he could feel that there
were shelves on either side of him, and that on the shelves were
what seemed to be victuals. Though narrow, by stretching out his
arms he could feel the wall with either hand; it extended,
longitudinally, to some considerable distance--possibly to twenty
feet. At the further end there was a window. It was at an
inconvenient height from the floor, and directly under it was a shelf.
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