The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-10-10
A MUSEUM OF RELIGION.
Objects Held Sacred in the Earl!
 Faiths of the World.


 Faiths of the World.
 A notable effort to realize the ideal museum has been made at Paris by the Musee Buimet. This museum exists for the illustration of a single study, and tke objects are arranged, not for dis play or for picturesque effect, but for the ordered development of the subject
 Treasures of art and learning gather ed here bear more especially upon the Orient, and comprise original mOnu- ments precious by age, by material. by the ideas they nIusIraE':, above all by their intelligent classification. They in- clude objects of cult; models of tenn pies, ancient, sacred manuscripts and a reconstruction os scenes with life sized models, in the costumes and char acter of the people they represent. In the museums library are 22.000 vol umes of print and of Oriental manu- scripts, sacred books written on palm leaves that opea out like the leaves of a fan, woven in silk, cut on pebbles, all catalogued in the language Iii which they are written. and in French. A strange library. It holds among other things a grammar of the od-Sanscrit preserved in the temples of Japan, fol- lowed with an explanation of tf;a luys- tic sense of the Sanscrit characters; the first document of the kind ever brought to Europe or published there.
 The museum building is on the Place d'lena. It is three stories high, built round triangular open court. and has a round tower at one angle which serves on the first floor for entrance gallery, and on the second and third. finished together, for. library and pie ture gallery. In theSfirst galleries India urolls it's naive thoughts about Deity and the hereafter The series is opened by a marvellous sculpture in black basalt, Vishnu floating upon the ocean of chaos, before the birth of Brahma. and the beginning or the world. In sculptured wood, fragments of ruin pass one after the other,SSthe heroes and seems of the Ramayana, and tie Mahabharata, the curious trihnlations of Soma, the moon-god, and his twenty sevn wives, and all the monstruous in- carnationss of many heads ard many hands, sole means of primitive people to express power and many attributes. l There are bronze statuettes precious by time and by art; there is an elephant headed god of science in massive silver; there is model of the temple of si- lence" at Bombay. and. shown for the first time to profane Western eyes, a Parsee rite in the rorshiD of fire. The scant remains of Buddhism in India plerge into the living Buddhism of Java, strongly mixed with Brahminism, and we arrive at the Buddhism of the been equal to the portrayal of "the thousand Buddhas of the ten words;' and also to the representation of the en- tire universe in a single model. This sacred object is one of the most curious things in the museum. From out of the midst of a gilded plain rises Mount l Merou with the dwellings of the gods at 1 the top. On tEe plain are figured the | four great continents. and between are disposed in circles the four treasures of | the world, the seven things precious 1 the eight goddess mothers, and the three protecting Buddhas of the world The Chinese section holds treasures of great art and great price, statutes in 1 faience and jewelled bronzes.5 There is 1 a bronze oe the last century repre- senting Buddha (Cakya- -MounD as 8 penitent, which is a masterpiece. He ! ate, says the legend, but single grain | of rice at meal. He carries a bowl to receive aims, and is draned in wind | ing sheet he has taken from a corpse 1 to make of it his first religious dress l There is an extraordinary bronze o, | Dharma which seem to hold the secret. | of the hereafter in their cavernou. | depths. The native and official religion | of Japan, Shintoism, scarcely lends it. | self to art. With its simple rites, it: emples without images, and its yelled l sanctuary which holds only mirror O.
 polished metal, it is no more than oul Professionalism religion to make ( | show in a museum, and it takes in fac very little place there. In Buddhism, or
 the other hand, Japanese are found it 1 opportunity. In the innumerablt
 Buddhas, in the rich vestments of thu
 priests, in the eight hells whose detail. of torture exceed imagination, on al 1 this they have brought to bear thei
 refined fancy and delicate taste Tn, ! Japanese department offers, in fact, { l complet synthesis of Buddhic philoso l phy. In the midst sits colossal the su
 by the eight lesser Buddhas, his ema
 nations representing each moral at tribute, by the five prophets, also hi
 emanations, charged to bring men t
 well-doing by good counsels. and, fin
 ally, by the more respectable of thu l genus demon, charged to bring men tt I well-doing by constant physica | harassment From the St James, Ga