sidedness of an individuality which does not constitute the inmost kernel of our being, but is rather to be thought of as a kind of aberration of it. The true original freedom re-enters at this moment, which, in the sense indicated, may be regarded as a restitutio in integrum. The peace and quietness upon the countenance of most dead persons seems to have its origin in this. Quiet and easy is, as a rule, the death of every good man: but to die willingly, to die gladly, to die joyfully, is the prerogative of the resigned, of him who surrenders and denies the will to live. For only he wills to die really, and not merely apparently, and consequently he needs and desires no continuance of his person. The existence which we know he willingly gives up: what he gets instead of it is in our eyes nothing, because our existence is, with reference to that, nothing. The Buddhist faith calls it Nirvana,[1] i.e., extinction.
- ↑ The etymology of the word Nirvana is variously given. According to Colebrooke ("Transact. of the Royal Asiat. Soc.," vol. i. p. 566) it comes from va, "to blow," like the wind, and the prefixed negative nir, and thus signifies a calm, but as an adjective "extinguished." Obry, also, Du Nirvana Indien, p. 3, says: "Nirvanam en sanscrit signifie à la lettre extinction, telle que celle d'un feu." According to the "Asiatic Journal," vol. xxiv. p. 735, the word is really Neravana, from nera, "without," and vana, "life," and the meaning would be annihilatio. In "Eastern Monachism," by Spence Hardy, p. 295, Nirvana is derived from vana, "sinful desires," with the negative nir. J. J. Schmidt, in his translation of the history of the Eastern Mongolians, says that the Sanscrit word Nirvana is translated into Mongolian by a phrase which signifies "departed from misery," "escaped from misery." According to the learned lectures of the same in the St. Petersburg Academy, Nirvana is the opposite of Sanfara, which is the world of constant re-birth, of longings and desires, of illusion of the senses and changing forms, of being born, growing old, becoming sick, and dying. In the Burmese language the word Nirvana, according to the analogy of other Sanscrit words, becomes transformed into Nieban, and is translated by "complete vanishing." See Sangermano's "Description of the Burmese Empire," translated by Tandy, Rome, 1833, § 27. In the first edition of 1819 I also wrote Nieban, because we then knew Buddhism only from meagre accounts of the Burmese.
