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LIFE OF SAKYAMUNI.

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solitude: he abandoned his gay, playful comrades and buried himself in the dark recesses of dense forests, where he gave himself up to profound meditation. Suddhodana, the father, however, wished his son to become rather a powerful monarch, than a lonely ascetic. When, therefore, after a renewed consultation with the Brahmans, he learned that Siddhartha would certainly leave his magnificent palace and become an ascetic, in the event of his seeing four things, viz. decrepitude, sickness, a dead body, and a recluse, he placed guards on all sides of the palace, in order that these dreaded objects might not come near his beloved son. Moreover, in order to weaken his love of solitude and meditation, he married him to Gopa (in Tibetan Sa Tsoma), the daughter of Dandapāni, of the race of the Sakyas, and gave orders that he should be provided with every kind of pleasure. But all these precautions proved futile. Siddhartha, though living in the midst of festivities and in the enjoyment of all wordly pleasures, never ceased to reflect upon the pains which arise from birth, sickness, decay, and death; upon their causes, and upon the remedies to be used against them. He found that existence is the real cause of these pains, that desire produces existence, and that the extinction of desire causes cessation of existence. then determined-as he had already done a hundred times before to lead human beings to salvation by teaching them the practice of virtues and by detaching them from the service of the world. Although he had hitherto often hesitated, his resolution to renounce the world and to become an ascetic was finally put into

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execution, when he happened, on his walk to a garden in the vicinity of the palace, to meet at four different periods an old man, a leper, a dead body, and a man in a religious garb. He had attained the age of twentynine years, when he left his palace, his wife, and the infant son to whom she is said to have given birth at the very moment of her husband's meeting with the recluse. 1

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Siddhartha began his ascetic life by assiduously studying the doctrines of the Brahmans and by becoming the disciple of the most learned of them. Being, however, dissatisfied with their theories and practices, which, he declared, did not offer the true means of salvation, he left them altogether, and gave himself up during the next six years to earnest meditation and the exercise of great austerities; the latter, however, he soon renounced, perceiving from his own experience, that the mortifications practised by the Brahmans were not of a nature to lead to the attainment of perfection. The six years past, he proceeded to the holy spot Bodhimanda, where the Bodhisattvas become Buddhas; and it was here, that, having seated himself upon a couch of grass of the kusa species, he arrived at supreme perfection, which became manifest by his remembering the exact circumstances of all human beings that had ever existed; by his obtain

It is more probable, says Wassiljew, in his "Buddhismus," p. 12, that Sakyamuni was led to view existence as the cause of pain and sorrow in consequence of a war in which the Sakya tribe was defeated, and which obliged him to wander about, rather than by his seeing the four dreaded objects mentioned; for there is a legend which says that the Sakya race was almost entirely exterminated during the life of the Buddha.

LIFE OF SAKYAMUNI.

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ing the divine eye, by the aid of which he could see all things within the space of the infinite worlds, and by his receiving the knowledge that unfolds the causes of the ever-recurring circle of existence.

Sakyamuni being now endowed with all these wonderful and marvellous faculties, became the wisest man, the most perfect Buddha. But having arrived at this state of perfection, he still hesitated whether he should make known his doctrines and propound them to men, his principles being, in his opinion, opposed to all those then adhered to. He was, at first, afraid of being exposed to the insults of animated beings, who are unwise and filled with evil designs. But, moved by compassion, and reflecting, that there would remain nevertheless many beings who would understand him and be delivered by him from existence-the cause of pains and sorrows-he at once resolved to teach the law that had been revealed to him.1

Sākyamuni died, the books say, after having attained an age of eighty years. The data contained in the sacred books as the year of this event, differ considerably, the most distant periods mentioned being the years 2422 and 544 B.C. Lassen, in his examination of these materials, gives preference to the literature of the southern Buddhists, which places his death in 544 or 543 B.C. Westergaard, however, in a recent essay on this subject, believes even this epoch to be by far too early, and calculates his death to have taken

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1 Barthélemy St. Hilaire, "Le Buddha et sa Religion,” p. 32.

place in the period from 370 to 368 B.C., or about one generation before Alexander the Great took the throne.1

Lassen "Indische Alterthumskunde," Vol. II., p. 51. "Ueber Buddha's Todesjahr:" German translation, p. 94.

Westergaard,

CHAPTER II.

GRADUAL RISE AND PRESENT AREA OF THE BUDDHIST RELIGION.

DEVELOPEMENT AND DECLINE IN INDIA.-EXTENSION OVER VARIOUS PARTS OF ASIA.COMPARISON OF THE NUMBER OF BUDDHISTS WITH THAT OF CHRISTIANS.

SCARCELY had Sakyamuni begun to teach his new religion in India, when he obtained a great many followers. His system had an extraordinary success both on account of its simplicity and of the abolition of castes; the Buddha admits to the blessings of which he is the dispenser the highest classes of man (Brahmans) as well as the lowest. Already at his death the number of Buddhists seems to have been very considerable; and about the middle of the third century B.C., during the reign of Asoka, Buddhism began to spread all over India. It then continued to flourish for eight hundred years (till the fifth century of our era), when a series of violent persecutions was commenced (instituted by Brahmanical sectaries, particularly by the adherents to the

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