CHAPTER III.

THE GREAT RELIGIOUS TEACHERS. -2. GAUTAMA.

Of the greater religious teachers, in the order of time, - Moshai properly succeeds Manu and Zarathustra. It seemed, however, better for preserving the continuity of thought in their respective races, to treat of the two great Indians, Manu and Gautama, and the two great Hebrews, Moshai and Yaishooa, together, rather than to separate the naturally connected teachings of these pairs, merely to preserve the order of time.

Gautama stands, in some degree, in a similar relation to Manu as Yaishooa does to Moshai; and the teachings of both the later sages are to a similar degree corollaries from those of the earlier. As Manu preceded Moshai by some five to six hundred years (according to the lowest computation), so Gautama preceded Yaishooa by as nearly as possible the same interval.1

The date of Gautama's birth has been fixed with great exactness by Professor Müller at within two or three years at most of 557 B.C. The reign of the Indian King Chandragupta, whose seat of government was Pataliputra, and who is identified with the Sandrocottus, reigning at Palibothra, of the Greek histories of Alexander's incursion, is the point of contact enabling the Greek and Hindu chronologies to be brought together. This period of history is marked by numerous inscriptions on rock, of this and the next age, still remaining in India.

The latest and most careful estimates of the period of Manu very greatly increase the interval between him and Moshai, making it over a thousand years.

This Sandrocottus of Palibothra, "mentioned by the Greek historians as contemporary with Seleucus, and visited by Megasthenes, is undoubtedly the Chandragupta of Indian literature, who reigned at Pataliputra, the founder of a new dynasty, the grandfather of Asoka, under whom the great Booddhist council was held in 245 (or 242) B.C., and of whose time are various inscriptions on rocks in different parts of India."

"These inscriptions are not in Sanskrit, but in " [Prakrit] "a language which stands to Sanskrit in the same relation as Italian to Latin. The days, therefore, when Sanskrit was the language of the people were over in the third century B.C."

"In the third century B.C. the ancient Sanskrit language had dwindled down to a mere volgare or Prakrit, and the ancient religion of the Veda had developed into Buddhism, and had been superseded by" [this] "its own offspring, the state religion in the kingdom of Asoka the grandson of Chandragupta."

It is not necessary here to follow the successive steps of Professor Müller's able and learned proof: it is sufficient to say, that as the date of Gautama's birth has been fixed by various authors to within the third quarter of the sixth century before Christ, and by Professor Müller (with a possible error of only two or three years) to the year 557 B.C., so the historical facts of his life have been by patient students unwrapped and unrolled-as a blackened papyrus is unrolled from incrusting Pompeian ashes, or as the features of a mummy are unwrapped from its manifold cerements from the baffling envelopes and thick incrustations of myth and fable; and we thus have before us a reliable picture, though but in rough outlines, of a great life that was lived twenty-four centuries ago.

Of all men that ever lived, perhaps Gautama was the most "Christ-like," resembled most that Yaishooa who was to be born five and a half centuries later; - so much so, that were the ancient Indian doctrine true of the successive re-appearances on earth, at vast intervals, of the Booddha or Wisest Teacher, we might well infer the later

master to have been a re-appearance, a incarnation of the earlier.

new Avatar or

All students of Gautama's life and teachings are agreed in this opinion of him, even those, who, as Christian. missionaries of the Church of England and other bodies, have made it the business of their lives to combat the religion he introduced, and supplant it by the substitution of Christianity. The Rev. J. S. Robson, before quoted, says of him ("Hinduism," pp. 71-72), —

"Buddha was the first to teach a religion which might be common to all men, and to seek to awaken in man's heart the idea of a brotherhood as broad as the human race. . . . He is the one example of a human teacher who in his life was more than his religion. . . . The spectacle of him renouncing all that man most prizes, - going into the desert and agonizing there for six years; and at last, alone and deserted, without even a ray of hope in a God to cheer him, withstanding all the temptations that came on him; working out his conception of man's deliverance; then hastening, in overflowing sympathy, to communicate it to all who would hear him; and, when he had attracted thousands of followers, still continuing the poorest of the poor, is one of the grandest pictures of self-denial and service which the world has produced, and was a constant testimony before all men to the sincerity of his convictions and the depth of his sympathy."

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Barthélemy Saint Hilaire says of Gautama,

"His life has no stain. His constant heroism equals his conviction; and, if the theory which he preaches is false, the personal illustrations which he gives are irreproachable. He is the finished model of all the virtues which he preaches: his self-abnegation, his charity, his unchangeable sweetness, never fail a single instant. He silently prepares his doctrine by six years of retirement and of meditation; he propagates it by the sole power of preaching and of persuasion during more than a half-century: and, when he dies in the arms of his disciples, it is with the serenity of a sage who has sought and practised the Good all his life, and who is assured of having discovered the True." (Translation by the author.)

Gautama was born a prince, being putative son and heir to Suddhôdana, an Indian king whose capital was Kapilastu, the "white city" of early lore, a town which has g disappeared, but of which some remains are believed.

to be traceable at Nagara, on the river Kohâna, on the borders of Nepaul in North India. Great expectations clustered about the child even before birth; for his very conception seems, like that of Yaishooa, to have been considered miraculous, - indeed, a voluntary incarnation. Maya, his mother — a virgin, according to some legends, - in a vision saw a brilliant star shoot from heaven, and, descending upon her, enter her body on the right side. This was interpreted by the court astrologers to signify that the queen should bear a child of supernatural wisdom, ― the Booddha, in short, or heaven-descended sage, who, according to Indian belief, became periodically incarnate for the instruction of mankind.

The name of the queen, Maya, may perhaps be allegorical, as it is the same word which is used to express the "delusion" which the bodily senses cast about the mind in our present state of being. Incarnation would cast this "delusion" about the mind of the Booddha, previously a free dweller in heaven; and "delusion" might therefore be said allegorically to be his terrestrial parent, or origin of his earthly life. The legend of the star, which the wise men from the East saw settling upon the house of Mariam or Miriam (Mary), the mother of Yaishooa, may have originated from the above legendary vision of Queen Maya (see hereafter).

The legends respecting Gautama's childhood are, some of them, strikingly similar to those of the childhood of Yaishooa, so much so, as to suggest a common origin, at least, for both. Thus the sage Asita, or Káladèwala, a "wood-dweller" or hermit, a person of great age and sanctity, having heard the Devas (a sort of semi-divine or angelic beings) singing hymns upon the birth of the marvellous infant of Maya, came and worshipped the babe, and declared that by certain signs he knew him to be the Booddha, who should preach the Law and save mankind, though he himself should not survive to hear him. He also predicted to Maya (as did Simeon to Mary), that

a "sword should pierce her for the boy," or on account of the boy, meaning, however, not the sword of sorrow, as in the latter's case, but the sword of death the queen's death, accordingly, is said to have ensued in seven days.

Again, when the man most learned of the time in the holy books and in secular science, Visvamitra, is summoned to the court to take charge of the education of the young prince, he is astounded to find that the boy, miraculously and without instruction, is already master of more than all the knowledge which he himself has acquired in a long life of study. He, too, falls down and worships the child. The similarity of this story to that of Christ and the doctors of the law need scarcely be pointed out."

In his younger days, Gautama was called Savârthasiddh or Siddartha, "the fulfilment of all wishes," or "the allprospering." There is no reason to doubt that his father (as is alleged in the story of his life) used all possible means and precautions to prevent his abandoning his brilliant prospects for the life of a travelling preacher. The young prince was surrounded with every luxury and indulgence that an Eastern imagination could invent,palaces, gardens, wives, horses, and splendors of every description; but all his movements were guarded to prevent his forsaking all these for the unselfish rôle of the missionary, which his supposed Booddhaship might lead him to assume.

The story of his wooing of Yasôdhara, daughter of the neighboring Prince Suprabuddha, is probably in the main true; though legend has adorned it with a fanciful garni

Both these incidents - whether the later story be derived (as is most probable) from the earlier, or both from some long-forgotten tradition, or each merely from a similar exaggeration of facts- must be regarded by the sincere historical student as belonging to the domain of romantic legend or fable, - that illusory nebulous envelope which man's imagination, credulity, and love of the marvellous, delight to form around the solid nucleus of truth in the life-stories of great men. It need not be doubted that both Gautama and Yaishooa were very precocious boys; and some striking actual instance of this precocity has (perhaps) been expanded by tradition into this miraculous knowledge, in the one case, of the whole mass of Brahmanical divinity and science; and in the other, of the entire body of the Hebrew sacred writings.