perception arises an inward sensation, producing pleasure or pain. Sensations produce this misery and joy, because they supply fuel as it were to the inward fires, concupiscence, anger, and ignorance, and the anxieties of birth, decay, and death. The same was declared to be the case with the sensations produced by each of the other senses. But those who follow the Buddha's scheme of inward selfcontrol, the four stages of the Path whose gate is purity and whose goal is love,-have become wise; the sensations from without no longer give fuel to the inward fire, since the fires of concupiscence, &c., have ceased to burn 1; true disciples are thus free from that craving thirst which is the origin of evil; the wisdom they have acquired will lead them on, sooner or later, to perfection; they are delivered from the miseries which would result from another birth; and even in this birth they no longer need the guidance of such laws as those of caste and ceremonies and sacrifice, for they have already reached far beyond them!

One may well pause and wonder at finding such a sermon preached so early in the history of the world, -more than 400 years before the rise of Christianity, and among a people who have long been thought peculiarly idolatrous and sensual; a sermon remarkable enough for what it says, but still more remarkable for what it leaves unsaid. Its meaning is perhaps scarcely clear without a knowledge of the

1 In a passage from Jina Alankara, given by Burnouf (Lotus, 332), the Buddha is described as 'that great man who, unaided, works out salvation for all the world; and extinguishes by the rainfall of the nectar of his teaching, the fires of lust, and anger, and error; of birth, old age, disease, and death; of pain, lamentation, grief, disappointment, and despair.'

'paths,' and of the 'senses,' but to explain them here would detain us too long, and the general spirit which it breathes is sufficiently unmistakable.

From Gaya, Gautama and his new disciples walked on towards Rajagriha, then the capital of Bimbisāra, the most powerful chieftain in the eastern valley of the Ganges, whose kingdom of Magadha extended about 100 miles south from the river Ganges, and 100 miles east from the river Sona. Both Gautama and Kāṣyapa were well known in the town, and when the rāja came out to welcome the teachers, the crowd was uncertain which was the master and which the disciple. Gautama therefore asked Kasyapa why he had given up sacrificing to Agni. The latter saw the motive of the question, and replied that, while some took pleasure in sights and sounds and taste and sensual love, and others in sacrifice, he had perceived that all these alike were worthless, and had given up sacrifices whether great or small. Nirvāna was a state of peace unattainable by men under the guidance of sense and passion; a rest destructive of transmigration, birth, decay, and death: a happy state to be reached by inward growth alone.1 Gautama is then said to have told the people a Jātaka story about Kasyapa's virtue in a former birth; and seeing how impressed they were, to have gone on to explain to them the four Noble Truths. At the end of this sermon the rāja professed hiinself an adherent of the new system; and the next day all the people in the place, excited by the conversion of Kāṣyapa and

For the story of the conversion of Kāṣyapa, see 'Vinaya Texts,' pp. 118-140; Jātaka, p. 82; Rh. D., Buddhist Birth Stories,' p. 115, and 'Hibbert Lectures, 1881,' p. 159; Bigandet, 130-144.

F

Bimbisāra, crowded to the Yashțivana grove, where Gautama had rested, to see him and hear what new thing he had to say; and when Gautama went towards midday to the city to the raja's house to receive his daily meal, he was surrounded by an enthusiastic multitude. The rāja received him with great respect, and, saying that Yashṭivana was too far off, assigned to him as a residence a bamboo grove (veluvana) close by, which became celebrated as the place where Gautama spent many rainy seasons, and delivered many of his most complete discourses.1

There he stayed for two months, and during that time two ascetics, named Ṣāriputra and Moggallāna, afterwards conspicuous leaders in the new crusade, joined the Sangha or Society, as the little company of Buddhist mendicants was called. The high position which Gautama soon after assigned these new disciples created some ill-feeling among the older members of the Sangha, which Gautama, however, allayed by calling together his followers and addressing them at some length on the means requisite for Buddhist salvation, which he summed up in the celebrated verse. 'To cease from all wrong-doing,

To get virtue,

To cleanse one's own heart,—

This is the religion of the Buddhas.'

At the same time he laid down the first rules for the

'Curiously enough while Yashṭivana has been identified by General Cunningham ('Ancient Geography of India,' p. 461, and map xii.), the site of Veluvana has not yet been discovered: it must have occupied about the position where the ancient basements, marked K. K. K. and G. in Cunningham's map of Rājagriha (Pl. xiv. Reports, vol. i.), were found by him. See above, p. 33.

guidance of the society, the simple code being called Pātimokkha,' that is the Disburdenment,' a word afterwards applied to a book containing a summary of the more complex system of laws, as it had been elaborated at the time of Gautama's death. This meeting of mendicants at which the Society was first, so to speak, incorporated, is known as the 'Sāvakasannipata,' or assembly of the disciples.1

The enthusiasm of the people seems to have cooled down as rapidly as it arose, for we hear of no other conversions besides those of Ṣāriputra and Moggal lāna, and their pupils; and the members of the society began even to complain to Gautama that, when they went out to beg their daily food, they were received with abuse and ridicule; on the ground that the new teaching would deprive households of their support, and depopulate and ruin the country. This they did not know how to answer, which is not surprising, for the charge was unfortunately true. The Brahmans, indeed, held celibacy in high honour, but only in youth and old age; and the tāpasas or ascetics, so far from seeking imitators, added such penance to their celibacy as they hoped, rightly enough, would be unattainable by ordinary men ; whereas the Buddhists painted in glowing colours the contrast between the miseries of life in the world, and the sweet calm of life in the Order, and wanted every one for his own sake to share at once in their salvation. Gautama's

1 Jātaka, p. 85; Hardy, M. B., 198; Turnour, J. B. A. S., vii. 816. Hardy says that the verse above quoted (v. 183 of the Dhammapada), 'constitutes the discourse,' called Pātimokkha. Compare my 'Ancient Coins and Measures of Ceylon,' p. 5, and below p 162.

answer, perhaps the best possible, does not dispute the charge, but simply reasserts that what the people called ruin he called good. He advised his followers to say that the Buddha was only trying to spread righteousness, as former Buddhas had done; that he used no weapons except persuasion; those whom he gained, he gained only by means of the truth, which he proclaimed for the benefit of all.

While the new teacher was laying the foundations of his order, and experiencing first the devotion and then the attacks of the multitude, his relations at Kapilavastu had not remained ignorant of the change in his life; and Suddhodana had sent to him asking him to visit his native city, that his now aged father might see him once more before he died. Gautama, accordingly started for Kapilavastu, and on his arrival there stopped, according to his custom, in a grove outside the town. There his father, uncles, and others came to see him; but the latter at least were by no means pleased with their mendicant clansman; and though it was the custom on such occasions to offer to provide ascetics with their daily food, they all left without having done so. The next day, therefore, Gautama set out, accompanied by his disciples, carrying his bowl to beg for a meal. he came near the gate of the little town, he hesitated whether he should not go straight to the rāja's residence, but at last he determined to adhere to a rule of the Order, according to which a Buddhist mendicant should beg regularly from house to house. It soon reached the raja's ears that his son was walking through the streets begging. Startled at such news, he rose up, and holding his outer robe together with

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