SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN. 65 



SOME KEMAINS OF BUDDHIST INDIA. 



By JAMES TROUP, M.A., Formerly H.B.M.'s Consul-General at Yokohama, 



Japan. 



(Substance of an Address delivered 30th October, 1907.) 



Before taking you to see, in photographic illustration, a few of 

 the architectural and other remains of Buddhism in India, which I 

 had an opportunity of seeing during a visit extending over six months 

 which I paid to India in the season 1905-6, it may be well that I give 

 you the very shortest sketch of the career of the founder of Buddhism. 



The date of the death of Buddha has now been brought down to 

 the end of the fifth century, B.C. As he was said to have been in 

 his eightieth year when he died, this would place his birth soon after 

 500 B.C. He was the son of the chief of the State of the Sakya clan, 

 an aristocratic republic, whose capital city was Kapilavastu, in what is 

 now the frontier country of Audh (Oudh) and Nepal. His father 

 was Suddhodana Raja, his mother the Lady Maya. In his youth he 

 excelled in athletic sports, such as the use of the bow. He married ; 

 had a son. But, his thoughts turning to serious views of human 

 life, he, notwithstanding his social position, and the dissuasions of 

 his father, quitted the palace and adopted the life of a wandering 

 ascetic. He visited Uruvilva, in the neighbourhood of Gaya, in 

 Bihar, where he remained six years ; and there perfected his religious 

 system, " attained enlightenment," or Bodhi, as it is called. Subse- 

 quently he went to Banares, the religious centre of India, to establish 

 the Kingdom of Righteousness, as he termed it. In the Deer Park 

 there, the Modern Sarnath, he expounded his system and established 

 his religious community. An account of his life as a religious teacher, 



