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THE NINTH INDIAN AVATAR, OR THAT OF BUDDHA, INCARNATE 

 FOR THE PURPOSE OF PUTTING A PERIOD TO SANGUINARY 

 SACRIFICES OF MEN AND BEASTS. 



CHAPTER IV. 



The vast Extent in which the religions and philosophical Doctrines of 

 BUDDHA, the Ninth Avatar, have been diffused throughout Asia. 

 Sanscreet Documents concerning himself and his extraordinary His- 

 tory. His secluded and penitentiary Life, persevered in with a View 

 more efficaciously to inculcate the main Object of his Avatar, PARDON 

 WITHOUT PROPITIATORY SACRIFICE, the grand Exemplar which 

 the ancient Gymnosophists and the modern Yogees imitated in the 

 dreadful and disgusting Austerities to which, from remote ages, 

 they have voluntarily devoted themselves. 



1 HE ninth Avatar, or that of BUDDHA, commenced, according 

 to Sir William Jones, in the year 1014 before Christ.* Buddha, 

 however, must have nourished at a period much earlier, if, as is 

 intimated in another part of the Asiatic Researches, he appeared on 

 earth towards the commencement of the Cali-Yug, and married Ila, 

 whose father (Noah, or llus, as he is called by Sanchoniatho-f) 

 was preserved in a miraculous ark from a universal deluge.^ Possibly 

 Buddha may be the name of a dynasty, as were Bali and Rama; a 

 dynasty extending from very remote a?ras down to periods compara- 



* Asiatic Researches, vol. i. p. 425. f See Bishop Cumberland's Sanchoniatho, p. 29. 



* Asiatic Researches, vol. ii. p. 376. 



Vol. in. N 



