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his hearers. The early part of his life is said to have been spent in 

 retirement from the world, and contempt of its grandeur ; in acts of 

 severe penance, and in the incessant worship of Mahadeva. He had 

 likewise the gift of prophecy, and could alter the course of nature. 

 It was predicted of Buddha that he should introduce a new religion 

 into the world. The prediction was fulfilled, and the leading prin- 

 ciple of that benevolent religion was, that the horrid custom of. 

 offering up men and beasts in sacrifice should be abolished. He is 

 said to have had above eighty thousand disciples, who propagated 

 his doctrines through all the neighbouring kingdoms ; and ten only 

 of these disciples published five thousand volumes in honour of their 

 master. At the close of a life, whose duration was one hundred 

 years, consumed in acts of exemplary piety and beneficence, it is 

 asserted that Buddha, convoking his disciples together, retracted the 

 pious doctrines which he had, through the whole of that prolonged 

 life, inculcated ; telling them that the worship of any deity was 

 mere delusion, for that, in fact, no deity presided over the universe ; 

 that every thing is the effect of blind chance, and that the world is 

 eternal, but subject, at stated periods, to alternate destruction and 

 renovation. The sacred character of an Avatar, however, as we 

 before observed, absolutely forbids the possibility of his speaking in 

 this impious manner, though doctrines very similar are imputed to 

 Buddha by some of the more inveterate of the sect of the Brahmins -. 

 and it is in part to explain this difficulty, as well as to account for 

 some other contradictions in his character, that the existence of a 

 second Buddha has been supposed, who flourished many centuries 

 after the first, and who imported those principles into India from 

 Egypt, where Plato, in his Timaeus, has expressly asserted that such 

 doctrines were maintained. 



It is to Mr. Wilford, who has gone pretty much at large into the 

 history of this Avatar, that we must ultimately recur for a genuine 



