96 THE GANDHARA SCULPTURES. 



garden, received and attended to by Hindu gods, and that on 

 his birth he strode forth proclaiming himself the greatest in the 

 universe. Before he was thirty years old he left home as an 

 ascetic, taking the title of Sakyamuni, " the ascetic of the Sakya 

 family." After some years of austerity in company with Brahman 

 ascetics, he undertook a great fast which reduced him almost to 

 death. He then realised that fasting could not bring superhuman 

 merit or knowledge, and gave it up. Like the North American 

 medicine men and women, after taking food he had visions of 

 temptations by Mara, "the wicked one," and afterwards declared 

 that he had attained Bodi, or saving wisdom. After this he 

 went about teaching his doctrines and attracting disciples until 

 his death about 477 B.C. Nirvana or, practically, annihilation 

 was the goal he taught as the highest bliss, being the close of 

 the endless transmigrations of sentient being. No god as 

 eternal or creator was admitted, and Nirvana could only be 

 obtained by merit through self-abnegation carried to absurd 

 lengths. His religion was, properly, a sort of ethical philosophy 

 or cult of self-sacrifice abounding in beautiful moral precepts 

 largely borrowed from the Brahmanic literature. At first, at 

 least, it had no worship properly so called : attention to its 

 precepts was the only ritual or Dharma. 



Hemispherical mounds, faced with stone, and containing relics 

 of the founder or some of his notable disciples, became centres 

 of assemblage where the community, or Sangha, could hear 

 the law read by the Monks and pay reverence to relics of the 

 teachers and to the symbols of their religion. These structures 

 were called Stiipas, and were surrounded by procession paths ; 

 for to go round a shrine of any kind with the right hand towards 

 it was supposed to bring good. A wheel, representing the law, 

 and called the Dharmachakra ; a pair of footprints of the 

 Buddha ; a relic casket placed on a throne or seat ; a sacred or 

 Bodhi tree ; a figure of an elephant — were the principal symbols 

 used in the earlier times. No images of the teacher seem to 

 have been employed as objects of worship before the Christian 

 era or somewhere about that date. 



