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and Buddhism. They are of two distinct kinds : first, there 

 is the morality of Buddhism, often of extreme beauty ; and, 

 secondly, there are the accounts of the person and character 

 of Buddha himself. In regard to each of these we can find, 

 or imagine, certain parallels in either the Old or the New 

 Testament. What do these pai'allels mean ? 



10. Let us take the second class of parallels first, those 

 which relate to the persons and characters of Buddha and 

 Jesus Christ. Take, as a prominent instance, the birth 

 stories. I need not here give details, which are to be found 

 in any modern work on Buddhism. The supposed miraculous 

 conception; the bringing down of Buddha from the Tasita 

 heaven ; the Devas acknowledging his supremacy ; the pre- 

 sentation in the Temple, when the images of Indra and 

 other gods threw themselves at his feet ; the temptation by 

 Mara, — which legends are embelhshed by the modern writer 

 I have already quoted, under such phrases as, " Conceived by 

 the Holy Ghost/' '' Born of the Virgin Maya,'' " Song of the 

 heavenly host," " Presentation in the Temple and temptation 

 in the Avilderness," — none of these are found in the early Pali 

 texts. The simple story of ancient Buddhism is that an ascetic, 

 whose family name was Gautama, preached a new doctrine 

 of human suffering, and a new way of deliverance from it. 

 The surrounding of Buddha with the attributes of divinity is 

 an exaltation of his person by the later Buddhist writers, which 

 is entirely foreign to the earliest elements of his history as 

 gleaned from the Pali texts. To write a consecutive history 

 of his life at all was an after-thought. The earliest Buddhist 

 writings relate his teachings, with only cursory intimations as 

 to his personal history. Prom them we glean that he was the 

 son of Suddhodana, who was a king residing at Kapilavatthu ; 

 whether a ruler over extended territory, or only what would 

 now be called in India a " petty rajah," may be left doubt- 

 ful. Surrounded from his infancy with some amount of wealth 

 and luxury, as he afterwards told his disciples, this intel- 

 lectual youth, — for such he must have been in an eminent 

 degree, — was led to reflect on sickness, decay, and death ; and 

 while he thus reflected in his mind, " all that buoyancy of youth 

 which dwells in the young, all that spirit of life which dwells 

 in life, sank within him." Though he was mai-ried, yet at 

 twenty-nine years of age he left his home to become an ascetic. 

 This was no unusual course; and he sought two other Brahtnan 

 ascetics to be his teachers. Dissatisfied, however, with their 

 teaching, he travelled to Uruvela, or Buddha Gaya, near Patna, 

 where he spent, it is said, seven years in discipline, meditation. 



