BUDDHISMj AND " THE LIGHT OF ASIA." 159 



Spirit of the Universe, and his relation to human things, but 

 containing comparatively few references to moral truths. 

 The Yogis no doubt then practised, as they still practise, 

 certain bodily austerities; this manner of religious life 

 Buddha defines under the one word " mortifications," which, 

 he says, are " painful, ignoble, and profitless." But his own 

 system was new and very different. Instead of the many 

 rehgious external observances he would have Right Action 

 in a moral sense. This I believe to have been, as I have 

 already said, his first thought. And the revolution from a 

 rule of ritual to a rule of conduct we can well understand 

 to have been enormous. 



Buddha, then, was a reforming ascetic amongst the many 

 ascetics of his day, and further than this we can hardly go 

 with anything like a feeling of certainty. That there may 

 be a substratum of truth in the later accounts of his being 

 a king's son ; his youthful dismay at the first sight of old 

 age, disease, and death ; his forsaking of his young wife 

 and child ; is no doubt quite possible ; but that wonderful 

 history of his early years, so often quoted and admired, that 

 " Great Eenunciation," as it has been called, had better be 

 regarded always, perhaps, as part of the " Romantic History " 

 of Buddha. It is quite worth mentioning, in this connection, 

 that a portion of that " Romantic " early history is found in the 

 Mahavagga of the Vinaya Pitaka, where it belongs to the 

 history, not of Buddha, but of a noble youth of Benares, 

 Yasa by name, who joined Buddha early in his career. I 

 refer to the scene of the sleeping female musicians in the 

 palace, the sight of whom is said to have reminded him of a 

 cemetery of the dead. In this way embellishments were 

 heaped upon the founder of Buddhism by zealous, and not 

 always very truth-loving, devotees, as years passed on, at 

 least one of which was stripped from the shoulders of even 

 one of his own disciples. 



We must now come to a more interesting, as well as more 

 difficult part of Buddhistic teaching. What was to be the 

 end of this new mode of religious life, which replaced the 

 ancient Hindu systems of religious austerities, ritual, and re- 

 sultless meditations, by the rule of personal conduct ? And 

 what suggested to Buddha this, to the then world of India, 

 entirely new method of reaching peace of mmd, and free- 

 dom from human ills *? To take the last question first — the 

 reply to it is by no means easy. But I cannot trace his 

 method to any sufficient data in the then existing, or any 



