422 Buddhism and its Legends. 



like that seen now among the nations of Europe." " A general 

 opinion seems to prevail that some great personage is about to 

 appear, who will make all one, from being gifted with unerring 

 intelligence and unbounded power . . . and men are 

 waiting for some event to decide whether future ages are to be 

 ruled by a Chakrawartti, a universal monarch, or guided by a 

 Buddha, or all-wise sagfe." 



On Sunday, the day of the full moon in the month of May, 

 and in the year B.C. 623,* a prince of the house of Sakya was 

 born in Kapilawastu, a city supposed to have been on the 

 borders of Nepaul, and on the following day his mother died. 

 As he grew up, his preceptors foretold that he would become 

 a recluse, and his father endeavoured to entice him into a 

 more regal mode of living by the pleasures of the chase and 

 the glories of war. At the age of sixteen he was married to 

 the princess Yasodhora, "peerless in excellence and in grace" ; 

 but his character seems to have had few capacities for domestic 

 enjoyment. The sight of a leper, and afterwards of a decom- 

 posing corpse, encouraged his brooding and introspective pro- 

 pensities. He came to the conclusion that all existence was 

 vanity, and he determined to exchange his princely rank, with 

 all its luxuries, for the position of a wandering mendicant, 

 carrying an alms-bowl to receive the gifts of the charitable. 

 He put this intention into practice on the very day on which 

 his wife presented to him his first-born child. He looked at 

 the infant and its sleeping mother, felt no compunction at 

 leaving them, and rushed off into the forest with an attendant, 

 whom he soon dismissed. 



When he carried his beggars' alms-bowl through the town, 

 the beauty of his person and the grace of his manner caused 

 many to take him for a celestial personage. He accepted the 

 morsels of food that were given to him, and eat them under a 

 tree; their uncleanness reminding him of the vileness of man's 

 body. His austerities nearly cost him his hfe, but he recovered, 

 and spent six years in mental anguish and ineffectual search 

 for absolute truth, and the means of extinguishing all human 

 desire. Again he carried the alms-bowl, and, being deserted 

 by his companions, continued his struggle alone. " Taking 

 with him," says Mr. Spence Hardy, in his graphic narrative, 

 " as much food as would support him during forty days of 

 additional trial, he retired to the spot that was afterwards to 

 become of world-wide renown. There, under a bo-tree, he was 

 assaulted by innumerable demons, and the contest was fiercely 



* The dates of Gotama's birth and death aro variously given ; the latter 

 being, according to some authorities, 2122 years B.C., others place it nt 544 B.C., 

 and Westergaard as late as 370 to 368 B.C. Spence Hardy is a high authority 

 on all questions of Buddhism, and we give his in the text. 



